Stargate Atlantis: Third Path: Book 8 in the Legacy series

by Melissa Scott

  Radek nodded, and found a stool for himself. “An entire science based on manipulating living tissue rather than inorganic materials the way we do. It is hard to get one’s mind around it sometimes.”

  “Yeah.” Sindye rested her head against the wall and gave him a wry smile. “It doesn’t help that Ember — every single Wraith — creeps me out. No, that’s not fair. They terrify me.”

  “Have you taken the retrovirus?” Radek tipped his head to one side, not sure why he felt as though he ought to defend Ember. The Wraith had saved his life, thrown him clear of falling debris in the chaotic last battle against Queen Death, and had been badly injured himself. Radek had let him feed in order to save his life, and still wasn’t sure how he felt about the bond Ember claimed it had made between them.

  “Yes. Though there are times I think maybe I shouldn’t have — the idea of being caught on a hiveship permanently is really unpleasant.”

  “Yes.” That was Ronon’s argument, of course, and not at all unreasonable. And yet — “I think of it as giving me a chance to escape, or to be rescued.”

  “I suppose.” The idea seemed to relax her slightly.

  “Ember is not a bad person,” Radek said, and Sindye gave him a sideways look.

  “If you say so.”

  And that was about as much as he ought to say, Radek thought. “How long do we wait?”

  Sindye glanced at her watch. “It’s been taking about ninety minutes for us to see any signs of degradation.”

  Radek sighed, and shifted to a more comfortable position. “So we wait some more.”

  The time seemed to crawl by. No matter what topic either of them introduced, from the unavailability of certain movies on Atlantis’s intranet to recent work on Sateda to who supplied the Marines’ poker school with moonshine, everything turned back to the Wraith, and to the mysterious bacterium that currently cut them off from the rest of the galaxy.

  “And if we had simply read the sign that was standing there…” Radek broke off, knowing he was being unfair, and to his surprise Sindye gave a wry smile.

  “Well, considering how rare it is for any Ancient label to say anything useful, I suppose I can’t entirely blame them.”

  Radek smiled himself, looking around the room. Sure enough, the lettering around the door read ‘caution — door closes quickly,’while the decorative band around the worktable actually repeated ‘do not remove’ a dozen times. “That is true. And we will know better next time.”

  “If there is a next time.” Sindye shook her head. “I’m surprised stuff like this doesn’t happen more often — biological materials coming through the Stargate to contaminate a new world. Or chemicals, for that matter.”

  “The Stargate removes most contamination,” Radek said. “Or at least that has always been true so far.”

  “Yeah, but how does it know? That’s one of the things I was working on before I got tapped for Atlantis, and now that it might actually be relevant, I realize we don’t have the faintest idea.”

  “The Ancients did it,” Radek said, his voice dry.

  “And when was the last time the Ancients left us something that worked the way they said it would?”

  “Not in my time with the SGC,” Radek said. “I wonder if the Stargate — or whatever part of it that looks for contaminants — didn’t recognize this because it was Wraith?”

  “It’s possible,” Sindye said. “Do you think Ember has come up with an answer?”

  “I think he is going to try his best,” Radek answered, “because if he doesn’t, he is trapped here with us.” And that was an ugly thought, one Wraith in a community of humans, some of whom, at least, had taken the retrovirus. He shook the thought aside. “I think it is time.”

  “Yeah.” Sindye slid off her stool. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  Radek followed her to the worktable and peered over her shoulder into the first box. The travel mug was nearly half gone, and the previously untouched plastic was starting to get a chewed look along its edges. “This is the control?” he began, then realized that the plastic was wet.

  “This was the test.” Sindye looked stricken, then shook herself. “Let’s see the control.”

  It, too, held a deteriorating travel mug and a chewed-looking piece of plastic. In fact, Radek thought, it was very nearly identical to the test. “This is not good.”

  “No.” Sindye groped for the tongs, then retrieved both pieces of plastic, laying them side by side on the tabletop. “I don’t — the compound didn’t do a bit of good.”

  “No.” Radek reached for his radio. “Dr. Beckett. We have some bad news.”

  “Looks like a landing bay.” John shone the light from his P90 around the empty space. There were faded markings on the floor, lines that might have demarcated parking areas for various craft or marked some areas off for maintenance or passengers – it was impossible to tell. Or maybe the Travelers had put them there, blocking off areas for various ships to use. One way or another, the chamber’s use was obvious.

  “Those look like Traveler packing crates in the corner,” Rodney said. “Probably it’s some stuff they left.”

  “That could be,” Teyla said. She had ranged ahead a little bit, toward the set of doors to the left. There was another, identical set to the right. Going that way first made as much sense as the other.

  Daniel Jackson squinted up at the ceiling far above. “Is there power?”

  The lights went on with sudden, dazzling brightness. Rodney looked smug from where he stood at a panel at the hangar door. “Amazingly, if you use the light switch, it works.”

  “Thanks, McKay,” John said. He’d gotten used to Ancient installations where the lights went on for him. It actually hadn’t occurred to him to look for a manual control beside the door.

  “Ok,” Daniel said. “That’s a good sign. If there’s power, there might be equipment intact.”

  “Remember,” Teyla said. “The Travelers use this as a waystation. They have probably removed anything that was obviously useful.”

  “Let’s have a look,” John said. “Rodney, you go with Daniel and take the right door. Teyla and I’ll take left.”

  “Do you think we ought to split up?” Rodney asked.

  “Yes, I think we ought to split up.” John turned around and stared at him. “There’s not some big green monster here or the Travelers would have found it. And remember? We’ve got a patient dying in the jumper? We need to search this place quickly. Why are you arguing about everything all of a sudden?” Though the answer to that was obvious – Jackson. He and Rodney had problems that went back to years ago at the SGC, and every time Jackson set foot in Atlantis, Rodney got weirdly territorial.

  “Why don’t I switch with Teyla?”

  “Why don’t you go do what I asked you to?” John said. “You and I are the ones with the ATA gene. It doesn’t make sense to have us in the same party.”

  “But this isn’t…”

  “Rodney!”

  “Fine. I’m going.” Rodney spun on his heel and headed for the other door. “We’ll go find the secret hidden machinery that kills people.”

  “If there was secret hidden machinery that kills people, it would already have killed the Travelers,” Daniel said as they went out of earshot. “Not that I’m saying there may not be something there, but if you avoid turning it on —”

  “Jesus.” John shook his head.

  Teyla looked vaguely amused. “You gave me Daniel Jackson before. He is just as bad around Rodney as Rodney is around him.”

  “I’m going to kill them both,” John said.

  “The thought has crossed my mind,” Teyla said with a smile. And that made it better. It always did. She had his back with no drama.

  “Let’s see if we can find anything useful,” John said.

  Of course what they found was a warren of rooms used by the Travelers and not exactly put back the way they found it. “Take only photographs and leave only memories,” John said as he
surveyed a large room full of debris – papers and tatters of cloth, empty food containers and burned out electrical components and what looked like one frayed sock.

  “I have found the latrine,” Teyla said from the doorway of a smaller room. “Or at least that is its function now.”

  “Great.” Those looked like plastic wrappers from MREs. When did the Travelers get their MREs? “Let’s try down here,” John said, opening the next door into a dimly lit corridor. Most of these chambers seemed to be on emergency power, every fourth fixture lit. They could see well enough. There were two more rooms along the hall that looked like they’d been occupied, and a door at the end that stubbornly stayed closed when John tried to open it.

  “It is not like the others,” Teyla said, running her hand over the elaborately inscribed Vanir letters around the top and sides of the door. “They do not have this.” She traced them down the side. “I wonder if it says keep out or if these are directions.”

  “Or the name of the room,” John said. He opened his radio. “Jackson? I need you to come down to our location. We need a door read.”

  “Say again?” Jackson’s voice was tinny.

  “We’ve found a door with inscriptions,” John said. “We need you to read them.”

  “On my way.”

  It took a few moments for the other party to arrive, Rodney in the lead.

  “Did you find anything interesting?” Teyla asked.

  Rodney shook his head. “Stuff the Travelers used. Rooms full of trash and useless junk. How about you?”

  “We found much the same thing. And then this.” She nodded at the door.

  Daniel was already examining it. “Ok, this inscription is pretty typical. It says, ‘Authorized Personnel Only. Do Not Enter. Not a User Entry.’”

  “Not a user entry?” John said.

  “I suppose not a client entry would be more exact,” Daniel said. “Or not a customer entry.”

  “So this is the back door, the employees only entrance? To what?”

  “I don’t know,” Daniel said. He stood back, his hands on his hips. “But it doesn’t look like the Travelers have opened it.”

  “I don’t see any way to open it,” Teyla said. “Did it respond to Vanir speech? Or to their genetic pattern?”

  “Maybe it had to be opened from the inside,” John said.

  “These kinds of doors…” Daniel wandered back down the hall away from the door.

  “What?” Rodney said.

  “…generally had to be opened from some distance. Ah ha!” Daniel pointed to a line of letters at waist height and twenty feet back. “It says ‘press for attendant.’ So we press here and…” He pressed a section of wall and waited.

  “It’s like those hospital doors,” John said. “Going into an ICU or something. You buzz the nurses’ stand and then wait for them to open the doors from inside. So there should be a manual override, right?”

  “There should be,” Daniel said. “So let’s look for it.”

  “I don’t think we have to look very far,” Rodney said triumphantly. “It’s right here by the door. See?” He turned a piece of the carved panel outward at knee level so that it was a lever that pressed down. “Turn and pump. The doors slide right open.” He put his foot on it and stepped hard. The doors slid open an inch.

  “I am very glad that you are both so experienced with doors,” Teyla said with a smile. “It is always useful to travel with many experts on Vanir doors. You are both irreplaceable.”

  John tried hard not to laugh.

  Rodney pumped and slowly the doors ground open until a space about a meter wide appeared between them. “That’s good,” John said, shining the light from his P90 through them. “Let’s take a look.” There were shapes, surfaces. They were dust covered, but the room wasn’t empty. He stepped inside.

  Daniel followed almost on his heels. “There’s the switch,” Daniel said, reaching to a panel at hip height beside the door. “And there.” Light came up from recessed fixtures in the ceiling and along the walls, an amber glow that grew rapidly to the brightness of sunlight. There was a low desk with a single seat behind it, a triangle with the seat in the middle, giving it access to three sides where amber letters scrolled down across the surface of the desk.

  “Bingo,” Rodney said, making a beeline for the terminal. “I think we’ve got something.”

  “What is this?” Teyla asked. On one side of the room was a large tube, clear at one end and dark metal elsewhere. Through the clear surface could be seen a padded interior. “It looks like the chambers on the ship.”

  “I agree,” Daniel said. “And we’ve certainly seen Asgard stasis chambers before.” He bent over Rodney’s shoulder, weirdly folded into the short desk, peering at the amber letters.

  “What have we got here?” John asked. “Control center? Power supply?”

  Daniel pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Better than that. I think – if I’m reading all this correctly – this is a field medical station. And it looks like it has power and might be working.”

  “Then let’s get our patient down here,” John said, keying on his radio.

  Daniel looked around. “We need to run a diagnostic. This equipment hasn’t been used in hundreds of years and…”

  “The guy’s dying,” John said. “What could happen? It could kill him? We don’t have time to run a bunch of tests on it first. Elizabeth? Do you hear me?”

  Daniel’s eyebrows rose but he didn’t argue.

  “Elizabeth?”

  There was no answer.

  “We’re probably too far underground,” Rodney said. “Radio, remember? Not mysterious Ancient device.”

  “We will go and get them,” Teyla said. “After all, they cannot carry the stretcher and all the equipment alone.”

  “Yeah,” John said. “Daniel, you and Rodney stay here and do what you’re going to do to get that thing working. You have until we get back to run tests if you want. We’ll go get the patient.”

  It was twenty minutes before the injured Vanir was closed into the regeneration chamber, Dekaas bending over the control panels with Daniel translating and Rodney adjusting power levels. John shook his head, looking down at the small, still form in the coffin like box. The Vanir looked nothing like human children, but…

  “We have done what we can do,” Teyla said quietly. “And that is all we can do.”

  “Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “I wish I could win them all.”

  “I know.” Teyla put her hand on his arm. “But there is nothing more we can do at the moment.”

  Dekaas looked up at her words. “It’s going to be a while. It looks like the regeneration chamber goes through several cycles. It’s in the diagnostic cycle now. It has three cycles after this, so…”

  “Don’t ask me,” Rodney said. “A couple of hours at least. Maybe longer.”

  “If you do not mind,” Teyla said, “I would like to investigate this installation further. Perhaps there are other machines that would be useful.”

  “That’s a good idea,” John said. “We could do that.”

  “We’ll stay with Dekaas and monitor the patient,” Daniel said.

  “Sounds like a plan,” John said. Anything was better than sitting around watching the regeneration tube do its work.

  The installation was bigger than it looked. Forty minutes later John and Teyla had found more mazes of corridors and empty rooms beyond the medical center. As yet another door led to yet another corridor, John shook his head. “This place is enormous. I wonder what they built it for.”

  “I cannot even guess,” Teyla said. She looked up at him sideways. “But I thought you would prefer to explore it rather than watch the medical equipment.”

  “You’ve got that right.” He paused, glancing down two identical corridors.

  “Someone you cared about?”

  As usual Teyla was too perceptive. John shrugged. “My mom. She died a while ago. But she had a lot of procedures. I don’t know.”<
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  “Ah.” She waited, not saying anything.

  He glanced off down the corridor, the silence heavy around him until it seemed easier to fill it. “My mom thought there was some kind of higher purpose to everything, that things happen for a reason. I don’t know if that’s true or not.”

  “I think that it is,” Teyla said.

  “I don’t like to think it is. I think the reason people suffer is because shit happens. You know? It just does and mostly it’s nobody’s fault. Or it’s some big global thing and nobody can really do anything about it.”

  “Like Cullings.”

  “No.” John frowned. “Cullings don’t just happen. And they can be stopped.”

  “If you know about them ahead of time and you have the technology or you have the diplomatic relations or you have the weapons,” Teyla said. “But most people do not have those things. Cullings simply happen. They are a thing we endure.”

  “But it’s not that they can’t be stopped. It’s just that a lot of people can’t stop them.”

  “That is my point,” Teyla said. “To the inhabitants of a world that would have been Culled, we are the eyes and hands of the Ancestors.”

  John looked at her. “So you’re saying there are no higher powers?”

  “I am saying that I believe they work through us.”

  He took a deep breath, feeling something loosen inexplicably in his chest. “That’s what my mom said. She said we all have a purpose and I hadn’t found mine yet.”

  “And have you now?” Teyla’s eyes were knowing.

  “Yeah,” John said. He looked ahead at a pair of double doors at the end of the corridor, trying to lighten it up. “And you never know what you’re going to find right around the corner. There might be something amazing behind those doors.”

  “Or another empty room,” Teyla said with a smile.

  “Maybe.” John pressed the plate to open it, then reached inside for the light plate beside the door. Then he stopped, staring at what rested inside.

  “Perhaps I was mistaken,” Teyla said.