Succinct, and to the point, Weir had to admit. She didn't like it either, not at all.
They all fell into silence again, disturbed only by Peter Grodin, who charged into the room and began whispering urgently to McKay. Weir tuned out their discussion, her mind full of other things. The story they'd just heard changed everything, it turned all expectations on their head. No longer a city of wonders and ancient knowledge beyond their understanding, Atlantis had become a ghost ship. The final refuge of an ancient civilization driven to extinction by an enemy so relentless that all their technology could not save them. An enemy who, for all Weir knew, was still out there, waiting in the shadows. She swallowed hard and was about to ask Sumner for his assessment when Beckett started to talk.
"It starts again in a minute," he said, nodding toward the empty dais. "She scared the hell out of me the first time."
Sure enough, after a moment there was a quiet hum and the Ancient woman reappeared.
"Stop!" McKay yelled suddenly. "Turn it off!"
Startled, Beckett jumped back from the dais and the hologram disappeared.
"Power levels throughout the city are dropping like a stone," McKay blurted, dashing for the door.
"What does that mean?" snapped Sumner, getting in before Weir had a chance to speak. Damn him.
McKay managed to look triumphant, resigned and scared as hell all at once. "That if we don't stop everything we're doing, right now, we're dead!"
Chapter Four
Don't panic, don't panic. You can fix this. You can fix this! The words rattled through Rodney McKay's head as he raced up the stairs and back to the control room. A bird's nest of wires and cables trailed across the floor, patching laptops and monitoring equipment into the Ancient technology. It was like strapping a steam train to the space shuttle, but it was the best they could do.
Grodin was ahead of him, his anxious face telling the whole story, and from behind McKay heard the thundering footsteps of Weir and her posse of jarheads.
"Please tell me this is not my fault." And Beckett, of course, with his constant whining…
"No," McKay snapped, staring at the screen in front of him and processing the data as fast as he could read. "From what we've been able to ascertain, the city is powered by three zero point modules. Two are entirely depleted, the third," he paused, double-checking the data, "the third is reaching maximum entropy. When it does, it will die too and nothing can reverse that." He liked stating the bald facts. The world looked better in black and white; ambiguity made it hard to think.
"Just give me the bottom line," Sumner barked.
McKay cast a swift glance at Weir, who was tight lipped and silent. Typical, a power struggle at the top was just what they needed when faced with imminent drowning. Swallowing a comment, he stalked over to the display screen and stabbed a finger at the relevant section. He'd long ago learned that, when dealing with the military, it was easier to show than tell. "The force field holding back the ocean has collapsed to the minimum sustainable level," he said shortly, indicating the red section of the city map. "You can see here.. and here.. where the shield has already failed and the city has flooded."
"Flooded?" echoed Weir, as if it was a surprise. What else did she think was going to happen in a sunken city?
"As in sea water," he snapped. "Could have happened years ago." Or last week. He glanced around the huge chamber in which they stood, the shimmering light from above suddenly claustrophobic. He struggled for a quick breath and pushed the thought out of his head. Focus, focus. "This section of the city is likely the most protected because of the Stargate, but-"
"If it fails completely?" John Sheppard was glancing around as if he expected to see the water already rising. He probably wouldn't have long to wait.
"That's a matter of when, not if.."
The Major accepted the news with apparent calm. At least, with more calm than McKay felt at the prospect of being drowned beneath five hundred feet of alien ocean.
Weir, however, seemed to take him seriously. "Colonel, you have to order your security teams to stop searching the city immediately. Everywhere we set foot, the lights and ventilation come on, and that draws more power."
Sumner keyed his radio. "All security teams fall back to the gate room."
It would be about as effective as sticking your finger in the dam when a tidal wave was approaching. "That's not going to be good enough."
"How much time do we have?" asked Weir.
"It's hard to say. Hours. Maybe days if we can minimize power expenditure."
Beckett piped up again. "What about our own power generators?"
"We're working on that." Though the steam train metaphor was applicable again. These people really had no idea what they were dealing with here! "Even with our most advanced naquadah-powered generators, the equations are coming up far short of-"
"Then we need to find more ZPMs," Weir interrupted, stating — in McKay's not-so-humble opinion — the blindingly obvious.
"How do we do that if we can't search the city?" Sumner pointed out.
It didn't matter anyway. McKay waved at the map. "If there were more here we'd be able to detect them." And didn't I already say there were only three ZPMs in the city?
"Can we use the Stargate?"
Oh for crying out- "No way near enough power to open a wormhole back to Earth!"
"Somewhere in this galaxy then?" Surprisingly, the suggestion was Sheppard's.
"That's relatively easy," McKay admitted. He cast half a glance at the Major, wondering if he needed to reassess the jarhead label. "The power requirement to travel within a galaxy is a fraction of what is required to gate between two separate galaxies."
Sheppard gave a lopsided smile. "Can gate anywhere in Pegasus, can't gate back to Earth."
"Yes, I said yes," McKay muttered. "Fortunately some Ancient technology uses good old-fashioned push buttons, and we've been able to access the Stargate control systems and a library of gate addresses in the database."
"That's not all," Grodin chimed in. "Look at this!" Before McKay could stop him, Grodin hit the button on the console next to him. A static fizz drew everyone's attention to the shimmering force shield that now covered the Stargate. Grodin smiled. "Just like the Iris on the Earth gate."
Oh, give me strength… "Using power, using power, using power!"
Grodin cast him a dark look and shut off the shield.
"At least we won't have to deal with any uninvited guests," Weir pointed out. McKay might have been wrong but he thought she was giving him a sympathetic look. But then she turned her attention to Sumner. "Colonel, assemble a team. We need to find safe harbor or, better still, another power source."
With a nod, Sumner strode from the room. A man on a mission. "Lieutenant Ford," he barked into his radio, "gather security teams one and two and gear up."
But McKay didn't miss the dismissive look the Colonel flung at Sheppard as he left, or the way the Major hung back and didn't follow. Weir too had noticed the exchange, and after a moment came to stand at Sheppard's side. "I'd like you to go along, Major," she said.
He looked awkward. "I wasn't invited."
"I give the orders here."
And hallelujah for that.
Sheppard paused, just for a moment, and that almost-smile was back. "Yes, ma'am."
Then he was gone, and Weir's attention returned to McKay. "All right," she said. "Pick an address and start dialing."
Just like pulling a lucky number from a hat. Trying not to over-think the incalculable and potentially devastating consequences of this random choice, McKay briefly consulted with Grodin. Pick one, look at the rest was his sound advice. So he did. Despite the situation, it was actually rather exciting.
McKay hit the first symbol. Unlike the Earth Stargate, this one didn't spin. But the lit symbol itself chased around the rim of the gate and locked at the top. Fascinating.