TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
THE WILD BLUE
Melissa Scott
An original publication of Fandemonium Ltd, produced under license from MGM Consumer Products.
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METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER Presents
STARGATE ATLANTIS™
JOE FLANIGAN RACHEL LUTTRELL JASON MOMOA JEWEL STAITE
ROBERT PICARDO and DAVID HEWLETT as Dr. McKay
Executive Producers BRAD WRIGHT & ROBERT C. COOPER
Created by BRAD WRIGHT & ROBERT C. COOPER
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CHAPTER ONE
THE SQUARE around the Stargate was crowded, or what passed for crowded on Sateda, the mid-week market just winding down. The biggest of the temporary stalls were still from off-world, Ronon saw, speculators looking for salvaged goods their own worlds couldn’t quite make or maintain, but he was pleased to see that the goods offered in exchange were not just ordinary foodstuffs, but things worth almost the value of the salvage. Some of the Satedan stalls were offering food as well, great jugs of cold tea and little crisp cakes and even knobs of sugar-candy: more progress. The last time he had been in the capital, the provisional governor Ushan Cai was still requiring everyone to contribute all their rations to the common store. All the meals had been cooked and served communally, even while people were spreading out into the ruins.
Cai saw where he was looking, and nodded. “We’re — doing better.” His voice was that of a man who doesn’t want to call down ill luck. “We’ve got a trade agreement with Varres now, food for scrap metal and technical assistance, so we don’t have to be as tight as we were when we got here. Of course, when we started coming back, no one wanted to live away from the square.”
In case the Wraith returned, Ronon knew, but guessed also that not many people had wanted to live too far from their fellow humans. Even now, the ruined city could seem painfully empty, as though the dead were just waiting to peer out a broken window, or step from a shattered door.
“Now we’ve got people in the houses all along Arkan Avenue, and we’ve cleared the old rail line from the Souter Depot all the way in to the Gate Square.”
“That’s good.”
“It’s made it a lot easier to bring in coal —” Cai stopped abruptly as one of the women detached herself from a group around the notice board that had been erected beside the hotel’s pump.
“Governor! Why are we still having power cuts? You said we’d get all day power as soon as we’d gathered enough coal, and the gods know there’s solid ton of it ready now. I swear I carried enough of it.”
“That coal’s for the winter,” Cai said.
“We’re still hauling coal in every day, me and my boys and half the city.” The woman put her hands on her hips, obviously aware of the people who had stopped to listen. The shortage of electricity was a long-standing grievance, Ronon knew. The borrowed Lantean generators went to power the hotel and the radio station and a handful of nearby buildings, things the Lanteans needed as much as the settlers. At the beginning, that had been enough to take care of everyone, but now that more and more Satedans were coming home, they were spreading out into buildings that couldn’t be hooked up to that limited network. Cai and his people had rigged up a couple of coal-fired generators, but the coal had to be scavenged from depots and cellars all over the city, and everyone was acutely aware that there was only a limited supply available. “You could run the generators all day, and we’d be able to bring in more than enough coal to make up what you burn.”
“We don’t know that,” Cai said, with more patience than Ronon could have mustered. “Marti, you and your boys have done an amazing job emptying the old rail depot coal storage — I didn’t think we’d be finished before autumn, and it’s only just past midsummer, and most of that coal is here.” Marti relaxed slightly under his praise, and Cai went on, “But you know as well as I do that there’s not enough left to both increase the hours we have electricity and have enough coal to get us through the winter.”
“We can’t keep going like this,” she said. “Two hours out in the middle of the day, every day — anyone who’s trying to use a power tool has to stop and start, and it’s just no good.”
“I know,” Cai said. “We’re working on it, believe me.”
“She’s right,” a man said. “Those breaks are just killing us. Can’t they come at the end of the day, or in the morning?”
“You can bring that up at the next citizens’ council,” Cai said. “This was what worked best for most people the last time we voted.”
“Or you could let more people tie in to the Lantean grid,” another man said. “They don’t have any shortages.”
“Again, that’s a matter to bring up at the next council,” Cai answered. “And we’d need to bring the Lanteans in on it, it’s their technology. And if anyone finds another big coal dump — and I’m sure there are some out there — we’ll revisit the question.”
For a moment, Ronon thought they were going to keep arguing, but Marti grinned.
“That’s fair enough. We’ll need to find more supplies for next year anyway.”
“You and your boys — and their cousins — you’ve done a great job,” Cai said warmly, and the crowd dissolved, people turning back to the business of packing up their stalls. Ronon started to turn away, relieved, but Cai caught his elbow. “Hang on, I’d like a word —”
He broke away as yet another man came up, saying something about the water supply, and Ronon let himself drift toward the hotel entrance, where he knew Cai would end up. This was exactly the sort of thing he didn’t want to do, another secret, faintly guilty reason for not leaving Atlantis. Leave Atlantis, and he’d be stuck playing referee when no one was actually wrong, but there wasn’t enough to go around. He’d rather be shot at any day.
It didn’t take long for Cai to disengage, and he came up onto the hotel’s porch, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. “Warm day. Care for a beer, Dex?”
The beer wasn’t what it used to be, but bad Satedan beer was better than most of what he could get off world. Ronon nodded with some enthusiasm, and let himself be steered to a corner table in what had been the hotel’s lobby and was now the community’s main meeting place. A teenage boy brought a pitcher and two glasses and scurried off.
“Well,” Cai said. “You remember the Ezes?”
Ronon frowned, shaking his head.
“They managed to survive the culling up in the mountains around Escavera, them and seven or eight other country families, and a few months back Jana,
that’s the daughter, got the bright idea of walking to the capital to see if there was anything they could salvage. That was when your people were looking for Dr. Weir.”
As always, being treated as one of the Lanteans felt odd, but Ronon just nodded. “Yeah. I think I heard something about that.”
“Beron and the older girl, Vetra, they’ve gone back, but Jana’s stayed to help Hocken with the mapping. And one of the things she said got me thinking. They came past the old hydro plant at the Narmoth Falls, camped there a couple of days after they got down the cliffs, and she said she didn’t think it had taken any damage from the culling. If we could get that running again…”
“Yeah.” The Narmoth Falls power plant was old and reliable and close to the city, and it had been one of the main power sources before the culling. “You’d have to fix the power lines between here and there — and I’m not sure why you’re telling me. I’m not an engineer.”
“Neither am I,” Cai said. “And neither is much of anybody here. I was hoping maybe somebody on Atlantis could help us out — at least to see if there’s any chance this could work.”
Ronon took another swallow of his beer. “I’ll talk to Colonel Sheppard.”
“Thank you,” Cai said, and filled their cups again.
***
Mel Hocken taxied the Rapide into the hangar, then ducked back out through the side hatch, resting her hand affectionately on the fiberglass skin of the fuselage. She had shepherded the kit-built plane that she’d found and purchased for Governor Cai through complexities of getting it to Sateda, and then through the build and testing, and she was more than a little in love with the airplane. It wasn’t anything like the F-302s she’d flown before she retired, but she’d always kept a general aviation license, and the Rapide had more than lived up to its marketing, especially after McKay had modified its engines to run off a scaled-down naquadah generator. Through the open door she could see Tarek Mav, the groundsman, turning the ox-drawn mowing machine onto the landing strip, the great blades whirring. That was typical of Pegasus, the mix of top-of-the-line technology and something that would have been out of date on Earth a hundred years ago, and she couldn’t help shaking her head. It went along with kerosene lamps and an outhouse, having to walk for an hour to get to what passed for town, but she had known what she was getting into when she took the job. She’d put in her twenty years, and couldn’t see a reason to stay, not anymore, but she hadn’t had anything to go back to on Earth, either. Then Cai had offered this job, and as soon as the Rapide was fully approved, she’d be paid to train the first class of Satedan pilots, just as she’d trained the drone operators who were piloting the unmanned aircraft currently searching the areas north of the capital for any signs of survivors. Of course, at this point ’pay’ was food and housing, and a promise of any profits made from the Rapide in the future, but she was, somewhat to her own surprise, perfectly content with that. Plus her Air Force pension was still going into a bank account, and she suspected the Atlantis crew would be willing to place orders for her if she needed anything, but all in all she couldn’t see any reason to go home. She had no family there, and Sateda was wide open, a new frontier where her skills were genuinely needed.
The sound of the mower grew stronger again as Mav made another pass along the strip, and she pushed herself away from the plane. Before she reached the door, she heard clattering footsteps on the stairs that led to the drone station on the roof, and glanced back to see Yustyna Tan hurrying toward her.
“Mel! I’m glad I caught you. Something interesting’s turned up.”
“Yeah?” Mel climbed the stairs behind her, to emerge in the little shack they’d built on top of the trolley barn’s roof. Eventually it would be the control tower for the field, or at least the base of a tower, but for now, with only the Rapide and three drones to worry about, it was filled with the monitors and consoles for the drones.
Cai had borrowed a couple of Air Force sergeants as trainers, and one of them was at the controls, frowning lightly as she studied her screens. One of the other Satedans, an ex-mechanic named Alpir Bas, was leaning over her shoulder, watching intently.
“What’s up?” Mel asked, scanning the screens. They were filled with the tops of pine trees, more of the forest that lay between the capital and the Alduren Plateau, and she looked to the screen that superimposed the drone’s position over a map of the area. The trouble was, the map dated from before the culling, and showed plenty of things that were no longer there, like the railroad that had once run north to the Narmoth Falls. The drone’s last half hour of flight showed as a bright line, running along the edge of the area to be mapped and now turning back toward the west as though it was doubling back on its tracks.
“We spotted a clearing,” the sergeant said. Her name was Montaigne, and she had a good reputation both as an operator and as a trainer. “I’m checking it out.”
As she spoke, the trees in the video thinned out, and Montaigne reached for the controls to adjust the camera, zooming in on the cleared ground that suddenly appeared. “That looks man-made —”
She stopped, grimacing, as the ruins of a farmhouse slid into view, and the Satedans sighed in chorus. The roof had fallen in, though there didn’t seem to be any signs of fire or explosive damage, and weeds and brush were beginning to choke out the fields.
“Looks like they were culled,” Bas said, his voice tight, and Tan nodded.
“Or they abandoned the house,” Montaigne said. “It looks more like the roof fell in than that somebody took it off. And the Wraith would use culling beams —”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Mel said, seeing the Satedans bristle. It was a knee-jerk reaction for them to assume that the Wraith had killed anyone who was missing, and they were weirdly offended if you suggested anything less. We’d rather the surprise was a good one, Tan had said, with her wry smile, and Mel could kind of understand that. “Let’s mark it and move on.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Montaigne answered, her hands busy on the controls. The camera pulled back, the clearing receding, and the drone turned back to the north.
“That’s not the only thing,” Tan said. “There’s something up here in this edge quadrant that looks interesting. At the end of the last pass, just before we made the turn back to the south, it looked like there might be something in the foothills of the Spur. I’ve got the images up on my screen if you want to see.”
Mel nodded, leaning over her shoulder. The Spur was a line of mountains that ran south from the edge of the Alduren Plateau.
“It’s not real clear,” Tan said, “but it is… interesting.” She had been a photographer before the Wraith attacked, and had taken to digital images like a duck to water.
Mel squinted at the screen, trying to figure out what she was seeing. Those lighter patches had to be rocks, the slopes of the Spur where it separated from the Plateau — it had been a mining area, Tan had said, though sadly it had been metals rather than the coal they needed for heating. And if those were rocks, then those other shapes must be low-growing brush, and that — it was too straight to be natural, surely? “There?”
She pointed, and Tan nodded. “Yes. This is an enhanced image, and it was at a funky angle because of the distance, but that looks almost like timbers to me. It might just be logs harvested before the culling, but I think it’s worth checking out.”
“Makes sense to me,” Mel said. “Sergeant. Can we do it this run, or will we need to wait for the next mission?”
“This is my last pass for the day,” Montaigne answered. “We’re losing the light, and I’m toward the end of my fuel load anyway. I thought I’d make my turn to the east, see if I can’t pick up a little better picture. But I definitely think it ought to be on the schedule for tomorrow.”
“Sounds good,” Mel said. She looked around the little room, seeing the reluctant hope in the Satedan faces. “It’s definitely worth the look.”
***
It was another bright day on Atlantis,
and the sun had dried the platforms outside the mess hall. They hadn’t even been frozen, Ronon thought. They were moving into Atlantis’s summer, and now there were nights that didn’t actually get cold enough to freeze: definitely an improvement over their previous location. He wished he could go for a run, sprinting along the catwalks and ramps that tied the towers together, but he was due at another briefing. He filled a cup of tea, and made his way into the meeting room.
Most of the others were there before him, Sheppard still looking uneasy at the head of the table, and Dr. Weir looking just as awkward sitting beside McKay and Zelenka. Teyla had brought coffee in a travel mug marked with a stylized head in the Americans’ favorite red-white-and-blue, and as Ronon took his place beside her, Beckett came bustling in, spilling tea and apologies. Zelenka found a napkin, and Sheppard looked at his laptop.
“Right. The agenda.”
Ronon leaned back as the others ran through the listed business, ignoring Teyla’s reproving look. He didn’t have anything to contribute to any of these topics — things were actually running pretty smoothly at the moment, though if the past was any indication, that should mean the Wraith or the Vanir or some other weird thing was going to show up and send everything straight to hell — and he waited patiently until they reached the end of the list.
“Ok,” Sheppard said, a faint look of relief on his face. “Anybody got anything else to bring up?”
“Yeah,” Ronon said, and saw a look of surprise on almost everyone’s face. “Governor Cai asked me to ask something.”
“Ok,” Sheppard said again, and across the table Dr. Weir leaned forward with a look of genuine interest.
“The biggest problem they’ve got right now is electricity,” Ronon said. “The capital used to be supplied from a hydro plant at the Narmoth Falls, here.” He touched his tablet to bring up the file and projected it onto the main screen, then used his finger to circle the spot. “The people who walked down from Escavera came down from the Plateau there, and they said they didn’t see very much damage. They weren’t even sure the Wraith had been there. Cai wants to send a team up to see if they can get the plant going again, and he wanted me to ask if anyone on Atlantis would be available to assist his team.”
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