Chapter 6
Teyla did not know much about the development of Ancient technology, but she recognised that this was different, even apart from the layout and shape of the room. It was octagonal, and instead of many separate cubicles, there was a very large, central, floor-to-ceiling cylindrical tank. Its sides were transparent, like glass, but Teyla could not see into its depths; it was like looking down through a frozen lake, seeing shapes, but being unsure whether they were fish or merely flaws in the ice. She turned to regard the rest of the room. The stairs occupied one side of the octagon, but the other seven sides were lined with displays and consoles that bore little resemblance to those in the grenza area and, to Teyla, did not seem to have much in common with the technology on Atlantis either.
Rodney was in his element, his eyes interrogating the room, a running commentary burbling from his lips like a fast-flowing brook. After several circuits he sat cross-legged on the floor, a briar patch tangle of cables in his lap, his quick hands selecting and discarding, working out a way to access the information stored in the room, his anticipation bright and eager. Teyla was reminded of a furren she had seen trying to eat a tough-shelled bird's egg, intent upon its work, sharp teeth and claws snapping and chipping toward the richness within.
Ronon lounged by the entrance, John peered into the depths of the tank.
"I can't make it out," he said, blinking. "It's like one of those magic eye things; you think you see something, then it's gone."
"I do not think there can be anything in there at all," Teyla said. "Perhaps this experiment was abandoned."
John shrugged. "Maybe. You got anything, there, McKay?"
"Give me a chance! This is completely different from anything I've come across before! Well, maybe not completely different, but different enough to be a challenge, even for me!"
"How long?" John asked, which was a mistake, Teyla thought, and she was proved right by the resulting tirade.
"This long!" spluttered Rodney, his hands held wide apart. "Or maybe just as long as it takes for you to drive me insane with your military-minded, deadline-driven obsessiveness!"
"Whoa! Calm down, McKay. I only asked!"
Rodney glared, then unleashed a brief squall of keystrokes at his laptop and spun it round to face John. Large, flashing green and red letters lit up the screen: 'Silence! Genius at work!'
"Perhaps we should consider our water supplies, John," said Teyla, diplomatically. "There does not appear to be any running water in this area. Will we stay here overnight?"
"At this rate, yes," said John, tightly. He sighed, ran one hand round the back of his neck and smiled at her ruefully. "You're right. As usual. Ronon, you stay here, keep an eye on McKay. Teyla and I'll go and refill the canteens."
Ronon stared at John impassively, and even after years' acquaintance, Teyla couldn't guess the thoughts running through his mind.
"Be careful," he said.
oOo
John had emptied his pack and now it held only their canteens. They had opened the doors that led back into the ruined section and stood, looking into the darkness, listening hard for several minutes before Ronon had shut and locked the door behind them.
John was uneasy. It was the usual problem; how to balance the safety of his team against the risks of the mission. He was almost certain they would, if they succeeded, come out of this mission with something good; a ZPM to power Atlantis, a weapon to use against the Wraith, some other tech that McKay would adapt to their advantage, maybe all of the above. But the dangers of this place were unknown, unpredictable; even a simple water run was fraught with risk.
"We'll try that place that McKay thought was a bathhouse," said John, quietly. "There was a trickle of water running through it."
Teyla, a silhouette ahead of him, didn't reply. She held her weapon ready and John could see the tension in her shoulders, her swift glances, left, right and upward. He turned, feeling the potential energy in his muscles also, the pent-up aggression, the fizz of adrenaline, readying him for explosive action. He swept his P90 back and forth, following the beam of light with his eyes. There was nothing there but the long darkness of the tunnelled passageway; he turned back and followed Teyla toward the distant light.
The direction of the sunlight had changed during the time they'd been underground and now shone further into the corridor. John paused before stepping out into the bright, mid-afternoon glare, letting his eyes adjust, listening for any movement amongst the ruins, feeling the warm breeze against his skin, pleasant after the underground chill. He felt Teyla stiffen next to him and was about to speak but she raised her hand, preventing him. John could hear nothing but the intermittent sighing of the wind, but he knew Teyla's hearing was sharper than his. She slowly relaxed and shook her head, as if to shake off her fears.
"Let's move," he murmured.
They moved, as quietly as they could, stepping over loose rocks and rubble, trying to tread only on smooth areas, to avoid the scrape of grit beneath their boots. They reached their goal. At the front of the bath-house, the passageway broadened out to encompass a wide terrace, overlooking the view of the mountain range.
John and Teyla slipped through one of the archways that led to the main area of the bath-house; a huge room, mostly taken up by a large, central depression, which had probably been a pool for swimming and socializing. It was difficult to imagine the room as it had once been; a vast, luxurious, marble-faced, echoing space. John thought that, unless the Ancients kept their voices to a very polite murmur, it must have got very noisy.
Smaller rooms led off, cut back into the slope; hot and cold pools, saunas, perhaps. Then, to one side, a crumbling flight of stairs, climbing to an open area at the back of the complex, which had been a garden or an outdoor gym. It was here that the meandering trickle of water which ran through the building made a tiny fall into a small pool. John set his pack down and looked up at the buildings above, set into a part of the mountain so steep that they appeared to loom over him and left most of the garden in deep shadow.
The thin thread filled the canteens irritatingly slowly, but John preferred to take the running rather than the standing water in the pool, which looked slightly green, although the water purification tablets should take care of any bacteria, he thought. As he began to fill the last canteen, a patter of shifting stone somewhere above made him jerk his head toward the sound, Teyla's P90 pointing swiftly in the same direction. John looked up to where a terrace or balcony had half collapsed, leaving a steep slope of debris down to the garden level. He could see nothing in the dim, blue afternoon shade, until a slight tumble of pebbles drew his attention and he squinted, suddenly able to make out eyes, and then he could see more eyes and distinguish a cluster of small grey-brown bodies on spindly legs, their narrow, sheep-like heads all turned toward him. They merged nearly perfectly into the shadows, but now John had noticed them, he could see the rapid rise and fall of their flanks; they were frightened.
"They are here to drink," Teyla murmured, softly.
The canteen had filled while John was watching the creatures, and, making his movements slow and deliberate, he screwed on the cap and stowed it in his pack.
"Let's back off. See what they do," said John. "Unless you want roast sheep-thing on the menu tonight?" he suggested facetiously.
"No. We have enough to eat and there is no fuel for a cooking fire," Teyla replied, taking his words at face value.
John stood slowly and they both moved back toward the head of the stairs. The little creatures, showing less fear than animals accustomed to human hunting parties, pattered delicately down the heap of fallen masonry, leaping agilely between blocks of stone. Some rushed forward to drink, while several stood, positioned at intervals up the slope as if overseeing. The drinking animals' heads bobbed up and down, wary of John and Teyla.
John was about to signal Teyla to head back, when one of the sentry-sheep let out a shrill, grating bleat and the animals immediately scattered, some running back up the slope, some scuttling toward the bathhouse, others forcing themselves into nooks and crannies in the rubble. John and Teyla swiftly came back-to-back, eyes and weapons darting here and there, ready to face the threat; and then sudden, sharp movements of angular savagery drew John's gaze to the top of the slope. A grenza burst from the piled ruins above them, its claws flailing and flashing, its mouth open in a snarling hiss of cruel intent.
oOo
The deafening rattle of John's P90 split the air and Teyla quelled an impulse to turn and fight alongside him, her instinct confirmed when some of the sheep shot back up the slope toward her, obviously pursued. John continued to fire in short bursts, the noise of Teyla's weapon joining his, as a grenza strode, sinister and skeletal, up from the floor of the bathhouse. It jolted under the impact of her bullets and stopped, raising its clawed arms and screeching. Teyla felt the pressure of John's back against hers disappear. She let loose another burst from her P90 and saw the rounds ricochet away from the creature's iron-hard exoskeleton. John's P90 continued to fire, but then the sound was abruptly cut off and she heard repeated shots from his pistol. Teyla's grenza screeched again, and reached out its taloned hands, but, rather than ripping her life away it grasped the bodies of two of the trembling, cornered sheep, and retreated, carrying its prey. Teyla spun round; one of John's grenza's arms hung limp, its claws shattered, and John clung onto the other arm with one hand, the creature jerking him this way and that in an effort to fling him off, while he fired again and again, directly into its eyes. Teyla's bullets joined John's and, with a final, desperate roar, it threw him off and retreated, scrambling and half-falling up the slope and away, black blood dripping from its wounds, roaring out its pain and anger.
Teyla turned in a smooth, efficient arc, scanning her surroundings, breathing hard, adrenaline still roaring in her ears. As if in a series of snapshots, her eyes focussed on small, frightened forms hidden amongst the rubble, John, sprawled on the ground, the pack by the pool. She listened: a faraway cry and another, answering. They had gone. Her heartbeat began to slow.
John had picked himself up. He shakily snapped a fresh clip into his sidearm and then holstered it.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Yes. Are you?"
"Just a couple more bruises, I guess," he replied. "Look what it did to my P90." He kicked at the mangled remains on the ground. "That's the second one I've lost to those guys." He bent down and picked up the weapon, nearly severed in two, and dumped it in his pack. "Better get going, before they bring reinforcements," he said, shouldering the pack.
"I wonder if we did right, John. Firing upon the creatures!"
"What should we have done? A handshake? A kiss on the cheek?"
They made their way back through the bathhouse and back along the now familiar passageway.
"They were hunting their prey, not us. The one I confronted took two of the sheep and left."
"Cut its losses. It would have taken you, Teyla, if you'd let it." John quickened his pace, as if impatient with her words.
"I am not so sure. In the winter, they had been forced out of their territory; they were threatened, defensive."
John stopped and turned to face Teyla.
"Could you have stood there and held your fire? Really?"
"No. But I am still unconvinced that enraging the creatures was the best course of action, John."
"No, well, it was my responsibility and my decision. And my fault if it comes back and bites us on the ass. Literally."
He set a quick pace back toward the darkness of the tunnelled pathway, and the relative safety of the underground labs.
oOo
Rodney stared into the tank. He put his face as close to the surface as he could and shielded his eyes from the light with both hands.
"Whatcha doing, McKay?"
"I'm trying to see it." Rodney let his hands fall with a sigh, and turned away. He stretched out his back and rolled his shoulders, stiff from sitting hunched over his laptop. "I can't see anything."
"Nothing to see," shrugged Ronon. "It's empty."
"No, no, it's definitely not empty. The Ancients didn't finish it, whatever it is, but the containment's still ticking over, after all this time, keeping the 'it' in some kind of stasis."
"What will happen when you pull the ZPM?"
"It'll die, I would imagine, that is, if you could classify it as alive in the first place, which is debatable. What's that?" A thumping sound came from above them, and Rodney fumbled for his sidearm.
"Relax, McKay, it's just Sheppard and Teyla."
"Well, let them in, quick! They might be pursued, or something!"
Rodney began unplugging his connections, attempting to coil them neatly and put them, in order, back into his pack. A futile effort, he knew; they always ended up in an angry, snarled-up mess.
Boots clumped down the stairs. Rodney looked up and then sat back on his heels.
"Who threw you on the trash heap?" he asked, noticing the dirt and dust coating John's clothes. "Ah, I see."
"You see what?" asked John, lowering himself to the floor with a hastily-supressed groan.
"Well, you're in a state and Teyla is her usual cool, calm and collected self, thus leading me to the conclusion that she's been teaching you not to disturb busy scientists!"
"Ha, ha," grumbled John, half-heartedly.
"We encountered two grenza, Rodney," said Teyla, with a quelling look. And it was never good to be on the receiving end of one of those; and, actually, he was concerned and, yes, that was a small twinge of remorse for making light of John's appearance.
"Are you hurt?"
"No. Although you are right about one thing. I did get thrown on the trash heap."
"Did you kill them?" Ronon asked.
"We did not," said Teyla. "They were hunting the small mountain creatures, not us."
"They would have eaten us and then had those sheep-things for dessert," said John. He looked at Rodney and then gestured toward the console where he had been working. "Am I allowed to ask?"
"Yes, of course, although even now I'm not really sure what was going on here! The notes that I could decipher remind me of some kind of phase-shift theory. I mean, this technology represents months, even years of study and I've had, what? An hour?"
"Just tell me..."
"Yes, yes, I know! Is there, or is there not, another evil creation on the loose that's going to hunt us down? Quick answer: no!"
"Well, that's one good thing, then!" drawled John.
"Yes, I suppose so," Rodney said vaguely, getting up and peering into the tank again. "I just would've liked to get more of an idea of what they were trying to achieve here. As far as I could tell, the project was nearly complete, and they were about to embark on a stringent testing phase, which isn't that surprising, given the whole grenza debacle."
"I don't care what it was, as long as it's not coming after us," said John, climbing stiffly to his feet. "We need to get moving."
"Where to now?" asked Ronon.
"What d'you think, McKay? Do we need to check out the other labs or head straight for the prize?"
Rodney brightened at the prospect and rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
"Oh, I think it's definitely Holy Grail time!"