Free 02 - Reliquary by Martha Wells - (ebook by Undead) Page A

again feeling inexplicable
disappointment.
    Kolesnikova had told him earlier that she had seen all there was to see in
the repository’s command center and wanted to tackle the lower levels with them.
He hadn’t argued with her, having the feeling that she thought she had let them
down by not going yesterday. Corrigan was actually gleaning far more information
in the city’s ruins, and wanted another day out there. John was leaving Boerne
and Kinjo up top again, to keep watch and back up Corrigan. Ford had been
chafing at the inactivity yesterday and he wasn’t needed on the surface, so John
was adding him to the belowground group. Hopefully more searchers meant faster
progress. And maybe with Kolesnikova’s engineering background, she would see
something that McKay and Kavanagh had missed.
    “I’m getting more pronounced energy readings,” McKay said, finally answering
the question.
    That got Kavanagh’s attention. He nearly dropped the pack he had been sorting
through and strode to the shaft, pulling out his own detector. McKay lifted his
brows and sat back on the floor, making a production out of waiting for
Kavanagh’s assessment.
    Fortunately for team harmony and John’s already depleted supply of patience,
Kavanagh didn’t notice. “You’re right,” he said, also failing to notice when
McKay took an ironic half-bow. “This is markedly different from the readings we
took yesterday.”
    “Thus the choice of the word ‘odd’ in my original statement,” McKay added. He
pushed to his feet. “Something changed down there.”
    “Maybe you guys tripped something without knowing it,” Ford said, leaning out
to peer down into the shaft. “Set off something that increased the emergency
power, or activated some other stuff.”
    “But there appeared to be no changes.” Teyla shook her head. “We took readings throughout our search, and before we left, and there
was no increase in power at that time.”
    “What she said,” McKay added.
    Ford shook his head, gesturing helplessly. “Maybe it took a while to get
going.”
    For some reason, everybody then looked at John. He shrugged, pretending this
new development didn’t make him uneasy. “We’re not going to figure it out up
here.”
     
    Once they had gotten down to the bottom of the shaft, the readings were
stronger. “This way.” His eyes glued to the detector, McKay pointed them toward
a corridor John knew they had tried yesterday. They hadn’t found any cells along
it, just debris from laboratories smashed so thoroughly that McKay and Kavanagh
had only been able to make guesses as to what their original purpose had been.
    The blue emergency lighting glittered off the wreckage of twisted metal and
the unidentifiable stains on the stone walls on either side of the broad
walkway. John had a bad feeling about this; he remembered what else they had
found down this corridor and he had a strong suspicion of where the detector was
going to lead them.
    McKay dug out the PDA with the map he had made yesterday and wordlessly
shoved it at Kavanagh. Bringing up the map, Kavanagh scanned the screen
hurriedly. “Damn,” he muttered, obviously coming to the same conclusion John had
just drawn. “I wouldn’t have expected that. Our suppositions about the layout of
the active power conduits must have been—”
    “Wrong.” McKay’s voice was grim. He stopped next to a round opening in the
walkway, where metal stairs curved down into a dark well. They hadn’t bothered
to search down there or in any of the other dark areas yesterday, believing the
power source would be where the active power grid lay. McKay let out his breath,
looking up and shaking his head in exasperation. “Well, this is just fantastic.
It’s pitch dark down there.”
    John stepped to the lip of the well, shining the P-90’s light into the
depths. Teyla moved up next to him, leaning over to peer downward. He estimated
the stairs descended about forty feet; the light