SGASGA

Chapter 24: History of Violence

SGASGA

Kannar didn't take the nanites reveal as well as Rodney hoped that he would.

"Nanites!" Kannar's raised voice turned the word into a curse. He pointed angrily at Rodney and growled. "Tell me you didn't know it was nanites making Sheppard sick all this time. Didn't purposefully keep this from me, allowing me to endanger my people, for real, instead of with some upset stomach potion!"

"I didn't know!" Rodney stridently denied his accusations. "You think I'd play around with John's life! Have a clue it was nanites and pretend it was just him being dramatic!"

But Kannar didn't accept or deny Rodney's claim, instead turned to the Atlantis doctor and demanded more concise answers. "Is it possible for Sheppard to affect others? Are these nanites programed to transfer hosts?"

"I don't know if they can transfer hosts but by the research in Atlantis, they are only harmful to Ancients," Carson provided the truth as he knew it. Realized he hadn't said something right when Kannar's face heated with greater anger.

Kannar cursed himself for being so trusting, thought how far he'd gone to protect Sheppard and he was a freaking Ancient! "Ancients!? So Sheppard is…"

"No!" Rodney dodged in front of Kannar, knew how deadly this particular misunderstanding could be. "He took a serum to enhance what Ancient DNA he had to follow you through the gate, exactly like we told you. But the nanites…they don't know the difference between a real Ancient and a human dosed with a higher level of ancient DNA. We did not LIE. None of us are Ancients."

Kannar's eyes bored into Rodney, wanted, needed this to be true, that all his trust, all the risks, all the betrayals he'd done in the name of gaining an ally wasn't for nothing. That he hadn't been unknowingly, foolishly siding with the sworn enemy of his people all this time.

The doctor piped in his own proof. "What Dr. McKay is saying is true. John might have one of the highest counts of Ancient DNA in his blood but he's from earth, same as the rest of us. I too have a higher count of that gene but I've not been effected by the nanites in the 2nd Stargate, so there is no reason any of your people would be affected. At least not adversely."

Putting his arms across his chest, trying to process everything calmly, Kannar bit out, "Explain…my people won't be adversely affected but affected all the same."

Rodney jumped back into the explanation. "You know when I returned to Atlantis I was still sick as a dog…"

"As a what?" Kannar interrupted in confusion.

"Dog. You know, furry animal, licks your face, has to be taken outside to do its business," seeing this wasn't clearing things up for Kannar, Rodney abandoned trying to describe a dog to someone who'd never laid eyes on one. "Regardless, I was sick when I left, right?"

"Yes," Kannar could agree on that much at least.

"Well, when I went back through the 2nd Stargate to Atlantis, I wasn't sick at all. No rumbling in my tummy at all. Cured. Instantly. It got me thinking what properties that 2nd gate had no other gate had. Turns out the answer was nanites."

Kannar's eyes skeptically narrowed at this explanation. "Good nanites?" Because he'd never heard that description for the microscopic computers that embedded in a host's body and ravaged it.

"Yes," Rodney snapped at Kannar's tone of disbelief before he relented, "Ok, we haven't seen the good in them before now either but these nanites, they made me well and then, job done, they shut down."

Carson merrily jumped in with his own expertise. "And will leave the system in sweat, urine,.."

"Gross! Ok, too much medical voodoo talk," Rodney cut in. "But yes, they don't stick around once they have completed their programed task. But with John…their task is to attack the host..the Ancient host. And apparently going through another stargate, any stargate only makes them work faster to sicken or . or..…" Rodney couldn't voice the worst-case scenario.

Not wanting the pessimistic outlook to hang over them, Carson theorized, "Knowing the nanites target any anomalies in a host's body, either to heal or to harm the host, it makes sense that, in the case of Major Sheppard, since his body had an adverse reaction to the ATA serum, the nanites have zeroed in on that reaction and exacerbated it. To the extreme. But I believe it's probably we can modify the nanites to treat the hosts with ancient genes as it would human genes."

"And heal Sheppard? Even clear up his memory issues?" Rodney excitedly clutched onto the hope Carson offered.

Carson paled, hadn't meant to offer false hope to his friend. "Rodney, I can't make that determination, not until I do a CT scan, see the damage to his brain functions. But the nanites healing powers should stop the seizures, make his prognosis survivable."

Rodney grappled with Carson's half hope, half gloom and doom diagnosis. Didn't think John would think that him losing his ability to be military leader, fly a jumper or even be a soldier would be an acceptable exchange for his life being spared.

As the Atlanteans divulged more about the nanites, something was surfacing in Kannar's mind, some memories, not his own. His ancestor's memories, something buried there. Felt like he had heard all this before. "Give me a moment," he gruffly announced as he stalked back to the ship and Frata waiting there.

She quickly came to him, "That's not your good-news face."

"I have a good-news face? When did I last pull that out…when I was ten and we caught that rabbit?" because there hadn't been much good in their lives to celebrate lately. Even getting the power source for the generator was turning pretty sour.

Frata returned his sarcastic sally with a lukewarm smile and conceded, "Yeah, it's probably been about that long since I've seen the opposite expression from you. So tell me, what trouble did we stir up letting them contact their people?"

Kannar sighed and rubbed a weary hand down his face. "Not quite sure. I need to meditate for a moment, pull up memories. Can you keep them off the ship while I do it?"

"You think something in our people's past has something to do with them, with Sheppard's sickness?" Frata's surprise evident.

"It just might," Kannar grimly allowed the possibility that all this lay at their people's feet. Like some circle of bad karma catching up with them.

Knowing enough about her leader, that he'd only reveal things to his soldiers when he thought it would be beneficial to their goals, Frata didn't press Kannar for more answers. "Ok. Go access your memories and I'll keep the Atlanteans away."

Entering the ship, Kannar knelt on the floor and pulled out his knife. It wasn't so farfetched, the nanites targeting certain markers in the blood. For his people, blood was a pathway to the past, flowing with more than DNA but memories of the ancestors in his bloodline.

Removing his glove on his left hand, he used his knife to cut a slice along his palm. "I hate this part…" he grumbled before he raised his hand and grimaced before he dabbed his tongue into the welling of his dark red blood. Fought back gagging but luckily that small drop of blood was enough to access the memories of this family line.

It was like getting blasted through a wall, all images coming at you like knives. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and forced the images to slow down, concentrating on one word: nanites. The flashes of memories flew at him slower and slower until one washed over him, drew him in, sank him into the body of his ancestor. His ancestor was speaking to another man.

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"If they discover we have done this, re-engineered their weapon to use against them…they will not banish our people but kill us all."

The other man, older, with a grey beard, faced the younger man, their military leader of their clan. "And if we don't do it, they will follow us through all our gate jumps to our new home. They will come for us, again and again. Think that we are forever their servants, to utilize our intelligence and then keep us in bondage. We must leave, for if they fear we can take Atlantis from them…."

Kannar's ancestor grimly answered their people's best scientist, "They would use the nanites on us. To murder us if we rise up against them. For no other reason makes sense why they have kept this experiment secret from our people."

The older man pointed out the differences in their people and the Ancients. "They have plotted our murder. Meanwhile, we will only sic these nanites on them if they come after us, only plot their deaths so we can be free."

"And you are sure they won't be able to follow us by using the main Stargate?"

The older man shook his head. "It will shut down when our Stargate opens. They want to pursue us..they must use our gate and unknowingly infect themselves with their own deadly nanites."

"But these small machines, these nanites, you are sure that they won't hurt us?"

"Hurt us?' The scientist gave a chuckle. "They will make our people stronger than they've been before. Have faith, dear cousin. We will soon have a new life far from here."

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Kannar's head jerked up as he broke from his ancestor's memories. Sat there as the new information stirred more memories, hazier memories to surface. Rodney and his medical doctor were right, the second stargate in Atlantis was boobytrapped with nanites that targeted any Ancient that traveled through it in pursuit of his people.

Sheppard had been an innocent caught in their trap. 'And my people have been accusing him of being the bad guy, bringing sickness to our people, when all along it's my people who devised it all along.' That was the thing about war and battles, even for things as worthy as freedom, there were always far-reaching consequences, even to the supposed righteous.

Wrapping a cloth around his bleeding hand, Kannar stood up, knew he couldn't let Sheppard die as a casualty in his people's long-ago fight for freedom. Nor could he let his own people now destroy their chance to forge a peaceful alliance with Atlantis. The past could not ruin their future. He would not let it.

Stalking out of the ship, he ordered Frata, "Join me. You need to hear this too."

Coming back to the two Atlanteans, Kannar didn't waste time, boldly declared, "I think you already guessed that it was my people who set up the nanite boobytrap in the 2nd gate when they fled the Ancients' indentureship."

"How did…a second ago you were all growly at us, blaming up for the nanites and now you suddenly know your people…" But Rodney cut himself off mid-rant, stared at Kannar, assessing the man's expression of guilt…and his bleeding hand and made a leap of logic. "You assessed your ancestors' memories, figured out how they used the Ancients' own nanites against them."

"Yes," Kannar grimly replied, wasn't all that proud of those tactics now. "Someone in my village knows more about nanites than I ever would. He will either know how to turn off the nanites in Sheppard's blood or work with your people to figure it out."

"Just like that, we're on the same side? You're collaborating with us?" Carson distrustfully challenged. Kannar, however, wasn't the one to put up a defense on his own behalf. Rodney was.

"Actually, he's pretty much been on our side from the beginning," Rodney endorsed Kannar, before he put an addendum to that statement. "Well, not from the beginning beginning because he had threatened quite convincingly to shoot me. John too. And Sheppard would have recognized a bluff and it wasn't one."

"No, it wasn't," Kannar conceded with a rueful smile. "But we have a pathway to an alliance between our people now and with the generator you provided, my people have what they ultimately wanted from Atlantis."

"You mean beside wishing us all dead?" Rodney contested Kannar's 'the skies are all blue now' outlook. "I vividly remember the greeting we got in your friendly village. Olpwen's knife heading our way and not to give us a free haircut. And later, your people were only too happy to sit back and watch John die in your council hall."

Kannar offered up a reconciling smile, as if Rodney was recounting an old story that hardly had any merit on the here and now, "So it's been a bumpy road. You want Sheppard well. I want my people to have a better future and that means alliance with your people. I think our goals can heal the past, at least it's worth trying, right?"

Rodney thought it was almost funny. Only a few days ago he had been so disrespectful to a tribal leader that he had gotten he and John kicked off the planet. Not to mention Sheppard's dire threat: "You say one more word to enrage these people and I swear you'll be off my away team. Permanently." Which, honestly, still made Rodney break out in a cold sweat.

And now here Rodney was, asked to be an ambassador of peace. John would get a kick out of that turnaround. (Might even forgive him for his failing on that other planet.) Though to be truthful, Rodney knew that he was just working on the groundwork John had laid down. "You heal Sheppard, and we'll consider putting you on our Christmas card mailing list."

"Christmas card.." Kannar asked yet again not understanding these Atlanteans.

"He means we'll be willing to advocate opening up real negotiations for an alliance between our two people," Carson interpreted for Kannar.

Kannar nodded, relieved at even the conditional promise. "That's all I can ask. Now let's get back and pray your soldier Ronon didn't stir up trouble while we were gone."

Carson reassured the other soldier, "As long as no one posed a threat to Sheppard, Ronon will be on good behavior." But at the skeptical look Rodney shot him at his declaration, Carson's confidence fractured. "He would be, right?" he worriedly asked Rodney.

Rodney didn't answer directly, because, honestly, he still wasn't great at predicting which way Ronon would go in a particular situation. John was their resident Ronon expert. What Rodney did know was Ronon liked a good fight…but he valued his friendship with John more. "Good behavior? Questionable. Won't go attack dog if John's being treated well? Probably."

Kannar sent up a fervent plea that his people were being, if not gracious hosts, at least not threatening ones in his absence.

SGASGA

John had just managed to find that nirvana zone where he could shut out his body's pain almost enough to sleep when someone was shaking his shoulder, speaking too loudly. "What? I'm awake.." he groggily retorted, though his eyes remained shut. But someone grabbing his arms and yanking him upright on the bed jarred him awake fast.

Ronon's face hovered by his, and his friend wasn't wearing his nice face. Which, honestly, Ronon wearing his nice face was a rare thing, only happened when they weren't in the comforts of Atlantis and nobody was trying to kill them. So yeah, super rare. And apparently not the situation at hand.

"House is on fire, Sheppard. We gotta move," Ronon commanded.

That announcement brought John wide awake. It had him identify it was actual smoke settling down from the ceiling of the room and not a product of his sleepiness. "Guess I've finally worn out my welcome," John sardonically quipped, would lay odds who had the guts to light the firebomb while Kannar was away: Olpwen. Because some people never missed a chance to burn the world down so they could get ahead.

SGAT

TBC

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Thanks for reading! And yup, it was so time for another cliffie!

Cheryl W.