Too bad. “You’ll warm up to me when you get to know me better, sir, I promise.” Officers like Sumner always failed to impress him, and Sheppard thought it best that the Colonel know that from the outset.
Sumner just walked away, but not without a sarcastic parting shot. “Long as you remember who gives the orders.”
Snide sonofabitch. Sheppard watched him go and, at the last possible moment, called, “That would be Dr. Weir, right?”
The Colonel turned back and glared. Sheppard met his challenge without flinching and didn’t blink until Sumner was forced to look away and move on.
He allowed himself a grim smile and returned his attention to the spinning Stargate. So…this is gonna be fun.
The atmosphere in the control room was charged so thick Weir could almost feel her hair beginning to stand on end. Dr. Jackson, General O’Neill and Rodney McKay were with her, staring, transfixed, at the dialing Stargate. It hardly seemed possible that they were about to reach out across the universe to an entirely new galaxy, and she wondered if this was how Columbus or Magellan had felt as they stood aboard their frail ships and set sail for an undiscovered world.
“Chevron six encoded,” the technician reported.
With butterflies dancing in her stomach, Weir cast a glance at McKay. He was staring straight ahead, expressionless. She wasn’t entirely sure he was still breathing. “This is it,” she said quietly. He didn’t respond, all his attention riveted on the Stargate. “Seriously,” she laughed, the tension making her giddy, “calm down. You’re embarrassing me.”
His eyes didn’t move, his face deadpan. “I have never been so excited in my entire life.”
Weir had never seen anyone become catatonic with excitement, but she had an open mind. Anything was possible. “It’s going to be fine.”
“Honestly, I never thought we’d get this far.”
Really? Well, that was interesting… She glanced at O’Neill, who lifted his shoulders in a shrug, but any comment was forestalled.
Chevron seven was encoded. This was it. This was the moment…
The Stargate stopped spinning. The entire gate room had fallen silent, every single breath was held. No one even dared blink. The chevron clamped down on the symbol for Earth, the gate rumbled, and then…
The event horizon mushroomed out, and settled peacefully in place.
“Chevron eight is locked!” The technician sounded elated. The gateway to a new galaxy had been opened…
Weir glanced at O’Neill, who gave her a brief nod. “Send the MALP,” she ordered and watched as it crawled up the ramp and disappeared into shimmering light. Then it was gone.
With everyone else, Weir huddled around the technician’s work station, waiting for the transmission that would determine if anyone would follow the MALP through the gate…
Let it work, she silently prayed. Let it work!
Nothing happened. Static snowed across the screen, but there was no transmission. Damn it. “It should be there by now.”
“It has a long way to go,” McKay pointed out, sounding much calmer than herself. How the hell does he do that?
To fail now, when they were so close… So damn close! She didn’t think she could handle it. Seriously. If the MALP just disappeared without trace, if there was no answer to the thousands of questions already pummeling her mind, then she—
Suddenly the indicators on the screen jumped to life and the snowstorm vanished, to be replaced by a dark, unclear picture.
“We have MALP telemetry,” the technician reported quietly, almost reverently.
Weir’s heart leaped. “What are we looking at?”
Eyes glued to the screen, McKay slipped behind one of the consoles, frowning in concentration.
“Switching to infrared,” the technician said and the screen flipped to a more psychedelic image. It helped, but only slightly.
“Radar indicates a large room,” said McKay, studying the screen.
“Structurally intact,” Dr. Jackson added.
For the first time, McKay was beginning to reveal his excitement. Or, perhaps, his trepidation. “Environment sensors say there’s oxygen. No measurable toxins. We have viable life support.” He paused and looked over at Weir. Yes, she thought, definitely trepidation. “Looks like we’re not getting out of this.”
She wanted to grin, but kept it in check as she looked to O’Neill for his decision.
The General took a breath, and she thought she detected a slight hint of regret – or envy – as he gravely said, “Dr. Weir…you have a go.”
Life as she knew it – as they all knew it – was about to change forever. With a nod to O’Neill and Dr. Jackson, she turned to McKay. He was on his feet, nervous now, but not backing down. Hell, she was nervous too. Who wouldn’t be? This was so enormous she could hardly comprehend what they were about to do, but one thing was for sure. They were going to do it.
“Come on,” she said to McKay, “let’s go make history.”
Chapter Three
The order was given; the mission was a go. Colonel Sumner felt no surprise, no elation, no fear. He didn’t allow himself to be distracted so easily. Afghanistan, Abydos, or Atlantis; it was all the same to him. It was all enemy territory, and his job was to keep his people safe. That was all, no argument and no ambiguity.
He cast a glance at Sheppard and wished for the tenth time that Weir had listened to his recommendation to drop the cocky, smart-ass kid from the team. She’d said he was important, that he had some mutant gene. Whatever. But if Sheppard so much as hesitated before carrying out an order, Sumner was going to own his ass. And that was no joke.
Behind him, the security team were swinging their heavy packs onto their backs, settling their weapons ready for use. No one knew what lay on the other side of the puddle, but he’d bet dollars to donuts it wouldn’t be friendly. That was how the world worked, and he doubted the Pegasus galaxy would be any different. He paused, just for a moment, to feel the weight of the gun in his hands and to focus his mind. And then he stepped up onto the ramp and started walking.
“Let’s go, people,” he barked, “we don’t know how much power we’ve got! Security teams one through four are up first. All other personnel will follow on our signal.” He turned on the ramp and glanced back at his men. “Once on the other side, keep moving and clear the debarkation area.” He turned back to the Stargate and began striding toward it. “On my lead.”
“Hold on, Colonel!” It was Weir, her strident voice carrying through the bustle of the gate room. “We go through together.”
Refusing to display his irritation he stopped again, and once more turned around. She was pushing through the crowd, her own pack so large he was surprised she didn’t topple over. What the hell did she have in there? Hairdryer and rollers? Suddenly Sumner felt eyes on him, and looked over to see Sheppard watching him intently.
“Long as you remember who gives the orders.”
“That would be Dr. Weir, right?”
Smug SOB. Sumner turned his attention back to Weir. What the hell – if she wanted to get her ass blown off in the first wave, who was he to argue? But all he said was, “Fair enough.”
With his weapon raised, expecting everything and nothing, Sumner took a final glance at the gate room – and Earth – before stabbing through the event horizon and letting it shred him to pieces.
Daniel battled against a tidal wave of jealousy as he watched Elizabeth Weir standing at the top of the ramp. She’d paused, as so many did, on the cusp. He saw her take a deep breath and then, with no further hesitation, she stepped boldly through the gate and was gone.
He wondered briefly if he’d ever see her again, but the thought wasn’t enough to distract him from the stomach-twisting envy. She was going to Atlantis! All these people were going to Atlantis, the place he’d been compulsively seeking for over a year. The city of the Ancients! He’d found it at last, but they were going and he had to stay home. It was just…wrong.
He glan
ced at Jack, who silently watched the Atlantis team make their final preparations. His face was impassive, but Daniel knew he was bound to share the sense of being left behind. At least to some degree. And, as usual, Daniel found it impossible to hold his tongue. “Jack, there’s still time for me to—”
“No.”
“But I—”
“No.”
And then the radio crackled, and Sumner’s faint voice could be heard. “All clear, it looks good!”
“Very well,” Jack replied.
That was it, the final moment was upon them. Daniel clenched his teeth and turned to watch through the window.
At his side, Jack gave the order. “Expedition team, move out.”
The exodus began. Scientists, soldiers, doctors, engineers, biologists, archeologists… The luckiest people alive, Daniel thought. They filed up the ramp in twos and threes, lugging their equipment behind them as they embarked on humanity’s biggest adventure – without him.
A hand suddenly landed on his shoulder. “Come on,” said Jack, brandishing a magnum of champagne, “let’s go see them off.”
With a sigh, Daniel followed him out of the control room. “I’m never going to forgive you for this,” he pointed out as they trotted down the narrow steps into C-corridor.
“Yeah,” Jack nodded. “Think I can live with that.” At the bottom of the stairs Jack stopped and pinned Daniel with a serious look. “Don’t get me wrong, what these people are doing is astonishing. It’s important. And one day, they’ll come back and tell us what they’ve discovered. But,” he paused to let a couple of airman past, “but it’s our job to give them a home to come back to. It’s not over with Anubis, and you know it.”
He was right, of course. And without a ZPM they had no defense against renewed attack. But it was just so…
“They have a job to do Daniel,” said Jack. “So do we.” And then he smiled, “Besides, Teal’c would miss you.”
Daniel snorted a quiet laugh and they carried on walking. “Teal’c?”
“Sure. And Carter.”
“As pep talks go, Jack, this is one of your…less convincing.”
“Thank you. I put a lot of thought into it.”
Daniel didn’t bother answering, but perhaps – maybe – it wasn’t so bad to be left behind after all.
General O’Neill had been right when he’d said that Sheppard didn’t scare easy. And it wasn’t like he was scared as he stepped up to the ramp and came face-to-face with what looked like a shiny, vertical puddle. It was just that flying he knew, flying he understood. You had the stick, the bird did what you told it to, you knew where the ground was and you knew what would happen if you hit it too hard. But with this… Holy hell! McKay had given him a long-winded description, the gist of which had been that every molecule in his body would be torn apart, flung across the galaxy, and then reassembled at the other end.
It sounded painful. He hadn’t asked McKay about that because, well, frankly that wasn’t the sort of thing majors in the USAF asked civilian scientists. But it had been niggling there in the back of his mind for a while now. Not that he was afraid of pain…he just wanted to know what to expect.
He was close to the Stargate now, he could feel the static prickling against his skin and smell the tang of ozone. Yeah, this was real. This was…crazy. At his side, a young lieutenant was watching him. Ford, was his name. He was SGC trained and had done this a hundred times, or so he’d said. And he was watching Sheppard now – waiting for him to baulk?
That wasn’t gonna happen. “What’s it feel like?”
“Hurts like hell, sir.” The kid was deadly serious.
Crap. Sheppard hesitated on the brink, bracing himself. Suddenly Ford was grinning, turning his back to the wormhole like a kid at the side of the family swimming pool. With a whoop he flung himself in backward, and Sheppard knew he’d been taken for a ride.
Rolling his eyes he stepped through…and felt an awesome, ice-cold, stomach-dropping dive from 30,000 feet, slamming into a tight roll, and a screaming ascent at an angle that would shred the blades and—
Then he stepped out into a dark, vast room. It took a second to orient himself and shake off the effects of the ride – and to resist the urge to yell ‘let’s do it again!’ But orders were orders, and he had to clear the gate area. Moving carefully, trying to look everywhere at once, he saw the rest of his team milling around in awe. The place was astonishing, disappearing up into darkness. Mottled blue light seeped down from above, casting the curved, elegant design in shadows that stretched out in all directions. A wide staircase rose in front of him, leading to other levels and balconies that arched as if the place were a palace. Sheppard wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but this wasn’t it. Perhaps he’d been expecting a place of war but this looked like a ballroom. In the dim light he could see Weir gazing around, as awestruck as any other member of the team.
Turning, Sheppard glanced at the Stargate and was surprised to see that it was different from the one on Earth. It looked more modern, if that was possible. The chevrons glittered blue, and the rim of the gate disappeared beneath the floor of the room in which they stood. There was no ramp.
“Teams one through four secure the immediate area.” Sumner’s voice came over the radio, and Sheppard glanced up to see him coming to stand next to Weir on the stairs. “Everyone else find an open space and plant yourself there until instructed otherwise.”
Sheppard moved through the milling civilians toward the stairs. Someone seemed to have found a light switch, because as he moved small white lights were winking on all over the place.
“Who’s doing that?” he heard Weir ask Sumner.
“Security teams, any sign of alien contact?” the Colonel barked into his radio. The answer was negative, but Sheppard didn’t need to hear it. He understood exactly what was happening.
“The lights are coming on by themselves,” he said quietly. The only person listening was Rodney McKay, who’d appeared out of nowhere and was blatantly ignoring Sumner’s order to stay put while the security teams investigated. Sheppard decided to keep an eye on McKay, and together they crept up the stairs into what looked like the Atlantis equivalent of the SGC’s control room.
Everything was covered with dust sheets. Sheppard smiled at the notion. Who knew aliens used dust sheets? It was strangely comforting, almost as if they’d been expected. But that was impossible…
From this level, Sheppard found he had a good view of the gate room. If that was what it was called. The last of the security teams were making their way through, blinking in astonishment and glancing around as they emerged from the high-octane ride.
“That’s everyone,” Sumner told Weir.
With a nod, Weir keyed her radio. “General O’Neill,” she said. “Atlantis base offers greetings from the Pegasus galaxy.” Sheppard smiled, and wondered how long it had taken her to come up with the line. That’s one small step… “You may cut power to the gate. Weir out.”
Nothing happened immediately, but then something slowly rolled out of the Stargate and came to rest at Weir’s feet. What it was Sheppard couldn’t quite make out, for at that moment the wormhole disengaged and the room was plunged into a deeper gloom. As his eyes adjusted to the relative darkness he saw Weir bend down and pick up the object… It was a magnum of champagne.
“Bon voyage,” read Weir on the label, “from General Jack O’Neill.”
Sheppard grinned. Nice touch.
Taking a deep breath, Weir turned and looked at her team. Even from up in the control room Sheppard could feel the intensity of her gaze. “That’s it,” she said, her quiet voice carrying to everyone. “We’re on our own.”
And never had those words been so absolutely, incontrovertibly true. He wasn’t sure if it was scary as hell or the biggest rush of his life. Both, probably.
It was more astonishing than anything she had dared to imagine. Never, not once, had she believed they would find Atlantis intact. At best she’d hoped
for a vast ruin, undisturbed by looters and treated kindly by the ravages of time. At worst she’d imagined dust or a hostile reception from the descendants of the gate builders. But this… Elizabeth Weir tried to take it all in as she slowly climbed the stairs to the mezzanine level. She could see Sheppard and McKay already up there, their voices mingling with the constant chatter that drifted through the vast chamber and the stream of static and awed voices that came over her radio.
Her people were spreading out, exploring and securing this most alien of environments. The first humans ever to stand here! It was a giddying thought.
“They look like ships. Space ships!” an excited voice she didn’t recognize burst over her radio. “Dr. Weir, you have to see this!”
She smiled at the schoolboy enthusiasm and kept walking up the steps. “I have a lot of things to see. Just be careful.”
At the top of the stairs she realized what was fascinating McKay and Sheppard. They’d discovered what had to be a control room. McKay looked like a kid in a toy store, whipping off dust sheets and dashing from one bank of instruments to the next while muttering under his breath. He wasn’t smiling, but she knew him well enough to recognize excitement when she saw it. Compared to his deadpan tension in the SGC control room, this was tantamount to a hurricane. Sheppard on the other hand was more cautious, the center of calm to McKay’s whirlwind of activity. The Major’s eyes were moving across the controls, carefully watching them light up one by one.
As she stepped inside, he glanced at her and said, “I didn’t touch anything.”
“Relax, Major,” Weir smiled. “It’s like the entire complex is sensing our presence and coming to life.” It was already clear they were talking about a technology that far surpassed their current understanding, but if they could just make sense of a fraction of it, the possible advances were beyond the power of her imagination.
“This must be the control room,” McKay said, his brusque tone interrupting her musing. He was still moving, touching one of the consoles with nervous fingers. “And this is obviously their version of a DHD.”
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