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Noventer:

Now now, no one is supposed to notice the foreshadowing this early...

John awoke under a silky smooth sheet. He stretched lazily for a moment, then jumped out of bed like he was under attack. "What the hell?" He looked around his surroundings for a few moments, then it all started coming back to him, he remembered being led here in a sleep induced stupor. "Oh yeah..."

He exited his room, immediately noticing the two guards at his door. Neither moved a fraction of an inch at his sudden arrival.

Creepy, he thought.

He started walking around, taking in the sights, while also trying to figure out where everything was. He spent several minutes walking around aimlessly until he gave up looking for an exit. He walked up to a nearby replicator and asked to be shown to the exit nearest the stargate.

After another few minutes of walking, John and the replicator stepped out into the bright early morning sun. John looked around, trying to understand all the changes that had taken place in so short a time. He walked a dozen meters and started a short walk up a small hill that overlooked the gate. At the top he looked down and viewed a dozen replicators still in the same guard formation as they were when he went to sleep in the jumper.

Crazy little robots, he thought.

He tore his gaze from the replicators at the gate and looked all around the horizon. In a few directions he saw large, busy mining sites with several large, odd looking robots moving in and out of holes in the ground. John whistled, WOW, these sucker's sure can build...

He turned around and motioned for the replicator to follow him. As he walked down the hill he asked, "So, any contact with any other sentient beings while we were sleeping?"

The replicator simply responded, "No."

John nodded and mulled that over, thanking whatever higher power who was looking out for them for the good news. "Alright then, tell me what you built for us here, just the highlights."

"We have followed the instructions laid out for us by Dr. Rodney Mckay. The following is what we have constructed: a mine for each reachable metal vein discovered in a one hundred mile radius, twenty personal bedrooms, a fully outfitted science lab, a gate control room identical to Atlantis, long range sensors, a neural interface chair, a 'puddle jumper' bay minus the ships, several hundred 'drones', and a dozen small cold fusion reactors to power the various constructs. Note that the reactors are insufficient to power the chair to fire the drones."

Half way through the replicators list John had stopped walking and just stared at the replicator. When the speech was done, John still stood there internally questioning if this was really happening. He managed to stammer, "Really?"

The replicator rotated his head to look at John, nodded and said, "Yes."

John said, "Take me to the control room."

Five hours later, everyone was gathered together in a small mess hall busily stuffing themselves with the berries and fruit that Ronon and John had gathered the day before.

Ronon finished eating before everyone else as he was long accustomed to shoveling food in his mouth while he had the opportunity. He spoke up, "So, what's next?"

Rodney put his two cents in the fastest, "Well I don't know about you guys, but I say we get a real food supply set up as quickly as possible." he said, while looking strangely at the fruit in front of him. "This just isn't...right. No fruit should taste like chicken." He said shaking his head.

Elizabeth smiled, "I agree with Rodney, we need a more diverse selection of food. It also wouldn't hurt to move the gate inside our complex and get it protected by a shield iris."

Rodney, with a piece of food in his mouth, managed to say, "I did that last night, the replicators should be done moving the gate by now."

Ronon spoke up, not entirely satisfied with the answers to his original question, "So we get food and make sure we're safe here...then what? I want to kill some wraith."

John grunted and said, "Chewie's right. We need to keep helping people. Hell, it's the reason I'm in this galaxy in the first place."

Everyone around the table nodded their agreement. Elizabeth spoke up, "Ok, so we've got a long term goal, how are we going to accomplish it?"

John spoke first, "Well, we have a small army of replicators. We can do a lot of damage with their help." Here he turned his head to look at Rodney who was busily chowing down on berries and asked, "Can you make more replicators or is what we have all we're going to get?"

Rodney held his finger up, only increasing his chewing speed slightly, then answered, with his mouth still slightly full, "I can have the replicators make some more replicator creation tables. Then we will be able to make as many as we need."

John nodded his head and was going to speak when Elizabeth spoke first, "Can we trust them though? Won't the Asurans be able to take them over like they did to Niam?"

Rodney replied, now without food in his mouth, "Huh uh. No way, these are completely separate from the Asurans."

Elizabeth just stared at Rodney, one eyebrow raised, not saying anything.

Rodney held under the pressure….for 5 whole seconds before he squeakily replied, "Well, uh.. I don't think so. I mean, I don't see how they could!"

Elizabeth shook her head, "I don't think we should make any more at the moment. They are too big of a security risk."

John now, "Okay, so we don't take them on missions until we can make sure that they can't be turned. What does that leave us? We have a few ancient stunners which are nice and all, but we're going to need more firepower."

Ronon nodded, saying nothing.

Rodney perked up at a thought he got, "Wait, didn't I tell you how I was going to fix that?"

Everyone around the table looked at him, John spoke first, "No, please, tell us this wonderful plan."

"I thought of a way to get basically anything we need. It helps that we have the replicators, because we can't set it up without them."

John just stared at Rodney and spoke a little angrily, "Well? Are you going to tell us your brilliant idea or not?"

Rodney looked hurt and said, "Of course! Anyway, I'm sure we're all familiar with the way the replicators construct things right? Right, well I'll tell you anyway. They take the molecules in question and literally connect them together at the molecular level to form any shape or structure they want. So, with that capability, I plan to have the replicators construct a sort of super 3D printer. It'll be much faster than those of Earth origin, and it will be able to create vastly more complex items."

Ronon questioned, "Could it make another of my pistols?"

Rodney looked at him, "Definitely, no doubt. But...well, you'll need a working module or blueprint to be able to make it. That's the drawback, unless it's already in the ancient database then it will have to be scanned by a machine here on the molecular level before it can be constructed."

Elizabeth said, "So, we could construct anything the Ancient's could make?"

Rodney replied, "Yeah, and anything else we scan into the database. It's the perfect constructor. I also have an idea to make it work by speech access to get it to design new things that aren't in the database...but I have a lot of work to do before that will be ready."

Everyone looked at each other, back and forth multiple times, then as one they all looked at Rodney and forcefully said, "Then do it!"

As Rodney worked on his super 3D printer, Elizabeth and John were in the control room trying to get used to the fact that it looked identical to the one in Atlantis. Ronon and Teyla were in a newly built training room, sparring with the dual Athosian style wooden clubs that Ronon had spent his time carving.

Elizabeth walked over to John and asked, "So how's the long range sensors looking? Any contacts?"

"Negative, but thankfully Atlantis is on our sensors so we'll be able to see if they get into any trouble."

Elizabeth pondered that for a moment then said, "That means that any ship that heads to us would be visible to them too, correct?"

John nodded, "That's right."

Elizabeth thought, Good, we can use that.

Later in the day John found Ronon, in the gym room of course, and asked, "I'm getting really bored just sitting around, what about you?"

Ronon responded quickly, "I thought you'd never ask. Let's go kill something."

John raised his arms slightly, "First, we need a plan. When you were a runner, what did you use for weapons before you got that awesome gun of yours?"

Ronon thought for a second and replied, "Well, at first I used weapons from supply depots on Setada, but the wraith eventually caught on to that and kept bringing larger and larger forces to Setada whenever I went back for resupply. Eventually it was just too much hassle. At that point I just used whatever I could make, sticks, spears, rocks, and a whole lot of traps."

John seemed to mull this over. "Those weapons you used on Setada when you were made a runner again were pretty effective. Are there any supply depots still intact?"

Ronon nodded and answered, "Yeah, there's several left, nearly untouched."

"Great, get prepared, we're going to get armed."

Ronon, John, and Teyla met up with Rodney in the middle of a seemingly useless hallway.

John being the leader spoke up, "Rodney, get ready, we're going to Setada to get some weapons and explosives."

He looked at John with a confused look, "What, right now? I'm a little busy at the moment!"

John just grabbed Rodney's arm, pulling him away from a console on the wall, "It can wait, you are a vital member of my team and we're going on a mission."

"But, but, I'm almost done, give me five or ten hours, tops."

"Don't make me find some citrus."

In the control room, John nodded at Elizabeth as his team walked by her on the way to the Jumper bay. John dialed the gate and brought the jumper down through the ceiling. As the gate's puddle formed, Elizabeth spoke over the radio to John in the chair of the jumper, "Good luck and don't get caught, there won't be any rescue coming."

John smiled and replied, "What, you wouldn't lead a one woman rescue op to save us?"

She replied with the hint of humor, "Not a chance."

As soon as the jumper went through the gate, Elizabeth whispered, "Godspeed."

Several short seconds later, the jumper exited the gate on Sateda. John flew the jumper higher and cloaked it as soon as possible. While doing a quick scan of the city for life signs Teyla asked a question, "I thought the stargate was destroyed when Ronon was made into a runner again last year?"

John nodded and replied, "It was. I requested the Daedalus to replace it with a salvaged space gate a few months after that though. I thought it would be good to have it back on the gate network."

Teyla thought for a second, "Well, that decision is certainly helping us now."

Rodney spoke up from the back of the jumper, "Picking up any life signs?"

"Nothing yet. It looks all clear. Ronon, where is the easiest accessible weapons depot?"

"Several blocks south of the stargate. Look for a high-rise building with a large antenna on the roof."

John turned the jumper around and headed in the indicated direction, "How's it going back there Rodney?"

Rodney was busy tapping at a few control crystals in the tray that folded down from the top of jumper. "I should have it up and running by the time you're done loading everything in here. The extra parts I had the replicators make are really making this a lot simpler."

John shook his head, "Don't pat yourself on the back until the job is done Rodney!" Here he gave a sly look and smile to Teyla and said, "Personally, I don't think you can do it."

Rodney sounded indignant, "What? Like saving your life from the replicators isn't enough for you to have some faith in me?"

Any further Rodney bashing was halted when Ronon saw the building in question, he stood up and pointed out the front window, "There, to the east a little."

"I see it." John said as he turned the jumper in that direction.

John lowered the jumper in front of the building, making sure to keep the jumpers back door facing the side of the building that Ronon indicated there was a loading bay. There was a slight jolt as the jumper touched down and then the rear ramp was lowered.

Ronon lead John and Teyla out of the jumper and towards a large metal door.

John shook his head, "This loading door looks like it could've been made in Pittsburg."

Ronon looked at him confused but John just said, "Never mind, let's get this over with."

Ronon walked to the right side of the large door and noticed a rather large padlock on the handle. Looking around on the ground he found a metal pipe about 20 feet away. He shoved the pipe in between the locking mechanism and the pad and levered down as hard as he could.

Five seconds later Ronon was opening the door, sliding it to the left.

John spoke up again, "Ah, never mind. On earth, loading bay doors go up, not left."

Ronon shook his head and walked in without a word, John and Teyla following behind a moment later.

The bright light from the sun filtered into the now open depot and the team looked around at the seemingly endless piles of boxes.

John opened up the nearest crate and let out a low long whistle, "Now this is what I'm talking about!"

AN: Looking for a few beta readers. If you're interested, shoot me a message.