Chapter 10

Radek came to the conclusion that he did not envy Evan his relationship with Jeannie in the least. No, not one bit. Not at all. In fact, he suddenly had great respect for the man for falling for her. But Radek had enough trouble with working with Rodney that he had no idea how anyone could willingly engage in a relationship with the female version of the scientist.

And the worst part was that he knew – he just knew – that should he do something to upset Jeannie, he will get it later from Anne. In her pregnancy his lover had gotten the odd notion in her head that she shared some sacred bond with the rest of the pregnant population of Atlantis. Sometimes it seemed to Radek as if he was bumping into a pregnant female wherever he turned.

"You have no idea what that would do to Elizabeth and Sitnalta," Jeannie hotly told him. When she had come to Atlantis a few years back to help Rodney with the inter-dimensional bridge, he had been oddly charmed by the lovely woman. But now she considered Radek as much family as she did Rodney, it seemed. It also seemed she considered it fair to talk to Radek the same way she usually did to her brother. Which meant she and Radek had been arguing for half an hour now.

Throwing his hands in the air for effect, he told her exactly how he felt about her in Czech. It lasted a while, as he had a lot to say. And all the while she merely stared at him with those calm blue eyes that were in fact not like Rodney's at all. Behind her eyes a calm lurked even in the midst of her ire.

When he finally finished telling her how mad she made him, she merely tilted her head to one side. "Feeling better?" she calmly asked.

Radek nearly exploded with indignation. "No, I do not," he snapped back. "We have less than ten minutes to shut the gate down before the first ZPM blows and you are standing here arguing with me!"

She glared at him. "I merely pointed out to you that an overload might do irreparable harm to Elizabeth and Sitnalta."

He raked his fingers through his hair, wishing he did not feel so helpless. He was aware part of the reason he and Jeannie were fighting was because both of them were worried about those they loved. Taking it out on each other relieved some of the pressure, but it did not take the feeling of helplessness away. He shook his head.

"I know," he finally said, defeated. "But within a few minutes we are going to have to make a decision between the lives of two women and that of the entire city."

"Unless we can figure out how to get Elizabeth and Sitnalta disengaged from Atlantis," she pointed out. For a few moments they stood staring mutely at one another, wondering how to do the impossible.

Finally Radek sighed. "Okay, let's go over the situation once more," he said as he turned back to the screen displaying the city's energy grid. "If Atlantis was on the surface, we could have simply manually disengaged the ZPM's," he began.

"But we have no idea how that would affect the women linked with the city," Jeannie added. "And of course, we can't shut down the system as we need the shields."

"Yes." Radek replied. "And we can't isolate the stargate from the system either," he continued. "Whatever is keeping the gate open from that side prevents us from just cutting the power to the gate."

Mutely they stared at the screen. Radek knew that the answer was just out of reach, they just didn't have enough time. From the start that had been the problem: not enough time.

"We can isolate the systems powering the shields and the hologram room..."

"...but we still have to pull the ZPM's, so it doesn't help us," Jeannie finished much like her brother. "And we don't have any naqada generators lying around..." she added.

"...just to power the shields and hologram room," Radek added. They both frowned at the screen again.

"Besides, they generators had never been strong enough to power the shields," Jeannie added. "If only we had a power source separate from the ZPM's."

Once more their conversation had come full circle without offering any ideas.

Radek frowned as he tried to work through the problem. "But what if we did shut down the entire city for a moment," he slowly asked, the thought unformed as of yet.

"Even a split second of lost power would have the sea crushing us," Jeannie replied. "Not to mention what it would do to Elizabeth and Sitnalta," she angrily added. Radek held up his hand and slightly wriggled his index finger as he spoke.

"I know. Believe me, I know," he said, his eyes widening as he thought about it. "I'm trying to think about what we can do, not about what we can't do," he tried to explain.

"Okay..." Jeannie slowly replied. "Shutting down the city would solve our problem with the gate. But it will cause the city to flood."

Radek nodded. "Yes. So what would be the solution to the city flooding?"

They frowned at the screen. Then Jeannie leaned over and called up number of programs, spreading them so they lay next to one another on the screen. "What if we didn't shut down the entire city," she excitedly began. "What if we just shut down the gate."

Radek frowned at her. "I thought we already decided that cannot be done," he replied. "The system simply won't respond."

Jeannie smiled. "Not from here. But what if we overloaded the gate itself." He frowned and she pointed at a menu. "In the gate-room. If we overloaded the gate itself..."

"...then it might cause a surge that will sever the link from the other side," he happily continued her sentence. "All we need to do is first isolate the hologram room and the shields," he added, already typing. "We can't have the surge overloading either of those systems."

"What if we wrote a secondary program that kicks in the moment the overload starts at the gate? Could we isolate the gate itself?" Jeannie added as she also started to type.

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Altogether eleven of them stood in the hall of the building known as the 'chromulus.' In near stunned silence they regarded the two artefacts contained within. One, the most prominent one, was the stargate itself. To their left, thus to the right side of the stargate, another, much smaller, artefact stood on an elaborate pedestal. Though the building had few windows, the entire inside was lit with the cool blue light from the stargate. Between the two artefacts a thin sparkly line of energy travelled, looking like nothing more than fireflies. Or, as John regarded it, those little bugs that they had found on the planet with the ancient Wraith.

"Okay, so how didn't we see that before?" he now asked nobody in particular, but expecting Rodney to answer none the less. Quite obviously that energy discharge was the reason why the stargate had not disengaged yet.

"How should I know?" Rodney answered as expected. But he was also tapping at his tablet, searching for the elusive answer. Familiar with his way of doing things, the rest of the team patiently – for now – waited for the answer. And, as expected, Rodney looked up with slight wonder on his face. "It's increasing," he cryptically remarked.

Though SGA-1 knew Rodney would explain that statement in due time, and patiently waited, the Satedan leader of the Forty was not as used to the idiosyncrasies of the Atlantean scientist.

"Explain," Draven barked, making Rodney jump. The latter turned to give Draven a black look, but almost immediately turned back to his team.

"The energy drained from the stargate is growing," he worriedly started on his explanation. "When we first came here, the energy would not have been visible to the naked eye. But by now it had increased dramatically."

"Would that not mean that we have even less time to stop this than we had thought at first?" Teyla carefully asked, her eyes never leaving the stream of flickering light. John was constantly amazed at how quickly she could cut to the heart of a problem.

Rodney looked up at her, his eyes wide with worry. "Yes," he slowly, slightly sneeringly remarked. John and the team ignored the tone as by now they had learned it was nothing more than a way for the man to cope with the reality of yet another crisis. Sometimes it seemed to John their lives were lived from one crisis to the next.

At that, for a moment, his thoughts travelled back to the man they had seen near the rebel building. He had been like any other native: scrawny and ragged. But as he had momentarily met the man's eyes, the desperation in them had stood out.

Rodney brought John out of his momentary reverie. Holding up a finger in explanation, he smiled slightly; ruefully. "That would explain the sudden increase in earthquakes," he suddenly exclaimed.

Almost on cue, another earthquake suddenly shook the earth. This time the force of the tremor was enough to throw them off their feet. John felt the floor heave beneath him and the next moment the same floor was rushing up to meet him. Years of training took over and he neatly turned his body into the fall, connecting with the floor but not suffering any damage. The moment he felt the floor beneath his shoulders, he rolled and in one smooth movement regained his feet. As it turned out, just in time. As soon as he was back on his feet, another tremor shook the ground and a large part of the roof landed where he been only moments before. Nimbly he danced aside, avoiding the worst of the falling debris. The weapon he had been given by the rebels got knocked out of his hands, though. Right at that moment he did not really care.

The earlier tremors had lasted only a few seconds, but, just as Rodney had predicted, the tremors were coming much closer together and much more violent. John felt as if he just barely missed being crushed by one piece of debris flung by the tremor, only to be bombarded by the next batch. It felt like an eternity that the earth shook, although he suspected it lasted only about twenty seconds. Although, as such things went, twenty seconds of shaking earth was quite a long time for the earth to be moving.

Just as he thought the earth had finally ceased its trembling, a final, vicious tremor nearly threw him off his feet once more. As he stumbled about, he suddenly felt another person falling against him. Looking back he saw Teyla had been thrown up against him and was just as desperately fighting to keep upright.

Finally the earth stopped moving, but with a loud and almost lazy rumble the entire front wall of the building toppled over into the street. The chromulus was now without roof and without front wall. In fact, the wall neatly toppled over, leaving a ramp of broken bricks leading up to the stargate and the infamous weather device. Whatever they planned to do would now be done without the protection of a wall hiding them from the view of the Ministry patrols.