Through the thick layer of water, nothing was visible. No matter how long she stood there, head tilted back, everything seemed so... so... opaque. And she so wanted to see the Ancient ship depart! She'd seen Wraith ships do it a few times.
A dim glow would appear in the sky. Just for a brief moment, but it was beautiful. Though after that, Kirik always said they should hide quickly, because they'd be coming for them soon.
Right now, they were safe. That's what he said. And the girl had grown used to trusting her savior.
It was cold on the little balcony attached to the control center of Atlantis. So, to keep from freezing, Seliza wrapped herself in a warm blanket. She didn't think Kirik would scold her for taking something from his room. He rarely scolded her at all — only when her actions could lead to mortal danger. First and foremost, for herself.
So, he'd probably scold her more for going out on the balcony than for swiping something from his bed...
She didn't get to finish the thought — behind her, the door leading to the city's control center level slid open with a soft hiss. The girl, even though she knew it was impossible, couldn't help a joyful, hopeful cry:
"Kirik!"
But as soon as she turned around, she realized she was wrong.
"Not quite," Chaya said, approaching the girl. The Ancient stood next to her, mirroring her pose.
Seliza watched as the beautiful young woman she secretly admired now stood, head tilted back, just as Seliza herself had a moment ago.
"When I was little, I loved coming here and looking at the night sky," the Ancient said unexpectedly. "You'd think... what's so special about that? Light from distant clumps of hydrogen and helium, compressed by magnetic fields, and endless vacuum... From a physics standpoint, admiring them is completely pointless. And enjoying them up close without protective gear even more so. In a vacuum, you'd die from lack of oxygen, and the stars... Get close to them without powerful shields, and you'd die faster from stellar radiation... But for millennia, they've captivated inquisitive and passionate minds. I remember looking at the stars on Proculus the day the Lanteans came... I knew a lot about science, so I wasn't too surprised when a pair of symmetrically positioned 'stars' suddenly started moving toward me, growing larger..."
Seliza was silent, listening to the revelation. She didn't understand why the Ancient was sharing this kind of information with her, but... She wasn't about to interrupt this story. And who would refuse to hear a story from the life of an Ancient?
"They came to Proculus," Chaya said with a sad smile. "I remember not being able to say a word. I had just built and launched a super-powerful transmitter — by my understanding at the time, to contact other civilizations. I managed to connect to the Stargate in the planet's orbit. As it turned out, that was exactly what they were waiting for to deem the race worthy of first contact. And so they arrived... Just like us. They were led by General Hippaforalkus. He was so happy with what he saw. I remember how joyfully he told me that our species had reached such a level of development that the Lanteans wanted to get to know us, to introduce us to their high culture and the knowledge accumulated over millions of years of development. The war with the Wraiths was in full swing, and... I didn't understand it then, but the Lanteans needed soldiers. And based on my example, they decided we were a perfect fit. And I... I was so impressed by his story about Atlantis, about the Ancients and everything else, that I didn't even think to explain to him just how wrong he was. He wanted an entire advanced race, but all he got was me... And deep distrust from the rest of the Ancients. I'll never forget his words: 'You are my greatest achievement. And my biggest mistake.'"
"A mistake?" the girl gasped. "But you're so... so... good! How could they think you were bad?"
"Good, bad," Chaya smiled sadly. "There's no difference. All that matters is who has the best technology. That rule held before the war. And it became ironclad after the Lanteans got burned by my people."
"Burned?" Seliza echoed.
"I was the first one they met on Proculus," Chaya said. "General Hippaforalkus was so impressed by my knowledge, my judgment, and my views — not just on science and the world around us, but on the spirituality of the human race — that he immediately set up an outpost on the planet. He wouldn't listen to any of his subordinates, too busy talking with me. We went to Atlantis, where, amid general celebration, he told them about my achievements. He was their hero, the best at everything. They believed him unconditionally. It was no wonder they were so inspired by his story. I was one of the first among the young races to join them. They made me an Ancient and expected more and more Proculucians to come, to fill their dwindling ranks... And imagine their disappointment when, out of thousands of my compatriots, only I met their criteria of advancement. They were furious, but there was nothing they could do. They had broken their own rule — not to interfere in the development of primitive races — and couldn't take it back. The Lanteans dreamed of an army, and all they got was me."
"But... why were they angry at you, and not at themselves? It was their mistake."
"When you've lived for a thousand years or more, it's hard to admit your mistakes," Chaya sighed. "Especially when you're the most advanced race in several nearby galaxies. I tried to show them that my people were worthy of following the path I had blazed... But it didn't work. I did a lot to make them understand that a civilization's low development wasn't a death sentence. That other people were also worthy of joining the younger races. But they were adamant. Because of my persistence, I was exiled from Atlantis. I joined one of the younger races and tried until the very end to show that I wasn't a black hole among young stars..." Chaya's face darkened. "But I only made things worse. I was exiled again, without the possibility of leaving Proculus. I couldn't do anything when the Wraiths came. And no one helped me stop it..."
"And the General... Hippo... Hippa... Grippa..."
"Hippaforalkus died in the heat of the war. His ship was lured into an ambush and captured. That's how the Wraiths got Lantean power sources, which let them develop new tactics. He managed to ascend, to become pure energy. And he helped me do the same when my world was attacked. I gained the power to destroy the Wraiths... And I did it, even though I was warned. I saved only a few... And found myself isolated from everyone. I was exiled for the third time..."
"You remember that?" Seliza was surprised. "Kirik said you don't remember anything from the time the Ancients disappeared."
"I don't," Chaya admitted sadly. "But I know how to encrypt large data packets in seemingly simple text. I suppose it's my fate — to create false impressions. Soon enough, the others will realize that... And they'll hate me."
"That's not true!" Seliza declared. "You're good!"
"Maybe," Chaya smiled, stroking her head. "But no matter how hard I try, it will happen... Very soon, other Ancients will arrive here... And they'll want to settle scores with me... Nothing will stop them now..."
"Misha will protect you!" Seliza said confidently. "And Kirik! And Alvar!"
"I'm afraid that would be the last thing they ever did," Chaya sighed. "Even if I don't remember everything that happened to me during the Ascension... Some things are constant. They won't forgive me for what I did. Back then, they spared me because of the war and because they needed scientists. But now... Against the backdrop of those who are coming, I mean nothing. Mikhail and the others won't have a chance to save me. That's why I have to leave."
"Leave?!" Seliza's eyes went wide. "No, no, no! You can't leave! Kirik said you'd take care of me!"
The girl rushed to the young woman, wrapped her arms around her, and pressed her whole body against her.
"Don't go, please! I'll tell them not to touch you! I'll tell them how good you are!"
"My little one," the girl felt a soft, warm hand run through her hair. "There are moments in life when you have to make a decision that affects the well-being of others... Right now, I have to leave. That way, Mikhail, Kirik, Alvar, and even you won't have to choose — between your future well-being and me."
"Don't go! I promise I'll never, ever, ever touch anything in your lab again! Cross my heart!"
Seliza felt her hands being gently but firmly pried apart. Chaya crouched down in front of her and kissed her cheeks, wet with tears.
"Don't look for the problem in yourself," Chaya asked her. "It's not your fault. No one is to blame but me. I thought I could keep my secret, but... It turns out I'm not smart enough to overcome one man's stubbornness. So, to avoid negative consequences, I have to leave."
"I'll go with you!" Seliza declared. Not so much out of deep love for the Ancient, but because staying alone in the empty city terrified her to the point of animal panic.
"I'm afraid that's impossible," Chaya said.
"But I'll be all alone!"
"Only for a very short time," the Ancient assured her. "I know you're scared. But I will make you strong, and it will pass."
"Make me strong?" Seliza blinked.
"Exactly," Chaya straightened up and offered the girl her hand. "Come on. There's a lot you need to learn before I leave."
Kirik's ward, sniffing, grabbed the Ancient's hand like a lifeline. And silently trudged into the city, which now seemed even more frightening and repulsive to her.
* * *
By the second day, all the gloss and euphoria of hyperspace travel had worn off. The rapturous feeling of moving faster than light on a ship built by an ancient civilization, in a universe I'd only ever considered a science-fiction fantasy, had vanished.
And turned into routine.
A hard bunk in the captain's quarters. Confined space, feeling like a sardine in a can...
This wasn't how I'd imagined humanity traveling among the stars.
The others, however, didn't share my pessimism. Except for Alvar, for whom flying through empty space wasn't anything out of the ordinary, the crew couldn't tear themselves away from the portholes. The Athosians were arguing about what exactly they were seeing outside the ship: divine light or non-divine?
I chose not to tell them about the Doppler effect.
The ship and its automation were working perfectly, and I felt a growing respect for Chaya and the work she'd done. Yes, the Ancients had done well too, building a beautiful ship that still functioned ten thousand years later. But it was thanks to Chaya's efforts that this battleship had come back to life.
Of the seven days of flight, the last five had turned into hard labor for me. Wake up, hygiene, a run around the Hippaforalkus's decks, thoughts about how sick I was of this long, hard-to-pronounce ship name, push-ups, jumps from the deck to the edge of the bed, another run... I never thought I'd start exercising just because I was bored.
By the fifth day of the journey, everyone except a few Athosians was sick of it. Now both runners and Teyla joined me on my runs. For variety, I practiced some combat techniques that Kirik and Alvar could show me.
I tried practicing the Athosians' folk martial arts. Something between the demonstrative, ceremonial duels of the Japanese and Aikido. I don't know why they thought that a piercing gaze, complete emotional detachment, and ritualistic circling with an opponent were valuable in real combat, but to each their own madness.
I was much more drawn to Kirik's and Alvar's skills. Strength, agility, strikes to pressure points, one hundred and seventy-five ways to break an opponent's arms and kill him with his own fingers. Short and manly-simple. Reminded me of the sambo or karate I'd done as a child and teenager. Just without all those "ki-ya!" shouts and high kicks that make your dad's eyes roll back in his head.
Toward the end of the flight, I was even getting decent at... falling to the floor without hitting my head on the overhead panels. Still, Alvar said that against an unprepared person, I had decent odds. Kirik was less sarcastic in his teaching, more focused, so in his martial arts — which reminded me of the sambo that was close to my heart — I made a little more progress.
The alarm signal that we were approaching our destination sounded just as I'd almost managed to catch the runner and throw him over my back. But I got distracted — and ended up being thrown over his shoulder instead.
"Siren," Kirik identified, freezing with two fingers in front of my eyes. According to his philosophy and experience, those organs took the longest for Wraiths to regenerate. And in humans — they didn't regenerate at all. So, either way, "finishing" with blinding was a universal technique. "Something broken?"
"No," I got to my feet and arched my back, which was sore from the fall. "We've arrived at the Aurora. Half an hour and we'll drop out of hyperspace."
"We need to prepare," Kirik said.
Agreed.
I managed to get myself cleaned up and changed before the second siren sounded — the five-minute warning. By that time, I was already in the command chair on the bridge.
Situated on a small dais, rising above the other workstations, it offered a perfect view through the portholes. And from here, I could activate virtually any system on the Ancient warship.
But my first interest was the scanners.
There were no long-range scanners like those on Atlantis or the Taranian outpost aboard the Hippaforalkus. But the ship could still detect objects within a decent radius.
And... Chaya had been right.
There wasn't a whiff of Wraith ships here. We could relax and not prepare for a sprint to the compartment from which we could launch homing projectiles.
"Dropping out of lightspeed," I announced a minute before it was supposed to happen.
Besides Kirik, Alvar, and Teyla, all the Athosians had also gathered on the bridge. Thanks to the ship's systems, I could track Koschei's location on board the starship. And, thank you again, Chaya — his life signal was perfectly distinguishable from human ones. As far as I remembered, neither the scanners nor similar systems on Ancient starships in the events I knew of could boast such quality.
A slight tremor ran through the entire hull, barely noticeable. But it, along with the white-green cloud of energy appearing at the end of the light tunnel in our path, were the signs that the Hippaforalkus had finally reached its destination.
The Hippaforalkus exits hyperspace.
The battleship returned to realspace several tens of thousands of kilometers from its target. I supposed Chaya had specifically programmed the ship to not scrape against the Aurora, which was already battered enough by life. But I figured she understood perfectly well that I wouldn't be able to bring the ships together on my own without one of them falling apart from the collision.
A considerate young lady...
"I don't see anything," Kirik admitted.
"Me neither," Teyla practically jumped out of her boots trying to make out something against the pitch-black backdrop of space. Unfortunately, the Athosian woman didn't realize that a ship wasn't a star, and you couldn't just spot it like that in open space.
"We're still a fair distance from it," I explained, pulling up a small map on the screen with a mental command. Though I'd meant to display it on the nearest monitor to the other crew members, it only showed up on one of those embedded in the wall next to the auxiliary panels. "We'll close in ten minutes. Initiating approach program."
The display wasn't rich with detail. Sort of like a radar screen, but without the sweeping clockwise trace. The space between the 'Hippaforalkus' marker at the center and a small icon approaching it, labeled in Ancient as 'Aurora,' was divided into squares after all.
Hmm... I'd seen radar screens a couple of times. Very similar. Was it a coincidence that our technology looked so much like the Ancients' in its implementation and design, or was that just how it was, considering humanity was created by the Ancients?
The Hippaforalkus was moving toward the Aurora. A mental image came to mind of a textbook problem about two cars racing toward each other at different speeds. In our case, the speed was maximum sublight, the best the Ancient engines could squeeze out powered by ship generators alone. The Aurora, on the other hand, was just coasting. It had gotten an impulse of momentum ten thousand (or so) years ago and hadn't had a chance to slow down. And how could it, with no crew to pilot it and the resistance of vacuum so negligible it might as well not exist?
After just nine and a half minutes, we were close enough to see the ship in all its 'glory.'
"Oh, ancestors!" the Athosians exclaimed almost simultaneously. But to the men's credit, the only one who covered her face with her hands was Teyla.
"What happened to it?" the leader of the people from New Athos managed to ask.
"It came out of a fight that must have been intense," Alvar said with a hint of admiration. "So much damage... and it hasn't fallen apart in all that time."
"And it's still flying," Kirik added quietly. "The Ancestors really knew how to build!"
I couldn't disagree — despite its frankly pitiful condition, the Aurora was impressive. For ten thousand years the ship had sailed through space and time, battered by a brutal battle. And yet, as far as I knew from the events I was aware of, it continued to hold hundreds of its aged crew in stasis. If they were taken out of their stasis pods, they'd barely have time to understand what had happened in all those years.
"It's very different from our ship," Teyla said, looking at me.
Well, well, Captain Obvious in action. All she needed to add was 'You don't say!' to make it just like the original.
"Did you figure that out because the Aurora is completely missing its forward section?" Kirik asked. "Or because our ship is intact, and she," he pointed at the mangled giant, "isn't?"
Teyla's dark eyes flashed, but she stayed silent. Her relationship with Alvar was decent enough, but with the other former fugitive... Well, yes. Still, she was a good woman in every sense. But sometimes it felt like she was secretly chugging brake fluid.
Alright, all that later. There was a more pressing task at hand now.
The Aurora... You couldn't look at her without weeping. Warships are built with a pre-planned strength margin. And that margin is many times greater than on research vessels. In this ship's case, I was more than certain no one had refitted her after being reassigned to combat duty.
The bow section of this class of battleship was something like an angular ball or a droplet attached to the main hull. But the Aurora's... there wasn't a single intact spot on her! The bow was gone, as if a big, mean child had ripped it off the hull! The skin was torn, punctured in many places. Here and there I even spotted through-holes. Structural girders and metal beams sticking out in all directions turned her into an ugly flower. Like those sculptures and compositions made of rebar I'd seen in my previous life.
In places, a dark red paneling remained on the hull. From what I'd managed to learn about the Ancient fleet, that was the coloring for ships with a military purpose. Well, 'coloring'... the hull metal itself had a reddish tint. And it was used where the most critical spots on the ship needed armor.
My neural link to the Hippaforalkus's systems told me that docking was fundamentally impossible. I tried to run the algorithm Chaya had written, but the ship's computer refused. At least it executed the approach maneuver and let the ships settle into parallel courses. Well, at least it didn't tell me to go to hell while I tried to initiate docking five times.
It was both hard and easy to live in an era where spaceships were smarter than their crew. I'd need to stop this when I got back. Period. I'd had enough dead weight on the team.
And the last thing I wanted was to be that weight myself. This expedition had already shown me that the best I could hope for, when it didn't come to firefights, was to 'hand off tasks' to Chaya. Only now did I realize how stupid it all looked.
I was genetically more developed than she was, but she knew and could do more than me. She just obeyed me as a representative of a less developed, younger race obeying a Lantean. A sort of genetic authority.
I felt sick. A leader should be the best among his people — at least in my understanding. At least in something. And not just because his genetics were better than everyone else's.
"Docking is impossible because of the damage to the Aurora?" Teyla clarified.
"Yes," I said, not going into details.
"We need to contact Chaya and ask for advice," Kirik suggested.
The Ancient battleship Aurora.
"Not a bad idea," I approved, mentally working out how best to implement my plan. "But a subspace transmission would give us away immediately. We might fend off one wave, maybe a second. But what then? We have work here that's going to take more than a day, so we shouldn't attract the Wraiths' attention before we have to."
"So what do we do?" Teyla asked. "Go back to Atlantis and ask Chaya to solve the problem, then come back?"
That was exactly what I'd been thinking. I'd dumped too much on the shoulders of the only Ancient. No wonder she'd snapped. I'd treated her not like a comrade, but like a subordinate who was supposed to follow orders and not ask questions.
Girls were girls, even among the Ancients. What she'd told me — about being rejected by the other Ancients, and then my exploitative attitude. How long had she been coming to terms with the idea that as soon as other Ancients appeared in the city, she'd be 'wiped' and sent somewhere to Athos to deal with the outpost there? Or sent out to the middle of nowhere near the Wraiths?
"No," I answered after thinking it over. "We don't have enough time to be flying around the galaxy. The ship could be discovered. We solve the problem ourselves."
"Interesting how, if we can't even dock with the Aurora?" Alvar asked.
"Well, are our spacesuits just for decoration?" I asked. Judging by the Ermenite's face, I'd planted some decidedly unpleasant thoughts in his mind.
That was nothing compared to what was coming...