Among the many myriad of physical and mental reactions their current situation demanded, an already injured John had the fleeting mental capacity to utter two words that summed it up pretty well.
"Oh, crap!"
Teyla glanced over at John, as her teeth clenched tightly together, making her unable to respond to the words she hated to hear most of all.
"Teyla-Hold on! I cant hold her! We're going down!" John managed to grunt out while in the midst of trying to get the jumper to respond, his head injury forgotten in the face of imminent death. A torrent of sweat trickled from his forehead into his eyes and down his temples, testament to the stress he was currently under. He didnt dare let go of the controls to wipe the stinging salty fluid away. He did not want to die this day-or take Teyla with him.
Twelve hours earlier...
As the majority of those living on Atlantis slept, only those assigned night duty and a handful of dedicated scientists remained awake, diligently working on projects with the ferver not unlike OCD patients off their meds. The Director of Scientific Affairs was among the duly obsessed.
An insomnia-driven quest was about to yield results Rodney had been searching for-for it seemed like forever, but amounted to just over a year. Much had happened within that year since arriving through the stargate, some of it good and alot of it bad. Regardless, this was home now and Rodney had been committed to finding a way to improve their chances of surviving even one more day. Each day was a blessing-yes-things had gotten that bad.
The Holy Grail, as someone might call it, popped up out of a random computer search using ancient data filters the scientists had recently discovered. Rodney had had several programs running simultaneously when a faint alarm brought Rodney out of his sleep deprived stupor.
He was instantly intrigued and with a few strokes on his keyboard he hurriedly set about to confirm the flashing results with the other running programs. Each of the other programs bore the same results, confirming the original data.
Rodney's eyes widened and his hands covered his mouth to stifle a whooping cry of success. His hands shook as he reread the data to make sure he was really seeing what he was seeing. After so many false searches, Rodney was sure this one was true. Excited, he wasnt sure who to wake first-Elizabeth or John. He decided on both and keyed his ear com to alert them both with one message.
"Elizabeth, John! I need you both in my lab-NOW! "
The message was received by both parties at the same time, though the reaction time was a bit different, but not by much. John, being military was alert and on the run within seconds, wondering what Rodney had done this time. Elizabeth was a little slower but experience had conditioned her to react far quicker in the last year.
John arrived in Rodney's lab first, slightly winded from his quick response. The urgency of Rodney's message had him on the run, giving himself only enough time to grab his handgun. He cautiously entered the lab, gun raised and ready. Dressed only in plaid flannel sleep pants and breathing slightly heavy didnt exactly impose a threatening figure, but then the gun usually had that desired effect.
Elizabeth rounded the corner, seeing John with gun raised and immediately tried to assess the situation. Rodney stood by his computer with a look on his face of pure terror-or was it glee?
"Down, boy!" Rodney exclaimed, staring at John.
"McKay-what's going on?" John kept the gun raised as he looked around the room suspiciously.
"Put that thing down, there's no threat, no danger!" Rodney realizing that his radio message might have sounded desperate and not jubilant.
Acknowledging Rodney's claim that all was well, John reluctantly lowered his gun and waited for an explanation. Elizabeth, seeing all was well, couldnt wait to hear why Rodney had summoned them here so anxiously. She did, however, notice John's apparell-or lack of. She eyed his bare chest and couldnt help the fleeting appreciation she held for his lean, muscular physique. She scolded herself for her observations, John was her second in command after all-and more like a brother figure. Still, she did appreciate his obvious good looks.
She felt the need to tease but held her tongue. She was glad that she had grabbed her terrycloth robe which concealed the lacy nitegown she had on underneath.
"Rodney-if there is no emergency, why did you radio both us to come here so urgently?" Elizabeth queried her lead scientist. She knew he suffered insomnia and had little regard for what time of day it was, but still-did the man not know that others did indeed enjoy sleeping at night?
"Elizabeth, you will be happy I woke you for this! I was running some new computer programs dealing with some of the planets on the outskirts of the galaxy." Rodney tipped up and down on his toes triumphantly. "I got a hit!"
"What do you mean you got a "hit" ?" demanded John.
Rodney turned his computer around and launched into the findings that made him smile from ear to ear. Elizabeth and John stared at him dumbfounded.
"Helloooo...Did you hear me? Do you understand what I'm showing you here? It's an ancient lab where they built ZedPM's! And-there's a rather obscure but powerful energy signal emitting from the planet! It's obscure enough that we never detected it on previous sweeps-plus we didnt have the new data filters!" Rodney was so excited, he continued to babble.
Elizabeth sat down on the nearest stool, wondering if this was a dream...Had they finally been able to locate the one place that could provide them with the means to keep the expedition safe, perhaps power up the city to its full potential, shield the city against any threat, return home to Earth, defeat the Wraith?
"Rodney, if you located the signal-what are the chances that the Wraith could track it too?" John asked.
"Major, this signal is so obscure. We recently found data filters in the ancient database that helped us enhance the search for a particular energy signal. Only this particular ancient program would be able to distinguish the specific signal from the mixed soup of radioactive and particle energy readings. I'm pretty confident the Wraith have no idea about this planet or even find it worth the trouble of venturing so far out." Though Rodney wasnt a hundred percent sure of this fact, he kept this to himself.
It stood to reason that the Wraith stayed pretty local to the immediate planets that were populated. Too much time and energy would be wasted on venturing so far out without any way to predict there would be a substantial prize to be culled. Besides, the scientists on Atlantis had established that the further out planets were from the center, the less populated they became. This was due primarily to the lack of Ancient stargates on these outlying planets as many of the gateless planets were uninhabitable also.
"Okay Rodney-let's get a MALP set up so we can send it through-uh, we do have a gate address, dont we?" Elizabeth could feel her optimism drop slightly.
"Uh-yeah-that information will have to be extracted from the database, along with the planet specs-I'll get Zelenka on that right away! Give us a few hours to research the information." Rodney explained as he keyed his ear com to summon Radek to the lab.
"Okay, McKay-we'll leave you to it." John gestured to Elizabeth to exit the lab with him.
"Well-that sure got my adrenaline going! I'll never be able to sleep now. Wanna get a cup of coffee and speculate on what this could mean for us, Elizabeth?"
Elizabeth smiled; "I'd love to-and though I really dont mind, perhaps you'd like to stop at your quarters to add a shirt to your ensemble? We wouldnt want rumors to start now, would we?"
John had forgotten his lack of attire and he felt his face redden a bit. "Uh...yeah-perhaps we both should dress more appropriately before we go to the mess hall."
TBC -If you like the story so far, please let me know! And even if you dont, please tell me why! Constructive criticism is always welcomed!