Allegiance

Chapter Twelve Sateda

It was their usual morning meeting, but it was still strange for John to sit down at what he thought of as Woolsey’s end of the table. Teyla, Ronon, and Radek were already waiting when he came in, Teyla and Radek holding steaming cups of coffee.

“This is still a little weird,” John admitted after a moment. He felt he probably ought to put a better face on it than that, but there wasn’t anyone there but the team.

“You are telling me,” Radek said.

“How are we doing on the iris?” John asked.

“With Colonel Carter’s assistance, I think we have a workable design,” Radek said. “Our current plan is for essentially manual operation.”

“I take it you don’t mean the Marines will have to get out there and push it open and shut,” John said.

“Not quite, but almost. The process of opening and closing the iris will be powered by a generator, but we are talking about wiring the iris directly to the generator, and to nothing else. No computer control.”

“Someone’s going to have to stand there and push a button?” Ronon said skeptically.

“Or pull a lever, or — that part is not important. But, yes, it will require that someone operate the control mechanism by hand. If we build any automatic control system that is connected to the DHD or the city’s computers — ”

“Then we’re right back where we started,” John said. “All right, that’s not a problem. We’re posting a security detail in the gateroom around the clock anyway.”

“The problem is the materials,” Radek said. “The towers in Atlantis contain mainly steel, with small amounts of other metals used for decorative purposes. That would be better than nothing, but would still leave the iris extremely vulnerable to explosives. The iris on Earth uses a trinium-titanium alloy, but for now I would be satisfied with titanium.”

“There is none in the city?” Teyla asked.

“There are some titanium components in the city’s hyperdrive. Removing them will render the hyperdrive temporarily inoperable, although since we have no ZPM, that may not matter. The big problem is that it would not be nearly enough material for the iris. We could use titanium plating over steel and hope for the best.”

“I have a problem with any plan that involves the words ‘hope for the best’ when we’re talking about explosives,” John said.

Radek shrugged. “So did Colonel Carter.”

“I think Sam’s right on this one,” John said. “What about finding the titanium somewhere else in Pegasus?”

“We have tried to contact the Travellers, but we have had no success so far,” Teyla said. “It is likely to take some time for us to get a message to them, and even then, they are likely to charge a high price for the material we need.”

“I think right now we’d be willing to pay, but we can’t do much if they won’t pick up the phone. What about the Genii? Not that we’re likely to be their favorite people right now, since Dahlia Radim probably told her brother we’re scary people who tried to steal his ship.”

“As far as we can tell, titanium is very rare on the Genii homeworld, even more so than it is on Earth,” Radek said. “They have been using steel alloys in their experiments in aviation. Their most likely source of the material we need would be their salvaged Ancient warship, but…”

“But they’re not exactly about to take it apart for us. Great.” John ran a hand through his hair. “We may be back to ‘hope for the best’. At least then we’d have an anti-personnel shield.”

“I know where you can get the titanium,” Ronon said. He looked as if he didn’t like his own idea much.

“Where?” John asked, after it became clear he was going to have to.

“It wasn’t that rare on Sateda. They used it in buildings, and in a bunch of different kinds of machines. There must be tons of the stuff still there. It’s not valuable enough to most people to be worth salvaging.”

Teyla raised her eyebrows. “The idea of taking it from the ruins of Sateda does not bother you?” Her people had left their own ruined cities on Athos alone, although in Teyla’s encampment when he’d first seen it, they’d certainly been using scrap metal that must have come from at least the outskirts of the city.

“Yeah, it bothers me,” Ronon said shortly. “But it’s better than letting the Wraith blow up Atlantis.”

“You’ve been there before since the Wraith trashed the place,” John said. “I know you brought some things back.”

“Some books, that painting,” Ronon said. “Small things. I didn’t think anybody would have a problem with that.”

John was getting the feeling that anybody here meant dead people, and he wasn’t sure where to even start with the question of whether dead Satedans would have minded them taking their stuff. “You think they’d have a problem with us taking the titanium?”

“I said let’s do it,” Ronon said. “The gate’s in the middle of a city. If you look around, can you find what we need?”

“I think so,” Radek said. “We would want a team of engineers.”

“We need to check it out first,” John said. “As far as we know, there’s nobody living there now, but we don’t want any surprises.”

“It would make a useful base for the Wraith,” Teyla pointed out.

“And that’s the kind of surprise we don’t want. So let’s — ” John stopped himself in mid-sentence. Let’s go check it out. And leave who in command of Atlantis? Colonel Carter, he thought rebelliously, who actually wanted this job, but it didn’t work that way and he knew it. Anyway, Caldwell was senior to Sam, and the idea of leaving the city in Caldwell’s hands wasn’t nearly as attractive.

He started over. “Ronon, why don’t you take Teyla and Radek and go check it out.” Teyla had seniority as team leader, but given that it was Ronon’s home planet, it seemed reasonable for him to run the show this time.

“All right,” Ronon said after a moment. He looked at Teyla and Radek. “So… gear up, and let’s go check it out.”

“Let us do that,” Teyla said, standing up.

“Yes, great,” Radek said, without a lot of visible enthusiasm. “Time to ‘gear up’.”

“The sooner we go, the sooner you can be back in Atlantis building the defense we need against the Wraith,” Teyla pointed out.

“You know, Rodney learned to like offworld missions,” John said as Ronon and Teyla went out. “At least the ones where nobody tries to kill us.”

“Rodney is a crazy person,” Radek said. “And people try to kill you all the time.”

“Only some of the time,” John said. “And some of them are trying to kill Rodney in particular.”

“That is sort of comforting,” Radek said. “I will try to keep that in mind.”

Teyla shouldered her pack and gave Radek an encouraging smile. She and Ronon had wordlessly moved to put the scientist between them, so that they could watch out for him if there was any danger. Teyla privately felt that was unlikely in the extreme, and thought she might have done better to stay at Ronon’s side. It could not be easy for him to have to face again what the years were making of Sateda.

It had not been easy for her to face, and it had never been her home. It was one thing to walk into a village that had been Culled and see the familiar aftermath, buildings burned and crops ruined by dart fire, families grieving the missing. It was another to walk into a city that was bigger than any she had seen before it and see the ruin the Wraith had made of it.

It made her imagine unwillingly what it must have been like when the Wraith had destroyed the cities of Athos. She knew the pain of Cullings well enough, but she had not imagined before what it must have been to leave the dead lying unburned in the streets because there were not enough hands to build pyres for them. She had never walked in the streets of her own ruined cities with broken glass crunching under her feet like snow.

Teyla had seen Sateda twice. The first time was when the Wraith had recaptured Ronon and brought him there to hunt him, like the entertainments on some worlds where wild animals were brought into town to be killed for sport. The second time would not have happened were it not for Rodney.

It was later the same year that they had rescued Ronon from Sateda, on a quiet enough day that there was time for idle curiosity. Rodney was examining Ronon’s pistol, more carefully than he usually examined things because Ronon had told Rodney that he would break his limbs if Rodney broke the pistol.

“I’m not going to break it,” Rodney said. “I’m not sure where I’d even start with trying to build you a replacement ray gun. I don’t suppose there are a lot of these just lying around somewhere on Sateda? Because Sheppard for one would be happy about that.”

“No,” Ronon said. He held out his hand, and Rodney reluctantly returned his pistol.

“It is unlikely that anything so valuable would still be ‘lying around’,” Teyla said.

Ronon nodded. “People had eight years to scavenge things before the Wraith blew up the Stargate.”

Rodney’s brow furrowed. “Before the Wraith did what?”

“I saw the explosion,” Ronon said. “Before the rest of you guys showed up. You can’t dial in now.”

“Huh,” Rodney said. “They probably just knocked the gate over, or maybe a building fell on it or something. If there’s enough junk inside the ring, it won’t dial.”

Teyla glanced sideways at Ronon. She knew it had troubled him that Sateda’s Stargate was gone, and that to ever reach his home planet again he would have to depend on Colonel Caldwell to be willing to take him on Daedalus.

She did not think the people from Earth understood how disturbing the idea was, even if Ronon had no intention of ever actually going there again. The first thing children learned about the Stargates was how to dial their home. She remembered her own father allowing her to touch the symbols on the dialing device for the first time, after she had proved she knew them by heart, his hand over hers. He had told her the Ring of the Ancestors would always bring her home.

“You do not think it was destroyed?” she asked Rodney.

“The Stargates are basically indestructible by anything short of a massive nuclear explosion,” Rodney said, in what for him was a relatively patient tone.

“It looked like a pretty big explosion,” Ronon said.

“And yet you weren’t instantly vaporized. Look, a Mark IX naquadriah-enhanced warhead can take out a Stargate. It has a blast radius of a hundred miles. You’d be a smear of ash in a city-sized crater.”

Ronon nodded slowly. “So you think we can fix the gate.”

“Probably,” Rodney said. “But it’s not like we’re running there every ten minutes. There’s no reason we can’t get there on the Daedalus if we ever need to.”

“Even so,” Teyla said. “We know there are other Satedan survivors. Someone will try dialing Sateda again someday. If the gate will not even open…” She shook her head, not sure how to explain and sure that Ronon would be no better at finding the words. “It will be another blow for people who have already suffered a great deal.”

Rodney shrugged. “So tell Sheppard that. He’ll take looking for ray guns as enough of an excuse to go back.”

“He’s not going to find one,” Ronon said.

“Thus the word ‘excuse’,” Rodney said, and after a moment Ronon nodded in return, thanks he would not say; the two men were little enough alike, but she thought this time they understood each other well enough.

It had been a quick trip, that time. It had not taken long for Rodney to get the gate operational again, and none of them had wanted to linger after that. Ronon had said little, clearly far away in some other time, and John had looked at the city with the pained expression he usually wore when confronted with the aftermath of war. This time they were likely to be there longer.

“Will it be winter there as well?” she asked Ronon, more for something to say to break the tension than because the answer mattered. She wished she had not spoken the moment after she had, because she thought she could read his expression well enough: he had forgotten after so long, and was trying to work out how his calendar fit with the Earth one they had grown used to.

“I think so,” Ronon said after a minute. “You ready?”

“We are,” Radek said.

“Then let’s go do this.”

It was warm as they stepped through the gate, too warm for winter, with a light breeze blowing and the sun shining bright. Teyla saw Ronon’s look of startlement, and for a moment she took it for a reaction to the weather until she realized that the square surrounding the Stargate was not just as they left it.

Much of the rubble that had filled the square and the streets leading out from it was gone, the pavement swept bare of glass. There were canvas tents set up on one side of the square, with lines strung between a few of them where someone had hung out clothes to dry. Many of the windows that faced on the square had been boarded up, and others that still had glass looked clean. Smoke was rising behind one of the buildings, not the smell of burning buildings but the smell of cooking.

She raised her P90 as she was taking it all in. If there were scavengers living here, they were not likely to be much of a threat, but it was rare for scavenging parties to make this much of a camp. Most of those who made their living hunting through the ruins of Culled worlds were the very young or the very desperate, those who had no trade they could follow that would make them welcome in a settlement.

“It appears that someone is living here,” she said.

“I see that,” Ronon said.

“Is that good or bad?” Radek asked.

Ronon shrugged. “Doesn’t look like Wraith, at least.”

“No,” Teyla said. The Wraith rarely camped on planets except at utmost need, and they had no need for cooking fires.

Ronon brought his pistol up at movement in one of the doorways. An older man with white hair stepped out into the sunlight, followed by two younger men with rifles slung over their shoulders. Teyla thought the rifles were not the ones the Genii used. They might be Satedan, although it had been years since the Satedans had offered such things in trade on Athos.

The older man was dressed in a dark coat and patterned waistcoat over dark trousers, his white shirt open at the neck. His boots were good but worn, and the trousers were mended at the knee. He looked at them as if sizing them up, curiously but without alarm, his gaze coming to rest on Ronon.

“You’re Satedan,” Ronon said.

“We are,” the older man said. Teyla could see Ronon beginning to smile, looking suddenly younger. She was pleased to see it, but she kept her eyes on the men with the rifles, not yet ready to relax. “Have you come to trade? Or to join us?”

“I’m Ronon Dex,” he said. “This is Teyla Emmagan and Radek Zelenka.”

“Ushan Cai,” the man said, clasping Ronon’s forearm with a smile. “You are from Atlantis, then. We have heard many stories of you.”

“I hope you have heard well of us,” Teyla said.

“You’ve killed a lot of Wraith,” Cai said. “But we heard that the City of the Ancestors had been destroyed.”

“It’s still here,” Ronon said. “We had some problems for a while.” He glanced at Teyla as if expecting her to speak; negotiating was normally her task, but these were his own people. She gave him an encouraging look, and he went on. “We came to see if we could find some titanium. We didn’t think anyone was here.”

“We’ve been here the better part of a year,” Cai said. “I would say we should talk terms for it, but as you’re Satedan yourself, and you’ll have to do the work of finding what you want and hauling it out… Well, come inside and have a drink while we talk. I’m the provisional governor of Sateda, or so everyone says. I’m not sure how much that means, but it makes people feel better.”

He turned back toward the building, and after a moment, Ronon said, “We should go hear what he has to say.”

“I agree,” Teyla said. She lowered her weapon, but kept it at the ready. She meant no disrespect for Ronon’s people, but it was best to be cautious with strangers, and the Satedans were not like the Athosians. If she had come home to find some of her people still on Athos, they would be people she knew, lost friends or relatives whose arms she would have readily rushed into.

This man was a stranger to Ronon, for all that he was one of Ronon’s people, and her time on Earth had taught her just how little being of the same people could mean to those who lived in great cities. She caught Radek’s eye, intending to tell him to stay watchful, but she saw that he was watching Cai’s guards carefully himself.

Radek was not a trusting person by nature, Teyla thought, and was glad of it.

The building Cai showed them into had once been a hotel. Ronon remembered it full of wealthy travelers, in the city to make business deals or to spend the night before making a trip through the Ring. It had been a place for people from offworld to stay, too, if they weren’t guests of someone important.

He had never stayed there, but had been inside a few times, to have a drink or on some errand. He remembered laughing with Tyre about a huddled knot of offworlders in the bar, their clothes severe and their backs straight, who were scowling as if the courting couples listening to music over glasses of beer might as well have been taking their clothes off in a brothel.

The place was empty now, the soft carpet waterstained and the electric lights gone dark, part of the staircase up to the second floor crumbled away and the rest braced with a frame of timbers. The tables in the bar were scrubbed clean, though, and there were oil lamps lit on the sills of boarded-up windows. A radio set still stood in the corner, and he had the weird desire to turn it on, even though he knew it wouldn’t make any sound.

“We got the coal boiler working, but we haven’t got all the coal in the world, so we don’t run it in good weather,” Cai said. “By next winter we’ll have hauled in more.” He waved them to a table and poured drinks for them himself, not beer but strong grain spirits that should have been mixed with something. “Nobody’s brewing beer, and what we can get in trade goes fast, so if you don’t mind drinking what’s lasted — ”

“Not at all,” Teyla said, although he saw her exchange a look with Radek when she tasted hers. Ronon hoped both of them had sense not to drain their cups fast, or they’d end up reeling, as small as they both were. He drank thirstily himself, letting the strong drink take the edge off the weirdness of being here.

“What are you doing here?” Ronon said after he’d drunk.

Cai put his own cup down. “It’s been ten years,” he said. “Going on eleven, now, but it was reaching ten years that got a few of us thinking maybe we’d risk it.” He shrugged. “I had warehouses full of trade goods that had been sitting here ten years, not to mention what other people left behind. It seemed like that was worth coming back for. And besides, it’s our home.”

“Not much left of it,” Ronon said.

Cai nodded. “Not much compared to what was. And not enough people to farm or mine coal or do the things we’d need to bring back what was. But there’s enough here that we can sell offworld that we don’t need to farm. We’re no better than scavengers right now, it’s true. But at least we’re home, and by the time what we can salvage begins to run low, we may be able to manage light industry again. It seems like a better bet than trying to start again as farmers and trappers. Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” he said quickly to Teyla.

“On Athos we chose not to risk attracting the attention of the Wraith again by rebuilding our cities,” Teyla said. “But they still returned, and drove us from our homes.”

“You’ve made them pay dearly for that,” Cai said. “Or so I hear.”

Teyla inclined her head, taking that as the compliment it was. “We have.”

“We’ve killed a lot of Wraith,” Ronon said. “I’ve fought beside Teyla for nearly five years. And Zelenka is one of our best scientists. They’re both friends.”

He felt that was worth saying. They’d never been particular allies of the Athosians, who hadn’t had much that Sateda had wanted, and the people from Earth were an unknown. The best he could do to make this go smoothly was make it clear that these were friends, people he was willing to speak for.

“Your friends are welcome on Sateda,” Cai said. “And we would be pleased to trade with the Lanteans.”

“We are looking for titanium,” Radek said, finally speaking up. “As pure as we can find, although the shape does not matter.”

“What for?” Cai asked, with a businessman’s easy smile. Ronon glanced at Teyla, who gave him a warning look.

“An extra defense for the city,” Ronon said. He expected what she didn’t want him to say was because we don’t have a shield at the moment. “A metal shield for the gate that can be opened and closed.”

“We have a similar device on our home world,” Radek said. “The titanium is strong enough to defend against a nuclear explosion.” He turned up his hands. “You may not have seen such weapons.”

“I have heard that the Genii are testing great bombs they say are nuclear, weapons that can destroy a city,” Cai said. “I expect that part is boasting.”

Ronon shook his head. “It’s not.”

Cai frowned. “Wonderful.”

“We are less concerned with the Genii than with the Wraith,” Teyla said. “They have been very active of late.”

“So can we look around and see if we can find the titanium?”

“I can probably find it for you,” Cai said. “There’s a metalworking plant that manufactured train cars, among other things. They used titanium, or at least an alloy. But you have to understand, right now the right to salvage what’s left here is pretty much all the Satedan people have.”

“We’re willing to trade for what we need,” Ronon said, glancing at Teyla again.

Teyla nodded. “We are. I cannot offer weapons, but we can certainly trade stores of food and medicine. And our scientists may be able to help you repair some of your machines.”

“I’m sure we can work something out,” Cai said. He waved one of the guards over from where they’d been leaning against the wall by the door. Not soldiers, Ronon thought, but young men who looked barely old enough to be out of school. They must have been children when Sateda fell, and he wondered how they’d made it offworld. “Vin, can you take them to the old Kusada plant, the one down by the tracks? And maybe one of you can stay and talk terms in the meantime.”

Ronon wasn’t sure about leaving Teyla alone, although he thought she’d make a better bargain than he would, even not being Satedan. “It’s not that we don’t trust you,” he said slowly.

Cai gave him a measuring look. “But?”

Ronon hesitated. He hated to speak of how Tyre and Rakai and Ara had been broken and given their service to the Wraith, to spread the news of their dishonor any further. “I’ve met Satedans who worked for the Wraith,” he said.

“And you would be valuable if we held you hostage,” Cai said. “I know. And you don’t know me. You probably never knew anyone I ever spoke to. Except Kell — ”

“I wouldn’t use him to speak for your trustworthiness.”

“He can’t speak for anything, since I hear that he’s dead,” Cai said. “All I can do is ask you to trust that I’m not the kind of man who would sell anyone to the Wraith, and that I’m a sensible enough man to know that I wouldn’t live long if I tried it.”

“You wouldn’t,” Ronon said.

“I will be fine,” Teyla said. She put her P90 pointedly on the table between her and Cai, one hand resting on it while the other curled around her cup. “I am happy to stay here and negotiate.”

Cai smiled a little. “Are you sure you’re not Genii?”

“I am Athosian,” Teyla said serenely.

The Kusada plant had been badly damaged, but Cai’s people had shored up the weakest beams, and reinforced the main entrance with new timber. Ronon eyed it warily, and glanced at Radek to see if he thought it was safe. To his surprise, the scientist was nodding in approval, and followed Vin into the building without hesitation. Ronon came after them a little more slowly, hunching his shoulders in spite of himself.

“This is good work,” Radek said. He was blinking hard behind his glasses, as though that would make his eyes adjust faster to the relatively dim light, and Vin paused.

“Thanks. It’s mostly Martei’s doing, he’s — he used to be an architect, and he told us where to place the supports. Cai recruited him after we nearly lost Pollar in the old Manbael Building. We thought we’d shored up the stairway enough, but we hadn’t. Martei can tell us just where to put the props.”

Ronon looked around, letting his own eyes adjust. He didn’t know this part of the city well, never had reason to be there — soldiers and factory hands didn’t mix much — but even he could see how the massive working frames were bent and broken. They had made train cars here, Cai had said, and he could sort of picture it. There were the tracks, running in and out of what had been massive doors, and overhead were the ruins of the power supply, wheels and shafts that ran the length of the factory. He had been to such a plant once or twice, vaguely remembered the screech of metal and the whine of the enormous leather belts that took power from the driveshafts to the individual machines. Now the machines were dead, thrown from their platforms, and the floor was covered with a thick layer of debris.

“The storage areas are back here,” Vin said.

“How do you know all this?” Ronon asked. It seemed suddenly too easy, and his hand twitched on the butt of his blaster.

Vin glanced over his shoulder. “I was an engineer-apprentice — not here, with Tolland Sons, but it’s pretty much the same layout.” He shook his head, turned back to the path that had been cleared through the rubble. “It’s funny, Kusada was our biggest rival, but Tolland’s factory burned and theirs didn’t, so — ” He shrugged. “Here we are.”

They had reached a sliding door, now permanently bent out of true. Radek reached for his flashlight, shone it through the gap into the greater darkness. He said something in Czech as the light struck the slabs of metal, and ducked past both of them into the storage area. Ronon clicked on his own light and followed, and a moment later Vin came after him, carrying an oil lantern. In the combined light, Ronon could see what had been the neatly stacked raw materials for the train cars, now tumbled into ugly heaps. It would be impossible to move most of it without heavy equipment, and he hoped no one had been in here when the Wraith attacked. There was pig iron, showing rust-red in the light, and what looked like a roll of something silvery, and then Radek’s light swung and steadied, and Ronon tipped his head to one side.

“That it?”

“Oh, yes,” Radek said, almost reverently. “Yes, this should be exactly — ” He stopped, as though he’d suddenly remembered they were supposed to be driving a bargain, and Ronon shrugged.

“We’ll see.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Vin grinning, and didn’t think they’d fooled him one bit.

“Yes,” Radek said, and moved forward to examine the plates more closely.

“Careful — ” Ronon began, and bit back the rest of what he might have said. Human strength alone wasn’t going to move these piles of metal.

“Yes, yes,” Radek said, and edged into the gap between what looked like two different kinds of plating. “This may take a while.”

It took, in fact, the better part of an hour, Vin trailing Radek with the lamp, the two of them sharing a huddled conversation, and then moving on again. After twenty minutes, Ronon was bored, and convinced that Vin, at least, was honest; after forty-five minutes, he stopped the ex-apprentice as he darted after Radek.

“Is there a way to the roof?”

Vin blinked. “Yes — yes, actually. Through there. We’ve shored them up, and the roof, too, it’s perfectly safe — ”

“Thanks,” Ronon said, and turned away. He couldn’t have said quite what he was looking for, if he was even looking for anything, and not just trying to distract himself. The factory smelled old and dry, not even dead, and he needed air and light.

He ducked through the doorway that Vin had indicated, and started up the stairs, body tensed just in case the next step was the one that wouldn’t take his weight. He could see the paler wood of the repairs, and it wasn’t that he didn’t believe Vin when he said it would hold — well, his mind believed, but his body did not. The occasional crack and groan didn’t improve matters.

Then at last he came out onto the roof, and stood for a moment, staring. Most of the biggest buildings were still there, their shells intact, roofless, broken, but recognizable. Somehow that seemed worse than if they had been missing altogether, and he shook his head, wishing he had the words. It was like looking at the skeleton of something so long dead that half the bones were missing. The eye filled in the gaps even as it noted them, shapes made as familiar as they were strange. There was the old guildhall, converted before he was born to a commercial exchange: the long windows were empty, carved frames broken out, but the line of the roof was intact. The Panopticon’s roof had fallen in, but its narrow towers still flanked the gap, scorched and blackened against the pale sky. In the far distance, sunlight glinted from the dome of the City Museum. Somehow most of the gilding had survived, and it had not been worth anyone’s while to pull it down for salvage. Or at least, not worth it yet. Cai was bound to get there, in the end.

Beyond that was the gap that had been Centenary Park, once dark with trees, now bleak and empty, a few twisted stumps thrusting out of the rubble. He and Melena had never gone there much, preferred the livelier amusement of Gateside, where there were band concerts three nights a week, and you could buy cakes and tea from a dozen vendors, and bring a flask of your own if you were reasonably discreet…

He looked back at the Museum, the afternoon sun bright on the gilded dome. If there’d been no looting there, no salvage — it had had what was supposed to be an important collection of Ancient artifacts. He remembered being taken there on school trips, walking through the echoing halls, boys in one long line, girls in the other, giggling and shoving each other when the teachers weren’t looking. There was much more in the catacombs beneath the museum: he definitely remembered one young teacher explaining that there was far too much to display, as well as things that were too fragile, and things that were too dangerous. Maybe that would be worth investigating, too, if Teyla’d managed to strike a deal.

They walked back to the hotel through lengthening shadows, Radek vainly trying to suppress his excitement. Teyla met them in the doorway, calm as ever, P90 still clipped to her chest.

“We — there is quite a bit of what we need,” Radek began, trying to be cautious, and Teyla nodded.

“We have come to some provisional arrangements,” she said, and smiled. Cai was smiling, too, Ronon saw, so the deal seemed fair to him. “We must return to Atlantis and confer with our superiors, of course, but I believe this will do well for both of us.”

Cai bowed. “I sincerely hope so.”