It wasn’t wearing anything like clothing, but it had a cord around its neck with a small handheld data pad attached.
John picked it up, staring at it incredulously. The case looked like it had been scavenged from something else, like a puddlejumper remote or maybe a handheld sensor of some kind. An Ancient control crystal that was a little too big for the case had been crammed into it. The rest of the insides, even from John’s limited experience, looked makeshift. Teyla recovered the life sign detector from where John had dropped it and held it out, showing him the screen. She said softly, “It does not even show us, now.”
“Yeah. This is the jammer, all right. But it wasn’t built by the Wraith.” John felt cold, the adrenaline rush of the fight giving way to grim realization. It was just believable that the original Wraith sensor-jammers might be lying around here after ten thousand years, still functional. They had certainly gotten bitten in the ass by other lost pieces of Wraith technology that had lasted at least that long. That the Koan would know what the jammers were and remember them as a thing to take with them when they hunted humans was vaguely possible too. But that they could be living like this and figure out a way to build one from scratch, from scavenged Ancient technology? I don’t think so.
John used his knife to cut the cord, then pushed to his feet, controlling a surge of homicidal fury. The immediate thing was that he no longer thought it was Corrigan, Boerne, and Kinjo who were in danger. He tucked the jammer into a vest pocket and said deliberately, “Let’s go surprise somebody.”
Rodney hurried back through the passages, checking the life sign detector to make sure Dorane was still down in the other room with Kavanagh and Kolesnikova.
Ford watched his approach from the gallery, brows drawing together. “What’s up?”
Rodney motioned urgently for him to come closer and met him halfway up the stairs. “I think something’s wrong. Dorane is lying to us about the timing.”
Ford shook his head slightly. “What do you mean?”
Intent, Rodney explained, “This facility was powered by three ZPMs, with two now at maximum entropy and one at minimal power. From the readings I’m getting, the draining had to have occurred at least fifty years before the Ancients left Atlantis for Earth.”
Ford stared. “That doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t they come here to look for survivors, then? Why couldn’t he contact them through the Stargate?”
“My point exactly.”
“Are you sure?” Ford demanded. He touched his radio headset, then grimaced, obviously recalling that Sheppard was out of reach.
“Of course I’m sure.” Rodney gestured impatiently. “Look, I need to examine that stasis container. I want to see how long he was actually in that thing. I need you to keep an eye out and make sure I don’t get caught at it.”
Ford nodded, his mouth set in a grim line. “Yeah, let’s do that.”
Rodney started back down into the stasis chamber area, Ford behind him, moving quickly and quietly. This whole thing was making Rodney’s skin creep. It would be nice if Dorane was confused, his memory a little scrambled by putting himself in and out of stasis. If the trauma of the repository’s destruction had so unhinged him that he couldn’t remember the exact sequence of events.
It would be nice. But according to Rodney’s experience in the Pegasus Galaxy, things were never nice.
Rodney crossed the foyer into the stasis chamber lab. Behind him, Ford took up a position in the archway, where he could watch the passage to the communications room.
The stasis container had closed itself up again, looking like a glass coffin on a metal plinth, as if it was meant for a postmodern Snow White. Rodney knelt beside the control console at the foot end, tapping the pads, trying to get it to bring up a diagnostic. The container, like the ZPMs, was definitely Atlantean technology, no question about that. The controls were similar, and the displays used the Ancient language. But there was a haphazard quality to the way it was tied into the other systems and the power conduits, that weirdly awkward air flow system with the pipes. He recognized that quality from his own attempts to mesh Earth-built components with Ancient systems.
After several minutes of struggle and coaxing, he got the panel to run a diagnostic. He ran a finger down the crystalline display, muttering under his breath as he translated the Ancient figures, rapidly calculating the power outputs and shutdown sequences, translating the time markers into hours and minutes.
The answer was worse than he thought. “Three days.” Rodney sat back on his heels, appalled. The container had been powered down a little more than three days ago, immediately after the MALP had come through the Stargate. “He knew we were here all along.” The system was configured to automatically cycle down and release the occupant when an external sensor suite recorded a power surge from the direction of the Stargate. The diagnostic showed that it hadn’t been powered up again until roughly six hours ago. When I started picking up intermittent power signatures. The intermittent power signatures that lured us down here.
Rodney pushed to his feet and headed for the door. So if it’s a trap, and obviously, it’s a trap, why did he let Sheppard and Teyla go up to the surface? He answered himself, Obviously, he didn’t. Ford was still in the foyer, warily watching the doorways and stairwell. “Lieutenant,” Rodney whispered harshly. “We need to go after the Major and Teyla. They—” The lights went out. “That wasn’t a coincidence!” He swung his pack around, frantically digging for his flashlight.
The light on Ford’s P-90 snapped on, and he said, “Listen.”
Rodney froze. The silence seemed complete. He fumbled out the detector and showed Ford the screen. “There’s nothing,” he whispered. “Wait. Oh, no.”
Ford’s eyes widened as the screen suddenly came alive with blinking dots. Twenty, thirty, more, filling the level just above them. Ford swore and ran for the stairs.
His light flashed across the doorway, giving Rodney a good view as the first Koan crowded in. The silver-mottled skins, the wild spiny hair glinted in the light. They spotted Ford and howled.
Ford halted on the steps and fired up through the doorway, driving the first surge back with a spray of three-shot bursts. “Get the others!” he shouted. “We need to fall back.”
“Right!” Rodney dashed for the passage down to the com room, bumping off the rocky wall in the dark.
“Hey, there’s—” He froze in the doorway. His flashlight revealed an empty room. Empty except for Kolesnikova, sprawled facedown on the floor. Rodney swore, jolting forward, dropping to his knees beside her. He grabbed her shoulders, rolling her over. “Irina—”
There was a stain on her chest just above her tac vest, dark against her blue uniform shirt. Her eyes were open. Rodney automatically felt for a pulse in her neck, even as part of his mind cataloged the fact that he was kneeling in a pool of blood, that it was minutes too late.
He choked down a sudden rush of nausea and shoved to his feet. “Oh, God,” he breathed. Where the hell was Kavanagh?
Rodney turned back for the passage, shouting, “Ford!” over the staccato bursts of gunfire. He reached the foyer again and saw Ford braced against the railing, firing up at the Koan. In the muzzle Hashes Rodney could see more of them crowding around the doorway, ducking in, forcing Ford to shoot to keep them back, pinning him down in the stairwell. Rodney tucked the flashlight under his arm and dragged out his sidearm, fumbling for the safety. “Ford, Kolesnikova’s been killed! Something’s — Someone’s—” Distracted, Rodney stared as his light caught another figure, running across the dark chamber toward Ford. It was Kavanagh. “Kavanagh,” he shouted, anger and relief that at least the bastard was still alive temporarily overriding fear. “Where the hell were you? What happened to—”