Martha Wells: Reliquary

John nodded. He wasn’t surprised; the hard way was the way they did everything. He made everybody do radio checks, then used the remote to tell the puddlejumper to close its ramp and set its cloak. The little ship obediently sealed itself, then vanished. The cloak would keep it invisible to the naked eye and to any non-Ancient instruments, and each team member had a remote to allow them to open the ramp and enter. Those precautions, plus leaving the two Marines on guard, made John reasonably sure the jumper would still be here when they came back — possible Wraith, flesh-eating zombies, and mutants notwithstanding. “Right, let’s go,” he said, and started up the steps to the entrance.

Once inside, McKay paused to take some more readings, and the others spread out a little to look around, Corrigan still filming, moving close to the walls to get detailed shots.

John led the way on through the foyer and into the big triangular corridor. The bright daylight outside and the broken skylights made it possible to see the big control area at the opposite end, and he could hear the scientists’ awed reactions.

“Well, here it is,” McKay said as they reached the entrance. He didn’t sound as enthusiastic as John had expected. Normally something like this would have caused McKay to go into a near hysterical frenzy of excitement. He should almost be able to smell the ZPMs that possibly lurked in the bowels of the building’s power systems. Instead he sounded almost resigned. “I’m still not getting any readings — most of this is probably too damaged to tell us much — but this has to be the control center for the structure.”

“The only thing missing is the Stargate,” Kavanagh put in. Corrigan was still filming, and Kolesnikova was already moving toward the intriguing heaps of dead machinery, both as eager as kids in a toy store. Kavanagh was frowning at a spiral design in the center of the floor, directly below the peak of the ceiling. It was too obscured by dust and debris for John to make out much, but it looked as though it was made of little silver tiles. Kavanagh shook his head. “The Heliopolis in our galaxy had an interior ’gate. The one here must have been removed at some point.”

“You think?” McKay glanced up, intrigued, studying the chamber again. “It would have to be here in the center, and I’m not seeing anything like a well or a platform safety zone. Though it could be—”

“If there was a ’gate here, we’ll find evidence of it,” Kavanagh cut him off.

“Listen up.” John raised his voice to make sure they all heard. They had gone over this with the new kids before leaving, but he wanted to emphasize the point. “Everybody remember the rules. Especially the one about not going anywhere alone. Stay in sight of me, Ford, or Teyla at all times. If you see something interesting in another room and need to take a closer look, tell one of us and we’ll come with you. At the moment we have plenty of time, and there’s no point in not practicing safe science.”

“He means,” Rodney added, digging through his vest pockets distractedly, “Don’t do anything stupid and get killed. This is an alien planet, possibly filled with things that will try to eat you. Listen to the man who had a giant bug attached to his neck, he knows.”

John rolled his eyes. I am never living the giant bug thing down. He asked Rodney, “Can you not bring that up every time we go out with new people?”

Rodney already had a power bar unwrapped and shoved into his mouth. He said around it, “It makes an excellent object lesson.”

“We know what he means, McKay,” Kavanagh snarled and started toward the nearest pile of debris.

Leaving Ford on guard in the central chamber, John and Teyla did a brief survey of the dozen or so connecting rooms. Their flashlights revealed nothing but more shattered glass and twisted metal, bits of the crystalline material the Ancients had used for their circuitry and wiring, the remains of incomprehensible machines, melted lumps of plastic-like substances and ceramics. Everything was so wrecked, John suspected that it wasn’t just the random destruction of a bombing and a surface battle. It looked methodical and deliberate, as if someone had been careful to destroy every working console, to leave nothing intact. “The Wraith must have been very angry at this place,” Teyla commented, sounding sober and a little regretful.

“We don’t know it was the Wraith.” John flicked a look at her, but it was too dark to read her expression. He was glad to hear she thought the destruction was unusual too, that it wasn’t just his imagination. “But yeah, whoever it was definitely had anger issues.”

They came back through the center chamber to find Ford keeping a wary eye out, Kolesnikova and Corrigan hard at work, and McKay and Kavanagh having a loud emphatic discussion that was probably another one of Kavanagh’s attempts to challenge McKay’s position as alpha male of the science team. John trusted one of the others to break it up if it progressed to the hitting stage. He decided to risk a set of wide stone stairs that still seemed stable and do a quick sweep of the upper galleries.

There was no sign that anything alive had been in here for decades, despite the open access through the doorway and the broken skylights. Up on these levels, an undisturbed layer of dirt and dust coated nearly every surface, made thick and corrosive by the moisture and salt in the air. There wasn’t even anything like bird or rat droppings, no spider webs or other signs of insect life. The local fauna seemed to be carefully avoiding this place. It was quiet, except for his and Teyla’s footsteps and an occasional exclamation or clatter from below. Creepy, John thought, and felt glad to rejoin the others on the main level.

Once they were back down in the center chamber, Teyla moved off to tell Ford they hadn’t found anything, and John went over to Rodney.

He was crouched down, already half-buried in the center control station near the giant organ-pipe-tubes, taking what was left of it apart. John knew he was trying to get some idea of what the connections to the power system were like, hoping for a clue to where a ZPM might be hiding. McKay was also assembling a little pile of useful spare parts to drag back home to Atlantis.

“Hey, you think this damage looks deliberate?” John asked him.

Rodney snapped automatically, “If I look busy it’s because I am!” Then John’s question must have penetrated, because he pulled his head out of the console to stare up at him. “What, you think it was accidental? Somebody tripped and accidentally pushed the ‘bomb our own city back to the stone age’ button?”

“No, no, I do not.” John held onto his patience. “I mean, like somebody came through here with a crowbar or the high-tech equivalent and made sure nobody would ever be able to use any of this stuff again.”

McKay sat back on his heels, poking into his pack for another tool. “Wrecking whatever human technology they can find still intact is probably standard operating procedure for the Wraith, Major. What are you getting at?”

“I know, but this looks different.” John gestured helplessly, giving up. He didn’t know what he meant.

He left Rodney to get on with it and paced, trying to keep an eye on everybody, feeling a little like a hen with too many chicks. The back of his neck kept itching, but he didn’t see how anybody or anything could be watching them. Ford was helping Kolesnikova shift some twisted pieces of metal to get to the crystals and circuits underneath, Corrigan was making notes on his PDA, and Teyla stood across the big chamber, watching the corridors that led off into unlit areas. She didn’t look like she was having a great time, but it wasn’t like she wouldn’t have mentioned it if she started sensing Wraith. And— Where the hell is Kavanagh?