Stargate Atlantis: Death's Door
"Sheppard? Colonel Sheppard?"
The summons went unanswered.
The KAWOOSH was an explosion of energy, expanding from the Stargate and then snapping back to form a shimmering pool of light. It rippled like water and lent an aqueous sheen to the 'Gate room. The pale light was glowing on bare walls, on a bare floor, on the bare ceiling, flickering like a living thing, translucent and seductive.
A few seconds later the team stepped out of it, materializing as they stepped onto the hard floor and paused to get their bearings and to stare round, although there was nothing to see.
It was dark.
Blackness engulfed the 'Gate room, engulfed the control room above them. The emergency lights were frail amber pools swallowed by the gloom. As the Stargate's wormhole winked out of existence the team was plunged into an even blacker darkness. Quickly they turned on their P90 lights. The gleams were harsh rays of brilliance that revealed nothing out of place, nothing out of the ordinary. The lights on their helmets revealed their surprise, their worry, their wonder.
It was silent.
The only sounds were the faint bubbling of the water in the walls and the hiss/snap of the team's oxygen tanks on their EVAC suits. It was an odd combination of faint sounds, and resembled the workings of an aquarium. Snap. Hiss. Bubble. Snap. Hiss. Bubble.
The rest was silence.
The MALP they had sent through earlier was standing exactly where it had stopped, before its feed had given out and died. The footage had revealed nothing, no danger, but nothing remarkable either. It could only tell them where they were, that the dialing sequence had worked and they had reached the correct destination.
The leader gestured. Two team members fanned out to either side, guns at the ready. Their footsteps were loud against the silence. The EVAC suits seemed to squeak with every step. The team resembled a set of spacemen clad in red spacesuits. Everyone was staring round at the darkness, as if expecting a monster to leap out of the shadows.
None did.
The leader shook his head. He checked the MALP but it was stagnant, drained of power. He patted it as if it was a pet. "Atmosphere?"
"Barely…yes. It's safe to remove them," the scientist replied. Their voices sounded tinny over the comms in the helmets. At least there was nothing to block their communications. Even so the team adjusted their more primitive radios, just in case.
The leader gestured and the team unsnapped their helmets and removed them. Deep breaths were taken of the stale, yet breathable air. It was cold. Not cold enough to reveal the breaths that they took but nearly so. Helmets were set aside, but the hazmat suits remained just a precaution.
The guns remained as well.
"What now, sir?" asked the man as he hefted his gun in both hands. The hazmat suit was too small for him and wanted nothing more than to get out of it.
"Control room. We need to see if we can get the power running," the leader decided. "Let's move out."
The team cautiously exited the 'Gate room and climbed the stairs. Their lights shone across the steps, the walls, chasing away the darkness and the gloom and revealing no bodies, no evidence of any violence or cataclysm. The lights were so dim that they cast barely a shadow as they climbed the steps in unison.
The architecture was eerily similar to other cities built by the Ancients, and familiar. Each had knowledge of the construction of the cities and even if one was buried underground or had been overgrown by centuries of neglect the basic blueprint was the same.
Apparently one layout was good enough for the Ancients.
The scientist moved to the control panels and began fiddling, having to remove his gloves. The controls were cold to the touch, but after a few moments they sluggishly responded. Power flared then was gone. "Power's nearly depleted. I'm detecting only one ZPM and it's at half power, at best. No wonder they couldn't contact us for help. This latest drain seems to be recent, however."
"Can you get the city up and running?"
"No." At the leader's stare the scientist amended his opinion. "Well, at bare minimum. It's not obeying commands."
"I'll take the bare minimum," the leader replied. "We've only got an hour to find out what the hell happened here or we will miss the trip back home. Can you get anything out of that?"
"Sure, if I had a few hours," the scientist snapped, but he sighed. "Secondary systems are offline. Primary systems are only barely operational. There have been a few breaches in the structural integrity, but I can't tell if it was by accident or attack."
"Well, it wouldn't be the first time now would it?" the leader remarked with a sneer. "Half of the people here don't know how to run this stuff, let alone control it properly. I'm surprised that the place is up and running at all."
"Shouldn't we be looking for them?" the man asked.
"In due time. We don't want to run into anything unexpected, now do we?" the leader replied.
"It's a little too late for that," the scientist commented, earning a scowl from the leader.
"Are there any data files or—" the woman attempted, but the scientist interrupted her query.
"No! I can't access those either. It's locked down, or deleted." He wiped at a screen. A thin layer of frost was beginning to form over it, obscuring any data that might appear. He frowned as if disciplining a recalcitrant child.
"Life signs?" the leader asked.
"Scanning." There was a pause as the scientist adjusted his scanner, smacking the side of it to make it function properly. It would have been humorous if the situation wasn't appearing to be so grave. "There's a lot of interference…internal sensors are offline…there must be some kind of residual damage to the main grid. Three," he finally answered.
"What?" the leader exclaimed. "There should be over two hundred!" He looked around as if his shock would make them come out of hiding, but this was no surprise party.
"Perhaps they evacuated, sir," the woman suggested, looking round as if she could sense those who should have been there, or perhaps those who might be there instead. She looked out of the window to see the night sky full of stars. "Perhaps that's why there was no call for help. Maybe there wasn't time to send out a distress signal." She looked at the night sky again.
All appeared calm and bright.
"Something went wrong. Let's move out. We'll go down a level and check the living quarters first. Comms?" the leader asked. He walked over to a console and tapped the PA button, but nothing happened. Not even a squeak of static broke the oppressive silence.
"Not working. Look." The scientist gestured. "Control crystals are broken. They have been deliberately broken. See how the panel's been pried open by force?" He pointed to a series of marks on the structure, deep gouges made by some metallic instrument. "As far as I can tell it is just communications, citywide."
"Sabotage?"
The question hung unanswered in the cold air. All four looked at each other, sharing the same thoughts, the same worries. Grips on guns tightened and they looked around the control room. But there was nothing to see but darkness, and the darkness beyond.
At the same time there was no hint of violence. Apart from the one panel nothing else was broken or smashed. Everything appeared to be operational and just wasn't. It almost appeared as if the city had been abandoned, possibly for years. The fine patina of frost was due to the chilled temperatures, but no dust filmed over the machines indicating that at least fairly recently they had been working and utilized.
Yet the threat of an unseen enemy lurking in the city invaded all of their thoughts.
"Orders, sir?" the man asked, frowning. The lack of any noise and the darkness were starting to get on his nerves, although he would never admit it out loud.
"We stay together, Watson. No heroics. Let's go check the living quarters."
"If I stay here I might be able to raise the comms and give us more power to—"
"Negative, Kavanaugh, we stay together." The leader ignored the scientist's frown. "Let's go. Watson, take the six. Larson, take point."
Larson nodded and she moved into position, gun at the ready. Her P90 light was a lonesome beam amid the liquid darkness beyond them. She felt a shiver and attributed it to the cold. She had heard many tales about the Ancients and their cities but none of them had ever described this. She was both disappointed and worried.
The team quietly exited and used another set of stairs as the transporters were inoperable. It seemed that the whole city was plunged into darkness and silence, as if it had fallen asleep and was lost in some dream.
Or it was lost in some nightmare.
"Sir, are you sure this is the right place?" asked Watson. He was clutching his gun tightly and couldn't keep his heart from pumping, pumping as the darkness seemed to close in around him, as tightly as a fist.
"Of course it's the right place!" Kavanaugh flared, but he too glanced round as if uncertain. Things were certainly not the way he remembered them. Not at all, but he tried to remain calm and vowed to find a rational explanation. He wondered if somehow the city had gone into a self-induced hibernation after some catastrophe.
Larson was silent as she checked the settings on her gun. The darkness didn't bother her but the silence did. The city should have been full of life, not this stagnation.
The leader paused, looking round the hallways he had once walked when he had been stationed here years ago. "Welcome to Atlantis," answered Major Bates.