Major Lorne's Puddlejumper

Lorne had known that they would be waiting for a while, but he was glad that he had assigned Teyla, Gates, Hansen, and Reed to his jumper. With Lieutenant Miller as his copilot, he was having a pretty easy time of the wait, no doubt a lot easier than the team that had gotten stuck with the twins as their pilots. "Major, may I ask you a question?" Teyla asked him, coming into the cockpit and sitting down behind him.

"Sure, we've got nothing better to do while we wait," Lorne said. He was running diagnostics on the cloaked jumper just for something to do. Miller was in the back exchanging stories with Gates, Hansen and Reed.

"Why have you split our team up into three parts?" Teyla asked, puzzled at the arrangement.

"Pure military paranoia," Lorne said cheerfully. "This way we have enough room in the extra jumpers in case we can rescue anyone from the hive on the upside. On the downside, if McKay's geeks are wrong or Eve's intelligence is wrong, we have enough teams and nukes to take out three hives." He nodded at the back where Teyla's spare bomb was stored. Each person on the three man bomb teams had been given an extra nuke just in case.

That was something she understood. The Earth born, especially their military, did tend to try to plan for everything that could go wrong. "Well, I do have good news," she told him. "Hetikiah has conceived and wishes to know if you are willing to take up second father's duties. She understands if you are not able or interested, but she does not wish to keep you from taking up those duties if you wish them."

"Second father?" Lorne asked, puzzled. He knew who Hetikiah was. Atlantis had traded with her people for food two months ago and she had asked him to trade for his seed. He had been amused at the time to find out that Lantian men were gaining a reputation for being especially virile. It sounded like his turn at the male seed trade had taken. Normally that would have been the end of it as the chances that he would go back to her world were small. His duties as the XO and team leader for ART2 would have interfered, but last week her world had been subject to a Wraith attack and over half of the population had been culled. Hetikiah was now living on the mainland with the Athosians.

"Hetikiah's mate was not culled, but if he had been the child's second father would have taken over helping to raise the child. A second father and mother are often selected to help lessen the chances a child will lose all of his or her caregivers to a culling. If the child shares a blood tie with someone who is not a parent, then that person is given the first choice of becoming a second parent.

"Murphy will be a first father to my daughters and Conner will be their second father, but that is only because I do not have a mate at this time. If I take a mate in the future, then my mate would also serve as second father to my children. However, the chance that I will take a mate soon is very small," Teyla said, holding up her own situation as an example.

She did not mention the fact that it was extremely unlikely that she would ever take a mate with her Wraith blood being public knowledge. No one wanted her or those like her for a mate; although they were not condemned. The mila poppaaem had declared them to be good men and women and thanks to the Ancestors and the Earth born they were still able to provide their people with children without the taint of their enemies. In fact, Halling had even been politely hinting that if she were willing to provide her seed when the Ancient child machines were next available, he would like to make use of the machines to give his son Jinto a sibling or two. Jinto was an only child thanks to the Wraith culling Halling's mate and Halling had no wish for his son to be his only contribution to their people. Her daughters would not have this problem. In fact, there were several men with young sons who were interested in whether or not she would allow a pre-betrothal between their child and hers.

"Oh, I get it," Lorne said. "We have something similar." Teyla's expression showed her surprise and Lorne laughed. "No, we don't have anything as bad as the Wraith on Earth Teyla, but things can and do happen to parents. We call them godparents and they are often chosen when the child is born. Most often the godparents are someone close to the parents, like a best friend. For instance, I know that Radek is planning on asking Rodney to stand in as his baby's godfather. It's considered a great honor."

"And would you be willing?" Teyla asked again.

"If I live through this, I would be honored," Lorne said seriously. "To be honest, I'd been looking around for a woman that I could safely pass my ATA genes on with. I'm military and in a war zone. My chances of having a family of my own are slim to none, although they've gotten better since the twins moved to Atlantis, but to not pass the ATA genes on is practically a crime. Everyone in Pegasus needs to have those genes kept alive."

Teyla smiled. "It is good to hear you say such things. Sometimes I fear that the Earth born do not realize just how much that you have the blood of the Ancestors means to those of us who are Pegasus born."

"There's no way we can know, but that doesn't mean we don't understand the fact that nothing built by the Ancients works without it." He thought for a moment. "Teyla, do you think that they would object to having the baby in the infirmary? I know that some of the Athosian women are really adamant about having their children in the village, although they don't turn down help from Beckett's people," Lorne said.

"Is there a reason you would wish this?" Teyla asked.

Lorne shrugged. "It's just…if the child does have my ATA gene, then I'd kind of like Atlantis to be there. She's so excited about your twins, in a kind of 'I'd thought it would never happen again' kind of way. They'll be the first ATA kids born in the city in 10,000 years."

As long as Teyla had lived in the city, and as often as she had heard the ATA positives refer to the city as a female, she'd never really thought about the city as a person. It suddenly struck her just how lonely the city must have been, even though she had slept beneath the ocean for the years between the time the Ancestors' departure and the expedition's arrival. "I do believe that would be a very good thing, Evan. I will explain this to Hetikiah and her mate. You are a very good man to think of Atlantis at such a time."

Lorne shrugged again, uncomfortable as many men were when such things were pointed out. He looked up as the jumper warned him and brought a HUD up with a thought. Ironically it looked like he'd been saved by the arrival of the hive ship they were waiting for. "Well, it looks like McKay and his people were right again. One hive ship, incoming, tell the others."

The Orion

Colonel Sheppard could barely feel the touch of the medic assigned to monitor him while he was plugged into the Orion's systems. This was not like the connection he had to Atlantis when he sat in her control chair. Atlantis' AI brought him into her systems with open arms and a joy that could only be described as 'Welcome Home, I Missed You'. The Orion was much more abrupt, although he wasn't unwelcoming; which when John thought about it made a great deal of sense. Atlantis was home. She was designed to be nurturing and to want to take care of her people.

The Orion on the other hand, was a military machine and he reacted much more like one of John's old flight instructors when the old man had gotten to lead one of the war games John had participated in under his command. The image of an old war horse, lifting his head eagerly at the sounds of battle flashed through his mind, and he could tell that the Orion agreed. The Orion was eager to get back into battle again against the enemy which the battleship had been built to destroy. John could even tell that the Orion was amused at the deception they were playing on the Wraith.

'It's a classic maneuver', John thought at the Orion with the part of his brain that wasn't being taken up with the battle he was directing, 'and the reason that classic maneuvers are still around is because they work. One group is assigned to get in the face of the enemy while the second sneaks around behind to kick the enemy in the ass where he isn't watching.' Mostly John's and the Orion's job was to keep the hive's attention on the Ancient ship in front of them, and that was something they were both more than willing to do. It felt really good to finally be bringing the battle to the enemy.

That was actually fairly easy. The hive was throwing darts at them in such a way that gave John the impression that they were panicking. That was a good thing as far as he was concerned because it meant that they wouldn't be looking for an attack from their rear - or even better from the inside of their own ship in this case. He hoped that this meant that Lorne's people wouldn't even meet any of the hive's population on their way to plant the nukes, although he really didn't believe that would happen.

In the dozens of holographic screens that floated around the bridge, darts were shown exploding from the Orion's rail guns, which launched a slightly different and much more explosive - at least when it encountered Wraith tech - type of drone, (the chemists had become particularly excited when that was discovered and it had launched an untold number of scientific debates that Rodney had been forced to referee with his pistol in one hand and his best snark on idiocy in the other. It had been a joy to watch.) and from the standard drones launched from the jumpers not assigned to the sneak attack mission.

Every puddlejumper that they had pilots for was being used on this mission, evenly split between the Orion and the Daedalus including the ones they had gotten from the buried city. In fact, the only ATA pilot that they had who wasn't on the mission was the one who was in charge of manning the control chair in Atlantis should that be needed, and Sheppard desperately hoped that it wouldn't because that pilot was Miko Dex.

Ronon had been very quiet about the danger to his family until Sheppard had told him what her assignment would be. The Pegasus native wasn't about to protest his wife taking part in this operation simply because she was pregnant. That was not how things were done in Pegasus. No one who was able to fight was prevented from doing so because they simply could not afford to do so. That being said however, the relieved way that he had thanked John had told the Colonel just how much he hadn't wanted Miko in danger.

"Lorne's team has entered the hive," John called out. The Orion's sensors were able to pick up the shielded puddlejumpers, and now all they could do was wait for them to reappear. That was the only way that they would know when the nukes were about to go.