Chapter 8
"Ronon? Colonel Sheppard?" McKay asked into the night. He tightly clenched the knife in his hand. He would know it anywhere: one day he had seen Ronon pull over a dozen from various places – including his hair. "Are you there?"
For a moment he was met with only silence. Then another flurry of sand left a second knife at Rodney's feet. Sitnalta bent and picked it up, examining it. Seconds later she tucked it into a pocket on her jacket.
"Wha..." Rodney started, but was interrupted by her smile.
"A girl's got to defend herself, doesn't she? Besides," she added with a toss of her head, "Specialist Ronon showed me how to use it. And I'm rather good, too."
Rodney had a hundred things he could say to that, but for once he ignored the temptation. He had more important things to do. Silently he handed the first knife to Sitnalta. Then he took out the lifesign-monitor he constantly carried with him and checked it. It still only read two lifesigns: his and Sitnalta's. Holding it out, he looked up.
"If you are out there, then..." he thought about it for a moment, "then make one of Sheppard's power bars appear in the sand." Currently John was going through a phase where he preferred a citrus power bar. Rodney suspected it was just so he had an excuse never to hand it over to Rodney, should he ask.
Another flurry and the asked-for citrus bad appeared on top of the lifesign-monitor. Though the screen was now obscured, Rodney had seen the small third dot blinking for a fraction of a second. Somehow, Sheppard, Ronon and probably Teyla were right there with them.
"Okay," he said into the air. "We're on our way to the tower. We were told we would find some answers there."
Nothing happened. Yet Rodney was sure the three could hear him. They just couldn't talk back. After a minute of silence he tried again. "We will find a way to rescue you. Do you understand? If you do, then make Teyla's power bar appear." Teyla favoured strawberry.
He was sure the flurry of sand sighed, but moments later the strawberry bar fell from the sky and landed at his feet. Grinning, he picked it up. "Then let's go," he said.
As they set out again – all five of them, he hoped – Rodney handed the orange bar to Sitnalta and opened the strawberry for himself.
"Why did you give me this?" the woman asked, holding the bar out in explanation.
After swallowing the first bite, he answered her: "Well, I'm allergic to citrus."
For a second or two she seemed to consider his explanation. Then she shrugged and opened the bar and ate it.
It took them nearly half an hour to trek through the dessert-valley. Rodney assumed that if the buried city was half as big as Atlantis, they had been inside its borders ever since they had stepped onto the sand. Somehow that seemed relevant.
Of course, the only dignified way into the tower was buried beneath the sand. But only a level above them was a broken window they could climb through. But he wasn't sure his companion would be able to make the climb. He looked at her, but she must have thought the same thing he had. Looking up at the window, she said:
"I'll make it, don't worry."
Five minutes later they were both inside the tower, proving Sitnalta right. She had scampered up the wall without his help. But he could see how much it had cost her. Yet he suspected she had spent too much time with Ronon: she was every bit as stubborn as the Satedan.
Fortunately they were able to find the transporter room in working condition, and they were sent to a room only down the hall from the main control room. From there Rodney would be able to access most systems in the city.
It took their combined efforts to unlock the secrets of the city-ship as well as the planet it was on. In the end, though, it was Sitnalta who made the final connections between the pieces:
The city was a colony of Atlantis that had been sent to this planet because of its rare starlight crystals. But though they had been aware the crystals were a source of power, they had not reckoned on the true power it possessed. Originally the Ancients had hoped to use the crystals to assist in Ascension – and that it did. When locked in a ring, the crystals had the power to transform matter into energy. Unfortunately a number of things went wrong from the start.
Soon the Ancients realised the rings could turn matter to energy and back, but when one moved out from the circumference of the rings, the person's energy got dispersed: wiping that person from existence.
Another thing was that these rings could not occupy one place in space for too long before the planet itself became unstable. Therefore the rings had to be constantly moved.
The third thing was that though one did not age when in the energy state, aging resumed the moment one went back to being matter. So those who wished for immortality in this fashion were doomed to wander the planet from site to site.
"So they abandoned their city and constructed smaller mobile towns." Rodney couldn't believe the story as Sitnalta told it. "For eons they have been wandering this planet, using the crystals to maintain a permanent ring around the towns. They are also able to keep the Wraith from finding this planet with the aid of the crystal rings."
"But the crystals degrade and break," Rodney added as he unearthed another part of the tragic tale. "So they use the local population to mine the starlight crystals in return for their protection. And in time the locals have come to regard the Merrikai as wrathful gods."
"The Merikki are safe from the Wraith, but the price they pay is even steeper," Sitnalta continued. "The mines go ever deeper and are becoming more treacherous by the year. Few who go down ever return."
The two looked at each other. Then Rodney snapped his fingers as another piece fell in place in his mind. "That's why they were afraid of you in the town!" He looked at the white-haired beauty. "You were cloned using Ancient DNA! They must think you are one of the Merrikai!"
She frowned. "That does not please me," she told him. Sitnalta returned to the screen in front of her. "How do we save our friends?"
It took another hour for them to find the way to do that. The rings were set in a permanent cycle all over the planet. Seven hours ago one had opened where Ronon and the rest had disappeared: they must have walked through the edge of the ring. Soon after the same ring had opened near the stargate – the interference from the energy rings would have interfered with the gate's ability to create a stable wormhole.
Just over an hour ago the ring had been in the dessert. In fact it had just been luck that Rodney and Sitnalta had not stumbled into it and been transformed into energy themselves.
"But why don't Sheppard, Ronon and Teyla just ask the Ancients to turn them back to matter?" Rodney wondered.
"Perhaps the process uses too much energy. And if the crystals are hard to come by..."
"They wouldn't waste the power on three wanderers from Atlantis!" Rodney completed the thought for her. He smiled at her. "Okay," he challenged her, "then explain how they had been able to make the knives and the energy bars appear."
She smiled back at him, accepting. "They are Ascended. They simply created the knives and the bars using their minds."
"Typical," Rodney said as he returned to his perusal of the system. "I bet when they get back Ronon will have all of his knives and Sheppard will have his power bar." Somehow it seemed like cheating to him: he had thought he had won those items, fair and square.
