Evil Author Day: Burning It All Down

 

Title: Burning It All Down
Author: Ladyholder
Series: Agent Very Far Afloat
Fandom: NCIS, SGA, SG1, Numbers
Warnings: Canon Typical
Wordcount: 5020
Author’s Notes: This was initially part of the Agent Very Far Afloat ‘verse, but I decided it was too damn dark for it, and I didn’t want to go there. Given that; have a very dark turn that I didn’t go any further down.

 

“Atlantis, this is the SGC. How’s our transmission coming through?”

Elizabeth nodded at Chuck. The hum of an open carrier wave hit her earpiece, and she smiled at the image on her tablet screen. “Loud and clear, General O’Neil.”

“Great, Midway is open for business then!” O’Neill said cheerfully. “You’ve got the IDC from us?”

“You are clear to send anything through,” Elizabeth promised. She kept an eagle eye on the area in front of the gate and nodded as the first person stepped through. “Your first person is through, and all is good.”

“Thank you,” O’Neill said somberly. The abrupt mood change grabbed her attention. She had to wonder what was going on to cause such a large mood swing. “We’ll be sending people and goods through along with information over the next few days.”

“How many?” Elizabeth asked warily. She pulled her tablet out and started an email for Cooper. If they were going to get slammed with new people, they would need to house them, and that was Cooper’s job. “And how much in the way of supplies?”

“A lot of both,” O’Neill said frankly. The general shifted slightly as he took in her location. “Can you put me on a private line and go to your office?”

Elizabeth pressed her lips together and nodded before waving at Chuck. It took only moments to get everything arranged, and she propped her tablet against her laptop as Chuck transferred the call. “Okay, Jack. We’re as private as I can manage. What’s going on?”

“Our war with the remnants of the Goa’uld is ramping up. And we’ve got a new enemy called the Ori. From what we’ve been able to determine, they are actual Ancients who ascended, and instead of taking a hands-off approach, they require actual worship from the population of their galaxy. And they want the Milky Way to worship them, too. And they are willing to force it by sword, blackmail, death, and destruction. I’m getting our vulnerable out, resupplying you with the troops you need and any supplies I can think of.”

Shit. “Am I going to be getting any briefings on this?” Elizabeth demanded. If Atlantis was going to be the fallback point, she needed to make sure her people were ready. Working in an information vacuum would suck.

“Sam should have sent the data packet through with the first group. I made sure that we did it in hard copy and an electronic version. That will give you the option to upload it to everyone who needs it on the city,” O’Neill said. He looked tired, Elizabeth decided. And distracted. “Brief your people quickly, Liz. O’Neill out.”

Elizabeth sat back and fumed. Damn the man for cutting her off before she could grill him! When a knock came on the glass wall of her office, she tried to smooth out her expression before she unlocked the door. It wouldn’t do for her to be visually disturbed by anything if she could help it. “Come in, Captain.”

“Ma’am,” the captain said. He handed her a small packet. “With compliments from Colonel Carter and General O’Neill.”

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said. She kept her face neutral with an effort. Flexing her fingers on the packet, she could feel the crinkle of paper and the lumps of several small USB drives. “I suggest you get back to whatever you should be doing now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the captain agreed. He nodded his head to her once and left her alone with what felt like a small bomb.

Drawing in a deep breath, Elizabeth walked back to her desk and carefully pressed the button that locked her door. Another button changed the polarity of her windows, and they dimmed, giving her the privacy she needed. “Okay, Jack. Let’s see what’s coming,” Elizabeth muttered as she pulled out the paper file he’d sent her.

 

“Elizabeth,” John called as he walked into the main conference room. He was the last of the senior staff to arrive, and he stared at her with a raised eyebrow as he sat down.

“Don’t even try to give me that, John,” Elizabeth warned. “O’Neill dropped some news on me, and it’s not good.”

“Wonderful,” John said with a sigh. When Cooper dropped a cup of coffee off for him, he didn’t even bother to try to protest. He’d finally figured out that she was using her need to take care of everyone around her to soothe her anxiety. He wasn’t going to protest against her care as long as she didn’t spiral out of control. And he honestly needed the coffee. “Thank you, Warrant.”

“We got a lot more of the supply order than I thought we would,” Cooper offered as she moved down to her chair. “Some of it wasn’t supposed to come through for several months.”

“That tracks,” Elizabeth said. She scanned the table and nodded. “John, please lock the conference room down so no one can get in, and no one can listen to us.”

“Right,” John said. He sat quietly for a moment and mentally prodded Atlantis to lock the room down under the highest level of security he could manage. He got a flavor of agreement as he heard the locks engage. “Done.”

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said. She took a deep breath and started passing each of the senior staff a USB drive. “On these, you will find a breakdown of exactly what is happening on Earth, General O’Neill’s plan to deal with it, what people and supplies are expected to be sent through for our departments, and the current timeline for the various arrivals.”

“How bad are we looking at here?” Rodney asked as he plugged the USB drive into his laptop.

“Bad,” Elizabeth said frankly. “O’Neill’s evacuating everyone he considers vulnerable and sending them here.”

It didn’t surprise him that everyone at the table only nodded at that news. The SGC had a lot of secrets, and John expected he was going to be surprised and possibly shocked by a number of them as they came through the gate.

“Ma’am, did General O’Neill include a list of whom he is planning on sending through?” Cooper asked as she reviewed her copy of the briefing documents.

“He did,” Elizabeth assured. “So far, my review says that he’s not sending any of the political targets through the gate. We’re getting a lot more military and scientists. Your departments will be at least doubled, Chief.”

“Right. There’s no way to send politicians and the like through the gate right now and not have it be noticed immediately,” Rodney muttered as he moved through the data on his laptop. “If he wants to keep this quiet, politicians can’t drop out of sight.”

John hummed softly in agreement as he reviewed his own packet. Scanning the information showed he was going to be getting the better part of a battalion in combat troops, along with enough support troops that he was deeply glad Cooper had gone for Warrant. If she hadn’t, they really would have needed to get a supply officer assigned to Atlantis. As it was, he was going to need to reconfigure his office corps and hammer out a detailed chain of command for all departments.

“Do we have enough room for our expected population?” Elizabeth asked as she folded her hands on the table.

Cooper shook her head, and John pressed his lips together in irritation. It wasn’t Cooper’s fault that they were being caught unprepared. “Is it that we don’t have the actual living quarters or the furnishings? Because I know we explored several of the residential towers our first year,” he reminded everyone. “And there were a number of residences that I saw that looked like they could easily be lived in.”

“We have four towers, sir, that are on the list to be opened for habitation,” Cooper admitted. She looked uncomfortable, and John tried to remember if she’d sent him any reports on this. “But we’ve got several issues that are causing a bottleneck on that front. First and foremost is power.”

“Which is where my departments come in,” Rodney cut in. He was leaning back in his chair, staring at Cooper before flicking a glance at John. “We can run basic services with a generator or two, but to get the most out of the towers, we’re going to need to find another full ZPM or three. What we have is taxed with our current population, and the systems Atlantis uses as part of her day-to-day upkeep. Basic services are water, lights, and the Ancient version of HVAC. The transporters would be utterly offline.”

“And we don’t have a spare ZPM,” John said with a sigh. Damn the Dagan’s for hiding the fucking ZPM they’d found. Even if they went looking for it and found it, taking it would point the finger right at the expedition, and they didn’t need that at all. And Earth didn’t have another that they could send them.

“No, we don’t,” Rodney agreed. He tapped a finger against his laptop and then shrugged. “We’ll have to make due as best we can on the power front with the generators.”

“Right,” John said with a nod. He turned back to Cooper and cocked an eyebrow at her. “What else do we need?”

“Household goods. Toilet paper. Computers. Everything,” Cooper said. She waved her hands and frowned, staring into space. “I’ve got a lot of it, but if we don’t get anything else in, it will completely wipe out my reserves. I can supplement any furniture with items we can commission from the various artisans in this galaxy, but that will take time. And with the limits on power, I would only want to fix up the first three or four floors of the towers, so that’s a limit as well. Everyone can deal with the Ancient version of a NYC walkup.”

“I’m sure General O’Neill is aware of our supply situation out here,” Elizabeth cut in. “Remember, we got more supplies with this batch of people, and I expect we’ll get more with each subsequent group. Also, the general has never struck me as someone who doesn’t think things through.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cooper said. She sat back, and John made a note on his calendar to meet with her to discuss what she was seeing. As much as he might want to leave the whole thing to Lorne, she was one of his officers, and he needed to know. Thinking things over briefly, he sighed. The whole of the senior staff for the military arm of the expedition needed to get together to discuss the changes that were happening. Officers and enlisted.

“Tony, you’ve been very quiet,” Elizabeth said, and John turned to see what their NCIS agent had to contribute.

“I’ve been reading the briefing that O’Neill gave us,” Tony admitted. He frowned and swiveled his chair from side to side as he stared at her. John had noticed that the other man used the motion to buy himself time to think, and he had to wonder what was going through his head. “From the sheer number of people coming in, Ian and I are going to need more help. More than the part-time MP’s that we have now.”

Elizabeth cocked her head to the side and then nodded. “I expect General O’Neill knows that he’s going to be getting a list of wants and needs back. So, having me send him a request for more assistance for you would not be out of the realm of possibility.”

“Good. I’ll make my lists and get them to you this afternoon. In the meantime,” Tony looked over at Rodney and waved his hands like he was trying to encompass something. “Have you lot tried to ask Atlantis where she kept her spare ZPM’s?”

“First thing I did when she made herself known,” John admitted. It had been a bitter pill to swallow to know that the city was not able to give him the information he had asked for. “She knows they came into the city from somewhere, but that information has been removed from the database.”

“Right. Well, that sucks,” Tony muttered. He leaned back in his chair and then glanced at Elizabeth. “And the gate addresses that Old Elizabeth had? I take it you checked those out?”

“Yes, we did,” Rodney said. He sounded as bitter as John felt, and he wished he could reach out and comfort him. “There were three addresses. One, the stargate never opened, and when the Daedalus flew by after we got access to her, it was determined that the planet had blown up. From the debris field, it had been gone for several thousand years.”

“Jesus,” Tony breathed out. He shook his head and looked at John. “And the second?”

“Dagan. And we know they have it, but we can’t get at it without looking like a bunch of assholes. Our reputation is already on shaky ground as is, thanks to the lies that the Genii spread. Taking the religious heart of that culture would go over badly. And we can’t sub in a spare because we don’t have one,” John said shortly.

“I still think we can do it,” Rodney muttered. He closed his laptop softly and glared at John. “Beam one in and one out. Easy peasy.”

“We’ve war-gamed that, Rodney. We can’t pull it off. They’ve got the damn thing in the middle of a well-guarded room, and the transporter makes a huge, bright light. Subtle, it is not,” John reminded.

“Damn it,” Rodney bitched. He turned to look at Tony. “And the third is Sateda. The Wraith bombed the planet to rubble, and we’ve scanned it six ways to Sunday with Daedalus. A ZPM is a huge power source on the sensors. There are no power sources on the planet anymore, and while the stargate is still upright, the DHD is trashed and barely working.”

“I know Ronon’s gone several times and come back with books and other assorted cultural items, but even he says that there’s no tech worth saving,” Tony agreed.

John grimaced before he could help it. That had been a letdown to find out. The gun Ronon had was officially one of a kind, and unless they managed to find a cache of them off-world, there weren’t going to be any more. Every single member of their exploration teams had been directed to keep an eye out for any hint of Sateda’s weapons. So far, they’d found nothing.

“Let’s put that to the side for the moment,” Elizabeth directed. She pulled everyone’s attention back to her, and John nodded once in acceptance. “We need power. We need enough household goods to furnish the rooms that we will be opening to house everyone that we expect to get due to O’Neill and his plans. We need food. We need a thousand other things that we last thought of when we came out here the first time. And we’re going to have to rely on O’Neill to get most, if not all of it, to us. Am I missing anything?”

“No,” John said after several seconds of thought. “That about sums it up. I would suggest that we put out a memo to the whole expedition, that if they want anything that is not a standard item, they need to put the order in now so it has a decent chance of coming in, because we have no idea when the General is going to hit his magic point where he cuts things off.”

“Right,” Elizabeth nodded once and tapped out something on her laptop. “Okay, let’s get started on working out what we need to do to make this plan work from our end.”

John leaned back into his chair and listened as Rodney, Radek, and Cooper started hashing out exactly what would be needed on the power front. He had no idea what the General was up to, but he could only hope it didn’t bite them on the ass.

 

:: I am in need of power. Please provide. ::

 

 

Chapter Two

 

“Atlantis, this is Midway. We have another batch of people for you.”

“Right. How many, Midway?” Chuck asked as he moved to confirm that the access code for Midway was correct and accepted by the computers. While that was working, he sent out a message to Dr. Weir and Colonel Sheppard to warn them that they were getting more people. Once the access code was confirmed, he triggered the shield. “Midway, you are cleared for transport.”

“Roger that, Atlantis. Headcount is fifty, that is five, zero,” the Marine manning the comms station on Midway stated. “They’ve got their personal gear, so we’ll be pushing that through with them.”

“Got it,” Chuck assured. He kept an eye on the status of the wormhole as the first of the incoming troops arrived on Atlantis. “Wormhole is steady, Midway.”

“Good to know. We’ve got mail as well,” Midway said after several seconds.

Chuck hummed once as he queued up the mail server. “Ready for transmission,” he announced. He was keeping a mental count of the people coming through and was up to thirty-five as he monitored the transmission. None of them was familiar.

As the last of the transmission uploaded into the server, the last of the men and women scheduled to come through exited the wormhole and were being organized by one of the sergeants in charge of security. “Transmission was successful. All travelers have completed their transit. You are cleared to start sending in their gear, Midway.”

“Roger that,” Midway confirmed. Chuck keyed up the program Dr. Kusanagi had developed to review all the mail drops to confirm that there was nothing hazardous hitching a ride. Atlantis did not need a computer virus.

The masses of people on the Gateroom floor formed up into lines as carts full of trunks started getting pushed through, each working to move the luggage out of the way. Chuck kept an eye on the progress as he got the outgoing transmission queued up for the SGC. They were taking advantage of every opening of the gate to get information out. Dr. Weir had made damn sure that everyone in the city was aware of what was happening, and communication had been steady.

“That was the last of them,” Midway reported as a final cart was pushed through the wormhole. “We’ll be in touch when we have more to push through.”

“Understood, Midway,” Chuck said. “Stay safe.”

“You too, Atlantis,” Midway said before signing off.

Chuck started his reports on the whole procedure as Dr. Weir and Colonel Sheppard arrived and started organizing their newest arrivals. While that was going on, he kept an eye on the Gateroom, but the colonel and Dr. Weir seemed to have everything well in hand. Reports done, he checked the mail, and it had passed the review and entered the key sequence that directed the mail to be sent.

Leaning back, Chuck sighed. That had been the third transfer from Midway on his shift. Whatever was happening was speeding up.

 

 

“Okay, everyone. We’re not even going to try to pretty this up,” Cooper announced as she stood in front of the forty junior enlisted who had been turned over to her department. She made sure to turn and survey the entire room before starting her speech. “You’re here because we’re having a rapid build-up in troops on Atlantis, and we need to have you working somewhere while the command works out the kinks associated with the change. Thankfully, we’ve got an option. The Navy has an old tradition of what’s called ‘mess cranks’. That means that you will be with my department. We handle all the day-to-day tasks that keep Atlantis running that aren’t science-related. We clean, we cook, we manage supplies, and we make sure that the food is there and generous. And that means that while you lot are with us, you will all be doing the same thing.”

She turned to stare at a new section of the room as a group of Marines muttered to themselves. “I don’t honestly care, gentlemen, if you came out here to kill Wraith. Trust me, you’ll get plenty of opportunities to do so. Right now, you’re more of a hindrance than a help to the various Teams as they go about their duties. There are things you need to learn, and you will be given plenty of time to do so. Even with helping my departments out.”

“Pardon me for asking, Warrant, but what do Supply pukes and Mess Specialists know about combat?” one of the Lance Corporals asked. His buddies all nodded at the question, and Cooper sighed softly.

“I’m First Wave,” she said shortly. “That means that both me and my staff survived the Wraith beaming down to the city and hunting us as food. We killed four drones and a half dozen officer Wraith. All of whom were determined to get to the civilians we were guarding and eat them and us. And that experience was at the end of fifteen endless months of what amounted to siege warfare. Our self-defense training was what we had in basic training, what the SGC gave us to deal with footholds, and some occasional dry-firing range time here due to a lack of ammunition for practice. And yet, we survived, and none of our charges were hurt. Do not diss those who’ve come before you.”

“You killed a Wraith?” one of the Marines clustered around the Lance Corporal asked.

“She killed three,” Jones snapped. He stepped up next to her and stared at the Marines as they boggled at her. “Just because we stay in the city doesn’t mean it’s safe. Atlantis was abandoned for ten thousand years. She does her best, but she’s not in great shape after that long without help. If we’re lucky, what we initialize works without a problem. Sometimes, the equipment blows up when power is introduced. We’ve had killer nanites, rogue energy creatures, invading Nazi Amish, and storms that span half the planet, hit the city to name just a few incidents. You learn to roll with it or die. Since we’re not interested in letting you lot die, we’re going to do what we can to make sure you live. While you’re with us, yes, you will be bussing tables, cleaning things, washing stuff in the deep sinks, and basically being the extra hands we need so we can feed everyone.”

Jones smiled then and waved his hands towards the kitchens. “We will also be making sure that you can cook foods common to Pegasus, that you can identify the most common allergens, that you know the worlds you can use to break your trail if needs be, how to haggle if you hit one of the trading worlds, and what items are actually good trade goods. For the record: your knives, guns, clothes, and boots are not items for trade. Atlantis has trade goods, and everyone goes out with some items that can be used if you see something that you might want or that might be needed by someone in the city.”

“You will also get time to settle into the rhythm of the city. You’ll be enrolled in classes to teach you everything we know about Pegasus. You’ll also be getting some very intense self-defense classes led by some of the senior Marines on the base, Specialist Ronon Dex of Sateda and Teyla Emmagan of Athos. They will make sure that you can survive, even if you don’t have a gun,” Cooper picked up the explanation without pause. “And while all of this is happening, you will also be observed by Colonel Sheppard, Major Lorne, Master Gunnery Sergeant Bates, and the leaders of the Teams. They will be determining where you will end up. Being an asshole is a great way to screw your chance up.”

“In the meantime, we’ll be dividing you up. You’ll have teams that you will be working with, and halfway through your time with us, we’ll shift everyone around so you get new coworkers, new experiences, and new knowledge,” Jones continued. He turned to look at the men and women in front of them, and Cooper had to wonder what he was seeing. She was seeing a whole lotta Wraithbait. Hopefully, with training, that would change. “You will be assigned a shift, you will be assigned a supervisor, and we will make sure that you are trained in the jobs that we need from you as quickly as possible.”

Cooper jerked her chin up in a summoning gesture to the various shift leaders stationed around the walls. All of them moved to line up behind her and Jones, and she turned her attention back to their new team members. “These will be your supervisors. They will be the ones to give you your assignments on a day-to-day basis. I will be getting reports from them on your progress and if there are any issues that crop up while you are with us. I get that this isn’t what you expected when you got assigned out here, but this is what we need from you. Each of you had a folder on your chair when you came in here. Please read through the information in them and then find your supervisor. Some of you will be on a late schedule, so once you meet your supe, you’ll need to head back to your barracks so you can figure out a sleep schedule.”

She took a step back and watched as the troops in front of her opened the folders. She had done her best to break up the various groups that had formed among the junior enlisted. It was natural for those with complementary MOSs and duty stations to gather together, and she needed to break up the way like glommed to like. Every single one of the people in front of her was slated to be reviewed for a Team slot, and they all needed to be able to work with someone who wasn’t quite like them.

From the frowns that were crossing their faces, some of the newbies were figuring out that they weren’t going to be assigned to a shift with their shipmates. Thank you, Harriman and Siler, for all the gossip. That prewarning was going to let her break up any potential mischief. Cooper didn’t think that the general had deliberately sent them any troublemakers, but none of the new kids had expected to be sent over to her department. Hard feelings were utterly likely.

When Jones leaned in close, Cooper glanced at him and raised an eyebrow in question. “Bets on if the Lance Corporal tries to bitch to Gene?”

Cooper turned her attention to the Marine in question. From the thunderclouds gathering on the kid’s face, she had to agree. He was going to bitch to someone. “We’ll see if he has enough chutzpah or not. But no matter how it works out, my guess is, he will be our first troublemaker of the lot.”

“Happy, happy, joy, joy,” Jones muttered. “Here’s hoping he doesn’t kill anyone with that attitude.”

 

 

“We’ve pushed the mission to P4X-323 off for a while, Elizabeth. We’re getting some very pointed messages from our allies. They want AR-1, and my team needs to go out there to find out why,” John reminded.

“They have been getting very insistent, haven’t they?” Elizabeth mused. She frowned slightly before leaning back in her chair to stare at him. “Do you have any idea why they are asking for you all?”

“No. When we were there, we did see some Ancient tech, but none of it seemed to respond to us, so we didn’t try to press our luck,” Rodney said. He had his laptop open, and John leaned back slightly to see the screen. His lover tilted his screen slightly so he could read the report he had up. A quick scan confirmed what Rodney had said. Nothing stood out in his memory. “I’m looking at my report, and I didn’t put anything in it to say we needed to pay special attention to it.”

“I don’t remember anything special either,” John said. He frowned slightly at that. He normally did very well at remembering any flicker of response from Ancient tech, so that had to mean that the place was dead.

Elizabeth nodded once at that. “Okay, so when do you want to go?”

“Teyla is on the mainland with that meeting Halling called, I believe,” John mused. He pulled his own tablet out and checked the team schedule that his admin had put together. “Right. She’s scheduled to be there for several days. Ronon is out at the R&R camp, helping Stackhouse and Markham set up an obstacle course for our new troops to run while they are out there on maneuvers, so he’s not available.”

“You’re not going with just the two of you,” Elizabeth protested. She eyed the two of them closely, and John tried to look innocent and trustworthy. From the way her lips were twitching, she was at least amused by his antics. “What team is available to go with you?”

“AR-7 is available,” John said after confirming the schedule. “Captain Jordan has been doing well, and he and his men should be a good set of guards.”

“And he tolerates me well enough,” Rodney said wryly.

“He does,” John agreed. He checked the schedule and nodded. “We can go later this afternoon, I think. Soonest done and all that.”

Elizabeth nodded once. “Good idea. P4X-323 is on a schedule close to ours, right?”

“They are,” John said. He tapped out a quick message to Jordan, ordering him and his team to meet them at the Ready Room in an hour. “I’ve got us scheduled to leave in an hour, Rodney. So, you’ll need to let Radek and Miko know.”

“I will. I’ll go get dressed for an away mission, too,” Rodney said. He closed down his laptop and nodded at Elizabeth. “See you in an hour.”