Keeping Jumper One level was taking far more concentration than usual, thanks to the continual nudges of vertigo, and he couldn't prevent the occasional momentary slip. Every few minutes, he would catch Ronon sneaking a wary glance at him or the controls. When the scrutiny had grated on John's nerves long enough, he finally snapped, "If you think you can do better, be my guest "
"Just making sure you still know which way is up," Ronon replied mildly.
"Give me a break. It's myfini flight."
"Your what?"
"It's a military pilot's last-" John cut himself off. He didn't do self-pity. A lot of things were happening, and all of them were more important than his damned wings. "Never mind."
"Colonel, look," Teyla called from Jumper Four.
Below them, several groups of cliff-dwellers were traveling inland at a rapid pace, trails of dust fanning out behind them. The convoy seemed orderly enough, with no panicked animals or overturned carts, and was making awfully good time. Of course, they had been preparing for this event for ten thousand years. Enthusiasm probably played a pretty big role.
"There's another group off to our two o'clock." John watched an enormous train of villagers, spread out across a mile or two, emerge from a minor sand squall.
"Wow. Sir, if it's all right, I'm gonna go in a little lower," Witner requested.
"Go ahead." Knowing better than to trust his own shaky skills with an unnecessary low pass, John maintained his altitude and instead used the HUD to bring up a magnified view of the convoy. Observing its progress, he began to understand just how many lives they were about to change. God, there were tens of thousands of people down there.
Jumper Four decloaked, revealing itself to the villagers in a flyby of sorts. As they caught sight of the craft, people stood up in their carts and waved colorful scarves in the air. Ronon raised an eyebrow, but John shrugged with a smile. "Let Witner have his fun," he said. "I mean, look at them down there."
The villagers' voices were inaudible, but the HUD clearly showed their euphoric faces as they cheered the jumpers on. We're doing this, John thought, trying to wrap his head around it all. They were on their way to fulfill the hopes and dreams of countless generations. So often in the past, on Earth, his role in any given mission had felt remote, difficult to put into context. The sight before him now, these thousands of people in a mass exodus to an essentially new world-all of it was because his people were about to employ their knowledge and abilities to accomplish something profound and fundamentally good.
Some days, this job wasn't so bad.
"All right, it's about time for us to split up," he radioed. "Hope you get what you came for, Jumper Four."
"We wish the same to you, Colonel," Teyla responded. "Good luck."
Jumper Four reengaged its cloak and broke off to follow its assigned flight path. Cautiously, John put Jumper One into a shallow dive down the face of the massive three-mile high cliff, and headed out across the pre-oceanic 'basin'-which was a hell of a misnomer, because it wasn't in any way shaped like a basin. More like a course he'd once flown from Jalalabad to Feyzabad, except that these mountains, all of which would soon be under a few miles of water, had never seen a drop of rain.
Even Ronon seemed impressed by the massive outcrops and bizarre shapes sculpted by millennia of wind and caustic sandstorms. They skirted around a particularly striking mesa, and the Satedan let out a grunt of surprise at the series of enormous natural arches lined up along the desert floor. Under any other circumstances, John might have been tempted to fly under a few of them, but right now he was more frustrated by the lack of life signs on his HUD. Maybe Rodney had been right about the stuff in the red sand interfering with signals.
"Hey, guys, we're all set over here, just waiting on you," put in a smug voice from Jumper Five.
"Children, children," Radek chastised. "Is not a race. Except. it is a race. I stand corrected. Continue the taunting"
Ronon squinted at corner of the HUD that normally displayed life signs. "Still not seeing anything"
"Supposedly this is the place" John flew a racetrack pattern around the area, willing the HUD to blink. Nothing-no sign, neither visual nor technological. Just more scoured stone and barren gullies, and literally thousands of rocky mounds that could, with a little imagination and a lot of terror, be mistaken for a half-buried hive ship. "Maybe the old guy's memory was starting to go"
"Or maybe the hive ship already left."
Whatever satisfaction John had felt a few minutes earlier was wiped out in an instant. "All jumpers, be advised," he reported, climbing to start a wide sweep of the other canyons in the vicinity. Even if the thing had taken off, in a landscape that was distinctive for its harsh edges, a rounded, hive-ship shaped crater would stand out. "We may have a problem."
"What kind of problem, Colonel?" asked Radek.
He angled Jumper One upward and rapidly climbed to an altitude of one hundred thousand feet, hoping to get an overall picture of the area. "Well, if nothing else, we're proving that irony's alive and well in this galaxy. The one time we actually want to find a hive ship, it's being shy." Blink, damn you, he ordered the life signs indicator. Come on, Rodney, where the hell are you?
"You have scanned the surrounding areas?"
"Completing my sweep now." The comer of the HUD remained obstinately dark. "I've got nothing"
Radek sighed heavily. "This is a big problem."
John didn't need to be told. Their entire strategy had revolved around taking out the hive ship in the first deluge of water. Now they had no idea where the Wraith were hiding, or if they'd been awakened.
Early on in the Atlantis expedition, Rodney had explained to his new teammates that he reacted to certain doom a certain way. Over the course of the past year or so, various classifications of doom had forced him to amend that theory to include corresponding levels of panic. Personal doom was one thing. He was getting used to that kind. Planetary doom, on the other hand, was something else.
Springing to his feet, he demanded, "What the hell kind of lunatic Ancient dreamed up this experiment? Toxic mountains? In what twisted reality did that ever look like a good idea?"
Nabu did not respond. Rodney felt Turpi's hand on his arm. "Father has gone to warn everyone and to call the Darts back."
"I have to get to the Ancient lab," he told her. "I need to talk to my friends before they do something very, very ill-advised."
"The first Dart to return will carry you there. But all the Darts are on the far side of the planet. It will take time-"
"Tell them to return by low orbit! We need every second." Even as he spoke, Rodney began running through other possibilities. If he didn't make it back before Radek and Sheppard started yanking ZPMs, could anything be done to minimize the water release? Not likely, even if they replaced the ZPMs immediately and attempted to reconfigure the force fields…
Slowly, the sensation of panic began to ease, as if a knot was loosening, and he recognized Turpi's soothing influence. He jerked back, tearing his arm out of her grip. No matter how pure her intentions, he couldn't deal with this manipulation. "Don't do that! Don't get into my mind. I don't want you to dull this. I need this. This is what's going to help me come up with a plan!"
No sooner had he finished the thought than her presence vanished. "Turpi?" Suddenly on his own, he heard the growing cries of the children as the news and the terror spread with equal speed. "Turpi? Someone!"
Where was she`? His own terror escalated. Dozens of rapid footsteps dashed past him, around him, but no one answered his shouts. Blind and alone he'd never make it ten meters. In desperation, he shoved at the bandages over his eyes, trying to work his wrapped fingers underneath.
"No!" Turpi grabbed his hands and pulled them down, at the same time flooding him with relief. "You must leave the bandages in place. The light will destroy the fragile cells before they can heal. We must wait for the Darts to return."