Popular wisdom says: "The depth of the mess during a mission is directly proportional to the size of the thing you gambled on during preparation."
Good words, only...
For some reason, it didn't work for us.
"We shouldn't have blown up the auxiliary power node!" Teyla shouted through the roar of the Alash.
"Noted for the future!" I agreed. "Ihaar, how many of them are there across the whole ship?"
"They've restored the corridor to one of the large stasis compartments!" Ihaar reported, hiding behind a control panel. "I have no idea how many were in there. A hundred, another hundred, maybe all the soldiers! They're waking up in all the stasis compartments right now!"
We took the bridge alright, but defending it against dozens of pressing Wraiths is quite the adventure.
"Do something about it!" I yelled, throwing a munition into the corridor. "Grenade!"
Teyla, providing covering fire from the other side of the bridge entrance, ducked behind the jamb of the organic door.
The Ermen munition worked as intended, mowing down five Wraiths with shrapnel... For a couple of minutes.
"Right," the engineer, hiding behind the console that protected him from fire from multiple directions, focused on his computer. "They restored the corridor, but the direct path was destroyed and hasn't been restored yet. To get to us, they'd have to... Okay, I see, they came through the sensor module in the ship's bow, then circled through the port side and the prison cells, and then attacked us. Correction — only part of the soldiers did that; the rest went through the auxiliary tunnels to the stern — that's how they met our other squads."
"How is this knowledge going to help us right now?" I asked, swapping positions with a pair of Athosians.
Hopefully, at least these will hold out in battle a little longer than their three comrades. We dragged them to the non-combat zone of the bridge so they wouldn't become prey for the Wraiths. They don't need ammunition right now either.
Altogether, the bridge had two entrances — on the left and right in the far part of the room. We had to fend off Wraiths from both directions.
And they were coming thick and fast.
We repelled the first wave brilliantly and even pushed them back from the bridge using Ancient shields and frequency guns. But there were only about fifty enemies then, and it didn't seem like a problem.
But when two such squads started barging in through both entrances, it was no laughing matter. We used up the remaining charges of the personal shields and the energy in the pulsars just to fight them off.
Never mind that these are our potential donors for resurrection. If we get wiped out, there won't be any resurrection. We'll be hanging in prison cells while the Wraiths feed on us.
"Well, actually, yes," Ihaar looked at me when I ended up nearby, changing the magazine in my weapon. "I managed to vent the air from the auxiliary tunnels, so the hive ship's system sealed the bulkheads. Which means..."
"That they'll come here by circling through the bow?" I clarified.
"Well, yes," the engineer said, bewildered. "We'll have about ten minutes... Their scientist redirected almost all the ship's energy to restore that corridor and... And he did it before we even landed. The bomb has nothing to do with it — they were expecting an attack."
Wraith hive ship schematic. Very approximate and superficial, but I don't have another.
"I don't care anymore that they were waiting here," I growled. "Ihaar, we need to figure out how to send these bastards either to death or back into stasis. Do it before we all get eaten here."
"Let's blow up the ship?" Ihaar suggested.
"Perfect," I agreed, slamming the magazine into the receiver.
"Really?" the senior engineer sensed something was off.
"No, of course not!" I snapped. "We're on this same ship! Contact the Ares, have them try to destroy the same corridor the Wraiths restored!"
"I can't," the guy said, flustered. "I only have access to auxiliary systems, and not even all of them. And the Wraiths have activated a jamming field..."
"What the hell is that?"
"During the war, we used to throw bombs and sabotage teams onto their ships. But then we couldn't do it anymore — the Wraiths learned to jam communication and teleportation channels. And now those jammers are activated by their scientist. And I don't have access; the ship isn't responding to my commands; I'll try to hack it..."
"Man down!" one of the Athosians shouted as his partner was hit by a stunner.
"Damn it, Ihaar, do something!" I yelled, rushing to help.
There are seven of us, now six who are conscious. Ihaar is busy with the technical side; Teyla and two of her tribesmen are holding one door; the other three Athosians were holding the other. Well, now they're like in that nursery rhyme — two left.
Between the doors there was a small isthmus, next to which stood a throne, which I assume was for the hive queen. And it looks like an unfolded facehugger egg...
The hive queen's throne. Actually a very multifunctional thing.
Next to it, I laid the stunned man down and took his place at the doorway. How lucky we are that Wraith stunners don't have a sniper mode...
As if mocking these thoughts, a charge hit the Athosian standing on the other side of the doorway directly in the head. He collapsed to the deck like a felled tree.
"Crap!" I cursed, realizing that if we lost the ability to crossfire in the corridor, our situation would be really bad. "Ihaar!"
"I can't do anything!" he squeaked. "Someone in the command center is blocking us! It looks like that scientist who did all this survived!"
Ripping a burst right into the face of a charging enemy soldier, I warned the second shooter and got out of the kill zone.
"This is Mikhail! We're pinned down in the bridge. There's a Wraith in the ship's command center controlling the ship. Anyone close?"
All teams have ship maps, so it's easy to figure out how far everyone is from the compartment we need.
"We've fallen back to the prison cells," Fry reported. "We've fortified here, freed a couple dozen people, and we're holding on with their help."
Good job, scout! Even if he didn't manage to do what was needed, he's already mobilized recruits.
"We're pinned down near the hangars," Kirik reported. "Holding for now."
"That won't last long," Ihaar muttered. "Kirik, they're redirecting energy to the airlock gates! You're about to have company — the Darts have been recalled!"
That means thirty Wraiths on five infantrymen, a blow right in the back.
"If they break through, use one or two Jumpers to take out the Darts," I ordered. "Alvar, what about you?"
"Do you want the exact truth or the polite version?" my earpiece asked. Well, if he's joking, things aren't too bad... "I've lost five Athosians stunned, and we've been pressed back into compartments near the engines. We're retreating under fire, trying to hold them off by sabotaging systems. Saya's group joined us. All nine of them except her. So it's not all bad... I hope."
"What about her?"
"She lost her communicator during the fight in the hyperdrive compartment, and then things got really bad; she ordered us to retreat and link up with you," Alvar said. "She hasn't been seen since."
Crap, crap, crap...
Timing the moment, I leaned out from behind the jamb to provide covering fire for the Athosian who was reloading.
At the other door, things were slightly better — by one person.
"I have an idea!" Ihaar shouted. "Teyla, you need to order them to retreat!"
Yes, a good idea; I thought about it. Except the Athosian woman had barely managed to crack a dozen Wraiths. And here we have half a hive.
"Have you lost your mind?" she voiced my own thoughts.
"Only soldiers are left here!" Ihaar insisted stubbornly. "Someone has to give them orders! And you can order them!"
"And besides!" I swapped places with the Athosian again. "We have a scientist in the command post. Who definitely knows better than Teyla how to order Wraith soldiers!"
"Then we just need to wait until we die, or until..." Ihaar's voice cut off. "Oh, no!"
"What now?"
"The Wraith scientist found a way to start the hyperdrive!" Ihaar cried out in panic. "He's diverting energy there! Ten minutes, and we'll jump into hyperspace!"
"Where?" I asked.
"To Talus!"
Well, crap! Of all the...
* * *
Return or stay...
This dilemma consumed her for a whole minute.
Melia hadn't pointed out the malfunction for no reason, but at the same time, Chaya adequately assessed her field repair skills. Nothing she couldn't handle would happen.
But the fact that two Ascended had come to meet her at once... Chaya considered herself a smart person who understood a little about how the Ascended and the Lanteans conducted their affairs.
Melia and Ganos Lal hadn't come to her right now for nothing. And certainly not just to argue or let her have some of her theories confirmed.
Quite a number of answers don't even need to be given in words — a reaction is enough. And she got that. Lal had walked right up to the edge and got cut off because she thought she could take Chaya back to the Ascended. And then the violation would clearly have cost her nothing if Chaya had Ascended without having time to tell anyone anything.
Melia realized that Lal was wasting her time and that this was exactly what Chaya was aiming for, so she came to stop the notoriously stubborn Lantean woman.
But that's only the first layer of what happened.
The key to it all happening was exactly which planet Chaya had chosen.
There were orbital gates here, located in high orbit. The Jumper's scanners detected no other ships, orbital structures, or even debris. All of this indicated a low level of development for the beings living on the planet. If, of course, they were here at all.
And there was clearly no war between the Ancients and the Wraiths raging here.
Below, a predominantly blue-and-brown planet spun serenely, surrounded by a long layer of white clouds from a cold front, deserted and quiet. Just what you need if you want to hide something important.
The girl guided the Jumper into the atmosphere. She looked at the map now unfolding on the display; the ship carefully plotted water, land, and weather conditions based on its sensor data.
It took several hours to figure something out.
No Ancient buildings, no Wraith structures... Only small settlements of humans, as she understood it.
They had lived here ever since they appeared on this planet. Although Chaya suspected that the Ancients hadn't actually centrally directed the seeds of human life to populate all worlds at once.
All the worlds in Pegasus where humans had lived for a long time looked far too practical and uniform. In the Milky Way, yes, they could well have used the Gates to transfer the necessary substances for the origin of life.
But in Pegasus...
Chaya had studied the gate's stabilisation engines on Proculus and could say for certain — it was Ancient technology. Moreover, very, very archaic, but quite interesting. So the first gates were put into orbit by the Ancients themselves.
Proculus and this planet were settled by humans, and they couldn't have arrived here through the Gates. At least not by themselves — otherwise they would have died in the vacuum. Teyla had said that this was precisely why people in Pegasus didn't often travel to unfamiliar places — there was always the possibility of dying in a new place.
There was no proof for the assumption, so Chaya shelved the thought for a better time.
First, she had to do what she came here for. Well, besides talking to the Ascended behind their problems.
In the end, she settled on the eastern coast of a large young continent. The other landmasses were volcanic in origin and had clearly formed only a few years ago. So it was unlikely they had existed here ten thousand years ago.
At an altitude of thirty and a half thousand kilometers, one of the ship's indicators notified her of the detection of debris. No energy traces; a scattered structure in the northern part of the only large continent.
Chaya reactivated the ship's cloak, changed course several times before returning to the debris.
At first glance, you couldn't tell, but it was clearly a Wraith starship. The characteristic organic parts are hard to confuse with anything else. The sensors didn't indicate the presence of alloys used in their starships by the Ancients or the Nomads, so the most obvious options were ruled out.
This ship had crashed here. And whoever was to blame for it getting damaged beforehand, preventing a normal landing, that person had survived the battle.
The girl called up a map of the nearest surface, thinking that if the Wraiths had survived... They would have headed for the rocky coast she had detected. The only shelter, not counting a few nearby villages.
The nature of the debris indicated that surviving in it would have been possible only by a miracle. And Chaya didn't believe in miracles. Still less in Ascended help for the Wraiths.
She flew over a group of villages at the mouth of a river; smoke from cooking rose into the air from stone chimneys far below the ship's hull. On the higher cape stood something resembling a square tower-house, in the shadow of which several outbuildings were visible. A flotilla of small fishing boats was moored at the shore.
No people were visible anywhere, but food was being cooked for a reason.
The girl called up the data from the scan of this planet, which the Ancients had conducted many thousands of years ago, long before the war started.
What she was looking for then lived precisely in this place and nowhere else.
Why would the Ancients, almost twelve thousand years ago, scan a planet on which they had built absolutely nothing?
An interesting question. All the addresses in the Atlantis database had records that, at various times, the Ancients had scanned planets suitable for life. She hadn't been able to find what the purpose of this scanning was in the records.
But the girl assumed it was a control measurement before populating the planet with humans. With humans specifically, not primordial soup.
If they had scanned the planet to understand whether its inhabitants were worthy of becoming a lesser race, they would certainly have indicated the very presence of intelligent life in the scanning data. But it turns out that twelve thousand years ago, there were no humans here at all. Interesting.
Another fishing village was located further along the coast, where data on the presence of underground and underwater caves became more precise. And also, it was precisely there that the Ancients had discovered what had caught her attention.
Oh, how she wished she could find those scanners with which the Lanteans could, from orbit, almost down to the Earth's mantle, obtain information about living organisms. But, no, this technology was most likely lost. Or it never belonged to the Lanteans at all.
Chaya lowered the cloaked ship to a thousand meters, flying past menacing sea cliffs. Nothing. The scanning didn't detect anything outstanding, and if there were structures built by the Ancients under the cliffs, the rock density was dampening all outgoing signals.
However, they should have left an antenna for signal recognition for an automated reaction from the complex upon the arrival of their ships. Of course, if the Ancients had built anything here.
She received no response to her IFF query. And if there were anything Ancient here, the Lantean identification code would certainly have set the mechanisms in motion.
Nothing.
The girl grew stronger in her conviction that she had done everything right.
The sea cliffs stretched for hundreds of kilometers around, but only in this place were there erratic signals from underwater sea structures. Submerging the ship, Chaya again found no traces.
If access to the underground structures was possible at all, it could only be through a passage above, probably in the settlement itself.
The girl lifted the ship from the water. She smiled, seeing thousands of white figures on the sea cliffs. Birds. Carefree creatures; perhaps only they and the beasts could live in peace in this galaxy. After all, the Wraiths considered feeding on them beneath their dignity.
The girl noticed that the people in the fishing village were staring directly at her Jumper. Right, she had switched the cloak to a shield when she submerged.
"Well, time to talk," the girl said, steering her ship closer to the shore. It took a minute to find a dry spot nearby, where she landed.
Walking into the cargo compartment, she pondered for a few moments what she should do. She settled on a concealed carry holster with a weapon and the personal shield she used in her necklace.
Not as good as her first version, but with limited resources, it would do. And personal shields are more needed by the assault team. She and Trebal get by fine with less powerful versions.
Already at the exit, as the ramp began to lower, the girl froze. A Wraith ship...
Even though it was unlikely, it wasn't impossible.
Approaching the backpack packed for this expedition, the girl slung it onto her back. A bit heavy, of course...
"Oh," she groaned, seeing that the end of the ramp rested in a puddle of mud. "How is that even possible? This is a rocky cliff!"
It took her a few more minutes to change out of her dress into field gear. Cursing herself for needing to remember to change before leaving on a mission, not after, Chaya finally stopped reinventing the hyperdrive and geared up completely.
Why else did she go to the arsenal?
Heavy combat boots, Ermen field uniform, a shield that warmed the body, and a Lantean pistol in a thigh holster. And a heavy backpack on her back.
"How do they even run around planets with this?" the girl gasped, feeling the full weight of the equipment and gear. However, she wasn't about to complain about it.
Glancing at the chronometer, she confirmed that there were still two hours until the scheduled time when all operation participants were supposed to communicate.
She needed to hurry. Because if she was needed, it would most likely be during this very communication session.
If everything went according to plan... And Lal said everything hadn't gone according to plan. But if so, then... Then everything she denied was also wrong.
"Calm down," the girl ordered herself with a deep exhale. "This is a half-hour mission, no more."
She took out her scanner, opening console commands on the fly and beginning to reprogram it. She needed a powerful, narrowly focused scanner beam to understand what exactly was underground. And if she couldn't figure it out in half an hour, she'd return to Atlantis.
Yes, exactly that.
The girl froze, hearing a loud animal roar. Lifting her eyes from the small screen, she saw a woman hurrying towards her, as well as something else. She had landed her Jumper in someone's backyard.
Several children with baskets were heading towards the sea cliffs; a large black dog was with them. The dog growled, but one of the children, a girl about twelve, held it back by its leather collar.
"Hello," Chaya smiled kindly at the children and waved her hand.
"You crushed our mud hut," squeaked the smallest, a light-haired boy of about six or seven. "I built it for two days."
"Didn't your mother tell you not to play in the mud?" Chaya asked. "Parasites, bacteria, larvae, insect eggs, and many things that, at your age, you'll put in your mouth and let grow inside you, live there."
The little boy noisily sniffled back the nasal mucus secreted during inflammation of the nasal mucosa.
"I suppose it would be awkward to ask you about vaccinations," Chaya smiled apologetically, approaching the little one. Taking a portable medkit from her vest pocket, she pulled out several Ermen broad-spectrum cold remedies and handed them to the boy. "Go dilute this in warm water, one packet per cup. And drink it all; you'll feel better."
"What's that for?"
"To get rid of the sickness?"
"What for?"
"So your body doesn't waste its immune system fighting off such minor diseases and to make you feel better. You don't want to stay in this state all the time, do you?"
"It's fine, I'm fine," the boy said with a grimace. "So, are you going to give me a ride on your flying thing?"
Chaya followed the direction of his tiny finger. Right, he was interested in the "Jumper." No wonder. The girl gave silent thanks for her foresight in developing a remote control that allowed her to close and open the doors from outside, as well as activate the cloak or the shield.
It was useful that she'd used it right now, before the little terrorist could call his friends and take the whole thing apart out of sheer childish curiosity.
The older girl who came up to them silenced him.
"Did you come here on that flying thing?"
"Yes," Chaya replied. "I'm a traveler from far away. I came to your world to find something I believe was hidden here a very long time ago."
"Well, we don't have anything," the girl warned. "Just a bit of fish and some fresh bread, but that won't be ready for a while."
"I have food," Chaya said. "May I look around? Or could someone tell me about your settlement?"
If there was something here she needed, the locals would have retained a legend about how the Wraith ship ended up here. And Chaya had no doubt about the reason it had appeared.
"How foolish," the Proculucian thought. "Asking a child for permission."
Then again, she didn't interact with children very often. On Proculus, her people were kind to one another, and no one would ever harm anyone else. So children knew they could trust adults. They would never say or do anything their parents would disapprove of.
"Well, alright," the girl said, glancing around uncertainly. "But everyone's busy in the fields right now. We're just a simple village. What did you give my brother?"
Chaya explained.
"Is it safe?" the girl asked, frowning.
"Completely," Chaya assured her. "Though, you know, I'd better scan you to see if you have any diseases or conditions that might make it ineffective."
"You'll what?" the boy asked, sniffling.
"I'll pass this box in front of you," Chaya explained as simply as she could, holding the scanner out in front of the boy. "This device has enhanced sensors. It'll show... hmm... you're healthy."
"Yeah, I know," the boy sniffled.
"Aside from the runny nose," the girl muttered, bringing the scanner to her. "And so are you. Strange, given the level of your society's development... Have you ever been sick at all?"
"Of course," the girl nodded. "A year ago I had an illness, but the Bride healed me. And my brother," she looked at the boy with the snotty nose, "he was actually born with a hole in his heart. But Grandfather pleaded for him at the Sanctuary, and the Bride healed him. She heals a lot of people."
"The Bride?" the Proculucian clarified.
"Yes. What, you've never heard of her?"
"I'm from far away," Chaya reminded her.
"Your village must be really far if you've never heard of the Bride," the girl shrugged. "But if you want to meet her, it's over there," she waved her little hand, "at the House of Pilgrims. Everyone who wants healing goes there. That's where the Bride is, too."
"Thank you," Chaya said, tucking the medkit back into her vest and pulling a couple of fruit bars from another pocket. "Here, these are for you. Sweets."
Walking through the settlement, she noticed it was quite cozy.
Both the boys and girls — and right now, only they were in the settlement — were dressed in coarse wool pants and tunics, wool jackets, and little caps. The adults clearly weren't planning on coming back. Or maybe they just hadn't been told that a stranger had arrived. Which made sense if a mythical Bride lived here and people made pilgrimages to the place.
Following the girl's directions, she made her way up a winding path. The cliffs were steep, but the path was clearly marked, just as the children had said. A rope, held in place by iron stakes, ran along the edge of the drop, which at least indicated the presence of some kind of metalwork.
A primitive guardrail, she supposed. And most likely, they'd used remnants of something older for these railings.
From the top, the path led downward, where, as she'd been told, the Sanctuary was located. Her Ancient scanner indicated that somewhere below, under this very piece of terrain, lay rather extensive catacombs. And something very much like residual traces of energy. Without the scanner's enhanced sensors, she wouldn't have been able to detect it.
And the dense rock here was probably blocking most of the radiation.
Her path ended at the entrance to a cave.
A wide, dark portal in the weathered stone. Chaya noticed numerous quartz inclusions in the rock. Interesting. Luminescent quartz. A very, very familiar situation...
Obedient to her instincts, the girl activated her shield and drew her weapon from its holster. Going back to Atlantis for help was pointless. If what she was looking for was here, while she flew back and forth to the gate to dial an address and report the find, calling in a team of soldiers, a lot could happen.
Not from the locals, but... Her shield, her weapon, the Jumper, and the scanner with enhanced sensors. That would be more than enough to handle any threat that might be waiting for her.
Around the cave entrance, copper bells hung on long, pale threads, each one swaying in the constant wind, producing a soft, gentle chime.
Chaya understood this was an alarm system for visitors. So, as she crossed that line, she already knew — whoever dwelt in this cave, whatever they claimed to be, they already knew she was here.
She immediately noticed several side passages leading deeper into the cave system.
But something else caught her attention.
A pale blue floor-length dress, bright red hair cascading in a long waterfall down to mid-shoulder... The woman stood with her back to her, doing something at a small table where incense was burning.
"Have you come to seek intercession for yourself or for another?" the woman asked, turning to face Chaya.
Recognition flickered in her eyes — not immediately, but it came. Not of Chaya herself, but of the weapon in her hand. And the scanner in the other.
Chaya Sar, however, recognized the woman standing before her the moment she saw her face.
No, not a woman in the conventional sense of the word.
She was looking into the eyes of a Wraith Queen.