02 - Reliquary by Martha Wells - (ebook by Undead)

broken equipment and blasted
consoles, floors littered with glass and broken ceramics, giant pipes emerging
from the ceilings and disappearing into the floors, sealed chambers filled with
empty racks for little containers, other rooms that might have been frozen
storage. There were also what looked like living quarters, or at least rooms
with the stark remnants of metal furniture and no locks on the doors. And there
were lots of little cells with monitoring equipment outside; after the first
few, they stopped checking for bodies. As Rodney pointed out, it wasn’t like
they were going to find anybody alive and waiting to be rescued. The ones they
saw that were empty, the doors standing open, were a relief. Imagining what was behind the closed doors was
in some ways worse than actually seeing it. “We should be finding bones out in
these corridors, too,” Kavanagh had said at one point, “But there’s nothing.
That’s anomalous.”
    “Everybody who wasn’t in a cell could have escaped,” John had suggested. “Or
the people who were locked up were already dead when the attack started. Like
the World War II concentration camps, where they’d start trying to gas the
prisoners faster when the Allies—”
    “Yes, I’m aware of that practice, Major, and thanks so much for the image.”
McKay had glared at him. “Why don’t you just hold the flashlight up under your
chin and make spooky noises while you’re at it?”
    And Kavanagh had said sharply that they didn’t know these were cells, they
could have been quarantine rooms for plague victims, and Teyla had said “World
War two !” in an appalled and incredulous voice, and the discussion had
veered off into unproductive areas.
    They had also found stairwells leading down to even lower levels, telling
John that the place was far more complex than they had hoped. The first hour
stretched into four, then six, then eight, and John returned to the shaft
periodically to check in and let the others know they were still alive. He could
tell from Ford’s voice that the younger man no longer regretted being left
behind.
    That intermittent odor of rot and decay was starting to get on John’s nerves,
especially since, in the few cells they had opened, the remains had been too
desiccated to have much of an odor at all. It made him wonder just what the hell
they hadn’t found yet. John had firmly banished all thoughts of zombie movies,
and McKay didn’t bring the subject up either. Kavanagh was too intent on the
search, and just didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would have been into cheap
horror flicks. Teyla was culturally immune. Though she admitted that she would
rather be doing just about anything else, including helping Hailing and the other Athosians build latrines in their new village
on Atlantica’s mainland.
    Now she and Kavanagh were checking out the lower part of a large room full of
equipment that looked like it was for synthesizing something. John and McKay,
having finished their section, waited on the gallery above.
    Groaning under his breath, McKay sat down on the metal floor to consult his
PDA. He was making a map as they went along, trying to deduce where the main
power generator, whatever it was, might be. McKay and Kavanagh had told each
other at least ten times that nothing except a big naquadah generator array or a
ZPM could have kept these emergency lights powered for so many years. They had
been trying to identify main power conduits, testing them to see which were
still hot, and trying to figure out where the cables were coming from. It
allowed them to mostly skip the areas where the emergency lights weren’t
working, except when one of their flashlights caught something Kavanagh or McKay
found fascinating and they just had to go explore.
    John sat on his heels beside McKay, rolling his head to ease the tension in
his neck. The air still wasn’t stale, but the smell was getting steadily worse.
It made him wonder how