Have you ever been thrown under a hydraulic press?
To the bottom of the Mariana Trench?
Or at least from the stratosphere without a parachute?
No?
Then you can't understand what I felt at that moment when the Hippaforalkus lunged forward like a wild beast. The platform and the captain's chair were equipped with enhanced inertial dampeners, but even being in their zone of effect, I felt like a steamroller had run me over. And since I'm the clingy type, I got wrapped around its roller. And traveled quite cheerfully for, say, kilometers...
"We're five hundred thousand kilometers from the Aurora's explosion site," reported a voice coming from above. I couldn't identify it because it was coming through a layer of water... Which wasn't anywhere around.
But everything in my eyes was strangely orange-red... And warm...
"Could you climb off me before the others regain consciousness?" asked the same voice. I think it's called a baritone.
That's sad.
Doubly sad is that baritone is actually a male voice. I've got nothing against members of my own gender... No more than I have any desire to climb on top of them!
Every movement of my head was accompanied by a sledgehammer pounding my brain. It got a little easier; the drums stopped thundering in my ears, my vision cleared...
The warm orange fabric in front of my face was moving. Rhythmically, cyclically... Inhale, exhale...
And also very distinctive curves going left, right, a cleavage...
Adrenaline flooded into my bloodstream in a stream that even liquefied gas in a pipeline would envy.
Lifting my face, I saw the top part of a chest... And, to my shame — translucent reddish streaks... I touched my face with my hand — right, that was from me... Apparently, I'd bitten through my lip and thrown up everything in my stomach... Well, at least my stomach is strong, and it was empty...
"Are you deaf or what?" this time the voice, though more melodic, remained demanding. Yeah, a problem, a trouble...
Holy shit, Trebal!
Looking up, I met two sapphire-green emitters of impulse pistols. I don't even know if it's good or bad that those are eyes...
"I don't usually end up on women like this."
Once in my youth, the idea that a sense of humor could save any problem with women had sunk deep into my soul. I adopted that tactic... but because of my leaky memory, I overlooked one thing — the sense of humor has to be on the woman's side. A man's sense of humor is permanently born ahead of him...
But a woman with a sense of humor is a luxury, not an incubator in a pretty shell.
"I'm not interested in your wordplay," Trebal clipped out.
One poke between my ribs and pain shot through my body. My fingers unclenched and I tumbled from the chair and off the girl onto the floor.
God dammit, that hurt!
And my body already felt like it'd been put through a garlic press, and now this!
"Do you have even a drop of pity?" I groaned.
"Yes, but not for you," to my surprise, Trebal stood up from the chair quite easily. Staggering, she took a couple of steps down from the platform... And immediately swayed, collapsing backward.
Acting more on instinct than conscious thought, I lunged forward and... My physiology failed me — my muscles wouldn't obey.
The blonde head, or rather the back of it, hit me right in the... And they told me: "Don't do good — you won't get evil!"
I had no strength left to scream in pain. Only enough to cover the injured part of my torso with my hands and curl up in a fetal position.
The Ancient woman, getting on all fours, looked at me through the veil of her white-blonde locks.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to," she muttered. But her voice said it all!
"And the second hit with the back of your head was intentional?!" I groaned. "She 'didn't mean it'..."
"That was the inertia of two elastic bodies colliding," she said rapidly, simultaneously reaching the chair. "Physics, nothing more. But I apologize for my carelessness."
What a bitch! She'd smashed her head against the entire Lantean nesting ground! What does she have instead of bones? Ship armor?!
"Apology..." I groaned, "accepted. Remind me not to bash you by the back of the head into a corridor anymore... You were no sweetheart before, but now you're a bitch among bitches. Miss Bitch of Two Universes!"
"What?!" Trebal was taken aback. "You hit my head against the wall?"
"What?" I caught myself. "Those are sound distortions from disruptions in the harmonizing membranes of the middle ear due to the overload the organism experienced."
The girl looked at me with a piercing gaze.
"No such phenomenon exists."
"Tell that to the collision of elastic bodies — your head and..."
"I already apologized. And, by the way, I saved your lives!"
"That doesn't give you the right to take them from my descendants!" I groaned.
The state of stillness reduced the pain... By the time I could get to my feet, Trebal was already standing in front of one of the consoles. Well, "in front of" I think only the good grip of her boot soles on the floor and her hands braced against the top edge of the console were keeping her from falling.
"No Wraith," she said. "The Aurora is gone, too... The commander pulled it off. As always."
Using the chair, I regained a vertical position and looked around.
Our comrades — Alvar, Teyla, a couple of Athosians, and two Ancients — were lying along the wall that contained the only entrance and exit to and from the bridge. From what I could see, they were all breathing. No blood visible, no unnaturally twisted limbs either.
"They'll be fine," Trebal assured me. "The shock knocked them out. It'll pass."
"Tell that to a concussion or intracranial hematomas, bone fractures..."
The young woman shook her head.
."..but you really did get us out of big trouble," I finished my thought. "I guess that's an even exchange, partly. Thank you."
The girl nodded silently in response, then activated a few switches on her console.
"Is Koschei in the cell?" I asked.
Trebal looked at me in surprise: "The Wraith told you his name?"
"No, I gave it to him myself."
"And he responds to it?" she asked, even more surprised.
"As you can see... So what about him? Should we be worried?"
Trebal checked the data on one of the monitors and nodded affirmatively.
"His life signs are being recorded in the locked part of the brig," she said. "Strange..."
"What exactly?"
"That system shouldn't separate the life signals of humans and Wraith," she explained, looking at me with interest. "Did you modify it? Install differentiation by biorhythm of organisms? By brainwaves? Based on cellular structure?"
"We'll talk about it when we get back to Atlantis," I grimaced. I have no idea how that thing works. But something tells me I shouldn't mention Chaya Sar's name. Not yet, anyway. "We need to figure out what's going on with our ship and crew."
"Yes, of course," the Ancient woman frowned, returning her attention to the control panel. "Biorhythms are all stable; the ship isn't registering any brain trauma or life-threatening conditions."
Strange lady. There are notes of arrogance and contempt in her, a born bitchiness. But when she's busy with business, it seems like all that is just outer shell, and the real Trebal is the very model of compassion.
A contradictory woman.
"Ihaar, are you all right?!" she asked using the ship's intercom.
I went over to the other comrades, helping bring them around. We need to think about what to do next... Extra hands definitely wouldn't hurt.
"We're alive," the answer came over the intercom a couple of seconds later. Right as I was bringing Alvar around.
"I haven't been spread out like that since piloting a faulty interceptor," he admitted, realizing we were in relative safety.
."..but we have huge problems," Ihaar summarized.
* * *
It took some time to revive the crew. Yes, the acceleration that the inertial dampeners couldn't handle certainly didn't do anyone's health any good... But a dozen broken bones, concussions, and an ocean of bruises was a small price to pay for getting away from a supernova explosion.
Which, actually, was what we were talking about in the infirmary while the healthier ones patched up the less healthy.
"We're all going to die," Ihaar declared from the doorway as he entered the compartment. He didn't even look at us, but walked over to the nearest console and started tinkering with it. "I warned you that bypassing the protection protocols and ports wouldn't do us any good, but you didn't want to listen to me...!"
"Is he always this pessimistic?" I quietly asked Trebal. The Ancient woman twitched the corner of her mouth and shrugged, as if to say, I'm used to it by now.
The other Ancients didn't react much to what was said either. Apparently, a panicking engineer was really the norm for a crew from Atlantis.
"So," Ihaar used a medical monitor and brought up the ship's schematic. Oh, I didn't like the red marks in the aft section of the ship. "We survived the Aurora's self-destruction, three Wraith cruisers destroyed... And that's the end of the good news."
"There were four ships," Kirik reminded him, cradling a broken arm in an improvised sling. Thank Ermen for the medical supplies! I don't know how we'd be managing now without them. We'll also need to think about replenishing stocks.
"Yes, as I said, the good news is over," Ihaar winced. "I boosted the sensors during the restart and calibration," he changed the image on the monitor and showed a pulsing red marker at a considerable distance from us. A very distinctive marker. "If anyone's interested, that's a Hive Ship. It's badly damaged, but there are signs of life on it. That means the crew survived too."
"If they haven't attacked yet, they don't have the capability," Alvar observed, glancing irritably at the female technician wrapping his head in a bandage.
"Most likely their sensors and part of the hull were damaged by the explosion's radiation," Ihaar speculated.
"So that's good, isn't it?" Teyla asked.
"Wraith technology has a biological basis," Trebal interjected. "Unlike our ships, they don't need spare parts to repair the vast majority of damage. They'll reconfigure energy flows, direct it to repairing the damage. An hour, a day, two, or a week — but they'll restore their ship to a state where they can attack and destroy us. I assume," she looked at Ihaar, "that the damage to our ship is worse than theirs?"
"I'm not Ascended!" the chief engineer declared. "I can't even imagine the state their ship is in!"
"And the long-range sensors?" I asked. "Can we aim them at the Wraith ship and find out the details..."
"And then they'll know exactly where we are," he said. "For now, there's a chance their sensors are fried and recovering. But risking it while we can't respond or run..."
"We have munitions," Alvar reminded. "Let's hit them before they hit us?"
I glanced briefly at the now-gloomy Trebal.
It seemed her emotions were under control, but at the same time, this conversation touched on very slippery circumstances. Which, I had my doubts, she had accepted and understood.
"The battleship isn't fit for combat," Ihaar grimaced. "It's second generation, a bit better than the Aurora, but worse than the latest versions. Your generators are only putting out seventy percent power. That's not enough to power the shields even at the first setting. And without a ZPM, you shouldn't even think about full operation of all systems. The builders didn't just..."
"Enough theory," I asked. "Let's get to specifics. What's broken and what can we fix?"
"If we have spare parts, we can fix anything," the Aurora's chief engineer shrugged.
"Ihaar," Trebel admonished him.
"What?" he asked irritably. "I'm not Ascended to fix everything with a wave of my hand! I warned there would be consequences..."
"Yes, and we'd be interested to hear about them," Kirik grumbled.
"Well then listen," Ihaar said, still agitated. "I don't know who the smart guy was who reprogrammed the 'Mutiny on the Ship' protocol to counter the Wraith, but he's a bit of a genius and a complete idiot! Because the ship sent a subspace signal to Atlantis, that's how they found us."
"You mean the signal wasn't sent by Koschei?" Teyla was surprised.
"Of course not," Ihaar stated confidently. "It was the onboard computer. And it kept transmitting until Mikhail rebooted the systems. The procedure for canceling the 'Mutiny on the Ship' protocol kicked in; the Hippaforalkus thought order on the starship was restored and stopped calling for help."
"Could the Wraith have learned that Atlantis survived?" Kirik worried.
"And they don't know that?" Trebal asked. "If they haven't seen anything destroyed and what's happening contradicts their logic, they don't jump to conclusions. I think they concluded that the Ancients either fled or died in the city during the blockade."
"And now they have confirmation that's not the case," I concluded. "The Hive Ship needs to be destroyed."
"Well, then the second one too," Ihaar snorted.
"A second Hive Ship?" I, Trebal, Alvar, Kirik, and Teyla repeated almost in unison.
"That's right," the engineer nodded. "Didn't I mention it? It'll be here in about two hours. And we'd better get out of here."
"Do we have enough munitions to destroy both Hive Ships?" I asked Trebal.
"One — definitely," she said after thinking. "But two... We probably have enough munitions, but we can't stand against a fully combat-capable Hive Ship. We simply don't have enough shield power to survive such a battle."
"And we don't even have power!" Ihaar said. "No engines — neither sublight nor maneuvering, the hyperdrive went into emergency mode and is locked out, the impulse cannons are without power."
"Can we fix it?" I asked.
"If you have a ship packed with spare parts and at least ten to fifteen percent charged ZPM, then no problem, it'll be good as new," Ihaar threw out. "But first we need to thaw out all the crew members, or the work will take several months."
"Let's be realistic," I suggested. "We need to restore the hyperdrive at minimum. Preferably, we retreat and regroup now."
"That's illogical," Trebal objected. "If we want to keep the fact that Atlantis has an operational Ancient ship secret, we should destroy at least this Hive. Before the second one arrives."
"Can we restore the necessary systems before the second ship arrives?" I asked Ihaar.
"Theoretically," he hesitated.
"Ihaar!" Trebal's eyes flashed.
"How the hell should I know?!" he exploded. "I don't have that many people who can help with repairs. I lost two senior technicians and ten people in stasis pods when the Hive Ship hit us! There are practically no spare parts, which means I can't fix the critical damage, only bypass it — and that's only if the backup circuits survived and the diagnostic readings only relate to blown fuses and so on..."
"In that case," I stood up, looking around at everyone gathered, "we need to start sorting this out as quickly as possible. Kirik — you're in charge of guarding the Wraith. Make sure he stays unconscious. Hopefully, that way he can't communicate with his kind..."
I looked around at the Ancients.
"He can't, can he?"
"Most likely not," Trebal said for all of them. "Their brains are structured roughly the same as ours. The same centers are responsible for higher brain functions. So as long as he's unconscious, he shouldn't be able to make mental contact with them."
"Take a couple of people, knock him out with this," I handed my trophy to the former runner. Trebal, giving me a look that clearly showed she hadn't forgiven me for her helplessness, still remained silent. "Then hook him up to the medication. Keep him in a coma until we get back to Atlantis."
"It would be better if someone with a medical education helped us," Kirik lamented. "I'm not too strong on how to inject metal into a sentient and keep him alive."
"Were there medics in stasis on the Aurora?" I asked Trebal.
"The medical section on ships of this type is located in the forward part of the vessel, next to the biological laboratories," she explained. "We lost it during the retreat. Along with our medics."
"Then don't deny yourself the pleasure of finding his veins by trial and error," I advised Kirik. "Just in case, take one or two Athosians with you to keep an eye on him. If you see him so much as twitch — knock him out."
It's too early to kill him yet.
At least because he was mentally linked to the queen of another hive, and that's information. Besides, he clearly hasn't revived everyone he could. Waking him up now would be stupid — he could contact his own. But in the long run...
As long as he's useful, he lives. If not — he dies.
"The scanner can help illuminate his anatomy," Trebal said, nodding to one of the technicians, who pulled a familiar bulky datapad from a pocket on his belt. "This man will scan the Wraith and..."
"Stop, stop, stop!" Ihaar waved his hands. "I need every person who can understand what needs repairing and how. Sending a technician to replace a medic..."
"He'll just show me where Koschei's vein is, then go do whatever you tell him," Kirik explained.
"Oh," Ihaar drawled. "Well, that's acceptable then."
"Alvar," I addressed the second runner. "Take one of the technicians and get back to the bridge. Observe and coordinate the repair teams. Ihaar, Teyla," the two exchanged glances. The latter with a readiness to help, the former with bewilderment, like, how did you even think to say our names in the same sentence? "Split your people into teams. Have them work from inside the ship under Ihaar's direction."
"And how can they help?" Ihaar asked. "Do they know how to replace wiring? Can they not get confused by the distributor's polarity? Can they identify a burned-out crystal? What exactly has your people achieved?" he looked at Teyla.
"Well..." she seemed a bit taken aback by such audacity. "We tamed fire..."
A tense silence fell over the infirmary. The Ancients exchanged quick glances. But the 'poker faces' they wore carefully concealed their true emotions.
"That's already worth a lot," Trebel assured him, giving Ihaar a meaningful look. He shook his head and sighed in resignation.
"These Athosians helped us get the battleship in order," I encouraged the chief engineer.
"Ah!" he said, understanding dawning. "Then it all becomes clear. Still surprising though... But then again, ten thousand years... It must have been rough for you..."
"Excuse me?" Teyla inquired with pressure. It seemed she took it as an insult. Hard to blame her — that's more or less how the chief engineer's words had sounded.
"The Athosians, in our time, were one of the races destined to become Minor," Trebal explained. "You were well-developed and caught the Lantians' attention... If not for the war, you would have reached the same developmental level as us or other Minor races..."
"I see," Teyla nodded. "I think my people will be very interested to learn our ancient history..."
"Let's talk about it once we get out of here," I cut off the waste of time. I understand everything, but now isn't the time. "Ihaar, send someone to inspect the damage to the jumper and start repairs. First priority is the hyperdrive and sublight engines..."
Because if we can't prepare for a fight against even just one battered hive ship, we'd better just get out of here. Yes, fleeing with live witnesses will lead them to our trail, but... Better that than losing more than we hoped to gain.
I thought bitterly that Chaya was right — we should have prepared for this expedition as thoroughly as possible.
"Alright, let's get to work," Ihaar clapped his hands. "Let's start distributing groups... Teyla, what exactly did your people do on the ship, and what systems are they familiar with?"
Our crew, which had nearly doubled in size, came to life, splitting into teams... If we got really lucky, we might just get out of this mess.
A hand touched my shoulder.
Turning my head, I saw Trebal staring intently at me.
"Come," she said quietly, nodding towards the infirmary exit. "We need to talk."
In how many cases out of a hundred does this phrase precede big trouble? Two hundred? Or more?