A metallic clicking vaguely reminiscent of the clicking made by replicators as they ate through a ship could be heard in the underbelly of the city. Luckily for the inhabitants of the city these weren't replicators, in fact they didn't even look much like replicators other than being made of the same basic replicator block.
These mechanical beasties were distinctly more crystalline in both design and materials, instead of the basic spider slash bug design, these were instead designed to follow the oceanic theme the ancients used for the city. They resembled octopi, the central head area was covered with spines that were reminiscent of a sea urchin.
Each limb supported an array of tools to help in repair jobs. Raw materials would be collected by the arms and held in in the central body until needed. there was a short range but power intensive molecular reassembly kit in one of the arms that could be used to efficiently and flawlessly repair small breaks that would have called for a complete replacement if conventional methods were used.
Unfortunately for the mechanical repair octopi, the clicking was just a tiny bit too familiar for the few people onboard who had personal experience with the replicator bugs that had proven to be such a problem. They had been active for just five hours and were working their way up from the bottom of the city before the first member of the atlantis expedition heard the faint metallic clicking of the crystalline limbs tapping on the floor.
The unnamed crewmember tapped his radio, "Control, I'm in section 30D sub-level 2 I just heard something that sounds suspiciously like a replicator bug."
"This is control, we read you and will have a team at your location in ten minutes."
Calling in a replicator wasn't a joking matter, doing so without there being one would be like acting out the boy who cried wolf. It got everyone all up and bothered over nothing and when you finally did find one you'd be ignored and there goes your ship. Of course Atlantis' internal sensors could find activated keron pathways, and her AI if it was running could outmaneuver any invading replicator AI as long as it wasn't putting the full brute force of an overpowered replicator hivemind to the task.
Even then this was her home turf. She could always just disable whatever section they'd tapped into or if the area was uninhabited she could send a surge through the conduits in that area, causing electrical arcs to cascade down the superconductive lining in the hall frying any active replicators it came in contact with.
Of course the Atlantis Expedition didn't know all this, as they didn't know the city had an advanced AI having lived all this time with only the basic operating system running. So they heard the word replicator and came running.
It was rather confusing for the team that ran into the first repair octopi, "Hey control, are replicators supposed to be fixing stuff? For that matter why do they look like extremely prickly octopi?"
"Say again?"
All this could have been avoided had they just asked Ike or Sheppard. Ike however was resting in the quarters he'd commandeered. Sheppard hadn't told anyone he could speak with the city, and he wasn't paying attention to his radio as he was in the gym sparring with ronan.
The team lifted the Anti-Replicator Gun pulled from storage, aimed it at the somewhat intimidating repair octopi and pulled the trigger. Nothing. The Octopi completely ignored them. Well, it did seem to glow a bit around the edges before the glow collected into one of the tentacles where it expertly fired a molecular reassembly beam at a crack in the corridor wall.
"ARG has no effect. And It looks like, yes, it's sealed one of the cracks in the wall." the guy holding the ARG called back to control. "Please advise."
"This is control requesting confirmation, did you say it's repairing the wall?"
"Affirmative."
One of the marines approached it as it finished sealing the hole in the wall. As soon as he touched it, the octopod replicator stiffened, its limbs coiling around the base of the spine covered head.
"Damn this thing is heavy." The marine said as he lifted it off the ground.
The science types were running scanners over the thing as they walked their way back up to one of the labs.
"That's right it just deactivated as soon as Sgt. Miller here touched it."
"So you're sure it's actually down right?"
"What do you mean he touched it!" Rodney yelled back over the radio. He could be heard muttering, "You people just can't keep your hands off things."
"I'll be right down with my interface equipment."
"Don't get what he's so worked up about." the marine muttered.