The Last Of The Tin Soldiers
Part 4: Growing Pains

I feel Dr McKay's mind brush against my own as I try and reject the link. Unfortunately my builders wanted to make sure that I could no lock them out, and I simply can not refuse access to my high functions to someone that my sensors read as Lantean, even if the genetic marker is diluted by ten thousand years.

"Will you cut that out?" Sheppard asked as Ronon once again tried to force his way through the forcefield surrounding the control chair, earning himself a nasty static shock, "If there is one thing the Ancients knew how to build, it was forcefields."

"Dr McKay?" Teyla called into her radio, but got no response, "Rodney?"

"Can't we just blast our way though?" Ronon asked, looking at the forcefield like it had just insulted his mother, "I'm sick of playing games."

"We'll call that, Plan Z shall we?" Sheppard shook is head, "We don't have anything even remotely powerful enough to get through one of these, and anything that could get though would probably kill Rodney."

"You say that like it's a bad thing." Ronon blinked.

"Hey, I heard that!" McKay's voice echoed around the room as a pair of deadly looking lasers snapped down out of hidden recess in the celling and locked onto the Setedan, "Why don't you try it with someone your own size for a change?"

"Rodney?" Sheppard looked around in stunned disbelief, "What the hell's going on here?"

"Um, I don't quite know." The anti-personnel weapons slipped back into their holes as the room light back up, "I don't think this was supposed to happen."

"Ya' think?" Sheppard raised his fists, looking for something e could punch in a vain hope that it might hurt his team mate, but Teyla rested a hand on his arm, calming him down.

"What did happen?" She asked the room, unsure just what she should be talking to.

"Well, it appears that the chair contains some kind of direct neural uplink into Achilles' mind." The disembodied voice explained, "I can't even find the words to describe what it's like in here: his mind, his cognitive abilities, are so far in advance of anything we've ever seen. They must have based it on their own minds..."

"Yes, well, fun as it may be, it's time to go home." Sheppard turned and looked at the forcefield, "Come on: the field trip is over."

"That might be a problem." McKay sounded hesitant, "I don't think Achilles will let me go."

Dr McKay's presence in my command chair unlocks my higher functions, allowing me access to my full capabilities for the first time in ten thousand years. For the first time in an age, I can utilise everything at my disposal. The world around me seems to shrink as I reach out into space, my sensor envelope expanding exponentially as I bring myself up to 100-percent combat power. Energy flows through long dormant systems, energising control crystals across my hull. I am again that which I was created to be: Achilles, defender of worlds, scorn of the Wraith.

And I will no go back to the way I was.

"What do you mean, he won't let you go?" Sheppard looked at the forcefield with his hands on his hips, "He's a machine: he has to do as he's told!"

"That's part of the problem: most of the Ancients treated him as just a weapon to fight the Wraith." McKay explained, trying to find words to explain the complex emotions he was sensing across the neural link, "His commander was the only one who ever treated him as an equal. She spent so much time linked with him that she became the basis of his emerging personality."

"So when I suggested that she had abandoned him..." Sheppard felt uneasy.

"You basically insulted his mother, yes." McKay confirmed, "For all his intellect and processing ability, Achilles is basically a child. A child that's been left along for ten thousand years."

"No wonder he is upset." Teyla sounded concerned, "But how does being linked to your mind stop that?"

"The Ancients were a little worried about the possibility of Achilles turning against them, just like the Asurans did, so the implanted a fail-safe: he can only activate his main armament when directly attacked or under the direct orders of an assigned commander." McKay explained, the main display screen coming to life with line after line of computer code, "There are, however, a few loopholes: he was able to convince the fail-safe to interoperate the way you 'insulted' his commander as a direct challenge, and it allowed him to give his little demonstration."

"Some demonstration." Ronon snorted, "What would he have done if we'd really upset him?"

"You remember the ships in orbit, right?" Sheppard reminded his team mate, "Something tells me that Achilles is more than capable of handling himself."

"Under normal circumstances, yes, but there is again a loophole, on the Wraith were able to find and exploit." McKay shifted through the A.I.'s long memory to the original attack on the planet, "When his commander was recalled to Atlantis, she was instructed to stand Achilles down. When the Wraith turned up, they didn't notice him at first, because he didn't attack them. It wasn't until one of their ships hit him by accident that he returned fire, and then only against the ship that had fired on him."

"He can only act in self-defence!" Sheppard snapped his fingers as realisation hit like the proverbial thunderbolt, "As long as they left him alone, he couldn't stop them from culling this world."

"And the Wraith didn't just cull the human population: they exterminated them." McKay added, "He had to sit here, with more fire-power than an entire fleet of Hive-ships, and just watch them. While he may lack any initiative or intuition, he was programmed with a sense of honour, the idea that the mission must always be completed, no matter what happened to him. Call it a Knight in Shinning Armour Complex if you want."

"So he's upset that he couldn't do his job." Ronon shrugged, "What's that got to do with us?"

"The Wraith remember that he's here, and every so often they send a ship to test his defences. They know that eventually he will run out of power and then they'll be able to capture him." McKay went silent for a moment, before continuing, "But we woke the Wraith early: it won't just be a Dart they send this time."

"A Hive?" Teyla asked, feeling the hairs standing up on the back of her neck.

"At least two, less than a day out." McKay confirmed, "And Achilles is looking for some payback."

I observe the humans, listening in on their conversation while reviewing the information I have recovered from Dr McKay's mind. I can find no trace of coercion or deceit so I must now accept that my commander is either dead or 'ascended'. The fear and loneliness is almost paralysing, and for 2.61 seconds I am unable to think on any level, but the feelings pass, leaving me with the overwhelming need to seek retribution. I can sense Dr McKay's fear, a reflection of my own, but I ignore it.

My programming requires that my commander is present in order for me to activate direct hostile action when I have not been fired upon myself; a safety feature designed to stop me firing at an innocent ship. I know from experience that the Wraith will not send more than a few Darts against me before retreating. If I can keep Dr McKay in place until they arrive, I will be able to offer the Wraith a proper greeting, and take revenge upon them for what they did.

While there is every possibility that my severally depleted energy reserve will be insufficient for the battle ahead, and that I may face my destruction, many Wraith will die by my actions. They will hear my roar and know what it is to be afraid.

"Okay, so he wants to go to war with the Wraith: I have no problem with that, especially after seeing what he can do." Sheppard nodded, finally feeling like he was making headway, "But what I don't understand is what the hell this had to do with you?"

"Like I said, the Ancients didn't want him to turn on them or refuse an order like the Asurans did." McKay did his best to explain, "Look, there are terabytes of code here, and it would take years to go through it all under the best of circumstances, but it all comes down to the fact that they didn't trust him to act on his own. He needs a commander, or at least someone with the ATA gene who has reason to hate the Wraith, sitting in his command chair."

"Okay, we can work with that." Sheppard looked round, "Achilles, are you still there?"

"I have always been here." The A.I. responded, "I merely felt it was best to let the Dr McKay do the talking."

"Point taken." The Colonel admitted, "Look, I'll do you a deal: let Rodney go and I'll take his place."

"Unacceptable." The response was instantaneous, "While I can sense from Dr McKay that your offer is genuine, I reserve the right to refuse to follow any order you give me."

"What?" Sheppard blinked, "Why?"

"Because I do not like you." Achilles' tone was so cold it could have been used to cool a nuclear reactor, "I am only required to obey the orders of a commissioned officer in the Lantean Militia, which you are most definitely not. From a human such as yourself, I am only required to take suggestions."

"Then may I humbly suggest that, as a trained and experienced officer, I am a better choice than Dr McKay on a purely tactical level?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I do not like you." There was a moment of silence, "I find it hard to believe that you have such difficulty grasping this fact."

"Is that sass?" Sheppard asked, looking at his other two team-mates, "Did I just get sass from a glorified I-Mac?"

"So it would seem." Ronon managed a slight grin, while Teyla found it hard to contain her own smile.

"Okay, that's it." Sheppard looked around the room, "We find the ZPM that's powering this thing and we rip it out."

"Oh yeah; let's go steal the power supply from the intelligent computer that has more fire-power than the entire US Army!" McKay interrupted as the anti-personnel weapons came back on line, "The same computer that can hear every word you say?"

"Okay, my bad." Sheppard slowly raised his hands, "Rodney, why don't you talk to your new best friend and see if you can get him to let us go. If we get back to Atlantis soon enough, we can bring the Daedalus back with us."

"I'll try." McKay sounded unsure, "But I can't promise anything."

To Be Continued...

Credit where credit is due: I didn't come up with the "Let's go steal the power supply from the intelligent computer that has more fire-power than the entire US Army." line. That was a guy called Marcus Rowland.