Free STARGATE ATLANTIS: Dead End by Chris Wraight Page A

indigestion. So, yes, I’m not exactly the happiest I’ve ever been. But thanks a lot for asking.”
    McKay picked up a loose circuit board and started poking at it.
    “Oh, give it a rest, Rodney,” Sheppard snapped. “If these people hadn’t been here waiting for us, we’d be deep frozen by now. And if we can’t generate enough power to get back in the Jumper, Elizabeth will send the
Daedalus
. You’re worrying over nothing.”
    “Am I?” The circuit board suddenly gave a fizz, and a shower of sparks burst from the housing. “Dammit!” McKay yanked his hand back. His mood was getting worse all the time, and Sheppard’s admonishment hadn’t helped. “The
Daedalus
isn’t available, which you’d know if you’d looked at the schedule more carefully. We’re on our own. And maybe I wouldn’t mind that if, for once, it wasn’t me in charge of getting us back.”
    “You know, Rodney, you’ve really got the knack of looking on the dark side of life.”
    “Well that might have something to do with being stuck here with a bunch of primitives who haven’t mastered the basic techniques of Jell-O making yet, and who seem to think the height of architectural achievement is a bunch of caves with — ”
    Sheppard’s eyes widened and he shot a warning look towards the back of the Jumper. With a sudden lurch of embarrassment in the pit of his stomach, McKay turned around. Aralen was standing in the open bay, observing.
    “Greetings,” the Forgotten leader said, unperturbed. “I trust things are going well?”
    McKay felt his face redden, despite the cold. Why could he never learn to keep his mouth shut?
    “Ah, Foremost,” he said. ”Didn’t see ya there. Did you, ah, hear much of the conversation?”
    The Forgotten walked towards them, looking at the interior of the Jumper with intent interest. “I assumed you were discussing the means by which to restore your vessel.”
    Sheppard gave Rodney a look which said
you got away with that one
. “Something like that,” he said. “We’ve just made a start.”
    Aralen stared at the cockpit viewscreen with undisguised wonder; there was little glass on Khost and it must have looked like something out of the legendary past. “I am glad you’re moving toward a solution,” he said. “Surely this machine will soon be operational.”
    Feeling he needed to claw back some dignity, McKay put on his most authoritative voice. “Perhaps,” he said. “There’s relatively little structural damage, but there are some important systems which might take a while to bring back on line. One problem we have is power. We don’t have any. And I fear that your Starga… — sorry,
portal
— might have been damaged by whatever it was we did in that wormhole. I’ll need to look into it. Whether it’s the distance, or some other problem, I don’t know yet.”
    Aralen looked troubled at McKay’s downbeat assessment. Perhaps the old man thought that the visitors should be capable of fixing anything. Rodney wasn’t convinced that Aralen had entirely given up on idea that they were Ancients.
    “That sounds grave,” the leader of the Forgotten said. “May we help?”
    McKay couldn’t help but let a sarcastic smile slip through. “Not unless you’ve got a ZPM,” he said. “Or maybe a stash of ZPMs?”
    “Forgive me, I don’t understand…”
    Sheppard coughed significantly.
    “Not unless you’ve got access to more power,” said McKay. “And from what I’ve seen — with all due respect — you don’t. So we may be here a while.”
    Aralen nodded. “Very well. Then I will leave you to your work. But if there is anything else…”
    McKay was prepared to give him his version of a polite refusal, when suddenly there was a grinding sound deep beneath them. It echoed inside the Jumper bay ominously.
    “What the…?” started Sheppard, rising from his seat.
    It sounded like someone was using a circular saw on metal, directly below. Aralen looked around, his face