Reading Time: 120 Minutes
Title: Seeking Truth
Series: Priceless
Series Order: 3
Author: SASundance
Fandom: NCIS, Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Criminal Minds; JAG
Genre: Crime Drama, Crossover, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Science Fiction
Relationship(s): Radek Zelenka/Miko Kusanagi
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, 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)
Beta: Aussiefan70
Word Count: 100,261
Summary: Now that Colonel John Sheppard, had been found and brought home, he faced a long and arduous recovery from his time in captivity. Meanwhile, during his search for the CO, Alex Paddington, aka Tony DiNozzo, uncovered a shocking crime that would rock the residents of Atlantis to its very core. With victims rising and an imminent threat to the safety of Earth’s inhabitants, the case would force him to confront some highly personal demons he wasn’t ready to deal with yet. He never expected that while working with the survivors, they would help him to begin his own healing journey as well.
Artist: AngelicInsanity
Chapter 13 Codes to Live By
It was Tony’s turn to pick up the kids from school and deliver them back to their family quarters again. Technically, he was supposed to do it yesterday, but he’d been off on Winya with his team interviewing the villagers and Dr Girard had agreed to swap with him. As he corralled the four excited kids who were all enthusiastic about the third movie night that was happening tomorrow night, he grinned as he watched Tali interacting with the three others. She had settled into going to school like a cute little duckling to water, she had friends her own age, a teacher she adored and there were plenty of others who were happy to teach her extracurricular things such as dancing and music. While she still missed Lavinia, Cris, and the twins, she was settling down well. Even her nightmares weren’t so prevalent or as violent.
As they frolicked about, making their way home he thought about yesterday. Teyla, he, and Aoife had spent about half of the hour the psychologist had freed up for him, discussing the sort of things that might be done to help the Winyan victims. She thought Tony’s suggestion had merit that Teyla and Monique might have a better chance of educating them that they weren’t to blame for Lucius’ enslavement of them if they were willing. They talked about setting up counselling, but Aoife said that she would need a second psychologist to help take up the slack, which would need to be factored into the proposal that they would present to the IOA.
Afterwards, when Tony told Aoife that he’d confided in Teyla about how Belle was conceived, she’d told him that she was pleased that he’d shared that information with her since it would undoubtedly be healing for both of them to support each other. She then debriefed them on how they were dealing with the news that Lucius’ forced wives had been unjustly found guilty of crimes. They both ranted and raged, and she admitted she was finding it hard to deal with herself. She did leave them gobsmacked when she admitted that she had represented Ireland thirty years ago in Tae Kwan Do tournaments and decided that she probably needed to take it up again to help manage her anger.
None of them broached the topic they were all thinking about – what to do should they learn that commuting the death penalty meant merely delaying it. Hell, Tony was damned sure that Cadman, Barnes, Vala, and Barbara were all obsessing about it too. It was the massive elephant in the room that remained unacknowledged and until Daniel got that legal definition in writing, no one could let it go. Not with the knowledge that an innocent young woman had already lost her life because of Lucius’ potion.
He’d decided to drop off Torren and Kazumi first, leaving Felix until last because he wanted to talk to Monique and let her know what was happening. After the way she had been treated by Weir and Shen who may or may not have been acting in concert with the IOA, Tony had vowed to keep her in the loop regarding his efforts to see that Lucius Lavin paid for his crimes. He knew that she was distrustful, and he couldn’t blame her, but he wanted her and ultimately everyone else to know when they tried him, that Tony was here on Atlantis now.
He wanted to send an unequivocal message that he wouldn’t tolerate anyone trying to sweep anything under the carpet. When crimes were committed against the people of Atlantis he intended to see that justice was served. While he couldn’t turn back the clock on what had happened to Monique, he could keep her informed of what they’d discovered, especially since Felix had nine other half-siblings besides Torren. Well, technically eleven Winyan half-siblings but at this stage, he didn’t think that Jeroze or Adrexa would be in any hurry to meet Torren or Felix.
Monique, although still reserved when he’d dropped off her son, invited him and Tali into her quarters when he asked if they could talk. After getting a snack for the two hungry children and a pot of tea for them both, he noted that she was a little less guarded around him than she used to be. He figured that it had something to do with him uncovering the truth that Sofie Danziger had been another victim of Lavin, too and giving her a personal shield generator for her protection. Fortunately, when it came to trusting people, Tony knew that it would take time and effort to win her trust. He didn’t trust people overly much himself.
When he told her about everything that they’d learnt about the Winyan women, she seemed composed, even though she said that she was furious. He figured that her emotions must be so tightly repressed that any emotions she experienced had to be extremely muted – mere echoes of what she truly felt. He felt incredibly sad for her that she’d been forced to cope with her rape in this way. He also wondered what would be the outcome if one day, her emotions finally exploded after years of keeping them so tightly screwed down.
Tony didn’t know whether to be surprised or not when he mentioned that Teyla wanted to talk to Willa and her fellow wives and try to explain that it wasn’t their fault, and she expressed a desire to participate. He had hoped she would help but had been careful not to suggest it because even though she would have likely agreed, she’d been shamefully manipulated by people in power with their own agendas and he wanted her to have choices that she hadn’t had since it happened. He knew that control was important to be empowered but he also knew that if she try to help the other victims because she chose to, it may help her too. But he was quite surprised when she suggested having males from Atlantis talk to the Winyan victims about the things that Lavin had forced them to do against their will, to go on suicide missions or lock up their commander might help too.
Or forced to have sex with him if Lucius’ orientation included having sex with other guys.
He’d offered to take Felix for a sleepover if Monique needed some time alone to process the news, but she’d refused politely. So, after reminding her about the movie night tomorrow, he’d headed off to the playground with Tali who wanted to let off some steam after sitting in class today. She had boundless energy and he sympathised, since he’d found it hard to stay still when he was young.
Now, the only other work-related task he needed to complete tonight was to talk to Seven of Nine about writing a program to translate the Alteran text into English. He would do that once Tali was snuggled up in bed for the night.
~o0o~
They had an early dinner in the mess with Miko and Kazumi who were missing Radek, who was once again off-world on Balar with McKay. Miko explained that they were studying some new toy they’d discovered deep inside the Ancient compound, half complete. Neither scientist was sure of what it was, and they were frustrated. Meanwhile, Kazumi and Tali were chattering away to each other in Japanese as they discussed their project. When Felix came in with his mother the girls called them over, pleading with Dr Girard to eat with them. When Miko and Tony nodded and extended the invitation, Monique sat down beside them as Felix sat down next to Tali and they began chattering, although now they switched to English to include Felix.
Tony noted that Monique was looking drawn and only ate about half of what was on her tray. He figured that the situation was weighing heavily upon her, and he wondered again what might happen if her tightly controlled emotions were to get away from her one day. He made a mental note to talk to the Marines and SFs to tighten security on Lavin just in case she felt compelled to confront him. He didn’t have a problem with her doing that, but it would take place under appropriate security measures. To be honest, Monique was hardly the only person who might opt for a little retribution after the revelation about Mayuna’s stoning.
After dinner, he and Tali had started working on Tali’s project and spent a quiet night creating a model from her favourite book which at the moment was Charlotte’s Web. Tali wanted to recreate the barn where Wilbur and Charlotte lived together. They’d used homemade paper mâché, cardboard off-cuts, paint, and modelling clay for the animals. Tony wished he had memories of working on school projects with his parents, but his mother was usually too ill (inebriated), and his father was much too busy proving the old saw – that a fool and his money are easily parted to waste time on his son. So, he wasn’t sure if he was doing it right or not, but he was trying. Even if he were flying blind here, he hoped that he was creating memories with Tali that she would someday recall fondly as an adult.
By the time bedtime came along, Tali chose a new book, Peter Pan which made him smile a little sadly. Oh, if only you could only see me now Caitlin, all grown up and being a responsible father. You probably wouldn’t believe it, but I have to pinch myself too sometimes, so I can’t blame you.
After reading a chapter and then letting her con him into reading another chapter, he closed the book and refused to be manipulated into another one. Smiling up at him, she looked at him adorably, all sleepy-eyed.
“Papa, will you sing me some lullabies tonight. You haven’t sung me to sleep for a loooong time,” she begged.
It was true, he hadn’t sung her to sleep since they arrived on Atlantis. When she was younger, he sang her to sleep every night after learning that it had been Ziva’s night-time ritual. Back when he thought he was just her guardian, not her real father, he’d tried to maintain continuity but now in his new job and their new home, there was so much going on Tony sort of let it slide.
“Sure baby,” he told her and waited for the inevitable ‘I’m not a baby I’m a big girl reaction’, but it didn’t come which probably meant she was too sleepy.
Fetching his guitar and tuning it swiftly, he started to sing one of her favourites, the Cradle Song and when he was finished, she wanted the Hush Little Baby Song, so he sang to her about what Papa was gonna buy her and when he deliberately forgot that it was a billy goat and not a frilly coat, she corrected him as she always did with a smile.
“Papa, that’s not it,” before singing the right words. It was part of the ritual! Their ritual.
When he finished, he could see she was fading fast but she requested one more song. “Please, Papa, sing the Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral song,” and he started softly singing the old Irish lullaby that he dimly remembered his nanny singing to him a few times when he was small.
Too ra loo ra loo ral
Too ra loo ra li
Too ra loo ra loo ral
Hush, now don’t you cry
Too ra loo ra loo ral
Too ra loo ra li
Too ra loo ra loo ral
That’s an Irish lullaby
By the time he reached the end of the second verse, she was sound asleep, a smile on her face and he hoped she would have pleasant dreams. After tucking her in and kissing her goodnight he switched on her night light and slipped out of her room, his heart brimming with love. He was still concerned that he would mess her up since he had so much emotional baggage from his own less than idyllic childhood and the inauspicious way he’d become a father, but he was trying his hardest to be a good parent.
Tony had to admit he wasn’t expecting to come to Atlantis and encounter so many children whose mothers had been raped, resulting in unplanned pregnancies. Somehow, knowing that he wasn’t the only one trying to bring up a child who was the result of non-consensual sex and deal with a maelstrom of emotions, helped him to deal with the dark and ugly thoughts and anger. For the attack itself which was such a deep betrayal of trust but also at its consequences – having his life totally turned upside down, and then feeling guilty because those feelings indirectly blamed an innocent child for whom he’d fallen head over heels.
It was enough to drive a person into a dark self-destructive territory. Someone like Tony, whose parents were alcoholics, could easily be tempted to deal with those feelings and thoughts by self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. Although granted it would have been much tougher out here to get, but needs must. Thankfully, he’d been smart enough to know he needed to reach out for help and even if it felt like surrendering control – like he had when Ziva drugged him and forced him to become Tali’s father against his will. Yet with Aoife’s support, he was learning to accept that it wasn’t the same thing at all. He was in charge. Every time he sat down with O’Shea for a session, he chose to do so and yes, maybe he chose to do so because of Tali, but Anthony DiNozzo aka Alex Paddington was still the one who decided to step through her door each and every time.
He hoped they could help the women from Winya and their children and that they would avail themselves of counselling. He believed that it was equally important to convince them that they were not at fault for what had happened to them, nor were their children. He hoped to take their case to the interplanetary tribunal that had initially tried AR-1 for crimes of the Ancients who then just nicked off and Ascended when it all got too hard for them. The Tribunal also accused the expeditionary force of a whole lot of dumb shit they shouldn’t have done and stuff that they really couldn’t be held legally responsible. They admitted that AR-1 was their scapegoat, which was crazy, but he hoped they had moved on from political grandstanding.
But this verdict by the Winyans needed to be overturned as it was unjust, and he hoped they’d agree to retry it.
If Aaron Hotchner came to Atlantis as a WitSec placement, given his professional background he would be an awesome prosecutor. He could help change the lives of those five women and their nine children in a way that therapy wasn’t able to address. Each was important but Tony felt that should the court find that they were innocent of wrongdoing, it would certainly kickstart their ability to accept help and support. Without it, it would be that much harder for them to believe they deserved support and assistance.
As to the former FBI agent, should he come to the Pegasus galaxy, it was a suitable place to hide from criminals who were looking for revenge, especially when you had a kid. Of course, his son was not so little anymore, a teenager but still it was hard to expect a teenager to follow WitSec rules. Without access to social media and the like, it would be easier to make sure Jack Hotchner was safe.
Tony also thought about the fact that Sheppard was coming home to Atlantis in a week or two. Although he’d heard that he had a brother, they weren’t close, and his parents were both dead. Carolyn Lam felt that now he was out of the woods, the rest of his recuperation might go easier if he was in familiar surroundings. Maybe a support group for men who’d had been sexually assaulted might help him to recover. If Daniel hung around for a bit, and he got the feeling neither he nor Vala were in any hurry to go anywhere, Daniel could join in too. He’d float it by Aoife and see what she thought about it when he had a spare moment.
Daniel had lived through some horrific shit and Tony felt indebted to him for sharing his own rape and use of his DNA to create infant aliens. He couldn’t imagine how he’d have felt if they had survived. Of course, Daniel had no idea that Tony had been drugged and forced to make a child, when he shared his non-consensual sex with the Goa’uld Hathor, and sure he’d said that since it happened at the SGC it had been common knowledge, but Tony hadn’t known. The fact he was so ready to talk about his experience made Tony want to reciprocate and share his experience too. Before coming to Atlantis, he’d fully intended to take his dirty secret with him to the grave, unless Ziva was alive as he suspected.
If she were, she could ‘spill the coffee beans’ as she used to say, if she wanted to get custody of Tali. She’d likely use it to turn Tali against him by telling her he never wanted her to be born. Should that happen, he might be forced to pre-empt her, getting in first and explaining sex education that someone Tali’s age didn’t need to know yet.
Sighing, he decided to have an early night. He hadn’t slept well last night – thinking about what he’d learned from Willa. But before heading to bed he needed to check in with J.P. about the translating as tomorrow would be a busy day and he was alone right now. Better to get it over and done with, he decided.
Softly so he didn’t wake Tali, he called out softly, “J.P. can you talk?”
Almost immediately the Seven-of-Nine hologram appeared beside him, seeming to sit on the sofa with him. Hmm, okay. That was weird!
(Unfortunately, I am still working on being able to use my corporeal representation to be able to talk. However, be assured, defender of humans, that I am extremely confident I will be able to create an algorithmic program to make it possible.)
J.P. had taken him literally about being able to talk, he thought in amusement, stifling a chuckle. Tony couldn’t help thinking how green with envy McGee would be if he knew about the existence of Janae Progenius. He firmly pushed the thought to the back of his mind, along with all the other thoughts of his former colleagues. It was better not to think about them, not to dwell in the past – although sometimes it was easier said than done.
(Um, okay. I just wanted to ask you if it was possible to create a translation program so that other people besides me can read Ancient’s Codes of Law. I could do it, but it would take me ages and I have so many other things to do. We need to use it asap to formulate our own Atlantis Laws.)
(It would be possible for me to do this. It will take time, but I will take a break from my endeavours to synchronise my thoughts with audio and the correct movements of my holographic mouth. I will start creating the translation program immediately.)
With that the Artificial Intelligence program disappeared, obviously intending to begin at once. Tony wondered – now that J.P. had a holographic body and was on the cusp of being able to talk, did that mean he was not merely a program but an entity? He’d like to be able to discuss it with Daniel but there were issues that he was too tired to even think about. Deciding to worry about it later because it would need to be addressed, he went into the bathroom and got ready for bed. As he slipped into sleep, his last thought was Monique and his fear that something was going to break in her sooner or later.
~o0o~
As Tony piloted the puddle jumper back to Winya, he was thinking about the developments over the last few days. J.P. had finished the translation program and he’d been able to send Chegwidden a copy of the Ancient’s Laws and Code of Justice, much to the attorney’s satisfaction. Daniel was over the moon and the pair had been holed up in a small conference room most of the weekend and worked through until Monday. Tony had to force them to take a break late in the afternoon, reminding Daniel he had to be fresh for their return trip to Winya the next day. Vala had promised to make sure he ate and got a good night’s sleep and he left her to it, figuring his teammate was probably used to his obsessive personality by now.
Before they left this morning, he’d called a meeting of the interview team to go over the mission which had changed somewhat from the previous one due to the capture of Lucius Lavine and the information that Willa had provided.
“So, as we agreed upon, Daniel is going to be quizzing the village elders and/or the magistrate about the Winyan definition of commuted sentence of death. He’s going to try to get it in writing but in case that isn’t possible he will video his interviews, so we have them on tape. One of the Marines who are going with us will do the honours.”
Daniel, who looked much better after a night of rest, said, “Okay Alex, will do.”
“Okay, this goes for everyone, not just Daniel. There is to be no commentary or arguing with the Winyans’ statements no matter how much we might disagree with them. The last time was in part an intel-gathering expedition. This time I want everyone who talks to the victims to stick to the script that Dr O’Shea and retired Admiral Chegwidden have drawn up for you all.”
Amelia looked around at the others in the room before asking, “Not that I’m disagreeing, but you said that last time was an intel-gathering expedition. What is our goal this time?”
“To get formal statements for the purpose of asking the Interplanetary Tribunal of Justice to overturn the Winyans’ finding that these women were guilty of moral and sexual depravity. I want these women to understand that they didn’t have a choice in what Lucius did, and just because they ‘seemed’ happy to do whatever he asked of them, does not mean that they participated willingly or that they weren’t harmed by what he did to them.”
Everyone looked happy at that declaration. He said, “Okay, Amelia you will be with me and film Willa’s statement since you are the techiest of us here. Major Teldy and her team are going to film everyone else. Captain Cadman, you are with Heleen, Vala you take Ota, Dr O’Shea has Lahn, and Dr Biro is with Neese. AR-3 and AR-8 will be our backup although I don’t anticipate any trouble.”
He looked at Cadman who nodded. “When we went back to inform Filiya Lavin about Thomas Magnum’s proposal, which she was thrilled about FYI, she told us that Lucius’ mother was relieved that her dilemma had been resolved without her involvement. She didn’t want him there, but she also couldn’t turn him in. I don’t think we will face any retribution from the Winyans,” she said.
Tony nodded. “Good, but there could be trouble from others such as rogue genii accessing the gate, so everyone needs to be alert. Okay, let’s head off.”
Now as they took the short trip back to Winya, he couldn’t shake off the definite foreboding he was experiencing. He hoped that it had nothing to do with their mission or Tali. They had had a perfect weekend. The movie night was an enormous success with the four kids and the adults had fun too. Kanaan seemed much more at ease, perhaps because the secret about Torren’s parentage had been revealed and Tony had been so supportive of them both.
As the planet came into sight, he shoved aside his foreboding to focus on the mission – the securing of testimony on Lucius’ crimes against the five Winyans. Lives depended upon it – fourteen lives to be precise.
~o0o~
Back on Atlantis, Tony called them all together for an immediate debrief, including Major Teldy’s team since they had filmed the formal statements and were therefore exposed to the information revealed by the five women too. He’d already flagged the need for the debrief with Aoife before they got started. Except for himself, Aoife, and Barbara, they weren’t prepared for this, having to remain silent as these women claimed that they were immoral and deserved to die had been extremely harrowing for everyone. Having worked a lot of cases involving sexual assault, even a few cases of sexual slavery and sex trafficking over his time as a cop and NCIS agent, he’d seen too much pain and suffering. He’d found it extraordinarily hard to let those poor exploited young women (most of them young enough to be Lucius Lavin’s daughters), continue to exist under the outrageous belief that their own weaknesses were to blame for a rapist turning them into his slaves. He knew the rest of the team would be doing it tough.
Daniel had been able to ascertain after speaking with the five village elders who had judged Lavin and the six victims and determined that the Winyan meaning of commuting a death sentence was that it was merely delayed until any offspring produced during the crime were 15 years old. At which time they were deemed to be adults under Winyan law and therefore independent. Since the eldest child was not quite eight years old, that meant that technically, executions were some ways off, fortunately.
Other disturbing information he’d managed to acquire, was that if someone offered to adopt the children, then the commuted sentence would be declared null and void and the original sentence would be carried out. The elders had confided to Daniel that it was most unfortunate that no one was willing to assume responsibility for the children of such a wicked union. The children were deemed to carry the degenerate taint of their parents which meant there had been no choice but to commute their sentences so that the unfortunate offspring could be raised.
Even more devastating, Heleen had expressed her wish that AR-1 had never come to Winya that day, giving Lucius the idea to travel to Atlantis and abandoning them since they’d all been better off being on the potion. Of course, the Winyans had no idea that Lucius had been motivated to invade Atlantis – at least initially so he could gain access to a puddle jumper to secure more plants to make more of the potion but the idea that she thought she was better off as his sexual slave was distressing. It wasn’t exactly an uncommon thought among the abused, as Tony knew, but the rest of the group was shocked, even though on a purely practical level, they could see why she felt that way.
As they all debriefed, Sergeant Dusty Mehra was probably the most volatile. “Can’t we help them, offer them sanctuary on Atlantis?” she demanded after pacing around the room like a caged tiger.
Tony shrugged, he’d thought about the possibility himself. “Maybe, but that is a question that would need to be asked of the powers that be, Sergeant Mehra. As a short-term solution, it might work but long term, I think it might be difficult. These women come from a medieval community, not the urban technologically advanced society that we have on Atlantis. What do you think they would deal with the transporters, beaming technology and even the simple things like the hot showers and flushing toilets we take for granted?”
Not to mention a holographic Artificial Intelligence Entity and a star city/space ship created from a living breathing ancient ‘Ancient.’ Hell, he was still more than a little disturbed by J.P. and most definitely creeped out about Atlantis when he thought about it. Even now when he looked at Dr Keller, he sometimes found himself thinking of her as some massive hive ship filled with ravenous Wraith. He seriously doubted that the Winyans would cope with such a phenomenon and that was entirely understandable.
“Well, have you got a better idea? We can’t just leave them there. What if someone changes their mind and offers to adopt one or more of the children,” she demanded belligerently.
“Stand down, Sergeant Mehra!” Major Teldy ordered her hot-headed teammate.
Tony held up his hand. “It’s okay, Major. I called this debrief because this is a highly emotive issue, and your team didn’t know anything more than basic data before they were co-opted to record the women’s statements. Dr O’Shea and I wanted everyone to vent in a safe environment. None of us can help that we feel outraged over this situation, but I have been aware of the problem for longer than some of the people here. I do have an idea or two.”
Vala leapt in to defuse the situation. “In that case, do tell, Special Agent Studly,” she purred as many people chuckled and Daniel and Tony rolled their eyes.
“I’d prefer to be addressed as Thomas Magnum, Ms Mal Doran,” he joked. “After all, it is my alter ego.”
As most people laughed outright, Vala looked puzzled. “I don’t know who Thomas Magnum is, cutie pie.”
Tony mock scowled at her. “Okay Vala, never call me that again. And for your information, Thomas Magnum was a private detective on a TV show back in the eighties. He was a former US Navy SEAL and Naval Intelligence officer in the Vietnam War, and he drove a cool car, a red Ferrari 308GTS Quattrovalvole. I always wanted to own one.
“Anyhoo, it was my favourite show when I was young, and I used the name when I set up my network of contacts and informants on various planets around Pegasus. Play your cards right and you might get an invite to come around and watch my DVDs and since Daniel doesn’t have a TV you can bring him too.”
She grinned at him, holding out a hand, she said, “Okay deal!” as they shook on it. “So, what is your idea, Thomas?”
We get Daniel, Dr Porter,” he gestured to the young anthropologist on Teldy’s team with the big doe eyes which Carson found so beguiling, “and Teyla Emmagan to check with planets and communities who have a similar level of technology to the Winyans to see if they would give asylum to five mothers and their nine children.
“We have them investigate not just if they are at a similar level of development but what their views are involving victims of non-consensual sex but also how they view any offspring that result from that union,” he said as Daniel and Alison Porter nodded.
Amelia interjected. “That’s a great idea, Alex. We can ask Ronon for his suggestions too. He visited at least a hundred of planet in his seven years on the run from the Wraith.”
Daniel looked pleased. “Sounds like we have a plan, then. Let’s get on it right away.”
“And what about your project with A.J.?” Vala teased him.
Daniel looked momentarily crushed before he shrugged. “I’ll just have to split my time, I can multi-task,” he said airily.
His teammate gave a throaty chuckle, “Since when, my Daniel. You suck at multi-tasking,” she told him fondly. “I guess I will have to manage you.”
Laura, seeing this was about to degenerate into an all-out bickering fest, decided to interrupt them by sounding a note of caution. “Don’t want to prick anyone’s balloon, but the Winyans might not want asylum.”
Tony shook his head, “It is possible, Major but I think that if they had the opportunity to make a fresh start, maybe find a mate, at least Willa and her sister would jump at the chance. After we finished the formal statement, she and I were just talking. She said that she and her sister will try to convince their children to leave Winya through the gate and seek out a new world to live in, when they become adults, where people won’t judge them as tainted. She said they will probably find it difficult to attract a spouse if they stay.”
AN: An Irish Lullaby was written by J.R. Shannon (erroneous original attribution was to John Hobbs and Colin Raye. Thank you to S.M. for the astute catch)
Chapter 14 A Question of Ethics
Jack O’Neill was keen to get back to Atlantis. There had been significant inroads made in several areas, the location of The Ancients Code of Law and Justice was just massive. Even from a purely historical perspective, it had the relevant experts who were in the know drooling in anticipation of getting their mitts on it. From the standpoint of setting up a law enforcement bureau on Atlantis, it was helpful to have a starting point and then to make it more current using tenets of international laws and human rights charters. Rear Admiral A.J. Chegwidden, although retired, was a masterful acquisition to the program and his wealth of experience was obvious to everyone.
Alex Paddington had been a gift, although Jack was dismayed by the way he’d found himself and his daughter sucked into the program, being targeted by the Trust, but at least they were safer in Atlantis than anywhere on Earth. As an experienced cop and federal agent, he had no illusions about the efficacy of WitSec when determined, highly connected individuals with massive financial assets wanted to find you. He’d told Jack that there were always going to be corrupt US Marshals and FBI agents willing to sell their own grandmother down the river if it made them rich. They wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over Tony DiNozzo and his small daughter.
Still, DiNozzo’s misfortune at attracting the attention of the Trust after a simple car accident and blood tests that identified the pair as possessing the ATA gene, had been the Star Gate Program’s lucky day. He, like Admiral Chegwidden, had the perfect combination of knowledge, skills and military and civilian law enforcement experience. Plus, he was a brilliant investigator. He’d found Colonel Sheppard which other people had assured him after exhaustive months of searching was like finding a needle in a haystack. He’d obtained information in an interrogation that made it look like child’s play when it was anything but and then, helped plan and execute a mission that recovered Sheppard with no casualties and not a single shot fired.
As if that weren’t enough, he’d already sniffed out a massive coverup of a foothold situation that had occurred five fucking years before he set foot on Atlantis. He’d uncovered, not just a suspicious death that turned into a murder, but a plot by the IOA’s Ambassador Shen to get her hands on Lavin’s zombie potion. The ramifications of the plot were horrific – being able to turn your enemies and your own forces into mindless armies, unable to resist unlawful orders, even of the most heinous war crimes. Its potential had shocked everyone on the JCS and the White House to the core.
As it should! If this Zombie potion that the Pentagon had dubbed MCD – 238 proved to be as potent as it seemed, it could be cataclysmic. Even if used to target individuals, say to force them to spy or carry out sabotage or assassinations. For example, Secret Service agents on the POTUS’ protection detail could be infected with the drug and ordered to kill him or her and the implications were terrifying. As such, the President had ordered that Jack personally undertake a program to mitigate as much as humanly possible, the risk that MCD – 238 posed to national, international, and interstellar security.
Already the director of Homeworld Command had the go-ahead to set up a secret research facility on an as yet to be determined planet in the Pegasus galaxy, headed by Dr Carolyn Lam. The SGC’s chief medical officer was taking a sabbatical so she could establish and run the medical portion of the program. Their priority was to manufacture massive quantities of the vaccine developed by Dr Beckett and inoculate everyone. First on Atlantis, then the rest of SGC personnel who were the gatekeepers to Earth’s stargate and key people in Washington. After that, they would progressively roll it out to everyone else serving in the Armed Services, then the judicial branch, both houses of Congress and law enforcement agencies. All of which would be a massive job.
They also needed to undertake research into how long the vaccine provided immunity – fortunately, they had the perfect test subjects to start studying that question since everyone sans John Sheppard had been given the vaccine. They would have their blood analysed to see if any of them retained immunity to MCD – 238.
He also needed to put together a team of botanists. Maybe he would borrow Dr Nigel Parrish from Atlantis and Dr Brown from Cheyenne Mountain and assign them to AR teams. Note to self, make Parish TAD to AR-1, not Katy Brown, who used to date Rodney McKay – that could be awkward for her. They would need another eight botanists to join the remaining AR-1 teams to search every viable planet to ensure that plant used to brew – 238 wasn’t growing wild on any other planets besides M6H – 491. It if grew on other planets, they would need to look at if it were possible to use genetic manipulation to render it harmless.
It was why he’d been keen to nuke the whole damned planet until he found out about Shen. If she and her government had managed to get hold of the plant and cultivate it for warfare, then they were in a shitload of trouble because he didn’t trust sections of his own military and government let alone a foreign superpower to have access to that drug. Fuck no, they had to be prepared and there was a risk with research that the wrong people in the military and Washington could get their hands on it and use it unethically, but they had no choice. Thanks to the IOA and Elizabeth Weir.
The only good thing was that because it was Paddington who uncovered the whole debacle, Jack had managed to keep it in-house and away from the IOA, NID and the likes of the CIA and other highly dodgy alphabets. Thank providence, since after all he’d seen and done, Jack no longer believed in a God or Gods.
Of course, other more questionable research would also take place to see if it could be used on non-human species in case of future wars, but Jack was going to try to control that situation as much as possible, by keeping it tightly compartmentalized with Daniel supervising, even though it wasn’t his area of expertise, he had the ethical requirements to ensure they didn’t create another Hoff drug or hybrid human wraith drug ever again. He’d find a geneticist to run the actual experiments, but he’d make sure that whoever they were, they needed permission to wipe their butt before they went to the toilet.
So now, he was on the lookout for an individual of unimpeachable character to head the whole scientific side of the research facility. He’d been under immense pressure to appoint Rodney McKay and he’d been considering it at first. On paper, he certainly had the scientific credentials. He’d saved Atlantis and Earth on countless occasions, was a genius and was used to supervising other scientists. Although O’Neill wasn’t a fan of McKay’s management style, that hadn’t been the problem. He simply didn’t trust Rodney not to be corrupted by the potential dangers this drug presented. Paddington had discovered something disturbing while talking to Teyla, and Jack had subsequently confirmed that it did occur with Ronon Dex. After the foothold situation had been resolved, McKay had used the last of Lavin’s potion to control Colonel Sheppard as he was the only one who hadn’t needed inoculating as he’d had a cold.
When caught out, he’d laughed it off as just a prank, but O’Neill failed to see the funny side. McKay had experienced the effects of the drug firsthand when Ronon physically held onto him so he couldn’t avoid being exposed and then being publicly humiliated by becoming a Lucius fanboy. Frankly, Jack didn’t see anything the slightest amusing with him exposing Sheppard to the drug and apparently neither did Weir. Which was when McKay switched his story to claim he was just doing research on the last of the potion Sheppard obtained from Winya. And that there was why Jack would resist with his dying breath, letting Rodney McKay anywhere near this – 238 research project. Anyone conducting research involving drugging another individual without their knowledge and prior consent did not have the impeccable ethical standards that were an absolute necessity to work on this project. This project, even staffed with scientists of the highest of moral standards, still gave Jack nightmares most nights since he learnt of the existence of MCD – 238.
O’Neill’s suspicion that McKay may have baser motivations for wanting control over John Sheppard meant that he was never in the running for this critical research, no matter how much pressure was applied. Over the years he’d heard rumours about McKay’s infatuation with Sheppard, but he hadn’t paid much attention to it. After all, there had been rumours about him and Sam Carter and him and Danny for the eight years he’d led SG1. Hell for all he knew, there were rumours that he and Teal’c had been fuck buddies too, but he knew that his team had never stepped over the line, so he assumed that the rumours about McKay and Sheppard were of a similar ilk. Until now.
Drugging a teammate to humiliate them and turn them into a personal servant to clean your quarters, was reprehensible behaviour and enough to rule him ineligible to lead the research into MCD – 238. But if he had intended to have non-consensual sex with his team leader because he had the hots for the man or believed he was in love with him, that was criminal behaviour or at the very least, a conspiracy to commit a felony. Nope. McKay was not going to have anything to do with this research and that was final. So far, he’d provided other reasons why Atlantis CSO wasn’t going to be involved but if push came to shove, he would have Paddington investigate the whole sordid episode.
At the moment, aside from Carter who was busy doing Colonel stuff like commanding the USS George Hammond, a Daedalus-class deep space carrier there was really only one other individual he’d trust with it. Sam was gaining much-needed leadership experience in the military, as opposed to her ridiculously short stint as the commander of Atlantis. He was loath to recall her, which meant he had only one other candidate in mind. Bill Lee might not be as brilliant or talented as Carter or McKay but he, like Radek Zelenka, was still a top-notch scientist and was a man of outstanding ethics and character. He’d served the SGC and the world faithfully during his time with the program and Jack just needed to persuade him to take up the helm. Maybe he should have Paddington do a psych profile on Bill and figure out what his currency was.
Which brought him full circle to the catalyst for all this panic – Anthony Darius DiNozzo aka Alexander Clive Paddington. Of course, only the President knew who Alex was, but the point was that Special Agent Paddington was currently the darling of the White House, Pentagon and the NatSec community for uncovering this whole mess with Shen, China and the compound that was now known as MCD – 238. He’d been authorised to keep him on Atlantis whatever it cost. Give him whatever resources he demanded, if humanly possible because they needed his skill to be out there helping to protect Earth. The NID was itching to get their hands on Lucius Lavin, and they were fulsome in their praise for the Informant Network he was slowly establishing, which had helped capture the architect of the foothold situation and who bore no small responsibility for Colonel Sheppard’s abduction either.
Seeing as the Genii – their frenemy in a Cold War kind of way – employed a veritable legion of spies and informants across the Pegasus galaxy, it made huge sense to establish their own too. There had been numerous times when Genii spies managed to breach their defences which resulted in losses of weapons, resources, and personnel. Perhaps the most serious was the unsuccessful attempt to seize control of Atlantis back in the first year of the expedition when Sheppard had almost single-handedly killed sixty-odd Genii soldiers. Having spies and informants keeping track of the Genii spies and paying them in provisions and even black-market contraband like booze, was much cheaper in the long run than losing even one highly trained military asset. While their relationship with the current Genii regime was cordial at the moment, a replacement at the top could see that change quickly. Hence the edict that Paddington could write his own ticket.
It was highly ironic to Jack that there was such a lovefest going on for Special Agent Alexander Paddington. For years now he’d been hounding the powers that be about assigning an AFOSI agent or even better, establishing a field office at the SGC only to be told it was too difficult. He’d been told that the officers were fully capable of dealing with anything that may come up, but Alex made them all eat their words. It had taken a brilliant investigator to uncover what could potentially be bigger than the Wraith, Goa’uld, Replicators or the Ori in the threat they posed. Worse still, it wasn’t a threat they were facing from Aliens, in theory, they were looking at an attack from someone on Earth.
Looking at the list of things that Alex had requested that O’Neill brought back when Jack returned to Atlantis, he grinned. The guy was certainly an out of the box thinker, as his reputation had promised. He wondered if Danny had a hand in this list – it screamed of setting up Madame Lavin in a small business that would, if she was serious, give her the means to be self-supporting and possibly even comfortable. It seemed it wasn’t merely enough to reward people, Alex was bound and determined to help them change their lives for the better.
When he was a cop, Tony saw far too much misery and suffering, especially working in Vice; it wasn’t exactly surprising he’d want to help the people enduring countless generations of suffering caused by the Wraith. Alex had also prepared more generic lists to be used to pay off his informants, practical stuff such as garden implements and bags of seeds – not just grain crops for agriculture but smaller packets of seeds to grow vegetables for kitchen gardens. Plus, fishing gear (which Jack thought was a great idea) and stuff like post hole diggers and hand drills. Most of it was already crated up and ready to be taken aboard the Zephyrus, due to head back to Atlantis in less than a week.
Already on board was a special item of cargo, the cost of getting their newest residents of Atlantis to agree to join the mission. Okay well, that wasn’t entirely true – it had been more like a deal sweetener for former FBI Agent Aaron Hotchner. Jack was surprised when he’d suddenly accepted their offer, which he’d previously rejected, to move to Atlantis with his son, Jack (good name too) to help set up a justice system in the city. When first approached by Homeworld Command, he was resistant to uprooting his son after they were forced into WitSec three years ago when he was targeted by a serial killer by proxy. Even though Peter Lewis was now dead, it was highly probable the monster had likely set up multiple proxy killers for just the eventuality that he was killed. Lewis was a brilliant mathematician with an obsession with Aaron and someone who saw numerous outcomes and planned for them.
Of equal concern to Hotchner, FBI and Federal Marshalls was the mass break-out, masterminded by Lewis that had many of the serial killers still at large three years later. They were worried that they may pose a threat to the Hotchners, either because Lewis had primed them as his proxy killers or just the good old motive of revenge for killing Mr Scratch. Given Peter Lewis’ fascination with the former head of the BAU, Hotchner wasn’t willing to take risks with his son’s life by leaving WitSec or heading to Atlantis either.
Jack got the feeling that he would have risked coming out of hiding if it were just his safety at stake, but no way would he risk his son’s life. Which was why he’d crossed Aaron Hotchner off his list and started looking for someone from the Criminal Justice world instead. Admiral Chegwidden had suggested a few people if Hotchner turned him down and he’d been vetting them, a complicated process but a very necessary one. In Hotchner’s case, he’d already had a great deal of vetting as an FBI agent, but it couldn’t be helped.
O’Neill knew Paddington would be upset, since they needed a prosecutor asap, but Jack understood and respected Hotchners decision, having been a father too, and he knew full well that Atlantis was not without its risks. He was confident that Alex would understand, having made a huge life-altering change by taking Belle to Atlantis to keep her safe from the Trust.
As to the danger, Hotchner felt he was well placed to watch out over his son on Earth. But unfortunately, no parent can watch their teenager 24/7 and that was what was their undoing. Sure, Jack understood why his father had given up his career and why they had to cut ties with everyone from their former life, even his maternal Aunt Jessica Brooks, who was his surrogate mother. Yet there was also an inevitable undercurrent of invincibility in the teenage Jack, typical of most kids his age. Even a kid who’d seen a psychopath attacker almost kill his dad and then murder his mom while she and Jack were in witness protection the first time, ten years ago.
Now, as a typical fourteen-year-old teenager, he was addicted to his cell phone and social media, even though his father had spent many hours explaining the dangers of using social media unsupervised and without proper precautions for any kid but most especially those who were in witness protection. Hotchner had gone so far as to write up a contract and have his boy sign it, stating that he wasn’t to access the internet or social media unless Arron could supervise it. He agreed to give his dad details and passwords to his social media accounts before his father finally relented and let him have a cell phone.
Of course, the kid signed the contract eagerly, ready to say or do anything, even eat brussels sprouts for a full year without complaint just to get his hands on a cell phone and be just like his friends. But unfortunately, he had no intention of abiding by it. Like most teenagers, he thought that his father’s generation didn’t understand technology or how important it was to his identity.
Jack had set up some accounts on the latest social network platforms under his new WitSec pseudonym or close enough that it hardly mattered and had become increasingly overconfident that his father was being alarmist and overprotective. A few weeks ago, he reached out to a couple of his best friends in Woodbridge, VA, and of course the hackers had been waiting. Fortunately, one friend he’d contacted let it slip to his mom that Jack Hotchner had been in contact via his Snap Chat account. She was a cop and immediately contacted the Federal Marshalls to alert them of the security breach. They’d been spirited away again, hours before a deranged killer showed up and shot their house to shit.
Their narrow escape had made Aaron second guess his refusal to take Homeworld Command’s job offer. He told O’Neill that while Atlantis might not be the most teen-friendly place to live, its lack of internet and social media had suddenly become a pretty big drawcard. He said he knew enough about behavioural neurobiology to realise it would be impossible to prevent it from happening again. Sure, Jack was incredibly remorseful after receiving one helluva scare, tearfully promising to delete all his apps but his dad knew that the reward pathway in the brain which experienced pleasure developed early in adolescents.
Particularly the nucleus accumbens, recognised for its role as the reward circuit in the brain, which is fired up when using social media. The difficulty was that it developed much earlier than the regions in the brain responsible for making reasoned intelligent choices and explained why teens were so motivated by pleasure rather than rational thought. It was why it was so difficult to protect teens from their sense of invulnerability when using social media. Considering the danger in their situation, Aaron Hotchner had taken the extremely tough decision to take Jack to Atlantis to keep him safe, not only from proxy killers but from himself.
While his son would be furious with him for living somewhere cut off from the online world his generation considered impossible to live without, he would prefer to keep him alive. So, Aaron and Jack Hotchner would be boarding the Zephyrus next week and Aaron was busy ordering computer games and movies, hoping to make life a bit easier for Jack once they arrived in the Pegasus galaxy. He’d been reassured that most if not all of his educational resources would be met, O’Neill had hired a top-notch STEM teacher to educate the older children on the base. Other subjects were covered by the international civilian population, which consisted of people who were among the best and brightest in their fields. Hotchner commented that Jack would have to sacrifice a few of his extra-curricular studies but it was the price that he was willing to pay to live without looking constantly over their shoulder at every stranger.
O’Neill felt sorry for the poor kid and had Paul quiz the US Marshalls about his extra-curricular activities. Davis discovered that he was into fencing, and robotics and had been taking piano lessons for the past four years and was fairly good – working towards his level five examinations in the Royal Conservatory of Music. Now someone on Atlantis might have been into fencing… maybe. However, he happened to know someone qualified to teach piano.
When Paddington had mentioned having to pick up Belle from her keyboard lesson with Dr O’Shea, he’d been curious. “Having gone through your file with a fine-tooth comb, I know that you started playing when you were quite a bit younger than Belle. Why aren’t you teaching her?” O’Neill asked, knowing that he was more than qualified to do so. He had an Associate Diploma in Piano and Guitar and somehow had found time to complete a Licentiate Diploma in Piano from the Royal Conservatory of Music, which Davis said was the equivalent standard of a concert pianist. Plus, conveniently, he was an RCM certified music teacher.
“Because when I started my mother tried to teach me, but she was too technically advanced, not to mention too drunk. She forgot how much practice it took and became irritated when I couldn’t master the technique quickly enough. Luckily, she sent me to a teacher who was nowhere as proficient as my mother, but she was a wonderful teacher for beginners.
“Plus, I want Belle to spend time with other adults apart from me, especially females since she doesn’t have a mother. Aoife can also chat with her and assess how she’s coping so it’s a kind of musical therapy,” he’d explained.
So, Jack had decided to send a baby grand Steinway to Atlantis so that people who played, like Jack and Alex could use it. He had a feeling that Carter might have mentioned that Rodney McKay played, and now he knew that the pocket dynamo, Dr O’Shea played too. If enough people used it, they might need to ship another upright piano or two to the city. There was certainly enough space for them on the vast floating city. Naturally, he was trying to make life as pleasant as possible for Hotchner and his kid. Jack had also taken note of Lavinia Paddington telling Paul that it was such a shame that Alex couldn’t take his piano with him since he spent time playing the one at the Paddington ancestral home every day.
Well, the powers that be did tell O’Neill to keep him happy no matter the cost. He was just following orders.
As he returned from another meeting at the Pentagon with the JCS and various NatSec players, wanting an update from him before he left for Atlantis in a couple of days, he sighed in frustration. Except for Aaron Hotchner accepting the position as the Chief Prosecutor of the Atlantis Department of Justice (its tentative name for the time being), there wasn’t that much to report. While it was an important development, it wasn’t the issue that had everyone in a tizzy, so to speak. He gave a tight grin, knowing that his colleagues wouldn’t like their behaviour being categorised thusly, but they were all in a panic or at least a flap, so tizzy fit well enough in Jack’s estimation.
They’d asked again about personnel to head up the program and he told them again that Dr Lam would oversee the medical side, including producing the vaccines and research into how long it gave immunity. Plus, at some point further down the track, he wanted to know what the long-term dangers were of being repeatedly exposed to MCD – 238 since Colonel Sheppard’s exposure had been for months and the Winyans had been exposed for up to three years. He told them he’d offered the position of Chief Botanist to Dr Nigel Parrish who’d accepted the position. He would create a database of possible planets where the plant could exist, and he and his team of botanists would accompany Atlantis Reconnaissance teams to check out all the possible planets. The botanists would also look at ways of breeding strains that didn’t have the active compound found in – 238. He finished up with the offer he’d made to Bill Lee to head up the program, and also oversee the scientists focusing on should we need to be concerned about possible aerosol transmission methods.
Almost immediately, both the Army and Marine generals once again stated that they thought that Dr McKay should be placed in charge of the research program and General O’Neill smirked.
“Not gonna happen. This is a Homeworld Command operation, and Dr Lee is my pick. I don’t want him anywhere near this.”
“You know when he learns about it, he’s gonna throw a giant tantrum if he’s not in charge,” Chief of Staff of the Army, General Irving Conrad, protested. “The IOA will want him running it.”
“Yeah, well that’s too bad because my guy discovered the threat and reported it. McKay has had five years to come to the same realisation that my agent did. If he throws a tantrum, tell him that!” he said irritably.
The Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Michael Rosen shook his head, looking irked. “Look, Jack, Dr McKay may be high strung, but he’s saved our bacon more times than I care to count. Sometimes it’s just easier if you throw him a bone to keep him happy and off everyone’s backs.”
“Okay then Mike, you toss him a bone with a damned project, but I stand by Dr Lee as my first pick and if he won’t do it, then I’ll ask Colonel Carter. I don’t wanna do that and jeopardise her career but if I have to, I will. But the bottom line is, that McKay won’t be in charge of the MCD – 238 research. I can’t be blunter than that.”
“If this is still some sort of grudge about when what happened when Teal’c was stuck in the gate, perhaps it’s time to let bygones be bygones,” Chief of the National Guard Bureau counselled him gravely.
“You honestly think I’d be so unprofessional as to put any ancient history between him and myself before the integrity of such a crucial research program?”
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Harry Litchfield said, “Then why are you so adamant that he not head up the program.”
“Because I have information that calls into question his ethical suitability to have anything to do with this particular program, much less lead it. And I’m only going to say this once, Gentlemen. The President gave me full authority over the program. If you have concerns, then I suggest you take them up with him.”
Which left them all pissed off but with nowhere to go. Perhaps he should have just told them why he was so resolute about Dr McKay’s unsuitability to head up the program, but he was fed up with their pandering to McKay. Paddington had been right, his inability to control what came out of his mouth had helped land Sheppard right in the clutches of the Genii militia and left him severely wounded physically and psychologically. Yet everyone made excuses because he was a genius who saved everyone’s butts. And Alex was spot on again in his analysis of how his undisciplined speech to a total stranger on Dagan had cost them a ZPM they desperately needed back in their first year when three hive ships were headed for Atlantis after AR-1 was nearly killed locating it.
Likely there were more examples of his loose lips sinking ships, and his tantrum-throwing and arrogant belief he was smarter than everyone else didn’t mean that he was. There was technical genius and there were real-world smarts and McKay was like the proverbial raging testosterone-driven bull, raging about in a minefield. His arrogance could easily lead to significant collateral damage when there were no controls imposed on his behaviour. So, fuck the JCS, He was piloting this plane.
As he sighed over being stuck in DC traffic, he pulled out one of the ‘memos’ Paddington had sent him not long after being sent out to Atlantis. Having a new set of eyes giving an honest assessment of what was ancient history in the early years of the program had been enlightening, to say the least. Since he was stuck in a traffic jam, he glanced down reading it again, Not something he often did but Paddington had a sarcastic sense of humour that was surprisingly similar to Jack’s snarkiness, and the memo made him snigger and maybe even laugh out loud. It read:
Memo to: Brigadier General Jonathon O’Neill, Director of Homeworld Command
From: Special Agent In Charge, Alexander C. Paddington
Subject: Project Batshit Crazy aka Project Arcturus aka Blowing up a galaxy
Dear Dad, (please excuse the informality, Sir,)
Sometimes I ask myself, what the fuck am I doing here! No, forget that – it’s MOST of the time. The remainder of the time I tell myself that I’m here to keep my daughter safe from the vampires who want to get their hands on her, which is why we came here instead. To a land that still has the odd vampire trolling around in a spaceship, looking to suck the life out of humans. Anyway – I digress.
So why the memo, I hear you ask. Ah, well… as I was making my way through the after-action reports, I found this little gem of a mission today that I thought might be of interest, since it resulted in Dr McKay blowing up most of a solar system in a minor teensy weensy little oopsie whoopsie. I mean, hey! It could happen to anyone, right?
WRONG! It happened because the chief scientific officer who has an IQ off the fucking charts, and really should have known better, is so damned pathologically arrogant, he could be the love child of a Goa’uld, an Ancient and an Ori. For anyone who wasn’t a genius or who didn’t have their head so far up their ass that they could see their epiglottis, it was painfully clear that Project Arcturus was all going to end in tears. However, when you have a megalomaniac at the helm, it was always going to be a big fucking catastrophe.
Picture the scene if you will – our brainiac and his minions find themselves exploring a grim planet, following in the footsteps of the Ancients to a land known as the Dorandan Homeworld in the Dorandan galaxy, which is no more by the way. They locate the Ancients’ research base and find it literally littered (how’s them apples for alliteration, hey) with scads of long-dead Ancients or dare I say it, ancient Ancients?
Now to us mere mortals (herein to be known as MMs) who aren’t geniuses, this fact of a base strewn with corpses would serve as a dire warning about the dangers inherent in the research that was being carried out there. Amiright? Not Dr Rodney McKay! He insisted that he could achieve what they (the ancient very dead Ancients) couldn’t do. He insisted he could complete an experiment creating energy in the realm of approximately 25 ZPMs that could in turn fire a VBF gun.
But wait, I hear you say, it couldn’t be so simple, surely? And you’re right but I’ll thank you to stop calling me Shirley! Enter stage left, the antagonist, the evil Dr Zelenka warning the genius Dr McKay, Col Sheppard, Dr Weir, and Col Caldwell that the experiment had been abandoned, not because they ran out of time due to the War with the Wraith (hereto to be known as WwW) but because the Ancient scientists weren’t able to control the power. He insisted it was too inherently unstable, and it had destroyed them.
But back the Daedalus up here – you want to know what was Col Caldwell the Captain of the Daedalus doing there. I’m so glad you asked me that, Dad! Ya see the JCS and the IOA had some pretty major skin in the game. They were desperately looking for a way to defeat the Ori and willing to do just about anything to achieve that admirable goal. But hey, a blind guy and his dog should have been able to see that the Ancients weren’t conducting their experiments in a long-dead solar system (at least I hope it was dead before they started) because it was perfectly safe and hunky-dory.
And Dr Weir, to give the former CO her dues, halted the experiment after Dr Martin Collins was killed in their first attempt to make Arcturus work. However, our hero Dr McKay ranted and raved and threw his usual tantrums. Skilfully he manipulated Colonels Caldwell and Sheppard until they convinced Weir to let him proceed, based on his hubris that he was smarter than a whole base of Ancients. Unfortunately, he’d ended up nearly getting himself and Sheppard killed when he was proved wrong about being smarter than the Ancients, blowing up most of the solar system in the process.
But hey…as they say. All’s well that ends well, right. I just hope and pray that there was nothing or no one still alive in the Dorandan galaxy.
Best Wishes from your loving son
Benjamin Franklin Hawkeye Pierce MD
But seriously, General O’Neil. WTF???
Regards A.C. Paddington.
And as amusing as that was in its irreverent way, it did give Jack food for thought about the whole let’s not argue with Rodney McKay trope because he’s much smarter than we are. It reminded him that the Ancients were far smarter and look where that had got them.
At least when Sam had exploded a sun, it had been intentional. Not due to a terrible miscalculation of how much smarter she was than the builders of the Stargates. Still, O’Neill consoled himself a little, at least Rodney was on par with the Ancients on one level – he could match them when it came to sheer unbridled arrogance!
Oh yeah, he got why the Joint Chiefs of Staff were so eager not to piss Rodney McKay off – as Paddington pointed out so entertainingly, they hoped he would create weapons to figure out how to protect Earth from the next deadly threat from Narcissistic Races wanting to rule the Universe. It was a given that someone would step in to fill the void left by the Goa’ulds, Ori and Wraiths who were no longer the existential threat to the Pegasus galaxy that they had been. But treating McKay as a god, treating anyone as a god was always going to end in disaster.
If a humble peacenik such as Dr Daniel Jackson could be seduced by having way too much power, as Shifu sought to demonstrate to him, then the already arrogant Canadian didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hell of not falling into the trap. And he would drag them along with him on a one-way trip to oblivion.
All that aside, McKay had already demonstrated why he was not in any way suited to be in charge of this program – not strategically because he never even considered the terrible threat the herb MCD – 238 posed back when it had been used with such brutal effect. And not ethically, because he’d not hesitated to drug an unwitting colleague for personal gain.
Jack decided to share his reasoning with the President in case the JCS tried to do an end-run around him. It wouldn’t be the first time when it came to weapons of immense power, which potentially was what this herb seemed capable of doing! To be honest, it terrified him – its capacity to tempt those in positions of power to utilise it, was surely immense and seductive.
A mass supply of the vaccine to prevent that from happening was a huge priority!
Chapter 15 Sanctuary Sought
As the DC traffic began slowly moving again, the general thought about Alex. No doubt in his mind that the shit show run by Leon Vance at his former federal agency and the crap-fest of insanity flourishing under the leadership of Leroy Jethro Gibbs influenced his perspective of the likes of Rodney McKay. Jack had decided after returning from Atlantis, and some of the remarks Admiral Chegwidden had made, to have the agency investigated. Whoa, had he received a horrible surprise at what he’d uncovered!
Honestly, the more he learnt about what passed for acceptable behaviour from the powers that be in that federal agency, and he used the term loosely, the more outraged he’d become. It included a Cold World former CIA operative with highly questionable ethics, especially when it came to the young waifs she’d collected, moulding them into spies and creating her own private army of spooks. It also consisted of one former and one current director with very personal ties to the assassinated former head of the Mossad which was all kinds of wrong. There was the long-in-the-tooth leader of the MCRT and Alex’s former boss, who should have had his field clearance yanked years ago for maxing out the age requirements and then thrown in jail for good measure. Gibbs committed first-degree murder, covered up premeditated murder committed by family and friends, tampered with evidence, and god knows what the fuck else.
But wait! What about the huge elephant in the pumpkin-coloured bullpen at HQ – the farcical placement of a foreign operative of Israel’s national intelligence agency as a liaison and then full-blown agent, serving nine years on the MCRT. Mossad’s raison d’etre was gathering intelligence, covert ops, and counterintelligence. So, seriously what had Ziva David been doing on a team investigating serious crimes including murder, taking place against Marines and Navy personnel and their families? How was it even remotely defensible to the most credulous moron, let alone several successive Secretaries of the Navy!
O’Neill seriously felt like the whole damned agency needed to be blown up and rebuilt, top to toe. What sane individual would be in any way shocked, upon discovering that Officer David had been handling covert operations for the Mossad while an NCIS operative on US soil. As if that weren’t bad enough, she’d also been passing classified intel back to her father, and Vance and Gibbs caught her red-handed. Instead of charging her with espionage they turned around and offered to make her a US citizen and federal agent after a mission went bad for her under the Mossad’s watch? Holy SHIT! No, seriously who in their right mind would do something so unconscionably stupid? Leon Vance apparently!
And don’t even get him started on the fucked-up program dreamed up by none other than the NCIS director Leon Vance when he was at the Naval Academy to take military personnel and use brainwashing techniques, turning them into glorified zombie assassins for hire. He could have been one of those poor sods – having done his share of damned distasteful things as he’d told George Hammond an eon ago. Good Lord, it was like something out of a Marvel comic or some Hollywood producer’s florid imagination to bring in gullible moviegoers and yet, it had been goddamned real!
His heart bled for the military personnel who, unlike him, had been selected for the Operation Frankenstein program and had their lives ruined by the likes of Vance, along with the disgusting and thankfully, dead spook, Trent Kort and also the former SECNAV! And Vance got to be all entitled and grieving when he lost his wife, who Jack was sure was a lovely person, but how many servicemen and women’s lives had he ruined due to that colossally batshit crazy idea, dreamed up to gain college credits. Yet another example of overweening arrogance of people who considered themselves to be smarter than everyone else.
How it was possible for Director Vance to still have a job cleaning the streets, let alone running NCIS, despite all of the shit he had been responsible for and the outrageous things he’d permitted in his agency, beggared belief. Jack was so damned glad that they’d never gotten around to appointing an NCIS agent afloat to the SGC, even though it had been mooted on a number of occasions since the SGC had a massive contingent of Marines under its command.
Yep, they’d caught a lucky break there. One thing was clear, with Vance involved, it would have been an unmitigated disaster!
As he neared Homeworld Command HQ, he scowled at the thought that NID Special Agent Malcolm Barrett was foisted upon him for the flight to Atlantis. The NID wanted to question Lucius Lavin to try to ascertain how many other people knew critical information about MCD – 238 and if so, what exactly did they know? Jack did not like or trust the NID. Sure, they ‘claimed’ it had been a rogue element that had tried to set him up for murder – turn Teal’c into a lab rat, plus a score of other things he couldn’t forgive, namely some of its rogue agents morphing into the evil incarnate that was the Trust. Carter had worked with Agent Barrett in the past and trusted him, and normally, if Sam trusted someone, then it was generally good enough for him.
But fer cryin out loud, this was the NID!
Grumpily, he made his way to his office, knowing Paul would be along soon to find out what happened at the meeting. He pulled out the list Paddington had sent, grinning as he perused it again, deciding that he’d toss it into Colonel Davis’ capable hands. He was sure his 2IC had contacts that could steer him in the right direction.
~o0o~
When General O’Neill returned from the JCS meeting at the Pentagon he’d been pissed off, even more than his normal irascible self after a long and frustrating meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Jack O’Neill did not suffer fools gladly and he hated being in Washington DC and only agreed to head up Home World Security because he knew how critical it was to the SGC, but it sure left him feeling extremely cantankerous. Paul and the rest of the general’s staff had learned to give him a wide berth when he became too belligerent.
After O’Neill had ordered him to set up an urgent meeting with the President before he left for Atlantis in another two days, the Lieutenant Colonel had nodded and backed out of his office, giving his boss solitude until he’d calmed down. Several hours later, Davis entered the general’s domain, armed with a coffee from O’Neill’s favourite shop and news about the meeting with the POTUS.
“General, the President has cleared time to see you at 1800 hours tonight. I cancelled your meeting with Mr Barnsley and told him we would try to reschedule the meeting to discuss financial matters tomorrow,” Paul told him, placing his coffee on his desk.
“Eggcellent,” he quipped, seemingly to have regained his good mood. No doubt the prospect of getting to go off-world was contributing to his improved humour.
“Sorry about the attitude earlier. Between the Dr Rodney McKay fanboys at the Pentagon and the prospect of having Agent Barrett sticking his bib into what is Homeworld business, seeing as it was Paddington’s discovery, I was kinda pissed off,” he apologised to his 2IC.
“Understandable General,” Davis said, accepting the apology with his usual aplomb. Although to be fair he recognised that as irritable as General could be at times, he never hesitated to apologise if he went too far in taking out his anger on his staff.
In Paul’s experience, there weren’t many commanding officers willing to do that because they were worried about losing face. Perhaps that was why General O’Neill didn’t have any qualms about it – he had done so much in his career protecting not just the US, but he’d saved the planet on countless occasions. He probably felt, rightly, that he had nothing left to prove. That or he didn’t care what his peers thought of him.
“Will there be anything else for now, or will I leave you to study the report I prepared on Major Martin’s report of suspicious activity in known Trust operatives?” he asked adroitly reminding O’Neill of the things that needed to be done before his departure. “You have a meeting with the surveillance unit at 1230 today.”
Giving him a sardonic grin to let him know he was aware that Paul was managing his boss, Jack gave Paul a list of items and Davis looked at it curiously. It listed:
- 2 kilos of flax for spinning
- 2 kilos of cotton fibre for spinning
- merino fleece
- alpaca fleece
- mohair (goat) fleece
- Corriedale fleece
- 1 medium-sized drum carder
- 2 hand carders
- 1 ball winder
- 1 niddy noddy.
He read it a second time and looked at the general in askance. He didn’t understand what some of these things even were. Was it supposed to be some sort of joke?
“I need you to pick up these items for me asap, Colonel.”
The lieutenant colonel nodded. “Yes General. May I be so bold as to ask why?”
“Because Special Agent Paddington requested that I bring them with me when I return to Atlantis,” O’Neill answered airily as if that explained everything.
Davis thought that it was only part of the answer. “Yes Sir, I see. But what does he want with them?”
“Paddington? Nothing. Thomas Magnum wants them to pay his snitch for ratting out that rat bastard, Lucius Lavin.”
Paul raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Thomas Magnum, I thought he was a television character.”
“Well yeah, but he’s also apparently Alex’s alter ego. He thought it was safer to remain incognito when he set up his interplanetary informant network.
“He’s not very trusting, is he?”
“Because his WitSec undercover persona has an alter ego? Can’t say as I blame him. You’ve seen the utter shit show that his former agency is,” O’Neill shook his head. “I don’t know what sort of crazy, Director Vance thinks he’s running there or how they’ve managed to keep getting away with all their crap for so long. It is a farce.”
As he left the general’s office, Paul Davis decided he really couldn’t disagree with his superior’s assessment. He’d done a fair share of the historical research for the General when he came back from Atlantis with some bee in his bonnet about the frankly minor federal agency NCIS. He’d also had him investigate Ziva David who was the mother of Agent Paddington’s daughter and reported as deceased.
Paul had learnt that she had been a dangerous individual. She was trained by Kidon the Mossad’s lethal special ops unit, as an assassin, just like her half-brother, Ari Haswari, who had been sent in to infiltrate Hamas and ended up betraying Israel because of his hatred for his father. Her father had been the director of Mossad until he fell from favour, and then his enemies had arranged his assassination. It would seem that he was deemed too dangerous to be allowed to retire gracefully.
Ziva David had hunted down and killed the man she believed had killed her father Eli David and Director Vance’s wife, who had been collateral damage. However certain sections of the US intelligence community had been dubious about his guilt, believing that Ilan Bodner had been set up as a patsy by the powers that be in the Israeli cabinet. The other likely suspect was that as Bodner had been next in line to take over as director of the Mossad, his direct subordinate had set him up so she could run Israel’s national intelligence agency.
Meanwhile, for nine years, Leon Vance and his predecessor, Jennifer Shepard, who was a family friend of the David clan, had extremely close ties with Eli David. Too close, in Paul’s opinion. Shepard had worked ops with Ziva in the Middle East when she still was a field agent, and once she was director, gave her a spot on the premier major case response team in DC. That gave Ziva David unfettered access to classified materiel which the dutiful assassin had relayed back to her father in Tel Aviv. At least on one occasion that they’d known about, she had been the unsanctioned handler of another Kidon assassin who killed several terrorists, operating without the State Department’s knowledge or approval. They’d only found out about her involvement after Michael Rivkin inadvertently killed an ICE agent and then tried to kill Paddington when he attempted to arrest him.
It turned out that Rivkin was also Ziva David’s lover and childhood friend. Alex had killed him and although it had been declared a righteous shooting in law enforcement parlance, meaning it was justified, it didn’t stop the Director of Mossad from insisting Alex go to Tel Aviv for questioning. Except that Mossad didn’t question him, they interrogated him using their usual modus operando of intimidation and torture.
No, Paul really couldn’t blame Alex Paddington for being so paranoid, especially since he now had the Trust on his tail, wanting to get their hands on his daughter. The Trust had been watching the Paddingtons – Crispian and Lavinia to try to find out where Tony and Tali DiNozzo had disappeared to. Crispian had made a huge fuss, accusing DiNozzo of trying to defraud him by contesting his Uncle’s will. He alleged that Crispian, as the executor of Clive Paddington’s will had cut him out of it illegally, demanding that DiNozzo repay with compound interest an illegal IOU he wrote when he was underage and without the benefit of legal advice. Crispian called him a conman like his father and a petty drama queen, insisting that someone was trying to kidnap his daughter, going as far as to accuse Crispin, claiming he’d organised it to blackmail him into dropping the lawsuit.
Of course, it was all a massive fabrication, the Paddingtons and their twins were under the protection of MI6. The lawsuit had been a ruse to protect DiNozzo’s cousin and to explain why he and Tali had left the ancestral home so abruptly, disappearing into thin air. Meanwhile, Paul and his minions at Homeworld Command were having a lovely time, creating anonymous sightings of DiNozzo and his daughter in various parts of the world. Keeping the Trust chasing their tails was amusing but it served a secondary purpose of helping them identify and track more of the operatives employed by the secretive and treasonous group that proved so ridiculously hard to eradicate. General O’Neill had said in one of his typically sarcastic modes that the Trust had to be part cockroach since they were so damned hard to wipe out of existence.
Since the General’s last trip to Atlantis, he’d ordered, and they had been carrying out a comprehensive evaluation of and covert surveillance of Paddington’s former agency and Paul was horrified by what they’d learnt. Corruption, cronyism, lawlessness, and a director who wasn’t who he purported to be, were just the tip of the iceberg from what they’d learnt so far. He wasn’t sure why the General was keeping such a close eye on NCIS, but he couldn’t say that it wasn’t necessary. It was an OpSec nightmare.
~o0o~
As Jack listened to Carolyn giving him a medical report on Colonel Sheppard’s progress, he waved it away. “Dr Lam, I asked if you supported his request to return to Atlantis to continue his recovery there, not a discourse on his renal output and his electrolytes.”
“They are both extremely important, General,” she admonished him gently.
“Never said they weren’t, Doc. But let’s cut to the chase, is he stable enough?”
“Physically, he has graduated to eating approved soft foods augmented by the complete liquid dietary supplements that we started him on initially. His diet needs to be carefully monitored to watch out for ongoing issues caused by malnutrition, so that is something to be factored into the decision.”
“And does such a person exist in Atlantis?” he asked her.
“Maybe,” she said cagily.
“As to his psychological recovery, having Ronon here with him since he regained consciousness has helped more than a bit, but I think that he would also benefit from having more social supports now.”
“One of the reasons we brought him to the SGC was to give him privacy away from those under his command,” he reminded her.
“Yes General. I believe that we made the correct decision, the only decision as he was extremely vulnerable, physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Knowing how difficult it was for my staff to see him like that as they nursed him, I can’t imagine how the Atlantis medical staff would have coped and Col Sheppard would have hated them to see him so broken. It would have negatively impacted on his ability to return to a command role, and I’d even go so far as to say it was untenable.
“As soon as he was able, he would have felt like he needed to act strong and knowing the medical personnel in Atlantis he would have bullied them in a way he hasn’t been able to do here. We absolutely made the right call but now he is beginning to gain some mobility and independence and he is going a little stir crazy here. The SGC isn’t exactly conducive to recuperation so far underground. I could transfer him to a military hospital where he’s able to be monitored and get out in the fresh air or send him to stay with family. I didn’t realise that he only has a brother back here. Both his parents are dead and his relationship with his brother, while not exactly estranged, is badly strained. I don’t think he would be willing to recuperate back at their family home. He doesn’t seem to have any strong ties here at all.
“Aside from his ex-wife, who is director of DHS,” Jack mused. “Okay, what about the torture and the sexual abuse? Has he been willing to talk about it?”
“No, not the rapes, but he has talked a little about the physical abuse to Dr Shore and Ronon.”
Jack shrugged. He didn’t think that highly of their psychiatrist, Dr Roland Shore. He was better than Mackenzie but not by a whole lot, in his not so humble opinion. So yeah, okay, he clearly was well qualified academically or they wouldn’t have employed him, but he just didn’t have an empathetic bedside manner for anyone with a military background. O’Neill thought about the psychologist on Atlantis, Dr O’Shea. She’d been called to assist Alex when he had been talking with Paddington. She seemed to have established an excellent rapport with the federal agent, which judging by all the mandated psych evals during his time as a cop and agent saying he was a nightmare, was a feat in itself. Maybe she could handle John Sheppard too.
“I want to talk to him before I authorise his return to Atlantis, Plus I’m reluctant to have Dr Keller take over the case – there is something I can’t quite put my finger on with her, brilliant though she might be.”
“What about Dr Beckett?”
“Caro, he’s a clone! Ya know how I feel about clones. It’s creepy,” he whined just a little, but ever since that little grey Asgard shit Loki had made a copy of Jack that didn’t quite take, he felt justified in being clone phobic.
“Well since I am going to be sitting around on Atlantis for at least a month while the Marines set up our MCD – 238 research facility with nothing to do, I’ll be able to supervise his recovery,” she told him.
Jack grinned. “Ah I see, you don’t want to relinquish his care to the interim CMO. But I thought you’d want to spend time with family since you won’t see them for a while.”
Lam shrugged, “Guilty, I do want to continue to supervise his recovery plus I’m well enough informed about his nutritional requirements at this point to monitor his progress as we continue to expand his dietary options,” she admitted.
“And spending time with your parents?”
“Mom’s caught up in a major home renovation at the moment – I’d just be in the way, and you know that Hank and I aren’t that close,” she said. “Besides, I see him every day at the SGC.
Jack did know. The relationship between General Hank Landry and his daughter had not been good but there had been a rapprochement of sorts since Lam took over from Dr Fraiser.
“Okay, well I approve of you supervising him medically, Doctor but I still need to be convinced about his mental health before I sign off on him returning to Atlantis,” he stood up in preparation for visiting the Commanding Officer of Atlantis.
“Are you going to talk to Dr Shore, she asked him as he glared at her. “And that would be a no, I’m guessing,” she sassed him.
“Good guess,” he snarked, as he strolled out of her office.
~o0o~
He could hear the sound of Sheppard and Dex discussing his latest sparring session in the SGC gym with a new batch of Marines.
“I figure I’ll get a head start if any of them are assigned to Atlantis,” he said with a faint touch of mocking.
Jack knocked on the door of the ISO room and entered without waiting. “At this rate, they’ll be begging not to be sent there, Dex,” he taunted the Satedan.
“Yeah, well don’t they say if you can’t handle the temperature don’t come into the kitchen,” he retorted as O’Neill and Sheppard shared an amused look.
Sheppard muttered, “Close enough, I guess.” He glanced at his superior. “Can I help you with something, Sir?”
“Yeah, wanted a SitRep on how you’re doing. Hear you requested to return to Atlantis?”
“Yes Sir, I’m going stir crazy here under the mountain. I miss the sea air, especially as I’m getting my sea legs back, pun intended.”
“Hmm, if I were going to sign off on that plan, I’m gonna need convincing. You do appreciate when you go back, you’ll need to be fully cleared before you are permitted to return to duty?”
“Of course, I’m aware of that General.”
“Yeah, I’m not so sure. Seems you haven’t exactly been cooperative with Dr Shore, Sheppard,” he said, getting right to the point.
Dex stood up to leave. “I’ll give you two some privacy,” he said, backing towards the door.
After he left them, Jack pulled the chair around so he could see Sheppard’s face properly and produced a chessboard and pieces with a flourish, already determining that the colonel played. After arranging the pieces, he presented the younger man with the white pieces.
As the game got underway, Sheppard groused, “Dr Shore is a jerk.”
Moving his knight, Jack shrugged. “And so? Tell me where it states that you only get to talk to docs who are non-jerks. And off the record, I agree but bottom line, you need to talk about this shit if you are planning on returning to duty, Colonel. Those are the rules I’m afraid, and even a general can’t overrule them.”
John scowled. “Talked to Ronon a bit,” he said shortly.
“That’s a start. He’s a good soldier but it’s not enough to satisfy regs, Colonel, and if it were one of your men, you’d be saying the same thing too.”
Sheppard picked up his rook, staring at it for several minutes before moving it to another space on the board. “Maybe,” he conceded grudgingly.
As Jack stared at the chessboard, he heard Chaya Sar tell him “You possess the healing gene, and you still possess the healing knowledge. It is part of what the Asgard left behind but behind blocks. It will over time be released gradually. You may be able to help heal John.”
Suddenly he felt something snap, as he suddenly realised that healing didn’t have to mean fixing the physical body or curing diseases. It could also mean curing dis – ease of the mind and soul.
Picking up his bishop, he said, “You may not know this but long before I became involved in the Star Gate program, I spent several years in a black-ops unit. In 1982 on a black ops mission in East Germany to capture a Russian agent, we lost my commanding officer. Then in the late eighties, I was parachuting between the borders of Iran and Iraq and broke nine bones, that’s if you count the skull fracture when I hit the ground hard. And for the record, I count it! I spent nine incredibly long miserable days making my way out of enemy territory all on my own. Took a long time to heal from that and I was pretty bitter there’d been no rescue. When I figured I was on my own, I vowed that if I were ever in command I would leave no one behind.”
John had been listening quietly as he stared at the chessboard. “I haven’t had a chance to say thank you, General. Ronon told me you sent an investigator to the city to look for me when all else failed,” he said. “He was pretty impressed by him and that’s no easy feat with Dex.”
“Paddington is a freak of nature – I’m not sure anyone else could have found you so quickly, if at all, nor managed to neutralise Porteus Kolya’s thugs without any loss of life, Sheppard. He’s also uncovered some extremely serious crimes: murder, sexual assault and an IOA representative’s attempt to get their hands on a chemical weapon that could have been used to control other nations on Earth,” Jack said proudly.
John looked at him, his mouth hanging open. “In Atlantis?” he blurted out in surprise.
“Yep, but that’s classified, so mum’s the word till we have a chance to round up the conspirators,” Jack told him, tapping the side of his nose in the non-verbal gesture indicating a secret, although Sheppard recognised it for what it was, an order.
John nodded, “Yes Sir.”
Jack captured Sheppard’s second to last pawn, as he continued. “But I digress. In 1992 when a black op I was on went FUBAR and my CO bugged out, I was left behind because he assumed I was dead.”
John looked pained. “You weren’t dead.”
“No just banged up pretty bad, although not as bad as the parachute mishap. At least until I was captured. I got to spend the next four months as a guest of the Iraqi secret police, and they tortured me in every way imaginable. Physically, psychologically, and sexually. When I finally managed to get out of there, I was such a fucking mess I wanted to eat my gun on any number of occasions at first. The only time in my life that was worse was when my little boy, Charlie shot himself with my service weapon and died. That’s why I ended up as CO of that first mission to Abydos because it sounded like little more than a suicide mission and I was up for it,” he said, candidly as he recalled the painful memories.
“In case you’re wondering why I told you this, it’s because I know what you’re going through. I know why you aren’t opening up to Dr Shore, but you have to talk to someone, or you can’t return to active duty. So here are your options, Colonel,” he said, emphasising his rank and giving him control back by letting him make choices.
“Dr O’Shea, the psychologist on Atlantis has impressed me. She is option number 1 – you can talk to her. I’m going to be hanging out on Atlantis for a few weeks, at least until we get this mess Paddington uncovered sorted out,” he said vaguely. “So even though I don’t have any formal training, I’ve been where you are now, so I’m option number two.”
Sheppard was staring intently at the chessboard, not making eye contact, and not reacting.
Jack continued to lay out his options. “Special Agent Paddington has a PhD in psychological profiling and a masters degree in psychology so he’s option number 3. He isn’t a trained therapist, but he’s worked a lot of sex crimes. Your final option is Dr Biro who has had some training in psychiatry before Barbara told her supervisor he was full of shit and had to change specialities. You wanna go back home to Atlantis, then you have to agree that you’ll talk about the torture, including the non-consensual sexual activities with at least one of us.”
“And if I don’t?” he said combatively.
“Then I’ll leave you here so you can continue to work with Dr Shore, and I’ll head off to Atlantis tomorrow, and he won’t let you out of here for weeks, maybe months. He might decide to try family therapy and bring in your brother David and your ex-wife Nancy.” O’Neill said, a touch sadistically. “I believe he is a big advocate of family therapy,” Jack informed him blandly.
“You monster!” John whined. “Fine, do I have to tell you which option I choose now, General?” he said, sounding like a petulant teenager.
Maybe he and Jack Hotchner would get on like a house on fire.
Joking, he said, “I don’t suppose in that fancy public school education of yours, before the Air Force Academy, that you ever studied fencing?”
John’s expression was priceless. “What kind of question is that?”
“Oh my god, you did, didn’t you?” he chortled. “Well as part of your PT as soon as the Doc signs off on it, I’m assigning you to tutor Jack Hotchner who is the 14-year-old son of Atlantis’ new prosecutor, Aaron Hotchner.”
“New prosecutor, what the hell’s been going on since my abduction?”
“Told you, serial sexual assault, murder and conspiracy to create a chemical weapon to take over the world.”
“Shit.”
“And to answer your question, no, you don’t need to decide who you want to talk to yet because you don’t even know Special Agent Alex Paddington. But I do want your word if I sign off on you coming back with me tomorrow, that you’re going to get help dealing with what happened to you.”
“Fine, you have my word,” he pouted.
Yes, he pouted and General Jack decided a bit of a wake-up call was in order.
“Listen up, Colonel Sheppard. You’re the one who’s busting his ass to get back to Atlantis tomorrow. Don’t do me any favours. You don’t wanna talk, don’t talk. But I’m not signing off on your return to Atlantis or duty.
“That said, you can pout like a bratty adolescent all you want. But if that’s your attitude, then mine is that you can do that just as well here in Cheyenne Mountain. Or go spend time with your brother, Dave,” he said, as he made one last move with his knight, placing it down on the chessboard determinedly.
“Checkmate,” he said, standing up and walking out of the ISO room that Dr Lam had assigned Sheppard when he returned to Earth nearly a month ago to provide the colonel with a little bit of privacy. As he shut the door behind him, he left a greatly chastened and stymied John Sheppard in his wake.
As he made his way to the VIP quarters that he used on the rare occasion he stayed on the base, a corporal approached him. “Excuse me General O’Neill, but you have a call from Colonel Davis. The call is being routed to the conference room above the gate room for your convenience, Sir.”
Which meant that Paul needed to speak to him on a secure line because something had happened. “Thank you, Corporal,” he acknowledged, turning, and making his way towards the gate room. Once in the briefing room which was off his old office, he sat down and picked up the phone.
“Colonel, do we have a problem?”
He listened to his super-efficient 2IC outline the situation before he asked, “What would you like me to do, General?”
He looked at his watch, 1720 and sighed. “Okay, that’s excellent work, Paul. Get in touch with Director Addison from DHS and request a meeting tonight. I need to speak to a couple of people here and then I’ll have Colonel Suarez beam me back to my office. My ETA is 1830 hours, so any time after that.”
They finished up and Jack hung up the phone, making his way back to the infirmary to let Dr Lam know that he was almost certain that Sheppard would be heading back to Atlantis, subject to the stipulation he’d outlined and his sulking. If that was the case, he suggested Carolyn travel to Atlantis with them via the Midway II gate bridge. Plus, he had been intending to leave tomorrow, but something came up so they wouldn’t be leaving as planned. Jack would need an additional couple of days to deal with an unforeseen development.
~o0o~
Four days after his sudden return to DC to attend to some urgent business, Jack was back. Back at Cheyenne Mountain which felt like home to him in a way that Washington never would, no matter how many years he spent there. In a couple of hours, he would be flying a puddle jumper back to Atlantis and he was looking forward to getting back there to interrogate Lucius Lavin personally. Oh yeah, the NID had insisted on sending Agent Barrett to question the Winyan con artist who hid his evil behind a mask of buffoonery but anyone who had known evil wasn’t fooled by his bonhomie.
Even if he had only seen Lavin courtesy of the video of interrogations conducted by Paddington, Jack had felt a frisson of dread at the dark malevolence that would intermittently peek out. It was usually only for a second or two before he would lapse back into his hail-fellow-well-met schtick. Jack had a finely tuned bullshit meter and Lavin’s affability in O’Neill’s estimation was in reality, more of a creepy dude, get outta my face personality.
Although his impressions were based purely on video there was something about Lucius Lavin which reminded him of the Canon on the medieval planet which Sokar had sent his Unas Goa’uld to harvest humans to serve as hosts. The Canon had chained Teal’c’s hands and ankles and tossed him into a pond to test if he was a demon or a mortal and the only reason that the Jaffar hadn’t drowned was T’s ability to attain a deep state of meditation. Plus, T’s water-breathing symbiote which Jack always referred to irreverently as Junior had kept him alive, fortunately. But the whole episode had made Jack very pissed off at the so-called religious leader of the village.
Anyway, the Canon’s unctuous oiliness was similar to this Lucius guy and wasn’t that ironic since his name meant light. Yet there was ugly darkness about him despite his pretence at affability. Especially when he felt threatened, and Paddington had made him uncomfortable on more than a few occasions as he questioned him. So, yeah, Jack couldn’t wait to get his hands on this guy and strip away all of his bullshit.
He was certain that Alex was aware of it too, which wasn’t a surprise. By all accounts, his father was a narcissist, hiding his vile baseness behind a façade of charm, flattery, and seduction and not just in the sexual context. How else could you explain DiNozzo’s ability to part dozens, if not hundreds of filthy rich people from their wealth? All so he could embark on yet another ridiculous and ultimately doomed money-making scheme that permitted him to live an extravagant lifestyle, but he wasn’t a conman, he was an entrepreneur. That is until it didn’t work on any of his high rolling marks anymore.
As he finished making sure that Thomas Magnum’s supplies were crated up and stored in the jumper (and could someone explain what the hell a niddy noddy was, for cryin out loud) he thought about two passengers who’d declined to join them. He’d offered that Aaron Hotchner and his fourteen-year-old son, Jack could join them in the puddle jumper to Atlantis, saving over 19 days of flying time aboard the Zephyrus. He’d expected Aaron to leap at the chance, but Hotchner had turned him down.
“Thanks, General O’Neill, I appreciate the offer but I’m hoping that the 19 days aboard the battlecruiser will give Jack enough time to detox from his addiction. With luck, he’ll be a bit more agreeable before we get dropped off on Atlantis. First impressions count,” he pointed out dourly.
“Fair enough. I guess it is a trip he’ll always remember, too,” he said.
“Yeah. With any luck, one day he’ll understand why I decided we had to leave Earth. Right now, he’s pretty bummed at me.”
Jack hoped Hotchner was right. “Well, we’ll see you when the Zephyrus docks. Have a good journey,” Jack told him before remembering something.
“By the way, I found Jack a piano teacher on Atlantis, and I have a baby grand in the cargo hold of the Zephyrus. Plus, I found that the CO used to fence, so I’ve arranged for him to work with Jack as part of his physical therapy program while he’s recovering from his injuries. I’m still working on the robotics stuff, but with all the resident genius geeks on Atlantis, I’m sure that someone will be into robotics,” O’Neill told him.
Hotchner looked truly touched. “Ah…that’s terribly kind of you General. I’m sure you have more important things to do than chase up my son’s after school activities,” he said.
O’Neill shook his head. “Jack’s has some tough breaks for a fourteen-year-old. If I can make his life on Atlantis more comfortable, then I’m happy to do that.”
After wishing Hotchner and his currently rather truculent kid a safe journey, he focused on more immediate matters hoping that Jack Hotchner didn’t spend the whole trip pissed at his dad. He briefly wished he and Charlie had an opportunity to make a journey like that to Atlantis but ruthlessly suppressed it.
Jack knew all too well that those thoughts would only bring on further recriminations and he couldn’t afford those now.
Chapter 16 When the Bough Breaks
Daniel and Vala were over at Tony’s place to watch some DVDs. Although Daniel was surprisingly clueless about television programs, that was not the case with Vala, who seemed to have a reasonable acquaintance with current shows or the iconic ones of the new millennia. So, with all the angst that was going on in Atlantis right now, it was good to kick back and relax, especially watching his favourite show – Magnum PI, the original (and the best in Tony’s opinion). Watching Vala drooling over Tom Selleck was pretty funny too.
Tali had enjoyed having the two adults drop by to watch DVDs and had already started inculcating them into the wonders of Power Rangers, but she’d been sent to bed several hours ago and Selleck had been running around Hawaii in Robin Master’s Ferrari for a couple of hours now. He’d decided to make some tea for himself and Vala because they didn’t want caffeine to interfere with their sleep, but he made coffee for Daniel. Like Gibbs, Tony’s former boss, he was addicted to the stuff that he could and did drink at any hour of the day or night.
He knew that the episode they were watching would be ending in approximately ten minutes, so he figured they should call it a night and the hot drinks were a polite way to round off the evening. It was almost 2230 and he had work tomorrow, plus a daughter to get off to school on time. One of the disadvantages of living in this massive city was that if he slept in, not something he did since Tali had become a fixture in his life, Tony couldn’t use the excuse that the traffic was bad. Still sleeping in had become a long distant memory so he was rarely running late anymore, so it was petty of him to grumble.
As he was looking around the kitchen for a tray so he could carry all three beverages at once, a wave of ferocious anger and terrible pain washed over him. It forced him to his knees, and Tony felt grateful he wasn’t carrying the hot drinks. As he struggled to deal with the overwhelming emotions that felt like a bomb blast, a random thought popped into his head; 2230 was the time shifts changed at the infirmary, in the gate room and in the brig. And just like that, he had the unshakeable urge to go down the brig and make sure everything was okay.
He raced out to the living area to check on his guests, who seemed unaware of anything wrong. He stopped long enough to tell Vala and Daniel he needed to check up on something and would they stay with Belle until he returned. Incredibly he even remembered telling them their tea and coffee was in the kitchen before he raced out of his quarters. Feeling a sense of dread that had been troubling him for days suddenly ratchet up to the point where he felt nauseous. As he ran to the nearest transporter to make his way across the city to the area where the brig was located, he wondered if J.P had given him a psychic heads-up.
(Hey, Janae, did you just send me a message to get to the brig asap?)
(I did not, Alex. I was working out the finer details of my holographic program to give me the ability to speak to individuals without looking like a bad case of lip-synching. Is something wrong?)
(You tell me, Buddy.) Tony asked as J.P. disappeared from his mind only to return with the worrying message to hurry. Which was what he was doing but he increased his jog to a flat out run and hoped he didn’t bowl anyone over.
(Defender! You must hurry.)
(I’m nearly there, what’s happening?)
(It is Dr Girard. She has a knife, and she is acting very oddly. You must come now.)
(Entering the last transporter now. I’ll be there in less than thirty seconds,) he reported, exiting the transporter at a full-out turn of speed he used to use to chase down perps.
Was Monique Girard a perp? Should he warn the SFs guarding the brig? Something told him not to do that and as he came into view of the brig, he could see Felix’s mother creeping along the corridor toward where the guard was due to exit in the next minute or two. Without thinking, he cannoned into the scientist, taking her down to the ground as she fought with him with almost demonic strength, despite her smaller frame.
As she struggled to get away, she accidentally sliced his arm with the blade she held, clutched tightly in her hand. He was fairly sure who the intended recipient of that knife was, but that didn’t mean that innocent people couldn’t get hurt accidentally.
He already had, so as gently as he could, he disarmed her, although he was concerned he might have broken one of her fingers, prising the wicked-looking knife out of her vice-like grip. Luckily, he’d disarmed her in the nick of time as the two now off-duty SFs exited the entrance to the Atlantis detainment centre, usually referred to by the military personnel as the brig.
Seeing Tony lying on the ground, Dr Girard wrapped in a tight embrace, his arm leaking a significant amount of blood, the male and female rushed to help but Tony ordered them off. After he disarmed the distraught woman, something seemed to snap in her and she had stopped fighting him, sobbing brokenly in his arms.
As the SFs started to call for reinforcements, he told them to belay the request. Instead, he asked them to contact the head of base security, Captain Cadman and ask her to join them and to ask her to contact Dr O’Shea and Dr Biro asap.
As he waited for help to arrive, he didn’t know what else to do, so he continued to hold Monique and rock her as he would do for Tali when she had a meltdown. He worried that he might be making her feel trapped, very aware that she was a victim, not a perp. He briefly thought about Felix before he noticed that her sobbing had lessened a little. When he tried to let her go though, he was surprised that she clung to his jacket like a limpet and started wailing. Tony had no way of knowing that he was the first adult who had held her since the night Lucius Lavin had raped her, because she hated people touching her. Tonight, somehow… it felt right. She felt safe for the first time in over five years and her body craved human contact.
The SFs looked at him, concerned but not knowing what to do. They had already informed their replacements that there was an incident and to remain inside on guard. One asked if she should get some water but Tony shook his head. He just wished that Aoife would get here soon. She would have a much better idea of how to deal with Monique than he did.
Several hours later, Monique was in the infirmary in an iso room. In consultation, Aoife and Dr Biro had sedated her with one of the infirmary nurses watching over her. Tony had his arm stitched up by Barbara, who insisted that the wound on his upper arm was deep enough to warrant it. Tony had protested, telling them it was nothing, he’d had much worse, but Biro, O’Shea and Cadman were all in mother hen mode and threatened to sedate him too, if he resisted being treated. Having given in with bad grace he’d ended up with ten sutures and a sling.
Now, wanting someplace private, they retreated to the interview room to discuss what to do next, when he remembered Felix. Despite the fact it was after midnight, he asked Teyla via comms to go to Monique’s quarters and check to see if someone was with him. She had reported that he was asleep but alone and she offered to wait there with him until morning.
Since Teyla was Torren’s mother and he was Felix’s best friend, it was decided she was probably the best person to watch over him – at least until morning. Dr O’Shea was pessimistic about the prospects that Monique would be able to look after her son, at least in the next few days. How she recovered from this meltdown remained to be seen, but she warned them that Monique might require a great deal of support. She seemed less shocked than the rest of them about what had happened tonight.
She tried to explain Girard’s dramatic psychological decompensation as not unexpected, especially now. She listed the fact that Monique had recently given a formal statement about being raped. That along with Lucius Lavine’s capture and his physical proximity was more than enough stressors to push her beyond her limits. It made perfect sense and Tony expressed his regret for not stopping it before it got so out of hand. Aoife also pointed out that discovering the whole ruse to keep her quiet by threatening her with the NDA she signed was nothing more than of codswallop, must have affected her deeply.
“Sadly, she must have found her old methods of coping to be ineffective as her rage and grief spiralled out of control,” Dr Biro told them gently.
Cadman asked, “So what do we do now?”
Aoife replied, “We wait. I’ll check up on Monique in a while, but I doubt if she’ll surface until morning. You go grab some sleep, especially you Alex.”
He waved her off. “I’m fine, this is nothing,” he said, wondering about Felix. “Any idea about Felix?”
Aoife shook her head, getting what he meant. “I think it is too early to say if this will adversely affect her ability or indeed her desire to resume her parental responsibilities. For now, I suggest that we monitor her closely and ask Teyla and Kanaan if they would be willing to have Felix stay with them for the time being. I think he will benefit from having Torren’s support at this time.
Tony frowned as Cadman asked, “Are you saying that she might reject Felix? But he’s her son.”
Studiously ignoring Tony, Aoife said, “A son who was conceived during a rape when she was drugged, Captain. She tried several times to terminate the pregnancy when she learned she was pregnant. I’m saying that IF Dr Girard decides that she cannot be a proper parent to Felix, then we owe it to her to support her decisions, especially since the powers that be ignored her for the last five years. We must support both Monique and Felix, but no one has the right to pressure her or make her feel guilty if she decides to relinquish custody of him.”
“Mark Twain said that ‘Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.’ I think he was right,” Tony said darkly.
Cadman said, “Okay, well I guess we call it a night then,” as she herded them out of the interview room like a persistent sheepdog.
Two days later, Monique was closed off, depressed and Aoife had her on suicide watch. Girard had refused to let Felix visit, despite him requesting to see her repeatedly. She did agree that for the moment he could stay with Torren’s parents, but Tony was worried about them both. Aoife was under pressure from Dr Keller, wanting to start Girard on a bunch of medications but Aoife was wary of further dampening down her patient’s emotional responses, arguing that she had valid reasons for feeling this way and needed to express her feelings not suppress them.
Of course, Dr Keller was yet to be read in on the reason for Monique’s dramatic decompensation, for which she was pissed off. However, until General O’Neill gave the all-clear for them to talk about Lavin raping Atlantis personnel, they weren’t about to discuss it with her. Luckily, O’Neill was due to fly in tonight, bringing with him Colonel Sheppard and Ronon. Amelie was ecstatic about Dex’s return and the rest of the city was thrilled to have Sheppard back home at last.
Hopefully, it would divert much of the speculation about how Special Agent Paddington had been injured. He’d already told Monique that she wouldn’t be charged, not that she seemed to take it in. He did need to investigate if anything or anyone had pushed Monique over the edge into doing something that could easily have gotten her killed by the SFs had she’d managed to attack Lavin. He was sceptical but Laura had argued that they had to make sure there wasn’t someone else pulling her strings. After Sofia, it might have been in someone’s best interests to make sure she couldn’t testify or maybe Ambassador Shen had a mole on Atlantis.
That was a definite cause for concern, it was why he’d handed out a personal shield generator to Monique, Teyla and Ilsa because he worried that the IOA or Shen might have spies here reporting back on what went on. He would request that Homeworld Command looked into it because they needed to find them and have them reassigned. But even though he couldn’t rule out that someone was deliberately orchestrating Monique’s ill-conceived attempt to kill Lucius Lavin… or simply hurt him the way he’d hurt her, he feared there was a much simpler explanation.
Monique Girard was suicidal and hoped that if she went after Lavin that the SFs or the MPs that were guarding him would take her down. He’d seen death-by-cop too many times before and he knew it was a definite possibility in this case too. If not, why wasn’t Monique wearing the personal shield generator that he’d given her to protect her? If she’d been using it, the guards wouldn’t have stood a chance of stopping her if she’d killed Lavin.
What an absolute mess!
~o0o~
It was one day after Jack had flown the puddle jumper back to Atlantis via Midway II Station with a contrite Colonel Sheppard, a solicitous Doctor Lam watching her patient like a hawk, plus a Satedan warrior anxious to be reunited with Amelia. And then there was Agent Barrett, like an excited Labrador pup to be on his very first mission off-world, one that just happened to be to another galaxy.
After getting settled in and catching up with everyone and informing Lorne, Cadman, and Paddington about the NID agent and his assignment, Jack had called a briefing for the next day. In truth, he wanted the first crack at Lavin before the NID got their slimy mitts on him. He’d also received a SitRep about the Winyan situation and Tony had been able to sense his fury about the stoning of a twenty-three-year-old woman. O’Neill was also appalled to hear about Dr Girard, and he backed Tony’s decision not to charge her with assault.
At the briefing next morning, he was in a take-no-prisoners frame of mind, only Daniel who knew him better than anyone, and Tony, who seemed to be increasingly able to read people’s emotional tones, were aware of just how lethal his mood was. Before he called an all-out briefing, he’d met with Ambassador AuClair and Richard Woolsey to fill them in on what Agent Paddington had uncovered, and why he’d had to go back to Earth to utilise resources that he couldn’t access on Atlantis and brief the President and relevant authorities. Naturally, they had been upset to have been kept in the dark, but they also reluctantly agreed that as the IOA had appeared to be involved, there had been little choice but to keep them out of the loop.
O’Neill filled them in and now, somewhat mollified if still pretty pissy, they sat in the conference room as the rest of the people who were involved in the investigation filed into the conference room and took seats. Retired Admiral and Judge Advocate General, A.J. Chegwidden, acting military commander Lieutenant Colonel Evan Lorne, and Captain Cadman, head of Atlantis security all came in together and sat down, chatting quietly. Dr Daniel Jackson and Dr Carolyn Lam both came in together, clutching oversized mugs of coffee and sat down next to each other as Jack looked across at Lorne.
“Anyone seen Special Agent Paddington?”
“He’s on his way, Sir. He said he was breaking up a fight between a couple of scientists and then he had to run back to his office to get some files.”
“Right well I’ll give him a few minutes then,” he said.
“While we are waiting, I wanted to let you know that we have secured the services of an experienced former federal prosecutor, Aaron Hotchner who is also a former FBI agent. He was forced into witness protection with his son. One of the serial killers he put away when he was head of the Bureau’s BAU escaped and came after him. Hotchner and his son Jack – cool name,” he quipped as Daniel rolled his eyes, “are travelling here aboard the Zephyrus,” he informed the group, as he noted Alex slipped soundlessly into the room and sat down.
“Good you’re here,” he said.
“Yeah, sorry about that. Two of our chemistry geeks had a nasty break up after he caught his partner cheating with his ex-girlfriend.”
“That sounds like a plot from a soap opera,” Carolyn commented facetiously.
The agent nodded ruefully. “I know, right.”
Getting the meeting up and running, Jack said, “I was just telling them about our new prosecutor, Agent Paddington.”
“I’m so happy you managed to persuade him, General,” Alex said. “He’ll be a huge asset.”
Chegwidden nodded in agreement. “I’ll second that, Paddington. I thought you said in your last message that he turned you down, General. What made him change his mind?”
“A baby grand piano on the Zephyrus and piano lessons from Paddington,” Jack joked as his agent squawked.
“What?” Alex stared at him.
“C’mon, I know you’re fully qualified to teach him and he’s no beginner. He’s studying fourth level RCM curricula right now.” Jack cajoled him as Alex glared.
“Right, moving on, shall we?”
He had Admiral Chegwidden give an update on how they were faring with the development of the international code of law. When he replied that they had read through the Ancient’s one that had been used on Atlantis and Daniel had offered to help draft the modern version, Jack asked how they had discovered it, Daniel had replied that Atlantis had revealed it to Agent Paddington like the city had provided him with a proper set of interview rooms when he needed them. Daniel hypothesised that after the Ancient who was banished to look after Proculus, Chaya Sar had revealed Atlantis’ origins and sentience, she didn’t feel the need to remain secret any longer. He thought that she’d decided to assist Alex in his endeavours because he was one of the good guys.
Jack noticed that Alex stayed out of that conversation, and he was fairly sure he was holding something back – but at this point, it didn’t seem to be critical. Perhaps he was uncomfortable that the city had decided to reward him for finding her Lost One, in such a lavish manner. Still, there were more serious issues to be with, so he put it on the back burner.
It was at that point, that O’Neill took over briefing everyone about what they’d uncovered back on Earth. He told them that Dr Weir had been in contact with Ambassador Shen right after the foothold situation and she ordered Weir to alter the reports of the situation. Which included Dr Weir’s and particularly Colonel Sheppard’s extensive mission report, since aside from video surveillance, it had been the only unbiased source of what occurred during the entire foothold situation. Of course, that didn’t include anything that occurred in his absence.
Paddington, having read Colonel Sheppard’s undoctored report, was appalled at the fact that no action had been taken against Lavin and passed the report on to General O’Neill who had no idea there had been a full-on foothold situation and they set out to discover why. Jack stated that initially, the entire IOA was under suspicion of covering up the incident but Homeworld’s investigation into the board found that Shen was acting alone. Or to be more accurate, she was operating in concert with either a faction inside her government or the government itself. They were still investigating the situation. They had ascertained though that Ambassador Shen had swiftly realised the implications of Lavin’s herb and that was why she moved swiftly to cover up the incident. It was just unfortunate that when the first report from Elizabeth Weir had come in, she’d been hanging around the SGC and was able to delete the communique before the rest of the agency had a chance to read it.
Without revealing that Colonel Carter had hacked into Atlantis, effectively spying on the other Commanders, Jack pointed out that Shen had tried to get herself appointed as the Commander when Dr Weir was lost to the Asurans. However, the IAO was understandably freaked out by the threat they posed and Colonel Carter’s extensive expertise in dealing with replicators had made her the most qualified for the position. Once the replicators had been taken out of the equation, the Athosians rescued and Wraith Michael thought to have been defeated, Ambassador Shen had successfully lobbied for Carter’s removal, citing all the times she failed to follow protocol.
At that point, Jack scowled at Woolsey. “Shen was desperate to get hold of the herb that the scientist called MCD – 238 or at least the active ingredient that causes people to become highly suggestible,” he said. “And the IOA played right into her hands by knifing Colonel Carter in the back for cleaning up the shitstorm that was Atlantis.”
Paddington snorted in disgust. “Is that what the scientists are calling it? Highly suggestible. Four members of AR-1 described how when Lavin expressed that he didn’t want Sheppard’s team to leave the planet, the incredibly friendly villagers instantly turned hostile, closing in on the team and not letting them leave. They only stood down when Lavin ordered them to let them go. Highly suggestible doesn’t exactly describe how Dex pulled his blaster on Col Sheppard when he tried to take the plant away from him, since Lavin hadn’t even verbally told him to attack. Then later, Dex did shoot Sheppard when Lavin was back on Atlantis, so this drug caused people to become violent, willing to attack friends or I’d extrapolate, even their family,” he said angrily.
“This suggestibility seems to be more than being open to an idea or easily swayed. I don’t think anyone could describe a pig-head individual like Ronon as someone easily swayed. He’s a warrior, so if it can make him turn on his teammates and his Commanding Officer, what would less stubborn individuals be likely to do?”
There was silence as the rest of the group processed his impassioned words.
Chegwidden agreed. “I really don’t know Dex, but he seems legendary around here and I trust Paddington’s assessment of him and the situation. It seems a whole lot more than suggestibility at work here – more like a strong attraction to Lavin to the point that those addicted to the drug are willing to commit acts of violence to win his approval.”
“Agreed, Admiral. Even when the exposed individual is not in direct physical proximity to the source they still acted to win his approval. This is mass cult-like stuff, only the scale could be huge and terrifying,” Alex emphasized. “Don’t forget that when Dex shot Sheppard, the colonel was outnumbered, yet Ronon chose to take him down and Lucius was nowhere near them to suggest it.”
Again A.J. agreed. “We’ve been going over the statements of the women who were forced to have non-consensual intercourse with Lavin. His people don’t understand that they had no choice – they think that if the women were of sufficiently strong moral character, they could have refused to participate in Lavin’s orgies and sex outside of lawful marriage. Yet he told Dr Beckett he could give him a potion that would have the ladies lining up around the block to be with him.”
“Exactly, he knew that they weren’t highly suggestible, he knew they couldn’t say no. We have to stop using language that feeds into the narrative that people had any choice in the matter. Lavin was already laying the groundwork for Atlantis personnel to get rid of Sheppard if he couldn’t control him and they would have carried it out too. We must be mindful of how we speak about the drug, especially as we are looking to have him stand trial and I don’t want its effects whitewashed or downplayed in any way. I want this bastard to pay for what he’s done,” Alex finished angrily.
His boss nodded seriously. “Point taken. Okay, where were we?”
Lorne told him helpfully, “Colonel Carter being removed as Commander, Sir.”
“Right. Well, Ambassador Shen lobbied hard to be appointed as Atlantis’ commander, after successfully getting rid of Carter because she desperately wanted access to Lavin’s plant to send back to her people. We aren’t sure if they planned to cultivate it back on Earth or to extract the active ingredient and synthesize it for mass production. Unfortunately for her plans, before the IOA appointed Colonel Carter to save the day, Mr Woolsey was in line for the job. He missed out on the liaison position Helia’s Ancients had offered when they reclaimed the city. Seeing how easily the Asurans wiped the floor with the mighty Ancients, builders of the stargates, the IOA in their infinite wisdom, chickened out and appointed Carter instead.
“Once the threat passed, Shen was able to have Colonel Carter iced with the help of her fellow IOA representatives,” O’Neill said, throwing a disdainful look in Woolsey’s direction. “After Woolsey did the board’s dirty work and fired her, he got the gig, much to Ambassador Shen and her bosses’ fury and they started looking at other ways to get access to the herb. One possibility was to get hold of a Battle Cruiser or con Colonel Chekov into taking a trip out to Pegasus but unfortunately for her, the Korolev was blown up by the Ori.”
“How would Shen get hold of a battlecruiser, General,” Lorne asked.
“Hold that thought, Colonel,” Jack said. “So, let’s travel eight months into the future after Mr Woolsey had been in the job as commander of Atlantis. One of the main reasons he was appointed to the position was the IOA board believed he’d be indebted to them. They also believed he’d stick to the rules, since it was well known he was extremely critical of people who stray from them,” he glanced at the man before continuing.
“Apparently, like Elizabeth Weir, Atlantis has a way of forcing people to ignore rules when there are crises. And to be fair, it is a reasonably common occurrence, like when Dr Keller was taken over and began turning into a Wraith hive ship.”
“So, Shen bided her time, planting seeds of doubt in the other board members’ minds about his unsuitability to lead Atlantis until she finally had the numbers to roll Woolsey. The other IOA members stipulated that she had to come and do his job appraisal on Atlantis and then fire him personally. Finally, she was close to achieving her goal and she would have succeeded too if she hadn’t arrived right in the middle of another foothold crisis,” he said, as Woolsey’s head shot up and stared at O’Neill in shock.
“How do you know about that, General?” he demanded.
Jack just gave him a stare that reduced many a raw recruit to jello. “I am the Director of Homeworld Command.You’d be surprised at what I know, including the IA program aka Vanessa Conrad – nice honey trap by the way. The real question is why shouldn’t I know about it unless you broke the rules and didn’t report it. But that is a conversation for another day, Richard. Suffice to say, that the President has been informed.”
Woolsey turned grey and Jack gave a sardonic smirk. Daniel barely managed to contain a big grin at Jack’s predatory manner. He might be the director of Homeworld Command, but he would always be the team leader of SG1 and Sam, Teal’c and Daniel were his team. Woolsey had shafted Sam and Jack wouldn’t forget.
“The Sekkari AI breached our security and demonstrated how easy it was to apply undue influence on the three top people of Atlantis, zeroing in on your psychological vulnerabilities. First by impersonating Dr Zelenka and admitting that McKay was smarter than he was, which resulted in the Sekkari Seed Carrier being retrieved from the bed of the ocean. The AI kept Colonel Sheppard busy by manipulating his guilt about not saving Lieutenant Ford and Dr Weir by manifesting as the dead Kolya trying to destroy Atlantis. While Vanessa Conrad was the physical embodiment of your subconscious sexual and romantic ideals, manifesting to persuade you to see off the seed carrier to the world it was supposed to travel to.
“You caught a lucky break. While the Sekkari AI manipulated all three of you, its motives weren’t nefarious, merely protective of its charges. Although I do wonder what it may have been capable of, how far would it go if you’d ordered the database to be opened,” Jack mused.
“Shen showing up in the middle of a foothold situation was lucky from your point of view and also Earth’s too. Shen ordered you to retrieve the contents of the box which would have killed the last chance for the Sekkari race and blackmailed you into doing it to save your job, but the lovely Vanessa had convinced you to do the ethical thing for the Sekkari race.”
“I was not compromised. I would have made the same decision without the Sekkari Artificial Intelligence program’s influence,” Woolsey protested.
“You can tell yourself that, Richard, but there’s no way of knowing for sure. In fact, with the Ambassador and McKay wanting to access the Sekkari database, I think you probably would have followed protocol if it weren’t for Vanessa, but that is not the point. The point is Ambassador Shen pissed off the IA program by threatening her charges and thus it made Xiaoyi go away using mind manipulation, as she did with you, Sheppard, and McKay. And it tricked Shen into making your position permanent and threatening her own position on the IOA. It also did us a massive favour since by stopping her taking over as Commander of Atlantis, it prevented her being able to gain access to the herb.”
O’Neill looked at Lorne expectantly who grinned. “Is this a suitable time for me to ask how Shen could get access to a Battle Cruiser, Sir?”
“Yes, perfect timing, Lorne. I’m so glad you asked me that,” he joked before turning serious. “
“They learnt from the Russians about how to get a spaceship which was Plan B, so Ambassador Shen has started playing hardball to get the next BC 304. Unfortunately, the Russian ship was blown up by the Ori, so the Chinese battle cruiser was pushed back for twenty-two months. Now the Sun Tzu’s estimated time of completion is approximately six months away.”
Carolyn looked grim. “That’s not enough time for us to get a stock of the vaccine. We are going to need billions of doses, Sir.”
“Believe me, I know that Doctor but to be fair, once they take possession of the ship, it will take a while for them to learn how to fly her. Even when they can operate it, they have to come up with an excuse to fly to the Pegasus galaxy to harvest the plant. Plus, it is going to take them a while to manufacture it, since we will make damned sure Lavin isn’t available to help them.”
“But it is still going to be a race, General. We need to find a way to buy more time.”
“Can’t we just build some cold bombs,” Alex asked?
“Do you mean dirty bombs? Daniel queried when it seemed like everyone else was too stunned to reply. “I don’t think a dirty bomb’s gonna help us, Alex.”
“I know that Daniel. I meant a cold bomb as in an explosive device that we could detonate containing the Rhinovirus otherwise known as the common cold, to stop people from being infected by MCD – 238 he explained carefully. “Okay maybe it’s a dumb idea,” he said shrugging.
Dr Lam was looking at him as if he had two heads. “Not dumb, it’s brilliant. It won’t work long term, we still need the vaccine, but it could help us buy time until we can make enough of the vaccine to ensure everyone is immune. Why didn’t anyone else think of it?”
Daniel started laughing as Carolyn glared at him. “I don’t see anything amusing about Alex’s plan. It is simple but brilliant.”
“Sorry, sorry but Jack, I gotta ask. Is Alex your secret love child? He just did what you do – cut through all the BS when the world needs saving and come up with a genius plan,” he said trying to control his laughter.
Carolyn nodded, “Okay, you might be onto something there, Daniel. They both like to pretend that they are not very smart but that’s all an act. A very convincing one I’ll grant you, but still totally fake.”
Jack looked amused, shaking his head as Alex turned bright red. “OMG, this isn’t some overused trope in a teenager’s fanfic. A young Air Force officer travels across the pond to the UK and has a tryst with my mother, Daniel. That’s about as clichéd as it gets!” he protested, as Daniel and Carolyn broke into fresh laughter and even O’Neill started sniggering.
“What,” he demanded, incensed at being mocked.
“It’s just that Jack loathes clichés too,” Jackson said, trying to stifle his chuckles. “I don’t suppose that you use the phrase – yeahsureyoubetcha by any chance?” he teased as Alex gave him a look modelled on Gibbs’ I’m going to put my boot so far up your ass that you’ll be tasting leather look.
“Sorry,” Jackson apologised, still fighting not to laugh.
Alex collected what was left of his dignity and said, “Can we go back to Dr Weir’s files. You mentioned you found evidence that Lavin assaulted a young Marine, I’ll need his name so we can question him. Do we even know if he’s still in Atlantis?”
Jack became instantly serious. “Yeah, he’s still here, I’ll give you the details later. And I know that Elizabeth told Dr Danziger that she was one of Lavin’s victims like she was, but we’ve discovered additional emails between her and Shen. The Ambassador suggested Weir should lie to Dr Danziger to gain her trust to persuade her not to make a complaint. We don’t believe she was a victim, but we can’t prove that beyond all doubt,” he said.
“Lavin denied that he had sex with her, said she was very attractive for a mature woman, but he preferred his bed partners to be younger than Weir,” Alex told them. “Again, not proof but suggestive when combined with the emails you found, General.”
Lorne shook his head. “I worked with Dr Weir for several years. I just can’t help wondering how someone who believed in the peaceful resolution of conflicts and devoted herself to the pursuit of her principles turned into a killer who’d cover up a foothold situation where people were harmed just to keep her job.”
Ambassador AuClair nodded. “I agree. It is a hard concept to grasp.”
The Colonel sighed. “She was better than this! What happened? Was it when she was infected by nanites? Did they corrupt her?”
Cadman said, “I know what you mean, Sir, but I read Sofie Danziger’s diaries. I do not doubt that Dr Weir drugged her so she would never wake up. I can’t explain what happened to her, I just know that it did.”
Woolsey shook his head. “I worked with her too, and I’m afraid I find it difficult to believe that she would commit murder just so she didn’t lose her job.”
Daniel weighed in too, “Look, Richard, I have the ultimate respect for Dr Weir’s work. I cited it when I wrote the Tau’ri Tok’ra Alliance Treaty. I considered her to be my friend, but I also translated Dr Danziger’s diary, and something happened to her.
“Maybe it was the nanites that caused her to totally lose the plot, but Jack was hijacked by nanites. He didn’t go around killing people when they held a gun to his head to leave the SGC and made him go to Washington. I honestly don’t know what to tell you.”
Chapter 17 Clear and Present Danger
Tony cleared his throat amidst all the angst and betrayal from Daniel, Lorne, Cadman, and Richard Woolsey who had all worked with the first commander of Atlantis.
Looking amused, General O’Neill asked him, “Did you swallow a fly or are you trying to say something, Agent Paddington?”
“I created a psychological profile on Elizabeth Weir because I’ve been trying to reconcile how such a skilled and highly esteemed civilian, a US diplomat and expert in international politics could suddenly devolve into a murderer for personal gain.”
Everyone hushed as Jack indicated he should continue. “If you have any insights, I reckon people would appreciate hearing them. I know I would.”
Alex nodded, “Okay, thanks. The second thing that made me decide to conduct a psych profile on her was that I’m fairly certain Dr Weir had to know why Ambassador Shen was so interested in Lavin’s mind control herb. Weir used to believe in nuclear non-proliferation, she despised the whole might is right, military-industrial complex as being an evil cadre of multinational thugs, and oligarchs. I have to think that being given authority over them was enormously powerful for her, probably addictive.”
“How so, Doctor Paddington?” Ambassador AuClair asked, recognising his PhD in profiling.
“Using her staunch support from the POTUS, De Weir was finally able to wield a mighty big stick, by forcing the military to reject Colonel Caldwell as the permanent replacement to Colonel Sumner. She also coerced them into promoting then Major Sheppard to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Having that degree of supremacy over the US military must have been a real power trip.”
There were other nods around the table. “And no doubt, it seduced her. Corrupting her idealism to no small degree, but that doesn’t explain why she went from being a diplomat to a killer. Not for me,” he said, shaking his head.
“I mean, c’mon, she worked as a mediator for the UN and brokered at least a dozen highly sensitive international accords. By all accounts, she was extremely savvy, serving in diplomatic posts all over the world. If she were here to be held to account, she could hardly claim to be politically naïve when it came to international agendas and political intrigues,” he told those present.
“Not hardly,” Daniel averred. “She had two Ph.Ds. and she spoke five languages including Latin and Russian,” he informed the group.
“She also could read Ancient and basic Wraith as well,” Alex replied. “Am I detecting that you might be an Elizabeth Weir stan, Dr Jackson?”
Daniel frowned, “I don’t know what that is.”
O’Neill managed to avoid laughing but a small smile flashed across his face momentarily. “Even I know what a stan is, Danny. He’s asking if you fanboy Weir?”
“Okay, I see. Well yeah, even before I worked with her down at the Antarctic site when we were looking for Atlantis. As I said, I referenced her work when I wrote the Tau’ri Tok’ra treaty back in 2001,” he said shrugging and looking a little discomfited.
“So, I think we can agree that Dr Weir must have had at the very least, suspicions about what Shen’s agenda was, in wanting the foothold situation kept under wraps from Homeworld Command and the other members of the IOA,” Tony stated.
Chegwidden looked around the room before he asked the question that most people wanted to know. “So, what would cause someone of her impeccable credentials to kill or at least to order someone else to kill Dr Danziger. It is hardly in keeping with her background. And please don’t think I’m casting doubt on the evidence presented, I’m not.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s hard to comprehend,” Alex acknowledged gravely. “It seems like such a betrayal of her principals…and it was.”
“It’s just so unthinkable that someone who seems to have been an upstanding citizen could degenerate so markedly to become someone incompatible with the person who believed fervently in her life’s work of fostering non-proliferation treaties on Earth. I’ve never met her, but I have admired her work so I’m just trying to wrap my head around how it came to this, ya know?” A.J. shook his head.
As there were numerous nods around the room Tony considered how to answer that question. “Okay, well the short answer to that conundrum is that she did it to prevent the truth from coming out. If Dr Danziger had made a formal complaint as she threatened, everyone would know Weir covered up the Lavin insurgence of Atlantis and she didn’t want that. But I guess why would she didn’t want it to come out is a much more pertinent question.”
Jack said, “You’ve theorised that she felt that her job was hanging by a thread. I have to agree. If the truth about how close we came to losing control over Lavin’s bloodless coup was ever to be made known, it would have been the final straw. The President’s appointee or not, if she hadn’t been removed, then it would have caused a helluva ruckus, particularly after the Wraith hybrid shit show.”
Richard Woolsey looked rather ill. After all, he had been the one to go out on a limb for Dr Weir only days before Lavin had managed to convert the whole base, bar Colonel Sheppard, into mindless zombies, with no ability to regulate their emotions when it came to Lavin. No ability to exercise free will.
He cleared his throat in his very precise way and said, “So your profile of her psychological state is that because she had been on the brink of being terminated as the leader of the Expedition was why she doctored the mission reports of the insurgency and murdered a Polish scientist? That seems to be a massive overreaction, surely?”
“Yes, it does, doesn’t it, Mr Woolsey but I do believe she felt backed into a corner. Do I believe that fear of losing her job on Atlantis would be her sole reason for feeling so threatened she would resort to covering up something so serious as what happened during Lavin’s insurgency? No, I don’t think that it was the whole picture. I think the important question we have to ask ourselves is why did she become so desperate to remain in her position as the commander of Atlantis that she would betray her principles?”
AuClair, who had remained fairly quiet up until now, asked, “And do you have any answers, Dr Paddington?”
“I do, Ambassador, but if you’ll bear with me, I’ll get to that in a moment.”
The commander bowed his head in acknowledgement. “Carry on.”
“Okay, first, I want to point out that ever since Elizabeth Weir arrived on Atlantis, she’s been obsessed by the idea of meeting Ancients and particularly fascinated by the possibility of Ascension. By the time she was assimilated into the Asurans’ collective consciousness, Weir’s desperation to Ascend helped push the splinter group she recruited into destroying their nanite bodies so they could Ascend digitally. When that didn’t work, she invaded Atlantis, putting everyone in the city in jeopardy, lying and helping the other Asurans access the city. They demanded that Atlantis help them to attain physical bodies so they would be capable of physically Ascending or else they would destroy Atlantis.”
“That’s unhealthily obsessed, I’d say.” Doctor Lam commented when Alex finished. Like him, Carolyn didn’t know Elizabeth Weir, so she could remain dispassionate about her.
Woolsey who had been silent. grimaced. He had been in Command of Atlantis during that incident. “Which is why she agreed that she and the Asurans must die,” he said.
“Dr Sheppard and the other Asurans aren’t dead. If someone were to stumble upon them and collect them, they would once again be a threat to Atlantis just as Niam was.” Lorne pointed out although he hadn’t had much to say. “Even now. Including Dr Weir.”
Tony nodded. “Agreed. I think that the problem needs to be addressed asap but that’s not why we’re here today. I want to focus on the fact that it was equally well known that Dr Weir had become obsessed with the city too.”
He looked at Jack. “General O’Neill has described how hard she fought to stay on Atlantis and demanded to be the human representative who was allowed to stay as a liaison when Helia’s contingent of Ancients from the Tria took back the city,” he paused and waited.
Jack nodded. “When the core leadership group returned to Earth, despite being disappointed at leaving but she was devastated,” Jack confirmed. “While they left Atlantis reluctantly, Sheppard, Dr McKay, Dr Zelenka and Dr Beckett all managed to move on with their lives, even if they weren’t happy. Dr Weir became depressed and unable to move on to the point that they were all genuinely concerned about her mental state.”
Paddington picked up a glass and took a swallow of water. “They had good reason to be, in my opinion. I went through the case notes of the original Dr Beckett, who documented what Weir told him about what happened to her after Niam attacked her and infected her with the nanites. She woke up in a mental facility as the nanites tried to get control of her brain by convincing her that the stargate was some giant delusion she’d created after her ex-fiancé’s death. The details were too accurate,” he said.
Jack said, “What do you mean, too accurate?”
“Once before, on a mission, aliens tried to convince the team plus Dr Weir that they were back on Earth, but Weir and Sheppard caught onto the ruse because details weren’t authentic enough to fool them. But in this case, her account of being in a mental health hospital, even down to the medications used was spot on. I asked Dr Biro, Dr Lam, and Dr O’Shea to review the notes and they agreed that the details of her time as a psychiatric patient were very realistic.”
Woolsey tapped his pen a little impatiently. “And this is significant because?”
“When she was nineteen, she had a mental breakdown. She spent several months in a psychiatric hospital after the death of her father, who was killed in a mass shootout by a deranged conspiracy nut. That hospitalisation isn’t in her file,” Alex said.
“So even before Atlantis, the cracks were already there?” Chegwidden commented.
“From a psychological profiling perspective, I would say that is a fair summation, Counsellor,” Alex agreed.
“How did she get clearance to work in the SGC in such a senior role? Lorne asked.
“That’s an excellent question, Colonel Lorne,” Alex said, “and I have another one. Who altered the details about her teenage breakdown and why? Okay, that’s two questions but you get my point.”
“Shouldn’t we also be asking when was her admission to the hospital deleted, Agent Paddington?” Cadman asked, having, like Lorne, remained mostly mute during this discussion. He was acutely aware that she and Lorne had both served under her, Cadman albeit briefly and would be feeling torn by their discussion. He couldn’t blame them, they were loyal officers.
“Another good point, Captain Cadman. Also, was it before or after she was offered the leadership of the SCG?” Alex mused. ‘However, while her early struggle with grief and depression was a clear vulnerability, something massive happened, apart from her feeling like she would lose the position that sent her over the edge. Lavin was the trigger, not the cause, which turned her into a killer.”
“What was the catalyst then?” Chegwidden asked him curiously.
Tony took a deep breath. “I believe it was something that happened in the first year of the expedition, on Elizabeth Weir’s birthday, no less. She watched herself die, although she was over 10,000 years old at that point. Most people, when they offer condolences for an elderly person’s death, usually offer up the banal platitudes such as at least the deceased had led a long and productive life. I guess we are supposed to take comfort in.” He shrugged as a few people nodded.
“Yet in this case, in the first timeline, Dr Weir hadn’t led a full and satisfying life. She’d spent most of it sacrificing it, instead of spending her life in the presence of living Ancients. She could have spent it growing old back home on Earth amongst the most advanced humanoid race we know of as Ancients, aka the former residents of Atlantis ten thousand years ago. Elizabeth spent ten millennia all on her own in Atlantis, mostly in stasis – awakening approximately every 3,333 years so she could rotate the depleted ZPMs to keep Atlantis’ shields from failing.”
He looked around the room and saw people who knew what he was talking about, Jack and Daniel, Cadman, Woolsey, and Lorne. Carolyn, Chegwidden, and AuClair looked confused, so Alex started from the beginning.
“It was in a previous timeline,” he began, marvelling at how bizarre that statement was. As if he was telling Tali a story.
“The expedition came to Atlantis, but in the earlier timeline, the ZPM was practically depleted. People began pouring into the city which the Ancients left at the bottom of the ocean on Lantea to keep it safe. In the earlier timeline, the shield failed but the city didn’t rise up out of the sea. Dr McKay managed to hold Atlantis together long enough for Sheppard, Elizabeth, and Dr Zelenka to escape in a puddle jumper before everyone else in the expeditionary party drowned. The three who managed to escape ended up in not just your garden variety ship. It was a time travelling puddle jumper, modified by the Ancient known as Janus and they were sent back in time approximately 10,000 years. Unfortunately, it promptly crashed, killing Sheppard and Zelenka.”
The three who didn’t know the story looked to Jack to corroborate this fantastic tale.
“Look as crazy as it sounds, it’s the truth,” O’Neill confirmed before indicating that Alex should continue the story – after all, it was his profile.
Dr Jackson couldn’t help himself though. “Aw, c’mon, Jaaack. It’s no crazier than me ascended and returning three times or us going back in time in a puddle jumper to Ancient Egypt to steal a ZPM or dozens of crazy plans and stuff we’ve seen or done over the years.”
“True, Space Monkey,” General O’Neill conceded with a snigger. “Go on, Paddington.”
“Yes, General. So, Dr Weir awoke on Atlantis but ten thousand years before she departed which had to be a nasty shock. The Ancients rescued her, but they were evacuating the city due to their war with the Wraith. Their numbers were too massive, and the Ancients weren’t capable of Ascension at that point, so they decided to retreat to Earth. They’d lived there many millennia before until a plague threatened to wipe them out of existence.
“A plague that Jack and SG1 caught when they were at the Antarctic,” Daniel interrupted.
“And while Daniel had ascended and was being all Ancient-y,” Jack clarified.”
“That’s not even a word, Jack.”
“Hush, Danny, let the man speak,” O’Neill commanded, rolling his eyes. “Sorry Alex. I’ll zat him if he interrupts again,” he promised.
Shaking his head in mock irritation at their antics, Alex pushed on. “So, the Ancients invited her to return with them, but Dr Weir wanted to return to her own time. They refused to allow it and ordered the time machine to be destroyed. Janus, the scientist who had built the time machine, came up with the crazy scheme for her to rotate the ZPMs so that the city wouldn’t drown – it would rise up when the SGC contingent came through the gate from Earth.”
He looked around at his audience listening raptly, even those who were already aware of the story.
Woolsey pursed his lips together before looking at Daniel. “Is this the same Janus that you and Dr McKay went looking for in his secret laboratory and the Rogue Asgards kidnapped you and the Attero device?”
“Yes, one and the same, Richard. When we found his lab, it activated a signal to an identical one that the Asgard controlled,” Daniel confirmed. “As they say, it’s a small world.”
Richard Woolsey huffed. “Todd nearly killed me when the Asgard forced you to activate that machine. He thought we had orchestrated the meeting to destroy them.”
Paddington ignored their little divergence down memory lane, eager to get the account back on track. “Why Elizabeth Weir from the previous timeline didn’t awaken when the expedition arrived in Atlantis in the new timeline, we don’t truly understand,” he said.
Although that wasn’t completely true. He knew that there had been a glitch in the system that failed to re-enervate her and without Janae Progenius who had enacted the failsafe, they would all have drowned, just like in the previous timeline. Janus’ AI program had acted to raise the city of the ocean floor, just in the nick of time.
The same AI program that was currently working on a holographic identity that he would soon unleash on the unsuspecting residents of Atlantis. Not sure how well that was going to go – especially after the Sekkari AI program had infiltrated the base and manipulated the three highest-ranking personnel on the city. Giving a mental shrug because this wasn’t the time or place, he got back to the profile.
“The end of the earlier timeline story is on her birthday on the 18th of February, during the first year of the expedition, Dr Weir from our timeline got to meet herself from the previous timeline, who was of course, over ten thousand years old.”
Seeing AuClair, Lam and Chegwidden look at him as if he were crazy, he said. “No, not making this up. Dr Beckett, Col Sheppard, Dr McKay, Teyla and Ronon were all there and talked to her too. I’ve read the reports and watched the video.”
“What he said, campers,” Jack told them with a shake of his head.
“Personally, I can’t even begin to imagine what that was like, except I think you’ll agree it must have been completely surreal. She was able to hear from herself about what happened in the first timeline. She learnt how her older self, had to sacrifice her life so that in the new timeline, Atlantis would rise from the ocean, instead of drowning almost every member of the mission. Plus, to save everyone, she had to turn down a chance to do the one thing that Elizabeth Weir longed for more any anything – to be able to talk to real-life Ancients, to be able to live amongst them and learn their secrets,” Alex returned to the profile he’d developed.
“By the time she was released from the stasis chamber one final time, she was too old to last even 24 hours. Our Elizabeth was with her as her earlier timeline self, took her last breath after 10,000 years of being alone on Atlantis, waiting for them to come and then she expired.”
He looked around the room at the others and he could see that they were empathising with how strange and terrible it must have been.
“And that’s what I believe was the precipitating factor in Weir’s obsession with her appointment as the Commander of Atlantis and her relationship to the city,” he concluded dramatically.
Alex let the silence build for several minutes, waiting for comments but when none came, he continued, “Now I know that General O’Neill and Dr Jackson have died or in Daniel’s case, Ascended more than once. They’ve met themselves in alternate timelines or their mirrors from Alternate realities but for most of us, this life, this reality is more than enough for normal people to deal with.
“Elizabeth was quite definitely not psychologically equipped to deal with such a mind fuck of massive proportions, nor did she ever get any counselling to help her deal with it. Even more critical, no one ever attempted to assess how she was coping with such a mind-altering experience. It was treated just like another day at the office.”
Cadman was the first to react. “Wow, it makes sense in a twisted sort of way. Like if she saw the alternate Dr Weir as herself, then she must have begun to see Atlantis as hers, since she’d already spent ten thousand years protecting it.”
Daniel nodded, “I agree. If she did see the older version as an extension of herself then in her mind, she’d already sacrificed so much to ensure the survival of Atlantis by going on what they believed would be a one-way trip to Pegasus. Learning she’d already spent ten millennia here alone must have made Elizabeth feel like the city belonged to her. After all, she’d been guarding it for the expedition for ten thousand years.”
“I suspect that Sofie somehow managed to threaten Weir’s territorial instinct to protect Atlantis, which in her mind had become intimately linked to her sense of identity. She was able to justify killing Dr Danziger because Sofie threatened to destroy Weir’s link to Atlantis.” Alex theorised.
AuClair looked spooked. “Do you still think she poses a threat?”
“If she weren’t frozen in space right now, I’d say she would be a massive threat.”
Jack gave a heartfelt sigh. “Sadly, I agree. It is just a matter of time before some good citizen finds them. Look at how AR-1 found those pods containing the last two fighter pilots of a race long dead. They were hours away from death and the thanks we got from being good Samaritans was them taking over Weir and Sheppard’s bodies so they could kill each other, and if that failed, kill everyone on Atlantis.
Seeing blank faces he said, “You know, they called themselves Feeble and Failure,” he said, unable to resist mangling technical terms or in this instance, names just to get under Daniel’s skin and piss him off.
And it worked! Typically, Daniel couldn’t resist correcting his tormentor and best friend.
“Jaaack, their names were Phoebus and Thalan and the stasis pods that they’d escaped in were fascinating, the technology…” he began as Jack ruthlessly interrupted.
“The point is, that pair almost killed everyone on Atlantis, and they only had hours to live. Those damned replicator bodies can be a danger for thousands of years. So, what the hell to do with them?”
Lorne had a suggestion, “Destroy their physical bodies and store their consciousness in virtual reality to keep them occupied. Like they did with the human form replicator, Ava Dixon who Colonel Sheppard and Ronon encountered back on Earth at his father’s funeral. Maybe they could create a virtual reality of Atlantis.”
“We had planned on doing that before things took a dangerous turn,” Richard Woolsey told them. But being frozen, perhaps it would be easier to carry out now.
“It’s worth investigating. Special Agent in Charge Paddington is right, we can’t just leave her or the others out there, she is much too unstable and dangerous if threatened.”
After the meeting adjourned, Jack remained in his chair, deep in thought. Paddington constantly surprised him. His psychological profile of Elizabeth Weir was spot on and when he outlined his assessment of her, even though he’d never even met her, he was wondering why no one else had noticed all the things that Alex had mentioned and put it all together. He was working off the mission reports and conversations he’d had with people who knew her. Jack and John Sheppard knew her quite well, and yet neither of them ever picked up the clear level of psychopathology that must have been bubbling away under the surface. Thank goodness they had Paddington on their side.
Jack had met with the President a few days ago to fill him in on the Joint Chief of Staff’s attempts to pressure him into making McKay head of Homeworld Command’s research program on the drug. He’d bitten the bullet and explained why he was so adamant that he wasn’t going to capitulate and his reasons why. The President was shocked, but he agreed. Anyone who had been drugged and then decided to use the drug against someone else, whether as a joke, an attempt at seduction or for research purposes, was not a fit or ethical person to run the research program. Not with a drug that had so much potential to be abused on a massive scale. Bill Lee was an unassuming man and a far safer pair of hands to entrust with such a crucial project.
Both men were appalled at how close to disaster the world had come. POTUS had once more reiterated that they should do everything possible, including Jack’s firstborn, if necessary, to keep Agent Paddington happy. Of course, it had a bit of a tasteless joke – on several counts even ignoring the entrenched misogynism of females as chattel and Jack’s firstborn being deceased. However, it did start him thinking about Cassie and Alex. He practically attacked him when he thought Alex was trying to seduce Cassie, who was like his own daughter, but he’d been wrong about that.
Still, Danny was right – sixteen years was not that big of an age gap, his grandmother was twenty years younger than his Pop, and they had a lifelong marriage. And Cassie was certainly crazy about him and his cute kid, but Jack sensed there was something more than age that had made him so emphatic about not getting into a relationship with anyone. Maybe he was concerned about Ziva David still being out there somewhere. Did Paddington still have feelings for her the way Daniel did for Sha’re so that no one else could worm their way into his heart? He sure hoped not because, from all he knew of Ms David, she was not a nice person. Her father had done an excellent job of forging her into an assassin but a fucking miserable job of nurturing a good person.
He thought back to the phone call he’d received from Paul Davis, just before he had planned to return to Atlantis and then been forced to delay his departure because something urgent had come up. His priceless 2IC who loved all the attention to detail, logistics and the hundred and one other things that Jack despised about being the head of Homeworld Command, had found a threat to their new secret weapon. O’Neill asked him to keep a weather eye open for a former Mossad operative – Ziva David who was supposed to have been killed by a former CIA spook called Trent Kort, who was also a really nasty piece of work, who’d in turn been killed by NCIS. And no, he wasn’t about to shed a tear for that pile of recrement.
Several minor remarks and nonverbal cues that Tony DiNozzo had let slip when he offered him the chance to come to Atlantis made Jack suspicious that he didn’t believe that she was truly dead. If that turned out to be the case, he had nothing but contempt for her to let her child believe she was dead for over three years. So, Homeworld Command had alerted the relevant authorities to watch for her attempting to enter the US on a fake passport. Even so, Jack honestly hadn’t expected to land their dead spy.
That had been why Paul had called him on a secure phone line at Cheyenne Mountain to inform him that a not so dead Ziva David had attempted to enter the country on a fake passport. Fake, since she had been declared officially dead, and she’d been accompanied by Shin Bet Officer, Adam Eshel, her current shill. When challenged by the border authorities, they claimed that they were in DC to collect their daughter, Tali David. Since Paul and Jack both knew damned well that Tali DiNozzo was Anthony DiNozzo’s daughter, even sharing the strong expression of the ATA gene with her father, Paul wanted to know how O’Neill wanted it handled. In the interim, both Israelis had been arrested for trying to enter the US on fake passports.
After consultation with ICE and the DHS, courtesy of Director Nancy Addison who was John Sheppard’s ex-wife, they decided to charge Ziva David, since she was legally declared dead and therefore didn’t have immunity, indicting her with illegal entry and visa crimes. Eshel was immediately deported back to Israel and told not to come back. It was likely that he would try to pull strings to get Ziva released but, in the meanwhile, she was sitting on her butt in detention.
Once she was deported, they had plans to keep her busy chasing her tail with false sightings of Tali and Tony DiNozzo in every South American country before starting on Asia and Africa. At this stage, he’d decided not to tell Tony that she’d surfaced. He knew that he had his name added to Tali’s birth certificate – the stack of blood tests proving she was his child, and her mother was down as deceased. And there was no way the assassin was going to get her hands on Tali. As far as Jack was concerned, she gave up her parental rights three years ago when she staged her own death, the callous little bitch.
At best, it was a temporary solution but as with Elizabeth Weir, it was a necessary one until they figured out how to deal with her permanently. Perhaps what was good for the goose was good for the gander. They could kill off Tony and Tali DiNozzo and blame it on the Trust. Then Ziva David would undoubtedly do what she always did – hunt down those she saw as her enemies and take their lives as retribution.
For now, he would not apprise DiNozzo of the fact that David had miraculously risen from the grave or that Eshel was tagging along in her wake, laying parental claim to Tony’s daughter. A question he would like to know the answer to, was Eshel a sap who Ziva lied to, telling him that he was Tali’s father or was he a willing participant who was willing to go along with stealing the child from her biological and custodial parent?
Right now, the threat by Shen and her supporters to gain a way to control everyone on Earth who didn’t have the rhinovirus was far too important to distract his focus. For the immediate future, she was in detention, and as a dead person, didn’t have any legal status. Nancy Addison would make sure to delay and obstruct any attempts made by the Mossad to rescue her, especially should she get lost in the system for a couple of months, while they figure out what to do with her. As a non-person that could definitely happen, and he intended to see that it did.
Meanwhile, it was time to save the world again!
The End (for now)
Brilliant set of stories! Thanks for sharing your work, and if the ‘for now’ really means there’s a sequel in planning, all I can say is good luck and happy writing.
It is in the process of being written. Seven chapters in the can, hopefully the muse will continue to cooperate.
Intriguing story. Thank you for sharing this.
You’re welcome, thanks for commenting.
Wow. Part 3. Lots resolved and lots still in motion. Thanks for writing so much about characters that I like, plus fix-its, and then beyond that with character growth/new ground.
Yes I bit off a bit more than I could chew but am already writing part IV Seeking Justice. Approx. 45,000 words written at this point. Hoping that the muse remains cooperative. Glad you enjoyed part 3.
Hello there
I really love the whole Story!!! The characters are so well described and written- big compliments. I‘m awfully curious how the Ziva-situation will be solved and I hope I can read it soon.
Thank you for sharing
So wonderful and beautifully written!
Thank you so much for this
amazing stories!! really, really enjoying these! congratulations, O Author, I salute thee!!
very cool! my first comment seems to have vanished, but Bravo O Author, bravo!!
well played!
This was such a brilliant series to read.
All the kudos!!!
Thanks for sharing your talent.
This was a great series I am glad the Tony is around good supportive people. I’m glad you will be continuing. I can’t help but wonder Atlantis being Atlantic how many babies AJ is going to deliver while he is there.
Wow just wow haven’t stopped reading and can’t put it down! So excited for more! Thankyou for your awesome writing! Keeping stargate alive
This set of stories is amazing, beautifully written, aspects of joy and angst, just gorgeous to read, I can’t wait to see Hotchner and Jack on Atlantis, thank you so much for sharing your talent
Intresting to see a few small loose ends can change so much. Hopefully John can make friends with Aaron and Tony. Emotionally mature and professionally successful men that he can meet on an even base.