THE LAST MEMBER
"What was that?" Radek asked, jumping as the voice echoed in all their minds.
Carson smiled sadly as Bri answered, "You heard her Radek, why don't you say hello."
"Say hello…"
'Hello Doctor. I hope you don't mind, but I am feeling rather uncomfortable, there appears to be a problem with one of my sensor arrays, would you mind terribly if I told you how to fix it?' Atlantis faded from the minds of the other five people in the room, speaking only to Radek as the others went back to their preparations.
Carson looked on with sad eyes as Radek lost himself in the soft, sweet voice of the city.
"Don't worry Carson, Atlantis has no interest in stealing your lover away," Bri ignored the startled looks from everyone in the room as she continued, "She's just making sure he knows how to patch up her dings, and I think she's telling him how to fix some of the issues he found when we were gone."
"I…he's…we're not…" Carson stammered, glancing with trepidation towards John and Rodney.
"Oh don't worry about it, you really think we'd have a problem with you and Radek? After all that would be rather hypocritical considering that John and I are now together." Rodney snapped as he pushed past the two doctors in the doorway and headed for the gate room.
Brianna looked at Carson. "I hate to sound callous here, but these people are our best chance of finding what we need to defeat the Wraith. If you're up for it, we'd like you to coordinate things from here. Mostly that means keeping an eye out with the sensors and making sure Major Lorne gets back all right. Atlantis says she has a job in mind for him."
"All right, I'll get Radek going on fixing that stuff, then I'll see what I can do about getting Lorne back soon. Do you know what Atlantis has in mind for him?"
"Something about a battleship. Atlantis is being annoyingly vague. She keeps muttering about this 'being a good match', whatever that means." Brianna shrugged as she finished gearing up.
John sighed. "The Wraith are massing for a final attack. They're gathering in a remote quadrant of space, apparently to plan or something, but a few hive ships are looking for The Sister City. If they find her, we're all screwed."
"Why doesn't Doctor Weir know about any of this?" Carson asked.
Brianna sighed deeply. "Atlantis doesn't like her, not really. Or, more to the point, she doesn't trust her. She can't or won't give me a good reason why, and she won't let us tell her. Every time we try, well…things have a disturbing tendency to break, hurt someone in the process, and show anomalous readings on the life-signs scans. We tried to tell Weir a couple of times, until we figured out what Atlantis was doing; now we don't bother because she just runs us around on wild goose chases, it's better to stay put, keep our mouths shut and get stuff done. Atlantis will tell her when she's ready."
Carson thought for a moment. "She who?" He asked.
"Hmmm?" Bri responded, glancing up at him.
"You said 'when she's ready', is that Atlantis or Doctor Weir?"
"Ah, now THAT my friend," Bri said, placing a hand on the doctor's shoulder, "Is the sixty-four thousand dollar question."
The team gathered in the gate room, facing the giant ring as Chuck began to dial out.
"I wonder why Lorne's so late." John suddenly said, "I thought he was supposed to be back by now.
"He was." Bri murmured softly, as the gate opened from the other side.
"Off-world activation." The gate tech announced over the radios.
"It's Lorne" Lilah said softly, her words confirmed a moment later by Chuck.
As the shield dropped and every person in the Gate room prepared for the possibility of incoming fire, Rodney asked "Just a thought, but if the message said 'come flying through the ring', shouldn't we take a puddlejumper?"
As if in response the ceiling began to iris open and a puddlejumper began to descend, unpiloted, through towards the team.
Looking up Brianna remarked, "It appears Atlantis agrees with you Rodney." Glancing down she added "And since this is Lorne, we might as well grab him and save Carson the trouble of explaining everything."
"Carson, how quickly can you clear Lorne to come with us?" John called up to the doctor standing in the control room.
"It depends on why they're late." The Scot answered.
Brianna suddenly jumped, then glared at a random spot half-way up one of the walls. "You little…" she trailed off. "You could have at least told us!"
"I take it Atlantis was responsible?" The doctor shrugged, "Very quickly in that case, as long as Atlantis assists."
"She says she wanted to make sure we didn't leave without him." Lilah sighed and leaned over to stroke the wall nearest her. "I know you meant well," she said softly, "just let us know the next time you're going to do something like that so we don't worry, okay?"
The lights dimmed, then brightened in assent as Elizabeth, who had been standing next to the doctor for the exchange, shook her head "Wait!" She exclaimed loudly, "are you saying the city made Major Lorne late?" She sounded shocked and annoyed as she shook her head, "How is that even possible?"
Doctor Weir was rapidly loosing whatever tenuous control she had retained over the situation, she could feel it, and she had no idea how to stop it.