Unexpected by Oparu
Author's Chapter Notes: Elizabeth and Sam talk about love. Lorne and Zelenka search for Teyla and Carson. Teyla leaves Carson alone in the cold. The fleet strikes back again Asura.
Thanks to Shannon and Heimedall for betaing
Thanks to Shannon and Heimedall for betaing
Sam collapsed onto the bench next to Elizabeth and leaned back against the wall, sighing as she rolled her head along her shoulders. "Are all nine hundred people here?"
"No," Elizabeth laughed initially and then grew stiff. It had been over an hour since she'd heard from control. John kept trying to get her to relax, reminding her that their people were the best. Lorne and Ronon could find Teyla.
"I think it's close though," Sam teased as she closed her eyes. "It's beautiful," she murmured before she opened them again. "This whole city is just beautiful."
"Thank you," Elizabeth sighed softly and tried not to dwell on the coldness of the stars. "I miss the ocean."
"Rodney said we'll need to land again," Sam mentioned over the edge of her cup. "The city's air circulation isn't up to one hundred percent yet."
Elizabeth blinked slowly before pressing on the center of her forehead. Wondering what she'd give to wake up and have no complaints from her body, she dropped her hands back into her lap. Her left hand caught slightly on the roundness of her stomach and she stopped herself before she rested her hand there.
"Do you think you and John will be next?" Sam asked as she rubbed the handle of her cup. Jack was in the center of a group of people, laughing as he glanced over her way. Meeting his eyes for a moment, however briefly; sent a thrill up the back of her neck.
"Next?" Elizabeth repeated softly. Her stomach was harder than she remembered. She thought her belly would be softer, but it wasn't. She stopped her hand and looked over at Sam. "I don't understand."
"He's adorable..." she pointed over with her cup. John was over in the corner behind a plant, waiting for four-year-old Maddie to find him. Cameron and Jeannie shared a piece of cake and watched as the two of them chased each other around Rodney. "John is really excited about the baby," Sam explained with a smile. "We were working on Jack's battle plan and he kept getting this funny grin."
"Oh," Elizabeth replied quickly. It took her a moment to pull her mind back. "It's not the best time."
"Is there a good time to have a baby?" Sam teased as she swirled the liquid in the bottom of her cup. "It took us years to figure us out. Don't let that happen to you," she warned softly. "Life is so fragile here."
"Maybe we just never saw how fragile it was before," Elizabeth replied darkly. How many times had she passed up the chance to talk to her mother? How many cups of tea had she put off until another day? Her eyes stung and she stopped trying to fight the tears giving her the pounding headache in the middle of her head. "I was so stupid..." she trailed off, remembering things she'd given up.
"Do you cry at all weddings?" Sam wondered shyly as she caught sight of Elizabeth's tears. "My dad used to have to retreat mysteriously to the bathroom..."
Elizabeth laughed, but it caught in her throat and choked into a sob. "I'm sorry," she stammered as she wiped at her eyes.
Setting down her cup, Sam caught her hands and stopped her. "It's okay," she promised softly. "You can blame hormones."
"Hormones..." Elizabeth shook her head and wished Sam would let her dry her face. "I can't just..."
"No one's watching," Sam assured her. "I'm not going to think less of you," she continued softly, "or start challenging your authority because I saw you cry."
"I shouldn't..." Elizabeth argued with herself. She didn't know Sam. Except for Teyla she had barely allowed herself to get close to any of the women in the city, and Teyla certainly had her own problems at the moment. Worrying about Teyla shocked her back to reality. "They should have contacted us by now, the rescue teams..."
"Do you love him?" Sam interrupted, forcing Elizabeth back to her personal life.
Elizabeth jolted, sitting up straighter and immediately looking away from Sam's face. The question tore at her. John loved her. She'd seen it shining blindly in his eyes when he looked at her. He'd admitted it. "I'm carrying his child," she replied evasively. "He sleeps in my bed."
"You didn't answer the question," Sam correctedArtemis gently. She got up for a moment, walking to the table of food; she retrieved one of the cloth napkin scraps. She sat down again and handed it to Elizabeth. "Do you want to be with him?"
"I can't be without him," Elizabeth whispered weakly. She rubbed her tears away with the napkin, but fresh ones replaced the old. "Everything's changing, and this city has to protect a more precious burden each day. We've lost so much already..."
"...we're growing," Sam interjected. "We're creating. Jack and I got married..." she stopped dead and grinned sheepishly. "Do you have any idea how long we've waited? How many times I knew I would die alone because I'd let go of my best chance...my only chance to be truly happy? We're human and we survive. It's what we're best at doing."
"What's the difference between loving him and clinging to him because I'm terrified?" Elizabeth demanded bitterly. She couldn't help thinking that Sam was right on a darker level than she realized. They were past living and into the darkness of gritty survival. She was pregnant because she needed a reason to keep going.
"I think you know," Sam offered as she reached across to the other woman's shoulder. "You know..."
"...I don't," Elizabeth finished, starting to tremble slightly. "I honestly don't. John's in every part of my life. Part of him is living inside of me, but do I love him?" Her hand crushed the damp napkin against the red silk covering her stomach. "I can barely look at myself in the mirror," she admitted finally. "I can't face it..."
Sam hugged her; impulsively folding the other woman into her arms. Elizabeth's shoulders were cold, and she wondered if she should get one of the men to give up their jacket. "It's okay," she promised gently. "It's okay. You're doing great."
"I'm working too hard," Elizabeth argued as she let herself cling to Sam. "I feel like hell."
"I've heard that's part of being pregnant," Sam reminded her gently. "At least...it was in the last movie I saw. Can't say I have any first hand experience..." she trailed off and squeezed a little tighter. Her recently broken ribs protested indignantly, but Elizabeth's breathing slowed.
"My breasts hurt," Elizabeth admitted shyly as she lifted her head from Sam's shoulder. "They've done nothing most of my life, and now they feel like I let Ronon train me in hand-to-hand combat."
"You did?" Sam wondered with a worried look.
"Once," Elizabeth nodded with a wry chuckle. "For about seven seconds," she continued. "Teyla let me train with the Athosian teenagers after that."
"I see," Sam replied as she retrieved the damp napkin and cleaned tears from Elizabeth's face. "I don't think anyone, especially John, is going to rush you into anything."
"I should be..." Elizabeth cut off but bit her lip and finished, "I should be able to tell him. Show him...be more than..."
"Love sneaks up on us," Sam explained gently. "One day I'm out trying to save the galaxy, minding my own business, and the next I'm wondering how I'm going to make it through the night without him. When you're not looking, I think you'll find it." She rubbed Elizabeth's shoulder once more and looked over at the man who was now her husband. Jack's quietly concerned glance asked her more than anyone else could have fit into a minute of time. She smiled back, reminding him just how lucky he was. "Now...I have it on good authority that the cake is amazing..."
Sam stood and reached down towards Elizabeth. "Come on, Jack wants to pontificate about the wonders of marriage and we're wasting his chance."
"Give me a moment?" Elizabeth begged softly.
Sam nodded as she watched Elizabeth stare down at the crumpled napkin. "Don't take too long," she pushed before she walked away.
Elizabeth's fingers cupped the small roundness of her belly and she really looked down at herself. Beyond the aching fullness of her breasts, her stomach had changed without her notice or permission. It seemed that John's child was as confidant as he was that her heart would learn to accept them. Was it her part of the child that made her dizzy? Was it the magnification of her own apprehension that turned her stomach?
"Or hormones..." Elizabeth whispered to herself. Her dress swished around her feet as she finally stood up. With her tears spent, her headache had faded to a foggy feeling that wasn't entirely unpleasant. John was waiting for her, watching as she made her way through the crowd. His arm went immediately around her back.
"Warm enough?" he asked politely. He started to shrug out of his jacket.
Elizabeth started to insist otherwise, but now that she thought about it, she was cold. Letting him hold out his jacket, she slipped her arms into it. "Did you hear from Lorne or Ronon yet?"
"No," he straightened the collar of his Genii dress jacket around her neck. John's lips with thin with concern. "But, Ronon can track Wraith through anything," he shrugged and studied her.
"You look good in black," Jack decided lightly as he snuggled closer to his new wife. "So...do I get a whole night for my honeymoon? Or do you intend to drag me out of my wedded bliss?"
"The mission will wait for you, General," Elizabeth promised softly. John's jacket smelled like him and somehow that calmed her stomach. "We're launching the Artemis at thirteen hundred, so you can sleep in."
Jack looked down at his watch and back at her with quiet dismay. "That's only twelve and a half hours from now," he paused and downed the rest of his wine. "Let's go..." he playfully started to drag Sam towards the door.
She laughed and kissed his cheek, glowing as she met his gaze. "We have time," Sam insisted.
Jack rolled his eyes. "We've wasted so much until now and you can still look at me and say we have time?"
Sam laughed again; radiating her joy so palpable warmth suffused the room. John smirked and snuck his fingers inside the jacket over Elizabeth's hip. Cameron, Rodney and Jeannie joined the circle. Madison was fast asleep in her uncle's arms and he was glowing nearly as much as Sam.
"She likes me," he announced in a whisper. "She really likes me."
Jeannie shook her head and accepted the cup Cameron passed to her. "I think they're both the same age mentally," she confided to the group. "Though, you were having a good time as well, John. Maybe I should loan her to you so you get some practice..."
Cameron joined her and chuckled when John looked down shyly. Elizabeth watched as Daniel and Vala disappeared into a darker corner of the balcony. She watched in quiet surprise as Daniel reached for the alien woman's face, pulling her closer to him. Her soft smile as Daniel and Vala kissed made everyone else turn and look. Jack raised an eyebrow and Sam's smile grew a bit brighter.
"Gotta love weddings," Jack teased as he raised his glass. "To Sam, the most beautiful bride in this galaxy, or any other she happens to be in." Laughing as he kissed his wife, he clinked his cup into those of his friends.
The gate faded as the glistening blue wormhole evaporated. Ronon slammed his fist into the side of it and glared up at the control room. "Empty...again," he growled as he followed Zelenka and Lorne up the stairs towards control.
Zelenka sighed and stared down at his computer. "The DHD on the second planet Teyla took Doctor Beckett to is one of the oldest I've seen and barely in working order," he explained to Lorne because Ronon was no longer listening. "It predates the city by several hundred years, possibly longer than that. We're lucky I was able to get any coordinates from it at all..." he drifted off as Ronon glared at him.
"Fix it," Ronon demanded darkly. "Find them." He didn't look back as he stomped off towards his quarters.
Lorne gave the scientist a sympathetic glance. "How many planets do we have left to check?"
"Thirty-one, based on the address the Lantian library thinks are still viable," Zelenka replied as he straightened his glasses on his nose. "However, it is possible that Teyla was possessed by the Wraith or somehow affected by them and she used gate addresses only known to them.."
"Which means we may never find them," Lorne finished for him. "Why take Beckett? She's much closer to Sheppard or McKay..."
"Perhaps the Wraith have a special hatred for Beckett," Zelenka mused as he plugged his portable computer into the mainframe. "He did come up with the retrovirus that makes them human."
"Do you think they're all right?" Lorne wondered quietly as he watched Zelenka boot up his computer. "It doesn't have to be Wraith, does it? Teyla could just be out of her mind, confused..."
"You think?" Zelenka wondered over the computer. "I don't know if any of us ever get that lucky."
"We'll find them," the major repeated optimistically. He settled in a chair next to Zelenka and waited patiently. "We missed the wedding," he pointed out lazily as he watched the two computers interact. "I was going to head over to the balcony...see if there was any food left..."
Zelenka looked up instantly from his work. "That's a wonderful idea," he interrupted quickly. "Let's go," he insisted as started away from the desk. "All I've had today are those terrible MREs..."
Lorne shared his disgusted face. "We're down to the last of our stores too," he agreed with a wince. "Chili macaroni has got to be one of the worst flavors an MRE can come in. I didn't mind it so much when we still had the BBQ ribs...those at least are covered in sauce so you don't care what it tastes like."
Laughing as he walked along beside him, Zelenka nodded. "I went a few trips with the Russian Stargate teams, back in the Milky Way and my commander used to get into big arguments with the quartermaster when they played cards..."
"Uh-oh," Lorne said, grinning wickedly as they headed down the hall.
"One mission we had nothing, but potted meats and rye bread for two weeks," he explained and shivered at the memory. "We made him stop playing cards after that."
"Good idea," Lorne agreed as he made way for some of the more intoxicated revelers leaving the party. His watch read oh-three hundred and he couldn't help wondering what trouble everyone had gotten into. It wasn't every day a general got married.
Doctor Jackson was up ahead, laughing as he leaned against one of the glowing corners of the grey wall. Vala crashed alongside him a moment later, laughing and finishing the last of her sparkling wine before her metal cup crashed to the floor. She turned into Daniel's arms and Lorne and Zelenka snuck past as she melted his resolve with a kiss.
"Do you think they even saw us?" Lorne wondered with amusement as he hid around the next corner with Zelenka.
Zelenka shook his head quickly. "I don't think they saw anything..." Still fairly amused, he continued down the hall.
When they finally made it out to the grand balcony it was mostly deserted. Sam and Jack were still dancing lazily by the part of the PA system Rodney had rigged up as a stereo. Slow music, unrecognizable and wordless, drifted across the balcony.
"Who had this CD?" Lorne wondered as he tried to place the melody. "I don't..."
"Rodney got it from the database," Zelenka offered as he started at the head of the buffet table. "The Ancients had music from all parts of the galaxy. Some of their archive is older than that DHD..."
Lorne stacked finger foods onto his plate and licked his thumb clean of a dark red sauce. "How long will it take the computer to run the gate addresses?" he asked. Dumping the last of some kind of fruit salad onto one corner of his plate, he paused over the barrel of sparkling wine from the Genii. "Are we going out again tonight?"
Zelenka shook his head and filled a cup of wine. "No, the computer will not be finished with its analysis until after we're moving on the Asuran home world," he explained. Balancing a piece of cake over the top of his cup, he grinned over his food at the major. "I get to manage the shield systems on the city," he said as he stuffed a piece of spiced meat into his mouth. "You?"
"Stand-by in the jumper bay," Lorne replied as he sank onto a bench near the railing. "Transporting medical teams and damage control," he finished.
"Hopefully we'll stay in the bay," Zelenka wished and raised his cup thoughtfully.
Lorne thudded his glass against his friends. "Hopefully the shields won't need any work either," he toasted. Passing his plate across, he pointed at a few piece of meat. "You have to try this, did you get any?"
Reaching across and grabbing a piece with his fingers, Zelenka grinned broadly as he closed his eyes in delight. "Excellent," he replied zestfully. "We should have more weddings," he chuckled as he shoveled rice pilaf into his mouth.
"Who's still over there?" Lorne wondered as he finished his fruit salad.
"General O'Neill," Zelenka started as he glanced over towards the stragglers. "Colonel O'Neill, Colonel Sheppard's sitting in the corner there."
"We should report to him," Lorne sighed as he finished his the last of the food on his plate. He ran a piece of bread over his plate and cleaned up the last of the sauces. "He's not going to be happy."
Zelenka nodded and shared Lorne's sigh of resignation. "Do you see Doctor Weir?" he asked apprehensively. "She's going to give us that look..."
Lorne winced and collected Zelenka's empty plate. "I hate that look," he agreed softly. "Least we didn't lose Sheppard..."
Zelenka shuddered and followed Lorne over to the bins full of dishes. "Who drew dish duty?"
"Edison's team," Lorne answered with a wicked smile. "They're the most behind on their mission reports." They both shook their heads. "Ready?"
"Yes," Zelenka replied nervously as he glanced over in the corner.
John had watched her dance with everyone; Rodney, Doctor Jackson, Teal'c, Jack, and many of his own troops. He had missed Teyla's quiet presence and hearing what she thought about an Earth wedding ceremony. Major Lorne had saved him nearly as often as Ronon had and if anyone could track her and Beckett down, it would be the two of them.
Elizabeth hadn't finished her thought. Whatever she had meant to say before the alarm had been lost to her worries that followed. Carson and Teyla were part of her expedition; her people. After they went missing, nothing in her life mattered. No small nuance of emotion that passed between her and her lover could make up for her people being missing.
He wondered sometimes if that was all he was. If he was just the man in her bed; the man who fathered the child she was terrified of. John smiled softly as he watched Sam and Jack sway to the music and remembered the end of his own wedding. The smell of starch in his dress blues ran through his mind with the trace of perfume he remembered.
He'd been so young then. She'd been young and laughing in his arms. There was no Replicator fleet bearing down on them. No insane ascended beings taunting their dreams. Back then it had been him and her and the vows of two innocents who thought it would last forever. Maybe that was why it failed. There was nothing more than love between them and they had failed.
Elizabeth's head was heavy and warm in his lap. Her dark hair cascaded down over his thigh and tangled into his hand. He rubbed the back of her head lazily, calming her as she slept. He wondered if she knew he was there; if she was becoming used to his constant presence. He'd given up off-world travel and the dangerous missions that had become his forte. He'd given up his team, traded them for her and the child sleeping within her and she couldn't even meet his eyes and confess her feelings for him. That was assuming she felt anything at all.
Someone touched his shoulder, startling him from his thoughts. Zelenka and Lorne circled around him and Lorne knelt down to his level. "We haven't found them yet, Sir," he whispered.
"Are you continuing the search?" John whispered back. Glancing down at Elizabeth, he wondered if she would forgive him for not waking her.
Lorne nodded and Zelenka added gruffly; "We're waiting for the computer to sort out the rest of the possible gate addresses." He explained softly. "Thought we'd get something to eat..."
"...was it a good wedding, Sir?" Lorne wondered in a more personal tone. Addressing his commander out of uniform at a party didn't count as a formal situation, and he watched the colonel start to smile.
"Yeah," John explained contentedly. "Everyone really enjoyed it."
"It was short then, Sir?" Lorne teased, remembering how apprehensive John had been about attending earlier that day.
"Elizabeth does a nice wedding," John replied as he stretched his shoulders as carefully as he could. Part of his back was starting to go numb from the way he was sitting, but he couldn't bring himself to wake her. "She's probably going to be booked solid after this one," he guessed with a soft smile. "It'll be the middle of next year before we get a name for the baby worked out."
"The baby?" Zelenka tightened his forehead in thought for a moment, his eyes wandered down Elizabeth's sleeping form and he remembered. "Right," he answered himself in a strained whisper. "Doctor Weir must need her sleep."
"I don't know if I can move her without waking her up," John confessed sheepishly. "I thought maybe she'd wake up eventually..." he met Major Lorne's shy smile.
"I could help you, Sir, if you promise she won't hold it against me," Lorne offered as he squared his feet beneath him.
Zelenka held his finger over his lips and nodded. "Won't say a word," he promised innocently.
Lorne's strong hands slipped beneath Elizabeth's back and he pulled her in towards his chest before he stood up. He bit his lip for a moment, breathing out as the weight bore down on his legs. John slipped from the bench and stretched his arms and back, twisting for a moment before he turned back to his second-in-command.
"I've got her," Lorne promised, trying not to think about the look Elizabeth would give him if she woke up in his arms. "Take your time," he assured John, thinking he'd probably get stuck with kitchen duty for a month. She moaned slightly, turning her head closer in to his shoulder. He remembered being able to tell as a child which parent carried him in from the car by the scent and wondered if she tell him from John in the same fashion.
John rolled his neck over his shoulders and tried to ease the tension from his body. "She's been asleep for over an hour," he explained gently as he tried to coax the stiffness out. "I was talking to Jeannie and Rodney. Jeannie was joking about Maddie falling asleep in Rodney's arms, and then she got to tease me for Elizabeth."
"It's late," Lorne allowed quietly in Elizabeth's defense. He shifted Elizabeth's arm, keeping it from being pined to his chest. It went without saying among his men that she was entirely out of reach. Firstly because of her position, and then later when the military started to notice the way their colonel looked at her. He shuffled his feet, finding the most comfortable way to stand. He'd seen the way she looked when he didn't come home and he had lost count of the times he'd been pulled from his mission to find Sheppard's team on some forsaken, dangerous world. His mother had said love was knowing that someone's waiting for you to come home. It had always been his father as a child who waited for his wife to return.
"Rodney was worried about her," Zelenka remembered as he watched John shake out his arms. "He kept wondering if she was getting enough sleep. He can really be quite thoughtfully, in his way..."
John grinned secretively. "Don't tell him that," he interjected quickly. "It'll go to his head," he teased. He stretched his arms once more and walked over to the major. "Okay," he requested gently. "Thank you, Major."
Lorne transferred the sleeping weight of his expedition leader into the arms of his commanding officer. Elizabeth stirred again, but as he adjusted her up against his chest she quieted. He watched the look of relief pass over John's face. "All part of the service, Sir," he offered softly.
Zelenka's lips twitched in amusement. "We'll report when we know more," he assured the colonel. "The computer should be done with the sorting of gate addresses soon."
"We're letting the team get some sleep, Sir," Lorne whispered when Zelenka looked to him. "We thought we'd gate out after the battle and plan on using New Athos as a base of operations."
"Okay," John agreed with a slight nod. His arms were already feeling the strain on his muscles. "I'll expect your report in the morning, eleven hundred?"
"Yes Sir," Lorne replied easily, burying his smirk. Elizabeth would have expected his report by nine or ten. John was much more lenient, and he suspected, just as tired as she was.
"Think they're alright?" Zelenka wondered as he watched his leaders disappeared into the darkness of the hallway.
"As much as any of us," Lorne replied calmly. "Come on, let's go check the computer and get to sleep before we have to fight the good fight against the Replicators."
"You did say sleep in there somewhere, didn't you?"
Carson spat blood out on the floor of the jumper and mentally catalogued his injuries. The blinding pain in his ribs was the most excruciating, but hardly the most dangerous of his injuries. The dark spot in the left of his vision was growing, starting to creep across all of one eye. He hadn't paid much attention during the last seminar he'd attended on how to best reattach a retina. There'd been a lovely redhead on his left and the prospect of her smile had been much more intriguing than the discussion of retinal sheering. Hoping Doctor Wallace or Doctor Biro were more current on the technique, Carson turned his pounding head towards his attacker.
Teyla sat hunched near the rear hatch of the jumper. Something was coming for her. Sometimes she babbled to herself, falling into moments of complete incoherence. Her hair was a tangled mess that fell over her face. She had been herself enough to know he could fly the jumper, but there was little more than that. She beat him when he argued with her.
The swollen knot of flesh on his chest was from the one moment he tried to resist. The at least two of the ribs beneath were broken. His lung ached with each breath, but it didn't gurgle in his chest; his injuries would still heal. Teyla's eyes had gone black hours ago. He wasn't sure what had started the transformation, perhaps it was part of her Wraith DNA, but something within her was changing.
The last time she'd touched him her skin had been cold and clammy like the Wraith arm he had kept in his laboratory in the city. Carson pulled the silver emergency blanket tighter around his shoulders and wondered how cold it was on the planet she'd dragged him to. He didn't have enough internal injuries to be in shock, and the snow on the window of the jumper was oddly beautiful. It had been a long time since he'd seen snow. Carson smiled slightly before the dried blood on his swollen lips stopped the motion.
She hadn't said when she was letting him go. Teyla hadn't eaten, or let him eat anything. Carson wasn't sure it occurred to her that she still needed food. He moved his arm, reaching out painfully for the power bars in the emergency kit. His cold fingers fumbled with the wrapper and when he finally opened it the vanilla flavor of the bar was mixed with the blood in his mouth.
He could hear Teyla moving around the rear of the cabin, but it was warmer in the front. He'd never seen her like this; prowling like an animal as she waited for something. Light poured in through the front window of the jumper, bathing him in a bluish glow. It was what she was waiting for. He turned painfully in his chair to watch her running out towards the light. Something cold twisted his stomach and Carson realized the half-heard voices outside the jumper were Wraith.
He slapped anxiously at the dashboard, activating the cloak just as the Wraith patrols walked by in the swirling snow. Teyla was with them, her dark eyes searching the area for a moment. She pointed back towards the light, not even feeling the cold on her bare skin, and the Wraith guards hurried to obey. A moment later she was in the jumper behind him. She moved impossibly quickly now. He could feel the slight warmth of her breath on his neck.
"Michael," Teyla choked on the word, clearing her throat before she continued, "Wanted to kill you." Her hand closed around his shoulder, softer than she'd touched him since she'd taken him. "Get out of here," she ordered in a hiss. "Wait; then go..."
For a moment her eyes looked nearly brown again.
"...don't come after me," Teyla whispered as firmly as she could. "Not Ronon, not John...don't let anyone..." She shuddered, nearly falling to the floor of the jumper as pain lanced through her head. When she stood up again she was all Wraith. Carson remembered the buzzing feeling of the Queen's presence from the time she'd been in his lab in the city.
Teyla's eyes were jet black and her cinnamon skin was greenish and pale in the weak light. "Goodbye Doctor," she said menacingly. "Be thankful Teyla's will is as strong as my desire to see you dead."
"Michael?" he asked insanely. He knew the accent, even if it came from her mouth. "Let her go, Lad..."
More pain in the back of his head, and then quiet darkness fell all around him.
Elizabeth clung to the control panel in front of her as the entire city shook. Weapons fire lanced orange off the shields and bathed the room in light before it dissipated.
"Shields holding at ninety percent," Zelenka reported from one of the computers. "We managed to block some of the fire."
"And the Odyssey?" Elizabeth bit her lip as Rodney looked up from his displays.
He didn't have a poker face, even in the midst of a battle. "There aren't any power readings..." he trailed off and stared down at his controls. "We have to shut down the weapons platform on the planet. Our ships can't take that kind of bombardment."
Elizabeth nodded, reaching for her earpiece. "John, did you hear that?"
Far below the control center, John heard her voice cut through the haze of the city's navigational systems. He could see it all in his mind. The Artemis and the Daedalus were safe behind the bubble of the Atlantis city-ship's shields. Nothing the Asurans had been able to throw at him had even made much of a dent yet.
"The Asgard weapon is still charging," John reported back up to Elizabeth. His voice sounded a million kilometers away, as if someone else was using it. "Just a few more minutes," he lost interest in speaking as an Asuran battleship challenged the city. Using the beam weapons, blue light lanced out and bored through the enemy ship's shields. In a stunning display of power, he ripped through their hull and cut into their power core. The explosion followed a microsecond later.
In the control center, Elizabeth covered her eyes as the blinding white explosion of another Asuran ship blasted through the room. "General..."
"We're okay," Jack's voice crackled over the intercom. "We were hoping to get close enough to take some fire off the Odyssey..." he paused as something exploded in the background. Elizabeth could hear the crackling of sparks. "We got a little banged up, but we're alright."
"Colonel Caldwell?" she continued her rounds, making sure what was left of her fleet was all accounted for.
"The Daedalus is fine, Atlantis," Caldwell promised grimly over the radio. "Sheppard put the city right between us and that platform."
"Why the hell didn't we see that coming?" Elizabeth hissed over at Rodney. His fingers flew over the console and quiet resignation overtook his usual bravado.
"The power cells must be shielded somehow," Rodney explained quietly. His quiet expression was entirely too serious. "It didn't look like a weapon...I thought they might be launching a city ship..." he stumbled over the words.
Elizabeth patted his shoulder. He did his best.
"They took out the Odyssey's shields in one shot...even with a ZPM," Zelenka murmured behind him. "We've never even seen that kind of power, Doctor Weir; none of us."
"The Daedalus and the Artemis are both safely behind our shields?" she double checked before she could lose any more precious lives. Everyone around her nodded in agreement.
The lights in the control center dimmed for a moment. John's voice carried across the radio into her ear. "I'm firing the Asgard weapon; everyone might want to hang on..."
The entire city jerked as if it had impacted hard against something. The lights stayed weak and grew dimmer as he continued to fire. From his place in the chair John saw the wave of light begin as a point on the planet's surface before it began to expand outward. He could feel the vibrating of the city around him as most of the power of all three ZPMs went into blasting the Asuran home world out of existence.
"The field needs to cover the entire planet," Rodney reminded him excitedly through his comm.
John nodded up towards the ceiling, feeling the struggle between weapons and shields in the power systems of the city. He stole power from everywhere else, taking the systems offline one by one in his head.
Up in the control center, the lights went out completely. Rodney pulled up his hands. "Sheppard's taking all of the power," he explained defensively as Elizabeth looked at him. "That damn weapon will cut through our shields if he doesn't."
Zelenka nodded sagely behind Rodney's head. "I suggest you hang onto something," he reminded them just in time. The inertial dampeners had been sacrificed in favor of the shields and only Rodney flattening her against the console kept Elizabeth from being knocked from her feet. In the darkness, the orange light from the planet's defense made the city look like it was bathed in fire.
Rodney kept his arm around her back, and didn't move away from her body. In John's absence, he seemed determined to protect her. The city rocked with a deep shaking that made her teeth chatter in her head. The orange light left them in darkness again as the Asurans recharged and prepared to fire again.
Down below, John watched the energy wave grow like a flower on the surface of Asura. Covering the whole planet was the only way to make sure every nanite was destroyed. It was beautiful as the energy pulsed outward like a living thing. It was going too slowly. The energy wave would take too long to encompass the planet, John realized. If Atlantis' shields faltered, the Asuran weapon would certainly destroy both the Artemis and the Daedalus.
Slowly, he began to draw power from the shields. Voices demanded to know what he was doing, but it took all of his concentration to maintain the fragile balance of energy. One wrong move and more power than anyone in the city understood would explode outward, bursting conduits like a hundred dams. Right now the Asgard weapon needed the power, sucking everything he could give it like a starving creature.
Turning all the shields towards the planet, he forced himself to speak. "I had to divert from the shields," John called up towards the ceiling. "They'll protect the city and our ships from that weapon, but not much else." There were still nine Replicator warships out there. Three of them were bigger than anything he'd seen of Asuran technology so far.
"We hear you, Sheppard," Jack's voice drifted through from the Artemis. "Carter and Caldwell will just have to keep the little ones off your back while you fry the planet."
The space battle went on as a dance in the corner of his mind. As the energy wave continued to expand across the surface of the planet, the vicious orange beam of the Asuran weapon burned into the shields covering the belly of the city. He could almost feel the energy of it in his back, as if a grenade had gone off beneath him. The weapon on the planet fired again, testing the edges of the shield.
The Daedalus skirted the edge of the safe zone, locked in combat with one of the largest warships. The Daedalus helm tried to stay safely inside, but some kind of concussive charge knocked it back. The warship followed, blasting away at the careening vessel.
John felt the weapon fire before he saw it. The Asuran gunner had the Daedalus and he knew it. As if he were reaching out a hand, John stretched the protective bubble of the shields outward and caught the Daedalus like a ball in his hand. For a moment, he sighed in relief as the Artemis swept in to devastate the warship. In that moment, fire from the planet blasted through the south pier of the city. In the chair it was hard to separate himself from the city. He felt the blast as if it had slammed into his leg.
Atlantis bled air and debris. The jumper teams scrambled from the bay, intent on sealing the breach. The south pier was mostly empty; everyone had been evacuated to the very center of the city. Fallout from the explosions ran through the pier. Power conduits ruptured before he could shut them down. The overload rushed up towards the control tower. John finally cut off the cascading energy by letting one of the vents explode outward instead of running back up to the people in control.
On the planet, the field of blue energy continued to expand, reaching out to cover more and more of the surface. The huge weapons platform on the planet fired once more before going silent as the wave passed over it.
Pulling the last of the power away from the shields, John coaxed the blue energy field around the planet into a bubble, washing away everything that was left on Asura. He pictured the silver dust left behind drifting on the wind. One of the battleships left in orbit started to fire and he watched the Artemis intercept them with a wave of missiles. In a few seconds, that ship too was destroyed. Feeling the final blast scorch the belly of the city, he hoped everyone above him was safe.
"General O'Neill, Colonel Caldwell," he caught them both on the comm. "The planet has been neutralized; feel free to leave the city-shield."
"Acknowledged," Caldwell returned quickly.
"Good work," General O'Neill replied cheerfully. "And good hunting."
John concentrated on bringing other systems back online. The Asgard weapon stopped rumbling deep in his mind and went quiet.
Up in the control room the lights came on through a haze of smoke. Elizabeth stared up at the apologetic face of Rodney over her and reached up to his shoulder. He stared down at her, sheepishly looking at the hand covering her slightly rounded belly before he pulled it away.
"I'm alright," she promised softly. He was heavy against her and she could smell the nervous sweat on his neck. The wall behind them had exploded outward with energy, if Rodney hadn't been so quick to knock her down Elizabeth would have certainly spent some time in the infirmary.
He climbed to his feet and offered his hand down to her. Tackling her to the floor seemed a little overprotective in hindsight. "Sorry, I heard the sparks, thought you shouldn't..."
Elizabeth's wave cut off his apology. "Thank you," she replied gently. "Is everyone alright?"
Blood ran down Charles' face from a nasty cut on his forehead, but his expression was resolute. Walter had caught some of the sparks, and his t-shirt bore the scorched marks to prove it. Both of them just nodded and went back to their stations.
"I'm okay, Rodney, really," Elizabeth promised again as the city shook beneath their feet. He held onto her arm until the shaking stopped.
"Right," he replied softly before turning back to his controls. "There are only dormant power signatures coming from the planet," he reported and looked up, suddenly grinning. "I think it worked."
"How many ships are left?" Elizabeth asked hopefully. The planet had been defeated, but the fleet had been extensive at the beginning of the battle.
"Eight," Rodney reported as he shared a glance with Zelenka. "We've already destroyed six of them..."
"Seven," Walter corrected as another ship exploded into a ball of white flames and sparkling metal. "The Artemis got another one."
"Two points for Carter..." Zelenka noted from behind her. Elizabeth pursed her lips and decided she didn't want to know what parts of her staff were scoring their space battles.
"John?" she tapped her radio and pictured him sitting in the chair with his eyes closed.
"The Asgard weapon is recharging," he reported in the distant tone he always took in the control chair. "I'll try to take some of them intact."
Elizabeth looked over Rodney's shoulder and watched as the Artemis and the Daedalus took out another Replicator ship. In the middle of the battle, the dead husk of the Odyssey hung lifeless in space. Fifty precious lives had been lost in one shot of the enemy weapon.
Rodney followed her gaze. "We didn't know," he tried to reassure her. "It could have just as easily been the Daedalus or the Artemis that was closest to the planet when they fired."
Elizabeth didn't dare tell him how glad she was the Artemis had survived. Losing Jack and Sam in their moment of happiness would have been more of a blow to morale than the city could stand. As it was she had another funeral to plan. Another fifty names to commit to the status 'deceased' in her logs. Touching her eyes to prevent the tears from coming, Elizabeth turned back to the battle. Life went on.
"No," Elizabeth laughed initially and then grew stiff. It had been over an hour since she'd heard from control. John kept trying to get her to relax, reminding her that their people were the best. Lorne and Ronon could find Teyla.
"I think it's close though," Sam teased as she closed her eyes. "It's beautiful," she murmured before she opened them again. "This whole city is just beautiful."
"Thank you," Elizabeth sighed softly and tried not to dwell on the coldness of the stars. "I miss the ocean."
"Rodney said we'll need to land again," Sam mentioned over the edge of her cup. "The city's air circulation isn't up to one hundred percent yet."
Elizabeth blinked slowly before pressing on the center of her forehead. Wondering what she'd give to wake up and have no complaints from her body, she dropped her hands back into her lap. Her left hand caught slightly on the roundness of her stomach and she stopped herself before she rested her hand there.
"Do you think you and John will be next?" Sam asked as she rubbed the handle of her cup. Jack was in the center of a group of people, laughing as he glanced over her way. Meeting his eyes for a moment, however briefly; sent a thrill up the back of her neck.
"Next?" Elizabeth repeated softly. Her stomach was harder than she remembered. She thought her belly would be softer, but it wasn't. She stopped her hand and looked over at Sam. "I don't understand."
"He's adorable..." she pointed over with her cup. John was over in the corner behind a plant, waiting for four-year-old Maddie to find him. Cameron and Jeannie shared a piece of cake and watched as the two of them chased each other around Rodney. "John is really excited about the baby," Sam explained with a smile. "We were working on Jack's battle plan and he kept getting this funny grin."
"Oh," Elizabeth replied quickly. It took her a moment to pull her mind back. "It's not the best time."
"Is there a good time to have a baby?" Sam teased as she swirled the liquid in the bottom of her cup. "It took us years to figure us out. Don't let that happen to you," she warned softly. "Life is so fragile here."
"Maybe we just never saw how fragile it was before," Elizabeth replied darkly. How many times had she passed up the chance to talk to her mother? How many cups of tea had she put off until another day? Her eyes stung and she stopped trying to fight the tears giving her the pounding headache in the middle of her head. "I was so stupid..." she trailed off, remembering things she'd given up.
"Do you cry at all weddings?" Sam wondered shyly as she caught sight of Elizabeth's tears. "My dad used to have to retreat mysteriously to the bathroom..."
Elizabeth laughed, but it caught in her throat and choked into a sob. "I'm sorry," she stammered as she wiped at her eyes.
Setting down her cup, Sam caught her hands and stopped her. "It's okay," she promised softly. "You can blame hormones."
"Hormones..." Elizabeth shook her head and wished Sam would let her dry her face. "I can't just..."
"No one's watching," Sam assured her. "I'm not going to think less of you," she continued softly, "or start challenging your authority because I saw you cry."
"I shouldn't..." Elizabeth argued with herself. She didn't know Sam. Except for Teyla she had barely allowed herself to get close to any of the women in the city, and Teyla certainly had her own problems at the moment. Worrying about Teyla shocked her back to reality. "They should have contacted us by now, the rescue teams..."
"Do you love him?" Sam interrupted, forcing Elizabeth back to her personal life.
Elizabeth jolted, sitting up straighter and immediately looking away from Sam's face. The question tore at her. John loved her. She'd seen it shining blindly in his eyes when he looked at her. He'd admitted it. "I'm carrying his child," she replied evasively. "He sleeps in my bed."
"You didn't answer the question," Sam correctedArtemis gently. She got up for a moment, walking to the table of food; she retrieved one of the cloth napkin scraps. She sat down again and handed it to Elizabeth. "Do you want to be with him?"
"I can't be without him," Elizabeth whispered weakly. She rubbed her tears away with the napkin, but fresh ones replaced the old. "Everything's changing, and this city has to protect a more precious burden each day. We've lost so much already..."
"...we're growing," Sam interjected. "We're creating. Jack and I got married..." she stopped dead and grinned sheepishly. "Do you have any idea how long we've waited? How many times I knew I would die alone because I'd let go of my best chance...my only chance to be truly happy? We're human and we survive. It's what we're best at doing."
"What's the difference between loving him and clinging to him because I'm terrified?" Elizabeth demanded bitterly. She couldn't help thinking that Sam was right on a darker level than she realized. They were past living and into the darkness of gritty survival. She was pregnant because she needed a reason to keep going.
"I think you know," Sam offered as she reached across to the other woman's shoulder. "You know..."
"...I don't," Elizabeth finished, starting to tremble slightly. "I honestly don't. John's in every part of my life. Part of him is living inside of me, but do I love him?" Her hand crushed the damp napkin against the red silk covering her stomach. "I can barely look at myself in the mirror," she admitted finally. "I can't face it..."
Sam hugged her; impulsively folding the other woman into her arms. Elizabeth's shoulders were cold, and she wondered if she should get one of the men to give up their jacket. "It's okay," she promised gently. "It's okay. You're doing great."
"I'm working too hard," Elizabeth argued as she let herself cling to Sam. "I feel like hell."
"I've heard that's part of being pregnant," Sam reminded her gently. "At least...it was in the last movie I saw. Can't say I have any first hand experience..." she trailed off and squeezed a little tighter. Her recently broken ribs protested indignantly, but Elizabeth's breathing slowed.
"My breasts hurt," Elizabeth admitted shyly as she lifted her head from Sam's shoulder. "They've done nothing most of my life, and now they feel like I let Ronon train me in hand-to-hand combat."
"You did?" Sam wondered with a worried look.
"Once," Elizabeth nodded with a wry chuckle. "For about seven seconds," she continued. "Teyla let me train with the Athosian teenagers after that."
"I see," Sam replied as she retrieved the damp napkin and cleaned tears from Elizabeth's face. "I don't think anyone, especially John, is going to rush you into anything."
"I should be..." Elizabeth cut off but bit her lip and finished, "I should be able to tell him. Show him...be more than..."
"Love sneaks up on us," Sam explained gently. "One day I'm out trying to save the galaxy, minding my own business, and the next I'm wondering how I'm going to make it through the night without him. When you're not looking, I think you'll find it." She rubbed Elizabeth's shoulder once more and looked over at the man who was now her husband. Jack's quietly concerned glance asked her more than anyone else could have fit into a minute of time. She smiled back, reminding him just how lucky he was. "Now...I have it on good authority that the cake is amazing..."
Sam stood and reached down towards Elizabeth. "Come on, Jack wants to pontificate about the wonders of marriage and we're wasting his chance."
"Give me a moment?" Elizabeth begged softly.
Sam nodded as she watched Elizabeth stare down at the crumpled napkin. "Don't take too long," she pushed before she walked away.
Elizabeth's fingers cupped the small roundness of her belly and she really looked down at herself. Beyond the aching fullness of her breasts, her stomach had changed without her notice or permission. It seemed that John's child was as confidant as he was that her heart would learn to accept them. Was it her part of the child that made her dizzy? Was it the magnification of her own apprehension that turned her stomach?
"Or hormones..." Elizabeth whispered to herself. Her dress swished around her feet as she finally stood up. With her tears spent, her headache had faded to a foggy feeling that wasn't entirely unpleasant. John was waiting for her, watching as she made her way through the crowd. His arm went immediately around her back.
"Warm enough?" he asked politely. He started to shrug out of his jacket.
Elizabeth started to insist otherwise, but now that she thought about it, she was cold. Letting him hold out his jacket, she slipped her arms into it. "Did you hear from Lorne or Ronon yet?"
"No," he straightened the collar of his Genii dress jacket around her neck. John's lips with thin with concern. "But, Ronon can track Wraith through anything," he shrugged and studied her.
"You look good in black," Jack decided lightly as he snuggled closer to his new wife. "So...do I get a whole night for my honeymoon? Or do you intend to drag me out of my wedded bliss?"
"The mission will wait for you, General," Elizabeth promised softly. John's jacket smelled like him and somehow that calmed her stomach. "We're launching the Artemis at thirteen hundred, so you can sleep in."
Jack looked down at his watch and back at her with quiet dismay. "That's only twelve and a half hours from now," he paused and downed the rest of his wine. "Let's go..." he playfully started to drag Sam towards the door.
She laughed and kissed his cheek, glowing as she met his gaze. "We have time," Sam insisted.
Jack rolled his eyes. "We've wasted so much until now and you can still look at me and say we have time?"
Sam laughed again; radiating her joy so palpable warmth suffused the room. John smirked and snuck his fingers inside the jacket over Elizabeth's hip. Cameron, Rodney and Jeannie joined the circle. Madison was fast asleep in her uncle's arms and he was glowing nearly as much as Sam.
"She likes me," he announced in a whisper. "She really likes me."
Jeannie shook her head and accepted the cup Cameron passed to her. "I think they're both the same age mentally," she confided to the group. "Though, you were having a good time as well, John. Maybe I should loan her to you so you get some practice..."
Cameron joined her and chuckled when John looked down shyly. Elizabeth watched as Daniel and Vala disappeared into a darker corner of the balcony. She watched in quiet surprise as Daniel reached for the alien woman's face, pulling her closer to him. Her soft smile as Daniel and Vala kissed made everyone else turn and look. Jack raised an eyebrow and Sam's smile grew a bit brighter.
"Gotta love weddings," Jack teased as he raised his glass. "To Sam, the most beautiful bride in this galaxy, or any other she happens to be in." Laughing as he kissed his wife, he clinked his cup into those of his friends.
The gate faded as the glistening blue wormhole evaporated. Ronon slammed his fist into the side of it and glared up at the control room. "Empty...again," he growled as he followed Zelenka and Lorne up the stairs towards control.
Zelenka sighed and stared down at his computer. "The DHD on the second planet Teyla took Doctor Beckett to is one of the oldest I've seen and barely in working order," he explained to Lorne because Ronon was no longer listening. "It predates the city by several hundred years, possibly longer than that. We're lucky I was able to get any coordinates from it at all..." he drifted off as Ronon glared at him.
"Fix it," Ronon demanded darkly. "Find them." He didn't look back as he stomped off towards his quarters.
Lorne gave the scientist a sympathetic glance. "How many planets do we have left to check?"
"Thirty-one, based on the address the Lantian library thinks are still viable," Zelenka replied as he straightened his glasses on his nose. "However, it is possible that Teyla was possessed by the Wraith or somehow affected by them and she used gate addresses only known to them.."
"Which means we may never find them," Lorne finished for him. "Why take Beckett? She's much closer to Sheppard or McKay..."
"Perhaps the Wraith have a special hatred for Beckett," Zelenka mused as he plugged his portable computer into the mainframe. "He did come up with the retrovirus that makes them human."
"Do you think they're all right?" Lorne wondered quietly as he watched Zelenka boot up his computer. "It doesn't have to be Wraith, does it? Teyla could just be out of her mind, confused..."
"You think?" Zelenka wondered over the computer. "I don't know if any of us ever get that lucky."
"We'll find them," the major repeated optimistically. He settled in a chair next to Zelenka and waited patiently. "We missed the wedding," he pointed out lazily as he watched the two computers interact. "I was going to head over to the balcony...see if there was any food left..."
Zelenka looked up instantly from his work. "That's a wonderful idea," he interrupted quickly. "Let's go," he insisted as started away from the desk. "All I've had today are those terrible MREs..."
Lorne shared his disgusted face. "We're down to the last of our stores too," he agreed with a wince. "Chili macaroni has got to be one of the worst flavors an MRE can come in. I didn't mind it so much when we still had the BBQ ribs...those at least are covered in sauce so you don't care what it tastes like."
Laughing as he walked along beside him, Zelenka nodded. "I went a few trips with the Russian Stargate teams, back in the Milky Way and my commander used to get into big arguments with the quartermaster when they played cards..."
"Uh-oh," Lorne said, grinning wickedly as they headed down the hall.
"One mission we had nothing, but potted meats and rye bread for two weeks," he explained and shivered at the memory. "We made him stop playing cards after that."
"Good idea," Lorne agreed as he made way for some of the more intoxicated revelers leaving the party. His watch read oh-three hundred and he couldn't help wondering what trouble everyone had gotten into. It wasn't every day a general got married.
Doctor Jackson was up ahead, laughing as he leaned against one of the glowing corners of the grey wall. Vala crashed alongside him a moment later, laughing and finishing the last of her sparkling wine before her metal cup crashed to the floor. She turned into Daniel's arms and Lorne and Zelenka snuck past as she melted his resolve with a kiss.
"Do you think they even saw us?" Lorne wondered with amusement as he hid around the next corner with Zelenka.
Zelenka shook his head quickly. "I don't think they saw anything..." Still fairly amused, he continued down the hall.
When they finally made it out to the grand balcony it was mostly deserted. Sam and Jack were still dancing lazily by the part of the PA system Rodney had rigged up as a stereo. Slow music, unrecognizable and wordless, drifted across the balcony.
"Who had this CD?" Lorne wondered as he tried to place the melody. "I don't..."
"Rodney got it from the database," Zelenka offered as he started at the head of the buffet table. "The Ancients had music from all parts of the galaxy. Some of their archive is older than that DHD..."
Lorne stacked finger foods onto his plate and licked his thumb clean of a dark red sauce. "How long will it take the computer to run the gate addresses?" he asked. Dumping the last of some kind of fruit salad onto one corner of his plate, he paused over the barrel of sparkling wine from the Genii. "Are we going out again tonight?"
Zelenka shook his head and filled a cup of wine. "No, the computer will not be finished with its analysis until after we're moving on the Asuran home world," he explained. Balancing a piece of cake over the top of his cup, he grinned over his food at the major. "I get to manage the shield systems on the city," he said as he stuffed a piece of spiced meat into his mouth. "You?"
"Stand-by in the jumper bay," Lorne replied as he sank onto a bench near the railing. "Transporting medical teams and damage control," he finished.
"Hopefully we'll stay in the bay," Zelenka wished and raised his cup thoughtfully.
Lorne thudded his glass against his friends. "Hopefully the shields won't need any work either," he toasted. Passing his plate across, he pointed at a few piece of meat. "You have to try this, did you get any?"
Reaching across and grabbing a piece with his fingers, Zelenka grinned broadly as he closed his eyes in delight. "Excellent," he replied zestfully. "We should have more weddings," he chuckled as he shoveled rice pilaf into his mouth.
"Who's still over there?" Lorne wondered as he finished his fruit salad.
"General O'Neill," Zelenka started as he glanced over towards the stragglers. "Colonel O'Neill, Colonel Sheppard's sitting in the corner there."
"We should report to him," Lorne sighed as he finished his the last of the food on his plate. He ran a piece of bread over his plate and cleaned up the last of the sauces. "He's not going to be happy."
Zelenka nodded and shared Lorne's sigh of resignation. "Do you see Doctor Weir?" he asked apprehensively. "She's going to give us that look..."
Lorne winced and collected Zelenka's empty plate. "I hate that look," he agreed softly. "Least we didn't lose Sheppard..."
Zelenka shuddered and followed Lorne over to the bins full of dishes. "Who drew dish duty?"
"Edison's team," Lorne answered with a wicked smile. "They're the most behind on their mission reports." They both shook their heads. "Ready?"
"Yes," Zelenka replied nervously as he glanced over in the corner.
John had watched her dance with everyone; Rodney, Doctor Jackson, Teal'c, Jack, and many of his own troops. He had missed Teyla's quiet presence and hearing what she thought about an Earth wedding ceremony. Major Lorne had saved him nearly as often as Ronon had and if anyone could track her and Beckett down, it would be the two of them.
Elizabeth hadn't finished her thought. Whatever she had meant to say before the alarm had been lost to her worries that followed. Carson and Teyla were part of her expedition; her people. After they went missing, nothing in her life mattered. No small nuance of emotion that passed between her and her lover could make up for her people being missing.
He wondered sometimes if that was all he was. If he was just the man in her bed; the man who fathered the child she was terrified of. John smiled softly as he watched Sam and Jack sway to the music and remembered the end of his own wedding. The smell of starch in his dress blues ran through his mind with the trace of perfume he remembered.
He'd been so young then. She'd been young and laughing in his arms. There was no Replicator fleet bearing down on them. No insane ascended beings taunting their dreams. Back then it had been him and her and the vows of two innocents who thought it would last forever. Maybe that was why it failed. There was nothing more than love between them and they had failed.
Elizabeth's head was heavy and warm in his lap. Her dark hair cascaded down over his thigh and tangled into his hand. He rubbed the back of her head lazily, calming her as she slept. He wondered if she knew he was there; if she was becoming used to his constant presence. He'd given up off-world travel and the dangerous missions that had become his forte. He'd given up his team, traded them for her and the child sleeping within her and she couldn't even meet his eyes and confess her feelings for him. That was assuming she felt anything at all.
Someone touched his shoulder, startling him from his thoughts. Zelenka and Lorne circled around him and Lorne knelt down to his level. "We haven't found them yet, Sir," he whispered.
"Are you continuing the search?" John whispered back. Glancing down at Elizabeth, he wondered if she would forgive him for not waking her.
Lorne nodded and Zelenka added gruffly; "We're waiting for the computer to sort out the rest of the possible gate addresses." He explained softly. "Thought we'd get something to eat..."
"...was it a good wedding, Sir?" Lorne wondered in a more personal tone. Addressing his commander out of uniform at a party didn't count as a formal situation, and he watched the colonel start to smile.
"Yeah," John explained contentedly. "Everyone really enjoyed it."
"It was short then, Sir?" Lorne teased, remembering how apprehensive John had been about attending earlier that day.
"Elizabeth does a nice wedding," John replied as he stretched his shoulders as carefully as he could. Part of his back was starting to go numb from the way he was sitting, but he couldn't bring himself to wake her. "She's probably going to be booked solid after this one," he guessed with a soft smile. "It'll be the middle of next year before we get a name for the baby worked out."
"The baby?" Zelenka tightened his forehead in thought for a moment, his eyes wandered down Elizabeth's sleeping form and he remembered. "Right," he answered himself in a strained whisper. "Doctor Weir must need her sleep."
"I don't know if I can move her without waking her up," John confessed sheepishly. "I thought maybe she'd wake up eventually..." he met Major Lorne's shy smile.
"I could help you, Sir, if you promise she won't hold it against me," Lorne offered as he squared his feet beneath him.
Zelenka held his finger over his lips and nodded. "Won't say a word," he promised innocently.
Lorne's strong hands slipped beneath Elizabeth's back and he pulled her in towards his chest before he stood up. He bit his lip for a moment, breathing out as the weight bore down on his legs. John slipped from the bench and stretched his arms and back, twisting for a moment before he turned back to his second-in-command.
"I've got her," Lorne promised, trying not to think about the look Elizabeth would give him if she woke up in his arms. "Take your time," he assured John, thinking he'd probably get stuck with kitchen duty for a month. She moaned slightly, turning her head closer in to his shoulder. He remembered being able to tell as a child which parent carried him in from the car by the scent and wondered if she tell him from John in the same fashion.
John rolled his neck over his shoulders and tried to ease the tension from his body. "She's been asleep for over an hour," he explained gently as he tried to coax the stiffness out. "I was talking to Jeannie and Rodney. Jeannie was joking about Maddie falling asleep in Rodney's arms, and then she got to tease me for Elizabeth."
"It's late," Lorne allowed quietly in Elizabeth's defense. He shifted Elizabeth's arm, keeping it from being pined to his chest. It went without saying among his men that she was entirely out of reach. Firstly because of her position, and then later when the military started to notice the way their colonel looked at her. He shuffled his feet, finding the most comfortable way to stand. He'd seen the way she looked when he didn't come home and he had lost count of the times he'd been pulled from his mission to find Sheppard's team on some forsaken, dangerous world. His mother had said love was knowing that someone's waiting for you to come home. It had always been his father as a child who waited for his wife to return.
"Rodney was worried about her," Zelenka remembered as he watched John shake out his arms. "He kept wondering if she was getting enough sleep. He can really be quite thoughtfully, in his way..."
John grinned secretively. "Don't tell him that," he interjected quickly. "It'll go to his head," he teased. He stretched his arms once more and walked over to the major. "Okay," he requested gently. "Thank you, Major."
Lorne transferred the sleeping weight of his expedition leader into the arms of his commanding officer. Elizabeth stirred again, but as he adjusted her up against his chest she quieted. He watched the look of relief pass over John's face. "All part of the service, Sir," he offered softly.
Zelenka's lips twitched in amusement. "We'll report when we know more," he assured the colonel. "The computer should be done with the sorting of gate addresses soon."
"We're letting the team get some sleep, Sir," Lorne whispered when Zelenka looked to him. "We thought we'd gate out after the battle and plan on using New Athos as a base of operations."
"Okay," John agreed with a slight nod. His arms were already feeling the strain on his muscles. "I'll expect your report in the morning, eleven hundred?"
"Yes Sir," Lorne replied easily, burying his smirk. Elizabeth would have expected his report by nine or ten. John was much more lenient, and he suspected, just as tired as she was.
"Think they're alright?" Zelenka wondered as he watched his leaders disappeared into the darkness of the hallway.
"As much as any of us," Lorne replied calmly. "Come on, let's go check the computer and get to sleep before we have to fight the good fight against the Replicators."
"You did say sleep in there somewhere, didn't you?"
Carson spat blood out on the floor of the jumper and mentally catalogued his injuries. The blinding pain in his ribs was the most excruciating, but hardly the most dangerous of his injuries. The dark spot in the left of his vision was growing, starting to creep across all of one eye. He hadn't paid much attention during the last seminar he'd attended on how to best reattach a retina. There'd been a lovely redhead on his left and the prospect of her smile had been much more intriguing than the discussion of retinal sheering. Hoping Doctor Wallace or Doctor Biro were more current on the technique, Carson turned his pounding head towards his attacker.
Teyla sat hunched near the rear hatch of the jumper. Something was coming for her. Sometimes she babbled to herself, falling into moments of complete incoherence. Her hair was a tangled mess that fell over her face. She had been herself enough to know he could fly the jumper, but there was little more than that. She beat him when he argued with her.
The swollen knot of flesh on his chest was from the one moment he tried to resist. The at least two of the ribs beneath were broken. His lung ached with each breath, but it didn't gurgle in his chest; his injuries would still heal. Teyla's eyes had gone black hours ago. He wasn't sure what had started the transformation, perhaps it was part of her Wraith DNA, but something within her was changing.
The last time she'd touched him her skin had been cold and clammy like the Wraith arm he had kept in his laboratory in the city. Carson pulled the silver emergency blanket tighter around his shoulders and wondered how cold it was on the planet she'd dragged him to. He didn't have enough internal injuries to be in shock, and the snow on the window of the jumper was oddly beautiful. It had been a long time since he'd seen snow. Carson smiled slightly before the dried blood on his swollen lips stopped the motion.
She hadn't said when she was letting him go. Teyla hadn't eaten, or let him eat anything. Carson wasn't sure it occurred to her that she still needed food. He moved his arm, reaching out painfully for the power bars in the emergency kit. His cold fingers fumbled with the wrapper and when he finally opened it the vanilla flavor of the bar was mixed with the blood in his mouth.
He could hear Teyla moving around the rear of the cabin, but it was warmer in the front. He'd never seen her like this; prowling like an animal as she waited for something. Light poured in through the front window of the jumper, bathing him in a bluish glow. It was what she was waiting for. He turned painfully in his chair to watch her running out towards the light. Something cold twisted his stomach and Carson realized the half-heard voices outside the jumper were Wraith.
He slapped anxiously at the dashboard, activating the cloak just as the Wraith patrols walked by in the swirling snow. Teyla was with them, her dark eyes searching the area for a moment. She pointed back towards the light, not even feeling the cold on her bare skin, and the Wraith guards hurried to obey. A moment later she was in the jumper behind him. She moved impossibly quickly now. He could feel the slight warmth of her breath on his neck.
"Michael," Teyla choked on the word, clearing her throat before she continued, "Wanted to kill you." Her hand closed around his shoulder, softer than she'd touched him since she'd taken him. "Get out of here," she ordered in a hiss. "Wait; then go..."
For a moment her eyes looked nearly brown again.
"...don't come after me," Teyla whispered as firmly as she could. "Not Ronon, not John...don't let anyone..." She shuddered, nearly falling to the floor of the jumper as pain lanced through her head. When she stood up again she was all Wraith. Carson remembered the buzzing feeling of the Queen's presence from the time she'd been in his lab in the city.
Teyla's eyes were jet black and her cinnamon skin was greenish and pale in the weak light. "Goodbye Doctor," she said menacingly. "Be thankful Teyla's will is as strong as my desire to see you dead."
"Michael?" he asked insanely. He knew the accent, even if it came from her mouth. "Let her go, Lad..."
More pain in the back of his head, and then quiet darkness fell all around him.
Elizabeth clung to the control panel in front of her as the entire city shook. Weapons fire lanced orange off the shields and bathed the room in light before it dissipated.
"Shields holding at ninety percent," Zelenka reported from one of the computers. "We managed to block some of the fire."
"And the Odyssey?" Elizabeth bit her lip as Rodney looked up from his displays.
He didn't have a poker face, even in the midst of a battle. "There aren't any power readings..." he trailed off and stared down at his controls. "We have to shut down the weapons platform on the planet. Our ships can't take that kind of bombardment."
Elizabeth nodded, reaching for her earpiece. "John, did you hear that?"
Far below the control center, John heard her voice cut through the haze of the city's navigational systems. He could see it all in his mind. The Artemis and the Daedalus were safe behind the bubble of the Atlantis city-ship's shields. Nothing the Asurans had been able to throw at him had even made much of a dent yet.
"The Asgard weapon is still charging," John reported back up to Elizabeth. His voice sounded a million kilometers away, as if someone else was using it. "Just a few more minutes," he lost interest in speaking as an Asuran battleship challenged the city. Using the beam weapons, blue light lanced out and bored through the enemy ship's shields. In a stunning display of power, he ripped through their hull and cut into their power core. The explosion followed a microsecond later.
In the control center, Elizabeth covered her eyes as the blinding white explosion of another Asuran ship blasted through the room. "General..."
"We're okay," Jack's voice crackled over the intercom. "We were hoping to get close enough to take some fire off the Odyssey..." he paused as something exploded in the background. Elizabeth could hear the crackling of sparks. "We got a little banged up, but we're alright."
"Colonel Caldwell?" she continued her rounds, making sure what was left of her fleet was all accounted for.
"The Daedalus is fine, Atlantis," Caldwell promised grimly over the radio. "Sheppard put the city right between us and that platform."
"Why the hell didn't we see that coming?" Elizabeth hissed over at Rodney. His fingers flew over the console and quiet resignation overtook his usual bravado.
"The power cells must be shielded somehow," Rodney explained quietly. His quiet expression was entirely too serious. "It didn't look like a weapon...I thought they might be launching a city ship..." he stumbled over the words.
Elizabeth patted his shoulder. He did his best.
"They took out the Odyssey's shields in one shot...even with a ZPM," Zelenka murmured behind him. "We've never even seen that kind of power, Doctor Weir; none of us."
"The Daedalus and the Artemis are both safely behind our shields?" she double checked before she could lose any more precious lives. Everyone around her nodded in agreement.
The lights in the control center dimmed for a moment. John's voice carried across the radio into her ear. "I'm firing the Asgard weapon; everyone might want to hang on..."
The entire city jerked as if it had impacted hard against something. The lights stayed weak and grew dimmer as he continued to fire. From his place in the chair John saw the wave of light begin as a point on the planet's surface before it began to expand outward. He could feel the vibrating of the city around him as most of the power of all three ZPMs went into blasting the Asuran home world out of existence.
"The field needs to cover the entire planet," Rodney reminded him excitedly through his comm.
John nodded up towards the ceiling, feeling the struggle between weapons and shields in the power systems of the city. He stole power from everywhere else, taking the systems offline one by one in his head.
Up in the control center, the lights went out completely. Rodney pulled up his hands. "Sheppard's taking all of the power," he explained defensively as Elizabeth looked at him. "That damn weapon will cut through our shields if he doesn't."
Zelenka nodded sagely behind Rodney's head. "I suggest you hang onto something," he reminded them just in time. The inertial dampeners had been sacrificed in favor of the shields and only Rodney flattening her against the console kept Elizabeth from being knocked from her feet. In the darkness, the orange light from the planet's defense made the city look like it was bathed in fire.
Rodney kept his arm around her back, and didn't move away from her body. In John's absence, he seemed determined to protect her. The city rocked with a deep shaking that made her teeth chatter in her head. The orange light left them in darkness again as the Asurans recharged and prepared to fire again.
Down below, John watched the energy wave grow like a flower on the surface of Asura. Covering the whole planet was the only way to make sure every nanite was destroyed. It was beautiful as the energy pulsed outward like a living thing. It was going too slowly. The energy wave would take too long to encompass the planet, John realized. If Atlantis' shields faltered, the Asuran weapon would certainly destroy both the Artemis and the Daedalus.
Slowly, he began to draw power from the shields. Voices demanded to know what he was doing, but it took all of his concentration to maintain the fragile balance of energy. One wrong move and more power than anyone in the city understood would explode outward, bursting conduits like a hundred dams. Right now the Asgard weapon needed the power, sucking everything he could give it like a starving creature.
Turning all the shields towards the planet, he forced himself to speak. "I had to divert from the shields," John called up towards the ceiling. "They'll protect the city and our ships from that weapon, but not much else." There were still nine Replicator warships out there. Three of them were bigger than anything he'd seen of Asuran technology so far.
"We hear you, Sheppard," Jack's voice drifted through from the Artemis. "Carter and Caldwell will just have to keep the little ones off your back while you fry the planet."
The space battle went on as a dance in the corner of his mind. As the energy wave continued to expand across the surface of the planet, the vicious orange beam of the Asuran weapon burned into the shields covering the belly of the city. He could almost feel the energy of it in his back, as if a grenade had gone off beneath him. The weapon on the planet fired again, testing the edges of the shield.
The Daedalus skirted the edge of the safe zone, locked in combat with one of the largest warships. The Daedalus helm tried to stay safely inside, but some kind of concussive charge knocked it back. The warship followed, blasting away at the careening vessel.
John felt the weapon fire before he saw it. The Asuran gunner had the Daedalus and he knew it. As if he were reaching out a hand, John stretched the protective bubble of the shields outward and caught the Daedalus like a ball in his hand. For a moment, he sighed in relief as the Artemis swept in to devastate the warship. In that moment, fire from the planet blasted through the south pier of the city. In the chair it was hard to separate himself from the city. He felt the blast as if it had slammed into his leg.
Atlantis bled air and debris. The jumper teams scrambled from the bay, intent on sealing the breach. The south pier was mostly empty; everyone had been evacuated to the very center of the city. Fallout from the explosions ran through the pier. Power conduits ruptured before he could shut them down. The overload rushed up towards the control tower. John finally cut off the cascading energy by letting one of the vents explode outward instead of running back up to the people in control.
On the planet, the field of blue energy continued to expand, reaching out to cover more and more of the surface. The huge weapons platform on the planet fired once more before going silent as the wave passed over it.
Pulling the last of the power away from the shields, John coaxed the blue energy field around the planet into a bubble, washing away everything that was left on Asura. He pictured the silver dust left behind drifting on the wind. One of the battleships left in orbit started to fire and he watched the Artemis intercept them with a wave of missiles. In a few seconds, that ship too was destroyed. Feeling the final blast scorch the belly of the city, he hoped everyone above him was safe.
"General O'Neill, Colonel Caldwell," he caught them both on the comm. "The planet has been neutralized; feel free to leave the city-shield."
"Acknowledged," Caldwell returned quickly.
"Good work," General O'Neill replied cheerfully. "And good hunting."
John concentrated on bringing other systems back online. The Asgard weapon stopped rumbling deep in his mind and went quiet.
Up in the control room the lights came on through a haze of smoke. Elizabeth stared up at the apologetic face of Rodney over her and reached up to his shoulder. He stared down at her, sheepishly looking at the hand covering her slightly rounded belly before he pulled it away.
"I'm alright," she promised softly. He was heavy against her and she could smell the nervous sweat on his neck. The wall behind them had exploded outward with energy, if Rodney hadn't been so quick to knock her down Elizabeth would have certainly spent some time in the infirmary.
He climbed to his feet and offered his hand down to her. Tackling her to the floor seemed a little overprotective in hindsight. "Sorry, I heard the sparks, thought you shouldn't..."
Elizabeth's wave cut off his apology. "Thank you," she replied gently. "Is everyone alright?"
Blood ran down Charles' face from a nasty cut on his forehead, but his expression was resolute. Walter had caught some of the sparks, and his t-shirt bore the scorched marks to prove it. Both of them just nodded and went back to their stations.
"I'm okay, Rodney, really," Elizabeth promised again as the city shook beneath their feet. He held onto her arm until the shaking stopped.
"Right," he replied softly before turning back to his controls. "There are only dormant power signatures coming from the planet," he reported and looked up, suddenly grinning. "I think it worked."
"How many ships are left?" Elizabeth asked hopefully. The planet had been defeated, but the fleet had been extensive at the beginning of the battle.
"Eight," Rodney reported as he shared a glance with Zelenka. "We've already destroyed six of them..."
"Seven," Walter corrected as another ship exploded into a ball of white flames and sparkling metal. "The Artemis got another one."
"Two points for Carter..." Zelenka noted from behind her. Elizabeth pursed her lips and decided she didn't want to know what parts of her staff were scoring their space battles.
"John?" she tapped her radio and pictured him sitting in the chair with his eyes closed.
"The Asgard weapon is recharging," he reported in the distant tone he always took in the control chair. "I'll try to take some of them intact."
Elizabeth looked over Rodney's shoulder and watched as the Artemis and the Daedalus took out another Replicator ship. In the middle of the battle, the dead husk of the Odyssey hung lifeless in space. Fifty precious lives had been lost in one shot of the enemy weapon.
Rodney followed her gaze. "We didn't know," he tried to reassure her. "It could have just as easily been the Daedalus or the Artemis that was closest to the planet when they fired."
Elizabeth didn't dare tell him how glad she was the Artemis had survived. Losing Jack and Sam in their moment of happiness would have been more of a blow to morale than the city could stand. As it was she had another funeral to plan. Another fifty names to commit to the status 'deceased' in her logs. Touching her eyes to prevent the tears from coming, Elizabeth turned back to the battle. Life went on.