Note: From a very long previous chapter to a far more bite-size one today, this eases us into the start of Day 32...
000000
DAY 32 – Exploration
Chapter 31 – Arrival
The wide expanse of darkness, dusted with the occasional distant star, stretched out beyond the Valse's main viewport.
Seifer squinted towards the faint light of the closest star in the far left corner of the wide viewport. The sun's dim light had a red tinge to it and a faint flicker that told of an asteroid belt sat between here and its distant light.
He shifted his attention down to the Satedan display in front of him, studying the data available on the star. It registered as small in mass, with no planets around it, not even a chunk of rock circling the sun anymore. Boring, just like this entire sector out beyond the border. There was little out in this old corner of the galaxy, just endless asteroids and the occasional gaseous nebulae. No planets, no moons, no Portals. The Alliance had long ago determined this massive stretch of nothingness as not worth the tech to watch over it.
He could see why.
That said, the region did attract one particular group in significant numbers: Salvagers.
The masses of free unclaimed pieces of tumbling rock out here were salvager treasure. For every ten asteroids explored, one would hold ore that could be used, and there was no shortage of asteroids to explore out here. Digging out the ore and refining it was dirty and dangerous work, but salvagers made good currency selling it into the Alliance and out beyond.
The Alliance had little trouble with the salvagers, despite the 'profession' tending to attract certain contrarian thinkers and the sometimes brutal competition between the different salvaging groups that occasionally spilled across the border into Alliance territory. At least out in this particular area of the galaxy there was more than enough for the salvagers to share. He estimated it would probably take a thousand years to check through all the rock available in this vast uninteresting edge of nowhere.
Still, it would be a good place to go unseen, and Division had discovered that the salvagers had lost a significant number of their ships out in this sector recently. It was possible it was just a Wraith Hive or two that were stalking out from the border and picking off the smaller salvager ships for snacks, but it had to be checked out. It had taken weeks just to get to the border and cross it to reach this sector, so it had only been two days since the Valse had officially begun its search. Two days of rock, distant uninteresting stars, and darkness.
A light shifted green on the console in front of him, confirming the ship had passed across some unseen boundary between solar systems that only made any sense to Human made maps. The Valse, the second biggest battleship of the Satedan section of The Military Fleet, second only to the Ballista herself, was a powerful ship. Its crew were battle-hardened and filled with the aggressive determination that only Satedans could achieve. He'd worked with the Valse twice before now, first during the initial forays before the Nest System battle and then, more recently, against the Rogue Hive in the Arkinian System. Due to that familiarity, he'd volunteered to be the Elite presence on the Valse for this scouting mission to find any trace of the new enemy, the Skerti.
So far little had actually been found about the new aliens from the Elite led research, and most of it, in Seifer's opinion, came from scan shadows, rumour, and fairy tales, but since there was nothing else to go on, thin trails was where they were starting.
Seifer tapped on the display to bring up the lists of 'facts' that Division and rumour had provided from the drunken sharings of salvagers in trading ports. There was a list of seven vague areas out here that were the last known locations of the 'missing' ships, as salvagers weren't good at sharing detailed locations. Giving a definitive location of a good ore-producing rock was, to them, as good as handing over ownership of it. If a fellow salvager got to your asteroid out here and you weren't there to defend it, then you'd better damn well get back there fast with weapons ready. Such was the way with people who made their living finding forgotten, abandoned, or undiscovered things.
Still, for the salvagers to have given any locations to Division said a lot. The reports from the experienced Division agents included repeated emphasis that the salvagers had become noticeably anxious and fearful of this sector. For a people who prided themselves on going where no one else would even wish to go, and exploiting whatever they found there, that said a lot.
Which was why the Valse and three supporting Fleet ships had been sent here.
Still, it was very possible that all they would find were rocks and, maybe, a Hive ship hiding away out here.
A bleep from across the Valse's brightly lit Central Station drew Seifer's instant attention.
"Readings," a voice announced.
"Of?" Commander Ara demanded from her raised central chair set among an island of displays and weapons.
"Scans reading possible ship hull half a run from here, starboard track twelve," the Satedan technician replied from across the Station.
Seifer headed across the wide room towards the technician, Ara stepping down from her command chair and falling into step with him.
"Wraith?" Ara asked as they reached the large display screen glowing in front of the technician.
"No," the man confirmed what Seifer could already see from the magnified image of a distant fully metallic hull and the dancing lines of scan readings from the target. It was a decent sized ship, but clearly not Traveller or known Earth tech.
"No power," Ara muttered as she studied the display.
"No power, no signals of any kind, and no heat," the technician confirmed as a new series of readings scrolled down the screen.
An entirely dead ship.
"Anything else nearby?" Ara asked.
The display expanded its view.
"There's a dust cloud at track fifteen and a slow moving ice comet at seven," the technician replied efficiently. "They're both giving off screening rad."
Radiation that could be masking a hidden Wraith ship. Or perhaps Skerti?
"Ship identification?" Ara asked next.
A further magnified view of the dead ship appeared as a response.
"No discernible ident," the technician replied, the image zooming in tighter across the dull shine of the cold hull. "Though, we only have sight of the upper and port hull."
"Looks salvager," Seifer noted. "Dark, bulky hull. Multiple pockmarks," he gestured towards the series of shallow dents visible across one part of the hull, which were pretty standard for salvager ships that faced asteroid fields all too often.
"No obvious weapons damage," Ara noted.
"Not from this angle," Seifer pointed out.
Ara leaned forward and jabbed a control beside the technician. "Fleet ships, this is Commander Ara; conference in two."
She didn't wait to hear a response, but instead straightened up next to him. Seifer considered her as she consulted the screen again. She was an excellent and experienced warrior, though all too Satedan at times.
"Trap?" She considered as she turned to him.
"Possible," Seifer agreed. "The bait is strange if it is though."
"Mmm," Ara nodded. "No trapped civilian salvagers to tempt us in."
"All three Fleet ships report ready in one, Commander," a voice informed Ara from somewhere behind Seifer's shoulder.
"Hold ready," Ara responded.
"Yes, Commander," the voice responded and footsteps retreated.
Seifer considered the displayed ship again. "Spread the Fleet ships, we go in alone and check it out close up," he suggested.
"With fighter ships holding a perimeter," Ara added with a sharp nod.
"Hull damage and any residual radiation should hopefully indicate if it was near a Skerti drive," Seifer added further. Silvar's research on the drive was moving slowly, but he had provided a series of base power readings from the drive, as well as the Wraith-damaging radiation pattern they'd seen before.
"Excellent," Ara declared with the passionate excitement all Satedans held for the approach of an engagement. "All hands, prepare ready," she announced loudly across Central Station and the light above Seifer immediately dulled to a red hue. "Get me the Fleet ships," Ara ordered as she strode back towards her Command centre.
Seifer held back though, considering the rolling data on the screen.
The salvager ship's size suggested it was one of their large processing ships, the base for the smaller scout and harvesting ships that ranged out to find their targets and bring in the ore to be refined on the bigger ship. It was hard to know exactly, but there had to be a significant number of crew for a ship of this size. A minimum of fifty, perhaps far more.
And not a single energy reading traceable. He tapped a few controls next to the technician, bringing up all the scanned temperature readings from across the salvager hull. They were all the same, the ship entirely chilled through, which meant the engine and any back up emergency power had been dead awhile.
It was very possible that this had been the scene of a Wraith attack from months or even years ago. The Wraith would have boarded the ship, feed on most of the crew, taken the rest for cocooning, and simply left the ship behind. The abandoned empty vessel would have been left to drift, its engine eventually shutting down without maintenance, and no one left of this particular salvager group to even know it was missing. Without any discernible readings left, thanks to the passage of time and the cold of space, any sensors would simply have detected it as a chunk of metal floating in the vacuum of space and, ironically, only salvagers likely to find it worth recovering.
Though, even if was just the empty vessel it appeared to be, if they could access the ship's salvager computer database it could provide very useful intel on the region and other local salvager operations. Maybe help narrow down the seven locations on the Division report.
That would, at least, make this venture worth something.
00000
He had nothing. He'd slaved away for days, drunk enough coffee to float the City, and he'd found absolutely nothing.
Rodney hated failure.
If the Ancients had recorded anything about the Skerti in Atlantis' database, they'd done an amazing job in removing any hint that it had been there. Every attempt to find a clue or a hidden section of the database where the information might be hiding had ended in complete failure.
Their latest search had been looking through the base programming level of the database, hoping to find evidence of hidden pockets of concealed encrypted information. It had taken days to do, with three whole teams working at it, but all they'd found was some old programming related to the console systems and power conduits in different parts of the city. Old versions of programming that, for some reason, the Ancients had left available but inactive. He had no idea why they'd do that unless it had been by accident or just plain laziness. Hell the processing and storage capacity of the Atlantis database was so massive the Ancients had hardly needed to worry about freeing up space, so maybe they hadn't cared.
So that little diversion had been a waste of time.
He'd let Radek tell Sam the bad news, and had instead stayed up the whole of last night to run through the deletion points in the database again, hoping he'd missed something the previous three times they'd gone through them.
It also hadn't gone well.
There was nothing left to search for, nothing to find apparently.
He was starting to believe that the Ancients really hadn't recorded anything about the Skerti here. It had probably been on a separate database they'd destroyed, or taken with them to Earth. Sam had taken that idea to Earth Defence, but they'd reported nothing like that in the hidden Ancient bases discovered on Earth so far. They'd gotten in touch with Dr Jackson still out on his whatever politics mission with the Jaffa, but he'd had no ideas, which wasn't a surprise.
Which meant there was only one final place to look in Rodney's opinion: the Ancient repository of knowledge which General O'Neill had downloaded into his brain twice before. However, no one with any power back home had approved of the idea of repeating the process. Rodney had made the argument that someone losing their mind under all that knowledge might be worth the risk, but again no one had taken his suggestion seriously.
So, he'd asked O'Neill to look at the Skerti data, hoping that maybe there were still some residual repressed bits of Ancient knowledge stuck in the back of the man's brain, but the General hadn't been able to come up with anything. Rodney had tried pushing him on it again earlier today, but O'Neill had just made some weird Simpson's reference about not having a crayon up his nose. Whatever, the man was no use at all.
Sheppard was no better. He was off again now on his fourth wild goose chase trying to convince his Ancient ex-girlfriend to share any knowledge she knew, but she was never there when he visited. Rodney had no idea why Sam kept letting Sheppard waste his time with it. Clearly the Ancient woman wasn't going to share anything, and probably couldn't anyway with the other Ancients controlling her.
So, unless Sheppard's Ex had anything useful for him today, they had absolutely nothing.
And the IOA were supposed to be dialling in to the Elite with a final report today.
Rodney leaned forward against the console to peer off to the left where he could just faintly make out a glass wall of Sam's office. The IOA had been sequestered in there this morning, talking through the Elite's latest dial in this morning to discuss the big trading contract. Rodney didn't understand what the problem was. It had to be obvious to everyone that the IOA had to take the deal, because it was the only way they were going to get access to the Elite energy weapons and sentry satellite tech that was being offered. That was on top of the Elite sharing their anti-Wraith stunner defuser tech, helping develop Carson's retrovirus, and to combine forces to develop shielding tech. The deal seemed obvious to Rodney, and he couldn't get why the politicians were dragging their feet. Though, that the IOA had been in with Sam all morning maybe suggested things were finally getting sorted.
He could only see part of Woolsey's arm from this angle, the bureaucrat sitting facing towards Sam's desk, but it didn't appear like things were getting wrapped up in there any time soon.
Rodney sat back in his chair, wondering if he should order one of the Airmen to get him a fresh coffee, but found himself looking round at Radek sat further along the Ancient console. Radek was hunched over his laptop, feverishly tapping away. What was he working on?
Had he found something?
Rodney debated whether to ask, but then Radek would probably ask what he had, and he had nothing. He certainly wasn't going to admit that just yet, not until Radek had given up first.
A burst of sound from down in the Gate Room was the Gate activating.
"Unscheduled off-world activation," someone called out from the DHD station.
Radek finally sat up from his work, shoving his glasses up his nose. "Maybe it is Colonel Sheppard returning with some information after all," he declared.
He'd sat up enough that Rodney could now see his laptop screen and what he was working on. It was just Carson's Skerti cell digital reconstruction, which had also provided nothing useful from the Ancient computer so far.
"What we got?" Colonel Sumner demanded loudly as he strode into the Control Room from who knew where. Rodney hadn't even noticed the man was on duty this morning.
He really should get another coffee. Though Katie had been getting worried about how much he was drinking lately, and she didn't see how much he actually drank in the lab.
The wormhole exploded to life in the room below.
"Receiving Colonel Sheppard's IDC," was reported back.
"Let him in," Colonel Sumner ordered.
Rodney leaned in Radek's direction. "Bet you a month's pay he's still got nothing."
Radek looked round with a frown. "I will not take your bet."
"Wimp," Rodney muttered as he heard the loud rush of sound that was Sheppard's Jumper returning. Normally Rodney wouldn't give a damn to watch the rest of this play out, but since he had nothing else to do...
Sumner was stood looking out towards the Jumper, one hand to his ear to trigger his radio. "Anything useful, Colonel?" Sumner asked into the air. "Fine," he frowned as he turned back towards the rest of the Control Room.
"See, I told you," Rodney declared proudly to Radek.
"I never took your bet."
"Report to the Control Room once you're parked, Colonel," Sumner ordered before he jabbed at his radio and started heading towards Rodney.
Crap.
As the Jumper rose up and disappeared out of view behind the advancing gruff Colonel, Rodney tried to think of a good way of spinning his complete lack of anything.
"Anything new from you two?" Sumner demanded rudely as he arrived on the other side of the console.
"Dr Beckett and I continue to find nothing of use regarding the Skerti genetic molecules in the Ancient database," Radek fortunately answered first. "The computer simply repeats that it is related to the Wraith and Iratus bug."
"McKay?" Sumner turned his blunt features on him.
"I've scoured through all through the deletion points again," Rodney told him. "Spent hours at it, up all night-"
"So nothing," Sumner interrupted him.
"I still think we should consider the Ancient repository idea," Rodney pushed. "If we can-"
"Earth Defence says no," Sumner repeated the same lack of imagination.
"Maybe one of the Elite will volunteer," Rodney suggested. "Then we're not risking one of our own."
"It may be that you have to have the Ancient gene to activate the knowledge repository," Radek put in unhelpfully.
"I know, but we can give them the gene therapy so-"
"The Ancient repository idea is a bust. Leave it alone," Sumner ordered.
Rodney glared up at the Space Marine and his thick unyielding head.
"Unless you're volunteering to be the guinea pig, Dr McKay?" Sumner asked.
If the bloody Asgard hadn't all committed suicide then maybe he'd think about it. Clearly he'd be the best brain to assimilate the information anyway.
"Didn't think so," Sumner uttered. "What's the latest on the Skerti drive digital build?"
"We have nothing there either, not without far more detailed specs of the device, but the Elite are not forthcoming so far," Radek replied.
"I agree," Sumner scowled, one forearm leaning on the console's edge. "Colonel Carter is pushing for more today and Sheppard's been repeating the requests via Elite Emmagan."
"Yeah, that's what he's repeating," Rodney muttered under his breath as he pulled up the latest work on the Skerti drive data.
Without knowing precisely how the innards of the drive were connected and constructed, or an update from Silvar's team on how they were doing in further powering up the drive, they really had nothing to go on. And the Ancient database certainly hadn't recognised any of it, other than referring to Gate travel tech. Rodney had tried to wrap his head around what was in the database about the Gates, but there was nothing helpful yet that linked to the Skerti drive. So far, he kind of agreed with the latest Elite theory that the Skerti drive was adapted early Ancient wormhole tech, but how the thing could form a wormhole without having the structure of a Gate...it made no sense to him yet. It would once the damn Elite started properly sharing what they were discovering, but, until then, it was all trade talks.
"Hey," Sheppard's voice called from the left and Rodney looked round to see the Colonel jogging down the stairs, a smile on his face.
"Did you get anything useful this time?" Rodney asked.
"Um, nope," Sheppard reported as he casually leaned against Radek's end of the Ancient console. "But I think I'm making headway."
"Chaya was there today?" Radek asked with a foolish spark of optimism.
"Not technically, no," Sheppard replied.
"Not technically?" Rodney repeated with as much scorn as he could put in it.
"She wasn't technically there when I was," Sheppard added, "but she left me a coffee and a sandwich, so she had been there and she knows I've been visiting."
Rodney glared at that weird rubbishy theory. "Maybe someone else left you the food; you know, one of her minion monks who look after her 'temple' for her."
"No, it was her," Sheppard insisted though.
"How exactly did you determine that?" Rodney pushed.
"Because it was an actual coffee, dark roasted with just a bit of sugar, and the sandwich was just like the best turkey sandwich back home, thick crusty bread with mayo and-"
"Alright, alright you made your point," Rodney interrupted him. Damn it he was hungry now. "So, she left you a nice Ancient magicked Earth meal, but she wasn't actually there to answer your questions, was she."
Sheppard pulled a face like he was having to really think about the answer. "No," he admitted with a sigh.
"So, we've got nothing," Rodney concluded to Sumner.
"What's going on in the Colonel's office?" Sheppard asked.
"Elite dialled in with their latest response on the trade negotiations," Sumner answered him. "IOA are debating it. Colonel Carter wants you here for when they dial back."
"Great," Sheppard smiled.
Rodney waited.
"Who'd they talk to at the Elite?" Sheppard asked after a beat, his attempt at casual indifference completely fake.
"Your alien warrior princess wife wasn't part of the call," Rodney told him.
"Elite Aedii again," Sumner supplied. "The Elite seem motivated to sort the deal and they want an update on whether we've found anything Skerti related in the Ancient database."
"Which is nothing," Rodney summarised again. "Shouldn't be too long a call then."
"On Athos on Wednesday, Elite Emmagan told me the last two scouting parties looking for the Skerti had reached their target locations," Sheppard told Sumner. "Once they have something, they're going to be launching the Sythus warship so maybe they want the trading contract done and dusted before then."
Sumner was nodding. "Elite Aedii implied the same today, but added that the Elite had made contact with the Travellers."
"Really?" Sheppard shifted closer along the console. "They hate the Alliance."
"Apparently they still haven't seen anything like the Skerti, but they told the Elite that they've recently lost contact with one of their Generational ships."
"Which one?" Sheppard frowned.
Probably worried about his Traveller Ex. "Kirk," Rodney muttered as his laptop popped up a calendar reminder.
Damn it, he was supposed to be having lunch with Katie in half an hour. He'd missed the last three of their planned dinners together, or had it been four now? She'd been getting worked up about his all nighters in the lab, so he'd promised to have lunch with her today. Great, the damn Skerti were ruining his love life.
He glanced past Sumner towards Sam's office. Even if the IOA came out now, dialled the Elite, there'd still be a debrief afterwards...he clearly wasn't going to make lunch.
Wincing, he started typing her an email to say he was sorry. He'd been doing this too much lately.
He wasn't sure how much longer she'd put up with him.
"Stay put Sheppard for when we dial out," Sumner's voice registered back into Rodney's awareness as he sent his grovelling email off to Katie.
"Will do," Sheppard agreed as Sumner walked off.
"Yeah, we know exactly why you're hanging around," Rodney told Sheppard once Sumner was out of earshot and he saw Radek smirking as he started working on his laptop again.
"Just fulfilling my job as Ambassador to the Stars," Sheppard joked as he leaned both his forearms on the console.
Rodney rolled his eyes. "Ambassador to Flirting with the Stars," he muttered.
"So you guys really got nothin' new?" Sheppard asked.
"Nothing," Radek admitted for them both. "The Ancients did a magnificent job in removing and concealing any data on the Skerti."
"I doubt it was even here," Rodney pointed out. "They saved it somewhere else."
"They built this computer system, Rodney," Radek repeated his now boring theory, "I have little doubt that they could remove data without a trace. We could probably do the same."
Rodney ignored that point, which was sort of valid. Still, he really hated failure.
An email pinged up on his laptop.
Katie graciously accepting that he couldn't make lunch.
Another thing he was failing at.
Just great.
000000
TBC