There was a sound, far away, a metallic fluttering…
The patch of light coming in through the hatchway was changing shape, growing ragged at the edges.
The spell broke. McKay found himself rocketing forwards, all the tension built up in his limbs released in a sudden, massive burst of energy. “Out!” he howled. “Get out of this goddamn thing now!”
Sheppard didn’t question further, just launched himself towards the hatch. McKay, scrambling forwards on the slick floor, saw him dive out, the filigreed edges of closing hull snagging on his clothes, and then he too was barreling through the opening.
It snapped shut on him, the golden maw closing around him in a hail of razored teeth. He felt the blades of it on his legs as he dropped free, and icy pain as they cut through the skin…
The floor of the hangar hit him squarely across the shoulder blades. He yelped, collapsed in a heap, and rolled over, clutching at his leg. As he did so, he saw the hatchway vanish as if it had never been.
A moment later, and it would have had his foot off.
Blood was soaking out through his right trouser leg. There were long cuts in the fabric where the closing hull panels had caught him. Pain, a growing, throbbing sting, surged up into his gut. “Ow. Son of a… Ow!”
“Are you okay?” Sheppard was next to him, sitting up on the deck. “What the hell just happened?”
Mckay shook his head. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “But I think that ship just tried to kill us.”
Chapter Seven
Fragments
Ever since she had decided to bypass the authority of the IOA, Sam Carter had been preparing three dossiers in parallel. The first was, of course, a series of compiled reports for the Advisory, detailing what progress had been made on the Angelus project. The second, Carter’s dossier for General Landry, contained almost exactly the same information as the first, although the order and intent of its contents varied considerably.
The third, though, was very different. Its contents would have made no sense at all to anyone but Carter herself — in fact, they made little enough to her. And while the first two dossiers were purely digital in form, this last file was strictly old-schooclass="underline" a manila folder containing paper documents, many stapled together or held in place with paper clips.
There were printouts in there, photographs, scans and transcripts, reports and requisitions; a collection of papers that seemed to have no correlation to one another at all. Carter had been putting the file together for two days, now, and she still wasn’t entirely sure why. It was as though the documents it contained were pieces of a puzzle, but a puzzle she wasn’t completely sure even had a solution.
Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the file’s contents needed only to be laid out in the correct order for their meaning to become clear to her. And it was this order that Carter was trying to find when the IOA observer arrived on Atlantis.
Carter had been sitting at her desk, a piece of paper in each hand, trying to read both at once in the hope that somehow they would make more sense together than they did alone. One was a form from one of the Atlantis medical staff, one Nurse Rhonda Neblett, who was reporting the loss, possibly theft, of a series of blood samples. Apparently, even though the blood had been in test tubes and locked in up one of the medical labs, it had vanished overnight.
The test tubes had not. They were exactly as Neblett had left them.
The other sheet contained information that was even more obscure. When Colonel Ellis had reported back to Atlantis after jumping into the M19 system, all the sensor readings gathered during Apollo’s orbits of Eraavis had been compressed into a data packet and sent back through the Stargate. Most of the data was video footage, the now-infamous film of the planet’s scorched and blasted surface. In addition to this, however, were the results of all the chemical, radar and gravimetric scans that the ship had carried out while it was filming. A part of this information, translated into a series of complex graphs and charts, was in front of Carter now.
Much of it was a mystery to her: the chemical sciences were not really her field. But even with her level of knowledge she could see holes in the data. There were elements that should have been in the atmosphere of that slaughtered world that, according to Apollo’s sensor suites, were quite absent.
Together, Carter was certain that the documents in her folder, especially these two, meant something desperately important. Part of her was almost afraid to know what that might be.
A distant rumbling broke into her reverie, making her start slightly. Carter often found the world around her shrink away when she was working on a difficult problem; her perceptions would narrow, collapse into a into a single point encompassing only the mystery she was trying to unravel. It could be useful, that sheer degree of concentration, but there was a downside. When the real world decided it required her attentions, the switch in focus could be startling.
The rumble turned into a rising, rushing snarl. Carter put the papers back into their folder and stood up as the Stargate activated, the growl of the forming event horizon dropping back into a liquid hum. The activation was scheduled, and should have come as no surprise: Andrew Fallon, the IOA’s chosen observer, was on his way through.
Carter put the folder away, and went down to the gate room to meet him. The Stargate had shut down by the time she got there, leaving the observer standing in front of an empty, open ring of stone.
She trotted up to meet him. “Mr Fallon?”
“Colonel Carter.” He extended a hand, and she took it to shake briefly. “That’s an unusual experience, isn’t it?”
“The gate?” Carter looked up at it. “Really? I don’t even notice any more.”
Fallon blinked a couple of times, as if trying to clear his vision. “Well, if you need reminding, it’s like riding Space Mountain in a hamster ball.”
The observer was, in terms of appearance, quite unremarkable; a man of middling height and build, clean-shaven, with graying hair. His voice was soft, and his accent hard to place. He was, Carter judged, a man who was quite used to having people not notice he was there.
To some, that can be a curse. A few, though, turn it into a career.
He had a small suitcase in one hand and a coat draped over his shoulders, which told Carter that he intended to be around for a few days at least. Carter’s heart grew a little heavier to know that, but she should have expected it. Her hope that the IOA’s observer would look around, make his report and then go home again could only have been a vain one.
She dismissed it. “Do you want to settle in? There are spare rooms on the accommodation level — if you like, we can get one set up pretty fast.”
Fallon smiled. “I’d prefer that to happen in the background if at all possible. Midway has me a little stir-crazy, so maybe we could start right away?”
“Of course. My office is just up here.”
She led him back up the stairs and through the control room. He waited at the door to her office for her to go in, and then stood until she sat behind her desk. Then he set down his case, folded the coat neatly on top of it, and sat opposite her.
Precise, thought Carter, summing the man up in that single word. She patched a call down to the techs in charge of the accommodation level and asked them to set a room up, aware that Fallon was watching her carefully the whole time.
“So,” he said, when she was done. “Here we are. The seat of power.”
“I don’t exactly think of it like that.”
“Well, it’s not always a good thing. Like it says in the comics, with great power comes great responsibility. And you do bear a lot of responsibility here, Colonel.” He folded his fingers together, settling back a little into his seat. Carter could feel him weighing her up.