After passing through low cumulus clouds, a view of the Sateda metropolis opened before us.
"It doesn't look as bad as Ermen," Ihaar said, studying the structure of the buildings over which our 'jumper' hovered, hidden by a cloaking screen. The second 'jumper' following close behind was also cloaked.
The latest news called for caution.
The Sateda metropolis.
"Compared to Ermen, it really does look almost intact," I agreed. "From flight altitude, of course."
In reality, as soon as we descended lower, the sight of burnt structures, destroyed walls, streets piled with construction debris and rubble immediately caught the eye. Destruction everywhere.
Not a single building had survived.
Some had only broken windows and burned roofs, others had walls that had clearly collapsed not of their own accord. Other buildings had lost several floors, and everything around was littered with their rubble.
But, one way or another, the destruction of Sateda was simply incomparable to the razing of cities from the surface that the Scavenger had carried out on Ermen. Did this indicate that Ermen represented a greater threat to the Wraiths compared to Ronon Dex's homeland?
Perhaps.
I tend to think that the Scavenger himself had his own opinion on how exactly to flatten foreign planets so they no longer posed a threat. The Demon's hive, it seems, did not focus on the radical destruction of all infrastructure, but on intimidating people and destroying the most dangerous enterprises. If you looked at the picture of the metropolis's destruction, one could assume that the Wraiths had purposefully started the destruction from the city's outskirts to force people to cluster in the central part.
Logically, that should have facilitated a 'rich harvest' for the Wraith 'darts' collected using the 'darts'. But they clearly underestimated the Satedans' will to self-defense.
The planet's gate was located in the central part of the metropolis. Situated on a small square, it was installed on a man-made pedestal made of local building material. And that already indicated that the Satedans had improved the Ancient device.
Usually in Pegasus, the gate is simply dug into the ground... Well, simply into the ground. Their pedestals, in the form of a flat heavy platform, are just underground and over the millennia have become covered with earth and overgrown with grass. But not on Sateda. Here, they clearly not only used what remained of the Ancestors but also treated this legacy with respect.
Sateda Stargate. Naturally, a frame from the series.
"We can deal with the gate later," Ronon grumbled when he saw that I intended to land on the platform. Naturally, not to have a smoke break there. "We need to fly to the villages and check on the survivors."
"That's what we'll do," I assured, turning in my seat as the 'jumper' touched the surface of the platform. "But later. I want to know if we can get out of here faster than flying to orbit if necessary. Or, conversely, if we can bring help. Having the Ares fly across half the galaxy isn't the most convenient option. It's a warship, not an interplanetary taxi."
I hope the gate can still be repaired.
"Ihaar, you stay with the second group under Saya and her people's protection," I ordered. "Examine the gate and tell me if you can fix it. We'll head to the countryside and figure out whose life signs the Ares found."
After all, the ship can't determine from orbit whether the people down there are actual humans or, say, Wraiths. Even Atlantis's scanners can't manage that across all of Lantea — only within the city itself. Maybe a little farther out.
"They wouldn't have taken me on this mission if they didn't think I could fix the local gate," the Chief Engineer said with a grimace, stepping into the cargo bay. He grabbed the bags of spare parts and crystals that had been prepared back on Atlantis and headed for the open hatch. "If even half the systems survived in those, I'll make them work."
"Will he manage?" Ronon asked me. "Mr. Sensitivity" there naturally didn't know that other people's competence should preferably be questioned in silence. Or, at the very least, in a whisper.
"For starters," Ihaar said, dropping onto a trunk the bag he'd just picked up and going back into the cockpit. "Not counting Chaya, our only scientist, I'm the only person in all of Atlantis — and maybe in the whole Pegasus galaxy, for that matter — who understands Lantean technology on a level where I know how the systems actually work. I could fix equipment blindfolded that most people here don't even have a clue about!"
"Good for you," Ronon praised him, then looked at me again. "So, will he manage?"
Teyla snorted into her fist, turning away from us so she wouldn't bruise the Chief Engineer's ego any more.
As much as I appreciated this Satedan trolling, it wasn't proper to laugh at a subordinate. Laughing with him at someone else — maybe.
"I'm sure Ihaar is the best person who could possibly deal with a problem like this," I assured him.
Ideally, I would have brought Chaya along, but that girl was up to her neck in work back on Atlantis. We had, after all, started checking and repairing the hyperdrive. It was a complicated system, only vaguely familiar, and had a ton of differences from everything my Ancients had worked with before.
And without a working hyperdrive, I wasn't going to risk raising the city to the surface. Honestly, I'd get as far away from Lantea as possible as soon as we fixed everything we could.
I had a certain plan for that, but so far it was just rough sketches — there would be a more appropriate time to implement it. Say, when Atlantis could actually fly.
I understood that Ancient structures were built to last, but everything has its limit. We'd already run into that more than once, and we'd run into it a thousand more times in the future. Without fail.
And besides... this was a field mission. If I died in it, even if our whole group and the crew of the Ares were killed along with me, Atlantis would survive. Of course, we didn't intend to let that happen — which was why all the munitions from the Hippaforalkus were currently stored in the battleship's arsenal. It wouldn't need them anytime soon, so no matter how much Trebal complained, resources couldn't just sit there and wait for our second battleship to return to service.
And I was really, really hoping we'd find a way to replenish our ammunition stocks. Or, at the very least, mount a new cannon on every skyscraper in Atlantis.
Muttering something about how hard it was to be a genius, Ihaar left the Jumper, meeting Saya in the hatch. The cyborg had received her instructions from me about what she and her team were to do, and she headed off to carry out the new mission.
As for us...
"Let's go check out the villages," I announced, closing the Jumper's rear hatch and lifting it into the air.
* * *
While Dahlia was soldering, Ladon was critically examining the structure they'd been assembling all this time.
Wireless signal transmission wasn't anything new or unknown in the Genii's home world. They had developments in that area, but like many others, they'd been buried under Chief Cowen's fanatical drive to complete the nuclear weapon project.
However, having his own project at his disposal, Ladon could act according to his own judgment. And at his own pace.
For the most part.
The place Cowen had designated as his base was one of the many Genii outposts in alien worlds. Once upon a time, a fairly advanced human civilization had existed here, one that had built an entire city.
They hadn't survived the Wraith invasion, but they'd left behind hundreds of structures. The Genii had secretly restored some of them and used them for their own purposes.
Ladon practically never left the area of the large warehouse where the lab had been set up. As he'd been told, his job was to work, not to go sightseeing.
So he worked.
Trying not to pay attention to the racks filled with crates of clearly valuable contents, Ladon and Dahlia — the only scientists Chief Cowen had assigned as research staff for this project — devoted almost all their time to preparing for the upcoming missions.
The Genii base.
But every now and then, under various circumstances, Ladon managed to learn more about this place. From some bored guard on duty — who were clearly watching to make sure he and his sister didn't get any ideas outside the project's scope — he could pick up plenty of interesting information.
For example, that they generally didn't care what happened. So people disappeared from the special battalion... Good riddance! Frankly, this casualness with which Cowen's guards so nonchalantly wrote off their fellow soldiers as traitors or dead men unsettled and alarmed Radim.
If he'd once thought that Cowen's guard was a monolithic unit, now he was becoming more and more convinced that it was anything but. The soldiers from Commander Kolya's special battalion were clearly more equal among equals.
From conversations with the guards, Ladon gathered that Koli's soldiers enjoyed far more privileges than the other guards. Where the latter, for example, got a double ration, Koli's troops got a triple. And not rations, but fresh produce — meat, vegetables, and fruit. You could say they lived incomparably better, practically like Genii commanders. Of course, it was a big secret that the leaders of the Genii people could afford such a luxurious existence.
A kind of mind game — the population was perfectly aware of what was happening, but had neither the strength nor the opportunity to hold the commanders accountable. And the commanders, in turn, so as not to push things to a boiling point, didn't flaunt their lifestyle.
The guard wasn't monolithic.
Talking with several young soldiers he'd asked to help him hold equipment, unspool cables, and move cargo delivered through the gate, Ladon had the chance to interact with them. Something that would have been unimaginable back home.
The guards were bored, and each one fancied themselves entitled to say what they thought. The scientists' subordinate status played a role — in the soldiers' opinion, they existed in Genii society only to supply the military with new weapons.
And so, making sure no other soldiers could hear, they occasionally exchanged words with Radim. Ladon had the chance to learn more about how the Genii leader's closest associates and soldiers operated, what they thought, and what they were thinking.
And it wasn't that he liked what he heard.
The guards' position had never particularly bothered him. After all, these were the people who were supposed to be primarily responsible for protecting the Genii population. In the event the Wraith ever actually found the bunker, that is. Which had never happened at all.
That was precisely why Koli's special battalion had been created. While the bulk of Chief Cowen's guard stayed in the home world, these soldiers were meant to operate beyond their home planet.
And that was when Ladon understood something he'd only suspected before.
The numerous bases outside the planet could only be created on Chief Cowen's orders and by the forces of Koli's special battalion. They were, after all, the most trained for such work.
However, for quite a while now — at least five years — Chief Cowen's guard, or rather the part that didn't answer to Koli, had been involved in parallel projects. They scoured various worlds, searching for new things for the Genii, establishing bases in abandoned worlds, and staying to guard them.
According to one young soldier's very rough estimate, he alone had stood guard at three bases besides this one. And they were all cut from the same cloth — abandoned planets with clean air, ruined but restorable settlements. Some even had warehouses stocked with useful supplies. The soldiers were told it was insurance in case the Genii had to flee their home world. Then Chief Cowen would open a gate to one of the bases, bring the entire bunker population through, and they'd be saved.
The soldiers were satisfied with this plan.
Ladon was torn by contradictions.
And just how, exactly, did Chief Cowen intend to pull that off, when the Wraith, during their harvesting or extermination attacks on planets, had a habit of blocking the gates until their operation was complete?
It reeked of Chief Cowen outright lying to his closest associates. Evacuating the entire bunker would take days — and that was assuming they weren't being bombed, and people stood in columns from the bunker exit all the way to the Stargate.
During a Wraith attack, it was completely impossible. Under any circumstances.
And that wasn't even counting the other underground settlements in other parts of the planet besides the bunker. There were mines, hydroponics, and much more. It would take months just to travel from one bunker to another overland!
Ladon liked what was happening less and less.
But even worse was realizing what millstones he'd actually fallen between.
Cowen and Koli had never seen eye to eye on the Genii's political and military course. The discoveries made on Ermen had played into Cowen's hands — he was betting on refining nuclear weapons by any means necessary.
Koli, on the other hand, demanded more weapons and more soldiers from him. The special battalion commander wasn't particularly well-versed in technology, but he believed the Genii needed weapons for army units first and foremost. More factories were needed to produce weapons and ammunition. The bunkers needed to be expanded to house the caves where the poor were accumulating. And, finally, he demanded that Cowen hand over the poor and the weak to turn them into soldiers for his battalion.
Cowen refused him. But he did solve the issue with the poor — he sent them to the quarries and mines.
And Cowen also dismissed Koli's initiative to send the entire special battalion to Ermen, not just Tyrus's group. The special battalion commander had argued that the more people on the planet, the more they'd take from it, and the faster they'd find what was hidden.
Those arguments didn't convince Cowen.
And listening to the soldiers, Ladon concluded that he understood the reason for Chief Cowen's behavior.
The leader of all Genii... was afraid.
Koli's popularity was only growing, because he was an advocate of decisive action. Even the operations to punish the deceitful traders were Koli's initiative, not Cowen's. And this initiative was becoming more and more popular with the other commanders.
The special battalion was power. And in the context of the Ermen operation, Cowen was simply afraid that if the Genii had found knowledge there about creating nuclear weapons, they might find something even greater. And if Koli got his hands on something truly valuable, he might simply overthrow Cowen.
All these bases on abandoned planets were nothing more than places where Cowen and his inner circle could retreat in the event of a coup. The supplies were created for that purpose. Ladon would bet that the hundreds of crates he'd seen contained weapons, ammunition, tools, equipment, food, and much more — everything Cowen would need to lack nothing in exile.
Ladon had become part of this secret for one reason — Tyrus, who had been a Cowen supporter in the matter of creating nuclear weapons, had vanished without a trace. Despite the fact that Tyrus was part of Koli's special battalion, the latter could easily have made him disappear.
And all these problems with the other groups — on Ermen, on Taranis, even the problems with the trade partners — clever Koli could have created them himself. Simply to undermine Cowen's influence.
The Chief had watched the unfolding crisis for a long time. And as far as Ladon could tell, Cowen wasn't the type of man to give up easily. He was clearly doing something to counter Koli's growing influence.
And then, suddenly, Koli's soldiers and Koli himself disappeared. The research mission to find Athos had resulted in the special battalion's bases being emptied. According to the soldiers, it wasn't just scout teams that had vanished — even the sentries.
One might think Wraith raids were to blame, but there was no sign that there had been a fight at the bases. Nor was there any trace of the equipment and weapons the special battalion had stored there as reserves.
Now Ladon understood what was happening.
Koli had left and taken his people, along with everything he might need to overthrow Chief Cowen. There was no doubt Koli hadn't perished — he'd gone into hiding and was surely operating through a network of spies, continuing to recruit his agents.
With Radim's help, Chief Cowen intended to find the traitor and destroy him with the force of his guard. First Koli, then everyone connected to him.
It was entirely possible that the key to finding Koli was on Athos. Or that one of the Athosians might have information about what was happening. That's why Cowen was so obsessed with the search.
And that's why Radim and his sister were working outside their home world. And since Cowen's guard didn't have that many bases, they'd been sent to one of the existing ones. It was logical that no one would hide an entire stockpile of resources here just to preserve a single secret.
Why bother, when the brother and sister would surely be killed once they either finished their work or failed?
"Done," Dahlia said quietly, setting down her soldering iron. "I think the camera can transmit a signal through the gate now. We'll be able to see what's on the other side without unnecessary risk."
The girl set the clumsy device on the floor, then walked over to the massive control console. Flipping levers and switches, she activated the movement mechanism. The device shifted from its spot and rolled slowly forward. Ladon looked at the monochrome monitor, which displayed the image from the device's tracking camera.
The picture wasn't the clearest, but at the same time, everything necessary was easy enough to make out. Clicking some switches, the man redirected the lens in different directions — and success again!
"Of course we managed it," Ladon nodded, looking at the pile of spare parts lying nearby. The plan called for creating several such devices. But he was doing his best to make haste slowly. "You've done great, Dahlia."
"We both have," his sister said with a faint smile, returning the scout sphere to its original spot. "You did all the main work."
"And you did the most important part," Ladon reminded her.
An ordinary segmented spherical metal frame, with a movie camera mounted on a gyroscope inside, capable of transmitting images wirelessly. All that was needed was to install Plexiglas segment inserts to protect the internal mechanism, and it was practically ready.
The belt-like movement mechanism on the outer surface of the sphere would allow the device to move across relatively flat terrain, to learn as much as possible about what was on the other side of the gate.
Honestly, Radim was pleased with what he and his sister had accomplished. Yes, testing would be needed, but the concept itself... All of this was within the Genii's reach and could significantly ease their reconnaissance missions.
Considering how many Genii had disappeared over the years during reconnaissance, when they'd gone through the gate into new worlds and never returned, the scout sphere would solve the problem easily and effortlessly!
For a moment, Ladon wondered what else the Genii could have done if they hadn't been so focused on building an atomic bomb as quickly as possible. One could only hope that the nuclear weapon project would soon be completed and hundreds of scientists would be redirected to other programs.
With a creak and a clatter, the door leading to the warehouse swung open.
Ladon looked at the tall, powerfully built unit commander in charge of guarding their mission. Honestly, ever since he'd begun to suspect that this man was probably not only their guard but also their potential executioner, Radim had lost all desire to address him by name.
Along with his appetite.
"You finally finished," the officer said, his words carrying little joy and a lot of sarcasm.
"Almost," Ladon corrected him. "We need to finish a few things..."
"It works," the soldier pointed at the sphere rolling across the floor. "What else is needed?"
"Install the glazing to protect the mechanisms," Radim explained. "Without Plexiglas, any bump, any stone that flies inside could be fatal to the mechanism. And we'd just lose it."
"We're losing time!" the Genii commander snarled, burning Radim with his gaze. "Chief Cowen is losing patience and faith in your project!"
"Putting in the glazing won't take long," Dahlia explained. "But it will save the device from danger."
The commander ignored her, as if she wasn't there.
Ladon sighed and repeated the exact same thing, but in different words.
"You're stalling for time," the commander said, not even realizing how close to the truth he was.
"We're working as fast as we can!" Ladon objected.
"Work faster!"
"We're already sleeping three hours a day!"
"Sleep two, sleep one, or don't sleep at all, but by tomorrow morning the mechanism had better work," the second Genii said angrily. "I'm sick of hearing reproaches aimed at me because you can't handle your job! The other scientists," he grimaced at the word, "have already finished work on the main project. And there will be new tests very soon!"
Ladon went cold.
If he understood correctly, this meant only one thing.
"The atomic bomb is finished?" he asked, lowering his voice.
"Yes," the Genii commander said proudly, then bared his teeth. "And I want you to do everything you can so we find Koli before we strike the Wraith!"
"But... why?" Dahlia was as stunned by what she'd heard as her brother.
The Genii commander, it seemed, didn't notice this time that the question had come from a woman.
"For the glory of the Genii, naturally!" he said, his eyes burning with fanatical fire. "First we'll wipe out all the Wraith, and then we'll bring order to this galaxy! Just as Chief Cowen wants."
"We're doomed," Ladon Radim realized.
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