Author's Note: Hello all! I know this story hasn't been updated in ages and I'm deathly sorry about that, but there are a few things I need to fix. Just finished fixing up some grammatical errors in this chapter and eventually I'll get to fixing the rest of the chapters. I'll probably end up going back and adding in some things; making some stuff easier to understand. Anyway, wanted to let you know that I didn't forget this story! And for those of you new to this story, I hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, places, etc, in this story.
Story Notes: This was written just after "Before I Sleep" and is sort of an AU of "The Siege". Eventually, as I go through and edit, it may encompass the episodes between "Before I Sleep" and "The Siege" ("The Gift", "Letters to Pegasus", etc).
"Elizabeth!" Rodney rushed into the control room, breathing heavily. Exercise was definitely not his forte—he was already panting just from running from his lab to the control room. "What's going on?" he yelled over the loud noise. "Why did you sound the alarm?" The alarm, shrill and noisy, continued to pierce the tense air of the control room. Elizabeth Weir turned to face him and Rodney froze. He had been expecting that it was a drill of some sort, but her expression… It looked as if her worst fears had come true. "Elizabeth?" he asked again, his voice more gentle. He stepped forward, softly touching her forearm. There was a faraway look in her eyes, as if she didn't see anyone there in the room with her. Finally her eyes moved to his, but the glazed look remained.
"Rodney," she said, pursing her lips briefly before speaking once more. "We're putting forth an immediate evacuation of Atlantis."
McKay looked at her, frowning deeply. "What do you mean? Why?" It took only a moment of staring into Elizabeth's eyes beyond the numbness and into her fear that he realized just what it was—the Wraith. "They're almost here, aren't they?" he asked.
"No," Elizabeth gazed at him, "they're already here."
"What? What do you mean?"
Elizabeth bit her lip and Rodney could tell she was fighting back tears. He could nearly hear her mentally reminding herself that she had to be strong for her people. "The Wraith are hovering around the planet. More Darts and Hive Ships keep appearing by the minute."
"How can they just appear?" Rodney asked, his words blurring together as his speed of talking increased. "What about the sensors?" he sat down in front of a nearby laptop, his fingers flying as he pressed the keys.
"They just appeared an hour ago. Maybe there was some interference in the sensors, I don't know and it's not the problem we need to be focusing on. I sent all personnel with the Ancient gene on jumpers to go and get as many Athosians as they could from the mainland."
"If they arrived an hour ago why haven't they attacked by now?" Rodney questioned. He stood and they began to walk side-by-side to her office.
"I'm guessing they're gathering their forces," Elizabeth said, pulling papers from one of the drawers of her desk and tossing them on the top of it in a messy pile. Rodney clamped his mouth shut before he said what they both knew. The Wraith wouldn't wait long. All of the Athosians couldn't possibly make it back to Atlantis and to the Alpha Site before the attacks started. Once the attacks started it would be too dangerous for them to continue shipping them back and forth. "One-third," Elizabeth said as she continued dumping official documents onto the desk. "One-third of the Athosians won't make it back. They all volunteered to stay back and hide in the caves. We gave them what weapons we could," she told him, "They forced Teyla to go onto one of the jumpers. All of the women and children are on their way back and some of the men. Everyone else is on the mainland."
"They might be safer there," Rodney said seriously, "We didn't notice the mainland for a while. Maybe they won't. The ships are probably over Atlantis, not the mainland." He said the words knowing they were most likely false, but hoping to comfort Elizabeth.
"If Atlantis falls, everyone on this planet will die at their hand," Elizabeth stood, her eyes connecting with Rodney's. Her body was shaking with her fear of the impending doom at hand. Breaking eye contact, she ducked her head and walked over to him. She pulled out a lighter from her pants pocket and lit it.
"What are you doing?" Rodney asked, his brows furrowing.
"I'm burning all of the documents about the Alpha Site," she told him. "If the Wraith win, they'll be all over the base. I can't risk one stupid, pale-skinned bastard coming in here and figuring out where everyone else is," her emotions were written clearly over her face, her curse a slip in her mature and stoic façade. Rodney looked at her and bit his lip, concerned. Elizabeth lit the end of one of the papers on fire and watched as the orange blaze spread across the white sheet. "C'mon," she said, tugging at his sleeve, "We've got to get out of here before the Ancient sensors seal the room." Rodney turned and followed her out without question, knowing that when the sensors picked up the danger they would lock them in.
"What are we doing to protect ourselves?" the question fell from Rodney's lips as Elizabeth leaned against a machine in the control room that had since emptied.
Elizabeth sighed softly, knowing deep down that their attempts were futile. "Carson is injecting everyone who wants to stay behind with the Ancient gene."
Rodney look mildly alarmed. "Is that safe?"
"No, not really, but do we have a choice?" she asked rhetorically. "We'll have a person with the gene for every jumper, one person per jumper. Everyone else is arming themselves with whatever we've got," she looked at Rodney. "A lot of the scientists are grouping together to form an expedition of sorts to go to the other sides of Atlantis to see if there is a weapon that we can use against the Wraith." A last ditch effort, that's what this war had come down to. In these months that they'd been on Atlantis exploring they hadn't found anything useful – what was to say that they would now?
"I'll go with them," Rodney said instantly.
"No," she replied without a second of thought.
"Don't trust the future of Atlantis in their incompetent hands," Rodney said, though he knew very well that the scientists were the best in the world. When it came down to it, they could pull their own weight. "Why not?" Rodney asked, frowning.
"Rodney," her face, so stern most days, was struggling to keep her emotions hidden, but now it finally broke. "We're not going to win this thing. I…I can't send you to your death, Rodney," she whispered, her voice cracking.
"Don't say that," Rodney mumbled softly, his voice weak. They both knew the odds were against Atlantis coming out in the end.
"You know it's true," Elizabeth whispered, and her shoulders sagged. "This is the end. The end of Atlantis, the end of everything we worked for, the end of us. No one will ever know what happened to us. The people on the Alpha Site will never be able to return home. And the people here…" her eyes filled with tears, "I'm sentencing everyone to death." She closed her eyes and the tears ran down her face. Rodney walked forward and, without thinking, hugged her to him tightly. She hugged him back, setting her chin on his shoulders as the tears ran down her face
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"I thought you'd never get here," Zelenka announced as Rodney flew into the lab room. He was amazed to see nearly all of the resident scientists in their uniforms, gearing up. The guns attached to their hips looked bulky and unnatural by their sides. Rodney looked at Zelenka for a moment and slowly shook his head back and forth.
"I'm not," he whispered. "I'm not coming with you guys."
"What?" Zelenka snapped. His forehead wrinkled in anger for a brief second, but a moment later all of the anger went out of him as he realized why Rodney was staying. Elizabeth—it had to be. Zelenka turned around toward the other scientists, silencing their chorus of loud inquiries with a firm stare. "He has his reasons, guys. We're going to have to do this on our own."
Rodney looked at Zelenka with a newfound appreciation. Here was Zelenka, with zero military training, taking charge of a science expedition into the totally unknown parts of a foreign place with no backup and an enemy overhead. Rodney grasped Zelenka's forearm with respect. "Good luck," his words were simple, but Zelenka took them to heart and nodded back firmly.
"You too," he replied, and turned back to the scientists. Rodney watched them for a moment before turning around and walking slowly out of the room. He ran a hand over his head, mentally reviewing the facts. Twenty-nine Darts had appeared, as well as seven hive ships—more than enough to take down Atlantis. Obviously no one had ever mentioned the concept of overkill to the Wraith. Rodney sighed softly to himself as he walked down the halls.
"Rodney!" he turned at the sound of Elizabeth's voice. She ran up to him, her breathing heavy. "One of the jumpers is stalled on the mainland; something is wrong with it. John is flying another jumper out there to get the last group of Athosians. I'm going to go with him."
"What?" Rodney yelled, and winced at the volume of his voice. He lowered it and continued speaking, "You can't go with him. It's too dangerous!"
"Rodney," she said sternly, "I have to go. I owe it to them, to see them one last time—" her throat tightened, cutting off her sentence. Rodney sighed, not liking it, but recognizing what she was saying. He knew it wasn't the brightest idea a leader could have, but Elizabeth was put in a tough place as the leader and a friend. "As of now, you're in charge of Atlantis."
"Fine. But be careful." Rodney agreed. "I'm going to go back to the lab and see if I can finish what I've been doing. The shield that held the ocean back from collapsing on Atlantis; I think I can calibrate it so that it will protect the city and the jumpers."
Elizabeth frowned, looking worried. "Do we have enough power for that?"
"We have enough," he affirmed, "You see, the ZPM uses the same amount of power each day. Sometimes not all of it is needed. What isn't needed is basically stored throughout the 'power lines' in the city. If I can access those and reroute the power I can use it to power the shield. When that power is gone it will automatically take energy from the ZPMs. As long as we don't use the shield for more than five hours, we'll have primary systems and basic functions. We'll find some ZPMs and the city will be as good as new." He left out the fact that since they'd been to Atlantis they'd yet to find a ZPM that they could use.
"Theoretically," Elizabeth said, still frowning. "Work on protecting the jumpers for now."
"Why not the city?"
"It's made of a hard alloy, isn't it?" she asked him, "It withstood the reaction that the C4 had in the west wing when Lieutenant Crown and his team tried to blow a door down, so wouldn't it be protected from Wraith shots?"
"Possibly."
"Why would the Ancients build this place with such a hard element? The Athosians found a bunch of other alloys on the mainland that are nearly as strong. There's got to be a reason why they chose this one," Elizabeth plodded onward.
Rodney caught her drift. "They must guard against the culling beam the Wraith use," he said aloud, and grinned. "You're brilliant!" he turned on his heel, nearly speeding off to his lab. Elizabeth smiled a ghostly grin before jogging to the jumper bay. How did he remain so upbeat when potential death was reining down on them?
She headed slowly back to her new, temporary office. Elizabeth was not a military commander but now the occasion called for it. Running a hand through her air, she bit her lip. It all came back to the Wraith. She had heard about them in mission reports-had seen the Wraith they'd captured-but the terror associated with them she had never experienced. In the dark expanses of the nights where she could no longer sleep, she found her chest constricting with the treacherous wonder of how it felt to have your life sapped away. Elizabeth shook her head. Now was no time to succumb to fear. She had to be strong for everyone now.
War was upon Atlantis.
And by the sheer amount of Wraith appearing above the planet, it was a war that they could not win.