“There,” McKay said impatiently, pointing.
John squinted, and the jumper obligingly increased the magnification. What had looked like shadows resolved into a triangle supported by three thick legs and a tangle of woven wires; the ground at its base was bare and looked rough, as though it had been disturbed recently.
“That looks like Traveler work,” Ronon said, leaning forward.
“Isn’t that what I said?” McKay worked his controls again. “But definitely not Genii.”
“Scan the system?” John asked, and McKay scowled.
“I’m getting to that. Not that there’s any reason to think that — oh. Hello.”
“What have you got?” John felt the jumper tremble, preparing itself to ready weapons, and hastily told it to stand down.
“You said Travelers, we’ve got Travelers,” McKay answered. “One ship, at the edge of the system.”
In John’s screen, the image of the planet vanished, and was replaced by a schematic of Ouroun’s system, a tiny dot flashing at the edge of the system. It was heading toward the planet, trailing a stream of ionized gases that made John’s eyebrows rise. “McKay. It is me, or is that thing highly radioactive?”
“It’s a Traveler ship,” McKay answered, “but — yeah, even for them, that’s a lot. They must have blown some shielding.”
Get me the most recent Traveler contact frequency, John thought, and numbers shifted on the communication console. “Traveler ship, this is Atlantis Jumper One. Do you read me?”
There was a moment of silence, just the faint sound of deep static, and then a man’s voice said, “Atlantis? What’s Atlantis doing here?”
“We’re looking for a lost ship,” John said. “A Genii ship, not one of ours. I don’t suppose you’ve seen any sign of it?”
“Not us,” the man answered. There was a scuffling noise, and a new voice spoke.
“Actually, we might be able to help you. For a price.”
“Oh, please,” McKay said. “Don’t tell me! They want me to repair that wreck they’re calling a ship.”
John waved for him to be quiet. “What’d you have in mind?”
“We’ve got an Ancient data reader that we can’t activate. Somebody on that jumper has to have the Ancient gene, or you wouldn’t be out here. So, give us a hand, activate the reader, and we’ll tell you what we know.”
Ronon made a skeptical noise. “Somehow I don’t believe them.”
“No more do I,” Teyla said. “But perhaps we can arrange a different deal.” She leaned between the pilots’ seats to press the comm controls. “Traveler ship, we would be glad to activate your reader if you allow us to copy the contents. Also, we cannot help but notice that you are leaking radiation. Perhaps Dr. McKay could help repair your shielding.”
“I never said I’d do that,” McKay protested.
“Dr. McKay?” The Traveler sounded startled. “Does that mean Colonel Sheppard is on board?”
Teyla frowned, but John answered first, “Yeah, I’m here.”
“Larrin sends her regards.”
John grimaced. The last time he’d dealt with the Travelers, no one had actually hit him, but he still found it hard to be entirely comfortable around them. “Do we have a deal?”
There was another pause, and then the first voice answered. “Deal. Bring your jumper alongside, we’ll open the bay for you.”
“Roger that,” John said, and turned the jumper toward the distant ship.
McKay gave him a dubious look. “Can I point out that the Travelers have been at best remarkably uninterested in keeping our deal with the Wraith? And that they weren’t exactly super-friendly before that?”
“We’ve got enough drones on the jumper to blast our way out of their hull if we have to,” John said. “And they know it.”
“Let us hope it does not come to that,” Teyla said, severely.
The Traveler ship was a large, heavy bodied freighter that had once been of Ancient design, but had been so modified over the years that those lines were almost invisible. Instead, it was ungainly, additional sections bulging from the hull, a ring of modified shielding attached like a frill around the jets of the main engines.
“How can they take that into hyperspace?” McKay asked, staring at the shapes. “The hyperspace envelope must be wildly unstable. I can’t even imagine what kind of calculations they must be using. Well. Of course, actually I can, and they’re kind of interesting, but —“
“Perhaps you could provide something better,” Teyla said.
“That’s not something you can just do off the top of your head,” McKay protested. “Not even me. I mean, give me time, I could probably come up with something better, but I’d need more time than we have…”
John saw the hangar bay doors open, and put the conversation out of his mind. The bay was relatively small, but there was room enough for the jumper. He matched velocities, and slid the jumper carefully through the open doors to bring it down on the exact center of the faded cross painted on the bay floor. Behind him, the doors slid shut, and flashing lights warned that the compartment was being repressurized.
“Welcome aboard,” the first voice said, over the communications channel. “It’s now safe for you to leave your ship.”
John glanced at McKay, who was bent over his scanners. “The radiation level is acceptable, but we don’t want to stay here too long.”
“Thanks,” John said, to the unseen voice, “but I think we’ll stay with the jumper. If you’ll bring out your reader, I’ll be glad to activate it, and we can make our copy while Dr. McKay takes a look at your engines.”
“Very well, Colonel.”
Ronon rose from his seat and moved toward the rear of the jumper, taking up a position to cover anyone approaching the rear door. Teyla joined him, one hand resting lightly on her P90, and John worked the controls that lowered the ramp. Three Travelers were approaching from the airlock, a tall, graying man in a much-patched jacket, a middle-aged woman carrying what had to be the Ancient reader, and a gangling teenager, so draped in baggy tunics that it was hard at first to tell if it was a boy or a girl. Boy, John guessed, after a moment, and decided to wait until the others introduced him.
“Corvyn,” the tall man said. “I’m the captain. This is Alsina, who handles salvage, and Vivon, who’s our head mathematician. He’d like to propose a slightly different deal.”
“We’ve got the radiation leak pretty much under control,” Vivon said. “It’s a matter of fitting new plates, and we can do that easily once we land, it’s not like it requires any fancy calculations. But — we’ve heard of Dr. McKay. Our hyperdrive was designed for an entirely different ship, and we don’t know how to adjust it to make it more efficient. We’re always running at over-capacity, which is part of what’s blown out our shields. We’ve made a start on recalculating the envelope, but I was hoping Dr. McKay might be able to help us with the calculations.”
“You see?” McKay said, to no one in particular.
Teyla smiled sweetly. “And we will copy this Ancient database while he does so.”
Corvyn sighed. “Of course.”
McKay followed the boy Vivon into the depths of the Traveler ship, and John accepted the Ancient reader, feeling the casing warm slowly under his hands. It was scratched and dented, and there was even dark residue around the seams and the controls, as though the Travelers hadn’t quite been able to scrub away scorch marks. It was intact, though, and alive, warming back to full life as he held it. The screen lit, and he couldn’t hold back a pleased grin.
“What does it say?” Alsina asked, craning to see, and John turned it so that she could read it as well.
“Star Map of the Altissimas Sector,” John said. “It looks like it’s a combination of an atlas and a guidebook. Where did you find this?”
Alsina looked away. “I can’t really tell you that.”
“Ok, sorry,” John said. “Trade secret, fine. But — do you have anything else like this?”
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“Not anymore,” Alsina said, with a swift glance at Corvyn, and the captain sighed.
“We had another reader, but we traded it on Teos for the plates we need to repair the shielding. We couldn’t read it, and we needed the shield more.”
John swallowed his disappointment. They were still so short of Ancient knowledge — even with Atlantis’s databases to work with, they were always coming up against things that the Ancients took for granted, but which were wholly unfamiliar to the members of the Atlantis expedition. Every new artifact, every new discovery, made everything easier. “Too bad. We’re always interested in things like that.”
By the time the database was downloaded into the jumper’s free memory, McKay had returned, Vivon at his heels. They shook hands at the base of the ramp, and then McKay climbed back into the co-pilot’s seat. John turned to Corvyn. “I don’t suppose you actually know anything about the Pride of the Genii?”
“Only that it’s overweening,” Alsina answered, and Vivon snickered.
“Actually,” Corvyn said, riding over anything else Alsina might have said, “actually, we did cross courses with them on Teos. It was the Harvest Fair, and they were showing off their ship. Tours and everything.”
“And you did not ask them for help?” Teyla asked.
“I wouldn’t ask them to piss on me if I was on fire,” Corvyn said. “We’re not going to owe them anything.”
“If we ever let them put a toe in the door, they’ll try to take us over,” Alsina said. “We made our trades as privately as we could manage, and left. Not that it was easy. They were all over everywhere, sticking their noses into everyone’s business.”
“You didn’t hear anybody say they were having problems with their ship?” John asked.
Corvyn shook his head. “To hear them tell, it was better than when the Ancients’ had it.”
That wasn’t much help, John thought, as he closed the ramp and waited for the docking bay doors to open.
“At least we know that they were not experiencing any problems,” Teyla said, as if she’d read his thoughts, and John glanced quickly over his shoulder.
“Yeah, but would they admit it?”
“Probably they would not,” Teyla said, “but also they would not let so many of their crew go on leave that they could be said to be ‘all over everywhere.’ Surely they would keep their technicians on board to make repairs, and not let people take tours of the ship.”
“True enough.” The last of the atmosphere had been vented, and the bay doors slid slowly open. John nudged the jumper into motion, and slid it through the gap into open space. Ouroun hung like a polished agate ahead of them, the jumper’s systems nudging them toward the Stargate. “You’re being very quiet, McKay.”
“What’s to say?”
Too much, usually. John said, “Were you able to help?”
McKay glared at the controls. “Yes, of course I was able to help. I showed them a better way to calculate the envelope, and it should give them considerable gains in efficient use of their power plant, too. What’s more, the kid, what’s-his-name, he actually understood what I was saying. I know, that doesn’t mean much to you, but, take it from me, this is serious, genius-level theory we’re talking about. And he got it. And instead of doing something with it, he’s going to spend the rest of his life fiddling with hyperdrives that leak radiation and ships that barely work.”
“Surely that is something useful,” Teyla said.
“Once the formula’s set up, anyone can run it,” McKay said. “This kid — give him a chance, give him some training, and he could be the next genius to invent a new way to model hyperspace envelopes, or something equally useful. That’s what we ought to be doing here, not putting bandaids on problems.”
“Bandaids are real useful when you’re bleeding,” John said, and heard Ronon grunt agreement.
“Sheppard’s right. Besides, everybody on that ship would be dead without that kid.”
“That’s not —” McKay glared over his shoulder. “I signed up because I thought we’d make things better.”
“But you have,” Teyla said. “Just now, you gave that boy a new way to look at his calculations, and, yes, he will use it to improve his ship, but can you seriously think he will not push it further, just as you would have done were you in his shoes? There is no guessing where this gift might lead.”
McKay shrugged, but seemed to relax a little. John said, “As long as it doesn’t mean we get the Travelers coming down on Atlantis looking for trouble, I’m good with that.”
“Where next?” Ronon asked.
John glanced at his chart. “Looks like P2M-663. Let’s go.”
~#~
“The Pride of the Genii is due back momentarily.”
Ladon didn’t turn away from the window overlooking the main square of the underground settlement, crowded now with the stalls that held the weekly market. The groups of people spilled out into the main traffic-way, and a flat-bed carrier struggled to pass, blowing its horn repeatedly. His office was cool and quiet, the noise barely reaching him through layers of stone and armored glass.
“You’ll have to tell them something,” Karsci went on. “Unless — is there word?”
“Nothing yet.” Ladon clasped his hands behind his back.
“The longer you wait, the worse it will be.”
“I know that.” Ladon turned, nodding toward his desk. “The announcement is there. I propose to place it on the noon radio.”
He watched as Karsci’s eyebrows rose, and then the other man snatched up the announcement, reading it through with a deepening frown.
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Better to tell them the truth and have them pleasantly surprised when Pride returns than to expect her return and be disappointed,” Ladon answered.
“Balas will have your head.” Karsci sounded grimly pleased, and this time it was Ladon who raised an eyebrow.
“Do you intend to help him?”
Karsci paused. “I’d still rather have you in charge than him. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you drag me down with you.”
“This is not going to end my government,” Ladon said. “No matter what happens to the Pride.”
“That’s what you think.” Karsci snorted. “If we lose the Pride, everyone will say that it was a waste of our greatest scientific achievement to date, and Balas will be right there to point out that he was always against the plan.”
“I’ve done more for our people than Balas ever did,” Ladon said.
“Much good that did Cowen,” Karsci answered.
Ladon managed not to flinch. “I’ve done more than he ever did — Atlantis is our ally, not our enemy, an ally that needs us as a balance against the Wraith.”
“Lose the Pride, and no one’s going to remember that,” Karsci said. “And I mean it. I’m not going to go down with you.”
“You’d really settle for Balas as Chief?”
“There are other candidates.”
“Not at this moment. Depose me now, and Balas will be Chief,” Ladon said.
Karsci tossed the announcement onto Ladon’s desk. “Then wait a few hours. Even until tonight. Maybe the Lanteans will come up with something.”
“They need time, just as our own search teams do,” Ladon said. “This buys them time.”
“You’re determined to do this.”
“I’m not asking for your support,” Ladon said, though that was, of course, a lie. “All I want is for you not to interfere.”
Karsci shook his head again. “It’s a mistake. But — all right, I won’t say anything.”
“Good enough.” Ladon held out his hand and after a moment Karsci took it.
“Balas will raise hell.”
“I know.”
“Then why —” Karsci stopped. “Because he’ll look like a fool when the Pride comes safely home.”
Ladon smiled. “Yes, won’t he?”
“If I didn’t know better, I�
��d think you’d arranged this yourself,” Karsci said, admiringly. “All right, Ladon, I’ll ride with you a little longer.”
“Thank you,” Ladon said, and let the door close behind him before he allowed himself to heave a deep sigh. No, this was no plan of his, though if he’d thought of it, he might have tried something similar. But if he was going to have to suffer the loss of face that came from having to ask Atlantis to help them, he might as well get some political gain as well. Balas had been Cowen’s man, and still harbored ambitions to become Chief himself; Ladon’s faction still wasn’t powerful enough to oppose him directly, and the rest of the Council, Karsci and Dolos and Tivador, each had ambitions of their own. On the civilian side, he could count on Dahlia, of course, and on Moric of Agriculture, but Vendel… He had forgotten that Vendel’s son was on the Pride, which was a mistake, and now he couldn’t tell if Vendel would support him because he’d brought in the Lanteans, or throw in with Balas because the Pride had been endangered.
No, he told himself, Vendel would support him until it was proved that the Pride was lost: that was the best way to protect his son, and Vendel knew it. The other generals would wait to see which way the wind blew. And Balas — Balas would push, and, with just a bit of luck, he would push too hard, and Ladon could bring him down.
The intercom buzzed. Ladon frowned — he wasn’t expecting anyone — and stepped around his desk to answer it. “Yes?”
“It’s the Chief of Sciences, sir.”
“Show her in,” Ladon said, and hoped she brought good news.
Dahlia swept through the door as soon as it was opened, her arms filled with an untidy heap of papers. “We’ve unscrambled that last signal,” she said, without preamble.
Ladon let himself drop into his chair, relief washing over him. “Do you have a location?”
“Maybe.” Dahlia set the papers on the corner of his desk, and pulled up the guest chair so that she could rummage through them more comfortably. “As best we can determine, the transmission was the automatic log update — we arranged for the ship to transmit a compressed version of the officers’ logs every twelve hours, so that if anything went wrong we’d have a record.”
Stargate Atlantis #24 Page 13