Despite the impenetrable darkness that reigned at the bottom of the Lantian ocean, despite the millennia during which silt had covered the ship's hull so thoroughly that it barely stood out against the ocean floor, one thing still made the Wraith cruiser's hull less harmonious with the seabed landscape.
A Wraith cruiser on the ocean floor. Frame from the series.
"This is a very, very, very bad idea," Ihaar said, drumming his fingers on the control panel. "We should have just blown up this ship!"
"The planet's crust is thin beneath it," Trebal objected. "Do that, and the release of geothermal energy will tear the world apart."
"We should have just repaired the engines and gotten out of here," the engineer said. "A month, another, maybe a couple of years, and we could have fixed everything. Besides, I think Atlantis is capable of a short hyperjump without critical consequences."
"And you're ready to bet your life on that?" I clarified.
"Of course not," the engineer fumbled. "But you're definitely insane! Hunting the Queen of Death... Do you even know what she's famous for?"
"She united all Wraith against the Ancients' Confederation in Pegasus," I showed off my knowledge, watching a mark of energy activity appear on the virtual screen. If you looked closely, you could see distant, barely discernible beams of light from the ultra-powerful floodlights of a mobile drilling rig. They were barely visible to the naked eye... And that was despite the fact that we were no more than a kilometer in a straight line from the rig.
"That too," Ihaar agreed. "But... I've seen her in action."
"You're not the only one," Trebal said, turning to the engineer from the navigator's seat. "I and the entire crew of the Aurora fought against Death and her minions. In case you forgot."
"That's not what I mean," Ihaar shook his head. "I was in Emeg when she attacked Athos. I was among the last group to evacuate from there to join the war."
"Emeg, that's the Old City on Athos, right?" I clarified. "With the geothermal shield generator in the control room, isn't it?"
"My group was there to show the Athosians, before we left, how to use the generator and shield to close the planet against Wraith attacks," Ihaar continued. "The strategy was that the Wraith, encountering the planetary shield, would batter against it for a while, then leave, realizing they couldn't harvest the Athosians."
"You never told me that," Trebal said.
"Do you tell your colleagues about every day of your life?" Ihaar asked. "I don't recall you or anyone else sharing particularly pleasant memories?"
An awkward silence fell, broken only by a sound signal on the jumper's panel.
"Mikhail," Teyla contacted me. "The technicians have started the drilling rig. The device has power, systems are operational. No damage, which surprises me greatly. The technicians have recalibrated the rig's sensors and we're now registering a barely perceptible energy emission from the ship."
"So it has functional power sources," Trebal said. "Probably the cruiser wasn't as badly damaged when it fell as we thought. Or it recovered over ten thousand years."
"And that means we potentially have a combat-capable Wraith starship," I concluded.
"Yes, but maybe we kill the Queen of Death first?" Ihaar suggested. "Or better yet, don't touch her at all? Let her die on her own?"
"Do we know why the Ancients abandoned the platform?" I asked Teyla, ignoring the panicking Ancient.
"They shut it down and evacuated when Wraith ships began falling into the ocean," the Athosian replied. "The Council was afraid that destroying an operational station would draw Wraith attention to the thin crust at this location on the planet. The crash of that cruiser near the rig was the last straw. The Council decided the Wraith had detected the installation, so they decided to evacuate it. At least, the technicians say that's the last entry in the rig's log."
"It's illogical to extract energy under bombardment or threat of capture," Trebal said.
"I understand you, Teyla," I said. "Do you sense the Wraith?"
"No, Mikhail," Teyla replied after a pause. "The device is still on. Also, Chaya said I might not sense her when the queen or another Wraith is in hibernation. Maybe she hasn't woken yet?"
"Or she's dead," Ihaar said hopefully.
To prevent the Queen of Death from detecting Teyla, the latter had flown with a group of technicians and soldiers to the rig under a device that suppressed Wraith mental abilities. And until we started our part of the operation, it would remain that way.
"Good, stay in touch," I ordered. "Let me know as soon as all rig systems are under our control."
"Of course, Misha, I'll inform you," Teyla said.
"Misha," Trebal repeated in an innocent voice, looking at me with a glint of amusement. "What warm relations you have."
"If there was a shield and a generator, and the Wraith aren't inclined to sit and wait for prey for long, then how did Athos fall?" I switched the conversation to Ihaar.
"It wasn't a normal harvest," Ihaar shuddered. "We underestimated them, thinking the Wraith only needed humans for feeding. The Queen of Death changed their tactics. Athos and hundreds of other worlds weren't needed to feed her vast army. She destroyed them."
"Planet extermination," Trebal said, as if remembering something. "We never understood why the Wraith killed the inhabitants of worlds they couldn't take by storm on the first attack."
"Death attacked Athos despite the shields," Ihaar continued. "Her ships bombarded the planet's defenses, causing instability in the defensive systems. My group had just received orders to withdraw. The Athosians refused to leave their world. I explained to them that the bombardment was thinning the shield and soon it wouldn't be able to protect the entire planet. They said that after we left, they would shrink the shield to the size of the city, thereby not wasting huge amounts of energy on protecting the whole planet. I warned them that in any case, such a load on the shields, their prolonged activation, would cause the geothermal reactor to overload, triggering a supervolcano eruption. They needed to leave, but they refused again. Before leaving, I assembled a small observation system from a damaged jumper and left it near Emeg. To prevent the Wraith from blocking the gate, we opened it from another planet, and I received telemetry..."
Ihaar spoke, staring at one spot. Trebal and I exchanged glances, both realizing the guy was trapped in traumatic memories.
"The Wraith knew about the weakness of geothermal technology," he continued. "We watched, helpless, as they forced the Athosians, through relentless bombardment, to shrink the shield. District after district, parts of Emeg were left open to the Wraith. And they attacked... It wasn't a harvest — they were exterminating people. Killing them. All of them, indiscriminately. Men, women, old people, children... Everyone who hadn't managed to take shelter under the shrinking shield. And then, when the Athosians turned off the shield to keep Athos from exploding, the Queen of Death herself descended onto the planet. She personally led the final assault. She walked through the city streets, killing everyone she met. She didn't eat a single person — she reveled in the killing. And she told each one that their cruel death was the price for resistance. As in, if they hadn't fought, but obediently submitted to the harvest, she would have taken some. Half, or a little more. But in worlds where she encounters resistance, she and her soldiers would kill everyone."
"Why tell that to people already doomed?" Trebal wondered. "Sounds like a lesson for survivors... But she killed everyone, didn't she?"
"Everyone I saw," Ihaar swallowed the lump in his throat.
"She knew you were watching," I suggested. "Or she suspected it. So she put on a demonstration execution. The lesson wasn't for the Athosians. It was for the others."
"I could work on gravitational attraction systems, like a gravity anchor," Ihaar shook his head to dispel the traumatic memories. "We could lift Atlantis into the air, pull the cruiser up, raise it to orbit, and blow it up with projectiles! Then splash down and..."
"Chaya and I calculated that option," I said. "Such manipulations would take too much ZPM energy. We can't delay neutralizing this threat. And we can't deprive ourselves of energy knowing that the Wraith have information about Atlantis's location and that there's an operational Ancient ship in the galaxy."
"If they wanted to, they'd have shown up long ago," Ihaar's voice sounded offended. "I still recommend changing planets. We just need to find another couple of ZPMs, if you're so worried about energy consumption."
Find... Funny.
"ZPMs don't grow on trees," I reminded the engineer. "And we still have a few options to locate them... Three, to be precise."
"Three?" Trebal was surprised.
"We know that there are three ZPMs somewhere at once?" Ihaar perked up. His interest was understandable — the guy didn't want to risk dealing with the Queen of Death, whom he'd already seen in action. If we had three more ZPMs, we could fly to another planet and do a lot more.
"In the events I know of, when the leader of the Earth expedition accidentally ended up in the past, during the last days of the siege of Atlantis, Janus gave her a note with the coordinates of worlds where there was definitely one ZPM each," I said. "There were five addresses in total. Sudaria and its Potentia were the first world on the list. Epheon, as I understand it, was the second. Three remain."
"But you said the time paradox with the time travel didn't happen, because the time machine ended up in the past, in besieged Atlantis," Trebal recalled. "Moros ordered it dismantled... And you found it here when you woke up in the city."
"And the Ascended took it," I finished.
"And what guarantees do we have that Janus actually distributed the ZPMs on those five planets if there was no time travel?" Ihaar asked. "You said he did it to help the expedition. And if he didn't know they were coming, he might not have hidden them..."
"And he didn't hide them specifically for the expedition," I said.
"Janus gave the coordinates of planets where ZPMs already were," Trebal understood. "Because if he was under the Council's thumb, no one would have allowed him to take such valuable equipment out of the city during the occupation of Atlantis. That means the ZPMs ended up on the planets much earlier."
"We don't know how or why the ZPM ended up on Sudaria," I said. "Just for safekeeping for the Ancients, as was said in the known events? Well, maybe."
"On Epheon, it was brought to power the EMP generator," Trebal voiced the known data. "So... The other three might also have been transferred to some planets to power defensive devices."
"As soon as we deal with the Queen of Death, we'll start those searches," I promised.
The instrument panel again made the familiar sound of an open comm channel.
"Misha, this is Teyla," the Athosian's voice came. "The technicians say the drilling platform is completely under our control. Soldiers are in position, the defensive fields are working. We're ready to begin."
"Good." I looked at Ihaar. "Are you ready?"
The engineer looked at me, then somewhere into the void.
Licking his dry lips, he abruptly rose from his seat in the second row and said:
"Let's do this. Give me a couple of minutes to check everything. As soon as I'm back in the cockpit, you can open the rear hatch and drop the device." He looked at the awkward structure occupying most of the cargo compartment. "We won't have much time to get clear before it shuts down everything in the vicinity."
At its core, the generator Chaya had built was recognizable. But the numerous add-ons, attached and powered through insulated cables coming out of the device, had appeared over the past week. That's how long Ihaar and Chaya had been creating our analogue of the EMP generator from Epheon.
It must be said that the Epheons' version turned out much more elegant.
"Everything's ready." After three minutes, Ihaar returned to the cockpit and locked the bulkhead separating the pilot's cabin from the cargo bay. "We can start our madness."
"Better strap in," Trebal offered the advice just as I began positioning the jumper stern-first toward the surface of the enemy cruiser. As soon as that was done, the rear hatch opened.
"Magnetic cushion disengaged," Ihaar reported. "The device is in the water and beginning its descent toward the Wraith cruiser."
A second later, he added:
"Magnetic cushion activated." The ship obediently followed my will, and the rear hatch closed. "Descent continuing... Continuing... The device is on the cruiser's hull. Magnetic clamps engaged! The system is in order, and the countdown has begun! Three minutes, Mikhail! Either now, or we'll be shut down along with the cruiser for several hours!"
"Begin, Teyla," I addressed the Athosian. "Turn off the blocker. And we," I closed my eyes, concentrating on the jumper's weapons, "will go knock on the Queen of Death's door in the meantime."
"Device turned off," Teyla said. "So far... I don't sense the Wraith."
A yellow flash from a homing projectile shot forward, visible for a moment through the jumper's single porthole. But the next second, it disappeared behind the Lantian ship racing at top speed toward the drilling platform.
"Direct hit!" Ihaar exclaimed quietly. "The cruiser's power plant is damaged!"
The floodlit bulk of the Ancients' mobile drilling platform was already growing before us.
So that's what it looks like.
Compared to Atlantis, of course, the platform was a dwarf. But in real scale, the installation was a small city, exceeding the tallest skyscrapers in size. Only a small part of the complex was intended for the free movement of crew and workers, and about ninety percent of the entire structure consisted of geothermal energy extraction equipment.
"Heading for the docking port," I warned. "Teyla, how are things?"
"I sense a growing Wraith presence," the Athosian said. "Rage... Hatred... Malice... A desire to kill..."
It seemed reading the Ancient records on meditation and mental power control had done her good.
The docking port of the mobile drilling platform appeared before the porthole. There were only two in total, and one was occupied. Despite their proximity, they didn't share a common exit into a single room. Passages from each ship's docking area led to different ends of the rig. So if one docking bay was damaged, the second could still operate.
Docking bay of the mobile drilling platform.
In case any parts of the complex were flooded, there were impenetrable (if activated) force fields inside. According to Trebal, such fields had been installed on the latest models of Lantian warships. On the Hippaforalkus and the Aurora, for example, they relied solely on blast-proof bulkheads.
This gave me an idea that the battleship we hadn't yet found, and which was probably in the hands of the Nomads, belonged to the latest generation of Auroras. Which meant modern hyperdrives, high-output generators, improved shields... And a full arsenal of projectiles, as far as I remembered.
I really wanted to find it.
And the Tria.
And a lot of other things.
Carefully guiding the jumper into the last free docking bay of the mobile drilling platform, I exhaled in relief.
"We're in position," I informed the people aboard the complex. "Teyla, any data from the Wraith ship?"
"No, Misha." Trebal snorted sarcastically. What a woman. How did she manage that at such a time? "No traces of energy on the cruiser. Looks like the generator is working as intended."
"Do you still sense the Wraith?" I clarified, getting out from behind the controls. Through the sealed bulkheads, I couldn't hear what was happening in the cargo bay, where I'd just opened the outer hatch. But I hoped the water we might have taken on during the maneuver had drained out. "Did she try to take control of you?"
According to the series, that was quite possible.
"I sense her," Teyla said. "I feel her rage; she knows I'm close... But she's not eager to establish mental contact with me. I'm following your orders and not trying to connect with her either."
Good girl. I hope it stays that way; initiative is very dangerous now.
"Even if the queen takes control of Teyla," Trebal said to me as she exited the powered-down jumper after me and Ihaar, "the Athosian will be under full control. Teyla won't do any harm."
"Let's hope so," I replied. "Control room, lock the passage to the jumpers behind us and inform Atlantis that Operation Trick Death has begun. Have them ready to send additional teams. We're moving to phase two of the plan."
"Understood, Mikhail," a technician replied. "Shutting down all auxiliary consoles. Done. Station control is now possible only from our control room."
"Excellent," I declared, switching comm channels. "Combat teams, prepare. Our guest will be here soon."
Behind our trio, a transparent veil, like thickened water, appeared with a deafening crackle. The station's force fields were active and ready to withstand any threat.
* * *
At the beginning of her existence, she bore the name Cold Amber. But that was long in the past, and for many centuries she had been the Queen of Death. Ever since she learned to channel her rage and find its purpose in killing the hated Lantians.
And now her rage was unstoppable.
This awakening was unlike any she had undergone every few centuries.
It had been necessary to oversee the restoration of her ship and to learn whether she could leave her vessel, which had become a prison.
She moved swiftly through the dark corridors of her cruiser, navigating the gloom with ease. Despite the depleted power source being knocked out, her physiology and the luminescent elements of the inner hull helped her find the right direction.
Rage consumed her, and the Queen of Death tried to find a worthy outlet for it. But she found none: there was not a single living soul left aboard her ship. The holds were empty, the livestock supplies for feeding long exhausted.
Even the crew members she had fed on had long since become only withered flesh over time-bleached bones.
She entered the cruiser's bridge and roared in fury upon seeing that none of the instruments worked. No matter how much she used mental or manual control, nothing happened — the ship was completely dead.
A cry of rage echoed through the compartment.
The same cry she had emitted ten thousand years ago in her starship's bridge when Lantian homing projectiles had downed her vessel. Damaged engines and power systems had prevented the crew from saving the starship, and the destroyed communication systems had prevented contact with her loyal followers.
Had she been on a hive ship, this might not have happened. Fragments of a conversation with her commander surfaced in her memory, in which he had argued why she should have remained aboard the super-hive. The commander of which, Styxs, by the way, had remained silent, accepting his queen's desire to go into battle on a swift cruiser rather than a massive super-hive.
Death thought that now she would be glad to see even one of them — the silent but cunning Styxs, or the restless and cautious second. He had a name, of course, but she had erased it from memory. Death hated and despised those among her subordinates who did not follow her orders.
Depriving a Wraith of his name was one of the harshest punishments. But not as harsh as sending a Wraith commander from the bridge of his own cruiser to command a transport starship to replenish human stocks for the Wraith army besieging Atlantis.
Now she would gladly drain either of them to give her body more strength. One for being silent, the other for his words.
Both of them, like the other Wraith, were guilty of not coming to search for her. They had undoubtedly decided she was dead. The ocean floor and the pressure created by hundreds of meters of water above her negatively affected her mental abilities, preventing her from contacting the Wraith.
What angered her even more was that for thousands of years, no one had even tried to find her on the ocean floor. Her or her remains, to immortalize her memory.
Weaklings, cowards, and traitors.
For thousands of years, she had dreamed of being freed, leaving this world she had come to hate, and killing every Wraith who hadn't come for her. She would slaughter them all, one by one, to reign again. For the other queens had undoubtedly taken advantage of what she had created. And had undoubtedly torn the Great Alliance into many hives, subjugating them to their rule.
The queen found herself in a room near the airlock.
She had used it many times over the past period to reach the abandoned Lantian drilling platform. She spent days wandering through the abandoned complex, pondering how she might use its mechanisms for her own purposes.
But the Lantians, fleeing the platform, had shut it down. And without the Ancient gene, even the Queen of Death couldn't start the installation and its systems.
Time and again, she returned to the cruiser, falling into hibernation. And she woke up a few centuries later to repeat her ritual once more.
But today, everything had changed.
The explosion of the generator had awakened her. And almost immediately, she sensed a weak Wraith nearby. It used its abilities very modestly, but had undoubtedly detected her.
However, this carrier of cowardly guts hadn't even tried to contact her mind. Hadn't opened it to his queen. She could have taken him under her control like some soldier, a mindless drone — her mental strength was more than enough for that.
And she also felt, despite the interference created by the pressure, that there were humans nearby.
A cry of rage echoed through the compartment.
The same cry she had emitted ten thousand years ago in her starship's bridge when Lantian homing projectiles had downed her vessel. Damaged engines and power systems had prevented the crew from saving the starship, and the destroyed communication systems had prevented contact with her loyal followers.
Had she been on a hive ship, this might not have happened. Fragments of a conversation with her commander surfaced in her memory, in which he had argued why she should have remained aboard the super-hive. The commander of which, Styxs, by the way, had remained silent, accepting his queen's desire to go into battle on a swift cruiser rather than a massive super-hive.
Death thought that now she would be glad to see even one of them — the silent but cunning Styxs, or the restless and cautious second. He had a name, of course, but she had erased it from memory. Death hated and despised those among her subordinates who did not follow her orders.
Depriving a Wraith of his name was one of the harshest punishments. But not as harsh as sending a Wraith commander from the bridge of his own cruiser to command a transport starship to replenish human stocks for the Wraith army besieging Atlantis.
Now she would gladly drain either of them to give her body more strength. One for being silent, the other for his words.
Both of them, like the other Wraith, were guilty of not coming to search for her. They had undoubtedly decided she was dead. The ocean floor and the pressure created by hundreds of meters of water above her negatively affected her mental abilities, preventing her from contacting the Wraith.
What angered her even more was that for thousands of years, no one had even tried to find her on the ocean floor. Her or her remains, to immortalize her memory.
Weaklings, cowards, and traitors.
For thousands of years, she had dreamed of being freed, leaving this world she had come to hate, and killing every Wraith who hadn't come for her. She would slaughter them all, one by one, to reign again. For the other queens had undoubtedly taken advantage of what she had created. And had undoubtedly torn the Great Alliance into many hives, subjugating them to their rule.
The queen found herself in a room near the airlock.
She had used it many times over the past period to reach the abandoned Lantian drilling platform. She spent days wandering through the abandoned complex, pondering how she might use its mechanisms for her own purposes.
But the Lantians, fleeing the platform, had shut it down. And without the Ancient gene, even the Queen of Death couldn't start the installation and its systems.
Time and again, she returned to the cruiser, falling into hibernation. And she woke up a few centuries later to repeat her ritual once more.
But today, everything had changed.
The explosion of the generator had awakened her. And almost immediately, she sensed a weak Wraith nearby. It used its abilities very modestly, but had undoubtedly detected her.
However, this carrier of cowardly guts hadn't even tried to contact her mind. Hadn't opened it to his queen. She could have taken him under her control like some soldier, a mindless drone — her mental strength was more than enough for that.
And she also felt, despite the interference created by the pressure, that there were humans nearby.
This created questions. Humans and a Wraith side by side. Only one Wraith, and so many humans. Had the Wraith lost the war against the Lantians? But if so, why was the Wraith still alive?
The life signs she sensed came from the direction of the mobile drilling platform. Which meant the Lantians were there. They had come to restore their energy source.
And this was her chance.
If humans were here, they had to have a ship. And she would use it to get out, return to the Wraith, and lead them again.
The Queen approached the manual airlock controls, still trying to break into the Wraith's mind... and snarled in fury when she couldn't. The Wraith's mind had vanished from her mental grip.
That foolish kin was either dead or had shut her out.
No one had the right to do such a thing.
So he would die. She would feed on him, just like she would on the humans at the drill. For the first time in thousands of years, she would be full.
Freezing water crashed down on the Queen of Death, nearly sweeping her away. But the Queen had endured this too many times in the past, and was prepared for surprises.
Her lungs were full of nutrients; her body had endured tremendous pressure. Any of the livestock would have been crushed on the spot, but she was a Wraith. She was stronger than those animals.
The Queen of Death pushed off the bulkhead of her ship and surged into the impenetrable darkness of the ocean floor.
She lost track of how much time had passed, but soon the lights of the complex came into view. She looked toward the docking bays, where two small Lantean ships were visible.
And for the first time in ages, the Queen of Death felt a rush of adrenaline. She had a chance to escape this forsaken world!
The Queen of Death drew closer and closer to her cherished goal. Soon she would be aboard and throw a true bloody feast before leaving this tiresome world.
The Queen of Death swims toward the mobile drilling platform. Frame from the series.