Stumbling over the shaking ground, Daniel
gripped the edge of the DHD and slapped the glyphs as fast as
he could make out what they were. Behind him, he could hear
Jack swearing loudly. "The water's receding!" Sam
shouted.
A particularly violent tremor threw Daniel
onto the dialing pad just as he went to press the red
activation button. Teal'c narrowly escaped being hit by the
kawoosh, but wasted no time in punching in their IDC as soon
as the event horizon settled. "GO!" Jack ordered, grabbing
Daniel by the arm and hauling ass towards the Gate. Ahead of
them, Teal'c gave Sam a boost through the Gate just as the sun
was blocked out, casting an ominous shadow over the
team.
General Hammond had only just
arrived in his office when the offworld activation alarms went
off. By the time he made it down to the control room, the
seventh chevron was just locking. "There's no one due back
yet," Sgt. Harriman informed him. Neither man looked surprised
when SG-1's emergency IDC flashed up on the screen and the
iris opened automatically.
Major Carter was the first
one through, tumbling to the end of the ramp as if she'd been
thrown. Teal'c dashed through right behind her, vaulting over
his teammate when he realized there wasn't enough time to
stop.
A few seconds later, two more figures appeared at
the top of the ramp and were immediately obscured as the event
horizon seemed to roar outwards, slamming into the glass of
the control room. There was a loud, wet thud and Hammond
caught a flash of a dark shape before it was swept away in the
deluge. It's water, he realized belatedly, shocked at
the unexpected event. "Dear God, close the iris!" he shouted
over the roar of water hitting the glass.
Harriman
quickly hit the iris control, and very slowly, the insane
cascade of water ceased. The Gateroom side doors had been
closed, trapping the water inside, and the Gate ramp was
mostly submerged in four feet of water. Six forms floundered
in the choppy froth, and Hammond's worry eased a notch as he
recognized all four members of his flagship team and the two
SFs who had been guarding the Gate. "Turn off power to the
Gate," Hammond ordered, eyeing the superconductor clamps.
Within moments, the danger of electrocution was
gone.
Teal'c and Major Carter had taken refuge at the
top of the ramp, sitting in over a foot of water. Colonel
O'Neill grabbed one of the SFs by his vest and helped the
stunned man regain his footing. The other SF was clinging onto
the railing of the ramp already, unbuckling his helmet and
tossing it into the water.
Doctor Jackson surfaced near
one of the doors, coughing up water and looking like a drowned
rat. "Let's never do that again!" he said fervently as soon as
he could talk without choking. His glasses had been knocked
off his face, lost somewhere under the flooded
mess.
Satisfied that none of them seemed severely
injured, Hammond leaned over and grabbed the mic. "SG-1, are
you all right?"
There was a brief pause as conditions
were assessed, then Colonel O'Neill called up, "Nothing that a
couple of towels and maybe a fire won't cure."
Hammond
smiled faintly. "I'll see what I can do. What
happened?"
"Tsunami, sir," Major Carter replied. "We
barely managed to dial out in time."
Sgt. Siler looked
over the watery mess in the Gateroom. "Sir, it will be several
hours before we manage to get rid of enough of the water to
open the doors," he reported. "I can have a hole cut in the
glass so we can get supplies to them, but it would be too
dangerous to try and bring them up through it."
"Get
right on it," Hammond commanded, leaning back over the mic.
"Looks like it'll be awhile before we can get you out of
there," he informed the waterlogged personnel. "Is there
anything we can get for you?"
