Miruva’s brow furrowed as she interrogated the mind of the Avatar again. “There may be exits still in operation,” she said. “I can see the plan of this place in the Banshee’s mind. We are in a control room near the perimeter of the cave complex. There is a passage leading back towards the settlement and the Stargate. It must have been used in the past by the Ancestors. It is long, and the Avatar tells me it is no longer complete. But we could try it.”
She opened her eyes, and looked at Teyla. The Athosian could see that the young woman was only half willing to go; now that she had discovered the true nature of Sanctuary, it was clear that some part of her wished to head back down to the fertile plains and forget about Khost’s troubles.
“You do not need to come with me,” said Teyla. “Your destiny lies here, in discovering how to use the machinery of the Ancestors.”
But Miruva smiled. “Of course I’m coming with you,” she said. “We need to get you back to the surface, and find a way to bring the rest of my people down here.”
“Very well,” she said. “We must go quickly. If what the Avatar has told us is correct, then the situation on the surface will only get worse.”
Miruva gave a significant look to the Avatar, and it winked out of existence.
“Even being present drains their power,” she explained. “I believe I can summon it at will now. Once the link has been established, it remains with me.”
Teyla pulled her furs closely around her, guessing the journey ahead would be a cold one.
“I am glad to hear it,” she said. “We may have need of it later.”
“Not too close,” Ronon warned as he carefully stepped on to the rock bridge. Testing his weight on it he felt the solidity of the stone beneath him. He stamped a little harder, and the echoes of the muffled blows rang across the yawning gap. The bridge felt solid.
Ronon pulled his furs close around him and began to walk. He could hear Orand follow him a few yards behind, but concentrated solely on what he was doing. The bridge continued, perfectly straight and rigid, until it dissolved into the gloom and haze ahead. It was like walking along a road in the mist with the horizon just out of view. Except that, in this case, stepping off the trail would result in a long, long fall.
He paused and turned to look behind him. The hunting party had made their way on to the pier, one by one, a few yards apart. Each shuffled forward carefully, knowing the price of a slip. Thankfully, the stone surface was smooth and well-made. The surface was shiny with ancient ice, but the thick leather of the Forgotten boots did much to maintain a secure footing.
Ronon turned back and inched further along the narrow way. His heart thumped powerfully; the need to concentrate was paramount, and he kept his eyes securely fixed on the hazy passage before him. If a Banshee came now… He didn’t want to think about that.
Time was hard to measure. Gradually, the cliff-edge behind him shrank back into shadow and it felt like they were marooned on a tiny rock of stability within a void. For a terrifying second, Ronon was consumed by the urge to leap out into the darkness, to fall into its seductive embrace. He shook his head, angry with himself. Such flights of fancy, even in his tired state, were unworthy of him. He took a breath and his concentration returned.
After what may have been just a few minutes, or maybe much longer, Ronon began to see something solidify from the haze in front of him. He crept forward, his eyes flicking back and forth between the bridge and whatever he was approaching. The darkness gave way, hardening into another vast wall of rock — they had reached the other side.
As before, the towering cliffs extended incredibly far both upwards and down into the abyss. There was a stone shelf with a circular doorway carved into the rock-face.
Taking care not to slip at the last minute, Ronon negotiated the last few yards of the bridge. With enormous relief he stepped on to the shelf at the other side. Despite the endless chill of the subterranean passage, he felt his palms slick with sweat.
He turned and watched the rest of the party carefully file from the bridge and on to the safety of the cliff-face.
“I don’t want to do that again,” said Orand, looking shaky. “Ever.” His earlier ebullience had clearly deserted him.
“Know what you mean,” said Ronon, turning to the circular doorway before them. It was as black as ink, but it was the only way they could go. “We’ll need candles.”
Ronon ducked under the narrow gap. Orand didn’t object to him taking the lead. His eyes took a moment to get used to the gloomy candle flame again and he waited, watching the little column of tallow as it glowed softly in his hand. It was nearly burned through. If they were going to get out, they had better do so quickly.
Gradually, the dim outline of the tunnel began to resolve itself and he pushed on. From behind, he could hear the uncertain progress of the others as they followed him. Some of the candles must have failed and there were muttered curses as the hunters stumbled in the dark.
The journey continued much as it had done before. After a few minutes, Ronon began to wonder if the bridge over the chasm was some kind of cruel joke. For all he knew, the passages could lead on like this for miles. Once the candles went out, they would be entirely in the dark and then the game would be up. His earlier morbid thoughts about death underground came back. With a low growl of frustration, he shook them off.
As he recovered himself, he heard the first swishing noise.
“Hear that?” he hissed, stopping in his tracks and crouching low.
“Hear what?” said Orand, close behind him. Then something swished past them again and his face went white. “Oh, by the Ancestors…”
Suddenly, the entire tunnel was bathed in light. It blazed from all sides, and the swishing noise became a roar.
Dazzled, Ronon scrambled backwards, shielding his eyes. He was blind and disorientated. Behind him he heard shouting and the sound of running feet.
“Banshees!” cried a voice which might have been Orand’s.
His eyes streaming from the light, Ronon forced himself to look up. Towering over him was an insubstantial shape, flickering like a flame. There were long, flowing robes, and pale flesh. A lean alien face looked down at him. The expression was haughty and cruel.
Then there were others, sweeping through the corridor like ghosts. There was no escape. With a howl, the Banshees were upon them. Ronon felt a brief surge of resistance, but then it was banished. Despite all his training, all his experience, he felt a rising tide of horror. There was nowhere to run. There were too many to evade. The hunters fell on their faces.
Ronon reached for his weapon, but his hands were cold and clumsy. He didn’t even get a shot away. The Banshee came for him, and all hope fled.
Sheppard hacked at the rock. Despite the cold, he had worked up a sweat and he could feel rivulets of it running down his back. It was hard work, exhausting and dangerous. The ice shattered easily enough under the blows of the axes, but the rock was a different matter. He didn’t even attempt to break that up. Forgotten miners stepped up for that job, wheeling massive hammers to crack the heavy boulders in their way. Metal pins — which must have been extremely rare on Khost — were hammered into the stone to weaken it, and the hammer-blows did the rest. Sheppard was amazed at their strength and skill. He wouldn’t have been so confident that Earth miners, no matter how tough, could have worked the rock so fast.
After an hour of solid, back-breaking work, they had succeeded in delving beneath the ice shelf. Night was fast approaching, and torches had been lit across the workings. Now the task was to bolster the walls of ice around them so they weren’t buried as they descended. There wasn’t much wood to spare, so most of the structure was self-supporting. Helmar and his colleagues had done enough excavation to know what to leave and what to attack. Sheppard just did as he was told.
“How’re doing?” asked Helmar, coming to stand at his shoulder.
Sheppard turned awkwardly in the cramped space. “Feel like I’ve been wrestling
a grizzly,” he panted. “Otherwise fine. What’s our progress?”
Helmar smiled. “We’re in luck,” he said. “Larem has broken into a fissure. They’re all over the place here. Come.”
Helmar pushed his way past other miners, all working hard. Sheppard followed him, grateful for the break. A couple of meters further down, the miners had opened up a narrow cleft and were busy widening it. The stone seemed laced with lodes of ice, weakening the structure, and every so often a huge chunk would break from the sides and come crashing down. Sheppard watched the work intently. It looked perilous. “You’ve done this before, right?”
“Of course,” said Helmar. “A thousand times. They know what they’re doing.”
Sheppard peered into the open chasm, trying to see how far it went. “What do you think?”
“This is good,” Helmar said. “I reckon this runs a long way down. We’ll secure the breach above us and then follow it. No doubt we’ll have more digging to do, but this makes our task much easier.”
Sheppard looked at the gaping fissure warily. In the gloom it looked treacherous. “Guess you’re right,” he said. “I can’t tell you how far down we need to go.”
Helmar laughed. “You sound worried, Colonel,” he said. “That’s not like you. Trust me. Some of these tunnels run for miles. However far we need to go, we will get you there. We are at home under the ground. It is our way of life.”
Sheppard tried to look reassured. “Let’s keep going,” he said. “The sooner we get to the bottom, the happier I’ll be.”
Teyla and Miruva went quickly. They passed rooms full of equipment displaying various diagnostic readings from Sanctuary. Some looked like the medical read-outs in Dr Beckett’s infirmary. There were rooms lined with computers arranged in galley format, and others full of gently humming machinery. One was dominated by a circular machine, dark and monolithic. Lights flickered uncertainly up and down its flanks and the symbol of the Ancients had been etched into its surface.
“That is where the Banshees come from,” said Miruva, looking at the machine with fascination. “To think that the object of our fear is generated by such a thing.”
They pressed on. Smooth metal surfaces gave way to hurriedly-worked rock-faces. On the fringes of the Sanctuary, the Ancestors’ haste to leave was readily apparent. The meager heat levels began to plummet, and the deathly chill of Khost reasserted itself. After working their way through the dark of the Ancient tunnels, a red light grew ahead of them until there was a clear opening in the rock face. It looked like a pool of fire against the rock.
Teyla ducked through it and found herself on a narrow ledge on a sheer cliff-face. It resembled the precipice at the entrance to the living areas of Sanctuary, only this time dark and throbbing with noise. If the peaceful chambers they had left resembled paradise, then this place looked like hell.
Garish red flares illuminated the chiseled rock faces, which were black as pitch. The reason for their charred appearance lay below. Dimly, Teyla could make out vast machinery operating in the depths of the chasm. Massive power couplings shone weakly in the in the deep, huge pistons revolving with magisterial slowness. The size of it all was phenomenal. Clearly, such technology was required to keep the ecosystem behind them in full working order.
“So this is what Telion wanted you to learn how to use,” said Teyla. “He expected much.”
“It will take us lifetimes,” Miruva said, the daunting scale of the task dawning on her.
“At least you have the gene,” said Teyla, trying to reassure. “That gives you many advantages.”
They walked along the ledge, keeping their fingers against the stone wall on their right. Eventually they came to the far side of the chamber and passed once more into chill dark of the narrow tunnels. It was now clear that they had left the main areas of the Sanctuary. Everything was haphazard and makeshift, and corridor looked like it had been blasted out in a hurry. The way became difficult, and Teyla lost her footing a number of times. Ice lay in the cracks and indentations of the stone, making the going treacherous. The red light ebbed almost to nothing and darkness enveloped them, pierced only by the narrow beam of Teyla’s flashlight.
As they went, the noise of the machinery grew weaker and the deathly silence of the underworld returned. Teyla started to speak to Miruva — anything to break the unearthly quiet — but was interrupted by muffled cries of distress from far ahead.
She looked at Miruva, startled. It sounded like human voices raised in anger and fear.
“I hear it too,” said Miruva.
They started to run. Teyla held the flashlight low as she went, trying as best she could to pick out the perilous shards of rock barring their way. Her heart began to race. Who could be down here, so far from the habitable areas? Was it Sheppard? If so, that meant there was a route to the surface…
The tunnel took a sharp bend to the right. Miruva and Teyla tore round it, and stumbled into a scene of bedlam. There were fur-clad figures cowering against the stone. Some had covered their faces; others were trying to scramble back the way they had come. The reason for their panic was obvious. Banshees were hovering, staring at the humans with their baleful eyes. Despite knowing what she did about the Avatars, Teyla felt the fear rise in her too.
“Enough!” Miruva made a dismissive gesture with her hands and, almost instantly, the Banshees rippled out of existence. The chamber sunk back into darkness, lit only by Teyla’s flashlight and the stubs of a few candles.
“They were confused,” said Miruva to Teyla, almost by way of apology. “Their programming is corrupted. They can’t help it.”
Teyla nodded, still feeling the after-effects of her receding fear. Whatever the bug was, it really needed to be ironed-out.
Shakily, the men in the room began to get to their feet. One of them came forward, his face pasty and haggard.
“Orand!” cried Miruva, and threw herself at him, embracing him fervently.
“Miruva!” Orand exclaimed. “What are you doing here? You should be at the settlement.”
“It is a long story,” said Teyla.
A huge shadowy figure loomed over Orand’s shoulder. Teyla flicked the torch up, illuminating Ronon’s shaggy face. She burst into a smile.
“Ronon!” she cried. “I am very glad to see you.”
The Satedan looked too weary to smile back. “Me too,” he said, gruffly. “How d’you get rid of those things?”
“I’ll fill you in when there’s time,” said Miruva. “Right now, we need to know how you got down here. We need a route back to the surface.”
Orand’s face fell. “This isn’t the way out? There’s no exit back there. Just tunnels. Miles of them.”
Teyla felt the relief at meeting the hunters begin to fade. If the tunnel led to a dead end, then her hopes of reaching Sheppard were close to disappearing.
“There must be,” she insisted. “We should press on. Perhaps there is an exit that you missed in the dark.”
Miruva put her hand on Teyla’s arm. “Teyla, these men are exhausted. We don’t have the supplies for a long trek under the ice.”
Teyla felt a stab of frustration. The longer they delayed, the less likely it was any of them would ever leave Khost. Frantically, she searched for a reason to keep going.
Deep down, though, she knew that Miruva was right. The hunters needed to rest, and Sanctuary was the best place for them. For the time being, they would have to withdraw. The escape attempt would have to wait until they had gathered their strength.
“Very well,” she said. “We will go back to the inhabited areas.”
She looked back at Ronon. “There is much that has been hidden here,” she said. “And you will not believe what we have found.”
Sheppard looked down at the newly-exposed tunnel. He had to suppress a whoop of triumph. Helmar had been as good as his word, and the miners had smashed their way further than he would have thought possible.
Breathing heavily from his exertions, he joined
the others as they scrambled down the loose stone. He had little idea how far they’d gone, but it must have been many meters. The light from the aperture above was now almost useless, and the miners lit fresh torches.
“That it?” he asked, looking at the bare rock below him.
“It is,” said Helmar, looking proud. “There’s a hollow space under us, or I’m a buffalo’s hrnmar.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said Sheppard. “Whatever ‘that’ is.”
“How are your arms? Have you got strength for more work?”
Sheppard felt his biceps ache as he flexed them. He hadn’t been this strung out for a long, long time. “You promise we’re nearly there?”
Helmar grinned. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Sheppard.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Sheppard. “Then let’s go. Final push.”
Together with the hunters around him, he began to hack at the stone. The sound of rock chipping and ice shattering filled the narrow space. The axes hammered down again and again, aimed with precision. The Forgotten knew what they were doing. First one crack appeared, then another. They widened, attacked relentlessly by the miners.
“Back!” cried Helmar suddenly. The nearest miners sprung away from the crumbling rock floor. There was the sound of falling debris under them.
Helmar turned to Sheppard, his eyes alive with triumph.
“It’s giving way!” he said. “We’re breaking through!”
The hunting party gathered itself together and the group limped back through the tunnels towards Sanctuary. As they passed the massive chamber of machinery, it was all the hunters could do not to stumble into the chasm. None of them seemed much interested in the machines below; they were on their last legs.
They picked up the pace slightly as the light increased. In the distance, Teyla could see the bright lights of the Banshee’s control room and suddenly realized how weary she was herself. A rest, some warmth, and some food would do all of them good. Only then would they be in any state to reconsider how they were going to get out.
STARGATE ATLANTIS: Dead End Page 20