We must have it, though, he thought. They woulnd’t have come to Pegasus without it, but— He couldn't see the IOA being willing to give the Genii the key to Ancient technology. And saying they didn't have any — well, it might buy him as much time as it took Radim to point out that they could use the Stargate to send for it.
"And certainly we're in a difficult position at the moment," Radim said.
"Which we need each other's help if we're to survive," Woolsey pointed out. There was nothing to be lost in making that explicit.
"Precisely. However, it would certainly make things easier on my people if we were able to start with your therapy." Radim smiled. "Surely that can be arranged, even on short notice."
Over my dead body. Woolsey swallowed the words, managed a thin smile of his own. "My government frowns on using unwilling subjects for medical experimentation, Mr. Radim."
“My volunteers are all willing,” Radim answered. “Nor would I call it ‘experimentation.’ After all, you know perfectly well that the gene therapy works.”
"It's against the policy of my government," Woolsey said. He put his hand to his ear as though he had received a radio signal. "Yes?" He paused, letting imaginary words roll through his mind — excuse me, we need to talk to you — and turned back to Radim with the best smile he could manage. "I'm sorry, Mr. Radim. I'm needed urgently. Perhaps we could return to this discussion a bit later?"
"Of course." Radim rose politely. "But I do want to make our position clear, Mr. Woolsey. Unless we get access to the ATA gene, the Pride of the Genii remains where she is."
"Commendably clear," Woolsey said, and let the door close behind him.
Rodney McKay bent over his laptop in the new quarters he'd picked out as temporary housing. It wasn't as nice as the rooms he'd given up, but it did have an actual bathtub, and the outer room had a tiny balcony, which was less important, given the weather, than the fact that the balcony came with a clear glass door that gave onto a view of ocean between two of the towers. On the negative side, the bedroom was small and dark, but then, he wasn't doing much except sleeping in it these days. He hadn't really unpacked yet — there was bound to be something better once he had time to explore a little further — but it would do for now, and it kept Sheppard happy, in that everyone knew where to find him when he was off duty. That wasn't something Rodney actually wanted to think about in any detail, and he bent closer over the screen, studying the model he'd created. The order was to destroy Hyperion's weapon, and he could guess what Carter's solution would be. Surely there was something more elegant than just dropping it into the nearest sun.
The trouble was, there might not be a more efficient method. He'd pulled up all the files on "destroying things in naquadah casings" — of which there were rather more than he'd expected — and most of the successful results seemed to come from large nuclear devices or dropping it into a sun. Of the two, the sun was probably preferable.
A part of him wished there was a chance to examine it more closely. He'd like to know how it was supposed to work, as well as what it actually did, but Alabaster's warning had been enough to sober him. "Burn out the brain of everyone with Wraith DNA": it wasn't just that the category now included him, but there were too many innocent, non-Wraithy people who carried some trace of the Wraith. Teyla and Torren, for two, and he wasn't about to risk them. Not when she and John finally seemed to have gotten themselves together. It was nothing to do with worrying about his own fate.
Besides, he was feeling less Wraith-like with every passing day. Yes, there was still that weird residual telepathy, though he was getting better at tuning it out, and his hair was still stark white, but other than that he was unmistakably himself. It was a pity some people didn't seem to recognize it. He grimaced at the thought, ducked his head closer to the screen. They'd get over it. Eventually.
"Rodney."
Zelenka's voice sounded in his ear, as close as telepathy, and Rodney straightened, scowling even though he couldn't be seen. "Yes, what? I'm busy."
"Sorry." Zelenka didn't sound particularly regretful. 'You're needed in the control room. Immediately."
"Would you like to tell me why?" Rodney was working as he talking, putting his laptop to sleep and shrugging into his jacket. "Or at least whether we're being invaded?"
"If we were being invaded, I would not be calling just you," Zelenka said. "It is — urgent, but not dire? We are searching for something that should be there, but we have the sensor field at maximum, and we cannot pick it up."
"I'm on my way," Rodney said, and slung the laptop over his shoulder.
The control room was busier than he'd expected, and when he glanced over the railing into the gateroom, there was a trio of Genii soldiers standing to one side under the watchful eye of an equal number of Marines.
"What are they doing here?" he asked, and Zelenka looked up from his console.
"Oh, good, you are here."
"Yes, obviously. Why do we have Genii in the gateroom?"
"Ladon Radim is here," Zelenka said.
"Ok, yes, but why is he here? What does he want from us this time?"
Zelenka finished typing in a series of commands, and pushed himself back from the keyboard. "He says that Queen Death has launched an all-out attack and that her fleet will be here within thirty-six hours."
He kept his voice low, but Rodney flinched in spite of himself. That explained the tension he could see in people's faces, the way they kept querying their screens, erasing the results, and querying again. "We should be able to see her if that's the case —"
"Yes, yes," Zelenka said. "Except that we can't. The ships would be at the limits of our sensors, yes, but we ought to be seeing something. And we're not."
"Then Radim is lying," Rodney said. "It wouldn't be the first time. And that's Woolsey's problem, not mine."
"Woolsey wants us to find the Wraith fleet," Zelenka said. "Or prove it isn't there. At the moment, I am unable to do either."
"Let me see." Rodney took his place in front of the main sensor array, frowning at the screen. "OK, that's — look, all you need to do it extend the bandwidth, here, and channel more power through the phased array —"
"No, wait —"
Sparks flew under Rodney's fingers, and he snatched his hands back. "Ow!"
Zelenka reached past him, swearing in Czech, and hit another switch. The sparks died.
"What the hell did you do that for?" Rodney demanded. Now that he looked again, he could see that the settings were different, the power routed through new pathways.
"Why do you think?" Zelenka retorted. "We had to make certain changes while you were — away."
They both stopped, Rodney for once speechless, all too aware of what Zelenka wasn't saying, and after a moment, Radek gave an awkward shrug.
"Well. You see what we did."
"Yeah." Rodney looked at the screen again. He was not going to pursue the issue. There was nothing he could say that would make them trust him any sooner — though, really, of all people Zelenka ought to know him better than that. Except that there was that moment in the ZPM room, when he'd come too close to killing Zelenka, and he doubted either of them had forgotten. He made himself concentrate. "Well, that's why you're not getting the readings you want. With the power fed that way, you're losing efficiency in the long-range band."
"Yes, I know," Zelenka said, "but it meant —"
He stopped abruptly, but Rodney could fill in the rest. It meant that he didn't know how the sensors were routed, meant he couldn't control them even if he had managed to gain access to Atlantis's systems, and it meant that anyone left in Death's fleet who knew what he'd done would have the same problems.