Stargate Atlantis: Nature's Bounty
"Colonel Sheppard, I've got those reports." Evan Lorne stood at the table in the cafeteria. He set down a data pad next to the tray where the remnants of John Sheppard's lunch could be seen. There were crumbs from a sandwich, a stray strand of turkey and a leftover piece of lettuce. A small piece of a French fry was all that remained from the group, and the bottle of water was nearly empty. Even the pudding cup had been decimated and only a trace of chocolate remained on one side of the vacant holder. At John's grunt he continued. "I made a few notations about the recent activity in the—"
"Evan! Evan! Evan, you are not going to believe this!" Moira O'Meara called from across the room. Speedily she rushed to him, white coat flapping to either side of her like wings, her brown hair messily streaming out of her ponytail. "Look! It's an entelodont! An entelodont!" she practically squealed, flipping open a data pad to show him a screen capture. An animal was frozen on the screen, a large pig-like mammal with a huge head and knobby protrusions along its face. "Do you know what this means? I have to go there! Can you clear it with Major Teldy so I can be on her team when they return to his planet? Please, Evan, this is an unprecedented opportunity!" She was almost jumping up and down.
Evan blinked at the rush of words, of enthusiasm. He smiled. "Okay."
"Thank you, Evan! I…oh, sorry!" She took a step backwards, only now just noticing that he had been talking to John. "I didn't mean to, to, to interrupt!" She closed the data pad, glancing at Evan before looking at John, shrugging and quickly leaving the two men.
John was staring at her, transfixed by her exuberance, her joy, her sheer vitality and her messy appearance. He lowered the spoon he had been holding, forgetting about that last bite of chocolate pudding. "What—"
"Sorry about that, sir. Doctor O'Meara can get rather, um, overly enthusiastic about her paleontology studies," Evan explained, trying not to laugh at the colonel's expression.
"No, I mean, yeah, I noticed that, but what was that thing on the vid?"
"Oh. An entelodont." At the military commander's blank look Evan smiled. "It's an extinct species of a prehistoric pig, I think, dating from the late Eocene. I'm sure Moira could tell you all about it in great detail, sir, for several hours."
"That's what I'm asking you, major," John jested, and the two men laughed.
"So you will allow her to join Teldy's team for this mission? I am aware that you have a no civilian ban at the moment but this really is O'Meara's field and if this is a living example of a supposedly extinct prehistoric species then the implications for us and the—"
"Yes, she can tag along in this instance," John decided on a whim, not wanting to quell her enthusiasm, although he did rather anticipate getting into an argument with her. He could just imagine her Irish temper. "I'd be afraid to tell her no," John jested.
"You and me both, sir," Evan agreed with a grin.
"Does she always become so…excited over science?" John asked, settling on the word. He found himself wondering what else could get her excited. He recalled the way she had been gyrating on the table in the bio lab, singing painfully out of tune.
"Don't they all, sir?" Evan quipped.
"John! John! John, you're not going to believe this!" Rodney McKay called across the room. He hastened towards the two men, waving his data pad in front of him like a machete to clear his way as people jumped and darted out of the beeline he was making towards the two men. He even ignored getting some food in his haste and excitement.
John smiled. "Case in point," he sighed. "Rodney, let me guess. You have finally fixed the DVD machine?"
"What? No! Not yet, anyway," the physicist answered as he reached the two men. "The inner circuitry is somehow scrambled and the don't get me started on that look at this!" He thrust the data pad under John's nose. "I've analyzed the debris left on Dagan and you are not going to believe this!"
"Believe what?" John asked, staring at the equations and charts on the screen. It was a meaningless jumble to him.
"There's a residue of radiation. That means—"
"It wasn't just a malfunction. Weapons," John finished for him. He shoved the data pad aside.
Rodney closed it. "Oh. You do know," he said, deflated, but he smiled. "I bet you didn't know that I found the same signature, the exact same isotope recorded from the shock wave blast that hit us when we first arrived. And you won't believe what that was!" He brought up another screen, shoved the nearly empty lunch tray across the table and set the data pad in front of John. "See those star charts? The one on the left is from before we left. The one on the right was taken a day ago. See what's missing?"
John scowled, but eyed the two star charts. Evan stepped round to look over John's shoulder at the display. Several planets were blue dots, each with a tiny coded designation of numbers and letters. John looked from one to the other and back again, his scowl growing as was his impatience until he saw it. "Ah. A planet's missing?"
"Bingo!" Rodney said.
Evan squinted. "M17TQ9. Where is it? Are you saying that planet is gone?"
"Gone as in blown away by something unimaginable. At first I suspected some interstellar catastrophe, like a comet impact or even a moon impact because a solar explosion or a black hole would have simply swallowed it whole but the debris and residual shock wave impact tells me that it was blown out of the sky, so to speak."
"Just like Alderaan…completely blown away," John muttered, shaking his head.
"What? Any way the point is that the-"
"Same kind of weapon was used in both instances," John finished for him, curtailing his friend's triumph once again.
But Rodney was not deterred. He held up his forefinger. "And this particular isotope and residual radiation is of a kind that I have never seen before in this galaxy or in our own galaxy! And as far as I can tell it is not naturally occurring either as the atomic structure of each molecule is quite specifically manufactured and not a—"
"The Wraith don't have that kind of technology, nor do the Ancients, is what you are saying," John interrupted.
"Then who does?" Evan asked.
Neither man had an answer.
XxX XxX XxX XxX XxX XxX XxX XxX XxX XxX XxX XxX XxX XxX XxX XxX XxX
Richard Woolsey tapped the data pad on his desk. He adjusted a pile of folders near it. He checked his computer screen. He set a pen next to another. Finally he repressed a sigh and adjusted his glasses, eying the two men who sat across from his desk in his office. "So you're telling me that someone or something out there has a weapon capable of not only destroying a Wraith Hive ship but an entire planet?"
"Yes," John and Rodney said at the same time. They glanced at each other. Rodney continued. "By the designation it was a small planet, perhaps even a moon or some other planetary body and we never had a mission there so we have no way of knowing whether or not it was populated but it did have a Stargate so odds are that it was inhabited and being on the edge of this particular solar system the impact event or destruction would have occurred approximately during the second month of our absence and—"
"Rodney," John directed.
"Right, so yes," he returned to the question. "A weapon that powerful could only be wielded by a rival Wraith Hive or by the Genii using an Ancient weapon system but we know that—"
"Neither of those options is applicable given the unique isotope signature, plus it just doesn't track."
"Explain that last part, colonel," Richard interjected.
John settled back in the comfortable chair, crossing one long leg over the other. "Even if the Wraith have united under this queen they wouldn't go around destroying planets, especially populated ones. Not even as a lesson to other worlds. They wouldn't completely obliterate their food sources, and they don't have the power to destroy a whole planet like that."
"Like the Replicators tried to do," Richard reminded.
"Exactly."
"And they were, in turn, obliterated by me, by us, so it can't be them," Rodney noted. He wasn't sure if he should be proud of that achievement or mortified. He eyed his hands as he pondered.
"And the Genii?" Richard asked.
"They don't—" John attempted.
"-have the technology or comprehension for such a weapon, even an Ancient one," Rodney explained, taking over from John. "Even if they somehow discovered an Ancient outpost and had a guy with the ATA they don't have the physics let alone the schematics to get the thing up and running in the first place like I did."
"And that ended well," John noted with a smirk, causing Rodney to glare at him.
"If not the Wraith or the Genii, then who?" Richard asked.
"That's the six million dollar question," John agreed. "My teams have been putting out feelers to our contacts to try to get some reliable information, as has Teyla. Radek's scanning for that tracking device I put into Todd before he escaped." He glanced at Rodney.
"Where?" Rodney asked, seemingly unaffected by the mention of the Wraith who had killed Jennifer Keller, his almost fiancée. He laced his fingers together on his lap.
"You don't wanna know," John grimaced.
"Oh." Rodney made a face as he imagined the worst possibility.
"Once we locate him we will have a line on the Wraith and this queen, at least an idea of their current location." John stood. "I need to ask Carson about this change to their enzyme and whether or not that will change things, and no one knows more about the Wraith than him."
"I'll keep analyzing the debris and fallout and the shock wave and maybe I can pinpoint the point of origin outside of this galaxy. Maybe we can find this weapon."
"Let's hope we do before someone else does," Richard agreed.