Some of the old guard tended to be a little resentful of Caldwell, wanting to close ranks against an outside authority, against someone who hadn't spent the last year isolated and under the constant threat of the Wraith. Carson didn't think it was a fair or logical attitude, but he didn't know Caldwell very well, and the man was hard to read. That might be part of the problem. We've all been living in a close-knit little community for so long, we're too used to each others' ways. An outsider, especially someone who was seen as a potential rival to Elizabeth's and Sheppard's authority, was bound to have a hard row to hoe.
And there was a rumor that Carson kept hearing, that Caldwell had suggested Sheppard had killed Colonel Sumner unnecessarily, that Sheppard could have rescued him if he bothered. If the rumor was true, it would explain a great deal of the tension. The man should review the report on poor Colonel Everett, Carson thought uncharitably. Or stop by the medlab the next time Carson and Biro were autopsying a Wraith victim. Carson shook off that unpleasant image. He told Lorne, "Perhaps when we come out of hyper there'll be a message from home, saying they arrived safely sometime after we left."
He saw Lorne smile wryly. He supposed he had been sounding a bit like a Pollyanna again. Carson sighed. "I know, I know, I'm something of an optimist. It helps balance out Rodney."
"I wish I was an optimist," Lorne admitted. "I should have-" He cut himself off with grimace, and put more sugar in his coffee.
Carson watched him a moment, then said firmly, "You didn't abandon your post, lad. You had to get the others out, and that needed both jumpers. What were you going to do, hide out there alone? That wouldn't have done anybody any good."
"I know, Doc, there wasn't a choice." Lorne still didn't say it like he believed it. He shook his head. "If we don't find them-"
Then Carson felt the low steady thrum of the ship's engines change in pitch. After all these long hours en route, he hadn't been aware of the engine noise at all, but the slight change made him sit up straight. The Daedalus was coming out of hyperspace. Startled, Lorne set his mug down with a thump and checked his watch, saying, "We're early."
"Thank God for that." By the time Carson shoved out of his chair, Lorne had already raced down the corridor. Carson caught up with him at the lift and they made it onto the bridge together. Heart pounding, Carson followed Lorne through the maze of consoles and suspended screens to the forward area. Colonel Caldwell was on his feet, watching one of the console screens over the operator's shoulder.
The view out the big port didn't tell Carson much. He could see the moon, presumably the correct moon, hanging red and full in the lower quarter of the port.
Caldwell glanced up at their arrival. "We've got a little problem, gentlemen."
"Colonel?" Lorne asked warily. Carson swallowed frustration, supposing that if the sensors had picked up puddlejumper wreckage and human bodies, the man wouldn't use quite those words to announce it.
Caldwell folded his arms, frowning at the screen. "We've found the Quantum Mirror, exactly as described. But there's no sign of the jumper."
Major Meyers at the right hand control board touched some buttons, studying her screen carefully. "Sir, I'm still not picking up any life signs, and there are no ships in the area.
"Not even Wraith?" Beckett asked, feeling his heart sink.
"We've identified some orbital debris that looks like it might be from darts, several of them." Caldwell saw Carson's expression. He added, "The Mirror is interfering with our sensors, Doctor, and we just got here. At the moment, all it means is that we've got a lot of searching to do."
Carson swallowed in a dry throat, and nodded. It didn't mean they had all been captured-taken-by Wraith. It just meant that they had had to go to ground somewhere, to hide in some other part of the system.
One of the airmen said, "Sir, we've got a sensor scan of the structure."
Caldwell stepped over to the man's station. "Let's see it.
The image that formed on the screen could have been a weather satellite's view of a massive hurricane. It seemed to cover half the moon's surface, the sensors rendering the detected energy into angry swirls of color, spiraling outward. It looked like the images the jumpers had collected of the killer storm that had nearly destroyed Atlantis, like a powerful malevolent entity. Baffled, Carson said, "What the bloody hell is that?"
Lorne shook his head a little, staring incredulously. "That's not the-"
Caldwell's expression was grim. "That's the Mirror."
"Colonel, answer me! Are you all right? Colonel!"
John pried his eyes open. Rodney was leaning over him, pale and wide-eyed with anxiety. "Yeah. What?" Groggy and finding it difficult to think, John couldn't figure out why his perspective was so skewed. He was lying on his side, on a painfully knobby surface, but he could see part of the cockpit's ceiling past Rodney's head, and he didn't think he had ever seen it from this angle before. It was like an Escher print or a Twilight Zone episode. And Rodney was clinging to the pilot's seat like he needed it to keep himself upright, and his breathing mask was down around his neck. John didn't seem to be wearing his anymore either, though he could feel the tank jammed into his back. He asked vaguely, "You okay?"
"No, no, I'm not, actually." Rodney laughed a little, with just a touch of hysteria. "But back to my original question-No, never mind. First things first. You need to get off the console."
"The what?" John's head hurt and his ears were ringing, but he could hear Teyla and Miko in the rear cabin. Miko sounded frightened and shaky, and there was a note of urgency in Teyla's voice that worried him a lot. He tried to sit up, and that was when he realized the thing his knee was jammed against was the jumper's DHD, and it suddenly dawned on him why everything looked so strange. He was on top of the control console, wedged between it and the port. And the jumper was sitting at an odd angle, tilted slightly forward. Oh crap, we crashed. No, something the Mirror? grabbed us off the roof. He looked over his shoulder, out the port. It was dark outside, but the cockpit's emergency lighting fell on a dart smashed up against the jumper's nose. A Wraith arm, unmoving, was sticking up out of the wreckage, the hand clenched as if grasping for something. John blinked. "Uh o.
"Yes, that's a brief but accurate summation." Rodney took John's arm, trying to pull him upright. "We're on the Mirror platform, and the deck has a couple of feet of incline, so I suspect there's another dart underneath us. The inertial dampeners must have held on until the last possible instant or we'd all be smashed to bloody pulp, you especially. Next time you tell us to strap in, you should actually do it too."
"Rodney, is he all right?" Teyla called from the rear cabin.
"Not really, no," Rodney called back.
"I'm fine." John shoved away from the port, then gasped as little knives stabbed his back, ribs, and right knee all at once. He gritted his teeth against the pain and said, "Anybody hurt?"
Still trying to pull John off the panel, Rodney winced. "Radek and Ronon didn't finish strapping in either. Radek's still unconscious but Ronon's coming around." Rodney braced a foot on the base of the DHD, grabbed John by the tac vest and hauled him up. "Oof, you're heavy when you're half-conscious," he gasped. "And trust me, this is not a good time for my back to go out. Did I mention there are Wraith everywhere? There are life signs and dart energy signatures all around us."
We could be seriously screwed here, John thought, grabbing the pilot's seat and dragging himself upright and off the console. The blood rushed from his head and he squeezed his eyes shut, holding onto Rodney, riding out the wave of dizziness. His side hurt in one particular spot when he took more than a shallow breath, and he knew he must have a couple of cracked ribs. "Do we have the cloak, weapons, radio?"