43: Saboteurs
Racing through the corridors of Atlantis brought back memories for both McKay and Daniel, not all of them pleasant ones. McKay, of course, had the most, whether it be of being pursued by the Genii, or the Wraith or some other alien creature out to kill him. As they were now, he and Daniel and Teal'c had made themselves scarce very quickly after disposing of Holt's two guards and the man himself, who was handcuffed in a storeroom somewhere in the central tower with a gag in his mouth. The trio had taken the teleporter pad there to one of the outlying buildings, one of many that had seen little use during the original expedition's time on the city-ship when it had been in the Pegasus galaxy. Mostly living and storage space, this smaller building had been left generally bare, with some of the internal fittings, be it tables or chairs and the like, still covered up with dust shrouds or plastic sheets. There was the odd stack of crates about the halls, each marked with the emblem of the SGC. Some had been present since the siege on Atlantis that had occurred near the end of the first expedition's first year in the Pegasus galaxy. Some of these boxes still contained ammunition or guns or grenades, a veritable treasure trove of weapons that the trio very quickly helped themselves to. Teal'c in particular, had dusted off a forgotten G36K rifle and now carried it with him as he followed the pair of doctors through the corridors. He relied on McKay and Daniel in this instance, for they knew the city much better than he did.
Daniel had some idea of where they were headed, whereas McKay knew for certain. Compared to the central tower, this smaller building was unremarkable, and there appeared to be none of the laboratory space that was present within the central tower. Nonetheless, McKay led the way through its corridors and up several levels. Every so often they passed by a window, with the barren grey vista of the moon's surface spread out beyond the city's edge. And far off, against the black, star-scattered backdrop of space, lay the familiar blue and white ball that was Earth.
"What are we looking for here?" Daniel asked McKay, as they moved down another corridor. McKay did not answer right away, being apparently focussed on the path ahead and whatever way was necessary to take them to the destination he had in mind. After a moment, he paused at a T-intersection in the corridor, looking down both ways before turning right. Daniel and Teal'c followed after him, and it was at that point that McKay answered.
"There's a secondary control terminal in here somewhere," McKay explained as the trio moved. "Not too many people know about it, and it wasn't in much of a working state when I first found it. I think the Ancients put in place as backup, in case something went wrong with the control tower."
"Do the people here know about it?" Teal'c asked them. McKay stopped at a door, turning to look to Teal'c with a worried look on his face.
"I don't know," he said, after a brief moment spent mulling it over. "It's unlikely, but it's also likely they've learned a lot from the computers here as it is. I'm hoping the people here have kept themselves mostly in the main tower. There aren't too many of them as it is, from what I noticed, and Atlantis is a big place." He gestured for the door, a standard sliding copper-coloured one. "It should be behind here."
Teal'c nodded in affirmation, before he reached over and tapped the lit-up button on the panel by the door. It slid open, revealing a darkened, grey-blue space beyond. As he stepped inside, the lights switched on automatically, revealing a set of Ancient-built terminals along the left-hand wall. After surveying the otherwise empty room, Teal'c signalled for the others to follow him inside. The coast was clear, and McKay moved straight for what Daniel perceived to be the main computer. It switched itself on as McKay laid his hands upon it, the artificially induced Ancient gene in his system still working after all of these years. Doctor Carson's work had been second-to-none.
"I should be able to disrupt the cloak from here," McKay said. The screen before him came to life, Ancient symbols dancing across it as the systems activated after years of inactivity. Teal'c lingered by the door, keeping an eye on the corridor outside. Daniel stood to McKay's right, watching the physicist get to work. It appeared that McKay took his time with it, as the ancient computer was not working to the extent it should have been.
"Shit." McKay muttered the word loud enough for Daniel to hear.
"What is it?" Daniel quirked an eyebrow, worry creasing his face.
"Looks like they've been tinkering with the city's systems." McKay sifted through the information that came scrolling down the computer, his fingers working at the keypad before him with an experienced finesse. "Centralising things to the main control centre. Subsidiary terminals like this one have been isolated. And, what do you know, the wormhole drive and the hyperdrive are both offline. Someone stuffed up somewhere." He was muttering more to himself than to the others now, and he must have realised that as he abruptly stopped and turned to Daniel. There, his face was set in firm concentration. "I may need to do a hard bypass. It could take a little work."
"And if you succeed?"
"Then I can shut off the cloak and call for help," McKay replied. "Thing is, if I start screwing around with the wiring here, it's going to start flashing warnings up in the control tower. They'll know something's wrong and they'll be able to work out its location fairly quickly." McKay was looking to Daniel questioningly, presumably waiting for some sort of permission. "So, if I do this we can get the help we need, but we're also going to bring down on us a whole world of trouble. What do you think?"
Daniel considered it for a moment, his eyes narrowed, the wheels turning within his mind. He glanced to Teal'c, whose stern features made it clear what he thought they should do. There was no question that they needed to do this, even if it meant announcing to their enemies their location and their intentions. All they needed was a few minutes, not even that, to get a transmission to Earth and hopefully to the right people on that planet. And if the city-ship's cloak deactivated, even if only for a moment, then enough people on Earth might take notice of such an anomaly.
"All right, Rodney. You do what you have to." Daniel pulled the 9mm pistol he had acquired from where he had tucked it into his waist belt. He suspected that they would soon have company.
McKay went down on his knees and began attempting to pry open the panel underneath the terminal's keypad. It took a bit of fiddling, but he soon found the panel's release. Popping it off, he revealed the inner, almost neon-lit workings of the Ancient-built computer within. It was all snaking, illuminated cables and solid, transparent control crystals. A mess to most people, but Rodney McKay was one of the few individuals around who could navigate such a system. He surveyed the cables on offer for a moment, before he took hold of one and tugged it, enough to tear one end free of its housing. He then did the same to another, all while Daniel returned to the doorway and shifted his attention to Teal'c.
"We should set up some defences," Daniel suggested. Teal'c gave a curt nod in agreement. The two of them went across the hall to one of the other, less important rooms, in which some old metal containers were stacked. They began lifting and dragging them out into the corridor, blocking off both ends with the boxes, forming makeshift barricades.
Inside the computer room, McKay worked hurriedly, now lying upon his back as he attempted to connect one cable to another, flaying them open with his fingernails and teeth to do so. One might have likened it to the work of an electrician, or perhaps a thief hotwiring a car; in this case, McKay was 'hotwiring' an entire city-ship to do what he needed it to do. At the same time, certain warnings had popped up on a critical computer terminal in the main control room of Atlantis, with technicians seeing immediately that someone in an outlying building was tampering with the city's systems (or at the very least, attempting to do so).
Holt was called into the conference room once again, after having been found and freed by a passing guard. Humiliated once again, he blustered into the conference room expecting some less-than-friendly words from the Old Man. Instead, he saw the Old Man appeared as calm as he so often did, his pale blue-grey eyes indicating that his mind was hard at work as it considered this latest situation. A fresh cigarette was held between two fingers, the glowing orange tip wisping thin trails of smoke. And in the darkness behind him, a taller and broad-shouldered figure stood, shrouded in a thick black cloak. Blazing orange eyes pierced through the darkness, fixing themselves upon Holt with a look of sheer malice. Under that glare, Holt felt his resolve faltering. He was quick to rein in his rising doubts and the sensation of dread that was building within him, yet his efforts were of only limited success under that piercing, hateful gaze.
"They're already working to sabotage us, Holt," the Old Man stated. "Take every available guard and stop them."
"We know where they are?"
"They gave us their position. Take the men and see to it that the three of them are eliminated." The Old Man let out a sigh, seemingly disappointed that he had needed to give this order. "They are more trouble than they are worth."
"I'm glad you see it that way, sir," Holt replied. The Old Man's eyes met his own, displaying a look that suggested that perhaps Holt should keep his mouth shut, lest he incur any real wrath from his boss.
"Please ensure that you do not fail again, Holt," the Old Man warned him. He gestured to the creature standing a few paces behind him, still shrouded in the dark. "Otherwise, the Herald here may have to take matters into his own hands, and he has a habit of removing anyone who gets in his way with extreme prejudice." The implication was clear, and Holt thought he saw the Herald's dark face light up ever so slightly with a cruel smile. It was hard to tell when the lighting was so poor, an intentional setup on the part of the Old Man. His associates preferred it dark, and perhaps even some of that preference had rubbed off on the Old Man himself? Spend enough time in the company of the Devil, and one may adopt some of his ways.
Holt turned and left the room then, heading for the control centre. The technicians there had pinpointed the location of the systems intrusion, and so Holt stuck a communications earpiece into his left ear and put out a call for all available security personnel to make their way for the building from where the intrusion originated. He would take great pleasure in killing Daniel Jackson and his friends, especially after the humiliations they had caused him. And judging from the warnings springing up on the computers around him, they were doing an apparently poor job of covering their tracks. Besides, they were three people up against a small army of highly trained professionals. What could they do, short of being simply overwhelmed?
McKay was still working on the terminal. Daniel waited at one end of the hall, crouched behind the makeshift barricade. Teal'c was at the other end, his automatic rifle held at the ready, his eyes scanning the corridor beyond carefully. It had been a quiet few minutes whilst they waited, with McKay working as fast as he possibly could on what was some delicate alien computer-tuning. Ancient computers were generally made to be foolproof, with redundancies built upon redundancies, yet when it came to something like this there was always that margin of error, especially when one was essentially 'jerry-rigging' a system to do something it was not necessarily designed to do.
"I think I've got it," McKay called out, as he connected one last loose wire. A flurry of sparks erupted, and he moved his head back fast enough to hit it upon the underside of the computer controls above him. Swearing loudly, he rose out from under the terminal, rubbing the back of his head whilst his eyes roamed over the display and the many new Ancient words now appearing across it. He seemed to have done what he had intended, for with a few careful keystrokes he found himself accessing the city's more critical systems.
Daniel felt only some small measure of relief, for his attention was diverted to the far end of the corridor. He could hear footsteps echoing from somewhere distant, multiple sets thumping loudly upon the smooth, polished floors. They were about to have company, and he figured it was not to be the friendly type.
"Make it quick, Rodney!" Daniel exclaimed. He ducked behind the makeshift barricade, relying on the old metal boxes and their various contents to hopefully stop whatever bullets happened to come his way. Teal'c had moved beside him, and he cocked the G36K rifle before raising it to his shoulder and peering through its built-in scope. At least, for the time being, the pair had the enemy funnelling towards them. Not that this would make it much easier, as a few grenades or well-placed shots could put a swift end to this makeshift defence. They had to make a run for it while they still could, and that meant relying on McKay to do what he needed to as quickly as humanly possible.
Daniel peered down the sights of his pistol. He saw the first of the black-clad security personnel appear, faceless behind their tinted visor and respirator. Both he and Teal'c opened fire, the clatter of the guns deafening within the confines of the corridor, with Daniel's senses being filled with little more than noise and the faint flash provided by Teal'c's rifle. The black ops trooper crumpled and fell, riddled with bloodied holes. Another appeared at the end of the junction, leaning around the corner and returning fire from a crouched position. Bullets clanged against the solid boxes, sparks flying as Daniel ducked on impulse.
Teal'c's gun thundered again with another volley. The soldier backed around the corner as part of the wall was torn up by the rifle rounds. Inside the computer room, McKay was working frantically as he attempted to bypass the firewalls blocking his access to the cloak's controls. However, he found very quickly that sending out a coded burst would be much easier, and as such he turned his attention to that particular task. It would not be an audio or visual signal, rather a transmission that he would shoot to Earth on a subspace frequency. It was the kind of frequency that very few on Earth would be able to receive effectively, and among those few would be the technology contained within stargate command. They would get it and know what to do, and so McKay rapidly hashed out a message to attach to this burst. Atlantis was covered in powerful transmitters, so sending it was no problem.
"I'm sending a message now," McKay called. Outside in the corridor, more of the city's black ops troopers had appeared. Two of them had taken up the corridor, thick black metal shields held in front of them. Bullets pounded off of the solid surfaces, leaving marks and slight dents, but otherwise no penetrations were achieved. These two shield-bearers offered the others behind them a way to advance, soaking up the fire from the beleaguered pair at the barricades. Daniel's pistol did little when its bullets connected with the bulky riot shields, and even Teal'c's hail of rifle fire did not stop the pair.
More footsteps could be heard coming from the opposite end. The trio were about to get flanked, which would be the end of their last stand here. Daniel looked to Teal'c, and from the way he returned the glance it was clear that he was thinking something similar.
"McKay, we have to leave!" Daniel shouted, crouching behind the barricade as a volley of automatic rifle fire slammed into the front of it. McKay was at the terminal, still working away, his attention fixed solely upon the display.
"I've almost got to the cloak," he shouted back. The message was sent, and that would surely be enough. He had crammed enough details into the short burst that the people at the SGC would know where to look. Even so, he wanted to deactivate that cloak, ensure that there could be no doubts as to where Atlantis was. He knew time was running out, the gunfire was loud and clear. And yet he pressed on, determined to do just this one more thing. McKay was firmly wrapped up in his activities, and no amount of shooting was going to interrupt.
One of the troopers moving behind the shield-bearers paused and pulled a grenade from his waist. He pulled the pin and threw it over the shields in front of him, sending it sailing down the corridor and over the barricade. Teal'c saw it coming, and with a deft movement that spoke of coordination honed by years of training and fighting experience, swung the butt-end of his rifle around in a club-like motion. It connected with the grenade and sent it sailing back the way it had come, all in a manner not unlike that of a baseball player striking a solid pitch. The grenade went over the shield-wielding troopers and detonated in a rush of thunderous noise and screams. There was a flash, followed by a eruption of dust, wherein the four troopers who had been slowly making their way down the hall were ripped up and tossed aside. Blood splattered every which way, the mangled bodies being thrown about the corridor like ragdolls. Lights set upon the wall shattered in the detonation, and the entire floor shook noticeably with it. Teal'c and Daniel ducked as the grenade went off, some small pieces of smoking debris zipping over the barricade and their heads.
More men were coming for them, this time from the other end of the hall. Daniel turned to the doorway into the computer room, seeing that McKay was still working at the terminal.
"Come on, Rodney! We have to go!" They could lose themselves in the city, and with McKay's help their chances of doing just that were greatly increased. He knew every inch of this place, more so than Daniel did. Yet, McKay was determined to sabotage the city-ship's systems, and that included the cloak and power generation in general. He was getting close, just not close enough. More armed goons were storming down the hall. They had to leave, even McKay knew this, but still he remained, absolutely intent on breaking down the firewalls that were keeping him out. The 'Old Man' and Conrad Holt would rue the day that they had turned Atlantis to their own selfish ends, not to mention for what they had done to Keller. McKay was certain that they were behind that, even if he could not prove it. They had killed her, and they had sent him off the deep end through doing so. Dismantling their schemes around them was the best form of payback McKay could provide, short of outright killing them.
"Doctor McKay, we must leave," Teal'c stated, rising to his feet to meet the oncoming team of black ops goons. He let fly with his rifle, sending a steady stream of bullets down the hall. Two of the thugs went down, before the others scattered and returned the fire, causing Teal'c to duck back down behind the barricade as the air above him filled with gunshots. The walls around them were being thoroughly torn into, chunks being blasted out with each errant bullet impact. Walls and fittings that had remained in place for millions of years were torn asunder within seconds.
"Go on!" McKay shouted at them, trying to be heard above the cacophony of battle. "I'll do everything I can from here. I just need a few more minutes."
"We haven't got a few more minutes…" Daniel began, but he did not get a chance to finish. Teal'c grabbed him suddenly, throwing him over the opposite barricade before following. Behind them, a flashbang grenade detonated, filling the air with a momentary flash of brilliant white light. Daniel had not been looking at it directly, so his eyes were spared the full intensity of the flash. However, the deafening bang the device made when it exploded sent his ears ringing, and for a moment it was all he could hear. Teal'c ushered him down the corridor, one-handing his rifle and firing back at their pursuers. Another of them went down, falling into a bloodied heap.
"We can't leave him," Daniel said, squirming out of Teal'c's grip. The exchange was interrupted by the clatter of automatic weapons fire and by bullets striking the wall near them. The barricaded position was already overrun, leaving McKay at the mercy of the black ops troopers. Both Daniel and Teal'c had no other choice but to push on ahead, hurrying around a corner as they fled the scene. Daniel felt that they may have been leaving McKay to his death, yet he also felt that McKay had a habit of surviving things most would not. A man with his knowledge and experience was useful, and it would be a waste if Holt simply killed him.
They would have to lose themselves in the bowels of the city. As the pair charged down the corridors, they could make out the sounds of further pursuers hurrying through neighbouring halls. They had stirred the hornet's nest, it seemed, and they had little other choice but to plunge deeper into it. Hopefully, and it was a big hope, someone on Earth would get the message and send help. What kind of help, Daniel could not be sure of. He also could not be certain if some of the conspirators back home would not intercept the signal themselves, something they likely had the resources to do. Could they hinder any efforts made to assist? That message had to get to the SGC. General Janssen would do everything in his power to assist, that was for sure.
The pair came upon another of the internal teleporter/elevator pads. Opening the door, they bundled inside, allowing themselves to catch their breaths. Daniel looked to the display at the back wall, searching for a point on the map of the city that would be far enough away from their enemies, but not too far as to render them cut off altogether if help did arrive. It was somewhat hard to tell what place was what just by looking at the map, and Daniel was not familiar enough with the intricacies of the city to know for sure just what he would be teleporting into. Nonetheless, he had to make a choice, especially with the very audible booted footfalls hammering down the corridor outside. Pressing one of the marked points of the map, both he and Teal'c were immediately enveloped by the familiar flash of white light, before they appeared upon an identical teleporter pad somewhere on the other side of the city.
As they stepped out into the empty corridor, Daniel took his pistol and fired several shots into the teleporter pad's display. Sparks flew and glass shattered, and he found himself contemplating how he was essentially destroying a piece of technology that had survived a million years. Still, they had to slow their pursuers down, for there was a chance they would determine where they had gone from the teleporter pad they had departed from. It felt like Daniel was also cutting McKay loose, leaving him to his fate in that computer room that was now on the other side of the miles-wide city.
He looked to Teal'c, the Jaffa's face set in its usually stoic fashion. Even so, Daniel felt that he was likely thinking similar to what he was, that they had cut their losses and left McKay behind.
"Let's hope someone back home gets the message he sent," Daniel said. Otherwise, Doctor McKay may very well be dying for nothing.
When Conrad Holt came upon the computer room, moments after Daniel and Teal'c had made their getaway, he was expecting to find McKay in there. After all, he had not departed with his companions, so he had presumably elected to stay behind, perhaps as some sort of misguided attempt to be selfless. The troopers who had stormed the place parted from the doorway to allow Holt to walk in. The trip down the corridor had seen him step over several dead, mangled bodies, not to mention step in some splattered blood. The soles of his boots left some blood-red prints on the floor behind him for several steps, something he noticed with some mild disgust.
As for the inside of the ancillary computer room, it was empty. McKay was gone, seemingly having vanished into thin air. None of the soldiers here had seen him go out into the corridor, and so for a long moment Holt stood in the middle of the room and looked around, his eyes carefully scrutinising any detail. Knowing McKay, he could very well be hiding somewhere, cowering even. However, there was little in the way of apparent hiding places here, and instead Holt's eyes were drawn towards a mesh at the far wall. It was little more than a small hatch, coloured the same copper brown as the rest of the wall and easily missed at a glance. However, this hatch was partially open, and with the table at the wall under it, climbing up into it would not have been too difficult. Not even for a man such as McKay, who was not all that athletically inclined.
"He's in the vents," Holt announced, the soldiers about him turning his way. "Start scouring every inch of this building. He'll come out of there soon enough." He walked over to the wall, climbed atop the table and then reached up for the partially open ventilation grille. He pulled it open all the way, peering into the narrow duct behind. McKay had made himself scarce, so there was no sign of him to be found inside. Nonetheless, Holt leaned forwards, knowing that McKay was not far enough away to be completely out of earshot.
"You won't get far, doctor," he called, his voice echoing down the metal passage. "We own this city now, not you and not your friends. We're coming for you and we always get the ones we set our sights on."
Despite the threat, Holt found himself feeling increasingly uneasy. Even more so when the lights about the room flickered. Red warnings flashed upon the computer screens inside, drawing his eyes to the very computer that McKay had been using. This warning was in English, courtesy of the modified systems put in place within Atlantis: the cloak was deactivating, and just about every alarm in the city was now switching on. Their secrecy was about to be swept off of them in one fell swoop, ensuring that any idiot with a telescope down on Earth would now be able to see them.
Holt was not so much concerned about that. Rather, he was terrified as to what the Old Man might do to him, in response to this failure. The Old Man was not a wasteful person, but in the case of something as critical as their continued secrecy, there was no telling what he might do.
Holt needed a contingency plan. He already had a few in place, just in case his position here became too perilous. He could already hear the beeping in his earpiece that spoke of an incoming call. The Old Man wanted to know what was going on and, most importantly, why their cloak had suddenly switched itself off altogether.
