ACT 1 – DISCOVERY
Chapter 6 – Broken Pieces
Teyla watched the two docking freight vessels manoeuvre on the front view screen, the two ships moving against a bare background of hardly any pinpoints of starlight out in this empty region of the galaxy. It was only the bright forward lights of the Sythus and two other Fleet ships that provided enough illumination to see the wreck that had been the first target of this hunt mission.
Two ship hulls detected drifting with no power readings.
Except it had turned out not to be two derelict ships, but one that had been broken entirely in half, the two parts drifting a short distance from each other.
Teyla watched the smaller shapes moving into the closest broken half of the ship, the boarding party in space-ready suits. The docking freight vessels had hooked onto the broken pieces of the ship, stabilising their drift and providing the boarding crews access, their magnetised boots providing safe passage onto the powerless wrecks.
It was very disconcerting to see the broken edges of the halved ship. She had seen all manner of damage to ships, buildings, and people in her career thus far, but she could not recall having seen such a raw ragged edge. It was as if something massive had grasped the back and front of the small scout-sized ship and simply torn it in two pieces.
"Same as the back half here so far," Seifer's voice echoed out of the link from the closest boarding team. "It looks like components have been removed," he grunted, suggesting the angle of the ship's floor wasn't as level as it appeared to Teyla's eye from inside the Sythus. "Wall screens torn out, a section of floor plating," Seifer grunted again. "Watch your footing there," he added to someone in his team.
Teyla looked away from the visual view to the tactical display table, watching the sensor data flowing in. The other half of the broken ship had already been searched, finding only components removed and no sign of any former life. She watched more analysis and data flowing across the screens, building a fuller but no more conclusive picture of the derelict.
"We have the latest results of the samples taken," Si was the one to report out loud for all to hear, not just in Central Station but also those in the boarding parties and on the other ships over the audio link. "No evidence of energy weapons damage on the fault line of the ship, no charring or evidence of explosive decompression."
Teyla shifted round to look at the data in more detail as a central screen filled with the detailed scan of the exterior of both ends of the ship.
"Definitely a Salvager ship," Halling confirmed as the Sythus' computer reconstructed the entire ship from the sensor readings. "Evidence of significant physical impacts and old weapons damage."
"Not all that unusual for any Salvager ship," Teyla noted. Given the rather competitive and foolhardy adventurism that was normal for the Salvagers, their ships often sported various dents, scratches and weapons burn marks.
"No evidence of any radiation damage due to exposure to the Skerti Drive tech. However, there is evidence of clamping marks on both ends of the ship," Halling continued. "Evidence of major structural weakness stemming from those points, but also possible penetration damage to the left side of the hull. Appears as if the ship was cut into from one side and then physically wrenched apart."
"We've reached the piloting section," Seifer reported from the front half of the Salvager ship.
All heads turned towards the front view, all ears focusing in on what would be found.
Seifer's voice grunted with effort. "Computer core is completely missing, along with a large section of the front piloting console." There were more noises suggesting Seifer was crouching down and reaching into the console in question. "Nothing left of it; even the circuitry and conduits inside the remaining console sections have been gutted."
Teyla sighed. The computer, even if a large part of it had been damaged, would likely have provided valuable information on what had happened to the ship.
"No bodies," another voice reported from the Satedan boarding party.
Teyla watched the data flowing in from the team's sensors. She frowned at the constructed images and data.
"The screens have been physically torn out of the walls here," Seifer continued. "Ripped out."
"Salvagers don't behave like this," Si noted. "They carefully remove items to preserve the components for use elsewhere."
Teyla nodded. "And it is not like them to abandon whole ships. Even broken, the hulls are valuable metals." Salvagers were known to 'acquire' abandoned ships in the past, but they literally took the entire vessel to repurpose it or to disassemble and use the components elsewhere. It was a known matter of pride to the Salvagers that they could reuse anything; even if that meant simply melting down metals to be used to construct other items.
"Unless they were in a serious hurry and had no time but to rip out the components they needed to replace their own?" Jobrill suggested.
"But they took the computer core," Teyla replied. "That suggests concealing what truly happened here. And the wall screens, they would have held residual data that we could have accessed."
"Clearing their tracks," Jobrill nodded.
And Teyla knew it was in all their minds whose tracks this was perhaps attempting to conceal.
"Seifer?" Halling called into the air. "Any signs of a struggle?"
"When the computer core was ripped out it caused a lot of damage to the front piloting seats and the floor, but nothing obvious that I can see."
"Any blood?" Teyla asked.
There was a pause and she watched as more sensor data from the team flooded in.
"Nothing," Seifer replied. "Nothing on the walls, floors, or on the chairs. No signs of any life being here actually."
"The ship was perhaps drifting for weeks, so it is likely any personal items inside were lost into space," Nalla stated.
"Or the ship was fully evacuated before it was torn apart?" Young Isen suggested.
"Possible," Halling nodded as he tapped on a screen.
Teyla watched the latest data flow joining the existing visual reconstruction of the inside of the broken Salvager ship. She frowned at the wreckage of the piloting station out of which the computer core had been brutally removed. As Seifer had reported, it looked like part of the floor had been ripped up with it all. Like someone had just grabbed and ripped, cutting and tearing anything vaguely connected to the core to aid the fast removal. She had never seen any Salvagers work like this, but if removing the core had been their highest priority and done in the panic of battle…
"We're not getting any residual biological data from the remaining console surfaces or the chairs," one of Seifer's boarding party reported. "No evidence at all, not even of the Salvagers." The Satedan female sounded understandably frustrated with the results.
"Sythus, this is Sensor Platform," another voice entered into the audio link.
"Commander Teije, we read you," Halling replied instantly. The Military Fleet's Sensor Platform Ship was the most sophisticated scientific ship in the Alliance and it had been the Elite's first request for this mission.
"We have completed our full initial scan of the region," the ship's Commander replied. "No signs of any Wraith readings, current or in recent past. No evidence of any Wraith weapons fire, no Hives within this Sector, but we are detecting two more small ships ahead of current position. Sending summary of the data now."
"Receiving," Si noted and Teyla watched him shift a new scan chart into the centre of the display table.
"I cannot send you our original data as only this ship's systems can read it, but you can see what we have so far," Commander Teije added.
Teyla considered the simple display. The Sensor Platform's detection range covered an area far wider than even the Sythus was able to detect, their sensor chart now supplying details of a gaseous nebula off front left on the edge of sensors, a small micro-asteroid field close to it, and then two dots labelled as metallic hulls.
The detected ships were a significant distance from each other, the furthest on the limit of even the Sensor Platform Ship's range, but both were ahead of the Fleet's current position.
"No energy readings of any kind again, and showing signs of simple drift," Teyla noted out loud. "Just like this derelict."
"They almost form a direct line from here," Si frowned.
"Perhaps all from the same battle that damaged this ship?" Young Isen asked.
"Or the source of the damage," Jobrill considered.
Teyla shifted her attention round to Halling, the next move obvious. Halling nodded at her and then glanced around the table.
"Valse?" Halling called.
"Valse here, Honoured Elite," Commander Ara replied instantly.
"I suggest we split the Fleet into two, if you complete the analysis on this derelict, we'll take the other half ahead to the next detected ship."
"Agreed, Honoured Elite."
00000
"Sixty people?" John frowned up from the yellow legal pad that held the long list of Ancient names that Dr Jackson had pulled out of Janus' logs. "And you're going to read all of their journals? How long are the logs?"
"On average about one hundred and eighty years each," Jackson replied from his chair next to an Ancient console, the screen in front of him full of Ancient spiel.
"That's ten thousand eight hundred years of logs!" John pointed out.
"Another win for high school maths," Rodney muttered from the table set up alongside Jackson. But whereas Jackson was reading direct from the Ancient screen, Rodney was hunched over his laptop, out the back of which ran glowing cables into the Ancient console.
John decided to ignore Rodney and focus on Jackson. "And you want to read every page of all these logs?"
Jackson nodded with bizarrely cheerful optimism.
"Can't you just like do a word search through them all?" John asked.
"And look for what?" Rodney interrupted. "Bat Cave?"
John narrowed his eyes at Rodney. The guy had been real ratty today, clearly still annoyed at having been pulled off the taskforces to help Dr Jackson. Annoyingly though, Rodney had his entire focus on the laptop screen and was missing John's warning glares. It had in fact been strangely quiet in here when John and Skan had first arrived to see how the new Janus project was going, so John had to wonder if Rodney was sulking.
"I was thinking along the lines of 'Janus' or 'suspicious behaviour'," John replied as he dropped the legal pad back onto the end of the lab table. "Or 'hidden lab', even."
"Yes, that could speed things up," Jackson replied as he reached forward, picking up the legal pad. "But then we might miss more subtle hints by those who worked with Janus, or a passing comment that could turn out to be useful. And it's possible some Ancients may have even gone out of their way not to use Janus' name specifically if something was suspicious to them or if they were working with him on some secret research."
Skan, the surfer-dude Elite, moved past John, wandering around behind the lab table to peer at Rodney's laptop screen.
"Do these sixty Ancients have like summaries of their days?" John asked hopefully.
"Some of them are brief," Jackson winced slightly as he glanced at the Ancient screen. John could read Ancient numbers and basic words used to describe the different parts of Atlantis, but the current full screen of words was lost on him. He preferred the laptop translations, which clearly Rodney was using today.
"And some of them go on about every little bit of their days," Rodney added, finally looking up from the laptop. "This Ancient is talking about what he had for breakfast one day." Rodney suddenly became aware of Skan looking over his shoulder and glared up at the Elite.
A small burst of panic hit John that Rodney was going to snap at the Elite warrior. "Was this Ancient sitting next to Janus when he had his breakfast?" He quickly asked Rodney.
Rodney looked away from Skan with frown. "No."
"So move on," John suggested, glad at least Rodney was making eye contact again.
"How about you sit in here and help us out?" Rodney suggested back.
"Honoured Elite Skan and I are still doing our afternoon rounds," John smiled back at Rodney. "We're about to head out to see how Carson's team are doing."
"The retrovirus work?" Jackson asked with interest.
John saw Skan look round at Jackson with a faint frown.
"Yep, that's the stuff," John replied to Jackson.
Skan moved behind Rodney's chair, which made McKay hunker down a bit and frown over his other shoulder as Skan headed towards Jackson, the Elite's eyes now on the Ancient screen.
"You are reading the Ancestor language without translation, Dr Jackson?" Skan asked.
Jackson looked round and up at the Elite. "Yes, I find it helps reduce mistranslation and I can get a better grasp of the subtle meaning this way."
"But you're on the translation programme?" John took the opportunity to ask Rodney. "I thought you could read Ancient?"
"I have a very good grasp of the technical stuff," Rodney protested quickly. "I don't need to know descriptions of food or slang terms."
"You're on the training wheels, got it," John teased.
"The technical side is all that is important in keeping this city running," Rodney countered.
"The Ancients' personal logs use a far more casual language," Jackson added in, seemingly coming to Rodney's aid. "There's even a noticeable shift of some words which make me suspect that there were some different dialects developing here in Atlantis over time, perhaps even picked up from interactions with other species. It's interesting to see the differences here compared to what we see on Earth, where the different dialects seem to have increased in variation…"
"That's great," John interrupted quickly, recognising the start of a long scientific lecture when he heard one. "Honoured Elite Skan and I had better be moving on, get to the retrovirus team." He backed up a step.
"Okay, great," Jackson simply smiled and turned back to the Ancient screen, but Rodney gave John a knowing look.
"Enjoy your reading," John smiled sarcastically at Rodney. "Let me know how that Ancient's lunch goes."
Rodney pulled a face, but was distracted away as Skan moved past close behind his chair again.
John smiled towards Skan as the Elite headed towards him; the Elite's face was pretty controlled, but John suspected he saw enough signs to suggest the Elite was pleased to move on too.
"I'll check in with you both later," John told the scientists as he backed further towards the door. "Maybe bring you guys something from the Mess."
Jackson gave a distracted nod and wave, but Rodney was back to hunching over his laptop.
His escape complete, John stepped out into the corridor outside the small lab to find Skan waiting for him, the male's attention directed back into the room.
"Good to go?" John checked.
Skan nodded and turned, striding off in the right direction, which was pretty impressive considering this was only the second time the guy had been to his part of the tower. John increased the length of his stride to casually catch up with the Elite.
"Have you worked on other missions with Dr Jackson before now?" Skan asked as they turned a corner, now out of earshot of the lab.
"Not directly, but he's probably got more battlefield experience than any other scientist I know. Well," John reconsidered that, "perhaps except for Colonel Carter. And Dr McKay has actually-"
"You respect Dr Jackson's work?"
"Absolutely," John insisted, frowning up at Skan next to him. "He's highly respected back home. The guy almost single-handedly helped stop some serious alien threats back in our galaxy. There's no one more qualified to help us find Janus' lab."
Skan's strides had shorted into a more comfortable walking pace. "And his stories about ascending to the Ancestors' plane of existence?"
"Look I know it sounds crazy, but we're talking about a race of beings that turned themselves into pure energy or whatever it is they actually do when they ascend."
"I do not doubt what the Ancestors did," Skan replied his blue eyes meeting John's as they walked. "But there have been many over the years who have claimed to have done what Sythus and Hastos did."
Ah, John knew this story from Teyla. "The first two Elite warriors who decided to return from being ascended to help fight the Wraith."
Skan nodded, clearly pleased John knew the story. "Exactly, and it is a story many deceivers have used to convince the weak-minded that they know the true path of the Ancestors."
Okay that was interesting news. "Really? Like Ancestor cults?"
"Some even maintain that your people should be forcibly removed from this city and that it be claimed back by those of this galaxy."
"Te- my Honoured Wife warned us about them," John replied, almost slipping into using Teyla's name, but continued on quickly. "And though I'm sure there are con-artists in this galaxy who make up stories of ascending, Dr Jackson really did it. More than once."
"You are certain of that?" Skan asked, sounding less suspicious now and more like it was an honest request for John's opinion.
"Absolutely," John assured him, pulling up, facing Skan in the empty corridor. "If asked to, I'd have Dr Jackson on my team without question."
Skan seemed to consider that. "And he is trustworthy to share what he might find?"
"Hey, with Jackson's type, it's getting them to stop talking about what they find that's the problem."
Skan abruptly smiled. "I do, indeed, know what you mean," he chuckled and started forward again.
A little thrown by the sudden display of a sense of humour, John found himself hurrying to catch up again. What was it with Elite and striding? Did they take classes in confident fast walking when they trained? He'd have to ask Teyla when she got back…whenever that would be.
The aching fear hit him again. He'd managed to go most of the day without the freaking out worrying about her, as Jackson's arrival was something new and distracting, but the worries were back again.
She'd be okay.
She was his warrior princess; she'd be fine.
He and Skan were abruptly at the doors to the most local transporter and John wasn't sure he'd been the one leading the way here, but he stepped in alongside Skan and triggered the point on the map for the transporter closest to Carson's retrovirus team. Light burst through the room and the doors opened to the new corridor.
"Were Hastos and Sythus the only Elite who de-ascended?" John muddled through the term, not sure if it was right.
"Yes," Skan replied. "Though there is some disagreement on whether they did ascend again when they eventually met their end."
"Turning into a bright floating cloud of light is usually the giveaway," John replied as they turned into the corridor that led to the section of rooms set aside for Carson's project.
Two Marines were stationed outside the main entrance and both looked pretty bored and ready for their shift to end. However, they put on a good show of abruptly looking alert and nodding politely as John and Skan headed into the research rooms.
It looked pretty much the same in here as the last few days, with both the Atlantis and Elite-sent teams all sat in front of two large whiteboards that were covered in diagrams and words John didn't understand. In front of the scribbles stood Carson and the Elite's top biological scientist – and major Carson-fan – Imseti. There seemed to be a lot of discussion going on, heated and fast, among them all, but John had learnt a long time ago that just because scientists were excited about something, in no way meant an actual real outcome was incoming. They got excited about all sorts of weird and entirely useless things.
So John focused his attention round to where Lorne, who was on duty watching over the retrovirus research room today, shot up from his chair. Lorne had been sat with his boots propped up on another chair, clearly finding the duty pretty boring.
"Colonel," Lorne said formally and nodded to Skan. "Honoured Elite."
"Major," John replied with an amused nod of his own. "How are things going in here?" he asked.
"It's been another busy afternoon at the whiteboards, Sir," Lorne reported, his tone telling John just how boring it had been. This certainly wasn't the most interesting guard duty. At least those on duty on the other pier got to watch generators, space guns, and satellite build discussions going on. And, of course, be ever ready if the space gun research team needed a weapons test once the first prototype was built.
"It's all important work," John reminded him, but gave Lorne an understanding wince. "If you want, I can see if you'd prefer to help McKay and Dr Jackson read through thousands of Ancient logs?" John suggested.
Lorne pulled a face. "Maybe I'll stick down here."
"Yeah, thought so," John chuckled looking round to see that Skan was heading towards the scientists. As most of them had their backs to the door, it was only Imseti from the Elite crew who noticed Skan approaching and she straightened her posture and bowed towards him. The other Elite scientists all shot up from their seats and did the whole 'bow-to-an-Elite' thing. It was a routine John had seen twice a day every day since the joint taskforces had started.
And John usually left Skan to do exactly what he was doing now, striding up to Carson and Imseti and asking for developments. John usually got his far more informative summary of the day from Carson in the Mess Hall later. Unlike Rodney and Radek, Carson was far better at keeping to sensible working hours. Perhaps that was because this team was still on the 'ideas phase' or perhaps it was because Carson was still somewhat recovering from his wounds. Though his arm fracture was all in the past now and his burn scars were as healed as they could be, he hadn't been back at full-time working all that long now. And what he'd gone through in that explosion had clearly left a far deeper mark on him than simple surface scars.
That said, it was real good to see Carson back to his more usual excitable research self. John watched as Carson and Imseti filled Skan in on what they had been discussing with the teams. There was a lot of gesturing with dry-markers and Carson was framing a section of what looked like a DNA diagram with his hands.
Skan was nodding back, seeming to understand exactly what they were saying or, perhaps, just better at faking it than John.
Either way, John would get the lowdown from Carson later, oh and from the official reports. He did try to read the daily updates from the research teams, but they were in such technical language that he preferred Carson and Rodney's cliff note versions.
"Dr Jackson think he'll crack our Janus lab problem soon?" Lorne asked, cutting through John's thoughts.
"Apparently he thinks the answers are in the Ancients' logs," John supplied.
"Hasn't McKay already read through Janus' stuff?"
"Yeah, but Jackson thinks Janus' lovers and assistants are the next best bet," John answered.
"Lovers?" Lorne pulled an impressed face. "Go Janus."
"It could take a while though," John summarised for him. "I wasn't kidding when I said there are thousands of years of logs for them to read through."
"Bet McKay's loving that," Lorne chuckled.
John nodded as he watched Carson go back to gesturing with a dry marker and then start redrawing part of the DNA diagram again in a tiny free spot of space on the whiteboard.
"The Elite heard anything new on the Skerti?" Lorne asked next.
"Nah," John looked round at him. "Their hunting party are still under silent running, so no news is probably good news," he hoped.
God he hoped Teyla was okay wherever she was.
Hopefully not battling hordes of Skerti in hand-to-hand combat while he was stood here all nice and safe in Atlantis watching scientists waving their hands at whiteboards.
If Jackson and Rodney could find Janus' lab ASAP then hopefully John would actually have something useful to help Teyla - and the other Elite - fight the Skerti.
Because right now, it all kind of felt like they were in a holding pattern, waiting for something to happen.
Waiting for labs to be found, new tech to be built, or this retrovirus to work.
Though any one of those successes right now would likely be a game-changer, what he'd actually prefer to hear was that Teyla was alive and well.
Maybe she'd even already found the Skerti hiding away in that asteroid field. Maybe the Elite were already sorting out a peace-treaty with the Skerti and everything was going to be fine.
Yeah, because things always went that easily…
0000
TBC