A/N: Sorry for the long delays! uni blah And Big thank yous for the reviews they make me smile :-) so here we go! I'm going to try and update once a week with at least one chapter... I figure it's better than nothing right? Also I have no knowledge of stellar phenomena or computer stuff and thus please allow the following to slide...if it's incorrect! Enjoy!

Chapter 21

"What are you doing here?" McKay asked as he turned away from the white board he was currently staring at when Sheppard announced their arrival.

"I'm here to assist you" Hannah said reluctantly.

"I doubt there is anything you can do to help" McKay said Hannah looked back at Sheppard who made motions for her to press on. So she did.

"What do you have?" Hannah asked.

"I'm not going to bother explaining the complexities of the situation read it for yourself." McKay said as he pushed a tablet computer into her hands. Hannah read the screen at the possible problems they had predicted for why they couldn't establish an active wormhole. After ten minutes of skimming she handed the tablet computer back to him.

"Why haven't you considered a Magnetic storm as a possible reason?" she asked.

"A Magnetic storm, that's absurd… this is the real world not Star trek" McKay told her, he spoke to her as if she was a child.

"They do exist. I suggest you read up on your spatial phenomena in the Atlantis database. Magnetic storms have been known to interfere with the Atlantean technology. Thus it could be hypothesised that the magnetic storm is impeded the Stargate and the puddle jumper from operating. " Hannah told him bluntly.

"She is correct there is such a thing as Magnetic storms" Demming said as he had moved to stand with them at the board and also to show the reference he found from the database on his computer. Hannah looked at McKay with a smirk as she was vindicated and he for once wasn't right.

"I preferred it when you didn't have your memory" McKay snapped at Hannah as he ignored Demming.

"You never spoke to me when I had amnesia" Hannah said.

"That's my point" he replied.

"Noted but for future reference if you speak to me as if I am a small child or a golden retriever again I'll break your nose" Hannah warned him, in a cold and threatening tone.

"Well your assistance is no longer required" he said as he had paled at her steady and unnerving stare before he nodded and turned back to his work.

"Well, it's nice to have you back. High five?" Demming said to her, he held up his hand waiting for a high five. Hannah gave him an unimpressed look.

"No" Hannah told him before turning on her feet and walking towards the exit where Sheppard was waiting.

"Come on, don't leave me hanging" Demming said as she left the room.

"What?" Hannah asked as Sheppard was wearing an amused expression.

"Break his nose?" Sheppard asked.

"I could have threatened to kill him" Hannah said with a shrug. She technically was no longer constrained by her former military protocols nor was she an employee of the IOA so she could say whatever she liked to a certain degree.

"True, let's go to the control room. I thought you might want to get a radio" Sheppard said as he steered their direction towards the room.

"Would be helpful, oh and you should talk to Dr Branton. There's an Astrometrics lab that shows sensor readings for that area from a roaming satellite. It might help in seeing where Lorne and Megan might be. But if I'm right about the Magnetic storm, there's a possibility that they are already dead" Hannah told him.

"I'd prefer to think they are still alive" Sheppard told her, they stopped in front of Chuck's station and the man looked up and smiled.

"Hey Chuck" Hannah said.

"Lt O'Neill, good to see you. Rumours say you got your memories back" Chuck said.

"Rumours are true, I was hoping I could get an earwig and radio" Hannah said.

"No problem, just give me a couple of minutes. Colonel Sheppard what channels do you want me to give her?" Chuck asked.

"Give her Military as well as Civilian" Sheppard answered. Hannah looked at him surprised that he would give her access.

"You sure Colonel Carter won't object?" Hannah asked.

"What she doesn't know won't hurt her" Sheppard said, Hannah raised an eyebrow at him but said nothing as they waited for Chuck to return. He handed her an ear wig which she adjusted it with ease before placing it in her ear. She could hear the chatter of multiple people going on in her ear. It only took seconds for her to block it out as it wasn't relevant to her.

"Thanks" she said to Chuck. She turned to Sheppard "McKay wll tell you that sending the Daedalus will be impossible if I'm right about the Magnetic storm. The ship wouldn't fair well in the storm even with shields at maximum" Hannah informed him.

"Then what are we supposed to do? Leave them stranded?" Sheppard asked her.

"For the time being? Yes. They might have gotten lucky and landed on a habitable planet. When it blows over they'll be back" Hannah said.

"How likely is that?" Sheppard asked.

"I don't know, come on let's go talk to Dr Branton" Hannah said, she was amazed at how quickly and easily they slipped back into their previous roles of her being his XO and him the Commander. Even though he had been given a promotion and she was no longer in the Military.

"Ladies first" Sheppard said as he gesture she take the lead.

"Well what are you waiting for?" Hannah replied with a sarcastic drawl inferring he was the 'lady' in this instance he smile and pointed at her.

"Don't be cute it doesn't suit you" he replied with a smile.

"You don't think being cute suits me?" Hannah asked with mock disappointment.

"I think it suits you" Chuck said to Hannah who smiled at him as he was joining in on the fun. But upon Sheppard's look of 'whose side are you on' Chuck smothered his smile and became serious and added a "Ma'am" in a formal manner before ducking his head and going back to work.

"Thank you Chuck" Hannah said as she looked to Sheppard and motion that they leave. He nodded and they left the control room heading to the nearest transporter.

"As soon as I was told about it I've the Astrometrics Lab. I learned there is about of about 24 hour delay between the satellites in that area and here" Mike said as they met up in the Astrometrics lab. He had a holographic scaled down version of the sector displaying in the room when they walked in. Sheppard was currently waving his hand through the holographic nebula marvelling at how cool it was.

"So you have record of the puddle jumper?" Sheppard asked.

"Yes, it's course and trajectory… I have up until they were returning to the Stargate and there is the storm front" he said as he pointed to the holographic recreation.

"This is pretty cool why can't we spy on wrath ships this way?" Sheppard asked getting off topic.

"Because there aren't that many satellites in the Pegasus Galaxy to begin with and because the wrath destroyed all the ancient satellites around their more popular feeding grounds" Mike said. Sheppard nodded his head acknowledging the information.

"Makes sense, they wouldn't want the ancients spying on them" Hannah added.

"So this Magnetic storm..." Sheppard drawled.

"Well we can only assume so as the data hasn't come in yet" Mike said.

"If that's true, they could have crash landed on the planet and possibly survived if their systems weren't too heavily damaged. Is this planet habitable?" Hannah asked Mike pointing to the planet that the Stargate was orbiting.

"Depends on your definition of habitable but if they did crash on the planet then they could possibly still be alive and be able to survive. From what I read in the database the planet is swamp like in nature" Mike said.

"Let's believe that's true" Sheppard said.

"Forever the optimist" Hannah said looking to Sheppard.

"Well it balances out your pessimism" Sheppard replied with a smile.

"I'm pragmatic there is a difference" Hannah told him.

"Colonel Sheppard please report to the Control Room Immediately" Came over the P.A.

"That's me, keep me updated" Sheppard told them.

Hannah nodded as did Mike not bothering to mention that they could be doing better things with their time to help in the search. Sheppard left the room and Mike turned to Hannah who was looking at the holographic projections. She managed to open up a small screen and accessed the database through it.

"How did you do that?" Mike asked as he had never seen the function before.

"I don't know I just knew how to… I'm told it's a side effect of my memories being restored" Hannah said as she closed the window and demonstrated how she accessed the screen and a key board to type in a search while Mike watched and imitated her movements and garnering the same results.

"I tried to see you in the infirmary but Dr Keller said you asked to be left in peace" Mike said as he kept his eyes on the screen and not her. She appreciated not being stared down for answers but none the less felt she had to give him answers as he had been good to her.

"When I woke up, I was overwhelmed" Hannah said as she was uncomfortable admitting her weakness. "I still am" she added as she looked at the screen reading historical data on the solar system. Mike remained silent as he watched the frail control on her emotions hold. It was amazing how different she was from the woman he met when she first arrived.

"I look at people I know and every memory I have of them, opinions, emotions, thoughts all flood me. Like I said it's overwhelming. You are the first person I have encountered today that I thankfully have not experienced this with. It's somewhat of a relief" Hannah said with a sigh as she looked at him quickly to make see his reaction. He didn't look upset by her statement in fact he looked pleased.

"Well I'm glad I'm one of the few that you can be comfortable around. I'm sure once your memories settle back to where they are supposed to be it'll get easier" Mike said as he continued to open and close screens practising it as they really couldn't do anything but wait for more data to come in.

"I can only hope" Hannah said relieved he wasn't offended. They fell into a companionable silence as Mike read historical occurrences of Magnetic storms in the sector of space Lorne and Megan were in. Hannah read up on how Atlantean technology survived in past brushes in magnetic storms. After an hour of working Mike saw a pattern start to emerge.

"It seems every 10 years or so the sector goes through a turbulent storm season for about six months" Mike commented. Hannah moved to stand by his side and looked at data.

"So it seems. This doesn't bode well for Dr Johnson and Major Lorne if we can't open the Stargate or have them rescued by the Daedalus. Is there a way to predict the next storm from previous data?" Hannah asked.

"Possibly but it will take time. I guess we can take comfort that they'll be relatively safe on the planet." Mike said but Hannah wasn't paying attention as her mind ran a million miles an hour churning up ideas.

"If we can open the Stargate and send a message their comm. system could possibly pick it up" Hannah said she bit her bottom lip as she sifted through the Atlantis database for past incidents of crashes. She remembered reading about it once upon a time.

"What are you looking for?"

"I remember reading somewhere about exploration vessel crash landing on a planet when they were knocked out by a magnetic storm… Their comm. systems were damaged from the crash and barely functioning but they were able to receive messages and send out a weak signal but I can't remember where" Hannah said, she wished she could remember where in the logs.

"Ok say hypothetically we could open a wormhole. You're saying we send a message in Morse code?" Mike asked.

"I was thinking a data burst would be better. But we have the power and resources we could possible cut through the interference. What do you know about Atlantis's communication systems?" Hannah asked.

"That it's a little out of my field of expertise. You might want to talk to someone" Mike said to her. Hannah nodded and reluctantly knew who she had to call and tapped her ear piece. She had the choice between two people and decided the lesser of two evils.

"O'Neill to Demming come in" Hannah said on her radio.

"Demming here, what do you need brown eyes?" Demming drawled.

"I require your assistance in the Astrometrics lab" Hannah stated.

"On my way, Demming out" Demming said.

"So what's cooking good looking?" Demming asked as he came into the room 10 minutes later.

"I assume he's calling you good looking" Mike said.

"Well you're a good looking man but I was referring to Hannah" Demming said, Mike nodded and looked to Hannah.

"We need him?" Mike asked just out of curiosity.

"It was him or McKay" Hannah commented.

"Good choice" Mike commented before he moved away to continue his work.

"I'm so happy I rank higher than McKay. So what am I doing here?" Demming asked. Hannah launched into what they had found about the sector of space and how the Daedalus would not be able to rescue the ship for some time due to the erratic and unpredictable weather patterns. She then told him of her and Mike's idea to possibly communicate with the ship if it crash landed on the habitable planet.

"Whoa slow down" Demming said holding up a hand. "What if their communication systems are down or dead then what?" He asked.

"Let's assume they aren't dead yet just that they crashed landed" Hannah stated calmly.

"Fine, so they crash land and they are alive but Magnetic Storm in interfering with long range communications and the operations of the ship. How are we going to get a message to them?" Demming asked folding his arms, he said it in a thoughtful manner than the demanding way McKay would have.

"Dr Johnson would have her computer which hopefully was detached from the ship's systems before they crashed. It will still work even in the storm because the planet's atmosphere will lessen the disruption of power. So I was thinking we override the safety protocols of DHD and then send a data burst repeated over and over for a half a minute before the DHD fries itself and possibly anyone nearby" Hannah said, Mike looked slightly put off by the idea of people being 'fried' while Demming considered it how viable the idea was.

"Colonel Carter wouldn't go for it" Demming said after a moment.

"It's the only idea I have. Tell her and see what she thinks and don't mention my name" Hannah said to Demming.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not supposed to be working, I'm on convalescence leave remember?" Hannah told him.

"Right! I forgot with your whole hard edges and professional exterior back on" Demming said with a smile. "I'm going to talk to the head cheese. I'll be back" he said and with that Demming left the room leaving Hannah and Mike alone again.

"How long will you be on convalescence leave?" Mike asked.

"About 6 months, thankfully Mr Carver worked it so I didn't have to spend all of it 'talking' with Heightmeyer" Hannah said with relief.

"So you're just going to hang around here for 6 months?" he asked.

"I was thinking about going to New Athos for a bit of that time but other than that I don't know. Any suggestions?" Hannah asked.

"I just figured you'd go back to Earth" he said.

"There's nothing there for me anymore" Hannah said.

"Not even to just travel?" he asked, Hannah smiled as she remembered her somewhat fond memories of travelling around the world. There had been a lot of drinking, poker and then there was the gruelling martial arts training.

"I'm not interested, I did the whole travel the world thing. I'm not sure what I want but ah running around the globe getting drunk and robbing people at poker tables doesn't appeal to me" Hannah said.

"Really" he said surprised she would be so hedonistic in her pursuits.

"Yeah, well how am I supposed to afford a week at Bauer Il Palazzo in a grand suite with a balacony overlooking the canals on a Lieutenant's wage?" Hannah asked Mike gave a low whistle looking impressed.

"Out of curiosity, how much does a Lieutenant make?" Mike asked.

"Not enough for the trip I took" Hannah scoffed with a smile. Mike couldn't help but smile at her as she seemed completely comfortable in that moment.

"The things I learn about you" Mike said.

"And yet you've barely scratched the surface" Hannah replied. As soon as the words left her mouth she realised how flirtatious it sounded. She felt her cheeks warm up as she looked away for a moment. Mike let a moment of silence pass between them while he smiled.

"I look forward to getting to know you and I'll have to take a holiday with you sometime I wouldn't mind a bit of luxury. Make a change from the backpackers" Mike said with a smile.

"Can we get back to this?" Hannah asked pointing to the holographic seen in front of them.

"Sure, what do you know about predicting space weather patterns?" Mike asked,

"Nothing"

"Well then this should be fun" Mike said.

"So basically you're saying we can't fly in there and snap them up with the transporters" Colonel Caldwell said to Demming as he sat in Sam's office with Sheppard, Demming and McKay.

"Right at this time the weather in that sector of space is unpredictable and Hannah says it will interfere with our technology" Demming said.

"Hannah?" Caldwell asked.

"O'Neill, I asked her to help Dr Branton" Sheppard said tentatively as Sam looked at him with something akin to frustration and anger.

"Isn't she supposed to be on convalescence and even then can we trust what she says in this matter? As far as I know she doesn't hold a degree in astrophysics" Caldwell asked he already knew Hannah had recovered her memories from the procedure. He was hesitant to take the word of someone who had been for all intents and purpose was a P.O.W. and turned soldier of the Ori for more than half a year. Even if she ended up bringing about the end of the Ori war, he still questioned the allegiance and sanity of such an individual.

"She doesn't have a degree in anything but that's not the point. Dr Branton agrees with her and he's crunched all the numbers. I also agree and looked over the work. If you try to go out there you'll end up dead in the water or worse" Demming assured him.

"Dr McKay?" Caldwell asked. It was unusual for the Canadian to be so quiet.

"They are right." McKay said.

"Ok so what are our options?" Sam asked.

"Well I have a crazy idea... well Hannah had a crazy idea" Demming said.

"What is it?" Sam asked.

"Well she believes she can override the safety protocols of the DHD to open a wormhole and possibly send a message" Demming said carefully he was already wincing in preparation for McKay to start ranting. McKay did not fail to perform.

"Is she insane?" McKay asked, Caldwell and Sheppard were not sure what was wrong with the idea but said nothing as they knew it wouldn't be long until they found out while Sam looked to be practising patience as she thought through the merits of the idea.

"I wouldn't ask her that but personally I think she appears to be in complete control of her mental faculties" Demming said.

"Can we get Miss O'Neill in here to tell us the full details?" Caldwell asked before McKay would go on his rant he hoped by the time Hannah showed up McKay would tell them the negatives of the plan before Hannah told them the positives.

"We can" Sheppard said.

"Sorry" Hannah said stopping as she nearly ran into him. She had gotten a call from Sheppard to get her butt to Sam's office as soon as possible but with Ronon in the way progress had come to a halt. She took a couple of steps back putting space between them before she waited for him to step to the side like a gentleman should. But he didn't and she was running late so she tried to pass him but instead they did a dance of trying to pass one another and failing until Hannah stepped back and looked at him.

"Ronon" Hannah said.

"Hannah" Ronon said as he looked down at her, silence lapsed between them before Hannah spoke.

"This is incredibly awkward" Hannah commented.

"I-" Ronon started but stopped when Hannah held up a hand silencing him.

"Don't its fine I get it. We don't know each other that well. You don't owe me anything or have to feel like you have to pretend we're something that we're not. We had some fun and you said all the right words afterwards. We parted ways. I ended up where I did and you here." Hannah rambled she stopped as she was pretty sure she had made an idiot of herself but hey how else was she supposed to deal with him. He had avoided her thus far which proved he wanted nothing to do with her. As the stupid book said 'he's just not that into you'.

He opened his mouth to talk but Hannah cut him off as she didn't want to fall victim to the 'you're a nice girl and blah blah' speech.

"I have to get going, Sheppard is waiting for me" Hannah said as she stepped to the side and made a grand gesture of letting him pass. Ronon was gobsmacked at Hannah's blow off. It was not how expected their first meeting after she left the infirmary. He closed his mouth and walked past her. She looked at him with complete disinterest wondering why he was trying to stare her down or at least that was his interpretation. It was confusing and unexpected and before he could think of a reason to detain her further she walked off. He watched her leave and noticed she didn't look back once as she headed to the nearest transporter.

Hannah stepped into the transporter and pressed for the gate room. When the doors closed she leaned her body against the wall and sighed as she hated how stupid she felt for having delusional fantasies about the man and imagining emotions that weren't there.

She was better off alone, it's not like she had anything left to offer in a relationship. She was riddled with anger, guilt and pain. She had to deal with her own issues before adding someone to the equation in a more intimate level than friendship.

When the doors opened Hannah pushed herself off the wall and headed out of the transporter and made her way to Sam's office.

"Sorry I'm late, busy transporter" Hannah said after she was waved into the office, she stood beside Demming and noticed how miffed McKay looked. Not to mention Sam who didn't look impressed by the fact that Hannah was involved in trying to help. She knew she was in trouble the only allies she had in the room were Sheppard and Demming. Caldwell played his cards close to his chest. But Hannah didn't know him well enough to gauge his character.

"That's fine, Mr Demming was telling us of your plan" Colonel Caldwell said. Hannah shot Demming a look as if to say 'I thought I told you not to say my name'. He gave an innocent shrug in reply.

"I was telling them about your idea and then McKay went into tirade about all the negatives of the idea" Demming said in a low voice to her.

"So, you covered the overloading the power systems and blowing out the DHD?" Hannah asked.

"Yup, he even said the Stargate would explode" Demming said.

"That's impossible, it would spark… a little dramatically" Hannah said casually.

"Please enlighten us on how your plan would work" McKay said dryly.

"Well, we override the safeties on the DHD to make a connection with Stargate orbiting the planet. The wormhole will be completely unstable for travel but to send a data burst it should be fine. I'm thinking hold it open for about half a minute and repeat the data burst over continuously. The comm. system on the puddle jumper if it hasn't been too badly damaged will be able to receive the data package in broken pieces and amalgamate it a whole message" Hannah explained.

"What good is it sending a message?" Caldwell asked.

"They'll know that we are coming for them" Sheppard said.

"Also Dr Branton is trying to predict the storm patterns. If we can predict two windows where there is a break in the storms we can fly a jumper through and pick them up. But until then they have to sit tight" Hannah said.

"If I were stranded I'd want to know help was on the way" Demming said.