Fic: Cross Training, Part One
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis, Stargate: SG-1, The Sentinel
Title: Cross Training, Part One
Author: Quasar
Rating: R
Pairing: John/Rodney, Jim/Blair
Date written: November 2006
Length: ~26,000 words (whole story)
Summary: Explorations and discoveries, a wormhole to Earth, a spy, a new drug, attempted escape, daring rescue. Also, some schmoop, a hint of smut, some silliness, and lots of talking over food.
Notes: This is a sequel to my stories Cross Product and Cross Multiplication; read those first or you will be very confused. This one was also written for NaNoWriMo, so don't be surprised by editorial insufficiency.
John's first week as a member of the Atlantis expedition was hectic. They might not be in contact with Earth to file paperwork, but they had to be ready to file it at any time. Weir listed him as a civilian consultant, with a pay rate three times what he'd been making in San Diego and a very nice retirement package that he'd probably never get to take advantage of. Room, board, and medical benefits were included as well, which made John smirk. He composed a resignation email (only subtly insulting by the time he finished the third draft), filled out various electronic forms (paper was very much at a premium), and discussed his record and his experience with Weir, O'Neill, Caldwell, and Ellison.
That was a little strange by itself, since John was more accustomed to prospective employers who'd already read the worst about him and were, in the best cases, willing to listen to him try to make it sound better. Here he had to deliver the bad news himself, but he found he wasn't really tempted to color the truth. He wasn't going to be at the mercy of the military officers, and Weir didn't seem to care much about his history of problems with authority. O'Neill and Ellison weren't bothered by it either, but Caldwell made faces as if he were sucking on a lemon. John detailed the exact combination of disobedience and insufficient discretion about his sexual preferences that had gotten him kicked out. It was amusing to see Caldwell's lips crimp tighter at the casual admission of bisexuality. Weir, with eyes crinkled humorously, just pursed her mouth as if trying not to laugh and said it wouldn't be a problem.
The command shake-up was beginning to resolve itself. Apparently, ever since the Daedalus had arrived last year with Colonel Caldwell aboard, he'd been the titular head of the military on Atlantis, responsible for all the organizational and administrative stuff. But since he'd been injured during a big battle with the Wraith when he first arrived, Captain O'Neill, as his exec, did all of the heavy work and a lot of the command work as well, whenever Caldwell had to recover from another medical procedure. That was the state of things before Colonel Sheppard had brought several more people through the wormhole with him.
Out of that group, John wasn't Air Force any longer, two were scientists (McKay and Jackson), two were lieutenants (Cadman and Hailey), and only two had high enough rank to threaten Captain O'Neill's position. Colonel Mitchell, along with Dr. Jackson, apparently had orders to return to Earth at the earliest opportunity to help out with some alien threat there (which John really hadn't wanted to know about -- apparently the entire planet had been in jeopardy more than once in the past decade while half its nations had been distracted by wars with the other half). That left Major Lorne, currently in the infirmary recovering from a bullet wound and a concussion, as the only one putting O'Neill's authority in jeopardy.
There was some discussion (which John wasn't involved in, but Atlantis was rife with rumor) of different ways to address the problem. There might be various divisions for Lorne or O'Neill to be put in charge of, or Caldwell, as the ranking officer, could simply choose to keep O'Neill on as his exec so long as O'Neill's orders didn't directly conflict with Lorne's. Atlantis had comparable numbers of jarheads (from the original expedition) and airmen (from the derelict Daedalus), and it was possible each officer might get command of one group. But most people seemed to think it was likely O'Neill would get a second field promotion to Major, to be confirmed when contact with Earth was re-established. That would still leave Lorne with seniority, but technically the two would be on equal footing and Caldwell could give them whatever assignments he liked.
John liked O'Neill just fine and enjoyed the training flights they made where O'Neill showed him some of the finer points of making a Gateship do tricks, but he still didn't get the prevailing worshipful attitude about the man. "What's the deal with O'Neill?" he finally asked Rodney one morning over breakfast (two plates of baked goods and salty, pinkish eggs which he had brought to Rodney's lab since all the scientists seemed determined to kill themselves with overwork). "It seems like everyone, both Marines and Air Force, thinks O'Neill should be in command for real, and not just, you know, in a practical sense. Is it because his father's a general?"
Rodney blinked at him over a mouthful of toast. "General O'Neill'f not hiv fadder," he lisped, spraying scrumbs. He chewed and swallowed hastily. "Not really, anyway. Hasn't anyone told you about this yet?"
"Everyone I ask just says it's a long story. Including you," John pointed out.
"Oh. Well, O'Neill -- our O'Neill -- is actually a clone of the original."
John stared. "A clone. Of General O'Neill?"
"Yes. Well, he was a colonel at the time of the cloning, but, yeah, same guy. It was done by a renegade Asgard."
"The Roswell grays? Wait, aren't they supposed to be good guys?" John had been reading up on the history of the Stargate program and the Atlantis expedition. Some of the accounts were pretty hair-raising -- though Rodney would have said John didn't need any help in that particular area.
Rodney rolled his eyes. "See, that would be what made this one a renegade. He was experimenting on humans -- not for some sort of evil plan, but actually to see if we were ready to receive more knowledge and advanced technology from the Asgard. The others disagreed with his methods and carted him off to face their justice system, or whatever. But anyway, this is how the Asgard reproduce -- by cloning themselves and then transferring the older one's memory and identity into the clone. He was trying to do that with O'Neill."
"So you're saying the clone has all the general's memories."
"Or at least the colonel's memories. Of course, by that time O'Neill had already saved the Earth from destruction at least half a dozen times. So the clone -- our Captain O'Neill -- has the knowledge and experience of a much more senior officer. An interplanetary hero, in fact."
"But he looks like he's barely out of college!"
Rodney shrugged. "His real age -- since he was created -- is something like four or five years old. His equivalent physical age . . . well, there was this acceleration procedure the Asgard did, which left him as a teenager. He could just barely pass for eighteen when they brought him on this expedition as a lieutenant, because they needed someone with a strong ATA gene and of course they didn't know about you. Then he met up with a Wraith when he was rescuing people off the Daedalus during the big siege."
"Oh."
"That's how his eye got messed up. And that's why he looks old enough for people to at least start taking him seriously. But you have to remember, as experience goes -- what you might call his subjective age -- he's older than you or me."
"Okaaay . . ." John finished off his eggs while he thought about this. It didn't get any less weird. He was getting used to the idea of aliens that could take over human bodies like their puppets and aliens that could suck the youth and life right out of a person, but now it seemed there were aliens doing screwy genetic experiments on people.
Of course, from what he'd learned about the Trust, there were also people doing screwy human experiments and helping aliens take over human bodies, all in the name of patriotism and protecting Earth. The Trust had kidnapped Ellison and Sandburg on their honeymoon, had implanted Rodney with a Goa'uld on the eve of the expedition's departure, and must have done a lot of similar stuff John really didn't want to know about. So he couldn't blame it all on the aliens.
He shook his head. "I keep thinking it should be comforting that I'm not the only one that's had weird shit happen to me. But somehow, you know? It really isn't."
Rodney just grunted; he'd already turned back to his laptop and whatever simulation he was running today.
John gathered their plates. "I'll take these back to the mess. You all ready for the big day?"
Rodney grunted again, then belatedly turned his head. "Big day?"
John sighed. "Our first mission with Ellison, starting from the Gate room in an hour? You didn't forget, did you?"
Rodney's eyes went wide.
"You did forget. Rodney --"
"No, I -- I remembered! I've got all my gear set up. I just have to put it on and pack my vest. There's an alarm on my laptop that will remind me in --"
Rodney's laptop beeped insistently.
"See? I'm ready. Uh . . . will be ready. On time."
John thumped him in the shoulder. "Come on, Mr. absent-minded professor. We can gear up together."
"That's Dr. absent-minded professor to you," Rodney muttered as he closed up his laptop and followed John out the door.
Rodney looked kind of cute, in his tactical gear. Not exactly sexy cute, because the laptop velcroed to his back and all the scanners and tools and powerbars in the front pockets really added bulk to his silhouette -- but he certainly appeared to be prepared for just about anything.
Ellison had made sure Rodney knew the basics for handling the nine-millimeter holstered at his thigh; he wouldn't be carrying any heavier weaponry. Apparently Sandburg also preferred to skip the P-90; instead, he carried a Wraith stunner to back up his pistol. They weren't expecting to meet anything or anyone hostile, of course, but Ellison had emphasized that they should wear the same gear they would take for an off-world mission and be ready for just about anything.
"One time we ran into a Wraith out on the north pier, more than three months after the siege," Ellison had growled when Rodney wanted to skip the weaponry.
Sandburg had shivered at the memory. "Yeah, one of those huge drones with the hockey-mask faces? Turns out it crawled away wounded during the fight and built a cocoon for itself. Their life signs can't be detected when they're in hibernation, you know, so we thought we'd cleaned the city out. Until we got close to this one and it woke up because it smelled food. I'll tell you, I was so glad Jim heard it coming!"
"There've been some other things, too," Ellison went on. "Weirder things."
"Like that black energy-eating cloud thing that got released from a trap in one of the labs," Sandburg mused.
Rodney looked interested at that. "Sheppard -- uh, Colonel Sheppard -- told us about something similar they found on the other Atlantis. He said my counterpart got rid of it there."
"Well, Jack dealt with it here," Sandburg said. "He tricked it into going through the Gate to a deserted planet. But he paid for it with some nasty electrical burns."
"The point is," Ellison said firmly, "we never know what we might meet up with. So we go armed and ready. If you want, you can think of it as practice for going off-world. But we carry live ammunition."
John opted for both a nine-mil and a P-90, along with plenty of ammo in his vest. No grenades, though; he would prefer not to take any of them even on an off-world mission, and he certainly wasn't going to risk structural damage here in the city. It was a preference based on personal experience: John had once seen a curious Afghan kid tangle with a grenade, losing one arm and one leg and taking a hell of a lot of shrapnel just about everywhere else. The kid had lived long enough to make it to the hospital, but John never had found out if he survived. Since then, he refused to carry grenades or set mines in any inhabited area unless directly ordered to. And since he was a civilian and technically not bound to obey, maybe not even then.
Despite the precautions they took, the explorations turned out to be easy and pleasant. Ellison took point, John watched their backs, and Rodney and Sandburg ("Call me Blair") went everywhere in between, arguing passionately with broad, quick hand gestures over the meaning of everything they found. John wondered, watching Rodney's excitement, if the man had any Italian or maybe Spanish blood in his background.
As expected, the building they were checking out was mostly residential. But there were some large meeting areas ("ballrooms," John called them, gaining him a lecture from Blair on Ancient social rituals), communal baths on every other floor ("It's an important community bonding experience," Blair insisted), and sometimes interesting things left behind in the rooms or apartments ("We've seen those before -- the engineers think they're some kind of child's toy," Blair said, leading to a lecture from Rodney about the fallacy of explaining things as essentially purposeless just because you didn't understand them. John had to admit, he couldn't see much purpose other than toy or decoration for the multicolored lights, but he prudently didn't say so).
"These are nice beds," John commented, impressed at the way the Ancient mattresses had lasted through the millenia. "How do we get a big one like this in our quarters?"
Blair snorted. "By moving it in the dead of night without telling Sergeant Bates about it, and bribing the movers with chocolate or porn."
Ellison gave his partner -- husband, actually -- a quelling glance. "It's a good thing I'm distracted, Chief, and didn't catch what you said just there. Otherwise, I might be forced to give you a noogie."
"Yeah, bite me, Ellison," Blair retorted. "You know Bates is obstructive just because he enjoys it. No reason John and Rodney shouldn't have a proper bed."
"Aside from the fact that we don't actually have room for one right now," Rodney said.
They were on the stairs up to the top level of the building, and John was wondering what lecture he'd trigger if he said the word "penthouse," when Ellison stiffened.
Blair broke off his discussion with Rodney in mid-word and moved up to one step below Ellison. "What is it, Jim?" he asked, resting a hand just above his husband's hip.
Ellison shook his head, mouth open as if he were tasting the air. "Not sure."
John reflexively checked behind and around them, making sure that Rodney was in a defensible position from either direction.
"Something . . . dusty," said Ellison. "And woody."
"Like sawdust?" Blair asked.
Ellison didn't answer. "Wood sap . . . "
Rodney scoffed. "The Ancients didn't use wood in their construction."
"If they just used it for a few things, we might not know," Blair pointed out. "The wood could have crumbled to dust in ten thousand years. Maybe we think they only used durable materials because that's all that's left."
Ellison shook himself like a man waking from a dream. "There's nothing alive or moving. Just different, that's all. Let's check it out."
But John noticed the team leader pressed Blair back carefully before moving ahead.
The top level turned out to be a clear-domed semi-circle, with broad steps leading down to a sunken center. "Almost like an amphitheater," Blair said.
Ellison was tilting his head back and forth, again with his mouth open. "The acoustics in here are . . . whoa," he said. "Anyone in the room could hear a pin drop, right there in the middle." He pointed to the oval area at the bottom of the steps, where some trash was scattered around.
"Maybe you could," Rodney muttered.
"No, really, anyone," Ellison insisted. "It's amazing. I swear I can hear the air moving right there."
"Don't go too deep, man," said Blair, brushing a hand over Ellison's arm.
"Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Chief," Ellison grumbled. But he showed no inclination to walk down to the center, instead prowling around the perimeter of the room.
John stood near the exit and watched Blair and Rodney exploring. They descended the steps and studied the debris in the recessed center of the room.
"Hey, check it out!" said Blair excitedly, and John startled; it sounded as if Blair's voice were coming from inside his head, directionless and everywhere. "Are those wood fragments?"
"Mm," said Rodney non-commitally. He bent down to look at something more closely, then pulled back so sharply John thought for a moment he'd been bitten by something. "These are musical instruments! Or . . . they were?"
Blair looked interested. "You really think so?"
"Yes. Yes, I'm sure of it. One or two instruments here, I think. See, that little piece of wood there is thin and very fine-grained. Not structural -- it was chosen for vibrational elasticity. And I think these bits may have been strings -- although it seems they were made out of multiple materials which have since separated. And those there --" Rodney pointed.
"Frets?" Blair guessed. "A capo?"
"No, I think . . . maybe keys, that would change the vibrating length of the string when pressed."
"Keys on a string instrument?" Blair said doubtfully.
"Pianos have strings," Rodney pointed out. "And hurdy-gurdies have keys, even though they're bowed instruments."
"Okay." Blair looked down at the pile by their feet. "I wonder what it sounded like."
"Depends if it was bowed or plucked or strummed," Rodney mused. "No indication of that here."
"Yeah, I suppose a bow wouldn't have survived."
"It probably sounded similar to some Earth instruments," Rodney said. "Probably a rich sound, guessing from the complicated string materials."
Intrigued, John caught Ellison's eye and asked with a sideways head-jerk and a lifted eyebrow if he could join the others. Ellison nodded; he'd probably hear anyone on the stairs long before John, no matter how they were positioned.
John hopped down the steps to see the remains of the Ancient hurdy-gurdy. It was pretty fragmentary; some of the little parts that Rodney had claimed were strings had ended up far from the central body -- maybe after snapping under tension. John was impressed they'd manage to conclude so much from so little.
"They must have used natural materials like wood for the sound quality," Blair said.
"That doesn't make any sense," Rodney objected. "We know the Ancients could design materials with almost any physical characteristics they wanted. They could have gotten far better vibrational fidelity than any wood. They could have prescribed exactly what kind of overtones they wanted and how the sound should damp out. Why take chances with random plant growth patterns?"
"So maybe it was some kind of retro movement, going back to the roots of their musical tradition," Blair suggested.
John added, "Or the instrument could have belonged to a visitor to the city, or it could be a gift from a less-advanced ally race . . ."
"All right, all right," Rodney said. "Lots of possibilities. That could explain why it was left behind -- less personal value than their own instruments, maybe."
John wandered over to a counter that curved along the back of the oval stage area, like a parapet to hold people back from the domed crystal window. "I wonder what this was for," he murmured. Holding people back from a window seemed un-Atlantean, somehow. He laid a hand on the countertop and jumped when half a dozen door panels slid open along its length. "Oh." Apparently it was some kind of storage cabinet.
Blair and Rodney were at his side in moments, studying the contents of the cabinet. Half the shelves were empty, but others held small forgotten objects that the two scientists argued over amiably. There was a thing like a guitar pick (Rodney called it a "plectrum"), something that Blair was sure worked as a tuning fork although it wasn't fork-shaped at all, and a device that lit with several colors at Rodney's touch which he speculated might be a tuner or metronome --
"Or maybe it has music stored on it! Recordings --" Blair began.
"Or music notation in a form we don't know . . ." Rodney peered at the tiny screen.
"Hey, cool, what about this?" said John, pulling something from a cabinet further along. "It's like a, like a flute or something."
"Or a whistle or recorder," said Blair. "Straight-through instead of sideways."
"But see, it's four-way!" said John. The single mouthpiece (that was a mouthpiece, right? Listening to the scientists argue all day had John questioning every assumption) split into four pipes lower down with little keys like a clarinet's over what might be finger-holes. The material wasn't wood, but another of the Ancient substances that John had no name for: warm and lightweight like plastic, rough like sandstone, colored in teal and dark red and bright orange and forest green, probably not conductive to electricity (but you could never be sure about that one until you tried).
"So you can play four-part harmony with yourself?" Blair supposed. "Oh yeah, that would be awesome!" He blew experimentally into the mouthpiece, but no coherent sound came out -- only an airy sort of hoot.
"Careful, Chief, you don't know where that's been," said Ellison from above.
"It's been here for ten thousand years, Jim. I doubt any germs lasted that long."
Rodney ignored them, still studying the thing. "You couldn't sound all four of those at once," he said positively. "Human lungs -- or Ancient lungs, even -- wouldn't have the air capacity. It's physically impossible."
"You couldn't finger all four at once, either," John realized.
"But maybe two at once," Blair said. "That could be what the little key things are for, so you can make more notes with just three or four fingers."
John followed the thought. "If you're supposed to blow two at once there should be --"
"-- A way to switch them!" Blair said.
John grinned and turned the little multi-flute upside down to look for a switch. They found some kind of thumb-control near where the pipes split apart and were arguing over how to operate it when John realized that Rodney hadn't weighed in for over a minute. He turned to see his friend -- partner? boyfriend? -- kneeling before the last cabinet door and peering inside.
"What is it, Rodney?" John asked.
"It's . . . I think it's a sort of glass harmonica," said Rodney. "Except it probably isn't glass, of course." He extended a hand slowly, as if afraid to touch.
"Oh wow, you mean like one of those wine-glass things?" Blair said. "I always wanted to see one of those."
"Well, that's the principle, I think, but the design is different. Give me a hand, John -- it's heavy --"
They pulled the thing -- an oblong box with a series of round crystalline ridges showing at the back -- out of its cabinet. The crystals, with fat circles at one end tapering down to narrow, closely-spaced circles at the other, reminded John strangely of a spiral-grooved unicorn horn.
"Here," said Rodney, touching one end of the box. Several dim blue lights appeared, then turned warning-yellow and died. "I think this would be the mechanism that makes the crystals rotate."
John touched where Rodney had. He could feel the Ancient machinery trying to come to life, but failing. "I think it's dead."
"That might be why it was left behind," Blair said. "This thing is a little bigger than the kind of stuff that just gets forgotten, like a plectrum or a tuning fork."
"And these . . . " Rodney ran his fingers over an arc of keys colored in various muted pastels. "These must be how you choose which ones vibrate." He frowned. "Look at the progression of sizes on those crystals -- it's a chromatic scale, not like the finger-hole spacing on that whistle thing. And over four octaves -- you could play it almost like a piano."
"Too bad it's broken," said Blair. "I bet it sounded really amazing!"
"Mark it down in the report," Ellison said. "We can have it moved to the labs so you can try to fix it later. Otherwise, I think we're almost done here. Sheppard, you check these walls for hidden doors?" He waved to the rear of the room, at the top of the steps.
John found two closet-sized rooms -- both empty -- and a small bathroom along the back wall. Meanwhile, Blair and Rodney stowed the glass harmonica away again, took notes on what they'd found, and argued with Ellison about hanging onto the multi-whistle and the metronome/tuner/recording device. In the end, Rodney triumphantly pocketed the device and Blair carried the whistle cradled in his elbow as they headed back down the building to the transporter they'd three levels below. One mission completed, one building cleared as safe for habitation or study, and about twenty bizarre new mysteries for various groups of scientists to wrangle over.
John had to admit: even though it didn't involve flying, exploring a deserted alien city was certainly more interesting than rush-hour traffic reports.
-----
When John got to the Gateroom, he found the back walls packed with people. The doors and control level and Gate level were carefully left clear, but he had to hunt around a little to find a spot out of the way that wasn't already taken. Watching the action from somewhere out of the way seemed to be everyone else's plan, as well -- at least, everyone who wasn't directly involved in today's experiment.
Rodney's legs were sticking out from under the main dialing console, and Peter Grodin was sitting above him typing at high speed on a laptop. Lieutenant Hailey and Dr. Simpson were further along the same control console, apparently arguing over crystal placement.
Dr. Weir, Colonels Caldwell and Mitchell, Captains O'Neill and Ellison were waiting at the back of the command level, watching all the activity. Dr. Jackson was down on the Gate level discussing something with the Canadian sergeant John had met before. Dr. Beckett was also down there, checking on three of his patients: a man who'd been caught by a Wraith and appeared about eighty years old, another man who'd lost a leg somehow, and a woman with chemical burns on her face and her eyes clouded to uselessness. Other people were milling around, helping out or delivering messages or getting in the way.
Someone -- Blair Sandburg, actually -- elbowed in next to John in the crowd just as Rodney squirmed out from under his console. The tension in the group of watchers rose sharply as Rodney leaned over Grodin's shoulder, pointed something out on the laptop screen, then pushed the other man out of the way so he could type himself.
"This is pretty intense, man," Blair murmured to John.
John nodded. "I've only been here a couple of weeks, and I think it's a big deal. I can't imagine what you folks from the original expedition must be feeling right now."
Finally Rodney straightened and turned, blinking at the crowd lining the walls and then turning to search for Weir. "We're ready to try it," he announced, and a sigh of anticipation went around the room.
Weir nodded solemnly. "Go ahead."
Grodin reached for the DHD, but Rodney was there before him. John had only seen the Gate dial a few times, so any variation from the usual wasn't really apparent to him -- but he felt the excitement ratchet up around him when the seventh chevron locked in place and the lights kept moving. Then the eighth chevron locked and whispers ran through the packed group: "Is that it?" "Did it work?" "Oh god, it's working!" even as the wormhole blasted into being.
Dr. Weir took a deep breath and pushed a crystal on the console, announcing clearly, "Stargate Command, this is Atlantis. Anybody home?"
The pause that followed was short but nerve-racking. Then a man's voice came over the speakers: "Atlantis, this is the SGC. Good to hear from you."
The room erupted in cheers.
John noticed it because he was watching Rodney. And he knew from the sudden stiffening of Blair beside him that his teammate noticed as well, but most people apparently didn't catch it. Rodney was muttering to Grodin under his breath, checking something on the laptop, talking again, looking increasingly desperate. Grodin looked worried.
Weir was speaking to General O'Neill now, the conversation broadcast for everyone to hear. The general's voice was a little deeper and rougher than Captain O'Neill's, but otherwise identical in intonation and delivery. John supposed that made sense, since they were essentially the same person at different ages.
"General, we have to thank you for sending the supplies and reinforcements last week," said Weir. "They cleared up our little problem very nicely."
"Glad to hear it," said the general's voice. "Anything we can do to help out, Liz, you just ask."
Rodney ducked underneath the console.
"Colonel Mitchell and Dr. Jackson are ready to return to Earth now, along with several others of our people who could benefit from advanced medical care. We also have a databurst with all of our mission reports ready to go."
Rodney popped up looking white-faced. Grodin was getting ready to send the databurst and just shook his head distractedly at whatever Rodney told him.
Blair's hand clamped painfully just above John's elbow. "What do you think is wrong?" he whispered.
John could only shake his head. "Sorry. I don't have Ellison's ears, so your guess is as good as mine."
"We're all set to receive your data," said O'Neill, "and it so happens we have messages for a lot of your people, too; we'll get those ready for you right away. The iris is open, you're clear to send people through anytime. Say, did Daniel find anything we can use against the Ori?"
Down on the Gate level, Colonel Mitchell rolled his eyes and keyed the mike attached to the shoulder of his fatigues. "We've got some addresses from the Ancient database we need to check out," he said.
Jackson explained, "It's supposed to be the location of some kind of weapon that works against ascendants, hidden somewhere in the Milky Way. There's a lot of other information, too. I think it'll come in useful, but I haven't sorted through all of it yet."
"We'll use anything you can get," said O'Neill.
Rodney was murmuring something in Weir's ear. She frowned and turned back to the console. "General, we're not sure how long we can keep this wormhole open, and we don't think we'll be able to dial Earth again by the same method, so we're going to start sending people through now." She waved down at Beckett, who started herding his patients toward the open wormhole.
"Really? I thought you must have found one of those ZPM things if you could dial at all," said O'Neill.
"As you'll see from our mission reports, we do have a ZPM, but the control crystal which allowed us to dial extragalactic addresses was damaged last year," Weir explained. "Dr. McKay came up with a scheme to adapt a regular dialing crystal, but it seems to be putting some strain on the system."
"Another Canadian jury-rig, huh?" General O'Neill said in amused tones which made John's hackles rise.
"We're glad it worked once, but it's not a method we can use regularly," said Weir in calm tones, but her forehead showed more worry than she was letting into her voice. She was keeping an eye on Rodney and Grodin to see if something else went wrong.
"Sure, sure, we're happy to get any word from you at all," said O'Neill.
Mitchell and Jackson ambled toward the Gate behind the three wounded.
"Colonel Mitchell indicated that you might be able to send a re-supply ship to us soon," Weir said, her hand white-knuckled on the back of a chair. "We could certainly use that; our databurst includes a list of the most urgently-needed supplies. We can assure you that the Odyssey won't be flying blind into battle as the Daedalus did. Although there are still Wraith throughout this galaxy, Atlantis is safe at present."
The pause this time was a little too long. "That's good to know," said O'Neill at last. "But the thing is, we might not be able to send Odyssey along for a while. The ship was badly damaged in a recent battle, and even when repairs are done we may need to keep her here for resisting the Ori."
A murmur of disappointment went through the people gathered at the back of the room.
Rodney was bent over a laptop again, frowning, then he startled and bent to stare more closely at something else. After a few seconds he turned his head, searching the group behind him until he found Ellison and beckoned him forward. They bent together over the laptop, Rodney explaining something with quick gestures.
Dr. Weir watched Rodney and Ellison for a moment, then decided it wasn't an immediate problem and turned to address the expedition members who'd assembled to watch the scene unfold. "I know everyone here has worked hard for this mission, and some of you feel you've given more than you had to give. We don't know when there might be another opportunity for us to get back to Earth. If anyone wants to go now, we won't hold it against you."
Everyone shifted their weight uneasily, some people stepping back as if to show their intention to stay.
On the Gate level, Beckett was arguing with a man wearing a sling: Major Lorne, who had come through the Gate with Colonel Sheppard and was wounded in the fight with the Genii. Apparently the doctor thought he should go back to Earth, but the major wanted to stay. John couldn't fault the guy for his determination, but he supposed the chain of command would be easier to keep straight if Lorne weren't here.
Two more people -- a limping man and a woman whose face was deeply lined with stress or pain -- headed for the wormhole, but since they were already on the Gate level and had luggage with them, John supposed they hadn't made the decision at the last minute.
No one else moved.
Weir looked keenly at Colonel Caldwell in his wheelchair, but he just shook his head with lips pressed tight; he wasn't leaving this command. With a quirk of her eyebrows in acknowledgment, Weir turned back to the mike. "That's everyone who's going through, General. I hope to have a chance to speak to you again soon. Sorry we can't make it a regular date."
"I understand, Liz," said O'Neill. "We'll call if we can, and we'll send a ship as soon as we can spare one."
Weir gave a tight nod. "Understood, General. We know you have problems of your own. Thank you again for the help you did send; it's been invaluable. Oh! You should know that Colonel Sheppard was returned to his own universe, but Mr. Sheppard has elected to stay on with us. You'll find his information in the databurst."
Rodney turned his head and sought John out in the crowd, smiling shyly. Then Ellison said something that caught his attention, and he bent back over his laptop.
"Nice to know he made it home," said O'Neill. "And I'm glad we could help you out with your quasi-Nazi guys. I hope you get your dialing problems fixed soon."
Weir swallowed hard. "So do we." She glanced around the room quickly. "I think that's all our business done. Take care, SGC. Hold the fort. Atlantis out."
"So long, Liz. Talk to you soon!"
The wormhole collapsed, and a collective sigh went out from nearly everyone in the room.
Link to Part Two
Title: Cross Training, Part One
Author: Quasar
Rating: R
Pairing: John/Rodney, Jim/Blair
Date written: November 2006
Length: ~26,000 words (whole story)
Summary: Explorations and discoveries, a wormhole to Earth, a spy, a new drug, attempted escape, daring rescue. Also, some schmoop, a hint of smut, some silliness, and lots of talking over food.
Notes: This is a sequel to my stories Cross Product and Cross Multiplication; read those first or you will be very confused. This one was also written for NaNoWriMo, so don't be surprised by editorial insufficiency.
John's first week as a member of the Atlantis expedition was hectic. They might not be in contact with Earth to file paperwork, but they had to be ready to file it at any time. Weir listed him as a civilian consultant, with a pay rate three times what he'd been making in San Diego and a very nice retirement package that he'd probably never get to take advantage of. Room, board, and medical benefits were included as well, which made John smirk. He composed a resignation email (only subtly insulting by the time he finished the third draft), filled out various electronic forms (paper was very much at a premium), and discussed his record and his experience with Weir, O'Neill, Caldwell, and Ellison.
That was a little strange by itself, since John was more accustomed to prospective employers who'd already read the worst about him and were, in the best cases, willing to listen to him try to make it sound better. Here he had to deliver the bad news himself, but he found he wasn't really tempted to color the truth. He wasn't going to be at the mercy of the military officers, and Weir didn't seem to care much about his history of problems with authority. O'Neill and Ellison weren't bothered by it either, but Caldwell made faces as if he were sucking on a lemon. John detailed the exact combination of disobedience and insufficient discretion about his sexual preferences that had gotten him kicked out. It was amusing to see Caldwell's lips crimp tighter at the casual admission of bisexuality. Weir, with eyes crinkled humorously, just pursed her mouth as if trying not to laugh and said it wouldn't be a problem.
The command shake-up was beginning to resolve itself. Apparently, ever since the Daedalus had arrived last year with Colonel Caldwell aboard, he'd been the titular head of the military on Atlantis, responsible for all the organizational and administrative stuff. But since he'd been injured during a big battle with the Wraith when he first arrived, Captain O'Neill, as his exec, did all of the heavy work and a lot of the command work as well, whenever Caldwell had to recover from another medical procedure. That was the state of things before Colonel Sheppard had brought several more people through the wormhole with him.
Out of that group, John wasn't Air Force any longer, two were scientists (McKay and Jackson), two were lieutenants (Cadman and Hailey), and only two had high enough rank to threaten Captain O'Neill's position. Colonel Mitchell, along with Dr. Jackson, apparently had orders to return to Earth at the earliest opportunity to help out with some alien threat there (which John really hadn't wanted to know about -- apparently the entire planet had been in jeopardy more than once in the past decade while half its nations had been distracted by wars with the other half). That left Major Lorne, currently in the infirmary recovering from a bullet wound and a concussion, as the only one putting O'Neill's authority in jeopardy.
There was some discussion (which John wasn't involved in, but Atlantis was rife with rumor) of different ways to address the problem. There might be various divisions for Lorne or O'Neill to be put in charge of, or Caldwell, as the ranking officer, could simply choose to keep O'Neill on as his exec so long as O'Neill's orders didn't directly conflict with Lorne's. Atlantis had comparable numbers of jarheads (from the original expedition) and airmen (from the derelict Daedalus), and it was possible each officer might get command of one group. But most people seemed to think it was likely O'Neill would get a second field promotion to Major, to be confirmed when contact with Earth was re-established. That would still leave Lorne with seniority, but technically the two would be on equal footing and Caldwell could give them whatever assignments he liked.
John liked O'Neill just fine and enjoyed the training flights they made where O'Neill showed him some of the finer points of making a Gateship do tricks, but he still didn't get the prevailing worshipful attitude about the man. "What's the deal with O'Neill?" he finally asked Rodney one morning over breakfast (two plates of baked goods and salty, pinkish eggs which he had brought to Rodney's lab since all the scientists seemed determined to kill themselves with overwork). "It seems like everyone, both Marines and Air Force, thinks O'Neill should be in command for real, and not just, you know, in a practical sense. Is it because his father's a general?"
Rodney blinked at him over a mouthful of toast. "General O'Neill'f not hiv fadder," he lisped, spraying scrumbs. He chewed and swallowed hastily. "Not really, anyway. Hasn't anyone told you about this yet?"
"Everyone I ask just says it's a long story. Including you," John pointed out.
"Oh. Well, O'Neill -- our O'Neill -- is actually a clone of the original."
John stared. "A clone. Of General O'Neill?"
"Yes. Well, he was a colonel at the time of the cloning, but, yeah, same guy. It was done by a renegade Asgard."
"The Roswell grays? Wait, aren't they supposed to be good guys?" John had been reading up on the history of the Stargate program and the Atlantis expedition. Some of the accounts were pretty hair-raising -- though Rodney would have said John didn't need any help in that particular area.
Rodney rolled his eyes. "See, that would be what made this one a renegade. He was experimenting on humans -- not for some sort of evil plan, but actually to see if we were ready to receive more knowledge and advanced technology from the Asgard. The others disagreed with his methods and carted him off to face their justice system, or whatever. But anyway, this is how the Asgard reproduce -- by cloning themselves and then transferring the older one's memory and identity into the clone. He was trying to do that with O'Neill."
"So you're saying the clone has all the general's memories."
"Or at least the colonel's memories. Of course, by that time O'Neill had already saved the Earth from destruction at least half a dozen times. So the clone -- our Captain O'Neill -- has the knowledge and experience of a much more senior officer. An interplanetary hero, in fact."
"But he looks like he's barely out of college!"
Rodney shrugged. "His real age -- since he was created -- is something like four or five years old. His equivalent physical age . . . well, there was this acceleration procedure the Asgard did, which left him as a teenager. He could just barely pass for eighteen when they brought him on this expedition as a lieutenant, because they needed someone with a strong ATA gene and of course they didn't know about you. Then he met up with a Wraith when he was rescuing people off the Daedalus during the big siege."
"Oh."
"That's how his eye got messed up. And that's why he looks old enough for people to at least start taking him seriously. But you have to remember, as experience goes -- what you might call his subjective age -- he's older than you or me."
"Okaaay . . ." John finished off his eggs while he thought about this. It didn't get any less weird. He was getting used to the idea of aliens that could take over human bodies like their puppets and aliens that could suck the youth and life right out of a person, but now it seemed there were aliens doing screwy genetic experiments on people.
Of course, from what he'd learned about the Trust, there were also people doing screwy human experiments and helping aliens take over human bodies, all in the name of patriotism and protecting Earth. The Trust had kidnapped Ellison and Sandburg on their honeymoon, had implanted Rodney with a Goa'uld on the eve of the expedition's departure, and must have done a lot of similar stuff John really didn't want to know about. So he couldn't blame it all on the aliens.
He shook his head. "I keep thinking it should be comforting that I'm not the only one that's had weird shit happen to me. But somehow, you know? It really isn't."
Rodney just grunted; he'd already turned back to his laptop and whatever simulation he was running today.
John gathered their plates. "I'll take these back to the mess. You all ready for the big day?"
Rodney grunted again, then belatedly turned his head. "Big day?"
John sighed. "Our first mission with Ellison, starting from the Gate room in an hour? You didn't forget, did you?"
Rodney's eyes went wide.
"You did forget. Rodney --"
"No, I -- I remembered! I've got all my gear set up. I just have to put it on and pack my vest. There's an alarm on my laptop that will remind me in --"
Rodney's laptop beeped insistently.
"See? I'm ready. Uh . . . will be ready. On time."
John thumped him in the shoulder. "Come on, Mr. absent-minded professor. We can gear up together."
"That's Dr. absent-minded professor to you," Rodney muttered as he closed up his laptop and followed John out the door.
Rodney looked kind of cute, in his tactical gear. Not exactly sexy cute, because the laptop velcroed to his back and all the scanners and tools and powerbars in the front pockets really added bulk to his silhouette -- but he certainly appeared to be prepared for just about anything.
Ellison had made sure Rodney knew the basics for handling the nine-millimeter holstered at his thigh; he wouldn't be carrying any heavier weaponry. Apparently Sandburg also preferred to skip the P-90; instead, he carried a Wraith stunner to back up his pistol. They weren't expecting to meet anything or anyone hostile, of course, but Ellison had emphasized that they should wear the same gear they would take for an off-world mission and be ready for just about anything.
"One time we ran into a Wraith out on the north pier, more than three months after the siege," Ellison had growled when Rodney wanted to skip the weaponry.
Sandburg had shivered at the memory. "Yeah, one of those huge drones with the hockey-mask faces? Turns out it crawled away wounded during the fight and built a cocoon for itself. Their life signs can't be detected when they're in hibernation, you know, so we thought we'd cleaned the city out. Until we got close to this one and it woke up because it smelled food. I'll tell you, I was so glad Jim heard it coming!"
"There've been some other things, too," Ellison went on. "Weirder things."
"Like that black energy-eating cloud thing that got released from a trap in one of the labs," Sandburg mused.
Rodney looked interested at that. "Sheppard -- uh, Colonel Sheppard -- told us about something similar they found on the other Atlantis. He said my counterpart got rid of it there."
"Well, Jack dealt with it here," Sandburg said. "He tricked it into going through the Gate to a deserted planet. But he paid for it with some nasty electrical burns."
"The point is," Ellison said firmly, "we never know what we might meet up with. So we go armed and ready. If you want, you can think of it as practice for going off-world. But we carry live ammunition."
John opted for both a nine-mil and a P-90, along with plenty of ammo in his vest. No grenades, though; he would prefer not to take any of them even on an off-world mission, and he certainly wasn't going to risk structural damage here in the city. It was a preference based on personal experience: John had once seen a curious Afghan kid tangle with a grenade, losing one arm and one leg and taking a hell of a lot of shrapnel just about everywhere else. The kid had lived long enough to make it to the hospital, but John never had found out if he survived. Since then, he refused to carry grenades or set mines in any inhabited area unless directly ordered to. And since he was a civilian and technically not bound to obey, maybe not even then.
Despite the precautions they took, the explorations turned out to be easy and pleasant. Ellison took point, John watched their backs, and Rodney and Sandburg ("Call me Blair") went everywhere in between, arguing passionately with broad, quick hand gestures over the meaning of everything they found. John wondered, watching Rodney's excitement, if the man had any Italian or maybe Spanish blood in his background.
As expected, the building they were checking out was mostly residential. But there were some large meeting areas ("ballrooms," John called them, gaining him a lecture from Blair on Ancient social rituals), communal baths on every other floor ("It's an important community bonding experience," Blair insisted), and sometimes interesting things left behind in the rooms or apartments ("We've seen those before -- the engineers think they're some kind of child's toy," Blair said, leading to a lecture from Rodney about the fallacy of explaining things as essentially purposeless just because you didn't understand them. John had to admit, he couldn't see much purpose other than toy or decoration for the multicolored lights, but he prudently didn't say so).
"These are nice beds," John commented, impressed at the way the Ancient mattresses had lasted through the millenia. "How do we get a big one like this in our quarters?"
Blair snorted. "By moving it in the dead of night without telling Sergeant Bates about it, and bribing the movers with chocolate or porn."
Ellison gave his partner -- husband, actually -- a quelling glance. "It's a good thing I'm distracted, Chief, and didn't catch what you said just there. Otherwise, I might be forced to give you a noogie."
"Yeah, bite me, Ellison," Blair retorted. "You know Bates is obstructive just because he enjoys it. No reason John and Rodney shouldn't have a proper bed."
"Aside from the fact that we don't actually have room for one right now," Rodney said.
They were on the stairs up to the top level of the building, and John was wondering what lecture he'd trigger if he said the word "penthouse," when Ellison stiffened.
Blair broke off his discussion with Rodney in mid-word and moved up to one step below Ellison. "What is it, Jim?" he asked, resting a hand just above his husband's hip.
Ellison shook his head, mouth open as if he were tasting the air. "Not sure."
John reflexively checked behind and around them, making sure that Rodney was in a defensible position from either direction.
"Something . . . dusty," said Ellison. "And woody."
"Like sawdust?" Blair asked.
Ellison didn't answer. "Wood sap . . . "
Rodney scoffed. "The Ancients didn't use wood in their construction."
"If they just used it for a few things, we might not know," Blair pointed out. "The wood could have crumbled to dust in ten thousand years. Maybe we think they only used durable materials because that's all that's left."
Ellison shook himself like a man waking from a dream. "There's nothing alive or moving. Just different, that's all. Let's check it out."
But John noticed the team leader pressed Blair back carefully before moving ahead.
The top level turned out to be a clear-domed semi-circle, with broad steps leading down to a sunken center. "Almost like an amphitheater," Blair said.
Ellison was tilting his head back and forth, again with his mouth open. "The acoustics in here are . . . whoa," he said. "Anyone in the room could hear a pin drop, right there in the middle." He pointed to the oval area at the bottom of the steps, where some trash was scattered around.
"Maybe you could," Rodney muttered.
"No, really, anyone," Ellison insisted. "It's amazing. I swear I can hear the air moving right there."
"Don't go too deep, man," said Blair, brushing a hand over Ellison's arm.
"Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Chief," Ellison grumbled. But he showed no inclination to walk down to the center, instead prowling around the perimeter of the room.
John stood near the exit and watched Blair and Rodney exploring. They descended the steps and studied the debris in the recessed center of the room.
"Hey, check it out!" said Blair excitedly, and John startled; it sounded as if Blair's voice were coming from inside his head, directionless and everywhere. "Are those wood fragments?"
"Mm," said Rodney non-commitally. He bent down to look at something more closely, then pulled back so sharply John thought for a moment he'd been bitten by something. "These are musical instruments! Or . . . they were?"
Blair looked interested. "You really think so?"
"Yes. Yes, I'm sure of it. One or two instruments here, I think. See, that little piece of wood there is thin and very fine-grained. Not structural -- it was chosen for vibrational elasticity. And I think these bits may have been strings -- although it seems they were made out of multiple materials which have since separated. And those there --" Rodney pointed.
"Frets?" Blair guessed. "A capo?"
"No, I think . . . maybe keys, that would change the vibrating length of the string when pressed."
"Keys on a string instrument?" Blair said doubtfully.
"Pianos have strings," Rodney pointed out. "And hurdy-gurdies have keys, even though they're bowed instruments."
"Okay." Blair looked down at the pile by their feet. "I wonder what it sounded like."
"Depends if it was bowed or plucked or strummed," Rodney mused. "No indication of that here."
"Yeah, I suppose a bow wouldn't have survived."
"It probably sounded similar to some Earth instruments," Rodney said. "Probably a rich sound, guessing from the complicated string materials."
Intrigued, John caught Ellison's eye and asked with a sideways head-jerk and a lifted eyebrow if he could join the others. Ellison nodded; he'd probably hear anyone on the stairs long before John, no matter how they were positioned.
John hopped down the steps to see the remains of the Ancient hurdy-gurdy. It was pretty fragmentary; some of the little parts that Rodney had claimed were strings had ended up far from the central body -- maybe after snapping under tension. John was impressed they'd manage to conclude so much from so little.
"They must have used natural materials like wood for the sound quality," Blair said.
"That doesn't make any sense," Rodney objected. "We know the Ancients could design materials with almost any physical characteristics they wanted. They could have gotten far better vibrational fidelity than any wood. They could have prescribed exactly what kind of overtones they wanted and how the sound should damp out. Why take chances with random plant growth patterns?"
"So maybe it was some kind of retro movement, going back to the roots of their musical tradition," Blair suggested.
John added, "Or the instrument could have belonged to a visitor to the city, or it could be a gift from a less-advanced ally race . . ."
"All right, all right," Rodney said. "Lots of possibilities. That could explain why it was left behind -- less personal value than their own instruments, maybe."
John wandered over to a counter that curved along the back of the oval stage area, like a parapet to hold people back from the domed crystal window. "I wonder what this was for," he murmured. Holding people back from a window seemed un-Atlantean, somehow. He laid a hand on the countertop and jumped when half a dozen door panels slid open along its length. "Oh." Apparently it was some kind of storage cabinet.
Blair and Rodney were at his side in moments, studying the contents of the cabinet. Half the shelves were empty, but others held small forgotten objects that the two scientists argued over amiably. There was a thing like a guitar pick (Rodney called it a "plectrum"), something that Blair was sure worked as a tuning fork although it wasn't fork-shaped at all, and a device that lit with several colors at Rodney's touch which he speculated might be a tuner or metronome --
"Or maybe it has music stored on it! Recordings --" Blair began.
"Or music notation in a form we don't know . . ." Rodney peered at the tiny screen.
"Hey, cool, what about this?" said John, pulling something from a cabinet further along. "It's like a, like a flute or something."
"Or a whistle or recorder," said Blair. "Straight-through instead of sideways."
"But see, it's four-way!" said John. The single mouthpiece (that was a mouthpiece, right? Listening to the scientists argue all day had John questioning every assumption) split into four pipes lower down with little keys like a clarinet's over what might be finger-holes. The material wasn't wood, but another of the Ancient substances that John had no name for: warm and lightweight like plastic, rough like sandstone, colored in teal and dark red and bright orange and forest green, probably not conductive to electricity (but you could never be sure about that one until you tried).
"So you can play four-part harmony with yourself?" Blair supposed. "Oh yeah, that would be awesome!" He blew experimentally into the mouthpiece, but no coherent sound came out -- only an airy sort of hoot.
"Careful, Chief, you don't know where that's been," said Ellison from above.
"It's been here for ten thousand years, Jim. I doubt any germs lasted that long."
Rodney ignored them, still studying the thing. "You couldn't sound all four of those at once," he said positively. "Human lungs -- or Ancient lungs, even -- wouldn't have the air capacity. It's physically impossible."
"You couldn't finger all four at once, either," John realized.
"But maybe two at once," Blair said. "That could be what the little key things are for, so you can make more notes with just three or four fingers."
John followed the thought. "If you're supposed to blow two at once there should be --"
"-- A way to switch them!" Blair said.
John grinned and turned the little multi-flute upside down to look for a switch. They found some kind of thumb-control near where the pipes split apart and were arguing over how to operate it when John realized that Rodney hadn't weighed in for over a minute. He turned to see his friend -- partner? boyfriend? -- kneeling before the last cabinet door and peering inside.
"What is it, Rodney?" John asked.
"It's . . . I think it's a sort of glass harmonica," said Rodney. "Except it probably isn't glass, of course." He extended a hand slowly, as if afraid to touch.
"Oh wow, you mean like one of those wine-glass things?" Blair said. "I always wanted to see one of those."
"Well, that's the principle, I think, but the design is different. Give me a hand, John -- it's heavy --"
They pulled the thing -- an oblong box with a series of round crystalline ridges showing at the back -- out of its cabinet. The crystals, with fat circles at one end tapering down to narrow, closely-spaced circles at the other, reminded John strangely of a spiral-grooved unicorn horn.
"Here," said Rodney, touching one end of the box. Several dim blue lights appeared, then turned warning-yellow and died. "I think this would be the mechanism that makes the crystals rotate."
John touched where Rodney had. He could feel the Ancient machinery trying to come to life, but failing. "I think it's dead."
"That might be why it was left behind," Blair said. "This thing is a little bigger than the kind of stuff that just gets forgotten, like a plectrum or a tuning fork."
"And these . . . " Rodney ran his fingers over an arc of keys colored in various muted pastels. "These must be how you choose which ones vibrate." He frowned. "Look at the progression of sizes on those crystals -- it's a chromatic scale, not like the finger-hole spacing on that whistle thing. And over four octaves -- you could play it almost like a piano."
"Too bad it's broken," said Blair. "I bet it sounded really amazing!"
"Mark it down in the report," Ellison said. "We can have it moved to the labs so you can try to fix it later. Otherwise, I think we're almost done here. Sheppard, you check these walls for hidden doors?" He waved to the rear of the room, at the top of the steps.
John found two closet-sized rooms -- both empty -- and a small bathroom along the back wall. Meanwhile, Blair and Rodney stowed the glass harmonica away again, took notes on what they'd found, and argued with Ellison about hanging onto the multi-whistle and the metronome/tuner/recording device. In the end, Rodney triumphantly pocketed the device and Blair carried the whistle cradled in his elbow as they headed back down the building to the transporter they'd three levels below. One mission completed, one building cleared as safe for habitation or study, and about twenty bizarre new mysteries for various groups of scientists to wrangle over.
John had to admit: even though it didn't involve flying, exploring a deserted alien city was certainly more interesting than rush-hour traffic reports.
-----
When John got to the Gateroom, he found the back walls packed with people. The doors and control level and Gate level were carefully left clear, but he had to hunt around a little to find a spot out of the way that wasn't already taken. Watching the action from somewhere out of the way seemed to be everyone else's plan, as well -- at least, everyone who wasn't directly involved in today's experiment.
Rodney's legs were sticking out from under the main dialing console, and Peter Grodin was sitting above him typing at high speed on a laptop. Lieutenant Hailey and Dr. Simpson were further along the same control console, apparently arguing over crystal placement.
Dr. Weir, Colonels Caldwell and Mitchell, Captains O'Neill and Ellison were waiting at the back of the command level, watching all the activity. Dr. Jackson was down on the Gate level discussing something with the Canadian sergeant John had met before. Dr. Beckett was also down there, checking on three of his patients: a man who'd been caught by a Wraith and appeared about eighty years old, another man who'd lost a leg somehow, and a woman with chemical burns on her face and her eyes clouded to uselessness. Other people were milling around, helping out or delivering messages or getting in the way.
Someone -- Blair Sandburg, actually -- elbowed in next to John in the crowd just as Rodney squirmed out from under his console. The tension in the group of watchers rose sharply as Rodney leaned over Grodin's shoulder, pointed something out on the laptop screen, then pushed the other man out of the way so he could type himself.
"This is pretty intense, man," Blair murmured to John.
John nodded. "I've only been here a couple of weeks, and I think it's a big deal. I can't imagine what you folks from the original expedition must be feeling right now."
Finally Rodney straightened and turned, blinking at the crowd lining the walls and then turning to search for Weir. "We're ready to try it," he announced, and a sigh of anticipation went around the room.
Weir nodded solemnly. "Go ahead."
Grodin reached for the DHD, but Rodney was there before him. John had only seen the Gate dial a few times, so any variation from the usual wasn't really apparent to him -- but he felt the excitement ratchet up around him when the seventh chevron locked in place and the lights kept moving. Then the eighth chevron locked and whispers ran through the packed group: "Is that it?" "Did it work?" "Oh god, it's working!" even as the wormhole blasted into being.
Dr. Weir took a deep breath and pushed a crystal on the console, announcing clearly, "Stargate Command, this is Atlantis. Anybody home?"
The pause that followed was short but nerve-racking. Then a man's voice came over the speakers: "Atlantis, this is the SGC. Good to hear from you."
The room erupted in cheers.
John noticed it because he was watching Rodney. And he knew from the sudden stiffening of Blair beside him that his teammate noticed as well, but most people apparently didn't catch it. Rodney was muttering to Grodin under his breath, checking something on the laptop, talking again, looking increasingly desperate. Grodin looked worried.
Weir was speaking to General O'Neill now, the conversation broadcast for everyone to hear. The general's voice was a little deeper and rougher than Captain O'Neill's, but otherwise identical in intonation and delivery. John supposed that made sense, since they were essentially the same person at different ages.
"General, we have to thank you for sending the supplies and reinforcements last week," said Weir. "They cleared up our little problem very nicely."
"Glad to hear it," said the general's voice. "Anything we can do to help out, Liz, you just ask."
Rodney ducked underneath the console.
"Colonel Mitchell and Dr. Jackson are ready to return to Earth now, along with several others of our people who could benefit from advanced medical care. We also have a databurst with all of our mission reports ready to go."
Rodney popped up looking white-faced. Grodin was getting ready to send the databurst and just shook his head distractedly at whatever Rodney told him.
Blair's hand clamped painfully just above John's elbow. "What do you think is wrong?" he whispered.
John could only shake his head. "Sorry. I don't have Ellison's ears, so your guess is as good as mine."
"We're all set to receive your data," said O'Neill, "and it so happens we have messages for a lot of your people, too; we'll get those ready for you right away. The iris is open, you're clear to send people through anytime. Say, did Daniel find anything we can use against the Ori?"
Down on the Gate level, Colonel Mitchell rolled his eyes and keyed the mike attached to the shoulder of his fatigues. "We've got some addresses from the Ancient database we need to check out," he said.
Jackson explained, "It's supposed to be the location of some kind of weapon that works against ascendants, hidden somewhere in the Milky Way. There's a lot of other information, too. I think it'll come in useful, but I haven't sorted through all of it yet."
"We'll use anything you can get," said O'Neill.
Rodney was murmuring something in Weir's ear. She frowned and turned back to the console. "General, we're not sure how long we can keep this wormhole open, and we don't think we'll be able to dial Earth again by the same method, so we're going to start sending people through now." She waved down at Beckett, who started herding his patients toward the open wormhole.
"Really? I thought you must have found one of those ZPM things if you could dial at all," said O'Neill.
"As you'll see from our mission reports, we do have a ZPM, but the control crystal which allowed us to dial extragalactic addresses was damaged last year," Weir explained. "Dr. McKay came up with a scheme to adapt a regular dialing crystal, but it seems to be putting some strain on the system."
"Another Canadian jury-rig, huh?" General O'Neill said in amused tones which made John's hackles rise.
"We're glad it worked once, but it's not a method we can use regularly," said Weir in calm tones, but her forehead showed more worry than she was letting into her voice. She was keeping an eye on Rodney and Grodin to see if something else went wrong.
"Sure, sure, we're happy to get any word from you at all," said O'Neill.
Mitchell and Jackson ambled toward the Gate behind the three wounded.
"Colonel Mitchell indicated that you might be able to send a re-supply ship to us soon," Weir said, her hand white-knuckled on the back of a chair. "We could certainly use that; our databurst includes a list of the most urgently-needed supplies. We can assure you that the Odyssey won't be flying blind into battle as the Daedalus did. Although there are still Wraith throughout this galaxy, Atlantis is safe at present."
The pause this time was a little too long. "That's good to know," said O'Neill at last. "But the thing is, we might not be able to send Odyssey along for a while. The ship was badly damaged in a recent battle, and even when repairs are done we may need to keep her here for resisting the Ori."
A murmur of disappointment went through the people gathered at the back of the room.
Rodney was bent over a laptop again, frowning, then he startled and bent to stare more closely at something else. After a few seconds he turned his head, searching the group behind him until he found Ellison and beckoned him forward. They bent together over the laptop, Rodney explaining something with quick gestures.
Dr. Weir watched Rodney and Ellison for a moment, then decided it wasn't an immediate problem and turned to address the expedition members who'd assembled to watch the scene unfold. "I know everyone here has worked hard for this mission, and some of you feel you've given more than you had to give. We don't know when there might be another opportunity for us to get back to Earth. If anyone wants to go now, we won't hold it against you."
Everyone shifted their weight uneasily, some people stepping back as if to show their intention to stay.
On the Gate level, Beckett was arguing with a man wearing a sling: Major Lorne, who had come through the Gate with Colonel Sheppard and was wounded in the fight with the Genii. Apparently the doctor thought he should go back to Earth, but the major wanted to stay. John couldn't fault the guy for his determination, but he supposed the chain of command would be easier to keep straight if Lorne weren't here.
Two more people -- a limping man and a woman whose face was deeply lined with stress or pain -- headed for the wormhole, but since they were already on the Gate level and had luggage with them, John supposed they hadn't made the decision at the last minute.
No one else moved.
Weir looked keenly at Colonel Caldwell in his wheelchair, but he just shook his head with lips pressed tight; he wasn't leaving this command. With a quirk of her eyebrows in acknowledgment, Weir turned back to the mike. "That's everyone who's going through, General. I hope to have a chance to speak to you again soon. Sorry we can't make it a regular date."
"I understand, Liz," said O'Neill. "We'll call if we can, and we'll send a ship as soon as we can spare one."
Weir gave a tight nod. "Understood, General. We know you have problems of your own. Thank you again for the help you did send; it's been invaluable. Oh! You should know that Colonel Sheppard was returned to his own universe, but Mr. Sheppard has elected to stay on with us. You'll find his information in the databurst."
Rodney turned his head and sought John out in the crowd, smiling shyly. Then Ellison said something that caught his attention, and he bent back over his laptop.
"Nice to know he made it home," said O'Neill. "And I'm glad we could help you out with your quasi-Nazi guys. I hope you get your dialing problems fixed soon."
Weir swallowed hard. "So do we." She glanced around the room quickly. "I think that's all our business done. Take care, SGC. Hold the fort. Atlantis out."
"So long, Liz. Talk to you soon!"
The wormhole collapsed, and a collective sigh went out from nearly everyone in the room.
Link to Part Two