Lorne took an uneasy point, concerned by the periodic repetition of the ground vibration, which caused the surface tension of the water in the rocky depressions surrounding them to shudder a bit. He found it entirely too Jurassic Park-esque for his taste. He'd never thought about what the last thing he wanted for Christmas was, but he had a sudden awareness that it was to be eaten by a space dinosaur.
Wouldn't that just fit in nicely with everything else about the Ancients, particularly the ones that split off to do experiments on their own? Genetically engineering dinosaurs that ate them and then ran wild in a foggy valley, just looking for more Ancients (or their descendants) to snack on. It wasn't as if it would be the first time the Ancients dabbled in such things, with similar results.
But hadn't Lorne just last night been thinking that it wasn't the Ancients that had built this place they were headed towards, and that the explanation was too convenient and easing of mind to be true? And, now he thought about it, wasn't it possibly also merely an assumption on their part that they were actually going towards the ruins of a city, an assumption largely based on what they wanted to be true? They could actually be headed towards just about anything… or nothing at all.
Dinosaurs brought to life by Ancient experimentation, however scary and fantastic that prospect was, were more welcome to Lorne's mind than the more likely alternative: something they knew nothing about and were ill-equipped to understand was happening under their feet. Something that might or might not have any connection at all to where they were going. The truth was that they knew nothing about what they might be walking into.
Whatever it was, Lorne didn't like it. And he didn't want to be caught in the open when whatever it was either caught up to them or finished doing whatever it was doing to make the ground shake.
He felt better once they'd been underway for a good hour, and he let Wilson take over on point, dropping back himself to see if there was any sign they were being followed. There wasn't, but the closer they got to what they had assumed was a city, the more uneasy Lorne grew about it.
More and more, his every instinct seemed to be warning him to turn back. Not to go any further, that he didn't really want to see whatever lay ahead. Lorne was unaccustomed to getting a case of nerves during a mission, especially when he had seen nothing to indicate they were in any more danger here than they'd been near the cliffs.
Having been an 80s kid, Lorne had found the thick fog and tangled tree branches of the day before remniscent of the Swamp of Sadness, especially in the dark. But they were heading uphill now, along a trail that had probably been carved by some migrating herd animal or other over hundreds or even thousands of years. The ground was rockier, the fog thinner, and he would have expected to feel more confident as they headed into the increasingly mountainous country, not less. But every step now seemed marked by foreboding he could not account for.
Finally, Coughlin dropped to the back of the line and joined him. It seemed Lorne was not the only uneasy party after all.
"I don't like it, sir," Coughlin remarked point blank, "What kind of defense system can take a jumper out of the air but doesn't have anything to say to anyone walking away from the crash?"
"Maybe a damaged one," Lorne suggested, but Coughlin gave him a sharp look, saying he wasn't buying that and there would be words if Lorne made a secondary attempt to sugar-coat the situation, so Lorne simply sighed and said, "I don't know, Lieutenant. I don't know any more than you do."
Coughlin, though the same rank as Wilson, was considerably older and much more experienced, both as a member of the Air Force and the Stargate Program. He was a steady, straight-forward man, reliable and honest, and expecting the same in return. He needed no one to hold his hand, and didn't appreciate the effort, in fact resented it more than a little. The truth Lorne spoke settled him out, and the warning look in his expression faded after a moment.
"I think we should probably go in first, scout the city, then bring in the civilians," Coughlin recommended, knowing that Lorne would have asked this of him, and so skipping over that step; a habit that had not gone over well with Coughlin's previous CO, who didn't like his subordinates to get ahead of him.
"They'll pitch a fit," Lorne said, then thought for a moment, "You and Wilson drift on ahead. I'll set the pace for the rest of them. The last thing we need is for the civilians to get riled up."
Coughlin frowned a little. Being the type of man he was, he didn't see why everything couldn't be said straight-up. And he knew that it was Lorne's habit to make sure things were clear between himself and his superiors, Dr. Weir in particular. But she was an exceptional civilian. And also his boss.
Not everyone was built the same or had the same experiences. Lorne fully expected George to notice and understand the second Coughlin and Wilson were out of view, but Helton, Souci and Janella hopefully wouldn't. Janella would get nervous if she thought Lorne's team was, and Souci was sure to get offended at 'being treated like she was helpless.' Helton… one could never be sure which way that man would swing. He was too erratic in mood and Lorne didn't have much of a handle on him.
Fortunately, Coughlin had built a rapport with Lorne, however tentative, and so decided to trust his leader's judgment... for the moment. That came as a relief. Lorne knew Coughlin would follow any order he gave, but whether the man did it willingly or grudgingly made a huge difference to his performance of his duties, and Lorne's ability to work with him in future.
Shortly after Lorne drifted to the front of the group, Coughlin and Wilson disappeared from view. Lorne looked back every now and then to be sure everyone was staying together as they'd been trained to. It made him even more uneasy not to have a man posted to the back of the procession, keeping an eye on the civilians to see they stayed out of trouble. The lack of rearguard felt risky. But not as risky as sending one man ahead by himself, or staying in the back and hoping the civilians wouldn't chase after the recon men. In this business, a man had to accept that risk was inevitable, and he had to learn to quickly weigh risk versus reward and make a decision.
Any hesitation on his part could get them all killed. But so could making even one wrong choice.
Fortunately, though it was exhausting, Lorne truly did love his job. This was exactly the kind of pressure and challenge he'd been looking for when he'd volunteered to join the Atlantis Expedition. He'd gone into the Air Force to defend home and country, and the SGC to protect his planet… but the Atlantis Expedition was clearly the adventure of a lifetime.
Back home in the Milky Way, there were a thousands and one things to be done to help protect humanity and its allies, all of it important. But in the Pegasus Galaxy, the team was largely on its own, blazing completely new trails into the unknown. That was terrifying… but also very exciting. Lorne lived for this stuff, even though at times like this he had to ask himself why he would choose a life that would make him feel this scared and uncertain.
Maybe he was stupid. Maybe he was a thrillseeker. Maybe it was because he was one of only a handful of people who could do what he did, and that made it his duty to take on the fight that most people wouldn't or couldn't. Or maybe he was just crazy.
"Major Lorne, we found the city. It's pretty much a deserted ruin."
After acknowledging the report, Lorne continued on, the civilians now pushing to get ahead of him so they could see for themselves what Coughlin and Wilson had found. He let them go.
They'd been traveling uphill most of the morning, out of the swamp and up onto drier ground. If Lorne had been in any doubt, a glance at George told him the rock underfoot was very similar to that which they had encountered near the cliff ruins. Maybe coincidence. Maybe pattern.
While not particularly geologically trained, Lorne hadn't spent months working with a team mining for naquadah for nothing and he felt oddly certain that whatever race had been here had an attraction to karst, and that must mean something. After all, there was plenty of other high ground if they had merely wanted to build above the swamp. But what did hollowed out limestone have to offer that other sites didn't? He made a mental note to bring it up with George when the opportunity arose. It was partially curiosity on his part, but primarily intel gathering. Even if he couldn't make sense or use of information himself, he could collect it and carry it back to someone who could.
Abruptly, the steep, winding route they'd been following flattened and opened out onto a plateau, which harbored a few scraggly looking conifer-type trees, but mostly the remains of what had once been a city maybe half the size of Atlantis, made of similarly colored material, but otherwise not recognizable. Most of what had survived were foundations, a few shattered piles that represented walls, and probably a plethora of bits and pieces that an archaeologist would love trying to make sense of, but which mostly looked like uninteresting debris to Lorne.
The layout of the walls that he could see did not resemble that of Ancient structures. As Lorne approached and began to examine the ruins, he could see that the thickness of the walls was all wrong, the shape of the foundations matched nothing he recognized. He knelt and took up a handful of wall remains. The dust the walls had broken down to felt nothing like crumbled or blasted naquadah or any other Ancient building material Lorne was familiar with.
Coughlin and Wilson shortly joined Lorne, keeping one eye on the civilians, who immediately started roving in search of something that resembled… well… something recognizable. Ideally something that looked like more advanced technology than the broken edge of a stone bowl (was it a bowl? Or something else that simply had a curvature to it?), something that looked capable of bringing down a puddle jumper. The site didn't look promising for anything like that.
"I never thought I'd wish we had an archaeologist on our team," Coughlin commented dryly.
"You never tried teaching an Unas to use a jackhammer without one," Lorne replied, standing up.
Cocking his head, Coughlin looked at Lorne oddly, "What?"
"Never mind," Lorne shook his head, "Keep an eye out for trouble."
"Are we expecting any?" Coughlin wanted to know.
"Always," Lorne answered absently, dusting off his hands and eyeing the expanse of shattered building fragments that had once composed a city.
"How come the UAVs didn't see this?" Wilson wondered, once more looking to the sky for answers.
"This is just one spot on an entire planet, and it's a lot farther north than the spot that interested us. UAVs probably never passed within a hundred miles of here."
"Well this has been just a grand waste of time, hasn't it?!" Helton called loudly, raising his hands to indicate the surroundings, "A day and a half of hiking through the mud, half-killing ourselves on that uphill slope, and all we've got to show for it is a dusty pile of crap!"
It would've been either Helton or Souci, who both had a tendency to get bent out of shape whenever things didn't go quite the way they wanted them to. As if the rest of them hadn't come just as far with the same hope, weren't just as unhappy to be here, weren't just as bruised and cold and miserable and disheartened by the realization that they were back to square one, with no idea of where to go from here. Sometimes it felt like civilians didn't think soldiers were even human.
Lorne sighed, trying to swallow down his own disappointment and annoyance with their circumstances, sternly reminding himself that Dr. Weir came down like the Wrath of God on any airman or Marine who turned their temper loose on a civilian. She tolerated no bullying or intimidation tactics, and Col. Sheppard was quick to back her policy. Neither of them was here, but guaranteed if Lorne lost his temper with Helton now they'd hear about it some day. And then he'd hear about that.
Unaware of Lorne's faltering patience, Souci joined Helton, and unknowingly added that final straw to the camel's back, saying, "At least we're not at some socially obligatory party listening to bad music and pretending to love Christmas."
"Okay!" Lorne exploded, turning on her so suddenly that even Coughlin and Wilson flinched, "We get it! You hate Christmas! But you know who keeps bringing up Christmas over and over? YOU. You people can't stop complaining about it," he flashed a brief glare around at the other civilians, before rounding on Souci once more, "We're here on a planet without a trace of holiday cheer, with a thousand other problems, possibly going to die, but all you can think about is how much you hate Christmas," he gave a harsh look in Helton's direction, "Or how much you think you missed out on because you never could appreciate what you had while you had it."
Something in him warned him to stop there, take a breath, back off, but he ignored it, turning again on Souci, walking towards her as he spoke, "You want to know why I spent every Christmas Eve at my grandparents? It's because my parents went to their office parties, came home drunk, and fought all night. And then they slept through Christmas morning, my dad usually on the couch. That's what my sister and I had growing up, right up to the divorce. At least your families stayed together. At least they tried. But you're so busy being ungrateful about what you didn't have, you can't see what you did have, and you don't seem to realize that the only one making you unhappy now is you!"
And that was when the ground abruptly crumbled from under him, and Lorne fell.