Ok, here is the new story that I had an idea for. I hope it turns out alright.
Thanks to Arones for beta reading this.
Samantha Carter looked on from the control room as the kawoosh ejected from the Stargate. A voice came from behind her, directed towards the general control room as the team below stood, waiting to proceed. "Wormhole established, Colonel." Chuck told her as he slid his chair across to another station and away from the DHD. Sam glanced back towards Chuck and then turned her attention to the team below where Sheppard, Ronan, and McKay were waiting for acknowledgment.
"You have a go, Colonel Sheppard. God speed." Sam called down from the railing she was leaning on. She smiled as she said it, remembering all the times that General Hammond said it to them on their trips through the gate. Now it was her sending people through the gate. Since she had taken command of Atlantis, she had realised how hard it must have been for him to let people go.
Sheppard looked up. He removed his hand from the butt of the gun that was strapped to his shoulder and gave a quick salute of acknowledgment. The salute was more to show Sam that he had heard, rather than a gesture of rank.
Sheppard turned back towards the others, and rested both of his hands on the rifle, one on top of the other, as he often did, "McKay, Ronan. Move out."
Ronan stepped forward flipping his gun from its holster and aiming it in front of him as he walked through the gate. Sheppard started to tell him it was just a recon and he didn't need the gun, but he had disappeared through the gate before Sheppard could say anything. He turned his attention back to McKay and with a sideways tilt of the head told him to get through the gate and then followed up disappearing into the event horizon.
As the Colonel went through the gate shut down and Sam stood from leaning on the railing. She felt a pain in her hands as she moved and looked at the offending limbs. They were red from where she had been pressed against the metal. Sam rubbed them together gently massaging them, as if it would help with the pain. It did a little as she walked across the walkway to her office.
No sooner had she sat at her desk that she saw Dr Keller walking across the walkway through the open plan walls that the Ancients had seemed too favour. She smiled as the women walked in and pushed her laptop open with one hand as she greeted her, "Dr Keller." Sam said with a smile, "What is it I can do for you today?" She knew that something was coming. Sam's mind ran through all the alternatives quickly as she tended to do before an answer could be given.
"I've told you before," Keller stated as she sat in the seat opposite, "Call me, Jennifer."
Sam smirked. She wasn't used to this lack of protocol, but she was slowly coming around to it. "Very well, Jennifer. What can I do for you?"
Jennifer crossed one leg over the other, and placed her hands on her knee as she spoke, "We have this issue in the lab at the moment, a protogean spore that's almost starting to overgrow the lab." She started in as Sam's eyes showed a hint of recognition.
"Yes, I'm aware of it." She told Jennifer. "From P4X-356, if memory serves." Sam added checking her—as O'Neill would say—internal hard drive to see if she was accurate.
Jennifer nodded. "That's right." She confirmed as she slipped her fingers inside each other and grasped her knee towards her. "I have some treatments I would like to try that should reduce the spread and hopefully return the spore back to its original size."
"So, what's the problem?" Sam asked wondering if this was going and where she thought it might be going.
"Well, I'm short staffed at the moment. What with the teams' off-world helping with the plague research…" Jennifer told her and continued, "And those here have been working for forty-eight hours. I've already told them to get some rest. We're running on a skeleton shift at the moment."
Sam already knew where this was headed and she tried to resist a smile of amusement as Jennifer finished what she was saying.
"Anyway, I was wondering if you would be free to assist. It would certainly help having a senior officer nearby if anything was to go wrong." Jennifer stated with a small smirk on her face that turned into a look of worry. "Not that I'm expecting anything to go wrong." The woman added quickly, trying to re-assure herself more than Sam as she unknowingly picked her nails on her leg.
"I would be honoured to help." Sam pushed a file to the side of the desk. "To tell you the truth, it would get my mind off these personnel evaluations for a while, which would be nice. A chance to do some actual lab sounds like fun."
Jennifer rose from her chair and smiled at the thought of someone liking lab work as much as she. "Great. I'll see you in about two hours then." Jennifer turned and began walking out of the room—a small skip in her step—as she began to make her way across the room.
"Looking forward to it." Sam called out to the young woman's back as she stepped out and strolled across the office walkway. Sam turned back to her laptop and pushed it open. The screen powered into life, but that was as far as she got before she heard Chuck's voice calling from the control room.
Sam reluctantly stood from her desk and straightened her uniform before she made her way towards the voice. As she crossed the walkway, Sam wondered how General Hammond managed to maintain a somewhat cheery disposition. Chuck turned in his chair as she approached.
"Yes, Chuck. What is it?"
"Long range scans have picked up a vessel moving towards our position."
"Wraith?" Sam asked as she moved around the control panel to get a better look at the glass screen hanging from behind. A green dot blinked in one corner, and Sam could see that it was only about a sector away.
"Unsure." Chuck replied as he pressed the controls on the station and a hazy image of the approaching vessel flickered to life on the screen. She tilted her head to the side a fraction, but the blurry image still did not resemble a Wraith ship, or a replicator cruiser for that matter.
"A possible first contact situation?" She queried, turning to look at Chuck and back at the monitor after he shrugged his shoulders. Sam thought for a moment as she stared at the mysterious ship that graced the screen.
"Better not take a chance." She said to Chuck in a strong commanding tone. "Raise the cloak."
The technician slid his chair along the control panel and over to the edge of a second console.
"Cloak engaged." He replied as he pushed a few buttons that were in front of him and looked back up at the display screen. There was no change in the running of the control room, but from the outside the city shimmered and disappeared as the cloaking field fell down around it.
Sam looked up at the screen a bit longer, as if she could see through it and suddenly everything was going to become clear as to who, or what the ship was – but it didn't happen. The ship remained a ghostly haze of static as she crossed her arms over her chest.
"Keep me apprised of any changes to the ships movements." Sam told the room as she began to walk around the console and over to the stairs at the back. She grabbed a tablet off the top of one of the consoles as she passed and tucked it under her arm.
"Aye, Commander." Chuck replied as he turned back to the ancient machines and began to talk to the crew member beside him.
Sam changed her step towards the mess hall thinking that she should get some food in before meeting up with Jennifer. The corridors were strangely devoid of people for such an early hour of the afternoon. Sam shrugged it off assuming a lot of those in the expedition were either off-world, or having time off like Jennifer's department.
Even as Sam approached the mess hall, she noticed that there weren't many people lounging in plastic chairs. She walked over to the table to see what was there. She glanced back over her shoulder as she noticed two men hunched over the table, a chess board between them. Each was staring at the board so she wasn't sure whose turn it actually was.
Sam shrugged it away and turned back to the food table. Those two were always there. Sometimes she wondered if they actually did any work, and made a mental note to follow up on it in the personnel reviews. She turned back to the table and reaching out with her free hand carefully grasped a bottle of water along with a sandwich pack and moved over to the table at the centre of the room.
Putting the water bottle and the tablet down, Sam pulled out the chair and sat. She peeled open the plastic cover of the sandwich and hit the power button on the tablet. As it loaded she tapped on the screen and a page full of text appeared. Smiling, she read the first sentence—My Dearest Sam.
No sooner had she done so than she was interrupted by a figure standing over her shoulder. Sam looked up to see Dr Zelenka casting a shadow across the table and blocking her light. He looked rather disjointed, but that wasn't an unusual occurrence from what she had seen since arriving on Atlantis. She placed the sandwich packet back on the table and took a quick mental bet with herself that it was about Rodney before she acknowledged him.
"What can I do for you, Dr Zelenka?"
Taking this as an invitation, Dr Zelenka pulled out the chair opposite and sat down in such a hurry that the chair squeaked across the polished floor. Sam cringed as Dr Zelenka leanedt forward and rested his elbows on the table.
"It's Dr McKay." He began before Sam could even get a word in. "We are trying to use the puddle jumpers to see if we can correct the instabilities in McKay's hyperspace generator to make it use-able on more than one trip."
"I understand." Sam replied, rolling her eyes "What seems to…"
"He has security locked the entire jumper bay!" Zelenka cried out, almost jumping out of his seat in frustration and cutting her off. "I've got people trying to break in now, but it's a tremendous waste of our time." He pushed himself off the table and back into his seat with an even more annoyed look on his face than Sam thought possible. She leaned back in her seat and tried to remain calm. She knew that getting annoyed at Radek—or McKay—wasn't going to help the situation.
"Why would he stop you from getting to the jumper bay?" Sam asked crossing her arms in front of her.
"He believes that because it was his creation, that he should be the one to fix it." Zelenka explained, his speech getting quicker and angry. "But it's more than that, he doesn't believe that his design is at fault, and it must be a problem with the jumper's engine capacity."
Zelenka swore something in Czech under his breath as he finished and Sam waited a second for him to calm before she spoke. Although, she knew he wouldn't. "I understand how Dr McKay can be." She said trying not to raise her voice higher than it needed to be. "I will have a word with him and discuss the situation when he returns. In the meantime, I assume you have other work you can continue with?"
Zelenka seemed to relax, and he nodded his agreement standing from the table. "What about the jumper bay?" He asked, a puzzled look crossing over his face as he wondered what to do.
"Leave it with me. I'll deal with it."
Nodded again, he turned away from the table and began moving to the door – stopping only to step beside the food and quickly grab a sandwich before exiting the room.
Sam sighed and turned back to her tablet. She raised the sandwich to her mouth as she read through the first page of reports that appeared on screen. She bit down into the sandwich and the bread squashed between her teeth as they split a piece off. As she started to chew the familiar sound of the radio attached to her ear began to crackle.
Luckily it was a small bite, and she swallowed quickly before raising her hand to her ear and acknowledging the call. "Carter here." She said into the mouthpiece sitting beside her cheek – which she preferred compared to the bulky handsets carried by SGC personnel.
Chuck's voice came through her ear. "Colonel, could you come to the control room?" She astutely picked up a little bit of a nervous tone in his voice. "We have a little bit of a situation."
Sam furrowed her brow, unsure of what Chuck could mean. "Could you elaborate?"
The reply that came through sounded unsure. "Uhh, I'm not sure I can, Colonel. It would probably be best if you see for yourself."
Sam breathed in and then out heavily with a sigh before she replied. "I'm on my way." Tapping the earpiece in her right ear, she stood from the table – pulling the tablet into her grasp. Sam grabbed the sandwich with her free hand and began to walk out into the corridor – munching down the food as she left.