“Impossible.” Snapping forward in his chair, Rodney swooped down like a raptor on the uneaten sandwich half. “Much as I hate to quibble with the good doctor’s diagnosis, any airborne pathogen would have been detected by the city’s quarantine system and, as we all know, you can’t really miss it when that kicks in. The man works in the biogenetics lab, for God’s sake! He probably got careless, cut himself, and picked up one of his own bugs. Next!” He took an emphatic bite, pulled a face, and spat the mouthful into a waste basket with less discretion than one might have hoped for. “Christ! Hummus! Why didn’t anyone warn me? It’s got lemon juice in it.”
“McKay has a point,” observed Colonel Sheppard. “About the quarantine system, I mean. And stop eating other people’s food, Rodney. It’ll keep your allergies in check.”
“Other people shouldn’t leave their food lying around, and of course I have a point.”
“What if the system has developed a fault?” asked Teyla.
Rodney’s undoubtedly pithy reply was nipped in the bud by the rather abrupt entrance of Radek Zelenka who gave the impression of a man chased by furies. “We’ve got a virus!” he blurted, screeching to a halt inches from Elizabeth’s desk.
“Beckett mentioned it,” Ronon offered helpfully from his post by the door.
“No, no, no. The computer!” The Czech scientist’s accent was more pronounced than usual, always a sign of upheaval. “The computer has a virus.”
“Did I or did I not tell you to buy a Mac?” Rodney performed an eye roll that shouldn’t have been anatomically possible. “Don’t come whining to me now.”
“The mainframe!” Steaming with frustration, Zelenka slammed both palms on the desk, sending plate and sandwich leftovers into a series of little hops. “I don’t know how this is possible, but the mainframe has a virus.”
For once even Rodney was rendered speechless.
Finally, carefully, Elizabeth asked, “Are you absolutely sure, Radek?”
“Do I look like I’m speculating?” Then he seemed to recall to whom he was talking. “I’m sorry, Dr. Weir. It’s just that I… It’s bad.”
“I suspected as much,” she said. “How bad exactly?”
“We could lose every single system in the city, potentially without a chance of restoring them.”
“That is bad.” Going by the look on the Satedan’s face, rarely cheerful to begin with, Ronon was contemplating how the Wraith might feel about a crippled Atlantis.
As if on cue, a technician rapped his knuckle against the doorjamb. “Dr. Weir? Sorry to interrupt. The transport chambers just went down. All of them. We got a bunch of people trapped and”— with a hopeful glance at Drs. McKay and Zelenka— “we could use some help.”
“It’s starting,” Zelenka muttered gloomily and followed it up with a couple of interesting sounding Czech phrases. Presumably, parental discretion was advised.
“Yeah, well, let’s stop it then, shall we?” Elizabeth cut him off. “How long will it take you to sort this out? Rodney?”
“How long is a piece of string? Last time I checked the mainframe didn’t have Norton or McAfee, so clicking on ‘Run Virus Scan’ isn’t an option.” Rodney actually looked miserable. “I, uh… There’s been a compellingly well-founded theory that crystal based data systems can’t be infected.”
“In other words, you got it wrong,” translated John Sheppard.
“I never said it—”
“Save it!” Elizabeth said sharply. “Rodney, Radek, see that you get rid of this thing before it shuts us down. John, Ronon, help getting those people out of the transport chambers. After that I want you to work out contingency plans for defense. Right now the Wraith are keeping their distance, but there’s no telling how long that may last. Get going!”
“Wait!” Teyla slid off the filing cabinet, stood. “What if Rodriguez’s virus is airborne, as Dr. Beckett suggested it may be, and the quarantine system was disabled before it could react? We need to consider appropriate measures in the case of an epidemic.”
The words hung there like a dark cloud about to burst. Which wasn’t too far from the actual state of affairs. “God help us!” Carson pinched the bridge of his nose in a futile bid to dispel the brewing headache— both literal and figurative. “I didn’t get round to mentioning it earlier. The symptoms… like I said, I can’t be sure until the lab results come back, but everything points to this being the same kind of virus SG-1 picked up in Antarctica.”
“General O’Neill almost died,” Elizabeth said quietly.
“He would have, if it hadn’t been for that Tok’ra symbiote that later caused all sorts of other trouble.” Carson pinched harder, fully aware that it wouldn’t work. “What I’m getting at is that there’s no known cure. If Teyla’s assumption is correct, we’re… well, we’re—”
“The least offensive word you’re looking for is toast,” Rodney jumped in. He’d gone pale. They all had.
Carson shared the feeling.
Chapter 17
“Perhaps someone should advise the Air Force to acquire several of these craft.” Teal’c reclined in a wide leather seat, propped his feet on a small table, and took a sip of cappuccino. Served in a china cup.
Jack grinned. “I’ve been telling them that for years, T.” He peered out the window, swung his legs off the couch, stretched languidly, and rose. “Enjoy it while it lasts. We’re nearly there. I’m gonna go freshen up a little before the rush on the bathroom starts.”
He threaded his way to the rear, past Carter who was still snoring softly. She looked exhausted, even asleep and despite the fact that she’d dropped off practically the second they’d reached cruising altitude. Jack doubted the exhausted look would go away anytime soon. Not until they got Cassie back safe and sound.
If they got Cassie back safe and sound.
Nix that thought, Airman! That’s an order!
There simply was no alternative to the safe and sound scenario, at least not one he’d like to contemplate.
The bathroom door stuck a little— just can’t get good maintenance anywhere, can you?— and opened with a Thwack! Jack winced. Carter didn’t so much as twitch, but Daniel, who’d been poring over the Ancient document throughout most of the flight, gave a start and squinted up from his laptop’s screen. Possibly for the first time in ten hours.
“Oh… Hi… Uh…” He peered out the window. “Good morning.”
“Morning. Been busy?”
“You could say that.” Daniel slipped off his specs, rubbed his eyes, slipped the specs back on, a little askew. “I think I’ve figured it out. Weird thing is old Stavros was on to something. He did find—”
“Daniel, hold that thought. I gotta go. Really.”
Jack folded his frame into what the aircraft’s manufacturer laughingly called a bathroom. You didn’t so much enter it as wear it. And you were liable to knock yourself unconscious if you were overcome by a sudden urge to sneeze. Still, it had a sink and a toilet, and anyone who’d ever spent twelve hours in a fighter jet could attest to this being the height of luxury.
All courtesy of Mr. Michael Webber. Who currently was in the cockpit, playing with the pilots. The conveyance had come with a price tag, though, all things considered, taking Michael along for the ride wasn’t a bad deal.
Halfway through splashing water in his face, Jack felt his ears pop. They’d started their descent into Santorini. Twenty minutes, Jack figured. Thirty, tops. As for what would happen next, he didn’t have much of a clue. They’d cross that bridge when they came to it.
Old Jaffa proverb.
When he peeled himself out of the bathroom, Carter was awake and had moved into the seat next to Daniel. “Morning, sir.” She yawned.
“Morning, Carter. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I see.”
“Did you happen to look in the mirror while you were in there, sir?”
“Tried to, but it’s roughly at the height of my belly-button, and I couldn’t bend over far enough in there.”<
br />
“Do you want to hear this or not?” Daniel interrupted, obviously not interested in what could have been a rather entertaining skirmish.
“Indeed, we do.” Teal’c had abandoned his recliner and came over.
“Okay. This took me a while,” explained Daniel. He cast a quick glance in the direction of the cockpit, but there was no sign of Michael. “It’s Ancient alright, but it’s a dialect I haven’t come across before, so in places the translation is a little wonky. I had to fill in some blanks by deducing the meaning of certain words from the context— just by ways of a cavil.”
“You guessed,” Jack couldn’t resist paraphrasing.
It promptly brought a blush. “Educated guesses.”
“I’ll take your educated guesses over somebody else’s certainties any day of the week.”
“Uh… thanks.” Daniel blinked, unsure if he was being snowed. “Well, uh, the weird thing is, this seems to be part of some kind of manifesto. Or a journal.”
“There’s a bit of a difference between the two,” Carter interjected carefully.
“I know. But it’s either an official outline of policy or the writer was recording his or her beliefs for personal use. Without seeing the complete document, I simply can’t tell. Anyway, this is fascinating because, other than Dr. Weir’s account of Janus being at loggerheads with the Lantean council, this is the first solid evidence we have that not everything was well in Ancient-Land. It points to the existence of a fifth column that was radically opposed to the Lantean— and Ancient— doctrine of noninterference.
“Here”— Daniel’s forefinger traced a line of symbols on the document— “the writer is condemning it outright, calling it an arrogant and malevolent neglect of the suffering of the less evolved peoples of the planet.”
“Nicely put.” Jack couldn’t have agreed more. He had first-hand experience of the joys of that particular rule of the Ancients. “The guy would get my vote.”
“Not so sure about that.” Daniel peered at him over the rim of his specs. “You may want to hear the rest before you sign up.”
“Oh?”
“Quite. Oh. The writer and his or her cohorts apparently were trying to reason with the Lantean council for a good long while, arguing for a change of doctrine. According to what’s said here, the council members’ reaction makes Omak look like a capricious patsy.”
Teal’c’s eyebrow shot up, and Carter gave a soft snort.
“Okay, slight exaggeration, but you get the idea. So, when the council showed no signs of budging and in fact threatened to exile the lot of them, the majority of the fifth column started leaning toward the theory that different measures were necessary.”
“Different measures?” Jack frowned. “As in?”
“Good question. That’s where it breaks off. End of the page.”
“This is regrettable,” murmured Teal’c.
Carter put it more succinctly. “Damn.”
“What’s your best guess?” Jack had a feeling that Daniel was holding back, which was uncharacteristic enough to be troubling. “Educated or not.”
“Don’t hold me to it, alright? This is just a guess based on the emotional subtext I’m getting.” Daniel blew out a breath. “There’s an incredible amount of anger, bitterness. The writer really hates the council, despises its followers, and at the same time he or she is fanatical about their duty to help those people whom they see as having been willfully deprived of knowledge that could end their suffering. And they’re not alone in this. I suspect that those different measures they mention may very well have been violent.”
“You’re thinking they were Ancient terrorists?” asked Carter.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
As far as butt-ugly concepts went, this one was a doozy. Given the scope and power of Ancient technology, a bunch of determined fanatics could destroy half a solar system without so much as breaking a sweat. On the other hand, Jack would have thought that ten thousand year old insurgents were the least of their problems right now. Unless they had Ascended, in which case butt-ugly probably wouldn’t begin to describe it. But the old Jaffa proverb applied here, too. “So, how does this relate to Cassie being kidnapped?”
“Search me.” Daniel shrugged. “Best guess, and again it’s a guess, the guys who have her found some piece of alien technology and think the document here is the instruction manual. Which allows for the conclusion that they probably won’t respond well when they’re told it isn’t.”
That went over like a pregnant pole vaulter.
Somewhere beneath, a bunch of dull clunks announced that the landing gear was coming down. Final approach.
Daniel turned to look out the window at an oval of water embraced by the rocky caliper that was Santorini. Suddenly he tensed.
Uh-oh.
Jack knew this particular set of Dr. Jackson’s shoulders. It rarely was accompanied by good news. “Daniel? Will you stop staring out the window in that tone of voice?”
“My God,” murmured Daniel, still staring. “He finally found it! He was right!”
“Who?”
“Stavros Dimitriades. He did find Atlantis… well, the place where it used to be. Look!”
They dutifully found windows to peer through. Oval, caliper, rock, etc.
“What exactly is it that you wish us to look at, Daniel Jackson?”
Good question.
“The caldera!” Daniel’s head whipped around. His eyes had that gleam, the one that said he was about to burst with excitement. “Santorini is basically the rim of a volcanic crater. One eruption that’s relatively well documented is the so-called Minoan Eruption, which was massive enough to destroy the civilization on Crete three and a half thousand years ago. What if it wasn’t an eruption? What if it was a city ship taking off?”
“The date doesn’t gel, Daniel,” said Carter. “It’s six and half thousand years after the Ancients left.”
“I know, but it doesn’t have to be the Minoan Eruption. The area’s been volcanically active for hundreds of thousands of years. If anything, Atlantis taking off may have weakened it further tectonically, actually laying the groundwork for the Minoan Eruption. To a volcano six and a half thousand years are a blink of an eye.”
Interesting. Definitely interesting. Jack thought he’d figured out where this was going. “So, what you’re saying is that your late pal, Dr. Crackpotopoulos, may have dug up the abovementioned piece of Ancient technology. The one the kidnappers want a user guide for?”
“Dimitriades, but yeah, that’s the gist of it.”
“Just checking.” Jack slumped back in his seat. “Strap in, kids. We’re about to land.”
It was pitch dark. Here and there sparks fizzed and hissed in the blackness as some piece of equipment or other was losing the fight for survival and shorted out.
The energy bolt had taken out the lights, the computer, everything except the generator. That was still humming, feeding power to things that might or might not electrocute her.
Cassie determined that, right now, her best move was not to move. No telling what she’d done or how she’d done it. Fact was, she was still standing, still felt tiny whispers of power tingling through her body. Her hands were raised in an almost exact mirror image of what she’d seen the woman do, seconds before the bolt struck and the lights went out. She had mimicked it reflexively, or maybe her body and that weird part of her mind Nirrti had claimed as her personal playground had known how to act. However it had happened, it sure as hell worked. In that brief moment before everything went dark, a vicious tornado of tools and equipment and debris, carried before the energy bolt, had swept toward Cassie— and swerved around her like water flowed around a rock in the stream.
Which left only one inescapable conclusion: Nirrti’s tinkering had saved her life.
Go figure.
Cassie decided to postpone any expressions of gratitude to a more suitable date. Never might do nicely.
Staying perfectly still, trying to keep
her breathing slow and quiet so as not to give away her position, she strained for any sound, the smallest of noises, either from the Creeps and their pet hacker or from the ice lady. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she thought she heard a faint rustle of fabric. It came from in front of her and was moving to the left, gradually, hesitantly. She took it to mean that the woman didn’t have inbuilt night vision in addition to the tornado feature, which was a bit of a relief. It also meant that, as long as the lady was on the move, she might not hear any noise coming from Cassie’s end.
Alright then.
Slowly enough to make her muscles scream with the effort of retaining control, Cassie lowered herself into a crouch. She had a rough idea of where the exit was, but the floor had to be strewn with clutter and at least two bodies— hopefully unconscious rather than dead— and it seemed wiser all round to feel her way out quietly instead of inadvertently kicking bits of metal across the cave and announcing her location.
Her fingertips touched the ground. Dry, powdery stuff— dust. She let her fingers spider out a little further until they struck something lumpy, covered in cloth. T-shirt material, at a guess. A shoulder, at a guess.
Whose?
Didn’t really matter. It was one of the Creeps, possibly Number One, because he’d been standing closer to her when the brown, smelly stuff hit the fan. Her hand slipped up the shoulder and over the collar of the T-shirt, found bare skin, reassuringly warm. His neck? Well, it couldn’t be his butt, that much was for sure. Neck. Definitely the neck; there was the Adam’s apple. She let her fingers slide up under his chin and over to that dell under his jaw, searching for the carotid and the pulse there.
Couldn’t find it.
Stop shaking and relax, dammit!
Oh yeah, that worked wonders… Hand trembling she tried again. Nothing.
The lights came on with an abruptness that damn near made her jump out of her skin. She whipped around, her first instinct being to find a place to hide. Except she could barely see through the sudden dazzle, even though this light was nowhere near as harsh as the glare from the lamps had been.
STARGATE SG-1: Transitions Page 12