A view of the Ancient outpost on the planet Taranis.
"Looks bleak," Kiryk remarked, not holding back as he surveyed the view from the control room. "If the Wraith come, they won't escape. Their gate is a beachhead for an invasion."
"Not so loud," Teyla gently reminded him of the social graces as she approached. "We are guests. Have you forgotten?"
"No," the fugitive cast another glance at the Taranian landscape before looking at the Athosian. "But that doesn't change the fact that these people will die the moment the Wraith decide to drop in. Too much open space near the gate. A whole squadron of Darts could pass through here."
View from the Ancient outpost control room on Taranis.
Teyla, sensing a heavy gaze upon them, looked at the nearest guard. He had undoubtedly heard what the former Runner had said. From his expression, it required no mental effort to understand—this man would now be watching them twice as closely.
"In my childhood, I heard many stories about Runners," Teyla said softly. "The people who shared them always portrayed you as heroes, fighters for human freedom, hunters of the Wraith..."
"And they didn't lie," Kiryk said.
"True," Teyla gave him a disapproving look. "It's a pity the fairy tales never mentioned you don't have a grain of tact."
"Just look at what they've turned the control room into," the former Runner gestured toward the numerous Taranian mechanisms bolted to the walls and scattered in every corner. "I saw the shock in Chaya's eyes when she saw what they did to the Ancestors' instruments."
The control room of the Taranis outpost.
"Show more respect for someone else's home," Teyla advised. "These people were simply trying to understand the Ancestors' technology. This could happen in any corner of the galaxy. It doesn't make them any less intelligent or capable than us."
Kiryk shook his head.
"It's not about respect," he pointed out the window. "It's simple tactics. Their gate is in an open spot. Too much exposed space and unprotected structures. If the Darts..."
"Keep your voice down," Teyla said with "scary eyes." "We came here to negotiate with these people, not to frighten them."
"And Mikhail asked me to evaluate and make recommendations for their defense," the former Runner reminded her. "Which is exactly what I'm doing. One strike through the gate, and these people will become Wraith food..."
Teyla felt embarrassed by how loudly that was said. The people in the outpost control room were no longer hesitant about casting unmistakably irritated and suspicious glances at them.
"If you want to help, don't do it out loud," Teyla suggested. "The negotiations are difficult enough as it is..."
"I don't see any negotiations here at all," Kiryk snorted. "These people have what we need. And it's something they're incapable of using. Why the hell keep such a thing for themselves?"
"I think that's exactly what Chaya and Mishey are trying to prove to them," Teyla said quietly, looking at the control panels the Taranians had ruthlessly pried open. The abundance of wires and local devices connected to the Ancestors' technology commanded respect for the Taranians' inquisitive minds. But here was the catch... according to Chaya, they had only made things worse.
* * *
"Chancellor Lycus," Chaya tried to remain polite. "I'm not trying to intimidate or pressure you..."
"But that is exactly what you are doing, pointing out that we are ruining your technology," the silver-haired man sitting across the table looked her straight in the eye without fear. "You know, my people had a different opinion of the Ancestors. And then you show up, telling us we've brought the outpost to a desperate state..."
Chancellor Lycus's quarters.
Chaya used breathing exercises to calm herself. It didn't help much.
"Let me explain something to you," she said with a strained smile.
"Try," the Chancellor leaned back in his chair and cast a quick glance at the guard.
"You have quite spartan lighting in this room," Chaya noted. "Doesn't that bother you?"
"Yes, the builders of this place didn't bother with better lighting," the leader of the Taranian people admitted, pointing to a vertical lamp in the corner. The white-glowing column was draped with a red curtain. There was, in principle, too much red decor here. "We had to install additional lamps," he gestured to two characteristic floor lamps by the wall behind him. "Plus keep the entrance door open."
"Suppose you keep the door open because when you pried this room open, you damaged the locking mechanism," Chaya explained, pointing to the crystals on the side panel that weren't glowing with internal light. "And the lighting problem is because when you hung this beautiful curtain," she pointed to the fabric behind the Chancellor, "so the Taranian star's light wouldn't interfere with your work, you damaged the power cables for the internal lighting hidden in the walls of this warehouse. The panels on the wall you took for decoration are decorative covers for cable channels for easy access to the power buses running through the room. According to the electrification standards for such rooms, the lighting wiring runs alongside them, which your technicians drilled into. I suspect this happened before you managed to start the geothermal generator from the control room. Otherwise, it would have resulted in the technicians' deaths and a fire in the room."
"A warehouse?" the Chancellor echoed.
"Yes, this room is a warehouse," Chaya explained. "That's why there's only one main," she pointed to the vertical column of light, "and a few additional lighting sources. When they work, it's enough to see everything necessary here."
"And... the window behind me? You put a window in every warehouse?" the Chancellor continued to press.
"There are half as many additional light sources here as required for such an area," Chaya explained. "It was done out of simple economy. The Taranis outpost was built in the final years of the war when we were short on resources. Taranis is rich in minerals that my people extracted from the caldera of the supervolcano in which this outpost was built."
"There you go again," Lycus said irritably. "We've lived in this place for a long time! And we know nothing about any volcanoes!"
"You would if you understood what's written on the monitors in the control room!" Chaya said with emphasis. "This entire complex was built on a supervolcano only because the ultra-strong rock that sealed the vent after the last eruption is dense and stable enough for tunneling and construction. Moreover, extracting the necessary materials directly from the mantle made building mines unnecessary."
"Mines," the Chancellor chuckled. "Dear Chaya, we have several mines in settlements far from here. And they are quite deep and extensive. Which proves the absence of any supervolcanoes. And yes, we have an idea of what volcanoes are. There are several on the planet. The outpost is located in a mountain, not a volcano. So there's no need to try and confuse us."
She really wanted to hit the man, so blissfully blind. But the Proculus woman understood that was not the way. At least not now.
"Your mines are located more than two hundred kilometers from the outpost, outside the supervolcano. The rock there is thicker and the magma is not so close to the Earth's crust. That's why you haven't encountered..."
"Do you want to impress me with things you supposedly can't know?" the Chancellor smirked. "Мой главный ученый, Norina Pero has already informed me that you've connected to our instruments. That's where you got the information."
"I connected to the outpost equipment," Chaya clarified.
"And you did so without permission," the Chancellor reminded her.
"Because I saw a warning about increasing pressure in the magma chamber," the girl said.
"Ah, those flickering symbols on the screens," the Chancellor chuckled. "Our scientists have already determined that it's nothing more than a screensaver on non-functional monitors."
Inside, the girl wanted to scream. Very loudly, very intensely...
"All the outpost systems are operational," she said softly.
"You said just half an hour ago that they weren't," the Chancellor continued to smile. "Something about an emergency system and all that..."
Chaya closed her eyes, summoning the remnants of her patience. One part of her soul very much wanted an agreement to be reached after all. The other, the larger part, was rooting for the deal to fail and for this place to blow to high heaven.
"When you managed to start the outpost systems..." she began.
"Ah, so now we're not so primitive that we can't handle the Ancestors' systems we've inherited?" the Chancellor taunted her.
"Turning on even the most complex equipment costs nothing," Chaya said with irritation. "Especially since the necessary buttons were probably just highlighted or blinking. And since no genetic imprint input control system was installed here, the Wraith, or even unintelligent animals, could have done it!"
A shadow crossed the Chancellor's face.
"You are insulting us, Chaya!" he said in a warning tone.
"You are ruining technology that is more than ten thousand years old!" the girl hissed. "And if you continue to be so dismissive of what you've inherited, your planet will simply cease to be habitable! Is that what you want!?"
A threat flashed in the Chancellor's eyes.
"You and your friends won't like what I want," he warned.
* * *
"The complex extends many levels down," a young blonde woman informed him, touching a side panel. The elevator doors slid open, and she made an inviting gesture.
Young... no, the term "trying to look young" fit better. For the tons of makeup on her face and the inappropriately worn skin-tight evening dress were much more suitable for a restaurant or a party. But not for visiting the secret corners of an ancient outpost.
"Ladies first," I painted a smile on my face.
"You're so gallant, Mikhail," she gave me a smile. "We definitely ought to chat in private. I so want to learn more about your world and your customs. And," she tried to make eyes at me. I nearly gagged. "About you personally."
The two guards standing at the far wall of the elevator exchanged meaningful looks as Norina Pero was the first to leave the cabin.
All the while, the lady didn't forget to sway her hips, drawing attention to her figure.
'God, kill me!' the thought flashed.
Taranis's lead scientist, Norina Pero.
I'm not a sexist, a chauvinist, and I don't have a club card for the Blue Oyster bar. I love women. Но Машу ж вашу! How old is this Norina!? Forty? Fifty!?
Even makeup doesn't save her from expression lines and all that. The madam is clearly trying to flirt and play games with me. At the same time, I don't think she has a problem with attention from the opposite sex. But... well, I'm not a gerontophile, not in the slightest!
Yes, I'm in a young body, but my brain isn't at all in puberty. And I have no desire to pursue her. And it's not even that she's older... okay, I exaggerated there—she doesn't even look over forty. That is, about my age in my past life. Но even then, I wasn't a fan of getting involved in anything other than working relationships with women who, in their conditional forties, try to look young like teenagers.
How this woman became Taranis's lead scientist is known only to the Ascended. But there are only two options: either through the bedroom (and then that explains the barbaric approach to studying Lantean technology), or she's trying to play the fool. Well, a known female tactic: I can open a jar of pickles myself, but I'll pretend I can't, let the man do it, because it'll make him feel strong, and therefore more compliant to what I actually need.
Been there, seen that. Even Marina didn't shy away from such tricks. Though she did it when she didn't want to drive the car to the shop herself or dust the cabinets.
For five minutes we walked through the corridors, the silence broken only by the click of heels (heels, for mercury's sake!!!) from Norina and her empty-headed babbling about how the complex was discovered, how much time was spent mastering it, and how great it was that we came because we could teach them everything... and other blah-blah-blah.
From what she said, the following could be highlighted: the Taranians found the complex some time ago thanks to a network of tunnels they stumbled upon. Their society is quite developed, I'd say at the level of the early twentieth century, adjusted for the realities of a space universe. Previously, they didn't use the Stargate, as it was installed on a platform in front of the outpost and the Taranians knew nothing about it. However, among these people were entire villages of those who had come through the gate to Taranis to escape the Wraith. For a long time, the locals thought the Wraith were on their planet, but after the outpost was discovered, everything fell into place.
The Wraith don't fly here, but that clearly can't last forever. Especially after the Taranians started the outpost systems.
"Some time ago we spotted a Wraith hive ship flying nearby," Norina said. "By then we had figured out how to operate the energy shield, and the Chancellor ordered it activated. We haven't heard from them since."
"Well, imagine that," I gave a strained smile. "Spotted it yourselves?"
"We saw symbols on one of the screens," Norina explained, pointing to a passage at a crossroads of corridors. "To the right for us."
Chaya had already found out that the locals had started the outpost and all the systems it was equipped with. Including long-range sensors, like on Atlantis. And those showed them a lone Wraith hive ship. Which was supposedly flying toward them.
In fact, it seems like it's the same hive that visited Ermen and destroyed everything there. Then it headed for Sudaria and other planets where Runners were hunted. It just so happened that the planets were in the range of the long-range scanners. But it was enough for the locals that it just flew past. The stories of refugees from distant planets played on the fears of the local government like never before.
And Chancellor Lycus ordered the shields strengthened.
The energy source at this outpost is a geothermal generator, like on Athos. It draws energy from the planet's depths. In theory, it's simply inexhaustible—as long as the mantle and core haven't cooled, the generator will receive energy.
Except the shields are strengthened. They need more energy. And the generator is working like crazy. Which is reflected in the pressure in the magma chamber...
It was roughly the same in the known events with the Atlantis expedition members. Except they discovered the Taranians a year after they had activated the shields. I suspect the circumstances under which this happened are the same for the series' events and for us. It's just that the Earthlings in their "universe" didn't stumble upon Alvar, Ermen, and so on. The cause-and-effect relationship of events has simply been disrupted.
But that's just to set the stage. One just needs to understand that it's unlikely the events that occurred in the series will play out for us in the same way they did for the Earthlings. In some places we'll manage to "grab the prize," and in others failure will await us.
Except the current situation on Taranis isn't as grim as it was during the meeting with the Earthlings. The latter came to Taranis in the second year of the expedition, when the Taranians had already been living under a strengthened shield for a long time. Eventually, this provoked the supervolcano's eruption, the outpost's destruction, and the Taranians' evacuation.
We came long before that. And there's a chance to fix everything. But there's a suspicion we might not succeed. For in the known events, only the supervolcano's eruption convinced the paranoid Chancellor that he wasn't being cheated and taken for a ride...
"And here's the hangar," Norina smiled, waving her hand over the entrance door control panel. "I'm sure you'll appreciate what's in there."
"I don't doubt it," I assured her, following after her.
We found ourselves on an observation deck, from which a simple stepped ladder led off to the left, disappearing into the darkness of the enormous room opening before us.
As Chaya had told me after finding the records in the database, the Ancients had stumbled upon Taranis toward the end of the war. Their resources were running low. She guessed, and now I can confirm it in practice, that the Ancients, though not out of scrap and sticks, had built this complex with minimal technical saturation. High technology—only what was necessary, nothing more. And everything that could be replaced by much simpler things, like a standard elevator, like a conveyor, ladders instead of a conveyor, and so on, was replaced. Most likely they no longer had sufficient resources for high-tech facilities. After all, the Taranian outpost was built at the end of the war.
The girl, as the most obvious representative of the Ancients who could talk the local ruler's ear off—after all, the Taranians respected the Ancients (like most people in the galaxy)—went to the negotiations. I, on the other hand, set about inspecting the surroundings.
I needed to understand what else of note was in the outpost besides what I already knew. And the negotiations... I think Chaya, who is better equipped for that sort of thing, can handle it better.
Lighting fixtures began to flare on in the ceiling and on the walls. So powerful that they managed to drive away the darkness in the huge room we were now looking at.
And at what was in it.
"We believe this," an indescribable joy was visible on Norina's face, "is an Ancestors' warship."
View of the Ancient battleship from the hangar.
I looked at the battle-worn Lantean battleship, then gave a polite smile.
Suddenly, a radio on one of the guards crackled. He quickly held it to his ear like a mobile phone, listened to something, and, looking at us, said:
"The Chancellor demands that you leave Taranis. Immediately."
Norina looked at me with a surprised gaze.
As for me... I really wanted to talk to Chaya and find out the details of their meeting with Chancellor Lycus.