Despite the fact that the massive, thick door leading to the room with his cell opened almost silently to human ears, Koschei still heard it. He sat with his eyes closed in the middle of his cell, meditating and trying to break through the mental blockade surrounding him. So far, no success. But that wasn't a reason to give up.
The city's brig had nothing that would help tell day from night. Counting seconds would have been an utterly stupid exercise and a waste of resources. So Koschei had entered a state close to suspended animation, to slow his life processes and conserve as much energy as possible. Though he'd lost track of the time spent in the cell, he understood clearly — the energy accumulated from the thousands of human animals and fellow Wraiths he'd absorbed would come in handy when he was ready to escape.
Perhaps that day had come today.
Feeling the barely perceptible draft of air and the almost inaudible click of the lock, he opened his eyes.
Just in time to see the people who had entered the cell room. Two men, only one of whom he recognized.
"Yo, paleface!" Mikhail made some gesture that Koschei didn't understand. At the same time, he did two things at once.
First — he slammed the other man against the cell bars; the man had tried to break free from Mikhail's grip. This man was dressed in a uniform clearly different from Mikhail's, and from the members of his team that the Wraith had seen.
Of average human years, dressed in a worn-out uniform of a gray-brown color, with a furious face, but thoroughly disoriented (even before the blow against the horizontal bars), this second man clearly didn't look healthy.
But he wasn't a Lantian — his behavior, his expressions, even his body constitution bore no resemblance to a representative of one of the Ancient peoples. Looked like one of the locals, insufficiently developed. Perhaps even a representative of the enemies Mikhail had promised he had.
"Don't thrash," Mikhail said, kicking his companion in the kneecaps, forcing him to his knees. Holding him by the hair, the Lantian performed the second action that drew the Wraith's attention.
He unlocked the entrance section of the grating.
Looked no different from the wall; it shimmered with the greenish glow of a deactivated energy field as it slid aside, letting both men in.
"A Wraith!" the second man exclaimed, as if just seeing the prisoner. He tried to slow his forward movement, started digging in his heels, landing blows on Mikhail's torso and arm. But the personal protective field enveloping him reduced all attempts to harm Mikhail to zero.
Koschei mentally thanked the unknown man for demonstrating the protection of the human who had captured the commander. Honestly, he himself had planned to attack Mikhail or any other member of his team as soon as they came. But now he understood that wouldn't be the best option.
"My people will have their revenge!" the man declared, just as Mikhail grew tired of dealing with him. The Lantian, in one motion, threw the man at the Wraith's feet. Koschei, despite the victim's proximity, was in no hurry to feed. He hadn't forgotten Mikhail's threat about a biological weapon. And he assumed that during the time he'd been in captivity, a prototype could have been developed.
Mikhail had already demonstrated (so far only in words) that he was capable of crossing the moral line that prevented the Lantians from fighting to the last and at any cost. Such a man, without a twinge of conscience, could unilaterally change the terms of their agreement and decide that cooperation with the Wraith was not to his advantage. Especially since he was surely still scanning the Wraith, even after showing he'd dismantled the equipment. Or he could have gotten himself a more compliant member of the race.
"Commander Cowan won't let this slide!" the man assured, cowering in the corner of the cell. "As soon as he finds out, he'll take revenge! All of you will die! I give you my word, you'll pay for everything you've done!"
Koschei, intrigued by what he'd heard, turned his head toward Mikhail, who was standing impassively in the doorway.
"What is this?" the Wraith asked, pointing at the pathetic man.
"A down payment," the Lantian explained. "You remember the agreement: I feed, you work. Time to get your strength back and get to work."
"You're collaborating with the Wraith?!" the man screamed. "The people of Pegasus won't forgive you for this treachery!"
"And why should I believe the food isn't poisoned?" Koschei asked. He looked at the offered prey and grimaced in disgust. How pathetic and weak was this man?
"Why would I poison my assistant now?" Mikhail said in surprise. "I don't remember you starting what we agreed on."
"And you're in no hurry to deliver me those frozen Lantians," the Wraith noted.
"Everything in its time," Mikhail shrugged.
"…Collaboration with the Wraith is the gravest sin for all people in the galaxy and… AAAAARGH!!!"
At the end of his angry tirade, the future prey squealed on a high note. Not of his own will, of course. It's just that his speech had started to annoy Koschei. And with one blow, he broke the man's leg.
"He couldn't have run from you even with healthy limbs," Mikhail remarked, ignoring the man's frantic screams in the worn uniform.
"His speech was getting on my nerves," Koschei explained. "I hope I've demonstrated sufficiently that I have little patience for irritating promises?"
"Quite," Mikhail said. "So, will you be long?"
"As long as it takes," Koschei growled, casting a predatory glance at the wounded man. The man, seeing the Wraith anticipating his meal, stopped screaming. He just whimpered, curling into a ball in the corner of the cell. "I savor his fear and panic, I relish it."
"My mother taught me not to play with my food," Mikhail said. "Guess yours had a different opinion on table manners."
Ignoring the human's joke (and a rather refined one at that), Koschei approached his food, raising his right hand to latch onto the man's chest. The man had shriveled up, and it was impossible to do so easily. And without mental powers, the Wraith couldn't suppress the man's will to resist.
But he was experienced enough in feeding matters to know what would happen next. Koschei leaned over the victim, making the most terrifying gestures of imminent death. That was more than enough to provoke a reaction from the prey.
The man thrust his right hand forward, clenched in a fist. He hoped to hit the Wraith right in the jaw. He couldn't have won that way anyway; it would only delay the inevitable. But at the same time, people who were worth anything always tried to fight to the end.
Their attempts were laughable, but they made for excellent entertainment.
Koschei caught the man's fist with his left hand, squeezing so hard that the bones of his fingers crunched. The prisoner screamed in pain as the Wraith twisted his limb at the shoulder joint, forcing his body to arch to minimize the pain. The man's chest opened up against his will.
And the pale-green hand with a feeding sucker, bony growths on the fingers, and long nails dug into the man's scrawny chest.
The prisoner screamed the moment the sucker dug into his chest. His howl of pain shifted intonation when the life-giving enzyme flooded into his body, preventing him from dying too quickly.
Koschei's vertical pupils dilated as he saw the man's eyes roll back from the euphoria overtaking him. The man was now in an altered state of consciousness, unable to resist the Wraith's biochemistry.
And the next moment, Koschei pulled into himself everything he had given the man. And everything that now belonged to him.
He felt his body fill with the man's strength and life, flowing through the Wraith's organism. Koschei's body, already saturated with energy from the number of people and Wraiths who had become his food, barely noticed the energy streaming from this puny human animal.
The Wraith had barely gotten into the swing of it when he felt the life-giving flow from the man to himself drying up. Looking at the victim, he saw only a shriveled body. A head crowned with gray hair; limp, desiccated skin stretched over a practically muscle-less skeleton.
His fingers could easily have ripped the sternum from these remains and used it as a weapon. But that wouldn't have helped — Mikhail was still protected by his personal energy shield.
Shaking his hand, Koschei tossed the body aside, straightened up, and hissed at Mikhail.
"Are you satisfied with what you saw?"
The fact that the Lantian hadn't left only confirmed what he'd assumed. Mikhail wanted to see the feeding process firsthand.
"Quite," the latter answered laconically, tossing into the cell something that looked like two metal bracelets linked by a short chain. One glance was enough for Koschei to understand — the metal used in these manacles resembled the same kind used in the hulls of small Lantian ships.
Such chains couldn't be broken by physical strength alone.
"What is this?" he asked.
"Put them on your wrists," Mikhail ordered. "Time for a walk, my paleface friend. Work awaits you."
"Finally going to revive the Lantians?" Koschei asked, snapping the locks shut and voluntarily chaining his hands. Another chain with bracelets fell to the floor. It was little different from the first.
"Now fasten these on your legs, just above the feet," Mikhail ordered.
Koschei obeyed. Now he was chained by hands and feet, but these were two separate chains. If he wanted, it didn't prevent him from using his hands or feet to attack.
"What else do I need to chain?" Koschei asked irritably, seeing Mikhail pull out another pair of handcuffs as he approached.
"This part I'll do myself," the Lantian smirked.
A couple of movements, two clicks, and the third set of handcuffs linked the chains of the previous two. At the same time, Mikhail checked the tightness of the cuffs on his hands and feet. With a smile, he ratcheted the manacles on his hands two more notches, making it impossible to pull his hands out of the restraints now.
"Have you ever heard the parable about the tricky nut and the bolt with a special thread?" the Lantian asked, nodding toward the exit.
"No," the Wraith growled irritably. "But I'm sure you're about to enlighten me with this folklore…"
"Why, you're a Jedi too!" Mikhail admired. "Koschei, you have so many hidden talents! You understand Lantian technology, you revive the dead, you turn the living into corpses, and you can see the future! I'm impressed. But our journey will be short, so you'll hear the story about the nut and bolt another time. However, I will demonstrate how to intrigue a Wraith."
"And how's that?" Koschei asked as they left the brig room.
"I'll tell you tomorrow," Mikhail promised.
* * *
Despite the abundance of work that needed to be done, a short rest was simply necessary for the entire repair crew.
Chaya understood this better than anyone. Honestly, over the past two weeks dedicated to repairing the battleship, she had felt the effects of fatigue more than anyone else. But at least she had managed to get the ship's main engines in order.
Consequently, even in this state, the Hippaforalkus could lift off from the surface and go into space. But the fact that in space they would have to spend a huge amount of time and effort fixing the damage to the ship's hull, replacing damaged circuits outside the ship, and so on and so forth — that was the reason the starship still rested in the hangar.
"You said Wraiths don't need windows on their ships," Kirik suddenly said. The former fugitive sat in a corner of the bridge, lazily poking his spoon in a bowl of porridge.
"That's right," Chaya confirmed.
"Then why did the Ancients make bridges with such a huge panoramic view?" the man asked, pointing at the forward part of the compartment they were in.
The bridge of the Hippaforalkus.
"I agree," Jensen, who was busy eating in another part of the bridge, joined in with the question.
Chaya glanced at Norana Pyro, whom she had also brought in for work on the battleship. Teyla and a dozen of the most astute Athosians also stopped eating and looked at her. As did a couple of Taranian scientists. The smartest and most competent in dealing with Ancient technology. Chaya had held a sort of interview with the Taranian scientific group. And she'd kicked out almost ninety percent of them from the outpost, forbidding them to come closer than the established zone.
Better they stick to farming than try to prove to her that connecting the positive and negative ends of power conduits was perfectly safe.
Was everyone really that interested? Most likely, yes.
For all the people she had chosen for the team, without exception, the Ancients were an object of admiration. To be honest, Sar was surprised at the precision and even a touch of religious reverence with which the Athosians approached their assigned task. And they were only opening panels and swapping crystals, carrying deformed and burned-out parts to the workshops where they were melted down into more useful items.
But before she could clarify further, a raspy chuckle sounded behind her. The girl sitting in the ship's command chair spun around and locked eyes with…
"A Wraith!" Kirik had already thrown aside his bowl with the leftover porridge and was on his feet, pistol aimed forward. Jensen, Teyla, and the Athosians did the same. Sure, Chaya was confident she'd fixed the outpost's systems and it was completely sealed, all extra entrances and exits locked, but better safe than sorry.
The pale-green being with long hair braided into thick coils looked at the people with contempt. He was probably thinking he could have attacked them when no one noticed he'd entered through the open bridge doors.
But instead, with complete indifference to what was happening, he unclenched his hands and two massive black bags fell to the floor. The characteristic sound of glass clinking followed.
Right after that, a third bag also dropped to the floor. The sound repeated. But this time, it was clear something inside had broken.
"When I open that, I'll knock out as many of your teeth as the crystals you broke," promised Mikhail, who was entering right behind him. The man carried two bags in his hands, similar to the ones already seen. But he set them down on the floor carefully. "Alright, boys and girls, calm down, breathe out, and lower your weapons. Koschei isn't here to kill you."
"Are you sure?" the Wraith inquired, not taking his eyes off Chaya.
The Proculucian woman, frozen in place, couldn't look away from the commander either, clenching her fingers into fists so hard her knuckles went white.
"Koschei, have you actually come to your senses?" Mikhail asked as he walked up to the Wraith. "That attitude is definitely not earning you trust on my end."
"A Wraith should not be trusted," Teyla said. At her signal, the Athosians lowered their weapons. But they kept their suspicious gazes fixed on the Wraith. "Mikhail, why is he here?"
"For the same reason I left him alive in the first place," the young man explained. "He's going to help us solve problems."
"And how exactly?" Jensen asked.
"At least he's in chains," Kirik muttered.
Chaya blinked and looked closer. Indeed, the Wraith had metal bracelets on his hands and feet, connected to each other by a simple system of sturdy chains.
"He understands Ancient technology," Mikhail explained. "On Lantea-2, he tried to use an activated jumper. So he knows a thing or two."
"Like how to drain the life out of people," Teyla said. "Wraith don't use Ancient technology."
"Because you are incapable of understanding that, due to your limitations, human female," snorted the one Mikhail had called Koschei. "I am nearly eleven thousand years old. I have drained life from the Ancients, I have studied their ships and technologies. And I, unlike your frightened Ancient, can explain why we place our command sections inside the ship. And why we have no need for viewports."
"Well then, enlighten us," Mikhail asked, moving the Wraith's bags aside and starting to examine their contents. "Otherwise, you've already put at least five teeth in your jaw at risk."
"It's not my fault you brought defective crystals," the Wraith said irritably. "Ancient crystals have high density; a fall from that height wouldn't break them."
"Don't get distracted," Jensen advised him, stepping closer to the Wraith. They were about the same height, so the Ermen looked Koschei straight in the eye. "You are cooperating with us. But just give us a reason to…"
"In many areas, Wraith technology uses the same principles as the Ancients'," Koschei ignored the man. "We studied their technology as the most advanced. And wherever it was possible with our organic methods, we applied Ancient developments. Some hive ships even had partially mechanical sections integrated into the overall ship structure. Those are the wrecks of Ancient starships. But what we couldn't solve for our technology was energy generation. Organic reactors cannot produce as much power as the Ancients' mechanical ones. We couldn't integrate the technology for ship shields; all attempts resulted in an energy bubble that didn't protect ships at an adequate level. And it consumed energy on a massive scale. Because of this, we couldn't rely on ship hulls with viewports. Those were vulnerabilities we couldn't afford. Just like violating the laws of aerodynamics."
"So you chose an organic hull structure for ship defense?" Mikhail clarified.
"That was one reason," the Wraith confirmed. "The Ancients, on the other hand, could afford to build space objects of any shape and size — their shields reduced all physical resistance. The powerful shields of this subtype of ship allowed for many viewports. Besides, people feel uncomfortable in sealed ships without being able to at least look at space and the stars. Also, all Ancient warships evolved from exploration vessels, which had many viewports."
"Informative," Mikhail said. "And what did you mean by 'subtypes' of these ships?"
"The Ancients developed several versions of this type of starship," the Wraith said. "We captured several of them at different times and could see that the Ancients changed the ships. From simple former exploration starships armed only with homing projectiles and filled with various laboratories, to purely combat vessels. The latter, in addition to projectiles, also had energy turrets. Or force fields that blocked decompressed compartments. And much more. Not to mention more advanced hyperdrives. This ship," the Wraith looked around, "is very similar to the second generation of Ancient battleships."
"And how did you determine that?" Mikhail asked, intrigued.
"Hull shape, hangar position relative to the hull, and the bridge looks quite familiar," Koschei explained.
"That's an awful lot he knows about all this," Kirik said. "What guarantee do we have that while helping us, he won't do something to land us in the hands of the Wraith?"
Koschei burst out laughing.
"Not bad, human, not bad," he said. "But I made a deal with Mikhail. So far, the terms suit me. I will help you repair the ship. At least with what I know about these systems."
"And he'll also get information on the condition of our only warship", Chaya thought, stepping back from the sudden appearance of the Wraith. Yes, she knew about the prisoner. But she thought he would be used solely to revive the people trapped on the Aurora.
He cannot be allowed near the main systems.
"I'll be watching you," Jensen declared.
"As will I," Kirik chimed in.
"My people won't take their eyes off him either," Teyla assured.
"Well," the Wraith squinted, looking at the Athosian woman, "as for me, I'll be watching you, girl."
"Why?" one of the Athosians blurted out.
"Because I have eyes," the Wraith laughed, looking at Mikhail. "So what are we waiting for? Do we work, or since everyone decided to eat, will I be fed too?"
"When you're done, we'll talk about it," Mikhail promised. "Chaya, we dug up the required amount of sand and created the crystals you asked for. They need to be distributed around the ship's systems…"
"Of course," Sar snapped out of it. "I'll handle it…"
"It would be better if you and Koschei took care of repairing the more important systems," Mikhail said. "Our repair is slow enough as it is. So… alright," the man sighed, seeing that everyone present couldn't take their eyes off the Wraith. "Koschei, promise you won't attack anyone or try to eat anyone."
"It would be foolish for a predator to assure its prey of good intentions," the Wraith smirked. "Keep your word, human, and then I will leave them alive. If you deceive me…"
"Stop droning on, Koschei," Mikhail asked. "Grab a bag and… Chaya, we have problems with the hyperdrive, right?"
"I'll handle it myself," the girl said. "Go to the living quarters and fix the life support system there. We'll need cabins for long journeys."
"As you wish," Mikhail agreed. "Koschei, grab one bag of crystals and let's go to work."
"Are these two coming with us?" the Wraith asked, seeing both former fugitives move in his direction.
"Of course," Mikhail confirmed. "Chaya, send us the fault schematic; we'll fix what we can…"
"Excuse me," Norana Pyro broke the silence. "Um… Is that green one really a Wraith, right?"