Previously: Lorne makes it to the surface, but there's that pesky suffocating. Or hypothermia. Maybe both?
Now: Sheppard goes down to go up. The Jumper doesn't like it much.

Sheppard slid the jumper underneath the sinking ship, and with a rough thud and grinding screeching, started pushing the alien ship back up. The jumper engines strained against the mass of the much larger vessel, trying to prevent it from sinking but only managing to slow its descent. It wasn't working. Those last two life signs were going to go down with the ship, and Sheppard couldn't stop it.

The scraping of metal on metal ground through the hull of the jumper as he closed his eyes and willed the little craft to push upwards with everything he could get it to give. After several minutes of working against gravity, shuddering against the mass of metal and water above them, it finally began to feel as though they had managed to halt the downward progression. The jumper engines were doing the Ancient equivalent of redlining, but they were at least holding steady.

It wasn't good enough.

If he could just push a little bit more, push back up... The ship was supposed to weigh less in the water, shouldn't it? It felt pretty heavy judging by the way the mental interface was complaining at him. The ship was more than twenty times the size of the jumper. It gave him an idea, and he mentally dialed up the inertial dampeners and extended the dampening field asymmetrically upwards to encompass part of the alien ship. It gave him the slight edge he needed; the artificial negation of a portion of the mass of the ship above him allowed the jumper's upward force to outclass the downward force of the sinking ship.

Just barely.

It was a slow and arduous upward inching. The depth indicator crept back upwards; 40m, 38m, 36m, 34m, 32m...

At the 30m mark the field generator began to flash red. The extended inertial dampeners were drawing heavy amounts of power, so it had been pulling from the reserve power to compensate. The backup had run out, and they were on pure power from the drive pods which couldn't handle both the lift and the lopsided field. He had to scale back the output or risk burning out the engines. The inertial field dissipated, and their progress was halted. The full weight of the alien ship settled back onto the roof of the jumper with a metallic scraping and shuddering. The engines were back to regular redline straining against the mass above.

They wouldn't be able to keep this up forever.

There had to be something else he could do. If he couldn't lift the ship alone...They needed more jumpers! Extra jumpers would be able to push the ship up together, and also bring out some divers with their emergency kit. Yes! Sheppard lifted a hand to engage his comm.

His radio crackled to life.

A voice; he doesn't know whose. There was something in the water! No, wait.

There was someone in the water.

Sheppard mentally flicked the HUD LSD back on and switched to a horizontal plane view, and saw that the last two life signs which had previously been in the ship were now floating at the surface. There was nobody left alive inside the alien vessel, and no point in trying to prevent it from sinking further.

They had to get to the people in the water.

With a shuddering and scraping he extricated the jumper from underneath the alien vessel, and headed for the surface, breaking through to beautiful blue sky just a few meters off to the side of the pulsing dots on his HUD.

There were two masked figures in the water, one holding the other from behind. As he tried to make out whether they were friend or foe, the one at the back slipped under the water. Crap. They had to hurry. Sheppard yelled to the back and immediately swung the jumper around and lowered the hatch while Sanchez readied a rope to an anchor point at the door for the retrieval. Griffiths was digging through the rescue kit for towels and blankets and the medic had cracked open a med kit and was preparing an O2 canister and other equipment.

Literally skimming the surface of the water, Sheppard backed up at the Marines' instruction until they were able to reach down and grab the one remaining floating figure. He glanced at the life signs detector again. The sunken one was still alive. The mask was probably preventing it from drowning, but it was definitely going down, fast. It was three... four... five meters down.

He yelled the increasing numbers to the marines in the back. He didn't have to ask. He didn't have to order. There was a thud, another thud, a clang, and a shuffle, followed by a splash as someone dove into the icy water. Trying to hold the jumper steady and level just above the water meant he could only peer over his shoulder and vaguely see what was happening in the rear compartment.

Relief flooded through him when Griffiths hollered that they had McKay, and that he was unconscious and on the cold side but breathing fine inside the mask. Hope welled up in him at the news; he tamped it down immediately and remained quiet, waiting. Not 30 seconds later there was more splashing and Griffiths yelled at him to reverse another three meters, then more sloshing and splashing as first a masked body and then a gasping Sanchez were hauled back into the jumper.

Five seconds later they were clear. Griffiths yelled at him to go, and Sheppard resolutely kept his eyes forward as he shut the rear hatch and lifted the jumper up to head for the tower.

Another five seconds later whatever relief he may have felt and whatever hope he had harboured were crushed when Sanchez, in a rather more breathless and panicked tone, reported that their other tango was Major Lorne… except Lorne wasn't breathing, and he was 'beyond frigid'. They were still trying to get the mask off. The medic was struggling to find a pulse.

A few seconds later there was a hissing squelch and a face mask was tossed out of the way. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him Sanchez, still soaking wet, starting CPR while the medic attached the O2 canister to an ambu bag and covered the Major's face. He had to turn his attention back to avoiding crashing the jumper into one of the buildings. Behind him, Sanchez swore, but it was more of a surprised expletive than a panicked one, and Sheppard heard some rattling and thunks before the rhythmic sounds of CPR started up again.

When he glanced back again Sanchez and the medic were blocking his view of Lorne, but on the other side of the jumper he could see Griffiths removing McKay's mask and wrapping him in some spare towels. Sheppard took a deep breath to steady himself and activated the comm to broadcast on all frequencies; he only wanted to do this once. It took all his command training to sound perfectly calm as he informed the tower that they had McKay and Lorne on board and requested a medical team to meet them in the jumper bay with a crash cart and hypothermia supplies. He ordered the naval unit to continue patrolling the area where the alien ship went down. A chorus of affirmative responses filtered back to him as he urged the jumper towards the bay at the top of the central spire.

Lorne had stopped the alien ship. Lorne had saved McKay.

Lorne was dying.

He had to fly faster.

My apologies for leaving you all on the worst cliffie of the series and not posting last night; I had an international team meeting via Skype that lasted until well after 23:00 and I was too exhausted to edit and prep a new chapter for publication. Here it is though, and we should be back to our regularly scheduled daily posting. Only 3 chapters remain, plus the artwork. Thank you to all my readers and followers and especially to my reviewers! You guys rock, and are way too smart for your own good. I need to stop being so predictable...