Date Published: 2017/03/31

Date Re-Edited:

Warhammer and Stargate: Atlantis, are the sole properties of Games Workshop/THQ and MGM respectively. This is a work of Fiction, as well as non-profit, and thereby complies with their 'Term and Conditions' stipulated by the Companies themselves. The only thing I seek to gain with this Literary Work; is to improve my Creative Writing abilities, and if in the process someone were to enjoy what I have written…

So be it.


Prologue

Damn It Rodney–


"Damn it Rodney! What on Earth were you thinking?!"

"Uhm… this could solve all our energy needs?"

"Rodney!"

"Sorry…"

"You should be, your recklessness put your life and the lives of your entire Team at risk. Damn it Rodney, you destroyed three quarters of a Solar System!"

"Well, five sixths. It's not an exact science–"

"Rodney! Can you give your ego a rest for–"

"Unscheduled Off-World Activation… I think?"

Doctor McKay let go of a very tense breath he had been holding onto for dear life, he was grateful for the reprieve–

"This isn't over Rodney."

However short it maybe…

"What have you got for me Radek?"

"I have no idea, at first I thought it was a diagnostic… but then the Cities Systems started re-routing power to the Gate–"

"It's not a diagnostic, but I can see why Zelenka made such a simple mistake–"

"Vlastni posedly kreten…"

"Rodney! We just talked about this–"

"About what?! About what Elizabeth? This is Deep-Code. You only see it when something breaks or something goes wrong. Zalenka spends his days fixing things, while I come up with ways to blow up planets!"

The silence in the Atlantis Control Room was deafening… a silence that Doctor Wier – as head of the Atlantis Expedition – felt she needed to break as quickly – and as cleanly – as humanly possible.

"Now Rodney, I know it has been a difficult day – for you… for all of us – but I need to know… is this a threat to the City?"

"No… it isn't… it's like… Zelenka I need an analogy…"

"Uhm… what kind of analogy?"

"I don't know… something about nerves and arteries… and reflexes and stuff… Go."

"Oh well uhm… think of Atlantis as a living organism. The Power-Conduits are its arteries, and the Data-Lines are its nerves. When a section of the City is damaged, the Cities Systems reflexively shuts-down the area… blast-doors… shields… and this Code appears when–"

"Not exactly correct Zelenka," Rodney interrupted from where he was standing hunched over a laptop, "but close enough–"

"Zvanili debil–"

"To build upon Zelenka's flawed analogy, Atlantis has two types of systems… Conscious and Subconscious. Most Conscious thought is directed through the Control-Room. It's also the epicentre of most of the Subconscious thought, all the Deep Code originates and terminates here. It's kinda like… going to a High-School Reunion and recognising someone, not by how they look, but how they act… like one of my old classmates Joe Wokowski, guy always used to run his fingers through his hair when he was nervous, he runs a chain of fast-food restaurants now–"

"Rodney focus–"

"Yes-right… so, the City is constantly monitoring all its sensors, it actually dedicates a small portion of its considerable processing power to the task and two-and-a-half minutes ago it received a short Data-Burst via Sub-Space–"

Doctor Weir was the first to ask, "do we know what it contained?"

"No, but we do know protocol it activated, because it was recorded in the Cities Dialling Computer–"

"I was there," Colonel Shepherd muttered gruffly, "the Gate didn't connect. I thought only successful Dialling Sequences where recorded in the DHD?"

"Nice to know someone listens, and normally you'd be right, however the Gate did activate but only for a fraction of a second. Long enough to transmit a sequence of letters… using the same protocol we used to contact Earth a few months ago–"

"I thought you wrote that?"

"I lifted it off the Ancient Database, and for your information Shepherd, the Atlanteans used that program to send a handful of characters at a time… a couple of words or maybe some video, all within the same Star-Cluster. It took me a week just to get the System to recognise our Coding Language, and another two days rewriting the Dialling Protocols to contact another Galaxy–"

"Yes, yes, your very clever Rodney, what's the message say," Colonel Shepherd muttered harshly, as he leaned over the console to get a look at the Laptops screen himself.

"Seven characters," Rodney muttered in return, "looks like a Gate-Address–"

"Where was it sent from?"

"Ah… give me a second – that can't be right–"

"Rodney? What's wrong?" Doctor Weir questioned, rather concerned that the usually quite verbose scientist had gone silent.

"Doranda… it was sent from the Space-Gate in Orbit around Doranda…"

"How's that possible?" Shepard grumbled, his brow knitting in confusion, "I thought we just blew up the whole system–"

"Five-sixths–"

"Maybe the Gate was blown clear by the blast?" Zelenka offered by way of explanation.

"Impossible," McKay spat irritably, "even a tenth of the energy from that blast would have sent the Gate super-critical ten thousand times over–"

"What about the Address in the message, is it in the Database," Doctor Weir redirected before Rodney could get going on one of his infamous tirades.

"No… it's all wrong anyway, Carters algorithm puts the Co-ordinates somewhere in the Milky-Way Galaxy… nowhere in range–"

"Wait a minute!" Doctor Weir cried out after a moment of sudden realisation, "each glyph on the Stargate represents a sound, if we read out the Gate-Address–"

McKay cut the Doctor off, clearly seeing where this was going, "En-Les-Zi-Es-UL-Mu-Att… gibberish–"

"Not necessarily… it would be difficult to remember such a long stream of letters," Zelenka muttered absently, "try it phonetically…"

After a moment or two, he stopped and looked up, finally noticing the surprised looks of all the staff in the Command Centre, "what? It's how I learned English, such a confusing Language, it's easier to remember it in smaller bits…"

"Right…," Doctor Weir replied, the first to recover from that surprising little fact about the Polish Physicist, "Rodney?"

"Yeah?"

"The Address?"

"Oh yeah… give me a minute, I haven't done this since High-School," Rodney muttered as he copied down the Address onto a small note-pad, a few scribbles later and, "done… E-L-Z-E-U-M… A… well, at least not all of its gibberish–"

"The last glyph isn't an A…," Doctor Weir muttered in a stunned whisper, "it's the Point of Origin…"

"Earth…," Shepherd hissed in surprise, his eyes widening at the realisation, "there's another undiscovered Outpost on Earth–"

"No, not on Earth," McKay muttered distractedly, his fingers flying across the keys of the Laptop in front of him, "the original Ancient Protocol was for use at very short range. The two Gates have to be in the same Cluster, the Sender has to be in range–"

"Can you give me some Co-ordinates Rodney?" Shepherd enquired as he leaned forward, looking over McKay's shoulder, trying his damndest to decipher the gibberish scrolling down the screen.

"What do you think I'm doing," Rodney muttered irritably, as he continued to whack away at the keyboard in front of him as if he had a grudge against it.

Several tense seconds later they got their answer… sort of, "I can't tell where the signal is coming from, other than it was in range of the Dorandan Gate–"

"How far is 'in Range' exactly," Colonel Shepherd enquire suspiciously, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Six hours by Jumper, eight tops–"

"Woah! Back up… I may not have as many fancy letters before my name as you do, but what I do know is; that if we open a Wormhole to the Dorandan Gate, the moment we drop the Shield to let the Jumper through the radiation will kill us, not to mention anyone we try to send through."

"Not right away," McKay muttered petulantly, he didn't exactly refute the Colonels claim either, "the radiation shouldn't be able to travel back up an out-going Wormhole… theoretically."

That didn't exactly engender any confidence. Rodney fell silent as he started to pace, clicking his fingers all the while, after his third circuit of the Control-Room, Doctor McKay had his Eureka moment.

He spun round, pointed to Zelenka, cried "Hermes" and sprinted from the Control-Room… leaving a lot of very confused people in his wake.

"What just happened?" Shepherd muttered to the room at large.

His question was – however – superseded by Doctor Weir asking one of her own, "Who's Hermes?"

"Not a 'Who', a what…," Zelenka stated simply, at their confused looks he clarified, "Hermes is a little project me and Rodney have been working on in our spare time… we've been trying to replicate a Jumper – small scale of course – our Prototype can fly – well hover really – we just got the inertial dampeners working, but the… ah Cloak has been a little bit more tricky–"

"And just how big is this… Prototype?" Colonel Shepherd muttered worriedly, the thoughts of Rodney tinkering around with Ancient technology was… disturbing… well, after Doranda… it was just a bit more disturbing than usual.

Such apocalyptic thoughts were quickly derailed however by Rodney's triumphant cry of, "I present to you… Hermes!"

Moments later a small white tube, with a fish-eye lens on the end, floated into the Control-Room… a very familiar looking white tube…

"Isn't that the UUV, that Doctor Miron in Underwater Cartography reported missing last week?" Doctor Weir muttered in exasperation at the thought of Rodney stealing from other departments to…feed a hobby, "please tell me you had a good reason for taking it Rodney?"

"He wasn't using it–"

"He couldn't use it because you took it!"

"Elizabeth! Breath…," Colonel Shepherd soothed, getting between the two scientists before one of them ended up throttled, "okay Rodney, it's very nice… what do you want to do with it?"

"Send it through the Stargate–"

"No way!"

"Come on John, a few tweaks to Hermes emitters and he can pass right through the Shield… we'd never have to drop the Iris once…"

Curiosity peaked, Shepherd turned to Zelenka and asked, "can you do that?"

"Certainly, give me a few minutes and I could re-modulate the–"

"Done," McKay cried out smugly as he tapped a button on his repurposed Life-Signs Detector.

"What about the radiation?" Colonel Shepherd enquired, doing his utmost to ignore that smug look on Rodney's face, lest he get the urge to take a swipe at it.

"The risk should be minimal," Zelenka replied, as he pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose–

"Define minimal…"

"Five – maybe ten percent–"

"I don't like those odds, no matter how small–"

"Now wait just a minute–"

"We could mitigate those risks," Zelenka asserted, before an argument could break-out, "evacuate the Gate-Room, and dial the Gate from a Jumper in the Bay… the Drone certainly has the range…"

Silence fell heavy on the Control-Room, as all those present waited for a verdict. Shepherd was contemplative, his gaze solely on the orange-red beam of the Ancient Console in front of him. Doctor Weir was similarly engaged in thought, her focus however was squarely on the Stargate in the Room below… the risks were obvious, the rewards… not so much. The silence stretched on, first ten seconds… then thirty seconds… then a minute… two. The tension was palpable… and just when it looked like Rodney was going to start fidgeting–

Shepherd tuned to Weir, Weir turned to Shepherd, the Colonel gave the Doctor a nod, and Weir gave the order, "get it done. I'll order a general evacuation of the tower."

With that, Weir stepped up to the nearest Console and activated the P.A. system… Colonel Shepherd was already making his way out of the Control-Room, Rodney in tow. Halfway down the grand stair-case, they ran into a returning Tayla and Ronin, both of whom appeared rather curious over the evacuation that was being staged around them.

"What'd we miss?" Ronin Dex, the more blunt of the two asked.

Shepherd his usual glibness rising to the occasion, replied, "oh nothing much… Rodney blew up a planet and I think we just found a missing Ancient City… you coming?"


This is one of my new stories, I hope you like it.

I wrote it using transcripts of season 3 (and all the others besides), and by watching Stargate: Atlantis while I wrote this, in the hope of best capturing each of the actors as they were portrayed, their character and behavior.

I will be updating this story at the same time as Upon The Wings Of Eagles V2.

I attempted to write this Story in an episodic fashion, it didn't work out.

I've got 10 Chapters so far, covering only the end of 1 Episode.

I may write more or I may get writers block, but you will get at least 10 Chapters of this.

Expect the next update on 30/04/2017.

P.S. I'm also writing a Stargate: SG-1/Infinite Warfare Crossover that is much more promising that is currently 14 Chapters in and actually manages to follow the series episodic format.

P.P.S. The Crossover is called: A Matter Of Time and I will be uploading along with my other two stories next month.

P.P.P.S Yay!