Apollo was in a new system, one several light years from M4T. Ellis had chosen it quite carefully; it was reasonably far from any predicted Replicator or Wraith activity, hopefully distant enough to avoid any confrontations. But it was also part of the Stargate matrix.
Although the battlecruiser was fitted with a subspace communications system, Ellis had decided at the beginning of the mission that he would not be using it. Subspace communications could be detected more easily than burst transmissions through a Stargate, and M4T was too close to the enemy battle lines for him to chance that. Retreating to a safe distance and using a local Stargate was the safer option by far — he’d not open subspace communications unless absolutely necessary.
Ellis had hoped that negotiations with the local populace for use of their gate would be swift. Despite what some of the Pegasus expedition seemed to think, neither he nor anyone else had a right to simply beam down to the surface of an alien world and activate a Stargate. However, as it turned out, there were no negotiations to make. The landing party reported no signs of life when they arrived, and were able to dial back to Atlantis unmolested. Still, Ellis remained nervous, and found himself trying to keep the conversation as brief as possible. The sooner Apollo was away from here, the better.
The problem with the lights had unsettled him, far more than it should have done.
“So far we’ve detected no enemy activity, and apart from a slight technical problem we’re good to go here, Colonel. I’d like to be underway as quickly as possible.”
There was a pause. “What problem?” she asked.
“It’s nothing to worry about. Minor pulse in the power grid, but I’ve got a team on it.”
“Would it stop you making a slight detour?”
Ellis rolled his eyes, and tried not to sigh audibly into the pickup. He should have known. “What kind of detour?”
“We’ve traced our new guest’s point of origin,” she said, and he could hear the wariness in her voice. “There are some elements of his story which we’re having a hard time getting to grips with.”
“And?”
“And we need visual confirmation. Colonel, it shouldn’t take much time — I’ll upload the jump solution directly to your helm terminal, but trust me, it’s not too far from where you are right now. I just need you to drop out of hyperspace in low orbit and make a cursory scan of the planet.”
Ellis glanced over at Meyers, but she just gave him a kind of facial shrug. “Can’t you send someone through the gate?” he asked Carter.
“Not any more. Colonel, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. But believe me, this is vital. We need to know what happened down there.”
“The more I hear about this, the less I like it.” He sat back. “Very well, upload that solution. I’ll have Deacon check it out, but if there’s no problem we’ll jump there as soon as I get my landing party back.”
“Thank you.” She sounded genuinely relieved. What was going on back there? “Lower your firewalls and I’ll send the data through.”
The audio feed shut off. Ellis heard a series of faint sounds from Deacon’s board as the hyperspace flightplan was uploaded, then a chime that meant the firewalls were back up. There was almost no chance that anyone would be able to tamper with the radio signal from Atlantis, but almost no chance was not the same as none at all. The Replicators, machines themselves, were masters of electronic warfare, and there was no telling just what the Wraith’s biomechanical data systems were capable of. A piggybacked computer virus could be as deadly a weapon as a railgun or a nuke if it was allowed through Apollo’s defenses.
The thought didn’t give Ellis much comfort. Not a lot did, in these troubled times. “Well?”
Deacon tapped a few keys on his board, then frowned and pushed his spectacles a little higher on his nose. “M19-371,” he replied. “Colonel Carter was right, it’s not too far out of our way. But it is on the other side of Replicator space.”
Ellis stared at him. “We’d need to go through the Replicator battlelines?”
“No, not as such. This jump solution’s been worked out pretty thoroughly.” Deacon nodded. “I think we’ll be okay.”
Ellis could feel his teeth clamping together. “’Slight detour’ my ass,” he muttered. “Okay, plot it out on the tac map. If — and I mean if — I like the look of it, we’ll go on Carter’s goddamn goose chase. In the meantime, call the landing party. I want them off that rock and shipboard right now.”
Much to Ellis’ chagrin, the jump solution was sound. He could find no real objection to the diversion, or at least none he could safely vocalize. He wasn’t sure if the crew would think less of him if he did express his disquiet, but now was not the time to find out. Instead, he gave the order for Apollo to re-enter hyperspace, and tried to put his nameless fears to the back of his mind.
The engineering team he had sent to work on the power grid came back during the flight, reporting that they could find nothing at all amiss with the generators, the power distribution grid, or any of the associated batteries or capacitor banks. Ellis could do nothing but accept their findings — he trusted his engineers implicitly, and if they said there was nothing wrong with those systems then the fault, if there was one, lay elsewhere. Somewhat against his instincts, Ellis was forced to put the problem aside, and told the engineers to stand down, with the proviso that they monitored the grid at regular intervals.
Meyers spent some time reconfiguring the ship’s sensors for ground analysis, while Deacon ran simulations of the course home. Carter would need to know Apollo’s findings as soon as possible, but although M19 had originally been part of the Stargate matrix she seemed certain this was no longer true. Ellis, despite his feelings about the woman, saw no reason to doubt her on that, and had Deacon plot a jump solution that would allow them to call back to Atlantis without raising the wrath of either of the two great serpents.
He could only guess what the map of those two twisting battle lines looked like now, and how many systems had drowned under those bright splashes of monstrous blood.
It was a disturbing notion, and one that threatened to bring back the disquiet that had troubled him earlier. He shook it away. “Deacon, what’s our ETA?”
“We’re four minutes out, sir.”
“Right. Meyers, fire up the sensors as soon as we break out. Tactical sweep first, then orbit-to-ground as soon as we know we’re not going to get jumped on. Helm, have we got an outward-bound yet?”
“It’s queued up and ready to run, sir.”
“Good work.” He sat back in the command throne, reached down to grip the seat arms. The solidity of the metal there, the cool, hard edges under his palms, seemed to steady him. Steel was something he could rely on; smooth tempered steel and trinium armor and the cold iron ingots in the magazines of the railguns. That was something he could put his faith in, right there. It was all the strength he needed, and his fears retreated in the face of it.
“One minute and counting,” said Deacon.
“Weapons hot,” said Ellis calmly. “Shields to max.”
“Forty seconds- What the hell?”
Something on Deacon’s board was buzzing, a low, insistent drone. “Helm, what am I hearing?”
“Glitch in hyperspace navigation,” Deacon said quickly. He was already tapping out command chain, fingers flying over the keys. “I’m compensating… There!”
The drone stopped abruptly. Ellis glared at Deacon. “A glitch?”
“Minor, sir. A percent off on the timing… Breakout in three, two, one.”
The hyperspace tunnel grew an end, a disc of black nothingness that raced towards Apollo, flared, and vanished into darkness. Ellis felt the deck shudder slightly under his feet as the ship re-entered normal space. “Check our position. Run a stellar overlay, make sure we are where we’re supposed to be.”