STARGATE ATLANTIS: Dead End Read Free Page B

just raw power — now that the ZPM was installed, they had plenty to spare for the operation of the gate. The problem was the efficiency of supply, ensuring that the Stargate’s complex and subtle mechanics were fed what they needed when they needed it. Opening an event horizon was an art that the Atlantis team still barely understood, and it was clear that the existing Stargate had definite limits. Trying to keep everything within the necessary parameters was like trying to herd cats. In the dark. With oven gloves.
    “OK, Rodney,” came Zelenka’s voice over the intercom. “We’re done. Run the sequence when you’re ready.”
    McKay took a deep breath and looked carefully at the command scripts he’d developed. He made a few minor alterations, changing the order in which certain items were run, and then packaged the lot for execution.
    “Get your people out of the way,” he told Zelenka. “Here we go again. If this doesn’t work, we’ll have to start over.”
    The gate room cleared. Once the area was sealed, McKay hit the Enter key on his terminal, and the power sequence activated. Lights danced across the monitor as data was relayed back to the command center. Huge amounts of energy surged down the power cables, each burst timed to what McKay hoped was perfection. A few nanoseconds apart, the carefully placed units powered up. For a moment, very little happened. Then the red lines appeared on the monitor again.
    “Oh, please…” groaned McKay, feeling the empty sensation of failure in his stomach. “This should be
working
.”
    Then the red lines cleared. There was activity in one of the compensators and a series of lights flicked on across the control terminal. With a shudder the gate stuttered into life, the familiar watery surface of the event horizon tearing across the circular aperture. Strange readings lurked at the edges, but those could be tweaked. It had worked!
    “Yes!” McKay punched the air in delight. “I knew we were getting close! Oh, I’m good. I’m really good.”
    “Congratulations, Rodney,” said Zelenka over the intercom. He sounded genuinely impressed, albeit grudgingly. “I didn’t think we’d squeeze that last bit out.”
    McKay did his best to calm down. Victory was always sweet; there was no point milking the moment too much.
    “Oh, ye of little faith,” he said. “Now we need to tie this down and do a few more tests. We’ve shown it can work, but Elizabeth will want a repeatable demonstration. I don’t want to let her down.”
    “Very good,” said Zelenka, his voice breaking up slightly over the comm link. “I just hope all of this is worth it. You still haven’t convinced
me
we should be going there, whatever Elizabeth thinks.”
    “Well, thankfully you’re not in charge of this installation, and she is,” said McKay impatiently. “Is the MALP in position?”
    “It is. Sending it through now.”
    Zelenka and his team stood clear as the cumbersome MALP crawled towards the shimmering gate, servos whining as it disappeared into the event horizon. Immediately, more red lights flashed across McKay’s console.
    “What’s that?” said Zelenka, concerned. “We’ve got some strange readings down here.”
    “Ignore it,” snapped McKay, concentrating on the data stream beginning to emerge from the wormhole. “It’s just the power drain from the extra mass in the gate buffers. It’ll clear up.”
    The MALP was gone, sucked into the wormhole and hurled thousands of light years distant in a fraction of a second. The readings on the monitor went back to normal.
    “It’s through,” said McKay over the intercom. “We’ll be getting telemetry any second.”
    He swiveled in his chair to look at the monitor assigned to the video feed. The screen was a snowstorm; clearly the MALP hadn’t begun relaying yet.
    “What a mess!” said Zelenka, suddenly appearing at McKay’s shoulder.
    “Don’t worry,” said McKay, starting to get worried. “We’ll get