Author's Note: Here's the second chapter! Sorry for the mishap (posting this in the wrong category). Anyway... I'm sorry if the story sounds kinda weird, in the original thing there were little excerpt-ish things when it went back to present day, but I took those out, so yeah... Lol, anyway, I hope you enjoy! Please reivew!
"I thought you'd never get here," Zelenka announced as Rodney flew into the lab room. He was amazed to see nearly all of the resident scientists in their uniforms, gearing up. The guns attached to their hips looked bulky and unnatural by their sides. Rodney looked at Zelenka for a moment and slowly shook his head back and forth.
"I'm not," he whispered. Elizabeth needed him here.
"What?" Zelenka snapped. His forehead wrinkled in anger for a brief second, but a moment later all of the anger went out of him as he realized why Rodney was staying. Elizabeth—it had to be. Zelenka turned around toward the other scientists, silencing their chorus of 'why?'s with a firm stare. "He has his reasons, guys. We're going to have to do this on our own."
Rodney looked at Zelenka with a newfound appreciation. Here was Zelenka, with zero military training, taking charge of a science expedition into the totally unknown parts of a foreign place with no backup and an enemy overhead. Rodney grasped Zelenka's forearm with respect. "Good luck," his words were simple, but the meaning behind them was not.
Zelenka nodded back to him stonily. "You too," he replied, and turned back to the scientists. Rodney watched them for a moment before turning around and walking slowly out of the room. He ran a hand over his hair, mentally reviewing the facts. Twenty-nine Darts had appeared so far, as well asfour hive ships—more than enough to take down Atlantis. That wasn't even counting the other Darts that continued to appear. Obviously no one had ever mentioned the concept of over-kill to the Wraith. Rodney sighed softly to himself as he walked down the halls.
"Rodney!" he turned at the sound of Elizabeth's voice. She ran up to him, her breathing heavy. "One of the jumpers is stalled on the mainland; something is wrong with it. John is flying another jumper out there to get the last group of Athosians. I'm going to go with him."
"What?" Rodney yelled, and winced at the volume of his voice. He lowered it and continued speaking, "You can't go with him. It's too dangerous!"
"Rodney," she said sternly, "I have to go. I owe it to them, to see them one last time—" her throat tightened, cutting off her sentence. Rodney sighed, not liking it, but recognizing what she was saying. "As of now, you're in charge of Atlantis."
"Okay," Rodney relented. There wasn't a point in arguing, especially when time was short. Rodneyknew John wouldn't let anythinghappen to Elizabeth. "I'm going to go back to the lab and see if I can finish what I've been doing. The shield that held the ocean back from collapsing on Atlantis; I think I can calibrate it so that it will protect the city and the jumpers."
Elizabeth frowned, looking worried. "Do we have enough power for that?"
"We have enough," he affirmed, "You see, the ZPM uses the same amount of power each day. Sometimes not all of it is needed. What isn't needed is basically stored throughout the 'power lines' in the city. If I can access those and reroute the power I can use it to powerthe shield. When that power is gone it willautomatically take energy from the ZPMs.As long as we don't use the shield for more than five hours, we'll have primary systems and basic functions. We'll find some ZPMs and the city will be as good as new." He left out the fact that since they'd been to Atlantis they'd yet to find a ZPM that they could use.
"Theoretically," Elizabeth said, still frowning. "Work on protecting the jumpers for now."
"Why not the city?"
"It's made of a hard alloy, isn't it?" she asked him, "It withstood the reaction that the C4 had in the west wing when Lieutenant Crown and the rest of his team tried to blow a door down,so wouldn't it be protected from Wraith shots?"
"Possibly."
"Why would the Ancients build this place with such a hard element? The Athosians found a bunch of other alloys on the mainland that are nearly as strong. There's got to be a reason why they chose this one," Elizabeth plodded onward.
Rodney caught her drift. "They must guard against the culling beam the Wraith use," he said aloud, and grinned. "You're brilliant!" he turned on his heel, nearly speeding off to his lab. Elizabeth smiled a ghostly smile before jogging to the jumper bay. How did he remain so upbeat when potential death was reining down on them?
She headed slowly back to her office. Elizabeth was not a military commander-but now the occasion called for it. Running a hand through her air, she bit her lip. It all came back to the Wraith. She had heard about them in mission reports-had seen the Wraith they'd captured that John had named-but the terror associated with them she had never experienced. In the dark expanses of the nights where she could no longer sleep, she found her chest constricting with the treacherous wonder of how it felt to have your life sapped away. Elizabeth shook her head. Now was no time to succumb to fear. She had to be strong for everyone now.
War was upon Atlantis.
And by the sheer amount of Wraith appearing over the planet, it was a war that they could not win.
Purple Yin: Thanks for pointing that out to me! It's fixed now.
