STARGATE UNIVERSE: Air (18 page)

 “Good timing,” began Eli. “We just figured out that—”

Rush stepped forward and snatched the radio from Eli’s hand without even the slightest glimmer of interest in what he was saying. He toggled the radio to the general channel and spoke into it. “This is Doctor Rush. All of you, stop what you’re doing and meet me in the gate room immediately.” Then he bothered to give Eli a look. “That means you too.”

The scientist walked back out of the control room as briskly as he had entered, leaving Eli, Brody and Park watching him go, nonplussed.

“So,” ventured Brody, “did he find a bathroom, or what?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

The course of action was clear to him; someone had to take authority over the situation, and do it now. There was no sense in waiting for one of the military to step in — they were just soldiers, out of their depth in this place and for all their weapons and bravado, unprepared for the kinds of challenges they were all going to face.

What was needed was a calm, rational mind. Someone of intelligence and foresight. Someone like
him
.

Rush glanced around at the assembled crowd in the gate room, the groups who had split off to wander aimlessly around the decks of the ship trickling back after his summons. He saw Eli watching him with confusion; the young man was bright, there was no denying that, but he lacked focus. Rush could give that to him, use his skills and those of people like Brody, Park and the others to make this mission work. Rush caught sight of Armstrong and saw the pale, sweaty cast to his face; the senator might be a problem, though. He was used to being obeyed, and he’d already challenged Scott. The man clearly thought that he was the person who should be calling the shots here…but they were a long way from the Senate floor, and surviving in an environment like this was doubtless well outside the politician’s experience. Nearby, the medic Johansen was checking Young’s pulse, and by the look on her face it was long odds that the colonel would pull through. All the more reason to have a strong leadership in place as soon as possible.

Rush nodded to himself. He was doing the right thing. The others would see that and follow along.

Lieutenant Scott and his group were the last to return to the gate room, and Rush noted they all seemed fatigued and twitchy. A loaded look passed between Scott and Eli, something Rush couldn’t read.

“What’s going on?” said the lieutenant.

Rush climbed up a few steps toward the balcony so he was above the heads of everyone else, looking down on all of them. He held up the silver case so everyone in the room could see it. “In this box are three Ancient communications stones,” he began. “They connect to another person who is also holding a preprogrammed stone across vast distances, in real-time—”

Armstrong got it immediately. “We can talk to people on Earth. Why are you only just telling us this now?”

He ignored the question. “Except, unlike conventional communication technologies, the stones allow you to actually take control of the body of the individual on the other end.” That earned him some incredulous looks from everyone who had a low security clearance. “I brought these with us in the event that we ended up somewhere out of range of normal communications.”

The senator held out his hand. “So let’s use them,” he insisted.

“I already have,” Rush replied. Murmurs washed out over the crowd.

Brody spoke up, voicing the question they all wanted an answer to. “Are they sending help?”

“No.” Rush shook his head gravely.
First the bad news. Make them afraid
. “The only means of dialing this gate from our galaxy was destroyed in the attack. We’re cut off.”

“The whole planet?” he heard one of the airmen say. “Gone?”

Armstrong pointed at the case, drawing himself up. “I want to use one of those things, now.”

“I have spoken with General O’Neill—”

The politician didn’t let up. “I am a United States senator—”

Rush spoke over him. “And I have explained our situation clearly,” he went on.
Now give them hope
. “In light of my knowledge and experience, General O’Neill has placed me in charge—”

Armstrong couldn’t let that pass. “He did?” Disbelief dripped from the words.

“It was the original mission of this expedition to explore the universe,” Rush went on. “I believe we can still do that.”

Eli gave Scott a brief, pointed look. “We only have a few hours of air left…maybe not even that much. How much of the universe are we gonna be able to cover?”

The muttering in the group took on a fearful edge at the young man’s announcement, and Rush frowned. “I have faith in our ability to work together and to repair this ship,” he insisted. “But if we’re going to survive this, we need leadership and a clear chain of command —”

Once again, Armstrong interrupted, his condescension evident. “Get off it, Doctor! I want to talk to the general myself!”

Rush fixed him with a hard look. The last thing anyone needed was this pompous fool interfering. For a moment, he considered a lie; he could tell the man the stones were programmed for certain individuals, and Armstrong wouldn’t know it wasn’t the truth.

Scott stepped between them. “Give it to him, Doctor.” There was an implied threat in there somewhere, and Rush hesitated. He didn’t want to make an enemy of the young officer, not while he needed him to strengthen his authority.

With a sigh, Rush held opened the case and showed the contents to Armstrong, who seemed on the verge of snatching it from him. For a moment the senator studied the contents, his face an angry red. It mattered little; Rush doubted that the man even had the first clue of how to use the artifacts.

“Dad…” Armstrong’s daughter was close by him. Surely she could see he was being unreasonable?

The politician reached forward, intending to pick up a stone; what followed Rush hadn’t expected at all. Armstrong tensed and froze in place. Then in the next second, he gasped in pain and dropped to the metal deck. His daughter called out in alarm and went to him, eyes wide with fear.

Rush quickly closed the case and put it aside.

Scott was glaring his way. “What did you do to him?”

“Nothing,” Rush said in all honesty, securing the case. “He didn’t even touch the stone…”

Johansen parted the group around Armstrong and knelt by his side. “He’s conscious, still breathing.”

“I…I think he might have hurt his side…” offered Eli. “After we came through the gate, he looked like he was in pain…”

“He was caught in a rock fall,” added Scott.

The medic nodded and pulled up the man’s shirt. Rush winced at the sight of a string of heavy purple-black bruises down the length of Armstrong’s torso.

Chloe’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my God.”

“I saw him taking pills,” said Johansen. “What were they?”

“Warfarin, for his heart,” Chloe replied, her voice catching.

Johansen frowned. “Blood thinners are the last thing he needs if he’s bleeding internally.”

“Please do something!” Chloe begged.

The other woman’s firm expression suddenly crumbled. “I told you, I’m just a medic! I mean, I have morphine but I don’t…” She trailed off.

Rush could feel the situation slipping and he took a breath, speaking loudly so his voice would carry. “People, listen!” he demanded. He could hear them becoming more agitated by the moment; if he didn’t take control now, then he never would. “There is no need for us all to congregate in one place!” He looked down at the medic. “Lieutenant Johansen, please locate reasonable accommodation for the injured. As for the rest of you—”

Before he could finish, another challenger stepped up; Wray, a woman he barely remembered from one of his first meetings on Icarus Base. “I don’t recognize your authority, Doctor Rush! As the IOA representative here, I—”

His opinion of the IOA was somewhere below that of politicians and imbeciles, and Rush ignored every word she said, growing more frustrated by the moment. “We’ve found quarters nearby, more comfortable than this,” he said. “Go there and stay there until you are asked to do something useful.”

Andrea Palmer, one of the geology team, shot him an affronted glare. “Something
useful
?” she echoed. Palmer’s annoyance rippled out into the crowd. Rush was suddenly aware that he had lost them, and sensed their mood veering toward an angry pack mentality.

“We don’t want to settle in!” snapped Wray. “We want to get out of here!”

“She’s right,” Volker added. “ We should all be working on getting home.”

Rush hesitated;
all right
, he thought,
if all else fails, tell them the hard truth
. “I don’t even know if that’s possible.”

The words had barely left his lips when the group exploded in uproar. Wray stabbed finger toward the silent Stargate. “What? You haven’t even tried!”

Spencer was nodding along with her. “Maybe you should do something instead of standing around talking about being in charge.”

From the side of the group, a hatchet-faced Marine eyed him coldly. “If that’s even true.” The man stood up and took a menacing step.

People were pushing forward now, all talking at once, crowding toward the staircase where Rush was standing. He resisted the urge to draw back and put some distance between himself and them. It was all falling apart! Didn’t they understand? Didn’t they realize he was doing this for the good of the mission, for the good of all of them?

Scott stepped up, making his rifle evident on its sling, and a couple more of the Air Force officers backed him up. “Curtis,” said the lieutenant, addressing the Marine, “back off!” Curtis hesitated, and Scott used the moment to raise his own voice. “Everyone calm down! The fact is, Colonel Young put
me
in charge, and I expect all SG personnel to follow my orders.” As that sunk in, he scanned the faces of the civilians. “As for the rest of you, if you get out of line we will lock you down.” He threw Rush a quick look over his shoulder. “Now. Doctor Rush is right about a couple of things. One: we have to work together and Two: we don’t all have to stay here. So let’s move out.”

And just like that, the simmering resentment was damped down, the potential riot forestalled. As the crowd broke up into smaller groups, Rush let out a weary breath, unable to grasp how the situation could have spiraled out of his control so fast.

He found Scott looking at him. “I think we need you, so I’ve got your back for now,” said the lieutenant, his voice low. “But if I were you, I’d start figuring out how to dial that gate back to Earth.”

The lieutenant walked away before he could frame a reply.

Once the civilians had got themselves into the quarters, Greer gathered a handful of people, and got them to work moving the cases and backpacks that were scattered all over the gate room into an empty chamber that he’d arbitrarily decided was a storage compartment. The gate tech, Riley, had offered to keep inventory of what they had, but without something to write it all down on, he wondered how the man was going to manage it. Along with Spencer, two of the science types — Palmer and a guy called Volker — were lending a hand. But much to the sergeant’s irritation, that snooty witch Wray from the IOA was also there; although she seemed to be spending more time eyeballing Greer than actually helping out.

Riley was bent over an open airdrop case. “I’ve got some sort of testing equipment here…” He gave the device a rattling shake. “Looks broken.”

Greer nodded. “We’ll come back to that.”

“Did no-one think to label anything?” Volker grumbled.

“There’s a bar code on every case,” noted Riley.

“Anybody find the bar code
reader
?” Volker replied.

Greer shook his head, joining the chorus of ‘No’s. He unzipped a bag and found what appeared to be a collapsible tent and some desert-pattern camouflage gear. He showed it to Riley, who nodded.

“I guess the reader got left behind along with the food and the water,” said Spencer.

“We got food,” Greer looked up again and caught Wray watching him. She quickly turned away.

“Oh, yeah, power bars,” replied Palmer, “and that powdered stuff.
Yum
.”

Greer noticed Spencer pocket a handful of the ration bars from the open case as Palmer looked away. He didn’t say anything about it for the moment, but made a mental note to give the guy a firm one-on-one talk.

Volker held up some silver packets, all of them carefully color-coded and compartmentalized. “Hey everybody, look,” he said sarcastically. “We’re saved!”

“Seeds?” Riley squinted at the packages. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

As Volker tossed the packets aside, Palmer went to the next box and opened it to reveal a set of blocky packages. “This is like a very depressing Christmas morning,” she said.

“What’s that?” said Riley.

“I’ve got a case of blank paper,” came the reply.

“Maybe we should start a suggestion box,” offered Volker.

From the corner of his eye, Greer saw Wray giving him the look again and his composure snapped. He turned on her. “What are you staring at?” he snarled.

Wray held her ground. “You were in detention, back on Icarus.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” he replied, challenging her.

“For good reason,” Wray went on. The room became quiet.

“What did you want him to do?” Greer snapped. “Leave me there?”

“Of course not,” she said, looking him up and down. “I was just wondering what to do about it now.”

Who the hell did she think she was?
“It’s not up to you.”

“We’ll see,” replied Wray.

Greer’s lip twisted in annoyance and he took a step toward her. Wray hadn’t expected that, and she showed a flash of fear, backing away.

Riley stepped into his path. “Don’t, man.”

Greer turned his glare on the Air Force sergeant, who had placed a hand on the Marine’s chest. Greer looked down at it, and Riley pulled it away.

Then he heard Lieutenant Scott calling his name over the radio. “
Greer, do you read? I need you to help check for any open bulkhead doors that lead to damaged parts of the ship. Rush will direct you from the control room.
”