Exogenesis Read online

  Rodney was already shaking his head. "Won't work. The nanites will ultimately consist of so many diverse components that even allowing in air could be dangerous. From this point on we must consider the planet's atmosphere as hostile as the vacuum of space. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can come inside." He whirled toward Dr. Weir, a barely perceptible tremor running through his arm and down to the datapad. "You have to let me activate the shield immediately and begin plans for evacuation ASAP. We can't maintain the shield at full strength indefinitely."

  Dr. Weir studied him, looking as surprised by his vehemence as Teyla felt. On the occasion of their first meeting, Teyla had found Rodney McKay to be overly excitable and prone to pessimism, but, in time, both her view and his behavior had shifted somewhat. They had yet to encounter a technological obstacle that he could not overcome, and in spite of appearances he never hesitated to do whatever was necessary to salvage the best possible outcome from a crisis. This state of instantaneous near-panic seemed an overreac tion, even for him.

  "Time out," Sheppard said, folding his arms. "Let's assume for the moment that we can bring the Athosians to Atlantis before starting the evacuation." Hope flowed through Teyla, and she sent the Colonel a glance of tentative gratitude, choosing not to see Rodney's resigned headshake. "What's the status of the Daedalus?"

  Dr. Weir pressed her lips together before replying. "According to Hermiod, it will take upwards of two weeks working with, in his words, Atlantis's `limited' facilities to get the hyperdrive back online."

  "They're lucky thatAtlantis even has the necessary equipment," Rodney retorted. "Catastrophic material failure can be ugly even in an air-breathing engine, and in-flight fires are entirely too exciting for my taste. There's no way the Daedalus could have limped back to Earth or even effected repairs in space given the amount of damage that was done. I'm surprised they managed to land without incident."

  "Hermiod confirmed that the problem doesn't lie with the Asgard technology but with the components manufactured on Earth," Dr. Weir told them. "Apparently our manufacturing processes aren't quite as flawless as one might hope, and the engine design is unforgiving of even the slightest imperfections."

  From his bed, Dr. Zelenka muttered something uncomplimentary-sounding about Russian-made titanium parts.

  "The temperature cycling of prolonged hyperdrive use caused metal fatigue," Rodney explained curtly. "Over time, hairline cracks propagated in some rather critical locations. Apparently it's time to start considering more frequent inspections on some of our hyperdrive components. One might also point out that it would have been prudent to put said components in more accessible locations, since our techs aren't quite as small and flexible as the Asgard, but that's hardly pertinent now. In any case, the main engines will be completely offline until we can machine the replacement parts and get them installed."

  Dr. Weir nodded. "When I bring Colonel Caldwell up to speed, I'll see if that time can be cut down."

  "Yes, do that." Rodney started toward the door. "I recommend a period of days rather than a week." Motioning absently for Sheppard to follow, he added, "I need to take a look at the first pod you recovered. Hopefully that will tell us something more about what specifically we're dealing with."

  "Wait, Rodney," Dr. Weir cautioned. "Atlas might be dead, but we can't afford to spring any other booby traps that might be left in that pod. I'll have it taken to a quarantined area. Meanwhile, I'd like you to get me an update on exactly what Ea's machine is doing."

  The group disbanded. Teyla called after Dr. Weir, stopping her in the corridor before she could rush off to initiate contingency planning. "What of my people?" Teyla asked again, her voice becoming more insistent.

  The city's leader looked at her with such empathy that Teyla's blood chilled. "I'm sorry, Teyla, but as it stands there's very little we can do without risking Atlantis. Bringing anyone back from the mainland would pose too great a threat of infection."

  Dr. Weir's expression implored her to understand. Teyla did, but understanding did nothing to relieve the growing ache that had settled in her chest.

  "That wasn't what I was hoping to hear, Colonel Caldwell." Elizabeth sat back in her office chair and rubbed a hand across her forehead in a vain attempt to alleviate the throbbing.

  "I'm not too fond of the idea myself," replied the commander of the Daedalus. "Unfortunately our resources are limited by our remote location. Even with three shifts working around the clock there's simply no way to accelerate the repairs by more than a couple of days. Do you have any idea what sort of time frame we're looking at?"

  "Carson can't be sure, but a week, perhaps less, for complete terraforming. I imagine that environmental conditions will have deteriorated rapidly long before then, and we can only guess exactly what the impact will be "

  Caldwell gazed through her office window at the silent 'gate for a moment before speaking again. "Our options range from lousy to awful," he said. "Daedalus won't be hyperdrive-capable anytime soon, and not at all if we can't access the engineering workshops and labs on Atlantis. The idea of abandoning my ship is fairly repugnant, and when Hermiod learned that something resembling a miniature replicator plague was about to be unleashed-the word `displeased' doesn't even come close to covering it. I don't like anything about what I'm going to say here, but I agree with Dr. McKay's recommendation that we begin immediate evacuation to the Alpha site."

  And there it was, as unavoidable as death and taxes. Elizabeth's fingers tightened around the arm of her chair. "I was holding out hope that it wouldn't come to that."

  "Hope's a useful thing," Caldwell remarked. "But right now we'd be better served to deal with our reality." Eyes narrowing pensively, he glanced outside to where Rodney was seated at a workstation, tracking the machine while Sheppard, Teyla and Ronon stood watching. "What exactly is this exogenesis device doing right now?"

  Elizabeth stood and led Caldwell out of her office. She was about to put the question to Rodney when one of the duty techs tapped his earpiece, turned, and signaled her. "Dr. Weir, we just received a report from Dr. Anane at the Athosian camp."

  Rodney's head snapped around. "What? What's he doing out there?"

  The news surprised and concerned Elizabeth. Kwesi Anane and a handful of his fellow engineers had been on the mainland, helping the Athosians implement an irrigation system that he'd developed in his home country. She glanced at Teyla and Ronon. "The hydrology team didn't come back with you this morning?"

  Ronon shrugged. "Most of them, yeah. But Anane said he had some tasks left"

  That complicated matters further. Signaling to the tech to patch them through, Elizabeth lifted a hand to her earpiece. "Dr. Anane, what's your status?"

  "There is a peculiar cloud buildup occurring inland from the Athosian village," the Ghanaian engineer reported. "I have seen a similar formation only once before on this planet, and that was prior to the storm last year."

  No further description was necessary. That storm occupied a singular place in the short history of the Atlantis expedition. "I can rig up a camera to show you," he continued, "but it will take a few minutes."

  "Please do so, Kwesi. Thank you." Tom, Elizabeth met the gaze of her military advisor, who looked equally apprehensive. She'd already been reconsidering her decision regarding the Athosians. It seemed that, too often, Teyla's people had borne the brunt of problems brought about by the Earth team's actions. Despite Rodney's resolve, she'd contemplated rescinding the quarantine, and now with Kwesi still on the mainland-

  "Getting back to my earlier question," Caldwell said, interrupting her thoughts. "Can you pinpoint exactly where this machine is now and how long we've got before we run into trouble?"

  Rodney's fingers skipped across the keyboard in front of him to bring up a map of the mainland. "Carson's description of the exogenesis device suggests that, with no ZPM to provide power, the machine instead derives energy from the heat in the asthenosphere-the hot mantle beneath the planet's crust," he said. "Makes s
ense. It's a virtually limitless source of power and could easily sustain a planet-wide operation."

  Caldwell arched an eyebrow. "What if we attempt to blow up the machine?"

  "And here we go again with the standard military solution to every problem." Rodney's bearing clearly demonstrated his impatience with the Daedalus's commander. "Need I remind you that this thing was built to direct a complete molecular restructuring of an entire world while powering itself from the radioactive decay that melts rocks`? Somehow I don't think nuking it will help."

  "You haven't answered my second question, Doctor." Caldwell replied levelly. "How long?"

  "Where am I supposed to glean that information? I don't exactly have a wide range of experience with planets being terraformed." After a moment under Caldwell's impassive gaze, Rodney conceded, "Carson's one-week estimate may not have been completely off the mark. Although we've noticed some chemical and geophysical anomalies that could explain the formation of the storm, we haven't detected any change in the molecular structure of the surrounding rock, so it doesn't appear to have begun manufacturing nanites as yet."

  Teyla's head snapped around, and her eyes bored into Elizabeth's. "Then by all means we should evacuate the Athosians," Elizabeth said firmly. "I think it's a risk worth taking." She anticipated an argument from Caldwell, but the Colonel nodded, while Teyla took a deep breath and bowed her head in gratitude.

  "Dr. Weir," came Kwesi's voice over the radio, nearly shouting to overcome the increasing noise of the wind. "I'm sending the images now."

  Rodney opened the file on his screen, and his jaw slackened. "Oh, boy."

  Looking over his shoulder, Elizabeth was confronted with another terrible reality. The time stamp on the pictures showed that they had been taken thirty seconds apart, displaying the growing speed of the storm. Any rescue jumpers they sent might be able to land, but there would be little chance of evacuating the entire Athosian settlement before it struck.

  "This is incredible," Kwesi shouted. "The winds are already approaching gale force. The Athosians are attempting to prepare-"

  The signal abruptly cut off, leaving an agonizing silence in its wake. "Kwesi will know what to do," Rodney asserted. "Back in Ghana he designed the water distribution system for an entire group of villages and implemented it practically from scratch as part of his dissertation. He'll get them through it "

  "Dr. Weir, I must be there."

  Elizabeth shifted her gaze from Rodney to Teyla, whose expression had tightened. "I'll ask for volunteers to assist in evacuations, but as it stands, I'm not certain that any of you will even be able to land." Her eyes moved to John, knowing they all shared her thought. "We need to find a way to stop that machine. Soon."

  ell, Rodney, what have we got?" Elizabeth's nose wrinkled in distaste as soon as she stepped into the room.

  "Besides the overpowering stench of decaying sea life?" Rodney's eyes were watering, and he was certain that the tingling in his fingertips was due to an allergic reaction provoked by the weird orange gunk he'd had to fight through in order to set up an interface between his computer and that of the stasis unit. He stood and stared down at the marine-encrusted pod, now thankfully empty of its resident. "Judging by the Ancient design, this is obviously a portable stasis unit similar to the module we discovered with your"-he glanced at Elizabeth-"older self."

  "Except it didn't operate quite the same way," Carson put in.

  "Yes, Carson, I'm getting to that, and shouldn't you still be in a hospital bed or something? Or poking around the insides of our Ancient friend?" He gestured toward the glass window, behind which Atlas lay awaiting an autopsy.

  Carson didn't reply, but instead stared at the pod as if he could divine something from it. The two armed guards at the door-only one door this time, a lesson they'd learned well from Phoebus and Thalen-moved aside to let Sheppard and Ronon enter the already cramped room.

  "I've asked Carson to wait until we're absolutely certain that Atlas is in fact dead," Elizabeth said. When the doctor still didn't comment, she added, "SG-1 revived an Ancient in Antarctica after being frozen for what they estimated was several million years. Atlas may yet be able to provide us with some information."

  Rodney felt a stab of panic. No matter how many nightmare scenarios his hyper-cautious mind could conjure up, there was always one more that hadn't occurred to him.

  Apparently reading his expression, Elizabeth reassured him. "We're keeping the body under twenty-four-hour guard."

  "Oh, in that case, there's obviously nothing to worry about. Never mind the fact that this is an Ancient who had the brains to design planet-shaping devices. I'm sure a couple of Marines will be able to handle him just fine."

  "Quit knocking my guys," Sheppard told him. "And remind me why you called us all here."

  "According to the data log that I've been able to retrieve, it wasn't the removal from the jumper that damaged the pod. The avalanche ruptured the hull and flooded the compartment. In order to maintain the memory module, power was diverted from the stasis pod's life support, resulting in the occupant's death-well, presumable death." He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the body. "The memory module was the piece that snapped off during retrieval."

  The lifeless panel now sat on the lab bench nearby, smooth and unblemished on one side, and encrusted with growth on the other. A year ago it would have been inconceivable to Rodney that the entire consciousness of an Ancient could be contained in the coin- plex matrix. A year ago, however, he hadn't yet had the experience of being stored in a similar matrix inside a Wraith Dart. "Once power to it was severed, Atlas was effectively brain-dead."

  Sheppard glanced away, looking uneasy. Rodney decided to head off the Colonel's train of thought immediately. "It wasn't anything our teams did. The module wasn't attached all that securely. It looks like it was intended to be removed and plugged in to a separate power unit, much like a USB port. Abysmal design, really. Something so critical should have been much more robust. Anyway, it's likely that Ea's pod was damaged in the same way. It was just... luck, I suppose, that the memory module remained connected to the main power supply long enough for her memory to be transferred to Carson."

  Walking to the pod and glancing inside, Elizabeth said, "Radek speculated that, once the unit detected a viable atmosphere and nearby host, it acted in a manner similar to the Cohall pods."

  Not a bad theory, Rodney admitted to himself, especially from someone whose head no doubt hurt like hell.

  "That's nice," Sheppard responded, apparently channeling his earlier remorse into impatience. "How does it help us stop the exogenesis machine?"

  "It doesn't. But like the Cohall pods it acted as the equivalent of a biological black box. Just before the power completely died in this stasis chamber"-Rodney typed a command into the com- puter-"I managed to extract some basic information from the matrix. Unfortunately nothing of Atlas's memory, which is what I was hoping for. It actually contains flight data information from the transport they took to escape back to Atlantis. The module must have been connected to the transport ship's main log at some point and later to the log of the jumper. I've written a basic decryption program, but so far all I've managed to decode is the raw data on various ship systems. Atlas and Ea were the only two passengers on their jumper. I may be able to get access to recordings of their conversations, but refining the decryption program that much could take more time than we've got."

  "Perhaps something in the logs will jog Carson's memory," Elizabeth suggested.

  Carson seemed to shrink back a little from the sudden scrutiny of the group. "I don't know," he said hesitantly. "I'm trying to remember more, but it's terribly confusing."

  "I've got the program set up to work backward through the logs" The code scrolled rapidly across Rodney's screen. "The jumper's course suggests that they approached Atlantis and failed to gain entry through the city shield."

  "We knew that much already," Sheppard pointed out.

  "Yes. Giv
e me a few minutes, would you please?" Rodney snapped back. "The heading of the jumpers and the time en route should give us a good idea of where the main transport ship was destroyed... there." The computer helpfully plotted the coordinates. "Anything, Carson?"

  The doctor stared at the map on the screen, but shook his head.

  "Okay, moving on. Back on the main transport now. Damage reports from the battle... boring. Casualty list by hour, both boring and unnecessarily depressing. Unless any of these names look familiar?" Rodney took Carson's lack of response as a negative and turned fully back to the computer. "All right, now we're getting somewhere. The navigational data from the transport suggests that its flight originated from a planet in this system. There's a name-at least, I think that's the planet's name. Pol-"

  "Polrusso!" All eyes went to Carson, suddenly pale and distantlooking. When Ronon's hand flew to his weapon, Rodney wondered for a moment if maybe the Satedan hadn't been wrong about Ea loitering around after all.

  "Carson?" Elizabeth prompted. "Are you all right?"

  "The planet, Polrusso," replied the doctor slowly, with increasing assurance. "When she woke, part of Ea's shock came from the realization that Atlas hadn't had time to activate the exogenesis machine that they left behind there."

  The possibilities contained in that statement instantly sent Rodney's mental processes into overdrive. For the first time in the current crisis, he felt a surge of hope. "Perfect," he breathed. "That's it. That's our best shot."

  "What?" Ronon spoke up, still keeping a wary eye on Carson.

  "If there's a second machine on that planet, one that hasn't been used, we could learn an immense amount from it. Best-case scenario: if we can recover that machine and bring it here, I might be able to configure it to counteract the one Ea programmed."

  "Is that really possible?" Elizabeth demanded.