STARGATE ATLANTIS: Dead End (2 page)

Sheppard could hear McKay itching to come in, but the Colonel was in no hurry. His headache was still bad, and the scientist would have to wait. With a flick of his fingers, he motioned for the marines to fan out and check for anything untoward. With a cool efficiency, they began to sweep the walls. Sheppard walked over to the far wall, scouring the patterned surface for clues to the room’s function.

“Oh, come on!” cried McKay impatiently from the corridor outside. “It’s a minor control chamber of some sort. You don’t need to—”

There was a muffled explosion. The orange light flickered and a warning klaxon began to wail. Slowly, the central column started to sink into the floor.

“Get out!” yelled Sheppard, darting back towards the door. The marines tore across the chamber. He just had time to see the last of his men slip through the gap before the wall section slammed shut in front of him. He was trapped inside. The klaxon continued to blare. Within the enclosed space, the noise echoed alarmingly. The central column carried on sinking into the ground.

“Rodney!” he shouted. “Wanna tell me what’s going on?”

From the far side of the wall, McKay’s voice sounded faint and indistinct. “I don’t know!” he yelled. “One of your men must have set something off!”

Sheppard slammed his fist against the doors in frustration, then took a breath. Whatever was happening in the chamber was happening quickly; the column was now barely a foot above ground level and he ran over to it. There were Ancient symbols on the surface, still glowing, and the thing looked a lot like a DHD. But if there was a DHD, where was the gate? He looked up at the ceiling. Nothing. The column continued to descend, the klaxon continued to blare.

“Rodney, get this thing the hell open!”

“Trying, Colonel!” came the muffled response. “It seems to have gone into some kind of shutdown sequence! I’m working on it!”

That was not reassuring. Sheppard stepped back from the column, now nearly flush with the floor, and looked around. That’s when he noticed the ceiling was sinking.

“Oh, great,” he breathed, watching the rapidly descending arches.

He raised his P90, but the gesture was pointless. For once, it couldn’t save him.

“Losing headroom in here, Rodney…”

He thought he heard a curse coming from the far side of the door. Sheppard dropped to his knees next to the sunken column. Nothing happened to the klaxon, nor to the slowly descending roof. The control panel surface was now level with the floor, and the glow had disappeared. The six Ancient symbols were still visible. Frantically, Sheppard pressed them in turn. Nothing. He tried in reverse order. Still nothing. He glanced up — the ceiling was now just a few centimeters from his head — and sank to his belly, letting his weapon clatter to the floor.

“Rodney!” he yelled. “You’re gonna have to work this out quick, or I won’t be needing those slimming classes!”

“I’m on it!”

The ceiling crept down further. Sheppard tried the sequence again. Clockwise. Anti-clockwise. Random. His fingers were slick with sweat, his breath short and sharp, as the ceiling drew relentlessly closer. What a way for a pilot to go.

He slammed his fist against the symbols. Something sprang free from a slot in between them. It bounced back down as it hit the ceiling. Sheppard grasped it frantically, desperate for anything. It was a shard of translucent matter, some kind of Ancient computer component. Not very helpful.

Then, with a shudder, the doors slid open. Booted feet filled the narrow gap and two marines threw themselves to the floor, arms extended into the chamber.

“John!” cried McKay. “Over here!”

Sheppard scrabbled round in the tight space and squirmed towards the exit. As he went, the irregular surface of the ceiling scraped against his body armor. Something snagged, but he thrust himself forward. Hands grabbed his arms. He was yanked out through the doorway. As his feet were pulled free, there was a dull slam behind him.

Shakily, he looked back. Through the open doorway, there was nothing but solid metal. The device had been well and truly shut down.

He took a deep breath and gingerly hauled himself up. That had been too close.

“You okay?” McKay’s face creased with concern. He had that rare guilty look he wore when he knew something had gone wrong and it was probably his fault.

“What do you think?” asked Sheppard, recovering his poise. “You want to tell me what just went on in there?”

“I may have, er, crossed a few wires,” he said, flustered. “These things are complicated. But that shouldn’t have happened!”

“No kidding.”

McKay scowled. “Anyway, we’re not going back in. Whatever was in that room is lost for good.”

Sheppard brushed his uniform down, his heartbeat returning to normal. “We might get something out of it,” he said. “There was a gate address in there. And this.”

He held up the shard he’d retrieved. McKay snatched at it eagerly, his air of embarrassment quickly lost.

“An address?” McKay’s eyes lit up. “And what looks like some kind of data panel. Or what’s left of it. Interesting. Perhaps it’s some kind of—”

Sheppard held his hand up.

“Enough already,” he said. “I’m getting this place locked down and off-limits. Then I’m gonna brief Weir on the fun and games. You might want to consider joining me.”

McKay gave a dramatic sigh and folded his arms in irritation. Sheppard ignored him, signaling the marines to regroup and follow him. As he made to leave, he paused and threw McKay a dry smile.

“Cheer up, Rodney. At least you cured my hangover.”

Weir leaned forward in her chair and fixed McKay with a steely look.

“You did
what
?”

McKay shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Look, how was I to know they’d go all Indiana Jones on us? It doesn’t make any
sense
. I mean, it’s pretty clear the Ancients were a kooky bunch, but even so…”

Weir’s eyes flicked across to Teyla, but the Athosian remained unperturbed. Her respect for the Ancestors may have been dented in recent months, but she still had the potential to balk at Rodney’s casual references to them.

“Alright,” Weir said, running her hands through her hair. “Let’s try and get something useful out of this. Give me your best shot — what was in that room?”

Weir sat at the head of the table in the conference room. A few hours had passed since the incident. Despite the seriousness of what had happened, the interruption to an already overloaded schedule was unwelcome. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have enough problems coming from
outside
the city. Sheppard, McKay, Zelenka, Teyla and Ronon also sat around the table — John looking a little paler than usual, but otherwise unharmed. He seemed to have a knack for getting out of these situations unscathed. It was a good quality to have in a military commander.

McKay leant forward and clasped his hands together on the table.

“Here’s my hypothesis,” he said. “I’ve had a quick look at the failsafe mechanism — the pile of metal that nearly flattened the Colonel. It’s designed to withstand massive force. We can surmise that the walls and floor are similarly constructed. Clearly, the chamber was built to contain huge amounts of energy.”

Weir listened carefully. McKay could be a pompous windbag when he thought he was on to something, but his hunches had a way of proving correct.

“Combine that with what Colonel Sheppard told us about a DHD-like machine in there,” McKay continued, “and I think what we’re looking at is a prototype transport mechanism. Either something to do with the city’s Stargate, or perhaps even a replacement for it entirely.”

Weir could see Zelenka’s skeptical expression.

“Why would the Ancients build such a thing?” he said. “They had the gates. Sounds implausible.”

McKay turned on him. “Have you looked at it?” he snapped. “No, you were in bed wiping your nose. Before you start questioning my judgment, you should do your own research.”

Zelenka was about to retort, but McKay plowed on.

“I’m not just stabbing in the dark here. The Colonel managed to retrieve something from the control mechanism. He didn’t use as much finesse as I’d have liked, so it’s in pretty bad shape.”

“I was kinda engaged with other stuff,” sighed Sheppard. “Like staying alive.”

“And we’re all very glad you did. Thankfully, it’s still usable, and I’ve seen stuff like it before.” As he spoke, McKay flipped up the lid of his laptop and punched something into its keyboard. The translucent panel Sheppard had retrieved was jutting out from one of the custom ports in the machine. “Take a look at the screen.”

All swung round to look at the screen in the corner of the room. The display turned into a mess of green zigzags.

“Nice pattern,” said Sheppard. “Like what you’ve done with that.”

“Thanks to some rough handling, we’ve lost most of the visual,” McKay said. “Audio’s intact, though. Keep listening.”

On the screen, the zigzags began to break up. It looked like there was a figure addressing them, though it was impossible to make out features. Over a backdrop of static, he or she was speaking. Chunks of speech were muffled or distorted, and only scattered fragments came through.

“… returning Lanteans … list of priorities … three settlement programs on … ensure that we … do not neglect the … Telion is insistent on … coordinates in prototype gate device … do not neglect what we left …”

Then the voice broke up, and what little picture there was dissolved into a green snowstorm. McKay flicked the display off.

For a moment, there was a hush around the chamber. It wasn’t the first time they’d seen footage of Ancients, but the experience never quite lost its air of strangeness.

“Can you get anything more out of the recording?” asked Weir, turning back to the table.

“Believe me, I’ve tried,” said McKay. “That’s as good as we’re going to get. But it’s enough, right? You’ve figured out what it means?”

“Perhaps you could enlighten us with your opinion,” said Teyla.

“Look,” explained McKay, giving his favorite wearied expression. “The Lanteans always intended to come back here if they could. This must have been a message to those returnees. Some kind of standing orders, in the event the city was reactivated. Whatever was being worked on in that room need to be revisited. Perhaps they didn’t have time to finish off whatever they started.”

“You got all that,” asked Sheppard, raising an eyebrow, “from
that
?”

“I’ve had longer to look at it than you,” replied McKay. “And, no offense, I really am a whole lot smarter.”

Weir looked unconvinced.

“So why the elaborate defense mechanism in that chamber?”

Rodney rolled his eyes.

“You want me to work out every last detail of this? Oh yes. Of course you do.” He thought for a second. “I don’t know. Maybe it was for Lantean eyes only. Something to stop the Wraith reading the message, in case they ever got down there.”

“Or us,” said Ronon.

“Quite. But thanks to Colonel Sheppard’s acrobatics, we got something out. And now we can use it.”

Weir held a warning hand up.

“Whoa. You’re going too fast here, Rodney. So far, all we’ve got is a sealed chamber and a message we can barely understand.”

“With respect, Elizabeth, we’ve got more than that,” said McKay. “We’ve got a gate address, and we’ve got a theory. We know the gate network isn’t perfect. Some destinations seem to require more power to get to than others. The obvious example is the inter-galactic route, which needs huge amounts of juice. But even in the Pegasus galaxy we find some destinations are harder to reach than others. Maybe there are ways around this. My guess is that we stumbled across an attempt to refine the gate technology.”

He looked from one member of the team to the others, searching for agreement.

“Interesting,” said Weir. She turned to Sheppard. “You got a note of the gate address in the chamber?”

“Oh, I got it. Those little squiggles are pretty well stuck my mind.”

“And?”

“I can show you,” said McKay, bringing up a galactic map on the display. The map started to zoom. “Here we are, home sweet home, on the galactic rim.” The map continued to zoom out. “Any minute now…”

The animation concluded. A red triangle marked Lantea, and a green circle the location of the gate address. The dotted line between them ran the width of the screen.

Weir shook her head. “My God,” she breathed. “It’s basically out of the galaxy.”

“How far
is
that?” said Zelenka.

“In technical terms?” said McKay.
“A
really long
way
. Further than we’ve ever been in Pegasus. I looked at the stellar cartography. It’s off the scale. The power requirements to get there are pretty scary.”

“Yes, but it can’t drain more than dialing back to Milky Way,” scoffed Radek.

“You know, normally I’d agree with you,” said McKay. “But we don’t know everything about gate travel, and something’s odd about this setup. And there’s another thing. Most locations on the Stargate network are accessible from anywhere else. If you know the address, and have some means of dialing, you can jump from anywhere to anywhere. The exceptions are the long hops, like between galaxies. Here’s the trick — I think this one’s exactly the same. From the database, it seems clear that this node is only accessible from one other place.”

Weir let out a deep breath. “I think I know what you’re going to say.”

Sheppard grinned. “I love it when you’re ahead of us.”

Weir pursed her lips. She had come to like and respect John in their time serving together on Atlantis, but his endless flippancy could get wearing. She knew that exploration was part of the brief, but it would be nice, just for once, if her senior officers could think about something other than scooting off on a fresh mission as soon as the last one had ended.