Reading Key: Thoughts and emphasis are in italics. Telepathic conversation is underlined.
Continuity info, etc. can be found at the top of chapter one, disclaimer is at the bottom of chapter one.
Author's Note: Wow, been awhile. Had some trouble with this chapter, and don't even get me started on RL. Hope anyone who has stuck around enjoys!
I have changed the breaks in this story to match those done for TDL. A centered line of multiple "x FNM x"s is a scene break, a single "x FNM x" left justified is a POV change.
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Nycole paced the front wall of the cell. Why couldn't just one of the missions she'd had a hand in planning go off without a hitch? This latest calamity was sure to be a black mark against her… if they got out of it. She was pretty sure they would. Almost all of the Wraith she'd seen so far in this settlement were hybrids, and though they were obviously agitated by the Atlantis team's presence, they hadn't been overly hostile. They were more curious than anything else. Especially about her. Every individual that had passed by had glanced over the whole team but lingered longer on her.
The black-haired one, Thale, stared at her even more. And though there was nothing malicious in his gaze, she did feel an interest from him that had little to do with her being a stranger to his planet. Something she had only ever felt before from people she'd rather not have. But in this instance, as with certain previous occasions in her life, she might be able to use it to her advantage. Moving close to the cage door, she beckoned to the tall male both mentally and with a hand gesture. After a slight hesitation, he walked over.
"I'd like to speak with you in private," Nycole said when he looked askance at her.
"Nycole!" John protested behind her.
She glanced back at him, "Trust me."
The worried look didn't leave John's face, but he nodded grudgingly. Nycole pushed aside the hurt over her father's doubt and turned back to Thale.
"Stand back," he said after searching her eyes.
Nycole followed his instruction, waiting as he unlocked the door. She eased through the opening and stood, subdued, as he closed and locked it. Thale gestured to a small building nearby and told her to walk to and into it. Nycole tamped down on the wariness that always occurred when someone she didn't know was behind her, moving quickly while being careful not to move too fast and agitate her captor. He followed her inside and shut the door behind him.
"You wanted to speak to me," he prompted almost immediately.
Nycole raised her chin and looked him directly in the eye. "I saw you watching me."
Thale smirked. "I was watching all of you. You are my prisoners, after all."
"No," she corrected, moving to stand directly in front of him, mere inches separating their bodies. "You weren't watching anyone else the way you looked at me."
She lifted a hand to his chest and splayed her fingers caressingly. He sucked in a breath when her hand trailed down his torso, the muscles there jumping at her touch under the lightweight natural material of his tunic. She stepped in even closer, her body brushing his, and trailed her lips along his jaw in a barely-there caress. When she leaned her head back to look into his face once more, his eyes were half-closed.
"Let them go and you can have me," she said softly as she took a step back, creating space between them once more.
"You would do that for them?" he asked incredulously. "Lie with one of Wraith blood?"
"I will let you do anything you want to me," she confirmed. "I just can't let you kill me."
When he opened his mouth, she waved a dismissive hand, "It's not my own life I protect but that of someone who depends on me. When you release the others, he will have to come here and be with me in captivity in order to live."
"You are bonded," he said in obvious surprise, stepping closer to her again though he wasn't as close as she had gotten when trying to tempt him. He lifted a hand to trace a finger down the mark under her eye. "This is real."
"You recognize it?" Nycole asked.
She'd thought he hadn't since he had dared to throw her into a cell with the others. She had assumed that being a hybrid, and a member of a large group of them, meant he knew less about markings and their meanings. Apparently she'd been wrong.
Thale nodded. "I assumed it was a fake. According to my intelligence the Queen of that particular hive is still in hibernation, and you are much too young to have known her before that, let alone have done something to deserve the mark."
Nycole didn't know how he'd gotten that information, but it was the closest thing someone could come to the truth without knowing her very odd history. She only wished the part about the Queen being safely in hibernation was true.
"It's… complicated," she hedged when it became clear he was waiting for some sort of response.
The male hybrid gave a half nod. "I will release the others, and you." He sighed heavily, "We will have to move earlier than I had intended."
"Your group?" she asked.
Thale nodded. "I am forced to assume that there are special circumstances that cause the Atlanteans to harbor you and the one you are bonded to, but we are well aware of their hatred for the Wraith. I will not risk the lives of my people by staying in a location they know about."
"I'm sorry," she cringed.
"For what?" he asked with a frown.
"I'm the one who led them here. I believed the planet to be uninhabited."
"Then you have nothing to apologize for," Thale dismissed readily.
"You are rather forgiving for a Wraith," she said quietly. "And I don't mean anything negative by it; it's just an observation."
"Wraith is not all that I am," he replied just as softly. He hesitated visibly before saying, "If you wish to join us, we are always glad of more members. Perhaps you and your mate…"
"We're not mated," Nycole interrupted. "Just bonded."
A full smile appeared on Thale's face and he leaned in even closer. "In that case," he murmured, tracing her jaw line with a fingertip, the gentle scrape of his nail sending a slight shiver down her spine, "perhaps you will find yourself attracted enough to someone among my people to take a mate. Then the one you are bonded to can go back to his hive if that is his wish."
"What do you mean?" she frowned.
"You did not know? A mate bond supersedes the other kind of bond."
Nycole looked down. After a quiet minute, she said, "I didn't know. I would… have to talk to him about it. I… we've been through a lot together. It would take more than just physical attraction for me to tie my life to another after this long."
"I understand," he responded, stepping back to move away from her. "Come, we will free your people, though you will all have to stay long enough to let us be prepared to leave."
"Wait," she called, grasping his arm at the wrist to hold him in place.
Her skin touched the unadorned metal cuff at his wrist, which seconds later was not unadorned. She glanced down, feeling engravings under her fingers. Her eyes widened at the gate symbols she found there. There were dozens of them in a filled-in triangular design. They didn't make much sense in order from left to right, but the eight symbols that formed one side of the triangle formed an address she knew, as did seven of the ones that formed the bottom. The eight symbols were the address to Earth from Atlantis, and the other seven she recognized formed the address to a planet that had been very important to her in the past.
"Who are you?" they both asked.
"Only those with the blood of an Alteran can reveal the symbols," he told her when she hesitated, unsure how to answer his question. "Are you one?"
Nycole shook her head. "No, my parents are humans from Earth. I inherited what my people call the Ancient gene from my father. But why would you keep an artifact that you couldn't read so close to you?"
Thale ran his own hand over the gauntlet twice. The first pass made the symbols disappear, the second made them reappear. When he was sure she had seen what he'd been able to do, he caused them to disappear once more.
"What made you think I could not read it?"
"You're half Alteran!" she breathed in surprise. "But… how?"
A half-smile quirked his lips. "The usual way… but perhaps we should let your people out of the holding cell before we have this conversation. And… I would appreciate if this could stay between you and me. It is known, of course, that I am a half blood, but everyone assumes my other half is simply human. If it were known… I might not be allowed to stay with these people, to lead them as I have for thousands of years. It may even cost me my life if the information was given to the wrong person."
"I won't say anything to anyone," she paused for a moment. "I will even hide it from the one I am bonded to if you ask me."
"If you trust him to keep it to himself, that is not necessary. But I appreciate the offer. I know about the complexities of bonding, and it will be easier on both of you to not keep things from each other. But again, only if you do not think he will share it with others."
"Thank you," she responded simply.
"Before we go to release your friends, why did you call me back?" Thale asked.
Nycole shrugged slightly, "I was going to ask that you not mention what I offered you. Their leader, the man with the short messy hair, is my father. And, well, none of them would understand the lengths I'm willing to go to, lengths I've had to go to before."
"I will never mention it," he assured her. "I understand the things people can be driven to do. Perhaps you will tell me your story one day."
"Perhaps," she echoed lightly.
With one more lingering glance at her, Thale turned to the door of the small building and exited. He allowed Nycole to trail behind him this time. Her father seemed to recognize the significance of that allowance, because he stood a bit closer to the door of the cell, his stance more relaxed than it had been since before they had been forced into the structure.
"I will release you," Thale said when he had approached. "You will be given back your weapons, with the understanding that if one of you attacks one of my people, they will defend themselves. I am afraid, however, that you will not be allowed to return to Atlantis until my people have the chance to prepare to move to another world. I am sure you can understand why we would be unwilling to risk our lives by trusting you not to come back until we had moved on."
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John grudgingly accepted Thale's terms. The team was released from their cell and led to a house near the small building in which Nycole had spoken to Thale. They were given back their weapons and told they had free use of the house for the duration of their stay. Thale excused himself, saying he would be back in a short time to discuss allowing them to contact Atlantis. When they had been left alone, Teyla asked Nycole how she'd talked Thale into letting them out.
"I asked nicely," she said.
"It can't possibly be that simple," John responded.
Nycole frowned slightly, "What would Thale and his people have to gain from keeping us prisoner or killing us? Most groups social enough to know what's going on in the galaxy know that teams from Atlantis are never just left behind, and your team is more well known than the others. And among the Wraith, news of your various betrayals and experiments is wide spread. Thale knows he can't keep us here indefinitely, and he wouldn't risk his people just to kill us for stumbling upon their encampment."
"Betrayals?" John echoed, ignoring the rest. The rest was too logical to argue against, and he needed to argue right now. Things had skewed way too far off course, and he had a bad feeling about what it would do to the chances of the IOA and SGC letting them choose how to deal with Nycole, Ben and Marion. "We were betrayed by the Wraith in every dealing we've ever had with them."
"That's not true," Nycole immediately refuted.
"Ben doesn't count," he shot back. "We haven't really made any deals with him."
His daughter's eyes narrowed, and John's stomach sank. He was pushing her away… and he couldn't seem to stop himself.
"I wasn't talking about Ben. The Wraith you escaped from Kolya with didn't go back on his word."
"True," John grudgingly admitted. The Wraith had restored his life force completely, before he had known that it was Sheppard's people that were only a short distance away and not more Genii. "But he was one Wraith, alone. Every group we've encountered has gone back on their promises."
"Because you always intended to go back on yours," Nycole said flatly. "Even when it was just you and him you never meant to keep your word. The stars only know why he trusted you."
John's frown deepened, but it was Teyla that asked, "What would our being cautious have to do with the Wraith failing to keep to our agreements?"
"You weren't cautious, you were preemptive. The Wraith read people; I know you know that by now. Even those who don't have enough skill to actually read a mind can feel certain things. And one of the easiest things for a Wraith to recognize is dishonesty. As soon as they feel at all threatened, the Wraith are going to have plans in place to save themselves. Anyone would, especially when they've been betrayed before."
John couldn't meet the intensity of Nycole's gaze anymore and turned his head to glance at his two teammates. They were looking at each other and then him. Nycole's passion… and the deeper issues John could sense lay behind her words… were too much to face head on when they were already in such a stressful situation.
When he looked at his daughter out of the corner of his eye, her own eyes were narrowed as they swept over the Atlantis team. Her mouth thinned, a white line forming around her compressed lips, and she breathed out heavily through her nose. A second later she whirled and headed through the main door of the house. John took a step to follow her, more out of instinct than anything else, but was stopped.
"Let her go, John," Teyla said, holding him back with a hand on his arm and an understanding look. "Give her time to 'cool off,' as your people say. Thale will not allow her to leave the planet, and I believe of all of us, she is the one safest alone in the company of these Wraith."
Ronon huffed. "Neither of you find all of this just a little too convenient?"
Teyla took on a troubled look, but shook her head after a moment. "Nycole would not do anything to escape Atlantis if Ben was not with her. It has to be an unfortunate coincidence."
"I'll believe that," Ronon said, "when we're back in Atlantis with what we came for and everyone we left with."
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The Wraith commonly known as Ben… Evan knew his real name but wouldn't use it until he had been invited to do so… stopped in the middle of a sentence, his head tilting and a subtle change coming to his features. It had been several hours since the flagship Atlantis team, with the temporary subtraction of McKay and addition of Nycole, had left.
Ben had been showing Evan the specifications for one of the gadgets he and Nycole had stored in the time travel puddle jumper and which the pair was working on modifying. Feeling bored and confined stuck in Ben and Nycole's room, and knowing it must be a thousand times worse for the Wraith, Evan had asked to see them, having heard about the project from Nycole the previous day. He wasn't sure he'd actually be much help, but the simple act of reviewing the data would give he and Ben something to do.
Evan was dressed in civvies since he was technically off-duty, and the two of them were sitting at a simple table Evan'd had brought in. He'd leave it there for the room's actual occupants to make use of however they saw fit, but Evan just hadn't been comfortable with the idea of sitting on the bed with the other male, which was how Nycole worked with Ben. And now, something in him that wasn't really him recognized the look on the Wraith's face.
"What's wrong?" he asked, hoping it was something minor.
"I am not sure," Ben rumbled after a minute. "I cannot feel her as strongly as I did on the last mission. But something has happened, something that has made her angry."
Evan frowned. The limited information made the situation impossible to try to find a solution. The problem could be something as simple as Ronon making a remark about the Wraith when Nycole wasn't in the mood to hear it, or it could be something that had put the mission in danger of failing.
"Should we tell Dr. Weir?" Evan asked.
Ben shook his head once decisively. "We do not know enough. Unnecessarily worrying her would only make things worse. All we can do is be prepared for when we know more."
Evan knew the "we" was limited to Ben and himself, and though part of him wanted to warn Dr. Weir… partially because she was his boss but mostly because Nycole was her daughter and John was, well, something to her… he knew the alien male was right. There was no point to making anyone panic, least of all Weir. They would just have to wait and see if whatever had happened affected the mission. Unfortunately, because of the atmospheric interference, that meant they'd have to wait nearly twenty-six hours for the team to be due back in Atlantis.
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Nycole only got ten feet away from the door before realizing she had nowhere to stomp off to. Just because Thale had been so accommodating thus far did not mean she had the right to go wherever she wanted in the settlement. And the place she really wanted to go… to the site of the ZPM so they could just go straight back to Atlantis when this was over… was outside of the village. She definitely had to ask permission before attempting to leave.
Reaching out tentatively with her mind since he'd rebuffed her first attempts to communicate with him that way, Nycole mentally searched for the Alteran-Wraith hybrid. Thale responded immediately, letting her know his earlier resistance to that type of communication had been because he had assumed her to be a spy. He also let her see his own private frequency, one that was maintained separately from that of his "hive." The reason for this was two-fold: she could now communicate freely with him on any subject without fear of someone else listening in, and it was up to his people to decide if she was trusted enough to be allowed to speak telepathically with them. For now, they had not been approached on the subject.
Are you busy? she asked once she'd acknowledged and thanked him for the information.
Not with anything that cannot wait, he replied. I am on my way to you.
Nycole waited less than a minute for the dark-haired male to reach her. She smiled in greeting when he did, though hers was a bit more forced.
"Is there something wrong?" he asked her aloud.
She shrugged, trying not to let it show when her right shoulder tensed too much and caused a burning pain to ripple down her arm. "Just a little disagreement with my father. I'll get over it."
Thale's gaze went to the house for a moment before finding hers again. "He seems… young to have sired you."
Nycole nodded agreement. "It's part of that complicated story I mentioned. Which, if I can ask a favor, I might have the time right now to tell you some of…"
Thale inclined his head the tiniest bit, encouraging her mentally to go ahead and ask.
"We came here for a reason," she reminded him. "I'd like to leave the settlement and complete the mission, without my father and his team. I thought if you came with me, I could have permission to leave temporarily. And since I'm unarmed, I don't think there's a need for anyone else to come along."
He gave her an amused look as he said, "I do not believe you being without a weapon means you are not dangerous. A Queen would never allow someone under her protection to leave the hive if that person could not defend his or her self. But yes, I will accompany you. Just tell me what we need for this mission of yours."
It took them only a short time to gather the few things that Nycole thought might be necessary. They were silent until they had left the unmarked boundaries of the settlement a significant distance behind. Even when Nycole began to share the basics of her life history with him, she did it without speaking. Partly to prevent anyone who might have followed them from listening in, and partly because once a person was used to it, telepathic communication was much faster to get things across accurately. Thale was surprised but not shocked by the more 'interesting' parts of her story, easily believing what she shared with him because of his own past experiences with Alteran technology. When she was done with her tale, he began to share his.
Thale's mother Linia had been a healer, and though it was a previous generation that had taken the actions that changed the Wraith and caused the start of the war between the two races, she had never approved of what had been done, nor the way her own generation had chosen to carry on. Despite her protests, or perhaps because of them, her main assignment was to provide care for the Wraith held in Paititi, a city-ship not dissimilar to Atlantis. She did so without complaint, though there were many close calls with more than one of her patients. Most Wraith were as blindly hateful of the Alterans as the Alterans were of the Wraith. With good reason.
One day a new group was brought in for genetic experimentation. But first they had to be fully healed from the injuries sustained in their capture. Having heard what was in store for them, Linia did her best to slow the healing process without it hurting the Wraith or being obvious to their captors. It was, however, obvious to the Wraith, and she earned their respect. Through sheer luck, there came a time when many of the residents of Paititi were called to the battlefront for an important standoff and the number of guards on the Wraith grew low. Drugging those who might have been able to stop her, Linia got the small group to a ship and away from the city. She would have gone back after taking them to an uninhabited planet, but the eldest of them had become captivated by her and would not allow her to go to her death. He was Thale's father, and Thale was born less than a year after the escape.
The group of Wraith had, in that time, an opportunity to rejoin their hive. The rest of the group did so, but Thale's father remained on the planet with his new family, fearing that his Queen would have his mate killed simply for being Alteran. Over the next few years, Thale gained a brother and a sister. Several years after his sister was born, when Thale was an adolescent, an Alteran scout ship discovered them while his father was off-world hunting. They were captured and taken to Paititi, where they lived for close to two years as little more than prisoners. When it became clear during a battle with the Wraith that Paititi was going to be destroyed, the city-ship was abandoned and everyone fled to Atlantis, which was having its own problems. As the last inhabited city-ship in the Pegasus Galaxy, Atlantis was the evacuation point back to Earth.
It was made clear that it would not be permissible for Thale and his siblings to give the Wraith a genetic foothold in another galaxy. Linia wanted to stay with them, but was not permitted to do so. She went through the 'gate quietly when her children's lives were threatened should she not do so. When there was just a skeleton crew left on Atlantis, the children were sent back to the planet they'd been born on. Several months later, during which time Thale was the caregiver for his two younger siblings, their father returned to the planet, having rejoined his hive when they had disappeared. He took them with him to the hive, where the two males began training.
Their sister was kept out of the way much of the time. Females had much different upbringings and status than males, but being a half-blood made her unfit for normal Wraith societal structure. When she was still young, their father was killed in the culling of a fairly advanced planet. Thale and his brother tried their best to be unobtrusive and still protect their sister. But when she reached maturity, a full-blooded male took an overt interest in her that she did not return. He felt she should do as he wanted because of her much lower status, and she was killed in an altercation between the two of them. Thale and his brother took revenge without seeking permission and were then banished from the hive.
The two brothers stayed together for a short time. Unlike Thale with his black hair and more Alteran-influenced features, his brother could pass for full Wraith. He left Thale behind to join another hive. Thale had not heard from his brother in the nearly ten thousand years since then and did not know if the other male still lived. By chance a few hundred years later, he ran into a few other Wraith hybrids, though all of them were descendants of humans and not Alterans. Being stronger mentally than any of them, Thale became the surrogate "Queen" of the group. Over the centuries, the group gained and lost members, doing their best to stay out of the way of hive-claimed planets. In that time, Thale learned to be completely secretive about his past. Even those who had only some Wraith DNA knew of and hated the Alterans.
"So you're the only one left from the original group?" Nycole asked when it became clear Thale had shared as much as he was going to.
Thale held out a hand to pull her up a boulder he had just scaled, nodding. He waited until she was beside him to answer verbally. "Yes. A few were killed, some died of old age. Few hybrids have the full regenerative power of a full blooded Wraith, so unlike their forebears, they do age. I do not have that restriction and am the oldest living, so far as I know. By quite a bit, now."
"Did you ever have children?"
"No." He looked at her with an unidentifiable expression. "Because of the strength of my telepathic ability, any female I mated with would have to be… compatible in order for me to remain leader. I have met very few, and none of them were suited to me in other important ways."
"I'm sorry," Nycole said softly.
Thale shrugged dismissively, eyeballing the next part of the hill they were climbing. It was nearly vertical and did not have many trees or other plants to use as handholds. Next to him, Nycole unwound a section of the rope she'd brought along, tying a metal hook to the end. When she was satisfied that the knot would hold, she swung the rope expertly around, releasing it at the perfect angle to hook a tree thirty feet away where the ground leveled out enough to stand on. Tugging with the full weight of her body, Nycole made sure the rope and makeshift grappling hook would hold before shifting her hands to begin the climb. Thale stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
"It will be faster if I climb up first and then pull you up."
Nycole nodded agreement and relinquished the rope to him. When they had both reached the higher elevation and she had retrieved and recoiled the rope, she asked why, if his group took in any they came across, there were not more of them.
"Despite the mixed nature of our blood, we are still affected by the Terror. Each new life is cherished when it comes, but not all live to adulthood. And then there are some who can pass for full-blooded Wraith. Almost all of them tend to join up with a hive once they reach puberty. Some of them come back to stay once they learn what they need to, but most of them… the ones that need to feed more regularly… do not. A few of the latter visit, keeping me appraised of what they can in honor of the family they still have here."
"Is that why you thought my hive was still hibernating?"
Thale nodded. "There are two males, one a half-blood and the other the son of a half-blood and a full Wraith, who live with that particular hive. I have not heard from either of them for a few decades, and since the last time was just before their hive was going into hibernation, I had assumed they were still in that state."
Nycole hummed thoughtfully and stopped walking. They had been hiking north for the past several minutes instead of simply climbing, and she thought they were close to her goal. Studying the steep drop on their right, she searched for the hidden treasure she was here to plunder. It took a few minutes, but eventually she spotted the fallen tree and the brush surrounding it that marked her goal. She attached the hook and rope to a nearby outcropping of rock, dropping the other end down where she needed to go. Once again, Thale held her back.
"Perhaps I should…"
"No," she interrupted, adding soothingly, "I've done this before." She gave him a lopsided grin as she looked him up and down. "Besides, I'm not sure the ledge will hold your weight."
Thale frowned at her. "Is that supposed to comfort me?"
With a sigh, Nycole took the backup rope he'd been carrying and threaded one end through her belt loops as a simplistic harness. She handed the rest of the coil to Thale.
"Better?"
He gave her a look that clearly said it wasn't by much.
"I'll need the knife," she requested.
There was no hesitation as Thale handed her a long blade, similar to the machete of Earth. Turning the dull tang side toward herself, Nycole clenched the blade of the knife between her teeth. As ready as she was going to get, she began easing herself down the side of the hill, traveling backwards to increase her safety. As much as Thale probably believed she was being reckless because she was angry with her father, Nycole would never purposefully put herself in danger. Danger to her meant danger to Ben, and she would never willingly hurt the Wraith she was bound to.
She let the thought go and concentrated on her task. When she had reached the ledge where the fallen tree resided, she removed the blade from her mouth and began hacking strategically at the undergrowth surrounding the trunk of the dead tree. After ten minutes worth of work, the mental equivalent of a gasp reached her from her companion. He, like her, was very familiar with the basic structure of the small ship hidden underneath ten thousand years of straggling growth. The puddle jumper, as her father and the rest of the expedition called the small vessels, was heavily damaged but still recognizable.
How did you know that was there? It was much more in Thale's nature to use telepathy than to yell down to her. We have lived here three years and no one found it.
You weren't looking for it, Nycole responded as she continued to clear the brush that had grown over what was left of the Alteran vehicle. We came across a report that the ship crashed when it went too close to the atmosphere of this planet while trying to escape detection. Apparently, it wasn't worth the effort or the risk for the Alterans to try mounting a salvage operation. It took us nearly two months to locate.
That makes sense. But what made it worth it to you?
Give me a minute and I'll show you, Nycole replied.
She had finally managed to clear enough of the plants and debris away to expose the damage-created fissure she knew was in the side of the hull. Tucking the long blade into a handy slot built into her belt, she began to climb carefully, pulling herself into and through the crevice. Nycole went immediately to the spot behind what was left of the pilot's chair to retrieve the sturdy case wedged there, ignoring the few dusty bone and fabric fragments that were all that remained of the long since dead pilot. She took a minute to scavenge easily-pulled parts from the jumper, shoving them into the case.
After a bit of a struggle getting the case through the narrow exit, Nycole got herself out and onto the ground before looping the shoulder strap over her head so that it was securely attached to her. Climbing back up was a much faster affair than the trip down had been, Thale aiding in the speed of her ascent by steadily pulling on the rope tied around her waist. Nycole opened the case when she was once more standing at his side, pulling out the ZPM.
"This," she simply answered his earlier question.
Thale's eyes widened slightly at the sight of the power source, and Nycole realized too late that it might not have been the best idea to let anyone else know about it. Especially someone who could, no doubt, think of many ways to use it to help his own people.
Having no choice but to risk asking, she queried, "Is this going to make things more difficult?"
"No. Even if we possessed a device that was compatible with an Alteran power source, we could not risk using it. The threat of exposure would be too great."
Mentally breathing a sigh of relief, Nycole nodded and returned the ZPM to its case. They worked together to recoil the two ropes, setting off back down the hill. Companionable silence settled between them, both because they were each keeping their thoughts to themselves and because though the trek down was faster than the trip up, it was still risky at different interludes. They made it down without a problem and were halfway back to the settlement when Thale froze, his features paling.
"What is it?" Nycole immediately asked.
"One of the guards that watch the Ring just reported an activation," he responded. "It is a scouting party."
Nycole sucked in a breath, knowing what being found by the wrong group of Wraith could mean to Thale's people. Not only were they hybrids living with humans, but they were not under the protection of any hive.
"I have an idea," she said as one developed in her mind.
She allowed him to see it, and Thale inclined his head to her. "We must hurry. For this to work, we must reach the settlement before they do and then cut them off."
Nycole settled the shoulder strap of the case so that it would be snug against her. And then she started to run. Thale was keeping pace beside her within seconds.
To be continued…