Allegiance

Chapter Twenty ZPM

It was quiet in the lab, clevermen moving in careful choreography as they drew a newly formed cable from the wall. It was designed to mesh with the framework that held the ZPM, and Quicksilver adjusted the socket, eyeing the connector warily. The last three had failed catastrophically, and he was more than a bit tired of being splashed with molten cable… Salt tugged it forward, letting it wind around his off hand, so that he could examine the cable’s mouth Quicksilver leaned closer himself. It wasn’t his specialty, but he couldn’t help wanting to see what things had changed. It looked like an adapted sucker, a leech-mouth lined in tiny sparks like diodes, and at his side Ember gave a shrug.

*We won’t know until we try.*

Salt showed teeth in answer, and unwound the cable from his wrist. He led it into the frame, and it reached out hungrily, fastened and clung. Lights pulsed, data cascading down the monitor, and Salt lifted his head eagerly. And then there was a snap, and the cable shriveled back, trailing smoke. Salt caught it and another cleverman quickly smothered the flames.

*How hard can this be?* Quicksilver exclaimed. *How many times do you intend to try this?*

*Until it works,* Ember snapped, and Salt snarled in agreement.

*Which will be when?*

*When it is done,* Salt said, and Ember lifted his hand.

*As you saw, we are nearly there.* He had himself under tight control. *The next iteration should resolve the last compatibility issues.*

Salt turned away, carrying the damaged cable tenderly, and another cleverman came to join him, examining the connection.

*It needs to be done,* Quicksilver said. *I’ve given you everything I can — *

*Quicksilver.*

Quicksilver turned on his heel, his long coat flying. The blade in the doorway was a stranger, his mind bright and scattered like sunlight on glass, his hair bound back in an elaborate double club.

*The queen requests your presence.*

*I am at her command,* Quicksilver said. In spite of himself, he glanced at Ember, and the other cleverman nodded.

*I will accompany you if you wish.*

*The queen wishes to speak to Quicksilver,* Sunshard said. *Not to you.*

There was a moment when it might have tipped into violence — half the clevermen were Ember’s own — but then Ember stiffly bowed his head.

*So be it,* Quicksilver said. *Stay and finish this.*

He followed Sunshard through the corridors as they wound slowly toward the heart of the hive. Bright Venture was a healthy ship again, and her crew was busy, blades leading teams of drones about their business, here and there a junior cleverman testing the tone of hull and bone. Rumor said they would need to Cull again soon, to supply all the men now working aboard, but Ember said the cells had seemed full enough. They passed through the large assembly room, where a quartet of drones waited in mindless patience, and the door of the zenana opened to them.

The inner chamber was in an uproar, the air hard with crowding thoughts. Quicksilver checked in the doorway, seeing the lords caught mid-quarrel, and Sunshard gave him a look that was like a shove.

*My queen. The chief of the physical sciences, as you required.*

Death swung to face him, skirts flying. Her hair gleamed in the shiplight, and her courtiers ducked their heads as though they were afraid to catch her eye. Even in her anger she was beautiful, Quicksilver thought, and made his own obeisance.

*My queen.*

*So.* Despite her temper, she paused to smile at him. *The very man we need.*

*This is not his business.* That was the youngest blade, Sky, his own anger barely in check, and Guide stirred in his corner.

*My queen, I must agree. This is a matter for blades, not clevermen.*

*He is the one who gained entrance for us before,* the Old One said. *It will be he who takes down their defenses this time as well. If he can.*

*We need not risk it,* Farseer said. *My queen, we have energy shields — thanks to Quicksilver, I fully acknowledge it — and we have installed them on nearly all our ships. Let us take a fleet against Atlantis, not fiddle about with attacks through the Stargate.*

*We have attacked Atlantis before,* the Old One said. *Without success.*

*Their ships were too strong for us,* Noontide said. *And I believe they still will be. I remind you that these new shields require much power — *

*We cannot delay,* Sky said, and Farseer bared teeth at him.

*Enough,* Death said. *We have talked that to death, and I have given my decision. We will not attack the city from space until all our ships are ready, and Quicksilver has worked out this new power plant.*

Quicksilver looked warily at Death, afraid he knew exactly what they wanted from him, and she smiled again, laying her off hand on his shoulder. *We are on the knife’s-edge, cleverman,* she said, and made the word a caress. Her touch was delicate, thrilling, and Quicksilver suppressed a shiver. *My Old One has proposed another attack, while we know their shield is compromised, and you, Quicksilver, have given us control of their computers. But Noontide believes they will have found a way to counter us, and Guide, who has fought the Lanteans more than any man, agrees with him.*

*It has been my experience that the Lanteans cannot be taken the same way twice,* Guide said, with a deferential bow.

Sky tossed back his hair. It fell almost to his waist, Quicksilver saw with envy, straight and silver and unbound. *Yet if we can weaken them further — we must try.*

*You should lead it then,* Farseer said. *For I will not.*

*You will do as I bid you,* Death said. *And I bid you depart my presence.*

Her tone was like the slap of a hand. Farseer flinched and bent his knee.’*My queen — *

*No more. Return when I summon you and not before.*

For an instant, the room sang with Farseer’s fear and anger, and then he had mastered himself. *As my queen commands,* he said, and turned away.

The drones opened the door for him, and the lords of the zenana drew aside from him as he passed. Death raked the room with her stare.

*Do not doubt me,* she said, soft now as silk, *for I am your queen.* She let her gaze sweep the room a final time, daring them to defy her. *But we have more important matters. Quicksilver. You lowered their shields before. Can you do it a second time?*

*Maybe,* he began, but her eyes met his, and he could refuse her nothing. *Yes. Yes, I can.*

The camp looked pretty much like every other dig site William had ever worked in, a couple of tents rigged to shelter the equipment, and a makeshift kitchen where most of the crew had gathered in the morning chill, huddled close to the fire while a woman who had bound her braids up in a scarf dispensed cups of the hot mint-lemon-and-smoke-flavored tea. A second bucket had been set aside to cool, ready for the heat of the day, along with a box of MREs and a couple of smaller baskets of Satedan rations. William took his place in line, let her fill his travel mug — he’d already had a couple of offers to trade for it, would probably succumb one of these days — and ducked through the doorway into what had been the museum’s loading area. The stairwell there was one of the less damaged, though the big elevator shaft was blocked by the wreckage of the car; it had taken them a full day of hard labor to shore up the walls and clear a passage, but he thought they might be just about ready to see what was in the catacombs.

The combat engineers had already gotten the generator going, and the lights rigged, and a thin Satedan woman was talking to one of them as they both peered dubiously into the opening. He could see Radek a little beyond them, checking the supports, and his steps slowed in spite of himself. Not that he was avoiding Zelenka, he told himself. It was just easier to gather his thoughts in relative quiet.

“So, today’s the day, huh, doc?”

That was Corporal Sinclair, one of the engineers, a pottery cup of tea in one hand.

“If we’re lucky,” William answered.

“Say.” Sinclair glanced over his shoulder, lowered his voice just a little. “You were at the meetings, right?”

“I was,” William said, warily.

“What did Colonel Sheppard say to get the Genii to back down? I was on Atlantis the first time, and those little — those guys never seemed to give up.”

“Damned if I know,” William said. “I agree, Chief Ladon conceded much more quickly than I would have anticipated. But as to why?” He spread his free hand. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Weird,” Sinclair said, and William nodded in heartfelt agreement. It was extremely strange — and someday, he told himself, he would find out what really happened.

“There you are,” Radek said, and came bustling over, brushing dirt from his hands. “I think we are ready to send someone down.”

“I’ll go,” William said. For a moment, he thought Radek was going to protest, but then the scientist shrugged.

“I suppose that’s best. It is your job.”

“Yes,” William said. He was already divesting himself of unnecessary gear, anything that might get caught climbing down through the floor, handed his tea absently to Sinclair. The engineer grinned, but didn’t comment, and William checked his camera and light a final time. “Will you lower me, or do I need to climb?”

“We can lower you,” one of the Satedans said. “No problem.”

Radek nodded. “Yes, it will be safer that way.” He paused. “You are clear on your location?”

“Yes,” William said again. This stairwell had led into the Museum’s largest storage area — where large incomplete fossils were stored before restoration, according to one of the women who had been married to a scholar and had spent a fair amount of time in the underground areas — but the map she had drawn for them showed a corridor that led to the room where the Ancient artifacts had been stored. If it was blocked, there was another way around — but perhaps they would be lucky this time.

He stepped into the harness, waited while Sinclair double-checked the buckles and the rope, and stepped to the edge of the opening. “All right.”

“Go,” Radek said, to the Satedans working the winch, and William felt the harness tighten as it took his weight. “All right. Stay in radio contact, please, and do not take chances.”

I didn’t know you cared. William swallowed that remark as thoroughly inappropriate, and adjusted his grip on the rope. “Ready.”

“Now,” one of the Satedans called, and William stepped gently into the empty air.

He let the light play ahead of him as he descended, grimacing as it picked out the signs of destruction. The floor was strewn with rubble, thick with brick dust, and something had fallen on a pile of crates, shattering the top tier and spilling their contents. He recognized pieces of armature, broken stone, shreds of some kind of packing material. None of that was a good sign. If the Satedans had been trying to move their best pieces to safety, there was no telling where the ZPM or the crystals had ended up.

As his feet touched the floor and the rope came slack, he swung his light in a wider arc, surveying the pile of crates. Teeth glinted among the shattered wood, the smallest as long as his hand, seemingly dozens of them poking from a bony snout. Tusks curled up from the lower jaw, the skull poking out of the wreckage like a dragon half buried in its hoard. He let out a sound somewhere between a yelp and a curse, and Radek’s voice crackled in his ear.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine,” William said. “I — stepped wrong.” The rope slackened further, and he unclipped himself, watching as it slithered up and out of sight. “I think — ” He switched on the camera as he spoke, panning slowly across the threatening skull — one of the incomplete fossils, presumably — and around the rest of the room. “It looks to me as though they’d started to pack things up to move them out of harm’s way.”

Radek’s voice tightened. “Understood.”

William let the camera linger a moment longer on a cracked black case that looked like plastic. More bones had spilled from it, along with another, weirdly crocodilian skull, and his fingers practically itched to examine it more closely. He compromised on a couple of close-ups, then switched off the camera and turned to look for the door.

There were more crates in the way, undamaged ones, and for an instant he hoped the passage might be clear. Then he came around the last crate, and his heart fell. The door was there, and open, too, but beyond it was a tangle of wood and plaster. He swore under his breath and moved closer, letting the light play slowly over the chaos.

At second glance, it wasn’t quite as bad. The debris didn’t look entirely structural, or at least there was only one large beam that looked as though it had come from the ceiling. The rest might have come from the furnishings, might have been shelves and boxes and packing materials. And artifacts, too; he winced at the glitter of broken crystal among the mess.

Still, there was a bit of a gap, and the camera’s light seemed to show more open space beyond. He could probably fit through it easily enough, especially without a pack or any heavy gear — He curbed himself sternly. That was a stupid choice at the best of times, on Earth, say, on an ordinary dig somewhere in Western Europe. Here it was utter folly. He touched his radio instead. “Zelenka.”

“Yes?”

“The door’s partly blocked. I think I can get through without causing any more damage, but I’d like your opinion before I try it.”

“Hell and damnation,” Radek said, in Czech. There was a pause, and he went on in English. “Ronon and I will come down.”

William lifted an eyebrow at that. He hadn’t expected Ronon to be at the dig at all, much less to participate. Especially when he was easily the biggest person around, not at all the sort you’d normally want to have crawling around narrow spaces underground… But it was his planet, his homeworld, and that made a difference, too.

Ronon came down first, as though he was expecting attack, and Radek followed, muttering to himself in Czech. As he landed, his light caught the tusked skull, and he swore more loudly. Ronon turned, amazingly fast, reaching for his gun before he saw the skull and relaxed again.

“That’s Tsuzhur. She used to be in the Great Hall.”

“Is that her name or her species?” William asked, and Radek sighed loudly.

“Nickname,” Ronon said. “Where’s the door?”

William pointed, and followed as they ducked around the piles of crates. Radek studied the debris for a long moment, running his light up and down the one long beam, then examining the frame and the walls.

“Well,” he said at last, and shrugged. “I think it is stable. I am smallest — ”

“But I know what I’m doing,” William said. He unbuckled his harness, not wanting it to catch on anything in the rubble, and Ronon gave him an appraising look.

“He should go,” he said, and Radek shrugged again.

“As you wish.”

William edged into the gap, turning sideways to scrape along what felt like a wall, then went to hands and knees to pull himself through the last low gap. There were sharp things in the debris, and he felt his trousers tear, felt something else jab into the heel of his hand. That he stopped to check, but there was no blood, and he crawled out at last into a larger space. A few rows of shelves were still intact, and several more had been tipped over, leaning against the wall like dominos. Crystal dust glittered on the bare tiles, but the shelves were mostly empty.

“Oh, damn,” he said. He had known better, had known not to hope too much, but he never managed to be sensible about such things, and the barren shelves were like a blow. There had been a ZPM — here, in this room, according to the dataleaves; after everything they’d been through to get it, it seemed unfair to lose the prize.

He swung the light again, focusing more carefully. The tilted shelves were definitely empty, what had remained of their contents broken on the hard tiles, but there were still a couple of boxes in the closest upright shelves. They were made of the same black plastic as the broken cases in the fossil room, only intact, and he lifted the smaller one from its place. The latches had held, though the hinges felt weak, and he opened the lid with renewed hope.

It was an Ancient crystal, all right, long and narrow and pale gold, but a jagged crack ran all along one narrow face. He sighed, closed the lid again, and moved on. The next case had more crystals, dulled and chipped, obviously unusable.

“Lynn!” Radek’s voice sounded in his ear. “What have you found?”

“Sorry.” William stretched to take another case down from the top shelf. “There’s not a lot left, I’m afraid. I did find a couple of crystals that look like the ones you wanted, but most of what I’m seeing is damaged.”

There was a fractional pause, and then Radek said, “Keep looking.” His voice was scrupulously neutral.

William worked his way down the row of shelves that were still upright, and was not particularly surprised when most of the cases turned out to contain only damaged crystals. One small box held what looked like a single Ancient data crystal, and he tucked it, box and all, into the pocket of his jacket. Not that it was likely to be that much help; what they needed right now was power, weapons, ways to defend the city, not random information.

“Nothing so far,” he said into the radio, and Radek answered patiently enough.

“Understood.”

William shone his light along the top of the tilted shelves, looking for anything that might have been caught between, that might have survived, and a pale object by his feet caught his eye. He swung the light down, his breath catching as he recognized the bones of a human hand. He let the light play further, picked out a sleeve and a shoulder, the fragments of a skull beneath a fallen case. A soldier, he guessed — the remains of the clothes looked like a uniform, complete with badges and what were probably rank stripes ringing the sleeve. And there was carrying case, almost invisible in the shadow of the tilted shelves, lying as though the soldier had dropped it when the crates fell on him. On her, he corrected, assessing the size of the hand. A woman, or a very young man. He wouldn’t know for sure unless he could examine the rest of the skeleton.

He shook that thought away, pulled the case free. It was rounded at the corners, with an extra set of straps to keep the lid in place. He picked them loose, pried open the lid, and peered inside. Nestled in the padding was a narrow crystal pyramid, its jagged edges seamed with darker color. “Oh.”

“Lynn!” Radek sounded distinctly out of patience, and William grimaced.

“Sorry. It’s here. I have it.”

“The ZPM?”

“Yes.” William closed the lid, relieved that the case seemed solid, refastened the straps.

“Does it have power?”

“I don’t know. It’s not glowing, does that mean anything?”

“Not really.”

“There isn’t any obvious damage,” William said. He looked back at the body, wondering if the Satedans had known what they had, if that was why she’d been trying to retrieve it, or if she’d just been trying to save one more piece of her people’s past. And that was gross speculation. All he could say for certain was that she had died trying to get the artifact out of the Museum. “The case was undamaged, and it seemed to be well padded.”

Radek sighed again. “We must get it out right away.”

“All right,” William said, and moved back to the debris-choked doorway.

It took them almost ten minutes to work out how to fit the case through the gap, Radek swearing in Czech the whole time, but at last it was through. William squatted against the wall, feeling the sweat trickling down his spine, and after a moment, Radek spoke in his ear.

“It is intact, at least. It is not at full power, but I can’t tell any more than that until we get it out of here.”

“Go,” William said. “Ronon?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve also found a body.”

There was a little silence. “Yeah?”

“It’s mostly buried, but I can see sleeve marking — unit insignia, maybe, or rank? I’ll photograph them, but do you want me to bring the actual sleeve end?”

This time the silence was longer, and William winced, hoping he hadn’t inadvertently offended. The Air Force people he’d known, the Marines, they would have wanted that tangible memory, but maybe Satedans, the Satedan military, didn’t work that way.

“Yeah,” Ronon said. His voice was just a little hoarse. “That’d be good.”

“Right,” William said. He fished in his pocket for his knife, sawed carefully through the tough fabric just above the rings that looked like rank stripes, freed it gently from the skeleton. In spite of his care, he dislodged a couple of the smaller fingerbones, the tendons too far gone to hold them, and he nudged the bones back into place.

“Sorry,” he said, softly, and turned back to the blocked door.

He worked his way through the gap, emerged gasping and sweating in the fossil room. Ronon extended a hand, hauled him to his feet, and William nodded in thanks.

“Here,” he said, and held out the cut sleeve.

Ronon took it, held the scrap of cloth into the beam from his light. His face was shadowed, but William thought his voice was unnaturally controlled. “University Brigade. A corporal.” He tucked it into his own pocket. “I’ll give it to Cai.”

William nodded, suppressing unworthy regret. He had the photos, he didn’t need the actual artifact.

“What happened, could you tell?”

William shrugged. “A crate fell on her — from the size of the hand, I think it was a woman — and my guess would be that she was trying to rescue something from the shelves. The ZPM, it looks like.”

Ronon nodded in turn. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Several people were looking over the edge of the hole, and William climbed back into his harness, let himself be hauled to the surface. Ronon came after, hand over hand up the rope, and looked at Radek, who had the ZPM lying on a worktable, cables snaking to it from his laptop.

“Well?”

“Well.” Radek glared at both of them. “It is a ZPM, and it is intact and undamaged. But. There is only minimal power.”

“How small is minimal?” Ronon asked.

“Too small,” Radek said. “We might be able to power the shield for a few minutes. We might be able to launch drones. I will not know for certain exactly how much power is available until we go back to Atlantis, but it is not enough. Not enough at all.”

“Bugger,” William said.