Wow…

You know, you've been saying that an awful lot lately.

Talon gave the equivalent of a mental shrug.

We've seen a lot of new things lately, Hot Shot. Do you disagree that most of them are interesting?

Melony smiled and shook her head, amused by his defensive attitude. More often than not he was the one putting her on the defensive, not the other way around, and it was fun to turn the tables.

No, we've definitely seen some wow worthy stuff, you're right.

Take what they were doing just then for instance. Mitchell was on her back on the floor of the first dart she'd stolen, with her head under the console, a flashlight in her mouth – which made it a good thing she didn't need to speak aloud to converse with Talon – and her hands busy checking all sorts of odd connections that truth be told, she and her symbiote were neither one sure of.

We haven't blown up, yet, though

That's a good thing.

"Hey, what have you found?"

She flinched, startled to hear Jack's impatient voice after a good hour of silence broken only by her silent conversations with Talon.

Spitting the flashlight out before she swallowed it accidentally, Mitchell twisted around to see Jack standing at the rear hatch of the little craft, blocking the light coming from the outside. Not that she needed it, since the interior of the ship lit up fairly well on its own.

"Are you trying to give me a heart attack?" She asked him.

He gave her an apologetic smile, and came into the ship, followed immediately by Daniel, who was looking around with amazement.

"You haven't blown up yet, so chances are you're not going to, right?"

He's probably right, Talon agreed.

"Yeah, probably not. Come on in and check it out. But if you get blown into little bits, don't come running to me."

Jack snorted, and walked over, running his hand along the pilot's chair.

"Looks fairly similar to most other craft," he noted.

"Yeah, and the controls are the same, too," she said, agreeing. "But it's responsive like nothing I've ever seen."

Which was saying something, since Jack knew Melony had flown pretty much everything Earth had to offer.

"That good huh?"

"Oh, yeah."

"This language looks somewhat familiar," Daniel said, more to himself than to them. He'd been looking around the interior of the ship with great interest, and had realized almost immediately that he could almost understand the pattern of the odd characters that seemed to be everywhere.

"What?"

Daniel looked at Jack, and shrugged.

"I'd have to actually study it," he said. "But it looks similar to Ancient. Not exact, of course, but similar."

"Ancient?" Melony asked, dubiously, looking at the symbols as well. Of course, she didn't speak Ancient any better than she spoke Swahili, so she wouldn't know, but she did know that Daniel spoke Ancient better than anyone on the planet. Well, on Earth, that was. "Are you sure?"

"No."

He'd only seen the language a minute ago, after all.

"But it might be?"

Daniel nodded, walking over and looking over Jack's shoulder at the main control panel. Those looked similar, as well.

"It looks like it is."

Mitchell stuck her head back under the console, raising her flashlight once more and reaching up to pull out the small device that every wire on the ship seemed to be running toward. The ship didn't blow up like she'd half expected it to, and the apparatus came away smoothly, dropping into her hand. It was about the size of a thick slice of bread, and she twisted around again, setting the flashlight down and getting to her feet.

"What's that?" Jack asked.

"It looks some kind of CPU or something," Melony said, ignoring the fact that Jack had his hand out to take it and handing it over to Daniel instead. Jack would just drop it, or break it, and Melony knew him well enough to know that. "If it's a language that you can understand, we might actually have a chance to learn a little bit about the bastards."

Daniel looked at the doohickey in his hand, and nodded.

"Doctor Weir and Doctor McKay would be helpful…" he said. "And Sam, of course, since she knows more about technology than I do."

Melony nodded.

"Let's get off the ship for a minute, and see if it blows up or anything if we try to take it away from the parent couplings."

Daniel gave her a hesitant look and Mitchell smiled.

"It probably won't."

"Probably," Jack said, smiling as well, because there were very few chances to screw with Daniel recently and he hated to let one slip by. "But just in case, you can go first."

"Thanks."

Daniel led the way off the dart, and Melony and Jack followed him. As soon as they emerged, Teal'c came over, accompanied by Sheppard, Carsonand Teyla.

"What did you find?" John asked.

Melony shrugged.

"Daniel thinks that the language in the dart might be similar to Ancient, so we're going to need help trying to translate it."

"What is that?" Teyla asked, gesturing to the device in Daniel's hand.

"It's some kind of processor," Daniel said, looking down at his hand. "We think."

"I just took it off the main console of the dart," Mitchell explained. "The question is… do we take it back to Atlantis? Or bring Weir and the others here to help scrutinize it? I don't like the thought of pulling everyone from the city in case something happens…"

"But we don't want to run the risk of that thing having a tracking device in it, either," Jack pointed out.

"Exactly."

"Why not bring Sam over and see if she can figure out how to take the data off this thing and put it on a disk or something so we can take it back to Atlantis?" Daniel asked.

"Good idea."

Jack looked around.

"Okay. I'll go get Carter – and maybe McKay. Teal'c, you stick around here and guard Melony while she continues looking through the ships."

He looked at Sheppard.

"I'll go back with you, Colonel. I need to check on the security forces."

"I shall remain here and help guard Colonel Mitchell," Teyla said. Since she wasn't under O'Neill's command, it wasn't like he could make her leave – although she had placed herself under Sheppard's authority, and Sheppard was obviously lower in rank than O'Neill was.

"Fine." Jack didn't care. The more people guarding Melony the better as far as he was concerned. "Daniel?"

"I'll stick around."

Big surprise there. Daniel wanted to check out the Wraith language and Jack knew it.

"Don't wander off."

With that final warning, O'Neill and Sheppard headed for the Jumper, ad Carson turned to Daniel.

"Does he expect you to wander off?"

Daniel frowned.

"He thinks I need constant reminding."

"And you do," Melony added, with a grin, heading back into the dart before Daniel could say anything.

Teal'c gave what was almost a smile, but didn't say anything, and Daniel scowled.

"Maybe. Sometimes."

With the device in his hand, he headed into the lava tube, followed by the Mok and Carson Beckett.