“What else have we got?” Lorne wondered.
Teyla raised a hand. “Colonel, I can organize a team of message runners. It would not be unlike the system we used on Athos — all I will need are some volunteers who are quick on their feet.”
Carter nodded. “That’s a great idea. Get together with Major Lorne. I’m sure you can rustle up a few sprinters.”
“Count on it,” grinned Lorne. “But Colonel, you mentioned information being of tactical use to Angelus. Does that mean we’re treating him as an enemy now?”
“Absolutely.” Carter glanced around the table. “He can fake images, project false test readings, everything. He somehow managed to conjure up twenty seconds of surveillance camera footage specifically designed to sow distrust and paranoia among us… Basically, we can’t be sure of anything we thought we knew about him. It’s probable that he’s not only been lying to us since he arrived, but that all the medical tests we did on him showed false results too.”
“So he might not be an Ancient?”
“That’s right. Everything we thought we knew about him is thrown out as of now. We operate on the following assumptions: something hostile has infiltrated the city and locked itself into an area of the west pier. It’s drawing power from the grid, it’s hacked into the communications network, and it might well have subverted whatever Atlantis personnel are in there with it — from what I’ve been able to get out of Cassidy, the techs I assigned to Angelus are…” She paused, trying to translate the physicist’s terrified story into something she could use here. “Are probably no longer human.”
Lorne sat forward. “So what do we do?”
“Our priority is to get into the lockdown area and neutralize whatever threat we find there. Right now we’ve got two ideas about that, but I’d welcome more.”
“What two have you got?” asked Keller.
“Firstly, we’ve got a team of engineers trying to cut their way in through one of the blast doors. According to Major MacReady the oxy-acetylene torch hasn’t even scorched them, but we’re rigging up a high-density plasma unit right now.”
“It’s a little difficult,” Zelenka said, “because the power is out around the lockdown area, as opposed to just inside it. But we’re setting up a naquadah generator to run the plasma torch, which should give us a real chance.”
“And if that doesn’t work, we’ve managed to identify a possible way in through an inter-level crawlspace.” Carter wished she’d brought the systems diagram Zelenka had printed out for her earlier. It would have made her look more confident, if nothing else. Given her something to do with her hands. “MacReady has a team ready to go in through one of the ventilation flues and into a space between the lab ceiling and the deck above it.”
“Colonel,” frowned Lorne, “we did a security evaluation of the interfloor spaces about six months ago, when they were first discovered. There’s really not a lot of room in there.”
“I know.” Carter had studied the diagram in great detaiclass="underline" the crawlspace, where it existed at all, was cramped, barely tall enough to lie down in and criss-crossed with power conduits, atmospheric ducting and all manner of unidentified systems. “Believe me, it’s not a job I’d want. But if we can’t cut our way in, we’ve really got no choice.”
“Colonel Carter,” said Teyla. “Perhaps it would be better to send someone into the crawlspace while the doors are being cut. The attempt to burn through would make a useful diversion.”
“Actually, that’s worth a try.” Carter stood up. “I’m heading down there right now. I’ll tell MacReady to proceed with both at the same time. Anything else?”
“There’s one more thing,” said Zelenka, hesitantly. “We’ve recently been monitoring the city’s seismic detectors — they’re normally used to detect undersea quakes, as an advanced warning against tsunami. But with the gain up, we’ve gotten some vibration from inside the lockdown zone.”
“What kind of vibration?”
“I’m not sure,” the scientist said. “But it almost sounds like hammering.”
Someone handed Carter a tactical vest when she reached the gallery. She shrugged into it, sealed it up over her jacket, feeling the integral slabs of Kevlar pressing into her from its pockets. It was a safety measure, just in case anyone did come out of the lockdown zone shooting, although something told Carter that was just about the least likely thing that could happen. Besides, with the number of armed marines MacReady had stationed around the blast doors, anything that did try to come out and cause trouble would be shredded by weapons fire before it could blink.
There was no harm in taking care, though. By the same token, Carter had recently taken to wearing her sidearm all the time.
MacReady was waiting for her at the end of the gallery. He was a wide, blocky man, with rough features and graying hair under a battered forage cap. The battledress jacket he wore under his tacvest made him look bulky, almost clumsy, but Carter knew that was an effect he cultivated on purpose.
“Colonel,” he said flatly, nodding a greeting. “I’ve spread the word about the comms net. We’ll be passing notes like schoolgirls from now on in.”
“Now there’s an image,” smiled Carter. “Is the plasma unit ready to go?”
“Almost.” He led her over to the end of the corridor, now plugged with the burnished silver slabs of the blast doors. There was an irregular burn mark marring the metal surface to one side, but when he brushed at it the carbon simply wiped away. “I’ve got to say, Colonel, I don’t even think a plasma torch is gonna to mark this.”
He was almost certainly right, Carter thought. Many of the corridors and walls in Atlantis were lined with a superconducting alloy, and the blast doors didn’t appear to be any different. If that was the case, heat from any kind of cutting equipment would simply be absorbed and shunted away quicker than it could ever be poured in. Somewhere in the lockdown a heat-sink of some description had probably warmed up a little in response to the technicians’ efforts, but nothing else would have changed.
Hopefully, though, Angelus would notice the attempt to cut in. And it might draw his attention away from the three marines already clambering into the nearest ventilation flue.
They were being helped in even as Zelenka’s technicians returned with their plasma torch. All of them were small, slender; one was a man, the other two were women. There had been more than three volunteers to start with, but not many on MacReady’s watch could have fitted into the crawlspace.
Carter couldn’t see their faces. Although they had stripped out of their tacvests and uniform jackets, they all wore sets of night-vision goggles with headset communications links. Each had a pistol duct-taped to one thigh, and the sleeves of their t-shirts had been taped down too. Hopefully, that would reduce the chances of the marines becoming snagged as they struggled through the crawlspace.
Just watching them made Carter feel slightly claustrophobic. She didn’t envy them their task one iota. “Major, they know not to use those headsets, right?”
“They know.”
“Unless they really have to.”
“Colonel, they know,” he said gently. “I don’t like the thought of it either. Hell, if I went where they’re going I’d get stuck like a tick.”
She nodded silently, then turned her head slightly away as the plasma torch lit up. One of the technicians — Norris, she guessed, although both men wore full-face welding masks — was aiming the anode at the door’s surface, bringing it close. The tiny ball of searing blue light at its tip flared as he increased the power, sending hard-edged stripes of light and shadow fluttering around the gallery.
The last of the three marines was fully inside the vent, now. Carter could hear distant thumps and scuffles past the electric fizzing of the plasma. As they faded, she found herself hoping that they would sound less loud inside the lockdown than they did in the gallery.