Hundreds of years lived give you an understanding of one immutable truth: you can't trust your own kind.
Especially if you're a Wraith.
Cunning Blade stepped onto the bridge of her hive ship, measuring the commander with a completely indifferent look:
"Speak!" she ordered.
"In three minutes we'll exit hyperspace," he said. "Scanners show two Ancient ships waiting for us."
Cunning Blade hissed, showing her irritation.
"How is that possible?"
"I don't know," the commander didn't lie. "Perhaps someone is using Ancient technology. One of them is heavily damaged. The other is less so. They could have been left over from the war..."
"Fool!" the queen snarled at her dim-witted subordinate. "An Ancient ship can't be activated without the Ancient gene! Those can't be some animals that stumbled upon an abandoned starship!"
"I completely agree," the commander said politely. "There are no Stargates nearby."
"The only reasonable explanation is that one ship came to get the other," the queen squinted.
"Or that the ship belongs to the Artificials," the Wraith commander noted.
"Impossible," Cunning Blade dismissed the theory. "They've been sitting on their planet for ten thousand years. The attack program was permanently shut down. And they can't interfere with their own program code."
"In that case, there's only one explanation, my queen."
"The ship is under Ancient control," Cunning Blade said in anticipation. She seemed to be tasting the words.
Her entire being trembled at the thought of fighting those who had populated the galaxy. It wouldn't be a simple fight. But even at the cost of heavy losses, she would secure victory. Which, in turn, would add to her influence among the Keepers.
Influence was a chance to strengthen her hive over others.
"Prepare for battle!" the queen ordered. "None of them must escape into hyperspace! I want to capture the crew!"
"As you wish, my queen," the commander agreed obediently.
Cunning Blade looked at the sensor screen.
She belonged to a younger generation of Wraiths and had not participated in the Great War. She hadn't fed on the Ancients, hadn't seen their starships fight, hadn't seen their cities burn.
But she had witnessed what came into the galaxy after the Ancients disappeared — those her hive called the Artificials.
Despite the fact that they resembled the Ancients in every way, they were fundamentally different from them. You couldn't feed on them, they weren't made of flesh and blood, they knew no fear.
Machines in the guise of food.
Predators pretending to be prey.
Deadly dangerous predators.
The worst possible scenario for her would be to encounter even a single Artificial ship right now. A fully functional and armed Ancient battle starship could easily destroy her entire fleet.
And so she was ready to retreat the moment she realized she couldn't handle the task.
But to retreat now, without trying to win... Would be foolish.
The Scavenger had damaged her authority within the hive, and it needed to be restored. Destroying the Ancient ships would be enough. And if she could capture the crew and the ship...
It was hard to imagine what she could do with her ships if she had Ancients, once she broke their resistance and forced them to serve her.
She was warmed by the thought of creating at least a couple of Ancient worshippers for herself, as she had done on dozens of worlds. Spies and saboteurs — they were useful. They could find out about the number of animals on planets she had just marked for addition to her feeding grounds, for example. Or blow up aboard another hive that had encroached on her territory.
There were countless uses for these domestic animals. But none would be as useful as an Ancient worshipper.
The Ancients created wonderful energy sources, and their weapons were simply unparalleled. When the Wraiths managed to capture several Ancient battle starships and their energy sources, they created armadas and armies thousands of times larger than the Ancients had ever been able to field.
But the Artificial offensive had nullified all of that.
She had seen with her own eyes how hundreds and thousands of ships carrying Wraiths perished upon encountering the Artificial fleets. She had seen them sterilizing entire worlds of humans and Wraiths, seeing no difference between them.
All the achievements her kin had managed to gain during the long Great War had been undone by the Artificials.
Now, there was only one hive ship in the galaxy that had been grown back in that distant time. Improved armor, a large number of powerful cannons, chambers and compartments for thousands upon thousands of Wraiths, storage rooms for tens of thousands of units of food... Such a ship, if it were in perfect condition, could become the dominant force in the galaxy!
One ship, capable of destroying several fleets of hive ships and their escort single-handedly...
But the Scavenger had been quite skillfully slipping through her cunning nets. However, without an Ancient power source, the starship was nothing more than a burden...
But now she had a chance to get everything she wanted...
"As soon as we exit hyperspace, send the cruisers in first," Cunning Blade ordered. "I want to watch them crush Ancient technology."
"As you wish, my queen."
And she also very much wanted to live. And she understood that the Ancients, the Artificials, or whoever it was, would be attacked by the cruisers, and those very cruisers would be the first to be destroyed. Wasting their valuable homing projectiles.
And then the hive would have a chance to survive this encounter and bring her plans to life.
"Exiting hyperspace," the Wraith commander reported. "The Ancient ships are positioned with their upper hemispheres facing each other."
"Protecting the command bridges," Cunning Blade understood. "They've grown smarter in ten thousand years."
"The cruisers are re-forming into attack formation... First volley... Direct hit. My queen? What's wrong?"
But Cunning Blade didn't bother to answer that question.
"The Scavenger?! " she roared in fury. "That Scavenger is aboard that ship!"
* * *
As soon as the light before my eyes faded and the doors of the teleportation chamber swung open, the jarring sound of a siren burst into my ears.
"Alvar, we're aboard!" I said into the radio. "Raise the shields! Get us out of here!"
"Did you stop for a break or something?!" the former fugitive grumbled. "We have three hits on the lower part of the ship!"
"How bad is it?"
"We need to get out of here as fast as possible!" Ihaar shouted. He'd somehow ended up next to the nearest console. "You've raised the shields, but without the battery they won't hold up against four Wraith ships! We've already taken serious damage!"
"How serious?!" I repeated the question to him. The fact that the ship had stopped shaking from the hull impacts was encouraging.
The chief engineer looked at me, pursing his lips.
"The small aft hold is destroyed!" he said. "They were clearly aiming for the hyperdrive! On the Aurora, it's located there, but on this ship it's shifted deeper and..."
And all the stasis pods that were there. Two of my people died.
Goddammit...
"How many did we lose?" I understood the essence of his words.
"Two of my people died in that compartment," he said, irritated. "Ten pods from the last batch were already connected there, the rest were not and..."
"They got blown out into space?" I asked. "Can we pick them up?"
"Do you have any understanding of the physics of Wraith energy weapons?!" Ihaar exclaimed indignantly.
"Ihaar!" I barked at him.
"They're incinerated!" the Ancient raised his voice in response. "It's high-temperature energy, like plasma, but of a different nature and..."
"Go and check," I ordered, handing him the bag of crystals. "And stash her somewhere on the way."
The angry engineer silently obeyed.
"And this ship is going to explode too?" Kirik asked, referring to the siren, throwing an angry look at me. Well, not exactly at me. At the contents of my shoulder. And no, I wasn't talking about the bag of crystals.
Behind him, a wheezing laugh and the distinctive crunch of bones being reset rang out.
"Primitive creature," Koschei snorted. "That's a battle alert signal. It triggers upon detecting ships of my race... They're close, and soon all of you will..."
"Oh, that's right," I realized, looking at the Wraith. "Are your kin close enough for you to send them a message?"
"So far we've only identified each other," Koschei said. "They're being led into battle by a queen who was born after me. And the greatness of my mind has shocked her. She's confused..."
"Well then, let her be even more shocked," I replied, looking him in the eyes. "Tell her that these ships are your prey! Tell her to get lost before your hive rips everything to pieces! Only you are allowed to feed on the Ancients on these ships! Word for word!"
"My hive? Feed on Ancients?" the Wraith was surprised. And then he practically lit up. "Well, well... The path of deception!"
His gaze went glassy for a moment.
"Done," he replied. "But she won't yield. She's angry, irritated, she hates me... It seems she mistook me for another Wraith she recently had a conflict with."
"And you didn't clear up her misunderstanding?"
"No, but..."
"Good job," I praised, knocking the Wraith out with the electroshock weapon. "Kirik, and you, Canon," I addressed another victim of that lady's rampage. "Take him to the brig. And make sure he doesn't wake up!"
"I'm Kanaan!" the brewmaster protested.
"Now!" I growled at both of them. "We'll literally have space burning under our feet soon!"
While my comrades dragged the unconscious, chained Wraith to his place of confinement, I unceremoniously lowered Trebal to the floor by the wall. But I miscalculated a bit...
A distinct, loud impact sound rang out.
After checking that her head hadn't gotten wet with blood from contact with the wall, I propped her up in a half-sitting position. Funny, but after testing the durability of her skull, her perpetually frowning expression had actually become... more human, if you will...
"I'm sorry, girl," I said, laying her down on the floor at the limit of my guilty feelings and tucking my jacket under her head. "The Ascended know, the whole way from the Aurora I thought you were heavier."
* * *
"Never in the last ten thousand years has the Aurora been this empty," the ship's commander said.
With a sad smile, he looked into the faces of his nineteen closest and most trusted beings in the entire galaxy. Young, focused faces, devoid of even a hint of panic or cowardice.
Battle comrades and true friends.
"I've had reason to be proud of you many times before, but today I can't find words to describe how proud I am of you and your decision to support me," the captain continued.
On the bridge of the Aurora.
"Even if we can't return to Atlantis, won't see our loved ones again, and won't finish our work, we will fulfill our duty," the Lantean said firmly. "I am proud to have served with you. I give you my word — the sacrifice we are ready to make here and now for a chance at a better future, for the sake of saving our battle comrades, will not be forgotten. Our last combat mission into space ends here, now... But the memory of us will live on in the hearts of those we saved!"
Taking one last breath of non-existent air, the commander of the Aurora uttered the battle cry of those who perish but never surrender one final time:
"Noo eternus!"
"Noo eternus!" his brothers-in-arms echoed.
* * *
Even though the Hippaforalkus had moved well away from the Aurora's hull, the problems didn't end there.
"Shields at twenty percent!" Alvar reported. "We lost ten percent in half a minute!"
And I even know why.
While the Hippaforalkus and the Aurora were hanging near each other, the Wraith had formed something like an attack formation. Three cruisers moved in a wedge ahead of and slightly "above" the Hive. The cruisers and their "darts" were taking the brunt of the fire from our automated ship guns. But the Hive Ship was firing under essentially range conditions.
We couldn't reach it — our impulse cannons didn't have the range. And besides, there was no way to close the distance. We'd pulled about two or three ship-lengths from the Aurora, but the starship was drifting, refusing to start its sublight engines.
Not only could the ship not output maximum power, but the shield projectors had been repaired to save us from a shootout, not to take a hit in one. And that wasn't Chaya's fault — there's only so much one person with limited resources can do.
"Our guns are working," Kirik said, pointing at the yellowish energy streaks hunting the Wraith's endless "darts."
"Maybe we should accept the fight?" Teyla suggested.
There was neither time nor desire to answer the question.
We'd only moved a short distance from the Aurora. The engines, though they were getting the power they needed, were malfunctioning for some reason. It seemed the hits had done far more damage than Ihaar had assumed.
"We have problems," and there was the chief engineer, appearing. "It's worse than I thought."
"How bad?"
"Based on the damage, we weren't being shot by cruisers, but by the Hive," he said. "Besides the destroyed compartment, part of the main wiring powering the hyperdrive and sublight engines was damaged. Power is flowing, but only a small amount gets through because of a short circuit..."
"Can you fix it or not?!" I asked. "In a minute, we won't have any shields left to withstand the Aurora's explosion!"
"What?!" a cry came over the radio. "Have you lost your minds?! Get the ship away from the Aurora immediately! Without the battery, or whatever you call it..."
"ZPM," I prompted.
"Yes! Without a ZPM, we won't survive the ship's self-destruction! And even with it, the odds are seventy-two to twenty-eight. With survival being the last number! When the Aurora explodes, it will release such a volume of zero-point energy that the very metric of spacetime..."
"We need engine power!" I cut him off. "Without it, we're just targets!"
"We can free up some energy from the auxiliary systems," one of the Ancients in the control room told me. I hadn't even noticed them. Just a couple of people, but...
"Ten percent shields!" Alvar shouted.
"Do it," I allowed.
"Redirect power from the redundant LSS to the shields," one Ancient immediately ordered the other.
"Bypassing the protective circuit, redistributing," both their hands literally glided across the keyboard. About as mesmerizingly as recognized virtuosos play the piano or grand piano... "Done!"
"Fifteen percent!" Alvar warned. "It helped."
"Ihaar!" I reminded the chief engineer of my presence. "Get us out of here!"
"I'm not Ascended!" Ihaar reminded me. "I can't fix what can only be repaired in open space! All the circuits are exposed and..."
"Figure something out!"
Silence hung in the air.
"I'll redirect power from the impulse cannons to the shields," he said. "That'll buy us another minute..."
Was he laughing?! The whole place was about to...
"We won't need shields," a voice behind me said, one that sent a chill straight to my soul.
My eyes flew open and I met Trebal's gaze. And I figured that if it weren't for the threat of death or capture by the Wraith (though the former was more obvious), she would have killed me on the spot.
"Move over," she demanded.
Well, I didn't even need to ask any extra questions.
As soon as I stood up, the girl was in the command chair. A quick glance at the countdown — we had fifteen seconds left.
"Ihaar, listen to me," she ordered. "Divert power to the sublight engines and the aft shield. Bypass the protection circuits of the crystal lattice so they're powered directly..."
"Have you lost your mind?!" the chief engineer's howl came through. "An instantaneous discharge! We'll burn out the sublights!"
"Either them or we die," I cut in. "Choose — death from an explosion or from a Wraith boarding party?"
"Psychopaths!" the panicking chief engineer answered. "It'll be ready in seven seconds!"
"Hold on," Trebal ordered, closing her eyes.
The deck vanished from under my feet at that very moment, and the starscape beyond the bridge began to shift rapidly.
The only thing I managed to do to keep from flying into the wall was wrap both arms around the command chair. And press my face against something extremely soft and fragrant...
* * *
"What are they doing?!" Cunning Blade grew agitated.
The cruisers had driven one Ancient ship away from the damaged one. This allowed them to land a scout carrying a boarding party on the hangar deck. Also, more than twenty "darts" used beams to transport up to a hundred Wraith soldiers onto the ship.
Guarding their prey, two cruisers hovered next to the damaged Ancient starship, while a third herded the second ship straight toward the Hive Ship.
The relentless bombardment had yielded the desired result — the shields went down, and three energy projectiles bit into the protruding bow section of the Ancient battleship. The commander, without needing a reminder, ordered the ship's command bridge targeted...
But the next volley hit empty space.
The Ancient battleship, as if there were no living soul inside capable of surviving such inertia, lunged sideways, pulling a loop. Now, on the contrary, it was approaching the damaged starship!
"They want to destroy our trophy!" Cunning Blade realized. "All power to engines! The third cruiser, give chase!"
Repeating the Ancient ship's maneuver — though less sharply — the third cruiser ended up about two hundred ship-lengths from the Hive Ship's forward sensor protrusion. It kept firing at the fleeing enemy but had no success.
"The Ancient starship's shields have been restored aft," the Wraith commander stated.
The Queen silently watched as the second ship "dove" under the first, accelerating. The cruiser pursued it; the other two provided covering fire. The Hive Ship kept pace as well.
But because of errors in the targeting system, it was dangerous to open fire on the fugitives — she risked damaging or even destroying the damaged ship. And, apparently, that was the Scavenger's trophy, who had suddenly demanded she back off!
Cunning Blade had almost accepted that she'd lost the second starship — it had simply vanished from the scanner screens.
"No hyperspace transition windows were detected," the Wraith commander said, puzzled.
"How is that possible? Where did they go?"
"The only explanation is they accelerated to near-light speed and... A power surge on the damaged ship!" he said loudly, displaying both surprise and even panic.
And the next moment, everything disappeared.
An explosion resembling the birth of a supernova instantly incinerated all three cruisers that had been holding position near the damaged starship. On the monitors, an expanding field of energy radiation appeared, rapidly approaching the Hive Ship...
The Aurora's farewell.
"We're getting out of here!" the Queen commanded.
"Impossible, my Queen..." the commander barely managed to say.
The next moment, a powerful shockwave threw Cunning Blade from the control panel she'd been at. Slamming into an organic bulkhead, the last thing she saw was the Hive Ship's schematic rapidly filling with red.
Then the Wraith commander's body flew into her, and a new explosion inside the Hive cut off her consciousness.