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Not enough Radek last chapter. Here, this is better.

Last time: A guy died on the way to Atlantis! So, still on the way to Atlantis.


Chapter 16. Stowaway.

Radek regretted not going to bed when he had the chance. This was looking like a long night. But Anna was right. These conduits didn't carry "enough juice" as Caldwell put it. Even as he swelled with pride that Anna identified that so quickly after Optrican's glossing over power junctions, he shrank at the possibility that this was more than a simple malfunction.

First of all, no malfunctions were simple in space.

But this was even less than simple. Rodney discovered a power spike that occurred thirty seconds after the camera shorted. Rodney was talking to Caldwell right now about the massive coincidence of the door, the camera, and the shock. Caldwell might buy it. Radek thought his discovery of what Doctor Monroe was working on might seal the deal.

Suddenly, right in the middle of his contemplations, he felt the floor's continuous gentle rumble cease. The Daedalus had dropped out of hyperspace.

Rodney strode past him one second later. "Engineering." He pointed in that direction, and Radek assumed he ought to follow.

Engineering was a few floors and a short walk away. Radek had almost grown used to it, thinking he might like it there, but he couldn't deny that he liked the stability of a planet. Sure, the Daedalus was interesting and he might have liked to work with the resident Asgard more. Of course, when Rodney was there, it was hard to catch Hermiod in a good mood.

Or maybe he was always like that.

They made it to Engineering without any malfunctions getting in their way. Rodney was obviously using Radek as a Hermiod-workaround. He didn't want to deal with the Asgard. The feeling might have been mutual.

"What are you looking for?" Hermiod asked Radek over his shoulder.

Radek glanced at him just as his enormous black eyes blinked eerily. "Any indication someone's been tampering with the ship's systems," he answered absently, gluing his eyes back on the screen.

"Perhaps if you were more specific, the search might not take so long," Hermiod suggested.

"We can't," Radek said. Door controls were almost completely unrelated to the system for the cameras. Yet another system handled the power flow to the console. Either something happened to go wrong in all three of those systems at once, or something bigger was going on.

Rodney returned to Radek's side, and looked at his screen. "Good. Yes. Just check all major systems," he said. Radek wasn't sure who he was talking to for a moment. "Hermiod, look for anything out of the ordinary. Lindstrom, Zelenka, and I will check out the power distribution and see if we can figure out what caused the spike."

Before the three of them could pack up their things for power distribution, Sheppard walked in. Rodney was right, he did get in the way a lot. "How's it coming?" he asked.

Rodney rolled his eyes. "It's going to take a while. Even longer if you keep interrupting like that."

They all hesitated in complete silence as Sheppard's eyes slid over everyone else to rest on the Asgard busily scanning major systems with his bulbous almond eyes.

"Don't stare," Rodney mumbled. "He hates it when people stare."

"Am I the only one who thinks it's strange we're working with an alien?" Sheppard asked.

Radek smirked. They were on a spaceship going to another galaxy working primarily on alien technology, and he had qualms about pretty much the only friendly alien they'd met so far.

"Intergalactic hyperdrive technology's kind of new to us, so we need his help," Rodney said.

Sheppard glanced around the room, back at Hermiod, and then came to Radek. He whispered, "Is he supposed to be naked like that?"

Rodney rolled his eyes and shouted, "Lindstrom!" before storming out of the room.

Radek hurried to follow Rodney, amused by Sheppard's discomfort. Lindstrom joined them in a moment with his own diagnostic tools. The three of them were dressed in their Atlantis expedition jackets, separating them from the Daedalus crew jumpsuits.

They made it to power distribution without incident and split up their jobs. Radek looked at the logs and Rodney took the junction box. Lindstrom floated between them and monitored power flow in real time. Radek took a seat at the back of the compartment and started skimming logs.

Rodney suddenly growled in frustration. "I've got nothing."

"Let me see," Radek handed Lindstrom his tablet and went to look at the junction box.

"What?" Rodney asked sarcastically. "You think something's going to magically appear just because you're looking at it?" He glanced at Lindstrom. "Do you see anything Zelenka overlooked?"

Radek frowned.

"Wait a minute," Lindstrom mumbled. "I think I've got something."

"Well?" Rodney glanced at Radek with a look that said, See? You're incompetent.

Radek took a step to look.

He jumped back right into Rodney with a yelp when alarms sounded and he felt the acidic burn of coolant on his right hand. He could already feel the air scald his lungs as he breathed.

"Coolant leak!" Lindstrom shouted. "Let's get the hell out of here!"

Rodney pulled Radek back and they both watched as Lindstrom tried to run through the toxic spray. He changed his mind after suffering a burn similar to Radek's and backed away.

"Lindstrom!" Rodney shouted.

Lindstrom had already backed into another compartment and shut the door. Rodney did the same on their side.

Radek backed up against the wall and stared at his red and blistering hand. He couldn't seem to move it and his lungs tingled. Another conveniently-placed malfunction? This was a little more than a coincidence. And he might need a little more than pain-killers.

"Rodney…" he sighed, leaning his head back on the wall as he coughed. He tried to talk himself into thinking about something other than his hand, but it didn't work. It looked pretty bad...

"I know, I know. A little above and beyond the 'coincidence' theory," Rodney mumbled, tapping into the comm control on the wall. He eyed Radek's hand for a moment before the camera on Lindstrom popped up on the screen. "Lindstrom, are you alright?" Rodney demanded.

"Yeah." Lindstrom coughed. "I'm okay. What happened?"

"I don't know," Rodney said. "Just sit tight. We're gonna need to shut down the leak and vent the coolant from our side." He started to work on his tablet and then he stopped. He looked at the suddenly silent screen.

Radek leaned forward to look, too. Lindstrom was talking, but they couldn't hear him. Rodney absently dropped a tablet into Radek's hands. Radek tried to balance the tablet on one hand, but ended up having to use his right hand to steady it anyway. He gritted his teeth and looked at the tablet for any reason they wouldn't be able to hear him while Rodney tried to raise Lindstrom on the comms.

Another alarm sounded. "What the hell are you doing?" Rodney shouted at the screen. Radek glanced up just in time to see Lindstrom push the button to stop the airlock from opening. "Override the system!"

Radek didn't know if he was talking to him or Lindstrom. He looked at his tablet, but there was nothing he could do. "Oh, no," Radek whispered. Lindstrom looked straight at the camera, screaming for help. There was nothing—he could do nothing. "Rodney, what—"

He didn't know what he was going to ask, and it was too late anyway. They watched in helpless horror as the airlock blasted open and Lindstrom blew out into space.

Rodney's eyes went wide. He gasped and shuddered.

Radek held a moment of silence as long as he could before gasping for pain.

Rodney looked at him, and then at the hallway. "Where's Beckett? Who knows how much of that stuff we inhaled…"

Maybe. That would be nice. His hand was fixed in a throbbing claw. He coughed. "We need more than that," Radek sighed. "These are not just random malfunctions."

"Yes, what was your first clue?" Rodney asked sarcastically.

"Doctor Monroe, actually," Radek mumbled, holding his wrist as though that might help his hand. Part of his jacket sleeve had already stuck to the burnt skin and hurt like hell whenever his heart had the audacity to beat.

Rodney snatched up the tablet and looked at it. "But who?" he wondered aloud. "Why?"

Radek didn't have the answer to those questions and couldn't think or speak quite clearly with is every thought interrupted by the painful throb of his hand. The distraction was just short of taking his mind off the sick worry. Why wasn't he back on Earth right now?

He hoped Anna was well into a dreamland.

Small chance of that. The last thing she'd seen before going to her quarters was a dead man. He managed not to consider that before sending her off earlier...

Carson arrived not too long later and examined them.

Rodney insisted a few times that he was alright, but took the oxygen mask anyway. Carson cleared Rodney and turned to Radek. "That's a nasty burn you've got there," he said. "No worries, though. It doesn't look bad."

"Oh, not bad? Let me show you what 'not bad' looks like sometime," Radek mumbled.

Carson narrowed an eye on Radek, frowning. "It could be worse."

He listened with one ear to Carson talking about how he needed to clean the burn, apply topical antibiotics and anesthetics, and wrap it securely. The other ear listened to Rodney, Caldwell, Sheppard, and Elizabeth. They wondered about intruders, but no. Life-signs head count. A hibernating Wraith was brought up, but there was no way it could hide that long in hibernation on this ship. It had been pored over by three dozen engineers and a decontamination sweep before heading back to Pegasus.

Anybody on board had the expertise. No one seemed to have the motive.

His one ear picked up the next sentence perfectly well. "As of this moment, I want all civilian personnel confined to quarters."

Radek stood even though Carson was only part-way through whatever he was doing. The pain was inconsequential. He had to help Rodney solve this. They had to get to Pegasus alive.

He would have spoken up himself, but Elizabeth and Rodney beat him to it. Rodney made the point that the civilians of the Atlantis expedition had expertise that shouldn't be put in a closet.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," Caldwell said, "but I can't trust any of them for the simple reason that I didn't have any say in their selection. Somebody else was in charge of the process." He cast a glance at Elizabeth.

Radek had never wanted to slug someone in the face before, but there was a first time for everything. Good thing his dominant hand was in shambles…

"What about Zelenka?" Rodney asked, jerking his thumb in Radek's direction.

Colonel Caldwell and Radek stared at each other for half a moment. He didn't know what "desperate" looked like, but he figured this was it. Sure, it didn't seem like as certain death as the Wraith launching an all-out attack on Atlantis, but the stakes were higher this time.

Carson shook his head. "He'll not be much use to you with his hand like this," he said, glaring at Radek. "Radek, you're making this difficult." Radek obliged by giving him his hand back and kept his mouth shut. Rodney had a way of getting what he wanted by sheer annoyance.

"What, is he brain-damaged, too?" Rodney paused. "Don't answer that." He looked at Caldwell just in time to miss Radek roll his eyes. "The point is, we need to find out what's going on fast. I can do it by myself, but this will speed things up."

Caldwell didn't look convinced but nodded his agreement. "Get on it, Doctors."

"Good." Rodney looked at Radek before tracing his eyes down Radek's arm to the doctor. "Carson, can you take that on the road? We need to get to Engineering."

"Calm yourself, Rodney," Carson said quietly as he wrapped gauze around Radek's hand. "I'm almost done."

"Sorry, I get a little nervous with the threat of eminent death."

Radek smiled tightly. His hand still hurt, but whatever that ointment was that Carson put on it had eased the pain significantly. "I don't think this is a saboteur, Rodney," he said. He didn't know why he thought that. Maybe because he couldn't imagine killing someone by ejecting them out an airlock, no matter how incriminating their testimony would be.

"I don't either," Rodney said. "That's why—Engineering—Carson, are you done yet?"

"You'll get your lollipops after the doctor's visit is over, children," Carson said with a grin at Rodney. "And now it is. But, Radek, I want to see you back as soon as you get a chance."

No problem there. Radek nodded and followed Rodney to Engineering.

Hermiod was apparently waiting for them, studying a screen littered with assorted ones and zeroes. Rodney took one look and said, "It's a virus, isn't it?"

"How perceptive of you," Hermiod said. Rodney had met his match in condescending sarcasm. "I found it in the one of the navigational computers. There is evidence of it in communications and some of the propulsion systems as well."

"So it's spreading," Radek sighed and went to a nearby console. He sat and tapped clumsily with his left hand. This was inconvenient…

"Yes," Hermiod agreed. "And changing. It appears to be rewriting itself as it grows. It is unlike any human-engineered program I have ever encountered."

If it wasn't human, what was it? Radek pulled up the translation program as quickly as he could with one hand, but Rodney tapped his shoulder before he finished.

"Yeah, Radek," he said distractedly, shoving him off to one side. "Don't be there."

Radek gave way his seat, but he was pretty sure they both knew what they'd find when he finished. The translation program swept through the ones and zeroes, changing them to a script all too familiar.

"Crap."

Not exactly the word Radek would use…

"What did you do?" Hermiod asked.

"Ran it through a translation program," Radek sighed.

Rodney turned around to look at Hermiod. "It's Wraith."

Hermiod blinked slowly. "Crap, indeed."

#

Radek leaned back in his chair in the infirmary while Doctor Beckett did a more careful—and painful—cleaning of the burn. It would take weeks for his hand to be back to normal. Weeks, if he was lucky. If he was unlucky, he'd be mere specks of organic matter scattered in the vastness of space.

This was no ordinary virus, as Caldwell was about to find out.

He and Rodney had figured it out pretty quickly, but at the expense of two lives. He wasn't even sure they were in time. It was like an entire mafia on its own, killing witnesses and working out its objectives just under the radar. It was intelligent, stopping them at every turn and eliminating every way they could think of—so far—to stop it.

"So hold on a second," Doctor Beckett said. "This virus has been on the Daedalus for a long time, right? Why is it just now causing problems?"

Radek sighed, suddenly feeling Rodney's pain that he was so often the one who had to explain what was going on. "It was probably in compressed format at first," he said. "Small. It probably took the entire trip to Earth for it to start adversely affecting systems. Then it was waiting for something."

Doctor Beckett chuckled nervously. "You make it sound like a predator or something."

Well, it was. "It killed two men," Radek pointed out. "And only when it was about to be discovered."

"A predatory virus," Doctor Beckett mumbled with a shake of his head. "That sounds like a Wraith, then, doesn't it?" Radek sensed it wasn't a question he was meant to answer. He continued to work on Radek's hand, either concentrating on the task at hand or contemplating the dire strait they'd found themselves in. When he spoke again, it was evidently the latter. "What was it waiting for?"

"Probably proximity to Wraith territory," Radek answered. "Rodney thinks it was originally designed to just fly the Daedalus to the Wraith." He twitched as Beckett picked at his already sensitive hand.

"Oh," Doctor Beckett breathed. "That would be bad."

"Worse, actually," Radek said. "If they got the Daedalus, they'd have the location of Earth and the hyperdrive technology to get there."

Doctor Beckett paused and looked up at him. "Is this thing going to take control of the whole ship?"

"No, no," Radek answered. That was their saving grace at the moment. "The Daedalus is a network of computers, but some systems are completely isolated." It was probably the one reason they were still alive. The virus couldn't get at life support or another life-sustaining system.

"Oh." Doctor Beckett looked relieved at that.

Beckett obviously didn't have a grasp of the situation. But he didn't need one, not really. That was Radek's job. That was Rodney's job. The ship was approaching "impossible to fly" status, if it wasn't there already. Now was not the time to be relieved.

"Well, that should do it," Doctor Beckett said, clipping a sturdier version of the gauze on his hand. "Get back to saving the ship."

Radek nodded. He would. But he had to do something first. Things weren't going to get any worse in ten minutes, were they? He walked straight to Anna's quarters and almost buzzed the door. Then he checked his watch. A quarter 'til four in the morning.

That wasn't too early. Not for this.

The door opened almost as immediately as he'd requested it be opened. Anna stood on the other side. She was alone in there. "Where were you?" she demanded. "Where is everyone?"

Radek sighed and leaned in the doorway.

That was when she noticed his gauze. "What happened to your hand?"

He looked down at his wrapped hand and decided not to answer that question. "Have you been awake all night?" Radek asked.

That was his first question? The ship was going to try to deliver them into the hands of their greatest enemies... but had she slept? Better be well-rested for certain death. What was he thinking?

Was he thinking?

"Yeah. Of course. Jennifer left pretty soon after I got back and I think Lieutenant Cadman has been… guarding something. Or something." She sighed and stepped back to let him in the room. He saw a book on the top bunk that must have been hers. It was in German, and she was about a quarter of the way through.

He looked at her. "You've been alone since three?"

She nodded. "What's happening?"

"The ship's computers have a virus," he said. "We're trying to fix it, but it might take a while."

"So you're going again," Anna said.

"We have to fix this."

She sighed and looked back up at her bunk. "That's okay. I was reading." She blinked, her eyelids heavy. "I couldn't come with, could I?" she asked.

Radek smiled a little. "Then we'd both be sent to our rooms."

"I'll be quiet, I swear. You won't even know I'm there," Anna begged.

Radek looked back into the corridor. What was the worst that could happen? Next to Rodney, Radek was most likely to be at the epicenter of disaster, but, if that happened, the ship was likely to follow shortly after.

He wasn't usually this defeatist, was he? No, he and Rodney could still fix this. Caldwell was starting to just nod to almost everything Rodney said now, which meant he had to be getting desperate. If Caldwell wasn't openly antagonistic, things were bad.

To hell with it. Caldwell didn't like him anyway. He couldn't leave Anna alone in a crisis. "You have to be absolutely silent. And you will not go beyond arm's reach."

She nodded solemnly and slipped her light blue Atlantis jacket on.

He regretted this. He regretted taking her on this ship in the first place.

She stuck to him almost as closely as the gauze on his hand while he made his way to the bridge.

His arrival was met by the beep of a broadcast. He glanced at Rodney. Why were they broadcasting? What? To whom?

Rodney noticed his look, glanced at Anna, then explained, "We need to do a full system shut down. Wipe everything and start again."

"Will that work?" Elizabeth asked.

"Absolutely," Rodney said.

Elizabeth looked to Radek. He shrugged. "It should."

"Since when do you need a second opinion?" Rodney wondered, and motioned for Radek to follow him. "This will take an hour or two. It's not like the ship has an on-off switch."

Sheppard didn't seem satisfied with that figure. "Every second we wait we increases the chance of being detected. We have to shut the broadcasting beacon down now."

"Do you have an idea?" Caldwell asked.

Sheppard nodded. "I do. But you're not gonna like it."

#

The possibility of suffocating to death in space was enough to keep her wide awake. Doctor McKay and Radek grumbled at one another every now and again in scientific English about the hyperdrive, life support systems, and backup logs. Anna didn't know what half of it meant and understood less and less as time went on.

Not because their conversation got any more complicated, but because her internal translating got harder and harder the more tired she got.

She slipped down to the floor next to the console Radek worked at and watched the door. Colonel Sheppard walked in and asked several questions. Doctor McKay answered snappingly. Then Colonel Sheppard looked down at Anna.

"Is Anna supposed to be here?" he asked quietly.

Anna indignantly thought there wasn't anywhere else she was supposed to be.

No, scratch that. She should be on Earth, getting ready for school tomorrow. Her mother should be cursing bills at the dining room table and shouting to Anna they needed a vacation. That was how things were supposed to be.

Instead, she was sitting on the floor of a spaceship. Anna mentally prepared for death tomorrow while Radek cursed some alien virus. No mention of a vacation. This was not the way things were supposed to be.

Radek glanced down at Anna, then back up to Colonel Sheppard. "She's not in the way."

"Yeah, but—"

"You've gotten more in the way in the last two minutes than Anna has for the past hour," Doctor McKay shouted from the other side of the room. He was working on separating some life support this-and-that from some power distribution thing. Anna had no idea.

Colonel Sheppard held his hands up, apparently in defense. "Excuse me. Just trying to help."

"Then be quiet." Doctor McKay went back to clacking keyboards.

Colonel Sheppard crouched down beside Anna. "Couldn't sleep, huh?" He looked a little sympathetic, maybe even apologetic. He nodded. "Me either."

"Um." Anna pressed her lips together and tried to arrange her words. "I was worried after… Doctor Monroe." She hoped she got the name right.

Colonel Sheppard's eyebrows raised with understanding. Probably got the name right then. "Right. Damn, I forgot you were there for that." He shook his head and put his back against the console next to Anna. "Great introduction to the Pegasus galaxy. Murder mystery, Daedalus edition."

Anna couldn't help a small smile. That was a little flippant. People died. Real people who had families. Families who had no idea why they died. Although, that was a question rarely answered...

On the other hand, someone needed to be flippant. Colonel Sheppard seemed just the person to do so.

"Did your idea work?" Anna asked.

He nodded, his only response for a long moment as he watched Doctor McKay snap his fingers at Radek. Radek handed him something.

"Yeah," Colonel Sheppard finally said. "Disabled the transmitter, but it turns out the virus is as good a pilot as I am." He looked at her with a serious glint in his eye.

"Are you a good pilot?"

Colonel Sheppard sniffed, like that was funny. He didn't answer, though. "Anyway, the virus somehow spread itself onto my F-302. The Daedalus barely beamed me out of there in time." He looked back toward the wall in front of them. "It's still out there somewhere."

Anna looked, too, imagining that someone, maybe a hundred thousand years from now, might stumble across the relic with the killer virus in its system. The odds that their technology would be compatible were astronomical. "Technology trying to kill us," Anna mumbled.

"Yeah." Colonel Sheppard glanced at her with a grin. "Kind of like Terminator."

"2001: A Space Odyssey," Anna suggested.

Colonel Sheppard grinned. "A classic. Maybe all Hal needed was a reboot, too."


Next time: Remember what happened to Icarus? He flew too close to the sun? Yeah, he died. Don't do it.