Reminder:
"This is spoken English."
"This is spoken Czech."
This is a thought.
Last time: We discovered a Wraith hiveship is heading right for us (SG:A Inferno and, to a lesser extent, chapter 131), and it probably has to do with Michael (more implied than anything at this point, to be honest... Anna isn't involved in that situation, though we talk about it in chapter 129).
Chapter 133. Strange Bedfellows.
"Are we good?" Radek asked, and he heard Rodney hum in brief indecision before giving him an affirmative. "Alright. Good luck, then."
"I think you guys are the ones who need luck."
"Hm. Yeah." Radek switched away from his channel with Rodney and tapped a few keys on his keyboard. This wasn't how he thought today would go… and he hadn't decided yet if it was a bad thing. "Elizabeth?"
"Are you ready?"
He didn't turn toward her when she spoke, instead starting the patch for Atlantis's systems. Rodney really was—well, they both were really quite good. Very fast. "Rodney and I have set up the subspace relay to go through the Daedalus, and I've been able to configure our systems to handle both the radio and video frequencies, so we should be able to see and hear them live."
"They want to know what's taking so long," Chuck said.
Radek managed to restrain himself from muttering a curse under his breath. This whole program had taken him and Rodney twenty minutes to devise, practically no time, and they wanted to know why it wasn't faster? Why not ask them to just make the hive ship self-destruct? Would save them all a lot of time, and, even if they managed to do it, it still wouldn't have been fast enough.
The computer chirped at him that the patch was complete.
Elizabeth looked at Radek, though, spreading her hands as if to ask whether they were ready. At his nod, she said, "Open the channel."
Radek stepped back to stand next to her, realizing as he did so that he would be in the frame.
That was alright; Michael would probably just be confused about who he was. He might also realize that McKay was not here, and think twice about whatever he was planning on doing. Unlikely, but anything was possible. He took another two steps back, just behind her.
"Hello, Michael." Elizabeth's voice was strong, almost disinterested. Her ability to be calm in a crisis was always admirable.
And the Wraith Radek found himself staring at was quite similar to the man they'd pretended was Human. His hair, unlike other Wraiths they'd seen, was short; but there was no doubt about it. He was the one they called Michael.
"Why the long delay?" Michael asked.
"We needed to take a few precautions before contacting you. I'm sure you understand."
Radek did his best to not react, but there was nothing about this situation that was remotely tolerable. If Michael was a monster, he was one they made. Radek had been held in a Genii prison for a week, watched his friends suffer the ill-effects of technologically-inferior experiments that gave little to no regard to their humanity, and barely escaped. Reed wasn't even that fortunate. If Cowen were still alive, and Radek wanted to work with him…? Cowen giving Elizabeth's answer would have been worthy of nothing but rage.
But Michael was calm. "I said we would not harm you."
"Well, excuse me for not taking you at your word. You wanted to talk? We're listening. Go ahead." Elizabeth was calm, too. But what else could she be? If she thought anything like Radek thought—and he knew she did, and more so—she would have a shred of doubt that perhaps she was wrong. And even if she was not wrong, that Michael was at least understandable…
He'd been just as lucky to make it out alive. Radek wasn't shy about admitting that. It was probably one reason he was being asked to reroute communications in the time it took to make a microwave dinner, not engage in diplomacy.
"Over two years ago, every hive ship in this galaxy emerged from hibernation prematurely. We thought a new, rich feeding ground had been discovered."
"Earth…" Elizabeth murmured.
"Unfortunately, locating your planet and uncovering an effective means of transportation to get there has proven quite… difficult."
"I can't say I'm sad to hear that," Elizabeth said when he paused.
"For the first time since the dawn of our race, there are two few of your kind to feed the waking Wraith. This has resulted in civil war. Hives are forming alliances. The strong are attacking the weak."
"Which one are you?" Elizabeth asked.
Radek thought he saw the flicker of a smile on Michael's lips, but the idea of a Wraith smiling was unsettling. He chose to see something else. What he saw wasn't much better… and Michael didn't answer the question. "Our goals are not dissimilar, Doctor Weir."
The weak, perhaps, then.
"You would like to eliminate the Wraith as a threat?" Elizabeth's voice rose with surprise. "I find that hard to believe."
"We would like you to give us Doctor Beckett's retrovirus," Michael said. "If we were able to distribute it among the rival Wraith hives in sufficient quantity, this would both render them helpless and provide us with an alternative food source."
Radek knew he must have blanched as Elizabeth continued her conversation with Michael. She said those Wraith would become human, but he knew she didn't believe that. None of them did, or they wouldn't be standing here talking to Michael like this. He never would have escaped, because he never would have been a prisoner.
"As a sign of good faith," Michael was saying, "I am sending you our jamming codes. This program was established and distributed before the civil war broke out, so we assume all the hive ships are still using it. By figuring out how to bypass or disable this program, you would be able to beam your nuclear weapons aboard any of our ships whenever you so please. We are willing to help you achieve this if you help us."
The tone indicating incoming data sounded behind them, and Chuck confirmed it. Radek let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. If they really had sent the jamming codes…?
"I'm sure you'll want to recall all the ships you have lying in wait for us and discuss this with your people," Michael said. "We will await your reply—but, should you make an attempt to destroy us, we will alert every Wraith in this galaxy to the fact that Atlantis is still very much intact. I'm sure you wouldn't want that."
Radek was sure communications cut off from Michael's end, rather than theirs. Elizabeth leaned back; Radek hadn't noticed she was leaning forward, perhaps to make herself appear larger or more powerful subconsciously.
"Radek?" she said, suddenly a bit closer to his Elizabeth again. Not quite. Her fingers were curled, not into fists but almost. Her lips were drawn, not quite into a frown, because she didn't show any emotion good or bad at times like this.
"Yes?" He cleared his throat when his voice didn't seem to be working quite as normal.
"I want you to comb over every inch of that program."
"Yes, of course." He gave his glasses a small, unnecessary adjustment, and picked up his laptop. Without looking at it, he knew it would take him and Rodney weeks, probably, to pull it apart and figure out what made it tick. Precious time that looked like they might just have had more of.
He wished he could have said something else to Elizabeth, something pleasant or comforting, but not here in public. They weren't out of the woods, and these woods were just as dark as if the Wraith had come for battle. But these were unfamiliar woods, tenuously interesting, with the promise of something better than the casualties that would have happened, no doubt, if the Wraith had come with their weapons armed.
Elizabeth radioed Caldwell to pick up Sheppard and Rodney and come back to Atlantis. She called up Carson. Radek didn't listen.
In some ways it was better than what he expected. In other ways it was worse.
Anna approached quietly, entering his peripheral vision like a bright white ghost in her uniform. Not a single expedition member was in casual dress today. "Can I help?" she whispered under the din of conversations about what to do next and what this could possibly mean.
"I don't know," he said.
Radek held a hand out to her, unsure what he expected her to do with it except that he wanted her to be nearer. She'd been in the Central Tower all morning, at his request, because he wanted her as close to the Stargate as possible. She hadn't argued, even though he could tell she very much wanted to help with the Athosians' evacuation.
Instead of taking his hand, she stepped into his open arm. "But the Wraith are having a civil war," she said, leaning against him slightly as he rested his arm around her. "That's a good thing, yes?"
"Probably." He didn't know whether it was or not. The Wraith could kill one another all they wanted, but he didn't know where they'd be fighting. Probably over the planets they wanted to cull—killing humans as much as each other because if one hive couldn't have them, the other shouldn't, either. "I don't know." It was a word he felt like he was using a lot lately.
"At least they aren't shooting at us," she offered.
He nodded. "For now." Radek didn't know why he thought that might change. Probably because they were Wraith.
#
"Oh, Radek?" Carson's tone was a facsimile of a singsong, distinctly gloomy and serious at once. Anna looked up from her seat against the side of Radek's console. It must have been her movement that drew Carson's attention down on her. He smiled, ignoring for the moment any response Radek had to say. "Hello, dear."
"Good afternoon," Anna said.
Carson obviously hadn't come to talk to her, and that couldn't have been more obvious. He looked back at Radek and started talking. "We need to start the labs on churning out the retrovirus. We won't know more until the Daedalus gets here. Until then, I figured, well…"
"Yes, of course."
Anna leaned out around the desk to see Radek looking down at her, his expression all a question of what he was supposed to do.
This morning, she had been terrified. At eight in the morning, the Wraith hiveship would arrive between four and six hours later. Everyone's somber attitude said it, the way they almost ran everywhere they went, the way Radek's hands were shaking when he took the coffee she handed him and didn't drink any of it. He didn't tell her to stay in the Central Tower with him; he'd asked, and said please. What was she supposed to do?
"I can come with you," Anna said.
Of the two options that seemed equally likely to her a moment ago—staying here or going with him—it seemed very obvious when Radek shook his head that, no, she shouldn't come. "Stay with Elizabeth."
Anna wondered if Radek would want her to sleep here in the Central Tower until this was over. She didn't ask, for fear he would think that was a good idea. On the other hand, the idea had some appeal. So she gave half a smile and a shrug. "Then you know where to find me."
"Thank you, darling."
Radek rose and walked off with Cason, rattling through some technical jargon in Czech that Anna doubted Carson would have understood even if he could follow it. And just like that, she was alone. At least, it felt like that.
Elizabeth was in her office with Teyla, in some kind of conference with each other that Anna couldn't fathom. They would be making some interesting decisions in the days to come, perhaps more depending on how quickly Radek could get Atlantis to start making the retrovirus. Most of the military crew idled here, or in the rooms below.
In Sheppard's absence, Major Lorne stood on the balcony outcropping overlooking the 'gate, his arms crossed over his chest. Even though he looked as serious as the situation warranted, he smiled at her when she came closer.
"Hey, Anna." He glanced over her shoulder to the seat Radek had just occupied. "I take it your dad was called somewhere else on urgent business."
"He asked me to stay here…"
Major Lorne nodded as if that made plenty of sense to him. There were, actually, a lot of people who seemed to be taking Anna's continued and absolutely useless presence here as understandable, for granted. A few people she didn't even know said hello to her, and one of them even offered her a chair while they waited for the hive ship to appear in orbit.
Everything about today was unsettling.
"What do you think is going to happen?" Anna stepped up to the railing beside him. Instead of watching the activity in the room below, she watched him for a response.
For a while, all he did was shrug. Anna didn't have many guesses, either, but she figured anything Major Lorne could come up with would be better than what she could. But, perhaps not. "I don't know," he said. "It's a weird situation above my paygrade."
"That's fair." Anna sighed and, leaning on the railing, looked at the Stargate. "Do you think we'll be evacuated?"
"If the Wraith are sincere about what they want, no."
"And the odds of that?" Anna glanced back at him, and smiled when he did… even though that wasn't exactly cheering. He didn't answer, and she sighed, "That's what I thought."
They fell into silence again, that uncomfortable and antsy silence waiting for another bad thing to happen. Anna didn't figure there was much to lose by being very honest. It might make her feel better, though she didn't hold much hope in that. Still, she offered, "I really don't want to go to Earth by myself…"
"Your dad would probably come with you." Major Lorne sounded so sure… which meant, to Anna, he must not have known him all that well after all.
"What do you think would have to happen for us to evacuate?" Anna asked. "Because I'm thinking it's after we've exhausted all of our options." Meaning, she assumed, Rodney wasn't here for new ideas. Meaning Radek wasn't. Meaning…
Major Lorne gave her a long look, and muttered, "How's that for a 'welcome back to Atlantis'?"
"I'm glad you're here, though," Anna offered, though she wasn't sure why she'd said it. Probably because having more than one very competent military commander was preferable to one in a situation like this. "It's a pretty weird ethical situation, too," she offered.
Lorne nodded. "Also above my paygrade."
"But what else do you have to do?"
He kept his eyes on the Stargate for a moment, a ghost of a smile almost breaking through what she imagined was a put-on serious exterior. Like everyone else, he was nervous and anxious, but there was still comedy in there somewhere.
Wraith had come to their doorstep and wanted to work with them. They didn't say no. There was something funny about it.
A/N: Alright. It's been fun. As always, there's more, but I have to duck out for the summer on account of my doing some traveling.
And, incidentally, after a series of events, one of the places I will be going is the Czech Republic. So, I don't know if any of my Czech readers are still around (I think I've heard from three or so over the years) and will be in Brno or Prague in June, but drop me a note if you'd like to share our love for Stargate over a coffee or some other beverage. (Or, you know, if readers of any other nationality happen to be there, too.) I can honestly say writing this story has prepared me to recognize exactly one (1) Czech word. And that word is "proč." As in "why?" Or, better yet, "proč ne?"
I should have gotten a Czech phrasebook back in 2016, huh? Would've helped.
Next time: I don't know how to respond to this.
