(no subject)
Title: I Feel the Earth Move
Rating: PG-13 (for some creepy, nasty villains)
Characters: John, Rodney
Genre: Future-Fic, Action
Disclaimer: not for profit!
Summary: This is just one vision of the future. Pretend, for a moment, that you got stranded somewhere for a few years, only to return and watch the series finale of SGA without having a chance to catch up.
And special thanks to my beta-honeypepper blurryeyes!
*
He woke Rodney an hour before landing to be sure he’d be alert. Then he went over the mission plan again---and again---drilling in the points like Army core values.
“When I say 'shield' you do it. And when I say, ‘cloak’, you do that too. We won’t be able to see each other so stay close and move wherever I tell you. We are not getting separated so if you can’t follow directions and figure out where I am, I’ll have to break out the kindergarten rope. Keep your radios open but don’t talk unless you have to, in case they stumble on our channel. Don’t touch anything unless I say so.”
“Wait, wait, no,” Rodney broke in. “Shouldn’t that be, you don’t touch anything unless I tell you to?”
“Nope,” John shook his head, “you advise me on what’s worth touching and wait for my go-ahead. Don’t get too close to anything either. And if they’re on to us, we run. Lorne, help McKay; McKay, let him help you. We clear?”
As the planet came into view, so did a hive ship and darts in orbit. Rodney leaned over John’s shoulder, eyes glued to the HUD.
“Looks like the darts are swarming around the base,” John said.
Lorne nodded. “They’re delivering bodies. But there won’t be many Wraith on foot, and they’ll have their hands full.”
On the HUD, the complex showed up loud and clear, a hot spot on the energy sensors. The complex was big, though not nearly as big as Atlantis, and as perfectly utilitarian in design as one could imagine.
“Rest of the planet’s pretty much a wasteland,” Lorne said. “Reeks like sulphur.”
“Oh, now he tells us,” Rodney grimaced.
“I’m sorry, there wasn’t a space on the mission report form to state my olfactory experiences.”
John pulled the jumper into a descent. “Okay, I’m going to do a fly-over at a couple hundred feet, see what we’ve got. Hang on.”
Threading through a fleet of darts with a little more risk and flair than was necessary, John brought the jumper almost right on top of the complex and then swept over it slowly, while Rodney was straining to make sense of the readings. After making some adjustments to the sensor-sensitivity, Rodney brought up a strangely-coloured energy map of the building.
“All right, good. This shows us where the big energy source is concentrated. If we can get to this section of the building I’ll have a chance to learn more about what this thing actually is. There’s a secondary energy source that could power the base. Then there are some smaller readings here, and by ‘smaller’ I still mean comparable to a ZPM. All this is probably powering fairly essential stuff, so we’ll blow our cover if we disconnect anything, but I doubt they’ll go from ‘oh look, our systems are down’ to ‘we’ve been infiltrated by invisible intruders’ in less than five minutes. Hopefully.”
John bit his lip in concentration, alternating his attention between Rodney’s energy-map and his flightpath. “Then we’ll just have to be fast.”
He put the jumper down a fair distance from the complex, cutting down on the likelihood that any Wraith of Hal would bump into it. Then he opened the hatch and he and Lorne surveyed the scene with the tactical binoculars. It was surreal, that was the overwhelming impression---the quiet, almost subdued way the Wraith carried the bodies after the darts beamed them down; efficiently but not roughly, not tossing them like they were worthless. The complex rose from cracked dry soil, white and gleaming in the sun, and the place was so weirdly devoid of any other sign of life---no Hal-craft or paths or vegetation---that it looked like a quarantined morgue.
He swept the binoculars to the building’s entrance and watched the Wraith go in and come out again. Beside him, Lorne spoke softly.
“Shouldn’t be hard to get in. The Wraith work in shifts but they never really stop. The entrance isn’t guarded or coded as far as we could tell.”
John watched. A few minutes later, just when Rodney was starting to get impatient and nervous behind them, he saw two figures emerge from the building, tall and white-clad and pale, and blank as Ronon had described.
“Huh,” he said.
“That’s them.”
The two Hal wore belts with weapons---a nerve disruptor among others John didn’t recognize---and strange asymmetrical helmets mounted with dials and equipment. They stood like overseers, motionless and looming.
Three AI pods circled overhead; maybe they were being more cautious after Lorne’s failed recon mission, but the pods weren’t detecting the cloaked jumper. John exhaled a long breath.
“Okay. Gear up and engage the cloaking devices. Let’s get this show on the road.”
One by one, John’s team flickered out, made invisible and untraceable, leaving John feeling alone even though his teammates were right beside him. He hit his radio, which McKay had rigged to work through the cloak. “Stay with me, don’t move yet. We’re going to head straight for the entrance, hold onto my pack if you have to, just stay together. Right; let’s go.”
They went out slowly, avoiding kicking up plumes of dust from the dry earth. Hard as the ground was, they did leave footprints, which was enough to set John’s teeth on edge. One of a million things could go wrong and they’d be toast, burned like Kedram or paralyzed, and they’d likely join the stacks of bodies that lay before them. For himself, John had no qualms being here---they were nearly on the edge of the end of the world, the Hal being so unfathomably powerful, and this might be their last chance to do something. Maybe he could have come alone; maybe he should have; maybe he could have blown the place up, and maybe that would be enough to save Atlantis.
“---track mud on their nice white floors,” Lorne was saying, an ironic smile in his voice
“Ow! What are you, ten years old? Where are you? Stop poking me,” Rodney yelped.
They walked past the bodies as the Wraith brought them in. John didn’t look, put all his attention into being unnoticeable, and when the Hal at the entrance started to walk back inside, he told his team to follow him in. The entrance was wide and led to a white corridor, a large round tunnel with fluid twists and turns. They inched down it, all but blinded by white, and there were weird, weird noises like echoing screeches and thunder, and layered on top of that was McKay's frantic breathing over the radio. John could feel a kind of tingling static on his fingers if they brushed too near him or Lorne, which was useful because his handheld sensor showed nothing, not even a flicker, where the three of them ought to be.
Two of the Hal walked by in the opposite direction---it was a scramble to keep from bumping into them. John chewed on his lip and stared straight into the Hal’s face as they approached: not completely blank, not smooth and utterly without feature: the pale skin had slits where eyes might be, more like wrinkles that made John think of naked mole-rats; and a long, too-long, thin slash for a mouth. The helmet concealed the rest, but long fingers reached up and touched the dials on the side of its head. He held his breath until the two Hal were past, then followed the other Hal through a door into another white corridor.
"You getting anything?" he asked, and heard McKay's breath hitch like he'd been startled.
"Yeah, uh, yeah. It's just...it's unbelievable. But I can’t track anything because it reads as one big energy source."
“Perfect,” John sighed. “We’ll just have to keep following the Hal around.”
“I wish they’d say something,” Lorne mused. “It’s like they know we’re behind them.”
“I’d almost rather they didn’t,” John admitted. This place was creepy enough.
Finally the Hal stopped outside an oval-shaped door and pressed on panels on either side of it. A beeping noise echoed all the way down the tunnel.
“Are we following them in?” Lorne asked.
John gave it two seconds’ thought. “Yes. Stay right up close behind me, don’t know if the door’s going to snap shut fast. Hustle. Hustle.”
The door opened fluidly and the two Hal stepped inside, and John pressed on behind them, far too close for his liking. Rodney---he thought it was Rodney---had his hand on his back. They cleared the door.
“McKay? What is that thing?”
It could have been anything. Coal-black, monolithical in scale, thrumming, no joints or seams, and no reflection---it almost seemed to suck light into it. Its edges weren’t convincing either, like in the dark when things seemed to move. The rest of the room was the same featureless white, except for a silver control panel that looked intense for all its smallness.
John felt someone brush up near him---Lorne. “Did we bring a pick axe by chance? Because if all the rooms are like this, we’re going to have to tear up the walls.”
“That’s subtle,” John replied. “McKay, where are you?”
“Right behind them. For all the good it’s going to do us, seeing as the readouts are in another language.”
There was a noise---deep and gravely and strange---and John swore it came from one of the Hal. He shifted uneasily. “Get over here, McKay. Don’t get close to them.”
The Hal worked fast at the controls; John felt the change before he saw it, the whole room was buzzing. The thrumming got louder, then impossibly loud, and the coal-black monolith was radiating, supernova-bright and hot, and suddenly it was liquid light, as if the monolith was beyond molten, without boundary at all. Then blackness plunged and the bedlam stopped, except John could still hear it and he was a bit flash-blind.
He waited until his senses calmed. “McKay? Lorne?”
“What the hell was that, sir?”
“We’re lucky it didn’t fry my scanner,” Rodney said breathlessly. “Hey---the Hal are gone.”
John turned in time to see the door shut. Damnit.
“All right, let’s just sit tight. McKay, what do you make of that thing?”
“I’ve got nothing. Seriously. I cannot begin to make you understand how much power that thing potentially has.”
“What’s the point of heating up a big…box?”
“It wasn’t heating it up or we’d all be dead. Though I might---oh yes, I definitely have a sunburn here.”
“Rodney,” John said, trying to get him on track.
“Seriously, it’s a waste of time trying to get answers when all I can do is talk theoretical physics at you, which we know you understand so well. I promise, I’ll give you a shadow puppet version once I get back to the lab and figure this out. Now, I’ll be over there trying to commit the control panel to memory.”
John half-rolled his eyes and moved until he felt the static off Lorne’s cloak. “Think we can get out the door? I’m not reading any lifesigns.”
“Isn’t that what you brought McKay for?”
“We could try pressing on those door-panels. Question is, are we going to set off an alarm?”
“I’m guessing yes. Not much point having them otherwise.”
John heard a rustle and looked around, only to realize it was coming from the radio. More rustling, then…chewing.
“Rodney, are you eating?”
“Hello, we could be stuck in here for hours.”
“You might make yourself useful,” Lorne said.
“And do what? My God, it’s like you want me to kill us.”
“Quiet down,” John snapped. “Rodney. What do you think about the door?”
“I think we’d better leave it if we don’t want to attract attention. But hey, feel free to get the Hal down here with their nice big weapons. We can test the shields.”
“Enough,” John scowled. He really didn’t like waiting. Then he looked at his scanner and saw two lifesigns approaching. “Okay, looks like we have company. Get ready---“ and he grabbed McKay by his tac vest and pulled him--- “get by the door. If they come in, we might have enough time to get through that damn door.”
They had enough time---just barely. In the corridor he listened to Rodney’s breathing for a few minutes as they stood alone and lost.
“All right. Let’s keep going. There’s more Hal up ahead, watch out for them.”
They turned a few bends, which, since the tunnel was so featureless, was almost the only way John could tell he was actually moving at all. There were four Hal and a couple doors; he watched as, up ahead, one of the Hal slipped through a door, and---for a mere moment---he saw into the room, white like the hall, blinding white everywhere, except for red blood, blood and bodies. It was so brief a glance he wasn’t sure of what he saw, but he couldn’t get it out of his head either. He stopped short and Lorne bumped into him from behind, and he stayed put, like waiting for the afterimage of the sun to fade from his eyes, like being heat sick too.
“Hold up,” John said. “We’re not going in there.”
Rodney’s breath hitched again. “What is it?”
“Lot of Wraith-kill. They’re experimenting on them.”
“I think we better check it out,” Rodney replied, his voice strained.
“You heard the Colonel,” Lorne said.
“At the risk of being unpopular, I have reason to believe that whatever experiments they’re doing are to further their technology, which means we might find a power source in there, even something small. So I think we need to check it out and believe me, I’d really rather we didn’t have to.”
John figured he had about 20 second to decide, if they wanted to follow the other Hal in on their heels. He grimaced. “We’re going in. Lorne, you can wait outside and cover us if you want.”
“Thanks but no thanks, sir,” Lorne said resignedly.
And so they went in.
It wasn’t violent, not like the back of a butcher shop was violent. It was cold and calculating and there was really less blood than John had thought. More like a pathologist’s lab, not that that was at all comforting. But it wasn’t experiments like the kind of holocaust war-crime experiments that had leapt to his mind; and the bodies had not been exactly desecrated. Not that John was looking, because he wasn’t, he was not looking so hard it hurt his eyes.
There were the typical trappings of pathology: metal tables, instruments, ceiling lamps, clinging white winding sheets. The Hal were at the back of the room, with computers and wires and things too complicated for his mind to sort out---and brains. Brains hooked up to wires, brains missing from the bodies he was walking past---
He didn’t stop but his legs were on auto-pilot and his vision greyed out for just a second, feeling unbelievably numb. What the hell were they doing here?
“Colonel---“ Rodney’s voice came to him weakly.
This feeling was no stranger to him. Breathing sand, drowning in sand, sand stuck under his eyelids and grinding down his teeth, in a heat wave that wouldn’t let up even in the dead of night but just stuck to him like sweat, in a goddamned hole stinking of corpse-rot, the sky flashing and bombs falling, yeah, for a moment back then he’d lost sight of what the damned point was of everything. But he wouldn’t let it swallow him whole; he knew it was about the good guys beating the bad guys, and with tears burning his eyes because he was trying not to cough up an entire desert, he’d tried to make it about saving home.
And it made more sense now than it had back then.
“Colonel.”
“Yeah.”
“They’ve got ZPMs.”
John looked up, looked around, and his eyes settled on the modules at the back of the room, some of them in pieces, and then there were wires again and pieces of---
“I was wrong,” Rodney said. “I figured they used neural matter as part of the AI. Because that would make sense, wouldn’t it? Whatever the Hal do, it doesn’t make sense.”
“What are you saying?” Lorne asked.
“It’s as if they can tap the brain as a power source.”
“Well, we’re just energy, aren’t we? I mean,” and John didn’t like to bring this up, “the Ancients ascended into pure energy.”
Maybe that was it, somehow, and John was momentarily glad his imagination wasn’t constrained by laws and reality like Rodney’s, because what if the energy of the very essence of a person could mingle with the power of a ZPM?
“Look at that,” Rodney said as they drew close to the Hal. They were working on the ZPMs they’d laid open in pieces, and they had three more that were reconstructed and hooked up like they were being tested. On another table lay five more, reconstructed with strange thin bands around it, as if it had been opened and now needed to be held closed, but otherwise perfect and not hooked up to anything.
"They all look jury-rigged," Lorne noted.
"Um-hmm. And it's probably best not to dwell on the details, but there’s only one reason they could be doing this: to make them even more powerful."
"A grey matter ZPM?"
"Well, like I said, it's best not to dwell on that. This is the best-case scenario by far, Colonel; they’ve got ZPMs here that aren’t hooked up to anything. We can take them right from under their noses. Just put them in your packs---and don’t, please, don’t hold them up in the air, try to keep them on the table until they’re cloaked. Let’s not attract any attention, shall we?”
In the briefing Rodney had said something about "discrete packets" and if John had followed his explanation as well as he thought he had, it meant that an object outside the cloak would get cloaked only when someone pulled it completely through the field, which extended about six inches around their bodies at any point. After that it would only reappear once every part of one’s body was more than six inches away from it. So all John had to do was lean over and put his arms down to cradle the module and it disappeared all at once. From there he carefully loaded it into his pack, and the Hal didn’t notice a thing.
They took all five, and John’s heartrate rose again, the mission hovering between its most successful and most dangerous moment. They waited an eternity by the door and eventually made their breathless escape, and when they found sunlight again it was all he could do not to run.
*
Elizabeth was there waiting when the jumper came through the ‘gate, and they stepped out like heroes---stunned, adrenaline-high heroes.
“You will never, I repeat, never, in a million years, guess what we have.” Rodney was fairly bouncing.
“A ZPM,” Elizabeth said.
“No, no, no. Not a ZPM. Five ZPMs. Five souped-up ZPMs, in fact.” He opened his pack and carefully took one out. “Isn’t it beautiful?
“Five---five ZPMs!” Elizabeth wheeled around, looking to John for answers. “I’m calling everyone up for a debriefing now.”
“And I would love, really love to tell my part of our truly brilliant heist,” Rodney was saying animatedly, “but I’m going to go find out everything I can about these babies. The Colonel and Major Lorne can tell you everything---from a military standpoint at least---and I’ll let you know the minute I have some answers, and keep in mind I work faster without interruptions---unless someone wants to send down some lunch, that would be…right. Going now.”
Elizabeth was shaking her head and beaming; she laid a hand on John’s arm as they headed to the briefing room for an urgent meeting of all department heads. John sat back, self-satisfied, his mind still spinning with what they’d done.
“All right, thank you all for coming, I’m sure by now you’ve heard the news. Assuming the ZPMs are charged, this is our way home. I’m ordering a withdrawal of the expedition as soon as Dr. McKay gives us the green light.”
John bolted upright, then held himself very, very still.
No one said anything; they looked at John, but he refused to speak, forcing down stunned anger and making his expression unreadable. Tactics, he thought fiercely, strategy. Finally he glanced at Lorne, just a quick pitch of his eye, and Lorne caught it easily. He was all level-headedness and practicality.
“Dr. Weir, do you mean a complete evacuation?”
“Yes,” she said as if this were obvious. “I’m surprised the Hal aren’t at our doorstep as we speak, trying to get their ZPMs back, and now we have the means to go home and help our own people. We know the SGC is just as desperate for ZPMs as we are---giving them five of them might make all the difference in the world. I don’t know any more about what’s happening on Earth than you do, but I’ve known for a while now that our first responsibility, when we get a spare ZPM, is to go home. So, yes, I’m saying we abandon the expedition. It’s a matter of duty.”
“Do you intend to destroy Atlantis?” Teyla asked.
“It may be necessary. But from what we’ve seen of their technological capabilities, they don’t need Atlantis. They have tremendous power supplies and smart enough weapons that they haven’t even bothered to engage us face to face. On the surface, it seems what they want are victims for their experiments.”
She paused, looking around the table. “I’m setting the evacuation to take place in 24 hours. Teyla and Ronon, it’s your decision if you want to come with us, of course. I realize there’s not much time. I need all of you to help organize teams to pack everything up.”
John put his fists on the table and leaned forward. “What about the rest of the people in this galaxy? The sanctuary worlds? We’re just going to pick up and leave? We have ZPMs, we can try to take on the Hal.”
“No, John. 24 hours---that’s my final word. We’ve got work to do,” she said and stood up, signaling the others to start in on the evacuation procedures. John didn’t move.
When they were alone and the doors swung back shut, John got up slowly, tenuously holding himself in check, still calculating out the situation. “Let’s get this out in the open: I’m not turning my back on Atlantis. I’m not turning my back on the people we promised to help. And if you had any courage or self-respect, you wouldn’t either.”
She had the gall to look patronizing. “John,” she said, almost reaching for him, “you’re tired like everyone else. You’re tired and sick of this and you can’t tell me you don’t want to go home. This isn’t about staying and fighting. It doesn’t make sense. We can’t go up against the Hal.”
She stepped closer and John held his arms stiffly across his chest. Her eyes were coaxing, pleading.
“You don’t have to prove anything to me or anyone,” she said all too gently. “It’s okay. We do what we have to survive and we take care of our people back home. It’s not really giving up, John, it’s okay.”
She was all misplaced concern and slick self-preservation. He knew where it came from and he hated it, he clenched his teeth and looked away, frustration and desperation combining into a violent urge. But he was never violent, he reminded himself. He was cool-headed. Cold, if he had to be. He was cold.
It had been so cold on the hive ship.
“Stop trying to save me,” he said hoarsely. “We have to save Atlantis.”
“It’s okay to want to go home, John,” Elizabeth quietly insisted, and tried to touch his hand, but he was already heading out the door.
Lorne was there waiting; they walked off together for a spell before he opened his mouth. “Sir?”
“Don’t ask any questions. I’m going to take command. Beckett won’t back me up, I’ve asked him before, so we’re going to have to do this ourselves. We’re not leaving Atlantis.”
Lorne looked at him straight on, and John could see he wasn’t forming questions but weighing his words.
“Colonel, with the ZPMs we’ll have enough power to operate the shield and open a wormhole back to Earth. Whether it’s Dr. Weir or the SGC, people are going to be making decisions for us pretty soon.” He shook his head. “You can’t stop this.”
“Like hell I can’t,” John spat, and he felt his knees start to give out, adrenaline betraying him, acid rising in his empty stomach. He coughed and straightened; Lorne’s hand slipped under his elbow for a moment, a solicitous flicker in his eyes. “We won’t open a wormhole, we won’t talk to the SGC. McKay’s got better things to do with the ZPMs anyway. What you’re going to do is get a sedative off Beckett and slip it to Weir, and I don’t like that any more than you do, but she’ll just sleep and you’ll say she collapsed.”
“You can’t keep her out of the game for long,” Lorne insisted. “The doc will be on to you, and then there’ll be trouble. I’m just saying---“
“No questions,” John said.
“I’m just saying, Colonel, maybe we talk to people, get them on our side. Enough people want to stay, we stay; it’s still messy but you need people backing you.”
John stumbled forward and Lorne’s hand caught him again.
“If you don’t trust me you better tell me right now,” John said.
“I’m not saying Dr. Weir is right, sir, you know that. We’re all of us screwed up, and believe me, you’re a bit of a mess. But I know who should be in command here and I won’t turn on you. Sir, you’ve got 24 hours, you can take half an hour to sit down and catch your breath and stop looking like crap. That’s all I’m saying.”
John stared at him hard, trying to figure it all out just by the twitch of Lorne’s eyes, but there was nothing there to see that wasn’t written plainly on his face. “All right,” John said, and took a breath. “I hear you loud and clear.”
And he did; he saw that Lorne thought he was a little crazy, and that Lorne wasn’t going to let him down.
*
"Rodney, we have a situation--"
"What a surprise, we have one here too."
"Rodney, Elizabeth wants to evacuate everyone to Earth."
"No kidding, and don't waste your breath trying to change her mind." He turned and called across the room, "Radek, have you finished running the numbers yet?"
"I have done the calculations four times now Rodney, I tell you I am not going to get a different result."
"Then you need to find out where you screwed up, because your numbers don't make sense."
"Rodney. It's not going to make sense, not by any physics known to man."
"Do you actually think that's an excuse?"
The two scientists were staring each other down and this could go on for hours, so John made an impatient noise. "Would you mind filling me in on your theory?"
McKay pressed his lips into a thin frown before punching up some display on his laptop that failed to illuminate John. “The readings I took from the base are, as Radek pointed out, outside the realm of physics, but we think they were experimenting with something, and if they get it to work---and I see every indication that they will---this whole galaxy isn’t going to exist anymore.”
“What kind of experiment? A weapon?”
“We can’t be sure, of course---“
“We’re pretty sure,” Radek cut in.
“We’re mostly sure. There’s not much else it could be.” Rodney lifted his chin, wonder and fear in his eyes. “We’re talking about a wormhole that can bridge between universes.”
“Is that even possible?”
“I have no idea, but after today, yes, I would say so.”
“And it’s going to destroy the Pegasus galaxy?”
“It’s going to rip a hole in the fabric of space big enough to take out the galaxy and more. I assure you, the ramifications of that, while only theoretical at the moment, are extremely unpleasant.”
“Cataclysmic,” Radek muttered.
“Yes, yes, we might as well be living next to a black hole.”
John felt his emergency and last ditch effort heartrate take flight. His mind spinning out, he tried to catch Rodney’s eye, but he’d looked away. “So we have to get out of here.”
“Sooner rather than later,” Radek said.
Rodney stared off at his work, his eyes distant, shaking his head.
*
Ronon was suiting up in his quarters, stuffing food and what looked like Gnassa credits into a rucksack, when John buzzed his door. He’d heard that Elizabeth was offering, on behalf of the SGC, sanctuary to what people Ronon and Teyla wanted to bring with them to Earth, which was a weak concession to the fact that they were leaving everyone else in the galaxy behind. Teyla had already left, still looking determined and brave. Ronon had a harder job ahead of him as far as John understood it, because his people didn’t always want to be found.
“24 hours isn’t much time,” John said, not walking into the room but leaning on the doorframe. Ronon didn’t answer, yanking hard on the ties to his rucksack, tightening them.
“Do you need any help?”
“Not much you can do.”
“Are you okay with this?” This was a vague gesture to all that was happening---teams in the corridors packing up and talking, in disbelief, about going home, and the swift deadline that was nearly promoting panic.
“Doc’s going to take Kedram and fix him up. I can’t let him go alone.”
“You’d stay otherwise?”
Ronon shrugged. “I don’t see that I have a choice.”
“No, and I’m glad you see that, ‘cause if you were determined to get obliterated along with the rest of the galaxy I’d have to curse your stubborn ass in all my stories.” He tried to smile, but it felt cheap. “So, listen. I think you should know what to expect on Earth. The SGC will treat you great, but I don’t think you’ll be allowed to move around freely for a while.”
“I know. I put up with that for you when I came here. Remember?”
He remembered. The backwards glance stung a little too sharp and he put on a things-to-do act. “Right. Well, look, how ever many dark alley worlds you’re headed to, get back here on time and don’t get into trouble, okay?”
“Sure.” Ronon shouldered his pack and walked past him through the doorway.
“Good luck.”
*
Rodney wasn’t taking a break so much as having a very calm nervous breakdown. It happened when he was too tired to sleep and thinking too fast to get any work done. John sat it out with him, waiting until he crashed or prioritized---either would do. He knew from long hours of experience that there was no point in coaxing him in either direction.
Rodney sat with his head bent over an old glass coffee pot, feeding tiny pieces of Atlantis-shrimp to what passed as a salamander.
“I need to get back to work,” Rodney said for the fifteen-hundredth time. John nodded agreeably just as Elizabeth came into the lab.
"Why--" Elizabeth began. Why do you have a salamander in a coffee pot?
"This is no place for a cat, Elizabeth," Rodney explained.
She wisely let it go. “John, we could really use your help in the evacuation.”
“Just taking a break,” John replied.
The salamander opened his jaws wide, looking exactly like a miniature muppet, and gummed Rodney's forefinger. Rodney smiled indulgently and tapped the little guy on the head.
“Okay, can I expect you in, say, an hour?” She was being too careful and overly generous and John just nodded, almost dismissively. Then she sat down like she wanted to talk---though she hid it by taking an interest in Rodney’s pet salamander---and John had rarely been more grateful for one of Rodney’s scientists coming and interrupting them.
“Miko,” Rodney said tiredly, “I seem to remember telling you to get out and pack up.”
“You did, Dr. McKay,” she said, bowing her head, contrite but somehow smiling too. “I am very sorry. But I have finished my work on the attack console. I am sorry it is too late.”
Rodney considered the computer she handed him, then considered her. “Well,” he said, “it looks like you won.” He found her hand and shook it gracefully.
“It is too late for it to be any use,” Miko protested apologetically.
“That doesn’t matter. Thank you. I’ll take this with me, okay? Now…” and he gestured to her, not unkindly, to scram.
Elizabeth looked like she had thought of better places to be herself, and stood, holding herself stiffly and awkwardly. “I’ll see you in an hour, then,” she said, and something in her eyes changed.
It was that same unwanted concern and pity he’d seen and hated for a year. It was a look that made him grind his teeth, and damn her because he never had flashbacks, he didn’t even care, it was nothing worse than a hundred other things that had happened to him, except when she looked at him like that he thought of long slicing arcs of lightning and the smell of burning hair.
Maybe she stared at him that very same way because he looked the same as he had back in that damn place. His mouth twitched and he wanted to pummel the crap out of someone. He wanted to push her back and tell her to get over it already.
He was breathing in gulps and suddenly his gut feeling swerved, like a flock of sandpipers sweeping up into an instant about-face.
She was so sorry. And she’d lost Atlantis long ago. When the expedition turned into survival just for survival’s sake, and half-assed mission reports smothered all sense of progress, she’d started thinking retreat. In another life she’d gone on for ten thousand years just to wake up and rotate the ZPMs because it meant everything---and now she’d let go of it all. Maybe she knew it too, maybe she was sorry for that, maybe it was a regret she couldn't bear to face.
He stopped just short of reaching for her, but the effect was the same. “You’re going to take them by storm, whatever’s happening on Earth.”
She nodded, and there was fire in her eyes. “They need us.”
*
Ronon came through the ‘gate alone. From the moment he saw him, John was surprised he'd come back at all, his expression was so closed down and dark. Then he noticed his lip was swollen and his clothes were muddy. He thought about following him as Ronon stalked out, but he knew he was the type of self-possessed soldier who could live in crowded barracks, nose-to-nose for months with other men, and still be private as all hell. And he'd bet that no one ever messed with him when he looked the way he did now.
Anger bubbled to the surface---he didn’t want to think of how he’d spent the last twenty hours. Not one single person came with him. It hit home; it was like a backwards glance to an empty house, opening the door and finding everyone had gone. John shook himself; he wanted a fight, and he didn’t want to fight clean.
He kept his head down and went back to the lab; he didn’t need to hang around supervising people while they packed anyway. Rodney jumped and hastily shut his computer when he came in then glared when he saw it was John.
“Rodney,” John said, and it was the kind of tone that stopped McKay in his tracks. “How sure are you about all this? About everything?”
“I’m sure. John, I’m sure. Sure enough for us, I mean, it’s---I wouldn’t want---”
He exhaled a thousand days’ worth of trouble and unfolded his knotted hands. “I know.”
Rodney was looking at him weird, like he knew something had happened, but John couldn’t tell him. He tried to think of something else to say instead but he couldn’t, and his hands floated uselessly, searching for something to do. He reached for Rodney’s bad left hand and rubbed out the tension but really he was comforting himself.
“John,” Rodney said.
“Colonel Sheppard?” his radio buzzed. “Teyla’s returning through the ‘gate.”
He outran Rodney, he couldn’t help it. He got to the gateroom feeling sick to his stomach and Teyla was there, surrounded by---he counted---14 people. His gut clenched.
“Teyla, where…?” he asked, where are the rest?
“These are all that would come,” she said, and she was trying so hard to keep her chin from trembling that John had to cup her face, run a thumb over her cheek.
Tears were silently running down her face by the time Rodney got to the gateroom, looking pale and limping slightly. Teyla automatically reached out a hand to support him, lifting her face with a quiet look that seemed to deny the fact that she was crying.
Rodney didn't wait for explanations. "I should have come with you," he said earnestly, regret rising into fury and frustration. "We can go back, I can make them understand."
Teyla searched his eyes, and then she was reaching out to him again, hands on Rodney’s upper arms, pressing her forehead against his. It was brief and gentle but sincere; she let him go with a half-smile and then squeezed John's arm.
"We cannot force them," she said as she left to speak to her people.
Rodney looked more than a little lost.
"Come on, back to the lab," John said. "The ZPMs."
*
The hours slipped by; Rodney finally declared that the grey-matter ZPMs weren’t going to blow up or---more unpalatably---develop consciousness, and handed over crates that Elizabeth could bring to the SGC like a prize. She would be the first to go through, closely followed by the rest of the expedition members and refugees, and John and Lorne would bring up the rear, making sure via scanners and an ongoing head count that no one got left behind. People were lined up with their gear in the corridors that led to the gateroom; Rodney hadn’t left the lab yet and when it come down to the last hour, Elizabeth came to fetch him and John trailed her, because she needed him; he would support her and nothing would go to hell now.
“Rodney, I’ll need someone to explain the finer points of galaxy-wide destruction as soon as we get to Stargate Command.”
“Take Radek ahead.”
“It’s not like you to turn down the spotlight.”
“I’m still working. I’m trying to bring back as much information as I can to salvage at least a percent of the technology we’ll never be able to crack. Just let me work. Please.”
“All right, Rodney,” Elizabeth nodded, backing off understandingly. “See you on the other side. Zelenka, you’re with me.”
Radek went, leaning over McKay’s shoulder as he passed him, muttering, “You know how nervous I am talking to generals.”
“You’ll be fine. See you.”
And then time pedaled uphill hard and Elizabeth spoke over city-wide communication, a strange, hurried thank you for all these years, for the work and life of the mission and John was calm though his heart was pounding. Then Elizabeth went forward with Radek and the crates, and they disappeared through the wormhole and others stepped up to follow. John sat down on the stairs while Lorne kept count and wondered if Rodney would turn off whole city-sections of power, and if the lights were going off, bit by bit.
*
Lorne counted off everyone but him and John and McKay, and then he tapped the city-wide lifesign detector in the control room.
“Okay, we’re clear.”
John nodded. “Head on through, Major.”
"What about Dr. McKay?"
John pulled a face and activated his radio. "Rodney, time to go. Get on up here." Then to Lorne: “Go through.”
"Sir, with all due respect, I think you should go first."
"I'm ordering you to go through, Major. Get on with it."
“Colonel---“
"Get through the goddamned 'gate, Lorne." He stared Lorne down, making a show of sliding his hand down to his P90.
"Hell," Lorne said quietly. He shook his head. "Hell, Sheppard, what the hell?"
John just stared, a twitch growing in his hand. Lorne’s face twisted, and then he seemed to come to a decision, straightening up as if he’d heard a silent order.
"Right. I'm going to get grilled in the debriefing, you know, is there anything I should say?"
Bobbing his head, John said, "We're all just a bunch of strung-out people. Screwed up, all of us. You can say that."
"Right," Lorne nodded and started to walk towards the 'gate.
"Listen. You're one in a million. I don’t say that often."
Stalling just a moment in front of the event horizon, Lorne smiled. "You too. See you, sir."
When he disappeared, silence closed in like water. He treaded the seconds and refused to think he was drowning.
When Rodney arrived, he headed straight to the DHD, said his name, and waited for an answer.
When he finally nodded, Rodney shut down the wormhole.
They didn’t speak again for half an hour.
*
The labs were all a mess; so was every elsewhere, really. Stuff abandoned in corridors and doors left open, bedrooms half-stripped and tossed. They walked carefully as if they thought there might be people hiding around corners. But there was no one---the scanners proved it.
“They left the windows open,” John observed.
“We didn’t tell them not to.”
“No.” And he was glad.
At the back of Rodney’s main lab there was a dark pile of boxes and spare parts and junk in general, and he started rummaging, handing things off to John, who put them down in the corner. At the bottom was a crate with a combination lock which Rodney swiftly spun, and then they pulled off the lid. Inside lay three ZPMs: six times the power of one.
“What first?” John asked, trying to sound normal, like this was just another day, like they always did this. Rodney didn’t answer as they moved the crate nearer the centre of the room, and then he was tapping on his laptop again. And sure, there must have been a million things Rodney needed to take care of, the entire weight of Atlantis resting on his ability to stay one step ahead of all her needs, but John felt lost. He wanted to grab him and make him stop working, stop thinking about getting on with it and have their moment to look at each other and say, is this really happening? Rodney pushed off in his chair, rolling to another computer, holding up a finger when John so much as opened his mouth. John crossed his arms. He leaned.
Rodney was pouring over a third computer when something caught his eye and he stopped. Picking up a scrap of paper lying on the table, he turned to John.
“Radek.”
Good luck. I will tell very heroic stories of what you’ve done.
*
John made up errands for himself, and at least once in an hour his mind went back to the imaginary Wishing device, and it was silly but whenever he thought of it he had to pray in earnest, let this work. Rodney’s face glowed by computer-light and John didn’t push him, didn’t remind him needlessly to hurry. He helped when Rodney asked him to but mostly just stuck with him wherever he was, crouched under a console or hunched over a computer, handing over food and water and sometimes talking against the enormous weight of silence that was Atlantis emptied. When his hand spasmed John helped him and made him take a break. In those snatches of time they’d stretch out on the floor and talk about Earth, though never about people. John was thinking of a beach and a long sunset and a turning point, and he wanted to tell him, and it was fumbling and incomplete when he finally did, but Rodney just nodded.
“I hate looking back on things,” John tried to explain. “I decided that’s the last good thing I’m going to see come to an end.”
“Everything ends,” Rodney said quietly.
“Earth’s the last home I’ll never return to. When this ends,” he shook his head, “it ends for good.”
In the last 40 hours when Rodney started bringing new systems online, they didn’t speak and Rodney never stopped.
*
Eventually Rodney led him to the chair room and told him to sit down. He said it like any other order for food or grunt work, but John heard it like an offering.
“How good are our weapons, really?” he asked, his voice hoarse from silence.
“Good. And they better be, for all the power they eat. The old drone attack console is...well, smarter, faster, better, and as much as I’d like to take credit for that, it’s Miko’s work. But the lightning in a bottle, that’s mine, and it’s more the sort of thing you need for this job, I would think. There are actually ten points of discharge all around the city, and I can boost the output a lot higher than what we did in that test. That’ll get someone’s attention.”
“I’m beginning to get why you love ZPMs so much.”
“At this point, I love even modified grey matter ZPMs. Now, if you’ll excuse me---“
“Wait.” There was one question that had been in his mouth from the start, or at least it felt that way; he’d been sucking on it for months. “How fast?”
Rodney looked up, and John got that there should have been a window so he could smile at the sky. “Fast as you’d like it. Seriously, and Atlantis isn’t a revolving restaurant. Fast. Now, sit down.”
Rodney knelt beside him, nearly buried in hardware and splitting his attention between half a dozen monitors.
Sweat slipped between him and the chair, slicked under his palms, sealing up every place where the skin of his hands didn't quite touch the palm-pad. He longed after some of the familiar trappings of flight: harness, helmet, visor, radio, screens and dials. The deep rumbling hastened and buzzed in his chest, and Rodney looked like he was trying to hold everything together with his teeth. Light shot through his eyes and exploded behind them, streaks of colour leaking into his head, and when he could see again shapes hovered above him: a projection, a wandering view searching for a flightpath. He clenched his jaw tighter.
And what if her engines were just wax wings; they could tear her apart just trying to lift her from the ocean---oh, but Icarus isn't sorry, John knew this more than anything.
“Rodney. You’ve never had the engines on for more than point-one second. We might go down in a big ball of fire, right?”
“Yes, and since we don’t take passengers it won’t be on your conscience.”
John laughed weakly and swallowed. His heart was pounding.
"Rodney. How close are you?"
"I don't know--I don't know. Just hold on, it'll come together..."
John thought, closing his eyes, he could feel her bucking to fly.
*
When everything lit up and all the systems engaged with each other and data poured out, Rodney breathed something halfway between a laugh and a gasp.
“I think we’ve got it. John…John, have you got a hold on the interface?”
John stared up at the starfield, feeling like freefall, his stomach jumping. “What should I think about?”
Maybe there wasn’t anything left for Rodney to do, because he put a hand on John’s knee. “Think about lifting off, going into orbit.”
Atlantis was huge and he felt like he had to lift her himself, and it was too much. “Rodney,” he said, and Rodney squeezed his knee and the deep hum that was everything was getting louder.
He took a deep breath.
“You can close your eyes,” Rodney said. “I’ll tell you what’s happening.”
So he closed his eyes and tried to think Atlantis was light as a seed caught in the breeze, lifting up, carried into sky.
“What’s happening?” he asked, little more than a whisper.
“You’re doing it,” Rodney breathed.
Sweat fell down his face. Orbit. Orbit. Orbit. It was terrifying---and beyond wonderful.
“Can you do this? I mean, keep it up?” Rodney asked. “It would take me days---or weeks---to rig up a more standard interface.”
Something more standard than hard hope and swift thoughts, John supposed. He swallowed. “It’s fine. It’s not really so new as you’d think.”
“Right,” Rodney said, unconvinced. “You need to try to set a flightpath based on these coordinates. If we want to take them by surprise, we’ve got no time to lose.”
He could do it; they could do it; the Hal would never see it coming; and tonight the galaxy was theirs for the taking.
*
The End.
*I ought to give due credit here to Don McKay, Canadian poet and author of Another Gravity, from whom I lifted the fine line “Icarus isn’t sorry.”
Rating: PG-13 (for some creepy, nasty villains)
Characters: John, Rodney
Genre: Future-Fic, Action
Disclaimer: not for profit!
Summary: This is just one vision of the future. Pretend, for a moment, that you got stranded somewhere for a few years, only to return and watch the series finale of SGA without having a chance to catch up.
And special thanks to my beta-honeypepper blurryeyes!
*
He woke Rodney an hour before landing to be sure he’d be alert. Then he went over the mission plan again---and again---drilling in the points like Army core values.
“When I say 'shield' you do it. And when I say, ‘cloak’, you do that too. We won’t be able to see each other so stay close and move wherever I tell you. We are not getting separated so if you can’t follow directions and figure out where I am, I’ll have to break out the kindergarten rope. Keep your radios open but don’t talk unless you have to, in case they stumble on our channel. Don’t touch anything unless I say so.”
“Wait, wait, no,” Rodney broke in. “Shouldn’t that be, you don’t touch anything unless I tell you to?”
“Nope,” John shook his head, “you advise me on what’s worth touching and wait for my go-ahead. Don’t get too close to anything either. And if they’re on to us, we run. Lorne, help McKay; McKay, let him help you. We clear?”
As the planet came into view, so did a hive ship and darts in orbit. Rodney leaned over John’s shoulder, eyes glued to the HUD.
“Looks like the darts are swarming around the base,” John said.
Lorne nodded. “They’re delivering bodies. But there won’t be many Wraith on foot, and they’ll have their hands full.”
On the HUD, the complex showed up loud and clear, a hot spot on the energy sensors. The complex was big, though not nearly as big as Atlantis, and as perfectly utilitarian in design as one could imagine.
“Rest of the planet’s pretty much a wasteland,” Lorne said. “Reeks like sulphur.”
“Oh, now he tells us,” Rodney grimaced.
“I’m sorry, there wasn’t a space on the mission report form to state my olfactory experiences.”
John pulled the jumper into a descent. “Okay, I’m going to do a fly-over at a couple hundred feet, see what we’ve got. Hang on.”
Threading through a fleet of darts with a little more risk and flair than was necessary, John brought the jumper almost right on top of the complex and then swept over it slowly, while Rodney was straining to make sense of the readings. After making some adjustments to the sensor-sensitivity, Rodney brought up a strangely-coloured energy map of the building.
“All right, good. This shows us where the big energy source is concentrated. If we can get to this section of the building I’ll have a chance to learn more about what this thing actually is. There’s a secondary energy source that could power the base. Then there are some smaller readings here, and by ‘smaller’ I still mean comparable to a ZPM. All this is probably powering fairly essential stuff, so we’ll blow our cover if we disconnect anything, but I doubt they’ll go from ‘oh look, our systems are down’ to ‘we’ve been infiltrated by invisible intruders’ in less than five minutes. Hopefully.”
John bit his lip in concentration, alternating his attention between Rodney’s energy-map and his flightpath. “Then we’ll just have to be fast.”
He put the jumper down a fair distance from the complex, cutting down on the likelihood that any Wraith of Hal would bump into it. Then he opened the hatch and he and Lorne surveyed the scene with the tactical binoculars. It was surreal, that was the overwhelming impression---the quiet, almost subdued way the Wraith carried the bodies after the darts beamed them down; efficiently but not roughly, not tossing them like they were worthless. The complex rose from cracked dry soil, white and gleaming in the sun, and the place was so weirdly devoid of any other sign of life---no Hal-craft or paths or vegetation---that it looked like a quarantined morgue.
He swept the binoculars to the building’s entrance and watched the Wraith go in and come out again. Beside him, Lorne spoke softly.
“Shouldn’t be hard to get in. The Wraith work in shifts but they never really stop. The entrance isn’t guarded or coded as far as we could tell.”
John watched. A few minutes later, just when Rodney was starting to get impatient and nervous behind them, he saw two figures emerge from the building, tall and white-clad and pale, and blank as Ronon had described.
“Huh,” he said.
“That’s them.”
The two Hal wore belts with weapons---a nerve disruptor among others John didn’t recognize---and strange asymmetrical helmets mounted with dials and equipment. They stood like overseers, motionless and looming.
Three AI pods circled overhead; maybe they were being more cautious after Lorne’s failed recon mission, but the pods weren’t detecting the cloaked jumper. John exhaled a long breath.
“Okay. Gear up and engage the cloaking devices. Let’s get this show on the road.”
One by one, John’s team flickered out, made invisible and untraceable, leaving John feeling alone even though his teammates were right beside him. He hit his radio, which McKay had rigged to work through the cloak. “Stay with me, don’t move yet. We’re going to head straight for the entrance, hold onto my pack if you have to, just stay together. Right; let’s go.”
They went out slowly, avoiding kicking up plumes of dust from the dry earth. Hard as the ground was, they did leave footprints, which was enough to set John’s teeth on edge. One of a million things could go wrong and they’d be toast, burned like Kedram or paralyzed, and they’d likely join the stacks of bodies that lay before them. For himself, John had no qualms being here---they were nearly on the edge of the end of the world, the Hal being so unfathomably powerful, and this might be their last chance to do something. Maybe he could have come alone; maybe he should have; maybe he could have blown the place up, and maybe that would be enough to save Atlantis.
“---track mud on their nice white floors,” Lorne was saying, an ironic smile in his voice
“Ow! What are you, ten years old? Where are you? Stop poking me,” Rodney yelped.
They walked past the bodies as the Wraith brought them in. John didn’t look, put all his attention into being unnoticeable, and when the Hal at the entrance started to walk back inside, he told his team to follow him in. The entrance was wide and led to a white corridor, a large round tunnel with fluid twists and turns. They inched down it, all but blinded by white, and there were weird, weird noises like echoing screeches and thunder, and layered on top of that was McKay's frantic breathing over the radio. John could feel a kind of tingling static on his fingers if they brushed too near him or Lorne, which was useful because his handheld sensor showed nothing, not even a flicker, where the three of them ought to be.
Two of the Hal walked by in the opposite direction---it was a scramble to keep from bumping into them. John chewed on his lip and stared straight into the Hal’s face as they approached: not completely blank, not smooth and utterly without feature: the pale skin had slits where eyes might be, more like wrinkles that made John think of naked mole-rats; and a long, too-long, thin slash for a mouth. The helmet concealed the rest, but long fingers reached up and touched the dials on the side of its head. He held his breath until the two Hal were past, then followed the other Hal through a door into another white corridor.
"You getting anything?" he asked, and heard McKay's breath hitch like he'd been startled.
"Yeah, uh, yeah. It's just...it's unbelievable. But I can’t track anything because it reads as one big energy source."
“Perfect,” John sighed. “We’ll just have to keep following the Hal around.”
“I wish they’d say something,” Lorne mused. “It’s like they know we’re behind them.”
“I’d almost rather they didn’t,” John admitted. This place was creepy enough.
Finally the Hal stopped outside an oval-shaped door and pressed on panels on either side of it. A beeping noise echoed all the way down the tunnel.
“Are we following them in?” Lorne asked.
John gave it two seconds’ thought. “Yes. Stay right up close behind me, don’t know if the door’s going to snap shut fast. Hustle. Hustle.”
The door opened fluidly and the two Hal stepped inside, and John pressed on behind them, far too close for his liking. Rodney---he thought it was Rodney---had his hand on his back. They cleared the door.
“McKay? What is that thing?”
It could have been anything. Coal-black, monolithical in scale, thrumming, no joints or seams, and no reflection---it almost seemed to suck light into it. Its edges weren’t convincing either, like in the dark when things seemed to move. The rest of the room was the same featureless white, except for a silver control panel that looked intense for all its smallness.
John felt someone brush up near him---Lorne. “Did we bring a pick axe by chance? Because if all the rooms are like this, we’re going to have to tear up the walls.”
“That’s subtle,” John replied. “McKay, where are you?”
“Right behind them. For all the good it’s going to do us, seeing as the readouts are in another language.”
There was a noise---deep and gravely and strange---and John swore it came from one of the Hal. He shifted uneasily. “Get over here, McKay. Don’t get close to them.”
The Hal worked fast at the controls; John felt the change before he saw it, the whole room was buzzing. The thrumming got louder, then impossibly loud, and the coal-black monolith was radiating, supernova-bright and hot, and suddenly it was liquid light, as if the monolith was beyond molten, without boundary at all. Then blackness plunged and the bedlam stopped, except John could still hear it and he was a bit flash-blind.
He waited until his senses calmed. “McKay? Lorne?”
“What the hell was that, sir?”
“We’re lucky it didn’t fry my scanner,” Rodney said breathlessly. “Hey---the Hal are gone.”
John turned in time to see the door shut. Damnit.
“All right, let’s just sit tight. McKay, what do you make of that thing?”
“I’ve got nothing. Seriously. I cannot begin to make you understand how much power that thing potentially has.”
“What’s the point of heating up a big…box?”
“It wasn’t heating it up or we’d all be dead. Though I might---oh yes, I definitely have a sunburn here.”
“Rodney,” John said, trying to get him on track.
“Seriously, it’s a waste of time trying to get answers when all I can do is talk theoretical physics at you, which we know you understand so well. I promise, I’ll give you a shadow puppet version once I get back to the lab and figure this out. Now, I’ll be over there trying to commit the control panel to memory.”
John half-rolled his eyes and moved until he felt the static off Lorne’s cloak. “Think we can get out the door? I’m not reading any lifesigns.”
“Isn’t that what you brought McKay for?”
“We could try pressing on those door-panels. Question is, are we going to set off an alarm?”
“I’m guessing yes. Not much point having them otherwise.”
John heard a rustle and looked around, only to realize it was coming from the radio. More rustling, then…chewing.
“Rodney, are you eating?”
“Hello, we could be stuck in here for hours.”
“You might make yourself useful,” Lorne said.
“And do what? My God, it’s like you want me to kill us.”
“Quiet down,” John snapped. “Rodney. What do you think about the door?”
“I think we’d better leave it if we don’t want to attract attention. But hey, feel free to get the Hal down here with their nice big weapons. We can test the shields.”
“Enough,” John scowled. He really didn’t like waiting. Then he looked at his scanner and saw two lifesigns approaching. “Okay, looks like we have company. Get ready---“ and he grabbed McKay by his tac vest and pulled him--- “get by the door. If they come in, we might have enough time to get through that damn door.”
They had enough time---just barely. In the corridor he listened to Rodney’s breathing for a few minutes as they stood alone and lost.
“All right. Let’s keep going. There’s more Hal up ahead, watch out for them.”
They turned a few bends, which, since the tunnel was so featureless, was almost the only way John could tell he was actually moving at all. There were four Hal and a couple doors; he watched as, up ahead, one of the Hal slipped through a door, and---for a mere moment---he saw into the room, white like the hall, blinding white everywhere, except for red blood, blood and bodies. It was so brief a glance he wasn’t sure of what he saw, but he couldn’t get it out of his head either. He stopped short and Lorne bumped into him from behind, and he stayed put, like waiting for the afterimage of the sun to fade from his eyes, like being heat sick too.
“Hold up,” John said. “We’re not going in there.”
Rodney’s breath hitched again. “What is it?”
“Lot of Wraith-kill. They’re experimenting on them.”
“I think we better check it out,” Rodney replied, his voice strained.
“You heard the Colonel,” Lorne said.
“At the risk of being unpopular, I have reason to believe that whatever experiments they’re doing are to further their technology, which means we might find a power source in there, even something small. So I think we need to check it out and believe me, I’d really rather we didn’t have to.”
John figured he had about 20 second to decide, if they wanted to follow the other Hal in on their heels. He grimaced. “We’re going in. Lorne, you can wait outside and cover us if you want.”
“Thanks but no thanks, sir,” Lorne said resignedly.
And so they went in.
It wasn’t violent, not like the back of a butcher shop was violent. It was cold and calculating and there was really less blood than John had thought. More like a pathologist’s lab, not that that was at all comforting. But it wasn’t experiments like the kind of holocaust war-crime experiments that had leapt to his mind; and the bodies had not been exactly desecrated. Not that John was looking, because he wasn’t, he was not looking so hard it hurt his eyes.
There were the typical trappings of pathology: metal tables, instruments, ceiling lamps, clinging white winding sheets. The Hal were at the back of the room, with computers and wires and things too complicated for his mind to sort out---and brains. Brains hooked up to wires, brains missing from the bodies he was walking past---
He didn’t stop but his legs were on auto-pilot and his vision greyed out for just a second, feeling unbelievably numb. What the hell were they doing here?
“Colonel---“ Rodney’s voice came to him weakly.
This feeling was no stranger to him. Breathing sand, drowning in sand, sand stuck under his eyelids and grinding down his teeth, in a heat wave that wouldn’t let up even in the dead of night but just stuck to him like sweat, in a goddamned hole stinking of corpse-rot, the sky flashing and bombs falling, yeah, for a moment back then he’d lost sight of what the damned point was of everything. But he wouldn’t let it swallow him whole; he knew it was about the good guys beating the bad guys, and with tears burning his eyes because he was trying not to cough up an entire desert, he’d tried to make it about saving home.
And it made more sense now than it had back then.
“Colonel.”
“Yeah.”
“They’ve got ZPMs.”
John looked up, looked around, and his eyes settled on the modules at the back of the room, some of them in pieces, and then there were wires again and pieces of---
“I was wrong,” Rodney said. “I figured they used neural matter as part of the AI. Because that would make sense, wouldn’t it? Whatever the Hal do, it doesn’t make sense.”
“What are you saying?” Lorne asked.
“It’s as if they can tap the brain as a power source.”
“Well, we’re just energy, aren’t we? I mean,” and John didn’t like to bring this up, “the Ancients ascended into pure energy.”
Maybe that was it, somehow, and John was momentarily glad his imagination wasn’t constrained by laws and reality like Rodney’s, because what if the energy of the very essence of a person could mingle with the power of a ZPM?
“Look at that,” Rodney said as they drew close to the Hal. They were working on the ZPMs they’d laid open in pieces, and they had three more that were reconstructed and hooked up like they were being tested. On another table lay five more, reconstructed with strange thin bands around it, as if it had been opened and now needed to be held closed, but otherwise perfect and not hooked up to anything.
"They all look jury-rigged," Lorne noted.
"Um-hmm. And it's probably best not to dwell on the details, but there’s only one reason they could be doing this: to make them even more powerful."
"A grey matter ZPM?"
"Well, like I said, it's best not to dwell on that. This is the best-case scenario by far, Colonel; they’ve got ZPMs here that aren’t hooked up to anything. We can take them right from under their noses. Just put them in your packs---and don’t, please, don’t hold them up in the air, try to keep them on the table until they’re cloaked. Let’s not attract any attention, shall we?”
In the briefing Rodney had said something about "discrete packets" and if John had followed his explanation as well as he thought he had, it meant that an object outside the cloak would get cloaked only when someone pulled it completely through the field, which extended about six inches around their bodies at any point. After that it would only reappear once every part of one’s body was more than six inches away from it. So all John had to do was lean over and put his arms down to cradle the module and it disappeared all at once. From there he carefully loaded it into his pack, and the Hal didn’t notice a thing.
They took all five, and John’s heartrate rose again, the mission hovering between its most successful and most dangerous moment. They waited an eternity by the door and eventually made their breathless escape, and when they found sunlight again it was all he could do not to run.
*
Elizabeth was there waiting when the jumper came through the ‘gate, and they stepped out like heroes---stunned, adrenaline-high heroes.
“You will never, I repeat, never, in a million years, guess what we have.” Rodney was fairly bouncing.
“A ZPM,” Elizabeth said.
“No, no, no. Not a ZPM. Five ZPMs. Five souped-up ZPMs, in fact.” He opened his pack and carefully took one out. “Isn’t it beautiful?
“Five---five ZPMs!” Elizabeth wheeled around, looking to John for answers. “I’m calling everyone up for a debriefing now.”
“And I would love, really love to tell my part of our truly brilliant heist,” Rodney was saying animatedly, “but I’m going to go find out everything I can about these babies. The Colonel and Major Lorne can tell you everything---from a military standpoint at least---and I’ll let you know the minute I have some answers, and keep in mind I work faster without interruptions---unless someone wants to send down some lunch, that would be…right. Going now.”
Elizabeth was shaking her head and beaming; she laid a hand on John’s arm as they headed to the briefing room for an urgent meeting of all department heads. John sat back, self-satisfied, his mind still spinning with what they’d done.
“All right, thank you all for coming, I’m sure by now you’ve heard the news. Assuming the ZPMs are charged, this is our way home. I’m ordering a withdrawal of the expedition as soon as Dr. McKay gives us the green light.”
John bolted upright, then held himself very, very still.
No one said anything; they looked at John, but he refused to speak, forcing down stunned anger and making his expression unreadable. Tactics, he thought fiercely, strategy. Finally he glanced at Lorne, just a quick pitch of his eye, and Lorne caught it easily. He was all level-headedness and practicality.
“Dr. Weir, do you mean a complete evacuation?”
“Yes,” she said as if this were obvious. “I’m surprised the Hal aren’t at our doorstep as we speak, trying to get their ZPMs back, and now we have the means to go home and help our own people. We know the SGC is just as desperate for ZPMs as we are---giving them five of them might make all the difference in the world. I don’t know any more about what’s happening on Earth than you do, but I’ve known for a while now that our first responsibility, when we get a spare ZPM, is to go home. So, yes, I’m saying we abandon the expedition. It’s a matter of duty.”
“Do you intend to destroy Atlantis?” Teyla asked.
“It may be necessary. But from what we’ve seen of their technological capabilities, they don’t need Atlantis. They have tremendous power supplies and smart enough weapons that they haven’t even bothered to engage us face to face. On the surface, it seems what they want are victims for their experiments.”
She paused, looking around the table. “I’m setting the evacuation to take place in 24 hours. Teyla and Ronon, it’s your decision if you want to come with us, of course. I realize there’s not much time. I need all of you to help organize teams to pack everything up.”
John put his fists on the table and leaned forward. “What about the rest of the people in this galaxy? The sanctuary worlds? We’re just going to pick up and leave? We have ZPMs, we can try to take on the Hal.”
“No, John. 24 hours---that’s my final word. We’ve got work to do,” she said and stood up, signaling the others to start in on the evacuation procedures. John didn’t move.
When they were alone and the doors swung back shut, John got up slowly, tenuously holding himself in check, still calculating out the situation. “Let’s get this out in the open: I’m not turning my back on Atlantis. I’m not turning my back on the people we promised to help. And if you had any courage or self-respect, you wouldn’t either.”
She had the gall to look patronizing. “John,” she said, almost reaching for him, “you’re tired like everyone else. You’re tired and sick of this and you can’t tell me you don’t want to go home. This isn’t about staying and fighting. It doesn’t make sense. We can’t go up against the Hal.”
She stepped closer and John held his arms stiffly across his chest. Her eyes were coaxing, pleading.
“You don’t have to prove anything to me or anyone,” she said all too gently. “It’s okay. We do what we have to survive and we take care of our people back home. It’s not really giving up, John, it’s okay.”
She was all misplaced concern and slick self-preservation. He knew where it came from and he hated it, he clenched his teeth and looked away, frustration and desperation combining into a violent urge. But he was never violent, he reminded himself. He was cool-headed. Cold, if he had to be. He was cold.
It had been so cold on the hive ship.
“Stop trying to save me,” he said hoarsely. “We have to save Atlantis.”
“It’s okay to want to go home, John,” Elizabeth quietly insisted, and tried to touch his hand, but he was already heading out the door.
Lorne was there waiting; they walked off together for a spell before he opened his mouth. “Sir?”
“Don’t ask any questions. I’m going to take command. Beckett won’t back me up, I’ve asked him before, so we’re going to have to do this ourselves. We’re not leaving Atlantis.”
Lorne looked at him straight on, and John could see he wasn’t forming questions but weighing his words.
“Colonel, with the ZPMs we’ll have enough power to operate the shield and open a wormhole back to Earth. Whether it’s Dr. Weir or the SGC, people are going to be making decisions for us pretty soon.” He shook his head. “You can’t stop this.”
“Like hell I can’t,” John spat, and he felt his knees start to give out, adrenaline betraying him, acid rising in his empty stomach. He coughed and straightened; Lorne’s hand slipped under his elbow for a moment, a solicitous flicker in his eyes. “We won’t open a wormhole, we won’t talk to the SGC. McKay’s got better things to do with the ZPMs anyway. What you’re going to do is get a sedative off Beckett and slip it to Weir, and I don’t like that any more than you do, but she’ll just sleep and you’ll say she collapsed.”
“You can’t keep her out of the game for long,” Lorne insisted. “The doc will be on to you, and then there’ll be trouble. I’m just saying---“
“No questions,” John said.
“I’m just saying, Colonel, maybe we talk to people, get them on our side. Enough people want to stay, we stay; it’s still messy but you need people backing you.”
John stumbled forward and Lorne’s hand caught him again.
“If you don’t trust me you better tell me right now,” John said.
“I’m not saying Dr. Weir is right, sir, you know that. We’re all of us screwed up, and believe me, you’re a bit of a mess. But I know who should be in command here and I won’t turn on you. Sir, you’ve got 24 hours, you can take half an hour to sit down and catch your breath and stop looking like crap. That’s all I’m saying.”
John stared at him hard, trying to figure it all out just by the twitch of Lorne’s eyes, but there was nothing there to see that wasn’t written plainly on his face. “All right,” John said, and took a breath. “I hear you loud and clear.”
And he did; he saw that Lorne thought he was a little crazy, and that Lorne wasn’t going to let him down.
*
"Rodney, we have a situation--"
"What a surprise, we have one here too."
"Rodney, Elizabeth wants to evacuate everyone to Earth."
"No kidding, and don't waste your breath trying to change her mind." He turned and called across the room, "Radek, have you finished running the numbers yet?"
"I have done the calculations four times now Rodney, I tell you I am not going to get a different result."
"Then you need to find out where you screwed up, because your numbers don't make sense."
"Rodney. It's not going to make sense, not by any physics known to man."
"Do you actually think that's an excuse?"
The two scientists were staring each other down and this could go on for hours, so John made an impatient noise. "Would you mind filling me in on your theory?"
McKay pressed his lips into a thin frown before punching up some display on his laptop that failed to illuminate John. “The readings I took from the base are, as Radek pointed out, outside the realm of physics, but we think they were experimenting with something, and if they get it to work---and I see every indication that they will---this whole galaxy isn’t going to exist anymore.”
“What kind of experiment? A weapon?”
“We can’t be sure, of course---“
“We’re pretty sure,” Radek cut in.
“We’re mostly sure. There’s not much else it could be.” Rodney lifted his chin, wonder and fear in his eyes. “We’re talking about a wormhole that can bridge between universes.”
“Is that even possible?”
“I have no idea, but after today, yes, I would say so.”
“And it’s going to destroy the Pegasus galaxy?”
“It’s going to rip a hole in the fabric of space big enough to take out the galaxy and more. I assure you, the ramifications of that, while only theoretical at the moment, are extremely unpleasant.”
“Cataclysmic,” Radek muttered.
“Yes, yes, we might as well be living next to a black hole.”
John felt his emergency and last ditch effort heartrate take flight. His mind spinning out, he tried to catch Rodney’s eye, but he’d looked away. “So we have to get out of here.”
“Sooner rather than later,” Radek said.
Rodney stared off at his work, his eyes distant, shaking his head.
*
Ronon was suiting up in his quarters, stuffing food and what looked like Gnassa credits into a rucksack, when John buzzed his door. He’d heard that Elizabeth was offering, on behalf of the SGC, sanctuary to what people Ronon and Teyla wanted to bring with them to Earth, which was a weak concession to the fact that they were leaving everyone else in the galaxy behind. Teyla had already left, still looking determined and brave. Ronon had a harder job ahead of him as far as John understood it, because his people didn’t always want to be found.
“24 hours isn’t much time,” John said, not walking into the room but leaning on the doorframe. Ronon didn’t answer, yanking hard on the ties to his rucksack, tightening them.
“Do you need any help?”
“Not much you can do.”
“Are you okay with this?” This was a vague gesture to all that was happening---teams in the corridors packing up and talking, in disbelief, about going home, and the swift deadline that was nearly promoting panic.
“Doc’s going to take Kedram and fix him up. I can’t let him go alone.”
“You’d stay otherwise?”
Ronon shrugged. “I don’t see that I have a choice.”
“No, and I’m glad you see that, ‘cause if you were determined to get obliterated along with the rest of the galaxy I’d have to curse your stubborn ass in all my stories.” He tried to smile, but it felt cheap. “So, listen. I think you should know what to expect on Earth. The SGC will treat you great, but I don’t think you’ll be allowed to move around freely for a while.”
“I know. I put up with that for you when I came here. Remember?”
He remembered. The backwards glance stung a little too sharp and he put on a things-to-do act. “Right. Well, look, how ever many dark alley worlds you’re headed to, get back here on time and don’t get into trouble, okay?”
“Sure.” Ronon shouldered his pack and walked past him through the doorway.
“Good luck.”
*
Rodney wasn’t taking a break so much as having a very calm nervous breakdown. It happened when he was too tired to sleep and thinking too fast to get any work done. John sat it out with him, waiting until he crashed or prioritized---either would do. He knew from long hours of experience that there was no point in coaxing him in either direction.
Rodney sat with his head bent over an old glass coffee pot, feeding tiny pieces of Atlantis-shrimp to what passed as a salamander.
“I need to get back to work,” Rodney said for the fifteen-hundredth time. John nodded agreeably just as Elizabeth came into the lab.
"Why--" Elizabeth began. Why do you have a salamander in a coffee pot?
"This is no place for a cat, Elizabeth," Rodney explained.
She wisely let it go. “John, we could really use your help in the evacuation.”
“Just taking a break,” John replied.
The salamander opened his jaws wide, looking exactly like a miniature muppet, and gummed Rodney's forefinger. Rodney smiled indulgently and tapped the little guy on the head.
“Okay, can I expect you in, say, an hour?” She was being too careful and overly generous and John just nodded, almost dismissively. Then she sat down like she wanted to talk---though she hid it by taking an interest in Rodney’s pet salamander---and John had rarely been more grateful for one of Rodney’s scientists coming and interrupting them.
“Miko,” Rodney said tiredly, “I seem to remember telling you to get out and pack up.”
“You did, Dr. McKay,” she said, bowing her head, contrite but somehow smiling too. “I am very sorry. But I have finished my work on the attack console. I am sorry it is too late.”
Rodney considered the computer she handed him, then considered her. “Well,” he said, “it looks like you won.” He found her hand and shook it gracefully.
“It is too late for it to be any use,” Miko protested apologetically.
“That doesn’t matter. Thank you. I’ll take this with me, okay? Now…” and he gestured to her, not unkindly, to scram.
Elizabeth looked like she had thought of better places to be herself, and stood, holding herself stiffly and awkwardly. “I’ll see you in an hour, then,” she said, and something in her eyes changed.
It was that same unwanted concern and pity he’d seen and hated for a year. It was a look that made him grind his teeth, and damn her because he never had flashbacks, he didn’t even care, it was nothing worse than a hundred other things that had happened to him, except when she looked at him like that he thought of long slicing arcs of lightning and the smell of burning hair.
Maybe she stared at him that very same way because he looked the same as he had back in that damn place. His mouth twitched and he wanted to pummel the crap out of someone. He wanted to push her back and tell her to get over it already.
He was breathing in gulps and suddenly his gut feeling swerved, like a flock of sandpipers sweeping up into an instant about-face.
She was so sorry. And she’d lost Atlantis long ago. When the expedition turned into survival just for survival’s sake, and half-assed mission reports smothered all sense of progress, she’d started thinking retreat. In another life she’d gone on for ten thousand years just to wake up and rotate the ZPMs because it meant everything---and now she’d let go of it all. Maybe she knew it too, maybe she was sorry for that, maybe it was a regret she couldn't bear to face.
He stopped just short of reaching for her, but the effect was the same. “You’re going to take them by storm, whatever’s happening on Earth.”
She nodded, and there was fire in her eyes. “They need us.”
*
Ronon came through the ‘gate alone. From the moment he saw him, John was surprised he'd come back at all, his expression was so closed down and dark. Then he noticed his lip was swollen and his clothes were muddy. He thought about following him as Ronon stalked out, but he knew he was the type of self-possessed soldier who could live in crowded barracks, nose-to-nose for months with other men, and still be private as all hell. And he'd bet that no one ever messed with him when he looked the way he did now.
Anger bubbled to the surface---he didn’t want to think of how he’d spent the last twenty hours. Not one single person came with him. It hit home; it was like a backwards glance to an empty house, opening the door and finding everyone had gone. John shook himself; he wanted a fight, and he didn’t want to fight clean.
He kept his head down and went back to the lab; he didn’t need to hang around supervising people while they packed anyway. Rodney jumped and hastily shut his computer when he came in then glared when he saw it was John.
“Rodney,” John said, and it was the kind of tone that stopped McKay in his tracks. “How sure are you about all this? About everything?”
“I’m sure. John, I’m sure. Sure enough for us, I mean, it’s---I wouldn’t want---”
He exhaled a thousand days’ worth of trouble and unfolded his knotted hands. “I know.”
Rodney was looking at him weird, like he knew something had happened, but John couldn’t tell him. He tried to think of something else to say instead but he couldn’t, and his hands floated uselessly, searching for something to do. He reached for Rodney’s bad left hand and rubbed out the tension but really he was comforting himself.
“John,” Rodney said.
“Colonel Sheppard?” his radio buzzed. “Teyla’s returning through the ‘gate.”
He outran Rodney, he couldn’t help it. He got to the gateroom feeling sick to his stomach and Teyla was there, surrounded by---he counted---14 people. His gut clenched.
“Teyla, where…?” he asked, where are the rest?
“These are all that would come,” she said, and she was trying so hard to keep her chin from trembling that John had to cup her face, run a thumb over her cheek.
Tears were silently running down her face by the time Rodney got to the gateroom, looking pale and limping slightly. Teyla automatically reached out a hand to support him, lifting her face with a quiet look that seemed to deny the fact that she was crying.
Rodney didn't wait for explanations. "I should have come with you," he said earnestly, regret rising into fury and frustration. "We can go back, I can make them understand."
Teyla searched his eyes, and then she was reaching out to him again, hands on Rodney’s upper arms, pressing her forehead against his. It was brief and gentle but sincere; she let him go with a half-smile and then squeezed John's arm.
"We cannot force them," she said as she left to speak to her people.
Rodney looked more than a little lost.
"Come on, back to the lab," John said. "The ZPMs."
*
The hours slipped by; Rodney finally declared that the grey-matter ZPMs weren’t going to blow up or---more unpalatably---develop consciousness, and handed over crates that Elizabeth could bring to the SGC like a prize. She would be the first to go through, closely followed by the rest of the expedition members and refugees, and John and Lorne would bring up the rear, making sure via scanners and an ongoing head count that no one got left behind. People were lined up with their gear in the corridors that led to the gateroom; Rodney hadn’t left the lab yet and when it come down to the last hour, Elizabeth came to fetch him and John trailed her, because she needed him; he would support her and nothing would go to hell now.
“Rodney, I’ll need someone to explain the finer points of galaxy-wide destruction as soon as we get to Stargate Command.”
“Take Radek ahead.”
“It’s not like you to turn down the spotlight.”
“I’m still working. I’m trying to bring back as much information as I can to salvage at least a percent of the technology we’ll never be able to crack. Just let me work. Please.”
“All right, Rodney,” Elizabeth nodded, backing off understandingly. “See you on the other side. Zelenka, you’re with me.”
Radek went, leaning over McKay’s shoulder as he passed him, muttering, “You know how nervous I am talking to generals.”
“You’ll be fine. See you.”
And then time pedaled uphill hard and Elizabeth spoke over city-wide communication, a strange, hurried thank you for all these years, for the work and life of the mission and John was calm though his heart was pounding. Then Elizabeth went forward with Radek and the crates, and they disappeared through the wormhole and others stepped up to follow. John sat down on the stairs while Lorne kept count and wondered if Rodney would turn off whole city-sections of power, and if the lights were going off, bit by bit.
*
Lorne counted off everyone but him and John and McKay, and then he tapped the city-wide lifesign detector in the control room.
“Okay, we’re clear.”
John nodded. “Head on through, Major.”
"What about Dr. McKay?"
John pulled a face and activated his radio. "Rodney, time to go. Get on up here." Then to Lorne: “Go through.”
"Sir, with all due respect, I think you should go first."
"I'm ordering you to go through, Major. Get on with it."
“Colonel---“
"Get through the goddamned 'gate, Lorne." He stared Lorne down, making a show of sliding his hand down to his P90.
"Hell," Lorne said quietly. He shook his head. "Hell, Sheppard, what the hell?"
John just stared, a twitch growing in his hand. Lorne’s face twisted, and then he seemed to come to a decision, straightening up as if he’d heard a silent order.
"Right. I'm going to get grilled in the debriefing, you know, is there anything I should say?"
Bobbing his head, John said, "We're all just a bunch of strung-out people. Screwed up, all of us. You can say that."
"Right," Lorne nodded and started to walk towards the 'gate.
"Listen. You're one in a million. I don’t say that often."
Stalling just a moment in front of the event horizon, Lorne smiled. "You too. See you, sir."
When he disappeared, silence closed in like water. He treaded the seconds and refused to think he was drowning.
When Rodney arrived, he headed straight to the DHD, said his name, and waited for an answer.
When he finally nodded, Rodney shut down the wormhole.
They didn’t speak again for half an hour.
*
The labs were all a mess; so was every elsewhere, really. Stuff abandoned in corridors and doors left open, bedrooms half-stripped and tossed. They walked carefully as if they thought there might be people hiding around corners. But there was no one---the scanners proved it.
“They left the windows open,” John observed.
“We didn’t tell them not to.”
“No.” And he was glad.
At the back of Rodney’s main lab there was a dark pile of boxes and spare parts and junk in general, and he started rummaging, handing things off to John, who put them down in the corner. At the bottom was a crate with a combination lock which Rodney swiftly spun, and then they pulled off the lid. Inside lay three ZPMs: six times the power of one.
“What first?” John asked, trying to sound normal, like this was just another day, like they always did this. Rodney didn’t answer as they moved the crate nearer the centre of the room, and then he was tapping on his laptop again. And sure, there must have been a million things Rodney needed to take care of, the entire weight of Atlantis resting on his ability to stay one step ahead of all her needs, but John felt lost. He wanted to grab him and make him stop working, stop thinking about getting on with it and have their moment to look at each other and say, is this really happening? Rodney pushed off in his chair, rolling to another computer, holding up a finger when John so much as opened his mouth. John crossed his arms. He leaned.
Rodney was pouring over a third computer when something caught his eye and he stopped. Picking up a scrap of paper lying on the table, he turned to John.
“Radek.”
Good luck. I will tell very heroic stories of what you’ve done.
*
John made up errands for himself, and at least once in an hour his mind went back to the imaginary Wishing device, and it was silly but whenever he thought of it he had to pray in earnest, let this work. Rodney’s face glowed by computer-light and John didn’t push him, didn’t remind him needlessly to hurry. He helped when Rodney asked him to but mostly just stuck with him wherever he was, crouched under a console or hunched over a computer, handing over food and water and sometimes talking against the enormous weight of silence that was Atlantis emptied. When his hand spasmed John helped him and made him take a break. In those snatches of time they’d stretch out on the floor and talk about Earth, though never about people. John was thinking of a beach and a long sunset and a turning point, and he wanted to tell him, and it was fumbling and incomplete when he finally did, but Rodney just nodded.
“I hate looking back on things,” John tried to explain. “I decided that’s the last good thing I’m going to see come to an end.”
“Everything ends,” Rodney said quietly.
“Earth’s the last home I’ll never return to. When this ends,” he shook his head, “it ends for good.”
In the last 40 hours when Rodney started bringing new systems online, they didn’t speak and Rodney never stopped.
*
Eventually Rodney led him to the chair room and told him to sit down. He said it like any other order for food or grunt work, but John heard it like an offering.
“How good are our weapons, really?” he asked, his voice hoarse from silence.
“Good. And they better be, for all the power they eat. The old drone attack console is...well, smarter, faster, better, and as much as I’d like to take credit for that, it’s Miko’s work. But the lightning in a bottle, that’s mine, and it’s more the sort of thing you need for this job, I would think. There are actually ten points of discharge all around the city, and I can boost the output a lot higher than what we did in that test. That’ll get someone’s attention.”
“I’m beginning to get why you love ZPMs so much.”
“At this point, I love even modified grey matter ZPMs. Now, if you’ll excuse me---“
“Wait.” There was one question that had been in his mouth from the start, or at least it felt that way; he’d been sucking on it for months. “How fast?”
Rodney looked up, and John got that there should have been a window so he could smile at the sky. “Fast as you’d like it. Seriously, and Atlantis isn’t a revolving restaurant. Fast. Now, sit down.”
Rodney knelt beside him, nearly buried in hardware and splitting his attention between half a dozen monitors.
Sweat slipped between him and the chair, slicked under his palms, sealing up every place where the skin of his hands didn't quite touch the palm-pad. He longed after some of the familiar trappings of flight: harness, helmet, visor, radio, screens and dials. The deep rumbling hastened and buzzed in his chest, and Rodney looked like he was trying to hold everything together with his teeth. Light shot through his eyes and exploded behind them, streaks of colour leaking into his head, and when he could see again shapes hovered above him: a projection, a wandering view searching for a flightpath. He clenched his jaw tighter.
And what if her engines were just wax wings; they could tear her apart just trying to lift her from the ocean---oh, but Icarus isn't sorry, John knew this more than anything.
“Rodney. You’ve never had the engines on for more than point-one second. We might go down in a big ball of fire, right?”
“Yes, and since we don’t take passengers it won’t be on your conscience.”
John laughed weakly and swallowed. His heart was pounding.
"Rodney. How close are you?"
"I don't know--I don't know. Just hold on, it'll come together..."
John thought, closing his eyes, he could feel her bucking to fly.
*
When everything lit up and all the systems engaged with each other and data poured out, Rodney breathed something halfway between a laugh and a gasp.
“I think we’ve got it. John…John, have you got a hold on the interface?”
John stared up at the starfield, feeling like freefall, his stomach jumping. “What should I think about?”
Maybe there wasn’t anything left for Rodney to do, because he put a hand on John’s knee. “Think about lifting off, going into orbit.”
Atlantis was huge and he felt like he had to lift her himself, and it was too much. “Rodney,” he said, and Rodney squeezed his knee and the deep hum that was everything was getting louder.
He took a deep breath.
“You can close your eyes,” Rodney said. “I’ll tell you what’s happening.”
So he closed his eyes and tried to think Atlantis was light as a seed caught in the breeze, lifting up, carried into sky.
“What’s happening?” he asked, little more than a whisper.
“You’re doing it,” Rodney breathed.
Sweat fell down his face. Orbit. Orbit. Orbit. It was terrifying---and beyond wonderful.
“Can you do this? I mean, keep it up?” Rodney asked. “It would take me days---or weeks---to rig up a more standard interface.”
Something more standard than hard hope and swift thoughts, John supposed. He swallowed. “It’s fine. It’s not really so new as you’d think.”
“Right,” Rodney said, unconvinced. “You need to try to set a flightpath based on these coordinates. If we want to take them by surprise, we’ve got no time to lose.”
He could do it; they could do it; the Hal would never see it coming; and tonight the galaxy was theirs for the taking.
*
The End.
*I ought to give due credit here to Don McKay, Canadian poet and author of Another Gravity, from whom I lifted the fine line “Icarus isn’t sorry.”