The Drift
Page 12
What he wouldn’t give for a P90.
“O’Neill,” Teal’c said, pointing toward the far off building. “Should we not approach?”
“We should do something,” Daniel said. “Whoever it is, maybe they can help us get home.”
“Yes, please,” Weiyan whispered. “I want to go home.”
Jack looked back at his team. Daniel had draped a protective arm around Weiyan. The girl was practically shaking in her boots. Carter flashed one of her A+ smiles of reassurance.
She should really bottle that smile up. She’d make a mint.
“Plans, sir?” Carter turned toward Jack, the smile gone.
All of them turned expectant gazes toward him, waiting for him to make the first move. Say the right thing. Make a decision.
A wave of fatigue hit him. He stuck a hand in his pocket, wrapping his fingers around the Zippo. Another familiar thing, though he hadn’t a clue how it got there.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t miss what the lighter represented. He did. Skaara’s death had been tough to take, but staying ahead of the Goa’uld this past year had been too big a distraction.
Hell, just staying alive had been a distraction.
“Jack?”
“Yeah, Daniel?” The words came out barely more than a croak. His throat was dry, tight.
“General, shouldn’t we — ”
“Just… Just give me a moment, Carter.” The wind felt wrong somehow. It tugged at his clothes, coming from too many directions. Hell, the entire situation was wrong.
The ground rumbled faintly beneath Jack’s feet and he knew.
He knew it was up to him to remember. Remember how they got there. For all their sakes.
He looked again at what he was pretty sure was a man standing by the building. Turning back toward the disheveled surroundings, he felt everyone watching him, waiting. The weight of their expectations pressed down hard and a private flare of reproach welled up in response. There’d be time enough to deal with self-pity later.
A soft rumble started up again. Low, almost a growl. Another piece of a puzzle he couldn’t fit into place.
Shrugging off his uneasiness, he said, “All right, SG-1. Let’s go make nice with the native.” He turned back toward the building.
The man was gone.
MCMURDO STATION
ROSS ISLAND, ANTARCTICA
18 AUG 04/1530 HRS MCMURDO STATION
Paul Davis had just hoisted another injured civilian into the awaiting Bell 212 when the floodlights across the central compound kicked back on. A good thing, too, since the chopper was parked so close to Cray Lab that one of its blades nearly touched a neighboring electric pole. Sliding the side hatch shut, he waved at the chopper pilot and gave the go.
The chopper lifted off the ground, inched forward away from the pole, and then headed toward Pegasus Air Field where the civilian would be evacuated on a C-17 to New Zealand. Paul watched as the blue neon lights along the chopper’s tail and blades illuminated the last dull gray night of Antarctica winter.
The sun would rise tomorrow. A whole hour and thirty-nine minutes of sunshine. As much as the floodlights helped in finding survivors, Paul knew the sunlight would bring disadvantages along with advantages.
It’d be easier to find the dead.
“We found another!”
Station personnel ran past, heading toward a collapsed smaller lab down the hill. With a sigh, Paul took off after them. He immediately kicked himself when his cold breath stung his face. A fur-lined parka wasn’t enough in the sub-zero temperatures, not when minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit was the norm. He should have pulled on a pair of coveralls. Tugging his balaclava back down over his face, he found himself grateful for at least some protection.
He arrived at the collapsed building as an injured civilian was being put on a gurney. The man’s face and red beard were covered in blood. Knowing instantly who it was, Paul’s heart dropped. He stepped up to the gurney and looked down into the pained face of Dr. Malan.
“Major Davis…” Malan coughed, spitting up more blood. “Where’s Mr. Murray? Is he all right?”
Squeezing the young scientist’s hand, Paul lied. “He’s around here somewhere. Don’t worry about him.”
“He’s gonna miss bowling. He’s gonna miss meeting…” Malan dropped his head to the gurney and closed his eyes.
One of the volunteers put a finger on Malan’s neck and checked his pulse. “He’s alive, barely.”
Paul released Malan’s hand and stepped back. “Where will you take him?”
“Byrd Station’s a good 1400 kilometers away,” the volunteer said as he strapped Malan to the gurney. “But it beats going back to New Zealand. He’s got internal injuries so we better get him up to the airfield quick. Excuse us, Major.”
Paul said a silent prayer as they carried the gurney toward another waiting chopper. The chances of Malan surviving the trip to Williams and then on to Byrd weren’t good.
“Major Davis!” A parka-clad woman ran up to him, her face buried inside her hood.
“Here!” Paul stomped his feet against the cold as she approached. A black patch on her chest labeled ‘Operation Deep Freeze’ let Paul know she was part of the science community. “There’s a call for you on the long-range radio. A General Hammond.”
“Which way?” Of the hundred or so buildings that made up McMurdo, more than half had collapsed in the quake.
“The NSF chalet. Edmunds’s office.” She pointed up the hill toward the Swiss-style wood building.
“The chalet didn’t suffer any damage?”
“Just don’t use the front entrance,” she shouted as the chopper bearing Malan headed off. “The doors are wedged shut from the seismic activity.”
“Thanks.” Paul hurried up the hill, allowing himself a brief head shake. Seismic activity? More like a pancake flattener.
Once inside the chalet, he rushed down the hall to Edmunds’s office, picking his way over fallen ceiling tiles, reams of papers strewn everywhere, and several broken bulletin boards. Finally, he found the NSF Director’s office. The door was half off its hinges.
“I don’t give a damn about the military’s special projects,” Edmunds bellowed into the radio, his back to the door. “You people are here to support the NSF. Now get down here and — ”
“And I don’t give a damn whether you care or not.” The radio’s crackle did little to hide General Hammond’s Texan twang. Or his obvious impatience. “The President has authorized — ”
Edmunds switched off the radio. “Ha, like I care.”
“Sir…” Paul cleared his throat and stepped inside. Edmunds eyed him without any warmth. The NSF Chief of Operations for McMurdo was much loved by the civilian population for his anti-military stance.
Edmunds pushed back his chair and stood up. All six-and-a-half feet of him. Paul recognized it for the intimidation effort that it was so he kept his face neutral.
“I suppose you want to talk to that asinine jarhead?”
“Yes, sir.” Paul didn’t bother pointing out that Edmunds’s use of a derogatory term for the Marines wasn’t exactly relevant apropos a USAF general.
Edmunds stepped out from behind his desk. “Then do it, but hurry things up. We need to keep the channel clear.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not stupid, Major.”
“No one ever said you were, Doctor.”
“Earthquakes rarely hit this part of the world and when they do, they’re small in scale.” Edmunds waggled his finger. “You military folks are up to something.”
“Sir — ”
“I wasn’t here back in March,” Edmunds said, “but I’ve heard enough from the winter staff to know something happened. Something big. Strange lights in the sky, F-302s shooting off from behind Observation Hill like it was the end of the world. And let’s not forget all the new Air Force personnel coming through here ever since — ”
“Need to know, sir.”
Paul slid past him and picked up the mic. “Sir, I’ll need the room.”
“Five minutes, Major.” He strode toward the door.
Paul waved the mic as a reminder. “Sir, the sooner I talk to the general, the sooner I can rejoin the others and assist in the search and rescue of your personnel.”
“Make sure that you do.” Edmunds stomped off.
Paul sucked in a breath and counted to five. He blew out and thumbed the microphone’s talk button.
“This is Major Paul Davis for General Hammond. Over.”
ANCIENT OUTPOST, ANTARCTICA
18 AUG 04/1610 HRS MCMURDO STATION
“…the entire continent’s been struck, sir. I’m hearing reports of anything from a 7.1 to a 7.4 scale earthquake.”
As George listened to Major Davis’ report, he glanced up at the outer chamber’s concave ceiling. Striated stone blended with what looked like frozen waterfalls. Best he could tell, the Ancients had built the place to last. The roof hadn’t cracked or suffered any other damage.
He thumbed the radio mic. “How many causalities, Major?”
“At McMurdo? Seventeen plus another ten or so injured. We were lucky, General. Only two hundred winter here besides our F-302 pilots.”
“And the pilots are fine?” George held his breath, hoping for the best.
“All present and accounted for, General. We lucked out, but I received a report a short while ago that a wing led by Captain White completed an easterly flyby, and… Sir, New Zealand’s Scott Base flattened. No survivors.”
George took in the bad news, steadying himself against the pallet of crates where the radio had been set up. Davis detailed the status of McMurdo and signed off to go assist with recovery efforts. As George put down the radio mic, someone stepped up beside him, a cup of coffee in hand. He took the proffered cup and sipped greedily.
Hell, by this point he should have just asked for the whole coffee pot.
“General Hammond?”
Dr. Lee stood at the pallet’s edge, blinking rapidly behind his glasses. Beside the stocky scientist was a face George hadn’t seen in several years.
“It’s good to have you here.” George smiled grimly at Lieutenant Graham Simmons. “The coffee’s much appreciated.”
The young man returned the smile. “It’s good to see you, too, General.”
“I sort of wanted some coffee, too,” Lee said, indicating George’s half-empty cup.
“There’s more over by the elevator.” George waved his cup toward the cage conveyor where someone had been smart enough to set up a coffee and food station. While the trainees had been relegated to the break room, the diplomats hovered in the main chamber by the coffee, anxiously waiting for an available chopper to airvac them back to McMurdo.
Lee glanced over at the diplomats and shrugged. “Uh… Maybe later. I wanted to give you a preliminary report.”
George put down the coffee. “Go ahead, Doctor.”
“Actually, some of this will be easier if I just show you.”
Lee shambled off toward the weapons platform chamber.
George followed with Simmons at his side. As they passed the de-activated Ancient stasis unit, he pushed down ten tons of regret. He’d been powerless to save Jack the last time an Ancient contraption had got ahold of him. This time, George would move Heaven and Earth if need be.
Inside the chamber, Lee grabbed two military-issue green parkas hanging off a trellised panel. He handed one to George. “You’ll want to put this on. We’ve switched off the heaters in the chair room.”
The room was already barely above freezing. George offered his parka to Simmons. He’d need it more, dressed only in a standard uniform.
Simmons waved him off. “I’m fine, sir.”
Lee zipped up his parka. “We were hoping the colder temperature might convince the chair to shut off.”
“Convince?” George shrugged on his parka, but kept it open. “Dr. Lee, are you trying to tell me the chair, this weapons platform — ? Is it sentient? Is the chair the reason we can’t get to our people?”
“Honestly, we’ve no way of knowing.” Lee circumnavigated the pillars bordering the hole. Someone had installed a walkway plank over the force field leading from the weapons platform to a bank of three monitors on the chair’s left. A low-level hum emanated from the Mark II generators.
George glanced at the force field, hoping for even a flicker that might let him see down below.
“Do you think they’re all right, General?” asked Simmons, joining him by the hole’s edge.
“I certainly hope so, son.” George pulled himself away and joined Lee by the monitors. “Why haven’t you turned off the generators?”
“We considered doing that, but I was worried we might damage the chair if we shut the generators off without shutting down Colonel Carter’s power filter program.”
“Forget the chair and forget the program, Doctor Lee, just shut those damn things off!”
Lee bent down and switched off the generators. The hum disappeared instantly, but the chair remained lit up.
And the force field didn’t so much as flicker.
“Yeah. I didn’t think that would do much good.” Lee returned to the monitors. “I’m pretty sure the generators didn’t activate whatever device set things off. I’d bet it has something to do with the chair.”
“Is that possible?” asked Lt. Simmons. Of his own volition, he’d taken up sentry duty by the hole.
“We think the trainee’s genetics — ”
“Weiyan Shi.”
Lee pulled his glasses off and frowned. “Sir, as strong as General O’Neill’s ATA genetics are, I’ve seen two stronger cases. Major Sheppard, who’s now on Atlantis — ”
“We hope.” He pushed aside his concern for the fate of the Atlantis team. “Who’s the other case?”
Lee stuck his glasses back on. “Weiyan Shi. She’s stronger than Sheppard’s and General O’Neill’s combined. I’m willing to bet she’s the one who got the chair to activate this Drift device.”
“Drift device?”
“As in Continental Drift. We think it’s running right beneath the force field.” On Lee’s central monitor, he called up a map of the planet. “Colonel Carter’s report on the Proclurash Taonas mission — ”
“The planet where they retrieved the ZPM to power the weapons chair in the first place?”
“That’s the one,” Lee said. “The Taonas chair showed them a map of Earth from millions of years ago which looked like this.” He tapped a key and the center screen displayed a planet with a single land mass.
Hitting another key, he animated the image. The land mass broke up into more recognizable pieces which slid apart into a facsimile of Earth today. “Immense seismic activity caused Continental Drift and it’s what we’re experiencing right now.”
“Earthquakes happen all the time,” George said. “All over the world.”
“Normal earthquakes. The key word here is ‘immense.’ In the last hour, I’ve located an off-the-charts form of energy, right here in the outpost. Fifteen feet below this floor.”
The doctor tapped another key. A new image came up. A graph with a bunch of squiggly lines peaking high above a red line toward the top. “Whatever’s been activated, it’s emitting enormous levels of solar-photonic energy downward, right into the basalt layers — ”
“Basalt. You mean like the dolerite around the hole?”
“That’s one type, yes.” Lee placed a sample of the grey rock on the table beside the monitors. “Deeper down in the earth’s crust, basalt magma is formed by decompression melting of the mantle.” He raised a small hammer over the sample. “The photonic energy emitted is applying tremendous pressures. Strong enough that if the force field is shut off while the device is still running — �
��
Lee smashed the hammer down, splitting the rock into three uneven pieces.
“The force field is protecting the outpost?” Simmons asked.
George frowned. “The very force field we’re trying to shut down is the reason the outpost hasn’t collapsed.”
“Exactly,” Lee said, “but the rest of the region wasn’t as lucky, and further tectonic activity pushing against the basalt could eventually tear apart the plate. Scott Base collapsed because it sat closer to the plate’s fault line than McMurdo.”
“Sir, we should evacuate McMurdo.” Simmons knelt beside the hole and peered down.
Lee joined the lieutenant. He stared at the hole and said, “General, evacuating McMurdo will only prolong things.”
George steeled himself, recognizing the preamble to something much worse. “Go on,” he said softly.
“We’re pretty convinced the device gets its photonic energy from some sort of solar energy retrieval system.”
“If you haven’t noticed, Doctor, Antarctica hasn’t seen the sun in months.”
“That’s true.” Lee shoved his hands into his pockets. “The lack of sunlight’s probably why the tremors stopped for now. The device only had a residual charge leftover. The thing is… Twenty hours from now, the first real sunrise is due. When that happens, the quakes will start up again, and well, it’s likely the seismic pressure will extend outward, resulting in quakes and tsunamis across the world.”
Simmons turned away from the hole and faced Lee. “All because the ground is being bombarded with photonic energy?”
It was then George realized that he’d heard the term before. “Didn’t the System Lord Yu retrieve some Ancient technology using photonic energy?”
Lee picked up a stray pebble from the floor and dropped it into the hole. Predictably, the pebble bounced back. “The Goa’uld used it for shields — ”
“And cloning,” George said, still unhappy with the manner in which that particular SG-1 mission had ended. Though the key objective of rescuing Dr. Jackson from the Goa’uld had succeeded, Jack’s decision to let Yu live hadn’t gone over well with the President. “What are our options?”