John turned in his seat, but indicated he should leave first. "Be there in a minute."
The moment the hatch opened, Radek got mobbed. Ronon stood back, one eyebrow cocked at the free-for-all. The Czech couldn't even finish answering a question before someone else broke in with what John supposed was a more urgent request. Even through an ear that felt stuffed with steel wool, he could hear enough of the various subjects to know that they'd get nothing accomplished this way.
At last, Radek had had enough. "Ticho, debilove! Quiet! No wonder Rodney rails at you so!"
The effect was instantaneous. Silence fell, and John, who had by now carefully made his way to the rear of the jumper, realized just how much losing Rodney had shaken them all. Present tense, he noted. Did Radek believe Rodney might still be alive, too`? Or was John reading way too much into one word?
Elizabeth, who was hovering by the rear hatch, took the opportunity to restore order. "There are a lot of important issues to deal with, everyone. I trust Dr. Zelenka to assign the appropriate priority to each of them. Please get him up to speed-one person at a time."
The jumper bay doors opened to admit Colonel Caldwell. Figuring he'd better report to his superior, John started to disembark from the jumper, only to stagger as he stepped through the hatch. Again, Ronon steadied him.
Damn it, I do not need this right now. No matter what he tried, he couldn't seem to get his balance. Pain was radiating down through his jaw; it felt like somebody had punched him when he wasn't looking.
Concern was immediately evident in Elizabeth's bearing. She approached him, saying something he couldn't make out.
"What?"
"Are you all right?" she repeated.
"Yeah, just got a little rocked by the transit" Aware of how flimsy it sounded, he immediately turned to Caldwell. "How did Teyla get left behind on the mainland?"
"It was her choice. She understood that we had to leave and asked to continue the search for the rest of the Athosians." Caldwell's lips compressed in regret, but he also looked resigned to that decision. "We'll go back for them if at all possible, but right now we have more immediate priorities."
John nodded, realizing a half-second too late that any such movement was a bad idea. "One of those priorities needs to be me going back to Polmsso. It's possible that Rodney's still alive."
Elizabeth's eyes flared wide. "How can that be?"
"Apparently the villagers saw one of the local Wraith beam him onto a Dart." John leaned on the extended drive pod of Jumper Eight, currently down for maintenance, and willed his head to get its act together. "From what the Elders said, I didn't get the feeling that the hive was awake, just that a few Darts go out on occasional snack runs during the storms"
"If the Wraith have McKay, they may know about Atlantis by now." Caldwell looked none too thrilled with that possibility.
"Not necessarily. The villager said that Rodney was barely alive when he was taken."
`But the Wraith need healthy victims."
"Which means they might not feed off Rodney right away, or even at all. They might put him in one of those damned cocoons, dump him in a corner, and leave him to a slow and agonizing death." Elizabeth's horrified reaction told John he was hitting below the belt, but being delicate wouldn't serve anyone's purposes right now.
Caldwell was studying him a little too carefully. "Colonel, forgive me for sounding skeptical, but this seems like a risk we may not be able to take. For starters, you don't appear to be in any condition to lead a rescue mission."
"I just need a couple hours of sleep-"
"John, you're white as a sheet and barely upright," Elizabeth cut him off gently. "And your face and ear look… Well, you certainly need medical attention."
"Given the situation here," the Daedalus commander continued, "we're not in a position to go mounting an attack on a hive ship. An attempted extraction would most likely awaken the hive, and they'd be apt to finish the job the exogenesis machine started on Atlantis."
"This is not necessarily true," countered Radek. John hadn't noticed him break free from the science team, but the Czech now came over to join them. "We can still carry out the original plan to acquire the ZPMs and simultaneously flood the Wraith ship. But if I am to do this, I will need to return to the planet as soon as we have taken care of the worst of Atlantis's problems."
Elizabeth held up a hand to slow him down. "I understand the urgency here, but I need more information. What would be the impact to the Polrussons? You said they needed time to complete their move."
"They'll move fast enough now." That statement came from Ronon, and received a look of mild suspicion from Atlantis's leader.
Even talking was starting to hurt, but the anger John still felt toward Vend and his people spurred him on. "It took far more than it should have to get the Polrussons to be honest with us about the Wraith. Given the way we had to drag the information out of them, and the way we left, they have to assume that we've gone for good. When we go back, we can tell them that we'll only help if we're allowed to release the water now, because we're as worried about the Wraith threat as they feared. While Radek gets everything set up, we'll have the opportunity to take a team in to extract Rodney."
Caldwell didn't appear convinced. He turned to Radek. "How confident are you that we'll be able to acquire the ZPMs and flood the Wraith ship?"
The scientist's brief hesitation put the differences between Rodney and Radek into sharp relief. "I cannot guarantee," he replied truthfully. "We must remember that a hive ship is indeed a ship, and has the capability to seal itself against water as it does against the vacuum of space. Still, Atlantis was submerged for a purpose. Perhaps the Wraith do not like water. But whatever the reason, we can only work to minimize the time the Wraith will have to recognize the threat and defend themselves or escape."
"What's your plan for shutting down the terraforming system and collecting the ZPMs?" Elizabeth asked.
In response, Radek withdrew his laptop from his pack and quickly called up a schematic. From what John could see through a fog of pain, it was a diagram of the ZPM locations on Polrusso. "The ZPMs form a type of power matrix across the surface of the planet. If we go by jumper to remove them sequentially from the matrix, the remaining units will attempt to compensate, and the system will weaken. We will remove the first ZPM from the area where we wish the force field to fail initially, but this does not assure that the water will rush out at once. It may do this, but equally it may take days or even weeks for the water pressure to break through the rock holding it back." Radek pushed his glasses up on his nose. "It may also still be possible for me to locate the second exogenesis machine. This I cannot promise, either, but if there is time-"
"Time we can only buy ourselves by doing everything in our power not to alert the Wraith," Caldwell interrupted.
Radek's head bobbed readily. "Hopefully by then we will have acquired sufficient ZPMs to power the city shield, against the Wraith as well as the nanites. That will give us time to repair the Daedalus."
Even before Caldwell spoke, John knew he wasn't going to like what he heard. "If you go barging into that hive ship now, the Wraith will be all over you before you can blink, and we'll kiss off any chance of acquiring even one of those ZPMs."
"Not necessarily," John insisted. "We've learned a lot about the layout inside those ships. And if we do wake them up, we can go for some of the furthest ZPMs right away, before they can stop us."
"You don't know that you'll make it."
"You don't know that we won't!"
"Gentlemen." Elizabeth sounded utterly torn.
John felt for her, but there was nothing he could do to make this easier.