NOTES: We are very nearly there! This is the 2nd last chapter.
The Astonishing Persistence Of Memory: Present Tense
Part Three
Chapter Ten
"So Teyla's got you ready for your trip out?"
John paused with his hand hovering over his bishop, his brain stuttering to a halt. "What?" Rodney couldn't know; Teyla wouldn't have told him.
From across the table, Rodney frowned at the laptop he was typing into. "Hiding from the Wraith using only the power of your mind? Hello? What planet are you on?"
"Oh, that."
"Yes, that." Rodney shook his head as he began typing – probably an email. "What else did you think I meant?
"Not that." John went back to pondering the board, hoping that Rodney wouldn't ask further. He wasn't ready to discuss what had and hadn't happened with Teyla last night.
Maybe it had been a goodbye fuck, but John had no complaints.
In the last six months, his life had turned upside down too many times – from being Kolya's prisoner to escaping with a Wraith; from becoming the Wraith's toy to losing his memory on Orawi. He'd been content to hunt on Orawi as Yan Stormborn, to share Ivali's bed without knowing who and what he was – until John Sheppard's life came looking to claim him back. And now, with the realisation that the Wraith hadn't just let him go, that they'd turned him into a weapon to be used against Atlantis and Earth, with the Iratus virus running through him, inexorable and unstoppable, John had come to realise how fragile his life really was.
For the Iratus, there was no tomorrow, there was only today.
Sex in his dreams might have been cerebral, but it had felt very real in his body when he woke up this morning. John had felt relaxed, satisfied in the way he usually did after a good night. And ready to go again – this time in the real world. Unfortunately, Teyla's watch had beeped the morning alarm, just as things were getting interesting and all John's powers of persuasion hadn't been enough to make her stay just a little longer.
He moved his bishop across the board to threaten one of Rodney's pawns. "She thinks I can keep them out now. Apparently they haven't been attacking as hard the last couple of nights."
Rodney squinted at the chessboard. "Maybe they realise you're not available anymore."
There were several ways John could answer that. He took the most innocuous. "Maybe."
"Hm." The white queen was edged across the board to threaten one of John's knights.
John grimaced. He didn't have anywhere to move the knight – hedged in by other pieces as it was. Not unlike him, come to think of it.
His hand hovered over the board, considering his options, then stopped.
"What is it?" Rodney demanded as John's head reared up from contemplation of the chessboard.
It was like Atlantis had hiccuped and suddenly became real – which was a weird way to describe it, but the best John could do.
"We've dropped out of hyperspace."
"What?" Rodney looked down at his watch. "We're two hours early!"
As Rodney called up the Control Room to find out what was going on, John stood, his head turned towards the windows of the mess hall and the vast blackness of space that loomed beyond the protective shield off the balcony. His eyes narrowed. The star field beyond the shield was rotating gently, as though Atlantis was tumbling in space in an unstable orbit.
A little alarm went off in John's head.
He headed for the door, dodging the people who'd risen from their chairs in surprise to look at the new spectacle. "I'm heading for the chair."
"What? Already? But we're–" Rodney broke off, probably because the curve of the planet below was rising into view. "Oh, God that's making me dizzy. Go."
John ran through the empty corridors, only vaguely aware of the Marines tailing him as faithfully as shadows. "Elizabeth?"
"John. Where are you?"
"On my way to the chair room. We've come out in an unstable orbit."
"And hours early." Edwards cut into the conversation. "What's going on?"
"You'd be better poised to know that, sir." John passed a knot of Marines who were staring out the window at the planet below. "Are we where we're supposed to be?"
"Campbell says yes, we are. We're talking to Radek–"
He hardly listened to the conversation as he clattered down the stairs to the chair room level – background, all of it. What occupied his mind was the awareness that something wasn't right.
"John?"
"Hey, Teyla. I need you to head up to the control room and fill me in on what's happening." He needed someone to keep him apprised on whatever was going on and while Elizabeth and Rodney would be in the thick of it, he couldn't count on being able to grab them at a moment's notice.
"You are setting us to rights?"
"Well, I don't know about setting us to rights. But I am going to reorient the city." A smile ghosted across his face. "What've you been doing this morning?"
"Planning our initial scouting trips. The landmasses are not too far, and the hunting should be reasonable, so Atlantis will be fed."
"Hireni?"
"Yes. But according to the initial survey there are plenty of other creatures here, too."
Casual conversation, meaningless in subject, but meaningful in who was saying it. John tried to forget that she was talking about something he probably wouldn't get to have a say in, and just focused on the lilt of her voice as she described something so simple and yet so significant for the expedition.
He reminded himself that this morning had been a one-off – circumstance, opportunity, willingness. They hadn't talked about where he'd be going after he landed the city. He hadn't wanted to break the mood, and Teyla hadn't seemed to need any promises from him.
Will it be enough?
Would you give more if it wasn't?
John entered the chair room and tried to drag his mind back to the conversation. "Don't forget to invite me when they flock."
"I will not. You would be most welcome." He was grateful that Teyla wasn't referencing the fact that by the time any hireni flocked, it was more than likely that he wouldn't be even vaguely human. The small but meaningful inclusion squeezed his chest, lightly. "I am nearly at the control room."
He settled himself in the chair, the silver patterns on the seat's surface rapidly warming up to his body heat. "I'm in the chair. Tell them that if I need to make corrections, I'll do so without warning. The inertial dampeners should keep everything stable."
"They were not quite up to it the other day."
"Well, the other day, our acceleration exceeded the city's ability to comfortably compensate."
"According to Amelia, we experienced over nine gees on the ascent."
John blinked, shocked as he prepared to start correcting the city's descent. "Nine gees?" Their atmospheric exit had been fast, but he hadn't thought it was that fast. At nine gees, they should have all been unconscious. "Wait, you mean before the inertial compensators did their work, or after?"
"I am not sure." Teyla sounded resigned. "I merely offered the information. You must ask the technicians for the details, John."
"Yeah, sorry. Professional curiosity." It would only have taken four to six gees for most personnel to hit G-LOC, although anyone who'd been through pilot training would have experienced way more during their course.
But that wasn't something John needed to think about now. "Starting the corrections."
He sank his mind into the city with a little difficulty and forced his hands to lay still on the arms of the chair as he reclined back.
"Sheppard, what's happening?" Edwards cut in. "What are you doing?"
He ignored the question for a few moments, allowing himself to get a grip on the city. Over the earpiece, he could hear Teyla explaining what he was doing, and someone else making a comment. There seemed to be several voices chiming in, and it was hard to follow it all and manage the city.
He tapped the thrusters on the subspace engines – just a twitch, really, reorienting the city so it was no longer in a tumble. With the peculiar awareness that came of being in the chair, John adjusted the balance – wobbling a little here, shifting a little there, taking into account the sheer weight of the city – delicate as building a house of cards. He could feel little crackling bumps on his skin – probably some aspect of the integration of a human mind with the city's interface. Given how much had been going on during their departure from Lantea, no surprise that he hadn't noticed it before this.
There.
Stable orbit.
Lift-off had been a lot more chaotic; he hoped that landing wouldn't be quite so busy.
John opened his eyes, let a slow smile touch his mouth. This was like flying – that careful co-ordination of everything together, yaw, pitch, roll, and thrust. Like one of those games whose purpose was to get all the little silver balls into the holes. John had always been good at those. And, like flying the Tweety Bird, or flying a Chinook, he could feel it in his balls and in his bones in that moment when everything came together as a whole – a perfect moment.
Of course, it didn't last very long.
"Sheppard here. We're stable."
"Stable?" Edwards gave a short snort of disdain. "You're not anywhere near a window are you, Colonel?"
"No, but I can–" John broke off. This wasn't just a tickling trickle of sensation, but a sharp sting, like someone had pelted him with a marble while his back was turned. "What's that?"
Rodney took over the conversation. "We came out four hours early in the middle of a meteor shower. Someone didn't think very hard about our exit vector – or look at the astronomical events happening in the locality!"
In the background someone – probably Chuck Campbell – was defending their actions.
At one level, John knew that Rodney was annoyed and taking it out on whoever happened to be available. At another, they'd been on a fairly tight schedule and there'd been no opportunity to do the double-checks they might otherwise have done. And Rodney could be annoying as well as annoyed.
"Colonel Sheppard, this is Dr. Zelenka." As though John wouldn't recognise the distinctively accented voice. "This meteor shower is going to be a problem. You see, the power it took to get here was greater than we anticipated and our engines are not working at full potential. There was more drain on the ZPM and so our power levels are not what we expected."
"It's not the engines' fault – they're ten thousand years old! You didn't acc...!" Rodney's voice faded.
In the background, John heard Teyla commenting that perhaps it would be better to let Radek finish.
"It is no-one's fault." The patient tones suggested that Zelenka knew exactly what was going through Rodney's mind. "It is an unfortunate concurrence of circumstance, and there is nothing that any of us could have done differently. But we are still in need of a solution."
"How much power do we have?"
"Less than fifteen percent." When that produced no response, Zelenka added, "It took us nineteen percent to get off old Lantea."
"So it's gonna be a close shave?" John nodded to himself. "Okay, so we wait a few hours and then go down."
"Yes. Unfortunately, there is a slight problem with that plan. Holding both the shield and our present orbit would be more of a drain on the ZPM than would be worth staying up here."
"Okay." John grimaced. "I'm for going down now."
"Yes, well, that would be everyone's vote."
"But?"
It was a few seconds before Teyla answered. "A position was located for Atlantis to rest in. However, that part of the planet is presently in the midst of a storm."
"Not the first time I've landed in the rain."
"Yeah, and if it was just rain, then it wouldn't be a problem," Rodney broke in. "We're talking hurricane force winds, Sheppard!"
"And there's nowhere else on the planet to land?"
"We have a secondary site that isn't too far away from where we are now."
"So we'll use that. If we're that short on power, our priority should be getting down to the ground. We're best off just landing wherever we can find somewhere to settle, and worry about moving the city later." There was a pause on the other end. "Hello?"
"We're discussing the options, John."
But not including him. Fine. John blew out a long breath and addressed Rodney, but left his channel open so Teyla could hear if she wished. "Rodney, seen Ronon today?"
"No. Why would I have seen Ronon today? I'm not his keeper, you know!"
"I know." It looked like Rodney was in one of those 'don't blame me' moods, where any question would set off a flurry of defensiveness. John turned his mind back to what he was supposed to be doing – bringing the city down. There was still nothing on that channel, and although he could hear what sounded like Elizabeth and Edwards having it out, he couldn't hear Teyla. He switched channels again. "Teyla?"
"A decision has been made on the secondary site, and one of the control room techs is being sent down to you. I believe Carson is also on his way down to monitor you."
"And to provide backup if things fail?"
"That has not been said, but it is a fair estimation."
Teyla fell silent, although John could hear other voices in her background. He didn't bother trying to hear what they were saying – something about reps and relays to the engine control room; instead, he prepped for descent.
The sublight engines were all running, even Rodney's much-maligned Number Four. It sounded a little tired, but it was going. Engine Two had a slight flutter in it, almost like a hiccup, which might prove a problem on the way down. He pushed them all a little, listened to them whine slightly, then let them fall back to an idling state.
A few minutes later, Carson arrived and began setting up. He held up a series of sensor pads and wires. "Colonel?"
John waved a hand. "Yeah, go ahead." The sticky pads were cold on his skin, but started warming up within seconds, and he watched Carson as the doc began activating the sensors. "The inhibitor seems to be working pretty well."
"Yes. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner."
"Don't beat yourself up about it, doc. Too many things happening all at once. It's understandable."
"Understandable, aye. But still a frustration. Right, then." Carson glanced up as footsteps sounded outside before a young woman entered, brown hair sleeked back from an oval face marked by strong bones and dark eyes. "Ah, Amelia. Are we nearly ready to go?"
"I've brought the co-ordinates for Colonel Sheppard." An apologetic twist touched her mouth. "Dr. McKay said he would have come but he wanted to stay up in the control room in case anything went wrong."
"Thanks." John scanned the screen. "Okay, Elizabeth?"
"John. You've got the co-ordinates?"
"Yes." He waved the laptop away, relying on the city's internal mapping sensors to tell him where the planet was, where he was headed, like a gyroscope in his mind. "Did you want to make an announcement?"
Somewhere in the background, a voice made a comment about how well a speech went down last time. Edwards – John thought it was Edwards – growled something out, and Elizabeth's next response was sharp and stiff.
"Thank you for that, Rodney."
John barely listened to the announcement of their descent. He was too busy working the engines up to descent level, too busy trying to estimate how much burn they'd encounter on the way in, how much turbulence they'd see once they got into atmosphere. A six mile city was more solid than a fighter jet, but even with Ancient technology, it was subject to the forces of nature, friction and gravity among them.
And this wasn't just his life and the mission; this was everyone and everything he cared about.
So don't fail.
It was so simple when his mind put it like that.
Of course, it was never that easy when in the middle of the situation.
"Shields up, diagnostics running. I'm taking her down," he murmured, more to himself than anyone else. "Please keep all heads, limbs, and anything that you wish to keep inside the city until landing is completed."
He touched the engines, settling them in his mind, then began the descent.
John had done the calculations with Rodney, Zelenka, and a bunch of the techs yesterday, consulting the other 'jumper pilots, even researching all the logs and diaries of the shuttle pilots from Earth. Ancient tech could take so many things out of the landing equation, but even all that knowledge couldn't make Atlantis descend through 600 miles to light on a planet's surface like a feather.
Especially not when the pilot was rapidly losing his ability to fly the city.
It was harder to control the city than it had been on the way up, the steady march of the Iratus retrovirus crippling him. But John held on. They weren't in a rush, there was no need to hurry. The Wraith weren't after them this time – the Wraith didn't even know where they were. He didn't need to take it fast, he could take his time and bring the city down whole and safe.
Outside the shield, the air pressure increased as they hit the exosphere – the edge of the planetary atmosphere. From here on, vacuum became molecules of atmopsheric gas, held around the planet by its gravitational field. And with gas came friction, heat, and pressure on the shield.
Heat grew all along the underside of the shield as it warmed up around the edge, an inferno of flame, like a fire surrounding him. In the half-world between awareness of the city and John's own senses, almost everything seemed blurry and out of focus; with the occasional detail coming through here and there, in sharp relief.
The shield felt very hot, although John knew it was holding. He could feel the city's engines straining against the gravitational pull of the planet, already tired from getting off the first planet, struggling now in the second.
Just hold on, guys, he told them, knowing it was stupid to be talking to inanimate objects, still feeling as though he should at least try. Just a little further, and then you can rest.
"We're in atmosphere." He spoke out loud, not sure if anyone could hear him. The chair room seemed dim and distant against the immediacy of the engines, the thrumming pulse of their power vibrating in his veins. John felt as though he was the city, quivering with the strain of holding everything together, of keeping everything going. "We'll start encountering turbulence pretty soon – another fifty miles. Let the Control Room know."
He heard Banks pass the message on, heard Elizabeth make the announcement to the city.
He struggled with the controls, trying to keep the city balanced as the air resistance grew greater. Whatever the Ancients could do about inertial dampeners, they hadn't been able to do anything about turbulence.
There was no graceful way to bring down a city six miles across. And even if he'd been able to do it gracefully, John wouldn't have. This wasn't an air show, he wasn't displaying his flying skills; all he needed was to get them down to ground without crashing.
Simple, right?
Engine Four disagreed. It whined loudly for a couple of miles of descent, then died.
John tried resetting it and kick-starting it live again. No luck. He set the city to run a swift diagnostic that came up red with a hardware malfunction – nothing that John could affect from his position in the chair.
"Rodney! Engine Four's out!"
He had another problem on his hands. Without the downwards thrust of Engine Four, countering the gravitational pull of the planet's core, the city began to tilt.
"I see the diagnos– Oh, no. No, no, no. Not now. Now is the worst possible timi– Damn. Teyla?"
"I am here, Rodney." Her voice sounded oddly echoing, as though she was speaking from inside a tunnel of some sort or another. "What needs to be done?"
"We've lost the catalytic synaptors from Engine Four. Do you remember–?"
"I do. They require replacing?"
"For starters. Remember the access shaft that runs along the outside of the engine zone? Then you'll have to run a manual recalibra– Damn! That's the one I rejigged the heat shunt– Sheppard, the tilt's getting annoying – can't you even...?"
John had already dropped the power on engines One through Six, and upped the power on Engine Seven – the central one – to keep their descent rate steady. There would still be a slight tilt – enough to drop pens to the floor, but the heavier things wouldn't slide off desks and people would keep their feet, although they'd feel it walking up the slight incline. "I can't do better than that. And we can't land on this, Rodney." They might not be in free fall, but their stability was shot to all hell.
And when they were descending into a storm, stability would be crucial to their safe landing.
Hang on a minute... A visualisation of the engines provided sudden inspiration, and he boosted Engines One, Three, and Five to full, killing Two and Six entirely to match Four. The city's descent slowed a little, giving them a little more time, although a rough landing lurked ahead like an iceberg in a Titanic future.
"Chuck?"
"Colonel?"
"How close is the storm system we're going into?"
"Uh...a couple of hundred miles away."
"Do we have any other weather readings? Wind speeds, rain, lightning, atmospheric ionisation?"
"We only have one weather satellite in orbit right now, and it's closer to our original location. We're picking up heavy ionisation to the north, though."
"A storm? At least we know where not to go." John's lashes hovered just over his cheeks, letting in the faintest line of light beneath them as he contemplated their options. "Rodney?"
"I'm working on it! And Engine Two is showing signs of failing as well..."
"I'm on it."
"You're on it?"
In situations like these, ignoring Rodney was the best option. John mentally hunted down the connections for Engine Two – an issue of software configuration, not like Engine Four's hardware – and did something that felt suspiciously like dissecting his brain with scalpels. God, that hurts! Breath hissed through his teeth as Rodney noticed the change and made an exclamation of surprise.
"Okay, whatever you just did– Oh, I see. Okay, Teyla?"
John's mind suddenly flashed to an image of Teyla half-crouched in what looked like an access tunnel that ran along the engine space, facing what looked much like a motherboard that was in an even smaller tunnel. Rodney had complained of the size of the tunnel, and looking at it now, John could see it wasn't very large – maybe a yard and a half across and a yard and a half high. It seemed a weird height for an access tunnel, but then perhaps the Ancients – having created things like the Asurans – hadn't needed to make them big enough for actual people.
He focused on Teyla. The image of her was blurred around the edges, fuzzy and somehow multidimensional, as though he was looking at her from several different perspectives at once. He wasn't looking at it with his eyes, but his eyes hurt just thinking about it all the same.
Still, he kept an eye on her, even as the city descended, bit by bit.
"I have reached the problem and am working on it, Rodney." Her voice echoed oddly, as though John was hearing her from multiple directions all at once. Small hands shifted panel configurations, deftly replacing burned-out ones with new, and adjusting the connections. "This does not appear to be the only point at which the synaptic connectors have failed, either."
"So can you reach the other ones?"
"I can." She twisted something and the panel lit up with a yellow glow. "But it will take another few minutes..."
"We don't have a couple of minutes!"
John saw her face; the way her mouth twisted a little to the side as she pushed back damp hair with one graceful movement. The space inside the engines would be hot after initially stabilising the city and starting the descent. She was feeling the heat – in more ways than one.
"All right." Her voice held an infinity of patience, although her expression was tired. "I will hurry."
She replaced the cover panel, but didn't secure it, moving off down the crawlspace at a swift crouch. John wanted to follow her, to watch her as she went along, but other things were demanding his attention – the increasing winds about the city, the rumble of overworked engines as they struggled to keep the city from freefall, the way he could feel the city shaking with growing turbulence.
He blocked out the image of Teyla crawling through the access shaft, her face barely lit by the blue-green glow of the underlighting, focussing instead on Atlantis and the air currents beginning to shift around it.
The problem was not the same as the one had by a small craft in high winds: a fighter or a chopper was a minnow in an ocean; Atlantis was a whale. And while it could be incredibly graceful out in the ocean, it would founder on a beach or in a shallow bay.
With the amount of power John had in which to bring down the city, they were definitely looking at foundering.
John felt the city shake as it began hitting pockets of turbulence in the atmosphere – but he wasn't feeling it with his usual senses. Instead, it was something he felt through the city, as pilot to Atlantis, wired in to the city's sensors. He tried to exert greater control over the four active engines, but couldn't seem to make the city respond as delicately as he would have liked. "Rodney?"
"Teyla's still fixing the connectors! I can't do anything until she finishes the– Wait. I can start the configuration on the one she's already done..."
"Do it! Elizabeth?"
"John? What's going on?"
He could feel the wind shearing off the sides of the shield, knew the pressure was building around them. "We're getting more turbulence. The inertial dampeners should take most of it, but tell people to be ready to brace, just in case."
"Just in case. All right." There was humour in her voice. "Are you okay?"
"I'll survive." His left side – the side succumbing to the Iratus – was beginning to feel warm. It wasn't painful, exactly, but it was growing increasingly uncomfortable. Nothing he had to let slip. He was fine.
And still they dropped from the sky while John struggled with the remaining engines, needing more control the lower they dropped and unable to summon it with only three engines.
"Rodney, we need those engines back!"
"All right, Teyla's done! I'm configuring the last of the three and Teyla's back on her way out."
Fear slid into John's gut, cold as a knife. "No, she's not."
"What? Teyla?" Rodney's voice leaped several octaves. "Teyla, respond!"
Through the swirling, shifting images the city was sending him, John could see her lying on the crawlspace floor, her body limp. She shifted a little at Rodney's call, as though struggling to come up, but from the way she moved, it looked as though she was drugged. A quick request for information from Engine Four showed the CO2 levels dangerously high in the access tunnel.
"It's leaking CO2," he told Rodney shortly. "Who's down there?"
"Dr. Engheart, and Sharon Mallet. But they're working on– Damn, damn, damn..."
John felt the change in air pressure a second before the city shivered in his grasp, the engines failing to keep up with the wind. Nothing was felt in the city yet, but with each yard, the difficulty of maintaining his control of the ship was getting worse. "Why's there a leak in there anyway?"
Rodney was a moment in answering. "It's the feedback shunt. I reprogrammed it because the old one– Okay, Engine Four is ready to go."
"Except that Teyla's still in the crawlspace!"
"I can't help that!"
Another gust of wind swept over the city, and this time the inertial dampeners couldn't disguise the way the city shook. John fought for control of the city, minute changes in the individual engine directors keeping them on course, but it was getting harder. They needed Engine Four, but not with Teyla still stuck there.
Someone was gabbling into their earpiece in the room, something about Teyla's situation that John tried to tune into amidst everything else, but couldn't actually process through all the other things taking up his brain.
"Sheppard?" Edwards' voice growled over the comm. "McKay says Engine Four is ready to go, but Zelenka isn't reading any power draw and we all just felt that shake! What's the hold up?"
A foolish heart that I leave here behind. The quotation snuck into his brain from nowhere, oddly apt.
"Teyla."
He knew what Edwards' response would be before the man even spoke. "You'd risk hundreds of lives and this city to save one person?"
John wanted to say there was a difference, that between the choice of Teyla against the rest of the expedition it wasn't a question of choice but a question of hesitation. He knew the 'right' choice – the one he had to make – but to act upon that decision...
Teyla.
"John." For a moment, he thought it was Teyla's voice cutting through his pause. Then he registered the resonances of Elizabeth's regret. The city shook again, and he felt it slipping from his grasp. He only had moments. "John, I understand..."
"Do you?" Another shake of the city. No more time to wait. It only took a thought to set Engines Two, Four, and Six on. And John forced his voice through his too-tight throat. "I'm taking us down."
I'm sorry, Teyla.
If he thought of her skin blistering in the heat as her hair burned away and her body suffocated for lack of oxygen, he'd never get the city down. He had a duty – a responsibility – and she'd understand that. She'd done it once herself – been prepared to shoot him for the sake of the city. She'd understand.
So John shut the thought of her away with all the repression he could summon. He locked it in the room in Antarctica. Antarctica, where he'd died and been reborn, where he'd found a sanctuary and love.
Then John focused on the moment, on getting the city down.
Even with all the engines going, it wasn't going to be an easy ride.
Turbulence was a function of form. The shield had been built to withstand everything from the friction of atmosphere to asteroids to the Wraith energy beams off a hiveship. Which was fine when it was in vacuum or stationary in atmosphere. But a flattened sphere was one of the worse shapes for flying through air, particularly when that atmosphere was already rough with storm winds.
He struggled with the city, fighting gravity, fighting the wind that skimmed across the shield's surface, fighting the Iratus retrovirus that was burning up his body.
Not enough power. Not enough control.
He couldn't do anything about the first; but he could do something about the second.
Carson was hovering, an anxious exclamation on his lips. Blue eyes looked into John's. "Colonel– "
"I'm going to try something."
"What? What something–?"
The shrill tones of Rodney's alarm faded as John plunged himself into the city.
This wasn't the half-and-half world he'd inhabited before while lifting the city from Old Lantea but a complete absorption of his senses into the city. He wasn't John Sheppard and he wasn't sitting in the chair; he was Atlantis and the city was him.
He thrust back against the gravity that dragged him down towards the stormy sea. He manoeuvred through cold clouds and blustering rain, almost blind in the grey slush. He trembled with the air currents whistling at tremendous speeds, hard enough to make the shields shake, and with them the steel and glass of his construction.
But he was solid. He had his own mass, his own gravity, his own strength in the engines that whined and burned up their power as they lowered his bulk down, down, down towards the rapidly approaching ocean.
A part of him, still human, separated from the consciousness of himself as the city.
Is this where we want to be? John asked himself, and tried to visualise the land, the sea, the markings on the map Amelia Banks had handed him.
There wasn't time to ask the question.
They were down to the last dozen miles, and he couldn't afford mistakes. Flip the city up in high atmosphere and it could be righted before it hit the ground. Flip the city less than a mile up and they were all goners.
No room for error. No room for distractions.
John brought Atlantis down.
Back down on the thrust turn the engines down, down. Seven first, it's the biggest, it needs to go down while we up the others. Slowly, steady, easy, easy, you're a big girl, I know, but you've got fucking amazing control. The Ancients knew what they were doing when they built you. Okay, time to reduce Two, Four, and Six – Shit! Watch the wind, watch the eddies off the ocean, convection currents are a bitch and you don't need to worry about the yaw just watch the pitch and the balance. I wonder could I spin the city like a top and settle her in like that. Probably not the time to try it, especially not when the wind's threatening to tip her up. Down, so close I can taste the sea – Jesus–!
The gust came out of nowhere, billowing down from the sky and skimming up off the sea to the underside of the shield. The city jerked like a leash had been yanked and tilted along its horizontal axes.
John acted on instinct. To counter the imbalance, he poured all power into the stabilising engines.
All power.
He didn't mean to include the shield, but he felt it come down in the midst of the storm. He felt the sudden rattle of wind and splatter of rain against the like a slap in the face with a fistful of snow. He felt something tear in the sudden gust of wind, felt it break free like a snapped tendon, felt crashing glass and twisting metal of the city's central spire, brutal as a fist in the kidneys.
In John's mind, his body jerked upright – and for one horrific moment Atlantis jerked with him–
Fuck!
John forced himself to concentrate on their elevation.
Water churned beneath the base of the city, kept from boiling by a set of heat shields that surrounded the underside of the city, keeping hot metal from encountering cold water. He brought her down with as much grace as she could manage, the great wallowing mass of Atlantis easing into the choppy waves like someone settling back into a familiar couch.
There.
Inch by inch, he let the engines wind back down, transferring their power to the anchoring stabilisers that would keep Atlantis from drifting. He listened to the city, felt it settle on the sea's surface, instigated the routines that would start drawing geophysical data in about this planet. The wind still blustered beyond the edge of the falling shield, shivering the city, and John drew the shield back up again, an impermeable veil between the storm and the spires.
Then he drifted out of the city, back to his body, back to the chair, back to the real world.
He opened his eyes to light – the bright overhead lights of the chair room – and hastily squeezed them shut again. Someone was talking softly, but his brain was still scrambled from interfacing with the city so wholly. A few moments later, he eased the seat up into a position that was more sitting up than lying down and opened his eyes.
Technician Banks glanced up at him from her laptop. "No, I can't– Chuck, the Colonel's out of his trance. Colonel Sheppard?"
"Where's Carson?" There was no sign of Carson.
"He went up to the control room, Colonel. There was an accident."
"What kind–?" John stopped, recalling shattering glass and splintering steel. "What's the damage?"
"One of the communications arrays came off when the shield went down. It went through the Gateroom window – the one at the top of the stairs. There's glass and metal everywhere they say. Dr. Beckett went to help – he thought you'd be okay since you made it this far." She stood and offered him a black twist of metal and wire. "Ronon called to say Teyla's okay and in the infirmary."
"Ronon?" John stared at the earpiece as though it might bite him. Maybe he was still recovering from the flight down, but he didn't get where Ronon came into it all. Instead, his mind latched onto what it understood.
Teyla's okay and in the infirmary.
"I called him and told him where Teyla was. He was down near the engines." Her eyes were watery pale, John noticed, and very direct.
"You did that?" She nodded and he felt a rush of gratitude. "Good work. What's their injuries?" There was no way they'd gotten out without some injuries. The engines had been running hot, and if the feedback shunts hadn't been working properly, it must have been a furnace
"They're both okay. He says they're a bit scorched but nothing Dr. Keller's worried about."
So they were in the infirmary being looked after. John hadn't believed in a God in years, but he gave silent thanks now to anyone or anything who'd been watching over them. Ancient, God, Devil, he didn't care – he was alive and so were his team-mates.
It was enough.
He activated his earpiece, ready to hear the rest of it from the horse's mouth. "Rodney?"
"Sheppard? Sheppard, get up here." Rodney's voice sounded even thinner and sharper than usual.
"What's wrong?"
"It's Elizabeth. She's been injured."
- tbc -