The Satedan had deigned to make his way over, stared, and refrained from commenting for once. Instead he hauled Rodney to the dialing console and the paraphernalia gathered there. It was pitiful. The generator casing was badly corroded, contacts and switches dull and packed with dirt. There was no way of telling just how long the device had been rotting in this place, but its design was based on the prototype developed by Sam Carter and that had been a lot sturdier than it needed to be. So, despite the sorry state it was in, the generator should still work, as long as the core was intact… theoretically.
From there his mind naturally segued back to Sam Carter, a shock of blond hair, that dazzling smile, and those amazing-
Wow.! Ikaros produced the mental equivalent of a wolf whistle.
Of all the precocious little… "Stay out of that comer of my head," Rodney hissed. "That's private!"
Sony.
Yeah. Right. Rodney could practically see the smirk.
Gritting his teeth, he concentrated on the generator. Cold hands and fingers numb from blood loss didn't make for a great deal of precision, but he managed to pry off the lid of a maintenance access. It revealed a relatively dry, relatively pristine interior. On visual inspection-and visual inspection would have to be sufficient, God help them! — the vacuum container that held the naquada seemed to be tight, so there was no obvious reason why the core shouldn't be intact. One of the nice things about naquada was that it had no half-life, at least none that he had been able to measure.
While all of that was surprisingly encouraging, the generator controls were a different story. He felt a little chill crawl down his neck… or maybe it had been a drop of rain…
"Well?" asked Dex.
"Not really." Of all the patently asinine questions…
Rodney fumbled for the aluminum foil and needed three attempts to snatch a strip and four to get a hold on a second. His fingers just didn't work properly, and the blood-starved tingle was driving him mad. Muttering to himself, he twisted the thin bands of metal into two approximately foot-long threads and managed to fashion a crude point on one end. He really, really hated MacGyver physics. This would probably bum out inside a minute. Then again, with any kind of luck-ha! — a minute was all they needed. Still muttering, he scraped the crud of centuries from the generator's power outlet as best he could, shoved the pointed end of the aluminum strips in there, and packed some mud around it to hold it place, hopefully for longer than five seconds.
That done, he awkwardly shifted to turn his attention to the dialing console. Catching any air at all was getting more difficult by the second. There no longer seemed to be any room inside his chest. The notion terrified him, and he focused on the console purely for the sake of not having to think about drowning in his own blood.
When he popped the lid of the maintenance hatch, a small torrent of water shot toward him. As far as starts went, it wasn't exactly promising, but it wasn't an outright disaster either. Like all Ancient equipment, the technology of the dialing console was crystal-based and therefore largely immune to moisture. He'd only once come across a problem caused by condensation on the crystals, which wasn't relevant here. The real hitch was that he had to reroute the power supply. Power to the console would have been piped in from one of the ZPMs in Atlantis's generator rooms, with the wiring-in the manner of all wiring-running inside the walls and under the floors. He had to find the main power cable, strip it, attach some more aluminum foil to it, and all of that preferably without getting enough rainwater inside the console to short circuit the entire array.
"I need a knife," he wheezed. "Have you got a knife?"
Dex pressed something into his hand. "Will that do?"
"To debone a mastodon? Possibly."
It was roughly the size of a cutlass, but it would have to do, Rodney supposed. Besides, given the steady deterioration of his motor skills, it was doubtful that he could have kept hold of anything more delicate. As carefully as he could-not very, in other words-he reached inside the console, scraped the insulation off the power cable, and wrapped another aluminum pigtail around the blank wiring. Then he extracted himself from the hatch.
Ikaros screeched into his awareness. You'll overload the console!
"Tell me something I don't know! In the highly unlikely event that you've got a better idea, let's hear it."
The kid remained conspicuously quiet.
"I thought so."
Eyes narrow with suspicion, the Satedan stared at him. "I take it your invisible friend has objections."
"My invisible friend was a mathematical prodigy by the name of Charlotte Luisa. Sadly she disappeared just prior to my sixth birthday. We had some of the most stimulating conversations I-"
"McKay!"
Well, it had been worth a try. Rodney should have known that Dex wouldn't be sidetracked. "We have one chance at this… if that."
"If that?"
"Yes. If that. My bad. Next time people refuse to listen to me, remind me to pack all equipment necessary to fix the entire control center."
He sucked in an exasperated breath, or tried to, and was rewarded by a scythe of pain slicing through his chest. If he talked any more, he wouldn't be around to watch the outcome of the experiment. And if he dragged his heels any longer, he wouldn't be around either. Rodney twisted the aluminum strips together to form a connection between the generator and the console. It'd bum out. Of course it'd bum out… not that he had an alternative.
Gritting his teeth, he slid a glance over at Teyla, who crouched in the meager shelter of a tree, babysitting what supposedly was John Sheppard's skull, then looked up at Ronon. "We'll probably have to run. Fast."
"Figures." One comer of Dex's mouth quirked upward into half a grin. "Need a hand?"
Muttering something akin to a prayer, Rodney activated the naquada generator, then nodded and reached up. Dex pulled him to a shaky stand. At Rodney's feet the generator was beginning to hum, which was one bit of good news at least. Part of him had dreaded to hear nothing but silence and the hammering of rain on the metal casing. The hum quickly thickened to a whine, angry and off-pitch, the homey noise of a naquada generator building up an uncontrolled charge.
"Is it supposed to sound like that?" asked Dex.
"Under the circumstances, yes."
For a split-second the generator was bathed in a liquid, turquoise glow, then the surge slammed through breakers and switches, melting circuitry and leaping along the makeshift aluminum connector into the dialing console. Ronon gave a startled shout and jumped back, but Rodney barely noticed. The next stage was essentially simple. In a moment they'd either have lift-off for the entire console or he'd be able to dial.
The surface of the console lit up.
Hands shaking, he began to tap in the dialing sequence for the first planet that shot through his mind, glyph after glyph, mentally yelling at himself to do it faster. With each touch the glassy surface felt hotter and then, between Triangulum and Canis Minor, blue energy discharges started to sizzle along the rivulets of water that ran around and across the glyphs. By the time he finished, the console was vibrating, which was vaguely interesting, but Rodney's attention remained glued to the Stargate.
At least until Dex yanked him away from the dialing console. "Let's go! That thing looks like it's gonna blow any second!"
A heartbeat later it did just that. Rodney was tossed back by the blast, arms flung across his face to ward off shrapnel, and the next thing he knew was being dragged down the stairs toward the gate, legs buckling under him, his chest feeling as if someone had poured liquid fire into it. His ears filled with the thrum of his own pulse and, above that, the outraged hiss of hot, twisted metal struck by the hammer of rain, Ronon's harsh gasps just above his ear, the lighter counterpoint of Teyla's panting breath somewhere on Ronon's other side, and feet that seemed to belong to someone else slapping the ankle-deep water at the bottom of the stairs.