Dead end

Chapter One

“OK, remind me again why I agreed to come down here with you?”

Lt Col Sheppard was not in a good mood. Introducing Ronon to poker last night had been a good idea; introducing him to bourbon had not. The Satedan could put away a phenomenal amount of the stuff without even blinking. Sheppard’s aching head, on the other hand, was witness that its effects on human physiology were the same as they had always been. The last thing he needed now was a morning with McKay at his most irascible.

“Because your devotion to duty knows no bounds, and I need your impeccable scientific credentials,” said McKay. “That, or Zelenka’s laid-up sick and you’re the next best thing. And you never know when that ATA gene will come in handy.”

Sheppard scowled and ran his fingers over his throbbing forehead. There were times when, despite all the provocation, he actually liked McKay. This was not one of them. He looked back at the four-strong team of marines stationed a few yards away in the corridor. They looked faintly sympathetic.

“It’d better be important,” Sheppard growled, turning his attention back to the scientist. He was working away at the dismantled Ancient computer panel. “If you don’t get this open in ten minutes, I’m outta here.”

McKay turned around to face him, irritation written all over his face. “Oh, like what?” he snapped. “What’s more important than finally getting to the bottom of this place? I mean, you might be happy spending your time in a city where we only understand half of what anything does, where the power ratios fluctuate every time Ronon sneezes, and where the machinery we do know about could fry the lot of us in a nanosecond if we happen to flick the wrong switch. Forgive me, but I’m not.”

Sheppard gave him a warning look. McKay might technically be out of his chain of command, but there was a limit to how much crap he’d put up with.

“And your time is, of course, most appreciated,” said McKay, taking the hint. “I’m almost done. Just a few more moments.”

Sheppard gave a curt nod. The movement hurt his head. “Make it quick.”

The two men were deep in the bowels of the Ancient city. After their last prolonged battle against the Wraith, a rare window of opportunity had opened. For once, scientific research had taken priority over survival and the civilian staff were making the most of it. Not that Sheppard minded that. It felt like they’d been high-tailing it from one crisis to another ever since arriving in the Pegasus galaxy. If the price of a little peace was making McKay even more insufferable than usual, it was probably still worth paying. In any case, they all knew the lull was only temporary.

Rodney turned back to his work. There were Ancient devices all over the polished floor, some retrieved from other parts of the city, some taken from the hole in the wall McKay was investigating. The gadgets, all of which were more or less meaningless to Sheppard, were mixed up with McKay’s own equipment: oscilloscopes, signal processors, metal detectors, and Venusian death-rays. OK, so the last one was probably made up. But knowing McKay, only probably.

“This place has been out of action for a long time,” came McKay’s muffled voice from halfway inside the wall cavity. “I don’t think it’s been shielded for any particular reason. It’s just that the systems have malfunctioned and the access doors have locked down.”

“Reassuring,” said Sheppard, watching McKay fiddle with electronics behind the open panel. Wires and transparent circuit boards poked from the gap like entrails. “Like these places have never been wired before.”

Bitter experience had taught the team to be very careful with unexplored parts of the city. Hence the marines. From the looks on their faces, it was clear they didn’t relish being down here any more than he did.

“Ha!” cried McKay. “That’s it. The field harmonics have distorted due to the burnt-out intake manifold. I thought it must be something like that.”

“Yeah, me too. Suppose you tell me what that means?”

To his right, there was suddenly a low hiss. The marines perked up, and raised their weapons. With a click and a sigh, an entire section of wall slid smoothly back and upwards. What had been a blank, unremarkable section of corridor now revealed a second chamber. McKay pulled himself out of the mess of cables and circuitry, looking smug.

“It means, Colonel, that I’ve got us in,” he said. “Whatever delights have been hidden in here for 10,000 years are about to be revealed.”

“Not so fast,” said Sheppard, hefting his P90 and gesturing to the marines to back him up. “We’ll take this nice and slow.”

With the marines behind him, Sheppard inched towards the open doorway. The room beyond was about ten meters in diameter and octagonal in shape. The usual geometric Ancient patterning stretched across all of the eight walls. A low light filtered upwards from wells near the floor, bathing the space in a dim orange. Like most of the rooms in the city, there was a minimum of clutter. The Ancients had never been ones for fussy interior decor. The only item of note was a raised column in the very center, perhaps three feet tall. It was also octagonal, and a selection of symbols glowed gently on its smooth top. It looked like a control panel.

Sheppard could hear McKay itching to come in, but the Colonel was in no hurry. His headache was still bad, and the scientist would have to wait. With a flick of his fingers, he motioned for the marines to fan out and check for anything untoward. With a cool efficiency, they began to sweep the walls. Sheppard walked over to the far wall, scouring the patterned surface for clues to the room’s function.

“Oh, come on!” cried McKay impatiently from the corridor outside. “It’s a minor control chamber of some sort. You don’t need to—”

There was a muffled explosion. The orange light flickered and a warning klaxon began to wail. Slowly, the central column started to sink into the floor.

“Get out!” yelled Sheppard, darting back towards the door. The marines tore across the chamber. He just had time to see the last of his men slip through the gap before the wall section slammed shut in front of him. He was trapped inside. The klaxon continued to blare. Within the enclosed space, the noise echoed alarmingly. The central column carried on sinking into the ground.

“Rodney!” he shouted. “Wanna tell me what’s going on?”

From the far side of the wall, McKay’s voice sounded faint and indistinct. “I don’t know!” he yelled. “One of your men must have set something off!”

Sheppard slammed his fist against the doors in frustration, then took a breath. Whatever was happening in the chamber was happening quickly; the column was now barely a foot above ground level and he ran over to it. There were Ancient symbols on the surface, still glowing, and the thing looked a lot like a DHD. But if there was a DHD, where was the gate? He looked up at the ceiling. Nothing. The column continued to descend, the klaxon continued to blare.

“Rodney, get this thing the hell open!”

“Trying, Colonel!” came the muffled response. “It seems to have gone into some kind of shutdown sequence! I’m working on it!”

That was not reassuring. Sheppard stepped back from the column, now nearly flush with the floor, and looked around. That’s when he noticed the ceiling was sinking.

“Oh, great,” he breathed, watching the rapidly descending arches.

He raised his P90, but the gesture was pointless. For once, it couldn’t save him.

“Losing headroom in here, Rodney…”

He thought he heard a curse coming from the far side of the door. Sheppard dropped to his knees next to the sunken column. Nothing happened to the klaxon, nor to the slowly descending roof. The control panel surface was now level with the floor, and the glow had disappeared. The six Ancient symbols were still visible. Frantically, Sheppard pressed them in turn. Nothing. He tried in reverse order. Still nothing. He glanced up — the ceiling was now just a few centimeters from his head — and sank to his belly, letting his weapon clatter to the floor.

“Rodney!” he yelled. “You’re gonna have to work this out quick, or I won’t be needing those slimming classes!”

“I’m on it!”

The ceiling crept down further. Sheppard tried the sequence again. Clockwise. Anti-clockwise. Random. His fingers were slick with sweat, his breath short and sharp, as the ceiling drew relentlessly closer. What a way for a pilot to go.

He slammed his fist against the symbols. Something sprang free from a slot in between them. It bounced back down as it hit the ceiling. Sheppard grasped it frantically, desperate for anything. It was a shard of translucent matter, some kind of Ancient computer component. Not very helpful.

Then, with a shudder, the doors slid open. Booted feet filled the narrow gap and two marines threw themselves to the floor, arms extended into the chamber.

“John!” cried McKay. “Over here!”

Sheppard scrabbled round in the tight space and squirmed towards the exit. As he went, the irregular surface of the ceiling scraped against his body armor. Something snagged, but he thrust himself forward. Hands grabbed his arms. He was yanked out through the doorway. As his feet were pulled free, there was a dull slam behind him.

Shakily, he looked back. Through the open doorway, there was nothing but solid metal. The device had been well and truly shut down.

He took a deep breath and gingerly hauled himself up. That had been too close.

“You okay?” McKay’s face creased with concern. He had that rare guilty look he wore when he knew something had gone wrong and it was probably his fault.

“What do you think?” asked Sheppard, recovering his poise. “You want to tell me what just went on in there?”

“I may have, er, crossed a few wires,” he said, flustered. “These things are complicated. But that shouldn’t have happened!”

“No kidding.”

McKay scowled. “Anyway, we’re not going back in. Whatever was in that room is lost for good.”

Sheppard brushed his uniform down, his heartbeat returning to normal. “We might get something out of it,” he said. “There was a gate address in there. And this.”

He held up the shard he’d retrieved. McKay snatched at it eagerly, his air of embarrassment quickly lost.

“An address?” McKay’s eyes lit up. “And what looks like some kind of data panel. Or what’s left of it. Interesting. Perhaps it’s some kind of—”

Sheppard held his hand up.

“Enough already,” he said. “I’m getting this place locked down and off-limits. Then I’m gonna brief Weir on the fun and games. You might want to consider joining me.”

McKay gave a dramatic sigh and folded his arms in irritation. Sheppard ignored him, signaling the marines to regroup and follow him. As he made to leave, he paused and threw McKay a dry smile.

“Cheer up, Rodney. At least you cured my hangover.”

Weir leaned forward in her chair and fixed McKay with a steely look.

“You did what?”

McKay shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Look, how was I to know they’d go all Indiana Jones on us? It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, it’s pretty clear the Ancients were a kooky bunch, but even so…”

Weir’s eyes flicked across to Teyla, but the Athosian remained unperturbed. Her respect for the Ancestors may have been dented in recent months, but she still had the potential to balk at Rodney’s casual references to them.

“Alright,” Weir said, running her hands through her hair. “Let’s try and get something useful out of this. Give me your best shot — what was in that room?”

Weir sat at the head of the table in the conference room. A few hours had passed since the incident. Despite the seriousness of what had happened, the interruption to an already overloaded schedule was unwelcome. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have enough problems coming from outside the city. Sheppard, McKay, Zelenka, Teyla and Ronon also sat around the table — John looking a little paler than usual, but otherwise unharmed. He seemed to have a knack for getting out of these situations unscathed. It was a good quality to have in a military commander.

McKay leant forward and clasped his hands together on the table.

“Here’s my hypothesis,” he said. “I’ve had a quick look at the failsafe mechanism — the pile of metal that nearly flattened the Colonel. It’s designed to withstand massive force. We can surmise that the walls and floor are similarly constructed. Clearly, the chamber was built to contain huge amounts of energy.”

Weir listened carefully. McKay could be a pompous windbag when he thought he was on to something, but his hunches had a way of proving correct.

“Combine that with what Colonel Sheppard told us about a DHD-like machine in there,” McKay continued, “and I think what we’re looking at is a prototype transport mechanism. Either something to do with the city’s Stargate, or perhaps even a replacement for it entirely.”

Weir could see Zelenka’s skeptical expression.

“Why would the Ancients build such a thing?” he said. “They had the gates. Sounds implausible.”

McKay turned on him. “Have you looked at it?” he snapped. “No, you were in bed wiping your nose. Before you start questioning my judgment, you should do your own research.”

Zelenka was about to retort, but McKay plowed on.

“I’m not just stabbing in the dark here. The Colonel managed to retrieve something from the control mechanism. He didn’t use as much finesse as I’d have liked, so it’s in pretty bad shape.”

“I was kinda engaged with other stuff,” sighed Sheppard. “Like staying alive.”

“And we’re all very glad you did. Thankfully, it’s still usable, and I’ve seen stuff like it before.” As he spoke, McKay flipped up the lid of his laptop and punched something into its keyboard. The translucent panel Sheppard had retrieved was jutting out from one of the custom ports in the machine. “Take a look at the screen.”

All swung round to look at the screen in the corner of the room. The display turned into a mess of green zigzags.

“Nice pattern,” said Sheppard. “Like what you’ve done with that.”

“Thanks to some rough handling, we’ve lost most of the visual,” McKay said. “Audio’s intact, though. Keep listening.”

On the screen, the zigzags began to break up. It looked like there was a figure addressing them, though it was impossible to make out features. Over a backdrop of static, he or she was speaking. Chunks of speech were muffled or distorted, and only scattered fragments came through.

“… returning Lanteans … list of priorities … three settlement programs on … ensure that we … do not neglect the … Telion is insistent on … coordinates in prototype gate device … do not neglect what we left …”

Then the voice broke up, and what little picture there was dissolved into a green snowstorm. McKay flicked the display off.

For a moment, there was a hush around the chamber. It wasn’t the first time they’d seen footage of Ancients, but the experience never quite lost its air of strangeness.

“Can you get anything more out of the recording?” asked Weir, turning back to the table.

“Believe me, I’ve tried,” said McKay. “That’s as good as we’re going to get. But it’s enough, right? You’ve figured out what it means?”

“Perhaps you could enlighten us with your opinion,” said Teyla.

“Look,” explained McKay, giving his favorite wearied expression. “The Lanteans always intended to come back here if they could. This must have been a message to those returnees. Some kind of standing orders, in the event the city was reactivated. Whatever was being worked on in that room need to be revisited. Perhaps they didn’t have time to finish off whatever they started.”

“You got all that,” asked Sheppard, raising an eyebrow, “from that?”

“I’ve had longer to look at it than you,” replied McKay. “And, no offense, I really am a whole lot smarter.”

Weir looked unconvinced.

“So why the elaborate defense mechanism in that chamber?”

Rodney rolled his eyes.

“You want me to work out every last detail of this? Oh yes. Of course you do.” He thought for a second. “I don’t know. Maybe it was for Lantean eyes only. Something to stop the Wraith reading the message, in case they ever got down there.”

“Or us,” said Ronon.

“Quite. But thanks to Colonel Sheppard’s acrobatics, we got something out. And now we can use it.”

Weir held a warning hand up.

“Whoa. You’re going too fast here, Rodney. So far, all we’ve got is a sealed chamber and a message we can barely understand.”

“With respect, Elizabeth, we’ve got more than that,” said McKay. “We’ve got a gate address, and we’ve got a theory. We know the gate network isn’t perfect. Some destinations seem to require more power to get to than others. The obvious example is the inter-galactic route, which needs huge amounts of juice. But even in the Pegasus galaxy we find some destinations are harder to reach than others. Maybe there are ways around this. My guess is that we stumbled across an attempt to refine the gate technology.”

He looked from one member of the team to the others, searching for agreement.

“Interesting,” said Weir. She turned to Sheppard. “You got a note of the gate address in the chamber?”

“Oh, I got it. Those little squiggles are pretty well stuck my mind.”

“And?”

“I can show you,” said McKay, bringing up a galactic map on the display. The map started to zoom. “Here we are, home sweet home, on the galactic rim.” The map continued to zoom out. “Any minute now…”

The animation concluded. A red triangle marked Lantea, and a green circle the location of the gate address. The dotted line between them ran the width of the screen.

Weir shook her head. “My God,” she breathed. “It’s basically out of the galaxy.”

“How far is that?” said Zelenka.

“In technical terms?” said McKay. “A really long way. Further than we’ve ever been in Pegasus. I looked at the stellar cartography. It’s off the scale. The power requirements to get there are pretty scary.”

“Yes, but it can’t drain more than dialing back to Milky Way,” scoffed Radek.

“You know, normally I’d agree with you,” said McKay. “But we don’t know everything about gate travel, and something’s odd about this setup. And there’s another thing. Most locations on the Stargate network are accessible from anywhere else. If you know the address, and have some means of dialing, you can jump from anywhere to anywhere. The exceptions are the long hops, like between galaxies. Here’s the trick — I think this one’s exactly the same. From the database, it seems clear that this node is only accessible from one other place.”

Weir let out a deep breath. “I think I know what you’re going to say.”

Sheppard grinned. “I love it when you’re ahead of us.”

Weir pursed her lips. She had come to like and respect John in their time serving together on Atlantis, but his endless flippancy could get wearing. She knew that exploration was part of the brief, but it would be nice, just for once, if her senior officers could think about something other than scooting off on a fresh mission as soon as the last one had ended.

“OK, so we have an address, and a mystery device designed to access it,” she said, carefully. “What are we going to do about it? Can we access this planet from the regular Stargate? Even if we can, do we want to?”

McKay shrugged. “We’d need to do some work,” he said. “I’ve been thinking of ways to increase the power to the gate mechanism anyway. I’d bet it’s possible. As for whether we should. That’s a different proposition. It’s an opportunity to find out what the Ancients were up to in that room. And if it was that heavily shielded, it must be important.”

Weir frowned. “We’ve got our hands full with the Wraith right now,” she pointed out. “I can see that there’s something interesting going on here, but I’m not sure I’m going to give the green light to this.”

Sheppard interjected, looking a little embarrassed to be doing so.

“Er, I know you’re not gonna believe this, Elizabeth,” he said, “but I reckon Rodney could be on to something here.”

She gave him a quizzical look. McKay just looked startled.

“Our situation here’s still kinda precarious,” he said. “But a gate address on its own, with no other way to get to it? Sounds like a perfect Alpha site to me.”

Zelenka shook his head. “This is all still just supposition. We don’t really know what that room was used for, and in my experience, gate addresses hidden behind layers of steel tell you one very clear thing: don’t go there!”

“Yeah, well that might not be such bad advice,” said Sheppard ruefully. “But we did it anyway, and now we’ve gotta decide what to do with what we found.”

Weir turned her attention to Teyla. The Athosian had been uncharacteristically quiet. “What do you think, Teyla?” she said. “You’ve never heard of this place?”

“No,” Teyla replied. “My people have no knowledge of anything that far away. I am not sure whether the risks of going there outweigh the potential benefits.” She glanced at the shard still protruding from McKay’s laptop. “But we have heard the words of the Ancestors. Though their message was not complete, it seems obvious that they had some important purpose there. I do not think we can ignore that.”

Weir saw Sheppard looking at Teyla approvingly. It was what made her so valuable to the team, her willingness to take risks. But the commander had to balance those with the needs of the entire mission. Yet again, the choice was a fine one.

“OK,” she said at last. “You can look into this. But we’re not going to hurry, and we’re not going to get it wrong. McKay, take Zelenka with you and see how feasible it would be to reach this place. Once we know a little more, we can make a decision on what to do next. But if we can’t do this safely, we’re not doing it at all. Period.”

She rose, and the rest of the room did likewise. She could see Zelenka’s look of concern, and Sheppard’s expression of eager anticipation. They were cut from very different cloth, those two, and Weir just hoped she’d chosen wisely.

The screen filled with numbers, filtering downwards rapidly, before the red lines appeared again. The terminal issued a perfunctory bleep, then shut down the relay.

“Damn!” hissed McKay.

He was sitting at a computer in the Operations Center, directly over the gate room. Zelenka was down by the gate itself, wrestling with thick cables and a battery of routing equipment. They had been trying for a couple of hours to get the Stargate to accept the mystery address, but the power requirements were too large. Every time it was entered, the system shut down.

“I’m guessing this was why the Ancients decided to use a replacement!” shouted Zelenka from the bay below.

McKay scowled. He could swear Zelenka was enjoying this. Despite the best efforts of a dozen technicians, they were still nowhere near getting the beefed-up Stargate mechanism to work and the ideas had started to run dry.

“OK, let’s try again with the re-routed backup supply,” said McKay over the intercom. “It’s all about timing. We only need a short burst.”

The figures on his monitor reset themselves, and down in the gate room the technicians set about arranging the equipment again.

McKay looked at the schematics one more time. The issue wasn’t just raw power — now that the ZPM was installed, they had plenty to spare for the operation of the gate. The problem was the efficiency of supply, ensuring that the Stargate’s complex and subtle mechanics were fed what they needed when they needed it. Opening an event horizon was an art that the Atlantis team still barely understood, and it was clear that the existing Stargate had definite limits. Trying to keep everything within the necessary parameters was like trying to herd cats. In the dark. With oven gloves.

“OK, Rodney,” came Zelenka’s voice over the intercom. “We’re done. Run the sequence when you’re ready.”

McKay took a deep breath and looked carefully at the command scripts he’d developed. He made a few minor alterations, changing the order in which certain items were run, and then packaged the lot for execution.

“Get your people out of the way,” he told Zelenka. “Here we go again. If this doesn’t work, we’ll have to start over.”

The gate room cleared. Once the area was sealed, McKay hit the Enter key on his terminal, and the power sequence activated. Lights danced across the monitor as data was relayed back to the command center. Huge amounts of energy surged down the power cables, each burst timed to what McKay hoped was perfection. A few nanoseconds apart, the carefully placed units powered up. For a moment, very little happened. Then the red lines appeared on the monitor again.

“Oh, please…” groaned McKay, feeling the empty sensation of failure in his stomach. “This should be working.”

Then the red lines cleared. There was activity in one of the compensators and a series of lights flicked on across the control terminal. With a shudder the gate stuttered into life, the familiar watery surface of the event horizon tearing across the circular aperture. Strange readings lurked at the edges, but those could be tweaked. It had worked!

“Yes!” McKay punched the air in delight. “I knew we were getting close! Oh, I’m good. I’m really good.”

“Congratulations, Rodney,” said Zelenka over the intercom. He sounded genuinely impressed, albeit grudgingly. “I didn’t think we’d squeeze that last bit out.”

McKay did his best to calm down. Victory was always sweet; there was no point milking the moment too much.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” he said. “Now we need to tie this down and do a few more tests. We’ve shown it can work, but Elizabeth will want a repeatable demonstration. I don’t want to let her down.”

“Very good,” said Zelenka, his voice breaking up slightly over the comm link. “I just hope all of this is worth it. You still haven’t convinced me we should be going there, whatever Elizabeth thinks.”

“Well, thankfully you’re not in charge of this installation, and she is,” said McKay impatiently. “Is the MALP in position?”

“It is. Sending it through now.”

Zelenka and his team stood clear as the cumbersome MALP crawled towards the shimmering gate, servos whining as it disappeared into the event horizon. Immediately, more red lights flashed across McKay’s console.

“What’s that?” said Zelenka, concerned. “We’ve got some strange readings down here.”

“Ignore it,” snapped McKay, concentrating on the data stream beginning to emerge from the wormhole. “It’s just the power drain from the extra mass in the gate buffers. It’ll clear up.”

The MALP was gone, sucked into the wormhole and hurled thousands of light years distant in a fraction of a second. The readings on the monitor went back to normal.

“It’s through,” said McKay over the intercom. “We’ll be getting telemetry any second.”

He swiveled in his chair to look at the monitor assigned to the video feed. The screen was a snowstorm; clearly the MALP hadn’t begun relaying yet.

“What a mess!” said Zelenka, suddenly appearing at McKay’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” said McKay, starting to get worried. “We’ll get something through soon.” It would be just his luck, after all this effort, that there was a problem with the MALP’s transmitters.

Zelenka clapped him hard on the shoulder. “Look again,” he said, enjoying the moment. “That’s a real snowstorm.”

McKay screwed his eyes up and studied the feed more closely. The lines of white and gray were momentarily broken. There was an fleeting image of a vast, open space. A glacier, or perhaps a snowfield of some kind. Then the streaks of snow and ice returned. The camera was rocking badly. The MALP had been sent into the middle of a storm. It looked absolutely filthy.

“Atmospheric readings?” asked Zelenka.

“Usual oxygen/nitrogen mix. Within standard Ancient parameters. Perfectly breathable.”

“And the temperature?”

McKay took a look down the screen at the flickering figures being transmitted by the MALP. He let out a low whistle.

“Cold. Very cold. That’s odd.”

Zelenka gave him a quizzical look. “I don’t see why. The Czech Republic is cold. Everywhere the Ancients seeded doesn’t have to look the same. These are planets we’re talking about, not movie sets.”

McKay gave him a withering look. “Yes, but the similarity we’ve noticed between most of the places we’ve been to is no accident. Surprisingly enough, the Ancients didn’t want their populations freezing to death within a generation. So they made their homes as pleasant as possible. And this is way outside the normal envelope.”

Zelenka sucked his teeth thoughtfully. “But habitable?”

McKay studied the readings.

“Yeah, I’d say so. Just chilly.” He looked suddenly worried. “I’m really not that good in the cold. It’s a family thing. My circulation’s bad.”

Zelenka ignored him. The signal from the MALP began to break up. “You’re not the only one. We’re losing the MALP.”

“We can’t be losing the MALP,” snapped McKay, frowning. “Those things are tough. It’s got to be a transmission problem. In fact, now I look at them, there’s something really strange about these wormhole integrity indicators…”

The video feed sheered into nothing, and the data readings gave out soon afterwards. McKay looked at the empty screens, suddenly perturbed. The euphoria of getting a MALP to the mysterious gate address had dissolved into a nagging worry about what it had found.

“God, that place looks horrible,” he breathed, half to himself.

“Then good luck!” said Zelenka, grinning at him. “You’ll need it. This is one mission I’m happy to miss.”