They had brought what gear for camping the jumper had been packed with, just in case. And they certainly needed it. At their own pace, Lorne's team could have made the journey. But with the civilians, that was impossible. Though physically fit, relatively active people in comparison to their fellow Lantean researchers, none of them were at the level of the team Lorne had put together.
Contrary to popular belief, not every man and woman in every branch of the military was a buff fitness nut capable of breaking boards with their bare hands for fun. But Lorne had enough off-world experience that he didn't want anybody at his back who couldn't make good time across country on foot. A whole lot of off-world exploration involved hiking. P3X-403 had taught him many things, including a cold, hard truth about being not quite tough enough.
With the possible exception of Colonel Sheppard's team (whose average was brought down sharply by Dr. McKay), Lorne's was the toughest in Atlantis. He'd picked the members of his team for that, and he held them to a high standard. He didn't have to browbeat or harass them into it. They wanted a leader they could follow, one who led by example. Lorne knew this, because that is what he had been seeking for years, and finally found here in Atlantis.
Colonel Sheppard had been everything to everyone in that first year. Lorne had no idea how the man had pulled it off, for it seemed impossible. But it was a standard he at once strove to meet. Though he wasn't entirely aware of it, Lorne had always had a tendency to mirror the attitude and behavior of his CO. But now he had a CO that was really worth emulating, and whose approval he valued.
Knowing his own desire for a leader worth following, Lorne knew he must be that for his team. He didn't have to be perfect, but he did have to aim for perfection, and to hold himself accountable when he fell short... without then sinking into wallowing over his shortcomings. He had to acknowledge his failings or weaknesses, then pick himself up and keep going. That's what a leader did.
At least the civilians in this case were also experienced campers. Well... not Helton, but the other three. And they were more than capable of picking a good spot with drier ground and shelter from the wind, among other important factors that often went overlooked by inexperienced campers. Helton's inexperience showed plainly, but he was making a strong attempt and learning as he went, so Lorne saw no reason to pick on him for it. And if Lorne didn't pick on somebody, his team didn't feel free to do so either. The civilians, meanwhile, were too busy with their own concerns to take much notice of Helton's struggling attempts at keeping up with them.
"What kind of people would want to target Ancient technology?" Janella was wondering, "Obviously the Wraith, of course. But nothing we've seen here seems to suggest the Wraith."
"It's not Goa'uld technology," George pitched in helpfully, "Or Replicator."
"Obviously not," Souci replied, "We're in the wrong galaxy for it to be either of them anyway."
"I'm just eliminating suspects," George commented.
"Maybe leave the detective work to Janella," Souci suggested, with the sort of irritation that had nothing to do with the subject and everything to do with a long day's hike to nowhere, "She's the one who reads all those mystery books in her off-hours."
Janella blushed, "Actually I read Lilian Jackson Braun because I love Siamese cats, not mystery novels. And reading mysteries is a lot different from actually solving them."
"But it's a start," Souci persisted, "It sends your thinking in the right direction. And you can't tell me that stack of Agatha Christie you've been collecting from other Expedition members in trade for your crochet projects is because you like cats."
Janella offered no response to this, and instead sat down on her bedroll and pulled an energy bar out of her vest pocket. She was evidently in no hurry to eat it, playing with the plastic wrap more than earnestly trying to pry it open.
"I seem to remember something about eliminating the impossible," George mused, then explained, "A Goa'uld or Replicator finding its way to Pegasus is improbable, but not impossible. However, making its way here and developing a technology that bears no resemblance to anything we've seen before seems quite impossible to me. Especially as this would have been thousands of years ago. If the Goa'uld had been powerful enough to knock out shuttles like they were nothing thousands of years ago, the history of the Milky Way would look very different now."
"Okay, fine, I concede your point," Souci sighed, throwing up her hands, "But it's still a puddle jumper."
"Whatever," George replied, the amusement glinting in his eyes saying he'd done that on purpose.
Coughlin and Wilson had managed to put a fire together, despite the wetness of most of the wood in the area. It was more about warmth than light, but also the fire had a drying effect on their damp clothes. The team huddled in close to it, though Lorne could see there was an additional wariness to the way they regarded the encroaching shadows.
Humans were diurnal creatures by nature. The darkness belonged to the predators. Particularly in a foreign environment, humans viewed the night with instinctive distrust. They couldn't see well at night, though better than most people realized if they had no artificial lights interfering with their eyes' ability to adjust, but it wasn't truthfully about being able to see. It was about what the animal part of their brain knew could be lurking out there, hunting for its next meal.
"That leaves us with the original question," Helton said, settling his pack on the ground behind him so he could lean against it, "If not any of the known enemies of the Ancients, then who built the device?"
"Someone we don't know about yet," Souci declared, "Which is bad, because we won't have the first clue how to operate their technology. We could get ourselves into a real jam trying to even recognize the device, much less deactivate it."
"I wouldn't be so quick to make that assumption," Lorne offered, though he had not been part of the civilian conversations all day. But this was possibly productive, and certainly better than unending complaints about a holiday which had no relevance whatsoever to the situation.
"Oh no?" Souci asked, a challenge in her tone.
Janella rescued Lorne from the potential argument, "Major Lorne's right. We know that the Ancients themselves weren't all in agreement all the time. Many of them had differing ideas on how to deal with the Wraith, as well as other threats. Any number of them could have split off, landed on a planet and decided to erect a defense grid to keep other Ancients away from them. Which would explain why the jumper was so quickly and easily disabled."
Actually, Lorne had been going to say that he had encountered a lot of alien technology, especially during his first year with the SGC when he wasn't even allowed off-world but instead got to help transport, guard and catalog various artifacts the off-world teams had found, and he had seen that there were some basic principles of technology that were usually roughly the same.
Power buttons, for example, were almost universal, though of course they might look very different from one technology type to another. Actually using alien technology took some study and skill, but accidentally turning it on was far, far too easy. Many devices were equally easy to turn off… once you figured out what the 'off' switch looked like.
However, he liked Janella's point better, especially the part where letting her make it meant he didn't have to argue with Souci, who was a little too smart (and, more importantly, too aware of how smart she was) for her own good. Janella and Souci were friends, and of course Souci had mere moments ago said that they should leave the detective work to Janella.
Souci had a point there as well. None of them were techs, historians, or any sort of expert when it came to the identification or usage of alien technology. So they had to find ways to apply the skills they did have. Practice at problem solving came in many forms, Janella's simply happened to be mystery novels. Well, that and she and George had the most experience working in the Pegasus Galaxy itself, as they had been part of the original expedition.
The dearth of tech experts on this mission suggested to Lorne that wasting time looking for the 'off' switch wasn't such a good idea, especially given the concern that more teams in jumpers might crash on the planet, and might not be as lucky as Lorne's team had been.
Rodney woke up shortly after midnight, half surprised he'd been asleep. But then, Carson had made him stay in the infirmary for awhile, and denied him access to his tablet so he couldn't do any work or receive updates, so there hadn't been much to do besides let the fatigue catch up with him.
He'd certainly had longer work shifts here in Atlantis, but tired was tired, and his body already detested the longer day/night cycle of Lantea without his adding any extra hours (or near-death experiences) on to that. A few hours sleep did wonders and he woke up because his subconscious had put something together that it felt his conscious mind needed to be aware of.
The trouble was, the realization hadn't made the leap to his wakeful state. He knew… something. Something, but he couldn't grasp it. He decided he needed to leave the infirmary and try to find a way to trigger the elusive thought in his mind, which he did over the objections of the on-shift medical staff. Carson had gone to bed a few hours ago, and was pretty much the only person on the medical team that Rodney might have listened to.
Having found his pants and escaped hospitalization, Rodney started for his lab, then abruptly stopped. After a moment's uncertainty, he did an about-face and headed in the opposite direction. There were research stations planted all over the city, some because the object of research couldn't be moved, others for convenience. He had teams scattered all over the city, working on all the projects he simply didn't have the time or enthusiasm for. But he didn't head to one of these stations. Instead, he went for one that had been set up by Zelenka without Rodney's own input.
Zelenka functioned primarily as Rodney's second-in-command of the science and research division, but he did also had up a team of his own. Atlantis was simply too vast, its secrets too varied, for any one man to handle alone. Besides, it kept some of the more annoying members of the science division out of Rodney's hair, and ensured that Zelenka stayed busy.
The Czech was insufferable and ill-tempered when he had nothing to occupy his time. Basically, if he had enough free time to comb his hair into submission, Zelenka wasn't happy. And when he was unhappy, he was like a flea in a dog's ear until Rodney couldn't stand it anymore and turned on him. Once the two of them were fighting, there was no way anybody could get any work done or have a moment's peace. So it paid to keep Zelenka run ragged and looking harassed. Zelenka might've begged to differ on that point, but fortunately Rodney was in charge.
It was a good fifteen minute walk to the lab Rodney had decided on, even traveling briskly as he was. It wasn't his habit to run, or in fact hurry much of anywhere, unless there was an urgent need to. However, just now, he felt a great sense of urgency, though his mind was still a bit muddled from sleep. It was clearing rapidly, however, and he knew there was no time to waste. This was why the imp had tried to kill him. It wasn't because of what he knew, but what he was on the verge of discovering, which would change the playing field entirely and put the imp at a decided disadvantage.
Entering the lab, Rodney was relieved to find nobody there. He didn't want to deal with people just now. What he wanted was a laptop hooked into the Atlantis system, specifically the library.
What he had realized was that they had, as usual, been directed to pay attention to the wrong thing. Specifically, what the imp was doing, as opposed to how it had arrived. In retrospect, it should have been obvious. They had already theorized about where it came from. The timing said it was almost definitely from M6S-868 unless its origins were more mysterious than they could imagine. But they had failed to consider what it actually meant for the thing to have come from there: it had come in through an outgoing wormhole. But actual physical creatures couldn't do that. Wormholes were one-way for people and objects. However, there were a handful of things that could come back through an outgoing wormhole. Radio signals, for instance, could travel both ways.
Rodney had been assuming that the Atlantis library had been tampered with, because the imps had access to it. But there was an easier way, the way used by illusionists for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. Misdirection. People were looking in one place for the trick, thinking they understood the mechanics, but they were of course completely wrong, and the real trick was somewhere else entirely. Often it had already been done by the time anyone was looking. Manipulating the systems of Atlantis was one thing, erasing the library was another matter. So instead, they had merely used some flash and fanfare to distract from the reality of what was happening. Because once the mechanism was understood by all, the magic was ended, and the illusionist (or imp) lost his audience.
"Gotcha," Rodney grunted with some satisfaction.
Only then did it cross his mind that he was now probably in an enormous amount of danger. If the imp had been targeting him before because of what he might discover, how much more aggressive would it be once it realized what he now knew for sure?
He'd been careful to go somewhere the imp wouldn't expect, because he was only tangentially connected with the study project going on in this lab. He'd gambled it wouldn't see or react to the threat, because it wouldn't recognize it soon enough. But, hooked into the system as he now knew it to be, the imp would know the instant he'd accessed this information. And it would know there was no one in shouting distance. Not at this late hour.
"Oh," he said to the empty room, "Oh, this is bad."