So I obviously haven't been as busy as I thought I would be...
BTW, I'm waiting to post this on my website until it's finished--but when I do, it'll have pictures and links to songs and videos and all kinds of other stuff. And all the notes will be in ONE PLACE, which FF.n doesn't allow anymore!
References to (but not exactly spoilers for) SGA “Thirty-Eight Minutes,” “Duet,” and various arcs from Season 5. For an explanation of Col. Conlon, see “There and Back Again.”
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
So Much for the Frying Pan
Sheppard didn’t think he’d been asleep more than a minute when McKay started shaking his shoulder. “G’way, Rodney....”
“John, it’s time for dinner,” McKay replied, concerned.
Frowning, Sheppard pulled his hat off his face and discovered that it had gotten dark outside and the Jumper’s internal lights were on. His stomach growled, confirming McKay’s statement. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Five hours. What were you doing this afternoon?”
Sheppard stood up and stretched as he thought back. “Playing chess with Marya, and then... yeah, I went toe to toe with Pungenhorst. Think I confused him enough that he won’t be a problem for now, but there’s a good chance we will have to make sure he’s in the lab when it blows.”
“Oh, you didn’t.”
“What?”
“You told him about the Stargate?”
“Nothing that Langford and Littlefield don’t already know, and a lot that isn’t true. I’m just saying we need to make sure it doesn’t get back to Berlin.”
“Like what that wasn’t true?”
Sheppard smiled deviously. “Oldest lie in the world, Rodney--‘ye shall be as gods.’”
“You told him about the Goa’uld?!”
“Not as such, no. Not too many people want a snake in their heads. And I didn’t want to get that specific given that no one currently knows for sure what’s on the other side of that wormhole. I just... offered some vague possibilities.” At McKay’s skeptical look, he added, “Marya gave me the idea.”
McKay sighed. “Remind me never to time-travel with you again.”
“How are the repairs coming?”
“I told Hogan we’d be ready to go at 2130. Cloak’ll work temporarily, shield should be fine, navigation’s close and so are flight controls. No weapons or hyperdrive, but we shouldn’t need those.”
“Good. Where’s Zelenka?”
“He and Carson are moving the time drive down into the tunnel. He’s gonna work on it tonight while we’re gone.”
“Is he....”
McKay grimaced. “As well as can be expected. I think he’s glad to have something else to focus on.”
“Yeah.” Sheppard sighed. “Guess we’d better get to the mess hall before Marya comes looking for me.”
“You’re not, um....”
“Look, whatever you hear from the guards, it isn’t true, but Pungenhorst has to think it is.”
“Oh.” McKay nodded. “Should I change some of the stories about you and Larrin to be about you and her?”
“Only if you want me telling stories about Cadman and Beckett’s first kiss,” Sheppard returned dryly as he put his cap on and headed out of the Jumper.
McKay paled. “You wouldn’t!"
Dinner was a fairly low-key affair, or as low-key as anything involving Marya could possibly be. Klink came over to their table about halfway through the meal to check on them.
“By the way, Colonel,” Sheppard said, “we will be making a series of short test flights tonight, so we’d appreciate it if you could confine the prisoners to the barracks and keep your guards away from the Pfützespringer for the evening. We may be out quite late; we won’t be going very far, but it may take several sustained flights around the village to test all the systems that have been repaired and see what remains to be done.”
“Of course, Colonel,” Klink agreed. “How close do you think you are to finishing your repairs?”
“We will know better after tonight,” Zelenka stated, “but we probably have several days’ worth of work left to do.”
“I see. Well, good luck, gentlemen, and if there’s anything you need, feel free to ask me.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” Sheppard said courteously but dismissively.
Klink took the hint and left, while Marya made a fuss over “Hansie” having to work. Sheppard had just about “calmed” her as they prepared to leave when Pungenhorst entered and made a beeline for their table.
“I’m glad to catch you, Dr. McKay,” Pungenhorst said after exchanging some pleasantries. “I had a question about the Pfützespringer--I understand it has some... unusual capabilities.”
McKay shrugged. “Oh, yes, high altitude, radar evasion, you name it.”
“How do you make the engines work properly under such conditions?”
Covering Marya's hand with his own, Sheppard gave McKay a look that McKay understood all too well: Technobabble, but nothing either of them can use if they remember a word of it.
McKay cleared his throat nervously and abandoned his tenuous German. “Well, since it’s classified... do you mind if I explain it in English?”
“Not at all,” Pungenhorst replied.
With another glance at Sheppard, McKay said, “It’s done with a thermothrockle.”
“A what?”
“A thermothrockle, anfilated through a dalegoneter. Of course, this is made possible because the dirnadan has a frenna coupling.”
“I don’t understand.”
"Well, I knew you wouldn't. If I'd told you before, the ancimeter on the other side permulates the canudaspel hepulase, and that's the entire secret. There you have it."
Pungenhorst turned a puzzled frown on Sheppard and Zelenka.
“You asked,” Zelenka deadpanned.
Pungenhorst nodded once slowly. “I see. Thank you, gentlemen. Guten Abend.”
“Remind me to thank Lorne for showing us Desperate Journey,” McKay said to Sheppard under his breath as the Lanteans headed back to the Jumper and Marya returned to the VIP quarters. “Never thought you’d hear me quoting Ronald Reagan....”
Sheppard chuckled and patted McKay on the back.
In the tunnel two hours later, Carter was fretting to Teyla and Beckett about the final stop the Jumper would make that night. The Lanteans exchanged amused smiles when he wasn’t looking.
Finally, Teyla laid a calming hand on Carter’s arm to cut him off. “I too was nervous when I first flew in a Jumper and had time to think about what we were doing. The technology of the Ancestors was not new to me, but I had never experienced even an aircraft before, let alone flight through space. But it is as Dr. Zelenka told you. And Col. Sheppard has flown far more dangerous missions than this during his time in Atlantis. You will be fine.”
“You fly in spaceships all the time but never saw an airplane?” Carter frowned.
“Our base is on another planet,” she said, glancing at Beckett. At his nod, she added, “I came to live there when my own planet was attacked and my people could no longer remain there.”
Carter stared at her. “You’re an alien?!”
“She’s as human as we are, if that’s what you mean,” Beckett replied.
“No, I just... wow!”
Teyla and Beckett didn’t hide their amused glance this time. If he only knew....
They were spared any further awkwardness when Newkirk, Ronon, and Zelenka joined them at almost the same time. Zelenka gestured toward the ladder. “They are ready. The tent is open, but the cloak is engaged and expanded to cover the tunnel entrance.”
“Thank you, Radek,” Teyla nodded. She then gave the others a look that said Shall we?, slung her P-90 strap over her shoulder, and led the way up the ladder.
Beckett watched them go before turning to Zelenka with a sigh. “You think you’ll be all right down here by yoursel’? I know you need some quiet to work, and I’ve been invited upstairs to play gin.”
Zelenka hesitated. “Actually, Carson... I would be glad to have company. Would you perhaps tell me about your work offworld last year?”
Beckett smiled. “O’course.”
Nothing could have prepared Carter and Newkirk for the sight that awaited them as they emerged from the tunnel. They barely noticed that Sheppard and McKay had changed back into their offworld gear, so stunned were they to be standing next to an honest-to-goodness spaceship that looked nothing like the illustrations in Weird Tales. Newkirk was less of a scientifiction fan than Carter, but even he had expected... well, a rocket, not a tilted Quonset hut with funny carvings on it.
They had no time to gawk, though, as Ronon hustled them inside and pushed them down onto one of the bench seats in the rear of the Jumper. They were still getting their bearings when McKay bustled past on his way to the co-pilot’s seat. “Yes, that’s a good place to sit,” the physicist observed in passing. “Just don’t touch anything, and you’ll be fine.”
“It doesn’t even have wings!” Newkirk whispered to Carter.
“Doesn’t need ’em,” Sheppard stated as he closed the hatch and strode forward. “All set, McKay?”
“Ready when you are,” McKay replied.
Sheppard sat down in the pilot’s seat and pressed a few controls, and Newkirk and Carter startled at the distinctive sound of the Jumper powering up. Then they stared openmouthed as, with very little sensation of motion, the Jumper lifted off the ground and shot out of the tent. Seconds later they were already above a bomber’s cruising altitude, and the drive pods whirred open as Sheppard settled the Jumper into the flight path that would take them to Schwäbisch Hall.
“Wow,” Carter breathed.
Pungenhorst stretched out on the bed in the VIP quarters without even taking off his boots and shut his eyes to try to ease the headache that was coming on. He wished he could forget the afternoon as easily as he had told Schäfer that he would, not because he had promised--what SS officer always kept his word?--but because it was all too fantastic; yet his cursed eidetic memory would not let go of Schäfer’s words. A doorway to another planet... alien gods... weapons that offered absolute power....
Hitler would buy it, whether it was true or not. And that was what worried Pungenhorst. Did he dare to report Schäfer’s crazy scheme and raise false hopes when the war was going so badly? Or was there a chance, however remote, that the thing could actually work? And what if Schäfer really did have friends in Berlin... would Schäfer make good on his threat, and how?
His reverie was broken by the sound of the door opening and shutting and by the wave of smoke and Chanel No. 5 that announced Marya’s arrival. “You have headache, Otto darling?” she asked, sounding disappointed.
Pungenhorst opened one eye just enough to look at her. “I thought you were spending the evening with your Hansie,” he stated disdainfully.
“Ah, work, work, work,” she replied with a wave of her hand. “He’s no fun anymore. But if you have headache....”
A bored Marya is a dangerous Marya, Pungenhorst thought, and something in her pout stirred an appetite he had yet to understand where she was concerned. “Do you Russians have any good cures for headaches?”
With a dancer’s grace, Marya shed her fur coat, leapt onto the bed, and began rubbing her thumbs in circles on his temples.
Once he got over the shock of how quickly the Jumper was moving without the roar and rattle he’d been used to in the B-17, Carter moved forward to the cockpit and struck up a quiet conversation with Teyla about Athos, comparing and contrasting Sioux customs with those of Teyla’s people. Ronon even threw in a comment here and there when something reminded him of his childhood on Sateda or one of the many cultures he encountered as a runner. Newkirk, for his part, stayed warily silent, still not entirely sure Ronon wouldn’t kill him for even speaking to Teyla.
Even though Sheppard chose a speed that would put minimal strain on the Jumper’s jerry-rigged systems, the three-hundred-mile flight to Schwäbisch Hall took less than an hour. A sensor sweep of the immediate area turned up nothing. As Sheppard turned the Jumper toward Schwäbisch Gmünd, McKay broadened the sensor range to fifty miles, and immediately a blip appeared nearly thirty miles south of their location.
“That’s it,” Sheppard nodded and pointed the Jumper toward the indicated coordinates.
“What is that?” Carter frowned.
“Radiation from the lab,” McKay replied, busily tapping on his tablet. “Doesn’t tell us what they’re doing, but it is gamma radiation, which means they do have uranium or plutonium. But the readings are pretty faint, which means they either don’t have much or the lab’s well underground.”
“Or both,” Ronon rumbled.
McKay made a non-committal noise.
“Got a town name, McKay?” Sheppard asked.
“Yeah, give me a second....” More frenzied tapping. “Hohenstaufen. It’s about six miles southwest of Schwäbisch Gmünd.”
“That fits the courier’s statement, then,” Teyla noted.
Newkirk came forward to study the topographic map that Sheppard pulled up on the HUD. “Those ’ills could be a problem for the bombers, sir,” he said.
More readings appeared at Sheppard’s mental command, revealing towns and gun emplacements. “Yeah,” Sheppard agreed, “and if it is underground, bombers won’t do much good anyway. We’ll do a couple of fly-bys just to be safe.”
The next several minutes were mostly silent apart from McKay rapidly working through the sensor data and the HUD clicking as it responded to Sheppard’s queries. By the time they were five miles out, Sheppard and McKay had mapped out their objective enough to tell that the town was on the south and east sides of Berg Hohenstaufen and the lab was on its northwest.
“Is it on the mountain?” Ronon asked.
“No,” McKay replied, making his own adjustments to the HUD readings to clarify the location. “It’s this foothill northwest of the mountain... looks like about nine hundred yards from the castle.”
“No flak batteries,” Sheppard frowned before shutting down the HUD. “They must be pretty confident they stopped the leak.”
“Pungenhorst seemed to think no one could have gotten enough information to find the place,” Newkirk confirmed.
The first fly-by from 35,000 feet yielded no visual clues as to the lab’s location, even though the moon was only a day past full. A second pass just above the treetops was no more helpful.
Sheppard sighed. “Looks like we’re gonna have to put boots on the ground to get a clear picture. Ronon, Teyla, Carter, Newkirk.”
“Where are you gonna land?” McKay frowned. “It’s too heavily wooded.”
“There’s enough space in the castle ruins.”
“Which are on top of the mountain!”
“It’s only ’alf a mile, guv,” Newkirk shrugged.
Sheppard’s eyes narrowed for a moment as he thought. “Did Zelenka ever get that transporter installed on this thing?”
McKay’s eyes widened. “Maybe....” He tapped on his tablet for a moment. “Yes!” He turned to Carter and Newkirk. “You’ll have to stay close to Ronon and Teyla; otherwise I can’t get a lock on you to beam you up again.”
Carter and Newkirk exchanged a nervous glance and nodded their understanding.
“Wouldn’t the flash give us away?” Ronon frowned.
Sheppard pulled up the HUD and pinpointed where patrols were and which way they were moving, which happened to be away from each other and from the lab. “We can beam you down here if we do it now,” he said, pointing to a clear space near what appeared to be the front door. “But we probably can’t beam you back out. One flash should go unnoticed; two would be pushing it, even if we could get a lock on Carter and Newkirk. So as soon as we beam you down, we’ll head for the ruins. Scout the area and get back to the castle as soon as you can.”
“Understood,” Teyla nodded.
McKay picked up a life-signs detector. “Um... Carter, do you think you can work this?”
Carter took it from him. It turned off.
“Give me that,” Newkirk grumbled, snatching the Ancient device away from Carter. It stayed off. “Now you’ve broken it!”
“It’s not broken,” McKay explained, taking the device back from Newkirk. “You just don’t have the genetic key that allows you to use it. I’m sorry. I thought it might be useful to know where the patrols are.”
Ronon shrugged. “I don’t think we need it.”
“Just keep your eyes open, Chewie,” Sheppard returned. “And don’t shoot anything unless you have to. You’ll have maybe ten minutes to scout before you head back. If you’re not back in forty-five minutes, we’re comin’ after you.”
McKay set the life-signs detector back on the console while he continued tapping on his tablet to set up the beaming system. After a moment’s silence, he said, “Okay, I think we’re good to go. Um, try holding hands.”
“Will it hurt?” Carter whispered to Teyla as she took his hand.
Teyla smiled warmly at him. “No. You may be a bit disoriented, but you will not feel anything.”
Newkirk very sensibly grabbed hold of Ronon’s belt just in front of the holster. Ronon looked at him oddly and gently grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. Sheppard looked back at the HUD to keep from laughing.
“Yeeeah,” said McKay, entering the final coordinates without looking around at his fellow passengers. “Here goes.” He pushed a button on the console, and the white flash of the Asgard transporter filled the cockpit. When it faded, Sheppard and McKay were alone.
“Exactly where we wanted ’em,” Sheppard stated as four new life signs appeared on the HUD. “Good job, Rodney.”
“Mm, thanks.” McKay paused and looked at Sheppard. “Do you think it was safe sending Newkirk out there with Ronon?”
Sheppard couldn’t keep from laughing, but he noted, “I did tell Ronon not to shoot anything.”
Teyla had often wondered whether the Asgard transporter would ever beam them down facing the wrong way. At first, it appeared that it had done so this time, since they materialized facing downslope. She turned, but nothing behind them suggested a door at all. Frowning, she turned to the others.
Ronon, for his part, had let go of Newkirk and had been scanning the ground with a tracker’s practiced eye. He met Teyla’s glance and pointed straight ahead, then indicated a safe path down the slope to their right.
Teyla nodded and turned to Carter, who was still shaking the spots out of his eyes. She shifted her hand to his elbow and steered him in the direction Ronon was likewise gently pushing Newkirk. Carter recovered his sight just in time to spot and silently point out a ventilator as they passed it; Newkirk recovered shortly thereafter.
A few yards later, Ronon stopped the group and pointed to a lightly-worn path to the left. They silently made their way toward it and followed it back up the slope until he stopped them again. There, barely visible even in the moonlight that filtered through the trees, was a large metal door like that of a storm cellar, nearly flush with the ground and set almost exactly at the same angle as the slope. There were no exterior lights or any other means of marking the entrance. Had they come straight down from their original position, they would have literally stumbled on it.
Teyla took a deep breath and exchanged meaningful glances with each of the men. Carter signaled to Newkirk, and the two prisoners set off in opposite directions to find other ventilators as quickly as possible while Teyla and Ronon stood guard. About five minutes later they returned and signed their numbers to each other, and Newkirk checked his watch and pointed up to the mountaintop. With a nod, Ronon led them back up the mountain at a much faster pace than they had come down.
About a hundred yards up the slope from the lab, Ronon stopped the group again and pointed through the trees to a disused road. Then he turned about thirty degrees away from the road and started up the mountain again. Newkirk and Carter turned puzzled looks on Teyla, who nodded and took off after Ronon. They shrugged and followed. After another hundred yards, they crossed another apparently disused road, and still Ronon made straight for the top.
They were barely out of sight of the road when they heard a vehicle passing behind them. Newkirk paused long enough to look back. It was a radio detector truck. He grimaced up at Ronon, who had glanced back at him with one raised eyebrow, and scrambled to catch up.
In the end, Ronon’s straight-line approach brought them almost directly to the castle ruins in just under twenty minutes with no patrol encounters. They stopped at the edge of the trees to catch their breath and look around.
“Jumper’s not here,” Carter wheezed, concerned.
“Yes, it is,” Ronon replied. “Just wait.”
And a split second later, the Jumper shimmered into view a few yards to their south in what had once been the great hall. A second after that, a shout went up from somewhere in the distance.
“Run!” Teyla breathed.
No one had to be told twice. The path to the Jumper was not completely straight, weaving as it did among the castle’s foundations, but it still took less than a minute for all four scouts to make their way into the Jumper, where Sheppard was standing guard at the base of the ramp. As soon as everyone was inside, Sheppard’s mental commands had the hatch closed and the Jumper cloaked and off the ground before he could even get to the pilot’s seat.
The Gestapo patrol that reached the ruins five minutes later would forever wonder whether the lights they had seen had been a ghost.
“Colonel, are you telekinetic?” Carter asked in wonder as Sheppard sat down.
“Not exactly,” Sheppard replied.
“The Jumper has a neural interface that’s activated by the gene I mentioned earlier,” McKay explained. “Basically, it can read the pilot’s mind.”
“What’d you find?” Sheppard asked Teyla as he pulled around for a final fly-by.
“The facility is indeed underground,” she answered, pointing to its location as they passed. “Even the Genii do not hide their labs so well. We would not have found the door until we were standing on it had Ronon not found an alternate path down the slope.”
“Looked like there’d been only one patrol that direction all week,” Ronon stated.
“Only six ventilators, sir, also very close to the ground,” Newkirk added. “No booby traps or land mines that we could see, and not many patrols, but they’d only attract attention. The Krauts ’ave really done a good job wi’ this one.”
“We could never get in there,” Carter concluded. “Maybe if the Underground knows of a way to sneak a bomb in through the front door, but my guess is they keep traffic to a minimum. There’s no way to get it from the air.”
Sheppard sighed. “Yeah, my thoughts exactly. All right, McKay, how long until you have those schematics for Newkirk?”
“Ah, five minutes,” McKay replied vaguely, already at work on the task.
Carter started rifling through the cargo nets above the seats in the rear of the Jumper, studiously ignoring Newkirk’s silent attempts to stop him.
McKay’s tablet suddenly beeped at him. Frowning, he punched in a few commands, and his face paled as he read. “Oh, no, no, this is bad....”
“What?” Sheppard demanded.
“The patch isn’t holding. We’ve got, like, thirty seconds before we lose the cloak.”
“I thought you said you fixed it!”
“I said temporarily!”
Ronon growled.
“All right, hang on,” Sheppard ordered and sent the Jumper straight up into the stratosphere. Though the inertial dampeners prevented the ship from jolting with the sudden acceleration, Carter’s infamous clumsiness caused him to lose his balance and pull an open satchel down on himself. The satchel in question happened to have been left by an expedition member who had been coming down with a virus when the Jumper was last used, and Carter found himself showered with used Kleenex. One even landed in his open mouth.
Though Sheppard kept his eyes on the path ahead, the rest of the team turned briefly at the noise. “Did I not tell you not to touch anything?!” McKay squawked.
Carter spit out the Kleenex. “Sorry.”
“You’re a ruddy menace,” Newkirk grumbled as he helped Carter to his feet, and the two of them began cleaning up the mess.
“All right, we’re out of ack-ack range,” Sheppard announced. “Switch to the shield in case a fighter comes after us.”
“On it,” McKay replied, turning back to his work. A noise from outside heralded the switchover.
“If the cloak’s down, how will we get back?” Carter asked.
“McKay can fix it when we’re in orbit,” Ronon shrugged. “We’re not gonna need it until we head back.”
“Is that safe?”
“Our orbit will certainly be stable for the period it takes Dr. McKay to repair the cloak,” Teyla replied. “One revolution will take ninety minutes, and he usually works much faster than that.” She smiled as Newkirk and Carter exchanged a worried glance. “The first time we had to repair the Jumper in space, Col. Sheppard was badly injured, and we had only thirty-eight minutes to repair the ship before it was cut in half--and as you see, we are still very much alive. Believe me, in this case we are quite safe.”
Just a few minutes later, Sheppard eased the craft level, dropped the shield, and shut off the engines. “Okay, we’re here. Newkirk?”
Bypassing Teyla’s proffered hand sanitizer, Newkirk came forward to glance over the schematic McKay had pulled up on his tablet. “I doubt London will need that much,” he said, “but it’s good to have anyway. Thanks.”
Teyla poured some hand sanitizer onto Carter’s outstretched hand and demonstrated its use. Carter nodded, grinned, and followed suit.
“Okay, we’ll have just over three minutes before we’re out of range,” McKay noted. “What frequency do you need?”
“Emergency wavelength’s 410,” Newkirk replied.
“Just speak normally,” McKay directed as he punched the proper buttons on the console. “It works like a speakerphone.”
Newkirk cleared his throat at McKay’s cue. “Mama Bear, this is Papa Bear. Come in, please. Over.” He paused. “Mama Bear, this is Papa Bear. Come in.”
A muffled curse suddenly came over the speakers, followed by an angry voice with a heavy Brooklyn accent: “What part of radio silence do youse not understand, Teddy Boy?”
Newkirk had the grace not to groan--it would be a night Col. Conlon was on duty. “We’re in a secure location, Mama Bear. And we’ve got the information on that Swabian target.”
Another curse, this one with an undercurrent of admiration. “Go ahead, Papa Bear.”
McKay gave Newkirk his seat and headed back to the control panels in the rear of the Jumper to start replacing the patch. As Newkirk continued his report, switching in and out of the emergency Sindarin code they’d devised in June, Sheppard kept an eye on his watch so that he could warn Newkirk when they were about to drift out of range. They were almost directly over London when he finished speaking.
Conlon sighed. “Concur your analysis, Papa Bear. Communication with Hohenstaufen units not possible at this time, but target must be destroyed at all costs--priority double red. Use whatever means you can. Over.”
Newkirk exchanged an unhappy look with Sheppard. “Roger, Mama Bear, will do earliest possible. Papa Bear out.”
Sheppard cut off the channel and sighed. “You catch it, you clean it, huh?”
“I suppose so, sir,” Newkirk nodded.
“Why can’t they call anyone in Hohenstaufen?” Ronon frowned.
“Because apart from the radio detector truck patrolling the area, the Hohenstaufen nobility was behind the plot to kill Hitler, and the village is probably crawling with Gestapo,” Sheppard replied.
“That the same plot Pungenhorst is investigating?”
“Yeah. Should have mentioned that, Newkirk.”
“Wouldn’t ’ave made any difference, sir,” Newkirk said with a shake of his head. “Col. Conlon probably thinks the fewer people who ’ave the information, the better.”
“What’ll we do now?” Carter asked.
“It’s Col. Hogan’s decision, not mine,” Sheppard answered. “Main thing now is to get you guys home in one piece. How’s it coming, McKay?”
“Gimme another couple minutes, but you can head back now if you want,” McKay said. “I’ll have it working by the time we need it.”
“Right.” Sheppard turned the engines back on and turned the Jumper back toward Germany.
Having caused enough trouble for one night, Carter sat on his hands to curb his impulse to stand immediately behind McKay and watch what he was doing. From the little he could see at the angle where he was sitting, he doubted he’d understand anyway. But McKay had finished and chased Newkirk out of his seat by the time Sheppard needed to raise the shield for reentry; the cloak behaved itself once engaged, and the rest of the trip home was uneventful. Once they were into the atmosphere, McKay opened a channel to the radio in Hogan’s office, and Sheppard reported their findings to Hogan.
“That is great,” said Hogan disgustedly. “That is just great. We’ve got the Gestapo on our doorstep, and London expects us to take out the lab?!”
“That’s what you get for performing miracles, Colonel,” McKay observed wryly.
“Well, this one was Sheppard’s idea!”
“Sir, I did say earliest possible,” Newkirk noted. “I didn’t say ’ow soon ‘earliest possible’ would be.”
Hogan sighed. “Yeah, but we can’t wait too long. Look, let’s sleep on this. Maybe somebody will have an idea in the morning.”
“Roger, Colonel,” Sheppard replied. “We’re almost home. Sheppard out.”
Without meaning to, Carter and Newkirk both heaved a sigh of relief as the Jumper slid silently into the tent and landed. Newkirk was halfway down the ladder into the tunnel before Carter and Teyla had the tent flaps closed, but the rest of the team followed in fairly short order.
“Hey, Ronon?” Carter asked as the Satedan stopped to talk to Beckett and Zelenka. “Why does Col. Sheppard call you ‘Chewie’?”
Ronon chuckled. “You’ll find out in about thirty years.”
A/N: The five-line thermothrockle dialogue is from the 1942 movie Desperate Journey, starring Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan; you can find the full scene on YouTube. It’s such a brilliant piece of technobabble that I had to find an excuse for McKay to borrow it. (What’s a thermothrockle? Ah, that’s telling....)
The 3-D maps available online these days are very helpful, but the biggest problem is not knowing what trees were still standing sixty years ago. I've gone on the assumption that most of the area around Berg Hohenstaufen was still forested in 1944. And hey, it's AU anyway....
Next
References to (but not exactly spoilers for) SGA “Thirty-Eight Minutes,” “Duet,” and various arcs from Season 5. For an explanation of Col. Conlon, see “There and Back Again.”
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
So Much for the Frying Pan
Sheppard didn’t think he’d been asleep more than a minute when McKay started shaking his shoulder. “G’way, Rodney....”
“John, it’s time for dinner,” McKay replied, concerned.
Frowning, Sheppard pulled his hat off his face and discovered that it had gotten dark outside and the Jumper’s internal lights were on. His stomach growled, confirming McKay’s statement. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Five hours. What were you doing this afternoon?”
Sheppard stood up and stretched as he thought back. “Playing chess with Marya, and then... yeah, I went toe to toe with Pungenhorst. Think I confused him enough that he won’t be a problem for now, but there’s a good chance we will have to make sure he’s in the lab when it blows.”
“Oh, you didn’t.”
“What?”
“You told him about the Stargate?”
“Nothing that Langford and Littlefield don’t already know, and a lot that isn’t true. I’m just saying we need to make sure it doesn’t get back to Berlin.”
“Like what that wasn’t true?”
Sheppard smiled deviously. “Oldest lie in the world, Rodney--‘ye shall be as gods.’”
“You told him about the Goa’uld?!”
“Not as such, no. Not too many people want a snake in their heads. And I didn’t want to get that specific given that no one currently knows for sure what’s on the other side of that wormhole. I just... offered some vague possibilities.” At McKay’s skeptical look, he added, “Marya gave me the idea.”
McKay sighed. “Remind me never to time-travel with you again.”
“How are the repairs coming?”
“I told Hogan we’d be ready to go at 2130. Cloak’ll work temporarily, shield should be fine, navigation’s close and so are flight controls. No weapons or hyperdrive, but we shouldn’t need those.”
“Good. Where’s Zelenka?”
“He and Carson are moving the time drive down into the tunnel. He’s gonna work on it tonight while we’re gone.”
“Is he....”
McKay grimaced. “As well as can be expected. I think he’s glad to have something else to focus on.”
“Yeah.” Sheppard sighed. “Guess we’d better get to the mess hall before Marya comes looking for me.”
“You’re not, um....”
“Look, whatever you hear from the guards, it isn’t true, but Pungenhorst has to think it is.”
“Oh.” McKay nodded. “Should I change some of the stories about you and Larrin to be about you and her?”
“Only if you want me telling stories about Cadman and Beckett’s first kiss,” Sheppard returned dryly as he put his cap on and headed out of the Jumper.
McKay paled. “You wouldn’t!"
Dinner was a fairly low-key affair, or as low-key as anything involving Marya could possibly be. Klink came over to their table about halfway through the meal to check on them.
“By the way, Colonel,” Sheppard said, “we will be making a series of short test flights tonight, so we’d appreciate it if you could confine the prisoners to the barracks and keep your guards away from the Pfützespringer for the evening. We may be out quite late; we won’t be going very far, but it may take several sustained flights around the village to test all the systems that have been repaired and see what remains to be done.”
“Of course, Colonel,” Klink agreed. “How close do you think you are to finishing your repairs?”
“We will know better after tonight,” Zelenka stated, “but we probably have several days’ worth of work left to do.”
“I see. Well, good luck, gentlemen, and if there’s anything you need, feel free to ask me.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” Sheppard said courteously but dismissively.
Klink took the hint and left, while Marya made a fuss over “Hansie” having to work. Sheppard had just about “calmed” her as they prepared to leave when Pungenhorst entered and made a beeline for their table.
“I’m glad to catch you, Dr. McKay,” Pungenhorst said after exchanging some pleasantries. “I had a question about the Pfützespringer--I understand it has some... unusual capabilities.”
McKay shrugged. “Oh, yes, high altitude, radar evasion, you name it.”
“How do you make the engines work properly under such conditions?”
Covering Marya's hand with his own, Sheppard gave McKay a look that McKay understood all too well: Technobabble, but nothing either of them can use if they remember a word of it.
McKay cleared his throat nervously and abandoned his tenuous German. “Well, since it’s classified... do you mind if I explain it in English?”
“Not at all,” Pungenhorst replied.
With another glance at Sheppard, McKay said, “It’s done with a thermothrockle.”
“A what?”
“A thermothrockle, anfilated through a dalegoneter. Of course, this is made possible because the dirnadan has a frenna coupling.”
“I don’t understand.”
"Well, I knew you wouldn't. If I'd told you before, the ancimeter on the other side permulates the canudaspel hepulase, and that's the entire secret. There you have it."
Pungenhorst turned a puzzled frown on Sheppard and Zelenka.
“You asked,” Zelenka deadpanned.
Pungenhorst nodded once slowly. “I see. Thank you, gentlemen. Guten Abend.”
“Remind me to thank Lorne for showing us Desperate Journey,” McKay said to Sheppard under his breath as the Lanteans headed back to the Jumper and Marya returned to the VIP quarters. “Never thought you’d hear me quoting Ronald Reagan....”
Sheppard chuckled and patted McKay on the back.
In the tunnel two hours later, Carter was fretting to Teyla and Beckett about the final stop the Jumper would make that night. The Lanteans exchanged amused smiles when he wasn’t looking.
Finally, Teyla laid a calming hand on Carter’s arm to cut him off. “I too was nervous when I first flew in a Jumper and had time to think about what we were doing. The technology of the Ancestors was not new to me, but I had never experienced even an aircraft before, let alone flight through space. But it is as Dr. Zelenka told you. And Col. Sheppard has flown far more dangerous missions than this during his time in Atlantis. You will be fine.”
“You fly in spaceships all the time but never saw an airplane?” Carter frowned.
“Our base is on another planet,” she said, glancing at Beckett. At his nod, she added, “I came to live there when my own planet was attacked and my people could no longer remain there.”
Carter stared at her. “You’re an alien?!”
“She’s as human as we are, if that’s what you mean,” Beckett replied.
“No, I just... wow!”
Teyla and Beckett didn’t hide their amused glance this time. If he only knew....
They were spared any further awkwardness when Newkirk, Ronon, and Zelenka joined them at almost the same time. Zelenka gestured toward the ladder. “They are ready. The tent is open, but the cloak is engaged and expanded to cover the tunnel entrance.”
“Thank you, Radek,” Teyla nodded. She then gave the others a look that said Shall we?, slung her P-90 strap over her shoulder, and led the way up the ladder.
Beckett watched them go before turning to Zelenka with a sigh. “You think you’ll be all right down here by yoursel’? I know you need some quiet to work, and I’ve been invited upstairs to play gin.”
Zelenka hesitated. “Actually, Carson... I would be glad to have company. Would you perhaps tell me about your work offworld last year?”
Beckett smiled. “O’course.”
Nothing could have prepared Carter and Newkirk for the sight that awaited them as they emerged from the tunnel. They barely noticed that Sheppard and McKay had changed back into their offworld gear, so stunned were they to be standing next to an honest-to-goodness spaceship that looked nothing like the illustrations in Weird Tales. Newkirk was less of a scientifiction fan than Carter, but even he had expected... well, a rocket, not a tilted Quonset hut with funny carvings on it.
They had no time to gawk, though, as Ronon hustled them inside and pushed them down onto one of the bench seats in the rear of the Jumper. They were still getting their bearings when McKay bustled past on his way to the co-pilot’s seat. “Yes, that’s a good place to sit,” the physicist observed in passing. “Just don’t touch anything, and you’ll be fine.”
“It doesn’t even have wings!” Newkirk whispered to Carter.
“Doesn’t need ’em,” Sheppard stated as he closed the hatch and strode forward. “All set, McKay?”
“Ready when you are,” McKay replied.
Sheppard sat down in the pilot’s seat and pressed a few controls, and Newkirk and Carter startled at the distinctive sound of the Jumper powering up. Then they stared openmouthed as, with very little sensation of motion, the Jumper lifted off the ground and shot out of the tent. Seconds later they were already above a bomber’s cruising altitude, and the drive pods whirred open as Sheppard settled the Jumper into the flight path that would take them to Schwäbisch Hall.
“Wow,” Carter breathed.
Pungenhorst stretched out on the bed in the VIP quarters without even taking off his boots and shut his eyes to try to ease the headache that was coming on. He wished he could forget the afternoon as easily as he had told Schäfer that he would, not because he had promised--what SS officer always kept his word?--but because it was all too fantastic; yet his cursed eidetic memory would not let go of Schäfer’s words. A doorway to another planet... alien gods... weapons that offered absolute power....
Hitler would buy it, whether it was true or not. And that was what worried Pungenhorst. Did he dare to report Schäfer’s crazy scheme and raise false hopes when the war was going so badly? Or was there a chance, however remote, that the thing could actually work? And what if Schäfer really did have friends in Berlin... would Schäfer make good on his threat, and how?
His reverie was broken by the sound of the door opening and shutting and by the wave of smoke and Chanel No. 5 that announced Marya’s arrival. “You have headache, Otto darling?” she asked, sounding disappointed.
Pungenhorst opened one eye just enough to look at her. “I thought you were spending the evening with your Hansie,” he stated disdainfully.
“Ah, work, work, work,” she replied with a wave of her hand. “He’s no fun anymore. But if you have headache....”
A bored Marya is a dangerous Marya, Pungenhorst thought, and something in her pout stirred an appetite he had yet to understand where she was concerned. “Do you Russians have any good cures for headaches?”
With a dancer’s grace, Marya shed her fur coat, leapt onto the bed, and began rubbing her thumbs in circles on his temples.
Once he got over the shock of how quickly the Jumper was moving without the roar and rattle he’d been used to in the B-17, Carter moved forward to the cockpit and struck up a quiet conversation with Teyla about Athos, comparing and contrasting Sioux customs with those of Teyla’s people. Ronon even threw in a comment here and there when something reminded him of his childhood on Sateda or one of the many cultures he encountered as a runner. Newkirk, for his part, stayed warily silent, still not entirely sure Ronon wouldn’t kill him for even speaking to Teyla.
Even though Sheppard chose a speed that would put minimal strain on the Jumper’s jerry-rigged systems, the three-hundred-mile flight to Schwäbisch Hall took less than an hour. A sensor sweep of the immediate area turned up nothing. As Sheppard turned the Jumper toward Schwäbisch Gmünd, McKay broadened the sensor range to fifty miles, and immediately a blip appeared nearly thirty miles south of their location.
“That’s it,” Sheppard nodded and pointed the Jumper toward the indicated coordinates.
“What is that?” Carter frowned.
“Radiation from the lab,” McKay replied, busily tapping on his tablet. “Doesn’t tell us what they’re doing, but it is gamma radiation, which means they do have uranium or plutonium. But the readings are pretty faint, which means they either don’t have much or the lab’s well underground.”
“Or both,” Ronon rumbled.
McKay made a non-committal noise.
“Got a town name, McKay?” Sheppard asked.
“Yeah, give me a second....” More frenzied tapping. “Hohenstaufen. It’s about six miles southwest of Schwäbisch Gmünd.”
“That fits the courier’s statement, then,” Teyla noted.
Newkirk came forward to study the topographic map that Sheppard pulled up on the HUD. “Those ’ills could be a problem for the bombers, sir,” he said.
More readings appeared at Sheppard’s mental command, revealing towns and gun emplacements. “Yeah,” Sheppard agreed, “and if it is underground, bombers won’t do much good anyway. We’ll do a couple of fly-bys just to be safe.”
The next several minutes were mostly silent apart from McKay rapidly working through the sensor data and the HUD clicking as it responded to Sheppard’s queries. By the time they were five miles out, Sheppard and McKay had mapped out their objective enough to tell that the town was on the south and east sides of Berg Hohenstaufen and the lab was on its northwest.
“Is it on the mountain?” Ronon asked.
“No,” McKay replied, making his own adjustments to the HUD readings to clarify the location. “It’s this foothill northwest of the mountain... looks like about nine hundred yards from the castle.”
“No flak batteries,” Sheppard frowned before shutting down the HUD. “They must be pretty confident they stopped the leak.”
“Pungenhorst seemed to think no one could have gotten enough information to find the place,” Newkirk confirmed.
The first fly-by from 35,000 feet yielded no visual clues as to the lab’s location, even though the moon was only a day past full. A second pass just above the treetops was no more helpful.
Sheppard sighed. “Looks like we’re gonna have to put boots on the ground to get a clear picture. Ronon, Teyla, Carter, Newkirk.”
“Where are you gonna land?” McKay frowned. “It’s too heavily wooded.”
“There’s enough space in the castle ruins.”
“Which are on top of the mountain!”
“It’s only ’alf a mile, guv,” Newkirk shrugged.
Sheppard’s eyes narrowed for a moment as he thought. “Did Zelenka ever get that transporter installed on this thing?”
McKay’s eyes widened. “Maybe....” He tapped on his tablet for a moment. “Yes!” He turned to Carter and Newkirk. “You’ll have to stay close to Ronon and Teyla; otherwise I can’t get a lock on you to beam you up again.”
Carter and Newkirk exchanged a nervous glance and nodded their understanding.
“Wouldn’t the flash give us away?” Ronon frowned.
Sheppard pulled up the HUD and pinpointed where patrols were and which way they were moving, which happened to be away from each other and from the lab. “We can beam you down here if we do it now,” he said, pointing to a clear space near what appeared to be the front door. “But we probably can’t beam you back out. One flash should go unnoticed; two would be pushing it, even if we could get a lock on Carter and Newkirk. So as soon as we beam you down, we’ll head for the ruins. Scout the area and get back to the castle as soon as you can.”
“Understood,” Teyla nodded.
McKay picked up a life-signs detector. “Um... Carter, do you think you can work this?”
Carter took it from him. It turned off.
“Give me that,” Newkirk grumbled, snatching the Ancient device away from Carter. It stayed off. “Now you’ve broken it!”
“It’s not broken,” McKay explained, taking the device back from Newkirk. “You just don’t have the genetic key that allows you to use it. I’m sorry. I thought it might be useful to know where the patrols are.”
Ronon shrugged. “I don’t think we need it.”
“Just keep your eyes open, Chewie,” Sheppard returned. “And don’t shoot anything unless you have to. You’ll have maybe ten minutes to scout before you head back. If you’re not back in forty-five minutes, we’re comin’ after you.”
McKay set the life-signs detector back on the console while he continued tapping on his tablet to set up the beaming system. After a moment’s silence, he said, “Okay, I think we’re good to go. Um, try holding hands.”
“Will it hurt?” Carter whispered to Teyla as she took his hand.
Teyla smiled warmly at him. “No. You may be a bit disoriented, but you will not feel anything.”
Newkirk very sensibly grabbed hold of Ronon’s belt just in front of the holster. Ronon looked at him oddly and gently grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. Sheppard looked back at the HUD to keep from laughing.
“Yeeeah,” said McKay, entering the final coordinates without looking around at his fellow passengers. “Here goes.” He pushed a button on the console, and the white flash of the Asgard transporter filled the cockpit. When it faded, Sheppard and McKay were alone.
“Exactly where we wanted ’em,” Sheppard stated as four new life signs appeared on the HUD. “Good job, Rodney.”
“Mm, thanks.” McKay paused and looked at Sheppard. “Do you think it was safe sending Newkirk out there with Ronon?”
Sheppard couldn’t keep from laughing, but he noted, “I did tell Ronon not to shoot anything.”
Teyla had often wondered whether the Asgard transporter would ever beam them down facing the wrong way. At first, it appeared that it had done so this time, since they materialized facing downslope. She turned, but nothing behind them suggested a door at all. Frowning, she turned to the others.
Ronon, for his part, had let go of Newkirk and had been scanning the ground with a tracker’s practiced eye. He met Teyla’s glance and pointed straight ahead, then indicated a safe path down the slope to their right.
Teyla nodded and turned to Carter, who was still shaking the spots out of his eyes. She shifted her hand to his elbow and steered him in the direction Ronon was likewise gently pushing Newkirk. Carter recovered his sight just in time to spot and silently point out a ventilator as they passed it; Newkirk recovered shortly thereafter.
A few yards later, Ronon stopped the group and pointed to a lightly-worn path to the left. They silently made their way toward it and followed it back up the slope until he stopped them again. There, barely visible even in the moonlight that filtered through the trees, was a large metal door like that of a storm cellar, nearly flush with the ground and set almost exactly at the same angle as the slope. There were no exterior lights or any other means of marking the entrance. Had they come straight down from their original position, they would have literally stumbled on it.
Teyla took a deep breath and exchanged meaningful glances with each of the men. Carter signaled to Newkirk, and the two prisoners set off in opposite directions to find other ventilators as quickly as possible while Teyla and Ronon stood guard. About five minutes later they returned and signed their numbers to each other, and Newkirk checked his watch and pointed up to the mountaintop. With a nod, Ronon led them back up the mountain at a much faster pace than they had come down.
About a hundred yards up the slope from the lab, Ronon stopped the group again and pointed through the trees to a disused road. Then he turned about thirty degrees away from the road and started up the mountain again. Newkirk and Carter turned puzzled looks on Teyla, who nodded and took off after Ronon. They shrugged and followed. After another hundred yards, they crossed another apparently disused road, and still Ronon made straight for the top.
They were barely out of sight of the road when they heard a vehicle passing behind them. Newkirk paused long enough to look back. It was a radio detector truck. He grimaced up at Ronon, who had glanced back at him with one raised eyebrow, and scrambled to catch up.
In the end, Ronon’s straight-line approach brought them almost directly to the castle ruins in just under twenty minutes with no patrol encounters. They stopped at the edge of the trees to catch their breath and look around.
“Jumper’s not here,” Carter wheezed, concerned.
“Yes, it is,” Ronon replied. “Just wait.”
And a split second later, the Jumper shimmered into view a few yards to their south in what had once been the great hall. A second after that, a shout went up from somewhere in the distance.
“Run!” Teyla breathed.
No one had to be told twice. The path to the Jumper was not completely straight, weaving as it did among the castle’s foundations, but it still took less than a minute for all four scouts to make their way into the Jumper, where Sheppard was standing guard at the base of the ramp. As soon as everyone was inside, Sheppard’s mental commands had the hatch closed and the Jumper cloaked and off the ground before he could even get to the pilot’s seat.
The Gestapo patrol that reached the ruins five minutes later would forever wonder whether the lights they had seen had been a ghost.
“Colonel, are you telekinetic?” Carter asked in wonder as Sheppard sat down.
“Not exactly,” Sheppard replied.
“The Jumper has a neural interface that’s activated by the gene I mentioned earlier,” McKay explained. “Basically, it can read the pilot’s mind.”
“What’d you find?” Sheppard asked Teyla as he pulled around for a final fly-by.
“The facility is indeed underground,” she answered, pointing to its location as they passed. “Even the Genii do not hide their labs so well. We would not have found the door until we were standing on it had Ronon not found an alternate path down the slope.”
“Looked like there’d been only one patrol that direction all week,” Ronon stated.
“Only six ventilators, sir, also very close to the ground,” Newkirk added. “No booby traps or land mines that we could see, and not many patrols, but they’d only attract attention. The Krauts ’ave really done a good job wi’ this one.”
“We could never get in there,” Carter concluded. “Maybe if the Underground knows of a way to sneak a bomb in through the front door, but my guess is they keep traffic to a minimum. There’s no way to get it from the air.”
Sheppard sighed. “Yeah, my thoughts exactly. All right, McKay, how long until you have those schematics for Newkirk?”
“Ah, five minutes,” McKay replied vaguely, already at work on the task.
Carter started rifling through the cargo nets above the seats in the rear of the Jumper, studiously ignoring Newkirk’s silent attempts to stop him.
McKay’s tablet suddenly beeped at him. Frowning, he punched in a few commands, and his face paled as he read. “Oh, no, no, this is bad....”
“What?” Sheppard demanded.
“The patch isn’t holding. We’ve got, like, thirty seconds before we lose the cloak.”
“I thought you said you fixed it!”
“I said temporarily!”
Ronon growled.
“All right, hang on,” Sheppard ordered and sent the Jumper straight up into the stratosphere. Though the inertial dampeners prevented the ship from jolting with the sudden acceleration, Carter’s infamous clumsiness caused him to lose his balance and pull an open satchel down on himself. The satchel in question happened to have been left by an expedition member who had been coming down with a virus when the Jumper was last used, and Carter found himself showered with used Kleenex. One even landed in his open mouth.
Though Sheppard kept his eyes on the path ahead, the rest of the team turned briefly at the noise. “Did I not tell you not to touch anything?!” McKay squawked.
Carter spit out the Kleenex. “Sorry.”
“You’re a ruddy menace,” Newkirk grumbled as he helped Carter to his feet, and the two of them began cleaning up the mess.
“All right, we’re out of ack-ack range,” Sheppard announced. “Switch to the shield in case a fighter comes after us.”
“On it,” McKay replied, turning back to his work. A noise from outside heralded the switchover.
“If the cloak’s down, how will we get back?” Carter asked.
“McKay can fix it when we’re in orbit,” Ronon shrugged. “We’re not gonna need it until we head back.”
“Is that safe?”
“Our orbit will certainly be stable for the period it takes Dr. McKay to repair the cloak,” Teyla replied. “One revolution will take ninety minutes, and he usually works much faster than that.” She smiled as Newkirk and Carter exchanged a worried glance. “The first time we had to repair the Jumper in space, Col. Sheppard was badly injured, and we had only thirty-eight minutes to repair the ship before it was cut in half--and as you see, we are still very much alive. Believe me, in this case we are quite safe.”
Just a few minutes later, Sheppard eased the craft level, dropped the shield, and shut off the engines. “Okay, we’re here. Newkirk?”
Bypassing Teyla’s proffered hand sanitizer, Newkirk came forward to glance over the schematic McKay had pulled up on his tablet. “I doubt London will need that much,” he said, “but it’s good to have anyway. Thanks.”
Teyla poured some hand sanitizer onto Carter’s outstretched hand and demonstrated its use. Carter nodded, grinned, and followed suit.
“Okay, we’ll have just over three minutes before we’re out of range,” McKay noted. “What frequency do you need?”
“Emergency wavelength’s 410,” Newkirk replied.
“Just speak normally,” McKay directed as he punched the proper buttons on the console. “It works like a speakerphone.”
Newkirk cleared his throat at McKay’s cue. “Mama Bear, this is Papa Bear. Come in, please. Over.” He paused. “Mama Bear, this is Papa Bear. Come in.”
A muffled curse suddenly came over the speakers, followed by an angry voice with a heavy Brooklyn accent: “What part of radio silence do youse not understand, Teddy Boy?”
Newkirk had the grace not to groan--it would be a night Col. Conlon was on duty. “We’re in a secure location, Mama Bear. And we’ve got the information on that Swabian target.”
Another curse, this one with an undercurrent of admiration. “Go ahead, Papa Bear.”
McKay gave Newkirk his seat and headed back to the control panels in the rear of the Jumper to start replacing the patch. As Newkirk continued his report, switching in and out of the emergency Sindarin code they’d devised in June, Sheppard kept an eye on his watch so that he could warn Newkirk when they were about to drift out of range. They were almost directly over London when he finished speaking.
Conlon sighed. “Concur your analysis, Papa Bear. Communication with Hohenstaufen units not possible at this time, but target must be destroyed at all costs--priority double red. Use whatever means you can. Over.”
Newkirk exchanged an unhappy look with Sheppard. “Roger, Mama Bear, will do earliest possible. Papa Bear out.”
Sheppard cut off the channel and sighed. “You catch it, you clean it, huh?”
“I suppose so, sir,” Newkirk nodded.
“Why can’t they call anyone in Hohenstaufen?” Ronon frowned.
“Because apart from the radio detector truck patrolling the area, the Hohenstaufen nobility was behind the plot to kill Hitler, and the village is probably crawling with Gestapo,” Sheppard replied.
“That the same plot Pungenhorst is investigating?”
“Yeah. Should have mentioned that, Newkirk.”
“Wouldn’t ’ave made any difference, sir,” Newkirk said with a shake of his head. “Col. Conlon probably thinks the fewer people who ’ave the information, the better.”
“What’ll we do now?” Carter asked.
“It’s Col. Hogan’s decision, not mine,” Sheppard answered. “Main thing now is to get you guys home in one piece. How’s it coming, McKay?”
“Gimme another couple minutes, but you can head back now if you want,” McKay said. “I’ll have it working by the time we need it.”
“Right.” Sheppard turned the engines back on and turned the Jumper back toward Germany.
Having caused enough trouble for one night, Carter sat on his hands to curb his impulse to stand immediately behind McKay and watch what he was doing. From the little he could see at the angle where he was sitting, he doubted he’d understand anyway. But McKay had finished and chased Newkirk out of his seat by the time Sheppard needed to raise the shield for reentry; the cloak behaved itself once engaged, and the rest of the trip home was uneventful. Once they were into the atmosphere, McKay opened a channel to the radio in Hogan’s office, and Sheppard reported their findings to Hogan.
“That is great,” said Hogan disgustedly. “That is just great. We’ve got the Gestapo on our doorstep, and London expects us to take out the lab?!”
“That’s what you get for performing miracles, Colonel,” McKay observed wryly.
“Well, this one was Sheppard’s idea!”
“Sir, I did say earliest possible,” Newkirk noted. “I didn’t say ’ow soon ‘earliest possible’ would be.”
Hogan sighed. “Yeah, but we can’t wait too long. Look, let’s sleep on this. Maybe somebody will have an idea in the morning.”
“Roger, Colonel,” Sheppard replied. “We’re almost home. Sheppard out.”
Without meaning to, Carter and Newkirk both heaved a sigh of relief as the Jumper slid silently into the tent and landed. Newkirk was halfway down the ladder into the tunnel before Carter and Teyla had the tent flaps closed, but the rest of the team followed in fairly short order.
“Hey, Ronon?” Carter asked as the Satedan stopped to talk to Beckett and Zelenka. “Why does Col. Sheppard call you ‘Chewie’?”
Ronon chuckled. “You’ll find out in about thirty years.”
A/N: The five-line thermothrockle dialogue is from the 1942 movie Desperate Journey, starring Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan; you can find the full scene on YouTube. It’s such a brilliant piece of technobabble that I had to find an excuse for McKay to borrow it. (What’s a thermothrockle? Ah, that’s telling....)
The 3-D maps available online these days are very helpful, but the biggest problem is not knowing what trees were still standing sixty years ago. I've gone on the assumption that most of the area around Berg Hohenstaufen was still forested in 1944. And hey, it's AU anyway....
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