“Oh, obviously,” Sheppard agreed.
But McKay wasn’t listening, dashing back to another bank of lights. “This area could be power control systems, possibly a computer interface of some—”
“Why don’t you find out?” Weir suggested.
He stopped, as if the idea were novel, then nodded. “Right.”
She watched for a moment as he called down for Grodin and some of the other scientists, rattling off a list of equipment, only half of which made any sense to Weir’s non-technical mind. So amused was she by the flurry of activity that she didn’t hear another set of footsteps.
“Dr. Weir.” It was Sumner, marching into the control room like he owned it. “You need to come with me.”
And now he was giving her orders? “Colonel—”
But he was already halfway out the door, striding off into the shadows of the complex. Damn him. Weir caught Sheppard’s eye and saw her irritation mirrored in his face. Suddenly, right then, she realized she had an ally in Major John Sheppard. And that thought was more comforting than she liked to admit. With a curt nod to him she headed out after Sumner, leaving Sheppard to trail along behind them.
Sumner didn’t slow his pace, forcing Weir to almost run to catch up. As soon as she was within hearing distance, he started talking. He didn’t bother to turn around, he just started talking. “We’ve only managed to secure a fraction of the place,” he reported. “It’s huge.”
Better and better. “Then this may really be the lost city of Atlantis.” It was mind-blowing to even say those words. She was living a legend!
“Oh, I’d say that’s a good bet,” Sumner replied, and something in his tone of voice gave her pause. She was about to call him on it when Sumner led her through a set of ornate doors, beyond which stood a vast floor-to-ceiling window. And beyond that…
“My God.” Slowly she approached the glass. Outside lay a vast city of sweeping spires and arching walkways, a beautiful city of ethereal elegance, all covered by a thin skin of energy. She looked up and far above them she found the source of the mottled blue light that permeated the whole complex. It was sunlight, filtered through the shimmering surface of a vast ocean. “We’re underwater.”
“I’d say under several hundred feet of ocean,” Sumner replied clinically. He was assessing the tactical situation, she supposed, rather than the city’s unearthly beauty. “If we can’t dial out, this could be a problem.”
If we can’t dial out…
“Colonel, Dr. Weir!” McKay burst into the room.
“We’re underwater,” observed the ever laconic Major Sheppard.
“Yes, I was just coming to tell you. Fortunately there’s some sort of force shield holding the water back.” Sparing a glance out the window, McKay was momentarily derailed. “That is impressive, isn’t it?” And then he shook it off, “Dr. Beckett has found something you should see.”
McKay led them at a breakneck speed through the corridors of Atlantis, lights flicking on constantly as they passed. The whole city seemed to be waking up, to be welcoming them. Everywhere they turned there were wonders to be seen, secrets to be uncovered. It was almost too much to take in, and Weir found herself worrying that she might miss something vital; that in the rush to see it all they’d walk past some tiny piece of information or knowledge that—
“In here,” McKay said, stopping before a set of double doors and waving her and the Colonel ahead of him. With no of idea what to expect, Weir stepped inside and found herself staring at a beautiful woman in long, white robes.
The woman stood at the center of a low dais and it took a moment for her to grasp that she wasn’t real. She was a projection, a hologram, and she was talking. “…in the hope of spreading new life in a galaxy where there appeared to be none,” she said. “Soon, the new life grew and prospered…”
At her side, Weir sensed Sheppard looking around uncomfortably. “Isn’t anybody gonna say anything?” he whispered.
“It’s a hologram,” Weir whispered back, not taking her eyes from the face of the woman – the Ancient woman. This was the face of their ancestors, of a past so distant it had been forgotten even in antiquity.
“The recording loops,” Dr. Beckett explained, clearly proud of his discovery. “This is my second time through,”
As usual, Sumner refused to be impressed by the majesty of the moment. “What’ve we missed?”
“Not much, this is the good part.”
“Here, as before, we built a system of Stargates,” the hologram continued, “so that fledgling civilizations could travel between the stars, exchange knowledge and friendship.”
“Can you rewind it?” Sumner asked. “Start from the beginning.”
Oh, for the love of— “Just wait…” murmured Weir.
Suddenly, above their heads, the galaxy appeared, swirling above them in all its marvelous intricacy. “In time, a thousand worlds bore the fruit of life in this form,” the Ancient woman explained, and as she spoke tiny blue dots began to appear among the stars until the entire galaxy was alive with color – the planets on which the Ancients had seeded life in an almost biblical act of creation. It was truly breathtaking.
“Then, one day, our people set foot upon a dark world where a terrible enemy slept.”
On the far side of the galaxy Weir saw a single dot glowing a malevolent red. A whisper of icy air seemed to brush across her skin, stirring the hairs on the back of her neck, and she shivered.
“Never before had we encountered beings with powers that rivaled our own. In our overconfidence, we were unprepared and outnumbered.”
Another red dot appeared, then another. Blue was consumed by scarlet, like the slow creep of blood spilling across the galaxy. Weir found that she was actually holding her breath, and no one in the room made a sound. Not even Sumner. Their attention was rapt.
“A great battle was fought and lost,” the Ancient woman continued, her voice now heavy with sadness. “The enemy fed upon the defenseless human worlds like a great scourge until finally only Atlantis remained.”
And in the stars above them, only one dot of blue remained. A beacon of light in a field of red.
“This city’s great shield was powerful enough to withstand their terrible weapons, but here we were besieged for many years.”
Suddenly the woman raised her hand, and the walls and ceiling of the room simply disappeared. Weir gasped as she spun around and found herself standing in the center of a large courtyard. Sumner and Sheppard had their weapons raised, while McKay and Beckett simply stared up in shock as a vast, dark shadow loomed above them. A massive alien ship was moving over the city, dark and angular and bristling with armor. Weir was breathing hard now, staring up into the face of an enemy so fierce that it had defeated the builders of the Stargates. Suddenly, a blast of light obliterated the courtyard. Someone yelled, and—
They were back in the room.
“In an effort to save the last of our kind,” the hologram said, oblivious to her startled audience, “we submerged our great city beneath the ocean.”
Sheppard shifted nervously. When Weir glanced over at him, he met her gaze with a somber shake of the head. This didn’t bode well for their mission of peaceful exploration.
“The Atlantis Stargate was the one and only link back to Earth from this galaxy and those who remained used it to return to that world that was once home.” The woman paused, ineffably sad and yet possessing a poise that Weir found herself envying. “There, the last survivors of Atlantis lived out the remainder of their lives. This city was left to slumber, in the hope that our kind would one day return.”
And with that faint hope for the future, the hologram flickered into nothing and the room settled into a profound silence.
Typically, it was McKay who broke the moment. “So the story of Atlantis is true,” he said, faintly disbelieving. “A great city that sunk into the ocean…”
“It just didn’t happen on Earth,” Beckett finished.
McKay
was nodding, picking up the tag-team reasoning. “The Ancient Greeks must have heard it from one of the surviving Ancients.”
Sumner grunted. “I don’t like finding out they got their asses kicked.”
Succinct, and to the point, Weir had to admit. She didn’t like it either, not at all.
They all fell into silence again, disturbed only by Peter Grodin, who charged into the room and began whispering urgently to McKay. Weir tuned out their discussion, her mind full of other things. The story they’d just heard changed everything, it turned all expectations on their head. No longer a city of wonders and ancient knowledge beyond their understanding, Atlantis had become a ghost ship. The final refuge of an ancient civilization driven to extinction by an enemy so relentless that all their technology could not save them. An enemy who, for all Weir knew, was still out there, waiting in the shadows. She swallowed hard and was about to ask Sumner for his assessment when Beckett started to talk.
“It starts again in a minute,” he said, nodding toward the empty dais. “She scared the hell out of me the first time.”
Sure enough, after a moment there was a quiet hum and the Ancient woman reappeared.
“Stop!” McKay yelled suddenly. “Turn it off!”
Startled, Beckett jumped back from the dais and the hologram disappeared.
“Power levels throughout the city are dropping like a stone,” McKay blurted, dashing for the door.
“What does that mean?” snapped Sumner, getting in before Weir had a chance to speak. Damn him.
McKay managed to look triumphant, resigned and scared as hell all at once. “That if we don’t stop everything we’re doing, right now, we’re dead!”
Chapter Four
Don’t panic, don’t panic. You can fix this. You can fix this! The words rattled through Rodney McKay’s head as he raced up the stairs and back to the control room. A bird’s nest of wires and cables trailed across the floor, patching laptops and monitoring equipment into the Ancient technology. It was like strapping a steam train to the space shuttle, but it was the best they could do.
Grodin was ahead of him, his anxious face telling the whole story, and from behind McKay heard the thundering footsteps of Weir and her posse of jarheads.
“Please tell me this is not my fault.” And Beckett, of course, with his constant whining…
“No,” McKay snapped, staring at the screen in front of him and processing the data as fast as he could read. “From what we’ve been able to ascertain, the city is powered by three zero point modules. Two are entirely depleted, the third,” he paused, double-checking the data, “the third is reaching maximum entropy. When it does, it will die too and nothing can reverse that.” He liked stating the bald facts. The world looked better in black and white; ambiguity made it hard to think.
“Just give me the bottom line,” Sumner barked.
McKay cast a swift glance at Weir, who was tight-lipped and silent. Typical, a power struggle at the top was just what they needed when faced with imminent drowning. Swallowing a comment, he stalked over to the display screen and stabbed a finger at the relevant section. He’d long ago learned that, when dealing with the military, it was easier to show than tell. “The force field holding back the ocean has collapsed to the minimum sustainable level,” he said shortly, indicating the red section of the city map. “You can see here…and here…where the shield has already failed and the city has flooded.”
“Flooded?” echoed Weir, as if it was a surprise. What else did she think was going to happen in a sunken city?
“As in sea water,” he snapped. “Could have happened years ago.” Or last week. He glanced around the huge chamber in which they stood, the shimmering light from above suddenly claustrophobic. He struggled for a quick breath and pushed the thought out of his head. Focus, focus. “This section of the city is likely the most protected because of the Stargate, but—”
“If it fails completely?” John Sheppard was glancing around as if he expected to see the water already rising. He probably wouldn’t have long to wait.
“That’s a matter of when, not if…”
The Major accepted the news with apparent calm. At least, with more calm than McKay felt at the prospect of being drowned beneath five hundred feet of alien ocean.
Weir, however, seemed to take him seriously. “Colonel, you have to order your security teams to stop searching the city immediately. Everywhere we set foot, the lights and ventilation come on, and that draws more power.”
Sumner keyed his radio. “All security teams fall back to the gate room.”
It would be about as effective as sticking your finger in the dam when a tidal wave was approaching. “That’s not going to be good enough.”
“How much time do we have?” asked Weir.
“It’s hard to say. Hours. Maybe days if we can minimize power expenditure.”
Beckett piped up again. “What about our own power generators?”
“We’re working on that.” Though the steam train metaphor was applicable again. These people really had no idea what they were dealing with here! “Even with our most advanced naquadah-powered generators, the equations are coming up far short of—”
“Then we need to find more ZPMs,” Weir interrupted, stating – in McKay’s not-so-humble opinion – the blindingly obvious.
“How do we do that if we can’t search the city?” Sumner pointed out.
It didn’t matter anyway. McKay waved at the map. “If there were more here we’d be able to detect them.” And didn’t I already say there were only three ZPMs in the city?
“Can we use the Stargate?”
Oh for crying out— “No way near enough power to open a wormhole back to Earth!”
“Somewhere in this galaxy then?” Surprisingly, the suggestion was Sheppard’s.
“That’s relatively easy,” McKay admitted. He cast half a glance at the Major, wondering if he needed to reassess the jarhead label. “The power requirement to travel within a galaxy is a fraction of what is required to gate between two separate galaxies.”
Sheppard gave a lopsided smile. “Can gate anywhere in Pegasus, can’t gate back to Earth.”
“Yes, I said yes,” McKay muttered. “Fortunately some Ancient technology uses good old-fashioned push buttons, and we’ve been able to access the Stargate control systems and a library of gate addresses in the database.”
“That’s not all,” Grodin chimed in. “Look at this!” Before McKay could stop him, Grodin hit the button on the console next to him. A static fizz drew everyone’s attention to the shimmering force shield that now covered the Stargate. Grodin smiled. “Just like the Iris on the Earth gate.”
Oh, give me strength… “Using power, using power, using power!”
Grodin cast him a dark look and shut off the shield.
“At least we won’t have to deal with any uninvited guests,” Weir pointed out. McKay might have been wrong but he thought she was giving him a sympathetic look. But then she turned her attention to Sumner. “Colonel, assemble a team. We need to find safe harbor or, better still, another power source.”
With a nod, Sumner strode from the room. A man on a mission. “Lieutenant Ford,” he barked into his radio, “gather security teams one and two and gear up.”
But McKay didn’t miss the dismissive look the Colonel flung at Sheppard as he left, or the way the Major hung back and didn’t follow. Weir too had noticed the exchange, and after a moment came to stand at Sheppard’s side. “I’d like you to go along, Major,” she said.
He looked awkward. “I wasn’t invited.”
“I give the orders here.”
And hallelujah for that.
Sheppard paused, just for a moment, and that almost-smile was back. “Yes, ma’am.”
Then he was gone, and Weir’s attention returned to McKay. “All right,” she said. “Pick an address and start dialing.”
Just like pulling a lucky number from a hat. Trying not to over-think the incalculable and p
otentially devastating consequences of this random choice, McKay briefly consulted with Grodin. Pick one, look at the rest was his sound advice. So he did. Despite the situation, it was actually rather exciting.
McKay hit the first symbol. Unlike the Earth Stargate, this one didn’t spin. But the lit symbol itself chased around the rim of the gate and locked at the top. Fascinating.
“Chevron one, encoded,” McKay said. Because, well, it just sounded right.
“Rodney…” Apparently Weir didn’t agree.
“Fine,” he snapped, and quickly entered the rest of the sequence. The symbols spun so fast that, by the time he’d hit the last one on the Ancient DHD, it had locked on the gate and then—
With a whoosh, the Stargate was open to a new and utterly uncharted world.
Sheppard shifted his pack into a more comfortable position as he trailed Sumner and Ford into the gate room. The soft ocean light had been augmented by the iridescent glow of the Stargate, casting everything in shifting blue shadows. The two security teams were already there, just waiting for the order to move out, and the shimmer of the wormhole gave their faces an odd kind of pallor.
Colonel Sumner hadn’t spoken a word to Sheppard since Weir had ordered him to join the mission, but the dark looks he’d shot in the Major’s direction were eloquent enough; the Colonel was gonna make his life hell and not only because of the Afghanistan thing. Sheppard was no fool, and he could see the tension between Weir and Sumner. What bothered him – what sat like cold lead in his belly – was the fact that he’d become the pawn in their unspoken power struggle.
Just great.
On the plus side, Weir seemed to trust him. So at least he had one friend in the Pegasus galaxy…
He came to a stop in front of the gate, glanced up at the control room and noticed Weir watching them all with an unreadable expression on her narrow face. Was she frightened? She slightly lifted a hand in greeting. Sheppard acknowledged it with a nod and then turned toward the man who stood in front of the Stargate.
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