Approaching the room with the empty stasis pods, I felt a slight sense of déjà vu. Wasn't this the very compartment where the show's heroes did exactly what I was about to do?
Teyla looked around with slight bewilderment; Kirik frowned. Kenan and the other Athosian were standing guard at the transport booth. Just in case.
A still from the show.
"Are you sure you want to go through with this?" the former runner asked just as I activated the pod.
The transparent lid rose with a soft hiss. At the same moment, an anatomically contoured bed extended from the wall. A bit narrow, and that "headrest" reminded me of the block they use for beheadings. Or for autopsies with a pathologist's saw.
"No choice," I cut him off. "The Wraith will be here soon. The least I can do is make contact with the crew."
"It could be dangerous," Teyla worried.
"The pod creates a feedback loop between the virtual reality processor — or the virtual environment they have in there —" I pointed to the nearest pod with an Ancient inside, "and the brain. You can get out by simply willing it. But leaving without doing anything, abandoning the crew or destroying the ship so it doesn't fall to the Wraith, isn't an option. At least not yet."
I'd hate myself for the rest of my days if I didn't at least try to see it through.
The bed in this pod was pretty hard, I had to admit. Though the mattresses on Atlantis clearly weren't stuffed with feathers either.
"And if things don't go according to plan?" Teyla asked, approaching the pod.
"On the panel," I pointed to a small vertical console to the right of my pod, "there's a big white button. Yes," Kirik pointed to the large key I'd used to prepare the pod for immersion, "that one. It controls the pod. Pressing it will either pull me out or send me in. If I haven't gotten out in two and a half hours, press it. Or," I glanced at Kirik's disapproving expression, "if the Wraith arrive sooner. Or in any other emergency. As a last resort, Alvar can buy time, cover us so we can get out of here before everything goes to hell."
Though I wasn't sure the Wraith would destroy the Aurora once they found her. They clearly knew the ship's purpose. In their place, I'd do everything to extract any information from the Ancients. Even if the latter were currently little more than frozen vegetables in a refrigerator.
"And if the battleship shuts down again?" Teyla asked.
"It shouldn't this time," I assured her. "The main thing is to keep an eye on Koschei. He stays in the brig until I say otherwise. Understood?"
"Yes," Teyla spoke for both of them.
"I'll make sure," Kirik promised, looking me in the eye. "Two and a half hours. No more. Then I'm pulling you out."
Hopefully not with a sledgehammer.
Settling in as comfortably as possible, I gave the signal. Kirik pressed the key I'd indicated.
"Well, here we —" I started to cheer myself with the famous phrase. But then I fell into darkness.
And then the light came.
* * *
"… ly," I finished, standing inside an exact copy of the room where I'd lain down in the stasis pod. I looked around.
"What déjà vu," I muttered, smoothing my tunic with my hands. I was wearing exactly the same uniform I'd first put on when I appeared on Atlantis. Nostalgia, though...
Everything around was exactly as I'd seen in reality. Except that in the virtual environment, the pods were missing. In their place were decorative covers. Interesting.
The light was annoying — it was white-blue. And the walls of the Aurora definitely weren't lit that way in reality. The starship was actually painted in light tones inside! I hadn't noticed in reality because it was dark. And I was too busy fixing the transport booth to study the interior.
I didn't have time to think about anything else: the door opened with a soft hiss, and a young man walked in, staring at the screen of an Ancient laptop.
Just like that. No "tutorial," no instructions on how to behave in virtuality. Though, come to think of it, they don't write instructions on how to use a knife either... And for the Ancients, apparently, such technology...
"Ow!" I blurted out involuntarily when the Ancient kid (no, seriously, he looked about twenty!) plowed into me at full speed.
Dropping his laptop, he jumped back as if scalded.
He grabbed something at his belt that looked very much like those flashlight-tasers that were popular for a while, and pointed it at me:
"Who are you? What are you doing in the restricted section?"
"Which one?" I asked.
"This is the deck's distribution hub, the energy section," he stammered. "Access is limited to technical personnel. That means me and my subordinates! I don't know you!"
"Ah," I nodded. "Want some advice?"
I couldn't help but treat a guy whose skin still showed traces of acne like an adult! And this, for crying out loud, was a Lantian? Even we, the backward (compared to them) Earthlings, had invented "Kryrosil"! It didn't work great, but still!
The guy frowned, clearly confused. Well, great, the plan was working... By the way, what was the plan? Oh, right: get to the captain as fast as possible! Well, I'd definitely get to him. I could even kill some time.
Interesting. When the Earthlings connected to the Aurora's virtual environment the same way, they met this exact same guy. Did he have a ten-thousand-year shift? Standing at this very door?
"Security to distribution hub three," the kid kept me in his taser's sights, touching a small brooch under his collar. A trinket — an Ancient comm device. But... how to put it simply... You could whisper into it, sure. But whatever they said back would be audible to everyone around. "What advice were you going to give me?"
"Before you shove a high-tech dildo in someone's face, you should at least introduce yourself," I said as amiably as possible. Yes, I could afford it. He wouldn't understa—
"How dare you compare a weapon to an item of intimate use?" he was taken aback.
... nd. And he was looking at the device in his hand suspiciously. Oh shiiiiit... Please, just don't get any ideas about testing it. That would end up like that joke about the guy who hung himself with a towel on a doorknob. Universe, don't be harsh on me. I didn't mean to break an Ancient.
Ancient stun weapon.
I snapped my fingers to get his attention.
"Don't think about it," I asked. "Introduce yourself instead."
"Why should I tell you my name?" he protested. "Security will be here any moment and—"
"Because, my young friend, you've been waiting for help from Atlantis," I reminded him.
"Yes," he frowned. "And—"
"And I'm here. My name is Mikhail."
"Ihaar," he said, embarrassed, holstering his weapon. "Senior engineer of the battleship Aurora. We've been waiting so long for you..."
"Iiiiiigooooor!" Grandmother's voice — straight out of Andrey Rozhkov — screamed in my head. Complete with the costume change, the intonation... Anyway, you had to see it and hear it.
Something like that.
I had to shake my head to get rid of the analogy that had popped into my head at such an inopportune moment. His name was actually kind of strange. I'd always thought Ancients had names with a Latin flair. In this universe, by the way, the Ancient language was its progenitor.
Ancient Ihaar.
My new acquaintance didn't notice my reaction, because two guys about thirty or so with extremely unfriendly expressions entered the room the same way he had.
Well, well... Here we go...
* * *
Unlike what I'd seen in the show's footage, the Aurora's bridge in the virtual environment looked much more... alive, if that makes sense. Even though in the show it had also looked more like a place where a drunk prop master had stumbled into work drunk and decided that chaos would be good for the creative process.
The Aurora's bridge in reality.
In the virtual environment, though, the bridge of the ship, while different from the Hippaforalkus's, still had significant similarities. For example, in the design.
The Aurora's bridge in the virtual environment.
I even stared at how neat and clean everything was... And comfortable, when there weren't just a couple of people on the bridge who knew at least a few buttons on the panels in front of them. Though, I had to admit, as the captain of the Aurora, I'd have a tough time — two panels right in front of my eyes...
But I figured the captain, the sturdy gray-haired man currently occupying the command chair, wasn't as bored as I was. If only because he was currently exchanging words with a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman standing nearby, wearing a tight-fitting uniform quite different from those worn by the other Ancient women on board.
Now there was a fleet where women in senior officer positions had plenty of room... The uniform was fitted, the sleeves were open, and you didn't have to pull your hair back but could wear it in big curls... It smacked of fraternization, you know...
"Captain, senior officer," wow, Ihaar, you're here too? I hadn't noticed he'd tagged along with me and the goons from security. "The detainee has been brought in."
The man sitting in the chair turned to me. Curiosity showed on his face, weathered by a network of age lines. His assistant, however, measured me with a contemptuous look, as if I were a courier who was two hours late delivering her favorite pizza. "Bitch," I decided. And okay, in the show she acted that way — there were reasons.
But in reality, she didn't seem sweet either.
The Aurora "'s captain and officer Trebal."
"Interesting..." the ship's commander said, studying me with interest. "You're wearing our uniform..."
And that's how he started the conversation in the show. Were they scripted or something?
"But you don't know me," I finished his sentence for him.
"Correct," he seemed slightly surprised. Apparently, he'd really hoped to say it himself.
The Ancients around us stared at me like I was some exotic animal. Annoying.
"Let's get straight to the point," I suggested.
"Go ahead," the captain nodded. "Start with the fact that you claim to be a man from Atlantis, but you didn't enter the security code when you immersed yourself in the virtual environment."
Umm...
"I don't think modern access codes would be recognized by an outdated computer," I tried to hedge.
"I don't think a rescue team would overlook such minor details," the bitch said with unexpected pleasantness. "A security code would have helped us avoid awkward situations like this. It would be best if you clarified this situation. Mutual trust is important for all of us in such turbulent times."
"Steady," the captain asked.
Hmm... Now I understood why events in the show played out exactly that way. Why the replacement, rather than entering through any free pod.
"You know, Officer Trebal, you're much nicer when you don't have a Wraith inside you," I blurted out. No, really, she was pretty cute.
And... I shouldn't have said that. All the pleasantness evaporated from her.
"Excuse me?" she said in an icy tone.
And how was I supposed to explain that in the show I'd watched in another universe, set in this one, the Wraith, upon discovering the Aurora, had pulled Trebal — the captain's assistant — out of stasis, killed her, and replaced her in the virtual reality with one of their own, mimicking the blonde's appearance? At best, that would land me in a padded cell...
"No, forgive me," I backed down. "After ten thousand years, humor... has undergone some changes."
A murmur of astonishment ran through the assembled Ancients. Only then did it hit me.
"You didn't know how long you've been in stasis?" I asked.
"We didn't," the captain said sadly. "The system is programmed so that the sensation of time fades. It reduces psychological stress. Well... That explains a lot."
Seriously? And what does it explain?
"Sir," I addressed the man. But he only raised an eyebrow in surprise.
"Sir?" he repeated. "Is that some form of address?"
"Everything could have changed in ten thousand years," Trebal suggested. "Including rescue protocols. Otherwise, they wouldn't have sent such a young specialist alone."
"Perhaps," the commander of the Aurora turned away to the console for a moment, his fingers running over the keys. Interesting... Nothing new appeared on any of the screens.
I glanced at Ihaar. The guy looked about five years younger than me. And he was already a senior engineer on a combat battleship.
"Young?" I clarified.
"Forgive Officer Trebal," the ship's commander asked, turning toward me. "Sometimes her humor is... inappropriate."
"So we have something in common," Trebal ignored the smile I offered. "Captain, can we speak in private?"
"Reading my thoughts," he sighed, getting down from the chair and gesturing toward the passage through which I'd entered the bridge. "Let's take a walk. We have much to discuss, long-awaited compatriot."
The guards who had escorted me and were standing behind parted silently, letting us into the corridor. Interesting; no one followed us. Discipline, though.
The commander showed trust in me, and clearly no one intended to question his decision. I liked that...
We turned into one of the corridors and entered a small room. Nothing special, given the absence of control panels and crew members. But transport containers... They were there. Several of them. Hmm, couldn't they find a better place to store all this near the bridge?
The captain silently gestured me to one of them. He sat down on another so he could look me straight in the eye.
"Start talking," he ordered coldly, despite the friendly expression on his face. "The truth. From the very beginning."
Yeah... This was going to be a tough conversation.