"It was wine," Teyla stood her ground firmly.
"I spent two hours after waking up thinking I was blind!" Kirik complained.
"I felt like my limbs had been cut off," Alvar admitted. "And my head, too. But not completely. And my mouth felt like Wraiths had shit in it..."
"Exactly!" the other former runner agreed.
"It was wine!" Emmagan insisted. "Probably... The berries we used for it weren't quite right."
We were sitting around a semicircular table glowing from within, in the Council Hall, having met at the end of the current day. Not because an evening briefing was a given.
It was simply that by this time, all participants of the drinking session had come to their senses and were able to communicate coherently. There would probably have been more problems if Chaya and I hadn't put all three of them on IV drips. Thank Ermen and his storerooms for the saline solution!
"Alright, water under the bridge," I raised my hand to get their attention. "What's done is done. The wine really was tasty, but... Teyla, it's probably too strong for ordinary people..."
"Possibly," Emmagan admitted. "I apologize to all of you. I think it really was about the berries... We need to be careful on the new planet. But the berries looked so much like the ones that grow on Athos..."
Yes, that would be nice. Considering that the chosen world had been uninhabited for a long time (or perhaps never inhabited), the Athosians' belief that wild berries were the same as the ones they'd cultivated on Athos for centuries wasn't exactly conducive to a long life. We should thoroughly check their planet; what if there's, say, a deadly nightshade masquerading as a raspberry?
"In my world, we use labeling for strong and weak alcohol," I shared my knowledge, handing the girl a symbol I'd drawn from memory. "I think the wine from these berries should be marked with this sign."
"Yes, of course," she looked around at those present with a guilty expression. "I apologize once again."
"Forget it," Kirik relented.
"But let's not do it again," Ermen acknowledged.
"Mikhail," Teyla became interested. "What does that symbol mean?"
"That a product marked with it is... specific enough not to be for just anyone," I improvised. "Strictly for the strong in spirit, body, and those hardened in dealing with such products."
"My, my..." Teyla admired. "Just one word, one drawing, and it signifies so much... I need to remember that the inscription 'Biohazard' means 'only for the strong in spirit...'"
"Exactly right," not a single muscle in my face twitched.
Biohazard. The biological hazard symbol.
Since I'm the only Earthling here, I think Teyla and the others won't find out for a long time that this symbol is placed in places and on objects of possible infection, storage, production, or use of biological substances harmful to health. At first, I thought about pushing for the use of the skull and crossbones symbol on an orange background, as a symbol of a substance capable of causing severe bodily harm or death.
But I thought it would be too obvious. This way, who knows, we might save lives... Good intentions and all that.
"I'm surprised Misha didn't have any side effects," Alvar said, looking at me suspiciously.
"The bodies of Lanteans are more developed than ordinary people's," I said without flinching. "Millions of years of evolution and all that."
These guys don't really need to know that I'm from a different universe altogether. The official story is that I arrived from far away, as the last representative of Lantean society. The story Chaya told our comrades differed little from reality. Except that we omitted the potentially negative attitude of the Ascended towards us.
The doors of the Council Hall rotated, allowing Chaya to enter. The girl was dressed in a simple field uniform of blue-gray. It had become something of our everyday uniform. Practical and comfortable for daily wear.
"There you are," she greeted those present with a warm smile. Sitting down on the edge of the table, the Proculucian placed her ancient laptop on it. "Well, I have news."
"Good and bad?" I clarified.
"Exactly," the girl said sadly. "I returned from Taranis."
"You went there alone?" Kirik tensed up. "The locals could have set an ambush. I don't think the Chancellor will just give up."
"I used a jumper," the girl explained. "I scanned the area around the base in stealth mode. Even if they intend to take revenge, it won't be anytime soon. No people were detected in the restricted zone."
"Maybe they're just plotting and watching for now," Jensen suggested.
"Or they've come to terms with what happened and are busy with more pressing matters," Teyla shared her thoughts.
"In any case, for now, we have no problems with them," I concluded. "So I take it the outpost has a hangar for jumpers?"
Although, of course, the gate was located quite close to the main entrance. The Lanteans might have just walked there.
"There is," Chaya confirmed. "Inside, I found five damaged jumpers and one working one. There's a chance to restore them, but it will take a lot of time — we'll need to manufacture spare parts."
"That's for later," I set the priority. "Right now, we have more working machines than pilots. So what about the outpost? Any problems with the generator?"
"No, I managed to avoid problems," Chaya said. "I returned its operation to the original level and activated the lock chambers. The pressure in the magma chamber will drop, while the collection and filtration system will start accumulating the materials we need from the lava. Unfortunately, the repositories you saw around the mountain are empty. Some are even damaged and need to be restored to be airtight. Then we'll be able to get a stock of necessary substances for producing hull parts and internal partitions."
"Wait," I frowned. "Lock chambers? Repositories? Lava filtration? I don't remember that..."
"The operation of the geothermal generator leads to increased pressure inside the magma chamber," Chaya explained. "Even at the minimum level, the generator can eventually cause a volcanic eruption. To prevent this, and also to obtain substances melted in the magma, the Ancients built a magma extraction system. It pumps magma out of the chamber, after which the metals are separated from impurities, cooled, and turned into purified ore. Then it's sent to the surface repositories. You did see the large cylindrical tanks around the outpost, right?"
I remembered. Big tanks surrounded by a grayish fence. They were grouped in clusters of about nine or ten and enclosed by a perimeter fence. Honestly, I had thought they were Taranian buildings until now. But I just realized they don't really resemble those. Especially since the paved paths, made of stone similar to the fences and small surface buildings, leading from the outpost to these repositories, testified that it was all built by the Ancients.
"Yeah, there were some like that," Kirik nodded. "So those are the repositories?"
"Correct," Chaya confirmed. "Once the raw material is deposited there, it can be transported to the workshops inside the outpost to produce the necessary parts."
"I hope we won't have to carry it by hand?" Alvar grumbled. "We'll need tons of ore to smelt anything big..."
"Hundreds, even thousands of tons," Chaya corrected. "And no, we won't. There are conveyors for that. Not all of them are in working order, but I think I can fix them quickly enough — a few days, a week at most."
And then we'll still have to smelt, mix, and so on... Repairs will be ve-e-ery long. Considering we only have one engineer. We need to do something about that. The Earthlings managed without any workshops. They just pushed some buttons.
"So we'll be able to repair the damage to Atlantis you mentioned?" Teyla asked.
"We can," I agreed. "In time."
Yeah. The question is only about the malfunctions we haven't mentioned. And there are probably a hundred times more of those than the ones we have. The problem of the structural integrity and metal fatigue of the city-ship is just the tip of the iceberg. Yes, it can continue to be operated in this state; with enough energy, it won't fall apart thanks to the shields, which mitigate various physical impacts on the ancient structure. But in the end, I'm not going to repeat the mistakes of the Earth expedition where they can be avoided, am I?
So, safety of Atlantis comes first. The city suffered greatly during the siege and ten thousand years of hibernation. Not to mention that it was almost completely flooded. Yes, not all sections lost their seal, but in most corridors, water was up to the ceiling. And salt water isn't the best friend of wiring and electronics. Even if the latter is based on crystals rather than microchips.
"What about the ship?" I asked Chaya. A large part of our hopes for solving the problem with the Aurora's crew rests on that battleship. Or at least getting to the ship.
"I went on board and managed to start the main systems," Chaya explained, connecting her laptop to the connectors hidden in the tabletop. Well, well... That's available too. "I got the diagnostic data. See for yourselves," she pressed a few keys on her device's keyboard, and a hologram of a very familiar starship appeared in the center of the room. "The Lantean battleship-class combat vessel called the Hippaforalkus."
The Hippaforalkus-class battleship.
For a couple of seconds, silence reigned in the room.
"Isn't it supposed to be..." Jensen hesitated.
"More aerodynamic?" Chaya clarified.
"Yes," Jensen confirmed. "Since the ship is on a planet in a dock, it should at least be somewhat optimized for atmospheric entry, to avoid breaking apart from friction with the dense layers and all that."
"Environmental resistance," Kirik recalled something.
"A valid point," Chaya said. "But thanks to shield technology, these physical phenomena can be negated. As for the rest... It's a spaceship. Its external appearance, streamlining, and so on are not important in a vacuum. In space, there's no medium, no resistance, so even if it were a lump of rock, it would still fly as far as it could."
Mmm... I could have used a physics teacher like that in school.
"From what I was able to learn, the ship participated in several battles in the final phase of the war with the Wraiths and sustained serious damage," Chaya continued. "It was transferred to Taranis for repairs, but then the evacuation was announced and the ship was abandoned. The outpost personnel went to Atlantis, and from there, as I understand, to Earth."
"You were one of the Ancients," Alvar said unexpectedly. "Do you really need to look through all kinds of logs and databases to tell us about something?"
A good question, but... I think I know the answer to Chaya's lack of knowledge.
"I'm a scientist," she reminded him. "Before Ascension, I had my own tasks, my own laboratory, and I didn't interfere in military affairs. I don't think any of you knew everything all your military personnel were doing."
"Agreed," Kirik supported her. "Military secrets. Not everyone needs to know everything."
Alvar nodded slowly. Teyla remained silent.
"In principle, I agree. Even if the Lantians were a single people and not a confederation of a titular race and lesser races, there's still information that isn't shared with ordinary citizens. Or even with leading scientists. As far as I understand, Chaya wasn't in the category of trusted individuals for the Lantian government, so she can't know everything."
"What are we dealing with?" I asked.
"The damage is significant, but you can see that someone tried to repair the starship," Chaya continued. The ship's schematic was colored in various shades of red and green. "Green means undamaged sections and systems. About forty percent. Orange means those that can run on secondary circuits, but it's not recommended for long-term use. These are emergency systems and shouldn't be stressed. The red ones… those need to be repaired."
And half the ship was colored red. Pretty bad, honestly.
"But can it fly?" I asked.
"After repairs — yes," the Proculucian said. "The Sublight Engines are damaged, and repairing them without restoring a large number of systems is impossible. The Hyperdrive also needs repairs. The main power conduits are either destroyed or damaged. I found a few places where the locals tried to repair the damage… Unfortunately, they only made it worse."
"Can you fix the engines?" I asked.
"There's no critical damage, I just need parts," the girl added after a moment's thought. "A lot of parts. I've programmed the outpost's workshops to manufacture the damaged parts. When they're ready, they'll go to the hangar. There, using cargo hoists and other equipment, I'll carry out the replacement of the most cumbersome parts."
"By hand, without automation?" I clarified.
"Only some mechanisms are automated," Chaya sighed. "I'll mostly have to work manually."
I pictured it for a moment. One single Chaya, first lifting some spare part with a hoist, hanging it over the right section of the ship, then lowering it, then running to the ship and starting to weld it… If she didn't keel over after a couple days of this running around, she deserved a monument while she was still alive.
"This could drag on for a very long time," I said, shaking my head. "Can we run the ship's engines and Hyperdrive on secondary circuits?"
Chaya frowned.
"That risks malfunctions," she warned. "The ship is old. Moreover, it's semi-civilian, so its safety margin isn't that great. I can switch the damaged systems to backups. But when they fail, we could end up in space with no way to fix the situation."
"'When'?" Alvar clarified. "Not 'if'?"
"No," Chaya said, looking at me cautiously. "I understand the desire to get to the Aurora as quickly as possible, but this is a journey that will take more than one day. Anything could happen on a faulty ship. A failure of the main systems, the backups failing — and we won't be able to fix much out in open space."
She had a point there… But Earthlings had managed to fly and even fight on ships in similar disrepair.
I needed to think over everything she'd said.
In the past, the Lantians had a very large fleet, which included various starships. One way or another, they'd all taken part in the war against the Wraith. And almost all of them had been destroyed.
In the known events, the Earth expedition had encountered starships of the Aurora or Hippaforalkus types several times.
They'd first met these ships when they directly discovered the Aurora. When the Earth expedition got the ZPM they used to power Atlantis, the city sent signals to the ships, calling them back to the city. The Earthlings went to the starship in their own vessel, but the Wraith, who had awakened by then, found the Aurora first. As a result, the already severely damaged ship was destroyed.
The second starship they found was the Hippaforalkus. It was also heavily damaged, but a team of scientists from Earth managed to partially restore its systems. It was destroyed in a battle with Wraith hives because it couldn't simultaneously support its shields and weapon systems.
The third ship the Earthlings found was the Tria. At that point, the Earthlings were building a space bridge from the Stargates to travel from Pegasus to the Milky Way, so they wouldn't have to waste the ZPM power of Atlantis or send their only Pegasus-assigned ship across galaxies. The Tria had a crew of Ancients on board. According to them, the ship had taken damage to its hyperdrive, so using the ZPM installed on board, it had been traveling toward Earth at near-light speed. Because of relativistic distortion, despite ten thousand years passing for the rest of the galaxy, the crew had aged only a few years. Honestly, I couldn't remember that starship's ultimate fate, but the crew, after taking Atlantis from the Earthlings, died at the hands of the Asuran replicators.
A fourth starship of this type was discovered by a human faction in Pegasus known as the Nomads. They had their own fleet of ships where they lived. When they found an Aurora-type ship in orbit around a dwarf star, they tried to start it up but couldn't. So, unwillingly, they brought in one of the Earthlings, Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard, as a helper. Eventually, when the Attero device was activated — which, as a side effect, exploded any active Stargates — that ship was destroyed along with the Nomad colony planet.
The Asuran replicators — a race of nano-machines that had evolved from a weapon created by the Ancients — also built ships like these. The Ancients had actually tried to destroy them but never finished the job. In the end, both the Asurans and their achievements, including warships, were destroyed by the Earthlings. The reason was that the Asurans believed humans should be exterminated. The reasons for that… it's not so clear-cut. But the fact that these machine intelligences that copied the Ancients weren't exactly right in the processor and were ready to kill people — as yet another manifestation of Lantian experiments — made me want to steer clear of them.
Chaya knew about all these ships in general terms — I'd told her. That's why she'd been scouring the galaxy for specific stars and ships that might be in their orbit.
Since there was no point in messing with the Asurans (at least for now), the Tria was unreachable for obvious reasons (we simply had nothing to fly there on), the Aurora herself was seriously damaged and unlikely to be capable of interstellar flight, and the starship discovered by the Nomads — while capable of jumping between stars (at least it could do that during the events of the series, which wasn't the fourth year of the expedition, meaning at least three years from now) — couldn't be found… The Hippaforalkus was the only option for an interstellar ship we could use.
And, I assumed, its repair would take time. Speaking of which!
"How long will the repairs take?" I asked.
"Hard to say," Chaya admitted. "Some systems can be restored by replacing program crystals or resoldering damaged wiring. Others require new parts, which can hardly be manufactured in finished form. I'll remove from the repair plan the restoration of hull integrity in sections we won't need for the flight to the Aurora and back, but that's just one star in the universe…"
I figured that last expression was the equivalent of Earth's "a drop in the ocean."
"But still?" I persisted.
"Months," she said, spreading her hands. "Maybe even a year, if I do everything properly and alone. Unfortunately, I can't be in several places at once. And besides me, no one can even handle the correct selection of crystals, forgive me. Not to mention that if something breaks down at the outpost — the same conveyor belts or workshop mechanisms — I'll have to get distracted fixing them…"
In other words, Chaya would first have to check the functionality of some mechanisms, then smelt other parts, then install them, replace the wiring on half the ship, then test everything, fix any possible problems…
And I hadn't even taken into account the fact that to smelt the crystals, which would then need to be programmed and replaced, we'd first have to deliver a huge amount of sand from Lantea-II! And that's not even mentioning the wiring, mechanisms, and so on! If, hypothetically, some processors had burned out, or whatever it was that the Ancients used instead, it would all have to be reprogrammed…
And all of this had to be done by just one person. Do it and not go insane. Just wonderful.
Looking at the prospects: patch up the ship quickly, fly to the Aurora, pull some crew members out of stasis and revive them, get their agreement to cooperate, and then solve the remaining issues with their help. I figured even if we had at least a dozen technical specialists, they could significantly speed up all the processes.
Not to mention that we'd at least have someone to leave on Taranis or Antlanide while we evacuated the Aurora's crew on the Hippaforalkus. Or to look for other ships…
All in all, everything was limited by the availability of qualified technical personnel familiar with Ancient technology. If we had even five people, things would already be much simpler…
"I think we can be shown how to perform some procedures," Alvar chimed in. "After all, I think we can handle soldering contacts or swapping one device for an equivalent one."
"I'll try very hard to do everything right," Teyla assured us.
"I'll need time to understand everything, but I'm ready to try," Kirik declared. "Since the Ancient Gene didn't take root in me, at least — if I can't do the rest — I'll bring the needed parts to the others."
I almost smiled, picturing Kirik carrying a twenty-ton reactor core on his back. Or something like that. But really, it was more than the right approach.
"It's not that simple," Chaya said. "Lantian technology requires significant precision and care."
"To start, I think we just need to show our comrades what they can help with and see if they can manage it," I said, getting up from the table. "I'm sure there's work they can do perfectly."
Swapping a hypothetical burned-out crystal for a similar but intact one — absolutely anyone could do that. It's not that complicated.
"Yes," Chaya said without much joy on her face. "Of course, I'll show them what's needed…"
"One more thing," I said after a moment's thought. "There are labs in the city, experiments we're definitely not going back to," the same hypothetical "Ascension Machine," which could bring a person closer to transitioning into pure energy, scared me shitless. A good thing, but also dangerous. Since in the vast majority of cases, it would turn the test subject into a flash of light and kill them. "We can take some equipment from them. The same crystals or wiring…"
The Proculucian and I had found and shut down at least a hundred such labs. The experiments the Ancients had conducted there weren't just dangerous — a significant portion were immoral. I hoped they'd been stopped for those very reasons and never implemented.
"Don't," Chaya said quickly. "Breaking one piece of equipment to restore another is not the best option. Even if we never return to those experiments, that doesn't mean the equipment and its parts should be dismantled. Besides the fact that these are very complex mechanisms to manufacture and calibrate, repurposing them would take significantly longer than making new ones. Don't do that."
"Whatever you say," I said to Chaya as I walked past her. "In that case, time to get to work. Head to Taranis. Maybe among the Athosians there'll be someone else who can be useful."
"I doubt it," Chaya muttered, but only I heard her. I understood — a reasonable doubt.
"And where are you going?" Alvar asked, seeing me approach the opening doors of the Gate Room.
"For a walk," I replied. "Besides, we need sand to make crystals, don't we?"
And I needed help.
But somehow I doubted that any of the Ascended would answer the call.