For a couple of seconds, silence reigned in the room.
"But shouldn't it be..." Yensen hesitated.
"More aerodynamic?" Chaya clarified.
"Yes," Yensen confirmed. "Since the ship is in a dock on the planet, it should somehow optimally enter the atmosphere so as not to break apart from friction with dense layers and all that."
"Medium resistance," Kirik recalled something.
"Correct opinion," Chaya said. "But thanks to shield technology, these physical phenomena can be neutralized. And otherwise... This is a spaceship. Its appearance, streamlining, and so on are unimportant in vacuum. In space, there's no medium, no resistance, so even if it's a piece of rock—it will still fly as far as it can."
M-m-m... I wish I had such a physics teacher in school.
"From what I could learn, the ship participated in several battles in the final stage of the war with the Wraith and sustained serious damage," Chaya continued. "It was towed to Taranis for repairs, but evacuation was announced, and the ship was abandoned. The outpost personnel left for Atlantis, and from there, as I understand, to Earth."
"You were one of the Ancients," Alvar said unexpectedly. "Don't you need to look at logs and databases to tell about something?"
Good question, but... I think I know the answer to Chaya's lack of awareness.
"I'm a scientist," she reminded. "Before Ascension, I had my own tasks, my own lab, and I didn't interfere in military affairs. I don't think any of you knew what all your military do without exception."
"Agreed," Kirik supported. "Military secret. Not everyone needs to know everything."
Alvar nodded slowly. Teyla remained silent.
In principle, I agree. Even if the Lanteans were a single people, not a confederation of the titular race and junior races, there would still be information not reported to ordinary citizens. And even leading scientists. As far as I understand, Chaya was not in the category of trusted persons for the Lantean government, so she can't know everything.
"What are we dealing with?" I asked.
"Damage is significant, but it's clear the starship was being repaired," Chaya continued. The ship schematic colored in various shades of red and green. "Green is undamaged sections and systems. About forty percent. Orange is those that can work on secondary circuits, but not recommended for constant service. These are emergency systems and shouldn't be stressed. Red... That's what needs fixing."
And half the ship is red. Shitty, really.
"But can it fly?" I asked.
"After repairs—yes," the Proculian said. "Sublight engines are damaged, and their repair without restoring a large number of systems is impossible. The hyperdrive also needs repair. Main power busbars are either destroyed or damaged. I found several places where locals tried to repair the damage... Unfortunately, they only made it worse."
"Can you fix the engines?" I asked.
"No critical damage, I'll just need parts," the girl added after thinking. "A lot of parts. I programmed the outpost workshops to produce damaged parts. When they're ready, they'll go to the hangar. There, with the help of cargo cranes and other equipment, I'll replace the bulkiest parts."
"Manually, without automation?" I clarified.
"Only some mechanisms are automated," Chaya sighed. "Mostly, it'll have to be done manually."
I imagined it for a moment. Just one Chaya first lifts some part with a crane, suspends it over the needed element of the ship, then lowers it, runs to the ship, starts welding... If she doesn't die in a couple of days of such running around, she should have a monument erected while alive.
"This could drag on for a very long time," I shook my head. "Can we start the ship's engines and hyperdrive on secondary circuits?"
Chaya frowned.
"Such would risk failures," she warned. "The ship is old. Moreover, it's semi-civilian, so its margin of safety isn't that great. I can switch damaged systems to backups. But when they fail, we might end up in space without a way to fix the situation."
"When?" Alvar clarified. "Not 'if'?"
"No," Chaya looked at me cautiously. "I understand the desire to reach the Aurora as soon as possible, but this is a journey that will take more than one day. On a faulty ship, anything can happen. Failure of main systems, backup failure—and we'll be able to fix little in open space."
She's right, of course... But Earthlings managed to fly and even fight on such faulty ships.
I needed to think hard about everything said.
In the past, the Lanteans had a very large fleet, consisting of various starships. One way or another, they participated in the war with the Wraith. And almost all were destroyed.
In the known events, the Earth expedition encountered Aurora-type or Hippaforalkus-type starships several times.
They first encountered these ships upon directly discovering the Aurora. When the Earthlings had a ZPM with which they powered Atlantis, the city sent signals to the ships, calling them back to the city. The Earthlings went to the starship on their ship, but the awakened Wraith discovered the Aurora first. As a result, the already seriously damaged ship was destroyed.
The second starship found was the Hippaforalkus itself. It was also heavily damaged, but the Earth science team managed to partially restore its systems. It perished in battle with Wraith hives because it couldn't simultaneously support shields and weapon systems.
The third ship discovered by Earthlings was the Tria. At that moment, Earthlings were building a space bridge from Stargates to travel from Pegasus to the Milky Way without wasting Atlantis's ZPM energy or racing their only Pegasus-assigned ship between galaxies. The Tria had an Ancient crew aboard. From their words, it became known that the ship had hyperdrive damage, so using the onboard ZPM, it was heading to Earth at near-light speed. Due to relativistic distortion, despite ten thousand years passed for the entire galaxy, the crew aged only a few years. Honestly, I couldn't recall the fate of this starship, but the crew, having taken Atlantis from Earthlings, perished at the hands of Asuran Replicators.
The fourth starship of this type was discovered by a Pegasus human faction known as the Travelers. They had their own fleet of ships on which they lived. Discovering an Aurora-type ship in orbit of a dwarf star, they tried to start it but couldn't. So, without voluntary desire, they enlisted the help of one Earthling, Lt. Colonel Sheppard. In the end, when the Attero device was activated, exploding activated Stargates as a side effect, this ship was destroyed along with the Travelers' colony planet.
The Asuran Replicators— a race of nanites evolved from a weapon created by the Ancients—also built such ships. The Ancients tried to destroy them but didn't finish the job. In the end, both the Asurans and their achievements, including warships, were destroyed by Earthlings. The reason—the Asurans believed humans should be exterminated. The reasons for that... It's not so straightforward. But the fact that intelligent machines copying the Ancients aren't quite friends with their processor and are ready to kill humans as another manifestation of Lantean experiments makes me stay away from them.
In general terms, Chaya knows about all these ships—I told her. That's why she was searching the galaxy for quite specific stars and ships that might be in their orbit.
Since there's no point in going to the Asurans (at least for now), the Tria ship is unreachable for obvious reasons (we simply have nothing to fly to it on), the Aurora itself is seriously damaged and unlikely capable of interstellar flights, the starship discovered by the Travelers, though it can make jumps between stars (at least could during the series events, which is like not the fourth year of the expedition, i.e., at least three years in the future from the current moment), but it's undiscovered... The Hippaforalkus is the only option for our own interstellar ship that we can use.
And, one must assume, its repair will drag on. By the way!
"How much time will the repair take?" I asked.
"Hard to say," Chaya admitted. "Some systems can be restored by replacing program crystals or resoldering damaged wiring. Others require new parts, manufacturing which in ready form is hardly possible. I'll remove from the repair plan the restoration of hull airtightness in sections we won't need for the flight to the Aurora and back, but that's just one star in the Universe..."
I think the last expression is an analog of the Earth "drop in the ocean."
"And still?" I persisted.
"Months," she spread her hands. "Possibly even a year, if done quality and independently. Unfortunately, I can't be in several places at once. And besides me, sorry, but no one can even properly select crystals. Not to mention if something breaks down at the outpost, the same conveyors or workshop mechanisms, I'll have to divert to their repair..."
In other words, Chaya will first have to check the operability of some mechanisms, then smelt other parts, then install them in place, replace wiring on half the ship, then test everything, eliminate possible problems...
And that's without considering that even for smelting crystals, which then need to be programmed and replaced, we'll first need to deliver a huge amount of sand from Lantea-2! And there's still wiring, mechanisms, and so on! If, say, some processors burned out, or whatever replaces them in the Ancients, we'll need to rewrite all that...
And all this one person has to do. Do it and not go mad. Simply magnificent.
From the prospects—patch the ship hastily, fly to the Aurora, pull several crew members from stasis and revive them, get their agreement to cooperate, and with their help solve the remaining issues. I think even if we have at least a dozen technical specialists, they can greatly speed up all processes.
Not to mention that we'll have someone to leave on Taranis or Antlanida while we evacuate the Aurora's crew on the Hippaforalkus. Or search for other ships...
In general, everything is limited by the availability of qualified technical personnel familiar with Ancient technology. If we had at least five people, it would be much simpler...
"I think we can explain how to perform some procedures," Alvar spoke up. "After all, I think with soldering contacts or replacing some instruments with similar ones, we can manage."
"I'll try very hard to do everything right," Teyla assured.
"I'll need time to understand everything, but I'm ready to try," Kirik stated. "Since the ATA Gene didn't take in me, at least if nothing else works, I'll bring the necessary parts to the others."
I almost smiled, imagining Kirik hauling a twenty-ton reactor core on his back. Well, or something like that. But actually, more than the right approach.
"It's not that simple," Chaya said. "Lantean technology requires significant precision and care."
"For starters, I think we just need to show our comrades what they can help with and see if they can handle it," I said, rising from the table. "I'm sure there's work they'll do excellently."
Replacing a burned-out crystal with an identical but intact one—anyone can do that. Not that complicated.
"Yes," Chaya said without much joy on her face. "Of course, I'll show what's needed..."
"One more thing," I said after thinking. "There are labs in the city to which we definitely won't return for experiments"—the same conditional "Ascension machine" that could bring a person closer to transitioning to a state of pure energy scared me shitless. A good thing, but at the same time—dangerous. Since in the vast majority of cases, it turns the subject into a flash of light and thereby kills. "We can take some equipment from them. The same crystals or wiring..."
Chaya and I discovered and deactivated at least a hundred such labs. The experiments the Ancients conducted there are not just dangerous—in a significant part, they are immoral. I hope they were stopped and not implemented precisely for these reasons.
"No need," Chaya said quickly. "Breaking one equipment to restore another is not the best option. Even if we don't return to those experiments, it doesn't mean the equipment and its parts are subject to disassembly. Besides being very complex in production and setup mechanisms, it will take significantly longer to repurpose them than to manufacture new ones. No need to do that."
"As you say," I said to Chaya, passing by. "In that case, time to get to work. Head to Taranis. Maybe among the Athosians we'll find someone else useful."
"I doubt it," Chaya muttered, but only I heard her. I understand the reasonable doubt.
"And where are you going?" Alvar became interested, seeing me approach the opening doors of the Gate Room.
"For a walk," I replied. "Besides, don't we need sand for making crystals?"
And we need help.
Just doubt that any of the Ascended will respond to the call.