Blood Ties

Chapter eleven

"So," Elizabeth said. "Safety assessment?"

We can make it work, ma'am." Major Lorne delivered the textbook definition of a military response.

Rodney suspected the officer would have given the same decisive answer if asked to scale the city's central tower using dental floss and a soupspoon. Across the table, Teyla and Ronon were nodding. Naturally.

"The animals won't be able to bother us inside the Ancient lab if we can stay shielded, which Dr. Zelenka says is no problem," Lome finished.

"In order to gain access we will match the force field frequency of the jumper to that of the laboratory," Radek put in. "No different from shield modulations we have achieved in the past."

Rodney was anxious to move on. "I'll accept your word on the accessibility of the structure, against my better judgment. More important, in my opinion, is a protocol to prevent any more of those reptiles-"

"They're not reptiles," Geisler put in.

Whatever. "Those fleet-footed menaces from coming back through the gate with us. Every gate activation from MIM316 needs to be preceded by a life signs sweep with a radius of at least two hundred yards."

"Five hundred," Ronon countered. "They may have gone home willingly last time, but those guys were smart and fast."

Hearing the Satedan err on the side of caution was unusual. Disconcerting, too. "Five, then." Rodney looked to the expedition's leader for approval.

"Agreed. Let's consider adding that protocol to our standard procedure for travel to worlds of this type. And yes, I realize that the `standard procedure' lists keep getting longer and longer." Elizabeth rested her elbow on the table and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Are we ever going to reach a point where all our guidelines and safeguards actually become sufficient to protect us?"

"When we have learned all there is to learn about this galaxy," Radek answered. "At which point there will be nothing more that can surprise us-and nothing more to discover."

Cheery thought. "Once we arrive on the planet, we'll need to secure the gate area there as well," Rodney stated. "Not to put too fine a point on this, but I prefer to minimize my risk of being mauled by a dinosaur while coming or going."

"Bailey's team is up on the rotation," said Lorne. "Two of his guys are qualified on the AT4."

And the fact that Rodney recognized `AT4' as the designation for a rocket launcher was a testament to how wildly his life had detoured since his first doctorate.

"Three jumpers, then." Elizabeth inclined her head in agreement. "Major, you and Rodney can split a security team between you and fly the first two jumpers to the Ancient facility. The third will stay with Lieutenant Bailey's team near the gate."

Rodney hadn't failed to notice Geisler's eager expression. Apparently neither had Elizabeth, because she next turned to him. "You should go as well, Doctor. With the activities of the cult on Earth escalating, the IOA has identified the investigation of Lilith's research as our top priority. We need as much expertise as possible on this mission."

So Rodney would get to play chauffeur this time. That always went swimmingly. Although he sincerely doubted that any research on Geisler's beloved lizards could help illuminate Lilith's work, he didn't particularly care who tagged along to Ml M-316.Of course it would have been nice to have Colonel Lite-Brite around to activate any recalcitrant Ancient tech that refused to recognize Rodney's artificially triggered gene, but someone seemed to think Sheppard was needed more on Earth. In Iraq, of all places. That certainly sounded like an inspired distribution of resources. He also felt certain the decision had not been entirely based upon the Colonel's prior experience in the Middle East, nor on the presence of the attractive and somewhat disturbing FBI agent.

It would be painfully ironic if the Colonel were to survive innumerable confrontations in the Pegasus Galaxy only to run into a roadside bomb on his own planet. No, not painfully ironic-just flat-out painful. A man could only lose so many friends to explosively violent deaths.

Abruptly, Rodney stood. "If there's nothing else, I have equipment to pack."

Allowing him some latitude, Elizabeth dismissed the meeting. "Be ready to depart in an hour. Good luck."

Under less urgent circumstances, MIM-316 might have been an interesting place to explore-from the climate controlled comfort of the jumper, of course. The valley in which the gate was located had a certain aesthetic quality when viewed from the air. Having left the Marine team to set up a defensive perimeter around the gate, Rodney glanced out at the vista below as he eased his jumper into a trailing formation behind Lome's.

They climbed to some fifty thousand feet, which, Geisler had assured them from his seat behind, would be sufficient to avoid the pterosaurs encountered on their initial sortie. What little Rodney saw of the land they passed over hinted at massive, striking features. Approaching what the HUD indicated was the coast, the mist thinned sufficiently to reveal steep ravines overgrown with tree ferns the size of redwoods and impossibly dramatic waterfalls. It left him with the impression of a primordial landscape, one that had been shaped but never cowed by the passing of eons. Once over the shoreline, he used the zoom function on the HUD to focus on what Geisler said were gigantic crocodilians, wading contentedly in the shallows, and plesiosaurs in a narrow channel between several barrier islands. It was evident that the plesiosaurs were hitching a ride on the tremendous current set up by an outgoing tide and funneling through the narrow shallows. Whether it was for the purpose of catching fish or for the sheer pleasure of it, like dolphins and whales surfing offshore breaks, Rodney had no idea. He enjoyed an unexpected flicker of amusement at the sight until he realized that what fascinated him was the resemblance of the beasts to the supposed Loch Ness Monster.

"What is it?"

He turned partway in his seat to find Teyla studying him. "What is what?"

"Just for a moment, you smiled," she said quietly. "It has been some time since I've seen you do so. Why did you stop?"

There was no use offering flimsy excuses. Teyla's earnest, probing stare was a more effective interrogation technique than many methods banned by the Geneva Convention. "For the same reason I started." Rodney directed his gaze forward again, noting with vague indifference that the variegated patterns beneath the surface of the ocean indicated a long stretch of tropical reef. "Those animals down there, the long-necked ones, reminded me of a mythical creature from Carson's homeland. I just…"

"He would have liked to see them." Comprehending, she laid a gentle hand on Rodney's arm. "Perhaps he sees them now. I for one would not be surprised."

The sentiment was nice, but it left Rodney cold. They'd all kept moving, kept working, in the aftermath of Carson's death, having no other choice. Those people comfortable enough to mention him in conversation seemed to manage the task without any overt emotional displays, which only reinforced Rodney's sense of isolation.

Geisler was saying something to Radek about the presence of magnesium in the caves they were approaching being indicative of other heavy metals. Shutting out the chatter, Rodney focused on the distant horizon. Categorizing relationships had never been easy for him. Although he considered his teammates to be friends, in many ways a surrogate family even, he was the odd man out among them, the only one who hadn't come into this with some type of warrior background. Each time they went through the gate he had to prove to them, whether they realized it or not, that he could handle himself in the field. To his scientists-Radek included-he had to prove that he was worthy of being their superior. With Carson, there had been nothing to prove, and Rodney missed the simplicity of that friendship more than he would have imagined.

Sometime later, Radek's voice over the radio cut short Rodney's musings. "Starting descent and life signs sweep."

The coastline of the next continent was coming up fast. Unfortunately, just as Lome had advised, the life signs indicator was crowded almost to the point of forming a continuous blob across the entire screen. This ocean was teeming with life, even more so than the waters surrounding Atlantis.

Rodney knew to expect unusual crenulations in the coast; nevertheless the bizarre shapes that came into sight drew a brief grunt of surprise from him. Following Lorne's lead, he leveled off about fifty feet above the crests of the surging waves. It was then that he saw the narrow cuttings and sea caves in the patterned cliffs that made up the shoreline.

Ahead, Lorne slowed his jumper and flew parallel to the coast until reaching a rather unsteady looking outcrop, beneath which was a massive arch. The roof of the arch was about twenty feet above the waterline, although that varied somewhat as foaming surf surged back and forth through the gap. Teyla's sharp intake of breath was followed by a sound of satisfaction. "The outgoing tide has indeed allowed us access."

Rodney followed Lorne's jumper through and was gratified to note that the waves only reached a few yards inside. The arch-or perhaps tunnel was a more accurate term, because it was almost forty feet long and angled sharply up-was pockmarked by miserly shafts of sunlight through a multitude of holes and long cracks. The entire formation looked entirely too unstable to Rodney's way of thinking, so he focused on the ground, much of which was covered in tangled skeins of kelp and various other items discarded by the retreating tide. The tunnel also appeared to serve as a refuge for several dozen large lizards, which fortunately scuttled away at the sight of the slowly moving craft.

Ahead of them, it broadened out into a cavern, although strictly speaking it wasn't a cavern, since much of the roof had long since collapsed and been washed away. Somewhat smaller than the diameter of the jumper, and therefore not a viable option for access, the opening was cluttered with verdant growth that almost entirely blocked the view of the sky. Rodney's incipient claustrophobia was alleviated only by a few gauzy curtains of filtered sunlight trickling through the overhead greenery.

Once past the light's soft glare, he saw that the entrance of an Ancient building was contained within quite a stunning example of dolomite flowstone. Millions of years of magnesium-rich calcium, liquefied by weakly acidic groundwater and trickling through countless small cracks, had created a roseate wonderland. Glistening pastel stalactites and stalagmites were dotted here and there with rich veins of glossy blue-black manganese oxides. Encasing entire sections of the Ancient outpost, the living rock protected it from the ravages of time even as it slowly entombed it.

"Oh…my!" Geisler declared. "Extraordinary."

"It is quite beautiful," Teyla agreed, while one of the Marines in the rear of the jumper let out a low whistle of approval. "I have seen such things in caverns elsewhere, but nothing so extensive."

Looking beyond the formations, a barely visible bubble offered a different mode of protection for what was evidently the entrance to a more recently constructed Ancient lab. Presumably the sea level had been somewhat lower when the Ancients had abandoned the planet, making access to the lab far less dependent on the cyclic movement of the ocean.

Geisler confirmed this hypothesis with his observation. "Eons ago this entire region was underwater. That's how dolomite forms, you see: the result of coral reef building and then tectonic forces thrusting up the land. The process must be ongoing, or the mountains would have long since been eroded by the high rainfall. This tunnel was once part of a system of underground rivers exposed to the surface here and there by way of sinkholes."

"I'm filtering the life signs indicator to detect only larger animals," reported Lome.

Rodney did the same, and the riot of color, which had previously indicated dozens of iguanas and assorted marine life in intertidal rock pools, vanished. "Small favors," he muttered.

"The iguanas are not likely to have any interest in the lab." Geisler leaned forward in his seat to offer unsolicited reassurance. "In any case, the force field will keep them at bay."

"Assuming there are no fluctuations in the power levels or the coverage," Rodney said, glancing over his shoulder. "Jurassic Park was safe, too, until the power went out."

The paleontologist's normally ruddy complexion turned a deep red. "Don't talk to me about that worthless piece of celluloid. The gross misconceptions it perpetuated in the name of entertainment…"

Glimpsing Teyla's attempt to mask a smile, Rodney was forced to recall his own vocal objections to Back to the Future. Of course, his points of contention had been rooted in hard science, as opposed to a few prehistoric bones and a lot of conjecture surrounding a few pieces of amber and some mosquitoes.

"I liked that movie," Ronon contributed from Jumper Two.

"The raptors kicked ass," added one of the Marines.

"Rodney, I am transmitting the frequency modulation algorithm to you now," said Radek over Geisler's continued grumbling.

"Receiving." Rodney activated Jumper Three's shield and began making the necessary adjustments to allow it to merge with the lab's force field.

"…every one of you is so bloody convinced that they're reptiles when in fact-hello, what's this?" His rant forgotten, Geisler peered out through the windshield and up at the greenery piercing the sunlight. "My word, that's amazing. They shouldn't be able to survive in the harsh saltwater conditions this close to the coast."

Trying to follow his gaze, Teyla asked, "Are you speaking of the plants, Doctor?"

"I am indeed." Geisler got to his feet and leaned over the center cockpit console for a closer look. "The flax and other succulents that we saw outside are understandable, but those tree ferns growing over there-this is all very indicative of a constant stream of freshwater through the cavern."

Which surely would be a fascinating find if the trees were in any way related to their mission objective, Rodney thought, until Geisler added, "It suggests this area is still connected to the underground river that services the sinkholes we saw on our first visit. I suspect it's subject to partial flooding on a regular basis °"

In which case Rodney's priority upon entering the facility would be to determine whether the frequency of the force field expelled water. In the meantime, he focused on the HUD's readings of the lab building itself. "The component materials not encased in rock appear to be a combination of standard Ancient materials and something considerably older."

"As I noted on our earlier visit, the architectural form of some of the ruins is remarkably similar to the Ancient structures we've found in the Milky Way Galaxy." Geisler was practically vibrating with impatient enthusiasm. "The Ancients must have had a rationale for choosing to come to Pegasus when they left Earth. It stands to reason that they had other cities here-cities in excess of one hundred and fortyfive million years old."

An intriguing thought, certainly, but it didn't quite add up. "If the dinosaurs had been here that long," Rodney pointed out, "it stands to reason that they would have evolved, at least enough that we wouldn't recognize them so easily."

"Not necessarily," Geisler argued. "Evolution isn't spontaneous or automatic; it's driven by the survival needs of a species. These animals existed for an extremely long time on Earth, even through various ice ages and continental drift. There's no evidence to suggest they would have naturally become extinct had it not been for the catastrophic K-T event. It's entirely plausible that they've maintained a stable, healthy population here without outside intervention."

"What is a K-T event?" Teyla asked.

Yet another case of a misleading acronym. While Geisler explained what was in fact the Cretaceous Paleogene event-a massive comet that impacted the Yucatan peninsula and wiped out a large chunk of life on Earth sixty-five million years ago-Rodney edged Jumper Three through the frequency-matched force field without so much as a bump.

"Don't mean to be ignorant, Docs." One of the Marines spoke up from the back. "But what do the dinosaurs have to do with this Ancient lady, Lilith? I mean, what was she doing here?"

"That's what we're here to find out " There was only one area under the force field that was large enough to accommodate both jumpers, so by default it became their landing zone. Rodney guided the craft in to settle on a largely barren rock surface inside the smaller cavern that acted as a sort of vestibule. While it also featured a collapsed section exposed to the surface, minimal sunlight penetrated a veritable screen of mosses and delicate maidenhair ferns. Shutting down the jumper's shield, he signaled to the sergeant nearest the hatch controls. "Go ahead and open it up."

Almost immediately, a sharp odor found its way into the cabin. Rancid butter, Rodney's brain labeled it, although if questioned he'd deny having any prior experience with which to make that determination. Teyla's nose wrinkled. "It is similar to the aroma we encountered at the Stargate."

"The force field repels solid objects. Air, as you've noticed, gets through just fine." He climbed to his feet and grabbed his pack as he headed for the hatch.

As the Marines fanned out around them in the twilight, Rodney joined Radek at the outer wall of what Rodney had mentally labeled the `modem' facility. The foliage inside the force field had thrived just as well as its counterparts on the outside, a mass of ferns vying for space along those sections of the wall in receipt of the scant sunlight. This indicated that water vapor and plant spores had also found a way in, and it made him wonder exactly what the force field was repelling. "There is an entrance here," said Radek, stepping close to an unobtrusive doorway. Experimentally, he tapped a few keys on the control panel mounted beside it. "It does not appear to respond to inputs."

"To a lesser man, that might present an obstacle." The force field served as proof that the laboratory had power, and Rodney had dealt with enough of these types of controls to know which conduit directed the failsafe. He pulled a screwdriver out of his pack. Ignoring Radek's admonishment that he might trip some sort of defensive response, he worked the tool's head into the seam between the panel and the wall and slid it down the narrow gap until it caught. "Bingo." He levered the handle up and felt the conduit give way. The doors snapped open exactly as he'd expected, while behind them a brief shimmer indicated the force field had dropped.

"It seems you have missed your calling as an Ancient cat burglar." Radek aimed his flashlight into the dim space.

"I doubt the owners will press charges" Nevertheless, Rodney waited for Ronon and Teyla, weapons ready, to enter first. The life sign detector showed nothing of interest, but they'd learned long ago not to rely on `warm fuzzies,' as Sheppard and Lorne called such dubious indicators of security.

The lab's interior, lit by a dull ambient glow, appeared to be divided into sections. The area they'd entered featured a row of darkened computer terminals against the far wall and not much else. Rodney and Radek traded a glance and each headed for a terminal. Despite Radek's attempts to activate it, his screen remained stubbornly silent. When Rodney put his hand down on a console, however, the entire row came to life.

"Go ahead. Be smug about your acquired gene." Radek's grumble had little bite. "Is this a database?"

"In the three seconds since it powered up, I'm supposed to have catalogued its contents?" Trying very hard to forget the fact that he might also have acquired unwanted Wraith genes, Rodney reached out to press another key-but was interrupted by a static-laced call.

"Major," reported Lieutenant Bailey. "Got… situation here."

Standing in the open doorway, Lome tapped his radio. "Wildlife starting to worry you, Lieutenant?"

"Not that kind… situation, sir. Some kind of force field just popped… around…Stargate."

Rodney jerked his hand back from the console even before Radek's head swung toward him. Off, he thought hurriedly.

The terminals stayed active.

Well, crap.