STARGATE ATLANTIS: Dead End (17 page)

“Yes, they are, Miruva,” he said. “At first there was a culling every few months. We would wait a long time for more to join us. Then it was every few weeks. Now it is even more frequent. Those that come tell us of the approaching End Times. The land of the living is being destroyed by the creators. Soon enough, all of our people will be taken here, or will perish forever in the ice. You are merely the latest.”

Teyla didn’t like the use of the word ‘culling’. Compared to what the Wraith did to their victims, the Banshees seemed far more benign. At least for now.

“Have you seen the Banshees since they brought you here?” she asked.

Geran shook his head. “They are our jailors, not our tormentors. Some of the younger claim to have seen them from time to time, but, as for myself, I don’t believe they live down here with us. They are merely the messengers of the underworld.”

Teyla looked at Miruva. She seemed to have recovered some of her composure, but her face was still pale. Perhaps whatever underworld her people believed in did indeed resemble this dark, silent place. As the shock of Geran’s arrival had worn off, Teyla was becoming more convinced that it was a highly-advanced remnant of Khost’s past. Teleportation was a technology with which she was familiar, even though these people could not have been so acquainted. That meant they were probably still on the planet, although she couldn’t discount the possibility they were somewhere off-world. In either case, it was hopeful. If there were beings still capable of using such mechanisms, that offered some chance of solving their predicament.

At that thought, she suddenly recalled the fleeting glimpse of the Banshee. She shuddered slightly. Whatever those things were, it seemed unlikely their motives were purely altruistic.

“Did you come alone?” asked Geran. The grim edge in his voice had begun to recede. Perhaps he greeted all new arrivals in such a manner.

“There are more, back in the tunnels,” said Miruva. “We thought it best to explore ahead.”

Geran motioned towards two of his companions, and they silently melted into the darkness.

“They will retrieve them,” he said. “You needn’t fear us: we are Forgotten, just like you. All our squabbles have been put aside now — we must look after one another here.”

At that, he looked quizzically at Teyla. “I knew of Miruva before I was taken,” he said. “Of you, though, I have no recollection. Which family are you from?”

Teyla returned his gaze flatly. “I am a traveler,” she said. “Miruva and her people have given me shelter. I am one of them now.”

Geran looked at Miruva, and then back at her. “Strange,” he said, suspicion heavy in his voice. “There have not been travelers on Khost for a generation or more.”

Teyla found herself unwilling to get into a discussion of her origins, and moved to change the subject. “You say you have been here for three years?” she asked. “How do you sustain yourselves? Where do you get your food?”

Geran looked like he might press his earlier question, but then appeared to relent. “We will show you,” he said. “Come with me. If you have any doubt now that this place is indeed the resting place of the dead, you will soon lose it.”

The storm blew over far quicker than Sheppard had feared, and the tearing wind seemed to hurl the clouds across the sky. After a frustrating wait cooped up underground, the whole place became a hive of activity as the inhabitants prepared to make use of the break in the weather. No one knew how long it would last, and the people were clearly determined to restore some sense of equilibrium after the Banshee raid.

Sheppard donned his furs and went to find Rodney. The enforced break had at least allowed them to eat something and prepare for the cold again. The morning was not yet over, though they’d lost precious time.

McKay was waiting for him, sitting on the floor of the corridor near the entrance, adjusting some of his instruments and muttering irritably to himself.

“Hey,” said Sheppard. “Ready to go back out?”

McKay winced, and struggled to his feet. “Oh yes,” he said. “I’ve just managed to defrost the last of my fingers, so it’ll be good to freeze them up again. By the way, were you aware that this place is falling apart?”

“Looks pretty solid to me.”

“Well, I guess that’s the level of observation I’ve come to expect. During my only partially successful attempts to warm up, I logged three tremors.
Three
. That’s why I came out here. It’s frankly a marvel that I’m alive at all, let alone capable of reactivating the Jumper, fixing the Stargate, locating Teyla and Ronon, getting us out again, and… what’s next? Oh yes, no doubt we’ll be fixing Khost’s climatic model so that none of the little children die. Really, I’m very pleased by how things are going.”

“Keep it together,” warned Sheppard, opening the heavy doors leading out into the wilderness. “I don’t need you going all crazy-eyed on me.”

“
Crazy-eyed?
”

Sheppard shrugged. “Yeah. You’ve started looking a little… crazy-eyed.”

McKay placed his fingers on his cheek, feeling gently. “You think so? God, that’ll be the cold. I mean, my eyes are my best feature. Apart from my hair. And Jeannie always said I had a cute smile. When she was talking to me, that is…”

Sheppard shook his head and walked out into the snow. One day he’d like to meet McKay’s sister. The woman deserved a medal.

After the latest storm, the ground was swept clean. Any residual footprints near the settlement entrance had been buried. Just as before, the vista before them was magnificent: sweeping arcs of glittering ice interposed with isolated craggy outcrops, all watched by the insipid sky. It was frightening how quickly the scene could change into one of utter desolation.

“Anyway, I was talking about those tremors,” said McKay as they trudged through the snow.

“Don’t get jumpy. We can cope with a little jiggling about.”

“I had time to take a few readings when I was in the Jumper,” said Rodney. “Seismic read-outs. Some basic meteorological scans. Nothing very detailed — nothing was working properly. But I didn’t like what I saw.”

“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like it either?”

“Look, I’m not sure. We’ve not been here long enough. But the shakes we felt when we arrived? They’re getting closer together. And those storms — they’re building up to something.”

“OK, quit beating about the bush. What’re you telling me here?”

McKay shrugged. The gesture was almost entirely absorbed by his thick layers of clothing. “I don’t really know yet,” he said. “I’ll take more readings when I can. But I’ve got to say it: from what I’ve seen, this place is falling apart. The storms, the earth shifting. Something very bad is happening here. It could be coming to a head.”

“Why is it that we seem to arrive places just as everything’s kicking off?” Sheppard sighed.

“Well, in this case, we’ve got the whole nine yards. We already knew about storms, ice-shifting, no power, dead Stargate, missing team. You can add earthquakes to the list now.”

“Great,” said Sheppard, grimacing as the icy wind scoured his exposed skin. “Just great.”

Weir forced her attention back to her paperwork with difficulty. There were things that really needed her attention — there were always things that really needed her attention — but it was hard to concentrate on them when she knew there was a team stranded off-world. Just as her weary eyes started scanning the opening lines of a report on food supply in the Athosian settlement, Zelenka’s voice crackled over the intercom.

“Dr Weir? I think we’ve got something. Do you have time?”

“You bet,” snapped Elizabeth. She flipped the report into her ‘pending’ tray, and made her way quickly down to the Jumper bay.

When she arrived, the place was a mess. Cables connected to various diagnostic instruments trailed all over the floor. One of the Jumpers had been moved into the central area, like a patient on a surgeon’s table. All of its various panels had been opened or removed and Zelenka’s team were crawling over it like blowflies on a wound.

“I see you’ve been busy,” said Weir.

Zelenka looked up and gave her a satisfied smile. His fingers were black with engine oil. Which was odd, because as far as Weir knew, Jumpers didn’t use engine oil.

“We have!” he said. “And I think we’ve done it. If Rodney were here, he’d be proud.”

The Czech scientist wiped his grimy hands and took her around to the rear of the Jumper. Within the exposed bay, the scene was even more chaotic than outside the vessel. Most of the internal panels had been pulled open. The equipment inside them had been taken out, mixed-up, and put back again in various configurations. It all looked extremely confused.

“It’s possible,” he said, gesturing to mass of electronics. “It’s really possible. The power module used to negotiate the long link can be constructed using standard Jumper internals. Presumably, this was a design goal of the original project. We should think of the experiment as a way of boosting the Jumper’s own systems, rather than a replacement for them. So the team should be able to modify their systems, and augment their vessel for the journey home.”

“That’s good, Radek,” said Weir, trying to keep her voice neutral. It was important not to get carried away. “I thought we couldn’t make contact with the gate?”

“Yes, that is still true — at least partly,” Zelenka said. “But it’s progress, nonetheless. Come.”

Weir followed him into the Jumper’s open bay. “Assembly process for the module isn’t too difficult in itself,” he explained, gesturing to a relatively small set of components connected by a cluster of wires. “The problem is ensuring that the Jumper’s basic systems remain fully functional in the absence of the instruments needed for the power boost. It can be done, but getting the bypass circuitry right is tricky. It’s taken us a while, but we’ve shown it can be done. I’ve run a hundred tests on this Jumper. If we could get it through the gate in one piece, I’ve no doubt that it would be able to travel all the way to Khost.”

Weir pursed her lips, impatient to know more but aware that she had to give Zelenka time to explain his achievement. “Well done, Radek,” she said. “This is good work, but…” It felt cruel to puncture his bubble, but it had to be done. “It doesn’t solve our main problem. We know how to avoid premature materialization, but we still can’t communicate with the team, nor reach them. Unless they somehow stumble on the same conclusion as you, we’re as stuck as we were before.”

At that, Zelenka shook his head. “I’ve been looking at the data from the first journey again,” he said. “What is clear is that the gate at the far end has been damaged, both by our actions and by its environment. We can’t simply fly a second Jumper through the gate to rescue them. The stress of opening a fully-functional wormhole, with all the power demands we’d need, risks irreparable damage being done. However, do you remember when Dr McKay managed to open the intergalactic gate for just a second or two on very low power? When we thought our days on Atlantis were numbered?”

“Of course I do.” How could she forget? “But how does it help us?”

Zelenka walked over to a monitor wired into the cannibalized Jumper bay. He pressed a button and streams of data began scrolling down it. “We’ve managed to put the instructions for enabling the module, plus everything we know about the power systems in the gate route, in a highly compressed data file,” he said. “Sending a Jumper through the Stargate might be impossible, but there’s a chance there’s just enough residual power in the receiving gate to get a short databurst across. Think of it like a ping.”

Weir felt her heart jump. With the schematics available to them, the chances of getting the team home were suddenly looking much better. “What kind of a chance?”

Zelenka looked uneasy. “If everything works as I think it will, McKay will be able to modify his Jumper to make the trip back. If he can find a way to get the Stargate even minimally operational, he’ll be able to break the event horizon at that end. Once inside the wormhole, there’ll be a critical power failure, just as before. That might damage the gate on Dead End even further as it attempts to compensate, but that’s OK, because the Jumper will now have the additional module onboard. It should kick in immediately, giving the craft just enough energy to exit the gate at this end. We’ll have destroyed whatever Stargate technology the Ancients were working on, but at least we’ll have our people back.”

“That’s good enough for me,” said Weir. “We’ve got to take the risk.”

Zelenka nodded. “It’s all ready. Just give the word.”

Weir looked back over the chaotic piles of instruments and equipment. It was hard to imagine anyone being able to assemble a workable module of such complexity from a simple set of instructions, and when she imagined the conditions McKay would have to work in, she shuddered. Zelenka’s plan was a shot in the dark, but it was the only plan on the table and dithering over it would do no one any good.

“You’ve got it,” she said, her voice betraying none of the doubts in her mind. “Let’s go.”

Ronon cast a wary eye over his surroundings. All the hunters now carried the little tallow candles; they burned slowly and with a minimum of smoke, but the light was feeble. The ground was uneven and slick with iron-hard sheets of ice. Even the practiced hunters slipped and fell occasionally; Ronon had been on his backside more than once and his body ached from the sudden impacts. They inched along in the dark, trying to ignore the distant sighs and cracks deep within the ice. It was like being buried alive, with just a glimmer of hope to keep you going.

The network of fissures and caves might lead nowhere and this could very well be their grave.

He put the thought to the back of his mind. That kind of speculation could prove fatal. Instead, he concentrated on Orand’s optimism. The leader of the hunters seemed unperturbed, confident that the warren of narrow subterranean passages would lead to the surface. Even after an hour of painstaking progress, though, they were no nearer to finding an exit. Ronon’s sense of direction had totally abandoned him in the darkness and he hoped that Orand had a better idea of where they were.