John stepped up on the railing, balancing easily. A long way down, waves washed up against the platforms and supports at the tower’s foot. He knew his own weight and the approximate distance down, so it was hard not to automatically calculate the velocity he would reach by the time he hit the base. Right. Here goes. He caught a handhold in the decorative embossing, and wedged a boot into the junction where the girder met the wall, and hauled himself up.
Chapter Ten
Rodney really, really didn’t see a way out of this. Watched carefully by the Koan, he was forced to follow Dorane, two Marines, and Ford to the naquadah generator that powered the lower center section of the city, including the medlab. Rodney had tried to steer Dorane toward one of the generators for the other sections, but Dorane hadn’t gone for that.
Part of him was wondering how much of the system Zelenka had trashed while sealing off the medlab. As Rodney knew very well, there was nothing like the threat of certain death to inspire speed and creativity. Between the damage Dorane and the Koan had caused, and the damage Zelenka and the others had done trying to stop them, it would probably take a month to repair everything. If they got out of this alive. Rodney groaned mentally, wishing an insane repair schedule was his only problem.
If the power was completely cut, the doors on the medlab level could be pried open manually. Rodney knew that was where Dorane had sent a large number of the Koan and several of the expedition’s military personnel that he had under his control, ready to move in.
In the lead, Ford took the last turn in the corridor, reaching the doorway to the generator room. A cardboard sign with the words “stay out” and a badly-drawn skull and crossbones had been stuck on the wall next to it with sticky tape. At the time Rodney had thought the symbolism was a nice touch; now it was all too appropriate. Even if some of the expedition members escaped into the unexplored sections and managed to evade Dorane, how were they going to survive with the city a dead powerless hulk? And Rodney didn’t suppose Dorane would be stupid enough to leave any jumpers behind.
The door slid open to reveal a dimly-lit five-sided room with antique gold walls and burnished copper trim, colors that suggested an upscale restaurant more than they did a main access point to the city’s power grid. Unless you were Ancient, apparently. There were three other sealed doors, all corridor accesses, and the naquadah generator sat near the center. It was small for something so powerful, positioned on a low pallet and connected into Atlantis’ system through the access points in the floor and wall panels. Dorane eyed it with an expression Rodney could only interpret as skepticism, asking Kavanagh, “Is that it?”
“Yes,” Kavanagh said, as bland as if they were discussing the weather. “That’s the generator.”
Rodney eyed him sharply. He told Dorane, “You shouldn’t have killed Kolesnikova. She knew more about naquadah power generation than Kavanagh could ever learn.”
“I could control Kavanagh,” Dorane replied easily, as if it was nothing. “She had your gene retrovirus.”
Rodney had wondered if Dorane had ordered Kavanagh to kill Irina. But that sounded as if he had done it himself.
Rodney remembered thinking once that it was bizarrely unfair that Sheppard and Carson and the others had come by the gene naturally, just because they had promiscuous ancestors who must have been lining up at the proverbial dock the day the Ancients had landed on Earth. And it had been a huge relief when the ATA therapy had worked for Rodney. Now it was going to get all of them killed in a horrible way, and that was just typical.
“You know why we’re here. Prepare it for transport.” Dorane looked at Kavanagh. “Bring the tools. Make sure he uses only the correct ones needed for the job at hand.”
Rodney looked down at the generator, grimacing. He had put so much work into getting these things to mesh with the city’s more advanced systems; taking it out was really going to hurt. At least he could do it slowly and blame the low emergency lighting. “I assume you want it intact, and not in burnt-out pieces, so it’s going to take some time since I can barely see what I’m doing.”
“That can be remedied,” Dorane told him, his expression bland.
Rodney threw him a wary look, not sure if he meant a flashlight or a little genetic adjustment. Except for the lights on the P-90s, which the men weren’t using because of the Koan, nobody seemed to be carrying a flashlight. He said stiffly, “I’ll make do.”
Kavanagh brought a tool case over and opened it. Rodney glared at him, but Kavanagh’s normally annoying face was blank, just like the Marines and Ford. Rodney selected the screwdriver needed to get the generator’s panels open, holding it out to Kavanagh for inspection. Kavanagh nodded, and Rodney sneered, saying, “I’m not quite insane enough to blow this thing up with me standing over it.” Not yet, anyway. If they got to the fifth generator and Sheppard still hadn’t shown up, Rodney knew he might rethink that position. For all he knew, Dorane’s genetic tampering had finally run its course and Sheppard was already lying dead in one of the corridors.
Dorane watched him get the panels off the generator’s access points, and it made the back of Rodney’s neck sweat. He flinched when Dorane said suddenly, “I am only just realizing how apt my earlier comment was about the city being fit only for scavengers. Your technology is cobbled together from many different sources, is it not? You weren’t lying about coming here from another galaxy.”
I’m only just realizing how apt my earlier comment was about you being a serial killer. Rodney said flatly, “No, we weren’t lying.” Dorane seemed to know the Ancient systems fairly well, but it was the interfaces with Earth-based computers and technology that baffled him. Considering how much of it was a hybrid mix of Terran, Goa’uld, Asgard, and Ancient, it probably wasn’t surprising that Dorane didn’t understand it. Or us.
“You did not know of the Wraith, when you came here to loot Atlantis? I suppose your Lantian ancestors did not bother to pass along the story of their defeat.”
Rodney set his jaw, barely managing to stifle his first knee-jerk reply. He knew Dorane wanted him to assert the expedition’s right to the city, based on Earth’s inheritance from the Ancients. Guess what? You’re the only person with an ATA gene handy, and he wants an excuse to torture you. He said only, “We didn’t know.”
Dorane continued to watch him from what Rodney thought was way too close a distance, but didn’t reply. Rodney tried to focus his attention on the delicate maze of circuitry inside the generator’s connection panel and ignore the lingering painful death that was in his immediate future.
In his more optimistic moments, of which there were few, Rodney had imagined what things would be like if they ended up staying here forever, or at least all lived long enough to die of natural causes. Somehow in that scenario, Sheppard had still been here too, though God knew after years of crash landings, head injuries, and Wraith stunner attacks he would probably have even more impulse-control issues than… Of course, Rodney thought with a sudden surge of hope. He leaned down over the connecting conduit to conceal his expression. Now he knew what the plan was.
He just hoped Sheppard was still alive to carry it out.
The climb was an intense few minutes, but John was able to make the other balcony without dying. From there he went to the corridor just above the one that approached the medlab from the outer wing of the city, then found the correct floor access panel. He pried it open and crawled through the floor to find the ceiling panel that would open inside the quarantine-sealed area, on the opposite side of the medlab from the booby-trapped corridor of death that led from the center stair shaft.