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
The Phantom of Atlantis
In many ways, Elizabeth wasn't entirely certain how to feel when the Stargate activated and Earth's IDC was received from the other end of the wormhole, shortly after McKay's Gateship had returned to Atlantis with its two remaining passengers.
On the one hand, the concept of reinforcements arriving for them at a time like this was certainly welcome; even with the two days McKay's actions with the satellite seemed to have brought them- the remaining two hive-ships had significantly slowed their progress towards Atlantis, most likely now uncertain what the city might have to offer in the way of defences-, their options for defence were limited to just the few dozen drones remaining in the city's weapons' storage and whatever power remained in the shield, and Sumner and McKay had both hade it clear that they doubted they possessed the necessary power to run the shield for more than a matter of hours under sustained assault.
If they were going to hold their own in this kind of situation they would definitely need far more trained soldiers than they had at present; in this kind of situation, any kind of aid would unquestionably be helpful.
On the other…
She was almost ashamed to admit it, but, in some way, she'd wanted to prove herself capable of defending the city on her own without anyone else coming in. She and the expedition had made this city their own since arriving in it almost a year ago; on some level, she'd wanted to prove that they deserved to be there by being the ones to save the city themselves, without the aid or assistance of anyone else.
Oh well, she reflected silently, hurrying down the stairs to greet the new arrivals- Ford already at the bottom and saluting the man standing before him, she noted-, large crates accompanying the new arrivals through the wormhole. You can't always get what you want, and at least this is a positive change…
"Doctor Weir," the man Ford had just been saluting said as he turned to look at her, revealing a weathered face with short, curly pepper-coloured hair and a high forehead, before he looked past her to smile at Colonel Sumner. "Marshall."
"Dillon?" Sumner replied, a smile crossing his face as he looked at the other man. "Good to see you, old friend; we could use all the help we could get right now."
"I gathered," the man replied, the slight smile he shot in Sumner's direction making it clear he intended no slight towards Sumner with that statement before he turned back to look at Elizabeth, a grimmer expression on his face. "Colonel Dillon Everett, United States Marine Corps; General O'Neill sends his compliments on a job well done under extraordinary circumstances, but as of now Atlantis is under our command; you are relieved."
Elizabeth blinked.
She'd been prepared to accept that they'd have assistance in saving the city from the Wraith, but to be informed that she wouldn't even have a say in the defence of the city she'd been leading for the last year…
"Excuse me, Colonel," she said, stepping forward slightly to look the new arrival directly in the eye- after staring down Kolya during the siege, she'd be damned if she'd back down from somebody who was officially on her side-, "I don't think you fully grasp our situation here-"
"You have have three Wraith hive ships bearing down on your position and precious little to defend yourselves with," Everett interjected, looking at her as though she was a child who refused to leave the adults to do the talking. "That about sum it up?"
"It's actually down to two hive ships now, Dillon," Sumner put in, looking slightly apologetically at this man (Whom Elizabeth was increasingly certain Sumner had already known before this meeting). "We've managed to destroy one already, but as stated in our message our power reserves are limited; right now we're limited to just a few dozen drone weapons and maybe a few hours of protection from the shield if the Wraith start firing at us with everything they've got."
"Yeah, I heard about that; you never give me the easy ones, do you, Marshall?" Everett replied, shooting a briefly joking smile at the man Elizabeth was increasingly convinced was an old friend of his before he became more serious once again. "Still, we've got the ZPM from Egypt being transported up to Daedalus even as we speak; all we need to do is hold the line here until they arrival. Marshall, I'd appreciate it if you could fill me in on our tactical situation here as soon as possible; I need to know how to distribute my men as soon as possible."
"Trust me, Dillon, right now any men you can bring would be a help," Sumner said, nodding at his friend before the two of them began to walk up the stairs towards the conference room, Ford and a group of the newly-arrived marines behind them, none of the soldiers even bothering to let Elizabeth or McKay know they could come along as well.
"Colonel Everett!" Elizabeth yelled, looking pointedly up at the two colonels as they turned around to look back at her. "Fine, you're in charge. But I should be at that briefing."
"Doctor Weir," Sumner said, looking over at her, "when it comes to Atlantis's general operations, I respect your decisions, but this is a military matter; your presence is not required at this time."
"I understand that-" Elizabeth began.
"Good to know," Sumner interjected, unaware or unconcerned- Elizabeth wasn't sure which was worse- that she'd had more to say, before he and Everett continued on their way towards the conference room, evidently regarding the matter as closed.
Elizabeth could only stare in stunned silence at the stairs where she had just been so casually dismissed from the meeting that could decide the future of the city she had come to call home.
So much for bonding with people… she reflected bitterly to herself; even after everything they'd been through since arriving here, Sumner evidently still regarded her as little more than a paper-pushing politician, capable of making diplomatic decisions but unable to cope when the time came for hard military action.
Sighing in frustration, she turned around and walked up the stairs towards her office, unaware of the silent figure clad in black that was watching her from an observation hatch he'd set up in the tunnels he used to get around the city, one fist clenched resolutely before he turned around and began to crawl along the tunnel towards his destination.
"This schematic is based on the information we got in your original message," Everett explained as he spread out a large piece of paper on the conference table, looking curiously at Sumner and Ford as he spoke.
"I take it nothing else has been discovered that might impact any plans?"
"Unless you've recently changed strategies since I last saw you, not likely," Sumner replied, shaking his head with a slight smile. "What did you bring?"
"Given what you said about your drone weapon shortage, the SGC thought it best to provide further weapons for Atlantis, so we've been provided with some of the rail guns that were due to be added to Prometheus during their next refit," Everett clarified, a slightly satisfied smile on his face as he spoke. "They'll deliver an impact velocity of mach-five at fifty miles; a standard magazine will hold ten thousand rounds."
"Nice," Sumner reflected, nodding in approval. "Good call…"
Further conversation was cut off as Doctor Weir walked into the room, looking pointedly at the two colonels before her as they turned around to look at the new arrival.
"Doctor Weir?" Sumner asked, looking uncertainly at her. "Is there something you want us to clarify?"
"Start with everything and work your way up from there," Doctor Weir replied, her arms folded as she glared at the two men. "Colonel Sumner, I have spent a year in command of this facility and you have never before questioned me when it comes to command decisions-"
"With all due respect, Doctor Weir," Sumner countered, glaring pointedly back at her, "that was when we were organising exploration and recon missions; this is a strictly military matter-"
"Concerning the lives of everyone on this base, whom I have personally been responsible for, both military and civilian, for the past several months," Elizabeth interjected; she was beginning to feel increasingly like she was talking to herself with the amount of progress she was making with this situation. "I am not about to put those lives in jeopardy until I at least know how you intend to defend this city."
"I don't need to explain myself to you, Doctor," Everett responded, his tone as cold as though he was talking to an enemy soldier who'd asked an impertinent question rather than someone who was meant to be his equal. "And I don't need your cooperation."
"But you could probably use mine," a voice said from behind them.
Spinning around, the two colonels and their respective men were shocked to see the new arrival. Standing casually behind the monitor that was currently displaying Atlantis and the distance the hive-ships had yet to travel, his arms casually folded as though he was merely there having a chat with some friends rather than in a room full of people who'd want to capture him, stood the Phantom, smiling slightly nonchalantly underneath his silver mask.
"You?" Sumner yelled, staring incredulously at the man before him.
"Me," the Phantom replied, his narrowed eyes underneath his mask the only hint of emotion. "And I'm here to make a deal; keep Doctor Weir and the Athosians in the loop while arranging the defence of Atlantis, and I'll offer you my assistance in exchange."
For a moment there was silence as the expedition's leaders tried to process what they had just learned- Sumner and Everett confused at the terms while Elizabeth was left wondering why John would take such a risk for something so personal-, before it was broken again.
"Excuse me?" Everett said at last, looking sceptically at the man before him as he walked forward a coupe of feet so that he was more directly facing the new arrival. "You'll help us if we keep Doctor Weir informed? Why?"
"For the simple reason that she is the only one of you three whom I trust not to arrange to stab me in the back- metaphorically, anyway; I freely acknowledge that nobody here would stab me in the back, you'd just stick me in a cell somewhere and try and make me talk-, and, therefore, I would prefer her to actually have some say in what happens here," the Phantom replied, his tone continuing to sound frustratingly casual as he looked at the people around him despite the fact that all of them had guns at their sides and he appeared currently unarmed.
"And what guarantee do we have that you'd be honest under those circumstances?" Everett countered.
"My word," the Phantom replied simply.
"The word of a man in a cloak and a mask; forgive me if I'm not exactly reassured," Everett retorted, continuing to glare as he spoke. "What's to stop us just doing what you said originally and-"
Before he could finish the next word, the Phantom had unfolded his arms, drawn an energy pistol of some kind, and then proceeded to shoot the guns of all the soldiers before him out of their holsters- while avoiding causing any actual damage to the guns or the men carrying them- before apparently closing the conference room doors with nothing more than a flick of his hand.
"Because if I wanted to take control of this city for myself, it would be that easy; the fact that I haven't done that suggest that I actually am interested in working with you?" the Phantom asked, a slight smile under his mask as he took in Everett's stunned expression at the Phantom's nonchalant attitude at what he had just done before the expression under the mask reverted to its original neutral look. "We're all going to be in trouble when those Wraith ships get here, and I've been fighting the Wraith- both one-on-one and in their ships- for the better part of the last decade or so; can you honestly say you couldn't use that kind of expertise?"
After another brief, tense stand-off, Everett sighed and nodded.
"All right," he said, everything about his appearance making it clear that he wasn't happy with this arrangement but recognising that he had no other choice. "What do you want, exactly?"
"Oh, it's simple enough; just to know that you'll give everyone in this city an equal role in its defence, that you'll listen to what I have to tell you about Wraith tactics… that kind of thing, you know," the Phantom said, shrugging slightly before he raised one hand. "Deal?"
"…Deal," Everett said; he wasn't happy about it, but the simple acceptance was all that the Phantom needed right now.
"Good," he said, waving one hand to open the conference room doors once again. "So, what did you bring here to help us deal with these assholes?"
Glancing around at his men, each of whom were already now holding their weapons after picking them up from where they'd fallen, Everett momentarily allowed himself to entertain the possibility of trying to make the Phantom tell them what they wanted to know on their terms- he just wasn't… comfortable… relying on someone like the Phantom; the man was an irreverent vigilante with no apparent moral code regarding treatment of prisoners or cooperation with others-, but then he remembered how rapidly the Phantom had disarmed his men and decided against it; starting a firefight wouldn't accomplish anything right now and would probably only end badly for him anyway.
The only thing he could do was try and give the Phantom just enough leeway to be of assistance while making sure to wait for an opportunity to take him by surprise as soon as he dropped his guard; this man was far too dangerous and independent to be allowed to remain the loose cannon that he was at a time when they were at war…
"Right then," the Phantom said, clapping his hands together sharply as he looked around the room at the soldiers gathered before him, a slight smile on his face as though his earlier actions had never happened, "aside from the rail-guns and a few dozen drones, what else did you bring?"
"Six naquadah-enhanced nuclear warheads, twelve hundred megatons apiece," Everett answered, almost operating on automatic; what was important now, as far as he was concerned, was remaining patient until the time was right. "They emit almost zero EM and are otherwise invisible to radar. Once deployed, they will detonate by proximity fuse-"
"Keep about half of them back just in case," the Phantom interjected.
"Excuse me?" Sumner asked.
"The Wraith have this nasty habit of setting up seemingly natural disasters to catch you off-guard when dealing with the more advanced races out here, and their own sensors are very advanced into the bargain," the Phantom clarified, looking pointedly at Sumner. "Deploy two or three, I'm not objecting to that- we could use every advantage we can get at this point, and they should stop the asteroids if nothing else-, but if we put everything we've got out there at once, we're never going to win."
Everett wasn't sure what frustrated him more; the fact that the Phantom was already telling him how to do his job, or the fact that what he was saying actually made sense.
"Right…" he said, trying to regain some sense of control as he looked resolutely at the Phantom. "I understand from the files that you've displayed the ability to control these 'puddle jumpers' by remote from the chair?"
"How- oh yeah, that incident with the… Iratus bug, right?" the Phantom said, clicking his fingers as he remembered the incident in question. "Oh yeah, I can do that; just don't ask me to teach anyone how to do it themselves."
"Excuse me-" Sumner began, looking in frustration at the Phantom.
"Look, the control I need to do that without blowing up the jumper by giving a drone too much power is ridiculously focused; it took me over a month to be certain I could do it without blowing the ship up by trying to take it on a flight of longer than a few metres, and that was when I had nothing to worry about but myself," the Phantom said, looking around in frustration at the two colonels. "I can give your men flying lessons, but the fact remains that I'm the only one who can do some stuff, and even that's only because I've had a lot of time to practise; at the end of the day, I'm your best candidate when it comes to some of the trickier things like getting the control chair working."
"On that topic," Elizabeth said, stepping forward slightly as she moved to address the Phantom- if she was going to be allowed to participate in this she was going to make an active contribution-, "I assume we can count on you to operate the control chair when the time comes?"
"Control chair?" the Phantom repeated, turning to look at her with a brief smile. "Oh yeah, that's easy enough; I couldn't do much practising with firing drones underwater- didn't want to waste them needlessly-, but I've managed to get the chair to do everything else I wanted it to do without any problems."
He glanced back over at Sumner as he saw the man opening his mouth. "And before you ask, the chair as a whole is another system you need to practise using quite a bit before you've got it working properly; if you don't know precisely what you're doing in a tense situation you run the risk of making things worse the moment you sit down in that thing."
"So, in other words, according to you, you're the only one who can effectively get this city to do about half the things it's capable of doing?" Sumner asked, looking pointedly at the Phantom.
"The only one who can do them in the time frame we have, Colonel Sumner," the Phantom clarified, raising a hand as he returned Sumner's glare with one of his own. "If we had more time before those hives get here I could maybe train a few people to do what I can do, but that's about it in this kind of time frame; you let me do it, or we're all dead."
Everett didn't like this; it seemed like their entire hope of survival depended far too much on one figure they knew little to nothing about in terms of his past and his motivations, with only a few legends from a bunch of primitive hut-dwellers in various parts of this galaxy to give them any kind of 'proof' that he wasn't going to turn on them at a moment's notice…
But then he remembered General O'Neill's orders to him before moving out- "Work with the Phantom if you run into him; guy sounds like we want him with us rather than hacking him off by trying to lock him up"- and he knew that, in the end, one thing the Phantom had said was the truth; they needed him.
If anyone was going to get out of this alive…
They needed the best man available to make the control chair work, and right now all the evidence they had made it clear that the Phantom could make Atlantis do things the rest of them couldn't even begin to attempt at this point…
Everett swore under his breath.
He hated it when he had to work with loose cannons like this masked lunatic…
He just hoped that it wouldn't come back to bite him in the ass in the not-too-distant future…
