by Graham, Jo
Outside, the blue of hyperspace faded, blue to black, the pinprick lights of a million wheeling stars.
“Jesus Christ,” Beckett said over the radio. “What the bloody hell was that?”
Zelenka held on to the edge of the board and shoved his glasses back up his nose with one finger. “We are spinning. Carson, can you level us out?”
“Not without the lateral thrusters!” Beckett said indignantly. “I’ve got no power to any propulsion systems. Get me some power and I’ll see what I can do.”
Zelenka’s hands skimmed the board. “I am doing. I am doing.”
Colonel Sheppard came charging up the steps from the lower doors, in uniform pants over a faded t shirt that proclaimed him a patron of Johnson’s Garage, his hair askew. “What happened?” he demanded.
“We have a problem in the hyperdrive induction array,” Zelenka said, not even looking up from his screen. “It started pulling power from other systems. Kusanagi rerouted priority emergency power to the shield so we did not lose that. I had Carson drop us out of hyperspace.”
“Where are we?” Sheppard asked.
“That is the least of our troubles at the moment.” Zelenka spared him a sideways glance, and Sheppard swallowed.
Dr. McKay bounded up the stairs two at a time in what appeared to be flannel pyjama pants with a uniform jacket over them. “What did you do?”
“The number four induction array went crazy,” Zelenka said. “Carson’s little wobble, remember?” He looked at McKay over the top of his glasses. “As much as I can tell, it started opening a wider and wider hyperspace corridor, and drawing sufficient power to do so from all available systems.”
“Did you…” McKay began.
“I had Carson drop us out of hyperspace. All the propulsion systems are offline.”
Salawi moved out of the way so that McKay could crowd into the board. “Did you…”
“Yes, of course I did.”
“Would somebody like to tell me what that means?” Sheppard asked, scrubbing his hand over his unshaven chin.
McKay shoved Zelenka over, his hands on the Ancient keys.
Zelenka looked round at Sheppard. “When a ship opens a hyperspace window, the window occupies real space. It has a location and a size. The larger the ship, the larger the window it needs to open. This is intuitive, yes? The Daedalus does not require as large a window as a hive ship, nor a hive ship as this city. And the size of the window determines the power requirements. A big window requires exponentially more power than a small window. Daedalus could not open a window for Atlantis. She would not have enough power to do so.” He spread his hands. “It looks like the induction array malfunctioned and began expanding our hyperspace window as though the city were much larger than it is. To do so, it pulled power out of all other major systems to sustain an enormous hyperspace envelope.”
“That’s not the only thing it pulled power out of,” McKay said grimly. “The ZPMs are at 20 per cent. It’s eaten our power.”
* * *
Teyla Emmagan folded her hands on the conference table in front of her, tilting her head toward Rodney as he spoke.
“We’ve restored power to all vital systems, but that’s not going to do it for us. The shield draws massive amounts of power, and it’s not optional. So rather than have the kind of involuntary rolling shutdown we had before, we’re shutting down systems manually.”
“Water filtration, for example,” Radek said from the other end of Woolsey’s conference table. “We have ten days supply already clean. We can resume filtration when it’s necessary.”
“And of course power to unoccupied parts of the city,” Rodney said. “But I cannot stress enough that this is not going to help much.”
“So we’re all going to die.” John leaned back in his chair. “What’s the bad news?”
“No,” Rodney said shortly. “We are not all going to die. At least I hope not.”
At the head of the table, Richard Woolsey looked as though his head were hurting. “Is there enough power for the hyperdrive?”
“Yes,” Rodney said.
“No,” Radek said.
They exchanged a glance. “There is technically enough power,” Rodney said. “But it doesn’t matter. The overload has destroyed the induction array command crystal, one of those beautiful Ancient parts that we have no idea how to make. We’ve learned how to repattern some of the less complex crystals, the ordinary ones used in many systems, but the command crystal for the hyperdrive is much more complicated. We would need to pull it and replace it, and as we have no idea how to synthesize even an ordinary one…”
“The answer is no,” Radek said.
“I was coming to that,” Rodney said.
Teyla thought Woolsey looked as though he wished to kill them both. It seemed like time to sum up. “So the hyperdrive is inoperable, and will be for the forseeable future?”
Rodney pointed a forefinger at her and gave her a smile. “Got it in one.”
“No rolling shutdowns?” John asked, letting his chair spring forward again and resting his elbows on the table. Teyla remembered all too clearly the last time Atlantis had been lost in space, power depleted by the Replicator weapon that had nearly killed Elizabeth Weir. She was quite certain that he remembered far too clearly as well.
“Not at this point,” Radek assured him.
“So where are we?” Woolsey asked, a question directed to John rather than the scientists. Atlantis’ command chair gave a far clearer picture of their navigational situation than any other.
“Just inside the Pegasus Galaxy,” John said, tilting his head to the side. “A couple of hours earlier and we’d be in real trouble. As it is, there are three systems in reasonable sublight range, none of them with Stargates and only one of them in Atlantis’ database. It’s a binary system.”
“No inhabitable planets,” Rodney said. “They’re all too close to one or another primary.”
Woolsey twitched. “And the other two?”
“We are analyzing data now,” Radek said. “The odds are reasonable that one of them will have a suitable planet.”
“And if they don’t?” Woolsey asked.
Rodney’s face was eloquent. “They’d better. We can’t get anywhere else. May I stress that we are right on the fringe of the Pegasus Galaxy? The stars are not exactly thick out here.”
“If they do have an inhabitable planet, why did the Ancients not build a Stargate there?” Teyla asked.
“Perhaps they did and it was lost,” Radek said.
“And the Daedalus is thirteen days out,” John said. “Minimum.”
“We can last that long,” Rodney said. “Assuming we can communicate our position.”
“Then let’s get to it,” Woolsey said, rising to his feet.
Teyla lagged behind, falling into step with him as the conference room emptied. “We were in far worse condition last time,” she said reassuringly.
Woolsey gave her a grim look. “You aren’t wishing you’d stayed on Earth?”
“That was not an option under the circumstances,” Teyla said.
Chapter One
Maneuvers
Five Months Earlier
“She doesn’t look like an alien.” Carson Beckett winced, and hoped the comment didn’t carry. He glanced around quickly to identify the speaker. Aurelia Dixon-Smythe, just as he feared. She was seated at the conference table next to Shen Xiaoyi, who pursed her lips primly. Shen had already met Teyla on her trip to Atlantis for Mr. Woolsey’s evaluation, but Dixon-Smythe was new to the IOA since the representative hanging on from the last ministry had resigned.
On the other side of Dixon-Smythe, Konstantin Nechayev, the Russian representative chuckled. “I’d like all my aliens to look like that!”
Teyla stood at the head of the conference table next to Woolsey, who was winding down a lengthy introduction. She wore the Atlantis uniform, BDUs and a uniform jacket, rather than anything more attractive or revealing, but there
was no denying that Teyla was a beautiful woman. Carson had certainly never doubted it.
“The Asgard are not so pretty,” Nechayev said a little too loudly. “Short, little gray men. They look like aliens ought to look. Like they were done by Hollywood!”
Shen pursed her lips again, her eyes on Woolsey, but Dixon-Smythe tilted her perfectly coiffed head to Nechayev. “I have not met the Asgard,” she said.
Nechayev shrugged expressively, his florid face agreeable. “I have. But let us hear what the prettier alien has to say!”
I’m going to kill someone, Carson thought, making his way carefully around the conference table to the door as Woolsey ended and Teyla stepped up.
“It is a great pleasure to meet with all of you,” Teyla said, her eyes moving from one to another, “And to bring you greetings on behalf of the peoples of the Pegasus Galaxy. As Dr. Beckett has explained, we share a common genetic heritage. There is no medical means by which any of us could be differentiated from any of you, so rather than aliens let us consider one another foreigners, kindred long separated by the borders of interstellar space, now confronted with our similarities as much as our differences.”
Carson stood with his back to the door and gave her an encouraging nod as her eyes swept over his. She seemed perfectly at ease with her trader’s smile, but then he supposed that Teyla had presented many a case in the past. Certainly she’d brokered most of their food and supplies in the last two years.
“And it is our similarities that confront us. The Wraith require human beings to feed upon. If we were very different from you, it would be likely that you would not satisfy their requirements as prey animals. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The Wraith find your lives as satisfying as ours.”
Teyla paused for effect, and for a moment Carson was forcibly reminded of Elizabeth. Dr. Elizabeth Weir had been the master of a moment like this. She would have convinced the IOA to let them take Atlantis home. He could not imagine a universe in which Elizabeth would not have prevailed. But Elizabeth had been lost to them for two years, and no one had ever truly taken her place.
Carson had liked Colonel Carter, but there was no denying that she was not the diplomat and administrator Elizabeth had been. He was not unsympathetic to Woolsey, though he’d worked with him only sparingly, but in his opinion Woolsey didn’t hold a candle to Elizabeth. Elizabeth had been their moral compass, their guiding star, and the expedition had never really recovered from her loss.
“But our similarities also bring us opportunities,” Teyla continued. “Despite the differences in our long-sundered cultures, we retain much in common.”
Someone nudged the door behind him, and Carson turned around to see Sheppard opening it a crack. Quietly, Carson edged out, pulling it shut behind him.
It was a good thing he closed the door, because he nearly burst out in laughter.
“Yeah, it’s very funny,” Sheppard whispered. He was wearing his usual uniform, with the addition of a harness around his neck from which dangled Torren, who appeared to be sound asleep. “Have a good laugh, Carson. Teyla has to do this meeting, and I said I’d watch him but I needed to go to the gateroom.”
“It lends you a certain something,” Carson said. “A certain ineffable dashing charm. There’s nothing like wearing a baby as a necktie to make women ovulate when they see you.”
“There’s something seriously wrong with you, Carson,” Sheppard said. He peered around the corner of the door, trying to see in the room. “Better her than me. How is she doing?”
“She’s doing very well. But whether or not that’s going to do any good, I couldn’t tell you. It’s a tough crowd.” Carson peered in at the faces ranged around the table as Teyla turned to point to something on the projection screen Woolsey had networked to his laptop.
“Who’s the guy checking out Teyla’s butt?”
“Nechayev, the Russian representative,” Carson said. “Nobody can do a thing with him. He’s a complete contrarian.” Carson put his hands in his pockets. “Of course, our representative just called Teyla an alien, so I suppose the UK has no leg to stand on here.”
“Our reps haven’t been stellar either,” John said with a frown. “I suppose politicians are alike all over the world.”
“Teyla’s doing a good job,” Carson said. “Elizabeth would be proud.”
“How’s it going?” Colonel Carter had come up behind them, peeking around Carson’s shoulder toward the door.
“Fairly well, I think,” Carson said.
Sheppard turned and Carter had to cover her mouth with her hands to keep from laughing out loud.
“Yes, I’m wearing a baby,” Sheppard said. “It’s very funny. Can we get past that?”
Torren stirred, and all three of them froze.
Sheppard paced carefully back away from the door. “What are you doing back here, Sam? I thought you were fitting out the George Hammond for her launch.”
“I am,” she said, “But Atlantis has some repair issues that needed second eyes, and I’ve spent a good deal of time with Ancient technology, so I came to pinch hit.”
“Rodney will have a cow,” Sheppard said.
“Actually, it was Rodney who invited me,” Carter replied with a smile.
“Good God!” Carson said. He exchanged a glance with Sheppard. “Rodney asked you to come help him?”
“That’s right.” Carter said pleasantly. “Some of the issues with the damaged components in the engines. I’m afraid that wormhole drive is pretty much out of the question in the near future. There are burned out components we don’t even have names for. It’s the old problem with Ancient technology—we may be able to do some maintenance, but we can’t actually reconstruct the things they built. We’re like fifteenth century people with P90s. We can point and shoot, but build one? It’s centuries ahead of us.”
“What about the hyperdrive?” Sheppard asked urgently. “Can you fix that?”
Carter nodded. “We can fix the hyperdrive. It’s not too bad, and the Asgard drives use comparable technology. It’s a matter of customizing components, not inventing them from scratch in a technology we’re only beginning to understand. With work, we should have the hyperdrive repaired in several weeks.” She looked at Sheppard keenly. “Going somewhere?”
“I hope so,” Sheppard said.
“So do we all,” Carson said. He glanced back toward the closed conference room doors. “Teyla’s doing what Woolsey calls ‘putting a face on the issues’, but I’m not sanguine.”
“We need Atlantis back in Pegasus,” Carter said. “I’m supposed to take the Hammond out on her first run, and then Steven Caldwell and I will alternate patrols with the Hammond and the Daedalus. I can’t begin to tell you how many times Steven says he’d have lost the ship if he hadn’t had Atlantis to return to. If we don’t have a base closer than eighteen days away, it’s going to make our job nearly impossible.”
“Your job?” Carson asked.
Carter gave him a hard look. “Defeating the Wraith. It’s not like we can afford to just forget about them.” She looked at Sheppard. “Or about the people who live there.”
Sheppard nodded, and there was a tone of respect in his voice he didn’t usually have for anyone in authority. “I know you’ll do your best.”
“That’s not the part that matters right now,” Carter said. She glanced toward the door. “It’s what happens in there. Since we lost the Korolev, we’ve been running on three functional starships. The George Hammond will make four, but there are no additional keels laid.”
Carson frowned. “What precisely does that mean?”
Carter’s eyes were grave. “It means there’s no money, doctor. With so many needs at home and a global economic crisis, construction on the next ship after the George Hammond has been suspended. The Russians aren’t in a hurry to replace the Korolev, either. Seven billion dollars, and she lasted less than two years in service? It doesn’t seem like a very good return on their investment. The Sun Tzu was bad
ly damaged in the battle with the hive ship and still has to be salvaged, if she can be. Ariane’s Austerlitz class is still on the drawing board, and with our construction halted, that’s all of Earth’s spacecraft. It’s an incredibly expensive investment, and even the wealthiest nations are feeling the pinch.” She glanced back toward the conference room door. “At dinner last night Mr. Desai was making noises about Indian investment in a scientific vessel, but that’s further down the road than the Austerlitz, three to five years at best. We’re going to be alone out there.”
Sheppard’s brows knit. “More reason to take Atlantis home.”
“That’s what I think.” Carter put her head to the side. “But they don’t let me run the world.”
The conference room door opened again and General O’Neill slipped out, closing it carefully behind him. “Beckett. Carter.” His face changed when he saw Sheppard. “Sheppard, you’re out of uniform.”
“I realize the baby’s not regulation, sir,” Sheppard said, wincing as though he were ready for it.
“He’s asleep,” Carter whispered. “Don’t wake him up.”
“I see he’s asleep.” O’Neill bent down to take a closer look. Torren had his fist in his mouth, his plump face turned to the side against Sheppard’s chest. “Oh my goodness he’s big. He’s such a big boy. Aren’t you a big boy?”
Carson gave Sheppard a look of utter horror, while Carter seemed to be fighting another fit of laughter. She cleared her throat loudly. “Don’t you think we should take this conversation away from the door, sir?”
“Absolutely,” Carson agreed fervently.
* * *
Teyla smiled pleasantly as the IOA representatives reached for briefcases and jackets, gathering up their things to move on to the reception on the gateroom balcony that Mr. Woolsey had prepared for them, just some light hors d’oeuvres and cocktails in the fading sunset of a San Francisco evening. Though it was cool outside, Woolsey had assured her they would be warm enough with the addition of some heaters brought across the bay to make outdoor events more pleasant.
