A/N:

So we all know Todd. I hope I got him correct. And I know it seems a bit like I'm rehashing the saboteur but bare with me. Thanks again.

Like it? Leave some feedback. Don't? Go read something else or tell me something constructive.

See you next time.

J.R.

Recap:

Atlantis has left earth once more. But there is no rest for anyone as the saboteur is at it again. And this time they've changed the game. No longer using a big strike force to take the city, they've intensified their efforts to tear it apart from the inside out.

Episode 7 Feedback Part 2

Engineering bay.

"What do you mean the engines have had to be shut down?" Sophie growled, almost running behind Rodney and Zelenka.

"What do you think I mean?" The Canadian snapped. "There was a feedback loop in the power relays that was building to an explosion. We've seen it before in when goa'uld rewrote part of the city programming."

"But you weren't drifting in space at the time. You were on a planet's surface. Not moving!" She insisted, snatching up her tablet. "Who knows what we could bump into."

"It's space!" He argued back. "There's not a whole lot around us."

"Rodney!" Sophie took a deep breath. "Listen to me carefully. You left the shield up so we wouldn't have to deal with micro dust and meteors, thank you, but we still have a problem things like gravity wells. When you took the thrusters offline, they stopped detecting and compensating for the microscopic fluctuations in our area of space. Which would mean very little if we weren't moving but we were! Our inertia will keep us moving and because we cant slow or change our trajectory or even redirect when a grav well does..."

"I already know this." Rodney interrupted and Sophie could almost hear the man rolling his eyes at her.

"You may be a genius at most things Rodney," she snarled. "But you're absolutely crap at dealing with your colleagues."

"You haven't earned my respect yet McIntyre." He replied coolly. "Why should I pay attention when you aren't telling me anything I don't already know?"

Sam, stepping forward to head the brewing argument off at the pass, took the tablet from Sophie's hands and gasped. "You're telling me that we're going to slingshot a star?"

"Not slingshot."Sophie insisted. "Slam straight into. The shields will fail in the heat, and we will die. Thankfully long before the hulls melt, we burn to death and are consumed by a blue hypergiant. Which," she glared at Rodney, "you would know if you had bothered to look at the readouts before you shut the engines down. Or even after!"

"We just need to figure out the fault in the engines and fix it." Rodney calmly replied, patting her forearm. "You need to go and rest. I don't even know why they called you in. They have me and Sam to figure things out."

"I called her in," Woolsey broke in coming up behind them. "Because someone needs to make sure the hull doesn't begin melting while the rest of you find and fix the problem in..." He turned to Dr. McIntyre with a raised eyebrow. "How long would you estimate?"

"An hour before our course is catastrophically altered by the mass of that star." She sighed. "Two more before we're irretrievably in it's well. Two, if we're lucky, beyond that before we die from the heat. But that could possibly speed up due to a variety of factors like random solar flares which we have no way of knowing about as we don't even know what the name of the star is."

"Bottom line is we need the engines back online." Radek ran his fingers through his hair, tugging at the roots to calm his nerves.

"Which I will do." Rodney insisted, rocking back on his heels as he turned to Sophie. "Remember our deal, McIntyre. I take care of the world ending emergencies, you take care of everything else." He smiled dismissively. "Now take Radek and Romanov to make sure we don't lose shields or hull integrity and Sam and I will work on the engines."

With a shake of her head at Rodney's arrogance, Sophie turned and jogged to her team who was busy gearing up.

"You're going to regret that." Carter chuckled, tapping away on the screen of the tablet in her hand.

"I already do." He admitted quietly on a sigh. "But she reminds me of Jeannie." He tapped a few times on his own tablet and confirmed Sophie's warnings before he went back to trying to find the problem.

"Your sister?" Sam asked scanning through the records for when the feedback began. "The one who's smarter than you?"

Rodney sighed and glanced up at Sophie who was pulling on her work overalls, covered in patches and repairs, and a safety harness. "Yeah." He admitted. Then spun on Sam. "And she is not smarter than me!"

"You blew up a solar system!" Sam reminded. "And Sophie has been working on terraforming and building a planet from scratch in her spare time."

Rodney blinked. He had heard rumors of a terraforming project, whispers really, but creating a planet? That was next level. "Really?"

Smiling knowingly, Sam pulled up the latest repair pictures of a quadrant of the engine that had been worked on and was showing something funny. "Rodney." She called. "Look at this."

Hallways on the way to shield generators

Sophie smacked the communicator in her ear as she sped through the halls. Radek, having been chosen to stay at command and monitor the shield levels and hull integrity, it was only Romanov and their team of busy technicians at her sides as they raced to the nearest transporters. "Sheppard this is Sophie." She called. "Come in."

John answered a moment later.

"I need security teams for my people and ones whoever goes out to repair the engines."

After a few seconds of listening, she sighed frustrated. Apparently people here had a problem with communication. This was why she insisted on documentation and meetings every twelve hours. "I don't honestly know what Woolsey and Rodney told you about our repairs that have suddenly been not repaired but something about the whole thing is fishy."

Like someone hit her, she stopped dead in her tracks, breathing hard. "You mean to tell me," She began enunciating each word carefully as her ground together. "That there is a wraith in this city which seems to have gone missing and no one knows how?"

She could feel her team stiffen around her as they came back to see what the problem was and overheard her words.

"My clearance wasn't high enough?" She hissed.

Romanov backed up a step. Everyone else followed his lead. If Romanov was worried, they had learned to follow what he did.

"I am having repair glitches." She began slowly, her fingers going bone-white where they kneaded the straps of her tool kit. "Your security feed shows signs of tampering when it keeps going on the fritz but you prisoner never is missing according to the feed. He happens to be a wraith. We're having engine troubles and power relay issues. There is a feedback loop that I'm willing to bet is going to begin electrifying hallways not so long from now. We are hurtling through space slowly being turned to a blue giant star."

One of the techs held their tablet in front of her face as a shield relay began showing signs of strain. Its output acting almost like a water hose that was pinched in half. Sophie nodded once and the tech quickly drew the screen back. Their tablets were reinforced, but not Sophie proof.

"I now have a relay that's about to burst like Lief's appendix right before prom, and you're giving me grief about my security not being high enough?" She asked, suddenly going glacially cold. Romanov blanched. "When this crisis is over, Colonel, you and I will be having a conversation about the words Need To Know. It will be very painful for you. You will need medical assistance."

"Get my teams and Rodney's some damned security." She growled. "One of my brothers had better be watching Radek and the other had best be with Romanov by the time you are done giving orders."

After a moment of him speaking, she began laughing darkly. "Me? I hope your Wraith does come after me… I truly do." Her smile turned predatory and hungry. "Radek is in the control room, Romanov is heading toward the east pier then south. I will be in the west and then north. Good hunting, Colonel."

Then she tapped her coms lightly and turned to her friend. "Well, this should be fun."

"You and I have vastly different definitions of fun." Romanov snorted before taking off with his team to the closest of the relays.

Turning to her team she smiled calmly. "Take the west pier. Then begin checking any hull plating that we tagged as weak and in need of reinforcing. I'll head north."

"But that's where the relay is that..."

Sophie interrupted with a wave of her hand. "I know." She smiled reassuringly. "But that is also where it seems someone is playing merry hob with power relays. They won't leave until they know their work is done."

"You're going to take on a Wraith by yourself?" The tech asked disbelievingly as they walked toward the transporter.

"Don't be silly." The chief engineer grinned. "I'm going to buy security time so they can take care of the Wraith while you check the relay and then make it back to me. Security should have the area secure by the time you arrive." She assured, gently shoving her little lambs into the transporter and then waving her hand at the door controls and sending them off.

Armory.

Leif and Gunnr winced, hearing their sister's voice. Didn't matter that the com was in John's ear. They could make out that tone of voice anywhere. And when his face did that twisty thing that they had noticed it did when he was irritated, or thinking actually, the brothers looked at each other and pulled their gear on quicker.

"Lief, head to the east pier with four marines. Gunnr head to the control room and secure it with another four. And Lorne!" He spun to look around for the man who was clipping his gun to his vest. "Take a contingent to guard Sam and Rodney."

"Oh come on Colonel!" Lorne objected, very thankful that Shepherd wouldn't roast him for it. "Sam is a General, O'Neill is with her and so are Mitchell and Teal'c. They're guarded."

"Then head to the team on the west pier and watch yourself with Sophie!"

Lorne chuckled. He was well aware of Sophie's reputation among the military, but he liked her. She was practical. And spunky. And not at all hard to look at. Although he wasn't looking. The chef that he was dating would poison him in his sleep.

"And us?" Ronon asked, buckling his holster and vest into place. He was almost itching to get going. He had heard Sophie's voice too. And although he was wanting to make sure she was safe, the best way to keep her safe was to find the Wraith and let her do her job. For now anyway.

Nodding beside him, Teyla snapped her gun and sidearm into place. "Will we be heading to the north pier?" She asked. "Sophie told me the shield generator was showing error signs while we were in the transport."

"But she's heading west first?" John voiced the wonder that went through Ronon's mind. Something was fishy about that.

John shrugged a moment later. He could figure that out as they went. "We're going hunting."

North Pier Field Generator

Around the city, there was a wide flat area, that ringed it like a track. It was generally used as an observation platform when they were planetside. But no one used it while they were in space. With good reason as the city's shields would only do so much against the lack of atmosphere and the g-forces that the moving city would generate. And being outside during something like the emergency situation they were currently in, moving under the city's engine power or not, was crazy.

Which is exactly why Sophie had donned one of the experimental space flight suits that were stored in the wall on the inside of every airlock at every exit.

The gloves of the suit needed help, she decided. Not as dexterous as she would have liked for delicate things like hacking the airlock controls but they got the job done and she got back inside without too much fuss.

"Really hadn't expected you to still be here, Wraith." She said, leveling her blaster at his chest.

He wasn't the first Wraith she had ever seen, having been in the SGC during the foothold situation. But he wasn't wearing the odd face shield like armor that the others wore, so Sophie could see that he was gaunt. Muscles that she had expected, remembering the Wraith soldiers that had nearly gotten through blast doors that she was feverishly welding shut, were sunken and much smaller. He was hungry-looking like he hadn't eaten in weeks. Which he might not have, as he had been a prisoner since they left Pegasus and the Atlantian teams were unlikely to cater to his "dietary requirements".

But he didn't immediately turn on her. So there was something.

Todd's fingers stilled on the keyboard. "You're new." He said, cautiously looking up at the weapon she held steadily. Not a single tremor. Unusual for a human the first time seeing a wraith. The weapon was similar to the one that Ronon Dex carried. But different. For one thing, it was decorated. There were designs etched into the barrel from what he could see.

"And you aren't the saboteur."

He blinked. Not the reaction the human military would have had. "No. I'm not." Upon closer inspection, he decided she was a scientist not military.

"You were attempting to fix the problem." She said evenly.

"I have no interest in dying in your galaxy." He agreed, his pale almost lizard-like eyes flicking back to the readouts on the screen as the computer protested his negligence with an annoyed beep.

"You're hopeful that when we make it back to Pegasus that either Sheppard will release you or you can escape."

Todd snorted. "I would undoubtedly be killed for contamination if I get back to a hive." He admitted. "I just have no interest in dying. And at this point, keeping you humans alive is my best chance of survival."

The human's bluish eyes narrowed, then she lowered the gun. "It'll be easier with two of us." She admitted with a nod. "But turn on me and I will kill you."

"You would try, human." He agreed with something resembling a smile.

She snorted and moved to the second screen. "My name is Sophie McIntyre."

"Shepherd calls me Todd."