Looking at the massive construction, covered with wires, blinking sensors, relays, and other technical obscenities whose names I didn't even vaguely know, a faint doubt began to creep in...
"And for this we spent a week searching through junk on Ermen?" I asked.
"Not junk, but the remnants of technology," Chaya corrected me. A week after we discussed the plan to find the Runners and the Proculus woman began working on it, she looked even better than before. Sleeping under the regenerative radiation in the medical wing is a magnificent idea, after all.
It's just a pity we can't do the same—the equipment is closely tied to a specific development of physiology and cellular structure of the recovering organism. For humans, it's almost lethal—at least with prolonged exposure, your brains would definitely leak out of your ears.
The maximum for our allies is a few minutes under the radiation. Followed by gastrointestinal disorders, aching bones, headaches, and so on... Yes, that's just a theoretical assumption; none of us dared to risk our bodies to check the limit of endurance and the efficiency of a possible reconfiguration of the equipment.
In short, we didn't stock up on medicine on Ermen for nothing.
"Exactly; to be honest, I didn't much like seeing a girl inside a huge cage covered in something resembling a metal mesh." "Are you sure this is safe?"
Chaya looked at me with sympathy.
"Does a lack of knowledge about high-energy physics, subspace fluctuations, and direction-finding turn my actions into magic for you?" she asked.
"Not just for him," Alvar spoke up. "This construction reminds me of the electric cube used to execute enemies of the state on Ermen."
"What is that?" Chaya asked, interested.
"A metal cage where the condemned were driven," Alvar shared his knowledge willingly. "Then, power from the nearest reactor was connected, with a gradual increase in power. In five minutes, only bones remained. But often they exploded too."
A vivid account of how to vaporize a living being with a reactor. Oh, what a wonderful new world.
However... compared to what Alvar described, the electric chair is just a prelude.
For experiments with the subspace beacon extracted from Jensen, Chaya chose another vacant laboratory. A couple of tables, a couple of computer terminals.
And a monstrous kind of cage, assembled by the Ancient from technology samples we'd scavenged on Ermen. I recall that in the known story, an Ancient assembled a one-time Stargate out of a toaster.
And here, out of fragments of household appliances, wires torn from the underground, and other electrical contraptions, Chaya had assembled... Hm... did Doctor Frankenstein happen to use something like this to bring his monster to life?
"No, this construction is perfectly safe," Chaya reassured us, locking a tiny door from the inside. The girl remained alone inside the device, powered by a massive glowing structure in the corner of the laboratory. And at her side was only a lab table, a scanner, and a portable Ancient computer. "I created it to shield the transmitter's signal on subspace and other frequencies. But at the same time, if everything works out, I'll be able to obtain data on the communication channel."
"And that's how we'll find other Runners?" Emmagan checked.
"Yes, I think I can locate other Runners by their subspace beacons. Provided, of course," Chaya looked at me, "the discharge didn't destroy everything possible. In that case, I'll need a bit of a miracle to restore it. If it's even possible after a discharge. A significant portion of the transmitter's nerve fibers are simply fried."
Go ahead, judge me.
"Actually, I was saving a man's life," I reminded her.
"And I'm grateful to him for that," Alvar put in. "And for the record—the idea of recruiting Runners isn't exactly the right one."
"Aren't they good warriors?" Teyla asked.
"If they're still alive—then yes, they're good fighters," Alvar countered. "However, not all of them are good guys. Runners aren't disliked only because they bring the Wraith with them. But also because many of them are extortionists, murderers, robbers, or simply thieves. When your goal is survival, moral questions can fall by the wayside."
"I'm not planning to organize a boy band out of every Runner in the galaxy," I had to remind him. "And I perfectly understand they haven't been grooming pink ponies and picking flowers all this time. We need experienced soldiers. And not just an army unit that knows how to dig trenches, build houses, or charge while shouting 'Short thrust—kill!'. Specifically a mobile reconnaissance and sabotage squad. Ideally—several. But only those we can trust, not fear that they'll stab us in the back."
In a galaxy where survival at any cost is an absolute, betrayal isn't that hard. But the value of friendship with those who can save you from the unenviable fate of an animal in a pen shouldn't be underestimated either.
Nor should the presence of "lawless ones" and humans working for the Wraith.
"Connecting power," Chaya reported, attaching a thin wire feeler to the tiny subspace transmitter.
At first, nothing happened, but then the multicolored blinking of indicators on the cage stopped. Tiny diodes, manufactured on Ermen, glowed with a steady light.
"The blocking cage is working," Chaya shifted her gaze to her computer monitors. Linked to the scanner, it showed a lot of data that wasn't very clear. "Well... the device suffered, of course, but not as much as I thought. It seems it was designed with a certain margin of safety. Peripheral contacts and the power source are burned out, but the sensor itself is intact. As is the subspace antenna. I'm registering the frequency it operates on... Oh, it's a two-way communication channel. How interesting. I thought it was a simple beacon with a pulsing signal. But it turns out everything is much more interesting..."
"The Wraith won't be able to track Atlantis by this signal, will they?" Teyla worried.
"They find Runners even at the other end of the galaxy," Jensen reminded her.
"No, the isolation cage is working and muffling the signal with an electromagnetic field," Chaya said, examining the scanner screen she was moving over the beacon. "Hm... this technology is more advanced than what existed ten thousand years ago."
"Did you have Runners too?" I was surprised.
"No," Chaya said. "The Wraith manufactured beacons in the form of souvenirs. And with the help of humans in their service, they passed them to the Ancients. Supposedly as gifts or under some other pretext. Before we realized exactly how they were finding our outposts under construction, shipyards, and so on, military targets were destroyed by the Wraith. Thousands of objects throughout the galaxy... In many ways, it was after this that the Lanteans decided to retreat to Atlantis. Well, and actually, they found out about these beacons here—when the Wraith headed for the city."
"An ingenious trap," Jensen noted.
"It's hard to deny the Wraith that," Chaya agreed. "This beacon," she pointed to the device, "is quite a treacherous thing. Besides the main power source, it has a series of fibers that grow into the body over time."
"That's why I didn't dare remove it but knocked it out."
"And you were right to do so," Chaya noted, pointing a laboratory probe at tiny black tentacles emerging from the bottom of the device. "The fibers are programmed to fuse with the skeleton and nervous system. The priority is the spine, spinal cord, and rib cage."
"And after that, it would be impossible to remove the device?" I asked.
"I think that's the intention," the girl said. "The human body generates a certain voltage, and through it, the device receives power for its development. The growth is slow, but the more energy in the body, the faster it happens. If I'm right, this beacon was supposed to replace the bone tissue in several thoracic vertebrae with its own, fuse with the spinal cord and..."
"Cruel," Teyla judged. Although Alvar and I said nothing, we were effectively in agreement with her.
"I'm finished," Chaya disconnected the wire feelers from the subspace transmitter, then attached a massive terminal to it. The wire to the latter came from that same glowing construction.
Flicking a tiny switch on the terminal, Chaya shielded her eyes with her hand when the Wraith device flashed blindingly.
Blinking away the "after-images," I asked:
"And what was that?"
The girl was just climbing out of the Faraday cage-like structure, holding Ancient equipment in her hands.
"I've obtained all the data that could possibly be useful from the device," she reminded me. "So it's best to destroy it for good. A short circuit from the generator burned its organic circuits. And now, I can say with certainty that it will never work again."
"Better toss it into the vortex when the Stargate activates," I suggested. The energy vortex created when establishing a stable wormhole guaranteed to disintegrate everything from stones to spaceships.
"As an option," Chaya laid her devices on another table and connected them to a horseshoe-like Lantean console. Slender fingers flitted over the futuristic keyboard.
A horseshoe-shaped console.
"So," after a couple of minutes, a two-dimensional map of the galaxy appeared on the nearest monitor. Dotted with blue planetary points, it also had blinking markers. "The long-range sensors Atlantis is equipped with cover only a small part of the galaxy. But I've reconfigured them to operate only on a specific frequency... Thanks to this, we've increased the sensor coverage area. I've also isolated the feedback channel from the beacon to the tracking device. We can observe the position of Runners in the galaxy in real time. At least in a tenth of it around us. For now, that's the maximum I'm prepared to provide. But a bit later, I'll write a program for constant tracking with a directional beam. That way we'll save energy and be able to check the galaxy."
The girl looked at me with warmth in her eyes.
"Thank you for the tip on how to do this quickly and efficiently," she thanked me.
"Glad to help the common cause."
The fact that I'd told her how it was done in the known story doesn't diminish my contribution in the least.
"Not much," Alvar said, looking at five blinking dots. "I heard there weren't that many Runners, but to this extent..."
To be honest, I was a bit disappointed too.
I recall that in the known story, there were many more. Yes, five is also good. But if you consider how many of them might agree to work with us and won't turn out to be connected to the Wraith service, you can safely divide by two.
"There's no guarantee we're seeing exclusively Runners' beacons," Chaya warned. "In the past, we encountered cases where the Wraith hung them on each other. Especially since this is only one subspace channel. If I understand its encoding correctly, it's merely secondary."
"Meaning?" I frowned.
"It's like dedicated frequencies of a single direction," Chaya said. "Imagine there's a group of frequencies in a certain range that the subspace transmitter operates on. The ones we discovered operate on one, say, sub-frequency within the range. It's possible it's dedicated to Runners, or perhaps used by a specific hive ship. I can't reconfigure to all of them now, as the transmitter only gives us access to this sub-frequency. The others have something like a cipher..."
With a short audio signal, two dots disappeared. A second passed, then another...
"Equipment failure?" Teyla asked hopefully.
"I'm afraid not," Chaya said slowly. "The devices cut out suddenly. Either their carriers died, or the transmitters were simply destroyed..."
As she was saying this, another one vanished.
Alvar and I exchanged looks.
"I think we should move out," I suggested.
"Agreed. While we're here admiring blinking dots, these people might be dying," Jensen said.
"Give me a few minutes; I'll match their spatial coordinates with planetary coordinates," Chaya said. "If there's a Stargate there, we'll find them..."
"Let's go," I patted Alvar on the shoulder. "You and I have things to do."
"I'm with you," Teyla said. "I think whoever the Runners are, they've heard of the Athosians. Perhaps my presence will help you negotiate with them."
"Reasonable," I agreed. "Chaya..."
The girl continued to work her magic over the control console.
"Don't worry about me," she answered. "I'm almost finished. While you're gone, I'll refine the prototype naquadah generator."
I glanced toward the glowing vertical monster. Assembled from both Lantean and Ermen technology, it looked less like a generator and more like a futuristic doomsday machine.
In essence, though, it was just a reconfiguration of the dynamo from the storage using a small amount of naquadah we'd gathered on Ermen last week. Not a very rich ore, but the mine we selected still needs to be restored. For now, we took what we could find literally in the galleries. Chaya assured us it would be enough for a while. She also said something about how this prototype would help her enrich the existing ore; we just need to solve the problem of heat dissipation, non-linear power drops, the atomic density of the substance and... I think she just wanted me to stop with the questions.
Chaya's prototype naquadah generator.
"Excellent," I judged. "I just wanted to ask you not to carry enriched naquadah with your bare hands. I don't want you starting to glow. You'd blow our cover right from the bottom of the ocean."
The Ancient finally looked away from the monitor and... smiled. Truly, kindly.
"I'm flattered that you care about preserving the natural radiation background of my organism, but I assure you—I have worked with much more dangerous types of energy sources. Everything will be fine. I know what I'm doing."
"It's after words like those that we ordinary people usually run into very nasty trouble," I noted.
"Do I need to remind you of the difference between us and people?" Chaya asked.
"No need," I assured her. "Comparing how people and Ancients screw up, one shouldn't even try to compete."
Chaya's smile faded. The girl moved away from the computer, then approached the wall. A decorative panel slid aside, and she took out a small tray with something resembling futuristic wristbands. Except made of something like rubber.
"Recognition bracelets," she said dryly, thrusting the tray at me. "For now, they're prototypes with the function of transmitting an individual code to the Atlantis gate shield. They are powered by the electricity emitted by the human body and are tuned individually. They don't work if removed or on a dead body. I called it a recognition bracelet. And disguised it as wrist protection."
Recognition bracelet. Picture from the internet.
"Additional security for passing through the Atlantis gate?" I clarified.
"Yes," the Proculus woman confirmed. "I think we can already trust Alvar and Teyla to pass through the gate without our involvement. To repeat, these are just prototypes with a single function. Without them, it will be impossible to either exit or enter Atlantis—the shield won't allow it."
"If only we could also attach a cloaking device or a personal shield to it," I said dreamily.
"I'm working on studying the records of the latter," Chaya assured me. "But you have to understand that it works exclusively for carriers of the Ancient gene. I can, of course, try to remove that function, but it's key for such advanced technology."
"Agreed. I wouldn't want a personal shield falling into the hands of our enemies."
"Exactly," Chaya agreed. The gloomy expression on her face seemed to have passed. I wonder what that was about? "Since we've made enemies, we should think about how to resolve that problem. I've already worked on the gate security; for now, that should be enough."
"And what about the recognition of our physiological features that you set in the gate program earlier?" I asked.
"They will remain," Chaya said firmly. "Finding and removing them from the program would be folly. We need to have a backup in case we find ourselves cut off from the gate or Atlantis through the gate."
Hm... it turns out I wasn't telling the girl for nothing about how many times the expedition was on the brink of failure due to their absurd incoming wormhole security system.
"Curious," I admitted. "A device powered by human body electricity and transmitting a special signal... It's not connected to the Wraith transmitter in any way, is it?"
"Only in conceptual ideas of charging from the human body," Chaya said. "A bit later, I'll refine them and add other useful functions. And yes, aren't you late by any chance?"
"I suspect they won't fly off without me," I put on one of the bracelets. I felt a certain warmth at the very beginning, but after a second, it all passed. I wondered if the initialization system had triggered.
Meanwhile, the bracelet tightened a bit and sat quite snugly on my arm, as if glued to the skin. But it didn't hinder wrist movement, and the density of the material was enviable.
Prying it up, I removed it quite easily, then put it back. Convenient.
"While you prepare for the mission, I'll write a program to search for the Runner and load it into the Jumper," Chaya said. "In fact, it's already ready, but a little time is needed to adapt the frequencies. Besides," she handed me a small connector with a jack for connecting to an Ancient scanner. Which was also present. "You'll need to find the transmitter, plug the contact into it, and run the program I wrote on this scanner. According to the plan, it should analyze the Runner's device and calculate the exact energy charge to burn out the transmitting antenna."
"But will the transmitter itself still work?"
"Until we extract it. But without the antenna, it's not dangerous to us."
"Most likely. However, I have a suggestion. As soon as we find him and disable the tracker, we'll head to a neutral planet. From there, we'll contact you, you'll fly out in a Jumper and extract the device..."
Chaya shook her head.
"I used a stationary surgical device for the extraction. I'm afraid I'm no doctor to do it in field conditions. It will be better if you burn the antenna but without damaging the power sources. Alvar was lucky, but in fact, it can lead to health problems. Strong energy discharges aren't good for the organism."
And she talks so casually about the fact that I almost killed a good man... Never mind the Genii, they're assholes to a man.
Well, this is... something...
"Have I told you yet that you're a great person and an irreplaceable comrade?"
Chaya laughed softly and smiled.
"Repeat it three times a day, and you won't get a headache."
"Is that a joke?" I grew wary.
"No," the Ancient assured me. "Just remind yourself that I'm qualified enough to work with such devices and there's no need to worry about it. Because that gives you a headache, doesn't it?"
"Yeah," I agreed, taking the other bracelets. "Among other things."
* * *
"Looks like a cheap trinket," Alvar grimaced, putting his bracelet on his arm. Teyla had already managed hers, and both inhabitants of the Pegasus galaxy were now checking the mobility of that body part.
"It is the custom among my people to weave identical bracelets or jewelry for members of the same family," Teyla said. "With such jewelry, we look like one family. Or clan."
"That sounds good enough to tell anyone who gets curious," I decided, directing the Jumper through the hatch in the hangar.
The Stargate was already activated, but I noticed Chaya standing on the balcony near the control center.
Touching the ship's communication system control panel, I asked:
"Houston, do we have a problem?"
"Does Chaya have another name?" Teyla asked Alvar in surprise.
"No, that's something from the expressions of his home planet," Jensen suggested, listening for the answer.
"Another dot just vanished," the Proculus woman said. "It seems the Wraith have decided to get rid of their Runners."
"That's bad," Alvar and I said at the same time.
"Most likely, we'll encounter a large number of Wraith on the planet," the Ermen man explained his thought.
Yes, I thought the same thing.
"But we were able to open the gate to the planet where he is, weren't we?" Teyla clarified. "That means they haven't attacked yet."
"Logical," I judged. "Chaya, can we keep the gate open while we search?"
"The maximum time I can keep the gate open without additional power support is thirty-eight minutes," the Ancient replied. "After that, the address will need to be dialed again. The reconnaissance probe indicates there are no Wraith near the gate. You'll pick it up on your way back?"
This was our only reconnaissance drone so far, assembled from tech parts from Ermen.
"Yes, we'll bring it back," I promised.
And one thought kept circling in my head...
"But we can keep the gate open by powering it from the ZPM, can't we?" I rummaged through my memory. Earth people, and others, in the known story had managed something like that.
"We can," Chaya confirmed my suspicions. "And you're right, only with the help of a ZPM. A generator can't do that; the energy output isn't stable enough. Are you sure you want to drain our only ZPM for a person who might not even suit us?"
A valid point. Spending energy to search an entire planet for a person who might not join us, or who might even turn out to be a potential traitor... There were such characters in the known story too. Seemingly hearty Wraith hunters, but in reality, rotten to the core.
"No," I said. "We'll fly to the other side, cloak there and search. If there are Wraith on the planet, we'll pick the person up, simply wait it out under cloak in energy-saving mode; we have a week's supplies. It's unlikely they'll stay there longer than that."
"I've loaded the search program onto the ship," Chaya reported. Indeed, a new program window appeared on the virtual screen. "You can depart. If the Wraith have already targeted the planet, it's best not to alert them with a long delay in dialing the address. Especially since the planet where the second-to-last beacon disappeared isn't that far from you. Six to seven hours with a Wraith hyperdrive—and they'll be there."
"Then we should get a move on," I concluded, directing the Jumper into the "puddle."
Wait for us, mysterious Runner. I hope you'll be a fierce and loyal guy with dreadlocks.