Allegiance

Chapter Sixteen Discoveries

William held the last of the plates he’d recovered from the museum closet up to the light, checking for the cracks that had made a couple of them shatter when they were exposed to the heat of the lights, then slipped it into the improvised reader. He’d guessed right, they were part of the cataloging system, though it also looked as though they’d been superseded, if he was reading the dates right and if his assumption that sticking them in that closet meant that they were rarely used was actually correct. But at least they were going to be able to get some idea of the parts of the collection that weren’t on display…

The airman that he’d borrowed from photo recon fiddled with the lenses, trying to get the image as clear as possible. They’d clean it up on the computer, of course, but you need to start with the best possible —

“Whoa,” the airman said, and William blinked.

“Isn’t that —?”

The airman looked up at him. “That looks like a ZPM. Doesn’t it, doc?”

“Yes.”

It was a line drawing, like all the images, not a photograph — another reason to think this was an older listing, because it was clear from talking to Ronon that the Satedans had had fairly sophisticated photography. They’d set it wrong side up, rested it on the broad base, but the jagged shape, the veins of shading, were unmistakable. And, just like that, William thought, all their priorities changed.

“Get that onto the computer right away, please, and get it cleaned up. Forget about anything else for the moment, see if you can get the text as clear as possible.” He touched his earpiece. “Dex. Ronon, are you there?”

“Lynn?” Ronon sounded wary, and William wondered belatedly what he’d interrupted. He hoped it wasn’t a training session, or something else that couldn’t be put off. “What’s up?”

“I need your help translating one of the record plates we recovered,” he said aloud.

“Now?”

“It’s — rather important,” William said, and crossed his fingers.

There was a little silence, and then Ronon said, “I’ll be there.”

William let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, and the airman looked up from his monitor. “Shouldn’t we let Dr. Zelenka know?”

“Not yet,” William answered. “For all we know, the notes say something like ‘if you ever find one of these, don’t touch it’ or ‘we used to have this, but it was destroyed’. Let’s be sure it’s actually there first.”

“OK, doc,” the airman said, and reached for his mouse.

William watched him for a few minutes, seeing the Satedan letters — typed, with handwritten notes — come into focus. Ronon would be able to read what it said, would be able to tell them if they’d just found the ZPM to go with the hyperdrive crystal thing, and all of a sudden he couldn’t stand still. He turned away from the console, paced the length of the room and back again, and the airman gave him a wary glance.

“Still working on it, sir.”

“Sorry.” William stuffed both hands in his pockets to keep from tapping his fingers. Coffee, he thought. If I go get coffee, by the time I get back, Ronon will be here and the file will be ready — “I’m going to the mess hall,” he said. “Do you want coffee?”

The airman looked at his own half-full cup, and shook his head. “No, thanks, doc.”

“Right.”

It was far enough to the mess hall that he had to take a transport chamber, though a part of him just wanted to keep walking, burn off the nervous energy. But that would take too much time — it was a fine line he had to walk. But the airman would work better if he wasn’t hovering over him the whole time.

It was mid-afternoon, and the mess hall was almost empty, just a couple of Hammond’s crew talking over a laptop at the far table, one of the mess crew pushing a broom across the spotless floor. There were a few sandwiches left, and a wilted-looking salad; he ignored them, filled another mug of coffee. He hadn’t consumed this much caffeine since his postdoc days, though then he’d been tougher about drinking it black. He added sugar and powdered creamer, and glanced out at the clouded sky. A few flakes of snow drifted by, but it was hard to tell if it was actually snowing, or if they were just blown from the buildings. Summer was supposed to be better, he reminded himself, and reached for the creamer again.

“You know that stuff explodes,” Ronon said, and pointed to the jar.

William jumped in spite of himself, and gave the Satedan a narrow look. He was never entirely sure when the man was joking… “Oh, yes?”

Ronon nodded. “Sheppard showed me, on one of those how to blow things up shows he likes. They used it to shoot off a rocket.”

“Really.” William eyed the container for an instant, then, determinedly, added another spoonful to his coffee.

“I thought you were in a hurry,” Ronon said. He had his own mug of something, William saw.

“I needed coffee,” William said. “But I’m glad you’re here. We may have found something.”

“Something useful?”

“That depends on what you tell me it says.”

They made their way back to William’s lab in silence, Ronon steering them to a shortcut through what looked like a service corridor. It was the first one William had seen, and he made a note to come back and examine it later. He was pretty sure he’d find out more interesting things about the Ancients in their support areas than in the soaring public spaces.

He waved his hand at the lab’s door sensor, checked abruptly as he saw Radek looking over the airman’s shoulder. Ronon made an irritated noise, and dodged past him into the lab.

“I thought — ” William began, and the airman gave him a guilty look.

“Dr. Zelenka called while you were gone, doc, asked what kind of progress we were making.”

“And when he told me, I thought I would come down and see for myself,” Radek said briskly.

“So what is it?” Ronon asked.

“There.” William pointed to the screen. “We found — well, it looks a lot like microfiche, except stiffer — ”

“Dataleaves,” Ronon said, and William nodded.

“I expect so. Anyway, it seems to be part of the museum catalog, so we’ve been bringing it into the computers so we could analyze it properly. But today we found an entry that seems to describe a ZPM.”

Ronon nodded, and the airman scooted out of his way so that he could scan the screen. William avoided looking at Radek, who was tapping his fingers lightly on the nearest table.

“You should have called me,” Radek said, after a moment, and William sighed.

“There was no point in dragging you away from the new iris — how’s that coming, by the way? — until I knew whether it was a real reference, or, I don’t know, their head archeologist’s wish list.”

“If there is any chance that we might find a ZPM, I should be informed,” Radek said.

“I wasn’t sure that’s what this was,” William answered. “It might be anything.”

“The drawing is too accurate to be guesswork,” Radek said.

“Hey.” Ronon looked up from the screen. “Do you want to know?”

“Yes,” Radek said, and William nodded.

“What does it say?”

Ronon glanced at the screen again. “It says ‘this artifact was found in the Ancestors’ presumed guidepost installation on Ascretta’ — do you want me to read all of this?”

“Yes,” William said.

“Just the important points,” Radek said. “Please.”

Ronon nodded. “OK. The important points. The chief curator found this on Ascretta, he says it was glowing very faintly when found, and it’s been stored in the museum ever since.” He tilted his head to read the handwritten note that ran up the side of the typed entry. “Somebody else moved it to more secure storage thirty years ago, and it looks like it’s still there.”

Radek said something under his breath in Czech — anatomically unlikely, William thought — and Ronon nodded again.

“Sheppard’s going to have to rethink what he was going to say to Cai.”

John drummed his fingers on Woolsey’s desk, wondering if he could justify going down to check on how the new iris was coming along. Radek had reconfigured the design to make better use of the titanium they’d gotten from Sateda, which meant they could stop racking their brains to figure out where they could get more. He wouldn’t learn anything else that he couldn’t find out by calling down there on the radio, and for that matter, he was pretty sure that what he’d learn by doing either one was ‘we’re working on it’. All the same, he was beginning to find himself sympathizing with Rodney’s claustrophobia. Every morning he came in here, the office seemed smaller.

“Hey, Sheppard,” Ronon said from the doorway. “Got a minute?”

“Sure,” John said, standing up gratefully, and then sat back down as Radek followed Ronon in, laptop under his arm. “You don’t mean ‘let’s have lunch’, do you?”

“We need to go back to Sateda,” Ronon said.

John ran a hand through his hair. “Look, I know how you feel about this,” he said. “But we got what we needed, and we’re just not in a position to help out right now. For one thing, the Genii are about the only people who like us these days — ”

“For a value of ‘like’ that includes holding Carson hostage,” Radek said.

“I’m not happy about that either,” John pointed out. “But the other thing is, we’ve got our own problems right now. Even if we wanted to try to kick the Genii off Sateda by force, we can’t spare any troops to do it as long as we’ve got the Wraith breathing down our necks. And the Genii have the best information network around, which means they’re one of our best chances for finding Rodney. When Woolsey gets back, maybe he can talk to them, but for right now — ”

“I do not think we can wait,” Radek said. He set his laptop down on John’s desk, its screen showing a sketch of a familiar shape surrounded by writing that looked Satedan.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“We believe it is a ZPM,” Radek said. “It may still be in storage in the Satedan museum we visited earlier. The descriptions from when it was found suggest that it may not be entirely depleted. Of course there is no way to know how much power remains, but at this point any amount would be better than none.”

“We could maybe run the shield,” Ronon said. “At least in an emergency. We could power the weapons chair.”

“We think we could maybe power the weapons chair,” John said.

“That’s better than knowing we can’t.”

John knew he’d be saying the same things if he were the one on the other side of the desk. He sincerely wished he was. He’d rather it be somebody else’s job to argue that they couldn’t afford to get on the bad side of the Genii. As far as John was concerned, the Genii could stand to make more of an effort not to get on the bad side of them.

“What do you think they’re going to want for it?” John asked.

Ronon looked at him like he thought the answer should be obvious. “For you to kick the Genii out.”

“That’s a pretty steep price.”

“Not for what the ZPM’s worth.”

John frowned. “To them, it’s an interesting paperweight that used to belong to the Ancients.”

“Not to us. You planning to cheat them?”

“You said yourself they didn’t have any use for this stuff.”

Ronon’s expression was stormy. “That doesn’t make it worthless and you know it. If they knew how much we needed it — ”

“If we tell them how much we need it, they’re going to set a price we can’t pay.”

“If you can get the Genii out, that’ll be good enough,” Ronon said.

“The Genii are stealing artifacts from the Satedans that cannot be replaced,” Radek said. “If they have their way, they will take possession of the entire Satedan homeworld. Are we to say that this is acceptable behavior in our allies?”

John rubbed his forehead. “I don’t think it’s okay, no.”

“Then do the right thing,” Ronon said.

“We may well find that the Genii are willing to negotiate,” Radek added.

John frowned. He’d wanted them to work as a team. It was good that they were putting up a united front. He just hadn’t expected to be on the outside of that, and it stung unexpectedly much.

“All right,” he said after a moment. “You’re right that we need the ZPM, and you’re right that we can’t let the Genii screw over the Satedans without even trying to stop them. We’ve got Teyla for the negotiations, but the Genii have problems dealing with women as equals. Normally I’d say that’s their problem, but it’s not going to help Teyla get any concessions out of them. Sora’s the only one who’ll actually take her seriously, and Sora hates her.”

“So handle the negotiations yourself,” Ronon said. “You’re in command of Atlantis, and you used to be military commander — ”

“I am the military commander,” John said. “This is temporary.”

“Whatever,” Ronon said. “The point is, they take you seriously. Lorne, too.”

“Lorne’s not even out of the infirmary yet,” John said. “Keller’s talking about letting him out on crutches in the next couple of days, but if we’re off negotiating with the Genii, he’s going to need to stay here and hold down the fort.”

“We could hold the negotiations here,” Radek offered.

“We’ve got enough problems without the Genii wandering around the city,” John said. “Not that I don’t trust Radim, but I’d still rather he didn’t hear all about our problems with the iris.”

“We may be getting ahead of ourselves,” Radek said. “Let us first see whether the ZPM even exists, and whether it retains any power. If so, we will see what Cai wants in exchange.”

“Take Teyla and Dr. Lynn and go check it out,” John said. “If you find the ZPM and you’re right about what Cai wants, you can tell him that we’re willing to try to set up a meeting with the Genii to talk about the situation.”

“That’s not a lot,” Ronon said.

“It’s what we’ve got,” John said. “The one thing we may have going for us is that Radim isn’t Sora’s biggest fan.”

Ronon frowned. “So why is she running this operation?”

“I don’t know, but I’m beginning to suspect,” John said. “You were military on Sateda. What would your people have done with an officer who’s too good at what she does to throw her out, but who has a problem following orders and drives her commanding officers crazy?”

“We called it ‘being posted to a coal town’,” Ronon said. “Somewhere out of the way where you couldn’t screw anything up too badly.” He smiled a little. “Like being sent to go fly scientists around in Antarctica.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” John said. “This way she’s out of Radim’s hair, and she isn’t in a position to make trouble by mixing it up with us. At least, that’s what Radim probably thought.”

“He thought wrong,” Ronon said.

John nodded. “I think he’s about to figure that out.”

It wasn’t easy to search the hive’s databases, particularly not for a human name that was hard to transliterate into proper symbols. It had taken him several days just to solve that problem — not the meaning of the word, which had seemed logical, nor had the clevermen used the usual way of transcribing human names, but a separate system, set apart, reserved for Lanteans and the Ancients — and then, of course, that search had led to the dead ends of denied access. Interestingly, though, they were all in the biological databases, and he had figured out Ember’s codes long ago. They were insufficient — Ember was not of this hive, did not have the full access — but at last he had figured out a work-around, and wormed his way in.

And all for this. He stared at the screen that glowed in the corner of his quarters, baring his teeth in a silent snarl. Page after page of notes on a virus this Michael had created, a variant of the Hoffan plague that left humans tainted, deadly fodder; someone had been working on a way to reverse the changes, but had gotten nowhere, and the research seemed to have been abandoned. Perhaps it had been Dust’s work, and that thought sent another pang of grief through him. One more thing he could not remember, one more thing gone wrong…

He pushed that aside, touched keys to re-sort his queries. Here was information on attacks — Michael had certainly been a thorn in their side, though it seemed he had held more malice toward Atlantis. It had been the Lanteans who had killed him in the end, hunted him down and destroyed his base — and that, he thought abruptly, wasn’t right. That wasn’t how it had happened. He frowned, but couldn’t bring up the rest of that memory, either. There was only the nagging certainty that there had been more to the tale.

But that made no sense, any more than it made sense for Guide to have given him the name. A name to conjure with, he had said, but Quicksilver couldn’t see the connection. Snarling again, he worked his way out of the database, careful to erase his tracks, launched another search on the name, excluding the virus this time. There were fewer connections, but still too many to review before Ember would return to their quarters. He hesitated, trying to decide, and finally chose the earliest reference. The data blossomed on the screen, unfolding to a cascade that settled to a slow and readable progress; it was a warning, Quicksilver saw, shared among all the hives. Michael had been Wraith, and had betrayed his hive — no, he had been changed by the Lanteans, made briefly human, and had been so warped, so twisted, that he had allied with them against the Queen who had rescued him. She was dead at his hands, and all Wraith were warned against him.

Quicksilver shuddered. Was that — could that have been what happened to him? Was that what Guide had been trying to tell him, that he had been made human in his captivity? Drained of his life, his true nature, everything that made him Wraith, recreated as one of the kine that existed only to be fed upon? Surely that could not be — it couldn’t be true, or the Queen and commanders would not, could not, trust him this far, could never have allowed him to lead the attack on Atlantis, to seize the ZPM for his Queen…

Yet the Lanteans had called him by a human name, said they would help him. A trick, to lure him back? The humans had killed Michael in the end, and he had been their most bitter enemy. Surely they would not try that experiment a second time —

He shook himself, entering new codes. The Lanteans would not repeat so drastic a failure, he was certain of it. McKay was smarter than that, and he was head of sciences. It was his job to be sure such things did not happen twice. There was little more, the same warnings repeated, an analysis of the retrovirus the humans has used, and the causes of its failure. He bared teeth at the screen again, but there was no time remaining. Ember would return soon, and he would need to have erased all signs of his presence by then.

By the time the door opened to admit the other cleverman, he was well away from the console, fiddling idly with a handful of game pieces. *Ember!* he said, and hoped he sounded welcoming.

Ember gave him a wary look. *What now?*

*Is that fair?* Quicksilver paused. He had been driving his technicians hard; perhaps it would be politic to admit it. *Well, maybe it is, but listen, I need you to tell me something. If you know it, that is — *

Ember lowered himself onto the low seat opposite him, his eyes automatically sweeping the board. *Are you planning to play that pattern among the blades?*

*What? No, probably not.* Quicksilver frowned.

*I would advise against it,* Ember murmured, his attention still on the stones. *Yes, definitely not workable — *

*Will you stop?* Quicksilver glared, and only then wondered if the other had been trying to distract him. *I’ve been hearing about this — about someone called Michael. Do you know anything?*

*What everyone does,* Ember said, wary again. *It’s not a pretty story, Quicksilver. It will not please you.*

*Tell me anyway,* Quicksilver said.

Ember picked up a pair of stones, rolling them between his fingers as though they were dice. *Death has forbidden us to speak of him.*

*In general, or just to me?*

Ember looked up sharply at that, as though he would deny it, and then his mouth curved into a wry smile. *If I speak, you must never say I told you.*

*I wouldn’t,* Quicksilver said, and Ember tossed the stones aside.

*Very well.*

Once before we slept — but this happened after we woke, after we were wakened and grew hungry. Once, then, there was a blade whose mind was the last flash of light at sunset, a blade with the heart of a cleverman, as they are often bred in the hives of the Stormdark queens. He was strong and brave, a leader risen to high trust over a hundred years and more. The Lanteans came to his queen’s feeding ground — she was the cloud that shrouds the highest hills, dead now a year and more — and she sent Lastlight to drive them away. It was a trap, of course, and Lastlight stayed with the rearguard to see his men safe away. The Lanteans shot him, wounded him near to dying, and the cruiser was forced to leave him there. The one who told me this wept then, for they were at fault for what happened after.

For Lastlight did not die. He had been badly wounded, yes, but he had fed recently, and he began to heal. The Lanteans examined him and decided he would do to make a trial of their latest weapon. They injected him with a retrovirus that suppressed much of his genetic code, and over time and with much pain he became like them. Everything that makes us Wraith withered and failed, and he was left without memory, trapped in a body that seemed human. And the Lanteans told him he was one of them, a human warrior injured in battle, and for a time he believed them.

But they were not as skilled in the workings of our biology as they thought they were, and Lastlight was strong, and his true self haunted his dreams. He deduced what had been done, and broke free of the drug, escaping through the Stargate to find our people.

And there he was unlucky a second time, for the hive that found him was of the queen whose mind was a wind of darkness. You do not remember her, I think, but she was a power in her day. Once she had daughters bound to her by oath and blood, once a thousand blades fought in her name, but in the War her blades were decimated, and her daughters fell away, until she had only her hive and her reputation to bargain with, and she resented the diminishment. Nightwind took him in, and in his story she saw a way to regain her former standing. She tricked the Lanteans into giving her the formula for the retrovirus they used on Lastlight, and then betrayed them, taking the knowledge they had given her to seek for Earth.

But she was of the old ways, and could not bring herself to treat Lastlight as anything but broken, tainted stock, and her men followed her lead. And Lastlight had been foremost among Highcloud’s blades, pallax, a man of standing in the zenana. Rather than endure such treatment, when the Lanteans came hunting them — as he had surely known they would — he allied with them, and it was his help that turned the tide in their favor. The hive was destroyed, and the queen herself was killed.

Of course the Lanteans did not keep their word. They drugged him again, along with the other survivors, and marooned them on a world without a Stargate, without any way to contact their own kind. But Lastlight was still determined — I think, perhaps, he was already a little mad by then, twice transformed against his will — and he managed to escape. He found his way back to Highcloud, to his own hive, and begged sanctuary, but he had killed Nightwind, and that was unforgivable. Highcloud banished him, branded him regicide. He became an enemy to Wraith and human alike, killing without thought or reason, and the Lanteans killed him in the end.

Quicksilver caught his breath. *Is that what was done to me, while I was captive? You have seen what Dust recorded, is that why I can’t remember?*

*You were not made human,* Ember said. *That I do know.*

There was something in his tone that made Quicksilver believe him, and he turned away, pacing like a man caged. If he had not been made human, what then? Why would the Lanteans pretend to know him, why did he dream of Atlantis? He stopped abruptly. If he had not been made human — if the Lanteans did know him, if Michael was the key, as Guide had said — was he himself somehow human? He turned his feeding hand palm up, seeing the mouth tightly closed: real, unmistakable, and yet — if he were not truly Wraith, it would explain too many things.

No. He closed his mind tight against the thought, hoping Ember had not sensed his doubt, this new fear that consumed him. If it were true, he could not betray that he had guessed; if it wasn’t, then he would be thought mad for conceiving of such a thing. There were things he could do to prove it — Dust’s records, for one; if he could find his way into those files, that would give an answer. That would be the next step. And surely, surely, it would not be true. He clutched his thoughts, his fear, tighter still, looked up to see Ember watching him, head tipped to one side. For an instant, there was something monstrous about him, teeth too sharp, eyes too hard, thoughts unreadable behind the pale mask that was his face.

*I said you would not like this story,* Ember said.