“Very good, sir,” Agosten said.
Bartolan nodded. “Hajnal! Put some riflemen on the dorsal gun. We need more coverage on that side.”
“Already on it, sir,” Hajnal answered, and Bartolan started back up the ramp, his rifle heavy on his shoulder.
In his cabin, he set it on his bunk, ready to clean it when he had a chance — that was a job he could have left to one of the stewards, but it was a familiar and soothing task — and reached for the intercom. “Systems Engineer.”
“Sir?” Orsolya sounded breathless, as though she’d been working hard.
“How soon can the ship be ready to lift?”
“Ah.” He could hear scuffling noises, and a thud that sounded like a toolkit closing. “I’ll be right up, sir.”
We can talk now. But the intercom light was already off, and he closed his lips over the words.
Orsolya rapped on his door a few minutes later, and he pressed the control to let her in. “Well? Why wouldn’t you give me an answer?”
“Because I didn’t want to tell the entire ship what I’d just found,” she answered. “Sir. Someone’s sabotaged the workarounds we put in place — a crude job, they just pulled wires, but that damaged some of the fittings. We’ll have to redo the entire thing.”
“Can you at least get us into orbit?” Bartolan asked. “You can hear what’s happening outside.”
Her eyes strayed to the sensor display still visible on his secondary screen. “I know. They just keep coming…” She shook herself. “We’re working as fast as we can, but there’s a lot to do before we’re safe to lift.”
“You were supposed to have people watching the vital systems,” Bartolan said. He kept his eyes on her face, watching for any betraying movements. She was one of Karsci’s people, after all — though how many people were willing to die horribly for their patrons? At least one, he reminded himself, and Orsolya grimaced.
“I did. And still do. But I don’t know when this happened. It might have been before, or even during the decontamination, though I think that’s unlikely.”
“How long?”
“To fix everything? Another day.”
“Make it less.”
“If I can,” Orsolya answered, and Bartolan nodded.
~#~
Jumper One exited the Stargate on P3M-284 into a narrow clearing barely a hundred meters wide, enormous black-barked trees closing in around the opening. John swore under his breath and brought the jumper to an abrupt stop, hovering just beyond the DHD on its well-worn pedestal. The trees were hung with what looked like sheets of moss, or maybe they were tangled, web-like leaves, and the sunlight seemed very thin and distant.
“Oh, this is lovely,” McKay said. “It’s the Hallowe’en planet.”
“It is not very cheerful,” Teyla said.
“And probably full of things that eat people,” McKay said.
“Oh, come on, Rodney,” John began, and Ronon leaned forward.
“McKay’s right. There’s something out there.” He pointed into the trees to the right of the jumper’s nose.
John looked, but saw only more sheets of moss, shifting slightly in a wind that was too light to affect the jumper. And then, deeper in the shadows between the branches, something moved against the wind. The jumper lurched backward, his instinctive command, and a square shadow leaped out of the forest, great wings beating. It was shaped like a manta ray, all wings and tail, but there were claws at the wings’ corners and a too-wide mouth full of fangs. It struck the jumper’s hull and slid down, the claws shrieking unpleasantly against the metal. Two more followed it, searching for a place to catch and cling, and there was more movement in the forest. John tipped the jumper sideways, turning it on the extended engine pod, and streaked for the sky. One last ray struck the windshield and slid off, teeth gnashing in vain, leaving a trail of saliva.
“Any more out there?” John asked, and the ship’s sensors showed all clear. He pointed the jumper toward the sky and scrambled for altitude, only leveling out when they crossed into the upper edges of the stratosphere. “Anybody ever seen anything like before?”
“A land-dwelling manta ray with shark teeth?” McKay asked. “No, I haven’t!”
“There are things like that on Pajen,” Teyla said. “But they are much smaller, about the size of my hand. They hide among the leaves of the doanra tree, and prey on birds and small lizards.”
“They also suck blood out of cattle,” Ronon said.
“They’d have to be pretty big cows to feed those things,” McKay said.
“A couple of those could probably carry off a cow,” Ronon said. “I didn’t think they grew that big.”
“If the Pride has landed here,” Teyla said, “her people are in trouble.”
“Yeah.” John expanded the jumper’s sensors to their fullest range, easing the jumper to a higher altitude as well. “Nothing yet, but we’ll need a couple of orbits to cover everything.”
“It’s not going to be here,” McKay said. “Anyone want to bet?”
Ronon shook his head.
“I hope you are right,” Teyla said.
“Still not picking up anything.” John kept his eyes on the displays, but part of his mind was examining the problem again. The Pride should be somewhere along the shortest course from Teos to Inhalt. If they were drifting in interstellar space, they were out of luck until the Hammond came back online, but if they’d managed to set down on a planet, one of the jumpers could reach them. Assuming they hadn’t ended up on one of the worlds without a Stargate, but surely her captain would have chosen a world with a gate just in case his people had to get home that way. Except that they hadn’t, because if they had, they would already have contacted the Genii homeworld. Which meant they should be concentrating on worlds with orbital gates, which were relatively rare…
He’d been around that circle a dozen times, and so had everyone else. And there was no knowing whether the Pride’s databases were up-to-date; the last he’d heard, the rumor was that the Genii were having trouble interfacing their data systems with the Ancients’. He sat up sharply, a new thought running through his head. “McKay. Do we still have that Ancient atlas the Travelers let us copy?”
“What?” McKay blinked. “Yes, of course. It checked out as clean, so I installed a copy. Why?”
“If the Pride was relying on Ancient databases, not modern ones — would it make a difference?”
“It might. But that’s assuming they didn’t have a current list, and they must have had one. The Genii have a ton of allies in this part of the galaxy.”
“But if something went wrong,” John said, patiently. “If they had to use the Pride’s original files.”
“Ok, yeah, I can run a search in the Traveler atlas and compare it to what we’d get,” McKay said, “but I don’t know how much it would help.”
“Look, it’s better than hopping from world to world and hoping for the best.” John glanced at his sensors again. “Which is our next step if you don’t try it. I’m not picking up any sign that the Pride has been here.”
“Ok.” McKay bent over his laptop.
In the windshield, the surface of P3M-284 curved away beneath them, dark forests covering most of the land, giving way only reluctantly at the edges to a fringe of beach as pale as bone. The water looked as dark and forbidding as the land; if there were manta rays in the forests, John thought, what was likely to be in the oceans?
“There is another reason the Pride might not choose a world with a Stargate,” Teyla said.
“You’re still thinking plague,” Ronon said.
She nodded. “That is one thing that explains everything we know so far.”
“If that’s the problem, why didn’t they inform the Genii homeworld?” John asked. “We saw they could communicate directly, you’d think they’d warn the homeworld as soon as people got sick.”
“Unless they were too busy tending to them?” Teyla shook her head. “If they no longer had the cr
ew to work all their systems? Or, indeed, if they had some other malfunction, and no sickness at all. But I think we must take care.”
“Oh, I’m keeping that very much in mind,” John said. “The last thing we want is to bring some weird disease back to Atlantis.”
“Hey.” McKay looked up from his laptop. “You might have something here, Sheppard. There’s a world with an orbital Stargate that features prominently in the atlas, but barely shows up at all on our charts — and probably on the Genii charts, for that matter. It’s, let’s see, P3M-271, which we have down as having sent a jumper through once and found pretty much grass and nothing. There was no sign that the Ancients or anybody had ever landed there, except for the Stargate in orbit. But the atlas —” He tapped his keyboard. “The atlas says it’s called Baidu, there’s a fueling stop in the system and the Stargate is there for emergencies.” He paused. “And they don’t recommend landing because of hostile wildlife.”
“Well, that rules Baidu out,” Ronon said.
“Unless they didn’t have a choice,” John pointed out. He bit his lip. “Is Baidu in our search area?”
McKay touched keys again. “Yes. We’d have gotten there in a day or two.”
“I say we go there now.” John looked at the others, willing them to agree. “It’s featured in the Ancient databases but not important in any of ours, and it’s got an orbital gate. And if the Pride is there, they’re likely to be dealing with something just as nasty as those things down there.”
“You’re right about that,” Ronon said. “Yeah. Baidu next.”
Teyla nodded. “I agree. With a warning like that, we must be sure the Pride is in no greater danger.”
“Me, too,” McKay said. “I agree.”
“Right.” John turned back to the controls. “Baidu it is.”
CHAPTER TEN
THE AFTERNOON LIGHT slanted in through the high windows of Atlantis’s secondary chemistry lab, washing out the readings displayed on the projection screen on the far wall. Carson Beckett ignored the display, his attention focused instead on senior chemist Paul Massour’s laptop.
“To tell you the truth, Dr. Beckett,” Massour was saying, “I think this is more your problem than mine after all.”
“Oh?” That was not really what Carson wanted to hear: he had been hoping that whatever the Teosians had put in the Pride’s water system was a simple poison, with a correspondingly simple antidote.
“Yes, I really do think so.” Massour pointed to the model of the compound. “There, and there — those are very crude genetic tools. From the look of them, I’d say they were derived from Wraith technology, which makes sense, considering that the Wraith are both the most advanced technology in this galaxy, and have concentrated on genetic manipulation.” He paused. “Sorry.”
Carson grimaced. That was another reason he would have preferred this to be a purely chemical problem: even now, everyone was far too aware that he was a clone of the original Beckett, the result of exactly the sort of Wraith genetic manipulation that Massour was talking about. “It’s all right.”
“Yes.” Massour adjusted his glasses. “But you see, here. I think this isn’t so much a conventional poison as an attempt at genetic alteration. I can’t tell what is being manipulated, though. Which is why I think this is more in your department.”
“Aye, maybe so.” Carson rubbed his chin. Why genetic manipulation, and not something simpler? If the Teosians wanted to destroy the Pride’s crew, surely poison would have been simpler and easier to create. Some sort of long-term attack on the Genii as a people? The Pride’s crew was too small to have much effect on the population as a whole, unless it was designed to create some sort of illness? Though, again, why not simply insert an infectious agent directly? For a society capable of producing this level of genetic manipulation, a viral or bacterial agent should be child’s play. Unless… “Oh,” he said, and reached for his radio to contact the infirmary. “Dr. Wu. What do we know about the Genii ATA program?”
“Not so much,” she answered, seemingly unfazed by the question. “As best we can tell it’s similar to ours, but uses Wraith-derived tools to do the actual delivery.”
“I see what you’re thinking,” Massour said. “If this affected their ATA genes, it might affect their ability to handle the ship.”
Carson nodded. “And, more than that, they can use it to keep Ancient technology from being useful to the Genii. This might just be a test.” He looked back at the laptop, considering. “This is all modeling. Can you brew me an actual sample?”
“Oh, yes,” Massour said. “Give me half an hour.”
“Thanks.” Carson touched his radio. “Dr. Wu, do we have any samples or models of the Genii modification? Anything we worked out on our own?”
“No. It didn’t seem that important.”
Nor had it been, until now. He rubbed his chin again. Samples from Atlantis’s crew wouldn’t be as useful, especially if the Genii had approached the problem in some entirely different way, but it might give them some idea if his guess was correct. “Make me up some test samples, if you would, please. Natural ATA gene, recessive ATA gene brought forward with our therapy, recessive ATA gene untreated, no ATA gene at all. I need to test something.’
“All right, Dr. Beckett.”
“Can I help with that?” Massour asked, with a quick smile. “I’m curious now myself.”
“You’d be welcome.”
By the time Massour finished putting together a sample of the Teosian formula and they returned to the infirmary, Wu had requisitioned lab space and had most of the equipment set up. While she finished adjusting things and brought the tissue samples, Carson explained what he thought he had found, and she shook her head. “That could be nasty. I mean, some people get pretty sick when they take the gene therapy. Presumably undoing it would cause the same kind of problem?”
“It could well,” Carson said. “Dr. Massour?”
“How much do you think I should use?”
“It was in the water supply,” Carson said. “Though we don’t know how much was originally introduced — but we can assume that everyone was drinking normally…” There were too many variables, and he shook his head. “Let’s try half a milliliter.”
“Very good.” Massour busied himself with pipette and flask, expertly transferring liquid. “All right, that is all of them. And now?”
“We wait.” Carson shook his head. Too many variables, and as always they needed the answers as quickly as possible. “We’ll check the samples again in an hour.”
“In that case, I will get coffee — tea for you, Dr. Beckett? Dr Wu?” Massour smiled cheerfully, happy to take cafeteria orders, and puttered off as soon as he had a list.
Carson found a stool and seated himself, twisting from side to side as though that would ease his nerves. Wu gave him a nervous glance.
“Does this have to do with the missing ship?”
“It might. Keep it under your hat, Marie, but there’s a good chance they were sabotaged on their last stop.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, that’s not good.”
“Not good at all.” Carson’s voice was wry.
Wu sank onto a stool beside him. “The Genii go to war over a lot less.”
“I’d noticed.” And that was part of what made him feel queasy, the rescue of one group likely to cause an all-out attack on another. And it wasn’t as though the Pride’s crew was to blame for any of this; even if you chose to take the Pride’s tour as an implicit threat, which he was sure Ladon Radim had thought of, the tricky little bastard, it wasn’t the crew who were responsible for the threat. They didn’t deserve being poisoned. Of course, most of the Teosians didn’t deserve being attacked, either.
My first responsibility is to the crew of the Pride, he told himself firmly. They’re lost and maybe sick and we need to help them first.
“I’m glad Colonel Carter’s here,” Wu said. “Not that Colonel Sheppard’s not a smart guy, but — Colonel Carter’s
done this before.”
“That she has.”
Massour returned, not just with coffee and tea but with a box of fresh-baked donut holes, and the three of them moved to the outer room to eat and drink, while both Carson and Wu fielded the occasional question from the nurses and technicians on duty. It was, Carson thought, an admirably quiet day, except for the experiment still running behind the lab’s closed door. Finally, the hour was up, and Carson set aside his mug and reached for a set of gloves.
“Right, then. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
“It looks as though we have a reaction,” Wu said, moving along the row of test stations, and Carson nodded.
“Why don’t you start with the full ATA gene, and we’ll meet in the middle?”
“Agreed,” she said, pulling on her own gloves, and together they set to work, Massour hovering curiously in the background.
Carson made his way methodically through the checklist, documenting signs of inflammation in the first sample — no ATA gene, natural or artificially enhanced — but finding no damage to fundamental structures. The “quick-and-dirty” DNA test showed no damage; he would need to run the longer version to be certain, but at the moment it seemed as though someone without the ATA gene would take little harm from the compound.
The next station held the sample with the enhanced ATA gene. Here, the signs of inflammation were much stronger, and there were signs of actual tissue damage. When he compared the quick DNA to the control sample, he pursed his lips at the damage showing in the test sample. It looked as though the Teosian compound had attempted to damage the enhanced gene, to scribble over it and render it useless by inserting nonsense DNA into it and the genes around it. It looked bad, the kind of damage that could undo the enhancement, and he looked up to see Marie Wu looking at him expectantly.
“Check what I’ve done, will you?” he asked, and she nodded, slipping past him to take up station in front of the next station.
Carson moved on as well, examining the unenhanced recessive — more inflammation, more damage, though it looked as though the compound’s “tools” hadn’t been able to work as well on the unenhanced recessive — and then the full ATA gene. To his surprise, it showed the fewest effects of all of them, and he ran the DNA check a second time to be sure. The result was the same, and he looked up to see Wu watching him expectantly.
Stargate Atlantis #24 Page 20