Stargate Atlantis: Even in the Distance
by Reyclou

Chapter Four: Fields of Time

Heavy, hollow thunking resounded throughout the gate room as the Atlantis Stargate blinked to life. Blue chevrons lit up as wild symbols, representing the Pegasus constellations, chased each other around the ring.

"Sir! Incoming wormhole!" a young sergeant called from the helm of the Ancient gate controls. Lorne's head snapped up, eyes narrowing against the sudden blue white flash as a wormhole burst through the Stargate. With Sheppard gone and Dr. Weir taking some well deserved personal time, the young major suddenly found himself in the uniquely uncomfortably position of man-in-charge. It wasn't the first time he'd filled in for Sheppard—months ago, when they'd thought him lost in that terrible debacle with Aiden Ford, he'd served as the ranking officer until Caldwell returned aboard the Daedalus—but he felt odd stepping in for Dr. Weir. This was, technically, a civilian operation. Civilians didn't particularly appreciate when the military took control of things, but in light of recent events, no one felt like squabbling over it.

Translucent pale covered the gate as the energy shield sprung into place, leaving Lorne with little time to debate his position. Someone wanted through that gate, but who?

"IDC?" he questioned. No one was due back, at least not for a few hours. That mean this was either an ally attempting contact, a friendly returning home early, or a third option he really didn't want to contemplate at the moment.

"Nothing yet," the sergeant responded, a nervous hand flitting over computer controls. "Not even a radio transmission."

Damn. Lorne hissed inwardly. No ally would dare contact them without an identification code, and any personnel attempting to gate home with out his transmitter—affectionately nicknamed the Garage Door Opener, or GDO for short—would dial the Alpha Site before risking Atlantis. That meant the latter of three options, and yet the option that opened up a host of creative possibilities—Wraith, Genii, disgruntled natives, et cetera.

Again, nothing he really wanted to think about.

"Leave it up," he commanded, ignoring a tickle of doubt in the back of his mind. It was not an unfamiliar feeling; they had all felt it at one time or another. Leaving the shield up over an incoming wormhole spelled certain doom for anyone who attempted to come through it. While that ensured the security of the Gate insofar as they could pick and choose who came through, it also means those who were not picked and chosen met a sudden and severe end. Stargate Command had experienced that scenario fist hand on more than one occasion. Still, without proper verification of the traveler's identity, protocol demanded the shield remain in place in order to protect the whole of the city against the unknown threat. Sometimes they had to ignore the chance that it wasn't anyone who meant them any harm.

"Yes, sir," the sergeant nodded, but frowned when the controls darkened at his touched, ignoring his commands. As if controlling itself, the panel lit again, but still would take no input commands. The airman wrestled with the controls, trying desperately to regain control, but the controls would not respond. Techs all over the Control Room looked up from their scattered stations, confusion bubbling over the sudden lockout. "What the…?" breathed the dark haired airman.

Major Lorne straightened, taking a surprised step forward to view the spastic controls for himself. "What's going on?"

"I-I don't know, sir," the sergeant replied. "I can't stop them."

A button on the Ancient controls darkened and the shield over the Stargate blinked out of existence, exposing the Gaterium to whatever threat lay beyond.

"Crap," grunted the major. Security teams around the Gaterium sprung into action, assembling a perimeter around the Gate even before Lorne gave the order. Force of habit, he supposed. The men and women of the Atlantis military contingent were well-trained in their duties, and securing the gate was the most important factor of all. Lorne made a motion to two marines standing guard at the doorway, silently commanding them to follow as he made for the lower level. They had not yet made it to the top landing of the lighted staircase before a slurp sounded from the Gate. Shouts rang out as a Puddle Jumper barreled through the Gate. It seemed to coast more than fly through the grey-blue ring, unceremoniously clattering to the Gaterium floor even as airmen jumped and stumbled out of its way. The small vessel skid along the floor, making a low scratching sound as it slumped forward, slamming into the lighted stair.

Lorne and his escorts saw the Jumper Five placard in the ship's window even before they noted the team tossed about within. The pilot, a man Lorne knew as Captain Gaines, looked back at him with surprise in his grey eyes. Gaines was a man who had earned every iron grey hair on his head, and in doing so became a man near impossible to frighten by mortal means. Still, whatever had happened on the other side of that Gate, Lorne could see in his eyes that Gaines had not expected to make it past the shield. The thought made Lorne cringe.

"Captain!" the ranking officer called out, scrambling down the stairs two and three at a time. What happened back there?"

Gaines shook his head, forcing calm into ragged breaths. "Unknown, sir," he called over the Jumper's com. "We were en-route back from our target planet when a Wraith ship picked up on us—we were surrounded by Darts before we knew what hit us. We thought we were home free when we dialed the Gate, but they used some kind of pulse weapon," he shrugged as he assisted his co-pilot, who seemed to have taken a nasty blow to the head when the Jumper lurched to a stop. "An EM pulse or something, by the time we realized they'd knocked out our radios and our GDO, we couldn't pull out of the way," Gaines let out a deep sigh as he dropped the hatch, allowing a med team access to his injured crew. "I guess we owe you a debt of gratitude, sir."

"Yeah," Lorne bit his bottom lip, unsure how to proceed. How do you tell a man he owes his life to a computer glitch? "The shield," he continued. "About that…"

Gaines' face fell. "Sir?"

oOo

Elizabeth held a small cut of paper in her hands, playing with it idly as she glanced about her surroundings. Overnight, John's quarters had turned into something of a shrine to the flyboy military commander. While protocol stipulated that his personal items be packed up and returned to their closest kin, no such relative had yet been tracked down. No one particularly had the heart to box away the colonel's life, either. After all, they didn't really need the space—Atlantis compared to Manhattan in size. Besides, what good would it do to have it all packed up only to sit in some dark storage compartment, or worse yet tossed out of memory or care?

As the grim news filtered throughout the city, expedition members, both military and civilian, had come to this place to pay their respects with small gifts of sentimentality. Unnamed stars shone through the windows and she marveled at the sheer volume of notes and photos plastered to the wall. The woman leaned in as her eye caught on one photo posted at just about her eye level. She wasn't quite sure of the context, but the photo must have been taken rather recently. John stood looking regal, if not downright cocky, as he posed for the snapshot—wearing Carson Beckett's off-world team jacket. While the colonel had known a thing or two about setting bones and bandaging wounds in the field, she had to chuckle softly at the idea of the pilot putting the yellow panels to the test. Apparently Carson agreed with her—he stood beside the airman, an exaggerated look of terror spread across his features.

Elizabeth smiled and glazed over the rest of the pictures on the wall. Most seemed to be candid shots, some blurred with motion as if the colonel had been unaware of the photographer's presence. She even saw a few awkward shots of the tall man practicing staves with Teyla, sweat on his brow as he lurched for the smaller woman. Elizabeth knew John had a few fans in the city—especially among the female population—but she had never considered the idea that there were expedition members stalking him with a camera. Under different circumstances, she might have considered sending a pointed memo, but she was glad, in the end, that her team had these few trinkets to remember him by.

Another photo, slightly overexposed, caught John and Rodney shoulder to shoulder in the commissary. Each sat before a plate of what could have been some kind of meatloaf, or perhaps it was some kind of cake. Either way, the two attacked their prey with that all-too-male concentration, forks poised just above the kill. The two had matching bulges in their cheeks where unsuspecting meatloaf-cake had already met its end. That one shot proved, if only in Elizabeth's mind, that John Sheppard and Rodney McKay just had to be brothers on some existential plane—regardless of whether either of them would admit it or not.

She looked down at the paper she held, a photo that she had kept to herself for over a year now. It was cock-eyed and just a little off center. Teyla was still getting used to the Earth technology when the camera had been pressed into her hands. Still the Athosian captured a rare moment, considering the gravity of the early days of the expedition. Cut off from Earth with little hope of ever returning home, laughs did not come easily back them. It had been somewhere around Christmastime and the fear of breaking tradition had grown stronger than the will to preserve a strictly-business attitude. The city celebrated a small holiday party—nothing fancy, just a chance to talk outside the confines of duty. Elizabeth stood in the center of the picture, a floppy, fuzzy Santa hat pulled over her brown curls. Rodney stood at her side, face pink from laughter and an arm slung around her back. On her other side stood John, for once not clothed in the greys of the Atlantis battle dress, but in a light linen dress shirt and a pair of worn jeans. The warm touch of his arm on her shoulder as the three posed for the photo still brought a smile to her lips. That soft smile turned to a bittersweet grin as she circled the room of memories. She placed the picture in an out of the way spot, burying it behind a few others so as not to draw attention to it.

This is how I want to remember John, she thought as she took in the whole of the room. Not by the scars on his body, but by the vibrancy of his life.

Elizabeth paused when she came to a bookshelf John had set up next to his personal computer terminal, noting a display on the topmost shelf. Several frames sat clustered together, photos of a young man she would have taken for John's double if not for the piercing blue of the younger man's eyes and the lighter cast of his ruffled hair. It confused her for a moment, knowing John had no living relative whom they could track down. The first picture that caught her eyes was of two boys at play in cool summer waters—one of them quite obviously John, though fifteen years younger and stripped to the waist. The young man who would one day become the military commander of the lost city of Atlantis dragged a hand through the water, casting a white wave on another young man. Bright blue eyes glittered from under brown locks of hair plastered flat to his head, a toothy grin breaking on his pink lips. She smiled again at the picture beside it—a very proud-looking Major Sheppard stood next to the young man, an arm around his neck. Both wore uniforms of the armed forces, though of differing branches. John, of course, was dressed in formal blues of the Air Force, the young man in dress blues of the United States at the bottom in an unfamiliar hand were the words:

"If the ocean was whiskey, and I was a duck
I'd dive to the bottom to get one sweet suck."

Her smile faded when her eyes fell on the keepsakes scattered among the pictures. A triangular case made of hardwood dominated the display, a blue field of white stars shone out from behind the glass lid. Elizabeth had seen this case too many times before—each held the flag of a fallen American serviceman. Her fingers traced the brass engraving tacked on the bottom of the cherry wood case.

Lt. Jason J. Campbell
1969-2004

A pair of beaten dog tags hung from the corner of a brushed steel picture frame, the same frame that held the photo of the two men in dress uniform. Elizabeth did not need to check the name stamped into the cold metal to know they belonged to the same man, and that that same man would never again feel the chill of the ocean, or the warmth of the summer sun.

Out of sheer curiosity, she had once asked John about the man, and had regretted dredging up the memory ever since. Chief Petty Officer Jason Campbell, his best friend their diaper days, had been stationed aboard the Spruance-class Destroyer from which the class took its name. While on practice maneuvers, the small fleet fell prey to a relentless attack from the heavens. The news media, fed a cover story be the government, reported it as a freak meteor storm that claimed two thousand souls and knocked out a host of communication satellites, but she and the SGC knew better. Jason died at the hands of the Goa'uld System Lord, Anubis without ever knowing the earth-shaking consequences of his own death, or that his death was part of a larger chain of events that would lead them to the lost city. She withdrew a shaking hand, giving a silent moment of solemn respect before she turned away.

She picked up one last little memoir placed on the nightstand next to Sheppard's bed—a large, grayscale photo of an older man with greying hair and wide shoulders. He placed large, careworn hands on the small shoulders of a young, dark-haired boy. Behind them sprawled a breathtaking vista of lake and mountains. Elizabeth sat on the edge of the bed as she imagined the two, John and General Sheppard, hiking through the beautiful wilderness, the general teaching his young son skills that the boy would later use in situations neither of them could have dreamed of.

Elizabeth set down the picture as hot tears burned her eyes. She wiped at them, but they were already streaming down her cheeks in salty rivers. She put a hand to her lips and choked back a few aching sobs. The cries came too strong, however, an Elizabeth shook with weeping sighs, staring at the young face and tousled hair of a boy who would die—not for a world, not for a country, but for a friend—a billion light years from home.