Carson looked over the body of one Mr. Skoglund, IOA asshole and would be city conqueror and sighed. The men and women of Clan McManus were a strange lot. They'd taken Skoglund from the command chair, put him on his knees, blew his brains out, and after carefully collecting all of the pieces, and had delivered the body to the morgue fully prepped for burial right down to the crossed arms and pennies on the eyes. Who had brought pennies to the Pegasus galaxy and why would they want to?
At least they had realized that he would need to check to see if the man had been more modified than Carson had previously thought. The mechanical piece embedded in the man's chest had mimicked a pacemaker right down to the internal design and since it had been listed as such in his medical files, Carson hadn't thought anymore of it when it had shown up in the man's physical. Whoever had come up with it was at least as much of a genius as Radek, if not quite in Rodney's league, not that he'd ever feed his friend's ego. It wasn't good for him, although genuine complements were another story altogether. No, the design had been good; it was merely the lack of understanding of Atlantis that had caused the device to fail.
That was something that was central to a great many problems the residents of Atlantis had with the organizations back in the Milky Way galaxy, both on Earth and other wise. Atlantis was special, and it took special people to be able to handle life within her walls. She couldn't be conquered, not in the traditional sense. Any who tried to force her to give up her secrets was doomed to failure. She had to be loved. It was only those who loved her, and loved being here in this galaxy helping to those who lived here to take on the Wraith, who thrived.
The first year had seen those who hadn't loved it here die one by one, and even now Carson had been forced to send far too many people back to Earth simply because they couldn't handle the stress of living here. Between the Wraith attacks, the questionable things that the Ancients had left lying around, the odd and often dangerous situations that the recon teams found themselves in and the idiocy of Earth's organizations that just wanted to gut Atlantis, the stress levels of the people here were higher than any military base on Earth, including those that were under constant threat of attack, although that was beginning to change now that the little tower was up and running.
Father Nevan was more than happy to officiate at any ritual, religious or otherwise, and the chapel now had regular services for many different religions. Conner and Murphy had not only gotten their brewery running, but they had also turned the most easily accessed of the little tower's gardens into a pub, rather like the ones back home, run by those who had married into their family. That right there had been a huge stress reliever, no matter what Elizabeth might think. Then there were the children, all of whom were dear little buggers, cuter than a dozen lambs and most of them as cheerful as Doctor Holbrook, a woman so cheerful that some wondered about her sanity, although Kate had given her a clean bill of health. Knowing that children belonging to their fellow expedition members were living in the city gave the expedition a sense of permanence, of roots and home. All of this had contributed to a significant reduction in stress just in the last few months.
Doctor Biro entered the operating room prepped for the autopsy along with Rodney. He'd offered to go over the mechanics of the device and any others that might be found. He had gotten used to bodies, at least much more than the other scientists, and stood a better chance at not bolting during the exploration of the body. It was time to begin. Carson began by activating the Ancient security system's cameras. It would provide a live recording of their work.
Saints-sga-saints-sga-saints-sga-saints-sga-saints-sga-saints-sga-saints-sga-saints
Richard Woolsey was exhausted. He'd read the reports on the nanite virus and the idea that Skoglund's actions would release another such virus was horrifying. He was sitting in the conference room along with Huang, waiting for the command staff of Atlantis to finish their investigation. He'd been no help with that, although it hadn't been for lack of effort on his part. Skoglund had hidden his intentions well from his fellow IOA representatives. Even Huang, easily the most hardline character he'd ever met, had been shocked and horrified by Skoglund's actions, although more for her own safety than anyone else's Woolsey expected.
Doctor Weir came into the room, leading Colonel Sheppard, Major Lorne, Doctor Zelenka, Doctor McKay and Doctor Beckett as well as two of the guards that always seemed to follow her about. "Mr. Woolsey, Miss Huang, I have to ask you now, what is your agenda for your time here in Atlantis?" she asked as she sat down at the table. The others silently took their own seats, showing their support for their leader.
Huang readily replied. "I had been ordered to see to it that you were removed as leader of the Atlantis base. My government wishes for an increased presence here and more information for its own use, most specifically weapons. It was believed that you were deliberately hindering the spread of such information."
"Somehow I'm not surprised," Woolsey sniffed. "Doctor Weir, my own agenda was somewhat different. I was not ordered to arrange for your removal. I was sent to find out exactly why you were so insistent upon bringing civilian families to Atlantis, why you threatened to fire Doctors Zelenka and Dex, and to discover if your actions were caused by alien action or mental instability. I do not believe that either is the case, but I still do not understand your reasoning behind those threats."
Doctor Weir sat calmly through their answers before addressing Woolsey's concerns. "Mr. Woolsey, it was not I who threatened the removal of Doctor Zelenka and Doctor Dex. That was the end result of the IOA's own policy, and I was merely pointing that out. You see, the IOA has forced the women of Atlantis to choose between their work here and murdering their own children."
"WHAT?" both Huang and Woolsey jerked upright in their seats, headless of the guards behind them.
Doctor Weir's voice turned ice cold. "Any Earth woman on this base must have an abortion if she is to remain here, thus choosing her work over her child's life. What I find particularly horrid about this policy is that she must do this while watching the women native to this galaxy run around this city with their children. There are children here whether the IOA wants them here or not. While Doctor Dex might have been able to stay here as Specialist Dex is a native of this galaxy, Radek and I do not have that option. We are both Earth natives and we would have been forced to chose between staying here and leaving Atlantis for Earth simply so that our child would be able to live."
"We did not like those choices," Radek said, picking up and holding his wife's hand. "Elizabeth decided that hiring civilians to do the sort of repair work that was eating up our time would be the best way to solve several problems at once. So she hired people from a family known to have members that had high percentages of the ATA gene. Every member of the McManus family that has been hired has a gene percentage of over ninety percent. Thus we have more than tripled our numbers of gene carriers. We have cut down the time we scientists have been forced to spend on repairs in half, which means that we are now spending twice as much time in investigations. Those investigations go more quickly because we have more ATA positives to help initialize or operate the equipment," Radek explained. "They also take part in Atlantis' security, and because they already have their children here ours can be born here."
"And Atlantis treats these people differently than the scientists you've been sent?" Woolsey asked him. "You said earlier that there were several small malfunctions around Skoglund even though he was under guard by at least one McManus. I take it the AI you think might be in the system normally doesn't deliberately allow such malfunctions to happen around them."
"Atlantis thinks of them as her people," Doctor Beckett said. "Colonel Sheppard is her favorite hands down, but she'll still do for a member of Clan McManus what she won't do for anyone else."
"And for that sort of malfunctions to occur near a McManus means one of two things, either there is something seriously wrong and Atlantis is trying to control those malfunctions, making them less serious, or she's seriously ticked off and letting us know about it," Rodney said. He crossed his arms and had his chin raised high, practically daring them to refute his conclusions.
"You are the expert on Atlantis' repairs, Doctor McKay. We would not dispute your assessment of the situation," Huang said, trying to calm Rodney down. Someone had obviously talked to her about pissing McKay off.
"Thank you for answering my questions Doctors," Woolsey said, addressing McKay and Beckett before turning to Elizabeth.
"Doctor Weir, I don't think that anyone back on Earth realized just to what extent that this city is returning to its former function or the sort of diplomacy it takes to survive in this sort of war zone," Woolsey said, not trying to butter up any of the people he was facing, but simply doing the job he had been sent to do – report honestly on the conditions in Atlantis. "The documents that I have examined and the ones that our guards were kind enough to allow us to access after today's emergency have shown an interdependence that is far more extensive than I was aware of from the reports I was given on Earth. From what I've both observed and read in your reports, Earth has been demanding a great deal more than the support it has been giving this settlement."
"Mr. Woolsey," Elizabeth leaned forward, trying to cut off Woolsey's legendary honesty. She had to distract Huang from what Woolsey had said. "We are a military base. We are also a scientific research base. We are all doing our best to find the answers that Earth and our allies need, but we also have to deal with the reality of living in this galaxy. That requires us to make adjustments to the standard procedures that work well in the Milky Way. We may be the most advanced society out here, but that doesn't mean much when reinforcements are nearly a month's travel time away. We are mostly cut off here, and we realize that we could return to being cut off at any time. We can't just march in here and say this is the way things are going to be done. We have to do our best to honor the ways of the people who have been fighting the Wraith for the last ten thousand years on their own."
"Because if we don't," Sheppard leaned forward. "It's a sure thing that we'll be cutting our own throats when it comes to survival out here. We still can't feed our own people, much less all of the refugees we get without the trade agreements we've set up. We're on the tail end of the supply line out here. We're more vulnerable to just plain old lack of support from home than we are the Wraith, the locals who think they're the only ones who have the right to this city, the Wraith worshipers, and the sheer idiots that the IOA keeps sending us put together." He turned to Huang. "And yet, they seem to think that we're holding back information that would turn either of these two wars around. That's not the case. We've gotten more translators with the people that Elizabeth hired than the IOA has seen fit to give us, but we still have to fight the database to find anything like what we might be looking for."
"Aye, if you wanted to know how to treat radiation poisoning, well finding that sort of treatment and only that sort of treatment took two men seven months of searching and not doing much else," Carson pointed out huffily. "The whole database is a strange mishmash that no one really can understand yet. Then when you add in how big the damn thing is, it's no wonder we haven't made as much progress as the ones back on Earth think we should have. It's like trying to search the whole damned internet all at once!"
Elizabeth turned to Huang, knowing that Woolsey had gotten the point. "I'd be more than willing to have more of your country's scientists and soldiers here, Miss Huang. I'm the one trying to hire more people. I don't particularly care what country they come from. I simply need them to be able to handle living in Atlantis and to be more than simply competent in their fields."
Huang seemed to brighten up at this, realizing that Elizabeth was giving her a way to complete the job that she was given by her government, even if it meant that she would have to back Elizabeth's leadership. "I believe that Mr. Woolsey was correct in saying that many of those who are making the reports about Atlantis are simply not understanding the situation that you are facing Doctor Weir. My reports will certainly reflect that."
"You should be careful whom you give those reports to Miss Huang," Colonel Sheppard said. "Skoglund was working for the Trust. This isn't the first time they've tried to sabotage Atlantis and I'm sure it won't be the last."