Disclaimer: SGA - not mine, don't sue! For fan enjoyment, not profit….
AN: Thanks for all the kind reviews; love the input! This is a pretty long chapter, but don't worry, it's worth it.
Decompression - Take 2
By Kerr Avon
"This is ridiculous. They can't be that hard to find." McKay vented his frustration by pounding the wall next to his terminal. This was the third pass over the target area, and so far, nothing. "Have you double-checked the coordinates?"
Lorne sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yes, doctor. And, before you ask again, I've double-checked with Atlantis as well."
They continued in silence until McKay tapped the computer in front of him. "Huh. That's interesting." He leaned towards the viewscreen to get a closer look at the data.
"Have you found something?" Lorne asked hopefully.
"Well, yes and no. Unfortunately it's not the shuttle, but it is useful." McKay tapped out a query and studied the responding data.
"So, are you going to let me in on it?" Lorne asked when it became obvious that Rodney had forgotten he was there.
McKay pushed a few more keys. "What? Oh, yes. This area of the mainland appears to be so rich in metallic iridium that it actually constitutes a fair proportion of the sand on the beach we're flying over. On Earth, it's exceedingly rare, while it's fairly common in meteorites. In fact, one of the reasons they postulate the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid is a thin layer of iridium found in the clay of that time period. It's very useful in electronics and manufacturing. In fact, this could be one reason the Ancients decided to settle on this world."
"So what made you notice this now?"
"Iridium is very dense, one of the densest of all metals. A sand composite with a high percentage of this metal would most assuredly conceal the Jumper from our sensors. However, as sand is constantly being sifted by the wind and the water, the heavier metallic bits sink several feet down on undisturbed beaches. This area here," he pointed to his screen, "must have been recently disturbed, throwing up enough iridium particles to stand out on our scans." McKay was at his best during expository.
"'Disturbed', you say?" An idea occurred to the Major. "Can we overlay the area you're talking about on a map of our search-zone?" At the thought, the Jumper started displaying graphics on the viewscreen.
"That's our crash site!" Lorne pointed at the diagram, where a nice, straight line over a mile long was highlighted. "At one end or the other we ought to find the Jumper."
"I can't believe we've flown over that three times." McKay said, staring intently at the screen and slapping his head in frustration.
"A Jumper is too heavy to wash out to sea, right?"
"Yes, of course." McKay was huffy.
"Then it has to be there; we just can't see it from the air, and we can't detect it on our sensors." Lorne was convinced. "Why else would there be a mile long stretch of disturbed sand?"
"Could they have the cloak on?" McKay wondered.
"Who knows? Point is, we'll have to do a ground search of both ends of that area."
"Ground search? As in, walking?"
"Sure." The Major appeared confident. "There's plenty of room to land. We'll set down on one end of our 'disturbed sand' and check it out. If we don't find anything, we'll go the other way."
"I'm an injured man, remember." McKay touched his bandage. "Wouldn't it be better to call in more search parties?"
"Don't forget, Weir wanted as few people as possible in on this. Let's check both sites out first. If we come up with nothing, we'll get teams in to turn over every grain of sand on this beach."
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Sheppard clambered up the slope to the cockpit, brushing his hands together to get rid of the dirt. "Well, that back hatch is well and truly jammed. How's it coming up here?"
Radek still sat in the copilot's chair typing furiously away at his laptop. His injured ankle was stretched out in front of him, propped up on a box of supplies, with a cold-pack wedged under the Ace wrap. He glanced up briefly at the pilot's statement before resuming his work. As he typed, he replied, "Well, the power's up, lights are on, CO2 scrubbers working, but I can't get the pods to initialize. From my readings, it appears as if something is jamming them externally. However, our scanners are only partially active, specifically in that direction." He pointed out the pilot's side of the front windshield, where the sky had become completely overcast.
"Whew," Sheppard plopped into his seat and looked back the way he came. "Is it just me, or are we more tilted than initially?"
Zelenka's head came up in earnest and he stared backwards toward the hatch. Shoving his glasses up his nose with his index finger, he slowly nodded. "I believe you are correct. The rear of this craft appears to be sinking."
John tilted his head as he ran through the possibilities, finally hazarding, "I'll bet that end is in the water." He stared at the ceiling as he did the geometry. "As we were flying up the coast, the ocean was to our right. We hit level, but as we slowed our back end started to come around on us. Therefore, the right side of the Jumper became our leading edge, burying it in sand, while our rear hatch would be the closest to the waves. If we were actually partially in the surf, it would explain the angle."
"How so?"
Sheppard smirked, then leaned back lacing his hands behind his head. "When I was a kid my Dad loved cars, the faster the better. We could never afford them, but it didn't keep Dad from dreaming. Anyway, we were on a road trip to Miami for one of his job interviews, and stopped for the night in Daytona Beach. He had heard about driving on the sand from one of his buddies, so he wanted to try it out. We raced up and down the section of beach where that was permitted for almost thirty minutes in his beat-up Pinto station wagon before he got tired of it." He chuckled at the memory. "The way the water sprayed as we drove along the edge of the ocean! It sometimes went up higher than the car. When he'd had enough, we parked the car in the surf and got out to play in the waves. Turns out, that was a mistake."
He shot Zelenka a chagrinned look. "When the waves come in, they liquefy the sand, kind of like quicksand. Anything sitting on top of this viscous liquid will sink. By the time we came back to the car, it was buried up to its axles."
Radek was mesmerized. "So what did you do?"
"Well, a couple of 'good old boys' were driving along the beach in their pickup truck, looking for stupid tourists like us. They talked to my Dad for a couple of minutes, then hooked up this huge chain to the back of the wagon. They climbed back into their truck, gunned the engine, dropped the clutch, and yanked us out of there as pretty as you please. Dad gave them a twenty to buy some beer, and off they went!"
Radek looked anxiously at the rear of the craft. "I think that we will need a very large pickup truck."
Sheppard swung around to his console. "Nah, just another Jumper. We just have to wait for them to find us."
"Then the sand is keeping us from opening the rear hatch." The engineer continued to stare backwards.
"Yeah, probably. Look, don't worry about it; we have plenty of food and water, the CO2 scrubbers are working, the power is on…not only could we stay here for several days, but we can do it in relative comfort." Sheppard was busily typing information into the front control panel. His eyes narrowed as he studied the results.
Zelenka sighed and returned to his computer. "I suppose so. But I am concerned that something might have happened on Atlantis to prevent their searching for us."
Sheppard shot him a sharp look. "How do you mean?"
"I have been analyzing the crash data and comparing it to the limited information we have on Jumper 6's accident." Mentally he again cursed the loss of McKay's onboard laptop. "In reviewing Rodney's report, and correlating it to the data from the command center when they disappeared," he took a deep breath, then plunged ahead, "Not only did we experience precisely the same malfunction, but at the exact same flight time."
Sheppard was out of his seat in an instant, peering over the engineer's shoulder. "May I look at that?" he asked, hand outstretched towards the Dell.
Radek blinked a moment, then nodded, pushing the computer toward the colonel. Then he closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead to try and mitigate his pounding headache as John reviewed the data.
Sheppard quickly scanned the information, then looked up grimly. "You might be onto something. Could be that Goa'uld sabotaged more than just the Base computers."
A new thought occurred to the Czech, and he reached for his Inspiron. "If I may?" he asked, retrieving it. "Each time the Daedalus comes to Atlantis from Earth, we routinely download the newest security patches from Microsoft. Caldwell knows this, and therefore the Goa'uld would have known it as well. It could have planted a rider code that would have downloaded with the software."
Sheppard squinted an eye shut consideringly. "OK, two questions. First, why would it care about sabotaging the Jumpers? Second, why do we download patches against Earth computer viruses anyway?"
"It would try to prevent the escape of any of our personnel using these vehicles. Evacuees to the Daedalus it would have direct control over; the Jumpers could not be so easily tracked." The engineer then smiled. "As far as the patches go; it was actually the cause of a heated debate in the science department. Ultimately, given the regular communication we have with Earth, it was determined to be in our best interests to protect against Earth computer viruses."
"So if someone planted a code to crash a Jumper…"
"It would be transmitted via this computer."
"Well, see if you can find the problem and bypass it. Meanwhile, I'll see what I can do about getting us out of here. We'd better assume that we're on our own for the time being." Sheppard turned back to his board with determination.
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It started raining just as the rescue team disembarked. Squinting up at the sky, Rodney complained bitterly, "Oh, this is just swell. Why don't you give me pneumonia while you're at it?" He shook a fist towards the clouds.
"Doctor McKay, it's just a light sprinkle. We'll check out the area and be back inside before you can get your feet wet." Lorne was beginning to wonder if he had somehow angered Dr. Weir to cause her to assign Rodney to this mission with him. "I'm going to have to stop trashing Jumpers," he muttered under his breath.
"I'm sorry, did you say something Major?" McKay came trudging up behind him.
"Oh, just talking to myself. Where is the end of that deposit you found?"
McKay consulted his handheld device, then pointed towards the right and towards the ocean. "Over there, about three hundred yards."
Shouldering his pack, Lorne said, "Let's go."
By the time they got to the search zone, it was raining in earnest. With nothing immediately obvious, they began trudging a search pattern so as not to miss a possibly-cloaked Jumper. After an hour and a half, however, it became evident that the vehicle was not at this site, so they headed back to their craft, soaked to the skin.
"I haven't been this cold and wet since….oh, last week!" snarled Rodney, shaking off as he entered the rear hatch.
"Well, at least you're safe. We have no clue how Sheppard and Zelenka are doing," Lorne snapped in reply. He had pretty much had it with Dr. McKay, and was a hair's breadth from telling him so.
"It's getting dark soon. We aren't going to be able to see anything anyway."
"Then we'd best hurry and get to the other site, hadn't we?" gritted the pilot, initializing the engines.
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"All right, try it now." Zelenka was precariously balanced on one leg and a makeshift crutch in front of the side panel he had been working on when they crashed. He had finally given up the laptop as a hopeless case, determining to debug it once they returned to Atlantis. Instead, he had gone back to manually bypassing the interface.
"Not until you're sitting down." Sheppard was adamant. He wasn't going to let the Czech get hurt a second time.
Hobbling the few feet forward, Radek slipped just as he reached the copilot's seat, and avoided falling only by the strength of the hand that suddenly appeared beneath his elbow. The tilt of the decking had become steeper in the past several hours, although at the current rate it would be days before they were completely vertical, if that was even possible. Nevertheless, this combined with his ankle made walking quite challenging.
"You OK, Dr. Z?"
"Yes, fine. I still do not understand how this will work if we cannot make the pods deploy."
"Did you ever drive a clutch car?" Sheppard asked, beginning the startup sequence.
"Yes, of course. Automatic transmission was 'luxury item'."
"Well, just imagine this as 'first gear' as we 'feather the clutch'. Then we'll drop it and see if we can pop free. We won't go far, but at least we'll be on dry land." Sheppard sounded supremely confident in his plan. Zelenka glanced at him dubiously.
Sheppard flicked the final switches and grasped the controls. "Ready?" he smirked. "Here we go!"
Radek scrunched his eyes closed and held on for dear life.
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"Hey, do you see that?" McKay asked as Lorne was beginning to land the Jumper. "Take a swing over there!" He had seen a brief reflection of their running lights on something that looked suspiciously like glass, buried in a sand mound several hundred yards from where they were alighting. If it was indeed the lost Jumper, Rodney wanted to minimize his exposure to the elements as much as possible. The rain was, if anything, even harder than before, and he was still chilled from their earlier search.
While the Major was hardly an advocate for the health benefits of trudging through pouring rain, he was a staunch opponent of listening to McKay complain about trudging through pouring rain. If they could set down close to their target, so much the better. "Where?" he asked, trying to make out details through the downpour.
McKay gestured to the pilot's left. "Eleven o'clock, about two hundred yards. I may have spotted the Jumper's windshield."
Lorne nodded, heading to the indicated trajectory and keeping a sharp lookout for any signs of the craft.
"There! You see it?" McKay gesticulated wildly.
He did. Only the left forequarter of the shuttle was visible, projecting out at an odd angle. "It looks like they are more than three-quarters buried in the sand. No wonder we couldn't spot them from altitude." He slowed the Jumper to a near-crawl as he came in for a landing, attempting to set down as close as possible to the other vehicle. McKay resumed the copilot's chair in preparation for touchdown.
Just then, the crashed ship exploded out of its enveloping sand like a cork from a bottle of shaken champagne, and headed straight for them.
TBC……
AN: Oh, I'm so evil! But what a place to end a chapter! You can almost imagine "insert commercial here" LOL!
The 'Daytona Beach' scene actually happened to my Dad and me; that Pinto sunk like a rock! Don't forget to leave a review to let me know what you think of the cliffie….