The acidic sound of Rodney’s sarcasm broke his train of thought. With a weary sigh, Sheppard turned from the vista before him and re-entered the Jumper rear bay.
“If I remember,” he said, “it was you who told me to get the hell outta your way while you did… whatever it is you did. Again.”
McKay scowled. “That was then. This is now. And right now, I need your help.”
McKay looked back over the mess of instrumentation cluttering the cramped interior of the Jumper. Most of it had been pulled from panels in the interior wall — the craft looked as if it had had its guts torn out — and the rest had come with McKay, part of the Swiss Army knife of tools and spare parts he always had stowed away somewhere.
“We’ve got some burned-out sections of transmission circuitry here,” said McKay, scowling at the twisted wires in front of them. “Even I can’t do much with those. But, as I like to say on such occasions, where there’s a Rodney, there’s a way. I’ve bypassed a couple of the worst affected systems and rigged up some proxy solutions to cope with the gaps. It’s fiendishly complicated, but I reckon it’s all in place now.”
“Fiendishly complicated, eh?”
McKay gave a smug smile and turned back to the tangle of electronics. Like a worried mother adjusting her son’s clothing on his first day in school, he tweaked at a few nodes and adjusted a pair of esoteric-looking crystals. The mix of Ancient technology and Earth engineering made an unusual pairing, but for all the man’s bluster, Sheppard knew that McKay was the foremost expert on such things in the galaxy.
“Now, I’ve not tried to get everything up and running at once,” said McKay, looking nervously at his jury-rigged contraption. “Just primary life support and some core structural functions. Trying to get it to fly might blow the few remaining circuits for good, so we’ve got to be careful.”
“Careful. Right,” said Sheppard. “What do I do?”
McKay handed him a couple of transparent rods. They were clearly of Ancient design, though they were plugged into a collection of McKay’s own pieces of kit.
“This is a replacement for your normal mode of interface,” he explained. “I don’t want anyone trying to use the main instrument panel yet. Think of it as a bypass into the basic systems of the Jumper.”
Sheppard frowned. He had the uncomfortable feeling he was being wired for an experiment, and wouldn’t have been surprised if the electrodes had given him a shock.
“You’re making me nervous, Rodney,” he said, taking a rod in each hand. “What’s the drill? Click my heels and say ‘There’s no place like home?’”
“Nice,” said McKay. “Now listen. I’m going to feed a little power to the system now. It’s more or less all we’ve got left in the portable units, so it needs to kick-start the reserve packs in the Jumper. When I say ‘Go’, do whatever it is you do that starts-up the Jumper.”
Sheppard lifted an eyebrow. “Whatever it is I do? You want to be more precise?”
McKay scowled. “Just remember, if you leave it too late we’ll lose the power. Lose the power and we could damage the Jumper’s few remaining relays. Damage those, then we…”
“I get it. Flip the switch, Dr Frankenstein.”
McKay shook his head and delved back into the heap of wires. After a few more moments of fiddling and tweaking, he stood back. “Alright,” he said. “Here we go. Three, two, one… zero!”
Nothing happened.
McKay stood back, scratching his head.
“That’s odd. I could’ve sworn — ”
Suddenly, a spasm of power surged through the rods in Sheppard’s hands. Pain bloomed up from the conductor, and he had to fight not to drop them like red-hot pokers. But the flash of power began to ebb almost as soon as it had begun and he scrambled to summon the mental activation commands. Normally, it was so easy. A second or two passed, and the power flow ebbed further.
There was a bang, and one of McKay’s linked machines started to bleed smoke. A power cable snapped free of its moorings and snaked towards Sheppard, spitting sparks. Another unit burst into flame, and a shower of red-hot metal exploded from one of the ceiling compartments.
Sheppard staggered backwards, caught his heel on something and fell heavily. The rods clattered to the floor as he sprawled backwards, cracking his head on a bulkhead, and crumpled to the floor. As abruptly as it had been established, the link severed.
McKay stumbled over to him, waving fronds of smoke away. “Are you OK?”
Sheppard shook his head, groggy. “Yeah, reckon so,” he mumbled. His vision was shaky. Or was that the smoke? “Sorry. Guess I blew it.”
McKay squatted down beside him, looking at Sheppard’s head with some concern. “Well, you certainly produced some fireworks,” he said. “That was unexpected. But otherwise I’m pretty happy with the way things worked out.”
Sheppard stared. “Happy?” He pushed himself upright, shaking his head to clear his vision. There was a throb in the back of his skull, but he ignored it as he looked over at the McKay’s cluster of equipment. Against all his expectations, a series of lights were happily twinkling. There was a faint hum. Systems were operational. There was even a low heat returning to the air around them. “Well, I’ll be…”
McKay patted him on the shoulder. That was unusual, the man was clearly pleased with himself. “See? What did I tell you? Genius.”
Ronon didn’t see his life flash before him. All he felt was frustration. This was a bad way to die.
A few more paces, and he saw the shadow of the beast fall over him. He screwed his eyes closed, gritting his teeth and waiting for the lancing of the hooves.
It never came. There was an almighty bellow, rending the air around him, and the pursuit suddenly stopped. Ronon kept going, legs scything through the snow. Only after he’d covered another few meters did he slow, finally turning to see what had happened. His heart was hammering
The White Buffalo was writing in pain, twisting and shaking its head frantically. A jar’hram protruded from one of its eyes. Orand let slip a cry of triumph, and the hunters cheered. Ronon bent double, leaning the shaft of the jar’hram against his knees, gasping for breath. The cold air made his lungs ache, but he was just glad to be breathing. That had been too risky.
But it wasn’t over. The buffalo was sent mad by Orand’s spear. The bellows became a frenzied trumpeting, and it reared again on its massive hindquarters, waving its head from side to side in agony.
“Fall back!” cried Orand, seeing the danger.
It was too late. Blind to all but its fury and pain, the buffalo crashed back on to four legs and charged headlong at the source of its misery. Orand, now empty-handed, turned to flee. Like Ronon before him, he was too slow, and too near. The Buffalo surged towards him, head low, streaming blood from its sides.
Despite his condition, Ronon stumbled into action again, running back toward the rampaging buffalo. He still had the jar’hram in his hands, though he didn’t trust a throw. There wasn’t time. Orand was just yards away from the slicing, churning hooves, moments from being crushed. All depended on a clean thrust.
Ronon held the jar’hram high over his head with both hands. He closed fast. Half of him screamed to retreat — this was the monster than had just nearly killed him. The other half, the warrior half, kept him going. Never leave your comrades behind. That’s what he’d learned on Sateda, and the principle didn’t change with the planet.
With a cry, he hurled himself into the air, straight at the charging beast. The spear-tip plunged deep into the side of the buffalo. With a sickening lurch, Ronon was torn from his feet. The jar’hram broke free, swaying in the air, and he staggered and fell back into the snow. Hurled to the earth again, he had a confused impression of movement. The musk was almost overpowering. Barely knowing what he was doing, he scrambled backwards through the trodden mire frantically, expecting at any moment to feel the crushing weight of the buffalo come down on him. The sound of the animal’s death throes was deafening, snow falling in heavy gouts around him, thrown up by the frantic wallowing of the buffalo.