Author's note: Okay, I couldn't wait to post the next chapter. Hope you enjoy!
Sheppard found the underwater jumper bay and Sam was glad that at least one part of their plan seemed to be back on track.
He slowly moved through the entrance.
"Careful," Beckett said quietly.
"Thanks, Doc."
She and Teyla traded a glance at Sheppard's barely restrained response to Beckett's backseat driving.
"Okay, closing the outer door. Yes. Now, I just have to pressurize the compartment and we are…" McKay's computer beeped. "Huh?"
"What?" Sheppard asked him.
McKay hit a few more keys on the computer and frowned.
"It's not letting me do it."
Beckett looked out the window. "The water's not draining out."
"Yeah, excellent observation," McKay muttered. "Thank you."
Weir stepped into the rear of the puddle jumper and looked up.
"It is, however, draining in."
"Oh, not again," McKay said. He looked over to where the water was dripping into the cargo hold.
She assumed he was thinking about the time he'd been stuck in a leaking jumper at the bottom of the Lantean sea, with only a hallucination of her as company.
Sam watched as his face filled with dread.
Then he looked at her with a strange mixture of desperation and hope. As well as something else she didn't want to name that was somewhere in the neighborhood of desire.
She pointed a finger at him. "Stop whatever those thoughts are right now. No pink shirts, no supposed partial nudity, no drowning."
"There was some kissing too," McKay said.
Sam barely stopped herself from swearing out loud.
"Never," she spit out before moving towards the back of the ship.
Sheppard stood and asked Beckett to move over to the pilot's chair. He followed her to the cargo hold, passing Rodney McKay on the way.
"Don't be a creep, McKay."
Sam sent Sheppard a look of thanks and then looked up at the leak Elizabeth Weir had pointed out. The water was coming down faster than she'd like and the rate would probably only increase.
"Well, guess we took some damage," Sheppard said, stating the obvious.
McKay, now that he was no longer focused on her, seemed like he was on the verge of panicking. He looked between the leak and the underwater jumper bay they could barely see through the front window and back to the leak.
"I just want to point out that this was not my idea."
Teyla lifted an eyebrow and Ronon shook his head. Weir and Beckett shared a look. Sam assumed that McKay refusing to take responsibility wasn't exactly a new thing for the Atlantis crew.
"You said, 'Get us close to the city.'" Sheppard gestured at the window towards the jumper bay. "This is pretty damned close!"
Sheppard stopped just short of blaming McKay, but Sam could tell he wanted to.
"And yet, no cigar!"
Sheppard looked around and his eyes landed on her. "Any chance we can still convert weapons power back to the cloak if I fly us back out of here? I might be able to find an unoccupied area of the city to land as long as they can't see us or track us."
His plan would at least keep them from drowning, but she'd been watching the status panels during their flight through the city and journey underwater. The weapons system had taken a hit too and the leak wasn't a great sign.
"I think we lost that chance when the drones hit the side of the ship," she admitted. "It would take too long to fix it, if it were even possible to do so without having access to the exterior of the jumper."
"Of course."
She watched as Sheppard pushed down the frustration and focused on next steps.
"All right. Just open up the outer doors. I'll figure something else out."
Sheppard grabbed a case from the side of the cargo hold, set it on the ground, and started to open it.
"Right," McKay said. He looked at some readings on his computer and Sam could tell right away it wasn't good news. His added "oh dear" didn't help her feel any better.
"What?" Weir asked.
"I don't think I'm gonna be able to open the outer door."
Everyone turned to look at McKay. Sheppard stood up. Weir asked the question they were all wondering.
"Why not?"
McKay looked up. "I think it might be jammed."
Sheppard turned to face him.
"Might?"
The single word might as well have been in bold and italics for all the emphasis he gave it.
"Okay," McKay admitted, "is."
"Well, that's unfortunate," Sheppard replied, voice threaded with irritation.
McKay nodded.
"Yeah, I'd have to agree with you on that."
Sheppard looked around the jumper and up at the leaking ceiling.
"This part of the plan isn't going so well."
They were so close. There had to be a way to actually get them into the city undetected.
"There must be a manual override somewhere," Weir pointed out.
She had to be right. As advanced as all this technology got, there was almost always a manual backup option in case things went wrong. Today, they were going to need that backup option.
"In the bay's control room, yes."
There was an unusual hesitance to McKay's answer.
"Okay, I'll swim to it," Sheppard said.
Sam was a good swimmer, but she could tell by the ease with which Sheppard proposed the solution that he was probably as much a natural at swimming as he was at flying the puddle jumper.
He reached up to check something on the ceiling while McKay continued speaking.
"…which is sealed from the other side."
Sheppard dropped his arm in surprise and barely banked frustration.
"Of course it is!"
His reaction in that moment reminded her of Jack's in the original SG-1 days when she or Daniel would tell him something he didn't want to hear.
"Perhaps General O'Neill can reach it," Teyla suggested.
It was a good idea, and probably their best option, but Sam didn't like the idea of Jack needing to fight his way through a city of Replicators to rescue the people who were supposed to be rescuing him. With Richard Woolsey in tow, it would be even more of a challenge.
"Good," McKay said in response to Teyla's suggestion. "Okay, give me half an hour to get Niam to the right power level, so we can do this."
"We've got more than one fracture," Sheppard told him. "We don't have that kind of time."
Sam watched as he hit the button to turn on the communications channel.
"General O'Neill? We're gonna need a favor."