Mitchell handed Sheppard her zat.
"Don't shoot it at me." She warned him.
"What does it do?"
"It's kind of like a stun gun," Melony told him. "A really nasty one. At least the first shot is."
"First shot?"
"One shot will knock you – or pretty much anyone – on your ass, Major." She said. "If you shoot the same target again, it'll kill that target."
"Really?"
She nodded.
"I'll demonstrate later."
"Well, I really don't have enough personnel to be able to spare one..."
Mitchell smiled.
You could use the Astrophysicist"I'll use it on something inanimate," she told Sheppard, while she silently chuckled at Talon's remark. "It has a couple other tricks you might find interesting. I wonder why you weren't issued them?"
Of course, Sumner had been in charge of the mission – militarily speaking – and he'd hated zats, so that might have been the reason. He'd always been more fond of using guns that he knew you could trust, and she had to admit he had a point there. You always knew when you were out of ammo with a machine gun, or a pistol... not so with a zat, which might misfire any minute –although it hadn't happened to Melony.
Sheppard shrugged.
"No clue. I wasn't really supposed to be a part of this thing, originally."
"Oh yeah?"
He nodded. "I was just General O'Neill's pilot when he went to visit the Antarctica base, and... well... it's a long story involving this weird drone thing and a chair... I'll tell it to you sometime. Here are your quarters."
He handed her back the zat, and gestured to a door.
"You run your hand along this sensor thing, like this..." he demonstrated, and the door swooshed open.
"Nice."
"Well, it's better than a doorknob, I guess."
If I get zapped...
He didn't. They walked into the room, which was fairly large, and held a bed, and a dresser-looking thing that was pressed against one wall. She wondered if it was originally intended as a dresser, or if the Ancients had used it for something else. She didn't even know if they wore clothes. Sitting on her bed was a large stack of boxes and her duffle bag. Her things.
Mitchell crossed the room and set her P-90 on the dresser, looking around curiously. For having been empty for millions of years, there was no dust, and no weird smell. That was a plus.
"There's a bathroom through that door," Sheppard told her, pointing. "Luckily, the Ancients seemed to have done everything pretty much the same way we do, so we didn't have to modify that to our own... needs. You'll find a shower in there, too, but no bathtub."
Mitchell crossed the room and opened the door, taking a quick look, then turned to him.
"How about a coffee pot?"
"There's a few in the big room we use as a commissary." He said. "One of the scientists could probably rig something up in here if you want-"
"I'll figure it out," she assured him. She definitely needed a cup of coffee, but there were a lot of other things that she needed, too. Like a tour of the place, and a summary of what had been happening there, so far. "Why don't we take that tour?"
He nodded, and the two of them stepped out the door.
"Colonel Mitchell, Major Sheppard..."
They turned and saw Weir coming down the hall, a stack of disks in her hand.
"These are copies of the reports we've made so far, Colonel Mitchell," Weir told her, handing the disks over. "We have them in hard copy, too, but the disks will be easier to read than my handwriting."
"Thank you, Doctor Weir," Mitchell took them. "I'll be right back." She told the two of them, and went back into her quarters to drop the disks off. No sense carrying them around, after all.
"How are you two getting along?" Weir asked Sheppard.
John shrugged.
"I like her."
"So quickly?"
"Why not?"
It was Weir's turn to shrug. Why not, indeed?
""So, have you briefed her-"
They were interrupted by the door opening again, and Mitchell's return.
"I was just asking Major Sheppard here if he'd managed to tell you about the Wraith, yet, Colonel Mitchell," Weir said. "Has he?"
Mitchell shook her head.
"He's going to do that while he gives me a tour of the place. Would you care to join us? I could use more than one person's perspective on things."
Weir nodded.
"I was going to suggest it myself, actually." She gestured towards the hallway that would take them to the control room. "Shall we?"
The three of them headed down the hall.
OOOOOOOO
It was impossible for Mitchell to hear the story of the Wraith and explore the strange new city at the same time, she discovered. Atlantis was a complex warren of hallways and rooms – small and large, some empty, and some filled with things she didn't even have a clue what they could be – and it was all far too new to her – and Talon – for her to be able to concentrate on what was being said. She ended up stopping in the middle of the hallway they were in, and asking the Major to tell her the story of the Wraith right there, where there was nothing to distract her.
She was glad she did, too, by the time he was finished with the bare bones of the tale. It wasn't a story to be told before bedtime, that was for certain, and it wasn't a nice story, but it was one she needed to hear and one that sickened even Talon, who shared his host's memories of Colonel Sumner and her anger that something so gruesome had chosen to torture him.
"He didn't tell them where Earth was?" She'd asked when Sheppard had come to that part of the story.
John shook his head.
"He told her to go to hell."
Melony nodded, wishing she could be alone for a while to mourn for her friend.
They will pay Talon promised her, his very real fury burning inside her, countering her sorrow.
Mitchell closed her eyes, and Sheppard was worried for a moment that she was going to pass out or something. She'd suddenly turned rather pale.
"Colonel Mitchell?"
Obviously Weir had been worried about the same thing, because when she opened her eyes, both of them were looking at her, concern in their expressions.
"They'll pay..." She said softly, turning away from the two, and echoing Talon's promise to her. A promise he'd given another host several hundred years before, regarding a different injustice, and a different race of beings, and one that had been fulfilled ruthlessly only years before.
Weir looked over at Sheppard, who was watching Mitchell.
"They don't know where Earth is," he said. "The Atlantis Stargate is the only one in the system that will go to Earth, so they're not going to find-"
"How do you know that?" Melony asked, turning back to them.
"Because of the hologram," Weir told her. "We found a hologram the Ancients left, and it told us that this gate is the only one that will return to Earth."
"So they won't get to Earth without coming through us," Sheppard told Mitchell.