STARGATE ATLANTIS: The Wild Blue (SGX-05)

by Melissa Scott

  “Don’t look at me,” McKay said. “I don’t do that sort of thing.”

  “No one was,” Sheppard said, not quite under his breath.

  Zelenka quirked a smile. “What kind of a plant is it, do you know? What sort of drive for the generators?”

  Ronon shrugged. “There were some sort of big turbines at the base of the falls, but that’s all I know.”

  “I’ve seen similar plants,” Zelenka said, to Sheppard. “And probably some of the other engineering staff have also. We could certainly take a look.”

  “What about helping them with repairs?” Elizabeth asked. “If that’s what the governor has in mind?”

  “I don’t think he’d say no,” Ronon answered, “but nothing’s got that far yet.”

  “We don’t exactly have a lot of spare parts lying around,” McKay said, and Zelenka nodded.

  “Rodney’s right, we might be able to provide information, expertise, but — presumably they would need transmission cables to get electricity into the city, and that’s not something we can supply.”

  “Perhaps there are still stocks of such things in the city,” Teyla said. “They are hardly fragile, and the Wraith had no reason to destroy them. And it would improve conditions in the new settlement if they had electricity that was not dependent on our generators.”

  “We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?” Sheppard asked.

  Ronon shrugged. “We won’t know till we take a look.”

  “How far is it to the — Narmoth Falls, you said?” Elizabeth frowned up at the map.

  Ronon tried and failed to convert Satedan measurements to the Lanteans’ kilometers. “Four or five days’ walk. Maybe more, if the ground’s bad. I was thinking we could borrow a puddle jumper. So that we don’t waste anybody’s time.”

  “Makes sense. Dr. Zelenka?” Sheppard looked down the table, and Zelenka shrugged.

  “I will go, yes. And I will ask Dr. Kasper to come along, I think he’s had some experience with similar technologies.”

  “All right.” Sheppard closed his laptop. “Tell Cai we’ll send a couple of advisors. But let’s get this done quickly if we can — things are calm right now, but who knows how long that will last?”

  Ronon nodded, and the meeting broke up. He made his way down to the control room to radio the message to Cai, and found Teyla at his side as he left the radio room.

  “That is a good idea of Cai’s,” she said. She was determined to keep her fingers on the pulse of Atlantis’s dealings with the locals. “Do you think it can be done?”

  Ronon shrugged. “I’m not an engineer.”

  “But you have opinions.” Teyla allowed herself a demure smile. “And you have talked to the ones who have seen the plant?”

  “Cai talked to them,” Ronon said. “He says they said there wasn’t much damage in the outer buildings, just broken windows. But nobody’s looked at the machinery in years.”

  “Then your group will be the first,” she said, smiling.

  ***

  Ronon could smell the machine shop a block away, oil and smoke and hot metal, and he stopped in the doorway, not wanting to interrupt the work at hand. The building had been part of the railyard before the Wraith came, and had survived remarkably unscathed. The returning settlers had cleared the main room and gotten the small forge working again, complete with the giant bellows to fan the fires. At the moment, they had a long piece of metal in the fire — it looked like a piece of rail — and a girl in a grimy shirt and pants was hauling rhythmically on the chains that moved the bellows while five or six men shifted the rail back and forth in the flames. Sparks rose from the bed of coals, and the leader lifted a hand.

  “Now!”

  The others heaved together, lifting the rail out of the fire and onto the concrete floor, hastily shifting it so that the heated section was against a thick wooden bollard. Two of the men began hitting one end with sledgehammers, while smoke began to curl up from the bollard. The girl who had been working the bellows ran for a couple of waiting pails of water, but the leader shook his head, and she poised, waiting. The rail began to bend, a gentle curve, the hammers falling faster, the noise deafening.

  “Stop!” The leader dropped his hand, and the girl hastily threw the first pail of water over the smoking bollard. She reached for the second as the others hauled the rail away, then stopped as the smoke faded.

  “Good job, boys,” the leader called. “Let it cool now and then we’ll measure.”

  The girl tapped his shoulder, jerking her head toward the door, and the man turned, his homely face breaking into a smile. Ronon smiled back, recognizing him: Vin had been one of the first wave of settlers. It was good to see him settling in.

  “Dex! Good to see you!”

  “You, too,” Ronon said. They clasped hands, moving away from the heat of the forge, and Vin cocked his head.

  “What brings you here? Anything I can do for you?”

  “I hope so,” Ronon answered. He grimaced as the girl began working the bellows again, sending another wave of heat across the room. “Mind if we step outside?”

  “Not at all.”

  Ronon gave a sigh of relief as they moved out into the breeze, and Vin rummaged in his pocket for a grubby handkerchief and mopped his sweating face.

  “So, what do you need?”

  “Governor Cai is looking for a way to get reliable power back on in the city,” Ronon answered. “So I’m looking for people who know about the Narmoth Falls power station.” He outlined the plan quickly, Vin nodding eagerly, and finished, “I was hoping you might know some folks.”

  “Valiena Bar — she’s the apprentice here — her brother was with the power company, I’m pretty sure,” Vin said. “Cremer Pas wasn’t at Narmoth Falls, but he worked on a similar plant over in Calianta. He’s working salvage right now, but I think he’s still in town. Val might know some more.” He turned away without waiting for Ronon’s response, sticking his head back into the workshop. “Val! Come here a minute, please.”

  The girl trotted over, wiping her face on a dirty sleeve. “Boss?”

  Ronon explained quickly, and she nodded.

  “My brother Atil worked for the power company all right, but he’s out on a salvage job right now.” Her face clouded. “He went out with Evrast Mar, but they haven’t checked in for a few days.”

  “Evrast Mar?” Ronon frowned. The name was familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.

  “General Mar, he was,” Vin said. “Alpine Rangers. It’s too bad he’s already left; he was the guy I was going to send you to next. He’s been up to the Spur a couple of times since he came back, he might know how things are at the Falls.”

  “If you’re going up there,” Bar said, “would you keep an eye out for my brother — for the General’s party? They should have checked in by now.”

  “Radio reception’s always tricky in the hills,” Vin said, patting her shoulder.

  “We’ll definitely keep an eye out,” Ronon said. “Anyone else you can think of who might know the power system?”

  Vin gave him two more names, but when Ronon tracked them down where they were repairing one of the old town pumps, only one had actually worked on the system. But she had more names to offer, and by the end of the day he had a list of five people who had had some experience of the Narmoth Falls station. All had said they were willing to join the Lanteans to take a look at the plant — all the more so, Ronon guessed, because they’d be traveling by puddle jumper instead of hiking — and he made his way back to the communal dining hall in a cheerful mood. The supply situation had improved considerably, to the point that he felt no compunction about accepting Cai’s invitation to join him for dinner. In fact, he admitted silently, leaning back to let one of the hall’s runners set half a loaf of bread in front of him, it was a treat to eat Satedan food again.

  He brought Cai up to speed on the day’s researches and handed over the list of volunteers. Cai took it, frowning thought
fully.

  “Yes, I know most of them. I think we can spare three or four, if your people think that will be enough?”

  “I’ll have to ask Dr. Zelenka,” Ronon began, and stopped, seeing Mel Hocken threading her way through the crowded tables.

  Cai looked over his shoulder, and motioned for the Lantean woman to take a seat. “Trouble?”

  “Not exactly.” Mel slid onto the bench next to Ronon, nodding her thanks as the nearest runner brought her a glass of the smoky lemon tea. “We’ve picked up an anomaly.”

  “What sort of anomaly?” Cai asked.

  “The drones picked up something at the very edge of their range,” Mel said. “It might — and I stress might, because we can’t get closer, and Yustyna’s enhanced the picture as much as possible — show an artificial clearing and a structure, or at least cut timber.”

  “Where?” Cai leaned forward, his food forgotten.

  Mel reached into her pocket, spread out a tattered map. Ronon recognized it as the kind tourists picked up to take them to the mountains, before the Wraith came. She turned it so that they could all see, and touched a spot on the far side of the ridge of mountains that came down off the Alduren Plateau. “Right about there.”

  “That’s right in the middle of mining country,” Ronon said.

  Cai nodded. “We’ve always thought the people up there would have had warning when the Wraith came, and if they’d gone down into the mines — whole towns could have survived.”

  Ronon tilted his head to see more clearly. Narmoth Falls and its power station were on the western side of the Spur; the spot Mel indicated was on the eastern, not actually that far apart, except for the jagged ridge between them. The mines were mostly on the eastern side, where the slopes were less steep, and a rail line had run from there to the capital.

  “We’ve been looking for a good reason to take the Rapide out on a proper test flight,” Mel said, “and this looks like it to me. We can get there and back easily, and have plenty of time to circle and take pictures, see what’s really there. We could take in the whole length of the Spur.”

  Cai hesitated. “I don’t know. If anything goes wrong, it’s a long way back to the field.”

  “It’s always going to be a long way back,” Mel said. She added, more moderately, “It looks to me as though there might be clearings on top of the plateau, and at the base of the Spur. We’ve got some fallbacks if we need them. And we’re going to have to take the risk sometime.”

  She was right, Ronon thought, but he also understood Cai’s hesitation. They had traded a lot of Sateda’s wealth for that airplane; they couldn’t afford to lose it and have nothing to show for the loss. “The highway used to run up to Narmoth Falls, didn’t it?”

  “That’s right.” Cai frowned.

  “We’re going up there,” Ronon said, to Mel. “I’m taking some people up there to see if the power plant can be salvaged. What if we see if we can clear a length of the road for a landing strip? That way, if you had a problem, all you’d have to do was cross the Spur.”

  Mel nodded slowly. “I like that idea. And then if the plant gets going, we can make that a regular base, move north onto the Plateau —”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Cai said. He stared at the map a moment longer, tapping his finger on the table, then shook his head. “All right. If you can get a landing strip open up there, then I’ll agree to send the Rapide to look at that anomaly. If it is another settlement…” He shook his head. “Well. Too early to start thinking like that.”

  Ronon nodded, knowing everything Cai wasn’t saying. The more of their own people they found alive, against all odds, the more it felt as though they were becoming Sateda again, and not just a collection of refugees. He cleared his throat. “Say, while you’re up there — assuming you go, of course — there’s a guy who went toward the Spur and apparently he’s missed his radio check. Can you look for him as well?”

  Mel shrugged. “It depends on how big a party he’s got, and whether he wants to be found. But, sure, we can look.”

  “You’re talking about Evrast Mar,” Cai said.

  Ronon nodded again. “Yeah.”

  “He was warned — everybody who goes into the back country is warned,” Cai said. “We don’t have the people to mount rescue missions if something goes wrong.”

  And that was also reasonable, Ronon thought, even if he guessed Cai didn’t particularly like it. “He’s done this a lot, right? Maybe he just dropped his radio or something. If we’re up there, we might as well look.”

  Cai relaxed a little. “True enough. But first, let’s see what’s left of the highway.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  IT WASN’T a long flight from the capital to the Narmoth Falls, and Radek was glad he had claimed a seat directly behind Lorne’s co-pilot, Sergeant Fishman. The puddle jumper was crowded with the six members of the exploration team — the four Satedans plus Ronon, and Radek himself and Dr. Kasper — plus Lorne and two more military personnel. It was easy to see that this would be a long and tedious journey on foot: once they left the ruins of the suburbs, the gently rolling grassland gave way to steeper hills and thicker forest. A road had been cut through it once, and he could see the remains of a rail line, but in far too many places, the trees had filled in, or a bridge had slumped into a stream. Arkad Pin, the Satedan engineer who had worked on a similar plant in a different province, leaned forward, frowning, and shrugged in answer to Radek’s questioning look.

  “The transmission lines ran along the rail cut. I don’t see too many missing towers so far.”

  Radek looked again, and this time the sun was at the right angle to spark fire from the bare metal. The towers were low and crude compared to the ones in use on Earth, but would be sufficient for the job. “The actual wires are missing, I think.”

  Pin nodded. “Yeah. And they’ll be a beast to replace if we have to haul cable by ox-cart — assuming we can even find some spare oxen.”

  “Not to mention replacement cable,” the older of the two Satedan women said. Arkadya Kos, Radek remembered, and she had been an administrator for the power company before the Wraith came. She closed her eyes. “There was some stored at the plant, but most of it was in the city. I don’t know if anyone’s looked to see if it’s still there.”

  “First things first,” Kasper said. “There’s no point wasting time on that if the turbines can’t be repaired.”

  “But if they can,” the younger Satedan woman, Valiena Bar, said, “we need to be prepared.”

  Radek tuned out the discussion and craned his neck to see out the windscreen. The edge of the plateau was just visible in the distance, chocolate-colored rock rising like a wall out of the forest. A stripe of white split the wall, resolving as they came closer into the foam of a waterfall. Presumably the buildings of the power station were at its base, but the trees still hid them from sight.

  “Narmoth Falls,” Ronon said. “The Narmoth River runs southeast to the Spur, then south along the mountains. Otherwise it would be an easy way to get supplies up here.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Great rapids, though,” Ronon offered. “My unit used to train there.”

  “If that’s a thing you enjoy,” Radek answered, and Ronon grinned.

  “It weeded out the weak — what’s that?”

  “I see it,” Lorne said, from the pilot’s seat, and tipped the jumper into a slow turn that brought them back over the break in the trees. Radek realized he was holding his breath, and then released it in a sigh of disappointment as they passed over an empty meadow.

  “Nothing, sir,” the co-pilot said, and Lorne nodded.

  “Sorry, folks.”

  “Thank you for checking,” Pin said, but the Satedans’ disappointment was almost palpable.

  The trees thinned out as they got closer to the plateau, and for the first time Radek could see clearly what was left of the road. It reminded him sharply and unexpectedly of back roads around the SGC�
�s Colorado Springs headquarters, two lanes running parallel to a double set of railroad tracks. The paving was in ruins, but the rails seemed surprisingly intact — certainly there was enough undamaged material that they could cannibalize one line to repair the other, Radek thought. And there were the transmission towers, too, short, sturdy rhomboids thrusting up out of the forest’s edge. A few of them trailed lengths of cable, and the forest had grown in on others, but it looked as though this end of the system might be repairable.

  They were coming up on the plateau itself now, and Lorne slowed and banked, giving them all a good view of the power plant nestled at the base of the falls. There were three main buildings, the largest closest to the base of the falls and two smaller ones to the west; they all had broken windows, and showed no signs of life, but the roofs seemed to be intact, doors closed tight against the weather. The rail lines ran along the western side of the clearing, fanning out to enter a set of low-slung barns, and there was what looked like a turntable outside one of them; there was a cluster of transmission towers as well, set behind a double fence that was beginning to fall apart.

  “That little one was the superintendent’s house,” Kos said, “and the apartment for the staff was next to it.”

  And of course the largest building was the plant itself. Radek craned his neck again, trying to get a good look. Presumably the turbines had been set back into the wall of the plateau, where they would have direct access to the stream; certainly there was enough water coming off the plateau to drive more than one. If they could get this working again, it would solve the capital’s power problems for decades to come. No wonder Cai had wanted them to make the attempt.

  Lorne set them down outside the main building, and they climbed out, stretching after the long flight.