synecdochic (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
synecdochic) wrote2007-05-08 12:48 am
synecdochic) wrote2007-05-08 12:48 am
[fic] SGA: City on the Edge of Forever, the pilot
I'd like the record to show that I've still broken up with Atlantis, for various and sundry reasons. I'm just sayin'.
Anyway. I've had this vague idea for a while, pretty much ever since halfway through S1, and it's been refined back and forth with discussions with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sarahq, who also has Many Good Ideas for this 'verse. It's sort of a Ten Minutes AU, really: what would have happened if they hadn't accidentally turned on the Stupid Generator when they arrived on Atlantis. And, see, we both liked the frontier-outpost cut-off-from-everything-they've-ever-
This is kind of what resulted. It's the "pilot" for a universe where everything changes from "Rising" onward. It's not terribly in-depth, nor is this bit incredibly detailed, because I just wanted to throw everything on screen so we could go ahead and merrily change things from here. I'm kind of thinking of it as the "City on the Edge of Forever" series. Couldn't tell you if, or when, there'll be more of it, but I figured I'd at least share this bit ...
*
The first thing Elizabeth Weir did when she received final confirmation of the Atlantis mission was to sit down with every member of a SGC gate team who'd ever been stranded off-world for more than 48 hours and ask them one simple question: what item or items would you have needed to have brought with you, to keep yourself alive and well if Earth had never been able to come back and get you?
The list was full of things she'd expected, things she'd already had on her list -- food supplies, power sources, agricultural tools, medicines (particularly antibiotics), heavy machinery, ammunition -- and those items served to confirm she was thinking in the right direction. It wasn't until she got to Dr. Mendoza, SG-8's anthropologist and linguist and four-time winner of the coveted Most Useful Teammate award at the SGC's annual (and completely underground) Snakey awards, that she realized she wasn't thinking broadly enough.
"Olive tree seedlings," had been Mendoza's first and immediate response. She'd quirked an eyebrow at him, and he'd shrugged. "Soap, lantern fuel, food, medicine -- there's a reason the olive tree was so prized in ancient cultures. Iron, aluminum, lead, nickel, and steel ingots. And an anvil and other blacksmith tools. Tallow, for candles and soap, as well as for manufacturing, in case you can't domesticate any of the local wildlife. Salt, salt, salt. Diatomaceous earth -- both the kind used for swimming pool filtration to purify water, and the kind that's used for long-term food and grain storage. A good supply of vitamins, since Lord only knows if your body's going to be able to get the right nutrients when you're using offworld food to supplement what you brought. Matches. Activated charcoal. Chlorine. Iodine. Caffeine pills -- withdrawl's a bitch, and you need to carefully taper down. Wool roving, spindle, and knitting needles. Hell, needles, period. A loom or two, or at the very least someone who knows how to build one. Light sticks, those kinds you crack and they glow. Um. Bees, if they're lifting the regs and allowing you to bring through indigenous life."
He'd stopped, drummed his fingers on the table, and appeared to carefully consider. It had taken her a second to catch up in scribbling down her notes, and she'd looked up. "You're talking as though we'd be setting up something in between a post-apocalyptic nightmare and a cross-country covered-wagon trip."
Mendoza had smiled at her. "Well, you might be, right? And that's why you're asking. You asked about my ideal packing list, and God, that's only the beginning -- I could fill up your tonnage twice over with things you'd be praising me to high heaven for the first time you hit something you really needed. But a lot of it would be useless if you don't know how to use it. Look, gimme a few hours? I'll put together expanded versions of the packing lists I use for missions, throw in some bigger and more bulky stuff, check your crew manifest to see who's got what skills --"
Elizabeth had left with her head spinning, but it had changed the way she was thinking about things.
One hundred and fifty people. No idea what they were going to find on the other side; no idea how, or when, they were going to get home. Earth nearly had the prototype of the long-range hyperdrive ship working, but nearly wasn't exactly and who knew what was going to happen to it between then and now.
She wasn't just provisioning an expedition. There was a very good chance she was equipping a colony.
Thirty-eight minutes worth of time to transport things in, maximum. Less if their ZPM was drained of power too quickly, partway through the transfer. She tore up her lists, made new ones. Then tore up those and started again. First she exceeded her budget, then she obliterated it. General O'Neill watched with bemusement and no small amount of respect in his eyes as she bullied everyone into drill after drill, taking people and equipment through the Gate to the Alpha site over and over again, until seconds saved turned into minutes saved.
She argued (hard) and won (barely) access to five of the six Asgard mass-cancellation devices the SGC had for study; they used them on the heaviest pallets, so they could be handled by only one person. She begged, borrowed, and stole every spare pair of hands in the SGC, not to join the expedition but to help in the line of goods up the ramp and through the Gate. She built plans for every contingency, from arriving in a tiny room with little to no storage space all the way down to arriving outside on a broad open plain with plenty of storage but absolutely no traction for the pallets' wheels.
By zero hour, they'd gotten the transfer of people and vital materials down to eighteen minutes and thirty-one seconds at their optimal time, with the remaining time open for a bucket-brigade transfer of not-necessary-but-useful goods thrown through the open Gate after them until it ran out of power and disengaged. She fought, tooth and nail, with Colonel Sumner until he grudgingly agreed that his Marines could haul goods with them before fanning out to secure the area. In her secret heart of hearts, she hoped -- prayed -- for an uninhabited world on the other side, one that they could explore and claim and make their own, but she picked the cultural specialist Dr. Jackson spoke most highly of and put her in the first wave, in case they needed to talk their way out of a sticky situation.
They were as ready as they were going to be.
*
John Sheppard had been through the Stargate twenty-one times by that morning, each time on one of the trial runs to the Alpha site. Privately, he thought of it as the equivalent of flying across three continents to have lunch at the airport, then turning around and going home. But Dr. Weir had been smart to insist on the practice, he thought, watching her give her pre-Gate-dialing motivational speech and trying to deny the butterflies in his stomach. He wasn't the only person who was new to Gate travel -- wasn't even the only person who'd been briefed on the Gate just for this mission; although he had been the last addition, there'd been six weeks between his agreeing to join and actually getting the reassignment papers, plenty enough time to go through the ultra-condensed SGC training. And he was honest enough with himself to admit that if he hadn't gotten the chance to get used to the idea of Gate travel before the actual day of mission departure, he damn well would have held up the line on the way.
He only partially listened to Dr. Weir's speech; he was pretty sure he could have guessed what she was saying, since he'd heard her deliver variants on it nearly every day for the past six weeks. Best and brightest, one-way trip, glorious destiny. His pack was heavy on his back -- it was well past the standard field pack weight, and only the fact that he wouldn't be wearing it long made it bearable -- and he shifted his grip on his P-90. Next to him in the line, Colonel Sumner gave him a death glare. Sumner seemed to have singled him out as a target, rather than accepting him as a member of the command; well, it couldn't be helped. Wouldn't be the first time he'd dealt with a hostile commander.
Dr. Weir finished speaking, and signaled the control room to dial.
No matter how many times John saw it, it was still beautiful. It took longer, this time, for the wormhole to explode and stabilize after the eighth chevron locked. Or maybe it was his imagination, or the palpable tension in the room. The MALP trundled up the ramp and through the Gate, and for a minute, everyone in the room held their breath.
Then the voice of the scientist guy -- McKay, John thought -- came crackling over the intercom from the control room. "Viable atmosphere. Huge space. Looks like plan five is the best."
Dr. Weir looked up at the glass, where General O'Neill gave her the high sign and then leaned over to click the microphone. "Dr. Weir, you are go for departure. And good luck."
It took a second for it to sink in for her, John could tell. One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi, and then she was shouldering her pack and reaching out to push the pallet she'd been assigned. "Entrance plan five, people, and move."
Dutifully, as ordered, John turned to the person behind him in line -- a baby-faced lieutenant, Ford, John thought the kid was named -- and repeated, "Plan five, and we are clear." This close to the front of the line, Ford had heard her. But the departure line stretched all the way back to the elevators, and although each person waiting had headset communicators (the best state-of-the-art technology they had been able to find), sometimes there was no substitute for good old-fashioned word-of-mouth.
They'd practiced this so many times it was second nature for John to grab the pallet he was assigned -- food, he thought, or maybe ammunition; he didn't know all the details of what Dr. Weir had deemed important enough to bring -- and give it enough of a shove to get it moving. Up the ramp, through the wormhole -- it took longer this time, and he knew he wasn't imagining that -- to the left the minute he was clear, shove the pallet as far as it would go, and get the hell out of the way for the person behind him.
As he caught his breath, lifted his P-90, and thought God, it's dark in here, some unseen light source brightened to a soft glow, and he could see the room they were in. It was beautiful; high ceiling, even floor, steps leading up to a second loft-like level on the other side of the room. "Up the steps as you're clear," Weir was calling, and "security teams, fan out," Sumner was calling, and John kept his eyes open as he stepped up the first step and each step lit up one by one.
For a second, it felt like something was tickling the back of his head, the way his eyeballs always felt hot and itchy when he'd been awake for too long, but it passed quickly.
The cacophany of people swearing in every language under the sun, of pallets crashing into each other on the frictionless floor and of people yelping as fingers were smashed and toes were run over, wasn't important. This city -- city? Yes, city -- was beautiful. The Gate was sleeker, more streamlined. John reached the top of the stairs and turned to look behind him, his eyes drawn to the beauty of how harmoniously the Gate complemented the rest of the room. The top of the stairs was some kind of control room, its consoles covered with white sheets. Powered down -- no, as he looked at it, he could see the faintest flicker of lights behind the sheets, and he could have sworn they hadn't been there before.
McKay had been the first person in line behind the security teams, and John could hear him yelling, "Who the hell's turning on the lights?"
She's just happy to have company again, John thought, and then wondered where the hell it had come from. Airplanes were "she" sometimes, but he'd never thought to personify a city.
"Security teams, any sign of additional inhabitation?" Sumner's voice came over John's headset, crisp and clear. John didn't need the chorus of "negative" that came back, one by one, to know that they were alone here. She -- the city -- was sleeping, and had been for a while.
"Are you turning on the lights?" McKay demanded again, sounding more irritable this time, at John's elbow. He stalked across the control room, lifting sheets and peering under them. "Someone's gotta be. Is it you? Did you touch anything?"
"I don't ... think so," John said, slowly.
"Either you touched something or you didn't. It's a yes/no question."
"No," John said. Below them, on the Gateroom floor, he could see someone pushing the red-marked container that indicated they were one-quarter through the vital material supply train. The first quarter had all the most critical supplies, and each pallet also held a cross-section of the goods that would be necessary for survival and comfort. That way, even if they lost the Gate quickly, they'd have some of everything instead of all of a few things. It was seriously advanced tactical thinking; John hadn't expected it from a civilian.
Someone cursed, loudly and inventively, in some language that sounded Slavic or Eastern European. John could see Dr. Weir, standing on the first step, directing traffic and looking subtly terrified.
"Well, someone's gotta be. And I can't make heads nor tails of anything here, and I read Ancient. Well, all right, I read some Ancient." John turned his head and watched as McKay pulled free another sheet, which revealed crystal-looking switches lit up with the symbols John had started to learn were the symbols for Earth's gate address. They looked subtly different, somehow, here.
"We could spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out what all of this means," John said, before he could stop himself.
He was expecting mockery -- one thing he'd learned in his six weeks was that McKay didn't suffer fools gladly -- but instead the other man just looked up, startled, as though John's words had caught him by surprise. His face was blank for a second, and then a slow half-smile spread over it. "Sounds like a pretty good plan," McKay said, with a little twist of his mouth, and John got the sense he was being invited in on a joke.
"Hands, hands, hands," Weir was calling beneath them -- the surface of the floor was so slippery that the pallets were sliding everywhere, out of control, and there had already been more than a few collisions. John stood there for a minute longer, looking at McKay, feeling like an idiot but smiling anyway, and then he shook himself and got moving.
The Gate held for twenty-nine minutes and change before it sputtered to nothingness, spent of power. They'd gotten through all their critical supplies, past all of tiers one and two of the non-essentials, and were three-quarters of the way through tier three, catching each pallet as it was shoved through by helpful hands on the other side of the Gate, before the wormhole blew. Looking at it all, John thought that Dr. Weir had overpacked by a factor of about ten.
*
It was chaos; it was beyond chaos. Elizabeth could have cloned herself six times over and still had more places she needed to be. This pair of scientists had slipped away, despite her very strict orders that no one was to go anywhere the Marines hadn't cleared, and were radioing her, babbling something about ships. That team of Marines kept finding things they had to stop and look at, despite being on security detail. Elizabeth couldn't decide if she was more excited than she'd ever been in her whole life, or more terrified. Or both.
Atlantis. Atlantis. She was standing in the Lost City of Atlantis, and it was lighting up as she went.
Or, no. She frowned. The lights were coming on, yes, but in a haphazard order -- or, no, as Major Sheppard passed things. One of the screens in the command area lit up blue. "Major," she called, striding up the steps. "Are you doing that?"
Major Sheppard turned around, his hands held in the air. "I'm not touching anything," he said, and he sounded frustrated.
"I told you that you were doing it," McKay grumbled. "Do I need to handcuff your hands behind your back?"
The tone, pure disgruntled McKay, made Elizabeth stifle a laugh. "Relax, Rodney," she said. The blue control screen caught her eye, and she squinted at it, trying to decipher what the Ancient symbols meant. There was apparently some linguistic drift from the version Dr. Jackson had taught all SGC personnel. She could already tell she was going to have a long, happy time trying to figure it out. But she'd been in the middle of saying something; she turned back to McKay. "It's like -- the city's recognizing us. Welcoming us. Coming to life."
"Pre-programmed routines," McKay muttered, but his hand skimmed over the corner of one console, almost lovingly.
Elizabeth's radio crackled. "Dr. Weir? Sumner here. Can you come down and meet us? Three levels down, left-hand corridor."
Sumner's tone was brisk and biting; Elizabeth suspected they were going to have problems. They'd already clashed a few times, enough that she'd considered asking General O'Neill for a different commander. But she'd been so limited in her choices, and Sumner was competent. Very. Just dislikeable.
He was also someone who was entitled to ask for her attention, though, and so she said, "On my way." Sheppard fell into step behind her as she made her way down the corridors. She saw the way he was watching things, alert without being jumpy, and thought: he'll do well.
When she finally found Sumner, she knew without having to be told what he'd called her there for. "Oh my God," she said, the words slipping from her mouth unbidden. The entire wall was made of some sort of viewing port, clear glass or some transparent material beyond Earth manufacturing knowledge. The city stretched out beneath them, vast and incomprehensible.
And submerged. They were under water. A lot of water. As she watched, another section of lights came alive, and a trail of bubbles rose slowly.
"We're under water," she said. A second after it left her mouth, she realized how utterly inane the comment had been.
"Several hundred feet, it looks like," Sumner said, and Elizabeth stepped closer to the glass and craned her neck. She could see sunlight overhead, far away. Too far away. "We've only been able to secure a tiny fraction of the city. It's huge. But if we can't dial out, this might be a problem."
"We're under water," Sheppard said from behind her. Elizabeth turned to see if he was trying to make a point or just reinforce one, but she realized, looking at the awe-struck expression on his face, that he was simply just as stunned as she was.
"That's what I was coming to tell you," came a voice from just down the hall, and Elizabeth turned to see McKay rushing up. "It took me a minute to figure out what the sensors were saying, but it looks like we're submerged, and there's some kind of forcefield holding back the -- oh." He stopped dead in his tracks as he got closer, and Elizabeth thought she could see the same amazement on his face. "Oh. Oh, my. Oh, that is impressive, isn't it."
For McKay to admit to being impressed meant it was impressive indeed. But Elizabeth shook it off. "You were saying, Rodney?" she prompted, and McKay shook himself and looked over at her.
"Uh. Yeah. There's -- Dr. Beckett found something, and I think you should see it." His eyes, against his will, were drawn back to the window. "Did lights just go on in that section?"
"She's lighting up all over," Sheppard said, softly. For a second, Elizabeth wondered why he said "she", but it felt right.
"Yeah, well," McKay said, but it lacked his usual bite. "Come on. We found a recording. It explains a lot."
*
Weir and Sumner and Beckett and Sheppard were going through the hologram recording again -- lost city of Atlantis, great and powerful enemy, etc, etc, which didn't make Rodney feel particularly reassured, since the Ancients were supposed to be super-powerful and if they couldn't handle this mysterious enemy, there pretty much wasn't a chance Earth would be able to do it -- when Grodin came rushing in and pulled Rodney aside. "We have a problem," Grodin said, and when he explained how quickly the power levels were dropping, Rodney swore under his breath and turned to the others.
"You need to stop," he said. Probably a little too briskly. Well, he'd settle for being right over being liked. "Power levels throughout the city are dropping like a rock."
"What does that mean?" Sumner asked, and Rodney had to stop himself from rolling his eyes.
"It means," he said, speaking slowly and articulating, "that if we don't stop what we're doing right now and stop bleeding power like this, we will die."
Beside him, Grodin stiffened, but Rodney could see realization dawning across his face. Thousands of tons of water over their heads. Force field holding back the water. No power, no force field, no shield from the pressure, much less breathable atmosphere.
"Control room," he snapped at Grodin, and Grodin followed him. The rest of the team did, too. Rodney hated working with an audience, but he could already tell he wasn't going to be able to get rid of them. He tried very hard not to think about the choice between dying by drowning and dying by being crushed under pressure. Not thinking about it wasn't helping.
Two hours later, they'd sent a team off to find either a ZPM or a viable evacuation site, and Rodney and Grodin and whatsisname -- Zablonsky, Zaftig, the Czech guy who wasn't a complete idiot -- were frantically trying to interface a daisy-chain of naquadah generators into the city's power grid. Weir came over to breathe down their necks. "Give me some good news, Rodney," she said quietly.
"Wish I could," Rodney said, and for a minute, he actually meant it. "We're pretty much fucked backwards. The city's powered by three ZPMs. Two are completely drained, and one's on its last legs. The amount of power the shield is taking is ... immense." He stuck the pair of pliers he'd been working with in his mouth and talked around them while twisting some end-caps into place. "We're slowing the drain with the generators. Not stopping it. We've got --" He looked at the readouts, looked at the generators, ran some quick numbers in his head. "Six hours. Maybe seven, until catastrophic --"
He lost his grip on the pliers, and they came crashing down to the floor. He tried not to think of it as an omen. "Catastrophic shield failure," he said.
Elizabeth shook her head, slowly. "Are you saying that --"
"I'm saying that the minute Colonel Sumner and his team come back," Rodney said, "we need to get out of here. If not before."
"But --"
He knew what she meant. The thought of leaving this place, of abandoning all this knowledge, made him sick. "We've already lost two sections of the city," he said, as calmly as he could, even though the pit of his stomach was shouting at him. "It's not safe. But the sooner we leave, the sooner that shield holds. If we can find a safe planet in the database, I'd start sending everyone nonessential now."
Rodney could see the indecision written on her face. He was about to say something else, something like it's amazing but it's not worth dying for, when her expression hardened and she nodded and tapped her comm earpiece.
"All hands," she said. Her voice didn't waver. "Report to Gate room for immediate evacuation."
Rodney bent his head over the naquadah generator again, running through every trick he'd ever learned to coax the last erg of power out of the damn things, and tried to ignore the little voice screaming danger, danger, danger over and over again.
*
Join the Air Force, John thought, as his breath burned in his lungs and he tried to squeeze another burst of speed out of legs that felt like they were on fire. Meet strange and exotic people, travel to distant lands, get eaten by fucking aliens --
"This way!" Teyla cried, leaping over a fallen log like she was a gazelle. "There are caves --"
Another of those fucked-up fighters zoomed overhead. As John watched, a beam of white light scoured the path beneath the fighter. Teyla stopped on a dime, turned, and shoved him out of its way. He landed hard, the breath beaten out of him, and struggled back up to his feet, turning to thank her.
She wasn't there.
Neither, he discovered, as he made it back to the burned-out shell of the Athosian village, was Colonel Sumner.
"Fuck," he said, and scrubbed his hands over his face. With Sumner gone, he was technically next in rank, but he was outside the command structure and he'd never fucking wanted a command post anyway. He could hear the flames licking at a pile of timber that had, only a scant half-hour ago, been part of one of the few permanent buildings of the settlement. Ford was looking shaky, but he was holding up.
"I've got the address," Ford said. "What did they -- how did -- what was --"
"I can't find my father!" the boy they'd met -- Jinto, his name was -- cried. He wasn't the only one missing loved ones. Whatever that beam had been, whatever it had done, it had decimated the Athosian population. Along with -- John looked around him. They were missing at least four of the Earth team as well.
"Okay," he said, slowly. "Okay. Get everyone. Bring them with us."
"Where?" Ford asked.
John was making this up as he went along, but he knew enough about command to know that if you sounded like you knew what you were doing, people would assume you did. "Back to base," he said. "Whatever those things are, they attack from the sky. Under a lot of water is probably safer." Which must have been why the Ancients had left their city there, he realized. Crap. Whatever these things were, they probably were the enemy the Ancients had been fleeing.
Today was not turning out to be John's best day.
Getting the Athosians back to base turned out to be about as easy as wrangling cats. Getting the Athosians back to base only to discover all the lights out and Weir, thin-lipped, giving the orders to turn straight around and evacuate again was not in the plan.
McKay was holding onto the control panel against the shuddering and heaving of the city around them; John could hear the sound of metal stressed beyond all capability to hold on, grinding and screeching, and he dove out of the way just as one of the pallets of supplies that hadn't yet been secured went screaming across the floor. McKay swore. He hit a key on the DHD and one of the chevrons of the Gate lit up. Oh, God, help us -- he thought.
-- wait, all will be well, all will be well --
-- the floor heaved, and several of the Athosians lost their footing and stumbled, hitting the ground heavily --
-- arise, we arise --
-- another chevron, and then McKay's hand faltered --
-- be still, and wait --
-- "Wait," Dr. Weir said, breathless, holding on and staring up at the window, where a trail of bubbles wreathed the city --
-- and John lost his feet, tossed by the pitch and heave of the floor, and he went down hard for the second time that day, bruises on top of bruises --
-- and the city -- moved --
So long since we have seen the sun.
And John sat on his ass on the floor of an alien city, staring upwards with amazement, as the city broke free of the ocean and rose into the sunlight.
*
"They took our people," Sheppard repeated.
Elizabeth closed her eyes and counted to ten. When that didn't help, she counted to twenty. In Ancient. "Yes, Major, I am aware of that," she said. "And as I'm sure you are aware, we only just narrowly escaped death ourselves. I'm not authorizing a mission until we know more about what's out there, and more about how we can actually strike back at them. You said yourself our weapons were useless."
"I know what kind of weapons you brought with us," Sheppard said softly. "I saw the packing lists."
"Yes," Elizabeth said. "And if you can give me reason to believe that those weapons will have any more effect on the enemy than the ones you had with you, if you can give me one bit of a tactical advantage, I'll authorize a rescue." She met his eyes, held them. Held them fast, despite the way her knees and elbows were quivering, because she knew, knew, that if she backed down here, she'd never get that ground back again. (Don't let them push you around, O'Neill said, in her memory. You're in charge. Use it.)
Sheppard was fairly quivering with anger and resentment, but he just nodded. "All right," he said, and stalked back inside the city. Elizabeth stood for a minute and looked over the balcony's edge, watching the ocean and breathing in the sea breeze, before going back inside herself.
*
"Think you can fly it?" Rodney asked, eyeing Sheppard out of the corner of his eye.
Slowly, Sheppard smiled. Not a full smile, just a turning up of the corners of his lips. "Why don't we find out."
*
-- stealth, still and quiet, the eye will slide away --
Through the windshield, Sheppard could see McKay and Weir looking around themselves, bewildered. McKay's lips moved. Sheppard imagined him saying "But he was just here!"
He uncloaked the ship with the same thought he'd used to cloak it and watched them gape. "That enough of a tactical advantage for you, Dr. Weir?" he asked.
*
"Wait," Elizabeth said, just as Sheppard and the military team were preparing for departure. "Take one of the naquadah warheads. Just in case."
"Yes ma'am," Ford said, sounding awestruck, and turned to head for the piles of supplies still in the Gateroom, moving at a quick trot.
Sheppard was watching her, one eyebrow raised. Elizabeth shrugged, and couldn't help but justify herself. "It might come in handy," she said. "We packed them. It won't hurt to take one."
"Yes ma'am," Sheppard said, echo of Ford's response without the little-boy eagerness, and returned to checking his gear.
*
The scream that echoed through the ship-thing's corridors set John's teeth on edge. It was human. He was desperately afraid that was was the operative word. He checked the tricorder-thing's readouts again. Two dots, looked to be about five hundred meters to the left.
"Okay," he said to Ford. "Give me twenty minutes, then blow the cells and get out of here."
"Sir." Ford's hand on his wrist stopped him. "You're the only one who can fly these people out of here."
"I'm going to fly everyone out of here, Lieutenant," John said. "Including Colonel Sumner."
"Yes, sir, you are," Ford said, licking his lips and shifting his weight nervously. "Because you're going to take everyone and get back to the ship, and let me go and get the colonel."
"Are you giving me an order, Lieutenant?" John asked.
"No sir," Ford said, straightening out his spine at the dangerous tone that had crept into John's voice. "I'm just saying I should be the one to go, sir. It's an orbital gate. If anything happens to you, we're all totally fucked."
The scream echoed again. It sounded unreal, like something out of every bad horror movie John had ever seen. He thought about arguing for a minute, then remembered that Ford, for all his youth, had served eight months on a frontline SG team, and he himself was still wet behind the ears when it came to ground operations, SGC-style.
The kid had a point. It went against every instinct in his body, but the kid had a point.
"All right," John said, and motioned him over to the naquadah warhead. "We'll set this for detonation first. Forty-minute time delay. If it takes you more than twenty minutes to find the colonel, turn around and come back. You know the disarm sequence?"
"Yessir," Ford said, and took the key from around his neck. Together, they both turned their keys to activate the warhead, and John set the timer for forty minutes.
The red numbers counted down as he watched Ford slip away.
*
Twenty minutes left on the countdown. John motioned everyone to safety, and blew a hole in the side of the ship with C4.
Dammit, Ford, where are you?
He sent the Athosian refugees and the rest of the team through the hole in the side of the ship, back to the puddlejumper. He paced back and forth in the empty cell, then back out to the corridor, listening for any signs of life. No sounds. No screams. Nothing. Just silence.
Fifteen minutes.
Fourteen.
Thirteen.
At ten minutes, he heard pounding footsteps, and Ford came tearing down the corridors like the hounds of Hell were at his heels. "Go go go," he yelled, "they're coming --"
"Colonel Sumner?" John yelled back.
"Dead," Ford gasped, "and I killed another one of them, and they're all waking up, we've only got minutes, go --"
John whirled around -- he'd been doing the math as he waited, calculations of how fast he could run and how quickly the ship flew, something to idle away the time, and he was glad for it now as he slapped the buttons on the timer of the naquadah warhead. The timer stuttered and skipped ahead. Three minutes thirty seconds. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.
He and Ford vaulted through the hole in the side of the ship and ran, hell-bent-for-leather, as the first echoing footsteps started ringing through the corridors in the distance.
*
They made it. Barely. The very edge of the shock wave caught the tail of the puddlejumper, but the shielding held. John looked down at the new crater on the face of the planet's surface, where the hive ship had been, and shuddered to think of what might have happened if they hadn't had the nuke with them.
Next to him, in the copilot's seat, Ford was panting heavily and trying to catch his breath. The ship was packed with refugees. "Everyone all right back there?" John called.
After a minute, he heard Teyla's voice, sounding as though she too was trying to catch her breath after the excitement. "We are -- unharmed," she said, and elbowed her way through until she could come to stand at John's shoulder. "Have you truly destroyed the hive?"
"I think so," John said. He thought scanner and the HUD popped up. Theirs was the only dot visible; nothing else moved.
"I thought for sure they'd send some of those dart things after us," Ford said. "But I think -- they were confused. They were in some kind of cryo sleep, most of them. And I think the one I killed was their queen or something."
"You have destroyed a Wraith hive," Teyla said. At the sound in her voice, John looked back at her; she was looking at them with something quite like awe. "You -- your people can strike them while they sleep." She saw the look he was giving her, and shook her head, seemingly impatient with his lack of understanding. "If you hadn't destroyed them, they would have woken, all of them -- all of them, everywhere. They can communicate among themselves. But if you destroyed them before they could send a signal --"
John's knees were starting to go weak as the adrenaline rush wore off. "Dial us home," he said to Ford. "We'll talk about it when we get there."
Ford was looking a little green around the edges, but he nodded. "Yes, sir," he said, and began hitting crystals.
John knew that look, though, and so he said, "And Ford?"
Ford's hand stilled, and he looked up. "Yeah, sir?"
John made his voice as gentle as he could. "Good job down there."
It didn't help. He knew it didn't help, and he knew he was going to have to sit Ford down and figure out what the fuck had happened in that ship, why Sumner hadn't come back with Ford and what exactly Ford had seen and done. But there'd be time for that once he got the kid, and the rest of these people, home. He'd dump the whole mess in Dr. Weir's lap and try to figure out what the fuck was going on here. For now, his job was to get back and report to --
-- fuck.
Great. I don't have anyone to report to. Lucky you, John. You just got put in charge.
He tried to keep the dread off his face as he steered the puddlejumper to a Gate approach course.
*
"You're trying to tell me," Elizabeth said, slowly, "that -- if we can find the locations of these hive ships while they're still hibernating, we can infiltrate them and destroy them. Without waking their crew."
"Guerilla warfare," Sheppard said. He looked tired and dirty and worn, vibrating with a tension she couldn't quite put her finger on. "Teyla says that they only keep a skeleton crew awake." He made a face. "Apparently we're in the part of the cycle where they let their herd return to previous population levels."
"How many of these ships are we talking about?" Elizabeth asked.
Sheppard shook his head. "We don't know. And we don't know where they're sleeping, either. The good news is, Teyla says that the wholesale destruction of a ship probably won't send out alarm signals. She thinks. And we certainly haven't seen any Wraith ships on the long-range scanners, and none of the Athosians' trading partners are reporting any increased amount of cullings. I guess the Wraith are used to disaster hitting one or two ships while they're parked on the ground to sleep."
"Are we sure that'd be an effective use of our resources?" McKay asked, drumming his fingers on the table nervously. "We didn't bring that many naquadah warheads --"
We almost hadn't brought any at all, Elizabeth thought, and spared a quiet moment to say a prayer of thanks for Dr. Mendoza for making her think of the worst-case scenarios.
"We'll find other ways to destroy a hive ship," she said. "In the meantime --"
She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders. "Let's start exploring our city, gentlemen. We have a lot of work to do."
Anyway. I've had this vague idea for a while, pretty much ever since halfway through S1, and it's been refined back and forth with discussions with
sarahq, who also has Many Good Ideas for this 'verse. It's sort of a Ten Minutes AU, really: what would have happened if they hadn't accidentally turned on the Stupid Generator when they arrived on Atlantis. And, see, we both liked the frontier-outpost cut-off-from-everything-they've-ever-This is kind of what resulted. It's the "pilot" for a universe where everything changes from "Rising" onward. It's not terribly in-depth, nor is this bit incredibly detailed, because I just wanted to throw everything on screen so we could go ahead and merrily change things from here. I'm kind of thinking of it as the "City on the Edge of Forever" series. Couldn't tell you if, or when, there'll be more of it, but I figured I'd at least share this bit ...
*
The first thing Elizabeth Weir did when she received final confirmation of the Atlantis mission was to sit down with every member of a SGC gate team who'd ever been stranded off-world for more than 48 hours and ask them one simple question: what item or items would you have needed to have brought with you, to keep yourself alive and well if Earth had never been able to come back and get you?
The list was full of things she'd expected, things she'd already had on her list -- food supplies, power sources, agricultural tools, medicines (particularly antibiotics), heavy machinery, ammunition -- and those items served to confirm she was thinking in the right direction. It wasn't until she got to Dr. Mendoza, SG-8's anthropologist and linguist and four-time winner of the coveted Most Useful Teammate award at the SGC's annual (and completely underground) Snakey awards, that she realized she wasn't thinking broadly enough.
"Olive tree seedlings," had been Mendoza's first and immediate response. She'd quirked an eyebrow at him, and he'd shrugged. "Soap, lantern fuel, food, medicine -- there's a reason the olive tree was so prized in ancient cultures. Iron, aluminum, lead, nickel, and steel ingots. And an anvil and other blacksmith tools. Tallow, for candles and soap, as well as for manufacturing, in case you can't domesticate any of the local wildlife. Salt, salt, salt. Diatomaceous earth -- both the kind used for swimming pool filtration to purify water, and the kind that's used for long-term food and grain storage. A good supply of vitamins, since Lord only knows if your body's going to be able to get the right nutrients when you're using offworld food to supplement what you brought. Matches. Activated charcoal. Chlorine. Iodine. Caffeine pills -- withdrawl's a bitch, and you need to carefully taper down. Wool roving, spindle, and knitting needles. Hell, needles, period. A loom or two, or at the very least someone who knows how to build one. Light sticks, those kinds you crack and they glow. Um. Bees, if they're lifting the regs and allowing you to bring through indigenous life."
He'd stopped, drummed his fingers on the table, and appeared to carefully consider. It had taken her a second to catch up in scribbling down her notes, and she'd looked up. "You're talking as though we'd be setting up something in between a post-apocalyptic nightmare and a cross-country covered-wagon trip."
Mendoza had smiled at her. "Well, you might be, right? And that's why you're asking. You asked about my ideal packing list, and God, that's only the beginning -- I could fill up your tonnage twice over with things you'd be praising me to high heaven for the first time you hit something you really needed. But a lot of it would be useless if you don't know how to use it. Look, gimme a few hours? I'll put together expanded versions of the packing lists I use for missions, throw in some bigger and more bulky stuff, check your crew manifest to see who's got what skills --"
Elizabeth had left with her head spinning, but it had changed the way she was thinking about things.
One hundred and fifty people. No idea what they were going to find on the other side; no idea how, or when, they were going to get home. Earth nearly had the prototype of the long-range hyperdrive ship working, but nearly wasn't exactly and who knew what was going to happen to it between then and now.
She wasn't just provisioning an expedition. There was a very good chance she was equipping a colony.
Thirty-eight minutes worth of time to transport things in, maximum. Less if their ZPM was drained of power too quickly, partway through the transfer. She tore up her lists, made new ones. Then tore up those and started again. First she exceeded her budget, then she obliterated it. General O'Neill watched with bemusement and no small amount of respect in his eyes as she bullied everyone into drill after drill, taking people and equipment through the Gate to the Alpha site over and over again, until seconds saved turned into minutes saved.
She argued (hard) and won (barely) access to five of the six Asgard mass-cancellation devices the SGC had for study; they used them on the heaviest pallets, so they could be handled by only one person. She begged, borrowed, and stole every spare pair of hands in the SGC, not to join the expedition but to help in the line of goods up the ramp and through the Gate. She built plans for every contingency, from arriving in a tiny room with little to no storage space all the way down to arriving outside on a broad open plain with plenty of storage but absolutely no traction for the pallets' wheels.
By zero hour, they'd gotten the transfer of people and vital materials down to eighteen minutes and thirty-one seconds at their optimal time, with the remaining time open for a bucket-brigade transfer of not-necessary-but-useful goods thrown through the open Gate after them until it ran out of power and disengaged. She fought, tooth and nail, with Colonel Sumner until he grudgingly agreed that his Marines could haul goods with them before fanning out to secure the area. In her secret heart of hearts, she hoped -- prayed -- for an uninhabited world on the other side, one that they could explore and claim and make their own, but she picked the cultural specialist Dr. Jackson spoke most highly of and put her in the first wave, in case they needed to talk their way out of a sticky situation.
They were as ready as they were going to be.
*
John Sheppard had been through the Stargate twenty-one times by that morning, each time on one of the trial runs to the Alpha site. Privately, he thought of it as the equivalent of flying across three continents to have lunch at the airport, then turning around and going home. But Dr. Weir had been smart to insist on the practice, he thought, watching her give her pre-Gate-dialing motivational speech and trying to deny the butterflies in his stomach. He wasn't the only person who was new to Gate travel -- wasn't even the only person who'd been briefed on the Gate just for this mission; although he had been the last addition, there'd been six weeks between his agreeing to join and actually getting the reassignment papers, plenty enough time to go through the ultra-condensed SGC training. And he was honest enough with himself to admit that if he hadn't gotten the chance to get used to the idea of Gate travel before the actual day of mission departure, he damn well would have held up the line on the way.
He only partially listened to Dr. Weir's speech; he was pretty sure he could have guessed what she was saying, since he'd heard her deliver variants on it nearly every day for the past six weeks. Best and brightest, one-way trip, glorious destiny. His pack was heavy on his back -- it was well past the standard field pack weight, and only the fact that he wouldn't be wearing it long made it bearable -- and he shifted his grip on his P-90. Next to him in the line, Colonel Sumner gave him a death glare. Sumner seemed to have singled him out as a target, rather than accepting him as a member of the command; well, it couldn't be helped. Wouldn't be the first time he'd dealt with a hostile commander.
Dr. Weir finished speaking, and signaled the control room to dial.
No matter how many times John saw it, it was still beautiful. It took longer, this time, for the wormhole to explode and stabilize after the eighth chevron locked. Or maybe it was his imagination, or the palpable tension in the room. The MALP trundled up the ramp and through the Gate, and for a minute, everyone in the room held their breath.
Then the voice of the scientist guy -- McKay, John thought -- came crackling over the intercom from the control room. "Viable atmosphere. Huge space. Looks like plan five is the best."
Dr. Weir looked up at the glass, where General O'Neill gave her the high sign and then leaned over to click the microphone. "Dr. Weir, you are go for departure. And good luck."
It took a second for it to sink in for her, John could tell. One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi, and then she was shouldering her pack and reaching out to push the pallet she'd been assigned. "Entrance plan five, people, and move."
Dutifully, as ordered, John turned to the person behind him in line -- a baby-faced lieutenant, Ford, John thought the kid was named -- and repeated, "Plan five, and we are clear." This close to the front of the line, Ford had heard her. But the departure line stretched all the way back to the elevators, and although each person waiting had headset communicators (the best state-of-the-art technology they had been able to find), sometimes there was no substitute for good old-fashioned word-of-mouth.
They'd practiced this so many times it was second nature for John to grab the pallet he was assigned -- food, he thought, or maybe ammunition; he didn't know all the details of what Dr. Weir had deemed important enough to bring -- and give it enough of a shove to get it moving. Up the ramp, through the wormhole -- it took longer this time, and he knew he wasn't imagining that -- to the left the minute he was clear, shove the pallet as far as it would go, and get the hell out of the way for the person behind him.
As he caught his breath, lifted his P-90, and thought God, it's dark in here, some unseen light source brightened to a soft glow, and he could see the room they were in. It was beautiful; high ceiling, even floor, steps leading up to a second loft-like level on the other side of the room. "Up the steps as you're clear," Weir was calling, and "security teams, fan out," Sumner was calling, and John kept his eyes open as he stepped up the first step and each step lit up one by one.
For a second, it felt like something was tickling the back of his head, the way his eyeballs always felt hot and itchy when he'd been awake for too long, but it passed quickly.
The cacophany of people swearing in every language under the sun, of pallets crashing into each other on the frictionless floor and of people yelping as fingers were smashed and toes were run over, wasn't important. This city -- city? Yes, city -- was beautiful. The Gate was sleeker, more streamlined. John reached the top of the stairs and turned to look behind him, his eyes drawn to the beauty of how harmoniously the Gate complemented the rest of the room. The top of the stairs was some kind of control room, its consoles covered with white sheets. Powered down -- no, as he looked at it, he could see the faintest flicker of lights behind the sheets, and he could have sworn they hadn't been there before.
McKay had been the first person in line behind the security teams, and John could hear him yelling, "Who the hell's turning on the lights?"
She's just happy to have company again, John thought, and then wondered where the hell it had come from. Airplanes were "she" sometimes, but he'd never thought to personify a city.
"Security teams, any sign of additional inhabitation?" Sumner's voice came over John's headset, crisp and clear. John didn't need the chorus of "negative" that came back, one by one, to know that they were alone here. She -- the city -- was sleeping, and had been for a while.
"Are you turning on the lights?" McKay demanded again, sounding more irritable this time, at John's elbow. He stalked across the control room, lifting sheets and peering under them. "Someone's gotta be. Is it you? Did you touch anything?"
"I don't ... think so," John said, slowly.
"Either you touched something or you didn't. It's a yes/no question."
"No," John said. Below them, on the Gateroom floor, he could see someone pushing the red-marked container that indicated they were one-quarter through the vital material supply train. The first quarter had all the most critical supplies, and each pallet also held a cross-section of the goods that would be necessary for survival and comfort. That way, even if they lost the Gate quickly, they'd have some of everything instead of all of a few things. It was seriously advanced tactical thinking; John hadn't expected it from a civilian.
Someone cursed, loudly and inventively, in some language that sounded Slavic or Eastern European. John could see Dr. Weir, standing on the first step, directing traffic and looking subtly terrified.
"Well, someone's gotta be. And I can't make heads nor tails of anything here, and I read Ancient. Well, all right, I read some Ancient." John turned his head and watched as McKay pulled free another sheet, which revealed crystal-looking switches lit up with the symbols John had started to learn were the symbols for Earth's gate address. They looked subtly different, somehow, here.
"We could spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out what all of this means," John said, before he could stop himself.
He was expecting mockery -- one thing he'd learned in his six weeks was that McKay didn't suffer fools gladly -- but instead the other man just looked up, startled, as though John's words had caught him by surprise. His face was blank for a second, and then a slow half-smile spread over it. "Sounds like a pretty good plan," McKay said, with a little twist of his mouth, and John got the sense he was being invited in on a joke.
"Hands, hands, hands," Weir was calling beneath them -- the surface of the floor was so slippery that the pallets were sliding everywhere, out of control, and there had already been more than a few collisions. John stood there for a minute longer, looking at McKay, feeling like an idiot but smiling anyway, and then he shook himself and got moving.
The Gate held for twenty-nine minutes and change before it sputtered to nothingness, spent of power. They'd gotten through all their critical supplies, past all of tiers one and two of the non-essentials, and were three-quarters of the way through tier three, catching each pallet as it was shoved through by helpful hands on the other side of the Gate, before the wormhole blew. Looking at it all, John thought that Dr. Weir had overpacked by a factor of about ten.
*
It was chaos; it was beyond chaos. Elizabeth could have cloned herself six times over and still had more places she needed to be. This pair of scientists had slipped away, despite her very strict orders that no one was to go anywhere the Marines hadn't cleared, and were radioing her, babbling something about ships. That team of Marines kept finding things they had to stop and look at, despite being on security detail. Elizabeth couldn't decide if she was more excited than she'd ever been in her whole life, or more terrified. Or both.
Atlantis. Atlantis. She was standing in the Lost City of Atlantis, and it was lighting up as she went.
Or, no. She frowned. The lights were coming on, yes, but in a haphazard order -- or, no, as Major Sheppard passed things. One of the screens in the command area lit up blue. "Major," she called, striding up the steps. "Are you doing that?"
Major Sheppard turned around, his hands held in the air. "I'm not touching anything," he said, and he sounded frustrated.
"I told you that you were doing it," McKay grumbled. "Do I need to handcuff your hands behind your back?"
The tone, pure disgruntled McKay, made Elizabeth stifle a laugh. "Relax, Rodney," she said. The blue control screen caught her eye, and she squinted at it, trying to decipher what the Ancient symbols meant. There was apparently some linguistic drift from the version Dr. Jackson had taught all SGC personnel. She could already tell she was going to have a long, happy time trying to figure it out. But she'd been in the middle of saying something; she turned back to McKay. "It's like -- the city's recognizing us. Welcoming us. Coming to life."
"Pre-programmed routines," McKay muttered, but his hand skimmed over the corner of one console, almost lovingly.
Elizabeth's radio crackled. "Dr. Weir? Sumner here. Can you come down and meet us? Three levels down, left-hand corridor."
Sumner's tone was brisk and biting; Elizabeth suspected they were going to have problems. They'd already clashed a few times, enough that she'd considered asking General O'Neill for a different commander. But she'd been so limited in her choices, and Sumner was competent. Very. Just dislikeable.
He was also someone who was entitled to ask for her attention, though, and so she said, "On my way." Sheppard fell into step behind her as she made her way down the corridors. She saw the way he was watching things, alert without being jumpy, and thought: he'll do well.
When she finally found Sumner, she knew without having to be told what he'd called her there for. "Oh my God," she said, the words slipping from her mouth unbidden. The entire wall was made of some sort of viewing port, clear glass or some transparent material beyond Earth manufacturing knowledge. The city stretched out beneath them, vast and incomprehensible.
And submerged. They were under water. A lot of water. As she watched, another section of lights came alive, and a trail of bubbles rose slowly.
"We're under water," she said. A second after it left her mouth, she realized how utterly inane the comment had been.
"Several hundred feet, it looks like," Sumner said, and Elizabeth stepped closer to the glass and craned her neck. She could see sunlight overhead, far away. Too far away. "We've only been able to secure a tiny fraction of the city. It's huge. But if we can't dial out, this might be a problem."
"We're under water," Sheppard said from behind her. Elizabeth turned to see if he was trying to make a point or just reinforce one, but she realized, looking at the awe-struck expression on his face, that he was simply just as stunned as she was.
"That's what I was coming to tell you," came a voice from just down the hall, and Elizabeth turned to see McKay rushing up. "It took me a minute to figure out what the sensors were saying, but it looks like we're submerged, and there's some kind of forcefield holding back the -- oh." He stopped dead in his tracks as he got closer, and Elizabeth thought she could see the same amazement on his face. "Oh. Oh, my. Oh, that is impressive, isn't it."
For McKay to admit to being impressed meant it was impressive indeed. But Elizabeth shook it off. "You were saying, Rodney?" she prompted, and McKay shook himself and looked over at her.
"Uh. Yeah. There's -- Dr. Beckett found something, and I think you should see it." His eyes, against his will, were drawn back to the window. "Did lights just go on in that section?"
"She's lighting up all over," Sheppard said, softly. For a second, Elizabeth wondered why he said "she", but it felt right.
"Yeah, well," McKay said, but it lacked his usual bite. "Come on. We found a recording. It explains a lot."
*
Weir and Sumner and Beckett and Sheppard were going through the hologram recording again -- lost city of Atlantis, great and powerful enemy, etc, etc, which didn't make Rodney feel particularly reassured, since the Ancients were supposed to be super-powerful and if they couldn't handle this mysterious enemy, there pretty much wasn't a chance Earth would be able to do it -- when Grodin came rushing in and pulled Rodney aside. "We have a problem," Grodin said, and when he explained how quickly the power levels were dropping, Rodney swore under his breath and turned to the others.
"You need to stop," he said. Probably a little too briskly. Well, he'd settle for being right over being liked. "Power levels throughout the city are dropping like a rock."
"What does that mean?" Sumner asked, and Rodney had to stop himself from rolling his eyes.
"It means," he said, speaking slowly and articulating, "that if we don't stop what we're doing right now and stop bleeding power like this, we will die."
Beside him, Grodin stiffened, but Rodney could see realization dawning across his face. Thousands of tons of water over their heads. Force field holding back the water. No power, no force field, no shield from the pressure, much less breathable atmosphere.
"Control room," he snapped at Grodin, and Grodin followed him. The rest of the team did, too. Rodney hated working with an audience, but he could already tell he wasn't going to be able to get rid of them. He tried very hard not to think about the choice between dying by drowning and dying by being crushed under pressure. Not thinking about it wasn't helping.
Two hours later, they'd sent a team off to find either a ZPM or a viable evacuation site, and Rodney and Grodin and whatsisname -- Zablonsky, Zaftig, the Czech guy who wasn't a complete idiot -- were frantically trying to interface a daisy-chain of naquadah generators into the city's power grid. Weir came over to breathe down their necks. "Give me some good news, Rodney," she said quietly.
"Wish I could," Rodney said, and for a minute, he actually meant it. "We're pretty much fucked backwards. The city's powered by three ZPMs. Two are completely drained, and one's on its last legs. The amount of power the shield is taking is ... immense." He stuck the pair of pliers he'd been working with in his mouth and talked around them while twisting some end-caps into place. "We're slowing the drain with the generators. Not stopping it. We've got --" He looked at the readouts, looked at the generators, ran some quick numbers in his head. "Six hours. Maybe seven, until catastrophic --"
He lost his grip on the pliers, and they came crashing down to the floor. He tried not to think of it as an omen. "Catastrophic shield failure," he said.
Elizabeth shook her head, slowly. "Are you saying that --"
"I'm saying that the minute Colonel Sumner and his team come back," Rodney said, "we need to get out of here. If not before."
"But --"
He knew what she meant. The thought of leaving this place, of abandoning all this knowledge, made him sick. "We've already lost two sections of the city," he said, as calmly as he could, even though the pit of his stomach was shouting at him. "It's not safe. But the sooner we leave, the sooner that shield holds. If we can find a safe planet in the database, I'd start sending everyone nonessential now."
Rodney could see the indecision written on her face. He was about to say something else, something like it's amazing but it's not worth dying for, when her expression hardened and she nodded and tapped her comm earpiece.
"All hands," she said. Her voice didn't waver. "Report to Gate room for immediate evacuation."
Rodney bent his head over the naquadah generator again, running through every trick he'd ever learned to coax the last erg of power out of the damn things, and tried to ignore the little voice screaming danger, danger, danger over and over again.
*
Join the Air Force, John thought, as his breath burned in his lungs and he tried to squeeze another burst of speed out of legs that felt like they were on fire. Meet strange and exotic people, travel to distant lands, get eaten by fucking aliens --
"This way!" Teyla cried, leaping over a fallen log like she was a gazelle. "There are caves --"
Another of those fucked-up fighters zoomed overhead. As John watched, a beam of white light scoured the path beneath the fighter. Teyla stopped on a dime, turned, and shoved him out of its way. He landed hard, the breath beaten out of him, and struggled back up to his feet, turning to thank her.
She wasn't there.
Neither, he discovered, as he made it back to the burned-out shell of the Athosian village, was Colonel Sumner.
"Fuck," he said, and scrubbed his hands over his face. With Sumner gone, he was technically next in rank, but he was outside the command structure and he'd never fucking wanted a command post anyway. He could hear the flames licking at a pile of timber that had, only a scant half-hour ago, been part of one of the few permanent buildings of the settlement. Ford was looking shaky, but he was holding up.
"I've got the address," Ford said. "What did they -- how did -- what was --"
"I can't find my father!" the boy they'd met -- Jinto, his name was -- cried. He wasn't the only one missing loved ones. Whatever that beam had been, whatever it had done, it had decimated the Athosian population. Along with -- John looked around him. They were missing at least four of the Earth team as well.
"Okay," he said, slowly. "Okay. Get everyone. Bring them with us."
"Where?" Ford asked.
John was making this up as he went along, but he knew enough about command to know that if you sounded like you knew what you were doing, people would assume you did. "Back to base," he said. "Whatever those things are, they attack from the sky. Under a lot of water is probably safer." Which must have been why the Ancients had left their city there, he realized. Crap. Whatever these things were, they probably were the enemy the Ancients had been fleeing.
Today was not turning out to be John's best day.
Getting the Athosians back to base turned out to be about as easy as wrangling cats. Getting the Athosians back to base only to discover all the lights out and Weir, thin-lipped, giving the orders to turn straight around and evacuate again was not in the plan.
McKay was holding onto the control panel against the shuddering and heaving of the city around them; John could hear the sound of metal stressed beyond all capability to hold on, grinding and screeching, and he dove out of the way just as one of the pallets of supplies that hadn't yet been secured went screaming across the floor. McKay swore. He hit a key on the DHD and one of the chevrons of the Gate lit up. Oh, God, help us -- he thought.
-- wait, all will be well, all will be well --
-- the floor heaved, and several of the Athosians lost their footing and stumbled, hitting the ground heavily --
-- arise, we arise --
-- another chevron, and then McKay's hand faltered --
-- be still, and wait --
-- "Wait," Dr. Weir said, breathless, holding on and staring up at the window, where a trail of bubbles wreathed the city --
-- and John lost his feet, tossed by the pitch and heave of the floor, and he went down hard for the second time that day, bruises on top of bruises --
-- and the city -- moved --
So long since we have seen the sun.
And John sat on his ass on the floor of an alien city, staring upwards with amazement, as the city broke free of the ocean and rose into the sunlight.
*
"They took our people," Sheppard repeated.
Elizabeth closed her eyes and counted to ten. When that didn't help, she counted to twenty. In Ancient. "Yes, Major, I am aware of that," she said. "And as I'm sure you are aware, we only just narrowly escaped death ourselves. I'm not authorizing a mission until we know more about what's out there, and more about how we can actually strike back at them. You said yourself our weapons were useless."
"I know what kind of weapons you brought with us," Sheppard said softly. "I saw the packing lists."
"Yes," Elizabeth said. "And if you can give me reason to believe that those weapons will have any more effect on the enemy than the ones you had with you, if you can give me one bit of a tactical advantage, I'll authorize a rescue." She met his eyes, held them. Held them fast, despite the way her knees and elbows were quivering, because she knew, knew, that if she backed down here, she'd never get that ground back again. (Don't let them push you around, O'Neill said, in her memory. You're in charge. Use it.)
Sheppard was fairly quivering with anger and resentment, but he just nodded. "All right," he said, and stalked back inside the city. Elizabeth stood for a minute and looked over the balcony's edge, watching the ocean and breathing in the sea breeze, before going back inside herself.
*
"Think you can fly it?" Rodney asked, eyeing Sheppard out of the corner of his eye.
Slowly, Sheppard smiled. Not a full smile, just a turning up of the corners of his lips. "Why don't we find out."
*
-- stealth, still and quiet, the eye will slide away --
Through the windshield, Sheppard could see McKay and Weir looking around themselves, bewildered. McKay's lips moved. Sheppard imagined him saying "But he was just here!"
He uncloaked the ship with the same thought he'd used to cloak it and watched them gape. "That enough of a tactical advantage for you, Dr. Weir?" he asked.
*
"Wait," Elizabeth said, just as Sheppard and the military team were preparing for departure. "Take one of the naquadah warheads. Just in case."
"Yes ma'am," Ford said, sounding awestruck, and turned to head for the piles of supplies still in the Gateroom, moving at a quick trot.
Sheppard was watching her, one eyebrow raised. Elizabeth shrugged, and couldn't help but justify herself. "It might come in handy," she said. "We packed them. It won't hurt to take one."
"Yes ma'am," Sheppard said, echo of Ford's response without the little-boy eagerness, and returned to checking his gear.
*
The scream that echoed through the ship-thing's corridors set John's teeth on edge. It was human. He was desperately afraid that was was the operative word. He checked the tricorder-thing's readouts again. Two dots, looked to be about five hundred meters to the left.
"Okay," he said to Ford. "Give me twenty minutes, then blow the cells and get out of here."
"Sir." Ford's hand on his wrist stopped him. "You're the only one who can fly these people out of here."
"I'm going to fly everyone out of here, Lieutenant," John said. "Including Colonel Sumner."
"Yes, sir, you are," Ford said, licking his lips and shifting his weight nervously. "Because you're going to take everyone and get back to the ship, and let me go and get the colonel."
"Are you giving me an order, Lieutenant?" John asked.
"No sir," Ford said, straightening out his spine at the dangerous tone that had crept into John's voice. "I'm just saying I should be the one to go, sir. It's an orbital gate. If anything happens to you, we're all totally fucked."
The scream echoed again. It sounded unreal, like something out of every bad horror movie John had ever seen. He thought about arguing for a minute, then remembered that Ford, for all his youth, had served eight months on a frontline SG team, and he himself was still wet behind the ears when it came to ground operations, SGC-style.
The kid had a point. It went against every instinct in his body, but the kid had a point.
"All right," John said, and motioned him over to the naquadah warhead. "We'll set this for detonation first. Forty-minute time delay. If it takes you more than twenty minutes to find the colonel, turn around and come back. You know the disarm sequence?"
"Yessir," Ford said, and took the key from around his neck. Together, they both turned their keys to activate the warhead, and John set the timer for forty minutes.
The red numbers counted down as he watched Ford slip away.
*
Twenty minutes left on the countdown. John motioned everyone to safety, and blew a hole in the side of the ship with C4.
Dammit, Ford, where are you?
He sent the Athosian refugees and the rest of the team through the hole in the side of the ship, back to the puddlejumper. He paced back and forth in the empty cell, then back out to the corridor, listening for any signs of life. No sounds. No screams. Nothing. Just silence.
Fifteen minutes.
Fourteen.
Thirteen.
At ten minutes, he heard pounding footsteps, and Ford came tearing down the corridors like the hounds of Hell were at his heels. "Go go go," he yelled, "they're coming --"
"Colonel Sumner?" John yelled back.
"Dead," Ford gasped, "and I killed another one of them, and they're all waking up, we've only got minutes, go --"
John whirled around -- he'd been doing the math as he waited, calculations of how fast he could run and how quickly the ship flew, something to idle away the time, and he was glad for it now as he slapped the buttons on the timer of the naquadah warhead. The timer stuttered and skipped ahead. Three minutes thirty seconds. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.
He and Ford vaulted through the hole in the side of the ship and ran, hell-bent-for-leather, as the first echoing footsteps started ringing through the corridors in the distance.
*
They made it. Barely. The very edge of the shock wave caught the tail of the puddlejumper, but the shielding held. John looked down at the new crater on the face of the planet's surface, where the hive ship had been, and shuddered to think of what might have happened if they hadn't had the nuke with them.
Next to him, in the copilot's seat, Ford was panting heavily and trying to catch his breath. The ship was packed with refugees. "Everyone all right back there?" John called.
After a minute, he heard Teyla's voice, sounding as though she too was trying to catch her breath after the excitement. "We are -- unharmed," she said, and elbowed her way through until she could come to stand at John's shoulder. "Have you truly destroyed the hive?"
"I think so," John said. He thought scanner and the HUD popped up. Theirs was the only dot visible; nothing else moved.
"I thought for sure they'd send some of those dart things after us," Ford said. "But I think -- they were confused. They were in some kind of cryo sleep, most of them. And I think the one I killed was their queen or something."
"You have destroyed a Wraith hive," Teyla said. At the sound in her voice, John looked back at her; she was looking at them with something quite like awe. "You -- your people can strike them while they sleep." She saw the look he was giving her, and shook her head, seemingly impatient with his lack of understanding. "If you hadn't destroyed them, they would have woken, all of them -- all of them, everywhere. They can communicate among themselves. But if you destroyed them before they could send a signal --"
John's knees were starting to go weak as the adrenaline rush wore off. "Dial us home," he said to Ford. "We'll talk about it when we get there."
Ford was looking a little green around the edges, but he nodded. "Yes, sir," he said, and began hitting crystals.
John knew that look, though, and so he said, "And Ford?"
Ford's hand stilled, and he looked up. "Yeah, sir?"
John made his voice as gentle as he could. "Good job down there."
It didn't help. He knew it didn't help, and he knew he was going to have to sit Ford down and figure out what the fuck had happened in that ship, why Sumner hadn't come back with Ford and what exactly Ford had seen and done. But there'd be time for that once he got the kid, and the rest of these people, home. He'd dump the whole mess in Dr. Weir's lap and try to figure out what the fuck was going on here. For now, his job was to get back and report to --
-- fuck.
Great. I don't have anyone to report to. Lucky you, John. You just got put in charge.
He tried to keep the dread off his face as he steered the puddlejumper to a Gate approach course.
*
"You're trying to tell me," Elizabeth said, slowly, "that -- if we can find the locations of these hive ships while they're still hibernating, we can infiltrate them and destroy them. Without waking their crew."
"Guerilla warfare," Sheppard said. He looked tired and dirty and worn, vibrating with a tension she couldn't quite put her finger on. "Teyla says that they only keep a skeleton crew awake." He made a face. "Apparently we're in the part of the cycle where they let their herd return to previous population levels."
"How many of these ships are we talking about?" Elizabeth asked.
Sheppard shook his head. "We don't know. And we don't know where they're sleeping, either. The good news is, Teyla says that the wholesale destruction of a ship probably won't send out alarm signals. She thinks. And we certainly haven't seen any Wraith ships on the long-range scanners, and none of the Athosians' trading partners are reporting any increased amount of cullings. I guess the Wraith are used to disaster hitting one or two ships while they're parked on the ground to sleep."
"Are we sure that'd be an effective use of our resources?" McKay asked, drumming his fingers on the table nervously. "We didn't bring that many naquadah warheads --"
We almost hadn't brought any at all, Elizabeth thought, and spared a quiet moment to say a prayer of thanks for Dr. Mendoza for making her think of the worst-case scenarios.
"We'll find other ways to destroy a hive ship," she said. "In the meantime --"
She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders. "Let's start exploring our city, gentlemen. We have a lot of work to do."
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