"What are you doing?" Kincaid asked, leaning in as I started reaching along the side of the cylinder - patting along it systematically.

"Looking for the door." I replied in English, scratching at the metal with the talon tips of my gauntlets. "This spaceship isn't of Goa'uld make - so I'm not sure how to get in."

There was a tone of confusion in Kincaid's voice given the chain of events leading up to this point when he asked, "Spaceship?"

I froze for a moment, trying to reconcile the simple absurdity of that question with the chain of events leading up to this point. I mean - he had to know, didn't he? How could he possibly have gotten this far into this process without understanding something that basic? "Excuse me? What did you just ask?"

"It's not important." Kincaid shook his head. "Really if you'd just come over - "

"No, no, no - I want to address this." I shushed the mercenary. "Kincaid - where do you think the Stargate took you? The big ring you walked through to kidnap me?"

"Another planet." The Mercenary replied immediately. "It's a magical artifact that can transport people between rings."

"How did you think people got to those planets to put the rings there?" I continued to fiddle with the wall. "Stars and Stones, what did you think the transport was? A freaking helicopter?"

"I'm not an idiot - Warden." Kincaid replied glibly. "I just meant that there's no clear source of propulsion. Damned if I know how it flies. No wings - no engines. "

"And no doors." I groused, kicking the side of it in annoyance.

"Not on that side, certainly." Kincaid replied in amusement, leaning up against the side of the craft next to where I'd kicked it. He had the audacity to look cool doing it too, the jerk.

I closed my eyes and exhaled long and slow. "There is an obvious door on the back of it, isn't there?"

"Yep." Kincaid replied, fiddling with the sight on his oversized automatic rifle.

"And you were telling me about it when I interrupted you, weren't you?" I slumped my shoulders and walked over to the no patently obvious location of the hatch. I'd grown accustomed to Goa'uld design. Ptah's ships would never include a rear section without additional armor. It was just begging for someone to shoot you from behind. Apparently the designers of this ship were confident that it wouldn't be flanked or had designed it for civilian rather than military use.

"No - you'd never do something foolish like that oh "Lord" Warden." Kincaid's satisfied grin made me want to punch him. I didn't though. "You're a god."

"You're lucky I'm a merciful god." I groused.

Once I'd located an actual door, opening the ship was relatively easy. The gangplank descended and exposed a pretty much empty interior. I found myself sharing Kincaid's doubts - how did this thing fly? There was no apparent engine and if there were ritual markings or objects involved, they were too subtle for me to see them. I spoke softly as I walked inside, "Well - I'm here. What now?"

Ammit poked her head in after me, speaking in a voice of utter reverence. "This is Gate Builder technology. I've never been this close to it. Ra had some of it, but it was too dangerous to allow people unrestricted access."

"Did not the Goa'uld build the stargates?" Asked a nervous voice from the door. The fur clad priestess was poking her nose around the door.

"We built the gate network as it stands now." Ammit replied diplomatically, mulling over the question. "But the Stargates? I don't think many Goa'uld bothered to make new ones. There is as much naquadah in a single gate as most empires. We usually just took gates from worlds that couldn't support the life of our client races. The species before us made them. I've always reasoned that's why there's so little naquadah remaining. They already mined the most practical locations."

"What manner of monsters could exist in a world before the Gods? How can such a thing even be permitted?" Muminah looked like the very idea of species before the Goa'uld would derail our conversation for days but I really felt that she was focusing on the wrong part of Ammit's sentence.

"Too dangerous?" I replied nervously, reflexively pulling my hand away from the square block of crystal I'd been touching. I only realized that I'd been speaking in English, after Kincaid flinched - hesitating to enter. I switched to Goa'uld. "What kind of danger?

"Here in the ship? Nothing - well, hopefully nothing." Ammit scratched at her brow ridge nervously. "The Gate Builders were all immensely magically gifted. They designed their technology assuming a baseline capacity to use magic that puts the Hok'tar to shame."

"I've never even heard of the Gate Builders." I arched a brow. "Heka's library didn't contain much about them. It seems like the sort of thing he would have been focused on."

"Heka wasn't dumb enough to keep anything relating to them where just anyone could find it. If we broadcast the existence of the Gate Builders then some idiot would try to go and actually find their stuff without taking the proper precautions. Heka and Ptah were pretty much the only ones with enough knowledge to safely lead one of those expeditions." Ammit shuddered at the thought of it. "Nobody with half a brain should want to join one either. Their cities and ships are effectively minefields of accidentally lethal objects and experiments that were as likely to destroy the world we find them on as advance our civilization by thousands of years."

"Are you telling me that if I interact with this ship improperly I could blow up the planet." I groused. "Why would you make a transport that could blow up the planet? Why would you need a transport that can blow up a planet?"

"Not the planet - no. Probably the continent… I hope." Ammit sighed. "I wouldn't dwell on how deadly this thing has the capacity to be. We don't exactly have a choice. Byan itself? That's a different story. That place is intentionally lethal. We should be fine though, Buyan won't attack a Gate Builder ship."

"When you say "won't" attack," I shifted my staff to my left hand as I put it against another door control to open the cockpit. "Do you know that or are you just guessing?"

"The Archive managed not to get shot when she used one of these to escape Buyan. But I don't know how the defenses to that thing work, it's a best guess" Ammit shrugged as she followed me into the cockpit, perching daintily on the massively undersized co-pilot's seat. " I know it worked the first time I used one of these. Can't say much more that that for sure."

"You dragged us half-way across a planet on a gut hunch that we might not die if we used a ship that might not destroy the continent when we turn it on." I snorted, amused at the absurdity of the reversal. "Ammit - do you actually have a plan?"

"What? You're the only one that gets to make it up as you go along?" Ammit tapped the controls in irritation. She fidgeted with the buttons and dials, pressing keys and symbols seemingly at random as she muttered under her breath. Apparently for naught, nothing responded to her attempts.

"Ugh - useless. The Ancients gene locked these things to only work for them." She snorted, looking at me sidelong with reptilian amusement. "I suppose this is how most of the creatures who stumble on our tech feel. Ptah does love to steal from the best."

"Wait - then what are we even doing here? If we can't turn it on it's pointless to even try." I sat down in the Pilot's chair, grabbing what looked vaguely like a steering wheel. "I don't get it - if these things only work for the Gate Builders, how did the Archive get them to turn on?"

"You know what, Warden? For just this once - it's nice to be the one who knows what's going to happen before you do." Ammit's crocodilian grin of amusement lit up as the dark interior of the chariot was suddenly bathed in blue-white illumination.

As though the ship had been an extension of my very body it responded to the idea of "turning on" by flashing to life. Lights flared to life from seemingly everywhere, a grinding whirr of engines, hidden god alone knew where, filled the tube as holograms shimmered into view. To my surprise, in spite of never having seen the symbols before - I could read them. I might never have heard of these Gate Builders before, but apparently Lash had. I looked at Ammit, befuddled. "How?"

"Hok'tar, Warden - the Wizards. They're the remaining bloodlines of the Gate Builders." Ammit smiled sadly. "That's why every Goa'uld wanted them instead of the other magical races."

She gestured at the glowing controls, prodding uselessly at buttons in the holographic display. Her talons found no purchase. "I could sit in this ship for eternity and never use it. You can be here for minutes and have it respond to your every whim. There are some systems hard-wired to stuff I can touch - the gate controls for example - but most of it? Entirely useless to one without the blood of the Builders."

"This ship of the Builders?" Muminah inquired nervously. "The blood of the Gods before Gods - is it enough to command this vessel?"

That was actually a good question. By all rights I should have been horrified at the prospect of flying a spaceship. Embarrassing though it was to admit it, I wasn't even a particularly good driver. Yeah, I know it means someone out there is looking to revoke my man card, but honestly I drive in one of two ways. Either I'm scrupulously obeying the traffic laws in an effort to not stand out in any way that might spook a suspect or draw the attention of a cop, or I'm disregarding all traffic laws in a concerted effort not to die. Flying a plane was a skill set that took years to master - the space shuttle took a lifetime. I should have been utterly petrified to be trying to pilot a vessel from the dawn of freaking time.

But I wasn't. Something - call it intuition, call it a gut feeling, call it a sense of destiny - you can call it whatever you like - something was telling me that this was something I could do without even trying. My hands fit into the controls as effortlessly as if I'd been holding my staff or blasting rod. Just another tool.

"I think - no, I know that I can fly this." I flipped through the holograms, manipulating the menus to show me what I was looking for. This interface was flawless - I don't know if I'd ever used anything as user friendly as it. Unlike the Goa'uld technology this had been made for a near human mind with near human sensibilities for presentation of information and indications. "Is everyone good to go?"

"Da!" Replied the Colonel as the rear door closed. "And I want one of these as well."

"Not in the deal, Colonel." I looked over my shoulder at the quartet of Russians, noting the lack of other seats. "Uh - hold on to something. I don't know how fast this is going to be."

I tightened my hold of the control grips and lightly manipulated it towards where I wanted it to go and the cylinder leapt to life as though I'd been flying one of these all my life. If I didn't know better, I would have sworn that this thing was alive - it moved through the air with such utter elegance. A red triangle appeared on the holographic interface in an instant as I considered the location of Buyan, hovering in the starry sky three hundred thousand miles above us.

"Holy crap," I whistled. "Uh - well, buckle up kids. It looks like we're going to the Moon."

"Sorry - could you please say that again?" Colonel Zhukov replied with his lips quirked upward and his eyes closed.

"We're going to the Moon?" I repeated, observing as he adjusted his beret. "I mean, he's in a flying city ship. The Moon is a reasonable place to hide."

"Nyet - Nyet," The Colonel's wistful tone sounded almost bashful. "I just never passed the physicals to be a Cosmonaut. It just sounds nice to hear out loud - We're going to the moon. It has a good ring to it."

"Well Buzz Zhukov - you're going to get your wish." Kincaid replied, grinning from ear to ear. Hell - they all were. Who doesn't want to go to the moon?"

There were some days where being a Wizard was just downright cool. Flying a spaceship abandoned by first Wizards of all time to fight an evil geriatric on the moon? Yeah - that was a pretty cool day. I hummed the theme to Star Wars as I punched the accelerator, propelling us across the sky.

It flowed through the open air like a dream, disregarding the wisdom of Bernoulli with casual ease. Unfortunately age and decrepitude seemed to have taken their toll on it, it plodded through the air at a pace that seemed more on par with the Land Beetle than it's Skyward namesake. I was getting a comfortable two hundred miles an hour of of it, which was the interstellar equivalent to flying a paddleboat to the moon.

As we pierced the cloud cover, heading up through vaporous puffs of altostratus a cluster of fast wege-like objects appeared on my holographic readout. As I idly considered what they might be the image zoomed in on the approaching object, displaying a long nosed craft with a red star on its tail.

"Friends of yours Colonel?" I asked, willing the ship to move faster.

"Cheburashka," The Colonel groaned. "MiG-23s, they are coming to intercept the unknown craft in their airspace. Others will follow."

"Damn it." They were going to catch up to me in an instant. And they were definitely armed.

"Does this thing have a radio?" Kincaid asked. "Something to communicate with them so you can tell them to back off."

"Are you insane? Someone has just nuked Russia. Nothing is allowed in our airspace in that state of emergency." The Colonel scoffed at the suggestion. "They will be operating on encrypted comms and treating all unknown contacts as aggressors. Even if I were to identify myself over unencrypted communications my words would be dismissed as lies. No, Kincaid, they are coming to kill us as soon as they can."

Smaller red objects detached from the triangular objects, barreling towards us. I didn't need the Colonel's scream of "incoming" to know what they were. Missiles, mortal missiles to be sure but I was pretty sure that Russia had cracked open the "in case of" cabinet under the circumstances."

We were basically just an unarmed block of metal floating in open air. I did not need to be seen right now. I definitely didn't want to be seen by someone with freaking missiles. "They're too close."

And then suddenly, with a shimmering whirr of moving machinery within the walls I felt a rush of energy washing over the hull of the craft. It didn't feel quite like magic - it was too cool and calculated to be any magic I'd ever experienced. Magic was a passionate force. It came from somewhere. Even ritual magics had some sort of emotional or spiritual component to them. The power that was suddenly surrounding me was just raw logic. It was as though someone through sheer force of mathematical will had demanded the universe comply with the inexorable conclusion of their sums.

It wasn't wrong, not in the way that black magic or some of the nastier pacts with dark beings left a stench on the world, but it was so clinical that it might as well have been cast by a robot. That wasn't to say I didn't recognize its purpose. You don't spend months of your life conducting war councils with Mab and not understand the nuances of illusionary magic.

Especially when the missiles that were previously heading straight for you careen out in random directions, attempting to find the target that had been there only moments ago. The confused Russian pilots spread out, trying to maximize their area of coverage as they impotently searched for an aircraft that was suddenly no longer in the skies.

The Colonel sighed in mixed relief and exasperation. "I am going to find, thank, kiss, then summarily execute whatever morons are charge of training those pilots in the use of their systems and maintaining the upkeep of their radar."

"Not their fault." I pitched us out of earth's atmosphere, I replied in English so that Kincaid wasn't out of the loop. "I made it so they couldn't see us."

"You can manipulate the eyes of pilots flying faster than the speed of sound beyond visual range?" Marchenko exhaled long and frustratedly. "How - that's - just how?"

"Magic." I replied, hoping against hope that the chariot would hide itself as well from Buyan as it did from MiGs. "Come on can this thing move any faster?"

"Did you disengage the landing gear?" Inquired Vallarin.

"Did I what?" I looked around at the soldier.

"The legs that extend out under the craft to stabilize it." Asked the Soldier. "I noticed them when we were on the ground… did you retract them?"

My eye twitched as a command prompt appeared as I considered his suggestion, offering to retract the landing gear. I pressed "yes" on the holographic display and resisted the urge to scream in frustration as the craft accelerated faster than the Sky Beetle could have ever hoped to match.

I did not dare look back at Kincaid and the smug look I knew was plastered on his face as we propelled up towards the moon.