Ronon had his guard against the wall now, large body pressed tight against it with one hand as the other continued to bang his head against the stone wall in a steady rhythm.
“Ronon! Look out!” Cumby cried.
Something bit Ronon in the neck. He felt the sharp pain, the sudden near-convulsive shudders rushing through him. The next thing he knew he was on the floor, writhing uncontrollably and staring up at Saul, who held a small electronic device in his hand. It was aimed at Cumby, and he held a second trained on Teyla. Footsteps sounded in the passage beyond the open door.
“That will be enough of that,” Saul said. “If you should ever be so stupid as to try and escape again, I’ll throw you all into the next combat together. Without weapons.”
As Ronon dragged himself to his feet, guards poured into the room, weapons raised. The team stood down, backing together against the far wall. Rodney stepped behind Ronon quickly and tucked the computer under his jacket while he was out of sight.
“Take them all to the arena,” Saul said. “Put them in the holding cells for the entertainment. That will keep them out of trouble until we’re ready for them.” He dusted off his hands and smiled. “Judging by your performance here, you won’t offer much entertainment value for the audience — but you might serve as comic relief.”
“You’re crazy. You know that, right?” Rodney stepped forward quickly and the others followed. He kept the computer clutched under his arm and did his best to be inconspicuous. Cumby pressed in beside him, as if he was in a hurry to turn himself over to the guards.
Teyla stepped out after them, and Ronon brought up the rear. He moved purposefully and slowly, still angry from the shock he’d taken, and ready for another round with any guard foolish enough to press their luck.
Saul trailed after the group, following at a safe pace as the guards led them toward the arena.
Chapter Twenty
The team was led down several passageways. Each time they turned, the floor slanted down a little more. There were four guards, two in front and two bringing up the rear. Those in back held more of the Taser-style weapons.
Ronon glared at them the entire trip. It was obvious he wanted to make a fight of it, but Teyla kept a hand on his arm.
“We have to get Rodney to an access panel,” she said. “We can’t afford a fight here that might damage the computer, or get us separated. The time will come.”
Ronon glanced at the guards one last time. “You can count on that.”
They rounded a last corner and stepped into a larger open area. The room was round with smooth metal walls. A number of doorways were spaced out around that wall, and on the far side of the chamber a frame rose that appeared to be a single huge gate. The guards turned right and opened the third doorway.
“Inside,” the first guard said, nodding at the entrance.
Cumby stepped inside first, followed by Ronon, who looked ready to make an issue of it. Teyla hurried Ronon through, forcing Cumby in further, and Rodney brought up the rear.
“You know this is crazy, right?” Rodney told the guard, stepping back toward the door. “You know you — ”
The door closed in his face with a snap. He stood, looking at it with his chin tucked and his head cocked to the side.
“Don’t think they’re interested,” Ronon said.
Rodney shook his head and turned to the chamber, skimming his fingers along the wall. “We have to find an access panel.”
“Doesn’t seem like there’d be one in a holding cell,” Cumby said. “Sort of defeats the purpose if you give prisoners access to the computers.”
“And how many prisoners do you think could take advantage of that access?” No one answered, and Rodney turned back to the wall.
“I don’t think this was always a prison,” Cumby said. “The rooms are pretty large and the furnishings are built in. It looks more like some sort of converted guest accommodation. If that’s true, then there is probably an access panel here — maybe there used to be a console.”
The walls weren’t covered with tapestries, as they had been in their quarters, but they were decorated. There were posters in frames, just like in the upper city hallways, and there was a sort of brightly patterned wallpaper covering the rest. Rodney studied it, and Cumby moved to another wall, concentrating.
“It’s not the same,” he said. “None of this has been repeated anywhere that we’ve been.”
“It’s here,” Rodney said. “We have to find the pattern.”
“If you say so,” Cumby replied. He sounded anything but convinced, but he kept looking.
Meanwhile, Ronon turned in a circle and studied the posters. One showed the Woard, decimating an opponent. Another showed something closer to a dragon or a dinosaur than anything else. One was a stylized depiction of dancing girls. The next seemed to be two humans fighting, until you looked closer. A tall man with red hair, naked to the waist grappled with a blond barbarian. The difference was, the red haired warrior had a lizard tail, tipped by a barb dripping what looked like green venom.
Ronon stared at it, and then he turned again. Without a word he walked to the poster of the dancing girls, gripped the frame and lifted. It slid up and off the wall easily. Behind it was an access panel.
“Hey Rodney,” he said.
“Not now.” Rodney waved a hand in irritation. “We have to find an access to the computer.”
“Rodney!”
Rodney turned, his irritation boiling to the surface. He pointed at Ronon, caught sight of the access panel, and stopped with his mouth hanging open.
“Like this one?” Ronon said.
Rodney started to say something, then tucked his chin and strode across the room. Ronon set the poster down on the bench, leaning against the wall.
“You’ll have to hurry,” Teyla said. “If they come back while that panel is open…”
“Yes, yes,” Rodney muttered, recovering his composure, “I know. Here you go, Rodney, here’s the access panel Rodney, can’t you log in and reprogram the planet or something Rodney? Make sure you don’t take too long though…”
Cumby sighed. “That’s not helping.”
Ronon glanced up at the ceiling, then stepped between Rodney and the door.
“What are you doing?” Cumby asked.
“If they have security cameras in this room,” Ronon said, “the logical place to aim them is at that panel. If I stand here, it might help buy some time.”
Cumby glanced up and squinted, trying to see if he could make out a camera. The walls appeared solid, but the pattern was very intricate. He nodded and stepped closer to Ronon. The two stood as nonchalantly as possible, creating a wall of flesh between Rodney and any hidden surveillance.
“The problem isn’t getting in,” Rodney said, working quickly at the fasteners on the panel. “The problem is we still don’t know what message to send to Atlantis — assuming anyone there is bright enough and quick enough to decipher it.”
“Let’s think about what Saul told us,” Cumby said. “The gate is rigged so that it can only open once to any particular set of coordinates. Obviously we aren’t going to get it to open back to Atlantis.”
“Obviously,” Rodney grunted, pulling the panel off the wall and quickly working his computer cables into place. He snapped the connection together tightly and watched as several lights shifted through a sequential pattern and then pulsed gently. “I’m in.”
“If we can’t go back to Atlantis,” Teyla said thoughtfully, “we have to go somewhere else. But we need to know where.”
“Can you check the database for a usable gate?” Cumby suggested. “Can you tell what coordinates have already been locked by their security protocol?”
“Just a minute,” Rodney said. He flipped through several pages of data, entered a code, and watched the screen. “Okay, I’m into the DHD control system.” He typed another command and watched the screen.
“There are two tables of data,” he said after a few moments. He s
canned the data on the screen.
Cumby leaned in over his shoulder, then reached out and pointed. “Those are the coordinates for Athos, and that’s the Genii home world. That looks like Hoff, and that one — ”
“Wait.” Rodney eyed him narrowly. “You memorized all the gate addresses?”
“Eidetic memory,” Cumby said with a shrug, then pointed again. “Oh, and that’s Atlantis.”
Rodney batted his hand away. “I know the coordinates to Atlantis,” he said. “Give me some room here.”
He started going through the data in the other table. “Here’s a planet with an active gate,” he said. “Cumby, do you recognize it?”
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “We’ve never been there.”
“Well, it’s flagged with a symbol I don’t recognize but no one has traveled through it. We can dial it, but there’s no way to know what’s there. It might sustain life, it might be a dead planet, or a Wraith stronghold.”
“So…all we have to do is get through to Atlantis and tell them where we’re going?” Cumby said. “Maybe they can send a team to meet us there.”
Rodney turned on him and rolled his eyes. “Oh, sure, why not? Maybe we could all have a picnic too! All we have to do is get a message through to Atlantis giving them the coordinates to a planet none of us knows a thing about — a planet that might not even have a breathable atmosphere! Then we have to escape from this cell, find Sheppard, and make our way back to the gate without the entire population of a city stopping us. Oh, and let’s not forget the shield they’ve put up over the upper city. So, really, no problem at all.”
“You finished?” Ronon said.
Rodney started to speak again, rolled his head in a sort of confused circle, and nodded. “I think so.”
“Then send the message. We’ve only got one chance.”
“Right.” Rodney bent back over the data. He opened the program he’d used to find the carrier frequency of the phase shift and locked onto it. Using the microphone on his computer, he modulated the carrier signal very slightly. The spikes of data were so small they were barely visible on the original signal, but they were there.
“This is Dr. Rodney McKay,” he said. “We are trapped in the city of Admah. You cannot reopen the gate to this address, and we can’t open it to Atlantis. We’re attempting to gate out to the following address and could really use some back up.”
He continued the message, speaking slowly and carefully. When he was finished, he played it back, and then nodded.
“I have it recorded,” he said. “I’m going to program it to repeat on a loop any time someone in Atlantis tries to dial the Admah gate. There’s no way to know if they’ll see it, but if they are paying attention and analyzing the signal…”
“Like you would be?” Teyla smiled.
“Exactly. If they’re on the ball.”
“We won’t know if they’ve picked it up,” Cumby said. “All we can do is hope for the best.”
Rodney programmed his signal into the system and then closed the access panel. He lifted the poster back into place and then they all sat down to wait.
“We have to find a way to tell Sheppard what we’ve done,” Teyla said. “He’s on the outside — maybe he can find a way to get us out in time.”
“I gave them a window,” Rodney said. “Allowing time for them to get the message, decipher it, and open a gate to that world, we have to be out of here in about eight hours, ten at the most.”
“They’ll wait for us,” Teyla said, with absolute certainty. “They’ll be there.”
Rodney shrugged. “It’s a moot point,” he said. “Not much more than ten hours, and we’ll all be cooked. Literally.”
“The ‘entertainment’ starts soon,” Ronon said. “If we don’t get out before then, someone will have a fight on their hands.”
They all caught his grin.
“It probably won’t be you,” Rodney said. “Sheppard and I are the only ones with the gene, as he conveniently told them so. I’m sure they’ll come for me.”
“Well,” Ronon said, “at least the weapons will work.”
They fell silent again at that. Rodney turned away, his hands on the computer in his lap, staring at the wall. He felt very pale.
Chapter Twenty-one
Dr. Zelenka leaned over the console, his hands on the desk, gripping it until his knuckles turned white. With a deep breath he punched in the coordinates for Admah and stared at the readout. Everything seemed fine. The circuits were aligned and calibrated — none of the diagnostics showed any anomaly — but he knew in the pit of his stomach it wasn’t going to connect.
There was a hesitation in the system, as if it might actually break through whatever confounded it this time. Then it shifted. The coordinates changed and suddenly they were connected to a different gate on a different planet. There were no symbols in common between the address he’d dialed and the one that connected.
“Damn!” he growled. “I thought I had it that time.”
Commander Woolsey, who’d been watching from a few feet away, pushed in closer. “Did it disconnect? Again?”
“Not this time,” Radeck sighed. “This time, it shifted to another address completely. I have no idea what world these coordinates lead to, but it has an operational gate.”
“Close it down,” Woolsey said. “Could it be the DHD? Is it possible that the error is on our end?”
“I’ve dialed three separate known addresses,” Zelenka replied. “All of them connected without errors. Whatever it is that’s blocking us, it’s only associated with the Admah gate.”
“There’s nothing else you can try?”
“Let me see.” Zelenka turned back to the console. His fingers worked furiously at the keys and he squinted at the console readout. “I keep thinking that maybe with a change in the modulation of the signal I might overcome whatever it is that’s preventing the gate from locking on and opening. It’s as if the dialer connects, and then something shifts the signal just enough to prevent a lock.”
He pushed the symbols for the Admah gate carefully and waited. The wormhole shimmered and began to form. “I’ve got it!” he cried. “I’ve…”
The shimmer faded. Just that quickly, it disconnected again. “For the love of all that’s holy!” Zelenka exclaimed. He ran his hands back through his hair and stared at the console. Halfway back, he gripped tightly in frustration and pulled the hair taut.
“They’re using some sort of phasing signal. When someone dials the coordinates for their gate, it’s detected and a phase shift occurs. I don’t know how but it redirects the signal, reconfigures the address that’s been dialed. The coordinates to the gate change every time somebody tries to access it.”
“But,” Woolsey said, confused, “why would they do that? And why did it connect the first time and allow our team to pass through?” His brow was deeply creased, and he looked for all the world like he’d just bitten into a lemon. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Zelenka shrugged. “Maybe they don’t want anyone coming through the gate? Perhaps there is a problem on their end and they don’t want to endanger anyone else? I suppose Rodney is capable of creating such a shift…”
“We have to contact them. ” Woolsey began to pace, biting into his lip as he went. “Is the Daedelus in range, or anyone we could relay a signal through?”
“I have tried. No one is close enough”
“So, our team is stuck there and we can’t even contact them? The gate is broken, and as far as we know they can’t open it from their side either. Not to mention that the moon they’re on is on a collision course with a sun. Wonderful.”
“Perhaps we can connect with the phase modulator and disable it?” Radek offered with raised eyebrows. “It’s theoretically possible, but I’d have to be very accurate. Trying to reverse the signal might send it into a loop that would prevent the gate from ever working again.
Besides, even if we could get a signal through, we’d
have to hack into the system they’re using and shut it down before the phase signal closed the gate again.”
Woolsey nodded and tapped one finger on his chin. “You’re right. There’s too much risk.”
Radek groaned. “Well, we have to do something. We can’t just leave them there.”
“Oh, we’re not. Believe me.” Woolsey sighed and nodded, more to himself than anyone else. “I’ll be in my office. If we can’t connect to Admah through the gate, we’ll have to pay them a little visit in person. I’m going to see if I can contact the Daedelus.”
“I’m going to stay here and work on this signal phasing a bit more.” Zelenka smiled then, but it was a hollow gesture. “There’s something here, something I’ve never seen before, and it’s bothering me. If I can isolate it, maybe I can figure a way through the shift.”
“Keep me posted.” Woolsey said. He turned and strode off down the hall.
Zelenka watched him go, his mind already shifting back to the problem at hand, running over data he’d been over enough times to give himself a headache, and looking for what he’d missed. He knew he’d missed something, because there was always an answer. His life was science, and next to Rodney he knew more about Ancient technology than any man alive. Somewhere in the signals he’d already recorded, he’d find what he needed. It was just a matter of separating it from what he didn’t. His fingers worked at the keys as he thought out loud.
“There are only so many gates to be dialed. Eliminate the ones that have already been contacted, and the number drops significantly. Since almost nothing in the universe is truly random, there is a pattern, and if that pattern can be spotted, even a seemingly random frequency modulation can be predicted.”
He pushed off from the table, rolling the chair along its periphery until he reached the second table and an even better equipped console.
“All right, then. If I dial up the gate one hundred times and log the results, then I should be able to write a program that will predict exactly where the signal phasing will connect with a gate, based on those results. Unless of course, against all the odds, the signal is random. Then…”
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