Delirium
(the
following chapter needs rewriting, there needs to be more references to
the plot of the chapter early on, its quite apperent I had no idea what
would be the plotline when i first wrote the introduction=
But considering the situation on Atlantis right now, with the whole spy issue neither the lieutenant nor Hoglund minded that much to get out of there. Of course it was the Athosians who had found the jumper, so they probably wouldn't be here if the Athosians hadn't felt compelled to leave Atlantis in the first place.
Miller kept joking about it being paid vacation, he usually commanded one of the off-world teams, the intention had been to have Shepard command one and colonel Sumner comand the other but with Sumners death the comand of one had fallen to Miller as the second highest military officer of atlantis, havign seniority on lt.Ford. Despite the vacation jokes the boredom had eventually got to Milelr who had gone to see if the Athosians needed any help, watching a battery charge didn't really take two men anyway. Which was fine by Hoglund, the jumper had crashed down on the edge of a rocky beach. it had probably gone down over the ocean but had been going so fast it had bounced on the surface tension until it impacted the beach. Truth be told Hoglund didn't think he'd get it working again, ten thousand years of decay was probably to much. Then he heard a sound from the jumper, and sat straight up. Or perhaps not, the redundancy of this technology was marvelous. He walked over it and touched the back panel of it. slowly but surely it opened with a groan as of some wild beast. the stench that met him was unbelievable, ten thousand year sof seawater that had stewed inside the machine. Yes true jumpers was waterproof, Zelenka had even suggested they might be able to fly under water, but nothing held tight against the elements for then thousand years. It had held relatively tight though which meant that any seawater that had gotten in had not gotten out. there was probably an entire ecosystem living in this thing. Hoglund stepped away from the hatch again. He needed a new plan, the innards of the jumper needed to be cleaned somewhat if he was going to be able to find how to repair it, but he sure as hell wasn't going to go in there with a cloth and his bare hands. He went through his own gear, and found nothing useful, then he went through the lieutenant's supplies and found nothing. sure plenty of grenades and some c-4 but he wanted to save jumper not blow it up. What he really needed was pressurised water but then again with it nose down in the beach the way it was the water wouldnt flow out of it anyway. moving the jumper was out of the question... or was it, one of the drive pods was shot to hell, and propaby the reason it crashed, the other one wasnt all that bad. it might be made to give one last push in reverse. Hoglund entered the jumper thankign his luck that Zelenka had found the control circuits for the drive pods, Hoglund dug through a half gallon of desposited algae to get to the circuit hatch then coupled his tab up to the right circuit and left the jumper. It was propably not safe to be inside it right now. He set the settings for the curcuit to full, he'd propably burn up all the energy he had fed into it thus far doing this, and there was no guarantee that it would survive pulling itself free. then again if it didn't it was probably in to bad shape for anything but spare parts anyway. he activated the circuit, and was knocked to the ground by spraying mud stones and sediment. Something hit him hard. Not as intended he thought before passing out because of the pain.
"Doctor! Are you all right" a voice asked, Hoglunds head hurt like never before and the voice was like nails on a chalkboard for him. Hoglund sat up, at least that's what he intended instead he got halfway toppled over and threw up. "Doctor? What happened here? It looks like a bomb went down" Lieutenant Miller, Hoglund realised, he finally managed to sit up. He was covered in the very thing he hadn't wanted to clean up himself, and several, far to large for comfort, rocks was scattered in the mud around him, one of them had probably hit him and knocked him out. He looked over to the jumper. it was now resting in the shallow water of the beach. The engine pod he had intended to activate was fine, the other one appeared to have exploded. He had activated a broken engine at full power. the blast crater was actually quite impressive though not as impressive as it would have been if there had been a catastrophic overload.No a safety catch had probably activated and that had blown with all the energy that was loaded in the capacitor at that moment. If there had been a catastrophic overload they would probably have seen the explosion from Atlantis and that is if the Naquadah generator had not been caught in the explosion because then it would have evaporated half the coastal area.
"Don't be the guy who sets of a nuke" he laughed to himself.
"What? Sorry Hoglund but what are you talking about"
"I miscalculated a bit and nearly blew myself... what is the phrase... to kingdom come?"
"You said something about a nuke?"
"The generator" Hoglund said and motioned towards it luckily it was stating a good distance up on dry land "we wouldnt want that to get caught in the blastzone now would we"
"Have you gone crazy?" Miller asked worriedly.
"I think I might have taken a blow to my head"
"Several actually" the lieutenant gave him a compress "Saw a chopper go down in Iraq, some of the guys we pulled out of it still looked better than you, those of them who were lucky that is"
"And the one's that wasn't lucky"
"Dead on impact doctor"
"As I said slight miscalculation, but hey it got the job done"
"yes, and nearly got you killed in the process, I'll radio in for pickup, doctor Becket should have a look at that head"
"No need I'll have this thing up and running in no time then we can fly it back to Atlantis and Becket can give me some asprin." He got on his feet and grabbed the generator and headed for the jumper.
"Doctor!" Miller shouted "You are in no shape of flying even if that thing wasn't an antique!"
Hoglund just ignored him and entered the jumper he puled down the circuit panels and started orientating himself, more than half of them were broken. And that was not accounting any hardware that might be shot after the crash then ten thousand years of decay and followed by the explosion just a few moment ago.
Lieutenant Miller radioed Atlantis.
"Atlantis base this is Miller come in please"
"This is Atlantis base" chief engineer Grodin responded
"We had a malfunction with the jumper we were sent here to fix, Doctor Hoglund took a blow to his head and now he's acting very strange. We could use a lift out of here."
"Ok, Markham is on his way in jumper one" then there was a pause "Doctor Becket is coming along, he says keep Hoglund laying down"
"That could be a problem, he is intent on repairing the old jumper and flying it home"
"That's not an option lad" Becket cut in "His strange behaviour could be a sign of cerebral swelling or even bleeding, if that's the case he's in big trouble and moving around is just going to make that worse, as for flying after a blunt force trauma, no bloody way"
"I'll deal with him, just get here" Miller said and walked up to the jumper, at lest he tried, he walked straight into some kind of forcefield, it knocked him of his feet. "What the hell" he muttered as he stood.
"Sorry lieutenant but I cant let you stop me" Hoglund said from inside, he looked at a optic circuit. "Inertial dampeners? I can do without those"
"Doctor you really need to lay down, you could..."
"I have a radio to you know, I heard Becket. They underestimate me you know, by far" he switched a few other circuits.
"It doesn't matter how good you are at this stuff, you can't fly a jumper with one drivepod!"
"Please SG members have done way worse stuff"
Lieutenant Miller gave up he walked away and opened up the radio frequency again.
"This is Miller what is your ETA" he heard Hoglund scoff something about military jargon.
"We're two minutes out" Markham responded. "We can see the smoke from the explosion"
"Good, Atlantis base, Hoglund has activated the jumpers shield how do I shut it off"
"This is Grodin speaking, it can be turned of remotely by a control found in all jumpers, the inbound jumper will have those and can shut the forcefield down"
"Let's hope we have that long" Miller answered.
Hoglund felt like an observer in his own body, he could think but when he tried to transfer his thoughts and actions to his body they came out wrong. He knew there was several issues that were important here, one was the lack of a body of the person who crashed this in the first place. The second was a flashing light on the hud saying the location of the jumper was several hundred miles from where it had supposedly crashed. He just couldn't get to what it meant. He had managed to get stabilisers and a drive pod operational by sacrificing inertial dampeners cloaking weapons and all secondary systems. Somewhere he remembered shutting the dampeners of was a very bad idea. He just couldn't process it properly. Despite what Becket had said he knew it wasnt he trauma, he had been like this when he had decided to try and fly the jumper free in the first place.
He saw a second jumper come into view, he moved the control circuit from the shield to the stabilisers and activated his remaning drive pod, the pod coughed a few times and then fired up, and the jumper lifted of the ground, now he just had to find Atlantis, unfortunately navigation was one of those systems that he had salvaged to get the jumper running.
Just as jumper one landed the other jumper took of, not fast not gracefully, more like if someone had placed a very old steam engine on wings and made it fly. Jumper one opened it's hatch long enough for Miller to get on board before taking of after the other jumper.
"Markham! Bring us up alongside him!" Miller ordered Markham as soon as they took of.
"yes sir" Markham responded, then hesitated "There's no way for us to get aboard that jumper sir"
"Just do it sergeant, we'll figure something out" Miller said.
"No problem, sir" Markham said and followed the other jumper.
"Lieutenant, you mind telling me how he got injured in the first place" Becket asked.
"He tried firing up a broken engine pod, weird too he was the one who told me it would blow if we tried doing that"
"That doesn't sound like a mistake Hoglund would normally do, could he have been in an altered mental state already then?"
"It's possible, but if not cranial bleeding then what? People don't just go insane for no reason doctor"
"Can't say for certain until I get him under a scanner lieutenant" Miller turned back to Markham.
"Where is he going?" he asked him.
"can't say for sure sir, he keeps drifting to one side now that could be intentional but also a result of him flying on one engine" Markham paused "How is he even doing that? Shouldnt the jumper go into a spin?"
"The ancient systems are probably to some degree able to compensate for that" the jumper in front of them suddenly made a massive turn to the other side. and once again was steering towards Altantis. Miller pushed the radio button.
"This is Miller, I'm aboard the jumper but Doctor Hogludn managed to get his jumper in the air before we could get to him, he's heading towards Atlantis Atlantis base please advice"
"This is Bates sir, major Shepard is currently offworld,You may have to consider shooting him down"
"I would rather not Sergeant, he has a naquadah generator on board, the resulting explosion would take us down with him."
"But should he crash into Atlantis with that the resulting explosion might sink the city" Grodin cut in.
"I am aware of that doctor, but I need alternatives"
"I'll see what I can do"
Peter Grodin had once again assembled the Atlantis science team as well as his own technicians in one of the Atlantis conference rooms.
"We have a highly unstable jumper carrying a small nuclear payload heading towards the city, we have about half an hour to find a solution or the pursuing jumper will be forced to shoot it down"
"Less than half an hour actually" kavanagh pointed out "Destoyign the jumper will cause the generator to explode and if the explosion is close enough to the city it wont atter if it blows up on the landign pad or gets shot down by the other jumper."
"Thank you doctor Kavanagh" Groding said witha strained voice "Now someone who has an actual useful suggestion?"
"We could attempt to raise the shield momentarily" Simpson pointed out.
"How would that help us?" Johnsson replied
"It would mean we could blow the jumper up closer to the city without harm but there's no guarantee we could actually raise the shield even for an instant" kavanagh said.
"I meant that we might be able to prevent Hoglund's jumper frome ntering the city" Simpson argued.
"No way we have enough power for that, now one short burst of energy..."
"We could power up the drone chair and shoot it down ourselves"
"...No power..."
Grodin sat down beside Zalenka.
"I hate to admit it but we need Rodney on this"
"When he gets back from offoworld it will be to late" Zelenka responded.
"He might be able to get the chair to work though, not that I like the idea of shooting Hoglund down"
"If we had the chair we might be able to force the jumper on autopilot actually, but we don't so it doesn't matter really" Zelenkka said, looking at the scientists shouting at each other in the middle of the room. Grodin sat up straight, he had an idea.
"Could it be done from another jumper?"
"A jumper has a lot less range than the control chair, even if we could get them to work like that by the time we got in range it's be to late"
"There's a jumper within range right now" Grodin pointed out.
"That could work, they do have two pilots with the ATA gene on board"
"I meant just activate the autopilot"
"the autopilot is designed to fly a fully functional jumper and we can't be certain Hoglund havent already salvaged it in order to restore flying condition, but MiIller is a pilot he could land it remotely"
"That's assuming we can get the connection to last that long"
"Doesn't have to be that long, he dont need to fly it just the landing, but it's assuming they can adapt the neural feed to accept two inputs at once"
"We could design the system in one of our jumpers here and send it to them"
"I'll go start on the jumpers" Zelenka said standing up.
"I'll go boot up the neural link program from the database" Grodin said and they both hurried away leaving the other scientists to their debate.
Twenty minutes later the radio in the jumper buzzed to life.
"Jumper one we think we have a solution" Grodin's voice said.
"This is jumper one, we're listening"
"Ok Miller we'll transmit a program that will allow someone to temporarily control the other jumper from the copilots chair, we recommend you do it considering the state of the other jumper and that you have actual pilot training."
"Transmiot the program" a light lit on the dashboard "Ok i think we got it, what do we do?"
"Just open it it's plug and play, it's possible that the strain might deactivate your jumper entirely, if that happens someone needs to reinitialize it at the rear circuit hatch."
"You know I really don't need a task to make me feel needed here" Beckett noted nervously
"It is important Beckett" Grodin pointed out, "It's just sheer luck that there are three of you with the gene in one jumper at once"
"Oh I do feel really lucky" Beckett began but Miller made a gesture for him to be quiet.
"is there anything else we need to know?" he asked
"The circuits for this kind of thing are different from most others so Hoglund shouldn't have touched them but after ten thousand years they might be really bad anyway. There's no telling how long the connection will hold, don't activate it until the last second."
"Thank you Atlantis base, jumper one out"
They were quickly approaching Atlantis, the jumper right infornt of them was visibly straiend from flying on one drivepod for so long and also without amny other systems.
"Let's hope he even makes it as far as the city" Miller commented, none of the others responded, they wer elal following the path of the damaged jumper with terror, their haerts skipping a beat every time it made a large cringe.
"he should have activated the bay doors by now" Markham commented.
"If that function still works" Miller anwered him "Open the bay doors" he order him, then he sat in the co pilots chair. He touched the file Atlantis had sent to him and then placed his hand on the neural interface. At first nothign happened and he got a sinking feeling in his gut then, a small window opened on the HUD showing what was in front of the second jumper. He lfet it respond or rather try to respond to his commands. It reacted slowly as if unsure how to react to his inputs, but slowly it began slowing down as he willed it to. he tried to make it stand still in the air to hoer and descend like they were supposed to be every time he got it close it made a sudden movement. At first he found it very annoying then he realised that the other jumper could not hover on one drive pod at least not without inertial dampeners. He would have to fly it slowly in a circle to land it. Slowly but surely he took it downwards towards the floor, ten meters left, five meters left then at two meters left he felt as if someting snapped and the hud window died. At the same time all the lights in the jumper died.
"Bloody hell" Becket shouted from the back and threw himself at the rear circuit console, at first nothing happened and they started to fall, then with a whine the jumper rebooted and stopped the motion. while all this happened Millers eyes were fixed at the other jumper as it's last engine pod died and it crashed into the ground below it. Fortunately it appeared that the generator had not been damaged because nothing else happened. Markham landed their jumper and they met several technicians trying to crowbar the rear hatch of the damaged jumper open as soon as they got out of their own. Grodin and Zalenka was with them.
"Nice flying lieutenant" Grodin greeted him.
"Your solution didn't last long enough for a fully controlled landing, how come it didn't blow?"
"The inertial dampeners seems to have activated just as you lost control of it, perhaps Hoglund managed to get his act together again, or it was some fluke in the programming" Grodin responded
"I'm a little concerned he didn't open the bay doors, was the controls simply broken or was he unable to do so for another reason." Zalenka said
"I can't say until I get to him but at least with the dampeners on there's some chance he survived the last crash" Becket responded.
"Some chance?" Grodin said horrified.
"Well if he was severely injured before flying that thing he didn't make it much better by such a bumpy ride and a crash at the end."
With a whine the rear hatch gave up and the technicians pulled it open.
"Maybe we should go first doctor there could be a leaky generator in there" Grodin said to becket.
"There could also be a dying man in there" becket responded and waved the medical team to follow him as he entered.
Hoglund was unconcious on the in one of the pilots chairs. Becket gave hima quick goign over.
"No spinal damage he should be safe to move" he observed, then felt on his head "Doesnt appear to be any severe head damage either, he picked up a flashlight from his pocked and opened Hogludn eye, and lit into it. I'd say poisoned or in severe allergic chock, we need to get him down to the infirmary. he motioned the medical teams to lift him onto a trolley then turned to Miller. "Did he eat anything you found on the mainland?"
"He found some berries we put in our breakfast oatmeal, he said he knew what they were he used to pick them at home when he was a kid"
"We're in another bloody galaxy there are no plants that are the same here as on earth, don't eat anything that haven't been cleared by the botany department!"
"But if they were poison why am I fine?"
"Some people react stronger than others to these things some not at all" he hurried after his team.
Many many hours later Hoglund awoke in a bed in the infirmary. What the hell hapened? He aksed, or well he tried to ask instead he just made a groan. But he heard someone move in the vaccinity.
"Doctor Becket! doctor Hoglund is awake".
"Thank god for that" He heard Becket respond and then the doctor was leaning over him. "How are you felling Felix?" He asked.
"Water... please..." he managed to get out. Someone held a glass to his mouth and he drank. he then settled back, "What happened?" he asked.
"you had a severe concussion and few broken ribs, but the large problem was the reaction to those berries you ate"
"Berries? Why do I have a concussion?"
"Memory loss is common after trauma, or the poison might have something to do with it"
"What?"
"You ate some strange berries in the mainland, almost blew up a jumper then tried to fly a broken jumper carrying a naquadah genrator back to Atlantis."
"So I did something stupid and nearly got everyone on atlantis killed" Hoglund said with a ironic smile, his head hurt when he did ti though so he let it fade "I'm so going to get fired"
"No one is blaming you son, you're not the first person to do something stupid on their first time off-world"
"I wasn't of world, just the mainland"
"Anything that isn't earth is off-world" Beckett pointed out "Now the interesting part is that the concussion likely saved your life, it made you vomit, which reduced the amount of poison that you body actually managed to take in."
"Jay for blunt force trauma" Hoglund said then felt himself drft away.
he awoke later, feeling much better, he heard voices in the distance so he sat up.
"You can't volounteer someone else major" he heard Becket argue some distance away.
"I knew you would want to help"
"It's not about that!"
Hoglund opened his eyes, Becket and Major Shepard was standing a dozen meters away arguing about something.
"Morning Carson, Morning Major" he said sitting up. they both turned towards him surprised.
"You do relaise it's almost midday right?" Shepard answered him.
"Not where I have been I promise you that" Hoglund said with a weak smile, he had started to get his memory back.
"You know I got to try some of those berries you found" Shepard responded.
"I am going to throw something at you major" Hoglund promised.
" you look more like you're goign to throw up on me, you had us worried there fora while doctor"
"A while?" How long was I out"
"You've been drifting in and out of it for a week" Beckett told him.
"Paid vaccation" Hoglund smiled "Did I miss anything fun?"
"We captured a wraith, got him down in a holding cell"
"yeah sure"
"Actually they did, it's kind of a long story"
"Which actually reminds me, you fund that ancient pacification device right? Jolt a person when it feels anger or hostility"
"It registers certain body chemicals and administers a non lethal chock, the ancients used it on violent criminals instead of prison, that way they could rehabilitate by conditioning away unwanted behaviour instead of incarcerating" Hoglund said.
"Would it work on a wraith" Shepard asked
"No" Hoglund responded shaking his head.
"no?" Sherpard looked suprised nearly offended "Just no?"
"The wraith have very diffrent body chemicals from us" Beckett clarified.
"What if you modify it?" Shepard tried, Hoglund buried his head in his hands, military people! he thought.
"It's not that simple!" He expased.
"Why not?"
"Because the wraith is by far closer to the Iratus bug than it is to a human, it has none of the body chemicals we do and they're not even close enough that they have corresponding body chemicals" Beckett explained again.
"See this is why I need you to work with the Hoffans, you know these things"
"Ok but next time ask me before you tell Elizabeth that I'll do it"
Hoglund leaned back again, he was tired and he had a feeling that whatever this was about it would make itself known to him soon enough. He had no idea what an understatement that was.
to chapter 6
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