Stargate SG-1 & Atlantis - Far Horizons

by Sally Malcolm

  “That was the thought,” Sheppard said. “Teyla, I’ll leave you in charge. I don’t expect there to be any trouble, but if there is something, like if the Wraith show up —”

  “I will put everyone onto a jumper and we will either cloak and hide or we will return through the Stargate,” Teyla answered. “Do not worry, John, I do not expect trouble, either.”

  “Where the Travelers are concerned, that’s usually when we get it,” Sheppard answered, but he was smiling. He reached for his radio. “Lorne. How’s it coming with loading those drones?”

  “Piece of cake,” Lorne responded, his voice only a little distorted by the radio. “We’ve got the first jumper loaded already, and it shouldn’t take long to do the second.”

  “Load the third as well,” Sheppard ordered.

  “Sir, there’s just me and Porter to fly them. Well, except Dr. McKay, but —”

  “I’ll take the third,” Sheppard said. “If there’s a problem here, Rodney will have to take over.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lorne answered.

  “You can be the one to tell him that, Colonel,” Zelenka said.

  Sheppard grinned. “Oh, Rodney will be fine. I’ll just go talk to him myself.”

  “I will go with you,” Teyla said, and the control room door closed behind them.

  Ronon looked at Zelenka, who dropped into the nearest chair, shaking his head. “Look, doc —” he began, and Zelenka lifted a hand.

  “No, no, it’s a good plan, as plans go. It’s just not the one I thought we were following.”

  “I’d like to help,” Ronon said. “But I don’t want to be in the way.”

  “And you can be a help, I think,” Zelenka answered, with a quick smile. “You understand the problem, yes? We have to find all the places that the ship’s skeleton is stressed or broken outright, only I do not have enough people to do it manually. So if you would start with these files —”

  Ronon suppressed a groan, and seated himself at the indicated console. A screen lit, showing a model of the ship rotating in space, and Zelenka pushed his glasses more securely onto his nose.

  “This is a — Well, essentially it’s a stress scan of the ship. We placed a tone generator as close to the nose as we could get it, and then recorded the vibration throughout the ship’s frame.”

  “That was smart.”

  “Thank you.” Zelenka touched more keys, and the image on the screen stopped spinning, colors appearing along its length. “What I need you to do is flag every point where the metal shows red — this bright red, here.”

  Ronon squinted at the screen. There was quite a bit of red on the model, mostly at points where one or more lines crossed, and he gave Zelenka an uneasy look. “Is this thing safe?”

  “Mostly? We are leaking some atmosphere, but not much. Not enough to change our orbit, at least not in any reasonable time frame. As long as we don’t try to fly it, we should be fine.”

  “All right.” Ronon reached for the mouse, began moving it around the screen, clicking on the red patches to expand them, and drawing circles around the points where the color flared brightest. “Hey, doc? Wouldn’t it be more efficient to have the computer do this?”

  “Probably.” Zelenka didn’t look up from his own screen. “But I don’t have time to write that program just at the moment, and you are a perfectly reliable substitute.”

  “Thanks,” Ronon said, doubtfully, and went back to work.

  He worked his way down from the nose to a point a little before the control room, the number of weak points that he had marked making him feel as though he ought somehow to move more carefully, or at least sit more lightly in his chair. He felt as though he were inside a cracked eggshell, the spring eggs that they had bought filled with confetti for Founders’ Day. He jumped as the control room door slid open, but it was only Teyla, coming back from the docking bay.

  “Colonel Sheppard is ready to return to Atlantis,” she said.

  Zelenka nodded, adjusting his headset, and moved to a different section of the controls, activating the main viewscreen so that it showed the Stargate hanging above the curve of the planet. “Rodney. Colonel Sheppard is about to leave. Are all your people clear of the area?”

  “Yes, we’re fine,” McKay answered.

  Ronon tuned out the rest of the familiar conversation, looking up only when the Stargate whooshed open. One after the other, the three puddle jumpers disappeared into the roiling blue light, and then the gate winked closed.

  “Well,” Zelenka said, and Teyla nodded.

  “It is good to restock the city’s weapons.”

  “Yes —” Zelenka broke off as half a dozen lights flashed to life on his console. His hands moved busily over the keys, and he swore under his breath. “Someone is dialing the gate.”

  A moment later, the Stargate whooshed open, and a battered ship tumbled through. It hung for an instant against the stars as the gate blinked out behind it, and then thrusters fired in ragged sequence, irregular flashes of light across the scarred hull. They winked out, leaving the ship nearly motionless against the stars.

  “Wraith?” Ronon asked, and managed not to reach for his weapon. Something was very wrong.

  “I don’t feel any,” Teyla said, and she was cut off by a screech of static from the communications system.

  Zelenka swore again, adjusting the frequencies, and abruptly words came clear.

  “— Lanteans still on the Ancient ship, please answer! If anyone’s on board, come in, please!”

  Zelenka touched a key. “This is Zelenka. Identify yourselves, please.” He muted the system, and looked at Teyla. “Do you recognize the ship?”

  She shook her head. “It looks like a Traveler ship, but I don’t recognize it. It’s not one of the ones we have dealt with before.

  “Thank the Ancestors, the Lanteans are still there!”

  Ronon could almost hear the speaker shake himself, controlling fear and excitement.

  “Atlantis personnel, this is Tarris, Housing Officer of the Traveler ship Great Astala. We collided with the Sunstar, she’s holed, and we suffered catastrophic drive failure and are venting atmosphere. I’ve brought off the children and some of the women, but we’re out of power and we’re losing the ship — “

  “Rodney, you are needed on the bridge,” Zelenka said, into his mic, and touched the keys again. “I understand you, Tarris. You say you have survivors on board?”

  “We’re the lifeboat,” Tarris answered. “But there are another two hundred people back on Astala, and we can’t get them off — “

  “We don’t have enough ships to rescue all your people at once,” Zelenka said. “We can take off some, but it will take several trips. How badly is your main ship damaged?”

  “Astala lost the main drive,” Tarris said again. “She’s in an unstable orbit. If we don’t get power back, we’re going to enter the atmosphere and burn.”

  Ronon looked over his shoulder as the control room door slid open, admitting McKay. The scientist slid into a seat next to Zelenka, for once not interrupting, and Zelenka frowned at the screen.

  “How long do you have?”

  “I don’t know. The engineers were trying to get the maneuver drive back but they weren’t having any luck —” Tarris stopped, and Ronon could almost hear him hauling himself back from the brink of panic. “Ok. They’re telling me maybe four hours? Five? Not much more than that.”

  “All right,” Zelenka said. “That gives us a little time to plan.” He hit the switch that closed the channel and looked at McKay. “You heard?”

  “Every word.” McKay was already typing figures into a laptop. “Do we know anything at all about this ship of theirs? Besides that it’s a Traveler ship, which means it’s a jury-rigged collection of improbably wired and extremely dang
erous components that have finally given out on them?”

  “That seems to describe it, yes,” Zelenka answered.

  “The first thing must be to get the people off,” Teyla said.

  “We can’t,” McKay answered. “We’ve only got the one puddle jumper, it’d take ten trips at least. And where would we take them?”

  Zelenka opened communications again. “Tarris. Are you sure there’s no room on your other ship?”

  “We’re sure. Sunstar’s environmental systems were damaged, she’s barely able to take care of what she has.”

  “What exactly is wrong with your power plant?” McKay demanded. “What did you do to it?”

  “We didn’t —”

  “Do you have any schematics?” McKay reached for his laptop. “Any record of what happened?”

  “I can send you what we have.” That was a new voice, a light contralto that could have been a very young man or a slightly older woman. With the Travelers, Ronon thought, it could be either. Any Traveler who showed a talent for ship maintenance was promptly pressed into service.

  “Got it,” McKay said, watching the data spooling onto his screen. He spun the laptop so that Zelenka could see the screen. “If this is really what’s wrong — and I grant you, it’s a big if, this data is pretty ratty — we can fix it.”

  Zelenka studied the screen for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. Yes, we have everything you would need.”

  “Once we get the engine back on line, we can stabilize the orbit, and everything will be fine.” McKay scowled at his screen. “And if we need to — We have lifeboats here, right?”

  “Yes,” Zelenka said, “but they’re not — their engines won’t take them further than the planet.”

  “I know that,” McKay said. “But if we have to, we can ferry the rest of the Travelers back here. I don’t want to try to put them on this ship —”

  “Not given the state of the hull, no,” Zelenka said.

  “But there are, what, five lifeboats? We can transfer them to the lifeboats temporarily while we get this ship out of trouble.”

  Zelenka nodded. “Yes, ok, that will work. I will start loading the jumper —”

  McKay shook his head. “You’re not coming.”

  “Oh?” Zelenka looked up sharply, ready to protest, and McKay went on as though he hadn’t spoken.

  “I need you to stay here and launch the lifeboats. I’ll take the rest of our team — and Teyla, she can organize the rescue — and we’ll handle the repairs.”

  “Who will fly the puddle jumper?” Teyla asked. “Rodney, you cannot do that and fix their engines —”

  “Of course not. Dr. Tanaka has the ATA gene, she can fly the jumper.”

  Ronan looked at Teyla. “Do you want me to come with you? I can help corral the Travelers.”

  Teyla tipped her head to one side, visibly considering. “No. The Travelers must be used to emergencies in space, they will not panic. And we need all the room there is.”

  Ronon nodded, and swallowed his automatic protest. She was right, of course. They could fit two Travelers into the space he’d occupy in the jumper, and he wasn’t going to be any help with the repairs.

  “Did you hear that?” McKay demanded. “We’re coming to you.”

  “We heard,” Tarris answered. “And thank you.”

  Zelenka watched the puddle jumper leave the docking bay and accelerate toward the Stargate. It had taken less than an hour to assemble the supplies and load everything onto the remaining jumper, but that was time that was running out on the Astala. And on the ship that was Astala’s ‘lifeboat’, hanging in space between the Ancient ship and the Stargate. Tarris had not complained, but the scanner confirmed that they were pushing the limits of their life support systems.

  And that, he told himself sternly, was their problem to deal with. His job was to launch the Ancient lifeboats in preparation for the jumper’s return. He scrolled through Ancient menus, muttering to himself. Yes, there it was, the section of the manifest that dealt with emergencies, and there was the section on the lifeboats. All five of them were present, though the hull around both three and five had suffered damage. He checked the scan, frowning, but none of the stress lines showed completely red. According to the system, the lifeboats should be fully stocked, but they’d already discovered that the computer was not entirely accurate. Prone to wishful thinking, Rodney had said, glaring at the empty tool sockets as though it were a personal insult. But Radek was inclined to think that the Ancients were just as bad about falsifying checklists as most people. It wasn’t until your life had depended on the most obscure tool in the kit that you really understood how important they could be. And, besides, there were a few things the lifeboats would need that the Ancients didn’t supply.

  “Ronon. I need you to make sure that the lifeboats are in fact in place and fully supplied.”

  The big man rose, nodding.

  “Also there are oxygen candles in the locker beside the door. Take — let’s see, two for each lifeboat — take ten of them and share them out.”

  “Ok.” Ronon turned toward the door. It was nice, Radek thought, to deal with someone who didn’t need to argue about absolutely everything —

  The lights flickered. Radek looked up sharply, then reached for his laptop, switching to internal scans, but there were no alarms. The naqqadah generator was in place, powering the ship’s systems; the gravity field indicators glowed green, and they weren’t losing any more atmosphere than they had been.

  The lights flickered again, and then blinked out. The emergency lights came on at once, but half the consoles were dead.

  “Doc?” Ronon said.

  “I don’t know.” Radek glared at the displays as though he could make them work by mental force. “We’ve lost everything but emergency power.”

  “Damn.”

  Radek took a deep breath, considering the displays. Everything was down except the emergency systems, and they, too, were showing warning signs. But the naqqadah generator was fine, and the connections said they were still good. If they weren’t, he and Ronon would have to get down to the engine room and replace them by hand. But, for now, try rebooting, he thought, and typed in the sequence of commands that would bring the naqqadah generator back into the system. The response flashed across his screen: the generator was receiving his input, but the power wasn’t crossing into the ship’s systems. Probably that was a physical problem with that particular bridge. But, no, when he pinged it individually, it showed intact. The frequency? Ancient equipment could be finicky about the frequencies it received. The emergency lights wavered, shadows moving across the consoles, but he ignored them. He touched keys again, adjusting the generator’s output. Bring it down to the minimum, he thought, tune it to be sure it matches exactly, and then try to reboot…

  He entered the last command, holding his breath. The power surged, and the main lights flashed. For just a moment, he thought he’d succeeded, and then everything cut out. In the dark, the chair fell away beneath him as the gravity cut out, and he heard Ronon yell.

  He grabbed for the edge of his chair, dragged himself down against it and wrapped his feet around the pillar that connected it to the deck. “Ronon! Grab something and hold on!”

  “Trying, doc.” The answer came from somewhere near the door, but Radek couldn’t waste the time to look even if he had been able to see anything. His laptop, he needed his laptop — needed any laptop, it would be battery powered. It had been on the console beside where he’d been working, and he reached carefully in that direction, trying not to stir up air currents that would drive it away from him. Assuming that all the air was not rushing out — but, no, there was no breeze on his skin. They were not decompressing.

  The laptop. He had to find the laptop. He leaned forward, not losing his grip on the seat,
and stretched in the direction where he’d last seen it. His questing fingers touched metal, batting it away, and he swore.

  “Are you all right?” Ronon’s voice sounded closer.

  “I’m fine. Hold on to something, you don’t want to be drifting if the power comes back.” Radek unwound his feet from the chair, grabbed its arm with one hand and stretched again. This time his fingers closed on the laptop’s edge, but he flailed for a moment before he could drag himself back against the console. He opened the laptop, and couldn’t help a sigh of relief as the screen sprang to life.

  In its dim light, he could see Ronon spinning slowly in the center of the room. He wasn’t flailing, but working his arms and legs slowly, as though he was swimming in jelly, and Radek hooked his foot around the chair again to anchor himself. Ronon wasn’t in immediate danger; his first care had to be for the ship.

  The system management program opened, alert windows popping open everywhere. Radek dismissed the least important, leaving the last four open so that he could switch quickly from system to system. Power was definitely out; the naqqadah generator’s fail-safe had cut in, and he’d need to restart it. Their own Wi-Fi was running, but that was it for communications; he could talk to the generator, and to the other laptops, and anyone who happened to be on the ship. Except, of course, that it was just him and Ronon. The environmental systems were completely shut down, and there were new stress points showing throughout the hull.

  None of that was good, he thought, but the power came first. Without power, he couldn’t do anything else. “Ronon! I am going to try to get power back. Try to secure yourself.”

  “Yeah, I’m working on that.”

  Ronon sounded faintly breathless, but Radek couldn’t spare him a look. He switched to the main power window, studying the readouts from the generator. The power surge had tripped the failsafes, just as it was supposed to; when he pinged the system, there was no sign of damage. He typed in the commands to bring the generator back online, and held his breath as the line that showed power flow began to build.