STARGATE ATLANTIS: The Wild Blue (SGX-05) Read online

  “So you want her to fly back here.” Ronon sounded doubtful.

  “Yes.” Radek turned the tablet so that he could see the plans. “Look, I think the problem is here, with this transformer. It needs to be able to handle higher loads than originally calculated — we did not take into account what would happen with low speed but high reserve power.”

  “We don’t have any of those transformers, do we?” Ronon asked.

  Radek cocked his head in question. “Do you mean here, or at all?”

  “Both.”

  “No. Also to both. McKay will have to build some.” Radek sighed. “I suppose I will have to tell him so.”

  “He’s all yours,” Ronon said.

  ***

  Mel left the cowlings open to let the slight breeze pass through the engines and the compartment that held the connecting conduit, then made a quick circuit of the Rapide, checking for any other damage. Everything else seemed fine, even the tires, despite the grass caught in the landing gear, and she rounded the nose, ducking under the canard, to see Tan sitting on the top of the cabin steps, a Satedan water bottle in her hand. She held it out as Mel approached, and Mel took it with a nod of thanks, downing a mouthful of lukewarm tea.

  “Anything new from the Falls?” She handed the bottle back, and Tan drank in turn.

  “Not yet. I checked in a while ago and they’re still trying to decide what we ought to do.”

  “Right.” There was room on the steps for two, and Mel settled herself one step below the other woman, looking around the clearing. The Plateau was astonishingly beautiful, even by the Satedan standards. The knee-high grass stretched lush and green all the way to the bank of the Tellhart, marked by a scattering of low trees that rattled round green-gold leaves in the wind. A cloud of spray rose like fog from the falls, a rainbow poised in its heart where the setting sun caught it, and beyond the edge of the cliff, the purple-brown rock of the Spur stretched south and east, the darker green of the conifers rising along its flanks. “Did they have any suggestions?”

  Tan breathed a laugh. “It sounds as though Dr. Zelenka and Dr. McKay are fighting that out right now. Are they always like this?”

  “Pretty much,” Mel said. And that was something she wasn’t going to miss, not like she missed electricity and indoor plumbing.

  “Do you think they’re going to come up with an answer?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Mel accepted the thermos again, and took a long drink. “In fact, I think we could probably fly out of here once everything is thoroughly cooled down — we could land back at the Falls, and then Dr. Zelenka could take a look at things instead of having to guess.”

  “I’d like that better than sleeping in the airplane,” Tan said, with a grin, and Mel pushed herself to her feet.

  “Me, too. I’m going to check the conduits. If they’ve cooled down, I’ll radio the Falls and tell them I want to fly back.”

  “Ok.”

  Mel handed back the thermos, and ducked under the wing to check the conduit. It was a lot cooler than it had been, just warm to the touch, and she glanced back at the sun. There were still several more hours of flying time left before she’d have to worry about losing the light, even considering that she was going to be dropping down below the Plateau’s edge. Still, it was probably a good idea to check in with the Falls and make sure she wasn’t missing anything important.

  She heard a thud from the front of the plane, and then a scuffling noise. She froze, wishing she was carrying her service pistol, but it was back in the cabin — the plain had been utterly empty, though she should have considered that there might be wild animals. But Tan would have said if that was likely —

  She was moving in the same instant, fading back between the engines, stooped to duck beneath the Rapide’s belly. She could see boots, more than one pair of them, and then Tan’s feet, stepping away from the stairs. Mel swallowed a curse, furious at herself, at her own carelessness, and heard Tan’s voice sharp with fear.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “That’s our question,” a man answered. “You — I see you under there. Come out, or I’ll shoot your friend.”

  Mel swore again, but there was no place to run. She heard the snap as someone cocked an old-fashioned bolt rifle, and slid hastily out from between the engines. “Don’t shoot! I’m coming.”

  She came wide around the tip of the wing, her hands in the air, to see a group of four men — no, she amended, seeing several more standing well back, there were at least eight of them, and they’d placed themselves so that they could easily cover the area around the plane. They had to have come from the woods, she thought, then snuck up using the plane itself as cover. Probably they had been lying flat in the grass when she made her last walk-around, and it hadn’t occurred to her to look. That was the sort of carelessness that would have gotten her killed back in the Milky Way — would have gotten her killed on any number of Earthside deployments — and she wanted to kick herself. She’d gotten too comfortable on Sateda.

  “What’s the problem?” she asked, and the oldest of the men turned, covering her with his rifle. “We don’t want any trouble —”

  “Shut up,” one of the other men snapped. He looked young and scared, and Mel spread her hands carefully, showing both palms empty. He was the immediate danger, and she did her best to look unthreatening.

  “Who are you?” That was the oldest man. “And what is this — thing?” He jerked his head at the Rapide.

  Mel kept her face expressionless with an effort. When they’d chosen the Rapide, they’d debated about the shape of the fuselage, worried that the sharp nose and rear-facing propellers might look too much like a Wraith Dart. She had argued that the two short winglets that jutted from the plane’s nose made it look different enough, that the design’s other advantages outweighed the potential risk; now she just hoped she hadn’t misjudged things completely.

  “I’m Yustyna Tan,” Tan said, her voice admirably controlled. She nodded toward Mel. “Mel Hocken. That’s our airplane — we’ve come up from the capital, from the new settlement there —”

  “Wraith worshipper!” the young man who had spoken before said, and spat. “Kill them now.”

  “We’re not Wraith worshippers,” Mel began, and Tan interrupted.

  “What are you talking about? We’re from the capital, we’re part of the settlement that’s come back since the Wraith left.”

  “Then what’s this thing?” The old man waved his rifle at the Rapide. “Where did you get it, if not from the Wraith?”

  “We traded for it,” Tan snapped. “Dug salvage for two years, and traded for it, so we could find any other survivors. People like you!”

  “The general radioed that there was an overflight.” That was a dark-skinned man, who had been silent until now. “They did say it didn’t look Wraith — sure didn’t sound like them.”

  “We had an engine problem,” Tan said. “So we landed here to fix it.”

  “There’s nothing left in the capital except the Wraith and Wraith worshippers,” another young man said.

  “There haven’t been Wraith in the capital for ten years,” Tan said.

  “Traded with who?” the old man asked. “Not even the Genii make flying machines.”

  “With the Lanteans,” Tan answered. “With Atlantis —”

  All around them, the strangers froze, and then rifles lifted. “I told you they were Wraith worshippers,” the young man said. “Just shoot them now.”

  “We are not Wraith worshippers,” Tan began, her voice rising, and the dark-skinned man lifted a hand.

  “Wait a minute, now. Just wait a minute. Whatever this thing it, it’s not Wraith work. Look at it.”

  “So they changed things so we wouldn’t suspect,” someone said, from the back of the group.

  The old man shook his head. “The Wraith wouldn’t bother.” He stared at them, frowning, and Mel held her breath. If the old man decided they were Wraith spies, there wasn’t muc
h they could do to save themselves. Maybe she could throw herself into the man closest to her, knock him off balance long enough for Tan to run, but she herself wouldn’t survive, and there wasn’t much of anywhere for Tan to run… It was better than letting herself be shot, but that wasn’t saying much. She was just glad she hadn’t said she was from Atlantis herself.

  “Let the general decide,” the dark man said.

  “We can’t bring them to the mine,” the younger man protested, and the old man shook his head again, more decisively this time.

  “Yar’s right. We’ll bring them back with us.”

  “That’s bringing the Wraith right to us,” someone else said.

  “They won’t be able to follow us on the cliff path,” the old man said.

  The dark man — Yar — sighed. “They might have trackers.”

  “Search them,” the old man ordered, and Mel stood very still as one of the men went through her pockets. For an instant, she hoped he’d leave her multi-tool, but he emptied her pockets of everything, down to the rubber band she had picked up the last time she was on Atlantis.

  “No weapons,” he reported. “Just tools.”

  “Same here,” the man who had searched Tan said, and the old man nodded.

  “Right. You’ll come with us. Do exactly as we say, and nobody gets hurt.”

  “Our people will be looking for us if we don’t report in,” Mel said. “We don’t want trouble — we came up here hoping to find people — but they won’t be happy if anything happens to us.”

  Yar shrugged. “Then do what Jas says.” He gestured with his rifle, and Mel fell into step behind nearest Satedan, Tan following a few steps behind.

  “I don’t understand,” she began, and Mel shrugged.

  “Let’s hope we can talk some sense into this general of theirs.”

  “No talking,” Yar said, and Mel concentrated on the trail. Once they reached the general, it shouldn’t be that hard to convince him of their good intentions. Surely.

  ***

  “No,” McKay said, his voice loud in the earpiece, “no, I don’t think it’s the transformer because that isn’t a transformer. Possibly the modulator could be redesigned to either accommodate lower power transfers as needed or a larger heat sink could be installed.”

  Radek took a deep breath. “Ok, power modulator, then. And, yes, it seems as though it needs to be redesigned, as Mel — Colonel Hocken — needs to be able to fly at low power for extended periods.”

  “Yes, ok, I’ll work on that. But as a temporary fix, you should be able to drill holes in the fuselage to allow more air flow and thus more cooling.”

  “I had thought of that,” Radek said. “And I will probably do that if we can’t find another answer — or if you don’t come up with something by the time the plane is back here.”

  “Which I may very well have done, yes,” Rodney said. “I just — look, the timing’s not wonderful, ok? But I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you,” Radek said, and cut the connection.

  “Any luck?” Ronon asked, and Radek managed a nod.

  “Yes. He will work on the problem. And we have stopgap measures if he doesn’t produce new transformers — modulators, whatever, it is the same thing regardless of what Rodney says — right away.” Radek gave a rueful smile. “It will bother him, and he will work on it all night, and you know that first thing in the morning we will receive a message saying he has fixed the problem and why didn’t we just wait for him to fix it? But he will get the job done.”

  “Will it work?” Ronon lowered his voice so that neither Wood nor the two Satedans drinking tea at the far end of the lobby could hear. “I mean, no disrespect to McKay, but he isn’t always right.”

  He just thinks he is. Radek swallowed the words because they were no longer true. Rodney had changed during the years he’d spent on Atlantis, become braver and more thoughtful — in another man, I would call it humility, Radek thought, but Rodney was never humble. Rather, he considered the consequences more thoroughly, without losing the ability to make those startling jumps of something that wasn’t logic at all, but unconstrained genius. “No, but when he is wrong, it’s because he skipped over something simple to get to the part he thought was interesting. He’s gotten better about that. And this is his project. He was very pleased to have figured out to adapt the stripped-down generator to the Rapide. He won’t allow it to fail.”

  Ronon nodded slowly. “And you think you can get them back here before nightfall?”

  “As long as the transformer cools completely, and there’s no reason it wouldn’t.”

  “I wish we had those satellites everyone is always talking about,” Ronon said. It was so much what Radek had been thinking himself that he blinked in surprise. “Or Atlantis’s sensors.”

  “Yes, I agree. If there are going to be regular flights, some better weather forecasting system is required.” Satellites would be the easiest thing, Radek thought. You wouldn’t even need rockets, just place them in orbit from a puddle jumper —

  “Mr. Dex?” Wood frowned at her console, working the dials. There was a note in her voice that made the hair rise at the back of Radek’s neck.

  “Yeah?” Ronon was at her side in three long strides, and Radek followed.

  “The Rapide was supposed to check in fifteen minutes ago,” Wood said. “Nothing. And I’ve been trying to raise them for the last five minutes, and I’m not getting any answer.”

  “Keep trying,” Ronon said, and looked at Radek.

  “It’s possible that they had to switch off the generator completely,” Radek said, “though why they would have to do that now, I can’t think. But without standby power, they don’t have radio.”

  “Not a weak signal, anything like that?” Ronon asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Wood answered. “We had ten-of-ten reception every other time, and nothing’s changed.”

  “Ok. Keep trying to raise them,” Ronon said. He reached for the spare radio, switched it on. “I’m calling the capital.”

  “We don’t know anything,” Radek began, not quite wanting to say do you really want to upset the governor now, and Ronon shrugged as though he’d read the thought.

  “I was thinking we might be able to send a drone.”

  “That is a good thought,” Radek said.

  Ronon adjusted the radio’s frequency settings, and Radek reached for his tablet again, calling up the transformer schematics. They needed to be able to handle more power, but couldn’t be more than a few centimeters larger, or very much heavier at all…

  “Zelenka.”

  Radek looked up at Ronon’s call. “Yes?”

  “Still no answer from Hocken. And your sergeant says the drones can’t make it to the Plateau even if they use the most direct route. Not enough fuel. I’m going to ask Atlantis to send a puddle jumper.”

  “Yes,” Radek said again, feeling the familiar crawl of fear down his spine. “Yes, that would be wise.”

  ***

  It was only a couple of hours before the puddle jumper eased into its landing spot in front of the power station, but Ronon had to grit his teeth to keep from asking where they’d been. He knew that they’d come as fast as they could, but it might not be fast enough, not when they didn’t know what had happened to the Rapide… The back of the puddle jumper came down, and Lorne emerged, followed by one of the Marine sergeants.

  “Ronon! Any news?”

  “Still nothing.” Ronon glanced at the sun, dropping fast now toward the treetops. “We’ve got about two hours of daylight left.”

  “Plenty of time,” Lorne said. “And the good news is, we don’t really need it. The sensors will pick up life signs even in the dark.” He paused. “I brought a response team just in case.”

  Ronon could see them, three more Marines in full battledress sitting patiently inside the jumper. “Yeah. Couldn’t hurt. Though —Tan said they’d spotted signs of a settlement, but that was below the cliff edge. It’s
a big cliff.”

  Lorne glanced sideways at the Falls, the spray at the top just catching the last of the sunlight. “So I see.”

  Movement caught Ronon’s eye, and he looked around to see Zelenka coming briskly toward them, tablet tucked under his arm. “Are we ready?” he asked. “Let us not waste the light.”

  For a moment, Ronon considered telling him to stay, or at least to put on armor. Except that the scientists hadn’t brought full military gear, and there wasn’t time to find something to borrow that would fit him. He realized abruptly that Lorne was waiting for him to make the decision, and nodded. “Let’s go.”

  The puddle jumper rose quickly up the cliff face, Lorne taking it close enough to the Falls that the edge of the spray struck the windscreen. They emerged into the last of the sunlight, and Lorne adjusted the controls to leave them hovering over the top of the Falls. To the north, Ronon saw, the Tellhart narrowed toward the horizon, its wide surface mirroring the sun; to the west, there was a clearing and more thick woods — the Ezes had come down the Tellhart’s western bank, he remembered. “Hocken landed on the east side.”

  “Yeah.” Lorne frowned at the controls, talking to them the way the Ancestors had done, and a moment later a map appeared, a light flashing in its center. “Ok, sensors are picking up the Rapide’s beacon.”

  He turned the jumper eastward, putting the sun at their backs. They were flying over another open clearing, a long meadow that spread between the cliff’s edge and the forest to the north, and the sun caught something small and white in the distance. Ronon pointed.

  “There.”

  “I see it.” Lorne looked down at his controls again. “I’m not picking up any life signs.”

  “None at all?” Zelenka asked sharply, leaning forward between the pilots’ seats.

  Lorne shook his head. “Nothing.”

  As they came closer, it was unmistakably the Rapide, sitting alone and silent in the sea of grass. Lorne circled twice, then looped toward the forest and back again, and finally set the jumper down neatly next to the Rapide. Ronon levered himself out of his seat, drawing his weapon, and joined the Marines at the rear door. The door lifted, letting in the peppery smell of the grass and a fainter scent of pitch from the conifers, but nothing moved in the fading light.