To be honest, I thought the days when a smiling beauty unobtrusively pushed you out the door were long gone, back in my distant youth… How wrong I was.
"The joke about sound in vacuum is pretty primitive, but no less amusing," Trebal said, looking at me. Or maybe through me. Interesting — apparently she doesn't know that Ihaar repaired the maneuvering thrusters and the Hippaforalkus needs to be brought into the hangar for a full repair. The remark about parking by ear was exactly that…
While I was still in a daze from being caught off guard, Trebal unexpectedly hugged me. And kissed me…
"Thank you for everything," she cooed with suspiciously sweet intonations. "Your attention means a lot to me. As does my appointment as battleship commander. I'm glad that our misunderstandings were resolved so easily and productively for both of us. I hope you enjoyed… our conversation. If you don't mind, I'd like to rest a bit. Because… the conversation," for the second time now, she was emphasizing the words she spoke after a short pause in a peculiar way, "with you took a lot out of me…"
"Have fun," I waved my hand. "I have things to do too…"
The door closed in front of my nose, finally cutting me off from the beautiful bitch. God-fucking-damn-zero-point! I was practically offered sex with a more evolved form of human, and I froze up like a schoolboy.
No, I understand why — my body wanted it, but my brain was freaking out. The cognitive dissonance Trebal creates with her words and behavior seriously overloads the brain.
Maybe it was right that I didn't blurt out what my lower half was suggesting… But what if she actually wanted it? And her words about professionalism and all that were just a defensive reaction so she wouldn't feel rejected? Who the hell knows these women with their way of thinking!
Just as I was about to go about my business, I heard a discreet cough behind me.
Turning around, I saw… Ihaar and Chaya.
Suspicious thoughts took root in my head, directed at that door that had just closed in my face. What a fucking bitch! She should be working in theater, not commanding a ship! Let her screw up just once and I'll demote her to janitor!
For the slow ones, Trebal was at it again: she'd obviously seen the two Ancients and decided to rub it in. Because if you think about it… You might think she was thanking me for something other than our conversation. For example, for the kind of preferential treatment that "sugar daddies" give their "dolls."
Bitch!
Is this the Stargate universe or Santa Barbara?! What the hell, with their genetic chains, they're Ancients! No, I understand people are different… But I thought all Ancients behaved like Chaya… But no, Ihaar periodically panics and overwhelms you with his technical knowledge, Trebal… Maybe she really has leaky pipes or a hole in her roof?
This lady genuinely acts like she has bipolar disorder. One minute a bitch, the next a sweetheart… Or is she just a bitch who knows how to reliably get inside your head? And it's working! Because I've been staring at Ihaar and Chaya's open mouths for a minute now and I can't hear a word!
Trebal! Witch! Stop your sorcery!
"We need to find the most remote Ancient outpost…"
"…and that would give us greater energy generation," Ihaar was saying. Realizing what he'd heard, he exchanged glances with Chaya and clarified:
"What does a remote outpost have to do with the proposal to replace the reactors on the battleship?" the Ancient woman asked.
"I want to send Trebal there," I admitted. "On reconnaissance, of course. Don't think I'm trying to get rid of the bitch…"
The Ancients exchanged glances again.
"I have business in the lower hangar," Ihaar said hurriedly. "Chaya, you'll explain the gist of my ideas to Mikhail, won't you?"
"I'll try," she promised, looking me up and down. "I'm not sure he's thinking about the common good right now…"
"I believe in your intellect," Ihaar called from the other end of the residential corridor.
"Let's go," I frowned, waving my hand. "We'll talk in my cabin."
"Fine," Chaya agreed meekly, falling in on my right. "Hmm, don't think I'm a prude, but… You figured out the shower mechanism, right?"
Oh, for fuck's sake!
"How is that relevant to our conversation?" I didn't understand.
"What girl would be happy when a man invites her to his place and he smells of another woman?" Chaya asked in an innocent tone. "And the way Trebal clinged to you so passionately, how she demonstrated her sensuality after having her ten-thousand-year female solitude broken…"
I stopped and looked at the Proculus woman:
"Do you understand that nothing happened between us?"
"And you weren't in her quarters for nearly an hour?" Sar continued in the same tone. "I hope it was one long… conversation. Because if not, I almost feel sorry for her… Maybe I should talk to her, brag about how you can spend an entire night in a girl's room?.."
"And this is your gratitude for solving your problems?" I sighed sadly, realizing that Sar had mounted her favorite hobbyhorse. I don't know why, but Ancient women get some kind of perverse pleasure out of conversations like this.
"No," the pretense fell from Chaya's face and she quickly approached me. "This is my gratitude."
My lips were briefly seared with the taste of fruit and warmth. A moment — and her dusky face had already regained the expression of that same friend who teases you because she can. After all, you've spent half your life with them…
"And… what was that?" I asked.
"Well, now I believe you didn't kiss her," Chaya smiled. "Her lipstick has a distinctive aftertaste…"
"I don't want to know where you got that information," the Ancient woman snorted when she saw my face twist. "But if suddenly you two snarl at each other during the day and keep each other warm under the blankets at night with sound suppression on full blast, I wouldn't mind watch— Ouch!"
With a triumphant shout, I intercepted Sar's hand, which was aiming to deliver pain and humiliation to my cheek.
"Two can play at this edge-of-the-rules game," I explained to Chaya, watching her face morph into a battle hamster mask. "Unpleasant, isn't it? Now you know how I feel after your jokes about that night…"
"Who was joking?" Chaya pulled her hand free and shook her head.
"You again?" I grimaced.
"What can I do when I see a grown man, the leader of a city and a faction possessing the most advanced technology in several galaxies, blushing like a child when it comes to perfectly ordinary things?" Chaya snorted.
Yeah, it's not like you have the love of your life left behind in another universe… If only I knew whether I'll ever see Marina again…
"How about we tone down the bedroom humor?" I suggested. "It's unpleasant, given the situation we're in."
"I've been in a similar situation before," Chaya assured me. "And trust me, our position is better. Honestly, I wouldn't want to live this life as a prim scientist from a primitive race, good only as a sacrifice for my own salvation. I want to enjoy life…"
"You need a man, milady," I sighed, suggesting we continue walking. Otherwise we looked like a married couple with twenty years of experience — hashing out our relationship in the residential corridor. And let the whole world wait! "Otherwise your antics will give the whole village a heart attack…"
"Earth humor?" Chaya clarified.
"Something like that," I grunted. "So, what was our languid young man with the burning gaze suggesting?"
"Our ZPM can't be moved between Atlantis and the battleship, but fighting the Wraith is unavoidable," Chaya instantly switched to a businesslike tone. "Ihaar studied my generator on board the Satellite and figured we could replace the old ship reactors with more efficient ones. That would provide more power to the Hippaforalkus' systems, but without using a ZPM."
"And if we had a hundred of those, we wouldn't need him at all," I remarked.
"We'd need more," Chaya assured me. "About ten thousand or so..."
"Happiness was so close," I muttered, estimating the energy output difference between Chaya's generator and the ZPM. It was absolutely colossal. "Can we build enough of your generators for a battleship?"
"The generator I built for the satellite produces far less energy than a ship-grade one," Sar clarified. "We'd be talking about building a different device."
"Ah, in that case, we need more Naquadah and other materials," I understood.
"Exactly," the Proculucian confirmed. "But the mines on Ermen are either depleted, or the Naquadah is several kilometers deeper. It would take a lot of time to reach it with our current technology."
"Suggestion?" I asked.
"There's a simple one and a more complicated one," Sar admitted.
"Start with the complicated one."
"We need to check the planets with Naquadah deposits listed in Atlantis's databases. Even if the Wraiths mined the material, some deposits definitely remain elsewhere, and they'd be much easier to extract."
"We'd just have to fight the Wraiths, right?"
"That's why it's the complicated one."
"And the simple one?"
"To avoid fighting the Wraiths, we could just blow up a planet..."
Is this floor really level? I nearly tumbled head over heels when I heard that.
."..and extract the minerals — all of them — from the asteroid debris," Chaya said as if it were nothing.
"Tell me you're joking," I asked.
"Mmm," Sar bit her lip. "No. This was the Lantians' standard material extraction method in the final stage of the war with the Wraiths. Find an uninhabited planet, destabilize the core, explosion, process the asteroids..."
Holy mother... Is this really the Stargate I used to watch?
"Uh... Didn't the Lantians invent automated mines?"
"The Wraiths destroyed them," she said. "And building an automated miner would take a long time and require many resources. It's simpler to blow up a planet..."
"Chaya, I'm starting to regret standing up for you... I hope you weren't the one who blew up Lantea's second moon?"
"No," she blinked. "Honestly."
I'll have to check the database.
"Let's first survey this asteroid field," I suggested. "Then we'll think about it... But blowing up planets for resources... Can you imagine how much ore is wasted during an explosion? That seems uneconomical to me."
"No one mentioned that," Chaya reminded me. "Only that it's fast. If we stick to mines as a material source, we'll have to spend a lot of time training the Athosians to do it. And even then — only based on the databases. There are no former miners among the Dorandans."
"But we have the Cloak of Taranis," I reminded her. "And the ore filtered from it."
"But it doesn't have large quantities of the materials we need," Chaya said. "Naquadah, for instance."
"Priority — scanning the asteroids," I said firmly. "No planets in this galaxy will be blown up without my consent. Understood?"
"I could work on the hyperdrive and we could go to another..." Chaya began, but stopped herself after looking at me. "You've got no spirit of discovery..."
"Seems like I'm the only one in this universe who's friends with his conscience."
We had just arrived at a small open area that existed on every floor of the residential complex. A sort of hall, a lounge, maybe even a food court...
Settling into the soft sofas, Chaya and I continued our conversation.
"I hope you have no intention of continuing experiments with the Arcturus projector?" I inquired.
"Despite it being an extremely promising energy source, I don't know how to solve the problem of exotic particle generation," Chaya admitted. "I suspect it's fundamental, and therefore insurmountable. The best I could come up with was using part of the project's energy to create a space-time tunnel to shunt the exotic particles from our universe into another. Or else spend ten times more energy than we receive on destroying those particles. But then what kind of profitability are we talking about?"
"And... how likely is it that the universe where we send our exotic particle drain would be inhabited?" I asked.
"I'd like to say 'vanishingly small,' but in reality, given the constants of the laws of alternate universes, there's a ninety percent chance we'd be sending exotic particles straight onto the heads of our counterparts," the Ancient said. "Not to mention that unlike a Stargate's hyper-tunnel, this tunnel wouldn't be one-way. So if they have someone smarter than this chair" she lovingly stroked the armrest of the piece of furniture upholstered in unknown snow-white leather — "they'd redirect those exotic particles right back at us. Using the equation of particle universe identity, I don't think we'd be able to get rid of them."
"Because after visiting another universe, they'd acquire the frequencies of their new location?" I clarified. "And then we'd face a cascading entropy failure, wouldn't we?"
Chaya looked at me with benevolent surprise.
"Actually, that postulate applies to objects larger than particles," she said. "And they need to possess individuality. Otherwise, when moving between universes, a failure would start with the air atoms in your lungs, or the molecules of your clothing fabric... But I think you're right — the behavior of exotic particles would be very difficult to predict. And besides, the more Arcturus projects there are, the more dangerous it becomes to exist in our universe. Destabilizing the foundations of the system is no joke. Maybe not tomorrow, not in a year, not even in a thousand years — but the consequences will manifest. And we won't like them."
"The more energy we take, the faster we drive the universe to its breaking point," I agreed. "But what if we take tiny sips of energy from other universes, connecting to them through that bridge you wanted to use as a drain for exotic particles?"
"First of all, particles appear at every power level except the very lowest," Chaya said. "Secondly... Let's suppose I can stabilize the project's operation — with great luck — and we really can connect to other universes, drawing minuscule amounts of energy from them, thereby causing negligible harm... Let's assume the particles won't form... considering the infinite multitude of universes and the rate of zero-point energy extraction from them... It's pointless," she smiled. "We'd get a very dangerous generator that could power, with a one-time draw... well, say, a Jumper. And what would we need such a setup for? It'd be simpler to dismantle the Arcturus for spare parts. The turret, incidentally, could be installed on Atlantis as defensive-offensive weaponry and powered by the ZPM..."
"And why not on the Hippaforalkus?" I asked. "It'd be nice to give the ship something more powerful than simple projectiles. Which we don't have enough of."
"And the energy output?" Chaya reminded me. "That weapon can't be powered by ship reactors alone — its effectiveness would be low, only useful against Darts. Pulse cannons would be far more effective. If we're talking about offensive ship weaponry, we need a completely different energy source. And," she raised a finger, "definitely not a revamped Arcturus. Even if it could siphon energy from other universes like a conveyor belt, it wouldn't simultaneously deliver the same power output as a ZPM. And if the generator were destroyed or damaged... I'm afraid we'd face a spacetime continuum rupture."
Yeah... We don't think small.
"Actually, the Arcturus is supposed to tap zero-point energy, isn't it?" I clarified.
"Yes."
"And we have at least three empty zero point modules," I prompted. "The ones the Ancients call 'batteries.' Do you think we could recharge them using the Arcturus and other universes?"
Making the Arcturus pump energy from our own universe, even on a microscopic scale, would be stupid. Sure, we wouldn't extract enough energy to collapse the system in a short time — but we'd do it over a long time. The whole idea is not to destroy our own universe and to cause minimal damage to others.
"I've never heard of such a thing," Chaya admitted. "But... we could certainly try... However, I still advise looking for other ZPMs. This time I won't listen to anyone and I won't activate the machine until I'm certain no one will be harmed. In any universe. And for that, I need to interpret the multidimensional equation of universe drift, including the theory of minute probabilities, the laws of logic, and so on, to choose a location for the planetary operation where life is guaranteed not to exist."
"Something tells me Dorandan is more suitable for this than ever," I chuckled. "I don't think life survived there in any universe. In the one I know about, they blew up the planet. And five-sixths of the star system too."
"Was the project reactivated?" Chaya asked.
"By the humans of Earth," I confirmed. "They thought the Ancients had made a calculation error and there'd be no bad outcome..."
"The destruction of five-sixths of the star system and Dorandan itself, without forming a supermassive black hole or breaching the continuum, is probably a decent outcome," Chaya muttered.
Did I mention we don't think small?
"Anyway, I'll work on the theory," Chaya assured me. "But I won't promise anything. Or rush things."
"That works for me," I confirmed. "And you also need to disable the installation so that no one but you can activate it on Dorandan. You understand why?"
"I've already done it," Chaya assured me. "Right after I first arrived there."
Well, that put my mind at ease.
"Did the Wraith telepathic ability blockers work on Koschei without any incidents?" Sar inquired.
"Yes, he couldn't overcome them," I confirmed. "I think they'll be useful for several missions. Particularly here on Lantea."
"Death Queen," Chaya shuddered. "You still want to reach her?"
"I want to get the drilling rig," I explained. "And also eliminate the leader of all Wraiths, so that the irreversible doesn't happen: our enemies will arrive, and we'd hand the Death Queen back to them on a silver platter. Can you imagine what will happen when she takes power over the Wraiths?"
And I had no doubt that was exactly how it would play out. Among the Wraiths, the strong rule the weak. And since ten thousand years had passed, the number of those who could oppose her would surely be minimal. What was in my interest? Dozens, maybe hundreds of Wraith factions that wouldn't unite with each other without a good reason, or one unified faction under the control of a queen who actively participated in the destruction of the Lantian Confederacy?
When the Wraiths wake up — and I'm not optimistic enough to think they won't — it's better for them to fight each other than to swear allegiance to a single queen out of old habit.
The drilling rig, though... Yes, it's not a ZPM. But it's a working energy generation project, and you can never have too much energy. Just forgetting about the mobile drilling rig would be a huge mistake. Especially since what stopped me from capturing it before was precisely the Death Queen, whose ship had crashed near the rig.
But if we can protect ourselves from her mental influence... then why keep ignoring the obvious?
"I'll work on the neutralizer some more," Chaya announced. "Koschei is a strong mentalist, of course, but I think the queen will be even stronger. We should plan for that ahead of time."
"Agreed."
What kind of people are these Ancients? The moment they reach the brink of destruction due to their own carelessness, caution kicks in. Then again... Would I be any better if I didn't have the benefit of hindsight?
Probably not. So I should shove my snobbery somewhere far away.
"Misha," Chaya looked at me intently. "You know we have a very simple way to solve all our problems, don't you? ZPMs, Drones, ships... We could get all of it with just one trip through the Gate. I've already found the address, and I think we can make a simple decision."
The main thing is not to let Chaya follow through on her brilliant ideas... That's what the tribune said, I think.
"Seemingly simple," I corrected. "It's just that, in light of everything I've learned, I can't help thinking that showing up to the Asurans and saying, 'Hello, you fucking machines, it's time to serve your white master!' is not the best of ideas."
Chaya, lowering her gaze, said:
"Nevertheless, since, as you say, the Asurans weren't destroyed and started copying the Ancients... And since they were created for war, we could force them to return to their original task — the destruction of the Wraiths. If we make the Asurans fight the Wraiths, we'll have the opportunity and time to build our own strength! Without knowing fatigue or regret, the Asurans will destroy the Wraiths in months, or even less. They're probably the best version of the Ancients currently known."
"The best?" I clarified. "Chaya, they're made of killer machines created only to destroy the Wraiths by any means necessary. And something tells me that depriving the Wraiths of their food source is the simplest of those means."
"Did they do that in the events you know about?" Chaya looked at me fearfully.
"After they met the humans of Earth, who tampered with their base code," I admitted. "Not to mention that if I were a killer machine, I'd at least want to get even for how my creators treated me. The Lantians practically destroyed them. And what's stopping the Asurans from doing the same? In my memory, that's exactly what they wanted to do, and only a miracle — or maybe hints from the Ascended — saved humanity from extermination. Considering they hold all the cards and most likely all the Ancients' technology, the Asurans are not a force we can ignore. Unlike them, we have a city falling apart from age, no munitions, one battleship, and a couple dozen people. And there are, if I remember correctly, millions of them. So what sense does it make to poke at them, when one thorough interrogation would be enough for them to understand that none of us are Lantians?"
"As far as I know, there was a prohibition in their base code against harming the Ancients," Chaya said. "And the Ancients here in Pegasus aren't just the Lantians. They also include representatives of the younger races. That is, me, Trebal, Ihaar, and other Dorandans. The Asurans simply wouldn't dare — the program wouldn't allow it. Besides, you have the tribune's code — a junior member of the Council. You entered that code into the city computer, and Atlantis practically became your property! We could try doing the same with the Asurans."
"Are you willing to bet your life on that?" I asked. "That a race of killer machines would be satisfied with one old code? Considering they've been evolving for ten thousand years in one way or another."
After thinking, Chaya said:
"No."
"That's what I think too — the idea of sticking your head into a predator's mouth doesn't justify the potential problems either," I said. My words saddened Sar — it was visible to the naked eye. Sighing, I added:
"I'd also like to know how to create ZPMs and Drones without breaking a sweat. I think it's somewhere in Atlantis's database, but it might be encrypted with Moros's code. I understand you wouldn't want to go back to working on the Arcturus project, given your last experience..."
"I really wouldn't," Chaya admitted. "I understand how much we need energy, but... At the same time, I realize my knowledge is completely insufficient to radically change the situation or solve the problem. But they... If they can create ZPMs..."
"In the events I know of — they could. And they attacked with projectiles too. And somehow they could control Atlantis's arsenal, even though that's only possible through the chair, isn't it?"
"Not exactly," Chaya furrowed her brow. "If you calculate the exact control channel, simulate it... They wouldn't be able to control all of them at once, but they could manage a small number."
"Listen," I leaned forward. "The Asurans, in the events I know of, after several failed simple attempts to destroy the humans of Earth, decided to build a fleet. Forty or so ships like our battleship. What do we have to answer a race of robots capable of that? The Wraiths nearly went extinct when they clashed with them after the Ancients' flight. And the best they could do was cancel the attack command. But the humans of Earth reactivated it. And the Asurans began exterminating people... Maybe I'd even say that for a higher purpose one could look the other way, but... I don't think I want to see nightmares of millions upon millions of murdered people that the Asurans slaughtered every night."
"I understand," Chaya said. "I... I'm looking for a better path."
"The objectively lesser evil isn't always what it seems," I sighed. "We already flew to the Aurora. And the perfect plan, as I thought, led to both the Aurora's destruction and the Wraiths likely showing up on our doorstep soon. If I were them, I'd definitely fly to the last place where the Ancients were seen to find out: 'Did they come back?' Simply because there aren't that many places Lantian-design warships could have come from, are there?"
"Sounds logical," Chaya admitted. "Did they do that in the events you know of?"
"Yes," I confirmed. "But the difference is that we have a ZPM, living Ancients, and the city is underwater and protected from orbital bombardment. But that doesn't solve the other problems. Right now we have conditional control over several planets: Lantea-1 and Lantea-2, Athos and New Athos, Taranis, Dorandan... I think the Wraiths aren't showing up on Proculus anymore either. But the fact remains — we lack the resources to even defend Atlantis in a fight. The Hippaforalkus wouldn't survive a good beating, and activating the generators on Athos and Taranis to protect the planets from the Wraiths risks supervolcanic eruptions. And even if we close all those Gates with shields or somehow prevent the Wraiths from reaching the planets, their first attempts to attack the same Athos out of old habit would only raise new questions. Unfortunately, we don't have the resources for open confrontation. No army, no fleet. And the last thing we need in this situation is to take risks by following the Ancients' path: creating more and more new weapons, and in reality — more and more new problems."
"From your notes on the Spartan project, I understood you're not entirely opposed to open confrontation with the Wraiths," Chaya noted. "Super soldiers..."
My sigh was meant to convey the full weight of the world I currently felt on my shoulders.
"To understand what course to take, you need a plan," I explained. "And I'm more comfortable putting plans down on something tangible. The Spartan project is nothing more than one theory. And if you noticed, I never developed it beyond establishing a few theses."
"And it was born after I mentioned genetic improvement of human bodies," Chaya understood.
"In my world, science fiction writers used the theory of creating super soldiers as an alternative to regular troops more than once," I explained. "The Spartan project... Honestly, I borrowed the idea from a fictional universe about giant installations that burn all life to stop an incredibly dangerous biomass..."
"'Biologically, genetically, cybernetically, and technologically enhanced soldiers in armored suits,'" Chaya recited my Spartan project theses from memory. "Can you tell me more about it?"
"In that universe, humanity was at war with aliens. And losing. To win, they created a group of super soldiers whose abilities exceeded those of ordinary people. Faster, higher, stronger... Plus robotic armor linked to artificial intelligence, personal shields for each soldier... When I wrote it down, I thought soldiers like that would be far better than simple scouts. Because in the events I know of, people often lost to the Wraiths in ground combat purely physiologically. But here, imagine a soldier in armor protected by a personal shield, like the ones you and I have. Running faster than Wraiths, fearing no stunners, able to survive in extreme conditions thanks to their armor. When you said the Ancients practiced genetic modification of humans, I thought: 'There it is, our chance!' Because, really, no matter how hard Alvar and Kirik try to train the Athosians, it would be foolish to send them to storm a hive ship or Wraith base. But super soldiers..."
"I don't think we'd find data on such genetic experiments in the Ancients' database," Chaya admitted. "They focused on proportional development of the human body. And even then, not for war, but for achieving Ascension and bringing the younger races closer to their physiology..."
"It looks very much like the Ancients actually needed the younger races to avoid losing too much of their own evolutionary changes through interbreeding with other human subspecies," I muttered. "At least that would fit the overall picture of their behavior, which takes on new colors every day. And after the genetic changes affected Celise... I came to the conclusion that the Spartan project is unfeasible in this universe. Because in the source of this idea, the Spartans' modifications made them tactical geniuses. But here... even if we modified every single Athosian, they'd just be good soldiers. They'd hardly become two-and-a-half-meter soldiers with super-reactions and so on..."
"Most likely," Chaya agreed. "Yes, they'd become more developed, but... Knowledge... That's why I pointed out that manipulations are best performed on those who haven't reached their physical development limit. A child's brain can absorb much more information. And their hormones allow the body to grow faster... But adults... They'd become genetically slightly better, and that's all. After all, the Ancients' genetic therapy is more of a targeted mutation with certain capability limits. For underdeveloped physiologies, it could cause harm rather than improvement. It took me several days to calculate the optimal genetic therapy for her..."
"That's why we should forget about super soldiers," I chuckled. "The Ancients' knowledge isn't as perfect as it might seem..."
"Agreed," Chaya said. "Genetics isn't the Ancients' strongest suit, but..."
"But?" I tensed.
"The thing is, in the past, before the Wraith invasion, the genetic therapy for younger races was even less advanced," Chaya said. "It worked on me because it was already on a different level..."
"What are you trying to say?"
"I heard that the Ancients refused one developed race admission to the Confederacy precisely because they were too obsessed with genetic enhancement and cybernetics," Chaya said. "Janus once mentioned it, saying their knowledge would be useful for mass-producing soldiers. He considered negotiating with them directly, bypassing the Council's ban on contact with them..."
"Did he succeed?" I asked.
"I don't know," the girl admitted. "We never brought it up again."
"A race obsessed with genetic tinkering, cybernetic prosthetics, and deemed too dangerous for an alliance by the Ancients," I summarized. "Sounds like something that promises big problems..."
"Or opportunities," Chaya suggested. "But I think problems, still."
"Considering the Wraiths would never allow such a race to develop into a threat?" I chuckled. "What did you say that race of humans was called?"
"Salumai."
"Sounds like the kind of evil you shouldn't get involved with under any pretext. Smells like colossal problems... I hope the Gate address can be found in the database?"