Disclaimer: I don't own 'Stargate Atlantis' or any related concepts or characters; you know the drill by now. Also, the basic details of the plot were inspired by 'The Phantom of the Opera', although I have naturally put my own spin on things; hope it meets with your approval
Feedback: Always appreciated, trust me
AN: As with last chapter, the events of this one take place around the time of an episode of the series- "The Brotherhood" in this case-, but with some significant changes from canon events due to the Phantom's actions…
The Phantom of Atlantis
As she sat in her office looking over the latest reports of the various teams, Elizabeth allowed herself a brief sigh of relief at how much lighter their workload had become these past few weeks.
Ever since Chaya's departure from Atlantis, even if the mystery of her presence and her long-term motives remained, the offworld teams had encountered little to no real danger in their travels. They'd managed to establish a few trading agreements for further food supplies, they'd discovered a few sites that might make a useful place to evacuate to, and even McKay's continued research on the code that prevented them from shutting down the shield when dialling the Milky Way was making some progress. The shield was still activating whenever they tried to dial their original home galaxy despite McKay's best efforts at cracking the code, but the Canadian scientist remained confident that they'd have something worked out soon; he continued to assure Elizabeth that he just needed a little more time before he found what he was looking for and the problem was solved.
Privately, Elizabeth was beginning to wonder if McKay wasn't as far on with that particular line of research as he thought (Or claimed to think at any rate); even Zelenka's research team had recently discovered Atlantis's deep space sensors- admittedly, 'recently' translated into 'the last couple of hours' and she was still the only person outside Zelenka's staff who knew about it, but the fact remained that they'd made a discovery without McKay-, while McKay's own research team hadn't made any kind of significant discovery since their examination of the Ancient satellite and the crashed Wraith cruiser (Which, unfortunately, had been too badly damaged and decayed to provide them with any indication of a weakness they could exploit in future confrontations).
With that in mind, McKay's continued eagerness to go off on any missions that might arise had left her wondering if the scientist was trying to find a convenient excuse for not having actually accomplished anything yet by giving himself too much to do; whether he actually consciously thought about this or it was primarily a subconscious action on his part was something she didn't know, but she retained her suspicions.
Then again, the recent missions had been for a rather important purpose, so she supposed that she had little real right to be suspicious of him; he was, after all, their greatest available expert on Ancient technology, so it was really only natural for him to be involved in these particular missions. Shortly after her last encounter with the Phantom- which nobody knew anything about; she'd managed to smuggle the pot he'd given her back to her room and subsequently left it in a safe place in one of the cupboards she used to store her clothes-, McKay had managed to find a few addresses that seemed to indicate the location of Ancient research outposts which seemed likely to retain their ZPMs.
Colonel Sumner's team had been over most of them to see what they could find, but so far there'd been no luck; either the outposts analysed had been totally free of ZPMs or what ZPMs were there had completely run out of power a long time ago. Their current destination- a planet with a low-level civilisation apparently equal to Earth in the middle ages- was the last address on the list, but so far Elizabeth had yet to hear back from the team; the last news she'd heard was a message from Colonel Sumner that they were trying to convince the natives that they had come from Atlantis, and that had been several hours ago-
"Incoming wormhole!" Doctor Grodin's voice suddenly yelled at her from off to the side, breaking into her train of thought as she stood up and rapidly walked towards the control room.
"Who is it?" she asked, looking curiously at the young man currently sitting at the Atlantis DHD.
"It's Colonel Sumner's team," Doctor Grodin replied, glancing back at her.
"Lower the shield," Elizabeth said, nodding briefly at him before she turned to leave the control room, walking down the stairs to stand in front of the Stargate as Sumner's team came through the wormhole.
It didn't take Elizabeth long to note the conspicuous absence of a ZPM from their hands; evidently, this search had proven just as fruitless as the others.
"How did it go?" she asked, deciding to stick to the obvious question first; she could hear how it had actually gone in more detail once they were in the conference.
"Oh, just peachy; the people just wanted to understand why we'd come back to get something we already took!" McKay said, looking over at Elizabeth in frustration before Sumner could answer the question himself.
Elizabeth blinked.
"Excuse me?" she said in confusion.
"Apparently the ZPM that was kept on that planet was claimed around a decade ago," Teyla explained, stepping forward to take up the story from the clearly annoyed scientist. "It is an interesting story, but I feel we should wait to discuss it for when we are in the conference room."
"Agreed," Elizabeth said, as she indicated the stairs behind her that led up to the conference room. "Have Beckett check you out and then meet me up in the conference room."
The subsequent medical check-up fortunately didn't take long- given the lack of Goa'uld in this galaxy the Atlantis expedition were generally able to forego the MRIs that remained standard SGC protocol, although the tradition check-over for viruses could still take some time-, but even still, Elizabeth was unable to stop herself from impatiently tapping her fingers while she waited; one of the things that she had appreciated about her old job as a diplomat was that things generally operated on a precise schedule, which wasn't something she had the chance to experience that often in her current situation. Finally, Atlantis's main offworld team came into the room and sat down around the table,
"So," Elizabeth said, as she looked around at the four people sitting opposite her, "what actually happened to the ZPM?"
"According to the legends that we were able to translate from the Sudarians, which we subsequently confirmed after we looked over their archives," Teyla began- evidently she had been the main person to gather this information, given her unofficial role as the team's diplomat-, "an Ancient came to Dagan through the Stargate from Atlantis, entrusting them with a rare treasure which they referred to as the "potentia", and whose depictions match that of the ZPMs. This Atlantian told them to keep it hidden from the Wraith at all costs, which they claim to have done until almost a decade ago."
"And… what happened to it a decade ago?" Elizabeth asked, looking inquiringly at the Athosian woman.
"What else?" Sumner said, his expression grim as he looked up at Elizabeth. "The Phantom came to the planet, proclaimed himself to be the 'spirit of the Ancestors', passed their 'tests' to find where the damn thing was being kept, walked away with the ZPM, and hasn't been seen since-"
"Which," McKay added, raising a finger as he looked at Elizabeth, his expression appearing particularly annoyed, "suggests that the Phantom- wherever he is- has access to more ZedPMs than the one we found powering the city when we got here!"
Elizabeth could only stare at McKay in confusion.
"And you've come to that conclusion because…?" she asked uncertainly; she really couldn't see how this latest turn of events could translate into McKay concluding that the Phantom had access to multiple ZPMs.
"Look, the people we just visited regarded the ZedPM as a holy relic," McKay explained, looking pointedly at Elizabeth as he continued. "Given that they'd never have used it as a power source, and it's unlikely the Ancients would have left an even partially depleted ZedPM with a society like that for safe keeping- why go to that much effort to protect something that isn't able to provide full power?-, it seems like pretty good odds to me that the ZedPM the Phantom recovered from there would have been at least almost fully charged when he took it away. Assuming that the ZedPM he acquired from there is the same one as the one we found in the city when we got here, it should still have had around seventy percent power available to it in a worst-case-scenario; all it would have needed to do was keep the force field active to prevent the water from getting in and provide enough lights and atmosphere for one man to live in this city in relative comfort-"
"Hold on a minute, let me see if I've got this right; you're saying… if the ZPM that we're using now had come from there, it should have more power available to it than it actually does?" Ford asked, looking at McKay for clarification.
"Unless this 'Phantom' guy's more of an idiot than we give him credit for and did something stupidly power-draining in between getting the ZedPM and our own arrival- and, given what we've seen of his ability to survive so far, I'm pretty sure he's not that stupid-, that's it exactly," McKay said, nodding in confirmation at the young lieutenant.
"So… what are you saying?" Elizabeth asked, waving a hand promptingly at McKay. "That there are more ZPMs around here than the one we're using?"
No sooner had McKay opened his mouth to reply than he paused, his expression briefly lost in thought as he considered what Elizabeth had said, before he finally shook his head.
"Actually… I don't think there are," he said, his voice slow as he spoke, as though he was putting a great deal of thought into what he was saying as he said it. "I mean, as I already said, the Phantom isn't stupid, and storing a large bunch of ZPMs in something as important as Atlantis would definitely qualify as being pretty stupid in my book…"
"Keeping regular access to the very things that he needs to provide this city with the ability to defend itself is stupid?" Sumner asked, looking critically at McKay as though wondering if the scientist had lost the plot at some point.
"OK, I grant you that it seems like a good idea on paper, but what if the Wraith had ever made it into the city?" McKay pointed out as he looked back at Sumner, his expression giving no hint of the indignation he must have felt at the implication of the colonel's statement. "One lucky shot- well, one stupid shot; anyone trying it deliberately would have to be idiotic or suicidal- in the wrong place as they're running around here, and the Wraith could blow up the ZPMs and trigger an explosion that could wipe out at least a decent-sized chunk of this planet! We might be able to set up a secure location to protect them in the city, but the Phantom's one guy with limited resources; I don't care how good he is, there's no way he could have been sure of sticking multiple ZedPMs somewhere where the Wraith couldn't be guaranteed not to shoot them by accident!"
For a moment there was silence around the conference table as the team contemplated what McKay had said, before Ford finally broke it with an uncertain nod.
"You gotta admit, that does make sense," he said, nodding slightly as he exchanged glances with the rest of his team. "I mean, I heard of a couple of reports when I was still at the SGC about the science teams saying that one ZPM could be capable of maybe blowing up a planet if it was damaged; if there were a lot of 'em in one place…"
"Particularly when that 'one place' is somewhere that would be as significant a target as Atlantis; no matter how many precautions the Phantom might have made to try and keep the Wraith from getting here, he's only one person who can't be everywhere at once," McKay added, nodding resolutely as he glanced around the table. "He must have some secure offworld location where he can keep any extra ZedPMs he might have acquired; if he's acquired the two that we know of- the one from Dagan and the one we're using at the moment-, it only makes sense that he's got a few more hanging around somewhere where he can get to them at short notice."
"In other words, there might be multiple ZPMs on some offworld location that we haven't visited yet?" Sumner asked, looking pointedly over at McKay.
"Well, assuming we're correct about this-" McKay began.
"Beginning with the idea that you are correct," Sumner interjected, his gaze intensifying as he stared at McKay, "how would you recommend we go about finding them?"
McKay had just opened his mouth to speak when Zelenka suddenly hurried into the control room, looking anxiously over at Elizabeth.
"Sorry to interrupt," he said, looking apologetically around at the assorted members of the team before his gaze re-settled on Elizabeth, "but we have a problem."
"What is it?" Elizabeth asked, looking back at the Czech scientist.
"I've just managed to complete linking our computers to the Atlantean long-range sensors-" Zelenka began.
"Hold on; we have long-range sensors?" McKay repeated, turning to look critically at Zelenka. "I didn't know we had long-range sensors; why didn't anybody tell me that we had long-range sensors?"
"Nobody knew until recently," Zelenka replied, shrugging apologetically at McKay. "As far as I could tell, they've been running silently in background along with our other primary systems; they only recently jumped to the foreground."
"Why would that happen?" Sumner asked, his own interest heightened by anything relating to Atlantis's security (Elizabeth just hoped that he wasn't going to accuse the Phantom of having limited their access to the city; personally she considered it more likely that, given Atlantis's currently limited power supply, the city had just been keeping the sensors on low power until they detected something important).
"Well, I think it might be because of the unidentified craft about the size of a Wraith dart heading for us," Zelenka finished, looking over at Sumner with a slight glare.
"What?" Elizabeth said, as she and the rest of the team stood up and hurried for the control room, Zelenka leading the way as he showed them to a laptop that he'd connected up to one of the Ancient control consoles.
"I'm sorry," he said, as he sat down in front of the screen that was currently displaying a blurred picture that certainly looked like a Wraith dart. "The sensors picked it up days ago but its taken me until now to finally decipher what they've been trying to tell us-"
"And you never thought to ask for my help?" McKay asked, glaring over at Zelenka.
"You were always busy," Zelenka replied with a dismissive shrug before he turned his attention back to the screen. "I still don't know how this happened; my best guess is that it used neighbouring Stargate to fly towards us at maximum speed ever since the Wraith discovered we were here-"
"We can worry about the how of it later; right now we have to stop it," Sumner said, glaring resolutely at Zelenka. "How far away is it?"
"Approximately… twenty-seven minutes," Zelenka replied, glancing briefly at the laptop before he turned back to look at the others.
"Right," Sumner said, nodding briefly as he looked over at McKay. "Doctor McKay, get the gateship pilots together; we need to get in the air as soon as-"
"Someone's already doing it!" Grodin suddenly yelled from his seat at another control console.
"What?" Sumner yelled, spinning around to look at the other man.
"According to these readings, a gateship just left via the roof-hatch and is taking a direct intercept course towards the oncoming dart," Grodin replied. "I've no idea who could be piloting it, but-"
"Seems simple enough to find out; just look at who you told about these sensor readings before Doctor Zelenka told us," Sumner, said, glaring briefly at Grodin before turning to look at the Czech scientist. "Doctor, I thought I'd made the situation clear; I cannot be left out of the loop-!"
"Colonel Sumner, I hadn't even told anyone else here about what the sensors were telling me before I told you; how could anyone here have given the order?" Zelenka interjected, looking over at the colonel with a clearly confused expression. "Whoever is behind this, they have somehow become aware of the presence of the dart without any of us needing to tell them ourselves, and since I can assure you that nobody has left this room since I determined what we had discovered, I have no idea who could have alerted anyone else to this latest turn of events."
"Well, someone had to-" Sumner began.
"Atlantis control room?" a voice suddenly said over the main radio, a voice that Elizabeth recognised instantly even as she fought to control her reaction, "this is the Phantom of Atlantis; I am in the… gateship… that just departed the main bay, moving to intercept the oncoming dart."
For a moment, there was nothing but stunned silence inside the control room, everyone who had heard the message staring is shock at the thought that the man they'd been searching for since their arrival over a year ago was just… talking to them like this… before he spoke again. "Just thought you should know."
After another brief, stunned silence- Elizabeth didn't trust herself to speak; after the privacy of their last two conversations the possibility that she'd slip up and say something that would give away the fact that she'd spoken to 'the Phantom' before now was too great-, Sumner stepped forward and activated the radio,
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he yelled over the radio; Elizabeth briefly wondered if she should try and arrange for the rest of the people in the control room to leave, but swiftly decided that it wouldn't be worth the effort. "My pilots can handle this-"
"From what I recall from your mission reports, your pilots' combat training with these things is limited to your attempted rescue of the Athosians after you arrived here and that brief scuffle over Chaya's planet- where, I might add, your weapons were disabled so that you couldn't shoot back," the Phantom countered (Elizabeth could almost picture the surprisingly 'familiar'- for all that she hadn't seen it that often- teasing smile on his face underneath the mask before she forced her attention back to the current issue). "Given the time it would take you to rally your available pilots and the rate at which the dart is approaching, your men would probably end up having to fight the dart around Atlantis's towers; I'm currently your best chance at taking this thing out of the picture before it gets too close. You can either complain about me doing what I had to do to protect the city, or you can let me do what I came here to do and take out this dart; clear?"
Once again, silence dominated the control room, all eyes fixed on Colonel Sumner as he stared out of the nearest window overlooking the sea; if Elizabeth understood the sensor readings correctly, Sumner was currently looking in approximately the direction from which the dart was approaching them, which meant that the gateship that currently held the Phantom would be somewhere in that area as well.
Finally, after a brief moment where Elizabeth noticed Sumner clenching his fists like he wanted to punch something, he turned back to the radio.
"Fine," he said simply, his tone direct and his expression cold as he glared at the radio. "Just… do what you have to do and get back here, all right?"
"Where else would I go?" the Phantom replied, once again sounding like he was smiling slightly before he spoke again, his tone once again serious. "I'll be back soon; in the meantime, just keep an eye on the sensors and prepare to defend yourselves if this sucker gets past me."
Before Sumner could say anything else, the radio signal was terminated, leaving the Atlantis senior staff looking uncertainly at each other before Grodin broke the silence.
"Uh… according to the long-range sensors, the Phantom's gateship will be within firing range of the Wraith dart within the next ten or so minutes," he said, as he looked uncertainly at the others. "Shall I continue tracking?"
"Do what you can," Sumner said, nodding briefly at Grodin before he glanced over at McKay. "Doctor McKay, how soon can we get the control chair up and running?"
"Well, theoretically all it needs is someone to sit in it-" McKay began.
"Good; that'll be your job right now," Sumner said, nodding briefly at the scientist before he turned to look at Lieutenant Ford. "Lieutenant, gather the security teams together and direct them to the gateship bay; have half the team remain inside the main bay and have the other half take cloaked ships out of the tower-"
"Hold on; are you planning on trying to capture him again?" Elizabeth cut in, glaring at Sumner as she stepped forward to stand in front of him. "Colonel, as much as I respect your authority in military matters, the Phantom is currently trying to help us-"
"By dealing with a situation that he appears to have known about long before we did?" Sumner countered, returning Elizabeth's glare with one of his own. "If the Phantom genuinely wished to help us, he should have contacted us once he knew about the dart-"
"From what I've heard about their size, one Wraith dart is hardly a serious danger to this city," Elizabeth interjected, her arms folded as she glared back at Sumner. "Given our current lack of any ships other than the gateships, alerting us to the dart's existence earlier would have accomplished nothing, and in any case we have no way of knowing just how much in advance the Phantom was alerted to the dart's presence in this system; he might have simply learned about it when the long-range sensors activated and been quicker to understand what he was looking at than we did-"
"If he was genuinely concerned with helping this city, why wouldn't he simply alert us to the dart's existence rather than take action himself?" Sumner said, his arms folded as he looked critically back at Elizabeth. "Doctor Weir, your diplomatic ability to see both sides of the situation is commendable, but we are presently dealing with a military situation where an unknown combatant has concealed potentially vital information for unknown purposes; given this situation, apprehending him to determine the scale of his knowledge of the city can only be beneficial in the long term-"
"The dart has been destroyed," Grodin said, his voice cutting through the potentially-heated argument between the two leaders of Atlantis as he turned to look at them.
"What?" Sumner said, spinning around to stare incredulously at the British scientist, his argument with Elizabeth at least momentarily forgotten in his shock at this latest turn of events. "I thought you said that he'd take ten minutes to get within firing range of the dart-"
"That's what I thought based on our previous knowledge of how the gateships operated," Grodin confirmed, looking apologetically back at Sumner. "However, it would appear that the Phantom managed to accelerate his ship's speed via some unknown method; given that he took his jumper from the hanger directly above us he cannot have simply been using a modified ship or we would have already identified it as such. My best guess is that he accelerated the gateship's speed by using its drone weapons to provide additional thrust without triggering them to fire by accident; it would be difficult to maintain that degree of control over something that was fundamentally designed to serve as a weapon rather than as a means of propulsion, but it is theoretically possible."
For a moment Sumner looked like he was about to start berating Grodin for this latest mistake, but he stopped himself before he could say anything else, evidently acknowledging that he couldn't get angry about something that nobody could have predicted would happen.
"Fine," he sighed, his tone demonstrating his exasperation at this latest turn of events even as he turned to look at Ford, who was still standing off to the side; after Elizabeth and Sumner had begun their brief 'argument' Ford had apparently decided that it would be best if he just waited until they came to a decision about this either way. "Ford-"
"Attention Atlantis," the Phantom's voice said over the radio, cutting the colonel short mid-sentence once again. "This is the Phantom; the dart has been destroyed and I'm returning to the city. You might want to boost the long-range sensors to maximum power and trace back along the dart's flight-path; with what I know of Wraith tactics- coupled with the fact that darts are normally short-range fighters-, there's almost certainly something at the other end of that line that is going to be nothing but trouble for us."
"'Us'?" Sumner repeated, pushing Grodin aside as he stepped forward to speak more directly into the radio. "There is no 'us'… whoever you are; you're a rogue element outside the hierarchy of this expedition-!"
"I'm still a part of this city's defences, Colonel Sumner," the Phantom replied, his tone a solemn one that Elizabeth hadn't heard since he'd told Kolya to release her or be shot. "You don't have to like me; you just have to get used to me doing what needs to be done in desperate situations."
"What 'needs to be done' is for you to-" Sumner began.
"See you around," the Phantom interjected, his tone casual as he terminated the radio connection, leaving Sumner staring with a mixture of criticism and shock at the console that controlled the radio.
"Right," he muttered, nodding resolutely as he glanced at his side; the team had been so quick to come to the briefing that they all still carried their weapons, his gaze quickly falling on the P-90 still hanging by Ford's side before he turned to look at Grodin. "Given what we now know about the gateship speeds, how long will it take the gateship to get back into the bay?"
"Uh… two or three minutes at most; why?" Grodin asked, looking at Sumner uncertainly.
"Just enough time, then…" Sumner said, half to himself, before he turned around to look at Ford. "Lieutenant, you're with me; we're going to the gateship bay."
"Yes sir," Ford said, nodding briefly at the colonel before the two of them began to run towards the gateship bay.
Elizabeth barely even hesitated; waving a brief hand at the rest of the people in the room to stop them from following her, she swiftly turned around and began to jog after Sumner and Ford as they hurried towards the gateship bay.
Elizabeth would be the first to admit that she wasn't sure what she expected to accomplish by this action. She could hardly object to Sumner trying to capture someone who'd just stolen a ship for his own ends; just because the Phantom hadn't done anything didn't mean he couldn't have done something with it, and the issue of his fundamentally unknown motives remained a concern no matter how certain she was from her own meetings with him (Which she'd promised not to mention, frustratingly enough) that John didn't mean them any harm…
In the end, however, the reason she was doing this was simple; she wanted to see John again.
She had no idea why she was going to these kind of lengths to see someone when the only thing she really knew about him as a person were his name and a vague idea of his age; all she knew was that she had to see him…
Then she, Colonel Sumner, and Lieutenant Ford ran into the gateship bay, only to see the gateship that had so recently destroyed a Wraith dart 'slotting' into the only currently-empty space in the bay after lowering itself back into the city following its entrance via the upper hatch, with no sign of a pilot in the cockpit window. Elizabeth briefly thought that she caught a glimpse of a long black cloak hurrying towards a corner of the bay, but by the time she glanced in the direction the cloak had been running it had apparently vanished, with no sign of movement in that part of the bay to give away where he had gone.
"What the hell…?" Sumner muttered, looking at the clearly empty gateship before him. "How does he keep doing that?"
Elizabeth had a theory- particularly given what John had told her during their last meeting about those 'passages' he used to get around Atlantis-, but she wasn't going to mention it; right now, capturing John wouldn't accomplish anything.
"Doctor Weir?" Zelenka's voice said over the radio, cutting Sumner off before he could voice any further opinions on their next course of action.
"Yes?" she said, hoping that, whatever Zelenka had to tell her would draw attention away from the current issue; the last thing she wanted was for Sumner to find one of John's passages and take away what was possibly the only thing keeping him out of a cell simply for trying to do the right thing without worrying about the proverbial red tape (And why did she keep trying to defend his actions to herself?).
"You need to get down here as soon as possible," the Czech scientist's voice said, clearly anxious at whatever he had just discovered. "Doctor McKay and I found something that you should see."
Exchanging a brief glance with Colonel Sumner- she was relieved to see that he at least seemed to be taking Zelenka's warning as seriously as she was; the Czech scientist might not be as skilled as McKay but he was a lot less prone to exaggeration that the Canadian was-, Elizabeth turned and walked out of the hanger bay, making her way as quickly as possible back to the control room, McKay and Zelenka standing around the control console for the long-range sensors with anxious expressions (Elizabeth briefly noted Teyla's absence, but swiftly decided it was nothing to be worried about; Teyla had probably simply concluded that she could contribute nothing further to this particular situation and gone to her quarters).
"What is it?" she asked, looking between the two scientists as Sumner and Ford walked into the room, taking up position to either side of her.
"Well, based on the Phantom's… suggestion… about finding where the dart had come from," McKay said- clearly he didn't want to think of the Phantom's comment as 'advice'; that would have implied he'd done something that McKay couldn't have done himself-, "we traced the dart's flight path back along its projected course, and what we found…"
He swallowed slightly, a clearly anxious expression on his face. "Well, it's a definite cause for alarm."
"What is it?" Sumner asked.
"This," Zelenka said, tapping a few buttons on the console in front of him and McKay. Instantly three large shapes appeared on the nearest screen, somehow sending a brief shiver down Elizabeth's spine even without a clearer image of whatever she was currently looking at.
"What are they?" Sumner asked, his arms folded as he looked critically between the scientists.
"Wraith hive ships," McKay said, looking grimly over at the colonel. "And, judging by their current speed, they'll be over Atlantis in just under two weeks."
If Elizabeth had been the type to swear, she would have done so at that point.
Two weeks? They'd barely even begun to examine Atlantis' offensive capabilities- with their only ZPM operating at barely fifteen percent power nobody had wanted to risk accessing the kind of power that such an important system would require to operate unless it was necessary-, what little they had examined suggested that it was low on drone weapons with little else available to use as firepower…
And now they had barely two weeks to get everything up and running to an extent that would allow them to go up against three fully-armed Wraith hive-ships?
This is bad… Elizabeth reflected grimly to herself.
This is very, very bad.
Unknown to Elizabeth, even as she learned about this latest turn of events, the dark-clad figure who had so recently saved the city once again was currently crouched in his usual 'control room observation point'- as he thought of the part of the maintenance tunnels where he usually hid when he wanted to keep an eye on the situation in the control room-, silently listening to this latest turn of events.
Three Wraith hive-ships in two weeks, and I can barely set foot in the main city without Sumner trying to lock me up in case I make a bad call… he reflected, groaning slightly in frustration as he looked up at the ceiling just a few inches above him. Great…
There was no question about what the Wraith wanted, either; while Atlantis itself could be a valuable prize- even with the Ancient-gene-encoded technology, there were still several things in the city that the Wraith could salvage and use for their own ends-, what the Wraith really wanted right now was something that they could have only acquired from torturing Captain Gemmel before his death.
The Stargate address to Earth.
The address that could only be dialled from the Atlantis Stargate, and which he had protected from Wraith discovery the only way he could without preventing Elizabeth's team from being able to get here in the first place; by programming the shield to activate every time someone tried to dial an address in the Milky Way galaxy.
At the time, short of locking Earth out of the dialling computer- which he was pretty sure would have stopped anyone from Earth coming here as well-, it had been the only solution.
Right now, however, the Atlantis Expedition's only chance to fight off the Wraith hive-ships was to contact Earth and request assistance, which was something that they couldn't accomplish as long as that particular program was still active.
In other words, John reflected to himself, as he looked grimly out at the people who were faced with an attack on a scale that they could never have imagined they would be confronting when they first came to this city, it's time for Elizabeth to receive the code.
He just hoped that she could come up with a way to enter it into the system without attracting too much attention…
AN 2: If anyone objects to Zelenka finding where the dart came from this quickly when he said it would take him a couple of hours in the show, it should be noted that we don't actually know how long it took him to do the job- the 'couple of hours' thing was only an estimate; it might have been quicker-, he had McKay to help him here- the man might be a pain but he is good with Ancient tech-, and there's no way of knowing what John might have done with the computers over the years to make the sensors more sensitive to external input; just because he was unlikely to ever need them doesn't mean he'd have neglected them.
