Martha Wells: Reliquary

“Major, down there,” Ford said suddenly. “They must have taken a direct hit.”

John craned his neck, hearing Teyla make a startled exclamation. As the jumper came around the far side of the big complex, they could see that the outer wall of one wing was partly missing, revealing a mass of arched girders and partial stone walls. But it all looked a little too neat to be bomb damage. “No, I don’t see any rubble. I don’t think that section was finished.”

Rodney snorted derisively. “That doesn’t bode well for us finding a cache of ZPMs or another Ancient database.”

“Cache, schmache,” John said, though he thought McKay was probably right. “I’ll be happy with one ZPM. So will you.”

“That’s true,” Rodney admitted grudgingly.

John put the jumper down on a flat and relatively clear stretch of paving near the base of the repository’s wall, in a section with terraces and a big doorway that seemed to be the main entrance. He lowered the ramp, and Teyla bailed out of the back first, walking out onto the cracked pavement of the plaza and pivoting for a look around, cradling her P-90. John joined her a moment later with Ford and McKay.

The air felt damp, smelled of sea salt, and was warm enough that the cool breeze off the beach was welcome. There was also a faint foul odor underneath, like rotten fish. The building itself stood on a slight rise, so they had a good view of the field of scattered stone ruins where it followed the shallow curve of the beach.

It had been a large city at some point. Many of the buildings still had slab roofs that were mostly intact, though any other features had been stripped away by time and the violence of the long-ago bombing. Some were just roofless stone boxes, some only the outlines of foundations, but John could see where the streets had been laid out, where there were open squares that might have been anything from outdoor meeting areas to shopping malls.

Teyla was studying the ruins, her brow furrowed. “It is very… I want to say empty, but that is rather obvious.”

Ford was surveying the area with his binoculars. “The word you’re looking for is ‘spooky’.”

“Or ‘creepy’,” John added, frowning. The dark oblongs of the empty doorways and windows looked too much like eyes that were staring at you. He turned toward the building, and glass, broken and ground nearly to powder, crunched under his boots; it gave him a weird feeling for a moment, that somebody-walking-over-your-grave sensation. He shrugged it off, glancing over at the others. McKay was studying the handheld Atlantean life sign detector, his hard mouth twisted into a grimace. John stepped in to look over his shoulder. “Anything?”

“No. Go away.” McKay, who hated people reading over his shoulder, elbowed him.

“I am not sensing the presence of any Wraith,” Teyla said, sounding thoughtful. She had the hereditary ability of some Athosians to know when the Wraith were nearby; it gave you just enough time to bolt for cover or the nearest Stargate and was a valued survival trait.

It wasn’t an ability that the expedition had any scientific explanation for so far, but it was definitely real, and it had led to some initial suspicion of Teyla, at least on the part of Sergeant Bates, whom Elizabeth had appointed head of city security. John preferred some level of paranoia in the person who held that job, but Bates had never trusted the Athosians in general and Teyla in particular, and it had gotten in the way. Even before Bates had accused Teyla of betraying them to the Wraith, Bates had made a snide comment about John wanting his new friend on his ’gate team. Unsure at the moment whether Bates meant Teyla or Rodney, John had pretended to think that Bates meant Ford, and told him not to talk that way about the lieutenant or he would put Bates on report, and things had gone downhill from there. Now Bates’ paranoia just made John paranoid, mainly about Bates.

“No Wraith, that’s always encouraging to hear,” McKay muttered, still studying the detector. It wouldn’t identify the presence of hibernating Wraith, just conscious ones. They had found that out the hard way.

“We’re not going to have much time to look around before dark.” John went to the end of the plaza and up a short set of steps to the big double doorway. Through it he could see a hall, littered with blown sand and powdered glass, quiet, dusty, and dead. No bodies, but then this was old destruction; any remains would have long ago rotted away. Still, it just looked like a place where John would have expected to see bodies.

The two doors had both been blasted off and lay on the paving. One had tumbled down so the outer side lay face up; it was unadorned except for some embossed circles, which didn’t necessarily mean anything. The Ancients hadn’t been big on brand names, or even just labeling stuff. He started inside, the others following.

Inside the big foyer, McKay paused to take some more readings, and John stopped beside him, frowning, trying to get a feel for the place.

At the far end a giant spiral stairway curved up into a large shaft. It was made of cracked slabs of stone and charred metal, still mostly intact, but John wouldn’t have wanted to chance it, not without climbing gear. Still, he would rather trust stairs than the transporter/elevators, if there were any and if there was anything left to power them. Behind the stairway was a big triangular archway, opening into a passage toward the center of the repository. It had all been grand and lofty once, but the dark gray stone of the walls and floor was scarred where broken pieces of the stairway’s elaborately curled metal balustrade had shattered and slammed into it.

“I thought I had something for a second,” Rodney muttered, glaring at the detector. “An energy signature.”

John frowned at it too. “From where?”

“Couldn’t tell, it wasn’t there long enough for the detector to get a direction.” Rodney grimaced. “Let’s try that way.” He nodded toward the triangular passage and gave a mock-shudder at the stairway. “Better than climbing that deathtrap.”

“If we search this whole place, we’re going to have to tackle the deathtrap levels sooner or later,” John pointed out. He caught Ford’s eye and, with a jerk of his head, told him to watch their six.

“We?” McKay’s brow furrowed, his attention still on the detector. “We who, kemosabe?”

John led the way through the foyer and the big arch, Teyla coming up to walk beside him. Ahead he could see the corridor opened into another large space, streaked with light and shadow. John flicked on the light attached to his P-90.

They reached the triangular arch at the end of the corridor and saw what lay beyond. John said softly, “Wow. J guess they didn’t get any time to pack.”

The eight-sided chamber was huge and shadowy, bigger than Atlantis’ gate room, with three levels of open gallery above it, all intact. At the highest level, the walls curved up, meeting in a point overhead. Long diagonal open spaces had once held skylights, the glass long shattered by the bombing, allowing in dimming light from the overcast sky. Directly across from the archway, a bunch of giant silvery tubes like the top of an immense pipe organ stretched up and away, vanishing into the ceiling high above. The place was littered with debris: broken consoles that had been ripped off their platforms, smashed crystals, twisted metal, bits and pieces of Ancient technology, scattered and smashed like a trash heap. On this level alone, a dozen archways led off in all directions, into dark rooms that seemed to be filled with odd-shaped equipment.

McKay looked up from the detector and his jaw dropped. “Oh, oh yes, this is going to take a while.”