"Okay," O'Neill said. "Which brings us to the big question. What are our options as far as Atlantis goes?"
There was a long silence, no one wanting to be the first to speak. Woolsey cleared his throat at last. "General, the IOA has a long-standing recommendation that, if attacked in force by the Wraith, the expedition should evacuate all remaining personnel and destroy the city behind them."
"Or we could fight," John said, in spite of himself. O'Neill was looking at him, and he shrugged one shoulder. "We've held off the Wraith before, and we've got a fully-charged ZPM. We can sit here and take pot-shots while they try to break through the shield."
"The shield will hold for quite a while," Zelenka said. "And — we have tried to work out a way to destroy the city before this, and could not do it. I am not confident we could do it now."
"If we overloaded the ZPM," Carter began, and the engineer shook his head.
"We thought of that. Even a ZPM at full power is not enough to do the kind of damage we need."
"Or we could fight," John said again, not quite as softly as he'd meant.
"We could," Carter said. "But if it's just the Hammond and the Pride of the Genii and the city's puddle-jumpers against the fleet that Queen Death's bringing in — much as I hate to say it, we need Todd's fleet if we're going to have a chance."
"Todd's going to cave," John said. "He can't afford not to. If we don't fight Queen Death together, he's going to be her next snack."
"We can't count on that," Woolsey said. "He has made his position very clear."
"And yet we simply cannot destroy the city," Zelenka said. "Not we must not or we may not, but we cannot. And the Wraith must not take it."
"If we destroy most of it," O'Neill said, though he didn't sound particularly enthusiastic about the idea. "The Wraith don't have the ATA gene, how much use can they make of the wreckage?"
"They're not the Replicators," Carter said.
"But they are very, very clever technicians," Zelenka said. "We have seen that time and time again, they match what we have found to stop them. And if they capture the ZPM even partially intact — they could reach Earth."
John bit his lip. There had to be another way, something that didn't mean destroying the city, or sitting down to the same long siege that had nearly destroyed the Ancients…. "General," he said. "We launch the city."
There was another moment of silence, everyone staring at him, and finally O'Neill said, "Go on."
"Look." John took a breath, trying to order his tumbling thoughts. "Atlantis was designed to fly, designed to go into hyperspace, and it's a hell of a weapons platform. We've got enough drones to make this work. When Queen Death's fleet gets here, we lift the city and use it as our mothership. If Todd joins us, great, we can kick Death's ass. If he doesn't — well, we've got the option of taking the city into hyperspace and getting the hell out of here, so we can fight another day."
"We will not be able to use the Stargate once we are flying," Zelenka said, but he didn't exactly sound displeased.
Both Carter and Holmes were nodding, and even Keller looked impressed. John looked down the length of the table, waiting for O'Neill's decision. For some reason, the Antarctic base loomed in his mind, the city barely a hint of domes hidden under snow and ice. He could barely remember the man he'd been then, the one who'd said he liked the quiet, liked having nothing more demanding to do than to ferry visiting brass around. And then a rogue drone nearly knocked him out of the sky, and O'Neill had told him he was crazy not to want to walk through the gate into another galaxy, a potentially one-way trip to the lost city of the Ancients. Six years ago, and O'Neill looked older and more tired, but surely he was still the man to take the chance.
"Is there enough power in the ZPM for this?" O'Neill asked.
"We have two now," Zelenka answered. "Yes, I think there is."
"All right," O'Neill said. "We'll make that our main plain."
"The IOA," Woolsey began, and O'Neill lifted an eyebrow.
"I don't think there's any need to let them know what we're planning until we're sure we can do it, do you?"
Woolsey gave a thin smile. "Perhaps not."
"Colonel Sheppard," O'Neill said. "She's your baby. Get her ready to fly."
"Yes, sir," John said, the relief washing over him. "Thank you."
Chapter Eleven
Preparing for the Worst
William Lynn closed the last of the storage cases and looked around the long narrow room he'd called his lab for the few months he'd been on Atlantis. It was stripped nearly bare, only a few cables and the spare laptop to remind him of what the room had become; now that it was returned to its Ancient form, he wondered again what it had originally been intended for. Beyond the long window, the sea was gray in the city's shadow, the sun sparking from the waves beyond its edges.
The word had come through at twenty-two hundred hours the night before: non-essential personnel were to prepare for evacuation starting at oh-eight-hundred, and archeology fell firmly into the non-essential category. Fortunately, fieldwork for the SGC taught one to be ready to run at a moment's notice, and none of his staff had lost the habit. They'd been ready by oh-one hundred hours, and now it was only the final boxes that had to be hauled to the gateroom, along with the last of the backup drives. They were all perched now on a little cart, not heavy and not even very awkward, just waiting to be taken away.
He turned again, surveying the empty room, and Miranda James looked up from the laptop.
"That's everything transferred, Doc."
"Thank you." He forced a smile. "You can shut it down, then."
"Right." She frowned as the screen went dark, then closed the lid with a final-sounding snick. "When are you scheduled to go through?"
"I don't have a time yet," William answered. "You?"
She glanced at her watch. "Eleven-fifty. Time for coffee, anyway. What are you doing about your stuff?"
"Leaving it, I suppose," William said. "I'd settled in, rather, and there's quite a lot to try to move."
"Yeah, me, too." She shook her head. "I don't know, it's not that I want to stay — I've done a Wraith invasion twice now, thank you very much! But I feel kind of guilty leaving."
"There's not much either of us can do that would be useful," William said. Sensible though he knew they were, the words left a bitter taste in his mouth. He didn't want to leave, he realized, and shoved the thought aside. He reached for his tablet and checked the screen. "The next step is to check in with Sergeant Pollard so he can put it into the transfer queue." So that everything moves through the Stargate as efficiently as possible, he thought, and every scrap of power is conserved for the coming battle.
"Want me to take care of that?" Miranda asked. "It looks like you've got plenty still to do."
"That'd be brilliant, thanks." William helped her push the cart through the door, and glanced back at the window as the door closed behind her. No, he didn't want to leave — somehow, in the middle of work and all the ordinary tasks of an SGC social scientist, he'd fallen for Pegasus, and for Atlantis. He stared blindly at the sunlit towers, seeing instead the ruins of Sateda, half rebuilt, smelling of wood smoke and mint-and-lemon tea. Even on this world, icy and barren, there were things still to be explored. He remembered Radek taking him down to the city's lowest levels, where unexpectedly the sea's black depths teemed with light, with life, a squid's tentacle mimicking a flashlight waved behind thick glass.
And yet, practically speaking, he was of no use to anyone. He wasn't a soldier and he wasn't a technician, and those were the skills needed now. And quite possibly he'd merely be in the way, a nuisance, though if he stayed in his quarters and did nothing, surely no one could object. It was only his own life he was risking….