Exogenesis

Chapter Seventeen

As soon as Jumper One emerged from the event horizon, John.figured out why Beckett had warned him against 'gate travel. The wormhole had scrambled his senses but good, and the jumper lurched drunkenly when the transit-sequence autopilot disengaged.

"Pull up!" Ronon yelled, and John obeyed on instinct. After another oscillation or two, the jumper settled onto a stable course, but not before John heard a couple of the more obscure Satedan epithets from the right seat.

Feeling a little more secure, he commented, "You need to teach me those sometime. I've already learned all the Earth curse words I can from the rest of the expedition."

Ronon glared at him, uncurling his hand from around the armrest, which now looked a bit deformed. "You sure you can do this?"

"I'm sure. It was just the 'gate that messed me up." John didn't add that he had no idea how long the antihistamines Beckett had given him would last, or that the packet came with a warning about not driving or operating heavy machinery.

A click from the radio interrupted them. "Last jumper, please identify," said one of the Marines-John's diminished hearing kept him from recognizing the voice.

"This is Jumper One," he replied calmly, imagining the surprise and confusion on the other jumpers.

"Sir- sorry, sir," the Marine said hastily. "We didn't know you were coming along."

"Don't worry, I'm not here to ride herd over you guys. Ronon and I are going after McKay."

"Colonel Sheppard!" Teyla's warm voice joined the conversation. "It is good to hear your voice. Dr. Weir-"

"Was misinformed," John finished smoothly. "I'm okay, and we have a job to do. Jumpers Four and Five, take your cues from Dr. Zelenka."

If Teyla thought a two-person rescue team was unusual, she didn't say so. "We will meet you back at the 'gate."

"Negative. Atlantis needs those ZPMs. As soon as you've got em, head for home."

Radek broke in next. "Colonel, if the Wraith are alerted to you-"

"Then it'd be too much of a risk for any of you to come help us anyway. I'm not debating this, folks." It was a borderline hypocritical stance, but John didn't particularly care. "Get the ZPMs and get back."

"Yes, sir," responded the well-trained jumper pilots. Teyla and Radek said nothing.

"Hey, Dr. Zelenka," one pilot added-John finally identified the voice as Sergeant Witner's. "If the land's going to collapse when the water pours out, what are the chances that the 'gate will take a tumble, too?"

"Not to worry, Sergeant," answered Radek. "The furthest parts of the village will be destroyed as the cliffs fall, but the lab and the Stargate are located on solid rock. In my many simulations, it has remained perfectly stable."

"Simulations, huh?" Witner sounded less than convinced.

"To be certain," Radek continued, a hint of amusement in his voice, "I am extending the range of the lab's force field."

"That's more like it."

Now that his balance was more or less behaving itself, John broke the focus he'd locked on the horizon and looked down at the clusters of villagers standing near the Stargate. They were staring up at the jumpers and waving. Presumably these were the people who had elected to stay behind to watch what would doubtless be the deluge to end all deluges. The jumper climbed, and across the dune sea towards the mountains he saw a massive caravan trekking inland to the new homesteads. He'd expected the procession of animal-drawn carts to form a kind of Wild West wagon train, but apparently the creatures were a lot faster than they looked. "Nobody told me we were filming Ben-Hur out here," he commented.

Ronon didn't bother asking.

The Polrussons were moving fast, but it still was going to be tight. The longer the jumper teams could wait before removing the ZPMs, the better off the locals would be. But the teams couldn't wait too long, because time was running out back on Atlantis. John told himself that the villagers would reach a safe distance at the very moment Radek had everything ready. Just like clockwork.

"I am sending a set of coordinates to each of you now," Radek announced. "Jumper One, you are receiving the location of the hive ship. It is near to the ZPM Jumper Four will retrieve-only a few dozen kilometers away."

"Then I guess Four's got a wingman for the moment." John watched the coordinates flash across the HUD and input them into the navigation system. "All right, gang. Let's go stealth from here."

The three jumpers activated their cloaking devices at almost the same moment, disappearing from view through the windshield but still visible on the HUD. Jumper Five had already peeled off and was making a vertical descent below the cliff-dwellers' village near the 'gate.

"Jumpers Four and Five, your first task when you arrive will be to locate the structures that house the terraforming equipment," Radek told them as they flew. "The entrances are deep underground at the base of each cliff. While there are access tunnels designed to accept a jumper, each entrance will be buried under ten thousand years of accumulated sand and rocks that have fallen from the cliff. These entrances are protected by force fields that you will be able to detect. Calibrate your own shields to match. You can then use the shield to push the residual sand away and join your rear hatch to the airlock, as we have done here at the lab."

So that was why the so-called back door had been oversized. John felt a flash of aimless irritation, thinking about how handy that information would have been at the start of this whole mess.

"Cool," one of the Marines said. "Jumper Five is in position. We're locking onto the signature of the force field now. How long do you figure it'll take to dig through the sand?"

"It has been blowing over the cliffs for many millennia. The geology maps indicate that minerals in the red sand have…ah… cemented together in some places," replied the scientist. "I estimate twenty minutes, at least, and then you will need to wait for Jumper Four to catch up, as it has a much longer route to travel ""

That longer route would take the other jumpers nearly halfway around the planet. According to the old guy they'd met in the village, the hive ship was in the deepest trench of what would soon become an ocean, a few miles below the location of Teyla and Witner's ZPM. Since John wouldn't have a force field to act as a beacon, he was banking on the life signs detector to pinpoint the ship — and Rodney.

The two jumpers skirted along the cliff faces and up across a continental mass. Cracked, hard ground and windswept sand dominated the entire landscape. It was sobering to realize that soon this barren land would be either underwater or beachfront property.

Keeping Jumper One level was taking far more concentration than usual, thanks to the continual nudges of vertigo, and he couldn't prevent the occasional momentary slip. Every few minutes, he would catch Ronon sneaking a wary glance at him or the controls. When the scrutiny had grated on John's nerves long enough, he finally snapped, "If you think you can do better, be my guest "

"Just making sure you still know which way is up," Ronon replied mildly.

"Give me a break. It's myfini flight."

"Your what?"

"It's a military pilot's last-" John cut himself off. He didn't do self-pity. A lot of things were happening, and all of them were more important than his damned wings. "Never mind."

"Colonel, look," Teyla called from Jumper Four.

Below them, several groups of cliff-dwellers were traveling inland at a rapid pace, trails of dust fanning out behind them. The convoy seemed orderly enough, with no panicked animals or overturned carts, and was making awfully good time. Of course, they had been preparing for this event for ten thousand years. Enthusiasm probably played a pretty big role.

"There's another group off to our two o'clock." John watched an enormous train of villagers, spread out across a mile or two, emerge from a minor sand squall.

"Wow. Sir, if it's all right, I'm gonna go in a little lower," Witner requested.

"Go ahead." Knowing better than to trust his own shaky skills with an unnecessary low pass, John maintained his altitude and instead used the HUD to bring up a magnified view of the convoy. Observing its progress, he began to understand just how many lives they were about to change. God, there were tens of thousands of people down there.

Jumper Four decloaked, revealing itself to the villagers in a flyby of sorts. As they caught sight of the craft, people stood up in their carts and waved colorful scarves in the air. Ronon raised an eyebrow, but John shrugged with a smile. "Let Witner have his fun," he said. "I mean, look at them down there."

The villagers' voices were inaudible, but the HUD clearly showed their euphoric faces as they cheered the jumpers on. We're doing this, John thought, trying to wrap his head around it all. They were on their way to fulfill the hopes and dreams of countless generations. So often in the past, on Earth, his role in any given mission had felt remote, difficult to put into context. The sight before him now, these thousands of people in a mass exodus to an essentially new world-all of it was because his people were about to employ their knowledge and abilities to accomplish something profound and fundamentally good.

Some days, this job wasn't so bad.

"All right, it's about time for us to split up," he radioed. "Hope you get what you came for, Jumper Four."

"We wish the same to you, Colonel," Teyla responded. "Good luck."

Jumper Four reengaged its cloak and broke off to follow its assigned flight path. Cautiously, John put Jumper One into a shallow dive down the face of the massive three-mile high cliff, and headed out across the pre-oceanic 'basin'-which was a hell of a misnomer, because it wasn't in any way shaped like a basin. More like a course he'd once flown from Jalalabad to Feyzabad, except that these mountains, all of which would soon be under a few miles of water, had never seen a drop of rain.

Even Ronon seemed impressed by the massive outcrops and bizarre shapes sculpted by millennia of wind and caustic sandstorms. They skirted around a particularly striking mesa, and the Satedan let out a grunt of surprise at the series of enormous natural arches lined up along the desert floor. Under any other circumstances, John might have been tempted to fly under a few of them, but right now he was more frustrated by the lack of life signs on his HUD. Maybe Rodney had been right about the stuff in the red sand interfering with signals.

"Hey, guys, we're all set over here, just waiting on you," put in a smug voice from Jumper Five.

"Children, children," Radek chastised. "Is not a race. Except. it is a race. I stand corrected. Continue the taunting"

Ronon squinted at corner of the HUD that normally displayed life signs. "Still not seeing anything"

"Supposedly this is the place" John flew a racetrack pattern around the area, willing the HUD to blink. Nothing-no sign, neither visual nor technological. Just more scoured stone and barren gullies, and literally thousands of rocky mounds that could, with a little imagination and a lot of terror, be mistaken for a half-buried hive ship. "Maybe the old guy's memory was starting to go"

"Or maybe the hive ship already left."

Whatever satisfaction John had felt a few minutes earlier was wiped out in an instant. "All jumpers, be advised," he reported, climbing to start a wide sweep of the other canyons in the vicinity. Even if the thing had taken off, in a landscape that was distinctive for its harsh edges, a rounded, hive-ship shaped crater would stand out. "We may have a problem."

"What kind of problem, Colonel?" asked Radek.

He angled Jumper One upward and rapidly climbed to an altitude of one hundred thousand feet, hoping to get an overall picture of the area. "Well, if nothing else, we're proving that irony's alive and well in this galaxy. The one time we actually want to find a hive ship, it's being shy." Blink, damn you, he ordered the life signs indicator. Come on, Rodney, where the hell are you?

"You have scanned the surrounding areas?"

"Completing my sweep now." The comer of the HUD remained obstinately dark. "I've got nothing"

Radek sighed heavily. "This is a big problem."

John didn't need to be told. Their entire strategy had revolved around taking out the hive ship in the first deluge of water. Now they had no idea where the Wraith were hiding, or if they'd been awakened.

Early on in the Atlantis expedition, Rodney had explained to his new teammates that he reacted to certain doom a certain way. Over the course of the past year or so, various classifications of doom had forced him to amend that theory to include corresponding levels of panic. Personal doom was one thing. He was getting used to that kind. Planetary doom, on the other hand, was something else.

Springing to his feet, he demanded, "What the hell kind of lunatic Ancient dreamed up this experiment? Toxic mountains? In what twisted reality did that ever look like a good idea?"

Nabu did not respond. Rodney felt Turpi's hand on his arm. "Father has gone to warn everyone and to call the Darts back."

"I have to get to the Ancient lab," he told her. "I need to talk to my friends before they do something very, very ill-advised."

"The first Dart to return will carry you there. But all the Darts are on the far side of the planet. It will take time-"

"Tell them to return by low orbit! We need every second." Even as he spoke, Rodney began running through other possibilities. If he didn't make it back before Radek and Sheppard started yanking ZPMs, could anything be done to minimize the water release? Not likely, even if they replaced the ZPMs immediately and attempted to reconfigure the force fields…

Slowly, the sensation of panic began to ease, as if a knot was loosening, and he recognized Turpi's soothing influence. He jerked back, tearing his arm out of her grip. No matter how pure her intentions, he couldn't deal with this manipulation. "Don't do that! Don't get into my mind. I don't want you to dull this. I need this. This is what's going to help me come up with a plan!"

No sooner had he finished the thought than her presence vanished. "Turpi?" Suddenly on his own, he heard the growing cries of the children as the news and the terror spread with equal speed. "Turpi? Someone!"

Where was she`? His own terror escalated. Dozens of rapid footsteps dashed past him, around him, but no one answered his shouts. Blind and alone he'd never make it ten meters. In desperation, he shoved at the bandages over his eyes, trying to work his wrapped fingers underneath.

"No!" Turpi grabbed his hands and pulled them down, at the same time flooding him with relief. "You must leave the bandages in place. The light will destroy the fragile cells before they can heal. We must wait for the Darts to return."

Gulping back his fear, Rodney grasped her arms as best he could, anchoring himself on her in more ways than one. "I thought you'd left me… alone, I mean. Left me alone " He'd thought that he depended on her for sight, but that wasn't the half of it. Never before had he felt so strongly about another human being. "I'm-Before, what I said about my mind-"

"I have no choice. To talk to you I must speak into your mind."

In an instant he realized that he hadn't heard a single word or note actually pass from her lips to his ears. He couldn't be deaf, or he wouldn't be hearing the background noises the way he did. But there hadn't been any background noises when he first awoke, had there? No creak from the bed, no shifting of fabric, not even his own choked gasps in the throes of the nightmare. Just her.

"Your ears and the organs for hearing were destroyed, but they are now healed," she reassured him.

"Would you speak to me aloud? Could I hear your voice now?"

"You have been hearing the only voice I possess. This is my deformity. I cannot speak or hear as you do-only with my mind." She lifted his hand in both of hers. He could not discern what his bandaged fingers rested against, but his suspicions were confirmed when she instead pressed her lips softly to his. He felt no movement, yet heard her speak. "I will protect you, come what may. I will not have you die. You are too special."

Rodney had often thought himself too important to die. He might have even said as much on occasion. It was a wholly different sentiment coming from Turpi, because he could keep nothing from her. This time he knew-for the first time in his life, really knew-that she loved him. Not because he was brilliant; just because he was him.

It was overwhelming, and as tempted as he was to give in to the unfamiliar emotion, it still scared the hell out of him. "Do we know how far out the Darts are now?"

"They will be here soon," Turpi replied, drawing back but remaining close.

Which only served to remind him that he was about to be beamed up into a Wraith Dart. Rodney tried not to wince. It wasn't the beaming that bothered him so much as the dumping out on the other end. And there was also the small matter of not getting shot out of the sky by his friends. Normally he appreciated Sheppard's quick reflexes, but this was anything but a normal day.

So many variables, so many ifs. So many people here, all of them depending on him. He had to save them.

He had to save this incredible woman who had saved him.

The latest wave, definitely seismically generated, as Elizabeth now knew, was the strongest yet. Her fingers were beginning to ache from clutching the rail. Of course, every wave had been the strongest yet. The scientists who'd stayed behind to compose the last group of evacuees had gauged the forces to be significantly higher than those of Atlantis's rising nearly two years ago. The portion of the city that remained underwater was being constantly pummeled by the surges from beneath, so they'd had to extend the force field. As feared, the system that anchored Atlantis in a fixed position was also being taxed to its limits. Any minute now, she expected the entire apparatus on the seabed-indeed, the entire seabed-to collapse, setting Atlantis adrift. Even with the force field extended, it would be like sitting in a huge glass bowl, protected from the elements but tossed into a raging sea. The structural integrity of the city might survive, but its inhabitants would be thrown around mercilessly.

For a brief, bizarre moment, she imagined her people as tiny fragments of glitter in a snow globe, ruthlessly shaken by an ancient god whose wrath they had incurred by daring to claim the city for themselves.

Angry with herself for thinking of Ea as anything other than a grieving, embittered, very mortal being, Elizabeth turned toward her office and spoke over her shoulder to the last remaining 'gate tech. "Get the final group ready to go."

"Ma'am, we can't."

She whirled. "What do you mean, we can't?"

Trembling fingers belied the young man's calm voice. "The city's moorings have been diverting more and more power to hold us in position. That system's begun to fail, so the inertial dampeners have also been employed. We've drained too much power to dial the Alpha site."

"Not even for a few seconds?"

"No, ma'am. The city shield will fail "

And if the shield failed, the 'gate room would fill with water-and possibly gray goo-before the vortex even stabilized. Elizabeth pressed her fingers to her temples, only to scramble for a handhold when the city shook again. There wasn't much more to be done now, was there? "Control room to Daedalus."

"Caldwell here" In the background, she could hear the sound of cutting tools. "We've just about finished fabricating the components we need."

Thank God for that, at least. "That's good to hear, Colonel, because the last group of city personnel is coming your way. We don't have enough power left to dial the Alpha site, so we're going to have to shut down everything other than the shield, moorings, and stabilizers to conserve power."

"Understood. We've got plenty of room for a few more people."

"Thank you. Hopefully the teams on Polrusso will be back any moment with a ZPM or two. We just need a little more power to give us time to evacuate."

"Hermiod's made some updated calculations. He thinks two ZPMs might give us enough time to finish the hyperdrive repairs," Caldwell said. "Are we really down to minimums already?"

This last question was more a statement of disbelief, but Elizabeth answered anyway. "I'm afraid so."

"All right. Send all remaining personnel in the city to the Daedalus. When the control room crew is done powering everything down, we'll beam the last of you here."

"Then I'll see you in a few minutes." Elizabeth slowly edged over to the communications console, finding it difficult to keep her balance as the floor tilted under her feet. She reached out to toggle the citywide channel. "All personnel, report to the Daedalus immediately. Due to our worsening situation, nonessential city power will be terminated in five minutes. That will include the transport systems, so drop whatever it is you're doing and"-she swallowed hard, determined to inject a sense of absolute control into her voice in spite of what she was saying — "abandon the city. I repeat, abandon everything now and report to the Daedalus. There will be no further announcements."

Closing the channel, she felt bleak helplessness settle into her bones. They'd lasted as long as they could. It was up to Radek and his group now.

I'm sorry, she silently told the city and its long-departed people. I know this wasn't what you intended, certainly not what you had hoped. We did our best.

With an expression far too grave for his young face, the tech started to run down a checklist. All over the city, the last remaining lights began to wink out.