Nothing could be seen through the thick layer of water. No matter how long she stood, tilting her head back, everything seemed so... so... opaque. And yet, she so wanted to see the Ancient ship depart! Several times she had seen wraith ships do it.
A dim glow appeared in the sky. Only for a brief moment, but it was beautiful. True, after that, Kirik always said they should hide quickly, because they would soon be followed.
Now they were safe. He said so. And the girl had gotten used to believing her savior.
It was cold on the balcony adjacent to the Atlantis control center. So, to avoid freezing, Seliz wrapped herself in a warm blanket. She didn't think Kirik would scold her for taking an item from his room. He rarely scolded her – only when her actions could lead to mortal danger. Primarily for herself.
So, he would have scolded her more for going out on the balcony than for stealing from his bed...
She didn't have time to finish her thought – the door leading to the city control level opened behind her with a quiet hiss. The girl, although she understood it was impossible, couldn't help but let out a joyful and hopeful cry:
"Kirik!"
However, as soon as she turned, she realized she was mistaken.
"Not quite," Chaya said, approaching the girl. The Ancient stood next to her, mirroring her action.
Seliz watched as the beautiful young woman, whom she quietly admired, now stood with her head tilted back, just as Seliz herself had done a minute ago.
"When I was little, I loved to come here and look at the night sky," the Ancient suddenly said. "It would seem... What's unusual about that? The light of distant clumps of hydrogen and helium, compressed by magnetic fields, and the endless vacuum... From a physics perspective, admiring them is absolutely pointless. And even more so to enjoy them up close without protective equipment. In a vacuum, you'll die from lack of oxygen, and stars... Get close to them without powerful shields, and you'll die faster from stellar radiation... But for millennia, they have captivated inquisitive and enthusiastic minds. I remember looking at the stars on Proculus the day the Lantians arrived... I knew a lot about science, so I wasn't too surprised when a pair of symmetrically placed 'stars' suddenly started moving towards me, increasing in size..."
Seliz remained silent, listening to the revelation. She didn't understand why the Ancient was sharing this information with her, but... she wasn't going to interrupt the story. And who would refuse to listen to a story from the life of an Ancient?
"They came to Proculus," Chaya smiled sadly. "I remember I couldn't say a word. After all, I had just assembled and launched a super-powerful transmitter – to contact other civilizations, according to my understanding at the time. I managed to connect to the stargate in orbit. As it turned out, this was exactly what they were waiting for to consider the race worthy of first contact. And so, they arrived... Just like us. They were led by General Hippaphoralkus. He was so happy with what he saw. I remember how he joyfully informed me that our species had reached such a level of development that the Lantians wanted to get to know us, to introduce us to high culture and the knowledge accumulated over millions of years of development. The war with the wraiths was in full swing then, and... I didn't understand it then, but the Lantians needed soldiers. And they decided, using me as an example, that we were perfectly suited. And I... I was so impressed by his story about Atlantis, about the Ancients, and so on, that I didn't even think it necessary to explain to him how cruelly mistaken he was. He wanted to get a whole highly developed race, but he only got me... And deep distrust from the other Ancients. I will forever remember his words: 'You are my greatest achievement. And my biggest mistake.'"
"A mistake?" the girl gasped. "But you are so... so... good! How could they think you were bad?"
"Good, bad," Chaya smiled sadly. "It makes no difference. What matters is who has the best technology. This rule was followed before the war. And it became inviolable after the Lantians got burned by my people."
"Burned?" Seliz echoed.
"I was the first they met on Proculus," Chaya said. "General Hippaphoralkus was so impressed by my knowledge, judgments, and views not only on science and the surrounding world, but also on the spirituality of the human race, that he immediately organized an outpost on the planet. He didn't listen to any of his subordinates, busy talking to me. We went to Atlantis, where, to everyone's jubilation, he told them about my achievements. He was their hero, the best in everything. They believed him without question. It's no wonder they were inspired by his story then. After all, I was one of the first to join them among the young races. They made me an Ancient and expected the arrival of more and more Proculucians who could join their dwindling ranks... And what was their disappointment when, out of thousands of my compatriots, only I met their criteria for development. They were furious, but they could do nothing. They broke their rule – not to interfere with the development of primitive races, and they could no longer undo it. The Lantians dreamed of an army, but they only got me."
"But... why were they angry with you, not themselves? After all, they were the ones who made the mistake."
"When you live for a thousand years or more, it's hard to admit your mistakes," Chaya sighed. "Especially when you are the most highly developed race in several nearby galaxies. I tried to show them that my people deserved to follow the path I had paved... But nothing came of it. I did a lot to make them understand that a civilization's weak development is not a death sentence. That other people are also worthy of joining the ranks of younger races. But they were adamant. Because of my persistence, I was expelled from Atlantis. I joined one of the younger races and tried until the very end to show that I wasn't a black hole among young stars..." Chaya's face darkened. "But I only made things worse. I was expelled again, with no possibility of leaving Proculus. I couldn't do anything when the wraiths came. And no one helped me stop it all..."
"And the general... Hippo... Hippa... Grippa..."
"Hippaphoralkus died in the midst of the war. His ship was lured into an ambush and captured. Thanks to this, the wraiths acquired Lantians power sources, which allowed them to develop a new tactic. He managed to ascend, become pure energy. And he helped me do the same when my world was attacked. I gained the power to destroy the wraiths... And I did it, although I was warned. I saved only a few... And found myself isolated from everyone. I was exiled for the third time..."
"You remember this?" Seliz asked in surprise. "Kirik said you don't remember anything since the Ancients disappeared."
"I don't remember," Chaya admitted sadly. "But I can encrypt large data packets in seemingly simple text. Perhaps this is my fate – to create false impressions. Soon, others will understand this... And they will hate me."
"That's not true!" Seliz declared. "You're good!"
"Maybe," Chaya smiled, stroking her head. "But no matter how hard I try, it will happen... Soon, other Ancients will arrive here... And they will want to settle scores with me... Nothing will stop them now..."
"Misha will protect you!" Seliz said confidently. "And Kirik! And Alvar!"
"I'm afraid that will be the last thing they do," Chaya sighed. "Even if I don't remember everything that happened to me during the Ascension, but... Some things are constant. They won't forgive me for what I did. Then they pitied me because there was a war and they needed scientists. But now... Compared to those who have arrived, I mean nothing. Mikhail and the others simply won't have the opportunity to save me. That's why I need to leave."
"Leave?!" Seliz's eyes widened. "No, no, no! You mustn't leave! Kirik said you would take care of me!"
The girl rushed to the young woman, hugged her, and pressed herself against her with her whole body.
"Don't go! I'll tell them not to touch you! I'll tell them how good you are!"
"My little one," the girl felt a soft, warm hand stroke her hair. "There are moments in life when you have to make a decision that affects the well-being of others... Now I need to leave. And then Mikhail, Kirik, Alvar, and even you won't have to make a choice – future well-being or me."
"Don't leave! I promise, I'll never, ever, ever touch anything in your laboratory again! Honestly, honestly!"
Seliz felt her hands being gently but firmly unclasped. Chaya knelt before her and kissed her tear-stained cheeks.
"Don't blame yourself," Chaya asked her. "You're not to blame. No one is to blame but me. I thought I could keep my secret, but... It turns out I'm not smart enough to overcome one man's stubbornness. Therefore, to avoid negative consequences, I must leave."
"I'll go with you!" Seliz declared. Not so much out of great love for the Ancient, but because staying alone in an empty city terrified her to the point of animalistic spasms.
"I'm afraid that's impossible," Chaya said.
"But I'll be alone!"
"Not for long," the Ancient assured her. "I understand you're scared. But I'll make you strong, and it will pass."
"Make me strong?" Seliz blinked.
"Exactly," Chaya straightened up and offered the girl her hand. "Let's go. You have a lot to learn before I leave."
Kirik's ward, sobbing, grabbed the Ancient's hand as if it were a lifeline. And silently trudged into the city, which now seemed even more frightening and repulsive to her.
***
By the second day, all the gloss and euphoria of hyperspace travel had faded. The enthusiastic attitude towards traveling faster than light on a ship built by an ancient civilization, in a universe I had previously considered mere fantasy, was gone.
And it turned into a routine.
A hard bunk in the command cabin. A confined space, feeling like a herring in a can...
This is not how I imagined people traveling through the stars.
However, the rest did not share my pessimism. Besides Alvar, for whom flights in a vacuum were not out of the ordinary, the crew couldn't tear themselves away from the portholes. The Athosians argued about what exactly they were seeing outside the ship: divine light or unholy light?
I preferred not to talk about the Doppler effect.
The ship and its automation worked perfectly, and I developed a respect for Chaya for her hard work. Yes, the Ancients were also great, they built a beautiful ship that functions even after ten thousand years. But it was thanks to Chaya's efforts that this battleship was brought back to life.
Of the seven days of flight, the last five turned into a torment for me. Wake up, hygiene, a run around the decks of the "Hippaphoralkus," thoughts about how I'm sick of this long and difficult-to-pronounce ship name, push-ups, jumps from the deck to the edge of the bed, another run... I never thought I'd start exercising solely because I was bored.
By the fifth day of the journey, everyone was tired of it, except for a few Athosians. The two fugitives, Tayla... For variety, I was learning wrestling techniques that Kirik and Alvar could show me.
I tried practicing their folk martial arts with the Athosians. Something between the demonstrative-ceremonial duels of the Japanese and aikido. I don't know why they decided that in a real fight, a piercing gaze and complete emotional detachment are valued, as well as ritualistic circling with the opponent, but everyone goes crazy in their own way.
The skills of Kirik and Alvar were much closer to me. Strength, agility, strikes to pressure points, one hundred and seventy-five techniques to break an opponent's arms and kill him with his own fingers. Short and manfully simple. It's like sambo or karate, which I practiced in my childhood and youth. Only without all that "ki-ya!" shouting and leg kicks that made dad's boots leak.
Near the end of the flight, I was even getting pretty good at... falling to the floor without hitting my head on the bulkheads. However, Alvar said that against an unprepared person, I had a good chance. Kirik is less verbose in his training, focused, and therefore in his martial arts, which are indeed reminiscent of sambo, a spirit close to mine, I've made some progress.
The sound signal that we were approaching the destination sounded just as I had almost managed to catch the fugitive and throw him over my shoulder. But I got distracted – as a result, I was thrown over his shoulder.
"Siren," Kirik identified, freezing with a couple of fingers in front of my eyes. According to his philosophy and experience, these organs of wraiths recovered the longest. And for humans – they didn't recover at all. So, no matter how you look at it, a "finishing blow" with blinding is a universal technique. "Did something break?"
"No," I got to my feet and arched my back, sore from the fall. "We've arrived at the 'Aurora.' Half an hour – and we'll exit hyperspace."
"We need to prepare," Kirik said.
Agreed.
I managed to get myself in order and change before the second siren sounded – a five-minute warning. By this time, I had already taken my place in the command chair on the bridge.
Located on a small podium, towering over the other workstations, it offered a great view through the portholes. And from here, I could launch almost any system of the Ancient warship.
But first and foremost, I was interested in the scanners.
There were no long-range scanners on the "Hippaphoralkus" like those on Atlantis or the Taranian outpost. But the ship could still detect objects within a decent radius.
And... Chaya was right.
There were no wraith ships around. I could relax and not prepare for a sprint to the compartment from where I could launch guided missiles.
"Exiting faster-than-light," I announced a minute before it was supposed to happen.
Besides Kirik, Alvar, and Teyla, all the Athosians gathered in the command bridge. Thanks to the ship's systems, I could track Koschey's location aboard the starship. And, thanks again to Chaya, his life signal was perfectly distinguishable from human ones. As far as I remember, neither scanners nor similar systems on the Ancients' starships in the events known to me could boast such quality.
A slight tremor throughout the hull was barely perceptible. But it was this, as well as the white-green cloud of energy that appeared in our path at the end of the light tunnel, that indicated that the "Hippaphoralkus" had finally reached its destination.
"Hippaphoralkus" exits hyperspace.
The dreadnought returned from real space several tens of thousands of kilometers from its target. One must assume that Chaya specifically programmed the ship so that it would not "scrape" the already battered "Aurora." But, I think, she perfectly understood that I could not bring the ships closer on my own without one falling apart from a collision with the other.
A caring young lady...
"I don't see anything," Kirik admitted.
"Me neither," Teyla almost jumped out of her boots, trying to make out something against the backdrop of the impenetrable black cosmos. Unfortunately, the Athosian didn't realize that a ship is not a star, and it's not that easy to spot it in open space.
"We're still quite far from it," I explained, bringing up a small map on the screen with a mental command. True, I wanted to do this on the monitor closest to the other sentient beings, but it only worked on one of those embedded in the wall next to the auxiliary panels. "We'll close in ten minutes. Launching the approach program."
The demonstration was not rich in details. It looked something like a radar screen, only without the sweep running clockwise. But the space between the "Hippaphoralkus" marker in the center and the small icon approaching it, labeled as ancient as "Aurora," was still divided into squares.
Hmm... I've seen radar screens a couple of times. Very similar. Is it a coincidence that our technology is so similar in its embodiment and design to the Ancients', or is it supposed to be that way, considering that humanity was created by the Ancients?
"Hippaphoralkus" was moving towards "Aurora." In my mind, I recalled a problem about two cars that were rushing towards each other at different speeds. In our case, it was the maximum sub-light speed that could be squeezed out of ancient engines powered solely by ship generators. But "Aurora" was flying by inertia. How it gained momentum ten (or so) thousand years ago, it hasn't managed to brake yet. And how, if the ship is not controlled by a crew, and the resistance of the medium in a vacuum is so negligible that it can be neglected?
In just nine and a half minutes, we were close enough to see the ship in all its "glory."
"Oh, ancestors!" the Athosians exclaimed almost simultaneously. But to their credit, the only one who covered her face with her hands was Teyla.
"What happened to it?" the leader of the people from New Athos managed to say.
"The battle it came from was clearly fierce," Alvar said with a hint of admiration. "So much destruction... And it hasn't fallen apart over all this time."
"And it keeps flying," Kirik added quietly. "The Ancestors knew how to build!"
I can't help but agree – despite its frankly pathetic appearance, "Aurora" was impressive. For ten thousand years, the ship had been moving through space and time, having suffered in a fierce battle. But at the same time, as far as I know from the events known to me, it continued to keep hundreds of people of its aging crew in stasis. If they were taken out of the stasis pods, they would hardly even have time to understand what had happened all this time.
"It's very different from our ship," Teyla said, looking at me.
Well, well, Captain Obvious in action. She might as well have added "You don't say!" at the end. And it would have been very close to the original.
"Did you figure that out because 'Aurora' completely lacks a front part?" Kirik asked. "Or because our ship is intact, and it," he pointed to the disfigured behemoth, "isn't?"
Teyla, flashing her dark eyes, remained silent. She had a good relationship with Alvar, but with another former fugitive... That's true. However, she's a good girl in all respects. But sometimes it seems like she secretly drinks brake fluid.
Okay, that's all for later. Now there's a more suitable task for us.
"Aurora"... You can't look at it without tears. Warships are built with a predetermined limit of strength. And it's many times greater than that of research ships. In the case of this starship, I am more than sure that no one re-equipped it after it was reassigned to combat ships.
The bow of this type of dreadnought was something like an angular sphere or a drop attached to the main part of the ship. But on "Aurora"... There's not a single intact spot! The bow is missing, as if it were torn off the hull by a big, angry child! The plating is torn, pierced in many places. Somewhere I even noticed through holes. The construction trusses and metal beams sticking out in all directions turned it into an ugly flower. Like those sculptures and compositions made of rebar that I saw in my previous life.
Somewhere on the hull, dark red cladding remained. As far as I managed to familiarize myself with the data on the Ancient fleet, ships with a military purpose were painted this way. Well, how were they painted... The metal of the cladding simply had a reddish hue. And it was used where the most important places on the starship needed to be armored.
The neural connection with the "Hippaphoralkus" systems gave me an idea that docking was impossible in principle. I tried to launch the algorithm written by Chaya, but the onboard computer refused me. Fortunately, it performed the approach maneuver and allowed the ships to run on parallel courses. At least it didn't tell me to go to hell, while I tried to launch docking five times.
It is both difficult and simple to live in times when spaceships are smarter than their crew. I need to stop this upon my return. Period. I have enough ballast in the crew.
And the least I want is to be it myself. This expedition has already shown me that the best I can hope for, if it doesn't involve shootouts, is to "delegate tasks" to Chaya. Only now did I realize how stupid it all looked.
I am genetically more developed than her, but the girl knows and can do more than me. And she simply obeys me, as a representative of a less developed, younger race, a Lantean. A kind of genetic authority.
I felt bad. A leader should be the best among his people – at least in my understanding. At least in something. And not just because his genetics are better than others.
"Is docking impossible due to 'Aurora's' damage?" Teyla clarified.
"Yes," I didn't go into details.
"We need to contact Chaya and ask for advice," Kirik suggested.
The Ancient dreadnought "Aurora."
"Not a bad idea," I approved, thinking in my mind how best to implement my plan. "Only subspace communication will immediately give us away. We can fend off one wave, maybe a second. But what will we do then? We have tasks here for more than one day, so we shouldn't attract attention from the Wraiths prematurely."
"And what then?" Teyla asked. "Do we return to Atlantis and ask Chaya to solve the problem, and then come back?"
This is what I was pondering. I had shifted too much onto the shoulders of the only Ancient. It's no wonder she freaked out. I treated her not as a comrade, but as a subordinate who should follow orders and not ask questions.
Girls are girls, even among the Ancients. What she told me – about her rejection by other Ancients, and my consumerist attitude. How long did she get used to the idea that as soon as other Ancients appeared in the city, she would be "erased" and sent somewhere to Athos to deal with the outpost that remained there? Or somewhere else to the Wraiths in the boondocks?
"No," I replied after thinking. "We don't have much time to travel around the galaxy. The ship could be discovered. We'll solve the problem ourselves."
"Interestingly, how, if we can't even dock with 'Aurora'?" Alvar inquired.
"Well, are the spacesuits for show?" I asked. Judging by the Ermen's face, I didn't plant the most positive thoughts in him.
There's more to come...