Chris Wraight - Dead end

As he recovered himself, he heard the first swishing noise.

“Hear that?” he hissed, stopping in his tracks and crouching low.

“Hear what?” said Orand, close behind him. Then something swished past them again and his face went white. “Oh, by the Ancestors…”

Suddenly, the entire tunnel was bathed in light. It blazed from all sides, and the swishing noise became a roar.

Dazzled, Ronon scrambled backwards, shielding his eyes. He was blind and disorientated. Behind him he heard shouting and the sound of running feet.

“Banshees!” cried a voice which might have been Orand’s.

His eyes streaming from the light, Ronon forced himself to look up. Towering over him was an insubstantial shape, flickering like a flame. There were long, flowing robes, and pale flesh. A lean alien face looked down at him. The expression was haughty and cruel.

Then there were others, sweeping through the corridor like ghosts. There was no escape. With a howl, the Banshees were upon them. Ronon felt a brief surge of resistance, but then it was banished. Despite all his training, all his experience, he felt a rising tide of horror. There was nowhere to run. There were too many to evade. The hunters fell on their faces.

Ronon reached for his weapon, but his hands were cold and clumsy. He didn’t even get a shot away. The Banshee came for him, and all hope fled.

Sheppard hacked at the rock. Despite the cold, he had worked up a sweat and he could feel rivulets of it running down his back. It was hard work, exhausting and dangerous. The ice shattered easily enough under the blows of the axes, but the rock was a different matter. He didn’t even attempt to break that up. Forgotten miners stepped up for that job, wheeling massive hammers to crack the heavy boulders in their way. Metal pins — which must have been extremely rare on Khost — were hammered into the stone to weaken it, and the hammer-blows did the rest. Sheppard was amazed at their strength and skill. He wouldn’t have been so confident that Earth miners, no matter how tough, could have worked the rock so fast.

After an hour of solid, back-breaking work, they had succeeded in delving beneath the ice shelf. Night was fast approaching, and torches had been lit across the workings. Now the task was to bolster the walls of ice around them so they weren’t buried as they descended. There wasn’t much wood to spare, so most of the structure was self-supporting. Helmar and his colleagues had done enough excavation to know what to leave and what to attack. Sheppard just did as he was told.

“How’re doing?” asked Helmar, coming to stand at his shoulder.

Sheppard turned awkwardly in the cramped space. “Feel like I’ve been wrestling a grizzly,” he panted. “Otherwise fine. What’s our progress?”

Helmar smiled. “We’re in luck,” he said. “Larem has broken into a fissure. They’re all over the place here. Come.”

Helmar pushed his way past other miners, all working hard. Sheppard followed him, grateful for the break. A couple of meters further down, the miners had opened up a narrow cleft and were busy widening it. The stone seemed laced with lodes of ice, weakening the structure, and every so often a huge chunk would break from the sides and come crashing down. Sheppard watched the work intently. It looked perilous. “You’ve done this before, right?”

“Of course,” said Helmar. “A thousand times. They know what they’re doing.”

Sheppard peered into the open chasm, trying to see how far it went. “What do you think?”

“This is good,” Helmar said. “I reckon this runs a long way down. We’ll secure the breach above us and then follow it. No doubt we’ll have more digging to do, but this makes our task much easier.”

Sheppard looked at the gaping fissure warily. In the gloom it looked treacherous. “Guess you’re right,” he said. “I can’t tell you how far down we need to go.”

Helmar laughed. “You sound worried, Colonel,” he said. “That’s not like you. Trust me. Some of these tunnels run for miles. However far we need to go, we will get you there. We are at home under the ground. It is our way of life.”

Sheppard tried to look reassured. “Let’s keep going,” he said. “The sooner we get to the bottom, the happier I’ll be.”

Teyla and Miruva went quickly. They passed rooms full of equipment displaying various diagnostic readings from Sanctuary. Some looked like the medical read-outs in Dr Beckett’s infirmary. There were rooms lined with computers arranged in galley format, and others full of gently humming machinery. One was dominated by a circular machine, dark and monolithic. Lights flickered uncertainly up and down its flanks and the symbol of the Ancients had been etched into its surface.

“That is where the Banshees come from,” said Miruva, looking at the machine with fascination. “To think that the object of our fear is generated by such a thing.”

They pressed on. Smooth metal surfaces gave way to hurriedly-worked rock-faces. On the fringes of the Sanctuary, the Ancestors’ haste to leave was readily apparent. The meager heat levels began to plummet, and the deathly chill of Khost reasserted itself. After working their way through the dark of the Ancient tunnels, a red light grew ahead of them until there was a clear opening in the rock face. It looked like a pool of fire against the rock.

Teyla ducked through it and found herself on a narrow ledge on a sheer cliff-face. It resembled the precipice at the entrance to the living areas of Sanctuary, only this time dark and throbbing with noise. If the peaceful chambers they had left resembled paradise, then this place looked like hell.

Garish red flares illuminated the chiseled rock faces, which were black as pitch. The reason for their charred appearance lay below. Dimly, Teyla could make out vast machinery operating in the depths of the chasm. Massive power couplings shone weakly in the in the deep, huge pistons revolving with magisterial slowness. The size of it all was phenomenal. Clearly, such technology was required to keep the ecosystem behind them in full working order.

“So this is what Telion wanted you to learn how to use,” said Teyla. “He expected much.”

“It will take us lifetimes,” Miruva said, the daunting scale of the task dawning on her.

“At least you have the gene,” said Teyla, trying to reassure. “That gives you many advantages.”

They walked along the ledge, keeping their fingers against the stone wall on their right. Eventually they came to the far side of the chamber and passed once more into chill dark of the narrow tunnels. It was now clear that they had left the main areas of the Sanctuary. Everything was haphazard and makeshift, and corridor looked like it had been blasted out in a hurry. The way became difficult, and Teyla lost her footing a number of times. Ice lay in the cracks and indentations of the stone, making the going treacherous. The red light ebbed almost to nothing and darkness enveloped them, pierced only by the narrow beam of Teyla’s flashlight.

As they went, the noise of the machinery grew weaker and the deathly silence of the underworld returned. Teyla started to speak to Miruva — anything to break the unearthly quiet — but was interrupted by muffled cries of distress from far ahead.

She looked at Miruva, startled. It sounded like human voices raised in anger and fear.

“I hear it too,” said Miruva.

They started to run. Teyla held the flashlight low as she went, trying as best she could to pick out the perilous shards of rock barring their way. Her heart began to race. Who could be down here, so far from the habitable areas? Was it Sheppard? If so, that meant there was a route to the surface…

The tunnel took a sharp bend to the right. Miruva and Teyla tore round it, and stumbled into a scene of bedlam. There were fur-clad figures cowering against the stone. Some had covered their faces; others were trying to scramble back the way they had come. The reason for their panic was obvious. Banshees were hovering, staring at the humans with their baleful eyes. Despite knowing what she did about the Avatars, Teyla felt the fear rise in her too.