"I've tried to make it work," Carson said and slammed a hand on the console in irritation. It continued to glow in blissful ignorance. "Have I never mentioned that this is McKay's game? I break this kind of stuff."
"It's already broken," Ronon said helpfully. "Now you have to fix it."
"Oh, yeah, easy peasy. You are aware," Carson turned away from the blinking console to stare at the Runner, "that I'm a doctor, not an engineer?"
"It turned on for you."
"And that's an entirely different thing from making it fly, open a stargate and brew a bloody cup of coffee."
"I do not want a cup of coffee."
Carson hissed between his teeth and refrained from describing the bodily injury he would do for just one cup right now. Black, straight off the boil.
"And I do not know how to make it work," Carson said in his calmest 'dealing with angry relatives voice'. "Rodney's your guy for machines. I just do the soft squidgy stuff," he said in utter despair.
"You have the gene."
Didn't the man understand? "That's not the same as knowing how to make it work," Carson said in exasperation. He tugged off the control panel under the merrily blinking console and looked at the mess of gadgetry inside. He felt the same way he had when the guy in the showroom had cracked the hood to try and impress him with the inner workings of an SUV. Give him a nice and simple laparotomy any day.
Dust fell from the open panel. "It's ten thousand years old anyway and covered in trees and dirt." Although that wasn't quite true anymore; the villagers had begun stripping away the overgrowth when it became clear that the visitors would like to take the Relic-Cave itself as payment.
Ronon said, "Dr. McKay would have fixed it by now."
"Oh, and why don't you just go and get him, then?" Carson snapped. Unfortunately Ronon did not seem inclined to oblige.
This was more frustrating than having no Jumper at all, Carson thought. It was like being a teenager and finding your folks have left you the car but taken the keys.
He hit the console one more time for good measure. It didn't make him feel better this time either.
Teyla rushed in the Jumper, finally returned from inspecting the water source. The door was gone, so spaceflight was outside this Jumper's capabilities. Of course, anything besides lighting up was beyond it's capability at the moment.
"A Jumper," Teyla said and her face broke into a grin.
Carson hated to see anyone brought down to earth as brutally as he was about to do but he saw no other choice. "Don't get your hopes up. I don't think the thing can fly."
Rina had followed Teyla inside. "Fly?" she said in a squeak.
"Dr. McKay…" Teyla began, but Carson cut her off.
"Rodney is the damned expert. I'm just a doctor. I don't know anything about these things. You've seen me fly."
Teyla nodded.
"We don't need it to fly," Ronon said. "All we need is the DHD to open the Stargate."
Carson stared at the DHD in horror; he couldn't even program his Gran's video recorder. He tried to think it on.
The DHD remained dark.
"You have to dial," Ronon said.
"Why do I have to dial?"
Ronon didn't get a chance to answer. Teyla sighed and strode forward. Rina tried to stop her, but was too slow.
Bang, bang, bang… Teyla hit the Atlantis sequence.
The console remained dark.
"Perhaps we are too far away," she said.
"Well, unless you can do anything about moving this thing, we're back where we started from," Carson said angrily.
"McKay would have…" Ronon started, and Teyla hit him on the shoulder.
"Well, if you can just tell him that I'd really appreciate his help right… What the hell?" Carson stared at a new symbol on the HUD above the console. He recognized it as the Ancient equivalent of the Windows egg timer.
Ronon lifted his hands away from the equipment. "I didn't do anything."
Carson watched the timer in fascination. He didn't sense anything wrong, but obviously something he had said, or thought, had been enough to trigger a process.
"Should we leave?" Teyla asked nervously. She obviously expected a self destruct sequence.
The timer stopped and a message in Ancient appeared. Teyla had the PDA with the translation matrix.
It read 'Subject Found - Connection Made.'
SGA
John hadn't meant to doze off, but he was awakened by a chirrup accompanied by a flashing, white light that appeared quite insistent. He checked on Rodney first; still curled on his side and sleeping despite the interruption. John slipped off the table top into the water. The source of the noise was at the bottom of a mound of abandoned equipment. It was a small, circular piece of ceramic, with a blinking light on one side and what appeared to be an impression of an ear molded into the other.
Gingerly, he lifted it to the side of his head and heard a familiar voice say, "…don't know what that means."
He fitted it over his ear. It was a whole lot more comfortable than the headsets he was used to at home.Its light went dark.
"It does not look dangerous," Teyla was saying.
"Perhaps…" Ronon said.
John tried the obvious. "Hi, guys," he said.
"Colonel Sheppard!"
"John!"
"Sheppard!"
John smiled to himself. "It's nice to hear from you. How's things?"
Ronon and Teyla started talking together. Overlaid was a sigh of relief that sounded a lot like Carson.
"One at a time would be good," John suggested.
There was a pause on the other side, then Teyla said, "Colonel Sheppard, we have a problem."
John looked across at Rodney, who shifted restlessly in his sleep, and then gazed out into the darkness and the still water at the legs of their table.
"That's funny," Sheppard said. "I was about to say the same thing."
"Why?" Carson demanded. "What's happened?"
"Plenty of things, but I asked first," he said. "Please tell me there's a team on its way from Atlantis."
There was a pause on the other side, and he imagined the sharing of significant glances. "We are unable to contact them," Teyla said at length.
"Why not?"
"Well, the DHD was destroyed…"
"It was shot at and vaporized," Ronon clarified
"…by a cloaked ship," she finished.
Sheppard didn't think the Traders could have adapted to the Atlantis Jumper so quickly, so he suspected it was their own ship.
"Atlantis is not due to check in with us for another five hours, and we are unable to gate back," she continued
"So we may have to wait for a cavalry rescue, then.How about the Padanarams?" Sheppard asked
Carson answered. "I isolated the viral agent and it's man-made…"
"Let me guess," John interrupted. He quoted the sales pitch as he remembered it. "A water based viral agent synthesized from the local DNA, using a technique described by Tobiass in the Ancient database."
"I knew the first bit, but that technique sounds like an interesting lead. How on earth did you find all that out?"
"That's my story. I'll tell you in a sec. How did you manage to contact us now?"
"Well, that's the last part." Carson said. "We found a Jumper in the village, and it decided to contact you itself."
"You found a working Jumper!" John's mind started running with possibilities.
"Working is an optimistic term," Ronon said.
"We wondered if Dr. McKay would be able to help us to get it flying again." Teyla said quickly, at her most diplomatic.
Carson obviously realized that he hadn't heard from Rodney. "Where is McKay? Is he alright?"
"Sure," John said more confidently than he felt. He reached out to shake the sleeping form awake. Rodney batted his hand away with a moan. "Of course, we have been gassed and dropped into the darkened bowels of the Aurora's sister ship. And what with the enclosed dark space and being hit by a power surge and the dunking in the water that's everywhere, Rodney's doing just fine. Aren't you, Rodney?" John nudged him harder.
Rodney started awake. He opened his eyes and immediately began coughing. They were deep coughs that shook his whole body and echoed against the walls.
John helped him sit, all the while ignoring the demands for more information from the Jumper. He held Rodney's shoulders as he coughed and gasped for breath.
It settled slowly. Eventually Rodney caught his breath, once, twice before his body was wracked with a lesser bout. John patted his back gently. Carson finally stopped yelling into the radio.
The coughing finally eased and Rodney was left wheezing quietly.
In John's ear, Carson said. "I need to know about the dunking, lad."
"Well, it did follow the whole power surge thing, but…"
"What is the water like?"
John replied, although he couldn't understand the importance of the question. "Clear, from what I can see of it, it's pretty dark down here. It's about knee high everywhere we've been on this deck."
The color was fading from Rodney's face and now that the coughing had stopped the shivering was getting worse.
Carson's tone was urgent. "John, this is important. Have either of you swallowed the water, or inhaled it?"
"Rodney coughed up gallons earlier."
"And you?"
"Not deliberately. What are you getting at?"
Carson sighed. "I don't think we can afford to wait for the cavalry." He paused, gathering his thoughts before continuing. "The virus we found is delivered in water. The Padanarams were given barrels of the stuff by their 'gods'."
"Who probably fly cloaked ships," Ronon added.
John had a sinking feeling; he was glad that Rodney couldn't hear this.
"We guess that the people who manufactured it have been shipping it out to test at the villages, and that would require large quantities of water to be inoculated. It's a self replicating viral code that only needs the presence of a few basic compounds to affect a large volume. The people who made it…"
"They call themselves Traders."
"…would be much safer letting it seed a reservoir and siphoning off what they need." Carson's voice was serious. John had learned to dread that particular tone.
"You found an answer though?" John said. He avoided saying the word cure, so as not to panic Rodney.
"No. The severity of infection is related to the viral load. The bigger the exposure, the worse it is. You need to get out of there."
"We're working on it."
It was obvious then why the Traders seemingly had no interest in their captives. Dead up there or down here, it was all the same to the Traders. And they had his Jumper. Now that they had destroyed the DHD they would think they had cut off the medical team too. The Traders would think the team from Atlantis had been incapacitated.
Well, they were wrong. He would have to show them not to mess with his team.
Rodney's breathing had settled enough that he could ask, "What did you and Carson want?"
He held his hand out for the Ancient device and snapped his fingers
John handed it over. McKay didn't even examine it before fitting it to his ear.
Only one side of the conversation was audible as Rodney answered Carson's questions.
"I just fell in the water. Mind you, there was a massive power surge at the time." And then, "Getting a door open. It's a long story."
John was aware that the imperious sentences were far shorter than normal. Rodney was finishing one and taking in a wheezing breath before attempting the next.
"Well, it is a bit cold in here," he continued. "My clothes are soaking from sitting in a damned lake."
"You're wearing my jacket," John reminded him.
"Yes, and it's still soaking."
He was terribly pale as he handed the device back to John. "Mother Hen wants to talk to you."
Carson was talking even before John had raised the thing to his ear. "…get out of there, fast." He sounded agitated. "You need to get back to Atlantis."
"First of all you need to get that Jumper flying."
Rodney had been staring at the tabletop, but his head jerked up. "A Jumper? You didn't mention a Jumper."
"You were sleeping when we talked about it," John said, then brought Rodney up to speed on the 'relic.'
Carson said impatiently in his ear, "We can get it working once you're out of that place. Rodney can tell us how to get it working, but you need to get out of there now."
John explained for the doctor's benefit.
"We can't wait outside too long. We need you to come pick us up. The Traders may have life signs detectors as well as our Jumper and too many guns. And," he swallowed, hoping Carson would understand what he was trying to say, "we need to do it while we're safe, and while we still can."
Carson didn't reply, which John hoped signaled understanding. They needed to do this while Rodney could still form a complete sentence. If his breathing got any worse…
Sheppard handed the device over before Rodney could snap his fingers again.
"Right," McKay said. "Do we have anything to drink? Because I think I aggravated my throat. That water looks lovely, but you've had your boots in it."
John shook his head. "You play nice with Carson. Get his Jumper working."
"And what will you be doing?
John had a couple of thoughts on this subject. "I want to go check out the airlock."
"Off you go, then. It isn't far. I'll wait for you here." Rodney should have been terrified at the prospect of being left alone. Instead, he waved John away. "You'll need this," the scientist added, and handed over the life sign detector.
John held their light source in shock. Rodney was oblivious. "Go," he said again, distractedly.
"I won't be long."
"You'd better not be."
"I'll only be ten minutes," John said. The scientist was already lost in explaining the workings of the Jumper in sentences that were still too short.
Sheppard paused at the doorway. He was torn. He didn't want to drag McKay through the ship if he was getting sick (even if he didn't seem to notice), but he didn't want to leave him on his own, either. It would have been easier, Sheppard thought, if he didn't feel like he was breaking Rule Number Three, and the first lesson you learned from horror movies – Never split up.
SGA
When Carson had been a teenager, he'd had a bout of tonsillitis that drove his temperature up to delirious heights. He remembered the whole conversation he'd had with his Gran at the time. It had started with buying orange juice at the supermarket, and ended with him convinced that his best friend's dog had climbed a tree.
She told the story at parties. Carson reckoned if they got out of this, he was going to have a few stories that would rival hers. Rodney had better watch out.
In itself it wasn't a terribly unusual McKay conversation; Carson was left floundering in the wake of a commentary that was going too fast for mere humans to keep up with. It was the topics that were bizarre. He'd already reined Rodney in from the dizzying heights of alternative medicine; fuzzy-fuzzy science, the perils of EVA, the correct way to brush a cat and the pretty neighbor who was looking after it, and if she had fleas – the cat, not the neighbor, of course, but humans can be bothered with fleas if they….
And so on.
Carson acted as translator for Ronon and Teyla who did what they thought Rodney meant. Despite the increasingly delirious rambling, there were enough instructions for them to reroute the propulsion systems to the backup power source.
Twice, Carson was left helpless as another bout of coughing interrupted the instructions. There was nothing he could do but say quietly, "Hold on Rodney, we're coming."
The third coughing fit was followed by a long silence.
"Rodney!" Carson almost yelled.
"Hmm?"
"Come on, Rodney, we're nearly finished. Just a little longer. We've got the heads up. You were telling me about initializing the power source."
"'m Tired, Carson."
"I know. Just keep talking. What do we do now?"
"We…" he paused, and then said in a terrified whisper, "What's that?"
"What, Rodney?" Carson said. Teyla looked up from the display she was trying to decipher. Ronon continued to work beneath the console.
"That noise."
Carson instinctively looked out the newly cleared windscreen to remind himself that he wasn't in the dark, alone.
"It is Colonel Sheppard," Teyla said with utmost confidence.
The only noise from the radio was quick wheezing breaths.
Carson said "Rodney, it's John. He's coming back. You need to calm down." It made no difference.
Ronon snapped from under the console "McKay. Stop it."
The wheezing slowed.
The next sound on the radio was the far away voice of Colonel Sheppard.
"Rodney! Hey, it's me," he said and all three people in the Jumper breathed a sigh of relief. "I leave you for five minutes and I come back and find you in a panic. Take a breath, Rodney."
The coughing started again.
Carson sat heavily on the pilot's chair. He could hear exhaustion in the strangled breaths and he could imagine all too clearly the congestion in the lungs.
"Carson!" Sheppard said loudly. He must have taken back the radio. "The villagers didn't get sick as quick as this. They said it took a day!" He sounded as close to panic as John Sheppard ever got.
"They were exposed by drinking the water. It's going to be faster if there's direct exposure to the lungs," Carson answered quietly.
"I think the Jumper will fly now," Ronon said.
"Well, that's the next problem," Sheppard said. "The airlock we were heading for is buried under the hill. Unless anybody has a really big shovel, we're not getting out that way."
"We'll come in and get you," Ronon said.
Teyla nodded.
"No, you will not," Sheppard said. "These are arms traders with more guns than the Wraith have enemies. There's another way out. You concentrate on getting here. Rodney and I will find a way out ourselves."
Ronon and Teyla looked ready to disagree.
Carson headed them off. "Let's just get there first, before we promise not to go blowing these buggers to hell." After all, there was still the flying to be done.
"Understood. Do you need any more advice on the Jumper? Because I think you tired Rodney out." The words were light-hearted, but John couldn't hide his concern that Rodney had stopped contributing to the conversation.
"We're ready here," Ronon said.
"Colonel, we will be limited for speed," Teyla added. "This Jumper has no rear hatch."
"Well, ASAP would be good. Speak to you soon. Sheppard out."
A small figure came rushing up to the Jumper. Carson hardly recognized Levin after a rest and clean clothes. He looked like little boys the universe over. "Are you really going to make the relic fly?" he asked excitedly.
Carson smiled despite himself, and sat in the pilot's chair.
"Aye, lad," he said. "We bloody well are."