STARGATE SG-1: Transitions

by Sabine C. Bauer

  Minutes?

  At this rate he wouldn’t last a few seconds. The edge of the hatch panels loomed closer and closer, and the locking bolts that studded it looked like giant teeth. Like that space slug in Star Wars, and the maw would snap shut and—

  “Rodney! Snap out of it!” Sheppard glared at him from the HUD. “Keep imagining this kind of crap, and you’ll probably manage to cut the Jumper in half.”

  “Have you ever heard the words ‘positive reinforcement?’”

  “Later. Rodney, listen to me! Chances are that computer bug will find a way of stopping you if you wait. You’re right, it’s attempting to prevent any evacuation attempt. You can’t risk that hatch snapping shut because, once it does that, it’ll very, very likely stay shut.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Go vertical and flip the Jumper sideways.”

  “Who do you think I am? Han Solo?”

  “Jarjar Binks, but never mind that now. Just do it!”

  “Jarjar Binks, my a… argh!”

  He’d never even noticed his fingers tightening around the stick. Faster than the inertial dampeners could react, the Jumper’s nose swung skyward and the ship accelerated sharply. Rodney’s stomach did things no stomach had been designed to do, and he suddenly was very grateful for having skipped the last five meals.

  “Rodney!” Zelenka bellowed in his ear. “Wait!”

  “Not now!”

  That giant metal maw was racing toward him, and yes! The virus somehow seemed to be aware of what he was doing. The damn hatch was moving, and in the wrong direction, too.

  Flip the ship.

  Oh yeah, sure. Flip the ship. Why the hell not? Nothing could be easier.

  The Jumper corkscrewed between the still closing ceiling panels. A horrible, ear-splitting screech of metal on metal, and Rodney felt the ship shudder and slow down. But only for a heartbeat. With another jolt the Jumper came free and shot toward a clear, star-sprinkled sky.

  He blinked, momentarily surprised. Things had been so crazy, he’d never even realized what time of day or, rather, night it was. The canopy of stars filled the entire viewport, and it was beautiful.

  And he had made it.

  He’d actually made it.

  John Sheppard grinned at him from the HUD. “Nice flying, ace. But you might want to level out a little now. Less strain on the engines. Oh, and by the way, you pay for the body work, just so you know. That scratch is a stinker.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Talk to my insurance,” Rodney muttered, concentrating hard on not shaving the top three stories off the command tower.

  Clobbering the Jumper into a jerky turn, he zoomed past the tower with less than a foot to spare and steered clear of the city. Finally, he could afford to take a breath. Tension had twisted his shoulders into a murderous ache. Nothing a two-hour massage wouldn’t cure. For the moment, though, just rolling them a little would have to do.

  Elizabeth’s voice crackled from the ear piece, hissing with static and cutting out for seconds at a time. “Rodney… okay? Should… crews… ceiling to retract!”

  “I’m fine,” he yelled, then reminded himself that shouting wouldn’t improve reception. He was fast moving out of range of the two-way radios they used around Atlantis. “Couldn’t wait. Sorry about the damage,” he added generously, knowing full well that this probably would get lost in transmission.

  There was a last dying fizz from the radio, which he chose to interpret as Don’t worry about the little scrape and Good luck!

  “McKay out,” he murmured.

  A quick glance at the navigation systems showed that he was currently plowing through the planet’s stratosphere. The midnight blue of the sky was rapidly deepening to the utter black of space and the stars grew steadier and brighter.

  Wow!

  He’d done it!

  He’d flown a Jumper into space.

  “Rodney!”

  “What?” He forced his attention back to the HUD with some difficulty.

  The good colonel was scowling. “Can you just quit being impressed with yourself for a minute and adjust your course?”

  “What’s wrong with my course?”

  “Nothing’s wrong—”

  “I hear a yet,” Rodney gasped, panic taking hold of him again.

  “Get your hearing checked. Your course is fine, except you’re now coming round for your second orbit, and you might as well pass over Atlantis and check on the shield.”

  “Oh. Makes sense.”

  The Sheppard image grimaced and managed to look as though it wanted to stick out its tongue. “Thank you. So very kind. Now adjust the course.”

  Rodney adjusted.

  The ship damn near went into a roll, then flip-flopped onto the new course with the grace of a stoned manatee.

  “Gently!” Sheppard hollered.

  “Don’t get your panties in a wad!” snapped Rodney. “I’ve got it, okay? I’ve got it,” he repeated softly, if only to reassure himself. The ache in his shoulders was back. “You know, this kind of excitability you’re displaying isn’t exactly confidence-building.”

  “Your confidence is the last thing we’ve got to worry about, trust me on that.”

  They were coming up for the coordinates of Atlantis now. Rodney peered through the viewport. Nothing. Deep, dark night, which was exactly what he’d hoped to see.

  “Looks good,” he commented for Sheppard’s benefit. “Looks like… oh crap!”

  The darkness below had briefly exploded into a tiny cluster of lights. The glow was swallowed again almost instantly, but no matter how briefly, the city had been visible from space. Any reasonably intelligent Wraith would know what it meant. Unfortunately, Rodney had yet to meet a stupid Wraith.

  “Shield’s failing?” Sheppard asked.

  “No, they’re celebrating the Fourth of July down there. Of course the shield’s failing! What did you expect? That the virus, just from the goodness of its little heart, was going to say, Oh no, we’d better leave that one intact, they might need it?”

  “Hey, anything’s possible.”

  Rodney wasn’t listening. Something else had occurred to him, and it wasn’t pretty. “You think the hive-ship picked up on it?”

  The Sheppard image shrugged. “Like I said, anything’s possible. Though it wasn’t much more than a blip… Then again, they’re sure as hell going to pick up on your transmission to Daedalus.”

  “Thank you!” Rodney hissed. “Until this moment I actually managed to keep that certainty stashed away in my subconscious, so I wouldn’t go numb with terror until I absolutely had to.”

  “Check your sensors,” Sheppard proposed reasonably.

  “I was just about to do that,” lied Rodney.

  “You’re lying. Remember, figment of your imagination and all that. I’m bound to pick up on these things.”

  “I know. Now shut up!”

  Sensors were easy. Really easy. Rodney usually was in charge of those when he wasn’t flying. Of course, having to multitask might throw a spanner in the works.

  “Keep telling yourself that often enough, and it’ll happen.” The Sheppard image looked smug.

  “I thought I told you to shut up.”

  He calibrated the onboard sensors for the last known position of the Daedalus. Atlantis’s own long-range sensors had gone down shortly after Khan’s discovery, but the sergeant had been smart enough to record the coordinates while he still could. And those coordinates, by some miracle, were exactly where Rodney found the Daedalus.

  The sensor image overlaid the little Sheppard on the HUD, giving him an interesting case of the measles. The system where Daedalus was positioned was centered on Sheppard’s nose and some three light years away from the hive-ship, which wasn’t moving. With a little luck and thanks to that belching sun they were hiding behind, Daedalus might even be able to sneak out unnoticed. Unless…

  “Damn,” he whispered.

  The aspect of the hive-ship was beginnin
g to change, though it was impossible to tell whether it had simply got an update about promising culling grounds or whether the momentary failure of Atlantis’s shield had piqued the Wraith’s interest.

  “Doesn’t look good,” John Sheppard agreed, “but you can’t afford to worry about that now. Contact the Daedalus, and then get the hell out of here.”

  “Alright. Here goes,” breathed Rodney and opened the channel. “Daedalus, this is McKay. Come in please. Daedalus, come in. McKay to Daedalus, come in. Dae—”

  “Keep your hair on, Dr. McKay. We heard you the first time. This is Major Laval aboard Daedalus. Nice of you to check in. We were getting worried.”

  “Yeah, well, you’ll be getting a great deal more worried in a minute, Major.”

  When Laval’s reply came, he actually sounded worried. “What’s your situation, Atlantis?”

  “Lousy.”

  “Care to specify, Doctor?”

  “We’ve got approximately sixty percent of the expedition down with that Ancient bug, one fatality so far, but there’s bound to be more, and we’ve got a computer virus. Communications are down, and I’m currently sitting in a Jumper in orbit around Lantea. That specific enough for you?”

  “I’d say lousy is an understatement,” Laval came back.

  “It was the most optimistic epithet I could think of.”

  “Where’s Colonel Sheppard?”

  Rodney winced. “In the infirmary.” He didn’t think any further specifics were required at this juncture.

  They weren’t.

  “Crap,” said Laval with feeling and a fine appreciation for optimistic epithets. “What do you need us to do?”

  “We need you to come back to Atlantis. We need your transporter, to be precise.”

  “Look, Dr. McKay, if you’re planning an evacuation aboard the Daedalus, that’s not gonna happen, given the circumstances. I’m sorry, but I can’t—”

  “Did I say evacuation? Don’t second-guess me, Major. Better people have tried and failed. We need the transporter.” Rodney considered it best not to mention that this would involve a number of modifications, such as physically removing said transporter from the ship.

  “Alright.” There was a beat, Laval muttered something that sounded like a curse, then continued, “You’re aware that we’ve got company?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yeah. They’ve picked up the transmission, and it looks like they’ve managed to pinpoint your location. The hive-ship just jumped into hyperspace. You’d better get out of there, Dr. McKay. We’ll try to head them off. Daedalus out.”

  “Hey! Wait a minute! Wait…”

  Of course Laval didn’t wait. The man had better things to do. And so had Rodney. Like, getting back to Atlantis before the Wraith showed up. Which involved a little thing called orbital reentry. Which, in turn, was something John Sheppard had never let him try.

  “Any handy hints?” he asked the HUD.

  The little Sheppard image stared at him blankly.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  Chapter 28

  “Don’t be scared,” Daniel said to her.

  He was easiest to talk to, she found, other than Cassandra, of course. They had passed some kind of checkpoint, manned by guards who carried projectile weapons. Tall fences everywhere, and that had amazed her.

  Hadn’t these people discovered shields?

  No matter.

  Amara forced her attention back on Daniel. “I am not afraid of the dark,” she pointed out calmly. “It would be foolish. The dark alone never hurt anyone.”

  “True enough.” He turned back to once more peer out the large window at the front of the vehicle.

  If she had heard correctly, they referred to it as a ‘humphee’— odd name— and it was currently roaring down a long, well-lit underground passage whose end would mark the end of their journey, or so she’d been given to understand. Still, she couldn’t quite fathom it.

  Were they troglodytes?

  Their level of development argued against it, though, to be sure, there were a great many primitive things mixed in with the sophisticated. Take their types of conveyance, for instance. The aircraft she’d traveled in had struck her as torturously slow, and this ground transport was even worse. Its interior was barely spacious enough to hold them all; wouldn’t have been, had the man Michael still been with them. But he had traveled on in the aircraft to be reunited with his mate and his child’s children.

  And yet, however deficient their technology might be in so many ways, they possessed a gateway to the stars. She had gleaned this much from the man they called Jack. Or General. Or O’Neill. Their nomenclature was mystifying.

  Why couldn’t they simply choose one name and be done with it?

  She had stolen into his mind during the healing. That was why she had needed the girl’s help. Cassandra’s abilities were easily strong enough to let her perform such tasks on her own; she simply didn’t know it. Yet. At any rate, the girl’s aptitude had permitted Amara to concentrate her own powers on a breach of etiquette she’d never have considered under any normal circumstances. But she’d had no choice. She had to ascertain that these people were who and how the girl said they were.

  Reading him had been much more difficult than she’d expected, given the graveness of his injury and his weakened state. He might not recall it, but he’d fought her every step of the way. Strong-willed this one was. So as not to say stubborn. There were strange places in his mind, dark and well-guarded, which had piqued her curiosity. Amara could have broken down his defenses and gone there, had she chosen to do so, but then he certainly would have remembered. Which would have meant losing their fragile trust.

  Not something she could afford.

  She needed them.

  She needed O’Neill.

  At one time he had been their gatekeeper, and he would lead her to the gateway. She felt certain of it.

  The vehicle came to a halt outside the largest, crudest door she had ever seen. Made of strong metal, its bolts were the diameter of a man’s thigh. It stood wide open, so one should assume that its purpose was to keep danger out rather than in. Or to hide something.

  The gateway?

  But why would they hide it?

  Their journey now continued on foot, and Amara was grateful for the opportunity to stretch her legs. A forest or a cliff with a broad view of the ocean would have been preferable— surely the air would have been better— but she was willing to accept these stultifying gray corridors of manufactured stone. And to rein in the impatience that was her greatest flaw.

  The tall, silent Jaffa they called Teal’c had fallen in beside her. Guard or company, Amara couldn’t tell. This one was truly impregnable, and his presence among the humans still surprised her. Of course she knew of the Jaffa, a fiercely independent warrior race, but she couldn’t work out their connection to the humans. One of the far too many things she still was failing to comprehend.

  “Where are we going?” she asked him.

  “You shall see shortly,” was the uninformative reply. Then he seemed to reconsider and added, “Further beneath the mountain. Here.”

  They had stopped in front of what looked to be a transporter cabin. Odd that, if the humans had this technology, they would not apply it to more extended modes of travel.

  A few moments later, Amara realized that this was about as far from a transporter cabin as a calabash was from a dark matter container. It operated on the crudest mechanical principles and only served two directions, up and down. It also appeared to be confined to short distances, judging from the fact that they had to change cabins at what she took to be the halfway point in order to continue their descent. Another guard post here, she was relieved to see. For a while it had seemed to Amara that she and her companions were the only living creatures here in the bowels of the mountain.

  At last the second cabin, too, reached its destination and its door slid open onto another plain, gray corridor.

  Was there a law aga
inst grace and color?

  In one respect this corridor was radically different from the ones above; it bustled with people. Men and women in drab but practical looking suits walked past, briskly and with purpose, and more than a few of them greeted the new arrivals warmly.

  It made sense, of course, she thought with a quick glance at O’Neill. Anybody would revere a gatekeeper, even if he had surrendered the position. Amazingly, almost the same degree of courtesy was extended to Daniel, the Jaffa, and the woman, Samantha, who apparently was a scientist as well as a warrior. A curious combination. Amara couldn’t imagine how one would go about investing the necessary diligence in both at the same time.

  Samantha was leading them now, from this corridor into that, from unmarked gray into unmarked gray, following a map that had to be engraved in her memory. Finally they ascended a short flight of stairs into a dark little chamber stuffed with all manner of electronic devices. Amara stared at them, spellbound, the greeting of several occupants of this chamber floating past her unheeded. She hadn’t realized so far, but given their overall level of development it stood to reason that the humans were not using crystal-based technology yet.

  This was a treasure trove. Her own people had discarded virtually all samples of primitive data processing apparatuses, never once considering that, one day, historians might be desperate to understand how the old technology worked.

  The touch of a hand on her shoulder startled her— she was no longer used to physical contact it seemed— and she resisted an impulse to flinch away.

  Smiling, Samantha said, “You might want to look this way.”

  As she spoke, the scientist-warrior turned Amara toward a large viewing window. More chip-based data processing devices lined the desk beneath it, but politeness dictated that, first, she inspect what Samantha wanted her to see.

  A cavernous, high-ceilinged room beneath— it, too was gray— and at its back, opposite the window and mounted on an ungainly metal contraption…