Rodney had had nightmares that involved being the last one left alive in Atlantis after a Wraith attack, and they weren’t pleasant.
It didn’t help that it wasn’t all that far beyond the bounds of possibility; Sheppard, Ford, Teyla, and the other military personnel would be on the front line, the operations team not far behind them, while Rodney, Zelenka, and the other scientists would be deep inside the city nursing the power grid or trying to get that damn weapons chair activated. Rodney didn’t expect that witnessing the actual effect on someone unlucky enough to be a lone survivor would change any of his nightmare scenarios. He made a mental note to run some calculations on the possibility of placing triggers for the self-destruct sequence at multiple locations around the city, to see if it justified the risks involved.
He came to a landing with a short set of stairs leading down into an open bay with several hatch-like doors. Rodney followed the detector to the nearest, and tapped its control pad. It slid upward, revealing a small power room filled with bundles of what looked like jury-rigged conduit. Two Zero Point Modules lay in open metal cases on a low bench, and a third was seated in the round unit that tied it in with the power system. “Oh, oh, oh,” Rodney whispered. “Oh, yes.”
But after a few moments of examining them, he grimaced in disappointment. Dorane hadn’t exaggerated the problem. The two ZPMs in cases were at maximum entropy and dead. The third one, still powering the system, was drained to only a partial charge. That’s a hell of a lot of power, Rodney thought, studying the detector. Especially for a facility that had been drawing minimal power for ten thousand years or so. Atlantis’ ZPMs had been in a similar state, but they had been maintaining systems that had held Atlantis stable on the bottom of an ocean, keeping the city intact and pressurized by tremendously powerful force fields. Even if most of this facility’s power had been expended trying to defend against the Wraith… Except he said the Koan shut down the shields before the attack started; that eliminates the major power drain. All these ZPMs had been doing since then was running one stasis container and waking Dorane occasionally to putter around and check his com system, plus maintaining the minimal lights and air movement. This…doesn’t add up. Literally. He started to take more readings, running some mental calculations.
The tunnel led out from the complex to the south, and the going was fairly easy. The floor was metal grating, the walls weren’t overly dank, and the blue lights were set every twenty or so paces. Other passages branched off, curving away into darkness, but Dorane had said the surface shaft would be at the end of the main passage.
“I have never heard of a race called the Koan, or of the Wraith using another species to attack a human settlement,” Teyla said, throwing John an uneasy glance, her face shadowed by the blue light. “I hope that is a trick they have forgotten.”
“Maybe it was a one-shot deal,” John said, though he didn’t think that was too likely. The Wraith they had run into didn’t tend to vary their methods of attack. Being at the top of the food chain didn’t encourage innovation. “Maybe they ran out of Koan, ten thousand years ago. And maybe Dorane hasn’t told us everything that happened yet.” That sounded a little grim, so he added, “He seemed a little confused.”
“I do not think he is…well. Despite his protestations. I could not live without knowing my people’s fate, even if it meant giving up all hope that they had survived.”
“Yeah,” John admitted, “I didn’t get that either.” He hadn’t gotten the impression that the Ancients had been that…distant. Atlantis was example enough that, as a people, they had liked color and light and life. But everybody was different.
After a short time the ground turned to uneven dirt and rock, though they still kept passing branching passages. John kept trying to reach Boerne and the others on the radio, but all he got was static.
Teyla said slowly, “I am beginning to wonder… When you saw Dorane, did you not feel any sense of recognition?”
“No.” John checked the life sign detector again and saw the area around them was still clear. But with the Koan possibly having some kind of Wraith jamming device, that didn’t mean much. He threw Teyla an odd look. “Why? Did you?”
“I felt something, as if I had seen him before, though that is impossible. And…it was not what I would have expected.” She bit her lip, looking troubled, and asked, “Do you not think that you would recognize an Ancestor if you saw one? You have the Ancestor’s gene from birth, not through Dr. Beckett’s therapy, as the others do.”
“I don’t think so.” Considering it seriously, John glanced down at her. “It’s not like I’m psychic or anything. I just have a gene that lets me control the jumpers and turn on the lights and initialize the systems and stuff just by thinking about it.” He considered that for an instant. “Okay, I know that didn’t sound like it supported the argument I was trying to make, but you know what I mean. And you said ‘if I saw an Ancestor’.” He stopped, regarding her seriously. “You don’t think he is one?”
Teyla shook her head, then got what John could only describe as a very weird expression, as if something disturbingly strange had just occurred to her. But she said, “I–I cannot say.”
“You cannot say? Huh? Teyla—”
She was a few steps ahead of him as they passed another intersecting passage, so John had a heartbeat’s warning when the Koan dropped out of the shadows onto her shoulders.
With a yell, John surged forward. Teyla staggered but managed to flip the struggling Koan off her back. It snarled, clawed hands snatching at her as she kicked it in the chest. John fired up into the dark space above her, the P-90’s flash catching another Koan just leaping out of concealment. He spun to cover the rest of the ceiling but the next Koan slammed right down on top of him.
Half-expecting it, John twisted to land on his back, getting the breath knocked out of him but still managing to slam the creature in the head with the gun’s butt. It reared back, and he pulled the P-90 down and triggered it, catching the Koan nearly point blank in the chest. It toppled back, and he shoved it off his legs, rolling to his feet. God, these things smell foul. Teyla was already firing down one cross-passage, and John turned to fire down the other just as a dozen dark shapes charged toward him. The first three fell. The others yelped and scrambled back.
John caught movement out of the corner of his eye and ducked. A heavy metal rod split the air right where his head had been. He got off a three-shot burst as the Koan lifted the rod for another blow; one bullet caught the creature in the upper thigh. It bellowed and flung the rod at John’s head.
John fell backward, deflecting it with his shoulder. He lifted his weapon but his light showed the Koan was already fleeing back up the cross passage with a kind of limping gallop, the others in full retreat ahead of it. He decided not to waste the ammo. It looked like the Koan had changed their minds about the ambush.
Teyla had shot her first attacker and was covering the other two passages. “Are you all right, Major?” she asked a little breathlessly. Her arms had long shallow scratches from the creature’s claws, but she wasn’t bleeding too badly.
John took a long look around. There was no movement in the shadows down the corridors. His shoulder hurt, but nothing was broken. “Yeah, you?”
“I feel badly in need of a bath,” she admitted. “The Koan do not believe in basic hygiene, apparently.”
It was pretty rank in here now. John stepped past her to where the first Koan lay sprawled against the rock wall. In life, the creature hadn’t cared for itself well. The gray and silver splotched skin looked like it was molting, and the white hair was ragged and lank. There were white and silver spines through the hair and bristling from its ears, but John saw for the first time how human its facial features actually were, scrunched up in pain from the wounds in its chest. It looked fairly young, about Ford’s age.