by Graham, Jo
John nodded seriously. He ought to have expected something like this. “You know that’s not going to do it, don’t you? The Ancient technology is so advanced, so far ahead of both of us, that we can’t reproduce a quarter of what we see. Hell, we can’t reproduce the technology of a bunch of people in the Milky Way who were nowhere near as advanced as the Ancients! The first time we built a fighter based on reverse engineering the thing went haywire and nearly killed our test pilots. And that was based on a Goa’uld Death Glider, not an Ancient warship. This stuff isn’t easy.”
“We know.” Radim nodded. “But we must start somewhere. Do you think my people are any less resourceful than yours at trying to jump centuries of technology in a few years? It’s a leap we must all take if we’re going to defeat the Wraith.” He picked up his mug and took a long swallow of tea.
“What is your proposition?” Teyla asked. “We are certainly willing to consider it.”
“As I said, I need a pilot. I need a pilot with the ATA gene who has flown an Ancient warship. I need you to go to the planet where the wreck is, which my engineers assure me they have already substantially repaired, get the ship in the air, and bring it back here. That’s all.”
“That’s pretty straightforward,” John admitted. “If the thing will fly. I’ve flown an Ancient warship before, so…” He shrugged. “But I don’t think it’s going to do you guys much good, especially without pilots of your own with the ATA gene.”
“We have been working on that,” Radim said pleasantly. “As you know, the ATA gene is uncommon in this galaxy, but not unheard of. We will find our own pilots to train once we have the ship. But that’s not really your concern, Colonel. Your part of the bargain is just to bring it back here. When you bring us the warship, we’ll task our men with finding Dr. McKay.”
“It’s on a planet full of Wraith or something, isn’t it?” Carson asked.
Radim laughed. “No. It’s on an uninhabited world, one that’s too dry and unappealing to support human civilization anymore. Unfortunately, the crash site is a considerable distance from the Stargate, but with your ships that shouldn’t be much of an obstacle. A few minutes’ flight. While the Wraith doubtless know of the planet’s existence, since there are no humans there and the climate is inhospitable, there is no reason for them to be there or pay the planet any special attention.” He shrugged. “There are hundreds of worlds like it, essentially barren balls of rock with marginal atmosphere, of no use to anyone. Which is probably why the wreck has survived. If it had been on an inhabited world, it would have been scavenged long ago.”
“But if the Wraith show up,” Carson began.
“We’ve got a cloaked jumper,” John said. “And if we get there and the Wraith are all over the wreck the deal is off. We’ll come straight back.”
“If the deal is off, the deal is off.” Radim shrugged. “Obviously if you can’t get to the ship or get it in the air, we’ll have to come up with something else for you to trade for our intelligence networks.”
“Ok.” John nodded. “That’s fair. We’ll get on it. Give me the gate address.”
“Of course,” Radim said.
Teyla glanced at him sideways. “We will need to return to Atlantis first,” she said. “We do not have a scientist with us who is experienced with Ancient technology. We will return with Dr. Zelenka and…”
“I don’t think we need Zelenka,” John said.
“If the ship’s systems are in need of repairs,” Teyla began.
That was always Rodney’s job, putting things back together with duct tape and spit, complaining constantly that it would never work, it would never fly.
“We don’t need Zelenka,” John said.
Teyla’s eyes narrowed. “But if we need to make repairs…”
“I’m sure our Chief Scientist will be happy to assist you,” Radim said. “My sister, Dahlia Radim, will be accompanying you. She has been heading up our Ancient Technology Recovery program, and will be able to do whatever you need.”
“Great,” John said. “Then we’ll get going. The sooner the better.” He stood up. “Let’s get a move on, people.” Every moment they wasted talking Rodney was in Wraith hands.
They filed out of the office and through the halls, upstairs to the barn where the hatch led to the upper world. Radim left them at the bottom of the stairs. “Dahlia will be with you in a few moments,” he said.
John looked suspiciously after him.
Carson shrugged. “If it was a double cross there would be easier ways to do it. I think it’s on the up and up. So you’ll be flying the Ancient warship home and I’ll be flying the jumper?”
“Sounds good to me,” John said. He twitched as a bird outside burst into song. Hours. This whole diplomatic thing was taking hours. And it would take hours again to get this ship and get back, but that was probably the fastest way to get Radim on the case. At least what the Genii wanted was straightforward.
“I think we should go get Radek,” Teyla said quietly.
“That’s going to take a really long time,” John said. “Look, I’ll call in and tell Woolsey what’s up, but if we go back to Atlantis we’ll have meetings and debriefings and it will be half a day before we get on the road again. And either this thing will fly or it won’t. If it won’t, the deal’s off. And if it will, then we just do it. Radim isn’t going to send his sister to go get this thing if he didn’t think it would work.”
“That’s true enough,” Carson said. “I had her as a patient, if you remember. Lovely girl. He was worried sick about her. I’d say if Dahlia Radim is along he expects it to go smoothly.”
Teyla didn’t look convinced. “As you say, Colonel.”
Chapter Six: Live Wires
“Look, here they go again,” Lorne said in frustration as the security readout flickered. “We’re having these long periods where we’re not getting any data from the external sensors, and then when we do — ”
“Yes, I see,” Radek said, pointing out the same faint blur that Lorne had seen at the edge of the city. As long as he was hanging out in the control room waiting for Woolsey to clear him to take his team out, Lorne thought at least he might be able to pin down what was wrong with the sensors. It would be nice to be able to cross one problem off their list.
“If it’s not some kind of software error — ”
“It should not be,” Radek said. “We have not made any modifications to the programming of the sensors since before we left Earth. It is possible that the external sensors themselves could be accumulating ice.”
“Great,” Lorne said. If he was remembering right, the external sensor arrays weren’t anywhere that would make removing ice from them easy. “We can go out in a jumper and see if we see any ice. At least that would be a simple problem. What about these weird readings, though?”
“That is actually of more concern to me,” Radek said, the green light from the display reflecting off his glasses as he leaned closer and frowned. “Our preliminary scans of the planet found no signs of habitation, or of concentrations of large animal life in the oceans surrounding our landing site.”
“We didn’t find out about the whales for a while, though, either.”
“Well, we were not looking,” Radek said.
“We scanned this planet pretty fast,” Lorne pointed out. “And I know Teyla always says that planets in Pegasus that aren’t inhabited aren’t inhabited for a reason.”
“In this case, the reason is that there was no Stargate here,” Radek said without looking up. “The only people with any way of reaching this planet would have been the Travelers, and there are few natural resources on this world that would be of interest to them.”
“Or to us, it seems like.”
Radek spread his hands. “We did not have a lot of choice. We had to set down somewhere.” His hands were moving swiftly over the keyboard. “As much as our power had been depleted by malfunctions at that point, we were lucky to find a habitable planet and make a safe land
ing. And as for taking off again — ”
“I’m not saying we have to,” Lorne said.
“No, but you are not the only person to suggest it.” Radek shook his head. “This was the best planet we could reach with the power we had at the time. And now that we have landed and would have to factor in the power required to take off again…”
“We’re stuck here.”
“Unless you have brought a spare ZPM in your luggage.”
“Afraid not.”
“All right, I have reduced the sensors’ range, which should provide a stronger signal in our immediate area.” He zoomed in on one of the piers. “You see here? That may be ice.”
“Sea ice?” Lorne said, frowning. “It’s not that cold.”
“Not nearly cold enough for the sea water around us to freeze, no,” Radek said. “I would like to get some samples of the ice. Assuming it is ice.”
“Always assuming,” Lorne said. “What are we looking for, here?”
“Saltwater ice has a different concentration of salt than freshwater ice,” Radek said, his hands sketching what might be chunks of ice in the air. “If this is freshwater ice, we are probably looking at pieces of ice that have calved off an ice shelf. Oceanography is not exactly my field, but…”
“But you’re worried about icebergs.” Lorne shrugged in answer to Radek’s quick sideways glance. “It’s not my field either, but I do know something about problems that ships can run into.”
“I will ask Dr. Bryce to take a look,” Radek said. He adjusted the sensors again, frowning, the display zooming in on another part of the city, high on one of the towers. “That cannot be ice.”
“Probably not,” Lorne said. “Switch over to life sign readings, will you?”
Radek raised his eyebrows. “I would not think… no, there is nothing. Unless…” He tapped at the keyboard again. “We keep the sensors programmed to ignore life sign readings below a certain size. That was after we found that alarms were going off every time a bird landed on the city.”
“What bird’s going to be out in this weather?”
“The weather is not so bad as that,” Radek said, sounding a bit frustrated. “We are not talking penguins, here. And there should be few available food sources to attract birds to the city, although it could be that because of the storm…”
He trailed off as the blur suddenly sharpened and resolved itself into what looked like dozens of small, moving blobs of light.
“That’s a lot of birds,” Lorne pointed out.
“It could be just the local equivalent of a flock of seagulls,” Radek said hopefully. “Nothing to worry about, just a perfectly natural phenomenon with no effect on the city’s systems whatsoever. That is possible, yes?”
“Sure,” Lorne said. They both watched the small moving forms cross and recross the display.
After a moment, Lorne sighed. “I’ll get together a team to check it out.”
Radek looked weary. “That is probably best.”
Before he could head out to do that, alarms sounded, making Salawi’s eyes widen as she looked down at her board. “Unscheduled offworld activation,” Lorne prompted.
“Unscheduled offworld activation,” she repeated over the communications system, her voice growing more confident as she spoke. “We’re receiving Colonel Sheppard’s IDC and a radio transmission.”
“Put him on,” Lorne said.
“This is Sheppard,” Sheppard said.
“Good to hear from you, sir,” Lorne said. “Mr. Woolsey just went down to lunch. Let me get him up here for you.”
“That’s all right,” Sheppard said. “Just tell him that Radim may have some information for us, but he wants us to do a favor for him and go check out a wrecked Ancient spaceship that he thinks he can salvage. We’re going to take the jumper and go take a look. We’ll report in after we’ve checked it out.”
“Yes, sir,” Lorne said. He wondered what about this plan Sheppard expected Woolsey to object to. “Will you need a science team?”
“We’re just going to take a look,” Sheppard said. “Radim’s sister has been investigating the wreck, and we think with her help we may be able to get the thing working.” Zelenka’s eyebrows rose, and he looked like he was about to say something, and then like it had occurred to him that doing so would mean volunteering to go wander around wreckage offworld. He frowned and bent over his console again instead. “We’re waiting on her right now.”
“Okay, sir,” Lorne said. “I’ll let Mr. Woolsey know.”
Zelenka met Lorne’s eyes again as the transmission cut off. “I hope they know what they are doing.”
Lorne shrugged. There wasn’t much he could say, and certainly not in front of Salawi, who was smart enough to pick up on any hint he might drop that he thought Colonel Sheppard might not have entirely thought this through. “I’m sure they do,” he said.
* * *
Dahlia Radim didn’t keep them waiting long. She was a few years younger than Teyla, in her mid thirties, blond hair pulled back in a long pony tail, wearing a serviceable jumpsuit and carrying a large pack. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” she said, pulling herself up the last rungs of the ladder into the barn.
“No trouble, love,” Carson said, bending to help her the last little way. “We’ve just called in by radio and let them know where we’re going.” He gave her a warm smile.
Teyla approved, both of the smile, and of letting Radim know that Atlantis would know exactly what agreement they’d made and where they were going. Carson was much better at the iron hand in a velvet glove than John was. He had an iron hand and a velvet glove, but there was no meeting between the two.
“Are we ready?” John asked by way of greeting.
“I’m ready,” Dahlia said, letting Carson lift her pack for her so that she could slip her arms through the straps.
“That’s pretty heavy,” Carson said.
“It’s my equipment,” Dahlia said. “I led the expedition that did the repair work on the Ancient warship. Of course without the ATA gene we couldn’t initialize systems, but I think we have both sublight and hyperdrive working, though we have no shields or weapons, and only limited power outside of certain sections. There are hull breaches we haven’t been able to repair, though it appears that the ship has airtight bulkheads that have sealed off those areas.”
John frowned. “Are you sure this thing is spaceworthy? If there are decompressed sections and any of those bulkheads are damaged, it’s going to be a serious problem.”
“No,” Dahlia said frankly. “I’m not sure. But I can’t be sure without initializing systems. We’ve been all over the ship three times, and it’s as tight as I can make it without being able to turn it on and get readings.” She glanced from John to Carson. “That’s where you gentlemen come in. We’ve gone as far as we can go without a pilot.”
“We’ll give it the old college try,” Carson said.
Dahlia gave him a brilliant smile. “I’m sure you will, Doctor.” She looked back at John. “If the ship proves unspaceworthy, we’ll return and tell Chief Radim that it needs more work. The ship is a four day journey overland from the Stargate, so as you can imagine it’s been an effort to get crews out to work on it, especially given the environment.”
Teyla felt her brows rise. “Is the planet hostile, then?”
“A planetary day is forty of your hours long,” she said. “And the atmosphere is thin. It’s not impossible, but it’s thinner than most human inhabited worlds. Given the length of day and the atmosphere, there are extremes of daytime and night time temperature, from very hot to very cold in a matter of hours, and day and night are each twenty hours long. We found it a challenging work environment.”
“We’re not planning on staying there long,” John said. “With the jumper we can reach the ship from the Stargate in a few minutes, and then it shouldn’t take too long to either get the systems running or to know we can’t. Either way, it’s a short trip.” He opened the
barn door. “Let’s get going.”
Teyla hung back to go last, Dahlia and Carson chatting amiably ahead of her. It was not like John to be so quick to dismiss any warning, she thought. He was worried about Rodney, imagining horrible things happening every moment that Rodney remained in captivity. She supposed he had been the same when she was in Michael’s hands. She had heard as much from Sam and others. This was no different. John’s team was his family. That had never been more obvious than on Earth, when he thought the team was disbanded forever. It had begun to worry her considerably, what would become of him if Atlantis did not return to the Pegasus Galaxy. He had no other home.
Teyla settled into the copilot’s seat as she usually did, with Carson behind John and Dahlia in the seat behind hers that was usually Ronon’s.
“Ok,” John said, moving the indicators forward, “Punch the gate.”
Teyla pressed the coordinates they had been given, Dahlia looking forward over her shoulder. “This ship is extraordinary,” she said. “I only wish we had one like it.”
“Yeah, I bet you do,” John said. He didn’t lift his eyes from his instruments. He knew that Teyla would take that as she did. Still, Dahlia Radim was one person, and even if her backpack held weapons or a bomb Teyla was quite sure she could take her out by herself, discounting Carson and John entirely, if Dahlia tried to take control of the jumper. The only way she could do that would be by threat, as she couldn’t fly it herself.
“I didn’t mean that…” Dahlia began.
“Of course not,” Carson said, but Teyla heard the note of doubt in his voice.
“You can search me if you want,” Dahlia said, the color rising in her face.
John glanced sideways at Teyla.
She shook her head very slightly. “I see no need for that,” she said. “After all, we must learn to trust one another.” Dahlia could not see her face, but John could. He could read perfectly clearly what was there. I will be watching her, never fear. And I can handle her if I must.
“Right then,” John said, replying to her expression as well as her words. “Let’s do it.” He shoved the indicators forward, and the puddle jumper soared through the gate.
