Elizabeth Christensen - Casualties of war

"You're saying there are more labs built into the hill?" asked John, his dejection fading.

"Significantly more, I suspect. Come here," Rodney told their team leader, jerking his head with an air of impatience. "Make yourself useful and give me some light. I only have two hands."

John rolled his eyes and acquiesced, each step crushing shards of glass under his boots. He took Rodney's flashlight and held it in one hand, directing the beam from his P-90 with the other. "I gotta say, nothing makes a guy appreciate his position on the Atlantis food chain like being ordered to hold a flashlight."

"Many people with more postgraduate degrees than you have gotten me coffee, Colonel Uppity." Rodney reached for the panel next to the first door. Before he could attempt to pry it open, the panel responded to his touch, sliding back to reveal an illuminated map.

"It still has power," John noted, turning off the flashlight and stuffing it back into Rodney's pack as the scientist studied the map. He reached for the handle of the other door and found it locked. "What do you suppose is behind this one?"

"A closet." Rodney dismissed the idea, focused on the panel. "Nothing technological. This one, on the other hand…"

"Is it possible this facility houses a ZPM?" Teyla wondered. Even though they had come in search of weapons technology, a ZPM would be a truly fortunate find.

"Not according to the scanner, but at this point I don't completely trust the scanner." Rodney's face split into a satisfied smile. "The extent of this place is incredible. There must be ten times more lab space concealed in the hill. If the structure was built into the hill purposely, rather than having ten millennia of dirt accumulated on top of it, the labs very well may have escaped the Wraith attack unscathed."

"That map looks like it belongs in a transporter." John leaned closer to inspect it and received an elbow to the ribs.

"Don't crowd me. I think that's precisely what this doorway is. It's just designed differently than the ones on Atlantis. Apparently here you have to choose your destination before you get in." Rodney considered his options carefully before touching his fingers to a location on the map.

Teyla waited for the door to open.

It did not.

"Perhaps it sustained damage," she suggested.

"It was working well enough to open the map for me." Rodney sounded mildly put out as he turned to John. "You try-see if it likes your blueblood gene any better."

With a half-shrug, John tapped the same area of the map Rodney had pressed, then another, and another. There was still no response. "Maybe putting the map outside the transporter instead of inside was a security feature. It'll only let you in if you're on the cleared list."

"That's…not an altogether ridiculous theory. In that case…" Fumbling in his pockets, Rodney retrieved a multifunction tool and ran his fingers down the wall below the map. He must have located an access point, because the tool slipped into a groove, and a neatly-organized rack of crystals and wires slid out toward him.

Cautious, Teyla watched from a few steps away as he reached toward the rack without hesitation. "Are you confident in your knowledge of such systems?" At his indignant stare, she explained, "You did say that this transporter is designed differently than those on Atlantis."

"The underlying principles are identical. Relax, Teyla. I'm fully confident."

"So what else is new?" muttered John, only to adopt an expression of innocence when Rodney spun toward him.

"Everyone's a comedian. Get that light down here."

Evidently choosing to withhold any further comment for the time being, John trained his weapon's light on the rack as Rodney reached into a mass of wires at the rear.

"It's really not brain surgery," Rodney commented as he worked. "Disconnect the power supply, remove the crystal that controls the security protocol, reconnect the power supply."

"And we know which crystal controls the security protocol?" John inquired.

"In fact we do." Rodney tugged a bundle of thick wires loose from its housing. The map immediately went dark. "Our transporters back home don't have this security feature, and I've memorized its crystal set. This set is identical-except there's an additional one here." With surprising dexterity, he rotated the dissimilar crystal and slid it free. Slipping it into a pocket on his vest, he then replaced the wire bundle, and the map lit up again. "There. What did I tell you?"

His faint smugness was lost on Teyla as she stared at the map panel with increasing concern. Seeing her reaction, John glanced down. "Uh, Rodney. .that thing was glowing blue before, wasn't it?"

"Of course it-" Rodney paled as he took in the map, now blazing red. "Crap."

An incandescent flash assaulted her, and then there was only darkness.

Well, he wasn't dead, so that was a start.

The bright streaks in Rodney's field of vision required some time to identify. At last he recognized them as the holes in the roof of the Ancient research facility. Some kind of power surge had knocked him flat, and whatever illumination the transporter map had provided was now gone.

A few meters away, a focused beam of light rose from the cluttered floor, as Teyla came up out of a crouch with her P-90 raised. "John, Rodney, are you injured?"

"Ow," answered a muffled voice from somewhere nearby. Rodney took a moment to assess his physical state. He'd landed on his back amid some rather uncomfortable rubble, but aside from the painful bruises-

The door banged open, adding more light to the scene. Ronon barreled in, weapon at the ready. "You guys all right?" he demanded when it became clear that no immediate threat existed. "Where's Sheppard?"

Under Rodney's shoulder, the rubble shifted, and he scrambled to his feet. "Sorry!" he stammered upon realizing that his team leader had been pinned underneath him. "Sony, very sorry."

Rolling over with a wheezing groan, Sheppard glared up at him. "What the hell do you have in that pack of yours? Did Radek stow away in there, or what?"

Rodney met the glower with one of his own but offered the Colonel a hand up, which was accepted. "You could have said something."

"I said `ow'."

"Something more descriptive."

"I didn't have the lung capacity." Upright once again, Sheppard picked a few shards of glass out of his sleeve.

"What happened`?" Ronon wanted to know.

Rodney wasn't entirely sure, but he wasn't about to say so. "The power requirements of this transporter must be handled differently than what we've seen on Atlantis."

"That, or disabling the security feature triggered another security feature," Sheppard guessed.

Their Satedan teammate didn't smile often. When he did, Rodney considered it an alarming display. "McKay, you didn't `carefully consider the possibility of a boobytrap'?"

Just what Rodney needed: someone else on his case. "Discover the wonders of irony some other time. This was a power surge, not a failsafe trigger."

"How can you be certain?" asked Teyla.

"Because if the Ancients had intended to seriously discourage trespassers by that method, they'd have built it to do more than just knock us over." He bent down to reexamine the slightly singed access panel. "Somebody want to give me some light again?"

With a grumble that sounded like `I must be nuts,' Sheppard stepped up next to him and reactivated his light. "Maybe it's just well and truly broken, then."

"If it has a viable power source-and all indications up until two minutes ago suggested that it does-there's no level of `broken' that I can't fix. It might require a call home for some specialized tools, but I'm hardly going to let a door hold us back for long."

The scanner had fallen to the floor a while earlier. Rodney retrieved it and aimed it into the open access port. The handheld device was an Ancient gadget he'd appropriated during an early exploratory trek through Atlantis's labs, and as such was shielded from the effects of electromagnetic interference. It detected the presence of EM just fine, however, and right now it was blinking like mad. The field strength was off the charts-and yet the readings didn't make sense.