Disclaimer: I don't own 'Stargate Atlantis' or any related concepts or characters; you know the drill by now. Also, the basic details of the plot were inspired by 'The Phantom of the Opera', although I have naturally put my own spin on things; hope it meets with your approval

Feedback: Always appreciated, trust me

The Phantom of Atlantis

The next morning, as Elizabeth stood on the balcony of the control room, McKay tapping away at the computers he'd set up in preparation for sending the data and messages through to the other side after they'd made contact with Stargate Command, she wished that she could feel better about this situation than she actually did.

Even if they were able to send a message through to Earth, they still had no real guarantee that it would make any difference to their current plight. With Atlantis's only remaining ZPM as low on power as it was, their chances of fighting off three Wraith hive-ships were minimal at best, given their low amount of drone weapons- McKay had only recently managed to take inventory of the city's weapons supplies after they'd discovered the hive-ships approaching them; they assumed that the Ancients had used up the original supply during the last Wraith siege- and the sheer distance between Earth and Atlantis, the expedition seemed to be pressed for options even in a best-case-scenario…

But, on the other hand, they would at least have tried to do something to save Atlantis; even if Earth couldn't do anything, the expedition would have access to greater resources to deal with the problem than they had at present.

In the end, the one thing she mainly regretted right now was that so few of the people she'd sent condolence messages to knew the full details of what their relatives had been up to; it just seemed… wrong to her that so many people would never know the full details of what their loved ones had helped humanity accomplish before their deaths…

Right now, however, she couldn't allow herself to think about that; there wasn't time to think about what should be or might have been, no matter how much she might regret the losses the expedition had suffered to reach this point.

The best thing she could do was to focus on the fact that they finally had an opportunity to pass on what they had learned in Atlantis to Earth; regrets like that would have to wait until she could be certain that their sacrifice hadn't been in vain.

Looking resolutely around at the rest of her senior staff, Elizabeth nodded at Chuck as he sat in front of the controls.

"Dial the gate," she said simply.

Nodding in response, Chuck turned around and quickly entered the address for Earth into the DHD, everyone within the control room watching and waiting as the various chevrons illuminated on the Stargate before them, each of them secretly crossing their fingers as the seventh chevron was dialled…

Then, as the eighth chevron finally slid into place and the wormhole activated, with no sign of the shield being raised to prevent any attempts to send messages through to the other side.

As the various expedition members cheered and exchanged everything from high-fives to hugs with each other- even Sumner seemed to grin as he gave McKay an almost-affectionate thump on the back-, Elizabeth waited for the cheering to die down before she nodded over at Chuck to activate the radio that would transmit the message through to the other side of the inter-galactic wormhole they'd just created.

"Stargate Command," she said, trying to stop herself from smiling like a giddy schoolgirl (She had nothing against her team showing their enthusiasm at this latest turn of events, but she had to at least try and act professional if she had any hope of maintaining Sumner's respect), "this is Atlantis; I hope everything's well over there?"

For a moment there was silence at the other end of the radio link they'd just established, until the familiar sound of the SGC's commander finally responded.

"Sorry, I was doing some paperwork; this is Atlantis talking here, right?" General Jack O'Neill's familiar voice said from the other end of the wormhole, evidently slightly sceptical about what he must have just learned about. "Cause I gotta tell you, really not in the mood for a prank right now; I swear those things breed if left alone…"

"No worries about it being a prank or mistake, General; you heard correctly," Elizabeth said, allowing the smile to spread across her face at the realisation that she was genuinely talking to Stargate Command once again. "This is Atlantis, with greetings from the Pegasus Galaxy; it's good to hear your voice again, General O'Neill."

"Really?" General O'Neill replied, sounding like he was currently in possession of a more-than-slight grin himself at the confirmation that they were there. "Good thing you called when you did, if that's what you wanted to hear; I'm transferring up to Washington in a couple of weeks."

"Washington?" Elizabeth repeated, unable to stop her slight surprise at that last comment; from what she'd seen of Jack O'Neill in action she would have sworn that nothing short of death could drag him away from Stargate Command.

"Yeah, crazy, I know, but with the Goa'uld essentially useless now that the Jaffa have all quit and Anubis is dead there's really not much call for me down here, and with General Hammond retiring at the end of the month, the brass decided that I'd do better up there running Homeworld Security than sticking around here," General O'Neill responded, sounding for all the world as though he was just discussing the weather rather than the news that the Goa'uld-

"I'm sorry, did you say that the Goa'uld are 'essentially useless'?" she repeated, looking slightly uncertainly at the radio in absence of being able to look at General O'Neill himself, her thoughts finally catching up to her mouth. "As in… they've been defeated?"

"As good as, anyway; last we saw of them Anubis was stuck in eternal struggle somewhere on the higher planes of existence while Ba'al ran like a rabbit after his own Jaffa turned on him," General O'Neill replied, the nonchalant tone in his voice one that Elizabeth had grown to know fairly well during their all-too-brief time working together at the SGC (She might have spent a few months in the role, but given that then-Colonel O'Neill had spent most of her time in charge frozen in an Ancient stasis pod, followed by her moving down to Antarctica to oversee work at the Ancient outpost, opportunities to talk with him had naturally been limited). "All in all, it's really fairly quiet back here… but something tells me that the same can't be said for your group over there, huh?"

"You'd be correct in that assumption, General O'Neill," Colonel Sumner said, stepping forward to better address the radio; evidently he had concluded that it was his turn to take control given the military nature of the current crisis. "We have a fairly serious situation here. Atlantis has only a limited amount of its full potential offensive and defensive capabilities, as well as possessing only a fairly limited power supply, and we have three enemy vessels that are each the size of islands on their own due to arrive at our location in the next couple of weeks."

After a moment's silence at the other end of the radio, General O'Neill finally spoke again.

"You really don't do things halfway when you get in trouble over there, do you?" he said, somehow managing to sound amused and frustrated at this latest turn of events simultaneously. "So, what kind of bad guys are we talking about here?"

"You'll find your answers to that in the download we're sending to you," Elizabeth said, taking up the conversation once again after a brief glance at Sumner. "We're sending you everything we've gathered about our current enemy, along with records of everything that we've been able to download from the Ancient database that might be of interest to anyone else; if the situation here proves unsalvageable, we wanted to try and preserve as much of what we've learned here as we could."

"Let's hope it's not needed…" General O'Neill said, sounding like he was only partly addressing the radio with that last comment before his voice resumed its original volume, most likely as he turned back to directly address the radio at his end. "All right, send through what you've got; I'll have Carter and Daniel look over it all as soon as possible and we'll get back to you when we can."

"Don't take too long; we've got… well, we're operating under a time limit, to say the least," Elizabeth said. "We'll contact you again tomorrow at around this time; everything we know about our current enemy is available in the files, along with other information such as our current situation in terms of power and defensive capability; we also included some personal messages some of the expedition members have prepared for their families at the end of the download."

"Gotcha," General O'Neill said, pausing briefly to apparently speak to someone else at his end- Elizabeth couldn't make out the precise words, but she could definitely hear the general's voice as he spoke to someone else- before his attention turned back to them. "Send it through; we're all ready over here."

Nodding over at McKay, Elizabeth waited for a few seconds to allow McKay to transmit the data in question before turning back to face the radio, waiting for a few seconds before General O'Neill spoke again.

"OK, we've got that at this end," he said, sounding once again like he was smiling slightly as he spoke. "I'll have Daniel and Carter check over everything they can- and get the messages sent off to the relevant people- and get back to you tomorrow; no point wasting energy for a long-distance call if you've got the bad guys heading towards you already, huh?"

"No, probably not," Elizabeth admitted, shaking her head slightly as she allowed herself a small smile at General O'Neill's simplistic assessment of their current method of communication. "We'll talk to you tomorrow, General."

"Looking forward to it," General O'Neill replied, shortly before Chuck terminated the connection, leaving the expedition members exchanging broad grins with each other at this latest turn of events.

They might still have some way to go before they could officially consider Atlantis saved, but they weren't alone any more; after learning of the odds that hey faced since coming here, anything that increased their chances of victory in the upcoming fight was welcome, no matter how slight a chance it was.

They'd done what they could; from here on in, the ball was in the SGC's court.


The next day, a new group of technicians gathered in the operating room along with the senior staff, the Stargate was dialled for Earth once again, the wormhole once again being established with no sign of the shield activating to block signals. It didn't attract as much attention this time around as it had yesterday- with so many incredible things to find in Atlantis, coupled with how little time they had until the Wraith arrived, everyone was busy doing what they could to explore the city before they were forced to leave it-, but those who were there were nevertheless grateful to see the wormhole connect once again as the link to Earth was established once more.

"Stargate Command," Elizabeth said, addressing the radio once again, "this is Atlantis; how's everything at your end?"

"Well, still having a bit of trouble sorting out mission plans without an actual bad guy to fight these days- I was never wild about the survey missions when I only had to worry about arranging one of them at a time, never mind all the ones we've got going on right now-, but hey; whoever complained about not being at war?" General O'Neill replied, his tone becoming more solemn as he continued. "I'm just sorry we can't trade off some of our good luck at this end to you guys; sounds like you've got a serious problem waiting for you over there with those 'Wraith' things…"

"A 'serious problem' is an understatement, General O'Neill," Colonel Sumner said, stepping forward slightly to subtly-yet-significantly push Elizabeth aside to speak to the microphone himself. "We have three hive-ships at least the size of Atlantis heading towards us, a seriously limited supply of drones, limited aerial combat vehicles, and our only power source barely has enough energy to defend us for more than a few hours… and that's even without taking the Phantom into account-"

"Yeah, regarding that 'Phantom' guy; any chance you could see about asking him to help out over there?" General O'Neill cut in, breaking Sumner off before he could go any further (A fact that Elizbaeth was grateful for; she really wasn't in the mood to hear another of Sumner's anti-Phantom rants after things had been going so well for her lately).

As Elizabeth took in the suddenly incredulous expression on Sumner's face, she had to cover her mouth to stop herself from laughing; the stunned expression on Sumner's face made him look like he'd just walked into a room only to discover he was dressed as a clown (Or something equally ridiculous along those lines).

"A… ask the Phantom to help?" Sumner repeated, staring at the microphone as though waiting for the punchline to a joke he hadn't understood at first. "General, with all due respect, the Phantom is-"

"'A rogue element in an already volatile situation that must be contained before his vigilante-style actions jeopardise the city in a crisis situation', correct?" General O'Neill said, clearly reading a transcript of a report that Sumner must have sent in the transmission. "All valid points, Colonel- in a situation like the one you're in, you do need to be sure you know what everyone's doing-, but you're overlooking one crucial detail."

"Which is?" Sumner asked, looking at the radio with an expression that made Elizabeth think that he would have called General O'Neill insane if he wasn't Sumner's official superior.

"This guy seems to know more about Ancient tech than anyone else we've got- with you guys or at our end-, as well as apparently being able to do stuff with the control chair and other various doohickeys that we can only dream about pulling off, based on what I've read about him so far; can you honestly say we couldn't use that?" General O'Neill asked. "I get your concerns about him, but so far the guy really hasn't done anything that wasn't fundamentally to your benefit; if he hasn't tried to hurt you so far- as well as taking into account how fast he was at taking out that nanovirus thing you dealt with a few months ago-, seems to me like he's the kind of guy who might be interested in helping you out when things get ugly."

For a moment Sumner simply stood in silence, staring at the radio before him, his expression reflecting a lifetime's faith in the chain of command simultaneously dictating that he comply with his superior's 'orders'- even if it was more of a recommendation than an actual order- and object to having to work with someone of unknown agenda and motives. Elizabeth had just started to wonder if she should say something herself before Sumner stepped up to the radio once again and simply said "Understood," before stepping back, clearly considering the matter closed.

"Good," General O'Neill said, clearly grateful to have that issue sorted out, before he turned his attention back to Elizabeth. "Anyway, with that out of the way, you might like to know that Carter and Daniel have been over everything you sent us from the Ancient database with the intellectual equivalent of those brush things Daniel always uses when he's studying runes, and we've definitely got a lot of stuff to be going on with even if you don't manage to protect the city itself," General O'Neill said, even as his tone made it clear that they weren't going to give up Atlantis as easily as his words might suggest. "Actually, we might be able to help you as far as holding the city goes; we recently discovered an almost-fully-charged ZPM from a dig in Egypt that might be useful to you guys as a power source-."

"Hold on; Egypt?" McKay repeated, stepping forward to stare in shock at the radio, breaking the silence that he'd maintained since the connection had been established. "There was a ZedPM in Egypt?"

"Yeah, I know; amazing how much stuff people left us with when you start looking for 'em," General O'Neill confirmed, his tone once again reflecting his usual casual sense of humour despite . "Anyway, we were planning on keeping it around at this end in case we needed it- you know, a power source for the Antarctic outpost, something like that-, but given what you're up against over there, and given that we don't really have anyone to worry about back here, everyone here's already fairly certain you guys'll be getting it instead."

"Uh… no offence, General, but as much as we appreciate the offer, that really doesn't help us much," McKay said, evidently making an effort not to sound ungrateful (Elizabeth briefly thought about objecting to his actions, but decided against it; if ZPM-related issues were the topic of the current conversation, McKay was unquestionably the best man to talk things over right now). "I mean, you can't exactly send it through to us from your end because you need the ZedPM's power to dial our address, and …"

"No worries on that front; Prometheus might be a bit busy at the moment, but we've got the Daedalus pretty much sorted and ready to go any minute now," General O'Neill replied.

"Daedalus?" McKay repeated, his eyes widening in surprise.

"Daedalus?" Sumner asked, looking inquiringly over at the city's chief scientist.

"Sister-ship to the Prometheus; I looked over some of the plans back when I was still on Earth," McKay said briefly, before turning his attention back to the radio. "I didn't even know it was finished yet; even allowing for the progress that must have happened since we left I thought it would be at least another few months before it was completed…"

"We've managed to call in a few favours from our offworld allies to help out with construction over the last year since you left; all we need now is to get the hyperdrive finished and everything's good," General O'Neill explained. "Actually, from what I've heard part of the reason we need a bit more time is that we need to hook a few extras up to let Daedalus use the ZPM as a power source, and Carter says she could be there in a few days at maximum hyperdrive with that amount of extra 'oomph'."

"Just how long will that take?" Elizabeth asked, looking uncertainly at the radio.

"Well… that bit will take the better part of a week- maybe a little longer; turns out ZPMs're fairly tricky things to link up to-, but from what you've said in your reports you can wait for that long, right?" General O'Neill added, evidently apologetic that he wasn't able to get anyone there faster than that. "I'll see about getting a team together at this end to provide you guys with some extra manpower before we dispatch Daedalus, but with this kind of timeframe to coordinate a rescue effort I can't promise much more than a few dozen marines and some railguns, and even that might be pushing it…"

"Anyone you can send would be welcome, General O'Neill; we appreciate your assistance," Sumner said, taking up the conversation once again. "We've got a couple of defensive measures we can take at this end already, but further manpower would certainly increase our chances."

"Gotcha; just do what you can over there and we'll get back to you when we're ready to send back-up," General O'Neill replied. "Wish I could say I'll be there when we reach that point, but it'll pretty much be time for me to be briefing the new guy at that point anyway; I won't really have much time to chat at that stage."

"Just so long as you send us some people when we need them we'll be satisfied, General," Elizabeth said, smiling slightly at the radio. "We've got a few possibilities we're trying to explore at this end to increase our chances, but any aid you can offer would be appreciated; we'll call you if we need you."

"Gotcha," General O'Neill replied. "Don't call us- unless it's really bad-, we'll call you."

With that, the wormhole connection was terminated, leaving the group standing silently in the control room for a moment, their hope restored by the news of the SGC's knowledge and plans to aid them in the current crisis, until Elizabeth turned to face them.

"All right," she said, her voice clear as she spoke, "we have reinforcements on their way, but that doesn't mean we can afford to slacken the pace as far as figuring out means of defending ourselves at this end goes. Study everything we have on the hive-ships' strengths and weaknesses and then see if we can find out anything further about Atlantis's defences; if there's even the slightest rumour of a weapons system we can use to increase our chances of success right now, I want it up and running as soon as possible."

"Understood, Doctor Weir," Sumner said, nodding briefly at her before he turned back to look at the scientists. "OK, people; let's move!"

Even as the scientists and soldiers turned around to leave the control room and return to their unofficially-appointed task of 'search Atlantis for anything potentially useful', Elizabeth couldn't stop her mind from focusing on one thought.

General O'Neill was willing to accept aid from the Phantom.

Did that mean she'd be receiving another visit from John soon…?

And why was that so important to her?


From his usual observation post in the control room, the man known only to Elizabeth Weir by the name of 'John' silently sat and watched her as she and her team began to make plans and preparations for the upcoming battle with the Wraith.

He had to admit, things weren't going too badly at this point. They'd made contact with Earth, the SGC were aware of the situation here and were taking steps to send help, they still had a decent length of time before the Wraith ships got here, and- the most encouraging news, in his opinion-, General Jack O'Neill- a man the elder Elizabeth had spoken of with a not-insignificant amount of admiration, from what he recalled; the guy had done some pretty impressive stuff as the leader of SG-1 before she came to Atlantis- had essentially told Sumner that the guy was to allow him to work with the expedition, rather than telling Sumner to capture him.

If nothing else, at least John knew some people in the military understood that he wasn't intending to harm anybody on the expedition.

He just wished that he could have faith that Sumner wouldn't put a 'creative twist' on General O'Neill's orders and try and confine him to that cell where they'd kept their Wraith prisoner- seriously, Sumner could have really showed more imagination in naming that guy; personally he'd thought about calling the guy 'Steve' or something like that- and justify it as requiring 'unrestricted access to his knowledge' or something like that.

John couldn't do that.

His knowledge about Atlantis would be beneficial to the expedition, he wasn't denying that, but he had to be free if he was going to make any kind of active contribution. Sticking in the cell and keeping him under control might be preferable to Sumner- at least that way he could be certain that John wasn't doing anything that he didn't know about-, but John had no illusions that Sumner would let him out afterwards; once he was in that cell, he'd be staying there.

He couldn't allow Sumner to do that to him; once the Wraith got here, he'd need to provide hands-on information about the enemy's tactics and technical capabilities, to say nothing of him being able to use the control chair better than anyone else in the city.

It might be fundamentally selfish, but he had no choice; if he tried to contact Sumner now, he'd just end up stuck in a cell at best and ignored and put in a cell at worst.

For the moment, he'd just keep in touch with Elizabeth until the time was right, offer what advice he had available to him, and hope that was enough.

As he looked at Elizabeth as she stood in front of the control console, looking solemnly around at her staff as they hurried to fulfil their allocated tasks, he gave her a slight smile.

You'll be fine, Elizabeth, he promised her. Just keep it together until I can do what I can.

With that last thought, he turned around and crawled back into the tunnel, already planning out his strategy until the hive-ships reached the point where immediate action had to be taken…