Armament
Teyla walked over to him and looked around his shoulder, "Those look like grenades."
John just smiled and said, "I sure hope they are. Chewie, how powerful are these things?"
Ronon of course knew the devices in question and answered while moving several crates out the now open door, "Depends on the grenade you're talking about. The ones with red circles in the middle are mainly incendiary, for burning things down and creating a lot of noise. The ones with green circles are what you would call a fragmentation grenade, they have a kill radius of about 8 meters."
John did a small fist pump and closed the lid of the container. He picked it up and motioned for Teyla to grab another one. They walked the small distance to the jumper and set them down carefully.
As John set down his box he asked, "How's it going Rodney?"
Rodney not looking away from the Lantean computer pad as he mumbled without thinking, "Yeah, yeah, you too."
John had a confused look on his face but then decided to drop it. "Whatever, just get it done. I don't want to have to take ten trips to get all this stuff."
Teyla and John walked back into the depot as Ronon was pushing a small loading cart with six medium containers on it back towards the jumper.
"Any more of those around?" John asked.
Ronon replied, "On the left side, against the wall."
John and Teyla both grabbed a cart of their own and filled them up with containers, not bothering to check what was inside them first.
The loading continued for another few minutes until the back of the jumper was full. After that, they just unloaded the containers all around the sides of the jumper.
Half an hour later about half of the depot was empty and the loading bay area was filled with stacks of containers.
John spoke up, "Now would be a good time to be done Rodney."
"It'll be another ten minutes at least, but you can go ahead and start tagging everything. Remember, just tag the bottom container, the beam will do the rest."
"If you say so." John replied, not really sure this was going to work.
He walked out the back of the jumper and handed a small device to Teyla and Ronon. "He said to tag the bottom most container."
They nodded, then the trio all went separate ways, placing the device firmly against the side of containers and pressing a button.
When they were done, they entered the jumper just as Rondey said, "Annnnndddd that should do it. Everything set outside?"
Getting confirmation from everyone he spoke again, "Okay, here goes nothing."
He pressed a few buttons and then there was a sound of energy building up. Right when Teyla started looking worried there was a bright flash of light that covered the area around the jumper, starting at the ground and rising quickly.
When the teams eyes' readjusted they looked around and discovered that Rodney had succeeded yet again, all the containers were gone.
John, still looking around spoke up, "Good job Rodney, how much more can we store?"
Rodney pressed a few buttons and analyzed what he was seeing, "What we have stored already is taking up about 10% of the buffer. In other words, a lot more." he said smugly.
John smiled wide and hitched his thumb over his shoulder, back towards the depot. "Good, and now that you've got it working, you can help us load up the next batch."
Rodney's shoulders slumped, he set down the pad and shuffled towards the depot.
Several days later John found himself in the control room after just finishing a conversation with Elizabeth.
John spoke to one of the guard replicators in the control room, "Get 15 replicators up here that aren't currently doing anything."
It nodded, not saying a word, and within fifteen seconds replicators started jogging into the control room.
Elizabeth locked eyes with John and nodded her head, he then started dialing the gate.
By the time that the gate activated and the puddle stabilized, all the requested replicators had arrived. John waved a hand and they followed him down to the embarkation room.
"Alright, listen up! We're going to be sending you guys on recon missions, one each to a planet. I want you to look for signs of the Wraith but do not engage them unless you have to. The intelligence is more important that killing a few wraith. Do a detailed scan of the areas around the gate and then start your patrol, report back within 12 hours. Keep an eye out for energy signatures of any kind." He paused a brief moment and said, "Oh, and evade detection. We don't want anyone to know about us just yet." He pointed to the replicator nearest the gate, "You, go on through."
The replicator turned around without a word and stepped through the stargate, it shutdown a second afterwards.
John looked up to the control room and said, "Dial the next one."
The replicator exited the gate and crouched down next to the DHD. It observed its surroundings with its advanced senses and built in life-signs detector. Not finding anything in the immediate vicinity, it ran directly through the now powered down stargate and entered a patch of trees. It completed a cautious circuit around the gate at a distance of about 500 feet.
Finding nothing, it then followed a small dirt path away from the stargate for a quarter mile. The path exited a tree line that opened up into a large clearing. In the middle of the clearing was the remains of a village that looked like it had been destroyed from orbit. The replicator stayed inside the tree line for 10 minutes, watching for any signs of movement or habitation.
Detecting nothing for the moment it sprinted into the outskirts of the village. Houses and buildings were blown apart, several still on fire. There were craters in the ground, blackened and large. The replicator found human bodies in various states of injury, but found none alive.
It continued searching the village for several hours, then it headed back to the stargate.
John was in the control room leaning back in a chair with his feet up on a control console. He was throwing a small rock in the air and catching it, bored out of his mind. He had just tossed the rock nearly up to the ceiling when the stargate activated. He sat up quickly, temporarily forgetting what he had just done. As he was reaching forward to activate the shield around the gate the rock came back down and hit him on the top of his head.
"Owwwwwww." He hit the shield control with his left hand and used his right hand to massage his head where the rock hit him. The shield deactivated on it's own and a replicator stepped through it. It looked up and saw John in the control room and then sprinted up to him.
John, still rubbing his head, stood up and said, "Report."
"There was no sign of activity around the gate. I followed a path to the east and found a human village, it was destroyed recently via orbital weapons fire. There were no survivors."
John looked surprised and asked, "How many dead?"
"I couldn't determine an exact number, but at least a thousand."
John, now surprised and angry said, "Why the hell would the wraith destroy the village?"
"It wasn't the wraith. The buildings that weren't destroyed completely had holes through the walls and roof. It appears to have been caused from what you call 'drones'."
John's eyebrows rose in surprise, "Are you sure about that?"
The replicator nodded, "Positive, the readings I took of the residual radiation confirms it."
"It's the second report we've got and I have a feeling they aren't going to stop. Whatever is happening, we need to do something about it."
Elizabeth nodded, "I agree, but first we need to find out who is responsible. Who do we know that uses drones?"
John thought a few moments, "The travelers have an Aurora class ship so they could've done it, though I don't see why they would. That only leaves one other group, it's got to be the Asurans."
"I agree but I still don't see why they would do it."
John angrily yelled, "It doesn't matter why! We just have to stop them!"
"I'm all for that John, but how are we going to do that? We don't exactly have any super-weapons laying around."
John threw his hands in the air in disgust, "I know, I know! I just can't stand around and wait for more people to die." John walked over to the replicator guard in the control room and said, "Bring me a subspace transmitter and dial the gate to an uninhabited world close to Atlantis."
He walked back into Dr. Weir's office and she asked, "Have a plan do you?"
"No, not yet, but I need to let Atlantis know what is going on, maybe they can do something about it."
"Are you sure that's wise? I didn't think we wanted Atlantis to know we were still around yet?"
John shook his head, "I'm not exactly going to call them up and tell them what we've been doing these last few weeks. I'm just going to send a warning."
"Alright. Well, be careful John."
John walked through the control room and down the stairs. A replicator walked up to him and handed him a somewhat bulky ancient tablet. He took it without comment and started walking to the gate. Before he got there, 4 replicators surrounded him in a box pattern and they all went through the gate together.
They walked through the other side on a hot, sandy world. This systems sun was just starting to come up which meant that it was going to get even hotter soon. John walked to the DHD while the replicators fanned out and formed a perimeter.
John quickly typed out a message on the tablet and selected a frequency he hoped the wraith wouldn't be monitoring. He finished up the message settings and fired it off into the void. He dialed the gate back to their base and told the nearest replicator. "Make a recording device over on that rock facing the gate." he pointed off to the left of the gate, "Hopefully we'll be able to tell if Atlantis got the message this way. If they do they'll probably send a team to investigate."
The replicator reached the rock and bent down. He put his palm against the rock for a few moments and then removed it and walked back into formation. John hoped that meant the replicator did its assigned task. Shaking his head he headed back to the gate with his guardians in tow.
While Sheppard was briefing Elizabeth on the reports of destroyed human settlements, Rodney was busy working on the interface of his super machine. Finally, he thought he was ready for a test. "Computer, how much of the common elements do we have available at the moment?"
The computer, which was a special setup designed by Rodney to make it easy to construct and order things, replied, "We have several tons of the following readily available: Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Fluorine, Sodium, Magnesium. -"
Rodney had heard enough and interrupted, "Very well, that will do. Wait a second, how did we get the gases?"
The partial replicator AI replied, "The replicators built a few refinement facilities that pull in the breathable atmosphere and separate the different elements into specialized containers several dozen feet underground."
Rodney nodded and simply said, "Oh." then looked through the list of available items ready to be made from the Ancient database (that the nanites had in their memory from the Asuran homeworld's database) and decided to do a test. "Computer, please produce a batch set of eight personal shield devices."
"Accepted. Construction beginning. Completion of all items in ten minutes."
Rodney smiled broadly and thought, Hell yes!
The ten minutes passed quickly for Rodney, as he was busy searching through the database for all the cool things he ever wanted. A large list began to form.
Rodney looked up at the sound of a loud, but calm tone. To his right a panel slid up and out extended a small tray that held the eight shield devices he had ordered. Rodney smiled and excitedly rubbed his hands together. He grabbed the tray and took off running towards the control room.
When he got there he excitedly ran up the stairs to the control room that was identical to the one on Atlantis. Elizabeth and John saw him quickly approaching and shared a confused glance at each other.
John spoke up as Rodney cleared the line of sight to him, "I don't think I've seen you move that fast since the time I chased you with that citrus back on Atlantis."
Rodney closed the distance easily, with just a slight case of heavy breathing, "Oh ha ha, very funny. But even you can't make me feel bad now, look at these!" He lowered the tray and extended them to the duo. He grinned broadly and smugly as he saw on their faces a look of surprise. "See? What did I tell ya? The 'fabricator', that's what I'm calling it by the way, made these in ten minutes flat, no problem."
Elizabeth picked one up, looking at it closely and said, "Wow Rodney, these will be incredibly helpful."
John, not one to stroke Rodney's ego too much, spoke up, "I didn't think that idea of yours would actually work." He picked one up from the tray and stuck it to his chest. The device sat there easily. With a thought from John, the device went from a deep green color to a bright, almost glowing green. A small flicker surrounded John as he let out a low whistle, "Hey look, it actually functions too! You may have outdone yourself on this one."
Elizabeth walked over to a nearby console and quickly pressed a button, then spoke, "Ronon, Teyla, please come to the control room. We have some planning to do."
When everyone had gathered in the conference room, John caught them up on the attacks on human settlements.
Rodney, quite agitated and upset stammered, "What do you mean you sent a message to Atlantis? They're probably going to send a team to check it out!"
John looked at him like he was stating the obvious, "I know that Rodney! I think the risk of discovery is worth it though, we have to get a head start on this if we're going to prevent more deaths and Atlantis needs to know what's going on if they don't already."
Teyla agreed calmly, "I agree Colonel, we need to do something about this threat, and quickly."
John nodded, "We need a plan."
AN: Still looking for a few beta-readers. If you're interested, shoot me a message.
Also, review if you like it and comment about what you'd like to see in the future!