by Martha Wells
McKay went immediately to the hole in the platform where the DHD had been. He poked around at the remains of it for a few moments, then sat back, shaking his head. “I was right, this DHD wasn’t destroyed by an energy weapon, there was some sort of internal overload. Which means that maniac was out here trying to get around whatever control inhibition the Ancients placed on the crystals and blew the damn thing himself.”
John chewed his lip, thinking about it. “He would have still tried to dial manually. Maybe he tried it a lot.”
McKay had followed his thought. He snorted. “You think he killed two ZPMs manually dialing a ’gate? It’s impossible. It takes comparatively little power to initiate a ’gate, which is probably a safety feature to keep travelers from being stranded. The outside power source isn’t creating the worm-hole, it’s just unlocking the inner ring and then locking in the chevrons for the address. He would have to dial…” McKay frowned.
John lifted his brows. “Over and over again for ten thousand years? In between stasis chamber naps?”
“And I thought I was obsessive-compulsive,” McKay muttered, diving back into the hole. “I find the fact that he must have been unsuccessful all this time mildly terrifying.”
John wasn’t thrilled with it either. “Maybe he wasn’t unsuccessful. Maybe he went there after the Ancients left for Earth. Which means—” He hesitated, not liking where this was going. “It’s not the city he wants, it’s us. He wants to keep experimenting.” He took a frustrated breath, looking out over the bright plain. “Why didn’t the Ancients just kill him? All these tricks with the ’gate, it’s like they wanted him to squirm around trying to escape.”
“Or as if they wanted something from him,” McKay said quietly. “They didn’t touch his inner sanctum lab complex. Or they searched it, didn’t find what they wanted, and left it intact hoping the answer was just hidden too well. That they could force him to reveal it eventually.”
Antidotes, John thought. For the Thesians, for whoever else Dorane had managed to infect. He didn’t want to say it aloud; he didn’t want to sound that hopeful—as if it would tempt the universe to conspire against him.
McKay was quiet for a moment, then he said, “You look like an alien biker,” and started working again. He poked and prodded at the DHD’s remnants, dug tools out of his pack, and muttered to himself. The day was getting hot, the sun reflecting off the stone platform, and the brightness was giving John yet another headache. Then McKay connected in the ZPM, and John felt a sudden shiver travel down his back. It was not an unpleasant sensation.
He stared up at the Stargate, which still looked like an inert hunk of naquadah, but something in John’s head told him it was now powered up, ready to be dialed. “You did it,” he said, just as McKay sat back from the ragged hole in the paving and said, “I did it.”
“What?” they both said at the same time. John waved for McKay to shut up. “I felt it. Like it was an Ancient gene thing. Except I’ve never felt a ’gate before. And ZPMs have never talked to me.”
“I actually didn’t think you had been holding out on us all this time, Major.” McKay stared at the Stargate, then at John. “Maybe that’s what the spines are for. Maybe they’re meant to enhance reception of Dorane’s alternate mental technology activation, and they also function that way for the real ATA.”
John caught himself trying to roll his eyes back to see the spines in his brows. “Like antennae?” It did make a sort of sense.
McKay rubbed sweat and dust off his face with his shirtsleeve. “Can you dial the ’gate mentally, by any chance? Because that damn thing looks heavy.”
“Let’s see.” John concentrated on the first symbol for Atlantis, then for a few other destinations he had memorized. Nothing. The inner ring just sat there, making a deep metallic purring noise that John could feel in his back teeth. He felt like it was staring accusingly at him. Or possibly laughing. “Guess not.”
“Of course.” McKay pushed to his feet, stumbled, and John stood, giving him a hand up. “That would be too easy.”
They decided to test the theory that all destinations except Atlantis had been locked out to keep Dorane here. If they could dial another destination, that meant they could use Plan A, which was to try to dial into Atlantis from another ’gate address, and trick Dorane into letting them in by pretending to be traders or something else unspecified that they hadn’t quite figured out yet. “Let’s try the Hoffans,” McKay suggested, leaning tiredly on the gate. “They were nice people. Hopefully a few of them are still alive.”
“It’s worth a shot,” John agreed. The Hoffans put a high value on fighting the Wraith with science, and were advanced enough to understand genetics. If any of them were still around, they would probably be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and listen to McKay’s explanations, instead of shooting the freaky alien creature who had just come through their ’gate (i.e. John) on sight.
They wrestled with the ’gate’s inner ring. It was heavy, like pushing a loaded truck up a hill. But while it would rotate all around, it stubbornly refused to lock in the first symbol in the Hoffans’ gate address, no matter how hard they both shoved at it, or how hard John mentally begged it. John swore. “It’s going to have to be Plan B.”
McKay stepped back, eyeing the ’gate with weary disgust. “You know what you’re going to say?”
John had no idea what he was going to say. He thought he would be better winging it. “I can sound crazy and desperate, how’s that?”
“Crazy and desperate is standard operating procedure.” McKay went to his pack, rooted around in it for a moment, and pulled out something that looked like a little PDA, but John could tell it was Ancient technology. It buzzed with a low note, a minor key compared to the bass orchestra of the Stargate, but much friendlier. “Major, I’m going to put this in the MALP. I assume if this goes hideously wrong, we’ll both be searched and I don’t want Dorane to find it.”
“Okay.” John blinked, distracted, as the little device sang that it had lots of data but was ready for more. “Uh… What is it?”
“A download from Dorane’s database. He thought he had it adequately protected, but let’s say his system security skills don’t match his Frankensteinian expertise in biochemistry. The Ancients must have been able to get this data too, so I don’t know how useful it might be, but it’s still worth saving.” Rodney tucked it into one of the MALP’s code-locked compartments. The metal muted the little device’s song, and it settled into quiet. McKay dusted his hands off on his pants. “Now, this has got to look good. We need some stage dressing. I have to look like your prisoner.” Covered with a sticky combination of sweat, dust, and sand, and turning red from incipient sunburn, McKay already looked like he had been dragged to the Stargate by the ankle. He patted his pockets and handed over the 9mm to John. “You should tie me up,” he added, looking absently around. “Better use my belt. There’s some cable in the MALP’s compartment, but we’ll need that to hang ourselves if this doesn’t work.”
John went to the MALP to start powering up the transmitter, making sure it was ready to send as soon as they got the last chevron locked. “Right. How about a chorus of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life?”
“Maybe later.”
Having McKay’s hands awkwardly tied with the belt made pushing the inner ring more difficult, but the symbols for Atlantis’ address each locked without hesitation when the ring slid into place. They hastily scrambled out of the way as the last chevron encoded.
The wormhole whooshed into existence with a blast of ozone and a bass fugue John could feel through his whole body as he bolted around to the MALP. The jumpers’ instant response to him was like coming home, but he wasn’t comfortable with this intimate a relationship with a Stargate, let alone random data pads and ZPMs. He reached for the transmitter and froze. He felt something building in the DHD’s ruined base, heard a weird little scatter of dissonant notes. Then it cut off abruptly. He realized what it was an
d swore in frustration. “Rodney, I think the ’gate just ate the ZPM.”
Rodney stepped to the DHD’s pit, staring down into it. He moaned a little, sounding as if he was deeply in pain. “I think the Ancients might have anticipated that Dorane might try to dial manually. Obviously, they wanted to keep that to a minimum, so they not only doctored the crystal, they booby-trapped the DHD to eat any directly connected power source.”
“Yeah. I guess it didn’t take him long to use up those two ZPMs after all.” And that meant they only had this one chance to convince Dorane to let them in. “Here we go.” He keyed on the transmitter. “Sheppard to Atlantis.”
The radio crackled and static filled the little screen. The moment stretched and John had time to wonder what he would say if Peter Grodin answered as though everything was normal. The moment stretched longer, and every muscle in his body tensed as he felt the sudden conviction that no one was going to answer, that he was talking to a dead city, as dead as the ruins behind him. Then Dorane’s voice said, “Now this is unexpected.”
“Unexpected is right,” John said, having no problem making his voice sound rough and on edge. His imagination presented him with a picture of Dorane standing at the ’gate control console on the gallery, surrounded by dead operations staff. “The Koan didn’t eat me, though not from lack of trying. How’s that invasion of Atlantis going?”
“It surprises me that you were able to dial the Stargate.” Standing next to John, Rodney mouthed the words no, really. “Why did you bother?”
“My guess is it’s not going so well there. I figure you didn’t realize how many changes we’d made, how many of the Ancient components had failed, how jury-rigged everything was.” Dorane would have been expecting Atlantis as it was before the Ancients left, not consoles with laptops tied into their systems and naquadah power generators.
No answer. He wouldn’t be talking at all if he wasn’t at least curious, John reminded himself. He said, “I have something that could make the transition a little easier for you.”
“And that would be?”
“McKay. The Koan didn’t eat him either. He knows more about how our equipment meshes with the Ancients’ than anybody else there.” If he’s got Zelenka under his control, this is so not going to work.
Another long silence, while John’s nerves grated. He forced himself not to speak, to pretend he was the one holding all the cards. Then Dorane said, “Better than Kavanagh?”
Beside him Rodney rolled his eyes in disgust. John said, “Kavanagh’s a specialist; McKay knows the whole city. He set up the new power grid, the new ’gate protocols.” McKay was motioning with his bound hands, encouraging John to continue. “Everything.”
“And he will agree to help me, to buy your freedom from my old prison?”
“Well, he won’t agree, but I’m sure you can convince him otherwise. He doesn’t have a choice.”
Dorane still didn’t sound that interested. “You would turn against your own people to assist me?”
John took what he figured was their last chance. “Maybe you ought to turn on the visual and take a look.”
McKay, now hovering behind John and hopping from foot to foot, apparently decided he should be unconscious, and threw himself down on the platform, sprawling half on his side, bound hands stuck out obviously in front of him. He raised inquiring brows at John, who nodded and gave him a thumb’s up. McKay was right, it did look convincing. The video crackled into life, and McKay slumped over, eyes closed. The MALP’s camera swiveled toward them, but John was more interested in the image fuzzily forming on the screen. It was the ’gate control gallery, Dorane standing over the dialing console, frowning thoughtfully at something beyond the edge of the screen. The MALP’s telemetry and video went through a laptop, and John wondered if Dorane realized the little thingy to the side was a camera, that the system had been set to send video at the same time it received it. As soon as we step through, J can get him from the ’gate platform. His chest tightened at the thought that this plan just might work. Knowing where Dorane was standing in the large ’gate room was going to shave seconds off his time.
Someone else moved in the video’s background, and John saw it was Peter Grodin. He was sitting down and someone was covering him with a P-90. Grodin craned his neck to see the laptop’s screen, his expression confused and incredulous. Then Dorane said, “Take off the eye protection.”
John gritted his teeth, feeling like somebody’s science exhibit, and pulled off the glasses and the bandana. The light stung his eyes, and he shaded them with a hand, flexing his fingers to extend the claws.
Dorane said nothing. Afraid he was losing his audience, John added, “Yeah, it worked. You think my own people would take me back after this? I’m not human anymore! If they got their hands on me, I’d spend the rest of my life locked up in a lab, as somebody’s pet experiment, cut to pieces while they took tissue samples and made things out of my blood!” He put the glasses back on, unable to stand the glare, and saw Peter looked shocked, utterly boggled, and a little offended, as if he couldn’t believe John would really think that. John started playing to him, finding it easier than trying to convince Dorane. He twisted his face into his best impression of Jack Nicholson playing an ax murderer, and added on a note of rising hysteria, “And they never trusted me in the first place! I’m only the military commander because I shot Colonel Sumner! He never even wanted me on the expedition, I’m only here because I had the gene and O’Neill forced him to take me!” He paused for breath. His throat was dry and it made his voice so rough he barely recognized it.
Grodin’s expression now clearly said, “Fine, Sheppard’s turned into an alien and gone barking, that’s just lovely.”
Behind John, Rodney groaned, obviously wanting in on the drama. John pretended to kick him, his boot connecting with Rodney’s ribs though not nearly as hard as it would look. He hissed a heartfelt, “Will you shut up!”
John saw Dorane turn his head, and heard him ask someone, “Who was this Sumner?”
A voice, so dull and lifeless that John couldn’t recognize it, answered, “The military commander of the expedition.”
John took a deep breath. Dorane had obviously been using his control drug. Dorane asked, “Did your friend Sheppard truly kill him?”
“That’s what we were told. He said…it was because a Wraith was killing Sumner, he was dying.”
Whoever it was, was speaking literally, as if he was under hypnosis, but the effect of it was to make the incident sound less like a mercy killing and more like a murder. Feeling this just might work, John snarled, “Hey! Are you going to drop the force shield, or should I just kill McKay?” The Stargate’s bass harmonic was turning impatient as it counted down its thirty-eight minute window. He shouted, “Come on, the Star-gate’s getting pissed off!”
Dorane looked into the video monitor for another long moment. Then he smiled. “I’ll drop the shield. Come through.”
John cut the transmission, made sure the light on the MALP’s camera was out. “We’re clear.”
McKay shoved himself into a sitting position and glared at him. “Ow,” he said pointedly.
“That didn’t hurt.” John gave him an arm up. “I could see Grodin in the monitor. He looked okay, and I think he bought the act.”
“Who knew Peter was that big an idiot.” McKay took a deep breath. “It occurs to me that if you don’t take Dorane out in the first minute, I’m going to be tortured to death and you’re going to be dissected, and everybody else will still die.”
“Yeah, Plan B sucks, but considering that Plan C was hanging ourselves—” The Stargate informed John that the shield on the receiving gate was down and they were clear for entry, so go already. He picked up the 9mm and made sure it was ready, then grabbed McKay’s arm. They stepped through the wormhole.
CHAPTER NINE
After the heat of the plain, the cool air of Atlantis was a mild shock. They walked into a ’gate room that was lit only by low-le
vel emergency lights and the wormhole’s watery blue glow, the late afternoon sun muted by the colored window insets. The Stargate was playing a loud surrealist concert in John’s head, and he hadn’t stepped into a darkened ’gate room since they had first found Atlantis resting on the bottom of its alien ocean, just before the city had come alive to welcome him and the others who had the Ancient gene. The large space would be oppressively dim to normal human eyes, but John could see and recognize the figures standing on the gallery level.
There were a dozen or more Koan up there, as well as Ford, Benson, Kinjo, Parker, and Yamato, all with P-90s, all of whom must be under Dorane’s control. That really wasn’t good. But Dorane still stood beside the dialing console, and he couldn’t control anybody if he was dead. John pulled off the sunglasses, meaning to disguise the motion of raising the pistol; he stopped just in time.
Though he couldn’t see it, there was a little harmonic of active Ancient technology, announcing its presence right in the center of Dorane’s chest. Oh, crap, John thought, sick, his hand tightening on the pistol’s grip. Apparently Plan B was worse than we thought. He kept the pistol at his side.
Managing to talk without moving his lips, Rodney said, “Why aren’t you shooting him?”
Teeth gritted, John replied the same way. “Because he’s wearing a personal shield.”
“Oh, God,” Rodney said aloud.
“Shut up,” John snarled at him, making it loud enough to hear up in the gallery. All they had between them and being shot by their own people was convincing Dorane. And John had just recalled that McKay, like most people with minimal filtering between brain and mouth, was kind of a lousy liar. “Seriously,” he added, hoping McKay got it. McKay looked righteously offended, so John could only hope he had.