STARGATE SG-1 ATLANTIS: Homeworlds : Volume three of the Travelers' Tales (SGX Book 5)

by Sally Malcolm

  She and Rodney walked in silence for a while. The path turned away from the lake, beginning to ascend between curved low hills.

  After a while Rodney gestured to the mounds. “Is this what’s left of the Outer City?”

  “I think so,” Teyla said. “I am sure Dr. Jackson and Dr. Lynn would be very excited about digging into them. But they are not going to do so.”

  “Hey, not saying they should,” Rodney said. His mental voice added a thought perhaps not meant for her. *There wouldn’t be anything good here anyway.*

  “This is where we are going,” Teyla said. Ahead, twisted beams of metal rose into the air, remains of framed buildings that had once had facings of glass or brick. They were all shapes and sizes, and the rough path they had been following became more recognizably a broad street. Here and there along the curve of the hill, the remains of a cyclopean wall could be seen, though the later buildings eclipsed it in places.

  Rodney frowned. “Those buildings can’t all be from before the war with the Wraith.”

  “They are not,” Teyla said. “The most recent ones are less than three hundred years old, from the last time we rebuilt before the Great Culling.”

  “So this is what Sateda will look like in three hundred years.”

  “No,” she said. “Because we chose not to build back on the same site, as the Satedans are doing. We had done that many times before, and all it had done was allow the Wraith to find us easily. That is why we adopted a different policy. We would not gather in great cities with large populations in one place. We would not build things that would be easy to identify and destroy. We would not trust in weapons, because our weapons could not defeat the Wraith. Instead, we would disperse and deliberately reduce our energy and technology footprint. It would be much harder to find widely dispersed bands, and if the Wraith found one band they would kill a hundred people, not a hundred thousand.”

  To her surprise, Rodney nodded. “Makes sense. You guys aren’t Luddites who think technology is bad. But if you can’t win by fighting, hiding makes a lot of sense.”

  “The Genii chose the same course,” Teyla said.

  “And the Hoffans and Satedans….”

  “Let us not speak of the Hoffans,” Teyla said. “And look! We must consider where we shall go next. See how the streets divide just past that building there? We should decide how best to reach the city center.”

  Rodney stopped, frowning. “Wait. That.” He pointed at a stubby concrete dome half buried beneath the twisted steel beams fallen from a newer building that had been far taller. “That looks like a drone installation.”

  “Does it?” Teyla shaded her eyes from the bright morning sun. “It does not look like the ones in Atlantis.”

  “That’s because they’re beneath the surface. They’re built into the superstructure. This looks like the one in Antarctica.” Rodney started toward it, clambering over a pile of broken concrete.

  “We are not here to look for drone installations,” Teyla called after him. “We are here to look only for the shield generator, remember?”

  Rodney stopped. “We can always use more drones.”

  “The drones would have been expended before the city fell,” Teyla said. “The siege was a year and a day. They must have fired every weapon they had.” Her voice choked, trying not to imagine the despair the defenders must have felt, their last drones used, hoping that the Ancients would come to their aid. They had not. Perhaps they had no longer been able to even defend themselves.

  “Yeah.” Rodney looked across at the dome longingly. “There probably aren’t any left.”

  “Probably not,” Teyla said. “And you have seen drone installations before. We need to find the shield generator.”

  He scrambled back down the pile of concrete. “As galling as it is to say it, you’re right.”

  Teyla grinned. “Thank you, Rodney.”

  At that he laughed. “Had you going.”

  “You did.”

  “You thought you were going to have to pull this ‘I am in charge here’ thing.”

  “I hoped not.”

  “You know, it did occur to me that the drones had all been used.”

  “I am glad it did.” Together, they walked on.

  The closer to the city center they got, the harder their journey became. The streets were choked with rubble sometimes as high as the second story windows, fallen masonry, steel, bricks, concrete, and whatever had been on the streets beneath them. Twisted metal here and there protruded, the wreckage of some sort of caterpillar-treaded transports, here and there a little green or blue metallic paint remaining. There were other things too, plastic bottles and plastic shoes, scraps of deteriorating cloth. Some of them were wrapped around bones, and Teyla looked away. This was not decent. The dead should not lie in the open air, their arm bones scattered near the things they had carried when they fell, for the curious to stare at.

  Rodney seemed subdued as well. He said nothing. They did not speak except to discuss their direction among the confusing ruins.

  “There’s a tunnel,” he said, pointing to the shored up entrance of something beneath a building, steps going down. “It might take us to the center.”

  “I do not think we want to go that way unless we must,” Teyla said. Rodney looked around, and she said, “They sheltered in the tunnels, at the last.”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it again. “Right. We’ll find a different way.”

  The sun was past its zenith when they finally stopped. They were near the center, certainly, the rubble indicating a concentric set of circles — buildings that once ringed a park from which the central tower had risen. Now the area was choked with debris now overgrown with young trees and many hanging vines. Athos was a water rich world. There had been plants here, and good soil beneath. Even as time claimed the city, life was finding a way. Moss masked fallen stones, the weathered glitter of pulverized glass gleaming between the roots of trees whose branches spread over Teyla’s head. There were no remains here. The green had already claimed them.

  Rodney took a deep breath.

  “It is better so, is it not?” Teyla asked. “Better than if we rebuilt? Let these trees be their grave markers.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not my decision.”

  “Then perhaps we should have some lunch.” Teyla sat down on one of the tilted stones, pulling off her pack and opening an MRE. John would have thoughts on this — good thoughts and worth hearing. Something about time as a healer, and other things she could not guess. She would tell him of this and ask him.

  Rodney chewed on an energy bar thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t have to build right on top of this. Atlantis’ energy shield is seven kilometers in diameter when it’s extended. That’s all the way out beyond the mounds at the Outer City and well up onto the mountain behind Emege. There’s plenty of room to live under the shield and leave this undisturbed if that’s what you want to do.”

  “Is it that large?”

  “Yeah. It’s just harder to see on the ground here than it is from the tower in Atlantis. It looks bigger here, but it’s actually not.”

  Teyla nodded slowly. “That does give us a choice then. I think we would want to leave this as a shrine.”

  There was a skitter behind them, like small stones falling on a larger one, and Teyla spun around.

  Nothing was there. She saw nothing except a tiny puff of dust where a scattering of gravel had fallen against a great, sloped slab of concrete taller than her head.

  Rodney had his weapon in hand, though he was still chewing. “What was that?”

  “I do not see anything,” Teyla said. She stood still, listening.

  There was a call, and a gray bird slightly larger than her hand landed on the top of the slab, regarding her out of one beady black eye.r />
  Teyla relaxed, lowering her P90. “It’s a Housedove, Rodney. They’re harmless.” She looked at the bird and it looked back at her curiously. “They live in eaves and ruins, and sometimes they even roost in our tents.”

  “It looks like a big fat pigeon,” Rodney said. “I suppose if you blew up New York or Vancouver, the pigeons would still be there.”

  There was a flurry of wings, and four more birds dove down to perch beside the first. “I expect so,” Teyla said.

  “Are we going to be mobbed by those birds? Because if we are, I think we need to go. I was mobbed by pigeons once when I was five. I was eating popcorn and they swarmed me.”

  Teyla turned and stared at him. “Really, Rodney?”

  “It was very traumatic.”

  “I do not think the birds are going to attack you,” Teyla said. She sat back down, shaking her head. “And I am going to finish my lunch.”

  “You never know,” Rodney said darkly.

  “There are no large predators in Emege!” Teyla said. “Truly! There are large animals in the mountains, but there is absolutely nothing here that could possibly attack a human being. This has never happened in my lifetime.”

  “Well, if people don’t go in the city, how do you know there aren’t large predators here?”

  “Rodney….”

  He raised both hands. “Ok! Ok! You say there aren’t any large predators. Fine. We’ll just carry on like it’s all perfectly safe.”

  “It is perfectly safe,” Teyla said between gritted teeth. She stood up and neatly stowed the trash from her lunch in her pack. “But we have rested long enough. We should go on while the light is good.”

  “Suits me,” Rodney said, giving the birds a dark look. “Before some flock of evil demon pigeons attacks us. Weirder stuff has happened.”

  That was inarguable. Teyla didn’t even try. She just shouldered her pack and considered their best direction. Rodney was looking at the ruined buildings too. “What is it?” she asked.

  He pointed to a particularly large heap of tumbled stone. “You see that? No, not the rubble. The bit behind it. The way that big piece has that curve? And then next to it, do you see that slab with metal attached? Doesn’t that look like the top of the tower in Atlantis? Like the curve of the jumper bay window and the vane above?”

  Teyla shaded her eyes, and then nodded slowly. “It does indeed.”

  “I think that’s part of the top story of the central tower. Which means the bottom of the central tower would be just behind it.”

  Teyla’s heart sank. “Underneath that enormous pile. Rodney, it would take heavy equipment for us to get through there.”

  “Above ground.” Rodney gave her a cocky grin. “But we know that the Ancient installations are always accessible on multiple levels. If they had mass transit, they had entrances from the tunnels. It only makes sense.”

  “That is true.” Teyla steeled herself. “We must use the tunnels now. Surely there was an entrance somewhere around this main square.”

  “There,” Rodney said, pointing. “That looks like it might be.”

  They descended through a roofless atrium, crumbled stairs littered with the debris of the fallen ceiling, some shards of glass still as long as Teyla’s arm. There were no bones until they reached the bottom. Then there were many.

  “Ok, I’m just not going to think about this too hard,” Rodney said, tiptoeing along the edge of the stairs holding onto the railing.

  Teyla didn’t reply. She turned her flashlight on and shone it ahead. The vaulted roof of the tunnel seemed intact. It was best to look at the roof only. So many had sheltered here in the end and had died here.

  And then there were the blank spaces, the areas of tunnel where seemingly inexplicably there were no bones at all. “Culling,” Teyla said. The people who had been there had been swept up. The further they went, the more it was like that. Perhaps landing parties had been through this area, rounding up survivors for Wraith feeding pens. It was a grim thought. Whatever Rodney was thinking, he kept it to himself.

  “Ah ha!” he said suddenly, playing his light over the walls ahead. “Look at that. See those doors? I bet that’s the way up.” He hurried over to a pair of metal doors, their azure paint peeling, stuck open just enough for a person to slip through.

  “Be careful,” Teyla said. “This may not be the bottom of the shaft.”

  “It’s not,” Rodney said. “I think the elevator car is one floor below.”

  She slipped in beside him and looked down. It looked very much like one of the elevators in Atlantis, stopped in a crunch of metal a few feet below the doors.

  Rodney winced. “Nobody survived when that thing fell.”

  “I think it fell long after there was anyone to survive,” Teyla said, shining her light around. “See how the cable is rusted through? It was probably stopped far above and only fell generations later when the cable gave way.”

  “Yeah.” Rodney shone his light up. It failed to illuminate more than a story or two above, the shaft disappearing into distance. “I don’t think we’re getting up that. But there must be access stairs. And I’d bet that the installation we want isn’t far above this. They liked putting the shield generator way underground.”

  Teyla nodded. “It does not seem that the destruction was so great down here.”

  “Probably wasn’t,” Rodney replied. “Most of this is decay. I don’t see a lot of structural damage down here. The Ancients built solid.” He rapped on the concrete wall with his hand. “So let’s find the stairs. Off to the right? Gotcha!” Rodney ducked around the corner. “Do I know Ancient installations or do I know Ancient installations?”

  “You know them very well,” Teyla agreed.

  However, before they were halfway up the first flight, Teyla considered that perhaps Rodney had been premature in saying there was little structural damage. She stopped, shining her light at the stairs ahead. Or rather, at the gap two meters wide where there should be stairs and weren’t.

  “That’s a problem,” Rodney said.

  It appeared that a chunk of rubble had fallen from far above, plunging through the stairwell and knocking a hole in the stairs themselves. Along the edges the concrete was crumbly, suggesting that smaller pieces might fall at any time.

  “If we had Ronon,” Rodney began.

  “We don’t,” Teyla said. “And unless we want to go home today and try to persuade the Council to let us come back with him, we must find another way.”

  “I don’t think we can jump that,” Rodney said, eyeing the gap.

  “Not from the low step to the high one,” Teyla said. “We might make it coming down, but not going up.”

  “Ok, there’s got to be another way up.” Rodney headed back down a few steps, a thoughtful expression on his face. “What are the various ways to get up the tower in Atlantis, besides the elevator and the stairs?”

  “The transport chamber,” Teyla said. “But surely any of those here have been without power for a long time.”

  “Yeah. And there’s the ventilation system, which I’d hate to do given the state of the stairs. If we get in there, we might get trapped.”

  “There are some exterior stairs on the lower levels with the balconies, but surely the exterior of the tower isn’t intact. We saw the ruins of the upper levels.”

  “We did,” Rodney said. “But the lower levels might be intact. And they might be incorporated into some of these later buildings that grew up around it. Let’s see if we can find balcony doors. We might find some outside stairs intact.”

  They went back down and turned left at the bottom, toward what would be a terrace in Atlantis. It wasn’t. A solid wall greeted them.

  “Around the other side of the tower?” Teyla said.

  “It’s worth a t
ry.”

  They made their way around, and as they turned the corner stopped and gaped. “Oh wow,” Rodney said.

  The glass doors to the terrace were long gone, opening instead into a vast underground atrium. Light poured in from several stories above, dappling through the leaves of shade loving trees that had grown up around the natural depression that now held a pool of water. Birds flew in and out. Across the atrium, a building in an entirely different style from that of the Ancients closed off the space, intricate stonework with elaborate balustrades carved with leaves scrolling around spiraling staircases that wound their way upward. Each level had terraces. Once, this must have been a courtyard that melded old and new, the Emege of the Ancestors and that of Teyla’s own folk a few generation ago. It was still startlingly beautiful.

  Teyla blinked hard. “We must keep this unchanged,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  Together they made their way across the atrium, birds startling up from the trees. After all, they had seen no people walking here in a long time. They paused on the other side.

  “See?” Rodney said. “Where it joins the tower up there?”

  “I do.” Three stories up, the terraces on the other side met the central tower at a balcony there. “We go in there and then go down a floor or two.”

  “Yep.”

  The tower rooms were surprisingly intact at this level on this side, only broken glass making them unlivable. These rooms had either been swept by the Wraith or evacuated. There were even signs in the corridors. Rodney squinted at them. “That’s not Ancient.”

  “That is Athosian,” Teyla said. “Our people made these signs when they rebuilt a few hundred years ago. This one says ‘The Hall of Deep Remembrance.’”

  “A museum?”

  “Or something of the Ancestors they did not understand,” Teyla said, with mounting excitement in her voice. “Rodney, I think this may be what we are looking for.”