It's hard to find words to convey passing through the gate... Perhaps the fact that I had seen it many times on the screen, that I knew about the device's reliability, that... Perhaps that some-no-kind-of experience from the past allowed me not to scream with joy at how, before my eyes, the bluish puddle of Atlantis's Stargate turned into a green field bathed in the light of a distant planet.
Out of the corner of my eye, I managed to notice the standard Dial-Home Device standing at a distance and slightly off to the side from the gate, like a "mushroom"... But the Puddle Jumper, moving straight ahead at breakneck speed, rushed into the distance.
Stargates on planets of the Pegasus galaxy.
Pulling the control yoke toward me slightly, I felt the ship vibrate, lifting its front upward. Through the windshield, I could see approaching snow-white clouds, as well as the welcoming expanse of the sky...
Praying that nothing would happen and that no one had seen my emergence from the gate, I closed my eyes to concentrate.
At first, I thought of orbiting the planet so that the sensors could scan everything much better. But then I realized that I had neither the time nor the desire to head into space.
And yes, I was afraid that the technology, which had lain dormant for ten thousand years without maintenance, would still decide to present itself to its technical god. Falling from a height of a couple hundred meters is still more pleasant than from thirty-forty kilometers. It would hurt, but in the first case, the chances of survival seemed greater.
I wish I could become invisible right now and learn more about this planet... It would be quite nice, honestly.
The Jumper is indeed an extremely forgiving machine when it comes to human stupidity. If you think about it, reacting to my thoughts stirred up by the flight and being on a new planet, the ship could have done anything. Disable the engines, for example, or fire from the onboard weapons...
Either way, nothing out of the ordinary happened.
The Puddle Jumper activated its cloaking field, which hid it from various kinds of sensors as well as from curious eyes. I understood this by some sixth sense and looked straight ahead.
Projections on the windshield, you say? Yeah, car manufacturers have nothing on what I'm seeing right now.
The virtual screen, unfolded on the inside of the ship's viewport, was dotted with numerous annotations.
This is what the pilot's cabin in a Puddle Jumper looks like, and the virtual screen.
In one part of the projection, I could see a schematic image of the planet I had arrived on. A cute little planet.
Slightly larger than Mother Earth, it nevertheless had a vast ocean washing two continents. One—about the size of Earth's Australia, and judging by the sandy landscape— just as desert-like as its prototype.
But the second continent...
Eurasia compared to it is just a child's toy. Massive, it covered the entire northern hemisphere of the planet, crowning it with a gigantic ice cap. And only much farther south, seven or eight thousand kilometers from the equator, did the landscape change to vast plains interspersed with low rocks and hills. Full-flowing rivers, at the sight of which any native of a once-united state would immediately dub them Dnipro-1, Dnipro-2, and so on down the list, carried their waters across the entire landmass, flooding numerous lakes, compared to some of which Lake Baikal or the Caspian Sea nervously smoke on the sidelines.
But in the second... This I really didn't like.
"Hive ship," I said, coughing, staring at the image on the left part of the virtual screen.
Wandering my gaze across the screen, I saw a multitude of dots swarming over the planet's surface. These, I presume, are Wraith fighters, nicknamed Darts.
Things... I don't like what's happening.
"They should be in hibernation," I muttered, directing the ship farther away from the cluster of Darts. And it's not easy to choose such a spot—the planet is literally swarming with Wraith.
Presumably, a culling is taking place.
While the cloaked Puddle Jumper retreated farther away, I could only rejoice that the cloaking system, like the rest of the ship's components, was functioning properly. If the Wraith had detected me... It would have been very, very bad.
But the man-eating creatures' ship was on the opposite side of the planet. And, I hope, their technology isn't advanced enough to detect me right after exiting the gate.
It's strange that the gate works at all... I recall, the Wraith activated them during their attacks on humans to prevent the population of the assaulted world from escaping. No matter how magnificent Ancient technology is, you can't go back and forth through the gate when it's activated. You can set up either an outgoing or incoming hyperbridge—in either case, travel is possible only from point A to point B during the activation period. Otherwise, it doesn't work.
As far as I remember, at the time of the expedition's arrival in the galaxy, the Wraith should have been sleeping for many more years. The Earthlings became the reason they awoke. And an incredible multitude of aliens thirsting for human "food" descended on planets across the galaxy.
And until now, I thought the phrase "Wraith in hibernation" meant their ships were on planets, and all cullings were carried out exclusively via Darts through the gates. Turns out, I was wrong.
"And this is completely not good," I muttered, seeing a good dozen fast-moving red blips heading toward the gate. Looks like I'm not having any luck today—the Wraith detected me and sent Darts to investigate. Bad, very bad.
Through the cloaking field, they can't see or detect me, but I don't have time to land somewhere and wait it out until they get tired of searching for something. Good if the Wraith just saw a blip on scanners. Very bad if they determined it was an Ancient ship.
For ten thousand years in this galaxy, Ancient ships haven't moved freely. And the Wraith know this perfectly well—they had a hand in it. Direct involvement, so to speak.
The Puddle Jumper has weapons—drones, self-guiding "missiles" of Ancient manufacture. But, first of all, there are only about ten of them, maybe a dozen. That's enough to destroy at most a similar number of Darts. And even then, if I'm a damn good shot and pilot. Second, even with all my desire, I couldn't destroy the main threat with such an arsenal—the Hive ship.
Or could I?
I had to dig into my memory to recall everything I know about Wraith capital ships.
Hive ship. Not an Imperial Star Destroyer, of course, but it can deliver so many problems, oh mama...
If speaking simplistically, a Hive ship is a synthesis of a space carrier, aboard which there is a huge number of fighters and other small ships, like Wraith shuttles or something similar. The Wraith live and fly on these ships. And also feed.
Wraith starships don't have shields like the one that saves Atlantis from flooding. But their ships, like all their technology, have an organic nature. Essentially, it's a huge flying ecosystem capable of hyperspace jumps between stars and flights in normal space. Only with a huge crew—I think there's under a thousand Wraith of all stripes on the Hives after all, with energy cannons and a unified view of any human. Food. To the Wraith, we're no more than food.
But not in the classical sense, meat-bones-fat. The Wraith feed on something like the life force of people. Such anti-scientific parasites that in one "sitting" can age a nineteen-year-old youth to the state of a mummy. Thanks to this method of "feeding," the Wraith possess incredible regeneration and longevity. In the series, despite the ten thousand years that passed since the war with the Ancients, many Wraith remembered those times.
Despite their size, Hive ships are capable of entering a planet's atmosphere and landing. Actually, I thought that during hibernation, they land on secret planets where no one will disturb them. And the Wraith sleep for one purpose—to allow their human herds to multiply. Everyone loves to eat...
Aboard the Hives, there are special chambers where prisoners captured on planets are held. Naturally, they're kept until the Wraith on the ships decide to snack on "provisions for afternoon tea." And then it's the turn of those who weren't "drained" immediately.
The Puddle Jumper, following my thoughts, highlighted on the Hive ship schematic: gun ports, main engines, hyperdrive, sensors... And the longer I looked at all this, the more clearly I understood: nothing awaits me here.
"The most adequate idea would be to get out of here," I suggested the idea to myself. And cautiously directed the Puddle Jumper back toward the gate.
Already after ten seconds, I realized that this was absolutely not the best option to resolve the situation. It seems the Wraith decided to plug a gap in their tactics—the gate is open for passage from Sudaria... somewhere. To other gates in orbit around some planet, to a planet swarming with Wraith, into a trap from which there's no escape, or straight onto a Hive ship (it happened in the series)—any of the options is repulsive.
But a second later, I realized I was wrong in my assumptions. It's not an outgoing, but an incoming tunnel that's open.
Through which, one after another, five more Darts slipped into Sudaria's sky, forming a wedge and rushing into the heavens. Uh-huh, the camp heads into the sky, and my plans go to the cat under the tail.
A Dart is a very fast, maneuverable, and armed with energy weapons biotechnical small Wraith ship. Essentially—a knockoff of the Puddle Jumper, but, due to the Wraith's backwardness, not as advanced. No shields, no cloaking, but excellent aerodynamics that allow it to operate equally effectively in space and atmosphere.
Aboard is a Dial-Home Device, like on the Puddle Jumper, and therefore any "Dart" is capable of opening a gate and preventing me from flying away from here.
Moreover, aboard each "Dart" is a device that allows penetrating through walls and ceilings, dematerializing, or vice versa, materializing objects and organics. This is how the Wraith collect people—they fly over them in "Darts" and turn them into pure energy stored in special buffers aboard the ship. After which, on their Hive or base, they dematerialize the cargo and get the people back. Usually, due to the technology's effect, unconscious and unable to defend themselves.
Very convenient and devilishly thought-out.
Wraith Darts.
Presumably, the Wraith called for reinforcements. Because these five "Darts" aren't hunting people—they're not flying toward the villages I spot on my scanners. They're dropping off soldiers and officers right next to the spot where I activated my cloaking.
And, if only these five...
A good dozen "Darts" were returning to the Hive ship, after which they returned and dropped off more and more Wraith right by the gate. I think there's already a couple of companies of them here.
And that means problems are only increasing exponentially. I need to think realistically—if I fall into the Wraith's hands, they'll first interrogate me in the best traditions of mental mages from fantasy books, and then, coming to Atlantis, eat me. After which, one can only envy everyone around.
And if the conditional "everyone" didn't concern me much, then I wanted to take care of my own skin so that it stayed with me until deep old age. Therefore, it's better not to take rash actions. Including attacks on the "Hive," "Darts," and Wraith in particular are postponed.
Lovers of feasting on human life were tightly linked to each other via telepathy and could easily transmit mental messages to each other over short distances. I know for sure that queens, who stand at the head of any Wraith group in a Hive, and officers—by the way, that's how I dubbed the male Wraith who don't wear face masks—could do this. They're something like commanders, scientists, advisors to the queens... In any case, I really didn't want to meet any of them.
Yes, I have a weapon, a personal shield, but... One against several hundred? I'm sure I could take out some Wraith. But others would come after them. And the shield, the weapon would run out of charge sooner or later. I don't know exactly when, I didn't have time to study the technologies thoroughly—all thoughts were occupied with ideas on how to get here.
And now, on the contrary, how to get away. Preferably—with the ZPM. It would be absolutely ideal if I didn't drag Wraith to Atlantis with me and didn't become the reason they all wake up. If, of course, they haven't already.
I need a good plan.
Wraith officer—in the center. Wraith soldiers... Started wearing face masks even before it became mandatory.
The initial plan seemed ideal to me.
No, I wasn't going to do it like in the series: arrive on the planet, meet the locals, study their legends about the "Quindozium Treasure," aka ZPM, rack my brains over riddles, then reach the dungeon and find it. Well, and then blunder, get into a scrape, nearly lose the device, recapture it, rejoice... And still lose it.
I adhered to a different philosophy.
Find a settlement resembling a fortress where the plot developed, then scan its surroundings to find the underground repository where the ZPM was hidden. Yes, there was a chance the dungeon would be shielded from scanners, otherwise the Wraith would have found it over all this time. But, recalling that they rarely paid attention to what's hidden underground unless energy traces emanated from there, this was unlikely. The ZPM, though a battery with a huge power reserve for various devices, had been here for ten thousand years. And the Wraith visited the planet but found nothing. So, there's a chance.
More precisely, there was. Because I planned to blast the upper part of the dungeon with drones, descend there, grab the ZPM, and leave before the locals reacted to the explosion's roar or something else.
The plan was good... Only I didn't anticipate the Wraith's appearance here at all. Yes, I should have thought that since some time has passed since the supposed arrival of the expedition, the situation on the planets has changed, but... A Hive ship⁈ A bunch of Wraith on the planet⁈
No, life hadn't prepared me for that.
I pulled the "Puddle Jumper" farther away from the Wraith cluster and began observing them. It doesn't look like they're searching specifically for a ship.
The infantry spread out through the forest, advancing in small squads of four or five Wraith led by a commander. Most of the "Darts" continued hunting people, while the others patrolled over the forest...
As if looking for something.
An uneasy premonition stirred in me.
Something or someone? Possibly, one of the locals managed to escape into the forests, and now the Wraith are hunting them. But... Several companies of soldiers against local peasants who haven't even heard of machine guns? Something doesn't add up...
***
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