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
Now.
As John sat in the control chair, for the first time in his life he regretted one key feature of this city; they didn't have any cool viewscreens to allow him to really see what was happening out there. The sensors provided a pretty clear picture of what was going on, of course- the sight of the hive-ship blowing up like that was almost worth the loss of a decent jump- gateship; if he started slipping up and naming them what he wanted to call them he'd attract more attention than he really wanted- to deliver the bomb.
One down, he reflected, allowing himself a slight smile as he turned his mind back to the issue of waiting for the next bomb to be loaded onto the next gateship for deployment, one to go…
"Attention Atlantis," an unfamiliar voice suddenly said over the city-wide broadcast system. "This is Colonel Steven Caldwell, commander of the Daedalus; we are ready to assist you."
John blinked.
Daedalus was here already?
He wasn't sure whether to be impressed or frustrated at their timing; on the one hand, they had managed to arrive before the hive-ships started anything too drastic- the damn things hadn't even activated any of their weapon systems yet-, but on the other hand there was the issue that they hadn't managed to get here soon enough to provide them with an alternative means of taking out the damn hive-ship…
"Weir to Phantom?" a voice said, this one over his 'public' radio (The one the expedition knew he possessed).
"Yes?" he asked, raising his hand to activate the radio in response.
"Daedalus has beamed down the ZPM and McKay is taking it to the power room as we speak," Elizabeth's voice said, prompting a brief smile from John; at least that side of things was going according to plan. "However, he's uncertain how the system would respond to another ZPM being inserted if the city's power is already being used for some purpose; he wants me to confirm with you that you won't raise the shield until he's installed the new ZPM and all power can be directly diverted to the shield."
"Understood," John replied, nodding briefly as he reflected on McKay's request. The scenario he'd proposed was a bit of a question-mark, of course, but if he couldn't be certain what would happen if the ZPM was connected under the conditions McKay was concerned about, he couldn't risk activating the shield until McKay had accomplished his goal; if you could get electric shocks from pulling out a plug while the power was on, he really didn't want to know what could happen if you made a similar screw-up with zero point energy power sources.
As he sat anxiously in the chair, the sensors monitoring the battle waging above them- the hive-ship's sheer size and dart cover weren't exactly making it easy for the Daedalus, but the Daedalus's shields and its smaller structure made it harder for the hive-ship to do any damage in return-, John was already preparing himself for the moment when he might have to send up another gateship to take out the other hive-ship if the current fight didn't go their way…
Once again, he found himself missing the thrill of battle; he might be more useful to the expedition in the control chair than he'd be out there trying to wage a one-man war against the Wraith groups still in Atlantis-, but at least out there he knew that he'd be making a difference; right now all he was doing was waiting for his cue. With the Daedalus up there firing away at the hive-ship, there were too many darts in motion for him to even attempt to send the next gateship up in case it collided with a dart before it reached the hanger, and he wasn't going to try and waste the gateship's drones in an attempt to attack the hive-ship when there were this many darts around; in the end, all he could accomplish at the moment was to sit around and wait for an opportunity to serve as essentially a human 'on/off' switch.
God… he groaned, leaning back against the chair and closing his eyes in reflection. This is just great; even when I'm actually doing something I wish I was back out there kicking Wraith ass…
He might have needed to learn how to fight Wraith to survive, but did he have to have reached the point where he enjoyed it this much? Elizabeth was a diplomat by nature; she'd never-
NOT gonna go there! John berated himself, stopping that line of thought instantly; he'd already promised himself he wouldn't go there, why couldn't he stick to that…?
The sudden awareness of a massive explosion on the sensors drew John's attention back to the battle waging above him, prompting a brief smile as he 'saw'- as much as he could be said to 'see' anything when the information was being transmitted directly to his brain by the chair- the second hive-ship blow up at last, followed closely by the remaining Wraith cruisers; evidently the cruisers had decided that now was the time for a tactical retreat rather than remain to fight something that had already taken out three of their main ships.
Then he noticed the remaining darts turn around and begin to head towards Atlantis, and instantly re-evaluated his original assessment of the situation; at the rate those things were going, by the time they hit Atlantis they'd be the equivalent of seriously massive bullets moving at a rate that could easily shatter any part of the city they hit…
It was official; they were in trouble now. With that kind of destructive force arrayed against them, if McKay didn't get that ZPM installed soon-
"OK, Phantom," McKay's voice said, cutting off his train of thought- a fact that he was particularly grateful for as it wasn't going anywhere pleasant-, "I've got the ZedPM plugged in; get that shield on!"
John was just about to do what McKay had ordered him to when he checked the city's power supply and noticed a problem.
"Doctor McKay?" he said, trying to keep the frustration in his voice to a minimum as he . "As much as I admire your enthusiasm for your job, you do know that you need to actually insert the ZPM to the power systems rather than just put it in the hole, right?"
For a moment McKay was silent, evidently processing what he'd just heard, before he spoke again.
"What; and you couldn't have mentioned that before now?" he yelled, the Canadian scientist sounding increasingly panicked even as John's sensors told him that the city was powering up once more. "I thought it descended into the power core as energy was used up-"
"Later," John said, cutting McKay off as he activated the shield, drawing on a power supply far greater than what he'd been accessing so far, allowing himself a brief smile as the darts- their speed too great for them to stop themselves like they had done when he'd erected the shield earlier- crashed into the shield, generating small explosions (They might have been powerful enough to damage Atlantis but with two ZPMs to draw power from the shield was capable of coping with far more destructive forces than that) against the shield.
For a few seconds John just lay back in the control chair, smiling in satisfaction at the 'feel' of Wraith darts colliding with the city shield while otherwise doing no damage, until he shook that thought off, turned the shield over to the main control room- leaving it activated, of course; with Ancient technology you really had to be careful what you thought-, got out of the chair and headed for the door.
He'd done all he could do here for the moment; right now he'd probably accomplish more back in the main control area.
Looking up at the sound of footsteps, Elizabeth allowed herself a brief smile at the sight of Jo- the Phantom entering the main control tower, a casual smile on his face as he walked over to the control room to join her and Colonel Sumner; Everett was still out looking for any Wraith that might have remained in the city after the initial assault.
"OK, shield control has been rerouted to respond to orders from here; what's the situation inside Atlantis itself?" the masked man asked, looking casually around at the city's two main leaders.
"We've lost contact with Colonel Everett's team somewhere in the southern area of Atlantis, and Lieutenant Ford's team has been discovered with the lieutenant himself missing," Sumner explained, his expression grim as he looked at the man he was only grudgingly working with even now. "According to all available information, we still have maybe around a dozen Wraith unaccounted for in the city- it would have been more if it wasn't for that stunt you pulled with the shield during the first wave-, but we still have to find them on the city's sensors; any assistance you can provide would be welcome."
"Hunting Wraith?" the Phantom said, smiling slightly under his mask as he pulled out his weapon, checking its power cell before he glanced back at Elizabeth. "So long as you don't need me for anything else somewhere else, I'm there."
"Well…" Elizabeth said, briefly contemplating making up a task that would allow her to spend time with him- how often would she get this kind of opportunity to ask John about where he'd come from without worrying about being discovered?-, before she decided against it; as he'd so accurately pointed out on previous occasions, he was their best available expert at fighting the Wraith in any area. "No, you can go."
"Right," the Phantom said, nodding briefly at Elizabeth before he turned to look at Sumner. "If you're having trouble finding Ford, try widening the sensor radius; it's possible he fell somewhere outside the city itself."
With that, the Phantom turned around and walked over to join the rest of the marines as they began to gather their weapons in preparation for the search, leaving Sumner and Elizabeth to look reflectively after him before Sumner broke the silence.
"Interesting man," he said simply.
"Excuse me?" Elizabeth asked, looking at Sumner with barely-restrained surprise; had the colonel just said something positive about the Phantom?
"I'll give him this; he knows what he's doing when he gets into a fight situation, and he knows how to operate Ancient technology with a skill that makes the best men we've got seem like nothing but rank amateurs," Sumner said, his tone slightly grudging even as he spoke- evidently he wasn't entirely comfortable giving a man who was officially a civilian this kind of praise-, his gaze fixed on the Phantom as he left the control room with one of the teams. "What I don't get is where he learned all this…"
Elizabeth was about to ask if that mattered before she stopped herself, realising that it actually tied in to what she herself had been wondering about John; where had he learned how to do everything he was capable of? Had he picked up his fighting style on his home planet- wherever that was-, had he learned how to fight after coming to Atlantis, how had he found out about the city and gained access to it in the first place…?
As much as Elizabeth felt that she could trust John, she couldn't shake the fact that she really knew remarkably little about him…
"Colonel Sumner?" the distinctive voice of Doctor Zelenka said from off to the side, prompting the colonel and Elizabeth to look at where the Czech scientist was currently standing beside a screen displaying the layout of Atlantis. "We believe we have found Lieutenant Ford…"
"You have?" Sumner said, looking curiously at the Czech scientist. "Where is he?"
"That's part of the problem," Zelenka said, indicating an area on the map just outside of Atlantis, a small white dot blinking in a position that had to be at least a couple of hundred metres away from the rest of Atlantis (Elizabeth had never bothered to calculate the specific size of the city herself, but she knew that it had to be fairly large). "He's out here."
Elizabeth didn't need to be a medical doctor to know that it was a miracle Ford was still able to give off any kind of signature for the sensors to detect; even without the recent battle they'd been dealing with and the odds of him getting caught in the crossfire,
"Colonel Caldwell?" she said, activating the radio link to the Daedalus; questions of how Ford was still in a condition to give any kind of signal could wait until he'd been recovered. "One of our men is in the ocean outside our shield, most probably injured. Can you beam him to your ship and then down to our infirmary?"
For a couple of moments there was only silence, the disappearance of Ford's signal from outside Atlantis the only sign that the Daedalus was doing what they had asked- the signal had vanished too rapidly for the reason it had ceased to be Ford's death-, until Carson's voice broke the silence.
"Colonel Sumner; Doctor Weir?" he said, evidently anxious about something. "You'd better get down here immediately; we have a bit of a… problem… involving Lieutenant Ford that I think you should know about."
A couple of hours later, as John stood in the infirmary, the last few Wraith in the city having been eliminated by the search teams- there was no time to worry about attempting to interrogate prisoners when they could have another wave of hive-ships on them at any moment; they just didn't have the resources available to have people guarding the Wraith while they needed every man possible available to man the city's defences-, he couldn't help but wonder if there was something he could have done differently that wouldn't have resulted in the current situation.
Glancing over at where Everett lay in a nearby bed, the man having now aged at least a dozen years since his arrival in Atlantis, John almost couldn't decide who was better off; Everett seemed pretty shaky, but there was at least every chance he'd recover enough on his own to live some kind of normal life, even if he'd need to relocate in order to preserve the secret of the Stargate Program.
Ford, on the other hand…
Even as he looked at the young man lying before him- Sumner and Elizabeth had already moved on to get status updates on the rest of the wounded in the infirmary-, John couldn't help but recall his own experiences with Wraith enzyme.
Ever since he'd killed a Wraith just as it was starting to feed on him- he sometimes wondered how much it had taken from him before he could reach his gun, even after later tests confirmed it could only have been a couple of weeks' worth of life at most- and felt that rush of strength and mental disorientation caused by the enzyme overdose for the first time, the power he'd felt with the initial a sharp contrast to his status after he crashed and burned when the enzyme burnt out of his system…
Even after almost a decade since that close call, the memory of how close he'd come to becoming a Wraith junkie- for lack of a better term- continued to haunt his nightmares on more than one occasion.
He was just lucky that he'd made it back to Atlantis while the enzyme was still strong enough in his system to analyse it on the city's medical scanners; once he'd determined the effect it had on him, he'd resolved to himself never to use that stuff again unless all other options were exhausted.
He might try to maintain some ethical standards, but when you were on your own and facing a galaxy full of Wraith, you had to sometimes put ethics aside in favour of practicality. He tried to save it for when he had absolutely exhausted all other options available to him, but more than once he'd reached a point where he'd no other choice but to use the enzyme to increase his chances; he just always made sure to limit it to no more than what was absolutely required to survive the current crisis.
And now here was Ford- the lieutenant was really a decent enough kid, even if he was a bit rigid in obeying orders at times-, doped up to the eyeballs with the stuff and literally dependent on it for his body to function.
John couldn't help but shudder slightly at the thought of what he might have done to himself if he hadn't retained enough coherent thought to scan himself while the enzyme first entered his system.
He'd thought that he was a monster as he was; with something like the Wraith enzyme in him permanently…
"Weir to Phantom," Elizabeth's voice suddenly said over his radio, cutting off John's train of thought (A fact that was probably for the best, John admitted; that kind of thought never got him anywhere).
"Yes?" he asked, tapping his ear to activate the radio.
"Doctor McKay just activated the city's long-range sensors," Elizabeth said, her tone alone making it clear that she was concerned about whatever she had to tell him.
"Let me guess… more hive-ships?" John asked, taking care to keep his voice low as he glanced around the infirmary; if they weren't publicly announcing anything yet, he wasn't going to be responsible for starting a panic.
"Twelve, to be precise," Elizabeth confirmed. "We're planning on sending Daedalus out to try and stop them before they can reach us- given that our shield only buys us time and our ability to defend Atlantis is limited, Sumner and Caldwell have concluded that our best chance is to take the fight to the Wraith-, but given that you mentioned previous experience-"
"Sumner and Caldwell want to know if I'll be willing to give them a few pointers about how to take them out, huh?" John said, allowing himself a moment's silent contemplation before he nodded resolutely and turned to walk out the door. "OK, I'll do it; just so long as they're not expecting me to go with them on Daedalus, all should be fine."
"Understood," Elizabeth said, terminating the call as John began to head towards the conference room.
He might be fighting with them to defend Atlantis from the Wraith, but John didn't kid himself into thinking that this meant that they'd accepted him; after Sumner had spent the better part of the past year hunting him, he'd be an idiot to willingly enter a confined area like the Daedalus for any reason.
Atlantis might be equally confined in its way, but he knew the territory here and could plan an escape from pretty much anywhere they tried to stick him; if Sumner reverted to his original plan to try and capture him and make him talk, it would be far easier to pull it off in the confined and unfamiliar Daedalus than in the city which the Phantom had lived in for the last twenty years.
The trick now, as far as John was concerned, was working out the best way to give everyone the information and assistance they'd need to survive without giving away the fact that Elizabeth was still the only person on the senior staff he felt certain he could trust…
