No Place Like Home
Summary and Spoiler Warning: This is set a few days after the Stargate Atlantis finale. The story assumes that SG-1 and General Landry have returned to the SGC from their super-secret mission aboard the Odyssey. The Atlantis team is still on Earth, recovering from the events described in 'Enemy at the Gate.'
Characters: SG-1 team, SGA team, SGC and SG-Atlantis members, others
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis and their characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is a non-profit endeavour for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's notes and explanations are posted at my forum: fanfiction.net/topic/12334/12759760/1/
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"So you actually landed Atlantis in the San Francisco Bay?" Cameron Mitchell said. "Gotta admit, that's kinda... cool."
"Yeah. Wasn't me doing the piloting, though," Sheppard disclaimed, looking vaguely envious. "Beckett was in the chair."
The two men had been in a joint briefing session with General Landry and the other SG team leaders, and were walking down the hallway in Sub-Level 27, taking the opportunity to catch up.
"You were busy blowing the Wraith up, I hear. Some real pretty flying with the 302, according to Sam."
"Hey, it's what we do, right? Besides, if my team hadn't shown up, I probably wouldn't be here to talk about it," Sheppard said, shaking his head with an affectionate smirk. "Those guys - completely crazy plan, gating into the Hive ship."
"Hey, I like crazy," Mitchell said. "Crazy is SG-1's middle name."
Colonel Reynolds of SG-3, who was walking by them in the opposite direction, signalled his amusement at this with an audible snort. Or maybe he was signalling his agreement - it was equally likely, given some of the things he had known SG-1 to do.
Sheppard and Mitchell shared a grin.
"So you moved Atlantis to the Naval Base in San Diego?"
"Yeah, I got to fly her up that time. At least the ZPMs have enough juice left to keep the cloak engaged." He paused as he spotted two men exiting the briefing room ahead of them.
"Hey Rodney, Radek."
"Doctors," Mitchell said, with a polite nod, which was returned by Zelenka.
"Oh, hi. John, Mitchell," McKay acknowledged, with a distracted air. "Have you seen Sam? I think I may have an idea about the ZedPM problem, and Radek wants to run some numbers by her."
"ZPM problem?" Mitchell repeated, enquiringly.
McKay threw up his hands and scowled. "Well, when the genius here decided to pull his stunt-"
"Planet-saving stunt," Zelenka interjected, crossing his arms. "Based on your idea, I should point out."
"OK, his planet-saving stunt, with wormhole drive, it seriously depleted our ZedPMs - all three of them. They were already drained significantly when Atlantis made it to Earth, and then there was the battle on top of that, plus the stress of keeping the shields intact through atmospheric re-entry, not to mention... well, anyway, long story short, we don't have enough power to fly the ship back to the Pegasus Galaxy!"
"Assuming the IOA would let us take her back, even if we had the power," Sheppard said, with a saturnine smile.
"What? You don't think they'd try to keep Atlantis here!" McKay said, his voice rising along with his indignation.
"Well, we haven't managed to salvage the Antarctic Weapons Platform yet," Mitchell said. "They're still excavating at Area 51. There's going to be some people arguing that we need to be concerned about Earth's defences against any future extra-planetary threats."
"That's absurd! Earth is plenty well-defended - counting the General Hammond, we have at least 4 spaceships now, with the Asgard upgrades; plus the Russians and their 302 program, not to mention the Chinese and the new ship they're building. I mean, what about Pegasus? The Wraith are still out there! We can't just abandon our allies - there are millions of human lives at stake. "
"Whoa, McKay," Mitchell raised his hands in a pacific gesture. "I'm with you - but not everyone in the IOA or the Pentagon is going to see it that way. I'm just saying."
"Woolsey's working on it," Sheppard said.
None of the other men seemed to think this a particular reason for optimism.
"Pretty sure General O'Neill's got a plan," he offered next. "He was asking about the beaches on M35-117. He said something about a party, with umbrella drinks. And cake."
"He mentioned cake? That's a good sign," Mitchell said, nodding sagely.
"Well, regardless, the issue of returning to Pegasus is moot, until we solve our energy problem," Zelenka pointed out.
"True. Back to the business at hand - do you know where Sam is?" Rodney asked. "She's not off supervising the repairs at Area 51 or something, is she?"
"No, I dropped her and Vala off at Sub-Level 19 after lunch - they were going to meet Bill Lee in one of the computational labs."
"Oh, good. That's good. Later!" McKay said over his shoulder, setting off toward the elevators at a brisk pace. "Radek, your idea about applying continuum mechanics to the problem is totally ridiculous. For one thing..."
Sheppard watched the two arguing scientists retreat, and turned to Mitchell with a resigned shrug. "Guess the geniuses will figure something out."
"Yeah. Listen, I just got done with my reports. You wanna go catch a game or something?"
"Speaking of, Ronon said something about sparring with Teal'c."
"Really? You know, as team leaders, we should go keep an eye on things. Evaluate their relative combat proficiency." Mitchell's air of sober responsibility was belied by the glint in his eye.
"Yeah. Plus we should make sure they don't totally trash the gym," Sheppard said.
"Let's pick Jackson up on the way. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't want to miss this."
"Yeah, Teyla too. Lorne's probably selling tickets already. Last time this happened, they were at it for over two hours till Sam broke it up."
"Nice! If I know Siler, he's taking bets. If we hurry, we might get in on the action. Shall we, Colonel?"
"After you, Colonel."
*********
McKay and Zelenka discovered Samantha Carter in a lab, as Mitchell had said, in the middle of a discussion with Bill Lee. They were both looking at what appeared to be results of a simulation on one of the large LCD screens at the rear of the room. Vala Mal Doran was seated in one of the chairs next to them, her feet propped up on a table, apparently ignoring the discussion in favour of the contents of a glossy magazine that was occupying her attention.
McKay walked in waving his tablet excitedly and talking nineteen to the dozen.
"Sam! I know you can talk sense into this Czech idiot - I've figured out a way to potentially solve the energy equilibrium problem with that zero point energy generation model I told you about. Oh, hey, Bill. Could you scootch over a little bit? I just want to..." He pushed his way to one of the terminals, placed his tablet next to it, and tapped a few keys in rapid sucession. The display on the terminals changed to show a split screen view of a set of equations and a graphic resembling a series of nested inverted parabolas.
Zelenka rolled his eyes and shrugged at the other scientists. Bill Lee looked bemused.
"Hi Rodney. It's nice to see you too. No, we weren't really working on anything too important. Of course, we'd be thrilled to hear about your latest idea," Sam said, smiling a little too brightly.
Vala made a scoffing noise from behind her magazine.
"Oh, I'm sorry to interrupt your pedestrian little hyper-drive efficiency simulations," Rodney retorted. "But this is actually important. Not to mention way more interesting and original."
"Hey!" Dr. Lee said, looking a bit hurt.
"Take a look at this, OK? Radek doesn't understand these calculations, so he's no help."
"I understand the calculations perfectly well, Rodney. That is not the problem. The problem is that you are insane and your idea is completely impracticable."
"Oh, shush. Let her look."
Sam looked intrigued, and leaned over Mckay's tablets to bring up a new set of graphics and equations on the large screen. Bill Lee frowned at the display, and scratched his chin thoughtfully. Vala peered over the magazine at the LCD.
"Wow, Mckay, this is interesting! The quantum fluctuations in output are magnified with each cycle, but the entropy within the system increases at a dramatically slower rate: plus, the initial boost required to start the cycle is much lower than we thought was needed. This model is way more energy efficient than your earlier one, trying to draw energy from parallel universes," Sam said.
"Exactly! So if we can duplicate this in a live experiment, we should be able to generate at least 60% percent of the power that one of the Ancient ZedPMs gives us. We'd be sacrificing some extra energy to maintain a stable boundary, but..."
"But Zelenka's right - it's impracticable. There's still the problem of fabricating a container that would be able to store and release the energy at a differential rate for the input and output halves of the cycle," Vala said, pursing her lips thoughtfully.
"Yes, but if we could... wait, what?" McKay exclaimed, with an incredulous double take, first at Vala and then at the cover of the issue of Cosmopolitan that was partially obscuring her face. "You understood that?"
Vala lowered her magazine and raised an ironic eyebrow. She got that from Teal'c, McKay decided.
"Let's see: in theory, zero point energy might be infinite, but even the Ancients couldn't violate the laws of conservation: there is no free, unlimited, zero point energy buffet. What the ZPMs do is control the rate of energy flow, allowing us to extract the zero point energy from a bounded thermodynamic system, with the ZPM slowing down - but not stopping - the rate of change to the system; the greater the amounts of energy we drain, the faster the rate of change, until eventually, the system is irrevocably altered and there is no longer a net positive energy output. Is that a fair summary?"
When McKay remained speechless, doing a fair impression of a goldfish, she continued.
"In the process, the container crystal is also irreversibly degraded, resulting in the ZPM's depletion. As I was saying, Rodney, that still leaves us with the question of how to create a container which behaves in the unique way the Ancient's crystals do. Unless of course you've thought of some way to bypass the fabrication problem? No? I didn't think so."
Having silenced her audience with a display of Daniel Jackson-level sarcasm combined with Sam Carter-patented tech exposition, Vala raised her magazine and went back to reading it with every evidence of absorbed interest.
McKay spluttered incoherently for a moment. Then he spun around and pointed at the other three scientists in the room. "Oh, I get it! Very funny. You guys decided to have laugh at my expense, and..."
Zelenka shook his head, looking amused. Sam eyed him with exasperation. "Rodney. Did you read the the sign on the lab door?"
McKay glanced back, puzzled, at the door he had left ajar behind him. 'Computational Solid Mechanics Lab', he read. Below, in slightly smaller print, the sign went on, 'Senior Supervisor: Dr. William Lee. Projects Supervisor: Dr. Vala Mal Doran.'
McKay's eyes widened even more. "Since when did Vala..."
"Among other things," Sam said with some asperity, "Vala earned her doctorate in Mechanical Engineering last year. She already had a head start, with her expertise in applied ship design and gate technologies."
"Well, she's been working with my team since she officially joined the SGC three years ago," Bill Lee put in, with a deprecatory shrug.
Vala put her magazine down on the table with a long-suffering sigh.
"But the weasel men at the IOA wouldn't let me have any fun or spend actual money on my projects until I had the 'credentials' to justify the research budget," Vala said, using her fingers to punctuate, and wrinkling her nose in remembered disgust. Oh, she got that air quotes thing from Mitchell, McKay thought.
"Oh. Hmm. Yeah, I can see the IOA being like that," Rodney conceded. "So, you earned a doctorate in the three years you've been on Earth? Huh. That's actually... pretty impressive," he said.
"Closer to one and a half years," Bill Lee said, with an air of fond pride. "CalTech," he supplied, in response to McKay's unasked question.
Zelenka whistled softly. "That is impressive," he said. "What was your thesis subject?"
Vala preened and gave him a pleased smile. "Stress-induced Thermomechanical Response and Damage Evolution of Polycrystalline and Nanocrystalline Materials," she said. "My work was originally based on Goa'uld technology, but obviously there are applications in..."
"... Ancient tech, specifically ZedPM crystals," McKay concluded, looking simultaneously enlightened and stunned. "Umm, sorry! I- I didn't mean to imply earlier, that is, I didn't realise that..." he spluttered to an uncomfortable halt.
"That beneath this seductively attractive yet demure exterior, lurks a brilliant and original mind?" Vala asked, revealing most of her teeth in a predatory grin. "Never mind, Rodney. I'm used to it."
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