STARGATE ATLANTIS: Dead End Read online

  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 so
me 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.”

  Chapter Eight

  Sheppard screwed his eyes up. It was almost impossible to see where he was going, and he was navigating on instinct alone.

  “Are we there yet?” shouted McKay. In the howling gale, his yell was not much more audible than a whisper.

  “Sure,” said Sheppard, hoping he was right. “Any minute now.”

  “That’s what you said ten minutes ago.”

  “Yeah, well this time I mean it.”

  He powered on ahead, more relieved than he’d admit when he felt the ground rising beneath his feet. Within a few moments he spotted a dim light up ahead. In the ferocious storm, it looked as faint as candle flame.

  “Bingo!” he shouted to McKay. “Let’s pick up the pace!”

  Easier said than done. Despite his heavy clothing, his limbs already felt heavy and sluggish; the middle of the storm was no place for a man to be, buffalo hide or no, and he could hardly wait to get inside the Forgotten’s hidden city.

  But when they reached the entrance to the cave complex, the heavy external doors were shut. Light leaked from the cracks in the wood. Sheppard hammered on the weather-worn wooden portal, the dull sound of his banging snatched away by the wind. But there was no answer and the door did not open.

  The storm howled in delight, throwing all its terrible might against them, and it was hard to keep his feet even in the lee of the rock face.

  “So, you want to fill me in here?” cried McKay, huddled and miserable in the shadow of the rocks. “This party season, or something?”

  “Didn’t strike me as party people,” Sheppard shouted. “I don’t like it. Aralen told me these gates were always manned.”

  He retrieved his P90 from deep within the furs covering him. As he did so, the icy wind wormed its way inside and he gasped from the cold.

  “We’re not going to last much longer out here!” Sheppard yelled. “Get back!” He raised the gun to fire at the heavy lock. Using a submachine gun to pick a lock was hardly an elegant solution, but the cold was crippling and there weren’t many options left.

  “Tell me you’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do…” groaned Rodney.

  “Time to knock a little louder. You might want to get clear.”

  Rodney scampered out of range, back into the fury of the storm. Sheppard took a few paces back, took aim and issued a controlled burst.

  The ancient wood around the lock shredded instantly, and the heavy door swung open. From the other side, warm torchlight flooded out on to the snow.

  “Typical military,” muttered McKay. “See a problem. Shoot at it.”

  “Got us in, didn’t it?” snapped Sheppard, feeling his limbs begin to seize up from the cold. “Now let’s find out what the hell happened here.”

  The two of them staggered through the broken doorway and did their best to close the door behind them. The freedom from the howl of the snow-laced wind was a huge relief — Sheppard found his ears still ringing even after it had been shut out.

  “Stay close,” he warned, keeping the P90 raised.

  McKay, for once, had nothing smart to say. The corridor was deserted. Even though the torches still burned, there was no sign of movement.

  They crept down the tunnel watchfully. As they went, the noise of some commotion echoed up at them from further ahead.

  “What’s that?” hissed Rodney, starting to look agitated.

  The noise got louder. There was the sound of running feet thudding against the rock, shouts of alarm, stuff breaking.

  “I dunno, but we’re headed right for it.”

  Sheppard picked up the pace. They turned a corner and walked into a scene of chaos. The hall in front of them was one of the minor audience chambers of the settlement, and it was full of people. Men, women and children staggered aimlessly about, some moaning, others weeping. A few of them saw Sheppard and McKay enter and pointed accusatory fingers.

  “Why didn’t you stop them?” they cri
ed. Some Forgotten men began to advance on them menacingly, their eyes wild. The transformation from their earlier placid nature could not have been more pronounced.

  “Whoa!” said Sheppard, eager to keep the situation from boiling over. “Stop who?”

  One of the Forgotten, an older man with graying hair, pointed his finger at Sheppard.

  “The Banshees! They came again. The Foremost told us you Ancestors had come to free us from their menace. You lied!”

  McKay groaned. “I mean, we told him we weren’t Ancients,” he complained. “What more do we have to do?”

  Sheppard raised the muzzle of his gun to the roof. He really didn’t want to use it in such a confined space, but the mood of the crowd in front of him looked ugly. He’d seen this in Afghanistan, in villages after an atrocity had been committed.

  “Now slow down,” he warned, looking directly at the old man and holding his gaze. “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. How about you explain this, nice and slow?”

  Something in Sheppard’s voice seemed to cut through the worst of the anger. The crowd wasn’t really furious with the two of them. The target of their rage was elsewhere.

  “The Banshees came for us again,” the man said, bitterly. Wails of despair echoed up from corridors beyond the chamber. “We’ve been culled.”

  As the man said ‘culled’, Sheppard’s blood turned to ice. He turned to Rodney.

  “I thought…” McKay started.

  “Yeah, me too,” said Sheppard. His voice was grim. “God, those guys get everywhere.”

  “And what about…?” McKay started again.

  “That too.” Sheppard was ahead of him. Teyla had been in the settlement. “Let’s go. Find her first, and then we’ll worry about the Wraith.”

  Ronon staggered onwards through the blizzard, gritting his teeth against the pain in his legs.

  The wind tore across the plains, ripping and buffeting everything in its path. The noise was overwhelming, visibility was down to a few meters, and the snow had begun to pile up in massive drifts. The entire landscape had transformed into an icy hell.