Well, here it is, the next installment of Angels on Atlantis. I got the idea from one of the episodes right after Woolsey took command of the Atlantis expedition from Carter.
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The teams living on Atlantis swiftly became a thorn in the Wraith side, especially with Max's team, and Sheppard's team.
The routine was simple: gate in, blow up any Wraith outposts found, and gate back home. Things ran this way for roughly three months when Max and her team happened upon a lush, verdant world, seemingly untouched by the Wraith and their horrors.
The team spread out, hampered by the underbrush, looking for any indications of Wraith presence. Finding nothing, they decided to return to the gate.
Angel had just cleared the edge of the forest when she heard the signature whine of a Wraith Dart approaching.
"Wraith Dart, incoming!" she yelled into her radio.
Hearing it still coming, she made a dash for the gate, not wanting to get caught by the approaching Dart. She was halfway across the field when the Dart's culling beam was engaged, and it touched her, storing her as an energy pattern in the buffer. The moment she was stored, the beam was switched off, and the Dart dialed a Stargate address.
They were gone before Max could do anything to stop them.
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When Angel awoke from the stun effect she found herself strapped against a wall with a membrane across her front, holding her in place. She didn't recognize where she was, but she could tell she was in a lab of some sort.
It was all she could do to not loose it then and there.
A Wraith commander walked past, then he came back, stopping in front of Angel.
"The queen has ordered me to tell you why you are still alive," he hissed. Angel fought to suppress a shudder. "We are developing new ways of creating our ships."
"What sort of new ways?" Angel asked politely. In truth, their very presence made her skin crawl. It didn't help that she could sometimes catch glimpses of their thoughts.
It wasn't pleasant.
"We intend to start with an existing frame," the commander said. He withdrew a small knife, and Angel cringed back as far as she could. Fortunately the commander just slashed away the membrane holding her to the wall.
Angel gratefully stepped away from the wall, brushing herself off.
"Come," the commander stated imperiously; it was not an order to be refused, and Angel complied, trying to figure out what they meant about the 'existing frame' part.
They entered a room with several guards, and the commander huffed as soon as the door had closed. The guards in the room grabbed Angel and roughly placed her face-down on an operating table, kicking and sceaming. The commanded beckoned towards another Wraith in the room, who proceeded strap Angel to the table, then flipped it over, and then attempted to force Angel to drink a glowing liquid.
"Drink it," the commander ordered, "or I'll feed on you." Angel locked her jaw in defiance.
"You have decided that I am not a viable subject for this, and will return me to the world you found me on," she ordered mentally.
The scientist blinked, then held the flask to her lips. "Drink," he said gently.
The commander moved forward, holding out his hand. With a sudden jerking motion, he brought his hand down onto Angel's chest, and fed deeply. After several moments, Angel was close to death. The commander then reversed the flow, giving back everything he had just taken.
"Now drink!" he ordered.
Angel grimaced but did as ordered, ingesting the entire flask of glowing fluid. The guards then undid the straps restraining her and carried her into a cell, where they left her body to process what had been ingested.
She quickly fell asleep, one of the side effects of the formula. As she slept, her skin began turning green, and plantlike tendrils began growing from her arms and legs.
Four hours after she had been placed in the cell, a pair of guards opened the cell, and forced Angel to her feet, waking her up in the process.
"Where are we going?" she asked, confused. "What's going on?"
The Wraith didn't answer, just roughly helped her along to the Dart bay where the scientist was waiting with an organic power cell.
Some sort of new instinct in her caused the tendrils to reach out to the power cell, snatching it away from the scientist, who had surrendered it easily, knowing what was likely to happen.
He then huffed, and the guards moved her towards a special airlock that had been grown for this purpose. He shoved three more power cells into the airlock with Angel, then closed the inner doors, and opened the outer ones just a crack to release the air before opening the doors all the way. Angel swiftly returned to unconsciousness in the vast coldness of space as the inner door was opened slightly, pushing her out and away from the cruiser she was aboard.
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"Report on your experiment," the queen ordered silkily.
"The effects of the formula are promising," the scientist hissed. "Enough had been grown within the space of four hours that it's continued growth would have threatened this vessel."
"So what have you done to remedy the situation?" the queen asked, gliding closer.
"I surrendered four power cells to speed the growth, and as I had suspected, it assimilated them quite greedily. I then ejected it into space to allow it to finish it's growth without being a threat to this vessel," the scientist replied smugly. "We can continue to monitor the progress with the sensors or the smaller vessels."
"How large will it become?" the queen asked eagerly, her cool exterior slipping.
"I…do not know," the scientist replied, "Though I suspect it may surpass the size of this vessel."
"Excellent..." the queen hissed sibilantly. "You have done well; you may take two of our food supply for your nourishment."
The scientist bowed, then left to retrieve his next meal.
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Out in space, the tendrils covering Angel swiftly adapted to the rigors of space, hardening into a space-worthy carapace, though continuing to grow with the power gained from the four power cells they had been given.
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The first two weeks after Angel had been taken were very painful for Wraith factions with equipment on the ground. Raids were run in which Max and her team would thoroughly search the building, then destroy it if Angel wasn't there.
It was not to last, however, as Max began to get discouraged, wondering if she was even alive any more. Atlantis slipped into a depression, forcing Sheppard to stay in the city for the sake of everyone else getting stuff done.
By the fourth week, Max had almost stopped eating, and rarely left her room.
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It had been two months since Angel had been taken, and the growth had been considerable. She now had sublight and hyperspace engines, and had used her new mobility to move in closer to the star that the other cruiser was orbiting. The warmth and light had served to accelerate the growth somewhat, and she found herself regularly correcting for a larger mass. Only a month previous, a Wraith transport vessel had attempted to board her, but the queen's influence was not enough to make Angel open the doors to her hangar bays.
The growth was complete. Angel was now a fully functioning Hive ship. Had she still been human, she would have taken a deep breath to steady herself, but there was no air in space, and she wasn't human anymore.
Her portside plasma cannons powered up and fired a salvo without warning, destroying the cruiser before they had a chance to get away.
With that done, there was nothing left to do except charge her hyperdrive and jump to Atlantis.
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"Dr. Wier, we have Wraith Hive ship on long range sensors, heading straight for us!" Chuck said.
"A Hive ship? Are you sure?" she asked. It would not do to be panicked over something that wasn't there.
"Not completely," Chuck admitted, "I'm still working on getting the hang of reading these images."
"I understand. Rodney?" she called into her radio.
"What is it, Elizabeth?" Rodney asked, "I'm quite busy at the moment."
"You might want to get up here..." Dr. Wier replied. "We think there's a Hive ship on long-range sensors, heading straight for us."
"You think?" Rodney repeated.
Dr. Wier smiled slightly on her end of the radio, sensing that Rodney was about to get started on a rant.
"Chuck is still learning, Rodney. Cut him some slack."
"I'll be up in a few minutes." McKay replied, then cut the link.
Four minutes later, McKay walked into the Gate room and up the steps. "What do you have?" he asked tiredly.
The gate technician pointed toward the vague shape on the sensor screen.
"Yes, that's a Wraith Hive. I'll go down to the Chair and let Sheppard know."
"McKay?" Dr. Wier asked.
The scientist stopped short and looked back at the civilian leader.
"See if Sheppard would be willing to convince Atlantis to let him out of the Chair without shutting down."
McKay nodded. "Sure thing."
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Bloodangel winced as she departed hyperspace, the radiation wasn't good for her outer skin, and once it got to a certain point, she had to drop out to repair the damage. There was some good in all of this though, as she was moving at one-quarter sublight towards Lantia, starting at the edge of the system.
Sometime during her hyperspace jump, she had changed her name from Angel to Bloodangel, seeing as how she really wasn't the same person who had been forced to drink the fluorescent formula in the belly of a Wraith cruiser.
Her connection with Atlantis was still there, and she began seeking out the ancient city's signal as she slowly moved through the darkness of space.
After a particularly intense round of scans, Bloodangel found Atlantis' signal, steadily ebbing weaker. After a quick check, Bloodangel discovered that it was not due to a lack of power, nor was the city attempting to hide; she was mourning for Angel. The knowledge spurred Bloodangel to send full power into her engines, sliding through space at half the speed of light.
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Four people with a sufficiently high ATA gene were sent out in Jumpers to investigate the approaching Hive while Sheppard remained restrained to the Chair by some sort of energy field that Atlantis was generating to hold him in place. Atlantis couldn't bear the thought of loosing him so soon after loosing Angel, and was determined to keep him close.
"Rodney?" Sheppard asked, unable to see the scientist.
"I'm here, John," Rodney said nervously.
"Oh, come on," Sheppard said, "I'm not about to die or anything, but Atlantis won't let me go. I want you to tell Max and her friends that a Hive is on it's way."
"I doubt they'll take that news very well," Rodney muttered.
In truth everyone on the base, with the exception of Ronon, feared and respected the avians who had come to work with them. After Angel had been taken, Max alternated between depression and undirected rage; it was so bad that she had seemingly lost her aversion to weapons, maniacally firing into hordes of Wraith whenever she could. On the city, it was a fifty-fifty chance that Max would bite someone's head off if they even
twitched wrong; some people were even too scared to think too hard around her for fear she'd somehow hear them and lash out.
This was why Rodney was nervous.
The doorbell chimed in Max's quarters.
"Who is it?" Max asked listlessly.
"It's me, Rodney. Open up?" came the muffled voice.
With a sigh, Max opened the door. "What is it?"
"There's a Hive ship approaching," McKay said.
"OK, see ya!" Max said, shoving the scientist out of the way. She clicked her radio onto the channel that the Flock used. "Gear up!" she ordered "Hive ship approaching."
Within five minutes, they were running up the stairs for the Jumper bay. For some reason Iggy was the best pilot after Angel, the Jumper's sensor systems somehow being able to somewhat replace his sight; no one knew exactly why that was.
Pushing the small ship to it's limit the Jumper quickly overtook the other four that had been launched, as they weren't terribly interested in seeing combat action.
"Wimps..." Iggy muttered, shaking his head.
They cleared the atmosphere just as the Hive cut power to it's engines, and stopped in a high stationary orbit over Atlantis.
"Uh, Atlantis, this is Max. The Hive just stopped moving…how do we proceed?"
"What do you mean?" Dr. Wier asked.
"How do we get on board the ship?"
McKay got on the line at that point. "Do you see any open doors?"
As if on cue, the main doors to the hangar bay opened, releasing a large cloud of gas.
"Yep, I think we just found our way in!" Max said cheerfully.
Iggy swung the Jumper around, heading for the now open doors, watching through the sensors to see what was going on.
"Um, whoever's controlling this hive doesn't seem to feel like fighting," Iggy announced.
"What do you mean?" Max asked.
"There's no power buildup to suggest that they're about to fire weapons, and I'm not seeing any Darts…at all!" Iggy replied. He gently landed the Jumper on the organic hangar deck, and powered down the Jumper as great clouds of stored atmosphere were vented into the massive room.
As soon as the door was open Max spilled out of the Jumper with the rest of the Flock and the fanned out somewhat, looking for any signs of danger.
The entire ship reverberated with one word. "Welcome…"
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Nobody left any reviews on the last chapter, so I don't feel like answering anybody! Questions? Comments? Leave a review, and I'll get back to you!