John stared straight ahead, but not looking at anything in particular. He was finding it harder than he'd expected to re-live that day, and he fought with every sentence to force down the self-doubt that had crept into his memory in the days since. He'd done what he'd had to do, then and later.
"We made our way to the central hub and McKay was able to disable the automatic systems that Lear had used to hijack the autopilot. McKay was pretty certain that Lear's men had controlled the jumper from that console the first time, too. So we destroyed the console and fought our way into the jumper."
It sounded so simplistic: we did this, then we did that. But John would never be able to find the words to describe the fear, the terror of the situation, of knowing that failure meant the deaths of two members of his team simply because he couldn't get there in time. He could never explain to Murgia the feeling of hopelessness that had swallowed him up with every agonizing second that passed. 5 minutes to take out the autopilot. 5 minutes to fight their way to the jumper… So much accomplished in so little time and yet – still – not fast enough.
Murgia shifted and John felt a stab of annoyance when he realized that the Colonel was going to speak. John just wanted to get through it. He just wanted it to be done.
"What was the casualty count within the mountain?"
John recognized the question as a standard, mission-debriefing query. Optimistically he hoped that this meant that Murgia was returning his focus to the issue of military necessity. "8 dead. 3 wounded, McKay got 2 with the stunner." John replied authoritatively and he just caught Elizabeth's sudden look in his direction out of the corner of his eye. She seemed surprised by his quick answer. He always knew the answer to that question. But Elizabeth never asked it. It was one reason he liked working for her so much…
"And all within the accepted rules of engagement," Major Mackey added with hasty commentary.
Murgia just nodded without taking his gaze off John who finally met the man's look. "You were nearly out of time at this point in your rescue plan, were you not?" Murgia asked.
John clenched his teeth, then forced an answer out, "We had 7 minutes left, by McKay's initial estimates, to navigate the tunnel back to the surface and then fly the 30 miles to the mine where Teyla and Ronon were being held."
John looked at Teyla and Ronon across the room for the first time since he'd begun his testimony, his eyes pleading for understanding. "And, No. It wasn't enough time."
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John eased the jumper into the tunnel then nudged it forward leaving chaos and three more dead soldiers behind. McKay's fingers were flying over the co-pilot's controls and only a moment after the darkness seemed to swallow them up, the lights in the tunnel came on in blaring brightness. John shot a nervous look at the HUD's display, but no blinking autopilot light appeared. Not even taking the time to feel relieved, he pushed the ship to go faster and brought the walls flying past to a frightening blur.
McKay looked out the window for a second, then gulped and quickly returned to the console and the safe portion of the screen that was covered with data. "I've got the jumper linked into the outpost, now. We're wasting a bit of power by turning all the lights in the tunnel on at once, but we'll make Lear pay the utility bill…"
"Thanks," was all John had the ability to reply. Every ounce of his concentration was on keeping the jumper in the middle of the tunnel. If he so much as scraped a wall at this speed, the ship would tumble and come out the other end in little, mangled pieces.
"I've an idea about how to buy us some more time. If we can just kill the power to the mine that Ronon and Teyla are trapped in, it would stop the venting and shut down the force field. They'd survive until we can get there. Now, the power for the whole complex comes from a geo-chemical generator on the other side of the mountain range and is distributed through a central power grid…"
The jumper wobbled a bit as a small ray of hope flooded John's chest. "So we blow up the generator!" he interrupted with unabashed glee.
"No! No, no, no, no, no! REALLY, No. This whole mountain range is a chemical disaster area. Planet-wide kaboom! Remember? If you blow up the generator, or even so much as detonate a drone on the surface, you'll have your ignition event and most likely set off a firestorm in the atmosphere."
"That would be bad?"
"Um, very bad. Kill everything on the surface for thousands of miles and destroy the entire planet's ecosystem for thousands of years, bad."
"Then, how…?"
Rodney sighed with the impatience of one who's about to say something incredibly brilliant. "When we were shutting down the autopilot, I opened up a channel for the jumper to link in. This research facility doesn't hook directly into the central power grid's command systems, but it does hook into the main network that all systems share to some extent. I might be able to write a virus program that would copy itself onto the network and work its way into the central grid eventually. At that point, I'll just have it start shutting things down, cutting power to everything it can see and eventually the mines."
"Will it work?"
"It won't be elegant, and we'll still have to go get them out, but, sure. It'll work."
"Do it!" John said, more for his own satisfaction than to authorize the idea. He knew McKay was already working. One minute passed, then 90 seconds. John estimated that at this speed it should take another 30 seconds to make it back to the surface, and if McKay's plan worked, then they'd have all the time they needed to fly the 30 miles to the mine. The knot of terror was just beginning to unwind ever so slightly at the thought: McKay's plans usually worked!
The tunnel lights went out.
John slammed on the figurative brakes and brought the jumper to a screeching halt, narrowly avoiding the walls of the gentle curve he'd been navigating. John gasped with the surge of adrenaline, "Now what!" He snarled. This was seriously screwing with his schedule, and he threw the jumper back into forward motion, realizing that he was only capable of less than half the speed with only the jumper's headlights to show the way.
McKay was poking furiously at the console when the answer appeared on the HUD in the form of Ehman Lear's furious image. "You have defied me and killed my men!" he yelled, with no preamble.
"Yeah, well, cunning warrior and all that. Look, Ehman, you're not going to get the jumper. You're not going to get us. If you kill Teyla and Ronon all you're going to get is your ass kicked and a double handful of regret handed to you on a platter." John spoke the words lightly, but the seething fury underneath them saturated every syllable.
"My only regret is that your death will not be as slow and uncomfortable as that of your friends." With that the screen went blank and John just shook his head in angry disbelief.
"That guy has a real attitude," John muttered trying to push the jumper just a little faster.
"I'll be glad to leave," McKay agreed, still programming furiously at his tablet.
The jumper started moving backwards.
With complete shock, John watched the walls creeping by before him slow down, then reverse direction and then gradually pick up speed. Automatically John thought about a rear-view mirror, and the HUD popped up a window with a display of the also dark tunnel behind them, the walls sliding towards the image looking odd against the walls sliding away from the window itself.
"What the hell!" he exclaimed, and twitched the controls. The jumper reacted with a small lurch across the narrow width of the tunnel, nearly colliding with the skimming sheet of rock. "Dammit, McKay, something is controlling the thrusters but not the steering." He had to focus for a long moment on steering the jumper around the same gentle curve they'd just passed, but this time in reverse and faster – with no lights.
McKay was hitting buttons and reading his side of the HUD furiously. "He's found a way to get to the autopilot controls, bypassing that main console we destroyed!"
"We're going faster, I can't – I won't be able to keep up," John was concentrating so hard on the tiny window that was his only view into their path that the rest of the screen faded from his vision. Sweat trickled down his brow, and he gulped as the jumper just barely scraped the inside wall of a slight turn. The jumper shuddered and wobbled wildly, before it returned to its sickeningly fast flight.
"SHUT IT DOWN!" John bellowed, his voice panicky. The jumper drifted towards the wall again.
"I've almost got it," Rodney bellowed back, sounding equally panicked. "I'm trying to block the signal without killing the connection altogether."
A shrieking grinding sound scraped the length of the ship and John fought the controls to keep the jumper from tumbling, "Kill it, McKay, or we're dead."
"But!"
"Do it," John growled between gritted teeth, his knuckles white on the controls.
McKay's fingers flew over the console and he finally jabbed at a button on John's side of the cockpit with a frantic slap. The jumper slowed, then drifted to an obedient hover. John remained frozen over the console. He realized he was shaking when he ran his hand through his sweat-soaked hair and he quickly returned it to the controls, lest Rodney see. With great effort, he thought the jumper forward and they began moving towards the exit once more.
McKay was unusually subdued as he also slumped in his seat, so John threw him a nod and said, "Good work, McKay."
"Sure, sure," Rodney answered hesitantly. "I didn't think Lear could reroute the program that quickly. He's pretty clever. Think he was trying to bring the jumper back to the bay?"
"No. He was trying to kill us," John replied with certainty.
"Hmm. He does seem like an 'If I can't have it, no one can,' kind of guy." There was an odd quality to Rodney's voice that John couldn't quite pin down.
A brief moment of silence passed and John urged the jumper onwards feeling the sight of clear skies and open spaces couldn't come soon enough. They still had work to do. "Fire up that virus, Rodney. We'll head to the mine the second we get out of here." Then they could go home, then they could let Elizabeth figure out the best way to handle Lear, if they decided they even wanted to.
"I can't." Rodney's voice was soft again, filled with strangled defeat.
"…what?"
"Lear was using the uplink we'd opened to control the jumper. I had to break the connection to break his control of the ship. I lost access to the outpost, there's no way to send the virus."
John frantically looked at his watch. 3 minutes. He suddenly felt like he had in that moment in the outpost's small lab. Grief was knocking at his heart and his eyes stung with a moment of hopelessness. "McKay…"
"I know. There's not enough time to get to the mine. I'm…I'm sorry."
"No. No, we'll figure something else out." John was desperate, and he shoved the grief away with furious denial. "We'll…we'll take out the generator from here. I can hit it if I get enough altitude."
"If you fire a drone the atmosphere will ignite. Everything on the surface for a huge radius will be wiped out."
"And the outpost? Will Teyla and Ronon be affected?"
"The whole complex is mostly underground and so the Ancients built their own environmental controls. Anyone in the outpost would be OK for a while, until the loss of power affected the EC."
"Then, we do it."
"There are 2000 people in that village! Ehman is a first-class asshole, but those people don't deserve to die because of him."
"Dammit, McKay!" John yelled furiously, angry at Rodney for reminding him of what he already knew. The village would be destroyed, along with the generator, and, if McKay wasn't exaggerating, a large chunk of the planet. Teyla and Ronon would die if he did nothing.
An eternity of tense silence passed and finally - finally! - the jumper shot out of the side of the mountain into velvet night skies. John could just see a glimpse of the twinkling hearthfires in the village below as he turned the jumper's nose up into a steep, fast, climb. The ground fell away from them with frightening speed.
John looked at his watch. 45 seconds.
McKay was watching him with something like suspicion tinged with fear. John ignored him and leveled the jumper slightly while still climbing. Three dark shapes zipped away from them towards the twinkles far below.
"What did you do?!" cried Rodney.
"I fired disarmed drones at the village. Warning fire." Maybe they'll run for the outpost and some of them will be sheltered, he thought to himself…
McKay's expression had turned to surprise, but he kept his mouth shut and sat staring for a moment longer. John leveled out the jumper and pointed its nose West, towards the mine and the generator beyond.
"Sheppard, you can't do it!"
John's hands clenched on the jumper controls and the head's up display came to life with the drone targeting program.
"Can't McKay?" his voice was a dangerous growl. "Teyla and Ronon…"
"Knew the risks when they came through that 'gate with us this morning. We all did…do?."
John jerked his head, "So I'm just supposed to sit here and let that place suffocate the life out of them?" The growl was bordering on an anguished plea.
"No! I… I don't know!" John could hear the anguish in McKay's voice too, and the deep emotion spilling out of the carefully narcissistic scientist stayed John's hand more than any furious tirade.
"What do I do, McKay?" They were supposed to figure it out. They were supposed to have a plan that would save the day. That would save everyone.
"I got nothing." Rodney tilted his head, then looked away in resignation. "If you fire a drone…"
"I KNOW," John bellowed, feeling like he couldn't bear to hear the argument even one more time. "If I don't, Teyla and Ronon die."
"You can't do it." Rodney's voice was very small.
John's hands flexed against the controls again, the mental command to fire so dangerously close to realization that the display flickered, then magnified closer to the target in a half-hearted attempt to interpret the pilot's conflicting signals.
I'd do anything, for any one of you. If it meant laying my life down like Ronon was going to do, I'd do it.
John closed his eyes briefly – a last moment before the decision was made. The only decision he could make. When he opened them again, they were determined and just a little bit sad. A drone leaped away from the jumper, disappearing quickly from their view against the vast bulk of the planet they were beginning to descend towards.
A small flash marked the drone's impact, then the point around the flash seemed to glow, spreading quickly outward in an expanding ring of red-black devastation. The circle of lava-like molten fire raced over the planet's surface, consuming fully a quarter of the planet's landmass with frightening speed before finally turning black and cooling at the edges. The circle ceased to spread, lying like a glowing boil on the devastated land.
"I can't believe you did it…" whispered Rodney.
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