Dick Woolsey looked at the typed memorandum with neither shock nor disbelief. It was precisely what he had expected. And so he left it uppermost on his laptop and walked out of his office to the upper bank of the control room, where General O'Neill was bending over a young airman's terminal. "General?"
O'Neill had traded service dress for BDUs and a t shirt. Presumably either someone at the SGC had sent through his luggage or he'd borrowed a change from stores. He looked much more comfortable than he had earlier, much more like the hard headed colonel who had made Woolsey's life hell six years ago. It was rather comforting, actually. Colonel O'Neill might occasionally be certifiably insane, but he did get things done. Wordlessly, Dick handed him the laptop.
O'Neill read it and then walked him back in his office, shutting the door behind him. "So?"
"What do you mean, so?" Dick demanded.
"Pity you were so busy you didn't read that before we locked down the gate," O'Neill said.
"You mean the part where the IOA says to on no account lift the city and instead to evacuate completely and set the self-destruct?" Dick said. "The part where it's an absolute, clear direct order to destroy Atlantis rather than risk it falling into the hands of the Wraith? That part?"
O'Neill gave him a perky, irritating smile. "That part," he said. "The part you didn't read. Until after it was all over, of course. And then why would you do it after the Wraith are defeated?"
"And what if they aren't?"
The smile disappeared. "If they aren't, you won't be alive to face the music."
"Is that usually how you handle these things?"
"More or less," O'Neill said.
Below on the floor the gate to Earth was open, things coming through for the last time from the SGC. Landry obviously hadn't gotten the IOA's orders. Or perhaps, like O'Neill, he was ignoring them for the moment.
"I expect to be alive to face the music," Dick snapped. "And there is no way in hell that they're going to believe that I didn't disobey a direct order. If I do this and we're not all killed, it's the end of my career. They'll have me out of Atlantis by the end of the week. This will be the last thing I ever do."
"Then you'd better make it good," O'Neill said.
Dick took a deep breath. That was the bottom line. Win or lose, he'd pay the price, and that's what it meant to be in charge. He took another breath, looking out over the gateroom floor, at the stained glass windows darkening as night overtook this corner of this icy world in the middle of nowhere. Atlantis, the City of the Ancients. For a little while this had been his home. Maybe he would die defending it and maybe not, but either way he would lose Atlantis. For a moment he thought he heard Elizabeth Weir's voice behind him, but surely that was memory. "That's how it works, Richard."
He blinked. O'Neill was watching him, and surely he'd heard nothing. He cleared his throat. "Well," he said. "It's a shame I didn't get this before we shut the gate down."
"Then let's shut it down," O'Neill said.
Together they went out into the control room. Dick stood beside Airman Salawi's console. "Airman," Dick said, "it's time to close the gate down." The longer they waited, the more chance someone at the SGC would get the IOA's orders and feel like they had to heed them.
Salawi looked up. "I can't at the moment. We have inbound travelers."
"Well, as soon as they get here, tell the SGC not to send anybody else, and then shut it down," Dick said.
"Crap," O'Neill said, and Dick looked up from Salawi's screen.
The rippling surface of the wormhole parted, three figures stepping through, a fourth slighter figure coming behind the others, incongruous with a P90 and double pony tails like a four-year-old.
O'Neill came around the console, bellowing. "Daniel! What in the hell? What part of SG-1 is not coming to Atlantis did you not understand?"
Dick refrained from mentioning that it seemed to be about the same part as the IOA's order to evacuate and destroy the city. Apparently complete insubordination was one of the venerable traditions of the SGC. He followed the sputtering O'Neill down the steps to the gateroom floor as the wormhole died behind them.
"I told you no," O'Neill shouted. "I told Landry I needed Marines, not you!"
Dr. Daniel Jackson looked cheerful under the onslaught. "Sam had some questions about a problem she was having with an Ancient artifact, and as the foremost expert on Ancient artifacts on Earth, it seemed like I could help."
O'Neill's voice dropped to a low conversational tone. "The problem we're having with the Ancient artifact right now is that somebody's stolen it and we don't know where it is." He gave Colonel Cameron Mitchell a glare, who at least had the good grace to look solemn and attentive. "The last thing I need is SG-1 cluttering up the place."
Teal'c cleared his throat. "General Landry said that Colonel Carter required three additional 302 pilots. Colonel Mitchell and I were present and volunteered."
It was an unassailable fact that Carter had indeed asked for 302 pilots. O'Neill swore, rounding on Vala Mal Doran. "And you! What's your excuse?"
She shrugged perkily. "I'm decorative?"
O'Neill provided several more words not appropriate to the gateroom floor. "Do you realize that there is a giant Wraith fleet about to arrive, plus our allies aren't going to help unless we destroy an Ancient artifact that we can't destroy because first of all we don't know how, and second of all we can't find it?"
Mitchell turned to Vala Mal Doran. "It's an incredibly valuable Ancient artifact worth millions on the black market. Go find it!"
"And that's what I'm here for!" She gave Woolsey a brilliant and patently insincere smile and trotted off in the direction of the infirmary.
O'Neill shook his head, looking back at Teal'c and Mitchell. "Okay, you two report to Carter. And Daniel?"
"Yes?" Jackson looked smug.
"Go help Carter do whatever she needs to do to figure out how to get rid of this thing once we find it. Let's just assume we do before the Wraith arrive." He waited until Jackson had gone, then glanced up at the control center above, crew bending over their work again now that the excitement was over. "I've got no idea how we're getting out of this one," he said.
"All in a day's work," said Dick Woolsey.
The problem, Sam reflected, was that the Hammond's crawl spaces sometimes required crawling. Apparently that crawling was best done by someone five foot two with shoulders no more than twenty four inches wide. How many actual people in the Air Force fit those specifications was a very good question. One would think, she considered as she leaned forward over a strut and attempted to work on something eighteen inches beneath her while dangling, that the average service member was a tiny little woman or a preteen child. Teyla would have trouble getting in here, and for Sam it was right out of the question. If she inched forward just a little more….
…she would fall on her nose into a pile of circuits and steel beams six feet down. This became apparent an instant past the point of no return.
Fortunately at that moment a very strong hand seized the back of her pants at the waistband, hauling her abruptly backwards with her middle over the strut and her feet on firm deck. Sam twisted around.
Teal'c let go with a broad grin. "Good afternoon, Colonel Carter."
"Teal'c!" Sam bounced up with something like her old buoyancy. Behind him Cameron Mitchell and Daniel were both beaming as she threw her arms around Teal'c. "What are you doing here?"
"We happened to be in the neighborhood," Daniel said, his hands in his pockets.
"And Landry said something about you needing 302 pilots," Cam said.
"It seemed that we could make ourselves useful," Teal'c said as she let go of him and hugged Daniel.
"Besides," Daniel said. "Do you think we'd let you and Jack get yourselves killed by a million Wraith while we sat in Colorado?"