STARGATE ATLANTIS: From the Depths (SGX-08) Page 3
“Right now. You think it’s going to get worse?”
“There are more of the things still arriving, and we’re picking up life signs as far out in the ocean as we can detect them, all converging on the city. Unless something changes, we’re going to reach a critical mass of squid that’s going to overwhelm the shield generators completely. At that point, these things will be free to tear up the underside of the city, and there’s a lot for them to wreck down there. With all the trouble we had keeping essential components free of ice, this is going to be worse.”
“Is there anything you can do to keep the shields working?” John asked.
Rodney shrugged. “We might be able to reconfigure them, but it’s going to take us some time.”
“If it is possible,” Radek said.
“It’s probably possible. But that still leaves us vulnerable in the short term, and I can’t guarantee that any major reconfiguration won’t be more of a drain on our ZPM than keeping the shields up like this is already. There are reasons we don’t usually keep the city shielded all the time.”
“Dr. Moore says that the limited supply of food in the area will pose a problem for the squid if they attempt to remain near the city in these numbers,” Teyla said. “There are not enough fish near the city to support this many large predators for long.”
“Which makes sense given that we haven’t seen groupings like this before,” Elizabeth said. “We have to assume that the small population of squid we normally see near the city represents the number that can live here on anything like a permanent basis.”
“So they’ll leave when they run out of food, right?” Ronon said, leaning back in one of John’s office chairs. “If they’re an intelligent species, that’s the smart thing to do.”
“I still don’t have enough data to be certain how they will behave,” Lynn said from the other chair.
“Scientists always say that,” Ronon said.
“Yes, that’s science.” The debate between the two seemed good-natured; they’d become friends since they began working together in the field, especially as Lynn was genuinely interested in what Ronon could tell him about the Satedan writing system and culture, and Ronon seemed more willing than he once had been to talk about his home planet. It probably helped that it wasn’t entirely a burned-out wreck anymore.
“If there’s any chance that they are an intelligent species, we need to find that out and find some way to communicate with them and ask them to leave,” Elizabeth said. “If they’re not an intelligent species, and something about Atlantis is attracting them to converge in this area, we need to find out so that we can stop doing it. We need our shields back, and I also don’t want to be responsible for the extinction of an entire species of marine life, intelligent or not.”
“We’ve been here for almost two years,” John said. “We’ve never had this problem before.”
She shrugged. “Then something’s changed. We should figure out what.”
“We could move the city,” Rodney said.
John looked at him sideways. “And yet you don’t seem enthusiastic about that.”
“It would use a lot of power and introduce a whole new set of risks. This isn’t a passenger plane we’re talking about. It’s an entire city that was never designed to maneuver in atmosphere. Every time we’ve had to land it, we’ve ended up damaging something.” Rodney shrugged. “We can do it if we have to, but I’d rather not have to.”
“And whatever is attracting the creatures to the city may lead them to follow us to a new location,” Teyla said.
“Can’t we drive these things away from the city?” Ronon asked.
“We could stun them,” John said. “But we’re talking about moving a couple of thousand squid. We can’t exactly stuff them all in the backs of jumpers.”
“Dr. Moore recommended specifically against stunning them unless we don’t mind it being potentially fatal,” Lynn said. “He thinks that because they use electrical energy to communicate, stunning them is likely to disrupt that activity. At best, we’d render them unable to communicate, either temporarily or permanently. At worst, we might well kill them.”
“Which would at least get us our shields back,” Rodney said. “But if we’re assuming that’s unacceptable, then I have more bad news, which is that any modulations we make to the shields to prevent the squid’s electrical energy from interfering with them are likely to have similar effects. Depending on what we have to do to keep the shields up, we may actually be creating a giant bug zapper surrounding the entire city. Unless we can somehow communicate ‘very dangerous, don’t touch,’ we’re going to wind up with fried squid.”
“That’s a lot of calamari,” John said. “And these are intelligent beings who just happen to look like a seafood special. We’re not going to go there. So, okay, we can’t move them and we may not be able to fix the shields until we can talk to them. What can we do?”
“Work on talking to them,” Elizabeth said. “Let me go out in a jumper and see if I can establish contact with them. The best solution we have to all our problems is to get them to agree to move away from the city voluntarily.”
“I should go as well,” Lynn said immediately. “If we modify the jumper’s cloak to project color and pattern, we may be able to establish two-way communication. From what Dr. Zelenka says, that’s theoretically possible — the cloak already produces some visible light as a byproduct of its functioning, so it’s just a matter of altering its intensity and wavelength. If I can get enough data, and run it through the Stargate translation program, we could be able to speak to these creatures and find out why they’re here.”
“You want to go out in a jumper and take it underwater where there are literally thousands of squid, and you want to modify the cloaking device so that the jumper can’t be cloaked or shielded,” John said. “Assuming McKay and Zelenka can get that to work.”
“Sure, let’s also put wheels on it so that you can drive it on the highway,” Rodney said. “Do you realize that we’re going to have to… yes, all right, fine, we can probably do it.”
“Quickly,” John said.
“Like everything else around here, yes.”
“Great. I’m still not convinced this is a good idea.” He hated having to be the voice of reason; he was much more comfortable throwing out the wild ideas and letting someone more cautious shoot down the ones that really weren’t good plans. But someone had to be the voice of reason, and from the look in Elizabeth’s eye, it wasn’t going to be her today.
“We can hardly talk to the squid if we’re hiding from them, so we wouldn’t want the cloak anyway,” Elizabeth said. “And considering what their electromagnetic field is doing to the city’s shield, we probably can’t count on either one being effective in their presence.”
“Which is my point.”
“So we wait for Dr. Zelenka and Dr. McKay to modify the jumper’s cloak, which will also give Dr. Lynn more time to work on his translations, and then we go talk. We’re going to have to trust that we can either establish peaceful communication or get out of the way quickly if that doesn’t seem to be an option.”
John opened his mouth to say “all right, but you can’t go,” and then shut it again. He wasn’t certain he had a good reason, besides the chill that went up his spine at the idea of Elizabeth putting herself into danger again. They’d only just gotten her back. That wasn’t something he’d ever expected. He knew better than to expect it to happen twice.
“Fine. But I’m flying the jumper,” he said.
Elizabeth gave him a look. “You’ve just finished explaining how dangerous this is. You know that’s exactl
y why the commander of the Atlantis expedition shouldn’t be the one to go, right?”
“You know that’s the worst part of this job, right?” John replied.
“And here I thought you’d think it was the paperwork.”
“Take Teyla with you, and Lorne can fly the jumper.”
“Thank you, Colonel.” She smiled a little. “You know, I might come to enjoy being on the other side of that desk.”
“You know I’m not assigning you to a gate team, right?” He wasn’t sure she was really at a point in her life to take up sprinting for the Stargate as an occupation.
“I’m a diplomat,” Elizabeth said, sobering. “If I’m not here to talk to people in difficult situations, I’m not sure why I am here.”
“All right,” John said, repressing his misgivings. “Go talk to the squid.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE JUMPER cut through the dim water, the hum of its engines far quieter than the mechanical groaning of any Earth submarine Elizabeth had ever visited. It only drove home the fact that it wasn’t at all designed for the use they were currently putting it to. Elizabeth comforted herself with the thought that they weren’t descending to depths where they’d be in immediate danger if the jumper sprung a leak.
Around the undercarriage of Atlantis, the shield shimmered, and dark tentacled forms moved in front of it. Lorne gave them a wide berth, bringing the jumper to a point where they could see the creatures but weren’t in the midst of them. Immediately, several of the large cephalopods turned and approached the jumper, not touching it, but circling it in the water, tentacles and wider, flattened arms trailing behind them.
“All right, Dr. Lynn,” Elizabeth said. “Your advice?”
Lynn looked a bit alarmed by the number of shapes moving in the water around them. “Dr. Zelenka has modified the jumper’s cloak so that we can display patterns of light and electrical signals that are similar to the communication of the squid.”
“And we’re not getting the same kind of interference as long as we’re using it as a movie projector,” Lorne said. “It’s when we switch it over to producing a shield that things get screwy.”
“So we should be able to use it to talk to these creatures,” Lynn continued. “However, right now we’d simply be guessing at any meaning we were conveying. I need a bigger sample of the language of the squid for the Stargate translation program to begin to work.”
“I don’t know that we want to try talking to them until we’re sure what we’d be saying,” Lorne said.
“I agree that might be unwise,” Teyla said. “Were you able to decipher any words the creatures might understand from the data you collected earlier?”
“This cluster here —” Lynn turned his tablet to display a series of flashing colors and movements from the squid that Elizabeth could just identify as repeating between a series of video clips. “This might be referring to the Ancients themselves.”
“Or to humans in general?” Elizabeth suggested. “Telling them that we’re humans might be a good starting point.”
“They are most likely aware of that from their observations,” Teyla said. “But it might show them that we’re attempting to use their form of communication in a meaningful way.”
“Let’s try it,” Elizabeth said. “At least we may be able to get some kind of response that way.”
They’d been fortunate so far that in most of their tense first contacts with alien civilizations, they’d at least been able to speak a common language. If the builders of the Stargate system had intended for that to ensure understanding and respect between peoples, it hadn’t quite worked out as planned. But it had meant that it was possible to introduce themselves and to negotiate without starting by working out a language to negotiate in.
Lynn had connected his tablet to the jumper’s control panel with a cable, and his hands were moving over it swiftly. “All right, let’s see what the squid think about this.”
The reaction outside the jumper was immediate. The squid, who had been swimming in complex patterns around one another, now approached the jumper. Elizabeth counted two dozen of them, and wasn’t certain how many more there might be. One long, tentacled form blended into another as the creatures swooped through the water, crossing in front of the jumper, their colors shifting and changing as they moved.
“This is good,” Lynn said. “I’m getting a lot of additional data.”
Teyla frowned at the creatures. “They are approaching the jumper very closely.”
“I expect they’re curious about what we’re —” Lynn broke off as the jumper rocked. “All right, what was that?”
One of the squid rushed the jumper, its beak thumping against the jumper’s side, sending another heavy jolt through the craft.
“We’re probably structurally sound enough not to worry about this,” Elizabeth said. “Right?”
“The jumpers are pretty sturdy, although I don’t think we’ve ever actually tried to measure how tentacle-proof they are,” Lorne said. “But I’m not going anywhere fast, unless I plow through them.”
“No, no, no, don’t do that,” Lynn said urgently. “The translation program is getting somewhere, I think.”
One of the squid barreled into another, forcing it away from the jumper. Another hit the jumper hard, and Elizabeth took a firm grip on her seat. Its arms and tentacles splayed across the forward window, and the jumper tilted off-balance.
“Can you keep us steady?” Lynn asked testily.
Lorne rolled his eyes. “Would you like to come up here and try to compensate for being grabbed by a kraken?”
“I think classically the kraken is supposed to be an octopus,” Elizabeth said.
“It depends on who you ask,” Lynn said, “there’s some speculation —”
“Whoa!” Lorne exclaimed, as one of the squid rammed the jumper with its beak with a resounding bang. It swirled around, heading in for another pass. “I may have to try to disengage —”
“Wait,” Teyla said. Two other creatures slammed into the one heading for them from the side, ramming it out of the way and enveloping it in their arms. The patterns they were flashing looked a lot like the pattern that Lynn thought meant “Ancient” or “human,” although they were growing brighter with electrical energy, and there was no telling what that meant.
The knot of arms and tentacles pulled apart and reformed as the creatures struggled. Something dark stained the water, and whether that was blood or some kind of ink, Elizabeth was afraid that the confrontation outside the jumper was growing violent.
“Can we pull back?” she asked.
“Negative, ma’am,” Lorne said. “We’re right in the middle of them.”
“There appear to be two separate groups of the creatures,” Teyla said. “One attacking the jumper, and the other attempting to prevent them from harming us.” Vast bodies roiled in the water, with the imposing size of Earth dolphins or small whales paired with a sinuous grace that allowed them to bend and change direction as no creature with bones could have. More dark fluid stained the blue sea.
“Or trying to prevent them from harming themselves by attacking a metal ship,” Elizabeth said. “I’m just not sure it’s working. Moving away may be the least destructive option after all.”
“Dr. Weir, look,” Teyla said, and Elizabeth returned her attention to the forward screens. Outside the jumper, the altercation between the creatures seemed to have ended in most of them backing away. They swirled in two distinct groups, the color patterns on their sides shifting rapidly. One of the largest individuals approached the jumper, and Elizabeth braced herself for another jolt, but it only hung there in the water, its colors changing in repetitive patterns.
“Dr. Lynn,” Elizabeth said. “Now would be a good time.”
“I think I’ve got it,” Lynn said. “Colonel Lorne, if you can patch this through the jumper’s communication system so that we can run this through the city’s computers, I think I can synthesize a voice so that we ca
n hear what they’re saying.”
“On it,” Lorne said. “Here goes.”
After a few moments a computer-generated voice said, “You are the Ancients.” The voice sounded female, although that might not reflect anything more than a default setting. “Are you the Ancients? You have returned. You have returned?”
“It’s having some trouble distinguishing statements from questions, I think,” Lynn said. “The translation should improve as my algorithms incorporate more data. Talking will help.”
Elizabeth cleared her throat. “We are humans from the city of Atlantis.”
“The city of Atlantis? The city of Atlantis. The city of the Ancients.”
“Yes, the city of the Ancients,” Teyla said.
“We have brought the city of the Ancients to this planet, to live here,” Elizabeth said. “We mean you no harm.”
There was a clamor of voices, accompanied by flashing colors from both groups.
“You came here through the Stargate,” the same voice said. “Did you come here through the Stargate?”
“We came here through space,” Elizabeth said. “Not through the Stargate.” She wasn’t sure that concept would be comprehensible to a creature that lived its entire life under the ocean.
“The cold void between the worlds,” the voice said, somewhat to her surprise.
“Yes, that’s right. I’m Elizabeth Weir,” she said. “The other one of us who is speaking is Teyla Emmagen.”
“I don’t understand those words,” the creature said.
Elizabeth looked at Lynn, who paused the communication link. “Their language appears to be entirely visual,” he said. “If they have names, they’re probably distinctive color patterns or forms of movements.”
“Those are our names,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t think we can render them into your language.”
“I am…” There was a flashing series of colors in a kind of rippling swirl.
“I’m afraid we can’t say that, either,” Elizabeth said. “The way that we are able to speak to you only works for ordinary words.”