Reliquary

Chapter Eight

“How did they take the operations tower so quickly?” Carson Beckett asked in frustration. It was really a rhetorical question. They were losing Atlantis, and there was nothing he could do but look over Radek Zelenka’s shoulder and go mad with worry.

There were only three casualties in the medlab so far: two botanists with minor injuries who had managed to escape their lab moments before the alien what’s-its had arrived, and a badly wounded Marine. Sergeant Bates had dragged him through the corridor access doors just before Radek had sealed off this section. Dr. Sayyar was tending to him, leaving Carson with nothing to do but fret. They had all heard the shooting and the calls for help before the radios had gone dead, and Carson knew there must be wounded all through the upper levels of the operations tower; they just couldn’t bloody get to them. First Rodney, Sheppard, Irina, and Boerne are killed, Carson thought, sickened. They had barely begun to reel from that disaster. Now we’re inches from losing the whole city.

Zelenka looked up from the laptop to gesture helplessly. “The aliens must have come back on the jumpers sent to rescue supposed refugees, but I do not understand how they took over our systems so quickly. It’s as if they had all our security codes.”

Carson nodded bleakly. Zelenka had set up his equipment in the back research bay, and Carson wasn’t certain what he was doing, but it was keeping the invaders out of the medlab’s section. The other scientists were ransacking the medlab’s emergency stores, trying to put together things they could use for weapons, booby traps to protect the corridor. Besides Bates, only two other members of the expedition’s small military contingent had made it here; they were Marines who had been patrolling the edge of the city’s secure area and had barely made it to the lab before Radek had had to seal the corridor. Carson was badly afraid that the others were lying dead in the ’gate room, where the attack had begun. “Security codes,” he said, mostly to himself. “You don’t think this Dorane got them out of Rodney or Sheppard somehow?” He didn’t feel particularly hopeful; it might mean the story about the Wraith was so much rubbish, but it didn’t mean that Dorane hadn’t killed both men.

Radek winced, but before he could answer, the Atlantean com system clicked on and Carson heard a woman’s voice saying, “—try it now, it should be through to the medlab—”

Startled and hopeful, Radek said, “Dr. Simpson, is that you?”

But it was Elizabeth’s voice that replied, “This is Weir—”

Carson asked urgently, “Elizabeth, are you all right?”

Then Bates pushed in from the other bay, cutting through the confusion to demand, “Dr. Weir, what’s your situation?”

Elizabeth’s voice was rushed but calm. “I’m in the small science meeting room below the operations level, with Simpson and some of the operations staff. Simpson’s managed to keep them from getting the door open.” She took a sharp breath. “It was Dorane. Sending the jumpers back to the repository was a trap. And he’s done something to our people. Ford, Teyla, Kavanagh, and the two jumper crews who came back with the aliens are obeying him like robots, like they were under some kind of mental control. They captured the ’gate room before we even knew the aliens were here. I don’t know how he’s—”

The com cut off. “Dr. Weir!” Bates shouted. There was no response.

“My God,” Radek muttered into the sudden silence, sounding horrified. “That explains the codes. If he is controlling our people…”

Bates’ face could have been carved from stone. He turned to Carson, asking, “Do you know what would cause that?”

“Son, I don’t have a bloody clue.” He wondered if the man could handle this. He had briefly wondered the same thing about Sheppard, until the Major had taken a team to a hive ship and brought all their missing people back, except for Colonel Sumner and one of the Athosians. After that, Carson hadn’t wondered. And he knew Bates could be something of a bastard, but no one in his right mind would want Sheppard’s job, and Bates certainly didn’t look as if he wanted it now. He explained, “I need data, something to work with. If we could get one of the affected people down here—”

“That’s not an option at the moment, Doctor,” Bates snapped. One of the Marines called for him and he walked away toward the main part of the lab.

“He is afraid,” Zelenka murmured, turning back to the laptop. “It is bad enough that Dorane could take hostages. If he can send our own people to fight us…”

“Aye,” Carson answered, not wanting to hear the rest of it aloud. “It scares me, too.”

John came back to himself leaning against the rough warm trunk of a tree, at the edge of the forest that lay past the Star-gate’s platform. Breathing hard, almost sobbing, he realized he couldn’t hear anything except the rush of the surf. That… was freaky, he thought, cautiously glad he could think at all. He pushed off from the tree, his legs still shaky from adrenaline overload, the puncture wounds from the Koan throbbing painfully. Dry leaves crackled under his boots, reassuringly normal. The breeze was sweet and cool, and birds were singing somewhere in the forest, the song a strange mix of familiar and exotic. He could see the ocean through the scattered trees, where the land curved around to embrace the bay. It wasn’t long after dawn. I’m running around blind — literally if I lose these glasses — on an alien world. That’s incredibly stupid.

Without that cacophony in his head, he could think now. I didn’t imagine that. It was there. It had been as real as a punch in the gut. As a whole lot of punches in the gut. He looked back toward the dead city, the dark shape of the repository looming over it. It had been like a mental broadcast that only he — and the Koan? — could hear.

Dorane had said he had developed his own altered version of the ATA gene. And on their first night here McKay had talked about a theory, that the people who had taken over the repository after the Ancients had tried to imitate the Ancient Technology Activation, and that the differences in their version of whatever field it broadcast was what was making the people with the gene and the ATA therapy feel so uneasy.

Rodney was right again, damn him. Then, Crap, I left him alone.

Cursing himself and Dorane and this planet and life in general in the Pegasus Galaxy under his breath, John started back inland, moving along the edge of the forest toward the Stargate.

He moved quietly by habit, walking in the short yellow grass, sticking to the shadow of the trees. After a couple of hundred yards, he felt a tingling in the back of his neck and knew there was a Koan nearby. Oh great, I can sense them. Rodney was right about that, too, John growled mentally, turning back under the shadow of the trees. He didn’t have time for this.

He circled around, then saw a shape ahead, crouched at the base of a tree.

It was facing away from him, looking toward the city, a slight figure in a rough sleeveless tunic. It was also wearing a hooded wrap, a fold of fabric pulled forward to shield its face, and its hair was long and silver-gray, collected in a neat braid that hung down its back. And there was something else on its face, too. Fascinated, John stepped forward and a dry twig shifted under his boot.

The figure shot to its feet in alarm, causing John to leap backward from pure adrenaline. It was a Koan; he could see the silvery mottling on its bare arms and chest, the spines on its ears as its hood fell back. It was wearing a pair of primitive goggles, the lenses tinted dark. Instead of attacking him it scrambled back in confusion and bolted away through the trees.

Well, that was different, John thought, staring after it.

He studied the ground, kicking aside dead leaves and twigs, and something rolled free. Slowly, John picked it up.

It was a wooden tube, with a braided cord strap for carrying, with little decorative bands inset with bits of polished rock or shell. He turned it over, looked down one of the open ends and realized he was holding a telescope. The lens was colored with some kind of amber pigment. John peered through it, found it too dark, and had to cautiously lift up his sunglasses to see through it. Turning toward the city, he could see the repository’s main entrance from here, though he couldn’t make out much detail.

He lowered the telescope, looking off into the quiet forest. He didn’t need Corrigan to tell him a species composed entirely of animalistic psychopaths didn’t figure out how to grind lenses or make eye protection against the daylight.

So they aren’t all crazy. Over the years some of the Koan must have escaped Dorane’s influence, traveled away from the ruined city, reinvented some kind of life for themselves. And Dorane had said the Ancients had tried to stabilize the Koan’s genetic changes. Maybe they had succeeded, and it had just taken a few generations or so to show up. And Dorane had been too bent on revenge by that point to notice, or care. John looked back at the city. If the ones still inside hear those voices, that noise, all the time… No wonder they were nuts.

John found a branch at about eye level and hung the telescope on it, so the guy could find it if he came back. He searched himself for something else to leave and came up with a power bar wrapper he had shoved in his pocket by habit. He attached it to the branch next to the telescope, It wasn’t much of a way of conveying “I come in peace, sorry I scared the crap out of you” but it was all he had. He could, at least, say it to McKay.

John found Rodney trudging doggedly across the plain between the city and the Stargate, the pack slung over his shoulders, carrying the ZPM. His shirt was stained with sweat and his face red from exertion. He knew Rodney wasn’t in that bad a shape; he must have chased John most of the way through the city before having to give up. As John jogged toward him Rodney stopped, waiting for him to approach, regarding him hopefully. Reaching him, John said, “Sorry. Had a moment back there. Want me to carry that?”

“Yes.” Rodney handed the ZPM over with a gasp of relief.

John hefted the ZPM against his chest. It felt inert, like a kitchen appliance, and not like a subspace power source that when fully charged made a nuclear bomb look like a popgun. It whispered to him again, but this time, without Dorane’s dying technology screaming in his head, he understood it. It was speaking in something that was more like musical notes than words, but he knew it was saying that it was at minimal capacity, and needed maintenance. It was a reassuringly ordinary thing for a ZPM to say, if you thought about it.

They walked for a few moments, and John cleared his throat. “I think I know why the Koan are crazy. It’s got something to do with Dorane trying to create his own version of the ATA gene. Even with everything broken and powered down, something in that equipment in there is still broadcasting, and once he gives you his Koan gene retrovirus, it gets louder and louder until it’s screaming in your head. You were right, that was probably what was making us feel so weird when we first got here. Why we thought the place was creepy. Why I kept smelling rot and dead things when nobody else did.”

McKay nodded, wiping his forehead off on his arm. He took it all in like they were sitting around in a lab or conference room talking about how the puddlejumper’s propulsion system worked. “Because of the gene and the ATA therapy, we were subliminally conscious of it but couldn’t sense it well enough to be more than minimally affected.”

“Right. It didn’t really hit me until we got to the surface. Once I got far enough away from it, I could think again.” John shrugged awkwardly. “And I saw another Koan out there. He was watching the city and ran off when he saw me. So some of them must have escaped over time, and, you know, got over it. They probably saw the jumper land and they’ve been watching us from a distance ever since.”

“Sensible of them.” McKay took a deep breath. “All that aside, I had an idea. If we find the ’gate is actually locked against any destination except Atlantis, we can transmit a message with the MALP. If you can convince Dorane that you want to join him, he may open the shield for us. Then when we get there, you can shoot him. We’ll still have to do something about all the Koan, but if he’s not there to control them, it should be a little easier.”

John lifted his brows. It wasn’t exactly the best plan ever, but they didn’t have a lot of options. “Okay, so he figures I’m due for a psychotic break around about now and believes me. But suppose he doesn’t care how his experiment on me turned out. He’s got plenty of Koan already; what do I tell him I have that he might want?”

Rodney smiled, a weird combination of his normal smug expression and a look of resignation and terror. “Me.”

Any stairs or ramp that had led up to the Stargate platform had been a casualty of the bombing, and the scramble up the resulting pile of rock and rubble was not made any easier by the ZPM. John and McKay reached the top without dropping it or breaking their own necks. The MALP still sat to one side of the platform, coated with a layer of blown sand but otherwise unharmed.

McKay went immediately to the hole in the platform where the DHD had been. He poked around at the remains of it for a few moments, then sat back, shaking his head. “I was right, this DHD wasn’t destroyed by an energy weapon, there was some sort of internal overload. Which means that maniac was out here trying to get around whatever control inhibition the Ancients placed on the crystals and blew the damn thing himself.”

John chewed his lip, thinking about it. “He would have still tried to dial manually. Maybe he tried it a lot.”

McKay had followed his thought. He snorted. “You think he killed two ZPMs manually dialing a ’gate? It’s impossible. It takes comparatively little power to initiate a ’gate, which is probably a safety feature to keep travelers from being stranded. The outside power source isn’t creating the worm-hole, it’s just unlocking the inner ring and then locking in the chevrons for the address. He would have to dial…” McKay frowned.

John lifted his brows. “Over and over again for ten thousand years? In between stasis chamber naps?”

“And I thought I was obsessive-compulsive,” McKay muttered, diving back into the hole. “I find the fact that he must have been unsuccessful all this time mildly terrifying.”

John wasn’t thrilled with it either. “Maybe he wasn’t unsuccessful. Maybe he went there after the Ancients left for Earth. Which means—” He hesitated, not liking where this was going. “It’s not the city he wants, it’s us. He wants to keep experimenting.” He took a frustrated breath, looking out over the bright plain. “Why didn’t the Ancients just kill him? All these tricks with the ’gate, it’s like they wanted him to squirm around trying to escape.”

“Or as if they wanted something from him,” McKay said quietly. “They didn’t touch his inner sanctum lab complex. Or they searched it, didn’t find what they wanted, and left it intact hoping the answer was just hidden too well. That they could force him to reveal it eventually.”

Antidotes, John thought. For the Thesians, for whoever else Dorane had managed to infect. He didn’t want to say it aloud; he didn’t want to sound that hopeful — as if it would tempt the universe to conspire against him.

McKay was quiet for a moment, then he said, “You look like an alien biker,” and started working again. He poked and prodded at the DHD’s remnants, dug tools out of his pack, and muttered to himself. The day was getting hot, the sun reflecting off the stone platform, and the brightness was giving John yet another headache. Then McKay connected in the ZPM, and John felt a sudden shiver travel down his back. It was not an unpleasant sensation.

He stared up at the Stargate, which still looked like an inert hunk of naquadah, but something in John’s head told him it was now powered up, ready to be dialed. “You did it,” he said, just as McKay sat back from the ragged hole in the paving and said, “I did it.”

“What?” they both said at the same time. John waved for McKay to shut up. “I felt it. Like it was an Ancient gene thing. Except I’ve never felt a ’gate before. And ZPMs have never talked to me.”

“I actually didn’t think you had been holding out on us all this time, Major.” McKay stared at the Stargate, then at John. “Maybe that’s what the spines are for. Maybe they’re meant to enhance reception of Dorane’s alternate mental technology activation, and they also function that way for the real ATA.”

John caught himself trying to roll his eyes back to see the spines in his brows. “Like antennae?” It did make a sort of sense.

McKay rubbed sweat and dust off his face with his shirtsleeve. “Can you dial the ’gate mentally, by any chance? Because that damn thing looks heavy.”

“Let’s see.” John concentrated on the first symbol for Atlantis, then for a few other destinations he had memorized. Nothing. The inner ring just sat there, making a deep metallic purring noise that John could feel in his back teeth. He felt like it was staring accusingly at him. Or possibly laughing. “Guess not.”

“Of course.” McKay pushed to his feet, stumbled, and John stood, giving him a hand up. “That would be too easy.”

They decided to test the theory that all destinations except Atlantis had been locked out to keep Dorane here. If they could dial another destination, that meant they could use Plan A, which was to try to dial into Atlantis from another ’gate address, and trick Dorane into letting them in by pretending to be traders or something else unspecified that they hadn’t quite figured out yet. “Let’s try the Hoffans,” McKay suggested, leaning tiredly on the gate. “They were nice people. Hopefully a few of them are still alive.”

“It’s worth a shot,” John agreed. The Hoffans put a high value on fighting the Wraith with science, and were advanced enough to understand genetics. If any of them were still around, they would probably be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and listen to McKay’s explanations, instead of shooting the freaky alien creature who had just come through their ’gate (i.e. John) on sight.

They wrestled with the ’gate’s inner ring. It was heavy, like pushing a loaded truck up a hill. But while it would rotate all around, it stubbornly refused to lock in the first symbol in the Hoffans’ gate address, no matter how hard they both shoved at it, or how hard John mentally begged it. John swore. “It’s going to have to be Plan B.”

McKay stepped back, eyeing the ’gate with weary disgust. “You know what you’re going to say?”

John had no idea what he was going to say. He thought he would be better winging it. “I can sound crazy and desperate, how’s that?”

“Crazy and desperate is standard operating procedure.” McKay went to his pack, rooted around in it for a moment, and pulled out something that looked like a little PDA, but John could tell it was Ancient technology. It buzzed with a low note, a minor key compared to the bass orchestra of the Stargate, but much friendlier. “Major, I’m going to put this in the MALP. I assume if this goes hideously wrong, we’ll both be searched and I don’t want Dorane to find it.”

“Okay.” John blinked, distracted, as the little device sang that it had lots of data but was ready for more. “Uh… What is it?”

“A download from Dorane’s database. He thought he had it adequately protected, but let’s say his system security skills don’t match his Frankensteinian expertise in biochemistry. The Ancients must have been able to get this data too, so I don’t know how useful it might be, but it’s still worth saving.” Rodney tucked it into one of the MALP’s code-locked compartments. The metal muted the little device’s song, and it settled into quiet. McKay dusted his hands off on his pants. “Now, this has got to look good. We need some stage dressing. I have to look like your prisoner.” Covered with a sticky combination of sweat, dust, and sand, and turning red from incipient sunburn, McKay already looked like he had been dragged to the Stargate by the ankle. He patted his pockets and handed over the 9mm to John. “You should tie me up,” he added, looking absently around. “Better use my belt. There’s some cable in the MALP’s compartment, but we’ll need that to hang ourselves if this doesn’t work.”

John went to the MALP to start powering up the transmitter, making sure it was ready to send as soon as they got the last chevron locked. “Right. How about a chorus of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life?”

“Maybe later.”

Having McKay’s hands awkwardly tied with the belt made pushing the inner ring more difficult, but the symbols for Atlantis’ address each locked without hesitation when the ring slid into place. They hastily scrambled out of the way as the last chevron encoded.

The wormhole whooshed into existence with a blast of ozone and a bass fugue John could feel through his whole body as he bolted around to the MALP. The jumpers’ instant response to him was like coming home, but he wasn’t comfortable with this intimate a relationship with a Stargate, let alone random data pads and ZPMs. He reached for the transmitter and froze. He felt something building in the DHD’s ruined base, heard a weird little scatter of dissonant notes. Then it cut off abruptly. He realized what it was and swore in frustration. “Rodney, I think the ’gate just ate the ZPM.”

Rodney stepped to the DHD’s pit, staring down into it. He moaned a little, sounding as if he was deeply in pain. “I think the Ancients might have anticipated that Dorane might try to dial manually. Obviously, they wanted to keep that to a minimum, so they not only doctored the crystal, they booby-trapped the DHD to eat any directly connected power source.”

“Yeah. I guess it didn’t take him long to use up those two ZPMs after all.” And that meant they only had this one chance to convince Dorane to let them in. “Here we go.” He keyed on the transmitter. “Sheppard to Atlantis.”

The radio crackled and static filled the little screen. The moment stretched and John had time to wonder what he would say if Peter Grodin answered as though everything was normal. The moment stretched longer, and every muscle in his body tensed as he felt the sudden conviction that no one was going to answer, that he was talking to a dead city, as dead as the ruins behind him. Then Dorane’s voice said, “Now this is unexpected.”

“Unexpected is right,” John said, having no problem making his voice sound rough and on edge. His imagination presented him with a picture of Dorane standing at the ’gate control console on the gallery, surrounded by dead operations staff. “The Koan didn’t eat me, though not from lack of trying. How’s that invasion of Atlantis going?”

“It surprises me that you were able to dial the Stargate.” Standing next to John, Rodney mouthed the words no, really. “Why did you bother?”

“My guess is it’s not going so well there. I figure you didn’t realize how many changes we’d made, how many of the Ancient components had failed, how jury-rigged everything was.” Dorane would have been expecting Atlantis as it was before the Ancients left, not consoles with laptops tied into their systems and naquadah power generators.

No answer. He wouldn’t be talking at all if he wasn’t at least curious, John reminded himself. He said, “I have something that could make the transition a little easier for you.”

“And that would be?”

“McKay. The Koan didn’t eat him either. He knows more about how our equipment meshes with the Ancients’ than anybody else there.” If he’s got Zelenka under his control, this is so not going to work.

Another long silence, while John’s nerves grated. He forced himself not to speak, to pretend he was the one holding all the cards. Then Dorane said, “Better than Kavanagh?”

Beside him Rodney rolled his eyes in disgust. John said, “Kavanagh’s a specialist; McKay knows the whole city. He set up the new power grid, the new ’gate protocols.” McKay was motioning with his bound hands, encouraging John to continue. “Everything.”

“And he will agree to help me, to buy your freedom from my old prison?”

“Well, he won’t agree, but I’m sure you can convince him otherwise. He doesn’t have a choice.”

Dorane still didn’t sound that interested. “You would turn against your own people to assist me?”

John took what he figured was their last chance. “Maybe you ought to turn on the visual and take a look.”

McKay, now hovering behind John and hopping from foot to foot, apparently decided he should be unconscious, and threw himself down on the platform, sprawling half on his side, bound hands stuck out obviously in front of him. He raised inquiring brows at John, who nodded and gave him a thumb’s up. McKay was right, it did look convincing. The video crackled into life, and McKay slumped over, eyes closed. The MALP’s camera swiveled toward them, but John was more interested in the image fuzzily forming on the screen. It was the ’gate control gallery, Dorane standing over the dialing console, frowning thoughtfully at something beyond the edge of the screen. The MALP’s telemetry and video went through a laptop, and John wondered if Dorane realized the little thingy to the side was a camera, that the system had been set to send video at the same time it received it. As soon as we step through, J can get him from the ’gate platform. His chest tightened at the thought that this plan just might work. Knowing where Dorane was standing in the large ’gate room was going to shave seconds off his time.

Someone else moved in the video’s background, and John saw it was Peter Grodin. He was sitting down and someone was covering him with a P-90. Grodin craned his neck to see the laptop’s screen, his expression confused and incredulous. Then Dorane said, “Take off the eye protection.”

John gritted his teeth, feeling like somebody’s science exhibit, and pulled off the glasses and the bandana. The light stung his eyes, and he shaded them with a hand, flexing his fingers to extend the claws.

Dorane said nothing. Afraid he was losing his audience, John added, “Yeah, it worked. You think my own people would take me back after this? I’m not human anymore! If they got their hands on me, I’d spend the rest of my life locked up in a lab, as somebody’s pet experiment, cut to pieces while they took tissue samples and made things out of my blood!” He put the glasses back on, unable to stand the glare, and saw Peter looked shocked, utterly boggled, and a little offended, as if he couldn’t believe John would really think that. John started playing to him, finding it easier than trying to convince Dorane. He twisted his face into his best impression of Jack Nicholson playing an ax murderer, and added on a note of rising hysteria, “And they never trusted me in the first place! I’m only the military commander because I shot Colonel Sumner! He never even wanted me on the expedition, I’m only here because I had the gene and O’Neill forced him to take me!” He paused for breath. His throat was dry and it made his voice so rough he barely recognized it.

Grodin’s expression now clearly said, “Fine, Sheppard’s turned into an alien and gone barking, that’s just lovely.”

Behind John, Rodney groaned, obviously wanting in on the drama. John pretended to kick him, his boot connecting with Rodney’s ribs though not nearly as hard as it would look. He hissed a heartfelt, “Will you shut up!”

John saw Dorane turn his head, and heard him ask someone, “Who was this Sumner?”

A voice, so dull and lifeless that John couldn’t recognize it, answered, “The military commander of the expedition.”

John took a deep breath. Dorane had obviously been using his control drug. Dorane asked, “Did your friend Sheppard truly kill him?”

“That’s what we were told. He said…it was because a Wraith was killing Sumner, he was dying.”

Whoever it was, was speaking literally, as if he was under hypnosis, but the effect of it was to make the incident sound less like a mercy killing and more like a murder. Feeling this just might work, John snarled, “Hey! Are you going to drop the force shield, or should I just kill McKay?” The Stargate’s bass harmonic was turning impatient as it counted down its thirty-eight minute window. He shouted, “Come on, the Star-gate’s getting pissed off!”

Dorane looked into the video monitor for another long moment. Then he smiled. “I’ll drop the shield. Come through.”

John cut the transmission, made sure the light on the MALP’s camera was out. “We’re clear.”

McKay shoved himself into a sitting position and glared at him. “Ow,” he said pointedly.

“That didn’t hurt.” John gave him an arm up. “I could see Grodin in the monitor. He looked okay, and I think he bought the act.”

“Who knew Peter was that big an idiot.” McKay took a deep breath. “It occurs to me that if you don’t take Dorane out in the first minute, I’m going to be tortured to death and you’re going to be dissected, and everybody else will still die.”

“Yeah, Plan B sucks, but considering that Plan C was hanging ourselves—” The Stargate informed John that the shield on the receiving gate was down and they were clear for entry, so go already. He picked up the 9mm and made sure it was ready, then grabbed McKay’s arm. They stepped through the wormhole.