Chapter 2
Teyla ran her fingers over the rough, weathered surface. The rock was mottled with patches of coloured lichens and criss-crossed with fissures and cracks in which tiny alpine flowers had made a home.
"I cannot make out any features, Rodney," she said.
"Try looking at them from here," said John, standing a little way off. He squinted and turned his head on one side. "I can see eyes. And maybe a nose."
"They're just lumps of rock," said Ronon, casually kicking one.
"They're over ten thousand years old, Conan! Exposed to all the extremes of weather and temperature! How do you think you'd look?" Rodney continued to scrutinise the weathered rocks, muttering, his nose nearly grazing the surface.
Teyla stood, possibly eye-to-eye with one of the statues. They were approximately her height and were separated by a distance about equal to the width of the Jumper. She moved so that she was exactly between them and faced the mountains, where Rodney had said there was a path. She could see nothing, but there was probably a route between two peaks; a steep-sided valley, that looked like it narrowed to a ravine in the distance.
"Definitely Ancient construction," said Rodney, pointing a hand-held scanner at one of the statues. "Very ancient Ancient, I'd say. Pity there's no text visible."
"'Abandon hope, all ye who enter here'? Or maybe, 'Speak, friend and enter!'" said John.
Teyla recognised the Lord of the Rings reference; she had found the sequence in the Mines of Moria most disturbing.
"There is no underground entrance here!" she said.
John looked slightly put out. "I couldn't think of a quote for Shangri-la," he said.
"Is this a mission or a book group?" said Rodney, sharply. "Let's focus here!" He stood up from his crouched investigation, easing his back stiffly. "We need to follow this route, into the mountain range."
John looked up at the cloudless blue sky, shading his eyes, and then at the western peaks, the highest of which were wreathed in light swirls and wisps of grey.
"Weather looks good. Still a few hours of daylight." He clapped his hands together. "Let's go, folks!"
oOo
"Why've you turned the display off?" demanded Rodney.
"I need to concentrate, McKay," replied John, carefully guiding the Jumper along the forbidding ravine. "I couldn't see through all that psychedelia, or whatever you had going on up there."
"Essential data, Sheppard!"
"Essential 'not-crashing', Rodney!"
John ignored Rodney's further protests and was grateful to hear Teyla's calm murmurings, which resulted in silence. Worried about losing the trail, John had decided against flying safely above the range in favour of following the route slowly, close to ground level; a decision he was regretting, as the sides of the cut narrowed and became nearly vertical, winding first one way and then the other, very gradually gaining in height. John blinked and rubbed his forehead. A canteen of water appeared in front of him; he took it and drank, muttering his thanks. A particularly sharp, narrow turn made his heart beat faster and he felt the muscles at the back of his neck tighten painfully; he'd end up with a migraine if he couldn't relax a bit soon, but there must only have been a couple of feet clearance on that one and he had to keep focussed.
Then the ground rose sharply and the Jumper emerged into a more open area. John surveyed the base of the canyon, hoping for a ledge or some kind of level area where he could land, but there was nothing. The ground was a contortion of jagged edges, precipices and slopes of treacherous, dry scree; nowhere to land and not a fun hiking route. There would have to be something well worth investigating soon, or he'd be calling the mission off.
"I'm gonna bring up your display here, where there's a bit more space, McKay. You can check out your readings."
John called up Rodney's sensor settings and once more the HUD became flooded with colour.
"The base of the canyon's marked with naquadah compounds, said Rodney. "So at least we're still on track."
"There weren't any turn-offs, McKay. Of course we're still on track."
"Yes, well, it's good to see that verified, anyway! And look, here the ravine splits and goes off in two directions; we need to take the northerly one."
The trail continued to climb and narrowed again; John reduced the HUD display once more, retaining just the search for the traces of Ancient building materials. Then there was a sudden turn into a notch in the side of the canyon, leading south west and John couldn't possibly take the Jumper into it. He pulled it into a steep ascent, and as they topped the rise he saw a sharp mountain peak, a few clicks distant, a ragged streak of cloud curling over its summit indicating fierce high-altitude wind-speed. John angled the Jumper to take in the terrain below; the display indicated the trail as a narrow, intermittent red line, crossing rifts and crevasses and sometimes disappearing altogether. John moved the Jumper forward slowly and hovered over an area where there was no trace of red.
"That look like an impact crater to you?"
"Yes," said Rodney. "Not a very big one in the grand scheme of craters, but, yes." He sounded depressed, as if he could see another potential ZPM slipping through his fingers. Either that or a large crater with a cartoon sign at the bottom saying 'RIP ZPM'.
The sky had clouded over, as if to match Rodney's mood. John picked up the trail and carried on, the flying easier, at least, even if the landscape was as cut and broken as if it had been smashed by giant hammers. He felt a looming presence at his shoulder and glanced up to see Ronon, glaring at the peak ahead of them, accusingly.
"What?"
"Looks funny."
"Funny in what way?" said Rodney. "Oh!"
At the exact moment of Rodney's exclamation, the sun, lowering in the sky behind the mountain dipped beneath the cloud base and its rays struck the jagged peak and were refracted about the landscape in a myriad of bright, rainbow splinters of light.
"There it is!" said Rodney.
"What? I don't see..." John looked again at the peak and it was as if he suddenly saw through an illusion. The eastern side of the mountain rose, rugged and grey, the random cruelty of nature in its lines; but the other side, the western side, glowed with more than the light of the failing day. Cliffs seemed to resolve themselves into walls, rocky spires became ruined towers and at the very top, were the great, broken shards of some transparent material that had split the light to send pinks and golds dancing on the weathered verdigris of a complex so ancient that it had become part of the mountain itself.
oOo
Rodney stirred his MRE with his spork, bad temperedly, if it were possible to stir something bad-temperedly; with a spork, of all things. And, as far as Rodney was concerned it was entirely possible, natural and inevitable.
"I still don't see why we couldn't just go back to the Helg," he said.
John stopped eating, left his spork in the MRE pouch (Who named these things, anyway? Rodney thought. Spork. Ridiculous!) and rubbed his face, tiredly. And he's not the one who was straining his eyes over reams of data for hours on end!
"We've been through this, McKay. That climb," John waved through the Jumper wall toward the mountain, "is gonna be tough! We need to be on the move at first light, get up there, see what's what and, if we have to, get back down again. You're lucky we're not hiking from the start of the path." John picked up his spork and resumed his meal, as if signalling, 'end of discussion.' Rodney carried on eating too, hungry enough to comply with John's non-verbal signal.
He had some kind of chicken stew, its taste comfortingly bland; and he thought there was some cake left, so things weren't all bad, even though they'd be sleeping on the floor of the Jumper tonight. The wind roared against the sides of the ship, gusting fiercely even down into the base of the crater where they'd landed. John had taken the Jumper up and circled around the peak in which the Ancient facility, outpost, (maybe even palace), appeared to be embedded, and Rodney had been encouraged by some faint energy readings; perhaps a ZPM lurked in the depths of the mountain, like the Arkenstone in Smaug's lair. But there had been no safe landing place anywhere nearer than the blasted rocky slopes several kilometres away, the bowl of one of the craters proving big enough for the Jumper and giving some protection against the elements.
"Be good to get out there, get moving," Ronon rumbled. "Sick of being cooped up in here."
"I, too, will be glad of the exercise," Teyla agreed. "And the fresh air," she added, looking at nobody in particular, Rodney hoped.
"It'll be tough," John reiterated. "And we'll be carrying all our gear; tents, food, enough for a few days."
"I don't see why you all look at me!" Rodney said, noticing three pairs of eyes giving him uneasy glances. "I'm in peak physical condition, I'll have you know!" The eyes looked away, back to their meals. "I hope there aren't any of those grenza about, though." He recalled, with a shudder, his experience the previous winter: the towering black shape that had loomed over him, claws glinting in the moonlight and its dreadful, primeval cry. It had taken a rocket-launcher to finish the thing.
"They'll be out there," said Ronon, with a certain air of grim satisfaction that Rodney thought totally unnecessary.
"We'll have to stay alert," said John. "So, we'll need a good night's sleep."
oOo
Teyla rolled up her sleeping bag tightly and forced it into her bulging pack. Her eyes felt heavy, her thoughts sluggish and she hoped some fresh air would clear her head. Nobody had slept well. The wind had blown fiercely all night, whistling and shrieking around the crater so that it was easy to imagine the ship being surrounded by a pack of grenza, their claws scraping away at the hull. At one point, Teyla had felt the ship rocking and had jerked awake to thoughts of attack. John had struggled his way out of his sleeping bag and altered the settings on the inertial dampeners, muttering about the strength of the wind, and Teyla had drifted back into a fitful doze. When cheerless grey light had begun to filter into the Jumper, they had dismally consumed cold MREs, still wrapped in their sleeping bags, and then begun to prepare for their journey.
The hatch opened and Teyla felt her muscles tighten against the shock of the cold air. The wind had dropped from storm force to merely blustery, but it still seemed to work its way into her clothes, making her shiver. She shouldered her pack, checked her P90, clipped it on; she was ready. They trooped down the ramp and John closed the hatch, his face set, revealing no misgivings, military procedure taking over. Ronon looked eager, Rodney miserable.
"'Kay, Teyla on point, Ronon, six," John directed, laconically. "Take your time," he said to Teyla. "Find the best route." He looked round at all three of his teammates. "This is gonna be tough. We take regular breaks. If you need to stop, say so." He paused. "Move out."
As she crested the lip of the crater, Teyla felt the wind push at her body and strands of hair whipped around her face. The sky was the uniform grey-white of a thin, but complete cloud cover, the peak above them featureless and dull, its towers and walls merging into the surrounding rock. Teyla scanned the uneven ground before her, noting areas that were probably firm, patches of loose scree to avoid, and hidden dips where there might be deep crevasses. She set forward, her boots crunching on the gritty surface, and heard her companions follow her, their varying treads and the bluster of wind in her ears the only sounds in the bleak, blasted landscape.
oOo
"It's gonna be tough," John had said. And then he'd said it again. And then, before they'd set off, just in case it hadn't sunk in, he'd repeated his gloomy prediction. And he'd been right, damn him, thought Rodney, trying to suppress a whimper of sheer misery.
At first, he'd been cold, right down to his bones, the chill wind finding its way into every chink, and freezing fingers and toes, numbing the tip of his nose and making it run continually. Now, though, the cloud had cleared, and the sun scorched down, doing its best to burn his skin from above and blind him from below, its glare reflecting off the bare rock. His sun-screen mixed with his sweat to drip off his forehead and sting his eyes; he'd have to stop and reapply it again in a minute.
The extremes of temperature weren't the worst thing, though, nor even the distance they had to travel, or the occasional full-on, hands and feet climbing involved. It was the total lack of any even walking surface that was so draining, never more than two or three safe strides together where the footing was sure and he could get into an easy rhythm. The surface consisted of broken, shifting rock, where sometimes he had to jump from point to point, watching carefully where Teyla, or, as they swapped pretty often, Ronon had trodden. There were rifts of various widths, which, so far, they'd been able to step or jump over, sometimes narrow ridges, where a step either side would lead to disaster and almost certainly serious injury, but above all, the continual, relentless, two hops up, one jump down, over cruelly sharp, unfriendly jags, like the mountain had bared its teeth to warn travellers away. Or, thought Rodney, less poetically but more scientifically (although, geology was just a small subset of the more important sciences), forces acting on the rock had split and deformed the strata to varying angles of between zero and forty-five degrees from the vertical, instead of just, please God, just leaving it the hell alone so that he could walk in a straight line, for the love of...
"You okay, Rodney?"
Rodney looked up from his head-down, hands-on-knees, gasping-for-breath position. John leant over him, and Rodney saw his own red-faced exhaustion reflected in John's shades. Without waiting for a reply, John called, "Take five!" and Rodney, with relief, lowered himself to the ground, struggling even to find a sufficiently butt-friendly spot to sit on so that he could rest. He felt his pack being lifted off his shoulders and heard its heavy thump as it landed on the ground. Then a canteen of water and a power bar appeared before him. He drank. He ate. He looked up, and was surprised by the distance they had come and the height they had gained.
Ronon was standing at the edge of a precipice, strong and brooding, his hair highlighted gold against the pure blue sky, looking down over the unfriendly landscape, like an ancient warrior king surveying his domain. Rodney thought, enviously, that Ronon could probably climb all day and still be in fighting form at the end. Teyla sat, relaxed, tipping a stone out of her boot, the sheen of sweat on her skin giving her a natural, healthy glow; whereas Ronon fought against the landscape, as if it were an invigorating challenge, Teyla always appeared able to work alongside nature, finding the rhythm of the terrain and fitting herself in as part of a pattern that only she could see.
Rodney turned to John, who was sitting next to him, wriggling, as if he, too, had struggled to find a remotely comfortable perch. He'd taken off his shades and was wiping the sweat off his face and neck with a handkerchief. His cheeks looked slightly windburned and his hair drooped.
"Caradhras the Cruel?" John said, jerking his head in the direction of the peak looming above them.
"Huh, yes," agreed Rodney. "But at least it's not snowing."
Rodney broke out another power bar and offered one to John, who took it. Wrappers crinkled, bars were munched.
"I tell you what I didn't like about the Lord of the Rings, the book, that is," said John. "Moments like this, when they were just trying to have a break, someone'd always kick off with a song or poem, usually about elves you'd never heard of. I mean, who cares, right?"
"I forced myself to read them, as an exercise in mental discipline," said Rodney. John laughed. "So, we can agree a ban on morale-boosting recitations, then?"
"My sidearm's right here, if anyone gets the urge," said John, patting his thigh holster.