“We’ll just watch out for each other and muddle along. Right?” he said, and watched her eyes spill over at last.
“Yes,” she said, and smiled through her tears. “We will just muddle along.”
“Todd better not get any ideas,” he said. “I mean, Steelflower is pretty hot.”
“I can handle Todd,” Teyla said, raising her chin. “I am his queen.”
“No.”
She looked up at him swiftly. “No?”
“You’re my queen,” John said.
Jeannie drummed her fingers on the conference room table, waiting for everyone to arrive. Radek wasn’t actually drumming his fingers, but he looked like he wanted to. Ever since they got the detailed readings from the flyby survey of the island, it had been clear that they couldn’t send a team to investigate fast enough to satisfy him.
Colonel Carter was the next to arrive, a smudge of oil on one cheek as if she’d been interrupted working on the Hammond. She was just pulling back a chair to sit down when Ronon came in looking as if he’d just come from the gym. He’d said something yesterday about training sessions with the new Marines, which apparently meant teaching them how to survive when a big Satedan tried to kill them.
William Lynn, the archaeologist, came in a moment later. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I did want to take a moment to look over these sensor readings, since this is the first anyone’s told me that they found any.”
Radek cleared his throat. “Yes, well. Now that we are all here,” he said, and stood. He tapped at his laptop, and a map of the southern ocean appeared projected on one wall. “While we were working on the Wraith cruiser, we picked up some anomalous energy readings coming from a large island in the southern hemisphere,” he said, pointing. “Dr. Cain and Dr. Ikeda did a flyby of the island this afternoon, and the results of their scans are very promising.” He tapped a few more keys, and an overlay of power readings at different locations appeared on the map.
Colonel Carter leaned over to see better. “Oh, interesting,” she said. Ronon glanced skeptically at William, who shrugged as if to say that he didn’t see what was interesting yet either.
“We believe these power readings suggest that there is Ancient technology present on this planet, and, what’s more, that some of it may still be functioning.” He pushed his glasses up his nose and changed the display on the screen. Now it was showing geological maps, showing their best guess at how the islands and the ice had shifted over time.
“We think this island used to be a lot bigger,” Jeannie said. “Now a lot of it is under water, and the rest of it is under ice. But there’s room for who knows what down there. Okay, probably not a city this size, but something big.”
“Also interesting, Dr. Ikeda took some samples of the ice from the jumper, and we have found trace amounts of naquadah,” Radek said. “That is certainly not naturally occurring on this planet. We are thinking now maybe there actually was once a Stargate here, only now it is buried by the ice.”
“Or by volcanic activity,” Carter said. “If the gate was on a volcanic island, and the volcano entered an active phase, the gate could now be under meters and meters of rock.”
“Right,” Jeannie said. She was getting more confident as she spoke, falling back into the tones she’d used when she had to present in class. “Can you switch back to the other map, Radek? Thanks. So we noticed that these weak energy signatures fall roughly on a grid, as if they’re small devices located in different rooms.”
William looked more closely at the map, as if the pattern was starting to seem meaningful now. “The lights are still on?”
“It could be,” Radek said.
“And the big one, there in the center?” Carter asked. “You’re thinking power source?”
“Maybe even a ZPM,” Radek said. “That would be nice to think. Certainly they would have required a power source of some kind. If it is a ZPM, I doubt it is fully powered. The energy signature is too weak for that, even if it is fainter because it is being transmitted through ice.”
“Or rock,” Carter said. “If the whole thing’s been buried in lava, you’re not going to get to your ZPM. Still, it’s worth checking out.”
“I thought you would think so,” Radek said in satisfaction. “Unfortunately I am needed in the city right now, but if Ronon could take a team to do a preliminary survey, we can at least see what there may be to find. “
“No problem,” Ronon said. “Just don’t expect me to figure out what the Ancient stuff does. I can recognize a ZPM, but beyond that I got nothing.”
“That’s enough for a start,” Carter said. “Please don’t try to turn anything on, but if you find anything interesting, I’m sure Dr. Zelenka would like some video.”
“Definitely,” Radek said. “Dr. Lynn, perhaps you can figure out something about what they were doing down there.”
“I’ll do my best,” William said. “I suppose it’s too much to hope for that they left an explanatory note.”
Radek looked like he was trying not to roll his eyes. “Is that usual to find at archaeological sites that have been abandoned for centuries?”
“You’d be surprised,” William said. “People do document their activities.”
“I’ll take Cadman for backup, but we’ll need someone to fly the jumper,” Ronon said.
“Someone who is not currently engaged in critical repairs,” Radek added quickly,
Carter glanced down at her laptop, probably looking at people’s current assignments. “What about Dr. Robinson? She’s been training with the jumpers in her free time, and she could use the flight hours. This ought to be as routine as it used to be for someone to run over to the mainland.”
“There’s a lot of ice,” Ronon said.
“And there’s going to be, and people are going to have to learn to fly and land in this weather,” Carter said. “It’s a nice day, there aren’t any storms on the radar, and from what the earlier team reported, there’s a wide, flat area where you can land.”
“I see no problem,” Radek said. “This should not be hard.”
“Knock on wood,” Jeannie said under her breath, but she didn’t think anyone heard her.
Chapter Ten
Quicksilver
Ember had been avoiding him. Oh, it was subtle enough, nothing anyone else would notice — if anything, any other man would read it as confirmation of Quicksilver’s recovery, that Ember no longer hovered over him like a crèche master. Instead, he worked a different shift, busying himself in the biolabs rather than in the engine compartments, where the ZPM was now wound into its new socket. The tests were proceeding well, the power interface was solid… And Ember avoided him.
Rodney made his way through the corridors that laced the clevermen’s quarters, avoiding the main thoroughfare. It had been painful to walk there when he believed he was Quicksilver, and had no idea why the blades looked sideways at him; now it was too dangerous, in case his thoughts slipped, and betrayed what he had found. But he had to talk to Ember, and this was the only time he could approach the cleverman unaware.
A single drone watched the entrance to the holding pens. He stood aside at Rodney’s approach, mind blank, and Rodney stepped inside, the door sliding closed behind him. To either side, the cells stretched toward the hive’s bow, only a third full now, but… He had not been there since he had regained his memory, somehow hadn’t expected to feel anything different, but now — now he recognized the faces that hung in the webs as human, as kin, not kine. He could feel their fear, see here and there open eyes, waiting to see who would be chosen this time. There was a girl of maybe seventeen, fair hair lank about her face, her eyes sliding closed as though in prayer. Two cells beyond her, a dark young man, the web twitching as he tried, hopelessly, to free himself. An older woman, a grey-bearded man, a girl whose eyes were vivid blue: people, all of them, and he shuddered, unable to look at them any longer. He had fed on them — oh, he hadn’t done it directly, that was a minor mercy, but they were just as dead, the ones Ember had chosen for him. He was as much a murderer as any Wraith — worse, a cannibal, consuming his own kind…