Reading Time: 109 Minutes
Title: Finding Haven
Series: Priceless
Series Order: 4
Author: SASundance
Fandom: NCIS, Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Criminal Minds, JAG
Genre: Crime Drama, Crossover, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Science Fiction
Relationship(s): Gen, background pairings
Content Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Rape/Non-con/Dub-con, Slavery, Torture, Violence – Graphic, Violence – Domestic and/or Against Children , Violence – graphic, offscreen torture, discussions of past and offscreen rape/non-con, issues around the loss of free will, loss of bodily autonomy, mind control, past murder of OC character, discussions of miscarriage and abortion, discussions of slavery and implications of mind control, non-consensual drug use, discussion of past domestic violence, discussion of canon vaccination and future vaccination programs, discussion of past canon unethical medical experimentation, character bashing (Elizabeth Weir and Ziva David). Not friendly to: McKay, Gibbs, Keller, McGee, Vance. (Note: slavery, mind control, autonomy issues are related to canon events)
Word Count: 119,523
Summary: The head of the new Atlantis Department of Justice arrives in the Pegasus galaxy while the Interstellar Bureau of Investigation recruit another investigator to join Tony’s team. Tobias Fornell, ex FBI agent may be battered by multiple tragedies but he’s hoping to find a new beginning working for the fledgling agency. Home World Command’s secret facility on Balara is now producing vaccines for the mind control drug but Dr McKay is not put in charge of the program. /His exclusion leads to Rodney trying to find out what is going on and butting heads with the Black Queen, who has been put in charge of security for the program and earned the Artificial Intelligence’s undying love and admiration. Yes J.P. has a massive crush on Penelope Garcia. Meanwhile the JAG Corps arrives on Atlantis to conduct classified military hears for the rogue Genii who abducted John Sheppard and causing Tony to stress in case he’s recognised by any of the judge advocates.
Artist: Angelicinsanity
Chapter 16
Lately, Tobias Fornell, ex-FBI agent, former husband, and former father was wondering what he was doing. Really, what was the point of getting up day after day, trying to put one foot in front of the other? Why was he even bothering to answer the phone and be polite to the occasional client who wanted him to find their missing loved ones or aggrieved spouses, wanting to find out if their partner was cheating on them? Worst of all though, was when he had to listen to desperate and worried parents pleading with him to spy on their kids to find out if they’d fallen in with the wrong crowd, and if they were taking drugs. Usually, once the prospective client uttered the words – my teenager and drugs, much as Fornell sympathised with them, he immediately turned down the job. His heart, such as it was, couldn’t handle the strain that those cases caused or the memories they triggered of his own tragic loss.
In the time before Emily had become involved in drugs, which Fornell had begun to refer to mentally as B.E. (short for before Emily started), Tobias had always been empathetic and caring to families ravaged by the scourge of drug addiction, He’d encountered so many of them during his long years as an FBI agent. And yet, despite that empathy, secretly he’d also been a tad complacent. Yes, it was terrible, and yes, it was a tragedy, but privately he couldn’t help thinking that surely there must have been something wanting in those parents or else, in their parenting skills to have their children fall victim to such a horrific malaise. Some small yet highly significant flaw or deficit that could account for why their child had turned to chemical crutches to prop themselves up. Not enough love and attention had created poor esteem issues, or too much love and attention that spoilt them and fed their self-indulgent tendencies. Perhaps it was too little exposure to adversity so that resilience was never developed, or one hundred and one other small but important factors that saw their kids fall victim to drugs and ruin their lives.
Oh, in his secret heart, Fornell had been smug and cocky, thinking that his insight as a federal agent had given him some sort of shield of insightful invincibility that would protect his child, blood of his blood, the flesh of his flesh from the scourge of drug addiction. What a damned arrogant fool he had been, flipping the bird at fate, honestly and earnestly thinking that he had some amorphous superior parental abilities, that meant he could stave off the horrors of teenage drug abuse.
Now in the After Emily died (AE) times, he had to wonder if his hubris was the reason that karma/fate or God (no not God, he didn’t believe in God anymore after losing his Emily) had determined that he sorely needed to learn a life-lesson in humility and gratefulness. Perhaps, if he hadn’t in his secret heart, been so full of self-congratulatory and overweening pride, Emily would never have endured the unremitting Hell of addiction. One which demonstrated that no one was immune to the loss of identity, the loss of physical and mental control, the loss of the soul and the loss of precious life. His Emily was dead and Fornell just couldn’t handle cases where parents were terrified of losing their children but still secretly believed deep down that it only happened to other families, not to them.
Now, every time he looked into their terror-filled or their deluded eyes Fornell felt it was like looking at a mirror, except that he now knew it was nothing more than feeble clutching at straws. Sure a few might survive the addiction but even those individuals would carry the scars for the rest of their lives; literally one decision, one slip up away from being caught up in the mire of their addiction again. He just couldn’t cope with those cases, and he doubted that he ever would.
Of course, aside from the infidelity and missing person cases, there were always the more humiliating grist-to-the-mill paychecks earnt serving subpoenas in divorce, fraud, civil suits, and various trivial legal cases. While the regular money was appreciated by his bank manager, especially with the huge debt he’d racked up fighting Em’s addiction (rehab not coming cheap), serving subpoenas was the height of humiliation to the former FBI senior agent. Oftentimes, he wondered what would be more humiliating – subpoena serving or working as a mall cop?
Lately, he’d been getting some work, mostly simple surveillance jobs from a hush-hush federal agency that he’d never heard of before, run by a couple of military types. The head honcho, a Lieutenant General no less, had intimated when he approached him initially in a meeting that took place in an underground car park, that an old friend had recommended him as someone who might be willing to do odd jobs for his organisation. Tobias had immediately leapt to the conclusion that the old friend had been Gibbs, and this was his way of trying to make amends for the rift that had developed between them over the Hicks case and then growing even wider after losing his precious Em.
Sure, Gibbs had to testify about Fornell’s withholding of witness testimony that could have resulted in the jury acquitting someone the former FBI agent had fervently believed to be a killer. Fornell had come clean to the DA so that Gibbs didn’t have to rat him out, but it was hard not to resent him. Mostly because he’d seen Gibbs walk away without even a slap on the wrist for destroying evidence or obstructing justice on more than one occasion. Fuck, the man had even gotten away with murder and still had his job and a badge, so it was tough not to resent him for his hypocrisy over Gabriele Hicks. Particularly when Fornell had done the honourable thing and resigned for something which in the legal and moral sense, was far more minor than first-degree murder.
Still, Tobias was grateful that the shadowy agency (which the General might have hinted at being under the Department of Homeland Security umbrella) saw fit to sling some contract work his way. Most of it was surveillance of individuals and not because they were cheating on their spouses (even if for all he knew they were), it was trying to learn who their associates might be, having links to plenty of suspected criminals and corrupt multinational corporate syndicates up to no good. There had even been an occasional stint of protection work, once with a CIA analyst looking to get out from under an abusive spouse that made him feel good. So, working for the general for the last few weeks had been a real balm to his soul and to his professionalism, making Fornell feel slightly less like a washed-up has-been.
This week, General O’Neill had asked him to investigate an MVA where a navy judge advocate (a lawyer) about to ship out on a TAD had suffered a catastrophic car crash, leaving the Lt Commander with a severed spinal column. The General thought there might be something suss about the ‘accident’ and asked him to investigate. Although he wondered why it hadn’t been assigned to NCIS, he did secretly take pleasure in how pissed Gibbs would be if he ever found out. That man hated to yield jurisdiction to anyone else. And the more Tobias dug into the crash, the dodgier the whole local PD’s verdict appeared. O’Neill had given him the reports, and crime scene photos, including the car wreck and the mechanics and Fornell had one of his pals at the FBI crime lab take a look. Gerry had found fragments of a small highly sophisticated explosive device that he reckoned had been used to blow the break line. According to his forensic guy, it was easily missed, he’d just happened to have a highly similar case that had been traced back to the CIA a few years ago.
When Tobias filled in his client about what he’d found, the General had been ropeable. He got it, that poor kid had his brake line tampered with by technology that was damned near undetectable and worst of all it was the CIA targeting a member of the US military serving his country. It was scandalous if true. But Fornell couldn’t help feeling a sense of satisfaction in helping to bring the truth to light, that it wasn’t just some tragic accident or driver/ equipment error. It was premeditated to cause either loss of life or limb and he’d uncovered the crime even if he could haul someone’s ass off to jail. It was the most fulfilled he felt since he’d been forced to resign, and he felt halfway human.
Then when the offer of something more permanent had been offered by O’Neill today, it had certainly caught him off guard. As did the hint that Jethro had nothing to do with him getting work with the agency that was referred to as HWC, and no he didn’t know what they stood for – that was classified. The General, who’d contracted his services on a hereto ad hoc basis was cagey about the job. He was only willing to state that if Fornell accepted their offer, he would be looking at relocating outside of the US and would be limited in the number of personal possessions he could take with him. When Fornell asked for more details, the general had said, that due to the extremely classified nature of the job, he would need to first sign a ton of NDAs before he would be told further details. He also stated that he would not be able to reveal anything about the nature of his job to anyone, not even Jethro Gibbs. The only other detail he would offer was that the contract was for twelve months with an option for extending it for another year if both parties agreed to it.
It hadn’t been a lot to go on, in fact, it was pitiful thin but then, what was the alternative. To try to eke out an existence here in DC, spying on cheating husbands and wives? Trying to find some sweet old granny with dementia who’d wandered away from home? To be blunt, with his wife, career and his daughter all gone, what did he really have to keep him here in DC anyway?
Memories were all he had left but they would never be enough. Why torture himself with what he’d lost and could never regain. As to his relationship with Gibbs, well it was fractured badly, and he honestly couldn’t see a way to repair it. Now with the fucking unbelievable return from the dead of Jethro’s surrogate daughter Ziva David, he was preoccupied with whatever Mossad bullshit she’ was involved with. That and that Phineas kid.
Now that he knew that Gibbs hadn’t called in some favours to get him some work with this hush-hush secret government mob he was working for on a contingency basis, Fornell felt the ties that had bound them – commonalities such as friendship, family, collegiality, and shared personal tragedies – slip even further away to become essentially meaningless. There was really nothing or no one that was keeping him from leaving America and taking a job for the next 12 months, hopefully even two years.
Tobias reached for his phone to call back General Jack (who honestly, acted like no three-star general he’d ever met before), agreeing to be read in on the job offer and to sign a shit-ton of NDAs. Still, he’d worked for the FBI not NCIS or Army CID so what did he know about military types at the end of the day? Although something told him that he was about to embark upon a crash course in learning about General Jack and his terribly correct 2IC, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Davis. That guy sure had a stick rammed up his butt but occasionally Tobias had seen a glimmer of something wicked in his eyes, so maybe he wasn’t a completely cold-fish, just very convincing.
He now had an appointment at the Pentagon tomorrow morning at 0815. Good Lord, now it looked as if he’d have to adopt military jargon; Gibbs would shit himself laughing if only he knew. Of course, that was never going to happen, and a petty piece of Tobias Fornell’s ravaged heart warmed at the thought of him being kept out of the loop!
~o0o~
Three days later Tobias found himself sitting in something that the personnel at the SGC called a puddle jumper with General O’Neill as the pilot, which was something of a surprise. After all, as the director of the secret agency he ran, he wasn’t permitted to drive around and he had a team of bodyguards who drove him, which was SOP for directors of federal agencies dealing with law enforcement, terrorism, intelligence and counterintelligence. And yet, here they were ready to head out to another galaxy travelling through a stargate via a wormhole piloted by the director himself. And that right there was just too surreal!
Surreal, preposterous, bizarre, farfetched. He would have believed it was nothing more than an elaborate hoax if he hadn’t been forced to sign the most gigantic iron-clad non-disclosure agreement he’d ever believed was possible before he was read in by the terribly serious Colonel Davis. Plus, he’d witnessed people – teams of people going through the blue puddle of what looked like water but obviously wasn’t and disappearing into thin air. The real kicker had been the Zephyrus, which was a massive space ship no less, that had beamed him on board. It had plucked him right out of his home, along with the hastily boxed-up possessions he’d been permitted to bring with him and transferred him to Cheyenne Mountain in a ludicrously short space of time. In little more of a blink of an eye, he travelled what would take 2644 km (more than 23 hours by road) or by plane would take three and a half hours (wheels up, wheels down) but factoring in travel time to and from airports, he would have been looking at least six hours.
Plus, unless he was delusional and imagining all this, he was about to travel to a distant planet – New Lantea – in the Pegasus galaxy – to a super-secret military base. And as if that weren’t extraordinary enough, he was going to be living in the fabled lost city of Atlantis, which apparently was no longer lost. It had been located less than a decade ago – just turned out that it wasn’t on Earth, but in another galaxy entirely and had been built by a group of Aliens known as the Ancients. Oh, it was actually a city capable of interstellar travel. In fact, it had been flown to Earth to help defend the planet against a hoard of horrific lifeforce-sucking vampiric-like creatures, wanting to feed on the eight billion odd people living on the planet. Amazingly the Earth’s population had remained clueless about their close call, even when the flying Atlantis had landed in San Francisco Bay several years ago.
Turned out, that wasn’t the first time Aliens had attacked Earth, which Fornell found more than a little freakin scary. To be honest, his mind was awash with all of the information he’d been given about the Stargate and what lay beyond their solar system. He snorted to himself. Sometimes ignorance was most certainly bliss. But now that he knew that they weren’t alone in the universe, that they had allies and enemies, and there were even races who were simply indifferent to their existence, he felt a stirring within him that he hadn’t felt in a long time, not since he resigned from the FBI.
Again, he snorted derisively since his resignation had been little more than a polite sham by the powers that be, allowing him not to have to face the ignominy of being fired from the agency he’d served for so much of his adult life. But after the inevitable depression at the way he’d left the Bureau and the subsequent devastation of losing Emily first to addiction and finally to an overdose so close on top of it, he had barely been putting one foot in front of each other.
If he hadn’t been secretly afraid that topping himself would extinguish any hope. he had of being reunited with her in the afterlife and to a lesser extent to Diane, his ex-wife, he was pretty sure he would have already taken that action without hesitation. The truth was, he felt that there was little left for him to live for. That life had now plucked him out of the morass of grief, blame and guilt that he was wallowing in, and was dragging him across galaxies to work for an international law enforcement organisation, even in its embryonic state, had given him a fresh start, a reason to keep going.
Reminded of the fact that there had been one cogent point that General O’Neill had withheld from him until they were on their way via not one but two wormholes, interspersed with a brief stopover at a place mid-point between Earth and New Lantea, he wondered why it had been deemed too classified to share before.
He guessed he would be finding out soon enough as O’Neill shot him a sympathetic look and said, “Midway II is two minutes out.”
~o0o~
Jack was relieved to be going back to Atlantis, confident that between the President who was livid at General Conrad, the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Rosen, The Commandant of the Marine Corps and SAD when they had decided to take DiNozzo out of play, all based on the erroneous assumption that McKay would be reassigned to active duty. It wouldn’t have; all it would have done was rob Atlantis and their world of an incredibly valuable resource, but Jack wasn’t comfortable with having him classified as priceless. He wasn’t superstition exactly, more like an embittered grumpy cynic, but it did feel like putting that sort of label on someone was asking for fate to target them. Not to mention it was a helluva lot of pressure for one individual to bear.
As he glanced over at his passenger, likewise an equally embittered grumpy cynic, seasoned as Jack was by a shitty hand of fate that left him without the most important people in his life, he felt a stirring of simpatico with the former agent. He watched on stealthily as the ex-FBI agent attempted to process his newly acquired reality about stargates, aliens and the threat faced by Earth and its allies. Even after the guy had signed the SGC standard non-disclosure agreement that was gargantuan, bearing in mind his own very Black Ops work before he’d gone with Danny to Abydos, he could tell that a part of Fornell hadn’t truly believed it. Now he did and he was trying and failing to process it.
Perhaps that was why Jack had refrained from telling him who had been responsible for Fornell’s recruitment into the program, first as a Homeworld Command fixer and now as an investigator on Atlantis. Had he known about DiNozzo, it would have probably convinced him they were pulling some elaborate hoax on him. He’d thought it sensible to tell him about Tony after he realised that the Stargate and everything it entailed was very, very real. Of course, that hadn’t been the only reason for him holding back on advising him about DiNozzo, it was the fact that the safety of Tony and Tali were both riding on the fact that the fewer people who knew he was there the better. The most secure place he could envision sharing that bombshell information with Tobias was in a puddle jumper heading to Atlantis.
Yet if he were being completely honest, O’Neill had to admit that he had also decided to wait until they’d past the point of no return since the guy had shared the same wife with L.J. Gibbs and Jack didn’t trust the NCIS agent as far as he could throw him. Especially not now that Ziva David had run straight back to him. He saw her as his surrogate daughter and if there was anything more dangerous than a guy being led around by his dick, it was a heart-sick father being manipulated by a gelid hellcat taking advantage of his unrequited daddy impulses. Jack wasn’t willing to risk the possibility that Fornell might feel some bizarre sense of loyalty to the former Marine who seemed to engender a helluva lot of fealty in the people around him, considering that several people he’d consulted had profiled the guy as fitting the diagnostic criteria of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. One expert had even likened him to being a cult leader and well, Jack wasn’t willing to risk two lives on the possibility of a misplaced sense of loyalty to the Cult of Two Bs Bastard.
Now as he piloted the jumper towards Midway II, he looked across at the balding man beside him. He’d automatically registered the snorts, recognising the either I’m delusional or this is really happening,’ mental narrative going on right about now, having seen it often enough in others when the facts documented in black and white became a physical reality.
Breaking the tacit mutual embargo on the conversation since they exited the stargate six minutes ago, O’Neill shot him a sympathetic look and said, “Midway II is two minutes out.”
He thought about the first Midway space station and the less-than-foolproof security measures which led to it being highjacked by the Wraith, resulting in a terrifying foothold situation at Cheyenne Mountain. The catastrophic situation had been averted mostly thanks to Teal’c and Ronon Dex wiping out a shitload of the life-sucking aliens. What was scary was that it was pure happenstance that brought both warriors to Earth that day. Dex had been summoned by the Inquisitorial Squad, otherwise known as the International Oversight Agency, who in their ethnocentric egotism, wanted to determine if the imposing and fearsome soldier posed a threat to Earth’s authority in Atlantis. Ironically, his and Teal’c’s actions that day in defence of Earth provided a far better testament to his motives than any empty platitudes could have done.
One of the results of the hi-jacking had been that Sheppard and McKay had no choice but to destroy Midway, blowing it up to prevent the Wraith from occupying it. So, when Midway was rebuilt, it had a shit-ton of extra security features built in, one being that the wormholes from Earth and Atlantis did not automatically arrive at the Midway space station. They arrived nearby, but still far enough out to add an extra level of security. That wasn’t to say, that in situations requiring it, it wasn’t possible to travel directly to the space station if one possessed the highly encrypted code necessary to reconfigure the Stargate wormhole to include the third gate situated on Midway II. That was in addition to possessing the IDC to request manual override by Midway technicians of the trinium security iris that would vaporise anything that tried to open the gate without the proper code.
Not being able to routinely gate straight to the Midway station did increase the travelling time between Earth and Atlantis but the less than twenty minutes per trip from the two gates closest to Midway II to the station was negligible in comparison to going via a spaceship and well worth it to ensure the safety of Cheyenne Mountain, Atlantis and the second incarnation of Midway II. Of course, that extra time didn’t factor in the mandatory quarantine period of 12 hours that travellers must wait on Midway before undertaking the second half of the journey, although that particular protocol had already been enacted during the incarnation of the first Midway space station, so didn’t really count. All in all, Midway was definitely a much easier and faster route between the Pegasus galaxy and Planet Earth which enabled Jack to make visits that he otherwise wouldn’t be able to. Nineteen days one way on a 304 battlecruiser would have been entirely impractical, especially factoring in the return journey.
So, he didn’t begrudge the slightly extra time involved in using the new Midway station. Truth be told Jack relished the little bit of extra flying time in the jumpers, a rare freedom now he was head of Homeworld Command. Of all the sacrifices he’d made in his long and distinguished career in the US Air Force, it was possibly the loss of personal freedom to do simple stuff such as drive himself places that vexed him the most. Travelling to and from Atlantis was like a breath of fresh air, a small taste of what he’d taken for granted for most of his life – the autonomy to go from A to B without a platoon of Marines wrapping him up in cotton wool.
Having sent through the security code to verify his identity, O’Neill went through the tricky manoeuvring of the jumper to land in Midway’s docking bay. After a brief tour of the space station with the newbie, he intended to utilise the conference room about the station which was fitted with SCIF measures to finally put the former FBI agent out of his misery regarding who his new supervisor on Atlantis was going to be. Jiggling in his seat with glee, Jack, who despite being a deeply cynical pragmatist, retained an almost child-like sense of the absurd. Perhaps that explained his deeply steadfast addiction to the Simpsons TV show. He just regretted that when Fornell learnt that it was Anthony DiNozzo who was responsible for him getting a gig on Atlantis that he hadn’t thought to bring popcorn to get maximum enjoyment out of the situation.
Still, he had quite a few other matters on his mind, so Jack reckoned forgetting popcorn was kinda understandable.
~o0o~
As they landed in Atlantis and he docked his jumper along with the rest of the jumpers, Jack was thinking of Fornell’s reaction, back on Midway Station and it certainly hadn’t disappointed. Sadistically, he might have waited until the guy was swigging down a cup of coffee before letting the grimalkin out of the bag just to elicit maximum bang for his buck. So okay, some people might think it was cruel but knowing that years ago, Tobias had thrown Tony out of a ME’s van at night on the DC beltway in a body bag, which was an extremely dangerous thing to do, O’Neill thought he got off lightly. The man could have easily ended up serving time for manslaughter. The fact that Tony’s former boss had goaded him into doing it hadn’t escaped his attention either – the ex-Marine would pay for that and a lot more besides.
Still, after Fornell stopped choking on the coffee which had gone down the wrong pipe, his shocked features gave away his utter surprise and shock.
“DiNozzo,” he spluttered, pronouncing the name in the Italian way so that it sounded like dee- not-zo although Tony had mentioned he often called him DiNutso when he really wanted to rile him up.
“Anthony DiNozzo Jr? You mean Gibbs former faithful lapdog and now an unemployed single father to a child he didn’t know he had? That DiNozzo? Isn’t he supposed to be travelling around the US with Tali enjoying their newfound inheritance, although, by my reckoning, his daughter is just about ready to attend school? You’re saying he recommended me for the job?”
“Not only did he recommend you, but Associate Director DiNozzo of the Interstellar Bureau of Investigation aka the ISBI will be your new boss,” he said serenely, enjoying the look on Fornell’s face. As those old American Express ads used to say, ‘priceless.’
After Fornell had gotten over the shock and managed to put his game face on again, he remarked, “Just out of curiosity, why does DiNozzo need another investigator? Surely a bunch of geeky scientists aren’t exactly dangerous criminal masterminds,” he said mockingly. “I’d have thought this would be a fairly tame gig.”
“At the moment, he is also the AFOSI-appointed agent assigned to Atlantis – the first one ever to be assigned to the SGC, in fact. Being the first investigator to set foot on Atlantis has been an eye opener to everyone at what he’s turned up in the short time since he arrived here.”
“So, we are talking about illegal gambling, petty fights and larceny?”
“Obviously, that goes on here, but it’s definitely small potatoes in comparison to the big stuff he uncovered while investigating the disappearance of our military CO, Col John Sheppard. Tony figured out who sold out Col Sheppard to a rogue militia and why, and he finessed an utterly brilliant interrogation of the person who was responsible, to learn his location. It was one of the finest I’ve witnessed. By the time DiNozzo was done with him, the culprit was bawling his eyes out and tripping over himself to split his guts and he did it all while an IAO lawyer was sitting in on the interrogation. It was a thing of beauty,” Jack stated, the admiration in his voice hard to mistaken.
“Thanks to his investigation we discovered who’d taken Sheppard – a ragtag group of Genii mercenaries who abducted him to force him to operate Ancient tech they’d gotten hold of. Plus, they wanted payback for Sheppard killing their leader. Thanks to DiNozzo’s investigation, he made it possible to rescue Sheppard when no one else had been able to figure out who’d taken him or where they were hidden. The doctors reckon if we hadn’t rescued him when we did, he wouldn’t have made it, his injuries were that horrific, “O’Neill’s tone took on a grim tone that telegraphed how close it had been.
“So is Sheppard okay?” Fornell inquired politely.
“Still on medical leave but physically he’ll be okay…eventually,” Jack said bleakly. “He was tortured, and no one fully recovers from that,” he said authoritatively, making Tobias look askance at the general who adroitly changed the subject.
“So, there he was, investigating Sheppard’s disappearance, combing through mission briefings, after-action reports, personnel files, looking for suspects, since he was convinced someone in at Atlantis must have been involved in the Colonel’s abduction and that’s when he uncovered some highly disturbing crimes. He found a serious Foothold situation which is what we call an incident where enemy combatants gain physical control of the base, which had been covered up,” he said, anticipating that Fornell would not know what a Foothold situation was.
Fornell opened his mouth but couldn’t come up with a reply. A foothold situation freaked him right out.
“He also found evidence of serious sexual assault by a serial predator while the base was under the foothold status. He attacked at least five people on Atlantis although Tony is convinced others may come forward once the case breaks. He found evidence of a coverup of the rapes by the former Commander of Atlantis and a member of the International Oversight Agency. It led to a premeditated murder five years ago that the then Chief Medical Officer had put down to an accidental overdose of sleeping pills,” he said as Fornell whistled in reluctant admiration.
“That’s pretty impressive work,” he conceded ruefully, “but DiNozzo was always a great investigator. Too good to be stuck at NCIS – which was why I was always trying to recruit him,” he said dolefully, because if DiNozzo had been investigating the Gabriel Hicks case as his partner or even if the MCRT at NCIS had looked at it, Tony would have in all probability have solved the damned case ten years ago.
“He was certainly too good to waste being second in charge to a bully and a tyrant like Gibbs,” Jack told him scathingly before getting animated again, which was kinda scary in a three-star general.
“But wait…there’s more. The pièce de résistance was that during all of this investigation, he figured out why Ambassador Chen and her government were so desperate to cover up the Foothold situation and kill a Polish scientist when she wanted to report being raped. He figured out it was all about the drug that the rapist had developed which had strong mind control properties that allowed Lavin to make people do whatever he told them, so that essentially they become mindless zombies. Basically, DiNozzo figured out that there’s a serious plot by one of the IOA governments to get hold of this drug that as far as we know is indigenous to the Pegasus galaxy. They want to use the drug to take over the rest of the population on Earth,” he finished with a flourish.
All that was missing was a ta-da to add dramatic effect, but it was implied. Fornell however, was too shaken by the announcement to chuckle. Was there really a serious attempt to take over the world by using a drug that could make people perform like mindless automatons? If the Atlantis base had been compromised then clearly the potential for it to be used to control the entire planet was not an outlandish theoretical idea promulgated by a bunch of egg-heads. General O’Neill hardly seemed the type to be swept up in fanciful maybes.
“You aren’t shitting me about mind control?”
“I wish that were the case but unfortunately, it’s real. It was recently used on Col Sheppard and kept him docile and cooperative despite being savagely beaten and starved almost to death. This was an officer who in his first year in command on Atlantis managed to thwart a violent attempt to gain control of the base by the Genii Army during a cataclysmic storm. When they evacuated all non-essential personnel, the base was left vulnerable to being attacked. Although three of the Atlantis personnel returned from the mainland to help end the siege, Sheppard singlehandedly killed over fifty Genii soldiers who were highly trained, yet the drug, MCD- 238β left him helpless to resist.
Fornell cursed and even if he’d stopped believing in God, the nuns and brothers had beaten the catechism into his psyche so effectively, a part of him still expected to be struck down by bolts of lightning. It might be totally irrational, but the old Jesuit saying, ‘Give me a child until they are seven and they’ll be ours for life,’ mostly held true in his experience as an American Italian brought up in the church.
“What are we doing about it? Tell me we are doing something…anything,” he pleaded hoarsely. O’Neill patted his shoulder comfortingly as the Homeworld Command director poured more coffee for them both.
“We have a vaccine against MCD- 238β and you’ll be vaccinated as soon as you arrive on base. It is SOP now. Meanwhile and this whole conversation is classified, we have set up a massive laboratory out here in Pegasus to manufacture the vaccine so as soon as we have sufficient quantity we can vaccinate everyone on Earth and all of our allies in the Milky Way. But we need to be discreet and do so without tipping off the spies in the AIO and the Trust,” he said, looking highly satisfied. “But realistically, to produce quantities in that volume takes time and we don’t want them knowing we’re on to them.”
Fornell was relieved to know that they had a plan in place and that there was indeed a vaccine. What he’d learnt since being read in on the mandate for Homeworld Command and the Stargate Program was certainly enough to cause him chronic insomnia…well if he didn’t already suffer from it. Shaking his head, he reminded himself that the fact that Homeworld Command was on top of this horrific threat to subjugate the World was because DiNozzo had come to Atlantis as an investigator. His abilities would literally save the world, maybe even races on other planets – it was huge!
As the two men sat together in the conference room still in SCIF mode, drinking their coffee in silence, it was more than likely that both were contemplating the terrible consequences that could have unfolded if DiNozzo hadn’t been the one to investigate. What if someone else, a more conventional thinker, less prone to making connections that only he seemed capable of observing had been in charge. The possibility was incredibly bleak.
Eventually, by unspoken agreement, the recently re-hired veteran agent and the Lieutenant General moved their discussion back toward more prosaic matters. General O’Neill outlined how Paddington wanted to crack down on the sexual harassment and domestic violence and abuse in Atlantis’ civilian and military personnel and how Tony had already declared a zero-tolerance policy for that harassing behaviour and bigoted attitudes.
Finally, O’Neill discussed how Anthony DiNozzo and little Tali had come to be on Atlantis as part of a rather extreme form of witness protection and that they were living there under new identities supplied by Homeworld Command. Fornell was also somewhat surprised to learn that they had another former federal agent, FBI Bureau Chief Aaron Hotchner, and his fourteen-year-old son Jack, residing on Atlantis, also in WitSec. Like Tobias, Tony had been responsible for Hotch being hired as a prosecutor, something that not a lot of people knew about the profiler’s former career.
O’Neill had made it very clear that the Trust and other power factions would like to get their hands on DiNozzo and his daughter, who was now calling himself Alexander Paddington and Tali was now called Annabelle ‘Belle’ Paddington. As a result of all the stress he was under, he desperately needed an experienced agent to watch his back and someone who was able to conduct investigations without constant supervision, which was why Fornell had gotten the nod.
Chapter 17
Later, after General O’Neill and Tobias Fornell left the jumper in the docking bay, which was above the gate room alongside the other puddle jumpers, (so-called because they were small enough to travel through the stargate), Fornell stared around at the city in awe. It was just mind-blowing to think how old this city was. A Spaceship that was also capable of interstellar flight, and yet it was still functional. It had survived who knows how many millennia and although the décor was…different, it wasn’t anywhere near as disturbing as some other places he could think.
The NCIS headquarters in DC was much worse in his opinion. It was pretty damned surreal when you thought about it – that some Alien culture from back before humans had begun a nomadic existence would have a less jarring sense of what was aesthetically pleasing than some head-up-their-ass interior designer who probably got paid an obscene amount of money to come up with the NCIS interiors. What was even more unfathomable to Fornell, after the building had been blown up by a deranged terrorist bomber and they moved the headquarters to the Marine Base at Quantico, Director Vance had the new bullpen painted in the same colours as the original. Now that was really whacked!
Most people who visited the new Quantico headquarters of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and its previous incarnation within the Naval Yard at Anacostia in DC were overwhelmed by the pumpkin-orange-coloured walls, but a far smaller group of visitors were privy to an even more disturbing assault to one’s senses should they be invited into the conference rooms. Generally, only witnesses, loved ones of slain victims or fellow LEOs from police departments or sister agencies saw the vermilion red, pumpkin-orange and ultramarine blue clash of colours which always left Fornell feeling rather nauseated. Given that FBI décor leaned more toward neutral colours of institutionalised grey or green combinations, whoever decided the NCIS colour scheme, he’d always been relieved that he didn’t work there.
Still, he wasn’t given much of an opportunity to rubberneck at the alien architecture before General O’Neill bustled him off to the infirmary where they both had to undergo scanning to make sure that they hadn’t brought some contagion with them or as Jack snarked at the Chief Medical Officer, a hitch-hiker. Plus, they had blood drawn and Tobias was immediately given a vaccination against the terrifying mind control drug…what had the general referred to it as? He thought it was MDC something, maybe double-digit beta.
When he asked the Chief Medical Officer what it was called she looked at him as if he had two heads. Maybe she was just having a difficult day, she sure had been quick to start whining to O’Neill about the quarantine lockdown of the family unit and that Atlantis had refused to let her in so she could conduct medical tests. When the Artificial Intelligence program suddenly popped in, literally shimmering into existence as she was complaining about not being able to diagnose the pathogen, she meeped in surprise at its abrupt appearance.
Ignoring her, the holographic interface started giving O’Neill a sitrep, making the Chief Medical Officer’s sour expression turn downright hostile. Fornell decided to keep his mouth shut and observe this thing straight out of a science fiction novel. Oh wait, his inner Tobias snarked, you have landed right in the middle of real-life science fiction… except it is all true.
Like an excited dumbstruck kid, the professionally trained observer could hardly help himself, automatically cataloguing what he was seeing. The AI which had chosen to use the persona and appearance of a character in one of the Star Trek franchises, borrowing a Mr Spock-like Vulcan whose name Fornell did not know, reported that Atlantis had just determined that the feared contagion of the young children in Miss Fraiser’s class was deemed a false alarm and ‘She’ intended to end quarantine in the next twenty minutes. O’Neill acknowledged the information and the AI then proceeded to inform him that the Black Queen would be arriving at their location in 38.057 seconds.
Truly, Tobias felt a little bit like he was Alice in Wonderland, having fallen down the rabbit hole, he couldn’t help wondering who the Black Queen was. Fortunately, he didn’t have too long to wait before Penelope Garcia turned up in the Infirmary and she gave him a warm welcome to Atlantis, starting with a life-affirming hug from the caring computer technician. It seemed that she was The Black Queen and that the AI believed she hung the moon.
After discussing the matter briefly with General O’Neill, she offered to show Tobias to his quarters and then give him the grand tour because Capt. Cadman, who had been scheduled to do the honours had an incident that required her attention as head of base security. Tobias was grateful that someone he already knew was going to show him around, although he felt a pang of disappointment when the AI hologram headed out of the Infirmary, accompanying General O’Neill, who told him he’d see him later.
~o0o~
“The Chief Medical Officer was not at all joyful about Atlantis imposing a medical lockdown of the Family quarters,” Janae Progenius observed in all seriousness. “She ordered me to override the quarantine, even though she is cognizant of the fact that Atlantis is sentient, and therefore I do not have the capacity to do that, nor did I wish to,” he complained in a peeved manner. Jack was reminded of a child, whose attitude might be described as, Keller’s not the boss of me,’ not a AI program that was ten-thousand-years old.
Smothering a smile, Jack glanced at the AI as they were making their way to check in with Lorne. “Yeah, I kinda got the memo that she wasn’t a happy camper when she started giving me a flea in my ear about it during the medical exam,” he deadpanned.
J.P. in his Tuvok persona, quirked one eyebrow and Jack was insanely jealous. Oh, how cool would it have been if he could have done that to Hathor, Baal, and that sadistic bitch Nirrti back when he was with SG1 and kicking serious Goa’uld butt. He just knew it would have pissed them off, which was something he’d loved to do; the humourless slimy snaky parasites did not appreciate being mocked. And that probably explained why he derived so much gratification from insulting and ridiculing them.
“Why would Dr Jennifer Keller want to place a microscopic parasitical creature in your auditory canal, General Jonathon O’Neill? Do you wish for me to arrange for it to be removed or to remonstrate with her, so she does not continue with this unacceptable behaviour?”
Jack looked cynically at J.P., trying to figure out if the AI was trolling him or not. Sighing, he decided to play it safe and assume that it was a misunderstanding.
“She didn’t put a real flea in my ear, I was speaking metaphorically,” he explained as he would to a small child. “She was annoying, and I was agreeing with you that she is peeved.”
“Ah, I see. We are in concord with regards to her attitude,” the Tuvok hologram stated sagely before taking on a more pensive mien, albeit by cocking his head to the left while quirking his right eyebrow a few millimetres before he said, “I will admit that the Ancient’s original language has evolved greatly in this millennia into the common usage of metaphors and idiom to an astonishing degree.”
Jack considered that statement- thinking about how pop culture had hastened the process to an extent truly mind-blowing. He nodded, “True enough.”
“It is very colourful but not easy to understand for those who would take words in their literal sense,” J.P. confessed with a touch of frustration.
Jack chuckled, “I can only imagine, although I have hung out with my buddy Teal’c, a Jaffa who felt as you do. Just be glad you don’t have to converse with some of the subgroups back on Earth who’ve developed their own derivations, which are almost unintelligible to anyone else who isn’t a member of their tribe.”
“Like Dr Radek Zelenka or Dr Aoife O’Shea? When they feel especially passionate about something and commence to ranting, I can barely make out the words, let alone what meaning they are trying to convey.”
Thinking that when Zelenka was cursing up a blue streak in Czech that was hardly surprising, but Jack wisely decided not to share that with the AI. Instead, he replied, “Sure, I guess, but I was thinking about subcultures like surfers or rappers who’ve developed their own unique variation on our language,” Jack said. “It would fry your circuits,” he said before backtracking to explain, “That means it would be extremely frustrating.”
“Thank you, I will count my blessings that I have not encountered these groups then. I have no desire to fry my circuits in either the literal or metaphoric sense. Of that I am certain. ”
Jack chuckled. Although he was still concerned that the IA might decide to take over Atlantis like HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey, he was rapidly warming to the computer intelligence, if only because it amused him. J.P. also drove him crazy because he found it impossible to read the hologram, particularly the persona being employed at the moment, to tell if the AI was trolling or not. It was an effective way to deflect attention, O’Neill conceded, knowing a thing or two about deflection himself. He remembered with a grin, once before an off-world mission when he’d let smart Jack off his leash as they were heading off to study a black hole. Danny’s expression had been priceless when he sprouted off a bunch of astrological technobabble, leaving the archaeologist dumbfounded. Yeah, obtuseness was a very effective mask if you wanted people to underestimate you.
“Not that I’m complaining about your company, J.P. but did you wish to discuss anything further?”
“Well, I wished to inform you that Alex Paddington is giving evidence in Letus Kobbi’s military hearing, but I know that he desired to speak to you ASAP, General.”
“He is giving evidence via video link, yeah?”
“No exactly. He and Prosecutor Aaron Hotchner have been giving evidence of their interrogations via hologram,” J.P. informed him. It seemed to be a preferable option instead of a two-dimension representation on a screen,” he explained.
Jack nodded his agreement. Having used similar technology when he’d been on various missions with Thor, Supreme Commander of the Asgard Fleet on quite some missions, he was rather nonchalant about appearing as a hologram, “Sweet, well done. Okay, tell him that we’ll meet in his interview room tonight for dinner and a briefing.”
“I will deliver your communiqué, General O’Neill,” J.P. informed him seriously.
“Excellent. And before you go, can you tell me where Lt Commanders Vukovic and Mayfield are right now?”
“They have both been placed under constant surveillance as you ordered. Currently, Gregory Vukovic is in the gym running on a treadmill and has run 3.768 miles. Before that he went to the Mess and ordered sort of salmon and salad and Tali Mayfield had a Caesar Salad for lunch. At this moment she resting in her quarters, reading an erotic romance Rush: Book One of the Breathless Series by Maya Banks and…”
J.P. was frozen and Jack found that a little creepy before the hologram reanimated and continued speaking. “An update, Dr Ulf Rasmussen has just entered her quarters and they appear to be trying to exchange saliva. I believe they intend to…”
“ That’s okay, Jan Gen, I have a pretty good idea what they are planning on doing. Just for future reference, I think that might have been a tad too much information which I didn’t need to know,” O’Neill said feeling a little bit voyeuristic. “That said, I’m grateful that you are taking such a personal interest in monitoring them both, J.P. Thank you!”
Jack left the smiling holographic doppelganger cum Vulcan Tuvok in his wake which was just plain bizarre because first of all, Vulcan’s despised emotion and displays of emotion. Second of all, did the AI program experience emotions or did J.P. merely comprehend them in an abstract sense?
He pondered over the issue as he continued on his way to check in with Lt Col Lorne for a SitRep on what had transpired while he was back on Earth, causing mayhem in DC. If he were to ask Carter or Daniel about the emotional possibilities of J.P. he was pretty sure they’d insist that he was a lifeform now he’d created a body (of sorts) for himself. But Jack decided to talk the matter over with Garcia who had been working closely with the artificial intelligence interface. He hoped that her initial findings would be that Janae Progenius posed no immediate threats to anyone on Atlantis if they didn’t threaten those people J.P. viewed as people that ‘he’ existed to protect.
~o0o~
Later that evening, Tony made his way to the interrogation/ interview rooms that Atlantis had created for his use. He’d left Tali having dinner with Cassie, Amelia, and Ronon in the Mess. All of the personnel in the family wing were happy to be out of lockdown, it had been a long six days but still, it served its purpose while they investigated the situation with the judge advocates. As he looked around his domain, glad to be back here in the flesh, there was a knock on the door. Mentally unlocking the door, it slid inside the wall to reveal one of the personnel who worked in the Mess, Corporal Eileen Grimes standing outside with a trolley loaded with food.
Entering the room, she looked around curiously. “General O’Neill requested that dinner be delivered,” she told him, smiling.
“Requested, did he?” Tony smirked.
Grimes chuckled. “The General doesn’t throw his weight around, unlike every other general I’ve encountered,” she said. “ He asked, politely. So where do you want me to put it, Agent Paddington,” she asked?
He gestured to the table in the kitchen area, “Let’s put it there on the round table,” he said and moved to help her unload the food that looked like it could feed a small army.
“That’s okay, you don’t have to help,” she said.
He ignored her, knowing that everyone appreciated being assisted, besides, standing there watching was a little too much shades of his parents’ servants for Tony’s tastes. “Thanks, Corporal,” he looked at the food and said, “It smells great, but I think you might have forgotten something,” he said noticing the missing plates.
She frowned, checking everything but smiled with obvious relief. “No, I remembered the Sasha Torte,” she said as he tried not to laugh. Most of the base was well aware of Jack’s fondness for cake, and he recalled Daniel Jackson regaling them with a funny incident where their whole team were coerced to overindulge in his weakness for sweets when an alien entity put a microscopic device inside their brains to mine data about them in a creepy David Attenborough kind of way.
Shaking his head, he told her, “Not the General’s cake, Corporal Grimes. I was thinking about eating implements. Although I have glasses, and a few paper plates in the kitchenette, that won’t cut the mustard, I’m afraid.”
“Ah, you mean the plates, flatware and glasses,” she noted. “ Don’t worry, they should be here soon, Agent Paddington,” she explained.
“PFC Ramirez insisted he knew a shortcut from the mess to this tower, but the guy still gets lost several times a week,” she complained as he finally showed up looking chastened not to have arrived before Cpl Grimes had.
Since the corporal had been stationed on Atlantis for almost seventeen months, it was hardly a surprise she knew her was around way better than Ramirez did, who’d only arrived some seven weeks ago. Like many young (and not so young) guys, he was blithely self-confident about being a far superior navigator than his female counterparts. It obviously never occurred to the kid that experience negotiating the sprawling city would automatically give Eileen the edge over him. That, plus he was from some small town in Maine, and Sergeant Grimes had grown up in NYC so was used to navigating around a huge metropolis.
As Grimes hurried to help unpack the trolley containing the rest of the meal, Tony went to the refrigerator, to grab non-alcoholic drinks and bottled water. While he retrieved the chilled beverages, he couldn’t help remembering an analogous situation back in Caitlin Todd’s first year after she joined NCIS, and they’d been working a case aboard a Navy aircraft carrier. She’d insisted she knew how to reach the office of the sailor they needed to interview quicker than he could, even though finding your way aboard the ship was no easy feat and it was her first time aboard a navy carrier. One thing about Cate that stuck in his memory, she had supreme confidence in her abilities, even when, no, especially when she was barking up the wrong tree. And as a profiler, Tony would have to categorise her own profiling as her spending a lot of time barking at cats up incorrect trees which usually turned out not to be trees at all, but telegraph poles.
Tony stopped Grimes and Ramirez before they left, requesting that they leave the stainless-steel trolleys so they could pack up the meal after they’d eaten. At that point, General O’Neill, Admiral Chegwidden, and General Santiago wandered in, took plates, and started filling them. Several minutes later, Ambassador AuClair, Lorne and Cadman hurried into the room, collected their plates, filling them with various dishes, before parking themselves down at the table, and greeting the other guests.
Lorne grinned at Tony, “Nice to see you in the flesh, Alex. Where’s Belle tonight? With Teyla and the boys or Kazumi and her folk?
“Nice to be in the flesh, too,” he smiled back. “As for the littlest Paddington, she ate dinner with Teyla’s bunch but she’s spending the evening with Amelia, Ronon and Cassie. I think that the kids have gotten heartily sick of being in such close proximity during lockdown so I thought a little breathing space might be in order,” he explained before changing the subject. “So, what’s been going on since I’ve been locked down?”
As they chatted about various incidents, mostly petty theft and a couple of disagreements that had come to blows, they finished with the main course and moved on to coffee and cake. Tony had operated the sophisticated coffee machine like a professional barista (which he had been when he was working his way through college) making everyone superior cups of coffee to order.
General Santiago took a sip of his and savoured it. “This is good, but isn’t it obligatory for cops and federal agents to drink stewed drip-filtered coffee that is thick and sludgy?”
Tony chuckled, “According to the cop shows it is and to also consume vast quantities of two-day-old stale doughnuts. But this room also serves as a place to interview witnesses and victims. Offering them good coffee and tea isn’t much but it helps, and our intention is to use the room as a place for people to attend support groups,” he told the Air Force Judge Advocate General.
Which led to desultory talk about the type of support groups that might use the room for meetings.
“Our psychologist, Dr O’Shea was talking about support groups for ACOAs,” Tony said and got blank looks from everyone but Lorne, (which was interesting) so he clarified. “It’s an anagram for Adult Children of Alcoholics,” he said, his active brain filing away that little snippet about the lieutenant colonel for a later date. “They can be at a much higher risk of developing drug and alcohol issues of their own, plus a host of other issues. And Dr O’Shea was talking about groups for victims of domestic violence, too. Possibly PTSD support groups too if we can swing it, as it’s such a common malady for people in our line of work,” he frowned. “But we’re waiting on extra mental health professionals. She’s got way too much on her plate at the moment as it is,” he explained.
Jack nodded. “Paddington isn’t exaggerating about her having too much to deal with, but my 2IC is on it. He’s hoping that at least one of his recruits will be on the next supply run of the Zephyrus leaving Earth in a couple of days. Hopefully, that should take some of the strain off.
Lorne looked pleased by the news. “That’s great! By the way, Dr O’Shea suggested that we a physical challenge of some sort to help boost morale, since it has been really stressful on the civilian and military personnel having the Genii here on Atlantis.”
Cadman looked intent. “ I think that is a really sensible suggestion. Maybe some sort of a treasure hunt with teams that need to use brain, brawn, and other types of skills to find clues,” she said enthusiastically. We could mix up the teams or let people form their own, she said.
Tony nodded. “I like it, kind of like a Lantean version of the reality show, The Great Race,” he said enthusiastically. “I agree tempers are getting short, and we are only halfway through the Genii trials. There are still the two top-ranked Genii to be tried and then there are Lavin’s two trials as well.
“We should ask Cassie, Vala, Daniel and a few others to put together some ideas,” he suggested before getting up and making coffee and tea refills for those who wanted them. He was thinking about how Cpl Grimes could end up wiping the floor with PFC Ramirez and he vowed if they were on separate teams, he was placing a modest wager on her with Chuck who would no doubt run a betting pool.
AuClair and Lorne were nodding and making several additional suggestions about people they could co-opt for the challenge/ treasure hunt. Tony suggested that they shouldn’t forget to involve the kids in the activity too and the two leaders agreed that was a great idea, particularly the older kids like Jack Hotchner.
After dinner, Alex, Cadman, and Lorne quickly stacked the detritus of their meal back onto the trolleys from the Mess and left them outside in the corridor. Lorne sent a message via comms to the Mess that the meal had been cleared, and packed up, ready to be collected and after they set things to rights in the small kitchenette, they retook their seats. Jack called the meeting to order and then the group settled down to discuss the current situation with Lt Cdrs Vukovic and Mayfield.
Jack outlined what he’d learnt on his trip to Earth; that two of the JCS aided and abetted by the Head of SAD which changed its name to Special Activities Centre following its restructuring back in 2016 had decided to remove SAIC Alex Paddington from his position in Atlantis.
“Turns out that Dr Rodney McKay was working on several off-the-books special projects for the Army, Marine Corps, and the CIA. They were furious when McKay flipped out and wasn’t able to continue his work on their weapons systems,” he said, his eyes flinty.
Although he was pissed off, O’Neill’s face was expressionless apart from the subtle but forceful steeliness with his eyes that was difficult for even the best actor to control. Moreover, everyone with the possible exception of Henri AuClair knew he was fit to be tied and knew to tread carefully. No one was suicidal enough to want to provide the spark that set him off, knowing that bloviators were pretty much all bark and no bite – it was the quietly contained types you needed to watch out for. If they did let loose it was a take-no-prisoners fallout. While General O’Neill usually hid his lethality behind a carapace of dim-witted affability mixed with snarky cynicism, to cross him was not a clever idea as certain high-ranking persons back home would soon learn at their peril.
It was the former Navy SEAL who decided to ask the question that everyone was mentally asking. “So, what’s the connection between McKay’s breakdown and wanting Alex gone?”
“A spy on Atlantis informed them that Paddington was responsible for McKay’s freak out,” he said succinctly.
“Do we know who their spy is, General,” Lorne asked, immediately zeroing in on the worrying confirmation of something they’d long suspected. Just as they suspected that the IOA and maybe even the Trust had recruited spies to relay sensitive and classified information back to their masters.
“Not yet, but we will,” O’Neill averred coldly. “Colonel Davis and Master Sgt Harriman are on the case.”
General Santiago frowned, not knowing the background. “I take it that the premise that Agent Paddington caused McKay’s breakdown is a false one?”
O’Neill scowled at the Judge Advocate General. “Not that it’s relevant to our discussion, but he became the inadvertent trigger, playing the piano one night socially and that made the highly delusional and extremely paranoid CSO flip out. However, that geyser was primed and ready to blow because McKay was abusing stimulant drugs, and was physically and mentally exhausted, creating what Dr O’Shea described as a perfect storm. In fact, the whole security breach that caused him to start sucking down uppers like candy is looking more and more like it was just another trigger to a deeper underlying schism exposed during the search for Colonel Sheppard.”
Lorne agreed. “I can confirm that Rodney was teetering on the precipice that night. Anyone could have accidentally sent him over the edge. It was just unfortunate that Alex was the final shove,” he flashed a look of apology at Alex, feeling bad for him.
O’Neill nodded impatiently. “As I said, not relevant except for the fact that even if their plan to remove Paddington had succeeded, Dr O’Shea has confirmed that McKay was not going to be declared fit to return to duty any time soon.”
Ambassador AuClair looked concerned. “Does she have any idea how long he might be on leave,” he asked. “Atlantis technology is complex and prone to breakdowns. He’s saved the base from catastrophes on countless occasions. We need him back asap.”
Lorne half-heartedly nodded his head. “That’s true, but some of the time those catastrophes have been because he or one of the scientists have meddled with stuff without taking proper care. If people were more cautious, we might save a lot of angst. Even on off-world missions – I’ve been reading through some of the reports that SAIC Paddington has compiled. If we had more sensible security protocols and better before and after mission analysis and intel, we could undoubtedly reduce a lot of the risks.”
General O’Neill was pleased to see that Lorne was on board with Alex’s recommendations. He told him, “Good, I agree. Which is why Nikola Bates, a former CIA intelligence analyst will be arriving on the next scheduled supply run in roughly three weeks.”
Lorne grinned. “Awesome! Is she related to Sgt Bates by any chance,” he inquired.
“She’s his ex-wife, but it was a perfectly amicable split. He recommended her for the job,” Jack revealed. Eventually, we hope to recruit several more specialist intel analysts, but recruitment and vetting take time,” O’Neill told them.
“Okay, but that still doesn’t answer the question about Rodney,” AuClair worried at the issue like an animal licking an open sore.
Smiling grimly, the head of Homeworld Command smiled mysteriously. “I can’t give you a timeframe, Ambassador. Nobody can and if they say they can then they are blowing smoke up your ass, but I think I have come up with a pretty decent workaround. I’m still waiting on final approval for a temporary replacement for McKay; someone who can continue to work on the CIA, Army, and the Corps special projects. If they are approved, then I’m sure they are more than capable of helping to save Atlantis should it become necessary,” he said with deep irony leaving everyone wondering who it was.
“Besides, I think we are underestimating the potential of Janae Progenius and even Atlantis,” Alex pointed out. “It isn’t in their interest to let the city blow up.”
Obviously monitoring the conversation, the AI hologram popped up. “ The Special Agent in Charge is correct in his assertion. My programming enjoins me to protect the lives of Janus’ kith and kin. Since there are people on Atlantis who have Ancient genes, I will do my utmost to protect them and the kith they care about. Meanwhile, Atlantis wants me to share with you that she has similar philosophies too. In fact, it would be a mistake to simply assume that every time you have been in grave peril, it was the Chief Science Officer who assured your survival. We have both, at various times in the last eight Earth years that you have resided in the city, how do you say it…saved you baking.”
As people stifled a laugh at the mangled idiom, O’Neill stared long and hard at Tuvok aka J.P. before replying, “Well that’s good to know. So, when the Ancients got cocky and Helia let the Asurans take over Atlantis, why didn’t she step in then?”
J.P. stood silently; his features inscrutable with his head cocked to the side as if listening to something that no one else could hear.
“ Atlantis says that it was because Helia was very foolhardy and intemperate. Her attempts to remove the Terreuan expeditionary force from the city as swiftly as possible and her refusal to listen to accounts of what had taken place during the ten millennia of their absence caused Helia to act unwisely. In her haste to oust you all, feeling that they had a greater claim to the city than you had, even though it had been abandoned for ten thousand years, she underestimated the Asurans badly. Unfortunately, Atlantis was powerless to stop her since after her arrival she inputted the Ancients’ code, enabling her to take control of Atlantis and she was duty-bound to obey Helia.
Clearing his throat to get everyone’s attention, Admiral Chegwidden stated, “While I’m sure this is very fascinating, maybe we should get back on track. Somehow we’ve managed to get way off-topic. How the hell did two Navy judge advocates who were obviously compromised, managed to get switched onto the duty roster for the Genii Trials?”
“It was planning, good intel and bad luck. Had I not been called away to help unlock some of the Ancient Technology for our top-secret research facilities as a matter of urgency, I’d have noticed the substitution immediately, O’Neill growled. “It is doubtful they would have tried to sneak anyone past me had I remained on Atlantis but the person or persons spying on us for the CIA tipped them off that I was off-world and not scheduled to return for a week to ten days.”
He went on to fill them in on how their newest agent, Tobias Fornell had investigated Commander Patrick’s car crash and discovered a small highly sophisticated incendiary device planted in the judge advocate’s car. He also related how the CIA had switched the meds of the mother of the second judge advocate, precipitating her stroke to get Lt Com Karlson off the mission to Atlantis.
While everyone was silently digesting the utter ruthlessness of those actions, General Santiago had a question. “What about the vetting and security clearances? Mayfield’s gambling addiction should have precluded her from getting approval. I mean, those sorts of security clearances don’t happen overnight.” Although none of his officers had been compromised, Santiago realised that was probably good luck more than good management.
“Oh no they knew alright. The CIA had her in their sights for the longest time, Vukovic too as blackmail targets. Both by our enemies and for their own purposes if the need arose, which it did. As to the vetting, it was faked,” he told them furiously. “If we hadn’t found them then I don’t want to think about the security risk they posed.
Bottom line folks we do need to ID those spies who are funnelling back incorrect intel to the JCS, the IOA and especially those MFs at the Trust asap,” he ordered to the room at large as Cadman, Tony and Lorne nodded their agreement.
“So, the head spook at SAC approached Army Chief of Staff General Conrad and Marine Corps Chief of Staff General Rosen with a hair-brained scheme to send a couple of corrupted JAG lawyers here to compromise Paddington. Of course, what is classified, is that Paddington isn’t just the Special Agent in Charge in Atlantis, he will be the first Director of the new law enforcement agency known as the Inter-Stellar Bureau of Investigations when we get all our duck in a row regarding personnel and formal agreements with the various world governments who will help staff the new law enforcement agency. The president is incendiary,” he said, flicking a glance at the artificial intelligence hologram momentarily.
General Santiago smirked. “Think you mean incensed, O’Neill.”
Jack sported a predatory grin, as he looked around the room. “No, pretty sure I meant that he was in the mood to blow stuff up, like those three idiots who decided to set Paddington up. They were pretty closed mouth about how Vukovic and Mayfield were going to compromise him once they realised that POTUS was going to fuck them over, but we have a damned good idea.”
Colonel Lorne interrupted. “Actually General, Vukovic and Mayfield admitted what the plan was. J.P. had a little chat with them both, separately of course and they were very cooperative,” he said with a tight smile.
“They confessed,” O’Neill clarified? “How? Why?”
Lorne shrugged. “J.P. had a nice little chat about how environmental controls on Atlantis were easily manipulated, including heating, cooling, oxygen levels, and water temperatures in the shower units. He might have mentioned how he was programmed to protect the humans on Atlantis who were direct descendants of the Ancients who built the city. He told them he was most protective of those who had the strongest Ancient technology gene, including you, Colonel Sheppard, and Agent Paddington. Ms Garcia also suggested he might like to ask them if they’d ever read or watched a movie called 2001: A Space Odyssey,” Lorne smirked.
J.P. nodded. “Yes the Black Queen was most helpful, and I was honoured to be collaborating with such a keen intellect. Lt Commanders Mayfield and Vukovic were quite agitated by that point in the conversation. When I asked them why they were targeting Alexander Paddington, they spilt their stomach contents quite expeditiously.”
“And what did they say,” Jack demanded.
“They both independently said they’d been approached some time ago by someone they suspected was a ghost.”
“A spook,” Alex muttered sotto voce.
J.P. ignored the interruption. “Lt Cdr Tali Mayfield said that she had a problem with bookmakers a few years ago but had quit and was paying off her debts. The ghost knew about her secret and threatened to expose her if she didn’t do what they wanted. Lt Cdr Gregory Vukovic was a slightly tougher nut to shell, but he did admit that he was hiding in a cupboard in the navy and like his colleague, the ghost told him if he did what he said, his secret was safe. I confess that I do not understand why they didn’t wish for people to know that they hid in cupboards and made books.”
AuClair responded. “Janae Progenius raises a good point re Lt Cdr Vukovic being gay. DADT was repealed in 2011 so why was he still in the closet?”
“Why are a lot of people who aren’t in the military still in the closet? Because of other people’s bigotry,” Admiral Chegwidden told him a little tartly.
Jack looked pissed off as he explained. “A number of those who are high up in the military are still highly homophobic and just because DADT doesn’t exist anymore, doesn’t change that. Vukovic and many others like him chose not to come out because of this, fearing that their promotions may be jeopardised.”
Alex scowled, “And the terrible irony is that deciding to remain closeted, Vukovic plastered a giant target on himself because by staying secret, he became blackmailable by people at the top of the food chain, not to mention our good friends at the Trust.”
Everyone was silent as they considered the situation.
AuClair looked at General O’Neill. “So, several questions. What happens now and how do we deal with the issue of spies on Atlantis?”
Chapter 18
Aoife was concerned. Alex had contacted him this morning, asking if he could schedule a private early morning appointment on Monday before the Genii trials got underway. She had been working with him both professionally in his law enforcement capacity and personally as a single father and victim of assault, forced to go into hiding while dealing with many complicating factors. She liked to think she’d come to know him rather well. Her clinician’s ear was hearing someone who was extremely stressed, angry, and afraid but trying to tamp down on his emotions and stay in control. Moreover, she knew that there had been a briefing held last night, only a few hours after General Jack had arrived back on Atlantis with a stranger, who Penelope Garcia seemed to know. That briefing had gone on well into the early hours, AJ had woken her when he’d returned, looking sombre and was closed mouth.
She’d know that something was afoot all week, with an urgent meeting called right before O’Neill had made an unscheduled emergency trip back to Earth. In his absence, there had been several after-hours meetings between AJ, General Santiago, Ambassador AuClair, Col Lorne and Capt. Cadman. Even if she and AJ hadn’t been sharing her quarters and a whole lot more (although not pillow talk, because her work was just as confidential as his) the psychologist would have known about them, due to her sessions with McKay and Sheppard. Both were chaffing under the knowledge that something big was happening and that they were being kept out of the loop.
Of course, while he was upset not to be read in, John accepted that he wasn’t going to be able to return to active duty until the trials had been completed, especially as he was the star witness for the prosecution. They were taking up a considerable amount of his time and energy and having to relive and testify to the event surrounding his abduction, torture and incarceration were extremely stressful. It had caught the Colonel by surprise just how taxing they’d been on him emotionally and that was even though these current trials had not involved charging the lowly ranked prisoners with the most violent crimes committed against Sheppard. Those trials dealing with the intimate torture and sexual assault would take place after the mass military trials were completed and would be in a vastly different format, using a tribunal made up of representatives from different planets in the Milky Way to help contain details of the devastatingly dangerous compound MCD -238β. Since those trials would be incredibly traumatic, Aoife had no intention of signing off on his return to work until after they were out of the way.
So, while his grouching had been expected, she also noted that he was resigned to not being read in until he was back on active duty again. He wasn’t happy but he was accepting. This was in direct contrast to Rodney, who blustered and tried to bully his way into making her sign off on resuming his position as Chief Science Officer. Every mandatory therapy session started the same way, with McKay attempting to pressure her into declaring him fit for duty and when she refused, him launching into his usual diatribe about how people were out to destroy him. In his delusionary view, it was because people were jealous that he was the most intelligent person in multiple galaxies. When she failed to engage with him on either topic, despite his perseverance he would eventually reluctantly move on, given no other choice.
At the moment, he was still refusing to concede that the security firewalls protecting Homeworld Command were impossible for him to breach (because he believed he was the smartest person in the universe), and he refused to concede that what he’d done was illegal. He kept insisting that he should have been read in on the secret project – because he was the smartest person in the world and therefore had a right to know what was going on. It was a purely circular argument and until he was willing to admit liability for his actions, there was no way he would be permitted to return to work, let alone be permitted to hold any positions of authority. So, this week had made him even more manic, knowing something serious that was going on, and not being in the midst of it.
Of course, there was the whole mysterious incident of the lockdown of the resident family quarters by Atlantis due to a potentially contagious infection that was lifted late yesterday. Rodney and his partner, Jennifer Keller were going bat-shit crazy over the quarantine, insisting that they should be investigating the contagion. However, Ambassador AuClair and Col. Lorne had taken the conservative approach that until any of the individuals being quarantined developed symptoms, there was no need to adopt an aggressive stance or try to break Atlantis’ lockdown. They insisted that it made sense to take a wait-and-see approach. The bottom line was that Dr McKay didn’t have the power to act since his CSO position was suspended and he wasn’t permitted to touch any computer and when no one was experiencing symptoms, Keller couldn’t declare a medical crisis.
The lockdown had also meant that Rodney wasn’t able to spend any time that week playing piano which he had begun to depend on as a way of filling in his day, particularly as he was locked out of any of the labs on Atlantis. He’d been noticeably a lot angrier this week without access to the music room and Aoife was relieved to hear that he was able to go back to playing the baby grand, provided he didn’t go near either of the Paddingtons. His animosity towards them both was still very evident, and he was still not permitted to approach them.
So, knowing that something was going on, even if she hadn’t pumped AJ for information, she was concerned that making an appointment for Alex on Monday was not the best course of action. Sure, over the last month or two, he’d dropped down from seeing her twice weekly to once a week and they had been toying with the idea of reducing his sessions even further. But she decided not to ignore her clinician’s gut instinct that Alex was in trouble, the psychologist told him she would see him at 1130 hours today. The relief in his voice and the genuine guilt that he was disturbing her weekend off confirmed that whatever had caused his distress, it was urgent and couldn’t wait. She wondered what was wrong. Well, she would find out in a couple of hours.
~o0o~
Tony was feeling anxious. He’d reached out to request an appointment with Dr O’Shea on Monday before the trial began again. He was barely coping with the idea that some super influential people in the US government had decided to set him up on false charges of sexual assault to get him terminated and sent back to Earth. It was horrific and sick and the ultimate in irony considering his own experience but as terrible as it was, he was still relieved to know that it was three members of the US government who had hatched their conspiracy to ruin his and Tali’s lives, not the Trust. And how fucked up was it that he preferred his own people trying to betray him than a bunch of evil villains intent upon intergalactic domination. But it meant that the Trust didn’t know he was here, at least he hoped that was the case.
Still, he couldn’t deny that it hurt like hell to know a government he’d spent his adult life serving faithfully (apart from the last three years since he’d taken custody of Tali), would just toss him aside like a piece of trash. It reminded him of how two directors had been quite happy sacrificing his career and even his life to attain their own selfish ends for petty revenge and their career advancement. Adding both of those betrayals to all of the everyday situations where he’d been expected to take one for the team left a very bitter taste in his mouth. But it wasn’t a surprise.
What was hard to deal with was the fact that two navy lawyers had, despite their sworn oaths to uphold the law and the constitution, been willing to sacrifice their honour by seducing him, and then accusing him of raping them. Was their pursuit of justice merely a job for them? It must be if they were willing to go along with railroading an innocent person to save their reputations. When Michelle Lee, his timid little probie had betrayed her principles and the team, it hurt but at stake had been a life, her little sister’s life. And when Tony and Ziva rescued little Amanda she had been in mortal danger, drugged and placed on a pressure plate rigged up to explosives to destroy a sophisticated computer network and the little girl if she tried to escape.
Vukovic and Fielding, on the other hand, were simply facing the possible humiliation and loss of promotional opportunities. At least they had been before they allowed themselves to be caught up in a conspiracy to commit a crime against a federal agent. Now they’d be lucky if they didn’t end up with a bad conduct discharge and being disbarred from working as attorneys.
But these weaklings weren’t in mortal danger, and neither was anyone else. They’d taken the easy way out… the coward’s way. Instead of standing up for the principles of law and justice, they’d gone along with a despicable crime because it was convenient to do so. Admiral Chegwidden was nearly as ropeable as Tony was – he knew what it would have meant to Tali’s safety had their plan succeeded. What A.J. had no idea about was that Tony was still struggling to come to terms with finding out he’d been raped by someone he’d worked with. Learning that the judge advocates planned to accuse him of the same crime had made him feel ill. However, one thing he did know was that even without knowing about Ziva and what she’d done, AJ and Jack would make damned sure, that the two JAs didn’t get off easy.
And while it was certainly bad enough for him to lose a whole night’s sleep freaking out over what might have happened if he and Tali had been forced to leave Atlantis, that hadn’t been the end of it. O’Neill had asked him to stay back after the meeting broke up well after midnight and he got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Judging by his boss’ expression, Tony figured he didn’t have good news to impart.
Sadly, he was right! Ziva was alive and she was in the USA. Tali’s mother and her lover, Adam Eshel had both been picked up trying to enter the US. Ziva on a cancelled passport (which was stupid) but then she could be arrogant and dumb at times. She claimed to have been there to collect her and Eshel’s daughter who was being looked after by a friend and former work partner (which was clearly him). When Jack learned of her arrest, he’d pulled strings to have her detained in custody indefinitely calling in Nancy Addison, Director of DHS and formally married to Colonel Sheppard. She arranged for the deportation of the Shin Bet Officer Adam Eshel and conveniently lost Ziva in the system.
That was seven weeks ago, and no one had told him. When he had demanded to know why he’d been kept in the dark, Jack’s s guilty response had genuinely shocked him.
“Look, I could offer some piss poor justification that we were busy interrogating the Genii and preparing for the trials. Plus, after that, there was the whole debacle with McKay hacking our servers and needing an I-hug-me-coat, so from a triage point of view, it seemed to be way down the list of priorities. But they aren’t the main reason why I didn’t want to inform you.”
“Okaaaay,” Tony drawled, trying not to lose his temper. “So, tell me why?”
“I’ve been looking into NCIS and your former teammates, especially Tali’s mother and I gotta say I have a shit ton of concerns about Ms Mossad, Alex. And that’s not accounting for her personal life and how her family somehow seems to end up dead. Revenge, which seems to be her raison d’etre by the way, is not a sane or healthy way to raise a child.”
Tony shook his head. “Look I agree with what you say, but I don’t get how that has anything to do with not telling me that Ziva was alive, General.”
“Well, I know she is Tali’s mother but I’m afraid that the only way she would be allowed to come to Atlantis is over my cold dead body, Son. I know she is the mother of your child and your ex-partner and that you love her, but I am not letting her near the Stargate program…ever.”
“What makes you think I would want Ziva to come to Atlantis? I’ve never raised that possibility, General,” Tony was shocked.
“No, you never have, but you’ve been here for nearly seven months and every time someone mentions you dating, let alone being in a relationship you flip out at the thought of it. Plus, you live like a monk. It’s been over three years since you got custody of Tali, so people thought…”
Do you honestly think I’m grief-stricken over Ziva’s fake death? Once I knew she was back, you really expected I’d welcome her back with open arms and what… we’d settle down and play happy families together. Tali, me, Ziva, her lying, scheming Kidon-trained assassin mother and her Shin Bet lover?”
“You aren’t grief-stricken. You don’t want her to come back into your lives,” O’Neill double-checked, looking mightily relieved.
“Even if we were back on Earth, I would do everything in my power to ensure that Ziva never found Tali. She is toxic and I’ll do anything to protect that little girl from her mother’s interference. As far as I’m concerned, she gave up her parental rights to her daughter when she intentionally faked her death. Ziva made her bed and now she can lie in it.”
Tony was pleased that Jack’s reason for not informing him about Ziva was that the director was looking out for his daughter’s welfare. He wasn’t happy about being left in the dark about her return, but it was a relief to know that he wasn’t going to have to justify not facilitating a reunion between Ziva and her child. For Jack to have independently investigated her career (and probably knew a lot more about her kills pre-NCIS than Tony did) and to be determined to protect Tali said a lot about his promise to protect her. It was evident that O’Neill hadn’t just meant the Trust but anyone who might pose a threat to her.
~o0o~
Aoife was glad she had followed her instincts and decided to see Alex today rather than wait until Monday. Although he had made great strides since he first came to see her and been able to finally confide in her and also Teyla to a lesser degree, by the very nature of his work, he found himself in situations that had the potential to trigger his trauma and anxiety. Plus, his job and education gave him insight into the consequences of what had happened to him which most survivors didn’t possess and that could be a double-edged sword.
One occurrence that the clinician was pleased by was that shortly after he’d gathered his courage to tell her about his ex-partner’s betrayal that he’d then reached out to Teyla Emmagan and confided in her too. After Alex had discovered in the course of an investigation that the Athosian had been raped while under the influence of drugs and that it had resulted in a child, he realised that they were in a unique position to help each other.
While Aoife could and did support him professionally in a way Teyla could not, the Athosian was able to help him in ways that only a fellow survivor could. Just as he was able to support and encourage her too, even though she already had the love and unconditional acceptance of her partner, Kanaan. Alex and Teyla’s mutual support system was helping both of them recover and allowing them to reach out and help support Col Sheppard and Dr Girard even though Alex hadn’t revealed his own experience to them yet. She expected that when the time was right that he and Teyla would do just that but even so, all four individuals were already benefiting from their informal support. It cemented her determination to organise a more formal arrangement when her resources weren’t stretched quite so thin.
But as Alex came through the door of her office and switched from that cool professional mask of his, letting her see his current state of distress, she was appalled. It was clear that he was fighting hard to seem in control but the rapid deterioration when his mask slipped showed he was experiencing a maelstrom of emotions. What could have happened to have caused such turmoil especially since he’d been in lockdown for the past six days? Surely it must be linked to General O’Neill’s hurried departure and return from Earth.
Watching him pace like a caged animal, she pointed at the leather armless single sofa chair, “So Alex, do you want to sit and tell me what is causing so much anxiety, or do you need to move,” she asked.
He groaned, scratching his skull nervously. “Yes. No. I don’t know,” he groaned before collapsing into the chair for a minute or two as he seemed to be struggling to pull himself together using several of the techniques she’d taught him over the months that he’d been seeing her. As she could see it working and he was managing to centre himself she waited patiently, trusting him to let her know if he needed her assistance.
Finally, he stood up and stretched, several vertebrae in his spine popping as Aoife grimaced at the sound, but it seemed to be the final step he needed to regain his equilibrium. Okay, she was worried; what was wrong?
Alex gave a sardonic laugh. “Remember how I told you when I first came to see you that I had really bad luck?’
“I remember you reciting a list of unfortunate situations that suggested you were so far from catastrophising, it wasn’t funny. So, tell me, what’s happened now? Did you contract some Pegasus ailment,” she asked worriedly.
It had not escaped her notice that Alex had an unusual effect on some people, and she included herself in that category. Despite being an extremely competent law enforcement professional, paradoxically he somehow managed to elicit a desire in susceptible individuals to want to moth… um, to protect him. Vala Mal Doran and Amelia Banks had been discussing it one night at dinner, trying to figure out what sparked their over-the-top urge to nurture when both were not exactly maternal by nature. Curiously, she’d seen strong alpha males like A.J. and General O’Neill who seemed equally susceptible to it as well.
“Oh no, nothing like that,” he waved away her panic. “The lockdown was a ruse to keep me away from the judge advocates while General O’Neill returned to Earth to do some digging,” he explained briefly.
Okay, she did not see that coming!
“J.P. and Atlantis cooked up the whole con but O’Neill et al were all willing co-conspirators. There was no contagion but don’t tell my fellow detainees that or they might string me up for being the cause of them being in lockdown,” he said only half joking.
Oh, this was not good. Aoife already knew he was concerned about the military lawyers coming to Atlantis for the trials. “Did they recognise you?”
He shook his head. “No, we don’t think so. It was people inside the US government, who I sincerely hope are not part of the Trust. They tried to set me up so they could get rid of me and blackmailed a couple of the Navy lawyers to fake a crime.”
“Why would your government be wanting to get rid of you from Atlantis?”
“As far as I know, it was just the Army and Marine Corp General Chiefs of Staff and a shadowy arm of the CIA, although that is probably an oxymoron,” he mused. “As to why, they are reportedly pissed off that you won’t clear Dr McKay so he can resume working on his secret little side projects for them. According to what Lt Cdr Vukovic told us, someone on Atlantis led them to believe that I had caused his freak out and in their infinite wisdom figured, if I was not around, he’d be perfectly fine,” Tony said.
“Well, clearly, they’re gacks if they think that you your leaving would make me declare Rodney fit to return to work. And how did they intend to set you up since it wasn’t the Trust wanting your DNA to confirm your identity,” she demanded angrily.
“Oh, you’ll love this,” he told her with heavy irony.
“Will I, yea,” she asked and by the set of her jaw he had to think that it might mean the exact opposite of what it sounded. He’d learnt over the months he’d been around her that there were quite a few Irish idioms that meant the opposite of what one assumed.
Shrugging, he said, “Tali Mayfield and or Gregory Vukovic were supposed to get me to go to bed with them, do the deed and then scream rape.”
O’Shea winced. “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary! Why would they do that to you?”
“Mayfield was trying to cover up a pretty serious gambling addiction and Vukovic was in the closet. They were being blackmailed.”
“But hang about, Wasn’t Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repealed?”
“Technically, yes in 2011. But a lot of the military remain deeply homophobic, particularly the ones at the top, so a lot of gay military personnel remain in the closet. They fear it will affect their promotion, especially to the upper ranks.”
Aye, I suppose I can see why they don’t come out, particularly if getting a promotion means that much to them but to agree to set up an innocent person just to hide something about themselves. It isn’t like they’d committed a crime.”
Alex shook his head. “Beats me. We had a lawyer who’d been on our team who betrayed us because a terrorist had kidnapped her sister and Michelle was the little one’s legal guardian. She killed two men, an agent, and a sailor because she knew he’d kill Amanda… which he almost did by the way. But these bozos…” he threw up his hands and declared, “I got nuthing!”
“That’s disgusting. No wonder you’re in a right state. Why did they go with a male and a female, I wonder?”
“Well, here’s where there’s a small silver lining, Doc. Seems that my cover remains intact so far,” he said in evident relief. “Their spy on Atlantis or spies multiple, (it’s too soon to know which) reported back to them that I don’t date, so they had several theories for this. One theory is that Alex Paddington is still mourning the loss of his wife and her unborn child, so they thought that he might go for a guy.”
“I’m sorry, but what would make them think that,” Aoife asked, a puzzled look on her face.
“Because the Brains Trust thought that Alex wouldn’t see it as replacing his wife if it were just a down-and-dirty buddy-fuck with a guy. Or then there’s their second brilliant theory that if his grief has made him impotent he might be more amenable to being fucked,” he shrugged sounding disgusted.
“Alex, you do realise you’re talking about yourself in the third person, yea? It’s a tad disturbing.”
He snickered at her. “Alex Paddington is a legend… his backstory isn’t real. There is no dead wife and unborn child, Doc. He’s not mourning their death in a car crash, so their theories about how to try to frame him are way off base and I need to keep reminding myself that they wouldn’t have worked.”
She nodded, “Okay, as long as you aren’t…” She searched around for a discreet way to express herself.
“Don’t worry, I’m just trying to maintain distance to help keep them in perspective, I’m not disassociating on you. I know who I am, I’m just trying to keep things in perspective.”
That made her feel better. If he needed to delineate what was real and what was made up, to help cope with this shocking situation it was reasonable. After all, he had a lot of experience working undercover. “Good, I’m relieved to hear that.”
Smiling a little grimly he continued, “So their final theory was that Alex Paddington is sexually active but very discreet about it, confining his “liaisons” with non-resident staff from aboard the supply ships that dock every three weeks. So, they decided he might be open to hooking up with one of the JAG lawyers because they are only on Atlantis for a month. There was also some conjecture that Paddington’s caution might be due to some aberrant sexual orientations or fetishes,” Tony concluded disgustedly as he recalled the highly elaborate role-play scenarios that the pair had been schooled in before departing.
O’Shea just facepalmed. “Those tossers!”
He gave a brittle-sounding laugh, “That’s one word for them,” he said as they both sat silently for over a minute.
Eventually, O’Shea collected herself and stood up to fetch a couple of bottles of water for them before retaking her seat. “Okay well, I’m glad that your cover remains intact but that’s just a whole other level of asinine.”
Twisting off the top of the bottle Aoife had handed him; he took a long sip before recapping the bottle and placing it on the side table. “Vukovic could use some finesse in his seduction techniques,” he observed. To be fair, I was already paranoid because I’d worked with him and one of the other lawyers some years ago. When he came on to me, I thought that he’d recognised me.”
“But Lt Cdr Vukovic didn’t recognise you?”
“It would seem not,” he said. “And the other JA who is here on Atlantis who I’ve worked with, Lt Cdr Graves only met me a few times and that was to cross-examine me in court. But Vukovic and I worked one on a one a few times, so if either of them were going to recognise me, you’d expect it would be Greg.”
“Was Graves the other corrupt judge advocate sent to seduce you?”
“No, Lt Cdr Mayfield was the one hiding her past dealings with a bookmaker. But seeing her proximity to Las Vegas since she worked in San Diego, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that weren’t the only sort of gambling she was into,” he shrugged.
Returning to the crux of the matter, Aoife observed. “So, I’m guessing this plot to have you charged with rape has stirred up a lot of wounds?
“You mean because I’m a survivor, not a perp.”
Aoife nodded sympathetically. “Aye.”
Struggling with overwhelmingly strong emotions and thoughts Tony simply nodded assent as he tried to stay in control. Seeing him battling, Aoife discreetly backed off, letting him regain equilibrium.
When at last he was more composed he said, “Yeah, I guess you could say that Doc. And if that was all, I wouldn’t have disturbed your weekend off. I’m sure you’d rather be spending it with the Admiral,” he said with a faint smile.
“Relax, A.J. is off with General O’Neill and General Santiago and he muttered something about taking out the trash when he left. I’m guessing in light of what you told me that means dealing with Vukovic and Mayfield,” she said rather maliciously.
“Probably,” Tony agreed, feeling fairly vengeful himself. Anything that threatened Tali’s safety was always going to make him angry.
As Aoife thought about what Alex had divulged she was pissed off. That these gits, these rotters decided to set up an innocent person to try to have him removed from his position was unconscionable but for individuals in positions of power to choose such an ugly sordid method to achieve those goals was so abhorrent to her. Even if they didn’t know that he was a victim of non-consensual sex, calling someone a rapist who’d done nothing wrong was indefensible. What made it worse was that it would all have been for naught because it wouldn’t have changed her mind about clearing McKay to return to work had they (heaven forbid) succeeded in Alex being banished from Atlantis.
While Alex might have been a partial trigger for Rodney’s psychotic break, she was beginning to think there was a lot more to his psychological decompensation than she’d first thought. Yes, his psychosis had unquestionably been due to his physical and mental exhaustion and his abuse of stimulant medication. Yet as time went by Aoife was convinced that there was a lot more that needed addressing before he could move on. Even if in his delusional paranoid state, he’d paired Alex and Belle with his failure to penetrate the Homeworld Command servers, she had begun to wonder if there was more to his dislike of Alex than she’d initially believed.
Thinking back, she recalled how incensed McKay and Keller had been when Col Sheppard was rescued. They were dead against John being shipped back to Cheyenne Mountain for specialist care and very vitriolic about Agent Paddington, blaming him for ripping the Colonel away from Atlantis. It was stupid to blame Alex since it was Dr Lam who had made the call, along with General O’Neill. Alex may have been supportive of the decision, but he certainly didn’t have the power to send John back to Earth. And it wasn’t like he was the only one who was in favour of Col. Sheppard being given privacy to recover from his ordeal – she was also extremely supportive of their decision, as was Ronon Dex.
Two weeks ago, curious to know what might have sparked this animosity towards Alex by Rodney and Dr Keller, she asked him if they’d had a falling out before the night in the music room where Rodney tried to attack him. Alex admitted that there had been an incident that occurred in the course of his investigation into who had betrayed Col Sheppard that had upset the couple. He pointed out that investigating crimes frequently involved asking tough questions and pouring over personal, embarrassing, or even criminal behaviours that individuals didn’t want to discuss. Cops were frequently looked upon as an enemy – the term pigs was not a name that was coined out of affection, he’d pointed out.
Intrigued by his response, she asked specifically what had upset the couple when he was frantically trying to find Atlantis’ military commander. He’d replied cautiously that he had been interviewing a lot of the staff about any reasons why they might have wanted to get rid of Sheppard and in particular, several of the motives he’d been exploring had been related to jealousy and infidelity. He reminded her that was how he’d found out about not just the domestic abuse between L. Corp Joseph Favre and Dr De Rosa but also Sgt Callahan and Chief Warrant Officer Thomas. He was being rather tight-lipped about the investigative process. While she admired his professional discretion, she wished he’d drop her a few more hints but unfortunately, all he would say was that neither Keller nor McKay had committed any crimes.
Thinking about the limited amount of information he’d been willing to share, Aoife had initially surmised that Alex might have been investigating if McKay might have suspected (or possibly known) that Jennifer was having an affair with Col Sheppard and Rodney was jealous and killed Sheppard in a fit of jealous rage. She could understand how such an accusation might make someone extremely angry. Yet as a doctor, Keller knew full well that part of the process of making a differential diagnosis was ruling out all possibilities until hopefully, you were left with a definitive diagnosis. And equally, Rodney should have recognised an investigation was like a scientific endeavour, to prove something conclusively then you had to examine and disprove alternate theories, phenomena, or if you liked, the null hypothesis.
If they had been questioned and ruled out as suspects, both individuals as rational, educated professionals should have been able to accept it and move along, not act like a couple of poorly educated hotheads. So, in light of the successful operation to locate and bring Sheppard home to Atlantis, why were they still so angry with Alex?
Unless there was more than a modicum of truth there or at least there had been suspicions festering away in the shadows, and he’d unfortunately shone a huge spotlight upon them. She recalled that the domestic abuse between L Corp Favre and Dr Francesca DeRosa had escalated when Favre believed DeRosa was having an affair with John Sheppard That delusion was fuelled in part by Rodney’s bitching about how John was a real-life Captain Kirk and bedding every female who had a pulse. And that’s when it hit her, the Mess Hall gossip, the betting pools run by the eager Chuck Lyons regarding McKay’s jealousy about John Sheppard’s sexploits with beautiful aliens because he had the hots for his good friend. She already knew he had been having trouble coping after the colonel went missing because she’d been seeing him every week.
Had Alex, during his investigation, not just questioned Rodney about whether Jennifer might have been having an affair with Sheppard but also asked the very obvious question, had Rodney been doing the deed with Sheppard? Could all of their antipathy to Alex be that simple and yet that complicated? Also, if that had been what he’d quizzed them about and there’d been no truth to the rumours, then why had both of them reacted to the accusation so vehemently?
Aoife started to wonder, did Rodney have unrequited feelings for John Sheppard as many people suggested and was Dr Keller jealous? If so, she wondered, could McKay be bi or gay? Was he closeted or was he in denial? Not as if he would be the first middle-aged guy who was uncomfortable with his sexual orientation.
Something was tickling Aoife’s memory and she couldn’t quite grab hold of it but sooner or later she would recall whatever it was that was trying to make itself known to her. Realising she’d become distracted, and Alex had fallen silent, she backtracked to what they had been discussing before she disappeared off into her reverie.
She’d said, “So, I’m guessing this plot to have you charged with rape has stirred up a lot of wounds, as a survivor who they meant to set up as a perp.”
And he’d replied with, “Yeah, I guess you could say that Doc. And if that was all there was, I probably wouldn’t have disturbed your weekend off. I’m sure you’d rather be spending it with the Admiral.”
Hang on… he’d said, “If that was all there was, I probably wouldn’t have disturbed your weekend off!”
“Sorry, I was thinking,” she apologised. “And what do you mean if that was all? What else has happened,” she asked with genuine trepidation. He hadn’t been exaggerating when he said he had bad luck, if anything, he was downplaying it.
Laughing, although he had a catch in his voice, he said, “General O’Neill informed me after the meeting last night that Ziva David has turned up alive and well. She tried to enter the US on a cancelled passport with her sidekick, Adam Eshel and when she was picked up by Immigration she told them the reason they came to the US was to retrieve their daughter who her ex-partner had been looking after for them.”
There was silence as Aoife was floored by his statement. There was so much to unpack there, she didn’t know where to start and she didn’t think her initial knee-jerk reaction, ‘I am in me wick’ which roughly translated meant, you must be joking was very professional or helpful.
In the end, she decided honesty was the best policy, so she mirrored her client’s response. Making eye contact she said, “I’m sorry Alex but I got nuthin!”
“Yeah, I know what you mean, he smiled at her savagely. “I found out last night and I’m still trying to figure out how to feel about it. Correction, I’m feeling so many different emotions that I feel like I’m going to explode.”
She winced. “I know that a typical response would be to say I know how you feel, but the truth is, I can’t possibly know how you are feeling. All I can do is try to help you unpack what you are experiencing.” She let him process that before continuing.
“I think it would be helpful for me if you could give me more information. Do you mind if I ask you questions? If I ask something that you don’t want to answer, or it becomes too intense for you to cope with, then call time out, yeah?”
He considered her request carefully because he was so overwhelmed by this news, he was barely hanging in there. Finally, he nodded, “Okay, let’s unpack it.”
So gently, cautiously, she asked him simple questions, slowly gathering information, sometimes backing off when she saw that his anxiety level was peaking. Instead, she would turn the conversation towards more mundane inquires, ones that were typical like where was Belle now, how were her nightmares, and how was he sleeping. The familiarity of the questions helped ground him and then Aoife would gently return to the bombshell topic that had caused such evident turmoil.
The usual hour crept by, but she had no intention of ending their discourse. Besides, it was Saturday and she had no one else in crisis. As they unpacked the news, little by little, Alex was able to separate and name the complex array of emotions he was feeling, and O’Shea felt like that was a huge step forward. She could only imagine how overwhelmed he must be feeling right now. Ziva David wasn’t just his ex-work partner and despite her disloyalty, she knew that law enforcement viewed that relationship as sacrosanct. She had been a friend, albeit a highly questionable one. She was also Belle’s mother and the person who betrayed his trust by drugging him and forcing him to have non-consensual sex to conceive a baby with her. One that he knew nothing about until the callous little witch staged her own death and unloaded Belle onto her biological father. A child whose existence he didn’t have a clue about and probably never would have known about if her enemies hadn’t decided to come looking for the dirt files her father had amassed.
Finally hitting the two-hour mark, she decided to call a halt in proceedings. “Alright Alex, I know we haven’t finished unpacking this shite yet, but I think you’re done for the day.”
He looked gutted and nodded. “Yeah, I could do with a break.”
She smiled gently. “Good. I think you need to decompress and try not to think about it for a while. Go and play the piano or go for a run, since it helps you think. Get some food and get some rest.
“I need to meet with Fornell but he’s going to want to talk about the team and probably Ziva’s miraculous rise from the dead. Trouble is that I’m not ready to talk to him or anyone else for that matter, present company excepted and possibly Teyla.”
“Well, that makes sense, only Teyla and I know pretty much all of the reasons you and Belle are here. You know on a deep emotional level that we’ll have your back and that we don’t have our own agenda. Unlike your colleague Tobias. From what you told me he’s going to see this via the lens of the loss of his daughter, even if the situations are not even close to being analogous. Plus, he has no idea what Ziva did to you.”
He nodded, that makes sense. “He’ll also be remembering when he was the noncustodial parent deprived of spending time with Emily,” he said with a heartfelt sigh.
“I’m sure you’re right about that so I’m going to order you to take the rest of the weekend off. Let General O’Neill and Penelope deal with Fornell since they both have worked with him much more recently than you have.”
He looked like he was going to argue with her, but grimaced before giving in. “Much as I hate to palm off my duties onto others, I don’t think I could handle it if he starts talking about Ziva and her rights at the moment. Talking to you has helped but I’m still struggling to deal.”
“It’s a lot to cope with, especially on top of what was going on with Vukovic and Fielding. There’s only so much we can deal with, and I think you’ve exceeded your tolerance level and then some. Do you want me to take Belle for the rest of the day?”
“Maybe. No. I don’t know,” he wavered uncertainly.
Aoife smiled sympathetically. Well, the offer is there if you need it. She might help distract you from dwelling on it or might make it harder to switch off. So, play it by ear. And let’s pick this up tomorrow at the same time.”
Seeing he was going to protest about further disturbing her weekend she shook her head. “Look you’ve been running around supporting Dr Girard and Col Sheppard, not to mention the young women of Winyan. Now it’s your turn for some self-care.”
Notes:
Gack — a foolish or stupid person
Git – rotten person
Chapter 19
Fornell had fleetingly caught up with DiNozzo er Paddington this morning outside the Mess. He was leaving with a bottle of orange juice and an apple as Fornell was going in, looking for some much-needed coffee and something to eat. He knew he was going to have to start thinking of his new boss by his alias, so he didn’t slip up. After a decade and a half of calling him DiNotzo or even DiNutzo when he really wanted to piss him off, it was now pretty-much ingrained behaviour, but that just meant he would have to try harder. If Tony and Tali were here because Atlantis was the safest place for them as General O’Neill had claimed, it said a lot about how crucial it was not to slip up and call him by his real name. He couldn’t live with himself if he endangered either of them, especially since he owed Tony um Alex for giving him a second chance to do something meaningful when everything left in his life felt meaningless. No… it wasn’t just meaningful, being able to go back into law enforcement was truly life changing.
As they briefly shook hands and exchanged polite generic greetings about it being good to see each other and Alex welcomed him to Atlantis, he apologised for not being available to show him around, explaining that he had a meeting scheduled. He explained the head of base security, Captain Laura Cadman and the Acting CO, Lt Col Lorne offered to do the honours and get him sorted out in the meantime with an office, computer, and comms. Another handshake and he was gone before Fornell had a chance to try to pin him down to a formal meeting, and the veteran agent was left wondering what the hell was going on.
As Fornell made his way into the Mess to grab his caffeine fix, he thought bemusedly about his new boss. After not having any contact with…Paddington for over three years now, Tobias was struck by how youthful and healthy he looked, especially compared to that last Hellish year he’d spent on the MCRT before he resigned. The fact was that…Alex now looked somewhat like a version of the young agent that Gibbs dragged back from Baltimore and yet not. Somehow the undercover chameleon had managed to not just de-age himself but also subtly change his appearance. Lighter hair, a less structured haircut, he was wearing glasses, and something else that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
The man was a master of disguise; by some strange quirk of alchemy, he’d always been able to transform himself without having to resort to cosmetic surgery or prosthetics. It was both intriguing and quite annoying for the veteran who was forced to admit that if he hadn’t known he was on Atlantis, then Tobias was dubious that he’d have made him, even if he’d bumped into him. Of course, on Atlantis, the expensive designer suits were gone, and his wardrobe was a lot more casual, black jeans and a long-sleeved tee-shirt, although it was a weekend so it might be atypical attire. Nevertheless, this version of…Alex seemed much more muted. Definitely more serious.
Although he’d remembered picking up on the chatter last night in the Mess that something was up. General O’Neill along with Di…Paddington had been shut up with the heads of various departments long into the evening and Tobias had given up on being able to meet up with his boss until the next day. Now it looked like he wasn’t going to get the chance to have a proper meeting with the Associate Director anytime soon. Of course, O’Neill had emphasised that a lot was going on right now and Alex was wearing two hats, AFOSI and federal agent, plus he noted a bunch of JAG lawyers – at least ten or more – so it was very apparent that something significant was afoot.
It didn’t surprise him that Penelope had noted his arrival in the Mess, she didn’t miss much, that one and insisted on him eating brunch, dragging him over to eat with herself and her friends. They were also the same group of people who he’d eaten dinner with last night, along with a pretty blonde woman named Cassie, who he estimated was probably some five or six years older than Emily. And this was apparently what grief was, he thought sadly – judging other people using his daughter as his yardstick. He wondered if this was a temporary phenomenon or if it was his new normal.
There was also a smallish but well-built man with thick glasses and an untidy shock of light brown hair who had a middle-European accent. The other diners at their table called him Radek and were teasing him about being chased out of his quarters by his womenfolk, who Fornell gathered were making sushi. He grumbled at the good-natured taunting but took it in good spirits before introducing himself to Fornell as Dr Radek Zelenka, Atlantis’ acting chief scientific officer and welcomed him to Atlantis.
Tobias thought back to dinner last night when Garcia had dragged him into the Mess, insisting that he start getting to know the other residents, especially the people she’d befriended. Not surprisingly (as Jack O’Neill had already warned him) her friends included her former boss at the BAU, Aaron Hotchner and his boy Jack, who was now fourteen. Tobias didn’t need to be psychic to see that the three of them were still very close. No doubt the Hotchners were glad of a familiar face amongst the sea of strangers in the alien city in another galaxy. Today, in the aftermath of arriving in New Lantea, Tobias had to admit that he was feeling adrift in this strange place so far from home. Yes, he was a little homesick, but he hoped it would soon pass. After all, there was nothing left for him back on Earth and this was an adventure of a lifetime.
Although he’d had a nodding acquaintance with Hotchner when they both worked at the FBI, it hadn’t been a particularly close friendship, more a professional one. In part that was due to the BAU being stationed at Quantico, Virginia and him working out of the Hoover Building in DC so their paths didn’t cross all that frequently, but it was still nice to know someone in this sea of unfamiliar faces. Of course, he knew Penelope too, again superficially from the FBI but more recently he’d worked with her quite a bit when he’d been hired as a fixer cum general dogsbody for General O’Neill at Homeworld Command. At their table, there were also two adults who he soon learned were natives from the Pegasus galaxy and their two young boys, Torren and Felix who treated young Jack as a big brother.
After dinner last night Penelope had dragged him back to the family wing to watch a movie with the Hotchners and Teyla, Kanaan, Felix, and Torren. There was a communal area set up for recreation for the families who had children residing on Atlantis. He couldn’t help but be impressed watching the three boys. Jack Hotchner was a good kid, agreeing to join the two little boys to watch a kids’ movie with barely a teenage ‘whatever’ in sight or even rolling his eyes to express his displeasure at hanging out with a couple of five-year-old kids. To the contrary, he seemed remarkably happy to be co-opted into a big brother role. When Fornell commented to Aaron Hotchner, Jack’s dad agreed, saying that his son had missed Jennifer Jarreau’s two boys, Henry, and Michael very badly since they’d been placed into WitSec, not to mention Jack was also missing Dr Spencer Reid who was like his older brother. When Torren and Felix (who he learnt just now wasn’t Teyla and Kanaan’s kid) developed a huge case of hero worship for Jack he’d seemed pretty cool with that.
After everyone with kids retired to their quarters, Garcia offered to walk Tobias back to his own room, which was a relief since he was still filled with a sense of disorientation. He wondered how long it would take to find his way around the city, which was huge and unlike anything he’d ever seen before. Perhaps realising that he was wanting to talk to her privately, she suggested they made use of the tea and coffee-making facilities before heading back to their rooms for the night, he accepted the offer with alacrity. She just smiled and made herbal tea for herself and black coffee for him and then sat in a couple of chillout chairs sipping their beverages contemplatively.
Fornell was still thinking about what Jack O’Neill had told him on the way to Atlantis and he was still having difficulty coming to terms with some of it. Finally, he spoke. “I didn’t see Tali tonight.”
“Belle,” Garcia corrected him gently.
“It so sad that they were forced to make a little girl change her name,” he said sadly.
“Yeah that’s true, Tobias but unfortunately we live in a world where evil people have no compunction about wanting to harm children,” she replied with a scowl. It seemed that Tali DiNozzo was a hot-button topic. “ It is the lesser of two evils,” she observed.
“Did you know that her mother isn’t dead, Penelope?”
“Yes Toby, I have known for a while. She faked her death and dumped her daughter, who hadn’t even turned two years old onto her father, who had no idea of her existence, to run around playing her stupid spooking games.”
“She told Gibbs that the reason she did it was to keep Tali safe.”
Penelope snorted. “Maybe… as an assassin, there will always be people who go looking for vengeance for the things she’s done. Having a baby and not even telling the father he has a child is inexcusable in any circumstances but to do so when you have so many people who might come after you to take revenge, was nothing short of irresponsible. In my humble opinion, it smacks of pure selfishness.”
“Ziva told Gibbs that Tony isn’t Tali’s biological father.”
Staring at him sternly, she asked, “What’s your point? Why are you telling me this farrago of lies, Tobias,” she said angrily.
But how do we know she isn’t telling the truth,” he asked. “Despite what O’Neill said, he had the motive to lie about it if Belle has this gene everyone is so excited about.”
“Well, there’s just one problem with that Tobias. I know David is the one who’s lying about it. I saw the genetic tests that the SGC ran, as I’m sure that General O’Neill has already told you. We ran them numerous times, and they prove that Alex is her daddy,” Garcia told him categorically.
“Tests can be faked as you know,” he argued stubbornly. “If Tali has this special gene thingy, then what’s to stop the spooks from deciding to fake a few paternity tests and convince Di…Paddington she’s in danger so they come here to Atlantis and they can use her to…I don’t know, maybe power their weapons. Faking a paternity test wouldn’t be too difficult to convince Alex he’s her father.”
Garcia had stared at him as if he had two heads. “Since when did you start spouting conspiracy theories and wearing a tinfoil hat, Fornell, she chided him. “Why are you so desperate to think this is some giant government conspiracy?”
“Maybe because I think that Ziva made a huge mistake when she faked her death, but she’s still Tali’s mother,” he railed at her which was crazy since it wasn’t Garcia’s fault. “Look, doesn’t it makes sense that she wants to reunite with her child? Doesn’t she deserve a second chance to share custody of her daughter?”
Shaking her head at him, she told him gently, “I know you’re still mourning the loss of your wife and your daughter, but you didn’t abandon them by faking your own death. You can’t compare apples with oranges, Tobias. And I hate to break it to you, but Ziva David lies. From whom do you think Belle inherited her strong ATA gene? It wasn’t from Ziva, and it wasn’t from her Shin Bet lover, either.”
“But just because Tony has the gene it isn’t proof. And how do we know he has the gene,” he asked clutching at straws.
“Because he can fly the puddle jumpers and operate Ancient PPE and read and speak their language and if that isn’t enough for you, then what about Chaya Sar, an Ancient from the planet Proculus? She scanned both Alex and General O’Neill and concluded that they both have an extraordinarily strong ATA gene, plus they each have an extra one we didn’t know about. No one else on Atlantis has one of the extra genes, not even Sheppard.”
“But I read the reports that they can give you a mouse retrovirus to switch on the gene,” he argued, bailing out the sinking boat but not giving up. “They could have slipped it to Tony, damn it Alex without his knowledge surely?”
That’s true theoretically, but Chaya Sar, J.P. and Atlantis can tell the difference and the retrovirus only works in forty percent of the people who have the dormant form of the ATA gene. It doesn’t work for most people. It didn’t for me, and it won’t for you either; like me, you don’t have the latent gene.”
Penelope watched Tobias struggling to accept what she was saying.
“Face facts, Tobias, Alex is Belle’s father.”
Recoiling like she’d slapped him (and she kinda had…with facts versus emotions) he responded, “Then why would Ziva lie to him not being her father?”
“As near as I can make out, if her mouth is moving, she’s probably lying to you. She is a spy and assassin…isn’t that what they do? It is probably second nature to her if she’s gotten away with it her whole life,” Penelope said sarcastically
“ If you want to get into specifics, it seems obvious to me anyway that Ziva David wants to take Belle back.” she seethed, “Like Belle’s a possession she can discard when it is inconvenient to her plans and then when it suits, she can just take her back again after resolving whatever David family bullshit she got caught up in. I think she’s probably expecting to manipulate Alex into giving Belle up so she can return to Israel to pretend as if nothing ever happened.”
~o0o~
After Penelope walked him back to his quarters, kindly pointing out where her rooms were in case he needed anything, he wandered in and decided to take a quick shower before heading to bed. Now, dressed in his favourite pair of pyjamas that Emily had given him as a Father’s Day gift almost seven years ago, he felt calmer. On one level he knew that constant rewashing of them would wear out the fabric much sooner than if he kept them as a keepsake, but they’d become like a small child’s binky to the grief-stricken father.
He thought a lot about what he’d said to Garcia tonight and it wouldn’t surprise him if she thought he needed sectioning with all his wild conspiracy talk. He’d been pretty shocked by the time the topic of Ziva and Tali had ended up on the agenda earlier on while he was on Midway II. Even then a part of him knew he was spouting off a bunch of BS, yet it seemed that his heart, not his brain was firmly in control of his mouth. Now he couldn’t help but wonder if his passionate defence of Ziva David would cost him the job of a lifetime even before he’d been sworn in. What in the hell had he been thinking?
Strolling out onto the small balcony that gave him magnificent views of the ocean, he reviewed the conversation between himself and O’Neill regarding Tali, DiNozzo and Ziva sheepishly. He didn’t need to rehash what had happened with Penelope a few minutes before when he continued to sound off like a jerk.
After O’Neill had let the cat out of the bag that Anthony DiNozzo Jr was going to be his new boss and had specifically requested him for his Atlantis team, he’d been completely flat-footed. He had not seen that coming and perhaps that went some way towards explaining his over-the-top reaction.
Yeah, no, Tobias. Not even close.
Sitting in the small conference area with the SCIF engaged, something occurred to him. “So, where’s Tali, has Tony already handed her over to Ziva? Jethro didn’t mention it.”
“Tali is on Atlantis with her father where she’s been for the last seven months. She isn’t going anywhere,” O’Neill had bristled in response.
“Is he out of his fucking mind,” he demanded heatedly. “Why would he bring his kid to such a dangerous place, far away from his father and his friends? What is he thinking?”
O’Neill eyed him sternly. “I won’t blame a guy who’d only recently lost his daughter for jumping to conclusions and being judgemental, but you don’t know the facts behind why they came here, Fornell,” he told him bluntly.
“So, explain it to me,” he demanded hotly.
While normally, I’d agree that Atlantis and the Pegasus galaxy might not be considered a child-friendly locale, it is the safest place to protect her, to protect both of them. We like to think of their relocation as the most extreme form of WitSec in two galaxies,” he told him sternly.
“Okay, who the hell did DiNozzo piss off so bad that a flying city built by a race of aliens millennia ago would be considered the safest option. That man has a genius for rubbing people up the wrong way… but this? This is fucking unbelievable!”
“Stand down, Fornell or I won’t be the only one lining up to clean your clock if you go mouthing off like that. For the record, Tony did nothing wrong,” O’Neill told him harshly.
“You recall when we read you in on the Stargate program we said that some people on Earth have the ATA gene, allowing them to operate Ancient technology, like flying the puddle jumpers and use defence systems. Our geeks theorise that when the Ancients abandoned Atlantis and returned to Earth via the stargate that some of them ended up living amongst Earth’s native population, passing on the Ancient technology gene via procreation.”
He paused and Fornell nodded reluctantly. “What’s that got to do with Tali being in danger?”
“It’s got everything to do with Tali’s being in danger if you’ll just pull your head out of your ass and listen to me,” the General told him, supremely pissed off at him.
Tobias got the distinct impression that the unspoken part of the statement was something along the lines of, ‘So listen to me or else I’ll drop you into a dark hole or more appropriately, considering they were in space, in a black hole’. Folding his arms, he said shortly, “Fine, go ahead. Explain it to me.”
“Tony and Tali both have the ATA gene and so far, the only other individuals who have as strong a manifestation of the gene as they do, are Col John Sheppard, the commander of the Military on Atlantis although he is currently on medical leave right now and me!”
“So, the Stargate program is keeping the DiNozzos in protective custody so you can use them both to operate the Ancient technology and weapons?”
“Don’t be a dumbass,” he snorted! “They are in Pegasus because the Trust, who you were also briefed upon when you were running background security checks for us on various people who we suspected might well be Trust operatives, tried twice to violently abduct Tali. Thankfully, they failed.”
“Were they apprehended?”
“I wish! Luckily that little girl has a father who’s extremely competent and was already on high alert about her safety. He did manage to foil both plots although not surprisingly, Tali was extremely traumatised by what happened.”
“Okay, so why was he on high alert for kidnapping by the Trust? What was he doing?”
Apart from protecting his daughter, nothing but he was convinced that there were people in Israel (associates of Ziva’s father) who wouldn’t want him rearing her. He thought they might try to snatch the little one and he wasn’t going to take any chances. He was right by the way, certain high-placed Israelis were attempting to shadow them. We don’t know if it was because they didn’t believe Ziva was dead, they wanted control of Eli David’s granddaughter or were part of the Trust. Of course, I’m fairly sure he didn’t reckon on Tali’s own mother making like Lazarus to rise from the dead to steal her away from him by claiming her father was an Israeli national named Adam Eshel.”
“ Well, what makes you think Eshel isn’t Tali’s bio father,” Fornell argued mulishly. “It would make more sense that Tony and Ziva.”
“Hello‽ Did you not hear me say that Tony and Tali both have the ATA gene? That it is amongst the strongest manifestations that we are currently aware of,” Jack snapped at him. “Not only is he that little girl’s father with the paternity tests to prove it, but he also has legal custody of her too, signed off by a judge.”
“So why would the Trust try to abduct her,” Fornell wanted to know.
“Oh, gee, I don’t know… maybe because they are evil, power-mad criminals, cockroaches who won’t die no matter what we do to wipe them off the face of the Earth, Jack said sarcastically. “Of course, the last leader of the Trust was a Goa’uld who’d cloned himself, the slimy rat bastard,” Jack snarled and Fornell was smart enough not to prod him, rightly assessing that there was bad blood between the general and Goa’uld.”
He pulled out a thick classified file and handed it to him with the comment, “Just some light bedtime reading for ya for later on the Trust and our run-ins with them over the years.”
Jack retook his seat and resumed his explanation. “Near as we can figure, the Trust want Tali for one of two reasons and neither of them is good. Either they have gotten hold of Ancient tech, which is highly probable as their reach is scary, and they plan to use her to operate it for them, or they want to conduct scientific experiments on her for reasons too foul to imagine,” he finished with a shudder of distaste.
“How the hell did the Trust find out about Tali? Was it through leaks in the US government,” Fornell demanded, irate at the thought of a child in danger from a league of evil power super criminals with nada scruples. But then any decent person would be, she was just a child.
“No Fornell, not us.” O’Neill told him shortly. “The Trust put out the word worldwide amongst pathology testing laboratories that there were generous incentives should labs come across ATA gene holders during normal screening tests. Some Labs desperate for financial bonuses started screening all tests looking for it. This is what happened when Tali and Tony were in a vehicle accident in France and another car t-boned them. Tali had blood tests because they thought she might have internal bleeding and the medicos wanted to play safe. As her father was driving their car, there was a mandatory blood test for him to determine his blood alcohol levels and the lab screened both of them for the ATA gene and hit pay dirt.”
“The lab sold the Trust the results of their tests,” Fornell sounded appalled.
“One corrupt lab supervisor who signed off on the tests. He discovered a marker in their blood and ordered unauthorised genetic testing. That’s how we found out about the scheme. So far we’ve tracked down a couple of hundred people worldwide who have been sold out to the Trust via corrupt lab personnel, but most have only had a weak expression of the gene…nothing like the DiNozzos’.”
“Which is why they are safely stashed away on Atlantis,” Fornell concluded.
“Exactly,” O’Neill nodded emphatically. “And that is why they aren’t using their old names. They are going by Alexander Paddington, a widower who lost his wife and unborn child in a car accident, and his four-year-old daughter Annabelle. She’s smaller than average so we also made her four instead of five years old,” Jack filled him in as Fornell seemed to consider the facts.
“Meanwhile, the media circus that was reported back home between his English cousin Crispian Paddington and Tony over an inheritance from his uncle was a ploy to put the Trust off their trail. It was engineered by Tony and his cousin and Homeworld Command,” O’Neill revealed with a malicious smirk.
“It won’t take them long to figure out that it was a hoax,” Fornell mused.
“That’s why Ms Garcia left a complicated series of false trails and witnesses who will report they’ve seen them, as they are travelling around the US. We’re hoping to use the sting to identify people who are working for the Trust,” he shrugged. “So far, we’ve identified over fifteen people.
“So, who knows about DiNozzo being on Atlantis?”
“Officially? Ambassador Henri AuClair, who is the IOA appointed Commander of Atlantis, the Acting Military Commander, Lt Col Lorne, the head of Base Security, Capt. Cadman who was brought in specially to have his six, and the newly appointed Navy JAG of Pegasus, Admiral Chegwidden all know about Paddington and who he is. Unofficially, the acting chief scientific officer knows he is on Atlantis because of Belle’s gene making her a target for the Trust, but Zelenka doesn’t know their real identity and I think that Teyla Emmagan, who is an Athosian and has a boy the same age as Tali, knows that Tali…Belle was being targeted but not who they are.”
“That’s quite a few people,” Tobias observed.
“Wait, I forgot about Penelope Garcia because she knew him back in DC. Said she met him through a former FBI agent Derek Morgan. And of course, she’s on Atlantis working on a special project for Homeworld at the moment,” Jack warned him.
“Garcia is out here. I wondered where she disappeared to,” Fornell said. “I tried to call her to say goodbye before I left.”
Jack briefly filled him in on Janae Progenius and how Penelope was evaluating the potential risk that the AI program might turn on them if it felt threatened.
Fornell looked astounded. “You’re fucking with me! An artificial intelligence computer program created by an alien Ancient, millennia ago. Don’t tell me, it has decided that we are the prodigal sons and daughters who returned home and adopted the expedition members.”
“Not quite, just the individuals who have the naturally occurring ATA gene. It seems our AI who Alex calls J.P, is a gene snob and it’s not a fan of the mouse retrovirus version,” O’Neill corrected wryly and gave him a brief rundown on the AI program, its desire to interface with the residents and Jack’s concerns about potential risks, hence Garcia being sent to Atlantis to do a risk assessment.
Fornell waved away the distinction. “Okay, so it regards ATA holders as kin but it still saw fit to build itself a body so it could interface with all of the residents, even the retro-virus gene holders. And took as its inspiration from a fictional Si Fi show with an AI program that used a hologram to interface with the crew? Now it is having some teenage angsty identity crisis, trying out new hologram bodies to see which fits best. The only thing is, JP isn’t a teenager, it is ten thousand years old. Have I got that right?”
“Did I forget the snippet that it seems to have a crush on Ms Garcia? Other than that, I think you have the gist of it, Fornell,” Jack looked like he was trying hard not to grin as Tobias took his bald pate in his hands and moaned theatrically.
Looking hideously insincere, Jack thumped him on the back and said, “Buck up Fornelli, welcome to the insane asylum of the Stargate program,” before cackling evilly. “So where were we?”
“Discussing who else knew about DiNozzo and Tali,” the former Fibbie said faintly.
“Okay… well obviously you know too, and there are a couple of people back on Earth, including Col Davis and the President who also know Alex’s true identity and why the Paddingtons are here. And last but not least, Nikola Bates, formally of the CIA and NID. Ms Bates will be arriving aboard the Odyssey in 23 days to become Paddington’s head intelligence analyst. She knew him back when he worked at NCIS, so she’ll know too when she disembarks..”
“There are too many people who are in the know,” Fornell bitched.
“True,” Jack conceded, “ I told him that when he wanted to hire you, but Alex insisted that he trusts you,” the general told him, giving him the stink eye that said he was withholding judgement and readying a black hole just in case. “Said he thought you got dealt a shitty hand and he needed someone who could carry out investigations without having to hold their hand to do it. He’s got a couple of people on Atlantis that he wants to send to FLETC, however, he also said he needed someone seasoned to take some of the pressure off.”
“That’s flattering that he trusts me, but there’s a reason why you waited until we reached the space station to tell me about him, isn’t there, General?”
Jack nodded. “Guilty as charged. Paddington trusts you, I’m not so sure if that’s wise.”
“Why? You know I’m not working for the Trust. So, is it the Hicks case from ten years ago?”
“I’d be an awful hypocrite if that were my beef since I’ve ignored protocol, even disobeyed orders a few times when I was leading SG1 but tell me this. Who are you loyal to if push comes to shove? Would it be Tony or you’re wife’s former husband, huh?”
“You think I would have told Jethro that Tony was hiding out on Atlantis if I’d known? He’d think I was nuts and have me committed.”
“Wrong answer, Fornell.”
“ Yeah maybe but it’s all I got. I honestly can’t know what I’d have done if I’d been put in that situation, since you didn’t give me a choice. But seriously, after signing that NDA I’d be nuts to spill my guts to him, even if our relationship weren’t already on shaky ground since the Hicks case.”
“Yeah and what about Ziva David? She’s supposed to be Gibbs’ surrogate daughter after all; she had him twisted around her little finger when she worked with him. Would you have ratted Tony out to her because of some sentimental dumb-ass shit about the sanctity of mothers and daughters eh? Because I know damned well that your ex-wife’s rat bastard former husband would move heaven and earth to help reunite his surrogate daughter with Tali and fuck Tony!”
Fornell looked at him sideways. “So, I take it that you won’t be approving David to come to Atlantis to be with Tony and Tali then?”
“Not just no, Fornell. Hell no! Over my cold dead lifeless body will she ever set foot on Atlantis,” he said vehemently.
“But you say you’re looking to hire people for this new agency out here. She’d be ideal. She is an experienced investigator…”
“Who has no respect for the rule of law. She also has no regard for the chain of command. Do you honestly believe she would take orders from Tony? From my subterranean dive into that agency and its people, my assessment is that she doesn’t respect anyone who isn’t Mossad and or named David,” he said contemptuously.
As Fornell opened his mouth either to disagree or defend, Jack added, “Besides, she’s too damned much like Gibbs, running off renegade instead of working as part of a team. And that’s diametrically opposite of what we need on Atlantis – we need rock-solid team players, like Paddington. But the deal breaker for me was Ms David attacking Tony when he was illegally dragged over to Israel by Director Owens and SecNav to have to defend himself for doing his fucking job. Knocking down and threatening to shoot your team member when he was already severely injured due to an assault by a rogue Kidon operative, who’d killed that ICE agent and Little Miss Mossad was shtupping on the sly is not someone I’d hire, ever.”
Fornell started when he realised which ICE agent the general was referring to. He seemed remarkably well-informed. A lot better than Tobias was about a situation which Jack seemed au fait with.
“Ziva David watched on as Eli David tortured…I’m sorry, interrogated DiNozzo, even though Eli already knew that Rivkin had messed up badly and DiNozzo was just doing his job. Honestly, the interrogation was all about him trying to save face. She then compounded Mossad’s outrageous behaviour by assaulting DiNozzo while he was injured. She swept his legs out from under him, so when he landed on his back he’d cracked his scapula (which probably already had a hairline fracture) and displaced his already broken humerus .not content with the damage she’d already inflicted on him then she jammed her weapon point blank up against, first his heart and then his femoral artery and threaten to pull the trigger. Someone possessing such an infinitesimal scintilla of integrity isn’t someone I’d ever allow into this program.”
“She was grieving for her lover,” Fornell tried to rationalise her behaviour. He couldn’t exactly throw stones, not after his failure to report an eyewitness testimony.
“Not good enough,” O’Neill had roared at him. “She was supposed to be his teammate and partner. To be part of the Stargate Program, people need to be exceptional in every way, including their character. And if it was just a lapse due to grief, how do you justify her turning off a radio she was supposed to be monitoring while Tony was undercover gathering voiceprints from suspected homegrown terrorists? It was in a case where three people had already been mown down at a community radio station. That’s not my idea of someone whose suited to work for law enforcement. I can’t figure out why you are defending the indefensible.
Fornell shrugged looking sheepish. “Okay, I admit that when you put it like that, it’s hard to defend her. I didn’t know about either incident, but they are both indefensible,” he conceded.
“And yet, you tried to do just that,” the general observed, not yet mollified.
“True but at the end of the day, while you may not like or admire her, you have to concede that she is Tali’s mother,” he said.
“No, she may have birthed her and reared her for the first twenty-two months of her daughter’s life, but she faked her own death to go chasing after some fucking revenge plot when she should have asked for help. She could have taken her kid and gone into hiding, instead of which, she dumped Tali on Tony who had no idea he had a daughter because she deliberately chose never to tell him,” O’Neill stated caustically.
“Gibbs was pissed about that too, but she said she was trying to protect everyone,” Fornell pointed out, his tone and expression measured. To be honest, he wasn’t sure he believed it either, but she was Tali’s mother at the end of the day. Didn’t Tali deserve to know her mother?
The general huffed disgustedly. “She didn’t leave Tali with her daddy, she left a toddler with a total stranger who just happened to be her biological father and despite that, Tony stepped up and cared for her, loved her, protected her. He’s been more of a fucking mother to her than Ziva ever was. And when Tali was in jeopardy he didn’t go chasing off wanting retribution like an immature child; he gave up his life and entered the world’s most extreme form of witness protection, all to make sure she was safe as possible.”
He scowled at Fornell, daring him to keep on defending her but the investigator wisely got a clue and kept his mouth shut as Jack finished up his tirade with the cautionary, “ Don’t you dare to lecture me about her parental rights. She threw them away and stomped on them for good measure when she decided to fake her death.”
Deciding to dial down the tension between them, Fornell changed the subject. “By the way, Owen Granger isn’t the NCIS director.”
Jack eyed him steely. “I know that. Tyler Keith Owens is.”
Frowning, Tobias said, “Er no, I think you mean Leon Vance, don’t you,” he asked the head of Homeworld Command.
“Do I,” he asked rhetorically before shaking his head definitively. “No, I don’t believe I do,” Jack declared before he stood up and stalked around the room, palpable anger bleeding off him like the predator he truly was.
It reminded Fornell that despite the three stars on his uniform, he was no desk jockey; his bearing should be enough of a clue that he wasn’t a typical stick-up-his-ass general who’d spent his military career as an administrator. His demeanour right now was most decidedly that of a serious apex predator, all stealth, infinite grace, and deadliness, which was mostly masked by an air of cynical affability. This side of O’Neill he’d chosen to reveal to Fornell left him in no doubt whatsoever that the general was more than a match for the former Mossad operative, should she be foolish enough to challenge him. No one could possibly mistake that this man, this officer, earned his rank on a bloody battlefield with his troops and even now, was not a sit-back safely behind the lines and give the orders type of officer.
So now as he stood on his private balcony on the floating city cum spaceship, Tobias looked out across the vast expanse of ocean marvelling at the thought of being in a distant galaxy far, far away. He knew he’d been acting like a crazed lunatic when he went off half-cocked with those crazy-assed wild conspiracy theories and that his desire to reunite a parent with their child said more about his unbearable loss than it did about Ziva and Tali David. The only reason he identified with her was that she was a young female with a screwed-up childhood, let down by her father and there were enough similarities to remind him of Emily. But as O’Neill pointed out on Midway, it didn’t excuse the fact that she’d so blithely abandoned her daughter to chase down the most jealous of mistresses…REVENGE.
As he stared out at the unfamiliar stars above him in the Pegasus night sky, he wondered glumly if his out-of-control ranting to the Head of Homeworld Command and its technical analyst/ goddess had scuppered his opportunity to work as an agent again. Thinking about O’Neill and his blunt admonishment to pull his head out of his ass, Fornell figured it might be time to do just that. The truth was Ziva had abandoned a toddler whose father didn’t even speak the same language as she did. In the ‘Before Emily’ times when everything was good with his child, if Diane had done to Em what Ziva had done to Tali, making his daughter believe she was dead, then he’d have done everything in his power to see she never had contact with her mother again. But following the devastation of the ‘After Emily’ times, when she became addicted to drugs and ultimately lost the battle, he was far less judgemental. It made him more likely to identify with the grief of Ziva never seeing her little girl again and that feeling wasn’t something he’d wish on any other parent.
Still, WitSec was not something you fucked around with. Tali’s safety came before the rights of a parent who was considered by the child to be long dead. Ziva had made her bed and while he didn’t agree with the choices she made, she would have to live with them. He had done what he could to advocate for her, stupidly, but if the WitSec for the DiNozzo’s went all the way up to the POTUS then he wasn’t about to rock that boat. In fact, given General O’Neill’s implacable position, he was pretty damned sure that if he did, he’d end up tossed into a black hole. A few days ago, he might have welcomed oblivion but that was then. Tonight, on Atlantis, the prospect of being a law enforcement professional once more had made him feel like he still had something of value to contribute. Lord knew that he hadn’t felt like life was worth living for a long time now.
Having arrived in the city, listening to the limited stories he’d heard so far had made him feel alive again, meeting those aliens Teyla, Kanaan, and their cute kids (or were Earth personnel the aliens in this distant galaxy) had been amazing. And there was the AI hologram program that he’d seen earlier that day after they arrived, it made him feel excited to be here. It felt like he was embarking on a crazy assed adventure that most people would only ever dream about.
As he shivered a little, he wondered if he’d get a chance to catch up with Tony and Tali… make that Alex and Belle tomorrow. He supposed he should be grateful that he’d only made an ass of himself in front of Penelope and Gen O’Neill today but grimacing, he knew he’d done himself no favours with the Air Force general. Underneath his current guise of director of the Homeworld Command, drafted into the role of political horse trader/wrangler to deal with the asshats up on Capitol Hill, Lt General Jonathan ‘Jack’ O’Neill remained the battle-hardened warrior and an imminently dangerous force to be reckoned with. He was obviously someone supremely capable of crushing his enemies if they threatened him or his people and Fornell had stupidly questioned his motives when it came to Tali’s welfare. Nice one Tobias!
Penelope had also lost no time tonight setting him straight when she told him that he wasn’t the only one to lose his child. O’Neill had lost his son, which was why he’d promised Tony that he would do everything in his power to protect his daughter. It was clear that his vow hadn’t just encompassed the Trust either. He must see Ziva David in a similar vein – thinking her daughter was some puppy she could board out when she wanted/needed to go off playing superspy games and then drag her back home again when she’d caught her prey.
As he went back inside his cabin to check out his bed, Fornell knew that O’Neill and Penelope were right. Everything wasn’t about Emily, and he needed to get his head out of his ass unless he wanted to turn into another Leroy Jethro Gibbs. The last thing he wanted was to end up bitter and alone, convinced that no one else had suffered as much as he had. Tobias needed to remember this was a fresh start, not blow it by creating false equivalencies where none existed.
In keeping with his resolution to start over, he fished around until he located the thick file on the Trust that O’Neill had given him on Midway earlier today. He figured it was time to take heed of the maxim, ‘known thine enemy,’ seeing he was going to be here on Atlantis for at least a year or more if he was lucky.
Time for a little light reading before bed!
Intriguing. Looking forward to the next story
Very much enjoying this, though I confess I’m also nervous about future events. Bloomin’ Ziva, for example!
I really love how you’re pulling in characters from all over too. Though I gave up on NCIS canon after Tony left, so had no idea about Emily; those TV writers suck!
So I started reading this new story but then realised that I must have missed a huge chunk of back story…imagine my joy when I realised what awaited me from last year as well!!
2 days of pretty much solid reading later…..👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
I am always in awe of the brilliant insight and thoughtful analysis in your stories, and this latest instalment does not disappoint! The complexity and detail of your plots are incredibly immersive and realistic — this series just keeps amazing me! I’m completely addicted, and can’t stop reading until long past my bedtime 🙂
So many TV shows gloss over obvious procedural failures and continuity errors, yet you prove time and again that these issues produce both great drama, and enthralling character development!
I also appreciate that you do not sweep the effects of trauma under the rug, or blame the victims, as TV shows are still wont to do. Idolizing narcissistic and abusive characters also seems to be a TV trend, and I am glad that you shine the light of truth on those behaviours.
As icing on the cake, I was thrilled to read your description of kinesthetic learners. I can definitely see Tony experiencing the worst of the education system’s pressure to conform! Your conclusions about Tony being a kinesthetic learner are now headcannon for me! No wonder he believed his former teammates when they told him he was stupid, in spite of Tony constantly being the one to come up with the case-solving leads — both Tony’s home life and his school life have reinforced that lie. Once again, you show Tony demonstrating just how amazing he is at investigation and force protection, plus having a deep understanding of the legal scaffolding that upholds our laws. None of his former teammates could have done what he did, in spite of their high opinions of themselves — especially his former boss!
It also makes my fannish heart really happy that Tony’s lungs are healed by Vala, and that Jack O’Neill is so protective of him — Tony deserves all the good things! Plus I can’t help but visualize Tony’s new “undercover” persona as looking a lot like Weatherly’s Logan Cale character from Dark Angel (he was the only good thing about that show…)
Thank you so much for sharing your talent and effort with all of us grateful readers!
Very interesting. Hopefully Gibbs, Ziva, McGee and Tyler…err Vance get the comeuppance they all so richly deserve.
Great to see things settling in and Tony having more friends and allies on Atlantis.