Ford threw a glance over his shoulder and spotted Kavanagh. He turned back to face the Koan, starting to back away from the stairs. “McKay, fall back to that second passage, try to—”
Kavanagh came up behind Ford and Rodney saw his arm lift. He didn’t see the gun in Kavanagh’s hand until he cracked Ford across the head with it. Rodney stared in shock, his mouth hanging open, as Ford jerked forward and fell across the steps. The Koan howled and poured through the upper doorway. Then Kavanagh, his face blank and preoccupied, swung toward Rodney, lifting the pistol, aiming it at him.
Rodney’s brain lurched back into gear, and he clicked off his light, throwing himself sideways. The shot went off but missed him completely. Thinking, Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no, Rodney fired into the dark shapes of the Koan, scattering them, even as he scrambled for the open passage behind him. He pushed to his feet, fired two more shots, then bolted off into the dark, the Koan howling after him.
John half expected the door at the end of the passage to be locked, but it started to slide open when he touched the controls.
Confirming the bad feeling he had about this whole situation, he saw as it started to lift up that the room beyond was now dark. Oh yeah, John thought, now I’m really pissed off. He braced against one wall, Teyla against the other.
The door opened fully, and their lights revealed no movement. A few of the blue emergency lights were on, but none of the brighter overheads. John flicked the P-90’s light off and eased out into the room cautiously, saying, low-voiced, “Teyla, I think somebody played a little trick on us.”
“I do not understand this,” she whispered harshly, following his lead. “Surely, even if he was lying about being an Ancestor, he would want to be rescued from this place.”
“Well, you know, maybe he didn’t.” John checked the detector; the sensor-jammer had been jury-rigged, which meant there might only be one of them. He grimaced. “Oh, here we go.” There were life signs, about twenty of them, in the direction of the area with the stasis chamber. Where they had left Rodney and the others. Coldly angry, John thought, If he’s touched one of them—He handed off the detector to Teyla, then switched on the Koan’s handy sensor-jammer. “Let’s find him and ask him if he wants to be rescued.”
John and Teyla found an alternate route through the maze of passages, coming out into the big room with the support pillars. The room was lit only by the blue lights, but John could easily see Dorane standing in the center. He was holding something that looked like an Ancient life sign detector, frowning at its screen. A couple of Koan stood near him, their silver-gray skins tinged blue by the light, the spines in their wild hair glittering. It looked as if they were waiting for orders. The blast door out into the corridor was open and more Koan hovered near it, with still more loitering out in the corridor. There was no sign of Rodney, Ford, or the others.
John glanced at Teyla, got a grim nod in response, and stepped out of cover into the room. “Hi. Somehow I get the idea you’re not really an Ancient.”
Dorane turned, startled.
“Put whatever that is down,” John instructed, watching him narrowly. “Or I’ll blow it out of your hand. And, you know, your hand’ll have to go too.”
Dorane stared at him for a moment, his face expressionless. He didn’t make the mistake of underestimating John’s sincerity and carefully lowered the device to the floor. As he straightened up, John thought incredulously, Is he taller? He must have been slumping a little earlier, making himself look less threatening. Dorane said lightly, “You used the jammer. How astute.”
“Yeah, well, I catch on pretty quick when I’m attacked. What did you do with my people?”
Dorane folded his arms, and weirdly it reminded John of one of the older and calmer science team members explaining a theory. “There is nothing to fear. I locked them in the laboratory where my stasis container is.”
“Okay.” He’s lying, John’s instinct said. His worst fear added, he’s killed them. He pushed the thought aside. The detector hadn’t shown them, but then with all this shielding they might have been out of range. But if Dorane had locked McKay, Kavanagh, and Kolesnikova in a lab, of all places, with tools and power, John couldn’t believe they would be in there for more than five minutes. And he knew damn well that Ford was carrying extra ordnance in his pack. John would reserve shooting bits off of Dorane for a last resort, though at the moment it was his first choice for getting accurate information. “Let’s go get them out.”
Dorane said easily, “Very well.” He smiled. It wasn’t the evil smile John had been half expecting. There was a quality to it he couldn’t quite define. “This way.”
John didn’t move. “Tell your friends there to back up, right out through that doorway.”
Dorane turned back to him, lifting a brow. “They aren’t my friends, they are my people.” He touched the iridescent shoulder of one of the Koan. It twitched away from him with a growl, edging back.
John’s brows lifted. “What?”
“Oh, we were like you once,” Dorane assured him. “Human, or so genetically similar that any difference was immaterial. We knew the Lantians, the people you call the Ancients, your honored ancestors. They shared their technology with us, in dribs and drabs, built the Stargates. And antagonized the Wraith into destroying us.”
The last was said in almost the same even tone. Almost. “Antagonizing the Wraith isn’t that hard to do,” John felt compelled to point out. “Now tell them to leave, or I’ll kill every one of them. This gun holds a lot of bullets. Their buddies in the tunnel found that out.”
Dorane’s expression turned a little colder, but the Koan, in response to some invisible signal, backed away, muttering uneasily among themselves. They moved out through the doorway into the corridor, and when they were clear John flicked a look at Teyla, a jerk of his head telling her to seal the door. She moved over to it, sparing a hand from her weapon to hit the controls. As the door slid closed, John caught a glimpse of her in the light. She didn’t look so good, her face paling enough that her eyes seemed enormous. Her bangs were matted with sweat, though it wasn’t that warm. He remembered she had been acting oddly right before the Koan attack; oh great, maybe there is an airborne disease down here. They had to find the others and get this over with fast.
He told Dorane, “Now move.”
Dorane turned reluctantly, starting across the chamber. He said, “I was not lying when I said my people were attacked by the Wraith. We tried to use biological and chemical weapons to fight them, but the Lantians would not help us. We believed our biological weapons would only affect the Wraith; we didn’t realize they would affect us as well. Our weapons drove the Wraith away — temporarily — but they also caused terrible genetic changes in our own people.” He paused to look back at John. “I went to the Lantians to beg for help, and they allowed me to stay with them for a time, working in their laboratories. They pretended to help me.”
“Pretended, yeah, uh huh, keep moving,” John echoed skeptically. He didn’t get it. The Koan didn’t act like any kind of people, genetically altered or not; there was something wrong with their minds, not just their bodies.
Dorane’s eyes narrowed. He was obviously angry that John wasn’t paying attention to his little story. “They betrayed me. The attempts they made to stabilize the damage only made the situation worse, and my people were destroyed.”
John said pointedly, “They weren’t gods, they were just people. Technologically advanced people. They couldn’t fix everything or they would have destroyed the Wraith.” He squeezed off a three-shot burst, scarring the floor about two inches from Dorane’s feet. “Now keep moving, or the next time I’ll shoot your kneecaps, and drag you.”