by Martha Wells
The tunnel led out from the complex to the south, and the going was fairly easy. The floor was metal grating, the walls weren’t overly dank, and the blue lights were set every twenty or so paces. Other passages branched off, curving away into darkness, but Dorane had said the surface shaft would be at the end of the main passage.
“I have never heard of a race called the Koan, or of the Wraith using another species to attack a human settlement,” Teyla said, throwing John an uneasy glance, her face shadowed by the blue light. “I hope that is a trick they have forgotten.”
“Maybe it was a one-shot deal,” John said, though he didn’t think that was too likely. The Wraith they had run into didn’t tend to vary their methods of attack. Being at the top of the food chain didn’t encourage innovation. “Maybe they ran out of Koan, ten thousand years ago. And maybe Dorane hasn’t told us everything that happened yet.” That sounded a little grim, so he added, “He seemed a little confused.”
“I do not think he is…well. Despite his protestations. I could not live without knowing my people’s fate, even if it meant giving up all hope that they had survived.”
“Yeah,” John admitted, “I didn’t get that either.” He hadn’t gotten the impression that the Ancients had been that…distant. Atlantis was example enough that, as a people, they had liked color and light and life. But everybody was different.
After a short time the ground turned to uneven dirt and rock, though they still kept passing branching passages. John kept trying to reach Boerne and the others on the radio, but all he got was static.
Teyla said slowly, “I am beginning to wonder… When you saw Dorane, did you not feel any sense of recognition?”
“No.” John checked the life sign detector again and saw the area around them was still clear. But with the Koan possibly having some kind of Wraith jamming device, that didn’t mean much. He threw Teyla an odd look. “Why? Did you?”
“I felt something, as if I had seen him before, though that is impossible. And…it was not what I would have expected.” She bit her lip, looking troubled, and asked, “Do you not think that you would recognize an Ancestor if you saw one? You have the Ancestor’s gene from birth, not through Dr. Beckett’s therapy, as the others do.”
“I don’t think so.” Considering it seriously, John glanced down at her. “It’s not like I’m psychic or anything. I just have a gene that lets me control the jumpers and turn on the lights and initialize the systems and stuff just by thinking about it.” He considered that for an instant. “Okay, I know that didn’t sound like it supported the argument I was trying to make, but you know what I mean. And you said ‘if I saw an Ancestor’.” He stopped, regarding her seriously. “You don’t think he is one?”
Teyla shook her head, then got what John could only describe as a very weird expression, as if something disturbingly strange had just occurred to her. But she said, “I—I cannot say.”
“You cannot say? Huh? Teyla—”
She was a few steps ahead of him as they passed another intersecting passage, so John had a heartbeat’s warning when the Koan dropped out of the shadows onto her shoulders.
With a yell, John surged forward. Teyla staggered but managed to flip the struggling Koan off her back. It snarled, clawed hands snatching at her as she kicked it in the chest. John fired up into the dark space above her, the P-90’s flash catching another Koan just leaping out of concealment. He spun to cover the rest of the ceiling but the next Koan slammed right down on top of him.
Half-expecting it, John twisted to land on his back, getting the breath knocked out of him but still managing to slam the creature in the head with the gun’s butt. It reared back, and he pulled the P-90 down and triggered it, catching the Koan nearly point blank in the chest. It toppled back, and he shoved it off his legs, rolling to his feet. God, these things smell foul. Teyla was already firing down one cross-passage, and John turned to fire down the other just as a dozen dark shapes charged toward him. The first three fell. The others yelped and scrambled back.
John caught movement out of the corner of his eye and ducked. A heavy metal rod split the air right where his head had been. He got off a three-shot burst as the Koan lifted the rod for another blow; one bullet caught the creature in the upper thigh. It bellowed and flung the rod at John’s head.
John fell backward, deflecting it with his shoulder. He lifted his weapon but his light showed the Koan was already fleeing back up the cross passage with a kind of limping gallop, the others in full retreat ahead of it. He decided not to waste the ammo. It looked like the Koan had changed their minds about the ambush.
Teyla had shot her first attacker and was covering the other two passages. “Are you all right, Major?” she asked a little breathlessly. Her arms had long shallow scratches from the creature’s claws, but she wasn’t bleeding too badly.
John took a long look around. There was no movement in the shadows down the corridors. His shoulder hurt, but nothing was broken. “Yeah, you?”
“I feel badly in need of a bath,” she admitted. “The Koan do not believe in basic hygiene, apparently.”
It was pretty rank in here now. John stepped past her to where the first Koan lay sprawled against the rock wall. In life, the creature hadn’t cared for itself well. The gray and silver splotched skin looked like it was molting, and the white hair was ragged and lank. There were white and silver spines through the hair and bristling from its ears, but John saw for the first time how human its facial features actually were, scrunched up in pain from the wounds in its chest. It looked fairly young, about Ford’s age.
It wasn’t wearing anything like clothing, but it had a cord around its neck with a small handheld data pad attached.
John picked it up, staring at it incredulously. The case looked like it had been scavenged from something else, like a puddlejumper remote or maybe a handheld sensor of some kind. An Ancient control crystal that was a little too big for the case had been crammed into it. The rest of the insides, even from John’s limited experience, looked makeshift. Teyla recovered the life sign detector from where John had dropped it and held it out, showing him the screen. She said softly, “It does not even show us, now.”
“Yeah. This is the jammer, all right. But it wasn’t built by the Wraith.” John felt cold, the adrenaline rush of the fight giving way to grim realization. It was just believable that the original Wraith sensor-jammers might be lying around here after ten thousand years, still functional. They had certainly gotten bitten in the ass by other lost pieces of Wraith technology that had lasted at least that long. That the Koan would know what the jammers were and remember them as a thing to take with them when they hunted humans was vaguely possible too. But that they could be living like this and figure out a way to build one from scratch, from scavenged Ancient technology? I don’t think so.
John used his knife to cut the cord, then pushed to his feet, controlling a surge of homicidal fury. The immediate thing was that he no longer thought it was Corrigan, Boerne, and Kinjo who were in danger. He tucked the jammer into a vest pocket and said deliberately, “Let’s go surprise somebody.”
Rodney hurried back through the passages, checking the life sign detector to make sure Dorane was still down in the other room with Kavanagh and Kolesnikova.
Ford watched his approach from the gallery, brows drawing together. “What’s up?”
Rodney motioned urgently for him to come closer and met him halfway up the stairs. “I think something’s wrong. Dorane is lying to us about the timing.”
Ford shook his head slightly. “What do you mean?”
Intent, Rodney explained, “This facility was powered by three ZPMs, with two now at maximum entropy and one at minimal power. From the readings I’m getting, the draining had to have occurred at least fifty years before the Ancients left Atlantis for Earth.”
Ford stared. “That doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t they come here to look for survivors, then? Why couldn’t he contact them through the Star
gate?”
“My point exactly.”
“Are you sure?” Ford demanded. He touched his radio headset, then grimaced, obviously recalling that Sheppard was out of reach.
“Of course I’m sure.” Rodney gestured impatiently. “Look, I need to examine that stasis container. I want to see how long he was actually in that thing. I need you to keep an eye out and make sure I don’t get caught at it.”
Ford nodded, his mouth set in a grim line. “Yeah, let’s do that.”
Rodney started back down into the stasis chamber area, Ford behind him, moving quickly and quietly. This whole thing was making Rodney’s skin creep. It would be nice if Dorane was confused, his memory a little scrambled by putting himself in and out of stasis. If the trauma of the repository’s destruction had so unhinged him that he couldn’t remember the exact sequence of events.
It would be nice. But according to Rodney’s experience in the Pegasus Galaxy, things were never nice.
Rodney crossed the foyer into the stasis chamber lab. Behind him, Ford took up a position in the archway, where he could watch the passage to the communications room.
The stasis container had closed itself up again, looking like a glass coffin on a metal plinth, as if it was meant for a postmodern Snow White. Rodney knelt beside the control console at the foot end, tapping the pads, trying to get it to bring up a diagnostic. The container, like the ZPMs, was definitely Atlantean technology, no question about that. The controls were similar, and the displays used the Ancient language. But there was a haphazard quality to the way it was tied into the other systems and the power conduits, that weirdly awkward air flow system with the pipes. He recognized that quality from his own attempts to mesh Earth-built components with Ancient systems.
After several minutes of struggle and coaxing, he got the panel to run a diagnostic. He ran a finger down the crystalline display, muttering under his breath as he translated the Ancient figures, rapidly calculating the power outputs and shutdown sequences, translating the time markers into hours and minutes.
The answer was worse than he thought. “Three days.” Rodney sat back on his heels, appalled. The container had been powered down a little more than three days ago, immediately after the MALP had come through the Stargate. “He knew we were here all along.” The system was configured to automatically cycle down and release the occupant when an external sensor suite recorded a power surge from the direction of the Stargate. The diagnostic showed that it hadn’t been powered up again until roughly six hours ago. When I started picking up intermittent power signatures. The intermittent power signatures that lured us down here.
Rodney pushed to his feet and headed for the door. So if it’s a trap, and obviously, it’s a trap, why did he let Sheppard and Teyla go up to the surface? He answered himself, Obviously, he didn’t. Ford was still in the foyer, warily watching the doorways and stairwell. “Lieutenant,” Rodney whispered harshly. “We need to go after the Major and Teyla. They—” The lights went out. “That wasn’t a coincidence!” He swung his pack around, frantically digging for his flashlight.
The light on Ford’s P-90 snapped on, and he said, “Listen.”
Rodney froze. The silence seemed complete. He fumbled out the detector and showed Ford the screen. “There’s nothing,” he whispered. “Wait. Oh, no.”
Ford’s eyes widened as the screen suddenly came alive with blinking dots. Twenty, thirty, more, filling the level just above them. Ford swore and ran for the stairs.
His light flashed across the doorway, giving Rodney a good view as the first Koan crowded in. The silver-mottled skins, the wild spiny hair glinted in the light. They spotted Ford and howled.
Ford halted on the steps and fired up through the doorway, driving the first surge back with a spray of three-shot bursts. “Get the others!” he shouted. “We need to fall back.”
“Right!” Rodney dashed for the passage down to the com room, bumping off the rocky wall in the dark.
“Hey, there’s—” He froze in the doorway. His flashlight revealed an empty room. Empty except for Kolesnikova, sprawled facedown on the floor. Rodney swore, jolting forward, dropping to his knees beside her. He grabbed her shoulders, rolling her over. “Irina—”
There was a stain on her chest just above her tac vest, dark against her blue uniform shirt. Her eyes were open. Rodney automatically felt for a pulse in her neck, even as part of his mind cataloged the fact that he was kneeling in a pool of blood, that it was minutes too late.
He choked down a sudden rush of nausea and shoved to his feet. “Oh, God,” he breathed. Where the hell was Kavanagh?
Rodney turned back for the passage, shouting, “Ford!” over the staccato bursts of gunfire. He reached the foyer again and saw Ford braced against the railing, firing up at the Koan. In the muzzle Hashes Rodney could see more of them crowding around the doorway, ducking in, forcing Ford to shoot to keep them back, pinning him down in the stairwell. Rodney tucked the flashlight under his arm and dragged out his sidearm, fumbling for the safety. “Ford, Kolesnikova’s been killed! Something’s—Someone’s—” Distracted, Rodney stared as his light caught another figure, running across the dark chamber toward Ford. It was Kavanagh. “Kavanagh,” he shouted, anger and relief that at least the bastard was still alive temporarily overriding fear. “Where the hell were you? What happened to—”
Ford threw a glance over his shoulder and spotted Kavanagh. He turned back to face the Koan, starting to back away from the stairs. “McKay, fall back to that second passage, try to—”
Kavanagh came up behind Ford and Rodney saw his arm lift. He didn’t see the gun in Kavanagh’s hand until he cracked Ford across the head with it. Rodney stared in shock, his mouth hanging open, as Ford jerked forward and fell across the steps. The Koan howled and poured through the upper doorway. Then Kavanagh, his face blank and preoccupied, swung toward Rodney, lifting the pistol, aiming it at him.
Rodney’s brain lurched back into gear, and he clicked off his light, throwing himself sideways. The shot went off but missed him completely. Thinking, Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no, Rodney fired into the dark shapes of the Koan, scattering them, even as he scrambled for the open passage behind him. He pushed to his feet, fired two more shots, then bolted off into the dark, the Koan howling after him.
John half expected the door at the end of the passage to be locked, but it started to slide open when he touched the controls.
Confirming the bad feeling he had about this whole situation, he saw as it started to lift up that the room beyond was now dark. Oh yeah, John thought, now I’m really pissed off. He braced against one wall, Teyla against the other.
The door opened fully, and their lights revealed no movement. A few of the blue emergency lights were on, but none of the brighter overheads. John flicked the P-90’s light off and eased out into the room cautiously, saying, low-voiced, “Teyla, I think somebody played a little trick on us.”
“I do not understand this,” she whispered harshly, following his lead. “Surely, even if he was lying about being an Ancestor, he would want to be rescued from this place.”
“Well, you know, maybe he didn’t.” John checked the detector; the sensor-jammer had been jury-rigged, which meant there might only be one of them. He grimaced. “Oh, here we go.” There were life signs, about twenty of them, in the direction of the area with the stasis chamber. Where they had left Rodney and the others. Coldly angry, John thought, If he’s touched one of them—He handed off the detector to Teyla, then switched on the Koan’s handy sensor-jammer. “Let’s find him and ask him if he wants to be rescued.”
John and Teyla found an alternate route through the maze of passages, coming out into the big room with the support pillars. The room was lit only by the blue lights, but John could easily see Dorane standing in the center. He was holding something that looked like an Ancient life sign detector, frowning at its screen. A couple of Koan stood near him, their silver-gray skins tinged blue by the light, the spines in their wild hair
glittering. It looked as if they were waiting for orders. The blast door out into the corridor was open and more Koan hovered near it, with still more loitering out in the corridor. There was no sign of Rodney, Ford, or the others.
John glanced at Teyla, got a grim nod in response, and stepped out of cover into the room. “Hi. Somehow I get the idea you’re not really an Ancient.”
Dorane turned, startled.
“Put whatever that is down,” John instructed, watching him narrowly. “Or I’ll blow it out of your hand. And, you know, your hand’ll have to go too.”
Dorane stared at him for a moment, his face expressionless. He didn’t make the mistake of underestimating John’s sincerity and carefully lowered the device to the floor. As he straightened up, John thought incredulously, Is he taller? He must have been slumping a little earlier, making himself look less threatening. Dorane said lightly, “You used the jammer. How astute.”
“Yeah, well, I catch on pretty quick when I’m attacked. What did you do with my people?”
Dorane folded his arms, and weirdly it reminded John of one of the older and calmer science team members explaining a theory. “There is nothing to fear. I locked them in the laboratory where my stasis container is.”
“Okay.” He’s lying, John’s instinct said. His worst fear added, he’s killed them. He pushed the thought aside. The detector hadn’t shown them, but then with all this shielding they might have been out of range. But if Dorane had locked McKay, Kavanagh, and Kolesnikova in a lab, of all places, with tools and power, John couldn’t believe they would be in there for more than five minutes. And he knew damn well that Ford was carrying extra ordnance in his pack. John would reserve shooting bits off of Dorane for a last resort, though at the moment it was his first choice for getting accurate information. “Let’s go get them out.”