“We haven’t even fully explored this lost city of the Ancients yet,” Zelenka pointed out with a mock frown.
McKay said a little wistfully, “A planet with coffee plantations would be nice.”
And no Wraith, John added mentally. No one had said it, but it was there, hanging over all of them like a headsman’s ax. He could see from Grodin’s console that the MALP was running through its initial program, transmitting streams of data. Then the screen lit up with static as the MALP’s camera switched on. John nudged Rodney with an elbow. “Maybe it’ll be a ZPM factory next to a coffee plantation.”
Rodney threw him an annoyed look. “Don’t tease.”
The static resolved into a grainy black-and-white view of an ocean as the camera panned across a rocky coastal landscape. Attracted by the movement, it zoomed in on waves rolling up a beach. Then it panned across an open plain and stopped abruptly as it found a structure in the distance.
John heard a collective indrawn breath from everybody watching. It was a huge structure. As the MALP focused on it, he could make out a high wall, curving away to make a round bastion, and above it three towers, each resembling a flattened version of the onion domes you saw on old Russian palaces. “Cool,” he muttered. The pillar’s address hadn’t been a bust, at least; there really was something interesting there.
“Oh my God,” Elizabeth said suddenly. She grabbed Grodin’s shoulder, leaning in beside him to study the image. “That looks like — Am I imagining the resemblance—”
“You’re not.” McKay shouldered forward, unceremoniously shoving Zelenka aside and stepping on John’s feet. “It’s very similar. Grodin, can you—”
“Pull up the description so we can compare it, yes.” Grodin had already turned away to another nearby laptop, typing quickly. Even he looked quietly excited.
“What?” John demanded. “What is it?”
Watching intently, Zelenka explained, “It is like the description we have of Heliopolis, the repository found in the first year of the Stargate program.”
“Seriously?” John’s brows lifted, and he whistled softly. “Hot damn.” He hadn’t been in the SGC before Atlantis, but he remembered the story from the Stargate Command mission reports that were available to all expedition members.
“Heliopolis?” Teyla echoed, leaning in to listen. “What place is this?”
Zelenka told her, “It was one of the first indications we had that the Goa’uld did not build the Stargate network, that they were parasites using the remains of an earlier civilization. It was later concluded that Heliopolis was a meeting place where the Ancients shared information with the other great races of the time, the Asgard, the Furlings, and the Nox. There was a database designed for interspecies communication, that if we could have studied it—” He waved his hands helplessly.
“They lost it when a big storm came up and the building collapsed into the ocean,” John finished the.story for Teyla.
“They barely got out in time, then when they tried to redial to see if the ’gate was still there, they got nothing.”
Teyla nodded understanding, her expression intrigued. “Then this could be a wonderful discovery.”
“The resemblance isn’t exact,” McKay was saying, “but the shape of those towers, the height of the walls, even the fact that it seems to be near a sea, it’s all very suggestive. We have to check this out.”
Elizabeth nodded slowly, but a smile tugged at her mouth. “If it is another Heliopolis—”
McKay’s grin was smug. “Then maybe we did find a ZPM factory.”
They geared up for the trip in record time, with McKay actually changing into his field uniform in the puddlejumper bay while John was running the preflight check. But it was late in the day on the destination planet, and the jumper shot out of the Stargate into a cloud-streaked sky already reddening with sunset. John dropped speed, guiding the little ship up to give them a sweeping view of the area. He thought about sensors and the jumper obligingly popped up holographic life sign and energy detector screens.
In the near distance he could see the building that they hoped was a repository, the dark stone standing out against the lighter grays of the sky, the storm-colored sea, and the rocky shore. It was about a mile from the Stargate, maybe a little more, standing in the center of a scattered complex of dark stone ruins on a flat rocky plain. The sea curved around it, bordered by a wide gravel beach. Inland, past the edge of the ruins, grew a sparse forest of tall slender trees with light green leaves. Nothing stirred, except a small flock of gray and white birds, startled into flight by the jumper’s arrival. The screens confirmed it, showing only the little flickers that meant local fauna.
In the shotgun seat, Ford said, “See that? Somebody’s bombed the. crap out of it.”
“Hell, yes,” John agreed, sparing a look out the view port. “That’s not encouraging.”
This close, the damage was more evident than it had been on the MALP’s camera. John could see big bomb craters in the surrounding ruins, and the spires in the onion dome towers had cracks or holes, the exposed girders bearing a distinct resemblance to skeletal remains. He grimaced, but it wasn’t a surprise; the Wraith didn’t like their food source to get uppity and fight back, and the Ancients had fought back until they had been nearly exterminated.
“The Wraith must have attacked here, perhaps after the Ancestors left,” Teyla commented from the other jump seat, her tone regretful. “But still, you can see what a beautiful place it must have been.”
McKay was less impressed. “No energy readings. And it’s far more damaged than we thought, but the MALP’s image was so pixelized, it could have been sitting in the middle of Miami Beach. This is probably a waste of time.” He sounded bitterly disappointed.
“Oh, stop it.” Splitting his attention between the port and the HUD, John banked the jumper back around toward the Stargate. It sat on a large elevated stone platform, about twenty meters high. At one time a stairway had led up to it, but now it was just a pile of rubble. The MALP had trundled itself off to the side, out of the path of the wormhole’s blowback, its camera still pointed toward the ruins. John told McKay, “You’re just still mad because you’re not the one who made the new holo-thingy work.”
“The new holo-thingy is broken, Major,” McKay reminded him pointedly. “If it weren’t, we might know exactly who attacked this place. And if this repository had anything like Atlantis’ full defensive capacity, it had to be one hell of an attack.”
“Grodin was right, there’s no DHD,” Ford pointed out, studying the area around the ’gate. “The Wraith must have destroyed it. Funny, we’ve never found a damaged ’gate like that before.”
“My people never encountered damage like that either.” Teyla added wryly, “Fortunately, since we would not have been able to return through the ’gate.”
The jumpers came equipped with their own Dial Home Devices for the Stargates, right between the pilot’s and copilot’s seats, so the MALP’s inability to locate the DHD hadn’t been an impediment to coming here. “That’s weird,” John said, as the corollary occurred to him. “Why would anybody bother to blow up the DHD when the Ancients probably did most of their ’gate traveling in the jumpers?”
“Major, down there,” Ford said suddenly. “They must have taken a direct hit.”
John craned his neck, hearing Teyla make a startled exclamation. As the jumper came around the far side of the big complex, they could see that the outer wall of one wing was partly missing, revealing a mass of arched girders and partial stone walls. But it all looked a little too neat to be bomb damage. “No, I don’t see any rubble. I don’t think that section was finished.”