She spun around, trying to catch a glimpse of what was terrifying the people. There was movement, but it was impossible to see. She had an almost overwhelming urge to spray bullets indiscriminately at the shadows. Only her training and discipline prevented her. Why was she so scared? Screams echoed down the narrow tunnels, heightening the febrile atmosphere. Miruva had fallen to her knees and had her hands over her ears.
“Miruva!” shouted Teyla. “Stand up! I need your — ”
But then a shuddering wave of nausea reared up inside her. She felt her vision dim and her head throbbed. Teyla reeled, and felt the P90 slip from her fingers. She fought to retain consciousness, but something was pulling the life out of her.
For a brief moment she thought she saw something. A face: metallic, cold, severe. It seemed to be leaning over her. There was something familiar about it, something very familiar…
But then the darkness took her. The screams and wails of the Forgotten echoed away and Teyla collapsed. Her last awareness was of Miruva calling her name, but then she fell heavily and knew nothing more.
McKay pushed a series of panels back into place. One of them fizzed and popped back out again. The others stayed where they were and a propulsion sub-system came back online. A bank of lights illuminated, went red, and flashed out again. The system shut down and a sigh shuddered through the engine chamber below.
Rodney scowled. He felt like he was trying to reconstruct the Jumper more or less from scratch. Using novelty tools out of a kindergarten. As soon as one thing went right, another would go wrong. Even for someone with as much faith in his own abilities as he, there were moments when he wondered if he was attempting the impossible. At least the heating was still working. He’d just about managed to take off a top layer of furs.
Sheppard stomped back into the Jumper after a quick recon around the vessel, stamping snow from his boots. “Rodney, I need an sitrep.”
Irritated, Rodney put his work down. “I’d go a lot quicker if I could work for five minutes without — ” He stopped, catching the anxious look on the Colonel’s face. “What is it?”
“Storm coming,” said Sheppard. “You don’t really want to see it. Sky’s pretty black. A few more minutes, then we need to bail.”
McKay let slip a despondent groan. The sound was slightly more despairing than he’d intended, but it captured his mood pretty well. “I could use a few more hours,” he said. It sometimes seemed like his whole life was spent asking for a few more hours when he only ever ended up being given seconds. Scotty could go eat his heart out.
Sheppard glanced at the open rear doors. The wind was picking up already. He unclipped his radio.
“Ronon? You copy?”
Silence.
“Dammit, Ronon,” Sheppard muttered to himself. “I told you to stay in touch.”
“Could be the storm,” said McKay, looking up from his work.
“Yeah, I figured. Where are we up to with Frankenstein’s monster?”
“You’re still on that riff, eh?” McKay replied. “Here’s the good news: life support’s back up. But I’m not sure for how much longer. We’ve got fairly consistent power and the reserves are recharging. But I’m a long way off getting the drive systems online, and we’ve got no back-up at all. Another day, perhaps two, and I might be able to give you a working Jumper. But I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.”
Sheppard frowned. “That’s not good.”
As if to reinforce his pessimism, suddenly there was a great crack from beneath them. Sheppard staggered and reached for a bulkhead.
The Jumper shifted and came to rest an inch or so lower. There was a echoing sound from far beneath them — it took a long time to die away. Neither McKay nor Sheppard said a word until the noise had faded. They both knew what it meant.
“Uh, should we really have the heating on in here, Rodney?”
McKay felt a twang of irritation, the same feeling he got whenever the non-scientists on the mission tried to tell him his job. “For God’s sake, nothing’s escaping through the hull of the Jumper,” he said. “These things are designed to fly through space, as you might have observed.”
Sheppard held up his hands. “OK. My bad. No need to get snitchy.” He looked warily at the open rear doors. “But you gotta see the problem. If this ice keeps moving, we’re gonna have to think about leaving the Jumper behind.”
“What?” McKay fixed him with an incredulous stare. “Leave the Jumper and walk home?”
“Gate’s on the surface.”
McKay rolled his eyes. “Oh, I see,” he said, caustically. “We don’t need to worry about the fact that the gate’s got no power. Because, if getting this thing working is a problem, getting a 10,000 year old experimental Stargate operational will just be a cinch. Ignoring the fact that it’s got no DHD and the only means of dialing we have is right here. And, above all, we don’t need to worry about materializing in the middle of a wormhole in just a HAZMAT suit and a prayer, because that never happens, does it?”
The first flush of anger rose in Sheppard’s face. Words began to form in his mouth that began with Now listen, you little…
Before he could speak there was another booming crack. This time it came from above, rather than below. The storm was right above them. The Jumper began to sway slightly as the wind outside rose in speed.
“Let’s do this another time,” Sheppard snapped. “Secure this thing as best you can, we gotta go. Now.”
For once, McKay said nothing. There was a time for bickering, and this wasn’t it. He scrambled to get the haphazard systems ready for a period of hibernation. Most things responded as he expected them to. Control over the rear door was, predictably, still flaky.
“OK, you should get out of here now,” said McKay, grimly. “I’m going to have to set the rear hatch to close from here, and then try and get out before it shuts. Things are still a bit… basic.”
“You want me to handle that?” Sheppard looked doubtful. “You’re not exactly quick on your feet.”
McKay gave a dry smile. “Thanks, but no thanks. As if you’d know where to start with this stuff.”
Sheppard took one look at the morass of wires and electronics tumbling out of the Jumper’s internal structure, and the argument seemed to have been made. “OK, but be quick,” he said, turning to head out into the gathering storm. “I don’t want to have to break you out of this tin can on my own. I left my opener on Atlantis.”
The Jumper swayed again. The storm was now howling outside, and McKay could feel the snow thumping against the sides of the vessel. Sheppard leapt out of the Jumper and disappeared at once. As he did so, McKay made a few last-minute adjustments. Then he took a deep breath, got into position and set the door to close.
He scrambled to his feet as quickly as his heavy furs would allow and sped towards the door. As he did so, a gout of crimson smoke escaped from one of the pistons driving the doors. The exit suddenly began to shrink rapidly as the heavy external panel started to slam.
“Oh, sweet quantum fluctuations…” McKay yelled, flinging himself forward.
He managed to get his head and shoulders out of the gap, but the rapidly ascending doors clamped firmly on his heavily-clad waist. He felt the metal grip his body like a pair of very heavy, very uncomfortable calipers.
“John!” he cried, though his voice was swept away by the wind. The Colonel was nowhere to be seen, and the air was rapidly filling with snow and sleet.
McKay wriggled furiously and made some headway. The door mechanism, still imperfectly powered, was struggling to close properly, With a final heave, he thrust himself out of the grip of the Jumper and on to the snow beyond. Behind him, the door slammed shut. A row of lights flickered briefly and then extinguished. The Jumper was sealed. As long as the ice sheet beneath didn’t give way, it would be safe.
Unlike him. Sheppard hadn’t been exaggerating about the storm. The entire horizon was dominated by a filthy wall of near-black cloud. The wind screamed around him, throwing snow into the air, and visibility was reducing rapidly. Even within his layers of buffalo hide, McKay shuddered. He’d gotten used to the warmth of the Jumper’s internal heating very quickly.