Casualties of war

Chapter one

No matter how far from home a person drifted-and this was a fair bit farther than John Sheppard reasonably could have expected to drift-some things remained constant.

While the Ancient version of a washing machine bore little resemblance to anything Maytag had ever dreamed up, everyone agreed that it was awfully efficient. Still, there was only one room of the machines in the occupied section of Atlantis, and so laundry days often turned into a communal experience, much like in a college dorm or basic training.

In one corner, Teyla primly folded clothes and stacked them in a woven basket. Radek Zelenka had his head partially inside a dryer, muttering something that had to be a series of Czech expletives.

"Hate to break it to you, Radek," John remarked as he entered, "but there's nowhere in there for clothes to get stuck. If you're missing another sock, you'd be better off checking your quarters."

From the scientist's glower, John inferred that any further cursing would probably be directed toward him.

"Your input is most helpful, Colonel, thank you."

Teyla watched her team leader dump the contents of a large, nearly overflowing gear bag into one washer. "Do you change clothing more often than I realized?"

Her curious expression didn't fool John for a second. "Very funny. No, I stick to one uniform per day, except when something in Rodney's lab goes boom, or I have to crawl through ten thousand years of dust in the outer areas of the city, or-and I'm just picking an example at random- a recon mission turns into finger painting with six-year-olds."

"The Rianns demonstrated deep trust by allowing you to interact with their young."

"And I'm all warm and fuzzy about that, but even these spiffy Ancient washers took three cycles to get that green gunk out of my jacket." As he spoke, a pair of brightlypatterned boxers slipped out of his laundry pile and glided to the floor, proving once again that this galaxy really was out to get him.

Eyes glittering behind his glasses, Radek peered down at the fabric. "Are those airplanes?"

With reflexes that surprised all three of them, John snatched up the shorts and shoved them into the washer. "Some people have differential equations. I have airplanes. You want to put money on which one girls go for?"

Radek was still searching for a response when Teyla offered, "I am not convinced that either design would have a noticeable effect on any interpersonal situations… at least, not a positive effect."

Her sense of humor was becoming more Earth-like all the time. John flashed an approving grin at her.

Swiftly changing the subject, Radek asked, "Daedalus has finished off-loading supplies, has she not?"

Despite the innocence of the scientist's tone, John knew damn well what the real question was. The ship's arrival hadn't become a highly anticipated event because Hermiod's company was so enjoyable. "This morning," he confirmed. "Mail call will probably be tomorrow after dinner."

Radek broke into a wide smile, but an announcement over the citywide communication system cut off any reply he might have made.

"Unscheduled offworld activation."

Not a big shock. These days they had more unscheduled activations than scheduled ones. The emergence of the Asurans had thrown a serious wrench into Atlantis's standard operating procedure, assuming such a thing had ever existed. Having demonstrated in short order that they were not to be taken lightly, the replicator bastards had been testing the waters on a number of planets. They didn't seem interested in conquest, just information- and the occasional opportunity to put some of their revitalized, hard-wired aggression to use. And if they ran into a team from the city they were so obsessed with commandeering, well, that was just convenient, wasn't it?

John's team alone had run into them on three separate worlds and observed that their tactics had changed each time. He had a different word for the situation, and it wasn't family-friendly. On each mission, the team had hustled back home earlier than planned, often with weapons-fire singing past them all the way to the gate. He was willing to bet that Major Lorne's team had just found themselves the lucky recipients of the Asurans' attention this week. What fun.

A low rumble sounded, reverberating through the floor strongly enough for John to feel a faint tremor through his boots.

That, on the other hand, was not typical.

Apprehensive, he cast a glance across the room at Radek, finding him equally startled and equally concerned.

"That could not have been the jumper-could it?"

"No," John replied, his resolve drawn less from what he knew to be true than from what he needed to be true. Granted, they were fairly close in the relative sense to the bay that housed Atlantis's "puddle jumper" spacecraft, but for anything happening in there to be felt this far out…

The trio waited, all clearly hoping to hear a radio call that would reassure them. After a few seconds, the call came, but Lorne's ever-present calm had obviously been shaken.

"Medical team to the jumper bay!"

Everyone reacted in the same instant. Teyla was the first one through the door, but John's longer strides overtook hers halfway down the corridor. Adrenaline keeping his pace at something just below an all-out sprint, he barreled into the transporter at the end of the hall and reached for the control panel just as Teyla flung herself inside.

Instantly they found themselves outside the jumper bay. With his teammate on his heels, John burst through the hangar's double doors and immediately was suckerpunched by a rush of smoke.

Almost before he could grasp the implications of that, the haze began to clear, whisked out of the cavernous room by some kind of Ancient fire-suppression system. When he could see, he reflexively wished for the blindness back.

Jumper Five, having returned from its first mission after a long grounding for maintenance, was now grounded in the ugliest sense of the word. John was surprised that the craft had made it back at all. One of its engine pods was now a blackened gash in the jumper's side.

"Pro boha," murmured Radek from behind them, breathing heavily from the run.

The jumper's hatch opened with a weary shudder. "Some help here!" yelled Major Lorne from the rear compartment, seemingly trying to perform triage on three of his men at once.

Beckett would be here in seconds, no doubt, but seconds looked to be a precious commodity. John dashed up the ramp to one wounded Marine, Teyla to another. The Athosian smoothly took the field dressing out of Lorne's hand and knelt down to stanch the blood flowing from the sergeant's upper leg wound.

"They reacted so freaking fast, sir." Shaking his head, Lorne addressed his CO while turning his attention toward a corporal with a messy laceration above his right eye. "It was almost like they were anticipating us. And that hit on the engine pod-Colonel, I swear to God that we did everything we could think of."

"I don't doubt it, Major." Dropping to his knees with an inelegant thud against the unforgiving deck, John glanced at the remains of the jumper's first-aid kit and then at the face of the lieutenant lying beside it. Harper, he recalled. Matt Harper. Less than two years out of ROTC at Oklahoma-or was it Oklahoma State? Another mom-and-apple-pie kid, another officer who'd done everything ever asked of him and now had a hole in his chest to show for it.

John swallowed a curse and leaned in to apply pressure to the wound. Time to be The Colonel. "No lying down on duty, Harper. That's strictly a commander's privilege."

Harper blinked at him with unfocused eyes. "Sir," he managed. "Don't know. .what happened."

"Doesn't matter right now," he said, forcing himself to ignore the blood welling in the young man's mouth. "Just hang in there, all right? You're gonna be fine."

Harper's response was a weak cough and an expression of growing fear. As he feebly reached out, John seized his wrist with one hand, maintaining pressure with the other. "Hey," he offered, aware that he sounded just a little desperate. "Remind me again where you went to school. Was it OU or OSU? It's almost football season back home, and I can't be mixing up my guys' loyalties when the game tapes start coming in." Even as he finished the sentence, the Marine's eyes were sliding shut. "Lieutenant! Stay with me here, damn it-"

He felt Harper's breath stutter just as Carson Beckett and his team moved in to take over. As John got to his feet and climbed down from the hatch, Teyla came to stand beside him, her features deeply saddened. They watched the medics, hearing the eventoned instructions passed back and forth as if working on nothing more than a broken finger. John suspected Teyla wasn't convinced by the calm. Having flown his share of med-evac missions half a lifetime ago, he sure as hell wasn't.

When Beckett finally sat back on his heels, exhausted and defeated, John felt a familiar numbness creep into his bones. Turning away, he stripped off his sweatshirt and let it fall from his hand, the garment stained beyond repair with Harper's blood.

Although Rodney McKay's presence wasn't strictly required at the MIX-030 debriefing, he thought it prudent to show up anyway. For one thing, he wanted to know what had so thoroughly destroyed the jumper's engine pod. For another. .well, it was an unwritten rule that no one skipped out on a debriefing after an expedition member had been killed. It would have been disrespectful, somehow, not to hear the report, even if Rodney had no desire to know the details of the lieutenant's demise.

In the briefing room, Major Lorne sat ramrod-straight in his chair with a hardened stare. Rodney took a seat next to Colonel Sheppard, who was hunched over his coffee mug, giving off don't-mess-with-me-today vibes. It was a warning the scientist rarely heeded, but this morning he decided to be magnanimous and resist pointing out that the Colonel's hair was sticking up in back in ways that couldn't possibly be intentional, even for him.

And people thought Rodney was incapable of tact.

"I've scheduled the memorial service," Elizabeth began, sliding into her own chair. "Tomorrow, shortly before our scheduled check-in with the SGC, so we can send Lieutenant Harper's body back then. We'll also need to pack up his personal effects to send back for his family."

"I'll take care of it," Sheppard said before she could turn to him, not looking up from the table. Of course he'd take care of it. He always did when they lost a Marine.

"Thank you." Elizabeth leaned her forearms on the table. "Why don't you start at the beginning, Major?"

"By now you probably know the basic story as well as I do, ma'am." Lome delivered his after-action report dispassionately. "The Asurans apparently have assembled a network of human intel. We'd barely been in the village half a day when one of our guides started getting twitchy around us. He tried more than once to get us to split up. When we finally called him on it, he took off. We tracked him into the ruins, and that's where the Asurans got the drop onus."

"How many?" Elizabeth asked.

"Three-two with weapons and one who looked like a scientist or a doctor. That one came at Sergeant Dunleavy. I'm pretty sure he was planning to do that hand-throughthe-forehead thing and drag Dunleavy's IDC out of him right then and there."

Whatever else might be said about those sons-ofrobots, they were persistent. Unconsciously, Rodney slid his hand across his right forearm, where the scar from a similar interrogation had faded from everyone's sight but his. A Genii with a knife or an Asuran with a mindprobe-either way, it added up to bad guys who wanted their city, and he'd never been big on sharing.

"They pursued us." Lorne seemed aware that he wasn't being blamed for the results of the mission. Still, his voice was taut, frustration barely held in check. "Lieutenant Harper was hit about a hundred yards out from the jumper, but he made it inside. I cloaked us as soon as the jumper powered up. I guess it wasn't fast enough, because they shot something big at us and clipped the engine pod. It lost power immediately. We're lucky the pod retracted for gate transit. As soon as we got back into the jumper bay, the engine blew."

"Did you get a look at what they fired at you?" Rodney wanted to know.

Lome shook his head. "Felt like a rocket-propelled grenade. It came from about the eight-o'clock position, so nobody saw it coming."

Irritation prickled Rodney's skin. At least with the Wraith they'd been able to procure some of the enemy's technology for study. How was he supposed to counteract whatever the replicators were throwing at them if all he had was a charred husk of an engine pod?

"You did well to get your team out of there, Major," said Elizabeth. "We'll have to reexamine our security posture before we undertake any more off-world missions. If the Asurans want Atlantis badly enough to canvass this many planets looking for our teams, we may need to find methods of being more covert."

"Perhaps my people can assist," Teyla suggested. "There are still many trade worlds that may not know the Athosians have relocated to Lantea."

"Thing is, these guys probably aren't going to quit." Sheppard pushed his mug forward and leaned on the table. "We need a better long-term strategy than ninjaMarines and Athosian stand-ins. What we need is a way to even the odds."

"A weapon," Ronon said, making Rodney jump a little in his seat. The Satedan spoke so infrequently in these meetings that Rodney tended to forget he was even in attendance.

Sheppard swung his chair around and pointed at his teammate. "Bingo."

"The scientists have spoken of such a weapon in your people's possession," said Teyla. "Can the Daedalus not bring one here from Earth?"

Rodney was already shaking his head before she'd finished the sentence. He'd considered that option on half a dozen occasions and rejected it as futile each time. "Based on the paltry effect our projectile weapons have had so far, it's a safe bet that the Asurans have strengthened the cohesive factors the disrupter would target. It was developed by the Asgard specifically to combat the replicators as encountered in the Milky Way Galaxy. While the Asurans may have started out their lamentable existence in that form, we have to face the fact that they have evolved significantly since the time of the Ancients-even more so than their Milky Way counterparts, which were infuriatingly adaptable in their own right. Should we be so fortunate as to surprise the Asurans with the disrupter once, their learning curve would render it obsolete immediately."

"Which is why we need to come up with something better," Sheppard countered.

"Oh, well, since you asked nicely," Rodney snapped back. "Look, we have a lot of very bright people in this city, many of them with a disturbing talent for spectacular destruction. The same goes for the researchers at Stargate Command and at Area 51, not the least of which is Colonel Carter. She's got a prototype of a new antireplicator weapon in development. Unfortunately, these projects don't provide instant results and, for better or worse, she has next to nothing to test it on. It's not like this problem slipped anyone's mind. We've been working on it, but occasionally even I have trouble saving the day on a deadline."

"You could use a leg up?"

"A leg, a big toe-I'll take what I can get."

The Colonel swiveled back toward the head of the table. "Then I think it's time to reprioritize P7L-418."

Elizabeth's somewhat shuttered expression now closed down completely. Rodney grimaced. This was bound to be interesting, and not in a pleasant way.

A few weeks ago, the linguistics division had briefed the senior staff on a recently-translated historical record from the city database. The battle for PM-418 had been, up until the siege of Atlantis, the largest conflict of the Ancients' war with the Wraith. The planet had housed a facility that the Ancients had seen fit to defend with the full might of their fleet. Rodney had started to doze off when the head linguist had begun listing all the assets involved, but he understood that over the course of eight days a large number of ships, on both sides, had been destroyed or damaged beyond recovery.

He'd snapped awake when the timid man had explained just what the Ancients had been protecting so fiercely.

"We've been over this," Elizabeth said, her fingers tightening around a pen. "The records implied that the facility on 418 was used primarily for weapons development. It also implied that high-risk testing was conducted there. That could mean any number of things, many of which may involve extreme hazards to our personnel or others."

"There's no way to know unless we take a look," Rodney pointed out. "If I can get my hands on a prototype weapon or even some of their notes, it might be enough to provide a jump-start on something we can use the next time any replicators come out to hassle us."

"And if the research was flawed?" Elizabeth asked quietly.

She didn't elaborate, but Rodney got the inference; it was the reason he'd agreed, however reluctantly, to steer clear of PM-418 during the first round of this debate. A year ago they'd thought the abandoned Ancient project on Doranda would solve all their problems, and that hadn't gone too swimmingly for them. Or for the better part of a star system.

"We've learned that lesson," Sheppard replied, making an obvious effort not to glance over at Rodney as he spoke. "We'll approach anything and everything with all due caution. If it's a dead end, it's a dead end. But how could we be better off just sitting back and hoping an easier solution presents itself?"

Atlantis's leader had faced off against heads of state in two galaxies. She wasn't likely to simply cave in now. "The database is extremely vague about the aftermath of the battle. We know the Ancients drove the Wraith away from the planet, but a later record makes reference to the facility eventually being abandoned."

"Because they were losing the war and the fleet had to be recalled to defend Atlantis."

"We can't be sure that was the reason, John," Elizabeth maintained. "If the work being done there was so critical that the Ancients spent eight days and half a dozen ships protecting it, why would they then give it up?"

Rodney fielded the question. "The obvious possibilities are that they either lost interest in the research or took everything useful with them."

"Or something catastrophic happened." Elizabeth looked at him. "Did you get any details out of the database that even hinted at what they were working on?"

"Only in the most general terms. As best I can tell, the facility was a directed energy lab, which means there's a chance it met some kind of nasty radioactive end."

"Which is why the SGC keeps sending us shiny new MALPs," Sheppard insisted. "If the scan is clear, I don't see any reason why this mission should be more dangerous than any other, and there's an opportunity for a major gain. What am I missing here?"

As much as it pained him to admit it, Rodney was in complete agreement with the Colonel. "This might give us the edge we need." When Elizabeth's eyebrows climbed in surprise at their tag-team approach, he explained, "I recognize and accept your points. I accepted them the last time we discussed this, but that was before we started running into firefights on every other planet. Circumstances have made it no longer advisable to ignore the potential of this facility. If directed energy research was conducted there, it's possible I'd be able to find something that would exploit the Asurans' molecular cohesion with more success than a standard disrupter."

Sitting back in her chair, Elizabeth pinched the bridge of her nose. "I understand. I just hate the idea that this expedition seems to be turning into an arms race."

"I'm not wild about it either." Sheppard held firm, as resolute as Rodney had ever seen him in a briefing. "But I'm really tired of giving eulogies."

It all came down to that, didn't it? Rodney had a healthy sense of self-preservation, but even he could rationalize facing a potential hazard if it offered some hope of mitigating known hazards in the future. And the Asurans were a guaranteed hazard.

"I believe the journey to be worthwhile," Teyla said. Ronon gave a curt nod of assent.

"All right. P7L-418 goes to the top of the list." Elizabeth checked the calendar on her datapad. "Let's aim for the day after tomorrow. But if anything doesn't add up on that MALP scan, I'm scrubbing the mission."

The Colonel nodded, already rising from his chair. "Pre-brief and MALP deployment at 0800," he instructed his team.

Rodney followed him out when the meeting disbanded, the room's tinted wall panels rotating with graceful precision to offer them exit. "I assume you realize that we really don't have any idea what we'll find out there," he felt compelled to point out. "I mean, irrespective of the facility, we've got almost no data on the planet that houses it."

Sheppard tossed him a smirk, though the humor looked a bit artificial. "In what way would that be different from usual?"

He headed off down the corridor. Rodney sighed. "Depressing but true."

"Attention to orders!"

The military contingent of the Atlantis expedition came to attention as one, the unified clap of their boot heels reverberating through the gate-room. Lieutenant Laura Cadman stared straight ahead at the assembly of motionless gray figures, taking a kind of comfort in the formality. Atlantis was both the most intense and the most laid-back assignment she'd seen in her young career. Every one of her teammates was a consummate professional, and no one so much as blinked when stuff hit the fan-but it had been ages since she'd last seen anyone salute.

Granted, their uniforms didn't have obvious rank insignia, so spotting senior officers in time to salute would have been a little tricky until the faces became familiar. But if Laura knew anything about the Corps, she knew that there was always a way to enforce protocol if desired. Their commanding officer just didn't seem interested in enforcing it.

Even so, a little bit of military tradition never hurt anyone. Laura was damned proud of being a Marine, and of everything that came along with that title. She knew she wasn't alone in that belief. Every so often, it felt good to remind themselves.

Colonel Sheppard seemed to get that, because he'd started calling the occasional formation. Back on Earth, government red tape was alive and well, and so the `administrivia,' as the Colonel often labeled it, tended to take a while to reach them. When it finally did, courtesy of a Daedalus run, there usually were a few promotions and commendations to hand out.

"Citation to accompany the award of the Distinguished Flying Cross," Laura read aloud from the page on the podium. As she recited the description of the Orion's self-sacrificing battle with the Earth-bound hive ship, the men and women who had made up the Ancient ship's last, ragtag crew filed past her to face their CO and accept their medals.

Colonel Caldwell stood in the front row, locked in at attention alongside the others. Although he was the rank ing officer present, Daedalus's commander wasn't presiding over the ceremony. The Atlantis detachment was Colonel Sheppard's command, and Caldwell appeared content to observe.

Laura imagined that Sheppard must have had his work cut out for him when trying to match up his people's achievements with the appropriate commendations. Outer space conflicts generally weren't covered in the awards manual. Maybe the brass back on Earth had been flexible for a change.

She moved on to the next citation, a Navy and Marine Corps Medal for a lieutenant who'd evacuated an injured Athosian hunter by jumper from a barely-accessible ridge on the mainland. After that, there were two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and a Meritorious Service Medal.

Somewhere, buried in a file on Earth, there was an `official' citation for each of these medals. Those citations didn't mention spaceships or Athosians or Wraith. They contained vaguely-worded descriptions of generic heroism at a `forward operating location.' Anyone without clearance would see that phrase and assume Iraq or Afghanistan. It was less than honest, and it bugged all of them at one time or another, but that was life in the Pegasus Galaxy.

Turning the page, Laura came to the last medal. "Citation to accompany the award of-"

The name on the citation leapt out at her, and she halted, suddenly uncertain. She looked to Colonel Sheppard for guidance, and he responded with a small nod of encouragement.

Dutifully, she continued. "-the award of the Bronze Star to Corporal Joshua Travis."

No one spoke or even flinched, but she knew the reactions were there, hidden behind the impassive facades of her fellow Marines. The space between Laura and the Colonel remained empty as she read the citation.

It made sense, she realized partway through. The Daedalus had left Earth with the medals over two weeks ago. The ship must have been at the edge of the galaxy when Travis was killed. Red tape never could keep up with the fickle hand of fate.

It was a hell of a way to end a ceremony, but Travis had been a good guy and a good Marine. They owed him this much.

Lifting her gaze from the podium, she finished the well-known citation from memory and refused to change it to the past tense. "The distinctive and life-saving actions of Corporal Travis reflect great credit upon himself and the United States Marine Corps."

There was silence for a few seconds. It felt appropriate.

After the Colonel dismissed the formation, the gateroom cleared out rapidly. "Nice job today," he told Laura. "Sorry about that last one. I should have warned you it was in there."

"No sweat, sir. I'm glad he got it."

Sheppard picked up the small, flat case that held the unclaimed medal, weighing it in his hand. "Can't escape stuff like this, I guess, but damn if it doesn't drive me nuts."

Whether he was referring to the posthumous commendation or the ugliness of the overall situation with the Asurans, Laura couldn't tell. Not sure how to respond to her CO's uncharacteristically somber mood, she searched for something innocuous to say. "So…when do we get to the fun part of mail call?"

That seemed to do the trick. "Patience is a virtue, Lieutenant," Sheppard replied with a hint of a smile. "We just scheduled a new mission, so it'll probably be as soon as we get back. Unless everybody's in junk food withdrawal and can't suck it up for another day or two?"

Exaggerating her sigh, Laura grinned back. "Anything for the Corps, sir…"

"Beat it, Cadman."

"Aye, sir." She took the stairs up past the control room and headed for her quarters, hoping that the strain she'd noticed in the Colonel was a temporary condition. He was a good commander, and she wouldn't have wanted to serve under anyone else, but all the rock-and-a-hard-place decisions and steady losses had to be tough to weather.

Sometimes she was damn grateful to be a lowly lieutenant.