No good can come of a chapter with a title like this...
Chapter Seven: Sacrifice
The corridor continued to brighten as Rodney and Ronon proceeded. The lights were responding to them, Rodney realized -- brightening as they approached, fading into darkness behind them. Soon he was able to switch off the flashlight. The light was still not very bright, and flickered like an old fluorescent fixture about to go dead.
"Damaged?" Ronon asked, jerking his head at the lights.
"Maybe," Rodney conceded. "More likely just out of power." He glanced around, noticing conduits on the stone walls (electrical, maybe?) that had not been present earlier. "Judging from the other Ancient installations we've found, this thing is probably almost out of power and saving it for the core areas. I'd guess that means we're getting closer to the heart of the thing."
Ronon brought up his big gun into a ready position.
They began to pass doors occasionally -- wide, gray, institutional-looking doors. Rodney tried the first one that they came to; it was not locked and slid jerkily back into a slot in the stone wall, reminding him of the rolling doors in self-service storage units back on Earth. The room behind was dark, bare and empty. Rodney cautiously played his flashlight around the inside and noted Ancient-style power outlets on the walls. He crouched down next to one of them and got a Swiss army knife out of his vest, using the blade to pry open the cover of the outlet.
"Don't know that we got time for this," Ronon said from the doorway.
"Shush. I'm checking something." He'd lost his scanner, but he did still have a small voltmeter and he used this to test the current in the walls. Same voltage as the Ancient standard, on Atlantis and elsewhere -- but weak, with heavy power fluctuations. Rodney straightened with a satisfied smile. Ronon gave him a look that might have been curious, or just impatient.
"It's Ancient, or at least a culture that's had a lot of contact with them," Rodney said, and, out of habit, promptly launched into an explanation as he closed the door. "We figured out after only a few different off-world trips that the voltages an advanced culture uses for its technology are one of the best ways to tell which ones built which items." Actually, Zelenka had figured it out, but he wasn't about to admit that. He'd just been too busy actually doing the work of collecting offworld artifacts to sit around in a lab coming up with esoteric theories. Still, it had been a good idea. Unrelated cultures tended to have incompatible power systems just because of sheer random chance considering the many possible options. Earth -- where different countries still used different power systems -- proved the rule on a microcosmic scale. So they could crudely test cultural diffusion just using a simple voltmeter.
"Plus," Rodney added, pointing at the flickering lights, "I'm positive now that their ZedPM, or whatever they're using, is on its way out. I suppose it's possible that it's just powered down, waiting for somebody with the gene, but the fluctuations that I'm seeing make me think that it's on its last legs."
Ronon grunted. Rodney got the distinct impression that he wasn't interested, and couldn't figure that out. They were standing in a previously undiscovered, underground Ancient facility! What knowledge, what tools and weapons might be down here? Neanderthal ... he was dealing with a Neanderthal.
They passed more doors. Rodney insisted on opening the first couple of them, but when they proved to be as empty as the first room, he started spot-checking. One room was filled with powered-down equipment covered with Ancient dust-sheets, similar to the ones that had been all over Atlantis when they first arrived. Ronon practically had to drag him bodily out of there.
The lights were almost fully operational in this part of the facility. So far, they'd heard nothing, seen no signs of human beings.
It was too good to last.
------
Sheppard moved to unsling the P-90 from his shoulder, and the stranger said, "I wouldn't do that."
There were about a dozen of them, actually -- but only one who seemed willing to talk to them. He stood on top of a boulder about fifty feet away from them, as Earth people measured distance. Teyla had not seen how he got there -- one minute the wasteland around them was deserted, and the next minute, it was full of Cletans, all of them pointing an array of rifles, shotguns and even a few energy weapons at the two visitors.
And they were Cletans, the same hospitable, gentle people who had welcomed her family's traders all those years ago. The same ... yet not the same. She recognized their distinctively braided hair, the cut and style of their clothing, the cultural ornaments that they wore on their arms to indicate marital status and number of children. All these things were Cletan things. But their eyes ... The eyes of the people she remembered had been warm and welcoming. These people's eyes were flat and cold. And their clothes were so covered with dust that they blended with the rocks, their hair matted and dirty. The Cletans she remembered had been meticulously clean -- it was one of their beliefs that an unclean body and an impure mind were an affront to the Ancestors.
"Drop your weapons," the Cletans' spokesman said.
"You first," Sheppard retorted. "Don't do it, Teyla."
She kept her eyes on the spokesman: a lean man, all jutting bones and muscle, with long brown hair under a wide-brimmed hat. His eyes were pale, as blue as Rodney's, and startling in his deeply tanned face. Of all the ragged bunch on the rocks around them, he was the only one who really seemed to belong here, among the stones and the snow. He had the look of an outdoorsman to him. The rest of them gripped their motley assortment of firearms with the white-knuckled clutch of desperation and fear, huddled in their ragged clothes. They looked more like refugees than soldiers.
Teyla sought for familiarity in the faces. Some of these people she thought she had met before, on her previous trips to their world. But she could remember no names.
"I said drop it! I'm not joking."
The antique-looking rifle in his hands barked once, and dust puffed up a few inches from Teyla's feet. Warning shot. She did not flinch, although Sheppard made an incoherent growling noise. The stranger's gloved hand flicked the bolt on the rifle, snapped another cartridge into the chamber.
"So you've been putting in your time on the rifle range. Big deal," Sheppard said. "If you've got any sense, you can see how much more advanced our weapons are than yours. In the time it takes you guys to shoot one of us, we can shoot ten of you."
The rifle raised to point to Teyla's chest. "And you consider that a fair trade, do you?" the stranger wanted to know.
"We are not your enemies," Teyla said. "We are visitors to your world. My people and yours were friends once. You and I may have played together as children."
The man snorted. "Don't make me ask again."
Very slowly, acutely aware of the rifle pointed at her chest, Teyla swiveled her head towards Sheppard and said softly, "I do not think they will hurt us, Colonel. They seem more frightened than anything else."
"Frightened people can be a lot more dangerous than angry ones," Sheppard murmured back. He sounded as if he spoke from experience. His eyes were far away, perhaps in that Afgastan place he had spoken of.
"I concede that you are right. But the only alternative to surrender that I can see is a firefight that would kill all of them and most likely result in one or both of us being injured or killed."
"Gonna give you a five-count," the Cletan leader said, "and then I'm gonna shoot her. One ..."
"Fine!" Sheppard snarled. He threw his P-90 to the ground, followed by his sidearm. Teyla followed suit.
The Cletan spokesman jerked his head at the others, and in moments the two of them were surrounded and forced to their knees. Following their leader's directions, the Cletans stripped their prisoners of their flak vests and all else that they carried: one knife from Sheppard and two from Teyla; their first aid kit, Teyla's fighting sticks, their radios. Their captors produced a soft, strong rope -- surprisingly high-tech-looking -- and bound their hands behind their backs.
"You people need to read up on your Miss Manners," Sheppard snapped as they were dragged to their feet. "This is a pretty crappy way to treat guests."
"He is right," Teyla said coldly. "Our people were allies once. I do not think your forefathers would approve of what you have become."
The Cletan leader strode toward her and struck her across the face. Sheppard lunged forward but was brought up short by two Cletans who moved to defend their leader.
"You defile the Ancestors with your words," he snarled, and turned his back on her. Teyla drew herself upright, licking her lips and tasting blood.
"Hey!" Sheppard yelled at his back. "There were two more of us. What'd you guys do with them? They'd better be alive."
The Cletan leader didn't respond to him. "Let's go home," he told the others. "Bring them."
A smattering of murmurs ran through the ragged group. "Are you sure?" a woman asked finally.
"I'm sure." He didn't look at the prisoners. "I know what I'm doing. Bring them."
Prodded by rifles and dragged by hands, Sheppard and Teyla found themselves the center of a small and very well-armed parade. As they were dragged away, Teyla cast an anxious glance over her shoulder at the hole in the ground, and she noticed Sheppard doing the same thing. Then his eyes found her, and she understood that the Cletans' arrival had only postponed the reckoning that lay ahead for her.
"You people are in so much trouble," Sheppard growled as they were led at an uncomfortable speed down a winding, rock-strewn path that descended the back of the ridge. "You're messing with the U.S. Air Force here, you cretins."
"Cletans," the long-haired man corrected him, striding at the front of the group with a loose, swinging walk.
Sheppard snorted a half-laugh. "You know, I know a guy who has even less of a sense of humor than you do. He's about seven feet tall and looks like a walking bear. He's also got a gun that can blow a hole in your chest the size of a basketball. You seen him, by any chance?"
"Colonel," Teyla murmured.
He directed a stinging glare in her direction. "They know where they are, Teyla. Whatever happened to the temple, they caused it. They know where our teammates are; they just don't want to say."
Perhaps there is a reason why they won't tell us, Teyla thought, but that way lay a guilt so deep she did not want to look at it.
Sheppard, however, appeared to have no intention of allowing her to avoid it. As they trotted down the path, trying to keep their balance and avoid stumbling on loose rocks with their hands tied, he leaned closer to her and muttered, "Please tell me this wasn't part of your plan."
That stung like a slap to the face, until she saw a glint in the hazel eyes and realized that it was just Sheppard being Sheppard. But still it stung. "No. I assure you, I thought this world was deserted. Everything I had heard on the trading worlds indicated that no one lived on this planet anymore."
She fell silent as the path got steeper and they were forced to go single file, Sheppard in front and Teyla behind, occasionally bumping into his back when the variable pace of the people in front of him forced him to slow down suddenly. To their left, the steep slope dropped off into the valley below. There was no cover except the boulders, nowhere to go if they did try to escape. Looking down at the sweep of rocks and dirty snow, Teyla thought that their pathetic attempts to use the boulders for cover on their climb up the hill had probably been completely transparent from above. They had no doubt been watched the entire time.
"So when are you going to tell me?" Sheppard asked, risking a brief look over his shoulder.
"Tell you what?" The question was genuine; she wasn't sure what he meant.
"Why you brought us here. I know what you hoped to accomplish; what I can't figure out is what exactly you were trying to do."
She looked down at his back. "On Athos," she said, "I had to settle many disputes among my people. One of them concerned two brothers who fought over a woman. It became a great feud and threatened to tear their family apart. Their parents tried to mend the relationship, and then came to me and I tried as well. But it was impossible. They could not be reconciled because they would not speak to each other."
She became aware that their captors also seemed to be listening, and fell silent. But Sheppard was still listening as well, and after a moment he prompted, "And ...?"
Teyla sighed. "And one day, the village was attacked by a pack of shaganar -- an Athosian predator," she explained. "Like your cats, that you have told me about -- only very large, and venomous."
She stumbled to avoid bumping into Sheppard, who had suddenly stopped walking. The entire line of people had come to a halt at the end of the path, which petered out in a field of boulders at the foot of a cliff face.
Teyla peered past Sheppard at the leader of the Cletans, who appeared to be having a heated discussion with some of the people at the front of the line. She caught snatches of sentences, heard someone say "...strangers, they don't know any..." and another: "He said there are more of them, and they'll send..." Then the Cletan leader snapped in a clear voice, "Do you see any other way?"
The voices fell softer. Teyla sat back against a boulder, her shoulders aching from the awkward angle of her arms behind her back. Sheppard sat down beside her, glowering at the ring of guns bristling around them.
"You okay?" he asked her, seeing her roll her shoulders to relieve the discomfort.
Teyla nodded. "I am unhurt."
"I think you were telling me a story. Something about big cats?"
Teyla gave him a small, sad smile. "Shaganar," she said. "Yes. The pack had been displaced from their usual hunting territory by a forest fire and were starving and dangerous. They attacked the village and everyone was scattered. It was nearly as bad as a Wraith attack -- chaos, people running about, no one sure where anyone else was. In the confusion, each brother assumed that the other had been killed. I happened to be fighting alongside one of them. He was distraught. Where before, all he could speak of to me was how much he hated his brother, now all he could do was worry and try to find him. I later learned that it had been the same for the other. When they were reunited, their joy was the most beautiful thing I have ever beheld. They became inseparable once again."
Her gaze had fallen to the ground. Slowly, she looked up from Sheppard's boots to settle on his incredulous face. Both his eyebrows had very nearly vanished in his birds-nest hair. "You mean to tell me that this is all part of some kind of master plan to get me and Rodney talking again by making us think the other one is dead?"
"Not dead," Teyla said in a small, faint voice. "Just endangered. And not real danger."
"And you guys think MY plans are stupid?" Sheppard's incredulous expression had morphed into the one that Teyla, after being introduced to the Earth game of poker and its various conventions, had begun to think of as John Sheppard's "poker face" -- a faint smirk, a cocked eyebrow, looking slightly amused and slightly dumb to anyone who didn't know him ... your basic dumb, cocky Earth jet jock. What was going on in the sharp mind under that smirk, though, was anyone's guess, and as Teyla had seen in the past, could range from fury to pain to genuine amusement. As well as she knew the man, she just couldn't tell what he was feeling on many occasions.
"I have never thought any of your plans were stupid," Teyla said. Honesty compelled her to add, "Unwise, perhaps, on occasion. And sometimes most ill-advised. Quite often, poorly planned. But never stupid."
Sheppard had maintained his poker face just fine up until she started listing her string of qualifiers, but by the time she got to the last sentence, the smirk had dissolved in a genuine smile. He got the poker face back up, but it wasn't quite as flat as it had been.
"Colonel..." Teyla began. But before she could find her way to an apology, the Cletans were prodding them back to their feet at riflepoint. The argument seemed to have been resolved in favor of the big outdoorsy guy ... no surprise there. He stood at the base of the cliff face, looking back over his shoulder at them with impatience.
Teyla noticed the variety of expressions on the people around her: some nervous, some afraid, some angry. Where are they taking us? she wondered.
She got her answer a moment later when the Cletan swept his blue eyes across the two prisoners and then turned and walked into the cliff.
Oh. A hologram. She noticed some of the Cletans watching them, apparently waiting for a reaction, looking disappointed that there wasn't one. If only they knew what stranger things she'd seen in the last year...
As the Cletans hustled them forward through the strewn boulders, Teyla realized that this was not one of the tunnel entrances that she knew about. Apparently the Cletans had kept their secrets even from their allies.
Many secrets, it seemed.
Even knowing it was a hologram, she had to close her eyes to force herself to walk into what appeared to be solid stone. She felt no sensation at all as she passed through it, and a moment later she opened her eyes to find herself in a corridor beneath a low stone ceiling. To her surprise, the corridor was lit by bright, flickering ceiling panels -- Ancestor technology, she recognized immediately. When she'd been here before, the tunnels had been dark, illuminated only by the smoky yellow light of torches and lamps.
As their captors led them down the tunnel, Teyla noticed how the lights faded out behind them and brightened ahead, responding to their presence as did certain parts of Atlantis. Was this a different part of the tunnel system than the part the Athosians had been shown? she wondered. Or had the Cletans been hiding the truth even then? Clearly they were more than the simple farming people they had appeared to be.
Sheppard leaned his head towards hers. "You recognize any of this, Teyla?"
It was the first thing he had said since they'd come through the wall -- he hadn't even taunted their captors. At least he was speaking to her. "No, Colonel. I do not believe I have been in this part of the tunnels before. But they are very extensive; at least, so the Cletans told my people."
Sheppard smiled crookedly; her tone must have let him know how she currently felt about anything the Cletans told them. His voice dropped still further. "Think you could find your way back out?"
She nodded without hesitation, but cast a glance at the weapons bristling all around them. "You do not think we can find a way to--"
"I just want to have options if an opportunity presents itself."
The Cletans made no attempt to prevent them from whispering to each other, which was worrisome all by itself. Now that they were inside the tunnels, they seemed much more confident, talking amongst themselves and occasionally shoving their prisoners with the muzzles of their guns.
"Colonel," Teyla said quietly, and he looked at her. "Are you angry at me?"
The eyebrows raised a trifle. "Still trying to figure that out," he said. "I like my people to take initiative. Your course of action leaves a little to be desired, though."
Well, it was something. "If it should make any difference," Teyla said, "I do not believe I will try this sort of thing again. Ever."
"Conspiracies don't suit you," Sheppard agreed.
As they passed through corridor after corner, turn after turn, crossing after crossing, Teyla began to believe that the place was, indeed, as vast as the Cletans had once told her. Their captors moved swiftly, with the ease of long familiarity with the passageways. They passed many rooms, some empty and others filled with darkened equipment; Teyla could recognize nothing in the brief glimpses that she could get, but she thought how excited Rodney would have been, and her heart twisted again.
"This will do," the Cletan leader said suddenly. The two of them were thrust into one of the rooms and the door slammed shut behind them. Teyla fell to her knees, unable to catch herself with her hands tied; she heard a grunt and a thud from Sheppard. Rolling to her feet, she turned around to see Sheppard shaking his head; he'd apparently slammed into a wall. The room was nearly dark, lit only by ambient light from the corridor outside, streaming through an open window in the door.
Sheppard thrust his face to the window and said, "I'll be sure to recommend your local hospitality in the next edition of Pegasus Traveler's Review, right under the Genii homeworld and that planet where we got mind-raped by energy beings. If it's any consolation, so far you're still coming out ahead of the world where the bug attached itself to my neck. Let's make sure it stays that way."
Looking past Sheppard's shock of unruly hair, Teyla could see the puzzled look on the Cletan leader's face, fading slowly into disdain. "I don't think you're in a position to make demands, trespasser," he said.
"Oh, trust me, I haven't even begun to demand things yet."
Teyla edged up to stand next to her team leader. "Perhaps we should introduce ourselves ...?" she offered very quietly.
"No way I'm making nice to these people, Teyla. I think they've made it pretty clear how they feel about us, haven't they?" he challenged the Cletan.
The man shrugged. "We are simply trying to survive. From the look of you and the weapons you carry, you know nothing of hardship. I have no sympathy for you."
He turned away, motioning two of the others to guard their door.
"Hardship?" Sheppard shouted after his back. "You think you can tell me about hardship, huh? How about actually fighting the Wraith, rather than hiding in your bunker? You people are cowards, every last one of you!"
He snarled and kicked at the door -- winced, hopped away on one foot, then kicked the wall. Winced again.
Teyla turned away from him with a small sigh and examined the window in the door. It was about as wide as two of her spread hands and equally as tall. Although there appeared to be no glass blocking it, she could not see how it might help them. The door was made of the smooth hard material that the Ancestors favored for their buildings, and did not appear to have a handle on this side. She sat down on the floor and concentrated on trying to undo her bindings.
After storming around cursing and examining the walls, Sheppard came to sit next to her. "Not a damn thing in here," he said. "I think they've put us in an Ancient closet."
"A storeroom, yes. That makes sense." Teyla shifted her shoulders, trying to twist her fingers around. The bonds were very tight.
"Notice how the lights are flickering?" Sheppard said, jerking his head at the door.
She had noticed it, but had not thought about it. "Yes...?"
"Bet you their energy source, whatever they're using, is just about run down. Since there's nothing else on this world, they must really depend on it. I don't blame them for being half crazy."
Teyla smiled in spite of herself. "Yes, you do."
Sheppard heaved a sigh, grinned back. "Yeah. I do. But only because they tied us up and held us at gunpoint. That tends to put me in a less-than-forgiving mood."
"I think when they come back, we should try to reason with them," Teyla said. "I think they are only afraid of us because they do not trust outsiders. They may have had bad experiences with the Genii or others, or perhaps they have only been isolated for a long time. But I believe they may be willing to become our allies if we can explain to them that we face a common threat."
Sheppard shook his head. "I wouldn't be too sure. Most of them, maybe. But that guy they're taking orders from? He's a toughie. Notice his eyes?"
"They are very blue," Teyla said.
Sheppard laughed, then realized she wasn't joking. "Er, yeah. They're also dead. Lifeless. I've seen that look on other guys, back on Earth, in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It's shell-shock. Too much killing, too much losing people close to you. Eventually you shut down, lose the ability to care about other people. I think this guy's gone over that divide. He doesn't care anymore. There's no telling what he might do."
Sometimes Sheppard truly surprised her with his insights. "But why? There is no war here. This planet appears to be untouched by Wraith."
"Wraith aren't the only enemy in the universe. On Earth we did just fine without them." He laughed without humor. "Maybe they had a civil war. Maybe the Genii came and killed most of them. I don't know. All I know is these people look like war victims to me."
Teyla recalled her earlier thought, that the Cletans reminded her of nothing so much as a group of refugees. "I agree," she admitted. "But victims of what conflict?"
"That's the 64,000 dollar question, isn't it?" Sheppard turned his back to her, and she felt his hands bump against hers. "One thing, though -- they don't seem to have a whole lot of experience at taking prisoners. Since they were so kind as to leave us tied up together, let's see what we can do about that, huh?"
They were still trying to untie each other some time later, when the sound of footsteps and voices outside their door let them know that more of their captors had returned. The ropes around their wrists appeared to be made of some high-tech synthetic material, and only tightened as they struggled. Truly a strange mix of technologies, Teyla thought.
A fist pounded on the door, and the Cletan leader's voice said, "Hey in there. We're opening the door to give you some food. You two, get back against the wall and stay there until we shut the door."
"If we don't?" Sheppard challenged.
"We've been figuring out how to work your weapons. They are very nice. We currently have pointed them at the door. I'm sure you don't want to die."
He watched them through the door as they rose and reluctantly backed up to the far wall. Then the door slid open a crack -- it appeared to slide in and out of the wall -- and a pair of hands shoved a tray through before quickly closing it again.
"And we're supposed to eat with our hands tied?" Sheppard demanded.
"Since we have no intention of untying you, I guess you'll have to."
"A bathroom break would be nice."
"We'll come back later with a bucket."
"You got a name?" Sheppard called, challenging. "It's getting on my nerves, not having anything to call you. Other than 'Shithead', of course."
The Cletan flicked a pale, unreadable glance over his shoulder. "Karmath."
"Well, we're making great strides towardes a beautiful friendship!" Sheppard declared, stepping away from the wall. "I'm Colonel John Sheppard, U.S. Air Force. This is Teyla Emmagan. I can see we're going to be great buddies. Handshakes all around!"
"That remains to be seen," Karmath said, without turning around. "There is a task we need performed. We think you people may be able to do it for us. But we're still discussing it."
"Well, fine. Be sure and let us know what you decide."
"I assure you," he said as he walked away, "you will be the first to know."
Teyla and Sheppard looked at each other. "I really don't like the sound of that," Sheppard said.
Teyla shrugged philosophically. "There is nothing we can do about it now, though. And I am hungry."
In the dim light of their cell, they studied the food on the tray: four bowls of the Ancestors' tough plastic, two containing water and two containing a strange brownish porridge. Teyla sniffed at it. It did not smell unappetizing, but it also did not smell like any food she had ever eaten before.
"What is this stuff?" Sheppard asked, apparently having come to the same conclusion.
"I do not know. It is unfamiliar to me." Teyla hated to debase herself as their captors demanded, but it made no sense to starve themselves out of pride. Swallowing her dignity and forcing herself not to look at Sheppard, she knelt and cautiously touched her tongue to the contents of one of the bowls.
"Well?"
"It is edible, but that is about all I will say for it." Teyla ran her tongue around her mouth thoughtfully. "Actually, it reminds me a little of your MREs."
"Artificial food," Sheppard said, staring at it. "That's what it looks like to me. Like you'd get out of ... I don't know, a Star Trek synthesizer gone wonky. Tell me, Teyla, on all the worlds you've been, have you seen any Ancient devices that make food?"
She shook her head. "No, but that does not mean they do not exist." Looking down at the bowls of brown goo, she said, "I had wondered where they obtain their food, since they seem to have no crops. If you are right, that would be the answer to my question."
Sheppard snorted. "If that's what they eat, no wonder they seem traumatized."
In the end, they drank the water but left the food alone, and went back to trying to loosen their bonds.
"We've missed our check-in with Atlantis," Sheppard said. "When we don't report back, they'll send a team to look for us."
"Which will likely have the same problems that we had, as we have no way to warn them," Teyla pointed out.
"Somewhat less likely, since they probably won't be dumb enough to split up," Sheppard returned.
The words, and the guilt on Sheppard's part that it implied, hung in the air between them. Teyla looked over at Sheppard and saw that he was staring at the wall. "It is not your fault," she said. "If there is blame here, I believe it should be mine."
Sheppard gave a small laugh. "I guess we ought to get out of here first, and lay the blame around later."
Teyla smiled. "I think I can agree with--"
She broke off at the sound of approaching footsteps and voices -- at first too indistinct to make out, but after a moment resolving into a very familiar, nonstop litany of complaints.
"--Geneva Conventions! Ever heard of those? Well, pretty damn soon you're going to wish you'd never heard of those, my friends. Now I think you should take us to your local embassy or whatever pile of rocks passes for one around here, and we'll send a message to our people so the rest of us won't come through the gate and nuke the hell out of the lot of you, all right?"
"Rodney!" Teyla breathed.
Because she happened to be looking in Sheppard's direction, she saw the expression on his face at the sound of that voice -- a quick, nearly instantaneous flash of pure joy. It was replaced by his usual smirk so quickly that she would not have seen it if she hadn't been alert.
The door rumbled open and two more prisoners were shoved unceremoniously through the gap. It slammed quickly shut behind them. Ronon, for of course he was the second prisoner, landed hard on his knees and didn't get back up. Rodney caught himself with his shoulder against the wall, and stared at the two of them.
"Well, as Napoleon might have said as his troops turned back from the Russian campaign, this is a bit disappointing," he said in a voice laden with even more than his usual helping of sarcasm. "I was hoping for a bit more of a, you know, rescue with guns blazing."
"They took our guns," Sheppard said.
"So I inferred, since I don't see any guns in here."
"You're supposed to be the smart one," Sheppard snapped. "How about a little less backtalk and a little more working on a plan to get out of here?"
"I just got here and already you want a plan? How about some unrealistic expectations, Colonel? I thought we established a long time ago that I'm not Superman."
"No one would ever mistake you for him, don't worry," Sheppard retorted nastily.
Teyla decided to ignore them and went down on her knees beside Ronon, who had not raised his head. "Are you all right?" she asked him, concerned.
"I am fine," Ronon said hoarsely.
This distracted McKay, temporarily, from his argument with Sheppard. "He's most certainly not all right. He's got a broken arm and he fought back when they tried to take his gun."
"And several of them are never going to try that again," Ronon rasped with satisfaction.
"Yes, unfortunately the other twenty have no such illusions," Rodney sighed.
Sheppard looked Rodney critically up and down, clearly noting his unbruised condition. He was dirty, but appeared otherwise intact. "Nice to see you jumped right in there to help out your teammate, McKay."
"Hey! What do I look like, Mike Tyson? Unlike some people, I'm smart enough not to try to take on two dozen guys with my bare hands."
"How'd you find that many of them, anyway? This should be good."
McKay rolled his eyes. "If you must know, we'd found a well-lit section of corridors and were opening doors in search of a way out. One of them led into what I suppose, from the look of things, was their mess hall. And I do mean mess -- do you have any idea what these people eat? Oh," he added, noticing the tray on the floor, "I see that you do."
"So you walked into the mess hall..." Sheppard prompted.
"Yeah, and walked right back out again, double-time, with a bunch of pissed-off Mad Max extras on our heels. Unfortunately they were faster and a lot more numerous than we were, and for some stupid reason I talked Conan here out of summarily executing the lot of them ... well, the reason being that the remaining ones would probably have shot us before he could manage to mow them all down. It worked great until they laid their hands on his gun."
Teyla was trying to examine Ronon's injuries as best she could in the dim light without using her hands. He was terribly bruised, one of his eyes almost swollen shut, but his nose and jaw were unbroken and the damage seemed to be mostly on the surface. She saw with anger that they had bound together his wrists even though one of his arms was clearly broken. At least they'd had the decency to tie his hands in front of him rather than twisting his arms behind. He kept fidgeting his hands as she examined him; she thought he was just uncomfortable until she saw a glimmer between his fingers and realized that he was very carefully cutting his bonds with a small knife.
"Did they allow you to keep that?" she asked softly, surprised.
Ronon's teeth gleamed in a quick grin. "It was up my sleeve."
"Oh."
His ropes parted and he passed her the knife. She quickly busied herself cutting herself free.
On the other side of the cell, Rodney and Sheppard were still at it. "... without a thought, as usual!"
"Oh, because you're an absolute paragon of foresight and self-restraint, Colonel, sir!"
"Maybe I could find us a way out of here if you'd put a cork in your mouth for one minute, McKay!"
"Excuse me? You admitted yourself that I'm the one with the brains in this outfit, remember? I'm not the one who shoots anything that moves and calls it a plan, hm?"
Ronon stirred next to her. "I could hit 'em both over the head," he offered in a low rumble. "Peace and quiet for a little while, anyway."
Teyla couldn't resist the small smile that twitched at the corners of her mouth. "No, they would only wake up testier than before," she murmured. "It is a tempting idea, though."
The ropes around her wrists parted with a tiny snap. Teyla looked up from massaging the feeling back into her fingers, to see Ronon watching her with something akin to apprehension. She smiled hesitantly back at him. "Thank you," she said.
The answering smile that broke across his bruised face was oddly beautiful.
"Will you be well?" Teyla asked him. "I can help you care for your injuries."
He shook his head. "Got no first aid supplies. Not a whole lot we can do 'till we get out of here."
Teyla nodded and rose, approaching her other teammates with her arms kept to the shadows just in case their guards took a peek through the window.
"I said put a sock in it, McKay!"
"Ha, you can't order me around anymore. I'm not on your team, remember?"
"You're still on my damn team until we get back to Atlantis and Elizabeth damn well reassigns you somewhere else!"
"Excuse me..." Teyla tried.
"Ha ha, that may be true of you jarheads, but I'm civilian and as a civilian, I can quit my job any time I want, and I just quit!"
"You can't quit until I tell you you can quit!" Sheppard bellowed, the veins standing out on his neck.
"Civilian! Civilian! Allow me to spell it out for you in small syllables. Civ-il-ian!"
"You know what? If you want off my team, the sooner the better I say. You want off? Fine! You're off! Happy?"
McKay didn't look happy -- at all. Anger was like a mask across his features, flattening their usual expressiveness. "Just like that?" he snarled. "It's that easy for you, is it?"
Teyla groaned and, coming up behind him, slit McKay's bonds with a quick, expert slash of the knife. Since he'd been jerking his arms as he talked in an unconscious effort to move them, his hands immediately flew out from his sides and spread wide in a gesture of exasperation. There they stopped, as he realized with shock that he could move his arms again. Rodney stared from one hand to the other as if they'd suddenly turned into frozen chicken drumsticks on the ends of his arms. "Um?" he said in a small voice.
Teyla interposed her body between him and the door, holding up the knife so he could see it. "Dr. McKay," she said. "Kindly do not let the guards see that you are free."
"Oh. Right." His arms went down again, as she turned to Sheppard and set him free as well.
"You didn't mention that you had this earlier?" Sheppard wanted to know.
"It's Ronon's."
"Trust Ronon," Sheppard said, grinning. He completely ignored McKay as he brushed past him to the runner sitting on the floor. "Nice work, big guy."
Ronon grunted. "They're coming back," he said.
Indeed, they heard voices outside the door. Teyla helped Ronon to his feet and the four Atlanteans flattened themselves against the walls, out of sight of the door.
The Cletan leader, Karmath, appeared in the window, blocking the light. "Planning something in there?" he said. "I think you'll want to hear this."
They didn't respond. Teyla's fingers itched for a stick, a gun ... anything.
"The decision has been made," Karmath said. He looked ... relieved, Teyla thought, as if a great burden had been lifted off his shoulders. She did not like that, not at all. "You will be able to help us after all." He gestured to his guards. "Open the door."
The door slid back and light flooded into the room. Sheppard started to gesture to Ronon and Teyla, indicating which way they should go, but before he could do more than raise his hand, Ronon was on the move -- whipping out another knife (where he had hidden this one, Teyla could not tell; he'd been too quick) and hurtling it. However, still dizzy from his injuries, his aim was badly, and uncharacteristically, off; the knife went wide. Red light flashed and Ronon went down like a ton of bricks in the hallway. Teyla looked up, blinking the spots from her eyes, to see one of the Cletans holding Ronon's gun.
"Good one, Ronon," Sheppard growled under his breath as he was manhandled out into the hallway. "We'll have to have a little talk about chain of command later."
"Any other heroes?" Karmath demanded. "I didn't think so." He pointed to Ronon and told two of the others, "Carry him. Keep a gun at his head at all times. If the rest of them try anything ... kill him."
And so they were bound again, their escape attempt ingloriously aborted before it had a chance to begin. Teyla was silent, while Sheppard launched into a new round of insults and Rodney into a round of complaints. As they were led away down the hall, Teyla found that she kept looking towards her teammate being carried alongside them. He was so still.
"Do not worry," Karmath said to Teyla. "During the fighting in which we captured that man, some of my people were shot with his gun and they recovered with no ill effects."
Teyla's mouth went dry as she realized how easy it would have been for the Cletans to have accidentally bumped the controls on Ronon's gun from its stun setting to something far more lethal. Since there wasn't a giant hole in his chest, however, she had to assume it was still on stun.
Behind her, she realized that Rodney and Sheppard's motor-mouths had once again been turned from their captors to each other. She rolled her eyes before she could stop herself.
"... worst escape plan in the history of escape plans. You do realize this."
"I didn't have time to come up with an escape plan, McKay. We'd just got our hands free, for crying out loud."
"Well, you'll excuse me if it looked like one of your plans, what with all the aimless running around, lack of communication and people shooting at us."
"You know, McKay, you wanted off the team; I fired you; you quit. Now you're off the damn team. What do I have to do to get you to shut up?"
Maybe, Teyla thought, allowing the tiny doubt to creep in for the first time ... maybe some things were too broken to repair?
"Those men are clearly enemies," said a voice at her elbow, and she nearly jumped. "Yet you appear to be friends with both of them. That can't be easy for you."
Teyla turned her head to see that Karmath had dropped back to walk alongside her. "They have not always been enemies," she said.
He nodded. "I see. And your people and mine were once friends. Times change, then. I know this well."
"What did change here?" Teyla asked. "According to all I had heard, your people left through the ring of the Ancestors and went to other, greener worlds. Was this wrong?"
Karmath snorted. "Those you see around you are the only true Cletans who remain. Those who left -- we do not consider them kin to us. They are no longer welcome here. That is why we have set traps at most of the entrances to the tunnels -- such as the one your friends accidentally triggered. We have no intention of allowing the blasphemers back into this holy place. They violated the Ancestors' wishes, abandoned the world the Ancestors had given us. We, those who stayed behind, are the ones who trust in the Ancestors' plan."
"What is their plan?" Teyla asked quietly.
"How should we know? The Ancestors are far wiser than us. We are waiting for the true wisdom of their plan to be revealed -- for their purpose for Cleta to unfold. The cowards who left us claimed that the world was dying, that the Ancestors had abandoned us. They did not have faith."
His blue eyes had taken on a glow that Teyla had seen before -- among Chaya's followers, and among the deeply religious on other worlds. "What will you do if this world becomes incapable of sustaining life?" she asked.
"That will never happen to us. Down here, the Ancestors provide for us." He waved his hand around. "See how it is light and warm. The Ancestors give us all the things we need for life -- food, clothing, shelter. They will continue to provide for us as long as we keep the faith and wait until they need us."
"I see." Teyla looked around. The corridors seemed deserted except for their armed escort, and she wondered how many of these people were left. She had seen no children, no old people. "Perhaps you can answer a question that I have," she said. "When I was a child, your people showed these tunnels to my people. But they did not look like this. They were cold and dark."
"Ah, the tunnels near the surface are dead," Karmath explained. "Once, we thought that all the tunnels were like that. But as the surface grew more hostile, we explored more deeply and that is how we discovered this wonderful sanctuary that the Ancestors had left for our use. We believe that we were meant to live down here from the first. The Ancestors did not intend the surface to have to support our people, and that's why it became barren, destroyed by our grazing animals. The Ancestors do not make mistakes. It was only through my people's ignorance of the Ancestors' true plan --"
"Don't make mistakes, huh?" Rodney apparently had been listening in on their conversation, and now he attempted to shoulder his way back to them, only to be thwarted by a couple of hostile-looking Cletans with rifles in hand. "Don't make mistakes? Let me tell you about the Ancients' mistakes. Let me tell you about something they built on a world called Duranda --"
"McKay --" Sheppard hissed in a low, threatening voice. The threat in his voice, however, was nothing compared to the naked hostility in Karmath's blue eyes as he spun around on the scientist.
"How dare you." Karmath's eyes blazed; his body was stiff with furious tension. Teyla saw, out of the corner of her eye, that Sheppard had made an instinctive move to protect Rodney, only to be shoved back by more of their guards. Perhaps things were not so broken after all, she thought. "How dare you question the Ancestors' wisdom! Next to them, we are worms, incapable of understanding the simplest things!"
"Speak for yourself," Rodney retorted.
Karmath raised a hand to strike him -- Sheppard tensed up like a coiled spring -- and then lowered it. "I believe you will be the first," he said, raking Rodney with a knife-edged glare as a cold smile curved the corners of his mouth.
Anger warred with fear and suspicion in Rodney's eyes. "Er ... the first to what?"
"You'll see soon," Karmath said. "We're here."
One of their guards opened a door, and they were led inside. This room was larger than any of the rooms they'd seen previously, and looked far more like Atlantis than the hallways outside, in both its panels-and-glass decor and in the banks of equipment along the walls. Clearly, Teyla thought, this had been some kind of control room. Most of the equipment was dark and dead-looking, like that in the other rooms they'd passed, but some parts of it were lit up with flashing crystals. At the far side of the room, against the wall, her eyes were drawn to a white chamber with a metal disc in the floor and a matching one in its ceiling. Apprehension clutched at her throat. She really did not like the look of this at all.
"Put them there," Karmath ordered, and the captured Atlanteans were dumped against the wall by the door. Ronon groaned faintly when he hit the floor. Bending over him, Teyla saw that his eyes showed beneath half-raised lids -- glazed, but aware. After the small moan, however, he remained still and silent, observing the people in the room.
Rodney was observing too, but his attention was fixed on the equipment rather than the people. "This place is a mess," he said. "Are you a bunch of pigs? No wonder nothing works! Look at all the dust on those crystals. Er, why are we here?"
Karmath made a rather ironic, courtly gesture. "Welcome to the heart of this place," he said. "No outsiders have ever been here before. This is the incinerator room."
There was a long silence. Sheppard broke it.
"The what?" he said.
"The incinerator room." Karmath smiled at them. Perhaps the Atlanteans had disappointed them before, with their matter-of-fact reaction to the Cletans' advanced technology, but finally, here was something they did not understand. "Didn't you wonder where the energy to power this place comes from? This is it. The incinerator."
Rodney's head was cocked to one side, his eyes bright. "Tell us about this incinerator," he said, in his What the hell are you ON? tone of voice.
"You're looking at it." Karmath gestured to the white chamber. "We did not understand the function of this place at first. We did not understand until one of us accidentally walked into it and activated it. He was burned to death in an instant -- all that remained was a sprinkling of ash. And the lights, which had been fading, brightened immediately. Lights began to come on in parts of the corridors that we had not been able to activate. Machines which had been starting to malfunction suddenly had power again. And finally we understood. When we lived on the surface, we used to burn all our trash and the bodies of our dead. We even burned the dung of our cattle to generate heat for our homes. This place works just the same way ... except that it only works on living human beings. We tried it on trash and all manner of dead things, even dead people. Only a living human being will do."
The Atlanteans stared at him. Even Ronon seemed to have nearly stopped breathing. Finally Rodney spoke, and what he said was a typical Rodney question, odd and nonsensical and having, apparently, nothing to do with the real problem at hand. "How much ash, did you say?"
"Only a tiny amount." Karmath ran his finger over one of the dusty crystals, held it up to show him. "Just like this. That is how completely it consumes a body, converting it all into pure energy to power this place."
"I see," Rodney said, staring at the white chamber with a speculative, intense look on his face. "Very interesting."
"I'll probably regret asking this," Sheppard said grimly, "but how many, er, living human beings have you fed into this thing?"
"Only as many as we must," Karmath retorted, too quickly. "Of course, we use criminals, and volunteers -- the terminally ill, the very aged, the suicidal. But over time, each new ... energy source has fed it for less and less time."
One of the other Cletans spoke up suddenly. "That's why we started the lotteries."
"Lotteries?" Teyla repeated, horrified comprehension dawning.
A shudder went through Karmath. "Yes, lotteries," he snapped. "It is the only way. Otherwise, we begin to lose heat and light, lose the ability to make food. Those of our people who are chosen understand that their sacrifice is necessary so that all may live. All of us are happy to make this sacrifice, when we are chosen. I will have you know that my own daughter has had that honor."
Both Sheppard and McKay looked pale. Teyla swallowed and stared at the man in dismay. He barely looked older than herself; how could he have an adult child? Surely he did not mean ... "How old was your daughter?" she asked, hearing herself as if from a great distance.
"She was four years old," Karmath said.
Sheppard regained his voice first. "You inhuman bastard."
"It is necessary!" Karmath's voice rasped in his throat. "Any of us would gladly walk into that fire! My daughter died with great honor and went to join the Ancestors, just three days ago! And now the Ancestors have rewarded us for our faith by sending you."
"So that we can feed your damned machine? I don't think so!"
Around them, the guns rose to form a ring with the four Atlanteans at its heart. "You have no choice," Karmath said. "It's the Ancestors' will."
"The Ancestors are not gods, that you should worship them and make sacrifices in their name!" Teyla cried, furious. "Your very existence is an affront to them!"
Rodney spoke slowly, staring at Karmath. "So when you said I'd be the first..."
"You will be the first to walk into the incinerator," Karmath said, appearing to relish his words. "Unless you would rather watch your friends go before you."
"The hell you're gonna do that to him!" Sheppard flared. "To any of us!"
But Rodney was already struggling to his feet, not looking at Sheppard. "That's fine," he said. "I accept."
All the breath left Teyla's lungs as if she'd been struck. Beside her, she felt Ronon stiffen.
As Rodney moved into the circle of guns, Sheppard said, "Hey. Wait." It finally seemed to be sinking into his head that this was serious, that they were serious, that Rodney was serious. "Wait!"
"I know what I'm doing, Sheppard."
"Yeah -- you're throwing your life away trying to make a point! Get back here, you moron! That's an order!"
"I'm off your team, remember?" With his back ramrod-straight, Rodney allowed himself to be led across the room and into the chamber. He turned around, facing out towards the room, not meeting his teammates' eyes. His face was almost as white as the walls of the chamber.
Teyla could find no words. Desperately she forced her hands against her bonds, but the knots held tight. Beside her, Sheppard had flung himself forward, only to have one of the Cletans strike him in the face with the butt of his rifle. He fell to the floor with a groan, and still tried to struggle upright again.
"Stop it!" Rodney snapped, apparently speaking both to Sheppard and his captors. To Karmath, he said, "They'd better quit hitting him or I won't do this. I mean it. If you want my cooperation, you have to promise me that my teammates won't be harmed."
"You have my word on that, as long as they don't try to escape." Karmath glanced over his shoulder. "They will be treated as guests. This is, after all, a great honor."
"Honor my ass!" Sheppard bit out. With his face pressed to the floor, he'd twisted his head to the side so that he could speak. Blood ran down his face from a split lip. "Rodney, get your butt out of that machine this minute!"
Rodney stared at him, his eyes shadowed and sad. It seemed to Teyla that he was trying desperately to express something he couldn't bring himself to say. What he finally said, though, was, "You still don't trust me, huh, Sheppard?"
"You're standing in a goddamn incinerator, McKay -- don't tell me this is all part of some grand plan!"
Rodney gave him one last, desperate stare, then turned to Karmath. "Turn it on. Get this over with."
Karmath looked at him for a moment with something approaching respect, then moved forward and quickly slit the rope with which they'd re-tied his hands. "You should not go before the Ancestors bound like a criminal," he said. "You have chosen to meet your fate with dignity."
"Yeah, yeah," Rodney snapped, very pale. "Just turn the damn thing on."
"Rodney!" Sheppard screamed, as the Cletans reached for the controls. The cry cut Teyla to the very depths of her soul.
Light flared in the room, a light so blinding that Teyla had to turn her head away, twist her eyes shut. Even this far away, she could feel the heat. When she opened her eyes, blinking rapidly, there was no sign of Rodney McKay ... just a few light particles of ash, as fine as dust, drifting down in the middle of the white chamber. The metal disc in the floor glowed red-hot, quickly fading as the heat dissipated.
Teyla's fingers constricted, fighting her bonds as she fought the tears rising behind her eyes. No ... Rodney ... How could she have made such a dreadful mistake? Her eyes crept sideways to her teammates. Ronon had closed his eyes as if he'd fallen asleep, though she could tell by the tension in his body that he was very much awake. Sheppard's face was shockingly white against the brilliance of the blood staining his lower lip, staring at the incineration chamber as if he could bring Rodney back by sheer force of will alone.
"Colonel," Teyla whispered through stiff lips. She did not know what to say, what to do. How had it all gone so wrong? "I am so, so sorry... if I had known ..."
The look that he turned on her silenced her utterly. That must have been the look that he'd given Rodney after Duranda. No wonder McKay had been desperate to get back in the Colonel's good graces. There was anger, lots of anger, but worse, a cold, stony disappointment. I thought better of you, that look said, but I will never think so again.
And Teyla's heart broke, for in her effort to reconcile her friends, she had killed one of them and, she feared, cost herself the friendship of another. There was no way she could ever make up for this.
------
tbc...