Just like last time, the mess hall on Atlantis was practically empty now.
Except that the security shift that had just come off duty was eating there. And they were casually glancing at the man sitting at the far table, greedily devouring the contents of his second tray already.
Setting my own tray down next to his, I watched for a couple of seconds as one of the most famous people in this universe literally ate prepared food with his hands. And he didn't care that there were three or four kinds of porridge in front of him.
He didn't really care about me either.
The guy was busy with his own business.
"I think your appetite does credit to our kitchen machine," I said, opening the conversation.
"It's tasty," Ronon answered shortly, not looking up from his food. But I didn't miss the fact that the guy kept darting his eyes around the room. "Did I take your food?"
He also wasn't very well acquainted with any rules of politeness, etiquette, and so on. Or he was pretending not to be.
"No, I have my own," I chuckled, biting into a purple apple. The taste... Well, almost like a winter apple from Earth. Firm, juicy, tasty. Just not red. "My name is..."
"Mikhail," Ronon said, continuing to shovel handfuls of bean porridge into his mouth. "I know. Kirik told me. Said you know everything about me."
"Some things."
"Are you an oracle?" Ronon's eyes went still, looking at me without fear or deference. "Or are you just pulling the wool over their eyes?"
"You tell me," I said, chewing a piece and putting the fruit down on the tray. "You're the one who's a master at throwing dust in people's eyes."
"I don't know what you're talking about," the Satedan denied.
I have to say, after he was given quarters and a brief explanation of how to use various ingenious items of a civilization he'd been cut off from for years (and in the case of Lantean technology, had never encountered at all), Dex had spent a lot of time getting himself together.
A medical examination conducted by Seliza revealed no serious illnesses. The incipient pneumonia and mild radiation sickness, caused by his long sheltering on a planet experiencing a nuclear winter after the Wraith had dropped by about sixty years ago, had cleared up fairly quickly. As soon as he was hooked up to the Lantean equipment.
The girl prescribed him a course of Ermen vitamins, helped him get settled, and even explained how to use the washing machine in the quarters.
However, as far as I know, he'd shoved his wild-man outfit into the far corner. He refused to wear a uniform, but he did demonstrate that in his skinny duffel bag, there were more than just Wraith scalps. He needed the latter to wrap around the handle of his weapon with their hair.
Washed and changed, this guy didn't look at all like an aggressive homeless man somewhere in Harlem.
Ronon Dex, in civilian clothes.
"Come on, Dex," I chuckled. "You don't really think the security guys are just sitting here on alert for nothing? Especially since their shift is over and they wouldn't mind getting some sleep."
"Sleep is a luxury," the Satedan said, continuing to eat.
"Listen," I said.
"I'm listening," he replied, still stuffing his face.
"It's not customary to eat while talking here," I said more gently.
Ronon stopped, then looked at me.
"Time for me to go?" he asked.
No anger, no rage, no irritation. This guy was phlegmatic to the bone.
"No, not if you don't want to," I assured him. "But I'd like to talk, to understand what kind of person you are..."
"Kirik said you know everything," Ronon reminded me, chewing his porridge.
"Some things," I corrected him again. "Alright, I get it. You want me to tell you."
"And you want me to serve you," he said. "I'm grateful for the help. That thing in my back," he jerked his thumb backward, referring to the Wraith tracker that had been implanted in him on the Demon's hive ship, "was really bothering me. I don't want to be like her. If I'm in the way, I'll leave. And your secrets will die with me."
"Oh, they'll just die?"
"If you know anything about me, then yes — I won't reveal a single secret," the Satedan added darkly. "No matter how they torture me."
Oh, Ronon, Ronon... If you knew what I know, you wouldn't be so categorical.
"Frankness for frankness," I agreed. "I'll tell you what I know, what's happened up to the present moment," a very important addition, I have to say. "You were born on the planet Sateda, an industrially developed world. You had a grandfather who suffered from a disease called 'Second Childhood,'" that's what they called the local analogue of Alzheimer's in Pegasus — "when you were about seven or eight."
"Six," Dex corrected me in the same flat voice.
"You took him to the planet Talus, to the Sanctuary of Talus, where people like your grandfather regained themselves for exactly one day. Your grandfather taught you hand-to-hand combat techniques until he died with honor, as a man. You also suffered from Kirsan fever. When you grew up, you became part of the Satedan Planetary Forces, rose to the rank of sergeant, with a Spec designation. I take it that's your equivalent of our 'weapons specialist' from my home planet. You had a woman named Melena, who died about seven or eight years ago during the Wraith invasion of Sateda. You tried to send her through the Stargate, or the Ring of the Ancients as many call it, to a safe place with your commander, Kell, but she died."
"Quite possible," Ronon said, just as impassively, looking at me with a hint of curiosity.
"Then you were captured by the Wraith. When one of them started feeding on you, it stopped," I continued. "They implanted a transmitter in you, making you a Runner. That's about it. The rest is details."
Dex looked at me, then asked:
"Why do your people carry weapons like mine?"
Despite the potential danger, the Satedan was on Atlantis with his Frequency Gun. Not because we weren't all afraid of him — on the contrary, he'd shown at the first opportunity that he should be feared.
But this man wasn't crazy enough to cause trouble. And besides, even if he didn't know it, he was always under observation. Absolutely always.
Well, and if he needed to be calmed down... Completely by coincidence, Saya lived right next to him (yes, the cyborg woman also had her own quarters). And she was always roaming nearby. For example, right now she was standing in the shadow of the corridor, keeping out of sight.
Ronon slowly lowered his hand to his holster, then, holding his Frequency Gun by the grip with two fingers (while the security guys were already aiming their own Frequency Guns in our direction, but keeping them under the table), popped out the energy cell and laid them separately on the table. I recall that in the series, he didn't act like this. But then again, the first people he met there didn't tell him about his past.
Ronon Dex's Frequency Gun.
"This isn't Lantean weaponry," I said. "It belongs to a race called the Kocheniki. Same people as everywhere in the galaxy, just fleeing from the Wraith on spaceships for hundreds, if not thousands of years."
"I've met Nomads," Dex said unexpectedly.
"No kidding?" I was even intrigued.
"Before Sateda fell, my unit and I traveled by train," Ronon said. "We stopped near a small village that had been hit by earthquakes. We helped with construction work. That's where I met Melena. Later we found out the earthquake was caused by a group of Nomads. They came to Sateda to trade. And they stole the Iron Horse."
"The Iron Horse?" I repeated.
"You don't know what that is?" A look of some puzzlement appeared on Ronon's face.
"Haven't the faintest idea," I admitted. "If it's some device created by the Ancients or another race, I haven't come across that name in the archives."
"They say it was built by the Ancients to free Sateda from earthquakes," Ronon shared.
"Interesting," I admitted. "I'll have to look in the archives. I take it you made those people pay for their treachery?"
"Yes."
On that, I figured, the explanation was exhausted.
But the Satedan was now looking at me with attention and scrutiny.
"Well," I said, "we've also encountered that among the Nomads, there are those you can trust and those who would sooner start a war than give their hosts what they're owed," I vaguely informed the man about the circumstances of my acquaintance with Larrin and her people.
"I see," Ronon said, returning to his food. His Frequency Gun remained lying on the table between us.
"You're said to have some decent skills," I continued. "You took down half our reconnaissance team without breaking a sweat. And Kirik and Alvar only held out thanks to their coordination."
"They're good fighters," Ronon said.
"And Atlantis needs good fighters," I said. "Especially if they've had military training and have excellent survival skills. And yes, relax already. No one here is your enemy — unless you're our enemy."
"I'm not tense," the Satedan said.
"Oh, come on," I advised. "You're sitting alone, with your back to the corner of the mess hall. Positioned so you can keep the main entrance and the balcony exit in your field of view. You eat fast, with your hands, even though you can clearly see the utensils in front of you. You create the impression of a savage who isn't very smart, when in fact you're a pretty clever guy."
"You don't know me," Dex grunted confidently.
"But I do know that your planet was bombarded," I reminded him. "And there might be survivors."
Dex's hand froze, not bringing its clump of porridge to his mouth.
Looking up from under his brows, he clarified:
"Where?"
"Scattered across different worlds," I shrugged. "We don't visit populated worlds that often yet, but that will change over time. In fact, it's already changing. We have more strength now, we have something to fight back with in case of an attack."
"It's good that you have something to defend yourselves with," Dex agreed.
"But it's even better to attack," I noted. "We've been sitting in a passive defense long enough that it nearly led to a crisis. We have the strength to help people and fight the Wraith."
"Your soldiers won't stand against the Wraith," the Satedan noted. "Not all of them are good fighters."
Considering that the reconnaissance group sent to find him consisted of two security guys and two Runners, whom Dex had handled without much difficulty, I figured he had the right to make that assessment.
"So teach them," I offered. "Join us. The better prepared we are, the easier it will be to fight the Wraith. And who knows — maybe tomorrow, maybe in a week — we'll find traces of your people. And we'll be able to bring them back to Sateda."
"You can't go back to Sateda," Dex said firmly.
"What makes you so sure?"
"I tried dialing my planet's gate address," he explained. "Nothing happened — the connection between the gates wasn't established."
"The gate on Sateda is probably damaged or buried under rubble," I suggested. "In that case, yes, they won't work."
"And no one will ever go back there," Dex added, finishing his food.
Picking up a small towel, he wiped the remains of food off his hands with it, looking at me challengingly.
An interesting fact.
I clearly remember from the series that there were gates on the planet. They were standing there and were shot up by the Wraith in the third season, even though Dex himself joined in the second. Given the overall industrialization, the development of weapons, and simply for the sake of visiting a planet that had a device that prevented earthquakes (or at least had one), the team from Earth that had settled on Atlantis in the known events should have gone there.
But they didn't, not until Dex was captured by the Wraith and returned to his homeworld to be hunted again. And they shot up the gates then. After that, the Earthlings decided to go to the planet by ship.
An interesting fact. According to the series, there were hundreds of surviving Satedans in the galaxy who left their home planet after the Wraith destroyed it and exterminated the population. But none of them ever returned, even though settling in dead worlds from the Pegasus inhabitants' point of view was actually quite correct — after all, the Wraith definitely wouldn't come there for a very, very long time.
But in the known events, Ronon Dex found not a single compatriot or any traces of anyone's presence on Sateda. Could it be that the Wraith somehow found out that some Satedans had returned and then damaged the gate? And then, when they caught Dex, they really bombed it, knowing that he'd served on Atlantis for almost a year and a half and might know how to repair them?
That would explain everything.
Including the fact that in the computer of Demon's hive ship, there was no mention of his hive visiting the planet after the entire population was destroyed. Could other Wraith have been there? Quite possibly.
Sateda's address is in Atlantis's database. Moreover, the planet was called that during the Ancients' time. They visited it but for some reason didn't actively interact with the locals.
We dialed the gate address, but couldn't establish a hyper-tunnel. So the gate hasn't been working for at least a year and a half before the point in the known events when Demon captured Dex.
And if before I wasn't very interested in Sateda, considering that all that was there were ruins and not very advanced firearms, after hearing about the Iron Horse... It seems that either some private group of Ancients had been there, or aliens who left some of their technology behind.
I should check it out — maybe there really is something interesting there. At worst, we'll just fix the gate. Maybe our new recruit will appreciate the gesture. Well, if not him... Demon is dead, the planet is officially considered dead and inaccessible to people. It's not a bad foothold for a base, actually.
"If the gate isn't repaired or restored to working order, then yes, no one will return," I agreed.
"Can you do that?" Dex asked, interested.
"We can," I confirmed. "We'll do everything in our power."
The series never said why the gate on Sateda wasn't working. And what happened to it was also unknown.
It was quite possible that the Wraith had destroyed it, or thrown it into a star, to close the way home for the survivors.
One way or another, Sateda had indeed made the Wraith work hard.
From the onboard computer of Demon's hive ship, we learned that during the assault on Sateda, the Wraith lost over a hundred darts and almost half their soldiers. All their soldiers.
They never recovered from those losses, but they carefully hid their problems from other hives. In fact, this explained how easily the Scavenger managed to seize the initiative — there were practically no crews on the cruisers, or on the hive ship itself. And soldiers... Their queen worked like a bee-mother, but everything has its limits.
"And how do you intend to get to Sateda?" Ronon asked.
"The gate address is known; calculating a flight by ship won't be much trouble," I explained.
"On a spaceship?" Dex clarified.
"Yes."
"Your ships can only fly through the gate," he noted.
Right... He'd been brought here on a jumper.
"We have larger ships too," I assured him. "A few days' flight and we'll be there. We'll examine the gate; if possible, we'll repair it on the spot. And those of your people who survived can return."
"If they survived," Dex countered.
"I understand you don't trust my words. But it's not our custom to deceive allies."
"And we're allies?" Dex clarified.
"I hope so."
"Then tell me, Mikhail," the Satedan adopted a demonstratively relaxed posture. "Why do you need me, if you have allies like the Nomads... and the Wraith? Or are you going to say your people are lying when they tell each other that the Wraith brought them back to life?"
Even though he was pretending to be calm and unable to attack at any moment, that wasn't the case at all.
Sighing, I told the Satedan about Koschei, about the reverse feeding through which the crew members of the Aurora had been restored to life. I separately dwelled on the effect of dependency on the Wraith enzyme and how the Wraith used it to create admirers for themselves.
"Are your people admirers of the Wraith?" the Satedan asked.
"Do you see any Wraith around who are commanding us?" I asked.
"No."
"Then you know the answer to your question."
"Then why did you tell me about the admirers and the enzyme dependency?" the Satedan pressed.
"Because your close friends from Sateda went down that path," I wanted to say.
But it wasn't the time. To accept that fact, you needed at least a little trust. And from sitting together at the same table in this galaxy, that rarely developed.
Restoring the gate on the planet wasn't a bad start for cooperation.
Who knows, if the Satedan soldiers started returning to the planet, then by putting one of the observation satellites in orbit that the Lantians used in their social experiments, we might find more recruits for ourselves.
It sounded like a plan.
"Whether you leave or not, you'll have more information about the Wraith than before," I told him. "That's actually why we're cooperating with Queen Alabaster. She wants to strengthen her position, including by destroying other Wraith hives. Isn't that cooperation worth a chance, if the Wraith will be killing each other without our help?"
"Maybe," Dex said. "And maybe not."
"You're a real master of eloquence," I chuckled. "Well then, are you ready to join our ranks?"
"First, we fly to Sateda," he said. "When we get back, I'll give you my answer."
"Well, that's great," I declared, getting up from the table. "And yes, my friend. Using tableware as a weapon isn't the best option. Put the table knife and fork back where they belong, or they'll fall out of your bracers, and there'll be a lot of noise."
Silently, as if nothing had happened, Dex pulled a knife and fork from his leather bracer.
"Agreed, not the best knife of the ones I have on me," Dex declared, scratching his mop of thick dreadlocks.
Then he laid another knife on the table. A homemade throwing knife, clearly not produced by the machines on Atlantis.
Then another.
And another.
And another.
Seeing the security guys' faces turning pale, I asked Dex to stop. After all, he had been searched and scanned before coming to Atlantis. He couldn't have brought weapons without our knowledge.
Which meant he'd made them here on Atlantis.
The Satedan stopped his game of "Scare the Security Service" at about the thirty-fourth knife. And that was only from his hidden storage up to his waist.
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