Small mercies. At least this Wraith already had a name, so Sheppard couldn't tag him with `Steve' or `Bob.'
"Although most of their kind still sleep, Nabu and some of his dreaded horde often emerge to wreak havoc on our villages. They defile young women and steal children from their beds."
"That poor lass we saw on the way to the council chambers," Carson said with a flash of insight. "Although we've never heard of the Wraith specifically targeting young children before. If anything, they seem to leave them alone in favor of adults."
"Yeah, but we'd never seen humans worship Wraith before that pleasant little outing with Ford a few months ago, either," Sheppard reminded him. "Different hives don't always follow the same MO."
Still focused on his efforts to disable the force field, Rodney was listening with half an ear. He agreed that it didn't make a lot of sense for Wraith to go out on kidnapping sprees, and assaulting women certainly was a new and ugly twist, but he'd long since given up on expecting things in this galaxy to make sense.
"Nabu is the bane of our existence." Vene's voice had adopted the same bitter tone that Rodney had heard on too many planets. "He only raids the villages during the sandstorms. Some among our people suspect that he controls the storms, or has otherwise caused the terraforming machine to fail."
Although this was an unlikely stretch, it seemed only human to draw a cause-and-effect relationship between bad things happening and the Wraith. Hell, there were days when Rodney considered blaming the lack of butterscotch pudding in the mess hall on the damnable creatures. After all, it was the Wraith's fault that Atlantis now played host to considerably more Marines, and Marines tended to eat a lot.
Resetting the final crystal, Rodney watched in satisfaction when the bluish shimmer of the force field winked out. "And we're in," he announced with an exaggerated sweep of his hand toward the door. Ronon rolled his eyes, but Sheppard gave him a quick nod of acknowledgement. Vend gasped in elation.
The lab's expansive interior bore a striking and unsurprising resemblance to the main labs on Atlantis. Clearly Vene had never seen such a place before. He stood stock-still about two meters inside the doorway, awed and doubtless intimidated by the array of exotic technology.
Rodney set to work on a rapid catalogue of the lab's contents, trusting that Carson could locate the exogenesis machine-assuming it was still here. Finding Atlas's experimental device would obviously be the jackpot, but until informed otherwise Rodney was working under the assumption that it had been used to interfere with Polrusso's terraforming. Given what they knew of the Ancient Council on Atlantis, Atlas had most likely hidden that fact from the Council. Yet one more aspect about the Ancients that Rodney found less than admirable.
For now, he would focus his efforts on determining how to shut down Polrusso's terraforming machine. The implications of obtaining twelve ZPMs for the defense of both Atlantis and Earth were, in short, phenomenal.
Okay, maybe not twelve ZPMs. No reason to be greedy. The Polrussons could probably do with one to power a decent shield that would deal with a necessarily abrupt climate change. And perhaps a second ZPM as a backup. But Rodney had no doubt that the Polrussons' gratitude would assure him of securing, say, eight or nine. Even six would provide sufficient power to implement a scheme that, until now, even he had considered impossible.
The lab had been well sealed from the sandstorms; after sitting idle for ten millennia all the equipment was nearly pristine, although none of it was powering up in the way that Atlantis had. Of course, Janus and the time-traveling Elizabeth had prepared Atlantis for the team's arrival. Here, Rodney would almost certainly be required to use his gene to initiate the necessary equipment.
Crossing the room to the main database computer, a considerably smaller version than the Atlantis model, he laid his hand against the touch pad. After a moment, the bottom third of the screen lit, displaying a single line of text-the Ancient equivalent of a command prompt. That was a start. Atlantis's computing team had developed a standard set of instructions for initializing equipment found in the city. He'd memorized the complete file months ago.
"Hey, Rodney." Sheppard was moving around the room, eyes scanning a set of storage shelves. "If we managed to reboot the terraforming machine on this planet, the ocean would fill, right?"
He really didn't have time to teach Terraforming 101, but Sheppard would no doubt keep asking until he got an answer, so Rodney decided to humor him. "Gravity isn't just a good idea, it's the law," he replied distractedly, tapping out line after line on the Ancient keyboard. "The reservoirs, like the one I noted on the way in, would be released almost instantly and empty into the lowest point of land."
"Which is the basin where this hive ship is probably buried."
The man had a point. "The ship would be flooded within a couple of hours." Rodney glanced over his shoulder at the Colonel, who raised an eyebrow. "There'd be no way they could all awaken and escape."
"It'd sure be a nice fringe benefit."
"This is possible?" Vene sounded almost afraid to hope. "We can rid our world of the Wraith?"
"Perhaps. Theoretically." When the computer came to life, Rodney allowed himself a moment to enjoy his success before starting a preliminary scan of the database. "First I'd have to get a grasp on how the original terraforming process works. Of course, I'm still hoping to run across Atlas's machine, since it would come in really, really handy about now. But there's a lot of data here, so I may be able to pull enough useful information out of it to make this work for all of us."
"Go ahead and take notes, or do whatever you need to do," Sheppard told him. "We'll finish up the treasure hunt."
"Treasure hunt?" Vene asked.
"We consider anything new to be treasure, scientifically speaking," Carson explained.
While Ronon and Vene moved into the next room, a storage area, Rodney set up his laptop on a high bench and connected it to the Ancient computer.
Some time later, he heard the Colonel ask quietly, "Got anything?"
He looked up, about to reply, and realized the question had been directed at Carson.
Leaning forward, both arms propped on a nearby bench, the doctor sighed. "No. I can see this entire facility in my mind. I even know what some of the equipment was designed to do. But I can't reach in and find the one piece of information that we need."
"It's okay. Rodney'll figure something out, even if we can't find the exogenesis machine" Sheppard turned. "Won't you?"
"Sure. Well, maybe. At the very least, I think we can solve the Polrussons' problem, and that ought to get us closer to solving our own."
"You have a problem on your world?" Vend inquired, walking back inside.
Swiveling around in his chair, Rodney replied, "Well, of course we've-"
"Got a problem with the Wraith, just like everyone" Sheppard fired a warning look in Rodney's direction. "We're hoping that any technology we find can aid us in that."
"You've had some success?" Vend's whole bearing took on a hopeful air.
"We've done okay," Sheppard replied.
Deciding that he was better off concentrating on the task at hand, Rodney turned back to his computer. "I need to compare this with some of the records back"-he almost said `on Atlantis.' Reason number four hundred and sixty-one why he would never have made a good secret agent- "home. And if Radek's done malingering in the infirmary, he can make himself useful crunching numbers." He selected the relevant files and began downloading them onto his laptop.
Wearily lifting himself off the chair, Carson said, "I'm ever so sorry, Colonel. But I'm absolutely certain that it's not here "
"Of what do you speak?" Vene asked.
"We thought that if the exogenesis machine was in this lab," Rodney replied, "we could discount it interfering with the original terraforming program. That would have made my life considerably simpler, because then I could have pinpointed your problem more readily." Which, he thought rather proudly, was an accurate rendition of the truth.