STARGATE SG-1: Transitions

by Sabine C. Bauer

  “What’s happening?” she whispered.

  “Lots of brain activity.” This time he did shrug and regretted it immediately. Should have remembered.

  Beckett came galloping past. He ducked into the airlock, bouncing on his toes with impatience while the program cycled through its prescribed moves. Yucky eggplant light and a shower that stank of bleach. Not that there was any cause for hurry. When Beckett popped out the other side, Sheppard still was going strong, monitor flashing and bleeping and all.

  “I don’t understand,” murmured Dr. Weir.

  Hey, neither did Ronon. Same boat.

  She seemed about to say something else and stopped herself. He recognized that tilt of the head. Somebody was calling her on the radio. Fairly short message, too. “Keep trying and notify me if anything changes. Something’s happening with Colonel Sheppard… I’ll be with you as soon as I know he’s stable. Weir out.”

  “What?” asked Ronon.

  “One of the technicians is manning the com console in Jumper One to try and establish contact with Rodney. She just picked up what could have been a mayday. The transmission was breaking up badly, but apparently Rodney was on course for reentry when he came under attack from several Darts.”

  “Where’s he now?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. The technician lost contact.” Dr. Weir sounded gloomy, though dejection was laced with anger. “Dammit! What was I thinking? I never should have made him take a risk like that.”

  “And your options were?”

  Lips compressed to a thin line, she glared up at him. He just glared back at her, not saying anything else. No need. That aside, he could glare with the best of them. After eight seconds or so, she cracked. “You’re right. I know you’re right. Having said that, I’m supposed to protect people not—”

  “Dr. Weir, I’ve had commanders who didn’t give a… damn. You’re not it. ‘Sides, McKay achieved his objective.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Darts.” He narrowly prevented another shrug. “Wouldn’t be there for no reason. Says to me that the Wraith picked up McKay’s transmission to the Daedalus.”

  “I hope you’re right about that, too.” Her attention wandered back to the mayhem within the isolation unit.

  Beckett and the nurses were performing what looked like a ritual dance, attempting to figure out why or how Sheppard’s brain was doing what it was doing. Seemed to Ronon that he had as much of a chance coming up with an answer from out here. After all, they’d been through the same routine less than an hour ago and came up with zilch. Though one thing was new, he noted. The fingers of Sheppard’s right hand had curled as if they were holding something, and the hand was moving. Left a little. Right. A sharp yank up. Down again a moment later.

  Looked familiar.

  Dogfight-kinda-familiar.

  Suddenly it struck him, and he blinked in disbelief. No way. No damn way. Then again, the guy was a pilot, and he did have that spooky connection with all things Ancient. Well, Ancient technology anyway. So, who was to say he couldn’t do this, especially when his head wasn’t busy doing anything else?

  Ronon grinned. “McKay’s gonna be alright.”

  “What?” Dr. Weir slanted a glance up at him. “How can you possibly know that?”

  “He ain’t flying that Jumper. Sheppard is.”

  The Dart screeched past outside the viewport, close enough for the musty stench of Wraith to practically jump up your nostrils. Wherever that thing was going, Rodney didn’t want to follow. He was going to reenter now, and never mind that he and the Jumper would likely be charbroiled before they even left the stratosphere. Straight down and away from the Darts.

  He pushed the stick forward.

  Well, he tried.

  It barely moved. The Jumper’s nose dipped a little and came right back up again.

  “No! Now is not the time for a malfunction!”

  He pushed again, with even less success.

  Up ahead, the Dart raced into a turn so tight it should have been a physical impossibility. There were another two out there, Rodney knew, but they were out of sight at the moment, somewhere astern of him. He also knew he should activate the aft sensors, but multitasking escaped him at the moment. He had his hands full trying to control the Jumper.

  This was it, wasn’t it?

  And no, he hadn’t just made that little whimpering noise, had he?

  Or maybe he had, because that Dart was coming back and straight at him, and never mind that he was cloaked. Supposedly. The Wraith had to be reading the Jumper’s energy output, and the Dart’s hornet-sting nose pointed dead on course to spear the cockpit.

  McKay kebob.

  A soon-to-be staple of Wraith cuisine.

  Maybe not.

  The energy beam streaked out of nowhere, close enough to rock the Jumper. Some alarm started shrieking, announcing that rocking the boat wasn’t all the beam had done. It had hit, alright.

  Southern fried McKay.

  A quick glance told him that he’d lost drive pod extension.

  Don’t panic! You don’t need the pods. No orbital gate to go through.

  Too damn bad. He had to get out of here.

  Rodney shoved at the stick with everything he had. It felt as though the wretched thing was stuck. Actually, no… it was shoving right back. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say the Jumper had developed a will of its own.

  “Now is not the time,” he grunted, feeling a bead of sweat run down his nose. “Down!”

  “Stop fighting me, dammit!” bellowed the Sheppard image on the HUD.

  “What?” Rodney was surprised enough to almost let go of the stick.

  It promptly twitched in his hand, and the Jumper’s course, which momentarily had veered a smidge toward the spurious safety of the planet’s atmosphere, turned right back onto head-on collision with the Dart and the McKay kebob scenario.

  “You’re not flying this thing! I am!” he yelped. “More pertinently, you won’t be the one dying out here!”

  Because, truth was, John Sheppard— the real item— was dying down there, wasn’t he? Rodney felt something clutch his gut, and it had nothing to do with Wraith or the fact that, if he was perfectly honest with himself (and he could be when pushed), he sucked out loud as a pilot.

  “Rodney! Trust me. This is hard enough without having to argue with you. I’m not exactly in top form right now.”

  One way of putting it.

  Rodney swallowed hard.

  Truth was, too, that he had no reasonable chance of getting out of this alive. Not unless the Darts decided to spontaneously combust, which they showed no sign of doing. If anything, giving in to Little John’s insane demand would speed up Rodney McKay’s demise and this, he decided, was actually desirable. No point in postponing the inevitable. Better to get it over with quickly.

  “Fine.” He let go of the stick. “Knock yourself out. Just don’t blame me for the consequences.”

  This whole interior debate had lasted a second perhaps. During that time the Dart ahead had drawn close enough for Rodney to make out the color of the Wraith’s eyes. Bloodshot. Tucked away under the sleek wings of the Dart sat the capacitors— probably not what they were called, but it was close enough technically— for the beam weapon. They were glowing now as the charge built up. Quite hypnotic, actually.

  Any moment now.

  Rodney’s world flopped out of kilter. From one heartbeat to the next, he was staring no longer at the Dart but at a sea of fleecy clouds far beneath. The Jumper shook like a baby rattle. Couldn’t be air resistance yet, some detached part of his brain informed him. He was still too far out. A shock wave, then. The instant he thought it, he saw chunks of debris hurtle past the viewport, streak into the atmosphere, and vaporize somewhere among those clouds.

  Dart Number One had fired alright. But since its target had possessed the poor taste to put a spanner in the works and execute a sharp course correction, the energy beams had sliced str
aight through the target’s last known position and gone on to rip apart Dart Number Two. Or Three. Who was counting, anyway?

  It was the oldest trick in the book, but apparently the Wraith hadn’t read the book. Neither had Rodney, by his own admission, else he might have thought of that one himself.

  One down, two to go.

  Question was what they were up to.

  Seeing as he’d given up on flying— wisely so, it seemed, because contrary to expectation he was still alive— he could concentrate on other things. Such as the aft sensors, for instance.

  Yep. Two Darts astern, and one of them looked as if it was limping, possibly struck by shrapnel when its colleague exploded. Unfortunately, the other one was neither damaged nor discouraged and took up pursuit.

  The Jumper’s trajectory had leveled out, Rodney was relieved to see. There wasn’t that much of a difference in the respective outcomes of being struck by an energy beam in outer space and slamming head-first into the brick wall of a planet’s atmosphere. Dart Number One had picked up Rodney’s trail again. Piece of cake during reentry— all you had to do was look for a flare of superheated air molecules.

  To add insult to injury, the Dart’s shape was a hell of a lot more aerodynamic than that of the flying lunchbox Rodney was currently sitting in. No points for guessing who’d win a maneuverability contest.

  Then again, maybe not.

  A sharp yank to the left, and then the Jumper slowed almost to a standstill. The Dart zoomed past like a fury, shrinking to pinprick-size in the haze of the stratosphere. Jumper Four, without any help from Rodney, came around and headed sharply downward in the opposite direction.

  The cockpit was getting uncomfortably hot.

  “Uh,” said Rodney carefully. “You might want to watch your rate of descent.”

  “Shut up and let me focus.” The voice sounded tired, and on second glance Sheppard’s image on the HUD had taken on an alarmingly ashen complexion.

  “Hey! Don’t pass out on me now!” Rodney gasped.

  “Shut up!”

  More jolting now, not that relatively brief, hard shock of the explosion, but a slowly building rattle that intensified at the same rate as the heat in the cockpit and might well shake the Jumper apart. The vibration was so brutal that Rodney could barely see straight. Above his head a bunch of breakers popped in a flurry of sparks, and alarms started to shriek over the insane roar of air battering the fuselage. On the HUD, the hopping, skipping display of the aft sensors showed that the Dart had reversed course and was coming after them at a rate of knots. An energy beam lanced past the viewport, then a second. That one missed, too, but it could only be a matter of seconds now.

  Brick wall or energy beam…

  “Oh God.” He groaned.

  Outside the clouds were ballooning from far-off little fleecy things into humungous thunderheads, up close and personal. The Jumper thwapped into the nearest tower of fluff, came to another stop. The viewport went gray. It matched the color of Sheppard’s face.

  Swiping a sleeve over his forehead to soak up rivulets of sweat (ten percent caused by heat, ninety by sheer terror), Rodney studied the sensor display. Sadly, the Wraith was a quick study. No fooling the guy twice, and bully for him. The Dart slowed and began a lazy circle through the clouds, sniffing for the absconded prey. At a guess, the heat radiating from the outer hull of the Jumper would be enough of a giveaway.

  Without warning the ship was hit by a mallet of pressure, too sudden even for Colonel Sheppard— or his ghost or whoever else was actually doing the flying— to react. The Jumper was tossed into a sideways roll that defied the inertial dampeners. Once, twice, and two-and-a-half, and then Sheppard seemed to have recovered enough to steady the ship.

  His stomach still glued to the ceiling, Rodney felt a horrible urge to be sick, and the pitching and yawing of the recovery effort didn’t help.

  “What the hell was that?” he croaked and wished he hadn’t. It was all he could do not to barf all over the instrument console. His boots weren’t so lucky.

  “At a guess, Daedalus. Nice shooting. They must have aimed right up the Wraith’s butt. Figuratively speaking.” The little Sheppard on the HUD bent forward as if to peer at Rodney’s feet. “Ugh. That’s gross.”

  “No, that’s a metabolic miracle,” Rodney said glumly, trying to ignore the foul taste in his mouth. “I can’t remember when I last ate.”

  “You never can. Short-term memory syndrome.”

  “Ha.”

  The com panel lit up merrily and Major Laval’s image popped up next to Little John on the HUD. “Jumper Four, this is Daedalus. Come in.”

  “This is McKay. By the grace of God. You damn near blew us to bits.”

  “Oops. Sorry ‘bout that,” said Laval, clearly not meaning it. “Next time I’ll wait till the Dart has fired at you.” His eyes narrowed. “You look a bit green ‘round the gills, McKay.”

  “Sudden changes in gravitational aspect can do that to a person. Not that you’d care,” growled Rodney.

  “Don’t worry. Happens to the best of us.” The man had the audacity to grin. “That was some nifty flying earlier, by the way. Can’t see why Colonel Sheppard keeps complaining about having to give you flying lessons. They obviously took.”

  “Obviously,” muttered Rodney and added, “Thanks.”

  Next to Laval’s image, Little John scowled. Yeah, well. Rodney wasn’t about to explain that he was using the services of a ghost pilot, and besides it served Sheppard right for complaining to all and sundry.

  “Listen up, McKay,” continued Laval. “I’m getting word that the hive-ship just dropped out of hyperspace. Currently the bad guys are hiding out on the other side of the planet, probably scratching their shaggy heads, because they can’t raise their Darts. So I’d suggest you get the hell out of there before they send in the cavalry to figure out what happened. We’ll stay in orbit above Atlantis and guard the front door.”

  Uh, no.

  “We need you to land. That’s why we recalled you,” Rodney said, knowing full well what the reaction would be.

  Yep.

  “Are you nuts? We’ll be sitting ducks down there if the Wraith attack!”

  “Believe it or not, that has occurred to us. Fact of the matter is, though, we need a bunch of spare parts from Daedalus to fix a minor technical problem.”

  “So? Tell me what you need, and we’ll beam it down.”

  “I very much doubt that, Major. We need your Asgard transporter.”

  This time it was Laval who went a bit green. Quite satisfying, actually. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Do I look like a standup comedian?” From the corner of his eye, Rodney saw the Sheppard image nodding enthusiastically. He glared at it, then returned his focus to Laval. “You’ll get it back.”

  “Oh sure. And it’ll probably make espresso, too, when we do. But I suspect that’ll be the only thing it does once you’re through with it. Read my lips, Dr. McKay. Out of the question. Apart from anything else, Colonel Caldwell would kill me.”

  “Colonel Caldwell isn’t here,” Rodney pointed out, forcing himself to sound reasonable. He really, really didn’t have the time for this. “Look, Major, I wouldn’t—”

  Laval held up a finger. “Hang on a moment.” A technician appeared at his shoulder and cast troubled glances in McKay’s direction while updating Laval on something or other. The Major turned back. “What the hell are you guys playing at down there? Atlantis just lit up the sensors like Christmas morning! We’ve got Wraith out here!”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” Rodney hollered. Why did people have to be so slow on the uptake all the time? “That computer virus is wrecking every single system down there, including the city’s shield.”

  “You call that a minor technical problem?”

  “Semantics. The only hope we have of getting rid of it is with the transporter. And yes, there will have to be certain modifications. Which, naturally, will be reversed
as soon as we’re done.”

  Laval closed his eyes, a man praying for fortitude. “Have you tried… oh, I don’t know, Norton? Or McAfee?”

  “Your talents are wasted on a spaceship, Major. You should head the Pentagon’s IT division.”

  Through a gap in the clouds, Atlantis became visible, flickering in and out of sight, its shield decaying from erratic to practically nonexistent. It seemed Zelenka had finally run out of detours to take through the mainframe. What was left of the mainframe, Rodney mentally corrected.

  “Look, Major,” he said. “If you’re not going to agree, you might as well go home now. No point in putting the Daedalus at risk around the planet. Without the transporter, Atlantis is history.”

  His sense of histrionics finely tuned as always, Rodney left the implications hanging. Implications such as the Wraith finding a densely populated new culling ground in a little-known arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.

  At last Laval nodded. “Fine. I’m betting I’ll regret it, but what the hell. You’d better be right about this, McKay.”

  “Trust me, I wish I weren’t.”

  “Makes two of us. I’ll see you down there, I suppose. Laval out.”

  Well, that went better than Rodney had hoped. Going by experience, he’d expected another ten minutes’ worth of argument, minimum. “Okay,” he said in the direction of the HUD. “You can take us in.”

  The Sheppard image didn’t move or reply.

  “Hey! Did you hear me?”

  “You’ll have to do it yourself.”

  “Oh, come on! How petty can you get? Just because I wouldn’t admit to Laval that I wasn’t flying the—”

  “Rodney!” Albeit emphatic, the voice sounded tired. On closer inspection, Sheppard looked tired. “I can’t, okay? I’m not feeling too good. It’s just a landing. All you have to do is try and walk away from it.”

  The manic activity on the EEG had ceased as suddenly as it had started, and now settled into a slow, shallow wave pattern livened up by the odd blip here and there. Elizabeth couldn’t say what was worse.