stargateatlantisseasonsix

Episode Eight- Homecoming, Part Two- Chapter Four

Posted on March 30, 2015 by stargateatlantisseasonsix

Chapter Four

The dark cloud seems paused as though it’s evaluating those handful of marines watching it from the corridor entries leading into the Gateroom and the other remaining personnel in the Command Center looking down on it. Abruptly the cloud lifts, turns, and dives straight down into the floor. Sheppard starts.

“Let him go,” Kenmore tells him.

Teyla and Sheppard stare at her. “What,” the Colonel breathes heavily.

“Let him go,” she looks at him, “All he’s doing right now is sizing up where he is and what systems he has access to.”

Sheppard angrily turns on her, “And isn’t that a bad thing?”

“Not necessarily. We know that there are certain systems that are activated by presence alone like the lights for instance and the doors. We found this out when we first came to Atlantis,” Zelenka offers.

“So he can just start messing with the city at will now,” Sheppard snaps.

“No,” the scientist says firmly, “those systems are minor. But there are systems that do require physical access. The DHD for instance and the chair.”

“And he cannot access those,” Teyla asks hopefully.

Radek shakes his head, “No.”

Some relief spreads through Teyla, but it doesn’t reach Sheppard.

“So we just wait here until he’s done going through the systems? How long is that going to take,” the Expedition’s Military Commander continues to fume.

“Atlantis redefines the meaning of the word complex,” Radek replies calmly, “She has thousands upon thousands of systems. Where it has taken us years to just scratch the surface of what the city has to offer, it could take Anubis just hours. He knows what he’s after.”

“And we’re just supposed to sit here and wait,” Sheppard keeps harping on the issue.

“No,” Kenmore finally snaps.

“Well then what,” he snaps back, “what are we supposed to do in the meantime?”

Kenmore looks over at him. She’s had enough obnoxious little kid playing for today.

“Plan,” she says like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Like it was something so obvious, how in the hell—“Why in the hell hasn’t anyone from this team ever thought of that before? Is it always McKay that comes up with the damn plans? Is it always McKay that points out the obvious to you freakin’ people?”

John Sheppard glares at her, takes a step backwards then walks behind Woolsey’s back, behind Kenmore’s, and out of the room. The Lieutenant watches him go only until he passes behind her then she looks down, feeling that she has indeed crossed a line within the team, with Sheppard, but also knowing her SGC background supports her even if the Atlantis team she’s the fifth member of doesn’t. These people didn’t know what they were up against here. They’re thinking too much how they normally do things, and they can’t keep doing that here. Anubis is not a Wraith; he’s much worse. They needed to trust the people they know that have a firmer history with this stuff, with him. They needed to trust the people who weren’t a part of the team they have always had since their second year here. They needed to trust Lorne and her and Woolsey. Ursula glances up at Teyla. Teyla Emmagan may not be glaring at her, but the Athosian leader looks no less uncomfortable with the situation. She trusted John and felt the same as he about letting an enemy so frightfully powerful into the city, but in this moment the Lieutenant is right, even if it hurt John’s feelings about it. She would rather this terrible danger not inhabit the body and mind of a Wraith or worse yet, a Wraith Queen. And… Rodney was the person who they always went to. It is always Rodney… The Athosian lowers her head.

* * *

If the rest of the city was darker than usual, even if it is nighttime, then Atlantis’ medical ward, never the most highly lit area in the city during the night let alone during a skeleton crew situation, was downright out of a horror film. It’s sparse lighting from spotlights of overhead, triangular-shaped Ancient recessed ceiling lights or those floor-almost to ceiling sconces sporadically dotting the walls or Earth-made lamps strapped to the headboards of the only two medical beds left in this area made it look like the best place for some lawnmower-wielding psychopath or fully transformed werewolves or zombies or something fatal to humans to pop out of a shadow or from around a corner, still in shadow. And there was a hazy blueness all around due to the lighting and a moonless night. The minimal illumination casts glows over Ronon’s bed that reminded John of a hospital wing at night when the patients were supposed to be sleeping and the night staff was supposed to have an easy night. Like a bizarre island of calm and warmth and ease in the middle of Jaws’ ocean.

Sheppard sits at the foot of Ronon’s bed, thoroughly frustrated and venting at the one person he knows would be just as frustrated with the situation as he is… just as frustrated with Lieutenant Ursula Kenmore.

“And Woolsey let this happen,” Ronon growls.

“He didn’t even hesitate,” Sheppard’s exacerbated.

John shakes his head. Looks down at his boots slightly rocking back and forth in their dangling over the medical bed’s edge due to an unconscious will on his part to move them. Ronon had practically ordered him to stop pacing like a madman and sit the hell down before Ronon made him stop and sit. And if he couldn’t move to this little extent, then John was going to tear the place apart.

“We evacuated the city only to hand it over to him,” John says to his boots, who were now practically shivering in their rapid little movements.

“It’s a controlled setting,” comes the feminine voice of reason from somewhere in the shadows ahead of them.

Sheppard and Ronon look up to see Jennifer Keller walking up to them. She had been at her desk in one of the darker and farther corners of the wing when John’d burst in and took his anger to Ronon for nourishment and back up. She’d waited in the dark only lit be the minute power of her little, Earth-made overhead desk lamp until even Ronon had become so agitated with the Colonel’s pacing that he’d demanded Sheppard sit down. And when Sheppard relented, she still waited in the darkness until she felt that he’d suitably calmed down enough for her to step in. She’d heard every word of his complaints.

“You agree with this?” He accuses.

For a moment Jennifer’s taken aback at the blatant hostility she was getting from him, perhaps she should have waited in the dark a lot longer, but she supposed she hadn’t expected any less from him nor from a lot of the other remaining personnel in the city. She had already heard rumblings from scattered pairs of marines, who thought they were alone in the darker halls of the city, patrolling the hallway outside her door. Many were not happy with the decision to take this course of action, including her…

“Not really,” she answered honestly and with her usual tone of voice, “but I was checking through our database on the files from Anubis’s last attack on the SGC. I was looking over their medical files to see if there was anything I could use for Rodney.” That was why she hadn’t liked this course of action, there were people she cared about still here. That Anubis could still use… Or wasn’t done with yet. And Anubis had a hideous track record with his hosts… and now with her lover.

“Did you get anything out of them,” Sheppard asks, suddenly polite and caring yet still urgent at the change of subject to someone whom he got along with.

Jennifer nods her head, but her expression is still somber.

“Sort of. I’m hoping it’ll work for Rodney,” she admits, “The Doctor at the time noticed that the patients who hosted Anubis showed an extremely high white blood count like Rodney has. It’s what the body does when it senses an infection so she tried a few things and when they figured out it was Anubis, it was too late for one of her patients. But she did recommend a course of treatments combining the treatments for a viral infection, the treatments for Goa’uld symbiote poisoning, and the treatments for exposure to a high level of energy-based radiation.”

“Is it working?”

“I don’t know yet. It’s still early. And her treatment plan was never tested in the first place, she only guessed that this might be a combination of treatments that might work.”

Sheppard nods at her. There’s a moment’s silence… Three people, friends, just standing around; in an uncomfortable and awkward situation for them. Ronon was normally in the middle of all the action, not stuck in a bed as far away from it as possible. John was always the one leading the charge, on the frontlines of the combat, always in the thick of it; not told to just wait and wait around and do nothing while the enemy was right in here with him. Jennifer puts an awkward smile on her face, as was her trademark in abnormal moments like this, just put on a happy face and the patients’ will think everything is fine; she stands there with her hands clasped in front of her turning lightly from side to side. This is so weird.

“Apparently Colonel Carter tried something like this when they found out that Anubis was on base,” she speaks up finally, hoping she was helping to give their friends in the command center the benefit of the doubt, “Originally they thought it was a viral outbreak until the first victims started to come around and had no memory of what had happened to them except for Doctor Jackson. He realized he had been Anubis. Then they realized they had to lock the place down. Samantha came up with a way to step up the lockdown procedures too as a means of stopping Anubis.”

“So what did Carter do exactly,” although he was willing to listen to her, which was a step forward, the Colonel’s tone of voice didn’t exactly sound like it, which was a step back.

“I don’t know, the computer started to phase then it just shut down,” she reluctantly admits.

John looks away from her.

“Anubis,” he says bitterly.

Jennifer nods. Knowing now not to add her two cents or provide her own sort of oddball brand of comfort just this second. She waits for someone else to make the first move, she hoped it would be Ronon… and she hoped it wouldn’t be further condemnation of the Lieutenant for basically going with a plan that Colonel Carter had come up with in the same situation too, especially since Jennifer knew Colonel Samantha Carter was a woman both men respected and admired without question.

After a moment, Sheppard sighs and looks back down at his boots again. Their movements are slower now, almost lazy. Ronon eyes the profile of his friend and team leader’s face, he hopes that doesn’t mean that Sheppard is giving up. In his opinion, Sheppard had been doing too much of giving into their new Lieutenant ever since she arrived in Atlantis.

“Well whatever it was, it was a temporary fix. Anubis got out. He got away.” Then Sheppard looks up at Jennifer again, “Look, I know it’s too early to tell if the treatment is working, but is Rodney awake again yet,” John asks her.

“Nope, I don’t think he’s likely to for awhile. Usually when the body fights a viral infection, the idea is for it to get a lot of rest and put all of its energy into fighting off the infection. He still needs a lot of rest. I’m letting him come around and go back to sleep whenever he feels like he needs to.”

“And those… burns on his skin?” John hadn’t even noticed them until he’d come in here to check up on Rodney a few minutes after disposing of his gear in the locker room and the medical staff had removed Rodney’s own clothing. There had been these little burn looking marks on his chest and arms and legs. They were small but still… they were there.

“Still there. I keep treating them with a topical and some antibiotics, but that’s about all I can do about them right now. They won’t go away until I deal with what Anubis has done to his system first.”

John takes the information with a nod. “Is there any way to keep an eye on him if Anubis stops messing with the computers and starts moving on to the medical equipment?”

“No,” she says slowly, and that was another thing that Jennifer hadn’t liked about this way of doing things, “I’ll have to sit with him in his isolation room when the power starts to go. Just in case.”

“But we’ll need you when Anubis starts taking hosts,” Sheppard objects. And it would be damn hard to pry her away from Rodney by then. It was damn hard to do it now.

“I can’t leave Rodney,” she is resolute. No one was going to shake her on this and she means no one, “He’s still touch and go. One minute he’s awake, groggy but awake, and the next minute he’s asleep and he can’t tell me whether he’s in pain or not. I just have to guess,” she snaps at him.

Sheppard stares at her. That last handful of words, it wasn’t like Jennifer to bite someone’s head off like that. She wasn’t telling them something, something that was bothering her. There was something in the sound of her voice—

“Put me in the room with him,” Ronon pipes up.

“What,” Jennifer looks at him.

“You have to keep an eye on both of us and I have to stay in this bed so let me watch McKay while you help the others.”

There was a lingering of something more there; Jennifer is hesitant, “I’m not sure…”

Perhaps it was her imagination, but it seemed, it sounded like an offer he would have made back when he was flirting with her, trying to date her… court her… back before she chose Rodney over him.

“I’m stuck here. Let me help.”

Jennifer eyes him, he looks so sincere. Perhaps it had been Jennifer’s imagination, perhaps what she had mistaken for a latent tendency towards affection for her was in actuality a simple, hardcore desire in him to never be useless. To always look around himself no matter how bad his personal predicament was and find a way to still be a help to his team. Keller looks from Ronon to Sheppard.

“We don’t know how big a disaster this is going to become. We need you Jennifer.”

She eyes John for a moment too. It wasn’t like the Colonel to call her by her first name. It just… wasn’t his personality around her. His style in a tense situation like this. He usually called her ‘Doc’ like Kenmore does. She looks back at Ronon again.

“Okay,” she agrees but makes it abundantly clear by the look she’s leveling at him and the moment or two of further hesitation before she agreed that this decision is entirely reluctant on her part. She didn’t really think so but she might even go so far as to say it was against her will… and perhaps even her better judgment.

Jennifer walks around to the side of Ronon’s bed but she doesn’t look at him.

“Help me move him,” she says then bends over out of sight.

Sheppard nods then hops off his friend’s medical bed and bends over out of sight on his side of Ronon’s bed too. Both Keller and Sheppard pull the brakes up on the medical bed, pull it forward a few inches, get behind it, and then as a team start to push the bed with one hand and drag his remaining medical equipment behind them with their others.

Posted in Season Six- Episode Eight | Tagged Ancients, Anubis, Athosian, Colonel Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson, DHD, Doctor Radek Zelenka, fan fiction, Goa'uld, Jaws, Jennifer Keller, John Sheppard, Lieutenant Ursula Kenmore, Major Lorne, radiation poisoning, Richard Woolsey, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex, Season Six, SGC, Stargate Atlantis, symbiote, symbiote poisoning, Teyla Emmagan, Wraith, Wraith Queen | Leave a comment

Episode Eight- Home Again, Part Two- Chapter Three

Posted on March 22, 2015 by stargateatlantisseasonsix

Chapter Three

The horizon is crowned in a thick halo of dense golden light as the sun starts it’s descent beneath the far distant curve of the seeable edge of the planet’s surface. Were it any other location, it would be a divine sunset the likes of which honeymoon postcards or Tahitian or Bahamian resort ads were made of. Were it any other day, dozens of people would be lining the railings or the balconies or the couple of piers that face this direction, watching the sunset on Atlantis and the world’s ocean she rested on. In the dwindling daylight, the center of the city starts to glow like a beacon.

* * *

The conference room had no windows. There was no one looking at the view of the gorgeous sunset or any of its fleeting bold rays of light shining in to illuminate the room outside the fan doors. The conference room is lit by the light sources already in the ceiling and the floor-almost to ceiling sconces that lined the corners of the walls. Even in one of the few fully lit rooms left in the city, the air is thick and gloomy and lending an air of darkness to its atmosphere.

Woolsey governs the mahogany conference table he first brought to Atlantis with him from Earth like he usual does, at its head with his back to the fan doors of the room, and the others sit in their regular seats. The noted exceptions being Rodney, Ronon, and Keller. Doctor Radek Zelenka, the Czech scientist that was Rodney’s second in charge, and Major Evan Lorne, Lieutenant Kenmore’s old and dear friend and her best friend here in Atlantis as well as the only other person left in the city that had dealt both in and out of the field with the Goa’uld, filling their peers’ subsequent seats; although Jennifer was absent tending those peers in the shell that was now the medical wing. Woolsey calls the meeting to order.

“Does anyone have a plan,” he asks bluntly.

Sheppard, Teyla, Lorne, and Zelenka glance at each other as Kenmore keeps her head down. Sheppard looks over at Woolsey.

“Usually the evacuation is the plan,” he begins then reluctantly glances at Zelenka, he wasn’t sure he should say this but…, “And usually Rodney has the plan.”

To his credit, Radek doesn’t take it as a slight. He nods to the expedition’s military commander his ‘It’s okay, I’m fine with it, I’m fine with you’. And John felt secure enough with this line of questioning to help continue its conversation.

“Well, we’re left without Doctor McKay’s assistance,” Woolsey frowns at him. Time was of the essence. Now was not for pointing out the obvious.

Kenmore, still keeping her head down, “Do you think that’s why he went for Doctor McKay in the first place?”

“What?”

Kenmore lifts up her head finally and looks at Woolsey’s perspicacious face. It was clear now why she’d been keeping her head down since they’d entered the briefing room, not all of her conclusions she felt comfortable telling everybody, “He wanted a way to get off the ship and McKay was the only one who could give him that.”

“We all could have gotten Anubis off that ship,” Sheppard objects.

Kenmore shakes her head.

“He was probably watching us from the moment I parked the jumper on that platform. He would have sensed Selmak. He was probably stalking us the moment we got on board to figure out who was the one with all the power, who was the best tool.”

“We’re all tools,” he snaps.

Then suddenly realizes the joke he made at his own expense.

“Yeah, well, ya’ll are, but the moment we got on that ship what were we saying. Think about it. Selmak and I knew how to get the doors open and so did McKay. In fact he was the one going around plugging in his computer tablet and opening them. Then I tell Miss Emmagan about Ra as we walk down the halls, that automatically knocked her out of the running. You didn’t know what the Goa’uld use a sarcophagus for, so you’re out. And I don’t know what knocked out Specialist Dex.”

“I think I took care of that,” Sheppard says as his eyes turn downward to the shiny surface of the table.

Kenmore quirks her expression at him. “What do you mean,” she asks.

Sheppard shifts uncomfortably in his chair, the fingers of his clasped together hands rocking back and forth gingerly on the table top, he wasn’t sure he wanted to say this, “Before we left the tank room, I told him not to shoot you,” he finally admits.

She rolls her eyes.

“Brilliant suggestion… Well, that established the Specialist as the main physical threat. That explains why he was eliminated first. From the beginning we established who knew about the Goa’uld and who didn’t. And we established who we relied on as the resident genius. McKay opens the doors, McKay handles the detector, McKay tackles the computer. As long as McKay had a gun, which he did, McKay was the top choice.”

“Wait, wait,” Sheppard stops her with waves of his hand almost in dismissal, “didn’t you tell Teyla that the Goa’uld like to take young hosts so that they don’t know about the Goa’uld?”

Kenmore shakes her head, “Oh no, they know the Goa’uld. It’s just that they know only the Goa’uld.”

Teyla nods. Understanding. Although the look Sheppard was giving Kenmore and the expression he was pairing with it meant that he clearly didn’t. But Kenmore nodded back at Teyla, taking what she could get at this point. Teyla politely turns to John seated beside her.

“I believe it is something akin to Wraith worshippers. We here have lived so long in fear of the Wraith, knowing, for some, on a daily basis their power. It would be easy for some to, as you say, believe in a ‘higher power’ and become beholden to them. All they have known is the strength of the Wraith and they come to believe that if they worship them, they will be granted rewards that they believe their fellow people of this galaxy cannot give them.”

“So that’s why they think we’re so weird for fighting the Wraith, all they’ve ever known is the Wraith as their masters.”

Teyla nods at him with a close of her eyes, knowing he has caught on. She has made Lieutenant Kenmore’s point to him.

“Why didn’t Anubis pick the General or you,” Lorne asks, a hint of concern in the undertones of his voice. It was a question he had clearly been wanting to ask his longtime dear friend since the word came down of who and what they were facing… and the inevitable additional information going with it that Ursula had indeed been the one to come to the conclusion about the threat.

She faces him head on.

“Carter already had a symbiote inside him. It would be a war on too many fronts. Anubis would have to fight Jacob’s strong mind and Selmak’s. And I already established that I couldn’t handle the computer. I was never any that good at reading Goa’uld. You were a little, but not me.”

“But you’re half Ancient,” Lorne presses.

And all of a sudden it went from a group discussion to a one-on-one between old friends, one concerned about the other. A private discussion… being held out in the open.

“That may be why Anubis rejected her,” Woolsey interjects cautiously, not sure he should get in the middle of such a brewing personal conversation.

“What,” Lorne turns to him.

“She might be too Ancient,” Zelenka supplies the answer, “Anubis may think he may not have been able to maintain the control he wanted over her. It would be as she stated with General Carter a fight on all sides. Let us not forget Oma Desala.”

“But Urs is not Oma Desala?”

“She may not have to be. If Anubis has defeated Oma Desala, it was at great personal cost to his energy. He still may not be strong enough to attempt to forcibly take control of the Lieutenant’s mind and body or he just may not want to get into another battle like that, no matter how small it would be, just yet. His battle in the Astral Diner might still be on his mind.”

Everyone takes in the information.

“So what are we left with,” Lorne asks, bringing the discussion back to include the greater group.

Everyone looks everywhere, but at each other. Zelenka looks down. Kenmore returns to looking down at her hands now clasped before her on the tabletop. Lorne looks at the walls. Woolsey follows the path his finger is tracing down his notes, although the low speed of his finger left no doubts that he wasn’t paying attention to a single word of them. Sheppard looks at the walls too, just higher up them than Lorne was. And Teyla stares at the stretch of table in front of her, deep in thought. Everyone thinking the same thing and timid about having to admit to it. Just as Lorne musters up the courage and opens his mouth, Teyla speaks before he can…

“Why would Colonel Sheppard and I have been ‘knocked out of the running’,” she asks her question pointedly of Kenmore.

The Lieutenant looks up at her. That wasn’t the thing they’d all been frightened to admit.

“The Goa’uld like their victims to know about them first. It lends an air of fear that weakens the host’s mind and allows the Goa’uld to take firmer control.”

“So we must not be afraid,” the Athosian says. She sits up straighter in her chair, her back like a taut board. Her chin lifts, her shoulders set. Her demeanor takes on the familiar air of Teyla as a leader of people. It wasn’t nice to mess with Mother Nature. Especially a Mother-Earth Super Mom who had no problem kicking ass and taking names.

“That’s easier said than done,” Woolsey tells her and the Athosian turns her confident espresso rich eyes to Atlantis’ commander, “What disturbs me most about this situation are the symbiote tanks.”

Sheppard stares at him, “That’s what disturbs you most?”

Woolsey shoots Sheppard a quick side-glance of disapproval before continuing his line of thought to the rest of the table, also looking back at him, “There was a mission Colonel Carter went on with her father in which they infiltrated one of Anubis’ bases. They were originally supposed to investigate how many Super Soldiers Anubis had managed to create, but inside they stumbled across a room that had inside of it a series of symbiote tanks.” Kenmore and Lorne nod their heads, remembering as well. Woolsey continues, “Granted they were far bigger than the ones we’ve recovered from the Goa’uld mothership, but inside of one, the only one containing anything, was just one symbiote,” he held up a single finger.

“One,” Sheppard asks, not getting it, “Why would he need a tank larger than the ones we found just for one symbiote?”

“This symbiote was a Queen,” Woolsey tells him, “And she was pregnant,” he adds.

“That’s putting it nicely,” Kenmore scoffs derisively.

Woolsey ignores Kenmore.

“Usually a Queen can only give birth to a few hundred or so symbiotes at a time, but this Queen had altered herself and forced her body to carry thousands. When Colonel Carter found her, her body was grossly distorted.”

“Jabba the Hutt,” Kenmore cut in, again derisively.

And again, Woolsey moves on, “Something later the Tok’ra would inform us was extremely dangerous to her and so very rare because it’s not normally in the Goa’uld nature, especially a Queen’s, to endanger or harm herself just for the sake of giving birth. She should have been in considerable pain, but the Queen had willingly dampened down her brain activity so much that she was practically in a coma. This affected the minds of the larval symbiotes she was carrying. Rendering their minds as blank slates for whatever purpose Anubis wanted them to have.”

“I still don’t get it,” Sheppard speaks up, “Why?”

“Anubis used the larval symbiotes in genetically engineered hosts he created. Those manufactured hosts became the Super Soldiers.”

Sheppard’s mind suddenly flashes onto images he had watched from SG-1 mission video records of an alien soldier covered in black shiny armor walking, without slowing, through the fire from a direct massive blast from a trio of C-4 charges after firing on SGC members and friendly Jaffa who had stationed themselves in its way. An indestructible, unstoppable fighting force of one. Known for being so formidable on it’s own that it freaked out everyone at the SGC, hardened field soldiers like SG-1’s Teal’c included. Sheppard’s mind also flashes to the outright fear that had been in Major Leonard’s wide panicked, suspicious eyes. The way they had measured Sheppard up and down then darted off to Leonard’s left then right. His insane hallucinating ramblings about seeing four of those things closing in on him on a planet here in the Pegasus Galaxy when it was just John, alone, standing in front of him, trying to talk him back into sanity. Then the man took a grenade out of one of his vest’s pockets, his eyes suddenly grim with determination, pulled the pin, and held the live weapon to his chest.

Sheppard figured maybe Leonard thought Sheppard was one… and Leonard’s attacks on Sheppard’s team, shooting Teyla in the leg and taking any shots he could at the rest of them. He blew up the DHD in their faces for God’s sake. What he did to his own team. He’d mowed them all down, hallucinating. Shot two of them in the back as they were trying to run away from him. Anything that could drive Major Leonard to do something like that, a man Sheppard thought, had believed reminded him of himself so much… Good God, what Hell was a Super Soldier that it could inspire someone like Sheppard to do something like that to his own people, his friends. To himself. Lorne sits up.

“Is that what you think the symbiotes were for,” the Major asks Woolsey.

The former attorney shakes his semi-bald head, “No. The DNA tests we ran on the symbiotes matched up to the symbiote database we have on the Tok’ra. We knew every single one. In fact Lieutenant Kenmore and I knew quite a few personally from our time at the SGC and you would too.”

Kenmore nods her head at Lorne confirming what Woolsey was telling him to the Major’s satisfaction.

“Is that why they sought shelter behind you,” Teyla asks her.

Kenmore nods at her.

“Why one of them kissed you,” Sheppard prodded cheekily in the inappropriate moment. But he just couldn’t resist at least a little something to make him smile in all of this.

Kenmore starts nodding at him, closing her eyes with a bit of a smile and allowing him the indulgence for a moment before opening them again to quash his prod, “I think it was an overwhelming sense of gratitude. It’s also why I think some of them went for Teyla when she walked up to the tank. They recognized me, recognized our uniforms, knew you were some sort of teammates of me and Jacob. Thought of you as safe too.”

“From our reports, and what General Carter and Selmak could tell us, all of the symbiotes were missing. Some had been missing for years, others were thought to have died in Goa’uld attacks or at the hands of the Trust. It is now quite clear that they were all hostages,” Woolsey says.

“Prisoners of war,” Sheppard utters.

“I don’t like that,” Kenmore objects, “Hostages implies ransoms. Nothing was ever asked for in exchange for their return. And prisoners makes it sound like they’d have a chance to come home. To escape at some time. I don’t think that was ever going to happen for them. Maybe they could escape the tanks and die somewhere else on the ship, but they’d never escape to get any actual freedom.”

“Then what would you call them,” Sheppard asks, sounding almost as snarky as Rodney would have were he here to ask the same thing.

Kenmore takes a moment to consider what her mouth had run her into before her brain could catch up with it… Then she looks up at him, meeting his eyes fixedly, “Bait.”

Lorne eyes at her.

“What do you mean,” Zelenka asks.

“I think Anubis was specifically aiming for the city,” Lieutenant Ursula Kenmore finally admits.

The rest of the room doesn’t believe her.

“So he took hundreds of thousands of Tok’ra that we as well as their own people thought were long gone as hostages,” Sheppard asks sarcastically.

Kenmore glares at him, “Not hostages.”

“I don’t think he was coming for the city,” Richard Woolsey interrupts.

“Then why come out here to the Pegasus Galaxy at all,” Kenmore retorts at him.

Zelenka catches on to something—“How old is Anubis,” the Czech scientist suddenly asks.

“We don’t know exactly but Doctor Jackson hypothesizes that is somewhere long before Ra gained control over the Goa’uld,” Woolsey tells him.

“But it is safe to assume that being Ascended, he knew how the war with the Wraith progressed?”

Woolsey starts nodding, he supposed there might be some truth in that. Plausibility at the very least… “Yes,” Woolsey slowly says, “but we also know that the Others did keep some information from him. Like the location of the Lost City itself.”

“But it is possible that he still knew of Atlantis at least?”

Woolsey nods again.

“And by Colonel Sheppard’s team using the jumper to get to his ship, he would definitely know that the city still exists. Let alone confirmation that we are in control of her.”

The others light on to Zelenka’s train of thought.

“He knows we’ve reawakened the city,” Teyla says with a certain amount of dread.

Radek points at her. ”You said there were not any bodies on board his ship…,” Radek leads.

Teyla nods.

He turns and his finger starts pointing at Kenmore, “And you said that he told you the crew had jettisoned themselves.”

Kenmore nods too.

“He also said that he’d been waiting for us,” she adds.

Zelenka jabs his finger in her direction a few times, reminiscent of McKay’s tendency to finger snap when inspiration struck his genius brain.

“I think you’re right,” he says, “He was coming for the city.”

“What stopped him,” Lorne asks.

“He ran out of crew,” Sheppard answers with a sober nod. His eyes focused on the Lieutenant. Radek thinks she’s right…

“But how,” Evan goes on.

“When Anubis attacked the SGC, he didn’t need a host all the time. He needed a host only for certain things. He’d use them until he couldn’t use them anymore and remember Doctor McKay,” they all look at Woolsey at his mentioning of their friend, “Anubis has a tendency to make his hosts extremely ill.”

“So chances are that the hosts either couldn’t help him anymore or got too sick to help him,” the Major chances the conclusion.

“Either way,” John rejoins the conversation, “they outlived their usefulness.” His mind strays to Rodney unconscious in Atlantis’ infirmary.

“It would have only been a matter of time before either we found the ship or heard reports about it,” Radek throws in, “Either way,” he sighs, “he was waiting for someone from Atlantis to find him whether or not the Wraith got there first or that someone was the Wraith.”

Teyla shifts uncomfortably in her seat. Sheppard looks over at her.

“What is it?”

“The Wraith,” she answers him, “There were no ‘death gliders’, I believe Lieutenant Kenmore called them, in the ship’s hangar.”

Kenmore nods, but there was something different about the gesture. Like it wasn’t a form of agreement so much as meant to provide comfort and soothe things over.

“Knowing what we know now, it was probably an abandon ship scenario. There wasn’t any debris for miles around Anubis’s ship. And we based the designs of the 302’s from death gliders we captured, there would have been debris if there’d been a firefight with the Wraith. Lots of it. Let alone the fact that when we were testing the gliders on Earth we discovered that the Goa’uld have tendencies to booby-trap those particular ships in case one of their minions decides to rebel and get away by taking one,” she tells Teyla. Teal’c, she thought.

Teyla nods, but her body doesn’t ease any. The knowledge was little comfort. It was going to take more than Lieutenant Kenmore’s word to soften Teyla’s concerns.

“So what do we do now,” Evan asks. With Ursula’s guess, for him her guess had been enough but the others had needed at least Radek on board with the thought as well, semi-confirmed, they needed a plan of action.

“We let him come,” Kenmore answers.

Sheppard lets out a heavy sigh and leans back in his chair like he was bracing for impact, an impact he himself would deliver, but he needed to reign himself in first. He’s glaring at Kenmore. Teyla’s eyes widen and her mouth hangs open slightly, aghast at the Lieutenant’s suggestion. Zelenka just stares at Kenmore; his glasses fall down to the point where their barely hanging onto the tip of his nose. He makes no move to retrieve them. Woolsey is the only one maintaining some semblance of calm; he has his poker-face up, but it was a good thing to remember that his poker-face actually sucked. It wasn’t like he was playing chicken with a group of hostile Replicator’s trying to sink the city, this was Anubis. Lorne has no trouble letting his jaw drop and the shock break all over his face. He sits up, gaping at his friend…

“What,” he exclaims. He can’t believe she’d suggest this. She, of all people, should know better.

“Let him come to Atlantis. Then we can see what he wants here.” She answers as though her suggestion was simple.

“No,” John finally manages, “No. No. No. We are not letting him come to the city.”

“Why not?”

“Why…,” he almost laughs at her—actually he wanted to throw something at her, a lamp or something… the table—he would if the situation wasn’t so dire; he can’t believe he has to actually explain this to someone, “Why not? That thing just wiped out an entire ship full of people through mass suicide and you want to bring him here,” Sheppard slams his finger down on the table.

Kenmore nods. She wasn’t seeing a problem, and she was having trouble wondering why he should… And the theatrics, seriously? What the hell?

“How are we supposed to do that,” Woolsey asks calmly, as though he were spreading his hands and allowing the prey to fall into the unbaited trap that they couldn’t see at their own leisure.

She turns her chair to address Zelenka, “That ship’s just drifting, right?”

He nods.

“And Jacob took the ship close enough to that planet to give us a base chevron to dial out with… And to dial in.”

“You want us to dial in,” the Czech scientist asks.

The Lieutenant nods sitting back in her chair, “He wants to come to this place so badly I say we swing open the door for him.”

Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, his jaw so set he thought it might break, was about to bite into her, but Woolsey speaks up first, “Do it.”

John stares at him. Everyone stares at Richard Woolsey.

“What did you say,” John’s voice was snippier, more accusatorially obnoxious than he had meant. That tone of voice he’d built up had originally been meant for Kenmore and her dumbass suggestion and her ever stupider nonchalant attitude about it. But Woolsey…

Woolsey matches Sheppard eye for eye head-on, “I said do it. Dial Anubis’s ship.”

“But,” Teyla sputters.

“I would rather we have Anubis than the Wraith,” Woolsey cuts her off.

Richard stands up, tugging at the bottom hem of his uniform jacket. Pulling it straight and neat and crisp looking again, “See that it’s done.”

He walks out.

* * *

Night has descended on the planet. Atlantis does not glimmer like she normally does. Too many of her outer limits’ lights are gone and too many of her inner ones are dimmer than they normally are. Too many things are downcast tonight.

In the Gateroom Command Center, Woolsey stands behind technician James Robbins sitting at the DHD system, Chuck Campbell had been evacuated to the Alpha site, while Sheppard and Teyla stand to one side of him and Kenmore stands on the other. Sheppard and Teyla look thoroughly unhappy but without ways of figuring out how to voice their opinions anymore than they already have, while the others simply look determined. At another computer console already set up with a laptop attached to it, just in case, Doctor Radek Zelenka sits tapping away at it while Evan Lorne leans over his shoulder watching his progress.

“And what about the people left on this base,” Sheppard asks, steely.

“He doesn’t want us. He wants the city,” Kenmore says without looking at him. Both her and Woolsey’s eyes fixed on Atlantis’ inactive Stargate down below.

“He will take a host,” Teyla contemns.

“I’d rather not think of a Fallen Ascended Goa’uld Wraith,” Woolsey says, also without looking at her.

Teyla takes the information. She looks down at the floor, almost with a sense of shame. That had been among her own thoughts on board the Goa’uld mothership. Although she had not put ‘Fallen Ascended’ in the name of her thought. But there is also another shade to the shame she feels. She may only feel part of it for herself, and none of it for John, but she felt it mostly for the others around her. Perhaps she had again put too much faith in them. These people who were her friends, there were times when the word ‘friend’ seemed to flee their minds and their actions spoke volumes then.

Richard looks over at Radek.

“Doctor Zelenka, are we ready?”

“Almost, I am just finishing the last modifications to the transmission…,” a few final taps on the console and the Czech scientist returns Woolsey’s look, “Yes, we are.”

Woolsey looks down at the expectant tech in front of him.

“Dial him in,” Richard Woolsey orders. Never believing in a million years—no, infinity that he would ever issue that command in relation to Anubis, of all people. Of all enemies.

Robbins dials the mothership’s gate address and the wormhole comes to life with its familiar flush. Then calms into its usual undulating, glowing pool.

“I am sending the transmission now,” Radek announces in the silence of the room and starts typing in the commands on his laptop. He hoped the computer program he wrote into the radio burst to the still operating Goa’uld computers would be accepted. He was not all that familiar with Goa’uld technology other than what the F-301s and F-302s had to offer him—and that was minimal at best—, “It’s done.”

“Shutting down the wormhole,” Robbins announces, extends his hand and pushes a single button. Suddenly the undulating surface of the wormhole appears to shatter, breaking at its center and fleeing in sporadic dying waves to the perimeter of the Stargate’s inner ring it had been suspended in.

After a couple of heartbeats, every light on the Stargate comes on and the outer sequence of lights start rotating from symbol to symbol. Immediately Robbins goes to work on his console.

“Unscheduled incoming wormhole. No IDC,” he announces, “Looks like your program was accepted Doctor Zelenka.”

Woolsey reaches out a hand to clasp the top of the back of Robbins’ chair, “Don’t put up the iris,” he reminds the technician.

The man halts his hand above the iris’ activation button, it was reflex. He nods and was thankful Woolsey had called him out on it.

They all wait again. Nothing happens. Well more than a couple of heartbeats pass. Still nothing happens. Sheppard leans over to Woolsey…

“Would an Ascended Being be dumb enough to fall for this?

A black cloud of energy suddenly bursts out of the heart of the wormhole and hangs in front of it, rippling, in the air. Everyone stares at it in shock and awe except for Lorne, Kenmore, and Woolsey, who stare at it with their own old determined fire they had had for it back at the SGC.

“Perhaps you should have said would an Ascended Being be desperate enough to fall for this,” Kenmore corrects him.

Posted in Season Six- Episode Eight | Tagged Alpha Site, Ancients, Anubis, Astral Diner, Athosian, Bahamian, Chuck Campbell, Colonel Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson, death gliders, DHD, DNA, Doctor Radek Zelenka, F-301, F-302, fan fiction, Goa'uld, Ha'tak, Jabba the Hutt, Jacob Carter, Jaffa, James Robbins, Jennifer Keller, John Sheppard, Kull warriors, Lieutenant Ursula Kenmore, lifesigns detector, Major Leonard, Major Lorne, Oma Desala, Others, Pegasus Galaxy, puddle jumper, Queen, Ra, radiation sickness, Richard Woolsey, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex, sarcophagus, Season Six, Selmak, SG-1, SGC, Stargate Atlantis, Super Soldiers, symbiote, symbiote database, symbiote poisoning, Tahitian, Teal'c, Teyla Emmagan, Tok'ra, Trust, Wraith, Wraith worshippers | Leave a comment

Episode Eight- Home Again, Part Two- Chapter Two

Posted on March 13, 2015 by stargateatlantisseasonsix

Chapter Two

Teyla rushes around her family’s quarters, packing things into the two crates she managed to procure along her way here sitting on the Athosian bed—she had always believed it was a measure of kindness and equality that Elizabeth had allowed Teyla to bring the Athosian furniture with her to live in Atlantis. She races back to her child’s tiny dresser made of recovered pieces of fallen tree stripped bare and smoothed of the scraggy rougher bark it had once had, it’s drawers already pulled open in a mimic of staggered steps as Teyla had progressively emptied them one by one. She grabs a handful of his clothes, accidentally snagging a stowed away Athosian rattle made of a dried flower cone with its seeds still inside of it and its stem still attached with them in her grip. Kanaan rushes in. He’s still wearing his usual Athosian clothes but, as Teyla had in the beginning, he was adapting more and more to wearing the garb of their fellow residents of Atlantis, he was wearing the same sort of Earth shoes that Teyla herself had become very fond of wearing since joining forces with the Atlantis Expedition. They were called sneakers.

“What’s wrong? Doctor Brown in the hydroponics lab told me to return to our quarters and start packing.”

“There is a danger,” she answers him, silently thankful that Doctor Katie Brown was now in charge of the Botany department of Atlantis and she had welcomed Kanaan’s help with the various indigenous plants of the Pegasus, thus keeping him in the city and keeping her from having to go through this alone, “The Goa’uld are trying to come to the city.”

“What are the Goa’uld,” he has trouble saying the name as Teyla had at first. It was such a foreign sounding word to them, even more so than the languages of their many Earth friends that they usually encountered here.

“Creatures that take humans as hosts…,” Teyla pauses as she packs one of Torren’s outfits, a small pair of trousers that laced up the sides of his small, still baby chubby legs and a shirt that laced halfway down its front with long sleeves. They’re both made of the same fabric, that pale sea green fabric, as the small blanket gown he wore when Wraith hybrid Michael Kenmore had invaded the city, taken control of it, and captured both he and Teyla and held them hostage in Woolsey’s office. She glances over at her child sleeping soundly in his own wide rectangular bed also made of slats of recovered stripped and smoothed wood heavily cushioned by half a dozen thick furs of animals their people hunted on their new homeworld and a brick red tapestry blanket that had been made by Kanaan’s mother for Kanaan when he himself was a baby off to one side of the room, oblivious to the hysteria surrounding him, “They take children as hosts,” her voice chokes.

Kanaan looks over at their son. Teyla recollects herself and hurriedly resumes packing the little articles of clothing.

“You must go with Torren to the Alpha Site and help there.”

Kanaan nods, it was information he already knew. As he had said before, when the call to adhere to the evacuation procedures had been announced, Kanaan reported to his department’s leader, Katie Brown, and she had given him his orders. But he can see that it’s important to Teyla to regain some control of the situation, so he doesn’t tell her he already knew this…

Teyla tries to walk past Kanaan, but he reaches out and grabs her arm. She stops and he looks her in the eyes.

“And what about you,” he asks her.

Teyla looks over at Torren again. His little chest rising gently and slowly in blissful sleep beneath the deep brown sleep shirt he’s wearing. His lips gently puckering tight and loose then tight and loose again before settling back into the calm they had been in before. He is so pristine, so perfect, so precious, when he is sleeping… when he was awake. And oh how she wanted to be with him always, to go with him now but…

“I will stay behind and guard the city.”

“Teyla.”

She stares at Kanaan, “I will cover you both from the city and you will protect him at the Alpha Site.”

Teyla, fighting her emotions as she has often had to do on this mission, looks at her partner and the father of her child.

“We have to protect him.”

“And who will protect you?”

Her eyes dart to Torren again and despite herself a single tear slips from her right eye and down her cheek. He feels her start to tremble in his hand. He leans forward and kisses her temple. At the instant of feeling the gentle pressure of her partner’s lips against her skin, Teyla closes her eyes and considerably more than a single tear slips from both her eyes. His lips retreat from her flushed skin and he waits as she lets the emotions she normally tries to keep restrained in front of her teammates slip free. Reflexively the hand of her arm he has a hold of grips his elbow tightly. She could always be every part of herself in front of him. With Kanaan, she did not always have to be the strong leader or the wholly compassionate soul everyone has come to know and expect from her here in Atlantis. In front of him, with her love, she could be as emotional and doubting as she felt, she could voice it even. In front of him, she could be as angry and as irrationally mean as she wanted to be, as she wished she could be to some people. He would not judge her. He never judged her. Even when he had not agreed entirely with her decision to rejoin the Atlantis Expedition and John’s team, he had been the one to finally convince her to rejoin them when he reminded her that when she was here, she was not only fighting to protect their son, to protect both he and their people, but also all the people of their galaxy, all of it’s children. She opens her eyes, unusually bloodshot red, and glistening as they always did when she looked into the face of the man she loves and shares a life and family with. His eyes were unwavering and strong enough for both of them. In her moments, he was her strength. It was why they were such a good match. Why she had chosen to give her affections to him and had hoped for many years that he would return them one day… and he did. Whole-heartedly. With a smile, she leans her head towards him and their foreheads meet. She breathes in a sigh of relief. Her body calm now that he had let her have the moment she needed to have. Their eyes meet in the shadow of their foreheads touching.

“What else do we have left to pack,” he asks smiling back at her.

She was thankful he knew her so well.

* * *

Sheppard slowly walks into the wing Ronon is in, looking around himself at the staff rushing around. He would stop dead in his tracks as some raced patients in their beds out through every way into the wing. Others were disconnecting every piece of equipment they can get their hands on. And the rest are either stacking supplies and equipment into piles or just plain backing the hell away from disconnected patients and their beds and letting the Daedalus beam them out. It was an awe-inspiring sight of precise and methodical chaos.

“Weird, isn’t it,” Ronon says, even his bombastic voice is barely loud enough to make it over the clamor.

Sheppard is still looking around, his attention fixedly mesmerized by it all, boot falling slowly and shortly ahead of boot, “Yeah, I’ve never really seen what they do around here when something like this happens.”

“What’s wrong?”

Sheppard turns his attention to Ronon and walks at normal speed up to his friend’s bedside. A rushing gurney blows right past behind him, if John had been slow by just a second or his step short by a fraction of an inch, the thing and the nurse pushing it would have mowed off the back of John’s boot and the foot inside it. He turned instantly at the sound of its passing proximity and watches it blaze on out the door off in that direction.

“Kenmore thinks she knows who’s responsible for the Goa’uld ship,” he finally answers Ronon, distractedly.

Ronon rolls his eyes. He was so tired of this, of Kenmore, of Sheppard always giving her some rope. Why couldn’t she hang herself with it for once?

“Kenmore,” he growls.

That drew John’s attention.

“Hey,” he says defensively.

“Who does she think it is,” Ronon goes on, ignoring his friend and the tone of Sheppard’s voice defending her.

“A pretty bad Goa’uld named Anubis,” John answers.

“Does she know why?”

“If she does, she’s not telling,” John glances around again.

“That’s new,” Ronon complains sardonically.

“Hey, Buddy,” John says defensively again and there was no getting around how intentional his tone was this time. Or the pointed look on his face.

Ronon looks at Sheppard.

“She saved your life,” his friend points out.

Ronon looks away from Sheppard, uncomfortable with that information and all the implications that go with it.

“She didn’t have to. I told her to go. She took the coward’s way out, she hid behind me.” John could hear the anger in Ronon’s voice as he said that last part. But John wasn’t about to let him off the hook on this…

“I know, I heard it,” he confesses.

Ronon’s face shoots to look at him. Shocked. John held strong. Clearly Ronon had not known that.

“All of it,” John nods distinctly. “Her radio got stuck on. We all three heard everything that went down in that room,” Ronon’s mouth works, “She wasn’t hiding behind you, she was giving us time,” John let that sink in. “And we would have had a lot more of it too if you two hadn’t been stuck in there.”

Ronon stares at John. For the first time since they’d known each other, John had dropped a dress down on his friend. It had been quiet but it cut deep. Deeper than either friend had expected from the other. Ronon somehow looked like his own version of a kicked puppy. And John looked unyielding. Mutely, Ronon looks slowly down and away from his friend again.

* * *

Kenmore, kneeling, is fussing with Little Michael’s collar while the rush around her pours into the activated wormhole of the Stargate. The last wave through. Teyla stands nearby facing her partner Kanaan while he holds their son Torren.

“Why do I have to leave,” Little Michael asks his Mother.

“Because we can’t protect you here,” she tells him, continuing her maternal fussing even though the boy was pretty sure the collar of his makeshift BDUs was already as clean and lint free by now as it possibly could be.

Teyla reaches up and touches her own forehead to her child’s and closes her eyes, indulging in the feel of his soft, young, tender flesh. And not for the first time thinking that this was not the way he should live: in fear. The way their people had become a nomadic clan, moving constantly across the surface of Athosia, living in fear of the Wraith’s cullings. Hiding from them.

“Where am I going,” Michael asks another question.

Teyla couldn’t help but believe that it was supposed to be different here in Atlantis. The Great City of the Ancestors was supposed to be safe from fear, but it was becoming an all too frequent occurrence to evacuate the city down to only essential, otherwise known as ‘skeleton’, personnel only and requiring the greater majority to seek safety in a pre-designated Alpha or, in some cases, Beta site climate.

“It’s called the Alpha Site,” Ursula answers him.

Teyla opens her eyes again and sees the pair across from hers and in them the bright glimmer of the child’s father’s eyes. Those eyes so dear to her. No, she sighed to herself with a bittersweet smile on her lips in the face of her son’s attentive stare, a child should not have to be raised in fear. She takes her forehead away from Torren’s.

“Who will protect us,” Michael asks again.

Kenmore moves on to smoothing his hair, although she didn’t really know why and the child’s hair really hadn’t needed the attention; it was as spic and span as his shirt collar had been, “You won’t be there alone. Plenty of others are going with you and some of them will be soldiers.”

“But not you,” he asks tentatively.

“No, not me,” Ursula answers.

Teyla’s eyes travel to Kenmore. Ursula looks at her son, analyzing every feature like it was the last time she was going to have the chance to. Teyla’s eyes slide back to her own son, it had never occurred to her to do that before. But she can’t bring herself to do it now, it seemed too much like admitting failure, like admitting that she would never see Torren again and that he would never know her again as well. And Teyla was not about to admit that fear.

“There will also be some adults there that will take care of you and the other children,” Ursula tells him, “You’re not the only child here.”

Teyla looks over at Kanaan with a warm smile on her lips. He returns her smile. They lean their foreheads together and connect them, but not as mother to child, but as one partner to another. Their eyes lock. In Kanaan she always saw everything good about being Athosian. Every warmth of her home and her people. Another life she wanted their Torren to have. Of tilled soils, the laughter of friends and other children, the cheers of returning hunting parties with enough meat to feed the entire village for the next few days, of hearths with mothers and a lucky few grandmothers gathered around them making tuttleroot soup for lunch when all would join together for a communal meal. There was so much good there that despite the Wraith’s determination and persistence had not been crushed out of her people or culled from them. Teyla’s smile deepens and without hesitation she lifts her face up to his and kisses him. He wraps his free hand around her to keep her close, as she wraps one arm to be with his around their child and cups the side of Kanaan’s neck affectionately with her other hand.

“And who will protect them,” Michael asks his Mother.

Kenmore looks her son in the eyes.

“I don’t know,” she admits the truth.

Their kiss breaks, but the embrace remains and Teyla continues to gaze into everything pure about her home.

Little Michael considers his mother’s words for a moment then straightens up. There was resolution in his rich brown eyes.

“I will protect them,” he says strongly.

Teyla’s attention shoots to Kenmore and Little Michael as Kenmore looks on at her son.

“Godpa Teal’c and Master Bra’tac always say that a good Jaffa protects the innocent.”

Kenmore nods with a proud smile spread across her lips, tears welling up in her eyes.

“Yes,” her voice is slightly quavering, but it is proud, so proud, “yes, they do.”

Teyla takes a step towards Little Michael. Kenmore stands up as her and her son’s attention shifts to the Athosian woman.

“I would be honored if you would help protect my family,” Teyla tells him with a genuine smile and slight bow of her head.

Teyla looks towards Kanaan, who looks blatantly concerned, shifting Torren’s weight in his arms. Kenmore can’t help but see the man’s expression and her own expression reflects his. There is distrust there, fear, and suspicion. Kenmore looks at Teyla. Kanaan walks towards the wormhole and Kenmore directs Little Michael to follow. The three men stand on the threshold of the Stargate. They stop and look back at the women they’re leaving behind. Teyla smiles and Kenmore nods at her son, urging him. Little Michael looks up at Kanaan beside him.

“I’m Michael Kenmore. Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”

Little Michael reaches up, kindly takes Kanaan’s hand in his own, turns his head, and starts confidently towards the glowing, undulating pool ahead of him. Kanaan looks back at Teyla, still unsure of this, but travels with the boy through the wormhole. Teyla and Kenmore stand there for a moment staring into the wormhole, still maintaining their good-bye demeanors, Teyla still smiling brightly, Kenmore still urgingly calm and confident. Then the Stargate shuts down.

“That never gets any easier,” the Lieutenant says, a voice from experience. Not the only one.

Kenmore looks over at Teyla.

“You ready,” she asks.

Teyla nods and the two turn and head, side by side, up the two flights of stairs into the Command Center. They walk up to the station where Woolsey and Sheppard stand behind technician Robbins, one of only two technicians left in the center. Both Sheppard and Woolsey look up at their approach and give the women an understanding nod, the women nod confidently back. Both the Athosian leader’s and the Lieutenant’s expressions making it very clear that what had just happened on the embarkation floor was not something either man should pry into or mention. It was private. The tiny group is joined just a split second later by Doctor Jennifer Keller. Robbins looks up at Woolsey.

“That’s the last of them, Sir,” he tells him.

“McKay,” Sheppard addresses Keller.

She shakes her head, “He’s still too sick to move.”

“So, are we ready for this,” Woolsey turns and asks all of them, looking at each one individually starting with Keller and ending with Sheppard.

The assembled nod their heads. Woolsey looks back over at Robbins.

“Proceed.”

James nods and reaches out to his panel. At his touch the farthest stretches of the city shut down. Doors, in those areas and leading to them, slide close and lock. The hallways leading back from the piers into the heart of the city go dark. The supply areas, already the darkest rooms in the city, seem to completely vanish from any sight. The mess hall, the medical wards, everything as though the city had never been awakened in the first place. Even the lights in the parts of the city still left operational dim considerably to shine an almost surgical halo of light down on everything beneath them and leave everything else in shadow. In the almost blacked out Command Center, Robbins, underlit by his computer like a little kid playing monster with a flashlight, looks back up at Woolsey.

“It’s done Sir.”

Woolsey looks back at the group assembled with him in the room; John Sheppard, James Robbins, Teyla Emmagan, Ursula Kenmore, Jennifer Keller, Radek Zelenka, Jennifer Johnson, Evan Lorne, “So now what do we do?”

“We plan,” Kenmore answers him.

Woolsey nods.

Posted in Season Six- Episode Eight | Tagged Alpha Site, Anubis, Athosia, Athosian, Beta Site, culling, Daedalus, Doctor Elizabeth Weir, Doctor Katie Brown, Doctor Radek Zelenka, fan fiction, Goa'uld, hydroponics lab, Jaffa, James Robbins, Jennifer Johnson, Jennifer Keller, John Sheppard, Kanaan, Lieutenant Ursula Kenmore, Major Lorne, Master Bra'tac, Michael Kenmore, Pegasus Galaxy, Richard Woolsey, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex, Season Six, Stargate Atlantis, Teal'c, Teyla Emmagan, Torren John Emmagan, Wraith | Leave a comment

Episode Eight- Home Again, Part Two- Chapter One

Posted on March 5, 2015 by stargateatlantisseasonsix

Chapter One

Leaving Sheppard and Teyla to their own disturbance at the situation, Kenmore returns her attention to Woolsey.

“I recommend we immediately start evacuating the city.”

“I agree. Colonel Caldwell…”

Caldwell nods, “I’ll start prepping the Daedalus.”

He hurries out of the office, slipping in between Sheppard and Teyla, reaching up to his earpiece as he goes and radioing his ship, “Daedalus this is Caldwell…”

Kenmore and Woolsey follow Caldwell out, trailing him by a handful of feet, and Sheppard and Teyla follow on their heels across the bridge and into the Command Center. It was a rarity, the light from the bright sunny mid-morning day outside Atlantis’ walls was shining through the large windows at the back of the center. Imbuing the room, normally perpetually in shadow and in almost battle-conditions darkness, with a refreshing white haze of sunshine reflected off the floor at the back of the room. Everyone seemed to have been enjoying it until the start of the small group from Woolsey’s office entered the center then everyone had looked up at their approach, their smiles disappearing. As Caldwell quickly moves off to the quieter far side of the small overseeing room, still talking to his earpiece, Woolsey addresses the nearest technician, a shoulder-length blonde-haired woman that looked to be in her mid to late-thirties named Jennifer Johnson that had become Amelia’s replacement since her promotion and transfer back to Earth.

“Put me on city-wide.”

Jennifer nods her head and begins working on the computer console in front of her. After a few seconds, she looks back up at Woolsey and nods her head at him, knowing not to speak so that his voice was the first and only voice the city would hear.

“Attention Atlantis personnel,” his voice boomed through the speakers and reverberated through the city’s halls and rooms, “effective immediately we are evacuating the city. Follow your evacuation procedures as quickly as possible. This is not a drill. Please, all personnel follow your evacuation procedures immediately and quickly. This is not a drill. We are evacuating the entire city.”

Woolsey nods at Jennifer again and the technician turns off the city-wide communications system as every expedition member in the room seems to jump into action. It was a small mirror and pale comparison of what was happening around the city. In the mess hall, where people had either been in line to get trays of food, were filling their trays, or paying for their trays or were sitting down with friends and colleagues to discuss what either the day’s or week’s gossip was or the work they were doing, there was now nothing but a small tidal wave of uniformed men and woman racing out of every entrance/exit into the room as orderly as they possibly could. And the mess staff left behind were shutting down and gathering up everything they could; Hell, even people at the Alpha and Beta sites needed to be fed. Those that weren’t fortunate enough to be on break but were in their labs or other designated work areas abandoned whatever they were doing and raced over to their designated evacuation commanders to receive directions on where to go and what to pack and in what order. Almost instantly Doctor Jennifer Keller, Atlantis’ Chief Medical Officer, had a substantial flood of nurses and fellow doctors crowd over to and around her like they were bracing to mosh in front of the stage at a concert, and each and every face stared at her waiting for her to tell them what they should be doing for this evacuation. She took a deep breath, set aside the clipboard of one patient’s current medical information, reached up to the wall crowded with taped and magnetized-pinned information above her desk, plucked off the bright yellow packet containing their latest sets of evacuation procedures, turned around, pulled the information out of it, and started issuing orders as quickly and firmly as she could breath. Richard Woolsey turns his attention to the substitute technician sitting at the dialing console, who had come to fill in for Chuck Campbell while Chuck had left to get lunch.

“Dial the Alpha Site as soon as the first wave is ready.”

The technician nods his head and turns back to his computer console, going through the computer station’s own evacuation procedures.

* * *

Atlantis’ medical wards on their busiest days were not like this, not anything like this. You couldn’t see the walls even if you wanted to unless you looked up at the high reaching cathedral ceiling and see the stretch of the walls that was far out of reach. As for the floors, definitely no. Too many pieces of either stationary or moveable equipment covering them up and too many feet rushing around in a blur.

Ronon Dex semi-sitting up in a hospital bed watches the people rushing around him. He had never seen an evacuation of the city from this position before, normally he was in the Command Center or a hallway somewhere or the training room. He didn’t like it. He watches a nurse rush past the foot of his medical bed and notices Jennifer Keller is a few beds away, checking medical charts and dictating to a small squadron of other medical personnel gathered around her. She looks so in command, so calm here, like this was a moment she was born to be in over and over again. It was one of the things he had admired in her and had initially drawn his…intimate attention to her. In truth, it was one of the things still keeping his attention on her even after she’d picked Rodney over him and he had started… and ended a relationship with Amelia. Jennifer moved another bed closer and finally Ronon could just make out her voice above the clatter of supplies and equipment being prepped for removal and the chatter of those making that possible.

“Okay, this one needs to be beamed to the Daedalus as soon as Colonel Caldwell gives the okay to start beaming people aboard,” she says.

A female assistant breaks away from the group and starts prepping the unconscious marine and his bed for transport. Keller and her group move another bed closer to Ronon. Keller picks up the chart clipped to the bed’s footboard and reads it.

“She can wait and go with us to the Alpha Site, but I want her in the first wave through the Stargate, do you understand me,” she looks at the woman standing to her right.

The nurse immediately nods at Jennifer and breaks away to prepare the female patient, an elderly Athosian woman in her fifties that Ronon knew well from his short time living among Teyla’s people and a long time of just knowing Teyla—in the woman’s regular clothes, and not the cool white medical gown she was wearing now, Ronon had heard some members of the Expedition refer to her fondly as Babushka—for departure through the Stargate. Ronon’s eyes linger on the old woman’s sleeping form as Keller moves to the bed next to his. Even though moving quickly, the nurse that had remained behind and the extra male nurse that had broken off the main group as well gently lower the top half of the woman’s bed to lie flat with the bottom half.

“She definitely needs to go to the Daedalus, maybe not the first wave, but the second.”

Ronon’s eyes return to Jennifer. A male doctor breaks off to tend to the mid-twenties female patient, another marine, as Keller and her group move to the foot of Ronon’s bed. Keller snaps up his clipboard with a loud clack and reads his chart.

“Why are we evacuating,” he asks her before she can prattle off an order to one of her subordinates.

Jennifer looks up at him like it was the first time anyone’s spoken to her ever. Probably was the first time anyone’s said anything to her that wasn’t a question about patient or equipment evacuation procedures since the announcement went out over the city-wide.

“I don’t know,” she says then immediately goes back to his chart. “He needs to go to the Daedalus, make sure he’s in the first wave.”

“I’m not leaving.”

Jennifer looks up at him again.

“Ronon,” she cautions.

“No, I’m not leaving.”

“But your wounds—”

“You let Sheppard and me go save Teyla when Michael had her and his injuries were just as bad as mine are now. So were mine then,” he cuts her off.

Keller doesn’t know what to say for a moment, Ronon has almost a point. An ‘almost’ she can’t help but make clear to him.

“You’re wounds aren’t just as bad as either his or yours were back then, they’re worse.”

“You still let him go,” he tells her, “You let me go.”

Keller looks down at his chart again. The face of the watch on her wrist staring back up at her too. Time was not on her side already and she was wasting more of it discussing this with him. Her eyes flit to the medical forms with her own handwriting scrawled all over its lines and in its boxes. His injuries were severe though, although the bullet had missed everything important, abdominal muscles were always slow to heal and even when they received the proper rest and management, they were never the same again. Never as tight, never as effective as they once were…

“Okay,” she finally relents, “you can stay, but if at the last minute it looks bad, you go.”

She looks him dead on.

“No arguments,” she adds as firmly as any drill sergeant could.

Ronon nods his head. He’ll take that. She’ll take it too. She hooks his chart back to the footboard and moves on to the next bed. Some of the group eyes him in amazement; clearly none of them had ever thought or even considered tangling with Jennifer when she was in evacuation mode. Ronon meets their gazes until they look away and then he continues to watch the group of fellow doctors and nurses huddle behind her and other people rush around them and him. No one paying any more attention to him. Fine with him, he didn’t need anyone looking after him or trying to remove him. He was staying put. As Jennifer issues an order to another doctor beside her, she absentmindedly brushes a loose piece of hair that had fallen in front of her eye behind her ear… Peppermint. Ronon suddenly looks away and watches the rest of the commotion going on around him. Still no one was paying any attention to him. Good. Fine with him. He didn’t need anyone looking after him.

* * *

Kenmore rushes through the hallway, making sure to allow others to pass in front of her as the hallway has become quickly crowded but still making sure that she herself wasn’t losing any ground to them either. Sheppard’s following her and Teyla’s lagging just a step behind him.

“Kenmore.”

She doesn’t look behind her to answer him, “What?”

“What is a fallen Ascended being exactly?”

Wow, that was a big step for him. “When Ancients reach a certain point in both physical and mental maturity, they do something called Ascending.”

Even rushing through the hallway dodging people, Sheppard rolls his eyes at her, “Yeah, we know that already.”

“Well, when they ascended, they made up—”

“Rules, yeah we know about that too. There’s a lot of them,” he snaps. She was wasting their time. How stupid did she think they were?

Kenmore dodges around another person and finally makes the last few steps of her way to a transporter, it’s doors open smoothly at her presence, she steps inside, and politely waits—which was something Sheppard hadn’t expected her to do—for him and Teyla to get in with her. Then she turns around and presses her destination button on the city map on the back wall. The transporter doors close.

“Anubis was a Goa’uld and, like most of his kind, he was clever at manipulation. He went to Oma Desala and tricked her into helping him ascend, she fell for it. But as she was helping him, she find out what he was really like and, like I said before, she couldn’t reverse the process by herself, so she got the other Ascended to help her descend him and, also like I said before, they sent him back down to a normal plan of existence half ascended.”

Finally, she was getting to crap they didn’t already know about exactly.

“They kicked him out of the club,” he reconfirms.

The transporter doors open on a new hallway, again, crammed with people going in every direction the hallways can possible allow them to. Kenmore heads straight out and up the hallway and Sheppard and Teyla follow her.

“There was a catch though, he still remembered some of that all knowing knowledge you get when you ascend except he couldn’t re-Ascend and he couldn’t exactly retake his old human form like you can when you’re ascended. Do you know what an Ancient looks like after they Ascend?”

“Yeah, they look like a giant cloud of white light,” Sheppard answers remembering his considerable time, due to a time dilation bubble, with a group of Ancients who later went on to ascend right in front of him and his team and the Expedition’s then leader, Doctor Elizabeth Weir.

They go around a left corner.

“Energy,” she amends him; he let the irritation of her correcting him nipping at the tense muscles at the back of his neck pass, “Well apparently when you get kicked out of the Ascension club, you turn into a giant black cloud of energy. Anubis looks more like he’s made up of shadow than light actually.”

“That would explain why Colonel Sheppard did not see anything come out of Doctor McKay,” Teyla speaks up.

“It does more than just explain it, it confirms it. Sheppard couldn’t have seen a shadow go through the floor with how dark the floors were on the mothership let alone with the way McKay fell to the ground. Anubis could have slipped out Rodney’s back, directly into the floor, and slipped away into the level right below us. And none of us would have been the wiser.”

They make another left turn. And for the first time, John pays attention to where they’re at. It’s not a hallway he normally travels.

“Where are you going,” he finally asks her.

Kenmore stops and looks back at him.

“I am getting my son off this city. The Goa’uld like to take human hosts, the younger the better. That way the host grows up knowing only the Goa’uld way of life. I will not let my son be put in a cage. Especially that one,” she looks at Teyla, “I suggest you do the same for your son too.”

Teyla nods. Kenmore turns and runs up the hallway. Abandoning them for the sake of her child. Sheppard watches Kenmore’s fleeing back dodging in and out of the throng of people. Atlantis’ hallways weren’t normally this crowded; normally there was more warning before such an evacuation as this, like a hiveship in orbit or on approach, replicators, something. Then he turns to his left. But Teyla’s already turned and is running back to the transporter full tilt, dodging agilely in and out of the oncoming traffic too. Abandoning him for the sake of her child as well. He watched her practically fly into the opening transporter.

* * *

The Command Center was no longer a haven of a combination of business as usual and ease. Technicians that had been all around the city at the time of the evacuation call had flash-flooded into the center and were now breaking down what equipment that could be taken with them to either the Alpha site or onboard the Daedalus. As people scramble around him, Woolsey leans over a computer console by the command center’s entrance and checks its technician’s work. The man looks up at Woolsey, waiting. Woolsey looks down at him and nods. The technician, James Robbins who’s been with the Expedition since year one, continues with their procedure. Woolsey walks over to the computer console immediately to the right of the one Robbins was working on, it had already been abandoned. Woolsey leans over it, checks it, and clears it again. Then he turns and gives the still working technician a curt nod as he walks back into his office. The solid clear glass door slides shut behind him as he goes behind his desk and sits down, blocking out the sounds of what it was like to evacuate the city at her heart. But not the sights of it. Everything beyond the short little bridge to his office was all controlled chaos. Teamwork at it’s finest. Groups or duos of people shutting down apparatuses and helping each other to carry them out to a predesignated beaming location for the Daedalus to pick up both the machinery as well as the personnel or down below to the gateroom floor in preparation of the first gate connection to the Alpha site. With a heavy sigh, Richard reaches out to his sleeping laptop and wakes it up by pushing the ‘K’ button. He inputs his personal password and as soon as he’s in, he brings up the city’s main systems and calls up the program that would allow them to sink her. Silently he starts activating it right up to the second to last step. Then he brings the main systems’ window back up again and makes his way to the self-destruct program. There he also types his way up until the second to last step…

…then Woolsey takes a moment at his desk, staring at his computer screen split between the two near final protocols of damnation the city had to offer. John Sheppard walks across the bridge towards Woolsey’s office in a hurried pace, but when he sees Woolsey in a moment of silence through the glass, Sheppard slows down and quietly waits at the door for it to slide back open then walks into the office. And just as obediently and heedful, John Sheppard waits at the door for it to slide closed behind him again. Inside the room was practically deathly silent. Well, at least the Ancients were good at sound proofing.

“This city is always on the brink, isn’t it,” the administrator says without looking up.

Sheppard nods his head, “Yeah.”

“I’ve lost count of the times we’ve nearly lost the city under my command alone. In the first week, we almost lost her to a plant growing out of Doctor Keller’s stomach. Colonel Carter’s command had Replicator’s blowing down her door and Doctor Weir’s first year ended with her having to pretend to nuke the city in order to stop the Wraith from destroying it.”

“She’s survived a lot,” Sheppard tried to boost the man’s morale.

Woolsey continues to stare at his computer screen, clearly not buying it.

“Richard,” Woolsey looks up at Sheppard, never having really heard his name said in a tone of a conversation from one commander to another before, one friend to another. Sheppard finally moves to take the guest chair he normally took when sitting in this room, the one of the two chairs in front of Woolsey’s desk that was on the right, “She’ll survive. She’s been through tougher times than this.”

“John, Anubis is the Goa’uld who all of the other Goa’uld considered his crimes to be so heinous, even to them, that they banded together to force him into exile. He is the Goa’uld who created the Super Soldiers. Even after blowing up his fleet, he survived in our orbit in their remnants. And he’s survived being frozen to his host’s death on an ice planet. He is an enemy, a being, that may well have more access to this city than even Lieutenant Kenmore has. Forgive me, Colonel, but I’ve had to activate these systems far too many times.”

Richard Woolsey stands up, tugs the bottom hem of his uniform jacket neat and crisp and fastidious again, and turns his laptop around to show John Sheppard exactly what he was talking about. Silently Richard gathers up his notebook, comes out from behind his desk, walks past John, out his door, and back across the bridge into the bustling Command Center. John stares at the computer screen. The two systems, glowing in red, are waiting for the final two steps. And they require both commanders’ access codes.

Posted in Season Six- Episode Eight | Tagged Amelia Banks, Ancients, Anubis, Ascended, Chuck Campbell, Colonel Samantha Carter, Colonel Steven Caldwell, Daedalus, Doctor Elizabeth Weir, Goa'uld, James Robbins, Jennifer Johnson, Jennifer Keller, John Sheppard, Lt. Ursula Kenmore, Michael Kenmore, Oma Desala, Replicators, Richard Woolsey, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex, Super Soldiers, Teyla Emmagan, Wraith | Leave a comment

Episode Eight- Home Again, Part Two- Front Cover

Posted on March 1, 2015 by stargateatlantisseasonsix

(Because I screwed up last week by accidentally posting this week’s post last week, I will make the correction by posting what was supposed to be last week’s posting this week. And my Photoshop disc is still missing so I still haven’t been able to download the cover photo for this story so this will be edited in the future when I do find or buy a new Photoshop to go on my new computer.)

Something wicked this way comes…

Home Again

Part Two of Two

[Insert cover photo here, eventually]

After realizing Anubis is headed for the city, the Expedition immediately evacuates all non-essential personnel. Leaving only a skeleton crew to defend her.

It quickly becomes a waiting game and a matter of what to do next. Many options are on the table including interrogating Doctor Rodney McKay even as he’s losing his battle against the severe radiation poisoning that comes with being a host to Anubis.

While Ronon Dex, Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, Doctor Jennifer Keller, and Teyla Emmagan try to protect their friend against Lieutenant Ursula Kenmore and Major Evan Lorne, Atlantis’ fate hangs in a precarious balance. In the end who will be trapped in the city: those that stayed behind to save her or the evil heading her way?

Posted in Season Six- Episode Eight | Tagged Anubis, Jennifer Keller, John Sheppard, Lieutenant Ursula Kenmore, Major Lorne, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex, Teyla Emmagan | Leave a comment

Episode Eight- Home Again, Part Two- Prologue

Posted on February 19, 2015 by stargateatlantisseasonsix

Prologue

The warm natural sunlight from the large windows of the gateroom and the stark ceiling lights above fill the room overwhelmingly with light. A distinct contrast to everything inside of it ranging from the well cared for, jewel-toned bindings of the law books in the elegant bookshelf filling the entire back wall to the people. Richard Woolsey, loosened jaw inside his mouth, and Colonel Steven Caldwell, firmly on the edge of determination, stare in shock at Lieutenant Ursula Kenmore in between Caldwell and an empty guest chair, breathlessly bent over Woolsey’s desk. She’s just burst into Woolsey’s office and blurted out the impossible. There is no way…

“Anubis,” Woolsey asks, “Are you certain?”

He hadn’t moved since she’s burst in. Frozen…

“It’s the only explanation,” she breathes, gripping the top of his desk like it was the last lifesaver on any sinking ship.

Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard and Teyla Emmagan, who had been in pursuit of Lieutenant Kenmore and had stopped on the room’s solid, clear glass threshold, finally step into Woolsey’s office. It feels so distinctly different in here than when John was waiting for Jacob Carter and Selmak to arrive.

“But how,” Woolsey questions, “As I understood it SG-One relocated Anubis and his host to an ice planet, effectively trapping him there. And even when he did somehow manage to escape that planet later on, a mission record filed by Doctor Daniel Jackson claimed that he had encountered a persona of Anubis at what he called the Astral,” he was never going to get used to saying this next word, it just didn’t sound right, “Diner. There he said Oma Desala locked with Anubis in what he called ‘eternal struggle’. He said neither one could win which prevents Oma Desala from helping others to ascend while simultaneously forcing Anubis to concentrate and put all of his focus and power into fighting her back. Preventing him from ever harming the Milky Way or returning there ever again.”

“When the Stargate program was, was,” Kenmore coughs, her lungs using the body’s natural reaction to oxygen deprivation, then continues; her breathing getting somewhere back to normal, “first put into use after Apophis came through it, we would randomly dial gates with addresses Daniel got from the Abydos cartouche. We didn’t know where we were going, that’s why we developed the MALPs. What if someone dialed that ice planet the same way we do, without knowing?”

“Even so, the host’s body—”

“The body wouldn’t have gone more than a few steps from the gate on that planet, it wouldn’t be able to,” she cuts Caldwell off at the pass, “And we all know what the initial flush of the wormhole can do to someone too close to it.”

“Even so, what about Oma Desala in the Astral Diner,” Woolsey voices his last reservation. Even though it didn’t seem like it, he had great faith in the Ancients. Despite their rules of non-interference. Richard had even grown to admire Oma Desala especially over the years of his dealings and receiving the reports of the SG teams, ironically. He liked that she did not hold to those non-interference rules as staunchly as her fellow Ascended Ancients do. And he had great faith in her abilities especially. Even in the mission report Daniel said that the only time the ‘Others’ in the diner actually seemed to pay attention to something other than themselves was when Oma Desala challenged Anubis. They were watching the struggle and Richard Woolsey highly doubted that if Anubis won, the ‘Others’ would let him escape so easily to destroy or harm anyone in the Milky Way… or the Pegasus.

“Daniel also said that the other Ascended helped Oma Desala descend Anubis, but,” Lieutenant Kenmore holds up her finger and glances pointedly at both men, “but they only partially descended him as a punishment for her not being able to obey the rules about non-interference. They let him keep part of his Ascended knowledge and they let him go back into the galaxy. She did too. Not to mention that in that damn diner of theirs, while Daniel was there, while he was talking to Oma Desala, while the Others were all sittin’ around lost in their own personal little la-la lands, Anubis was securing control of Dakara and was getting ready to destroy all life in the Milky Way. None of them, not even the great Oma Desala everybody loves so much, was stopping that. She was too busy chattin’ up Daniel. And it was only when Daniel tried to go after Anubis himself in the diner that Oma Desala finally got a fire under her ass to go after Anubis herself.”

“But Anubis could only assume control of Dakara while using Ba’al, a non-ascended thoroughly human—yes, while still a Goa’uld—being, as a middle man,” Richard’s former attorney side counters.

“Ba’al wasn’t the one commanding the Kull warriors on Dakara. He was with Sam and Jacob. At that point, Anubis was the one moving all the pawns around the board,” Woolsey eyes her as she goes on, “And contrary to popular opinion, Ancients, even ascended, are not all powerful,” a tense silence falls, “I think we know who won the struggle now.”

Her own horrific final imagining doesn’t have to be envisioned by the seated men. She’s pled her case well enough. Caldwell jumps up.

“I’ll take the Daedalus and go blow that mothership apart.”

Kenmore straightens up and turns to him.

“That won’t work. It’s a Ha’Tak class mothership. Our ships can’t return the firepower and our weapons can’t penetrate the shields. Anyways, how do you think that lockdown happened in the first place? He survived out in orbit until another ship came close enough for him to hitch a ride. Just blowing the thing up isn’t going to be enough. It wasn’t enough then. And I doubt it’s magically become sure enough now. Ori not withstanding.”

“But you guys said she’s dead in the water.”

“Not entirely. We took out the tanks, where do you think all of that power’s gone now?”

“But there’s no one to power it,” Steven wasn’t about to give up on the idea of such an easy solution as a massive onslaught of pretty damn decent firepower.

Woolsey stands up.

“What about Colonel Ellis and Selmak,” he asks, “The other symbiotes?”

Kenmore doesn’t have to look away from Caldwell in order to answer Woolsey, “Are they still heading for the Milky Way?”

Caldwell reaches up to his earpiece and activates it.

“Daedalus, this is Caldwell. Respond.”

“This is the Daedalus. Colonel, what’s the problem,” came a female Tech’s voice almost instantly.

“Is General Carter’s tel’tak still leaving the Pegasus Galaxy?”

“Let me check, Sir,” there was a pause, the silence was edgier than a wait like that usually was, “Yes Sir, it is.”

“And is the Apollo still escorting it?”

Another wait on the tech’s line—John wanted to step in and say something but the air was too thick to, he wasn’t sure what reception he’d get—then, “Yes Sir, she is.”

“Then let them go,” Kenmore says, “Anubis was heading to the Pegasus, not away from it.”

Caldwell nods at her then says to the Tech, “Alright, keep an eye on both ships and tell me if either one’s flight paths change in the slightest for as long as we can detect them.”

Caldwell breaks his earpiece’s connection to his ship in orbit.

“What about the personnel we sent to help Colonel Ellis load those tanks before he left the city,” Woolsey asks. Thinking of the safety of those under his command and care.

“Have any been to see Keller? The last time Anubis attacked the SGC…,” Kenmore leads.

“His hosts got sick,” Woolsey nods and activates his own earpiece, “Woolsey to Doctor Keller.”

“Keller here,” the small radio emitted her voice.

“Have any of the personnel that helped Colonel Ellis load the symbiotes reported to the medical wards yet?”

“No.”

“They would have shown symptoms by now,” Kenmore tells him, “If anything they’d have an elevated white blood count that be doing something to them.”

He nods at her and returns his attention to the blind distance he normally did when he was talking to the little device hooked over his right ear.

“If they do, Doctor, inform me at once,” he instructs.

“I will,” Keller replied sounding confused but undertaking the order anyway.

Woolsey breaks the piece’s connection then turns to Kenmore, “Why would Anubis be heading to the Pegasus Galaxy?”

That was a tricky one, but Kenmore already had a thought for it.

“We kicked his ass and basically everybody back home knows we’ve found Atlantis, the Lost City of the Ancients. It would figure he’d want to go someplace where he figure’d we’re just a mindless bunch of humans running around someplace we couldn’t possibly figure out how to use properly unlike him. He might think he can rebuild and replan his empire from here. Easily.”

Sheppard finally has to step in, “Whoa, whoa, wait. Are you saying you think there’s more Goa’uld in the Pegasus?”

Kenmore turns to him, “Anubis isn’t exactly a Goa’uld.”

“Then what is he,” he asks.

“A fallen Ascended being,” she tells him.

Sheppard stares at her and swallows hard.

Posted in Season Six- Episode Eight | Tagged Abydos Cartouche, Ancients, Anubis, Apollo, Apophis, Ascended, Astral Diner, Ba'al, Colonel Abe Ellis, Colonel Samantha Carter, Colonel Steven Caldwell, Daedalus, Dakara, Daniel Jackson, Goa'uld, Ha'tak, Jacob Carter, Jennifer Keller, John Sheppard, Kull warriors, Lieutenant Ursula Kenmore, MALP, Milky Way Galaxy, Oma Desala, Ori, Others, Pegasus Galaxy, Richard Woolsey, Selmak, SG teams, SG-1, SGC, symbiotes, Teyla Emmagan | Leave a comment

Mid-season Hiatus

Posted on February 13, 2015 by stargateatlantisseasonsix

Yes, the title of this post is right. In keeping with treating this fan-fiction blog as close to a true continuation of the television series, a hiatus is called for at the mid-season mark. Two weeks. Last week I didn’t post and this is the post for this week which means that next week will be the start of the first story of the second half of the Stargate Atlantis’ Sixth Season.

Normally, I’d do a re-watch of Atlantis episodes during this two-week gap so I invite anyone and everyone to go back and read their favorite chapters of the stories so far. Have fun, enjoy, and “tune in” next week!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Episode Seven- Home Again, Part One- Acknowledgements

Posted on January 30, 2015 by stargateatlantisseasonsix

Acknowledgements

I guess I don’t already have to tell that there was a lot of SG-1 love going on in this story… But I couldn’t help it. With introducing a character that has her roots in SG-1, I eventually found myself wanting a story that had its roots in it too. A crossover sort of thing. I wanted an SG-1 villain to come wreak havoc in the lost city just to see how it would take the people of Atlantis out of their comfort zone (and a little bit of I thought the Atlantis Season Two episode “Critical Mass” had great potential but didn’t go far enough). And in mulling over the numerous villains SG-1 has had over the course of ten years and two, almost three (take a hint studios) movies, I immediately eliminated those that I couldn’t fathom a possible reason for them going to the Lost City (i.e. any Ba’als that might still be out there), but then I narrowed it down to either the Ori or one Goa’uld in particular. But when I was trying to come up with story ideas with either one, the Goa’uld just made my mind take off. Sometimes the stories just write themselves. And when I thought of this story, I found out that there was a way to bring back one of my favorite, if not my ‘the’ favorite, recurring SG-1 character for help and backup. I couldn’t resist, I love Jacob Carter/Selmak and I love Carmen Argenziano. So “Atlantis Only” people just bare with me, like I said there’ll be a lot of SG-1 love going out here, probably much more than Atlantis kudos. But I’m going to do my thanks in order of story chronology so… First of all I’d like to thank Damian Kindler and everyone involved with the making of Atlantis’ Season Two “Trinity” episode for what it did for Ronon’s character, his past, and his memories and for the introduction of his commanding officer, Kell. It helped a lot to be able to elaborate on Ronon’s thoughts and feelings about Jacob Carter and Jacob’s relationship with Lieutenant Kenmore. Then thanks to the onset photographers (I’m sorry I don’t actually know your name(s)) for their capturing of David Hewlett’s portrayal of Rodney in the Atlantis episodes “Progeny” (Season Three) and “Lifeline” (Season Four), there are moments here that contributed to the appearance of Rodney in emotionally sympathetic moments; for the capturing of Jason Momoa as Ronon in the Season Four episode “Adrift”, thank you both for capturing a side of Ronon we don’t normally get to see (it helps a lot in a mostly silent character like him to show the private moments and allowing for expansion on that); and for the capturing of Joe Flanigan’s performance as Sheppard in the Third Season episode “Tao of Rodney”, especially the moment when Rodney collapses in John’s quarters and the look on Sheppard’s face as he bends over Rodney is to me one of the most pinnacle moments of how that character leads and views his team, it’s the measure of the man. Thank you. Thanks also goes out to Ryan “Stitch” Nixon for his help on knowing the heft of Ronon’s gun. Knowing someone who works with these weapons and actually gets his hands on them really helps for accurate information like this, it always helps to be accurate and not disappoint the fans of this character and this weapon who know this stuff like the back of their hands (I know who these Gateworlders are, it was great talking with you and I hope I represented y’all right, if not let me know on Gateworld.net). Thanks to the set designers and the people who worked on the SG-1 episode “Off the Grid” for what a Goa’uld computer console and “computer room” looks like thanks to the character of Nerus going back to Ba’al and being put back to work basically immediately. Thanks to the Stargate Wiki and all those who contribute to it for the identification of the Stargate Teams of Cheyenne Mountain, especially SG-25 as the all Army team of the SGC. The information in my personal collection of everything Stargate didn’t have this so I’m really grateful you and your contributors do. Thanks everyone. My appreciation also goes out to Carl Binder for writing the Stargate Atlantis First Season episode “Before I Sleep” for that moment of Weir telling Rodney how he died the first “time” and Sheppard ripping on Rodney for it. And to actors David Hewlett and Joe Flanigan for their performances and embodiment of these characters in that moment and made it both amusing and quintessentially those characters’ friendship. I also appreciate regular Wikipedia for what the definition of “point blank range” actual is. I’d also like to thank those that contributed to this article on the site for its accuracy. It was really interesting and informative. My next thanks goes to Wray Douglas, Michael S. McLean, James Tichenor, Diane Panozzo, Michelle Comens, and Shannon Gurney as well as Rainmaker Digital Pictures, Northwest Imaging & FX, and Image Engine Design Inc., basically everyone even remotely associated with the special effects of the Fourth Season SG-1 episode “Double Jeopardy” for the scene in which Android Carter takes out the mothership computer crystals and that moment showing what color those sort of Goa’uld mothership forceshields look like. There have been so many Goa’uld shields of so many different colors over the show’s run that I just wanted it to be right and in keeping with canon established by the show. Special and huge gratitude goes out to Damian Kindler again for his writing of the Stargate Atlantis Season 2 episode “The Long Goodbye” for one of the funnest episodes of that season as well as the entire series that didn’t actually include Rodney on Sheppard’s team and making it possible for me to have all the references to this episode I’ve made in this story and for helping and allowing me to take Team Atlantis (at least part of them) up against Anubis and Rodney. Thank you so much, really there isn’t enough appreciation and gratitude to give to you here for so such a wonderful episode. And thanks to K. Stoddard Hayes for compiling the article “The A to Z of Teal’c” in Stargate SG-1/Atlantis Magazine Issue #10 in which the letter S is represented by the word Shol’va and showing whether the word is capitalized or not. I’ve seen it done so many different ways that I’m going to take yours as the definitive. I am also much obliged to the set workers Bridget McGuire, Ricardo Spinacè, Mark Davidson, Robert Davidson, Derick McLeod, David W. Sinclair, John Hamilton, Kaayla Ryane-Valleau, and writers Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie of the Season Six SG-1 episode “Descent” for helping me make sure that the crystal slats in the computer panels in the hallways of a Goa’uld mothership were accurate descriptions here in this story, especially for who the Goa’uld bad guy turns out to be. And thank you to my friend Pam McLoed for helping me figure out the timing of a belly wound and whether or not it worked in this story, your medical skills here were invaluable. Thank you. I’d also like to thank Brad Wright, the writer(s) of the Fifth Season Episode “The Shrine”. Even though it is a Rodney McKay heavy episode and in my opinion the best Rodney episode of the entire series, it is also an episode that reveals so much of the personality and personal character of Jennifer Keller and speaks to the way she thinks and how deeply she feels for Rodney. It’s a beautiful episode for both characters and I think it’s one that will and should always be a part of them. Thanks you so much for it. I assure you, I’m blowing a kiss to you for that one. I have to give out a lot of lovin’ to the SG-1 Season Eight episode “Lockdown”’s writers Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, again, and everyone associated with that for those moments I have Lieutenant Kenmore recall and for the inspiration that this episode was. Really, when thinking of an SG-1 villain to bring over to Atlantis for a bit of fun and interest, I couldn’t think of anyone better than the infamous Anubis character. What better than a castdown Ascended being to wreak havoc in the Lost City of the Ancestors? And when I saw this episode repeating one day on TV, I knew how to do it and bring back such a great friend to the Stargate family as well in Carmen Argenziano’s beloved character of General Jacob Carter/Tok’ra elder Selmak. Thank you all so much. And thanks to Robert C. Cooper for writing the SG-1 Season Nine episode “Origin” as well as all the cast and crew for their work on it. It was a great new story for the Stargate franchise and for SG-1 specifically. And it helped a lot to establish the little things Kenmore knew from her time at the SGC and helped be a great transition thing for her mind to flicker to in her moment of realization. It was awesome. And as always my final thank you goes to my Mom for her love and support and for being the first person to give paper and pencil and telling me to go have an adventure. I’m so happy and excited you come along for the ride each and every time Mommy as always my first editor. I love you. And I’m so grateful for and to you.

Posted in Season Six- Episode Seven | Tagged "Adrift", "Before I Sleep", "Critical Mass", "Descent", "Double Jeopardy", "Lifeline", "Lockdown", "Off the Grid", "Origin", "Progeny", "Tao of Rodney", "The A to Z of Teal'c", "The Long Goodbye", "The Shrine", "Trinity", Android Samantha Carter, Anubis, Ba'al, Brad Wright, Bridget McGuire, Carl Binder, Carmen Argenziano, Cheyenne Mountain, Damian Kindler, David Hewlett, David W. Sinclair, Derick McLeod, Diane Panozzo, Doctor Elizabeth Weir, Gateworld.net, Goa'uld, Ha'tak, Image Engine Design Inc., Jacob Carter, James Tichenor, Jason Momoa, Jennifer Keller, Joe Flanigan, Joe Mallozzi, John Hamilton, John Sheppard, K. Stoddard Hayes, Kaayla Ryane-Valleau, Lieutenant Ursula Kenmore, Mark Davidson, Michael S. McLean, Michelle Comens, Nerus, Northwest Imaging and FX, Ori, Pam McLeod, Paul Mullie, Rainmaker Digital Pictures, Ricardo Spinace, Robert C. Cooper, Robert Davidson, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex, Ryan "Stitch" Nixon, Selmak, SG-1, SG-25, SGC, Shannon Gurney, Shol'va, Stargate SG-1/Atlantis Magazine, Stargate Wiki, Teal'c, Wikipedia, Wray Douglas | Leave a comment

Episode Seven- Home Again, Part One- Chapter Ten

Posted on January 23, 2015 by stargateatlantisseasonsix

Chapter Ten

Atlantis’ medical ward during the day was among the most angelic sights the city had to offer. At one end of the ward’s main room stood a giant floor-almost-to-the-ceiling stained glass window representation that mimicked the appearance of a Zero Point Module standing on its flat part. The bright, brilliant sunlight outside shooting beams of its warm intensity through the outskirting pieces of yellow glass, projecting undiluted rays of honey-colored light into the area complete with accenting spears of amber. Where the glass was clear, it allows streams of pure light that highlighted parts of the teal walls and added to a whole sense of warmth and oceanic hominess to the whole place. A sense of comfort and safety.

Earth-made chrome grated shelving lined the walls here and there and the not-exactly-comfy-looking-but-actually-are-comfy Ancient medical beds were placed about every ten feet or so and when the space had run out of Ancient medical beds but definitely not space, the Atlantis Expedition had filled in with their own Earth-made medical beds of even-less-comfy-looking chrome metal frames and thoroughly-fluffy-looking white mattresses and crisp white bed linens. There was the threat of the beds with their sharp edges and sharply geometric shapes and angles making the area look sterile and unwelcoming, but the beautiful clean Tahitian ocean teal color of the walls, the red, not quite terracotta, clay color of the stone tile floors, and the imbued happiness of the sunlight coming in through the giant stained glass window’s honeycomb of colors more than abolished the threat and staved it off.

Kenmore lazily walks through the medical ward with her hands in her pockets, watching the details of the massive floor tiles in front of her pass by beneath her. Her eyes admired the rust-colored alien granite that bore a striking resemblance to the rust-colored granites that came out of Italian quarries back on Earth. It was scuffed now by the ten thousand years of dust and disuse that the city had undergone while “buried” beneath her original planet’s ocean until the Expedition arrived and then the almost six years of continual semi-emergency use the Expedition was. Some tiles were cut into large wedges, others into giant squares, and others cut into other polyhedron shapes as the floor’s geometric design dictated. Each side of each shape outlined by strips of what looked like silver, but time and the Expedition had done a good scuff job on those as well, so there was actually no telling whether or not the stripes really were silver or even genuinely metal for that matter anymore. Her eyes watched her boot lay itself down across the width of a silver border strip. It looked so scuffed that her body almost felt as though it should register a crunch emanating from the planted foot. But it didn’t and she took another step, her mind elsewhere.

“Lieutenant Kenmore,” she hears her name called from somewhere up ahead of her.

Kenmore stops and looks up. Teyla walks up to her.

“How is your arm,” the Athosian woman asks.

Kenmore touches her shirt where the wrapping still around her shoulder joint is hidden underneath and gingerly rolls her arm in its socket.

“It’s a little tight yet, but it’s healing,” she answers.

Teyla nods. That was good to know. She had not mentioned it before, but back in the Goa’uld mothership’s computer control room, she had uttered a silent prayer in her mind that the Lieutenant’s Ancestor DNA had blessed the woman with as swift a healing process as the Wraith had. And considering that two of her teammates were responsible for the injury: one for instigating the act, and the other for actually committing it…

“I have just come from seeing Doctor McKay.” She considerately used Rodney’s more formal title around Kenmore, acknowledging that the Lieutenant did so because she did not know the others quite as intimately as Teyla did. The Lieutenant did not yet consider them more than just co-workers where Teyla considered them as close a family as she has ever had in her life.

“How is he,” Kenmore asks.

“He is still very sick.” The Athosian’s face and voice downcast.

“Yeah, somebody should have told him that a Goa’uld symbiote releases a toxin into the host’s body if the symbiote doesn’t leave willingly.”

Teyla nods, but catches the downcast look on Kenmore’s face and in her voice as well. She was genuinely sorry that Rodney had been the one to suffer through this. Even being in the Lieutenant’s company for such a short time, Teyla already knew the young woman was very much like John Sheppard. Teyla’s acute hearing could detect the slight intonations in her words, the minor distinct variance in her diction that signaled the Stargate Command soldier was thinking that if she had been the one that the Goa’uld had infected, things might have gone much differently on this mission. That her Ancestor advanced healing would have been able to deal with its vacating toxin, the ensuing sickness. That Ronon may not have been shot. That no others would have been in any greater danger than they had been crawling through the ducts of the Goa’uld vessel and running down it’s corridors… That the Lieutenant should have taken Rodney’s place and kept the others safe. But Teyla also senses something else in the droop of the Lieutenant’s shoulders, the fact that the Lieutenant was letting so much of her feelings show; it was not like her.

“What is it,” Teyla asks her.

“I’ve just come from seeing off General Carter, he’s taking the symbiotes back to the Milky Way. We got the DNA results back from the symbiote I killed. According to our records, he wasn’t a Goa’uld, he was a Tok’ra named Malek. He was a very proud defender of his people… a very close friend,” the Lieutenant paused, feeling the loss deeply as Teyla could only imagine. Teyla had never actually killed a friend in order to save them; came close once, John during the assassins, but she had never actually pulled the trigger, “That must be why he came out to me, but then he… that screaming. I’ll never forget that screaming. He was being tortured, but a symbiote can’t take control of another symbiote. It doesn’t work that way. It’s not physically possible.”

Ah, that was it. Teyla’s natural maternal instinct came forth in the understanding calm set of her face. She was indeed a lot like John Sheppard. Rather than embrace the feelings she let show through, Lieutenant Kenmore chose to find shelter in some other aspect that presented itself in her… and hiding her feelings there. The Athosian lifts her head with a single inhale of breath then let’s her head fall back to its normal position. Yes. She understood now, it was not being downcast necessarily at all the sad news accompanying them from their mission back to Atlantis so much as “being confused by what had happened.” It was the Lieutenant and General Carter that knew more than the rest of them the possible circumstances in dealing with the Goa’uld. Teyla puts a hand on Kenmore’s shoulder. Kenmore takes Teyla’s hand off her shoulder, politely but firmly enough to let Teyla know never to do that again. Teyla accepts the warning.

“They had all been abused and tortured,” the Lieutenant goes on, “When we pulled the first tank into the hallway to take it to the gate, they all came out of the walls. They must have sensed Selmak’s presence so close to the ship and those that could crawl out of the tanks did and hid in the walls until we got on board and they could see who we were.”

“How many were there?”

“We lost count at ten thousand.”

The shock overwhelms Teyla.

“So, so many,” she breathes. The only time she had ever heard of so many people was Earth. And for that many to be put through what Lieutenant Kenmore says they were… Her mind could not fathom it.

Kenmore nods.

“There were so many in a tank that there wasn’t enough environment to nourish them properly so Jacob borrowed a few similar tanks from the Daedalus since she also ferries people from both races back and forth, and that gave them all enough room. But just barely. A few are already starting to heal themselves, but others are still too sick. They’ve been given a sort of jerry-rigged version of their own individual tanks from what we could scramble together on the Daedalus.

“Woolsey let us put one of the symbiotes into a volunteer though. Seeing as how they were so weak, if it was a Goa’uld, it wouldn’t have been strong enough to pose much of a threat so he allowed it. It turned out it wasn’t a Goa’uld, it was another Tok’ra, Zarin. And according to her, they were all Tok’ra. We got a name count. Some had disappeared years ago and others we thought have been dead for years, like her. She was too ill to get out much more than that, but that was more than we could have expected or hoped for.”

The Lieutenant’s mind wouldn’t stop wreaking havoc with her though; she looks down at the floor again, thinking it through, “The Goa’uld must have put the dead in sarcophagi and healed them then the symbiotes were put into those tanks and made to watch their hosts die,” it sounded plausible to Teyla’s ears and thinking, but the Lieutenant shakes it off and looks back up at her, “Selmak doesn’t think any of them are really ever going to recover from this, physically barely. And mentally… never. They were all prisoners of war for far too long.”

“Do they know who did this to them,” Teyla asks. Picking up on Kenmore’s urgency by how much emotion she was skipping over, all the feelings she was hiding in her determination to figure out the machinations of how the Tok’ra symbiotes came to harm.

“No, they’re either too weak to tell us or too afraid. I’ve never seen the Tok’ra, any Tok’ra, this scared of a Goa’uld before, never.” There’s still the look of complete confusion keeping Kenmore’s neck muscles taut and the utter lack of being able to comprehend any of it spread all over her face. Except in her eyes. In there Teyla can see such deep feelings threaten to show much, much more than the Lieutenant was probably ever willing to show to anyone other than herself in total privacy. There was great fear and pain. Her friends had suffered much and that they were so deeply scarred, and would remain so for the rest of their as, Teyla understood it, very long lives, was a personal anguish that would cut deep… perhaps too deep.

There’s a moment of uncomfortable silence between them as the Lieutenant tries yet again to figure it all out, to put every part of this puzzle together, and Teyla allowing her the time, silence, and patience to make the attempt again… Suddenly Kenmore throws a smile on her face. Again, how so much like John Sheppard.

“So how’s Specialist Dex? I heard that Doctor McKay might make it out of here before he does. That’s gotta be pissing him off. I expect he’s tearing the roof off his side of the wing.”

Teyla’s surprised that the Lieutenant would change the subject to Ronon and with such a jovial and friendly spirit as well. But…

“Actually, he has been quite quiet. I think the situation was too emotionally taxing for him,” Teyla informs her.

“Yeah, he did get really emotional during the mission.”

“I meant at the end of the mission,” Teyla tries to lead her on, seriously.

But Kenmore quirks her head at Teyla, totally confused but for a different reason than before, “Huh?”

Before Teyla can speak again, Doctor Jennifer Keller, Atlantis’ Chief of Medicine, walks up to the two women from the same direction Teyla had come from.

“Hey Doc,” Kenmore greets.

“I’ve got Rodney’s test results,” Jennifer says, a slight quaver in her voice that indicated she still had a hell of a time dealing with her boyfriend being injured on missions even after being together for almost a year now. Our anniversary is coming up soon…

“And,” Teyla inquires gently.

“It wasn’t symbiote poisoning. From what I can tell there are no signs of a symbiote having ever been in Rodney.”

“What? But he shot Ronon and Lieutenant Kenmore.”

“Are you telling me that was all really Doctor McKay?”

“No,” Teyla chides Kenmore, “Doctor McKay would not harm anyone.” She looks to Jennifer for confirmation.

But Jennifer looks like a wounded deer more than she ever has here, “All I can tell you is that we found no signs that a symbiote was ever in him.” And that meant that she had no clue how to help her lover, her closest friend, all she could do was treat his symptoms when what she really needed to do, what she wanted most to be able to do, was cure their cause. He shouldn’t look like that in a medical bed. Our anniversary is coming up soon. He shouldn’t, he shouldn’t… Suddenly the image that’s been haunting the fringes of her memory comes floating back into her mind’s eye’s view: Rodney sitting in a chair in the middle one of the empty operating rooms, still part of the medical ward but located deeper, closer to the core of Atlantis interior sections. Wearing a bathrobe with blue squares outlined by white stripes on it and a brown-Army green t-shirt. His head shifting from side to side in lazy seeming, uncontrollable movements. His mouth slackened, almost as though drool were about to come dribbling out of its drooping slightly more than its other side corner. His speech broken and childlike. Not being able to remember his own name. And becoming so agitated, so angry with her telling him that he’d missed the “Doctor” part of it and him telling her, his head movements, his tortured agonized facial contortions, seeking solace in his hand rubbing against the side of his neck, that he wasn’t Doctor McKay anymore because he wasn’t smart anymore. Telling her how he used to be the smartest person in the world. She told him they were trying to fix that. No, no. No, you can’t. You can’t. You can’t. She’d relented, told him okay, asked him what he was supposed to say next. But he was already too agitated, too far gone… Where, where’d John go?… John!… Where are you John?… John! She tried to tell him she was his friend, she was right there with him. But he was already too far gone. Past needing her help. Past her being able to help him period. Suffering from a parasite nesting in his brain that mimicked the effects of Alzheimer’s. And now… God damn it, he can’t even call for John. He can’t call for me. He can’t call for anyone. He’s in trouble and he isn’t even conscious to tell us when something helps or takes him even farther away… from me.

“But the symbiote should still be inside of him. John said he never saw anything leave Rodney’s body and he was by Rodney’s side the entire time after we entered the control room.” Teyla couldn’t believe this, what Jennifer is saying.

Jennifer shrugs, but only half of her was in it. The other half was spending its effort in concern. There had to be a way. Had to be a cure.

“There’s nothing there,” she says. But there should be, what had she missed? What test had she screwed up on that was now condemning Rodney to pain and suffering?

“But what about the change in his voice and his eyes,” Teyla presses on, “Both Lieutenant Kenmore and Ronon said his eyes glowed.”

“The Goa’uld can speak with the host’s voice and don’t have to do the eye thing. They’re just parlor tricks,” Kenmore tells her.

“He has no memory, is that not an effect of the Goa’uld?” Teyla Emmagan is not about to give up. Rodney, of all her friends, was not a murderer either attempted or otherwise.

Kenmore stares at Teyla then past her. A memory flashes through her head of one of the missions that she didn’t have to be off-world to be a part of. A time when a Goa’uld had invaded the SGC using a visiting Russian scientist as a host after abandoning its original Russian host, a cosmonaut that the Goa’uld had attained in Earth’s own orbit. She remembered Daniel Jackson talking to the man in a sickbed in the SGC’s own infirmary while she was given her mandatory regular physical behind a screen of navy blue curtain and thick steel rod frame. Even though their voices were quiet, in the silence of the practically empty room, they carried she’d figured much more than either one had either known or intended. They had been discussing the man’s illness, which seemed to be contagious, and the man asked Daniel to deliver a message to the man’s sister. Kenmore had thought it a rather sad notion as she had bent over in the process of tying one of her bootlaces after the nurse had noticed it had unraveled itself loose.

“No, Rodney should remember everything he did. The Goa’uld symbiote doesn’t suppress the awareness of its host. Rodney should be able to remember everything he did,” Jennifer answers frustration seeping into her words. What few moments he was awake, she had pressured Rodney for anything he could tell her about his condition. But he had nothing. She had nothing except useless information from the SGC’s records about the Goa’uld.

“No,” Teyla still wasn’t giving up, “Rodney would not harm anyone.”

Kenmore remembers that the man had become very sick due to the Goa’uld, the SGC personnel had been informed of later. In fact, everyone that had played host to the Goa’uld had become ill. The shorter the time the lighter the illness, memory loss and a rise in their white blood count, but the longer the time, the Russian’s whole immune system had been affected. She flashes back to another of her required physicals during that time; Samantha Carter, apparently still unaware that no matter how low you’d try to speak in that damn concrete room you’re voice carried, telling Daniel on the other side of the room and behind a halfway drawn light blue curtain dangling from the ceiling between Daniel’s medical bed and the Russian’s, again it did nothing for any actual privacy for them, that Doctor Brightman— the temporary fill-in for Janet Frasier until they could get hold of a permanent replacement for the beloved Doc—couldn’t do anything more for the Russian other than treating his symptoms and making him as comfortable as they possibly could in his final hours.

“Parlor tricks,” Kenmore says distantly.

“What,” Teyla asks looking over at the Lieutenant. Jennifer and she’s discussion had been so two-sided that the sudden vocalization of the third party present had been rather startling.

But as Teyla and Keller stare at Kenmore, the Athosian quickly realizes that the Lieutenant, her expression and focus distant, was not necessarily talking to them anymore. Teyla begins to wonder whether or not the Lieutenant is even present with them. Kenmore ignores their looks, absorbed by her own memories. She flashes on what the Goa’uld that had taken control of the SGC looked like, a floating whispy, black cloud. A black cloud that could go through walls and floors. Kenmore turns around and begins to walk away from the other women. Teyla’s eyebrows furrow. She calls after her.

“Lieutenant Kenmore?”

Kenmore flashes, in succession, on the many in that mission that the Goa’uld had shot in order to attain his goal: getting back to his homeworld in order to reassemble his armies and reforge his throne, to rebuild a body for himself because he could no longer take human form. Kenmore breaks into a jog as she tries to talk herself out of her conclusion.

“Naw, he’s dead,” Kenmore tries to wave off her ideas.

Her mind flashes on the memory of the repossessed ailing Russian scientist walking through the activated Stargate from her view in the SGC Command Center as General O’Neill lays on the floor, freed from being the Goa’uld’s previous host. Sam and Teal’c crowd around him as he reawakens and Sam tells him that she managed to redirect the gate from the Goa’uld’s destination to a frozen planet.

Kenmore’s mind even lights on what must have happened to the scientist afterward, transported to a frozen planet with no protection except for some thin hospital pajamas. The man couldn’t have made it more than a few steps from the Stargate before the cold brought him to his knees and froze him there.

Suddenly, Kenmore’s mind flashes on the time when Teal’c and Cameron Mitchell running through the halls of the SGC carrying a round Ancient device with a blue crystal on the top making the whole thing look like a giant, metallic blue genie’s bottle and screaming for people to get out of their way. She’d braced herself against the wall just across from the stairway leading up into the Command Center. Following the commotion with her eyes. The Stargate activating and the two men hurling the device into the initial flush of the wormhole, destroying it, then Mitchell and Teal’c clasping forearms in what T referred to as a warrior’s handshake in celebration. The mission in which Daniel and Vala had discovered, with the help of putting their consciousnesses into the bodies of two other people via two black stones plugged into that device, the Ori.

She imagines vividly the frozen planet’s Stargate activating from some random dialing in the same way that the SGC did their own exploration of the gate network. She imagines the flush engulfing the scientist’s fallen body, destroying it, and then sucking back in on itself, unknowingly releasing the indestructible black cloud from what remained of its host’s body. Then it taking a new host from whatever exploring group that had come through next and passing into the wormhole with them when they leave the frozen inhospitable planet… Escaping… until the next time Daniel met him… The Ancients don’t kill no matter what— Kenmore breaks into a full tilt run. Yelling at anyone in her way.

“Move! Move! Make a hole!”

People dive out of her way as she runs through Atlantis’s corridors— They only contain. Upon hearing the shouts, he couldn’t quite tell from who, and seeing people dart off to the sides like the Red Sea was parting, Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard’s military muscle memory kicks in immediately. He slams himself flat against the wall. It’s a moment before his mind can even process what was going on. He sees Kenmore barreling past. Shouting for people to move their asses.

“Move! Move! Move!”

John stares. Wait, what? Why?

Then he sees Teyla. She chances a glance at him as she too races past him as fast as she can. Teyla never raced, except when Wraith were after them and even then it was only when she was bringing up the rear and the rest of them had a healthy lead on her… The look on her face. Her cheeks are tight. Her brow is tense and furrowed. Concern. Worry. And her eyes.

“Lieutenant Kenmore,” she calls disappearing down the rest of the hall.

Aw crap, he races after her.

Finally Kenmore breaks into the gateroom. She runs for the stairs and makes the first flight easily. She trips on the second and desperately begins to pull and claw her way up them into the Command Center. Behind her, just breaking into the gateroom themselves are Teyla and Sheppard in pursuit. They watch their fifth team member desperately crawl up the second set of stairs. Bad. This is bad. Sheppard shouts at her.

“What is it?”

Kenmore ignores him. She makes it to the top of the stairs and regains her footing in the Command Center. She runs through the darkened room of shocked people, across the bridge, and bursts into Woolsey’s office. The glass door had already automatically opened at her frantic approach at the start of the bridge. Richard Woolsey and Colonel Steven Caldwell, who had been talking, jump in their seats at her arrival. She barrels to Woolsey’s desk and gets her hands on its surface as Sheppard and Teyla are coming across the bridge.

“It’s Anubis,” Kenmore rushes out breathlessly, “Anubis did it. And he’s still there.”

Woolsey and Caldwell stare at her. Mouths hanging agape slightly. Bodies suddenly stiff from the shock of her entrance and tightened by her words. And all Richard Woolsey can think of is Bad. This is bad.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Posted in Season Six- Episode Seven | Tagged Alzheimer's, Ancient Communications Device, Ancient Communications stones, Ancients, Anubis, assassins, Athosian, Brig. General Jack O'Neill, Col. Cameron Mitchell, Colonel Samantha Carter, Colonel Steven Caldwell, Daedalus, Daniel Jackson, DNA, Doctor Brightman, Earth, Goa'uld, Ha'tak, Jacob Carter, Janet Frasier, Jennifer Keller, John Sheppard, Lieutenant Ursula Kenmore, Malek, Milky Way Galaxy, Ori, Red Sea, Richard Woolsey, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex, sarcophagi, Selmak, SGC, symbiote, Tahitian, Teal'c, Teyla Emmagan, Tok'ra, Vala Mal Doran, Wraith, Zarin, ZPM | Leave a comment

Publishing correction

Posted on January 15, 2015 by stargateatlantisseasonsix

For some reason, I hadn’t realized that the posting of Chapter Eight didn’t go through yesterday and have ended up accidentally publishing Chapter Nine before Chapter Eight for the story “Home Again, Part One”. My apologies for the confusion.

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stargateatlantisseasonsix

Episode Eight- Homecoming, Part Two- Chapter Four

Episode Eight- Home Again, Part Two- Chapter Three

Episode Eight- Home Again, Part Two- Chapter Two

Episode Eight- Home Again, Part Two- Chapter One

Episode Eight- Home Again, Part Two- Front Cover

Episode Eight- Home Again, Part Two- Prologue

Mid-season Hiatus

Episode Seven- Home Again, Part One- Acknowledgements

Episode Seven- Home Again, Part One- Chapter Ten

Publishing correction

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