Chris Wraight - Dead end

A warning light blinked on; the power supply had dropped again. In desperation, he started to calculate the odds of following Sheppard’s last order and getting through the Stargate on his own. He couldn’t be sure the others were even alive and, if they were, he couldn’t be expected to find them in such conditions. And the power was going down. And…

He shook his head, disgusted with himself. While there was a milliamp of power left in the Jumper, he would use it to find the team. They would do the same for him. No one gets left behind. Isn’t that what they always said?

With a slight tremor in his hands, McKay nudged the Jumper downwards. Maybe if he got closer to the surface he’d pick up their life signs. Watching the altimeter readings like a hawk, he gently eased the Jumper into a lower flight pattern. The ice rushed up to meet him terrifyingly fast and through the occasional tears in the storm clouds, he saw blank sheets of white streaking beneath him. McKay’s palms were sweaty, his heart beating fast. He began to wonder how much longer he could keep this up without having some kind of coronary episode.

Then he saw it. Just a flicker, almost a ghost of a reading. He’d passed it, and as soon as it appeared it vanished again. McKay immediately pulled the Jumper around for another pass. It responded erratically, and almost fell into a tumble. Grappling with the controls, he gradually got it back on the level. No more sudden moves. That was best left to the experts.

More carefully, he coaxed the Jumper back around. Despite all his scientific training, he found himself willing the equipment to help him out. He flew as low as he dared, scouring the HUD for anything at all. There was nothing. Maybe the readings had been an anomaly? His euphoria began to dissolve. Then he saw them again — three signals, barely moving, just beneath him.

“Yes!” He punched the air. “Yes!”

But his exuberance lost him control of the Jumper, and it pitched to one side. “Damn!” He tried to pull up, but the Jumper’s inertial compensators were far from perfect and it jerked into a too-steep climb and almost stalled. Auxiliary thrusters whined into action, but it wasn’t enough. The Jumper flipped onto its side, and started to plummet earthwards.

“What’s that?” cried Ronon, roused from his deathly stupor by a shadow in the sky.

He shook his head, flinging snow in every direction. Focus. Painfully, he hauled himself to his feet. “There’s something out there.”

Teyla rolled over in the snow, looking as content as a child in her bed. Her limbs were floppy, and the snow was beginning to mass against her. Sheppard was little better. The cords between them had come loose.

“C’mon!” cried Ronon, shaking Teyla. He dragged her to her knees.

She looked up at him blearily. “Let me sleep…”

The words were fatal. Ronon felt the drag on his fatigued limbs like they did. He could hear the siren voice within him, urging him to give in, end the pain, collapse into the snow.

“No!” he growled. “There’s something out there! Get up!”

He yanked her roughly to her feet. For a moment, she looked furious. Then something seemed to kindle inside her and the old Teyla returned. “What did you see?”

“Dunno,” he said, reaching for Sheppard’s slumped figure. “Help me get him up. We gotta move.”

“Where?” yelled Teyla. Even as she finished speaking, there was a roar from above them. Something big, black against the skirling grey of the sky, hurtled earthwards. It flew low over their heads and was lost in the white-out ahead.

“There!” said Ronon. He started to run.

McKay acted instinctively. He punched the panel, gave a flurry of mental commands, shouted out orders. When that failed, he resorted to the final tool in his repertoire — letting go of the controls and cradling his head in his hands.

With a crunch, the Jumper hit the ground. McKay was thrown forward hard in his seat as it skidded across the ice. The world whirled around him for a minute, then everything slowed.

The Jumper came to a standstill. Gingerly, McKay opened his eyes and peered at the control panel. All systems were still active. Thank God. Hands shaking, he returned to the life-sign signals. They were still there, even fainter than before, maybe a hundred meters away from where the Jumper had come down.

Clambering into the rear bay he scrambled into his fur clothing again. There was no guarantee that the others had seen his descent in such weather, and if they had missed him and kept walking then all would have been for nothing.

Quickly, clumsily, McKay pulled the hides over his standard fatigues. They smelled even worse than the last time he’d worn them. Once fully clad, he took a deep breath, and prepared to lower the rear door. His hand hesitated as he took a look at the sensor readings again. The wind was blowing at ridiculous speeds, visibility was close to zero, and the temperature wasn’t even worth thinking about. Opening the door was very silly, as silly as anything he’d ever done in the Pegasus galaxy.

McKay sighed, and pressed the a button on the improvised door release mechanism. When he finally found the others, he thought to himself, they had better be grateful.

The rear door juddered open, and immediately a storm of snow shot into the narrow space. Within a second, every surface was covered in a layer of white. The wind was mind-blowing, and once inside it began to rock the Jumper like a toy. McKay grabbed a bulkhead for support and staggered forward. He couldn’t see a thing beyond the entrance to the vessel. His heart quailed and he hesitated, clinging to the fragile hull. He couldn’t go out. He just couldn’t.

“About damn time!” came a muffled shout from the void.

Three gray figures emerged from the white-out, staggering against the force of the wind.

“Ronon!” cried McKay, rushing forward. Sheppard, Teyla and Ronon stumbled into the rear bay, barely visible beneath the snow that clung to their clothing. Once inside the rear bay, they collapsed.

“Close the door!” yelled Ronon.

McKay hurried to comply, struggling to find the closing mechanism in the swirling confusion. Eventually, his fingers located the control panel and he activated the switch. The door slammed upwards, locking out the maelstrom. The noise was reduced to a booming rumble.

“All right, that was too close,” Sheppard’s voice was alarmingly slurred. “Anyone else feel their fingers?”

McKay frowned. “We’re not out of this yet,” he said. “I don’t want to hurry you, but most of the readings here are somewhere close to critical and I don’t even want to think about what’s happening to the Stargate in our absence.”

“Just gimme a minute, will ya?” The Colonel looked horribly fatigued. McKay could only imagine what a few hours in that storm must have been like. But there was no time to rest. He looked at Ronon, who made to speak, but then the Jumper was rocked by a massive gust. It tipped to one side. McKay had difficulty keeping his feet, then fell back heavily as a series of amber lights flickered across the HUD display.

“Minute up,” Sheppard groaned, climbing painfully to his feet, beginning to strip off his sodden furs. “Just don’t expect first-class service here.”

Weir walked into the Operations Center, just as she had done every couple of hours since the databurst had been sent. It had become a ritual, increasingly devoid of hope. But it had to be done.

“Anything?” she asked Zelenka.

Just as always, Radek shook his head. Each time, he looked a little wearier, a little less full of life.

“Nothing,” he said. Weir looked at the empty Stargate below. It gazed back up at her, vacant and hollow. Every time she looked at it, she imagined the addresses whirling around the rim, the sudden burst of a new event horizon. Staring at it too long played tricks on you. She let her gaze return to Zelenka.