“Lynn, dial the gate to New Athos,” Ronon said. “You and Zelenka take this stuff back there and wait until you can dial in to Atlantis.” He wasn’t finding it easy to get used to having to wait for the brief windows when they’d arranged to be able to dial in. “We’ll stay and talk to Cai.”
“I should stay too, I think,” Radek said evenly, handing the case to Lynn, who took it with a bemused expression. “One is not much backup, even if that one is Teyla. Of course, there are the Marine teams, but they are some distance away, and if Sora is here…” He shrugged expressively.
Ronon glanced at Teyla. He didn’t think she’d find Radek that much use if it came to a fight, and he expected her to tell him so.
“You are right,” Teyla said instead. “Our teams are still at the factory, and they must finish their work, especially if we are not to stay here long. We will warn them that there may be trouble, but I will not call them back to the gate yet. So, yes, stay.” She nodded at Radek, who shrugged a little awkwardly.
“Then perhaps I should stay as well,” Lynn said.
“We need that hyperdrive array back in Atlantis no matter what,” Radek said. Lynn was holding the hyperdrive crystal case more normally by its handle, his camera still in his other hand, and Radek gave him a dark look as if suspecting that he wasn’t taking proper care, although Lynn didn’t strike Ronon as a careless person. “It is our best chance of ever being able to fly the city again — ”
“Yes, so you already explained,” Lynn said fairly mildly. “All right, then. Anything in particular you want me to say other than giving a report on what happened here?”
“Tell Colonel Sheppard that we’ll check in again within the hour,” Ronon said. “If he doesn’t hear from us — ”
“Then he’ll know it’s time to send in the cavalry,” Lynn said. “I’ll tell him.” He set off across the square toward the gate.
“You and Zelenka wait out here, then,” Ronon told Teyla. “I’ll get more out of Cai by myself.”
Teyla didn’t argue, although her expression was skeptical. He didn’t know if that was because she didn’t trust his skill at talking, or because she suspected he intended to fight rather than talk. It was certainly tempting.
He felt a knot of unreasonable betrayal curling in his chest as he stepped into the dimly-lit hotel. He shouldn’t have let himself be so glad to see his own people here rebuilding that he let himself believe in strangers. He should have known it was too good to be true, should have expected the whole thing to be some kind of dirty trick —
He set his jaw and threw open the door to the hotel bar with a clatter. Cai looked up, startled at the sound, and then met Ronon’s eyes, his face closed. There’d apparently been some kind of disagreement in here recently; there were overturned tables, one of which Cai had been in the process of setting to rights, and drinks spilled across the floor.
Ronon drew his pistol and leveled it at Cai’s chest. “So you’re working for the Genii.”
Cai set the table down squarely on its feet before he answered. “I’m not working for the Genii,” he said.
“Liar,” Ronon said. “We know they’re here.”
“They’ve been here for half a year,” Cai said. “They have their own camps at several places in the city. At first they were mainly after weapons. They were talking about getting some of the munitions factories working again. Exploring the museum is new. That’s Sora’s project.”
“You know Sora.”
“She says she’s in charge of Genii operations on Sateda.”
“And you work for her?”
“I work for the Satedan people.”
“Yeah, it’s really going to help them to sell Sateda to the Genii.”
Cai actually laughed, an unexpected bitter bark that made Ronon’s finger tighten on the pistol’s trigger. “Sell it? The Genii don’t have to buy anything here. They’ve claimed the planet, Ronon. They say they’re taking over.”
“And you let them?”
“I’m not a soldier,” Cai said. “What have the soldiers who escaped Sateda done? Found work as mercenaries? Killing people is a surprisingly marketable skill. Become heroes fighting the Wraith?”
Ronon didn’t lower the pistol. “So?”
“They’ve built lives somewhere. They’re not desperate to get back to Sateda. Any world will take in good soldiers or good farmers. Good carpenters, even. But what do you think the rest of us had to offer out there?” Cai’s voice was tired. “I owned a factory. I spent most of my days sitting behind a table and the rest on the factory floor. I never fired a gun or plowed a field or dug a ditch. I had a dozen mechanical engineers working for me. What do you think they did on planets where the horse collar would be a breakthrough? Plowed fields, maybe. Dug ditches. Badly.”
“Sure, but — ”
Cai kept talking, like maybe he’d been wanting to say all this for a while. “I had a secretary, typists, clerks. Do you know of anywhere that needs typists now, or hairdressers, or radio operators?” He shook his head. “That’s who came back, Ronon. People who’d lost everything they had. Not just their possessions and their families but their usefulness.”
“Like you?”
“Like me,” Cai said flatly. “It took me ten years to figure out that being able to manage people, being a good salesman… that much I still had. That’s how I convinced these people to come back here. But they’re ordinary people, not soldiers. The Genii sent a regiment of soldiers through the Ring. If we’d tried to fight, it would have been nothing to them to kill us all. And I couldn’t let that happen to these people. I’m responsible for them. I’m not sure why they want me to be, but they do, and I am.”
“You sent us to the museum,” Ronon said after a moment. “You set us up.”
“I didn’t know they were working there today,” Cai said. “We try to steer clear of their people as much as we can.”
“That’s not the point,” Ronon said. “Why didn’t you tell us about the Genii?”
Cai reached for one of the other overturned tables, ignoring the way Ronon’s pistol twitched to follow him. He set it upright, squaring it with the others in the row instead of looking at Ronon. “You?” he said. “The greatest living Satedan hero, the great warrior against the Wraith? And here we sit, unable to keep the Genii from squatting in our cities and robbing our dead.” He looked up, finally. “What do you think? We were too ashamed.”
The words hung in the silence for a moment, and finally Ronon lowered his pistol. “You did what you could,” he said. “You brought our people back to Sateda.”
“I did,” Cai said, raising his chin a little. “And now we can finally be rid of the Genii. Compared to the Wraith, they ought to be easy for you and the Lanteans to handle.”
“Compared to the Wraith,” Ronon said, “but — ”
“The Genii don’t own Sateda,” Cai said. “The Lanteans have a reputation for being a fair people, and you call some of them friends. Surely you can bring their soldiers to help us.”
“It’s complicated,” Ronon said.
“Not so complicated,” Cai said. “We can make Sateda a world we recognize again. Our children will see the trains running again and have electric lights. Our grandchildren will have hospitals and factories and music on the radio. But none of that is going to happen if this world becomes a military outpost for the Genii. They’ll take everything they can use and build their great bombs here so that if the Wraith find out, it won’t be their world that gets burned to the ground.”