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Chapter 43 – Giant

The hallway was thick with the stench of smoke, burnt flesh, and blood. Carson had made it here on foot with his team in record time, practically jumping down the stairs in threes in the rush to reach the scene as quickly as possible with the transporters down.

As it had turned out, a small number of his own staff had been enjoying some of their mandatory rest day sitting out on a nearby balcony in the sunshine, so they had been immediately on the scene. Therefore, when Carson had arrived, some measure of control had already begun, with the worse injured already identified for him and his equipped team. Even with his own people nearby, one of the benefits to working on a military base was that a large proportion of the city's population already had good first aid training and a reasonably calm head in a crisis.

However, a sense of chaos still reigned, as was always the way in such shocking and brutal situations. In some ways such heightened panicked events were almost commonplace to him now, and though still has harrowing, but he was able to keep calm and focus on what he could do.

From the wounds he had seen, the remains he had had to step over, and the small fires still burning in the blackened corridors, it was obvious what had happened. In his experience, only explosives could do what he was seeing, but he would leave the details up to Radek and his team. Carson's job was to finish up with his last major injury patient as he worked the last bandage in place to stabilise a long protruding piece of metal that jutted out of his patient's upper chest. The woman was conscious and lucky to be alive, but in obvious pain. The wound was very serious, but for the moment she was stable and ready for transport up to the OR level.

He gave his last orders to his team for her care, and military personnel stepped in to assist in lifting this latest victim onto a stretcher and get her up to the OR level as quickly as possible.

Carson watched carefully as she was settled on the stretcher, the first IV meds getting into her bloodstream now, reducing her pain, but she was clearly holding in the whimpers and cries she no doubt wanted to release.

As the stretcher was carried carefully but quickly away, Carson turned on the spot, pulling off his latest pair of disposal gloves and assessing the situation further.

All the major injuries were now on their way up to the Infirmary and OR, the mid range injuries were being dealt with down the corridor, first aid underway and triaging allowing his team to understand what was needed and by whom up in the Infirmary. Those with minor injuries, or emotional shock, had been led away to a more secure area one floor away to be treated by nurses and even some of the city's scientists who were trained first responders. All hands were on deck. It was usually an annoying fact that in Atlantis no one could truly be away from being on call, but at the same time it was useful in such situations as these to be able to have all his staff and more instantly to hand.

He took one more glance around, his eyes falling over the two covered bodies further down the hallway. They were being moved last, the living taking priority of care. Then there were the few remains left of the poor person who had been right near the centre of the blast. There was little left of them, and what pieces there were had already been collected up as evidence. Carson would no doubt be performing that tiny and unpleasant autopsy, but it would have to wait.

"Doc?" Colonel Sumner's voice carried loudly down the corridor.

Carson glanced back to see that his final patient was out of sight. He needed to follow to be up in the OR, but he could spare a few seconds for the Sumner. He hurried quickly towards the Colonel who was in discussion with Radek right in the epicentre of the explosion site.

"..so there is no danger of the tower collapsing," Radek was reporting as Carson reached them. "From what we have, we know there was an explosion-"

Sumner looked ruffled and angry. "I can see it was an explosion," he interrupted. "Injuries, Doc?" He demanded of Carson.

"I've got three dead on site, four severely injured on their way up to the OR now," Carson reported.

"Injuries?" Sumner demanded the clarification he had apparently actually wanted.

"One will probably lose an arm, one has severe burns, and the other two severe penetrating wounds," Carson reported.

"The deaths?" Sumner asked.

"The explosion did all it needed to," Carson replied, not wanting to get too graphic. He needed to stay focused.

"Which is the strange thing," Radek added. "Granted I haven't been on the scene long, but from what eye reports we have suggest that Dr Hewston simply exploded."

"Suicide bomber?" Sumner asked doubtfully and angrily at the same time.

"I can't believe that of Dr Hewston," Carson argued.

"I agree," Radek added. "There is something very odd about this. I have scanned all of this area with my equipment and there is not a single trace of explosive residue."

Carson agreed it was a strange thing, but right now he needed to focus on his patients. "Colonel, if you don't need me, I've got to get up to the OR."

"Yes, go, Doc," Sumner replied, his attention focused on the damaged wall in front of him and Radek.

Carson turned away sharply and hurried away as quickly as he could move around the scattered debris, Radek's people, and some structural engineers. The patients out the way, they could now do their formal and detailed jobs to ensure the tower wasn't about to fall down around everyone's ears.

"Keep me and Colonel Carter informed, Doc," Carson heard Sumner shout after him.

Carson didn't bother replying though, his mind was already focused on the ops ahead of him, prioritising, reassigning who could look after which patients.

He was given priority going up the stairs, and he took the steps two or three at a time. He was not overly fit, but at times like this he had all the energy he needed.

As he reached the OR level, he discovered that he had caught up with the stretcher carrying the poor woman he had just sent up.

As he ran his eyes over her wound and checked her vitals again he realised how fortunate it was that he hadn't gone fishing after all.

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They weren't Jumpers, but Elite Transport Craft, or 'shuttles' as John continued to call them in his head, handled like a dream. Once he had gotten the handling the six engines part down, looking at the right screens, and remembering where the main controls were without looking at the sticky notes, flying the shuttle was pretty damn fun.

Half an hour into the trip through the strange cocktail soup of the nebula, Inifee had given him the controls. There had been a few sharp jerking course corrections at first, but once John had gotten the feel of the ship, it had all started to make a lot more sense to him.

A collection of large passing asteroids had been a good testing zone for him, which Inifee had talked him through. Playing dodge round the slowly turning chunks of rock had been fun and John was pleased that when push came to shove, he could easily handle the shuttle.

Impressed with John's skills, Inifee had let him steer them the rest of the way with Inifee playing navigator. It was probably the safer option any way as the guy could actually read the data displayed on the scans ahead, whereas to John they didn't really make all that much sense. He could handle the simple radar and x-ray like displays, but the technical detail displayed was above him. Inifee didn't seem all that worried about them switching roles though, since John was handling the shuttle well. But, it had reiterated the point for John once again that he needed to learn the Alliance written language as soon as possible. Inifee had already offered to help him with the piloting technical side of the language when John next stayed on the Sythus, but until then John was going to have to learn by himself. Unless Teyla might help him.

He had to almost constantly resist the urge to look round over his shoulder to where she was sat in the back of the shuttle. Of course doing that was never wise when driving, unless it was a Jumper that could follow your thoughts not just your hands. He hoped Teyla was pleased that her new political husband was pulling his weight so far, and that Seifer was suitably annoyed.

Glancing down at the main navigation screen just below his eye line he shifted the shuttle's course a fraction to the right. There wasn't a hell of a lot to see out front, just the orangey pink thick haze of the nebula, but the shuttle seemed to be flying through it okay. Inifee had said something about filtering systems and told him not to worry about it, and John was okay with not worrying about something. Flying through a nebula was a nerve wracking piloting experience as even the sensors were limited in range and clarity in this pea soup, which meant that he had to be ready at any moment to alter course around something that only appeared as a slightly thicker blob among the other blobs in the pea soup on the screen. If there was a Wraith ship just ahead of them, they wouldn't know until they were practically on top of it; which made it a tense flying situation, but also nicely challenging.

"Further," Inifee uttered quietly.

John glanced at him. "Further right?" He asked.

Inifee nodded as he frowned down at his own screens. "Picking up something just off at 3600528.31."

"At what time is that?" John prompted him.

Inifee glanced up with a faint smile. "Between 10 and 11 using your new twelve numbered clock technique."

"Tried and tested technique," John corrected as he altered their course a little further. He had explained the principle to Inifee over an hour ago, and though the fellow flyboy had mocked him somewhat, he'd gotten the idea and approved it. "Hey, in a moment of crisis you're going to be glad to only have to count up to twelve," John reminded him.

"I have no doubt that-" Inifee started, but his voice cut away.

John glanced down at his screens, seeing the data spilling around the mixture of blobs on the sensors. "What is it?"

Inifee tapped away on and around one screen. "Getting a definite reading at...at position nine," he corrected.

"Nine o'clock," John repeated, peering out into the orange soup outside the worryingly thin looking window on his immediate left. He couldn't see anything but the swirling and drifting varying shades of orange and pink. "Nothing visual," John reported back.

Behind him, the silence from the others in the back section seemed to grow deeper, everyone listening in.

"It's 156.21 distance away," Inifee added, which meant nothing to John, but the guy's tone said 'close but not too close' to John. "It's passing by us," Inifee said quietly. "Position eight, now seven."

"What is it?" John asked, glancing back at his screens, unable to see anything useful other than what looked like a faintly thicker blur among the other blurs on the screen, the Alliance hieroglyphs around the mess.

"Possibly a Wraith scout ship," Inifee replied. "Far too small to be a cruiser. Our probe picked up regular runs of small ships through the nebula."

"You think it detected us?" John asked worriedly. The blur on his left hand screen was now well behind them and still moving away. Which had to be good.

"We only picked it up using the new infrared scanning frequency," Inifee replied. "Same as used by the probe."

"Your special infrared say anything about this up ahead?" John asked.

"Looks like denser particles," Inifee considered the screens. "I'm not picking up anything that says it's Wraith. We're almost at Giant so it might be broken up pieces of what used to be a small moon that orbited the planet."

"Great," John muttered as he made another small course correction, "asteroids."

"They are usually very slow moving so should not be a major concern," Inifee assured him.

"Sure," John breathed as he made another correction around an approaching thick blob on the screens. "Still, it's starting to get crowded."

"We should be within visual range of Giant any second now."

"You'd think a planet nicknamed Giant would be easier to spot," John grumbled as he fired extra thrust from another two engines to adjust down and around another patch of possible asteroids.

As the ship levelled out, through the front view a sudden flash of brown rock broke through the pink soup, tumbling towards the nose of the shuttle. John reacted instantly, tipping sideways and firing several engines at once to give him the instant manoeuvrability he needed. The move worked, though the shuttle jerked aggressively at the sudden course change.

"Sorry everyone," John called to the back of the shuttle, "Unexpected pedestrian."

"Good evasive action," Inifee added appreciatively.

John switched his gaze down and up, using the sensor screens and his own eyes to make sure no other asteroids were going to get in their way.

He could feel a layer of thin sweat inside his alien atmosphere suit, right across the middle of his back.

"There she is," Inifee uttered with reverence.

John looked up from the screens and had his first view of Giant slowly revealed through the thinning mists of the nebula.

"Okay, so maybe Giant is a good name," John whispered.

The planet was immense, and because of the thickness of the nebula, by the time they were able to see Giant, it was practically in their face. It filled the front view, completely. Angling his head, John couldn't see the top or the bottom of the massive planet and it wasn't because of the nebula. It was so massive that John swore he could already feel its gravity from here.

It was mainly a muddy brown colour, the atmosphere thick with marbled through clouds of oranges and yellows, and some mixed in were white with thin long lines of purple running through them. As he watched, just 'north' of the equator of the planet, there was a sudden flash of a darker colour dancing through the clouds, sheet lightening scattering in all directions. Considering the size of the planet, that was one hell of a storm.

"Storms, as expected," Inifee said without any concern in his voice.

"That's a damn big storm," John replied as he watched another flash of deep purple slice through the clouds, lighting them up in deep pink and rusty orange before bright flashes zigzagged away in several directions. The storm seemed to fill most of the top hemisphere, at least on the side of the planet facing them.

"The good news," Inifee reported, "is that the storm has not yet reached the target area."

"Yet?" John noted, keeping his eyes on the growing presence of Giant ahead of them, streaks of purple storm and flashing lightening dancing across the ceiling of clouds over the planet. At least out of the nebula he could use his own eyes to watch out for floating rocks and Wraith. Inifee had assured him that Giant kicked out such intense readings that most sensors were useless, and what did work would be filled with static. John could see that already on the sensor screens, lines of static cutting through the data, but for now it was still readable.

"From the data we already have on Giant's weather patterns," Inifee replied, "and the probe's updates, I estimate the storm, or at least the closest edge of it, is likely to arrive at the target area within the next three standard hours. Perhaps sooner."

John glanced at him across the small confines of the shuttle's cockpit. Inifee noticed the attention and shrugged apologetically. "The patterns were difficult to plot when this was a known and used base," Inifee explained. "Everything's gotten worse as Giant passes through this sector of the nebula, so that is the best guess. The storm may even change direction and not hit the target area at all."

"Yeah, sure," John replied sarcastically. "Because that's the kind of luck I usually have."

"Maybe we should not have brought you if you attract bad luck," Inifee joked.

"Maybe," John shrugged as he made another small correction, heading towards the flashing triangle that on one screen that indicated the direction of the target zone down on Giant's surface. "But then, I'm still alive, and I've been in some tricky situations over the years, so maybe I'll bring some good luck."

"Still no Wraith detected in local orbit," Inifee reported. "Perhaps it is not luck's affects on you, but the luck of those commonly around you that we should be concerned about," he added.

"They're all still alive too," John replied quickly. "Mostly," he added quieter and with no small amount of regret and grief.

"Transport two is signalling their arrival at our corner," Inifee reported more loudly for the benefit of those in the back, but since it was so quiet in the shuttle it was obvious that everyone was listening in anyway.

"Hmmm," Inifee murmured.

John glanced over his screens quickly, recognising the concerned tone. "What?"

"Honoured Elite," Inifee called towards the back of the shuttle again. "I have more detailed readings of the Wraith structures detected on the surface, at least in the areas outside of the storm zone. I'm reading high energy readings that correspond exactly to the tendril-like structures noted on the probe's scans. The readings suggest they are harvesting the geothermal power under Giant's surface."

"Damn them," Seifer swore abruptly from directly behind John's right shoulder. Fortunately, a lifetime of training stopped John from accidently flying them off in a random angle at the shock of the man's sudden arrival so close.

"Life sign numbers?" Seifer asked quickly.

Inifee's dark hands worked over some controls and one screen began populating with small dots. "No change to that detected by the probe," Inifee replied.

"That explains why they're still on Giant," a male voice from the team in the back added. "They're harvesting power."

"Perhaps for the Nest," Teyla added. Her voice was still from further back in the shuttle, but Seifer's presence continued to hover a little too close to John's right shoulder for his comfort, but he let it go. Especially because he could feel the scratch of the handle of a knife against his seat as Seifer reached forward between the piloting seats and tapped away on the controls with Inifee.

"Still not detecting any Wraith in orbit," the annoying Elite reported.

"The probe detected some orbital patrols and our calculations for arrival predicted they would be further around behind Giant. The massive storm will be affecting their systems as well as ours and reduce their detection fields," Inifee reminded everyone.

"Speaking about that unstable atmosphere," John muttered as he made another course correction, which brought the shuttle lower, starting to skim Giant's outer atmosphere as they rounded the massive planet. The storm filled one side of the view now, the dark lines and flashing lightening filling all of Giant currently in view.

"We are well insulated," Inifee said quietly for John's ears. "Stick to a usual approach, but we will need to drop in quickly over the target zone ." John nodded, as Inifee brought up the approach vector they had planned before leaving the Sythus. John glanced down, looking between it, his other screens, and the view outside.

"You want to take the controls?" He asked Inifee. He was happy he could take them in and perform the landing, maybe, but this was Inifee's baby.

"If you are happy to take us in, I will keep watch and provide weapons systems control," Inifee responded. "If we engage, though you know how to alter engine power systems for what you need, instruct me and I shall make the adjustments for you."

John nodded. "Okay."

"Transport One?" a voice crackled out into the air.

"Receiving, Transport Two," Seifer responded to the air. The Elite warrior was still squeezed between the two piloting seats, most likely watching John's every move. "We're detecting geothermal harvesting on Giant, which explains the network structure spread over much of the surface. They've established a power network and are most likely siphoning it off for the Nest. There are no alterations to predicted life sign numbers."

"I am not detecting anywhere Queen on the surface," Teyla's voice arrived from the back.

"I concur," Si' deep voice replied out of the still unseen speakers.

"Target zone now in sensor range," Inifee reported.

The storm no longer filled their view of Giant as John lowered the shuttle a little further into the outer atmosphere. The plotted route blazed in red on a screen before him, on which the formally distant triangle that indicated the target zone was fast growing larger.

"As we saw from the probe," Si' voice reported from the speakers, "their network structure runs close to the inlet, but not to it."

"Initial plan is effective then," Seifer decided. "We will approach as planned."

"Transport Two will hold high orbit and distract if required," Si responded from the other shuttle. "Silence break only on emergency frequency 004. To victory," Si added.

"Agreed," Seifer replied. "To victory."

Inifee tapped a control on the edge of John's vision, which presumably put them in radio silence, but John was too focused now on the approach.

"Take us in then," Seifer ordered from behind John's shoulder, which of course wasn't what John was already doing. Wasn't it pretty obvious from the flashing enlarging red triangle on the screen?

John switched his attention to the other screens, while Inifee calling out some figures about the atmosphere for the Elite. "Have you got a map showing the landscape for me?" John asked Inifee.

"Yes," Inifee tapped around the red triangle screen and it shifted to a new view with the actual landscape below the clouds sketched out lightly. Instantly John orientated himself to it and the red triangle flashing ahead.

"Thanks," John uttered to Inifee. "Entering atmosphere," he added for anyone interested as he began the proper descent, lowering the nose of the shuttle enough to head down towards the distant, but fast approaching target zone.

Seifer shifted next to John, but this time he was moving away, probably to fasten his safety belt.

"We need to go in hard and sharp, down low over the landscape, around and down," Inifee reiterated the plan as the shuttle began to shake around them.

John nodded vaguely, but he was in a zone of his own now. Feeling the shifts of the ship was a hell of a lot easier now that it was buzzing dramatically in response to the physics at war outside between the shuttle and the atmosphere, their speed and the friction of superheated air, Giant's own gravity, and a whole load of other fundamental forces of the universe, which he was reading through the vibrations through his body and particularly in his hands. Shifting his view between his two screens and his actual view outside, which was currently filled with orange and purple clouds, he drove the shuttle down into Giant's thick dirty atmosphere.

"Electrostatic charges detected across the hull," Inifee reported out loud as the shuttle began vibrating even harder. Hell, they wanted to go in hard and fast, then they were going to have to deal with some jostling.

"Good approach," Inifee added next. "Cross winds of increased velocity below us, the very edge of the storm perhaps, but we should have passed them by the time we reach that level."

The clouds abruptly began to part in John's view, and his kept his eyes out front for a beat longer as the rushing brown stretch of Giant's surface was revealed. He quickly switched his gaze to the map view and red triangle again, orientating the route with what he saw outside.

"Craggy ground," he muttered idly to Inifee.

"Craggy, and worrying flat," Inifee answered. "Makes it difficult to sneak in, which is why we had to approach this way."

John nodded as he lowered the shuttle further, pulling back slightly on speed. Instantly, he felt those cross winds, but they weren't too strong, but he could feel the difference. He could also feel that they were lower in the atmosphere, the harsher fight with friction dissipated, and the craggy orangey brown landscape stretching closer before them. He levelled out the shuttle, lowering still, re –angling as he glanced back to the map and its approach. He decided to go wider on the approach.

"I'm going to drop into the valley further to the left," he told Inifee.

"Understood," Inifee replied. "If you can keep her in that gully round all the way round there, we can sneak up and to the target zone." He indicated the different approach on the screen and John nodded his agreement. "I'll take over for the final landing, but you take us in."

John nodded again as he began his change in approach. "She likes to pull right, doesn't she," he muttered.

"Yes she does in atmosphere," Inifee replied with what sounded like another one of those grins of his. "The engineers think the left engines are fractionally stronger due to some unexpected output values. They're working on it, but a good pilot can easily compensate."

John took the compliment as he reached forward and reduced power on the left engines fractionally, pausing only briefly to check the sticky notes to make sure he had the right switches.

"You've got it," Inifee whispered as John hovered briefly over what he hoped was the right control to synch in the changes. Confident in the choice now, he flicked the switch and returned both hands to the controls. The pull to the right stabilised slightly, but he reduced the power to the middle port engine a little further.

"No Wraith activity detected," Inifee announced for everyone. "No network beneath us. Atmospheric readings are as confusing as expected, which hopefully has obscured our arrival."

The edge of the gully was ahead, and John re-angled the shuttle's nose, worrying a little at the speed of the approach, but they needed to keep moving as fast as possible away from the edge of the Wraith's local network draining Giant of its geothermal life.

He was almost certain he heard someone muttering worriedly in the back, but he couldn't make out who it was or what they were saying, he was too focused.

Looking quickly between all his screens, he chose his moment and tipped the shuttle's nose down abruptly, rushing them down towards the surface, and the gully came into view just at the last moment. Ploughing into the seemingly small space of the long narrow gully, he pulled up immediately and to the right, letting the natural pull of the ship and their momentum to sling them along inside the gully.

Someone swore in the back.

Smiling a little smugly, John reduced power now, following the gully's route ahead of them as if he were in a third-person shooter game. The walls of the gully were close on either side, but not worryingly so. At least not for him.

He was almost certain he could hear Inifee quietly chuckling to himself. "Still no Wraith activity detected," Inifee reported loudly and seriously though.

"They are not aware of us," Teyla's voice drifted to John's ears.

"Our readings are desperately full of static this low to the surface," Inifee added.

The red triangle was really big on John's screen now, flashing as an arrow now appeared.

And the end of the gully was fast approaching.

At the last possible moment that he could risk it, John pulled the nose up and out of the gully, lifting them up just enough to spy the level of the ground beyond and then lowered them down to graze across the top of an vast brown ruined town of old brick and stone buildings.

That person swore again.

"The road there," Inifee instructed, but this time pointing ahead of them.

"Got ya," John replied as he re-angled, bringing the shuttle down and over the edge of the tops the buildings down into the new version of his gully. The roadway stretched between tall, falling buildings, until the left side opened up to run along the edge of a large empty riverbed.

The screen's triangle was massive now, arrows showing the direction he needed to take to where they would land the shuttle. He didn't need the arrows though, because the course was obvious to him now. Ahead he could see where this road met another along the side of the dead river, forming a nice large patch of flat ground where the triangle was directing him. Nice and precise.

"Let me take over," Inifee ordered as he reached forward, taking his version of the controls. "Once I start to bring us in, prepare your suit and be ready to depart."

"Right," John replied as he heard sudden busy activity in the back of the shuttle. All this work to get down here and the party was just starting.

"Taking control in four, three, two, one," Inifee flicked a switch and instantly John's controls lost all power and responsiveness.

He let go of them, wishing his would wipe his hands on this brown and bronze suit, but the gloves made it useless. Instead, he reached down for his face mask. He frowned at the large expanse of glass that was going to be all that was between him and the thin alien atmosphere outside.

Inifee was reducing their speed as the target area rushed towards them. John glanced at the screens in front of him, none of them showing anything that suggested there was anything to worry about...yet.

There was more movement and activity behind him, so he looked round into the back to see that the rest of the team were stood up, holding onto railings on the ceiling to support them as they readied their weapons. They were all already wearing their masks.

John frowned down at his own mask, worrying again at the seal that would bond directly with his skin.

Inifee brought the shuttle to a sudden, but smooth stop, the red triangle filling the screen in front of John as he reached up and pulled the tight hood of his atmosphere suit up over his head. As he tugged the tight fabric over his hair and around his ears, he watched Inifee flicking switches and lowering the shuttle down into the intersection of abandoned roads.

The shuttled shuddered only faintly as it touched down onto Giant, and immediately John heard the hatch opening in the back.

"Turn it on at the back," Inifee reached behind John and twiddled something on the backpack and John felt air flowing up at him from the mask in his hand. "The radio earpiece is inside," he indicated it to John, "put it in your ear first before you pull on the mask."

John nodded and did as Inifee instructed, while the rest of the team were disembarking from the shuttle behind him. As soon as he settled the earpiece in his ear he could hear Seifer barking orders over it, ordering his people to secure the area, and one to remain in the shuttle with Inifee. Once the team were out and away, Inifee would take off and head back up into the lower atmosphere, hiding from the Wraith and perhaps keeping any watchful eyes away from the team.

John pulled the straps of the mask over his head and pressed the full glass mask to his face.

"I will trigger the seal," Inifee shouted at him through the glass. "You'll feel a tightening of your skin; that is normal."

John nodded, as cool air softly flowed inside the mask and he felt Inifee slide the lone catch on the underside of the mask. A sudden sucking feeling tightened painfully around the edges of the mask as it clearly sealed itself to his skin. A second later it eased through and he let out a breath, fighting a slight sense of panic that he wouldn't have another breath available, but he pushed away the instinctive fear. He breathed deeply of the mask's air, which brought with it some less than friendly memories of being on oxygen in the Infirmary.

He shifted his head and shoulders, testing the fit of the suit and mask, and it was surprisingly comfortable, though the skin of his face felt slightly stretched. "At least I'll get a facelift out of this little adventure," John muttered as he turned in his seat to get up.

"Ready?" Teyla's voice arrived into his earpiece and he looked round to see that she was stood outside the open hatch, waiting for him. He was probably holding everyone up.

John climbed up and out of the piloting seat, Inifee patting him encouragingly on the shoulder as he passed. John gave the pilot a thumbs up as he headed towards the open hatch. The remaining member of the team staying with Inifee, nodded to John as John reached the open hatchway. Teyla was stood down on the dusty road a metre away, a gun in one hand and a pad in the other.

John gripped onto the bar beside the hatchway and was desperately grateful that the tight suit stretched with him as he stepped down and onto the road behind Teyla. She glanced round as he reached her side, her face lit inside her glass mask by a bar of light above her eyebrows.

Together they moved quickly away from the shuttle, and he looked back to watch as Inifee powered up the engines and lifted the shuttle up off the ground. John watched the fast ascent, the hatchway still closing as the shuttle turned and abruptly powered up and away.

John watched the shuttle gracefully speed away, and he was suddenly presented with his first ground level view of Giant.

There was something inherently alien about it, something strange that he couldn't put his finger on as he turned, taking in the dark brown craggy ground around the flattened road. Dark rusty red lines ran through the ground like veins through skin, and there were a few long thin cracks cutting through the ground that spoke of seismic activity. Brown dust seemed to coat everything, and was being blown constantly across the intersection at John's feet.

Along the road ahead of him he could see the crumbling buildings he had seen from above. They were taller than he had expected, but most of them were missing their roofs and in most cases their upper walls as well. Built out of the same brown and red stone and dust as that around John, the buildings looked rather like sand castles crumbling down.

Along the road between their dying remains, broken and scattered pieces of the buildings littered the place, along with what looked like long metal support beams and clumps of soil and brick walls. It was only then that John realised what was missing from Giant – there were no trees. No vegetation that he could see anywhere.

He turned on the spot, looking along the near edge of the empty riverbed, searching for where some greenery, any plant life, might be growing, but he couldn't see anything.

He frowned at that small, but oddly worrying detail.

There was another worrying detail too. The wind was a very real presence against his body, pushing intermittently at him. It wasn't strong enough to push him over, but it had that strange, rough, unpredictable quality of a real bad storm on its way. He looked up at the clouds above the crumbling abandoned town, to see the dark oranges were moving at a slightly worrying twisting speed.

He turned on the spot again, seeking out Teyla, only to find her stood a few feet away and, beyond her, the rest of the team was heading away.

"Keep up, Sheppard!" Seifer shouted loudly in John's right ear.

Right, yes, he needed to get his act in gear. He jogged forward after them, heading towards Teyla, remembering that she was on duty as the team's six, so she was probably again waiting for him to keep up. He was about to pass her as he followed the others, an encouraging smile ready, but he forgot it as soon as he saw what she had been looking at.

He gapped at the view, but kept his feet moving, Teyla falling into step at his side as they ran along the side of the riverbed. The river had been far wider than he had realised until seeing it from right on top of the embankment along which he and Teyla ran following the rest of the team. It had been a good sized river, but almost all the water had gone, except for the tiniest of trickling streams down the very middle of the wide expanse. The water couldn't have dried up too long ago though, because the former bottom of the river looked thick with reddish brown mud.

However, it wasn't the lack of water that worried him about the view; it was the myriad of metal, bricks, roofing, and what looked like carts that were buried into the muddy bed in a seemingly random scattered pattern.

"Tornados," John muttered.

Teyla's mask nodded beside him as she lifted one long bronze sleeved arm, pointing ahead of them. "The inlet is off to the right there and our target is up on the other side of the river. We can only hope that with the water gone and their geothermal production that the Wraith have not found the Mother Device."

"Was the river full when you were last here?" John asked, his voice and increased breathing uncomfortably loud inside his mask.

"Yes," she replied, her own breathing raised as they hurried after the rest of the team. "The Wraith have either drained it, or redirected the river further up."

John didn't nod his understanding, because up ahead was their way across the wide emptied river. A very high and basic looking bridge stretched across to the far side, but as John approached this side of it, he could already see that the high winds had taken a good few chunks out of it. That it was still standing was a testimony to somebody's engineering and construction skills. If it could just hold together for the rest of this mission...

Seifer was the first to head across it, moving with a low profile and gun ready at a worryingly speedy pace that John guessed he was going to have to match. The rest of the team followed suit, moving in single file as fast as they dared, and keeping their bodies low.

And then it was John's turn. He took a steadying breath, aware that the others were all making it across safely enough and that Teyla would be following along behind him.

He needed to put on a strong and brave face for Atlantis.

Telling himself that was all that was important, he stepped out onto the alien bridge, the winds pushing at his back.

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TBC