"Carson can't be sure, but a week, perhaps less, for complete terraforming. I imagine that environmental conditions will have deteriorated rapidly long before then, and we can only guess exactly what the impact will be "
Caldwell gazed through her office window at the silent 'gate for a moment before speaking again. "Our options range from lousy to awful," he said. "Daedalus won't be hyperdrive-capable anytime soon, and not at all if we can't access the engineering workshops and labs on Atlantis. The idea of abandoning my ship is fairly repugnant, and when Hermiod learned that something resembling a miniature replicator plague was about to be unleashed-the word `displeased' doesn't even come close to covering it. I don't like anything about what I'm going to say here, but I agree with Dr. McKay's recommendation that we begin immediate evacuation to the Alpha site."
And there it was, as unavoidable as death and taxes. Elizabeth's fingers tightened around the arm of her chair. "I was holding out hope that it wouldn't come to that."
"Hope's a useful thing," Caldwell remarked. "But right now we'd be better served to deal with our reality." Eyes narrowing pensively, he glanced outside to where Rodney was seated at a workstation, tracking the machine while Sheppard, Teyla and Ronon stood watching. "What exactly is this exogenesis device doing right now?"
Elizabeth stood and led Caldwell out of her office. She was about to put the question to Rodney when one of the duty techs tapped his earpiece, turned, and signaled her. "Dr. Weir, we just received a report from Dr. Anane at the Athosian camp."
Rodney's head snapped around. "What? What's he doing out there?"
The news surprised and concerned Elizabeth. Kwesi Anane and a handful of his fellow engineers had been on the mainland, helping the Athosians implement an irrigation system that he'd developed in his home country. She glanced at Teyla and Ronon. "The hydrology team didn't come back with you this morning?"
Ronon shrugged. "Most of them, yeah. But Anane said he had some tasks left"
That complicated matters further. Signaling to the tech to patch them through, Elizabeth lifted a hand to her earpiece. "Dr. Anane, what's your status?"
"There is a peculiar cloud buildup occurring inland from the Athosian village," the Ghanaian engineer reported. "I have seen a similar formation only once before on this planet, and that was prior to the storm last year."
No further description was necessary. That storm occupied a singular place in the short history of the Atlantis expedition. "I can rig up a camera to show you," he continued, "but it will take a few minutes."
"Please do so, Kwesi. Thank you." Tom, Elizabeth met the gaze of her military advisor, who looked equally apprehensive. She'd already been reconsidering her decision regarding the Athosians. It seemed that, too often, Teyla's people had borne the brunt of problems brought about by the Earth team's actions. Despite Rodney's resolve, she'd contemplated rescinding the quarantine, and now with Kwesi still on the mainland-
"Getting back to my earlier question," Caldwell said, interrupting her thoughts. "Can you pinpoint exactly where this machine is now and how long we've got before we run into trouble?"
Rodney's fingers skipped across the keyboard in front of him to bring up a map of the mainland. "Carson's description of the exogenesis device suggests that, with no ZPM to provide power, the machine instead derives energy from the heat in the asthenosphere-the hot mantle beneath the planet's crust," he said. "Makes sense. It's a virtually limitless source of power and could easily sustain a planet-wide operation."
Caldwell arched an eyebrow. "What if we attempt to blow up the machine?"
"And here we go again with the standard military solution to every problem." Rodney's bearing clearly demonstrated his impatience with the Daedalus's commander. "Need I remind you that this thing was built to direct a complete molecular restructuring of an entire world while powering itself from the radioactive decay that melts rocks`? Somehow I don't think nuking it will help."
"You haven't answered my second question, Doctor." Caldwell replied levelly. "How long?"
"Where am I supposed to glean that information? I don't exactly have a wide range of experience with planets being terraformed." After a moment under Caldwell's impassive gaze, Rodney conceded, "Carson's one-week estimate may not have been completely off the mark. Although we've noticed some chemical and geophysical anomalies that could explain the formation of the storm, we haven't detected any change in the molecular structure of the surrounding rock, so it doesn't appear to have begun manufacturing nanites as yet."
Teyla's head snapped around, and her eyes bored into Elizabeth's. "Then by all means we should evacuate the Athosians," Elizabeth said firmly. "I think it's a risk worth taking." She anticipated an argument from Caldwell, but the Colonel nodded, while Teyla took a deep breath and bowed her head in gratitude.
"Dr. Weir," came Kwesi's voice over the radio, nearly shouting to overcome the increasing noise of the wind. "I'm sending the images now."
Rodney opened the file on his screen, and his jaw slackened. "Oh, boy."
Looking over his shoulder, Elizabeth was confronted with another terrible reality. The time stamp on the pictures showed that they had been taken thirty seconds apart, displaying the growing speed of the storm. Any rescue jumpers they sent might be able to land, but there would be little chance of evacuating the entire Athosian settlement before it struck.
"This is incredible," Kwesi shouted. "The winds are already approaching gale force. The Athosians are attempting to prepare-"
The signal abruptly cut off, leaving an agonizing silence in its wake. "Kwesi will know what to do," Rodney asserted. "Back in Ghana he designed the water distribution system for an entire group of villages and implemented it practically from scratch as part of his dissertation. He'll get them through it "
"Dr. Weir, I must be there."
Elizabeth shifted her gaze from Rodney to Teyla, whose expression had tightened. "I'll ask for volunteers to assist in evacuations, but as it stands, I'm not certain that any of you will even be able to land." Her eyes moved to John, knowing they all shared her thought. "We need to find a way to stop that machine. Soon."
Chapter Five
"Well, Rodney, what have we got?" Elizabeth's nose wrinkled in distaste as soon as she stepped into the room.
"Besides the overpowering stench of decaying sea life?" Rodney's eyes were watering, and he was certain that the tingling in his fingertips was due to an allergic reaction provoked by the weird orange gunk he'd had to fight through in order to set up an interface between his computer and that of the stasis unit. He stood and stared down at the marine-encrusted pod, now thankfully empty of its resident. "Judging by the Ancient design, this is obviously a portable stasis unit similar to the module we discovered with your"-he glanced at Elizabeth-"older self."
"Except it didn't operate quite the same way," Carson put in.
"Yes, Carson, I'm getting to that, and shouldn't you still be in a hospital bed or something? Or poking around the insides of our Ancient friend?" He gestured toward the glass window, behind which Atlas lay awaiting an autopsy.
Carson didn't reply, but instead stared at the pod as if he could divine something from it. The two armed guards at the door-only one door this time, a lesson they'd learned well from Phoebus and Thalen-moved aside to let Sheppard and Ronon enter the already cramped room.
"I've asked Carson to wait until we're absolutely certain that Atlas is in fact dead," Elizabeth said. When the doctor still didn't comment, she added, "SG-1 revived an Ancient in Antarctica after being frozen for what they estimated was several million years. Atlas may yet be able to provide us with some information."