Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

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Art by mific

Part I: your sons and your daughters

Jonn got up in the morning chill, pulling on a clean flight suit directly over the clothes he'd slept in. Insulated gloves, too, and an extra pair of socks. "The fuck ya doin', Shep?" Mitch slurred from inside his cocoon of blankets, shifting without opening his eyes.

"Preflight," Jonn said quietly. "Go back to sleep."

Mitch muttered something indistinct and most likely obscene, and rolled over; Dex, on the next bunk over, slept right on through, and never even quit snoring. Jonn shoved his boots on and pulled a watch cap down over his ears, then snagged his parka off its hook and ventured out of the bunkhouse.

Brassy sunlight reflected off patches of ice on the ground, and in the distance the edge of the sea wall glittered pink and gold and lavender from the sunlight. Jonn took a deep breath, coughing a little on the cold air, before he headed to the mess hall; halfway there he broke into a jog, for the warmth. His boots crunched on the frosty regolith, and left gritty, orangish prints on the floor of the old airlock that functioned as a front door. The mess was almost empty at this hour, a few early risers mingling with those heading to bed from the third shift, both bleary and quiet over coffee and toast. Under a layer of grime and scuff marks, you could still make out the old logo of the Mars Defensive Perimeter inlaid in the middle of the floor; Hope of the Home World! declared a mural along the far wall, with a broad-shouldered figure in an old-fashioned space suit pointing one finger off into a sea of stars. Somebody had hung a flier for a poker tournament over his face.

Jonn lingered just long enough to fill up on coffee, which took the edge off his fatigue but didn't do much to warm his hands and feet. Then back out in the cold, out to the airstrip where the winds howled down off the sea in screaming gales even on a good-weather day. The shuttle was waiting for him, its maintenance logs hanging on the pilot's-side door. He didn't bother to look at them before he started his own inspection.

When he was still chipping crusts of carbon off the edges of the plasma vents, Mitch wandered over with a thermos that steamed in the frosty air. "You're fucking nuts, Shep," he said conversationally.

"And yet you brought me coffee," Jonn said, sitting up. "Love you, too, asshole."

Mitch loudly slurped from the thermos before he passed it over. "What's with the early wake-up call? Nobody's on patrol until oh-eight-hundred."

"Special assignment," Jonn told him. He'd taken his gloves off to adjust some couplings, and the heat of the thermos felt good on his frozen fingers. Also, there was never too much coffee.

Mitch snorted. "Yeah, right. Who'd you piss off this time?"

Jonn sipped the coffee; it was so sweet he could nearly feel his teeth start to dissolve on contact. "Starfleet Command."

He passed thermos back and Mitch almost dropped it; he fumbled and caught it with a funny half-smile on his face, as if he wasn't quite sure where the punchline was coming from but already knew it would be good. "What's Starfleet got to do with the Perimeter?" he finally asked. "I thought they'd forgotten about us like fifty years ago."

Jonn shrugged. "Over my pay grade. All I know is the flight plan and the passenger." A Starfleet admiral en route to Clarke Station, Iapetus, and why the hell he couldn't just hitch a ride on one of his own damn ships instead of using the Perimeter as a taxi service—well, that was over Jonn's pay grade too.

Mitch shook his head. "Fuck me backwards. Hey, whoever it is, ask him if we're ever gonna get comp grade on retirement benefits? I been out here long enough for a fucking commodore's pension."

"Gimme the coffee and fuck off," Jonn suggested. "I got work to do."

"Love you too, Shep!" Mitch said, but he left the thermos on the ground when he ambled back to the base.

Jonn finished tuning up and finished the coffee, in that order, and then retreated into the cockpit of the shuttle for warmth. The cargo compartment was sealed and depressurized to conserve life support, since it was just him and the passenger for this one. Three hours to Iapetus, a little more than that for the return trip to account for planetary motion. Glorified taxi service. Still, it'd be the first time in the past month he'd even left orbit.

The admiral arrived on a skimmer, with Kasseinova driving; she cut a deep turn as she came to a stop, antigravs shimmering over the dusty synthecrete as the bottom of the skimmer dipped dangerously low. She flipped a half-wave, half-salute at Jonn and called out "He's all yours!" as the admiral climbed down from the passenger side; he thanked her as he grabbed his bag off the back, but his words were half-swallowed as she revved the chuttering engine and raced back to the garage. Jonn was actually kind of surprised she even stopped long enough for him to get off.

In the interest of courtesy, Jonn told the man in the black parka, "Don't mind her, sir, she's like that with everybody."

"So I noticed," the admiral said, adjusting his grip on his jump bag. He raised an eyebrow when he took in the shuttle in all her glory. "That's my ride, I take it?"

"She's faster than she looks," Jonn said, thumping the scratched hull plates.

"She looks older than you do," the admiral shot back.

"That's the Perimeter, sir: where starships go to die." Jonn picked up the light helmet out of the pilot-side knee well and put it on directly over his cap. "You might want to strap in, by the way. She doesn't corner too well anymore."

The admiral just shook his head, but he knew where to stow his bag and coat, and how to secure the harness. Jonn went through his preflight with the base controller and Mars spacelane control, jiggling the switches as necessary in order to get the instrument reading he wanted. "Flight, this is shuttle Marquette-One-Niner-Kappa en route to Clarke Station, requesting permission to launch."

"Shuttle Marquette-One-Niner-Kappa, this is Flight, you are cleared for orbital exit."

He eased the shuttle up, mindful of the wind, coaxing the balky atmospheric thrusters to escape velocity. The base fell away below them, a rusty eye of aging buildings and eroded airstrips surrounded on almost all sides by the ever-rising Uchronia Sea. "Not half bad with the old girl," the admiral observed as they ascended. "Where'd you learn to fly a Marquette class shuttle?"

"Same place I learned to fly Hudsons, Popovs, Curies, Sanbaos..."

The admiral whistled lowly. "That's a lot of training for the Perimeter."

"We fly what we have," Jonn said. "You learn a lot of stuff on Mars."

"I suppose I'm a bit biased," the admiral admitted, making a face. "It's not exactly my favorite planet in this system."

Jonn engaged the impulse engines and turned the nose of the shuttle up, straight into the sky, which darkened as they rose. "I kind of like it here, actually," he said.

The admiral looked over at him. "You like it here?" he echoed, eyebrows briefly disappearing under his own helmet.

Jonn just shrugged. "Home is where you file your flight plan, y'know? Leaving atmosphere now, sir. ETA three hours."

They didn't speak again until he was out of Martian space—really out in space, even if the crowded lanes between the worlds of Sol hardly counted as space travel. That was when the admiral said, "What's your name, Flight Officer?"

"Sheppard, sir."

He had been about to make a minute course correction; the admiral sudden reached over and rested his hand on the controls, just barely blocking them off. "Flight Officer Sheppard, I'm going to request we finish this journey under radio silence," he said calmly. "If anyone hails us, respond only with the call sign Sierra-Gulf-Zero-Alpha. You can resume flying under Marquette-One-Niner-Kappa when you return to the inner system."

"Sir?" Jonn asked, licking his lips.

"Just think of it as a favor," the admiral said, and for the first time Jonn caught a bit of a smile on his stoney face. "I think your orders mentioned something about a security clearance?"

"I wasn't aware I had one, sir," Jonn said.

"You do now."

The admiral removed his hand, and Jonn tweaked them back onto course. Then he reset the shuttle's transponder to the new call sign as ordered. He wasn't sure if he really wanted to ask any of the questions that sprang to mind, whether they would get him any answers or not. Over your pay grade, he told himself sternly. Enjoy the damn flight.

Past Ceres, traffic opened out; Jupiter was way out of their flight path, as were most of the orbiting platforms, so there was nothing to look at but the slow parralax of the star field. Saturn started out as just a speck in the windows, a speck that gradually grew and brightened against the black, and by infinitesimal degrees took on a shape and color. Jonn could've programmed the flight path and spent the rest of the trip picking his nose, if he'd wanted to, but he liked the excuse to keep his hands on the controls. The admiral did a crossword puzzle. They didn't speak.

The planet swelled and filled the forward windows, with the famous rings and the thousand-year storms on its skin; eventually it became more of a background than an object, moonlets tumbling against the pale bands of clouds. Titan Control acknowledged them as they circled around, and didn't seem too worried about the strange call sign; they passed by a hydrogen refinery without even a ping. And then there was Iapetus, nearly eclipsed, with its big black spot like a dark eye. Clarke Station, hovering above, made the pupil: it had started out like the MDP, an outpost to defend a system that no longer needed defending, but unlike Jonn's base on Uchronia Planitia, Clarke had been reborn under the aegis of Starfleet. It still had the stern, clumsy profile of an old military base, but rumor had it that if anything happened to old Mama Earth, all of Starfleet operations could relocate to Clarke to prepare for the relief effort...or the counterstrike, depending on circumstances.

As they passed within range, Jonn asked, "Permission to hail the base, sir?"

"Go ahead, Sheppard," the admiral said, not looking up from his padd.

But just as Jonn reached out to toggle the communications switch, an emergency broadcase forces a channel open on its own. "All inbound craft, we have an unmanned drone that can seek a target on its own," a calm male voice announced. "Shut down your engines immediately and go into unpowered standby. This is not a drill. I repeat, all inbound craft..."

"What the hell are they talking about?" Jonn muttered, automatically checking his sensor screens. Didn't look like anybody else was even on this side of the planet...

The admiral, however, had looked up from his puzzle with a grim expression. "You heard the man, Sheppard."

"What do they mean, drone—?" he started to ask, even as he reached for the engine controls. It would take a few minutes for them to cycle down to idle, before he could safely shut them down—and then they'd have perhaps ten minutes of air left, on residual life support. The depressurized cargo hold didn't seem like such a great idea anymore.

But before he could finish his sentence, he saw a speck of light cross the moon's profile. A speck that curved in a way no meteor or photon torpedo could. A speck that was suddenly coming towards them.

"Too late," he said, and activated the shields—such as they were on a Marquette—instead.

The admiral let his padd drop and opened the active sensors on the copilot's station with practiced ease. "It's got a lock on us," he said as the speck of light—the drone?—grew brighter with proximity. "Weapons powering on."

"Hang on," Jonn said, and took a deep breath.

The drone, whatever that meant, was closing on them fast—too fast, he thought, faster than anything he'd ever seen in Sol. But objects in motion tended to stay in motion, and while a Marquette might not win any awards for handling, their maneuvering thrusters were overpowered for their size. "Now might be a good time to try some evasive maneuvers," the admiral said anxiously as the drone closed the distance, showing off a profile meant for atmospheric flight—fat teardrop body, slightly forward-swept wings.

"Trust me," Jonn said. The admiral started to say something to that, then just shook his head.

At the last possible second, he rolled off to starboard, away from the atmosphere. He could feel the delayed jerk when the inertial dampeners maxed out, but the drone's volley of plasma sailed wide, and it overshot their position...and then banked sharply around for another pass.

"What the hell is this thing?" he blurted.

"Pull up," the admiral snapped. "Get out of its range."

But that wasn't too damn likely—by the looks of things the drone was faster than a Marquette on its best day, and the best day for this one had been a decade ago. Instead Jonn rolled the other direction, closer to the moon, as the drone made its return pass. This time the inertial dampeners cut out sooner, and the proximity sensors wailed in protest.

The admiral played the sensor board. "It's coming around again. We need to get out of here, Sheppard."

"Got a better idea," Jonn said, and went into a straight dive. He could buy some acceleration from the gravity well, albeit not much; that wasn't the point anyway. On the HUD he watched the hull temperature rising as he hit atmosphere, and the shield began drawing more and more power to compensate for the friction. The drone was still on their tail, but its shell temperature was rising, too, and its weapons—two stubby cannons under the wings—seemed to be fixed in position; on their curved trajectory, each volley of light went wide, under the Marquette's belly and into the ice.

The other thing rising was the air temperature in the cabin. "Are you trying to blow a power coupling?" the admiral asked incredulously. "Pull up!"

"Just trust me on this," he said, and angled the shuttle even closer to the cratered surface.

They burst around the terminus into weak daylight, and the shields hit their maximum draw. Now the hull temperature really started to spike. The drone was closing fast, and matching their trajectory...they were perilously close to the surface, and the atmosphere was just thick enough for turbulence. He watched the altimeter drop precipitously—

"Sheppard, what the hell are you doing?"

He reached for the thrusters. "Pulling up."

He stopped acceleration for a moment and threw the Marquette into an awkward spin. Somewhere in the cabin ceiling, something sparked and burned, and the structural integrity system went totally red. For a moment they were falling upside-down, for a moment the drone appeared to be coming right for them in a halo of burning gasses, and then Jonn goosed the engines. Come on, old girl, give me just a little bit more—

The inertial dampeners coughed, and change in delta-vee was enough to slam them both forward; Jonn's face bounced off the console in front of him, and only the rim of his helmet kept him from breaking his nose. A moment after that, he felt the whole shuttle rattle with the shockwave of the drone's passage. "Holy Hannah," the admiral muttered, bracing himself with both arms on the edge of his board.

Jonn shook his head to focus himself, and scanned behind them for an impact crater or a debris field of something. Instead he saw the drone, still impossibly not destroyed, matching their new course. No fucking way, he thought, blinking, no goddamn way is that even possible, that thing should've broken up or crashed or fried—

"It's gaining on us again," the admiral said, still a little dazed.

There was one last thing to try, one very stupid thing that would either work or get them killed in extra-dramatic fashion. Jonn plotted the course with one hand while guiding the shuttle higher with the other. "Get ready to route everything we've got to structural integrity," he told the admiral. Then remembered to add, "Sir."

The older man stared at him. "We don't have much left after that little stunt, Sheppard."

He dropped the shields—they weren't going to be much use anyway if that thing scored a hit—and after a moment, started dialing down the inertial dampeners. In the remote likelihood that this worked, he was going to need all the inertia he could get. "This is gonna hurt," he warned the admiral.

"So will getting shot down," he shot back, bracing himself against the slowly rising g-forces.

This had to be timed just right. He carefully adjusted their course, trying to ignore the drone bearing down on them, and hoped that his rough mental math would pan out. Only when he was absolutely sure they were pointed the right direction did he access the main engine controls, the ones that you weren't supposed to be able to alter in mid-flight. All the Marquettes on the Perimeter had the same passcodes, though, and he had no trouble opening up the systems he needed.

"Brace yourself, sir," he warned, watching the drone come closer—closer than he'd let it get so far, because this all relied on timing. He adjusted the engine's intermix ratios, pouring antimatter into the reactor far faster than it could be used, sending the core temperatures spiking dangerously. There was more sparking and burning inside the walls, as power couplings failed under their new load. The inertial dampeners failed completely with a shudder and lurch. The drone was within meters of their position...no, feet...its cannons crackled as it built up a charge...

And then Jonn hit the emergency release valves. Plasma and antimatter belched out of the back of the shuttle and enveloped the drone; the resulting shock wave was a kick in the ass that sent the Marquette leaping forward, and without inertial dampeners the gees were oppressive, plastering Jonn back into his seat like a smothering hand.

And then, silence.

"What in the name of Hell did you do?" the admiral asked hoarsely, as the acceleration subsided.

"We're ballistic," Jonn said. The artificial gravity relied on the inertial dampeners, and the absence of both had his stomach doing a slow, unpleasant roll, but at least he hadn't blown the back end of the shuttle off. "Emergency engine shutdown. Even if it avoided the plasma cloud, the fighter can't have a lock on us now."

For the moment, the admiral actually looked impressed. "Is our orbit stable?" he asked.

Jonn forced a smile, though his face still stung from its encounter with the console. "I'm hoping we won't be here long enough to find out."

On cue, the emergency radio crackled to life. "The drone has been disabled and recalled. All clear. Sierra-Gulf-Zero-Alpha, what's your status?"

"Sierra-Gulf-Zero-Alpha to Clarke Station, we've taken some damage," Jonn replied. (The admiral snorted.) "I had to vent the engine core and I have limited thrusters and no inertial dampeners, so I'd really appreciate a lift into dock."

"Roger that, Sierra-Gulf-Zero-Alpha. Any injuries?"

"Negative, Clarke Station," Jonn said.

"Make that affirmative but minor, Walter," the admiral said. "My chauffeur here is going to need to get patched up. Have Dr. Fraiser see to him personally."

Jonn frowned, and touched the bridge of his nose; his fingers came away stained green. He glanced at the admiral, but he was already trying to coax the ship back to life and seemed unsurprised by the the color of Jonn's blood.

"Roger that, Admiral. We've dispatched a craft to tow you into dock, ETA two minutes."

"Ten four, Clarke Station. Sierra-Gulf-Zero-Alpha out."

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Jonn was hustled away from his shuttle as soon as they docked by some very calm, very polite men in red tunics, as the admiral disappeared in the opposite direction. He got sent him through a brisk medical checkpoint, where he had a chance to wash his face and get the abrasions mended, and somebody assured him his shuttle would be repaired. Jonn ended up in the mess hall, nursing a series of caffeinated beverages and trying to figure out what the hell had happened.

Not even Starfleet had technology like that...did they? Shuttles hadn't been used as fighters for decades, not since the advent of modern deflectors, and John had never seen anything maneuver like that thing, ever. But if this was some kind of experimental technology, why the hell were they testing it in such a populated place like the Sol system—even Iapetus was close enough to the space lanes, to colonies, to sensor and communication arrays that a rogue drone like that could do a hell of a lot of damage. What if it had made it as far as Titan? Or that hydrogen refinery?

But on the other hand, if it wasn't Federation technology...well, what the hell else could it be?

The mess hall filled up and emptied out again; an NCO stopped by and told Jonn he'd been assigned a bunk for the night, until he and his shuttle were "cleared" to return to Mars. He took the padd and ignored the yeoman, concentrating on his coffee. Eventually, the lights dimmed for the night cycle, and even the staff filtered out except for one middle-aged human woman presiding over a case of sandwiches and a coffee urn. She came over occasionally to top off Jonn's cup, but otherwise she sorted dishes and silverware onto a shelf in an unhurried way, sometimes humming a little under her breath.

The time on the padd said 0130 when the admiral suddenly put in an appearance. He didn't seem surprised to find Jonn there, awake and alone. "Flight Officer Sheppard," he said, nodding a little as he sat down.

"Admiral," Jonn said. He knew it was so far above his pay grade, beyond his concern, that he shouldn't even be thinking about it, but damn it— "You want to tell me what I nearly died for today?"

Instead, the admiral studied him for a moment. "Jonn Sheppard," he said after a while, drawing out the nn like a proper Vulcan name. "Your mother was Commander T'Perr of the Kelvin, am I right?"

"Yes, sir," Jonn said stiffly.

"She was one of Starfleet's finest officers," the admiral continued. "Brilliant, courageous—I had a chance to hear her speak at the Academy on the ethics of first contact once. An amazing woman."

Jonn looked into the dregs of his coffee. "Yeah, I wouldn't know."

"No," the admiral said softly after a while. "You wouldn't, would you? You must've been, what, two years old during the Athos Incident? Younger?"

"What does it matter, sir?" Jonn shot back, glaring.

The admiral took his venom in stride. "I have never seen anyone fly a Marquette-class shuttle like that, and I was assigned to a wing of them back when they were new. You might just be the most naturally gifted pilot I've ever met, and you come from a Starfleet family. So how the hell did you end up wasting your time on the Perimeter?"

Jonn raised his chin. "With all due respect, sir, my mother died before I could remember, and my father builds warp cores to finance his vacation planets. I wanted to fly and the Perimeter let me, and family doesn't have a whole hell of a lot to do with it."

"Did you ever even consider Starfleet?" the admiral pressed.

"You might not have noticed, sir," Jonn said, forcing a smile, "but I'm not real good at following instructions."

The admiral leaned back in his chair and studied him some more. "I can't explain to you what happened today," he finally said. "Because I can't justify giving that kind of security clearance to a Perimeter pilot who never finished his basic education."

"I got my GED," Jonn protested halfheartedly.

The admiral continued. "What I can do is tell you that there are more things in heaven and earth than you've ever dreamed of. And if you were to enlist in Starfleet Academy, you might just get to find out what they are."

Jonn rolled his eyes. "Thanks, sir, but no thanks."

"Your service on the Perimeter would be taken into account," the admiral said—almost pleading at this point, really. "You could be commissioned directly to full lieutenant if you play your cards right. You'd have the opportunity to fly the Federation's most sophisticated ships instead of the broken-down puddle jumpers the Perimeter uses. Four years of school for an officer's stripes and a chance to put your skills to use doing something useful."

"Gee, sir, you don't think the Perimeter is useful?" Jonn asked. "Who's gonna enforce the blood-alcohol limit for inner-system pilots if we don't?"

The admiral stood. "Just think about what I've said, son," he told Jonn with brutal kindness. "And if you change your mind, know I'd be eager to put in a good word for you."

Jonn rolled his eyes. "I don't even know your name, sir."

"Hammond," he replied. "Vice Admiral George Hammond."

"Yeah, thanks," Jonn muttered, as Hammond left the mess hall. The woman sorting silverware watched him go, then raised her eyebrows at Jonn. He carried his empty mug and stained napkin to the dish window before heading to his temporary quarters for the night—not that he actually expected to get any sleep.

Chapter Text

Elizabeth hurried through the streets—well, a Vulcan hurry, strides long but measured no matter how her heart wanted to run. A rare rain was blowing in off the mountains above the Forge, low dark clouds with brownish bellies; they filled all the visible sky, and the few other pedestrians were too intent on their own tasks to worry about one careless alien. Still, she walked, and with her hood up no one gave her a second glance.

Simon's lab was near the Academy, and the receptionist knew Elizabeth on sight and sent her up to his office with only the barest hesitation. Inside she gave in to the urge to fidget, just a little: smoothed out her hair, arranged the sleeves of her robe, felt her pockets again for the box, polarized the window and then cleared it again to watch the gathering storm. She'd have meditated, if she weren't so nervous, which was itself totally illogical since meditation would help her nerves. She'd have to share that one with Simon some time, another "flaw" in human nature for them to quibble over.

He entered in an elegant sweep, stopping precisely in the center of the office and nodding to her, the fall of his robes so precisely tailored they could've been sculpted into place. "Elizabeth."

She stood up straighter and nodded back. "Simon."

"I did not expect you so early today," he said. "What merits this occasion?"

Look at him, not at the window she told herself; not at Vulcan's Forge, the searing desert that was about to see a storm. "I received two pieces of good news today."

"From the embassy, I presume?" he said. "Have you received your appointment?"

Something about that threw her out of her stride, though she couldn't say why. "That was one of them. I've been offered a position as a policy officer right here in the city. They said they've never seen someone score so highly on the Diplomatic Service Exam."

"Hardly a surprise, given your education and aptitudes. But this is indeed excellent news" Simon said, warmly—she had learned to see the warmth in him, with practice. "It is fortunate that you will remain here for a time."

"It would be fortunate," Elizabeth said. And it would be—to stay in this city, on this planet, on the edge of the Forge with its unforgiving heat. She could go far in the Diplomatic Service; she and Simon could finally move in together; she would have five, six years before her posting was up for review, time enough for him to finish his research at the Academy of Sciences. Time enough, perhaps, for many things.

It would be logical. It would be fortunate. It would even be possible.

Simon raised that eyebrow again, suddenly wary. "You speak hypothetically, Elizabeth. Have you made other plans?"

She raised her chin. "I also applied to Starfleet, Simon. I petitioned to use my results on the Diplomatic Service exam in place of their usual entrance exams."

His expressions were so subtle; a line between his eyebrows, the set of his mouth. "You never mentioned this to me."

"I...was uncertain if I would be accepted," she said. "After all, I lack some of the usual qualifications in the hard sciences."

"And yet you still applied."

That was a flat-out accusation, however mild his tone; and Elizabeth turned to watch the brown-bellied clouds over the city rather than look Simon in the eye. "I admit I should I have discussed it with you first," she said. "It was illogical not to include you in any discussion about my future plans, and I am sorry."

He took a step closer to her and said, "Elizabeth, you know more of our culture than any human in the Federation, perhaps save your father. You are the only alien to have studied at our Academy of Sciences. It is logical for you to continue your work here."

"It was my father's work," she blurted, then winced; she heard him sigh. "Simon, I'm not being emotional here."

"Are you not?" he asked coldly. "Are you not indulging in rebellion, by rejecting your father's legacy?"

"I value his legacy highly," Elizabeth said. "But I do not intend to let it define me. I am not his...his replacement, Simon."

"I know you fear being perceived as the beneficiary of nepotism," Simon said in a gentler tone. "But you will have the opportunity to work in other postings. The Pegasus quadrant, perhaps, or one of the Neutral Zones."

"Starfleet works in the Neutral Zones," Elizabeth said. "The Diplomatic Service only works on core worlds—safe worlds."

Reflected in the window, Simon's mouth twitched a little when she said safe. "Is that your goal, then?" he asked. "To seek out danger for its own sake?"

"I want to work where I'm needed," Elizabeth shot back. "My test scores were remarkable, yes? Then why should I limit myself to those worlds where the Federation has already established diplomatic relations? Those jobs don't require someone in the ninety-ninth percentile. It's the Federation's borders where the most delicate situations are, and that's where I can do the most good for the most people."

He did not answer for a moment; a breeze rattled the windows. "And for you and me?" he finally said. "What good shall this do for us?"

She shut her eyes. "I'll have to go through basic officer training," she said. "They've offered me an adjunct position at Starfleet Academy while I get up to speed on the other core requirements. It'll be a few years before I'm assigned to a ship or starbase."

"That does not answer my question."

She turned to face him again; she couldn't even begin to read his expression. "I know the life of a Starfleet officer can be...peripatetic."

The eyebrow again. "You understate, Elizabeth."

She let herself smile, and reached out to very lightly, very carefully touch his hand. "Okay. I know I'll be on long deployments. But I've filed my home of record here. This is where I'll take my leave. This is where I'll always come back to—as long as you're here."

"And here I was beginning to suspect frozen feet," Simon said, curling a finger around hers.

"Cold feet, Simon. The idiom is 'cold feet.'" She took a deep breath. "And that's actually the furthest thing from the truth right now."

"Oh?" he asked.

She let go of his hand and took the box from her pocket. "On Earth, it's usually the man who does this..." she explained as she opened the box. "And usually he gets down on one knee. Somehow I didn't think you'd mind."

He studied the ring without touching it: a plain gold band, nothing more. On a planet where jewelry without cultural significance was unheard of, it had been a struggle to obtain. "This ring is a symbol of commitment among humans, is it not?" he asked softly, almost wonderingly.

"It is. Of betrothal." She took it out and offered it to him on her open hand. "And for us...I hope it will remind you that however far I travel, I always intend to return."

He finally took the ring and studied it again. "It would be...logical," he said after a while. "I believe Starfleet is more accommodating of spouses than lovers."

"They are," Elizabeth said, and if her heart soared she tried not to show it. "I know we haven't discussed this, either, but I thought—when you're finished with this project, or when I'm cleared for active duty. We'll make the time for it."

"Indeed," he said, and tried to put in on his index finger; Elizabeth stepped in again, and when the ring was in place he gripped her hands firmly. "We will find the time."

\\\

Beyond the gates there were adoring throngs and journalists; inside the compound Teyla could hear the birds singing in the courtyard, louder than the audio track from the television. Her luggage was nearly packed: one large, bulky bag and one small one that went over her shoulder, into which fit her entire world. Thirty kilos of luggage, they had told her, which amounted to a little less than fifty-two tann; so little weight for such a long journey.

On the screen, Illis Hattinen was giving a statement. "The Emmagen council seat has been held by proxy for too long. Teyla has a duty to her people—and instead she chooses to abandon us for aliens and heathens?"

There would be candles on Earth, she told herself, but she packed a few anyway, wrapping them in plastic so the scented wax wouldn't stain everything she owned. Incense, too, and a bag of tea, because she was certain the Terran sector had no tava plants, and shipping more from Athos would be a dubious prospect. They would give her uniforms, toiletries, linens; the wardrobes and chests in her bedroom were full of things she'd have to leave behind.

The moderator of the news program asked, "But Halling Alirren has done a capable job as the Emmagen proxy ever since the deaths of Tagan and her husband. And if we are to send one of our people among the Federation—"

Illis cut her off. "If we are to send one, we must send only our best, like a sacrifice to the Wraith?"

Someone tapped lightly on Teyla's door. "Charin, I do not have time eat," she said, trying to force down the flap of her shoulder bag.

The door opened, creaking a little. "She let me in," Kanaan said, and Teyla's heart jumped; she took a deep breath before she turned to face him. "Are you ready?"

"I am nearly packed," Teyla said; and because it was Kanaan, she added, "I do not know if I will ever be ready."

He made a face, twisting the hem of his sweater in his hands, and instead of looking at her glanced at the screen on her wall. The camera still showed the throng outside her gates, and the commentator was saying something about protests at the spaceport as well. "I almost did not get in," Kanaan said. "They are...numerous."

"I am glad you came," Teyla said, and it was even mostly true.

On the screen, the camera angle changed; some of the people outside were carrying signs, signs that said HERO and signs that said TRAITOR, FORWARD WITH THE FEDERATION and WHORE OF THE HEATHENS. "The last time Teyla Emmagen was the focus of such attention was when her father Torren was campaigning for the decriminalization of thought-sharing—" the commentator said, before Teyla finally shut the sound off. The birdsong was much more pleasant, and more intelligent as well.

She looked around the room again, at all the things she would not see for years. At Kanaan, who was staring at her bags. "Will you be able to carry them yourself?" he asked.

"I will be fine," she assured him, meaning so more than that.

He sighed, and finally looked her in the eyes, almost pleading, though for what she wasn't certain. "You will be gone a long time."

"I will see much and learn much," she reminded him. Reminded herself, to be honest. "I may be the first Athosian to join Starfleet, but I very much doubt I will be the last."

"Jinto already wishes to follow you," Kanaan said, one mouth quirking up without much humor.

Teyla rolled her eyes. "Perhaps when he is much older. Though I do not think Halling will allow it." He was already displeased enough at Teyla's choice—displeased, but loyal to the last, to Athos if not to her.

"Halling is wise," Kanaan said weakly. "Your seat is in able hands while you are away."

"Tell that to Illis," she said, giving rein to the irritation while she could. "One moment I am a flighty child to him, the next the true leader of Athos, and always a traitor whether I take my seat on the Council or not."

"Oh, Wraith take him," Charin said, breezing into Teyla's room with a tray of tea. "Kanaan, boy, what are you standing around for? Help her with these heavy things."

Kanaan blushed deeply, and he picked up Teyla's larger bag without seeming to have any idea what to do with it. Teyla rolled her eyes. "Charin, I do not need help. And there is no time for tea."

"There is no time for the last meal we might share together on our own world for years?" Charin said, setting out the bowls and plates. "The car will not come for another fifteen minutes at least."

She looked to Kanaan for help, but he just shrugged, and set the bag down where he'd found it. Teyla sighed. "Then let us have tea. But it must be quick, or I will miss the transport ship."

Charin poured Teyla's tea and passed it to her. "You will miss such things when you are away among the heathens," she said.

"They are not heathens," Teyla said automatically.

"If they have forgotten the Ancestors, they are either heathens or apostates," Charin asserted. "They could worship the Wraith for all we know."

"Do the peoples of the Federation even know of the Wraith?" Kanaan asked, brow furrowed.

Teyla shook her head. "They have their own gods, and their own monsters."

"You see?" Charin said, dropping lumps of sugar into her tea with a plop! "Heathens."

"You cannot dismiss a hundred and fifty worlds as ignorant heathens merely because they do share our faith," Teyla told her, though in truth she'd long ago given up hope of winning this argument with Charin, much less the rest of her people. "We must separate the eternal truths of the Ancestors from the ways those truths are interpreted by mortal minds."

Charin rolled her eyes. "What will you do among the aliens, when you cannot quote your father to solve every argument?"

"Let us not discuss theology now," Kanaan said loudly into his teacup, and for his sake Teyla bit her tongue and did not continue the argument.

They drank tea instead, while on the muted screen there were more arguments, more photographs of Teyla as the emissary, the heroine, the traitor, the child. There was a clip of the speech she had made when she announced her intention to attend Starfleet Academy, which Charin insisted on turning up and watching even though she'd been on the stage at the time. "Since our first contact with the Terran sector twenty-three years ago, our people have prospered immensely by our friendship with the Federation. Now our future lies along the path of full membership, to one day sit at a table as peers rather than as guests. And my future lies as the bridge between our people and theirs, to learn their ways and customs and to teach them ours. If I am to one day lead Athos into the Federation, then I must learn to speak with two tongues: to frame the words of our mothers and foremothers so that even aliens from distant stars can understand."

"Speak with two tongues, I did like that part," Charin said.

"It was a mixed metaphor," Teyla said irately. "Must we listen to this again?"

Thankfully the station cut away again, to a series of clips about the destruction of the USS Kelvin and the subsequent first contact with the Federation. Kanaan turned the sound off again.

Still, they actually saw the car pull up to the house on live television before Charin heard the buzzer ringing. "Oh, no, sit," Charin said, when Teyla made to get up and meet the driver. "I will see to the car. You will finish your tea."

Kanaan let out a slow breath as she left the room. "I was beginning to fear she would pour us another round."

"She fears for me," Teyla said, looking at the dregs in the bottom of her bowl. "And I for her, to tell the truth. When I am gone, she will be alone here, and her health is not good."

"I will visit," Kanaan protested.

Teyla rolled her eyes and began tidying the tea tray. "You are afraid of her."

"She is...formidable," he allowed. "But when you are gone, we will have our loss in common."

He was clearly trying to sound light-hearted, but when he caught her eyes his face was all misery and loneliness; it radiated off of him in waves she could feel, cold and heavy and acutely painful even though she was still here. It took a brief moment before Teyla realized that she was not imagining the sensation: they were sharing thought, or close to it, almost without effort. She mentally recoiled on instinct, and he flinched, looking away again. "Sorry," she said, hating his guilty expression. "I should not—it was unexpected."

"I brought you something," he blurted instead of responding to her. "That is why I came today."

"Not for tea?" Teyla asked, hoping to lighten the mood.

"That was but a pleasant consequence." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bundle wrapped in bright cloth, offering it to her from arm's length. "You do not have to open it now. But I hoped—I thought, perhaps, while you are among aliens, you might like a reminder of home."

The hour was growing late, and from downstairs she could hear Charin talking to the driver of the car—the car that would take her to the spaceport, where a ship would take her to a starbase, where another ship would take her all the way to Earth, a planet she had only read of even as she fought Starfleet and her people for the chance to go there. She took the time to unwrap the bundle anyway, because it was Kanaan, and because she would miss him.

The cloth fell away and an icon fell out. It was small enough to fit easily into the hollow of her palm, a stout wooden disc on a leather thong: a ring of the Ancestors was burnt onto one side with cobweb-thin lines, while on the other was the stellar coordinates for Athos, written in elegant, angular calligraphy. She had not worn such an icon for many years, not since the death of her father; he had disliked such overt symbols, insisting that they too often served as a substitute for genuine faith. Those who set their eyes on the truth of the Ancestors have no need to tell others; it is obvious in all they say and do.

But she was going to live among aliens who did not even know that the Ancestors existed. For that reason, and because it was Kanaan, she smiled, making him blush. "Thank you," she said, closing her hand around the disc. "It is beautiful."

"Will you write, from Starfleet?" he blurted, then bit his lip as if the words had escaped him.

She leaned over the tea tray to embrace him, but this time they were both careful to keep their thoughts tightly to themselves, and she could not sense anything that was not writ plain on his face. "I will write to all of you, of all the wonderous things I shall learn," she promised, and kissed him on the cheek. That just made him blush. "Ride with me to the spaceport, Kanaan. Stand with me before all of Athos. Let the fools wave their signs while we prepare for our future."

He stood up a little straighter and nodded, and whether he believed in her or not, he said, "Of course." Teyla took up her bags, and shut off the screen, and they walked down to the car side by side.

\\\

Rodney almost stumbled running up the stairs, and that would've been just the capper for the night, a dramatic exit turned into slapstick. He threw his bedroom door open so hard it recoiled off the wall, scuffing the paint, and dragged his suitcases from under his bed, knocking over trophies and starship models when he bumped into his bookshelf. He kicked at a miniature Parliament-class ship, and its warp nacelle snapped off when it hit the corner of his desk; downstairs he could hear his mother swearing, shrieking, and his father just talking right over the top of her.

His plans were already in place; he'd just have put them into motion a little early. Let them try calling him a child after this.

He pushed the broken model aside, along with the padd of letters; We regret to inform you and it is unfortunate and next year all went onto the floor while he lifted another padd out of its hiding place between the desk and the wall. That was the only one that mattered—well, that one and his thesis. That was the one where the letter started with It is our pleasure, and that was the one with the files that would set him free forever. All he had to do was send them.

After all the stomping and screaming and slamming of doors, Jeannie's voice was surprisingly quiet. "What are you doing?" she asked, and sniffed loudly, like she'd been crying.

Rodney jumped and pressed the padd to his chest. "Ahh! Nothing! What's it look like I'm doing?"

There was a moment's pause, presumably when she took in the yawning suitcases on the bed and floor. "Are you leaving?" she demanded, and in the process hit a not that could shatter glass.

"Close the damn door!" Rodney hissed, glaring at her. Her red eyes and outraged expression made him feel a little bad for snapping at her, but only a little, because even a kid should realize that running away required the element of surprise. Wasn't she supposed to be smart?

"You can't!" she shrieked again, so Rodney had to cross the room and slam it for her. (It cut off the sound of their parents almost entirely; probably they hadn't even noticed the noise from Rodney's room. Probably.) Jeannie took the opportunity to grab at the front of his shirt and cling. "Mer, don't go! You can't go!"

"You seriously expect me to stay here after this?" he asked her; he tried to pull away, but she staggered after him, nearly tipping him over.

"He didn't mean it!" Jeannie said. "He's just angry 'cause he thinks you don't want to study at UBC with him!"

Rodney rolled his eyes. "He's jealous, Jeannie, can't you see that?" He managed to shake her off and started packing: socks, underwear, all the deodorant he could find without going into the linen closet. Who knew when he might get his next shower? "He knows I'm going to surpass him someday and he's trying to hold me back."

"Maybe he just doesn't want you to go a million miles away!" Jeannie threw something at his head—a plush polar bear Mum had bought him at some nature park up in Nunavut, on one of her many "vacations" that he and Jeannie hadn't been allowed to take part in. It bounced off his shoulder. "You ever think of that, you...you big dummy!"

Rodney laughed at that. "Come on, Jeannie, when's he ever treated either of us like anything but...but trophies for showing off? He hasn't got a paternal bone in his body. That man—" He froze, hearing the unexpected echo of his mother's voice in his own. That man doesn't give a damn about any us, he doesn't appreciate all the things I do, you know you'd all be dead of starvation if he'd had his way...

Jeannie didn't miss a beat. "You're just saying that 'cause Mum says it!" she said, and threw something else at him—a shoe this time, that thankfully went wide. "Just 'cause you're her favorite!"

"Don't be juvenile," he told her, dragging his attention back to the task at hand. Plenty of non-underwear clothes, including cold-weather wear; he'd heard the winters in the mountains could be brutal. "I figured out a long time ago that they're both terminally cracked in the head, so you know what? From now on they can just be crazy at each other without me. I don't care anymore."

"Don't say that!"

He turned around to lecture her (being older and thus wiser, it was within his rights) but she anticipated that move and kicked him in the shin. "Ow! You really think that's gonna keep me from going?"

Jeannie's lower lip was trembling again—her whole body was, really—and after a moment she stomped over to Rodney's door and threw herself against it. "You can't go," she declared. "I won't let you."

He rolled his eyes at her and went back to packing. "I wasn't planning on using the door, anyway."

"You planned this?"

She sounded shocked, like she hadn't noticed—like she'd been living in a different house with a father who acknowledged her and a mother who was functional more than two days a week. "I knew he might try to sabotage me if I tried to get out from under his thumb, yes," he informed her. "So I made a back-up plan."

"He didn't sabotage you!" Jeannie wailed again. "That's not even possible."

"Believe whatever you want," Rodney snapped. He'd seen the so-called "recommendations" his professors had written, after he'd gone to his academic advisor with a stack of rejections from every university in the solar system. She'd mournfully shown him the letter that she had put her signature to, and explained with brutal kindness, Your father is head of the department, you know. He was very interested in what all of us had to say about you. Rodney had realized then just how low the old man was willing to sink to keep him under his thumb; Rodney had made his plan.

"So where are you gonna go?" Jeannie asked tremulously, raising her chin again.

Rodney leaned hard on a pile of t-shirts until they were compact enough to get a zipper over. "Starfleet Academy."

Jeannie's wordless shriek made Rodney wince, and he looked to the door again—surely one of his parents had heard that, and was about to come running? Then again, they hadn't wanted to take him to the hospital the time he was struck by lightening because Mum's soaps were on and Dad had a paper to edit. "You can't go to Starfleet," Jeannie yelped. "They're like the military!"

"They have a research and development arm," Rodney pointed out. "And it's not like they're going to send a theoretical physicist to the front lines."

"Dad won't let you!"

"He can't stop me," Rodney said fiercely. He'd forged the necessary forms ages ago, just in case; it had been thrilling and a little bit terrifying, but he'd told himself he was okay, just insurance, it wasn't like he was actually planning to use them. Just thinking about it now made him a little bit queasy, but he pushed the thought down: one thing at a time.

Jeannie grabbed his wrist and tugged on it. "Mer, you can't. You're still a kid, you get winded going up the stairs, you hate flying—"

He shook her loose and turned on her. "So what else am I going to do?" he demanded. "Let him push me around the rest of my life? Be his lab assistant until he finally croaks and we don't have to deal with him anymore?"

"Don't say things like that!" Jeannie screeched. She was crying again, tears streaming freely.

Rodney jimmied open his window, and pulled the rake out from under his bed, the one way he could reach the rope he'd secured and stashed in the elm tree out front. "It's true," he told Jeannie, and didn't even care if he sounded like his mother anymore. "That man is a tyrannical old bastard who's never going to let me have my own career and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of them. And I'm "gone."

"Fine!" Jeannie shrieked, while Rodney hitched the rope to his first suitcase. "Go! I don't even want you anymore! You're a sh-sh-shitty brother anyway!"

He rolled his eyes and pulled the rope taut. "Is that supposed to upset me?"

"I hope you get sucked out an airlock!" she added, stamping her foot.

"That only happens three times a year; I did research." He fastened the other end of the rope to the footboard of his bed; when he pushed the bag out the window, the pulley he'd fastened to the tree held. Perfect. He started to lower it to the ground.

Jeannie suddenly rushed up and shoved him in the small of the back, hard enough to make him lose his grip on the rope; the suitcase must've fallen about three meters and landed with an all-too-loud thump. "I'll tell!" she said. "I'll go right down there and tell them you're leaving!"

"Don't you dare," he said, turning around to glare at her.

She raised her head. "I'll do it!"

"I'll—I'll kill your goldfish!"

"Then take me with you!"

Rodney sputtered. "Are you insane?"

"You're the one trying to join Starfleet," she said, pouting.

He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, and what am I going to do with a twelve-year-old—"

"Thirteen!"

"—year-old girl in Starfleet Academy?" he asked. "Don't they live in barracks and stuff?"

"You're the one who did research," Jeannie grumbled.

He started to lower his second bag. "Forget it. Anyway, you're still in school. I think that counts as kidnapping or something."

She threw his grade-three math club plaque at him, and that hurt. "I hate you!" she said. "I hate you forever!"

The bag made contact with the ground outside. "Feeling's mutual, brat."

Jeannie burst into tears and ran out of the room. There was no screaming from downstairs—either Mum and Dad had declared a truce or finally murdered each other. Rodney waited, half-afraid Jeannie really was about to tell, but a moment later he heard her bedroom door down the hall slam. She'd probably just cry herself to sleep, and by the time she woke up...well.

He got the second suitcase down to the ground, and then pulled on his windbreaker and his backpack. This was the tricky part, getting himself down, but once he had the rope firmly knotted around his bed it should've been easy to climb down into the shrubbery where his suitcases had landed. Except for the part where the rope had frayed into coarse spurs of nylon, of course, and how his full backpack added mass and changed his center of balance. It occurred to him that maybe he should've rehearsed this, given his record with rope climbing in PE.

When he made it to the ground, he picked some slivers of rope out of his palms and then looked up. Jeannie's bedroom light was off; so was the light in the kitchen. Mum's room and Dad's study were both lit, which explained where they were—one was probably taking her sedatives, the other working on something theoretical and ground-breaking. Unless Jeannie got up early to tell them before they left for work, or they noticed the draft from his bedroom, they probably wouldn't even notice he was gone until suppertime at the earliest.

Fuck them, then. If they couldn't handle his genius, they should've put him up for adoption when he taught himself to play Bach.

Rodney hefted his bags and crept out of the shadow of the garden, out the front gate, and headed for the nearest bus shelter. It was dark between the streetlights, and the little wheels on his suitcases rattled on the rough pavement; they kept tipping over, too, at the slightest provocation. But one of the late-night express buses stopped four blocks from his house, and that would take him to the train station downtown, and then—

Well, term didn't start at the Academy for a while yet. But he'd squirreled away some credits in a hidden bank account, enough for a couple of nights at a hostel before he needed to leave. Or maybe he should leave town first? He supposed it would all depend on how long it would take to get to the Academy from Vancouver...he hadn't actually looked into tickets yet, since he hadn't realized he'd be leaving quite so soon.

As soon as he made it to the bus shelter, he collapsed on the bench and wrestled his backpack into his lap. He took out a padd and searched for a ticketing agent and—

"What do you mean there's no train to Colorado Springs?"

Chapter Text

It was funny how much Colorado Springs reminded Jonn of Mars—the thin air was almost the same, even if the colors were a little different, filtered through a different atmosphere from a closer, brighter Sun. Jonn didn't stumble over the change in gravity as he disembarked from the transport, but he stepped aside from the queue of incoming students, just to stop and breathe in the air—pine trees, humidity, clay, all the living green smells that were so hard to find on the Red Planet.

When he'd left Earth for the Perimeter that first time, he'd given his dad the finger and hadn't looked back. Now he was down for a four-year hitch, assuming Starfleet didn't wake up tomorrow morning and decide they'd made a terrible mistake. Home sweet home, he thought, looking at the too-blue horizons, but the words rang false. Station keeping; that sounded a little better.

From behind, somebody bumped into him, hard. Jonn was still more acclimated to the gentle drift of Martian gravity, and on impact he stumbled forward and nearly lost his footing. "Hey, asshole, watch where you're going," was what he started to say, turning around, but he stopped after two words when he found the asshole in question kneeling on the ground, surrounded by a spray of discarded luggage, actually kissing the black synthocrete landing strip. "Uh...."

The asshole looked up; Jonn would've put him at sixteen on a good day, and his face was beaded with sweat and pasty white where it wasn't smudged with grayish-brown dust from the strip. "I'm alive," he declared in a dazed way. "I made it. I think I'm going to throw up now."

Jonn quickly stepped out of range, but out of common courtesy he asked. "You okay there, buddy?"

Not-actually-an-asshole blinked, and rose up on his knees, one hand braced on either of his absurdly large suitcases. There was a big smooch of dust across the front of his shirt. "No," he said, sounding stronger. "No, I am not. Whoever designed the trains on this continent is a moron."

"Why's that?" Jonn asked warily, not quiet following the logic there.

The guy didn't answer him, just struggled to his feet with those ridiculous suitcases. (Jonn recalled something about a weight limit on bags, but maybe that was just for people coming from offworld.) "If I never have to fly in one of those deathtraps again, it'll be too soon," he declared viciously, and wiped the dust from his mouth on the sleeve of his windbreaker. He missed the mark on his shirt, though.

Jonn looked around at all the shuttles that had landed—shiny new ones from the four corners of this planet and several others, lined up in ranks to let their passengers disembark and form a queue. He stuck his hand out to Suitcase Guy. "Hi. I'm Jonn Sheppard, and I'm joining Starfleet," he said straight-faced. "Why are you here, again?"

The sarcasm didn't stick; the kid shook and said, "M—uh—McKay. Rodney McKay," he added, as if this needed affirmation. "And I'm far too important to science for them to ever post me in space, so don't even start with me."

"Good information to have," Jonn said. He shouldered his own jump bag, then looked at Rodney McKay and his two oversized suitcases. "You, uh, need hand with those?"

"Oh, yeah, thanks," Rodney said, then grabbed one suitcase and wandered away in the same general direction as the rest of the crowd. Jonn almost left the other one behind out of spite...but then again, when he'd first landed on Mars he'd been kind of a little shit himself. Almost as young, too, and maybe just a little bit cocky. If he hadn't had Mitch and Dex on his side, he'd have probably got himself killed in the first week of basic training.

Mitch had laughed himself stupid when Jonn explained why he was leaving the Perimeter, while Dex promised to keep a bunk warm for him for when—not if—he came crawling back. But they'd split a bottle of Saurian brandy with him anyway and saw him off from Uchronia when he departed to Burroughs Station. In their honor, he grabbed the handle of the remaining suitcase and did his best to follow McKay, and the rest of the arriving students, towards the wide, squat building at the end of the airfield.

They briefly lost each other in the dim, echoing building, where the cadets were divided up for check-in by name—which for some people involved figuring out which name to divide up by. There were signs projected overhead for guidance: S was its own line, and McKay for some reason lined up with G-H-I and had to go back, at which point Jonn lost track of him in the crowds. But after a row of paperwork and photographs, retinal scans and ID numbers and repeating his name to five different people—who all stared, who all looked at his ears like he'd ordered them out of a magazine or something—Jonn made it to the other side, and out of the building. He propped up the suitcase against a wall and waited.

Ten minutes later, McKay came out of the building at a jog, suitcase bumping and rattling along behind him. "Hey!" he yelled, zeroing in on Jonn. "Hey, you, with the hair! Why'd you steal my suitcase?"

"Just babysitting it for you," Jonn said, while McKay snatched the suitcase up and checked that the simple electronic locks hadn't been tampered with. "You nervous or something?"

McKay rolled his eyes and straightened up. "No, I'm just about to enroll in military school! Anyone here who isn't nervous is a moron."

"Well, duh," Jonn said, which made McKay do a small double-take; he frowned, like he suspected Jonn was mocking him somehow. "Just, you seem a little more nervous than most people," Jonn added.

McKay raised his chin defiantly, but his face was red. "I'm perfectly fine, thank you! And anyway, it isn't even your business. So if you're done stealing people's luggage—" He grabbed both his suitcases by the handles, turned around with a flourish, and tried to walk away. The suitcases tipped over in a heap before he'd taken one step and lay on their sides like beached sea creatures. McKay let out a wordless moan of frustration and stared at them; he was very nearly pouting.

Jonn adjusted his jump bag, and in a show of patience and virtue worthy of a goddamned medal, helped McKay wrangle the suitcases back into the upright position. "If you're done freaking out, let me help you get your stuff on the bus, at least. Christ, what did you pack in here?"

"None of your business," McKay snapped again, but his face had turned even brighter scarlet, and not just from exertion. He took hold of one suitcase and clutched it close to his body. "But, um...thanks. For...this."

"Not a problem," Jonn said breezily, and managed to get one of the bulky suitcases off the ground entirely; it wasn't any easier to maneuver but at least it wasn't going to fall over or crash into anything. McKay adjusted his backpack a few more times, got a white-knuckle hold on the other suitcase, and together they made their way towards the buses that would take them to the main campus of Starfleet Academy.

As they settled into their seats—McKay's luggage arranged under and around and partly on top of them—McKay added, apropos of nothing, "Do you think I look young?"

"Not really," Jonn lied.

"Because more than one person in that line said I looked really young," McKay carried on obliviously. "I mean, I'm nineteen, which I know is technically below the recruiting limit but I have all the proper consent forms signed and dated—" (he said this part in one continuous breath, then had to inhale slightly) "—but I'm worried that people won't take me seriously if they think I'm too young."

"So grow a beard or something," Jonn suggested.

McKay blinked at him. "And how am I supposed to do that, exactly?" he asked incredulously. "Are you offering donations?"

Jonn immediately scratched self-consciously at his chin, but no, his five o'clock shadow hadn't put in its usual one o'clock appearance. "Look, will you just relax for a minute?" he asked, letting his irritation burn through. "Getting in here in the first place was the hardest part, right?"

"The exam was actually pretty easy for me," McKay said, puffing up ever so slightly. "I scored in the ninety-eighth percentile."

"Great," Jonn said. "Which means everybody in here is probably going to know your name and how awesome you were." They'd know Jonn's name, too, which meant they'd know who his mother was, and how she'd died; he wondered who would be the first to bring it up. He wondered how he was going to react when they did.

The prospect of widespread recognition actually seemed reassuring to McKay, who brightened immediately. "They will, won't they?" he said cheerfully, and settled back in his seat with a small smile, hugging his backpack to his chest. "Of course they will. They can't possibly not. Hmm. Thanks, Joe."

"Jonn," he corrected, and glanced a McKay out of the corner of his eye, waiting to see if he'd figure it out, if he'd realized anything about a too-human Vulcan with an ambiguous name

But McKay was staring out a window now, watching the buildings on the outer edge of the campus stream by. "John, yeah. Whatever." He shifted, stretching his legs so they took up two-thirds of the available leg room. Jonn just turned to the side, letting his other leg hang out into the aisle. The bus rolled on.

-\-\-\-\-\-

Teyla's roommate was named Claire. Claire was nineteen, and from Perth, Australia. Claire had three brothers and a cat was going to study geology. Claire repeated all this several times, in a sort of dazed fashion, as if she needed to remind herself of who she was and what she was doing in this strange and crowded place.

Teyla tried not to blame her for it—she, too, was overwhelmed and over-tired, perhaps even moreso thanks to her much longer journey. But after the second overly detailed description of where Australia was on this planet, Teyla began to tune Claire out, letting her slighting nasal lilt fade into the background as she unpacked her things. The dorm rooms were sparsely furnished: two narrow beds, two small desks, a nightstand for each of them. In hindsight, it had been for the best that she did not bring everything she had wished to bring—there would have been no room.

She was arranging books on the shelves when Claire's monologue suddenly stopped; Teyla was ashamed to realize she had been asked a question. "I am sorry, can you repeat yourself, please?" she asked.

"I was asking about your necklace," Claire said. She touched her own shirt in the same place where Teyla's icon fell. "It's pretty."

"Thank you." Teyla brushed a finger against it self-consciously, and wondered how much to explain. "It is the sign of the gods of my people."

Claire blinked. "Oh...really? Do you have to wear it all the time, then?"

"It is not obligatory, no," she said.

"'Cause I don't think that's allowed, you know, with the uniform."

Teyla glance at her from the corner of her eye. "The uniform regulations include allowances for culturally significant accessories, do they not?"

"Well, yeah, but if you don't have to wear I don't think they'll let you," Claire said.

Teyla returned to putting away her things. "Then they will have to tell me to stop."

Claire tittered nervously. "Is it that big a deal then, for you?"

"It is my faith," Teyla said, reminding herself to be patient with the aliens. "The Ancestors created us, and we walk in their light. So my people have always believed."

That provoked a giggle, for some reason—though the sound died off as Claire got a look at Teyla's facial expression. "Sorry," she blurted. "I'm sorry, just—I've never actually heard somebody say that sort of thing before. It's sort of cool."

Teyla tried to reign in her irritation, despite her fatigue. "Are your own beliefs so different, then?"

"I...guess so?" Claire frowned a bit, then shrugged. "I mean, I don't suppose I have any. Beliefs, that is."

"You are an atheist, then?" Teyla asked.

That seemed to bring Claire up short for a minute. "I...guess so," she said. "I never really thought of it that way."

"But you do not believe in any higher beings," Teyla prompted, just to be certain.

"Well, I mean, not gods—of course not," Claire said as if this were obvious. "But who goes around telling people about all the things they don't believe? It's like if I went around saying, 'I'm not Martian!' all the time, you know?"

"You would say such a thing quite often if you were on Mars," Teyla observed.

That made Claire giggle again. "I guess you're right. I never thought of it like that."

Perhaps when they were both a bit more relaxed and well-rested, Claire would repeat herself less, or Teyla would find the habit less irritating. "If you do not believe in gods, what do you believe? Some other higher form of life?"

Claire shrugged, and began to play with a soft plush toy that had been sitting on her nightstand, absently flexing its legs. "I don't know what you mean by 'higher,' though. Isn't sentient the highest you can get?"

"There are beings whose powers and perceptions transcend ours, though," Teyla pointed out.

"Yeah, but that doesn't make them higher, it makes them different," Claire protested uneasily. "We should try to understand them, you know? Not just worship them."

"You say that as if the two goals are mutually exclusive," Teyla said, unable to keep her tone of voice neutral.

Claire looked confused. "Well, I just mean—you can't just say something's god or magic or whatever and leave it. You've got to look at it empirically. You've got to work out the truth about it."

Teyla lay down on her bed, and raised a hand to her icon. "There is a difference between fact and truth, though. Science has no answer for questions of ethics or justice."

"But you don't need a religion for that," Claire said uneasily. "You can have ethics without believing they had to come from a god."

"And one can have science without abandoning one's faith."

Claire looked just as uncomfortable as Teyla felt, now, and was no longer meeting her eyes. "It's just a bit weird, I guess," she mumbled. "Worrying about some invisible people in the sky watching you and telling you what to do. I guess all cultures do some weird stuff, though."

Teyla tried to picture herself explaining to Claire than the Ancestors were not invisible, and did not dwell anywhere on this plane, much less the "sky;" but she was far too tired for that, and she did not wish to antagonize the other woman any further when they had only just met. "Yes, you do," was all she said, and never felt herself to be further from home.

-\-\-\-\-\-

The name thing was going to be a problem. Rodney had practiced signing his name about a thousand times over the past few days, but it still didn't look right; he tried Rodney M. McKay and Rodney I. McKay and just R. McKay but it still didn't come naturally, still looked a little too neat compared to the sort of runic squiggle he was used to scribbling out. It had taken him forever to initial all the forms at check-in, and he kept scrolling past it on lists and indexes, beelining for the I section and then having to double back. And all the introductions...people had this funny tendency to look a you like you were insane if you apparently couldn't remember your own name, imagine that.

Necessary evils, he told himself, dragging his bags across the residential quadrangle. The dormitories were over a century old, and had probably looked ultra-modern back in their day—lots of hi-gloss synthecrete and soft, rounded corners mixed with keyhole doorways and chunky ornamentation. Rodney hoped the interiors weren't that tacky or he might go blind before he finished his dissertation. All the doors had been propped open, and despite signs declaring some were "EXIT ONLY" (or conversely, "NO PLEBES ALLOWED," which was just obnoxious) there were still crowds of people tripping over each other and blocking the way and just generalling being confused about things. Rodney looked at the narrow doorways, and then looked at his suitcases; yeah, no. He'd let the first wave of idiots clear out before he tried to fight his way through that.

Instead he fished a padd out of his backpack, found a news site and did a very general search for M. Rodney Ingram or Meredith Ingram. Just, you know, out of curiosity—it had been a couple of weeks, after all. The most recent article was about his father, some award or another he'd gotten back in the spring; the photo at the top was their whole family, smiling big, fake smiles and generally managing to pass for functional humanoids. Benjamin Ingram and his wife Donna McKay-Ingram with their children at the reception for the 2254 Federation Society for Applied Subspace Theory conference. Everthing older than that was just journal articles and press releases.

No missing persons reports, no frantic, global searches—not that he wanted to be dragged home kicking and screaming by the police, but it would've been nice to know somebody cared. Then again, these were his parents he was talking about; if Jeannie hadn't said anything they might still not have noticed he was gone...well, good riddance...

"Excuse me," someone nearby asked, though his accent was so thick Rodney could barely understand him. It turned out to be a tiny guy with a whole lot of fluffy brown hair and glasses of all things, clutching a tatty dufflebag to his chest. "Excuse me, is this Tucker Residence Hall?"

"No," Rodney said. "It's Gagarin Hall. Didn't you get the map at check-in?"

"Lost it," Glasses claimed.

Rodney blinked at him. "How do you lose an electronic map? It's either on your padd or it isn't!"

"I had customized my own firmware data transfer protocols to optimize background memory," Glasses claimed airily, rolling all his r dramatically.

"What's that got to do with anything?" Rodney demanded.

Glasses adjusted his glasses. "It crashed."

Rodney could only gape at him for a moment, trying to imagine how anybody could manage to crash the debilitatingly rugged firmware on a standard padd. "That is a truly impressive combination of brilliant and stupid," he concluded. "Let me see."

By the time the lights around the residential quadrangle were flicking on for the night, the crowds of students had thinned out enough to be manageable. Meanwhile, on the bench, the two of them had partially disassembled the crash padd, replicated the error on Rodney's padd and then managed to restore it with no loss of data but a permanent shift in the color resolution of the display. He had not yet figured out Glasses' real name or where they needed to go to find food, medical care or clean towels.

Still, flying aside, he was beginning to think he'd like it here.

-\-\-\-\-\-

The office they had assigned her in Ohala Hall was small, but it came furnished: plenty of shelves, a desk with a small console and a larger wall-mounted screen. It even had a single narrow window that overlooked a tree-lined promenade. Elizabeth looked at all the empty spaces and wondered how she was possibly supposed to fill them up.

Eight weeks of basic officer training—running and climbing, learning the parts of a phaser and how to program a tricorder, studying into the small hours and up at dawn again—had earned her a set of braids on her cuffs and a persistently sore calf. But she had finished it, passed every requirement with flying colors, and gotten back to Colorado Springs in plenty of time to start her teaching assignment. The Academy had leased her a tiny apartment near campus, though for the time being her most precious possession was a map of the bus routes; her things had been delivered from Vulcan, but she hadn't had enough free time to actually unpack any of them properly. Instead, she'd gone straight into the pre-semester organizational meetings and orientations, long days of meetings followed by long nights of mixers and receptions that were, in many ways, even more important. At least she hadn't had to cook for herself yet.

Admiral Nixon had assigned her Captain Carnahan in the linguistics division as something of a mentor, to help with the transition into Academy life, but their single meeting so far had been a brisk discussion of her schedule: which classes she would teach and which she would take, what certifications and clearances she would need, what internal organizations and societies she could join. It would've been a daunting work load if Elizabeth had been the sort to be daunted by work.

You''ll have to continue your basic training during recesses, Carnahan had reminded her, as they surveyed the list of required competencies for line officers. It'd undermine discipline, sending you out with the same students you're teaching, and putting you in a position to assign them marks afterwards—well, it's best to just avoid it. But everything's going to be Earth-based, mostly summer and winter, to accommodate your teaching responsibilities. Bet it's good to be back home, eh?

That had been the closest thing to a personal comment he had made, and Elizabeth had very nearly winced. For all she'd been born here, Earth didn't feel anything like home; the gravity and the temperature and the color of the sky were all just a little bit off, a little bit wrong. And the people—she wasn't used to being in crowds that loud, to smiles and personal conversations, to shaking hands and bumping elbows and all the other casual touches most humans took for granted. It made her nervous, for some reason, nervous and tired, and that in turn irritated her—this was her own species, the culture her parents were raised on, she was supposed to understand this. Yet she lay awake night after night, listening for the calls of nightbirds that had never flown in this air, turning over doubts in her mind like alien coins.

Not that she was actually second-guessing herself, not at this point. She'd had plenty of time for that before basic training even began. But it was realistic—logical, even—to recognize that passing the entrance exams had been the easy part, on the balance. That there were aspects of this she hadn't fully anticipated.

She'd answered Carnahan, I'll let you know when I get there, and he'd looked at her like he wasn't quite sure he had her meaning right. He hadn't commented, though, and she hadn't elaborated, and the topic had drifted naturally to a happy hour for new faculty and cadet teaching assistants happening that evening, and the curriculum planning meeting the following day.

Her academic credentials had given her authority over the cadets even though she'd officially enlisted just weeks before them, and she was expected to comport herself like both an officer and a teacher. Considering her own main educational experience had been in the rarefied atmosphere of the Science Academy, she was flying equally blind on both fronts; the lecturers there weren't really educators, the students were savagely competitive with one another, and those towering sandstone halls had been places of work, not camaraderie. But she hadn't dared let on her uncertainty—not in front of someone who would be judging her performance later on, whose word could change the course of her career.

She'd just have to play it by ear for a while and hope for the best. Simon would be horrified at the thought.

Someone knocked—this was one of the older buildings and not all the doors had chimes. Was is Carnahan? Another professor? A student, some early arriver? There was somebody at her door and Elizabeth was briefly at a loss about what to do. "Come," she said, resting her hands on the surface of the desk.

The young woman who walked in was tiny—even shorter than Elizabeth herself—and wore a cadet's uniform with a single tab on her collar. A beginner, just like Elizabeth herself, her only distinguishing feature being the wooden disc she wore on a leather cord around her neck. "Lieutenant Commander Doctor Weir?" she asked, standing erect before the desk, as composed as a Vulcan.

The rank still sounded strange in her ears, and bumped up awkwardly with the honorific, but she nodded. "Indeed. What can I do for you, Cadet?"

"I am enrolled in your xenoeconomics course for this term," the cadet said. "I was reviewing the course text and came upon some unfamiliar references that I wished to ask you about."

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow at her. "Cadet, you do realize academic courses won't begin until after orientation week and Basic Training?"

"I am aware of this, ma'am," the cadet said, unfazed. "But I am concerned that I may be at a...disadvantage, compared to some of my classmates."

"Why would that be?" Elizabeth asked.

The cadet blinked. "I am Teyla Emmagen of Athos, Commander Weir."

That made everything click: all the faculty had been made aware of this new cadet, not really warned but advised that her very presence was unique. The first cadet from the Pegasus quadrant, from an influential family on a world whose cooperation with the Federation was key to their Pegasus policy—it wasn't that they were supposed to go easy on her, of course, but more that they should bear in mind all that she represented, all that hinged on her success or failure. Elizabeth's first, inane thought was, she's shorter than I thought she'd be.

Then she scolded herself for the distraction, and focused on the actual problem. "I see," she said slowly, and only then realized that her office had only one chair—an oversight from the facilities managers, probably, but an awkward one. She stayed standing instead. "Cadet, let me start by reassuring you that the Academy's entrance exam is designed to reflect our curriculum. By passing it, you've proven you have the necessary background to begin our courses. You're on equal footing with everyone else in your class."

"With respect, ma'am, I do not believe this is so," Emmagen said, brow furrowing slightly. "I have read the first chapter of the textbook, and it presumes a great deal of familiarity in the history of the Federation and its key worlds."

"I suppose it does," Elizabeth said. She hadn't chosen the textbook—first-year instructors were given a set curriculum for most of their courses, at least the first term. "But we'll review that history as it comes up."

"And this review will be sufficient for my needs?" Emmagen asked.

Well, the curriculum said so, and despite the rank she'd been commissioned to Elizabeth saw little reason to tinker with courses that were new to her, when they'd been designed and refined by much experienced teachers. But then again—

She looked around the office in frustration. The single chair seemed to be taunting her, daring her to sit down and leave Emmagen standing like a schoolchild. Elizabeth leaned one hip against the corner of the desk instead. "Cadet Emmagen, I am a graduate of the Vulcan Academy of Sciences," she explained.

Emmagen blinked warily, as if she wasn't sure where this was going. "So I had heard," she said.

"I'm the only non-Vulcan to graduate from that Academy in its history," Elizabeth clarified for her. "I'm telling you this so that you know I'm sympathetic to your situation. I had many instructors who assumed that what served a Vulcan student should also serve a human. I mostly had instructors who thought we should succeed or fail on our individual merits, whether or not we were starting from positions of comparable privilege and experience. No leveling the playing field, in other words."

Emmagen cocked her head to the side. "How did you overcome this attitude?"

"By studying twice as hard as any of my classmates," she said frankly. "I had to make up the difference somehow, and even when I did get help or advice from an instructor, I still had to put in the extra work to live up to their standards. There's no shortcuts there, I'm afraid."

"I did not expect one," Emmagen said, raising her chin slightly. "Though the advice would be much appreciated, of course."

And because of the missing chair, they ended up standing over the console, shoulder to shoulder, reviewing the chapter and making a list of more general texts on history, philosophy and economic theory for her to study. Emmagen asked the kind of questions that showed she'd already done a little bit of research on her own, at least in a general way, or perhaps that she had some background in an equivalent field on her home world and had already made the right connections. Elizabeth found herself leaning on the edge of the desk and chattering away about different writers and the merits of their texts, so she was a little surprised when Emmagen suddenly checked her watch and grimaced. "I must go soon. I have an appointment with my academic advisor."

"Who is it?" she asked, genuinely curious. She pictured herself having a quiet word with that person, just a bit of friendly advice about helping a student who might not even know what help she needed—

"Captain Carnahan," Emmagen said. Well, there went that idea.

"Give him my regards, then," she said out loud; and because Emmagen seemed so unenthused she added, "And remember, my door will always be open to you as well, if there's anything I can do for you. Not just while you're in my class, either."

Emmagen smiled for the first time, a startling flash of warmth. "Thank you, Commander."

"And Cadet?" Emmagen paused in the doorway. Elizabeth though best how to put this. "My father told me something, when I was a little girl: that some people freely receive what others have to reach out and take. I took my degree from the Science Academy. I hope I'll see you receive your commission."

Emmagen's brows knit for a moment, then cleared. "I believe I understand, Commander Weir. Thank you for the advice."

Chapter Text

Part II: the greatest treason

Jonn woke up five minutes before his alarm and silenced it. In the predawn murk, Rodney was just visible—he'd fallen asleep half-dressed, face mashed into the pillow, slightly drooling. There were two different padds on the bed with him, and the blanket trailed off onto the floor to mingle with the dirty laundry and random trash that inevitably accreted on that side of the room between inspections. Jonn dressed as quietly as he could, going more by touch than sight; he headed to the bathroom and came back to exactly the same scene, not a hair out of place. If not for the occasional nasal snuffle, Rodney could've been dead.

Jonn went to his own desk and retrieved the necessary equipment from hiding. He took up a position over Rodney's left shoulder, squeezing between the bed and the wall, and bent down close to Rodney's face, which was utterly slack in sleep.

Then he blew a bosun's whistle as loud as he could.

The effect was kind of entrancing: Rodney's head snapped up a moment before his eyes fully opened, and before they'd fully focused he was flinging himself over the edge of the mattress. Even if he hadn't been tangled in the blanket, he probably wouldn't have made it to his feet; as it was, it was pretty lucky he didn't crack his head on the nightstand going over. There was a crash, and a pathetic moan, and ultimately a rather weak, "I am going to travel backwards in time and kill your progenitors, I hate you so much."

"Happy birthday, buddy," Jonn said brightly, and tossed the other half of his equipment—a burned isolinear chip marked in felt-tipped pen—onto Rodney's chest. "Don't say I never gave you anything."

"Star Wars?" Rodney squeaked without climbing off the floor. "The original trilogy?"

"And the prequels, and the cartoons," Jonn said. "I tried to get the Christmas special, but apparently it doesn't exist anymore."

"How did you get any of this?" Rodney asked, sitting up. "I thought you were still on probation, after the thing with the guy."

Jonn rolled his eyes. "That was over two weeks ago, dumbass." Not that the board of conduct wouldn't have loved to put Jonn on some kind of never-ending punishment, given the number of times he'd ended up in front of them, but Jonn had developed a finely-tuned sense for pushing the envelope. He had no intention of heading back to the Perimeter with two-thirds of a commission.

"Whatever, you're forgiven," Rodney declared, scrambling back up. "Wanna watch it now? I can rig up a projector—"

"Rodney," Jonn said. "Remember what today is?"

The slow collapse of Rodney's smile was like an iceberg sheering off a glacier. He actually pouted. "Oh, god," he whined. "Why did you have to remind me?"

"Roll call in two hours," Jonn said, and tossed what appeared to be Rodney's least-disgusting uniform at him. "Don't want to be late."

"Yes, I do," Rodney said, but he also started rooting around for his shower kit like a man going to his grave. "I really, really do...."

-\-\-\-\-\-

But at the appointed hour, he was right beside Jonn on the parade grounds, along with the rest of the third-year cadets. Spring Simulation was more important than anything but final exams this semester, and even that was an debatable; after all, you could possibly re-take a final, but your Spring Sim evaluation would stay with you the rest of your career.

Jonn's breath steamed in the air as he watched the officers milling around on the reviewing platform—he recognized some faculty members, but not everybody. Admiral Nixon was talking with a silvered-haired man with captain's stripes and a blonde woman in a red tunic. When she shifted, however, Jonn spotted a shiny bald head that made something funny turn over in his stomach.

"Admiral Hammond is here," he said under his breath to Rodney, who had shut his eyes and was rocking gently back and forth in a way that was actually getting worrisome. Jonn elbowed him in the ribs, pushing a little white oof! out into the frosty air. "Did you hear me?"

"No," Rodney said, but then, "Who's Admiral Hammond?"

Jonn realized he didn't actually know, beyond, of course, "He's the guy who got me in here. I think."

Rodney, displaying his usual level of tact, asked, "I thought it was the famous dead mom thing that got you in here?"

"Long story," Jonn muttered, because there wasn't time to mutter anything else: Nixon was ascending to the podium at the front of the stand. All the cadets straightened up subtly, and the murmur of faint side conversations ceased. Rodney screwed his eyes shut again.

"Cadets, attention!" Nixon barked, and after seeing a satisfactory jump, "At ease. I wanted to welcome you all to this year's Spring Simulation, and wish you good luck in completing the tasks assigned to you. As you all are aware, the outcome of this simulation will weigh heavily in your final assessment at the Academy, and you will be judged not only on whether you complete your goals but how you go about doing so—demonstrating the teamwork, discipline, judgment and leadership necessary for a Starfleet officer."

Jonn rolled his eyes; Nixon did love to hear himself talk, but he'd like to get to the parts they hadn't already been briefed on.

"You will be working with equipment helpfully donated by the starships Cheyenne and Mombasa, with some modifications to ensure your safety while also challenging your abilities," Nixon continued at a leisurely pace. "While faculty will be present in the simulation area to observe and facilitate, we will not offer you any assistance; anyone wearing white bands on their sleeves should be treated like a non-expert civilian, not an officer. You will not have access to any information, resources or personnel outside the simulation zone. If you leave the simulation zone at any time, for any reason, you will be disqualified from further participation, and any attempt to re-enter will be considered grounds for disciplinary action.

"As for the content of today's simulation," Nixon finally said, and Jonn didn't have to imagine the class holding their breath; there were fewer puffs of fog in the air. Even Rodney appeared to be biting his lip. "I turn the podium over to Commander Elizabeth Weir, its designer."

"Who?" Rodney hissed.

"I think I had her for Intro to Poli Sci," Jonn said, though he wouldn't have bet money on it; it had been a large lecture, and he hadn't exactly paid attention for most of it.

The woman in the gold tunic did look familiar, though, as she climbed up onto the podium and adjusted the audio controls: small, trim, with dark hair pulled back so tightly it was something of a wonder her face could even move. "Today you will be simulating the evacuation of a level-IIIb research station that has been damaged by tectonic activity," she said. "Many of the personnel inside are injured, the station's structural integrity has begun to fail, and ionized gases from the planet's core are interfering with transporters and communication; thus, the evacuation must be conducted by shuttlecraft.

"Your ship does not have the necessary space to house the entire population of the research station," she continued, "so your objectives are as follows: one, stabilize the station until the evacuation can be completed. Two, set up a temporary relocation center outside the tectonic zone where personnel can be evacuated. Three, transport the most critically injured victims to your ship for treatment, and the rest to the relocation center. A successful completion of this simulation is defined by the speedy and complete evacuation of the station with minimum loss of life and damage to equipment, as well as the establishment of a relocation center capable of safely and comfortably housing all evacuees until more assistance can arrive."

This sounded way too easy. Well, complicated, sure—he wondered who would be role-playing the refugees—but theoretically easy. There had to be something more to it than that.

He didn't have more time to think ahead, though, because a group of instructors had come down off the podium and were starting to walk the lines of cadets, issuing orders. "Sheppard, airfield, blue group," he heard, but he hesitated a moment, just long enough to hear "McKay, airfield, blue group."

"What?" Rodney blurted, but the officer had already moved on down the line to "Tobias, airfield—"

"Come on," Jonn said, grabbing Rodney's wrist. "Maybe you're my mechanic."

"That would be lovely except I am not a mechanic!" Rodney snapped.

Jonn broke into a jog, forcing Rodney to keep up. "Maybe I'm supposed to drop you off somewhere? You know, to work on the station."

"That's even less comforting!" he squeaked. "I'm a theorist, I should be on the ship doing science or something—"

"Instead of saving the day?" Jonn asked.

Rodney punched him in the arm. "That's what you're for!"

One side of the air field was being used as transporter staging—cadets beaming up in groups to crew out a ship in orbit. The shuttles were arrayed on the opposite side, and by the time they found the blue group a lieutenant has already started the initial briefing. "—interfering with sensors, communications, transporters and other sensitive equipment," he was saying. "There's also a possibility that the gases may compromise hull integrity. Therefore, every shuttle will have an engineer on board to monitor its mechanical stability, as well as an operations officer to ensure that communications aren't lost. Both of them should defer to the orders of the pilot."

Rodney groaned at that, and Jonn's heart rate bumped up a notch. Not that they were actually calling it a command, but still, two people taking his orders was two more than he'd ever had before.

The lieutenant referred to his padd. "Shuttle assignments are as follows. Blue Zero One: Yates, Karim, Turek. Blue Zero Two: Knaklova, Maareti, El. Blue Zero Three: Sheppard, McKay, Emmagen..."

Jonn didn't miss Rodney's sigh of relief at that. Their shuttle was a Tereshkova-class, larger than what he'd been using for training flights, with an actual engineering station behind the copilot's seat. Jonn started up his preflight immediately, McKay muttered, "Is it just me, or does this thing still seems too easy?"

"Right," Jonn said, checking each subsystem. "Multiple trips through corrosive clouds that interfere with our instruments, piece of cake."

"Like they're actually real," Rodney said, with a flap of his hand as he focused on the engineering station. "That woman, what's her name, Wells?"

"Weir, I think," Jonn said.

"Weird, right, she's got to have some kind of dirty trick up her sleeve." He frowned at whatever he was seeing. "Why am I locked out of the computer core?"

Jonn heard footsteps on the rear hatch just before a woman's voice said, "Mostly likely, to prevent you from tampering with any of the modifications to the shuttle's systems." It took him a moment to recognize the small woman who took the copilot's seat—Emmagen, of course, everybody knew of the pagan princess from the Pegasus quadrant, he just couldn't recall ever having actually spoken to her before now. She immediately went into her own preflight checks, and gave him a cool look when she caught him staring.

"Well, that's just dumb," Rodney continued, completely oblivious. "What if I need to change the antimatter intermix ratios or something? What if the boogeyman gas took down the primary flight controls? Is Where stupid?"

Emmagen paused, one corner of her mouth twisting down. "Commander Weir is a most intelligent and accomplished woman. I do not doubt that she thought through all possible scenarios thoroughly."

"What is she, your girlfriend?" Rodney asked scathingly.

"She is my thesis adviser," Emmagen said primly.

Rodney looked to Jonn for help, but aside from that one lecture—which he mostly remembered for being boring, technical, and easy to skip—he'd never met the woman. In fact, he wasn't entirely sure that he'd even spoken to her. Still, out of loyalty to Rodney he said, "She can't predict everything," and then immediately added, "Let's get preflight done before they start taking off without us."

-/-/-/-

It took about half an hour to get to the simulation zone, in a dry lake bed near Old Las Vegas; Emmagen kept the radio turned down, so Jonn could barely hear the murmur of voices and the occasional short word, and occasionally Rodney hummed or muttered to himself, but they didn't have a lot to say to each other. "Entering the simulation zone," Jonn announced as they finally crossed the perimeter, just to make it official.

Instantly the map on the screen changed, changing Nevada desert into a toxic ocean. All the external sensor readouts shifted abruptly, and a warning alarm started to buzz amber in one corner of the HUD. "What the hell?" Jonn blurted.

"That bitch!" Rodney blurted.

"Excuse me?" Emmagen said, turning around in her chair.

"Oh, you are brilliant," he continued, eyes glued to his station. "That's why I'm locked out of the computer. There's a module that's completely overriding our actual instruments. As long as we're within the simulation zone it's going to feed us whatever data Weir wants us to see. Oh, brilliant, evil woman."

"He says that kind of stuff all the time," Jonn said, because Emmagen seemed to be fighting the urge to slap Rodney across the face. "Don't sweat it."

Instead of replying, she turned back to the front and asked, "Are you aware that our airspeed is dropping?"

He checked the instruments and realized that engine efficiency was dropping like a rock. "Fuck," he murmured, adjusting the vents. "No way on Earth we should be running this rough."

"Exactly," Rodney said. "The shuttle doesn't think it's on Earth anymore. The computer's got all the systems reacting just like we were actually in the mess on the sensors. Which, uh, wow, that's ugly."

Those ionized gases from the briefing suddenly seemed a lot more problematic. "This stuff's going to eat a hypothetical hole in the exhaust vents if we stay in it too long," he pointed out.

"So I noticed, thank you," Rodney said. "This is how people get killed during these things, you know."

"Commander Weir is not that foolish," Teyla said firmly. But she also had to reset half the sensors to compensate for the mess they weren't actually flying through.

It was hard to reconcile the dire instruments with the blue desert sky visible behind the HUD, but soon they reached visual range of the "research station"—really a bunch of prefabricated huts on the floor of a dry lake bed. Red Group proceed to the south side of the station and begin taking on passengers," the Cheyenne radioed down. "Blue Group, proceed to the southwest corner. Gold Group proceed to eastern side, below the ridge."

"Great," Rodney said. "We get to land closest to the failing reactor. Wonder how they'll simulate radiation poisoning?"

"That is also the site nearest the station infirmary," Teyla said. "We will be taking on seriously injured passengers."

"And that's supposed to enthuse me?"

Jonn began to circle around to the landing site. "Come on, kids, play nice. The grown-ups are watching."

-\-\-\-\-\-

They spent the rest of the day loading up "evacuees" (mostly fourth-year cadets and volunteers from the crew of the Cheyenne) and ferrying them into orbit, or to the evac site at the south end of the simulation zone. Despite being told that they were surrounded by explosions and fire, it was pretty tedious work, each trip just varied enough that they couldn't get complacent. "Do you think we lose points when they die on us?" Rodney whispered at one point as they helped to carry a "casualty" aboard their shuttle. (Said casualty snickered out loud.)

The shuttle's situation wasn't too great, either: the modified computer kept reporting glitches in communication, sensors, even the maneuvering thrusters due to the "corrosive gases." It kept Rodney and Emmagen busy, but to Jonn it was mostly annoying; he could only imagine the stress they were putting on the shuttles by running them on these settings, and the only thing more frustrating than flying on doctored instruments was trying to fly without them.

Still, it looked like they were going to finish the sim with daylight to spare, as the last flight of shuttles took off, and Rodney couldn't complain about anything worse than some heavy lifting and a possible splinter. They had taken off with some last bits of "crucial equipment" that, according to Rodney, was probably just a large box of rocks; below, the last of the engineers and medics were running for shuttles as the station fell into total, simulated collapse.

"You know, that wasn't so bad," Rodney concluded as they formed up with the rest of the group. "I mean, except for the ridiculous levels of physical exertion involved, because honestly, when's the next time I'm ever going to have to haul a body twenty meters with a time limit?"

Emmagen sighed loudly—she'd been doing a lot of that all day, and Jonn was grateful that was all she was doing. He said, "You know, accidents do happen, Rodney. Gotta be ready for anything."

And, precisely because he said that—he would bet money on it later—just as the words left Jonn's mouth, one of the shuttles ahead of them suddenly banked, hard, in just the way that craft in atmospheric flight usually don't.

Jonn checked it against the HUD and then dropped out of formation; the other shuttle had stopped climbing, but was still maintaining air speed. "Blue Zero-One, this is Blue Zero-Three, dropping down to assist shuttle Red Zero-Seven," Emmagen said quickly when she realized what Jonn was doing. "Red Zero-Seven, this is Blue Zero-Three. What is your status?"

The radios had become noticeably more unreliable as the hours ground on, but at this range everything was still pretty clear. "Blue Zero-Three, this is Red Zero-Seven, maneuvering thrusters are unresponsive," the other shuttled answered. "We're trying to pinpoint the cause of the problem right now."

"I'll tell you the cause of the problem, half the valves on your starboard side are corroded shut," Rodney said. "Simulatedly, of course."

"Why would that taken down all of them?" another voice from the Red shuttle asked.

"How should I know?" Rodney squeaked. "I'm not the one who programmed these things!"

"Tereshkovas have a fail-safe to keep you from spinning out if certain thrusters fail in mid-flight," Jonn pointed out. "But it shouldn't take the whole system down."

"Looks like—yeah—the fail-safe’s kicked in," the Red shuttle responded. "How do I turn it off?"

"Well, in a sane and orderly universe, you could access the computer core and manually disable it," Rodney said.

"We already tried that," someone, probably the Red shuttle engineer, snapped. "We're totally locked out of the core."

"I could try to crack into it," Rodney said uncertainly.

Emmagen turned around in her chair. "Cadet McKay, that is expressly against the terms of the simulation."

"Cadet Emmagen, that shuttle can't land or dock right now," Jonn said. "They've got to do something."

"There's something I can try," the Red engineer said. "If we restart the engines in midflight it should trip a reboot and bring back the thrusters."

"And if it doesn't, you're going to plummet hundred of meters for nothing!" Rodney blurted. "That's insane!"

"Look, Blue Zero-Three, can you raise the ship or one of the group leaders?" the Red pilot asked. "'Cause I'm not seeing any other options from where we are."

The rest of the shuttles were long gone, and Emmagen, after a few minutes of coaxing her controls, scowled. "Our antenna is only operating at thirty percent capacity. The Cheyenne and the evac point are currently out of range."

There were multiple life signs on the Red shuttle, more than just the crew; some of them might've been fourth-year cadets or even officers, but they were sworn not to interfere. "So nobody here but us chickens," Jonn declared.

"Who're you calling chicken?" the Red pilot said. "Initiating engine shut down."

Jonn bit his lip as he watched the other shuttle slow and begin to lose speed and altitude. There was a heart-stopping moment of uncontrolled tumble, and then it righted itself—right before it began to vent very un-simulated gray smoke. "Shit," Jonn hissed.

"Red Zero-Seven, please report." Emmagen asked, eyes going wide.

"Well, the good news is we've got thrusters back."

"Yeah, and the bad news is that you fried your whole distributor coil!" Rodney cried.

"I can see that!" the Red engineer shot back. "There must've been a backwash of plasma from the exhaust vents."

"I can divert us to the evac site for an emergency landing," the Red pilot said.

"Like hell you can," Jonn said.

"It's not that far!"

"They could eject the entire distributor coil," Rodney said. "Glide in on emergency power or something. Can these things glide?"

"I could make it glide," the Red pilot said.

"Except to eject the coil, we need access to the computer core!"

Jonn turned and told Rodney, "Get them access. Now."

"Cadet Sheppard—" Emmagen blurted.

"That's not simulated damage," Jonn told her shortly. "If we don't fix this, they're dead."

Emmagen had nothing to say to that. Rodney's face had gone white, and he stammered, "Just...just give me a minute."

"They don't have a minute," Jonn said, but he let Rodney do his thing. "Red Zero-Seven, what's your payload?"

"Five medics. Cadets. You think this is going to work?"

"I'm thinking of a backup plan if it doesn't," he said.

Emmagen said quietly, "This shuttle is not equipped with transporters."

No, and even if it had been, Weir's simulation would've locked them out. Nor were they equipped with grapples or tractor beams, and even if they had been, the two shuttles were too similar in mass to do anything effective. "Check what's in those equipment cases," Jonn asked her, and called up the shuttle's manifest. Emergency rations, medical kit, tool kit—nothing that could possibly be used in a daring mid-air rescue.

Emmagen reluctantly abandoned the copilot's seat and began rooting around in the boxes. "Surplus isolinear crystals," she reported. "And thermal blankets."

"What about the cargo nets?" Jonn asked, thinking furiously.

"Their full dimensions are three meters square," Emmagen said, uncertain for the first time all day. "They appear to be made of plastic."

"Plasteel," Rodney corrected.

Jonn glared at him. "Keep working."

"I'm trying, I'm trying!" Rodney said, voice hitting octaves he really should've outgrown by now. "But these algorithms are incredibly dense and there's at least three layers of password encryption and if I had, I don't know, fifteen hours and an entire other computer—"

That was it, then. Jonn took a deep breath. "Emmagen, take your post," he said. "Red Zero-Seven, I think it's time for plan B."

"There's a plan B?" the other pilot asked.

"Yeah," Jonn said. "You're going to abandon ship."

Rodney's head snapped up. "What?"

"What?" the Red pilot asked.

"Unless you can crack that computer in the next thirty seconds, listen to me," Jonn said. "I'm going to bring my shuttle directly below yours and open the rear hatch. I can throw you a cargo net and you can climb down from yours to mine."

"Oh, my god, it's not me you're going to get killed, is it?" Rodney blurted.

Jonn squeezed his eyes shut. "McKay, for once in your goddamn life, shut up."

"Blue Zero-Three, you are officially a crazy son of a bitch," the Red pilot said.

"I think I concur," Emmagen added warily.

"Just to clarify, I didn't mean it as an insult."

They were cruising along the very perimeter of the simulation zone now, not because of the rules but because it was the safest place for a bad landing—nothing but desert scrubland for kilometers around. Jonn brought his Tereshkova up under the other shuttle, ignoring every proximity warning on the HUD. "Cadet Sheppard, I hope you realize this is exceedingly dangerous," Emmagen hissed, even as she silenced the warnings for him. Jonn ignored her, and Rodney's occasional whimper, as he matched lateral positions as closely as he could.

He got within five meters vertically, but the other shuttle was too unstable to get closer, and he needed to be sure they could catch the cargo net. "Red Zero-Seven, how's your stability control?" he asked.

"Crappy," the other pilot answered. "Either Weir's fucked us but good or we took more damage than I thought, can't tell."

"If we accelerate, it might actually smooth out the ride," the Red engineer said. "These things are pretty aerodynamic for their size."

"What've we got to lose?"

"Your lives," Rodney muttered. "You'll blow out your engines even faster."

"So it all depends on how fast you can climb," Jonn said. He watched the other shuttle inch incrementally ahead of him and matched velocities. Four and a half meters vertical separation. Four meters. "Okay, I'm opening the rear hatch. Rodney, I need you at the helm."

"Absolutely not!" he said, and even gripped his engineering console a little, like Jonn might try to drag him away.

"I need Emmagen to help me with the net," Jonn said. "All you have to do is fly in a straight line. I'm pretty sure even you can do that by now."

"And you're chalking up all our lives to pretty sure?"

Jonn glared at him. "McKay, that's an order. Get up here."

Rodney raised his chin, and for a horrible moment Jonn thought he was actually going to argue about it. Then he swallowed, grimaced, and crossed the cabin. "Just make this quick, okay?" he said, a little pathetically.

"Think of it this way," Jonn told him, programming a quick and dirty flight path to follow. "If you get us all killed, you've got only yourself to blame."

Rodney's eyes were very, very big and very, very blue as he dropped into the pilot's seat. His hands were clawed over the controls and very nearly trembling; if he'd had a throttle to grab, he might have snapped it off. The shuttle wobbled but didn't leave course. Good enough.

Emmagen flipped the radio on shipwide and followed Jonn into the cargo area. "Help me unfold it," Jonn said. "We need something heavy for the corner we're throwing."

"Like a bolo," Emmagen said, and immediately went into the toolkit; she came up with a bulky lantern. It had a strap that threaded easily through the plasteel mesh, and Jonn took that end into his arms. "The other corner must stay secured to the hold, correct?"

"For now," Jonn said. "Okay, Red Zero-Seven, I'm opening our rear hatch."

"Copy that, Blue Zero-Three. Here goes nothing."

The moment the seal on the rear hatch broke, both Jonn's ears popped painfully, and the rush of wind was nearly deafening. Emmagen, who hadn't quite been braced for it, staggered but didn't fall; she got a firm grip on the net, and on a wall railing, and nodded without trying to speak.

Jonn took another deep breath and eased his way out on to the ramp, which hung out uselessly over open air and shuddered with turbulence. The damaged shuttle was directly overhead, the smoke—now distinctly darker—whipping away in the breeze. Their ramp was already open, and somebody was peering over the edge, waiting for him. Using the lantern as a counterweight, Jonn gave his corner of the net a good swing, and threw towards the other ramp.

He missed.

The second throw also missed; the winds were throwing off his aim and the net just wasn't long enough to have any margin for error. On the third throw, though, Jonn must've got incredibly lucky, because the lantern disappeared over the edge of their ramp. A moment later, the net went taut.

Emmagen was watching, probably waiting for a thumbs-up or some other signal that the throw had gone well, but apparently she hadn't realized just how short the net was even on the diagonal. Jonn shuffled back into the shuttle, and very, very carefully unhooked the other corner of the net from its anchor. When she realized what he was doing, she tried to bat his hands away, but he shouldered her aside; it was the only way to give the Red shuttle passengers enough slack to climb down safely. He wrapped the net securely around both his wrists and shuffled back out on to the ramp, slower than before, because now he had to face the constant tug of the wind on the net threatening to jerk him over the side.

He gave a thumbs-up to the Red shuttle—it was useless trying to shout over the wind. After a few moments, the first person began to clamber awkwardly down the net, twisting and wobbling and spinning. His weight on the rope was almost more than Jonn could steady, and he hooked a toe under a safety rail on the ramp floor to brace himself. The guy let go and hopped down the last couple of feet, and Emmagen immediately drew him into the back of the shuttle—then crept forward, keeping one hand threaded securely in the man's backpack straps.

The next person came down faster, but rolled his ankle on landing. He hobbled to the inside safety rail, and Emmagen made him the next link in a human chain reaching out towards Jonn's position. The next two people down were women, and the third was a Tlakaran, all lighter and quicker to fall. Then came a cadet with smears of soot her hands, probably the shuttle engineer. When she joined the chain, Emmagen was able to get her hands firmly around Jonn's waist, giving him a safe anchor.

At that point, the net fell away from the other shuttle entirely, to flap in the wind.

Jonn fell to the ground, and only Emmagen's hands on his belt kept him from rolling out into the open air. He flailed for a minute before he could get his arms free; the net sailed away on the wind and out of sight. They clawed their way back inside, and when it was quiet enough he shouted over the open comm line, "Red Zero-Seven, what the hell was that?"

"Cam's flying, and Ruu was holding the net for us," the engineer pointed out.

"So how will they get off the shuttle?" Emmagen asked.

"Blue Zero-Three, come in," the pilot said. "Sorry about that, but it looks like us two are going to have to ride this out."

"Like hell you are," Jonn said immediately. "You'll kill yourself if you try to land that thing right now."

"What do want us to do, jump?"

Jonn pushed back into the main cabin and shoved Rodney out of the pilot's seat. "Red Zero-Seven, copy that," he said. "Give me two seconds and then go for it."

"Huh? Oh. Oh, Jesus. Not sure we have that long—"

But even the doctored sensors were good enough to visualize the two life signs at this range. Jonn called into the rear compartment, "You folks are gonna want to hold onto something. And kick those boxes out the back while you're at it."

"What do you mean to do?" Emmagen asked, back in the copilot's seat.

Jonn throttled slightly, creating more horizontal separation. "Catch them."

The others either trusted Jonn's piloting or had nothing to lose. "Blue Zero-Three, on the count of three," the pilot said, and Jonn focused carefully on the HUD, on the crippled shuttle and the two life signs aboard it. "Three...two...one..."

The moment the pilot left the controls, the other shuttle bucked and tumbled. Jonn had to pull away to avoid a collision, but then he came right back in as they leaped out of the back of their craft. The damaged shuttle began a corkscrew descent; as it sheered away, the two cadets were caught for a split second in open air.

Jonn very, very carefully dropped the nose of his shuttle, revered thrusters, and caught them.

He heard them hit the deck in the cargo area as the whole shuttle lurched; Emmagen looked back just a moment and then hit the hatch controls, sealing it. Jonn's ears popped again as the life support system re-established pressure, but they still rang with the roar of the wind. "Oh, my god, we actually did that," Rodney said raggedly.

A couple of the cadets in the back applauded fitfully. One—the pilot, apparently—pulled himself up and limped into the cabin. "Thanks for the lift," he said weakly.

"No problem," Jonn said, and let out a breath that it felt like he'd been holding for hours. According to the chronometer, the whole fiasco had taken less than twenty minutes.

Emmagen suddenly said "Oh," and hit a few buttons on the radio controls; whatever she heard, she routed it through her earpiece, with a small frown. "Two shuttles are inbound from the Cheyenne, ETA two minutes."

"Oh, great timing," Rodney grumbled.

Emmagen hesitated slightly, and there was something ominous in the way she added, "They are also under orders to escort us directly back to Starfleet Academy."

"The simulation isn't over, though," the Red pilot said, frowning.

Jonn swallowed. "Guess it is for us."

-\-\-\-\-\-

They unloaded the injured first, bumps and bruises and one probable ankle fracture into the waiting arms of an actual medical unit. That left Jonn standing on the shuttle ramp with Emmagen and Rodney: Nixon himself was waiting for them, flanked by Weir and, for some reason, Admiral Hammond. His presence threw Jonn off, because it was one thing for a random high-ranking officer to show up at Spring Sim, but this was clearly a little more personal.

However, it was Nixon who spoke first: "Explain yourself, Cadet Sheppard," he snapped, like this was another board of conduct meeting, like Jonn had been mouthy with another instructor or gotten in another off-campus fight. Like this was Jonn's fault.

That was enough to tear his eyes away from Hammond. "Well, sir, I think I just saved some lives," Jonn said.

Nixon's mouth tightened briefly, lips pressing whitely together before he said, "That little stunt you just performed could've killed all of you. As it is, you destroyed a shuttlecraft and risked the lives of your own crew and eight other cadets."

"I risked their lives?" Jonn asked, and pointed at Weir. "It was her modifications that screwed them over in the first place!"

"That's impossible," she said with a crisp certainty that made him want to grab her by her too-tight bun. "The shuttles were programmed to revert to normal flight mode in an actual emergency."

"Then why didn't they?" Jonn demanded.

Nixon cut off any answer Weir might've made. "Whatever the circumstances, Sheppard, what you just did up there was far beyond the pale. You took an outrageous and unnecessary risk that put everyone's lives in jeopardy."

"It was the right thing to do!" Jonn said, but he was acutely consciously that it wasn't much of a counterargument, and that what he'd meant to sound firm and serious actually came off a bit whiny.

Nixon looked at the three of them—Rodney was gaping, fish-like, and Teyla had raised one eyebrow dangerously high—and declared, "As of this moment I am placing you—all of you—on disciplinary probation pending a formal inquest on this incident."

"Inquest?" Rodney managed to squeak out.

"That's not fair," Jonn blurted, and stepped forward, aware he was getting dangerously close to Nixon's personal space. "They didn't do anything wrong, sir. I was the one in charge up there."

Nixon raised his eyebrows; the ramp emphasized Jonn's height and forced the admiral to look up at him. "Are you taking responsibility for what happened today, Cadet Sheppard?"

Jonn was acutely aware that this wasn't just another insubordination or conduct unbecoming on his file; he was aware of everyone, Rodney and Emmagen and Hammond and Weir, staring at him. He swallowed and raised his chin. "Yes, sir, I am."

Nixon huffed a little. "The probation stands. You're all dismissed."

He turned on his heel and walked away; Weir tagged along at his heels, and Hammond, after a pregnant silence, followed as well. "What the hell just happened?" Rodney asked shrilly, and Jonn didn't have the heart to tell him, I think we just became scapegoats.

Chapter Text

Elizabeth paused outside the doors of the conference room just long enough to take a deep breath. For a moment, she pictured Vulcan's Forge and Simon's low, even voice in her mind, repeating the words of a basic meditation; it allowed her to relax her white-knuckle grip on her padd, and slowed the hammering of her heart. She went over it until she was calm, until she could no longer justify the delay; then, with her head held high, she tapped the door chimes and entered.

Three human men and a half-Betazoid woman, were waiting for her there, arrayed around the head of a long table such that she could either stand at the far end or approach awkwardly from one side. "Doctor Weir," Admiral Nixon said, and that was a bad sign from the start, that she was Doctor and not Commander. "Have you had time to review the files on the incident?"

"I have, sir," she said. "I've also arranged to take depositions from Cadets Mitchell, Tobias and Ruu on what exactly went on aboard the lost shuttle leading up to the accident."

"Then you think it was an accident?" Carnahan asked—he had just taken over as dean of students this term, to the frustration of most of the faculty.

"I think it began as an accident," Elizabeth clarified. "And had it been handled properly and responsibly, that is what it would have remained."

Captain Markov turned to face Elizabeth directly; she was the chair of the engineering faculty, and had probably been reviewing the same records that Elizabeth had been poring over for hours, in search of the tipping point, the thing that had sent the whole situation spiraling out of control. "Do you believe your modifications to the computer core contributed to the destruction of the shuttle?" she asked outright.

"Not in the least," Elizabeth said firmly, concentrating fiercely on her own convictions. As if she could say anything else, with her whole career on the line. "Up until the distributor coil failure, the shuttle was operating entirely within the agreed-upon parameters."

"And those parameters included near-critical damage to its propulsion and control system?" Carnahan asked, just shy of sarcastic.

Elizabeth met his eyes. "The parameters we discussed in this very room were for an immersive experience, so yes, sir, that included the possibility of critical failure."

"We didn't discuss killing our cadets, Doctor," Nixon said.

"Which is why the simulation was programmed with various failsafes to return to normal flight mode in the event the shuttle took on actual damage," she said. She'd been repeating it to herself like a mantra: The failsafes had worked, the failsafes must have worked according to parameters.

"Clearly that didn't happen," Markov said.

"If you study the logs, ma'am," Elizabeth pointed out "you'll notice that the shuttle designated Red Zero Seven suffered several critical overloads when the distributor coil exploded. The simulation could not operate correctly on such damaged hardware—because none of us predicted such a serious emergency."

The us was deliberate; her work had crossed quite a few desks and she wasn't going to let any of them forget that. Nixon looked at Markov, who nodded, though slowly. "How much damage did that coil blowout do?" he demanded.

"A lot," she admitted. "They're lucky they didn't lose propulsion entirely. Except for the communication interference, very little about that situation was simulated."

"The fact is, though," Carnahan said loudly, "that they blew out the coil trying to correct the thruster problem. That was a result of the simulation."

"Yes, sir, it was," Elizabeth allowed, and she pressed her hands flat on the table to avoid the temptation to fidget. "Because the point of the Spring Simulation exercise is to expose the cadets to danger. It is to determine how they will react under intense pressure similar to what they may face in an emergency on active duty. But it is still only a simulation, something these cadets seem to have forgotten at the crucial moment. At any time—well before they destroyed their shuttle—they had the option to fly out of the simulation zone and request assistance, which they failed to do."

The third man in the room shifted in his seat. "You mean quit the simulation," Admiral Hammond said. "That's an awfully big decision to make about Spring Sim, Commander."

Elizabeth turned her eyes to him. She wasn't quite sure what the admiral's assignment was or why he had come to the Academy; obviously he had some interest in the simulation, but he hadn't tipped his hand as to what—or who—it was, and his presence here might well have been simply courtesy from Nixon to a guest of equal rank. "The evacuation portion of the simulation was over. Neither of the shuttles had received further orders," she pointed out. "The crew of Red Zero Seven had several hours of work on record, and their safety was at stake. Exiting the simulation zone was the least risky option, and the only reasonable one once the distributor coil was damaged."

"I suppose so," Markov said, though she sounded almost reluctant. "Though I also know Cadet Tobias—she can be stubborn."

"So what?" Carnahan asked. "Mitchell was at the helm. It was his judgment call."

"Cadet Sheppard has claimed responsibility for the whole incident," Nixon pointed out slowly. "Not to mention he's the one who came up with that lunatic evacuation scheme."

Hammond shifted suddenly again. "That's an awful lot of blame to place on the shoulders of a man who wasn't even aboard the shuttle in question," he said, and his tone was mild, but the words gave everything away.

"Cadet Sheppard is the oldest of the group and had seven years of experience on the Mars Defense Perimeter before he even entered the Academy," Elizabeth put in, seeing an opening. (Markov rolled her eyes at the mention of the MDP; Carnahan nodded absently.) "Given that, it was natural for the other cadets to defer to him."

"According to the transcripts, though, it was Tobias who suggested restarting the engines," Markov pointed out.

"A suggesting that Sheppard only reinforced," Elizabeth shot back. "And he cut off any other attempts to solve the problem in favor of his own plan, over the protests of his own team members."

Hammond folded his hands on the desk. "If this had been a genuine emergency, Commander, Sheppard's actions would've saved eight lives."

What was his angle, she wondered? Was he interested in Sheppard's family history or something else? "Be that as it may, Admiral, it was not a genuine emergency," she said firmly. "And if Cadet Sheppard can't distinguish simulation from reality, we have serious grounds to question his judgment."

The room went silent for a moment. The four senior officers sat in contemplation, while Elizabeth stood at perfect attention, matching her breaths to the cadences of an ancient meditation. Through the windows beyond, the lights of Colorado Springs winked out slowly as the night rolled on.

Eventually, Nixon said, "Do we bring formal charges?"

"Against whom?" Markov asked. "The crew of Red Zero Seven were the ones who lost their shuttle..."

"Blue Zero Three had no business being involved in the situation," Nixon said. "They've got to have some culpability as well."

"What about the rest of the Red wing?" Hammond asked. "They ignored a wing member in distress."

"They had grounds to assume that Blue Zero Three had the situation in hand," Carnahan said. "With communications disabled, they had no way to know otherwise."

"Sheppard's teammates did protest his plan," Elizabeth put in, thinking of Teyla's face as Nixon had handed down the probation. "And it's been legal principle for centuries that no one can be prosecuted for following a direct order."

"Sheppard wasn't technically in a command position, though," Carnahan pointed out. "Even if he's decided to act like it."

"You gave him his own roommate for a flight engineer," Markov said tartly. "I don't know about Cadet Emmagen, but if you haven't noticed how Sheppard and McKay get along, you've been under a rock."

"If Sheppard's service in the MDP is factored into his record, he is easily the most senior cadet in the group," Elizabeth offered. "There's legal precedent for treating him as the de jure officer in command of the situation. Certainly the transcripts demonstrate that the others deferred to him as a de facto commander, and that he actively sought to exercise authority over them." After a pause, she added, "He also claimed responsibility of his own free will."

They all looked at Nixon, but he was looking at Hammond. If this was about Sheppard's family—the human one or the Vulcan one—then Elizabeth would never be able to make anything stick. If this was about something else, though, depending on how much actual sway Hammond had... "I'll sleep on it," Nixon said, looking out over the midnight skyline. "We should all get some sleep on it. There's no requirement to even set up the inquest until Tuesday morning."

"Though it would be better to get it over with quickly," Hammond said.

"The probation stands," Nixon said sharply, and Elizabeth wondered what the two admirals had been talking about before this meeting even convened, why Hammond was here. "We have the rest of the weekend to decide how to proceed. This meeting is over."

The others rose to leave; Elizabeth waited for the senior officers to depart first, but Hammond stopped and stood in front of her, meeting her eyes. "Commander Weir, do you truly believe that it was Jonn Sheppard who risked those cadets' lives today?" he asked quietly as the others filed past.

"I do, sir," she said, just as steely. As if she could say anything else.

He regarded her for a long moment. "Then I hope you're prepared to argue your case," was all he said, though, and then he left, heading for the transporter zone rather than the main exits.

It was a long walk back to her apartment, so Elizabeth headed for her office—new digs with her promotion, bigger ones, with all the chairs she could want and a surprisingly comfortable couch. She locked the door behind her and collapsed onto said couch, breathing deeply and in patterns that she had learned as a child in the courtyard of the Federation embassy to Vulcan. This time, they didn't really help.

Eventually she grabbed a different padd from her desk, turning it over in her hands a few times. Eventually she switched it on, and opened a file of letters—dozens of them, letters she was never going to send. Tonight she would begin a new one.

Dear Simon, she wrote. I'm afraid I might have made a terrible mistake....

-\-\-\-\-\-\-

Jonn turned up his music, and quietly wondered how hard it would be to smother himself with a pillow. The wailing guitars made an oddly appropriate soundtrack for Rodney's wild gestures, but thanks to Jonn's pointy ears they couldn't drown out the sound of the ongoing argument—ongoing for what Jonn had clocked at three hours and counting.

Rodney was in the middle of saying something like, "It has to be a Haakon-Reyes algorithm because anything else would require twice the memory and also I could've cracked it already!"

"Haakon-Reyes would be overkill," Zelenka shot back, adjusting his glasses. "All that is necessary is a progression of increasing cubes—"

"Which is susceptible to T'Koor's Method," Rodney shot back. "Oh, my god, are you even listening to me? Are there words coming out of my mouth?"

"None that are particularly intelligent, no!"

Even on a good night, Jonn couldn't take this much nerd warfare in the room; he pulled out his earphones and snapped, "You guys want to take this outside or what?"

Zelenka, at least, looked chagrined; Rodney just rolled his eyes. "Sorry, we're just trying to save your commission and ultimately destroy Commander Weir here, we'll stop now."

Elizabeth Weir was the last thing Jonn wanted to think about, at the moment, her or her damned simulation; some instinct towards self-flagellation made him ask, though, "What's that supposed to mean?"

Rodney waved the padd in his hand around. "I managed to copy the whole simulation module—bastard encryption and all—before we got back to the Academy. If I can just get in here, I can prove that her simulation created conflicts with the shuttle's own programming that caused the thrusters to lock up."

"Possibly even contributed to distributor coil failure," Zelenka added, prodding his own padd absently. "If the simulation led the cadets to alter the coolant intake efficiency—"

"And so on, and so on," Rodney said, shushing Zelenka with a wild gesture. "But first I have to actually get into the module, which is taking an absurdly long amount of time even with full access to the engineering department's computer core."

Jonn rolled over onto his side, looking down on where Zelenka and Rodney had sprawled on the floor. "How're you getting into the core when we're all on probation?"

Rodney rolled his eyes and pointed at Zelenka. "Hello? What d'you think he's here for, his stunning good looks? I'm using his account as a proxy."

"Not anymore, you are not," Zelenka said, did something that had Rodney squawking at him.

Jonn sat up and leaned forward, setting the padd with his music aside so he could lean forward over the end of the bed. Most of the floor was covered with a set of padds networked in parallel, some scrolling dense text, some showing progress bars or graphical outputs from whatever they'd cooked up to crack the module. Rodney's hands were flying from one to another with the confidence of a virtuoso, while Zelenka stayed huddled around one, typing so fast his fingers might have actually blurred. "What are the odds of this actually working?" Jonn asked, genuinely curious.

"Hmm, that we can access simulation codes? Reasonable, I think." Zelenka said. "Cannot say more until we see what we are working with."

"But you definitely think it was all Weir's fault," Jonn pushed.

Radek suddenly made a face and bowed low over his padd, completely hiding his face behind the nowhere-near-regulation shag of his hair. Rodney coughed. "The shuttle crash? Totally Weir's fault. And unlike the naysayer over there, I'm positive we can prove it once we see exactly what it was she did."

Something about Rodney's tone of voice raised the hair on the back of Jonn's neck, and he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress, leaning forward. "So if we prove her simulation caused the crash, we're scott-free, right?" he said slowly. "I mean, they can't punish us for covering her ass, right?"

Radek clambered abruptly to his feet, and blurted something like"I have to—eh—toilet." Which was pretty goddamn alarming. Jonn looked at Rodney, who suddenly pulled his knees up like a little kid and hid his face behind a padd. Once Zelenka had picked his way out of the debris field and into the corridor outside, there was silence.

"Rodney," Jonn said, not even sure what they were arguing about—if they were arguing—just. "We did the right thing, buddy."

"Right," he said. "Which just happened to be so batshit insane that the rest of the Academy thinks we're about to get sectioned for it."

"Fuck them," Jonn said, because since when did Rodney care about the rest of the damned Academy? Wasn't he usually the one ranting about how they were all too dense to understand him? "Nixon can't punish us for saving lives."

"Nixon can do whatever the hell he wants, and he's already got it in for you," Rodney said. "Why didn't we just—I dunno—fly out of the simulation or something?"

"Would that have fixed the shuttle?" Jonn demanded.

Rodney threw up his hands, one of which was still holding a padd, which nearly got dashed apart on the corner of a desk. "I don't know! How am I supposed to know?"

"It's just that you were my goddamn flight engineer, McKay," Jonn said, curling his hands in the blankets, "so it was kind of your job to know. And to think of that shit before people nearly got killed."

Rodney's chin rose up at a dangerous angle. "Yes, because as a theoretical astrophysicist I am completely qualified in shuttlecraft operations—"

"Oh, fuck you," Jonn blurted. He turned away from Rodney—couldn't look at him with the blood pounding in his ears like this. "Try getting this through your ego, McKay—you fucked up back there, too. I asked you for a fix and you just froze. Some good your giant brain did us then, huh?"

Rodney scrabbled to his feet, kicking hardware left and right, blubber "You—you—" His face had gone a terrible meaty red—good Jonn thought viciously, shoving his feet into boots and shrugging on his jacket. He headed for the door, and Rodney said, "Hey, don't you dare—" and made like he was going to reach out for him; Jonn slammed the door behind him. A moment later, he heard a crashing thump, and wondered how many isolinear crystals had just burst into shards.

Campus was a terrible distraction; Rodney had been right about word getting around, and Jonn imagined could feel eyes on him everywhere he went, people he didn't even know watching and whispering behind their hands. It wasn't like he wasn't used to being in a fishbowl—he'd been putting up with his mother's reputation for years at this point, people bringing up the Athos Incident for small talk the moment they saw his name written down. But this was something different, something about the hushed tones and the glances averted a little too fast—he kept waiting for people to cross the street to keep away from him.

Maybe that was paranoid. He didn't care. Starfleet Academy took up twenty or thirty city blocks of real estate, and it had never felt so small.

Jonn knew the terms of disciplinary probation; it was just a fancy word for being grounded, and that had worked so well when he was a teenager and all. He turned down the narrow space between the engineering library and Littlefield Hall, crossing onto the grass when the footpath curved around to the left. The Academy campus had accreted in stages, as Colorado Springs stretched out to meet it, and there were several places on the north side of Centennial Quadrangle where the line between private property and Academy grounds was distinctly wobbly. The bars and cafes there weren't technically on campus, but Jonn would be within feet of the imaginary line...and of course, to get punished for leaving the grounds, somebody had to actually catch him.

He went into Legends, a dive that was favored by younger cadets—less chance of any faculty being around to spot him. His uniform jacket did stand out a bit, but with the placket open it was hard to see the third tab on his collar, and it wasn't like there weren't at least a few cadets in uniform—not to mention a couple groups of enlisted men in black coveralls, though most of them were no older than the cadets they were bumping shoulders with. It was witheringly hot inside, and the crappy pop music was almost inaudible over the sound of voices even to him; Jonn bumped his way up to the bar and tried to make catch one of the bartenders's various eyes.

It waved a free hand at him, and then mimed a gesture John couldn't decode for a minute. Then he looked down at the amber sensor embedded in the countertop. Oh. Checking identification, of course—and if Jonn swiped his thumb, there would be a hard record of him being off-campus, whether anyone spotted him or not. Not that he thought Nixon was bastard enough to check up on him like that...probably not enough of a bastard to check up on every bar in the campus district to make sure Jonn wasn't somehow secretly enjoying himself. Maybe. Crap.

Awkward now, he glanced around the crowd, not sure if he was hoping to see a friendly face who would spot him a drink or an unfamiliar one he could flirt with. The latter wasn't likely—despite what Rodney seemed to think, Jonn did not actually have people throwing their underpants at him everywhere he went, and he wasn't in the mood to put on a show in the faint hope of getting laid, much less just getting a beer. As for the former, well, that had been the whole reason he'd come to—

Wait a minute.

Jonn had to lean over the bar to get a better look, and someone in line behind him started trying to shove him out of the way. But up against the windows, at a high counter away from the bar—what the hell? He surrendered his position and made his way to where Teyla fucking Emmagen was drinking something fizzy. From the look of things, she was by herself.

"What's a beautiful girl like you doing in a place like this?" Jonn asked, leaning against the window.

Emmagen nearly choked on her drink, then glared at him. "I could ask much the same of you, Cadet Sheppard."

"Course you could," he said, smiling widely. "Seeing as we're both on probation and all."

Her expression twisted a bit, and she averted his eyes. "The probation will be rescinded soon," she said firmly.

"So you decided it doesn't just doesn't count?" Jonn asked. "Except something tells me there's no whiskey in that soda you're drinking, so you're just as worried about getting caught as I am."

"If I feared getting caught," she said frostily, "I would not have come. Perhaps you should not have, either."

"I didn't say I was afraid," Jonn countered quickly. "I just don't like the thought of getting confined to quarters. McKay might not survive it."

"You speak quite harshly of someone you consider a friend," Emmagen observed.

"So does he," Jonn shot back without thinking.

Emmagen raised an eyebrow, though, and looked down at her glass. "Perhaps now is not the ideal time to discuss the simulation," she said.

"Who said anything about the simulation?" Jonn asked, irritated all over again, at her and himself and McKay and the goddamned world. "I'm just looking for a decent bottle of beer. Unless you wanna talk about it...?"

"I do not," she said firmly.

"Then we're agreed," Jonn said. "So what should we talk about?"

"Let me clarify," Emmagen said, climbing off her stool. "I do not wish to talk to you at all right now, Cadet Sheppard. Good evening."

Jonn didn't think before he reached out and grabbed her arm. "Hey, now, don't—hey! Easy!" Because she'd spun out of his grip and landed some kind of oblique karate-chop on his wrist for good measure. It stung like hell and made his whole hand tingle. He needed to learn that one. "Sorry," he said, raising his hands. "Transmission received, okay?"

"Is this guy bothering you, ma'am?"

Jonn turned to follow the sound of the voice; a couple of enlisted men were standing behind him, led by a dark, stocky guy with the braids of a petty officer. They were looking loose and flushed, but nowhere near drunk, and despite the question they had their eyes on Jonn, not Emmagen. Somebody's spoiling for a fight tonight, Jonn thought.

And given the mood he was in right now...Good.

"Thank you, sir," Emmagen said crisply. "I am quite well."

"I'm not," Jonn put in brightly. "Think you can help me with that, sir?"

The PO glared at Jonn—they were probably the same age, or close do it, but he put on a condescending gruffness that probably intimidated the hell out of teenaged recruits. "Have you been drinking, Cadet?"

"Not yet," Jonn confirmed. "You buying?"

The guy at the PO's shoulder went red in the face. Somebody nearer to the back of the group said something like, "Bates, c'mon—" but the PO stepped up with a scowl. "You want to run that by me again, Cadet?"

"Just asking if you're offering to buy me a drink, sir," Jonn said, keeping a smile on his face. "Though I ought to warn you I never put out on the first date."

"You trying to get written up for disrespecting a superior officer, Cadet?" Bates asked.

"Why, do you see one?" Jonn asked, pretending to look over his shoulder.

As such, he wasn't sure if it was actually Bates who threw the first punch—it didn't seem likely, but there was a first time for everything. He saw the blow coming in his peripheral vision and dodged out of the way, enough that it only glanced off his cheekbone; he'd had enough hand-to-hand training to come up swinging automatically, and Bates just happened to be in the way of his fist.

It got messy real quick after that point.

Jonn knew he was a good bit stronger than a real human, had known it since the time he accidentally put a schoolyard bully in the hospital with a ruptured spleen. But what Bates and his boys lacked in strength they made up in enthusiasm, and also the fact that there were five of them. Jonn got in one more tag, from luck and Vulcan reflexes—the red-faced guy, who'd maybe had a little more to drink than his buddies and wasn't braced for it—before somebody else caught his wrist from behind and got it pinned against his back, where he didn't have leverage to break free. Jonn was thrown off-balance for a moment, and wide-open for Bates himself to fire at will. The first punch left him breathless, but by the time Bates was winding up for the third Jonn had got his feet under him again: he drove a kick straight into Bates' kneecap, hard enough to possibly fracture it.

At the same moment, the grip on his arm suddenly released, and Jonn stumbled; he managed to keep his feet at the last minute, and when he turned around, he saw Emmagen swinging the stool she'd just been sitting on at the man who'd been holding Jonn's arm. Another cadet tried to step in, and got the stool planted in his midsection for his troubles; the enlisted man stumbled into a table and sent a bunch of glasses crashing into the laps of the people seated there.

An arm suddenly closed around Jonn's throat, and he dropped down on instinct, bending at the waist and twisting to the side. It didn't throw his attacker, but it did send them both crashing to the floor, and when they landed the impact relieved the pressure on Jonn's neck. He managed to roll, and found himself facing Bates, who head-butted him right in the nose; Jonn responded by burying a fist in Bate's stomach, a little bit of payback. Bates folded right up, and Jonn was able to get a grip on his neck and shove his face into the floor, hard enough to scrape the skin.

Then Emmagen reappeared, slamming her stool into the ground an inch from Bates' head. "We must go," she said, and Jonn realized she was right—the crowd was getting into it now, grabbing Bates' boys by the arms and holding them back. She offered him a hand and he took it, and when a few well-intended folks put up restraining arms between him and the door he dropped his head like a line-backer and barreled right past, into the street's receiving dark.

-\-\-\-\-\-

Teyla was not entirely certain why she followed Sheppard, as they fled the bar; surely it would've been more logical for them to split up, the better to evade possible pursuit. But then again, if they had separated, she might not have another chance to ask him to explain his behavior at the bar; she had heard of his reputation for impulsiveness, but even on the shuttle she had not truly thought him reckless.

Despite his longer legs, she kept pace with him without excessive difficulty; they ran all the way back to the Centennial Quadrangle, where Sheppard slowly stumbled to a stop under a spreading tree thick with tiny lavender flowers. He leaned against the grey-brown trunk and pressed one hand to his stomach, wincing; when he noticed that Teyla had followed him, he seemed surprised. "Thanks," he rasped, still breathing heavily.

Teyla sat down on a concrete bench next to the tree to catch her own breath. Concern for Sheppard's well-being was at war with irritation over his inexplicable outburst, and losing badly. "You did not have to antagonize them," she pointed out, rather sharper than she'd intended.

"You didn't have to help," Sheppard responded crisply.

No, she supposed, she hadn't had to; except that leaving Sheppard at the mercy of five opponents had been unthinkable, never mind that he had mostly brought it upon himself. "Would you have preferred I not intervene, then?" she asked. "I am sure you could have convinced Admiral Nixon that it was all a great misunderstanding, had it come to that."

Sheppard flinched a little, and flexed his knuckles; one had split, and his own green blood was mixing with the human blood from one of his attackers, like splashes of vivid paint. "I said thanks, didn't I?" he muttered, but he also did not meet her eyes.

His silence gave her a chance to study him at her leisure, without the distractions that had been present during the simulation. She had not known what to expect of the son of T'Perr; the destruction of the Kelvin was a watershed moment in Athosian history, in the history of all Pegasus, but it was hard to remember that the woman immortalized in statues and films had been a being of flesh and bone, who left behind a husband and son on a distant star. Teyla supposed she of all people should know better than that, given the long shadows cast by her own parents over her life, even so many years later; still, she could not connect this impulsive and volatile man with someone made famous for her cool judgment and self-sacrifice. "You are not what I expected you to be, Jonn Sheppard," she admitted after a few minutes.

He snorted gruffly and looked up at her; one eye was growing puffy and green where Bates or another of his fellows had landed a lucky punch. "What, not Vulcan enough for you?" he asked, sounding strangely defiant.

"My people remember the name of your mother," Teyla said simply. "If not for her decision to evacuate the Kelvin, we might never have made contact with the Federation, and I would not be here now."

"And if not for me, you wouldn't be facing expulsion," Sheppard snapped, looking away again. "Poetic irony and all, I get that."

"We will not be expelled," she said firmly; she had examined the Uniform Code, and there would be no way Admiral Nixon could justify such drastic action to the disciplinary board.

Sheppard merely sighed. "Maybe you won't," he said mulishly. "Not so sure about me."

Such fatalism baffled her, but she did not have the energy to argue with it. Teyla stood instead, and rolled her shoulders, wincing at the stiffening muscles there; perhaps she had been cutting her bantos practices too short recently. "Admiral Nixon is not unreasonable," she told Sheppard, because she could not bear to let him have the last word. "No matter how he dislikes you personally, he must defer to the judgment of the disciplinary board. I am sure they will make the correct decision."

Sheppard blinked for a minute as if she had been speaking Klingon to him. "So you don't think it's all my fault?" he asked blankly.

I did not say that... "I think," she said, choosing her words carefully, "that given the circumstances as they were known to us at the time, your course of action was not unreasonable."

"That's...thanks," he stammered, looking away again. "I guess."

She studied him again. "You seem surprised by my opinion."

"Guess I just expected you to take Weir's side again," he mumbled. "You weren't exactly eager to be helping out back there."

"If I had genuinely objected to the plan, I would not have assisted you at all," she told him bluntly. "And Commander Weir has nothing to do with the issue."

"She's the one who wrote the simulation," he insisted. "And she's throwing me under the bus for her mistakes."

One of her father's sayings came to her mine. We are all mortal; we can rise above our nature, but not by clawing at each others' backs. But she did not think Jonn Sheppard would be interested in Athosian theology, particularly at the moment. "If that is your opinion, I will not attempt to dissuade you."

"Fine," he said, turning away from her. "Don't choose a side. See if that helps you save your own skin."

"There is no need for you and Elizabeth to be at loggerheads," she protested, exasperated with the flicker-flare of his temper. "The nature of an accident is that no one is to blame."

"Tell her that," Sheppard snapped over his shoulder.

Teyla sighed, watching him march off into darkness: all brittle strength and insecure convictions, coupled with the self-control of a man ten years younger. "I will remember you in my prayers, Cadet Sheppard," she said quietly, uncertain if he would hear her at this distance. "May the Ancestors grant you peace."

-\-\-\-\-

Jonn ran into Zelenka at the front entrance to the dormitory; almost literally ran into him, actually, as Zelenka was rushing out in high dudgeon, muttered fiercely to himself in Czech. He actually stopped short and did a double-take when he saw Jonn's bruised and bloodied face, though. "Oh! Oh. Ah. Hello. I am just—"

"Leaving," Jonn said, because if it wasn't a statement then it was a suggestion. "Finally had enough of McKay for one night?"

"Rodney has sent me away," Zelenka said irritably. "He received a message from some girl and went into manly vapors."

Jonn snorted. "Didn't know McKay talked to girls," he muttered half-heartedly.

"What is more surprising is when they talk back," Zelenka muttered. "Though I don't think this one is a cadet—unless she is first-year. Eugenia Ingram?"

Jonn shook his head; he couldn't summon the energy to care. "Hell if I know. See you around."

He wasn't sure what he'd say when he got back into the room—he didn't feel up to continuing the argument anymore, not when he ached all over from a different kind of fight, but he didn't feel much like apologizing when he'd been right. Luckily, though—or maybe not—when he actually slunk into the room, it was dark, and there was a tight, tense shape curled up under the blankets that didn't move as Jonn peeled off his clothes. Grateful for the excuse, Jonn dropped into his own bed, and found a comfortable position to lay down in. He wondered how much either of them slept, though.

Chapter Text

By Tuesday morning, their doom was upon them: the letter appeared on Jonn's padd, in bone-dry legalese, commanding him to appear before a disciplinary board on charges of destruction of property, recklessness and disregard for protocol. He wasn't sure what the last part meant, exactly, but there was a date and a time and a warning that failure to appear would have Serious Consequences.

He wanted to show it to Rodney, to laugh it off or compare with whatever he'd gotten, except Rodney seemed to avoiding him lately; for some reason that was worse than another confrontation, because at least if they started yelling again they might resolve something. But Jonn was also still too irritated to actually seek him out, and since neither of them were sleeping particularly well, their room was hardly a reliable place to wait. He thought about seeking out Mitchell or one of the other cadets from Red Zero Seven, but the gossip mill was bad enough as it was without giving them any more ammunition. Hell, even the professors seemed to giving him second looks...unless he was just being paranoid again.

Of course, given that he seemed to have shot to the top of Admiral Nixon's hit list all of a sudden, maybe that wasn't so paranoid after all.

Rodney was so committed to avoiding Jonn that he actually dared to skip Problems in Intercultural Communication—not that he needed much of an excuse, but when they were already on probation it seemed a little like flirting with disaster. Like something Jonn would do, actually. But the only thing that was attracting more attention than his impending doom were the bruises on his face and knuckles, and as much as he'd like to lay low until the day of the hearing, he was positive he'd never get away with it, even if Rodney could.

So he slouched into class on Tuesday afternoon, taking up a strategic position near the back, and made a game of trying to make eye contact with anybody he caught staring. He awarded himself bonus points if they blushed or dropped or anything. Go on, look all you want. I've got nothing to hide from you people.

"Good afternoon, cadets," Commander Yaxley trilled from the center of the lecture hall. She waited for the last murmurs and rustles to quiet down before continuing, "We'll be departing slightly from the syllabus today, as we welcome a very special guest lecturer. Dr. Daniel Jackson is a civilian consultant for Starfleet and an expert on ancient Earth civilizations." She gestured to the human man behind her, who wore a painfully ugly suit and glasses; he was typing away on a padd and didn't seem fully aware that Yaxley was talking. "He's here today to present to us on his research regarding—certain parallel developments in the histories of some Federation worlds. Dr. Jackson?"

Jonn didn't miss the little pause in her introduction, and just what the hell did parallel developments mean? He tilted his padd up to hide the screen, and did a quick, general search on the name plus ancient civilizations. A couple of journal articles, all five to ten years old with abstruse, wordy titles; some conference proceedings, almost as old...and an obituary, dated 2253, with a redaction issued for a year later. Colorful guy.

"...remarkably close parallels in unconnected cultures," Jackson was saying up at the front; he had some pictures of Egyptian pyramids on the screen, and he clicked up a picture of a Mayan step pyramid for comparison. "Keep in mind, these come from an era when human technology was barely adequate to get across the Mediterranean in one piece. Egypt and Mexico might as well have been on different planets. So why should they share the concept of the pyramid?"

Someone down in front—one of the people who actually wanted to be in this class, probably in communications or social sciences—shot up her hand. "With respect, sir," she said, "it's a geometric primitive. Thousands of planets have used pyramids in their architecture. It's used because it's efficient."

Jackson stabbed a finger at her. "Or do we assume it's efficient because it's commonly used?" When she didn't seem to follow, he prompted, "Look, the floor plan of a house—of any building—of this building—it's a rectangle, a quadrilateral. Or a series of them. But all the way back to yurts and igloos, circular floor plans have existed alongside the rectangles. For enclosing the maximum area within the smallest perimeter, the circle is the most efficient geometric primitive—but how often do you see it employed?"

Another cadet, hesitantly: "Isn't that a limitation of building materials?"

"Then triangles would be popular, if that was the key constraint," Jackson said dismissively. "Or octagons. The square building is a cultural concept, just like the pyramid. And you have a very good point," he added to the original cadet, who still seemed lost. "Thousands of planets, all modeling their monumental architecture on the same geometric primitive—but a cube is a primitive, too, and so is a cylinder. Why a pyramid? And why on such a vast scale? These things took decades to build, vast amounts of manual labor and natural resources—the forests of Egypt have never recovered. You can see the same thing on...lemme find it...on Bolarus—" and here he brought up another picture, of another pyramid made of vaguely greenish stone— "on Hanka, on Calder Prime, Indri VIII, Abydos, Velona—"

Picture after picture of pyramids, or crumbling stone structures that might've once been pyramids, filled the screen. Eventually, somebody piped up with what Jonn was thinking. "With respect sir—isn't a cone the natural endpoint of any big pile of rocks?"

"A cone is not a pyramid," Jackson said, with an edge in his voice that hadn't been there before. "These are engineered structures that required tremendous sophistication to build. All these structures are beyond monumental in scale for the time they were constructed, and they were all constructed within a few centuries of each other, on a dozen different planets, all using at best Iron Age technology. I realize this may not be quantum physics, Cadet, but even in the humanities we recognize the difference between a coincidence and a pattern."

The cadet who'd spoken up scowled, and slumped in his seat a little. But one of his friends jumped in to rescue him. "So are you proposing some kind of interplanetary travel pre-first-contact for all these races? Because, with respect, sir, that's harder to buy than a trans-Atlantic canoe trip."

"You're halfway there," Jackson said, erasing the pyramid pictures. "The key to understanding the pyramids—not to mention other advanced ancient technologies, which, well, I can come back to that diagram—the key here is to look at the mythology of the worlds in question."

He said this with decisive confidence, and Jonn glanced around the lecture hall to make sure he wasn't the only one who had no goddamn idea what that meant. He wasn't.

"Right," Jackson said, after a slightly-too-long pause, and started bringing up some more graphics—murals, paintings, a couple rotating holograms of statues. "Let me back this up. So we don't have actual historical records for most of these civilizations going back to the pyramid-building era; writing seems to have developed later, or been repressed until later, but oral traditions preserved valuable information—in the form of warnings, of cosmology, of cultural traditions that could only be adaptive in a particular climate, such as the D'raan practice of facial scarification—yes?"

He called on a cadet who had shot a hand in the air. "With respect, sir," she said (Jonn noted that phrase was getting more and more strained with every question), "did you say writing was repressed? By who?"

"Whom," Jackson said. "'Writing was repressed by whom.' And I'm getting to that part." He started pointing at the graphics as if they bolstered his argument, though from the back Jonn couldn't even quite see the captions. "See, mythology is how people make sense of the world around them—even in the modern day, urban legends and folklore are still perpetuated on subjects where scientific consensus is limited or absent. So for low-technology cultures, cultures where there isn't a concept of empiricism, where knowledge of the natural world is based on non-systematic experiential knowledge, mythology serves as a unifying means of explaining why rain falls, where animals came from, why grass is, uh, whatever color it is. This isn't just storytelling, it's ethnoscience, it's cosmology, it's Weltanschauung. And everything that these people encounter gets incorporated into that cosmology, on the best terms they can understand, and if something is so far beyond anything they have any other experience of, they'll call it magic, or God. That's where we find the pyramid-builders, or I guess the pyramid-inventors, really—why else would a gigantic pile of rocks be used as a tribute to the gods?"

Somebody, very quietly, giggled. Jonn noted that Commander Yaxley was staring at a fixed point in space across the room, biting her lower lip, as if she really, really wanted to interrupt with her own comments. The cadet with bad grammar had her hand up again. "Sir," she said, not even bothering with with respect this time, "it sounds like you're implying that gods exist."

"Is that so hard to credit?" someone interrupted, before Jackson could get a word in; Jonn craned his neck and noticed Teyla Emmagen sitting in the middle of the auditorium. He'd never noticed her in this class before, but then again, it was a big lecture. Her question sounded dead serious, and a bit more awkward snickering broke out in response.

"Exactly," Jackson said. "Ancient people weren't stupid, and they didn't make up ideas out of thin air. What we once called gods had to come from somewhere—from real beings, or from stories told about those beings."

"So you're saying—with respect—that religion is right," someone blurted, disbelieving, down in front.

"What I'm trying to demonstrate is that the gods of multiple Federation cultures are actually ancient representations of an advanced alien civilization that spread a number of common cultural developments across the worlds they once exploited," Jackson said. "So yes, in that sense, the gods of our ancestors were very real, if not exactly what their worshipers thought them to be, and the resulting religious traditions had a basis in fact."

"Doctor Jackson," somebody said, standing up—a Bolian cadet, one Jonn had had a couple of classes with. "You do realize that my people are atheists, yes? We've never had any gods."

"That is a valid point," Jackson said, and started frantically tapping at his padd. "And actually a very good one, because if you're familiar with the legends of Tkaan Ebrish the Hero King, there are tablets recovered from the Daishtipt Valley that give him the epithet 'gbuurh han aerish,' which roughly translates as 'spirit-destroyer' or possibly even 'god-slayer,' which suggests—and this is a recurrent theme across many planets—suggests a war between gods, or between gods and mortals, in which the losing side were somehow banished or dispelled from the known world. To be perfectly blunt, Cadet, you don't have any gods because your people killed them all."

The cadet flushed a deep indigo color. "That is one set of tablets out of thousands, in one valley on a whole planet," he blustered. "You think you can rewrite our whole history based on one sentence taken out of context?"

"At this time-depth, it's frankly miraculous any tablets survived so long," Jackson said. "And in this case, the context isn't just Bolarus, it's this entire quadrant of the galaxy—one planet is an internal phenomenon, two is coincidence, but three, five, a dozen—"

Another jumped to his feet before the Bolian sat down, cutting Jackson off. "Sir, do you really think that every single planet where these aliens landed would've received them as gods? At least one planet had to be smarter than that."

"It's happened to enough Starfleet officers by accident, regardless of how 'smart' the indigenous people are," Jackson said. "And the civilization I'm positing doesn't exactly have a Prime Directive or principle of first-contact ethics."

"Exactly what civilization are you positing, Dr. Jackson?" someone called out, without even standing up.

"A highly advanced one," Jackson said, "at least on a level with much of the Federation's current technology. One that was, at best, utterly indifferent to their indigenous slaves and, at worse, actively tyrannical, a pattern that some indigenous rules afterwards attempted to copy, such as the Egyptian pharaohs, the Bolian hero-kings, the D'raan yelits, et cetera. They introduced the pyramid, logographic writing, images of animal-headed monsters or divinities, and possibly the kilt, though that one could've been an independent development on some planets."

He didn't seem to understand why some people were giggling on that, or maybe he was just surprised that people weren't bothering to cover it up anymore. The same interrupting cadet challenged, "And where are they now, then? If they were so advanced and so wide-spread? Or did they all get murdered by a bunch of Iron Age primitives with rocks and sticks?"

"By definition, Iron Age primitives have graduated to spears and swords, actually," Jackson said dryly. "As for where they went—well, that's not something I can be specific about at this time."

Jonn thought there was something a little weird about that phrasing, but the heckler—because that's what it was at that point, outright heckling. "So you're suggesting we all start hailing a bunch of invisible aliens as gods based on evidence you're cherry-picking from every world in the Federation?"

"You're exaggerating my claim," Jackson said, with a certain underlying weariness, as if he'd had this argument before. "I'm not saying these aliens are gods, I'm saying they were seen as gods, that they actively promoted themselves as gods—and I certainly don't consider them worthy of respect, much less worship. The one universal trait of these aliens is that their pretense of 'godhood' was based on lies and oppression, and perpetuated solely to enrich themselves, rather than the people whose faith they demanded."

Another hand went up, and Jonn realized it was Emmagen's again—odd that she was still bothering to raise her hand when half the rest of the class had devolved into muttering amongst themselves. She stood, and even managed to say, "With respect, sir," with a straight face. "Do you include the worlds of the Pegasus quadrant in this analysis?"

"I...no, Cadet, I'm afraid those worlds are a little outside my area of focus," Jackson said, blinking a little.

"I only ask because you seem to be describing a concept very much like our Ancestors," she said. "They, too, were highly advanced beings, who gave life to the people of our various worlds and established much of our common culture before they were defeated by their enemies and Ascended to a superior plane."

That provoked just as much muttering as anything Jackson said, and Jonn's ears were sharp enough to make out the details of a few remarks—something snide about civilized planets and something about superstitions. Jackson, though, seemed to consider this carefully, and ultimately nodded. "That's certainly an intriguing set of parallels, Cadet, and definitely worth exploring. Certainly many of the false gods of other words claimed to have created the people they oppressed."

"You misunderstand me, sir," Emmagen said. "I do not speak of claims, but of facts."

That seemed to wrong-foot Jackson, and even some of the cadets quieted down, at least ones who were paying attention. "You have proof, then, that your Ancestors existed?" he asked.

"If I may ask, what proof do you have of your false gods?" Emmagen shot back. "Aside from that already mentioned."

That actually got him to wince. "Well, I'm afraid my principle field investigation was conducted on Abydos, so most of that's still classified," he said. "As are, ah, most of my other sources, to be perfectly honest. But there are specific hieroglyphic inscriptions, the Daishtipt Valley tablets that I mentioned, a series of cave paintings on the polar landmass of Ruah IV—"

"Whereas the peoples of the Pegasus quadrant have a lengthy written and oral tradition regarding the Ancestors and their gifts to us," Emmagen interrupted firmly. "One which is quite consistent across all worlds, and predates any culture's use of spaceflight."

"Which is significant," Jackson said slowly, "but still, all that means is that the traditions have a common origin, not necessarily that they're founded in fact."

Emmagen's face darkened. "To borrow a line of argument, Dr. Jackson—on dozens of worlds, spanning almost half the galaxy, we see the form called humanoid. Bipedal, carbon-based, oxygen-dependent, often possessed of roughly similar internal anatomy and biochemistry. There is no reason this should be the norm, not when we have seen that more exotic species such as the Tholians and the Medusans can thrive. Yet on many worlds, at many times, we find life in the image and likeness of...someone, carrying the spark of intelligence and spreading out across the stars, and carrying with them some faith in a Creator, however old or unpractised it may be. Is that pattern, sir, or coincidence?"

Jackson winced. "Like I said, Cadet, I'm not very familiar with the myths of the Pegasus quadrant," he said weakly. "And, well, it's not totally out of the realm of possibility that we're dealing with more than one ancient civilization here, though I admit right off that it's risky to start multiplying entities like that."

Emmagen's chin lifted. "I do not speak of myths, Dr. Jackson. If the Ancestors are real, could not your hypothetical aliens be in fact gods?"

"No," Jackson said flatly, and his knuckles went a little white where he was holding his padd. "I'm sorry, but—no, they really, really can't."

"And so you condemn my gods as well?" Emmagen asked frostily.

"I'm not condemning anything, Cadet," Jackson said, "but I'm also choosing to withhold judgment about anybody's divinity until I see a little more evidence."

"Perhaps what you require is a bit more faith," Emmagen said, and to Jonn's surprise, she picked up her padd and walked out of the lecture hall. The conversations that had gone quiet while she and Jackson argued sputtered back to life, but Jackson just looked down at his hands, a muscle jumping in his jaw.

That seemed to prompt Yaxley out of her zone. "I'd like to remind everyone that Dr. Jackson is a guest as well as an employee of Starfleet and should be treated with all the respect that position entails," she said sharply, as if she hadn't been tuning out herself. That at least got the murmuring to die down. "Are you ready to continue, Dr. Jackson?"

"I think I'm done here, actually," he said quietly, and picked up his padd. "Thank you, Commander, for giving me an opportunity to speak. And if anyone has questions, obviously you can contact me after class...."

He didn't look like he really expected that, though. If this was the kind of thing he published on, Jonn figured he was probably used to it.

The rest of the lecture went more or less according to plan—Yaxley was handing out term paper topics, analysis of first-contact situations within a specific philosophical framework—and Jonn slipped out of the lecture hall as soon as he could. He was planning to head straight back to his room and lay low until dinner time, or maybe even later—Rodney usually kept a stockpile of emergency field rations on his side of the room (he claimed to like the taste) and if he wasn't going to be in the room to defend them Jonn felt he had a right to take whatever he wanted.

That plan dissolved as soon as he came around a corner and found himself face-to-face with Admiral Hammond and another officer in a yellow tunic.

"Cadet Sheppard," Hammond said, with a small but friendly smile. "I was just coming to look for you."

"Sirs." Jonn stopped, and wondered if he ought to come to attention or something. The rest of the class streamed by them, no small number daring to slow down and stare—they didn't exactly make an inconspicuous group, two high-ranking officers and one slightly damaged cadet.

Hammond didn't seem to mind. "Cadet Sheppard. I wanted to introduce you to somebody here—Captain Jack O'Neill of the Cheyenne. Jack, this would be one of the cadets who broke your shuttle."

"Thought he'd be taller, sir." O'Neill's hair was mostly silver and he had lines weathered into his face, but Jonn knew he was much younger than he looked; he'd heard of the man by reputation, for his actions on the Klingon border, but he'd never expected to actually meet him. Sure as hell not like this, anyway. "That's a hell of a shiner you got there, Cadet. Whose corn flakes did you piss in?"

"Just a misunderstanding, sir," Jonn said quickly.

"Not related to the simulation, I hope?" Hammond said with a small frown.

"Absolutely not, sir." Jonn turned back to O'Neill. "With respect, sir, I thought I'd heard you retired."

"Sure it was me?" he asked. "There's another Captain O'Neil, with one 'L.' No sense of humor at all. We get mixed up a lot."

"Captain O'Neill volunteered to sit on the discipline board for your hearing Friday," Hammond said, and the penny finally dropped. "Since he happens to have some free time while he's here in Colorado Springs."

"Yeah, and you know I'm just a sucker for administrative procedure," O'Neill added in a deadpan dry enough to blister.

Jonn knew what he was supposed to say now, even if it rankled a little bit for Hammond to spring it on him like this. "I appreciate your time, sir," he said, forcing a bit of a smile.

O'Neill averted his eyes. "Yeah, well, it was either that or follow Daniel around all day." He glanced around. "Where is he, anyway? I thought he was lecturing a class around here."

Jonn cleared his throat when he realized O'Neill was talking about Dr. Jackson. "He did. It...ah, didn't go over so well."

"Lemme guess, he talked really fast, said something crazy and then looked at you like you were an idiot?" O'Neill asked.

Jonn blinked. "Does he do that a lot, sir?"

"Yeah, we pretty much just learned to go with it," O'Neill said with a little shrug. "It's a lot easier to assume he knows what he's talking about and worry about what he actually said later."

Jonn found himself glancing in Hammond's direction, because he honestly couldn't tell if O'Neill was being facetious or not. Hammond just gave him an enigmatic half-smile. "Captain O'Neill was impressed with what you did in a Tereshkova, Cadet, regardless of the outcome," he said, as if this wasn't a complete change of topic. "Haven't seen one of those put through its paces in a while myself."

"They're not exactly built for precision handling," O'Neill said. "You ever tried that trick in a Gagarin?"

"I did something similar once in a Sanbao, back with the MDP," Jonn admitted.

"No shit." O'Neill leaned against the wall, eyes lighting up. "You ever get one of those to override its stability management? The response time is amazing."

"Yeah, but you tend to lose a nacelle that way," Jonn pointed out. "You can jack the thruster response easier if you just disable the inertial dampeners."

"And then you lose a lung," O'Neill said.

"Eh, who needs lungs?" Jonn asked. "Besides, the ones on the Perimeter never pull more than three gees on a good day—the original plasma manifolds got retrofitted with parts from the Tamerlane series, so they vent like crazy."

"Now that's a damn shame," O'Neill said emphatically, but before he could continue the communicator on his belt started to trill. "Sorry, hang on—O'Neill here." He stepped away, but his end of the conversation was perfectly clear, and Hammond wasn't even pretending not to eavesdrop, so Jonn really couldn't help but join in. "Nice to hear from you too, Daniel.... What? Where is he...? And you can't find Carter for this? Ah, jeez, all right, I'll meet you at the fountain in twenty and we'll go bail him out." He closed the communicator and grimaced at them. "We're gonna have to finish this conversation after the hearing. Teal'c found an all-you-can-eat pancake place."

"Do what you have to, Captain," Hammond said gravely. Jonn didn't dare ask who the hell Teal'c was, or why he wasn't allowed around pancakes. Hammond turned back to Jonn as O'Neill took off at a trot, and gave Jonn's battered hands a significant glance. "I should be going myself, actually. Try to take care of yourself, Cadet?"

"Can't make any promises, sir," Jonn said, and Hammond hesitated, as if there was something more he wanted to say, like advice or reassurance or exhortations not to dig himself any deeper. In the end, though, he took his leave, and let Jonn finally escape back to the dormitories.

Rodney was in the room when Jonn got back—in fact, Jonn could hear him from four doors away, and he wondered whether that was a good sign or not. When he actually got into the room, he nearly got a face full of Rodney's wild gesticulation; Zelenka was sitting on Rodney's unmade bed, working on a padd, apparently not even paying attention to the rant. "—and just completely ignored me! You can't treat students like that! You can't treat future colleagues like that!"

"Perhaps if you hadn't come on to her like a dog in heat she would have been more receptive," Zelenka muttered.

"I gave her a compliment!" Rodney protested. "Who doesn't like a complement?" He pointed at Jonn, as if he'd temporarily forgotten they weren't speaking to one another. "You compliment people all the time!"

"It helps that I'm actually a nice person and not a sex-starved maniac," Jonn pointed out automatically. Messing with McKay felt good, familiar, like broken-in boots, and it probably said terrible things about his character that he'd kind of missed it these past few days.

Rodney waved him off, tutting. "I get plenty of sex, thank you! And I'm a very nice person! And what the hell happened to your face?"

Jonn flopped back onto the bed. "Long story, McKay. Who are you bitching about now?"

"Guest lecturer this morning in Topics of Subspace Theory," Zelenka said, while Rodney was still working his way up to shouting volume. "Lieutenant Commander Carter. Very insightful. Very intelligent."

"Very hot," Rodney added.

Jonn fought the urge to literally cover his face with both hands. "You don't tell superior officers that they're hot, McKay. I'm pretty sure we covered that in basic."

"It was a compliment!"

"Thus she treats Rodney like clingy man-bimbo that he is," Zelenka said airly, "and thus he is outraged and swears to destroy her."

"Can you maybe wait to get on that until after the hearing?" Jonn asked, thinking back to O'Neill's hasty conversation. "Seems like it might piss off part of the discipline board."

"Oh," Rodney said, and his face slowly transformed, the outraged flush draining out as he seemed to remember all at once that they were in trouble. His voice came out oddly high. "That. Um. Right. What do you know about the board, exactly?"

Jonn shrugged. "At least two people there aren't out to get me personally, so that's good."

"Yeah, faint hope," Rodney muttered, and sat down at his desk.

There was an awkward silence, but Jonn was no longer in the mood to play around with people who were supposed to be his friends. "You two ever crack Weir's encryption?" he asked.

"Um. Maybe. Sort of." Rodney rubbed his eyes and turned to face his desk, away from Jonn. "I've had—I've been busy. With, you know, other things."

"What other things?" Zelenka asked. "You are ignoring all my messages."

"Things!" Rodney snapped. "I have things that I do! And you two are not always involved in them!"

"And what things are those?" Zelenka asked.

"None of your damned business!" Rodney said. He started fidgeting with his communicator without flipping it open. "But, um. But yeah. I think I've got an approach mostly figured out."

"You'd better do better than mostly by Friday or we're screwed," Jonn told him.

Rodney suddenly flung his communicator down on the desk, where it bounced down into the gap behind. "Surprisingly, Sheppard, they let me into the Academy for a reason," he declared acidly. "I've got everything under control."

"All right," Jonn said, and was surprised at how badly he wanted to believe that. "Just—we're all counting on you, y'know."

"Yeah," Rodney muttered, and crawled under the desk to retrieve his communicator.

Chapter Text

The cadet dress uniform involved a stiff, hip-length jacket with a high collar, and Jonn had to fight the urge to keep tugging on it. He was waiting in the entryway of Archer Hall, a spacious, airy building with a delicate glass facade that contrasted oddly with the heavy bronze statues of famous ships and officers of Starfleet's past. The rest of the accused were grouped loosely near the doors of Room 145, where the hearing was scheduled to take place; Mitchell was talking quietly to Tobias, Ruu was reading, and Emmagen appeared to be meditating—well, either that or she'd fallen asleep standing up. Rodney had disappeared from the dorm while Jonn was indulging in an early-morning burn-off-the-nerves run, and at five minutes till there was still no sign of him. He's gonna come storming in here talking about a mile a minute and set the record straight, Jonn told himself. He's had all week to work on it. If anybody can do it, McKay can.

The sound of footsteps on the glossy tile floors preceded the board members; Admiral Nixon was in the lead, flanked by Hammond and Admiral T'Liir from the medical school. Jonn recognized O'Neill from their brief conversation, along with Carnahan and Markov from previous disciplinary actions, but there was another officer he didn't recognize—a human man, captain's braids, a little on the short side but with small, sharp eyes. He and O'Neill were standing about as physically far apart as they could in the narrow corridor.

Jonn snapped to attention, along with the others, as the officers filed past them. As they opened the door to enter Room 145, Jonn heard a low rumble of noise from inside—he made out Elizabeth Weir's voice, and a few others, observers or assistants. It was a mind game, making the cadets wait outside until the last minute, and one Jonn was intimately familiar with; that didn't necessarily mean it didn't work.

Where the hell was McKay, anyway?

"It is most unusual for a board of seven to hear a disciplinary case," Emmagen said. Even though she was murmuring, her voice seemed to carry to every corner of the hall.

"We did lose a whole shuttle," Mitchell said with a wince.

"Besides," Jonn added from experience, "Nixon doesn't actually get to vote except to break a tie." And that was cold comfort, because Jonn knew Markov and Carnahan didn't like him any more than Nixon did. He'd met Admiral T'Liir approximately twice, and one of those times was a mandatory meeting regarding telepathy protocols and Ponn Farr that Jonn was never speaking to anyone about ever again. It hadn't been the best first impression, but Jonn had made worse.

Hammond and O'Neill were there, though, and that last, unknown officer, who could've been another of Hammond's plants or a friend of Nixon's or someone else entirely. Two for, two against, two unknown. Given the odds, he'd rather be crash-landing a shuttle.

Someone opened the door for them, the signal to get underway. The desks in the room had been rearranged, creating a row of five—five?—at the front, directly in front of the table where the board members sat. Holocameras stood in all four corners to record the proceedings, and name plates had been set up: Captain Jonathan J. O'Neill at one end, and Captain Harold Maybourne at the other, with Nixon in between. Jonn lingered at the back of the line, taking the last seat on the right—definitely only five chairs set up. "Let's get this over with," Nixon said loudly, toying with the padd in front of him. "Commander Weir, if you're ready?"

"Excuse me, sir," Jonn protested, as Weir was about to open her mouth. "Cadet McKay isn't here yet."

"Cadet McKay has been excused," Carnahan answered.

"What?" Jonn blurted. It felt oddly like he'd been punched in the stomach.

"You heard him," Nixon said sharply. "Now, if we have your permission to continue, Cadet Sheppard?"

Jonn bit down hard on three different retorts that came to mind; Emmagen put one hand on his forearm under the table, though whether it was supposed to be reassurance or a warning, he wasn't sure. After a tense pause, Nixon nodded at Weir, who began to read the charges off her own padd. "We've assembled here today to hear evidence in the case of Cadets Second Class Teyla Emmagen, Rodney McKay, Cameron Mitchell, Ruu, Jonn Sheppard, and Claire Tobias in connection with the events of stardate 2257.107 which resulted in the loss of a Tereshkova-class transport shuttle and minor injuries to four cadets. The cadets stand charged with careless destruction of Starfleet property, gross recklessness, and disregard of simulation protocol."

"Thank you, Commander," Nixon said. He turned to one of the holocameras. "Let the record show that as Commander Weir has been the lead investigator of this incident, she has been chosen to conduct the bulk of the questioning."

Now that was more than Jonn could stomach. "With respect, Admiral," he said, coming to his feet. "Commander Weir isn't exactly an unbiased observer in this, is she?"

"This board has the utmost faith in Commander Weir's ability to conduct a thorough investigation, Cadet," Nixon said acidly. "Unless you've got a better idea?"

Jonn glanced at the rest of the board members, looking for any sign of dissent; O'Neill had raised his eyebrows, but he seemed to be absorbed in his padd, and Markov's lips had thinned considerably. Admiral Hammond met Jonn's eyes, and he gave a very, very small shake of the head. Jonn could imagine the drawling advice. Pick your battles, son. "My apologies, sir," he ground out, and dropped back into his chair.

Nixon set his padd flat on the table with a click. "Now, if Cadet Sheppard has nothing more to say—you may begin, Commander Weir."

"Thank you, Admiral," she said. "I'd like to ask Cadet Ruu to answer a few questions..."

A few questions turned out to be over an hour's worth, for each of them: long, detailed questions about who said what to whom, who did what, how the situation on the shuttle evolved. Weir was cool as a damned cucumber, and she wasn't asking anything particularly loaded: it honestly seemed like she was just trying to establish the facts. Occasionally she played back some of the comm recordings from inside the shuttles, asking them to confirm that they were accurate. A couple of times she entered data from the lost shuttle's engineering logs.

"Did you at any point have misgivings about Cadet Sheppard's plan to evacuate the shuttle?" she asked Ruu.

"I did not," he answered.

Of Tobias, she asked, "Did you at any point feel the midflight engine restart maneuver constituted an unnecessary risk to the safety of your shuttle and those aboard it?"

"No, ma'am," Tobias said.

"At any point," she asked Mitchell, "did you feel undue pressure from your fellow cadets to conform to Cadet Sheppard's advice regarding the thruster malfunction or the evacuation plan?"

"No, ma'am, I did not," he said.

Emmagen got a particularly close grilling, for some reason. Weir played out a clip from the shuttle's comms, of her saying, Cadet McKay, that is expressly against the terms of the simulation. "Was this the only time you reminded your fellow cadets of the protocols of the simulation?"

"I believe it was, yes," Emmagen said.

"And what was Cadet Sheppard's response to that?"

Emmagen hesitated slightly. "He responded that the shuttle designated Red Zero Seven needed to take immediate action to correct the thrust problem."

"Did you understand this to implicitly advocate action outside the protocols of the simulation?" Weir asked.

Jonn wanted to ask just what the hell that even meant, but Emmagen responded smoothly. "My understanding of Cadet Sheppard's meaning was that the situation was serious and called for swift and direct action."

"Your verbal response to Cadet Sheppard was, I quote, 'Is there not another way to override the failsafe?'" Weir said, referring to her padd. "Is that correct, Cadet?"

"That is correct, ma'am."

"And Cadet Tobias responded by proposing the engine restart."

"That is correct, ma'am."

Weir looked at her padd again. "Let the record indicate that during this time, both shuttles were flying within two and a half kilometers of the perimeter of the simulation zone."

Jonn curled his fingers into fists under the table. So that was her tactic—that Red Zero Seven should've just quit the simulation and let the evaluators mark them down for it. Did Nixon actually buy that line? That they should've blown the rest of their careers because of a stupid glitch?

Weir was now asking Emmagen, "You indicated verbally on the record that you disagreed with Cadet Sheppard's evacuation plan, did you not?"

"I believe I informed him he was 'a crazy son of a bitch,' in Cadet Mitchell's terms, yes," Emmagen said straight-faced. Up at the table, O'Neill smothered a snicker.

"But you didn't attempt to prevent Cadet Sheppard from acting," Weir said. "In fact, you assisted him."

"That is correct, ma'am," Emmagen said.

"Why was that, Cadet?"

She didn't glance at Jonn, but he recognized more or less the same words she'd given him last week. "Because, given the situation as we knew it at the time, his plan was not unreasonable, and because I judged that to not act or to delay action any further would only endanger the cadets aboard the other shuttle."

Weir didn't react one way or another, so Jonn had no way to tell if that was the answer she'd wanted. "I see. Thank you, Cadet Emmagen, you may sit."

Jonn braced himself for his turn under questioning, but Nixon suddenly leaned forward and said, "I think we could all use a break for lunch right about now. We'll reconvene in thirty minutes." The board stood up and filed out in a group, along with Weir; Jonn kind of wished he could pull Hammond aside and ask him how it was going, what Weir was playing at, but he knew the rules too well from too many board of conduct hearings. And god forbid we throw in any more breaches of protocol, he thought bitterly, kicking at the leg of the table.

"That went...not awful," Tobias said, grabbing a bottle of water off a side table.

"Could've gone better," Ruu grunted.

"We lost a shuttle," Mitchell repeated. "I'm counting it as a win if we don't fail the sim altogether."

Emmagen was looking at Jonn speculatively. "She seemed quite focused on your conduct during the simulation," she said slowly.

What did I tell you? Jonn wanted to ask; instead, he pulled his communicator out of his pocket and brought up Rodney's name. "I did kinda take the blame in public, remember?" he said.

Mitchell blinked. "You don't think they're serious about pinning the whole thing on you, do they?"

"Hey, if Weir takes her share of the blame, I'll gladly take the rest," Jonn said. He could hear the channel connect, but it rang out. Damn it. "Anybody seen McKay today?"

"I have not," Emmagen said. "Is he not your roommate?"

"That's what I'm trying to work out," Jonn muttered. He tried to call again and still got no answer, and McKay didn't call back before the hearing reconvened.

Once everyone was settled back in and the holocameras were recording. Nixon made a small gesture at Weir, who crossed the room to stand directly in front of Jonn, hands folded demurely behind her back. "Cadet Sheppard, I have a few questions for you."

Jonn stood up: he was maybe a hand span taller than Weir, but looking down at her didn't make him feel any better. "I kinda figured that," he said, and suspected that the loud cough that immediately followed had come from Hammond.

"Cadet Sheppard, your time here at Starfleet Academy has been rather...colorful, isn't it?" she started off.

"Is that a question or a statement, ma'am?" Jonn shot back.

One of her eyebrows went up slightly. "If you think it's inaccurate, Cadet, you seem to have no trouble offering corrections. But it's a matter of official record that you've stood before the board of student conduct no less than thirteen times in three years for offenses ranging from insubordination to fighting on campus..." Her eyes flicked to the remnant of the bruise around his eye. "And that's just the times you were caught, of course."

"Still waiting for an actual question, ma'am," Jonn growled.

"All right. Were you at any time designated with a command position during spring simulation?"

"I—no," he said, wrong-footed. "It's a matter of record."

"Yet during the simulation, you issued a direct order to Cadet McKay," Weir said. When Jonn didn't respond to that quickly enough, she asked, "Would you like to hear the official recording?"

"No," Jonn said. He could feel an angry flush building in the back of his neck already. "No, I don't need to hear the recording."

"So you admit that you said, I quote, 'McKay, that's an order. Get up here?'"

"I needed him to stay on task," Jonn protested.

"That wasn't the question posed, Cadet."

He clenched his fists. "Yes, that's what I said."

Weir consulted the notes on her padd. "Do you believe that was a lawful order, Cadet?"

"I don't know," Jonn said, "I'm not a lawyer."

Hammond interrupted Weir before she could respond to that, the first time any of the board members had said intervened. "Commander, I'm afraid I'm not seeing the relevance of this line of questioning."

"Allow me to restate the question," Weir said. She turned back to Jonn. "Cadet Sheppard, did you believe yourself to be in a command position over Cadets McKay and Emmagen?"

Aha. Here it was. "Somebody had to show some leadership, ma'am, and we didn't exactly have time for a vote," he said.

"And it was because of this command position that you verbally accepted sole responsibility for the loss of the shuttle designated Red Zero Seven?"

"I accepted responsibility because it was my idea," Jonn said.

Weir nodded. "Your idea, yes. Did you solicit any others?"

"Like I said, not a lot of time for voting," Jonn pointed out.

"Let the record show," Weir said, raising her padd in one hand, "that until the midflight engine restart, the shuttle's greatest mechanical difficulty was the disabling of the maneuvering thrusters. They had more than sufficient power to continue cruising at altitude until the end of the simulation period, if need be."

"Assuming your simulation didn't throw anything worse at them," Jonn shot back.

Weir's back stiffened slightly. "Let the record show that the simulation was operating within normal parameters before the engine restart."

"Then why don't you let Cadet McKay have a look at the code and prove it?" Jonn demanded.

"Commander Weir doesn't have to prove anything to you, Cadet," Nixon cut in angrily. "She is not the one under investigation here."

"And whose fault is that, sir?" Jonn asked.

Hammond was looking at Jonn with something like despair; Jonn found it hard to care. Nixon's face flushed, and he leaned forward over the table. "Cadet, unless you'd like to add another count of insubordination to your record, I strongly suggest you consider your position. Commander Weir, please continue."

"Thank you, Admiral," Weir said. There was nothing demure about her now: a sense of calm had settled in like a suit of plate mail. "As we're on the subject of insubordination, Cadet Sheppard, may I ask how many times you were penalized for insubordinate behavior while serving with the Mars Defensive Perimeter?"

You may, Jonn wanted to ask, but that was just petty, and he had no doubt that Nixon would find some way to follow through on the threat. "Three," he answered.

"Four, officially," Weir said. "And how many times for dereliction of duty?"

Jonn swallowed, seeing where this was going. "Twice."

"Intoxication?"

"Six times," Jonn admitted.

Weir scrolled through her notes. "According to a report filed by Group Captain Siranoush Bedrosian, then-Flight Officer Sheppard was, I quote, 'immature, irresponsible and occasionally prone to needless risk-taking.' She recommended against further promotion."

Hammond folded his arms across his chest. "Again, Commander, I'm having difficulty seeing the relevance of all this."

In response, she pulled up another document and sent it to every padd in the room. "Perhaps this will make it clear. In 2246 Jonn Sheppard was seen by Dr. Euh-Na Park, a xenopsychiatrist who specializes in the psychopathology of interspecies patients. Her diagnosis at the time was that the Vulcan aspects of his neurophysiology leave Sheppard exceptionally vulnerable to extreme mood swings and deficits in executive function, resulting in impulsive and irrational behavior."

Jonn felt his face flame, as the memory of that meeting rushed back to him: Dr. Park had been friendly enough, cheerful, chatting about his troubles in school while she scanned him with a tricorder. At least his Vulcan relatives never pretend to like him before telling him he was a half-breed freak, and they didn't dress it up in medical jargon like he was supposed to be grateful for it.

At the board's table, Admiral T'Liir leaned forward slightly. "How did you obtain these records, Dr. Weir?"

"They're part of Cadet Sheppard's permanent file, ma'am, just like his MDP service jacket," Weir said.

"I am certain you are aware of the controversy surrounding Dr. Park's research methods," T'Liir said. "Particularly when the subject is a pubescent male."

"I have to agree with Admiral T'Liir here, Commander," Hammond cut in. "If Cadet Sheppard cleared medical and psychiatric upon admission, there's no reason to bring up a diagnosis that's over a decade old."

"I'm merely attempting to establish a pattern of behavior, Admiral," Weir said. "Cadet Sheppard has a long and detailed history of conduct unbecoming to an officer in Starfleet. Yet despite this, he willingly assumed a command position, through which he directly and indirectly pressured his fellow cadets into taking recklessly irresponsible actions that disregarded the context of the simulation."

"Funny," O'Neill suddenly piped up. "I don't recall any of them saying they felt pressured."

"This is not the time or the place, Captain O'Neill," Nixon said sharply. He turned back to Weir. "Do you have any other questions for the cadets, Commander Weir?"

"Just one." Weir turned back to Jonn. "Cadet, after the simulation you offered to accept full responsibility for the incident. Do you still stand by that claim?"

"I'll take my responsibility if you take yours, too, ma'am," Jonn said just as flatly, staring her down.

"Then we're finished here," Nixon said. "Cadets, please wait in the hallway while we come to a decision."

Jonn stalked out, and ignored Mitchell and Emmagen calling after him. He went straight into the nearest restroom and splashed some water on his face, which did nothing to cool the hot green flush there. What he really wanted to do was hit something, and the mirrors looked nice and breakable...but of course, that would be impulsive and irrational, wouldn't it? Wouldn't Weir just love it if he came back in with lacerated knuckles to match the remnants of the black eye?

Emmagen surprised him by storming into the bathroom; she planted herself in front of him, arms crossed, chin raised. "You should not have lost your temper," she said firmly.

"Yeah, sorry about that," Jonn said. "Guess it just slipped out. Poor executive function, you know."

"Do not be foolish, Sheppard," she said. "Elizabeth did nothing but give you rope enough to hang yourself. If you anticipated a personal attack you should have prepared yourself better."

"So this is all my fault, is it?" Jonn demanded. "I thought you didn't disagree with me."

"You are impossible," Emmagen said with a shake of her head, and stormed back out.

They ended up loitering back in the hallway outside Room 145, the same place they'd started, though by this point the sun was westering and filling the corridor with light. Jonn checked his communicator, but no, no contact from Rodney. Figured. There was no sound, no sign of life from inside the room, no clue whether they were having a vicious argument or already drafting a conclusion. Hammond's got O'Neill on your side, he told himself, but that wasn't enough, not when Nixon was the tie-breaker...T'Liir had seemed sympathetic, except Vulcans weren't sympathetic, and Markov and Maybourne hadn't spoken up at all...

He passed nearly an hour like that, thoughts chasing themselves in circles, until the door opened. Weir came out, and stood by the door. "The board has reached a decision," she announced, and gestured for them to go in. Jonn did his best not to look at her as he went past.

Nixon waited until they had all shuffled back into their seats before he started reading out the verdict. "This board has considered all the available evidence, and come to a conclusion," he said. "You all demonstrated a serious deficit of judgment when you chose not to exit the simulation safely and immediately. I cannot over-emphasize this. All of your subsequent actions merely serve to compound this initial mistake. However, as to the specific charges, this board finds the greatest culpability rests on the shoulders of Cadets Tobias and Sheppard."

Tobias made a choking noise; Jonn, numbly, wondered if she'd thought she'd get off easy since they were so obviously scapegoating him. He looked at O'Neill, who wasn't making eye contact with anyone, and then at Hammond, who looked irritated and tired. What had they even said in his defense?

"Therefore, Cadets Tobias and Sheppard will remain on disciplinary probation for the next hundred and eighty days," Nixon continued. "In the event that this interferes with required coursework, the instructor may petition on a case-by-case basis for an exception. Any violation of the terms of probation will automatically trigger a far more serious punishment. In addition, a letter of censure will be placed in Cadet Sheppard's permanent record, detailing his role in the incident and this board's findings. Cadets dismissed."

And there it was. As sure as he'd been that this would be the outcome, Jonn still found himself numb with shock. He didn't care about probation; he'd been on and off probation for most of the past three years. But that letter of censure was a black mark that would follow him for the rest of his career...if he even still had a career...

"I'm sorry, Sheppard."

He started, and realized that the room was half-empty, and Hammond was standing across the row of desks from him. He really did look sorry, too, a little grimace written into the corners of his mouth. "That's nice, sir," Jonn said. "I'm sure that'll help a lot."

"I did everything I could," Hammond insisted. "But I'm afraid this time there were things going on behind the scenes beyond my control."

"And over my pay grade?" Jonn asked tartly.

"Over both of us, son," Hammond replied, and sighed. "I'm just sorry you got caught up in it."

And a couple years ago, that kind of cryptic bullshit had been just entrancing enough to get Jonn to take a gamble on the entrance exam. Now it just pissed him off. "Either way, future with Starfleet isn't looking so rosy now, is it, sir?" he asked. "I might've been better off staying on the Perimeter."

Hammond's brows lowered. "Don't do anything rash, Jonn. This isn't the end of anything."

"No," Jonn said, "no, sir, this was just the organization that I'm supposed to trust with me life stringing me up because they couldn't admit that one of their favorites screwed up. Now what the hell am I supposed to do about that? I'll say one thing about the Perimeter, I always knew exactly where I stood with them, even if it was in the gutter."

Hammond tried to put a hand on his shoulder, saying "Jonn—" but Jonn wasn't interested. He turned and walked out of the classroom, putting as much distance between himself and George Hammond as he could.

-\-\-\-\-\-

It should've been a relief, and Elizabeth supposed it was, sort of: the inquiry was over, and she could get back her real work. She'd been so busy during the past week preparing for the hearing that she'd gotten behind on marking papers, and if she didn't finish those soon she'd be reduced to showing a holo in class to kill time. She had correspondence to answer. She owed Simon a call, or at least a letter.

Dear Simon, I am not proud of what I did today...

"Doctor Weir?"

She paused on the pathway back to her office, and turned. Captain Maybourne was coming up behind her; he'd been a late addition to the board, someone Nixon had found, and she wasn't certain what his assignment was. He hadn't spoken during the board's deliberation, and voted to censure Sheppard but not Tobias—the deciding vote, in fact. He flashed a small smile at her as he caught up. "Sorry, make that Commander Doctor Weir. We didn't have much of a chance to get acquainted back there, did we?"

"No, we didn't, sir," Elizabeth said. "And there's no need to use the honorific, 'Commander' will suffice."

"Of course it will," he said indulgently, in a way that instantly put her off. "Listen, I wanted to commend you on how you handled Cadet Sheppard back there. You'd have every right to press another charge of insubordination on him."

"I think I've had my fill of Cadet Sheppard for now, sir," Elizabeth said. I'll take my responsibility if you take yours. Except she wasn't responsible, dammit, she'd already proven that....

Maybourne shrugged, accepting this. "Well, with any luck he'll keep running his mouth off and get run out on a rail before the rest of the fleet has to deal with him. That's actually not want I wanted to talk about, anyway."

"Oh?" she asked. Maybe now she'd find out what interest he'd had in the case in the first place.

He slowed to a stop at a bend in the path, near a thorn tree bedecked with wind chimes; their soft tinkling was almost musical. "I've been admiring your work from afar, Commander. You could've ridden your father's coattails into some cushy desk job, but you didn't. You took chances, and I respect that."

Elizabeth studied him carefully, but no, he seemed completely sincere. Obsequious as hell, but sincere. "Thank you, sir."

"There are some people I'd like to introduce you to," he continued. "I think you'll find what they have to say intriguing, and I'm positive they'd like to get to know you. Not a lot of people see things our way, you know."

"What way is that, exactly?" Elizabeth asked, trying not to betray her suspicions.

Maybourne laughed. "Oh, you know—pragmatically, I suppose you'd say." He pulled out his communicator and tapped out a message. "Councilor Kinsey is having a dinner at his house in Virginia in a couple of weeks. He'd love to meet you."

Elizabeth fought the urge to repeat the name like an idiot. Why exactly did a single board of conduct hearing merit a meeting with Earth's senior representative on the Federation Council? "I'm flattered, sir. Though it might be difficult to clear my schedule on such short notice."

"Oh, I'm sure something will work out." Maybourne closed his communicator with a snap. "I've sent you all the details. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a shuttle to catch. A pleasure, Commander."

"Captain."

She watched him walk away, wondering what exactly she'd just gotten herself into.

-\-\-\-\-\-

Crater Ridge had apparently once been a military base, back in the days of the last World War; that was how it had ended up a string of bomb craters in the first place. Rodney stumbled uphill, slipping on loose leaves and pine needles, and periodically he had to squint at the dim display on his tricorder to make sure he was on the right track. He'd waited half the night back in their dorm room, before it had dawned on him that Jonn might not be planning to come back; it had taken another couple of hours to triangulate his coordinates from the ping on his communicator, and over an hour of deliberation over whether he actually ought to go all the way down the south end of campus and find him. Ultimately, the odds of getting punched in the face weren't enough to outweigh the fear that Jonn might be planning to do something incredibly stupid, and Rodney had put his boots on and set off into the chilly spring night.

The sun was rising now on the other side of the ridge, leaving stains of gold and pink on the thin clouds overhead. Rodney paused for a minute to catch his breath and check his tricorder, but no, Jonn still hadn't moved...hadn't moved for quite a while, in fact. If he'd somehow left his communicator up here as a diversion and run off somewhere else, Rodney was going to kill him.

He finally crested the ridge, and found himself looking down a steep slope at misty, golden meadows; the highway out of town was a shimmering ribbon on the horizon, sparsely populated with trucks and buses. Jonn was, thankfully, exactly where the tricorder said he'd be, sitting on a flat rock and watching the scenery with a kind of thousand-yard stare; he'd brought a small backpack with him, and he was absently playing with one of the straps.

He also had to have heard Rodney coming from about a mile away—possibly literally a mile, given how quiet and still the woods on this end of campus were—but he didn't say anything to him, didn't even turn around and acknowledge him until Rodney cleared his throat. "So, um...yeah."

Jonn still didn't move. Bastard.

"My father's dying," Rodney blurted, because he was exhausted and suddenly outraged that Jonn could just sit there and presume to dictate how this conversation was going to go. Because the past week had happened and Rodney was done. He flopped down on the ground next to Jonn's rock and picked at a loose seam on the knee of his pants. "Xenopolycynthemia."

Jonn finally looked at him; he looked as exhausted as Rodney felt, with greenish-brown smudges under his eyes and even crazier cowlicks than usual in his hair. "I'm sorry," he said awkwardly, before glancing away again."

"Benjamin Ingram. The greatest physicist of his generation." Rodney wasn't exaggerating, either—he knew exactly who his father was, had never been allowed to forget it, had changed his name to get away from it. And yet— "He wasn't even going to tell me. My sister had to sneak out of the house and call me from the neighbors' to let me know."

Jonn kept playing with his backpack, and the traffic on the highway carried on as if nothing was wrong. As if people died every day—as if his father was just people and not the grim-faced ogre in the study who'd made Rodney's life a living hell. And now...now...

"I didn't...I ran away from home to come here," Rodney confessed; he'd always sort of figured that Jonn knew, but Jonn looked up sharply like this was brand-new information. "Forged the paperwork and everything. At first I was afraid he'd follow me and try to bring me back, but when he didn't come I decided he just didn't care enough to look...turns out he knew the whole time, though. Knew and didn't bother getting in touch with me anything." And now he was dying and Mum had told Rodney in no uncertain terms that he wasn't welcome, and damn it, Rodney had always thought this would be such a relief...

"I'm sorry," Jonn said again, lamely.

Rodney pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, which where sore and gritty from lack of sleep and...other things. "So, that's why I skipped the hearing. I chickened out on you again. I didn't have anything ready and I couldn't just stand in front of all those officers and just...I couldn't. Sorry."

Jonn sighed, like he didn't have enough energy to respond properly. "S'alright," he said, nudging Rodney's arm with one elbow. "Don't think it would've have made any difference anyway."

"Yeah. Still." Rodney scrubbed at his face with the back of one hand, then ruffled futilely at his hair—he probably looked like some unwashed crazy person, which was exactly what he was. "At least we didn't get kicked out, right?" he tried, aiming for the only sliver of hope he could see in the situation.

"Doesn't mean we can't still walk away," Jonn said ominously.

Rodney just blinked at him. "What do you mean, like, quit? Are you serious?"

"I don't know if I'm serious or not," Jonn said lislessly, eyes on the horizon. "I can still go back to the Perimeter. Probably get the same posting, even."

"That's stupid," Rodney said bluntly, stomach twisting with anxiety. "That's exactly what Nixon wants you to do."

"I don't give a shit about Nixon," Jonn snapped. He rubbed his own eyes, just as Rodney had. "If he wants to chase me out of the fleet, let him. It's not worth it to fight him."

"No. Jonn, no, Look." Rodney put a hand on Jonn's shoulder, then realized he had no idea what to do with it and pulled it back. "You can't give up now. This is stupid. You can't let a couple of assholes like Nixon and Weir stand get in your way." He racked his brain for something else to say. "Wow, I'm really bad at this."

"Yeah, you are." Jonn dropped the backpack strap and leaned back on his elbows, stretching his legs out in front of him. "I just need some time to think, Rodney. Figure out my priorities."

"What, beyond 'fly spaceships, score with aliens'?" Rodney asked.

"I can do that anywhere in the galaxy," Jonn pointed out.

Rodney shrugged, feeling helpless. "Yeah, but...but, um...anywhere isn't here," he stammered. "Which is, well, this is kind of all I've got, now, without—you know. And I...that is, I think...I think I'd miss you. If you were anywhere. As opposed to here. Oh, God, I'm shutting up now."

He looked at the wet leaves under his boots, willing his blush to go down, until Jonn nudged him with an elbow and said, "Thanks."

"Yeah. I mean right. I mean let's never talk about this again," Rodney said emphatically, before a yawn took him by surprise. Possibly he'd been sitting awake just a little too long.

Jonn nudged him again, as if he'd read Rodney's mind. "You look like shit, McKay. You should get some sleep."

"Yeah, probably," he said, as if he was actually going to get any sleep if he laid down again. He stood up, and spent a minute trying in vain to brush the mud and rotten leaves off his ass before giving it up as futile. Jonn seemed to have slipped back into the mysterious depths of his own brain, and Rodney felt another stab of anxiety, because if there was one other thing just couldn't deal with right now... "Just...don't do anything stupid, okay, Sheppard?" he asked. Pleaded, really.

"Trying not to," Jonn assured him.

Which was the best Rodney was going to get out of him, probably. With one more backwards glance, he set off back down the hill, to lay awake in bed and try to convince to figure out how he was supposed to grieve for the man he hated more than anything in the world.

-\-\-\-\-

Jonn waited until Rodney was out of earshot—out of Vulcan earshot—before he let out another bone-deep sigh. Don't do anything stupid, right—because Rodney couldn't just come out and say Don't leave me. Jonn knew he wasn't thinking too clearly, especially not after spending half the night wandering around the woods, but there was a part of him inclined to think that the smartest thing in this situation was to cut his losses—to his pride, and to his future prospects. Rodney would just have to learn to deal.

Because Jonn couldn't stay in Starfleet just to stick it to Nixon and Weir and everybody else who didn't think he could cut it. He couldn't do it just because Hammond wanted him around to play whatever fucked-up games he had going on behind the scenes. He couldn't do it for Rodney's peace of mind. He'd never been a big believer in revenge, and it wasn't like he'd never let anyone down before.

He'd had a lot of practice walking away from people and things that pissed him off. Not so much at toughing it out.

Jonn dug around in the front pouch of his backpack, looking for something he could use as a coin. He came up with a stray isolinear crystal—Rodney had probably brought it back to the room for something, who knew how it had ended up in Jonn's bag. There was a deep scratch in one side from where it had been knocked around by other things, so he called that heads. "Stay or go," he muttered under his breath, and flipped the crystal into the air, where it spun and caught on the light.

Chapter Text

Part III: deep space is my dwelling place

Eight

Even in summer, Colorado Springs had cool, breezy nights that invited long walks and open windows. With the end of the academic year upon them, many of the cadets were indulging in celebration, particularly the fourth-years who were so tantalizingly close to their commissions. Teyla passed plenty of revelers as she slipped out of her residence hall, their loud laughter filling the evening air. For some, the last exams were already over; she herself had only to deposit her undergraduate thesis, a task that could be completely nearly at her leisure. Starfleet Command had already issued deployment papers for the graduating cadets, contingent upon the completion of their coursework, and everything else increasingly seemed to be a mere formality.

Just thinking of her deployment papers set her teeth on edge, though. Teyla knew that she was near the top of her class in all subjects, and she had seen her own service jacket: excellent physicals skills for her size, technically adept, conversational mastery of a half-dozen languages. She had expected an assignment on a starship, perhaps even one of the new Constitution-class ships that would launch within the month; at the very least she would have thought she would merit placement on one of the larger stations such as Starbase Eight or Deep Space Two.

She had brought her papers to Elizabeth, barely able to contain her anger, and all but thrown the padd on the desk. "Why have I been assigned to Starbase Seventeen?"

Elizabeth had paused in the process of packing up her office, looking shocked that Teyla would storm in so abruptly. "I take it you're dissatisfied with the appointment?"

"I am far too qualified for a mere listening post," Teyla said bluntly, because it was true. "You know I am capable of a more challenging assignment."

Elizabeth had gone still and quiet, which was typically a sign that she was irritated or upset herself. "I'm quite aware of your capabilities, Teyla. That's why I recommended you personally for the Starbase Seventeen assignment, in fact."

Teyla had felt as if the ground beneath her shifted in that moment; as if there were dark fissures beneath her feet that she had only just become aware of. "I do not understand," she confessed, after a moment.

"Until you receive your security clearance for the assignment, there isn't a lot I can tell you," Elizabeth had said, but she also circled around the side of her desk to stand face-to-face with Teyla, put her hands lightly on her shoulders. "But believe me when I say that Starbase Seventeen is no mere listening post. In fact, it may be the most important installation in Federation space after Clarke Station. This posting is a real opportunity for you, and I'll admit I had to pull some very long strings to make it happen."

Teyla still did not understand what a listening post in a classified system had to do with a nearly obsolete space station in Sol; but she also still trusted Elizabeth, despite the strain caused on their friendship by the disciplinary hearing the year before. She had little choice but to trust her, when it came to matters of such high security clearance. So she had sighed, and submitted, telling herself that it would only be a matter of days before her security clearance was approved and she could be fully briefed on the posting. Only a matter of days, and she could be patient that long, at least.

She paused to trace the pendant under her shirt, the one she still wore after four years of sneers and blank looks from other students. Ancestors grant her patience, because otherwise she might explode from the frustration of not knowing.

Teyla's path took her at length to the shadows of Odhiambo Hall, around the west side where there were no windows or doors. She found one of the many secluded benches set along the path, place of peace and quiet...well, quieter than her own room, at any rate, and with the libraries and lounges tightly packed with studying students she had few other options to pursue. She made herself comfortable, with her padd in her lap, and opened the latest message from Halling, the one marked Urgent. At least, until she received her security clearance, she would have something with which to distract herself...

-\-\-\-\-\-

Jonn dodged out of the way of a laughing gaggle of cadets—science division, he thought, but he couldn't be sure—spilling out of a cafeteria on a tide of laughter. Lucky bastards must've been done with their last exams already; probably heading for the bars now, or a party in a rented apartment off-campus. Jonn himself still had a couple of finals, and technically he should've been studying for them, but with Rodney working on his thesis half the room had been swallowed up by a jumble of dirty laundry, food debris, hard copies of charts and graphs, hand-scribbled equations, and reference books hauled all the way from the main library and heavily bookmarked in multiple colors. And of course not a single piece of it could be touched without disturbing the order of the known universe and potentially costing Rodney his degree. This was like the apotheosis of every pre-final panic and mid-project psychotic break combined, and Jonn was fairly sure that if he did or said the wrong thing at any moment Rodney would either take a swing at him or burst into tears; thus he didn't intend on spending any more time in the room than he absolutely had to until Rodney had deposited, defended, and, ideally, showered. There was a reason the guy was already starting to lose his hair.

But that still left Jonn at loose ends, because he'd never really been able to concentrate well in a public place and at the moment, any place on campus that didn't have a lock on the door counted as public. That left the option of finding a party—not exactly a difficult achievement this week—and he had to admit that a couple of drinks sounded good right about now, even if the company didn't. Dozens of cadets celebrating the start of their glorious futures, and here he was, getting ready to drown his sorrows instead...

A big group of students—science students, based on the few Jonn recognized—tumbled out of Tucker Hall on a tide of laughter. To avoid them, Jonn veered onto the footpath between Tucker and Odhiambo, winding his way around the back of the residential quad. The winding path was lined with tall, dense stands of false indigo, as high as Jonn's shoulder in places and topped with long spikes of white or purple flowers; every ten meters or so a cozy little bench was tucked away, swallowed up by the dark leaves. The sounds of celebration from the main quad receded as he walked, and as they did he was able to pick up the much fainter sounds of the crickets and night birds, the subtle hum from the dorms' environmental units, and, very faintly, somewhere ahead, a voice.

He thought for a minute it might be someone studying—it might be dark, but Starfleet took all kinds, and some people were desperate for a quiet spot—but as he got closer he recognized the tinny overtones of a speaker. His next guess was someone watching a movie or making a call from their room, but there were no windows on this side of Odhiambo and all the ones he could see on Tucker were closed tight against the breeze. Without consciously thinking about it, he slowed down and listened, trying to make out the exact words.

"...detected by a Genii listening post crossing the Burill system thirteen hours ago..."

He slowed to a stop. Was this a news report? He hadn't heard anything on the news...though if they were talking about the Genii Confederation, that was light years away, in the Pegasus quadrant. Not the kind of thing that made headlines here on Earth.

"...complete destruction of the ship. A scavenging crew arrived within an hour to recover bodies and sensor records, but indicated there was little left to recover. The final transmission was decoded by the Genii shortly thereafter, describing a craft with the appearance of a 'flying mountain' which deployed squadrons of fighters in addition to the energy discharge detected. This message was relayed to us this morning under the terms of the Proculus Accords, and the council is about to go into debate—"

The recording suddenly switched off; the crickets sounded that much louder in comparison. Jonn waited to hear more—there was something about the message, something that sounded familiar—but a moment later, a voice he recognized called out from amidst the indigo. "It is impolite to eavesdrop."

Jonn approached the source and found another of the little benches hidden in the bushes. Teyla Emmagen was sitting cross-legged, with a padd in her lap (tilted conveniently away from Jonn) and her expression tensed slightly when she recognized him. "Letters from home?" he asked, hands in his jacket pockets.

"Confidential communications from my proxy on the Athosian Council," Emmagen said a bit stiffly, almost scolding.

"Not the best place to listen to confidential communications," Jonn said, making a point to look around the wide-open path. True, it was nearly deserted, but if he could wander by, so could anybody else.

Emmagen's mouth thinned briefly, and she averted her eyes. "My roommates have already concluded their last exam, and they are celebrating. Together. With...ah, volume."

"Aha. Say no more." Jonn probably should've left at that point, continued his search for a place to get loaded, except he hadn't seen much of Emmagen over the past year—not since the board of conduct hearing, really—and he was mildly curious about how she'd fared, whether she'd been tainted by association or worked her connection with Weir into some amazing opportunity. He leaned against the side of a conveniently-placed lamppost and crossed his arms. "So, did you get your deployment papers already?"

"Of course," Emmagen said. She could've brushed him off, if she'd really wanted to—he'd have taken the hint—but instead she blanked her padd and set it aside on the bench. "I have been assigned to Starbase 17 as a communications analyst."

Jonn's eyebrows went up. Starbase 17 was on the perimeter of Area 52, a border zone so heavily classified that nobody around the Academy would even admit to knowing its proper name. The starbase itself orbited Abydos, but rumor had it that the surface was off-limits without a boatload of special permissions and security clearance on the level of the Federation Council. "Sounds like a fun place to hang out," Jonn said, imagining it for himself: cooped up on a tin can in the middle of nowhere with no way out.

"It is...not an ideal assignment," Emmagen admitted, as if this wasn't an understatement. But she tossed her hair and lifted her chin again. "But I have spoken to Commander Weir about it."

"Oh, you did, did you?" Jonn asked, and fought the urge to roll his eyes. "Bet that went well."

She frowned at him. "Do you still hold a grudge against her, even after all this time?"

"I wouldn't call it a 'grudge,' exactly," Jonn muttered. For a while he hadn't even been able to look the woman in the eye, but fortunately they didn't see a lot of each other—less than he'd seen Emmagen, in fact. Jonn stayed out of political science courses and she had no business on the airfield. It was a good compromise. "But that letter of censure hasn't exactly done me any favors, you know?"

"I have not seen your name on any discipline lists this year," Emmagen observed with one eyebrow raised significantly.

Jonn huffed, and scuffed the walkway with his toe. "Yeah, I'm a changed man. Too bad the rest of the fleet didn't get the memo." She just watched him, quiet and waiting, and eventually the silence got uncomfortable enough that he elaborated. "I'm being 'deployed' right back to Mars. Seems Utopia Planitia had an opening for a test pilot."

"Evidently they think quite highly of your flying skills," she said, which was probably the most diplomatic spin you could put on the thing.

"And they don't trust me in the wild, or with anything bigger than a shuttlecraft." He wouldn't even be doing that much flying, if he'd understood the paperwork correctly—there would be hours of simulators and collaboration with the design teams, but the number of actual prototypes in testing was tiny—one, maybe two at any given time, and there were other pilots with more seniority. He'd logged more flight time on the Perimeter in the middle of a haboob.

He'd cleaned up his act since the hearing, mostly, but he knew his academic work had been hit or miss; it always had been, really, but he'd let too many classes get away from him just because he'd rather be logging cockpit hours. That had been the whole reason he'd come here, of course, and the main reason he'd stayed: He wanted to fly, not make friends or influence people. He wanted to fly and Starfleet was supposed to let him.

Except apparently they wouldn't, and he only had himself to blame. Well, himself and Elizabeth Weir, since without that letter sitting on his file, he might've at least gotten the benefit of the doubt...but it was too late to do anything about that now, wasn't it?

Emmagen flinched a little, and looked like she was on the verge of saying something else; but in the end she just stood up and collected her padd. "I should be studying, as I imagine you should be as well," she said, not exactly meeting his eyes. "Good luck with your finals, Cadet Sheppard."

It was as she was standing up that he noticed something strange. "Hey, what happened to your little—?" He fingered his own shirt, at the equivalent spot where her wooden pendant used to hang.

Emmagen's hand went up, and he saw her trace the approximate outline of the the pendant with one finger. "I have found it is...easier...not to wear it so openly," she said quietly, and gave him a look that just about dared him to argue with her.

But he'd seen what kind of ass-kicking she was capable of before, so he just shrugged. "Your decision, I guess," he muttered. "See you around, maybe."

"Perhaps," she said. "At graduation, at the very least."

"Yeah, see you then," he said vaguely, but he stayed under the lamppost for a while, watching moths buzz around the bulb, as she took off in the same direction he'd come from, head held high.

-\-\-\-\-\-

Jonn found his party, eventually, following a couple of guys he knew from Stellar Cartography to someone's off-campus apartment, and made his way back to the dorm with a nice, vague buzz but no danger of a hangover—the Vulcan genes gave him a ridiculously high tolerance. The residential quad had gone quiet, finally, but plenty of windows were still lit up, and he was far from the only person still walking the grounds in spite of the chill. He wondered vaguely how many people were planning to go straight to an eight o'clock exam without heading to bed first.

His own window wasn't dark, but that was hardly a surprise; he assumed either Rodney was still hard at work or he'd passed out face-down at his desk. But as he made his way up the stairs, he nearly collided with a statuesque second-year cadet in her pajamas, holding a large stuffed bear by the leg. "You're Room 429, right?" she demanded.

"Depends on who wants to know," Jonn replied, confused.

She brandished the bear in his direction, scowling. "Go and tell your damn roommate to shut up or I swear to God I'm going to pull his digestive tract out through his oral cavity," she said firmly, and then stomped back down the hall.

"I'll take that into consideration," Jonn called after her, bemused.

He made it to the next floor, and realized something of what she was talking about as soon as he opened the door; he could hear Rodney yelling from this end of the corridor, though he couldn't make out the words. One of the guys from the room next door was already poking his head out to stare around myopically in search of the disturbance, and Jonn gave the rest of the building thirty seconds at best before they decided to break down the door and shut Rodney up by force. He sprinted down the hall, Rodney's shouting resolving into a semi-incoherent mix of idiot and irresponsible and something like mother.

There was a pause, while Jonn reached the door and fumbled with the lock, followed by a distinct, "Fine! See if I care!" and a little later, "Well, don't come crying to me about it, you little—!"

Jonn got the door open just as Rodney was slamming his communicator down on the desk; the effect was somewhat spoiled, since it landed directly in a slice of cheese pizza. "Jesus, McKay, can you keep it down in here?" Jonn hissed, shutting the door again behind him.

"No, I cannot keep it down, thank you!" Rodney shot back at top volume. He'd taken off his pants at some point, revealing boxer shorts printed with cartoon planetoids, but left his uniform shirt on. With his hair sticking up and his chin raised, the overall effect was somewhere between mad scientist and crazed vagrant.

"It is three o'clock in the goddamned morning," Jonn told him, wading into the debris field to get in his face. "People have exams. You want them to turn up at the door with torches and pitchforks?"

"I have got an emergency, Sheppard!" Rodney shot back, although thankfully at a more reasonable volume. "This is no time to worry about other people's delicate sensibilities!"

"How about your delicate ass, where I'm about to kick it?" Jonn asked.

Rodney rolled his eyes and huffed pizza-breath into Jonn's face. "Oh, yes, very clever. How many beers did it take you to come up with that one?"

"Seriously, McKay," Jonn said, "you need to—"

At that moment, the train of thought was blasted from Jonn's head by a piercing whistle. For one stupid moment he thought it somehow had to do with Rodney's yelling—maybe somebody had decided to get revenge by air horn? But then he recognized the melody of the whistle and the flashing lights up near the ceiling, and realized it was a red alert. A goddamn red alert. In the middle of the night during finals week.

"What the hell?" Rodney whined, face going from red to ashy far faster than could possibly be healthy.

"Get your pants on," Jonn said, reaching for a jacket that didn't smell like beer and fake tobacco. If they were lucky, this was the worst-timed drill in Starfleet history. And if they weren't...well, Jonn couldn't think of an emergency big enough to turn out the whole Academy in the middle of the night. Maybe a declaration of war? With who, though?

The main quadrangle was lined with officers—faculty and staff and visitors—a lot of whom looked like they'd been turned out on equally short notice, hair sticking up or uniform askew. There were plenty of lampposts and the lights over the doors of the buildings, but even so, the whole area seemed too dark and too cold, every shadow ominous and sharp. Even as the students assumed a ragged formation, a couple of petty officers were setting up a microphone and speakers on the front steps of Cochrane Hall, just so they'd be framed by the giant arch of the main doors.

Jonn waited, shivering a little in the breeze, while next to him Rodney got his breath back. There was a low general murmur of people whispering back and forth to one another, trying to work out what was going on, but Jonn couldn't hear anything specific that also made sense. Natural disaster? Political crisis? Some kind of elaborate prank gone disastrously wrong?

Eventually Nixon climbed up to the microphone, though from where Jann was standing he was almost impossible to see behind the speakers. The assembled cadets went to attention immediately, a deep and almost eerie silence settling over the quad. Hardly seemed to even be breathing. Nixon talked quietly with somebody out of sight for a few minutes before clearing his throat loudly into the mic. "Cadets, at ease," he called, though not one person actually relaxed all that much. Nixon seemed to hesitate for a minute, before finally announcing, "You have been called to duty tonight because, forty minutes ago, Starfleet Command received a report of an ongoing attack on the planet Vulcan."

"What?" Rodney blurted; fortunately he wasn't the only one. He met Jonn's eyes, but Jonn couldn't exactly offer him any kind of answers, because, well—Vulcan? Vulcan was in the Federation's heartland, there shouldn't be any way for a ship to get across the border and into a developed system, not without somebody seeing them coming—and it should take a hell of a lot more than one ship to threaten a whole planet, given the amount of traffic in the system, its perimeter defenses...

"The system perimeter defenses have, at last report, been completely disabled," Nixon continued over the rumble of reactions. "The threat level is considered extremely high. The Federation Council has authorized Starfleet to respond with all available force. However, a large number of our Federation- and Saladin-class vessels are currently on a sensitive assignment in the Vorash system and cannot be diverted."

Jonn glanced at Rodney again, but Rodney just shook his head. Where the hell was Vorash? And what could possibly be so important there that ships couldn't be recalled for an attack on a founding member of the Federation? Something about this was fishy...

Nixon plowed ahead without bothering to clarify. "For this reason, in consultation with myself, the Academy faculty and the staff at the Utopia Planitia shipyard, Starfleet Command has authorized the launch ahead of schedule of three new Constitution-class ships currently in Mars orbit: the Apollo, the Daedalus, and the Atlantis. These ships are being prepared for launch as we speak, and will rendezvous with a task force of ships already en route to Vulcan to provide military reinforcement. In order to fully staff these ships on such short notice, all cadets first class and a selected group of cadets second class will receive brevet commissions, effective immediately. Certain Academy faculty and staff will receive brevet assignments, also effectively immediately, to accompany and supervise you. Once you receive your assignment, you will have fifteen minutes to report the airfield for staging and transportation. All three ships should be ready to depart within one hour."

Jonn had never heard such a large group of people go so quiet, quieter than they'd been even before Nixon started. A nervous kind of anticipation was clawing at him, equal parts anxiety and eagerness—because here was a way to get aboard a real starship, a real assignment, if only temporarily...with the catch that they were flying into the middle of a battle zone with an unknown enemy. Assuming the battle wasn't already over by the time they got there. Still, as little as he wanted to be happy about an attack, as terrifying as the prospect was of a one-starship army capable of challenging a whole star system...this was an assignment that mattered, and if it was the only one he ever got, he'd do his damnedest to make it count for all it could.

Nixon had hesitated for a minute, but now he continued: "This isn't the triumphant sendoff I know most of you were envisioning. It certainly isn't the one I was planning for you. But know that you deploy today with the full confidence of myself and the faculty of the Academy. We have chosen to charge you with a precious mission, perhaps the most precious mission you will ever undertake. You carry our trust and our hopes. Officers, prepare to take your stations."

Some of the officers who had been standing on the sidelines began distributing padds down the rows of cadets-no-longer. Rodney jolted out of some kind of terrified stupor when one of them was shoved into his face; Jonn took the next one, and scanned his thumbprint to access his new orders. Sheppard, Jonn – Lieutenant, the header read, and his heart gave a little jump, even knowing it was a brevet promotion as likely as not to be revoked within twenty-four hours. Still, full lieutenant was nothing to sneeze at...

Just as quickly, though, his insides turned to lead. Burroughs Station – Phobos.

"Atlantis," Rodney whimpered, as cadets began to push past them towards the airfield. "They're putting me on the Atlantis as the engineer's mate. I'm going to be in charge of people! Have they met me?"

"Trade you," Jonn said numbly. Words like liaison officer and combat readiness jumped off the screen at him but didn't really register. All this time, all this frustration, and they weren't just sending him back to Mars, oh no—when the Federation came under attack, when they needed people the most, they were sending him right back to the goddamned Perimeter. The irony made him want to choke.

Rodney's eyes, however, got huge when he wrestled Jonn's padd away to see his assignment. "They're mobilizing the Perimeter?" he said, with a definite squeak in his voice. "Oh my god, is Earth next?"

"Who the hell knows?" Jonn asked, snatching it back. "It might just be a precaution. Spend three days playing canasta in the officer's mess." He wasn't screwed-up enough in the head that he'd wish for any kind of attack on Earth, of course. But he might be spending the next few days sitting on this thumbs on Burroughs while everyone else threw themselves into the line of fire. The thought of it made him a little sick.

Rodney seemed to suddenly make the same connection, looking at his padd and Jonn's and back again quickly. Something in his face hardened, somehow, and that stubborn jutting chin came back in full force as he took several quick, deep breaths. "Right," he said with a savage certainty that he usually reserved for mathematical proofs. "Okay. First things first, we're taking care of this."

"Of what?" Jonn asked bitterly, but Rodney had suddenly seized his arm and was pulling him along with the tide of cadets. "Where the hell are we going, McKay?"

"If you think, for one minute," Rodney said distinctly, walking fast enough that Jonn actually had
trouble keeping up, "that I'm going to get aboard that ship and go sailing into the middle of a battle zone without somebody suicidally self-sacrificing to hide behind, you clearly have not been paying attention for the better part of four years. Come on, keep up."

"What are you talking about?" Jonn asked, totally bewildered.

"I," he announced, voice almost lost in the crowd, "am getting you aboard the Atlantis."

Jonn dug his heels on instinct, pulling Rodney up short. "No way," he said, trying to wrest his arm away, because—no, he wasn't even going to let himself think it, not even imagine it, not if it was impossible. " You're out of your damned mind."

"I know," Rodney said mournfully, but his grip didn't waver. "I think I caught it from you. Now come on, before either of us come to our senses or the spaceships leave."

There were a hundred perfect reasons for Jonn to tell Rodney to man up and leave him behind. There was pretty much just one reason to follow him. Nobody had ever commended Jonn's judgment, though. He stopped struggling, and let himself be pulled along in Rodney's wake, towards the airfield where their transportation awaited.

Chapter Text

Rodney had never developed a particularly detailed rubric for evaluating different kinds and degrees of terror; they were all unpleasant, in his mind, and all of them were to studiously be avoided whenever possibly. He did not have a well-developed vocabulary to distinguish broad-scale vague situational horror (aliens are attacking Vulcan, who why how?) from more immediate sources of panic (I am about to fly into a combat zone) from nagging abstracts (I am never going to deposit my thesis and Malcom Tunney will forever labor under the delusion that he's right) from the dark, gnawing ache in the pit of his stomach (my sister wants breed with an English major and she is only seventeen what the hell—)

At the moment, though, there was at least one problem blotting out all the others: how am I getting Sheppard on this starship?

Considering that they'd had less than an hour to get organized, the situation on the airfield was surprisingly not a chaotic mess; in fact, Rodney could dare say he identified a particular method to the madness. Their orders had each included a vague grid reference, and there were shuttles on the ground bundling people on board, along with a set of transporter staging zones, probably for transports still in orbit. It looked like they were using the same sets of shuttles to move supplies as well as people, though: trucks were lined up at the edge of the tarmac, and enlisted personnel were guiding pallets of wrapped boxes between the ranks of shuttles, occasionally arguing with the crews over what went where. Of course the starships wouldn't be fully supplied, they weren't supposed to launch for weeks yet; Starfleet must have decided to grab whatever they could find on short notice, from wherever they could find them, and if that meant raiding the Academy's meager stockpiles...

"How exactly are you planning do this, McKay?" Jonn asked, barely loud enough to be heard over the ambient noise of people yelling and shuttles landing and launching. "They're gonna notice awful quick when I don't report..."

"I'm working on that part," Rodney snapped; he wiped at the sweat stinging his face and searched furiously for some way to hide a reasonably lanky six-foot-tall half-Vulcan in the back of a shuttle. "Obviously once I get you aboard the Atlantis I can generate a false deployment orders, it'll just look like duplicates went into the system and you can pretend you never got the other ones—This way!" because he'd suddenly been struck with inspiration. He snapped in Jonn's direction and jogged towards one of the shuttles, where two human men were comparing padds and arguing loudly. Neither of them were paying the slightest attention to the large pallet of boxes one was trying to deliver to the other, and Rodney could start grabbing the boxes randomly with ease. He shoved the first one at Jonn. "Here. Carry these."

"Carry them where?" Jonn asked, as Rodney stacked another box on top of the two already in his hands. "Hey, watch it!"

"Just try to look official, okay?" Rodney said. He put a fourth box on the top of the stack; the top was level with the bridge of Jonn's nose, so all anyone would really see was his eyes and his upswept eyebrows. "All right. That's good."

Jonn grunted and tried to shift his grip on the boxes, almost causing them to tumble; Rodney had seen him pull the Samson act since the day they met, though, so he knew damn well how much Jonn could carry. "If you get me caught, McKay—" he growled petulantly.

"Nobody is getting caught," Rodney said, and oh god he hoped that was true because he didn't need other things to freak out about right now. "Keep quiet and follow me!"

"Maybe if I could see you, I would!"

Rodney grabbed him by the arm and started pulling him, counting off the grid markings in his head where the original signs had been knocked over or obscured by people running around like idiots. People such as themselves, at the moment, he supposed. They kept getting cut off by people who were lost or people who should not have been allowed to steer anything the size of an antigrav without a damned license, but Jonn did not, despite some vaguely aggrieved murmuring, drop the boxes, and suddenly Rodney found himself at the ramp of a Tereshkova-class transport marked Delta-One-Zero that was going to take him to the Atlantis.

Take them, assuming that this plan (which was looking more and more insane to him by the moment) actually worked. "Cad—uh—Lieutenant McKay reporting for duty," he said, trying to sound calm and confident. It came out like he was already pissed off at somebody, which worked, too.

"What's all that stuff?" asked a woman with a large padd who was partly blocking the hatch. She was blonde with a greenish tinge—skin and hair both—and had large, ominously orange eyes that seemed to be slightly bio-luminescence. Also, fangs. He tried not to shudder.

"Supplies," he snapped at her; he suddenly thought of his father, for some reason, and the way he used to terrorize his postdocs. If it was good enough for Benjamin Ingram... "Do they also need to report for duty, or can we go on through?"

Fang Lady checked her padd for a minute, typing quickly. "Exactly what supplies are they?"

"They're...supplies!" Oh, that was smooth. Jonn shifted the stack of boxes and almost lost the top one. Rodney groped for that particular frigid disdain that his father used to use. "Who cares what they are? We'll get it sorted out on board once we're underway."

"I need to check them against the manifest," the woman said tightly.

"Oh, yes, you do that," Rodney snarled back. "Meanwhile, we'll just stand here and hold up the departure of the entire task force while somebody shoots Vulcan all to hell, how's that?"

As if on cue, an antigrav came crashing up onto the ramp; it rammed Jonn in the knees, and Rodney had to throw up an arm to keep the boxes from flying across the shuttle. "Special delivery!" the antigrav operator sang out. "Forty units of hypodermic injector plates. Have fun."

"Does this look like a medical supply drop to you?" the woman demanded, and she pushed past Rodney and Jonn and the pallet of injector plates. "Get your ass back here and clean this up, Yeoman!"

Rodney didn't need a hint at that point; he dragged Jonn into the shuttle by the wrist, and helped him dump the boxes on the first level surface available. The other cadets in the back of the shuttle were busy buckling themselves in or trying to rearrange the pallets already stacked in the back, and didn't pay them much mind. "What's in these things, anyway?" Jonn asked as he flexed his forearms.

Rodney peered at the labels. "Rice-based emergency rations, apparently. Go on, get a seat, or else we'll have to sit on the floor."

Jonn ended up sitting on the boxes themselves, actually, without even a safety harness, and he just hissed "McKay, shut up," when Rodney tried to point out what a truly stupid idea that was. That gave Rodney one less thing to focus on that was not some form of stomach-clenching terror, and so he pulled out the padd with his orders on it and started looking up shuttle-crash data. And also forging the permissions he'd need to create a duplicate deployment order. But mostly the crash statistics, at this point. They still had time, for now...

-\-\-\-\-

Elizabeth hadn't had any time to pack a bag, but it didn't appear that anyone else had, either; she found a stack of duty uniforms in a range of sizes in the cupboard of her quarters, one of the only things in the snug little stateroom—she didn't even have a desk, just an exposed panel where a computer console and screen were supposed to interface with the ship's mainframe. She pulled the golden tunic over her head and smoothed back a few wisps of hair that wouldn't quite stay in her bun. In all her time at the Academy, she'd rarely had a chance to wear a duty uniform—instructors favored the more formal service dress. The soft, snug trousers and t-shirt felt almost casual in comparison, awkward in their comfort.

Then again, she supposed she'd have to get used to it eventually—Clarke Station wasn't known for their formal dutywear, and though she hadn't yet received an official transfer order, she had been all but assured of it through less official channels. We'll miss you, of course, but they need somebody on that station to keep Hammond in line, Nixon had told her over a very private cup of coffee. Elizabeth hadn't dared ask what would happen if Hammond didn't want to be kept in line, or even whose line he was to be kept in—she knew the players well enough by now, even if she didn't always understand the game. Hammond's people had already brought down Harry Maybourne, and she didn't intend to be their next target...

That's neither here nor now, she thought sternly, tugging on the tunic again. Quit distracting yourself. You've got far too much to do.

She shut the wardrobe and slipped out of her stateroom, into the steady flow of traffic through the corridor—the freshly-commissioned crew hunting for their new quarters, going in wearing the cadet grays and coming out in the primary-colored duty uniforms of commissioned officers. She nodded at Dr. Traalee, the CMO, who was rushing in the other direction; just behind him came a tall human man, solidly built, with shockingly light eyes in a weathered face that she recognized immediately. "Captain Sumner, sir," she said, coming to attention despite the traffic swirling around them.

She expected him to say At ease, to her salute; instead, he gave her a critical once-over, like he was checking her uniform for creases. "Well, thank god for you, Commander. I was starting to think everybody on this ship was a goddamned teenager."

Elizabeth dropped her salute anyway. "I think you may be being too hard on them, sir."

"You're damned right I'm going to be too hard on them," Sumner said harshly; he waved at her to follow him as he continued on his way. "I'm going into a combat situation and I've got no idea who's gonna fold up and cry when I call red alert. You know they jumped a bunch of them straight up to full lieutenant?"

"I was part of the committee that recommended that move, actually," Elizabeth said coolly.

"Good," Sumner said. "That means you can deal with them instead of me." She followed him into a turbolift, and he manually keyed up the engineering deck. "I'm having the same talk with Commander Castilho and Dr. Traalee, if I can corner them for two minutes, but since you know these kids better than the rest of us, I'm gonna rely on you the most. If there is anyone on this boat that you have doubts about, even slightly, you need find a place to hide them before we get to Vulcan. I'm not letting them get themselves or anyone else killed. I need reliable people here, not just the ones with the best test scores, and now is not the time for surprises."

"I understand that, sir," she said. "How long do we have until we get to Vulcan?"

"Maximum sustained cruising speed on these things is supposed to be warp ten," he said. "I'm going to see if Castilho can edge us any higher without ripping the nacelles off. That gives us four hours, plus or minus."

"Pretty strenuous shakedown run," Elizabeth murmured.

Sumner stood up. "You know better than me that it's worth it, Commander. The Samarkand and the Farragut should beat us there by a fair amount, and there's three more ships converging, so if we're lucky we won't have to fire a shot. I don't put much stock in luck, myself."

"A logical opinion. The Vulcan High Council will approve," Elizabeth said.

He scowled, as if the thought of coping with the Council gave him heartburn. At the same moment, the turbolift doors opened up. "I'll see you on the bridge in twenty to cast off, Commander."

He slipped out into the corridor, and Elizabeth let the lift doors close on her again; gave herself one more minute to feel the pulse fluttering in her chest, the knots in her stomach. She looked at the padd in her hands, where the latest updates from Starfleet Command were streaming. The High Council had fallen back to a secure location, but they were refusing to evacuate, claiming that the disruption to government availability would be too severe; the civil defense was organizing evacuations, but no one knew if they could outrun the behemoth of a ship slowly bearing down on them...

She very deliberately blanked the screen. No time for sentiment now. She brought up the crew roster as she sent the lift back into motion. If Sumner wanted a reliable bridge crew, she'd give it to him.

-\-\-\-\-

The shuttle came up on the aft of the Atlantis, and as much as Jonn knew he shouldn't draw attention to himself, he couldn't help leaning forward and trying to get a peek out the windows. For good or ill, everyone else was doing the same thing; over shoulders and heads, he made out the swooping nacelles and the convex curves of the saucer section, gleaming silver-white under the lights of the orbiting drydock—they hadn't even painted the underside of the saucer yet, so it was just an endless expanse of polished tritanium.

"Sit down!" Rodney squawked, tugging on the back of Jonn's jacket, when he tried to stand up to get a closer look. "Are you insane?"

"I thought we agreed we both were, yeah," Jonn muttered at him. "Don't you want to see it?"

Rodney huffed. "I could draw the schematics of this ship in my sleep. I don't need to see it."

"Yeah, you do," Jonn said, and tugged on Rodney's arm until he stood up and looked out the windows.

"I don't see the point of—oh. Oh, wow." Rodney licked his lips a couple of times, blinking widely. "That's...it looks bigger in person."

Jonn snorted, and let him sit down again. He wanted to ask about the next phase of Rodney's plan, such as it was, but didn't dare say anything while they were in the tightly packed shuttle. He caught a couple of the other passengers giving him sidelong looks, probably noticing the ears—he hoped like hell nobody said anything about it, because he wasn't feeling up to explaining his sketchy family history to half a starship. He hadn't spoken to his mother's family since he was a teenager, and somehow he didn't think now was the most practical time to start; he wasn't even sure how many of them were still living on Vulcan anymore...

The pilot took a low approach angle, giving them all a sweeping view of the ship's neck and engineering hull before they lined up with the landing bay. Rodney insisted on strapping back in for the landing, but Jonn didn't have anything to strap in to, so he just braced his elbows on his knees and enjoyed the spectacle of the ship getting larger and larger, until it finally swallowed the shuttle whole.

Almost as soon as the hatch was down, of course, Rodney was dragging Jonn off by the arm again. "Come on," he murmured, "come on, come on—"

"Where's the fire?" Jonn asked, dodging and pushing past the crowds in the landing bay. Shuttles were coming in low to unload and then taking off again over everyone's heads; cargo was getting shuffled around on antigravs or the overhead tractors, and every once in a while an entire segment of floor opened up, disappearing into the cargo hold along with everything on top of it. As if that wasn't enough, there were sections of wall where the bulkheads hadn't been installed yet, exposing raw tritanium ribs woven with fixtures and cables. A couple of the overhead lights weren't working, either.

Still, there were large blinking signs on a couple of wall panels directing incoming crew to report here or there; Jonn didn't have time read any of them closely before Rodney dragged him past. "Seriously, McKay, do you know where we're going?"

"Of course I do," he said. "We're finding you a hiding place."

"Hiding place?" Jonn dug in his heels. "Back it up a minute. Just what was the plan again?"

Rodney sighed again and dodged out of the way of a couple of people carrying containers of spare parts by hand. "Do you have anywhere on this ship to report to yet? No. Do you see anyone else lounging around with nothing to do? No—sorry! Sorry," he added to a Bolian he'd just clipped with an especially extravagant hand gesture. He turned back to Jonn "Ergo, you need to lay low for a while before somebody asks to see your papers and figures out you're supposed to be down there instead of up here."

"Could you say it a little louder, McKay?" Jonn asked, wincing.

"Considerably louder, if I was actually trying. Now come on." He started pulled Jonn along again, but Jonn shook him off—they were just going to bump into even more people that way.

Rodney lunged for a transporter, and they both managed to squeeze into the compartment. It spat them out on Deck Six, according to the sign on the opposite wall. The corridors up here were just as full, but Rodney seemed to know exactly where they were headed now: he consulted his padd just once more before charging off again, Jonn scampering in his wake while trying not to look like he was scampering anywhere.

"Here!" Rodney ducked into a room, which turned out to be crew quarters: Rodney's quarters, he assumed. Thank goodness officers didn't get roommates. "Okay, sit tight and I'll come and get you once I've had time to fix everything," Rodney told him.

"And how long is that going to be?" Jonn asked, sinking warily into the desk chair. "I didn't come here to be a stowaway, you know."

"I'm working on it, okay?" Rodney insisted. "Just...try not to freak out."

"Same to you," Jonn said, and actually meant it.

"Oh, this is not freaking out yet," Rodney said fervently. "I have not even begun to freak out. Also don't log in to anything!"

Then he was gone, and Jonn didn't have anything to do but wait, fidgeting around the room to distract himself. Once they launched, Rodney would have plenty of time to do...whatever it was he thought he could do to get Jonn in under the radar. Jonn didn't know what exactly that was going to entail. In the meantime, he searched through the room—a closet of a bathroom, a desk, a couch with a fold out table to make a kind of little dining area, one large screen—nice touch that—a cupboard with a change of linens, some standard-issue toiletries, a stack of uniforms...blue uniforms, for some reason...blue women's uniforms?

"Oh, shit," Jonn muttered.

The door behind him slid open, and a blonde Betazoid woman stepped inside and stopped short. "Who the hell are you?" she asked, staring at him.

Jonn had rarely had occasion to be thankful for the rudimentary psychic ability he'd inherited from his mother, but there were moments when it had its uses. "Sorry," he said, concentrating fiercely on putting up a game smile and nothing more. "I think I got the wrong room assignment. This isn't, uh, 3F-173, is it?"

"It's 6F-435," she shot back, frowning. God only knew what she was reading off him, but she wasn't reaching for the communicator on her belt yet, which was something.

"Damn. Sorry. I'll just—" He squirmed past her, careful not to make any skin-to-skin contact, and thankfully she let him pass. Out in the hallway, he joined the slipstream of traffic and didn't dare stop moving.

"Great job, McKay," he muttered, and took the first blind junction he came to. What was he supposed to do now?

-\-\-\-\-\-

By the time Sumner stepped onto the bridge, Elizabeth had rewritten half the duty rosters and sent advisory messages to the other two senior officers, full of carefully-worded recommendations but no outright orders. She had one posting in particular that she was careful to fill, and when Teyla reported for bridge duty, Elizabeth was able to give her an honest smile. "I want you on communications for this mission," she told her, and Teyla didn't miss a beat, taking over the station from the yeoman who'd been coordinating the loading procedures from the bridge.

When Sumner arrived on the bridge, Elizabeth leapt to attention, and everyone else rushed to follow suit. "At ease," Sumner called, though from his expression she couldn't tell if he approved of the display or discipline or thought it was absurd. He locked eyes with her as he came down to the main level. "How are we doing, Commander?"

"All the crew are on board and have reported to their duty stations. Ready when you are, sir."

"That's what I like to hear." He looked around the bridge, at the newly-minted officers on duty. "Care to make some introductions here?"

"Lieutenant Miller, helm," Elizabeth rattled off, pointing to each station in turn. "Lieutenant Zelenka, operations and navigation. Lieutenant Emmagen, communications. Ensign Ford, weapons."

Sumner nodded absently at each of them, until he got to Ford. "How old are you, Ensign?" he asked, utterly failing to keep a dubious tone out of his voice.

"Twenty-one, sir," Ford snapped back—either he didn't notice the skepticism or he knew how to hide his reaction. His Spring Sim evaluations had been fantastic, or else Elizabeth wouldn't have taken a chance on him; as it was, if they were going to be flying into combat, they were going to need a trustworthy weapons officer.

Sumner stared at him for another moment, eyes flinty, before giving a slight nod. Whatever he'd seen in Ford's face, apparently he approved. "Take your station, Ensign." He turned back to the center of the bridge settled into the command chair. "Mr. Zelenka, what's our status?"

"Engineering reports that all systems are at baseline operating capacity," Zelenka said crisply, but his accent had Sumner raising that eyebrow again. "The Daedalus and Apollo are already in free orbit. We are prepared to disengage at your command."

"Then let's disengage," Sumner said. "Get this show on the road."

Elizabeth watched as Zelenka and Miller cleared all the systems interfaces and released the docking clamps. With agonizing slowness, they crept out of the drydock, past the skeletons of unfinished ships and the empty slips where the Apollo and Daedalus had been moored. Only when they were well clear of the docking structures did Miller activate the impulse engines, and Mars fell away below them as they slid into a higher orbit.

"Orbital insertion complete," Miller declared. "We are now orbiting freely."

"Nice work," Sumner said. "Plot us a course for Vulcan, warp ten point five."

Zelenka's hands hesitated over the controls. "Ten point five, sir?"

"That's what I said," Sumner said, letting his irritation show. "We've got no time to waste here."

"Yes, sir," Zelenka murmured, and got to work.

Sumner turned over his shoulder to the communications station. "Ms. Emmagen, make sure everyone's on the same page here. Don't want anybody to get left behind."

"Yes, sir."

Elizabeth crossed up to the back of the bridge to check the engineering station. Baseline operating capacity was a kind euphemism; minimum functionality was more accurate. They didn't even have a working long-range antenna, just a subspace transceiver with local range. Of course, there would be plenty of alternate resources when they got to Vulcan...as long as that was all they had to do...

"Daedalus and Apollo are both prepared to depart," Teyla reported, holding the receiver to her ear with one hand. "They are waiting on us."

"Mr. Zelenka?" Sumner prompted.

"I..." He scowled, and prodded at his console. "Moment, please."

"A moment?" Sumner asked, voice dangerously low.

"There appears to be a problem with the impulse drive," he said, typing furiously.

Elizabeth glanced at the engineering station, but the impulse room wasn't issuing any alerts. "What kind of a problem, exactly?"

-\-\-\-\-

Jonn walked briskly out of the impulse room, trying with every fiber of his being to exude an aura of totally cool, exactly where I'm supposed to be despite the shouting going on behind him. In his defense, he hadn't recognized what he just stuck his hand in; there wasn't any bulkhead over it to put a labor on.

He'd already tried parking himself in a science lab, a transporter room, and two other suites of crew quarters, both of which had turned out to be occupied. He was starting to run out of places to lay low. By now most of the crew had changed out of their Academy togs, and his cadet jacket was making him stick out like a sore thumb; he could only hope his face wasn't as green as it felt.

Gonna kill you, McKay, he thought feverishly, climbing down an open ladder rather than risk getting trapped in a turbolift with someone paying attention. Going to kill you and then find a way to bring you back from the dead so I can kill you again.

He came out in another corridor, went into the first door he could find, and found himself in the middle of the ship's laundry—nothing but stacks of linens and mismatched uniforms as far as the eye could see. Awesome. He rooted around for the parts of a duty uniform, but only managed to find the black t-shirt and pants before he heard someone coming.

He ducked behind a hamper just as the doors he'd come in through opened. "...amazing we managed to get underway this fast."

"I know, right? And with all these precious baby officers running around..."

"Eh, they'll be back where they belong soon enough. Not the shakedown cruise I thought I'd get, though, you know?"

"Hey, at least they got the toilets working before we had to take off."

"Ha, yeah, true..."

He tried to slip away behind a counter, before they noticed his presence, but his elbow caught a stack of towels; he made one desperate attempt to catch them before they fell, but just ended up with a loose pile of fluffy white terrycloth in his arms. Something small and hard—a tube of detergent, maybe?—tumbled to the floor entirely, and the clatter when it hit the ground seemed positively deafining.

Or maybe that was the sudden silence in the laundry.

Jonn turned around and found himself looking at a couple of enlisted personnel—a man and a woman—who were blinking at him from the other side of a counter. "Can I help you, sir?" one of them asked very, very slowly.

"Er...I'm good, actually," Jonn said. He noticed the woman reaching for her communicator. "I just, uh, I didn't have any pants the right size in my quarters, so I just thought I'd come down here and help myself." He scrambled to untangle the uniform he'd grabbed from the loose towels. "Sorry for the trouble and all."

"Did you find the right pants, sir?" the man asked with an amazingly straight face.

"Yes," Jonn said firmly. "Yes, I am now good on pants. Thanks. Goodbye."

He took off down the corridor, back past the ladder, walking briskly. If he could just find a place to change, and lose his cadet uniform—even if he didn't have the right tunic, he'd immediately look less conspicuous. He saw a sign directing personnel to a rec room, and figured that that was one place that might be empty at the moment, with everyone at duty stations. Of course, that's what he'd thought about the science labs, too, but those were being used for storage, what with some of the cargo bays still not being pressurized...

The "rec room" turned out to be an arboretum, dark and still; the shift from the cool steel corridors to green trees and the smell of earth was a little disorienting. But, finally, here was a place that nobody on the whole goddamned ship was using—with good reason; many of the plants were still in pots, and only half the beds were even filled with soil. The lights didn't even come up for him on entry; he had to pick his way into a corner by the dim glow coming through the windows, a combination of running lights, Mars-shine, and the weak sunlight reflecting off the swan-neck of the secondary hull. By the time his eyes had adjusted, he had found a good-sized hiding spot in which to change clothes.

Of course, just when he'd gotten his pants off, the arboretum doors opened again..

He tried to wrestle them up as quietly as he could, but his heels kept catching in the legs, and he had one elbow in a potted shrubbery that rustled with every movement. No way was he talking his way out of this one, and in the meantime he had his pants around his damn ankles and the footsteps were coming closer and closer...

He jumped to his feet as soon as he got his fly closed, and found himself nearly nose-to-nose with McKay. Who screamed and backpedaled, nearly tripping over an empty flowerpot. "Jesus, McKay!" Jonn blurted, not sure if he was more relieved or annoyed.

Rodney, of course, was almost never not annoyed. "What the hell are you doing in here?" he demanded. "Didn't I tell you to wait in my quarters?"

"They weren't your quarters," Jonn hissed furiously. "And keep your voice down, will you?"

"Of course they weren't my quarters," Rodney said. "I figured that out in about two minutes, but by the time I got back you were gone and that woman was threatening to report you to security—were you actually fondling her clothes?"

"I am not having this conversation right now," Jonn said, crossing his arms firmly. He noticed that McKay had also changed into his duty uniform—it was odd, seeing him in red with the proper stripes. He'd sort of always assumed McKay would end up ensconced in research (and service dress) until the heat death of the universe. "What are we doing now?"

"Now we are going back to my actual quarters, where you will continue to hide," Rodney said firmly, beckoning Jonn to follow him. "Seriously, if you hadn't kept breaking things I wouldn't have found you in the first place. What were you thinking? You're the only life sign in this section, you stick out like a sore thumb...

"Stop talking," Jonn said firmly. "And get me back to the room, okay?"

A moment later, however, a subtle vibration went through the decks, just enough to be perceptible; out the arboretum's windows, the starfield shifted as the Atlantis broke orbit, a slice of Mars sliding in and out of view momentarily. "Oh," Rodney said. "Here we go—"

Mars, the drydock, the starfield—everything disappeared into a scintillating whorl of warp drive. They were underway.

"ETA to Vulcan is just a little bit less than four hours," Rodney said softly. "Just—by the time we get there I'll have everything set up and nobody should notice you. Probably. I think."

"You'd better be sure of that, Rodney," Jonn said. "If I get caught here, dishonorable discharge is gonna be the least of my worries."

"Hello, who here is forging important Starfleet documents for you?" Rodney asked irritably. "We can be pen-pals in prison. Now go on, I have to be back in engineering in ten minutes or Castilho is going to eat me alive." And he ushered Jonn out of the arboretum.

Chapter Text

Jonn made an effort to take a nap in Rodney's room—it was four o'clock in the morning in Colorado Springs, and he'd been awake something like twenty hours, so he needed the sleep. But he had too much nervous energy to lay down for long, and he resorted to fidgeting, snooping around the few contents of the room and trying unsuccessfully to get his communicator to interface with the ship's computer. Probably for the best; he didn't want his name to appear in the system before Rodney had done whatever voodoo he was planning. Rodney had left behind a padd that was already interfaced, but there wasn't much to do even with that—apparently completing the shipboard entertainment system hadn't been a priority in getting this thing launched, and status reports of non-critical systems didn't tell him anything worth knowing. Jonn brushed his teeth, instead, and debating putting on one of Rodney's uniform tunics (risk of standing out vs. the risk of getting mistaken for an engineer?), and did some pushups just to pass the time. Eventually he convinced himself to lay down again, try to at least rest up.

Of course, the moment his eyes closed, he was out like a light.

Jonn didn't dream a lot—he sometimes wondered if it was a Vulcan thing, if he actually dreamed less than a real human would, but he didn't know if anyone had ever actually tried to quantify that sort of thing and had never bothered to look it up. When he did dream, though, it was full-on vivid technicolor, and he tended to remember it pretty well. This dream started out like that: he was in the Kobayashi Maru simulator, and everything was just on the wrong side of realistic, the colors too bright and the sounds too muddy. He was at the helm, not in the command chair, and all the instruments said they were accelerating at half-impulse, directly into the teeth of ten or twenty bristling Klingon birds-of-prey. All stop, someone said—maybe it was him, who knew—but Jonn let the ship coast, instead, struggling to evade the battleships hanging strangely static in his path. All stop, Mr. Sheppard.

Dream-Jonn didn't stop, and with dream-logic he had a strangely split perspective, of his hands on the controls and the ship moving and the total lack of connection between the two. He probably ought to bring this thing to a stop. Did he even have reverse thrusters? Did it matter? Prepare to abandon ship, he heard, and this definitely wasn't his own voice; this was a woman's voice, and when he turned in his seat he saw his mother standing before the captain's chair, staring out the forward screen.

Don't be an idiot, he said, or thought he said. We can take a couple of Klingons. But when he looked out the forward screen, there were no more birds-of-prey. There was only a huge, black shape, formless and vast, visible only in how it blotted out the stars.

It is the only logical response, T'Perr said, implacably calm. There is system near these coordinates with an M-class planet, a spacefaring civilization. They will take in and protect the evacuees.

What's so logical about suicide? Jonn wanted to ask—maybe he did ask, seeing as it was a dream and all.

T'Perr's eyes looked as blank and cold as the thing outside. The good of the many outweighs the good of the few. You know this as well as I. Ramming speed, Mr. Sheppard.

Jonn looked back at the screen, at the black void coming closer and closer, preparing to swallow him whole—

And started awake to the sound of the shipwide speakers squealing to life. "Ah—sorry—" He recognized Zelenka's voice, and the feedback dialed down. "Sorry about that. Atlantis, we are currently thirty minutes out from Vulcan. All stations move to yellow alert."

As the alert sounded in the corridor, Jonn sat up and scrubbed at his eyes. He sort of knew where that dream had come from—in one of his classes, they'd had to watch a documentary on the Athos Incident, full of cheesy dramatizations of the surviving crew's reports. Jonn had toughed it out, focusing on the cheap-looking sets and the crappy make-up on what was obviously an all-human cast, but then they had shown the moment Commander T'Perr decided to ram her unknown attacker so that the crew of the Kelvin would have a chance to escape...that had been when Jonn had to step out of the room. He'd always known how she died, but that didn't mean he wanted to picture it. Especially not some melodramatic bullshit about how she looked her death in the eye without losing her cool—she'd had to have been at the helm, for one thing, to plot the collision course. Nobody knew what she'd done in those last few minutes, either; no record had survived. If a Vulcan cries in space and there's nobody around to see it, does it count?

The shipwide came on again, without the burst of feedback. "Atlantis, this is your captain speaking," said a gruff, unfamiliar voice. "We are about to engage an unknown hostile vessel in orbit around Vulcan. The last report from the Samarkand indicated that this ship has deployed fighters capable of atmospheric flight as well as ship-based energetic projectile weapons capable of penetrating standard shield configurations. It is powerful, it is shielded, and it's the size of a damn mountain. It is our duty to defend the people of Vulcan at any cost, and we will not fail them. I know each and every one of you is prepared to do whatever is necessary to see that this attack on the Federation does not go unanswered. Sumner out."

Jonn went into the bathroom to splash some water on his face. Size of a damn mountain... Why did that sound familiar? Had Emmagen said something...? No, her confidential message, the one he'd kinda-sorta eavesdropped on, it had talked about flying mountains. (Had that really only been ten hours ago?) They weren't that far from the Pegasus quadrant, though, either....but there was something else...

He wiped his face, and thought back to that dream. Now, why would his subconscious have dredged up memories of a mysterious hostile with powerful weapons attacking without apparent provocation? He grabbed Rodney's padd off the desk and scrolled through the ship's database, which was only slightly more complete than the entertainment selection...but there had to be a history catalog, or an encyclopedic reference, or something...

He tried searching T'Perr, T'Perr Sheppard and Athos Incident separately, but kept coming up against glitches—one more thing nobody had put the finishing touches on before the launch. When he tried USS Kelvin, though, he finally got an article. He skimmed down to the end, telling himself this was stupid, this was random, a shot in the dark...

Or maybe not.

Without a second thought, he dropped the padd on the bed and headed for the bridge.

-\-\-\-\-\-\-

There were over a hundred communication channels available over subspace, and each one Teyla checked seemed full of noise. A few were white noise, generated by broken transceivers on damaged ships; most were being used by the Vulcan evacuation fleet, cool voices betraying periodic hints of strain as ships tried to coordinate plans with one another or share hasty passenger manifests. The survivors of Vulcan's system defenses were requesting aid. The planetary government was continuing to loop a distress signal, updating the grim estimates of the dead as the attacking ship launched fighters to raze the surface; there seemed to be nowhere to hide, except perhaps the unforgiving deserts.

There were a half-dozen channels reserved for the rest of the task force. These had remained steadily quiet. Of course, the long-range subspace antenna was not operational, but surely there ought to be something...

A pair of incoming alerts flashed onto her screen, followed by text messages. "Captain Sumner, sir, the Daedalus has reached position and is preparing to drop out of warp," Teyla announced. "The Apollo estimates they are three minutes behind."

"What's holding us up, gentlemen?" Sumner asked, addressing the question at Zelenka and Miller.

"We have not been able to maintain a consistent Warp Ten-Five, sir," Zelenka said crisply. "Commander Castilho suspects there may be a faulty conversion coil that is responsible for the power leak, but we cannot be certain without disabling warp drive—"

"Fine," Sumner said, cutting him off. "Current ETA?"

"Twenty more minutes, sir."

A moment later, the port-side turbolift opened, and someone came barreling out, nearly crashing into the railing between the upper and lower bridge sections. Teyla was not certain which surprised her more: that it was Jonn Sheppard, out of uniform, standing wild-eyed on the bridge, or that he blurted out, "We need to drop out of warp right now."

"Excuse me?" Sumner turned around to face Sheppard, incredulous. Elizabeth, who had been at one of the sensor stations, straightened up with a look of shock that swiftly turned frosty.

"We need to stop this ship and contact Starfleet Command, right now," Sheppard repeated firmly, apparently uncowed by the looks he was receiving, whether angry or simply incredulous.

Sumner climbed to his feet. "And just who the hell are you?"

"This would be Cadet Jonn Sheppard," Elizabeth said, approaching him from behind Teyla's station. "Who was not, as I recall, assigned to this ship."

"That's Lieutenant Sheppard, ma'am," Jonn said hotly, before looking back to Sumner. "Sir, the ship that's attacking Vulcan isn't unknown. It was sighted in the Pegasus quadrant twenty-five hours ago, and it destroyed the USS Kelvin twenty-five years ago."

Teyla had half-forgotten Halling's message in the rush of activity, but it returned to her now...and Jonn, she remembered, had overheard part of it when they had met outside the dormitory. But that had had nothing to do with the Kelvin...it was not even sighted in the same sector...

"What exactly are you basing this claim on, Lieutenant?" Elizabeth asked dryly, hands behind her back, echoing Teyla's own thoughts. Teyla knew this was the most alarm Elizabeth was likely to let herself show—alarm, or irritation, it was difficult to tell.

Sheppard, however, seemed to have decided it was an accusation. "When Lieutenant Eirxxyl Dar Istys of the Kelvin described the ship that attacked them at Athos, he called it a flying mountain, amorphous of shape, radiating more waste energy than a starship consumes at warp," he quoted. "The only identifiable hull structure was a hangar, and it KO'd their shields and warp drive on the first shot. That description sound familiar to you?"

"What's this got to do with Pegasus?" Sumner asked.

Sheppard opened his mouth to begin explaining, but Teyla cut him off, rising to her feet; she was quite capable of speaking on her own behalf. Sheppard seemed not to have noticed her until then, because he did an actual double-take as she said, "The Athosian Council received a report yesterday about a Traveler ship that was destroyed on the edge of the Genii Confederation, near the Burill system. A Genii listening post was able to capture some limited sensor data from the confrontation, but the hostile vessel could not be identified—it fired once and completely destroyed the Traveler ship with no survivors."

"And let me guess, big as a mountain, came out of nowhere?" Sumner asked. Teyla could not yet tell when he was sarcastic; he seemed to put on irritation as part of his uniform.

"Except the Burill system is on the furthest edge of Genii space, over two hundred light years from here," Elizabeth said. "To get from there to Vulcan in the amount to time Sheppard is suggesting, a ship would have to sustain Warp Fourteen for twenty hours."

"Fourteen-point-five, actually," Lieutenant Zelenka volunteered; he cowered slightly when all eyes fell on him. "Of course, a ship with weapons this powerful would not necessarily have the same constraints on power consumption," he added quickly.

"And the ability to disappear for twenty-five years at a time?" Elizabeth asked. She turned back to Sumner. "Captain, not every coincidence in the universe needs to be deeply meaningful."

"It's not a coincidence," Sheppard said mulishly.

"Even if you're right, what are we supposed to do about it?" Elizabeth asked.

Sheppard raised his eyebrows. "Not get ourselves killed, maybe?"

Sumner interrupted whatever Elizabeth was about to say back by turning to Teyla. "Ms. Emmagen, raise the Samarkand and get a status report."

Teyla took her seat again and cycled through channels full of noise. They dedicated frequencies for the task force had been quiet, but she had told herself that they were occupied with the battle, and perhaps purposefully limiting the range of their broadcasts to avoid being overheard by the civilian ships. She sent a standard-form hail, expecting nothing more than a ping in reply.

The Samarkand did not reply at all.

She tried the Farragut. The Yorktown. The Challenger. The Carthage. The Daedalus...

"I cannot raise any members of the task force," she said, as she hailed the Apollo. That, at least, returned a ping of acknowledgment, but very weakly, and there was no follow-up attempt to open a channel. "There may be some kind of interference effect surrounding the hostile ship..."

"Emergency beacons?" Sumner asked.

She shifted to the proprietary channels reserved for Starfleet vessels in distress. Those should have been able to cut through most of the natural forms of interference, because they were, in effect, a single, powerful repeater sending out a steady ping. Even non-Federation vessels would be able to detect and locate such a signal; it was, after all, how the Athosian fleet had first located the survivors of the Kelvin twenty-five years ago. Teyla expected to hear the metronome click of one beacon, maybe a few.

The emergency channel was a continuous wash of noise.

"Sir..." She had to swallow before she could report; her throat had gone abruptly dry. "Sir, I am detecting nearly a thousand individual emergency beacons. The only source for so many signals could only be—"

"Lifeboats," Sumner cut her off. "One hell of a lot of lifeboats." He turned to the front of the bridge. "Mr. Zelenka, course correction. Bring us out of warp directly into Vulcan's orbit, thirty-five thousand kilometers. New ETA?"

"Ah, moment..." Zelenka worked for a moment, then said, "New ETA is fourteen minutes, sir."

Sumner nodded. "Emmagen, keep trying to raise the rest of the task force. Sheppard, fourteen minutes is how long you have to explain what you're doing on my ship."

"I was assigned here," Sheppard said tensely, though Teyla did not believe him for a minute; occupied as she was with her task, she could still hear the tension in his voice, could almost sense it radiating off of him. (Vulcans were capable of sharing thought, were they not? Though not in an Athosian manner

"I think we can clear this up rather quickly," Elizabeth said; Teyla saw out of the corner of her eye that she had approached one of the computer stations, and she brought up a document to stare at it intently.

"Well?" Sheppard prompted, folding his arms across his chest.

Elizabeth straightened up suddenly. "You're out of uniform, Lieutenant," she said crisply. "And very lucky to have Mr. McKay as a roommate."

Teyla glanced at him in time to see a pale green flush rush up from his neck; for once, though, he had at least enough wisdom to keep silent.

She tuned out the chorus of emergency beacons—lifeboats had no subspace communication, only radio, so she could not even acknowledge that they had been heard. Her hails to the Vulcan government went unanswered, though they were continuing to broadcast—perhaps Atlantis was being overlooked, or perhaps they were already operating at their antenna's maximum capacity. She tried, instead, discreetly asking some of the evacuee ships of their status and what they could see of the battle. Unfortunately, most of them were on the opposite side of the planet from the hostile ship, a deliberate decision to shield them; as a consequence, they were also unable to see the any Starfleet actions, and the few in the correct position were so far away that they could not report in detail. We suspect the Samarkand has been destroyed, one pilot said gravely, but Teyla told herself that these was still mere hearsay, not worth reporting to Captain Sumner yet.

"Five minutes to Vulcan, sir," Miller reported.

"Go to red alert," Sumner replied.

As the sirens wailed, Sheppard leaned against the computer station without taking a post—that he could loiter on the bridge like that was the surest proof that he was not meant to be there, but she had no time to speculate on why and how he'd come. Her hail to the Vulcan government was finally answered, and she hastened to open a channel. "USS Atlantis, this is the Vulcan Civil Defense. It is advisable that you do not attempt to engage the hostile ship," a male voice said.

"VCD, this is Atlantis," she replied. "Can you confirm the status of the task force in orbit?"

"Atlantis, this is VCD. There is no task force."

Teyla's heart skipped a beat. "VCD, this is Atlantis. Please say again, I do not understand."

"Atlantis, this is VCD. Your task force has been destroyed—"

"Dropping out of warp in three," Miller said, "two, one—"

The sheet of subspace distortion dissolved from the front view screen. At the same moment, a horrible, cold, clawing sensation flooded into Teyla's mind, feelings so utterly alien—and so distant—that she could scarcely parse them as thoughts. It felt very much as though the inside of her mind was being scraped raw: nauseated, she braced herself against her station with one hand, trying to push out the blinding sensations of hurt and rage and hungry—

"Hey." She felt the cool touch of Sheppard's hand on her wrist. She realized, faintly, that her other hand was pressed against her Ancestor's amulet, holding it through her uniform shirt like a lifeline. "Hey, you all right?"

"Wraith," she blurted. She meant it as a curse, but then realization fell upon her like an icy chill. It was insane, it was impossible, it was the raving of a fundamentalist, but— "Oh, Ancestors, it is the Wraith."

-\-\-\-\-\-

"Jesus Christ."

Jonn didn't know what Emmagen was talking about, but Sumner's quiet explicative caught his attention immediately. He looked up at the forward screen. Vulcan was a rust-colored disc, Mars-like, except for a few startling smears of turquoise sea. From this distance, the whole planet was visible, pole to pole.

So was the debris field surrounding...flying mountain sounded about right, actually. None of the Kelvin crew had ever been able to accurately describe what had hit them; Jonn hadn't been sure what to expect. The vessel had a weirdly organic look, with thick, curved ridges running along its tapered hull. The lurid burn of its engines was about the only thing that made it clear it wasn't a living thing—that, and the tiny flecks of the fighters that swarmed around it, like some kind of hive. It was ten times the size of the Apollo, which hung just below it, venting plasma and atmosphere.

"Get us down there, Mr. Miller," Sumner ordered, but then a ribbon of projectiles burst out of the mountain-ship-thing, and in the next minute the Apollo blew apart. The secondary hull disintegrated in a cloud of uncontained antimatter, releasing a shockwave of gas and fine debris; part of one nacelle went spiraling away end over end, split down its axis like a hot-dog bun. The saucer fractured along the midline, and flames flared in a few pockets of oxygen atmosphere before subsiding. Jonn could make out the tiny points of light where pieces of debris struck the enemy fighters, or even tinier dots that were probably lifeboats consumed in the blast.

"There are millions of life signs aboard that ship," Weir announced, breaking the silence. "I'm picking up transporter signatures from the enemy fighters. It looks like they're beaming people up from the lifeboats and the planet's surface."

"What the hell?" Sumner asked. He looked to Jonn, as if he had any answers. "Why would they do that?"

"Taking hostages?" Jonn proposed.

"They have no need of hostages," Emmagen said quietly, but though she was looking a little gray in the face she seemed to have regained her overall composure after that...whatever-it-was, seizure or panic attack or something. She was still rubbing something under the front of her shirt, though.

Sumner glanced at her. "You know what this thing is, Lieutenant Emmagen?"

Before she could answer, Ford blurted out, "Incoming fire, sir!"

Torpedos like a string of pearls were coming directly at them; Miller rolled the ship away, but obviously not fast enough. The entire ship shook from the impact, and the overhead lights flickered dangerously; Jonn had to cling to the side of the communication station to keep his feet. "Our main shield generator has failed," Zelenka called out. "Deflectors at thirty percent. We have sustained damage to decks five and six and the starboard nacelle." And that had been a glancing blow, holy hell.

"Return fire," Sumner called, as if that had worked for anybody else. "Give it all we've got."

But the vast enemy ship was at the very edge of their phaser range, and a full phaser bombardment scattered harmlessly well away from its hull. Ford rapped his fist against his station. "No good, sir. Their shields aren't even flickering."

Jonn leaned forward, staring at the vast length of the ship below them. "Why aren't the fighters attacking?" he wondered out loud. "There's got to be a thousand of them out there. We'd never be able to pick them all off if they swarmed us."

As if in answer, Emmagen suddenly called out. "Sir...we are being hailed by the enemy ship."

Weir and Sumner shared an inscrutable look, but only for a moment. "Open it up," Sumner said. "If they're talking, they're not shooting at us."

The forward screen flickered and went dark. The face that came up on it was humanoid, but in some ways looked more like a badly-made copy of a humanoid face than something real: its waxy skin was pulled tight over bones that protruded in the wrong places, and when it breathed deeply more air seemed to go into the pits beside its nose than through the nostrils. It had close-cropped hair of pure white, and when its mouth split into a smile, the teeth were far more pointed and widely spaced than Jonn was strictly comfortable with.

"Hello, Atlantis," he said with a horrible false cheer in a voice with distinctly non-human harmonics. "Elizabeth Weir. Jonn Sheppard. Teyla Emmagen. It is so good to see you again."

Jonn, for a split second, thought he'd somehow heard wrong. Then he glanced at Weir and Emmmagen, and their equally gobsmacked expressions said, no, he really hadn't. Sumner looked at them curiously, and Jonn could only shrug. No idea why the malevolent alien is name-dropping me, sir. Maybe ask him?

Instead, Sumner turned back to the screen and stepped to the front of the bridge, imposing himself in the center of the transmission. "This is Captain Marshall Sumner of the USS Atlantis. To whom am I speaking?"

"Ah," the alien said. "A bit early, am I? That's too bad; I hope you can still appreciate my work. You can call me Michael, Captain Sumner."

"Why are you attacking the planet Vulcan?" Sumner asked, sticking to stiff formality. "The Federation had no ill will toward you or your kind."

"Not at the moment, but I happen to harbor some very ill will towards the Federation." Michael's lurid yellow eyes seemed to search the room, as if he was scanning his screen for something. "How does it feel to watch your world burn, Dr. Weir? Is your family quite safe, Commander Sheppard?"

Commander Sheppard? This just kept getting stranger...Jonn looked at Weir, but aside from a slight twitch of one jaw muscle, her expression was completely passive. Emmagen caught Jonn's eye, and he shook his head slightly—he hadn't spoke to his mother's family in years, the threat was nearly meaningless.

But if they somehow had something to do with Michael's reasons for targetting Vulcan in the first place...

"We demand the immediate cessation of hostilities towards the planet Vulcan and all other Federation words and allies," Sumner said with a remarkable air of confidence, given the circumstances. "I order you to recall your fighters and withdraw from this system immediately."

"Now, Captain Sumner," Michael said, and actually rolled his eyes. "Did you really think that was going to work?"

"I take it that's a no, then," Sumner replied dryly.

Michael suddenly tilted his head to one side, a gesture few humanoids made naturally. "Oh, not at all! In fact, I would be delighted to have you as a guest aboard my ship to discuss...cessation of hostilities."

"Bullshit," Jonn murmured under his breath.

But to his surprise, Sumner hesitated, and then asked, "Do I have your guarantee of safe passage to and from your ship, and a cease-fire for the duration of the talks?"

"Captain!" Weir protested, eyes widening.

"You should listen to Dr. Weir, Captain," Michael said silkily. "But yes, if you require it—I promise you ship will be unharmed while you are my guest."

"All right," Sumner said. "Obviously you've got hangers on that thing, so I'll be coming over by shuttlecraft. Give me ten minutes."

"I'm sure it will be a most fascinating discussion," Michael said, and closed the channel.

Weir immediately charged forward. "Captain, no. It's out of the question."

"It might be the best chance we have at distracting that thing," Sumner said. He turned around, pale eyes drilling into Jonn's. "Jonn Sheppard. You're the hotshot behind that shuttle crash in Spring Sim last year."

"That's what the discipline board decided, sir," Jonn said, and it took a lot of willpower not to glance at Weir when as he did so.

Sumner tilted his head back, as if sizing Jonn up. "Had to be a pretty good pilot to pull off a move that stupid. What do you think, Lieutenant?"

"Sir, I think I'm one of the best damn pilots in the fleet," Jonn said firmly.

Sumner huffed, though whether he was impressed by Jonn's display of bravado or skeptical of the claim, Jonn couldn't tell. "Here's your chance to prove it, then." He climbed up to the sensor station and opened up a display of Michael's ship. "He's going to have to lower his shield to let my shuttle through. That gives you a split-second to get inside his guard. I don't know what kind of hull plating he's carrying, but at this range even a shuttle's phasers can do some serious damage."

"Captain, what you're suggesting is suicide for everyone involved," Weir said flatly. "Even if a second shuttle could get inside that shield, there's no way it would survive long enough to make an attack before those fighters swamped it. And if he suspects any treachery on your part, he'll kill you."

"Odds are he's going to kill me anyway, Commander," Sumner said flatly. "This is about getting a shot in any way we can. Unless you three know something I don't?" He glanced and Weir and Jonn, and at Emmagen, who had remained at her station.

She spoke up now, turning in her seat to face them. "He cannot be trusted, sir. I can...I have a sense of these creatures, and they are the closest thing to evil that I have ever encountered."

"You mean telepathically?" Sumner asked. Emmagen nodded reluctantly. "Noted," he said, and turned back to Weir. "I'm officially transferring the Atlantis into your hands, Commander. If there's any chance to kill that thing, I want you to kill it. Failing that, you need to get a message to the fleet at Vorash any way you can."

"Hasn't Starfleet Command already informed them of the situation?" Weir asked.

"The Vorash mission is so classified God himself wouldn't know what they're up to," Sumner said. "They're operating under radio silence, so they won't have a clue what's happening here unless someone goes and tells them. Jack O'Neill is in charge of the task force there, he'll know what he has to do."

Weir stared at Sumner for a minute, then nodded shakily. "I understand, sir. It...thank you."

"Thank you, Commander." He shook her hand, and then turned around. "Ensign Ford!"

"Sir?" Ford turned in his seat.

"You want to live forever, kid?"

Ford jumped to his feet. "No, sir."

"Good. You and Sheppard—with me."

He strode towards the turbolifts, and Jonn had to hurry to catch up with him. He gave one last backwards glance to Weir and Emmagen, standing at the back of the bridge, and then the lift was bearing them away.

Chapter Text

Elizabeth watched Sumner leave the bridge with Sheppard and Ford, a surprising calm sweeping over her. Perhaps this was the state of perfect logic some Vulcan sages claimed to feel during deep mediation. Perhaps she was simply hysterical. She went to stand before the captain's chair, watching the hideous ship five kilometers below; at this distance she could see the rafts of dark smoke collecting in the lower atmosphere, each plume marking a city or settlement as clearly as a pin on a map.

How does it feel to watch your world burn?

"Mr. Zelenka, what's the status of the shield generators?" she asked.

He shook his head. "They are under repairs now, but it will take some time..."

"What about warp engines?" she asked.

"Commander Castilho has taken them offline pending a damage assessment," Zelenka said.

So they couldn't run, and they couldn't make a stand. "Tell him to divert all attention to the shields. Even partial protection is better than none. Monitor that ship, and take evasive action immediately if there is any sign of its weapons powering up." She glanced at Ford's replacement at the weapons station. "Mr. Campbell, if any of those fighters comes within a hundred meters of this ship, destroy it."

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

She turned to Teyla, who still looked unsettled by whatever she was sensing off the enemy ship. "Lieutenant Emmagen, you have the conn." Elizabeth told her.

Teyla sat bolt upright. "Commander Weir."

"Many members of the Vulcan Council refused to evacuate in order to maintain continuity of government functions," Elizabeth explained. "I know where their secure bunker is located, and more importantly, I'm known to their security staff. I'm taking an away team to the surface to evacuate them by transporter."

Teyla's eyes narrowed. "You are one to speak of suicide missions, Commander."

"Until our shields are repaired, there's nothing else we can do," she said. "Michael can burn the cities, but he cannot be allowed to destroy the Vulcan culture. The Council aren't just politicians, they are elders and religious leaders, and they have to survive this."

Teyla stood, and nodded sharply. "Understood, Commander. We will not raise the shields until you have returned."

"Raise the shields as soon as you can," Elizabeth corrected firmly. "In the mean time, see if you can get a lock on any of the personnel in those lifeboats, before Michael's fighters scoop them up. I'll be in touch."

-\-\-\-\-\-

Jonn ran through the preflight checks on the shuttle—a Galileo, a good all-around class but not outstanding. At the moment he was mainly concerned with the phasers, dorsal and ventral, which didn't reach nearly the power output of a shipboard array but were better than nothing. If Sumner was right, and they could get inside Michael's shield, all it would take was one or two lucky shots to ruin his day.

Ford dragged a lidless plastic crate into the back of the shuttle and hooked a single long cargo strap onto the handle. "What the hell is that?" Jonn asked him, glancing up.

"Landmines," Ford said absently.

Jonn turned around in his seat, trying to peer into the crate without much look. "Landmines?"

"I'll explain later," Ford said, and dropped into the copilot's seat. "You really a pilot?"

"You really a gunner?" Jonn shot back.

"Top of my class in marksmanship in three different categories," Ford said.

"Good, 'cause I don't think these guys are just gonna sit still," Jonn muttered.

Their radio clicked over. "Sumner to Sheppard. Keep behind me until we're inside the shield."

"Roger that, sir," Jonn said. "Though you do realize that 'behind' is a relative concept when you're talking about a ship three kilometers long?"

"Maintain radio silence," Sumner snapped back peevishly, and cut the channel.

Sumner's shuttle rose off the deck and glided towards the bay doors; Jonn took his shuttle nearly to the top of the landing bay, lining up with Sumner as best he could. Michael's ship was directly below them, so in theory—and, again, only if they were fantastically lucky or Michael's crew were asleep at their posts—Jonn's shuttle would register as little more than a sensor shadow until it was already too late.

"You really think that's the same thing that destroyed the Kelvin?" Ford asked quietly.

Jonn shrugged. "Well, on one hand, it's been twenty-five years. On the other, if there's two giant murder ships flying around the galaxy, we're really in trouble, so...." He wasn't going to think about how Michael knew his name, anyone else's. Or how throwing a warp core at this thing apparently wasn't enough to destroy it, just delay it for a generation. Focus on the mission at hand.

A spinning piece of debris—maybe from one of the other task force ships—came at them, sending the perimeter alarms squawking. Jonn couldn't take evasive action and stay centered behind Sumner; the best he could do was close the distance between them to a single meter and hold his breath, while the twisted piece of tritanium drifted by. If Sumner even noticed the move, his piloting certainly didn't show it.

"Coming up on their shield now," Ford announced. "That's weird—there's debris inside the shield perimeter."

"If it's a Holtzmann-process deflector, it'll be porous to anything without enough kinetic energy," Jonn pointed out. "Let's just hope we don't hit any of it."

On the HUD, the red line representing Michael's shields was almost on top of them. Jonn, nervous, closed to within half a meter of Sumner's shuttle. A segment of the shield flickered out, and they both eased forward, sliding into the gap...

The very instant Sumner's shuttle was clear, the same segment of shield flicked back into existence. The nose of Jonn's shuttle bounced off it with a jolt he could feel. "Damn it!" he yelped, slapping the control panels. There went the whole damn reason for being out here!

"Hang on a second," Ford said, while Jonn was still distracted by Sumner's swiftly shrinking running lights. He started by shutting off the shuttle's life support.

"The hell are you doing?" Jonn demanded, still glaring at the shield perimeter.

"You just said low kinetic energy gets you through a shield like this," Ford said, shutting down sensors and communications as well.

Jonn blinked at him, but in the next second it all came together, and he couldn't fight down a little smirk. "I think I like you, Ensign."

"Aim to please, sir," Ford said. His hand hovered over the main engines. "Though...how slow is this going to be?"

"Slow," Jonn admitted, and gave the thrusters one last little squirt.

Once the engines were shut down, they were alone in the dark. The way they were oriented, Vulcan appeared to be above them, the vastness of Michael's ship hanging in between like some kind of space-faring sea monster. Their momentum combined with the planet's gravity sent them sliding forward with agonizing slowness...and forward, and forward, a centimeter at a time.

"This is going to take a while, isn't it?" Ford asked quietly.

"Yeah," Jonn said, flexing his hands in his lap. "Good thing we got nowhere to be, though, right?"

-\-\-\-\-\-

The Central Hall of the Vulcan Science Academy had collapsed. Its foyer was the best open area the transporter technician could find to put them down, and the first thing Elizabeth saw was the toppled, broken statue of Surak laying on the floor, half-covered by the debris from the open ceiling. Overhead, Michael's fighters were strafing the city, filling the air with a terrible, grating chatter.

This isn't about the buildings. This is about the people, the memories.

Elizabeth drew her phaser and shouldered the bag of signal boosters she'd brought down. "Follow me," she told the security team—three chief petty officers and a master chief, all armed with phaser rifles—and strode out into the street.

She could navigate this city with her eyes closed, or at least she could have done so once; now there were burning, broken buildings everywhere she looked, and the streets were full of people running with purpose, but in every direction. She saw a group of volunteers, some with blood-stained robes, evacuating one building; on the next block over, uniformed Civil Defense were attempting to gather people into a different building, the only intact one on the block. Tens of thousands had evacuated, but this was a planet of six billion, and Elizabeth wished for a whole armada that could gather everyone up and take them to safety.

You can't save everyone. You can save the ones who matter.

A fighter screamed overhead, dropping a ghostly white column of light to sweep the street. Elizabeth dove out of the way, only to watch Chief Toligen stop to take aim at the ship with his phaser rifle...and get swept away by the white light. "It's a transporter!" Chief Bates called across the street. "They're beaming people up! What the hell?"

Why kidnap people instead of killing them outright? There were bodies enough in the streets—it wasn't like Michael had any aversion to casualties. Elizabeth picked herself up and checked that the boosters were undamaged. "Keep moving, and keep closer to the buildings," she said, even as a second fighter swooped down and blew a building across the street to pieces. Elizabeth felt the heat of it, felt the flecks of glass and stone bite into her face—"Come on!"

The city center was ancient, but it had been logically planned—of course—with wide radial avenues and curving cross-streets. Those avenues were giving the fighters clear lanes to swoop into, but many of the narrower streets were blocked off, cratered or piled with debris. Elizabeth clambered over one pile of broken stone to find a severed arm protruding from the other side; they raced to the next intersection, and she spotted a child of perhaps ten weeping openly next to a dead body. "Ma'am?" Chief Markham asked, cocking his head in the child's direction.

No time, she thought, but there was no other sign of life in the street, and fighters were thick in the sky. "Fine," she said, raising her phase to cover him as he darted across the street.

Another fighter swooped down at that moment, its white beam groping in search of a target. Bates, without hesitation, shouldered his rifle and fired a sustained burst directly into the fighter's belly. The fighter shuddered, and something exploded inside; it crashed into the street and somersaulted over its pointy noise, leaving behind a trail of metal and glass mixed with something that looked distinctly more...visceral. Elizabeth had never seen anything like it. She hoped never to see it again.

Markham boosted the child onto his back and nodded. "Come on, we're almost there," she said, not giving the downed fighter another look.

The entrance to the bunker was, logically enough, nowhere near the Council chambers—that would rather defeat the purpose. Elizabeth's heart leapt when she spotted the right building; it fell again when she saw three or four hulking, white-haired humanoids at the doors, battering away with fists and energy weapons. "Set phasers to kill," she instructed her men. Michael might be taking prisoners, but she wasn't interested in returning the favor at the moment.

They should've had the upper hand—they came charging out from behind a heap of broken masonry, firing continuously, and Elizabeth saw her first shot connect. The alien troops shuddered under the onslaught, and their clothes blackened or burned where they were hit, but by some insane stroke of luck or physiology, they didn't fall—just turned and raised their own weapons to return fire. Elizabeth ran for the cover of an overturned vehicle, aiming a longer, sustained burst at one of the humanoids: though she felt her phaser head up dangerously in her hand one, the enemy did ultimately jerk and fall to its knees. They were all wearing featureless face masks without even eye holes, so she had no idea how they could see, but one of them took aim directly at her with a weapon the size of a lance—

Which exploded in its hands when Markham tried shooting that instead of the alien's body. "Keep moving!" Stackhouse called, and Elizabeth knelt in the cover of the vehicle, using another sustained burst to down another enemy soldier. How many more of these could she manage without short-circuiting the phaser's power cells? What kind of alien could withstand multiple shots like this?

The last of the attack troops fell, and Elizabeth quickly climbed to her feet. "We need to get inside and into the sub-basement," she called, jogging forward.

"Ma'am, get down—!"

Bright white light registered in her peripheral vision, but she didn't have time to dodge away from it. Her entire right arm filled with painful pins and needles, and her phaser slipped from her nerveless fingers; the back of her head and neck went numb and she smelled burning hair. Stupid, she thought, stumbling, stupid, illogical—of course there are more troops on the ground—

In the shelter of the doorway, she had to fumble with the locks with the wrong hand while the others raced to cover her. Markham pressed in the back, the child still clinging to him monkey-like. "You all right, ma'am?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she said firmly. "Just a little numbness."

He slid his own sidearm into her holster. "Just in case."

-\-\-\-\-\-

"How much longer is this gonna take?" Ford asked. So far they had escaped the notice of the fighters, but from this vantage point Jonn could see them occasionally stop to sweep over lifeboats and chunks of debris with their transporters. Looks for captives, he supposed—but why?

"It was your idea," Jonn pointed out, tapping his fingers against the dead controls. The shield wasn't visible to the naked eye, but at the rate they were falling they were probably only halfway through. If the shuttle accelerated now, the reactions with the shielf could very well sheer them in half, or at least damage the hull—and he kind of liked all their antennas and vents in working shape, thanks.

"He's been in there a while," Ford murmured.

"He knew what he was doing," Jonn said, and tried to make it sound like he believed it.

They waited some more, in silence.

"You ever heard of a game called Prime-Not-Prime?" Jonn asked.

Ford gave him a sideways look. "Hell no, sir."

"Just asking."

The fighters were circulating in and out of the mothership—refueling, maybe, or delivering their captives. They were long, fragile-looking things, with the same almost organic skin, and they maneuvered like nothing Jonn had ever seen before, carving out deep curves with every turn. When one of them turned in the shuttle's direction, Jonn could see that there wasn't any kind of screen or canopy—the hull was completely opaque all the way around. Flying on instruments.

Then he realized the fighter was still coming towards them. "This is trouble," Jonn said, leaning forward.

"Think it saw our life signs?" Ford asked.

"Does it matter?" The fighter was longer than the shuttle, but that was all in the spindly nose; the actual body of the thing seemed almost the same size. "How fast do you think we can get those engines restarted?"

"You wanna find out?"

Ripping the end of the shuttle off versus getting plucked out by a transporter and taken to Michael for...whatever. "Race you," Jonn suggested, and hit the emergency engine controls.

The moment power came back up, the shuttle's attitude-control thrusters tried to correct its orientation, which was admittedly cockeyed after drifting for so long. The change in delta-v was enough to send the shield screaming over the hull with an ear-splitting whine. "Can we go yet?" Ford asked.

"Faster we move, harder the shield gets," Jonn reminded him.

"'Cause that thing's got a weapons lock," Ford pointed out.

As if Jonn couldn't see it on the HUD. "You could just shoot it," he pointed out.

"Phasers just came online—"

The dorsal phaser bank was directly below the fighter, with less than five meters' separation—as closer to a point-blank shot as you could get. The explosion, as a consequence, was pretty spectacular. But without anything but the attitude-control system to stabilize it, the shock wave of the exploding fighter broadsided the shuttle and pushed them down, sharply enough that the shield reacted and began to tighten around them. The whine canted into an even higher pitch, and warnings about hull temperature and equipment failure began to flick up over the HUD.

"Do these things not have shields?" Ford asked, as more fighters began to close on their position.

"Guess it'd interfere with the kidnapping gag," Jonn said. They were two-thirds of the way through the shield now, and it was burning into the hull. "Hey, what happens if you fire on a shield like this from the inside?"

"Let's find out." Ford fired another point-blank shot directly behind them, which scattered over the shield into a bloom of lightening. For a split second, a whole segment of the shield thinned to ephemera; Jonn slammed a hand on the acceleration, and they were finally inside.

And facing about fifteen of the dart-like fighters, but one thing at a time.

Jonn went into an evasive spiral, overriding the first set of structural integrity warnings—a direct hit from one of those fighters would breach the hull way faster than the torque of a sharp turn. Ford did his best to pick off the fighters, but what they lacked in durability they made up for in numbers. At least their weapons weren't the turbo-charged nightmares of the mothership—a barrage of fire hit them at the rear, but the shuttle's shield held, just barely.

Ford suddenly reached back and closed the door between the cockpit and the cargo compartment. "What the hell are you doing?" Jonn asked, concentrating on hugging the lower curve of the mothership's stubby wing as he searched for an engine exhaust or some other weak spot.

"Landmines," Ford said.

"You gonna explain that one now?"

Instead, he blew open the rear hatch of the shuttle. The outrushing atmosphere should've carried Ford's mystery crate with it, except, of course, he'd tied it—barely. Instead, the HUD showed a couple dozen small points sailing out of the back of the shuttle like a debris cloud. And the moment they made contact with a fighter, they exploded, setting off a chain reaction of crashes and collisions, thinning the pursuing pack to nearly nothing in an instant.

"Type four photon grenade with the pin switch taped down," Ford clarified.

"So, landmines," Jonn agreed.

And now they were nearly at the main engines, where a line of pit-like plasma vents burned yellow-orange. The amount of heat and radiation pouring out was enormous, but fighters had clustered in front of them, grouped as close as they could without giving up maneuvering ability. There was no way to get by them without flying headlong into enemy fire from one direction or another; there were too many to shoot their way through.

So Jonn, on a gamble, hugged the hull as tightly as he could, around a curve that sent the intertial dampeners to the brink of failure. He came out of it skimming the rim of the first vent, into a literal hot zone that had a new flurry of environmental warnings flicking across the HUD. And which just happened to put them directly between the fighters and the ship, instead of vice-versa.

"Holy shit, sir," Ford blurted, and before he even had to fire something fantastic happened: one of the fighters started firing at them. All Jonn had to do was roll away from the arc of the blasts, and let it shoot its own mothership's engines out.

The vents were hardened to withstand all kinds of engine exhaust, so the effect wasn't immediate. Ford didn't hesitate to help out with a few sustained phaser blasts. But all it took was one little chip in the heat shielding before all that plasma started eating its way through the vent and back into the superstructure. They passed over the second well, firing into that too, just as the first one belched a column of white fire that vaporized a dozen fighters in one blow. Out-of-control plasma burn.

The environmental warnings were getting more insistent all the time, though, and the air in the cockpit was getting uncomfortably warm. "One more for the road," Jonn told Ford, hovering as close to the third vent as he could manage.

"I can live with that," Ford said, and trained the phasers on a point deep inside the well.

At the same time, another cluster of the regrouped fighters wheeled around to face them, coming in head-on and in nearly the same plane. Jonn diverted all their shield strength to forward, but didn't alter course, not yet. Come on, he thought, hands loose and easy over the controls as they closed the distance. I'm not afraid of you.

The first concentrated barrage of fire completely destroyed their shields. The shuttle rocked, but Jonn kept it level. The fighters charged weapons for a second barrage—

And Ford raked across their whole formation with a sustained phaser beam. They burst into glittering debris clouds, and there was no time to pull away from the cloud; the best Jonn could do was slow down and ride out the shock wave, and pray there wouldn't be a hull breach.

When he rose away from the vents, however, there were no more fighters coming at them; they all seemed to be streaming back into the hangars all of a sudden. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Ford asked, watching the disappear back into the ship.

"I'm not hanging around to find out," Jonn said, and followed a wide arc around the ship back towards the Atlantis.

-\-\-\-\-\-

Finally, she found a security code that worked on the doors—the old Federation embassy emergency codes, apparently still in use. Inside, the building was full of smoke from the burning upper floors, but otherwise empty; she found a stairwell and raced down as fast as she dared, holding her weakened right arm against her chest with the other.

The doors of the sub-basement appeared to be nothing more than a row of bland, basic offices, with the same sort of locks as the exterior door, but Elizabeth counted them off in her head and stopped at the sixth. She managed to press her palm against the scanner, and announced her voiceprint, "Elizabeth Weir."

A blue glyph flashed on the screen. Denied.

"Commander Elizabeth Weir, Starfleet, she tried—true, it had been a while since her last visit, but she still had connections within the council, shouldn't have been purged from the system yet. The same blue glyph came up a second time. "Doctor Elizabeth Weir, Exterior Ministry," she tried, and that was the voiceprint that worked, the screen flashing orange once before the locks gave way.

On the other side of the door was a simple, straight corridor, with just enough room for them all to fit inside. Elizabeth thumbed the panel at the other end. "This is Commander Elizabeth Weir of the Starship Atlantis," she announced to whoever was on the other end. "I'm here to evacuate the Council."

For a moment, there was a silence, and all her worst fears roared to the front of her mind.

Then the tiny speaker clicked on, almost imperceptibly. "The council has not requested evacuation."

"The Council has no choice," she said harshly. "The enemy ship has destroyed the entire Starfleet task force and they are burning this city down. We just stopped a squad of them trying to break into this facility. We have boosters; we can beam everyone directly to the Atlantis."

There was another long pause, and she wondered just who was on the other side of the door, who was foolish enough or new enough to stand between her and the council, and now of all times.

Then the door seals quietly clicked, and she found herself standing face to face with Simon.

"Elizabeth," he said quietly. "You should not be here."

"Nor should you," she said, struggling to keep her voice level, now of all times. This isn't about people! "Weren't members of the Science Ministry evacuated?"

"I elected to give my place to a colleague," he said. "Come quickly, before you are found."

He ushered them into a cramped lift, which took them into the bunker; the main illumination came from the various computer screens lining the walls, and the air was stifling hot, even by Vulcan standards. "You said the Starfleet ships have been destroyed," Simon prompted.

"Correct," Elizabeth said. "The captain of the Atlantis is attempting to negotiate, but it's only a stalling tactic."

Simon raised an eyebrow. "The hostile vessel has not responded to any of our attempts at communication."

"I'm not sure I understand the situation myself," she said, because she couldn't begin to explain the chill in her bones when Michael said Doctor Weir in that particular way. Not in any logical way, at least. "But this may be our only chance to evacuate anyone from the surface."

They came into a slightly larger room, where the Council members—scholars, priestesses, philosophers, and artists all—were gathered around a table. Vaaryl rose to her feet when Elizabeth entered, but the rest stayed seated. "Doctor Weir. Would that we were met under other circumstances."

"Councilor Vaaryl," Elizabeth said, raising a hand in greeting. "I presume you can deduce why I've come."

"You wish to evacuate us," Councilor Suvik said quietly. He was, perhaps, the oldest member of the Council, and possibly the oldest man on Vulcan. "Which presupposes we wish to be evacuated."

"I fail to see the logic in remaining," Elizabeth said.

"This is our homeworld, Doctor," Vaaryl said. "To flee would signal an abandonment of our long heritage and history."

"To stay is to risk destruction," Elizabeth said. "This is not a battle that anyone can win, Councilors. The enemy ship is simply too powerful. The most we can do is prepare ourselves for rebuilding."

Suvik tilted his head at her. "Tell me, Commander Weir," he said, with a quick glance at her sleeves. "Shall we be safer on your ship in orbit than here on the surface?"

"None of us are safe until that ship is gone," Elizabeth shot back. "But if there is any chance of escape, it's in orbit, not down here."

The Councilors sat, contemplative, and Elizabeth felt an unfamiliar urge to hurry; perhaps she'd spent too much time among humans lately. Bates and Stackhouse were fidgeting openly, and Markham kept shifting the weight of the child still clinging to his back. Far above, there was a crash like thunder, but from down here it seemed miles away.

Quietly, one of the bunker's staff members stepped into the room. "Councilors. The aliens are assaulting two of our entrances. We must assume our location is known."

"If they wished to kill us, they could do so from orbit," another councilor said.

"They may simply wish not to kill you immediately," Elizabeth could not help but snap out.

"Very well," Vaaryl said, and placed her hand against a wall panel. "If it is a choice between surrender and retreat, let us choose retreat, and return to rebuild."

"Let us be the called the ones who turned our backs on our world in its darkest hour," somebody else said sharply, but Elizabeth had verbal permission now; she gave half the boosters to Stackhouse, and they began lining the room with them.

Another explosion sounded, but this one was much, much closer. Simon stepped out of the council chambers for a moment, and Elizabeth squashed the urge to call him back—she focused instead on activating the boosters as fast as she could. This deep underground, they would need as many as possible to enable the Atlantis to get a lock.

Simon came back in, holding a very compact phaser in one hand. "The aliens have breached Entryway Four. They are on their way to the turbolift shafts."

"Atlantis, this is Weir," Elizabeth said into her communicator. "Can you read me?"

"Faintly, Commander," Teyla said; her own voice was tinny and weak. "Have you reached the council members?"

"We have, and we're activating the boosters now," Elizabeth replied. "Can Zelenka get a lock on us yet?"

"Ahm—no," Zelenka answered directly. "I am sorry, Commander, but you are simply too deep underground."

"This chamber is specifically reinforced against transporters," Simon said. "You will not be able to obtain a lock."

Elizabeth pressed another booster into the wall. "These boosters can multiply signal strength by a factor of ten. They'll get us."

"We cannot afford to wait," Simon said. Another explosive rattled the floor, this one the closet yet, and she heard phaser discharges in the room they'd just come from.

"Atlantis, how are we coming in now?" Elizabeth asked, instead of arguing the point.

"No...no...perhaps...yes!" Zelenka crowed. "I have your location. Attempting to lock."

Elizabeth held the communicator away from her mouth. "Get everyone in here."

"They can better hold off the enemy from outside the chamber," Simon said.

In a fit of frustration she didn't have the time to anaylze, Elizabeth looped her still-tingling arm around Simon's and pulled him bodily into the chamber. "Zelenka, we need you now," she said, while Bates and Stackhouse aimed their rifles into the corridor.

"Almost," he assured her.

A ball of white light came streaking through the doorway and burst a light fixture. "Now!" Elizabeth called.

And on her command, the world around her dissolved into scintillating blue light.

-\-\-\-\-\-

Jonn and Ford were halfway back to the bridge when Atlantis rocked around them, almost knocking Jonn off his feet. The lights in the corridor failed for a moment, and down a cross corridor Jonn saw a containment door drop, which either meant hull breach or fire. He raced the rest of the way to the turbolift, thinking, I am not going to die without a chance to look that creepy bastard in the face one more time, and palmed the lift controls.

Elizabeth Weir was already in the car that came, with a phaser on her hip and a spattering of bloody scratches across her face. Thick locks of hair had fallen out of her bun; they looked they they'd been burned off at the ends somehow. "What happened to you?" Jonn blurted.

She didn't even deign to acknowledge the comment. "Where's Captain Sumner?"

"He never left the ship, ma'am," Ford said, eyes averted. "We did our best to disable its engines and then returned to Atlantis."

Weir shut her eyes briefly. "Maybe that was enough to stop them," she said, massaging her right hand with her left.

The ship rocked again, knock the lift car against the side of the shaft. "Or maybe we just made them angry," Jonn muttered.

On the bridge, Teyla stood up as soon as they left the lift. "Commander Weir, Michael's ship is firing on us. We were briefly able to restore the shields, but they have failed again, and there are additional hull breaches on decks seven, eleven, fourteen and fifteen. We have attempted to return fire with no effect."

"Do we have warp?" Weir asked.

"Possibly," Zelenka said. "But power levels are not stable."

"Commander, the enemy ship is going into warp," someone called out, and Jonn looked up at the forward screen just in time to see the entire bulk of Michael's ship flicker and twist away. Apparently the engine damage hadn't done the trick. Dammit.

"We need to follow him," Jonn said immediately, eyes fixed on the screen.

"Absolutely not," Weir shot back, tucking the stray hair behind her ear.

Jonn rounded on her, gobsmacked. "You want to let him get away?"

"We don't have the power to stop him," she said firmly. "Besides, Captain Sumner's last order was to fall back to Vorash."

"Sumner is still with Michael," Jonn pointed out, fists clenching on their own accord. "Along with a hell of a lot of Vulcans and Starfleet personnel."

"Assuming any of them are still alive," Weir shot back.

"There's still a chance," Jonn insisted.

"And I will not sacrifice this ship and everyone on board it for a chance," Weir said savagely, and at some point they'd converged on each other, standing toe to toe. She was a lot shorter than she looked from afar, and the scratches on her face looked deep. "We will rescue as many of the seriously injured as we can and then we will fall back to Vorash as planned."

"You're a coward," Jonn spat, frustration rising to a peak.

Weir took a step back. "And you are guilty of desertion, trespassing, and falsifying official Starfleet documents," she said frostily. "Ensign Ford, escort Mr. Sheppard to the brig."

Jonn was struck speechless for a moment, and shook off Ford's hand when he reluctantly put it on his shoulder. "This is wrong," he said, since he figured he couldn't dig himself any deeper than he already had. "And you know it, or you wouldn't be putting me in the lockup."

"Get this man off my bridge, Ensign," Weir said, turning away. Jonn didn't have to be told twice.

-\-\-\-\-\-

Elizabeth dropped into the captain's chair, still trying to squeeze some feeling into her right hand. Sheppard's accusations hung thick in the air, almost smothering. "Mr. Zelenka, do we have warp drive or not?"

"Ah...possibly?" He typed a bit longer, then grimaced. "Main Engineering is reporting severe plasma fire."

She glanced back at Teyla, who opened an internal comm line without being prompted. "Commander Castilho, what's your status?"

"Dead," a voice, not Castilho's, responded; it took her a moment to recognize Rodney McKay. "Along with everybody who scored better than the fiftieth percentile on their aptitude tests, apparently."

Elizabeth squeezed her eyes shut momentarily, but she had to press on. "Is the warp drive functional, Mr. McKay?"

"For certain definitions of functional, sure," he said. "But you're not getting anything higher that warp six-point-five without blowing up our remaining nacelle. Three-point-nine if you want to actually sustain it."

Miller cleared his throat. "Ma'am, at that speed it'll take us four and a half days just to get back to Earth."

No point in asking about Vorash, then. Elizabeth shut her eyes. "What other destination are in range?" she asked.

Behind her, she heard Teyla move to the sensor station. "We are only ten light-years from the planet Hoff; the Federation has a reciprocal medical training program there. Their hospitals are known as the best in the Pegasus quadrant."

Ten light-years...surely they could do ten light-years. "Lay in a course, Mr. Miller. Contact the civil defense and arrange to beam up the worst injured—as many as we can carry, and as quickly as possible." She stood. "I'm going to inform the Council members of the situation. Ms. Emmagen—"

"Yes, ma'am," Teyla said, and allowed Elizabeth to escape into the lift, where she could lean against the wall and take deep, measured breaths.

Chapter Text

"I appreciate you taking time to talk to the senate, Doctor Beckett," Elizabeth said sincerely. The military hospital was in the mountains, high above Hoff's main city, and every window glowed with pearly light, a white sun filtered through low clouds; a comforting change from the artificial lights on the Atlantis or her last glimpse of Vulcan's smoke-choked sky.

"Och, don't think anything of it," Beckett insisted, waving the words off with one hand. "The senate is quite keen on establishing better relations with the Federation; they just need reminding of that sometimes. The refugees will be welcome here until another ship can come fetch them."

"I'm sure that I leave them in capable hands," she murmured, for lack of anything else to say. It had taken just over eleven and a half hours to get here, with McKay ranting about the strain on the warp coils the entire time, and another two hours to transport the injured to the medical center, and the remainder of the Vulcan refugees to temporary housing. They'd crammed a few hundred souls into the Atlantis before they left; a drop in the bucket compared to those left behind, in the evacuation fleet or on Vulcan's surface. And compared to the number lost...

"I wish we could offer you help with the repairs," Beckett continued quietly. "But I'm afraid the Hoffans don't have anything near as large or advanced as a Constitution class in their fleet."

"The supply depot at Delta Vega is only another three hours at warp," Elizabeth said assured him. She turned to peer at the door of an exam room; her hair swung freely, an unfamiliar sensation. She'd had to trim off the burnt ends, and the resulting bob was too short to pin back. "Once we get there, we should be able to repair our warp drive and hopefully finish the installation of our long-range antenna."

"Mm, yes, a bit hard to do your duty when you can't make a long-distance call." They came to the door of Beckett's office, where he paused. "Can I offer you a cup of tea, Commander?"

She forced a smile; now that the abrasions on her face had been treated, it didn't even hurt. "I really should be getting back to my ship, Dr. Beckett. The sooner we set off, the sooner we'll get to Delta Vega."

"You're not waiting to hear how Starfleet takes your report?" Beckett asked, looking surprised.

Elizabeth shook her head. "Regardless of what they say, we'll be heading straight back to Earth. Atlantis needs repairs that can only be done in dry dock, and we don't have much to contribute once the fleet returns from Vorash." She'd included instructions to forward all further communication to Delta Vega anyway. Also a private message to Admiral Hammond—assuming he was willing to listen to anything she had to say—asking him to order the fleet back from Vorash directly, if he could communicate with them. Assuming he hadn't already done it, of course.

"I heard a rumor there were shots exchanged there, too," Beckett said absently. "Though of course rumors coming out of Area 52 are nothing new..." She forced a smile, and hopefully Beckett thought she was admiring his wit. She'd been given a sketchy briefing on the Vorash mission, and the thought of the Federation at war on two fronts after losing a half-dozen ships made her vaguely ill. "Still, if you stay a bit longer, Dr. Traalee should be regaining consciousness soon, and we'll have a better idea of the extent of his injuries."

"I'm sure he's in capable hands," she said; there was one other visit she had to make before they could break orbit. "And our remaining medical staff should be able to get us back to Earth in one piece. Thank you again, Dr. Beckett."

"Safe travels, Commander Weir," Beckett said, and he offered her another smile before he disappeared into his office.

-\-\-\-\-\-

The mountains above the Hoffan capital were pretty, Jonn had to give them that: blue-green pines interspersed with broadleaf trees in a fetching shade of lavender. A little morning mist was still caught in some of the hollows, reflecting back the heavy gray bellies of the clouds, so that the whole area seemed to floating in a foggy void. He rubbed his wrists where Ford had removed the handcuffs, and thought this wasn't the worst possible place to get kicked off a ship; there was an atmosphere and everything. Like Colorado Springs for the colorblind.

"How long d'you think I'm stuck here?" he asked, turning away from the window to look at the Starfleet nurse who'd officially taken custody of him when Weir had him put off the ship.

She shrugged, still occupied with a padd. "Depends. The Yorktown was scheduled to make a visit next week, but, well...it could be a while."

Whereas Atlantis would be back to Earth in a couple of hours once they fixed the warp drive. Jonn wondered if that was a kindness or another example of Weir fucking with him. "Do I get confined a brig or what?"

"Do you want to be in a brig?" she asked. "I mean, I guess we could ask the Hoffans if they have one..."

"Gotcha." Jonn glanced out the window, at the jewel-toned mountains. "So what do I do until my ride gets here?"

"We've got paperwork you can review for completeness, storage areas you can reorganize and if all else fails, a couple of the Hoffan privates would dearly love some help on laundry duty, I'm sure," she said absently.

Jonn sighed. "Sounds like a laugh a minute around here."

"It's a hospital, not an amusement park," she said. "You can go look for the asteroid if you're that bored."

Jonn frowned at her. "Asteroid?"

"Mmm, yeah." She groped for a stylus on the desk to mark something on her padd. "It came down yesterday, somewhere up in these mountains, and the local authorities have been all over themselves trying to find it. Apparently the space force never saw it coming and the air force couldn't get any telemetry on it before it went down. Pretty embarrassing all around."

Out the window, a fine mist was beginning to fall. Jonn thought for a little while about spending the next indeterminate number of days playing gopher to the hospital staff while waiting for a Starfleet ship to come re-arrest him. "Yeah, I'm just gonna take a walk for a little while," he declared.

"Mmm," the nurse said; she hadn't looked up at him for the entire conversation, had she? "Remember, if you aren't back by nightfall, you're AWOL."

Jonn grabbed the jacket he'd been issued—a jacket, but still not a tunic, and at this rate he'd never get to wear one—and headed out of the main hospital building.

-\-\-\-\-\-

She found Simon in one of the private rooms, sitting with the boy Chief Markham had rescued. He was sleeping, curled on his side, while a panel overhead ran out his vital signs. Simon sat at the side of the bed, hands folded as if in meditation, but he raised his head when Elizabeth paused outside the door.

"We're preparing to break orbit soon," she told him, stepping into the room.

He nodded, once. "You are returning to Earth, then?"

"We have to stop to make some repairs," she said, frowning. "Aren't you coming?"

He looked down at the boy sleeping on the bed. "I have a duty to my people, Elizabeth," he said quietly.

She swallowed hard, uncertain why the words felt like a punch in the stomach. "And what about me?" she asked quietly.

He shut his eyes briefly. "Your world is not in ashes."

"Vulcan is my world, too," she shot back, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice.

"And yet you take us here." Simon opened his eyes, but they were unreadable, implacable, a thousand miles away. "You chose to abandon Vulcan in its hour of greatest need."

"I had no choice!" she protested. He fists clenched and she let them. "One ship cannot provide aid to six billion."

"So you offer it to none?" Simon asked, and there was something in his voice she wasn't used to hearing, something rough and broken. "How many have died, Elizabeth? How many will die in the days to come without shelter, without water, without medical aid? And you bring me here, far from those with the greatest need, because—why? Because of some selfish fear? Because you cannot bear to face what has been done?"

"I saved your life!" Elizabeth shouted, and on the bed the boy stirred in his sleep.

Something in Simon's face twisted. "I did not ask you to!"

They stared at each other for a moment, and Elizabeth couldn't quite get her mouth closed. Simon, after a moment, stood and went to stand at the small window, to look out over the mountain vista and the sparkling city visible below. "My apologies," he said, eventually, in a rusty voice. "That was...illogical."

"I don't think any of us are feeling very logical right now," she said, and swallowed around the dryness in her throat. For a moment, she had a vision of herself going to him, embracing him from behind; perhaps he would turn and hold her, perhaps he would simply take her hand, but either way they could take this moment to surrender to their common grief—

Simon's head dipped, once, and then he straightened again, and when he turned around he was holding something in the palm of his hand. "You should have this," he said. "It is a custom of your people, not mine."

Elizabeth couldn't bring herself to take the two short steps to cross the room. "Simon, no," she said—plead—"This wasn't my fault."

"No," he said. "But I do not think this promise has been true for some time. And when so many of my people lie dead, it would be...illogical, to proceed with this."

"To marry an alien, you mean?" she asked. She blinked; her eyes were gritty from too little sleep, and it might've been a relief if she could cry. "Is that all I am to you now?"

"I do not have to defend my logic to you," he said curtly.

"Nor I to you," Elizabeth said. "I did what was best for my ship and crew, and what was within our capabilities, and I still despair that it wasn't more. But I did not abandon you."

"Never?" he asked archly.

Elizabeth walked out of the room, into the high, airy corridor, where she breathed deeply and tried to rein in her thundering heart. There was a time when Simon would have forgiven her this display of emotion, would've waited for her to compose herself and then come out after her to continue the conversation.

But she was alone in the hallway now, and behind her, she heard the door of the room click softly shut.

Eventually, she straightened up and smoothed the front of her uniform. She raised a hand to her head, checking for the bun that was no longer there. Then she pulled her communicator off her belt. "Weir to Atlantis."

"Atlantis here, ma'am."

"I'm ready to go," she said, with more calm than she actually felt; but if she said it enough it would be true. "One to beam up."

-\-\-\-\-\-\-

There were trails, leading away from the main part of the base into the mountains; Jonn guessed he wasn't the first one to find the place claustrophobic for one reason or another. He had to haggle with the Hoffan gate guards just to be let out the door, but they eventually issued him a temporary ID card that would let him come and go as he wanted. If he'd been stuck on the base until Starfleet came to get him, he might've gone AWOL just to be contrary.

Hell, he still could—save everybody the trouble of the inevitable ouster. Hoff had a civilian space presence; he could jump a freighter to the farthest edge of Pegasus and never look back...find a spaceship to fly and somebody who would let him. There were worse ways to make a living.

Except Rodney might still get in trouble for his part in the whole scheme, and Jonn couldn't let him face a court-martial alone. He wasn't that much of a scumbag. And besides, that ship was still out there, Michael's ship...whatever it was, whatever he was. And maybe he should've walked away from it, maybe it didn't really matter, but for him this thing was personal. Not because of Vulcan, exactly—not even because of his mother, who he'd never really known even though she'd been hanging over him most of his life. But Michael had called him, called them by name. Sure, he'd got the rank wrong, but it was still too close for comfort, too accurate to be a coincidence. It had to mean something...

He drifted off the trail, weaving his was between trees; after a few minutes he pulled up his hood against the increasing rain. Whatever it meant, it wasn't going to matter to Starfleet, that was the important part—they weren't exactly in the business of indulging peoples' revenge fantasies. Except this wasn't revenge, not really; it wasn't like he wanted his T'Perr back, like he thought that would somehow fix anything. It was just that he wanted to understand, to figure out what the connection there was, if it was a connection at all. If his whole life was going to be bookended by a mountain in space that destroyed anything daring to come up against it.

And Starfleet was not responsible for his existential crisis, so maybe he just needed to grow the hell up.

And that just got him thinking again about leaving, about walking away—whether or not he let them court-martial him first. Because if Weir really did pursue those charges on him, that was the only way it was going to end, he was positive. He could justify his reasons and accuse her of being after revenge...because that had worked so well last time, after all. His career was over before it began, and even if he stayed out of prison, he'd have nowhere to go...except maybe back to his family, the human side, who had always been so terribly caring and supportive while farming him out to every xenopsychologist and crackpot doctor this side of Andoria...

The wind was starting to pick up, even through the trees; Jonn glanced at the sky and realized the clouds had gone even darker since he set out. No thunder yet, but that hardly meant he was safe; his light jacket wasn't going to do much to keep him from getting soaked if he was caught out here. Cursing a little—at the weather, at himself for being so distracted—he turned around and tried to trace his own steps back to the trail; straight uphill, shouldn't be that hard to follow...

Except the sky suddenly opened up in a torrent, and within a minute he had little rills of water running over his boots. His boots slipped on the litter of purple-gray leaves, and he had to brace himself against a sapling to keep his balance; maybe it would be smarter to wait out this particular cloudburst. He cast about for some kind of shelter, just so he didn't get totally drenched waiting for the rain to die down, and spotted one of those blue-green fir trees that seemed to be hanging over the side of a gulley or ridge; its lower boughs were just high enough off the ground for him to fit under, it seemed, and he started picking his way towards it...

And then something under his foot shifted in the sodden earth. The next thing he knew, he was falling.

He had just enough to get his arms up, to protect his head; the slope was steep and uneven, and his jacket wasn't heavy enough to cushion each little impact of stones or sticks or other debris. He tried to get a grip on something to slow his fall, but his hands only closed over loose leaves or softening mud; and then he was going over the edge of that little gulley, and he could only hope like hell there wasn't a river at the bottom of it—

There wasn't. He tumbled over a shelf of raw dirt and landed on a bed of what looked like scraped bedrock, with only a narrow rivulet of water running down the center. For a moment he just lay there, getting his wind back. "Good job, Jonn," he sighed, as he slowly uncurled and tried to push himself up. He'd skinned his palm on something, but even that wasn't really bleeding, and though he could already feel his future bruises he didn't seem to have broken anything. He was just muddy and wet and completely disoriented. There were worse things.

He looked around, trying to at least get his bearings relative to the hospital. The slope he'd fallen down had a strange, curved profile, like something had swept along the valley and scooped out a whole bunch of dirt—there were even a couple of downed trees laying along the bottom, creating little pools where they dammed up the drainage of the rainwater. It was almost like standing at the bottom of a giant ploughed furrow—

"Jonn?"

He spun around. There was a woman standing behind him, with long white hair to match her long white gown, a white shawl or veil of some kind pulled over her head for tenuous protection from the downpour. She looked old—ancient, really, with deep lines cut into her face and prominent veins in her hands. And when she saw Jonn's face, she started grinning from ear to ear. "Oh, Jonn," she said dreamily. "You really don't leave your people behind, do you?"

"I'm sorry?" Jonn asked warily. Was this just the day for strangers to know his name? First Michael, now this...

The woman took a few steps forward, still smiling. If she was as human as she looked, Jonn would've put her easily at a hundred years old, at a minimum; she reached out one fragile-looking arm towards his face. "Look at you," she said warmly. "I'd almost forgotten what you looked like with black hair."

"Thanks?" Jonn asked, and fought the urge to back away from her. "Um. Am I supposed to know you?"

The woman stopped, smile slipping a little, and her hand dropped. "Oh. Oh, no. You haven't met me yet?"

"Apparently not," Jonn said. "First time on this planet, actually."

"No...Oh, no..." She cast about for a moment, like she was looking for something, and Jonn was just about ready to write her off as senile—some unfortunate old woman lost in the woods, lost in her own memories—when she pulled something out of her dress pocket and pressed it.

A spaceship decloaked behind her, shimmering out of the rain like a mirage. "Come on, sit down," the old woman said more firmly. "I think we need to talk."

Jonn was busy staring at the ship, which was like nothing he'd ever seen before—about twice the size of a Galileo-class shuttle, with a chunky, textured hull and a strangely curved profile. Which just happened to match the size and shape of the furrow in the ground. Found: one asteroid, he thought, trying to make it all fit together. "Who the hell are you?"

She stepped into the open rear of the shuttle, which was kitted out with some makeshift survival supplies—a bedroll, a water bottle, a sturdy-looking lantern. With a smile, she peeled off her wet shawl and reached up to tie her hair back into a long, loose ponytail. "My name is Ambassador Elizabeth Weir," she said. "Ring any bells?"

Jonn blinked. "No."

"No?" she asked, looking confused again.

"I mean that's impossible," Jonn corrected, staring. "I just saw Elizabeth Weir two hours ago, she's not...I mean, you're much..."

"Older?" the old woman asked. "You can say it, Jonn. It's not like I haven't noticed."

"And also she was on Earth the day you crashed here," Jonn added, though he wasn't entirely certain how the calendars lined up around here. Still, Weir definitely hadn't been on Hoff until a couple hours ago.

"I should hope so," the old woman said. She sat down on one of the benches in the back of the shuttle, and patted the cushion next to her. "Come in, Jonn. Sit down. There's a much faster way to do this, and we don't have much time."

"What are you talking about?" Jonn asked, but he didn't see any reason not to take a few steps up the ramp—it at least got him out of the rain. The interior of the shuttle didn't look like anything he'd ever seen before, even on the perimeter—there were the usual labels and signage he'd seen on Federation ships, but they looked like stickers, not an integrated part of the interior. In other places there was a pattern of angular lines that looked almost like writing, but not in any script he recognized.

"Michael's been to Vulcan, hasn't he?" the woman asked while he stared. "I can't imagine that went well for you. A mind meld will save us both a lot of talking."

"How do you know about Michael?" Jonn asked, deliberately ignoring the other question.

"How do you think I ended up here?" the woman said. "Come on, don't be shy. You may not know it yet, but we've done this many times before—will do it, I should say."

"We really haven't," Jonn insisted. "Especially if you're Elizabeth Weir." Besides, he knew the theory of mind melds—any Starfleet officer with telepathic abilities had to be trained for at least basic self-defense—but he'd never actually been on the initiating end of one. The few times he'd had it demonstrated on him by his teachers had been intensely uncomfortable, leaving him feeling exposed and intruded-on. Not something he wanted to repeat, and definitely not something he wanted to inflict on somebody else.

Except the woman was smiling again, almost indulgently—grandmotherly, in a way. "Jonn. I can't ask you to trust me right now; you don't really know me yet. But I can promise you that, if we do this, you'll see that you can trust me, if that makes any sense. Come on, I won't bite."

Reluctantly, Jonn set himself down on the bench next to her, half-turned to face her. He splayed his fingers across her face, acutely aware of her thin skin, how close the bones were to the surface. It took him a few tries to get the position right. If he concentrated, he could already get a sense of her—she was tired, she had arthritis in her hip, she was genuinely happy to see him. She wasn't afraid. That makes one of us, at least. "My mind to your mind," he said slowly, because that was part of the tradition, even though it made him feel kind of foolish. "Your thoughts to my thoughts..."

And as he said the words, he sort of—pushed—

The first thing to hit was a grief so deep and wide he wasn't sure he could stand it; tears pricked his eyes, he couldn't even breathe through it, Vulcan, my Vulcan— Unbidden, he thought of Michael's ship, the burning cities, the explosion of the Apollo replaying in his mind's eye with gory detail. Wraith hive ship, darts, a culling, oh, Vulcan—

Who, he tried to think, tried to push into their joined thoughts, who, how, but he wasn't good at this, was all tangled up with his own fear and confusion—

A dizzying circle of faces leapt to his mind. Rodney, older—much older—hairline sliding back and forth as his uniform changed, red blue gray (his best friend, his only friend, the way a friend loves another friend) officer and civilian, It's a time dilation field— a vast steel dome with a gaping black doorway apt to swallow them all whole—Elizabeth Weir, with her cut short, at her proper age—and now this one, older, so much older, so many years of friendship—younger again, no, with the bun, and making his life hell with her cool contempt, get this man off my bridge no wait—Teyla Emmagen cuddling a baby while she smiled at a man Jonn had never seen before—and a howling white face, a gaping mouth in the center of a palm, a nauseating wave of fear and anger far deeper and older than he thought possible. Wraith. Wraith! Michael...

A film clip reeled out in his thoughts before he could stop it: the Kelvin and the Hive ship, T'Perr's final moments. No... He saw himself, with dream-like double vision, as he was now—and older, with a full head of iron-gray hair and a captain's stripes on an unfamiliar style of uniform. We don't leave our people behind. Older and younger, at the Academy, on the Perimeter, no, both, standing before a discipline board, shaking hands with an admiral— Because it's the right thing to do!

No, wrong, something was so very wrong, the pieces wouldn't come together, a broken kaleidoscope, why didn't it fit—

A tumbling wash of space and color, not warp speed, something else, something bigger—Marshall Sumner on the bridge, Emmagen in her uniform, but the images kept morphing and sliding away: a man with dreadlocks and a sword, Ensign Ford with a black and tainted eye, so much loss, so much regret, no. And a familiar place, a city by the sea, all shining white and soaring and so very, very home...

Jonn broke the meld and jerked his hands back, heart pounding, trying to make sense of it all. Next to him, Elizabeth's hand had flown to her mouth, and she was staring at him in horror. "No," she said. "No, it can't...it's all wrong, all of it. My god, you aren't even supposed to be here yet."

"Was all that the future?" Jonn asked hoarsely, still reeling. It was the only thing that made sense—

But Elizabeth was shaking her head. "No, it's—I don't understand. He's change it somehow. This isn't how it's supposed to be."

That made less sense than anything else that whole damn day. "You want to run that out for me?" he asked flatly.

She nodded slowly, and took a shaky breath. "All right. I came here from the year 2329." She paused, as if to make sure Jonn wasn't going to argue with her, but after the meld he had no intention of trying. "I had been summoned to a place called the Cloister to negotiate a peace treaty between the Federation and the Genii. The Cloister is...well, maybe that's still to come. But there was powerful, ancient technology there—" with an accent on ancient, more like Ancient— "including technology to manipulate the passage of time. That was the whole point of holding the accords there, actually...but that's not important...

"Michael was...is...will be one of out most dangerous and persistent enemies. He attacked the negotiations; he knew I was going to be there, and he's been seeking his revenge for a long, long time. When he fired on the Cloister, it created some kind of temporal singularity...you'll have to ask Rodney for the details, but you'd better give him forty or fifty years to nail it down." She gave a faint, fond smile for just a moment, and Jonn thought of the affection he'd felt in her memories, the friendship, something old and comfortable and pure that he didn't think actually happened in the real world. "I had tried to flee the planet in this puddle jumper here, but I was pulled in to the singularity...and so, it seems, was Michael."

"And, what, it spit you out in 2233?" Jonn asked.

"It spit me out yesterday," Elizabeth said wearily. "Michael was waiting to meet me—I supposed he must've been able to calculate the different points at which we'd emerge—and after he captured me and postured at me for a while, he ejected me and this old thing from his ship on his way to Vulcan. And if he emerged from the singularity in 2233, it's little wonder that his presence has already changed everything."

"In what way?" Jonn asked eagerly.

She looked at him sadly. "You were never particularly close to your mother, but she was a tremendous help in getting you through Starfleet Academy in one piece. She was retired by the time you made captain, but she came all the way back to Earth for the ceremony, to surprise you. I don't think I ever saw you more emotional, except maybe when Teyla's son was born, and you were on so many painkillers then I don't think it really counted."

Jonn couldn't look at her for a moment; he didn't have any reason to doubt her, but he couldn't quite bear to listen, either. It was one thing to speculate idly on what might have been, to wonder but not know for certain, but now he was hearing testimony from someone who knew—He killed my mother. He destroyed the Kelvin. He changed everything. He took a few deep breaths, fighting the sense that he was tumbling down the ridge all over again.

"So what do we do next?" he managed to ask, once he'd got a grip on himself. He'd handle the existential crisis another day.

"That depends very much on whether you genuinely believe me," Elizabeth answered warily.

Jonn raked a hand through his hair—still black, he assured himself, not gray, not now. "I...don't really know what to believe," he confessed. "I mean, I believe what I saw—I can't really not—but...time travel and space vampires? Seriously?"

Elizabeth smiled sadly. "Like a heart attack, I'm afraid."

Jonn sighed. Now that the images were a little less vivid, he could think a little more clearly—about what to do next, and about this woman, sitting next to him, talking like they were old friends even though they'd only just met. Her old friend technically didn't exist anymore, hadn't existed for twenty-five years. God, this was going to give him a headache. "We have to tell Starfleet about Michael," he said slowly. "Warn them that he's packing future technology and a grudge against us."

"You've got to tell me," Elizabeth insisted. "Commander Weir, I mean. If you're right, and the Atlantis is the only heavy cruiser in this sector, then you're the only ones who can possibly stop him."

"Yeah, well, I'm kind of on Commander Weir's shit list right now," Jonn pointed out. "And I don't think she'll be nearly this cool about jumping into psychic show-and-tell."

"Oh, you can't possibly tell her about me," Elizabeth agreed. "It's too much to explain, and it would undermine your credibility right now. But you need to make her see sense. Michael knows enough about one possible future that he could easily bring the Federation to its knees, and he's certainly got the motivation for it. And..." She hesitated, and took his scratched and muddy hand in one of her frail ones. "There's one thing. One place, that's more important than anything and anyone else. And if Michael gets there first, it will change everything."

Jonn still wasn't quite right in his own head after the meld, and thought the skin-to-skin contact he felt...something. The memory/image flashed in his mind again, the silver city by the sea, but then it was gone again, leaving him with just the residue of an emotion that wasn't his own. He pulled his hand away carefully. "All right. But there's just one more problem."

"What's what?" Elizabeth asked.

"The Atlantis left Hoff over an hour ago," he said. "And they're flying without a long-range antenna. So unless you know a way to call them back to pick me up..."

Something in her eyes sharpened, and suddenly Jonn could see very, very clearly the younger woman's face in the old. "Where are they headed? Not Earth, surely?"

"Delta Vega," Jonn said. "Pick up some repair supplies."

"And we're on Hoff, right? Perfect." She cast about the shuttle—puddle jumper, the word surfaced in his mind layered with echoes of many voices. "Have you got a pen?"

"Why do you need a pen?" Jonn asked.

She smiled. "Because there's more than one way to get around this galaxy."

-\-\-\-\-\-

Carson Beckett had just finished rounds with the patients from that Atlantis, and was setting in to a pile of charts to update and a nice cup of tea when the door of his office banged open. Lieutenant Sheppard barged in, the young man they were supposed to be holding for detention, and before Carson could ask "What can I do for you?" he was leaning over the desk, braced on both hands.

"Can this place spare you for a couple of days?" Sheppard asked. He was soaked to the skin, his jacket and trousers were covered in mud and he had some fisip leaves caught in his hair, but all that wasn't as suspicious as the queer, overbright look in his eyes—an air of barely-contained energy that he hadn't had when he'd been remaindered into this custody a few hours ago.

"I suppose I could, in an emergency," Carson admitted warily. "Something the matter, lad?"

"Sort of," Sheppard said. "We're gonna need you on the Atlantis."

Carson set his padd aside, considering this statement very carefully. "As it happens, I offered my services to Commander Weir before the Atlantis left orbit, and she turned me down."

"She's wrong," Sheppard said firmly. Had he blinked since he came into the room? "I can't explain why right now, but she is wrong and we're definitely gonna need you, and soon. You in?"

"There's one other small problem, lad," Carson pointed out.

Sheppard did shut his eyes then, and sighed a little. "Yeah, I know. And I know you probably think I'm out of my damned mind right now."

"The possibility had occurred to me," he admitted.

Sheppard straightened up, then, and put his hands on his hips. "So I'm going to ask you to trust me with one thing. Just one little thing. And if it doesn't work out, fine, we'll come back here and I'll scrub bedpans until the next starship comes through. But if it works out—if I can prove something to you—then I'm going back to the Atlantis and I need you to come with me. Deal?"

Three things crossed Carson's mind. First, that Sheppard stood accused of a serious crime and could be plotting some kind of elaborate escape, or even simply be delusional, and he'd be walking right into a dangerous situation.

Second, that if Sheppard was delusion or suffering from some other sort of impairment, he needed someone with him for his own protection—and in fact a timely diagnosis could be the difference between a dishonorable discharge and a medical separation from Starfleet. And if he was neither mad nor lying...well, he seemed awfully certain of himself, and of whatever it was he needed to do.

Third, that Carson had a full docket of patients, some of them still unstable, and with the Yorktown destroyed it would be days, perhaps weeks before Starfleet could send a ship to pick any of them up. The Hoffan doctors were good, but few of them had the xenomedical background to effectively treat alien patients without exhaustive background research, and they were short on some of the drugs needed to treat major trauma in Vulcanoids. Which meant if Carson was going to leave, even for a short while, he was going to need a damned good reason to do so.

"What exactly are you going to prove to me?" Carson asked warily.

Sheppard glanced over his shoulder for a minute, as if wary of eavesdroppers. "You'll see," he said. "I can explain some of it on the way."

"You're going to have to do better than that, Mr. Sheppard."

Sheppard sighed, and leaned over the desk again. "We're going to catch up to the Atlantis at Delta Vega. I know a way."

Carson blinked. "You mean you've got access to a ship?" he asked. Hoffan warp drives didn't go above warp three; they'd never catch up to a Federation ship, even a damaged one.

Sheppard smiled that queer smile again, still leaning alarmingly close. "Doctor, where we're going, we don't need ships."

Chapter Text

"No! No no no no! Did you attend any classes for the past four years? No, just stop, give that to me, you clearly cannot be trusted with actual tools—"

Rodney grabbed the flux coupler out of the idiot's hands and shouldered him (her? didn't notice) aside; he picked up a coil spanner instead, and clamped off the leaking conduit properly, the most basic precaution a sentient life-form should be taking in order to not kill themselves or overload an entire segment of the power gird. In fact, he could keep talking while doing it. "Apparently the only reason I was put on this ship was to keep you people from sticking your fingers into every random socket you come across, and if I have to stand over the shoulder of every mental deficient with delusions of adequacy to keep you from causing even more damage I'm just going to have Weir confine you all to quarters and start doing everything myself, because for one thing it would probably be faster—"

"Rodney," somebody said quietly.

"—and also I'd be assured that it being done accurately and to spec, to the extent we can do
anything according to spec when we're basically rebuilding entire decks with stone knives and
bearskins—"

"Rodney..."

But he was busy double-sealing the breached conduit, like they'd been trained for, and also adding –"and obviously that's a problem that I will be taking up with Starfleet Commander in my final report, assuming we don't blow ourselves up before we get back to Earth—"

"Rodney!"

"What?" He finished the patch and turned around, expecting the original idiot of a technician to be nagged him. Instead, Radek was standing over him, arms folded across his chest, glaring down at him like some kind of tiny Slavic god of wrath. "Oh. You. What now?"

"I have been nominated by the rest of the engineering staff to punch you in the face," Radek said,
perfectly deadpan. "Please stand up and remove your goggles."

"Do you have time for this?" Rodney demanded, gathering up the toolkit. "I don't have time for this. I have things to do, unlike some people around here—"

"You think we are not working?" Radek demanded. "You think we are not frustrated also?"

"You're sure as hell not showing it," Rodney snapped back.

He climbed to his feet and tried to return to the work he'd been doing (rerouting power around some damaged couplings in a breached compartment, which was, hi, kind of important—) but Radek put up a hand to stop him. Rodney, of course, didn't actually believe that Radek was going to hit him; any flinch-like reaction he may have had was entirely the result of the grimy sweat dripping into his eyes. "And who says you are the one allowed to scream and insult, eh?" Radek demanded. "Who died and made you commander?"

"That would be Castilho," Rodney snapped.

Radek flinched. "All right. Yes. Bad figure of speech."

"Are we done here yet?" Rodney demanded, tugging his filthy, sweaty t-shirt away from his
neck. "Because I have thing to do before we get to Delta Vega, and if all you have to say is that I've hurt someone's feelings—"

"You have individually insulted the entire engineering department," Radek said flatly. "I counted."

Rodney rolled his eyes. "They deserved it."

"They did not!" Radek said. "And you cannot keep shouting at people for no reason!"

"So what am I supposed to do, then, mmm?" Rodney demanded. "Ignore every obvious mistake until one them gets us all killed? Have a good cry about the tragic fate of the Vulcans? Go back to my quarters and hide under the bed, maybe? Because that one's looking like a pretty damn good alternative, except—oh, way—I have too many things to do. So excuse me for sublimating my abject terror in a vaguely constructive fashion, because if I actually stop to think about anything that's happened in the last twenty-one hours I'm going to have a complete nervous breakdown and I do not have time for that!"

Rodney hadn't even been aware of his voice rising, in volume or in pitch, but when he was done
the corridor seemed deafeningly loud in comparison. Radek just stared at him for a minute, then quietly said, "Oh."

"Yes," Rodney said fiercely. His heart seemed to be doing something funny in his chest; with his luck, it was a fatal arrhythmia. "Are we done here?"

"You are not the only one who is frightened, Rodney," Radek pointed out, as if Rodney might not have noticed.

And screaming was a fine Ingram/McKay family tradition, the perfect response to any crisis, whether it was a failing power coupling or a pregnant teenage sister or a typo in your dissertation abstract. "Yeah, but I'm apparently the only one actually working. Speaking of which, don't you have warp coils you're supposed to be stripping before we get to Delta Vega? Chop, chop."

Radek sighed, and stomped away, muttering things that weren't in the Universal Translator's database.

-\-\-\-\-\-

It took a lot longer to get to the spot Elizabeth had indicated to him than Jonn intended, partly because her map didn't quite match the actual geography of the mountains—not that he could blame her, since her memory was fifty years out of date and also of another universe—and partly because the cave they had to climb through was a lot darker, wetter and colder than he anticipated, especially with all the rain. Beckett, lugging a bag of "helpful supplies," looked more and more dubious all the time.

"Maybe we should go back," he suggested at one point, watching Jonn try to lower himself through a crack without breaking a leg. "Get the proper equipment, that sort of thing?"

"It's fine," Jonn grunted, feeling in the shadows below him for toe holds. He'd been so relieved that he'd actually talked Beckett into coming, he hadn't stopped for much more than flashlights and some water for the hike; if they could actually catch up to the Atlantis, the ship could use a new CMO, and if they couldn't, Jonn would have an escort to keep him from being labeled AWOL. "The Atlantis is halfway there, and we need—aha!"

He found a ledge, one that bore his weight, and then another—and then he was dropping down onto stone that was too smooth and level to be natural. He flicked his flashlight around warily, and spotted Elizabeth's last landmark—a stone pillar in the middle of the room, inscribed with the same writing as the puddle jumper. Don't touch it, she'd warned him, just go into the next chamber. "We're almost good," he called up through the crack. "Toss your bag down."

By the time Beckett got down, red-faced and sweating, Jonn had found an arched tunnel exiting off the other side of the pillar. "What is this place?" Beckett asked, eying the pillar.

"I...don't entirely know," Jonn admitted. When he lowered the flashlight he thought he could just make out a faint light at the end of the tunnel—a machine? Some kind of glowing mold? "C'mon, this way."

"You brought me here, but you don't know what it is?" Beckett asked incredulously.

"I got directions from a friend," Jonn said, and then paused for a second when he realized what he'd just said. If you told him two hours ago he'd ever refer to Elizabeth Weir as a friend...either of them, actually...

They proceeded slowly to the end of the tunnel, wary of any surprises in the shadows. The light grew ever brighter, and when Jonn finally came around the corner into the room he found the source: a blue-green hemisphere set into a wide, angled pedestal. His heart pounded as he recognized what Elizabeth had described to him. "This is it," he told Beckett, approaching the pedestal.

"That's the thing that's going to get us to Delta Vega?" Beckett asked, playing his flashlight around the sides of the chamber.

Jonn pointed his flashlight across the room, just as Elizabeth had instructed. "Nope. That is."

"My god!"

It was, he thought ludicrously, bigger than she'd described. The ring of silver-gray metal was easily five and a half meters across at its widest point, and it was set upright in the stone so that its inner rim was flush with the floor. In the twin beams of their flashlights, Jonn could just pick out the features around the edge: seven vaguely triangular panels along the outside, and clusters of dots along the inside, like constellations. The pedestal had the same clusters engraved on glassy tiles around its center hemisphere. "Do the Hoffans know this is down here?" Beckett asked.

"Gonna have to say no," Jonn said absently. He had to set the flashlight down so he could shrug off his jacket and push up his sleeve. The seven symbols Elizabeth had drawn on his arm hadn't smeared, thankfully. "I don't think you're supposed to stand too close to it."

Beckett glanced at him and did a double-take. "So this is some kind of...transportation device?"

"Supposed to be." Jonn found the first symbol in the address and pressed down on the tile. There was a low buzzing sound from the pedestal, and the ring lit up, each chevron glowing blue-green and bright enough to light up the room; each tiny constellation lit up in turn, a pattern of lights chasing itself around the ring before stopping on the symbol he'd selected. Huh.

Beckett backed away a little, and didn't seem to know what he ought to stare at, while Jonn entered the rest of the symbols into the pedestal. The buzzing sound got louder with each keystroke, and low enough to feel the vibration in his bones—who knew what kind of power source they were messing with. He took a deep breath, and pressed his hand flat against the hemisphere—

—and then jumped back instinctively as a cloud of energy came bursting out of the ring. Beckett very nearly hit the floor. But the cloud didn't quite reach their location before being sucked back into the hole, and then there was nothing inside the ring but what looked like a puddle of luminescent water...if water could stand perpendicular to the floor, that is.

"You honestly expect me to...do what, exactly?" Beckett asked shakily. "Walk into that thing?"

"I'm...almost positive it's not going to kill us," Jonn said, because yeah, he trusted Ambassador Weir, but still.

"This is madness," Beckett said, grabbing for his pack. "You're mad."

"And you promised to come with me," Jonn said. He quickly pulled his jacket back on and came around the side of the stool to grab Beckett's arm. "Come on. Delta Vega's right on the other side. We'll beat the Atlantis there."

Beckett looked at the shimmering gateway, grimacing. "You're seriously going to attempt to go through that thing?"

Jonn exhaled. "Don't really have a choice. There's something I gotta do there."

After a long moment of hesitation, Beckett shook Jonn's hand off and straightened up. "Right. Lay on, MacDuff."

And after that, Jonn couldn't really chicken out. He looked right into the pool of energy, squared his shoulders, and took a deep breath...just in case. Just like a transporter, Elizabeth had assured him. Only transporters weren't so creepy looking, or buried in ancient caverns, and all you had to do was stand there—

"Here we go," Jonn said, and took it at a run.

-\-\-\-\-\-

There was little for a communications officer to do on a ship without an antenna; once they passed beyond range of Hoff, Teyla had to search for something to busy herself with, and ended up sitting at the sensor station on the bridge, reviewing data on Michael's ship. Sleep would have been the wiser thing, but the last time she had laid down to sleep she had been plagued with disturbing dreams of these...creatures, that she could not put aside.

Wraith, she told herself. Call them by their true name. Except she could not, not in front of all the oh-so-serious Federation officers who believed in neither gods nor monsters. She found herself tracing the pendant under her uniform again and again, thinking of her father's contempt for signs and portents, the legends of demons in the dark. The ship that had hovered in space had been a real thing, made of metal and plastic, with engines and an atmosphere for a crew of flesh and bone. But that terrible feeling of coldness, of malice, reaching across five kilometers of space to rake at her mind as if with with pointed claws—if that was not the Wraith, then what was?

But if Michael was one of the Wraith, the ancient enemy of the Ancestors returned from wherever they had vanished to...how could they possibly stand against such an enemy, even with the might of the Federation? Or did it mean the return of the Ancestors themselves was at hand, and they would soon descend from their heavenly plane with flaming swords to purge their worlds of evil? Apocalyptic nonsense, she would have called it once—We cannot wait for the Ancestors to bring justice to our worlds, he father had always said, but he referred to social problems, not murderous enemies from the stars. Two hands at work achieve more than two thousand raised in prayer.

But could mortal hands slay demons? What did gods need with a starship?

"Hey." The soft voice startled her more than it ought to. Ensign Ford was standing over her shoulder, looking worried. "You okay, ma'am?"

"I am fine," she said, schooling her face. "I am simply trying to...understand."

"Yeah, you and the rest of the Federation," Ford said. He leaned against the edge of the console, folding his arms over his chest. "I keep thinking about how we could possibly hit something like that. All those fighters—"

"They are a fearsome enemy," Teyla said. "But they are mortal, just as you and I." And if she said it often enough, she might believe it.

"Hope so," Ford said. He watched the screen for a moment as she built another sensor composite, trying to unlock Michael's secrets. Eventually, however, he cleared his throat. "Uh. Listen, ma'am, you're pretty good friends with Commander Weir, right?"

Teyla looked up at him, frowning. "I would say so, yes."

Ford glanced around the bridge, once, and then leaned over and lowered his voice further. "Why'd she go postal on Sheppard like that? I mean, he was sort of right."

"He challenged her authority to her face and embarrassed her in front of all of us," Teyla pointed out, looking at the screens rather than Ford's face. "And if he was truly on board this ship without authorization, his punishment was deserved."

"Yeah, but he was right," Ford said again. "We're the biggest ship left between here and the Neutral Zone. Somebody's got to stand up to them."

"And as she pointed out, if we attempt to do so alone we will be destroyed," Teyla said.

Ford was quiet for a moment. Then: "He knew you guys' names. And he knew she was from Vulcan."

Teyla exhaled. "If you are proposing that Michael may target Earth or Athos next, I am sure the thought has already occurred to her." It had certainly occurred to Teyla, and while Elizabeth was transmitting her official report to Starfleet Command from Hoff, Teyla had sent a discreet word to Halling for the Council. Not that the Athosians had any ships that could stand against him any better than the Atlantis had, but perhaps, if they had sufficient forewarning they could avoid the fate of the Vulcans.

Reports suggest as many as nine out of ten are missing or dead, had been the report they received on Hoff. Many fled into the desert and remain unaccounted for. Evacuees have been advised to remain aboard their ships indefinitely. She could not bear to think to hard on it, and to imagine it happening on Athos, its cities blasted and the people driven into the woods to dwell in tents...

"Do you think she's right?" Ford asked earnestly.

Teyla took a deep breath. "I think she made the best decision with the resources and information she had available."

Ford lowered his eyebrows. "That's not an answer."

"I am aware of that." She watched the rotating model of Michael's ship, a comfortable abstraction of reality. Lines and shading showed where Sheppard and Ford had fired into the engines, and the signs of plasma blow-back into the rest of the ship. And yet they has still gone into warp, wounded but not paralyzed. There was nothing supernatural about powerful technology, but still, if the ship could absorb such a blow...

She saved her work and logged out of the sensor station. "I believe it is time I had words with Commander Weir."

"Great," Ford said warily. "But, uh, if she asks, I didn't say anything, okay?"

She is not something to fear, Teyla wanted to say—but of course, someone like Ford would not know that yet. And Elizabeth may not have realized what sort of impression she had created by casting Sheppard off the ship. "I will not speak of this directly," Teyla assured him, and headed for the turbolift.

-\-\-\-\-\-

Jonn ran through the gate and had a moment to register some of the most intense cold he'd ever felt; then he fell down. At least this time he got his hands up in time to prevent a complete face-plant, and anyway there was nowhere for him to roll. He found himself on all fours, up to his wrists in slushy, dirty snow. The sky above was a uniform green-gray, and there was nothing in any direction but plains of wind-swept whiteness, occasionally broken by an outcropping of black rock. He wasn't sure if this was actually Delta Vega, but it definitely wasn't Hoff.

The gate on this side was glowing under a crust of ice, and located on a crumbling stone plinth; Jonn had gone crashing right over the first step. As he picked himself up, Beckett came stumbling out of the shimmering puddle, eyes screwed up tightly; he stopped just short of taking his own tumble, and finally looked around. "My god," he blurted again.

"Told ya," Jonn said with more confidence than he felt. It hadn't occurred to him to dress for the weather, or even try to figure out what the weather was, and the only sign of life for kilometers around was a single point of white light on the horizon.

Beckett looked around, and apparently came to the same conclusion. "We can't stay out in this weather," he said, chapping his hands. "We need to go back, get some coats—"

"I said, there's not time," Jonn insisted. "We don't know how long Weir's going to stay here before setting off for Earth."

"And we're not going to make it to the depot without proper clothing," Beckett said. He turned around, making to go back into the puddle—

—which promptly winked out in front of his nose. He actually stuck a hand out and waved it around, as if to confirm that the gateway was gone. Then he looked over his shoulder at Jonn. "How do we go back?"

"Sorry," Jonn said. "Didn't exactly plan a retreat." He didn't even see another pedastle in front of this ring, though if it had fallen on its side he supposed it might be buried under a snowdrift. Didn't seem likely, though.

Beckett sighed, and turned towards the depot. "Right. In that case, you're carrying the bag."

-\-\-\-\-

A candle could be the single most dangerous object on a starship. Thirty-four crew members had been injured or killed by a fire in Engineering during the battle over Vulcan, and another fire had partially disabled their forward sensors. But Elizabeth had never been fully comfortable with holographic substitutes, and when given minutes to pack a bag before meeting her shuttle, the first thing she had grabbed was a white taper candle and a tiny electric lighter.

Illogical, of course. Simon would've—

She exhaled and tried again to get comfortable on the floor. The captain's stateroom seemed vast and dark, and more than a little grisly, but her original quarters were adjacent to a depressurized compartment...and it wasn't as if Sumner was using it at the moment. The candle flickered a little as her movement disturbed the air, then settled again. If only her mind would settle so easily.

The door chimed in the other room, and for a moment she considered ignoring it; they couldn't be at Delta Vega yet, and she had hardly slept since being roused to go to Vulcan. But that would be petty, and at any rate she was in command (for now, at least) and that came with certain responsibilities. Reluctantly, she blew out the candle and climbed to her feet. "Come in."

Teyla entered, looking as exhausted as Elizabeth felt. "I hope I am I not disturbing you," she said.

"No more so than anything else," Elizabeth said, and waved her onto the little couch below the windows.

Teyla sat, and looked at her hands for a moment. "I noticed that Dr. Simon remained on Hoff," she said.

"Yes, he did," was all Elizabeth said, because as much as she liked Teyla she wasn't sure she could bear to talk about that right now. "Was that what you wanted to discuss?"

"In a sense, it is one of the things," Teyla said. "I cannot imagine how it felt to see Vulcan under attack."

"It wasn't clouding my judgment, if that's what you're implying," Elizabeth said. Teyla just raised an eyebrow. Oh, damn—"Sorry," she added quickly. "I suppose I'm already preparing to be interrogated over my report."

"You expect Starfleet Command to find fault with your actions?" Teyla asked.

"Almost certainly." And I'm not certain they'll be wrong, either.

After a moment, Teyla said. "There was something else I wanted to discuss, Elizabeth." And the first name, not the rank, made her sit up a little further and pay attention. "It may be relevant to what we saw at Vulcan; I do not know for certain."

"You said you knew something about Michael," Elizabeth remembered suddenly. No, not knew—sensed. It was easy to forget sometimes that Teyla was a telepath, but the way she'd reacted as soon as they dropped out of warp—was that how Michael had known their names? But then why single out three of them out of all the crew...?

"I have told you of something about my people's laws on thought-sharing," Teyla said slowly, not quite meeting Elizabeth's eyes. "My father worked his entire life to reverse the most egregious restrictions, and even he did not fully succeed. But there is a very old reason why it was even criminalized in the first place."

"You told me once it was religious," Elizabeth prompted.

She nodded, and took a very deep breath. "We—the people of Pegasus—were made by the Ancestors, in their likeness; this is what we are taught, though I know the people of the Federation do not believe it. But there was another race—grotesque parodies of the Ancestors who wanted nothing more than to destroy everything they had created. They were called the Wraith.

"It is said that the Wraith raised a vast army among the stars, and went to war with the Ancestors; that is why they were driven from this plane of existence. And for ten thousand years, the Wraith preyed on the people of the Ancestors—it is said they fed on the souls of those they captured, and every hundred years they would come to cull the worlds they claimed as theirs. Until one day they simply ceased to come, without explanation."

Come to cull the worlds they claimed. Elizabeth thought of all those tiny fighters and their inexplicable transporters, all the life signs on that massive ship...but no, it couldn't be true. Could it? "What happened to these Wraith? Or is thought to have happened?"

"That is the basis of a great schism among the people of the Pegasus quadrant," Teyla admitted. "Some hold that they pursued the Ancestors onto a higher plane, where they do eternal warfare. Some say they went to war against themselves and were destroyed. Still others say they merely went into a deep sleep, and one day will return to cull their herds one final time." She forced a weak smile. "I have long tried to remain agnostic on the subject."

"And what does this have to do with your telepathy, exactly?" Elizabeth asked, hoping Teyla wasn't about to follow through on the obvious conclusion.

"The Wraith do not need to speak as humanoids do," Teyla said, averting her eyes again. "On this, all sects agree: they share their thoughts directly, mind to mind. Only ten, perhaps twelve percent of Athosians are capable of though-sharing to any degree, but those who can...it is called the Gift of the Wraith, for that reason. It is said that we were once used as their prophets and their slaves, and at one time the penalty for sharing thought was death."

And Teyla had doubled over as if in pain the moment they dropped out of warp. Elizabeth, spontaneously, took her hand, and squeezed it gently. "What did you sense, from that ship?"

"Hunger," Teyla blurted. "And anger. I was...I could not sense their thoughts more clearly than that. But if these are not the Wraith of history, they are the nearest thing possible."

And this was far from the first time the Federation had gone to war with self-proclaimed gods. Elizabeth settled back on the couch, thinking long and hard. If these Wraith of legend were based on a real species, perhaps they did have the means to hibernate—some kind of suspended animation technology? That would help explain where Michael had been all this time, if he was truly the one who'd destroyed the Kelvin. But what real reason could they have to take such a massive number of hostages? And why come all the way to Vulcan to get them?

How does it feel to watch your world burn?

"If these are the Wraith of Pegasus, or something like them, how do we proceed?" Elizabeth forced herself to ask. "Because I find it hard to imagine negotiating with something that 'eats souls.'"

"If Michael is one of the Wraith, he must be stopped at all costs," Teyla said with conviction. "Especially if there truly are more in hibernation elsewhere in the Pegasus quadrant."

"I understand that," Elizabeth said quickly; she didn't want to think about a plague of those monstrous ships spreading out across the galaxy. If they could do that to Vulcan, did Earth stand a chance? Bolarus? If O'Neill couldn't get the fleet back from Vorash on time...or even if he could...but what other choice did they have?

"We know that his ship is damaged," Teyla added softly. "Perhaps that was why he fled from Vulcan."

"Or perhaps he just finished whatever he'd come to do," Elizabeth said.

"His ship is capable of warp fourteen," Teyla pointed out. "He could have attacked any other planet in this quadrant in the time it took us to reach Hoff, but he has not. I could hope that he has chosen to sleep for another twenty-five years, but I do not believe we can take that chance. And we are still close enough to pursue him."

Elizabeth smiled wryly. "I'm surprised to hear you taking Jonn Sheppard's side in this."

Now it was Teyla's turn to take Elizabeth's hand. "This is not a question of taking sides, Elizabeth. It is a question of what is right, and what is necessary. The fleet at Vorash cannot get here with any speed, and in the meantime Michael goes free."

"We have no idea where he is, Teyla," Elizabeth pointed out. "And even if we did—even if he's damaged—look at what happened at Vulcan. He's just too powerful. When the fleet gets back from Vorash, when we can regroup—"

"When will that be?" Teyla asked. "And what may Michael do in the meantime?"

Elizabeth shut her eyes. "Thank you, Lieutenant, but that will be all." She couldn't bring herself to see the look on Teyla's face—betrayal or frustration or, God help her, pity. And when the door slid shut again, Elizabeth went back into the bedroom, and lit the candle again. If she had to, she would burn it to a stump.

-\-\-\-\-\-

The supply depot wasn't all that warm inside—twelve degrees was warm enough to protect the stockpiles from damage. Still, in comparison to the growing snowstorm outside, the access corridor was a glorious sauna, and Jonn sighed as he slumped against the wall. The backpack, ironically, had actually helped—it insulated his back against the cold and wind—but still, Vulcans weren't exactly built for the cold.

"Let's see your hands then," Beckett said, though he was shivering just as badly. Jonn held up his green, chapped hands and flexed his fingers, to show there wasn't any frostbite; he wasn't so sure about his feet, and as for the rest of him...well, hell, he wouldn't mind a little strategic revision on the ears. Beckett nodded, satisfied. "Right. Let's never do that again."

"Not arguing," Jonn wheezed. He sat down for a few minutes and hugged his legs to his chest, trying to raise his core temperature. Beckett, meanwhile, started studying a map mounted on the wall while slowly rubbing his chest and sides for warmth.

"Looks like the main cargo transporters are in the center of the building," he said after a minute. "That'll be the best place to find the Atlantis crew, right?"

"Yeah," Jonn said. Now that they were actually here, he wasn't entirely sure how to get back aboard—he somehow doubted that Weir had spontaneously forgiven him, and McKay was probably a little too busy to beam Jonn up on the sly.

Then again, speaking of McKay...

Jonn climbed to his feet again—which were starting to regain feeling, in that painful pins-and-needs way—and shouldered the pack again. "All right, Doc. Follow my lead on this one."

"Is it going to involve any more unknown technology?" Beckett asked warily.

"Not this time. Promise." Jonn glanced at the map, and started off towards the transporter room. "We just need to get on that ship and get to Commander Weir without anybody seeing us."

Beckett sighed. "Should've bloody stayed home..."

They started finding Atlantis crew members quickly, but everyone wore same standard-issue black jackets, and most of them didn't give Jonn a second look; they were too busy hunting through inventories and wrangling antigravs. He kept his head down out of principle, though, and as they got closer to the central chamber he ducked into the first store room that looked empty and grabbed a couple of boxes off the shelves. "Take these," he told Beckett.

"What in God's name for?" he asked, hoisting the box Jonn passed him. "Och, careful there, not all of us are Vulcans..."

"Just hold it in front your face and look busy," Jonn told him.

The central chamber of the depot consisted of four massive transporter pads, capable of materializing bulk cargo, and a landing pad for shuttles in the case of things that couldn't be safely or conveniently beamed. The Atlantis crewmen were utilizing both, and the open hangar doors were letting in a chilly wind and a fine drift of snow. Jonn hitched his box higher and headed for one of the transporter pads, since they wouldn't be the only crew members hand-carrying something bulky. He quietly took up a position at the back of the pad, and Beckett stepped up beside him, struggling to hold his own box high enough. All they had to do was dematerialize—

A human with a blue tunic and a ponytail suddenly poked him in the side. "Hey, you. What's that you're carrying?"

Jonn tried not to look like he was avoiding eye contact. "Sorry?"

"What. Do. You. Have." The blue tunic waved a padd and stylus at him. "So we can check it off McKay's anal-retentive inventory?"

Shit. Of course there was a list, and of course Rodney had made it excruciatingly detailed. "Self-sealing stem bolts," Jonn blurted.

"Me, too," Beckett said, though it was hard to hear since he was holding the box at armpit-level, directly in front of his face.

Blue Tunic narrowed his eyes for a moment, and then wrote something on the padd. It seemed to take an absurdly long time, but then again, Rodney did love his lists. "All right," he finally said. "Dematerializing in twenty."

Hope you didn't actually need those, buddy, Jonn thought, squirming in place. Eighteen, seventeen, sixteen...

The cargo transporter vanished in a glittering curtain, and one of the Atlantis' transporter rooms faded into view. Jonn had to wait until the people in front of him cleared out to get off the pad, but once he did he ditch his "bolts" and then go track down Weir and—

"Hold it." Jonn peeked over the top edge of his box for the source of the voice. A vaguely familiar man with a master chief's stripes was standing in his path, and he had a phaser. Shit. "What've you got there, crewman?"

"Stem bolts," Jonn muttered.

The chief smiled. It did not look nice. "Then why's the box labled 'thermocoupling sealant'?"

Jonn's stomach sank. "Well, shit, I guess I grabbed the wrong box," he said, trying for genuine distress.

The chief just pulled the communicator off his belt. "Bates to bridge. Kavanagh was right, we've got trespassers in Transporter Room Two. Requesting additional security to deal with them."

"Bridge here," said a voice that sounded a lot like Ford. "How the hell do you get trespassers off an uninhabited planet?"

"I betcha Commander Weir would like to know that, too," Jonn called, raising his voice to be heard over the comm line.

"Shut up," Bates snapped, at the same time Ford blurted, "Sheppard?"

"That'd be me," Jonn said. He set his box down and sat on it. "And if you want to know how I got here, you'd better get Weir in, because I'm not talking to anybody else."

Bates raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?" He glanced at Beckett.

Beckett dropped his box with a wince. "I'll talk to just about anybody, but I'm not sure I'll be much help, because I've no bloody idea what's going on."

-\-\-\-\-\-

It only took about five minutes for Weir to turn up, and Jonn fought the urge to stare: she'd cut her hair off above her shoulders, revealing a slight natural wave. Suddenly she looked like the woman from Ambassador Weir's memories, the one that somewhere, somehow, had been some Jonn Sheppard's friend.

Weir did her own staring for a moment when she saw who her trespassers were. "How did you do that?" she asked flatly.

"Hello, ma'am," Jonn said mildly. "Nice to see you, too."

She stepped up to the edge of the platform, staring alternately at him and Beckett, and Jonn was struck by the differences between this Elizabeth Weir and the woman on the planet. Not just the age—something in the way this Weir carried herself, in the dart of her eyes and the turn of her mouth. Even with the haircut, there was something different, something off. "We haven't seen any other ships capable of warp six or higher since we left Vulcan," she said flatly. "So you didn't fly here. And the transwarp transporter is still a theoretical model without any kind of practical implementation. So I say again: how did you get to this planet?"

"The real question is why," Jonn said. "It's because we need to talk."

Weir's eyes narrowed. "I have nothing more to say to you, Mr. Sheppard."

"Yeah, but I got a few things to say to you." Jonn stood up, but stepped off the pad, so he wouldn't tower over her. "Look, I'm sorry I called you a coward. I'm sorry I blew up at you. But you need to listen to me. Please."

Weir studied him for a moment, and he wished he knew how to read her expressions, whether she was giving him a chance or just contemplating more inventive ways to keep him restrained. Finally, she gave the smallest of nods, barely a twitch—did that mean what he hoped it meant? "Chief, I want you to confine Mr. Sheppard to quarters for the time being. Dr. Beckett—" She paused, as if just registering his presence. "What exactly are you doing here, Dr. Beckett?"

"I've been asking that myself," he said mournfully.

She sighed. "All right. I'll have you assigned some quarters and notify Nurse Ysep that you're available for duty." And she breezed out of the room without a second glance.

Jonn looked at Bates, who looked back with an expression of frustration. "She knows I don't actually have quarters on this ship, right?" he asked.

"I'll find some," Bates said, and grabbed Jonn around the arm to lead him out of the room.

Chapter Text

The quarters he ended up in weren't terrible—he'd half-suspected Bates would put him in a storage closet adjacent to a hull breach or something just as petty, but no, he had a nice empty room in which to kick around for however long it took Weir to decide what to do with him.

He took the longest, hottest shower of his life, and cranked the temperature inside his room just because he could; he even got a few hours of sleep, mostly out of sheer exhaustion, and woke up feeling slightly head-achey and disoriented. The ship's chronometer declared it to be 1440, but by this point his body clock was so out of whack he didn't think that mattered. Somebody had brought him by some lunch, if a ration pack counted as lunch, but seeing as he hadn't eaten since...hell, he didn't remember when he'd last eaten, so he wolfed it down fast enough he wouldn't have to taste it.

Had he actually convinced Weir to listen? She hadn't thrown if off the ship on sight, hadn't abandoned him on Delta Vega, that had to be a good sign...then again, Jonn had trespassed on her ship twice and insulted her to her face. There was no reason for her to overlook that, no reason not to keep him locked up indefinitely. Which, so far, appeared to be exactly what she was doing. He thought of the warm affection Ambassador Weir had regarded him with, and sighed. You weren't kidding. Everything's different. But it wasn't like he could miss something he'd never actually had...

The doors chimed once, more a warning than a request—Weir barged in without waiting for permission, and Jonn jumped to attention, almost holding his breath in anticipation. "I'm going to ask you again," she said with the same steely voice she'd always used on him. "And this time I expect an appropriate answer. How did you get from Hoff to Delta Vega?"

"It's a secret," Jonn said, which wasn't technically a lie. "A little bird told me how."

She raised an eyebrow at her. "Not a little bird named McKay, I'm sure."

Jonn rolled his eyes. "When exactly would that have been? Before or after he started screaming himself hoarse at the entire engineering staff?"

"How did you—? No, never mind," Weir said, apparently realizing it was a stupid question when Jonn had spent four years rooming with the guy. She raked her fingers through her hair, as if still surprised at the new cut. "So you're not going to tell me how you got here."

"I've been reliably informed you won't actually want to know," Jonn said, which was also the truth.

Weir tipped her chin up, eyes narrowing slightly. "All right, so let's skip to the why. You realize you've walked right back into detention."

No, gee, hadn't noticed that at all, Jonn thought, but bit it back. "At least I earned an upgrade from the brig, though," he pointed out. "I appreciate that."

She ignored this. "Why is it so important to you that we chase down Michael, Mr. Sheppard? Because I assume that's you've come back. Is it revenge?"

"Oh, hell, no," he said firmly, but she still looked dubious. Jonn sighed, and folded his arms across his chest. "Look at me. You're more of a Vulcan than I am. I never knew my mother."

"And if Michael hadn't destroyed the Kelvin, everything might've been different," she said.

That was a little too close to the conversation he'd had with the other Elizabeth for comfort, not so soon. "It is what it is," Jonn said quickly. "The important question is whether we're going to pursue that ship while we still have a chance."

She sighed. "Even if we find him, we can't possibly stop him," she repeated mechanically, but there was something rehearsed-sounding about the words, like the fight was gone out of them.

"We can try," Jonn said, seeing an opening.

"Not all of us have a death wish, Lieutenant," Weir shot back.

"'The good of the many outweighs the good of the few,'" Jonn quoted at her. "That sound familiar to you? We can end this before any more planets get culled, and it'll be worth the sacrifice."

For a moment, she just stared, mouth pinched to a thin line. Jonn clenched his fists around the cuffs of his jacket, willing her to just listen, to be the woman Ambassador Weir seemed to think she was. If they really were the same person in any sense, if the same character was somewhere down in there like a seed crystal—

Miraculously, Weir opened her communicator. "Weir to Zelenka."

"Ahm—yes—Zelenka here."

"How fast do you estimate the hostile ship was traveling when it left Vulcan?" she asked without breaking eye contact with Jonn.

Wherever Zelenka was, it was loud, and Jonn thought he could just make out Rodney screaming at somebody in the background. "At warp? No more than warp six, probably closer to warp five."

"And how long until our warp drive is operational?" she continued.

"If we work quickly—shut up, Rodney!—ah—two hours? Installation of warp coils is not a simple process."

She nodded quietly, as if she was doing the math in her head. "All right. I want you and Mr. McKay to devote all your attention to figuring out a way to track that ship. Consult with Lieutenant Emmagen if necessary. You have eight hours."

"Wha—ah, I mean, yes, ma'am?"

"Weir out." She closed the communicator and put it away. "Eight hours from now is the soonest he could arrive at Earth at that speed, assuming he went directly there without stopping. If we don't have a location for him by then, we will proceed back to Earth at maximum warp as per the original plan."

"I...thank you," Jonn stammered. He'd been so focused on the impossibility of convincing her to act at all costs... "I didn't think this was actually going to work."

"I never expected to hear you apologize to me," she replied, as calmly as if she was talking about the weather.

Jonn blinked. "Seriously? That's what it takes to get you to listen?"

"It certainly got my attention," she asked, folding her arms; a note of genuine frustration crept into her voice. "Every psychological profile the Academy ever concluded you were detached to the point of apathy and would never rise about the rank you were commissioned to. That you were arrogant, lacking in empathy and unconcerned with the consequences of your actions. And here you are, having bent the laws of space and time to preach morality to me? I don't understand it."

Something twisted viciously in Jonn's gut, and every thought of Ambassador Weir flew out of his mind. "You want to know why I came back?" he asked, stepped up into her personal space again. "Exactly what you just said. Because everyone I've ever known has told me I'm just going to end up pissing my life away, and half of you were willing to help me along. So I figure if I'm doomed to be a failure, I might was well go out on my terms. And if that means throwing myself into a fight I can't win, fine. At least that way I'll die for a reason."

Weir actually took a step away from him, staring. Jonn swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. Card on the table now; her move. "I have never regarded you as a failure, Mr. Sheppard," she said quietly.

Jonn snorted and looked away. "Really. Could've fooled me. Or did you forget about the hearing last year altogether?"

"That wasn't personal," she said quickly.

"And that's the problem," Jonn snapped. "That was my career, that was my damned life that you dragged through the mud, and it wasn't personal to you? If that's true, you really are Vulcan on the inside."

It was Weir's turn to avert her eyes this time, and Jonn looked down at his hands, at the little scratches he'd picked up while climbing down into the cave. The room felt strangely like it had too little air and too much noise at the same time.

"I'm sorry."

Jonn looked up, blinking, but no, Weir had raised her chin and was looking at him with smudged and weary eyes. "Don't look so surprised, Lieutenant," she added dryly.

"Just trying to make sure I heard you right," Jonn said.

"I'm sorry for my actions during the hearing," she said, and even though it sounded like the words were being pulled out with pliers, she was still saying them. "I went too far in arguing my case, and I stood by while members of the board pursued an unrelated agenda. I should never have accepted Admiral Nixon's request to serve as lead investigator when I was already so heavily involved. Is there anything else I need to add?"

"Why are you telling me this now?" Jonn asked, bewildered.

She sighed, and shut her eyes for a moment. "Because right now, I don't trust my own judgment. Because I have spent too much of the past four years doing the wrong things for the right reasons. Because I just watched my homeworld get reduced to ashes, and by every regulation I am not emotionally fit to command—except there's no one on this ship who is fit to take it over for me. In a perfect world I could just hand this problem over to Jack O'Neill or someone else with more experience and a fleet at their back, but that's not an option right now."

"And where do I come in?" Jonn asked.

"I can't afford to make any more mistakes, Lieutenant," she said bluntly. "And you've already demonstrated that you have no qualms about pointing mine out, in public and at considerable volume. The Vulcans say that the seed of truth is conflict. You need something to do on Atlantis and I need a 2IC."

Jonn held his breath, waiting for the catch, the complication, the other shoe to drop. She just stared levelly back at him, as if daring him to say something smart. He was very, very aware that the next words he said might change everything. "Just so we're clear," he finally asked her, "are you going to throw me in the brig every time I disagree with you?"

"Are you going to actually follow my orders as given?" she shot back.

Jonn nodded, conceding the point. "All right. So...when do I start?"

"As soon as you can get yourself in uniform," she said, and offered him a hand. Shaking with her felt like a weight settling on his shoulders, but Jonn found he didn't really mind it all that much.

-\-\-\-\-\-

Rodney pulled the gauge out of the interface cable and patched it back into the main data bank. "Okay, try it now," he called, and above him, he heard Emmagen start typing. "Anything?"

She gave a hissing sigh. "The Bell stabilizer is still running high."

"Of course it is," Rodney snapped. "Atlanis is a second-generation refit and the long-range communications array isn't backwards compatible with the parts we actually have." He shimmied out from the console and rubbed his head. "Square peg, round hole, not enough power tools to do anything about it."

"Can we not compensate by using a low-pass filter on the calibration sensors?" Emmagen asked, leaning back in her seat.

"Well, if you've got one handy, sure," Rodney snapped. "You'll just have to splice it into the primary array by hand, because there isn't a port for one. Or install a software solution directly on the buffer, if you don't mind doing a little spacewalking, because that compartment currently has atmospheric pressure of zero. Take your pick."

She made an irate noise, but began typing furiously—manually calibrating the array, dear god. "Better you than me," Rodney muttered, but the last word trailed off into a yawn that he couldn't quite fight down. Dammit, he couldn't fall asleep now, he'd only been awake...he realized he couldn't remember how long he'd been awake. Not long enough, obviously, because there was still more yet to do, and that wasn't even counting Weir's latest directive to chase down the big scarey monsters that they'd only so recently escaped from...

"You need not stay," Emmagen said, and Rodney blinked, suddenly unsure how long he'd been sitting there next to the communications station, staring across the nearly-empty bridge. "I will not be much help in tracking Michael until I am finished here."

"You're more help than Radek, at least," Rodney told her. "He's running a 'model'"—he made certain to mime the quotes in the air—"unless he's just fallen asleep again, which is entirely possible. I told him to take some of those little blue pills from the infirmary but he seems to think they're dangerous or something. So what, more for me."

Emmagen was looking at him with knit brows now. "Perhaps he is right," she said quietly. "You will be very little good to us if you are too exhausted to function."

"And I'm not doing anyone any good if I'm passed out in my bunk when there are still holes in the ship," he pointed out. Besides, that was the whole point of the little blue pills—didn't she get that? He could sleep when they were back on Earth, unless of course they didn't actually go back to Earth, because why would Weir ask them to go hunting for Michael unless she meant to actually follow him? She had apparently let Jonn back onto the ship, too—Rodney hadn't managed to corner him yet regarding that, but when he did there would be screaming, to be sure—so maybe Weir had just gone insane recently and nobody had noticed yet? So in a way, crawling into a Jeffries tube and going to sleep would only be a good thing, since without him the repairs would drop to a standstill and thus she would be unable to do anything suicidally reckless with the whole damn ship...

He was doing that thing again, the drifting-off thing. Probably he was due for another cup of coffee and a dose of synexadrine.

Instead he found himself asking Emmagen, "Do you really think we're going to do it?" Which made sense, he supposed, since she knew Weir better than anyone else Rodney knew of and would be able to identify signs of madness.

Emmagen glanced down at him. "Pursue Michael, you mean?"

"Well, yeah." What did she think he was talking about, competitive macrame? "Provided we can find him, of course, which, I mean, Radek's got a simulation and all."

She shrugged. "I do not believe we have a choice."

"There's always a choice," he said, rolling his eyes. "Free will, ever heard of it? Or, no, aren't you—you know—" he waved a hand about, groping for the words, "all religious and stuff?"

She made a face, a sort of scrunched-up one that he didn't think boded well for him. "My people believe in free will, Lieutenant McKay. The Ancestors do not preordain our lives, they merely guide us if we seek their aid."

"Yeah, whatever." Rodney scrubbed at his eyes. "The point I was trying to make is that we always have a choice, and I happen to like choices that result in me continuing to live. I like living. It's my favorite hobby."

"We did not join Starfleet for the safe and comfortable lifestyle," she said, sounding vaguely annoyed.

"You didn't," he muttered. "I wasn't supposed to ever serve on a spaceship."

An alarm went off under the console—oh, hell, she'd tripped an overload breaker again—but Emmagen silenced it while Rodney dragged himself back into the open panel with a little groan. "We all fear death, McKay," she said, just loud enough for him to hear. "But that does not prevent us from acting."

"Easy for you to say," he snapped. "Don't you beat people with sticks in your free time, or something like that? When was the last time anything scared you?"

Emmagen was silent for a while, while he fixed the breaker and got the interface booted back up. Before he could ask her if her if she was getting input, she said quietly, "I can hear the thoughts of the Wraith."

For a minute, Rodney didn't realize she was answering his question. When he did, all he could think to say was, "Oh."

"It is disturbing enough on its own," she added, and were they seriously having this conversation in the middle of the bridge? Then again, nobody was around but Chief Campbell, who was sitting at Ops and didn't seem to be paying them any attention. "But what worries me more deeply is that, for all their age and malice...they fly in ships. They fight as we fight. They seem so mortal."

"Isn't that good?" Rodney asked her, not quite following the logic. "I mean, I'd rather fight aliens in spaceships than demons from Hell, you know?"

She shook her head. "You do not understand. The Wraith are the enemy who defeated the Ancestors. But if the Wraith themselves are mortal..."

"Oh," Rodney said again, just to be saying something. Emmagen had stopped working for a minute, and she looked weirdly sad and kind of lost—not scared, exactly, but maybe somewhere on the rubric of terror, to the left of loneliness and three ranks below an uncontrolled plasma fire.

Which somehow made it seem perfectly logical to blurt out, "My baby sister's pregnant."

Emmagen blinked at him, clearly not following at all. "How young is she?"

"Seventeen," he admitted. "Which I realize was like the average a couple hundred years ago, but this is now and she thinks she's in love with this—this English major, and she's not even applying to graduate school, and I tried to tell her right before we left earth what a bad idea it was and it...it didn't go so well."

"Define 'well,'" Emmagen asked.

"Um. 'Shut up, you hormonal cow?'"

She flinched.

"That's actually pretty much how my family's always interacted, though," he hastened to add. "Screaming, I mean. And if you can't scream at it you drug it or ignore it. So, you know...I guess I'm at the trifecta moment here." And he didn't even know why he was telling Teyla Emmagen about his maladjusted childhood, out of all people, or why now, except that she was here and he was tired. Really, really tired, in ways that didn't have anything at all to do with being awake for a day and a half. He'd joined Starfleet to get away from his fucked-up parents and it turned out he'd gone and become them.

"Do you regret what you said?" Emmagen asked him, sounding genuinely curious.

"Of course!" Rodney said. "I mean, not that I was right, because I totally am, but...I mean...she's Jeannie." Who'd thrown polar bears at him and promised to hate him forever, but still called him with allegedly happy news. Who made sure he didn't find out about their fathers' death from an obituary column. Who had somehow not succumbed to the congenital insanity of the McKays or Ingrams, despite no obvious signs of being adopted.

"Then you have a powerful motive to survive the coming battle," Emmagen said. "So that you can return to Earth and apologize to her."

He flinched. "I'm, uh...we're better at the screaming part than the apologizing part, usually."

"Rumor has it that you are a genius, Lieutenant," Emmagen said, looking back at her work. "I am sure that you will be able to think of something."

Right. Because sisters were solvable like an equation. Divide by x to atone. "I'll work on," he muttered, and dragged himself to his feet. Time to wake up Radek and find out if he'd ever actually had a simulation in the first place...

-\-\-\-\-\-

The golden tunic with the wide stripe on each cuff didn't fit perfectly—Jonn had just grabbed the first one that looked the right shape from the laundry when he had the time. He didn't really care, either. Even if this was the only time he ever got to wear it, he could always say now that once, at least for a little while, he'd been a real Starfleet officer on a ship of the line.

That didn't stop him from tugging on the cuffs compulsively while the rest of the staff filed into the briefing room. If you could call it a staff at that point—out of the seven people at the table, five had been cadets this time two days ago, and now they were heads of departments. Rodney was the last one in, and he brought an entire urn of coffee with him. "Thank you, Mr. McKay, that's very thoughtful of you," Weir said when she spotted it.

"Huh?" he asked, blinking. "Oh, no, this is for me."

"Rodney," Jonn warned while Weir blinked.

"What?" he asked. "Get your own coffee."

"What else did you skip in kindergarten besides sharing?" Jonn asked out loud, and snatched the urn out to Rodney's hands. There was a set of cups in a cupboard along one long wall of the briefing room, under a display of all the ships that had born the name Atlantis, all the way back to a two-masted sailboat; he dug them out and started offering the coffee around, while Rodney sulked.

"What's the status of the long-range antenna?" Weir asked, accepting her coffee without looking in Jonn's direction.

"There is a hardware incompatibility that prevents us from transmitting or receiving accurately over more than twelve light-years," Teyla said. "I have been able to get incomplete transmissions from some of the aid ships orbiting Vulcan, but no further. Once we leave orbit around Delta Vega, we will again be out of contact with Starfleet Command."

Weir turned to Rodney and Zelenka. "Warp drive?"

"We have repaired the warp drive, and it is functioning at one hundred percent capacity," Zelenka answered. (Rodney was busy sucking down his coffee.) "However, some of the hull breaches have proven too extensive to be repaired outside of drydock. I have devised a stopgap means of stabilizing them, but for the time being I would not advise going higher than warp nine-point-five at the very highest."

"Which is still six times faster than Michael's ship is going, so that shouldn't be a problem," Rodney added, punctuating it with the clack of his coffee cup on the table.

The mood in the room seemed to sharpen, and Jonn dropped back into his chair. "Do you know where he is?"

"No," Rodney admitted. "Well, maybe. We can find out where he went, though, which is the first step."

"Sensor data we gathered en route out of Vulcan revealed a very unusual muon decay pattern," Zelenka said. "It does not match the signature of any warp drive currently known by the Federation. Yet, anyway."

"Oh, don't even start," Rodney grumbled.

"It is a viable possibility," Zelenka protested.

"Only because you are delusional from lack of sleep." Rodney raised his cup again, and pouted at the absence of coffee in it."

"You guys want to let us in on the joke?" Jonn prompted.

Rodney sighed dramatically, but Zelenka said, with a perfectly straight face, "I believe there is a strong possibility that Michael's ship may have traveled in time."

Jonn's heart jolted, and he quickly glanced around the table, as if Ambassador Weir was going to materialize and confirm the story. But the others were just frowning or looking a little lost, except for Rodney, who rolled his eyes. "You see?" he said. "You see what I've been putting up with?"

"Just because you will not recognize the data—" Zelenka started to say.

"Time out," Jonn snapped, cutting them both off. He wanted to hear this.

Teyla was blinking. "What do you mean, exactly, by 'traveled in time'?"

Zelenka pushed his glasses up his nose. "The muon decay pattern is atypical in part because of the high levels of co-occuring taychon particles," he explained. "These are theorized to be generated by a mass traveling non-relativistically though time."

"Delusional," Rodney muttered, sing-song, under his breath.

"It'd explain where he got weapons like that," Ford observed.

"And how he knew our names," Elizabeth added thoughtfully. Then she shook her head. "But unless that helps us stop him, I don't see how it's relevant."

"Wait a moment," Beckett said, leaning forward in his seat. "If this ship's from the future, doesn't he already know what happens next? How are we supposed to stand up to that?"

"That would be true if it were a stable time loop," Rodney said. "In which case, yes, everything that we're going to do, we've already done, which theoretically includes whatever it was that pissed him off in the first place, which may very well be what we're about to do, which is why stable time loops are stupid."

"And what is your better idea, then?" Zelenka challenged.

"Many-worlds," Rodney shot back. "If Michael even traveled back in time, which we don't know for sure, he would've forked the timeline and created this reality, which has absolutely no relationship to the one he came out of. No predestination paradoxes, no magical foreknowledge, and absolutely no relevance to this situation."

"Yes, but—" Zelenka started to say.

Weir cut him off with a sharp "Gentlemen." Zelenka subsided, pouting a little, and Rodney smirked at him and then tried to drink from his empty coffee cup. Weir glanced at Jonn, who could only shrug—yeah, they're always like this. "Back on topic. We can follow Michael's warp trail, yes? What does that buy us?"

"Well, given his speed and bearing when he left Vulcan, we have a vague idea of where to start looking," Rodney said. "Now that we've got part of an antenna, we can also ask around the neighborhood for clues, so to speak. So if we can pick up the trail, and if his ship is still held below warp five-point-five, it'll take us, what, eleven hours to catch up to him? Maybe twelve. Of course, if he has fixed his warp drive, this whole mission is pointless..."

"Either way," Jonn said. "How soon do we break orbit?"

But Weir turned to Emmagen first. "Has there been any response from Starfleet Command to my request?"

Jonn didn't know what request that was, exactly, but apparently Emmagen did; she hesitated a moment before saying, "According to Admiral Hammond, the star in the Vorash system went nova ten hours ago. Several ships in the task force were damaged, and the whereabouts of Captain O'Neill and the Cheyenne are currently unknown."

Jesus, it was just sunshine all over, wasn't it? The task force from Vorash was the last real way to defend Earth, if that was where Michael intended to attack next. If all those ships were out of commission too... "Nobody here but us chickens," Jonn muttered, and for some reason Weir gave him a sudden, sharp look.

"Admiral Hammond also instructed us to return to Earth, in the event that Michael's next attack falls there," Teyla added.

"Except that's not the heading he took leaving Vulcan," McKay said.

"Starships can turn, you know," Ford shot back.

"We'd stand a lot better chance against him with a bit of help," Beckett said.

"He'll stand a lot better chance against us if he's got time to repair," Jonn said. "How do we know he's not headed to his own drydock somewhere to repair? Or to find reinforcements?"

"Well, if either of those is the case, we're completely screwed," Rodney said.

"We're screwed if we do nothing," Jonn said. "We go back to Earth, Michael is free to pick the time and place of the next engagement, we get another Vulcan. We either face him now, when he's at his weakest, or we face him later on his terms."

"That's enough, people," Weir said, in one of those teacher's voices that projected further than seems possible. The whole table quieted, and Weir took a deep breath. "Lieutenant McKay is right: following Michael is a dangerous idea, and unlikely to succeed." She paused, and Jonn clenched his teeth, hanging on the next words. "For that reason, if anyone objects, they are free to remain here on Delta Vega while we proceed."

Jonn let out a breath he hadn't consciously held. Rodney's eyes bugged out. "You're disobeying a direct order from a Starfleet admiral? You?" He turned on Jonn. "Did you put something in that coffee?"

"Look at it this way, McKay," Jonn said. "If we fight him and lose, we aren't going to live to regret it."

He winced. "Thank you for that stunning moment of optimism, Mr. Sunshine."

"I want to be ready to set off in an hour," Weir declared. "Inform your respective departments of the plan and the option to stay behind. Lieutentant Emmagen, I don't think I need to give you any unlawful orders?"

"I have no intention of violating Starfleet's Uniform Code, Commander," Emmagen said confidently.

Weir looked at them all once more, and then nodded. "All right. You're all dismissed."

Chapter Text

Elizabeth found Sheppard and Ford in Science Lab Six, sitting on boxes of supplies facing one another, while McKay was sleeping face-down on the lab bench. "Shhh," Sheppard said in a stage whisper as soon as she entered. "He'd been out for the last forty-five minutes."

"Understood," she said. She could cling to the faint hope that some proper sleep would improve McKay's behavior, at least. "What did you want to show me, exactly?"

He passed her a padd. "For one thing, we think we worked out where Michael's headed. We think."

"It's an unmarked system on all the Pegasus charts," Ford added. "No inhabitants, no nothing. But it's the only thing he's gonna hit on this bearing."

Elizabeth looked at the profile of the only rocky planets in the system: one mostly ocean, the other only tenuously habitable. "Any theories on what he wants here?"

Sheppard gave her one of those quick, searching glances, the same one he'd been giving her since he appeared on Delta Vega. "I kind of have a theory," he said.

"Let me guess," she said: "A little bird told you?"

He flashed a quick, self-deprecating smile. "Something like that. I think there's something on that planet, something game-changing for him—not just a depot or a drydock, something bigger."

"A weapon?" she asked. As he needed more of those...

"Or maybe more Wraith," Sheppard said. "I mean, if they do hibernate..."

Elizabeth fought down a shudder. "If he's planning on waking up friends, we'll never stand against him."

"Exactly," Sheppard said. "So we've been working with Sleeping Beauty over there to come up with some tactics that might actually work this time."

Elizabeth passed the padd back, leaning closer. "I'm all ears."

Ford brought up a sensor composite of Michael's ship—a hive, Sheppard had called it, which seemed an appropriate-enough metaphor for the swarm of fighters it held. "So we had plenty of time to get a good long look at him, over Vulcan, and I think we've got it painted—torpedo launchers, port and starboard hangar doors, main sensor array. If we can get a jump on him before his shields come up, we might be able to get off a few lucky shots."

"And how do you propose doing that?" she asked.

"Well, I'm gonna have to talk to Miller about this," Sheppard said. "But a precision warp-hop right into his face should do the trick. Hear me out," he added, because Elizabeth couldn't quite keep her opinion of that off her face. "We're gonna catch up to him on the edge of the system, right? But if he spots us first, we're toast. So we overshoot him, park ourselves in the upper atmosphere of the system's gas giant, and let him pass us. Once we know which planet he's headed for, we can hop right into the same orbital plane and blitz him."

"You're suggesting a 'hop' at warp nine?" she asked. "That'll take, what, a tenth of a second? From one gravity well to another?"

"I know, I know," Sheppard said. "Trust me, McKay already did the ranting part. But we need every edge we can get."

"That's not the only plan," Ford added. "We figured out at Vulcan that this ship is using a Holtzmann process force shield, not a deflector. That means it's god vulnerabilities."

"He's talking about landmines," Sheppard said. "Modify a couple of photon torpedos to run slow and silent, we can deploy them as soon as we hit orbit. It'll take a few minutes for them to hit, but if he's not looking for them—boom."

"The other option is a plasma bomb," Ford added. "It'll detonate on impact and bleed through the shield, and if we deploy 'em right, they should be big enough to deter those darts."

"Any chance of strengthening our own shields?" Elizabeth asked. "All these plans aren't good for much if can't survive long enough to implement them."

"Rodney's gonna work on that in..." Sheppard checked his watch. "An hour and eight minutes. After coffee."

"Anything else?" she asked.

Sheppard hesitated again, eyes flickering downward. "You're not gonna like this," he admitted.

"I don't like anything about this," Elizabeth said. "What is it?"

They locked eyes for a moment, and she wished she knew what he was looking for in her, what he apparently saw. "The other thing that'll penetrate a Holztmann-process shield is a transporter beam," he said.

He didn't have to say anything else. Absolutely not was her gut reaction—barging into an unknown enemy's territory with no guarantee of a way out? Sheppard might be eager to throw his life away for a glorious cause, but she wasn't about to help him along if she could help it. Still...this is what you asked him to do. She took a deep breath. "What exactly would you be trying to accomplish?" she asked.

He looked startled and a little pleased that she was hearing him out. "Two strike teams," he said. "First one heads for the main engines—we've got a pretty good idea of where that is—and plants a kilogram of dilithium tetrakaranate on whatever surface has the most caution stickers."

She blinked. "Do we have any dilithium tetrakaranate on board?"

"No, but Rodney used to built nuclear bombs as a hobby," Sheppard said.

She glanced at the man who was quietly drooling on the table. "All right," she said. "You said the first strike team. What's the task of the second?"

He hesitated again, and then said, "Search and rescue."

"What makes you think that's feasible?" she asked.

"Nothing," he admitted. "But as far as we know, Captain Sumner is still on that ship, along with at least a hundred and fifty officers and crew who evacuated the task force ships, and who knows how many Vulcans. If there's even the slightest chance we can rescue some of them, we should take it."

"They've already been held by the enemy for a day and a half," she pointed out reluctantly. "If any of them are still alive, they're already compromised."

"We can't leave our people behind," Sheppard said.

"I will not risk losing more of my crew than I have to," Elizabeth insisted.

"This is the right thing to do!"

They both paused, while on the table McKay snuffled quietly in his sleep. Waiting for him to go still again helped Elizabeth rein in her temper again. "Intelligence-gathering," she proposed. "And if the second team happens to find anyone able to be rescued, they will have permission to evacuate them. But I don't want anyone taking unnecessary risks."

"Deal," he said eagerly. "We'll be waiting in the transporter room and beam over as soon as we come out of the warp hop."

"'We?'" she asked warily.

"That a problem?" he asked archly.

Sending a man with a self-destructive streak a mile wide on a dangerous away mission? No, no problem at all, she thought, but again held her tongue. "Who else are you planning to take?"

He hesitated. "That's the other thing you're not gonna like."

-\-\-\-\-\-\-

Teyla rose out of an uneasy dream, Wraith-like malice still clawing at the edges of her mind. According to the chronometer at her bedside, she had slept for nearly five hours; it still felt like no time at all. After they departed Delta Vega, she had delved deep into the ship's database, or what portions of it had been fully uploaded, in search of references to the Wraith from across the Pegasus quadrant—desperately trying to tie together some thread of fact from conflicting variations, to find something they could use against Michael and his ship. But she was no anthropologist, and soon enough she had begun to nod over her console; at that point, she was forced to admit temporary defeat.

The noise that had awakened her was the chiming of her door. She quickly rose from bed and wrapped herself in a dressing gown. "Come in," she called, wondering what was urgent enough to wake her but not so urgent as to merit a communicator call.

Jonn Sheppard crept into the darkened anteroom of her quarters, and grimaced a little when he saw her sleepwear. "Sorry. I didn't mean—I guess I should've called ahead."

"None of us can afford much sleep," she said, by way of forgiveness. "What brings you here...sir?"

They both paused to consider how strange it was, that he should be above her in the chain of command. Sheppard cleared his throat first. "I have to ask you about something," he said, perching awkwardly on the other end of the short couch. "And I wanted to do it in person. Commander Weir and I already went ten rounds on this one, but ultimately it's your decision."

"What is it that you require?" she asked.

"She's authorized me to take a strike team onto Michael's ship, when we engage him," he explained. "We'll be attempting to sabotage it from the inside and search for any of the captives taken from Vulcan, if we have time. Given that you can read Wraith minds—"

"—You would like me to come with you," Teyla said, completing the sentence almost in unison with him.

Sheppard nodded. "It might give us an edge, knowing what they're thinking. But you're the only one who can evaluate the risks, so if you're not comfortable with it, it's off the table."

Teyla shut her eyes for a moment. To walk on that ship, to breathe the same air as the things she had only sensed from afar...! But Sheppard was right, it would be an advantage to a strike team—provided she was not overwhelmed by them, possessed like the wretches of lore and forced to do their bidding. Did she have the strength to stand up to ancient demons?

Could she bear it if they were not so demonic after all?

We must separate the eternal truths of the Ancestors from the ways those truths are interpreted, her father had written once, in a moderately famous essay. The Ancestors are eternal; it is we who are fractious, biased, blind. It may be that all the tales on all the worlds are true; or it may be than none of them are; but the truth is more valuable than any tale of human devising. And what is true should be embraced, and never feared, no matter how great the lie it sweeps away.

"I will go," she said, opening her eyes again. Sheppard looked surprised and pleased. "I cannot promise how useful I will be, but if there is a chance that you may need me, I will go."

And the Ancestors would go with her, if she sought them. That, she would always hold true.

-\-\-\-\-\-

"You are putting too much extraction load on the sensor."

"I am putting exactly as much load on the sensor as it needs."

"It is a land mine, not a bouncing ball!"

"Finish your own bomb, this one's mine!"

Rodney was just slapping Radek's hands away from the perfectly normal detonator when Commander Weir walked into the torpedo bay-cum-workshop. She had this way of staring at him like she wasn't entirely sure which of them was crazy—it was annoying. "Gentlemen," she asked, slightly wary.

"Commander," Radek said.

"Please don't step on the explosive devices," Rodney added.

She picked her way very, very careful over to where they were rigging up the gag torpedoes for Jonn's master plan. "How much longer before these are ready?" she asked, looking curiously at the homebrew detonators.

"Not as long as if you don't stop talking," Rodney told her.

Radek smacked him on the arm, and then looked at Weir with earnest attention. "Was there something you needed from us, Commander?"

"I have a few misgivings about Lieutenant Sheppard's strategy," she said. "In particular, I'm concerned that the strike team isn't going to be able effectively deploy the explosives without a thorough understanding of the technology they're looking at. All the dilithium tetrakaranate in tthe world won't be very effective if they just accidentally stick it in a janitorial closet."

"Yes, well, there's not much we're going to be able to do about that from here, is there?" Rodney asked. Weir just raised an eyebrow at him. Then he got it. "Oh. Oh."

"I'm not going to order anyone to join the strike team," she said quickly. "This would be a strictly volunteer position. But if there's anyone in Engineering that you can recommend with a strong background in xenotechnology, preferably with some personal combat training as well—"

"You're completely serious about this?" Rodney asked as his higher faculties caught up with the conversation. "Sending an engineer behind enemy lines or whatever, as part of a tactical strike team to follow Sheppard around and stick bombs to things?"

Weir scowled a little. "As I said, Mr. McKay, it's an option. I understand that it's unlikely we've got anyone qualified for the job on board, which is why I'm asking you for a recommendation."

Except there wasn't anybody to recommend, not if Rodney had any say in it—oh, sure, there were a few people who made adequate technicians, if that was what you needed, but they didn't have any combat skills and they were just as likely to pee their pants as accomplish anything if they were faced with genuinely exotic technology. If fact, he couldn't think of any engineers on board with more than the basic personal combat requirements under their belt, and that was for a reason, because engineers and scientists were not supposed to be going into personal combat situations in the first place. Line officers did that kind of thing, pilots did that kind of thing, Jonn did that kind thing—

For a moment, Rodney's thoughts ground to an absolute halt as he fully explored all the implications of that one. Jonn is actually going to do this thing.

"I'll go," he announced, causing Radek to drop a spanner.

Weir was giving him that look again, the one that said someone in the room was crazy and it might not be her. "Are you certain?" she asked.

"Of course not," he snapped, and grabbed onto the casing of the torpedo with hands that were abruptly not steady enough to be doing fine soldering. "But I'm brilliant, and that will hopefully compensate for the rest."

"I just want to be certain that you know what you're getting into," she said.

"Death, most likely," he muttered, but if Jonn was going...after he'd dragged Jonn on board this ship and started the whole mess in the first place...

"I think McKay merely wants to keep his old friend in shouting-at range," Radek said suddenly. "It will be much more difficult to tell Sheppard he is stupid over comm lines."

"That is...a little too close to the truth, actually," Rodney admitted. Radek gave him a bland smile and dove back into the torpedo he was working on. Rodney looked back to Weir. "Yes, yes, it's a terrible excuse and I'm a tremendous coward and possibly co-dependent."

"That wasn't what I was thinking, Mr. McKay," she said, so earnestly that he honestly didn't know how to respond to it. She straighted up and started picking her way back across the parts they'd spread out on the floor. "I'll let him know to expect you in the briefing room at 1030 hours."

"Great. Awesome." Rodney looked down at the torpedo. "We are not going to have these finished by then."

"Only if you keep fiddle with the extraction load," Radek insisted.

"Will you shut up about the extraction load—?"

-\-\-\-\-\-

The strike teams assembled scant minutes before the projected intercept; the whirling lights of the red alert gave the corridors an eerie appearance, though they were more muted inside the transporter room. Teyla prayed, before they gathered—slipped into an empty room and held her pendent between herwere fingers, following the familiar grooves with her fingers. Ancestors protect me, she thought, and protect this ship and crew. There was no time to say more, and in truth, nothing more that she was ready to say. Ancestors, protect us.

When she reported to the transporter room, Sheppard handed her a pair of photon grenades to hang from her belt, and eyed the bantos rods she had holstered opposite her phaser. "You think hand to hand's going to work against these guys?"

"I believe in being prepared for any eventuality," she said simply.

The doors opened a second time, and Rodney McKay marched in, carrying a phaser rifle as if it might at any moment wrest itself from his grip and attack him. "Just so you know, I want bodyguards with me the entire time," he declared. "Big ones." His eyes fell on Ensign Tarkiff. "That one."

"Behave," Jonn said sharply. He climbed up on the edge of the transporter pad, which served to give him some elevation over the rest of the room. "Okay, listen up. We're dividing into two groups as soon as we touch ground inside the ship. Ensign Ford will take McKay, Tarkiff, Loyola and Ee towards the engine area to plant the charges. Emmagen, Koizumi and myself will be conducting reconnaissance inside the ship and trying to locate any surviving captives, whether they're Federation citizens or not. Remember, these Wraith are tough sons of bitches—don't assume they're down until they're down."

He stepped down, and crossed to the wall-mounted communicator. "Sheppard to bridge. Teams one and two in position."

"Bridge here," Elizabeth answered. "Estimating thirty seconds to engagement. Be careful."

Teyla expected him to say something flip, but to her surprise, Sheppard said, "Good luck, Bridge. We'll call you for evacuation when we're ready. Sheppard out."

Teyla stepped up onto the pad of the transporter, and counted down the seconds in her head. Twenty, nineteen, eighteen...

-\-\-\-\-\-\-

Elizabeth forced herself to stay in her chair instead of pacing the bridge; there was a subtle turbulence, a vibration that she felt in her teeth and her inner ear, as they eked out a few more tenths of a warp factor. The superstructure of the ship couldn't handle it for long, not in its current condition, but if gave them even the slightest edge—

"Passing the Wraith ship now," Zelenka announced, and Elizabeth's fingers curled into the armrests of her chair. "Preparing to exit warp—"

There was a burst of real turbulence, the kind that rattled more than just bones, as they fell back into normal space; the gas giant's thick clouds of methane roiled with the shockwave and recoiled back into the hull. "How are we looking?" she asked Zelenka.

He nodded, after a moment's thought. "Good. Better than expected, in fact. Preparing for the hop in five, four, three—"

The next few parts were very nearly automated—had to be, to get the kind of precision timing they needed. She couldn't see Michael's ship flit past at warp, not from within the smothering layers of cloud, but she knew the moment it did they had only a second and a half to execute the leapfrog.

The moment it did, the ship really lurched, shuddering in an unstable warp field—there were reasons why these sorts of split-second hops weren't recommended. It felt for a moment like Atlantis was literally shaking itself apart.

The forward screen flickered from blue-green clouds to the Wraith ship, the whole impossible bulk of it, less than a kilometer from the claw-tip of its sensor array. The phasers automatically fired, tracing an arc across the other ship's hull, until its shield flicked up and cut them off. "Modified torpedoes are away," Chief Campbell reported from the weapons station. "Away teams one and two are on board the enemy ship. Launching shuttles two and three now."

At the other end of the ship, Elizabeth saw the darts begin to emerge from their hangars. "What's their weapons status?" she asked anxiously, waiting for the first barrage of the hive's projectiles.

Zelenka let out a strange noise, almost like a choked-off laugh. "The Wraith ship's main weapons appear to be offline," he said.

Elizabeth's heart rose. It wasn't enough, wasn't nearly enough, of course, but it one big step in the direction of a fair fight. She rose to her feet, watching the cloud of darts bear down on them. "Fire at will, Chief," she announced.

-\-\-\-\-\-

When Jonn's vision cleared, he found himself somewhere cool, damp and dim, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. The first thing he did was scan for any Wraith in the area, but as luck would have it, they seemed to have gotten down in a relatively empty stretch of ship.

The second thing he did was check Emmagen. Her eyes were screwed shut, and she held her body rigidly, fists clenched and neck cording. For a minute he didn't know whether to try to shake her out of it or avoid distracting her; in the next, she started to relax, letting out an explosive sigh. "Oh, that is—unpleasant," she said, grimacing.

"You all right?" he asked, not that they could do anything if she wasn't—the Atlantis' shields would be up now.

"I think so," she said, glancing around the shadowy corridor. "They have not noticed our presence yet."

"Good. Great." He looked up at the others. "Quick as you can, guys. Let's move out."

-\-\-\-\-\-

"Shields at sixty percent," Campbell warned, as darts exploded all around them. Elizabeth could feel the inertial dampeners struggling to keep up with their evasive maneuvers; the Atlantis wasn't exactly built for dogfighting, even without the structural damage, and evading the darts was simply impossible.

Below them, over the Wraith shields, the first of the plasma bombs detonated against the shields: it blossomed in a blinding cloud, incinerating a handful of darts and bathing the hull in a brilliant white light. Around its edges, Elizabeth could actually see the shield flicker and pop, struggling to keep out the burning gas. A second bomb detonated meters away from the first.

"Shields at fifty percent," Campbell called out. No matter how many darts they destroyed, more seemed to keep coming. How much longer could this hold out?

A third plasma bomb burst over the Wraith hull. "Are those even bruising it?" she asked aloud.

Zelenka nearly tumbled out of his chair as the ship rolled again, but he said, "It appears so—their hull is degrading, but much more slowly than expected."

Elizabeth settled back in the chair and forced her hands to unclench. "Tell the shuttle pilots to keep them coming, then." Anything that would do a little more damage, buy a little more time—

-\-\-\-\-\-

"This way," Emmagen said, with a toss of her head, and Jonn had no reason not to follow. It seemed strange that the ship was so empty, but maybe most of the crew were dart pilots—pilots currently attacking the Atlantis. All he knew was that they hadn't passed a Wraith yet, but they also hadn't passed any sign of hostages—nor any corpses. Just miles of weird, fleshy corridors, cold enough to form a ground fog in places, and very rarely showing signs of recent damage.

They came to an intersection, and Emmagen threw herself around a corner and flat against a wall; Jonn managed to follow suit an instant later, with Koizumi still behind him. Two hulking Wraith passed them by without a glance; of course, given that their face masks lacked eyeholes...talk about flying on instruments. They stayed crouched for another few seconds, but when Emmagen rose again, Jonn followed suit.

"Any idea how the fight is going?" Jonn asked. The Atlantis could probably slice off one end of the ship and they wouldn't notice, not when it was this size.

Emmagen just shook her head. "I cannot tell the specific thoughts, not yet. There is—something, though. Ahead."

"Detention cells?" Jonn hazarded. She didn't respond to that.

The corridors rose and fell, until he was no longer sure what deck they were on, if this thing even had decks. They were passed by one more set of Wraith guards, but after that Emmagen picked up speed, walking with a definite purpose. "You wanna keep me informed?" he asked her, lengthening his stride to catch up.

"This way," was all she said. "I sense—there is something here, something important."

The next membranous doorway they passed through lead into a large, rounded room, the walls shrouded in something like cobwebs—if cobwebs came in the same gauge as guy wire. On the floor, Jonn registered the first spot of real color on the whole ship—the gold tunic of a Starfleet officer. After a quick sweep of the room, he ran to the man on the floor, rolling him onto his back to check for a pulse.

"Sheppard," Emmagen called in a strange, high voice.

"I think he's still alive," Jonn said. The man on the floor was old, though—ancient, really, with snow-white hair and sunken, spotted cheeks. He's never heard of any active-duty officers that old, much less ones who would've been sent to fight at Vulcan—

Then he glanced down that the cuffs. Captain's stripes.

A single weapon fired directly over his head.

Jonn scrambled back, getting his rifle up, and found himself looking at the only Wraith he'd ever seen without the face masks. Michael was holding something that resembled a Starfleet-issue phaser, only smaller and infinitely more menacing. A glance over his shoulder confirmed that Koizumi was dead, with a steaming hold in the center of his chest. "Sheppard. Teyla. So good of you to join Captain Sumner and I for dinner," Michael said, and grinned with all those extra teeth.

-\-\-\-\-\-

"Shields at twenty percent," Campbell warned, straining to be heard over the sound of the wailing alarms. Elizabeth glanced back at the engineering station, which showed another new hull breach where the hasty repairs had failed. If this kept up, the darts wouldn't even have to breach the shield—they could just chase the Atlantis around the sky until it disintegrated around them.

The entire dorsal surface of the hive was aglow with plasma fire now, hanging over the shield like a malevolent aurora borealis; some of the first charges were starting to sputter out. She no longer knew if the torpedoes were even in the air, or if the darts had picked them all off while she wasn't looking. "What's the status of the shuttles?" she called.

The officer at communications replied, "Atlantis-Two has shields at fifty percent and has discharged its whole payload. They can't get through the darts to get back to the landing bay. Atlantis-Three still has two bombs on board but shields are only at ten percent."

"We are losing antimatter containment," Zelenka warned. "Engineering is reporting fires on decks fourteen and fifteen."

Elizabeth swallowed. "Start evacuating personnel from the secondary hull," she said. If they had to, they could blow the explosive bolts connecting the saucer to the pylon; they'd be stranded without warp, true, but they'd be alive.

A moment after she spoke, a blinding flash flared from under the hive's belly. "Direct hit by the first torpedo!" Campbell called.

"Damages?" Elizabeth demanded.

He looked up directly at her. "Commander—the Wraith shields are down."

This might be the best chance they'd have to do any damage. "Concentrate all fire on the hive ship," she ordered. The darts would just have to take care of themselves...

-\-\-\-\-\-

"What have you done to Captain Sumner?" Emmagen asked, voice shaking, though her hands didn't.

Michael kept smiling. "Would you like a demonstration?" He transferred the phaser to his left hand, keeping it steady, and dropped into a crouch over Sumner's ruined body. When he pressed his right hand to the bloody rip in Sumner's uniform, Sumner groaned out loud, and started to writhe as if in pain; but the sagging skin of his face smoothed and tightened, the color flowed back into his hair, and his eyes opened and gaped directly into Jonn's. Agonized. Pleading.

And just as quickly, it all faded; if anything, Sumner looked even older, obviously too weak to rise off the misty floor. "Marshall and I have been having some nice little chats," Michael said, as if he hadn't just done something that ought to be impossible. "Getting my bearings in this timeline. I have made a mess of things, haven't I?"

"You led me to this room," Emmagen accused. "Why?"

"Ah, Teyla, you were always so easy to deceive," Michael said, a parody of affection. From far away, a low, deep concussion rolled through the ship. "I wanted to make sure you knew why you were about to die."

"Because you're a monster?" Jonn asked coolly, trying to shift to his left. If he and Emmagen could get some separation—

"Stop right there, Sheppard," Michael said coldly, and reached out that hand at Sumner again. "He still has a few years left in him. I won't hesitate to take them all."

"Why are you doing this?" Emmagen asked. "What have we done to you?"

Michael's eyes narrowed. "Jonn Sheppard over there talks of monsters, Teyla. Would you like to hear about real monsters? The people who kidnapped me, tortured me, performed medical experiments on me that destroyed my mind and tried turn me against me own people? Tried to make me grateful for it?"

Jonn's stomach roiled. "You're saying the Federation did that?"

"You did it." Michael took another deep breath through his nose and...nose-pits. "You and your little pet—a pity he isn't here yet—you held me down for the first injection personally. You even gave me a name."

"Only that hasn't happened yet," Jonn pointed out.

Michael snorted. "Only because I came out of hibernation a decade too soon."

"No," Emmagen said firmly. "It never happened, and it never will."

Michael rounded on her again. "Oh, yes, so confident—always sure you'll be on the side of angels and Ancestors," he sneered. "You cannot change your basic natures."

"Yet you have already changed us," she countered relentlessly. "The moment you fired on a Federation ship in Athosian space, you changed our fates."

"Fate," he spat. "Who taught you to believe in fate? The distant Ancestors who permit you to revere them as gods, but never lift a finger to save you? The Atlantean god-slayers?"

That seemed to faze her for a moment; Jonn jumped on it. "Just own up to it already, Mike: you blew this one. Whatever you think the Atlantis did you you, it doesn't matter anymore—we're not the same people and we don't make the same mistakes. So where does that leave you?"

He snarled, and reached into the front of his dark, ornate robe. "It leaves me in possession of the one thing my kind have wanted for ten thousand years," he said. The small, white remote control in his hand didn't fit with the rest of the ship—in fact, it looked more like the one Ambassador Weir had used to decloak her puddle jumper. He pressed a single button. "In a few minutes, when your starship is just a burning hunk of metal in a forgotten star system, I will have the key to ultimate power in this galaxy. And there was never anything you could about it, because this time I got here first."

A high, shrieking alarm began to echo through the hive ship, and the floor vibrated again, more violently than before. "Sorry to mess with your big plan," Jonn said, edging to the side again."But if we're going down, we're sure as hell taking you with us."

Michael snarled again, and then his whole body jerked with a start; on the floor, Sumner had thrown one withered arm around Michael's legs. He didn't have the strength to topple him, but all it took was a moment, the briefest distraction.

Jonn shouldered his phaser rifle and hit Michael with a sustained beam. But just as Weir had warned, it didn't immediately take him down—Jonn could smell flesh burning under the assault, but Michael still managed to throw himself forward with a snarl. Emmagen hit him in the chest with another shot, but his momentum carried him into her, and they went down in a tangle that Jonn didn't dare aim into. For one terrible minute Jonn saw Michael's right hand raised in the air, the vertical mouth open wide and dangerous, and then he struck—

And Emmagen caught his hand between her fightin sticks. A complicated twist of wood, and Jonn heard bones cracking. Michael's scream blurred into the sound of the rising alarm.

He lined up another shot and fired, directly at the head, and this time Michael thrashed and went still. Jonn helped Emmagen to her feet, and then raced over to where Sumner was still laying on the ground. This time there was no pulse, no signs of life, and Jonn drove his fist into the squishy floor in frustration. They'd been so damned close—!

"Emmagen to Ford." She had pulled out her communicator and was again sweeping the perimeter of the room. "What is your status?"

"We're setting the charges now. What about you?"

"Michael is dead," she said. "As is Captain Sumner."

"Any word from the Atlantis yet?" Jonn asked, rising to his feet.

"Negative, sir—maybe no news is good news?"

Jonn wasn't counting on it. He pulled out his own communicator. "Atlantis, this is Sheppard, please come in."

Static burst across the channel, but then Weir's voice came though. "Good to hear your voice, Lieutenant. What's your status?"

"We found Michael and we killed him," Jonn said bluntly. "Charges are almost ready."

"It would be helpful if you could beam us directly from this location," Emmagen added tensely. Shit.

"Getting a lock on you now. We'll give you a ten-count."

"You get that, Ford?" Jonn asked.

"Aye, sir. Charges set."

The deck was shaking almost continuously now, but Jonn could make out pounding footsteps over the roar. He shoved his open communicator into his belt and raised his rifle again, backing up until he and Emmagen were braced back to back over Sumner's withered body.

A moment later, Wraith came storming in through every door—dozens of them, like they'd come out of a goddamned clown car, raising long, deadly-looking weapons to their shoulders. "Atlantis, cancel that ten-count and get us out of here!" he called, but he had no idea if the line was even still open.

The last thing he saw was a forest of weapons charging to fire. Then his world was curtained in brilliant white.

-\-\-\-\-\-

"The away team is aboard," Zelenka said. "Hull integrity is at sixty percent."

"Get us clear of the hive," Elizabeth said, watching the last of the plasma bombs fade out. The explosion would have to be enough to destroy it—simply had to be, or they would be lost.

The Atlantis was already shaking so badly it was hard to distinguish one vibration from another; still, Elizabeth could've sworn she felt something new and ominous rattle through the ship a moment before Zelenka said, "Warp core containment is failing. Thirty seconds to breach."

"Eject it," Elizabeth said immediately. They'd be able to survive without warp drive. They'd figure something out.

Zelenka looked over his shoulder at her with wide eyes. "Commander, the core housing was damaged when the hull was breached. I cannot eject."

Elizabeth swallowed. This was it, then. "Mr. Zelenka, initiate emergency saucer separation. Mr. Miller, get us out of here at full impulse."

The explosive bolts fired, ringing through the ship like claps of thunder. Elizabeth switched the forward screen to display the rear-facing cameras, and watched in reverse as the secondary hull—now looking strangely lopsided without the saucer—floated free. The Wraith didn't seem to realize that the saucer had separated for a reason; the darts continued to swarm around the secondary hull, probably because it remained so close to their hive. Only a few pursued the saucer, and Chief Campbell picked those off easily.

"Warp core breach in ten, nine, eight..."

Elizabeth found herself holding her breath.

"...two...one..."

Twin sunbursts whited out the screen for a moment. When she was able to raise her eyes, there was nothing left of the massive hive or the secondary hull, just an expanding cloud of gas and debris. "We did it," she sighed, hardly able to believe her eyes.

"Brace for impact!" Zelenka called, and that was when the shockwave hit.

Chapter Text

The turbolifts were out; Jonn had no choice but to crawl up a Jeffries tube to the bridge, clinging to the ladder as the ship shook itself apart. That's what it felt like, anyway; he'd been through plenty of crash landings, but never anything as bad at this. Then again, he'd never crashed anything as big as this, either.

He scrambled onto the bridge and to his feet. "Did we get it?" he asked, staggering into a railing.

"The hive was destroyed," Weir confirmed, clinging to her own chair like she might get pitched out of it at any moment. "We had to execute an emergency saucer separation maneuver."

He hadn't even realized the Constitution class could do that. The forward screen was full of a blue horizon—the water planet, the one with nothing interesting to recommend it except a debris ring and some whales. Water landings were never a good thing. "Give me the helm," he called to Miller, crossing the bridge as quickly as he could. "I can bring us down gently."

"The hull is breached in multiple places," Zelenka warned him. "We will take on water even if we land successfully."

"And we'll break up on impact if we don't," Jonn snapped. Miller slid readily out of position, and Jonn found himself looking at a mess of damaged thrusters and non-responsive instruments. He fought to keep the front rim of the saucer up, at the very least; maybe they could skip off the water, burn off a little momentum...but he was always pretty shitty at skipping stones.

"Hull integrity is at fifty percent," Zelenka called out.

Rodney's voice carried over the alarms, too—had he been following Jonn up the ladder? "And we're losing the number one impulse reactor. If you're bringing us down in one piece, Sheppard, now's the time!"

The saucer hadn't really been designed for atmospheric flight, was the problem—somebody had decided that it would be a nice trick but must not have thought it through. Just keeping it level was hard enough, never mind slowing it down—and when they hit the choppy water, well....

He suddenly heard Weir jump to her feet. "What the hell is that?"

Jonn glanced up from the controls for a minute; then he did a double-take. Something was coming up out of the ocean, something massive, sloughing water off a transparent dome. No—a shield. It looked like a city, like a lost city rising out of the waters, and the irony of it almost made Jonn laugh. Atlantis, meet Atlantis, he thought.

Then he thought, Why not?

"I'm gonna try to land on it," he called over his shoulder.

"What?" Rodney protested. "We have no idea what it is!"

But now that the water was receding, and it was clear that the city was surrounded by piers, or pylons, or something—nice flat surfaces with plenty of room for a hundred-and-fifty meter flying saucer to touch down. "It's that or sink," Jonn said, banking hard in an attempt to cut their speed. The inertial dampeners weren't even trying to keep up anymore; he wondered what would happen if they failed completely before he brought them down.

"Its shield is down," Zelenka said. "The nearest landmass is another three hundred kilometers north-northeast."

Oh, no way Jonn was going to make that distance. He wrenched the saucer around again, and their airspeed was dropping, good—but not enough. He could see the exact spot he wanted to set her down, too, on the flared edge of one of the piers, but if he hit too hard he'd destroy the bottom decks of the saucer and probably damage the pier in the process.

"I'm diverting power from life-support to structural integrity," Rodney announced from engineering. "Either way, we're not going to be needing it soon."

"Much appreciated," Jonn called back. Maybe if he came in at an angle...he reversed thrust furiously, careening around the perimeter of the city, which was shining dry and silver in the sun.

—the silver city in Elizabeth Weir's memory—

"You are coming in too fast!" Zelenka squawked.

"No backseat driving," Jonn barked, and made one more loop around the city.

When they hit the pier, he nearly went flying out of the helm station entirely; for a couple of seconds they were completely out of control as he held on to the console for dear life. The first thing he got a hand on was the reverse thrust, and he did, massively; some of the port-side thrusters weren't responding, though, and it sent the saucer into a slow spin as it skidded across the pier's surface. But they were slowing, at least, and once he got his bearings he could correct the spin and make damn sure that front rim didn't catch on anything and flip them. He looked up just in time to see a structure the size of a skyscraper loom in front of them as they rushed towards it...

...slowed...

...and came to a grinding, lurching, rattling stop.

For several long minutes, nobody moved; Jonn could only gasp for breath and stare, listening to the wailing alarms and the ominous creaking of the superstructure. Very slowly—as if moving too quickly might send the whole ship into collapse—he turned his chair around. "Full stop," he announced.

"Thank you, Mr. Sheppard," Weir said breathlessly.

"You are never driving anywhere ever again," Rodney added, and yelped when Ford reached out and cuffed him on the arm.

Weir had to clear her throat a few times before she was able to ask, "Status report?"

"Ahm..." Zelenka had to push his glasses up his nose again. "We have stopped, obviously. Structural integrity is at seventy percent and holding. Hull integrity is at forty-five percent. Life support is off-line. Impulse engines are off-line. Shields are off-line. Dr. Beckett is reporting that sickbay has had a partial loss of power."

"I don't suppose any of that magically cured the long-range antenna?" Weir asked dryly. Zelenka shook his head. "All right. What can you tell us about where we are?"

"It's old," McKay said immediately from the sensor station. "Like, really, really old. I'm picking up trace levels of background radiation consistent with...huh."

Weir looked over her shoulder. "Care to define 'huh' for me, Mr. McKay?"

"Give me a minute," he said, peering closer.

"Old or not, if it's got a shield it might have a long-range subspace antenna," Jonn said. Which was just a flimsy excuse to explore...whatever this place was, whatever Michael had wanted so badly. "Permission to form an away party, ma'am?"

"Denied," Weir said immediately. Then turned around and said, "But you're welcome to join the away team I'll be forming shortly."

Rodney suddenly stepped away from the sensor station, climbed awkwardly onto the railing above the captain's chair, and reached for a hatch on the ceiling. It opened, letting in light and a whiff of faintly salty air. "Ventilation," he said when he noticed they were gaping at him. "While I realize we've got enough unintentional holes in the hull that it shouldn't be a problem, we should still open the external vents to make sure air is circulating. And since we're on emergency power, we'll have to do it all by hand."

That took a bit of the wind out of everyone's sails. "All right. First things first," Weir said firmly. "We need to form teams and inspect what's left of this ship from top to bottom, make sure it's stable for the foreseeable future. I want a full list of the damages, and be sure to search thoroughly for casualties."

"Then can we go out and play?" Jonn asked.

"Then we can form an exploration party," Weir corrected gently, "it order to figure out just where the hell we are."

-\-\-\-\-\-

Among the many features that demonstrated the saucer section was not meant for a planetary landing was that it did not have a gangway on the lowest deck, or even a ladder; instead, they had to climb out the forward airlock and shimmy down a rope. Teyla went down second, after Elizabeth but before Sheppard; McKay dropped to the deck last, looking as if this system had been designed specifically as an insult to him. "Okay," he said, brushing his hands off on his tunic. "Okay, so like I said, this place is old."

"How old is old?" Sheppard asked, shading his eyes from the sun.

"We're talking in the thousands of years," McKay said. "Maybe tens of thousands."

"That would date it to the time of the Ancestors," Teyla observed, something funny turning over in her stomach. She placed a hand against the nearest wall; it was smooth and cool to the touch, as clean as if it had been newly-scrubbed. Could it possibly have been new when the Ancestors still walked among their people?

"Age alone doesn't explain why Michael would want it so badly, though," Elizabeth observed. She shouldered the backpack she'd packed, and checked her communicator. "Mr. Zelenka, can you hear me?"

"You are coming in quite clearly, Commander."

"Good. We'll be checking in hourly, and the data from our tricorders should be dumping regularly into the computer core. Keep me posted on your status."

"Aye, Commander. Atlantis out."

The four of them set off at an easy pace; McKay kept his nose buried in his tricorder, and Sheppard, when he was not himself staring in wonder at the soaring towers, occasionally reached out with one hand and steered his friend around any impending obstacles. Teyla did her own fair share of staring and gaping; she had never before seen a city like this, a peculiar combination of organic curves and hard, machine-made edges, of large-scale organization masked by detailed ornamentation. It felt like walking through a normal city, though every "building" seemed to rise in one piece out of the same metal floor or deck—could they all be parts of a single structure?

At length, Teyla began to notice something else—patterns of decoration on walls and balustrades, repetitive jagged lines that could almost be writing. Could almost, in fact, be ceremonial script—she turned her pendent over to compare the calligraphy on the back to the figures embossed into a pillar. The shapes were roughly the same, though naturally the calligraphic versions had some additional swoops and serifs. After a while, she thought she could almost sound out some of the words, though they meant nothing to her: Nu ani anquitas, hic qua videum... If only the universal translator worked on the written word...

They hiked for nearly an hour, winding their way through glittering canyons of glass and metal; McKay was determined to stop and try every single door they came to, looking for some way into any of the buildings. "Because as convenient as it would be for us," he pointed out tartly, more than once, "I sincerely doubt that we're going to find a complete communications array sitting on somebody's porch with an instruction manual hanging from the front. "

"We might have to come back with cutting tools," Elizabeth said reluctantly—and Teyla agreed, taking a laser cutter to these delicately decorated buildings would be unfortunate, akin to an assault. Even if they were ten thousand years old, they still had an air of timeless grace and solidity; in comparison, the battle-scarred saucer of the *Atlantis** was an eyesore.

"I can't figure this out," McKay muttered, when they came to a door that appeared to lead into a central spire of some sort—the tallest tower in the city, its base alone several stories (decks?) above the level of the water. "There is clearly a locking mechanism, and there's clearly a release, but I can't find the release switch and when I try to access the OS I get gibberish. What's wrong with this place?"

"Maybe it just doesn't like you, McKay," Sheppard said, leaning against the other side of the door to watch McKay jam his tricoder against the wall.

Elizabeth, meanwhile, was examining a pattern of decorative scrip that traced the edge of a hand-railing. "This isn't any script I'm familiar with," she murmured. "But ten thousand years is a long time for writing to evolve."

"Forms of these letters are used throughout Pegasus in calligraphy and ritual works," Teyla said, showing her the back of her icon. "Many worlds have adopted a secular version for their primary script, as well."

"So given its age, this place could be where the script originated," Elizabeth said, tracing the embossed, angular letters with one finger. "Or at least an example of its earliest forms."

"True," Teyla said. "Though this language is quite unfamiliar to me."

"Ten thousand years is a long time for a language to change," Elizabeth said philosophically.

With the faintest sigh, the door slid open.

Teyla expected to see McKay crowing in victory, but both he and Sheppard jumped back as if alarmed instead; McKay was the one who recovered first. "What did you do?" he demanded, glaring at Sheppard as if insulted.

"What did I do?" Sheppard echoed, brows knit. "I didn't do anything."

"Yes, you did! You touched something!" McKay scanned the other side of the door, and then turned the tricorder on Sheppard. "Maybe it's biochemical? Hey, Emmagen, come poke this."

"Be careful," Elizabeth warned, peering through the doorway into the shadows beyond. "I don't want anyone locked in here by accident."

"Hmm." McKay typed into a padd for several minutes, before seeming to realize that someone was talking to him. "Oh. Oh! Well, if I can figure out what tripped it in the first place, yes, we'll be fine."

"All I did was touch it," Sheppard said defensively; he'd folded his arms across his chest and seemed to be trying to conceal his hands with his elbows.

"Which has no business actually working, since it's clearly not a DNA scanner, retinal imager, or even a fingerprint device," McKay said said. "Touch it again and see what happens."

They spent quite a while experimenting, until McKay seemed to accept that for some reason, Sheppard and only Sheppard could operate the doors. ("I'll figure it out eventually!") Since his touch worked form inside the building as well as from the outisde, Elizabeth finally agreed to venture into the tower. The interior rooms were dim and cool, decorated with the same grace as the outside of the buildings; every so often they passed a desiccated pot plant that disintegrated into dust if they came anywhere near it, but otherwise there was no other sign of habitation: there were stairs, plenty of them, configured to a scale comfortable for most humanoids, but in the echoing silence Teyla had trouble imagining that the pristine halls and galleries had ever been used, much less filled with the daily activities of life.

Sheppard examined the stairs at the same time she did, but he was obviously thinking upon rather different lines. "Hey, McKay, you think you can find us a turbolift?" he called out. "Not real interested in climbing all the way up to the top of this thing on foot."

"Busy," McKay snapped back, ranging as far ahead as he could without losing sight of the rest of them.

"Teyla, besides the writing, does this resemble any other Pegasus culture to you?" Elizabeth asked, training her flashlight on the sculpted railings that lined the upper level of an atrium.

"It does not," she admitted. "Though I am no expert on art or architecture, so my judgment may not be reliable."

"Can you think of anybody in the neighborhood who might have the kind of technology it would take to build an giant underwater city?" Sheppard asked her.

She shook her head again. "If I knew what technology this was, I could perhaps answer that question. But everything in this place is as strange to me as it is to you."

"Hey, guys!" Rodney called from somewhere down a corridor. "I think I found a turbolift!"

The "turbolift" turned out to be more like a transporter; they all four pressed inside, a rather tight fit, and in a flicker of white light they were...apparently exactly where they started. At least there had been no sensation of movement, or even the prolonged flickering of an annual confinement beam. Yet once they climbed out again, they found themselves in a totally different room, with windows showing a view much higher above the cityscape. Rodney insisted on testing the mechanism at least three times more, to "gather more data," before Sheppard dragged him out of the compartment by the collar of his tunic. "You can try all the rides again later," he said.

"But it's impossible!" McKay cried, waving his tricorder in vain. "I mean totally, fundamentally at odds with everything we know about transporter physics! There's no annular confinement beam, no pattern buffer, and by the way the amount of power that just consumed barely registered as a blip on my instruments—"

"We will have ample time to explore, Mr. McKay," Elizabeth said firmly. "After all, it may be days before a rescue ship can get here."

"Do you have to remind me?" McKay muttered, but he reluctantly let them lead him away from the strange transporter and down the next set of corridors.

They had not quite made it to the top of the tower, but nearly—from one window, Teyla could see the city sprawling away below the spire, and in the distance, the scarred saucer of the Atlantis and the crew members crawling over it to shore up the hull. The doors on this level did not seem to require Sheppard's touch to open, and they were able to search systematically. Many of the rooms were empty; others contained such a jumble of unidentifiable objects that they did not dare touch it. (Well, three of them did not; McKay would have gladly stayed all day in any one such room, and probably refused to leave come nightfall. Elizabeth had to insisted vehemently that they would return on a later day with a full scientific survey team, who would be able to do a more thorough—and safe—examination of each unknown object, which only seemed to placate him somewhat.)

Then they came to a windowless room with a low, hexagon-shaped platform in the center, a lectern-like console standing at one edge. McKay immediately approached it with his tricorder, crouching in front first and slowly working his way up to what seemed to be an obvious control panel at the tip. "This is good," he says. "This is...something. This is a giant holographic projector, but it's got one hell of a hardware system backing it up, so if we're phenomenally lucky and the universal translators are playing nicely..." He prodded at the top of the console a couple of times, then sighed. "Sheppard! Hand!"

"Well, since you ask so nicely..." Sheppard placed his palm flat on the surface of the console, which immediately began to glow. a moment later, a hologram appeared, bathed in white light, a little blurred around the edges but still clearly identifiable: humanoid, female, with large eyes and dark hair.

"Welcome, visitors to Atlantis," the hologram said crisply, and then suddenly flickered out; when Teyla looked to Sheppard, she saw that he had pulled his hand away sharply.

"What'd you do that for?" McKay cried, and he tugged on Jonn's arm, attempting without much success to force his hand back into position.

"Atlantis is just a myth," he said out loud, shaking McKay off. He looked to the others, as for confirmation. "I mean, that's what the ship was named after, right? A myth?"

"A myth about a lost city beneath the sea," Teyla said. Which, for the structure they now stood on, would either be quite fitting or deeply ironic...or perhaps something else entirely...

"Myths exist for a reason," Elizabeth said, echoing the gist of Teyla's thoughts, though her expression was suddenly rather strained. She nodded in Sheppard's direction. "Start it again, Lieutenant."

Sheppard pressed his hand down again, and the hologram re-appeared, the same in every detail. "Welcome, visitors to Atlantis. You stand now in the halls of our great city, which we brought here from the shores of Terra in the hope of spreading intelligent life in a region where there appeared to be none. Soon the new life grew, prospered. Here we created beings in forms like our own, such as we had done on Earth and worlds beyond; and as we had there, we taught them civilization, in the hopes that one day the peoples of all our many worlds would grow to exchange knowledge and friendship."

The upper reaches of the room suddenly blossomed into a vast star map, a chart of the whole Milky Way galaxy; in all four quadrants, stars were surrounded by colored halos, and a web of lines bound each cluster to a center point. Teyla recognized the planet they were on at the center of a dense cluster limned in blue, which sprawled across the whole Pegasus quadrant—to Jevek, to Hoff, to Proculus, to Olesia, even (she swallowed hard) to Athos itself; an even larger cluster had Earth dead in the center, radiating orange lines to Vulcan, Bolarus, Indri VIII...into Area 52 and Klingon space. "Holy—" McKay blurted, but for once even he seemed to be at a loss for words.

"In time, a thousand worlds bore the fruit of life in this form," the hologram continued. "Then one day our people stepped foot upon a dark world where a terrible enemy slept. Never before had we encountered beings with powers that rivaled our own. In our over-confidence, we were unprepared and outnumbered. The enemy fed upon defenseless human worlds like a great scourge, until in this region only Atlantis remained." The star map zoomed in on Pegasus, showing pointed red glyphs multiplying through the quadrant like a plague, swarming over stars that Teyla knew: some were home to inhabited worlds, others to worlds not known to be inhabited, or where only blasted ruins hinted of a past civilization. "This city's great shield was powerful enough to withstand their terrible weapons, but here we were besieged for many years. In an effort to save the last of our kind, we submerged our great city into the ocean. Here it was left to slumber, in the hope that we would one day return."

The recording blinked out—the woman, the star map, the symbols—and the room returned to a normal level of illumination. Teyla raised a hand to her icon, the sacred ring and the stellar coordinates written in an ancient script; but all roads led here, to this city of glass and steel, this alien technology, this oh-so-human place..."They are the Ancestors," she said aloud, if only to heard the words outside her own mind. "This place was created by the Ancestors.

"And apparently, so were we," McKay said; he looked intently at his hand, as if he suddenly expected to find a serial number engraved on it. "That's...wow. Impressive."

Teyla shut her eyes, blocking out the others for a moment. Had she not known, from the moment she spoke the name of the Wraith? Had she not been suspecting it all this time? The Ancestors were not immortal gods, but humanoids—perhaps the original humanoids, the pattern on which all other races were more or less fully based. And they had lived, and died, in this very city; there had been no ascension in the face of the Wraith, only loss and retreat. The Wraith had ruled for ten thousand years because they had won.

It was a bitter pill to swallow, and a part of her resented that she should face these facts among aliens, among people who had never honored gods and could not understand her grief. Another part was strangely relieved, for at least they would remain calm even as all Teyla had ever believed seemed to be swept away.

What is true should be embraced, and never feared, her father had once written. Oh, Father, what would you say if you saw this place? If you saw the enteral Ancestors brought down to mortal size?

"So Atlantis has always been a real place," Elizabeth said quietly, breaking Teyla out of her thoughts. "We just haven't been looking on the right planet."

"When was the last time anybody was looking at all?" Sheppard asked sharply.

Elizabeth looked them each in the eye for a moment, then sighed. "Come on. If I'm right, there's something else here we need to find."

"Wait, what?" McKay asked, attention snapping back to the rest of them. "But the hologram—did you see that map? We can't just leave something like this—"

"Not now, McKay," Elizabeth said quietly. "We need to keep moving."

Teyla was all too relieved to drag herself out of the hologram room. "How do you know what we're looking for, exactly?" Sheppard asked as they headed for the stairs.

Elizabeth gave him a peculiar look. "Let's say a little bird told me."

Sheppard flinched. "Okay. Yeah. Revenge for Delta Vega, I get you."

"Sheppard, you have no idea."

They searched the next two levels, always ascending for no reason Teyla could see; McKay seemed badly distressed by Elizabeth's desire to push on quickly past the treasure troves of store rooms and consoles. But then they came out at the top of a staircase, down a corridor, and into an open, airy chamber flooded with sunlight—the bulbous peak of the tower, it seemed. There was a balcony overlooking an open space below, and Elizabeth walked straight up to it, prompting Teyla and the others to fan out around her.

The sight below took Teyla's breath away for the second time in an hour.

A great metal ring was set into the floor below them, a shining ring of metal and glass etched around the rim with sacred signs. "How many of these things are there?" Sheppard blurted, looking alarmed.

"Huh," McKay said, almost at the same time. "Giant metal space donut."

But Teyla had to swallow hard against a tide of emotions. "The Ring of the Ancestors." She held up her icon again, seeing the same signs etched into the wood as were installed into the metal. They were nearly identical in all details; only the scale was wrong.

Sheppard nearly did a double-take at her. "Wait, you know about these things?"

"It is said that this was how the Ancestors used to visit their people and walk among them," she explained quietly. "It is said they were also the path to Ascension. But all are lost now, or..." she glanced at Elizabeth, suddenly suspicious. "Or presumed lost, among the peopls of Pegasus."

"They're called stargates," Elizabeth said with quiet authority. "And we've found several hundred of them in the Federation and Area 52 alone. This is the first evidence of a separate network in another quadrant, though."

Area 52 caught Teyla's attention, and she had a sudden and inappropriate urge to laugh. Even if they had never come here, had never brought the *Atlantis** to Atlantis, she would still have had to face the truth eventually; it was the sort of coincidence that others would call the light of the Ancestors. The irony of it was terrible.

Sheppard leaned out over the rail so he could look Elizabeth in the eye. "And when you say we, you mean—who, exactly?"

"The original Earth gate was found in Egypt in the twentieth century," Elizabeth said, turning her back on the gate to face them all. "For hundreds of years it was passed around, changing hands about once a generation, and nobody could ever make heads or tails of it. Five years ago, Starfleet was finally able to activate it, and eventually make a stable connection to the planet Abydos."

"Where Starbase Seventeen orbits," Teyla said, understanding dawning slowly.

Elizabeth nodded. "Since then, the Earth gate has been kept, for the most part, on Clarke Station, Saturn. Starfleet has been sending specially-designated teams through it to explore and chart the network. A task force led by the Cheyenne has been in charge of securing gates on populated worlds in the meantime."

"And they've been keeping it secret for all this time?" Sheppard asked. "Why?"

Elizabeth sighed. "Because the gate network is proof that the sentient races of this galaxy—many of them, anyway—have a common origin. For some people, that's hard enough to swallow. The idea that we were engineered, that we are created things, even if the creator was benevolent..."

"Benevolent, but mortal," Teyla said. "As imperfect as we are." But still the creators, still real; the massy reality of the stargate duplicated in wood seemed to confirm it. If one such intricate detail could be passed down intact from generation to generation, all the way down from this shining city, what else had been remembered? All the tales could be and all the tales could be false, all the tales could be both at the same time...

Elizabeth nodded gravely, though. "There's no telling how the general public might react to that kind of reveletion. So it's been kept quiet, for the most part, except for the occasional very controlled public releatse of information for scientific or security purposes."

"What, 'cause we can't put on our big boy pants and deal with it?" McKay asked with a huff.

Fortunately for him, Sheppard almost immediately jabbed him in the side with an elbow, satisfying by proxy Teyla's sudden urge to strike him. "Metaphysics aside, we did have a reason to come all the way out here," Sheppard said loudly. "Antenna?"

"Right, right...." There was a room over the gate area, obviously a control center, and McKay started poking around there. "Let me just see if I can figure out what everything is..."

He and Elizabeth vanished into the control room; that left Teyla alone with Sheppard. To her surprise, he leaned close and asked in an undertone, "You okay?" once the others were out of earshot.

She swallowed, and tried not to think about whether she would ever be okay again. "It is...a great deal to comprehend at once," was her lame reply, after a moment: too much to even put into words, to see her Ancestors live and die all at once, practically before her eyes. To be face with such complex questions about what was and was not real.

"Yeah, no kidding," Sheppard said. "Though I'm guessing it's a bigger deal for you than us."

She was not sure she was ready for sympathy at this moment, not even sympathy freely offered; she wasn't even sure if sympathy was something she needed. "It is the truth," she said simply, hoping to end the conversation quickly. "And that has its own value."

"If you're sure," he said skeptically, and he did not seem swayed by the small smile she managed to force for him.

A subtle vibration thrilled through the floor—something deep, on the border between feeling and sound. Elizabeth was punching keys on a console, and the stargate had come to life, blue-green lights chasing each other around the circumference. Sheppard bit his lip as he watched, and he jumped somewhat less so than Teyla when a cloud of glittering energy burst from the eye of the gate and then receded. If these rings could truly speak to one another across stars, then perhaps--

"Clarke Station, this is Commander Elizabeth Weir of the USS Atlantis," Elizabeth said crisply into her communicator. "Authorization Six-Five-Zero-Mu-Zero-Beta."

After a moment, familiar voice replied over the open channel. "Commander Weir, this is Admiral Hammond. What in God's name are you doing dialing this address?"

"It's a long story sir," she said crisply, with a glance at the rest of them. "However, I can report that the ship responsible for the attack on Vulcan has been destroyed with all hands."

"And where are you now, Atlantis?" Hammond asked.

At Teyla's side, Sheppard swallowed a faint snicker. A small, enigmatic smile played at Weir's lips. Even Teyla could appreciate the irony. "Funny you should ask, sir..."

Chapter Text

Part IV: time and fate

Rodney's nerves gave out right after he punched the buzzer, and he had forty-five seconds to try to devise a plausible evacuation route before the door opened. He wasn't in uniform, he'd changed into civvies for the flight to Vancouver, and the apartment was a walk-up on a crowded street. He could totally just run for it and nobody would be able to pick him out from a crowd—

The door opened. Jeannie's belly was already stretching the band of her skirt, and she stared at Rodney like he was a ghost, one hand flying up to cover her mouth. For a brief moment, Rodney's mind was perfectly blank. "Here," he blurted, shoving the bouquet of daisies in her face. "These are...yours. I'm just gonna—"

"Meredith!" she finally squeaked, and the next thing he knew she'd thrown her arms around his neck and was sobbing uncontrollably into his shoulder. He had absolutely no idea how to interpret this. Was this a pregnancy thing? He'd heard this kind of thing was a pregnancy thing...oh, god, people were staring at them, detouring around the front stoop and the hysterical woman attached to his neck. He'd thought the worst she could do was slam the door on him. What did he do?

He ultimately concluded, "Um," and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder with the bouquet. Some petals broke off and landed in her hair. "Okay. This is...okay?"

"Hate you so much," Jeannie managed to say—a miracle, considering how hard she was crying. Crying was definitely harder to handle than screaming.

"Yeah, well," Rodney muttered, and his first impulse was to shoot back, same to you. But the whole point of coming up here was to try having a conversation at less than a hundred and twenty decibels for once. "Um. I also brought you chocolate?"

"You asshole," she added emphatically.

He winced. "Did you not want chocolate? I can get you something else. I can—well, no, you're not supposed to have—wait, can you have synthehol while pregnant? I didn't exactly research—"

She pulled away and covered his mouth with one hand; it smelled like she'd been chopping garlic, fixing dinner in a perfect little bubble of domestic bliss while he tried to convince his flight attendant to fork over the shuttle's maintanence records (just out of curiosty). "Mer," she said, still sniffling, "I thought you were dead. I thought you got blown up on Vulcan and Mom just wasn't telling me."

"Oh," Rodney blinked. Well, if he'd known that— "Um. I'm not, obviously. I mean I didn't. Get blown up. I mean...hi."

"Hi." She took the flowers out of his hand and got an iron grip on his wrist. "Upstairs. Now. Kaleb should be back from class any time and I'm making moussaka for dinner." And that sounded like the most awful way to spend an afternoon in Rodney's life—eggplant and liberal arts specialists—but, well, there was a reason he'd come here. He'd survived Wraith, he could survive his sister's loser boyfriend. Sighing, he let her pull him up the stairs.

-\-\-\-\-\-

It was still winter in the capital, only the faint first signs of spring coloring Charin's garden with hints of green. Teyla clutched a cup of tea in both hands and watched the birds squabbling for bread crusts in the rubbish bins. Beyond the compound were houses and shops and schools and theaters and cars and people, a whole world full of people who were safe and happy and oblivious to what they had narrowly avoided.

Michael would have come to Athos, of that she felt quite certain. He had not come, and though the Council had elected to be discreet about the details in public, they all knew how close the miss had been. There were rumors, of course, of white-haired monsters, of Wraith returned to destroy the unbelievers, and the more offensive of the faithful pointed to Vulcan as the worst of the apostates; Teyla had written a rather vicious editorial in response, but of course, she had been sworn not to reveal that which she wanted to say the most.

Then again—how to tell people that the rumors were true? How to tell them that the gods were real, but centuries dead? That demons still sailed the sky, but could be slain by mortal hands?

Charin came to stand next to her, just standing quietly for a few minutes. "You have been quiet since you returned," she said, finally, and sipped from her own cup of tea.

"I have much on my mind," Teyla said lamely.

"You have seen terrible things," Charin said, half-questioning.

"I have." And wonderful things, beautiful things—the city of Atlantis itself, the wormhole that had taken them to Clarke Station in the blink of an eye—and she could not help it that they filled her with more questions than answers. Her attempts at meditation had been spoiled by an unfamiliar restlessness, a desire to understand: why the Ancestors had seeded the galaxy with thinking life, why they had allowed themselves to be revered as gods, why they had fled and where they had fled to. Dr. Jackson had briefed them extensively, and spoken of Ascension in terms both vague and vaguely wistful, but until the city of Atlantis was opened and explored, they would never know for sure—and Teyla found she had begun to crave that certainty, now that it seemed nothing could be taken for granted.

Charin suddenly embraced her, wrapping her free arm tight around Teyla's shoulders. "My poor child. I knew this Starfleet would bring you trouble."

"It has brought me nothing I did not seek myself," Teyla said wearily.

"Of course not," Charin sighed. "For you are Teyla Emmagen, and none stands against you, and whatever you will shall be true."

Teyla pulled away from the hug, and set her teacup down. "You speak as if I am still a willful child," she said. "Surely I am not as bad as all that?"

"Not anymore, no," Charin said, and her faced softened. "I am sorry, Teyla. You are not a child, and I should not speak to you as one. But I will not pretend I am not heartsick to see you so sad when you will not tell me of the cause."

"There are things I cannot tell you," Teyla said. "And...there are things I would not burden you with."

"Now who is the child?" Charin asked wryly. "I have seen many things in my time, Teyla. I may not be a brave space explorer, but nor will I break if you tell me what troubles you."

I fear you would, though, if I told you this. "I will be fine, Charin." She forced a smile, and thought ironically of Michael's long vendetta, his quest to avenge wrongs that were never committed. "Time itself is the greatest healer, is it not?"

"It is also said that pain shared is pain halved," Charin shot back. "Do not get into a battle of aphorisms with me, my dear, you will not win."

That drew a genuine laugh out of Teyla, and on impulse she hugged Charin close. "Simply being home with you helps me greatly," she said, because it was true—after so long confined to Earth, it was good to be back home, among familiar faces and customs. The rooms of her childhood, which had been a haven after her parents' deaths; the smells of tea and incense that spoke of her guardian and her home.

There was certainty in this, if nothing else: in home and family and the traditions of her people. And perhaps by the time she finally found her answers, her people would be ready to hear them.

"I pray to the Ancestors that it will help enough," Charin said, and Teyla's heart twisted, but she did not yet pull away from the embrace.

-\-\-\-\-\-

The official commencement ceremony for the Starfleet Academy class of 2258 took place a month later than planned, under cloudy skies; a misty drizzle had coated the grass of the parade grounds with dampness, but a hasty portable shield kept it from drenching the cadets and guests during the ceremony.

Extra ranks of chairs had been added at the rear of the field for the third-class cadets receiving early commissions. Still, almost two-thirds of the seats stood empty but for a folded officer's duty tunic, the bright colors burning against the murky sky: a graphic rendering of the final cost of the Battle of Vulcan. Almost three thousand dead or wounded from the seven destroyed ships, including over a hundred killed aboard the Atlantis, though Jonn wasn't sure of that ship's official fate yet—with half of it orbiting Lantea in pieces the size of marbles, he wasn't exactly optimistic.

The stadium was nearly silent as Nixon ascended to the podium; it went completely silent as he looked out over the sparsely filled seats. Jonn rose to attention with the rest of the graduates, empty chairs on every side of him. "Cadets," Nixon said gravely, staring out at a sea of empty seats. "Today we solemnize for the ninety-seventh time the graduation and commissioning of a new class of Starfleet officers. We do so in the absence of many of our colleagues who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of Vulcan. They stand remembered."

And for once, the old windbag chose to leave it at that.

Jonn spent most of the ceremony trying to spot people he knew without being obvious about it, tuning out most of the speeches. Rodney, having finally defended his thesis, had officially been transferred into the science division; he'd practically lived in the blue dress jacket for the past few days, and he had an aisle seat, so Jonn had a clear view of him fidgeting with the braids on his cuffs. Emmagen in theory was somewhere in front of him, with the operations-division officers, but she was so short he couldn't pick her out from the crowd. Zelenka and Ford were both seated somewhere behind him, and he couldn't gracefully turn around to search for them. Weir was sitting on the podium with the rest of the faculty, but for some reason she wasn't in uniform; she sat in the back, with a black armband, and did a passable job of looking attentive.

We few, we happy few. The survivors, the victors. Even if they never saw each other again after today, Jonn would probably remember them until the day he died. His crew, at least for one day.

One by one, Nixon announced the names of the cadets—all of them, the living and the dead—along with their degrees or awards. Normally this was where he'd also announce their future assignments, but that had suddenly become problematic—after so much death and destruction, there was a sudden, pressing need to rewrite a whole lot of personnel files. Jonn still didn't know where he was going to end up, but he at least had hope it wasn't going to be a ritual burial back on Mars, if only because they'd hastily awarded him the highest security clearance in the Federation. Bit of a waste for a part-time pilot.

When his name was called, he ascended to the podium and stood face-to-face with Nixon. For some reason the first thing he thought was that the admiral looked shorter than usual, and definitely older; perhaps he'd used up his excess hoard of words writing letters to the families of the fallen. "Raise your right hand and repeat after me," Nixon said mechanically, mirroring the pose himself for the umpteenth time.

And Jonn repeated: "I, Jonn Sheppard, do solemnly swear to support and defend the United Federation of Planets and its member words against all threats, internal and external; to bear true faith and allegiance to the Federation and the principles of its Charter and Constitution; and to seek out new life and new civilizations in a spirit of peace, friendship and discovery. I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office which I am about to enter."

"Congratulations," Nixon said in an undertone, shaking Jonn's hand with a little too much force. "Never thought this day would come, myself."

"Sorry to disappoint you, sir," Jonn said, straight-faced, and Nixon actually huffed out a small noise that could almost be taken as a laugh.

-\-\-\-\-\-

There were formal receptions and informal parties scheduled for the rest of the day, but Jonn slipped back his dorm to change out of his dress uniform first—whoever had designed it sure hadn't had comfort in mind. He and Rodney were both already mostly packed up, even if they didn't actually have their orders yet: Rodney's possessions had expanded to include three boat-like suitcases and a footlocker, but somehow or another Jonn's stuff still fit in the same battered jump bag he'd brought with him from Uchronia Planitia. Funny how little some things changed.

Almost as an afterthought, he switched on the padd on his desk and checked his messages while stripping off his heavy tunic and wrestling it back into its bag. There was one that made him pause, from his half-brother of all people, and he stared at it for a long time before passing it by unread; he was already in a weird mood from the ceremony and he had a hunch that anything Dave could say would only make it worse. Besides, there was another message from Starfleet Command, and that was surely more immediately relevant. He opened it to skim while he was unlacing his boots.

Effective immediately...rank of lieutenant commander...

He froze with the laces still tangled in his fingers.

...for valorous action in the face of extreme danger, conduct above and beyond the call of duty... He grabbed the padd off his desk and scrolled back to the top of the message. A goddamn promotion, and his pick of assignments...recommendation of Capt. Elizabeth Weir (ret.)... What the hell?

He tried calling Rodney first, mostly for a place to vent his incredulity (and to find out just what the hell he put in those forged orders); when that didn't go through, he hunted down Emmagen's's contact information, Hammond's, and even Weir's own. No dice. Of course, he did have access to his own personnel file, so he opened that up to see what kind of recommendation Weir could possibly have written him.

As acting commander of the Federation starship USS Atlantis, I sincerely commend Lt. Jonn Sheppard for his actions during the Battle of Vulcan (SD 2258.145) and the Battle of Lantea (SD 2258.147). Lt. Sheppard demonstrated exceptional courage under fire on both occasions while leading direct action against the enemy at tremendous personal risk, and on both occassions he succeeded in achieve his objective in the face of considerable resistance. His judgment, leadship and personal integrity contributed greatly to the success of the Atlantis' mission, and his tactical planning was crucial to the successful outcome of the Battle of Lantea. I can waithout reservation recommend Lt. Sheppard to the posting of his choosing, and I predict he will have a long and successful career in Starfleet.

He read the whole thing twice before he truly believed what he was seeing. You'll never rise about the rank you're commissioned to, Weir had told him, back on the Atlantis, and here he'd just been offered what was probably one of the fastest damn promotions in Starfleet history. And yeah, it probably had a lot to do with how many line officers had died at Vulcan, too, and the borrowed glory from the destruction of the hive ship, and maybe a little bit of whatever voodoo Admiral Hammond was capable of doing, and this little nudge from Weir—but still. Lieutenant Commander. You didn't get that high up the promotion lists without a reason.

Jonn realized that, for the first time all day, he was genuinely smiling.

-\-\-\-\-\-

Elizabeth had excused herself from the commencement reception as soon as was polite—not just because she had packing to do, either. Even though the details of the battle over Lantea were still mostly classified, there was no way they could conceal the fact that the Atlantis had destroyed Michael's hive, and there was a limit on how long she could smile graciously and wrangle with the effusive praise and indirect questions from those lower in the security-clearance ecosystem. In some ways it was even worse dealing with the handful of people who knew the full details—she'd had her fill of Senator Kinsey staring at her from across the room with lowered brows and a scowling mouth.

Besides, none of it was going to be her business much longer. She had submitted her resignation the same day she'd been promoted, explaining to Command that her priorities had shifted. The relief efforts on Vulcan would be extensive and ongoing for months, if not years to come; more than half the evacuees were still living on ships in orbit because there weren't adequate safe accommodations on the surface. The Federation needed people to organize and administer the aid process, people who could work with the Vulcan authorities and navigate the culture. And Elizabeth—well, she needed to think, and she might as well be doing something constructive in the meantime. If Kinsey's people wanted to sic a watchdog on Stargate Command, they had plenty of other options.

At that particular moment her mind was focused, for the most part, on the practicalities of packing—she couldn't really justify shipping some of the books, but perhaps Teyla would like to keep a few of them—and so she almost walked right past the person standing outside her apartment building, staring up at the facade. In fact, she probably would've barreled right past, if she hadn't registered the Vulcan outer robe, hood raised against the drizzle. Elizabeth slowed down, wondering—was this person looking for her? A refugee, maybe, or embassy staff? Or maybe nothing to do with her at all... "Can I help you?" she asked, stopping.

The woman in the robe turned around, showing a smile that dimpled the corners of her mouth. "I was actually going to ask you the same question."

For one peculiar minute, Elizabeth wondered why this woman reminded her so much of someone she knew—her grandmother, maybe, or that great-aunt from the Moon she only ever met at funerals. But not exactly, because there was something about the shape of her chin, something about the faded green eyes—

And then recognition hit, and all the air seemed to leave her lungs at once. Time travel, she remembered—they're argued about it—but surely it couldn't actually be—

"I'm sure Rodney will be happy to explain all the details for you," the woman...herself...said wryly. "Whether you want him to or not is a different matter entirely, of course."

Seeing her own face at so many decades' remove was...interesting. Elizabeth tried not to stare, and ended up averting her eyes entirely for a moment. "So that explains a few things," she said inanely.

"I thought it might," the other Elizabeth said. "I hope you don't blame Jonn for keeping it a secret, but there were more important matters at hand."

"Of course I don't blame him." She thought she'd done right by Sheppard, in the end, a recommendation to cancel out a censure; there wasn't much more she could do, on her way out the door, but she hoped he understood the intention of the gesture. She'd done her best to give him a second chance, a level playing field, but what happened next was mostly up to him.

The old woman looked at her—had to look slightly up, actually, though her posture was still upright—and the smile slipped off her face. "Now. What's this about you resigning your commission?

Elizabeth heard her mother's voice echoed through her own in those words; it was a surreal effect. "I'm needed on Vulcan," she said, half-defensively. "The aid effort is so massive—"

"You're needed in more than one place," her other self said chidingly. "Or did you think Starfleet just handed out captain's stripes like party favors?"

"Are you telling me I'm not supposed to leave the fleet?" Elizabeth asked warily. She'd never been particularly interested in the mechanics and ethics of time travel, much less the ontological implications, and hadn't Rodney said something about a parallel universe...?

"I'm telling you that I know us," she answered flatly. "And so do you. Wasting your talents on the relief efforts isn't going to make the survivor's guilt go away. Hiding from Starfleet isn't going to change the fact that you've commanded a ship in combat and you liked it. And you can't keep one foot on Vulcan forever, no matter how much you might want to."

Elizabeth averted her eyes again, one hand clutching the handle of her umbrella while the other one curled into a fist at her side. She'd had the same conversation in her own head, again and again, and wasn't this just another version of that? Talking to herself? But not really, because this Elizabeth was so much older, so much different... "Does this advice come from personal experience?" she asked quietly.

The older Elizabeth smiled gently. "In a way. I bent the laws of time, space and Starfleet to get back to that captain's chair sometimes, and it very rarely had anything to do with logic."

"Atlantis is supposed to be scuttled," Elizabeth said quietly. "There's no chair to sit in."

That provoked another chuckle. "Don't tell Jonn that." When Elizabeth only blinked at her, the older woman's smile slipped, and she sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm getting off topic. My point is—starships can be rebuilt. And the chair is a metaphor anyway. All that matters is...is that you are in a place that you need just as much as it needs you. And that you don't ever apologize for it. We do not make a good martyr, in any timeline."

"And you?" Elizabeth asked—knowing each other well went both ways, it seemed. "What is it that you need?"

The old woman laughed a bit. "I, as a matter of fact, am taking up a position in the Vulcan relief project." When Elizabeth just raised an eyebrow at her, she elaborated, "It's too tempting to hang around Starfleet—too many things I might let slip. Too many reminders...and anyway, I already had all my adventures." The smile finally touched her eyes. "And you and I together get the unique distinction of being in two places at once."

Elizabeth found a smile tugging at her own mouth, to her surprise. "I suppose I can keep you posted," she said, unsure if she had really even made a decision yet. "If you do me the same favor."

But her older self just shook her head. "No. Not that I don't appreciate the sentiment, but—it's your life now, Elizabeth. Not even I can tell you what to do with it."

Too tempting, of course. Elizabeth nodded. "All right," she said, as if saying could make it so, as if announcing it with enough authority would force her thoughts to obey. "All right. Thank you...Elizabeth."

"Strange, isn't it?" she replied with good humor. "With any luck we'll get used to it in the end."

Elizabeth nodded, and for the first time in a long time, raised her hand in the old, familiar farewell. "Live long and prosper, Ms. Weir."

She replied with one raised eyebrow. "Peace and long life, Captain." Then she adjusted her hood, and disappeared back into the rain.

-\-\-\-\-\-

She'd been told to report to the embarkation room, except there technically was no embarkation room on any of the maps of Clarke Station—all signs lead to the gate room, and until she actually found it Elizabeth wasn't entirely certain they were the same thing. It said something about the program here, that they already had their own nomenclature, their own subculture of quirks—starships developed that, over time, after a five-year deployment or two, but this was Earth's own backyard, for all they spent their time far away from it. She knew people within the Federation Council who considered it a problem; she wondered if Starfleet Command did.

She wondered if it was going to be a problem for her, when she was so much further away.

She dodged out of the way of an antigrav loaded with odd-sized boxes, half-turned to let a row of petty officers past—her backpack was loaded down with personal items, the precious few they'd be allowed to bring in this first rushed jump, and who knew when they'd next be able to get a starship out to Lantea? That half-turn became a full turn when someone else elbowed past in a huff—Doctor Jackson, she suspected, as he'd been in a towering snit for several days—and she found herself backing awkwardly into the gate room, praying she wouldn't trip ignominiously over something in her way.

A familiar voice boomed out over the tumult. "Captain on the deck!"

She spun around, and found herself facing row after row of salutes, all urgency very briefly put on pause. In the center of the room, a ramp lead down from the quiescent gate; at the foot of the ramp, Jonn Sheppard stood at crisp attention, and appeared to have just elbowed Rodney McKay into the same; Teyla Emmagen stood on his other side. "At ease," Elizabeth called, and just like that the room flew back into motion, except for the trio in front of the gate.

She made her way up to the ramp, where Sheppard, at least, was still only at parade rest. She never thought she'd see the day. "A pleasure to see you, Commander, Lieutenants," she said, nodding at each of them in turn.

"Ma'am," Sheppard said, straight-faced. "Glad to see you made it on time."

"Glad to see you made it here at all," she confessed. "I know this wasn't exactly the only assignment any of you were offered."

"Are you kidding?" McKay blurted with a roll of his eyes. "Where else are we gonna go?"

Teyla shot him am exasperated look. "It was the assignment that offered the greatest potential reward," she said evenly.

He huffed back at her. "This is the only assignment that was worth anything to me. Why would I want to be sitting around here proving other people's equations when there's all that—" He flapped one hand in the direction of the gate— "out there?"

"I suppose that's one way to look at it," Elizabeth said, before Teyla could shoot back a reply.

"Besides," Sheppard said with a small, enigmatic smile, "after all that trouble we went to, it kinda seemed appropriate. Almost like...fate."

Elizabeth wondered suddenly, intensely, what it was her other self had said to Jonn, what he might be hiding from her. McKay, on the other hand, just made a rude noise. "Please. There is no such thing as fate in a quantum-deterministic universe. Besides the part where I already explained about the many-worlds hypothesis—"

"Then let it not be fate," Teyla said loudly; McKay broke off his rant with a wounded look in her direction. "Let it instead be an auspicious beginning—that together, we slew monsters."

"Well, when you put it that way..." McKay muttered, averting his eyes.

Elizabeth looked at these people, her people, and realized it didn't really matter what secrets the older version of her was keeping; whatever had happened in that other future would stay there. It was as terrifying as it was liberating. "'We are not now that strength which in old days moved heaven and earth, but that which we are, we are,'" she quoted, even though it wasn't quite right, didn't quite fit—it was close enough for now.

McKay and Teyla looked a little confused, but Sheppard nodded, emphatically. "Couldn't have said it better myself."

"Let me know when we're ready to dial, Commander," she told him, letting a smile slip out—some combination of nerves and anticipation and joy. "I'll be in the control room." Elizabeth took one last chance to survey these people—her people, what a novel idea—before she fled up the steps, to wait for the moment when everything really began.