Disclaimer: I do not own any of the rights to SGA or it's established characters, though I am playing in MGM's sandbox.

Author's Note: As my second attempt at writing I'd like to explore several untapped story arcs at one time. Hope you enjoy the concept as much as I do. Also, for those that want to know, after some gentle nudging from my wife, my profile is now up...;-).

Forging On

"Colonel Sheppard to the Control Room," Chuck announced over the radio.

"What's up, Chuck?" John responded while still eating breakfast.

"We are receiving a sub-space communication from Daedalus with an eyes-only order for you."

"On my way." John picked up his tray and dropped it at the wash window of the Mess Hall. He could hardly contain his excitement as he made his way to the Central Tower and up to Stargate Operations. John pondered to himself. That should be Colonel Caldwell, confirming whether or not it is still there and I hope is it. Everything hinges on it. As he entered the Control Center, Chuck made a laptop interface available to him. Sheppard waited until everyone had gone back to work before opening the communication.

Caldwell was very succinct. "Its still here and intact, the exact coordinates are..."

John breathed a sigh of relief before quickly scribbling the coordinates down and deleting the communication. Now, he needed McKay's help. He didn't want to get Rodney involved in this secret mission he'd been on, knowing how well his friend couldn't keep a secret, but Sheppard didn't know anyone else who knew how to get the next phase accomplished. Mr. Woolsey had already given the thumbs up, but he didn't want a lot of resources dedicated toward it. Resolving that he had little choice now, John worked his way to Rodney's lab. Upon arrival, he found McKay in true form as he chided Zelenka about trying to kill him.

"For the last time, I'm not trying to kill you every chance I get." Radek's temper matched Rodney's, making his Czech accent harder to understand. Sheppard wondered what had happened this time.

"Yeah, yeah." McKay got up off the floor. "Now, how much of the data did we lose?"

"I hate to interrupt," John stated dryly from the door. He really did. He wanted to see just how far this would go.

"Oh, its you. What do you want?" McKay didn't even turn to face him but started working at the terminal where Zelenka stood.

"Actually, I need to talk to you about something."

"Oh, yeah? What about?" McKay continued to type away.

Sensing the need to leave, Radek piped up, "You know, I skipped breakfast. I'm gonna see if they've started lunch yet." He exited to room without waiting for Rodney's reply.

"Wa..wa..wa.." Rodney turned to find Sheppard the only other one in the room. He pouted. "So what is so important that you had to run him off like that? Can't you see that we were in the middle of something?"

"I thought I might be able to catch him in the act as he made another attempt to kill you," John smirked.

"Oh, ha ha, very funny." McKay crossed his arms. "Now, what do you really want?'

There's no going back now, John thought to himself. "I'm on a super secret mission, and I need your help to keep it that way."

"I'm Mr. Secretive. What are we keeping secret?"

John rolled his eyes before he answering. "The fact that we need to make contact with Larrin of the Travelers."

"Okay, do you know where they are?" Rodney started to look intrigued.

"No. That's why I need your help." John's smug look firmly in place.

"Ah. So you want me to help you find them and all the while keeping it just between us. Anything else I should know?"

"Not at the moment." John hoped Rodney wouldn't push the subject.

"Okay." Rodney worked his way around to another set of terminals. After a few minutes of mumbling to himself about different ideas, he snapped his fingers. "I got it! We initialize an AGB."

Sheppard looked a bit confused. "AGB?"

"Yeah, an All Gates Bulletin." When John still looked confused, McKay continued. "It's a program used to dial all the stargates at once. SG-1 used it years ago in the Milky Way to wipe out the Replicators."

"Sounds good. What do you need?" Sheppard seemed to be catching up.

"Well, I could comb through the database and see if I can find a Pegasus version of the program, but it would go a whole lot faster if I could get a copy of the original from the SGC."

"Do it, on my authorization. But only use the bare minimum people necessary."

Rodney waved him off. "Pft. No problem. I'll only need to use Bill long enough to get access to the SGC's servers. Give me couple hours."

"Okay, I'll be back with lunch then." John turned to leave.

"Oh, and do tell Zelenka that I don't need him anymore."

John chuckled to himself at the way that sounded as he walked out of the room. If this worked he knew that he'd have to tell the rest of his team but he wasn't quite ready, yet. They would try to talk him out of his plan if they knew. Touching his ear, "Sheppard to Zelenka."

;-)

John walked back into McKay's lab two hours later carrying a couple of trays of food. "How's it going, Rodney?"

Rodney looked up as he smelled the roast beef. From John's vantage point, it seemed as though McKay enjoyed the sensation a couple seconds before he finished what he was working on and turned the screen for him to see. "I'm done. I just need to know what you want to be transmitted."

"Already? That's not bad." He handed Rodney one of the trays only to have it nearly stripped from his hands. "I've thought of a problem, though."

Having stuffed his mouth with an oversized bite, McKay responded. "What's that?"

"Do we really want to broadcast our position to the entire Pegasus galaxy?"

"Hmm. I hadn't thought about that," Rodney admitted.

"Do we have to send a probe through every gate in order to take some readings where they are?" He prodded McKay.

"Not really. We can take some very basic readings, but that's about it. We'd still need to send a probe to see whether on not a certain gate is in space or other harsh environment, surrounded by creatures we've yet to encounter. Things like that."

"What about when you guys brought Atlantis back to Earth and were able to detect that the wormhole you opened was on a Wraith Hive ship?"

"Yeah, we were getting Wraith energy signatures back through the gate. What about it?"

"Do you still have your sensor readings from when you scanned those Traveler ships while trying to rescue me?"

"I see where you're going with this. It will take a bit, but I could write a subroutine to work in conjunction with the AGB that could hunt down the Traveler's specific energy signature coming back from any of the gates when activated.. In theory, I should be able to narrow down the search after the initial dialing. From there, we'd have to just take the chance that the computer detected the right signature coming back from the right gate address."

"Once you've narrowed the search, we'll have to make contact the old fashioned way." John handed Rodney his cup of blue jello. "Call when you have everything ready. I'll have to make preparations to use the Control Room at that time."

"Will do." McKay opened to second cup of jello and started working on another terminal as Sheppard made his way out. It was time to bring Mr. Woolsey up to speed and start making preparations to clear out Stargate Operations of all other personnel. John smiled at the realization that his plan was coming together nicely.