SGA-15 Brimstone Read online

  BRIMSTONE

  By David Niall Wilson & Patricia Lee Macomber

  An original publication of Fandemonium Ltd, produced under license from MGM Consumer Products.

  Fandemonium Books

  PO Box 795A

  Surbiton

  Surrey KT5 8YB

  United Kingdom

  Visit our website: www.stargatenovels.com

  METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER Presents

  STARGATE ATLANTIS™

  JOE FLANIGAN TORRI HIGGINSON RACHEL LUTTRELL JASON MOMOA

  with PAUL McGILLION as Dr. Carson Beckett and DAVID HEWLETT as Dr. McKay

  Executive Producers BRAD WRIGHT & ROBERT C. COOPER

  Created by BRAD WRIGHT & ROBERT C. COOPER

  STARGATE ATLANTIS is a trademark of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.

  © 2004-2010 MGM Global Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER is a trademark of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Lion Corp. © 2010 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  © 2010 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. All Rights Reserved. Photography and cover art: © 2004-2010 MGM Global Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  WWW.MGM.COM

  A Crossroad Press Digital Edition – http://store.crossroadpress.com

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  CONTENTS

  Brimstone

  Sneak Preview of Stargate Atlantis: Homecoming

  Chapter One

  The audience murmured in anticipation as a tall, gray-haired man with thick spectacles and a cloud of puffy hair stepped to the podium. There was a tinkle of crystal and a scuffle of chairs as the night reached its climactic moment. The speaker cleared his throat, and the crowd grew silent. He shuffled some note cards and glanced up at the audience.

  “I believe you all know why we are here.” His voice was dry and brittle, but it carried well. “Tonight we will honor our best and our brightest. I venture to say that if we tried to calculate the combined IQ of this room, we’d need a very powerful computer — but even in such company, one stands out clearly. We here at The Academy of Science bestow this honor annually, and I’m pleased to report that for the first time in our history, the voting is unanimous. Few have distinguished themselves so clearly, and in so many varied fields. I could go on, as many of you know…”

  He paused and there was a ripple of laughter.

  “But I will not. Without further ado, I’d like to introduce our keynote speaker, a woman we all know and admire, Dr. Elizabeth Weir.”

  There was an enthusiastic burst of applause. From behind the old man, a slender dark haired woman in a shimmering low-cut evening gown stepped forward. In stark contrast to the first speaker, she was tall, vibrant and attractive, catching the eye of each of those seated below her. She smiled brightly and waved to a few acquaintances in the front rows. She held no notes, but placed her hands almost provocatively on the podium and leaned down to the microphone.

  “I am pleased,” she said, “and honored, to have been chosen to introduce one of Earth’s finest minds — possibly the most brilliant physicist we’ve known — certainly the most brilliant in my lifetime. This is a man I have served with proudly, who has saved my life on countless occasions, and who I consider to be the foremost human expert on Ancient technologies. I’d like to tell you all a few things you might not already know about this amazing man…”

  As she spoke, Dr. Rodney McKay rose slowly from his seat in the back of the room. He knew she would go on for a while, praising his mind, but it was her smile he was really interested in. He was certain she was looking directly at him as she spoke. He thought, maybe, there was something more than usual in that smile — something inviting. It was the most important night of his life, and he intended to milk it for everything it was worth.

  He worked his way down the row of seats toward the center aisle, apologizing graciously to those he passed and shaking a few hands. They all knew him. Many of them owed their own careers and research to his work. It was the culmination of a lifetime of research and experimentation.

  Suddenly, Dr. Weir’s speech was interrupted by a sharp buzzing tone. Rodney spun, confused, searching the room for the source of the sound, but he could find nothing. He shook his head, and as he did, the room faded. His darkened quarters came into focus, and the blaring sound resolved itself into the buzzer on his door.

  He rolled over, checked the time — 0300, then rolled back and closed his eyes. It wasn’t until the third buzz that he rolled off his bunk, wrapped up in his blanket, and stepped to the door. He pressed the Intercom button.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Cumby, sir.” The voice was bright, cheerful, and irritated Rodney through to the bone.

  “Cumby, do you know what time it is? There’s a device in the lab — you’ll know it from the digital readout with all the numbers and pretty colors? It’s called a clock, and we use it to decide when is, and when is not, a good time to wake people up.”

  “Colonel Sheppard has something on the long range scan that he thinks you ought to see.”

  Rodney glanced back at his rumpled pillow longingly, and then sighed. “This had better be good.”

  He dressed quickly, ran his hand through his hair in place of a comb and blearily rubbed sleep from his eyes. A moment later, he stepped into the hall and turned toward the lab. Not many others were up and about, a fact Rodney considered the one positive thing about three o’clock in the morning.

  When he reached the lab, he saw Cumby, who was one of his newest lab technicians, bent over a monitor screen. The young man was tall and thin, completely bald, and at that moment the most irritating thing in Dr. McKay’s universe — next to the slender, dark haired officer standing beside Cumby. Rodney stepped up beside Sheppard and glanced down at the monitor.

  “What is it that’s so fascinating you dragged me out of a sound sleep?”

  “Look for yourself.”

  Rodney was already looking. He pushed Cumby out of the way and scanned the image on the screen. He frowned, twisted a number of knobs in quick succession, and stared again.

  “I’ve recalibrated the scan three times,” Cumby said. “No matter what I do, the readings on MC4-502 are still way off.”

  Rodney glanced up at the young man and scowled.

  “You think?” he said. “I don’t know why you recalibrated. Wait…I know. You looked at the screen, applied all the second-rate scientific wit you could muster, and concluded that maybe the scanner was exactly accurate on 99.99 percent of the objects it’s reading, but a glitch in the system caused it to be inaccurate just for that one moon. Brilliant.”

  Cumby started to answer, but Rodney ignored him. He seated himself in front of the scanner and zeroed in on MC4-502, the fourth moon around a distant planet.

  “What do you think?” Sheppard said, leaning in over Rodney’s shoulder.

  Rodney stiffened, tilted his head, and said, “What do I think? I think, in the thirty seconds I’ve had to think about it, that MC4-502 has left its orbit. I think it’s very early in the morning, it’s difficult to concentrate with you leaning over my shoulder, and that as far as I can tell, you’ve wasted my night’s sleep — and a perfectly wonderful dream, I might add — for a simple astral anomaly I could have studied over coffee in about three hours.”
>
  Colonel Sheppard, who was grinning widely, took a sip of coffee from the mug he held and waited.

  “I think, in fact,” Rodney continued, “that — ”

  He stopped. His hands returned to the controls, and flew from keyboard to knobs with uncanny speed and precision.

  “Oh,” he said, pushing back and away, nearly causing Sheppard to spill his coffee, “this is not good.”

  “I knew you were gonna say that,” Sheppard said.

  Rodney paid no attention. He’d changed screens, brought up a tracking grid and was plotting MC4-502’s course through its solar system. He punched in some numbers, cleared the screen, punched them in again, and spun back to face the Colonel with a frown. “It’s headed straight into the sun.”

  “That happens, right?”

  “No,” Rodney said, “it doesn’t. Not that quickly. Sure, over time orbits can erode and break down. Things can shift — a really big meteor could strike the moon’s surface and knock it off course, but this?” He waved his hand toward the screen. “I’ve never seen anything like this. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the thing had been flown off course on purpose.”

  “Is there any danger to Atlantis?”

  “Not per se,” Rodney said. “It’s thousands of light years away. But,” he frowned and punched more keys, “I guess it depends on who’s flying it, doesn’t it?”

  He turned back to the computer screen and began typing furiously. After a few moments, he glanced up. Colonel Sheppard was gone and Cumby stood off to one side looking very uncomfortable, clearly uncertain whether he should try to regain his seat at the console, or even speak.

  “What?” Rodney snapped. “Don’t you have something to calibrate?”

  Cumby turned and left, and Rodney returned to the console, everything else forgotten as he lost himself in the data on the screen.

  Chapter Two

  Richard Woolsey sat at his desk, drinking a cup of hot tea and scanning reports on his tablet PC. He smiled, because scanning reports was something he enjoyed — the regularity and security of continuity appealed to him. Since taking over command of Atlantis from Colonel Carter, his life had been a string of almost out-of-control adventures and crazed life or death situations. They were not activities he was comfortable with, because they rarely came with ready solutions or simple answers. He cherished the times when things ran smoothly and his post was largely a bureaucratic one.

  When the door opened without warning and Dr. McKay charged in, nose buried in the laptop he carried, Woolsey heaved a heavy sigh. In his experience, such an incident rarely ended well. He closed the document he’d been working on and sat back. In his late forties, slender and balding, at first glance the commander gave the impression of being a timid bookkeeper. He’d proven, over time, that he was made of much sterner stuff than he appeared, but certain characteristics stuck with him.

  “Dr. McKay,” he said. “I understand that you are very often caught up in your work, and that it muddies your otherwise impeccable judgment, but my door was closed for a reason. The least you could do…”

  Rodney held up a finger, still staring at the screen in his hands.

  “Rodney!” Woolsey raised his voice and glared.

  Rodney looked up, startled.

  “Did you hear a word I said?”

  “I…no.”

  Woolsey sighed again and rolled his eyes. “What is it, Doctor? I have a lot of work to get through this afternoon.”

  “It’s something we found last night — well — I didn’t find it, but…” Rodney stepped up to the desk and placed his computer on the surface. He turned it so that the commander could see the information he’d been scanning.

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve been digging through the data we’ve managed to translate in Atlantis’ memory banks. Last night we — Airman Cumby, I mean — noticed an anomaly in the moon’s around one of the planets we’ve charted. One moon, designated MC4-502, broke orbit and changed course very suddenly.”

  “That’s odd.”

  “Of course it’s odd,” Rodney said. “Why else would we be talking about it?”

  Before the commander could comment, Rodney continued.

  “It’s possible for a moon’s orbit to erode over time, or for some unforeseen occurrence, like a strike from a very large meteorite knocking it off course, but this is different. From the trajectory it looks as if the planet propelled itself out of orbit.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Of course it’s possible.” Rodney said, annoyed. “We can do it ourselves with our city, and a sufficiently strong tractor beam could do the trick. There are a number of ways the moon could shift from its orbit, but that’s not what I came here to tell you. Look.”

  Woolsey saw that Rodney was irritated with him for not immediately grasping whatever it was that bothered him about the data on the screen. He counted to three, very slowly and very quietly, and waited.

  “Here,” Rodney said. He traced his finger along a colored line superimposed over the chart. “This is the new path. If there is no other significant push to change that eroding orbit…”

  “It will plunge into the sun.” Woolsey concluded.

  “And soon.”

  “I assume there is a reason you believe this is significant?”

  Rodney turned and glared at him, and again the commander was forced to calm himself. Dr. McKay was possibly the most brilliant man the commander had ever encountered, but he was also very likely the most arrogant and the one graced with the least ability to interact properly with his fellow human beings. The doctor had little or no patience for the inability of others to keep up with his overly agile mind, and was fond of pointing it out when they failed.

  “I found references to that moon,” Rodney said. “None of what I have is clear yet, but there was definitely a gate there at one time, a well traveled one. I believe it is possible that there was a great deal more than that, as well. I haven’t had time yet to work through it. I have a couple of people digging deeper right now.”

  “A gate?” Woolsey said. He sat up straighter. “Do you think there might still be people on there? Surely if there are, and there’s a gate, they will…”

  “Someone is on there,” Rodney said. “When I found the references, I started some long range scans. I picked up a power signature — a powerful one. It was just a spike, like some sort of power surge, and then it all went dead.”

  Woolsey stared at the screen in front of him. He’d already seen all there was to see, but the moment of scrutiny bought him a few moments to order his thoughts.

  “I don’t know what we can do, maybe nothing,” Rodney admitted. “Whoever was there has probably evacuated through the gate already. But I was able to pick up traces from the burst that knocked it out of orbit and the energy signature was consistent with that of a ZPM. I can’t be certain, but if there’s any chance, and if that gate is still operational…”

  “Yes, I understand,” Woolsey said. “We could use the ZPM, and if there are other artifacts, or if there’s a civilization there in need of rescue…”

  “Exactly.”

  “There’s one problem,” Woolsey said.

  Rodney glanced up, momentarily distracted. “What?”

  “Do you have a gate address?”

  Rodney stood very still. “Well, no, not yet, obviously. We’re working on that. I’m sure it’s in the database. There are records indicating others have traveled there.”

  Woolsey picked up his reports and turned away. “Let me know if you find a way to reach that gate,” he said. “If you do, we’ll discuss our options. I also want to know how long you believe it will be before that moon is too close to the sun for human habitation.”

  Rodney stared at Woolsey a moment longer, then smiled and turned away. No doubt he was already deep into his calculations and research as the door slid closed behind him.

  Chapter Three

  When Rodney returned to his lab, he found Cumby h
unkered over a console with Radek Zelenka and Colonel Sheppard. They were so intent on whatever it was they were studying they didn’t even notice his approach.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “These two found something about your moon,” Sheppard said, stepping back.

  Rodney started to ask a question, thought better of it, and pushed Cumby out of the way so he could see what was on the screen. The top half of the monitor was filled with a series of Ancient hieroglyphic characters. The lower half was a text screen containing a partial translation. The Atlantis databases were filled with information that they’d not had the time, nor the facilities to unravel. When they had a particular object or subject in mind, they could narrow their efforts and often came up with amazing bits and pieces of the puzzle that had once been a city of the Ancients.

  “We found a reference to the moon,” Zelenka said. “When we cross-referenced it with data we’ve translated from the city’s database, we found a name. It’s not the name of the moon…”

  “I can read,” Rodney snapped. He scanned the screen rapidly, and then stepped back in surprise. “My God. It’s not just a moon.”

  “It’s a city,” Cumby said. “Very much like this one.”

  “Admah,” Zelenka added. “The city of Admah.”

  “It’s not the only reference to the name Admah,” Cumby said helpfully. “On Earth, the city of Admah was one of those destroyed in Biblical times, along with Sodom and Gomorrah.”

  Sheppard turned to Cumby. “My Biblical history isn’t too strong, but weren’t those cities destroyed by…”

  “Fire,” Cumby said. “They were consumed in flames.”

  “Very appropriate,” Rodney muttered. He barely paid any attention to the others. He was busy staring at the Ancient symbols and working out their meaning.

  “You said you found a power signature over there,” Sheppard said. “You think there might be an active ZPM?”