Dead end

Chapter Seven

Weir strode down the corridor toward the Operations Center. When she arrived she saw Zelenka and his coterie of scientists hunched over flickering screens. He looked even more disheveled than usual. Weir wondered how much sleep he’d gotten over the past forty-eight hours.

“So what have we got, people?” she said, with deliberate brightness. Zelenka and the others couldn’t be allowed to see how much this was affecting her.

Zelenka looked up from his panel. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his face gray. Had he even gone to bed since the Jumper left?

“We’re in a better place than we were,” he yawned. “But not much.”

Stretching in his chair, he managed to pull a little of his crumpled uniform into shape as he climbed to his feet. “We’ve succeeded in salvaging some equipment from the chamber McKay stumbled into,” he said. “That’s been a help. These things have been the most interesting of all.”

He gestured to a series of objects, each about two feet tall and surrounded by complicated-looking electronics. They looked for all the world like one of McKay’s half-baked engineering projects. None of them seemed finished, or even capable of powering-up.

“They’re not complete, as you can see,” said Zelenka, looking at them with ill-disguised irritation. “But we’ve learned quite a lot about them. They’re remote power-relays — and there are similar mechanisms in the Stargate here.”

Weir regarded the semi-complete devices carefully.

“OK, so the Ancients were working on the Stargate tech,” she said, trying to sound encouraging. “How does that help us?”

“We’ve run some simulations of their potential function.” Zelenka ran his hand through his hair. “We’ve made some guesses, cut some corners, and I’m reasonably sure these were designed to be used on the Jumpers themselves.”

He pressed a button on the console before him, and a graphical simulation appeared on the monitors. “Here,” he said, motioning towards a rolling series of power bars. “When a Jumper enters the Stargate network, the storage and transmission of the energy produces a drain on the system power levels.”

As he spoke, the bars dipped a little.

“Normally, the connected Stargates would compensate almost immediately,” he went on. “There should never, never, be a case of a Jumper materializing within an event horizon. Under normal conditions, it wouldn’t even be physically possible — a transiting object is just a stream of mass converted into pure energy.”

He pressed a second button, and the display changed again. “In this case, the gates were so far apart that the system wasn’t able to adjust. But it seems to me that there was a deliberate partial materialization on this jump. My speculation is that the distance was too great for a standard Stargate node to use, so the system scheduled a ‘drop’ out of the wormhole, ready for a second leg.”

The lines on the computer screen shrank, glowed red, and died. Whether or not Zelenka was right, obviously the numbers on his simulation didn’t add up. Beyond that, the readings were opaque. Weir was no one’s fool, but wormhole physics had never made much sense to her.

“So it didn’t work?” she said.

Zelenka shook his head.

“I believe the Stargate at the other end has not been used for a long time. Possibly hundreds of years. It may have been damaged from other source — perhaps the extreme cold. In any case, our attempt to create the wormhole placed a strain on the fragile system. Even the MALP, which has much less mass and complexity than a loaded Jumper, might have been enough to cause a failure at the other end. It seems likely that this Ancient booster mechanism was needed. Frankly, I’m surprised they got out the other end at all.”

A chill passed through her body. “But they did, right? They got out?”

“From what we can tell from the buffer records, yes. We’re working with fragments of information here, but something got them out. How…? That I don’t know.”

Questions bubbled up inside, but she kept a lid on them for now.

“When they dropped back into real space,” continued Zelenka, “there was no power left in the loop to complete the transit. We know they got through, so Rodney must have found some means of generating a little extra zip.”

“Where from?”

Zelenka shrugged. “The only source he had available was within the Jumper itself,” he said. “Propulsion systems, life support, etc. The point is, if he used those to get them out of the other end, the ship will be in bad shape. My guess is, it’s as dead as the gate.”

Weir sighed, and rolled her shoulders slightly to ease their tension. The longer this conversation continued, the worse things seemed to get.

“Right, I’m gonna need some good news now,” she said. “Give it your best shot.”

Zelenka gave a tired smile, and ran some new figures through the computer simulation.

“The best I can do is this,” he said. “We think that these Ancient devices are a means of bolstering the power to maintain wormhole integrity from within a Jumper, without risking a catastrophic drain on resources. Think of them as an extra battery, but one with a specific function. In a normal transit, the process might take fragments of milliseconds.”

This time, the bar chart on the computer monitor didn’t shrink when the sequence was run. As the power levels fell, there was a boost just when it was needed.

“If this was wired into the Jumper’s power systems,” said Zelenka, watching the dancing figures on his screen carefully, “there would have been enough energy to enable safe passage. That must have been what the Ancients were working on. A method of extending the range of gate travel from within the system. The implications of the research are impressive. Imagine, the intergalactic route could be opened-up without the use of ZPMs — ”

“I get it. Does it help us?”

“My hope is yes,” said Zelenka. “There might be some way of using the modules we have here to restore the link to Dead End.”

Weir frowned. “But I thought we couldn’t send anything through the gate? You told me we couldn’t re-establish a connection.”

“That’s right,” Zelenka admitted. “At the moment.”

Anxiety had already worn her patience thin, and Weir felt it beginning to fray. “Then perhaps we should be working on a way to do that first, rather than — ”

“Please!” Zelenka snapped. “What do you think I’m doing here? Or perhaps you have some solutions I’ve not considered. Do you?”

A shocked silence fell across the operations center. The scientists clustered around Zelenka looked away, awkward and embarrassed; no one spoke to the mission commander like that. For a moment, Weir thought about giving as good back.

She shelved that idea. The man was exhausted. “I’m sorry, Radek,” she said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “This situation is affecting all of us, and you’ve been working hard. Forgive me, I didn’t mean to interfere.”

Zelenka drew a deep breath. “No, no, I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s been a tough puzzle to crack.” He looked over at the Ancient devices. “But I feel sure there’s something important here. If Rodney were here, he’d agree.”

Weir gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “I’m sure he would. And after you’ve gotten some sleep, you can get back to work on it.”

Zelenka looked at her, briefly rebellious. But then the fight left his eyes. He was on his last legs, and he knew it. “Very well,” he mumbled. “Just a couple of hours. Then I’m back on it.”

“Good,” said Weir, looking at him with approval. “I know I can count on you.”

Teyla sprang up beside Miruva, instantly alert. She had seen this terror all across the galaxy. The faces of the people around her said one thing: cull. Had the Wraith followed them somehow? She had thought Khost was free of them.

“What is happening?” The hall had dissolved into a mass of fleeing people. The children were screaming, some of their guardians had pushed themselves up against the walls, staring wildly into space as if unseen enemies were in the air in front of them.

“There are Banshees coming!” cried Miruva, ghost-white. “We have to escape!” But she seemed paralyzed by fear and did not move.

Teyla looked around, trying to see what was causing the panic. There was nothing visible in the chamber, but the swishing sound was getting louder. Some of the Forgotten had rushed out into the corridors beyond, others stood still, awaiting their fate.

“This is no good,” muttered Teyla. “If there are Wraith here, we at least have to fight. Come with me.”

She pulled Miruva close to her, and half-jostled, half-dragged her to the chamber entrance. The girl recovered slightly and started to run alongside her.

“Where are we going?” she said, her voice clipped with anxiety.

“Back to my quarters,” said Teyla. “My weapon is there. Whatever these Banshees are, they will regret attacking this place while I was in it.”

Miruva looked doubtful, but said nothing. The two of them pushed their way back to Teyla’s quarters. The corridors were full of people running in all directions, bereft of a plan. In their fright, they were charging into each other or down dead ends. The swishing rose in volume. It was impossible to tell where it was coming from; it sounded as if it was all around them.

They reached Teyla’s room and she grabbed her P90 from under the bed. The cool weight of the submachine gun reassured her, but Miruva looked at the weapon with a horrified expression.

“What’s that?”

“Insurance,” snapped Teyla. “Tell me what you can. What are the Banshees?”

Miruva whirled around quickly. The swishing had now become painfully loud and cries of distress echoed along the corridors of the settlement. The Forgotten seemed to have lost their sense entirely.

“You can’t fight them!” cried Miruva, scampering over to the chamber entrance. “It’s no good! They just keep coming!”

Teyla gave up on Miruva and snatched her radio from her shoulder. “John, can you read me?”

Nothing. Just a hiss of static.

“John?”

Whatever else they could do, the Banshees could clearly jam her communication.

Teyla ran to catch Miruva up, her mind racing. Her Wraith-sense remained dead, which was a relief. But the panic sweeping through the Forgotten was infectious. She had to make a conscious effort to control herself. Hefting her P90 purposefully, she followed Miruva into the corridor and scoured the dim recesses of the tunnels for any sign of movement.

“What do they look like?” Teyla hissed. “What are we fighting?”

Miruva turned to face her, eyes wide and staring. “Don’t you understand?” she cried. “They look like nothing! You can’t fight them! They’re Banshees!”

Suddenly, the swishing vanished with a echoing snap. The fires in the hearths flickered and dimmed. Teyla thought she caught sight of an ephemeral shape flitting across her field of vision. She raised her gun, but it was gone. Despite herself, she felt a cold grip of fear around her stomach. How could you fight something you couldn’t see?

She spun around, trying to catch a glimpse of what was terrifying the people. There was movement, but it was impossible to see. She had an almost overwhelming urge to spray bullets indiscriminately at the shadows. Only her training and discipline prevented her. Why was she so scared? Screams echoed down the narrow tunnels, heightening the febrile atmosphere. Miruva had fallen to her knees and had her hands over her ears.

“Miruva!” shouted Teyla. “Stand up! I need your — ”

But then a shuddering wave of nausea reared up inside her. She felt her vision dim and her head throbbed. Teyla reeled, and felt the P90 slip from her fingers. She fought to retain consciousness, but something was pulling the life out of her.

For a brief moment she thought she saw something. A face: metallic, cold, severe. It seemed to be leaning over her. There was something familiar about it, something very familiar…

But then the darkness took her. The screams and wails of the Forgotten echoed away and Teyla collapsed. Her last awareness was of Miruva calling her name, but then she fell heavily and knew nothing more.

McKay pushed a series of panels back into place. One of them fizzed and popped back out again. The others stayed where they were and a propulsion sub-system came back online. A bank of lights illuminated, went red, and flashed out again. The system shut down and a sigh shuddered through the engine chamber below.

Rodney scowled. He felt like he was trying to reconstruct the Jumper more or less from scratch. Using novelty tools out of a kindergarten. As soon as one thing went right, another would go wrong. Even for someone with as much faith in his own abilities as he, there were moments when he wondered if he was attempting the impossible. At least the heating was still working. He’d just about managed to take off a top layer of furs.

Sheppard stomped back into the Jumper after a quick recon around the vessel, stamping snow from his boots. “Rodney, I need an sitrep.”

Irritated, Rodney put his work down. “I’d go a lot quicker if I could work for five minutes without — ” He stopped, catching the anxious look on the Colonel’s face. “What is it?”

“Storm coming,” said Sheppard. “You don’t really want to see it. Sky’s pretty black. A few more minutes, then we need to bail.”

McKay let slip a despondent groan. The sound was slightly more despairing than he’d intended, but it captured his mood pretty well. “I could use a few more hours,” he said. It sometimes seemed like his whole life was spent asking for a few more hours when he only ever ended up being given seconds. Scotty could go eat his heart out.

Sheppard glanced at the open rear doors. The wind was picking up already. He unclipped his radio.

“Ronon? You copy?”

Silence.

“Dammit, Ronon,” Sheppard muttered to himself. “I told you to stay in touch.”

“Could be the storm,” said McKay, looking up from his work.

“Yeah, I figured. Where are we up to with Frankenstein’s monster?”

“You’re still on that riff, eh?” McKay replied. “Here’s the good news: life support’s back up. But I’m not sure for how much longer. We’ve got fairly consistent power and the reserves are recharging. But I’m a long way off getting the drive systems online, and we’ve got no back-up at all. Another day, perhaps two, and I might be able to give you a working Jumper. But I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.”

Sheppard frowned. “That’s not good.”

As if to reinforce his pessimism, suddenly there was a great crack from beneath them. Sheppard staggered and reached for a bulkhead.

The Jumper shifted and came to rest an inch or so lower. There was a echoing sound from far beneath them — it took a long time to die away. Neither McKay nor Sheppard said a word until the noise had faded. They both knew what it meant.

“Uh, should we really have the heating on in here, Rodney?”

McKay felt a twang of irritation, the same feeling he got whenever the non-scientists on the mission tried to tell him his job. “For God’s sake, nothing’s escaping through the hull of the Jumper,” he said. “These things are designed to fly through space, as you might have observed.”

Sheppard held up his hands. “OK. My bad. No need to get snitchy.” He looked warily at the open rear doors. “But you gotta see the problem. If this ice keeps moving, we’re gonna have to think about leaving the Jumper behind.”

“What?” McKay fixed him with an incredulous stare. “Leave the Jumper and walk home?”

“Gate’s on the surface.”

McKay rolled his eyes. “Oh, I see,” he said, caustically. “We don’t need to worry about the fact that the gate’s got no power. Because, if getting this thing working is a problem, getting a 10,000 year old experimental Stargate operational will just be a cinch. Ignoring the fact that it’s got no DHD and the only means of dialing we have is right here. And, above all, we don’t need to worry about materializing in the middle of a wormhole in just a HAZMAT suit and a prayer, because that never happens, does it?”

The first flush of anger rose in Sheppard’s face. Words began to form in his mouth that began with Now listen, you little…

Before he could speak there was another booming crack. This time it came from above, rather than below. The storm was right above them. The Jumper began to sway slightly as the wind outside rose in speed.

“Let’s do this another time,” Sheppard snapped. “Secure this thing as best you can, we gotta go. Now.”

For once, McKay said nothing. There was a time for bickering, and this wasn’t it. He scrambled to get the haphazard systems ready for a period of hibernation. Most things responded as he expected them to. Control over the rear door was, predictably, still flaky.

“OK, you should get out of here now,” said McKay, grimly. “I’m going to have to set the rear hatch to close from here, and then try and get out before it shuts. Things are still a bit… basic.”

“You want me to handle that?” Sheppard looked doubtful. “You’re not exactly quick on your feet.”

McKay gave a dry smile. “Thanks, but no thanks. As if you’d know where to start with this stuff.”

Sheppard took one look at the morass of wires and electronics tumbling out of the Jumper’s internal structure, and the argument seemed to have been made. “OK, but be quick,” he said, turning to head out into the gathering storm. “I don’t want to have to break you out of this tin can on my own. I left my opener on Atlantis.”

The Jumper swayed again. The storm was now howling outside, and McKay could feel the snow thumping against the sides of the vessel. Sheppard leapt out of the Jumper and disappeared at once. As he did so, McKay made a few last-minute adjustments. Then he took a deep breath, got into position and set the door to close.

He scrambled to his feet as quickly as his heavy furs would allow and sped towards the door. As he did so, a gout of crimson smoke escaped from one of the pistons driving the doors. The exit suddenly began to shrink rapidly as the heavy external panel started to slam.

“Oh, sweet quantum fluctuations…” McKay yelled, flinging himself forward.

He managed to get his head and shoulders out of the gap, but the rapidly ascending doors clamped firmly on his heavily-clad waist. He felt the metal grip his body like a pair of very heavy, very uncomfortable calipers.

“John!” he cried, though his voice was swept away by the wind. The Colonel was nowhere to be seen, and the air was rapidly filling with snow and sleet.

McKay wriggled furiously and made some headway. The door mechanism, still imperfectly powered, was struggling to close properly, With a final heave, he thrust himself out of the grip of the Jumper and on to the snow beyond. Behind him, the door slammed shut. A row of lights flickered briefly and then extinguished. The Jumper was sealed. As long as the ice sheet beneath didn’t give way, it would be safe.

Unlike him. Sheppard hadn’t been exaggerating about the storm. The entire horizon was dominated by a filthy wall of near-black cloud. The wind screamed around him, throwing snow into the air, and visibility was reducing rapidly. Even within his layers of buffalo hide, McKay shuddered. He’d gotten used to the warmth of the Jumper’s internal heating very quickly.

“You OK?” came Sheppard’s voice from the blizzard.

For a moment, McKay couldn’t see where he was, but then the shape of the Colonel came blundering out of the snow. His furs were encrusted in a layer of ice.

“I am now!” yelled McKay, still shaken by his narrow escape from the Jumper. “Where the hell were you?”

“Trying to spot the route back!” shouted Sheppard over the increasing roar of the wind. “It’s this way! Let’s go!”

McKay staggered to his feet. He pulled his hood down low, and replaced the leather face guard. Only a few moments into the storm, and he was already chilled to the core. He trudged after Sheppard’s silhouette, now just vaguely visible through sheets of whirling snow and ice.

After a few moments walking, the form of the Jumper was lost in a cloud of white and McKay’s entire world drifted into a freezing nightmare of shapeless ice. The more he thought about it, the more he hated this planet.

Zelenka half-awoke from a particularly pleasant dream involving a flower meadow in the mountains of the Śnieżnik massif and a very attractive woman called Magdalena. Dragging himself away from it was really quite painful, especially as the two of them were getting on so well. Strangely, there was an incessant beeping coming from somewhere in the sky. Blearily, he dragged his eyes open, and the spartan interior of his room on Atlantis materialized around him. The alarm clanged irritatingly. With a sigh, Zelenka reached out and silenced it. Magdalena would have to wait.

He lay for a moment in the dark, gathering his strength. Getting out of bed was always difficult, especially when he’d only had two hours of sleep. Then he remembered what he’d been working on.

Zelenka hastily pushed the covers off and pulled some clothes on. A few moments to splash water over his face and soften the worst excesses of his unruly hair, and he was out of his room and striding back towards operations.

When he arrived, most of his team was still at work. They’d been working shifts under his direction and most had got considerably more sleep. Despite that, they looked as crumpled as he. What was it about scientists?

“Dobrý den, tým,” he said, as cheerily as he could. His colleagues had gotten used to his Czech ‘Hello, team’ greetings, and responded with tolerant smiles. “Now, where are we on this?”

One of the modules retrieved from the experimental chamber lay on a table, looking like a dissected carcass. He’d left orders for the modules to be taken apart in the hope that they would discover something useful. A slim chance, but one worth taking.

One of his colleagues, Watson, came forward.

“We’ve made some progress,” he said, looking proud of himself. “Come and look at the module.”

The Ancient device had been thoroughly pulled apart. What had initially looked like a monolithic structure had turned out to be a collection of smaller machines, encased in a thick layer of shielding. Zelenka cast his expert eye over the detritus. “It looks hastily assembled,” he mused. “I’d say a collection of pre-existing parts. Fair enough. It was experiment.”

Watson nodded. “Like many of the projects from the last days of the city, it looks like they were in a hurry. The system is composed of about twelve separate devices, each connected to each other with some fairly simple logic. If they’d had more time, this machine could have been half the size.”

Zelenka looked over the components with interest. They were all standard-looking Ancient constructions: angular, well-finished, with that esoteric patterning they were so fond of.

“This might be helpful,” Zelenka agreed, noting the way the various parts seemed to fit together. “If we could just find a way to get them through the gate to McKay…”

Watson could barely contain his excitement. “Take a closer look.”

Frowning, Zelenka cast his gaze back over the pile of machinery. For a moment, he couldn’t see anything particularly special. Then, as his sleepy brain finally hit full speed, he saw what Watson was so excited about. “These are standard Jumper parts!”

One by one, he recognized the pieces of machinery: there was a plasma transfuser straight out of the main drive system, and a crystal relay matrix that must have come from the cockpit HUD unit. “Are these all pieces cannibalized from one of the city’s Jumpers?”

“All but one,” said Watson. “Apart from the connecting equipment, there’s one component that I’ve not seen before. No doubt that’s the one that does the magic. But we’ve had a look at it and it doesn’t look that complicated. My guess is that things were pretty tight when this device was being designed. They had to use whatever they could lay their hands on. We might be able to reproduce it.”

Zelenka clapped the scientist on the shoulder. This was very good news. “Right, this is a start,” he said. “Good start. We need to figure out if there’s way of reconstructing this thing within a standard Jumper. If we can, then so can they. And that might just bring them home.”

“We’re on it,” Watson said. “There’s a Jumper kitted out in the bay, ready for work. It’s got the standard issue stuff in it, plus a few things we think Dr McKay would have had with him.”

“I’ll go to it,” said Zelenka. “I want you too, and anyone else you can spare. If we can create one of these units from the material the team will have available, we’re half-way towards getting them back.”

“That’s true.” Watson gave him a warning look. “But we’ve still got no way of communicating with them. And we have no idea how these things work.”

Zelenka waved away his concern. He was feeling full of energy, despite his lack of sleep. Once he had something to get his teeth into, there was nothing he liked better than meddling in Ancient technology. “One thing at a time!” he said. “For now, we have a power module to build.”