Read STARGATE ATLANTIS: The Furies (Book 4 in the Legacy series) for Free Online Page A

at the back of the room. “Colonel Davis, would you play the sound file in question?”
    It only took Davis a minute. He was good.
    “Atlantis, you have to help us!” A panicked voice, a young man, his voice breaking on the edge of terror. “We have Darts… I don’t know how many! They’re… “ A sob, a scream as though someone in the background cried out in mortal terror. It echoed through the gray and white conference room, cutting like the stench of blood. LaPierre’s hands clenched on the arms of his chair, and Anderson, silent beside the coffee service, raised her chin. “Please! You have to help us! Atlantis…” It faded in a burst of static. The Atlantis controller’s calm voice could still be heard. “New Athos? New Athos? Can you hear us? New Athos? We are sending a team with all possible dispatch. Can you hear us?” An accented voice, quiet behind hers, Dr. Zelenka. “I do not think they can. Bùh jim pomoz.”
    Davis turned off the recording.
    “Perhaps that answers your question, madam?” Desai asked Shen. “I think it is helpful, do you not, Mr. Martin?”
    “Very helpful,” Martin said. He frowned down at his briefing book as Anderson silently refilled his coffee, decaf, as he’d said.
    Nechayev’s eyes met Jack’s, a flash of amusement there. “So now that we have established why New Athos was informed that our gate team was coming, let us move to what happened when they arrived…”
     
    Lt. Colonel Davis was doing a good job of showing the IOA members out, and Jack smiled and let him do it. That was what they paid Davis for. Woolsey was last, his leather briefcase in hand, raincoat over his arm, hanging back. Outside the full glass windows the evening rush hour traffic crept up Massachusetts Avenue toward Columbus Circle, red tail lights bright in the gathering dark.
    “You ok?” Jack asked Woolsey quietly.
    Woolsey gave him a sideways glance. “I think I’d rather be interrogated by Replicators again, frankly.”
    “I hear you.” Jack looked at the retreating backs of S.R. Desai and Aurelia Dixon-Smythe as Davis herded them past the security desk.
    Woolsey took a deep breath as they disappeared around the corner. “I was thinking… Do you want to go across the street to Capital City Brewery and get some dinner?”
    Which translated as let’s spend three hours with you holding my hand while we rehash every word of the hearing. Jack thought another fifteen minutes would have him screaming in a decidedly un-Air Force way.
    “Actually, I’ve got a lot of paperwork to catch up,” he said. “This has eaten my whole day. I should probably just take the laptop home and nuke something rather than go out, Dick.”
    “Sure,” Woolsey said. He looked kind of crestfallen, and for a moment Jack almost said to hell with it. But three more hours of how the IOA sucked?
    “Another time,” Jack compromised. “They’ve got good steaks.”
    “Yeah.” Woolsey nodded and squared his shoulders. “I should be getting home too. Not that I’ve got paperwork from Atlantis…”
    Before they started another round of speculation there, Jack headed for the glass conference room doors. “I’ve got to run by my office and get my laptop.”
    “Ok. See you later.” Woolsey looked out the window. “It’s stopped raining.”
    “Good,” Jack said.
    There was the distant rumble of thunder off to the west as Jack left the building, putting on his cover absently while glancing up at the sky with a lifetime’s force of habit. Thunderclouds building again to the northwest, catching the updrafts over the edge of the Appalachian front beyond the horizon, away from the microclimate of the river. Thirty minutes, forty. Plenty of time.
    It was only eight blocks to his apartment, two rooms whose rent at three times the price of his mortgage in Colorado Springs was supposedly justified by granite countertops. He wouldn’t miss this when it was time to retire. Eight blocks, enough to provide a little