Hello! This story has been bouncing my around my head for a while, and after seemingly endless updates and revisions I've decided to finally post the first chapter. Most of the story is finished already, so you can expect pretty consistent weekly updates.
Hope you all enjoy, and remember to leave a like and a comment if you do!
The landscape below flitted by, the forest reduced to little more than a green blur that occasionally filtered through the clouds. Sheppard's mind was half-occupied by the jumper controls, almost taking for granted how fluidly they reacted to his maneuvers. He smiled, glancing out the window towards a thin blue ribbon of water cleaving the forest in two before it deposited into a lake, shimmering in the sunlight. It had been a while since they had a mission go off without a hitch - he was going to enjoy the feeling while it lasted.
"Would it kill you to pay attention?" His copilot whined, snapping him out of his thoughts. Figures. He was still moody about not getting to see the tunnels. Sheppard ignored him as he cast a glance back at the other two members of his team. Teyla caught his gaze and rolled her eyes at McKay's near-constant display of irritation.
They were making their way back to the Stargate now, one of the few gates that was in orbit around the planet rather than on the surface. It was one of the reasons that the people here were able to survive for so long - it gave them enough time to hide when the Wraith came.
The civilization that they came to trade with had built a few miles away in a nearby valley, past the forest that they were now flying above. It was an old lakebed some centuries ago, and the dry clay made it possible to build an underground tunnel system that connected the villages scattered across the valley. The people - Atorans, he remembered - were a simple civilization. They weren't completely untouched by the wraith, but the tunnel system helped them hide during the cullings. Sheppard remembered McKay's eyes lighting up when they were first told about them, muttering something about constructed defense mechanisms and ancient architecture. He had so desperately wanted to see them and learn how they were built, but they were already overdue for a check-in.
"Can't wait for a good mission," Ronon said, "Been pretty boring lately."
"A boring mission is a good mission," Sheppard said.
Ronon grunted. "Says who?"
"Says everyone," McKay grumbled, sneaking another irritated glare towards the pilot's seat.
Teyla glanced out the portview of the jumper at the landscape passing by. They were high enough in the atmosphere now that she could see the edges of the continent of Ator stretched out below them. P2J-989. The planet reminded her of the Athosian homeworld, and the people there seemed pleasant, ecstatic at the opportunity to exchange medicines for grain and seeds. It was not a planet that was able to trade often due to the space gate - and, in fact, it was a civilization she knew little about, because the Athosians didn't have access to spacecraft that would allow for such trade - but they seemed fairly self-sufficient regardless. Their help would be invaluable, too. Everyone on base, save for McKay, was starting to grow sick of the military-issued MREs.
"Woolsey will be pleased to hear that the trade negotiations went well," she said after a moment of silence.
Sheppard smirked, nodding, "Maybe you could convince them to throw in a couple bottles of that - " he was cut off when the jumper shuddered, then suddenly pitched forward, throwing him against the control console with a grunt.
The lights and displays went dark. She grabbed at the wall of the jumper as she tried to steady herself against the sudden turbulence. "What's happening?"
The sunset still gave some light coming from the windows, and Teyla watched in growing horror as the clouds outside, once far below, began rapidly approaching.
"The jumper just lost power!" Rodney was immediately on his feet, stumbling towards the control panel in the back of the jumper. Ronon stepped out of his way as he ripped off the front panel so he could evaluate the situation.
"What the hell do you mean, 'lost power'?" Sheppard shouted, still trying desperately to regain control of the jumper. "In case you haven't noticed, we're kinda far off the landing pad here." He braced himself against the console, hands splayed across the controls as he tried his best to prevent the jumper from spinning out. His commands seemed to be having little effect, and there was now a nice jumper-spaced hole in the clouds above them where they had fallen through.
"Look, I don't know what happened, and yelling isn't gonna make me work faster," Rodney snapped. He began rifling through the contents of the panel, rewiring connections as he tried to reroute power back to the engines.
He glanced at Ronon and Teyla, who were already stumbling towards one of the benches lining the walls of the jumper. His teeth rattled in his skull.
"Alright everyone, sit the hell down and buckle up." The steering was still functional, he realized with a sigh of relief, and he had barely enough control over the jumper to keep it from completely spinning out. Maybe he could try to guide it toward the lake, buffer the impact. "That includes you, McKay," he said pointedly as he buckled the pilot's seat. He had almost forgotten what it was like to fly through turbulence without the inertial dampeners, and he was thoroughly ungrateful for the reminder.
"No thanks, I'd rather not resign myself to certain death," McKay responded, his voice cracking slightly at the end.
Sheppard just rolled his eyes, instead diverting his attention to slowing their descent. He winced as the green blur became a forest, then individual trees as the jumper spearheaded towards the ground. They were going too fast. The jumper was going to be ripped to shreds. McKay was right - there was no way that they would survive an impact from this height.
He let his training take over as he jerked back on the yoke, trying to pull the jumper out of its precarious nosedive. It lifted, barely. His hopes of landing in the water quickly dissolved - it was too far away.
"Brace yourselves," Sheppard shouted. The forest filled the entire portview now, and he kept pulling back on the yoke with all his strength as he tried to keep a level descent. He heard a yelp from the back of the jumper and glanced behind him to see McKay being thrown against the wall before quickly righting himself and continuing, muttering under his breath.
They were still coming in too steep. "McKay - !"
"I'm almost done, I just need a few more seconds," he responded. The jumper shook again with a crunch and snap, and Sheppard felt the vibrations from the bottom of the jumper as it began bending and snapping the tops of the tallest trees.
"You don't have a second," he shouted, "If you're gonna do something, do it now!"
The lights on the jumper suddenly blared back to life. The engines began to fire up, filling the air with a gentle hum. The jumper was still precariously tilted downwards, but with the controls fully operational again Sheppard was able to quickly level it out. He froze in place, as if the slightest movement would cause the jumper to continue careening down.
He cautiously glanced over his shoulder. "Everybody okay?" Sheppard asked.
Ronon and Teyla both nodded and slowly stood from the bench, looking more shaky than anything. Rodney was leaned over, one hand on the control panel to support himself. Sheppard squinted at the expression on his face - he looked as confused as he did terrified.
"Close call." Ronon said.
McKay let out a breathy, adrenaline-forced laugh and leaned forward, hands on his knees. "A boring mission. Just one," he said, still trying to catch his breath, "That's all I want," he whined.
Teyla stared open-mouthed out the window of the jumper, the forest now close enough to make out individual pine needles. She watched as the wind created by the engines buffeted the tops of the trees, causing them to sway gently around them. Sheppard whistled, following her gaze as he craned his head to look around. Ronon stood. "Well, as far as close calls go. . . You could've done a lot worse," he clapped a hand on McKay's shoulder.
He winced. "Yeah. Thanks," he said hesitantly.
"How the hell did that happen?" Ronon asked.
McKay shrugged, a perplexed look crossing his face. "I don't know," he said, his gaze lingering on the open control panel. He still wasn't quite sure what had gone wrong, even less so what he had done to fix it. He pointedly turned to Sheppard, confusion almost immediately replaced with irritation. "Maybe if someone had been paying more attention to actually flying, they would have noticed something was off."
"Don't blame me," Sheppard interjected, throwing his hands up in defense, "Your science teams are the ones that are supposed to do the check-ins to prevent things like this."
"Oh, so now you're gonna blame -"
Teyla cleared her throat slightly, and both men stopped bickering. "Might we save this discussion for another time? Perhaps when we are back on solid ground?" She gave them a tight smile.
Sheppard gave one final glare before turning back to the controls, and cautiously began making the ascent towards the space gate. The forest once again blurred beneath them until it became a green smear on the landscape. He kept his gaze on it until they passed back through the cloud cover, and they all seemed to take a collective breath of relief.
--
The scanner let out another high-pitched trill as the screen temporarily flashed red. Rodney frowned as he tapped through the logs. "Are you getting these power readings?"
"The fluctuations, you mean?" Radek half-turned towards him, but his attention was otherwise occupied by the diagnostic tool hooked up to the control panel. "Yes, they were reported shortly after the first incident."
"Hm," he studied the screen for a moment longer before shaking his head slightly.
"What is it?" Radek set down the diagnostic tool as he crossed the jumper to look at whatever had Rodney so confused.
"Nothing, they just - look at the energy signatures," he tilted the screen so Radek could see, "They seem too consistent to be random system failures."
Zelenka squinted for a moment at the screen before slowly nodding.
"What do you think could be causing them?"
Rodney, unsuccessfully, tried to suppress rolling his eyes. "Obviously if I knew I would be well on my way to fixing the issue, now wouldn't I?"
Radek ignored Rodney's misplaced frustration. "I still believe that the Ancient database might contain some information on - aktualizovat . . . software update."
Rodney smirked derisively. It was truly an idiotic theory, and an easily disproved one at that. "If that were the case then we would have noticed these issues much sooner, and they wouldn't be confined to a single jumper."
He couldn't particularly say that he appreciated Radek's help - he was much better at understanding Ancient artifacts than the jumpers, after all - but Woolsey hadn't given him much choice in the matter. He was using some stupid buddy system for repair jobs after one of the scientists got lost fixing a generator in the lower levels of the city. Once again, someone's sheer stupidity and lack of foresight was hampering his work. It would get old quickly, at least, and then he could get back to his usual system of working alone.
"Look, why don't you go do something useful for once and stand over there," Rodney said, not even looking up from the tangled mess of wires in front of him. He waved towards the far end of the jumper. Zelenka rolled his eyes, but went to where Rodney indicated.
"Fine," he studied the wall in front of him, running his hands across it as he felt around for the edges of a control panel. "What's over here?" he finally asked.
"Nothing," Rodney grabbed the tablet from where he'd put it on the console and began pulling up the flight data from jumper 2's last mission, "I just needed you out of the way." He went over to where Radek had been standing and began removing the front panel from the recessed wall. After a moment of fiddling with the panel, he turned to find Radek glaring at him.
"Look, this would go a lot faster if you weren't breathing down my neck the whole time," Rodney snapped, no longer trying to mask his frustration, "Besides, you're not even helping anyway. You really don't need to be here." "You're not letting me help," Radek corrected, "and besides, you still haven't told me what you think it is that you have found."
"I'm - still working on it," Rodney admitted. He turned back to the console, plugging in the tablet and balancing it above the panel as he began to assess the system failure from the last mission on P2J-989.
As soon as the team had gotten back from their mission, still lightly wide-eyed and green, McKay had marched directly to Woolsey's office and demanded that jumper 2 be taken off the flight schedules. Frankly it was a miracle that no one had died yet - the jumper falling from the sky was just the latest in a series of unfortunate mishaps. The first time something like this had happened, one of the away teams was left stranded on a planet with no DHD. Normally that wouldn't have been a problem, but the jumper dialing system had gone kaput. And just last week, one of the marines - McKay couldn't bother remembering the name - had said the jumper "seized up". Controls completely died. Luckily they were low enough that the crash hadn't caused any serious damage, but still -
"Shouldn't have happened," Rodney muttered to himself.
After each incident, he and Radek had thoroughly checked the flight logs and data streams, but they'd found little more than a pattern in the outputs - which was only strange in the fact that it was a pattern, and not random fluctuations that would be typical of a failing system. This time, the patterns were even more distinct.
"It might have just been a lapse in focus," Radek offered, picking up the tablet and glancing at the data stream. "We still don't know exactly how the ancient gene interfaces with the equipment. Could be simple user error."
McKay shrugged - despite how much grief he'd given Sheppard about paying attention, he knew that he wouldn't have made such a careless mistake.
"Maybe," he removed another small yellow crystal from the Ancient version of a capacitor. He briefly inspected it for damage before replacing it. "But it's way too much of a coincidence for it to just randomly lose power so many times. And even if it was user error, ancient systems usually have enough failsafes to prevent a jumper from just falling out of the sky. Look," he turned, snatching the tablet back from Radek, "I really don't have the time or patience to be explaining the basics to you right now. Go - take a lunch break or something," Rodney made a shooing motion with his hands, "I'll call you when I'm done."
Radek stood his ground. "Woolsey specifically said -"
"Oh, please, Woolsey is afraid of his own shadow. It's not like the jumper is gonna up and vanish."
Radek made another swipe at the tablet, but Rodney swerved it out of his grasp.
"You're insufferable sometimes."
"Oh, insufferable, that's a new one. Where'd you pick up a dictionary?"
With one last glare, Radek stormed out of the jumper. Rodney didn't even seem to notice him leave.
Without the distraction, McKay was quickly able to bring power back to the jumper. The hum of electricity filled the air as the control panel suddenly sprung to life.
"Finally, something goes right." he muttered. He watched the tablet out of the corner of his eye as the energy readings initialized. It had taken him a couple of minutes, but now he had a better idea of what was going wrong with the jumper. From what he could tell, it seemed like a few connections were going haywire. Commands were somehow getting lost or completely changed between the ATA interface and the system - he still wasn't sure how, but he hoped it was just a few crystals out of place. He wasn't too surprised either. Given just how old the jumpers were, it was a miracle that they hadn't run into hardware issues sooner. Still, knowing Woolsey and his extreme penchant for safety it would probably be a couple of weeks before the jumper was cleared for missions again.
He knelt down to dismantle the ATA interface, located in the front under the control panel. Suddenly he felt the air shift behind him and he turned just in time to see the jumper door closing.
That's strange, he thought. He hadn't done anything to activate it on his end. He stood and stepped towards the door, waving a hand in front of the sensor. It didn't open.
"Radek?" He pounded a fist on the door. Maybe he'd been too harsh earlier, he thought. Not that he would apologize.
"This isn't funny, Zelenka."
There was no response.
"Look, can you just open the door, I -", he stopped when he heard an alarm on his diagnostic tool going off near the front of the jumper. His heart jumped as he briefly glanced at the tablet that he had still plugged into the sensors.
"What in the - ?" his initial confusion morphed into fear as he watched the power levels in the jumper begin to spike again, just as they had during the other malfunctions. The same strange pattern, except -
"That shouldn't be possible." He watched as the energy readings continued to grow. They were already well above the range of the spikes they had seen before, well above what the ship was meant to handle. It was as if the jumper was manually shutting off every system, and all of the power was being rerouted to -
Oh. Oh no. This was bad. This was very bad.
This wasn't a prank by Zelenka, he realized with growing terror. This was another system failure.
He tapped on his communications device. "Atlantis, this is Doctor McKay," he glanced back at the door, "one of the jumpers in the bay is experiencing - issues," he winced as he tried and failed to keep the rising panic out of his voice. He didn't have time to try to get the door open. Even if he did, he would never get far enough away from the blast, and he couldn't just let the entire jumper bay get destroyed. People could get hurt. He began frantically turning on systems in an attempt to reroute power, but one by one they immediately shut back down as they drained power to the engines.
"I'm requesting an immediate evacuation of the surrounding levels."
The engine wasn't made to handle these kinds of power levels, he thought as he nervously glanced back towards the readings on the tablet. And if he didn't get it shut off soon, the ship was going to blow a hole through this entire section of the city. If he could just reroute power, offload it into some of the other systems, maybe he could prevent the overload from going critical.
He growled with frustration under his breath when there was still no response over his earpiece. The humming sound grew louder, growing into a persistent ring as the ship strained under the sudden power surge.
"McKay to tower, does anyone read me?" he snapped.
Still no answer. "Dammit." There was no time for this. He ripped out his earpiece and threw it down. Whatever was causing the overload must have been interfering with the communications as well.
He knew what he needed to do. He didn't even really have time to think about it, but he briefly considered the fact that it would be a really dumb way to die.
He had to get the jumper as far away from the city as possible.
His hands hovered over the console for a moment and he glanced over at the tablet, still spewing out readings. Sheppard was usually the one to fly on missions, but he knew enough to get by. The strange pattern reappeared in one of the energy spikes, and he stared at it for a moment. He couldn't make heads or tails of it, but right now it seemed to be the least of his worries.
He sat in the pilot's chair and began to grab the controls before quickly dropping them and cursing under his breath - they were hot to the touch. He quickly removed his jacket to shield his hands and watched as the jumper rose from the ground unsteadily, and he briefly thanked the ancients that the bay door opened automatically. He flinched as sparks flew from one of the panels. There wasn't much time to dwell on it.
The alarm on the diagnostic tool continued to drone as the energy levels rose. He activated the engines and made for the open bay doors. At almost the same moment, the control console in front of him blew into a shower of sparks with a loud pop accompanied by the smell of ozone.
The explosion sent him flying back into the air before colliding against the back wall of the jumper with a sickening thud and a grunt. Searing pain bloomed up his left side, seeming to manifest as a black fuzz eating away at the edges of his vision. He tried to ignore it and stand, but suddenly found the strength leaving his legs as his vision wavered in front of him. He had the briefest sensation of the jumper ascending into the air before the darkness overtook him.