Despite the impenetrable darkness that reigned at the bottom of the Lantian ocean, despite the millennia during which the silt had covered the ship's hull so much that it was barely distinguishable from the ocean floor, something still made the Wraith ship's hull a less harmonious part of the underwater landscape.
Wraith cruiser on the ocean floor. Still from the series.
"This is all a very, very, very bad idea," Iha'ar said, drumming his fingers on the control panel.
"We should have just blown up this ship!"
"There's thin planetary crust underneath," Trebal objected.
"If we do that, the release of geothermal energy will tear the world apart."
"We should have just repaired the engines and gotten out of here," the engineer said.
"A month, two, maybe a couple of years, and we would have fixed everything. Besides, I think Atlantis is still capable of a short hyperspace jump without critical consequences."
"And are you willing to bet your life on it?" I clarified.
"Yes, of course, no," the engineer got confused in his answers.
"But you've definitely lost your minds! Hunting the Queen of Death... Do you even know what she's famous for?"
"She united all the Wraiths against the Confederacy of Ancients in Pegasus," I showed off my erudition, watching as an energy activity marker appeared on the virtual screen. If you look closely, you can see distant and barely discernible beams of light from the powerful spotlights of the mobile drilling rig. They are barely visible to the naked eye... And this is despite the fact that we are no more than a kilometer away from the drill rig in a straight line.
"And that too," Iha'ar agreed.
"But... I saw her in action."
"Not just you," Trebal said, turning to the engineer from the navigator's seat.
"I and the entire crew of the 'Aurora' fought against Death and her henchmen. Well, if you forgot."
"That's not what I mean," Iha'ar shook his head.
"I was in Emeg when she attacked Athos. I was among the last group to evacuate from there to participate in the war."
"Emeg is the Old City on Athos, isn't it?" I clarified.
"With a geothermal shield generator in the control room, right?"
"My group was there to show the Athosians how to use the generator and shield before we left, to protect the planet from Wraith attacks," Iha'ar continued.
"The strategy was that the Wraiths, encountering the shield protecting the planet, would batter against it for some time, and then leave, realizing they couldn't capture the inhabitants of Athos."
"You didn't mention this," Trebal shared.
"Do you tell your colleagues about every day of your life?" Iha'ar asked.
"I don't recall you or anyone else sharing not-so-pleasant memories?"
An awkward silence fell, from which only a sound signal on the 'jumper's' panel saved us.
"Mikhail," Teila contacted me.
"The technicians have started the drill. The installation has power, the systems are operational. There are no damages, which surprises me greatly. The technicians have reconfigured the installation's sensors, and now we are registering a barely perceptible energy emission from the ship."
"So it has working power sources," Trebal said.
"It's likely that the cruiser wasn't as badly damaged during the fall as we thought. Or it has recovered over ten thousand years."
"And that means we have a potentially combat-ready Wraith starship," I concluded.
"Yes, but maybe we should kill the Queen of Death first?" Iha'ar suggested.
"Or, better yet, just don't touch her at all? Let her die on her own?"
"Do you know why the Ancients abandoned the platform?" I asked Teila, ignoring the panicking Ancient.
"They turned it off and evacuated when Wraith ships started falling into the ocean," the Athosian replied.
"The Council feared that destroying a working station would attract the Wraiths' attention to the thin crust at this location on the planet. The fall of that cruiser near the drill rig was the last straw. The Council decided that the Wraiths had detected the installation, and therefore decided to evacuate it. At least the technicians say that's the last entry in the drill's logbook."
"Extracting energy under fire or threat of capture is illogical," Trebal said.
"I understand you, Teila," I said.
"Do you feel the Wraith?"
"No, Mikhail," Teila replied after a pause.
"The device is still on. Chaya also said that I might not feel her when the queen or another Wraith is in hibernation. Perhaps she hasn't woken up yet?"
"Or she's dead," Iha'ar said hopefully.
To prevent the Queen of Death from detecting Teila, the latter flew with a group of technicians and soldiers to the drill rig under the Wraith mental ability suppression device. And until we start our part of the operation, it will remain that way.
"Okay, stay in touch," I ordered.
"Let me know as soon as all the drill's systems are under our control."
"Of course, Misha, I'll inform you," Teila replied.
"Misha," Trebal repeated in an innocent voice, looking at me with a spark of amusement.
"What warm relations you have."
"If there was a shield, there was a generator, and the Wraiths aren't inclined to sit around waiting for prey for long, then how did Athos fall?" I shifted the conversation to Iha'ar.
"It wasn't a normal gathering," Iha'ar shivered.
"We underestimated them, thinking that Wraiths only needed humans for food. Queen Death changed their tactics. Athos and hundreds of other worlds were not needed by her for feeding her huge army. She destroyed them."
"Planetary extermination," Trebal recalled, as if remembering something.
"We never understood why the Wraiths killed the inhabitants of worlds that they couldn't storm on the first attack."
"Death attacked Athos, despite the shields," Iha'ar continued.
"Her ships bombarded the planet's defenses, causing instability in the protective systems. My group was just ordered to retreat. The Athosians refused to leave their world. I explained to them that the bombardment was thinning the shield and soon it wouldn't be able to protect the entire planet. They said that after we left, they would reduce the shield to the size of a city, and thus wouldn't have to spend a huge amount of energy protecting the entire planet. I warned them that in any case, such a load on the shields, their prolonged activation would cause an overload of the geothermal reactor, and a supervolcano eruption would occur. We had to leave, but they refused again. Before leaving, I assembled a small surveillance system from a damaged jumper and left it near Emeg. So that the Wraiths couldn't block the gates, we opened them from another planet, and I received telemetry..."
Iha'ar spoke, staring into space. Trebal and I exchanged glances, simultaneously realizing that the guy was trapped in traumatic memories.
"The Wraiths knew about the weakness of geothermal technology," he continued. "We watched, helpless, as they forced the shield size to shrink with relentless bombardment. District after district, parts of Emegé were left open to the Wraiths. And they attacked… It wasn't a gathering—they were exterminating people. Killing them. Everyone, without discrimination. Men, women, old people, children… Everyone who didn't manage to hide under the shrinking shield. And then, when the Athosians turned off the shield to prevent Athos from exploding, Death Queen herself descended upon the planet. She personally led the final assault. She walked through the streets of the city, killing everyone she met. She didn't eat a single person—she enjoyed the killings. And she told everyone that their brutal death was the price for resistance. She said if they hadn't fought, but had meekly submitted to being gathered, she would have taken some. Half or a little more. But in worlds where she met resistance, she and her soldiers would kill everyone."
"Why tell that to those who are already doomed?" Trebal wondered. "It sounds like a lesson for the survivors… But she killed everyone, didn't she?"
"Everyone I saw," Ihaar swallowed the lump in his throat.
"She knew you were watching," I suggested. "Or she suspected it. That's why she staged a public execution. The lesson wasn't for the Athosians. It was for the rest."
"I could have worked on gravity attraction systems, like a gravity anchor," Ihaar shook his head to drive away the traumatic memories. "We would have lifted Atlantis into the air, pulled out the cruiser, taken it into orbit, and blown it up with shells! And then we would have landed and…"
"Chaya and I calculated that option," I said. "Such manipulations would consume too much ZPM energy. We can't delay neutralizing this threat. And we can't deprive ourselves of energy, knowing that the Wraiths have information about Atlantis's location and that there is an active Ancient ship in the galaxy."
"If they wanted to, they would have shown up long ago," Ihaar's voice sounded offended. "I still advise changing planets. You just need to find a couple more ZPMs, if you're so concerned about energy consumption."
Find… Ridiculous.
"ZPMs don't grow on trees," I reminded the engineer. "And we still have a few options to find them… Three, to be precise."
"Three?" Trebal was surprised.
"We know there are three ZPMs somewhere?" Ihaar perked up. His interest was understandable—the guy didn't want to risk getting involved with Death Queen, whom he had already seen in action. If we had three more ZPMs, we could fly to another planet and do many other things.
"In the events I know of, when the leader of an Earth expedition accidentally ended up in the past, during the final days of the siege of Atlantis, Janus gave her a note with the coordinates of worlds where there was exactly one ZPM," I said. "There were five addresses in total. Sudaria and her 'Potentia' were the first world on the list. Epheone, I assume, was the second. Three remain."
"But you said the temporal paradox with time travel didn't happen, because the time machine ended up in the past, at the besieged Atlantis, after it," Trebal recalled. "Moros ordered it dismantled… And you found it here when you woke up in the city."
"And the Ascended took it," I finished.
"And what guarantees do we have that Janus actually distributed ZPMs on those five planets if there was no time travel?" Ihaar asked. "You said he did it to help the expedition. And if he didn't know they were coming, he might not have hidden them…"
"And he didn't hide them specifically for the expedition," I said.
"Janus gave the coordinates of planets where ZPMs already were," Trebal understood. "After all, if he was under the Council's thumb, no one would have allowed him to take such valuable equipment out of the city in the midst of the Atlantis occupation. So the ZPMs must have ended up on the planets much earlier."
"We don't know how the ZPM ended up on Sudaria or for what purpose," I said. "Just for safekeeping for the Ancients, as was said in the known events? Well, maybe."
"On Epheone, it was brought to install an EMP generator," Trebal stated the known data. "So… the other three could also have been transferred to some planets to power defensive devices."
"As soon as we deal with Death Queen, we'll start looking for them," I promised.
The control panel emitted the familiar sound of an open communication channel again.
"Misha, it's Teyla," the Athosian's voice came. "The technicians say the drilling platform is completely under our control. Soldiers are in position, defensive fields are working. We are ready to start."
"Good," I looked at Ihaar. "Are you ready?"
The engineer looked at me, then somewhere into the void.
Licking his dry lips, he jerked up from his seat in the second row and said, "Let's do it. Give me a couple of minutes to check everything. As soon as I get back to the cockpit, you can open the rear hatch and drop the device," he looked at the clumsy structure that occupied most of the cargo compartment. "We won't have much time to get away before it shuts everything down around us."
At its core, it was a generator built by Chaya. But the multiple units, built on top and powered through insulated cables coming out of the installation, had appeared here over the past week. That's how long Ihaar and Chaya had been creating our equivalent of the EMP generator from Epheone.
I must say, the Efheons' version was much more elegant.
"Everything is ready," Ihaar returned to the cockpit three minutes later and locked the bulkhead separating the pilot's cabin from the cargo hold. "We can start our madness."
"Better buckle up," Trebal advised as I began to position the "jumper" stern-first towards the enemy cruiser's surface. As soon as this was done, the rear hatch opened.
"Magnetic cushion disengaged," Ihaar reported. "The device is in the water and is beginning to descend towards the Wraith cruiser."
A second later, he added, "Magnetic cushion engaged," the ship obediently followed my will, and the ship's rear hatch slammed shut. "Descent continues… Continues… Installation on the cruiser's hull. Magnetic clamps are working! The system is in order, and the countdown has begun! Three minutes, Mikhail! Either now, or we'll be disabled along with the cruiser for several hours!"
"Let's start, Teyla," I addressed the Athosian. "Turn off the blocker. And we," I closed my eyes, concentrating on the "jumper's" weapon, "will knock on Death Queen's door for now."
"Device turned off," Teyla said. "So far… I don't feel any Wraiths."
The yellow light of a homing missile shot forward, briefly appearing before the "jumper's" only porthole. But in the next second, it disappeared behind the Lantian ship, rushing at the limit of its speed towards the drilling platform.
"Direct hit!" Ihaar rejoiced quietly. "The cruiser's power plant is damaged!"
Before us, the spotlight-illuminated behemoth of the Ancient mobile drilling platform was already growing.
This is what it looks like.
Compared to Atlantis, of course, the platform was a dwarf. But on a real scale, the installation was a small city, exceeding the height of the tallest skyscrapers. Only a small part of the complex was intended for the free movement of the crew and workers, and ninety percent of the entire structure consisted of geothermal energy extraction devices.
"Heading for the docking bay," I warned. "Teyla, how are you?"
"I feel an increasing Wraith presence," the Athosian said. "Rage… Hatred… Malice… Desire to kill…"
It seems that reading the Ancient records on meditation and mental control went well for her.
The docking node of the mobile drilling platform appeared before the porthole. There were only two of them, and one was occupied. Despite their close proximity, they did not have a common exit into a single room. Passages from the docking zone of each ship led to different ends of the drill. So, if one docking compartment was damaged, the other continued to work.
Docking compartment of the mobile drilling platform.
In case of flooding of any part of the complex, there were impenetrable (if activated) force fields inside. According to Trebal's stories, they had started installing similar ones on the latest models of Lantian warships. On the "Hippaphoralkus" and "Aurora," for example, they only used explosion-proof bulkheads.
This gave me the idea that the dreadnought, which we still haven't found and is most likely in the hands of the Nomads, belongs to the latest generation of "Auroras." And that means modern hyperdrives, high generator performance, improved shields… And a whole arsenal of shells, as far as I remember.
I really wanted to find it.
And the "Tria."
And many other things.
Carefully guiding the "jumper" into the last available docking bay of the mobile drilling platform, I exhaled with relief.
"We're here," I informed the people on board the complex. "Teyla, do you have data from the Wraith ship?"
"No, Misha," Trebal snorted sarcastically. What a woman! How does she manage to do that at such a time? "No energy traces on the cruiser. It seems the generator is working as expected."
"Do you still feel the Wraith?" I asked, getting out from behind the control panel. I couldn't hear what was happening in the cargo hold through the locked bulkheads, where I had just opened the external hatch. But I hoped that the water we might have picked up during the maneuver had drained out. "She hasn't tried to control you?"
It's quite possible in the series.
"I feel it," Teyla said. "I feel her rage, she knows I'm close… But she's not in a hurry to establish mental contact with me. As you ordered, I'm not trying to connect with her either."
Smart girl. I hope it stays that way; initiative is very dangerous now.
"Even if the queen takes Teyla under control," Trebal told me, exiting the deactivated "jumper" behind me and Ihaar, "the Athosian will be under full control. Teyla will not cause any harm."
"Let's hope so," I replied. "Control room, lock the passage to the 'jumpers' behind us and inform 'Atlantis' that Operation 'Deceive Death' has begun. Let them be ready to send additional groups. We are moving to the second phase of the plan."
"Understood, Mikhail," the technician replied. "Disabling all auxiliary consoles. Done. Station control is now only possible from our control room."
"That's wonderful," I declared, switching the communication channel. "Combat units, prepare yourselves. Our guest will be here soon."
Behind the three of us, a transparent film, resembling thickened water, appeared with a deafening crackle. The force fields on the station were activated and ready to withstand any attack.
In the beginning of her life, she bore the name Cold Amber. But that was long ago, and for many centuries, she had been Death Queen. As soon as she learned to unleash her rage and find application for it in killing the hated Lantians.
And now her rage was unstoppable.
Her current awakening was unlike any she had performed once every few centuries.
It was necessary to control the restoration of her ship and find out the possibility of leaving her ship, which had become a prison.
She moved rapidly through the dark corridors of her cruiser, perfectly orienting herself in the darkness. Despite the fact that the depleted energy source had been disabled, her physiology and the luminescent elements of the internal hull helped her find the right direction.
Rage burned within her, and Death Queen tried to find a worthy application for it. But she found none: there was not a single living soul left on board her ship. The holds were empty, the livestock for sustenance had long since run out.
Even the crew members she fed on had long since become nothing more than shriveled flesh over bones bleached by time.
She entered the cruiser's bridge and roared with rage upon seeing that none of the instruments were working. No matter how much she used mental or manual control, nothing worked—the ship was completely dead.
A roar of rage echoed through the compartment.
The same roar with which, ten thousand years ago, she had filled the bridge of her starship the moment Lantian homing missiles shot down her ship. Damaged engines and power plant prevented the crew from saving the starship, and the destroyed communication system did not allow contact with loyal followers.
If she had been on a hive ship, something like this might not have happened. Fragments of a conversation with her commander surfaced in her memory, who had presented arguments why she should have remained on board the super-hive. Her commander, Styx, by the way, had remained silent, accepting his queen's desire to go into battle on a swift cruiser, not a massive super-hive.
Death thought that now she would be glad to see at least one of them—the silent but cunning Styx, or the restless and cautious second one. He had a name, of course, but she had erased it from her memory. Death hated and despised those of her subordinates who did not follow her orders.
Depriving a Wraith of a name is one of the harshest punishments. But not as harsh as sending the Wraith commander from the bridge of his own cruiser to command a transport starship to replenish the human reserves for the Wraith army besieging Atlantis.
Now she would gladly drink any of them to give her body more strength. One for being silent, the other—for his words.
Both of them, like other Wraiths, were guilty of not going in search of her. They, undoubtedly, assumed she had perished. The ocean floor and the pressure created by hundreds of meters of water above her negatively affected her mental abilities, preventing her from contacting the Wraiths.
What angered her even more was that for thousands of years, no one had even tried to find her at the bottom of the ocean. Her or her remains, to immortalize her memory.
Weaklings, cowards, and traitors.
For thousands of years, she had dreamed of being freed, leaving this world she had come to hate, and killing every Wraith who hadn't come for her. She would kill them all, one by one, to reign again. After all, other queens had undoubtedly taken advantage of what she had created. And undoubtedly torn the Great Union into many hives, subjugating them to their power.
The Queen found herself in a room next to the airlock.
She had used it many times during this time to reach the abandoned Lantian drilling platform. For days, she wandered through the deserted complex, pondering how to use its mechanisms for her own purposes.
But the Lantians, fleeing the platform, had disabled it. And without the Ancient gene, even Death Queen could not start the installation and its systems.
Time and time again, she returned to the cruiser, fell into hibernation. And woke up after a few centuries to repeat her ritual again.
But today, everything had changed.
The explosion of the generator had awakened her. And almost immediately, she felt a weak Wraith nearby. He used his abilities very modestly, but undoubtedly discovered her.
However, this carrier of cowardly guts didn't even try to contact her mind. He didn't open it to his queen. That way, she could have controlled him like some soldier, a brainless drone—her mind's power was more than enough for that.
And she also felt, despite the interference created by her mental power due to the pressure, that there were people nearby.
Many people.
This raised questions. Humans and a Wraith near each other. And only one Wraith, but many humans. Have the Wraiths lost the war with the Lantians? But if so, why is the Wraith still alive?
The life signals she detected came from the direction of the mobile drilling platform. This means the Lantians are there. They arrived here to restore their energy source.
And this is her chance.
If humans are here, they must have a ship. And with its help, she will get out of here, return to the Wraiths, and lead them again.
The Queen approached the manual control of the airlock, continuing her attempts to break through to the Wraith's mind… And roared with rage when she couldn't. And the Wraith's mind disappeared from her mental grasp.
The foolish kinsman is either dead or has closed himself off from her.
No one has the right to do such a thing.
And therefore, he will die. She will feed on him just as she will feed on the people on the drill. For the first time in thousands of years, she will be full.
Icy water crashed down on Death Queen, almost washing her away. But the queen had gone through such things too often in the past, and therefore was ready for surprises.
Her lungs were full of nutrient elements, her body had experienced colossal pressure. Any of the livestock would have been crushed on the spot, but she was a Wraith. She was stronger than these animals.
Death Queen pushed off from the bulkhead of her ship and rushed into the impenetrable darkness of the ocean floor.
She didn't consider how much time had passed, but soon the lights of the complex's spotlights appeared before her eyes. She looked towards the docking bays, where two small Lantian ships were visible.
And Death Queen felt a surge of adrenaline for the first time. She had a chance to escape this cursed world!
Death Queen continued to penetrate closer and closer to her cherished goal. Soon she would be on board and would have a real bloody feast before leaving this detested world.
Death Queen swims to the mobile drilling platform. Scene from the series.