Geran didn’t look angry or perturbed, but she could see his suspicion remained.
“Like I said, many think such things when they arrive. They are always disappointed. In time they come to see that their life here, with all its blessings, is their true reward for a life well-lived. This is your home now, and no one can reach you.”
“You do not know my friends.”
Geran made to speak again, but Teyla turned away from him, not wanting to debate it any further. She walked towards Miruva to congratulate her and, as she did so, she wondered if she really believed her own words. Those rock walls looked very thick, and she had no idea how she’d got here. Only time would tell.
Another stream of energy seared past Ronon. He veered to the left, feeling the scorching heat of it as it crackled past his shoulder. It was getting closer, and he was out of ideas.
“This way!” Orand’s voice came from the left turn of a fork in the tunnel. Without thinking, Ronon followed the sound. As he swung around the corner he fired off a couple of shots behind him. He knew it wasn’t going to do any good, but it wasn’t like there was anything else to try either.
Ahead of him, the hunters had stopped running and formed a barrier across the tunnel. They looked terrified, but were holding their ground. All of them carried their
jar’hrams
, as if that would have any effect against such a creature.
“Run!” barked Ronon as he careered towards them. “It ain’t gonna stop!”
“We can’t outrun it!” cried Orand, raising his spear. “If we die, we’ll die like men!”
Ronon could hear the fear in the man’s voice. He didn’t look like he could stand up to a determined child, let alone a terror-inducing ghost that sent lightning from its fingers.
But he liked the sentiment. He reached the line of hunters and turned to face his enemy. It was only meters behind. As Ronon raised his gun to fire, it swooped down lower. Ronon saw that its outline had become even more indistinct. Its shape seemed to shudder, like a distorted video feed.
He aimed his particle gun right at the center of it, and fired again. The bolts slammed into it, tearing through the diaphanous form. Still it came, raising its fingers to let fly with a fresh lightning strike.
Ronon kept firing.
“This is it,” he growled, then gritted his teeth for the impact.
It never came. With a sigh, the image broke up, shimmering out of existence. The fingers faded into shadow, and the swishing died away, echoing down the corridor.
For a moment, the hunters stood motionless, mouths open, waiting for some new trick. No one spoke, no one moved.
The party finally relaxed. Ronon lowered his gun. Only then did he notice how much his hands had been shaking.
“What
was
that thing?” he asked, trying to hide his fear.
Orand’s face was pale and shiny with sweat.
“A Banshee,” he said. “The curse of our people.”
Ronon sank to the ground. All around him, the hunters were doing the same thing. He felt strung out. “You’re gonna have to give me more than that.”
“They come for us when the storms are bad. No one knows
why, nor how to stop them. But I’ve never seen one down in the tunnels, and I’ve never seen one do that.”
“The lightning act?”
“Yes. Normally, they just come, and then… some of us are gone. We never see how they do it.” He looked up at the patch of shadow where the Banshee had been. “I’ve never seen one stop before. Not before it got what it wanted.”
Ronon looked at his gun. Maybe the particle weapon had some effect. If the apparition had been some kind of shielded entity, then it was possible the bolts of energy had drained its power.
“No point sitting here talking about it,” he muttered, getting back to his feet. “We gotta keep moving.”
Orand nodded. All around them, the hunters did the same. “Agreed,” he said. “I don’t know what stopped it this time.” He looked at Ronon, and his flesh remained pale. “But they’ll keep coming until they get us, big man. They don’t give up.”
“Dammit!” hissed McKay, pulling his fingers back from a fizzing control unit. Things were going slowly. Too slowly. Why was he never given the time he needed?
“Got a fix on them?” asked Sheppard, hovering impatiently beside him.
McKay gave him a blunt stare. “What do you think?”
“Right. That’s it. I’m outta here.”
McKay thought about protesting, but then reconsidered. He
had
needed Sheppard during the early stages of Jumper reconstruction, but the point where he could help had passed. The scanners would eventually start functioning normally, but right now they were still a mess.
“So what are you going to do?” McKay asked. “Just set off on your own?”
Sheppard shrugged. “I’ve gotta do
something
,” he protested. “I’ll get help from the settlement. If you’re right about those storms, we’re running out of time.”
“OK,” McKay said, and slid some of the computer panels back into place. “I can manage the rest on my own. It’ll probably be quicker in any case.”
As Sheppard made to leave, McKay reached down behind a bulkhead and retrieved a bulky handheld instrument.
“Don’t go without this,” he said. “I’ve been powering up some of the portable kit. A lot of it was fried when we came through, but I’ve got this working. It’s a proximity meter, like the ones we use on the city. Its range is nothing compared to the instruments here, but it’ll give you a fighting chance of finding that needle.”
Sheppard took the device. “A haystack scanner,” he said. “Better than nothing, I guess.”
McKay lowered the rear door. It descended smoothly, he was pleased to note. “Good luck.”
“I’ll send someone to collect you before sundown,” said Sheppard, walking down the rear bay and out into the dazzling snowscape. “Keep your radio close. If you get this thing airborne, come find me.”
McKay looked out beyond Sheppard’s retreating back to where the icy wastes sat under the colorless sky. He could see the Stargate in the distance, a tiny speck against the otherwise flawless texture of the snow, the sun glinting against it.
Which was odd, since naquadah was not generally reflective.
Then, with a sudden lurch in his stomach, he realized what was happening. “The gate!” he yelled. But the glint had disappeared.
Sheppard looked at him quizzically. “What about it?”
McKay frowned. He could have sworn he’d seen an event horizon open. Granted, the thing was far away, but even so… “Er, maybe not,” he said. “Perhaps just an optical illusion.”
Sheppard looked at him with some concern. “I think we’re all a little short on sleep, Rodney,” he said. “Try to spend some quality time with your pillow when you can.”
McKay was about to fire off a sarcastic comment when there was a sudden squawk from behind him.
“Oh God, not now…” he moaned, and turned back to the array of electronics in the rear of the bay. If a component was about to fail, he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions. He quickly scanned the diagnostic read-outs. “I don’t believe it…”
Sheppard ran back up the exit ramp. “What is it?”
“The gate was opened!” McKay looked down the list of data on the screen with mounting disbelief. “We’ve just had a communication from Atlantis.”
Ronon felt his heartbeat return to normal. The fear was over, and the oppressive cold had returned. He kept his gun by his side. Imperfect as it was, it was still his only defense.
The low and winding tunnels were cramping his long limbs. They’d followed the course of the tunnel they’d been driven into by the Banshee, and it was just as long and circuitous as all the rest. Every so often the rock ceiling would rise a little, but it was never enough to allow him to stand at his full height, and the malevolent ice shimmered in the candlelight, mocking their attempts to escape the labyrinth.
Despite himself, he was beginning to lose hope. Dying here would be a bad way to go, locked in a freezing maze of narrow tunnels, far from the sunlight. How long would their bodies lay undisturbed in the ice, before the next band of foolish explorers stumbled across them? It was a ghoulish image.
In the dim candlelight, Orand looked worried. Sensing he was being watched, he glanced over at Ronon.
“I’m sorry, big man,” he said. “This was meant to be a hunt like all the others. I’ve brought you into danger.”
Ronon shook his head to dismiss the young man’s concern. “I’ve been in worse places. Got outta them too.”
Orand looked over his shoulder, back into the impenetrable darkness of the underground kingdom. “Perhaps we should have tried to ascend the crevasse you came down. I thought — ”
“Orand!” The nervous cry came from up ahead, echoing down the narrow tunnel. Ronon raised his gun instinctively, even though it had proved useless against the Banshee earlier. “There’s a light.”
Ronon turned and saw a slight, almost imperceptible lightening up ahead. At last!
Pushing forward through the ranks of the other hunters, Ronon and Orand arrived at the front of the party. Lapraik was waiting for them.
“There’s something up ahead,” he said. His voice was a curious mixture of apprehension and relief.
“Let’s take a look,” said Orand. “Ronon?”
He answered only with a nod and together they walked on, stepping carefully over the treacherous ground. The ceiling was lifting slightly and with every step a faint bluish glow became stronger. After just a few yards, it was even possible to make out the surface of the walls around them without the aid of the candles.
“What’s this?” whispered Ronon.
“No idea,” Orand said. “Looks like sunlight filtered through ice, but we’re a long way down.”
They pressed on and the light continued to grow. The tunnel snaked back on itself a couple of times, and then resolved into a smooth, straight course ahead. Ronon was able to stand up fully for the first time in hours. Despite his fatigue, the chance to stretch his muscles was a massive relief. He began to walk more easily, and the pain in his joints ebbed.
Ahead of them, the blue light had grown fierce. After so long in the perpetual gloom, Ronon’s eyes watered as he looked at it. The tunnel plunged steeply toward it, the rock smooth and even — as if it had been worn by running water in the distant past.
“Guess that’s where we’re going,” Ronon said.
Black ice underfoot made the sloping tunnel treacherous. Behind them, several hunters stumbled and slipped, and their muffled curses echoed against the rock and ice. Ronon missed his footing a couple of times, and at one point nearly fell; he was tired, they all were.
“It’s a doorway,” whispered Orand as they neared the light. Ronon came up alongside him and saw that Orand was right. There was a man-made object in front of them. The significance wasn’t lost on the hunters.
Orand turned to Ronon, torn between relief and fear. “We’ve got to go on,” he said. “One way or another, this is the end of our journey.”
McKay
frowned as he read. Unbelievably, Atlantis had managed to send something through.
Sheppard stiffened. “Why’d they wait so long?”
There was a lot in the transmission and idiot questions weren’t helpful. “Steady. Let me read it already.”
McKay scanned a few more lines. This was Zelenka’s work. He began to see what was going on. “OK, OK,” he said to himself, feeling the pieces of the puzzle begin to slot into place. “Do you remember the big Wraith attack, the one where we thought we were all going to die?”
“Which one?” asked Sheppard.
McKay ignored him. “You’ll remember that we didn’t have enough power to send real objects through the intergalactic link,” he said, his mind working rapidly. “That was purely a power issue: the network was fully intact. Zelenka’s done something similar. A databurst. It’s just coming across the screen now and the Jumper’s storing it in memory.”
“Good thing you got it working, then.”
“Perfect timing, yes,” said McKay. “More importantly, there’s some data in here about our predicament. Radek thinks that our nasty little experience in the wormhole was an anomaly caused by a power outage. Apparently, this node within the gate network has some rather intriguing properties. The extreme power demands mean that we can’t make it back with a standard Jumper. In fact, we never ought to have attempted it. The fact we got through was more dumb luck that anything else.”
Sheppard looked awkward. “Dumb luck, eh?” he said. “Just
how
dumb?”
“Oh, sweet mother of molecules,” said McKay. “And I really hate this. According to Zelenka, the chamber we discovered was a laboratory for some new kind of power module. Without this in place, there’s no hope for us getting back.”
“Hey, you were gonna hold back on the bad news. Anything on the positive side?”
“Depends on how crazy you think Zelenka is.”
“Try me.”
“He reckons we can construct a suitable module from equipment on the Jumper. That’s what the databurst is: a set of schematics. Apparently, he’s managed to make one on Atlantis. Good for him. He’ll no doubt want to boast about that when we get back. If there’s anything —
anything
— I can’t stand, it’s arrogance.”
“Yeah, I’ve always liked that about you.”
“Anyway,” McKay continued, “that potentially solves one of our problems. If we can construct the module, we can get back through the wormhole. In theory. That’s the good news.”
“There you go again with the
bad
news…”
“If I’m right,” said McKay, “and I’m very seldom not, then Zelenka’s little databurst will have finished off any residual power in the Stargate. Frankly, having seen it up close, I’m amazed there was anything left in the reserve at all. He must have gambled that we’d be able to make use of his information even without a working gate. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve absolutely no idea how to get enough juice to it again. We know that it can’t draw power from the Atlantis end, and I’m guessing that buffalo oil won’t quite do the trick.”