"Unless a Wraith comes along beforehand and feeds on someone with knowledge of the plan." Caldwell's counterargument was directed at Rodney, but his gaze was on John. Elizabeth recognized his implication, and felt a flicker of fresh sorrow at the loss of Aiden Ford. Not flinching from his superior's gaze, John remained silent.
"Okay," said Elizabeth, hoping to steer the conversation down a more productive path. "So whatever we plan to do should be closehold information, kept to only the Elders on Polrusso."
Rodney was already shaking his head. "Not possible. Most of the Polrussons live in settlements near the ZPMs because they need the Ancient-designed wells that tap into the reservoirs in order to irrigate their crops. Once the ZPMs are removed, those areas will be wiped out by the massive outpouring of water."
"Where will everyone go, then?"
Ronon, whose taciturn nature always seemed more pronounced in briefings, spoke up. "They've made plans."
After John elaborated on the villagers' intentions to move inland when necessary, Elizabeth began to warm to the idea. It did appear to solve a number of problems, not only for themselves but also for Polrusso. "You're certain that the Polrussons will be okay? There's no chance that removing power will leave them with an even less hospitable environment?"
"The Ancients terraformed countless planets," Rodney said. "From what I've seen, they had it down to a fine art. The Polrussons will be fine, but they all have to be ready and willing to move-every man, woman, child, and camel-looking thing. The good news is that they've spent generations expecting imminent shut down so they're prepared to pull up stakes at a moment's notice. The bad news is-"
"-that the entire population of the planet will need to know what's coming, which means it would only be a matter of time before the Wraith find out and react." Caldwell's reluctance seemed to be at least partly linked to Rodney's enthusiasm, but Elizabeth agreed with his assessment of the risk.
"What sort of time frame are we looking at to prepare Atlantis?" she asked.
Rodney made an impatient sound in the back of his throat. "The sooner I'm allowed to stop talking about the issues and start working on them, the sooner I'll be able to provide that answer."
"Why wait to collect the ZPMs?" Caldwell wanted to know. "If it'll reduce the amount of time for the Wraith to pick up on the plan, we ought to tell these people to start moving ASAP."
"You didn't read the diplomacy primer, did you? It's generally bad form to waltz in and say `excuse us, but you need to beat it so we can take your ZPMs to power up a cityship we pretended had been destroyed.' Look, it's going to take me most of a week, even if I forego sleep"-Rodney pointedly checked his watch, reminding them that it was past midnight-"to get everything set up both here and on Polrusso. As far as we know, Atlantis hasn't been a space ship for several million years. We can't just fire up the engines and expect everything to work perfectly. That's why we need every last technician and, dare I say it, Hermiod to stop working on the Daedalus and concentrate on prepping Atlantis."
"There was no sign ofAtlas's machine?" Caldwell pressed, still looking for options.
Irritated at being diverted from his message, Rodney threw him an incredulous glare. "The thing is, what, a twenty-centimeter-long piece of pipe, misplaced ten thousand years ago?"
Caldwell was unfazed by the obvious scorn. "So that would be a no.,,
"Yes, Colonel, it would indeed." Rodney gingerly touched a raw patch of skin on his cheek. "In fact, I suspect Atlas actually triggered his device, thus causing the malfunction in the original terraforming program. Before I shut the terraforming down, I'll need to know if that's the case."
He looked to Elizabeth expectantly, waiting for a go-ahead. While she would have much preferred to have found a way to prevent the nanites from destroying the planet, she couldn't deny that the idea of Atlantis once again taking to the stars held a considerable thrill. So far, however, it was nothing more than an idea. Sometimes Rodney tended to get a little ahead of the curve. "All right, proceed. But do so with extreme caution. We can't risk alerting the Wraith on Polrusso."
"I'll ask Hermiod to stop work on the hyperdrive repair. I can tell you right now that he's not going to be happy about it " The set of Caldwell's jaw made it clear that his Asgard crewmember wouldn't be the only one displeased.
"Dr. Weir," said a voice in her earpiece. "We have an incoming call from the mainland. No visual, and the signal's weak."
She hurried out to the control room, the others hot on her heels. "Kwesi, can you hear me?"
"Just barely," Kwesi called. His words were fragmented by static, but she could tell he was upset. "We have moved as many people as possible to a more protected location across the other side of the river. Our original location and the main camp have been inundated by a mudslide."
And things just kept getting worse. "Casualties?"
"Some. I cannot guess at a number." The engineer paused. "How many jumpers were sent to retrieve us?"
Elizabeth closed her eyes. "Kwesi, I'm sorry. They couldn't reach you, and we had to recall them. We've lost contact with Jumper Three-the ship Teyla was on."
"That is what I feared. During the slide, we saw a jumper being carried down the mountain."
The tight knot in Elizabeth's chest that had begun to unwind with Rodney's proposal instantly snapped back into place. Damn it. She wanted to scream at the blatant unfairness of it all, but she didn't have that luxury. Looking at Teyla's teammates, she found the same bitter conflict reflected in their eyes.
"Until I see them dead, they're alive," the Satedan stated bluntly.
John hesitated for a second before nodding. "I'm with him."
Elizabeth wished she could share their faith.
odney heard his teammates' words, but his reaction was a bit different. "Let me see if I've got this straight. Teyla and Corletti are out there in a wrecked jumper, and you're sitting in a cave?"
"We are now on the wrong side of the river," Kwesi replied. "The wind and rain are very strong, and we have minimal light to work by."
"Oh, and I've never had to save an entire city while held at gunpoint by a madman under those exact same conditions!"
"The jumper was lost in the mud-"
"So a little dirt is a problem now?" Rodney couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"Rodney, be reasonable," said Elizabeth. "Let Kwesi finish."
"Nothing about this is reasonable-why should I be the exception? The man is just sitting out there while Teyla-"
Her look of exasperation stalled his protest but not his seething anger.
Kwesi's response would have sounded clipped even without the static. "I may have been understating our circumstances. This is not a little mud. It is no exaggeration to say that half a mountain has collapsed on the camp. Those of us who managed to escape are on the far side of a river now swollen to three times its normal volume. Squalls coming through have gusts of over two hundred kilometers an hour, and the rain is so violent it is difficult to breathe at times. So I am sorry, Dr. McKay, but I do not have the ability to search for the jumper-no one here does. Even if the sun were to shine bright and clear come morning, I would expect the valley to be buried and the river to be five times its normal width. We are only praying that the squalls will die down and that you also experience a break in the storm so that it will not be so dangerous for you to lend assistance. We have many injured here"-there was a break in the transmission-"...understand if that is not possible."
While Rodney had not been unsympathetic to the plight of the Athosians, the situation was entirely different now that it involved Kwesi and Teyla. His anger at the engineer abruptly morphed into worry. "Kwesi, we need you back here!" he blurted, but received only maddening static in reply.
Elizabeth stood in front of him, ever poised despite her obvious concern. "Let me worry about the mainland," she suggested. "You have to focus on your work. That's as much as you can do for now, and I'm sure you'll agree that you're singularly good at achieving impressive results
under pressure"
"It does seem like I do my best work under the threat of disaster, doesn't it?" Rodney got the distinct impression that he was being handled, but he didn't have time for an abundance of indignation. "All right, give me a couple of hours to go through the files I brought back with me. After that I'm going to have to speak to everyone, and I do mean everyone, about what we need to do to get this city prepared for spaceflight"
"Woo-hoo!" yelled Lieutenant Corletti. She flashed a triumphant grin at Teyla as the puddle jumper pulled free of the grasping mud and took to the air.
"Well done, Lieutenant," Teyla acknowledged with a relieved smile. The Marine had been unable to bring the jumper's flight systems online until slamming her fist down on the control panel. "Is this a standard technique for encouraging recalcitrant equipment to operate?"
Corletti mumbled something about a Millennium Falcon before adding, "Okay, we're not as functional as I'd like. Inertial dampeners aren't responding too well. I'm having to fight every gust-and man, that wind is howling once we get any kind of height"
The view through the windshield was a jumbled mess of lightning strikes and impossibly heavy rain. The HUD, however, clearly showed Teyla the extent of the mudslide that had carried them down the mountain's face. The cascade of wet earth had stopped just short of where many life signs were clustered on the near side of the river. Though fully half of the camp had been destroyed, it appeared that no one had been injured, except- "There!"
"I see 'em, but I'm not sure how much help we're going to be. I can barely keep this thing in the air."
"We must at least try." Teyla stared in concentration at five life signs moving rapidly along the same course as the river. She felt a deep pain seize her heart as, one by one, the life signs winked out, until only two remained.
"I'm sorry, Teyla." Corletti's voice was tinged with regret. "But I'm going to have to put us down someplace until the wind lets up. I can't control it much longer."
"Can you reach this group?" She pointed to the closest life signs clustered on the near side of the river, then gripped her armrests to prevent herself from being knocked out of the seat. The jumper was, as Corletti had said, difficult to control in the storm.
"Yeah, I think so. Hang on. This could get bumpy... well, bumpier."
The atmosphere on the Daedalus was charged with a familiar tension. Crewmembers moved purposefully through the corridors, barely paying notice to the two members of Atlantis's senior staff making their way toward the bridge.
"You're sure you want to do this?" John asked.
"There's naught else I can do at the moment," Beckett replied. "I've examined the sample. Though I'm not a mineralogist, I can say that the red granules aren't really sand at all. They're more like tiny flakes of a substance that I can only assume was brought in for terraforming. Heaven knows why, since it's incredibly destructive."
"Maybe the Ancients weren't the environmentally sensitive miners we first thought."
"Perhaps not," the doctor allowed. "Under UV light, the surface of the flakes quickly degrades and develops an inert yellow crust, rendering them relatively harmless. However, once airborne, the grains abrade each other or whatever else they come into contact with, causing the flakes to fragment and exposing the caustic interior."
"So the sand lying on the ground is harmless?"
"Aye. You could pour it all over your hands and not feel a thing. But rub off the surface of the flake and you're in trouble. With millions of grains tearing into you during one of those sandstorms, the abrasiveness alone would guarantee an ugly outcome. Add the caustic component and there wouldn't be much left of you at the end."
John recalled seeing a few people who'd lost battles with sandstorms back on Earth, and remembered Vene's ruined face. "Yeah, I think I'll try to steer clear."
Arriving on the ship's bridge, they caught the tail end of Hermiod's expected complaint to Caldwell. "I do not believe it prudent to discontinue work on the hyperdrive. Nor do I have any desire to assist Dr. McKay in his misguided plans to prepare Atlantis for interstellar flight. Several million years have passed since the city was used for this purpose. If the Ancients had considered it capable of flight, do you not think they would have returned to Earth in the ship instead?"
"Well, they were under siege, for one thing." John was willing to admit that the short gray guy still weirded him out. Unlike most of the expedition, John hadn't done any time at the SGC, so in his experience, intelligent aliens usually were either humans by another name, or Wraith-which, as they had recently discovered, were sort of human. The Asgard, on the other hand, bore a disturbing resemblance to something that he'd seen once too often on the covers of supermarket tabloids.
The odd noise that came from Hermiod might have been a reply, but sounded more like something related to its-John wasn't sure if it was a he or a she-digestive tract.
Caldwell, apparently, had mastered Asgard-speak. "Hermiod is certain that he can have the Daedalus's hyperdrive repaired within a week," he explained, confirming at least that Hermiod was a `he'. "If the engineers can fabricate the necessary replacement parts. That's not going to happen if McKay commandeers all our resources."
"For a plan that is bound to fail," Hermiod added.
It wasn't a stretch to say that Rodney's ego occasionally got in the way of progress. John hadn't forgotten about the disaster on Doranda. Still, he felt compelled to stick up for his friend. "That's a little pessimistic, isn't it?"
"Colonel, my first responsibility is to my ship," Caldwell stated, his voice taking on an edge. "I've got a choice to make. I can put my resources toward Hermiod's ability to fix something that he knows well and that generally works without any problems. Or I can put them toward Dr. McKay's ability to fix something of which he has yet to acquire sufficient knowledge, only after sorting out some other planet's problems, most likely while fending off some angry Wraith."
Hermiod did his eye-blinky thing, the strangeness of which distracted John just long enough for Beckett to get a word in. "Colonel Caldwell, with all due respect, we're not here to argue Rodney's case."
Caldwell crossed his arms and looked at them expectantly. John obliged by coming right to the point. "How long would it take to get Daedalus's sublight engines, shields, and inertial dampening systems operational?"
"You're not thinking we should take the Daedalus to the nearest star system, are you? Because my great-grandkids will be in a nursing home before we reach it, even at top speed-unless we get the hyperdrive repaired."
"I was thinking of somewhere a little closer. Sending rescue jumpers to the mainland in that storm would be like sending a rowboat. But Daedalus is more like an aircraft carrier."
Eyes narrowing, Caldwell pointed out, "An aircraft carrier is still vulnerable if ninety percent of its systems are down. In order to repair the hyperdrive, we've taken the sublight engines, shields, in fact pretty much everything offline. We can't risk running power to anything that interfaces with the hyperdrive while we're in there tinkering around."
Which, John knew, was why Caldwell had been on edge. A warship existed to project strength, but the Daedalus was by no means invincible. The recent loss of her sister ship had made that all too clear. "There has to be a way to take the hyperdrive out of the circuit and put the other systems back together long enough to take a short flight to the mainland."
"That may be, but mounting a rescue mission in that condition would risk the ship in more ways than one. What if these nanites have already been let loose?" He held up a hand, forestalling John's objection. "Don't get me wrong, Colonel. I share your concern for the Athosians, but I need to consider the further ramifications of your request-not just here and now, but back on Earth. The threat of the Ori has become significantly greater, and now that we've lost the Prometheus-"
"Respectfully, sir, you're talking about theoretical benefits somewhere down the road. There are real people here who need help now."
"Careful, Sheppard. Unless my memo
ry's failing, this is starting to look a lot like the situation that got your ass busted back on Earth."
Instinctively, John's spine went rigid. That was one decision he'd never regretted. "The life of a fellow officer was at stake," he replied, voice hardening.
"And if I were that man, or his parents, I'd be damned grateful for what you did. But the fact remains that you sacrificed a hell of a lot more in the process. You're now asking me to endanger the lives of considerably more people."
John had had his moments of deliberately antagonizing superiors, but this wasn't one of them. He could see Caldwell's point. The Daedalus was an ongoing concern with a repairable problem. All they needed was a little more time, which Rodney would likely be able to buy them with another ZPM. However, he still had one more ace to play.
Turning to Hermiod, he said, "You were asking for the engineer who designed the interface for the hyperdrive's overheat detection system?" When the Asgard blinked at him again, he took that as an affirmative. "Well, his name's Kwesi Anane." From the corner of his eye, John saw Caldwell's expression shift. "He's currently sitting in a cave on the other side of the river by the Athosian camp."
"Desperately trying to perform first aid on several badly injured Athosians," Carson put in for good measure.
The bizarre noise from the Asgard sounded louder this time. John's gaze slid to Caldwell. The older man looked slightly exasperated at his crewmember's stubbornness. "It must be nice to be so sure of yourself," he grumbled at Hermiod. In spite of the tension, John had to fight to keep a knowing smile off his face. When it came to brilliant and socially inept colleagues, he could definitely relate.
"Sir," the communications officer interrupted from across the bridge. "We have a call from Jumper Three"
"Teyla?" John took an involuntary step forward, his throat suddenly tight. He hadn't let himself think too hard about her odds of survival until now, recognizing that it would have wrecked his focus. But if there was anything to know, one way or the other, he needed to know it.
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