By the time the first assistant approached Styx, the commander had already thrown the desiccated corpse of the fodder away from him.
The skeleton, covered in flabby skin, collapsed on the floor, dispersing some of the fog covering it. The first assistant calmly stepped over the human remains and froze, waiting for the satisfied commander to pay attention to him.
The young man in the chair was invited by the Wraiths to feast. But he didn't know that the main course for lunch was him.
"Speak," Styx commanded.
"I've started working on the data that the scouts obtained from the dialing device on that planet," the first assistant reported.
"When will you be able to provide me with the addresses of the planets they might have gone to?" the hive commander asked.
"The dialing device saved the last fifty dialed addresses," the subordinate reminded him. "Each address has seven characters…"
"Six, if you remove the departure point address," Styx said irritably. "From the six remaining address characters, you can make seven hundred and twenty variants."
"And there are fifty such addresses, commander," the first assistant reminded him. "And that means we already have three thousand six hundred variants."
"Discard those addresses that lead nowhere or cannot be dialed," Styx said angrily. "Separately highlight those that lead to other Wraiths' planets. Wherever they went, this world is free of our people. There shouldn't be many such planets."
"Commander, I just want to say that this work will take a lot of time," the first assistant retreated.
"In that case, why are you wasting it standing in front of me and making excuses?" Styx asked, noticing a pair of Wraith soldiers arrive. Picking up the desiccated human, they dragged the remains away.
"I'll get to work immediately," the first assistant assured him, taking a step back towards the exit.
"Wait," Styx said. "Did you deal with that bomb that the humans tried to detonate on my ship?"
"It poses no danger," the subordinate assured him.
"I know that myself," Styx grinned. "I want to know who built the second part of the device."
He had already wiped the creators of the detonating mechanism from the face of the galaxy. Only one fugitive remained…
"We are working on this issue, commander," the first assistant assured him, walking away.
Styx bared his teeth, seeing a new human brought to his chambers by soldiers. A cowardly, pathetic piece of meat…
"Come here," Styx commanded, increasing the pressure on the frail mind.
But the human didn't have the strength to come to the Wraith himself. Instead, the soldiers dragged him to the throne occupied by their commander and threw him at the foot.
"It seems it's customary for your people to shake hands as a greeting," Styx said, pressing on the remnants of the human's mind. The Wraith, whose age was almost eleven thousand years, completely destroyed the mind of his food and turned it into an obedient puppet. "Give me your hand, human…"
The broken toy, in which there was no longer even a hint of the former greatness of the Ancients, obediently extended its right palm.
And Styx, following an old Wraith joke, responded to the handshake, gripping his right palm to the victim's similar limb. The feeding organ plunged into the victim's limb, injecting an enzyme…
A couple of seconds later, he hissed with pleasure, drawing the remnants of the rapidly aging human's life.
Like any self-respecting city, Atlantis had a prison. Well, why not build one in the capital of a race of enlightened humans?! A foolish question, of course.
But Teyla still asked it.
"You see," I explained to the girl, not taking my eyes off the spectacle, thanks to which screams of pain and the sounds of meat being beaten with a hammer filled the air, "on the path to Ascension, to transformation into pure energy, there are many temptations. Available drugs, prostitutes, secret knowledge, moonshine, forbidden experiments, sodomy… All this prevented the Ancients from achieving enlightenment. Therefore, the most unruly were put into such cells."
Cells… Actually, it's a whole, damn it, compartment in the city, the size of a football field. And inside there are several (I lost count at ten) cells with very thick – half a meter – walls. Inside each such bunker, right in the middle, there was a rather large cage with horizontal bars and a powerful force field stretched along the sides. This field does not let material through and is deactivated (from the opening side) only when the cell is opened.
Put a bed, a bench, and a laptop there – and it's like a motel room. Except the construction quality is poor. As if they were building in a hurry.
"Are you thinking the same thing I am?" Teyla asked.
"If you're also bothered by the question of what kind of idiot came up with naming a prison in a city-ship of a space civilization 'brig,' after a solitary confinement cell on sailing ships, then yes," I replied. "In that case, we think alike."
Atlantis Brig.
"No, such thoughts don't occupy me," Teyla said.
"And it's a shame," I said, watching the scene through the locked cell door. Inside, as always necessary for the balance of the Universe, there were two. And they had been there for an hour.
"Mikhail," the girl frowned at me. "It's not customary on Athos to treat prisoners like this."
"It's great that we're not on Athos, isn't it," I gave her a meaningful look. "However," my hand pointed to the people in the cell on its own, "you can peek in there. And tell both of them that you don't approve of beating prisoners. Even if they pulled out their nails, broke three ribs, the radius and ulna, the right cheekbone, beat and almost disfigured our mutual acquaintance. I'm sure everyone will be glad if you show mercy to the Jenai."
"You forgot about yourself," she said modestly. "It seems you're better…"
"Oh, if it weren't for the painkillers, I wouldn't be standing here," I had to assure the Athosian.
"Forgive me," she lowered her gaze. "It's just… I can't comprehend it. I knew Tyrus and his daughter Sora as farmers. I knew all the Jenai as peaceful farmers who are friendly and welcoming. They haggle sometimes, but at the same time, they are always honest…"
"Remind me, how many times did they tell you about their bunker under the fields?" I asked.
"But they had no reason to trust me," Emagan parried. "If the Athosians were as developed as they are, then perhaps…"
"Do you want me to remind you about Chaya again?" I asked. "Just in case, I'll remind you that half a day has passed, and even with the regenerating radiation of the Ancients' equipment, her second eye has barely started to open. Here's an example of Jenai encountering a representative of a developed race…"
"Perhaps it would be better to build relationships without disfiguring Tyrus," Teyla looked at the cell where Alvar was now breaking the Jenai's last finger. On his foot. He stopped hitting about five minutes ago when Tyrus stopped moving. But, a miraculous remedy from the supplies so carefully collected by the enemy came into play. Time and again, adrenaline brought the male Jenai back to his senses. "Perhaps he should have been exchanged and…"
"The only thing I can do with Tyrus is to give him a quick death," I cut in. "And believe me, I approached him myself recently, but… What I managed to hear… Don't worry about them. Even if we drop a couple of nuclear super-bombs on their planet, believe me, the innocent will not suffer."
"Misha," I was called from the cell. Alvar was covered in sweat and drops of someone else's blood. The soldier was breathing heavily, out of breath. But Tyrus… Well, what was left of Tyrus was now lying in a pool of blood on the cell floor. With a slight hiss and the blinking of deactivating force fields, the cell door opened, and Jensen walked out. "I injected him with a small cocktail of drugs," the former fugitive threw a bag with interrogation drugs near the cell. "He'll last another day or so. If you need him…"
"Don't worry, I'll take care of him," I assured him. "Did you find out what you wanted?"
"I did," the military man's face contorted with a spasm of disgust. "Even what I didn't want."
"When you're cleaned up, come to the conference room," I suggested. "I'd like to discuss…"
"There's nothing to discuss," the Ermen retorted. "Give me a weapon, a box of ammunition, and deliver me to their planet. I will avenge my people…"
Judging by his expression, the former soldier was not joking. Not at all. Not even a hint.
He really intends to go to the Jenai alone and kill as many of them as he can. Judging by what I saw on Sudaria, he can kill a lot. And I need this terminator in the guise of Vladimir Mashkov here, not with a shot-through head surrounded by a couple of thousand dead Jenai.
"And you won't do it alone," I assured him. "At least I'll be nearby. But now we need to develop a strategy and understand how bad things are."
"Things are very bad, Misha," Alvar said, angrily wiping drops of drying blood from his face, but only turning his face into a terrible mask of a blood god. "They have nuclear weapons. And they intend to use them against the Wraiths. Even the fact that they shat themselves during the tests doesn't stop them. Soon the whole galaxy will be crawling with Wraiths! If it isn't already..."
Teyla grabbed Alvar's hand and drew his attention.
"You need to calm down," the Athosian said, looking him in the eyes. "A hot head is a bad advisor."
If the Ermen had wanted to say something in response, he held back and remained silent. Glancing towards the cell where Tyrus had begun to stir, he left the room with quick steps.
"I'll talk to him," Teyla stated her plans.
"Don't," I objected, approaching the cell door and closing it. "He needs to be alone with his thoughts. For now, let's unload the 'jumpers', I feel we'll need them soon."
The electromagnetic locks clanged, and energy barriers flashed between the flat bars. The cell once again became an insurmountable obstacle for anyone who didn't know the deactivation code.
"You don't have to hurry," Sora's father croaked, rolling onto his side and looking at me with blood-filled eyes. "Nothing will help you against the wrath of the Jenai."
"Yes, but you'll rot here," I cooled his ardor.
"I'm almost dead already," he laughed nervously, but immediately clutched his broken ribs. "I said I know. You don't need me anymore."
"You're mistaken," I assured the Jenai. "If you were a little more educated, you'd know that a xenomorph isn't just tough chitin and magnificent acid, but also a funny double jaw."
"I don't understand," the Jenai said after a few seconds of thought.
"That's the problem with your race," I enlightened him. "The name of your race comes from the word 'geniuses'. But you, may the Wraiths shake your hand, are not geniuses at all."
Groaning some curse, the man, grunting, rolled onto his other side.
***
"We should have placed the warehouses in a more suitable spot," I remarked, collapsing into a chair in the conference room.
Six hours of moving various cargo from the jumper hangar to that part of the central city buildings where we now have the arsenal, storage for medicine, ammunition, provisions, and equipment. And thank goodness we have teleporters, otherwise all this running up and down stairs and floors would be a complete disaster.
However, Teyla didn't look tired. On the other hand, she was carrying things, not shooting and explosive goods. And if only my back... My legs are buzzing as if they've turned into high-voltage transmission lines. And they're buzzing, buzzing, buzzing...
"I think," Emagan said, though not on the first try, she opened a tin can that looked like it was made of tinplate and easily picked up a piece of fruit dripping with syrup with a knife, "it was worth a little work for something like this."
I inhaled the air... Yes, if the smell matches the taste, then forget my complaints! It's pineapple!
Pink, though.
"Lenin bequeathed to share," I said, approaching the girl with an unambiguous hint.
"Who bequeathed?" she didn't understand.
"And to whom did he bequeath it?" Teyla continued to familiarize herself with Earth's culture, sharing the can.
"To the fists."
"And that...?"
"Those who were supposed to share."
"I don't quite understand..."
"You're not the only one, don't worry about it," I advised, pulling a juicy slice from the can. And yes, I was right – for such a reward, it was worth working hard.
There's something else Alvar didn't mention in his story about his race's miracle knives. Inside, there's a portable spoon-fork. To choose an eating utensil, you just need to flip the construction to the desired side. Not exactly like on Earth, but even with three prongs, a fork is a fork. Even if it's a teaspoon, it's a spoon. In Atlantis, for example, we didn't find any cutlery. And eating with wooden ones from those handed down by the Athosians... After a couple of splinters in the tongue, my appetite was gone.
With a slight hiss, the doors turned, and Alvar entered the hall with quick steps. One look at him was enough to understand – the guy had come to his senses. And tidied himself up.
Black pants from the camouflage set, a light t-shirt, a holster with a pistol attached to his thigh. And an expression of universal fatigue on his face.
But following him...
"Shouldn't you still be in the med bay?" I left the can and its contents to Teyla and found myself next to Chaya. Supporting the girl, I helped her sit in a chair near the entrance.
"There's nothing critical for my health," the Proculucian said. Well, at least her voice is cheerful, which is already a good sign. "I was tortured, not killed..."
"From your appearance, one might think that only chance separated one from the other," Alvar said, glancing briefly at the girl.
"I'll take that as a compliment," she promised, folding her bruised hands... My gaze caught on the nail plates that had just begun to grow back. Teyla shuddered, I pretended I urgently needed to sit where I was before, and Jensen looked at her with sympathy.
Chaya, pursing her lips, placed her hands on top of each other, hiding the traces of torture from those present.
"We need to go back to Ermen," she said.
"Are you kidding?" I was taken aback. "They almost killed us there."
"But they didn't kill us," the girl parried. "We didn't complete our mission as planned. We need to go back."
"I don't think that's a good idea," Teyla sided with me.
"I agree with Chaya," Alvar said unexpectedly. "We need to go back. In light of what I learned..."
He fell silent, casting a quick glance at Chaya. The girl, also dressed in Ermen uniform, now looked little different from the dark blue camouflage. At least the "blooming" bruises usually appeared much later than a day later. I think it's due to the equipment and the Proculucian's physiology – she recovered much faster than ordinary people.
What's more, even my pain and bruises no longer bothered me.
"Don't misunderstand me," I said. "We need everything that can be useful. However, the Jenai..."
"The Jenai put my race in the crosshairs of the Wraiths," Jensen interrupted me. "And now they're calmly digging through its legacy. I don't want them to get more than they already have."
"Did you interrogate the prisoners?" Chaya asked quietly. Teyla, unable to bear her gaze, looked away.
"Yes," Jensen took over. "Tyrus knows a little, but even what he said is enough to understand that the Jenai are not our friends."
"Tell us," I asked.
"A few months before we were attacked, a group of refugees arrived on the planet," he began. "Among them were these two, Tyrus and Sora. I didn't see them personally, but I heard about those who survived the Wraith attack. I don't know how, but they gained the trust of one of the high-ranking officers. And somehow obtained data about our nuclear project. Reactors, bombs, missiles, engines... Much of this was in principle only prototypes, but the reactors had been functioning for forty years. Tyrus claims that they managed to bribe some of our military, and they allowed them to take some blueprints and prototypes stored in the base warehouse. The Jenai used them, as well as valuable ore from our planet, to improve their own inventions."
"What material are we talking about?" I became interested.
"I don't know its name. I heard that the Ancients built the stargates from this material," Jensen shrugged.
Chaya and I met each other's gaze.
Alvar was talking about naquadah. In the events I knew, it was mined on many planets in the Milky Way. I hadn't heard of that for Pegasus. But, logically, it must be somewhere here, since Pegasus has a network of stargates in which this material is key.
From what I remember, naquadah is super-heavy and super-dense. In the Milky Way, it was used to create power sources or power weapons. Also, as a weapon, naquadah significantly amplifies energy, making it an extremely powerful explosive in combination with conventional explosives. Earthlings in known events reinforced missiles with naquadah to destroy enemy ships.
The physics of this material is quite fascinating, because, for example, the mineral also had a liquid form and was used in this form in weapons in the Milky Way by certain factions.
For possession of planets with naquadah mines, wars could be waged for generations, and millions of sentient beings killed on both sides of the conflict.
But, besides gates, there is another peaceful application of the material. Earthlings, having borrowed the technology from other aliens, for example, created super-powerful reactors that provide colossal energy output. In known history, these reactors powered Atlantis after its restart with the appearance of an Earth expedition.
"If there are naquadah mines on the planet, then we need it," Chaya emphasized the last word, "to find them. If we get naquadah, I can assemble several portable reactors. We can connect them as alternative power sources for various parts of the city."
"And the combat satellite," I suggested.
"First and foremost," she agreed.
"And you can also make bombs from naquadah," I sighed. "And it seems the Jenai know about it now."
"Perhaps they will use this material for a good cause?" Chaya suggested. "If we have energy problems, they have them even more..."
Jensen gave a wry smile.
"Don't you want to hear the rest of the story?" he asked. "The one where my race was exterminated because of the Jenai."
"Sorry," Teyla said, raising her hands in a conciliatory gesture.
"If Tyrus wasn't lying, then partly from our prototypes, the Jenai managed to finish and increase the power of their bomb," Alvar reminded. "They sent a group to the hive ship planet and tried to blow it up. But it survived. After that, the Jenai spies quickly left our planet. Literally a couple of days or so before the attack on Ermen. And according to Tyrus, we were attacked by the same hive ship they were trying to blow up."
"This cannot be a coincidence," Emagan said.
"It's not a coincidence," I said, glad that I could "cash in" my foreknowledge. "Among the Jenai, there was someone like a scientist. Before he died, he told me that many years ago they managed to shoot down a Wraith 'arrow', found an information storage device there, and on it – data on the location of at least one Wraith hive ship. They wanted to board it and find the coordinates of all Wraith ships in the galaxy through this device."
"To blow them up?" Alvar clarified.
"Exactly. A suicide tactic."
"In that case, they must have a very large race," Chaya said. "In our time, the Wraiths had tens of thousands of starships – from transports to hive ships."
"In any case, something must be done about them," Jensen stated. "I won't forgive myself for knowing who destroyed my race and doing nothing about it."
"But we don't know the reasons why the Wraiths attacked you," Teyla reminded. "The Jenai might not be involved."
"Oh, come on?" Jensen said grimly. "They ingratiate themselves with us, steal our secrets, build a bomb from them – something even we abandoned – send it to the Wraiths. And then, quite suddenly, they attack Ermen? Not the Jenai's homeworld, but my world."
"There are gaps in your reasoning," Emagan tried to calm her comrade. "Everything needs to be checked."
"But to me, everything is clear here," Jensen objected categorically. "I don't know how, but it was the Jenai who led them to our world. They probably decided to take revenge on us for the past."
"Tyrus told me that Ermen was once part of the same Confederacy as the Jenai. Then they were attacked, and they thought for a long time that no one was left of you. I suspect they checked this in practice, but found nothing, so they left."
"I'm not a historian of the past, but I know several ways to kill them," Jensen said. "We need to set up an ambush on the planet. Since one group disappeared and hasn't been in contact for almost a day, they will surely send another. Then another, another, and another. We have about a hundred Athosians who can handle firearms. We can..."
"I don't want to involve my people in a war with the Jenai!" Teyla raised her voice. "We've suffered enough from the Wraiths to start fighting amongst ourselves! Yes, I'll inform my people to minimize contact with the Jenai, but not to go to war with them?!"
"And why not?" Jensen asked, pointing at Chaya. "Show me the mine, and I'll dig up enough naquadah to destroy an entire Jenai planet. Or will we continue to sit here and wait for them to plunder my planet and use our knowledge to blow up first the Wraiths, and then other people? I'm sure the Jenai could have assembled their own analogues of our prototypes, but they made sure that our parts were in their bomb! That's probably how the Wraiths found us."
"But why didn't they attack the Jenai?" Teyla asked.
"They hide well," I reminded. "An underground city and all that, remember?"
"I can block the gates of Ermen," Chaya said unexpectedly to everyone present.
"Excuse me?" I clarified, looking at the Proculucian. "Block?"
"We do the same with the gates of Atlantis when we leave it," the Ancient reminded. "We'll block the gates of Ermen from being dialed by any other sentient beings except us. I'll set up a redirection to other worlds, so no one will pass there without our knowledge. The reconfigured dialing system will buffer the object's energy and transfer it to random coordinates in the galaxy."
"And random ones aren't needed," I suddenly said to myself. "We need prisoners for interrogation, don't we? We need to understand exactly what the Jenai got from Ermen and how they are using it."
"Simple soldiers are unlikely to be aware of such things," Teyla suggested. "But commanders, like Tyrus, might..."
"In that case," I summarized, "we need to find a planet where we can transfer our unwelcome friends. Chaya," the girl looked at me with poorly concealed suspicion. "Your priority is recovery. And no objections. We all value you too much to simply demand you work until you drop."
"But I'm fine," the dark-skinned girl, completely covered in purple-violet bruises, said with genuine surprise. Honestly, her half-open, swollen eye was chilling. It seemed like she would demand a motorcycle and clothes any moment...
She looked around, seeking support from Teyla and Alvar. But they didn't express any support for her separatist opinion to continue working in this state.
"Don't make me out to be injured!" the Proculucian exclaimed indignantly. "I can work and rest! Especially since I need to go there and check the state of the servers and..."
"We'll do it ourselves," Alvar said. "I think Teyla's people won't object to helping us with the removal of everything necessary."
"Especially since if the data on other servers is as damaged as on the main one, you won't be able to do much on-site," I supported the idea.
"This is a conspiracy!" the girl frowned.
"Say it's treason, pull a lightsaber from your sleeve and start cutting down Jedi Masters," I smiled. But, as expected, the joke was not understood. "In any case, the majority is for you to rest and recover. The faster this happens, the faster you'll return to work. And, in the meantime, we'll bring you everything you wish for. Alvar, you know where to find the biggest junkyard of equipment?"