“Gordon, Wallace,” the sergeant said. “Check it out.”
“Sir.” The two Marines moved forward at a crouch, the third and the sergeant moving up to cover them. Wallace and Gordon split up, circled the Rapide, and then Gordon crouched at the base of the open hatch while Wallace sprinted up the stairs. He reappeared a moment later, shaking his head.
“Nothing, Major.”
“I would like at least to take a look at the airplane,” Zelenka said, and ducked past the Marines. Ronon followed more slowly, scanning the area around the Rapide.
“What do you think’s happened?” Lorne asked quietly.
“I don’t know.” Ronon walked to the Rapide’s tail, staring south toward the edge of the cliff, and Lorne followed.
“If somebody did capture them, you’d be able to track them, right?”
Ronon shook his head. The grass was thick and coarse and tremendously resilient; an army could have passed without leaving signs. “There’s no track where the plane landed. People aren’t going to leave a trail.”
“Damn it.” Lorne turned to look back at the trees. “If they were taken — by who, and where did they come from? There wasn’t any sign of people in those woods.”
“I don’t know.” If Hocken and Tan were prisoners — Ronon was betting on that. Why else would they leave the plane without letting the base at the Falls know where they were going? If they were prisoners, they had to be heading for some settlement, and the only settlement they knew about was the one Tan had reported, at the old mine not far from the base of the cliff. Unless they came from the woods? “How far do the sensors reach? The ones on the jumper.”
Lorne considered. “We’d have picked up anyone within about a seven mile radius. Maybe further.”
That would reach well beyond the cliff’s edge as well as into the forest. And they’d flown into the forest for some Lantean miles, which made it unlikely any attackers could have gotten themselves and their prisoners out of sensor range. And there were always paths down the sides of the Plateau. Not easy ones, but certainly manageable even with prisoners. “I’m going to see if I can spot anything.”
He turned away without waiting for an answer, brushing carefully through the tall grass. Behind the plane, he found some stems that looked scuffed and bruised, marked, he guessed, by the landing; he cast from side to side until he found the edges of that track, then straightened, looking for signs that something smaller had passed this way. The grass swayed gently in the rising breeze, and he caught a flash of disturbed ground between two clumps of grass. There was another beyond it, and a third, and that one bore the distinctive marks of the Lanteans’ military boots. Hocken, at least, had come this way.
He lost the trail before he reached the edge, and a quick search along the top in the fading light offered several possible paths down the cliff face. None of them looked more likely than the others, and he straightened, baring his teeth in frustration, then touched his radio.
“Major. Looks like they went down the cliff, but I can’t tell where.”
“Can they do that?” Lorne asked, and Ronon had to remind himself again that the Lanteans knew very little about Sateda outside the capital.
“Probably. There are dozens of known trails, and probably a lot more that never made it onto any maps. Especially around the mines.” Ronon started back toward the Rapide. “Question is, do we go after them now, or wait until morning?”
“We don’t have any idea where they’re going,” Lorne said.
“Nothing on the plane?”
Lorne shook his head. “Nothing helpful. All their maps are still there, and their rations — and what’s left of their lunch, for that matter. Zelenka says the engine cowlings were opened to cool everything, and nobody’s touched anything inside.”
“Weapons?”
“They only carried a couple of pistols,” Lorne said. “Both missing, but the spare magazines are still here.”
None of which was proof that Hocken and Tan were still together — he’d only found the marks of Hocken’s boots. But two groups seemed vanishingly unlikely. And none of it gave them any idea where the strangers might be taking them. He wasn’t going to try to track them even a little way down the cliff in the growing twilight. “We need to figure out where they’ve been taken — where they’ve gone.”
Lorne nodded. “Yeah. I hate leaving them, but you’re right. I told Zelenka to pull the drives from the cameras, maybe there will be something there that’ll give us a clue.”
“That settlement Tan said they saw.”
“Yeah.”
“I agree.” Ronon looked back at the cliff, wishing he could carry on — even if he could camp at the top of the cliff and wait there for morning, he’d feel more as though he was doing something. But that was a stupid idea, especially when they could use that time to make better plans. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER FOUR
IT HAD been a long and difficult walk down the cliff face, though once they’d gone a few hundred meters, ropes and handholds appeared, carefully colored to blend in with the rock face. It was certainly a good way to discourage any escape attempts, Mel thought. She had been too busy concentrating on her footing to think of making a break for it, and the thought of trying to climb that same steep face while the Satedans were shooting at her was thoroughly discouraging. But surely it wouldn’t come to that. Once they had a chance to explain the situation, to prove that they weren’t Wraith worshippers… She slipped on a patch of moss and Tan steadied her.
“Do we try to get away?” she whispered, and Mel shook her head.
“Not yet —”
“No talking,” one of the men said, glaring, and Mel lifted her hands.
“Ok.”
They had reached the edge of the woods, passing through the first of what looked like several linked clearings, and Mel saw the stack of cut timber that they had seen from the air. There was the elevated wooden sluice, water flowing steadily away from the mine, and then they had reached the cleared area in front of the mine itself. She recognized the buildings she had seen from the air, though up close they didn’t look quite as deserted. Yes, the doors gaped and there was no glass in the windows, but it looked as though work was going on inside those battered shells. Up a graveled slope, the entrance to the mine itself gaped wide, but to her surprise, the group’s leader took them to the smaller of the two buildings to the left of the entrance. From the look of it, it had been some kind of administrative building, single-story, with a set of smaller rooms off a narrow lobby; the Satedans had shored up the walls and roof and replaced one of the rooms’ doors with a crudely-forged set of bars. The old man motioned them inside, and ostentatiously closed it with a padlock the size of his fist. There were no windows, and the only light came from an oil lantern, hung on the far side of the hall. There was a sturdy-looking wooden cot and what looked like a rolled-up mattress, but no other furniture.
“Wait a minute,” Mel said. “What about us?”
“That’s up to the general,” he said, and turned away.
Mel leaned against the bars, watching him walk out of sight. There was a man with a rifle at the end of the hall, but that was the only guard she could see. An advantage, maybe, she thought, except that there was still that cliff to climb before they could get back to the Rapide.
“There used to be a window here,” Tan said, from the back of the cell. “But they boarded it up. If we could pry it open —”
“There’s a guard at the end of the hall,” Mel said. “He’d hear.” She moved back from the door, positioning herself where she couldn’t be seen, but she would be able to tell as soon as someone moved down the corridor.
“Not to mention they haven’t left us anything to pry with. Unless we could break up this cot. And we’d have to get back up the cliff.”
“Yeah.” They could try hiding in the forest, of course, Mel thought, but the locals would know the ground a lot better than they did. “What’s going on, can you tell?”
“It sounds like they just don’t know anyone’s come back,” Tan answered. She moved closer, lowering her voice. “And if that’s true, we ought to be fine, we just need to convince them. Though I would have thought they’d have picked up some of our broadcasts by now.”
Cai had had the radio operators sending out general messages several times a day, hoping to reach surviving communities. Mel had doubted it would do much good, but Tan had disagreed. Lots of outlying towns and even farms had always provided their own power; she would certainly have kept checking the radios just in case.
“Not much good reception in the mountains,” Mel began, and stopped as something moved in the hall. “They’re coming back. You better do the talking.”
“Let’s hope they’ll listen,” Tan said nervously.
The hall grew brighter as the newcomers approached, and a tall woman hung two more lanterns on the wall, while a dark man with his braided hair pulled back into a loose tail made his way to the bars. “Right. Who are you people, and where do you come from?”
“My name’s Yustina Tan,” Tan answered. “And this is Mel Hocken. We’re from the capital.” Mel could see the stranger pull back, but Tan went on as though she hadn’t noticed. “Who are you?”
For a second, Mel thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he said, “Janosi Lek. And I’m surprised you’re admitting it. There’s nothing in the capital but Wraith worshippers.”
“That’s not true,” Tan said. “There haven’t been Wraith in the capital for years — not since the Stargate was reopened. We’ve started coming back — Satedans who managed to get off world. We’re starting to rebuild, with the help of the Lanteans.”
“Now I know you’re lying,” Lek said. “Atlantis. Everyone knows that Atlantis is a trap, a Wraith lie —”
“What?” Mel couldn’t stop herself, and Tan made a strangled sound.
“The Lanteans have fought the Wraith from the moment they arrived here! Their people have died with us and for us — they defeated Queen Death when she would have united all the Wraith to enslave all the humans who were still free. How dare you say that they are Wraith worshippers?”
Lek’s tone was conciliatory. “I know that is what you have been told, and many have believed it, but we have it on good authority that ‘Atlantis’ is a trick, to lure survivors into the open so that they can be culled.”
“But I’ve met the Lanteans,” Tan protested. “Many of them —”
“I’m from Atlantis,” Mel said. It was a risk, she knew, but it was the quickest way she could think of to cut through the confusion.
“Impossible!” Lek took a step back, as though he’d been struck.
“It’s true,” Mel said.
“You’ve seen Wraith aircraft before,” Tan said. “There were pictures of their Darts posted before the great culling. Ask the people who captured us, our plane is nothing like that.”
“It is different,” someone said, from the crowd, and Lek paused.
“We’ll put it to the general when he gets back. In the meantime — bring them food and water, but keep them here.”
There was a murmur of agreement, and Tan said, “Can we have a lamp, please?”
Lek hesitated, but shook his head. “We’ll leave this one in the hall.”
“But —” Tan began, but they were gone. She sighed. “That could have gone better.”
“It could have gone worse,” Mel said.
“Well, all right, they haven’t shot us,” Tan agreed, with a crooked smile. She turned to the cot, and unrolled the mattress, releasing a cloud of dust. “Ugh. Though if we have to sleep here, shooting might be preferable.”
“Any idea who this general of theirs might be?” Mel slapped the mattress a few times, decided that it wasn’t going to get any better, and seated herself, resting her back against the wall. It had been a long haul down the cliff and through the forest, and the more she could recover, the better.
Tan seemed to have the same idea, and settled next to her. “I don’t know. This wasn’t a military area before the Wraith — these mines were pretty well played out, and some of them had actually closed. Though I suppose if a unit was retreating from the capital, this might be a reasonable place to hide. Or maybe they came over the Spur from the power plant. I’m pretty sure there was a unit stationed there. These mines are deep, the Wraith sensors can’t reach them there.”
“Makes sense,” Mel agreed, and rested her head against the wall.
After a while — it was impossible to tell how much time had passed, since the miners had taken their watches — a woman arrived with a tray that held two wooden bowls and a wooden pitcher. She slid it into the cell under the watchful eye of two guards, and Tan collected it. There were two cups and two spoons, Mel saw, and the bowls were filled with a thick stew. She tasted it cautiously, and decided it was nearly identical to the food she got in the capital, bland but filling. The pitcher contained a dark liquid that tasted like pine needles, but it was the only thing they had to drink, and Mel quickly downed two cups. Tan sniffed at it and made a face.
“Mountain tea. I’ve never liked it.”
“We need to stay hydrated,” Mel pointed out, and Tan sighed.
“I know.”
They ate in silence, and left the tray with the emptied dishes by the door of the cell. It had to be getting late, Mel thought, and wondered where the general was, or where he had gone that it took him this much time to make his appearance. Ronon and the others would be looking for them, too, and they’d already radioed them enough information that a team in a puddle jumper could find the mine. The trick was going to be making sure nobody got shot by accident.
***
Apparently conference rooms on Sateda looked very much like conference rooms on Earth. Radek poured himself yet another cup of coffee and turned back to the polished table. The wood was redder then most Earth timbers, and the pronounced grain was almost black, but everything else could have fit unnoticeably into every place he had ever worked. The harsh electric light beat down on them all, washing out the images on laptops and tablets and emphasizing that everyone was exhausted. He rubbed his own chin, feeling the stubble, and scowled at the map clumsily overlaid on the images sent back before the Rapide had been forced to land.
“So we are in agreement that this is the Wild Blue mine? Here where the clearing is?”
“Above the clearing,” Tec said. He had worked in several of the Spur’s mines before the Wraith, driving steam-powered diggers. “About two of your miles? The ground opens up again there — you can see what’s left of the mine head in this shot.” He touched his tablet, dragging the image from forest to rocky ground that revealed two large wooden buildings. “There used to be a steam plant on the other side, but that was dismantled when the mine was sold, back in — well, at least five years before the Wraith came.”
Radek studied the map Kos had found that showed the Spur’s mines and their main tunnels. The Satedans had burrowed deep into the rock, opening a spiderweb of connecting lines beneath the mountain, some of which seemed to reach all the way to their side of the Spur. The thought of digging that out essentially by hand, men with picks and shovels carefully setting gunpowder into holes drilled into the blind end of a tunnel… Cheyenne Mountain had at least been hollowed out by machines.
“We’ve decided that Hocken and Tan are probably at the Wild Blue?” Lorne said, sounding doubtful, and Ronon shrugged. He was standing by the sideboard as though he couldn’t bear to sit down any longer.
“It’s where we should start. The tracks led to the cliff edge, and that’s the nearest place they’re likely to have been taken. There were ways down.”
“I agree,” Radek said. “So we have to assume that they went with someone, presumably from the settlement. And not willingly, or they would have let us know.”
“If there are survivors, they’re most likely living in the mine itself,” Tec said. “Some of these upper galleries are going to be dry enough
to be comfortable.”
“If they’re being held prisoner,” Lorne said, “it’s going to be hell to dig them out of guarded tunnels.”
Ronon nodded. “Maybe they’re not prisoners.”
“Then they should have radioed,” Lorne said.
“Yeah,” Ronon said. “So. If they’re prisoners, how do we get them out? Besides killing everybody?”
“That is probably worth avoiding,” Radek murmured, and saw Ronon give a fleeting smile. “Surely this is most likely some sort of misunderstanding. The people who walked down from the Plateau didn’t know that anyone else had survived, and were rightfully wary of strangers.”
“The miners were always a stubborn bunch,” Tec said. “You can’t threaten them, it just makes them meaner.”
Lorne shook his head, studying his laptop again. “I don’t like the idea of having to go into these tunnels after them. There’s just too much chance the miners could use our people as hostages.”
“What about gas?” Ronon asked. “Shock grenades?”
“I only brought a little tear gas,” Lorne said. “Three, four canisters. And I don’t want to use shock grenades underground. Too much chance of bringing the ceiling down.”
“That would be a bad idea,” Radek agreed. “Perhaps we could bargain? Trade?”
“Maybe —” Ronon began, and there was a knock at the door.
Radek looked over his shoulder as Kos pushed the door open, a thick book tucked into the crook of her other arm.
“I knew we had to have a copy,” she said, and dropped it onto the table with a satisfying thud. Radek had learned to recognize the Institute of Mines’ seal since he’d come here, but the words were unfamiliar. “This is the map book that covers the Spur. All the diggings, plus the service tunnels and rail lines, all in one book.”
Radek reached for it, but Ronon was quicker, flipping rapidly through the pages. “Yeah. Here’s the Wild Blue.”
STARGATE ATLANTIS: The Wild Blue (SGX-05) Page 7