I think the actual builders of the city did not much trust those who ran it to make good judgment calls about its technology, Radek said. This is not an attitude unique to the Ancients, believe me. There is a tendency to assume when building any mechanism or program that your users will be idiots.
Which in our case might be a good thing.
Cost of the time I think it is, Radek said. The safety protocols kept us from doing serious damage to the city or to ourselves many times when we did not know what we were doing. But this one is not helping. He ran a hand through his disheveled hair in frustration. If we had Rodney, he could maybe interface with the part of the city responsible for modifying its structure and make this work. It will not work for me.
Which leaves what?
We will have to repair the sensor inputs below the city, Radek said. It is impossible to tell if they were damaged by ice or by the battle with the hive ship that attacked Earth or years ago when we first moved the city, but they have been damaged by something. I have a team building replacements that should work. The entertaining part will be installing them.
Lorne didn't have many illusions about who was going to wind up taking a team to do that. I don't suppose we can fit a jumper with remote manipulators so that we don't actually have to get out in the water?
It is a good idea, but, no, Radek said. The connections required are delicate, and I doubt you can keep the jumper stable enough in the water in these currents.
The currents and the water temperature are what I'm thinking of when I'm thinking about doing this as a dive,Lorne said. Got to mention all the ice.
Radek shrugged apologetically. Yes, I know. I wish there was another good option, but I think this is it. Once the sensors are back online, the city's own defense mechanisms should keep ice from being swept under the city, and we will only need to worry about very large pieces of ice.
Lorne rubbed the back of his neck. Okay. If we set up a video feed, can you walk a team through what needs to be done?
Yes. I hope this is the only time you will have to go diving.
Knock on wood, Lorne said. Just out of curiosity, how big do very large pieces of ice get?
A couple of hundred meters in length we would say was very large, Radek said. Hopefully we will not run into anything bigger than that.
Great, Lorne said. How big are the ones we're hoping we won't run into?
Closer to the size of a city, Radek said reluctantly. But that is very rare, so I would not worry about it too much yet.
I try not to, Lorne said. There were usually plenty of current problems to worry about instead.
Chapter Twenty-eight: Proving Ground
They didn't actually race to the Genii homeworld. That would be irresponsible, and John and Sam were both very responsible people. Maybe they were a little competitive, but not quite that competitive, at least John wasn't when he was flying a ship that might fall apart any minute, and that anyhow Sam could dust with one hand tied behind her back.
For once, nothing terrible happened. Despite being on tenterhooks for the whole thirteen hours in hyperspace, there was nothing more dire to report than a few power fluctuations that had Dr. Kusanagi crooning and muttering over the crystals as if she could talk them into behaving. Maybe she did, because everything held together, and they came out of hyperspace exactly where they were supposed to, twenty two minutes after the Hammond. It was a good thing it wasn't a race, because that would have been pretty embarrassing.
Carter had spent a good twenty minutes trying to explain to Ladon Radim that she was there full of good will and happy thoughts, and that the Ancient warship and Dahlia were just behind. He is pretty much stopped believing her and the rhetoric was escalating when John dropped out of hyperspace and Dahlia called down to report that both she and the Avenger were in great shape.
After that things warmed up a bit, and there were a few hours of changeover as they landed on a camouflaged field and the Genii crew came aboard. Then there was a hastily prepared meal with Ladon Radim in a farmhouse that looked like it was straight out of Amish country, built over an underground bunker that generated nuclear power. John really didn't have enough words to express how glad he was that he wasn't the ranking officer in the party, so all the making nice and polite conversation that would be scrutinized for secret clues to Earth intentions was on Sam.
The Genii clearly had a problem with that. The way that some of the senior officers looked straight through her or posed their questions to John instead was pretty obvious. If he's been feeling a little more charitable, maybe he would have done something different, instead of giving everyone what Teyla called The Smile of Wrongness and deferring to Sam on every answer, like he couldn't tie his shoes without her permission. He wasn't sure what the Genii made of that little performance, but it seemed to amuse Sam to no end.
Dahlia Radim made polite conversation for a few minutes, clearly more at ease now that Teyla wasn't around. She kept giving him pitying looks, like a guy you expect to get killed in some awful way any day now, but that you can't say you didn't warn. Or maybe like the looks you give a guy who is blowing up his career by getting serious about the wrong person, but hasn't realized it yet. He's seen that kind of thing back on Earth, and he didn't like it any better here.
It was hours before Sam managed to shut the festivities down on the grounds that they had to get back to Atlantis. There was nice flat bunk waiting in the Hammond's guest quarters, and he sacked out and took a long nap while they left the Genii behind, homeward bound. It was the best sleep he's had in quite a while.
Radek looked at Ronon over the rim of his glasses as they entered the armory. “You know I think this entire thing is a bad idea.”
“I know that,” Ronon said. He refrained from pointing out that Radek had said so more than once in the last fifteen minutes. “But we need a scientist. If we get the jumper shot up, or we wind up on a planet where there’s something wrong with the DHD, or there’s some weird radiation that’s going to make us all mutate if we stay too long — ”
“It would more likely just kill you,” Radek said. “I understand that you must have someone on the team with an understanding of Ancient and Wraith technology. I just wish Sheppard would choose someone else.”
“But given that he hasn’t…”
Radek sighed and squared his shoulders. “Given that he hasn’t, I sense that my future will involve much more shooting at things than I would prefer. So here we are.”
Ronon smiled a little. “Lorne said you did a pretty good job beating up his Marines that time everybody had amnesia.”
“I had the element of surprise,” Radek said. “And my goal was not to overpower an entire Marine team, but to buy time in which to run away.”
“A lot of the time that’s us, too,” Ronon said. “If we get into it with the Wraith, the main thing is for you to be able to defend yourself as we retreat. Teyla will be covering you while me and Sheppard hold them off. You and Teyla are supposed to get back to the gate and dial out for us.”
“Believe me, I will not hesitate in that,” Radek said. Ronon handed him the pistol and watched while he loaded it. He did at least know how to do that competently, which put him ahead of where some of the scientists had started.
It had taken a while for Ronon to make it clear to Sheppard when he first came to the city that he knew how to train people with no combat experience at all, and that he wasn’t going to break them by accident. He always felt wrong teaching people to shoot before how to fight with their hands — you were supposed to teach the foundation skills before you worked with any weapons — but he could see that sometimes it was a necessary evil.