John went to the MALP to start powering up the transmitter, making sure it was ready to send as soon as they got the last chevron locked. “Right. How about a chorus of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life?”
“Maybe later.”
Having McKay’s hands awkwardly tied with the belt made pushing the inner ring more difficult, but the symbols for Atlantis’ address each locked without hesitation when the ring slid into place. They hastily scrambled out of the way as the last chevron encoded.
The wormhole whooshed into existence with a blast of ozone and a bass fugue John could feel through his whole body as he bolted around to the MALP. The jumpers’ instant response to him was like coming home, but he wasn’t comfortable with this intimate a relationship with a Stargate, let alone random data pads and ZPMs. He reached for the transmitter and froze. He felt something building in the DHD’s ruined base, heard a weird little scatter of dissonant notes. Then it cut off abruptly. He realized what it was and swore in frustration. “Rodney, I think the ’gate just ate the ZPM.”
Rodney stepped to the DHD’s pit, staring down into it. He moaned a little, sounding as if he was deeply in pain. “I think the Ancients might have anticipated that Dorane might try to dial manually. Obviously, they wanted to keep that to a minimum, so they not only doctored the crystal, they booby-trapped the DHD to eat any directly connected power source.”
“Yeah. I guess it didn’t take him long to use up those two ZPMs after all.” And that meant they only had this one chance to convince Dorane to let them in. “Here we go.” He keyed on the transmitter. “Sheppard to Atlantis.”
The radio crackled and static filled the little screen. The moment stretched and John had time to wonder what he would say if Peter Grodin answered as though everything was normal. The moment stretched longer, and every muscle in his body tensed as he felt the sudden conviction that no one was going to answer, that he was talking to a dead city, as dead as the ruins behind him. Then Dorane’s voice said, “Now this is unexpected.”
“Unexpected is right,” John said, having no problem making his voice sound rough and on edge. His imagination presented him with a picture of Dorane standing at the ’gate control console on the gallery, surrounded by dead operations staff. “The Koan didn’t eat me, though not from lack of trying. How’s that invasion of Atlantis going?”
“It surprises me that you were able to dial the Stargate.” Standing next to John, Rodney mouthed the words no, really. “Why did you bother?”
“My guess is it’s not going so well there. I figure you didn’t realize how many changes we’d made, how many of the Ancient components had failed, how jury-rigged everything was.” Dorane would have been expecting Atlantis as it was before the Ancients left, not consoles with laptops tied into their systems and naquadah power generators.
No answer. He wouldn’t be talking at all if he wasn’t at least curious, John reminded himself. He said, “I have something that could make the transition a little easier for you.”
“And that would be?”
“McKay. The Koan didn’t eat him either. He knows more about how our equipment meshes with the Ancients’ than anybody else there.” If he’s got Zelenka under his control, this is so not going to work.
Another long silence, while John’s nerves grated. He forced himself not to speak, to pretend he was the one holding all the cards. Then Dorane said, “Better than Kavanagh?”
Beside him Rodney rolled his eyes in disgust. John said, “Kavanagh’s a specialist; McKay knows the whole city. He set up the new power grid, the new ’gate protocols.” McKay was motioning with his bound hands, encouraging John to continue. “Everything.”
“And he will agree to help me, to buy your freedom from my old prison?”
“Well, he won’t agree, but I’m sure you can convince him otherwise. He doesn’t have a choice.”
Dorane still didn’t sound that interested. “You would turn against your own people to assist me?”
John took what he figured was their last chance. “Maybe you ought to turn on the visual and take a look.”
McKay, now hovering behind John and hopping from foot to foot, apparently decided he should be unconscious, and threw himself down on the platform, sprawling half on his side, bound hands stuck out obviously in front of him. He raised inquiring brows at John, who nodded and gave him a thumb’s up. McKay was right, it did look convincing. The video crackled into life, and McKay slumped over, eyes closed. The MALP’s camera swiveled toward them, but John was more interested in the image fuzzily forming on the screen. It was the ’gate control gallery, Dorane standing over the dialing console, frowning thoughtfully at something beyond the edge of the screen. The MALP’s telemetry and video went through a laptop, and John wondered if Dorane realized the little thingy to the side was a camera, that the system had been set to send video at the same time it received it. As soon as we step through, J can get him from the ’gate platform. His chest tightened at the thought that this plan just might work. Knowing where Dorane was standing in the large ’gate room was going to shave seconds off his time.
Someone else moved in the video’s background, and John saw it was Peter Grodin. He was sitting down and someone was covering him with a P-90. Grodin craned his neck to see the laptop’s screen, his expression confused and incredulous. Then Dorane said, “Take off the eye protection.”
John gritted his teeth, feeling like somebody’s science exhibit, and pulled off the glasses and the bandana. The light stung his eyes, and he shaded them with a hand, flexing his fingers to extend the claws.
Dorane said nothing. Afraid he was losing his audience, John added, “Yeah, it worked. You think my own people would take me back after this? I’m not human anymore! If they got their hands on me, I’d spend the rest of my life locked up in a lab, as somebody’s pet experiment, cut to pieces while they took tissue samples and made things out of my blood!” He put the glasses back on, unable to stand the glare, and saw Peter looked shocked, utterly boggled, and a little offended, as if he couldn’t believe John would really think that. John started playing to him, finding it easier than trying to convince Dorane. He twisted his face into his best impression of Jack Nicholson playing an ax murderer, and added on a note of rising hysteria, “And they never trusted me in the first place! I’m only the military commander because I shot Colonel Sumner! He never even wanted me on the expedition, I’m only here because I had the gene and O’Neill forced him to take me!” He paused for breath. His throat was dry and it made his voice so rough he barely recognized it.
Grodin’s expression now clearly said, “Fine, Sheppard’s turned into an alien and gone barking, that’s just lovely.”
Behind John, Rodney groaned, obviously wanting in on the drama. John pretended to kick him, his boot connecting with Rodney’s ribs though not nearly as hard as it would look. He hissed a heartfelt, “Will you shut up!”
John saw Dorane turn his head, and heard him ask someone, “Who was this Sumner?”
A voice, so dull and lifeless that John couldn’t recognize it, answered, “The military commander of the expedition.”
John took a deep breath. Dorane had obviously been using his control drug. Dorane asked, “Did your friend Sheppard truly kill him?”
“That’s what we were told. He said…it was because a Wraith was killing Sumner, he was dying.”