She got up, turning in the light from the window, a small, slow smile beginning. She turned on the boombox radio.
“…big pile up in the northbound lanes of Key Bridge, blocking two lanes at the Rosslyn end. Our advice is to take Memorial this morning, folks. It’s going to be a while before they get it cleared. And that’s your go-to traffic this morning! We’ll be back on the hour with the latest. To get you going, here’s John Parr’s Man in Motion from the hit movie St. Elmo’s Fire!”
The opening chords of one of her favorite songs washed over her, and Elizabeth turned the radio up, buoyed by sheer joy. She was here, and this was the beginning! She was finally here!
A noise, and Elizabeth snapped back to herself. The plastic curtain swayed. “I’m sorry,” Atelia said. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I didn’t realize you’d gone to sleep.”
“It’s OK,” Elizabeth said. The rumble of the engines was distant and constant now. She unstrapped the waist belt and sat up. “I didn’t mean to go to sleep.”
Atelia was watching her thoughtfully. “You must be used to space travel.”
“I must be,” Elizabeth said. She had remembered something on purpose, though what it told her was still a mystery. A dormitory, and being a very young woman… It poured away like water through her fingers, whatever happened next, the name of the place, of all those she’d known there.
“You can rest if you like,” Atelia said. “It’s two full watches before we reach our rendezvous point.”
“Where is that? A planet?” Elizabeth got to her feet.
“No.” Atelia shook her head. “We’re smarter than that! We choose random coordinates in deep space for our meetings, and we never use the same ones twice. That way the Wraith can never guess where we’re going to be and wait in ambush for us.”
“They would do that?” The Wraith were a mystery still, for all she had supposedly suffered at their hands.
“Some hives are smart enough to. A lot of hives leave us alone as long as we leave them alone, but sometimes they come after us. Who knows why.” Atelia shrugged. “They’re Wraith. They don’t have to make any sense.”
“Even your enemies usually make sense,” Elizabeth said. “We do evil things because we’re evil only works in bad fiction.”
Atelia gave her a sharp glance. “Then you don’t know the Wraith,” she said. “Or you’re not Satedan. Because there is no reason and there is no excuse.” She turned to go.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Elizabeth said, feeling her eyebrows rise. “I remember very little, so I don’t know.”
The set of Atelia’s shoulders changed a little. “I know,” she said. She turned back briskly. “Well, if you’re awake I’ll show you where to get something to eat. We’ll be in hyperspace for a long time. And once we reach the rendezvous you can see if one of the other ships will drop you at a gate if that’s what you want.”
“I think so,” Elizabeth said. She followed Atelia forward down the corridor toward a common room small enough to be crowded with half a dozen people, including an old man holding Atelia’s baby on his lap.
A genuine smile crossed Atelia’s face. “Hello baby! Hello sweetheart!” She reached down and took him, lifting him onto her shoulder. “How’s mama’s baby? How’s Jordan?”
Elizabeth stopped, halfway to picking up a mug from a hook above the counter. “Jordan?”
“That’s his name.” Atelia turned with him in her arms. “Jordan, can you smile for Elizabeth?” The baby crowed cheerfully. She frowned at Elizabeth. “Is something wrong?”
“No, not at all,” Elizabeth said, taking the mug. “I think I’ve heard that name before. That’s all.” Though why it should seem strange eluded her completely. It was just a name.
Chapter Four
It was a long walk back to the site, made even longer for Daniel by his aching leg and the lack of coffee. Rodney complained about the lack of breakfast until Ronon pointed out that he was the one who’d decided it was too dangerous to use the heaters, at which point he switched to complaining about the length of the walk, until John elbowed him in the ribs and then claimed it was an accident.
Ronon supplemented his breakfast with the roasted remains of some unfortunate small animal that had been trapped in the fire. “Want some?” he said, holding out a charred leg.
“No, thank you, I’ve had my daily dose of deadly pathogens already from jumping in the river,” Rodney said.
“Tastes like chicken,” Ronon said, and offered it to Daniel instead.
“No, thanks.”
“I thought archaeologists were supposed to eat whatever people offer them,” Rodney couldn’t help saying.
“First, you’re thinking of anthropologists, which I’m actually not, and, second, yes, if I were trying to make cultural contact here, I would eat the… what is that?”
Ronon turned the leg around in his hand. “I have no idea.”
“Right. But I’m not, and I don’t think this is exactly traditional Satedan food we’re talking about here.”
“I would not eat that either,” Teyla said firmly.
“Your loss,” Ronon said. “At least we didn’t invent MREs.”
“It’s military rations,” John said. “You must have had military rations.”
“Sure, but ours don’t taste terrible.”
Once they neared the site, they proceeded more cautiously, weapons at the ready. As John pointed out, everything that could burn in a several-kilometer radius had already burned. The ground was still hot, smoke rising from the charred grass, and Rodney appeared to be trying unsuccessfully not to breathe.
“All right, then,” John said. “Now let’s check out the site.”
Every crackle of burned grass underfoot made everyone twitchy as the team made their way through the remains of the underbrush toward the door of the metal structure, but there were no signs of the bird-creatures, and with the grass burned to stubble, it would certainly have been easy enough to see them coming.
“They’ve probably moved off to butcher their catch,” he said. “I wonder if they were already using tools when the Ancients left, it hasn’t been very long, although they did refer to them as ‘wildlife’ rather than a native civilization.”
John looked skeptical. “You really think they invented tools since the Ancients were here?”
“Honestly, no,” Daniel said. “Wildlife or pre-agricultural tool-users, I don’t think the Ancients cared. They were specifically interested in seeding worlds with humans, because they knew humans had the potential to evolve into something like them. Putting humans here would have meant they’d have to compete with our friends back there. I expect that’s why they abandoned their outpost here. After all, they had a whole galaxy to choose from. They didn’t need to bother with worlds that turned out to be less than ideal. “
Rodney crouched down to examine the door, and Daniel ran his hand down one edge of it; it was warm toward the bottom but not hot, which meant there was a reasonable chance that opening it wouldn’t make everything inside burst into flame. He resisted the urge to elbow Rodney out of the way to get a better look, and instead squinted at a rectangular patch of bared connectors and sockets.
“It looks like the original control panel is gone,” he pointed out.
“I can see that,” Rodney said.
“I’m sorry, I’m just making an observation about my site.”
“All right, given that the control panel is gone, how do we get in there?” John said.
“Somebody may have figured out a way to get in there already,” Daniel said. “Those pry marks at the bottom of the door.”