And then for a moment he blanked out too, the world a screaming dark pain as bones snapped audibly.
The lights flickered, stabilized, and Rodney rolled over, his eyes watering and his heart racing. "Oh no oh no oh no." The nerves in his arm screeched when he tried to move the fingers of his left hand, but he could move them. It was the wrist. It had to be.
Okay, Rodney thought as the jumper rocked again, white carpet beneath him pristine and perfect, though his hand was on fire. I broke my wrist. Okay. That's all. I broke my wrist and it hurts like hell but it's not going to kill me. And Carson or Jennifer will fix it up. The worst thing will be that I have to have surgery on it and a couple of months in a cast, which will be very inconvenient because I have to use the keyboard, but it's a broken wrist. I can live with that. It just hurts. A lot. But if this jumper gets blown up, it will be a lot worse.
Slowly, Rodney hauled himself to his feet. The board was blinking yellow, systems shouting for his attention. "What happened?" he muttered. Surely the hive ship hadn't hit him. He'd been sure he was clear of its shot. And he couldn't have collided…. And yet sensors were showing external physical damage, the shield generator damaged, the drone launching systems destroyed, as though….
Rodney swore. The Hammond had clipped the cloaked jumper with its rail guns. Rail guns fired a solid projectile. The jumper's shields had absorbed most of the kinetic energy, or his molecules would be spread across the solar system, but it couldn't make the solid projectile disappear into thin air.
Did he still have the cloak? Rodney's hands flew over the board. Yes, at least temporarily. The cloak was holding. None of the hive ships had seen him. The jumper's shields were at 40 % and steady, but one of the two generators was out of commission. And the launching systems were completely destroyed….
Rodney went cold.
The launching systems that were supposed to deploy the weapon, to launch it into the sun. Without them he had no way to complete his mission. Decloak, broadcast what he was trying to do so that Todd could see it, and launch the weapon into the sun. Without the launching systems, he had no way to destroy the weapon, to get it from the jumper into the sun. If he just opened the back tailgate and let it float out, it might take days before the sun's gravitational field drew it in enough to destroy it. It needed propulsion. It needed to be sent into the sun at speed.
Rodney's hands stilled, looking ahead at the bright glow of the sun filling half the front window.
Of course there was one way left, one means of propulsion — the jumper's systems. He could send the jumper into the sun with the weapon aboard.
The Hammond was behind, closely engaged. The Pride of the Genii was halfway across the system, protecting Atlantis and engaged too. No one was in range to beam someone out.
He could fly the jumper into the sun with the weapon aboard.
Rodney's wrist throbbed as he moved his hand. There was no one else. There was no alternative, no more than there had been for Peter Grodin when the first Wraith fleet bore down on Atlantis, stuck on the weapons satellite to fire one critical shot.
Okay, Rodney thought. That's how it goes. He pushed the jumper's engines as far as they would go, course set for the sun.
"One good shot," Sam said. And then they had it, the right angle, the right instant.
The rail guns fired, superheated metal streaking through the vacuum, cooling to black in absolute zero, and then plunging through the hiveship's hull at full speed.
"Yes!" Franklin said, punching his fist in the air.
The hiveship reeled, turning to present its intact side to the Hammond, guns bearing full against the new interloper. Blue energy fire streaked out. It was a long way from finished.
"We're losing the forward shield," Franklin said. "Ma'am?"
"Pull back," Sam said. "Reroute power to get a patch on it." They couldn't keep punching that way, and the new ship had at least bought them time to regroup. "Hocken, what's your status?"
"Colonel Hocken's ship has been destroyed," Teal'c said solemnly. "We have ten 302s in service."
Ten out of twenty. Crap. But at least two of those had landed to refuel, and one had skated in badly damaged. Another was trying to line up on the bay now, signaling an emergency landing, one thruster flamed out from fuel starvation. As she watched the other flamed out, an unpowered landing without even the dregs of fuel for maneuvering thrusters. Mitchell.
"Hold us as steady as you can," Sam said, leaning over Chandler's shoulder. At the moment they could actually stop bobbing and weaving, probably the reason he'd waited so long.
The 302 lined up on the bay, sliding in with several feet to spare below, hitting the emergency webbing at bone-jarring speed. That had to hurt, but there were worse landings. Any one you can walk away from….
Pride of the Genii was still after the hive ship, following up with energy weapons. Lorne must be out of drones, Sam thought.
"How's that shield?" she asked.
"Forward shield back at 12 %," Franklin said. "It's not much."
"Well, let's get in there," Sam said. The Pride couldn't do it alone, and neither could their new ally.
This is how it ends, Rodney thought, just like it had in that alternate world Elizabeth had avoided so long ago, in which he'd drowned at his post, staying to the last to save the city. That was what Rodney McKay's fate always had been. It was just that in this world it had taken five years longer. This was the story of how Rodney did what needed to be done and in the end he died for it, the jumper on course for the sun and the battle behind him. He was going to die to save Atlantis, and that had been the name of the game from the moment he'd stunned John in the jumper bay. It wasn't John's turn, not this time. He had way too much to live for.
Time to decloak. The radiation monitors were climbing, but not yet at critical levels. With the shields damaged he didn't know how much time he had. Rodney turned the cloak off and the transmitter on.
"This is Rodney McKay," he said clearly, and his voice found strength as he went on, the hard, decisive voice of a hero. They might play this back as his memorial, a hundred times better than those recordings he'd made during the siege, the real deal. "I have Hyperion's weapon. And I'm going to destroy it. It's on board this jumper and it's going into the sun."
He could hear the replies, distinct and indistinct, Lorne saying something far away on his ship, hold on or something else irrelevant, as if he could wait that long!
Sam was closer. "Rodney, you don't have to do this."
"Yes, I do." The Hammond was way behind, still snarled with the hive ship, one thruster entirely offline. "It has to go in the sun or Todd won't engage and we're out of time." He cut the comm. There was no point listening, not now.
The sun filled the entire forward screen, radiation warnings creeping into scarlet. How many minutes of this could he stand before they breached the jumper's shields for the last time?
The others…. He could see their endings now with painful clarity. Sheppard would turn into the old guy who knows it all, the Pegasus expert who went native a long time ago, our man in Pegasus with his kids and his wife and his friends, the opinionated go-to guy who could get it done. Teyla would be the diplomat, the one who knit people together, human and Wraith alike. And Ronon would be a leader despite himself, part of a new Sateda rising from the ashes, an ally and a friend. Jennifer would go home and maybe she'd remember him sometimes. Yeah, that would be how it was. He'd be the tragic thing that happened in her past, the thing that changed her.