02 - Reliquary (2 page)

“Or,” John put in, studying the address thoughtfully, “there is a quicker way
to find out.”

The address wasn’t one that Teyla recognized, which meant it wasn’t a planet
that the Athosians had ever visited on their trading trips. Peter Grodin was
trying to find it in the Ancient database, but that could take forever. John
pushed for his quick solution, and Elizabeth Weir, the expedition’s leader,
agreed.

Standing on the control center gallery level of the ’gate room, John
impatiently watched the techs get the MALP ready. The self-contained probe would
tell them if this was an orbital ’gate or a planetary one, check for radiation
and other hazards, and the video telemetry would let them know if there was a
bunch of Wraith waiting around for lunch to show up. The address had already
been dialed into the ’gate, and the event horizon was a lucent pool of liquid
blue glittering invitingly inside the ring.

The ’gate room was large and light and airy, designed with practicality and aesthetics in mind, like most of Atlantis. The soft
copper-colored walls were inset with the elaborate geometrical patterns of
stained glass that decorated all the living areas, and the ’gate itself was in
the lower level of the room, with a wide sweep of stairs leading down from the
gallery level to the embarkation floor. Unlike the ’gate room at Stargate
Command on Earth, there was no protected area that could be sealed off if a
hostile force came through; Atlantis’ ’gate room had been built at a time when
the city expected only friendly visitors. The only defensive measure was a force
shield over the ’gate itself that, like the trinium iris on Earth’s Stargate,
prevented unwanted arrivals. The puddlejumper bay was directly above the ’gate
room, with a floor and ceiling that could retract, allowing the little ships to
drop into a launch position for the ’gate or lift up to leave the city.

Teyla, Zelenka, and McKay had gathered to watch, and Elizabeth Weir was
standing beside John, arms folded. John thought everybody was acting like it was
Christmas and Santa was about to arrive through the ’gate. Elizabeth must have
thought so too, because her mouth quirked, and she glanced at him, saying, “So
what are you hoping for?”

John shrugged, pretending he wasn’t just as intrigued as everybody else. What
they were all hoping for, of course, was a place that might have a Zero Point
Module. ZPMs were the only thing that could fulfill Atlantis’ huge demand for
power, and the last of the city’s resources had been nearly used up bringing it
to the surface. Now the expedition was using the naquadah generators they had
brought from Earth to keep the city partially powered. This mostly worked, but
it wasn’t enough to raise the city’s shields or power the Stargate for a
wormhole back to Earth, so they couldn’t get supplies or new personnel, report
that they were in a hell of a lot of trouble, or retreat. John just said, “Oh, I
don’t know. A puddlejumper dealership and repair outlet?”

Below, the techs cleared the floor and the blocky shape of the MALP trundled through the wormhole’s event horizon. Peter Grodin, one of
the British scientists, was seated at the console that acted as the dialing
device and monitor for the Stargate. “And there we go. Yes. We have a safe
arrival.” He shifted over to the laptop that would receive and interpret the
MALP’s telemetry, glancing up over his shoulder at Elizabeth. “It’s a viable
destination, at least.”

Teyla, standing to the side, said with a smile, “I would hope it leads to
another lost city of the Ancestors, with many ruins to explore.” Teyla was the
leader of the Athosians, the first group of humans native to the Pegasus galaxy
that the expedition had met. The Wraith had arrived on Athos not long after that
first meeting, and Teyla’s people had had to flee and were now living on
Atlantica’s mainland. She was a beautiful woman, with red-brown hair and a
lovely smile, and she could kick John’s ass in Athosian stick combat, which was
one of the reasons he had wanted her on his Stargate team.

“We haven’t even fully explored this lost city of the Ancients yet,” Zelenka
pointed out with a mock frown.

McKay said a little wistfully, “A planet with coffee plantations would be
nice.”

And no Wraith,
John added mentally. No one had said it, but it was there,
hanging over all of them like a headsman’s ax. He could see from Grodin’s
console that the MALP was running through its initial program, transmitting
streams of data. Then the screen lit up with static as the MALP’s camera
switched on. John nudged Rodney with an elbow. “Maybe it’ll be a ZPM factory
next to a coffee plantation.”

Rodney threw him an annoyed look. “Don’t tease.”

The static resolved into a grainy black-and-white view of an ocean as the
camera panned across a rocky coastal landscape. Attracted by the movement, it
zoomed in on waves rolling up a beach. Then it panned across an open plain and
stopped abruptly as it found a structure in the distance.

John heard a collective indrawn breath from everybody watching. It was a huge
structure. As the MALP focused on it, he could make out a high wall, curving away to make a round bastion, and
above it three towers, each resembling a flattened version of the onion domes
you saw on old Russian palaces. “Cool,” he muttered. The pillar’s address hadn’t
been a bust, at least; there really was something interesting there.

“Oh my God,” Elizabeth said suddenly. She grabbed Grodin’s shoulder, leaning
in beside him to study the image. “That looks like—Am I imagining the
resemblance—”

“You’re not.” McKay shouldered forward, unceremoniously shoving Zelenka aside
and stepping on John’s feet. “It’s very similar. Grodin, can you—”

“Pull up the description so we can compare it, yes.” Grodin had already
turned away to another nearby laptop, typing quickly. Even he looked quietly
excited.

“What?” John demanded. “What is it?”

Watching intently, Zelenka explained, “It is like the description we have of
Heliopolis, the repository found in the first year of the Stargate program.”

“Seriously?” John’s brows lifted, and he whistled softly. “Hot damn.” He
hadn’t been in the SGC before Atlantis, but he remembered the story from the
Stargate Command mission reports that were available to all expedition members.

“Heliopolis?” Teyla echoed, leaning in to listen. “What place is this?”

Zelenka told her, “It was one of the first indications we had that the
Goa’uld did not build the Stargate network, that they were parasites using the
remains of an earlier civilization. It was later concluded that Heliopolis was a
meeting place where the Ancients shared information with the other great races
of the time, the Asgard, the Furlings, and the Nox. There was a database
designed for interspecies communication, that if we could have studied it—” He
waved his hands helplessly.

“They lost it when a big storm came up and the building collapsed into the
ocean,” John finished the .story for Teyla.

“They barely got out in time, then when they tried to redial to see if the
’gate was still there, they got nothing.”

Teyla nodded understanding, her expression intrigued. “Then this could be a
wonderful discovery.”

“The resemblance isn’t exact,” McKay was saying, “but the shape of those
towers, the height of the walls, even the fact that it seems to be near a sea,
it’s all very suggestive. We have to check this out.”

Elizabeth nodded slowly, but a smile tugged at her mouth. “If it is another
Heliopolis—”

McKay’s grin was smug. “Then maybe we did find a ZPM factory.”

They geared up for the trip in record time, with McKay actually changing into
his field uniform in the puddlejumper bay while John was running the preflight
check. But it was late in the day on the destination planet, and the jumper shot
out of the Stargate into a cloud-streaked sky already reddening with sunset.
John dropped speed, guiding the little ship up to give them a sweeping view of
the area. He thought about sensors and the jumper obligingly popped up
holographic life sign and energy detector screens.

In the near distance he could see the building that they hoped was a
repository, the dark stone standing out against the lighter grays of the sky,
the storm-colored sea, and the rocky shore. It was about a mile from the
Stargate, maybe a little more, standing in the center of a scattered complex of
dark stone ruins on a flat rocky plain. The sea curved around it, bordered by a
wide gravel beach. Inland, past the edge of the ruins, grew a sparse forest of
tall slender trees with light green leaves. Nothing stirred, except a small
flock of gray and white birds, startled into flight by the jumper’s arrival. The
screens confirmed it, showing only the little flickers that meant local fauna.

In the shotgun seat, Ford said, “See that? Somebody’s bombed the. crap out of
it.”

“Hell, yes,” John agreed, sparing a look out the view port. “That’s not
encouraging.”

This close, the damage was more evident than it had been on the MALP’s
camera. John could see big bomb craters in the surrounding ruins, and the spires
in the onion dome towers had cracks or holes, the exposed girders bearing a
distinct resemblance to skeletal remains. He grimaced, but it wasn’t a surprise;
the Wraith didn’t like their food source to get uppity and fight back, and the
Ancients had fought back until they had been nearly exterminated.

“The Wraith must have attacked here, perhaps after the Ancestors left,” Teyla
commented from the other jump seat, her tone regretful. “But still, you can see
what a beautiful place it must have been.”

McKay was less impressed. “No energy readings. And it’s far more damaged than
we thought, but the MALP’s image was so pixelized, it could have been sitting in
the middle of Miami Beach. This is probably a waste of time.” He sounded
bitterly disappointed.

“Oh, stop it.” Splitting his attention between the port and the HUD, John
banked the jumper back around toward the Stargate. It sat on a large elevated
stone platform, about twenty meters high. At one time a stairway had led up to
it, but now it was just a pile of rubble. The MALP had trundled itself off to
the side, out of the path of the wormhole’s blowback, its camera still pointed
toward the ruins. John told McKay, “You’re just still mad because you’re not the
one who made the new holo-thingy work.”

“The new holo-thingy is broken, Major,” McKay reminded him pointedly. “If it
weren’t, we might know exactly who attacked this place. And if this repository
had anything like Atlantis’ full defensive capacity, it had to be one hell of an
attack.”

“Grodin was right, there’s no DHD,” Ford pointed out, studying the area
around the ’gate. “The Wraith must have destroyed it. Funny, we’ve never found a
damaged ’gate like that before.”

“My people never encountered damage like that either.” Teyla added wryly,
“Fortunately, since we would not have been able to return through the ’gate.”

The jumpers came equipped with their own Dial Home Devices for the Stargates,
right between the pilot’s and copilot’s seats, so the MALP’s inability to locate
the DHD hadn’t been an impediment to coming here. “That’s weird,” John said, as
the corollary occurred to him. “Why would anybody bother to blow up the DHD when
the Ancients probably did most of their ’gate traveling in the jumpers?”

“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?”