“Sheppard’s right,” said Dex. He was leaning forwards in his seat, looking at the world’s surface with a slightly queasy expression. “This is still a waste of time.”
Behind him, McKay started. “Oh my God,” he breathed. “Guys? Maybe this one isn’t a bust after all.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a power signature. Something down on that slimeball is generating power!”
The energy trace McKay had picked up was faint and intermittent, and when Sheppard flew the cloaked jumper in a high, slow pass over the site of it there seemed to be nothing about the rocky landscape below to suggest its source; just the wrinkled, wattled ground, a ragged curve of coastline and the oily, thick wash of algae-riddled sea.
A lower, slower pass once again failed to reveal anything unusual. It was only when Sheppard hovered the jumper just a hundred meters up could he make out any signs of structure, and then only hints, blurred by rain that sluiced down from the mud-colored clouds and ran in streams off the viewport.
McKay’s scans revealed nothing more concrete. “I’m just not picking up enough to get a fix on,” he complained. “There’s something down there, but I’ve got no idea what.”
Dex peered out of the viewport, studying the ground. “Angelus said his people lived underground. Maybe it’s an entrance.”
“They lived underground to hide from the Wraith. Leaking a power signal like that… It’s like leaving the front door open.”
“Or having the front door blown off,” the Satedan replied grimly. “I can see blast marks.”
Sheppard stood up, trying to get closer to the port, to see past the distorting rain. “I can’t see anything.”
“We’ll have to land.”
McKay blinked, his eyes wide. “Really? I mean, actually land?”
“You got a better idea?”
“We’ve got no idea what’s down there!”
“And we never will if we stay up here.” Dex grinned wolfishly at him. “What are you going to do? Head back for home and when Carter asks if you found Eraavis, tell her ‘maybe’?”
“He’s right,” said Sheppard. “Nothing else for it. Trust me, Rodney, this place gives me as bad a feeling as it does you, but I don’t think we’ve got the choice.” He gripped the controls again, taking the jumper up higher, and then edging it slightly inland. The ground rose there in a series of twisted, bonelike formations, but behind them was a relatively flat area of something very like shale. He aimed for that, letting the jumper turn like a falling leaf as it dropped, finally settling onto the wet ground with its rear hatch facing the site of the power leakage.
There was an ugly sliding sensation as the ship put its weight down. The shale must have been slightly unstable, slick below the jumper’s belly, but after a final, jolting twist it became still.
Sheppard throttled back the drives, eased the power down until only enough to run the cloak filtered from the generator. The interior of the jumper darkened slightly, and the noise of its workings, so constant and pervasive that he had quite forgotten it was here, faded to nothing.
The three men sat, quite still, listening to rain patter on the viewport.
“Anyone bring an umbrella?” said McKay, after a time.
“If it really worries you, there’s rain cloaks in the survival kit,” Sheppard told him. “But I don’t intend to be out in it for that long. We’re about two hundred meters from that trace. We’ll double-time over to it, see what we’re looking at and go from there, okay?”
“Well, if you think there’s no other way…”
“Yeah, sorry.” Sheppard got up, and began pulling a black tactical vest on over his uniform. He’d already checked it a dozen times during the trip, when Dex and McKay were arguing over some impossible point and he’d needed to go to a quiet place in his head. Going over the vest, making sure its multiple pouches contained all the ammo and equipment that they should do, testing the webbing and the reinforced stitching, positioning the custom-reinforced slabs of Kevlar… It had been like a mantra for his hands, a muscle-memory he could retreat into.
It also meant that he could pick up the vest at any time and be sure it was ready.
In the aft compartment McKay was readying his own gear, stuffing the laptop into a backpack already filled with gadgets and spare batteries. And several MRE ration packs, Sheppard noticed, allowing himself a wry grin. He’d lived off the things himself often enough in his life, but he had no love for them. McKay, in fact, was about the only person he knew who would eat MREs by choice.
Dex had no such concerns. If the prospect of hiking in the driving rain bothered him, he didn’t show it. He simply checked that his blaster was fully charged, shook his dreadlocks out of his face and got up from his seat. “I’m ready.”
“You’re always ready.”
Dex seemed to weigh this up. “Pretty much. Anything wrong with that?”
“No, no…” Sheppard finished strapping up the vest and twisted himself this way and that, making sure it was snug but didn’t restrict him. “Just spare a thought for us slower folks, okay?”
He moved to the back, past McKay, to where the weapons were held. He thought about taking one of the M4s, but he wasn’t sure if he’d need to be fighting in a confined space. The P90 was a lot shorter, so he took that, along with a pair of grenades and as many spare clips as he could fit into the vest. “Rodney?”
“I’m good.” Sheppard glanced over to see that McKay already had a P90 held across his chest.
“Remembered the ammo this time?”
McKay glared. “Yes!”
“Just asking.” He threw a grin back over his shoulder at Dex, and then keyed open the rear hatch.
Almost the entire aft wall of the ship hinged downwards, folding outwards to form a ramp. Sheppard heard it’s top edge crunch into the shale. “Guys? Watch your step on that stuff, okay? Even if it wasn’t raining, it sounds unstable.”
“So unstable and slippery, right, got it.” McKay walked nervously down the ramp, stopping just below the rear overhang of the jumper’s hull. “Wow.”
Sheppard joined him, frowning up at the muddy sky. There was no wind at all, and the rain was coming straight down, a merciless, unceasing wash of grimy water spattering and bouncing off the rocks and the broken ground and the far edge of the ramp. He could smell it in the air, a swampy musk, like the wet fur of a dead animal. Ahead of him, the rocks twisted up into eroded lumps and mounds, eaten through by the rain into a maze of glistening holes, and in the distance, past the hiss and spatter of rain, he could hear the sea, sluggish and thick, slapping aimlessly at the bleak, colorless shore.
“God almighty,” he breathed. “What a dump.”
“You sure this isn’t toxic?” Dex was hanging back, slightly. “Seriously, what is that smell?”
“Rotted algae,” McKay replied. He stuck a hand out into the rain, and quickly pulled it back in, shaking it. “Warm,” he muttered, then brought his palm up to his nose to sniff it. His nose wrinkled. “Aw crap.”
“Oh, what the Hell.” Sheppard ducked his head and trotted down the ramp.
A blood-warm fug of rain washed over him, coating him almost instantly. It wasn’t heavy, like a monsoon or the sudden thunderstorms of home, but it was continuous. It felt almost artificial, like a chemical shower. There was a greasiness to it that made him want to wash.
“Come on, will ya?” He beckoned to McKay and Dex, who were still under the overhang. “Let’s get this over with!”
Grudgingly, heads held low, they followed. Dex keyed the hatch shut as he stepped off the ramp, and in a moment, the jumper had vanished.
No, not quite. Sheppard couldn’t help but smile as he looked back towards the ship, a hand cupped over his eyes to protect them from the rain, and saw the upper surface of the cloak outlined in greasy sparkles. The rain was bouncing right off it.
Not even the Ancients, it seemed, could beat the weather.
It took them longer than Sheppard would have liked to reach the power trace. As he had predicted, the going was treacherous — where the ground hadn’t been pulverized into multiple layers of shifting, razor-edged shale, it was granite-hard and slippery with rain and algal grease. The three men had to plant their feet carefully, making sure their boots had grip on each step before moving onto the next. To cross the two hundred meters from the jumper to the trace took them almost ten minutes.