STARGATE ATLANTIS: The Wild Blue (SGX-05)

by Melissa Scott

  Radek moved to look past his shoulder, pushing his glasses back into a comfortable position. There had to be ten pages of maps, maybe more, level after level stacked on top of each other, all with dozens of tunnels reaching back into the mountain, and he shook his head in dismay. “This is a labyrinth.”

  “Odds are there aren’t very many miners,” Ronon said. “These weren’t big settlements before the Wraith, and not everybody will have stayed. Not to mention that we haven’t seen any fields or anything like that. So a lot of this is empty space.”

  “I agree,” Lorne said.

  “We’ll need copies of the maps,” Radek said. “Everyone who goes should have their own copy, in case they get separated.”

  “I found the office pantograph,” Kos said. “I think it still works.”

  “We can image and scan them to tablets, too,” Lorne began, and Radek looked up.

  “We should have both, just in case. As many copies as Ms. Kos can make for us. We may not have the option of tablets.” He shook his head. “I hope getting lost is the worst of our problems.”

  “The doc’s right,” Lorne said. “We really don’t want to try to fight down there.”

  Ronon nodded. “Yeah. I say we leave at first light.”

  Radek pulled the book closer to him, tuning out the discussion of logistics. If that was the Wild Blue’s main level seen from above, was that a tunnel that ran all the way to the western side of the Spur? He nudged Kos, who turned to look where he was pointing. “What is this? Does it come out on our side?”

  “It seems to,” she said, and took the book from him, flipping pages to consult what had to be a map key. “Yes — yes, that’s the old rail access. They used to bring some of the goods to this side of the Spur, before the east branch of the rail line was completed.”

  “Rail access?” Ronon asked, and Kos pointed.

  “Dr. Zelenka reminded me. This is not far from here, there’s a cartage road.”

  “A back door?” Lorne said, and Ronon nodded again, considering.

  “Yeah. That changes things.”

  “I agree,” Lorne said.

  “Let’s play this like Teyla would,” Ronon said, with another fleeting grin. “Major, you take your Marines and knock on the front door. Find out if Hocken and Tan are just visiting, and if we can get them back without trouble. If not, see if you can spot where they’re being held, and I’ll bring a team through on foot and see if I can’t bring them out the back way.”

  That was exactly the sort of plan at which Teyla had proved herself an expert, Radek thought. And that was always a good thing. “I will go with Major Lorne,” he said aloud. The others looked at him, and he shrugged. “I am not particularly threatening.”

  “Good idea,” Ronon said. For a second, the mask slipped, and Radek caught of glimpse of the same worry that haunted them all. Were Hocken and Tan guests or prisoners, alive or dead? There was nothing they could do until morning.

  ***

  It was getting late, and the temperature inside the cell was dropping steadily. The woman who took away their dinner tray brought a couple of coarse wool blankets, and Mel and Tan huddled into them, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the cot for greater warmth. After a while, they wrapped one blanket around their shoulders and pulled the other up over to their chins, and the shared body heat inside the cocoon made the situation almost bearable. Mel leaned her head against the wall, and drifted into a doze.

  She woke when Tan elbowed her, saying quietly, “Someone’s coming.”

  Mel straightened, loosening the blankets so that they could move quickly if they had to. “Do you know what time it is?”

  Tan shook her head. “Late.”

  Mel could hear voices in the hall, two men, but she couldn’t make out the words. A few moments later, though, a stranger came into view, and leaned against the bars of the cell. He was an older man, broad-faced, with graying hair and a straggle of gray beard, a military-cut jacket hanging loosely on his shoulders, as though it had been made for him when he was younger and heavier.

  “So. You say you came up from the capital.”

  Mel glanced at Tan, who gave a fractional shrug: Mel’s call, then. She disentangled herself from the blankets and moved toward the door herself, Tan following at her shoulder. “That’s right. The provisional government there is looking for survivors.”

  “The capital was taken over by Wraith worshippers,” the man said. “There’s no one trustworthy there.”

  Tan made a sudden startled noise. “Wait, he —”

  She stopped abruptly. Mel gave her a wary look, but she shook her head.

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  The big man sighed, and a wry smile crossed his face. “Well, it’s not that big a community. All right, you know me. And I know you. You’re the photographer, Tan.”

  Tan didn’t answer, eyeing him unhappily, and Mel looked from one to the other. “Would one of you like to fill me in?”

  “He’s — you lied to them,” Tan said, to the stranger. “You told them we were Wraith worshippers. You kept them from joining us.”

  He lifted both hands. “Keep your voice down. You’re not in the best position here either.”

  “Who is he?” Mel said, to Tan, and the photographer controlled herself with an effort.

  “This is Evrast Mar. He’s the general they were talking about. He’s been telling the governor that he’s ‘exploring’ the country up here, looking for salvage and survivors, and all the time he’s been —” She broke off abruptly. “I don’t know what he’s been doing, except keeping these people from leaving and finding things out for themselves.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Mar said. “I’ve been keeping them safe since the Wraith attacked, and I’m still keeping them safe.”

  “Not if you’re not telling them the truth about Satedans returning,” Mel said.

  “It’s still safer here than it is in the capital,” Mar said. “The Wraith will come back, and we don’t have enough of anything left to have a hope of defending ourselves when they do.” He shook his head. “But, we won’t argue about that. I’ve got a deal for you. You keep your mouths shut about the capital, and I’ll tell my people you aren’t Wraith worshippers. I’ll even take you with me when I leave.”

  “And if we don’t?” Mel asked.

  Mar shook his head. “The miners up here really don’t like Wraith worshippers.”

  Mel swore under her breath. “I already told them I was Lantean.”

  “So you exaggerated a little. You probably traded with the Lanteans for that plane, right?” Mar grinned. “Do it, and I promise you, you’ll be back in the capital in no time at all.”

  “You’re leaving out something important,” Mel said. “There’s a Lantean team at the Narmoth Falls, and they’ll be looking for us. They know we’re down on the Plateau —”

  “But they don’t know you’re here,” Mar interrupted.

  “They’ll figure that out.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “And they won’t stop looking.” Mel went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “You have to have realized that by now. We don’t leave our people behind.”

  “I don’t need to keep you forever,” Mar said. “I don’t want to keep you forever. I need — one more week, maybe two at the outside. You don’t want to die over that, do you? Just cooperate, and everybody walks away safe and unharmed.”

  Mel glanced at Tan. Mar was right, the miners were already half convinced that they were Wraith worshippers, and Wraith worshippers didn’t live long on Sateda — she couldn’t even blame them for that, not after what they’d been through. They’d already failed to convince the miners, and if Mar spoke out against them, they would be in even worse trouble than they were now. She heard Tan heave a sigh, and shook her own head. “All right. We’ll play along.”

  “You won’t regret it,” Mar said.

  Mel wished she believed that.

  “Kormin!” Mar took a step ba
ck from the bars. “It’s all right, there’s been a misunderstanding. These people are friends.”

  “Yeah?” The guard came into view, looking doubtful, but his expression eased as Mar kept talking.

  “That’s right, they’re from up-country, they were taken in by the Wraith worshippers, but now they’ve seen the light. They’ll be staying with us for a bit, until we’re sure the worshippers can’t follow them.”

  “What about that aircraft up there?”

  It was a good question, Mel thought, but Mar didn’t even blink.

  “We’ll just leave it, and lie low for a few days. It’ll be a mystery!” He shrugged. “At some point, I imagine they’ll come and take it away, and then things can get back to normal. But in the meantime, let’s get our guests inside.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mel said. “We’re fine here.”

  “It’s much safer inside the mine,” Mar said. His voice took on a faint edge. “And, of course, it’s proof of good faith. Let’s go.”

  There was no point in further protest. Mar and several guards led them through the mine’s open mouth, and then down a spiral of ever-narrowing tunnels, lit by widely-spaced electric lamps. So they had to have a generator somewhere, Mel thought, and that will be something for the jumper’s infrared sensors to home in on. Though if it was far enough underground to fool the Wraith, the jumper might not pick it up, either. She concentrated on remembering the turns, hoping she’d be able to find her way back to the surface, but all the tunnels looked very much alike, the same dark gray rock roughly hewn out into corridors with arched ceilings. At least the relatively dim light would work in their favor, if they could get away, but she had no real confidence that she’d be able to remember the path correctly. Still, if they could follow the miners, surely they could eventually find the entrance. Of course, that meant they’d have to get away first.

  They finally stopped at a wooden door that, when unlocked, proved to open on an unexpectedly comfortable room. The stone walls were hung with strips of pale fabric, and there was an electric bulb hanging from a cable just inside the door. There was a wide bed at the back of the room, half hidden by shadows and a draped curtain, and a table and stools toward the front. There was an electric heater as well, a spiral coil glowing red behind its protective bars, and the room was surprisingly warm.

  “Right, then,” Mar said, rubbing his hands together. “Get some sleep, and we’ll talk more in the morning.”

  “Hang on,” Mel began, but the door closed behind them with a very solid-sounding thud. She listened, and heard the distinct click of a key turning in the lock. “Damn it.”

  Tan had her arms wrapped around herself as though she was cold. “We’re locked in?”

  Mel tested the latch, gently at first, and then putting her full weight on it. “Yeah.”

  “Lovely.” Tan dropped onto the nearest stool, hunching her shoulders as though she were cold. After a moment, Mel rested a consoling hand on her back.

  “It’ll be all right. Atlantis will send someone for us — Ronon knows where we were, and they know what we saw. They’ll be here in the morning.” She looked around the room again, and spotted the water jug and a stack of pottery cups set on a shelf opposite the heater. She poured a cup for each of them, glad to see that it wasn’t the mountain tea Tan had complained about before, and returned to sit down beside the other woman, pressing a cup into her hands. Tan took it with a nod of thanks, and sipped carefully.

  “If I could get hold of a stiff piece of wire,” Mel said, “I think I could get that lock open.”

  “There’s probably a guard right outside,” Tan said. “Or not far off, anyway.”

  Mel shrugged. “We need a flashlight anyway. We take out the guard, we get a light and at least one weapon.”

  “Against how many miners?” Tan sounded skeptical, but Mel could feel that she was shaking less. “Wouldn’t it be better to wait and see what your people do?”

  “Probably.”

  “Anyway, it doesn’t look like they’ve left any wire lying around.”

  “No.” Mel sighed. “I just — what do you know about this General Mar, anyway? Can we trust him?”

  “He was regular army before the Wraith,” Tan said. “Mountain troops, I think? He had one of the sector commands, though he wasn’t a politician, not like Kell. He was posted to the west, I think, but he was in the capital when the Wraith came.” She frowned as though she was trying to make sense of memories she hadn’t recalled for years. “It — I think the story I heard was that he couldn’t get back to his command, and the Wraith managed to wipe out the northern command in a lucky strike, so he took over there instead. He met up with some disorganized units, or what was left of them, but realized there wasn’t anything he could do to stop the culling. He fought a rearguard action and retreated up the Spur and then east along the edge of the Plateau, managed to hide out there until the culling stopped. Or at least that’s what he told the governor.”

  “And we can’t trust any of that anymore,” Mel said. “Right. He could have been here the whole time.”

  Tan nodded. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he was. That might explain why he didn’t bring more people into the capital with him. And why he didn’t set up a regular radio link.”

  “So what’s he doing here that he doesn’t want Cai to know about?”

  “I can’t imagine,” Tan answered. “I mean, these are silver mines, but — silver’s not that important right now. We need iron and coal a lot more than we need silver.”

  I bet we’ll find out, Mel thought, but decided not to say that out loud. “Let’s get some sleep. If Ronon shows up in the morning, I want to be ready.”

  ***

  They clustered around the puddle jumper in the chill pre-dawn light, maps and tablets out to go over the plan one last time. Radek listened with half an ear, knowing that he knew his part, and knowing, too, that if something did go wrong — as it probably would — the plan would be out the window and they’d be improvising instead. Luckily, both Ronon and Lorne were good at making things up on the fly. The trouble was, there wasn’t much they could actually do in the way of planning: they knew entirely too little about what was waiting for them at the Wild Blue.

  “So if you run into trouble, pull back and keep them busy at the front of the mine,” Ronon said, “and I’ll walk my team in from the west entrance and try to get our people out that way.”

  Radek couldn’t help glancing around at the group gathered on the tarmac. They had agreed that Kasper would stay with the radio, and that only left Ronon, Corporal Wood, and the four Satedans to perform the rescue. Even assuming that the Satedans had all of necessity learned to fight, it was hard to feel that the odds would be in their favor. On the other hand, the main search team was only himself and Lorne and three Marines, and, while he would be the last person to argue that the Marines’ pride was misplaced, there was no way to know how many people were living in the mine. This was definitely a moment for negotiations, not force, if at all possible.

  “Yeah,” Lorne said. “If it comes to that, I’ll try to put somebody into the mine, so they can find Hocken and Tan and then hook up with you.”

  Ronon grunted agreement. “Keep us up on what you’re doing, ok?”

  “Will do,” Lorne answered. “All right, everybody, load up.”

  The jumper rose almost silently up the edge of the Plateau, breaking into the sunlight as it neared the top of the waterfall. It was an astonishingly beautiful view, the sun rising ahead of them, the spray haloing the cliff, and Radek saw the Marines nudging and pointing. The Rapide was where they had left it, the white fuselage standing out against the dark grass. Lorne circled twice, dividing his attention between the scanners and the ground below, then shook his head.

  “Still no sign of Hocken and Tan. No indication that they’ve been back to the plane.”

  And if they had been, surely they would have used the radio. Radek swallowed the words, not wanting to blurt out the o
bvious, said instead, “Ronon believed they were taken down the cliff.”

  “Yeah.” Lorne eased the jumper forward, losing altitude so that he was only a few meters above the grass. “Let’s see if we can find this Wild Blue mine.”

  Radek leaned forward as Lorne brought the jumper to hover alongside the cliff face. It was more deeply fissured than he had expected, and fractionally less steep, with unexpected ledges, and he caught a glimpse of what looked like a strand of rope about three meters down from the cliff top. “Look there,” he said, pointing, and saw Lorne nod.

  “Yeah, I see it. It looks like there’s a path, all right.” He brought the jumper alongside as he spoke, carefully tracing the series of switchbacks until they were hovering just above the treetops.

  “Sir,” one of the Marines said crisply. “Permission to drop down and look for tracks?”

  Lorne considered for a moment, then shook his head. “Sorry, Peebles. We’ll stick together for now. They have to have been heading for the mine.”

  “Sir,” Peebles said, and settled back into her place. She was the one who was detailed to try to get away, Radek remembered, on the theory that she was small and quick and quiet and extremely tough even by the Marines’ standards. He had taken an unarmed combat class from her shortly after arriving on Atlantis, and was still quietly afraid.

  “We should be about five kilometers northeast of the mine,” Fishman said, in the co-pilot’s seat, and Lorne nodded.

  “Right. Let’s go see what’s there.”

  He lifted the jumper to hover about thirty meters above the treetops, and turned toward the line of mountains. Ahead, the forest stretched unbroken, the dark green foliage waving slightly in their wake. Then a break appeared, and Radek caught his breath, seeing the stacked wood at one edge of the clearing.

  “Major —”

  “I saw,” Lorne said. “Looks like we’re on the right track.”

  “Or at least we are seeing what they saw,” Radek said. He leaned forward again as something caught his eye. “And see — there’s the sluice they photographed.”