"No, we have nothing, we're down to emergency power." Rodney's voice was hard, edgy with fear. "The Mirror's field may have overloaded the crystals in the main bus. I have to check under the console. Please don't throw up on me."
"I'm not going to throw up." John got his eyes open. The emergency lighting was on, but all the other screens in the cockpit were dead. His heart was pounding, the adrenaline helping clear his head. They couldn't stay in the jumper without power for weapons or the cloak, the Wraith could cut their way in, jimmy the hatch controls from outside, or just blow them up. They had to get to a place they could defend. "If we can't fix the jumper, we need to make for the building." He pushed away from the pilot's seat and managed to stagger past Rodney, who immediately crouched down and started to rip open the panel under the console.
Teyla was just inside the rear cabin hatch, stuffing ammo into her vest pockets, two extra P-90s slung over one shoulder. She met John's eyes, her face tense and desperate. Yeah, John didn't know how they were going to get out of this one either. Past her he saw Zelenka lying on the deck unconscious, the front of his blue uniform shirt spattered with blood; Miko was just fixing a bandage to a gash on his forehead. Ronon sat on the bench, mostly upright but listing to one side and holding his head. Everybody looked bruised, scraped, battered. Teyla handed John a P-90 and said, "I can sense the Wraith. They are confused, angry. Hungry." She took a sharp breath and added, "If they have been away from their hive for some time, and have not run across any inhabited worlds to cull, the drones may not have been allowed to feed."
"Great." That was about all they needed. John got the P-90 clipped to his vest.
Rodney pushed out of the cockpit, and from his desperate expression, the news wasn't good. "The main power crystals are dead. If it's what I think-" He stepped across to the rack with the emergency supplies, pulled out a padded case, and tore it open. His mouth twisted in despair. "Yes, it's what I think. The field drained all of them, even these spares that weren't connected into the system. Unless we want to live out the rest of our very short lives in this jumper, we have to go."
John hadn't thought it would be anything else. The jumper just felt… dead. "Right. Everybody, check your breathing units. Miko, you're on the life signs detector. Rodney get a P-90. Ronon, can you carry Radek?" John hoped like hell Ronon could carry Radek, because he wasn't leaving anybody behind.
Ronon spat blood out onto the deck and shoved unsteadily to his feet. He was well on the way to developing two perfect black eyes. "Yeah. Let's go."
It took time they didn't have to scramble for extra ammo, and to get their breathing gear back on, and John made sure they were stocked up on grenades. They had smoke, flash-bangs, and fragmentation, and that might give them just enough of an extra edge. Miko grabbed the medical kit and Rodney stuffed the tablets and laptops into a couple of supply packs. John checked Miko's sidearm, making sure it was loaded and that she had extra clips in her vest. He knew she was checked out on it on the firing range, but he didn't think she had had to use it in earnest before.
Once Ronon had Zelenka slung over one shoulder and his energy gun in his free hand, John said, "Are we clear?"
"Closest life sign is one hundred yards," Miko reported, her eyes wide and bruised in the dim light. "But they are all around us."
Right, John thought. "Stay together," he reminded them, and nodded to Rodney.
"Oh here we go." Rodney, his face set in bleak misery, hit the emergency release for the ramp. "Nice working with you all."
As the ramp started to drop, John saw that the sky was dark, the gas giant eclipsing the sun again. The jumper's hatch was facing the Mirror's frame, the flat dull silver wall of it looming over them, but it was dimly lit by a muted white glow. The light was coming from above, from the Mirror, which was a little freaky. And he hadn't thought enough time had passed for another eclipse but whatever, it would help cover their retreat. "Keep your lights off," he said, and swung down to the pavement, wincing as his weight came down on his right leg.
Teyla jumped out behind him, P-90 ready. As the others climbed out, John looked cautiously around the side of the jumper. A cold wind moved over the vast stretch of the Mirror platform, stirring dust, cutting right through the material of his shirt. In the ghostly light from the Mirror, he could see a scatter of wrecked darts, some nearly intact and some crumpled smoking wrecks. The jumper was nosed into the dart he had seen through the port, and the long outline of a second dart was sticking out from under this side. Score two for us. There was no movement nearby, and he stepped out to get his bearings on the nearest entrance to the installation.
And he stopped, staring. "Uh."
Teyla moved up beside him, then halted in shock. "Colonel, what-How-"
John's eyes couldn't make sense of it. He stared, but it wasn't an optical illusion or a head injury. The installation was different.
There were towers evenly spaced along the flat roof, caught in the reflected light from the glowing Mirror. Tall narrow ones, with gracefully angular spires, like the ones on Atlantis.
John had a really bad feeling about this.
The others gathered behind him, and Miko said in astonishment, "Dr. McKay, I'm reading a breathable atmosphere now, twenty-one percent oxygen." She added, "Oh, I think we are-I think we must have-This is-
Rodney dragged his mask down, took a deep breath. He groaned. "Yes, this is…bad. Very, very bad."
John pulled his mask down too. The air was cold, full of ozone and the acrid scent of the charred darts, but there was plenty of it. As the others pulled their masks off, he asked, "Rodney, where the hell are we?" But he had the sinking feeling that he already knew.
"The Mirror." Rodney sounded sick. "Something must have activated it before I finished adjusting the pulse array. The accretion disk was still unstable and it created a gravity well and pulled us in. And the darts, everything in range.
Teyla shook her head uncertainly. "But then we are…in the other reality? Trishen's reality, where there are nothing but Wraith?"
There was a moment of horrified silence. John bit his lip, searching for a reaction that didn't involve a hysterical scream.
His voice flat, Ronon said, "You're joking."
"Yes, yes, I'm kidding, hah hah, it's a hilarious joke!" Rodney snarled. "Face it, we're in another reality. With the Wraith or Eidolon or whatever they call themselves."
John swallowed down panic and managed to say evenly, "Rodney, is the Mirror still connected to our reality? If we can getup over the frame, can we just jump into it? Or would it-"
Rodney blinked. "Dissolve us instantly in the crushing gravitational forces the unstable accretion surface may be generating?"
John eyed him worriedly. "Yeah, that."
"I have no idea," Rodney admitted, sounding bleak. "But I suspect this Mirror was specifically designed only to be used by spaceships or other vehicles with heavy energy shielding. An unprotected human body wouldn't survive the transition. And if it doesn't activate, that would be worse. I'll have to find a monitoring console."
Zelenka, slung over Ronon's shoulder, muttered, "My vsichni zemreme."
Rodney snapped automatically, "Will you stop with the profanity you think we can't understand? Tone and context make it perfectly obvious what you're-Wait, are you conscious?"
"I wish I was not." Zelenka sounded sorrowful.
Miko looked up from the life signs detector, saying anxiously, "Colonel, the Wraith are moving. I see signs-