Stargate Atlantis: Third Path: Book 8 in the Legacy series

by Melissa Scott

  “Captain,” Ronon began — hadn’t someone said that electronics could draw the lightning? — and she looked up with a wincing grin.

  “Shutting down.” She touched keys as she spoke, the screen going dark, then closed the computer and tucked it behind her back. Joseph touched her shoulder, handing her an MRE, then began to open her own.

  The western sky was full of fire, sheets of lightning that threw the clouds’ tortured shapes into sharp relief, punctuated by bolts that stabbed to the ground like twisted, barren trees of light. The noise was constant, deafening, as much felt as heard. Ronon made himself break off another piece of the dried meat, and then another; when it was finished, he grabbed the next piece, but he barely tasted the vegetable leather. Another bolt struck somewhere behind them, light and sound almost simultaneous, and some of the pod plants let off a salvo in answer. Their bolts seemed pale by comparison.

  Parrish leaned forward. “I think maybe that hit some of the pointed pods?”

  “Careful.” Hunt put a hand on his sleeve and he subsided.

  Something was moving in the dark, and with the movement came a rushing drone. Ronon tensed, bracing himself for wind, but instead it was rain, a sheet of it so heavy that it looked like fog. It swept toward them, dulling the lightning and blurring even the Stargate’s massive shape, and the first downpour hit the shelter like a blow. Everyone instinctively pulled their feet back, and Ronon glanced quickly at the leafy ceiling. There were leaks, but the construction held. And then it was past, as quickly as it had appeared, and he felt the relief travel down the line.

  “Wow,” Samara said. “Man, you couldn’t even breathe in that.”

  “I don’t think you’d actually drown,” Aulich said, though her tone wasn’t as certain as her words, “but, yeah, not nice at all.”

  As the noise of the rain receded, it seemed as though the thunder was louder. Ronon made himself eat another strip of the dried meat, knowing he would need the energy, but he couldn’t help watching the horizon. Was the lightning brighter? It seemed as though there were more bolts reaching the ground, and that they were marching steadily toward the Stargate clearing. Beside him, Aulich glanced at her watch.

  “About fifteen minutes.”

  Ronon opened his mouth to ask whether that was until the worst hit or until it was over, and the words were drowned by another roaring wall of rain. It swept over the shelter, and behind it the air was suddenly chill and strange. He felt the hairs on his arms lift and saw Aulich look up in sudden alarm.

  A bolt of lightning stabbed down into the clearing, slamming into the Stargate. The ring seemed to glow for an instant, caught in a light no longer white but weirdly blue-purple, and then the thunder slammed down on them. Ronon’s vision was full of blurred lights, jagged afterimages. Light seemed to run along the ring, long sparks crackling as they spanned the gap and vanished into the dark.

  Joseph started to get to her feet, but Aulich grabbed her arm, forcing her back down. “You’ll get yourself killed.”

  The sergeant took a breath, shaking herself. “Yes. Sorry, ma’am.”

  “It hit the Stargate,” Samara said. “Oh, man. We are so screwed.”

  “The Ancestors built the Rings to withstand storms,” Ronon said. “The Stargate’s the biggest structure around on most worlds. It has to be able to take getting hit by lightning.”

  Joseph nodded vehemently. “Yeah. Yes, sir. We’ve seen this before. It’ll be all right.”

  “But the DHD was already damaged —” Hunt broke off with a gasp. Ronon thought Parrish might have nudged her.

  “It’s a software problem,” Aulich said. “Not hardware. The hardware should be fine.”

  Ronon hoped she was as certain as she sounded. His skin was still tingling, hairs stirring against his skin. Two more bolts struck in quick succession, one among the succulents and the other further off, at the edge of the stand of conifers.

  “Not much longer,” Aulich said, half under her breath. “Not much longer now.”

  Ronon took a deep breath, bracing himself for more, but the worst of the storm seemed to have passed. There was still thunder, but it seemed to come from behind them now, and he thought he saw breaks in the clouds overhead. Aulich checked her watch again.

  “Permission to boot up the computer? We should be past the worst now.”

  “Go ahead.” Ronon waited while the machine cycled and the screen lit, revealing more lines and blobs of green.

  “Yeah,” Aulich said. “Ok, I think we’re good.” She angled the laptop so that Ronon could see, pointing to a space between two broad yellow line. “That’s us, here. The first line of storms has passed us.”

  A crack of thunder punctuated her words, but it was clearly behind them. Ronon uncoiled himself and took a cautious step outside the shelter. The air was much colder, and he hunched his shoulders against the wind.

  “Ma’am, sir, I got to take a look at the DHD.” Joseph scooted forward, her toolkit already in hand. Ronon looked at Aulich, who shrugged and nodded.

  “I think it’s as safe as we’re going to get, sir.”

  “Go ahead,” Ronon said, and Joseph hurried away. “The rest of us — let’s get a fire started.”

  They had collected wood before the storms hit, and stashed it under one of the smaller tarps. That had blown partly loose, and the wood was damp, but Parrish had kept several handfuls of the resinous bark in the shelter with them. Ronon and Samara stacked the wood in front of the shelter, and then Ronon tucked the bark into the driest crevices and applied a lighter. The bark spat and popped, throwing out sparks and a hot, green-toned flame; the branches smoked heavily for a few minutes, and then caught fire. Ronon fed it more bark, and more of the damp wood, and sat back onto his heels, satisfied with the result.

  “That feels good,” Hunt said, and held out her hands to the blaze.

  The shelter would capture at least some of the fire’s heat, Ronon thought. The fire might not survive the next round of storms — almost certainly wouldn’t, if the rain was as hard as the first bands — but they could rekindle it afterward if they had to. It wouldn’t be precisely pleasant, but they would certainly survive until the planet’s sunrise. None of them were looking at the DHD, he noticed. But even if the DHD was unusable, Atlantis knew where they were. If worst came to worst, they’d send one of the Taur’i warships to rescue them, or they could even ask the Genii for help. Ladon Radim owed them that much. Atlantis did not abandon its people. It would just be a matter of surviving long enough for the ships to reach them. Unless Atlantis itself was overtaken by disease before they could send for help… He killed that thought. The Stargate was undamaged, and surely Atlantis had told its off-world teams and the SGC about this problem; they could get supplies that way, from Sateda and the alpha site and any of half a dozen other worlds, both food and shelter, and they could make it if they had to. He wasn’t going to admit that there were any other options.

  He made himself walk toward the DHD. Joseph was crouching by an open panel, headlight shining into the interior, and she looked up at his approach, the beam of light flashing across his face and chest.

  “So far, so good, sir. The lightning doesn’t seem to have done any physical damage.”

  “Ok.”

  “I suppose there’s a chance the shock caused the system to reboot.” Joseph closed the panel and came to her feet, the beam of her headlight now playing across the top of the DHD. “Permission to test it?”

  “Go ahead.” Ronon heard her take a deep breath, then press firmly on the first symbol in Sateda’s address. There was a momentary pause, and then a different symbol lit: the first in Atlantis’s address. She pressed a second, but again Atlantis’s address lit.

  “Damn.” Joseph shook her head.

  “At least it still works,” Ronon said. “When’s our next check-in with Atlantis?”

  Joseph consulted her watch. “Half an hour, sir.”

  “Go back up to the fire and get warm,” Ronon said.
“There’s nothing we can do until we find out what their status is.”

  They all trailed back to the DHD half an hour later to watch the Stargate open and stabilize. Lorne’s image took shape in the screen, and Ronon could see the look of relief cross his face as he registered that everyone was present and unharmed.

  “Dr. Beckett assures me they’ve come up with a workable solution to kill the bacteria,” Lorne said. “The next step is to apply it.”

  “Do you have any kind of time frame on that?” Ronon asked, and thought he saw Lorne wince.

  “Dr. Beckett is hoping to be ready to decontaminate in about three hours.”

  And then they would need to be sure that it had worked. Ronon wouldn’t bet on that taking less than a couple of hours. He looked at Aulich, saw the same calculations in her eyes. “That’s going to cut it close for us, Major. The next line of storms will be here in about five hours.”

  “Can you ride it out like you did this time?” Lorne asked.

  Ronon considered. It had been bad, but not as bad as he’d feared. The shelter wouldn’t protect them from a direct strike, of course, but there wasn’t much out there that would. “If the storms aren’t any worse. And we were in a gap.”

  There was a little pause. “Understood,” Lorne said at last. “We’ll try to hurry things up.”

  “That would be good,” Ronon said.

  “We’ll check back with you once the decontamination process starts,” Lorne said. “Atlantis out.”

  The Stargate winked out, leaving only the night sky and the distant flicker of lightning visible through its circle.

  “What now?” Parrish asked, after a moment.

  “We hunker down and wait,” Ronon answered.

  Parrish nodded, though Ronon couldn’t entirely read his expression, and put an arm around Hunt’s shoulders. “Come on, Gina. At least we got a look at how those plants absorb power.”

  “I’m not sure I entirely agree with you,” Hunt answered, but let herself be drawn away.

  “Sammy. How are we doing for wood?” Ronon asked.

  Samara looked at the pile. “I could cut some more.”

  “Yeah. Do that.” Ronon surveyed the clearing again, the dark thick beyond the circle of firelight and the lights of headlamps and flashlights. Someone had switched the generator back on, and a couple of standing lamps added their light to the area by the fire. Overhead, the clouds were shredding in a fierce wind. PGX-239 lay in a particularly dense stellar neighborhood; the sky was filled with points and swirls of light, thrown in generous handfuls only partly veiled by the scudding clouds. On the western horizon, though, a solid bank of cloud was rising again, and there were faint flickers of lightning in its depths. It was still too far away for them to hear thunder, and he allowed himself a sigh of relief. At least they had this respite.

  “Ronon?” That was Aulich, straightening from the largest piece of her equipment. “Can I have a word?”

  “Sure.” Ronon waited, and when she didn’t move toward him, came to join her. “What’s up?”

  “Now that the generator’s running again, I’ve got the radar and the other scanners working, so I’m starting to get a good look at the next line of storms.”

  “Ok.”

  “The good news is, I don’t think we’re going to see too many of those incredibly heavy rain bands.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “I don’t think we’re going to be in a gap this time.” In the light of her laptop, Aulich’s face was very grave. “Unless there’s a significant change in the wind direction, we’re going to have a heavy cell pass directly over us.”

  That wasn’t good. The lightning had been too close for comfort even in a gap. “No sign that the storms are weakening? Or even that there’s less lightning?”

  “No, sir.” Aulich shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”

  “How long?”

  “Like I said before. About five hours.”

  About when Atlantis said they’d be able to lift the quarantine. “Cutting it close,” he said, and Aulich nodded.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ronon considered the problem. Lorne said they were ready to decontaminate, and that they were pretty much certain the process would work. If he was right, there was no point in taking the risk of waiting — except that if he was wrong, they’d be risking not quarantine but an unpleasant death. “Back to the shelter.”

  The others were gathered there, standing close to the fire as the wind swirled sparks from the blaze, and Ronon winced at their relieved expressions. “All right. I’ve got some news.”

  He laid out the situation as clearly as he could, watching the faces change from relief to renewed concern. “We could go through now,” he finished, “but that’s taking a chance that this bacteria will still mutate. And if it does, it’s fatal.”

  There was a little silence, no one willing to be the first to speak, and at last Parrish shrugged. “We’re all right for now. I say hold off a little longer. No point in risking it until we absolutely have to.”

  There was a murmur of agreement, and Ronon nodded. “Right. For now, we stay.”

  Radek looked around the conference room, making sure everyone was there. Lorne leaned on his elbows at the head of the table while Sindye fiddled with the connections, attaching her failing laptop to the projector one last time. One of the Air Force technicians — Shalcross, Radek remembered — was helping, a roll of electrical tape in hand. Ember was there as well, seated carefully three seats from the nearest human, his hands folded politely on the table. The rest were the volunteers who would help place the cylinders, an Air Force lieutenant named Casson, Spitzer and Hernandez, both Marines, and Dr. Koninsky, who as an astrophysicist had been useless for the research, but was an expert rock-climber.

  Sindye gave a grunt of satisfaction, and the big screen lit. It fuzzed with static for a moment, but then the connection held. The image faded into focus: a schematic of Atlantis’s ventilation system, carefully edited to show no more detail than was absolutely necessary. Three spots were marked with green dots, and Lorne straightened.

  “All right, gentlemen, ladies. What’s the plan?”

  “We have synthesized the neutralizing compound and placed it in fifteen aerosol containers,” Radek began. “Those are they, on the cart by the door.” There was a rustle as everyone turned to look, but he ignored them. “Each cylinder is, as you can see, about sixty centimeters long — approximately two feet — but weighs fifteen kilograms. That’s a bit more than thirty pounds. As you see from the diagram, there are three spots where the neutralizing compound must be introduced into the ventilation system, and five cylinders must be placed in each spot. Each cylinder has been fitted with a radio trigger that will release the gas, and that trigger will be released by a program run from the control room. That program will also simultaneously initiate what we might call a pulse of air that will ensure the even and near-instantaneous dispersal of the gas throughout the quarantine area.”

  “And we’re sure that this gas is harmless to humans?” Lorne asked.

  “Yes.” Radek nodded firmly, and Ember lifted his head, his hair slithering across his leather coat.

  “It was a necessary parameter.”

  Was that a joke? Radek thought. Lorne gave the Wraith an equally doubtful glance, and turned his attention back to the screen.

  “What if the radio trigger fails on some of these? Will it still work?”

  “It will not,” Sindye said. “It’ll take the full amount to fill the entire contaminated volume. But we have to do it soon.”

  Lorne nodded. “Aside from anything else, the team on PGX-239 needs to be evacuated as soon as possible. In less than four hours, they’re going to be hit by a line of storms —” He broke off before he finished the sentence, but he thought everyone knew what would have come next: a line of storms they may not survive. “We are not leaving them there. If the alflageolis isn’t neutralized, we’re going to bring them through anyway.�
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  “If we haven’t got this under control by then,” Sindye said, “we’re putting them at potentially worse risk.”

  “I’m well aware of that, Doctor,” Lorne said. “Which is why this needs to work, first try.”

  “We have collected gas masks from the jumpers,” Radek said. “The gas itself may be harmless, but the aerosol blast could cause eye or lung damage to the person right on top of it. One person will stay with the cylinders and if any fail to release on signal, they will trigger them manually.”

  “It is not ideal,” Ember said, “but it will be within the parameters.”

  Lorne nodded. “All right.”

  “Casson and Hernandez, you’ll take the western node, here.” Radek touched the screen. “Your best access is through the corridor below, on level twelve. There’s a maintenance hatch here, and if you follow the shaft to the west, you’re only twenty meters from the node.”

  The lieutenant nodded. “And we can just put the cylinders on the floor of the shaft?”

  “That’s correct,” Radek answered. “Dr. Sindye, you and Spitzer will take the southeast node, accessed through the jumper bay. Dr. Koninsky and I will take the north node.”

  “That’s the one that doesn’t have ladders,” Lorne said.

  “That’s the one that we don’t know about,” Radek corrected. “It was not intended to be accessed for any maintenance purposes, and we have not explored it since our arrival. However, other isolated sections of the internal systems have turned out to be fitted with handholds, so —” He shrugged.