Previously: Adventures. Or something. Since Chapter 103. Anna found a lab that belonged to Janus (no, not that Janus), and Radek found some nifty stuff in the Atlantis lookalike in The Tower. Which is the episode we're on, by the way.
Chapter 105. Priorities.
"This is all well and good," Rodney said, fiddling with his tablet and trying to figure out where their ghost energy signature was coming from, "but we really just need more power right now, Zelenka. Not weapons."
"I'd like weapons," Major Lorne said from the far corner of the hallway, looking pretty bored. "Besides, depending on your definition, weapons and power could be synonyms."
"Oh, how very clever." Rodney rolled his eyes. "I don't think the military needs anymore toys at this point in history."
"You're the one who destroyed a solar system playing with a gun," Radek reminded.
Besides, he was almost done getting into the room marked "armory." Getting the door open when there was no power was a trick and a half. The doors stayed shut using a combination of mechanics and magnets and getting the magnets to release wasn't, strangely, the difficult part. The Swiss had nothing on the Ancients. Radek didn't know a watch that would last more than 10,000 years and still keep time.
Of course, just because he hadn't seen a watch that old didn't mean that they wouldn't last that long.
"Yeah, that was an accident, and can you leave that alone for two seconds?" Rodney asked plaintively.
"No," Major Lorne and Radek said together.
Radek smiled, but it was probably because the door cracked open at that exact moment and not because of Major Lorne's complete and unreserved agreement with him. Though that was nice, too. It was nice to know there was someone else on Atlantis that preferred to think of McKay as something other than the local deity to be worshipped and feared.
Rodney was distracted enough by the hissing hydraulics to ignore the slight to his ability to handle explosives. "You got it?" He sounded baffled.
"Yes. I can definitely open doors when I put my mind to it," Radek mumbled, coaxing the door the rest of the way open.
Major Lorne and Rodney, despite their difference in opinion over the priority of the matter, crowded around to see what was inside. Directly in front of the door, a series of hexagonal crystals in glittering green winked at them in the light of their flashlights.
Rodney mumbled incoherently for half a moment before identifying what they were seeing. "Personal shields."
"More than that," Major Lorne said, stepping into the room.
Guns, if Radek had to guess. Racks to either side of the room held strange shining devices that none of them had ever seen before… at least, not to Radek's knowledge. They were the same color as the door mechanism, a dark shade of silver, with the shape of a vice grip attached to a pistol handle. White lights edged the sides and a white crystal set into the front between the clamps.
"Good lord." Radek stood still in the doorway, scarcely believing what his eyes were seeing. The uniform rows with the weapons resting in each specially-made depression. "Two-hundred…?"
"And eleven," Rodney added from further in the room. "Two-hundred and eleven Ancient guns."
"Do they work?" Major Lorne stepped up to one of the racks and leaned over to look more closely.
"Hard to tell."
Radek watched the major closely in case his anxiously twitching fingers got the better of him and goaded him to pick one up. They never did, though. Some scientist, most likely, in his past had done a very good job of teaching him to leave well enough alone.
Then the major looked up at Radek suddenly. "Prime."
Rodney didn't seem to hear as he completed his circle of the room. "Where's the…?"
"Here." Radek pointed to the wall where the an inert computer console sat. Rodney plugged his tablet into it and stayed quiet for a while. Radek unfolded the bag that had been wrapped and strapped to his belt, handing it to Lorne. "Grab a few."
"A few?" Major Lorne paled. "Doc, we may never get this chance again."
Radek frowned and looked around at the room. He was right. Negotiations were underway with the new leadership of the village in current possession of the tower, but the future was uncertain for a people whose government had been recently dismantled. Maybe Sheppard should have accepted being king…
Priority was on drones and Puddle Jumpers. Radek understood and agreed with that.
But the guns. They were, at the risk of sounding hopelessly juvenile, cool.
Major Lorne interrupted Radek's thoughts, picking up one of the guns. His finger brushed the inscriptions on one side, and the lights responded. The crystal glowed the familiar blue. They still worked, miraculously. Assuming their power cells were still charged.
"Doc, can you grab one?" Major Lorne carefully turned the weapon in his hand, his finger clear of the trigger.
Radek obeyed, knowing precisely what Major Lorne wanted to know. Radek repeated Major Lorne's motion, pressing his finger against the runes. The smooth silver-colored metal was cool with the ages it was locked in this room. Just as Major Lorne's gun had, the pistol in Radek's hand responded to his touch. A faint hum radiated into his palm, nearly imperceptible except for the stillness of the buried city.
Major Lorne pursed his lips, returning his weapon to its inert state. He looked disappointed or worried, and Radek couldn't figure out why. "It doesn't require the gene."
"We can't let the village people know," Rodney spoke up, having picked up a shield generator and turned it on. He turned it off, put it back, and turned toward them.
"But, Rodney…?" Radek said, gesturing to the open room of power. "This is theirs."
"Can you imagine what would have happened had the Asgard given the Vikings their weapons in the dark ages?" Rodney asked with an eye roll and a gesture at the shelves. "We wouldn't be standing here talking, that's for sure."
Radek wouldn't necessarily say that was for sure, but it was definitely more likely than not. And the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. Beings in possession of great power used that power, for better or worse, more often than they locked it in closets of bunkers underground. Even if the Vikings wouldn't use their hypothetical Asgard weapons to destroy their neighbors and beyond… somebody would have. Eventually.
Major Lorne was stuffing weapons into his bag. "There are enough guns here for all the 'gate teams on Atlantis."
"All we have to do is trade for them." Radek sighed and started helping stuff all the weapons he could into the bag.
It didn't matter so much if the natives of this planet didn't necessarily know what it was they were trading. Sure, it was pretty dishonest, but Rodney was right. If they knew what they had, they would have destroyed themselves ages ago. One thing was for certain, though…
"Elizabeth's not going to like this…"
#
Scientists certainly knew how to get riled about little to nothing. At least, that was what it was to Anna's view. Or maybe it seemed like nothing just because Anna had no idea nor desire to know what they were talking about.
Kusanagi had been given charge of Janus's lab, and Anna was glad for that. She was much more agreeable than Doctor Robert (even though he'd asked her to, please, just call him Robert) or Heyerdahl. Both of them were, of course, smart, but had their fair share of quirks. The only strange thing Doctor Kusanagi did was place Rodney on a pedestal so tall not even Heyerdahl could have reached him on his figurative tiptoes. Doctor Robert reminded her more a computer program than an actual human being. Doctor Heyerdahl was pale, had no sense of humor, and seemed to have no hobbies besides standing in shadowy corners waiting to step out and scare his unsuspecting colleagues.
Or maybe that was just Anna. She decided a few weeks ago that she really needed to work on her observational skills. She should probably talk to John or Ronon about that as soon as they got back.
"And Miss Zelenková?" *
Anna snapped up from zoning out of the argument. "Yes? Doctor Kusanagi?"
Kusanagi smiled, her eyes glinting in amusement as she pointed to the bottom left corner of the white board detailing assignments. "You are familiar with the translation program, yes? And you have a copy of the logs?"
Translation. Yes. Anna figured she was getting pretty good at that, even with Ancient.
Well, maybe not good at it. Used to it, though. "Yes, I can use it."
"Good, thank you. I'd like to your catalog the notes and records by subject." With that bit of instruction, and completely missing any visible symbol for Anna's sinking heart, Kusanagi turned back to the rest of her scientists. She seemed more stressed than usual, probably because she'd have to answer in detail for everything she decided to do while Rodney was gone…
Anna picked up her tablet and looked at it. Translation work. Exactly what she didn't want to do. But, then again, every great discovery and invention probably started out something like this. Pretty boring. A lot of technical detail where using the right word was the most important thing anyone could do.
She'd already done a quick search of Janus's database for the Ancient word for ZPM. As she expected, the word occurred thousands of times in his notes. It would take her hours just to look at every associated sentence… never mind try to translate them using the rudimentary Ancient-to-English dictionary compiled by Atlantis's translators.
Might as well get started.
Anna walked away from the back corner of the lab where Kusanagi and the others bickered over something about redirecting power to some of the machines in here. There were a few of them, and everyone wanted to know what they did. No one wanted to deplete the ZPM for a microwave oven, though. Ancients had to eat lunch, too.
The surface was several hundred feet above her, but the water was so clear she could see the light shining all the way down here through the one-way glass. The ocean was empty, and the chair facing it was, too. The millennia-old skeleton had been taken away to be poked, prodded, and taken apart. Hopefully the Ancients didn't believe in becoming haunting spirits after their death.
Ascended balls of energy that didn't interfere with the affairs of mortals were just as unfriendly, but certainly better than being haunted.
Purposefully not thinking about it, Anna walked over to the scrubbed and disinfected chair previously occupied by a skeletal Janus and took a seat. She could see why he liked this chair. He liked it enough to choose it as his likely-final resting place, anyway. It was comfortable and it had a great view. The lab was behind him, leaving only the ocean in view.
Anna could almost ignore the bickering scientists back there.
"I think… we could have been friends," Anna said quietly and started reading the headings to Janus's notes. Even though Anna fancied herself more forward-facing, she was also a little stuck in the past.
After all, her past made her who she was. Where she was.
And she was here, now. Translating and cataloging. And there was no one to tell her where to start.
Only a few dozen entries contained the word for ZPM in the title. One of them was something about using ZPMs as battery chargers for Puddle Jumpers in an emergency. The Ancient word for puddle jumper was considerably less colorful than the name that Colonel Sheppard picked for them, and probably one that Colonel Sheppard vetoed out of hand, even though calling them gateway ships made as much sense as anything. She stopped reading when she reached a heading about substitutes for the raw materials to make a one.
Scribbling furiously in an open notepad on her tablet, she copied the Ancient shopping list for ZPM-making, as well as doing her best to translate what was there with what the translators' dictionary provided her with. She figured this was as close to a jackpot as she was ever going to get.
The entries got less and less interesting as she continued. Janus started simply upgrading apparently every Ancient system that used ZPMs toward the end of his career. Perhaps it was difficult to create new things without his colleagues on Atlantis.
She stopped and stared at the translated entry before her. The very last entry.
Methods of Increasing ZPM Efficiency. About two dozen well-annotated upgrades to power consumption as well as to the ZPM itself spread before her, like the prettiest electronic Christmas gift to ever be given in the Pegasus galaxy.
Her heart racing in excitement, Anna got to translating as best as she could. She'd probably take this to the translators, since ZPMs were just about the most important thing they could have.
Plus, a change of venue could be good.
Czech Things
* Zelenková is the feminine version of Radek's last name, Zelenka. I've been using it all this time and no one's stopped me yet, anyway.
Next time: Life's not fair.