Part 2

Art by Lily

“We need more time,” Sheppard informed Woolsey from the Jumper’s console as it sat docked in the underwater station. “Rodney  needs to sift through the data here and maybe we can figure out a way to shut down the satellite… or at least, have Atlantis send back whatever signal she’s supposed to be sending back.”

 “Could that be the anomaly that Dr.s McKay and Zelenka picked up earlier?” Woolsey asked.

“Yes, yes,” Rodney replied over John’s radio.  “Now that I’m seeing it in front of me, I’m certain that the signal we discovered earlier was asking us to identify ourselves.”

“Well, now that you are there, can you figure out how to answer the question?”

“No, I don’t know, maybe,” Rodney replied distractedly.

 “Is this weapon powerful enough to reach Earth? You said it’s sitting halfway between Earth and the Sun, correct?”  Woolsey asked. “I’m no astronomer or an astrophysicist, but I’m pretty sure the distance is ---”

“Phenomenal,” McKay interjected.  “We’re talking a distance of 93 million miles from Earth.”

“Holy crap,” Sheppard remarked.

“Indeed,” Mr. Woolsey agreed. “What kind of weapon are we talking about here, Doctor? Is this a solid projectile weapon, like missiles?”

Rodney shook his head at the suggestion.

“Highly unlikely. The Ancients learned a long time ago that one of the major complications with a solid projectile weapon being used for orbital bombardment of a planet with atmosphere would be the atmosphere itself.”

“Are you talking about the re-entry burn?” Woolsey asked.

“In a manner of speaking, yes. The air friction caused by the thick layers of atmosphere over a planet like Earth would burn up any incoming object or, if the projectile were to come in at the wrong angle, it would simply be deflected and skip across the upper atmosphere like a stone skipping across the surface of a pond.  Beam weapons, in theory, would simply break up and scatter harmlessly throughout the miles between the upper and lower orbits, attenuating into harmless bits before ever reaching the ground. Of course, bombarding a world or a moon with no atmosphere wouldn’t be as difficult….”

“Rodney,” Sheppard warned and brought McKay’s wandering mind back on track.

“I’m thinking worse case scenario here,” Rodney told them point blank.

“Which is?” Woolsey pushed.

“Upper-atmosphere detonation.”

John’s eyebrows twisted slightly and he shared a glance with Ronon and Teyla. Mr. Woolsey also seemed to need more detail than that.

“Elaborate, please, Doctor.”

“If this weapon’s system can’t penetrate our atmosphere in order to get any solid or laser projectile to the ground to hit a specific target, and I’m guessing that even the Ancients couldn’t figure out how to do that since the last LaGrange Point satellite we encountered, or should I say the first one we encountered --”

“Rodney.”

 “--- was a space to space weapon, intended to take out enemy ships before they reached orbit of Atlantis’ home world, which, by the way, had an atmosphere equivalent to Earth’s… anyway,” he waved his hand in front of him as if erasing that thought for now.

 “I’m thinking, and by my calculations of the data on that screen, I’m thinking I’m right… they’ve programmed this platform to focus its weapons on a particular point inside the layers between the upper and lower atmosphere at the level they were sure the weapon, beam, missile, whatever, can reach.  I’m betting it’s a particle beam laser weapon like the first one we encountered, which means if they focus this beam onto one spot and just keep piling up enough energy on that single point, all at once… it will produce a massive atmospheric explosion that will send the resulting shockwave through the thicker lower levels and will slam into the surface of the Earth.”

 “Not exactly a surgical strike there…” Sheppard scowled, adding his thoughts from a military standpoint.

“Not at all,” McKay concurred. “We’re talking about a last line of defense system here. All or nothing. Remember the Tunguska Explosion of 1908?” he asked.

 Sheppard shook his head, his gaze intense. The others, not being from Earth, also shook their heads in response, as did Mr. Woolsey, unseen, back in Atlantis.

“It was a comet fragment about twenty meters in diameter.  As it passed by Earth’s orbit it was pulled into the planet’s gravity well and began to plummet through the upper atmosphere at a speed greater than seven miles per second. At that speed, it hit the thicker layers of the lower atmosphere like an egg hitting a brick wall. It shattered instantly, unleashing its pent-up kinetic energy about six miles above the Earth’s surface equal to about 20 megatons of power.

 “The resulting shockwave from the comet fragment’s destruction acted like a secondary explosion hurtling toward the ground and was powerful enough to level over eighty million trees at the point of impact over an area of 830 square miles.”  Rodney finally stopped talking and let that image sink in.

The lengthening silence from those around him along with the color that seemed to drain a bit from Sheppard’s face told Rodney he needed to keep control of this moment.

“I need to work on this,” he stated, keeping his tone level. John looked over at him and blinked. Rodney felt for his friends as they came to terms with the situation. This was big. This was bigger than any threat they’d encountered so far. “If this weapon is malfunctioning, there’s no telling how many firing sequences are programmed into it. If we’re looking at multiple bursts or more, we could be facing an extinction level event for all life on this planet. I need to figure out our next course of action. Now.”

There was silence from their radios and then a soft sigh from Mr. Woolsey. His voice was still calm and collected but tinged with the same fear they all felt.

“Okay. Take as much time as you need then, but… please keep me informed,” Woolsey requested.

 ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

While John remained with Rodney in the communications center, Ronon and Teyla explored the rest of the station. They followed the floor plan layout displayed on the hand held device Rodney had given them, and after about an hour’s searching, came upon a double door that refused to open for them.

“Colonel Sheppard?” Teyla called back on the radio.

“Sheppard, go ahead.”

“John, we’ve found a set of doors that are either locked or require the gene to access it. Could you join us? We’re three levels down, section D-7.”

“Roger that,” he replied and then looked to Rodney.

“Go ahead, I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. Keep working. I’ll be back shortly,” John told him and headed out of the room

 ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

John joined Teyla and Ronon outside the doors and Ronon gave him a shrug and a grin. They all looked at the doors and Teyla raised a brow to John with a smirk. Sheppard adjusted the weapon in his hands and stepped in front of the doors. They opened with a slight hesitation, and then a musical chime he’d come to know in the Lantean functionality chirped out as the doors slid smoothly to the side. They remained in place waiting for that something that always came as a surprise. Nothing happened.

The room behind the doors was dark as the three looked around from the doorway then John took a hesitant step inside and the lights came up. Another step and more lights popped on around the room. Within twenty seconds they were awash in brilliant colors of light from every direction. In the center of the room was a large opalescent orb sitting atop a short, wide dais. The orb spun slowly, changing hues slightly as it turned.

“It looks like a planet,” Ronon offered.

“Almost like a revolving planet,” John added, seeing the similarity as well.

“What is it?” Teyla asked and her two companions shrugged.

The three explorers slowly made their way toward it, looking at the machinery and other techno-gadgets along the walls as they approached the sphere from three directions.

“Hey,” Ronon said, alerting them to the dais with a nod.  “Are those what I think they are?” he asked, knowing precisely what he was looking at.

“ZPM’s…” Teyla acknowledged. Her eyes lit up with controlled excitement, for they’d been in this position before. The pot of riches at the end of the rainbow, as John’s people were fond of saying, but it was often a treasure they couldn’t grasp for one reason or another. Sheppard just stared at the rows of reclining modules, noting how they made him think of wine bottles resting in a wine rack.

“Some are black,” Ronon pointed out.

“But others, are not,” Teyla added.  “Many seem to be dimmed, but a few are still brightly lit.”

“They’ve probably been set up to share power needs,” John surmised.  “Can’t even imagine how much power it takes to run this place and a satellite system in orbit.”

“Wouldn’t your people have noticed a large orbiting station over your planet with all their space travel and high powered telescopes and things?” Ronon asked.

“Not if it’s cloaked,” John answered. “Which it probably is so any enemies coming into Earth’s orbit wouldn’t detect it. But Rodney said this thing is sitting 92 million miles away. Our moon is only about 238 thousand miles from here, a short distance in comparison. All other travel beyond our moon was by unmanned, remote vehicles and only Ancient systems can detect Ancient cloaking technology. So…” John let his words trail off.

“Why didn’t Atlantis detect it?” Teyla asked.

“It probably did,” John answered as he stared down at the cache of ZPMs.  “Rodney said he and Radek had picked up a power anomaly, but couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.”

“Yeah, but shouldn’t it have picked up on it from space? Why did it wait until we’ve been on Earth a week?” Ronon asked.

“I don’t know. This stuff is several million years old, from what I’m told. The Ancients left Earth several million years ago and headed to Pegasus due to some kind of plague or something here on Earth that was threatening to wipe them out,” John told them with a shrug. “So maybe it’s not all working like it was meant to. Instead of getting pinpoint timing and accuracy with the targeting system and its communications sources, everything‘s running behind schedule… seems like it’s taking its sweet time for everything to come online.”

“Well, I’d say that’s a good thing. Otherwise it probably would’ve already destroyed the City,” Ronon mentioned. “Maybe McKay can figure out how to turn it off.”

John and Teyla nodded, but their response was cut short by Rodney’s voice over the comlink channel as he opened the connection. “We’ve got a big problem. Sheppard, I need you back up here now.”  The three Lanteans exchanged glances and then John ran out of the room, followed by the others.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“See this?” Rodney pointed to a screen on the back wall as Sheppard strode into the room. John looked at it without a clue as the blips and wavy lines repeated their patterns over and over again. 

 “Yeah. What is it?” he asked.

“It’s a biometric sensor. We have one just like it on Atlantis.”

 “So?” John asked, unsure if he really wanted to hear the rest.

“It detects irregularities in biometric rhythms and reports them, stores them, and analyzes them.”

“Okaaaay,” Sheppard nodded. “Get to the bad part, Rodney.”

“The bad part… is that it picked up the Hive’s presence in orbit and that’s when all these systems started coming online. This station and the satellite overhead were put here to protect Earth from an attack.”

“From the Wraith?” John asked distractedly as he stared intently at the blips and wavy lines.

“No, from the Smurfs. Yes, from the Wraith!” Rodney shot back snidely. “The Wraith siege on Atlantis was the whole reason they left the City behind to begin with, remember? But that was after they’d escaped to Pegasus from Earth the first time. They originally fled to Earth millions of years ago from their home galaxy to get away from the Ori,  their origins, and were obviously afraid they would follow--.”

“See?” Sheppard grinned at Ronon and Teyla, feeling rather smug for getting that right. They grinned back at him as Rodney continued unperturbed by his comment.

“While they were here, they set up this defence system to protect Earth, and their children - us - from future threats. When they retreated to Pegasus, they left the system in a dormant state, programmed to come back online if a threat to us was detected. In the years following, they came into the battle with the Wraith. When they programmed the Pegasus satellite to detect Wraith presence, it must’ve uploaded that information to all their LaGrange Point satellites in order to protect us, and them, from attacks from their enemies – old and new. So now it’s programmed to come online if the Wraith ever managed to find Earth and came here looking for a new feeding ground.”

“So it detected the Wraith Hive…” John nodded.

“Right,” Rodney replied, still looking at him with a tense expression.

“But Atlantis took out the Hive ship, Rodney. Why didn’t the satellite power down once they were destroyed?” Sheppard demanded to know.

“Because it doesn’t know that Atlantis wasn’t compromised,” Rodney told him. “For all it knows, the City has been overrun and is under the control of the Wraith.”

“Why would it think that?” Sheppard growled.

“Because it asked us for confirmation of our identity and we didn’t answer.”

“Well, we didn’t know what the question was!” John said, thinking out loud more than actually informing Rodney of the fact.

“I know that!” McKay fired back and John nearly threw up his hands as he turned away, trying to focus on a solution to their predicament.  “But now it’s got a Wraith signal in its data receiver and an identity request not being answered with the right code… and it’s picking up the bio-signature of a Wraith on Atlantis…”

John spun around to look at Rodney, suddenly comprehending. “Todd.”

“Right. We have a Wraith in Atlantis confirming the City’s been compromised… so it’s counting down to destroy the City.” Rodney paused and then added, “And we can’t stop it.”

“Well, we have to stop it. Find the code!” John ordered him. “Figure it out, Rodney!”

“I can’t! I don’t have enough time! The only way to save Atlantis now is to get it out of Earth’s orbit and as far away from the Milky Way as we can get her before the weapon fires,” Rodney told them.

“Can she fly?” John asked Rodney.

“Well… yeah, theoretically she can. We sustained quite a bit of damage on re-entry, but thanks to the shields and the auto-pilot helping out with the landing… good thing with Carson in the chair…” he added half under his breath. “We‘ve been able to effect most of the vital repairs, and what damage we did sustain that hasn’t already been repaired can be repaired in flight, but we don’t have the power to get lift off and we certainly don’t have the power needed to achieve a hyper-drive window.”

“What would all that take?” John asked, as he pulled Rodney from his chair and ushered him toward the door.

“What? What are you doing?“ he asked and then answered the question. “ZPM’s of course, which we don’t have and there are no others that we know of on Earth. I need to finish this. Where are we going?” he asked as Sheppard physically hauled him out of the room and down the corridor to the transporter.

“Trust me, Rodney,” John told him as the doors slid shut behind them, “you’re going to like this.”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“Oh my god,” Rodney exclaimed softly as the door opened and he stepped inside the room that acted as the station’s power core.

“ZPMs. You need ‘em, we got ‘em,” John quipped as lightly as he could under the urgency of the circumstances.

“This is amazing!” Rodney chirped. “Look at this place…”

“We’ve seen it,” Ronon drawled.  “Can it help us?” he asked.

“I-- I don’t know. Give me a minute,” Rodney replied as he sat down at another console and opened his laptop. He began to upload the station’s data files, integrating them with his own files as he studied the routing systems of the power supply through the station.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Another hour passed as the team sat around the room waiting for Rodney’s verdict. He’d spent that hour with his attention solely on his laptop, either staring at the information on the screen intently or with fingers flying over the keys, making inquiries or calculating the data it showed him. Sometimes he pulled his eyes away from the monitor long enough to pick up his PDA or to slide his chair right or left to tap a few buttons on the banked consoles surrounding the Zero Point Modules.

Ronon paced near the door like a caged lion that desired to be anywhere but in the captivity he now felt closing in around him. Knowing that the cage was thousands of feet below the surface of the ocean was even more disconcerting to the Satedan.

Teyla sat on a tall lab stool a few yards away from McKay and watched him patiently. Her skill in the art of meditation served her well at times such as this, when the utmost patience was required to stay her need to do something. Once in a while she spared her other teammates a glance and a soft, empathetic smile, knowing just how difficult the wait was for her companions.

Sheppard, however, was now in complete military mode and stood nearby, every muscle in his body tense, coiled and ready to spring into action. Cradling his P-90, he waited for the information he needed to calculate his next strategic move in order to keep the people in the city, the people in his charge, safe. Finally, he moved and, although the movement was nothing more than flipping his arm up and over to look at his watch, the sudden action caught both his waiting teammates’ attention. Teyla and Ronon looked at him expectantly just as he stepped toward McKay.

“Rodney --” he began and was cut off by McKay.

“Okay,” Rodney finally piped out as he sat up straight and looked around the room to locate each of his teammates and to be sure he wasn’t completely alone in the room before he began to explain his findings. “Ah,” he said, pleased to find all of them were there and waiting on his every word. He turned himself toward Sheppard and John moved toward him and stopped a few feet away.

“What’ve ya’ got, Rodney?” he asked.

“I have good news and I have bad news,” McKay told him, waiting for Sheppard to choose which he wanted to hear first.

“What’s the good news?” John asked, which came as no surprise to Rodney.

“Okay, we can take some of the ZPM’s to give us the power we need to take off and escape the solar system, and get out of reach of the weapons satellite, and save the City and everyone in her…” Rodney told them then added, “including Todd.” The muscles in John’s neck tensed slightly in a reflex reaction. The slight, involuntary response from Sheppard, with the delivery of those last two words, told McKay that adding that information was somehow an important part that John was waiting for.

He didn’t really know what was going on between his friend and the Wraith, but it was clear to Rodney - to all of them - that Todd’s continued existence, as much as Sheppard tried to deny it, to himself and to others, was important to the military commander. Perhaps it was simply because of the unusual circumstances the two had found themselves in when they’d first met and the fact they were able to survive it together, and only with each other’s help, had formed a bond of seeming friendship between the two that had never been seen between the two species before.

Or  perhaps it was something that went a bit deeper, something caused by Todd’s repeated feedings on the man. After draining his life nearly completely, Todd had returned John’s life-energy to him voluntarily and, afterward, had referred to him as a “brother”. 

Rodney could only imagine what that sort of traumatic experience could do to a person, not only physically; the pain of the feeding process was well-known across the galaxy to even those who’d never experienced it, but psychologically and emotionally, as well. They knew for certain that the repeated taking and giving back of  a person’s life force was how the Wraith created and conditioned their human followers, their worshippers. So there was a precedence previously established that this exchange between the two species caused a formation of a bond on a psychological, if not physical, level.

McKay shook away those thoughts and got back to the matter at hand as Ronon’s gravelly voice pulled him back to the presently emerging crisis. “So what’s the bad news?” he asked.

“We can’t take all of them.”

“We kind of figured that,” Sheppard told him. “What else?” he asked, expecting the other shoe to drop.  And it did.

“And we can’t take the ones that are still full,” Rodney added, gesturing toward the two brightly lit modules that were now powering the station and allowing it to communicate with the satellite.  “These two,” he said, gesturing toward them as he stood beside the bank of ZPMs, “are the only things right now keeping that satellite from taking out the city and possibly the entire planet.”

“What?” Sheppard snapped with an angry scowl.

“If we remove these two power units, the satellite will immediately assume that this station has been destroyed and that Earth, as a whole, has been compromised and its population is in imminent danger of becoming fodder for the Wraith stores. In order to keep the Wraith from advancing any further into other galaxies, this satellite has been programmed to remove them as a threat to humans at all costs. That means, if taking out an entire single planet in the hopes of keeping multitudes of galaxies of humans safe…”

John scowled at him. “They’ll do it,” he finished.

“Yeah,” Rodney nodded somberly.  “For such a bright race, they sure made a lot of rash decisions to try to cover up their endless list of mistakes by making another endless list of poor judgment calls.”

“What can we take, Rodney?” Sheppard urged him, in order to stay on track.

“Any, but these two,” McKay assured them.

Sheppard stared at the collection of dimmed and blackened modules and rubbed his chin as he considered his choices.  His three companions looked at him, waiting for him to make a command decision. Finally, John took a deep breath and straightened.

“Okay, take any, but those two and any that are completely empty. Let’s get them back to the Jumper now,” he ordered.

Teyla gave a nod and ran out of the room. She returned a few minutes later with two large backpacks from the Jumper’s supply locker and joined Ronon who’d already moved to do as they’d been ordered. She helped him place the modules inside one of the packs as John continued to speak with Dr. McKay.

“How much time do we have, Rodney?” Sheppard asked as he pulled one of the zero point energy modules from its socket.

“I have no idea ---” McKay started to say and moved back to his laptop to try to consult the data again.

“Rodney!” Sheppard barked, making it clear that his lack of answers was not good enough.

“I’m sorry!” McKay snapped back.  “It’s impossible to estimate due to the power fluctuations and the malfunctioning of the equipment and the programming is making a lot of this data come out as a jumbled mish mash of incoherent digital vomit, basically.  It looks like it was originally set for…” He paused as he tapped a few keys and watched the Ancient symbols scroll and flash. “Twelve.”

John turned to look at him. “Twelve? Twelve what?”

“Ummm… I don’t know?” Rodney replied, uncertain Sheppard would accept that three word answer again.

“This is kind of important, Rodney! Twelve hours? Twelve minutes? Twelve days??” Sheppard pushed but McKay just blinked back at him with a helpless expression.

“Twelve… seconds? Maybe?” Rodney offered as an alternative to the others John had already listed.

“Twelve seconds?”  Sheppard bit out in disbelief.

“Well… it’s possible,” Rodney told him hesitantly.

“We’d be dead already,” John countered.  “It’s been counting down for over a week now, Rodney.”

“Ahh, but see, you’re forgetting that this satellite is approximately 93 million miles away from Earth’s orbit.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning… it’s possible the weapon has already fired,” Rodney told him and the tension in Sheppard’s face suddenly went slack.  “The higher a weapon is in orbit, the longer firing window it has due to the fact that its height allows it more time over the potential target on which it’s firing.  This satellite, even with the powerful array of particle beams we witnessed in the first one, still has to push that beam millions of miles through space. That takes time. So even though the countdown might’ve already expired… or the weapon might think it’s expired due to all the malfunctioning data systems… it’s possible it’s already fired on Atlantis and we’re living on borrowed time here.”

“Back to the Jumper now!” Sheppard barked. 

He ran from the room, carrying the ZPM he’d freed earlier while Rodney gathered up all his equipment and Teyla and Ronon finished pulling the last of the dimmed ZPMs and carefully placed them in the second empty backpack.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

As Jumper One shot out of the ocean Sheppard contacted Atlantis to inform Mr. Woolsey of their predicament. Between he and Rodney, they were able to make a very long and detailed story rather short by comparison.

“I’m not sure how much the I.O.A. is going to like this,” Woolsey mentioned as a matter of course, but even he knew that it didn’t matter.  Atlantis was once again under the gun, literally, and its survival rested solely on fleeing yet another planet.

“Frankly, Mr. Woolsey, the I.O.A has never liked anything anyone has ever done and if we left it to them to decide our fate we’d be dead, because we all know the I.O.A. doesn‘t like actually making a decision… about anything,” Sheppard reminded him. “And it’s not their asses on the firing line… ever, so this is our call. We have the Z.P.M.s ---”

“It’s not a lot of power even with the seven we were able to take --” Rodney said, talking right over Sheppard.

“Seven? You found seven Z.P.M.s?” Woolsey asked, astonished.

“We did, but don’t get too excited, as I was going to say, they aren’t at full power. I don’t know exactly how much power they do have left, but I’m hoping collectively they have at least enough to get us airborne and to a safe distance outside this solar system,” Rodney informed him.

“What do you need from us?” Woolsey asked from Atlantis.

“I’m ready to transmit data to Zelenka,” Rodney told him as he worked at his laptop behind Sheppard’s seat again. “I need Radek to do a final pass over the coding to be sure my calculations are correct. Normally I wouldn’t question that, nor leave it to Radek to double check my work, of all people, but I’m working under stress here… not that that is unusual by any means either --”

“Rodney. Can we stay focused please?” John asked.

“Yes, yes,” McKay answered.  “I’ve calculated, to best estimates, the power output requirements needed to achieve lift off and sub-light travel. Hopefully the Zed P.M.s we’ve acquired can provide that much, but we’re going to tax them out quickly. We’ll lose the first one within half a minute, I’m sure. So we need Zelenka standing by to switch over to a fresh one without losing our momentum during lift off. Once we reach orbit, the weight of the city won’t be much of a factor, but we’re still looking at massive power consumption for propulsion, even at sub-light. Once we’ve exhausted all of the modules in this cache, we can replace them with the Zed P.M. in the core right now. But space flight is going to tax that one too rather quickly. We’ll have a couple of days, a week on the outside, to find a new power source or a safe harbor. Playing it safe, I give us three days, at which point we’ll find ourselves drifting again with severely depleted power. That’s why I suggest we should save our good Zed P.M., which is in the city’s core now, for use after our escape. We’re going to need it for shields and life support once we’re out of the atmosphere.”

“Understood,” Woolsey replied.  “I’ll contact the SGC and inform them of the situation. We have people on shore leave, do we have time to recall them?”

“Doubt it,” Rodney stated bluntly. “Hopefully they’re not key personnel.”

“All command staff, except for you four, are in residence,” Woolsey assured them. “How fast a breakaway are we looking at?”

“As soon as we land, we need to launch,” Rodney told them.

“We need a pre-flight warm up done before we get there,” Sheppard told him.  “Get Carson in the chair warming up the star drive. Make sure inertial dampeners are online and functioning properly or we won’t reach high altitude before G-forces rip us apart.”

“I’ll head to the Control Room,” Rodney interjected, “to monitor overall systems operations and we need Zelenka to monitor the energy output from the Zed P.M. room. Same drill as last time.”

“Copy that,” Woolsey acknowledged.  “We’ll be ready for your arrival. Atlantis, out.”

“The fun just never ends,” John muttered as the Jumper streaked toward the City.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

In the Atlantis Control Room, Amelia Banks stared at the City commander with a concerned expression. Woolsey looked from her to Chuck and back again. With a heavy sigh, he gave her a nod and Amelia tapped a few keys to open the citywide public address system.

“May I have your attention, please. I regret to inform you all that we have found ourselves in another spot of trouble and Atlantis needs to leave Earth’s atmosphere to ensure its continued survival.  The reality of this situation is that the Ancients have left behind a weapons platform satellite, exactly like the LaGrange Point satellite that was found in Pegasus a few years ago. This one, however, has identified the City as a threat to the population of Earth and is targeting us for destruction.

“We cannot simply evacuate the city, because the weapon will fire on Atlantis whether it is occupied or not. The destruction to the surrounding area for hundreds of square miles has been assessed and confirmed… and once again we find ourselves in a familiar situation.  We cannot simply hide from this weapon by changing locations on the planet’s surface. It will most likely continue to fire multiple shots in order to annihilate what it sees as a threat.  Within the next half hour, perhaps sooner, we will be firing up the star drive once again and heading into space.

“We estimate, that with the cache of zero point modules being brought to the city as we speak, although nearly depleted, we should have enough power to make it clear of our solar system and, hopefully, put enough distance between the city and the satellite as possible. All personnel,  prepare for emergency take off.  Atlantis will be leaving Earth once again.”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Upon landing Jumper One in the jumper bay, Sheppard ran straight for the control chair while Rodney, Teyla and Ronon remained in the Control Room.  The floor vibrated under their feet as the city’s star drive was initialized. When John got to the weapons platform, Carson was in the chair, lying back with his eyes squeezed shut and his fingers gripping the chair’s arms.

As John ran into the room, the three technicians monitoring pilot controls and systems data turned to greet him with a nod or a smile, relieved to see he’d made it.  Sheppard noted their presence peripherally as he ran to the chair.

“Carson!” he called out over the sound of the engines, placing a hand over Beckett’s wrist to alert the man of his presence. 

Beckett’s eyes flew open.  “Oh, thank God,” he breathed out and slid from the chair without powering down.

Sheppard changed places with him smoothly and Atlantis was the only one who noted the change over.  In the pilot’s chair platform, the lights brightened slightly as it registered the change in, what McKay liked to refer to as, C.I.A. - Chair Interface Aptitude.

Carson stood back, off the raised platform, and watched in awe, as Sheppard seemed to meld himself into the chair.  John’s eyes closed and his entire body relaxed, feeling the power of the City running through him. Atlantis hummed loudly, its engines powering up to a deafening level as the entire city-ship seemed to come to life around them.

Beckett moved to hold onto the edge of a console nearby in order to keep his feet under him as the vibrations threatened to topple anyone standing.  The technicians monitored their controls, snapping a look at the pilot now and again, as the lights dimmed and the city’s thrusters kicked in.

Beneath his feet, Carson could feel the city rising from the ocean surface as the weapons control chair began to slowly rotate.  Beckett’s mouth dropped open a bit as he watched. He wondered if it only did that when they were taking off and not landing, because the chair hadn’t spun around when he was in control of it. Perhaps it rotated itself in response to the more powerful connection it had with Sheppard’s ATA gene. That would be something worth studying at a later point, he decided.

“We have lift off, Colonel!” Woolsey’s voice came to him like a disembodied spirit.

“Copy that,”  Sheppard replied.

“Five seconds!  Altitude, twenty-three point five miles!” McKay’s voice came through.  “Come on, you can do it, Sheppard! We need to reach altitude at speeds of seven miles per second in order to achieve escape velocity or we‘ll get trapped in lower orbit without enough momentum to break free if our power drains before we reach orbit.”

Carson listened to the radio transmissions along with the rest of the city’s population as he watched John reclining in the chair.  His expression was relaxed, as if he was in a trance-like state, something Dr. Beckett couldn't seem to do.  He also noted that Sheppard’s entire body was suddenly covered in a layer of perspiration as if he was physically exerting himself. These were all things that he intended to study a bit more now that he'd have the time again to follow through with his ATA gene therapy research.

“Twenty seconds!  Altitude, ninety four miles!”  Rodney shouted over the din. “Come on, Sheppard, you can do better than that!”

“Rodney?” Zelenka’s voice came across their earpieces.  “He needn’t actually hit escape velocity speeds since we have a source of continuous propulsion energy. If he---”

“That’s if you assume that our continuous propulsion will continue! How are we doing with the Zed P.M.s?” he asked pointedly.

“We’re doing fine, actually,” Radek answered. “We’re about to change out the first one.”

“What’s our trajectory?” Rodney asked Chuck sitting to his left.

“He’s taking us on a radial line from the center of the planet. Straight up,” Chuck confirmed.

“Which means the only significant force being put on the city right now is the Earth’s gravity well --” Radek continued, but Rodney cut him off again.

“You are not taking into account air friction,” McKay snapped.

“Yes, I am,” Radek countered calmly.  “You are projecting a worse case scenario, Rodney.  There’s no way he can reach speeds of seven miles per second. The city is too massive for such speeds within a gravitational field,” Zelenka warned.  “You’re taxing him for no reason.”

Carson listened to the chatter with concern, but he watched John Sheppard intently. The man seemed to not be bothered by McKay’s urgency or his demands. He seemed content as a man could be under the circumstances and the city rose steadily from Earth’s surface, heading for space.

Rodney watched his data screens with steadfast attention as he clung to the edge of the console to keep his seat.  “Why don’t you just let me coach him? I know what I’m doing.”

“Because we are still within the Earth’s atmosphere and you know as well as I do that it is impossible to give any object that kind of speed this close to the surface of the planet due to atmospheric friction.”

Mr. Woolsey stood in front of McKay and Chuck at the Command Center’s communications console, listening closely. He let the two scientists argue it out without interference because he didn’t have a clue which was right or wrong and secondly because the view outside the city’s massive windows was changing from the pale blue of oxygen and hydrogen rich atmosphere to the deeper purples that quickly changed to black.

“Yes, but what you’re not taking into account, Radek --”

“The hypersonic regime --”

“Is not an issue here considering the propulsion system of Atlantis is beyond the norm of what we would otherwise consider ‘practical propulsion’,” Rodney nearly bellowed as the city around them quieted and smoothed out her travel.

“It would appear that all your arguments are moot, Doctor,” Woolsey offered with a satisfied smile. “I believe we’ve achieved orbit.”

Everyone in the Control Center, and city inhabitants on all levels, were quietly looking about as the silence settled around them.  Outside the city shields the universe enveloped them like a black drape across their windows.

“We did it,” Rodney stated as he looked around them bright eyed. He smiled. “We did it!”  He did some fast typing on a keyboard and read the data it gave him. “We’ve got a clean path ahead and are heading toward the edge of the Milky Way away from the direction of the satellite.”

Cheers erupted throughout the city as McKay’s reassuring words came across the radios.

“Colonel Sheppard, you can stand down,” Woolsey informed John.

“Not yet,” Sheppard replied and Woolsey looked to Rodney in question.

“I have no idea,” McKay told him.

“Colonel Sheppard, what are you doing?” Woolsey asked.

“I think we should take a look at that satellite. I don’t like the thought that it may have already fired at Earth and we escape scot-free while thousands of people on the ground are in the line of fire,” Sheppard replied.

“Sheppard?” Rodney said, standing up in concern. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to take us to the satellite,” John answered, his voice droning evenly as if he was entranced.

“And then what?” Rodney asked.

“If it has fired, like you suggested, we’ve got to do something,” Sheppard told him.

“Like what?” Rodney demanded to know. “We can’t destroy it, John. That weapons system is precisely the thing we’ve been hoping for all this time to defend Earth. Do you have a plan?”

“Not really,” Sheppard replied. “You’ll figure it out when we get there.”

“Oh, of course, I will,” Rodney remarked.  “Why do you always lay this stuff on my shoulders, huh?”

“Because I know you can do it,” Sheppard told him. “Even if you don’t.

John’s words of trust and faith went right to his core and caught Rodney off guard. John was his best friend and, although he often pretended that the military commander was little more than a sore on his ass, it was moments just like this, when Sheppard wore his faith in Rodney on his sleeve without pause and in front of so many that really pierced McKay’s heart.

Rodney sat back down to monitor systems and keep in contact with Radek regarding the ZPM outputs. “We’re heading for the satellite, Radek. Stay on your toes with those ZPMs,” Rodney told him.

“Copy that,” Zelenka replied.

It didn’t take long for Sheppard to steer the city-ship into range of the satellite’s laser beam. Rodney picked up on its energy signature still millions of miles out. His fingers ran over the keys of two of the laptops in front of him and he frowned.

“What is it?” Woolsey asked, leaning over the edge of the console in front of McKay.

“It’s fired,” Rodney answered.  He tapped his earpiece, his expression intense as he turned a bit in his seat as if visualizing John beside him as he spoke to him. “Sheppard, the weapon has fired. I repeat, the weapon has fired. We need to intercept that particle beam or Earth is…”

“I got it, Rodney,” John replied calmly.

“Can the shield take a hit like that?” Woolsey asked, ready to counter that plan.

“It better,” Rodney replied, “but it’s either us or thousands of innocent people on Earth who don’t even know they’re in danger because of us.”

“But the last time the city had to deal with a particle beam weapon like this, you tried to sink the city and that didn’t work. You had to make an emergency escape and ended up drifting lost in space until --”

“That was a sustained beam energy weapon,” Rodney said, shaking his head at Woolsey’s conclusion. “There’s a huge difference between that and this one. This satellite has fired one burst, I think we can take that.”

“You think,” Woolsey pointed out.

“I’m pretty sure,” McKay nodded.

Woolsey looked at him but didn’t say anything more. He had to put faith in those that knew the city and what she was capable of. He stood close though, not moving from the spot in front of Rodney and Chuck.

“We’re in range and should be able to pick up on the energy beam on sensors,” McKay reported and looked to Chuck as he and Amelia began to work their respective consoles.

“Got it,” Amelia called out and Chuck nodded as he received the same data on his equipment.

“Put it on screen,” Woolsey requested.

Amelia brought up external sensor data and widened the field to show the shape of Atlantis coming into proximity with the enormous particle beam zipping through space like a deadly missile.

“Distance 23 million miles, speed 11.6 thousand miles per second.  It’ll be within intercept range in…” she checked the data coming over her screen, “... three minutes, twenty-three seconds.”

“Sheppard, if you can keep us on this course, we will be intercepting the beam in three minutes,” McKay reported.

“Copy that,” Sheppard replied.

Tense minutes passed as they all waited to face their fate.  Every person in the control room and the power core room and in the chair room, along with every other person on the ill-fated ship shared concerned glances with those nearby. Except John Sheppard, who was busy mind-melding to the great city to accomplish the mission, and Carson Beckett who was simply standing in front of him trying to assess the Colonel’s physical state.

“One minute,” Banks reported.

“One minute, Sheppard,” Rodney relayed to his friend.

“City wide,” Woolsey requested, pointing at Chuck who nodded and opened a channel for the commander to address the troops.  “Your attention, please. All hands prepare for impact,” he warned and everyone within the city got ready.

Rodney stared at his monitor as Amelia began the countdown to their fate.

“T - minus twelve, eleven, ten, nine…”

Everyone braced themselves and Rodney gripped the edge of his console as hard as he could as he stared at the read out on his computer. In the very last seconds of Amelia’s countdown, Sheppard pulled the city up at an abrupt angle, as he fired port thrusters and aimed the dome of the city shield directly at the incoming laser beam.

The impact lit up the shield like a neon bulb in a Vegas sign as the shield’s shape deflected the particle beam and shot it out into space at a right angle to Earth’s position. Rodney’s face fell in shock and awe as his monitor showed him the beam traveling out away from the planets in their solar system.

“What did you do?” Rodney babbled out. “What did you do? How did you do that?” he asked.

“We’re not dead,” Woolsey mentioned and Rodney looked up at him.

“We’re not dead,” Rodney echoed with a surprised smile on his face. “We’re not only not dead, the impact didn’t drain too much out of the shield because of the angle it hit. It glanced off our shields instead of solidly impacting it.  But the glancing blow has sent us careening off course. We‘re on a new trajectory heading toward the edge of the Milky Way in the direction of Andromeda… instead of Pegasus.  It‘s not that big a detour in the grand layout of the universe, but we can bring the city back on course once we --- ”

“Rodney? We’re down to our last three partial ZPMs,” Radek informed him.

“What? Already?”  McKay replied.

“And we’ve lost what little bit of  sub-light engines we had.”

“We’re adrift? Again?” Rodney asked, knowing full well what it meant.

“Yes,” Radek answered.

McKay looked up at Woolsey, but the city commander just looked back at him waiting for the bad news. Rodney, however, didn’t blurt out his normal doomsday rhetoric. “It’s okay,” he said, to everyone looking back at him. “It’s okay, we’re okay. We’ll… figure out something. We always do,” he stated and then redirected his attention to his radio. “Sheppard? How did you know that would work?” Rodney asked the pilot, awe-struck.

“The whales,” John replied.

“Whales?” Woolsey asked, but he knew McKay understood perfectly by the expression on his face as Rodney nodded.

“I figured it couldn’t be much more powerful than a coronal mass ejection and if we could use the shields of the Daedalus to redirect that solar flare using our ZPM to strengthen their shields ---” Sheppard explained.

“Then the city’s shields should be able to do the same thing…” Rodney finished.

“Right.”

“Wow, you really are a genius,” Rodney stated in wonder. Everyone around him smiled as the great scientist offered a compliment to the military commander.

“Thanks, Rodney” John replied and everyone in the city went back to work.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

In the chair room, John opened his eyes and sat forward. His face was shiny with perspiration and his wild scruffy hair was plastered to his forehead. He sat up breathing heavily and took a slow, deep, cleansing breath.

Carson moved up in front of him, gazing at him with a bit of concern. “Colonel? Are you all right?”

John looked to Beckett and blinked as he considered the question before giving a nod. “Yeah, I think we’re all ‘all right’… at least for now,” he answered. “As long as our power lasts anyway,” he added and the two men stared at one another as that thought once again weighed heavily on their minds. 

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