“Rodney took the ZPM,” John said. “We’re in a lot of trouble.”
Chapter Nine
Aftermath
John carried his cup of coffee to the head of the table, taking a certain morbid pleasure in seeing how many people looked just as bad as he felt. Radek looked worse, but that didn’t really count. He doubted the engineer had slept more than a few hours since the attack, and he’d been pretty heavily stunned into the bargain. Keller looked like death warmed over, too, though these days that metaphor didn’t work the way it used to. Ronon didn’t look as though he’d gotten any rest, either, sprawled sideways in his chair with a stare that suggested he was actually sleeping with his eyes open. Caldwell and Carter both looked better — as though they’d had a chance to get some sleep and a decent shower — and Teyla was as sharp as ever, but Beckett clearly hadn’t shaved since the attack. John ran his own hand over his chin, hoping that Woolsey was right and cleanliness was next to leadership, and took a last long swallow of the coffee.
“OK,” he said, and was still a little startled when everyone looked at him expectantly. “So where are we? Keller?”
“Anders died last night,” the doctor answered.
John bit his lip. That wasn’t unexpected, the guy had been fed on pretty badly before his buddies managed to kill the drone, but he’d still hoped maybe they could do something.
“But I think everyone else is going to pull through,” Keller went on. “That makes ten dead, and twenty-four injured. Most of those are fairly minor — people who were stunned and fell down stairs, a couple of sprains and some bad bruises from the hand-to-hand fighting.” She glanced at her notes. “Also Dr. Meyers got trapped in a room with something that he’s allergic to, and had a bad asthma attack, but he’s pulling out of that nicely. We have three people more seriously hurt, enough to keep them out of action for a while, but I expect all of them to make a full recovery.”
John nodded. That was about what you’d expect with the Wraith: if they didn’t get close enough to feed on you, their main weapons weren’t lethal. “How’s Lorne?”
“Still unconscious. He has a concussion on top of the broken leg. We set the leg last night, put in pins, and I’m waiting to see how it holds before I consider more surgery.”
That wasn’t all that surprising either, considering the way the jumper had looked. He was mostly just glad Lorne hadn’t been hurt worse. What was surprising was how confident Keller sounded. Usually she was stopping and starting, as though she was double-thinking every word. “What about Rizkala and Jovell?”
“Rizkala is doing much better than expected,” Keller answered. “To the point where I’m not planning to do surgery just yet. If he continues the way he’s been going, it’s not going to be needed. Jovell — ” She hesitated then, shook her head. “His wrist was pretty well shattered. He’ll need at least one more surgery here, and then — ” She stopped abruptly, as though she’d just remembered that they wouldn’t be able to evacuate him through the gate. “But none of these are life-threatening.”
Just career-threatening, John thought, if they couldn’t get the gate open.
Keller folded her own hands on the table’s gleaming surface, fingers carefully interlaced. “I’d like — If Colonel Caldwell’s medical officer has the room, I’d like to discuss transferring Jovell over to Daedalus. Even if Daedalus isn’t leaving this minute, it’s still the fastest way we have right now to evacuate anyone who needs treatment on Earth.”
“Whatever you need, Doctor,” Caldwell said, and John nodded.
“Go ahead.”
“Then that’s everything,” Keller said. “As far as casualties go.”
She was handling it well, John thought. It had to have hit her harder than anyone, knowing that Rodney had returned, a Wraith and an enemy. “Thanks, Doctor,” he said aloud, and took a careful breath. “Dr. Zelenka?”
Radek gave a mirthless smile. “Rodney took the ZPM. Which has some fairly bad implications for what he can do with it, but I am concentrating for now on what it does to us. Which is also fairly bad. We cannot run the shield or power the weapons chair, and we cannot dial the Milky Way. With naquadah generators, we can dial destinations in Pegasus, but we are effectively cut off from home. Without a shield.”
“What’s the good news?” Caldwell said, under his breath, and Radek looked at him.
“That was the good news. The bad news is that we still have no way to stop Rodney from accessing the city systems. Mrs. Miller has helped us find a number of his back doors, but I doubt we have found them all. We are successfully maintaining an open wormhole, currently dialed through to our alpha site, but we do not have enough power to do this forever. Not to mention that we may want to communicate with the rest of the galaxy at some point.”
That was laying it out with a vengeance, John thought. “How long can we hold the wormhole open?”
“Dialing every thirty-eight minutes — ” Radek shrugged. “Days, certainly. Perhaps weeks.”
“If I might interject here?” Carter said, and both John and Radek nodded. “We should probably cut the wormhole a little before the actual thirty-eight-minute limit — some random and varying number of seconds before, so Rodney can’t predict when the wormhole might go down.”
“That is a good thought,” Radek said, and reached for his radio. “Excuse me.” He turned away from the table, speaking quietly into his headset, and John looked around the table again.
“There’s one other thing that we need to consider,” Beckett said. He had been very quiet until now. “Rodney flew the jumper.”
There was a little silence, and John frowned. “So? We know Rodney has the ATA gene — ” He stopped abruptly, and Beckett nodded.
“Aye. Whatever they’ve done to him hasn’t changed that. He can still use the Ancient technology.”
“This just gets better and better,” Caldwell muttered.
“Hold on,” Keller said. “This — I mean, it’s not good news, but it’s also — we can maybe tell something about how the Wraith transformed him. We’ve got some actual data to work with, here.”
Beckett nodded slowly. “That’s true.”
“OK,” John said. “Let’s hold that for later. Right now, our main concern has to be keeping the city safe. Ideas?”
There was a discouraging silence, and then at last Radek shrugged one shoulder. “Well, there is the obvious solution. Build a mechanical iris, like the one on Earth.”
“Out of what?” Caldwell asked. He looked at Carter. “That thing’s made of what, titanium alloy? It’s not like we’ve got a whole lot of it just lying around.”
Radek shrugged again. “We have no shield. Even if we had another ZPM, we cannot trust that Rodney would not be able to access the city systems again. A mechanical iris is the safest thing I can think of.”
“Radek’s right,” Carter said. “It’s a logical solution. So the next question is, do we have — or can we get — the amount of titanium we’re going to need?”
“There is none in the city,” Radek said. “Not that we brought with us, anyway. Perhaps there are a few pieces of plate left over from the last time Daedalus was repaired here.”
“I’ve used most of my spares already,” Carter said. “And frankly I’m not keen to give up all my repair options.”
“Me, neither,” Caldwell said.
“Are you sure there’s nothing in the city?” Ronon asked. “You said you haven’t really looked at most of it.”
“It’s possible there is something in the parts we have not explored thoroughly,” Radek said. “We can certainly set teams looking.”