Zelenka shook his head. “Not enough data. We have the readings from the MALP, but I don’t know what good it would do to speculate. We can’t reach them. We must wait.”
“Keep running the sensor tests,” she said. “We’re not giving up yet. Let me know if you get anything. I don’t care how small.”
Zelenka nodded.
“Will do,” he said, but his voice was empty.
The team clambered into the cockpit, taking their usual places and strapping in. McKay sat back against the hard seat-back with some pleasure. Sheppard brought up the controls quickly.
“So what happened out there?” said McKay. “Did it go to plan?”
“Another time, Rodney,” said Sheppard wearily. “Just sit back and enjoy the flight.”
With a sudden surge, the Jumper powered smoothly into the air once more. Unlike Rodney’s chaotic ascent, this time it traced a straight line into the storm-driven sky, the power increasing steadily as Sheppard deftly managed the power fluctuations. The Jumper turned in a wide arc and headed back towards the Stargate.
“Coming up on the Stargate now,” said Sheppard. “Anything I should know about, Rodney?”
“Aside from the fact that it might already be at the bottom of a crevasse?”
“Right. Anything useful?”
“Just keep us near to the ice. At best, it will have sunk further since we were last there. The closer you can hug the ground, the easier our passage will be.”
Sheppard shook his head and dipped the Jumper further towards the planet’s surface. “Sure, piece of cake,” he said.
McKay didn’t reply, but the Jumper noticeably slowed and the altitude continued to fall. In the rare gaps between the driving snow, McKay saw flashes of the ice speeding below them. It was happening. This was the important moment. And there was so much to get right.
“Remember what I told you about the module!” McKay said, aware that getting into the Stargate was only part of their task. “You’ll need to activate it straightaway. A second too late, and we’ll be threading through the anomaly again.”
“Don’t need to remind me,” said Sheppard. “Dialing the gate now. Hold tight folks. We’re going in — see you on the other side.”
McKay screwed his eyes shut, then opened them again. It was hard to decide which way was worse.
The Jumper dropped sharply. They were racing along. Sheppard remained silent, looking at the figures on the HUD intently. Teyla seemed barely conscious and Ronon said nothing.
And then, as if Khost wanted to give them a view to remember it by, the cloud cover broke. They were in the open, hurtling earthwards. The Stargate was directly in front of them, only partly obscured by the tearing flurries of snow and ice, and its surface boiled with the massive contained energies of the event horizon. The ZPM had kicked in. The wormhole was open.
But the power unleashed was doing dangerous things to the ice around it; there were jagged cracks all around the base. The gate itself was still above ground, but only just. As they plunged towards it, dark lines were radiating out across the plain. The Stargate was going down.
“Faster!” McKay yelled. Sheppard didn’t need to be told. As the Stargate tottered on the brink, he poured on the power and the Jumper hurled itself forward. McKay was thrown back in his seat, his heart pounding. Cracks opened, fissures yawned, and the ice floe collapsed.
The Stargate plunged into the abyss.
“We’ve got something!”
Zelenka’s voice cracked with excitement. Around him, scientists scrambled to get at a monitor. Down in the gate room, the landing bay was flooded with light. The event horizon had formed.
“Try to feed power to the link!” cried Zelenka. “I don’t care what readings you’re getting, we need to keep it open!”
The Atlantis squads swung into action. The medical team was already on its way to the gate room. Marines snapped to combat alertness, just in case. But they all knew what was coming through. Or, more accurately, they all knew what they wanted to come through.
Weir arrived, out of breath. “What is it?” she demanded. ”Do you have them?”
“Don’t know yet,” said Zelenka. “But the wormhole is from Dead End, or I’m a Slovak!”
Elizabeth raced over to the balcony and Zelenka turned back to the screen. The numbers were all over the place; this was definitely no normal transit. For a moment it looked as if they would lose the signal. Then it came back. Then it dimmed again.
“Come on, Rodney,” he breathed, gripped by the fluctuating readings. “Come on.”
The top of the Jumper screamed as they hit the falling gate, metal scraping away. It was enough. Though battered and listing, they were inside the event horizon.
“Now!” screamed McKay. “Route the power!”
For a moment, the Jumper viewscreen was filled with a confused pool of energy. It looked horribly like the tunnel of plasma they had seen before.
McKay felt the contents of his stomach rise.
“I’m losing power, Rodney!” shouted Sheppard.
McKay leapt from his seat. “This should be working!” he wailed. “Did you trip the Zelenka module?”
The Jumper swung round hard. Something up ahead was forming. The plasma conduit. Not again.
“What d’you think?” yelled Sheppard. “We can’t survive another trip into that.”
“I know!”
McKay ran his fingers over the module. It was working. Power was being routed. But not enough. Why? It wasn’t fair.
“Here it comes!” warned Sheppard. “We’re gonna hit it…”
“I’ve got it!” cried Rodney. “There it is!”
One of the nodes on the Zelenka module had worked loose. Probably knocked when the Jumper had hit the ice. Rodney slammed it back into place. Immediately, the power feed doubled. “Hit it!”
The plasma tore away. A shimmering curtain of light formed in front of them and they were out. McKay looked nervously out of the front windshield. He didn’t quite know what to expect. Part of him wouldn’t have been surprised to see a wall of ice, another part of him still expected to see the anomaly in all its horrifying glory.
The reality was much more comforting. They were in the gate room on Atlantis. With shaking hands, Sheppard brought the vessel smoothly down on to the solid floor. Once stationary, he turned to the rest of the team. His face was white.
“Hit it?” he asked. “What the hell was that?”
“It just seemed, you know, the right thing to say,” said Rodney.
He looked around the cockpit for support. Teyla was out cold and even Ronon wasn’t moving. The full enormity of what they’d just done hit home. He felt queasy.
“Oh, God,” he said, and promptly passed out.
Chapter Nineteen
“I’ll see you.”
Sheppard felt confident. Real confident. Rodney was a terrible bluffer. He had trouble hiding his emotions at the best of times, but when there was money at stake his composure left him entirely.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” said McKay, looking a little uncomfortable. “You don’t want to raise the bet just a little?”
Teyla rolled her eyes. She was looking a lot healthier, Sheppard thought. Since the team had returned from Khost, she’d been kept in the infirmary longest. She’d been lucky — the injuries from the rock collapse had been relatively minor. Then again, they’d all been lucky. A few more minutes in the that storm, and it could all have been over. Not something he really wanted to think about.
“Rodney, that will hardly encourage him to raise his stake,” she said. “I am not sure you fully appreciate the subtleties of this game.”
McKay scowled.
“Subtleties?” he muttered. “It’s all a matter of probability, that’s what it is. And that’s where I score very highly. So here’s what I’ve got.”
He slapped his hand on to the table. Two queens. Not bad. But not worth the pile of bills stacked in the middle of the table.
&nb
sp; “Hell, yeah!” cried Sheppard in triumph. “My first haul of the night.”
He threw his own hand down, revealing a full house. Rodney rolled his eyes.
“This is the stupidest game I’ve ever played,” he moaned. “I mean, where’s the skill? Where’s the technique?”
“It’s all in your attitude to risk, my friend,” said Sheppard, moving to gather his winnings.
“Not so fast,” interrupted Ronon. All eyes turned to the Runner, who’d been characteristically quiet the whole round.
“You’re kidding me,” Sheppard groaned. “What have you got?”
Four jacks. The other three players looked disgusted.
“Even I am truly amazed,” said Teyla. Though she hid it better than Rodney, everyone knew she hated losing. Ronon was now sitting on a substantial pile of cash. He grinned and pulled the wad of bills towards him.
“Like the man said, it’s all about risk,” he said. “You’ll learn.”
“Yeah, once I’m bankrupt,” Rodney sighed. “This is too rich for my blood. I’m out, guys.”
“Glad to hear it,” came a new voice. Weir was standing in the doorway to the card room. She looked amused. “I don’t want any of my people getting into trouble over this. You’ve caused enough worry recently.”
The gentle dig was well-intentioned, but it brought an awkward silence around the table. Though the physical wounds from Khost had all healed, there’d been some soul-searching in the post-mission briefing.
Sheppard felt it keenly. To have gone so far and encountered so much danger for so little reward was still something that bothered him.
“Hey, it wasn’t a wasted journey,” protested McKay. “We learned something about Jumper propulsion we didn’t know before. And we got an insight into what the Ancients were up to before they left the city.”
“And the wonders of Sanctuary were truly worth seeing,” said Teyla. “Their technology is still so far in advance of anything we can achieve.”
“Well, that’s not quite fair,” muttered McKay. “And if you’d told me there were atmospheric generators and underground terraforming equipment, I might have liked to have taken a look myself. Could have proved pretty useful for us in the future.”
Weir leaned against the doorway, an amused expression on her face. “You can talk about the technology all you want. That’s not what made this mission a justified risk.”
“An entire people was saved from destruction,” said Teyla. “That is something to be celebrated, whatever the danger.”
“We are good at that,” agreed McKay.
“Kinda wish we could check up on them, all the same,” mused Sheppard. “I mean, it was a little cold…”
“Sure you can check up on them,” said Weir. “Just call by in another few thousand years.”
Teyla smiled. “By then, they will be masters of a city every bit as powerful as this one.”
“If they can figure out how to use it,” said McKay. “In any case, it’s given me an idea.” His face took on the eager expression that warned he’d been working on something. “We’ve seen what the Ancients were trying to do with the Jumpers to try and extend their range. Let’s not do that again: it’s far too gribbly.”
“Gribbly?” said Sheppard.
“Technical term. Anyway, they had the right idea. Except that we could do it much more simply.”
“Oh yeah?”
McKay gave Sheppard a mysterious look. “Oh yes. I’ve already started working on the plans. It’s time we stopped just taking the gate network as we find it, and started shifting Stargates around. By stringing them together, we could do what the Ancients never dreamed of.” He shot Teyla a significant look. “It’s all on the drawing board, but I’m thinking of christening it the McKay Intergalactic Gate Avenue.”
“Might need to work on that title,” said Sheppard.
“Really? Just what is it with you and names?”
Weir raised an eyebrow. “Well, I’m sure we’ll hear all about it when it’s ready, Rodney,” she said. “For now, I want you all to make the most of your down-time while it lasts. We ran that one a little too close.”
Teyla and Ronon looked like they were about to protest — they were already itching to report fit for the next mission — but Sheppard gave them a warning look. Too soon. Far too soon.
“Deal you in, Elizabeth?” he said, changing the subject. Weir laughed, and shook her head.
“Not while Ronon’s playing,” she said. “I’m guessing you wish you’d never taught him to play.”
Ronon looked smug, but Sheppard snorted.
“Nah. He’s just got lucky. Now whiskey, that’s another matter.”
“He can put it away?”
“Oh yeah. Doesn’t even take ice.”
Weir smiled. They all did. After so many days of worry, it felt good.
“After what you’ve been through,” she said, “I can’t say I blame him.”
About the author
CHRIS WRAIGHT is a freelance author with a wide and growing portfolio of published work. His main interest is science fiction and fantasy, and since 2007 he has published four novels based in the Warhammer game setting (the latest being Sword of Justice, due for release in July 2010). He is a long-time fan of the Stargate franchise, dating back to the original 1994 movie, and Dead End is his first novel set in the Stargate Atlantis universe. He is 34, and lives in the south west of England. You can catch up with news of his latest work at http://chriswraight.wordpress.com.
THE ADVENTURES CONTINUE....
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