Radek frantically tries to contact the Vela again. And again, there's nothing but static coming from the radio.
"Come in Vela, I repeat, come in Vela. Dr Miller… Rachel? Lt. Decker? Anyone, come in please! Rachel, are you there?" Radek says urgently into the microphone.
Rodney is watching the long distance scanner one hand on his hip, another on his chin, rubbing his day old stubble thoughtfully. Radek curses in Czech and throws his radio across the room. Several members of the expedition team turn and glare at him, including Rodney.
"Still nothing?" Rodney asks with a frown.
"No, I can't believe this, maybe it's a glitch in the long distance scanner?"
"And how would that explain how there was some sort of energy burst and then they completely dropped off our scanners even though we should be seeing them right now? Are you sure they dropped out of hyperspace?"
"They jumped into hyperspace here section 14.2 then reappeared here ten minutes later, then there was the energy burst that was recorded by our surveillance on the Vela and she disappeared off our scanners." Radek explains.
Rodney looks at the screen for a moment, unblinking, his eyes squinted and his lips a thin line. The chance of finding a ship in a quadrant of space that large with a jumper would be hard, what made this difficult was that there were no Stargate's in space or otherwise in the area, what made it almost impossible was the fact that if communications and tracking signals were out, then any distress beacon was too. But the crew of the Vela did have ONE thing on their side… they had Rachel Miller, if anyone had a plan it'd be her.
"I haven't got a clue, I'm sorry!" Rachel whines into her earpiece with a grimace on her face. She's sat in the captains chair, hunched over her laptop with a bandage pressed to her head with one hand.
"What do you mean 'you haven't a clue', come on give me some good news, damn it!" Decker's voice crackles over the radio.
"Look, you were the one who said that it wouldn't be hard to unplug a computer and plug it back in again!"
"You didn't tell me that this thing worked with Wraith technology!"
"I'm sorry that the whole crashing out of a hyperspace window with engines on full kinda distracted me from telling you that we had to use Wraith technology! You sound just like a bloody Mac user… you never use DOS?"
There's a pause and then a choked laugh from over the radio, Rachel for a moment feels very insulted, then incredibly amused. She laughs loudly until she can hardly breath.
"Okay… okay, I'm done. The air's getting thin in here. Did you check the LS Systems?"
"That the big bank of flashy buttons?"
"Uh…" Rachel brings up the schematics on the tablet, "Yeah, those are the ones. Are all the lights in the green?"
"I wouldn't know, they're all off."
"You said flashy buttons!"
"I did have a look round before we took off Dr Miller, even if I didn't remember the exact position of every piece of hardware on this ship."
"Okay, we'll deal with that later. Stand in front of the life support and turn around. There should be a casing on the wall, that's the power lines to the computer."
At her end Roxanne popes open the casing with a piece of nearby debris. Inside is a complete mess, the drop out of hyper drive must have overloaded the main power. She frowns and pulls the tangle of wires. She was smart, she could do this, not as smart as the genius still holed up on the bridge but close enough.
"Okay, I'm in." she mutters over the radio.
There's static for a while. Then for a bit longer, then too long.
"Dr Miller? Miller!" Roxanne yells.
"Whoa, wait, what?" calls a faint voice from the other side.
"Miller, you feeling alright?"
"Tired mainly, I could sleep for a week. Okay, you're in did you say?"
"You don't go sleeping on a clothesline, I need your brain," Roxanne pauses to look at the wiring, "First things first. We need to get some air moving in here, that means life support systems need to be up and running. Miller, which wires are the life support?"
"Blue, reconnect them as best you can, the system should work on minimal power."
"Didn't you people think of having a back up?"
"Where would we put it? This isn't exactly the TARDIS, space was limited."
"These Ancients, no so much on the maximalist look were they…" Roxanne mutters as she begins to reconnect all the wires, some of which are no bigger than a piece of fishing wire.
Her wire clippers flash as she moves rhythmically through them, stripping the wire then twisting them together clumsily within the space suit. She breathes a sigh of relief as the bank of flashy lights begin to wink at her.
"Doc, life support is back up and running." she radios in.
"Keep working, we need our screens back so I can salvage some of the data and get us the hell out of here." Miller replies.
"Yes ma'am."