The Lost and the Forgotten

Chapter 6

"So where is it, then?"

Herrick smiled and took a strangely shaped metal tool from his pocket.  He tapped his foot on the rusted metal surface of the alleyway.

"Down there.  Budge over a bit."

Ronon shifted to one side, looked at Teyla and shrugged his shoulders.  The miner rubbed away a couple of flakes of rust with his work-hardened fingers, inserted the tool into a hole in the metal plate and turned it.

"Give us a hand, then!"

He began working his fingertips under the panel that had lifted slightly.  Ronon and Teyla crouched down and did likewise and they raised the heavy panel and swung it up vertically on its hinge.  Herrick held it up.

"Don't want to let it fall and let the whole neighborhood know what we're up to!"

Teyla looked down at the utterly black rectangular pit at her feet.  "You said that the Mining clan commonly use these trucks for transport," she said. "Would those in authority not allow this?"

"Well, strictly speaking, we should've gone to one of the depots and filled in permits and all that.  This is easier, though."

"How do we get on?  Will it stop?" Ronon asked.

"Stop?" Herrick laughed.  "No, you don't want to stop it!  See, down there," he pointed, "the gradient's nice and shallow, so the trains are slow and you can just wait til you hear one coming and drop in." He wagged an imperative finger.  "Further along, though, it'll be steep, so you'll want to keep your heads down and hold on."

"Cool," said Ronon.

"And how exactly do we climb out?" Teyla enquired.

Herrick scratched his chin.  "You're both pretty fit, I take it?  Pretty agile?  Yes?  Well, no problem, then!  So there's a long stretch out in the open which will be the best place for you to get off.  She'll have slowed down a bit by then, so you just grab one of the overheads, tuck yourself up and wait for the train to go by, then drop down onto the track.  Then you get off the track sharpish in case there's another one coming!  Ah, that's one coming now.  Hear that?  You ready?"

Teyla did not feel particularly enthusiastic about this mode of transport.  She suspected that John, however, would have loved it, and would feel he had missed out on a rare treat.  Ronon was bouncing with eagerness.  Herrick took out a flashlight and shone it down into the underfloor passage.  There was a growing rumble and Teyla could feel tremors through the soles of her boots.

"Who's going first?" asked Herrick.

"I will go," said Teyla, never one to back away from a challenge.

"Right, then.  You'll be able to see the edges of the trucks as they go by.  You get the rhythm of them, then you jump, see?  Simple!"

Simple indeed, thought Teyla, but not necessarily easy.  She watched the beam of Herrick's flashlight as it illuminated the track below.  The rumbling and grinding increased and then there was movement.  Flash, flash, flash: she jumped.

The fall was short and the landing brutal and Teyla was immediately flung hard to the back of the truck and all was darkness and noise and bitter grit between her teeth and in her eyes and nose.  She coughed and sneezed and felt her eyes water.  She thought she had heard a thud following her own landing and hoped Ronon had made it too.  Teyla could see nothing and her ears were filled with the grinding rattle of the trucks' progress.  The darkness and the side-to-side rhythmic swaying were disorienting so that she could barely tell if she was upright, but she wedged herself against the rear end of the truck, her arms stretched out to either side, hands in firm contact with the cold, dusty walls.  The gradient increased, the rhythmic chatter and sway sped up and Teyla felt the wind of their passing reach down into her shelter, stirring up the coal dust and blowing her hair into a tangle.  There was a sharp right turn, then a left and then the slope was steeper still so that the train seemed to plummet into the centre of the planet.  From behind her there came a series of wild, exhilarated whoops.