“I wish Sheppard was here,” he said.
Rodney studied the tracking display, touched keys to study the course the autopilot had laid for them. It was a good thing there was an autopilot, because he wasn’t exactly checked out in Wraith lifepods, or any other kind of Wraith craft, and while he could handle a puddle jumper, flying still wasn’t one of his major talents. The system was homing in on the planet’s Stargate, which was good, but the engines seemed to be having trouble following the autopilot’s instructions. Already there were datapoints blinking white amid the gold, warning him that they’d missed course corrections. Probably because the lifepod was overloaded; it was designed to carry a single Wraith, not three humans. He frowned at the screen, toggled to the power supply and back to the navigation screen, trying to decide whether or not to intervene.
Something cold and hard jabbed the base of his neck: Ronon’s blaster. In the same moment, Ronon said, “What’s wrong, McKay?”
“Would you put that thing away?” Rodney toggled back to the power supply. OK, they had some room to maneuver if he had to go to manual control, but not much. Not much at all.
“No.” Ronon’s voice was cold. “Tell me what’s going wrong.”
“Besides being stuck in a Wraith lifepod?”
“With a Wraith?” Ronon said. “Yeah. Besides that.”
“I’m not —” Rodney began, but of course he was. And that was something he couldn’t afford to think about, not right now. “You want to know what’s wrong? Fine. The autopilot is having trouble getting us onto a proper course for reentry, probably because this lifepod isn’t meant to carry this much mass. I mean, presumably there’s some margin for overload, but we’ve clearly exceeded that. And that means our course is starting to shallow out, which means we’ll hit the atmosphere and bounce off it — like skipping a stone on a pond, if you ever did anything that benign. And then we just drift off into a random orbit — well, not really random, but cometary, a nice long orbit that gives us plenty of time to suffocate, so that if anyone ever bothers to look for us —”
“McKay,” Ronon said. “Shut up.”
Rodney blinked. All right, maybe that had been a little over the top. Unfortunately, though, the physics of the situation wasn’t improving.
“Can you fly this thing?” Ronon asked.
“You don’t fly a lifepod,” Rodney said. “They’re meant to land on autopilot —”
“McKay!”
There was something perversely comforting about that shout of exasperation. Rodney said, “Maybe. Just — give me a minute.”
The pressure of the blaster against his neck eased slightly, and he bent forward to study the screen. The thrusters fired again and the numbers shifted, but the key data continued to flash white. The programmed course was still too shallow. He touched keys, toggling to the screen that showed the power cells for the thrusters. It took him a minute to work out the system — not a direct burn of fuel, that would create too much of a risk of explosion in a hard landing, but a pressurized fluid that worked much the same way — and he closed his eyes for a moment, working out the numbers.
“McKay,” Ronon said again, his voice urgent.
Rodney opened his eyes to see the screen flashing white. A whistling alarm began to sound, but he slapped it to silence.
“What’s going on?” Ronon asked.
“We’ve slipped out of the safe corridor for reentry,” Rodney said. “I’m taking control.” He touched keys as he spoke, switching off the autopilot. The screen faded to a normal display, though half a dozen readings still flashed white. The calculation wasn’t complicated, just a simple matter of force applied along the lifepod’s long axis. He switched screens again, entered the parameters, and set his hand on the thruster controls. The lifepod’s computer counted down the seconds; at zero he pressed down hard on the plate. He felt the rumble as the fluid was vented, saw Ronon look uneasily at the walls around them. The second countdown was running, timing the maneuver; it reached zero, and he released the key. The images on the screen swam and reformed: they were back in the corridor, and he reengaged the autopilot.
“OK,” he said. “OK, that’s got it. We’re back in the corridor.”
“How long till we land?” Ronon asked.
Rodney glanced at the screen, the numbers rearranging themselves in his mind. “Forty — no, thirty-seven minutes to atmosphere. Then — well, it depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“On the exact angle of reentry, on the ability of the autopilot field generators and the internal dampeners to compensate for the increased mass, and — you know what?” Rodney glared up at the Satedan. “Why don’t we figure out a safe way to ride out that reentry instead of wasting time on pointless calculations?”
Improbably, Ronon’s mouth twitched into a grin. “You don’t know.”
“Of course I —” Rodney stopped. “No. I don’t. So we might as well get Jennifer someplace safe. Unless she’s waking up?”
“No,” Ronon said. He shifted awkwardly, trying to find a way to brace himself that didn’t brush up against any of the controls twining the lifepod’s walls.
Jennifer was slumped in the niche that was intended for the lifepod’s single occupant, her eyes closed, a few strands of hair falling across her face. Rodney reached out to brush them away, ignoring the twitch of muscles as Ronon controlled the impulse to stop him.
“What’s wrong with her?” Rodney asked.
“I don’t know,” Ronon said. He shifted his weight again, crowding Rodney back, and lifted Jennifer’s slack body, settling her more solidly into the niche. The padding shifted under her, cradling her body — protecting it, Rodney hoped. “I told you, she just collapsed.”
For a moment, Rodney wished he’d paid more attention in the mandatory SGC field rescue classes, particularly to the sections on bizarre and unlikely first aid situations. For all he knew, this could be something really simple, something that could be fixed with a slap on the back or an injection of Vitamin B — But, no, he wouldn’t be that lucky.
“McKay,” Ronon said. “The screen’s flashing again.”
Rodney turned, putting Jennifer out of his mind. The numbers were flickering white, the course line rising again even as the autopilot tried to compensate. “Oh, no.” He touched keys, the numbers shifting in his head, set up another course correction. The thrusters rumbled, releasing fluid, and then cut out. “No, no, no, that’s not —”
“McKay,” Ronon said again.
Rodney stared at the screen. “OK, this is not good. That wasn’t enough — we’re still too shallow, and we’re not going to make it into the atmosphere. And that was the last of the propellant, unless…” He was touching keys as he spoke, releasing a tiny bit of fluid from the opposite thrusters. “If I can turn us, I can use the forward thrusters — as long as I leave enough to get us back into the optimum angle for reentry, or the whole thing’s going to just burn up —”
The numbers shifted in his screen, proof that the lifepod was turning, even though the inertial dampeners kept him from feeling the motion. The bow thrusters spoke — a different rumble, shivering through the lifepod’s hull — and he cut them off as soon as he thought they’d reached the corridor. He waited then, counting precious seconds, while the computers checked and confirmed that they were back inside the corridor. Not far, not as far as he would have liked, and he hesitated. One last release? A literal second, just to be sure? No, the screen was starting to flash again, warning that they were out of position. All he could do was let the autopilot right them, angle them against the atmosphere, and hope for the best.