Warning Reminder and Confession: Happy belated 2019 everyone – where has January gone?! As we are in a new year and, coincidentally, this fic now enters into its final act, I feel I should mention an important fact. As some may recall, I put a warning on this story that there will be a death of an established character in this particular fic; however, I feel I should now confess that, by the end of this fic, there will in fact be more than one death in this story (and they are well established characters, not Red Shirt No.3 on the deck of a ship). With that juicy note (no shouting please) may I present the next chapter...
00000
Chapter 26 – The Diversion
Mind Song's body sang with life from the feeding.
It glowed through his body, filling every formerly dark place with new life once again. It felt like sunshine shining across a warmed hull, filling him with the blissful liberation from the brink of starvation.
As he walked back into his confinement, he was able to do so unaided and standing fully upright once more. As the prison door clanged shut behind him, he stretched out his once more supple and warmed arms. Even the restriction of the shackle locked around his right arm could not diminish the refreshing swell of recovery. It had not been quite enough to fully repair his cells and it would not entirely hold, but the second feeding had provided him far more than he had been expecting. For it was clear to him now that Sheppard was no ordinary Human.
Mind Song had suspected it during the first feeding, but he had been so near death himself that he had barely registered the slim wealth he had taken during so short a first feeding. However, the second feeding had confirmed his suspicions. Sheppard had Lantean blood flowing through his veins.
Mind Song had fed on plenty of the Lanteans' offspring before, but it had been many long millennia since he had tasted the strength of Lantean blood that Sheppard held.
Interesting.
Mind Song glanced to the left, hearing Sheppard's pained groans from the other cell.
Were all those in the Lantean city like Sheppard? Was all of Sheppard's home galaxy filled with descendents of the ancient race?
Or was Sheppard unusual, perhaps a leader of his prey group due to his Lantean blood?
Mind Song moved towards the small open space between his prison and Sheppard's and considered the Human still knelt on the floor, sounding as if he was cursing under his breath. Sheppard was weakened by the feeding, but he was still able to hold his body upright. He was strong, very strong.
Did all of his people taste of such strength?
Or was Sheppard indeed special? The prey leader's anticipation of Sheppard's capture had implied a personal grievance, and all that Mind Song had overheard confirmed as much, but clearly Sheppard was not a simple prey animal.
Though that fact did not save him from the effects of the feeding.
Regardless of his innate strength, Sheppard's loud breaths and muttering spoke of his weakening body. Mind Song wondered if the Human's mind would weaken the same way. Did Sheppard share the Lantean's strong mind as he did their blood?
"Where are your people?" Mind Song asked him.
"They'll be here," Sheppard groaned his reply as he straightened his back, the defiance Mind Song had seen in the other room still apparent. All Humans captured by the prey leader started defiant, but all swiftly turned into begging, fearful crying animals by their end. Though, Mind Song could not recall many who had still been able to hold their heads up high after a second feeding.
"You still believe they will come for you?" Mind Song asked, curious at the blind faith and denial of the reality around them.
"Yeah, I do," Sheppard responded as he dragged himself the few feet to the wall below the bars. That put most of Sheppard out of Mind Song's view, but he could still see the Human's boots and hear the slightly laboured breathing.
He seemed to truly believe he would be rescued.
Mind Song recalled the voices of Sheppard's kind speaking with the prey Pranos. It appeared that Atlantis was led by a female, and, as the Human Queen, she had spoken with determination to retrieve Sheppard. Faith in one's Queen was always vital; not that Mind Song had had a Queen of his own to follow in a long time.
The warm glow of the feeding faded a little with that stark reminder of his current situation.
"No one has ever escaped these prisons alive," Mind Song informed Sheppard, and, perhaps, himself as well.
Sheppard would not survive, and surely neither would he. The resulting depression crept over Mind Song with a new chill that crushed the former warmth away.
"Well, I'm going to get out of here," Sheppard insisted from the floor out of view. "I have powerful friends looking for me."
How many times had Mind Song heard similar from other captives? Whether Wraith or Humans, all those who had been brought into this captivity had only left as a corpse. Their bodies dragged away. Sheppard would learn that truth all too soon.
"Even if they find this place," Mind Song explained, "these Humans will kill you long before your people reach these cells. Their leader has made his intentions for you very clear."
"Kolya," Sheppard spat the name out with clear hatred that spoke of significant history.
"Yes," Mind Song confirmed.
Best that Sheppard accept his fate, as Mind Song had done long ago.
This was never a fate he had expected for himself – to die cold and deep underground, starved to death and a plaything of Human prey. So long he had lived, much had he seen, that it felt a special type of torture to die in this place.
Able to consider and plan far more effectively than most, Mind Song had been fortunate to work at his first Queen's side in the war against the ancient Lanteans. Those had been glory days of vast territory, challenging battles, and overflowing prey to feed upon.
And now, here he was kept in a hole, hidden and starved. To have lived so long only to rot away at the hands of prey...he had failed his first long dead Queen.
And he disgusted himself.
Movement from the next cell drew his attention back to Sheppard.
"How well do you know the layout of this place?" The Human asked.
Mind Song shook his head at the question. "All of these places are similar enough," he replied honestly, "so I know well enough what your people would be up against."
A scraping rasp and a groan followed and Mind Song watched as Sheppard lifted himself up into view, two aged Human hands resting on the ledge between their cells. Sheppard looked directly at him through the bars, right in the eye as very few Humans would dare.
"What about us?" Sheppard asked.
Mind Song frowned at the question. Was he suggesting...?
"Do you know this place well enough for us to get out?" Sheppard asked. Blind hope shone out of his foolish prey animal eyes.
"You and me?" Mind Song asked, amused despite himself.
"Why not?" Sheppard insisted. "You think they're going to just let you go after I'm dead? And if my people do turn up and all they find is you in these cells, what do you think they'll do to you?"
Mind Song growled at the worrying outcomes Sheppard voiced.
"What have you got to lose?" Sheppard ignorantly pushed.
"My life!" Mind Song stated the seemingly obvious.
The Human scoffed at that. "Yeah, some life you got here."
Mind Song growled more forcefully this time at the belittling behaviour from the prey.
"Listen," Sheppard continued, "it makes sense. We have a common goal."
Mind Song looked away from the foolish optimism. It was blind and irrational thinking. A Human and a Wraith working together was foolish enough, but to try to escape this place...
Mind Song had nothing here, but it was, at least, still life. If he attempted escape, he knew without doubt that the prey leader, Kolya, would have him killed instantly. Though that had presented as a possible option before, now that he once again recalled what it felt like to be strong, to feel life flowing through him...
He turned away from Sheppard. "As I said before, there is no escape."
00000
Everything felt wrong to Teyla.
The planet from the Genii contact's list was a strange one. It was the dead of night when she had followed three of Atlantis' mission teams through the wormhole and stepped out into the wide open flattened space around the planet's Portal. Clearly the area was well prepared for carts and perhaps a large number of people to use the Portal, but there had been no one standing guard over it. The only hints of life nearby had been small life-signs that her sensor pad had detected moving through the surrounding woodland, which had turned out to be hog beast-like creatures that had been snuffling through the leaf litter.
If this was truly the planet where Kolya was holding John, surely he would have someone watching the Portal; a lookout to warn if she and those from Atlantis found Kolya's holdout. But there was nothing. Atlantis' cloaked Ancestral ship watching from overhead had not detected any ships in orbit either, or any Human life-signs within the hour long trek to the local town that was their target. Clearly the Genii contact's definition of the town being 'close' to the Portal needed some reconsideration. Fortunately, the Ancestral craft had easily cut down the time, delivering them into an open field just outside the limits of the 'close-by' town.
Except, everything felt wrong about the town too. Even though it was clearly right in the depths of night-time on this planet, most worlds in Wraith-held space, or even within the Alliance, had some watch system; sentries stationed around a settlement to keep an eye on the skies above to provide early warnings of an imminent culling. Except here, there were none outside of a small group sat around a fire close to where the single road from the Portal reached the town. If that small group were supposed to be guards, they were clearly not doing their job correctly considering her group of fifteen had easily snuck into the town unseen.
Would Kolya truly keep John in a town so poorly watched by distracted local guards?
Once inside the town, the target abandoned section of the settlement had been reasonably easy to locate, not just from the instructions on the Genii contact's list, but due to another reason that had become swiftly apparent. The strong odorous smell of the river along which the abandoned section ran was surely the reason for the vacant buildings.
A tributary of the local river, as reported by the cloaked craft overhead, it was clearly used for the disposal of the town's effluent. The smell was foul and Dr McKay had nearly vomited as they had reached the river's edge. Long docks lined the near side of the disgustingly foamed waters, and the wooden planks creaked underfoot as she followed John's people along the line of warehouses overlooking the water.
The building that was listed as Kolya's 'factory' was only a few buildings down, and stood dark with the exception of a lone electric light glowing above a peeling orange painted doorway.
Colonel Sumner waved his hand through a series of silent gestures to his warriors and they all pressed shoulders to the factory's outer wall and held their weapons ready. Teyla followed their lead, practically at the back of the line behind Lieutenant Cadman, with only Dr McKay and Lieutenant Ford behind her.
Working to ignore the stench in the air, she lifted her sensor pad. It only provided her with more worries.
There was only one single life-sign inside the factory and none but those from Atlantis outside the building. Which meant that there were no guards watching over Kolya's factory.
It was faintly possible that there was a concealed bunker beneath the building, but there was no hint of any power inside the factory except the low level glow of electric light fixtures. Surely even a deep bunker would need to draw power from somewhere and that should register on her sensor pad, or most definitely on the Ancestor craft's scanners.
She looked ahead over the shoulders of John's people to the light faintly glowing over the factory's entrance. The light bulb flickered slightly, the power supply fluctuating with an unsteady rhythm. The local power distribution of the town registered as a very low and unsteady supply on her sensor pad, which only added to her confusion of Kolya's choice of this place.
If Kolya had no guards watching the factory, surely he would use some form of electronic surveillance system instead. There was plenty of cheap Alliance tech that he could have smuggled out to use here, even with the weak unsteady local electric supply. Yet, again, there was nothing registering on her pad. The factory was a dark, uninteresting, and easily forgettable building. If she had not been told it was, supposedly, used by Kolya, there was nothing about this building that would catch her attention.
But, perhaps that was the point. The lack of anything interesting meant it drew no attention, and the psychological cover provided by the stink of the polluted river kept wandering people away. It was either the very best of hiding places...or it was the wrong place.
Lieutenant Cadman shifted slightly to look round at Teyla. "We're about to breach the door," she whispered, the information no doubt delivered through the radio link in her ear.
Teyla nodded, appreciating the report.
"Once we're inside, our people will fan out, covering all directions," the woman continued. "The Colonel would like you to remain near the back." The shift of the female's expression supplied far more subtext though; the Colonel's request via Lieutenant Cadman's radio link had been an order not a request.
"Guns before swords," Teyla replied as she nodded, her gaze shifting ahead to where she could see part of the Colonel's shoulder at the front of the line of warriors. She would choose to believe that the Colonel's order was designed to protect his own warriors from her blades, but perhaps also to protect her from one of their stray bullets. Or it was also possible that he was asserting his dominance by keeping her back, keeping the mission run by his people alone? Teyla did not really care; she only cared about them finding John as quickly as possible.
She glanced down at the sensor pad again, checking the life-readings again. "Tell your Colonel that I am reading only one life-sign inside still," she whispered to Lieutenant Cadman, who nodded but said nothing further, which meant that the one life-sign was already registered and known by John's people. However, they could not know one extra piece of vital information.
"Also tell him," Teyla added quietly as she held the woman's gaze, "that I sense no Wraith inside."
Lieutenant Cadman's face shifted in the dim flickering light of the lone bulb and she nodded, understanding the significance. The chances were reducing rapidly that this was the right place, but there was still a possibility that there was a bunker deep underground, or was perhaps further away and only accessed by tunnels from inside the factory.
"Colonel Sumner," Lieutenant Cadman said quietly in to the air, one hand to her ear piece. "Elite Emmagan reports one life-sign inside and no Wraith presence detected."
Teyla glanced back over her shoulder, only to find Dr McKay leaning closer to her than she had sensed, almost as if he were seeking cover behind her. Behind the Doctor, Lieutenant Ford had most of his attention directed behind them, watching quietly and efficiently for any that might be sneaking up from behind. The young man glanced round, his features tense and concerned. Perhaps he had similar doubts as her.
She looked away from the worried youth, and looked out across the sickly water beyond the edge of the dock. The water's surface moved unnaturally with its thick pollution and, in the distance, all she could hear was the faint night-time calling of tiny insects on the far bank of the water.
Nothing felt right here. Or perhaps it was simply because she was far outside the reach of the Alliance. There was no Elite or Enforcement backup here to help her find John. If the Wraith appeared overhead, she would have only fifteen from Atlantis to help her. Though she did not doubt their capabilities, the faint chance of a culling interrupting her search for John filled her with a faint sense of panic.
She lifted her arm and consulted the Earth timepiece around her wrist. It had been over an hour since John had last been fed upon. If this was not the right place...
Another feeding could kill him, or even if it did not, the chances of him living for longer afterwards were significantly diminished.
He might already have succumbed to the effects of the feeding.
No, she could not think that. She had to believe that they would find him in time. That he would be saved.
She had to save John.
She could not fail him.
"Colonel Sumner thanks you for the information," Lieutenant Cadman's quiet report crashed through Teyla's fearful thoughts.
Teyla nodded to her, forcing back the panic and the brewing frustration.
She looked past the Lieutenant and saw Colonel Sumner lift his hand, his fingers held straight. He held down one finger and then another. Beyond him, another Earth solider stood flattened on the far side of the orange doorway.
The Colonel's fingers reduced to one and he pointed to the door.
The other soldier smashed his fist into a small window in the door and then threw in something – a grenade of some sort presumably. Teyla pulled her eyes away and, sure enough, a loud burst and a bright flash of light lit up the reeking dock.
Then from stillness and silence came sudden definitive action. John's people rushed into the building, filing in quickly and orderly, while she followed, feeling fruitlessly unhelpful at the back of the action. But, quickly enough, the orange door was ahead, and, with Lieutenant Cadman just in front of her, Teyla clutched her stunner tightly and pushed through the wispy dancing smoke from the Earth grenade and stepped into Kolya's factory.
The air struck her immediately as being stale and empty, and her first sight of the inside of the building suggested the same. Dust lay over tall stacks of wooden crates arranged to allow long corridors of space through them, down which John's people were hurrying in several directions, guns raised and eyes sharp.
Teyla lifted her sensor pad in her left hand, comparing the direction of the single life-sign to corridors available to her, but it was unnecessary as she heard blasting stunner fire from far ahead and shouting. Fortunately, Colonel Sumner had brought a selection of Wraith stunners for his people, hoping to bring down any Genii they encountered so that they would be alive for questioning afterwards.
"Stop!" Colonel Sumner's voice echoed down the crated hallways and Teyla ran towards the sound.
Someone might have shouted her name, no doubt to stop her from breaching their protocols, but she ignored the order and continued forward, pushing past far more cautious warriors.
"This way, Sir!" Echoed from the near distance and she found a turning to the left.
"Stop!" Someone repeated somewhere ahead and Teyla lifted her pad to see the various life-signs ahead of her in the maze of crates, but there was no way to know which were from Atlantis and which might be Genii now they were grouped too closely.
"Got him, Sir!"
"Stay down!" Colonel Sumner's voice shouted from around the next corner and Teyla darted around it to see a man lying on the dark floor, Colonel Sumner and two others stood over him, weapons pointed down at their captive.
Teyla slowed her approach, the factory's single life-sign having easily been captured. A life-sign that wore a Genii uniform.
"Where is Major Sheppard?" Colonel Sumner demanded of his prisoner.
The Genii male lifted both his hands up, palms to the ceiling as he panted. "I'm just the caretaker," he replied.
"Where is Kolya?" Sumner demanded.
"He's not here," the Genii replied, his words steady despite the stressful situation; a well trained Genii solider. "He's not been here for months."
As Teyla approached the interrogation, she noticed that the caretaker was far more mature in years than she would expect. Why would Kolya leave one lone and aged solider to watch his bunker's entrance? Though he might leave one as a caretaker of an empty warehouse.
"Sir, there's no one else here," someone reported to Colonel Sumner.
"You're here all by yourself?" Colonel Sumner asked the caretaker doubtfully.
The Genii nodded. "There's another caretaker who works the day shift."
Teyla paused as the depression cast over her – this wasn't the right place. Glancing to both sides of her, she could see that all of the crates around her had a heavy layer of dust over them.
"Is there a bunker underneath this building?" the Colonel asked next of his captive.
"No," the caretaker replied. He very calm, his breathing back to normal despite the weapons pointed down at him. This might be the wrong place, but that didn't mean that this caretaker couldn't still be a useful source of information.
Ignoring the rest of the Colonel's questions, Teyla strode towards the Genii. As she did, she slid her stunner back into its holster and reached up to her shoulder. Her hand found the familiar welcoming hilt of the single sword she had been permitted to bring with her to Atlantis, and she drew out the blade. The weak factory light glinted off her weapon as she swung it round. She saw Colonel Sumer react, but Teyla simply focused down on the Genii lying all too comfortably on the floor. She stepped up to his legs and swung her sword's blade down and round to halt a bare inch from the Genii' throat.
"Where. Is. My. Husband?" She demanded through clenched teeth.
The faint scent of fresh urine filled the air.
The caretaker shook his head, the movement small and fast, his eyes practically crossed as he watched her sword above him. "I do...not...know...Honoured..." the caretaker stuttered. "He is not..."
Depressed frustration rose hot in her throat – this man was not one that Kolya would share vital information with; Genii were famous for their determination and stubbornness, but Kolya had always surrounded himself by the very strongest in body and also in mind. This man was truly panicked by her threat – he would not be one that Kolya would tell the intricate details of his dangerous plan. This was likely an older and loyal solider for Kolya, used to simply watch over this place and the supplies stored here.
She pulled her sword back from the Genii and he visibly sagged his body to the floor in relief, his hands faintly shaking.
"Is there a bunker under this building?" She repeated the Colonel's question.
"No," the Genii stuttered, his eyes fixed on her.
"There's nothing here, Sir," one of John's people reported to Colonel Sumner. "We've secured the building. There's nothing by crates and empty rooms."
"Could the bunker be shielded?" the Colonel asked.
"The Jumper would probably see through anything they might use," Lieutenant Cadman's voice drifted from behind Teyla's shoulder, but Teyla kept her eyes on the caretaker.
"When was Kolya last h-" She started to ask, but a sudden loud burst of Earth gunfire echoed from somewhere off in the distant left of the building.
Forgetting the unhelpful caretaker, Teyla ran towards the sound, darting around more crates, hearing others shouting questions. Had someone been found? Had a bunker entrance been revealed after all?
"Report!" Colonel Sumner shouted from behind Teyla as he followed her.
She took a left turn to see Lieutenant Ford approaching from the other end of the corridor, but his attention was off to the right. "What is it McKay?" Lieutenant Ford asked worriedly, his weapon held ready.
"It's nothing, nothing," Dr McKay answered immediately from off to the right.
Teyla slowed her steps as she, and several others from the other end of the corridor of crates, all reached a very sheepish looking Dr McKay.
"It was a mouse," Dr McKay reported, gesturing weakly with his large Earth gun towards a corner of stacked crates. Clearly there was no emergency; the man had shot at nothing out of fear.
Only a sudden buzz vibrated in her coat pocket and she realised that she had pushed her sensor pad into her pocket at some point during the raid.
"It was a rat really," Dr McKay explained as she hurriedly pulled out her sensor pad. "Probably rabid."
"Sir, I'm picking up a power reading," someone else reported just as Teyla looked at her own pad screen.
"It's building," she added as she watched the power reading growing on the screen.
"Are all frequencies still jammed?" Colonel Sumner shouted angrily.
"Yes, sir."
Teyla turned slightly, seeing the power climbing gradually, but her pad had a directional lock on it. "It's coming from over here."
A large pile of crates stood in front of her, several sporting some bullet holes from Dr McKay's attack on a mouse – not that she was entirely sure what a mouse was. The power reading rose sharply on the screen as she moved towards the crates. The reading was coming from either inside one of these crates or behind them. Perhaps Dr McKay had triggered something with his bullets?
"We need to move these," she stated to anyone willing to listen and immediately Lieutenant Ford stepped forward to help. As soon as she pulled at one crate it became immediately apparent that there was little or nothing in the box. Now she was noticing, there was no dust on any of them either – they had been added, or moved and cleaned recently.
"These are light, there's nothing in them," Lieutenant Ford reported and another set of hands reached it to help shift the boxes aside.
"The power is increasing, Colonel," someone echoed what Teyla was seeing on her pad.
"We reading anything explosive?" The Colonel asked.
A gap had been formed between the crates now and Teyla could make out red glowing lights shining out of the shadows of the revealed wall.
"There's something in the wall," Lieutenant Ford exclaimed as Teyla moved into the small gap between the crates, shoving hard on them to finally fully reveal an electronic panel fitting low into the wall.
She crouched down in front of it, her pad held in front of her.
It was very recognisable tech.
"What is it?" Colonel Sumner asked from behind Teyla.
"Its Alliance tech," she supplied. "It looks like a standard communication panel. It's definitely the source of the power and its still building."
"Like to explode?" Lieutenant Ford asked worriedly.
"They've linked it into the local power distribution," Dr McKay reported as he crouched down beside Teyla, his Ancestral scanner glowing close to her sensor pad as she reached in to tap the panel's controls. "They just cut a hole in the wall and shoved it in," he added disapprovingly.
As Teyla's fingers touched the power button on the control panel and the screen lit up.
"What is it?" Dr McKay asked her.
"It's a communication relay," she was able to confirm her initial assessment. "In Genii. I am not very fluent in the Genii written language, but this is a 'waiting' screen, presumably building up power for communications."
"Pulling power from the pathetic local supply," Dr McKay said quickly. "That's why it's taking so long to buffer."
"Turn it off," Colonel Sumner ordered sternly.
Teyla had to agree and she tapped the usual 'cancel' button on the control pad, but nothing happened. She tried again, with no results, so she tried the main power trigger button, which also didn't work. "It is not working," she told them. "I believe the relay is set in a command sequence and is waiting for the power to build up to al-"
The panel's small screen abruptly changed to show the standard 'transmitting' image used across the Alliance. At the same time, both her senor pad and Dr McKay's Ancestral pad both showed a sudden power spike and a new series of readings burst across both screens.
"It's sending out a signal," Dr McKay shouted.
"Wher- What?! What satellite?" Colonel Sumner demanded from behind.
Teyla looked up and over her shoulder to see the Colonel talking into the air, no doubt with the cloaked Ancestral ship. "There's a satellite in orbit?" She asked hurriedly.
"It's just powered up," Dr McKay was the one to supply her. "The signal from this probably triggered it."
The panel's screen altered again, Genii words flowing over it. Teyla frowned at the display and then at her pad. She shot upright and turned to Colonel Sumner. "Destroy the satellite. Now!"
"It's a weapon?" Lieutenant Cadman asked worriedly from beside Colonel.
"Disable the thing now!" Colonel Sumner ordered into his radio link.
"No, destroy it," Teyla corrected. "You must stop it transmitting out now. It's using a link frequency, it will relay the signal somewhere else on the planet or off-world. Most likely to Kolya."
That got his attention.
"Can you disable it?" Sumner asked into the air, turning slightly from her. "Take out its power if you can, otherwise kill it."
If Kolya knew they were here, what might he do to John out of retaliation?
Teyla dropped her attention back to her pad, the realisation of what she was seeing hitting her. The panel in front of her was sending out a very recognisable signal, which the satellite would simply be relaying elsewhere. It was a warning system to tell Kolya that his factory had been breached.
Colonel Sumner turned back to her.
"The satellite's gone," Colonel Sumner reported. "They clipped it with a drone but it exploded."
"Probably self-destructed. Kolya hiding his tracks," Dr McKay supplied from where he was still crouched in front of the communications panel. "This is losing power now."
"It'll have been designed to send the signal it wanted, which the satellite will have captured and transmitted on," Teyla supplied. "Did your ship detect if the satellite was able to broadcast out its signal?"
"Yes," Colonel Sumner replied. "It was short, but the thing got out a signal."
Another failure.
"Could they tell where the signal was directed?" She asked next.
"Out into space," the Colonel replied with a gruff sigh.
"Which means it is unlikely Major Sheppard is being held on this planet," Teyla concluded for him.
The Colonel looked around her though to Dr McKay. "Is there any chance there's still a bunker hidden under this place?"
"There's nothing," Dr McKay replied as he stood up from the panel.
"Could one be shielded?" Colonel Sumner pushed.
"What with?" Dr McKay argued back. "We're in barely industrial land; how would they hide an entire underground bunker from the Jumper's scanners?"
"What about lining it with lead?" Lieutenant Ford asked.
"What in case Superman drops by?" Dr McKay asked sarcastically, though Teyla did not understand the reference. "No, there's nothing here. We're in the wrong place and Kolya now probably knows. By the time we get back to Atlantis we'll have lost two hours on this."
He was right; this had been a waste. Though they had the caretaker to interrogate further, she doubted Kolya would have shared anything with the man. He would not risk leaving information out of his control. Still, they might be able to gain some information on Kolya's other hideouts from the caretaker.
And they had the communications panel. She looked round at it, to see that it had lost most of its power and the 'waiting' screen glowed faintly once more.
"At least you helped rid this place of rabid mice, McKay," Lieutenant Ford joked lightly, but she could hear the defeat in his voice.
Teyla frowned at the panel. Kolya's signal hadn't just been a basic radio signal, it had been an Alliance links signal. She should have realised that Kolya would use the Alliance tech outside of the territory. It was smart as well – set up his own distant little links network between planets where he had his secret bunkers and buildings like this one. Why hadn't she thought of it sooner?
She wondered if they could try and trace his links signals...an idea suddenly struck her. The strange and mixed up signals within the transmission into Atlantis from John's captives might represent some of Kolya's own links system. What if Kolya had used his link system to transmit part of that transmission? If they could track that frequency, that might help them unpick and identify what was in the transmission and possibly where Kolya had originally broadcast.
And the panel held the transmission frequencies Kolya was using for his links network.
She looked to Colonel Sumner. "I have an idea, but we need to take this panel with us," she stated.
00000
Seeal's eyes were starting to ache from all the reading. She had spent the whole last hour of travel sat reading through every scrap of detail on the radiation frequency analysis by the Elite's scary genius squad. The brain-squad had pulled apart the multiple aspects and layers of radiation frequencies and analysed it all to an obsessive level of theory and debate that made it clear that they had actually done too much thinking. There were too many possibilities to it all and only new readings of the radiation was going to help, or if this mission out to the Arkinian System turned up what she hoped it would.
If her theory about the 'doorways' was right, then hopefully she'd find some of these latent frequency patterns in orbit over the Arkinian moon where the new drive tech might have been used before. If they found something, then it would give the brain-squad something new and useful to help with their work, perhaps even a 'doorway' to experiment on. Plus, there was the slim possibility that the new tech might have come from the ancient Wraith base on the Arkinian moon, but, considering the devastation the crashed Wraith Cruiser had done to that base, Seeal had her doubts.
Though, apparently the Elite's research and salvage teams sent in to pick through that crash site had found some old water caverns under the surface of the moon and Oneakka and Halling were hoping there was something useful in there.
Seeal wasn't overly convinced, as the research teams had found nothing so far in the caverns except simple plant and fish life. Of course the research teams had been forced to abandon the site during the recent Alliance-wide high alert, which meant that there could still be something useful, or dangerous, down in those caverns. And if there was, there wasn't much hope of any immediate support.
The Arkinian System had no Portal providing handy Alliance back-up, and was dangerously close to the border where retaliatory Cruiser attacks were still ongoing. The Fleet would be reasonably close, but their hands were full. So, basically it was her, Oneakka, and Halling - oh, and Inifee the smiling pilot - against who knew what in those water caverns. Maybe something deadly sliding through the water unseen?
Okay, she was starting to lose focus for certain now.
She lowered the computer tablet she'd been given for the mission and closed her eyes, allowing the welcoming darkness to soothe her strained eyes a bit.
The Ancestral ship was so silent around her that she could barely believe the thing's engines were working. There was absolutely no sensation of movement, which was very weird. Even with the best of artificial gravity plating and drives that she'd experienced on ships or stations there had still been had some sensation through the deck plating. Even the most advanced Elite ships still had a faint sense of movement on sudden manoeuvres, or at least a vibration of the engines on lower decks. Even on the large and slowly moving Dreamstation there had been a feeling of the station having a heaviness to it as it ran along its long elliptical orbit of the local sun. But not this ship. With her eyes closed, she would swear she was sitting stationary on a planet. But, instead, she was on the tubular Ancestral vessel moving at a real fast pace through hyperspace.
A sense of nausea passed through her stomach at thinking about it too much and she blinked open her eyes. The dark curve of the ship's ceiling above her came into view. There were several high hanging nets holding cases of supplies and, no doubt, weapons for the Elite, and they didn't shift even faintly with the ship's motion. It was freaky.
She lowered her eyes from the ceiling, following the length of the ship to the narrowed entrance into the forward section where she could see part of Inifee's shoulder. Piloting the ship didn't seem to take a lot of concentration for him, as he was looking around a lot and consulting a holographic-like display that ghosted across the wide large front window.
She vaguely remembered Inifee from when she had been on the Sythus, having seen him in the ship's canteen and he had piloted one of the Elite's transport craft back when she had been a prisoner of the Elite. Clearly Inifee enjoyed his role as a pilot, having arrived in the Facility with a bright beaming smile at the prospect of flying Oneakka and Halling out to the Arkinian System. In fact, each time she'd seen Inifee he'd been smiling.
Smiling wasn't the theme in the rest of the ship though.
Halling's voice had been near constant for the last hour as he read out summaries of the research and salvage teams' reports, providing the information verbally for Oneakka who had been using the travel time to check, clean, and load every one of his and Halling's weapons.
She drew her gaze away from the forward section of the ship and lowered her eyes to where Oneakka was sat working on the weapons. He had all of his and Halling's guns laid out in a very orderly fashion along the opposite bench to hers and he'd selected to sit on the floor of the ship to work on them.
She'd never seen a man of Oneakka's size and muscular build sit cross-legged on the floor before; she wouldn't have believed he was flexible enough to do it. But, he'd been sat like that for almost an hour now and seemed comfortable enough as he worked his way methodically through all the weapons. He was almost finished too.
His back to her and his attention focused on the weapons and listening to Halling's summaries, he could have completely forgotten she was here.
Sitting behind and slightly higher than him provided her with an entirely new angle of Oneakka. She'd noticed before that his very short hair had grown a little longer at the front, but the new length was more obvious at the back of his head. The ends of his hair were starting to curl ever so slightly at the nape of his neck, suggesting that perhaps if he grew it out properly that maybe his short brown hair was actually slightly curly. It seemed an odd thing, as if a warrior like him wouldn't have curly hair.
Below his hairline, she had spotted a thin well-healed scar at the base of his neck, just above the line of protection provided by his moulded body armour. Judging by the angle of the line line and where it was, she suspected the strike had been intentional – someone trying to take his head off perhaps? It looked like an old scar, years old; but not as old as his facial scars. She hadn't really noted before now that those large scars down the right side of his face didn't extend around from his cheek to his neck. She was a little surprised that she hadn't noticed that before, but maybe it was because the tattoos across the right side of his face hid that fact. Both sides of his neck were free of ink or scars; in fact, his skin looked far more youthful than on first appearances.
She knew how old he was from her reading about Ugun in the Facility's database, as his Alliance standard date of birth had been listed in a very short bio on his being the last of his people. Though it was not always easy to compare different planets' year cycles, especially when she'd lived on so many different worlds in her life, she considered herself to be about 33 yearly cycles old, while Oneakka was 35 cycles according to the Alliance standard. So they were surprisingly close in ages, but it was only in the last few months in spending more time with him that she'd realised that. Maybe it was because he'd used to be simply a big aggressive Elite warrior and nothing else to her before. Elite warriors somehow always seemed older, and none had curly hair that she'd seen so far. Though, admittedly, most of the Elite wore their hair short or tied back tightly for battle.
She shifted her gaze across to the back of Oneakka's arms, which were moving as he worked on the last of the weapons laid out across the bench beside Halling, who was still droning on with depressingly boring facts from the Arkinian moon.
There was another scar across the back of Oneakka's left upper arm, which she'd noticed before since he nearly always had the full length of his arms uncovered. She idly wondered why he did that. She'd only seen him wear a long-sleeve top on a handful of occasions. She'd used to think he slept in his armour.
Except, she'd actually seen under that armour and knew that the thick protection concealed an almost hairless muscular chest and long lines of Wraith tattoos around his ribs. It had been a tiny short stolen moment glimpsed through a curtain in his Sythus quarters, and she'd later let him know that she'd seen him when she'd asked about his Ugun chest tattoo. He probably didn't care that he'd been half naked in full view. Why would he, looking like that?
Okay, her mind was wandering into some dangerous territory here.
Only her brain didn't quite want to let go of those remembered moments of him moving around his quarters bare-chested. She had apparently recorded the moment in sharp and vivid detail.
Stupid silly distracted hormones were not helpful to her.
She looked away from the handsome pale skin and impressively survived scars.
Was it warmer in here?
The urge to look back at Oneakka itched at her eyes. No, it was just all the reading and eye strain making them feel that way.
There was no point in letting herself start looking at Oneakka more closely. They both liked their mutually agreed boundaries. It was just that he was sat so close with his back to her affording her the rare chance to look at him freely without him noticing.
Damn hormones.
She stood up quickly from the bench. She needed to move around anyway, her legs were aching from being sat still for so long. She headed down the ship, needing to move away from Oneakka for a bit.
The Elite hadn't said she couldn't go sit up front for awhile; though she imagined they probably wouldn't be too keen on her taking too close an interest in all the interesting Ancestor tech.
She reached the doorway between the front and back sections of the Ancestor ship and paused in the threshold considering the doorframe. It was thicker than she'd expected, but then she realised that it would probably be an airlock between the two sections of the ship. The back hatch appeared the only way in or out of the craft, so this airlock was the only way to open the back to work in space or to protect the pilot if there was a hull breach.
That fact noted, she stepped over the airlock threshold and Inifee looked round.
"Hello," Inifee smiled at her, as cheerful as ever. He had golden coloured eyes, deeply dark skin, and an accent that suggested he was from Rosenthal.
"Hi," Seeal replied as she moved down the short aisle between the four seats and slid into the one across from Inifee. As she settled into the surprisingly comfortable seat, she glanced over the Ancestral console, but she couldn't make all that much sense of it. She continued her assessment over the other console on the right wall beside her.
"Impressive, isn't it," Inifee said.
"Yes, it is," Seeal agreed honestly. "Not that I know what I'm looking at."
"And they probably prefer that you don't," Inifee replied.
She looked back round at him, surprised at the teasing tone and he grinned at her before he shifted his attention forward to his controls again.
"I just needed a break from all the reading," she shared, feeling oddly comfortable with the man.
"Anything useful?" Inifee asked, his golden eyes on the moving display across the front window.
"Not really," Seeal confessed as she tried to understand the Ancestral language displayed across the window. "Not until we get another look at how the Hive uses its new tech. Not that we know where the thing is."
"In my experience," Inifee reported, "the Elite usually find the trouble their looking for."
She pulled her eyes from what might be readings of hyperspace frequencies to look at the smiling pilot. "So your theory is that just by the act of an Elite looking, that they'll find what they're looking for?"
"That's usually how people find things," Inifee replied logically.
"Well, that's true enough," Seeal agreed.
"I'm surprised you came along," Inifee said, his tone implying he had more to say on the subject.
"Are you?" Seeal asked, watching his profile.
"Because I hear you're more likely to be starting a Satedan riot," Inifee grinned round at her.
She sighed loudly. She had a feeling that she was never going to be allowed to forget that music festival. "It wasn't a riot. It was a brawl," she corrected.
"A large one. Madesh said the whole place went up in smoke."
"Don't believe everything Madesh tells you," she replied. "I didn't know you knew Madesh."
"I've been instructing him on advanced flight training," Inifee informed her.
Seeal sighed in disgust. "He gets to have all the fun."
"It sounds like nights out with you are plenty of fun," Inifee joked.
"Jealous?" Seeal challenged him.
"I've been stuck on the docked Sythus for too many long weeks with little to do but teach advanced piloting skills, what do you think?" Inifee asked.
"So an invitation to fly an Ancestor ship on an Elite mission into potentially dangerous territory...?" She prompted.
"Was very welcome," Inifee nodded. "Though, if there's space, I'd love to join your group on their next visit to Myrtle's. I haven't been there for ages."
"Feel free to come along," Seeal agreed. "The more the-"
"Bigger the brawl will be?" Inifee joked again.
Seeal sniggered, only to hear movement from behind. She looked round to see Oneakka approaching.
"I haven't touched anything," she told him without prompting, holding up her hands.
Oneakka reached level with the back of the front seats and leant one long pale forearm along the back of her chair. His blue eyes held just enough amusement to suggest that he might have heard Inifee's teasing comments about the Satedan brawl.
"I know," Oneakka replied and then switched his attention to Inifee. "How much longer?"
Inifee had his eyes back on the Ancestor display. "I estimate only a handful of minutes, Honoured Elite."
Seeal wondered how Oneakka had timed his question so well.
"Let's get prepped," Oneakka stated as he turned and headed back into the rear section of the ship.
"Please tell me that I get to carry a weapon this time," she asked Oneakka's wide back as she quickly followed him.
He reached the bench and its waiting spread of cleaned weaponry, where Halling was already re-arming himself from the collection.
She took a breath to make the very valid point that there could be trouble waiting for them and that her being unarmed, though she had survived the same before on missions with Elite, was hardly the best option.
Only Oneakka turned and held out a stunner for her.
She let out the breath she held ready for her argument and took the offered weapon, a little surprised at his easy agreement.
Then Halling held out an empty holster for her to use.
"Thank you," she said, trying not to sound too stunned as she took the offerings. Halling nodded in return.
He hadn't seemed as grumpy as he had been back in the Facility, but then she'd never really gotten on with the tall Elite. He was clearly the type of man who preferred quiet and calm discussions, not someone like her asking difficult and pushy questions. She had no problem with his opinion of her - that was his business - though she was a little surprised that he and Oneakka were clearly such good friends. Oneakka was hardly one to favour quiet and calm debate.
Either way, Halling seemed resigned enough to her being on the mission and she could trust him as an Elite to help watch her back.
She secured the holster around her waist, though had to use one of the last holes in the strap; clearly the holster was meant for someone far larger than her. She slid her new stunner into the holster against her right hip; she felt better now.
Then Oneakka held out another gun for her.
Two weapons? Wow. She took the larger, more powerful energy weapon from his pale hand.
"You sure know how to make a woman happy," she told him as she checked the new weapon over and slid it into place on her other hip.
"There's a defuser unit in the back of the holster," Oneakka added. "You need to activate it."
Seeal felt around the holster until her fingers found the hard pressure of one of the small round units she remembered using on the Glisi homeworld. She pulled open the top of the covering pouch and found an obvious button inside. She pressed it and felt the familiar buzzing sensation pass over her as the defuser's charge powered to life. The buzz only lasted a second, but she was now protected from Wraith stunner fire – which was always a good thing.
There was the faintest sense of something changing around her and she looked towards the front of the ship to see Inifee look round.
"We're here, Honoured Elite," the pilot called.
Halling pushed slightly past Seeal, then Oneakka after him, as the Elite moved into the forward section to see the newly revealed sight of Arkinian System. Seeal followed, squeezing into the space between the lines of seats and Oneakka's left arm, so that she could see the view and the holographic display across the window.
"Any other ships on sensors?" Halling asked Inifee.
The display shifted to show an outline of the solar system. She hadn't seen Inifee touch any controls; how had he brought that view up?
"No ships or any life-signs registering anywhere in the system," Inifee reported at the same time that Seeal saw the same on the display.
"Any signs of the new radiation?" Halling asked next. His voice was lower than normal, as were Inifee's replies, as if whispering might help them sneak past any waiting enemies.
The display shifted with lines of data and graphs of frequencies. Seeal leant further forward to watch, leaning one elbow on the top of one Ancestral chair as she did. She couldn't understand the language displayed still, but the frequency graphs made some sense to her. If she was reading it right, there was just the usual kind of background signals.
"No," Inifee confirmed her conclusion. "I'm picking up just the local phenomena, and even that is some distance away."
"Where is the target moon?" Halling asked.
The display shifted, returning to the former map of the solar system and then zooming into one aspect of it; a planet with a large-ish moon rotating around it.
"Take us to it," Oneakka ordered and immediately the view outside beyond the display started to change as Inifee angled the Ancestral ship off to the relative left. A planet swept into view and then moved off to the right as the ship flew towards a distant large blue planet. The approach was amazingly fast, the smoothness of the ride belying just how powerful this Ancestral ship's engines had to be working. Still, inside, she felt nothing of the movement and vibrations of travelling at such speed. Her stomach threatened to roll a little as she watched the planet approaching and then veering off to the right as Inifee took them around towards the newly visible dry looking innocuous moon orbiting the planet.
Well, it was an innocuous moon apart from the massive smear of blackened mess that was the remains of the ancient Wraith base and the Wraith cruiser that had impacted it. It was all looking rather too familiar to her now. Flashes of fighting the slug robots played across her mind.
"I don't like this system," she muttered as she stood up straight again from her interested forward leaning. Oneakka's arm was a warm, oddly comforting, pressure against her right arm.
What if the slugs inside those robots had come from the water caverns on the moon?
"I'm not detecting anything out of the ordinary in orbit in or around the moon," Inifee supplied.
Seeal focused on the new frequency readings. Inifee was right, there was nothing obvious and certainly none of the particular brand of dangerous radiation from the Hive's drive.
"The Hive hasn't been here then," she considered, feeling a faint touch of relief. "We need to scan the region over the base where we saw the Seed Ship appear and disappear the last time we were here."
"And we need to get down to the water caverns under the base," Oneakka added the other part of this mission.
"I have located the Research and Salvage landing point," Inifee announced, the view of the moon now filling the screen as he descending the ship towards the dark smear that was the remains of the former base.
"Drop us there and we'll check the caverns while you scan the identified areas in orbit for any residual readings left by the Seed Ship," Halling instructed Inifee.
Inifee nodded, though his eyes were concentrating forward as the ship lowered towards the dark surface the moon. "Yes, Honoured Elite."
"Keep the cloaking shield up at all times," Halling added as he turned and pushed between Seeal and Oneakka, Oneakka following him. Seeal, though, held still, watching Inifee's impressive approach down towards the surface of the moon. She watched as the dark blot of the former Cruiser went from a simple area of the moon to a vast area of the moon's surface soon rushing below the ship's belly. The damage the Cruiser had wrought was as impressive as it was a little terrifying.
Had the Cruiser's crash resulted from damage from the Seed Ship having gutted the underside of their ship? Had they been trying to ram the Seed Ship when it had been in orbit of the moon and, the Seed Ship having escaped with its crazy jumping drive, had the Cruiser had nowhere to go but cash into the moon?
Or, had it been a deliberate and desperate act of the Wraith? Had they used their last remaining breaths and the heavy bulk of hull and explosive power of the impacting engines to destroy the base on this moon?
What could there possibly have been in that base that would make them do that?
And, more importantly, was the reason still here? Still hiding down in the water caverns beneath?
Whatever the answer was, she was about to find out, first hand.
She turned her back on the view and strode down the length of the Ancestral ship to join Oneakka and Halling at the back hatch. Halling had one hand raised, holding ready over the control to open the back hatch the second the ship landed, and Oneakka was drawing one of his stunners out of his holster.
She drew out her own stunner from her borrowed, and overly large, holster and set her boots solidly on the plating under her. Waiting and ready.
"I'm bringing us in," Inifee announced from behind her.
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TBC