Here's the next chapter for you all, questions will be answered and others will be asked. Note: Master Sergeant "Gunny" Richards is the property of DaniWilder, so thanks for letting me borrow him.

I intend to look at all reviews and try to clear up any questions you may have, so if you have any stick them in your reviews and i will try to answer them without giving the game away at the start of each new chapter.

Review Responses

Shadows-of-Realm: Thanks for the correction, i hope others will follow your example. Enjoy the new chapter

Scotius: The point i was trying to convey was that they are only using technology they have a grasp of, as of yet they have been unable to understand the information in the database regarding weapons and shields. As such they are using enhanced Asgard shields and their first attempts at drone weapons which, while not as lethal as the ancient drones, are quite powerful in their own right. Also in the time that Atlantis has been in thier possesion for study they have spent most of that time repairing and restoring, so no more flooded corridors.

DaniWilder: Thank you and I am glad you allowed me to borrow Richards.

Bridge of the Weir

After several days of familiarising himself with his new ship, a lot of time discussing mission directives with General O'Neill, going over the list of crewmembers and one promotion ceremony he was finally taking the opportunity to do the one thing he had wanted to do for days, sit in the command chair. He had to say one thing, all the great advances in technology meant nothing if you were stuck sitting in an uncomfortable chair all day. But he had to admit that if he had to be stuck sitting in a chair for the rest of his days of service then he wouldn't mind it being this one.

Around him crewmembers were manning consoles and taking their stations. His chair was positioned in the centre of the room, while around him, forming a trapezium with him at the centre, were four other control stations. To his immediate left was the helm, while on his left was tactical. On his far left was the science station which could access the main sensors for detailed scans as well as the Asgard beams, they also had control of the hanger doors and shields. To his far right was the communications station.

The ship was finally preparing to get under way. Her mission was to go to the Pegasus galaxy and make contact with their allies, and to take the fight to wraith. Of course for a shakedown cruise she would first be making the quick trip to Earth to pick up a few people. Obviously it would have been a simple matter to simply transport the people to Argus through the stargate but it would be a waste of a good opportunity. Besides in the case of one particular person they were picking up a beam up straight to a holding cell was safer than the problem opportunities a trip through the stargate would allow.

ISIS chose that moment to appear in the corner of the bridge. After several days Sheppard was getting used to her sudden appearances, but it was still courteous of her to not suddenly appear right in front of him.

"Commander Sheppard, all stations report ready. Doctor McKay in engineering reports the ships systems are fully operational and my personal diagnostic has come back clean." She paused. "In other words we are ready for launch."

Sheppard smiled. He may have had his doubts at first but the idea of having an interactive interface on call was actually rather handy. It also helped that ISIS was beginning to develop a decent sense of humour, which was always a strong selling point for an AI.

"Thank you ISIS." He pressed the intercom button on his chair arm. "Attention all hands prepare to depart." He turned to his com officer. "Com, signal Argus to open the hanger doors."

"Argus is acknowledging Commander," said the com officer. "Hanger bay doors are opening."

"Helm, take us up."

"Engaging anti-gravity drives, firing ascent thrusters, retracting landing gear," said the helm officer. "Engaging sublight drives."

The roof of the main hanger split in two along its length. The two massive pieces of metal began to slant in numerous places. Each individual segment closed together until they formed a thick chunk of seemingly solid metal against each wall. Once this was done the anti-gravity drives of the Weir kicked in and the ships weight dropped significantly. As the ascent thrusters fired the ship rose off the ground and its landing gear retracted into the base of the ship as she rose out of the hanger. Like a bird first discovering it could fly the ship surged up the main engines kicking in, forcing the ship forwards. The nose of the ship titled upwards as the main engines continued to fire driving the ship higher and higher. The g-forces, that should have left the bridge crew pinned to the back of their chairs and everyone not sitting down thrown across the room, were non-existent after being dissipated by the inertial dampeners. This allowed the ship to achieve phenomenal speeds without danger to the crew and in what seemed to be no time at all she burst out of the planets atmosphere and into the icy vacuum of space.

"Helm, set a course for Earth and take us into hyperspace."

"Aye Sir."

In front of the ship the dimensional barrier as they knew it split at the very seams as a hyperspace window opened in front the ship. Her mighty engines glowing in the black of space she was carried forwards into hyperspace on a course for the birth place of humanity, Earth.

A few hours later

The Weir tore through the dimensional barrier once again as it reappeared in normal space, beneath it was a familiar blue and green planet, Earth. The ship rapidly slowed down the moment it exited hyperspace, manoeuvring into a geosynchronous orbit over the Pacific Ocean. Or more specifically over the private island that was acting as a harbour for Atlantis.

"ISIS what's the status report," asked Sheppard.

"All stations are reporting green and all systems are fully operational," replied ISIS.

Sheppard hit the intercom button. "Attention all hands, we have arrived at our destination. We have experienced no difficulties with systems and all stations did their jobs admirably, good work people. Now prepare to receive supplies and personnel from Atlantis. You all know what to do"

Sheppard tapped his personal radio. "Rodney come to the bridge, we're beaming down."

"On the way," was Rodney's short reply.

Given the sheer size of the ship it would normally be a good idea to give someone fair warning that they were needed somewhere. Of course if one of the designers of the ship happened to be a fan of Star Trek and a man who had spent the better part of five years maintaining a flying city then some good ideas were bound to rub off. In this case while turbo lifts weren't an option at this point the idea of an internal transport system was, so using the Ancient's idea of transport booths as a design concept they had constructed multiple booths around the ship that utilised fixed point transporters. This meant that traversing the distance from one end of the ship to another became a thing of ease which was very useful if you were in a hurry.

A few moments later Rodney made his appearance and the two of them beamed down outside the Atlantis conference room where some familiar faces were waiting to greet them.

"Welcome back Doctor, Colonel, congratulations on the promotion." Richard Woolsey stepped forward to greet the pair.

Standing beside him were Ronon, Teyla, newly promoted Lt Colonel Lorne and Doctor Keller-McKay.

"It's good to be back here Mr Woolsey, although it's a shame we won't be taking the city with us." He smiled as he nodded to the others. "Congrats on the promotion Colonel."

Evan smiled back, "Thank you Sir."

While this was going on Rodney had moved to embrace his wife.

"Hey handsome, miss me?" Jennifer asked.

He kissed her lightly on the lips, smiling at the intimate contact. "You bet."

John decided to give them a minute while he said hello to the others then broke them up, they had things to do and they required McKay to be down here and not on cloud nine.

"Okay Rodney we have supplies to load up and a few key items to grab so let's get on with it." He turned back to Woolsey. "We'll load up the supplies first then start moving personnel, that'll leave us with our special guest."

Woolsey nodded. "I understand Colonel. I take it you're just going to grab a few things for the trip."

There was a slight glint in John's eye as he spoke, "Yep. I shouldn't be too long I doubt I'll be taking much, just some essentials."

With that he turned and strode out of the control room.

Stocking the ship up on supplies had been a fairly straight forward task. It had simply involved beaming up numerous crates from the SGC containing all things from medical supplies, to weaponry, to food along with a few special items. Of course they didn't need too much in the way of food as the ship not only had the same food replicators as the Odyssey, and by extension all ships in the earth fleet, it also had botanical and greenhouse areas and a galley. But it was nice to have a few herbs and spices for home cooked meals. The only tricky aspects involved beaming up and installing the Atlantis stargate and a number of puddle jumpers into an empty section of the ship that had been specially converted to act as a gate room. Of course they also took the opportunity to grab the dialling crystal so they could connect to Earth from Pegasus.

Loading up on personnel was proving to be a slightly more difficult task. While it was a fairly simple matter to beam up pretty much the entire Atlantis expedition, save for a few personnel who were staying behind to keep an eye on their precious city, making sure they all got to their quarters through all of the bustling corridors was a different matter entirely. It took a few hours, multiple beaming groups and several requests for directions before everyone finally found where they were supposed to be. Of course the regular personnel were all along for the ride, such as Woolsey, Lorne, Teyla, Ronon, Keller, Zelenka, Carson and newly promoted Sergeant Major "Gunny" Richards. Woolsey was coming along for the ride not as the commander of the expedition but to act as Earths diplomat. He had already shown that he was capable of negotiating with the natives, and more importantly he was a recognised and highly acknowledged person when it came to the Coalition. The man had pretty much saved SGA-1 single handed from the Coalition and at the same time given them a say on the Coalitions future, which is the kind of skill that gets General O'Neill's attention and there were no objections from Sheppard when he found out Woolsey was coming along. It was also useful that as a member of the IOA if Woolsey was kept up to date with what was going on then the less experienced members of the IOA back home couldn't complain they didn't get a say in what happened.

Two notable absences from the personnel list were Chuck and Amelia, Atlantis's well known Control Room technicians, who were staying behind to keep an eye on the city. Given their newly founded relationship people would have expected Ronon to be a little disgruntled at being away from Amelia, and that would have been true if Sheppard hadn't had a private conversation with Ronon via subspace before they arrived at Earth. Now, for some unknown reason, he seemed to be rather accepting of the situation and there were already a number of rumours going round as to what on earth Sheppard had told him. At this point though it was anyone's guess as neither men were saying a word, although it seemed Amelia had been talked to by someone else. Exactly who had talked to her though was just as big a mystery.

Atlantis – Stasis Pod Room

Now that all the supplies were onboard, and the ships crew had all been accounted for, they could at last bring aboard their special guest. Of course guest was using the phrase rather loosely since it was being used to describe their Wraith prisoner Todd. Luckily the special accommodation for him was fairly easy to organise as they were simply transferring him from one stasis pod to another. He had actually been in the stasis pod since they had recovered the two ZPM's and confirmed that they weren't going to explode the moment they plugged them in. Now they were going to transfer him to one of the multiple stasis pods onboard the Weir. Pods which would normally be used in an emergency for people who would not otherwise survive long enough for the necessary treatment to become available. By putting Todd in one they were making sure he wouldn't die of hunger because they sure as heck weren't about to feed anyone to him. The idea of feeding him clones had also been taken off the table as their knowledge of the cloning process was not yet advanced enough to guarantee that the clones would not develop even a small amount of consciousness and that was one line they were not willing to cross.

Standing in the stasis room was Sheppard, McKay, Lorne and a couple of burly marines, armed with stunners and P90's. McKay pressed a button on the control panel next to the pod and the wall of ice retracted, uncovering the Wraith encased inside. As the ice fully retracted Todd's knees momentarily buckled due to the surprise of suddenly finding he was conscious again, but he quickly regained control over his lower limbs and rose to his full height. He looked around the room at the assembled party until finally his eyes came to rest on Sheppard.

His deep voice had an echo of a hiss to it as he spoke. "So Sheppard, is it time for a snack?"

Surprisingly Sheppard was actually grinning, "Not yet Todd."

To say Todd was taken back was an understatement. "You mean you actually intend to feed me?"

"Oh there are rules concerning treatment of prisoners here on Earth Todd and one of them is that we have to feed you, but until that time you're just moving to a different room."

Todd deflated and his voice hinted at his annoyance at his predicament, even with guards present he was still cuffed and his feeding hand was covered.

"By room you mean another stasis pod." It wasn't a question just a statement. "How long have I been out?"

"Well done you got it in one and to answer your question about two months, or sixty days to you." Considering the mess they had been forced to clean up thanks to Todd a couple of months back Sheppard figured he was due some ribbing.

Todd mulled this over for a second. "So we're on Earth then, I take it you managed to deal with the hive ship then."

"You'll be happy to hear that it went down with all hands." If they were ever going to agree on one point it was that they were glad to see the back of the Wraith on that particular hive ship. Heck the chance of killing his treacherous second in command was the reason Todd had surrendered the location of the two ZPM's which they had used to power the city.

He tapped his radio. "Beam us up."

In a pillar of white light they disappeared and reappeared in a room filled with stasis pods that were tilted at a slight angle, one of which was already open. The marines prodded Todd as a gesture for him to get in the pod, which he did so, albeit a little reluctantly.

As he settled down in the pod he spoke. "You probably won't answer but I might as well ask anyway. Where are we going?"

Sheppard smiled. "We are taking you home." Then like lightning his hand shot out and pressed a button on the control panel, the stasis pod slid shut and Todd was frozen in place before he could say a word.

Sheppard turned to McKay, "Now that that's out of the way we've got work to do."

Atlantis – Control Room

In a pillar of light appeared Sheppard, Zelenka and McKay along with a large metallic case. The three of them strode over to the main data terminal whilst a couple of nearby technicians carried the case over. They opened the case revealing a large piece of equipment, which had a notably large number of data crystals jutting from its surface. Retrieving a lead attached to the device Zelenka set about connecting it to the terminal while McKay tapped away at the console.

"Rodney the connection has been established," said Zelenka once he was finished.

McKay turned slightly towards Sheppard. "I'm beginning the data transfer now."

"Okay how long till you've copied the entire database?"

"It'll take a few minutes to copy all the files, then about a minute to do a confirmation check. After that we're good to go."

"This sure is one big hard-drive you've built, although I'm surprised it can handle all that data."

Rodney was still tapping away at the console making sure that the information was being properly copied so Radek spoke up.

"It's impressive certainly but not perfect. The way we designed it was to act like a lock box for the data, so unless you transfer the whole lot out of it into a properly designed computer system you can't access individual pieces of information or view what's on the data drive. However the advantage of this is that we can then compress the data being stored so that it all fits inside the drive."

"So if I understand this right then the data is like a letter, so by folding it up you can fit in the envelope."

"That's actually not a bad example," the Czech admitted.

"And now that you understand how it works I'm sure you'll be happy to know the transfer is complete," said McKay.

"That was fast. What about the check?" asked Sheppard.

"That's what I was doing while you two were talking," he said while disconnecting the lead and sealing the case shut.

"You see, I told you that you two make a good team."

McKay just grinned. "Time to finish up then we can hit the road." He tapped his ear piece. "ISIS, beam us to the Core room."

In a pillar of light they once again disappeared only to reappear onboard the Weir in a sizable room. Along each of the three walls was a console and screen that were exact duplicates of those in the data core room aboard the Odyssey. Each of these consoles allowed access to the main Data Core which already contained the databases of both the Tau'ri and the Asgard. With the addition of the Ancient database to this large amount of data it would become the largest depository of data in four galaxies.

Zelenka opened the case and connected the lead to a data port on the middle walls console, once this was done ISIS appeared on a small pedestal in the corner of the room.

"Connection to the data drive has been established, shall I proceed with the transfer?"

"Yes, but transfer the data, don't copy," said McKay.

"Of course Doctor," said ISIS.

A few moments later she said, "Transfer complete."

"That was fast," noted Sheppard.

"She operates at an incredibly high speed which means transferring the compressed data is pretty easy. Now we just need to unlock it." McKay turned to ISIS. "Begin data decompression."

"Processing data," said ISIS.

After a couple of minutes she said, "Data decompressed, the Ancient database has been successful integrated into the data core."

"Well now that's out of the way we can get going," said Sheppard as he strode out the room. "Pegasus galaxy here we come."

A few minutes later a hyperspace window opened in front of the ship and the Weir was on her way.