Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In retrospect, it was probably the second-most important decision in Nate's life, right after joining the Marines. At the time, it was more a matter of charts and spreadsheets, comparing GI benefits, scholarships, cost of living, academic ratings, and a dozen other factors that had narrowed the choice down to Harvard or Georgetown. The former had a PhD program in case he got so enamoured with bleeding-heart pansy academia that one graduate degree wasn't enough, and the latter was close to his parents and the School of Foreign Service was regarded as the premier program in the country. It basically came down to a coin flip.

He didn't actually flip a coin, because that would be stupid, especially for someone who had used up any luck he had somewhere out in the desert. Mostly he decided that he should expand his horizons and not repeat the Ivy League experience.

Finding an apartment a reasonable distance from Georgetown was almost enough to make himself wish he'd stayed in California, especially once his mother started hinting that plenty of students lived at home to save money. Intellectually he knew that it was true, and that parents who'd repeatedly sent their son off to war would want him to stay where they could see him for a while. Emotionally, he'd never hear the end of it from his marines, and it would be comforting - too comforting. If he had wanted comfort, he would have stopped making waves and stayed in the Corps like a good boy. He did manage to find a place, though, and get settled in like a real adult who could be entrusted to organize his own life and the lives of others without being micromanaged by a fucking incompetent.

Nate really hoped his academic advisor was both understanding and capable of putting two sentences together without forgetting what the first one had been.

He got to his appointment early. So early, in fact, that his advisor wasn't even there yet. He spent a while chatting with the department secretary, a charming woman his mother's age named Winifred. During his undergrad he hadn't quite understood how the world worked, but these days he knew who was most likely to be getting shit done around here.

"That'll be Doctor Weir right now, honey," Winny said after a while. Down the hall, a tall, thin brunette was struggling to simultaneously unlock an office door and hold both a briefcase and a box of papers. "And if you have any problem with the bursar's office, you let me know and I'll straighten it out. Government doesn't always send the payments on time when you start so soon after you get out."

"Thanks," Nate said. He hustled down the hall and reached the other woman just in time to catch the box as it fell from her arms. "Let me get that for you, ma'am,"

"Thank you," Weir replied. She got the door open and led him inside. It was surprisingly small for a woman of her stature, even if she wasn't full-time faculty. Bookshelves lined two walls and were crammed full, and stacks of paper covered both the desk and both seats on the side of the door. It was faintly musty as well. "Are you a student? I should warn you, I've got an appointment in ten minutes."

"That's me, I think. Nate Fick, ma'am." It still felt weird not to put 'lieutenant' in front, although not as weird as captain had briefly been.

"Oh! My student, then." Weir sighed and cleared one of the seats by moving that pile to sit atop the one on the other. "Please, sit down. I'm sorry about the mess, I haven't been here all summer and it looks like things have been piling up. I've been stuck at the UN putting out fires for a while."

"Don't worry, Doctor. I've seen worse."

"Yes. I suppose you have." Weir pulled a laptop from her briefcase and set it up on the desk between them. She peered at it for a few seconds, scrolling down a file. "So, Classics at Dartmouth for your undergrad, then the Marine Corps. Tours in East Timor and Afghanistan, then OIF, and now back here for a masters in security studies. You're certainly getting around."

Nate shrugged. "I suppose so, ma'am."

Weir shook her head. "Please. No more ma'am or doctor. It's Elizabeth."

"Nate, then."

"Why grad school?" she asked, as if there hadn't been essays about that in his application packet.

"Well, I'm been assured that a classics degree isn't worth anything unless you want to work at McDonalds."

She chuckled. "Besides that."

"I'm still pretty young, ma - sorry. In this field, if I want to be taken seriously, I need those letters after my name." If he wanted to be taken seriously as anything other than a trained killer, that was. Certainly the shower of job offers he'd gotten from private security and military companies showed plenty of people were interested in him as-is. Nate just wished he had a little firmer idea of what he did want to do.

"Fair enough, although I think we'll manage to get you out of here with more than just the credentials." Weir made a few keystrokes and frowned slightly. "It's unfortunate you're coming in so late. A lot of classes are already booked full. Do you have any thoughts about your thesis yet?"

"I'll make do with whatever's available," Nate told her. "And nothing solid, no. Something related to counter-insurgency or peacekeeping operations, maybe, but…"

"But it's a broad topic. Don't worry, we'll get it narrowed down. For this semester, I can add you to my seminar on displaced persons, and there's room in Dr. Nguyen's class on international black markets and finance. We can round it out with a guided reading course. I'll pull together a list of potential topics and email it to you, and then we can meet for a couple hours later this week to work out a materials list. Sound good?"

Nate started to nod, but frowned after a few seconds. "Yes, but it seems like a lot of work at your end just for me."

"If I minded work, I wouldn't be trying to teach while consulting with the State Department and two different NGOs. I knew what I was getting into when I asked to be your advisor."

Nate stifled a sigh, wondering when the inevitable 'thank you for your service' would be coming. "Doctor Weir," he started, not even quite sure what he was going to say.

"Captain Fick," she replied, raising an eyebrow. He tipped his head in acknowledgement, and let her go on. "Advising is part of the job, Nate, as the chair keeps reminding me. It's not charity. In fact, I think your perspective could be very useful for my own work. As recent events have shown, when people like me fail, people like you pick up the pieces. And vice versa. It's useful to hear things from heights that aren't as rarefied as I find myself in these days."

She said it with a remarkable combination of frankness and kindness, a combination he wasn't used to. Nate tried to find a way to explain that his perspective mostly consisted of bitching, bad food, worse smells, pretending he couldn't hear bitching, glimpses of innovative strategy as filtered down four levels into incomprehensible fragments, and extremely filthy creative language that was mostly used to bitch.

Also, nightmares. Plenty of those in a number of varieties.

Instead he said, "If you say so. Elizabeth."

Nate spent two years at Georgetown. Partway through his last semester, Elizabeth disappeared off to Colorado Springs. It was apparently important enough to flat-out drop all her classes, leaving the rest of the department scrambling, although she couldn't say what it was. Instead she just spent a few months sending him apologetic emails along with notes on his thesis drafts. By the time graduation rolled around, she had by all appearances dropped of the face of the Earth entirely.

Needless to say, he was a bit surprised when she turned up at his apartment door one evening over a year later.

"Doctor Weir?" he said, earning himself the eyebrow. "Elizabeth. Uh, hi. Please come in."

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," Elizabeth said as walked in, trailed by an Air Force light bird in full Class A blues. He could hear someone else taking up position outside the door. "I'd have called ahead but I only got into town yesterday and didn't know exactly when I'd have any free time."

Nates glanced around his apartment. Tidy, immaculate even, verging on sterile, the main signs of life being the empty wine glass on the kitchen table, the equally empty beer bottle sitting among the scattered journals on his coffee table, and the flicker and soft white-noise mutter of the Discovery Channel on the hand-me-down flat-screen his dad had given him after upgrading the den. He was suddenly aware of just how much shit he'd get for how he was spending his Saturday night and clamped down on the reaction.

"No, I'd say I'm free." Nate lead them into what passed for the living room, now also wishing he'd stopped hoarding his salary and actually gotten some furniture that hadn't come from an estate sale. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"No, thank you," Elizabeth said, settling onto the couch and somehow not looking out of place even wearing blouse that probably cost more than everything in the apartment combined. "Nate, this is Lieutenant Colonel Paul Davis. He works at the Pentagon on a project related to mine."

"Sir." They shook hands, very proper, while Nate took note that 'the Pentagon' housed thousands of people working on any number of things big and small. It was like saying Nate worked in Washington: it implied plenty of things, not all of them accurate, without actually giving any information.

"I hear you took a think tank fellowship instead of going for the doctorate."

"I wanted to dip my toe into the market before making a decision, get a few years of work in. I'm talking with a couple organizations about long-term positions. Ricks is making noises about running one." Nate smiled briefly. "The positive cash-flow is a nice change."

"It sounds like I've come at the right time, then," Elizabeth replied, echoing the smile. "I've got a job offer for you. I'm in charge of an intergovernmental organization that has been unexpectedly dealing with issues involving displaced persons and reconstructing damaged infrastructure. Not to mention the security concerns related to the cause of those issues. I'm creating a position dedicated to managing them, a civil affairs coordinator basically, and I'd like you to fill it."

"Me?" Nate said, glancing over at Davis, who sat placidly at her side. "Why not an actual civil affairs officer, or someone from the foreign service?"

"For one thing, while we work closely with the military, it's still a civilian organization and I'd like to avoid poaching too much, especially when those officers are badly needed elsewhere." She tipped her head and grinned. "Also, in the interests of full disclosure, my first choice turned me down." The grin slipped away after a moment, then more seriously she added, "Further, given that this will involve going into the field, as it were, having someone with combat experience is a plus."

Nate's mouth felt dry. "Assuming 'elsewhere' is Iraq and Afghanistan, where is this job?" Central Africa or Indonesia seemed likely spots, but that wouldn't explain how she'd so thoroughly dropped off the map.

"Overseas. Somewhere with limited communications and transport access. There's a minimum commitment of one year, pay is competitive, medical is fully covered, and there's a death and disability package equivalent to the ones the military offers."

He shook his head. "None of this is actually telling me anything."

"Colonel?"

Davis set a briefcase on the coffee table and opened some sort of biometric lock. He handed Nate a folder. "You'll need to sign this non-disclosure agreement. Please read it carefully."

Nate accepted it and started reading. There was a lot of legalese, but it wasn't that different than what he'd signed for his top secret clearance or current job. The main thrust seemed to be that if he ever told anyone anything at all, he'd be locked up in a basement somewhere, probably after they reactivated his commission specifically so they could court-martial him and give him a longer sentence. He glanced up at Elizabeth, who nodded, and then signed and returned it.

"I always love this part," Elizabeth said. "In 1928, on the Giza plateau, the Langford archaeological expedition uncovered an alien artifact that we call the stargate. For the past eight years, we've been using it to travel to other worlds. Or, in the case of my expedition, the city of Atlantis, located in the Pegasus Dwarf Galaxy."

They stared at each other a few moments, then Nate cracked up laughing. "I'm pretty sure I've seen this show. It was terrible."

"Yes, it was," Elizabeth agreed. "Be sure to say that if you ever meet General O'Neill."

"Martin Lloyd was a mistake," Davis muttered.

Nate's smile slowly started to die. He glanced between the two of them, waiting for further explanation of their actual location. Instead, Davis pulled several photos from his briefcase and laid them out. A giant metal ring, sitting in a bunker. The same ring filled with a watery blue barrier, and people passing through it mid-step. An impossible skyline with two moons rising behind it.

"What the fuck." Nate couldn't help it, as much as he tried to conform to his limp-dicked Ivy League pansy officer origins while in polite company these days. "You're serious."

"Entirely," Elizabeth said. "Especially about the need for civil affairs. We've been winging it so far but we have a serious crisis on our hands, one that requires someone dedicated to outreach to other, often very strange cultures on neighboring worlds. I need someone who's familiar with current best practices and who can think on his feet in a high-stress situation - and who can, if need be, protect himself and others in the field during an emergency."

"Doctor Weir, there is no way I'm qualified for this." He wasn't really qualified for what he was already doing, and that was just trying to phrase the blindingly obvious in ways that policy makers could understand.

"No one was, eight years ago. Hardly anyone is now. We're having to write the manual as we go along." Elizabeth smiled gently. "If it helps, you won't be doing this alone. I've also recruited our foremost expert on interstellar diplomacy."

"General O'Neill still hasn't approved a transfer," Davis started.

"Jack will have to deal with it," Elizabeth replied without looking at him. "The war's over. Unless he intends to turn SG-1 into a one-man team, he can't force Daniel to stay."

"What war?" Nate asked. His wars weren't his anymore, and there were a great many ways to describe them, but over wasn't among them.

"That's classified," Davis said.

Nate didn't need a masters in security studies to put two and two together. "Does this have something to do with your refugee crisis?"

"Not precisely, no," Elizabeth said carefully. "But let's just say that not everyone we meet is friendly." It was a deliberate and massive understatement and they both knew it.

"More complete briefing materials can be provided," Davis said, "but only in a secure facility. We can arrange for a visit to our section of the Pentagon."

"I don't want to make this a hard sell," Elizabeth told Nate. "But I'm afraid I'm on a very tight timeline. Our ship back to Pegasus leaves in two weeks. I'll need an answer well before that. After that our schedule for personnel transfers is very up in the air."

"No," Nate said. There was a feeling of decisiveness that he hadn't had for years. "I'll want to see that material, but I'm in."

Elizabeth didn't say "I told you so," but the smirk she shot at Davis was more than enough to convey the idea.

"We'll have your onboarding meeting tomorrow," Davis said, packing his papers away. If anything sold the reality and urgency of this hidden space program, it was the idea of the Pentagon's personnel office doing something outside of their nine-to-five, Monday-Friday work hours. "I'll send a driver."

At 0900 on Sunday, he was led through an unmarked door in the basement of the Pentagon, subjected to every biometric ID known to man, and given a neck ultrasound. He spent the next two hours learning about the Ancients, Wraith, Goa'uld, and Jaffa. At 1100, he signed over his life for the next year, or indefinitely if there was a 'lapse of transport availability' or he acquired an 'altered physical or mental state requiring isolation from the general public'. By lunch he had direct deposit, a retirement plan, life insurance, a new secure phone, and a threat that he'd be exiled to Hoth if General O'Neill ever heard the word Xtreme again.

In Nate's defense, it wasn't as if the man had been wearing his stars. Generals weren't supposed to lurk around break rooms wearing jeans and a leather jacket.

Packing was the easy part. On Wednesday a small army of airmen had appeared to haul his belongings off to storage, Goodwill, or his parents' house. That had lead to the hard part: sitting down with them to explain that he'd be going overseas. With his previous deployments, he'd at least been able to point at where he was going on a map, even if the specifics had to be left out for opsec reasons. This time, he couldn't even promise to call home when he had a chance. In the end all he could do was tell them he was working for a civilian group and let them assume that meant he'd be safely behind walls somewhere. He didn't know if that was better or worse than trying to convey an accurate risk estimate.

The rest of his life he could wrap up with a few phone calls and emails so that everyone knew he'd be in limited contact for the foreseeable future, and working off a secure and monitored connection to boot. Compliment the latest baby photos from his seemingly ever-growing list of pseudo-nephews and -nieces, let Ray know his band still sucked and return a critiqued course paper, tell Mike and Cara he wasn't going to make it for Mike's birthday - all the usual, pretty much. It still amazed him that any of these people wanted anything to do with him, much less seek out advice or shove children toward him. He gave out his new work email to a handful of people who might genuinely need his attention in a hurry. That got relayed every time the city made contact, while personal accounts were batched when space allowed.

That left just one thing.

Brad,

I tried calling but only got your voicemail. I assume that means you've started training ahead of schedule. I'll avoid the usual platitudes and just say that I'm confident you won't embarrass us in front of the Royal Marines right before they send you home.

I've been recruited for an overseas posting with a specialized IGO. About all I can say about it is that it's run by my former advisor, Dr. Weir, and that it involves close cooperation with the military, including a sizable Marine detachment. There won't be any phone service and email gets batched weekly due to poor connectivity. I'll be off comms entirely the next three to four weeks. I'm afraid it means that we're unlikely to be able to meet up when you return stateside. Barring unforeseen circumstances, the deployment will last about a year, and possibly repeat. Once there's a firmer schedule maybe we can compare calendars and work something out.

Best of luck.

Nate

As dramatic moves went, Nate had to admit that swanning off to another galaxy one-upped moonlighting with the Royal Marines. Maybe an enforced low-contact period was just the thing he needed to move on with that part of his life, too.

Chapter Text

Strange though it was, the part of OIF that Nate remembered most clearly was Camp Mathilda. Muwaffaqiyah was probably second, but that was a fifteen minutes of crystalline clarity, burned into his memory by a combination of bloody-minded determination and monkey-brain terror so profound it wrapped back around into icy surety. Much of the rest of the invasion blurred together into a sea haze of boredom, sleep exhaustion, and anger. Mathilda, though, then he'd had plenty of time to think, to remember, and to reflect on how fucked up it was that he was having to send his embedded reporter off to the PX just to get basic toiletries in sufficient amounts.

Area 51 was not Mathilda. He wasn't sure it was even the same reality. The problem there was too many supplies, not insufficient ones.

It took Nate a week to get there, and that was moving fast by any reasonable standard. Stargate Command, and their overlords at Homeworld Command, had different standards. In fact, he was given to understand that people didn't like to to use words such as reasonable, because when they did someone would blow up a sun or die and then rise three days later. His bullshit sense, finely tuned thanks to a million dollars of Marine Corps training, had no idea what to do with that kind of statement.

He also had no idea how to get around, because no one had given him a map and the signage was abysmal. He was almost relieved to see some sort of regular human imperfection. After ending up in a giant underground hangar, home to a ship four times the size of any LHD he'd had the unlucky experience of boarding, he decided his advanced recon pathfinding skill had gotten a little rusty and instead settled for just asking directions.

"Excuse me," he said to a civilian in a black t-shirt and expedition utility pants who seemed to be directing traffic as supplies were loaded. Scruffy was probably the best way to describe him, as trying to put accurate words with the hair was problematic at best. "I'm a little turned around. I'm looking for Social Sciences and Outreach, with a Dr.Jackson?"

"Huh? Oh, sure. They're over on the west side, sub-level three, G corridor. Through that door and to the left, take the first stairs, and then a right. You can't miss them. You one of the new guys?"

"I'm Nate," he said, offering his hand. "Civil affairs, or whatever they've ended up calling me."

"Elizabeth's young apprentice, right. I'm John."

"What do you do around here?"

John looked inexplicably delighted. "I'm in aerospace."

"Nice to meet you. I've got to run, otherwise I'm going to be late to meet my boss."

"Don't worry about that," John said. "From what I hear, Jackson's not exactly the most reliable about showing up on time himself."

Nate refrained from commenting, because he wasn't sure he could do so without sarcasm. Academia wasn't free of hypocrisy and petty tyrants, but his filter level had still dropped considerably since he'd left the Corps. He probably need to ratchet it back up again if he was going to be working and living alongside airmen and Marines again.

As it was, it took Doctor Jackson about a minute to even notice Nate had arrived. He was busy rambling about digitizing books and complaining about a lack of shipping space for hard copy to a bemused redhead.

A British redhead, as it turned out. "Daniel. You've got a visitor."

"Huh?" Jackson spun around. "Oh! You must be Nate. Nice to finally meet you in person." They shook, and Nate was surprised by the familiar feel of gun callouses. "Nate, this is Dr. Sarah Gardner, one of our archaeologists. Sarah, this is... huh. Mister Nate Fick. You know, it's been a long time since I worked with anyone who didn't have a title. Weird."

"Unfortunately, I've been told no one actually uses 'master'," Nate replied.

"You'd be surprised. Did you get the reading list I sent you?"

"I did, but I didn't have access to a secure network to actually get any of it."

"Don't worry about it. A couple extra days head start on Ancient probably isn't a matter of life or death. It helps that you already have a grounding in Latin. That classics degree is going to come in handy."

Nate blinked. "Sir, I think that's the first time anyone has ever said that to me."

Jackson winced. "Please, don't start calling me sir. It's bad enough all the enlisted and half the officers do. It makes me feel old."

"Oh, Daniel," Gardner said. "You do realize how old Dr. Jordan was when we started, don't you?"

"What? No. That's not - no." Jackson's face went through a strange series of horrified contortions. "Look, there's an entire year that doesn't count."

"He spent it dead for tax purposes," Gardner told Nate.

"Don't talk to me about the IRS." Jackson shook his head.

"Are there any other languages I should be familiarizing myself with?" Nate asked. He didn't know how well he could handle learning Ancient and anything else simultaneously, but if he could avoid relying too much on an interpreter again, he'd make the effort.

"Well, we've working on Wraith, but it seems to be based on Ancient," Jackson said. "There have been a few other examples of written language gathered so far, but it seems that using either Ancient script or one based on gate glyphs is very common. It's possible Asgard, Nox, or Furling might come in handy someday. Don't worry about it yet, though."

"I was thinking more about talking with people."

"Yeah, don't worry about that either. It'll take care of itself."

"The gate translates most spoken languages once you've gone through it once or twice," Gardner added. "Priestly Goa'uld and Asgard are the most prominent counter-examples but you shouldn't run into those. It's best not to think about the mechanism."

"That's," terrifying, Nate thought, "handy."

"Yes, unless you're a linguist wanting to hear what they're saying. Although with that said, Dr. Piontek has some interesting research into what people with different first languages hear, as well as how audio recordings come across."

"I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what she turns up in Atlantis," Jackson agreed. "Most of the languages I've encountered have been clearly derived from ones on Earth, but Pegasus was a completely isolated environment."

"Is there anything I should be doing?" Nated asked, hoping to steer the conversation back to a more grounded level.

"Right, there's an arrival checklist around here somewhere," Daniel replied. He surveyed several tables and makeshift desks covered with piles of books with a frown. Gardner tapped his shoulder and handed him a slim green folder. "Thanks. Let's see, most orientation and training will be done once we're in flight. Right now we need to get you uniforms, a bunk, pre-flight medical." He raised his eyebrows. "Firearms safety certification, which seems redundant."

"Got to make sure I won't pick up a gun and shoot someone by accident," Nate said dryly. He only shot the wrong people on purpose.

"Range time with a zatnikitel might be helpful," Gardner suggested.

"No, they're not actually letting us take any," Jackson replied.

"And that's going to stop you?"

A knock at the door made all three of them stop and turn. A blonde woman in utilities was standing there. It took a moment for Nate to notice the silver oak leaves, and a moment more to suppress the bone-deep instinct to come to attention.

"Daniel, got a second?"

"Sure thing. Sam, this is Nate. Nate, Sam. What's up?"

"We got a call from the SGC." Sam, who Nate could only assume was the Samantha Carter from the intro briefing materials, grinned like a redneck who'd stolen the last jalapeno MRE. "Apparently SG-12 ran into a friend of yours offworld. She wants to come and meet with you."

"Really? Who?"

"Vala mal Doran."

Jackson closed his eyes. "Why?" he said, drawing out the word.

"She claims she has a tablet that will lead to an Ancient treasure located on Earth, and she wants your help translating it. In exchange for a share of the find, of course."

"Of course. Have Ferretti take care of it."

"He's at Disney World, remember?"

"Then Major Lorne."

"It's been two years, Daniel, you can't keep giving him every job you don't like. Besides, he's already at Atlantis." Carter's grin widened. "She's very insistent on speaking with you personally, and General Landry wants to know if you think she's safe to bring to the SGC."

Jackson sighed deeply. "Well, she didn't murder us all when she had the chance, so there's that. Fine, when?"

"They've arranged a meetup in two days, P6X-813."

"Whatever. I just hope Mitchell doesn't start begging again. Let me know when I'm supposed to beam up there."

"Actually, speaking of beaming, Hermiod has some complaints about his accommodations and I was hoping you could talk to him."

"Why not, I don't have any work to do. Sarah, could you," Jackson waved vaguely toward Nate.

"Certainly."

"Should I have understood any of that?" Nate asked after the two former members of SG-1 left.

"Qetesh," Gardner simply said. "No, that's unfair of me. I shouldn't conflate host and parasite. Vala's a space pirate who hijacked Prometheus last year and kidnapped Daniel. It seems they hit it off, once she stopped literally hitting him. Let's get you to the quartermaster."

Nate had been subjected to a wide range of hazing, but this certainly had to be the most bizzare variety yet. He wasn't going to let them get a rise out out of him. "So, how did you join the program?"

"I was an Egyptologist and we found some Goa'uld artifacts. I think they call what happened next a 'security incident'," Gardner replied matter-of-factly. "It took me a few years to recover. Afterward, I couldn't go back to academia knowing the truth, but I wasn't comfortable at the SGC or Area 51. Too many bad memories."

"I can understand that," Nate said. "I've felt that way myself a few times since I left the Corps."

"I'm sure. It's a bizarre feeling, being around people who are supposed to be colleagues or at least fellow citizens but who have no idea what you've been through." She shrugged. "Then Doctor Weir approached me about Atlantis, and I figured you couldn't get a fresher start than that. And where else are you going to get to do completely original research, with cultures no one's ever seen before?"

"I have to admit, I'm a little excited myself," Nate told her. "I know I'm mostly going to be arranging supplies and digging ditches, but I didn't get a lot of chances to just talk with people in my previous deployments. And now, aliens."

"Excitement's good, Nate. Don't hide it, embrace it. We're all geeks here."

Nate tried to imagine that advice being understood, much less supplied, by his brother officers, and failed entirely. There were a few who might have understood the appeal of intellectual pursuit for its own sake, even if they didn't share it, but it would never have come up. As for his men, well, they'd all get that bemused look like he was a puppy doing a trick. Any who might agree with him would be the least likely to admit it.

In short order, Nate's crate of personal belongings were stowed, he was issued his personal laptop and radio, and he received a couple duffle bags full of clothing. His uniform was dark grey utilities, as opposed to the tans used by civilians who stayed purely in the city, a couple sets of PT gear, and some extra shirts. It was the dark red panels of the jackets and similar color of his shirts that concerned him a little. Apparently it was what Weir and a handful of other operations or administrative staff wore, but he knew how these things went.

He couldn't help himself. He had to send one last email out, to Ray and Brad. Status update: the staff uniforms are color-coded and mine is red. Send rescue.

The doctors gave Nate a medical exam that mostly proved he still had no sense of bodily privacy, and the sergeant at the firing range range looked at his record and let out a deep, world-weary sigh. After that, he mostly alternated help the rest of the social science staff pack away equipment and helping digitize Ancient-related documents that had to remain on Earth, usually while listening to impromptu lectures by Jackson about things to avoid in interstellar diplomacy. That last bit only continued until Jackson went off to the SGC, from which he did not return. The rumor mill was vague and incoherent, even by J-Lo-is-dead standards, but most people agreed that he had been kidnapped by or married to either the space pirate or an Air Force colonel who was stalking him. Possibly both.

What frightened Nate was that he was starting to think the ludicrous "so no shit, there I was" stories he was getting from several people were not actually hazing but attempts at helpful advice.

When D-Day came, Nate was sitting in the Daedalus' civilian mess hall, along with dozens of others who didn't have anything better to do. At the same table with him and Sarah was his roommate for the trip, one of the original expedition's agronomists. Hopefully they would get along, but if not, sharing a ten-by-ten bunk room with a stranger for three weeks couldn't possibly be worse than a similar amount of time in a truck cab with an increasingly grumpy unwashed gunnery sergeant.

"Attention on Daedalus. This is Colonel Caldwell," a voice said over the 1MC. Nate could just barely put a face with the name; they'd been introduced, but by in large he'd been completely uninvolved with the military side of preparation. "Secure for take off. Once we have achieved orbit, it'll take about five minutes to do final hyperdrive calibration before we jump. If you have a chance, I suggest you take a look out the portside windows."

A dull rumble ran through the deckplates. Moonlight suddenly flooded the dusty hangar as the overhead doors opened up. With a barely perceptible lurch the ship lifted off, rising swiftly over the dimly lit desert. The lights of Vegas came into view, then more and more cities as the horizon began to retreat and curve away. Soon the whole of North America was visible, illuminated by its lights, and they were cruising toward the terminator line over East Asia. Everyone in the room gathered around the large windows to get a better view.

"You know, it's funny," Parrish said after a minute of silence. "I've been to another galaxy, but I've never actually seen Earth from orbit before."

"Neither have I," Sarah murmured. "Not with free eyes."

Nate knew he should really say something profound. A truly absurd amount of money had been spent providing him with an education specifically geared toward producing quotes on command and training on motivational leadership. Faced with such an awe-inspiring sight, he was reduced to the level of the average inbred redneck. "This is some crazy bulltshit. I'd pinch myself but if I'm dreaming, I'm probably bleeding out in a traffic jam."

Earth disappeared into a blur of blue and white. Sarah sighed and returned to their table. "I hope you're good at waiting, Nate, because interstellar flight is extremely tedious."

"I'd say I'm familiar with waiting, yes."

Chapter Text

Three weeks passed surprisingly quickly, filled with intensive learning and training on all the different protocols needed to survive on- and off-base, or more accurately off-world. He also had a lot of time blocked off for studying previous SGC relocation and support efforts, such as with the Hak'tyl and Enkarans. Almost all of it was spent with his fellow civilians, particularly the currently-leaderless social scientists. There was a rifle company supposedly lurking somewhere on the ship, but he didn't make an effort to seek them out. He needed to get integrated with his immediate colleagues first. Also, apparently Colonel Caldwell had quickly restricted them to their own section following some sort of overly enthusiastic training exercise.

At the end of the flight, for the first time in three years, Nate almost died.

"And therefore, having destroyed the massing fleet at the, the moon of the third - no, third moon of the second planet, tomorrow we will have had the ability to repel the thrust toward Palas?" Nate suggested, staring at a block of Ancient text. "The verb conjugation on last clause doesn't make sense. It looks like a future active participle but there's an extra modifier."

"I think it's some sort of variant on the conditional, use for potential future actions," Gardner replied. "Or for time travel. Check the references for the device on P3… something, the one translated by Teal'c."

"Of course," Nate said, opening a different file on his tablet. "Time travel. I should have thought of that."

Time travel was on the long list of things that could and had gone wrong with the stargate. There were rules for what to do if you went backward, forward, or sideways into another universe. Despite all the many reasons he had to the contrary, he generally liked rules. They made life a lot simpler and helped provide structure in unfamiliar situations, or when dealing with hyper-masculine teenagers with guns. The fact that these particular rules were necessary just made him wonder if maybe the entire gate concept was a bad idea and everyone should have stuck to spaceships.

"Hey, Nate. Sarah." They looked up to see Parrish standing at the door of their tiny makeshift office. "You hear about Dr. Lindstrom? He's dead. Spaced."

Nate crossed his arms and sat back in his chair. "That was Dr. Monroe. I thought there was an electrical short."

There had been an email an hour earlier, confirming the rumors that had rapidly spread through the ship about the reason for the medical call over the 1MC. Despite the size of the ship and the relatively small number of people aboard, word had spread fast. Training had provided a long list of ways you could die in Pegasus, but industrial accident wasn't even in the top forty. They'd dropped out of hyperspace shortly after that.

"No, this is different," Parrish said. "I heard from one of the engineers that McKay and Novak were talking about potential sabotage."

"McKay does work himself up sometimes," Gardner offered. "I'm sure there's no reason to be concerned, David. Save your worry for your coffee plants."

"You joke, but you don't want to know what people were like after we ran out last year."

As he left, Nate and Gardner shared a glance that made it clear neither of them thought this was a coincidence. Nate wasn't inclined to wait for a third time to declare something enemy action.

The intercom crackled to life a few minutes later. "Attention all expedition personnel. This is Weir. Unfortunately, there has been another accident. While we investigate the cause, everyone should remain in their current location. We are also doing a headcount. Please report in Technical Sergeant Reed, call code 1167. Arrangements will be made for food and escorts to quarters if that becomes necessary. Weir out."

"So it's like that, then," Gardner said, after they'd called in. "They'd have us reporting to our emergency stations if they thought it was just a malfunction."

"Traditionally," Nate replied, watching her reaction carefully, "this is the point where marines would start making bets on who's trying to kill us. I'd say the Wraith, although I'm not sure how they could be involved."

"That would be the safe bet, but also no fun. I'll go with the Goa'uld. Specifically Ba'al. This seems like his style, and that despicable worm Nerus is working for him."

Nate's sensibilities said that he should be making sure she remained calm. He was the experienced combat officer and she was a civilian archaeologist, supposedly on her first off-world assignment. Being trapped there, floating in a tin can that had apparently taken to springing leaks, was enough to drive anyone into a panic. He was more than a little pleased that his own pulse wasn't speeding up. She didn't seem to be the least bit inclined to be more than annoyed at being locked in a room without space to move around.

"Back to translations, then?" he suggested.

A while later, Elizabeth showed up, trailed by an armed airman. Nate really hoped she didn't suspect one of them; if so, she had brought a woefully inadequate escort.

"Dr. Gardner, we have a bit of a situation, and I wanted to touch base in case you could be of assistance," she said. With a glance at Nate, she added, "In private, if you'd like."

"Here is fine, ma'am."

Elizabeth nodded. "Dr. McKay's current working hypothesis is that there is a virus infecting the ship's computer systems. It may be Wraith in origin. While obviously you're not familiar with their exact technology, do you have any insight into the subject more generally?"

Gardner took a deep breath and closed her eyes. After a few seconds, she said, "Not really, no. Perhaps if this was Prometheus, which still uses Goa'uld crystal technology, but the systems on this ship are either Asgard or heavily customized by Earth. Even then, Osiris was thousands of years out of date. I could take a look if you need me to, but I doubt I'd be any help."

"Still, when he served Anubis, he made use of Ancient technology, and from what I'm told the Wraith programming language is at least partly derived from theirs."

Gardner shook her head and smiled sharply. "Anubis shared how to use it in an operational sense, what its strengths and weaknesses were in battle, but never the entire picture and certainly never how it actually worked. Which suited him fine. He found technical work distasteful, even if he'd do it when forced."

"I understand. I'll pass what you said along to Rodney just in case, but otherwise I'll let you two get back to work."

"If you do, leave my name out of it. I'm here to study people, not get my brain picked by over-eager engineers."

"Of course. Thanks."

"So," Nate said after she left, slowly putting pieces together. Osiris had never been mentioned in any of the briefing materials, but with names like Ra, Apophis, and Anubis floating around, it was easy to guess what he was. Given that, it wasn't hard to think about the sorts of security incidents an archaeologist could be involved with. "Want to talk about it?"

"Do you want to talk about why you have nightmares about directing traffic?"

Now there was some new and unpleasant information. Not so much the existence of nightmares, since he was perfectly aware that they still popped up, but that she could be that precise. He wondered if he need to apologize to Parrish. "Not really, no. Maybe later."

"Later."

A few minutes later, the shipwide intercom told them to brace for impact. That was swiftly followed by a quick series of loud, booming clangs, accompanied by a more drawn-out, rumbling detonation that kept vibrating the deck long after the noise stopped. As shellings went, it wasn't that bad, over and done with inside a minute and with no threat of ear damage. On the other hand, when some asshole sprayed you with anti-aircraft rounds, it wasn't like they could make your fabric-covered victor any less airtight, so now there was a delightful paranoid feeling that maybe there was a crack somewhere behind one of the walls that was slowly letting all the air out, to be noticed right when the emergency bulkhead slammed down to seal their section off.

He wondered how the doc felt about sleeping aids.

Naturally, they were soon left with nothing to do but sit there in the dark, their lifeless tablets testament to the wisdom of Jackson's desire for print books. Apparently it was that which made a crack in Gardner's calm, because soon she was pacing up and down the entire fifteen-feet length of their office.

"If I had know that the secret Goa'uld magic they needed," she finally said, stopping in one corner and wheeling on him, "was turning it off and on again, I would have solved this problem an hour ago and been done with it!"

She had struck a pose, right hand on her hip and elbow out, the left raised up in the air in a rhetorical flourish, chin upturned just slightly. Even in the light of Nate's little flashlight she looked regal.

"I'm sure it's more complicated than that," Nate said. The power came back on. "And really, isn't a simple solution usually a better one?"

Outside the room's tiny porthole, the stars began to wheel about. A few seconds later, sunlight started to fill the room. Given that they were near the front of the ship, this change wasn't as welcome as it might have been.

"Primitive idiots with overblown egos, meddling with technology they have no real understanding of," Gardner declaimed. "The only so-called technical expert on this ship with a clue what they're doing is Hermiod."

As much as he liked Weir, Nate was starting to feel a bit uncertain about the rest of the leadership. "It's probably not as bad as it looks," he said, using the tone he reserved for telling men that battalion command had definitely intended to leave an entire truck of supplies behind, and by the way doesn't everyone love half rations?

"Did you know this ship's life support is so limited, it can only carry about four hundred people for more than a day?" Gardner asked. "A ha'tak the same size can carry four thousand troops for years. Not even including the servants and priests."

"You sure you don't want to talk about it?"

Gardner dropped into her seat. "Not without a drink."

"I could probably dig on up somewhere," Nate offered. Breaking into the boxes labeled "Alcoholic Beverages, Diplomacy, For The Conduct Of" might be a bit much, but given the number of Marines aboard, it was a statistical certainty that there was at least one shady corporal smuggling rotgut, and he no longer had to pretend that wasn't the case.

"No, not today. Perhaps after we reach the city. For now I think I'll just sit here and wait for the sun to kill me in a fit of dramatic irony."

The sun failed to kill them, dramatically or otherwise, which suited Nate just fine. He had, at various times, resigned himself to a wide variety of possible deaths. If he had flown straight into a star on an Air Force ship named Daedalus, though, he would have been so embarrassed that his ghost would have risen for the sole purpose of personally apologizing to every Marine he'd even known, even the most utterly useless ones, for bringing such shame upon them all. As it was, the entire incident could be filed away as just another Air Force fuckup from start to finish, to be laughed about at a later date.

Two days later, they landed in Atlantis.

Nate had to give his civilian overlord and her Air Force servants this: she knew that the best way to relieve the pressure of three weeks on a spaceship was to get everyone get everyone drunk. She didn't put it that way, of course, because she was a professional diplomat, not a hick inexplicably trusted not to poison everyone with booze that fell off his cousin's truck. Call it a welcome party or a mixer; Nate knew a kegger when he saw one.

There was work to do first, of course. The ship had to be unpacked for one thing, and while the transporter allowed most of the equipment and supplies to be beamed close to their destinations, it still had to be moved the last twenty or thirty feet by hand, and a six-hundred-meter ship could carry an awful lot of stuff. Sensitive or perishable supplies and equipment in particular had to be moved into the appropriate climate-controlled rooms quickly. Everyone turned out for the process, and once that was done the newcomers still had to move into their rooms under their own power.

Nate's quarters were at least as big as his apartment back in Virginia. He heard a lot about how much of an improvement they were over the previous set; the expanding size of the expedition justified moving out of the Ancient equivalent of a motel to a newly-opened residential building. Everyone had their own rooms, even the more junior marines - not entirely unreasonable, given the lowliest was a corporal, if unorthodox - but somehow he'd scored one with a balcony, a hot tub, and a great view. Apparently being a divisional leader counted for something, even if it was a division of one.

However, once the initial wave of work was done and everyone had a night and day to adjust to local time there was a party. It was probably more sober than Elizabeth had originally planned when ordering crates full of cake mix, ice cream, and beer, given that it doubled as a wake following an early-morning funeral for their two fallen comrades, but a party nonetheless. They'd set up in large open-air park or lounge out near the city edge, where the full skyline could easily be seen, outlined by the last purples and reds of the setting sun behind it. As the lights came on it was truly spectacular in a way the defied words.

Almost all of the crowd was in uniform, if not the full utility set than the less formal shirts provided for off-duty wear. Most of the civilians were in tan plus department colors, while the military were in dark grey, but there were a few who crossed lines like Elizabeth, McKay, or Nate himself, signifying either higher rank or offworld qualifications. The Daedalus crew were mostly in their jumpsuits.

"Can I - is this on? Thanks, Rodney. Can I have your attention?" At the front of the dance floor, where a makeshift DJ station of a laptop and some big speakers had been set up, Elizabeth had climbed up on a table. All four hundred-odd people began to drift that way. "I'll try to keep this quick. We don't get a lot of chances to relax and I'm sure you've got better things to do than listen to me."

There was a scatter of polite laughter.

"We just passed one Earth year since our original departure, and I'm told we're coming up on one Lantean year, so this this may as well be our official anniversary. It's been a big year. A hard one at times, and full of sacrifices, but also one of extraordinary achievements. I expect the next year to be the same. We are going to face some incredible challenges going forward. They'll come in many forms - scientific, military, personal. Fortunately, you're all incredible people, some of the best and brightest our world has to offer. I have every confidence that working together, we'll overcome whatever Pegasus throws at us and do some truly remarkable things."

"But before all that - let's have some fun together first." There was some applause and the crowd began to break up. Nate headed up toward her as McKay helped her down off the table.

"Nice speech, ma'am," Nate said as he joined them.

She smiled at him. "Thank you, Nate. I'm glad you approve. I hope it didn't ping your BS meter too hard."

"No, that was a two or three at worst."

"Who are you?" McKay turned to Elizabeth. "Do you have an intern now or something? What is he, sixteen?"

Nate, who was well aware that even pushing thirty he still looked like a jailbait rentboy, kept a straight face and said, "I'm getting college credit for this. It's really exciting, this is the first time I've ever left my home state and now look at me."

"What? I mean, I know the Air Force is cheap, but that's a bit - you're mocking me, aren't you?" McKay eyed him suspiciously. "I hope you don't mind cold showers."

"Better be careful, Rodney," a voice said behind them. "The man's a trained killer. He probably knows five ways to kill you with his pinky that are completely undetectable."

"Ah, John, there you are," Elizabeth said as a familiar fluffy-haired man joined them. He was still wearing black, but in this case it was the panels of his jacket. "Have you met Nate yet? He's -"

"Your civil affairs guy. Yeah, briefly."

"You're John Sheppard," Nate said blankly. Somewhere, deep inside his brain, a TILT sign was flashing. "Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard."

"I know. Sometimes I'm as surprised as you." John smirked, in a way that made Nate wonder if all pilots learned that in flight school. "I was never supposed to make it past captain."

"Funny. I was." It was as if the man was every Marine Corps stereotype of the Chair Force, personified into physical form. The only thing missing was flaming homosexuality, and while Nate didn't like to stereotype, most straight men didn't spend that much time on their hair.

"That's military bureaucracy for you. Maybe we can compare notes during flight training."

"I'm infantry, sir, not a pilot. I jump out of planes, not fly them." He'd known letting them stick him with that ATA injection had been a bad idea.

John patted him on the shoulder. "Trust me, once you know the power of the dark side, you'll never go back. McKay, we're doing trivia shots. I need you on my team."

"Lieutenant Colonel," Nate said to himself as they walked off. Beside him, Elizabeth laughed.

"There is only one truth: the universe is infinite," she quoted to him. "Different circumstances call for different approaches. Standards meant to encourage cohesion and attention to detail may be counterproductive in a mixed environment where individual initiative is essential."

She was clearly remembering his sergeant-major impression from the department Halloween party years ago. "Maybe I can write a PhD thesis comparing methods," he mused. "It might be the only thing around here actually suitable for public release."

She wagged a finger at him. "Careful there. Around the SGC, talk of publication can be fighting words." Something or someone caught her eye. "Go on, stop standing around the boss. It's a mixer. Mix!"

Nate mixed his way over to the desert table, and then to the bar. Cake in one hand and beer in another, he looked around for a group to join, only for a soldier to waylay him before he got five feet.

"Evening, sir." Bearing and demeanour made Nate peg him as a Marine immediately. "Staff Sergeant Stackhouse."

"Nate Fick."

"Word is you were a Marine yourself, sir. That true?"

Nate nodded. "First Recon."

"I thought should welcome personally, then. I'm senior from the original expedition."

"Thank you, staff sergeant," Nate said, suppressing a frown. There hadn't been a lot of people with the original group, but certainly not so few a staff sergeant should be the highest ranking one left, even taking Sheppard or the international complement into account. "It means a lot."

Stackhouse glanced around to see if anyone else was close, then lowered his voice a little. "I also wanted to let you know you're probably going to hear things about what happened to Colonel Sumner."

That peaked Nate's interested. "He was killed in action the first day, right? Taken by the Wraith, interrogated, and fed upon." The public mission summary was sketchy at points, not just in the usual way but as if it was dancing around something.

"That's not the entire story. Ask Weir for the full reports, keep an open mind, and talk to someone who was here if you have questions." Stackhouse glanced away again, and this time Nate could follow his gaze over toward a group gathering around a projection screen. Sheppard's height made him stand out among them. "Same thing for Lieutenant Ford. He's not well, sir."

Ford had been mentioned during briefing, both as a current security risk and as an object lesson on the importance of following containment procedures for people under altered mental states. "I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for the head's up."

"Gladly, sir." His expression brightened a little. "And with that out the way, how do you feel about trivia? The LT's got the technical side covered, but we really need an anthro geek to help defend the Corp's honor."

"I suppose I should come along and help, then, if I want to be able to show my face at the Marine Corps Ball again."

The LT turned out to be a redheaded explosives expert named Laura. Nate thought he was going to like this galaxy.

He was less sure the next morning, but that had more to do with the hangover than anything else. He could only hope that the zoologists suffered as much in victory as the Marines did in defeat.

Nate had a 1030 appointment with Elizabeth - Lantean time, that was, not Zulu or Mountain time. There was a forty-six minute drift caused by the difference in the planet's rotation, making them to slowly fall in and out of phase with their counterparts at the SGC. He started off with a workout and breakfast, then went to his shiny new office in the Ritz, so-called because the building looked like a stack of crackers and was, as far as anyone could tell, perfectly harmless. The same could not be said for any of the labs the physical scientists used.

He had email waiting for him. Not just on the internal mail server, which was already full of the usual notifications about interdepartmental activities, committee meetings, drill schedules, and mess menu plans. His SGC and personal accounts had synced too, thanks to two databurst connections made while the ship was in flight. He fired off a pre-written letter to his parents first, just to make sure it got out with the next batch, and then took care of the work stuff before checking the rest. It was mostly baby photos and dad spam from both his father and Ferrando, who in retirement apparently had never met an email he wouldn't forward to his children and every officer he'd ever served with.

Ray had replied to his redshirt joke with a series of tirades about uniforms in general, how red didn't go well with his eyes, and how Sisko was the best captain anyway and Nate should be thrilled to wear the same color as him. Nothing unexpected there. To Nate's surprise, Brad had also sent a two-word reply of "Solid copy." It was terse even by his standards.

Status update: I have arrived alive and intact, no thanks to the Air Force. Apparently someone visited a porn site they shouldn't have and the entire network had to be wiped and reset. Satnav tried to drive us off a cliff.

Elizabeth's office was surprisingly small, but it had a great view of the stargate. It still comfortably fit the two of them, plus Major Lorne and Teyla Emmagan. The former was the force protection battalion's XO, a spit-and-polish officer who reassuringly embodied the other Air Force stereotypes of being too prim and proper to ever set foot anywhere with dirt, unless it was in a sand trap. Teyla was a woman with long, beautiful hair, on the org chart as a cultural liaison contractor and less officially the de facto chief diplomat and minister of trade.

"Does anyone else think I should have scheduled this for after lunch?" Weir asked after all the proper introductions had been made.

"I'm fine," Lorne replied.

Teyla nodded. "As am I."

Nate was forced to shrug. It was either that or admit that, despite doing is best to remain in shape, three years out of the Corps had worn off enough of his edge that a beer, a glass of Athosian wine, and an unclear number of jello shots made with something Botany produced was enough to make him miserable.

"Well. Maybe I'm just getting old." Elizabeth folded her hands on her desk. "Well, to start with, obviously all the plans that involved Dr. Jackson being here are out the window. Assuming he gets free of his current entanglement, he can't reach us until the Daedalus makes a round trip. That's six weeks at minimum, so we need to go ahead and get started without him. I'll figure out who's in charge of SSO later."

Nate had already heard enough from the staff who'd been there from the beginning to know that Daniel Jackson had been looked upon as the second coming, descending from the literal space heavens to save them from the Great Satan of the North. They probably weren't going to be happy.

"It could be worse," Lorne offered. "He could be married to a lizard."

"Be that as it may. How soon can we get Nate qualified for off-world travel?"

"He's already got everything he needs for the safe-world level, and civilian team-member's just a matter of a couple trips for the practical exam," Lorne said. "Same thing for team lead. Call it a couple weeks, depending on what missions we can slot him into."

"Team lead?" Nate asked.

"Yes," Elizabeth said. "My long-term goal is for you to have your own dedicated team. Even if most of what you'll be doing is follow-up to prior missions, often as part of a much larger group of marines and civilians, there's still going to be plenty of times a four-man team will be more convenient."

"I was under the impression that all SG teams were lead by field-grade officers."

"The SGC is a military organization, and has a tendency to be brass-heavy at that. Last year we had two teams lead by sergeants. They did fine," Elizabeth replied. "Further, this is a civilian expedition, so why not have a civilian in charge of a team? Your background makes you perfectly qualified."

Nate glanced at Lorne, but he didn't seem to have any objection. "That's fine with me, ma'am. When do you want me to start?"

"Picking a team can wait a while. Even the major here hasn't settled on his. As for the practical experience - Teyla?"

"We have a meeting with the Dylarians scheduled for later this week," Teyla said. "Mr. Fick would be most welcome. And I believe Colonel Sheppard wished to... refresh Dr. McKay's familiarity with certain procedures."

"We'll pencil that in, then," Elizabeth said. "Since we're on the topic of leadership, there's a related matter we may as well hit now. I'd like to put you on our control room emergency supervisor list. It's people who are qualified to take charge when something unusual comes up that the on-duty staff can't handle."

Nate frowned slightly. "Like the order of succession in the procedures manual?"

"Pretty much, just with more emphasis on ops protocols," Lorne said. "Right now the top tier is Sheppard, McKay, then Teyla. If they're all unavailable, it drops down to the division levels, starting with me. You'd be next."

"What about Beckett?" Nate asked.

"Carson is a compassionate and skilled physician," Teyla said, exchanging a glance with Elizabeth, "but outside of medicine he can be… indecisive."

"You'd be on call on a rotating basis, as well as attend certain briefings on security matters," Elizabeth said. "And to be honest, most after-hours calls involve plumbing rather than Wraith. If an emergency does come up, hopefully you'd just be holding the fort until a more senior staff member can arrive."

"Shouldn't Radner, Rutherford, and Griffin be higher than me?" Nate asked, naming off the three company captains. The first two were marines, and the third an Air Force pilot.

Elizabeth waggled her hand in a maybe gesture. "The IOA is keen on keeping civilians in the loop, and I agree. They'd still be in charge of directing military action, just like Sheppard or Lorne are even when I'm around."

"In an emergency, they might be busy anyway," Lorne added. "Although if they're all incapacitated too, military command could devolve to you. There should be plenty of redundancy, but this is Pegasus. If something in the coffee at a battalion staff meeting turns us all into cavemen, it could be problematic."

"If you're hoping not to have a lieutenant setting policy," Nate replied, "I should point out that I was a captain for a couple weeks."

"Most of our lieutenants came straight through the SGC's training program. It's great prep for off-world missions, but it's not the same as leadership in a combat situation. In a crisis that's already decapitated the battalion, proven experience trumps the manual."

"It's still damned irregular, sir." There had always been that small worry about the remaining years of his hitch being called in, but those had passed. Nate wasn't sure what he'd do if someone tried to actually put him back in a combat command at this late date.

"Trust me, compared to some of the times Teal'c has been put in charge of situations, having you in command until help arrives is downright normal," Elizabeth assured him. "You'll already be working with John and Evan regularly on manpower and scheduling issues as it is, so you may as well be kept in the loop for everything else."

Nate couldn't even come up with an argument against it. Not one based on fact, in any case, rather than the gut feeling that he'd left the Corps for a bunch of reasons and not wanting to be in charge of the next great fuckup was one of them. Even there, his gut was also saying that if all the officers were already dead or incapacitated, he couldn't leave some green lieutenant in the lurch.

"I suppose if I'm going to be using the Marines as overpaid donkeys," he said reluctantly, "I may as well know what else they're up to."

"Excellent." Elizabeth gave him a warm smile, like she hadn't just dumped a huge responsibility on his shoulders. "And on that note, Teyla, let's talk trade. Nate, it's important to remember that we're not actually selling the Marines into slavery, just renting them out."

"Marines are very familiar with the concept of renting labor," Nate said, "so turnabout seems like fair play."

The momentary flash of a smile showed Lorne got it, and that he wasn't as much a stuffed shirt as he seemed at first glance. He thought it went over the womens' heads, but Elizabeth had a mean poker face and he didn't know Teyla enough to tell for sure.

"Bartering labor is a common arrangement between many worlds," Teyla said. "Part of the reason we are meeting with the Dylarians is to negotiate the specifics of this year's transaction."

"I am serious about the slavery, though," Elizabeth added. "Early on there was a misunderstanding on Colonel Sheppard's part and, well, there's no need to go into specifics."

Nate opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again to say, "Okay." All the other potential responses were too rude.

Lorne leaned sideways toward Nate and mock-whispered, "I'll give you specifics later."

"It was a memorable occasion," Teyla said. "But perhaps not instructive as to how things usually go."

Lorne's skeptical look was worthy of any recon Marine. It was odd; he acted like he thought Sheppard was completely incompetent, and yet never seemed anything other than amused by it. Sheppard hadn't even been in the same galaxy for most of Lorne's own short tenure.

"For me," Teyla clarified, which Lorne seemed to buy.

It was little things like that which pushed Nate to ask the big question, not in private or by email like he'd planned, but the better part of an hour later when the meeting was wrapping up. Asking for full access to mission reports was perfectly normal in the context of preparing for his own off-world assignments; the complete versions were mainly restricted to prevent idle snooping by people who didn't need to know and there were abstracts available. Elizabeth agreed even as she asked if he was looking for anything in particular.

"It was suggested to me that I might want to read about the rescue mission at the start of the expedition," Nate replied, perfectly matter-of-fact and innocent. The reactions were instructive, which was why he said it.

Teyla was mildly curious. Lorne had a momentary flash of anger before his expression locked down into a stony blankness. Elizabeth disappeared, replaced with Doctor Weir, not the affable professor but the famed UN negotiator. Nate had the distinct impression he'd just started a mountain of shit sliding downhill toward some unsuspecting target.

"Of course, we need you fully informed just like any other team or division leader," she said. Despite having long since run out of fucks to give, Nate was glad her icy ire wasn't directed his way. "Major, see to it his server permissions are changed."

"Yes, ma'am. I'll take care of getting him a tour, too."

There had already been a tour as part of general orientation, but that had been a greatest hits of critical landmarks like the dining facility, along with essentials like the internal transporters and how to use the toilets. Lorne's was a more thorough look at operational areas, particularly the upper part of the control tower where stargate operations, the jumper bay, and the infirmary were located. It was also a chance to introduce him to some key people, such as the Canadian E-6 who dialed the gate and made sure incoming travellers did not make a horrifying thud when they arrived, and subtly get a bead on Nate.

"So, Afghanistan and Iraq, huh?" Lorne said, as if he would have gone into that meeting without going over Nate's record with a fine-toothed comb.

"Yeah."

"I was supposed to deploy to Bagram after finishing grad school. I got diverted to the SGC instead when they started to really ramp up offworld mining operations. Technical support at first, then SG-11 doing geological survey and planning."

"Sounds exciting."

"Intellectually, yeah, but not enough to keep us on our toes. I lost a man because I fucked up survey procedures and accidentally desecrated an alien graveyard."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Nate said. Jackson had scrubbed out the names but mentioned the incident. He hadn't had many kind things to say about it, except that the officers involved were, in his words, salvageable. Nate knew how fortunate he'd been to avoid losses himself, as well as some of the statistics about SG team survival, so he hadn't been inclined to say anything at the time.

"We've got the best here, but sometimes you mess up or get unlucky and pay for it," Lorne said after a brief silence. "Now Sheppard, he's only be with program a year, more or less by accident. He actually did make it to Afghanistan. Served with - no, nevermind, you wouldn't recognize the name. He was flying search and rescue. Saved a lot of lives."

"You don't need to preach about the value of casevac pilots, sir," Nate said. "I appreciate them already."

"You'd think everyone would. Anyway, he fit in pretty well around here despite that. Because of it, really. I think the two of you are going to get along. You might have the clean-cut hardcore marine thing going on, to his slacker pilot, but you've got a lot in common."

Nate sighed. "Sir, you don't need to sell me on Colonel Sheppard, either. If Dr. Weir has kept him around, I trust that there's a good reason."

Lorne stopped them in the middle of a corridor, glancing both ways to make sure they were alone. He didn't look the least bit angry or agitated; concerned, maybe, but not upset.

"Listen, when we go out there and say we're peaceful explorers, when we tell each other we leave no one behind, we mean it. Yes, our overall goal is to get technology to help defend Earth and improve people's lives. The methods matter. Every time we've slipped from our standards, it's hurt us way more than it's helped," Lorne said. "I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that if Jack O'Neill hadn't been the first gate team leader, if George Hammond hadn't been the man on the spot when Apophis came to Earth, we would all be dead. John Sheppard's the same kind of linchpin for this expedition."

Nate wondered what it was like to be in a chain of command where you could so earnestly defend not just your immediate superior but the generals above him when an outsider even vaguely questioned their worth. He'd done his best to avoid casting aspersions on his own and despite that there was not just an article but an entire book out there where his lack of regard for them featured prominently. He could just about imagine it with a few men, somewhere on the other side of a quantum mirror. He doubted even his own guys would be this effusive, given how often they'd gotten screwed indirectly thanks to him.

"You're not the only one suggesting I shouldn't make hasty judgements because of rumors or his record, Major," Nate said, considering his word choice carefully. "I assure you, I can form my own opinions when I've had time to see him at work."

"That's all I can ask," Lorne said, resuming their walk. "That and not starting any punch-ups that I have to pretend didn't happen."

"I'll do my best to avoid that."

"Especially not with angry civilians. Well, you know what I mean."

Nate chuckled. "I get the feeling I'm going to confuse a lot of people."

"Yeah, there's a few guys at the SGC who switched sides, mostly after a medical discharge, but not out here yet. Except for - well, I'm not supposed to talk about that one."

"But you can make leading statements?"

"Gotta oil the gossip machine somehow." Lorne smirked as they stopped in front of a door, which hissed open to reveal a really uncomfortable looking chair. It was closer to a throne, really. "We may as well wrap up here. Zelenka has you after lunch for some ATA-related training, and then Stacks is going to show you the stunners sometime after that."

"This is the control chair?" Nate asked, just to be sure. He circled around it. It didn't look all that impressive.

"A direct interface for the entire city, including the most powerful stardrive and weapons systems ever discovered. Go ahead and sit down. You won't break anything. You don't know enough to override the control room, and I don't think even Sheppard could do it by accident."

Deciding it was best to just try it and see what happened, Nate sat down. It was warm to the touch. After a few seconds, it hummed to life and reclined back. He could feel a slight tickling or tingling near the nape of his neck. He said as much.

"That's a good sign. Think about where we are in the universe."

The tingling spread, accompanied by a chill sensation, like someone had smeared Icy Hot up and down his spine. A hologram appeared overhead, showing what Nate had to assume was the Pegasus galaxy. Another, more familiar one appeared beside it. Both then zoomed in, one to Lantea and the other to Earth, and then further to Atlantis and what looked suspiciously like southwest England.

"Oh, bullshit," Nate said. The last thing he needed was some unfathomably old alien city trying to psychoanalyze him.

"Yeah, that's a new one," Lorne replied. "Could be Glastonbury Tor, maybe. You ever been to England?"

"My mom has family in Scotland."

"It might be trying to show a point of origin, and just misreading the geography." Lorne's look was a little too keen and skeptical for Nate's taste. "You've clearly got potential but sometimes it takes a while for it to really get a good connection with artificial genes."

"That's definitely the problem, yes," Nate said, face scrunching up as he made the Earth part go away.

"Dr. Kusanagi will be in touch about training," Lorne said. "Anyone who's got a decent aptitude needs it, in case of an emergency. There's around a dozen people we consider fully qualified, about half of them civilians."

"Is that likely?" Nate asked.

"Not with the long-range sensors giving us plenty of warning, but no one says the Wraith can't invent cloaking technology or the snakes can't find their way out here." Lorne waved for him to stand up. "Let's hit the mess. Maybe you can fill me in about this Vala-Jackson-Mitchell threesome I keep hearing about."

Chapter Text

A few days later, Nate was officially ready to go off-world for the first time. It seemed more than a little silly to call it that, given that they were very definitely not on Earth, but far be it from him to make waves about terminology.

Even as he stood in the gateroom next to Teyla, he had to keep himself from checking the contents of his tac vest a fifth time. P-90, sidearm, absurdly small radio, medical kit - everything was there, and hadn't vanished on the way between the ready room and stargate operations. Especially not the GDO strapped to his arm. That was definitely going nowhere. The previous day, anyone new who might have reason to go offworld had been given a thorough demonstration on their operation, including standing by the gate while guys at the Alpha Site chucked rocks through at the shield. Supposedly no one had ever been lost that way in Atlantis, but at the SGC it wasn't quite so clear. You could never be sure one of those thuds wasn't someone listed as MIA.

"There is no reason to be nervous," Teyla told him. "I have been visiting this world since I was a small child."

"I'm not nervous, ma'am," Nate said, shifting his P90 where it hung on his chest. It felt too small; he understood why the SGC used the compact weapon for most teams, but it still didn't sit quite right. "Just been a while since I went anywhere I needed a weapon."

A noisy ruckus coming down the hall turned out to be Sheppard and McKay, only a few minutes late.

"Why does he get a machine gun and I don't?" McKay asked immediately.

"Because he knows how to use it, and you keep dodging me when I try to take you to the range," Sheppard said. "It's not a PhD, you can't qualify once and never practice again."

"Are the Dylarians going to mind us bringing weapons?" Nate asked Teyla.

"That's not how a PhD works either. I had a long and brilliant publication list until I was unjustly exiled to Russia."

"It's generally not a problem," Teyla said. "There are some worlds that restrict weapons, but most understand that travellers need them for their own protection."

"So you're agreeing with me."

"No, I'm not."

"Even firearms?" Nate said.

"That can be trickier, in cultures that understand them," Teyla acknowledged, "but in the case of Dylaria I have a long-standing relationship with them, and so they feel that our presence increases their own safety against raiders or Wraith."

"And didn't you get unjustly exiled for trying to control-alt-delete the gate while Teal'c was inside?"

The was an electric chunk and whirring as the gate began dialing. Nate couldn't help but feel a moment of awe as he watched the glyphs light and cycle into place. It was a truly astounding artifact: so advanced that only a handful of the world's top scientists could understand exactly how it worked, yet put in a package so simple that even a monkey or a particularly stupid Marine could step between worlds as long as they had the right address to punch in. A cell phone was harder to use.

The gate kawooshed. Nate was assured that was the technical term for it.

"All right, McKay," Sheppard said, "time to stop bitching. Let's go get some fruit."

"It's not actually -" McKay was cut off the slurp of the event horizon swallowing both men.

"Statistically safer than parachuting," Nate said to himself. "Just don't think about the word disintegrate." He stepped through. There was a series of odd flashes and swirling lights, then he was on the other side without so much as catch in his step.

The gate at the other end was level with the ground, a stone-paved road leading straight up to it. It was at the top of a low rise, too gentle to really be called a hill, which afforded it a great view of the surrounding countryside. Back home, cherry blossom season had been Nate's favorite time of year. They'd gated into the local equivalent. There were miles of orchard spreading in every direction, every tree covered with delicate orange and violet flowers.

"Wow," Nate said. He had to stop for a few seconds to pull out his camera and take a photo, then hustled to catch up.

"As first planets go," Sheppard said, "this is about as good as it gets. Maybe it could use a beach."

It was hard to connect the laid-back man walking in front of him with the one who wrote a coldly clinical report about shooting his CO.

As after-action reports went, it was textbook perfect, emotionless, succinct, and informative. Sheppard had thoroughly detailed the tactical situation, layout of the room and position of the hostiles, and how he'd lined up the shot and fired. He justified it by saying it was necessary to prevent continued interrogation and end Sumner's suffering, something backed up by Ford's report as to the condition of Sumner's body when he arrived.

Nate had seen photos of Wraith victims, both dead and the handful of survivors. He couldn't count Sumner's killing as anything less than mercy. He also couldn't see how Sheppard's career had survived, given his prior record. Necessary or not, no general or other senior officer would want him hanging around after that decision. Stick a medal on him, thank him for his service, and then put him somewhere to ride out his twenty, sure; promote him and allow him to retain command, not so much.

He was going to have to do a lot more reading.

The town they were headed for was about a kilometer from the gate. It had a very Southern feel to it, lots of big shaded verandas and porches, mostly clustered around a big open square. There were plenty of children running around, mostly screaming Teyla and Sheppard's names, plus a few adults and a cranky-looking camel-thing. They waded through the crowd, leaving candy in their wake, and passed the colonnades of a large barn or meeting hall worthy of any county fair. Waiting for them were a woman, of an indeterminate but elderly age, and someone more middle-aged who might be a relative.

"Teyla! It is wonderful to see you and your companions again," the old woman called out.

"This is Nathaniel Fick, who is called Nate," Teyla said. "Nate, this is Frayzenzusho, who is called Fray, and her nephew, Tralbrinzusho, who is called Tral."

"Welcome to our world, young man. Is Aiden not with you today?"

There was a sudden stillness among the team, overtaking even McKay, until Sheppard said, "We were attacked by Wraith. He was... injured, in the head, and hasn't been himself since."

"Unfortunate. Most unfortunate," Fray said, reaching out and guiding his right hand to her chest. "You have our sympathy, Major John Sheppard."

Sheppard gave a quick, awkward nod. "Thank you."

"Let us speak of happier things. The weather has been good and the blooms promise a bounty this year. There is much to be shared, and many plots still free to claim."

"The well, auntie," Tral murmured.

"Oh, dear, I had forgotten that," Fray replied. She was lying. Pretty blatantly at that, unless Nate was completely mixing up his signals. "The new pump you installed last year - at our first meeting, do you remember - it has been having trouble lately. It's a very small problem, barely worth mentioning, the flow simply hasn't been what it used to be."

"If it's not a problem, why bring it up?" McKay asked. Nate bit his tongue. He was there to observe, not start a fight with the chief science office by means of unflattering comparisons to undereducated marines.

"We would be happy to look at it," Teyla said. "I am sure Dr. McKay can fix it with ease."

"It's a pump hooked to a windmill. Why don't I just go home and send Zelenka to take care of it," McKay said, even as Sheppard guided him off with a hand on his arm and a fixed smile.

"Come, let me show your new friend around," Fray said, her nephew following Sheppard and McKay.

"I wouldn't want to impose, ma'am," Nate told her. "I'm sure you have a lot of work to do."

"Nonsense. I need to stretch my legs. When you reach my age, you need to keep moving. Remember that."

"Yes, ma'am."

The three of them meandered through town, past grassy fields that would eventually hold drying racks and currently were kept cropped by goats, and made a few stops to see local tourist attractions such as the extensive brick storage cellars-slash-air raid bunkers, the mill, and the herb greenhouses made with glass from some far-away world. Appropriate praise having been given and demurred, they moved on to the orchards. There were more traditional fields further out from the gate, where the terrain was more suitable, but the trees were the main export-oriented agriculture around here. There were two main types, albeit each with what would be considered different cultivars back home: something close enough to a peach as to not matter, and something that was basically a tree-potato with a protective rhind.

"So the basic arrangement is that we claim some of these plots," Nate asked Teyla, taking out his fresh Moleskine and starting to sketch out dimensions, "which we get to harvest, and a share of that goes to the Dylarians?"

"Essentially, yes," Teyla said. "There are some additional terms, minimum requirements and side bartering for other things, but that is the heart of the agreement. It is quite common to send extra hands offworld in this way, so as to maintain fresh food supply through winter or spring, and then to reciprocate during your own harvest."

"And the marines were good at it?" Nate tried to envision them up in the trees picking fruit. Mostly he could just hear rants about exploitation.

"They tried very hard," Fray replied. "It went well, for a first time."

He made a point to write down that exact phrasing, even as he started counting the average number of trees per hundred square meters. With the number of new Marines they had, there statistically had to be at least a few who knew what the hell they were doing when it came to various kinds of farm work. Trying to phrase the inquiry would require skills worthy of an arms control negotiator.

"How many did you bring with you?" he asked Teyla.

"Twenty-five, over the course of a week, plus both botanists to help supervise," she replied. "I would have preferred to bring more, but in order to keep watch in the city we could not. It was adequate for our needs."

Adequate wasn't really the word he'd have used for some of the supply reports he'd reviewed. The expedition had brought months worth of food with them, but then immediately doubled their number of mouths to feed. There had been a more than a few lean months and a lot of hunted meat in their diets. Deserted planets weren't good for vegetables, but no one cared if you took some deer.

"If we're wanting to scale up proportionally, we'll need at least two full platoons," he decided, "and if we're doing that we might as well bring an entire company. If you think Colonel Sheppard will allow it?"

"The treetatoes, as he insists on calling them, are very popular and versatile, and Dr. McKay is particularly fond of anteeli fruit. I doubt John would object."

"Because if Dr. McKay is happy, everyone is happy. Got it."

Nate provided a rough estimate of how much they could reasonably expect to harvest when the season came, which Teyla seemed to thing was in the right ballpark, and he mostly stood back while she talked with Fray about exactly which groves would be reserved for them. What followed next was several klicks of walking to discuss drainage, sun angles, prevailing winds, and a lot of other bullshit that left Nate convinced he would have to corner Parrish and get a much more comprehensive briefing on Pegasus agriculture if he didn't want to get ripped off the moment he set foot offworld without Teyla or another native guide.

By the time an agreement had been made and plots flagged with little silk ribbons, McKay and Sheppard were done fixing the pump, apparently a matter of switching out clogged filters. Nate wondered what that act of kindness was earning them, in social credit if not any agreed barter. Not that it wasn't worthwhile in and of itself, but in a society with no electricity and few apparent machines, access to clean water on demand and without hours of work just to provide enough for supper or washing was a big deal.

The harvest wasn't for months, but they still left loaded down with dried fruit, some sort of spiced meat pie, and a bottle of something amber for 'that nice young lady' who Nate later realized was Elizabeth. No sign of any sort of preserves or canned fruit; Nate was going to have to dig into some books because all he could remember was Napoleon's cans prize something something professionals study logistics something something H&S company accidentally left all the food behind while rushing to assault an airfield. Or Moscow.

"So I get the basic idea," Nate said the next day while talking with Elizabeth and Teyla. "People have more land than they can farm themselves, so they let partners come do the most labor-intensive parts while they do the weeding in between. I'm not sure how it fits our own needs."

"We have a surplus of athletic young men," Elizabeth replied with a slight shrug. "And a surplus of hungry young men. The former helps take care of the latter and, as I understand, helps keep them out of trouble."

"Yes, you can only drill so much, and if you don't fill the rest of the time they'll get up to mischief," Nate acknowledged. "Physical labor's a more productive distraction than sports or making them repaint the city."

"You speak as if they are children," Teyla said dryly, more amused than judging.

"They're not, no," Nate said carefully. It was a bit too easy to think of a pair of teenage boys rapping their way through the world's worst road trip while mom and dad argued about directions up front. "Especially here where the average age is higher than usual. But good fighting spirit can make men a bit... high-energy. Best to keep them distracted, especially since it'd be hard to keep a straight face when screaming about the grooming standard under the circumstances."

Teyla deployed that slight lift of the eyebrow she got whenever a cultural reference went over her head. Hardly her fault; the Marine company sergeants probably did the best they could, but when coming up with ways to deflect mischief and grumbling you had to work with what you had, and what they had were zoomie officers and international troops, both with decidedly different ideas about appearance. There wasn't even a proper sergeant-major about, since the man intended for the short battalion's master sergeant slot had ended up with a medical discharge.

"I'll explain later. Maybe break out the impression." He'd nearly killed Mike with that one, although given how drunk they'd been he couldn't be sure of the actual quality. "The point is, they're not farmers. There's got to be other work that needs done that they could do better."

"It is not quite so simple," Teyla said. "Finding paying work could be done. Transforming that into food is less easy."

"We already do a steady trade in salt with some worlds. The desalination systems spit it out for free," Elizabeth said. "Occasionally we'll trade away stainless steel tools, but those we mostly reserve for gifts to ease relations open."

"That allows us to trade for finished goods and luxuries on some market worlds," Teyla continued. "However, getting bulk amounts of food is trickier, because of how one-sided our trade in it is and our lack of established networks. We consume, but do not produce, and so cannot trade food back in return during their times of need. As such many worlds insist that we commit to providing labor for both planting and harvest if we wish to purchase more than trivial amounts."

"Right, because who needs a new K-bar if you can't eat supper?" Nate asked rhetorically. "What about helping improve agricultural yields?"

"Dr. Lindsay is leading our efforts in that regard, but it's going to take time," Elizabeth said. "People will want to see results. We've thought about trading tools but the Athosians are using the ones we originally brought."

"And even if we had the SGC ship us a hold full of steel ploughs, they may not fit with local practices," Nate said. "Or be suitable for their draft animals. Has anyone ever considered hooking a jumper up to - I'll take that as a no."

He'd seen the kind of expressions Elizabeth and Teyla had, usually when something especially absurd was rolling across the company comms.

"If you want to suggest turning one into a tractor," Elizabeth said, "and can find a case where that's an efficient use for it, then by all means bring it up with the flight maintenance team or Dr. McKay. Maybe bring a camera with you."

"I'll put that one further down the list." Nate tapped his chair's arm idly. "So for ag trade at least, any alternatives need to free up local labor or otherwise improve food security."

"And that's completely separate from paying for hunting rights, or exploration rights," Elizabeth said, nodding along, "or bribes to visit the Ancestral temples, and so on. But it is pretty central, especially when we want to convince people to accept refugees."

"Do we have kilns? Glass blowing equipment? I know we've got metal-working gear and machine tools."

"I think so, yes, plus we're having quite a lot of luck with some of the Ancient equipment even if we don't know how it does what it does. Why?"

"I have a few ideas, but I think I'm going to have to sit down with the librarian first."

They had one, of course. Dr. Cinta Utari specialized in archives, data structures, and information theory, with a side line in translation. Mostly she poked at the Ancient database all day, trying to make it cough up the secrets of the ages, and managed the expedition's own servers full of academic and recreational resources. The SGC had subscriptions to JSTOR and every other database known to man, but actually getting the contents to Atlantis in a useful fashion was a pain in the ass. Books were worse. Nate foresaw a lot of long-distance interlibrary loan requests and blatant copyright infringement in his future.

There were other resources available, of course. Social Sciences was the red-headed stepchild of the science world, but they were still skilled professionals knowledgeable about the ways of both small-a ancient and merely old societies.

"You know about food storage and transport, right?" he asked Sarah a few days later, sitting in the common room at the top of the Ritz. The engineers might have had the fanciest labs - not that theirs were anything to sneeze at - but SSO by far had the most comfortable office spaces. Lots of couches and armchairs, big dome skylight, planters and bubbling water features, the works. It helped that they didn't have to worry about things exploding. Much.

"In Egypt several thousand years ago, yes," she replied.

"Yes, but also in the context of interstellar agricultural trade in an empire linked by stargates."

Sarah set aside the tablet she had been reading reports on. "Why, are you planning on starting one?"

"I wouldn't use that word anywhere Elizabeth could hear it," Nate said. "But if I am, it's going to involve a lot of pickles and canned goods. Also, public works projects."

"You understand that I literally flew three million light-years away from Area 51 to avoid these sort of questions, yes?"

"You wanted to avoid men with poor shaving habits who were grilling you about weapons technology," Nate replied. "I'm more interested in if the Goa'uld had anything like mason jars that could be produced at a local level."

"Do you really think the mighty System Lord Osiris, lord of the crook and flail, conqueror of a hundred suns, cared about how his slaves stored their food?"

"He did if he wanted his armies to eat and his mines to keep producing. I'm sure the motherships had some sort of magic food dispensers but the snakes wouldn't have let that sort of tech get out into the general population, even for the Jaffa. I can only imagine he had to care more once he lost all his servants and underlings."

"It is true that the more successful ones did take at least some care in the matter. I'd suggest you ask Major Lorne about Lord Yu's farming system, but I doubt he'd appreciate the questioning." Sarah sighed, long and dramatic. "You're asking a lot of me. I do have other things to do other than dredge up bad memories. What's in it for me?"

"You'll be helping improve the lives of thousands of people, not to mention our own diets."

She crossed her arms. "Feelings don't write papers. You can do better than that."

"I'm supposed to be forming an offworld team," he said. A sharp look made it through her feigned indifference. "I could use an expert on pre-modern life and interpreting cultural practices. And even in Pegasus emergencies are only a small part of the job, so there'd be plenty of time to study ruins or whatever else catches your fancy. I don't think we've got a team with a full-time archaeologist right now."

"Oh, I don't know," she said, studying her neatly trimmed nails. "Getting gate qualified is a lot of work."

"Doctor Jackson managed it somehow." Jackson was also more fit than some recon marines, but bringing that up would be counterproductive.

"I think you underestimate just how helpless Daniel was during the first year or two," Sarah replied, "but I'll accept your competitive bait anyway."

Nate grinned. Depending on your point of view, he was either halfway to having a team, or he already had one.

Even after Weir approved Sarah joining Nate's team in principle, she still had to undergo the extra training required. He'd mostly needed to recertify a few things; she needed to learn them from the start. Fortunately she already had enough to allow her to travel with other permanent teams, and he could teach her most of what she needed without having to rely on the schedules of other people.

This was especially helpful when Parrish showed up in the middle of the day and then all the other offworld teams vanished through the gate, right when Sarah was learning about the many uses SG teams had found for explosives, directly from their certified expert.

"Aren't you supposed to be off exploring a brave new radioactive world?" Cadman asked. Nate had the suspicion that one reason she was eager to help train Sarah was that she was angling for a spot herself and wanted to earn brownie points with command. There were fewer permanent slots than there were eager junior officers or NCOs.

"We found a Wraith," Parrish explained. "It was terrible. I lost all the samples I'd gathered when the major made me ditch my backpack on the way back to the gate."

Nate, Cadman, and Sarah looked at each other. "While your dedication to your work is admirable," Sarah said, "perhaps the thing to focus on is that the Wraith only got your plants and not you?"

"Oh, no, the Wraith was already dead. Did I not mention that? I almost tripped over it."

"You skipped that part," Nate replied. "Why was it dead?"

"I couldn't see, but from the way the major was talking afterward it sounded like it'd been shot with an automatic weapon and then had its enzyme sack cut out."

"Lieutenant Ford?"

"That's what the major seems to think," Parrish agreed. "Colonel. Well, the major and the colonel. You know who I mean. Anyways, there can't be that many crazy Marines running around the galaxy cutting up Wraith, right?"

"Hey, now, doc," Cadman said, "some of us resemble that remark."

Nate crossed his arms. "Lieutenant Ford is sick due to exposure to an alien drug. Even if we're forced to treat him as hostile until shown otherwise, that doesn't mean you should call him crazy."

Parrish had the good graces to look abashed. "Sorry. It's just, you know, he took people hostage and flew off to another planet."

"It's an understandable reaction. Just keep in mind that he's at least got a good excuse, which is a lot more than I can say of some of the other genuinely bugfuck whackjobs that I've had to work with." Nate had to give Ford this much: for someone having drug-induced delusions, or whatever the correct terminology was, he was at least doing it in a competent way.

Much too competent, as it turned out. When the offworld search teams finally returned, there was a distinct lack of lieutenants with them. Sheppard had brought home a stray, though, which was apparently a thing that happened with SG teams on occasion. Nate guessed it was like invading a country and finding yourself with a reporter along for the ride, only with more impressive hair.

There was supposed to be a meeting about what to do with Ronon Dex, who was the first official refugee of the new year and thus in theory someone Nate was there to help deal with. Instead he was woken up at three in the morning by shrill screeching from his radio.

"Fick," he said, after thirty seconds of blind fumbling to get the tiny earpiece in place and find the even tinier button to answer the alarm call.

"Lt. Kemp, sir, officer of the watch," a scratchy voice said. "Sorry to wake you, but there's a developing situation offworld and Col. Sheppard has asked for you."

Nate forced his eyes open and threw off his sheets. "I'll be there in five."

He'd taken to keeping the next day's clothes laid out on his armchair, clean and ready to go. All he had to do was throw those on, strap on his holster, and pull his sidearm from the drawer of his bedside table. He was out the door and halfway to the nearest transporter before he was even fully awake. When he reached the control room, most of the command staff was already there in various stages of bleariness, along with Major Lorne, Lieutenant Cadman, and her sergeants.

"Sergeant Stackhouse's team just gated to Therona," Sheppard said as Beckett hurried in behind Nate. "They were there for a routine check-in ahead of next week's clinic visit. Guard hut was burned and there's smoke on the horizon They radioed it in and went to check on the nearest village."

"You think it's Wraith?" Weir asked.

"If it were raiders, then there should have been bodies," Teyla responded. "A culling is the mostly likely answer."

"There's debris in front of the gate, so S&R will have to be done on foot," Sheppard said. "Teyla?"

She began to give a quick briefing, describing the local geography relative to the gate and how best to reach the population centers, and Nate found himself automatically taking notes. In the background a platoon of marines were gathering, along with a scattering of medical personnel. When the meeting broke up a couple minutes later, Sheppard waved Nate over.

"I know you don't have a full team yet," he said, "but I thought you might want to tag along since this'll be your thing someday. There's no sign of active Wraith presence so it's probably the best chance you'll get get your feet wet."

"Gardner, sir?"

"Think she's up for it?"

"I think she has the prerequisite skills, sir," Nate replied. "And if there's no immediate threat, I'd rather see how she handles the aftermath now rather than wait until a more pressing situation."

"Wake up her up, then," Sheppard said. "It can't possibly go worse for her than McKay's first mission."

Fucking Air Force. "Please don't say things like that, sir."

"There was a giant vampire bug. Stackhouse and Markham spent thirty-eight minutes as a cloud of dissolved particles. It was fun." Sheppard grinned, just a few seconds. "Second group leaves in ten, see if you can be ready by then."

Sarah was surprisingly gracious about being woken up in the middle of the night, and in return Nate politely didn't ask about the strange little snake-shaped weapon she brought in place of a sidearm. When the gate engaged, she was the first one through, no hesitation at all.

It was a beautiful day on the other side of the gate, clear blue skies without a cloud in sight. Not until you turned around and saw the smoke rising on the horizon. Major Lorne was directing traffic, standing next to a burnt-out shack that a squad of Marines were trying to clear away.

"Fick, you're with Nurse Ko," he said, gesturing to a Korean woman in medical tan and yellow, "and Sergeant Walker," a hulking black man. "Head north, there's a hamlet about a mile from the gate. There's a bridge across a creek, you can't miss it. Cadman, take Beckett and two men to join the colonel and McKay, they're down the western road. Coughlin, your boys are heading east with me toward Teyla."

North meant the opposite of the direction the gate faced, and not along one of the worn dirt roads perpendicular to it but across a wide grassy field. It was extremely peaceful. Bucolic was probably the right word. It wasn't some crazy 'where are the birds' shit, either. Those were happily singing away, and ahead toward the treeline a bunch of unattended goats were also cheerfully working their way through a patch of grass.

Nurse Ko didn't look happy or cheerful. She looked like if something spooked her she was going to either sprint off or throw up.

"I don't think we've met," Nate said to her. "I'm Nate."

"Huh? Oh, sorry. Marie."

"This your first time offworld, Marie? Not counting the obvious."

"No, not really. I've done a couple clinic visits before. And of course last year we had to evacuate during the storm. This is the first time I've been on call when there was an offworld emergency though."

Nate nodded. "My first too. How about you, Sergeant?"

"Second planet, sir," Walker replied. "I was out a couple days ago with the major, on the one with the killer sunlight. Other than that it was just training at the Alpha and Gamma sites."

"Looks like we'll all be learning together, then. It's a good sign, really. I've been assured I'm perfectly qualified to go offworld, and Dr. Beckett must have confidence in you too, Marie. If they thought there was any real danger they would have left us behind. I'm assured of this."

Ko seemed a little more confident, and asked, "What about you, Dr. Gardner?"

"That's a complicated question," Gardner said. "This is my first official mission, let's put it like that. I've gone through the gate several other times."

"I think I see why they're sending us to the smallest settlement," Nate said. They were passing the goats, which edged away cautiously, and cresting a hill. Ahead he could see the bridge Lorne had mentioned, crossing a creek that separated the field from woodlands. It was a stone arch, maybe six feet wide and spanning a creek twice that across.

Stepping a little closer while Walker and Ko crossed ahead of them, Gardner murmured, "Where are the goat boys?"

"Yeah, I know," he replied, pulling his lifesigns detector out for a quick glance. Nothing registered except the big group of untended and at least modestly valuable livestock.

The hamlet was fifteen more minutes' walk through the woods. The path emerged into a wide clearing, centered on a dozen small houses and a fringe of sheds, pens, and gardens. All of the structures were little more than burnt-out shells, many of them collapsed. The attack had happened long enough ago that the ruins were barely even smouldering. They walked through quietly, stopping at a small cobblestone square around a well at the center of the hamlet.

"Marie, Walker, you two take the west side. Sarah and I will take the east," Nate said. "There's no life signs but we should still check manually just in case. Do not enter any structures unless absolutely necessary. Some of those look ready to come down."

"Yes, sir. Come on, ma'am."

It wasn't a difficult search. Not physically, because even the largest houses were just one or two rooms and maybe a loft; he could glance through a door or window and see the entire thing. Not that bad emotionally, either; there were no burnt bodies, no splashes of gore and body part, just eerie emptiness.

Sarah's footsteps paused beside him and he turned, P-90 half raised. Grim-faced, she nodded toward the side of a barn, where two bodies were laying, obscured from their initial approach. One was a Wraith, laying face-down in the dirt with a broken-handled pitchfork sticking from the back of its neck. Nate cautiously creeped up toward it, Sarah covering with her weapon, and gave it a swift kick. There was no reaction. The other body was human, shirt torn open, aged and decrepit in a way that mere photos didn't do justice. He couldn't even tell their gender, not knowing what hair length or clothing styles might mean on this world. Nearby, a cellar entrance was open, the doors ripped off and flung aside. A glance inside revealed a small room and nothing but broken shelves and scattered root vegetables.

"There's drag marks," Sarah said, squatting down to examine the patchy dirt and grass. "Heavy men in boots going in and out again. Something wearing a long coat or cape coming after those. All ending right about there." She gestured towards spot on the grass, matted down but otherwise indistinguishable from the rest.

"They went in to pull them out," Nate said, lips pursed. Atlantis teams had witnessed a few cullings, but only a few, and most of those were just raids through the gate by a few darts. Only Sheppard had reported on a full-scale, multi-ship assault. Most of the time, it seemed like the Wraith stuck with darts, firing to drive people out of hiding in buildings but otherwise content to let a few slip by to replenish the herds. This suggested a new level of thoroughness.

"Cap'n." Walker and Marie were coming up. "No survivors, just one body. It looks like a wall fell on her, cracked her head open. Otherwise nothing but some chickens."

It would be easier to get distracted by chickens and the need to do something about them than to think about what the lack of bodies meant, so Nate forced himself to ask, "Marie, did that give you any idea how long ago this happened?"

"The state of the body suggests it hasn't been more than a few hours."

"That fits the condition of the buildings." Nate clicked his radio over to the command push. "Alpha Romeo One, Alpha Romeo Four."

"Sheppard here. Sitrep?"

"We've cleared the hamlet. Two dead humans, one dead sucker, no sign of survivors."

"We're seeing the same thing here in town. We're going to spread out some more, check the outlying farms." There was a momentary pause. "Teyla says there's not much else out your way in reasonable walking distance. Do a sweep of the immediate area, then return to the gate and we'll figure out where you can help next. We expect jumpers to be available within the hour."

Nate had the feeling there wasn't going to be much help needed. "Solid copy. Fick out." He looked over to the sergeant. "Walker, what's procedure on body recovery?"

"We mark the location, then once S&R is finished we'll send teams out on ATVs or jumpers to pick them up." Walker shrugged. "I don't know how that'll go. We try to coordinate with the locals for customs and shit, but here..."

"Gotcha." No survivors, so no one to tell them what rites to observe or how or where to bury the bodies.

"We could do worse than to emulate the Tok'ra," Sarah said quietly. At his questioning look, she explained, "Build a bier before the gate and use the vortex to disintegrate the bodies. Many cultures here venerate the Ring of the Ancestors. I understand a few SG team members have similar requests in their wills."

It would be easier than digging individual or mass graves, given their lack of excavating equipment, and more sanitary at that. "I'll touch base with Dr. Weir and Teyla and pass that on."

The search of the surrounding area turned up nothing, and they eventually turned back around, heading back through the woods toward the gate. As Sarah started asking Ko questions about the expedition's medical outreach, Nate mostly listened to the radio. No one else had found anyone yet, and Teyla and Sheppard were discussing that point. The Wraith were hungry, and getting more so as they realized that there wasn't enough to support them. Each culling was getting more and more thorough.

What was the point of coming out here to help resettle displaced populations if there was no one left to be displaced?

"Dart," Cadman said into the command push. "All units, we have an approaching dart, west southwest of the gate, heading in."

Nate signalled a stop, then had to physically stick his arm out and block Sarah. Something to work on later. "Bridge," he said after a split-second evaluation of their situation and nearby cover. "Under the bridge, now."

Ignorant of hand signals or not, Sarah got the point immediately, dashing down the path and dropping down into the creek without a word. There was a small squeak as Walker lifted Ko into a fireman's carry without even breaking stride, and Nate followed close behind him. Barely thirty seconds later they were all hunched under the stone arch, listening to the slowly growing whine of the dart. He didn't think anyone knew for sure just how far the scoopy beam could penetrate. Presumably the Wraith drove people into the open for a reason though.

"This could be worse," Nate said once they were all situated. He was on one side, Walker was at the other with his Stinger unslung, as if it'd do any good in all these trees, and the civilians were in the center.

"How so?" Sarah asked.

"That could be an Air Force pilot up there. They like to kill Marines." Behind him, Sergeant Walker laughed, short and sharp. There was a briefing, given to new officers and men, about how on the other side of the gate aircraft were not your friends. No Marine needed to be told that, except the weirdo aviators.

Sarah nodded gravely. "I'll keep that in mind, in case I need a decoy in the future."

"You should not speak of Colonel Sheppard that way," Ko said, stern as Nate's third-grade teacher. That was good; if she was angry with them, she wasn't paying attention to the distant sound of explosions and someone firing off a SAW.

"Oh, I know, he's one of the good ones," Nate told her. "He comes rescue to the Marines that other pilots shoot up."

"In that case, you should not talk about the Major Lorne that way."

"I don't think he's actually a pilot, ma'am," Walker said. "Not professionally, anyway."

"Then why would he be in the Air Force?"

"Now there," Nate said, "is a question that has been troubling philosophers since the dawn of civilization. What is it that makes good men do bad things?" He held up a hand as he listened to new orders from Sheppard. "We're clear. Back to the gate."

Getting out of the creek proved slightly more difficult than the reverse, but fifteen minutes later they joined a crowd at the gate. There was a new cloud of smoke rising to the east, where the dart had been shot down.

Cadman and McKay were aboard.

The process of un-boarding them was not one that required an archaeologist, a nurse, or a Recon marine. The three of them were politely shoved back through the gate, to face the questions of a city just waking up to find most of their bosses had vanished offworld to some sort of emergency. Nate wouldn't go so far as to accuse Sheppard of sending him back specifically so someone else could tell Elizabeth that her chief scientist was currently stuck downloading like an ill-advised porn choice, but it did seem a bit convenient for him.

He ended up turning around an hour later. Elizabeth wanted the planet cleared as soon as the engineering team had figured out how to drag half a dart the better part of four hundred meters from its crash site to the gate and through to Atlantis. The Wraith had presumably left it behind for a reason, possibly to double-check the rest of the planet, and might eventually come looking for it. Nate and a dozen Marine volunteers spend the same time in a jumper, flying from point to point and collecting bodies. It didn't take as long as he might have expected for the devastated home of some ten thousand people; there were very few of them. The goats would have to wait for another day, when it was safer to return and they had someone to give them to.

The last thing they did was leave behind an engraved metal plate by the DHD, with a stargate address for a monitored world and words for safety in a dozen different languages, just in case there had been people offworld when the Wraith came.

By the time they were finished and all the bodies were in the morgue, pending a decision on their final disposition, it was well into the city's dinner hours, so after showering he joined his colleagues in the mess. At some point while Nate was gone, McKay had come to with an extra passenger in his brain. It was all anyone could talk about. Word in SSO was that it was some sort of karmic retribution of his sins.

"It's not that we don't respect Marines," Dr. Corrigan told Nate as they ate. "But if someone had to be stuck in McKay's brain, a woman Marine is just about perfect."

"That seems a bit unfair to Cadman," Nate pointed out. "What did she do to deserve it?"

"Save his life," Dr. Montagne muttered. The French woman was one the lead linguists, and rarely impressed with the way the other science departments thought they existed solely to translate things for other people.

"Are we really arguing the just-world hypothesis?" Sarah asked.

"I'm sure Athar will reward Cadman in the afterlife," Montagne replied primly.

Nate glanced at her. "Do I even want to know?"

"Athar is an ascended Ancient who's basically the god a planet we found last year," Corrigan explained. "We like to think of her as our patron saint."

There was a distinct click as Sarah sat her utensils on her tray. "You ran into a false god?"

"Strictly speaking, Chaya Sar never actually claimed to be one," Montagne explained. "She was just the high priest for the mystical entity that blasts Wraith ships and gives everyone perfect health and good weather."

"Mostly we like her because she really pissed off McKay," Corrigan added. "Especially after she set her sights on the colonel."

"I supposed I've heard worse reasons to convert," Nate said, sparing a covert look at Sarah. She was carving up her roast beast with a bit more enthusiasm than strictly required.

"We threw an invitation to the department holiday party through the gate," Dr. Utari said after a few moments. "She didn't come, but I like to think she was there in spirit."

Nate made a mental note to tell Dr. Jackson that improving interdepartmental relations might be a good thing to prioritize, when he finally arrived. The Daedalus was leaving the next day, and the latest word was that the marriage bond to his space pirate was wearing off, so hopefully in six weeks he'd be there to take charge.

He was woken up the next morning by pounding at his door. Swiping it open revealed McKay. He was in a t-shirt and olive green short-shorts that had RAMIREZ written on the waistband.

"Get up, asshole," McKay said. "We're going for a run."

Nate blinked several times before his brain finally caught up with the utterly bizarre sight his eyes were giving him. "Cadman, what the fuck?"

"I'm stuck in someone else's body, and I need some stress relief," he replied. She replied. This sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen so soon into your first stargate tour. "I can't masturbate, I can't drink, and I can't troll Rodney about his love life until later tonight. Exercise endorphins are all I've got."

He'd tried to argue marines out stupid things before, with varying success, and any woman who joined the Corps had to be even more stubborn and crazy than the average jarhead. It was too damned early in the morning to be the rational one and so he just sighed and slipped into his PT gear. A minute later and they were out on one of the designated safe paths, jogging along at a mild clip.

"I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed," Nate said, after about a mile and a half of silence, save for a slowly increasing wheezing noise.

"In. What?"

"I've been out of the Corps for three years. And while I've tried to stay in shape, I've been told that I've put on some weight."

"I wouldn't. Have guessed."

"Maybe it's just because I started low thanks to the war."

"Do you have. A point. Nate?"

"It's just that I'd expect an active Marine to be keeping up more easily. Standards have clearly gone downhill since I was in."

"Very funny."

"But I was recon." Nate smirked. "Maybe my expectations were too high to begin with."

They stopped at one of the bubbly water pillars to make use of the fountain most of them hid. Cadman leaned against the wall and without warning a small bench popped out of it. She gratefully slid down onto it. Nate was glad she wasn't taking the shit talking too seriously; the color of McKay's face had been getting a bit worrying.

"So, any thoughts on which offworld team you want?" Nate asked.

"Colonel or the major," Cadman replied, lifting up her shirt to wiped the sweat from her brow. "No offense."

"None taken."

"You seem like a nice guy, and you're taking this all in stride," she said, waving at McKay's body, "but first contact's where the action is at. And even if that's out, one of the captains might form a team too."

There was a brief pause in conversation as they heard footsteps approaching. Ronon Dex came running past, followed by Sheppard. He slowly down for a moment, a look of completely bewilderment crossing his face, and then sped up again to catch Ronon.

"I get it. You need to stand out to get ahead. Working directly for battalion command gets you that. Being the only lieutenant reporting to a civilian, on the other hand, would be awkward." Nate could see the problem clearly. It was already official policy that Cadman couldn't lead men into battle, for all the SGC had long been forced to come up with polite fictions to avoid that rule. Adding more distinctions wouldn't do her favors when she was trying to get here career rolling.

Cadman nodded. "But if that falls through, you're definitely fourth on my college list."

Nate considered throwing in a few cynical warnings about the dangers of wanting to stand out and please your superiors, but decided against it. If she wanted advice, she'd ask for it. Hopefully from someone who actually got further in their careers.

"Come on, let's head back. I don't want to be with you when McKay wakes up and realizes you've been being healthy."

Once Cadman was safely delivered home - her own quarters, just to mess with McKay - Nate finished his workout and went for breakfast. He and the other relatively Ancient-savvy members of SSO spent most of the day feeding Zelenka what information they could find on the Wraith transporter technology, although he didn't know how much it could help. It definitely wasn't supposed to be swapping personalities around. What was the physical mechanism for it? What did the malfunctioning beam even move, since it clearly wasn't grey matter? The philosophical implications alone were astounding. Was Cartesian dualism making a triumphant return?

He'd put that thought into the growing pile of potential PhD theses he was never going to actually write.

Later, once the immediate emergency had been dealt with and no one was melted, Elizabeth flagged him down. Sheppard had decided to keep his stray, which mean Nate had his first official displaced person to assist. In theory Sheppard could take care of most of the intake himself, but Elizabeth strongly hinted that if they wanted it done anytime soon it was up to either Nate or Lorne.

"The good news is," Nate said, "that there's forms for this."

Ronon stared at him. They were sitting in his office, on opposite sides of the desk. The marine escort was gone, no longer necessary anymore than it was for Teyla. Nate liked to think that in his case he'd never needed any protection, and maybe three years ago that might have been true. Maybe not.

"It used to be a bit more ad hoc, but apparently after SG-1 brought home some archaeologist, they finally got around to creating a process. Colonel Sheppard already put you through a skills assessment, more or less, so mostly we just need to record some biographical information and get you on the official rolls."

The staring continued. If Ronon hoped to outlast Nate, he was out of luck. Never mind the Marines; grad school had been more than enough to make him immune to boredom or the need to sleep. Compared to waiting for certain Jewish assholes to respond to emails, or outlasting certain other rednecks and their musical interludes, this was nothing.

"According to your description," Nate said, opening it up on his laptop, "Sateda was an industrialized world with a professional standing military, supported by mass conscription. You were part of the former. I know you understand how this works. You've been through it before, just like I have. The quicker we get it done, the quicker we both get to go back to our normal routine."

That elicited a slight shift. "You served?"

"Several years as a Marine officer, including a couple combat tours. They're the ones who have been following you around all day."

"You don't look like it."

"So I've been told repeatedly." At least Ronon wasn't going to mistake him for a strippergram.

"If they're infantry, why are they called marines?"

"It's primarily an expeditionary force. We used to be part of the Navy. Ronon, given name, Dex, family name?" There was a slight nod. "Age?"

"I was twenty-four when Sateda fell." Ronon crossed his arms and hunched in the seat a little. "I think I told Teyla I was a runner for seven years, but I don't know if that makes sense."

Nate pursed his lips. Ronon didn't look like a man suffering from seven years of poor nutrition and lack of shelter. Even assuming he'd been regularly left alone long enough to find food and regain his strength, it seemed unlikely. "We can put down an estimate. You're a specialist - is that a rank or a job description? How high up were you?"

"What does it matter? Sateda is gone, and I'm not joining your military. I'm here for Sheppard."

"The people in charge - or at least the people that Sheppard and Weir answer to - they like ranks and titles. Credentials to prove your skills." Nate had suffered through more than one drunken rant about the evils of credentialism and how corporate America's failure to just accept that some poor boy from Missouri knew what he was doing was going to doom the country. "They'll take you more seriously if they realize that you've had training and experience in what sounds like a modern military."

Ronon seemed to accept that. "I was a squad leader on a strike team, going offworld. About a dozen guys."

"We'll call it an E-6, just to be safe." Nate continued to type away, filling in information that he'd already gleaned from the reports Sheppard and Teyla had made, either trimming or embellishing where it seemed like it might be helpful. "Officially, you're a security contractor. It comes with a salary, vacation days, and a retirement plan. Sure, go ahead and laugh. You'll be thanking me when you're sixty-five."

"What good's money here? Am I supposed to pay for food and uniforms or something?"

"No, that's all covered." Unlike some large organizations that Nate could name, Elizabeth was not interested in nickel-and-diming her own staff over their clothing and use of the dining facility. "But if you ever go to Earth on leave, it's there. And you'll be entitled to a personal luxuries crate every time the Daedalus comes. Online shopping's a bit of a bitch but the SGC sends airmen out to hit up the stores in Colorado Springs. Teyla takes a share for trade goods."

"Personal. Luxuries."

"Yes." Ronon was apparently back to glowering as a reply, so Nate added, "I can see you're not interested in anything yourself, but things from home are in short supply. You're a soldier, Specialist Dex, I'm sure you can do the math."

"Black market."

"As a division leader, I of course know nothing about any unofficial trades that might be occurring. However, I am assured that if you want to make friends around here, ordering lots chocolate or premium coffee would not be the worst thing you could do." Nate considered for a moment, then added, "Also, don't drink anything Engineering produces. Stick to the botanists."

"Maybe you people aren't as boring as you look,' Ronon replied.

Nate couldn't bring himself to inform Ronon that they were really were. After all, he was supposed to help him integrate, not drive him away.

Chapter Text

Over the course of six weeks, Nate started to slowly get a routine together. Despite the implications of certain majors, Atlantis was not a constant disaster zone. Colonel Sheppard's team was only imprisoned once during the entire time and they mostly escaped by themselves, along with a fellow prisoner who had opted for the "get the fuck out of Pegasus" option during Nate's interview. Nate and Sarah went offworld a few more times, all routine trade missions with other teams. He was starting to get a feel for the pool of qualified marines and civilians, and had talked over a few with Lorne, who was trying to finalize his own team. Really, until the Daedalus finished the trip to Earth and back, things were going pretty well.

There Nate was, minding his own business and trying to get the newest social scientists situated, when he heard Elizabeth coming up behind him, talking to someone. That person wasn't Daniel Jackson, who was apparently stuck trying to unstart an intergalactic war, but someone even less expected.

"I have to admit, I'd always thought he was exaggerating about your size," Elizabeth was saying. "That was before I met Teal'c and started spending time around soldiers. And Marines, of course."

"We do tend to be oversized, ma'am." The voice didn't register at first, because Nate's brain just assumed it had to be some auditory coincidence. It'd been almost eighteen months since he'd heard it in person; he could be excused for not sitting up like a goddamn dog whose owner just came back after a long deployment.

"It makes me wonder about his stories about your driver. I'd pretty much filed those under tall tales, too."

"Sadly, it's unlikely those were exaggerations either, ma'am."

Nate slowly turned around. Standing there next to Elizabeth, somehow still managing to look like a Norse god despite the horrible cut of the expedition's uniforms, was Brad. The stupid little smirk hadn't changed either.

"Nate, I believe you already know Sergeant Colbert," Elizabeth said, a small smile of her own. "He's one of our new arrivals."

"We've met, yes," Nate said. He smiled too, because it would be rude not to. Elizabeth meant well, and she wasn't the reason for the sudden upwelling of anger and other emotions in his gut. "Does he need to check in on the battalion side, or can I borrow him for a minute?"

"Major Lorne's already released him. Just get him back in time for the general orientation presentation."

"Thank you, ma'am," Nate said. He inclined his head toward a door and stalked over to it, allowing Brad to follow along behind. Once they were safely outside on a balcony, he dropped the smile and wheeled about on his heal. "Gunnery Sergeant Colbert, would you care to explain exactly how it is that you're here?"

"Well, sir, unless I've badly misread my orders, I've been transfered into the Atlantis expedition. Since that expedition is here, I had no choice but to board a ship full of pasty Air Force geeks and spend three weeks breathing canned air."

"And am I supposed to believe that this transfer was a coincidence?"

"Not really, no." Brad shrugged slightly. "You didn't think you could imply that you were taking some sort of dangerous overseas posting and expect me not to be concerned, did you?"

"Says a man who has been doing God knows what with the Royal Marines for the last three years." Nate crossed his arms. "Do I even want to know how you figured out where I was?"

"I am a recon marine, sir. Have some faith in my abilities." When Nate kept watching expectantly, Brad sighed. "I called Major Patterson and asked about this thing with Weir. He talked with a few people, including Sergeant-Major Sixta -"

"Oh, wonderful," Nate muttered.

"- who, believe it or not, was once a mere platoon sergeant in the Gulf War for some guy named Reynolds." Brad shrugged again. "He showed up at my office, lectured me about not prying into top secret, very hush-hush programs, and then gave me Colonel Sheppard's email address."

"You have been emailing. The battalion commander. Behind my back." While being distinctly terse in his own replies to Nate, even given the delays caused by the weekly databurst schedule, right up until they stopped three weeks before. He should have known there was something suspicious about the timing. Brad was supposed to be preparing to move back to the states, not going off comms for any more training.

The smirk was starting to slip a little. "He's not actually your battalion commander, you know. Did some alien gizmo make you forget you left the Corps?"

Nate had never been good at yelling. His voice just wasn't built for it. He could make himself understood in combat, but as his sergeant instructors had told him, attempts at angry screaming generally came out more like screeching. Instead he had gotten very, very good at channeling fiery rage into a quiet intensity that forced people to pay attention to figure out exactly how they had fucked up.

"I am not in the mood of sophistry, Gunnery Sergeant," he bit out. "Nor am I a princess in need of rescue. I do not think it is unreasonable to expect to have been informed that you were considering life-changing decisions because you thought I needed some sort of assistance. You will notice, for example, that I did not go to grad school in London. This is because I am aware that you are an adult capable to taking care of yourself."

Brad's smile was gone, replaced with drooping shoulders. Once it was clear Nate was done for the moment, he drew himself up more, into something almost like attention. "Sir, if you are genuinely displeased by my presence here, I will request transfer back to Earth."

Torpedoing his career in the process. He could have had almost any posting in the Corps, given his stellar record, especially after three years training and deploying with the Royal Marines given the importance of interservice cooperation in the current wars. He'd chosen this one, cutting short his previous posting early to do so. Immediately changing his mind would be a body blow to his reputation and he'd probably end up on guard duty at the Alpha site or some similar base, skills slowly atrophying away.

The worst part was that he'd probably do it if Nate gave the word.

Nate let out a long, weary sigh, the pent-up anger deflating like a balloon. "No, Brad. I'm afraid that this unit's slot for self-sacrificing martyr is already filled. You're stuck here with the rest of us lunatics."

"That mean you're done, sir?"

"I reserve the right to get pissed off again once I can articulate why more clearly. Are there any other surprises I should be aware of? Is Hasser hiding with the Canadians? Did you fold Ray up and smuggle him aboard in your luggage?"

"The last I heard, Walt's just getting home from Afghanistan," Brad replied, smile slowly returning. "And you've probably heard from the world's most inbred college student more recently than I have."

"Good. I can handle one of you, but not both. Come on, I've got some heavy shit to move." Nate started walking and Brad fell in beside him, so naturally that it might have been three weeks since they'd worked together and not three years. "Do you know what your billet is?"

"Charlie Company, sir. I understand there's still some shuffling about the platoon organization."

Nate nodded. Chances were they'd stick him with Cadman, even if he wasn't a combat engineer. "Right, the mysterious category of other. That makes sense."

"Sir?"

"In theory, the expedition's got a battalion attached. In practice, it's a very short one. Alpha and Bravo are full rifle companies. H&S is undersized, with the staff officers all wearing second hats and a lot of services outsourced to other departments. There's no weapons company or third rifle company. Instead we have Charlie. It's where we stick the aviators, scout snipers, Air Force, and international troops."

"That sounds very," and if Nate didn't know Brad, he'd miss the split-second pause to self-edit, "unique, sir."

"I am assured by our glorious leaders that it's the best option for integrating personnel from multiple branches and services into a single command structure," Nate replied. "Just like they in turn are assured by Stargate Command that there is a long-term plan to provide an actual weapons company."

Lorne believed in that the same way he believed that they'd find a ZPM factory. It could happen, but it wasn't something you planned for, especially with so many other growing offworld bases competing for the same very limited manpower pool. The transport situation didn't help at all; most people who'd accept the necessity of a year deployed would still balk at the possibility of being abandoned indefinitely if something happened to the Deds, especially if they had dependents.

"Colonel Sheppard also indicated that I might find a spot on an off-world reconnaissance team," Brad said as they entered a transporter. "Major Lorne mentioned it too, within a few minutes of me beaming down. Seems he has space on his."

"Fuck no," Nate said immediately. Visions of Brad mauled and crucified filled his head. Unfair and uncalled for, perhaps, but there was no chance in hell he was entrusting one of his men to the care of a zoomie. "Pick another team."

They entered a cavernous warehouse space, located in the city sublevels beneath the Ritz. Most of it was empty, save for one corner holding several piles of crates and spools, freshly beamed down from the Daedalus.

"Chicken wire, sir?" Brad said, examining the label for one long box. "Fence posts?"

"Cement mix, sheet metal roofing. A literal ton of nails and screws, plus power tools."

"Are you planning to start a farm?"

Nate grinned. "That's closer to the truth than you might think. Help me separate some of this out. I think Hermiod randomizes things out of spite."

Moving stuff into appropriate piles was a helpful physical distraction. Nate wanted to be happy to see Brad. It was hard to think of anyone he would trust more in a situation as fluid and challenging as the Stargate program in general and Pegasus in particular. It was also frightening as fuck and combined with the sneakiness it all turned into anger. Kate Heightmeyer would probably be very happy he'd worked that out himself; gold star for Nate's self-awareness.

When Brad had deployed from England back to Afghanistan, Nate's ability to sleep and focus had taken enough of a hit that Elizabeth had noticed it in his work. He'd had to see a shrink for the first time for a sleep script, and gotten Mike to screen his email for a few weeks. It was patently ridiculous; Brad wasn't even the first to redeploy, and Nate hadn't had the same reaction to the others.

But then, Brad always was unique.

Nate wasn't the sort of hyper-social guy who tried to obsessively keep in contact with every fellow serviceman he'd ever met. The only guy from Afghanistan he had much contact with was his company commander, and of Bravo Two there were maybe ten he routinely emailed for more than acknowledgement of weddings and births. It was normal; even without the officer-enlisted divide, you bonded more with the guys you worked closely with. Mike, Stafford, and Christeson, they'd been stuck in a victor together and were close as brothers. His team leads were next, the real reasons for any success Nate could claim. Ray, well, if you talked with Brad you might as well talk with him, but that had turned into its own self-sustaining friendship as they both tried to navigate life outside the service and coping with college.

Nate didn't email, chat, or call any of them every week without fail, though, unless something specific came up. He didn't do that with his actual, biological sister, who he could call without international fees. He had with Brad. And therein lay part of the problem: it was easier to ignore why he was attached to that particular friendship above all others when there was a convenient ocean or intergalactic void between them.

"I should warn you, most teams here aren't as flashy as Sheppard's," Nate said eventually. "Even if we don't specialize to the same degree as the SGC does, certain teams are definitely going to be spending more time on social outreach or studying ruins rather than fighting Wraith or doing search and rescue. I wouldn't want you to get stuck doing things that might offend your warrior spirit."

"If that's how certain teams," Brad said, with a look that said he thought Nate was being ridiculous but he was going to play along anyway, "work, then that sounds pretty good to me. My warrior spirit could use a vacation."

Now it was Nate's turn to give Brad a skeptical look. Skeptical was better than his other instinct of worried, because Brad almost sounded weary. Nate didn't know the full details of what he'd been up to the last three years, but he could read between the lines to see how much work there'd been even when based out of England. Maybe he hadn't done it quite as well as he'd thought, if he hadn't noticed that even the Iceman was starting to get worn down.

"It'll require working closely with at least one civilian. Other civilian, I mean."

"Better be careful, sir. Keep tripping up like that and people might start to think your dedication to liberal academia is slipping."

"Also, I should warn you, if you join my team you're basically taking sides in a departmental cold war. It's really ridiculous but there's not a lot of entertainment options and scientists are as bad as Marines at getting up to mischief and petty squabbling."

"So we're admitting that we're talking about your team specifically, then?"

Nate nodded. "Yes, but if you'd prefer another team, I'd support that too. Lorne's not actually a bad guy, for an Air Force officer."

It was painful to say, even if he felt obligated to do so. For his part Brad just looked utterly baffled for a few seconds, then he chuckled and shook his head. "There are times, sir, that I wonder if they scoop parts of your brain out at OCS."

"It's a requirement, yes. Otherwise we might use sentences too long for our men to understand."

Nate had missed how Brad smiled.

"Sorry to interrupt," Sarah said, "but do you have a second?

He really hoped she hadn't been standing at the door for more than a couple seconds, because the alternative was that they'd missed her entrance while grinning at each other like idiots and that would be just plain embarrassing. "Yeah, sure."

Sarah walked over, giving Brad a look that immediately set Nate on edge. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were one of those holograms the Asgard use with their subjects."

"This is Gunnery Sergeant Brad Colbert. We served together once." Nate left it at that; trying to explain how short that period had been compared to its outsized impact was difficult. "Brad, this is Dr. Sarah Gardner. We work together in SSO and she's on my team. Sarah, he's planning to join us, unless that's a problem?"

"Our very own Ronon? That's perfectly fine with me."

"Ronon, sir?"

"Ronon is a very long story," Nate replied, "and if you can beat him in a sparring match, you'll instantly be the hero of every Marine on this base."

Nate knew he really shouldn't be encouraging that sort of thing, but they were bound to run into each other eventually and if anyone was going to successfully defend the Corps' honor it would be Brad.

"I realize that some of us may look like performing monkeys, sir," Brad said, "but I'd like to think I'm not one of them."

"Brad, how many times have I told you to stop calling me sir?" He'd thought he'd broken him of that habit, but apparently being face-to-face - and sober - was bringing up old habits.

"You are going to be in charge of me again. Besides, what's the alternative? Fick?" Brad said it like it was some strange foreign word, which was a little unfair. Maybe it wasn't the strongest or most interesting surname, but it wasn't as if Colbert was much better.

"I like to call him Nate, even if that isn't how you military types do it," Sarah put in. "We're not as formal as some of the other departments, where it's always doctor this and doctor that. Everyone's a doctor, there's no point in ego-stroking each other about it."

"Did I mention the petty rivalry?" Nate asked Brad. "Actually, Sarah, you said you needed something?"

"Do you have any idea why we received a fifty-five gallon drum of silicone lubricant?"

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. It was beamed down along with all the sample containers and the like."

Brad looked as delighted a kid in a candy shop. A pig in a wallow. A redneck in the WalMart gun aisle. "Sir, is there anything I need to know about the extracurricular activities people get up to around here?"

"It's probably a shipping mistake," Nate told Sarah. "I bet it belongs to engineering."

"I assure you, sir, that if there's anything you need to tell me, your secret is safe with me."

"One word to Person, and I will find the darkest, coldest planet in this galaxy, and convince Dr. Weir that there's a valid reason it needs a lonely Marine guard," Nate replied. He was hit by the sudden realization that his level of information control had dropped significantly. Classified organization or not, suddenly there was a spy at his side. Never mind Ray, if Nate got so much as a bruise Mike might hear about it, and it was a short step from there to his parents.

"Don't worry, Nate, I'd never betray your trust." Brad said it with his shit-eating grin in full force, but something in his eyes told Nate he meant every word of it. For things that actually involved trust, at any rate; juvenile jokes might not apply.

Maybe he could bribe Chuck to add some extra censor keywords to the mail server.

"I should go find Zelenka and see if our unexpected delivery is theirs," Nate said, with a small nod of acknowledgement to Brad. "Sarah, could you make sure he gets to orientation?

"Absolutely. We don't want a repeat of Dr. Collins' shower adventure." Sarah smiled and put a hand on Brad's arm. "I understand you've been in England with the Royal Marines, Gunnery Sergeant."

"Brad, please, ma'am."

"Sarah, then. You must tell me any interesting news you have."

Zelenka didn't have any idea who might have ordered the lube. Engineering had plenty of uses for lubricant, but not in that particular grade and type. He suggested asking Lorne. As it happened, Nate's next destination was the headquarters building to turn in his official request to borrow Brad.

"We do have email, you know," Lorne said, while Nate sat down and handed him a tablet with pre-filled forms already pulled up. "I answer mine, unlike some people."

Nate, who had just received an electronic pile of mission suggestions from some people, ignored the comment. "I just thought I'd make sure it reached you and see if you had any questions."

"Want to make sure no one poaches Gunny Colbert?" It was still weird as hell to hear people call him that, for all that he'd earned the recent promotion.

"It did seem prudent. I'm not the only one filling out a team."

"Nah." Lorne shrugged as he pulled a stylus from his pocket and scribbled his signature on Nate's tablet. "When a guy drops everything to fly to another galaxy, you figure you should probably let his friend get dibs."

Nate didn't bother denying the friends part, since it was a bit pointless given that you didn't exchange weekly emails with everyone you'd ever invaded a country with. Instead he asked, "I promise our friendship won't affect professionalism in the field, Major."

"Yeah, sure," Lorne said, starting to chuckle quietly. Seeing Nate's frown, he added, "No, seriously, I believe you. But between you and me, it's an SG team. You just have a head start on what always happens anyway, at least with the truly successful ones."

"If you say so, sir."

"I do. You've been offworld with Sheppard's team. They don't exactly fit the Marine Corps idea of professional, do they? And they hang out off-duty, despite McKay being McKay."

"I am assured that Dr. McKay can be a good friend once you get to know him, and a capable leader in a crisis situation," Nate said dryly. "He's also getting better at interacting with people outside his immediate circle. I am assured of this."

Lorne grinned. "You've seen Chuck's chart, haven't you?"

Sergeant Campbell and the other control room technicians had a chart showing how McKay had slowly mellowed out over the course of a year, albeit with a spike at the end where the coffee ran out right as a Wraith fleet was discovered. According to the trend, McKay might be almost cordial within three to four years.

"I couldn't possibly comment. One of the nice benefits of no longer being on your side of the enlisted-officer divide is that I get the good gossip, and I wouldn't want to risk that."

"You're one of us, Nate. You can never escape," Lorne said, while typing something on his own laptop. "There, I've got him on your list and the appropriate training schedules. Any ideas about your fourth?"

"I'm not quite sure yet. We need someone with a few more technical skills to round us out. I was thinking maybe asking Dr. Murad, but honestly I feel like she'd be wasted." Her specialty of spaceships were a far cry from pumps and pigsties.

"Well, three's enough to get started, and Gardner has you pretty well covered for hard sciences even if she gets annoyed when you ask."

Nate blinked at that, and made mental note to ask Sarah about it. Lorne knowing her general background wasn't surprising, but he wondered how much they'd interacted. "How's your own search going?"

"I'm thinking Parrish and Cadman, maybe round it out with a couple other Marines. I've already had to rescue Sheppard twice, so the extra gun might come in handy."

"With respect, Major," Nate said, "I'm not sure you realize how lucky you are to have a CO like him."

"Oh, believe me, after Edwards I'm well aware. And Ferretti, well, he's a great guy but seven years on a gate team made him a little squirrely." Lorne glanced at his open office door and the common officers' work area beyond, then leaned forward across his desk to say, "It's just that I have this feeling that he's going to accidentally seduce another princess and I'm going to have to clean things up again."

It took Nate a few seconds to process. "Another? Did I miss a mission report somewhere?"

"It's not an SGC file."

"You know, I'm not going to ask," Nate said. "Not unless you get me drunk first."

That hadn't come out how Nate had intended. Lorne just shook his head. "Trust me, I'll have to be drunk too before I tell that story. It was not a shining moment of glory for the Air Force, even if it went worse for the KPA."

No, Nate definitely did not want to pry further, because any explanation would just lead to even more questions. "I'll see you at the mission planning meeting, then." He stood up and was at the door before he remembered to ask, "By the way, did you order fifty-five gallons of silicone lubricant?"

"What, like in one barrel? No. Not unless Sheppard - no, I would still have seen the forms. Maybe ask Beckett?"

Nate had the suspicion he was going to have to find something to do with a ridiculous amount of lube.

Chapter Text

"M4X-798, known locally as Phioge," Nate said. "The database indicates that at the time of the Wraith War, it was home to a civilization with very basic interstellar travel, basically space shuttles with third-hand hyperdrives. Obviously that's long out of date, but the local geology may have a number of useful minerals and ores. We have second-hand reports that it is currently inhabited."

"We have not traded with them directly," Teyla added, "but the Itari have. They are a reasonably friendly people and will not be surprised by visitors."

The two of them, along with Elizabeth, Sheppard, Lorne, McKay, and Stackhouse, were in the briefing room, sketching out the next few weeks of missions. For all that plans often had to be rearranged at the last second when there was inevitably an emergency, they still needed to be made. There were several fixed spots to cover existing trade agreements, and then additional arrangements needed to be made for follow-up missions, particularly to escort scientists to various sites of interest that the initial surveys had turned up. Some could be farmed out to be Marine squads or platoons, while others needed a bit more supervision or someone with authority to deal with the natives. Once all that was settled, it was on to the exciting exploration bits.

From what Nate had heard, at the SGC missions were largely assigned by traditional means, namely that the general pointed whatever coordinates were next on the list and told someone to go there after it had been MALPed. Occasionally there were more directed missions based on offworld intelligence, but it was still largely top-down unless one of the big names came up with a particular project they wanted to do. In Atlantis, Elizabeth ran mission planning more like an academic department working out class schedules. There were boring jobs that got spread around, but otherwise people mostly did their own thing barring some specific need. Between the database and the Athosians' wide-ranging trade contacts, there was a lot more opportunity to do research beforehand, and she encouraged the team leaders to find something worthwhile.

Hence Phioge, a planet mostly known for sheep but with possible ruins for them to explore.

"What sort of minerals are we talking?" McKay asked. "Naquadah? Trinium?"

"Phosphorus, high-quality silica, copper," Nate said. "There may have been trace naquadah long ago, but it sounds like it may have been mined out by the old inhabitants. There could still be concentrated refined metals buried in the ruins, though."

McKay frowned. "Oh, so nothing useful then."

"Just because you can't stuff it in a reactor doesn't mean it's not useful," Sheppard said. "That stuff's probably on Zelenka's list for making jumper parts or something."

"Actually," Nate said, "I plan to make some jars and crockery. Maybe windows. It depends on how well the Ancient repair equipment can be adapted."

Sheppard didn't quite frown, but he clearly wanted to. "That's, uh, exciting?"

Nate wasn't sure what their deal was. Stackhouse had just wanted to take his geologist to go look at some rock formations, which had made Lorne jealous but otherwise gotten him no guff.

"The Phiogans are also well-known for the quality of their wool," Teyla added. They'd spent a few hours discussing whether there was anything they could actually do with it, given they didn't exactly have a proper textile industry, but apparently she knew some people who could get them started, and the expedition had brought a loom along and promptly stuck it in a basement somewhere.

"Oh, well, in that case, great choice," McKay said, perking up. "My sweater got giant slug guts all over it, and the replacement the SGC sent just isn't any good. Do you think they're hypoallergenic sheep?"

"I'll be sure to ask," Nate said.

"Sounds good to me. Moving on," Elizabeth said, "Major Lorne?"

"I thought I'd try my hand at drug running." He waited for her to make a 'go on' motion. "Doc found a reference to some plant that's a natural painkiller and analgesic. Probably not surgical grade, but good enough for minor aches and pains if we refine it properly."

"It'll certainly make Carson happy. John?"

"Got a place called Doranda, not too far from Atlantis in galactic terms. One of the Ancients' human allies in their war with the Wraith. It's got a space gate, so it probably hasn't been picked clean by scavengers." It was a three-sentence summary so precisely laconic that Nate would believe it was all Sheppard knew. There was a detailed mission proposal sitting in the server's plans folder that suggested otherwise.

There was some more back and forth about the exact timing and MALP deployments, and then a general reminder that the Daedalus was available in case of an emergency, which also doubled as a reminder not to fuck up while Caldwell was around. It had taken a while, but Nate had eventually pieced together that Caldwell didn't dislike Sheppard for his general failure of decorum - although there was that too - but because he wanted Sheppard's job. It was best not to give him any reason to start sending memos about how badly run things were.

"Am I the only one who thinks it should be spinning?" Brad asked a week later as they stood in the gate room, waiting for Chuck to do his thing.

"What?" Nate said.

"It's going to shoot us five thousand light-years across space, but all it does it light up like some cheap kid's toy. Something should be moving around on it."

Nate sighed. "Brad, I realize that life without your RTO is hard, but please don't feel the need to echo every stupid thing he would have said if he were here."

"He has a point, you know," Sarah said to Nate's other side. "I prefer the original model. The speed and rotation gives it a sense of ceremony and gravitas."

"Don't encourage him."

"Also, you can't dial these manually if something breaks down. It's a serious design flaw."

Brad nodded. "You can't even see the bottom symbols."

"Sergeant Campbell," Nate called, "any time would be good."

The electric hum of the gate shut both of his companions up. Apparently even a jaded gunnery sergeant could feel at least some of the reverence and awe Nate had every time the machine turned on even after ten trips through one. Maybe someday he'd be so used to it he could keep up random chatter walking through, but it wasn't that day yet.

They were met with a vast expanse of bright green hills. The gate itself was in a valley and surrounded by trampled grass, but there wasn't an immediate sign of human habitation, save for some white dots moving about on one of the more distant slopes. Nate's mother had family near Glasgow, and the summer before his freshman year of high school they'd spent a month visiting and touring the country. This landscape would fit right in with the greener parts of the Scottish highlands.

"Any idea exactly where it is we're supposed to be going?" Brad asked, scanning the horizon with a pair of binoculars while Sarah sent the MALP home.

Nate shrugged. "Regrettably, Brad, I have not been provided with a map of the AO."

"Well that's just typical, isn't it? I'm a bit disappointed. I was always told the Air Force was better equipped.

"According to the star footage the MALP provided, north is that way," Nate said, gesturing toward one of the distant hills. "So based on Teyla's intel, we probably want to go that way, further down the valley."

"Nate, if your land nav skills have devolved to the point of 'that way' being considered a valid direction, I'm a bit concerned."

"Enough flirting, boys," Sarah said, walking past them. "I have ruins to document."

Nate looked at Brad, who looked back with an expression questioning who was actually in charge of this road trip. Nate spread his hands and started to follow. The two of them fell in behind and to either side of her, watching their sectors for any sign of life. No need to actually say what they were doing; it just came naturally. Strictly speaking, one of them should have been blazing the trail, but they could see ahead just as well as Sarah could, and he trusted her to spot anything they might miss. She'd had quite a lot to say about alien booby traps when Cadman had been teaching her explosives.

Before too long, the sound of distant waves and sea birds started to fill their ears. They went over a rise that turned out to be more of a cliff, albeit a short one. To the west the cliffs rose higher, to the east there was a river mouth and what looked like a village, and straight ahead was a wide expanse of dazzlingly white sand.

"High-quality silica, sir?" Brad asked, a smile in his voice even if he was mostly keeping a straight face.

"I couldn't use the word beach, obviously."

"Obviously."

"I'm told the battalion commander somehow smuggled a pair of surfboards on the Daedalus. He might lend one out to a fellow enthusiast at some point."

Brad just gave him a look. Nate looked back innocently; he could hardly admit that he'd chosen their team's first planet based on a combination of alien ruins, nice surfing, and a possible source of fleece blankets that didn't need intergalactic shipping.

"Hello the village!" Sarah called out as they neared the settlement. It was located a fair distance up the small river from the actual shore, probably enough to be past the brackish water. It was decently sized, a maybe five hundred people or so, with a number of houses, barns, and other structures, including a tall watchtower. Atop a rise another half-mile or so upstream, there were the ruins of a large castle or other fortification overlooking the river.

"My name is Sarah Gardner," she continued as people gathered around. There were no obvious signs of hostility; while most of the men and women alike wore knives or axes, they seemed to be normal daily tools, and no one was hustling the children away. "This is Nate Fick, and Brad Colbert. We're peaceful explorers from a planet called Earth. The Tau'ri, if you've heard of us?"

Tau'ri was the politically correct name for them; even if it was the language of their enemy, it also wasn't the language of anyone on Earth, and so no one had reason to complain about favoritism. Using "Atlantis" or "Lantean" was generally held back until much later, because people got weird about it. Elizabeth had a strict policy of saying 'no' when asked if you were a god.

"Please," Nate said, "take us to your leaders."

The villagers looked like the kind of people you'd expect to be running around the Scottish highlands, lots of thick wool clothing, big beards, and long hair. They inexplicably sounded like a bunch of Swedes. Their leader was in a longhouse, your typical petty ruler with a wooden throne, copper circlet for a crown, and two exceedingly burly minions carrying spears to either side of him. He was vaguely middle-aged himself, with plenty of gray finding its way into his braided locks, but in Pegasus as in Afghanistan - or the Marines - it was always hard to tell what was age and what lots of sun and a poor skin care regime.

"Welcome, travellers," he boomed. "I am Einkar King. What brings you to Phioge?"

"We're explorers, sir, seeking, trade and opportunities to study," Nate said, before launching into introductions again. "I've been told that the Itari find you fair dealers and your wool of high quality."

"The Itari," Einkar repeated. "If they have sent you, then they must find you good partners as well. Are you, perhaps, the strangers whom the Athosians now serve?"

"We are allies. I would certainly never use the word serve."

"I am glad to have been misinformed, then." Einkar relaxed subtly. "What do you need our wool for? Your garments are plain, but finely made."

"With the Wraith culling so many worlds, we often find ourselves sheltering refugees. We have need of blankets and clothing to help them resettle."

"A noble deed, although sadly nobility cannot feed a family or shear a sheep."

"I can offer strong arms if you need labor, or we can negotiate terms for salt or metal."

Einkar nodded. "You mentioned study as well as trade. What do you mean?"

Sarah took a step forward. "I am a scholar of ancient times, oh king. I seek to learn the stories of your people and examine the ruins left behind by the Ancestors or your forefathers, if it is permissible to do so."

Einkar looked puzzled, but not offended. "The old citadel? None have used it since the Wraith laid it low in the time of my grandfather's father, but if you wish to see it, you may. Take care, the walls are not safe." He shifted his gaze to Brad. "A trader, a scholar, and what are you?"

"I'm just along for the walk." Brad nodded toward the spearmen flanking the king. "For pretty much the same reason they're here."

"A wise precaution, in these troubled days." Einkar stroked one of his beard braids, then waved a woman out of the crowd. "One of our crofters had a building destroyed by the spring storms. I think he would be most willing to accept aid reconstructing it in trade for a share of his flock's production. Kayja, take our guests out to meet Vorik."

Nate knew a dismissal when he heard one, and after thanking their gracious host they followed their guide out. They had to walk a couple miles, with sufficient terrain between the village and their destination that it was going to be uphill both ways, and Sarah spent most of the time interrogating Kayja about the history of the ruins.

There was a cute little stone cottage at their destination, which looked perfectly fine. The shearing shed, which seemed more barn-sized to Nate's city-born eyes, was a different story. There were several noticeable chunks of roof missing, a badly-patched hole in one wall where something had been thrown through it, and the entire thing had a lean to it. Nate didn't know a lot about the process of shearing, cleaning, storing, and otherwise handling sheep hairs, but this was definitely not a building he would want to do any of it in.

"Okay," Nate said. "That's nothing that a few two-by-fours can't fix."

"Far be it from me to question the vast engineering knowledge imparted by your classics degree," Brad replied, "but I think that it may take a bit more than that."

"It's called hyperbole, Brad. Even Ray understands the concept."

"It might be easier to tear the existing structure down to the foundations," Sarah said, arms crossed. "But I don't think we have enough treated lumber for that. Maybe we can just reinforce the main supports, and put on a sheet metal roof."

Getting any at all had been a huge pain in the ass, and he was already starting to think he'd badly underestimated things. "In the long run we'll just have to cut some trees down on the mainland and find somewhere in the city where we can lay the boards out to dry or whatever."

"Whatever?" Brad repeated.

"Do you know anything about building houses, Gunny?."

"Do I look like Espera?"

"Tony would certainly be more useful right now." There would be complaints about stereotyping, but given that the man was manager of a home renovation company these days there was a limit to how long that could go on.

Brad gave him a strange look. "Since when are you on first name terms with Poke?"

"Since his youngest puked all over me," Nate said, wondering why Brad would find that odd. It wasn't as if he'd started every email with 'Dear Staff Sergeant Colbert'. "Anyways. We'll just get some engineering advice, and after that it's a matter of enough Marines with nail guns and drills. It's no different than building a deck."

"Maybe an illegal, unpermitted deck," Sarah said.

"Is there any other kind?" Brad asked.

"Americans."

The crofter turned up about then, and they haggled a bit about how much wool and in what condition they'd get in exchange for fixing his shed. He clearly didn't believe for a moment that they could do it as easily as they thought, and that he was probably ripping them off for the amount of man-hours it would need. With any luck he was wrong; then again, it was entirely possible Nate's men would end up accidentally knocking the whole thing over. You never knew with Marines.

"You know, I really shouldn't say this," Nate said as they approached the DHD, "since we're still on this side of the gate. But for a first mission together, this went pretty smoothly, didn't it?"

"We've been offworld several times," Sarah pointed out. "And on the first time, we found a dead body in a deserted village, hid from a dart, and Laura got stuck in McKay's brain."

"I'm not sure what you want to count as our first mission," Brad said, dry a fucking desert, and Nate could hear the silent sir, "but it's hard to think of a definition that wasn't ten kinds of screwed up."

Dialing Atlantis, Nate said, "Al-Gharraf went fine."

"Hasser nearly got strangled by someone's clothesline, and it was the first instance of Captain America going full Apocalypse Now."

Nate sighed. He wondered if any other team leaders got this much sass from their notional subordinates. Then he remembered Sheppard existed. Typical, really, for a colonel to ruin everything. "First mission as a single team, then."

"Oh, in that case, it's a stunning success," Sarah said as they walked to the puddle. "Or at least it will be until it turns out the gods abhor metal roofs and they try to throw us off a cliff."

"Athar keep us safe," Nate muttered, and damn it, now they had him doing it too.

They went through the rituals of returning from a mission: return weapons, visit medical, shower and change, one-minute summary debrief for Elizabeth pending the comprehensive write-up and review meeting. It felt like coming home from deployment, boiled down to the barest essentials.

Nate sent out a few emails to gauge interest, got approval from Elizabeth, and the next afternoon convened the first meeting of the Interdepartmental Committee on Offworld Construction. He'd have to find a better name for it later. In addition to his team, he'd recruited Farah Murad, an aerospace engineer who mostly worked on jumpers, Cadman, since at some point they'd inevitably need to blow something up, and JD McNeill, who despite looking like a refugee from a twink film had supposedly helped build a cabin.

"It just needs a few two-by-fours?" McNeill said, looking at Nate in disbelief as they passed around photos of the sheep shed.

"So much for confidence in my leadership," Nate said to Brad, who shrugged.

"Leadership, sir, not construction skills."

"It's not as bad as it could be," Murad said in a cheerful, almost sing-song voice. "I think the structure's sound overall. It'd be hard for them to pull it back into proper shape, but it's nothing we can't do with a winch or two. Then we just add braces and a new roof to keep it all dried in. Simple."

"Sure, if you want it to fall over again in five years," McNeill said. For a man who mostly sat in the corner grumbling in several languages about how much he hated the Ancients, he apparently had a definite opinions about architecture.

"Five years is about four years and forty-odd weeks more than it has right now," Nate said. "To be honest, this is mostly a practice run. I fully expect us to fuck up and have to fix it again later."

"Leadership, eh?" Cadman said, glancing at Brad.

"Absolutely confidence, ma'am. Most of the time."

"You'll have to excuse the gunnery sergeant, Laura," Nate said. "He was exposed to second-hand amphetamines during the invasion and hasn't been right in the head since."

"Oh, is that what we're blaming it on these days?" McNeill said.

"You're, what, twelve years old?" Farah asked. "You're not allowed to say 'these days'."

"Getting back on topic," Nate said, because he knew if he didn't step in now they'd never get close again, "my point is that this is a good chance to work out our procedures, so that when we build something that does need to be done right the first time we're ready."

"I take it you have something in mind already?" Sarah asked.

Nate nodded. With his tablet, he pulled up the relevant files, and then transferred some images wirelessly to their Ancient conference table. Three holographic diagrams popped into the air over it: a small house, suitable for a family or two depending on size, a larger longhouse adaptable for socializing or various types of work, and a greenhouse. "These are just rough concepts I threw together, not serious architectural diagrams, but it's what I'm hoping to move toward in the long-term. Basically some easily-built, maybe even prefabricated structures that can be thrown together in a hurry."

"So that when we resettle people they won't be stuck in tents for months?" Brad said.

"Or so that we don't have to move them to another planet at all. The Wraith trash buildings, so right now we have to move people so they have shelter. It might be easier to move shelter to them, especially when there's livestock involved."

"What sort of materials are you thinking for these greenhouses?" Murad asked, trying and failing to tap the image as it rotated.

"Glass? I'll have to ask botany about light requirements and all that. Why?"

"We have a machine that spits out jumper windows," she explained. "They're single-crystal aluminum oxide slabs - essential giant clear sapphires. We could design the window frames for the greenhouses or other buildings to fit those."

"You'll need more feedstock if we're scaling production up," Cadman said, "but most Pegasus natives can't refine aluminum anyway. We could probably trade for it pretty easy."

Nate started making notes. "Anyone else?

"As I recall," Brad said, "when I got here there were still sizable holes in our fair city. There's not as many of them now. How's that happening?"

"The city has automated self-repair systems," Murad said. "They seem to be drawing from internal material reservoirs. It's not really useful outside the city, but tracing the feed lines has turned up some other equipment of interest that might help us with alternative building materials. This gives me an excuse to play with the carbon fiber extruder, for example."

"If this your plan for rebuilding people's homes in a few weeks," McNeill said thoughtfully, "you still need immediate shelter. Something better than letting people into the city."

"We might be able to build out something permanent on the Alpha Site," Nate said, "but the military's worried about security there too."

"You should email Jackson," McNeill replied. "Ask him about Tok'ra tunnel crystals. They tend to be pretty stingy about handing things over, but they might if he asks nicely and explains what they're for. They've helped refugees before when they've had the resources for it."

Further conversation was cut off by the door opening and McKay sweeping in. He had a suspiciously cheerful demeanour, given his usual reaction anytime he was forced to visit social sciences on their home turn.

"Okay, people, it is time for you to earn your pay," he declared. Behind his back, Dr. Montagne made an A symbol with her fingers. "I have a bunch of files from an Ancient outpost that I need translated."

"I take it you found something useful on Doranda, doctor?" Nate asked.

"As a matter of fact, we did. A lab full of the Ancient's most cutting-edge technology."

"And that technology gives us…?" Brad said leadingly.

"Power," McKay said, with a smug, satisfied smirk. "Unlimited power."

Murad's eyebrows practically reached the hem of her headscarf. "You are the senate?"

"What?" McKay's enthusiasm took a direct hit, confusion flooding into his metaphorical hull. "Wait, aren't you an engineer? What are you even doing here? And why does your conference table do images like that? Ours doesn't."

"If you send us the files you need translated, we can divy up the work and get back to you," Nate said. "How much is there, and how soon do you need it?"

"Eh, you know, just a few hundred pages. Maybe a thousand. And I'm briefing the team we're taking back at 0900, so maybe you could have it done in time for me to review it over breakfast? Oh, and maybe someone should come with us, just in case we need something clarified on the spot."

"Thousand?" Sarah said.

"Breakfast?" McNeill added.

"You must be joking."

"Not going to happen."

"I'm not a postdoc anymore. Unless it's an emergency, I work strictly nine to five."

"I don't know what you're complaining about," McKay said. "There's, like, two dozen of you. It's not like you have anything better to do."

Nate knew mutinous expressions when he saw some, and decided he should cut things off at the pass. "As far as someone to go with you, I would ask Dr. Utari. She's been wanting to go offworld and she's our best expert on computer terminology. Otherwise, we do have our own research, including translations you've said are the highest priority. Depending on how the first machine translation pass goes, maybe we can have it for you in a couple days."

"It's just reading!"

"Come on, Rodney," Cadman said. "You just do math, right?"

He glared at her. "Shouldn't you be out shooting something, or prying into someone's private life like some sort of disembodied peeping Tom?"

"It will get done as quickly as it can," Nate assured McKay, entirely planning to tell everyone to take their time. If this was vital alien technology, after all, it was important to be thorough and careful.

"Good. Fine. Carry on, then."

There was a low but increasingly loud laugh. Everyone turned to face Brad. "I'm sorry. I'm at a complete loss here. I know I should be insulting your silly little nerd fight, but it's too funny to put into words."

"Brad," Nate sighed.

"Every joke I could make about what a limp-wristed ivory tower tweed-jacket geek you've become doesn't fit the enormity of what I just witnessed. I don't know how I'm going to tell Mike that your balls fell off sometime in grad school."

"Thank you, Gunny, you've made your point."

"This is why I never liked working with Marines," McNeill groussed. "They're always full of themselves and have a terrible sense of humor."

"Hey!" Nate and Cadman said simultaneously.

"This actually raises another question," Brad said. "What is it about the softer sciences that attracts people of the jailbait persuasion? Or men, I should say, since Doctor Gardner here is an attractive young lady -" Sarah rolled her eyes "- but definitely an adult."

"It's the lack of physical labor," Murad suggested. "That, and too much time in poorly-lit library stacks."

"I'll have you know that I'm older than I look," McNeill said, "and I have the fake ID to prove it."

"I'm not even going to dignify this with a response," Nate added. "And all joking aside, let's try to get this wrapped up. I actually would like see what those files are and how much time we'll need to work through them. McKay or no McKay, I prefer our current military commander to the alternatives, and it would be unfortunate if the physicists blew him up because they don't understand the ablative."

It took twenty-five marines, a wagonload of lumber, several boxes of nails and screws, and a jumper with a jury-rigged tow hitch about a week to properly fix a sheep shearing shed, and then use the leftover materials to give the shepherds' house a new covered porch. As it turned out, that was about the same time it took for one astrophysicist to blow up three-fifths of a solar system.

"Don't worry," Sarah said to McKay while passing in the mess, "you don't need to feel bad. Three-fifths is a very respectable start. We can't all destroy an entire solar system on the first try like Dr. Carter did."

Behind her, Nate made eye contact with Sheppard and just made a little 'what can you do?' shrug. He shrugged back. Apparently some things were universal across disciplines.

Chapter Text

"Now this," Brad said, "is some serious Lord of the Rings shit right here."

Brad wasn't wrong. This wasn't the usual Pacific Northwest bullcrap found around the gate on fifty percent of planets. It was a straight up majestic New Zealand vista, distant mountains giving way to a wide plain and river valley. A road led down the hill the gate was on to a town spread out along a levee that separated the plain from a wide river.

"What do your elf eyes see, Legolas?" Sarah asked Brad. She and Nate looked at him expectantly as emotions warred inside him and even the Iceman couldn't quite keep a straight face.

"Captain Fick," he replied solemnly, "I believe they are taking the hobbits to Isengard."

Nate nodded sharply, and equally serious said, "Thank you, Gunnery Sergeant."

Nate was pretty proud of himself, because Brad cracked first. A minute later, after they'd all stopped laughing, they started to walk down the road to talk with some priests.

In the weeks following the Doranda debacle, Nate's team had mostly stuck to routine trade missions. This one was a slight variant on the theme. A few months before, Sheppard's team had visited here searching for a ZPM. There was a thriving trade town which frequently hosted pilgrims seeking to visit their Ancestral ruins, most of which were located further upstream somewhere. Sheppard's team, being strangers, had not been allowed to visit. They'd been able to covertly do enough scans to make sure there wasn't a ZPM, but in the run-up to the siege there hadn't been time to do a more thorough investigation. Now Nate's team was there to follow up and see if what going from stranger to friend would take.

It was a mild and sunny spring day, perfect for taking a long walk. The road to town was mostly deserted, save for a mule-drawn cart ahead of them and a pair of mounted lancers that passed them going the other direction. There was more activity as they neared Sartika Sala itself. It was large enough that, at least by Pegasus standards, it might be called a city, covering about a square mile and home to eight to nine thousand people, depending on the time of year. It was on a slight rise above the rest of the river valley, although that was only a few meters, small compared to the four-story and centuries-old levee separating it from the river itself. Most of the buildings were built from sandstone or brick, and densely packed together. It lacked the usual smells that Nate had grown to expect from larger settlements; whoever had built the levees generations ago had left behind extensive sewers as well, which the inhabitants took advantage of. The final stand-out feature was a starkly white bridge that crossed the river's quarter-mile width. Sarah thought it was even older than the other structures.

For this trip, they skirted around the bulk of the city, instead following an outer ring road to a walled compound just to the northern, upstream side, where a rock outcropping had been exposed by the river over the centuries. This was the Lower Temple, in contrast to the Upper Temple hidden away somewhere dozens of miles upstream, where one of the River Sala's tributaries reached into the mountains. Most of the buildings were built of the same materials as the rest of the city, save for one eight-story white tower rising above the rest.

There was a welcoming party for them. The stargate was an inconvenient two miles from the city, but aside from some copses of trees and bushes immediately around it and along the hill, it was mostly open field.

"Friend Nathaniel," said Aunt Grackle, spreading her arms wide. She was a tall, lean woman, her long white braids contrasting with ebony skin. She wore a bright teal garment, similar in shape and cut to a sari if quite plain. Here the color, while vibrant, was a sign of austerity; the dye came from a seaweed that in summer turned even the muddy river to a bright shade. "You've brought new companions with you."

"This is Sarah, a fellow scholar," Nate said, "and Bradley, who was my brother-in-arms in our homeland. Teyla sends her regards."

"Ma'am," Brad said, dragging his attention away from the orphans playing in the courtyard long enough to give her a polite nod.

"You must be hungry from your trip. Let us get you something from the kitchen."

"Oh, we wouldn't want to impose," Nate said. "We ate before we left."

It was the same song and dance Nate routinely went through with his grandmothers, and more lately his parents. Unlike his mother, though, Grackle wasn't convinced the Marines had let him starve his way through Iraq and wouldn't force the issue. She'd seen actual starvation and had enough hungry mouths to manage as it was.

"It looks like the planting went well," Nate said as they were lead into the great hall that was built around the tower. It wasn't exactly Hogwarts, even if it did have the requisite rows of tables and benches, but the crystal chandeliers soaking up sunlight from the open windows added a certain magical feel. Or technological feel, if you started to wonder how crystals could light up at night like a bunch of naturally-occuring LEDs.

"It has, yes," Grackle agreed. "We have had to let Eastbank go to pasture, but the survivors have settled in well on this side, and all the fields have taken. Grandmother River is flowing strong so there should be plentiful water this year."

"I thought I saw irrigation channels," Sarah said. "How do you get the water over the levee?"

"There are pumps built by our forefathers," Grackle said. "They occasionally need mucking out but luckily they work well for the most part, and the Wraith have not seen fit to destroy them."

Nate wondered if that was foresight or just ignorance. Collapsing agricultural production wasn't in their interests, but often enough the Wraith seemed happy to destroy out of spite.

"How do you keep the salt from building up?" Brad asked suddenly. "In the soil."

Sarah and Nate both gave him identical incredulous looks. "Soil salinity?" she said.

"It's a reason why Mesopotamia's not green anymore. Don't give me that look. Not every enlisted Marine is illiterate."

"There are spill gates upstream, at Lake Ullas," Grackle said. "Each bank is flooded once every four years, during that side's fallow time. It washes away the impurities. Brother Sparrow! Sparrow, get out here for a minute, will you?"

A weedy man, quite possibly younger than Nate, came stumbling out of the kitchen area. His robe was covered with an apron, for whatever good it was doing him. Apparently there was something cooking back there that splattered a lot. "Yes, Auntie?"

"Nathaniel has brought the felkah."

Nate and Brad unslung their backpacks and started emptying out the contents, one plastic-wrapped brick at a time. For a moment he felt like he was that one shifty-looking weed dealer every dorm had, unpacking a shipment from a Mexican cartel or wherever the hell people got it from these days. Officially this was a product of Botany Lab 7's "spices for trade" racks. No one called it space peyote on the records, just like no one called the Athosians' mint-like chewing leaf space khat. The IOA had enough conniptions about the tightly-secured greenhouse full of poppies.

"We can't promise it's any good," Sarah said. "Dr. Brown says she tried to match the climate to what you described, but it's still a best guess."

Sparrow unwrapped the top of a brick and sniffed. "It smells right."

"You need not worry," Grackle said. "There are strong years and weak years, and weak is still better than nothing."

"Do you think you'll be able to return to your usual sources?" Nate asked.

Grackle sighed and shook her head. "Aunt Cormorant does not think so, not this year or the next. Abikta Sala is in ruins, and the people in the countryside struggle to rebuild. The southlands are far more populous than we ever were, and when the ships came they concentrated there. People must worry about food first."

"And you can't grow it yourself?" Brad asked. They hadn't actually said anything about doing a smart cop-ignorant cop routine, but if that was how he wanted to play it, that was fine with Nate.

"When Chickadee was apothecary, he tried," Sparrow said. "Others have too. It doesn't stay hot consistently enough here like it does in the south. The leaves wilt too early."

"If your people could grow us a crop for the next few seasons," Grackle said, "we would be in your debt."

"We could, if you'd like," Nate said, "but maybe we can do one better. Have you ever heard of a greenhouse? Or a glasshouse?"

The two priests looked at each other. "It's said the duke of Paranrush has such a thing," Sparrow hesitantly replied, "and that it was greatly expensive."

"We could build you one. It could be enough to keep you supplied if you're careful, and then in fresh greens once the south can start growing again."

Grackle was suspicious. It didn't show, but that was a tell in and of itself. You didn't put on a straight face worthy of an international arms negotiator if you weren't planning to look the gift horse in the mouth and make sure it wasn't about to give all your other horses space herpes. "Such a thing would be in your ability to make, I am sure, for your people are most skilled. But even for you, charity must have its limits."

"We'd do it at cost," Nate said. "And really, just for some of the materials."

"There is a rock, a mineral, that your world has," Sarah said, picking up the thread. "It's of no value to you, but we can turn it into a fine glass, unbreakable and unscratchable, or into a strong and light metal."

"What, our crystals?" Sparrow said. Grackle hushed him.

"No, it looks like this, or perhaps this," Sarah said. From her own pack, she withdrew samples of corundum and bauxite. The former might be mildly decorative if shaped and polished, but the latter was just ugly rock.

"If you still feel like it would put you in too much debt," Nate added, "then if you would help us negotiate with the landowners or governors where these might be found, we'd be very grateful."

"Hmm," Grackle said, picking up the rocks. There was no way to even vaguely mistake them for the sharp and clear crystals hanging overhead, or the larger ones that resided inside the worship hall.

"Also," Brad said, "it's our first one so it's probably going to look terrible."

"I can make no promises," Grackle said after a bit of thought. "But I think there would be no reason for the reeves or the mountain folk to object. It will take time to arrange."

Nate smiled and nodded. "We can get started immediately."

Grackle had to know what he was doing, but there was no way to call him out on it inside the dance of politeness surrounding the giving and receiving of gifts. Building first and worrying about the materials and introductions later created a huge debt, but the very act also made it hard to call that debt it. They needed the herb for their rituals and Atlantis was giving them the ability to grow it instead of keeping control of the supply. She was probably wondering if there was some other shoe being raised up and ready to drop when least expected.

The other shoe mostly involved the United State Marine Corps invading her side yard like it was Iwo Jima. Fortunately, they seemed to have sufficiently internalized that this was a temple and an orphanage to keep their behavior reasonably under control. Ground was cleared, leveled, and paved with locally-sourced stone, a metal frame was erected, and several dozen sheets of transparent aluminum were hauled in on donkey cart and epoxied into place. About the worst thing that happened, beyond some truly deplorable singing, was Nate getting distracted by the sight of Gunnery Sergeant Brad Colbert, USMC, giving piggyback rides to children and tripping over a goat.

The fact that it all went so smoothly should have told Nate that something was going to go wrong.

They were delivering a refugee family into the care of the temple, along with the food to keep them eating for a few weeks until more permanent residence could be established, and fairly early in the local day. They were on their way back and about a half mile from the gate when something made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. It was quieter than usual, save one very angry bird. Watching that direction, he spotted a glint of metal within a small grove of trees, a hundred meters ahead and just south of the road. It'd be a nice, shady resting place, if it were later in the day.

"Gunny," Nate said, scanning along his sector again with a more cautious eye. There wasn't a lot of cover or concealment out there, but if he was laying an ambush this was where he'd do it. They were far enough out of town to avoid raising an immediate ruckus, but not close enough to the gate that someone could conceivably sprint past to reach it. He tried to recall where they'd last seen a guard patrol.

"Captain." A slight inclination of Brad's head directed Nate's attention to a clump of bushes a few dozen yards to the north of the road. They weren't exactly in a line with the trees, but they were still a decent spot to set up a crossfire.

"Gentlemen?" Sarah murmured. Even if she hadn't spotted anything yet, she could feel the change in tension.

"Don't look. There are men in the trees." A little huff told Nate that Brad recognized the irony. The universe liked its little symmetries. "Bushes over there too. You see that boulder at my ten o'clock?"

Sarah nodded almost imperceptibly. "I do."

"If we turn around, they'll be able to catch us from behind. If we run past, they catch us from behind. So what we do instead is attack before they do," Nate explained, to be sure she understood his reasoning. Brad had the same training as him and more recent experience at that; he knew how he'd react. He couldn't rely on that with her. "When I say go, you head for that boulder, and provide suppressing fire against the bushes. We're going to charge the trees, take out the hostiles there, and then we'll catch the others in a crossfire."

There was a lot to be said for violence of action. Move first, move fast, and even an outnumbered group could achieve victory.

Nate waited as long as he dared, crossing another ten meters. "Go," he said, then mock-tripped on a rock. He went down, rolled, and came up in a firing position. P-90 to burst mode, aim, fire. It didn't have the range and precision of Brad's rifle, but if there was one thing it was good at it was suppressing fire. Brad bounded ahead to a clump of shrubs, went to a knee, and fired as Nate came back up to leapfrog him. Behind him the electric bells of Sarah's zat rang out.

They were halfway to the trees before the first wild shots started coming back. Tiny blue bolts flashed their way with strange high-pitched thwips. That set Nate's heart at ease about shooting these assholes up. The expedition had strict rules of engagement, and one of them was not shooting to kill against primitive forces unless in immediate danger. Lots of cultures would make elaborate threat displays, waving swords or shooting arrows wide, long before committing to actual violence. Gunning them down when they didn't know what firearms were was a good way to start a blood feud, and Sheppard, in that cold little part of the brain every field officer had, thought it was better to risk injury than war. Even Elizabeth at her most bleeding-heart liberal moments, on the other hand, had a firm policy that bad guys with guns knew what they were getting into.

It was odd, what you thought about while running into gunfire.

As Nate dashed past Brad a second time, he saw a man go down in the trees, and three others still moving among them. Too many for comfort, given increasingly accurate fire coming from the other side of the road. He judged the distance, bounded a little further than usual, and unclipped a grenade from his vest.

"Frag out!" he called, kneeling and bringing his weapon up to fire again even as it arced through the air.

The noise was louder than he remembered, leaving his ears ringing. So was the scream that followed, although that gurgled off after a few seconds.

Brad ran past Nate and he followed close behind. A stunner shot narrowly missed Brad, and in dodging he placed his foot into grass-covered animal burrow with a crunch. It didn't slow him down for more than a second, and in moments they were among the relative safety of the trees.

"Having fun yet, sir?" Brad asked, kicking weapons away from the bodies. None seemed to be stirring.

Nate flopped onto the ground, partly shielded by a large root and some low-hanging branches, and pulled his field glasses. "I miss my truck. And the kids."

"A fifty-cal or Mark 19 would be nice about now."

"I make it four more over there."

"Seems right." Brad fired as Nate reloaded his weapon, then did the same as Nate took over.

There was an important difference between cover and concealment. Cover, like a suitably thick layer of dirt or concrete, might stop incoming fire. Concealment just made you hard to see. Wraith stunners seemed to have trouble getting past leaves and branches, and the same seemed to be true of a zat beam, although parts of those bushes were starting to catch fire or outright vanish. Bullets designed to punch through a Wraith or Jaffa armor weren't much troubled. Whoever was over there seemed to realize that pretty quickly, because after a minute rifle rounds started to whistle past overhead. Not many and not very quickly, though.

A distant thunder drew Nate's attention back down the road. A pair of mounted Salash militiamen were galloping toward them, spears out. Their attackers were clearly in no mood to deal with a cavalry charge. Two men broke cover, one immediately double-tapped by Sarah and the other going down from a burst by Brad.

Silence fell on the area.

"I recognize these men," Sarah said over the radio as the militia guards approached her. She flagged them down and they approached before dismounting.

"Wait for us," Nate said, cautiously standing. He crossed the road toward one side of the bushes, Brad noticeably limping alongside him, while Sarah and the locals went the other way. On the other side they found four men, three dead and the last headed that way fast, three holes through his guts and chest. He seemed to be groping blindly for something only he could see.

Sarah came up beside Nate and glared down. "Who are you?" she hissed. "Who do you serve? Speak!"

She made as if to kick him and Nate gently pulled her back. "It's too late for that, Sarah. Just take a few deep breaths. Brad, morphine, please."

Brad nodded and knelt down with his first aid kit. There wasn't much point in anything beyond palliative care. Maybe if they could somehow beam straight to Atlantis and the trauma surgeon, he might stand a chance. It'd probably take a half hour or more just to call for the S&R jumper. As it was, he was barely breathing and unlikely to last more than a minute or two.

"Looks like a couple bolt-action rifles here," Brad said. "Stunners, too."

"Weapons of the enemy," said the lead militia man, Abelard or something like that. "They must be Wraith worshippers, here to take you to their masters."

Nate shook his head. There were always rumors of such people, but it was hard to untangle the real thing from excuses to hate neighbors in the next valley or next planet over. He was fairly certain Wraith didn't issue firearms, and if they'd known Tau'ri were here they'd have sent darts.

"Brad, you're injured," Sarah said suddenly.

"Probably just a sprain. I've climbed mountains with worse."

"You're not walking," Nate said. To Abelard he said, "Can you find us transport? Or take me to the ring of the Ancestors."

"Of course. Anything for a friend of the temple." He snapped his fingers at the other guard, who swiftly mounted and rode off.

"I should have brought a healing device," Sarah fretted, her almost unnatural calm starting to melt away. Now that the action was over, Nate could feel the pounding of his own pulse all too clearly.

"It's fine, ma'am," Brad said.

"There's a dozen of the things sitting at Area 51. We could have requisitioned one. They keep one at the SGC and use it occasionally, why shouldn't I?"

"Come on," Nate said, mouthing 'check the bodies' to Brad. He guided Sarah out of sight of the bodies and found a rock for them to sit on. "First time in a firefight, right?"

First time killing someone was the real, if unvoiced, question.

"Yes. No. Fuck, how I am supposed to answer that?"

Nate had to laugh at the sudden slip of composure. "You're hanging around us Marines too much, Dr. Gardner. Better be careful or you'll start using fuck as punctuation."

"I'll have you know that an archaeology dig is every bit filthy as any barracks."

"I'm going to have to call BS on that."

Sarah launched into the story of her first dig as a postdoc, not incidentally her first dig with Doctors Jordan and Jackson. It was enough to keep her thoroughly distracted from Brad's ongoing corpse-looting until a horse-drawn cart and a half-dozen more militia road up half an hour later. Grackle was riding astride a pony among them.

"This is an outrage," Grackle said, as soon as they'd assured her they were mostly unharmed. "Travellers, attacked on the high road! Where are the shire-reeve's men? Where is the town guard?"

"Auntie," Abelard started, perhaps wanting to point out he was right there.

"Wraith worshippers, lurking on our very doorstep! Absolutely disgraceful. Rest assured, when the Salash-moot next meets, I shall have words about this."

"It really is fine," Nate assured her. "It's probably our fault they're here in the first place."

"You are guests on our worlds. It is our duty to insure your safety." Grackle drew a slim wood box from her robes. "A gift."

Nate accepted it with all due gravity and carefully opened it up. Inside were four circular discs, each with a glimmering jewel in the center, about the size of his pinky fingernail. It was some sort of pinkish or purplish gem, amethyst or rose quartz maybe. The metal surrounding them was decorated with tiny Ancient script in gold filigree.

"Pilgrim tokens, for those making the journey the first time," Grackle explained. "Most people wear them on a necklace or bracelet, although in the south piercings are not unheard of."

"Ma'am, I hope this isn't," Nate started to say.

"I know very well why you spend so much effort here and not somewhere else, Nathaniel," she told him. "But you have not asked for anything, and you seem pure of heart. You may as well see what you work to support, and perhaps learn something that may benefit both our peoples."

"Thank you for your trust, ma'am."

"Is there a reason there's four?" Sarah asked, picking one up to examine it more closely.

"Traditionally pilgrims visit the high temple in even numbers. Teyla came with four, I thought you might at some point."

"Not to be critical, sir," Brad said, leaning against Nate in order to look at the jewels, and coincidentally take some pressure off his foot, "but all things considered, perhaps some movement on choosing a fourth man might be a good idea."

Certainly the tactical deficiencies of a three-man team were clear. As impressive as Brad, in so very many ways, he was not an eighty-something Jaffa master capable of dual wielding assault rifles with pinpoint accuracy.

'I'll put that on the list of things to do before our next mission," Nate said, "along with finding you a grenade launcher for your rifle."

Brad grinned widely. "Not to go all homoerotic, sir, but if you do, I'll have to kiss you."

Nate had to drag his attention away. "Auntie, are there any rules we need to follow?"

"Just wear them until the solstice," she said. About another three months, Lantean time, if Nate was doing the conversion correctly. "And now you should get Bradley to your healers. Give Teyla my regards, and tell John Sheppard I will want to speak to him of the Enemy sometime."

Nate barely had to chivy Brad into the cart. Nate plopped down next to him, and Sarah sat to his other side. The ride was far from restful - suspensions were clearly called for on the ever-growing list of things to teach people about - but Nate could feel exhaustion creeping into his bones as the last adrenaline started to wear off. He found himself leaning against Brad, even as he kept watch out to the side, just in case.

Forty minutes later, they were back in Atlantis and in the infirmary. Brad was on a hospital bed, being prodded by Beckett and Marie, while Sheppard watched from the next bed over and Elizabeth and Lorne questioned them.

"It's not broken, but it was a near thing," Beckett declared. Frankly Nate would have prefered to hear that coming from an actual orthopedic or trauma specialist, rather than a geneticist, but you worked with what you had. "Fortunately with the Ancient equipment, it shouldn't take more than a few weeks to be good as new. As long as you stay on light duty. And don't scratch it!"

Behind Brad, Sheppard very slowly pulled his hand away from the large, crusty-looking blue spot on his left forearm. Nate had seen a number of disgusting things in his time, many of them oozing out of Marines for various reasons, but Sheppard had managed to outdo them all.

"You have no idea who they were?" Elizabeth asked.

"There were no identifying marks or papers," Brad said. "Clothing wasn't anything special, nothing at a level I haven't seen in a couple marketplaces."

"They were definitely waiting for us," Nate added. "Other people had passed by before us and would have been easier targets. We brought the rifles and took pictures of the men, maybe that'll help."

"Not a lot of people out there with guns," Sheppard said. "Even basic ones."

"I don't know, sir," Brad replied. "They wouldn't be out of place with some of the hand-made ones I've seen in Afghanistan."

"That's true. Rare isn't the same thing as non-existent. And for that matter I've pissed off a lot of the people who do have them - Hoffans, Genii, Olesians, probably a couple others I don't remember."

"They could even be mercenaries," Sarah suggested, "hired offworld by someone whose trade we're cutting into."

Lorne shook his head. "The use of stunners suggests they wanted you alive. There could be something in the Wraith-worshipper idea."

"That's true," Sarah admitted with a slight nod. Her eyes met Lorne's briefly. "And unlike some, they can't rely on alternative methods of insuring we'd be alive for interrogation."

"There's one bright point in this galaxy's favor," Lorne muttered. "What about these pendants the priestess gave you?"

"Zelenka's looking at the spare now," Nate said. "He says the gem's chemically similar to Ancient computing crystals, but there's no sign of any power source. We should probably wear them just in case, though."

"Write up your reports. We'll do a thorough after-action in the morning," Elizabeth said. Nate felt a laugh try to bubble up and clamped down hard on it. For a moment she sounded exactly like she was running a simulated negotiation, just with eight dead bodies. "Major, I'd like a word about increasing security for our next few trade missions."

Beckett started making shooing motions. "The rest of you can stop cluttering my infirmary as well. I'll get the sergeant back to you as soon as that ankle's tended to."

"I'll catch you later, Brad," Nate said.

As he left, he heard Brad ask, "So what are you in for, sir?"

"I got bit. By a girl."

"Remind me not to visit that planet for libo."

It was already fairly late in the afternoon by Atlantis time. Nate managed to get through the rest of his day almost as if nothing unusual had happened. He got his supper, went back for seconds, and then sequestered himself in his office to write up his report while the memories were still fresh. He took a shower, unnecessary given he'd clean up post-mission but a form of stress relief he afforded himself in the land of unlimited hot water, and went to bed only a little early. He settled in easily and drifted to sleep in minutes.

He was up again before midnight, sweaty and mind filled with blurred and mixed images of ambushes and wounded Marines.

Nate forced himself to get up and take a walk to clear his head. What good that was going to do, when he'd started clear-headed to begin with, was unclear, but it was better than staring at the ceiling. He took a few loops around the ground level, listening to the waves lap against the city's base. When he started to get chilly, he went back inside, and found himself veering down a different corridor than usual.

Brad opened the door when he knocked, wearing sweats and looking entirely unsurprised.

"Captain," he said, waving him in.

"Nate."

"Nate," Brad corrected. "Trouble sleeping?"

"It's stupid," Nate said. He flopped down like sulky college student onto a couch that Brad had positioned near the window. The lights were off, but moonlight streamed in, along with a slight breeze that rustled the curtains. "I'm not some fucking boot who just popped his cherry. That barely even counted as a firefight."

Even with his face half in shadow, Brad's smile was obvious. He turned and opened up one of the built-in cabinets on the far wall. There was some clinking and after a minute he joined Nate on the couch, handing over a glass full of something that smelled like apples.

"I will grudgingly acknowledge that even an officer can in fact be a stone-cold killing machine," Brad said. "And that he might remain one after leaving the Corps. But you're a civilian, Nate. It's not your whole life anymore."

"It wasn't," Nate corrected. He took a sip of his drink. Definitely apple-derived, and definitely strong. "I can call myself an explorer or humanitarian, but we're still in a war zone. Combat's part of the job again. I need to remember that."

"That's why we practiced for it."

"I need your frank assessment. Just me and you, before Sheppard and Lorne and all the rest start picking it apart. How'd I do?"

Brad took a minute to mull over his answer. "There's a couple things I'd quibble about with your choice of positioning, and you should have had me throw that grenade. But you noticed the threat as fast as I did, then immediately formulated a tactically sound plan and acted on it. Decisiveness covers a lot of sins."

"I don't know whether to be relieved," Nate said, taking a much larger drink, "or worried about how natural it was to think that way again."

"Not to demean your current position as hippy-in-chief of the touchy-feely part of this outfit," Brad replied, grunting when Nate elbowed him hard in the side, "but you were born to be an officer."

Nate shook his head and vehemently said, "No, I wasn't. I left for a reason."

He'd wanted to stay so badly, when Eckloff had been talking options and company commands; and known just as strongly he couldn't live with himself if he did.

"Maybe not in that war, or even as a Marine," Brad said. "But as a leader of men in general?"

"You better be careful, Brad," Nate murmured, leaning against his reassuring bulk. "You sound like you're about to get poetical. I'd hate to think I'm rubbing off on you."

Brad chuckled and leaned back in turn. "For in these days men are slow to believe that a captain can be wise and learned in the scrolls of lore and song, as he is, and yet a man of hardihood and swift judgement in the field."

Nate blinked, taking a few seconds to place the quote."I leave myself wide open and that's how you respond? Ray would be appalled."

"I really don't care. Or want to think about him, for that matter." After a minute of silence, Brad said, "If it'd help to sleep near someone tonight, you're welcome to stay."

Nate gulped down what was left of his drink. "I'm a bit old to be crashing on someone's couch."

"If you're too good for my couch, the Ancients left a ridiculously large bed in this room. I'm sure we can both fit, if you promise not to rub off on me."

Nate looked Brad square in the eyes. "I only do that if a guy buys me dinner first."

For a brief moment confusion and surprise flashed across Brad's face, and then he was reaching out to pull Nate into a kiss.

There were ninety-three reasons that Nate had avoided doing that during those months they'd been around each other, between the first meeting at Pendleton and the departures for D.C. and England, and those handful of stolen weeks since. He was simultaneously too tired and too amped up to care. He just started fumbling with Brad's sweatpants and the growing hardness inside them instead.

This first kiss wasn't what Nate had ever imagined, those times he'd dared let himself do so. There was a hint of stubble there, and no trace of illicit tobacco. The tenderness surprised him more. He'd somehow expected the same bold forcefulness Brad exhibited with most of his endeavours. That was when he thought there'd be kissing at all; there'd been more than a few times the assumption was there'd be nothing but a one-way blowjob or a reach around.

That forceful nature did start to show itself once Nate got the sweats down and a hand around Brad's cock, although it was mostly directed at the buttons of Nate's own pants. Brad managed to tug those away and then pushed Nate down onto the couch. Nate chuffed out a little laughter against Brad's mouth, who pulled his head away just long enough to raise a quizzical eyebrow. Nate could have explained that Brad's heavy weight pressing their bodies tight was making it damned difficult to jerk him off, but instead he used his free hand to pull him back in. He extracted the other, which helped a lot, letting their cocks rub and slide against each other, and let it rest against Brad's ass where he could feel every flex it made as he humped Nate. What followed were a few minutes of wordless, desperate rutting against each other, years of pent-up desire released all at once, until Brad suddenly stiffened and with a quiet gasp shot his load. Nate followed close behind. They both slid into silent stillness, getting their breath back while luxuriating in the skin contact.

"Brad," Nate said after a minute, as post-orgasmic bliss slid back to mundane reality, "if you don't get off me, we're going to end up stuck together."

"Always the practical one." Brad huffed against his neck and rolled away, off the couch and on his feet in one smooth motion. Nate stripped off his clothes, eyed the stained hem of his shirt, and stuffed them into the magic Ancient washer drawer just as Brad returned with a washcloth.

"To be clear," Brad said softly, "in the unlikely event it ever comes up, this didn't happen. Fumbling on a couch like a pair of teenagers, I mean."

Nate nodded. "Obviously. It was much more dignified."

"I generally last more than two minutes."

"I am assured of this, Brad." And there they were again, grinning at each other like idiots.

After that, there wasn't much question about sleeping arrangements. It would be easy to say that they just slipped into bed and naturally fell in synch the way they did in the field. Instead there was a fair amount of tossing and turning, since they both seemed to think they should be the big spoon, and a ridiculous amount of tugging on the sheets. Despite that once Nate did doze off he was out like a light.

Brad was gone when Nate woke up the next morning.

"Motherfucker," Nate said to himself, wondering why he would have expected anything else.

He was already behind schedule, because his body's natural clock was a traitor and his alarm was probably beeping plaintively a dozen levels above. He skipped his run, substituting instead a careful exit from Brad's quarters and a dash back to his own to shower and retrieve his sidearm, and then headed straight for breakfast. He wolfed down his first serving of flapjacks, tree-tater tots, and institutional sausage and went for a second serving.

"Nate!" As he headed for the tray return, he heard his name called out, and saw Elizabeth at a table near the door, waving him over. Caldwell was with her.

"Dr. Weir. Colonel," he said with polite nods.

"I believe you're aware of Colonel Sheppard's condition," Elizabeth said. "Unfortunately, it seems to be worsening much more rapidly than we expected. We're going to have to postpone our meeting."

"Understood, ma'am. Anything my team and I can do to help?" All two of them able to actually walk without giving the medics a hissy fit.

"Actually, yes. I'd like you to coordinate between Medical and SSO. We're going to need translation of as much material as we can get with regard to the iratus bug and anything related."

Nate sucked in a breath. "Bio-med's tricky. It's a lot more ambiguous than most topics."

It was a polite way of saying that bio-med was often completely fucked when it came to translation in anything like a timely manner. Prose was one thing, as long as the writer didn't feel too poetic; physics and engineering could often be cross-checked using the math. Even bio-chem at least had some physical references. With general biology, the language was as messy as the topic. On Earth a tabby, a tiger, and a hyena were all feliform, but no one would ever call the last a cat or mix up the tiger and someone's kitty. The difference wasn't so clear in text, across tens of thousands of years and an equal number of planets.

"I know. Do the best you can."

As he walked from the mess to the Ritz, Nate called Chuck and had him assemble every member of SSO with even a scrap of Ancient. They had a much higher level than average; most of them started off with at least one extra language to begin with, and so much of Pegasus was built on understanding Ancient impacts on human civilization that even those focused purely on current events tried to pick some up. By the time they were gathered in the common room, he has a half-baked plan of attack. It was surprisingly similar to planning an assault.

"I know how the rumor mill works around here, so I'm sure you've all heard about Colonel Sheppard's predicament. The latest word is that it's getting worse faster than expected, and at an accelerating rate," Nate told them. "We need to provide Medical with any information that might help them produce a cure. Dr. Jonaitis, I understand you've been point person for assisting Beckett's research. I want you to stage from the infirmary, provide them with on-the-spot support and relay any requests for further info back to me. The rest of us will be doing a database dive."

"What are we looking for?" Montagne asked.

"Anything we have on the iratus bug. Elise, you're our zoology liaison, so take point on the anatomical and biochem parts. Anything about the relation between the bug, the Wraith, and humans is particularly important. Corrigan, handle the historical side of that search. Utari, McNeill, you're our database experts - find more stuff for the rest of us to translate. If you need IT support, let me know and I'll call Zelenka. Everyone else, pick a team that seems most in line with your expertise. Even just helping with dictionary and grammar checks can speed things up."

They broke up into a crowd of chattering academics, speaking in a half-dozen languages, some even shifting to pidgin Ancient just to get into the mood. No one took the time to question why he was giving out orders like he ran the place; it might look like a college history department, and at times the petty infighting flared up, but they recognized an emergency and Sheppard was popular. No one was going to complain about taking time from their own work to help him. Nate just desperately wished Jackson was there instead of him. Nate could manage the Ancient equivalent of simple-English Wikipedia these days, but the man had literally written the textbook on how to decipher it from unknown fragments.

Sarah caught him before he could retreat to his office. Some people were working in groups in the common room, but he needed a little more quiet to focus.

"Is there anything you'd like me to do?" she asked.

He motioned for her to follow him in. "Yeah. I know your history isn't public, so I didn't want to bring it up with the rest. Osiris knew a fair amount about healing technology, right?"

The day after Nate had requested her for his team, Elizabeth had provided him with a copy of the information the SGC's post-recovery debrief had produced, along with a note to see Major Lorne if he had any questions. He'd reviewed the summary and set the rest aside, not wanting to pry into her privacy more than necessary to understand what skills she could bring to the table.

"He was the lord of life after death," Sarah acknowledged. "He helped Tolchak develop the sarcophagus, and then personally miniaturized the technology into the healing device. It's what caught Ra's attention and lead to his primacy among the royal family. Naturally, once he had power he immediately squandered that cleverness and let his minions handle research while he focused on strategy and politics. A poor choice, given where scheming lead him and Isis."

"And both those devices can treat cancers and infections?"

"Yes, but we don't have one." Sarah shook her head. "Honestly, I'm not sure how well it would function with this sort of transformation. It might stop the virus from spreading further, but the flesh already changed is essentially healthy, just alien."

"It's still a starting point. Try to remember anything you can about the original Ancient healing device, and use that to see if there's anything the Ancients left here that might have the same effects. Even if Sheppard gets stuck half-bug, that's still better than all bug and buys us more time."

Sarah took a breath and gave him a shaky smile. "If he does, maybe McKay can build him little web shooters. I'll see what I can come up with."

Nate settled in at his desk and queued up some music on his laptop. He couldn't study in silence anymore, although he'd at least managed to mostly wean himself off hip-hop. He had an image to uphold, after all. He left the door open so people could interrupt if needed and started diving into the Ancient survey reports on the planet the expedition had first found the iratus on. For all their general obtuseness as a civilization, he felt a certain kinship with the long-dead Ancient soldiers and explorers who'd written some of them. They didn't spend as much time on overly complex sentence structures or trying to hit some obscure rhetorical standard. They were much more likely to come out and say what bit someone, where it happened, and how to avoid being bit again.

He spent most of the morning on translation, occasionally breaking off to check what others had turned in or forward a question from Medical to the appropriate expert. Toward the middle of the day, Brad knocked on his door. Nate beckoned him in with one finger, then motioned for him to close the door.

"Good morning, Brad." It was twenty minutes past noon, but he'd happily sacrifice accuracy for rhetorical effect.

"I had an 0700 appointment in the infirmary," Brad said. It was nice to see Nate's ability to communicate nonverbally was working. "I've been teaching Guns For Geeks the rest of the morning. I figured I'd let you catch up on your sleep."

"Thank you for that consideration," Nate said dryly. He knew he was being bitchy but Brad had weathered significantly more trying verbal assaults and he didn't feel like hiding his annoyance.

"You're welcome?"

"You know, it's funny. Despite the nonstop homoeroticism, I didn't know you sought out other men for that sort of recreational activity. But then, I suppose I never brought it up myself either."

It was truly amazing what sort of expressions Brad could come up with when caught off-guard and unable to fall back on tactical jargon. "Sir, I am aware that after combat, people sometimes look for relief in ways that might be outside their normal -"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Brad. That's not what that was and you damned well know it. To be clear, in my case the situational homosexuality is not very situational." Nate couldn't help but smile. It was a relief to finally tell Brad that. He'd danced around it for so long, even as he told Mike and Ray and his family, for fear of what else he might confess. "And if you call me 'sir' one more time in this context, I'm going to have to start drawing conclusions about your preferences in the bedroom."

For once in his life, Brad seemed shocked into speechlessness, rather than just defaulting to his usual stony silence. "Alright, message received. Nate."

"I'd like it not to be a one-time thing."

Brad swallowed. "Yeah. Me too. I've wanted - fuck, I don't even know what I wanted. I've spent so long not letting myself think about it. Can we talk about this later?"

"Sure thing." Nate was going to hold him to that, even if he had other fish to fry at the moment.

"Is there anything I can do to help with the Sheppard situation?"

Brad had been gamely learning the basics of Ancient, at least the parts needed for his job, but he was barely past the equivalent of "donde is el bano?" He wasn't going to be much use even as a sanity check. Nate decided to put him to a use more suited to his unique talents.

"Round up some Marines, head to the mess, and get us some chow. We need a break. Maybe see if Medical needs anything too."

"Aye aye, sir, one pizza and beer run coming up."

Nate went round the department to ask for progress reports, and spent the next half-hour writing up a summary with attached translations. They'd uncovered quite a lot about the biology of the iratus, as well as some entries on the Wraith that seemed like they might be vaguely relevant to understanding Sheppard's altered physiology. He fired them off to Beckett, Lorne, McKay, and Weir, pointedly forgetting Colonel Caldwell. Shortly after, Brad showed up with several corporals in tow. He'd been literal about the pizzas, although not the beers. Nate chided everyone away from their computers and into the lounge for a carb recharge and brainstorming session.

Naturally, that was when McKay showed up.

"Where is that idiot Fick?" McKay said, stomping through the door and right past him while brandishing a tablet. "And why the hell are you all sitting around eating pizza?"

Nate got to his feet and gave him a little wave. "Do you have some questions?"

McKay rounded on him. "Is this really the best you can manage? Fifteen pages about the iratus life-cycle, mating rituals, and other useless garbage?"

"There's quite a bit more than that, doctor. That's just my summary."

"Oh, sure, there's a bunch more barely-coherent ramblings about microbiology. There's more footnotes than actual text."

"It's not rambling," Montagne protested. "It's all true to the originals. Take it up with the Ancients."

Nate held up a hand to forestall further complaints. "I get that it's not as polished as our usual final product, McKay, but we've got a time crunch. Awkward now is better than pretty later."

"Awkward is one thing, irrelevant is another," McKay retorted.

"We've got two people who can quickly translate materials on cellular biology. That's what they're doing," Nate said, keeping his voice level with practiced ease. It was pretty amazing how well the same techniques needed to deal with a superior who would have trouble mastering fire could be applied to the self-proclaimed smartest man in two fucking galaxies. "The rest of us are working on what we can. Info on Ancient medicine may help the infirmary synthesize a cure or retard the infection. Knowing how an iratus bug or Wraith lives might help us keep Sheppard comfortable in the meantime, or tell us what's safe for him to eat."

For a moment, it looked like McKay was actually taking that to heart, his shoulders dropping and his expression softening a little. Nate could visibly see the instant where he remembered that they were basically talking about palliative care and all the helpless anger came flooding back in.

"Actually, that does bring up another thing. You," McKay said, pointing at Sarah. "You're an archaeologist! Since when do you know anything about medical technology?"

Sarah stood up and crossed her arms. "I can assure you, Dr. McKay, my translations are accurate. The Ancient healing technology I listed should be capable of helping with Colonel Sheppard's treatment. I think some of it matches equipment we've already located in or around the infirmary."

"It's not the translations I'm questioning, although maybe I should. It's the fact that you're clearly synthesizing with some other source and coming up with new conclusions."

"Are you suggesting I'm not competent to do so?" Sarah replied with a glower. Off to the side, Nate spotted Brad and McNeill sending identical steely glares of their own toward McKay. He shook his head slightly to discourage them from leaping into the debate themselves.

"Yes, actually, I am. Unless you went back to school and got an actual degree while I wasn't looking, I know you can't possibly have the expertise need to understand what half of this technology does, let alone make suggestions on how to use it! If you want to feel useful, go fetch coffee for the doctors instead of pretending you know what you're talking about."

In that moment, Sarah could have been Brad's duplicate from a mirror universe. Where he was the cool and collected Iceman, she was incandescent with a towering rage and fury, quivering like she might explode at any instant. Or stab him; her hands were clenched tight but one seemed to be drifting toward where she hid her backup knife when they were offworld, and he had to wonder if she was ever without it. He put himself physically between them, hoping she wouldn't literally go through him to get to McKay.

"Doctor McKay, I understand you're under a lot of stress and that you're upset," he said, quick and deadly calm.

"Upset? I'm upset that we're apparently paying a bunch of -"

"Shut the fuck up." It felt incredibly good to be able to just say it outright, instead of trying to guide and direct without actually giving voice to his own frustration. "I get it. Your friend is injured and dying. It's outside your own expertise to fix. But you're not going to take that out on us. If you're unable to be civil, I'm going to insist that any further communication between you and this department go through our supervisor."

"What?" McKay said, face screwing up in confusion. "I'm the head of sciences. I am your supervisor."

"Actually, that would be Doctor Jackson. Unfortunately, I'm afraid the time delay may slow down any responses."

"That's ridiculous," McKay scoffed. "Everyone knows he's never coming. Elizabeth just hasn't admitted reality and folded you back in with the rest of us."

"In that case," Nate said, stepping closer and getting right up in his face, "let's go talk with her and see how she feels about your behavior."

They stood there face to face for a minute, until McKay finally blinked and deflated a little. "Fine. Whatever. I'll email you some follow-up questions, maybe that'll help you focus more."

"I've already received a few from Dr. Beckett and Major Lorne. I can add yours to the list." As McKay turned to leave, Nate grabbed him by the bicep and lowered his voice so the others couldn't hear as easily. "Just so we're clear, if you ever speak that way to anyone here like that again, you'll regret it for the rest of your fucking life."

McKay glared at him wide-eyed, then jerked free and stormed out. Nate watched him go, only then wondering what he'd pay for that little lecture, then turned around to see everyone watching him.

"Okay, guys. Show's over, back to work."

Nate retreated to his office before anyone else could reply. He needed them focused on work, not the drama. That applied to himself as well. He set himself to reading through the responses to his report. Beckett seemed very interested in anything they could add about iratus reproduction or stem cells, particularly their eggs. Lorne wanted to know where to find the things and how to safely approach them. Nate farmed the former out and dug into the latter personally.

Caldwell, meanwhile, seemed mostly concerned with why Nate was sucking up so much Marine manpower on construction projects with no clear immediate benefit. He wrote a one-sentence reply, attached the minutes ten different meetings he'd had with both the expedition and battalion command teams, and then stuck that in the draft folder to be reviewed and sent when he could come up with a response beyond "fuck off I'm busy".

Elizabeth eventually passed along word that medical had formulated a plan and a team had gone offworld to steal some bug eggs. While that was happening, she wanted SSO to work on a backup plan with Zelenka: figuring out how to reactivate an Ancient stasis chamber. They knew where one was, due to an incident involving an elderly time duplicate, but no one was one hundred percent sure how it worked. Now was the time to change that. Nate joined that team, mostly for a change of scenery.

Late that evening, Brad appeared at the lab, grim and dour. He waited for Nate to join him outside, where the other geeks couldn't hear, before saying anything.

"Lorne's back," Brad said quietly. "Walker and Stevens were killed in action. Didn't get the goods, either."

"Fuck." For a moment Nate wondered about Cadman, until he remembered she and Parrish were off on the mainland helping the Athosians clear some land. Little wonder that Lorne hadn't recalled them for this mission. "You know them?"

"Not well, no." It was hard to tell what that meant for Brad, or how it might be affecting him. Nate had never actually seen him deal with a loss, even a relatively distant one. They'd been lucky that way, something Nate never forgot.

"I should check on Lorne," Nate said, because it was easier to think about the living. "Make sure he's okay."

Brad looked askance at him. "Why you?"

"Who else could he talk to while Sheppard's a bug? Certainly not Caldwell. I'm at least a team leader."

"Not to sound like I'm anything but copacetic with our temporary commander," Brad said, "but his priorities have been more than a little skewed today."

"I'm pretty sure Elizabeth agrees with you." Nate hadn't seen much of her, but there were a growing collection of CCed emails in his inbox that resembled a volcano about to blow. "He got a nickname yet?"

"No, but I can guarantee when he does it's not going to be as fond as Sheppard's." Nate raised an eyebrow and for a brief moment Brad smiled. "Sorry, I'm not going to share. A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell."

"If I called you a gentleman you'd punch me."

"Still." Brad nodded toward the stasis lab. "That going to be ready in time?"

"We can turn it on now, which is at least a start. We're hopeful we can find a way to administer treatment without unfreezing him."

Sheppard didn't die or get frozen. Instead another hail-mary pass succeeded and, after he successfully retrieved the eggs himself, Medical was able to treat him and start reversing the conversion. Life went back to normal like flipping a switch, save for a general melancholy over the two lost Marines. After the memorial service, Nate got Lorne drunk on Athosian wine. They had a long chat about chance versus fate, command responsibility, and the difficulties of dating civilian boyfriends. Nate didn't bring up his possible solution to the last problem.

"I understand there was an incident on your last mission," Kate Heightmeyer asked a couple days later. The two of them were in her office for their regular scheduled session.

"An ambush, yes. Someone tried to abduct my team. We still don't have a clue why."

Nate had largely avoided shrinks as much as possible, both before and after leaving the Marines. It was another of those guts-versus-brains things. Intellectually, he knew that earned the right to visit those VA doctors and that there was no professional scrutiny anymore. He still felt like he didn't really need it and shouldn't be wasting resources that could be directed toward people with serious problems. Probably one of the smartest organizational moves Elizabeth had implemented was making monthly mental health checkups mandatory for all gate team members.

It was also hard to argue that your shrink didn't know anything about what you'd been through when she'd served as a stretcher-bearer through the Wraith siege and had claw marks on her forearm to prove it.

"Not to be cliche, but how do you feel about it?"

"Fine."

"It's the first time you've been in combat since Iraq. It should be a little more complicated than fine."

"We've been training for combat. It's easier when you expect it."

"Combat against the Wraith," Kate pointed out. "Not other humans."

"Statistically, gate teams run into more trouble with humans than Wraith, or Jaffa for that matter," Nate replied. He realized he was fiddling with his pilgrimage token, where it hung from a dog tag chain, and put his hands in his lap. "It was bound to happen sooner or later."

"Still, fighting humans isn't what we're here for, is it?"

"Before now killing someone that wasn't human was even a possibility. It's not something new." Nate pursed his lips as he considered what to say. "Dead civilians give me trouble. Especially the ones I had command responsibility for. Dead or injured Marines give me trouble. Bad guys trying to kill me and mine? Never lost a wink of sleep."

Kate wrote a few brief phrases in her notebook. "In that case, what about the threat to your team? Especially in light of what happened to Sergeant Walker and Corporal Stevens."

"They handled themselves very well. Not that I'd expect less from Brad, but I was concerned about how Sarah's trauma might affect her ability to function under stress."

"That's not what I meant," Kate said with a pointed look. "Any nightmares, sleep issues?"

"No more so than usual." Nate sighed at her skeptical look. "That first night, I woke up from a nightmare, but... this is confidential, right?"

Kate nodded. "With the usual caveats. If I think you're a danger to yourself or others, or compromised by some outside influence, I have to report it to Dr. Weir. Otherwise my lips are sealed."

"I was intimate with someone, and sleeping in the same bed helped." Nate hesitated, wondering just how much to say. "I'd like to try dating. He says he's interested, but his history with relationships is not exactly promising, and privacy is an issue."

That was the impression Nate had gotten, at any rate. The conversation had been a bit awkward and circular at points, but Brad had managed to get across that he returned Nate's feelings, even if he clearly had no idea how to articulate that.

"An American serviceman?" Kate nodded in understanding. "I can see why you'd be concerned."

"And before you suggest couples' counseling, I don't think it's going to fly or go better for you than it did last time."

Kate laughed. "You know I can't comment." A bit more seriously, she added, "All I can say is that you're not the only person in the stargate program facing issues like that. Or this expedition. People have made it work."

Nate really wanted to pry, but knew better. It was encouraging to hear, maybe, just a little bit. "I really am fine, though. I promise, if do have any more trouble, you'll be the first to know."

"All right. We've still got forty minutes left. Anything else you'd like to talk about? Family, friends? Eurovision?"

"How's your own research going? McNeill says you've been making good progress with Ancient."

She rolled her eyes dramatically. "They had some very interesting ideas, when I can find the time to read about them. Their research into ascension in particular has fascinating implications for our understanding of the physiological substrate of thought."

They shot the shit about Ancient philosophy of the mind for a while, even as she occasionally inserted reasonably subtle questions about his social life. He wasn't actually bothered all that much. She was a professional with a job to do, same as him. Afterward he returned to his office and got to work on a proposal he was starting to sketch out now that they'd negotiated a supply of basic metals.

"Hey, Fick," Sheppard said, appearing at his door and leaning against the jam in a way that made Nate's inner lieutenant cringe. "Got a second?"

"Of course, Colonel. My office is your office."

Sheppard slouched his way in and dropped into a chair. There were still some blue and green splotches on his skin here and there, along with some flaky patches like psoriasis from hell. "I'm just making the rounds to say thanks to everyone that helped out."

"You're welcome, but I don't know how much good we did. The zoologists are all thrilled but I don't think Medical used much of our research."

"Trust me. Just figuring out how to find those things saved enough time to made a difference."

"I'll pass that along," Nate said. They'd be glad to hear someone at least appreciated the effort.

"So," Sheppard said, "there is one other thing."

"Sir?"

"Did you actually threaten to kill McKay?" He said it playfully but there was a certain sharp curiosity in his eyes.

Nate sighed and pulled up the relevant files on his laptop, while saying, "I didn't. I can't speak for the rest of my guys."

"Yeah, I noticed your very angry teenager staring daggers at him in the mess this morning. I wonder what his deal is?"

"I did say I'd make the rest of his life miserable. I supposed he imagined I was implying it'd be short as well." Nate turned his laptop to show Sheppard two dozen filled out complaint forms. "I'm hoping it won't be necessary, but if I need to, I'm willing to make sure he spends all his free time in front of the Ombudsman Committee."

Sheppard leaned in to read the first one, then cracked a smile. "I figured it was more like that. If I get him to say sorry, can you convince everyone to sit on those?"

"We're all here to do our jobs. No one wants to waste time with the grievance process." No one except possibly Sarah, who was on the warpath and all but swearing there would be fire and blood. Fortunately, Nate was fairly certain she wasn't bureaucratically inclined and she wasn't actively murderous anymore.

"Cool. Sometimes he gets a little over the top if you don't push back. I don't let him go scream at my guys, and while Carson's a bit of a pushover at times he'd never dare with the nurses. He's kind of like a cat, really. Occasionally you need to spritz him with lemon-scented water."

Nate found himself reluctantly smiling. "Solid copy, sir."

"But for fuck's sake, don't actually do that. I tried once months ago and I still haven't heard the end of it."

"Has anyone ever told you you're a very strange man?"

"Surprisingly few, especially now that I'm a colonel." Sheppard shrugged. "By the way, when you go to Earth, would you mind carrying a couple things for me? It's just a few letters I'd rather not have wait for the Deds to do another round trip. Caldwell skedaddled before I finished them."

"Earth?"

"To talk with the Tok'ra? Did Elizabeth not pass that along yet?"

"No, I've got a meeting with her this afternoon."

Earth. Strange as it was to think, it'd been six months since he'd been there, and he'd barely thought about it at all. Apparently he'd be visiting sooner than expected.

Chapter Text

Nate's first impression of the SGC's gateroom was that it was too dark, too cold, and too concrete. They could have put in a few more lights and painted the damned place sometime in the last nine years. The sudden loss of the city status-feed murmur was disconcerting as well. He hadn't realized how used to that constant tickle in the back of his mind he'd become.

Well, he supposed not everyone could live in the city of the Ancients.

He and a dozen others had been almost literally shoved through the gate during the dial-out, stepping through in one big group while the gate was held open precisely long enough to verify they'd reached the other side and not a second longer. Almost all of them were people from the original expedition, the last to finally get their scheduled leave. Going through the gate let them spend three to four weeks off while waiting for the Daedalus to reach Earth and prep for turnaround. Anyone actually leaving for good had to schlep it the long way between galaxies rather than waste power.

Despite a clean bill of health from the Atlantis infirmary, they still had to stop by the SGC's medical ward to be double-checked and present the appropriate paperwork. There was also a reintegration meeting, to make sure all of them had working credit cards, passports, driver's licenses, temporary cell phones, and so forth. That done, Nate went looking for his fellow anthropologists, economists, and other softies.

"Doctor Jackson?" Nate said, wondering if he'd found the right lab. Lots of books, random artifacts on the table, that all fit; he wasn't quite sure why an archaeologist's office needed a blast door, though.

"Huh?" Jackson popped up from behind the table that dominated the center of the room. "Oh, hey, Nate."

"Found it!" Some else came up beside Jackson, a tiny metal object held between his thumb and forefinger. He was around Jackson's age, and was about as close to the Platonic ideal of a poster boy as you could get. "Try not to drop it this time."

"I don't think we've been introduced. Nate Fick."

"Cam Mitchell."

"Right," Nate said as they shook hands. "The stalker."

Mitchell crossed his arms with a sigh and looked at Jackson, who just said, "It's not like he's wrong."

Nate reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded envelope, which he handed over to Mitchell. "Colonel Sheppard's complements, sir. He promises it's not anything illegal, but if it is please forget that I gave it to you."

"Thanks, I think," Mitchell said, accepting it while eyeing it suspiciously.

"This is for you, doc," Nate said, sliding Jackson a USB stick. "Some of Sarah's latest work on Ancient influences on the Goa'uld. She wanted to keep it out of the databurst. She thinks McKay reads her mail."

"Thanks. How's she doing?"

"Really good, actually."

"I'm glad to hear it. I was hoping Atlantis would let her open up her wings a little." Jackson grimaced. "Of course, apparently some asshole recruited her for an exploration team. It's a little bit soon for that in my opinion."

Nate's keen recon senses suggested that Jackson was both entirely serious and completely oblivious about who that asshole was, although Mitchell was giving them both some serious side-eye. "Yes. That sounds terrible and exploitative."

"I mean, give her some time to settle into the program. And get training! How much can they fit into a couple weeks?"

"Are you even hearing yourself right now?" Mitchell asked. "How much training did you have when you started?"

"That was a different time. And trust me, Jack had me running all over this stupid mountain while Apophis was clogging up the gate by throwing Jaffa at the iris."

"Atlantis can be a bit of a frontier town and loose with the rules at times," Nate said. "But I'm sure neither Elizabeth or Sheppard would ever cut any corners."

Something about that made Mitchell emit a snort. "Sorry, ignore me," he said.

"Why does every Air Force officer he's worked with react like that?" Nate asked. "Or at least the ones who like him?"

"It's nothing. So, you've got a Tok'ra thing going on? I haven't got to meet one yet. Kind of disappointing."

"Right, the Tok'ra," Jackson said with a sigh. "Anise and Freya will be meeting you at the Alpha Site tomorrow if everything goes as planned. I'll warn you now that one of them's going to hit on you, and it's really best if you ignore it. Really."

"Anise and Freya being one Tok'ra?" Nate said, to make sure he had the right impression.

"That's the best way to think of it, yes. Two people, one body. Freya is the host and Anise is the symbiote. Try not to get weirded out about it, and absolutely do not use the G-word."

"Don't refer to them as their mortal enemies who have killed countless friends and family," Nate said, nodding as he did. "Trust me, it can't be stranger than Sheppard turning into a bug."

"A bug?" Mitchell repeated, delighted.

"Yeah. Feel free to make Spider-Man jokes if you want. Once it was clear he'd be back to normal it stopped being horrifying and started being funny."

Mitchell spent a while trying to wheedle details out of Nate, who in turn tried to get clear answers out of Jackson, who wasn't as good about not adding color commentary about Tok'ra attitude problems as he seemed to think he was. Eventually he got what he wanted, and Mitchell volunteered to escort him up to the surface. He had a hotel room booked, because free or not Nate wasn't spending the night in whatever passed for guest quarters at the SGC.

"So, Captain Fick," Mitchell said, which immediately made Nate suspicious. It suggested he knew too much. "How long do you think it'll take him to realize you're the asshole who's taking Sarah offworld?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, sir."

"I've read some of the mission reports. It's basically how I keep occupied while the Wonder Twins are doing science and Teal'c is off with Jaffa stuff."

Nate laughed. "Are all Air Force lieutenant colonels this weird?"

Mitchell considered the question. "I was going to say Sam's pretty normal, then I remembered she blew up a sun. I think it's just the ones at the SGC, honestly. Davis is probably more typical."

"I suppose I should just be glad you're not referring to yourself in the third person."

Nate eventually managed to escape from Khazad-dum and out into the real world. Checking into the Marriot felt strange. Stopping by Target so he'd have something to wear for the next few weeks was stranger still. He'd almost forgotten that people wore something other than tan, grey, and digicam, or got to choose what they'd eat.

The next day, he found himself back on the other side of the gate. It was hard to tell the difference. The Alpha Site had come a long way from the tent city the earliest mission reports described. Now it was an under-mountain bunker almost indistinguishable from the SGC. He was led up to the administration level, which was right into a cliffside, and a conference room there. A middle-aged woman with a bob cut was waiting. If not for the leather getup she had on, she could have fit in anywhere on Earth.

"Captain Fick, it's a pleasure to meet you," Freya said.

"I usually just go by Nate these days. I'm not on active duty." Not that anyone seemed to pay his protests much mind anymore. Technically entitled to it or not, only assholes swanned around calling themselves captain outside of formal events where it might be relevant.

"Nate, then." The two of them sat down. Nate would give the Alpha Site this much: the little conference room they were in had a great view of the forest outside. "I was intrigued when Dr. Jackson relayed your request for tunnel crystals. I understand you hope to use them to shelter refugees?"

"Yes, exactly. Much like you, we've got an issue of hiding people from aerial detection and attack." Nate launched into his spiel about why he wanted the crystals: the history of cave shelters in Pegasus, problems with avoiding aerial detection, the difficulty of rapidly providing warm and dry shelter when cullings came during poor weather. She listened attentively as he went through the list.

"Interesting," Freya said once he was finished. "Usually when Stargate Command has asked for crystals, they've mostly been interested in help constructing bases such as this. We've obliged occasionally, but we've always insisted on deploying them ourselves."

"Yes, I understand your caution, given the importance of not letting them fall into enemy hands. I was hoping that since these will be used in Pegasus, that's less of a concern."

"I agree that's true, and certainly the cause is worthy. The SGC's willingness to relocate refugees has always been an admirable trait. We do what we can ourselves, but our numbers and organizational structure make is difficult. I do worry about the sustainability. Our own losses over the last few years have hit our production capacity. I don't know that I could convince our leaders to supply them in the numbers you may require on an ongoing basis."

"The Ancients made extensive use of crystal technology themselves, and we've been using equipment found in the city to fabricate those," Nate said, sliding her a sheet with the appropriate specifications. "I'm hoping to adapt those to produce tunnel crystals as well."

Freya studied the description and diagrams for a minute, then tipped her head. When she spoke again, it was with a deeper, resonant voice. "The technology should be compatible," Anise said. "However, they are deliberately designed to be hard to reverse-engineer. You would need the original formulas and programming code. This would be difficult to justify without something in return, even with a promise they would not be deployed in the Milky Way."

"I understand there's concern about advanced sensors designed by Anubis filtering into common use, as well as the Ori threat," Nate said, quite pleased he hadn't flinched. "We can use our Ancient scanners to test how well the tunnels can resist detection, and if necessary help improve them."

Anise nodded. "I've been hoping to expand the types of structures they can be used to construct, and a collaboration on improvements would certainly justify sharing the technology. Perhaps it could be the basis for further partnerships in the future? A renewal of the earlier days of our alliance."

"I can't make a commitment myself, but I could certainly bring that up with Dr. Weir," Nate said cautiously. Jackson had warned him at some length about the downsides of working with the Tok'ra in general and Anise in particular. He hadn't precisely used words like mad scientist or test subject, but the implication had been there. "Is there something in particular you're interested in?"

"Our older members are reaching the limits of their natural lifespans, and we lack any method to replace them. Several of us are working on means of reproduction, but my interest is in preserving those of us already alive. Individual System Lords lived up to ten thousand years thanks to the sarcophagus."

"Which was based on Ancient technology," Nate said. "I think I see where this is going."

"If we can use the original Ancient science to develop a model that grants health and long life without the deleterious mental effects, Tok'ra and Tau'ri alike would benefit."

"I think Dr. Weir would find that worthwhile, but getting approval from the political oversight committee may take a while," Nate cautioned. He was pretty sure that was a vast understatement, given the amount of wrangling over the national makeup of the expedition. Throwing in

"The Tok'ra High Council will undoubtedly need convincing as well. In the meantime, the tunnel crystals are well within my purview. I see no reason to seek their approval." With another head dip, Freya took over again. "We understand you have a time constraint in order to return to Atlantis. If we have an agreement in principle, we can go ahead and discuss implementation. Perhaps over lunch?"

Nate managed to escape the Alpha Site with his virtue intact and a case full of sample crystals and data rods. There was a little more paperwork to fill out - literally on paper, because unlike Atlantis the SGC hadn't joined the 21st century - but it wasn't long before Nate found himself with nothing to do for the first time in months. Even after hours or on Mandatory Rest Days This Means Everyone, there was a certain amount of structure. There were a couple dozen different groups and clubs, plus individual rec options and community events, but ultimately there were only so many options. Earth had orders of magnitude more activities just in Colorado and the amount of choice was paralyzing.

He called his parents and got the answering machine. He called his sister's cell number. She was happy to hear from him, but was at Disneyland with her kids, and told him the parental units were on a multi-week Alaskan cruise for summer break. Interrupting any of them was a no-go. Sticking around for the SGC's Fourth-of-July picnic was an option but that seemed like it'd combine the worst parts of a work event and partying with strangers. He checked the cost of flights to Houston, compared that to his increasingly bloated bank account, and booked an exorbitantly expensive last-minute flight.

"Daddy!" a ten-year-old girl screeched when he knocked on the door of a ranch house out in what was absolutely not to be called East Bumfuck, Texas. "It's Uncle Naaaaate!"

"Well, look what the cat dragged in," Mike drawled, emerging the kitchen. "I didn't know you were stateside."

"I didn't know I would be until a few days ago. Sorry to drop in unannounced."

"When we said any time, we meant it." A quick and very manly hug followed, then hellos to Mike's wife and kids and introductions to various relations that he'd never met before but who had apparently heard all about him. Eventually they ended up in the expansive backyard, where a hog cooker, two grills, and enough tables to seat a company were set out.

"How's retirement treating you?" Nate asked as he helped Mike set up a buffet line and shred pork. It was nice to actually recognize everything for once. Dr. Hiaasen might be a Michelin-starred chef specializing in cross-cultural dishes, but even she could only do so much to make tree-squid presentable.

"Pretty well now that the move's done. It was a bit rough on the kids at first, but they're settling in and we won't have to do it again, which is more than the Corps would guarantee me." Mike took a sip of beer. "Nice to be near family, too. Cara's folks are getting up there and it's good to have time to help them out."

"You're not exactly a spring chicken yourself."

"You don't need to tell me. I'm just glad I got out while I still had some working joints. How about you? This thing with the state department going well?"

"Couple rough spots here and there, but yeah," Nate said, finding himself grinning. "We're doing a lot of good.

Mike gave him a penetrating look, but after a few seconds grudgingly nodded. "Well, if it's something you can smile about, I suppose that's good enough for me. Just be careful you don't work yourself too hard. I'm not there to baby ya if you fall over from exhaustion."

"I'll take that under consideration." Nate double-checked there was no one in earshot. "Actually, Master Sergeant, if you've still got it in you, there's an idiot officer who needs some advice."

"Stop being so self-deprecating. There, satisfied?"

"Two pieces of advice, then. Can I continue? Thank you. There's a guy I met."

"I'm gonna need another beer." It was the exact same thing he'd said three years earlier, sitting at a bar the day before Nate left California for grad school. Dancing through bullets had been less terrifying than coming out to him.

"I want a relationship, but I'm not sure what he's looking for, and his romantic history is rocky."

Mike sighed deeply. "Let me stop you and take a wild guess. This guy got a 'Dear John' letter from his girlfriend, saying she was marrying his best friend, and since then his only relationships have involved one-night stands or payment for services rendered."

"Well, shit," was all Nate could say. "That obvious?"

"Your gigantic man-crush was never exactly subtle. Brad this, Brad that, hey Stafford you should pay attention to how Brad operates, you could learn a lot. Gunny, Encino Man's up to shit so I'm going to go stare mournfully into Brad's eyes."

"I didn't - fine, yes, maybe I did." Several months practically joined at the hip left Nate little room to argue about how well Mike knew him, especially when there were big sleep-deprived chunks he barely remembered. "The relevant fact is that Brad isn't one hundred percent straight and may be reciprocating that feeling now."

"Could have told you that too." Mike just smirked a little at his exasperated look. "Nate, every man has his blind spots. I thank God that yours are fairly harmless. Maybe even amusing."

"Mostly harmless. Wonderful." One good thing about not being an officer anymore was that Nate could openly roll his eyes. "Am I the only person in the recon community unaware of this?"

"Well, there's Brad, of course. Clearly you were made for each other. And to be fair, by the end I could judge your exact anger levels by which body parts were twitching, so I had a keener insight than most." Mike shrugged. "I've thought about saying something, but it wasn't my secret to share in either direction."

Nate wanted to throw up his hands, but he had a tray full of meat in them. "So do you have any advice for how to date someone who's natural instinct is to pay me every time we fuck?"

"Violence of action, Nate."

"Please don't quote Godfather in this context. I have enough nightmares as it is."

"I'm serious. Don't pussy-foot around. Tell him what your expectations are, demand to know his, and figure things out if they don't quite match. If he doesn't want to talk, find some way to corner him so he doesn't have a choice." Mike waved over at where Cara was herding the kids and a large number of cousins. "This didn't outlast twenty years of Marine bullshit without work. It's all about clear communication. You should know that better than most."

Well, Nate had heard worse advice, and it wasn't as if either of them were privates or butterbars planning to marry their favorite stripper. They could be adults about this. If not, he could always ask to borrow Jackson's magical marriage bracelets.

After a minute, another thought occurred to him. "How did you even know Brad and I were stationed together? And don't give me the Recon moto bullshit, Brad already fed me that line."

"He may have sent me a couple emails that were downright panicked by his standards. Seemed like he thought you'd end up bleeding out in a desert if he weren't there to watch your back. I tried to remind him you're almost as much a badass as he is -"

"Almost?" Which was fair, but there was no reason to point it out.

"- but you know how he is when he gets in a mood." Mike took a long swig of his beer. "Also, Person told me. He's been getting a bit dramatic lately and I get the impression he's worried too. You may want to nip that in the bud before he gets hisself in trouble. "

"Of course he is," Nate said, already resigning himself to detour to Missouri. "What vacation would be complete without everyone's favorite redneck?"

"I'm hurt that's not me."

"If I tried to describe him accurately within a hundred meters of your kids, Cara would run me off with a shotgun."

So it was that after a few days of seeing the sights around Houston, Nate flew north to Kansas City. He'd been spoiled by puddle jumpers; he spent more time in line for security than what his brain said the flight should have taken. He wasn't fond of having to walk around without a gun either.

"LT!" Ray said when he opened the door of the little house he was renting, face lighting up like it was Christmas. "You do remember I exist!"

"How could I possibly forget?" Nate asked, giving Ray a brief hug.

"I don't know. You didn't show up when I graduated and the entire thing was your idea, so I figured you'd given up all hope on civilizing me."

"Did you show up for your graduation?"

"My mom would have thrown a shitfit if I'd skipped." Ray shrugged. "I got a party and some cash out of it, so it was worthwhile."

"I meant to send a gift card, but I couldn't remember if you preferred WalMart or the Piggly Wiggly."

"Hey, there's no fucking Piggly Wiggly here. Try to keep your backwater hellholes straight."

As Ray tried to clear off some space on his couch, moving around books and laundry into increasingly unsteady piles, Nate asked, "How's the job search going?"

"Okay. I've been scoping out a few things around here and St. Louis. It's fucking stupid that I had to get a degree just to prove I could do basic networking, but you were right, the pay's looking better." Ray shook his head. "And sticking with the auto thing probably wouldn't have lasted until I retired. Fifteen years from now it's all going to be robots."

"You have no idea," Nate replied. Economics and industrial policy were popular subjects in his department, and a lot of the time the conversation devolved down to 'this would be fascinating if it happened to someone else's planet.'

"So what brings you to my humble abode?"

"Apparently you've been telling people Brad and I work together."

"Has our dear Gunny Wynn been talking about me behind my back? For shame." Ray disappearing into his kitchen, still talking. "But you can't blame me. You get a mystery job, then six weeks later he gets a mystery posting, and now you both reply to emails at the exact same time once a week. Oh, and it gets relayed through a server at Peterson, even though the domain names for the addresses don't match."

"Huh." There were times he forgot that Brad hadn't kept Ray around of his good looks and he'd earned his way into the RTO position the hard way.

"You should really have your IT guy randomize the forwarding time. I only noticed because you both email me but I can't be the only one watching." The fridge door slammed. "So I've got beer and, like, three different kinds of leftover casseroles that my mom and gran have shoved at me. If I were you, I'd opt for ordering pizza."

"If that's the best way to avoid food poisoning, then by all means. I'll pay if you want to splurge on a place that doesn't have rats."

"Very funny." Ray emerged with a phone and a takeout menu. He glanced at Nate and frowned slightly. "What's with the hippy lightshow?"

"Excuse me?"

Ray gestured around the collar of his own t-shirt. "The glowy mood-necklace. Something Gunny's kids gave you?"

Nate looked down to see light seeping through his plain grey t-shirt. He pulled out the pilgrim token and sure enough it was lit up, slowly pulsing bright purple and then fading. It felt like it might be slightly warm to the touch.

"Fucking Zelenka," Nate said. Perfectly safe, he'd said. No power source or active circuitry at all. "This is why no one likes Engineering."

"Is it an LED?" Ray asked, practically sticking his face right next to Nate's chest. Nate batted him away and pulled out his cell phone. He scrolled through his contacts and hit the one most likely to result in the least yelling.

"Hellooo."

"Dr. Jackson, it's Nate Fick. Is Colonel Carter available? I'm at a friend's house and an inert object I brought home from," he glanced at Ray, "overseas is being less inert than promised."

"Oh, that's always fun," Jackson replied. He sounded almost amused. "What's it doing? Are you seeing any extra-dimensional bug-monsters? Body parts turning invisible?"

Fucking SG-1. "It's lit up, otherwise I don't have a clue."

"Hold on, let me ask Sam." There was some muffled conversation in the background. Ray kept trying to poke the pendant, and every time he got close it got brighter. After a minute Carter took the phone.

"Captain, without seeing it I can't be sure it's not radioactive or causing some physiological effect. You've got a locator implant, right?"

"I do." The program, not content with using just dog tags, had upgraded to microchipping them all like especially expensive poodles.

"Prometheus will beam you back to the SGC. The only other alternative is a cargo plane out of Lackland, and that could risk exposing other people. We'll bring your friend along with you. Standby."

As Ray tried to poke Nate again, he grabbed his hand. There was an awkward pause as they stood there. "Not to complain, LT, but this is super gay and getting more so by the second, even for someone who's stuck his dick in -"

"Shut up, Ray." A moment later the room dissolved in a flash of light, replaced by a cargo bay aboard Prometheus.

"What the -" A second flash left them in an SGC isolation room. "- fuck."

"Ray, do you trust me?" Nate asked as Carter, Mitchell, Doctor Lam, and various minions came in holding different scanners, needles, and probes.

Ray looked around at the bare concrete surrounding them. "Was I just abducted? LT, did you just abduct me?"

"Ray."

Ray crossed his arms petulantly and glared. "Of course I trust you, it's dumb question."

"Then please cooperate with these nice people so they can make sure we're not about to die."

"If you say so." Lam came up to Ray and started prepping for a blood draw. He smiled at her. "Good evening, ma'am. I'm Ray, nice to meet you."

"Do not hit on the general's daughter."

"I'm just being polite. Where the hell are we, anyway?"

"Cheyenne Mountain," Carter replied, while pointing a thankfully-silent Geiger counter at Nate's pendant. "Below NORAD."

"Wait, is this Deep Space Radar Telemetry? Holy shit, LT, I knew you were up to some secret squirrel shit, but I didn't realize it was the men in black. Do you really have a little grey man down in Roswell?" He peered at Carter suspiciously. "Aren't you the Coulson hologram woman? And the one who just published about quantum crypto?"

"Where did you find this guy?" Mitchell asked.

"Kansas City," Nate replied. "Today, at least."

"You're practically neighbors, Cam," Carter said.

"Hey, no, hold on. That's Missouri, not Kansas," Mitchell said, making a stopping motion with his hands. "There's a big, big difference."

Ray scoffed. "Don't insult us just because you're upset God got bored and left your state a featureless plain."

Nate took a deep breath. "Ray, please be quiet."

"Fine, but only under protest. And remember, I don't have to do anything you say anymore, so this is purely voluntary."

"Have you tried thinking off?" Carter asked. Something about Nate's expression must have answered the question. "What about him?"

They both looked at Ray. After a seconds, the pendant went dark. Then it turned on again, and started to flash while he looked extremely pleased with himself.

"Carolyn, check for ATA markers," Carter said. She turned off her own sensors. "As far as I can tell, it's just a light. We should keep you under observation for a while to be sure, but I think it's harmless."

"So will someone explain what's going on now?" Ray asked.

"There's a stargate in the basement that lets us travel to other worlds," Mitchell said. "There are aliens. Your buddy works in another galaxy, and there is in fact a little gray man in Area 51 who is super cranky that the other little gray men make him hang out with us. I think that covers most of it."

Nate just slowly shook his head. "I see why they usually let Jackson do the speech."

"They let people from Kansas travel in space?"

"I think I'm going to take him to the commissary now," Nate said. "Ray, stop making this thing blink, or else I'm handing you over to Hermiod to probe. Maybe he can figure out how you live without a brain."

Eventually, they made their way to the small office in one distant corner of the base reserved for visiting Atlantis personnel. Word from Carter was that if a four-hour checkup didn't show anything, they'd be bounced back to Kansas City, leaving them with a little time to kill.

"They'll want you to sign an NDA," Nate told Ray. "You should go along with it. I don't know exactly what they can do legally since you found out by accident, but I'm pretty sure nothing good will happen if you tell anyone."

"I want in."

"In?"

"Into the program. A job. Atlantis if you can swing it, but even just here or at Area 51." Ray wasn't completely serious often in his life, and it was even more rare for Nate to witness it, but now he was as serious as Nate had ever seen without dead kids being involved. He knew he needed to give the request his full attention and respect.

"The program's very selective. Pretty much all the civilians have PhDs, especially the ones stationed here rather than Area 51. I'm one of the odd ones out."

"They can't have people with doctorates doing all the scutwork. No one pays those guys to run cabling."

"The technical support and IT staff are airmen."

"I'll re-up."

"They'd put you on guard duty on Hoth."

"Fine. Get me the papers. Who knows, maybe with this fancy degree they'll make me an officer."

Nate leaned back in his chair, studying Ray's expression carefully. "Why are you so set on it?"

"Why are any of these people here, Nate? It's space travel. I've dreamed about this since I was a little kid in a trailer park getting beat up because I was too nerdy. I can't go back to fucking Missouri and pretend I never saw any of this, while you and Brad explore other planets like it's fucking Star Trek. I know you feel the same way. Look me in the eye and tell me the only reason you dropped your entire life was because Weir gave you a sob story about helping people."

"No, I suppose I can't do that," Nate admitted.

"You owe me, LT. I've never asked for anything except a little advice. I'm asking now."

Nate sat there, running through all the possible scenarios. Ray sounded completely earnest and sincere. Desperate, even. It reminded Nate a little of himself, when he'd hit the end of grad school and suddenly needed to figure out his next step. Ray was also stubborn enough that if he really had set his mind to it he'd get in one way or another, even if it did mean enlisting again. Never mind him being former recon, the ATA gene would get the SGC to snap him up. And then what?

Nate booted up the office computer. It took a minute to search the documents server, and another to convince the disused printer to spit out the paperwork he needed, all while Ray watched expectantly.

"You're not reenlisting. I can't control what would happen if you did, and we both know you'd be miserable," Nate said, laying out the forms. "I can probably get you into Atlantis, and six weeks to prove you're worth having around. I'm putting my own spot on the line here, because if you flunk out I'm probably going too. Best behavior, understand?"

"I made it through boot camp and BRC," Ray said, picking up a pen and promptly sticking the end in his mouth. "I can pretend to be normal long enough to ingratiate myself. Your perception is skewed because I was either high or sleep deprived for the first couple months you knew me."

Nate refrained from pointing out that he'd known Ray a lot longer as a civilian, and rather more closely for that matter. "I hope so, because if you ruin this, the only question is whether I murder you or Brad does."

He gave Nate a sharp, speculative look. "How is dear Bradley?"

"We're not discussing him, Ray. This is the most surveilled place on the planet." Nate wasn't going to discuss Brad at all if he could help it, at least until he'd had a chance to talk with the man and figure out what there was to tell. Ray could pester him all he wanted; he knew damned well Nate didn't blab about this sort of thing.

It took remarkably little time for Ray to fill out the forms in neat, tidy handwriting. Nate added some of his own, and then set off to enact Plan A for this insane endeavor. He could just wait for the next databurst to send Elizabeth a long memo about why Ray would be useful, but that was risky. There wasn't much time for replies and she'd heard about him. Better to present her with fait accompli, and for that he needed an accomplice.

Unsurprisingly, Jackson was still in his office. SG-1 kept weird hours.

"Daniel, would you mind signing these?" Nate asked, handing over a folder of pages with each signature spot noted by a sticky tab.

"Sure," Jackson replied. He didn't actually do it immediately, because he wasn't an idiot. Instead he started reading. "Ray Person. Why am I hiring him exactly?"

"I know not everyone who learns about the stargate gets brought aboard, but hear me out," Nate said. "We're doing a lot of practical, hands-on work in Pegasus, stuff the engineering department doesn't really want to waste time on when there's more important research and city maintenance to do. Cadman's got a couple combat engineers but that barely helps. He'd be perfect fit for my civil outreach division, especially since we've seen fighting skills are a plus. The ATA gene is just a cherry on top."

"Mmm-hmm."

"I get that his degree isn't from the best university, but I know he's a superb mechanic and hands-down the best radio operator I've ever met. He'll be essential in my project to build a series of next-generation Sagan boxes that will give our allies voice communications with us and each other."

Daniel raised his eyebrows. "Okay, so that actually sounds pretty cool. How long's it been in the works?"

"About ten minutes," Nate admitted. Daniel laughed.

"Let me clarify. He seems like he'd be a reasonable choice. I mean, I was replaced by a guy with no degrees at all for a year, and the planet's still here. What I don't get is why I'm the one you want to sign off on it."

Nate smiled slyly. "Because you're still on the org chart as the Chief Social Sciences Officer, just on an extended leave of absence. You've got hiring authority."

"Huh." Daniel crossed his arms and looked thoughtful. "That would explain the angry memos I keep getting from McKay accusing my department of worshiping the Ori. I thought I would have noticed something like that. I guess I never got around to sending Elizabeth my resignation letter."

"By all means, send it," Nate tapped the forms, "after signing these."

Jackson scribbled out his named and initialed as needed. A minute later, Ray Person was officially the newest member of the Atlantis Expedition. Nate would just need to cancel their scheduled beam-out home, spend the night in guest quarters, and drag him up to see the personnel staff when they arrived in the morning.

"Nate," Jackson said as he turned to leave. "I hired one of my friends once. Robert died offworld with a snake in his head. Be sure you want to do this."

Nate hesitated. "I go on missions with friends already. Adding a third can't be worse, can it?"

Chapter Text

Nate had to help Ray pack, and then assure about a dozen female relatives that he was going to bring back little Joshua Ray in one piece, which ate up most of his remaining leave. There was about another week at the SGC for pre-flight preparation, including leading the official Atlantis shopping mall expedition. Then it was back on the Daedalus for the long flight home.

Ray was banned from the bridge after two days.

He started disappearing during off-duty hours shortly after that, which disconcerted Nate more than a little. He wasn't with the other civilians. He wasn't playing Xbox with the new Marines, or at least not always. He wasn't in any of the obvious places. It took Nate almost a week and a half to find him hanging out in engineering with Hermiod and Dr. Novak, and that was mostly by accident. It was an embarrassing lapse of his reconnaissance skills, although he thought he could be forgiven for not thinking of it sooner.

"Between you and me," Novak whispered to Nate, while across the room Ray leaned on the Asgard computer system and chattered away, "I think Hermiod might actually like him."

"He hasn't made any nudity jokes, has he?" Nate should have considered that his career would end along with the Tau'ri-Asgard alliance.

"He has, but Hermiod thought they were funny. It's really weird. I've worked with him for a year, and I'm pretty sure I was his only human friend until now."

"Unlike most humans, Mr. Person recognizes the deficient nature of his intellect," Hermiod said loudly, proving that lack of ears did not mean lack of hearing. "Attempting to explain complex concepts to him is an excellent way to practice my pedagogical skills and improve my own mastery of the material."

"What do you even talk about?" Nate asked.

"Subspace radio," Ray said. "Alien programming languages. Consequentialism. You know, stuff."

"Consequentialism," Nate repeated. "You discuss ethics."

"Homes, why is everyone surprised when I know shit?" Ray said, throwing his hands up in mock disgust. "Do you know how much I had to memorize about the laws of armed fucking combat because you officer dicksucks couldn't agree on the rules of engagement and kept changing things every ten minutes? Not to mention some ivory tower jackass decided that because I wanted to learn about electronics I had to take liberal arts courses. They said it was to make us well-rounded people but I think it's just so we have to pay for an extra semester. I figured ethics, how hard could that possibly be? It was fucking ridiculously hard but now I know fifteen different ways to justify bombing a village full of noncombatants out of existence."

Novak hiccuped. Nate just stared in awe.

"Also, he likes my band," Ray added proudly. "He's going to send Thor a copy of our album as an example of human cultural development."

Nate would swear Hermiod was smirking, even if his mouth couldn't actually form that shape. Somehow he doubted Thor would be as enamored with Missouri's most dubious musical group.

"Well, if it's not interrupting the crew's duties, I can't really object," Nate said after thinking it over. "I have to admit, I'm a little curious about Asgard ethical frameworks myself." He wondered if the reason Hermiod was so cranky was that no one ever wanted to talk to him about anything except work.

"You should ask him about the non-interference policies for the protected planets, LT. He has opinions."

Hermiod turned out to have a lot of opinions about a great many things, enough that Nate could conceivably base never-gonna-write-it thesis number twelve around Asgard philosophy.

They beamed down to the Atlantis gate room on schedule. No one was thrown out an airlock or into the brig, although there had been a couple near misses. Nate wasn't really sure what people were complaining about. Brad's team had managed not to shoot him, despite far harsher conditions, and Nate had spent most of a month in a car with him their first summer break. True, he had been given plenty of opportunities to stretch his legs, but a six-hundred-meter starship was a bit larger than a Concorde.

Nate noticed Elizabeth waving him up to the control deck. He went to face the music, Ray tagging alongside.

"Elizabeth, this is Ray Person. He's joining SSO as a technical assistant," Nate said. "Ray, this is Dr. Weir."

"Pleasure to meet you, ma'am," Ray said, with an expression so sincerely polite and respectful Nate had only seen it in the presence of Ray's great-grandmother. "Nate's told us all about you. I really look forward to working under you."

Elizabeth got the slightly puzzled look that she usually reserved for Sheppard or McKay, or more often Sheppard and Mckay. "The Ray Person? The one I've heard so much about?"

"There's other people with my name, but probably, yes."

"I don't recall seeing you on the manifest."

"He may be down as Joshua Person," Nate explained. He'd made certain of that.

"No one calls me Josh, that's my dad," Ray added. "And his dad. And two of my cousins. It's that kind of family name."

"I see. Nate, a word, please."

"Hey, you must be Chuck. I've heard a lot about you too."

Nate handed off his bag to Ray and followed Elizabeth into her office, ready to put on his most innocent face. No, ma'am, Ray absolutely did not burn off half of his face with an espresso pot, and anyone saying otherwise is a brain-damaged proto-human.

"Dr. Jackson formally sent in his resignation. Coincidentally it was right after the Daedalus departed," Elizabeth said. Apparently she was going to for ask no questions and hear no lies route. "That leaves leadership of SSO up in the air. Originally, the department was spun off from what's now Physical Science and Technology because of Dr. Jackson's seniority with the program. Having either him or Dr. McKay reporting to the other seemed inappropriate for a number of reasons."

"The clash of personalities certainly would have been interesting," Nate agreed. Interesting if you were in one of the other departments rather than observing at danger close ranges.

"Precisely. However, the feedback I've gotten from staff suggests trying to reintegrate the departments may cause issues."

"Dr. McKay's leadership style is not compatible with everyone, especially in fields that he doesn't have any respect for or knowledge about." Nate saw no need not to be blunt. If she was making decisions she should be getting accurate information.

"I don't think I realized how much Peter Grodin helped smooth things over when he was supervising social science and information technology," Elizabeth admitted. She smiled slyly. "There was one anonymous comment that suggested that Athar would strike Rodney down if he tried to take over. Now, while her apparent restriction to one planet makes that unlikely, I think that sentiment may indicate it's best to avoid any unnecessary trouble."

"On the other hand, even with the new hires bumping numbers up I can see the organizational difficulties of spinning out SSO and not, say, Life Sciences or Engineering," Nate said. "And if you did those too, you'd end up ballooning upper leadership and may need to shove us all back under McKay anyway."

"In the long run, it may be necessary to reorganize the civilian divisions, just to keep Rodney sane. Having the same department handle food production, day-to-day maintenance, and research doesn't necessarily make sense." Elizabeth shrugged. "I've been encouraging Dr. Parrish and Dr. Zelenka to take on more administrative responsibilities for their divisions, but no one wants to do paperwork. In the meantime, we're going to keep SSO separate as an experiment, which means we need an interim replacement Daniel until a full candidate search can be done."

Nate had a sudden sinking feeling. "Dr. Montagne or Dr. Corrigan would be senior, I think."

"They both declined. Like I said, no one wants to do paperwork, and most don't have administrative backgrounds. Conveniently, though, there is one person with experience leading twenty to thirty people. He even seems to have taken on hiring responsibilities already."

"I have a lot of work already with my offworld missions."

"So does Colonel Sheppard, and he's the one who recommended you."

There was no escaping it. He might as well accept it gracefully and try to speed along finding a replacement so he didn't have to play department chair while conducting outreach and exploring strange new worlds.

"I suppose I should go spend some quality time with the supervisor's manual."

"That's probably a good idea. I'll send you the agenda for the next senior staff meeting. Oh, and before you go. Colonel Sheppard's team is missing. We believe they've been abducted. Major Lorne is in charge of the search, but right now we don't have much to go on. I'll have him send you the current situation report so you'll be up to date if your team is needed."

"They've been kidnapped," again, he did not add, "and we're talking about the org chart?"

"It's either work or fret," Elizabeth replied with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Until I have actionable intelligence, this is the work that's available."

"Let me know if you need anything." Nate crossed the bridge back to the control room, snagged Ray's collar, and dragged him away from the DHD and its beleaguered Canadian attendant. "Let's go meet your coworkers. Hopefully they won't defenestrate us both."

They dumped Ray's duffle bag in his quarters - not, thank Chuck and Athar both, within several levels of either Nate or Brad - and then Nate took him for the tour of the city's main landmarks, ending with the Ritz.

"I get an office?" Ray asked, not sure if he was being fucked with or not.

"And a lab for the mechanics and electronics work. I'll introduce you to the engineers next, you'll need to be shown how some of the equipment works."

"Two rooms, just for little ol' Ray?"

"There's thirty people in this department and an entire skyscraper to share between us. Don't get too full of yourself. I'm afraid neither has a very good view."

"LT, the last place I interviewed, they were talking about getting rid of cubicles and switching to some sort of open-floor plan hotdesk bullshit. Now I get an office with a window, an apartment, and I can commute to work using a transporter. I'd say I'd kiss you, but this has definitely reached at least cock-sucking levels."

"Nate, there you are. They sent us a barrel lubricant again," Sarah said, coming up behind them. She spared Ray a glance. "Hello, welcome to Atlantis."

"Sarah, this is Ray. Ray, Sarah Gardner."

"The actual Ray Person?" Sarah said, looking him over in more detail. "Really?"

"I'm starting to think I should feel insulted."

"I'm sorry, it's just that you don't look how I imagined."

"Six-three and bulging with muscles, right?"

"No, I thought it was more of a Nobby Nobbs thing. Anyone who has to put 'Person' in their name is trying to reassure everyone else."

Ray just stood there, lips pressed firm, for several seconds. Finally he cracked a smile. "I think I like her, LT."

"I brought something for you, Sarah," Nate said. He waved them into the privacy of his office and sat a small carry-case on the desk. He opened it up to reveal a palm-sized metal circle. "Colonel Carter said they brought it back a couple months ago after a mission with Vala, and that Area 51 didn't need another. I hope I'm not being too forward."

"No. Not at all," Sarah said, slipping the healing device onto her right hand. "It's something useful that came of the experience."

He didn't mention the ribbon device sitting in storage. That was unlikely to have any good memories attached. He'd have to broach it more delicately.

Ray got a distant look, tilting his head slightly like a dog listening to something only he could hear, then took a couple steps backwards to stand in one of the front corners of the room. Moments later Brad appeared at the door.

"Nate," he said, with a smile that would melt even the coldest Nordic heart. He stepped inside, apparently not even noticing the lurking menace. So much for recon skills. "How was the trip?"

"Pretty good. The Tok'ra was cooperative. Were cooperative?" Nate glanced at Sarah, who shrugged. "I got to drop in on Mike and the family for a few days, even visited your RTO."

"And how is my favorite redneck?"

"Oh, he's great. He actually just got a new job, should be starting about now."

"Something better than scrubbing toilets at WalMart, I hope?"

"I'd say he's exceeded expectations. It's an important nonprofit, with very selective hiring standards. It was bit of luck that got his foot in the door, but I'm assured that he's going prove an invaluable asset and a credit to separated Marines everywhere."

"Sounds nice," Brad said with a satisfied nod. "I was always glad you convinced him to give college a shot. It's elitist credential-grubbing bullshit - no offense, ma'am - but it's the only way he'd ever get taken seriously and find something worthy of his talents."

"You do care!" Ray exclaimed. "The Grinch's heart grew three sizes while I wasn't looking. It's a Christmas in July miracle."

Watching the conflict between happiness, confusion, and mild annoyance taking place on Brad's face was worth whatever trouble this dubious hiring decision brought about. "Captain, please tell me that's an extremely distasteful hologram."

"I'm afraid it's not."

"Come on, give Ray a hug." When Brad refused to move, Ray wrapped his arms around him anyway.

"How did this happen?" Brad asked without so much as flinching.

"Fun fact: our pilgrim tokens react to strong natural ATA genes," Nate said, taking his out to show them. It had mostly settled down to a dim but noticeable glow. "It's probably harmless."

"That's right, homes," Ray said proudly. "You can shelve all your inbreeding jokes, because I am officially genetically superior."

"Oh, dear," Sarah said. "Has Daniel been feeding you his teleological nonsense? You really shouldn't listen to anything he has to say about evolution, or history after the Ptolemaic dynasty."

"Yeah, Hermiod's not impressed with him either. Hey, do you know if there's any way to get an Asgard drunk? Asking for a friend."

"Ray, shut up," Brad said. Under the steel he almost sounded affectionate. "Sir -"

"Nate."

"- captain, I know I'm not going to like the answer to this, but should I tell Major Lorne that we're not going to need another Marine after all?"

"I didn't travel three million light-years not to get the full stargate experience," Ray said. "I'll join another team if you guys don't want me."

"No," Nate and Brad said simultaneously. The thought of Ray running around unsupervised save for some hapless captain was funny; the thought of him with Lorne was morbid, no matter how unfair that was.

He already had the forms filled out anyway. A three civilian, one marine team was unusual by SGC standards, but it was downright normal compared to Sheppard's team. At least Nate's people were all from Earth.

"Sarah, Ray's going to be working out of 23-C. Would you mind showing him it, and then down to storage? There should be a big pile of electronics and machine parts with his name on it."

"Of course." Sarah slipped her healing device off her hand and into a pocket before leading Ray out, leaving Brad and Nate behind.

"Is there anything else I should know?" Brad asked, sitting down on the desk. "Is Hasser hiding with the Canadians?"

"This is just another classic Ancient-related fuckup," Nate replied. "I made the best of a strange situation."

"Right, the Ancients. Praise be Athar."

"Don't you start." For a moment, Nate wanted to just pull Brad close and kiss the smirk off his face, but he had better self-control than that. "I checked the rec calendar. Movie night's in two days. Apparently it's a sequel to some racing film."

It took Brad a few seconds to catch on. "Are you suggesting this as a team building event, or just the two of us?"

"I realize you're rusty at this, but movies are fairly standard dating fare, yes. We can do the climbing wall next time, if you'd prefer, or hit the beach on a weekend."

"Is that what we're doing, then? Dating?" Brad looked like he wanted to find something to crawl under.

"I'm not sure either of us are much for conventional romantic gestures or activities, but I want to do things together that aren't just work related. Also, dating sounds better than most of the alternatives."

"All right."

Nate had been hoping for more of a reaction than that, but when that was clearly all he was getting, he plowed ahead. "Cards on the table, Brad. I don't do casual well, and I don't intend to try it now. I'm not going to do the fuckbuddy thing. If that's a problem, we can stop this now before it becomes a big deal."

Brad nodded slowly. "I don't know that I've ever seen you do anything casually. Just be aware that this may take a bit of adjustment, and that I've been known to occasionally be a bit of an asshole unintentionally."

"That's not news, Brad. I still like you, asshole and all."

"I'd hope so. This perfect ass doesn't just happen on its own."

"I'm generally monogamous, but I understand that may not fit your style. I know people who have successfully negotiated open relationships, and if that's what you'd like we can discuss terms."

"First off, Nate, if I'm not supposed to call you sir, maybe you should avoid acting like we're sealing an interplanetary treaty. Negotiation? Terms?" Nate ducked his head in acknowledgement. "Second, what sort of people were you hanging out with in college? And third, do you have some sort of checklist?"

Nate was never going to admit that there was, in fact, a checklist, assembled after consulting several relationship books from the Colorado Springs public library. "I just want to make sure we're on the same page here. We're not exactly a typical couple to begin with, and that's before you add in the high-stress closed environment. It's important to make sure our expectations are clear and to be open with each other. I'm assured of this."

"Fuck," Brad groaned. "Did Mike give you the communication speech? Of course he did."

Nate frowned. "He may have mentioned the concept, yes."

"He always does anytime one of his Marines is having relationship trouble," Brad explained. "He gave it to Poke. He gave it to Rudy. He gave it to fucking Trombley."

"Way to ruin the magic, Brad." Nate shook his head mournfully. "So much for the sacred bond between a lieutenant and his platoon sergeant."

"I hate to break it to you, but I'm pretty sure you were his third lieutenant," Brad said. "And a couple more came after you. One of them even made it past captain."

"I'm starting to rethink this relationship thing already."

Brad opened his mouth, then paused and pressed a finger to his radio. After a moment he said, "The lieutenant wants me. Apparently some of the new marines need help settling in."

It was still odd to think of someone else as being Brad's lieutenant. "Say hi to Laura for me, and tell her I'm bringing some new blood to game night."

"Please don't expose her to Person," Brad said with a pained look on his face.

"You're welcome to come too."

"I may be in an alien city, in another galaxy," Brad replied, "surrounded by hundreds of scientists and dozens of Air Force drones, but there is no way I am sinking to that level of geekery. Keep your elf games to yourself."

Then, much to Nate's surprise, he leaned in and gave Nate a quick kiss. It was barely more than a peck on the lips but it left his cheeks burning as Brad went off to deal with whatever the misfit children were up to.

"Where the fuck did you find this guy?" Lorne asked two days later.

"Major Lorne, I'm surprised," Nate said. "I didn't realize that the Air Force allowed its officers to use language like that. I take it flight training's going well?"

Nate had considered teaching Ray how to pilot a jumper himself. He'd regained his sanity a few seconds later. If Ray had one of the miracle genes that made the city sit up and beg for him, then obviously it was best for a trained airman and fellow natural carrier to take him in hand.

"He's gifted. He also didn't shut up for all three hours."

"He does that when he gets excited. You should see him on stimulants. It's fascinating."

"It can't be a coincidence," Lorne said, slumping into the armchair Nate had put into his office due to the increasing number of visitors he seemed to be getting. "John gets abducted, and then five days later your man shows up? Leaving me the only one to train him?"

"You think Colonel Sheppard deliberately got kidnapped just to avoid Ray Person, who he's never met?"

"Stranger things have happened with the man."

He didn't specify who he meant, which seemed fair.

"You may want to talk with Heightmeyer about your paranoid delusions," Nate suggested. "And you could always hand him off to Captain Griffin."

Lorne gave him a stink eye. "Would you do that to a subordinate?"

"Strictly speaking, I did, although that was more of Sergeant Colbert's choice."

"He's going to start an interstellar war the first time he steps through the gate."

"Dr. McKay hasn't started one," Nate replied, "and Dr. Jackson has. Twice. Between you and me, loud mouthed and annoying appears to be safer."

Nate was fairly certain that Jackson's count was actually much higher than two, after you took into account various one-planet civilizations and individual system lords. The man was a menace sometimes. Sadly he couldn't say that, for the honor of social geeks everywhere.

"Well, I said I'd train him, so I will," Lorne grumbled, "even if it makes me wish I'd stayed dead."

"Are you here just to bitch," Nate asked, "or was there some other reason you're in my office being a drama queen?"

"I'm still trying to fill out my team. I've been borrowing marines so far, but it's not quite jelling."

"If you're going to ask for Ray, I'm afraid he's spoken for."

"Fuck, no. I'd like to ask McNeill if he's interested, and you're his supervisor."

"Acting supervisor. And that's fine with me. Just bring him back by his bedtime and let me know if you're planning a sleepover," Nate said, curiosity piqued. Access to Dr. Jailbait's personnel file, including part of the paper-only copy locked in Elizabeth's safe, had mostly served to raise more questions. "Do you mind if I ask why?"

"I've got geology covered, Cadman does something like engineering, and Parrish fills out life sciences. McNeill would gets us some history and computer skills." Lorne checked no one was near enough to overhear, then added, "And don't tell the doc, but he's basically useless in a fight. We're working on it but I can't bring him with us anytime we're expecting trouble. McNeill can take care of himself."

"So I've been told." Nate had seen him at the range once, and he helped with the entry-level civilian self defense courses. Apparently Brad was mildly impressed. "It's very interesting how he's developed so many skills at such a young age."

"It is, yeah," Lorne agreed with a little shrug and spread hands. "Hopefully this will work out for a while, although Cadman's making noises about grad school."

Nate considered that for a moment. She was officially a combat engineer, but her platoon was mostly made up of random misfits like Brad. It wasn't ideal but she also couldn't be put in charge of the infantry. "It'd be a good career move, especially if she's got an eye toward staying with the SGC."

"I know. I've already written her a letter of recommendation in case she asks. It still feels like the universe is telling me I'm not meant to have a team."

"If you think the universe is out to get you, maybe you'd consider converting? I've got an explanatory pamphlet around here somewhere. Father Reese helped us put it together." They'd all been a little bit drunk that night, especially the expedition's Jesuit chaplain and comparative theologian.

"You people are fucking weird."

"Evan, you married a lizard woman. You don't have room to talk."

"Shut up."

"Really, I'd think you'd be great friends with Ray. The two of you could compare notes, although I understand his experience is more with goats than anything with scales."

Lorne stood and stretched. "It's a good thing you got out, Nate. If that's what a few years in the Marine Corps did to your wit, I'd hate to think what would have been left after any longer."

Nate flipped him the bird as he left. Everyone knew that the entire planet would have been murdered or enslaved if the Marines hadn't been around to save SG-1's bacon on numerous occasions. It was sad they still got no respect.

It took two weeks for Ray to get up to speed, and it might have gone quicker if he hadn't gotten gotten laid up in the infirmary after an ill-conceived sparring match with a recently returned Ronon. It gave him time to work on a prototype radio, and Brad more time to bitch about 2 Fast 2 Furious.

Nate wasn't sure that Brad was actually capable of enjoying a movie without finding some reason to complain about it. Maybe they'd have to experiment and see if that was the case, or it was more genre-specific. Maybe complaining was adequate reason in and of itself to watch films, especially with someone else. The nice thing about movie night in Atlantis was that no one gave you a second glance if you sat on a loveseat with your teammate. Lots of people came in groups, and the available furniture in the rec room meant plenty had to share. It was also conveniently dark, such that if anyone looked like they were holding hands, it was probably a trick of the light.

The first trip was a fairly minor one, stopping by at Sartika Sala to trade and see if anyone knew what was up with the pendants. Sheppard's team had already visited again, investigating the mystery assailants to no avail, and no one wanted to let one little bout of killing get in the way of continued interaction. As such, Sarah was driving one of the electric ATVs down the muddy road, a wagon-load of salt bricks and Marines bumping along behind it. They'd be selling that to a fish-preserving concern for gold, which they'd use to pay the hill farmers who had a bunch of corundum waiting for them at the temple.

The suggestion about just bringing their own gold and skipping the fish had resulted in a lot of wailing and carrying on about inflation and the delicate nature of the planet's financial infrastructure on the part of the expedition's economist.

"Auntie, this is Ray Person," Nate said when they reached the temple. In the background, Brad was helping a swarm of young men load up the wagon. Sarah supervised while occasionally scowling at the clouds overhead, as if she could will the possibility of rain away. "He's an old friend, a former militia man like myself."

"Ma'am. Thanks so much for letting me visit," Ray said. In that moment, he looked as much like a proper Marine as Brad: clean-shaven, hair neatly combed, uniform spic and span. Even his boots were clean, or as close as they could be given the damp conditions. "You've got a really nice place here."

"My," Grackle said. "Such a polite young man, just like the others. No wonder they keep sending you out to us."

"We do try our best to be good guests."

Nate was almost tempted to start looking for a quantum mirror. "Auntie, since Ray's part of our travelling group now, we wanted to get your permission to bring him along to the temple. He's brought a gift to earn his way."

"There comes a point where gifts become a burden, Nathaniel," Grackle said chidingly. "Let's see what you brought, dear."

"Does it count as a gift if it saves him a lot of walking?" Ray asked. He pulled a metal box from his backpack, about the size and shape of a Playstation 2. It was plain brushed aluminum, completely sealed up except for a simple LCD display and keypad on the front and a pair of jacks on one side. "It's called a radio. Like these little earpieces we wear," he tapped his, "but bigger. It basically sends out a kind of light that your eyes can't see in a coded pattern."

"Like an invisible heliograph!" Grackle said, delighted. "They still have them in the south. The chain up the river was broken in my mother's day, and no one's been able to afford repairs."

"Exactly. So with one of these, you can talk to someone else with one. It's the first I've made, so it's a little rough around the edges, but I think it'll work fine."

"It's so you can talk with us through the gate," Nate said. "Teyla explained why you can't come directly, right?"

Grackle nodded. "The barrier that protects you from the Wraith, yes. And now your deception to hide your survival. She said that if I wished to send a messenger, they must go to another planet instead."

"This lets you skip that step," Ray said. "You'll still need to get someone to dial out, but otherwise it should work fine from here. There's a good line of sight from the top of the tower. I'll just need to install a solar panel and a small antenna."

"Remarkable."

"I know it's not really convenient," Ray said apologetically. "I'm trying to think of ways to let it work without the gate, but we have to test it to make sure the Wraith can't find detect signals."

"I have plenty of fit young men if I've need to call."

"Also, it might catch fire if you drop it, so, uh, don't. There's a tamper-proof system in case the Wraith or someone else tries to get inside to steal the codes."

Grackle sucked in a little breath. "Perhaps we should put it somewhere with stone surroundings."

"We hope to give most of our partners one eventually," Nate explained as they went looking for a good spot. "Maybe even a couple for use on-world."

"You could send Wraith-warning from the gate to the south in an instant. People would have time to shelter. A generous gift indeed."

"We can't always fight the Wraith directly, but anything that keeps them frustrated and hungry makes our job easier."

Grackle patted him on the shoulder. "I'm glad you have at least some ulterior motive. Sometimes I worry about you being taken advantage of."

There was a sudden coughing fit from Ray, who looked like he'd just swallowed his own tongue. "Fine. I'm fine," he wheezed. "Don't worry, ma'am, I'm told he's actually very good at trade deals and things. Definitely not being taken advantage of."

There were times Nate wondered if his men really did believe he'd traded his mouth for batteries and gun lube. God knew Ray had brought up the possibility often enough even after they were out, in both senses of the word.

It took an hour to get the radio's solar panel mounted to an exterior wall, run the cable, and train Grackle and two of the acolytes how to run the machine. Occasionally a screaming child would flash past the window, carried atop a certain marine's shoulders. Eventually they were sent on their way, pockets full of oat and fruit honey cakes.

"That was very well done, Ray," Brad said as they began the walk back to the gate. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Not acting like a uncivilized retard around Grackle, for one thing."

"She's, like, seventy years old and a nun," Ray protested. "Do you really think I act the same way around elderly women as I do a bunch of steroid-chugging apes?"

Nate opened his mouth, except after a moment's thought, he wasn't sure he'd ever actually seen Ray disrespectful to any of the old women they'd ever run across, at least not to their faces. "You know, I think he has a point."

"Are we supposed to be impressed?" Sarah asked.

"Yes," Brad replied. "It's a remarkable degree of self control."

"Where I'm from, being polite to the elderly isn't something worthy of note."

"Where you're from," Ray interjected, "there's a kindly old lady who can have you beheaded if you use the wrong fork at dinner. Of course you're all obsessively polite. It's how I got that way. My grandma would smack the shit out of me if I spoke without being spoken to, and she couldn't order Sir Christopher Lee to murder my ass."

"Every time I hear about your childhood," Brad said, "there's somehow a new and twisted facet to it. It's like you're fractally wrong."

"Excuse me for not growing up in a way your upper-middle class sensibilities approve of. It's my fault my parents weren't lawyers, professors, or, I don't know, a countess or some shit. Frankly, you should be honored to have me around. Someone has to represent the working class of our planet."

"Personally, I find it fascinating," Sarah said.

Brad shook his head. "Ma'am, please, don't encourage him."

"There's a paper here somewhere."

"It's going to be the same shit as with Reporter," Brad complained to Nate. "You don't know what it was like."

"We could co-author it," Nate suggested to Sarah. "Elizabeth keeps making noises about distance learning programs, but I can't exactly write about the trade patterns created by gate travel."

"Maybe I should join Lorne's team after all," Brad muttered to himself. "Being eaten by bugs can't be worse than this."

"You know you love me." Ray tried to reach up to ruffle Brad's hair, but was held firmly away at arm's length.

"The sad thing is," Brad told Nate over dinner that night, "I'm pretty sure he's my best friend."

As dining facilities went, Atlantis's mess hall was pretty much top notch. It was bright, open, and had outside seating on a balcony, where ocean sounds acted as a white noise generator. What it lacked in overpriced fast food or table service, it made up for in having good spots for a semi-private, secretly quasi-romantic meal.

"We can't all be Pappy," Nate replied, in lieu of admitting the same thing. "Some of us have to settle for a real person instead of a manifestation of physical and spiritual perfection."

"I don't need perfect. I'd settle for a volume knob."

"I'll ask bio-engineering to get right on it."

"Actually, how is Pappy? I heard you dropped in a few months before," Brad waved his hand around, "being drafted for this."

"Yeah, I was in L.A. for a conference and I had time to get together with him and a few others in driving distance. He's as fine as you can expect. He's working up to deploy and his baby girl's teething, so I don't think he's slept in two months." Nate shook his head. "Sometimes I wonder why he even talks to me. I got half his fucking foot shot off."

"You got us all home alive," Brad retorted. "That's what counts."

"McGraw managed that much. If I'd gotten us moving just a little faster," Nate shrugged. Brad was giving him a look, like he was trying to come up with the most polite way to call him on his bullshit. He changed the subject. "Trombley was there too. He's been out a while. He's a cop now."

"God save the people of Los Angeles," Brad replied, almost fondly.

"You know, I thought that at first," Nate said. "Then I remembered him staring down that anti-aircraft gun. There's a guy who isn't going to shoot someone over a cell phone."

Brad chuckled.

"And for the love of God, don't tell Ray this," Nate said, looking around just to be extra-sure he wasn't lurking behind a table or some shit, "he wanted to name his second kid after me. I'm pretty sure his wife and I talked some sense into him, but I still worry that anytime now there's going to be an email with photos of a baby Nate."

He also suspected the alternative might be a baby Brad, but he'd drop that particular bombshell if and when it happened.

"Have you ever considered that some of us actually liked you?"

"I was an officer, Brad. No one likes those, even other officers."

"You keep telling yourself that." There was a moment of un-Iceman-like hesitation. "There's something I've been meaning to ask."

"Shoot."

"This, uh, thing," Brad gestured between them with a venison-laden fork, "it's not causing you any trouble with your friends here, it is?"

"No, why would it?"

"You can't exactly tell Lorne and Cadman you're dating me."

"I don't tell Sarah or Parrish, either," Nate replied. "That's why it's called a secret."

What Ray knew or suspected was beside the point. Neither of them were going to be the first to bring it up with him. Nate was assured of his absolute discretion in the matter, given past experience, but he'd still be insufferable anytime they were alone. Well, more insufferable.

"It only has to be secret because of me. No one says anything about Bryce and Simpson. There's no reason you couldn't find someone you could be with publicly."

Nate swallowed his immediate reply, which was to tell Brad where to stuff it. He was the one who'd made a big deal about being open with each other. He needed to put his money where his mouth was.

"I won't say it doesn't bother me at all, but I made my peace with it when I joined the Corps. Even when I was dating at school, I never felt the need to make a big deal about it. You're my," Nate had to pause to grope for phrasing, "you're not my trophy husband or boy toy. The point isn't to show you off, it's to be with you."

Brad nodded slowly. "As long as you're happy."

"I am. And I'm out to the people that really matter, which makes it easier."

"Alright." Brad didn't seem to completely accept it, but he didn't push further. "But you would show me off if you could, right?"

Nate rolled his eyes. "If it would get half the base to stop ogling you, yes."

"You remember that there's a reason the UCMJ has so much to say about not coveting your buddy's wife, right?"

"Maybe you have a point. I could trade you in for Ray and not have to deal with the secrecy or the jealousy."

Brad's look said all that was needed regarding how he felt about that idea.

A couple weeks later they were headed back to Phioge, where people had decided that while Tau'ri construction techniques were extremely dubious, they were perfectly happy selling a bunch of cleaned wool and high-quality silica in exchange for mason jars and ax heads. They were flying for this mission, because no one wanted to actually carry several hundred jars, there was no road, and Sarah had a bunch of machines that would give the ruins an ultrasound or something.

"Captain, far be it from me to question the seating arrangements," Brad said as they got settled in, "but there really isn't much leg room in these second seats."

"Should have called shotgun," Ray said, running the jumper through its preflight checks.

"There's always the back compartment," Nate added.

"I'm just suggesting that maybe we can trade off."

"Are you going to get motion sickness?"

"Motion sickness?" Brad repeated, and Nate had no need to turn around to see exactly how affronted he was. "Of course not."

"Then I am making a command decision and calling shotgun permanently."

"Amazing. The one officer I trusted, and it's after you get out that you decide to start abusing your authority."

"I guess it's true what they say, homes," Ray said. "You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain."

"Or you die a hero and then come back again," Sarah said. "Several times."

"If we ever visit Earth together, you have got to let me introduce Space Jesus to my grandma. The one I don't like, I mean. Learning that some liberal academic keeps returning from the dead would make the old witch's head explode. Hey, have you ever met any snakes that pretended to be God? I mean big-G God, not all the ones only classics majors have heard about."

"Less blasphemy," Nate said, "more flying, please."

"It's all autopilot inside the city." Ray still shut up while the jumper lowered down into the control room and swiveled to face the puddle. Only after they passed through and were sailing over the moors did he murmur, "This is some cool shit."

Then he snapped his fingers and the jumper activated its hitherto-unknown audio system to play some truly terribly punk rock music.

They paid the petty king his due homage, delivered to his hall's kitchen jars that would let them store vegetables long into the winter, and then flew up to the fortress on its crag. The thick stone out walls were crumbling or toppled, the inner buildings long since rotted away or collapsed, but a foundation of smooth grey stone remained solid and unyielding.

"What is it?" Brad asked, squatting down to examine a palm-sized circular hole that disappeared down beyond the reach of his flashlight. "Concrete?"

"I don't know. That's what makes it interesting," Sarah replied. "The lack of cracks despite the obvious weathering of the other stone is remarkable. There's not even scrape marks. You can also see that it clearly predates the rest of the structure - the gatehouse at trail up was built along with the rest of the outer wall, but it extends beyond the main terrace."

"So they built on someone else's foundation."

"The thumper and the seismic sensors will let us see what's under the top layer," Ray explained, hauling gear out of the jumper. "Could be a basement or something down there, maybe with a secret entrance."

Brad peered down the hole again, shook his head, and stood. "Even if there is, how's this useful? It's obviously not Ancient."

"Oh, boy," Nate muttered. 'How is this useful?' was right up there with 'when was the last time you published?' as far as fighting words went in Atlantis.

"Not everything needs to have an immediate practical, military use, Gunnery Sergeant," Sarah said, not quite scolding but not far from it either. "Knowledge has value in and of itself. The people here were likely wiped out by the Wraith and we have a duty to record what we can so they aren't forgotten."

"Yeah, Brad," Ray said. "Stop being such a philistine."

"Furthermore, the material science implicit in creating such a durable structure is far beyond anything on Earth. Learning how it's made could revolutionize construction techniques of everything from buildings to infrastructure."

"Or," Brad said, "we could skip the fancy concrete and go straight to the Ancient stuff that lasts a million years under crushing ice."

"Brad," Nate called, "why don't you and I take a walk around the base of the hill, see if there's any more structures that look interesting. We can get those samples Dr. Z wanted while we're at it."

"Yes, sir."

"Can you believe this guy?" Ray said behind them. "What an uncultured lout, right? And to think, he mocked me for my theory that war is caused by -"

"Ray!" Brad and Nate shouted simultaneously.

"- unequal access to wealth and marriage opportunities in stratified societies, Jesus titty-fucking Christ, guys. Stop trying to police my language. At least let me actually be offensive before you scold me for it. You'd think by now you'd know preemptive strikes are bullshit."

"That's the American military for you," Sarah agreed as they descended out of the ruins.

Nate and Brad walked down the strand of the river toward the sea, occasionally stopping to fill sample vials with pebbles, muck, and eventually actual sand as they got past the village and to the wider beach. Even if useless for glass making, the geologists were hopeful the samples might indicate what sort of minerals were further upstream.

"Long walks on the beach, sir?" Brad said as they passed a rather toothy-looking seal, giving it a wide berth. "A bit cliche, isn't it?"

"If twenty minutes counts as long now, then I despair for the state of the Royal Marines."

"You know how it is over there. Walking an hour gets you halfway across the country. Don't even ask about what they call mountains."

"I suppose you'll be complaining about the surfing next."

"It was surprisingly decent, all things considered. And travel to the continent was easy."

Nate glanced over at Brad and noted the soft, almost contemplative look on his face. Over the last few weeks, he'd started to realized exactly how little he actually knew Brad. They'd exchanged enough emails that Reporter could bind them into another fucking book, but now he could see clearly just how many gaps there were that Brad had written around.

Not that Nate had been much better. He'd had lots of space to write about grad school and his sister's family and even, a few slightly-drunk times early on, his possible PTSD symptoms, but somehow anything that might have hinted at the crush or his dissatisfaction with his half-hearted attempts at dating had gotten edited out. Even the Ill-Advised Summer Road Trip with Ray had been carefully trimmed down into suitably amusing nuggets, none of their hours-long discussions about trouble adjusting to civilian life or anything else allowed to filter through to potentially bother Brad as he prepared to go to war with strangers.

"Did you like it over there?"

"The food wasn't as bad as people claim. Same thing with the weather, even if it never got warm enough for my taste," Brad replied. "They were excellent marines. Welcoming. I'm happy I deployed with them."

Nate nodded slowly. "I wondered sometimes, but I thought that's what you were saying under all the bitching. I worried a lot during that year. Sometimes I wished..."

He trailed off.

"I'm glad you weren't there," Brad said, answering what he'd left unspoken. "We lost our captain a few months in to an IED. A couple other guys later on. It was harder than last time I was there. Harder than Iraq, even. Less intense but it just kept dragging on and on. And I can tell it's going to get worse before it gets better."

Nate kept his reaction to another, more solemn nod. He'd written a paper making that same projection, cold numbers of population distributions, economic damage, and lack of stable civil authority spelling out the same thing as Brad's gut feeling. It hadn't done his anxiety much good.

"I worry that there's all this out here," Nate said, gesturing toward the horizon where a strange green crescent moon was rising, "and back home we're still so fucking petty. If the Wraith or the Ori or the Goa'uld don't wipe out us, all this technology we're discovering could let us do it for them."

"Sounds like we should focus on the first half of that sentence instead of borrowing trouble."

"We can't. Never mind the weapons, the entire economy could implode the moment the gate goes public. That matter printer up in the jumper maintenance bay is so simple Ray can use it and it'd put half the planet out of work. Elizabeth and I have talked about it. So has the entire department, and some of the more practical engineers. You should hear what they say when you put a few glasses of Athosian wine in them."

"There are times I've very glad I'm not an officer," Brad said dryly, "and that you are."

"I'm not an officer anymore."

"Whatever you call it, Mr. Department Head."

"Acting."

They were almost back to the village when a bell began to clang. For a moment, all motion stopped and eyes turned toward the watchtower, from the fishermen at the docks to children playing on the hills, then the running and shouting began. In the distant a faint buzzing whine could be heard, growing stronger by the second.

"Dart," Nate said. You didn't need to hear that noise more than once for it to burn itself into your brain, far more effectively than any number of recordings. He and Brad started running. "Ray, Sarah, status."

"LT, Bessy's flipping the fuck out," Ray replied, referring to the jumper. "Give me a second and I'll have sensors up."

"Cloak the ship, get airborne, and meet us…" Nate paused. Many of the villagers were running their way as they fled the buildings. "On the beach. Stand by for exact location."

"Nate! Brad!" At the front was Einkar's daughter Kayja, an ax in hand. "This way, there are sea caves!"

"LT, Jumper Five. I am reading three darts inbound from the stargate. One more heading north towards some of the steadings up there. No ships in orbit."

"We'll be there to pick you up in a minute," Sarah added.

"Hold on, there may be shelter. I don't want you getting too close where they might hit you by accident." Nate noticed an absence at his side and looked back over his shoulder. Brad had gone the opposite direction, rather than follow Kayja, but now he was booking it back toward them with a squalling toddler under each arm. He caught up with them as they stood at the entrance and distributed torches found just inside. Brad looked like he was going to turn right back around, but Nate grabbed his shoulder and shook his head.

The cave was exactly what it sounded like, a hole in the sea cliff wide enough to pass four or five people at once and then a wider cavern stretching inside far past where the light reached. It was cold and damp, and likely took on water at the highest tide, no place you could live or store supplies in. As emergency shelters went, though, it had room and thick rock, and someone had painstakingly carved steps here and there to create a path further inside.

A dart streaked past overhead, firing at the village. Another swooped along the beach, straight over a group of fleeing people, but its transporter beam remained silent until it had passed the cave. Screams rose from the approaching crowd, and as one Brad and Nate stepped out, pivoted, and fired into the unsuspecting group of Wraith standing just a few feet away. No time for precision shots or short, controlled bursts here, just a long stream at full auto until all six were on the ground and thoroughly shredded.

"They know this is here," Brad murmured.

"The same individuals could have culled this world for centuries," Nate replied. "We need to get people as far inside as we can, in case they try to blow the entrance."

Brad shook his head ever so slightly. "They won't. They probably like pulling people out. It's a decent choke point though."

There were at least two hundred people already inside, but the stream of villagers was trailing off, coming in twos and threes instead of dozens. The transport beams were firing steadily now, criss-crossing the village and beach. Behind Brad and Nate, there was a growing wall of men and women with spears, axes, and varied farm implements. None of them ideal, against Wraith with their strength and their stunners, but even one of them would have a serious bad day with twelve inches of steel through the heart or eye.

The radio crackled. "Jumper Five, Fox-Three."

There were a pair of booms, muffled by the rocks, and Nate saw a flaming dart go streaking past into the ocean. The jumper shot past moments later, fading into invisibility.

"Remind me to have a chat with him about the definition of setting down," Nate said. For the moment, if Ray wanted to play fighter pilot, Nate knew better than to distract him.

There were more Wraith approaching, all soldier drones. They were big, but they clearly weren't used to anyone fighting back with real weapons, walking straight into gunfire and returning inaccurate shots. It still took a worrying number of rounds to put each one down for good. There was no sign of any of the male leader caste, either.

After another distant explosion, Ray radioed in again. "LT, that's the last of them. I'm still seeing one more possible Wraith life-sign in the village. There's civilians nearby. I can't get a clear shot. You want me to take it anyway?"

"No, we're heading for it." Nate checked his ammo and left the cave, Brad falling in silently beside him. "Dial Atlantis and report. Keep the gate open until they're ready to dial in."

"Got it."

The thatch roofs of a half-dozen houses were ablaze, and several other buildings had already collapsed due to direct hits from Wraith cannon fire. Thick smoke filled the air, along with piles for rubble from collapsed walls. Shouts and wailing echoed through the cramped streets and alleys. As Ray's voice guided them through town toward the suspect sensor reading, Nate's unease grew. On an open beach, or even along the docks or the market square, rifles gave them an advantage. In the tight quarters of the residential district, it was all too possible to stumble into hand-to-hand range.

Brad's fist snapped up as a new scream rang out, muffled but still easily audible. Nate had heard a lot of screams, people dying or injured in a hundred different ways, but this was a new one, thin and raspy and trailing off with a peculiar rattle. They were at the intersection of the main street and an alleyway, where a large house still stood between two that had collapsed. The door flung open and a Wraith stepped out, looking straight at them.

In the time it took for Nate and Brad to raise their weapons and fire, it was across the street and behind a pile of rubble, long leather coat flaring out behind them. Their bullets shattered against the thick stone. Blue fire screamed back at them and they had to retreat, Nate to a overturned cart and Brad further back behind the corner of a half-collapsed home.

For a long minute there was silence as the three of them peeked at each other from behind their respective cover, unwilling to be the first to move from shelter. Brad tapped the grenade hanging on his vest with an inquisitive looked, but Nate shook his head after a moment's consideration. Wraith moved fast and might send it back their way, and freshly-fed ones were known to survive close explosions to boot.

"Lantean," the Wraith called. "I can smell you. So young and sweet. So defiant. When I drag you before my queen, she will reward me greatly. She has not had such a delicacy in ten thousand years."

Nate waved for Brad to circle around the other side of the house. He was pretty sure if the Wraith rushed him, he could kill it before it covered the distance. If not, every second it was playing with him was another for any other survivors to get away.

"Your servant can not save you, Lantean. I will break your legs and feed on him while you watch, and then the pilot of your ship."

"Excuse me."

Nate and the Wraith both glanced to the side. It wasn't Brad; he'd never actually announce himself. Sarah was calming walking down the cross street, metal glinting on the fingertips of her left hand. She stopped as the Wraith turned its weapon on her and fired. The stunner blasts stopped short against a shimmering gold barrier.

An unsettling smile spread across Sarah's face. "Kneel," she commanded.

Before Nate could take advantage of the distraction, the Wraith hissed and leaped toward Sarah, feeding arm outstretched. Her own hand raised up and a jewel on the palm flashed. The Wraith was flung back a dozen meters and into the open. Nate shot it twice in the head.

"I'm starting to understand," Nate said, standing up while a very puzzled-looking Brad poked his head around a far corner, "why the SG-leader mailing list has so many jokes about people going off plan."

The jumper slid into view overhead. "Just so you know, Nate, when we get back home," Ray said, voice distorted by the radio or adrenaline or both, "I am giving this thing a gun that can dial in lower than 'explode building'. Also, the Major is coming with, like, half of Alpha and a bunch of medics. ETA is about five for the ones in jumpers and fuck knows for everyone walking."

"Thank you, Ray," Nate replied. "Do a visual check of the buildings with life-signs, and direct us towards any that look like there may be a person trapped."

"Got it, LT."

Villagers began to emerge from shelter as the team started trying to clear the buildings in the most immediate danger of collapse or catching fire. Stopping the fire from spreading was out of the question with the manpower they had immediately on hand. It wasn't until Lorne showed up with a pump and forty more Marines that things started to look like they might be controllable.

"Major, we need to start by getting those buildings on the west wetted down," Nate said almost before Lorne and Captain Radner had left the lead jumper. "Those are the grain storage and fish smokehouses. Then the weaving houses, those looms are hard to replace." They were lucky the Wraith targeted buildings with humans inside first; longhouses full of people were replaceable, machinery and food less so.

"You heard the man, Captain," Lorne said to Radner. "Anyone who's not on the hoses or S&R, get on a bucket brigade. Next problem?"

"Did you bring tunnel crystals?"

Lorne lifted a small case. "They were with the other emergency supplies."

"Good. We've got at least three, four hundred people in this town alone without shelter even if we get the fires under control. They've got caves but they're not suitable. I need some geology advice on where to stick these things." It was about then that Nate's brain caught up with his mouth. "By which I mean, sir, would you like to assume command?"

Lorne looked more bemused that affronted. "Incident command rules, Nate. You're first on site, you're in charge until there's time for a handover. Point me at the rocks."

The tunnels proved to be the easier part of the process. All they really required was sticking them into a suitable rock face at chest height and the proper angle, and they'd automatically form a hall deeper inside. Branching corridors and chambers quickly followed. The trickiest bit was making sure there was adequate ventilation for so many people, as they lacked proper life support systems. Salvaging essential supplies and moving them into the temporary bunker took several hours more, even with all of the survivors having emerged to help. By the time Lorne formally took over and ordered them home, Nate and his team were sweaty and covered with sand and ash from several hours of work.

"Ray, you and I are going to have a conversation about following the captain's orders," Brad said, not exactly flopping into his chair behind him but certainly not dignified either. "Or at least telling him that you're going to roleplay Top Gun."

"Yeah, I probably deserve that," Ray agreed. Then, suddenly, he said to Nate, "Okay, I have to ask. Does he call you captain when he comes?"

It wasn't as if Nate hadn't been expecting this from pretty much the moment Ray had invited himself to Atlantis. "We haven't actually fucked yet, so it's unclear. Based on his reaction when I go down on him, I give it a fifty-fifty chance."

Ray looked utterly flabbergasted. Apparently he hadn't expected the virginal choirboy with the cocksucking lips to respond so freely, which was a bit rich all things considered. After a couple false starts his brain got back on track. "That is sad, Nate. Just sad. Marines have a reputation to uphold. You should have nailed that gorgeous Viking ass by the third date at the latest. You're worse than Walt."

"Are we acknowledging this now?" Sarah asked.

"That seems to be how this is working," Nate replied. "Every time we get shot at there's a new revelation."

Ray beamed at him. "I always knew you were a kinky motherfucker like that."

"Ray," Brad said.

"You understand your secret's safe with me, right? Your ol' buddy Ray-Ray is not going to announce your nuptials to the entire city. No more than I already am, anyway. If I'm making jokes about every pretty girl and boy in a thousand lightyears trying to get into Sheppard's pants, people will notice if I stop referring to your manly bond's homoerotic nature."

"I know I can trust you, you fucked up refugee from Misery. I was going to say start flying."

"I wrote a speech about teamwork, professionalism in the field, and the current western distinction between romantic and platonic love being arbitrary," Nate said tiredly, "but since we've skipped all my bullet points and straight to the end, let me know if either of you want to swap teams."

"Apparently you eye-fucked," and Nate could hear Sarah give that air quotes behind him, "across Iraq without incident. I'm inclined to trust Ray's judgement."

"You trust my judgement? Doc, that's a terrible idea. Like, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria, et cetera."

"It's the end of the world as we know it," Brad quietly sang. Entirely inappropriate given they were flying away from a village that had just been strafed by life-sucking alien vampires, and yet.

"And I feel fine," Nate finished.

They went through the motions of cleaning up and explaining to Elizabeth and Sheppard why there were now dart pieces strewn across Phioge, and how likely it was that the Wraith would investigate the mission ships. They didn't always turn up - plenty of Wraith males went off hunting on their own, and the queens seemed to believe that anyone who didn't come back deserved whatever happened - but they would still need to keep an eye on the planet just in case there was a reprisal attack.

This time Nate was slightly better prepared for the after-action cool down. He insisted on eating dinner as a team, keeping a close eye on Ray and Sarah, and later that evening made a point of checking in on both of them. He found Sarah in the reading library, curled on on a couch with a book while idly chatting with McNeill, who was sitting across from her in an armchair. The boy gave him a jaunty salute.

Ray, meanwhile, was in the lounge, off in one corner. There was a small gaggle of jumper-jocks and mechanics with him: Sheppard, Griffin, Murad, a few others. Based on his exuberant hand motions, he seemed to be regaling them with tales of his aerial victory. Seeing no sign of distress beyond Ray's usual baseline WTF aura, he decided to just slip on by unnoticed.

"Hey! Nate, hold up!" Ray shouted. "Brad said something that I just wanted to clarify."

Nate sighed and turned around. "Yes, Ray?"

"Did the Wraith really call you succulent?"

"Young and sweet," Nate responded. "And he thought his queen would find me delicious."

"They say things like that sometimes," Sheppard said. "Especially if you piss them off. Apparently defiance is the Wraith equivalent of barbecue sauce."

"I'll endeavor to remain indifferent next time, sir."

"He thinks the jumpers should have guns, too," Ray said.

"It's all very early F-4," Sheppard agreed. "Who needs anything but missiles, right?"

"Isn't it nice to have a colonel that agrees with us? He says he's fine with it if Farah and I try to add some."

"Good night, Ray. Sir, please don't let him stay up all night, it makes him cranky."

Sheppard nodded. "I kinda got that impression from the book."

"Of course you've read it," Nate muttered. He wondered if there was a handy time machine he could use to kidnap Reporter and dump him with some other unit, lucky charm or not.

"Honestly, if I'd known marines were so crazy, I'd have definitely chosen you over the Air Force."

"Sir, no, don't say that," Captain Griffin said, mustache quivering. Beside him Lt. Meyers, one of the mythical Marine aviators, shook her own head vehemently and added, "It would not have gone the way you're imagining, sir."

"They'd have made you shave your hair," Ray said sagaciously.

Nate took the ensuing chaos as a chance to escape and retreat to his room. He found a Marine wearing nothing but boxer-briefs lounging in his bed and reading a battered copy of Following Ho Chi Minh.

"Kids alright?" Brad asked.

"Don't let Ray hear you say that," Nate replied, slipping out of his shirt. He secured his sidearm in its bedside drawer and stepped into the bathroom to brush his teeth. "He'll want to know who's Mom and who's Dad."

"He's already got opinions on that," Brad replied. Nate rolled his eyes, and then almost inhaled his toothpaste when Brad continued, "He told me to lie back, spread my legs, and think of England while doing my wifely duty. You okay in there?"

"Fine," Nate gasped. "Wrong hole."

"Not really a phrase I want to hear in this context, Nate."

"I've got a hundred and ten gallons of lube, I'm sure I can make it work somehow." Nate actually had a normal-sized squeeze bottle and a handful of rubbers from the bucket the infirmary set out. Returning to the bedroom, he stripped off his clothes and got into bed next to Brad. At times like this, he was glad that his quarters were a dozen floors away from the nearest Marine and somewhat out of the way. It made it easier to justify the risk of spending a night together if the neighbors couldn't see ten feet without their glasses.

"We really shouldn't make a habit of this," Brad commented, setting his book aside. "If we have sex every time we get shot at, we're going to actively seek it out."

"I'd be more concerned about the post-coital cuddling," Nate said, "but maybe I'm just getting soft in my retirement. But if you're concerned, we can do it often enough these nights don't stand out."

"And three times on the weekends?"

Nate cupped the bulge in Brad's shorts. "Let's start with fucking once and work our way up to day-long debauchery."

"Not now, honey," Brad said, "I've got a headache."

Nate slid down the bed, tugged Brad's underwear off, and prepared to put those famed cocksucking lips to work. "Let me fix that for you."

Later, with Brad's legs over his shoulders, he was quite pleased when he gasped out 'Nate' and not captain.

Chapter Text

"Nate, you look like you have a question."

Nate pursued his lips and shot Elizabeth an annoyed look, because the last thing he wanted was to be the kid who raised his hand right before class was over. Senior staff meetings were about as fun as the term implied. No one seemed to want to be there, except possibly Beckett, who'd spent the last half hour talking enthusiastically about his magic Wraith-transforming serum. Even McKay looked he wanted to tell his friend where to shove it. If this was what battalion headquarters meetings were like, it was no wonder Godfather had obsessively sought out combat distractions.

"No, I think I understand the state of the project pretty well, even if some of the details are a little over my head."

Elizabeth shook her head. "I know that look. You've got something to say but you don't want to be rude. Spill."

"Fine. I understand why the retrovirus is proving problematic at a scientific level. What I don't understand is why we need to put more effort into developing it further along the current path. We should focus on delivery methods, not on making it last longer."

"Well if we don't," Beckett replied, "it's not going to be much good, is it? Right now we're looking at daily injections to maintain the change, at best. It can't scale up beyond a handful of subjects."

"So don't worry about maintaining it. If you can change them temporarily, it should be much easier to just kill them by permanently destroying the central nervous system or other vital organs."

"Thank you!" McKay said, sitting up straighter. "Finally someone agrees with me."

"The point is to have an alternative to killing them," Beckett protested. "You've got bombs and bullets for that already!"

"But we don't have an equivalent of symbiote poison," Nate replied, "which can kill Wraith without harming humans. From where I'm sitting, trying to draw a distinction between killing and a forced transformation, which will likely result in memory loss, is ethically and philosophically dubious at best. We may as well just be honest about what we're doing and focus on doing it efficiently."

"Alive is alive, and it's better than dead."

Nate refrained from asking whether Beckett had passed his medical ethics courses. When Ray had a firmer grasp of the subject than the CMO, there was something badly wrong.

"Colonel, you haven't said much," Elizabeth said.

Sheppard shrugged slightly while fiddling with his pen. "Keeping Wraith prisoners for interrogation has been problematic in the past. You can't feed them, you can't let them starve, and just shooting them defeats the purpose. This could help fix it."

Nate did nod a little at that. "Having a way to accept surrenders would be nice, if there was a chance of them ever happening."

"The Wraith do not surrender," Teyla said. "Submit, perhaps, in the face of superior force from other Wraith, but not surrender as we define it."

"Wonderful," McKay said, "now we're discussing Wraith behavior instead of voodoo biology. Maybe we could spend more time developing better space guns and less on viruses that have already turned one person into a bug on accident."

"We don't talk about that," Sheppard snapped.

"Well that hasn't stopped my nightmares about someone dropping a test tube."

That got Beckett's dander up. "We take safety precautions very seriously."

"So seriously a little girl could defeat them."

"It certainly sounds like there's room for a lively discussion of use cases," Elizabeth said before the fur could start to fly. "At another time. Carson, thank you for the update."

Nate could sense a position paper in his future. Elizabeth loved them under normal circumstances, and Jackson had repeatedly warned him that the SGC leaned heavily on the social sciences to tell them why they should or shouldn't blow something up.

"Next up - the Daedalus is arriving Monday and scheduled for a nine-day layover. Please make sure all personnel departures and outgoing shipments are ready to go. I also need any Daedalus-specific mission requests by tomorrow evening so I have time to review them before talking with Caldwell."

Nate and McKay looked at each other, then back at her. "M6G-804. The one Lorne visited, with the big suspicious desert crater in the middle of the jungle," McKay said. "There's ruins with some sort of large underground structure with no remaining surface access. We need the transporter to get in."

"I am assured the ruins indicate signs of an advanced human civilization," Nate added, "which will provide insight into the post-war history of the galaxy."

"The shape suggests it might even be a crashed or buried ship of some kind. A big one. We could learn a lot from it."

"The logs alone would be invaluable for learning about Wraith tactics and other possible developed worlds."

"Yes, I get the idea," Elizabeth said. "Written proposals, please."

Nate and McKay looked at each other again. With luck, this was an opportunity to declare a truce over a matter of mutual interest. Perhaps even the seed for a beautiful new friendship.

Well, probably not that. Nate would settle for professionalism.

When the meeting finally broke up, Nate headed to Ray's lab to pester him about some late mission reports. He stopped short as he entered the room. A large table at the center had been clearly off, and Ray was standing there beside it along with Farah Murad and Cadman. They all turned toward him with varying expressions: Cadman officer-blank, Farah vaguely pleased with herself, and Ray a puppy that had just been found tearing up the couch cushions. On the table itself was some sort of mechanical monstrosity. It looked a lot like a MALP, with the squat rectangular body and pyramidal hump full of equipment. It didn't have any tracks, though, and instead of the usual robotic grabby arm there was what looked a lot like the mounting gimbal for an M2 or Mark 19, with a stubby gun-shaped something attached.

"Ray," Nate said. Any further words seemed superfluous.

"We're calling it the Mighty MALP," Ray said. "The chassis is from the one those assholes ripped up on 117. It was going to be broken down for parts, but after the scientific equipment was pulled I, uh, requisitioned it. The entire drive train was shot, not even worth trying to fix."

"So instead we installed a gravity disc from the crashed jumper that was retrieved from Olesia," Murad said. "It was cracked so we couldn't use it in the repairs, but it'll still lift something this small and manage a walking pace just fine."

Nate stepped closer and started circling around. The radar antenna behind the gun looked bigger than usual, and there were a couple extra cameras stuck on so it had three-sixty vision. "Go on."

"It's just, you know, I was thinking, we really don't have any kind of good air defense in the field," Ray said, tapping his foot nervously. "Stingers are nice and all but you get just the one shot. If you're wanting some sort of point defense that can engage a bunch of targets, you really need a gun system. You remember how scary that fucking Zeus was, right?"

"I do."

"Obviously a rifle won't work, but mounting a SAW would do okay close in," Cadman went on. "The colonel shot down that dart on Therona with one. They're pretty fragile. But then I thought, we've got a bunch of M2s sitting around from the siege, and those have much better effective range."

"Unfortunately your buddy Lorne didn't want to just hand out a fifty cal to anyone who asks," Ray continued. "And obviously one of the big railguns won't fit at all."

"Obviously," Nate agreed. The city still had a dozen of the anti-aircraft guns here and there, despite attempts by Earth to demand them back. They were also the size of a compact car when fully deployed. You could probably fit one through the gate, but not onto a MALP.

"We thought about making a miniature version," Farah said, "but McKay is a complete Scrooge as far as access to naquadah goes. The rails melt without a durable superconductor. We had to roll our own alternative."

"So what is it?"

"Gauss rifle," Cadman said with a grin. "Basically."

"There's actually not many magnets involved," Farah explained. "It primarily uses Ancient inertia manipulation tech. There's no moving parts except the feed mechanism, and without direct rail contact there's fewer heat problems."

"It fires custom twelve-millimeter steel flechettes at 6,000 meters per second, one-twenty rounds per minute," Cadman said gleefully. "Effective anti-dart range should be at least a dozen klicks, depending on how the aerodynamics work in practice. And it'll completely fuck up any Wraith soldiers you point it at. I'm hoping to adapt proximity-fused shells in the next version, but the hypersonic muzzle velocity is proving problematic so far."

"We're still working out how to control it," Ray said. T"here's a radar guidance system but we still need some kind of handheld control. Cadman doesn't think Weir would approve of a fully automated death robot."

"No," Nate said immediately. "No, she would not. Why isn't Earth building a bunch of these?"

"They don't have an Ancient parts library hooked up to a replicator," Ray replied. Cadman smacked his arm. "Fuck, I know, it's a matter printer, don't use the R-word, I get it, you're all a bunch of superstitious pussies who think robot bugs will appear on a planet somewhere if we say their fucking name. Can you believe these people, LT?"

"We obsessively throw away a particular brand of candy because they're bad luck."

"Caldwell got super pissed on the first trip when we found a bunch of Charms on the Deds and threw them all out into space," Cadman said. "The major backed us up. Apparently there were some in his MRE the day he, you know."

Presumably the day he earned his golden coffin badge and not the day he married an Unas in what he insisted was a purely symbolic wedding to seal the alliance.

"You know what? I'm just going to turn around and pretend I saw nothing," Nate said, making a decision. "Call me when it's ready for a demo. And Ray, if you end up with shrapnel in your face."

"Fuck. You. Ell. Tee." Ray took time to pronounce each syllable, but he was grinning because he knew this was as close to explicit permission as he was ever going to get.

A Mighty MALP with a miniature Gauss rifle. Fucking Christ. You could take a Marine out the corps, but give him an alien CAD program and a Star Trek replicator and he'd still get a hard-on for overpowered weapons.

A few days after that, Nate's lunch was interrupted by a call to the control room. His mental calendar suggested that no one was offworld, but that had never kept anyone from getting into mischief. Just a week before two archaeologists, an engineer, and a chemist had gotten themselves stuck behind a wall.

The wormhole was open when he arrived, and Elizabeth waved him over to Chuck's master situation board. "Ma'am, he's just arriving. One moment, please," she said, making a muting motion to Chuck. "It's the Salash priestess. She asked for you."

"Huh. Alright." Nate nodded to Chuck. "Auntie, it's Nate. What can I do for you?"

"My friend, I fear we are in need of your help once more," Grackle replied. Even with the flattening effect of the radio, her worry came through clearly. "And not just the temple, but all of the city."

"What's the problem, ma'am?"

"The rain. And the river. I fear the Grandmother may drown us all."

Nate glanced at Elizabeth, who nodded. "We'll be there shortly. Shut off the radio so we can dial in."

"Sergeant, have his team assemble in the jumper bay on the double," Elizabeth said. She touched her own radio. "John, we have an offworld ally requesting disaster assistance. Please come the control room and prepare the ready platoon." Nate mouthed Cadman's name at her. "Along with Lieutenant Cadman and the combat engineers. I'll get Rodney moving too."

"Have, uh, Dr. Bryce come with him," Nate suggested. "It's not exactly oceanography, but she's the closest we have. Plus Dr. Soltani and the meteorology team."

"I'll handle it, Nate. Get moving and we'll be ready to receive data."

In the couple minutes it took the team to arrive, Nate grabbed a newly-assembled supplementary relief kit with a set of radio repeaters, flares, and a small collection of tunnel crystals. The next wave could carry more specific supplies from stores once the first in team had assessed the situation.

As soon as they passed through the gate, the jumper's windshield was splattered with drizzle. The sky overhead was slate grey, and the valley floor was covered with muddy pools and overflowing culverts and streams unable to drain fast enough. At the center of it all, the river was far outside its banks. Normally half a kilometer wide by the city, it had swelled up to twice that size, its surface raging within a foot or less of the levee tops on either side.

"Ray, I want you to do a pass along the river, ten klicks downstream and thirty up," Nate ordered as they sat down in the temple courtyard. "Do a detailed scan of the river level, flow rate, and levee structure. Relay the data back to Atlantis. Then do a high-altitude weather scan. I want an estimate on how much more water's headed our way, and how close it'll get to overflowing and where."

"You got it, LT." Almost before the rest of them were out he was back in the air. People were scrambling all around them, carrying crates and baskets and almost anything else portable up into the main tower. Nate and his team entered the main worship hall, where acolytes were carefully disassembling the crystal displays and other artwork.

"Thank you for coming," Grackle said, striding over to them. The bottom of her robes was black with mud and silt. "I fear we must truly press on your generosity today."

"I didn't realized flooding from the river was a risk," Sarah said. "The levees seem so high."

"The floods come every year, but the waters rarely reach even the halfway point. But there have been many storms this spring and summer, and the river has had little chance to retreat."

"How sure are you that it's going to be a problem?" Brad asked. "If they've stood this long, they've got to be pretty strong."

"They are. It is said that after the flood of my grandmother's time, the soil was scraped bare in spots, but the white stone beneath was unblemished. However, not far upstream, a Wraith attack on a bridge collapsed part of the inner structure. Since then we have tried to repair it with dirt and stone, but the watch there says it is wearing away rapidly. If the river comes through, it will come fast and with little warning."

Nate looked out the window toward the distant hill out of the valley. Even a strong and healthy man would hard-pressed to cross that muddy expanse in under an hour or maybe even two, and some of the streams were likely dangerous to cross. Children and the elderly stood no chance at all.

"Spread the word for everyone in the city get to the highest floors of the larger buildings," Nate said. "If we need to, we can lift people off the roofs. Bring only what's most essential."

"We shall," Grackle said, snapping at a young woman, who took off running. "But for all the city's size, we are only part of those living here. There are many villages and hamlets in this shire alone. You cannot hope to reach them all."

"We need to find another solution, then," Nate said. "Do you have a map?"

She did, in the library, and they gathered around to study it. There wasn't much good news. Both sides of the river were dotted with small settlements, too spread out to easily gather together and too large for a single jumper to hold. Even getting them word to prepare would be hard. Maybe if they worked from the upstream side down they could get people out before the flood came, but he suspected they'd run out of time.

"Ma'am," Brad said, "as I recall, you said the other bank was evacuated after the Wraith came. How far does that extend?"

"Most of the shire. There's a few herders out there, but they will have moved their flocks to higher ground days ago, when the plains started getting too waterlogged."

"But definitely downriver?"

"For quite some way, yes. At least to the locks of the fourth cataract. You can't see it on this map, but the land opens up a great deal about thirty stadia to the south."

"You want to relieve the pressure," Sarah said to Brad. "Breach levee at a place of our choosing."

"Exactly. Like the Mississippi floods back in the twenties."

Sarah pursed her lips. "Grackle, you said that there's floodgates?"

"Far upstream," she replied. "Even if you reached them, I'm not sure they could be opened. Our forefathers, in their wisdom, designed their shapes so that the more weight the water pressed on them, the stronger they would lock together."

And if they were far enough upstream, it might not help anyway depending on which tributaries were feeding the flood. Nate nodded slowly. "Ma'am, I'm not going to lie. We may be able to create a hole, but I can't promise we can fix it after."

Grackle drew herself up. "Do what you must. I will take responsibility. It is a sin against the Ancestors to value things over people, even things created by them, or to worry about what might be over what is."

Nate touched his radio. "Ray, you have those scans?"

"Yeah, the geek squad is going over them now. I'm coming in to pick you up."

"Let them know we need to breach the levee, and fast."

The jumper had returned and they were back inside by the time Cadman called in from Atlantis. "Sir, I've got good news and bad news."

"Hit me."

"Good news is that if we cause a breach about two miles upstream of the weak spot, it should rapidly draw the water down. Bad news, we don't have enough conventional explosives to breach the underlying structure. Not without a lot of drilling and prep. Just taking a few feet off the top somewhere isn't going to cut it."

"Drones, then?"

"That should work. It'll be a pretty big hole and probably ruin it for good, but the river will go down fast. We're relaying coordinates now."

Nate looked over the data. The levee cores were incredibly thick at their bases, effectively dozens of meters of solid rock, but a few drones set to explode would still shatter them and then the water would do the rest.

"Could we just use the drones in armor-piercing mode to drill smaller holes?" Sarah suggested. "Something easier to patch?"

"They wouldn't let enough water through, not with the number you have," Cadman replied.

"Patch," Nate murmured, an idea burbling up. "How large would be a enough? Like, ten meters by four?"

"Hold on." There was some garbled muttering. "That might work, but barely. You'd need it close to the base to take advantage of the pressure."

"I've got an idea. Keep preparing to send more help, but we're going to try breaching it." Nate closed the channel and looked at Sarah and Ray. "The tunnel crystals could make a hole like that, right?"

"They could," Sarah agreed. "The ones for large rooms are about the right size."

"And Tok'ra tunnels can be told to seal themselves back up, like they'd never been there."

"One of their more aggravating qualities, yes. It'd depend on the rock."

Brad nodded, seeing where Nate was going with this. "You want to use them to create the breach, then close it up later. Sounds like a good plan."

"Yeah, except even the biggest one we have won't go far enough through," Ray said, bringing them down close to the specified spot. "And you can't just jam a bunch of the fuckers in together. Someone would have to go into the tunnel, start a second one, and then probably a third. Chances are they'd get flushed out like a turd in the world's biggest shitter."

Nate was already stripping his jacket off. "I know. I'll just have to run fast after setting the last one."

"No, sir."

"Bad idea, LT."

"Don't be silly, Nate, I'm the crystal tech expert."

"You're an archaeologist, doc, I'm the tech wizard."

"You're all civilians."

"Ray, set us down," Nate ordered, stepping into the back compartment. Sarah and Brad followed close behind, and even as Nate opened the supply tote with tunnel gear Ray joined them. "It'll be fine. I'll use these three - these two mid-sized crystals will get me just in range for this big meeting hall one. It'll take long enough to carve through that I can get clear easily."

He moved on to the rappelling gear, looking for a safety harness and line.

"Sir, I can't let you do this," Brad said, arms crossed tightly and face stony.

"This is not a committee," Nate told his team. He could see in their faces that even Brad wasn't going to let him leave it at that. "Ray, you need to keep this thing flying above the breach point so we aren't caught on the ground. Sarah, you're the only one who can who can work the healing device if it's needed. Brad, if someone does go in the water, you're the strongest and best suited to pulling them back out. That leaves me, who the government spent fifty thousand dollars drown-proofing."

Brad took a deep breath and held it for half a minute, then let it out. "Let me get that harness on you."

Nate let Brad fuss over him until he was secured onto a steel cable, and that in turn was attached to the jumper. There was a lot of slack, but there had to be for this to work. He afforded himself two quick pats to Brad's shoulder, a thumbs-up, and then left the jumper, entrenching tool in hand.

The rush and roar of the water was audible as Nate started digging into the side of the levee. It didn't take much to get past the layer of sod and grass covering it to tight-packed sand and gravel. That was close enough for Nate's purposes. He pulled a hexagonal blue crystal from his pocket and planted it firmly into the exposed surface. A glowing, feathery web of light spread across exposed surface like an ice crystal, in fits and spurts at first as it consumed the gravel but then more steadily as it began encountering proper rock. Soon a wide but short hole had been dug into the levee, with lumps of soil falling into the new cavern.

Nate walked inside and planted another crystal against the far wall, making sure to angle it to strike with a long edge so it'd create other wide chamber. A seam line opened up in the rock face and split apart in hexagonal segments, like columnar basalt, reaching up to almost twice his height and then spreading out to the sides while also digging still deeper inside. Here and there a few support columns were automatically left behind, but otherwise it had formed a mostly smooth-walled and empty chamber.

A larger chamber than he'd expected, actually. He'd left his flashlight behind along with everything else, but the newly-formed surfaces still had glowing flecks in them that left some dim light to see by. He was definitely several meters further into the levee than expected, and the chamber was wider. Something about the possibly-artificial stone must have been easier to shape and restructure, making the crystals go further than expected. That could be problematic.

As Nate approached the far wall, he could feel the floor vibrating as if a freight train was passing just a few feet away. He didn't need much imagination to visualize what would happen if he was wrong about how long it'd take the crystals to dig out the last part of the tunnel. He'd have to ask about adding time delays in the next batch.

After checking that he had a clear path to the exit, he smacked the crystal into the wall and started running. He was almost out when there was a sudden rush of displaced air and a roar. He got just a momentary glimpse of the jumper hovering overhead before he closed his eyes, dove to one side so he wasn't directly in the way, and took a deep breath. The water slammed into him an instant later and knocked that breath right back out, dragging him along the ground until the line snapped taut and then continuing to bounce him around like a ragdoll as it rushed over him.

Nate had joked about being drown-proofed. He'd passed that and all the other water warfare courses, but it had been a near thing. That training had frightened him in a way that even SERE hadn't. There he'd had the tiny voice saying that they couldn't really hurt him, for all that they did their best to make him forget it. It was all too easy for even the best instructors to lose someone in the water, though. Bound and sinking in a pool, treacherous need to breathe growing ever stronger, he'd been on the verge of absolute panic the entire time. Now the still pool was replaced with a raging torrent; much shallower, yes, probably only a few feet deep, but moving with such force that there was no hope of surfacing and breathing. Despite that, battered and buffeted and blacking out, he felt a calm certainty. His team would fish him out any second, and if not, he'd at least died for a good cause.

He came to spitting mud from his mouth. Brad was kneeling over him wild-eyed, while Sarah was on the other side waving the healing device over him. Ray hovered anxiously behind them. Nate coughed and hacked some more and tried to reach up to stroke Brad's face, but found his bruised arm really didn't want to cooperate. He settled for grabbing his hand.

"If you need mouth to mouth," Ray said, apparently deciding he wasn't going to die that fucking instant, "I volunteer."

Nate gathered the energy to flip him the bird with his free hand.

There was a lot of fussing after that. A fucking ridiculous amount. It started with the team, continued to a pair of corpsmen who showed up twenty minutes later, and didn't relent until he'd spent several hours in the infirmary while the doctors and nurses made sure he hadn't fucked up his lungs or broken any bones. Then the next day half the people of Sartika Sala fussed over him some more, wanting to make sure their rescuer wasn't going to keel over from pneumonia or something called greenwarts, at least until his soul had been saved. It continued on through their pilgrimage two weeks later.

Traditionally, for both clergy and lay pilgrims alike, one was supposed to travel up the river by boat, along with a sponsor. People far downstream had started a month or more ago. Grackle insisted he not risk his health by spending the several days it would take even the fastest boat to cross the distance, assuming it could be done with the still-high water. She reasoned that the Ancestors would hardly object to travelling in one of their own sky-boats. It also let them ferry Sparrow and a dozen other pilgrims stranded by the flood.

The High Temple of the Ancestors was nestled inside a river valley, forty miles up the Sala from the gate and then another fifteen along the tributary, at a spot where the river came pouring off an escarpment and into a lake. It backed onto a low mountain, about half a klick from the docks. The temple had a sprawling main building, in several architectural styles, with a cathedral-sized grand hall rising above the rest on a promontory. Smaller buildings surrounded it, mostly more conventional stone or wood structures, particularly the working buildings whether the permanent staff supported themselves. Sarah spent most of the walk up taking photos and asking Sparrow and Grackle about the history of the building.

They split off to a side door in one of the lower wings of the main complex, rather than the main entrance that the priests and some other travelers were using. "As first-time pilgrims," Grackle explained, "you must complete the rites of cleansing and rid yourselves of impurities before entering the sanctum."

"Um." Nate glanced at Brad, who looked at Ray. Nate didn't want to judge the guys about impurities, since he'd been accumulating quite a few recently, but their idea of libo had always been a bit more extravagant than his. He was pretty sure Sarah was side-eyeing all three of them. "What exactly does cleansing entail?"

"A bath in the mineral springs and a change of clothes," she replied slowly. "Why do offworlders always worry about this?"

"Just want to make sure we're on the same page, that's all."

"Also, there is the unveiling of truths, in which you must tell your companions some personal secret you have never spoken to anyone. The more important, the better."

And there was reason number one no one liked alien rituals. If it wasn't drugs, cannibalism, or some strange sex thing, it was uncomfortable personal shit.

"It sounds delightful," Sarah said. The side-eye was still there but much more speculative. "Please, lead the way."

The baths were legitimately pretty awesome, with a long hot soak in a big marble pool followed by a brief cold plunge. The plain green tunics they were given could have used a few more inches of length, though. Nate was feeling drafty and it was minor miracle that Brad's bits weren't dangling.

They were shown to a small private room, little more than a cell with two padded benches facing each other and a stained-glass window like those of Atlantis in between. Brad and Nate took one and Ray and Sarah settled across from them. The door slid shut with a hiss.

"So," Nate said. "Secrets and truths."

There was an awkward pause. They all had their secrets, but for Nate at least it was hard to come up with something he'd never told anyone at all. Quite a few of the juiciest ones had already been shared with someone he trusted, in many cases with at least one person in the room. On the one hand, most of the embarrassing shit was out; on the other, that left the truly personal things.

"I'll start," Ray said, taking a deep breath. "I'm never going back to Missouri. Like, I'll visit, but I can't live there anymore. Not after having seen the rest of the world. There's too many people there who'll be perfectly polite to you and then start spewing shit about faggots or worrying black folk from St. Louis are going to drive across the state to rob and murder them. Don't get me started on how many times some fucker's bought me a drink because he wants to get off on stories about killing hajis, and excuse me, ma'am, but that's the politest word they use."

"It wasn't that bad any of the times I was there," Nate said with a small frown, thinking back to the Ill-Advised Road Trip and other visits. "Your family seemed like good people."

"You haven't met my dad's side on purpose, LT," Ray said. "I don't expose people to them for the same reason my grand Nevada tour doesn't include manure ponds. There's plenty of school friends I don't hang with anymore, too" He shook his head. "The worst part is the people who can clearly be good and just choose not to. I don't understand how a place that's so beautiful can be such shithole."

"I feel the same way sometimes," Sarah said. "Not for the same reason, obviously, but I can't go home. I tried for a month. Went back to Sheffield - I know, Brad, I put effort into the accent when I went to uni - looked up a few friends. I couldn't fit in anymore. I'd seen too much, every horror matched with a wonder."

Brad shrugged. "I basically hang out with Marines full-time, unless I'm visiting family. I think this is the first place I've consistently interacted with the same civilians since high school."

"I suppose I may as well go," Sarah said. "The great lie of the Goa'uld is that nothing of the host survives. We influence them more than they'd ever admit. The opposite is true, though. Samantha still gets flashes of Jolinar's memories. She was a host for a couple days. I was one for much longer. I don't know how much I've changed because of the experience, and how much is because something of Osiris survives in me."

"It is a little freaky sometimes," Ray said. "But, like, we all get a little freaky? When the Iceman thing gets to be too much, Brad likes to sulk."

"I don't sulk," Brad muttered.

"He hides under shit."

"Or turns into an airplane," Nate helpfully added. "I thought I'd need Doc to sedate him."

"But mostly he hides." Ray waved toward Nate. "And he represses everything like a good little officer until the tiny ball of hyper-compressed rage inside explodes. But you, when you get stressed, you turn into a fucking queen. An evil Disney queen sometimes, but it's fucking beautiful."

For a moment she did exactly that evil queen impression, then cracked a smile. "Thank you, Ray."

There was some unspoken understanding that made them look at Brad. He in turn looked Nate straight in the eyes. "I would have left the Corps for you."

Nate felts his lips quirk up. "I know."

There was a beat of silence. "Oh, come on, Nate," Ray said, "you're not Han fucking Solo."

"It's the thought that counts," Nate said. Those eight words meant more than the three Brad hadn't said yet and probably wouldn't anytime soon.

"Well, since we're not getting anything juicy from the Iceman," Ray said, when it became clear that nothing more was forthcoming, "what dark secret lurks behind that boyish innocence? I hope it's something kinky."

"I would have done anything to bring you all home rather than let you die for such a stupid war," Nate told Brad and Ray. He held up a hand to stall their simultaneous protests. "Let me finish. By the time we reached Baghdad, I'd stopped worrying about civilian casualties. I'd think, how many of them would I trade for one of my guys? How many men from Alpha? I started wondering if I had favorites. That's when I knew I had to leave, because the answer was yes, and sooner or later I'd have to make a choice between what was right for the unit and someone I loved."

"Knowing that about yourself is what makes you a good officer," Brad said softly. "And I know what choice you'd make, because you'd never choose yourself over what's right."

"What about now?" Sarah asked, curious but not accusative in the least.

"One of the beauties of a four-man team is you can focus on your three favorites without worrying about the other twenty." Nate ducked his head, and after a moment's consideration decided to keep spilling. "Don't tell Kate, but I've looked at the stats for SG teams and leaders. Chances are if one of you doesn't come back, neither do I. I'm fine with that."

"Nate," Brad said, taking his hand suddenly. "Promise me you won't… if I..."

"I'm... morbidly optimistic, not suicidal," Nate replied. "I'm not going to die on purpose."

"I fucking hope not," Ray said. "There'd be a riot in SSO if you got yourself killed."

There was a quite pause for a minute. Finally Sarah asked, "Does anyone know how long we're supposed to keep sharing?"

"I lost my virginity to Sarah McCallum and Billy Fox," Ray blurted out. "At the tri-state debate championship my sophomore year. They didn't send nearly enough chaperones to protect our nerdly virtue."

Brad broke down laughing and said, "At least it wasn't fucking band camp." Sarah started laughing too when she spotted Nate's growing blush. "No. Sir, please, no."

"I'm an officer and a gentleman," Nate replied primly, "and a gentleman doesn't kiss and tell."

Alien truth ritual or no, he wasn't going to tell them about his torrid whirlwind summer romance with the fucking star quarterback. Letting them think he'd ever been within ten miles of a band camp was better than that.

"Since we're under the seal of confession," Sarah said, "I'm the one who turned McKay blue for a week."

"I helped," Ray added. "We basically convinced his shower to add food coloring to the body wash it dispenses."

"That's terrible and you should be ashamed," Nate said. "But only because he blamed Botany for it."

"If you're the one who did that," Brad said slowly, "then what did McNeill do? He was up to something."

Ray shook his head. "Man, that boy is fucked up something serious. Like, not in the same way as our favorite psycho killer, but he makes me look normal. What's up with that?"

Nate and Sarah glanced at each other. If his conclusions were right, she knew the prototype and could probably answer any questions far better than he could.

"You could always just ask him," Sarah suggested. "We're sharing our own secrets, not other people's."

"That's no fun." Ray rolled his eyes. "Personally, I'm thinking alien refugee."

"Maybe he's a robot," Brad offered.

"Or someone's secret love child." Ray shot Nate a mischievous look. "Did I ever tell anyone I fucked an officer once? Well, more than once."

"What?" Brad squawked, going from zero to outraged in one second.

"Don't worry, Brad. He didn't exploit my ass too much while we made sweet, sweet love."

"You understand he's just baiting you, right?" Sarah said. "He wants to accuse you of hypocrisy."

"Although now that I think about it, maybe I was exploited. The only payment I got was a package of Ding Dongs. I should have held out for gun lube like someone else did."

"Ray," Nate said, "stop provoking Brad."

Brad scowled. "You better not be lying in the middle of our sacred truth ritual and screwing it up."

"Brad, stop being provoked." Nate looked at Sarah. "Imagine this, only with two dozen more of them. And a journalist writing down every stupid thing they say or do."

"It sounds like primary school, but with more guns."

There was a fortuitous knock at the door. A few moments later it slid open again, revealing several acolytes dressed in teal robes. "Honored pilgrims, please come with us. The service will begin soon."

The team was led up to the great cathedral hall. It was a stunning sight. The rows of plain wooden pews would fit right in with any similarly-sized church or other worship hall on Earth, but the building itself stood out as being light and open in a way only the most modern ones were. The white stone might have been plain under most circumstances, but with sunlight streaming in from many windows it was painted with a shifting rainbow of colors. Thousands upon thousands of crystals filled the space, some in frames or murals on the lower walls, but far more suspended by thin wires overhead where they could catch and refract the sunlight. Rotating chandeliers kept the light shifting and moving.

The worship ceremony itself was very similar to the Episcopalian services of Nate's youth, if a bit livelier and heavier on music. Readings from sacred texts, sermons about the virtues prescribed by the Ancestors and in particular helping your neighbor in time of need, some choral pieces and songs sung by the whole congregation - and, of course, lots of fidgeting by some members of the party. Ray and Sarah kept whispering into each others' ears and subtly pointing at the decorations, and Nate had to elbow Ray a few times to get him to simmer down while he was trying to pay attention to the theology.

"Okay, children," Brad said after the last sermon ended and people started getting up and chatting. "What's got you so agitated?"

"These crystals," Sarah said, walking over to one of the display racks along the wall. "They're all DHD parts. Like this big red one? It's a master control crystal, just cut down differently."

"Except they can't just be from DHDs, because even if they pried one open and pulled it out, they could never get home," Ray continued. "So where the hell did they come from?"

"And this one!" Sarah said, moving on to an even more elaborate display. There was a mandala of small blue, orange, and red crystals swirling around a coruscating toroidal crystal, about the size and shape of a Christmas wreath made of spiky opal. "It's got to be the muon-catalytic crystal for the cold fusion core in the base. I've only seen one outside the casing in photos."

Ray nodded. "It looks a lot like a jumper power cell, just bigger and fancier. Probably because it has to last fifty fu - million years."

Nate looked at Brad. Brad looked at Nate. It was times like this that reminded Nate that for all he had a masters degree and had been acclaimed the king of sociology, that crown rested on his head because he was the only one who'd put up with it and not because he had even begun to fathom the true depths of the scientific bullshit that Atlantis floated on.

He spotted Sparrow and flagged him down. The gangly man had acquired a small plate of cheeses, sausage slices, and pastries from somewhere - apparently the ancestral temple believed strongly in post-prostration buffets - but the whole peaceful explorer thing had to come before snacks.

"Where do you get these crystals?" Nate asked. "They're beautiful."

"Oh, those are all grown down in the old temple," Sparrow replied. "The Ancestral structure, I mean. Most of this was all built sometime in the second Whitestone era, nine hundred years ago or so. And that was replacing the first Whitestone temple after the Wraith bombed it."

"Would it be permissible for us to see it?"

Sparrow glanced back, like he'd rather see the buffet again, but nodded. "Of course, anything for our friends. Follow me."

He led them deeper into the temple, down several flights of stairs and toward where it met the mountainside. At one point the architecture changed, from the white stone of the temple to something closer to a khaki sandstone. It wasn't Lantean, precisely, but it did resemble the material used by many Ancient structures in the Milky Way, where a more naturalistic style was common.

The room they ended up in seemed a natural cavern carved from the living rock, but with a vast vaulted ceiling supported by artificial arches that had built-in lighting. Water trickled out of the walls to gather in pools, ranging in size from a birdbath to a hot tub, inside of which crystals of various shapes and colors were forming.

"The crystals grow in the pools over time," Sparrow explained. "The temple acolytes have to harvest them regularly or they get too large and clog things up. They're used for sacred art, here or in the other temples, or sold to support our works."

"What about the circular ones?" Sarah asked.

He shook head. "Oh, those we can't make anymore. It's said that generations ago, there was another chamber, but it disappeared after a Wraith attack. Probably just a legend - many thousands of young men and women have explored every inch of temple and caves, and never found anything."

"Hey," Brad said sharply. "Ray."

Nate looked over his shoulder to see Ray had wandered back to the far side of the cavern. There was a flat wall there, painted over with some sort of abstracted landscape art, along with passages leading out to the left and right.

"Can't you guys hear that?" Ray asked. He started running his hands along the wall. Without warning a good twenty-foot section retreated back, invisible seams splitting open as it retracted in several directions. "Once again, I prove all those years of jokes about my ancestry wrong."

"Shit." Brad shook his head, and as they all walked over to Ray, he muttered to Nate, "We are never going to live this gene bullshit down, are we?"

"You aren't," Nate murmured back. "I never called him an inbred whiskey-tango goat fucker. In fact, I assured him he could be the first person in Nevada, Missouri to get a college degree."

The new room was definitely Ancient in origin, and much more lab-like than the outer one. It was about thirty feet wide and a hundred or so long, with dozens of waist-high circular pillars along each side. They were all topped with metal basics, each containing water and one of the toroidal DHD crystals. Elegant drainage spouts ran from the wall to the basins, dripping a slow trickle of oily water into each. Holographic status displays flickered on the back wall, where standard Ancient control consoles stood.

"I need to get the aunts and uncles," Sparrow said, backing out wide-eyed and dashing for the stairs.

Sarah looked like she was going to start reenacting the dinner from When Harry Met Sally. "This is amazing. It looks like they just grow from seed crystals and mineral water. If we can analyse the contents, we can finally figure out what the reagents are."

"I know, right?" Ray replied. He practically sticking his face in one of the basins. "These are metal on the inside. Electromagnetic, maybe?"

"Use a static charge to shape the crystal growth?"

"Yeah."

"It makes sense."

"Use your words, guys," Nate chided. "What's so great about the fancy crystals?"

"We've got all sorts of machines back in Atlantis that shit out crystals, right?" Ray said. "The Ancients loved the things, used them in everything. But you need to know what sort of feedstock to put in and have the right recipe program, and no one's got a fucking clue what goes into a DHD power core."

"It's like baking a cake. The process is non-reversible," Sarah told them. "You can figure out what the general chemical composition is afterward, but that won't tell you how many eggs or sticks of butter went in originally."

"I bet we can find a faster way than this to make 'em, too. The Ancients would have only needed a few a century, if that, but when they first settled Pegasus I bet Atlantis built DHDs by the thousands. Database might tell us where to find the machines now that we have a better idea of what to search for." Ray grinned. "The physical scientists are going to shit their pants when they realized we turned up something this useful."

Brad rolled his eyes. "Okay, I get it, we've uncovered the mecca of hippie love crystals."

"No, seriously," Ray said. "Back before they got naquadah generators, the SGC had to install these fuckoff-huge naval gas turbines to power the gate without blacking out the rest of the mountain. It used a bajillion dollars in jet fuel for every minute the wormhole was active. One of these can do the same thing using nothing but a bit of air or water. Dr. Z will fucking cream himself if we can stop running our gate off the naqs."

Sarah shook her head. "Never mind him, if we can grow fusion crystals easily, it solves all the problems of civilian power generation on Earth. Naquadah generators are too easy to explode, but these are perfectly safe. You could have one or a dozen in every town on the planet."

"What are ZPMs made of?" Nate asked. They looked vaguely crystal-like, albeit nothing like these, and he'd never gotten a straight answer on how they worked beyond the basic principles.

"Who knows, maybe there's something about them here."

Nate grimaced. It was a great find, and had probably just secured funding for all the outreach projects he could dream of, but there was a downside. "We're going to have to get McKay in here to look it all over."

"Turn that frown upside down, sir," Brad said with a faint smile. "There's a bright side to that."

"Oh?"

"McKay and Sheppard are going to have to do a truth ritual."

Chapter Text

It was a quiet day on the east pier, save for the occasional loud, long buzz of giant angry bees as the Mighty MALP flung streams of hypersonic projectiles out to sea before an admiring crowd. It'd seemed like as good a time as any to introduce the command staff to it: Caldwell was around, de-snaked and much less grumpy, and both Elizabeth and Sheppard were in good moods because they'd flipped the Genii from enemies to maybe-allies courtesy of one tiny nuclear coup. There hadn't even been any particularly spectacular sour missions in over a month, excepting Lorne and his team being briefly mistaken for dead.

"You know this is fucking terrible, right?" Brad told Nate as the two of them leaned against a wall and observed. They weren't standing any closer together than they ever had before, which was to say they were practically touching. Just two Marines with no sense of personal space, bros being bros and constructing intricate rituals, nothing to see here.

"Portable air defense that could save thousands of lives?" Nate replied. "I see what you mean."

"Giving him attention, recognition, and approval."

Ray was busy waving his hands around and regaling Sheppard and Weir with some sort of elaborate explanation about the size of his weapon. At least Nate hoped that was what it was; most of the alternatives were too horrible to contemplate.

"You should be proud. He's a credit to his sergeant."

"I'm proud, I just don't think we should overdo the praise." Brad was smiling, though. Not obviously, no, but there was a distinct difference between his thin-lipped pissy expression and his thin-lipped suppressed happiness. "It makes his head too big."

"Two-thirds of this is Farah and Laura," Nate replied. "It'll be worse if he cracks the safe interstellar signaling problem. That's almost all his work, even if Carter's checking the math."

"When he cracks it."

"Don't overdo the praise, gunny."

"It doesn't count if he can't hear it."

"You know, I've heard marines phrase 'no homo' a lot of ways," Nate observed. "It's not gay if you need to cuddle to share warmth. It's not gay if you're on top. But now we've got it's rare cousin: it's not affection if I sound grouchy enough."

"I have no affection for that sad, scrawny, suppurating excuse for a marine," Brad replied, "and if you continue to imply otherwise, there's not going to be any more warmth-sharing in your future."

The gauss rifle cracked again, followed swiftly by a loud and familiar, "Oh, fuck!"

They both looked over at Ray, and then followed his gaze - and that of all the other senior officers and leaders - out to sea, where a few dozen meters away there was a large cloud of bloody feathers slowly falling into water. The coloration looked suspiciously like the goose-sized seabirds that hung out around the city, a flock of which were circling overhead and honking angrily.

"Uh, sorry about my french, ma'am. Sir. That was an accident, it just got in the way." Ray nudged Cadman with an elbow. "Right?"

She nodded. "Absolutely."

"We should probably intervene," Nate murmured, "before he convinces Elizabeth I authorized a fully automated luxury death robot."

"You kind of did."

He really had, and he should have seen it coming when the request for a copy of the Deds' point defense software had gone across his desk. He'd seen Kleineman operate the system during battle drills; he just pressed a button and three dozen railguns shot at whatever they felt like.

"Excuse me?" someone said near the door. "I'm looking for Major Lorne?"

"He's right over," Nate said, then stopped. He'd never been one to facepalm - if he felt like being a fucking drama queen, there were other options - but sometimes he could see the attraction.

"Captain Fick!" Hasser said, grinning. He'd lost the last of the baby fat and gained a long, barely visible scar across his temple, but he still looked too young to be drinking, let alone to have hit sergeant. "Brad! What are you doing here?"

"Funny, I was going to say the same thing," Nate said, shaking his offered hand.

"Honestly, sir, I don't know. They said the posting was with a Marine unit, but the only people on the ship were the Air Force crew, some scientists, and a dozen Canadian sappers."

"Oh, hey, my mail-order marine came in," Lorne said, ambling over. He had a broad grin. "I figured the recon marine thing was working well for you, so I'd give it a try."

"You have no one to blame but yourself," Brad told Nate. "You brag about us too much."

"So have you guys seen the photos yet?" Hasser asked. "Of little Bradley Nathaniel Trombley."

"Oh, fuck," Nate said.

Brad eyed Hasser suspiciously. "Did Ray put you up to this?"

"No, I haven't actually talked with him in quite a while," Hasser got that sad little frown of his. "He said he got a nice job somewhere, but he's been super vague about it. He claims the NSA reads his email. You know if he's okay?"

"I don't think anyone would call him okay," Lorne said, nodding toward the miniature death machine and its admirers. "But he seems happy."

Hasser followed Lorne's look and saw Ray and his toy. He frown actually grew a bit. "Captain, why does he have a robot with a gun, and who thought that was a good idea?"

"Welcome to Atlantis, Walt," Nate said, clapping him on the shoulder. "It's a little nuts here, but I think you'll like it. If not, well, you're stuck in this galaxy anyways. Just relax and try not to worry."