Reading Key: Thoughts and emphasis are in italics. Telepathic conversation is underlined.
Continuity info, etc. can be found at the top of chapter one, disclaimer is at the bottom of chapter one.
Author's Note: Sorry for the delay on this chapter. There are reasons, but most of them are personal. The chapter is a bit long to make up for the wait. Please read the second Author's Note when you reach the end of the chapter.
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As soon as John parked the puddle jumper in the spot reserved for the machine his team typically used, he stood and went to the back to see how Ronon was doing. Nycole's assertion that Ronon would be fine had been enough for him to be able to focus on just getting them home, but now that they were here he had the need to check on his friend personally.
When John reached the rear section of the jumper, Ronon was standing on his own. Teyla and Nycole were close by, but John could tell from the looks on each woman's face that though they were there if Ronon needed someone to lean on… John smiled internally at the mental image of Ronon leaning on the much shorter Teyla… they didn't think he would be requiring their help. The last bit of tension from the unexpected twist to their mission left him. Nycole had warned that the planet they had just visited was close to a hive, so nothing had gone so far out of the expected mission parameters that the SGC or IOA would be able to make a big fuss about it.
John glanced back to where Rodney was possessively clutching the ZPM they'd retrieved. When John had pulled it out of the small station it had been in, its glow had been brighter than the one currently powering Atlantis. He didn't think it was a scientific enough observation to completely confirm its power level, but he had hope that Rodney would examine it and find that it was even more of a find than they had thought it would be. Which, given the fact that it had still been powering a shield that hadn't been active in Nycole's time, was a pretty strongly supported hope.
The ramp lowered, revealing Carson and a small team waiting for them with a gurney. Ronon scowled at the object but climbed onto it without any arguing the moment Carson opened his mouth. The rest of the team and Nycole filed down the hall after them, knowing post-op checkups for the necessary evil they were. Evan and Ben… and Nycole and Ben's guards… met them on the way, staying out of the way of the medical personnel to fall into step behind John and Nycole.
Nycole slowed momentarily so that she was walking beside Ben instead of by him. Glancing back to see Ben doing a thorough visual sweep of Nycole, John realized it was at least partially so that the Wraith she was bonded to could see for himself that she had come back fine. It took most of the sting out. Ben and his half of the guard… as well as Evan… ended up leaving shortly after when it became clear that there wasn't really room for all of them in the infirmary, Nycole promising to meet up with them when the debriefing was over.
"I will stay with Ronon," Teyla said half an hour later when everyone had gotten an all clear but the Satedan.
He was no longer showing any motor function related effects from being stunned, but Carson had gone to retrieve some painkillers for the headache Ronon was now suffering. John didn't envy his alien friend, having suffered the hangover-like aftereffects of a stun blast more than his fair share of times. Rodney glanced at the rest of the team and then at the object in his arms, his indecisiveness clear. It had been amusing to watch the nurses have to work around the bag holding the ZPM since Rodney wouldn't let go of it.
Ronon took pity on him.
"Go poke at your new gadget, McKay," he said gruffly. "I'm fine."
"Of course you are," Rodney agreed as he straightened and headed off, most likely to his lab.
"What about you?" John asked Nycole. "There's a little over an hour until the debriefing."
Nycole shrugged. "I think I'll go get a snack and then wait in the meeting room. You'll join me there before it's time?"
John nodded and watched Nycole and the three Marines once more guarding her leave. As much as he would have liked to spend the extra time with her, he had a couple things to do before the debriefing.
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A little less than an hour later, John stepped into the room they'd be using to debrief… Elizabeth's office just wasn't big enough with the addition of Nycole and her three shadows. Seeing Nycole already seated as he had expected, he pulled a sheet of paper out of the file folder he was carrying and handed it to her. He also pulled off a pen that had been slipped to the cover but waited to give it to her.
"You want me to fill out a mission report?" she asked after she'd inspected the paper. "You don't think the IOA or SGC would have issues with that?"
John shrugged as he sank into the chair to her right. "We're not going to put it in the official file for just that reason. But if they decide to play Devil's advocate and demand to know why there isn't one, we'll have it ready."
"That would fit with what I've read about them," Nycole muttered, taking the pen he handed her and turning her attention to the single sheet of paper.
Generally, mission reports were typed up on one of the expedition laptops, but Elizabeth was still adamant about keeping to the rules as much as possible. And one of those rules was to keep people outside of the expedition from using the expedition's equipment.
John spun his chair slowly when he heard footsteps moving toward them from the hallway. Rodney, an excited expression on his face as he looked at something on his laptop, came in followed by a bemused Teyla. Ronon was trailing the two, a thoughtful frown on his face as he moved a bit slower than normal. John had the impression that it was due to whatever was on his mind and not any residual physical condition from the Wraith stunners.
"The ZedPM we just got has slightly more energy than our current one," Rodney happily told John. "I think it would be best to send the old one to Earth."
"I'm sure that option will be considered," John answered.
Rodney nodded somewhat distractedly as he moved to Nycole's other side to sit. When his attention finally left his computer, he cocked his head to try to look at the paper in front of Nycole. The young woman raised her eyebrows when Rodney slipped it out from under her hands, turning her head to watch as the Canadian frowned.
"What is this?" Rodney asked.
John was going to scowl at the scientist and ask him why he didn't recognize a form he had to fill out on an all too regular basis until he realized from Rodney's tone that he truly didn't know what he was looking at. It was a rare occurrence (or at least it was a rare occurrence that Rodney admitted not knowing something) but John had known him long enough to recognize the tone. The observation of another saved him from trying to figure out what he'd missed.
"It's Satedan," Ronon said as he sat down, having peered at the paper in Rodney's hand as he passed them.
"What, you can't write in English?" Rodney asked smugly.
"Of course I can," Nycole snapped, grabbing the form back from him a bit violently. "I just haven't had a reason to for more than a decade. No one in the Pegasus Galaxy, aside from the members of this expedition, reads and writes English. So it hasn't exactly been a skill I've used a lot lately. In some cases, it might even have gotten me killed."
Rodney frowned and turned to Ronon, "You don't write in English?"
"I'm learning to," the taller man answered, "and while I am, Teyla fills out my reports for me." He asked rhetorically, "What do you call it? Dictation?"
"I had to focus on little else for the first few weeks after we had to abandon Athos so that I could learn to write in English," Teyla added. "I have always been a quick learner, and it helped that your language shares some similarities to the written form of the Athosian language."
Rodney blinked, "I didn't know there was an Athosian language."
A slightly put-upon expression formed on Teyla's face. "Every culture from a different planet in this galaxy has its own. Dr. Zelenka is from the same planet as you and yet he speaks another language does he not? I was under the impression that many members of the expedition spoke something besides English."
"Well, yeah," Rodney agreed. He gestured to Teyla and Ronon. "But both of you speak English, so I just assumed you could read and write it too."
"Actually," Nycole broke in, "they're speaking Common. They'd never heard the word 'English' until the expedition came. And while Common is extremely similar to English, there is no written form of it. Not that I'm aware of anyway."
Ronon nodded his head in agreement, and Teyla added, "To my knowledge, there is not."
John leaned in to look at Nycole's slightly wrinkled form, which she was now re-filling in… having neatly crossed through the Satedan words… using the only language he could read and write. He'd taken Spanish in high school, but he hadn't retained much. He did know a few basic phrases and swear words in different languages that he'd picked up through people and places he'd been stationed around and in during his military career, but that was pretty much the extent of his linguistic skills.
"How many languages do you read and write?" he asked his daughter, trying to remember how many Elizabeth knew… five? Six? Though other than Ancient, all the ones Elizabeth could decipher were from a single planet… Earth.
Nycole set her pen down and began ticking off individual fingers for each language she mentioned, "English, Satedan, Athosian, Wraith, Ancient…" Nycole's voice became colder, "and Genii. Plus rudimentary knowledge of a handful of languages used by the people subjugated by the Genii that my squad had dealings with. Hard to make sure the natives aren't planning a rebellion if you can't read what they write."
"Makes sense," John said neutrally, recognizing that the subject had become something other than what it had started out as… and that Nycole wasn't happy about it.
His daughter bent her head slightly and returned to writing her mission report. Rodney opened his mouth, but John shot him a look. For once the other man took the cue without making a fuss, turning to his laptop and focusing on something on it for a while… probably the readings on their newest ZPM. He only hoped Rodney wouldn't get it into his head that they now had a "back up" that would make going through with the universal-energy-bridge project okay.
Not only was there no point without serious changes being made… there had been no energy collected in the cross-universe disaster of a mission… but that had not been the point of this mission. They all knew both ZPMs Nycole was leading them to would be confiscated for use in the Milky Way galaxy. The most they could hope for was the one with the most power in it being the one to remain in Atlantis.
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Rodney barely paid attention in the mission debrief, too wrapped up in going over all the readings from the new ZedPM and the limited data he'd been able to download from the power alcove he and Teyla had visited on the planet. Though the long-range sensor modifications had never been completed by the Ancients running the outpost thousands of years ago, he had been able to get some of their theoretical specs. They were by no means complete, but they still provided a starting point to make improvements to Atlantis' systems.
His part of the mission wasn't really a focus anyway. And although the amount of attention paid to the 'Nycole, Ben and Marion' situation had been making him feel left out lately, for the moment he didn't mind. It gave him more time to brainstorm over what he could do with access to more ZedPMs and how he was going to fix things so that he could still run his experiment. According to the files Nycole had given them, Rodney's future self had gone to Earth to discuss Jeannie's equation and its applications with her and then brought her to Atlantis to help him. Maybe if he didn't find a solution himself… and that wasn't as a big an 'if' as he would have liked to admit… he could talk the SGC into letting that happen again, this time with the emphasis on altering Jeannie's equation without making it unusable.
He smiled smugly to himself. If Jeannie was writing equations like this one in her spare time and traveling across galaxies without her family in tow, she must have at least partially realized he had been right about her choices the last time they'd really spoken. Rodney couldn't wait to hear her apology.
He was surprised out of his self-satisfaction by the two people on either side of him… Ronon on the left and Nycole on the right… standing up. A focusing blink and a quick look around the room showed that the meeting was over and everyone was leaving. Everyone but Elizabeth. She had stood up but hadn't moved away from her chair yet, instead watching Nycole leave with an expression Rodney couldn't quite read. Either something had happened in the meeting that he'd missed, or she was just still conflicted over Nycole. Even he had noticed the tension between the women during the times he'd been in the same room as the two of them.
Rodney had been meaning to bounce ideas off of Teyla about why Elizabeth was acting the way she was, but he'd been too wrapped up in his other concerns to make the time. Perhaps when they went on this next mission he would walk with her and discuss it then. If he remembered correctly, Nycole had said the ZedPM was half a day's hike from the 'Gate. Groaning at the thought and hoping the planet's terrain was relatively flat, Rodney tucked his laptop under his arm and followed his team.
"Hey," he puffed when he caught up to Ronon, who was heading in the direction of the mess. "When are we going on the next mission?"
"Fifteen hundred tomorrow, McKay. Other teams are using the 'Gate in the morning and Weir thought it would be better to head out in the afternoon, stay overnight where the ZPM is and then head back the next morning."
"Overnight," Rodney flinched at the whine in his own voice. "Do we really need to spend that much time off-world with everything else that's going on?"
"If you felt that way you shoulda said something when Weir asked if anyone had an objection to the plan," the taller man shrugged.
"Yes, well," Rodney deflected dismissively, letting the subject drop as they got in line to get food.
He'd have to make sure he packed more than his usual allotment of energy bars. He might also have to dip into his chocolate stash and keep a dessert reward handy for when they reached their destination. He would certainly deserve something for the effort it would cost him.
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"Unscheduled off-world activation." Dr. Weir was in her office in a meeting with a team that had returned ahead of schedule that morning, so after paging her Chuck followed his own announcement with the standard procedure. "Raising shield."
Chuck's eyes widened when he received the IDC signal. Hearing the sound of Dr. Weir's stride coming to a stop behind him, he turned his head to look at her.
"It's the SGC, Dr. Weir," he informed her. "There's an audio-visual signal coming through."
Dr. Weir straightened, folded her hands in front of her, and nodded grimly to him. "Put it up."
His fingers flying almost automatically, Chuck routed the 'call' to the nearest computer screen. He didn't want to miss this, and …well, frankly, Dr. Weir was right there anyway.
"General," Weir greeted when Landry's face appeared.
"Doctor," the older man fairly barked in reply. "I imagine you know why I'm calling."
"I assume it has to do with our latest arrivals," Dr. Weir answered. "Though I am surprised you were able to call instead of having to send a message via the Daedalus."
Landry grunted before saying, "The Asgard are helping us out."
Weir nodded acknowledgment.
Landry narrowed his eyes when she didn't say anything, then launched into a short spiel. "This call is just to set up another in three hours time. You'll need to set up a video conference somewhere other than the control room so we can speak with everyone involved. We're sending a short data burst with the necessary amount of screens and such for our end of the call. I'm sure you have someone on staff capable of setting that up."
"More than capable," Weir said in an ironic tone.
Chuck fought to keep a smile off his face. Something like that was almost child's play to most of the expedition, with the only possible exception being a few of the military staff, though most of them had above average intelligence as well.
"Is there a reason for the three hour wait?" Weir asked. "It shouldn't take us even half of that time to set things up."
Landry shifted his weight, his eyebrows drawing together slightly. "General O'Neill is flying in from DC; he lands in two hours."
Weir nodded again. "If that's all, General, we look forward to hearing back from you."
"I'm sure you do," Landry remarked dryly before the feed was cut.
Seconds later, the wormhole shut down as well.
"Would you like me to get things ready?" Chuck asked when Dr. Weir continued standing next to him with a troubled frown.
"Yes," she responded, a slight smile that didn't make it to her eyes touching her lips. "Thank you, Chuck."
"No problem, Dr. Weir."
He only wished he was an important enough member of the expedition so that he could be in on the conference. As it was, he'd just have to wait for the events to make the rumor mill via one of the men guarding their 'guests' in order to find out what happened.
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Nycole frowned when a knock sounded on the door of the room she shared with Ben. It was too early for anyone to be coming to get him or her for something. There was nearly an hour until lunch and another three after that until she was supposed to leave with her father and his team to go after the second ZPM. She glanced at Ben.
Your father, he informed her simply.
Wiping the frown from her face as much as possible while she was still curious, Nycole called, "Come in."
She could tell from the serious look on his face when he entered that her father was not there for a social visit.
"What is it?" she asked immediately.
"The SGC," John answered. "They're getting help from the Asgard in order to have a teleconference with us about the situation. They want all three of you there as well."
"When?" Nycole queried.
"Half an hour," John replied succinctly. "We need to head over there now. Carson and Marion have already been sent for."
Nycole nodded and stepped toward him, not needing to look at Ben since she could tell through the bond that he had set aside the laptop he'd been working on to get up and join them. Her father turned on his heel and headed back out of the door he'd only just stepped through. She and Ben followed. John was tense, and Nycole knew if she let herself think too much, she would be as well. The last thing they needed was to come across as too on-guard in front of the SGC.
"Will this postpone the mission?" Nycole asked as a way to break the silence.
John shrugged. "I don't know. I suppose it depends on how long the conference goes and what they say."
There was a tension in his voice that told her silence might very well be the lesser of two evils. Not for the first time, she wondered if she had chosen the right point in time to come back to. If they had shown up with knowledge of the location of ZPMs after the Atlantis one had been drained, the SGC and IOA would undoubtedly have been much more grateful. But no, if she had waited until the expedition had already been stuck in the Pegasus Galaxy, they would have wanted to know why she hadn't stopped it from happening. No matter what she might have tried, they would always have found a way to look at it negatively. She had chosen the option that worked the best for what she wanted.
Nycole remained silent the rest of the way. She didn't even comment or acknowledge anyone verbally when they joined the rest of the senior staff… plus Evan, Marion and Marion's guards… in one of the larger conference rooms. She and Ben were directed to two seats next to Marion where the three of them were in range of a single video camera. There were a couple of low conversations going on between some of the other people in the room, but it all stopped when the signal for an off-world activation was heard. Nycole watched as her mother lightly touched the communication device in her ear.
"Put it through," she said, sitting up as straight as she would if a ruler were strapped to her spine. When the three screens in front of them flickered to life… each holding the image of a single man… Elizabeth said in a more officious voice, "Gentlemen, I believe you know the members of my senior staff and Major Lorne. Our guests are Marion Beckett, Nycole Sheppard and… Ben."
The pause before Ben's name was minute, and though Nycole flinched internally at the fact that her mother had even the slightest bit of trouble acknowledging him, she didn't think the men watching from another galaxy would be able to detect it. One of the two Generals, the one that had a bit more of a portly figure though he wasn't quite fat yet, opened his mouth but was interrupted with a pointed throat-clearing by the frowning man with glasses and a bald pate.
"These gentlemen are Generals Landry and O'Neill of the SGC and Homeworld Security, and I am Mr. Woolsey of the IOA," he grimaced, the fact that he was addressing Nycole and her companions even more clear with his next words. "Though I suppose you already knew that."
"Why would I?" Nycole responded. "There aren't exactly any personnel files in Atlantis for the three of you, certainly not any with pictures."
"Hmm," Woolsey hummed disapprovingly.
Apparently he hadn't wanted an answer to his observation. Though there were plenty of ways she'd like to tell the sour little man off, Nycole sat back and held her tongue. She knew what was at stake.
"Now," Woolsey said, "to the reason we've gone through all this effort. Is there anything to add to the report sent with the databurst?"
"One of the missions we specified has occurred," Elizabeth reported. "Other than a few slight complications, the mission went as planned. The ZPM was retrieved and is actually more charged than anticipated."
"I see," Woolsey bit off. "And what were these complications? Explain, if you would, Colonel Sheppard."
"There was a shield that had to be deactivated," John said as nonchalantly as possible while still sounding professional, "and we had a small run-in with a few Wraith."
"I see," Woolsey said again, looking slightly more animated. "And how do we know this Wraith didn't contact the others, leading them directly to you?"
Nycole bristled but remained silent. They were likely to use any outburst from her, no matter how justified, to say she was a danger. Beside her, Ben sent her waves of reassurance, letting her know he understood why she wasn't verbally defending him.
"Ben wasn't with us," John said calmly. "And even if Nycole could contact other Wraith without him acting as a link, I doubt she would have then killed said Wraith, saving the life of a member of my team."
Woolsey blinked in apparent surprise and looked down, no doubt going over written notes that were out of camera view. General O'Neill… the nameplate on his uniform more visible when he leaned forward… took the opportunity to speak.
"Do you have any intentions toward Earth?"
"No," Nycole answered with a shake of her head. "Aside from being the place my parents are from, Earth means nothing to me. If I have my way, I will never leave this galaxy."
"And to your," he gestured loosely in Ben's general direction, "friend?"
"It holds even less meaning to me," the Wraith answered.
"Not even the six billion happy meals on legs walking around, ripe for the picking?" O'Neill asked.
"Because of the bond, I do not feed," Ben replied. "And through the records kept by this expedition in what would have been the future, I know any attack on Earth would not be worth the loss of Wraith life nor the time it would take to travel there."
"As logical as that is," Landry joined in, "I think you can understand that we can't just take your word for it."
"He's telling the truth," Nycole asserted.
O'Neill seemed to be mulling something over, while Landry and Woolsey each gave her a look that showed her word meant just as little to them as Ben's did. She had hoped it wouldn't come to this… there were so many ways it could go wrong… but this meeting was pointless when those on Earth had already decided not to believe anything they were told.
"Can I make a suggestion?" she asked before anyone else could say anything more.
O'Neill made a 'go ahead' gesture.
"I've read some of the older files that were sent with the expedition as reference material, and I know there is a device that shows whether a person being questioned is telling the truth or not," she said. "I assume someone will be coming on the Daedalus to… inspect the situation. Why not bring the device so these doubts can be handled permanently?"
"People can deceive a polygraph," Woolsey said dismissively. "Who knows if it would work at all on a Wraith?"
"I wasn't referring to a polygraph," Nycole refuted, her eyes locking on O'Neill, who looked like he had an idea of what she was talking about. "I meant the Tok'ra device used when sabotage was suspected in the SGC."
Though she could tell he had expected it, General O'Neill reared back slightly. Nycole remembered there being vague reference in the file to some trouble with two members of SG-1 and the device, and for a moment she wondered what had happened. But as long as whatever it was didn't interfere with using it in her situation, it didn't really matter.
"We'll take that into consideration," General Landry conceded. "But the Tok'ra usually take a few days to get back to us, and the Daedalus is scheduled to begin the trip to the Pegasus Galaxy tomorrow. We'd have to delay Colonel Caldwell with no way of knowing if the reason for doing so was going to happen."
"Actually," Rodney piped up, "that might not be a bad idea anyway. I assume you've had someone check to see if my sister has sent her physics proof to be published?"
Realizing Rodney had not given up on the project that she'd come back to stop, Nycole wanted to bang her head… or more appropriately, his… on the table in frustration. But it wasn't her place to actually stop him; that would have to come from someone in charge. And apparently them not having the same agenda as her was going to work in her favor, at least for a short time.
"Yes, Dr. McKay," Landry huffed. "She has in fact just sent it in. It hasn't been published yet, but it soon will be. What does this have to do with delaying the Daedalus?"
Rodney leaned further forward, "Now that we have a more powerful ZedPM and will soon have another, I'd like to come through the 'gate to Earth and visit my sister. For work, of course. Considering what we know about what would have happened, I'm sure I can talk her into coming back to Atlantis with me on the Daedalus. We can use the three-week travel time to work out how to alter her proof so that the problems that would have happened, don't. And as an added bonus, I can bring the other ZedPM through with me and you won't have to wait for the Daedalus' return trip to have that one for the Antarctic chair."
Landry and O'Neill glanced at each other and then at Woolsey, who grimaced again and said, "Excuse us for a moment, please."
Though the video feed remained on as the three men spoke to each other, the audio signal had been cut. Nycole risked the chance to glance around. Teyla looked as she did in all of the previous meetings Nycole had been a part of, sitting primly but not appearing overeager. Ronon was sprawled in his chair, also as per usual. Rodney was fidgeting slightly, obviously eager for the higher ups to give in to his plans.
John and Elizabeth were both staring at the screens and sitting ramrod straight. Nycole thought her mother might be attempting to read the lips of the men on the monitors. One of Carson's hands was under the table, and from the angle of his arm, Nycole thought he was probably holding Marion's hand in his. Her eyes shifted to Evan, who chose that moment to glance at her as well. He gave her a tight but heartfelt smile before turning his attention forward again.
Nycole turned her head to look at Ben. She knew through their bond that he was perfectly fine, but looking at the others and being able to tell how they felt about what was happening by their body language was making her curious as to how an outsider would see him. He turned slightly toward her to accommodate her, and she could see amusement in the subtle way his eyes flicked to hers and away. But would anyone else see that?
Maybe Evan… and to a much lesser degree perhaps Marion or Carson… but all the others saw, all they probably ever would see, was a Wraith. Dangerous, cold and aloof. And all she could see when she looked at him was, well, him. She'd known him too long and too deeply to be able to see him objectively.
"Dr. McKay," Woolsey suddenly spoke… Nycole just managed to hide her surprise. "As long as Dr. Weir and Colonel Sheppard can handle not having you close at hand for the time it will take, we have no objection to this new plan."
Rodney smiled his pleasure, and Elizabeth confirmed, "I'm sure we'll be fine. The timing is slightly different than it would have been, but nothing that required Rodney's presence occurred in Nycole's timeline while he went to Earth."
"If my team has any missions where a fourth is necessary," John added, "we can assign someone else short-term."
"Very well," Landry responded. "Dr. McKay, when should we expect you so that we don't have a scheduling conflict with one of our off-world teams?"
Rodney clutched his laptop to his chest and half-rose from his chair. "About two hours. That should give me enough time to switch out the new ZedPM and pack what I'll need."
Landry motioned to someone off-screen, and a hand held a clipboard up for his inspection. He waved it away moments later. "Two hours will be just fine, Dr. McKay. Try not to be any later than that."
Rodney nodded and was out of the room moments later.
"Unless there was anything else any of you wanted to add," O'Neill said, "I think we can wrap this up. Any questioning would just have to be redone later, so I don't see the point in wasting anyone's time."
"Thank you, General O'Neill," Elizabeth replied. "I think that's for the best."
O'Neill nodded and made a cut motion in front of his neck. The screens went black a moment later.
Nycole forced herself not to laugh derisively when she heard several sighs of relief. It wasn't that she wasn't relieved at how smoothly this first step had gone; she just knew that what was to come would be so much more treacherous.
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Adjusting the right strap of the pack on her back, Nycole fought to hide a wince. On top of being nervous about spending a night away from Ben… it had only happened twice since the bond had been initiated… her shoulder was acting up. Although a great amount of the damage had been healed shortly after the injuries were sustained, it hadn't been healed enough for there not to be lasting effects. If she didn't stretch and massage certain areas of her right side enough, the tension that built up around the scarred tissue generated a lot of pain and stiffness. She would have to do what she could herself once they stopped for the night.
Her father had decided to keep the mission on schedule, so after seeing Rodney off to Earth, she and the three remaining members of Atlantis' flagship team had headed through the 'gate on foot with the necessary supplies to stay overnight. They were making better time than they probably would have if Rodney had been with them and were now only a couple miles from where Nycole knew the ZPM to be. It was when she glanced up to check the position of the sun to judge the passage of time that she saw the smoke and froze, a confused frown on her face.
Teyla noticed that she had stopped and backtracked to join her, tilting her head as she asked, "Is something wrong? If you are tired, we can rest for a short time."
Instead of answering verbally, Nycole pointed. Following her finger, Teyla spotted the smoke, her eyes widening slightly.
"Perhaps it is a small wildfire. There may have been lightning in the area recently."
Nycole shook her head, "It's too uniform and narrow to be a wildfire. It's either a campsite or a house."
"I thought you said this planet was uninhabited?" Teyla frowned.
"It was," Nycole muttered, more to herself than to the other woman, "twenty eight years from now."
She had just turned to call her father when she saw movement in her peripheral vision. Using military hand signals to tell Teyla they were being followed, Nycole made the decision to join their companions silently and hopefully without letting whoever was out there know that they knew they were being followed. The two women ran to catch up with John and Ronon… just in time to be surrounded by Wraith.
Nycole frowned even as she automatically raised her hands to show that she was unarmed. There was something strange about these Wraith. Only a couple of them were wearing the traditional leathers, the rest dressed in garments of natural fibers… but that wasn't what was bothering her.
"Drop your weapons," one of them barked.
Despite his own momentary hesitance and Ronon's outright refusal, John did as ordered. Teyla complied directly after. Not having been allowed to bring any weapons with her, Nycole simply stayed where she was. After a short argument with her father… John won simply because of the sheer numbers surrounding them… Ronon tossed his gun away as well. The Wraith weren't fooled.
"All of your weapons."
Ronon shed the knives he wore in obvious view along with the sword strapped to his back.
The Wraith snapped, "I said all…"
One of the others lay a hand on his shoulder, soothing, "Thale will deal with them."
Moments later another male came into view, presumably Thale. One glance at him and Nycole realized why the group of Wraith had seemed odd to her. He was dressed in tan trousers and a cream-colored long sleeve tunic, the left sleeve rolled back slightly to show a thick metal cuff around his wrist. But it wasn't his clothing or his lack of visible tattoos that told her what she needed to know.
Tall and lean, Thale had the green skin common to most Wraith… but his features bore telltale signs of human blood. His nose and mouth were human in appearance, and though he bore the eyebrow-less forehead of a Wraith as well as the secondary nostrils, the Wraith features were muted. His eyes, pupils vertical slits, were the wrong color: a reddish brown instead of yellow or green-gold. His hair, too, stood out, pitch black. Female Wraith occasionally had hair of varying colors, but every male Wraith Nycole had ever seen had white hair.
And though their non-Wraith attributes were not as obvious as Thale's, now that Nycole had seen his, she could pick out signs of mixed blood in nearly every one of the males surrounding them. They had somehow stumbled upon a settlement of hybrids. She wasn't sure if that was better or worse than it would have been to run into a scouting party of full-blooded Wraith.
Thale glanced at her, eyes narrowing when he saw the marks on her face. She took the opportunity to speak to him telepathically on the level used by all Wraith, automatically trying to find the more personal 'frequency' used by this group as she had been taught to while living with Ben's hive. Thale rebuffed her mentally for the attempt and proceeded to ignore her. Not wanting to chance making things worse, she stopped trying. Thale spoke briefly with the male who had ordered them to drop their weapons before turning toward Ronon.
"If you do not remove your weaponry yourself, we will take them from you and you will be held separately from your companions."
Glaring the whole time at the newest arrival, Ronon divested himself of a few more knives that had been hidden on his person. Thale waited silently with a pointed stare. Grumbling under his breath, Ronon tossed three more to the ground.
"That's all of them," he snapped as the last one hit the rather impressive pile that had accumulated in the ground.
Thale nodded shortly. A few orders to his men and to them, and the group was moving in the direction of the fire Nycole had noticed. A mile later, they broke in to a clearing that held a midsize village populated by even more Wraith as well as many humans. They were led to a large cell-like cage and ushered inside, most of the men who'd originally surrounded them heading back into the trees. Six stayed to guard them, Thale walking a short distance away to speak with a female Wraith who had gestured to him when they'd arrived. She walked away moments later, obviously agitated, while Thale remained where he was. Nycole tore her gaze away from the hybrid male to check on her father and his team.
"She did this on purpose!" Ronon seethed through clenched teeth, stabbing an accusatory finger in Nycole's direction.
"Ronon!"
Though John's voice held a warning tone, the Satedan's name was all he said. He didn't defend her nor did he remind Ronon that Nycole's intel on the planet was from nearly thirty years in the future and therefore impossible to guarantee one hundred percent. Instead, when Ronon stalked away as far as he could in the cage, John turned to Teyla and began to talk quietly. He didn't ask her to join them, not even with a glance in her direction. Did that mean he secretly blamed her too?
Nycole hung her head for a moment. Nothing was ever easy. Tamping down on her sadness, she fed her anger and began pacing. She did some of her best plotting when rage cleared all other thoughts from her mind.
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Thale ignored the mental prodding of one of the men guarding their prisoners as he stood watching them. The quarter-human male wasn't the only one who wanted to know what they were going to do with the four humans, but Thale couldn't tell his people what he didn't know. Two of the humans… the darker skinned female and the male with oddly styled hair who was the apparent leader… were standing together and speaking in low voices. Thale assumed they were trying to plot an escape. The larger male, a Satedan by the mark on his neck, was standing near but not with them, glaring at the fourth member of the group.
She was an oddity. Despite her present choice of companions, she had to have some history with the Wraith that was more than just that of potential sustenance. After all, she did have an implant on one of her slender digits, and that technology was not wasted on those who were to be fed upon. He knew of no strictly-human culture that was proficient enough in the surgery required to successfully attach the hardware to a human finger so that it would correctly interface with the nervous system. He had no way of knowing just by looking if it was 'wired' properly, but the fact that she was able to use her hand with full functionality suggested it was.
There was, of course, a chance that she was the worshipper of a hive other than the one the tattoo under her left eye claimed. While under normal circumstances no hive would dare use the marking of another's Queen, the past couple of years had been anything but normal. The waking of so many hives at once… only those too far out of range or strong enough to ignore the Keeper had remained in hibernation… had been only one of the things that had led to the current civil war. The Keeper had died with two things on her mind: revenge against those who had killed her, and the supposed overabundance of people fresh for culling on the planet Earth.
The first had given those woken by her dying telepathic screams an extra edge of violence that had made former tenuous alliances impossible to maintain. True, they had banded together at first to attack what they had believed to be a return of the Ancient Enemy who had long ago abandoned the humans of this galaxy. But once more had become clear, there had been no hope of the entire Wraith race remaining allied. Despite their ability to use 'Ancient' technology and the fact that they made Atlantis their home, these new arrivals were not a return of the race that had come before. But they had still been able to do more damage to the Wraith than any other culture had in ten thousand years.
And Earth, with its promise of enough humans to feed the entire Wraith race for some time, was not reachable. Not only that, but the food supply within their own galaxy had not been given sufficient time to replenish itself. If the hives that had woken much too early had been willing to go back into hibernation to await the time when they were scheduled to awake, it would not have been as big a problem. But none of them had been. They were all too afraid of reawakening later to find opposing hives with so much power that their own would be wiped out.
Perhaps the tattoo and the finger implant had been intended to make her a tool, to put someone inside another hive to gather information or commit some act of sabotage. But no matter how she had received these gifts or for what reason, how she had then infiltrated the humans currently claiming Atlantis as their home was a mystery. The only reported use they had for the Wraith was as experimentation subjects. Thale didn't see how they would then take to a Wraith worshipper with anything resembling trust.
Well… the Satedan apparently didn't, but the other two did not seem to share his disdain of her.
What made Thale more wary than any of this, though, was the amount of telepathic skill she possessed… that and the fact that he was drawn to her. True, he was lonely, but he had been for thousands of years. What made now… her… any different? Thale gave himself a mental shake.
Her telepathic prowess was yet another reason to believe she had at one point been loyal to a Wraith hive. Some humans had rudimentary skill in this area… and he'd met a few who had the gift due to genetic manipulation… but she was different. When his people had first confronted hers, she had tried to find his people's group 'wavelength,' only falling back to the universal one used by all Wraith when he rebuked her for the uninvited attempt. She'd been apologetic and had immediately switched tactics to pleading for him to not let the confrontation get out of hand.
He'd ignored her, mostly out of lingering shock that she'd even known to look deeper than surface level for the nuances of the telepathic channel used by the people he led, but he had still done as she asked. The fact that he recognized the uniforms on two of the others with her had a lot to do with it. He had no desire to have the other humans of Atlantis coming here to seek revenge for their fallen friends.
He just didn't know how to send them away without still endangering his people. Part of him hoped that if he just sent them on their way, they wouldn't bother coming back. And maybe, if this had been one of their normal explorations, they would have. But from what the men who had been tracking them since their arrival had seen, the mysteriously marked young woman had been leading the group somewhere. Which meant they were here for a specific reason. He had no way of knowing if whatever it was they were after was enough to warrant them coming back with bigger weapons, or even ships, to kill his people in order to get to it.
And he couldn't deny that part of his hesitation had been her. It made him uneasy… and unable to truly concentrate on his current predicament. His attention kept drifting back to her, watching as she paced along one wall of the cell, her gaze focused outside of her prison. He stilled when her blue-green eyes found him and did not move away, narrowing in apparent consideration.
To be continued…
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Second Author's Note: I use the term "hybrids" in describing Thale and his people. Please note that this is because they are natural hybrids from the inter-breeding of two species and not genetic experiments like the abominations Michael calls hybrids in the show. To me there is a very vast difference.
