Jo Graham - Unascended

“I don’t take orders well,” Daniel said. “I admit that—”

“Then I will only give you one. Go back to the jumper, and wait there until we have spoken with the captain of the Travelers’ ship. That is not a request, and I am not asking you for your opinion about my decision. Is that clear enough?”

“Crystal clear,” Daniel said from between gritted teeth.

“I am glad we understand each other,” Teyla said.

Elizabeth woke. She lay in a bedroll on the floor of one of the rooms of the Paiden Regional Clinic, the other members of the salvage team sleeping nearby. In the doorway one of the men was keeping watch, looking out over the empty street and the stars paling with the coming dawn.

Already the dream seemed to fade. There had been a woman, an alien woman and a danger. To her? To Elizabeth? It was hard to remember. But she was certain of one thing the woman had said. She would soon be home.

Their packs were heavy when they left the Regional Clinic. Elizabeth’s held three piece of handheld electrical equipment and two manual blood pressure cuffs. They’d left the electric ones behind on the theory that you could take blood pressure just as well with the manual ones, and anything that didn’t waste power was good. Her pack also held two dozen metal implements, mostly surgical clamps and scissors, things that were beyond what the Satedans could make today, but which had been commonplace before. She also had two heavy half empty bottles of disinfectant, another thing that used to be dirt cheap but which was now incredibly valuable.

Margin Bri said as much as Elizabeth hoisted her pack onto her back.

“I understand,” Elizabeth said absently, adjusting the straps to distribute the load better. “It’s the same thing I saw in Bosnia. Everyday things become incredibly valuable when suddenly there’s no way to replace them.”

Margin put her head to the side. “Where is Bosnia? I haven’t heard of that Culling.”

“I have no idea,” Elizabeth said. The words had just come into her head, but she thought about them as they walked back to the rail station. She was remembering more. There were more pieces to the puzzle she was assembling. “I don’t remember a lot of places I’ve been since I left home.”

Margin nodded. “Some don’t,” she said. “It takes everyone differently. But you’re here and that’s what matters. You survived.”

“I did,” Elizabeth said. What she had survived might not be what Margin thought it was, but it was horror enough. Whatever it was, she had completely forgotten it.

The rail station was just as they’d left it and they passed through, turning south to follow the tracks. Suddenly there was a noise behind them, a scattering of stones and the low whine that Elizabeth recognized as the sound of a Satedan energy pistol powering up. They were standing in the middle of the tracks with little cover.

“Get down!” Margin Bri yelled, pulling one of the others off to the side.

There was almost nowhere to go. Elizabeth crouched, dodging back to the edge of the station platform. It only rose a couple of feet at the corner, but at least it was concrete. She reached for her side, for a weapon that wasn’t there. She was unarmed. They were all unarmed except for some knives.

“Stand where you are,” Margin Bri called out. “Show yourself or we’ll return fire.”

Nice bluff, Elizabeth thought.

“We’ve got you in our sights,” a man called back. “Identify yourselves!”

Elizabeth didn’t hesitate. “If you’ve got us in your sights, you know we’re not Wraith,” she said, standing up with her hands well to the sides.

There was a noise at the other end of the platform where a short flight of concrete steps led down to the tracks. An old man with a grizzled beard stood up, holding an energy pistol pointed straight at her. “Who are you then?” he demanded.

“A salvage party from the city,” Elizabeth said. “Satedan. Now put the gun away.”

“Why should I believe you?” he asked.

“Do we look like Wraith to you?” Elizabeth beckoned to Margin, who stood up, her heavy pack on her back. “We came looking for medical supplies. Which I bet you did too.” The old man was wearing a bulky pack, but it looked mostly empty. “Let’s talk about this.”

“From the city?” the old man said. “That’s impossible. They were all killed.”

“Some Satedans have returned,” Elizabeth said. Her eyes didn’t waver. “Put the gun away and let’s talk.”

“Dad, put the gun away.” A young woman stood up from the shelter of the steps, and after a moment a second did too. They were so alike as to be almost twins, but the one who had spoken had hair a shade darker and stood an inch shorter than her sister. “Come on, Dad.”

After a moment he wavered, returning the energy pistol to a holster at his belt. “OK.” He drew himself up. “I’m Beron Eze. These are my daughters Jana and Vetra.”

“This is Margin Bri,” Elizabeth said. “And I’m Elizabeth Weir. We’re friends.”

“How could you have come from the city?” the taller young woman, Vetra, asked. “There was nobody left. The Wraith were using it for their hunting games.”

“Not anymore,” Margin said.

“There are several hundred people there now,” Elizabeth said. “Ushan Cai is their elected leader. The Stargate is open and they are trading with other worlds.”

The other woman, Jana, shook her head in wonder. “What happened to the Wraith?”

“There’s a treaty,” Elizabeth said. “Among hives. They’re leaving Sateda alone.”

“For now,” Margin said. “But that’s something. Where did you come from? We haven’t found any people from outside the city, though Ushan Cai thinks there must have been survivors.”

“Escavera,” Beron said. “I have a farm near Escavera, up in mining country. The first Cullings didn’t bother with it because we’re way out in the country, and then we used the old mine shafts when they came back. They’re too deep to detect life signs from a Dart. There are a couple of dozen of us, a few families from remote farms and some miners. Me and my girls here, we’re getting by.”

“But we needed medical supplies,” Jana said. “So I talked Dad into this trip.”

“We had no idea there were any people here,” Vetra said. “We thought maybe we could salvage some things to take back with us.”

“Come to the city with us,” Elizabeth said. “It’s only another day’s walk. We will be there by nightfall. You can talk to Ushan Cai and work out supplies to take back. I know he’ll want to talk to you about where survivors are.”

Vetra looked at her father. “Dad?”

He nodded slowly. “OK. That seems reasonable.”

“I want to see what’s happened,” Jana said. “We need news. Let’s go.”

Daniel tried not to pace around the interior of the jumper. There wasn’t really room to take more than a few steps, anyway. Teyla’s words still rankled. All right, he’d gone off on a tangent, and one that might not have been tactful, but he’d spent years having to fight to pursue the answers to any questions other than “who’s trying to shoot us today and what are we going to do about it?”

He certainly didn’t believe he had all the answers. Some days he didn’t feel like he had any of the answers. But there had to be some way to fight back against that sense of frustration, to find out enough to be able to piece together the complete story of something. It was all intertwined, the Ancients and the Wraith and the Asgard, and he wasn’t sure how to begin understanding the story of Atlantis without knowing more.