Silence was the only answer.
Radek bent over his displays, frowning as though concentration would keep the fear at bay. It didn't entirely, of course — he was dry-mouthed, sweating — but his hands were sure on the controls, and his brain was clear. The city was holding up well under the attack, except for the damage to the East Pier, and Dr. Sommer was taking a team down there; with any luck he'd have it back on line shortly. The shield was only down about ten percent, and Sheppard was spending the drones with uncanny effectiveness. Well, canny enough, that was the way they were supposed to be used, and that was the one thing that was going to save them if Todd didn't join the fight –
A light flashed on his board, and he touched keys to see the warning. One of the Wraith cruisers disabled in the first passes of the battle was drifting closer to the city, its course converging with theirs. He had seen the cruiser abandoned, shedding Darts and men, but he scanned it anyway, found no sign of life on board. Or was there? His frown deepened, and he grabbed control of a single sensor suite, ignoring the flare of protest. The deeper probe was ambiguous: was that the cruiser's own quasi-living structure that he was reading, or was it a skeleton crew.
"Zelenka," Sheppard said in his ear. "I need those scanners."
"Yes, yes," Radek answered, but touched keys to return control to the city. "Colonel, we are on a collision course with that drifting cruiser —"
"Yeah, I saw that," Sheppard answered. "I've corrected for it."
"But —" If Radek hadn't been watching, they might have missed it, or taken it for one more release of gases from a damaged ship. But he was watching, and he saw the vent open, the vapor plume sparkling as gases froze instantly to snow in the vacuum. Even then, he might have dismissed it as automatic response, systems still struggling to function, nothing of significance. In his screen, the numbers shifted again, the line of the projected course curving back to cross Atlantis's shields in less than thirty minutes. He swore in Czech.
"Problem?" General O'Neill asked, looming over his shoulder.
"Yes, and a bad one." Radek pushed his glasses up on his nose. "Sheppard, do you see?"
"Yeah. Was that deliberate?"
"Was what deliberate?" O'Neill asked.
"That damaged ship." Radek pointed with his chin, his hands busy on the sensor controls. Scan the cruiser properly this time, he thought, see what's really in there — full spectrum, not just lifesigns and power usage. "It was on a collision course, and we moved to avoid it. But it — maybe it's coincidence, but it vented atmosphere in the just the right place to nudge it back into our path again."
"Crap," O'Neill said.
"I can take it out," Sheppard said. "I don't like wasting the drones, though…."
Radek ignored them both, analyzing the readings as they came in. Power usage was way down, main power plants disabled; the lifesigns remained ambiguous. Atmosphere — well, there still was some, though it wouldn't be very nice to breathe, and there was a weird chemical trace that he didn't recognize. He adjusted the scanners, trying to home in on it, and his eyes widened at the results. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph."
"What?" O'Neill bent closer.
"The cruiser is stuffed full of explosives," Radek said. The readings kept coming, weight and chemical composition — Death's people must have filled every unused storage space in the center of the ship. The spaces closer to the hull were empty, presumably so that the cruiser wouldn't blow before it accomplished its mission, but the rest…. The explosion would be strong enough to breach Atlantis's shields.
"Avoiding," Sheppard said, his voice distant again as he communed with the city.
On Radek's board, lights flickered as the remaining maneuver engines fired, and in the tactical display, Atlantis's course shifted, pulling away from the drifting cruiser. It hung motionless, the line of its projected course falling further and further from the city. Radek allowed himself a breath of relief, but then lights flared, a secondary engine firing from the cruiser's trailing edge. The lines began to converge again.
"Goddamnit!"
"Maybe it's time to waste some drones," O'Neill said, his tone tighter than his words.
"I don't have that many," Sheppard said, but the city monitors showed a drone settling into the silo. "It's got to be one good shot."
"Wait!" Radek stared at the numbers forming on his screen, answers to a question he really wished he'd never had to ask. "For God's sake, don't fire!"
"What?" Sheppard said, but in the monitor the drone eased back toward dormancy.
"We're already too close," Radek said. "If you destroy the ship here, it will severely damage the shields."
"What if Sheppard just takes out the engines?" O'Neil asked.
"I think the cruiser will blow anyway," Radek answered. "They'd be stupid to rig the ship any other way, and besides, the lifesigns — there may still be a skeleton crew on board, and they will detonate it."
"What's stopping them from blowing it up right now?" O'Neill glared at the screen as though he could stop the cruiser with mental force.
"I think — I assume they are waiting for a better shot." Radek punched keys, tracing the shape of the explosion, the pattern of damage. "If they fire it here, they will damage us, yes, but the city will not be entirely destroyed. There is a remote chance we could still get away."
"Crap," O'Neill said, not quite under his breath. "We can't keep playing dodge'em —"
"Sheppard is trying," Radek said. The city's course shifted, but there wasn't much more they could do, not with the East Pier engine off line. He touched his radio. "Dr. Sommer! Report your progress, please."
"We're not to the engine yet," Sommer answered, his voice distorted by hissing static. "There is a hull breach, it's going to take some time to get around."
"We have a situation," Radek said. "Take suits if it will be faster."
There was a little silence, and then Sommer said, "Okay, Dr. Zelenka, we're on it."
"They're not going to be fast enough," O'Neill said.
Radek shook his head. They weren't, and there was no other way down to that part of the city — Sommer had already gone through the closest transport chamber.
"Call them back," O'Neill said.
"But —"
"You said it yourself, they're not going to be able to fix it fast enough, and they're too exposed. Get them back, we'll deal with the engine after we solve this problem."
"All right," Radek said, and turned back to the radio to give the order.
"General O'Neill," Teyla said. She had been silent for so long that Radek had almost forgotten her presence. "I have a proposition."
Teyla moved to stand beside General O'Neill, the tactical display now laid out before them in Radek's central screen. "We cannot evade effectively — we are under fire, and the East Pier engine is damaged. But I can fly a Wraith cruiser. Radek says there is only a skeleton crew, or perhaps none at all. Let me go across and fly it to safety."
"Death will pull the trigger as soon as you board," O'Neill said.
"I think not." The pattern unfolded itself before her, clear and simple, what had been a tangle resolved by the cutting of a single string. "They will not waste their best weapon, not for a small party, and if we go by jumper, they may not know we are coming until we are aboard. And then we can create enough confusion that they will not know whether or not to detonate until it is too late."
"But once they know you have control, they'll blow it," O'Neill pointed out.
"If detonation is controlled remotely," Teyla answered, her voice steady. That was, of course, the great risk, but if it was the only way to save the city — she saw no other, and thought her odds were better than even.