Entanglement

Chapter five

Carson Beckett folded his arms, looking over Dr. Chandar's shoulder at the monitor. "I don't suppose you can tell what's happening up there from that thing." He was down in the Ancient monitoring room, watching the tech team work. The underground ruin wasn't exactly a pleasant place to be, with air that was stale and too warm, and inadequate light from the battery lamps, and he really should have returned to Atlantis by now. But he was anxious for word of Rodney and Sheppard and the others, and of the woman they had contacted, and at least here he could get the news first hand. The other teams still on the base moon were continuing their research for the moment, though the general feeling was that the sole purpose for this city's existence was as a support center for the Mirror installation on the other moon.

Dr. Chandar, taking the question in a far less irritable manner than Rodney would have, sat back with a preoccupied frown. "Not exactly, no, but now that we know that this device is monitoring a Quantum Mirror, it's possible to interpret its readings more accurately."

Carson frowned at the innocuous device. In the past day, it had begun to flash much more frequently, and he was finding it worrisome. "So just how unstable is the Mirror?" From Sheppard's last report, they knew the people in the other reality hadn't meant to use the damn thing, that their efforts to study it had probably caused the Mirror in this reality to activate. It all sounded very dangerous and uncertain.

Chandar shook his head, his expression worried. "There is some odd variance in the readings. It's almost as if the Mirror's singularity is becoming increasingly unstable-"

Carson flinched at a burst of static from his headset, the military channel suddenly alive with chatter. Major Lorne's tense voice overrode the others with, "All personnel, all personnel, we are evacuating immediately. We have incoming Wraith darts on sensors." He added sharply, "Move it, people, now!"

"Bloody hell," Carson gasped.

Chandar looked up, wide-eyed. "But-This system is uninhabited, the Wraith shouldn't have any interest in-

"It's the Mirror, lad, they're after it." It was just as Rodney had said in the first transmission. The reactivated Mirror's bursts of energy must have drawn the attention of a hiveship, and the Wraith had come to investigate. Carson pulled Chandar out of his chair and shut the laptop. The techs were already scrambling to gather their equipment, moving with sternly controlled terror. "Now get your things and move!"

Just as they finished breaking down the temporary lab, two Marines arrived to lead them to the jumpers. Burdened with a couple of bulky equipment cases, Carson followed the Marines through the narrow streets with Chandar and the others, fighting the urge to hunch his shoulders and duck. They were all sweating even in the cool air and one of the older techs, O'Keefe, was getting a bit red-faced with exertion and stress. Carson had been walking these streets for the past few days, and they had never seemed so claustrophobic and confining. He uneasily remembered his recent near miss, when Laura Cadman had pushed him out of the path of a culling beam, and she and Rodney had been caught in it. That had all turned out badly enough, though in the end they had both survived. He didn't think they would be that lucky again.

He heard the tense acknowledgements on the headset as Lome ordered Jumper Three, already loaded, to leave. Carson didn't see it pass overhead, but he heard the `gate activate. One of the techs recently arrived on the Daedalus said nervously, "They won't leave us, will they?"

Audley, one of the Marines, flicked a disgusted look back at him, obviously not appreciating this sentiment. Carson didn't particularly appreciate it either, knowing just how far the military contingent was willing to go to protect the science team. O'Keefe, another Atlantis veteran, answered the man, gasping derisively, "Bloody unlikely."

"They might dock Major Lorne's pay," Audley said, with acid sarcasm.

The other Marine, Ramirez, just grinned and added, "Yeah, after the Colonel shot him."

More Marines met them at the last turn, hurrying them out onto the plaza. Corrigan and Rousseau from the archeology team were still outside, tossing a last few cases into the already-cloaked jumper. As Carson's group started across the pavement, he heard the distinctive whine of a dart. Marines shouted, "Move it, move it!" and they dashed for the jumper.

Everyone tumbled up the ramp, stumbling over the loose equipment, pushing forward to make room. Sergeant Benson shouted, "That's everybody, Major!" and the ramp started to lift upward. Carson sat down hard on the bench and Rousseau fell into his lap. She said breathlessly, "Pardon, Carson."

"Quite all right, love." He helped her stand, then stepped over a couple of people to reach the cockpit.

Lorne was in the pilot's seat, studying the HUD with a worried frown. "Major," Carson said, watching him anxiously. "What about Sheppard's team? Can you get a message to them?"

Lorne glanced back at him. "I already tried. We'd just picked up a transmission packet from them when the darts showed up on longrange. I sent them a warning, but I don't know if they got it." He jerked his chin up at the HUD. "We've got lots of company here."

Carson focused on the HUD. It was the life signs screen, and there were lights appearing on it, all around their position. Wraith, beaming down from the darts. "Good lord," he muttered. "They must suspect we're here." He hesitated, a cold sensation growing in his stomach. "You don't think they found the others…"

"I hope not, Doc," Lorne said, but his expression was grim. More life signs appeared on the screen, close to the jumper, and Lorne swore. He looked back at the rear cabin, at the scientists and techs under his charge, and grimaced. "Dammit. I hate to do this, but we can't hang around."

The jumper lifted smoothly off the pavement, heading for the Stargate.

"So this whole thing was a Wraith trap?" Colonel Caldwell said, his voice coming in over Atlantis' comm system, a little too loud in Elizabeth's currently crowded office.

Elizabeth sat at her desk, still studying her copy of the last transmission from John's team. In the puddlejumper bay above the gateroom, the teams from the moon base camp were still unloading their equipment. As soon as Major Lorne had brought her the transmission, she had called Caldwell, wanting to get the Daedalus on its way as quickly as possible. The ship had only arrived this morning, and hadn't finished offloading the supplies it had brought yet. Lorne and Carson Beckett were sitting across from her, and Chuck, Laroque, and several other members of the operations staff were clustered in the doorway. She really should have sent everyone back to work, but she knew they were as anxious as she was.

"I don't know, Colonel," she answered Caldwell. From what Zelenka had said in the last transmission, John and the others had assumed the contact from the Wraith calling itself "Trishen" was a trap. But that didn't feel right, somehow. "The Mirror itself is genuine, obviously. And making them believe they were being contacted by an alien ship… That seems a bit imaginative for the Wraith. We've never seen them do anything quite so elaborate."

"Unless they suspected your team was from Atlantis, and wanted to try to get some information out of them," Caldwell said.

"That's a possibility," she admitted. As far as they knew, the Wraith still believed Atlantis had been destroyed, but they would certainly still be looking for survivors who had escaped with Ancient technology. "This makes it all the more imperative that the Daedalus reach the system as soon as possible."

"No need to convince me, Doctor, I understand that you have personnel in danger. And we can't allow the Wraith to get their hands on that Mirror, not to mention sensor technology that can see through the Ancient cloak. I'll be breaking orbit immediately." Caldwell sounded somewhat sourly resigned, and Elizabeth winced in equal parts chagrin and annoyance.

She hadn't meant to imply that she thought Caldwell would resist the idea of a rescue mission, or that he wouldn't understand the implications of what the team had found. But their working relationship had gotten off to a rocky start when she had had to squash his attempt to replace John, and things hadn't exactly been going smoothly since. She felt it would work out eventually; she and John had had clashes and arguments at first, too. But then John, for all his quirks, was far less prickly than Caldwell and had always been much easier to get along with. And at this point the original expedition members had all been through too much together to let disagreements get in the way of friendship.

Frustrated, Elizabeth frowned at her laptop screen and didn't apologize to Caldwell. She wondered if he understood that some of her closest friends were on that lost jumper. She just said, "Thank you, Colonel."

Major Lorne sat forward, his expression urgent, and Carson waved frantically at her. She added, "I believe Major Lorne and Dr. Beckett would like to accompany you.

Caldwell sounded slightly more resigned. "Then tell them to get ready to be beamed up."

He signed off, and there were murmurs of relief from the people waiting outside. Major Lorne pushed to his feet, looking relieved. "Thanks, Dr. Weir. We'll bring them back."

Elizabeth nodded firmly. "I know you will, Major." And she thought privately, I hope you will. She kept the worry off her face, but she had the bad feeling that this was going to be more complicated than just a Wraith trap.