Chris Wraight - Dead end

Without asking, Teyla knew who to address. “Con-gratulations,” she said to Miruva, clasping her hand. “You will be a fine Foremost of your people.”

Miruva looked at Orand, and they both grinned. “Not just me,” she said, pride evident in her voice. “There is much for us to do, and all skills will be needed. When the route to the surface has been made safe, then we must start the work of exploring this place. Even with the gene, it will take us many years to uncover its mysteries.”

“What’ll you do about the tunnels?” said Ronon.

“We will preserve them,” said Orand. “We cannot allow ourselves to become trapped. We will explore them for new resources and one day, when the planet is restored, we will use them to return to the surface.”

“Good,” said Ronon. “Hate to think all that wandering around was for nothing. Gotta admit, I didn’t think we’d ever get out.”

“Do not even think of that,” said Miruva. “You were all preserved, and that is enough. But what will you do now?”

“We gotta go,” said Sheppard. “Much as it looks nice around here.”

“Dr McKay is with our vessel,” said Teyla. “He thinks that we can still use the Stargate to return home.”

Aralen frowned. “You mean to return to the ice? The storm will still be fierce.”

“We have no choice,” said Teyla. “If the portal fails us, we will be stranded here — it is our only route home.”

“I wish you could stay,” said Miruva. “There is still much to learn about this place.”

Sheppard gave a grim smile. “Rodney would’ve liked to see it,” he said. “He’ll be mad as hell when we tell him what’s down here.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Orand. “You’ll need help on the ice.”

“No way,” said Ronon.

Sheppard nodded. “No dice, I’m afraid. You can’t help us out there.”

Miruva embraced Teyla. There were tears in her eyes, and Teyla felt her own throat tighten. “We will remember you always,” Miruva said. “The Ancestors will be with you.”

Ronon cast Sheppard a dark look. “They’d better be.”

McKay was getting angry. Mostly because he was scared. And the fact that he was scared was making him angrier.

The constant cracks and moans from the ice beneath the Jumper tore his nerves to shreds. The scanner told him the Stargate was still there, but any moment he expected to see the blip disappear. And that would be the end of it.

He’d looked over the flight controls a hundred times. Should he try and take off? Sheppard had shown him how to fly the thing once, but in this weather? And even if he’d been confident about flying the Jumper, he wasn’t sure there was enough juice in the tank for more than one short burst of atmospheric flight. If he tried to take off and seek higher ground, he might ruin their chances of escaping the planet entirely. And with the blizzard still howling around the Jumper with terrifying force, leaving the vessel was no longer an option. He’d never make it back to the empty settlement alone.

The choices were looking pretty bad.

He looked over the Jumper’s instrumentation one last time. The power configuration was set for optimal delivery at the right times, and the improvised Zelenka module (he’d have to think of a better name for that) was sending out a steady stream of helpful diagnostic readings to the central computer. Everything was ready to go. All, that was, except for the crew.

McKay flicked open the dividing doors between the rear bay and the cockpit, and took a look at the external viewfinders. Nothing. The screens were white with occasional flecks of gray. The snow was tearing around the ship at frightening speeds and even inside the heavily shielded frame, the sheer noise of the maelstrom was terrifying.

He sat down in the co-pilot’s chair and began to bite his nails. It had been hours since he’d heard from Sheppard and the others. And he couldn’t shake the image of them lost, in the heart of the storm, their meager furs flapping around their freezing bodies, their limbs ravaged by frostbite. Despite all they had endured since arriving on Khost, this maelstrom was something else. The planet had begun the process of inexorably scrubbing all life from its frozen surface.

Unable to settle, McKay got up from the chair and started pacing backwards and forwards. He had to make a decision, do something . If he’d been Sheppard, he might have been able to think of a cunning intervention to resolve things. McKay was proud enough of his brain, but even he would admit that it was better at some things than others. Fixing Ancient technology against hopeless odds with terrible equipment was something he could do; making split-second choices in the absence of any helpful information at all was something he couldn’t.

He started to run down the options again. Outside, the dark of the storm was gathering. According to the plan, they should have been back by now. According to the plan, they should have made radio contact hours ago. According to the plan, they should have been long-gone through the Stargate and home again, sitting around a table drinking a cool beer and vowing never to try out experimental gate devices again.

Enough of the plan; what was he going to do ? He could sit tight, and hope that the team had merely been delayed. If the radios were still affected by the storm, they might turn up at any moment, dusted with a light layer of ice and eager to get going through the wormhole. On the other hand, they might be horribly lost, or lying under a snowdrift, or stuck down a crevasse. Should he try to take off to find them? The vessel’s built-in proximity sensors would work better at short range, even in such hellish conditions. But then he risked draining the fragile power cells, dooming them all. And he couldn’t fly the Jumper. No one but Sheppard could fly it with such a storm blowing.

McKay sat down again in the cockpit. He glanced at the controls in the pilot’s seat. They looked intimidating and dangerous. He hated flying. Most of all, he hated flying in Jumpers. They had a habit of crashing, or pitching you into the sea, or getting stuck half-way through a Stargate. Really, flying them was best left to the professionals.

His thoughts were suddenly broken by a massive crack right beneath him. McKay sat bolt upright, heart thumping. That was a huge one. The Jumper groaned and shifted to one side. For a moment, nothing happened. There was the faint sound of snow tumbling against the outer walls, just audible over the scream of the wind.

McKay found that he had frozen. He tried to lift his hand, and it obeyed him only reluctantly. For all its robust design, it was clear that the hull of the Jumper was being put under some strain. The ice was moving. Things were getting very, very difficult.

There was another crack, and then a rolling, booming groan. The Jumper dropped a few inches, coming to a rest with a harsh snap. McKay leapt from his seat in panic. Was the ice completely collapsing? Or was it just a mild resettling?

Another crack — the Jumper began to slide. McKay raced to the controls in the cockpit and glanced at the external monitors. Three of them were black. He was slipping. The Jumper was tumbling into the abyss.

“We are not going to last much longer in this, Colonel!” shouted Teyla.

She was a proud woman and hated showing any weakness, but the situation was becoming desperate. She had been hurt in the rock fall, and the extreme cold had caused her right leg to seize up. Limping through the knee-deep snow was almost impossible.

Ronon came up on her left shoulder. He was badly hunched himself, and draped with layers of clinging ice, but he put his arm under her shoulders and helped to prop her up against the biting wind.