STARGATE UNIVERSE: Air (11 page)

“Yes,” Rush nodded impatiently, wondering where Wallace was going with his train of thought. He glanced away, to where the technician was programming in the standard seven chevron coding that would open a wormhole back to Cheyenne Mountain and Stargate Command.

Eli pointed at a specific symbol on the DHD; it was one that everyone involved in any aspect of the Stargate program remembered, the symbol that had enabled Daniel Jackson to open the gate, the symbol that every SG team wore on their shoulder patches. An inverted ‘V’ with a tiny circle above it. “So what if
Earth
is supposed to be the point of origin?”

Rush frowned. “We couldn’t do this from Earth,” he insisted, “even if we had a hundred Lantean zero point modules. The only viable power source we could find is
here
.” He indicated the floor. “Light-years away from the Sol system.”

Eli shook his head, his eyes wide. “But maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s the only combination that will work. Like a code.”

The truth of the moment locked into place inside Rush’s thoughts. It was simple, but it made perfect sense. And how like the Ancients to make the final part of their greatest leap across the infinite void contingent on the world that had been so pivotal in their history. He felt almost giddy with the sense of it.
Yes. He’s right
.

Rush turned to Riley. “Stop the dialing sequence.”

The sergeant gave him a look and shook his head. “I have my orders, Doctor.”

Rush dashed across the gantry to Riley’s console, his mind racing. If they returned to Earth now, then this planet and the Icarus Base facility would be lost to the invaders, at best; or torn apart by tectonic instability at worst. Without the core’s monumental power, it wouldn’t matter if Eli Wallace was correct about the origin symbol. No other known energy source existed that could pass the threshold for dialing the eighth chevron to reach the ninth. Everything Nicholas Rush had worked for, all these months and years of sacrificing himself, the destiny he knew was his…all of it would be lost, and this time there would be no more chances. He felt a tremor in his hands at the thought of that. It would destroy him.

Rush glanced at the power flow gauges and a thought formed in his mind. This was his last chance. He had to take
control
.

“We… We can’t risk dialing Earth,” he snapped, shoving Riley aside. “Get out of my way!”

Greer moved as quickly as he could with the dead weight of a bloody, unconscious man over his shoulder. His G36 rifle bounced off his thigh from its strap, and the Marine’s hand never strayed too far from it each time he turned a corner or passed a shadowed hallway.

So far, he hadn’t encountered any enemy contact this deep into Icarus, but he knew the enemy already had their men inside the perimeter. He’d seen the tail end of the firefight in the hangar bay, as waves of troops had flooded in through blast holes in the doors.

All things being equal, the Marine Corps and Air Force contingent at Icarus should have been more than a match for them, but whoever was pulling the strings of this operation knew that, and had made up for it with the sheer weight of numbers. Greer grimaced. Maybe the 300 Spartans had worse odds, but that was about it. Like it or not, Icarus Base was going to fall, and soon.

He rounded a corner into the main corridor and found what he was looking for. “Medic!” he called.

Lieutenant Johansen came to the sergeant’s side as he carefully lay his burden down on the floor. The injured man was barely breathing, and his face was a mess of blood.

From her shocked reaction, Johansen clearly knew the guy. “Oh my god… Doctor Simms.”

Greer blinked and looked again at the man he’d rescued. He hadn’t even recognized the base’s chief medical officer, the officer’s face so messed up it looked like he’d been attacked by a razor-wielding psycho.

“What happened?” said the lieutenant, as she started to work on Simms, tearing bandages from her medical pack.

“He caught shrapnel from an explosion,” Greer explained. “He was helping pull the wounded back from the surface.” The sergeant saw Johansen busy herself with a nasty injury at the doctor’s neck. Blood was seeping from it, matting his collar to his skin.

Greer stepped back to let the lieutenant do her job. He’d seen wounds like that before, and he had his doubts that Simms would survive it. Without another word, he paused to check his G36 once again and made to head back the way he came.

Strong fingers gripped his arm. “Greer!” He turned to find Colonel Young standing beside him. His commanding officer was smoke-dirty and he smelled like spent cordite. “We’re pulling back.”

Greer jerked a thumb at the corridor. “There are still people out there, sir!”

Young shook his head. “The
Hammond
has already started beaming up anyone pinned down on the surface —” 

The sergeant’s mouth twisted. When the hammer came down, he wasn’t the kind to rely on any of that
Buck Rogers
sci-fi crap the flyboys liked so much. “Someone’s got to make sure,” he retorted.

“Sergeant!” Young snapped, with enough force that Greer’s ingrained Corps training stopped him dead. “I’ve got people cut off from the gate room, trapped by a rock fall. The base is shielded, which means the
Hammond
can’t get a lock on them to beam them out. So I need you here, to help them.”

Greer relented. An order was an order. “Sir, yes sir. Where are they?”

“Corridor six-alpha—” Young halted as the medic gave a shallow, choked sob. Both men looked as Johansen’s desperate attempts at resuscitation proved fruitless. Tears streaked the lieutenant’s face, making tracks down her dust-smeared cheeks.

“T.J.,” said Young, touching her shoulder. “Tamara, stop…”

Johansen drew back her hands and gave a shuddering sigh. “I was just talking with him a couple of hours ago.”

“You can’t help him any more,” the colonel said. “We’ve gotta save who we can.”

Hunter Riley watched the Scottish scientist as he worked the console, erasing the Earth gate address and beginning the initialization sequence over again. He hesitated, unsure how to proceed. The man had practically tipped him out of his chair, and now he was in the process of countermanding the orders of Riley’s superior officer. The sergeant wasn’t exactly sure how chain of command was supposed to work with civilians like Doctor Rush. He was the lead scientist here, but this was still a military base. Rush was here on a mandate from the SGC and the IOA, though, and Riley was pretty damned sure that all those three-letter acronyms overshadowed his stripes. What the question boiled down to was,
Will I end up in the stockade if I lay a hand on this guy?
He thought about what had happened to Greer and hesitated.

Like a lot of his family, Riley was career Air Force, and the Stargate program had already claimed one of his relatives, a cousin of his who’d been lost on the Atlantis expedition. He didn’t want to be the next one who had a flag sent to his parents in lieu of a coffin.

“Doctor Rush,” he began, “I’m going to have to ask you to step away from the console.”

The scientist ignored him and entered the final symbol of the gate address, this time substituting the local glyph for the Earth symbol. Rush stared up at the spinning, rumbling gate with hope in his eyes. It was like he didn’t even see the rest of the people in the room.

Riley glanced at the console. He didn’t think for a second this was actually going to work.

But then the gate vibrated with a tremor of immense power and the event horizon erupted into the air, cascading across the length of the chamber with such force that everyone flinched and instinctively hugged the ground.

The noise of the vortex’s formation was louder and more intense than any active gate Riley had witnessed, invisible waves of cold and static radiating out across the room, making the hairs on his arms stand up. As the event horizon collapsed back into the metallic ring, a familiar rippling light danced over the walls and through the dust-filled air, the echo of the opening roar dying away.

“That is impressive,” managed Eli, amazement and shock writ large across his expression.

And it
was
impressive. The sergeant moved to one of the other consoles, checking the telemetry from the Stargate. His eyes narrowed. The wormhole was stable and showing the same kinds of readings he would have expected from a standard seven chevron link, but at the same time there was whole different layer of data streaming in that was totally new to him. Riley glanced at the energy transfer gauges and what he saw there gave him pause. Red tell-tales were blinking furiously, consumption and distribution graphs peaking well beyond the safe zone. “Power is fluctuating at critical levels.” He swallowed hard. “Doctor, we need to disengage.”

Rush didn’t look at him; he was staring at the shimmering silver pool of the gateway, and by the expression on his face, you might have thought the man was looking into heaven itself. “I’ve done it,” he whispered.

The
Hammond
rocked like a boat in a storm as another one-two punch landed on her forward shields, the energy-shock from the hits radiating back to the vessel itself. Colonel Carter hung on to her command chair and rode it out, unwilling to let herself be tipped out on the deck of her own bridge. It was all well and good that the ship had Asgard-designed gravity compensators on board, she reflected, but maybe a seatbelt wouldn’t go amiss either.

“Marks, report,” she demanded.

The major frowned at his readouts. “Shields are holding for now, but we’re not going to be able to take much more of this pounding, ma’am. Forward missile bays are off line, and we’ve got atmospheric venting on three decks. Damage control teams are en route.”

“What about the evacuation?”

Marks nodded. “The last of the wounded are coming on board now. Anyone else is inside the base itself and we can’t reach them.”

“They’ll have to fend for themselves…” Carter muttered, frowning.

An alert tone sounded on the major’s screen and he stabbed at a button. “The aft sensor pallet… I’m detecting a massive build-up of energy from the planet. It’s almost off the scale…”

The colonel saw the spike on the sensor return. The SGC had pretty big scales, considering the amount of high-power stuff they encountered on a regular basis, so anything that buried the needle was going to be, to put it mildly, a problem.

She studied the radiation waveform on the screen and her blood ran cold. What she was seeing was an energetic resonance build-up taking place deep inside the core of P4X-351. The natural deposits of naquadria were conducting and reflecting energy back upon themselves, shaping a quantum-level effect that would grow and grow until it reached criticality. When that happened…the release of radiation from the exotic matter would be huge and devastating.

Carter called out to the navigation officer at the chart console. “Get me a course to the nearest allied world with a gate, right now.” She looked back at Marks. “Recall our fighters. Radio Colonel Telford and tell him he’s got two minutes to get his people aboard before we go to hyperspace.”

“Ma’am, what about the others inside Icarus Base?”

Carter looked away, feeling hollow inside. “They’re on their own.”

Young knew something was wrong the moment he reached the corridor leading to the gate room and saw the throng of people there, people who, instead of moving in a steady and orderly manner through the gate back to Earth, were standing around looking panicky and afraid. The tremors beneath his feet were a constant, unsteady pulse now, and he wondered how much longer the walls could still stand. He charged into the gate room and saw the open gate and more people who also weren’t moving through it.

Rush looked over at him from the DHD, but Young glared past at Sergeant Riley. “What are you waiting for?” he demanded. “I ordered an evacuation!”

Eli held up a hand. “He didn’t dial Earth,” he explained, and nodded toward the Stargate. “It’s the nine chevron address.”

“What?!” It took a lot for Young to break his cool, but it happened now. He was incredulous that Rush could do something so reckless, at exactly the moment the lives of every man and woman on the base were in dire jeopardy. He glared at the gate and saw glowing light in each illuminated chevron, then turned his gaze on Rush.

“The attack has started a chain reaction in the planet’s core,” said the scientist, his words coming out in haste, “and there’s no stopping it.” He pointed at the open Stargate. “The effect will be catastrophic! The blast will easily translate through an open wormhole. It was too dangerous to dial Earth!”

Young advanced to him, his anger building. “You could have dialed somewhere else. The Alpha Site, or Chulak, or Abydos.
Anywhere
else.” He was face to face with the other man.

“This was our last chance,” insisted the scientist.

“Shut it down!” he snarled.

“We can’t,” said Rush. “It’s too late.”

Riley nodded grimly from a nearby console. “The system’s not responding.”

Young glared at the other man. “We need to get these people out of here.”

“We have a way out,” said Rush.

“We don’t know what’s on the other side!” he snapped back. “We can’t even get a MALP remote up here to go take a look!”

Eli spoke up from behind him. “Can’t be worse than here, can it?”

For a long second, Young wavered on the edge of knocking Rush on his ass, but this wasn’t the time or the place for that. The man’s arrogance was unbelievable, but it was too late to cry over it now, the damage was done. The colonel knew that severing the wormhole and trying to dial out again could be a death sentence for them all. It would take too long to cycle the whole process from the start, and Everett Young was not about to leave people behind.

He turned to Riley. “Get these people prepped to go through.”

The sergeant saluted. “Yes sir.”

Young favored Rush with a hard, unflinching glare for a long moment, then turned and stalked away to where Greer was waiting by the doorway.