by Stargate
“Wonderful.” Sheppard saw that he still had the grenade in his right hand. He clipped it carefully back onto his belt. If the Replicator had been a second later in grabbing him, he would have had the pin out of the thing. It would have gone off when he fell.
Come to that, a stray spark from the electromagnetic pulse could have cooked off either grenade, or the ammo in his vest… He suddenly thought just how close he had come to obliteration. “Guys, can we get out of here now?”
“With pleasure,” McKay said emphatically. “This place makes me want to take a shower. I more ways than one.”
The walk back to the jumper gave Sheppard time to think about what he had seen. But his thoughts were circular, chasing each other around in his tired head and ultimately making no sense at all.
He had almost worked out the sequence of events at the Replicator facility, although there were still a few puzzling gaps. The biggest of which was the idea of two groups of Asurans working at cross-purposes to each other, even to the point of one group shooting its way into the other’s facility and setting off a suicide weapon there. If there had been more light in the base, would he have seen scatterings of metal dust on the floor of that corpse-strewn chamber? It was impossible to say. The APE had rendered the compromised Replicators inert the first time it was used. The second time, at least given what he had seen of the one that had grabbed him, it had broken their structure down entirely.
A structure that was, quite obviously, part Replicator, part living tissue.
A chimera. A hybrid.
Too many pieces to the puzzle, he thought wearily. Too many gaps in the picture. He couldn’t put it all together just yet. Especially where Angelus was concerned. How the Ancient fitted into all this was a mystery beyond his capacity to solve.
Maybe when he was back on Atlantis things would become clearer. Right now, all he wanted to do was get back into the jumper and go home.
They had almost reached the landing site. Sheppard was first in line as they rounded the rocks, with McKay in the middle and Dex last. So it was Sheppard who first saw the puddle jumper.
He stopped in his tracks. “Aw crap,” he muttered.
McKay heard him, increased his pace on the slippery ground, and scrambled up alongside him. “What? What’s wrong.”
Sheppard gestured at the jumper. “I think we’ve got a problem,” he said.
“It looks okay to me.”
“Yeah,” said Dex, stopping a few meters away. “But when we left, the cloak was on.”
McKay stared at it for a second, then looked back over his shoulder. “What, you don’t think…?”
“Tuned to Ancient technology,” Sheppard replied. “Congratulations, Rodney. You just cooked our ride home.”
Chapter Fifteen
In the Zone
Outside the city, dawn was breaking.
Cold, clear sunlight was skating across the ocean, broken into misty shafts by the spires that dotted the piers and rose, clustering like admiring acolytes, around the control tower to form the city core. Carter had seen the sun come up from the balcony, as she had waited for the senior staff to congregate in the conference room. Those few minutes leaning on the angled rail, watching night turn into golden day, had been the first rest she had allowed herself since Teyla’s call had roused her in the night.
Now, with the conference room’s multiple doors closed, and the only light coming from the half-globe that hugged its ceiling, Carter missed the sun. Surrounded by identical rust-colored panels and the expectant faces of the Atlantis senior staff, she felt entombed here. Trapped.
She was very tired, and she wanted to be away.
Still, those feelings were a weakness, and there was no place for them now. She pushed the fatigue and the fear aside, shut them away within herself. Later, when all this was done, she would deal with them at her own pace — for now, ruthless efficiency was the order of the day.
“Okay,” she began. “Thanks for getting down here so quickly. I’ll keep this as short as I can; we’ve all got other things to be doing. So, first things first — I think it’s safe to assume that Mr Fallon isn’t coming back.”
“There has been no answer at all from him?” asked Teyla. Carter shook her head.
“Nothing. He went in to meet with Angelus, oh…” She checked her watch. “About four hours ago, and there’s been no word at all since then. I’ve had people trying to get in touch with him and with Angelus periodically since that time, and they’ve had no response.”
“Won’t that just be due to comms being out in the lockdown area?” That was Major Lorne, who was standing in for John Sheppard, representing the city’s military contingent. MacReady was still at the lockdown. “Maybe he’s just trapped, unable to respond.”
Zelenka, who sat across the table from Teyla, shook his head. “That’s just the point — the communications aren’t out, not in any conventional sense. Fallon proved that when he got in touch with Angelus. Try connecting to anyone who’s still in there, and listen. You’ll get a return, just no answer.”
“Actually, don’t,” Carter cut in, grimacing. “Trust me, it’s one of the creepiest damn sounds you’ll ever hear.”
“Creepy how?” Jennifer Keller was right opposite Carter, looking slightly more nervous than usual, if that was possible. “What is it, static?”
“Not exactly,” muttered Zelenka. He obviously remembered the eerie sounds he had amplified for Carter in the ZPM lab. “Put simply, something has infiltrated the comms net. We don’t know what — a computer virus, maybe, some kind of nanite infection — but that’s the noise it makes. It’s part of the same pattern of interference that’s been draining power out of the grid every forty-one seconds.”
“And the false images on the surveillance cameras and the medical scanners,” Carter went on. “The pattern interferes with some of our compression codecs, sets most of the picture just slightly out of phase, so you get that diagonal —”
“Jesus!” hissed Keller, and tugged the headset out of her ear. She had gone quite pale. “Sorry.”
“I said don’t,” Carter told her, smiling grimly. “Look, what this means is that we can’t trust the comms network any more. From now on, any communications that could possibly be of tactical advantage to Angelus can’t go via the city net.”
“What else have we got?” Lorne wondered.
Teyla raised a hand. “Colonel, I can organize a team of message runners. It would not be unlike the system we used on Athos — all I will need are some volunteers who are quick on their feet.”
Carter nodded. “That’s a great idea. Get together with Major Lorne. I’m sure you can rustle up a few sprinters.”
“Count on it,” grinned Lorne. “But Colonel, you mentioned information being of tactical use to Angelus. Does that mean we’re treating him as an enemy now?”
“Absolutely.” Carter glanced around the table. “He can fake images, project false test readings, everything. He somehow managed to conjure up twenty seconds of surveillance camera footage specifically designed to sow distrust and paranoia among us… Basically, we can’t be sure of anything we thought we knew about him. It’s probable that he’s not only been lying to us since he arrived, but that all the medical tests we did on him showed false results too.”
“So he might not be an Ancient?”
“That’s right. Everything we thought we knew about him is thrown out as of now. We operate on the following assumptions: something hostile has infiltrated the city and locked itself into an area of the west pier. It’s drawing power from the grid, it’s hacked into the communications network, and it might well have subverted whatever Atlantis personnel are in there with it — from what I’ve been able to get out of Cassidy, the techs I assigned to Angelus are…” She paused, trying to translate the physicist’s terrified story into something she could use here. “Are probably no longer human.”
Lorne sat forward. “So what do we do?”
“Our priority is to get
into the lockdown area and neutralize whatever threat we find there. Right now we’ve got two ideas about that, but I’d welcome more.”
“What two have you got?” asked Keller.
“Firstly, we’ve got a team of engineers trying to cut their way in through one of the blast doors. According to Major MacReady the oxy-acetylene torch hasn’t even scorched them, but we’re rigging up a high-density plasma unit right now.”
“It’s a little difficult,” Zelenka said, “because the power is out around the lockdown area, as opposed to just inside it. But we’re setting up a naquadah generator to run the plasma torch, which should give us a real chance.”
“And if that doesn’t work, we’ve managed to identify a possible way in through an inter-level crawlspace.” Carter wished she’d brought the systems diagram Zelenka had printed out for her earlier. It would have made her look more confident, if nothing else. Given her something to do with her hands. “MacReady has a team ready to go in through one of the ventilation flues and into a space between the lab ceiling and the deck above it.”
“Colonel,” frowned Lorne, “we did a security evaluation of the interfloor spaces about six months ago, when they were first discovered. There’s really not a lot of room in there.”
“I know.” Carter had studied the diagram in great detail: the crawlspace, where it existed at all, was cramped, barely tall enough to lie down in and criss-crossed with power conduits, atmospheric ducting and all manner of unidentified systems. “Believe me, it’s not a job I’d want. But if we can’t cut our way in, we’ve really got no choice.”
“Colonel Carter,” said Teyla. “Perhaps it would be better to send someone into the crawlspace while the doors are being cut. The attempt to burn through would make a useful diversion.”
“Actually, that’s worth a try.” Carter stood up. “I’m heading down there right now. I’ll tell MacReady to proceed with both at the same time. Anything else?”
“There’s one more thing,” said Zelenka, hesitantly. “We’ve recently been monitoring the city’s seismic detectors — they’re normally used to detect undersea quakes, as an advanced warning against tsunami. But with the gain up, we’ve gotten some vibration from inside the lockdown zone.”
“What kind of vibration?”
“I’m not sure,” the scientist said. “But it almost sounds like hammering.”
Someone handed Carter a tactical vest when she reached the gallery. She shrugged into it, sealed it up over her jacket, feeling the integral slabs of Kevlar pressing into her from its pockets. It was a safety measure, just in case anyone did come out of the lockdown zone shooting, although something told Carter that was just about the least likely thing that could happen. Besides, with the number of armed marines MacReady had stationed around the blast doors, anything that did try to come out and cause trouble would be shredded by weapons fire before it could blink.
There was no harm in taking care, though. By the same token, Carter had recently taken to wearing her sidearm all the time.
MacReady was waiting for her at the end of the gallery. He was a wide, blocky man, with rough features and graying hair under a battered forage cap. The battledress jacket he wore under his tacvest made him look bulky, almost clumsy, but Carter knew that was an effect he cultivated on purpose.
“Colonel,” he said flatly, nodding a greeting. “I’ve spread the word about the comms net. We’ll be passing notes like schoolgirls from now on in.”
“Now there’s an image,” smiled Carter. “Is the plasma unit ready to go?”
“Almost.” He led her over to the end of the corridor, now plugged with the burnished silver slabs of the blast doors. There was an irregular burn mark marring the metal surface to one side, but when he brushed at it the carbon simply wiped away. “I’ve got to say, Colonel, I don’t even think a plasma torch is gonna to mark this.”
He was almost certainly right, Carter thought. Many of the corridors and walls in Atlantis were lined with a superconducting alloy, and the blast doors didn’t appear to be any different. If that was the case, heat from any kind of cutting equipment would simply be absorbed and shunted away quicker than it could ever be poured in. Somewhere in the lockdown a heat-sink of some description had probably warmed up a little in response to the technicians’ efforts, but nothing else would have changed.
Hopefully, though, Angelus would notice the attempt to cut in. And it might draw his attention away from the three marines already clambering into the nearest ventilation flue.
They were being helped in even as Zelenka’s technicians returned with their plasma torch. All of them were small, slender; one was a man, the other two were women. There had been more than three volunteers to start with, but not many on MacReady’s watch could have fitted into the crawlspace.
Carter couldn’t see their faces. Although they had stripped out of their tacvests and uniform jackets, they all wore sets of night-vision goggles with headset communications links. Each had a pistol duct-taped to one thigh, and the sleeves of their t-shirts had been taped down too. Hopefully, that would reduce the chances of the marines becoming snagged as they struggled through the crawlspace.
Just watching them made Carter feel slightly claustrophobic. She didn’t envy them their task one iota. “Major, they know not to use those headsets, right?”
“They know.”
“Unless they really have to.”
“Colonel, they know,” he said gently. “I don’t like the thought of it either. Hell, if I went where they’re going I’d get stuck like a tick.”
She nodded silently, then turned her head slightly away as the plasma torch lit up. One of the technicians — Norris, she guessed, although both men wore full-face welding masks — was aiming the anode at the door’s surface, bringing it close. The tiny ball of searing blue light at its tip flared as he increased the power, sending hard-edged stripes of light and shadow fluttering around the gallery.
The last of the three marines was fully inside the vent, now. Carter could hear distant thumps and scuffles past the electric fizzing of the plasma. As they faded, she found herself hoping that they would sound less loud inside the lockdown than they did in the gallery.
“We were gonna put headcams on them,” MacReady told her, looking at the vent with just a raised hand between his retinas and the unbelievable light of the plasma torch. “Then we remembered the output would have to come through the comms net just like voice.”
“So that could end up hacked too…” Carter wasn’t sure whether she was displeased about that or not. Given her experience with the surveillance footage, she wondered if she could have actually trusted anything the head-mounted cameras might have shown. Not only that, but the thought of watching the marines as they inched their way through the flat maze of pipes and cables made her ribs feel tight.
On the other hand, now that the three were away inside the crawlspace, no-one had any idea of exactly where they were or what they were doing. If they did get into danger, how would anyone know?
“Maybe we should have tied something to them,” she muttered. “Had a mic cable running back to the vent…”
“Would have gotten snagged.”
“I guess.” Carter took a deep breath, partly to remind herself that she could. “Okay, I’m going to head back up to the control room. If we hear anything from Apollo or Sheppard’s team I’d like to be —”
Several hard, flat bangs issued from the vent.
“That’s a goddamn Colt,” yelled MacReady, running towards the blast doors. Carter followed him, protecting her eyes with her hand until the light of the cutting torch went out. More shots sounded as she got close, sounding short and metallic through the confined space. Some of the shots were so close together that they must have come from more than one weapon.
And then Carter heard voices.
Shouts at first, their actual words lost to distance and the crawlspace’s multiple obstructions. Sounds of impact, more shots. Carter found herself starin
g at MacReady, him at her, as they both strained to hear what was going on above the lockdown zone.
Something large moved past her, inside the vent.
She started as she heard it: the sound of its passing was unmistakable. It was a brushing, a slithering, a succession of metallic rings and tears as whatever moved did so without allowance for the obstructions in is path.
A scream echoed out of the vent, faint and shrill.
In an instant, Carter was listening to an unholy cacophony from inside the crawlspace. There were no more shots — the marines must have emptied their weapons in that first fusillade, and there was no room to reload — but there were more screams, shouts, hammering impacts. A high, unearthly bellowing.
“My God,” whispered MacReady. “What is that?”
Abruptly, the sounds ceased. Carter strained to listen, but only heard the sighing sea and the beat of her own rapid pulse in her ears.
“They’re gone,” she breathed.
Beneath her feet, the floor moved.
She jumped back. Something had slid under her, like the back of some great beast; she had felt its vibration, its heat. She heard a long, mournful groan of overstressed metal, saw MacReady’s eyes widen as he realized what was happening, and then the gallery erupted into shouts and movement.
“Get out of here!” she yelled. “Everyone, drop what you’re doing and go!”
There were five marines on the gallery with her, as well as MacReady and the two technicians. Most were on Carter’s side of the gallery; she stepped aside to let them go past ahead of her, hurrying them with hard slaps as they went past. Once they were gone, she and MacReady bolted after them.
She could feel the floor moving as she ran, could hear shuddering impacts against the walls. There wasn’t just one source of it, but many. It felt like the very stuff of Atlantis was springing to violent life around her.