Event Horizon Part Four- By Ladyholder

Reading Time:
11 Minutes

Art by Starkindler

The rest of the flight was silent. Rodney was rereading the information on the tablet Simmons had given him and making notes on things he wanted to discuss with Major Carter. John had given up on trying to be polite and had pulled out his Rocket eBook reader and started reading his latest book. Both of them were ignoring Simmons because the man had no information to give.

Thankfully, the trip to Colorado Springs was very short, and the drive up to Cheyenne Mountain wasn’t much longer. John stayed next to Rodney every step of the way.

When they hit the main guard post for the SGC, Simmons had to step up and declare what they were there for. As soon as they cleared security, the elevator opened, and Colonel O’Neill walked out, and John snapped to attention. “Sir!”

“At ease, Sheppard,” O’Neill snapped. He turned to look at Simmons and raised an eyebrow at the man. “Simmons. Why are you here?”

“I’m here to see if it’s possible to get Teal’c out of the gate,” Simmons said with a grin John wanted to call smarmy. “I brought the foremost expert on the gate, Dr. Rodney McKay, with me to assist Major Carter.”

“And Captain Sheppard?” O’Neill asked.

The smarmy grin dropped off Simmons’ face and was replaced with a frown as he glanced at John. “It seems that Dr. McKay is a guide and Sheppard is his sentinel.”

“If McKay is a guide, they don’t travel without their sentinel unless there’s no other choice,” O’Neill confirmed. “Moving on. McKay, we’ll get you in with Carter, and you two can discuss how to get Teal’c out of the damn gate. Sheppard, you’re going to be a buffer so neither scientist kills the other.”

Simmons nodded once before he waved at Rodney. “I’ll go along with them to make sure that they are able to…”

“Nope. You’re going to come with me to talk to the General so you can explain exactly what your goal with this is,” O’Neill snapped. He waved back at the elevator. “Let’s go.”

“Major Carter, my name is Dr. Rodney McKay. I’ve been studying the stargate over at Area 51 from your notes, and I was brought in to assist on this.”

“What?”

John watched as the woman he presumed was Major Samantha Carter looked up from the computer she was studying to stare at them. “Who are you?”

“Major,” John cut in as his guide started proving exactly how dorky he could be. “Colonel O’Neill sent us down to assist you in getting Teal’c out of the gate. Dr. McKay has a complete set of CAD drawings of the gate at Area 51 to help with that endeavor.”

“And you, captain?” she asked, blue eyes shrewd and level as she assessed them.

“He’s my guide, and I’m here to try to keep him from putting his foot in his mouth when he gets wrapped up in the science you two will be doing,” John said with a small smile. He waved a hand towards one of the stools she had pushed against a wall. “Shall I?”

“Please,” Carter said. She looked back at Rodney and started quizzing him on what he knew about the gate.

“Look, in my research on the gate, I found that there were over 400 different feedback signals generated by the gate every time it dials in or out. The dialing program you set up only uses 180 of them. Currently, we don’t know if any of the missing 220 feedback signals could have allowed Teal’c to reintegrate when the DHD on P3X-116 was taken out,” Rodney interrupted after Carter had spent almost an hour quizzing him on what he knew. “This gate should have had a DHD. Why hasn’t the one the SGC has been connected to it?”

“We turned it over to Area 51 for research, and it was taken apart,” Carter said with a frown. “The Dialing Computer we have is good enough since it allows us to control the gate from the control room.”

“Right. I found the DHD parts three weeks ago. It’s still currently sitting in pieces on a workbench as I put together the CAD plans on how it connects to the gate,” Rodney said. “But that’s the DHD for the gate you found in the Antarctic, and I don’t think we have the time to get all the pieces here and put them together. Where’s the DHD for this gate?”

“Moscow,” Carter said bluntly. “Daniel’s gone to see if we can get it sent to us with Major Davis. The Colonel is prowling the SGC because he can’t enter Russia without causing a diplomatic incident.”

“What are they asking for in return?” John asked. There was no way that the Russians would let them have access to something as important as a DHD without major concessions.

“I don’t know. That’s not something that I’m in charge of. I’ve got to figure out how to get Teal’c out of the gate,” Carter said with a shrug.

“Okay, so the gate acts like a giant computer buffer, storing the energy patterns of everything that uses it in crystals before it reconverts them back into matter. It does this to make sure it has all the information from the incoming person or object before it reassembles them,” Rodney said as he stared at Carter. “If Daniel can get the DHD, then we can connect it to the gate and figure out how to get the interrupted wormhole to complete itself. Does this sound right?”

“That’s possible,” Carter allowed. She snagged a cable to connect the tablet Rodney had brought to her computer and pulled up the CAD drawings he’d made of the guts of the stargate. “I want to confirm where the buffer crystals are to make sure that they’re charged and holding a pattern.”

“Will doing that change the pattern at any point?” Rodney asked.

“Checking to make sure they are charged should be fine. Trying to access the information they hold? Not fine,” Carter said with a frown. “Right. This sucks.”

John settled against the wall and let the two scientists spark ideas off each other. It was interesting and highly informative, but it quickly moved beyond his very shallow knowledge of exactly what Rodney did. “Quick question, Major.” Carter looked up at him and raised an eyebrow. “How are you keeping the gate from being used so the buffer isn’t overwritten?”

“We’ve got a trinium gate shield on the gate as a security feature,” Carter said. She waved a hand towards where the gate was set up. “The shield lets us keep people out if anyone dials in, and that’s come in handy far too often. Since we already have it, we’ve moved it so it’s sitting inside the gate, ‘burying’ the gate so no wormhole can form and clear the buffer.”

“So, the 48-hour window?” John pressed.

“Likely bullshit, but that’s honestly about as long as we can keep the gate offline before it starts impacting the teams we have out,” Carter allowed. “We’re 14 hours into this, and while there are threads for us to pull, not all of them are ones we should pull right now.”

“Sheppard, come up here and report on what’s happening to the General,” O’Neill said.

“The Colonel is requesting that I go up to him and report on what you’ve determined to him and what the plan is,” John said.

“He can listen in. Why is he asking for an update?” Carter asked.

“Likely to keep an eye on Simmons,” Rodney said. “And if Daniel is in Moscow, I’m sure that the Colonel doesn’t want to stretch too far in case something goes pear-shaped.”

“Ah. Fair point, and yeah, I don’t want the Colonel to try to listen around the audible mess that’s the SGC,” Carter said with a nod.

“I don’t either,” John said. He looked at the two scientists and took a deep breath. “Okay, I need to confirm exactly what the plan is.”

Carter glanced over at Rodney before she nodded once. “So, for me, the plan is we check the gate to make sure that the buffers are carrying the charge that contains Teal’c. Then, when we’ve got that confirmation, we get the DHD from Moscow, hook it into the gate, move the gate shield, and then have the DHD complete the wormhole so Teal’c can complete his trip like McKay said.”

“Do we know if wiring the DHD in will work?” John asked.

“No. That’s the part we’re going to have to work on,” Rodney said. “I know Carter’s got the CAD drawing of the DHD, with labels, that Colonel O’Neill put together. We’re going to have to go over it to see what can be done.”

“Okay. I’ll let the Colonel know,” John said. He waved his badge at Carter and raised an eyebrow at her. “Will this allow me to travel down to the Colonel? Or do I need an escort?”

Carter eyed the badge and shrugged. “That’s a general access badge. It’ll get you down to level 27, where the General’s office is located.”

“Thank you for confirming that. I’ll head out,” John said. He eyed Rodney and smirked before he walked over to his guide and pressed a careful kiss to his lips. “Try not to be an asshole while you argue.”

“I make no promises,” Rodney said with a smile.

“Do you even know how to wire a DHD into the system you’ve got set up?” Rodney asked.

“Yes,” Carter said. She glanced over at him and shrugged. “The CAD drawing the Colonel did has the information on how to wire the DHD into the gate.”

“Okay. And the multitude of signals that the dialing computer is ignoring? What are you planning on doing with them?” Rodney asked.

“Well…” Carter stared at him in consideration, and Rodney could feel her curiosity bubbling away under her skin. “We’re going to be putting sensors on the gate to make sure that the buffers are charged with someone’s pattern. Given that, it couldn’t hurt to add sensors that can tell us what the various signals are.”

“Please tell me you actually know what every signal actually means, that you’re not just ignoring them,” Rodney begged. When she shook her head at him, he pinched the bridge of his nose to try to stave off the sudden onset of a headache. “Holy mother of science. How have you not blown up the planet?”

“Eh,” Carter said with a shrug. “I know most of what the various signals do. Why are you so concerned about it? Haven’t you figured it out on the gate you have?”

“If we fire that gate up, it will be competing against this one for supremacy,” Rodney reminded her. “And if we add the DHD, it becomes the master gate for the planet. So, no, I haven’t had the chance to trace out the existence of every signal. Having a chance to figure out the missing signals would be a boon.”

“You’re hung up on the missing signals, why?” Carter asked.

“Because I don’t know if one of those missing signals could have allowed the gate to reintegrate Teal’c when the gate you traveled through was destroyed,” Rodney said simply. “There’s nothing to say that this won’t happen again, and I certainly don’t want to continue to be clueless when I have a chance to get the knowledge I’m missing.”

Carter stared at him for several seconds before she nodded. “Okay.”

Rodney blew out a slow breath and nodded. “Okay. So, shall we plan out what we’re going to do?”

John did his best not to wince as he walked down the hallway towards the elevator. He really, really hoped that Rodney could hold onto his temper while he was working with Major Carter because the man was not going to be happy with how blasé she was being. Missing any tech clues could be deadly, and even he had no idea why she was acting the way she was.

Maybe she knew more about the gate than Rodney did, but was willfully ignoring the fact that she had missed whole swaths of warning signals that might be relevant? It made him itch at the base of his skull, and he hated that feeling. He was certainly going to make sure that Rodney never did that, because no.

When he hit the elevator, it was simple to figure out where to go next. One quick button stab and he was on his way to Level 27. Since the Colonel was aware he was coming, John didn’t feel guilty at all for letting his hearing expand out to find him.

“That 48-hour window has no proof behind it, Simmons,” O’Neill snapped. “You’re grasping at straws there.”

“Oh, I got confirmation that the 48-hour window is a hard and fast limit,” Simmons said smugly. “And if you can’t get the Jaffa out of the gate, well then. I guess he’s going to be dead.”

The growl that O’Neill let out wasn’t surprising to John. “Don’t sound so happy about it, Simmons.”

“He’s been a security risk for years. No, I’m not going to be upset,” Simmons said. He sounded pleased to John’s ear, and it was deeply gross. What had they gotten pulled into?

When the elevator dinged and let him out on 27, John exited immediately. “Colonel, Major Carter, and Rodney are certain that with the DHD, they can figure out how to get Teal’c out of the gate. Currently, they’re working on the exact steps needed to do it, but they both agree that it’s doable. While your guide is getting us the DHD, they’ll be confirming that the gate’s buffer has Teal’c’s pattern. With that information, they’ll get started mapping the needed steps.”

“Thank you, Captain,” O’Neill murmured. “General Hammond, I think Colonel Simmons needs to sit this one out. Because he’s had far more information on what’s been happening here in the Mountain than he should. We wouldn’t want him to use what we’re doing to fuck things up for Daniel and Davis, now would we?”

“No, we wouldn’t,” a third voice said. John tagged that voice as belonging to General Hammond in his memory.

“What are you doing?” Simmons demanded with a yelp.

“Making sure you can’t tell anyone what we’re doing,” O’Neill said bluntly. “You forget, Frank, that I’m a sentinel. Your pulse jumped when I suggested that you’d share what we were discussing with someone.”

“You can’t do this!”

“I’m the second in command for the SGC and an alpha sentinel. You’ll find I can do a hell of a lot,” O’Neill growled. “Captain, go down to Level 28 and let Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman know I need a set of MPs.”

“Yes, sir,” John said with a grin. He moved quickly. The sooner they got Simmons on ice, the sooner things could start getting fixed.