Part 2

A significant look passed between John and Elizabeth as he watched her walk from the command center with Sora and two other soldiers at her back. He could almost hear the words that she was quietly communicating to him. Don't get yourself dead. Atlantis needs you. He could easily have told her the same thing, though he felt marginally better to have her being in Sora's presence than that of Kolya. From the moment he set eyes on the man, he'd pegged him as a heartless SOB with delusions of ruling of the galaxy.

Once the two women were out of view he rolled his gaze in McKay's direction. The physicist was pale and almost visibly shaking. No fear, he tried to communicate in a quick glance before focusing on Kolya. Rodney seemed to understand, and pulled himself up taller.

"I'm curious, Major Sheppard. Why did you decide to surrender? It is a clear tactical disadvantage." Kolya's tone was almost conversational.

"It's good to be curious," John replied, having no intention of making this easy on the invader.

Kolya seemed to contemplate that answer, and then casually, he pulled a gun from his jacket and pointed it toward the center of John's head. "I could kill you right now."

John didn't allow himself even the luxury of a blink. Instead he raised his lips in the smile that he'd perfected during some of his more covert assignments. "You could," he agreed, allowing the cold fury to show, if only in his eyes. "But I'm the only person in this city who has the ancient gene necessary to run this place. I'm the only one who can even activate a jumper, and I'm the only one that knows where the C4 is. Oh, and, the tech doesn't work if you're dead."

Kolya re-holstered his weapon, emotionlessly. "You have items to bargain with."

John shrugged, noncommittal. He knew this game.

"Where is the C4?" The tone was quiet, cold.

"Like I said, it's good to be curious."

John caught a slight shift in Kolya's eyes just as he heard Rodney yell his name. He turned into a brilliant burst of pain and light before the room tilted. His last view was of the floor rushing up to meet him.

Dr. Carson Beckett watched as Teyla moved into the passenger section of the puddle jumper and spoke quietly with each of the Athosians on board. He did not understand how she could be so calm under the circumstances. They were literally in the middle of a hurricane the likes of which none of them had ever seen before, and she seemed to be reacting as if this was something she dealt with on a regular basis.

With an inward sigh he turned away, and looked again through the reinforced view screen, consciously attempting to relax tension-tightened muscles. It was no use. The downpour seemed relentless, and worse, he was starting to have doubts about flooding. The puddle jumper wasn't exactly an ark.

"Something is wrong. We need to go back, now!" Lieutenant Ford's voice sounded more loudly than before as he all but pounded a fist against the inactive console.

"Lad, have you not been looking out of this window lately?" Carson asked as he pointed impatiently toward the wide view ahead of them. "If we fly in this we'll die and Major Sheppard will never get any help."

"We've got to do something," Ford insisted. "We're the only back-up he has and it's been too long since we heard anything at all from him! They probably hate him as much as they hate Teyla!"

"I understand that," he said, striving to be patient in the face of the other man's obvious anxiety. "But getting ourselves killed won't help them!" Everyone knew that Ford had developed a sort of hero worship for John Sheppard, which made it even more difficult for him to sit and wait.

They both turned as Teyla appeared between them. Instead of her usual efforts to resolve the disagreement between them she moved closer to the view screen. "Are not the winds lessening?" she asked.

Carson focused more intently on the weather outside, attempting to see beyond the downpour that nearly obscured the view. Apparently the ancients hadn't thought to install windshield wipers when they'd built the puddle jumpers.

Suddenly with that thought, something happened and the window turned completely black.

Carson's mouth dropped open. Before he could get far along the path of worrying about how he'd managed to break the shuttle, a display screen flickered, covering the whole of the window as a real time display appeared. This time though there was no flood of rain, and their vision of what was taking place on the outside was much clearer.

"I did that?" he asked half to himself.

"What'd you do?" Ford asked almost simultaneously, clear amazement in his gaze.

"I don't know. I was just thinking that windshield wipers would have been a nice addition," he confessed.

"Perhaps you should think of what remains of the storm in this area," Teyla suggested, ever focused on the situation at hand.

"Or a way to fly us safely back to Atlantis a little sooner," Ford put in, his intentions equally as clear.

Carson looked between the two of them. Even in light of his apparent success with the viewer, doubts surfaced. Last time he'd played around with the thought component of ancient technology, he'd nearly shot General O'Neill and Major Sheppard out of the sky. He wasn't at all sure he could do this. But they needed him. With a nervous sigh, he settled back into the seat and closed his eyes.

At both their surprised reactions, he looked up and saw that the screen had changed again. This time an animated display appeared showing a route from the current location to Atlantis, including current wind speed and the location of the storm in relation to both the jumper and the city.

"Wow," he breathed, proud of his own effort.

"Looks like you were right," Ford told Teyla. "The winds have died down to about 80 miles per hour. That's definitely better than it was before."

"Still too dangerous," Carson felt obliged to volunteer.

"And it appears that we still have this section of the storm remaining," Teyla pointed to the swirling tail end of the big formation which had its beginning fringes bearing down on Atlantis itself.

"But we have a route displayed for us," Ford pointed toward the flashing green lines. "Why can't we just follow it – like an autopilot? We don't need to be able to see where we're going."

"It won't be an auto pilot," Carson argued, all his previous confidence in the technology fading. "Someone would still have to fly this bird."

"Well it flies through space and automatically docks in the jumper bay when we come back through the gate, how do you know it doesn't have an auto pilot?" Ford challenged, his voice rising again.

"I didn't say it doesn't have one," Carson argued, thoroughly exasperated. "I don't know if it does or it doesn't. I just wouldn't bloody know how to use it!"

Teyla's calm voice broke into their argument. "What is auto pilot?" she asked, her face creased in confusion.

Carson turned toward her. "It's a device that allows an aircraft to fly on its own without the constant attention of the pilot."

"The ship would fly itself?" she pressed.

"Yes," Ford insisted.

"No," Carson disagreed. "That is an oversimplification. A course would have to be set, such as this one," he pointed to the one still display on the screen. "And then the system would have to be turned on. After that someone would have to. . . ."

A slight vibration began beneath their feet, causing Carson to lose his train of thought completely. Utter dread shot through him as he wondered what he'd done this time. Suddenly the route on the screen began to flash and the console lit up.

"Oh crap," Carson whispered as the ship began to rise into the air, buffeted slightly by the force of the winds.

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A/N: I hope you all are still enjoying this. Thanks to everyone for the wonderful reviews and the lovely welcome to the fandom.