The military went first, clearing the way for the civilians who were kept securely protected as they followed behind. Three teams of four were sent to scout out ahead, checking side halls and rooms for the missing men.
Sheppard was always cautious, though it soon became clear that he needn't have bothered. All they discovered of the wraith were charred corpses, crumbling to dust with the vibrations of their footsteps as the members of the Atlantis team walked by. Shock at the sheer number of dead wraith imposed a silence on them, and they traveled through the ship with minimal conversation. Athosian parents covered the eyes of their children, grimly taking in the disaster wreaked on their bitterest enemy. There was satisfaction in their eyes, if not joy at the sight.
It was a good ten minutes before a shout sounded up ahead. Sheppard moved to the head of the large group, halting their progress. A scout team had found something.
That something was Ford, strapped down to a disconcertingly human-shaped table. He was unconscious, and looking around the room, Sheppard was grateful for it. There were at least six dead wraith, one of which was half on top of the lieutenant. Another looked to have just missed landing on him as it fell. He was held down by the same strange half-alive webbing that had blocked their cells, and the implements scattered across the floor gave Sheppard pause. "Get Beckett," he finally ordered.
When Carson arrived, the bodies had been piled in a corner and the bindings pried from the captured man's body. His breathing was slow, his olive skin pale. There were injection marks on his body. Most worryingly, there were signs that at least one wraith, and perhaps two, had tried to feed off of him. To the eye, Ford was unchanged, but Carson's brow furrowed at the needle-marks in his skin. It was several long moments before he pronounced the lieutenant able to be moved.
After a good deal of wandering, they finally found the central control area Teyla had seen in her connection to the wraith. The place was absolutely littered with bodies, and Sheppard refused to let the scientists in until they had been cleared away. The unpleasant job took a surprisingly short time, and in the meantime Weir got the remainder of the civilians settled nearby. Beckett's team took care of those who had sustained injuries during the transport to the wraith ship – and there were several – but there was no food. The children were hungry, and Weir knew that the majority of the Atlantis team, working day and night to prevent the attack, had tapped into their last energy reserves. Her people needed to rest.
"Come and take a look at this," Rodney interrupted her, as she leant against the wall, musing over her people.
"What is it, Rodney?"
The scientist pointed at the console in front of him, punching a few buttons, and on the holographic display in front of them rose a vision of Atlantis. "This is a few hours ago. Apparently all the external sensors were blown out by a massive energy surge, and the last recording is -"
McKay was cut off by a sudden change in the hologram in front of them. Replaying the last moments recorded by the wraith's sensors, they could see a glow begin to emanate from Atlantis – it grew impossibly brighter, a white light iridescent and powerful, making them squint to see even in the hologram. It increased in strength until they were nearly blinded, and then cut off abruptly, leaving the watchers to blink the ethereal afterimage of the city from their eyes.
"That was the last the sensors could take," Rodney continued. "The visual ones, at least. The readouts I can decipher show that the energy output from Atlantis was phenomenal. I can't account for it."
"Is the shield up?" Weir asked worriedly. If so, it would seriously hamper their attempts to return to the city.
Rodney rewound and replayed the tape. They watched as the beams from the ships scoured the city, knowing that they were witnessing their own kidnapping, and the first stage of the attack. Elizabeth clamped down hard on a distressed shudder. Not long after the beams disappeared, the shield went up, and stayed that way for about thirty minutes before abruptly coming down. Shortly after that, the glow began brightening the city. Rodney halted the recording, knowing what they would see.
"It doesn't look like it," he reported.
Elizabeth breathed a quiet, relieved sigh. "Good," she nodded assertively. "Work with Dr. Zelenka – see how quickly you can figure out the wraith transporter beams."
Beckett approached then, looking between the two anxiously. "I need to get Lt. Ford back to the infirmary as soon as I can. How close are we to returning to Atlantis?"
Weir looked at Rodney.
McKay nodded, accepting her faith in him, and shifted to make room for the small Czech scientist. The two began quickly conversing in low tones, the other scientists doing all they could to obtain useful data from the remaining wraith computers.
Weir locked eyes with Beckett. "Soon."
It was when McKay and his team figured out how to use the transporter beams that Weir made an unpleasant realization.
"Well, that's that," Rodney stated proudly. "We're ready to return."
Elizabeth nodded, facing both Rodney and John. "I want you to develop a team, composed of at least ten individuals, five from each of your teams," she told them. "Make sure that they know how to use the transporter beams."
"Why?" Sheppard asked suspiciously.
"I'll stay," Rodney volunteered immediately.
"You're leaving them here." John was not pleased, precisely.
Weir looked at him carefully. "This is the best chance we'll ever have to study wraith technology. We'll have no way to get back if we abandon the ships now; and there's the off chance that their orbits could deteriorate and pose a serious threat to the city and the planet. Yes, I'm leaving a team here."
Sheppard's care for his people in the short term was overrun by the potential profits from long-term goals. There was also a distinct defensive advantage from allowing a team to remain and become familiar with the technology. "How many supplies can we spare for them?" he asked instead.
Weir relaxed a little, and said, "Enough."
Sheppard nodded. "Alright. McKay, after you transport the Athosians and civilians back to Atlantis, I want to send two teams to the other wraith ship. Can you do that?"
Rodney nodded swiftly. "Of course."
It was no sooner spoken than done. Weir had already organized the entire group into smaller teams to be transported down to the city, herself and Sheppard, as well as two military teams – one of which was missing a member – back to the city. They had no idea what they would find when they arrived.
The sight was not what they expected.
Moving quickly from the area in which the beam had deposited them, Sheppard had to step sideways to avoid stepping on a charred corpse. Others in the team had not been so lucky – a grunt of disgust sounded behind him, and someone swore, accompanied by a soft crunching sound.
Beckett, with three of his people, rushed Ford to the infirmary. Three men jogged ahead of them, weapons at the ready for anything they might encounter on the way there.
The rest had time to get clear of the beam's radius, and were busy taking in the sight before them, when the sound of more of the Atlantis team arriving reached their ears.
The place looked to be the sight of a bizarre slaughter. Blackened corpses drifting to piles of ash were liberally scattered throughout the room, marring the once-spotless room and jarring the senses. The strangest thing, Sheppard couldn't help but notice, was the lack of any smell at all. It was something the body prepared for at the sight, but even the odor of smoke was mysteriously absent.
The sound of another group of civilians arriving was blocked by a sudden shout in the control platform. Sheppard raced to the source of the sound, but others were closer. So he had to push his way past one of his own men, frozen in shock or horror, when he reached the top of the stairs.
The bodies here were thickly piled in a rough circle about one of the main control consoles. The center was a ground zero, the floor color rippling slightly from where an intense power wave had generated and blasted outward.
In the center of the circle a man was lying. He looked as if he had been carelessly dropped there, limbs in a sprawl, and left for dead. It was the missing SF, Private Gabriel Venner.
Sheppard took in all of this in a flash, and despite his certainty that the man was dead – nothing had survived that, after all – he vaulted over the ring of bodies to crouch at his side, and feel for a pulse.
To his shock, the skin beneath his fingers was warm. The pulse, when he finally found it, was slow but steadily growing stronger.
"He's alive," Sheppard called back, unable to hide his surprise. More than that, though – the man was awake. Looking back down at the face, John found his gaze ensnared by hazel eyes that were strangely golden, blinking up at him in confusion.
"Gabe?" came a voice behind him. One of the men on the man's team, no doubt.
Upon hearing his name, the confusion drifted from Venner's eyes, leaving him quite aware of his surroundings. He started to sit up, but Sheppard placed a hand on his chest, forcing him back down. "Take it easy," he ordered.
He snatched his hand away, however, when the other's face twisted, for a moment only, in pain. Sheppard turned about to see that, true to form, the members of the Atlantis team had made themselves useful. The civilians were helping the military to clear away the corpses. The three soldiers still in the control room, Sheppard noted, were the three members of Venner's team. The remainders of techs and military had returned to the 'gateroom below.
"Get a medic," Sheppard quietly ordered the team's leader, Hank Devor. The man's eyes widened, then narrowed, and he strode quickly away.
Defiant eyes met his when he turned back to the man on the floor, to find that Venner had slowly raised himself to a sitting position. But the man seemed content to move no further, so Sheppard merely glared. The expression was met by a calmly raised eyebrow.
"Tell me, Private," Sheppard drawled, grudgingly impressed by how easily the man was able to irritate him, even while injured. "How did you get to be left all alone down here?"
"Just lucky I guess," he whispered.
There was something . . . different, something off, about his voice. Disregarding the whisper, the tone seemed somehow more resonant than any human's should be.
"You're hurt?" Sheppard probed, quick to catch the difference and wanting to push the man into talking so he could pin down what was truly setting his senses alert.
Instead of answering, however, Gabriel shifted his shoulders, and tilted his head back to rest against the console. The collar of his shirt was tugged out of place, baring a strange wound at the base of his throat. Sheppard frowned at him, and carefully reached out to move the cloth more fully out of the way. The other seemed too exhausted to aid him, and tired beyond words.
There, he saw something he couldn't understand, and might never forget. Almost atop one another were the marks from where two separate wraith had tried to suck the soul from this man. Sheppard's mind worked quickly, trying to put the pieces together.
"Are you an ancient?" he demanded.
That surprised the other into opening his eyes, and those strange golden orbs stared incredulously at him. Then Venner laughed, and the sound, before he muffled it, was unlike anything Sheppard had ever heard – it was a whisper of truth in the tales told in church, a reminder of something sacred and forgotten, and he couldn't understand it at all. Still holding back his laughter, Venner shook his head.
His eyes drifted past Sheppard then, and the Major turned to see Beckett quickly approaching. The Doctor's shocked blue eyes said it all – even he, with his more intimate knowledge of Venner's condition, hadn't known what to make of the hologram. He certainly hadn't expected to find the man alive.
Beckett crouched down next to Sheppard, and said quietly, "Hello, Gabe."
The other smiled a little, and tilted his head back once more, closing his eyes with a sigh. His chest rose and fell evenly; he seemed to have slipped into sleep. Sheppard's mouth tightened – he wasn't particularly fond of waiting for answers. Beckett leant forward, taking the sleeping man's pulse.
"Doc, there's something you should see," John muttered, before anyone else could arrive. He tugged down the unconscious man's collar, knowing that Beckett would understand the import of the wounds. Carson's eyes widened, and he nodded. "I see," he breathed. And he did not protest when Sheppard covered the wounds again.
There was nothing more he could do.
So Sheppard left the mystery in Beckett's hands for now, and returned to Weir's side. Atlantis was being slowly freed from the wraith, every one of them dead, and reclaimed by the living descendants of her rightful inhabitants.
The last of the civilians arrived, and in short time the wraith bodies had been deemed fully decomposable, and dumped into the sea. Supplies were gathered and sent to those remaining on the hive ships, and Sheppard prepared to head a team to explore the second ship. That it hadn't responded to the commandeering of its companion by the Atlantis team was a telling sign of the extent of the destruction that had been brought to bear on the wraith, but it was not conclusive. A rotating shift schedule was worked out to relieve the members of the team still on the hive ship, and the civilians were escorted by military personnel throughout the reclaimed areas of Atlantis. It was almost like beginning from scratch again; they could no longer take their safety in this city for granted. While on the whole Atlantis was a benevolent host, the city had ghosts and terrors of its own.
But before the day was out, the Atlanteans had vigorously scouted the bounds of the habitable area, and Sheppard half-pitied the wraith who dared to confront them now. Tired and defiant, even the meekest of the scientists was showing a ferocity that would have surprised the Major, had he not before seen the protective loyalty of a people displaced and threatened. It was with great relief that the area was finally secured, and the people, civilians, scientist, military, could rest. The threat of the wraith had been hanging over them for so long that they had accepted their almost-inevitable deaths. It was with shocked disbelief and a resurgence of hope that they viewed life now.
There were a few, however, who could not rest. Teyla saw to her people, tirelessly ensuring their comfort and welfare. Beckett tended to the injured, keeping a special eye on his newest patient. The body of the missing tech, Anthony Marduk, had been discovered, and Weir was making the arrangements, speaking to the man's friends, and trying to offer comfort. Sheppard was taking stock of the duties and challenges that had arisen as a result of the past day, and his attention was also on the man who was lying, still asleep, in the Infirmary. The man's team were there now, and they could tell the Major nothing; they knew as little as he. Sheppard felt with keen certainty that the only one who had the answers to their questions was asleep, but he was content to wait now, sure in the knowledge that he would, eventually, find out what had happened to free Atlantis from the wraith.
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Reuploaded as of 12/18/05.