02 - Reliquary (23 page)

“Yes,” Kavanagh said, as bland as if they were discussing the weather.
“That’s the generator.”

Rodney eyed him sharply. He told Dorane, “You shouldn’t have killed
Kolesnikova. She knew more about naquadah power generation than Kavanagh could
ever learn.”

“I could control Kavanagh,” Dorane replied easily, as if it was nothing. “She
had your gene retrovirus.”

Rodney had wondered if Dorane had ordered Kavanagh to kill Irina. But that
sounded as if he had done it himself.

Rodney remembered thinking once that it was bizarrely unfair that Sheppard
and Carson and the others had come by the gene naturally, just because they had
promiscuous ancestors who must have been lining up at the proverbial dock the
day the Ancients had landed on Earth. And it had been a huge relief when the ATA
therapy had worked for Rodney. Now it was going to get all of them killed in a
horrible way, and that was just typical.

“You know why we’re here. Prepare it for transport.” Dorane looked at
Kavanagh. “Bring the tools. Make sure he uses only the correct ones needed for
the job at hand.”

Rodney looked down at the generator, grimacing. He had put so much work into
getting these things to mesh with the city’s more advanced systems; taking it
out was really going to hurt. At least he could do it slowly and blame the low
emergency lighting. “I assume you want it intact, and not in burnt-out pieces,
so it’s going to take some time since I can barely see what I’m doing.”

“That can be remedied,” Dorane told him, his expression bland.

Rodney threw him a wary look, not sure if he meant a flashlight or a little
genetic adjustment. Except for the lights on the P-90s, which the men weren’t
using because of the Koan, nobody seemed to be carrying a flashlight. He said
stiffly, “I’ll make do.”

Kavanagh brought a tool case over and opened it. Rodney glared at him, but
Kavanagh’s normally annoying face was blank, just like the Marines and Ford.
Rodney selected the screwdriver needed to get the generator’s panels open,
holding it out to Kavanagh for inspection. Kavanagh nodded, and Rodney sneered,
saying, “I’m not quite insane enough to blow this thing up with me standing over
it.”
Not yet, anyway.
If they got to the fifth generator and Sheppard
still hadn’t shown up, Rodney knew he might rethink that position. For all he
knew, Dorane’s genetic tampering had finally run its course and Sheppard was
already lying dead in one of the corridors.

Dorane watched him get the panels off the generator’s access points, and it
made the back of Rodney’s neck sweat. He flinched when Dorane said suddenly, “I
am only just realizing how apt my earlier comment was about the city being fit
only for scavengers. Your technology is cobbled together from many different
sources, is it not? You weren’t lying about coming here from another galaxy.”

I’m only just realizing how apt my earlier comment was about you being a
serial killer.
Rodney said flatly, “No, we weren’t lying.” Dorane seemed to
know the Ancient systems fairly well, but it was the interfaces with Earth-based
computers and technology that baffled him. Considering how much of it was a
hybrid mix of Terran, Goa’uld, Asgard, and Ancient, it probably wasn’t
surprising that Dorane didn’t understand it.
Or us.

“You did not know of the Wraith, when you came here to loot Atlantis? I suppose your Lantian ancestors did not bother to pass along
the story of their defeat.”

Rodney set his jaw, barely managing to stifle his first knee-jerk reply. He
knew Dorane wanted him to assert the expedition’s right to the city, based on
Earth’s inheritance from the Ancients.
Guess what? You’re the only person
with an ATA gene handy, and he wants an excuse to torture you.
He said only,
“We didn’t know.”

Dorane continued to watch him from what Rodney thought was way too close a
distance, but didn’t reply. Rodney tried to focus his attention on the delicate
maze of circuitry inside the generator’s connection panel and ignore the
lingering painful death that was in his immediate future.

In his more optimistic moments, of which there were few, Rodney had imagined
what things would be like if they ended up staying here forever, or at least all
lived long enough to die of natural causes. Somehow in that scenario, Sheppard
had still been here too, though God knew after years of crash landings, head
injuries, and Wraith stunner attacks he would probably have even more
impulse-control issues than…
Of course,
Rodney thought with a sudden
surge of hope. He leaned down over the connecting conduit to conceal his
expression. Now he knew what the plan was.

He just hoped Sheppard was still alive to carry it out.

The climb was an intense few minutes, but John was able to make the other
balcony without dying. From there he went to the corridor just above the one
that approached the medlab from the outer wing of the city, then found the
correct floor access panel. He pried it open and crawled through the floor to
find the ceiling panel that would open inside the quarantine-sealed area, on the
opposite side of the medlab from the booby-trapped corridor of death that led
from the center stair shaft.

The floor space was just as cramped as he remembered it, and much warmer.
Not to mention airless,
he thought, wriggling past the layers of conduit. When they had had people working down here,
McKay had managed to deflect the return air for the circulating system through
this passage, and John hadn’t realized what a difference it made. It was also
much noisier this time, with the sounds from the ATA growing into a painfully
incessant clamor. By the time he reached the ceiling panel, John was gritting
his teeth and having unpleasant flashbacks to the repository.

He hung upside down out of the ceiling for a moment, just glad to be able to
take a full breath, checking the copper-colored floor for suspicious objects and
substances. He had been hoping this corridor would be clear, that Beckett’s
group had planned to retreat down it if the medlab was compromised. Not seeing
anything indicative of traps, he unfolded himself out of the narrow panel and
dropped to the floor. The door to the rear area of the medlab area was around
the next corner, and it was sealed tight.

John listened at it for a moment and heard muffled voices. He pounded on the
door and called, “Hey, can anybody hear me in there? It’s Sheppard.”

After a moment he heard, “Major Sheppard?” It was Beckett’s voice,
incredulous and so relieved John could barely understand him through the
slurring vowels. “Radek, get over here and open this thing, it’s Sheppard!”

“Wait, wait,” John said hastily.
This could be awkward.
“Guys, listen
to me. When you open the door, I want you to remember that it’s me. Don’t freak
out and most importantly, don’t shoot me. Okay?”

There was silence from the other side of the door. John could practically
feel Zelenka and Beckett exchanging a look. Then Zelenka’s voice said, warily,
“Okay.”

The door slid open, revealing one of the main medlab bays. It was as dimly
lit as the rest of Atlantis, with storage cases and wire-framed supply racks
standing against the soft copper and silver metallic walls. Then Beckett
cautiously peered around one side of the door. He stared, blinked, and said, “Oh, dear.”

“What?” Zelenka peered around the other side of the door, holding a 9mm. His
eyes widened, and he gasped,
“Kurva drat!”
He grabbed John by the front
of his shirt and dragged him into the room.

John hit the wall console to seal the door again, and Zelenka stepped back,
staring at him, gesturing helplessly. “What—What—?”

“What—?” Beckett echoed, then took John’s wrist, turning his hand over so the
claws were visible. “Holy crap. What in the hell did they do to you, boy?”

Covering the door were Ramirez and Audley, members of Bates’ security detail,
both carrying P-90s. Ramirez managed to keep his face blank, but Audley looked
like he was having one of those Pegasus Galaxy moments where you had to keep
doing your job but all you really wanted was a little time to freak out. John
sympathized; he had been having one for the past day and a half. John said,
“Dorane did this. It’s a genetic retrovirus mutation thing. Rodney thinks—”

“Rodney’s alive too?” Beckett demanded.

“Oh yeah, Rodney’s fine. Sort of. He—” In the center section of the medical
area where the diagnostic tables and beds were, he caught sight of Dr. Biro and
several of the other medical personnel, as well as Dr. Sharpe, Miko, and a dozen
or so others from the science team. Everybody was staring at John in
consternation. Then a familiar figure shouldered a way through the crowd and
John forgot about anything else. “Bates, what the hell are you doing here?” he
demanded, furious. “Who’s with Elizabeth?”

Bates had had his mouth open, probably to say something about how John should
be held at gunpoint until they could find out why he looked like that, but
John’s irate question derailed that completely. “I don’t know, Major,” he said,
his jaw set. “When they took the ’gate room, I was down on this level and I got
cut off.” He hadn’t been patrolling or getting ready to go off world, so the
only weapon he had was his sidearm.

“Oh, that’s just fantastic!” John pressed the heel of his hand to his
forehead, trying for calm. “So she’s up there holding off a bunch of Koan and
our guys with what, three techs and a laptop?”

Bates controlled a wince. “Dr. Simpson is with her—”

Simpson was another expert on Ancient technology, and she must be the one
keeping the door sealed against Dorane. But that didn’t make John feel any
better. “Oh good, Elizabeth is being defended by another one of the
civilians
we’re supposed to be
protecting.
Does something seem wrong with that
picture, Bates? It’s children, scientists, and diplomats first, did you not get
the memo on that?”

Zelenka gestured impatiently. “Shout at Bates later! Tell us what happened
now! Where is Rodney?”

John took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. Coming unglued at
Bates didn’t help, though it had made John feel better for about a minute.
Bates’ dark face was suffused with anger, Ramirez looked guilty, and Audley
looked relieved, but then John had probably seemed a lot more like his normal
self yelling at Bates than he had when he had first come into the room.
“Rodney’s with Dorane. The only way we could get back here from the repository
was for me to pretend this retrovirus worked better on me than Dorane thought it
would, that I wanted to help him take over the city.”

Zelenka put his pistol down on a shelf to rub his eyes under his glasses. His
face set grimly, Beckett explained, “When the bastard first got here, he told us
you were both gone, that you’d been taken by Wraith. We thought—Well, you know
what we thought.”

Zelenka looked up, his eyes hard. “It was very affecting story, lots of
detail. Rodney trapped by the Wraith and you going after him, only to be caught
yourself.”

“Later, when everything went to hell, we figured he had killed you both,”
Beckett added. “And just what is he up to? What has he done to Ford and Kavanagh
and the others?”

John explained, “He used a drug, something that works on people like the ATA
works on Ancient tech. Or at least that’s what he said; he lies a lot. Teyla
said he was in her head, and she had to do what he told her, and we don’t think
Kavanagh even knew he was infected until Dorane started giving him orders. It
doesn’t work so well on people who have the Ancient gene or the ATA
therapy—that’s why he killed Kolesnikova and Boerne.” John flexed the set of
claws Beckett was still examining, adding grimly, “I got the special.”

Beckett swore. “I knew that damn gene would cause no end of trouble.”

His face drawn, Zelenka shook his head. “That is… interesting problem.
Interesting in the ‘oh God’ way.” He gestured vaguely. “Does Rodney have little
silver things too?”

“No, Rodney’s normal—well, he’s Rodney.”

Beckett shook his head, his incredulous expression turning thoughtful. He
took John’s chin and turned his head so he could look at his ear. “What are
these spines for? Antennae?”

John pulled away. “I have no idea, except it makes the Ancient technology
seem a lot more interactive.” Deciding it would be quicker to demonstrate than
to try to explain, he nodded to a set of utilitarian metal shelves, incongruous
against the smooth copper Atlantean wall panel. “That box there, on the bottom.
In it there’s five of those little portable medical scanners. No, wait, there’s
six. One…has a cracked control crystal.” He had almost said “one says it has a
cracked control crystal” but he didn’t want to look that deranged, at least not
in front of Bates.

Beckett and Zelenka stared at him. Zelenka muttered, “God, this would happen
in middle of emergency.”

“Oh yeah, it would have been so much fun if this happened without the
invasion of the city and the whole helpless mind-controlled slaves bit.” John
conquered his irritation and continued, “Look, you guys have to figure out a way
to stop the mind-control, because I’m stumped.” He turned to Bates.

From what John could figure, they had one asset that Dorane wouldn’t know
about. “He’s got a group of our people locked in that meeting room at the end of
the south hall on the lower operations level. I need you to take Audley and
Ramirez and get the Wraith stunners out of the armory, then take out the men
guarding the door and get our people the hell out of there. I’ll show you where
the floor access is so you can get out of the medlab corridor without alerting
the Koan. After that you’re on your own; I have to go back to Dorane before he
gets any more suspicious than he already is.” It was there that the plan got
really vague again, but he wasn’t going to mention that aloud.