Chapter Six

The first ground test for the new engine pulled in all of the important people working on the X-302 project, crowding the control room beyond its normal capacity. John jockeyed for elbow room as he tried to make his way closer to the window overlooking the hangar below. The engine itself was actually fairly small, almost dwarfed by the size of the hangar. Eyeing the dimensions, John was fairly certain that they could probably fit the X-302 in there when it was fully constructed, massive wingspan included. Scaffolding had been set up to lift the engine off the ground. The tail end of the engine was aimed toward a tunnel to cool the exhaust and muffle the noise that would be produced when it was fired up. It would also catch what little emissions and by-products would be burned off—according to McKay, this "naquadah" was a fairly clean source of energy.

A murmur of excitement threaded through the room, helping dampen the nervous twittering that had started up in his stomach. It still felt too early to be ground testing this engine. They had barely finished analyzing the results from the simulations.

"It's... something, isn't it?"

John glanced up to see McKay had taken up a spot next to him.

"It most certainly is." John returned his attention to the hangar where they were making the final preparations. "You don't seem nearly as excited as everyone else."

"Neither do you."

"Call me crazy, but I just can't trust something that's been thrust on us at the last minute—no offense intended toward the work you've been putting in on it."

"None taken," Rodney muttered, barely audible over the animated hum of conversation. "They've been pushing this too fast."

"The fact that you think that doesn't exactly inspire confidence."

"And lying to you when I thought otherwise would?"

"No." John studied the scientist out of the corner of his eye. "Has Marrick been giving you any more trouble?"
McKay squirmed as he uncrossed his arms and tucked them behind his back. Apparently that wasn't a comfortable position because he recrossed them a few seconds later. "No, he's left me alone."

"You sure about that?" John let his gaze wander around the room, mentally cataloguing each face, until he found one particularly cold stare boring into the scientist's back. "Because right now he's hovering in the doorway giving you the dead eye stare."

A nerve in McKay's jaw twitched, but he didn't look over his shoulder in the direction indicated. "Okay, he's been doing that."

John pursed his lips, but didn't say anything else on the matter. It had been made abundantly clear from the past few weeks of the cold shoulder treatment that the situation with Marrick was none of his business. The fact that McKay had decided to strike up conversation was hopefully a sign that things could go back to normal between them—although their version of normal was probably still pretty odd for everyone else.

"If this all goes well I'm thinking of heading out and grabbing a beer later," John said carefully.

"Good for you."

"I'm just saying you're welcome to tag along if you want."

McKay remained silent, Adam's apple bobbing up and down as if he had trouble swallowing the idea of spending time outside of his darkened office or apartment.

"Look, it's just an invitation—nothing to get worked up over."

"I'll think about it," he returned after letting the statement linger for a moment. "I've..."

"Got a lot of work, yeah I know." The bewildered, almost injured look John got nearly made him break his stare with the window, but he kept his eyes forward in hopes that the awkward moment would just pass. It almost seemed as if McKay didn't understand how to accept kindness when it was offered, which would explain a lot about him come to think of it. "Don't worry about it."

"Sure." McKay nodded, but looked ready to bolt.

"Of course that won't be happening if this fails spectacularly," John put in unnecessarily.

"It'll do just fine, thank you very much," McKay snapped. "I've spent the past week triple checking all of the parameters!"

"Man, I thought Carson told you to get some sleep—"

"I did sleep, last night actually, like a baby and—how did you know about that?"

"He cornered me in my office last week—gave me an earful about having to eat all of Laverne's leftovers by himself. It slipped out somewhere between 'immature in-fighting' and 'stop spinning in that chair'."

"See, it annoys other people too."

"That's why I do it," John grinned. "Oh, but did you notice the vein?"

"The one on his forehead that pops out whenever he hits mid-stride in one of his doctorly rants? Yeah. It looked ready to burst when he brought by some casserole on Monday."

"Wait, he actually brought you leftovers?" If he were more prone to be jealous of such things, John might have almost sounded wounded. Luckily he was a bigger man than that. "I've had to pack peanut butter and jelly for almost three weeks now. Liar said he wasn't sharing until we 'made up'."

"Maybe he feeds me because I'm working." He gave John a smug look. "Unlike some people."

"I work!"

"When? In between Skittles runs?"

"I wouldn't be talking if I were you, Twinkie King—"

A loud clang from below drew McKay's attention, and he looked like he was ready to snap out something at the workers below. The fact that the glass separating the control room from the hangar would have muffled any complaint probably had more with forestalling any rant than political savvy. At least, John's eyes darted to the figure still hovering at the back of the room; he hoped it was that and not the pressure of certain people's presence. Marrick's intense scrutiny of the scientist was ridiculous...

...but that wasn't supposed to be John's concern.

The final safety check was executed, and the hangar cleared of personnel. The sound inside would probably be close to deafening. From what John had heard, detonations on these engines were far louder than the standard ignitions on a normal turbojet engine.

"Showtime," John announced.

McKay was less than thrilled. "It's all a show here."

"Yeah, I noticed the big brass Langham's been chatting up. Friend of yours?"

"Colonel Frank Simmons," McKay ground his teeth together, "and not a chance."

"That bad, huh?"

"Oh, he's fine, if you're a fan of Langham's type."

"Kiss ass?" John asked casually.

"He makes Langham's brown nose look clean."

"Guess I'm glad he was never my CO then," John commented.

Langham made some parting remarks to Simmons before pushing through the crowd to take a place next to the main console. "Looks like we're all here. This test firing is the start of a major scientific breakthrough and I'm glad that you could be here for this momentous occasion. I know that you all still have a lot of work to do on this project, so we'll try not to take up too much of yours or the Colonel's time."

Simmons smiled tightly at the room at the acknowledgement, but did not chime in on the well wishes. John glanced around for Marrick, but he must have melted into the crowd. McKay nudged him in the arm, and John tuned back in time to hear the tail end of Langham's speech.

"So, without further ado, will Dr. Grodin do the honors?"

The Brit looked less than enthused, but dialed up the controls. The tunnel came to life with an audible hum as it created a vacuum in front of the firing end of the engine.

"Dialing it up twelve pulses per minute," Grodin announced.

An explosive thrum signaled the first flare from the tail end, the blast vibrating the metal of the tunnel to a hum. The thrum was followed by another and another in precise succession, the tunnel's hum echoing throughout the control room.

John couldn't contain the tiny grin or the "cool" that escaped him. McKay shot him a look of restrained excitement, letting him know that he wasn't alone in his impression.

"Take it up higher," Langham announced over the noise.

Grodin nodded, and began slowly dialing up the frequency until the thrum morphed into a rapid-fire series of pulses, sounding more like a giant-sized machine gun than a jet engine. Bright blue fire blazed out of the back of the engine, and John had to avert his eyes.

"Okay, make that hot," John corrected. "Very hot."

"A little higher," Langham said again, "up to three hundred."

"What?" Rodney snapped, almost drowned out by the engine noise.

Langham ignored him, and Grodin looked between the two scientists uncertainly.

"Do it," Langham insisted.

Grodin looked very reluctant but slowly reached for the controls and cranked them up. The rat-a-tat of the firing increased, pauses between detonations steadily decreasing to the point where the pulses began to form one long, deafening explosive thrum.

McKay's eyes widened. "That shouldn't be possible."

"Why?" John asked.

"I set safety protocols..." McKay trailed off, a dark cloud settling over his features. John had been used to irritation, but the outrage took him aback so much that McKay was halfway across the room, shoving people aside before John had even realized he was moving. He followed in the scientist's wake, pretty sure he wasn't going to like the reasoning behind the angrily twitching brow.

"What the hell did you do?" McKay practically exploded, and John reached out and tugged him back before the scientist could get himself fired by physically assaulting his supervisor. A small semi-circle cleared as people began to edge away from the astrophysicist on the war path.

"I made a few tweaks last night. I thought we needed to let Colonel Simmons here know what the engine is capable of—"

"We have no idea about the stability of the naquadah for sustained detonations! The fact that it amplifies the energy output so much makes it dangerous—"

"Or it makes you overly cautious," Langham shot back. "There's a lot of money invested in this project. The viability of naquadah as a fuel source could be one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of our time."

"Did you buy your PhD off the internet? There are steps that have to be maintained, even in your screwy 'no one needs to know' environment, to ensure that—"

"Doctors?" Grodin cut in nervously.

"What?" They both snapped.

"I think we have a problem—it seems the firing rate is increasing on its own."

A hum, almost barely audible over the sound of the engine firing, was starting to build. John glanced at McKay nervously. "What is that sound?"

"Oh no," it was almost a whisper, barely perceptible over the growing noise. The wide eyes and tiny pupils did nothing to ease the sudden hammering in John's chest.

"What do you mean 'oh no'?" he demanded more than asked.

"Turn it off!" McKay burst into motion, shoving past Langham as he dove for the control console where Grodin was stationed.

"Of course." Nervousness punctuated the British scientist's movements. Those movements began to grow more rapid and frantic as he switched from display to display. "Something's wrong."

"Wrong?" Langham cut in.

"The controls aren't responding."

"Move!" McKay practically shoved Grodin aside as he attacked the console with sudden fervor. A hush had extended over the room, only the ominous hum steadily increasing in volume and the frenzied clack of McKay's fingers assaulting the keyboard filling what would have been silence.

"McKay?" John ventured nervously, as the sweat beading on the scientist's brow was not exactly a comforting sign.

"This is so not good."

"How not good?"

"So very not good it's actually very, very bad!" McKay pushed away from the console, spinning back toward Langham and John wondered if he would have to hold him back a second time. "The remote program has frozen!"

Langham shook his head, eyes wide in panic. "But how could that happen?"

"I don't know, maybe when someone disabled important safety protocols he could have accidentally deleted a vital line of code that would have detected this sort of problem and prevented it!"

"It should have worked fine," Langham insisted.

"It didn't," McKay roared. "I warned you this might happen!"

"What might happen?" John cut in, because he had known McKay for almost two months now, and he had never seen this sort of reaction from the man.

"A catastrophic overload is what!" Rodney flung a finger at the engine burning brightly below.

"That sounds kind of bad."

"Oh, it is."

"How bad are we talking here?" To John's ears, the hum may have been approaching a whine, which was never a good thing as far as engines were concerned.

"Seeing as how the damn naquadah seems to enhance any sort of energy output—which in this case seems to be building toward an explosion—I'd say pretty damn bad!" McKay wrung his hands as he looked back toward the window to the hangar. "We're going to need to override it from down there, perform a manual shut down."

"All right," John announced, "Grodin, give me your earpiece."

The British scientist complied, looking puzzled.

"What do you think you're doing?" McKay's hands stilled, turning red as he squeezed them tightly.

"Shutting it down." John wiggled the ear piece around until it fit.

"That 'we' was in the formal sense, I didn't actually mean you and me—"

"Then who?"

McKay's mouth worked silently before he finally sputtered. "You don't know how."

"That's why you're going to talk me through it."

"What? No, you can't possibly—"

"If it overloads, McKay, how big will the explosion be?" His jaw snapped shut, and John didn't hear the barely muttered reply. "What was that?"

"I said it'll take out the entire hangar—probably the whole R&D wing if it triggers a secondary explosion!"

"Then it's getting shut down. Now talk me through it."

"Fine!" Rodney snapped, snagging an earpiece out of one of the other attendant's ears. "You are insane, I hope you know."

"Everyone needs to get out of here," John aimed the order at Langham, "and start evacuating the rest of the building!"

Langham cut in, "Sheppard, you can't just—"

John didn't have time for this, and directed the angry shout to the whole room. "Now!"

"You heard the man!" McKay snapped. "All of you out unless you want to be incinerated!"

The entire room moved like a panicked herd of cattle, fearful murmurs and pounding of feet able to counter the angry hum of the engine for volume. John watched as McKay physically shoved the slower moving people toward the door. If he wasn't able to shut it down... his stomach did a strange, unfamiliar lurch at the thought and he shook his head at the scientist. "McKay, maybe you should—"

"I'm the only one who's cross-trained on all parts of that engine and the naquadah, so as much as I hate to say it, it probably should be me going down there."

"No."

"We're seriously going to have this argument right now?"

"I'm doing it," John snapped. "I just don't think you should—"
"I'm staying! We're running out of time, so sitting around here and debating that point, not so good of an idea, okay?"

"Fine." Even though the strange twisting in his gut continued, John's mind was already sliding under a thin veneer of calm as the familiar instincts and military training kicked in. He pressed his lips into a thin line as he and McKay regarded each other.

"I just want you to know," McKay pointed out sourly, "this is the reason we don't make fun of magnetohydronamics."

"This has nothing to do with magnetohydrodynamics."

"You're right, it has everything to do with people changing things without listening to their highly-paid consultants!" McKay tossed a withering glare over his shoulder at Langham. "I just thought I'd throw that in there for posterity."

"McKay."

"Well, I'm sorry, but certain death tends to make me nervous—forgive me for trying to lighten the mood!"

"Just tell me what I need to do."

"Fine."

The irritability made it easier for John to break away, and with a burst of movement he headed toward the door at the side of the room that led down to the hangar. He took the stairs two at a time, already thinking ahead and seeking out the protective gear that hung outside the door leading to the hangar. He grabbed a pair of ear muffs, welding goggles, and a pair of gloves. Before donning his safety apparel he triggered his radio.

"McKay, can you hear me?"

"Yes," the voice over the earpiece was tinny and strained, but he could hear it, "but I can barely understand you."

"It's going to just get louder," John said as he grabbed the door leading to the hangar.

"I'll manage," came the droll response.

"McKay, if this works, I'm buying you a drink after this is over—no arguments."

"It'll work."

"Good, because if it doesn't, I'm coming back and haunting your loud ass."

"Just get in there!"

"Pushy," John couldn't help but smirk, even though his heart was racing as he flung the door open.

The tint on the goggles helped dim the bright flare of the flame and the angry hum was muted by the muffs. Neither of these did anything to protect him from the heat that was building up in the room, despite the tunnel greedily sucking up the tail end of the engine's brightly burning flame.

"There's an access panel on the side of the engine," McKay instructed. "It should be fairly obvious when you get up there."

"Right," John muttered, dashing across the room and trying to ignore the way the heat was stifling the air in the room or that the ground under his feet was starting to vibrate. He reached for the railing on the steps up the scaffolding, managing to feel the heat even through the thick gloves. "Damn."

"What?"

"It's getting a little warm in here."

"Then you'll be happy to know that being vaporized in the ensuing blast will be downright scorching!"

"I get it, I'm moving!" he shouted into the earpiece.

He pounded up the steps and started searching along the side for the access panel that was indicated. He grew more and more frustrated as sweat started to bead and slip down the side of his face. As much as he had studied the designs on the plane and the engine, it was entirely different trying to find one component sight unseen without any reference materials.

"McKay," he ground out.

"What?"

"You and I have very different ideas of what 'obvious' is!"

"You just passed it."

"What?" He turned his head to see a figure at the window. "Oh, right."

"Why are you looking at me? Move it!"

He felt around on the engine, lightly running his gloved fingers across the metal.

"Yes, that's the one. There should be a release—"

John's found it, and the panel quickly came off, revealing a mass of wires and circuitry that was going to be difficult to navigate with the gloves. He liked not being burned, though, so he'd manage. "I'm in."

"All right, now listen to me, all you have to do is—wait, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

John stilled his hands, but the final question hadn't been directed at him. He looked up in time to see a series of metal sheets start to slam down in place around the hangar, and the hammering in his chest increased two-fold. "McKay..."

"Get away from there!"

Rodney grabbed Langham and forcefully pulled him away from the console. It was too late, as the last of the blast doors in the hangar slammed over the window and cut Rodney off from his view of Sheppard and the engine, and effectively trapping the man inside. A new, unfamiliar sick feeling had settled in Rodney's gut, and he tried to dislodge it by giving his supervisor an angry shake. "Why the hell did you do that?"

Langham pulled away, looking just as irate. "To contain the blast, of course!"

"You just trapped him in there!" Rodney roared. "If he can't shut down—"

"Then he'll be dead anyway," Marrick's tone as cold as the ball of ice in Rodney's stomach. "Just like we'll all be if we stay in this room."

"He's right," Langham insisted, "we should go."

"No!" Rodney stared at them with wide-eyes. There was no way this was happening. "We can't just leave him there!"

"You said yourself that the engine was building toward an overload," Langham accused.

"It's not there yet!" Sheppard was trapped in there, and if Rodney let them drag him out of the room then the pilot would die for sure. Rodney didn't know why that was almost as terrifying as his own death, but it was. He dashed back to the computer where he'd pulled up all of the schematics he could on the engine. "Sheppard, are you still there?"

"Yes," the voice was almost drowned out by the roar of the engine, "but it's getting a little hot in here since someone shut all the windows."

"It wasn't me I swear," Rodney insisted, not knowing why it mattered that Sheppard believe that, "but I don't have time to override the controls to get them back up."

"Did I mention that it was warm? Because I was understating things to be nice. It's getting pretty damn hot in here right now and it's not cooling off any."

"I know, just bear with me here. Now that you're into the panel you can't just start pulling wires—that could just make things worse."

"Worse? I'm sealed in a hangar with an engine turned bomb, how could it get any worse?"

"Tempt the universe! Go ahead!"

"McKay," Rodney missed the next part from the roar, but he thought Sheppard mentioned the flame from the back of the engine, "I'm starting to get a tan!"

"Well then stop arguing and listen to me," he snapped back. "Sarcasm isn't going to help right now!"

"Fine!" At least Rodney thought he might have said "fine", it was almost too garbled by the background noise.

Aware of the clock rapidly counting down, he referred back to the schematics. "Now it's just a series of switches you need to pull."

There was another noise, which could have been an acknowledgement, and Rodney began to walk through the sequence, trying to enunciate clearly since he wouldn't be able to tell if one of his instructions had been missed. He was acutely aware of the two presences still hovering over his shoulder, despite their insistence on leaving a minute ago. Maybe they realized the unlikelihood of being able to clear the blast radius in time.

He ignored them and continued reciting the shutdown process, hoping that Sheppard was still with him. Rodney read out the final instruction, unsure if the pounding in his ears was due to the angry overload of the engine or the sound of his own heart hammering out a beat in double-time. "C'mon Sheppard..."

An indeterminate, long stretch of time passed as Rodney clutched the console desperately, hoping for some sort of sound other than the one that would signal his and Sheppard's demise. It had to have been an eternity—but finally, he thought he heard the whine abate and the hum start to die down.

"Sheppard?" he asked tentatively.

"I'm here." The breathless reply was almost lost in the background noise of the hangar, but it was there and was alive. "Looks like it worked."

"Are you all right?"

"A little crispy on the edges, but yeah, I'm still in one piece." The ring of laughter was clear over the comm system. "I tell you though, I'm ready for that beer."

Rodney couldn't help but let a grin break through the relief washing over him. "I think I am too."

"I'll just sort of melt into a puddle until you figure out how to open the doors."

"Sure." Rodney searched around the panel until he found the release mechanism. A shudder ran through the building, before the first of the blast shields began to raise back into their proper resting spot.

His hands were practically shaking in the wake of the adrenaline rush that had overcome him. He stared at his quivering fingertips in fascination. Rodney did not consider himself a brave person, despite the gravity of the situation he was caught in. This place had to be getting to him—what had happened to his once oh-so-reliable survival instincts? He did not volunteer to stay behind on suicide missions.

"It seems we owe you a debt of gratitude," Marrick intoned from behind; the smooth tones crawling up his spine like a giant spider.

"You owe it to Sheppard," Rodney ground out, surprised at the unwavering quality of his voice despite the fact that his fingers were still dancing in front of his eyes. "You know, the man you almost killed?"

"I may have acted in haste," Langham reluctantly admitted, igniting a flash of anger in Rodney.

"May have? May have?" He spun around, poking a finger in his supervisor's chest. This whole thing struck too close to home for him to be able to reign things in this time around. "Your reckless disregard for safety could have not just blown up your precious engine and the hangar along with it, but you could have killed almost everyone in this part of the building!"

"It was a mistake—"

"It wasn't a mistake, you moron, it was completely idiotic! I don't just make up these numbers arbitrarily, and you can't disregard them just because you want to make a flashier show for your buddies in the military."

"According to Downstairs it shouldn't have been a problem."

"I don't care what the magical little gnomes 'downstairs' have to say. You can't rush proper science no matter what miraculous breakthrough they come up with five minutes from now!"

"You can't speak to me like that!"

"Oh, yeah? Watch me!"

John had only been half joking about the tan. His entire face felt like he had just come in from a long day at the beach, with all of the tenderness to the touch of a sunburn without any of the fun that went with it. He removed the ear muffs and goggles before carefully stripping off the gloves. The heat had taken a lot out of him, and it took most of his energy to drag himself back up the stairs. He probably should visit the first-aid station before he grabbed his much needed and hard-earned beer.

Thankfully there were no contact burns, but it had gotten pretty hot in the hangar-turned-furnace. Raised voices from within the control room quickly chased away thoughts of discomfort.

"I don't know what you people think you're hiding, and at this point a large part of me doesn't really care," Hurricane McKay was in full force, quickly building toward a Category Five Rant, "but I've had it up to here with being fed piece-meal information when you decide it's all right to trust the people building this machine—"

"That's quite enough, Dr. McKay," Marrick's cold voice cut in, and John flung the door open to see the head of security elbowing between Rodney and Langham. John wrinkled his nose, the still tender flesh protesting the action, as he tried to squash the sudden surge of anger rushing to the forefront.

"And if you ever pull a stunt like this again, I promise you that you're going to need to find a new genius to jerk around." Instead of announcing his presence, John quietly stalked across the room so he could pull McKay away from the other man.

"Sheppard," Marrick flicked a glance at him, "nice save back there."

"Just doing what was necessary," John shot back, "although I had help."

"Yes, you two make quite the team."

"Looks that way." John met Marrick's stare dead on.

McKay finally slipped out of his rage long enough to slide a glance to the hand still resting on his shoulder. When he let it drift to John himself, the scientist nearly did a double take. "What the hell happened to you?"

"I told you it was hot."

"You didn't say it was broiling!" He pulled his shoulder out from under John's restraining hand as he stepped back towards Marrick. "You! Call an EMT!"

He and Langham shared an uneasy glance, but it was Marrick who answered. "I don't think that's necessary."

"Can you see him? Of course it's necessary!"

"I'll be fine," John squirmed uncomfortably.

"What if you have heat stroke?"

"Of course, we have the facilities here," Marrick cut in. "There's no need for him to wait. There's a first aid station just outside of the R&D wing."

"We'll go there," John said and that seemed to mollify Rodney. For two seconds before his righteous anger boiled back to the surface. John reached out and snagged his shoulder once more before Rodney could fly off the handle again. The shoulder was bunched with tension and John gave it a brief tug. "How about that beer, huh?"

"I don't think I'm done quite yet," McKay bristled, crossing his arms as he tried to incinerate Langham with a glare.

"Let's go, McKay," John insisted, "before you get yourself fired."

"That would solve so many of my problems right now I'd almost welcome it at this point!"

"And leave me here with them?" John asked quietly.

His mouth snapped shut and Rodney just glared fiercely at Langham, shoulders still quaking with rage. Marrick was eyeing McKay with a renewed interest that made John's skin crawl, and he wanted to get out of here as fast as possible.

"I bet if we ask real nice Carson will even tag along, that way we can have a whole Lunch Bunch reunion."

That should have elicited a sarcastic reply about lame group names (which John had intended to follow up with 'The Terrific Trio'), but it seemed that McKay had actually been provoked beyond the point of snarling back. Without another word, he stalked off toward the exit, apparently expecting John to follow. He sent Marrick a final warning glance, because that intense scrutiny could not mean anything good, before he slipped into the hallway after the incensed scientist. He almost had to jog to catch up, because McKay's angry stride hadn't slowed to wait for John. He was almost out of hearing range when a snatch of conversation drifting from the room caught his ear.

"So, what do you think now?" He thought he heard Langham say.

"Let me make a few calls," came the reply.

Not knowing what to make of that, John quickened his pace in order to catch up with McKay. The sooner they got to a bar, the better.