by Karen Miller
“We could move the city,” Weir suggested. Sheppard had returned to the Puddle Jumper and called Atlantis to update them on the situation and consider their options. “The weapon would wind up firing upon the planet instead, probably doing minimal damage as long as it didn’t pierce the crust, and after the satellite had exhausted its power supply we could simply return to our current location.”
“Maybe,” Sheppard conceded, rubbing his chin as he thought. “Assuming it’s not tracking the city somehow, in which case you’d just be presenting it with a moving target. And assuming you can get the city up and off-planet in time without tearing it apart. And that, like you said, it doesn’t shoot through the planet and make it explode or anything. And —”
“Yes yes, I agree, it’s not an optimal solution,” Weir cut in. “But it’s better than getting shot.”
“True. But if it comes to that, Rodney’s right, we can just blow up the satellite instead,” Sheppard countered. “That’d be a lot easier, and we’d be no worse off than we were before.”
“Agreed. But if there is a way to salvage that satellite, we should do so. It could prove invaluable for our defensive systems.”
“That’s exactly what I said.” Sheppard banged on the arm of his chair, more out of frustration than anger. “We’ll see what we can do.”
“Good. If we think of anything that can help from down here, we’ll let you know,” Weir told him before she signed off. Sheppard stared at the screen for a minute after it had powered down, lost in thought. Then, with a sigh, he rose and headed back toward the deadly new weapon they’d found, and the friends who were trying their best to disarm it.
“Anything?” he asked once he’d re-entered the satellite. Rodney was still examining lines of code, trying to figure out how to unlock the target selection, while Teyla was using a different console to scan other aspects of the structure. Ronon was leaning against one of the walls, arms crossed, his gaze flicking from corner to corner, taking in alcoves and railings, his hands never far from his weapons.
“I think I can manually drain the buffer,” Rodney called out, pulling up a second screen and zooming in on one section. “That should buy us a little more time. But whatever they did to lock in the target, I can’t break it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.” He shook his head. “Which means it’s only a matter of time before this satellite fires on Atlantis, unless we destroy the thing completely.”
“I might have something,” Teyla announced. That drew the others’ attention, and she waited until they’d all turned toward her before explaining further. “Rodney was already working on getting the system to choose a new target,” she said, “but I was thinking of something a little different. If we can’t get it to turn away from Atlantis, I thought maybe we could get it to target a section we’re not really using right now.” The others nodded. Atlantis was huge, and the Expedition was tiny by comparison, so they were only occupying a small portion of the Ancient city, with whole swathes they’d not even had time to explore yet. If the weapon did strike one of those sections, it could conceivably destroy something that would have proven useful in future, but at least it wouldn’t damage anything they were currently using, or hurt any of the existing personnel.
But Rodney was frowning. “I’d have noticed if the targeting changed even a little bit,” he pointed out, “and I haven’t seen anything like that this whole time.”
“No,” Teyla agreed, shaking her head. “That’s because I haven’t been able to shift it at all. It’s completely locked in.” Before the others could turn away she added, “Locked in on a specific spot, in fact.”
“What do you mean?” Sheppard asked. “How precise is its targeting?”
Teyla grinned. “Half a meter or less.”
“Half a meter?” Sheppard stared at her. “What the hell is it targeting that small? The center of the Stargate? The command chair in central control? Rodney’s favorite pillow?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know exactly,” she admitted. “But whatever it is, it’s in the center of the city.”
“A homing beacon,” Ronon suggested, still standing in the same spot. “Makes the most sense, especially for the Wraith — they’d drop one somewhere in Atlantis and lock in on its signal.” He shifted his head slightly, wincing just a little, and the others knew he was thinking about the tracking device the Wraith had implanted in him when they’d captured him so many years ago, turning him into a Runner. Carson Beckett had managed to remove the device without setting off its built-in explosives or permanently maiming Ronon, but if anyone knew about the Wraith’s tracking ability, it was the man they had tracked all those years.
“That’s a smart play,” Sheppard agreed. “I bet it was that one guy, Bob, the one they sent in to sabotage us during the attack.” The lone Wraith scout had been dropped into Atlantis to disable its defenses and cause chaos and panic among its protectors before the Hive ships arrived, and might have succeeded if Sheppard’s second at the time, Lieutenant Aidan Ford, hadn’t managed to get the drop on him. They’d tried interrogating the Wraith, who Sheppard had dubbed Bob, but hadn’t gotten much more than sneers, taunts, and threats. Finally he’d pushed them too far, and Sheppard had killed him. But the wily Wraith would certainly have had the time to set up a beacon somewhere in the city before he was found out.
“If you can find that beacon and switch it off, the targeting system should unlock,” Rodney pointed out. “At that point I should be able to set the weapon to standby mode instead. At the very least, if it’s searching for a new target I can input something else, like a hunk of rock out beyond orbit.”
“Great.” Sheppard slapped him on the back. “You keep working on things here — slow it down, give us as much time as you can, see if you can’t crack the system anyway. We’ll head back to Atlantis and find that darn beacon, shut it down on that end.” He gestured to Teyla and Ronon. “Let’s go, guys.”
Teyla hesitated, glancing over at Rodney. “I can stay, if you’d prefer,” she offered. “I could keep searching the secondary systems, maybe find something else we could try.”
Rodney waved her off. “I’ve got this,” he insisted. “And Sheppard’s going to need all eyes on the ground if you intend to find that beacon in time. Go on, I’ll be fine. Oh, and leave me a suit, will you?” He couldn’t help but shudder a little. “I suspect I’ll need it.”
She studied him for a second before nodding and following the other two toward the ladder, and from there back up to the Puddle Jumper.
“Just because the last time we left someone alone in one of these, he died,” Rodney muttered as he returned to his work, trying not to look after his departing teammates but unable to help himself. “Why should that mean anything? I’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m trying to stop the deadliest weapon we’ve ever seen from turning on us or anything. All by myself. Without any help.”
But despite his griping, and his concerns, he didn’t stop working. This was the job, and he was the only one who had even a chance of accomplishing the Herculean task before him. He’d complain later.
If he was still alive, that was.
“All right, so how do we find this beacon?” Weir asked. “Can we isolate its frequency?”
Ronon shook his head. “They’re designed so you can’t pick them up,” he answered gruffly, wincing a little again at the painful memories of his years on the run. “You have to have the frequency in order to even detect it, unless you’re practically touching it already.” Beckett had been able to pick up the signal from Ronon’s tracking device, but he’d been standing right next to the Satedan at the time. “It may have a jammer on it, too — if so, it’ll block any other signals around it. Calls, transporters, the works.”
“Which means we do this the old-fashioned way,” Sheppard agreed. “We need to know where Bob went while he was here. If we can backtrack everywhe
re he was, we should come across it sooner or later.” He glanced at one screen in the command center, which had been set to reflect Rodney’s best guess as to when the satellite would commence firing. Right now it said three hours and ten minutes. “Hopefully sooner,” he added.
“I can tell you at least some of where he was,” Zelenka offered. Leading them over to his workstation, he began inputting commands. “We used the Biometric Sensor Array to determine his location, and then track him so that you could capture him,” he reminded Sheppard while he worked, pulling up a city schematic on the nearest wall screen. “The program automatically records all search data, so it still has the information from that process. All I have to do is recall it” — a glowing dot appeared in one part of the city, right near the naquadah power station — “and we know where that Wraith was at the time that we locked onto him, and where he went after that.”
“But not before,” Teyla commented. “We only know from the point when you started the scan.”
“True,” Zelenka replied, “but it is someplace to start, no?”
“Yes,” Sheppard told him. “We’ll take it. If we don’t find the beacon along the route we know he took, we’ll go back to the first place you spotted him and see if we can’t backtrack from there.” He turned to Ronon. “You’re the tracker, big guy — I’m hoping you’ll be able to figure out which way he went.”
The Satedan nodded. “If there’s a trail, I’ll find it,” he promised.
“Good. Let’s go.” Sheppard led his two teammates out to start their search. He hoped Rodney was having some luck on his end, though, because even with a place to start looking, they’d have a lot of ground to cover, and not a lot of time to do it.
“This is my favorite part,” Rodney groused as he maneuvered through the concealed hatch, careful not to tear his space suit on the handles or the door’s latching mechanism, and stepped outside. Into open space. Even though he was standing on the false asteroid’s rough, uneven rock surface, and was partially cradled between two protrusions that masked the satellite’s spines, he still felt completely exposed out here in the cold emptiness, with nothing to shield him from other asteroids, gamma rays, and all manner of other dangers. But just standing around wasn’t going to help matters any — he’d already contacted Atlantis to let them know what he’d planned, so better to just get things taken care of as quickly as possible, then get back inside where it was safe. If one could call sitting in a small tin can that was also a deadly weapon ‘safe.’
Sighing, he closed the hatch behind him and clipped a rope onto the stanchion that was cleverly concealed right beside the door’s upper edge. Last time he’d had to do something like this he’d used a full EVA suit with maneuvering jets, but those were back on the Puddle Jumper, which was already back at Atlantis. If the satellite were fully exposed he could use magnetic grapples to clamp his boots to the hull and simply walk along, but the rock layer was nonmagnetic so that was out. And he couldn’t risk driving pitons into the rock because one could pierce the hull beneath and damage the satellite overall. That left doing this the old-fashioned way, with a rope and a harness and a death grip on whatever outcroppings he could find along the way.
“Why didn’t I tell Teyla to stay behind after all?” he berated himself as he measured out a length of rope and then pushed off from the ‘ground’ he’d been standing upon, swinging up and out. His tight hold on the rope kept him from going too far, and he slowly played it out hand over hand, carrying himself farther along the non-asteroid’s length. “Then I could have had her do this. She probably would have enjoyed it, too.” Except that he knew exactly why. He was fully capable of handling this himself, he just didn’t like it — but Sheppard might need Teyla’s help, and Rodney didn’t want to be responsible for the mission’s failure, or anyone’s injury, because he’d been feeling lazy. He did continue to mutter and complain, however, as he slowly, painstakingly made his way out to where, if this station really did match the one he’d examined before, the weapon’s main power buffer should reside.
Finally judging that he’d gone far enough, Rodney managed to hook a loop of rope around a small spur jutting out overhead, keeping himself more or less stationary. Then he began feeling along the rocks in front of him, trying to search for cracks or hinges or latches through the thick material of his gloves.
Nothing presented itself, which didn’t surprise him. The Ancients would have been more careful than that. Next he extracted a small energy meter from a pocket on one leg. The device had an effective range of only a few meters, but within that distance it could judge energy output on a variety of wavelengths. And he was literally centimeters from the rock wall, and thus well under a meter from the weapons systems that coating concealed. Rodney was hoping that would be close enough, as he switched on the handheld device and stared intently at its tiny readout.
After a second that seemed to stretch into an eternity, the screen showed a flicker of light, which then transformed into a series of undulating bands.
“Yes!” Rodney crowed, almost pumping his fists until he realized just in time what that would do to him. Hanging here in space, with no gravity and only a rope holding him in place, such a sudden motion would at best set him flipping head over heels like a deranged monkey, and at worst spinning off into space to freeze in the vacuum once his suit’s power ran out. Best to celebrate quietly and with no wasted motion instead. But he was pleased. The meter was showing the energy of the weapon’s buffer, and the device was sensitive enough that Rodney could use it to pinpoint that component’s exact location. Once he’d zeroed in, he was able to feel around that small area more thoroughly. After several minutes of searching his thumb finally caught in what looked like nothing more than a shallow natural divot, like a chip, which clicked when he pushed on it.
Aha!
With another hard push the click transformed into a definite pop that he felt through his gloves, and a narrow gap appeared alongside the divot. Rodney was able to wedge his fingers in there and pull, the entire section swiveling outward to reveal the thick conduits of the power buffer.
“Well, now,” he told the weapon system component as he studied it, idly returning the energy meter to its pocket and retrieving a multi-tool instead. “You seem to be functioning perfectly. Let’s see if we can fix that, shall we?” He set to work, first emptying the buffer so that all of the weapon’s built-up charge dissipated harmlessly out into space. But then he went a step further. He disconnected several of the buffer’s connection points. That wasn’t lasting damage — it was exactly like loosening the connections on a light switch or an electrical outlet — but it would make the buffer work far less efficiently, which meant it would take a lot longer for the weapon to build up a full charge again.
And that, Rodney hoped as he closed the compartment back up, tucked the tool away, and then grabbed his rope and started hauling himself back in toward the hatch, should give Sheppard and the others enough time to find and disable that beacon.
It had better. Because if he had to come back out here, he’d have to do a lot more damage than just pulling a few wires loose. And at some point it would become something he couldn’t repair in a hurry — if at all.
But for now, at least he’d bought them some time. And he knew the rest of his team well enough to know that time wasn’t something they liked to waste.
“Dang it, this is a waste of time!” Sheppard declared, kicking a door hard enough to send it clanging back against its frame. “We’ve been searching for hours and haven’t found a darn thing!”
“He was smart,” Ronon agreed grudgingly peering about the narrow alley they’d just entered. “Especially for a Wraith. Covered his tracks well.”
“It’s also been months since he came through here,” Teyla pointed out. “That’s bound to obscure a lot of traces.”
They’d already followed the trail outside and as
far as Zelenka’s scans had recorded, but hadn’t found anything along the route that resembled a homing beacon. Which didn’t mean the Wraith hadn’t stashed it somewhere along that stretch, just far enough out of sight for them to miss it now. Sheppard had asked how accurate the scan was, and the little scientist had admitted that it wouldn’t have detected something minor like stepping to one side. Nor could it have registered a change in altitude, since the scan was from above.
Which got him thinking. Glancing up, Sheppard studied the sides of the buildings around them. There were windows breaking up the walls here and there, some of them with short ledges flaring out just below. And although he didn’t see anything like a fire escape, in a few places the walls were studded with protrusions that might have been intended just for looks but could also serve as handholds if someone wanted to scale one of the structures.
Someone like a Wraith scout searching out a good vantage point from which to study the city.
Or a good place to hide a tracking beacon for his fellow soldiers to use when targeting the city during their attack run.
“We need to take this little search party up a notch,” Sheppard told his two companions. He gestured toward the rooftops some eighty feet above them. “Literally.”
Teyla groaned and Ronon grimaced, but neither of them argued.
After all, the search on the ground wasn’t yielding any results, so why not take to the heights?
At the very least, they’d get a good look around.
“I sure hope Rodney’s having better luck than we are,” Sheppard muttered as he stepped up to the wall, squinted upward for a second, and then grabbed onto a jutting block at head level, placed one foot on a similar shape a few feet off the ground, and hoisted himself up. “It can’t exactly be much worse.”