Title: The Caretaker

Author: Jackee (WriterJC)

Rating: Nothing you wouldn't catch on the show. . . . hope that helps.

Archive: Fine by me, just let me know where. Eventually at and my own woefully un-updated webpage. ( WIP

Category: Drama

Summary: A MALP recovery mission turns into something completely unexpected.

Spoilers: Anything and everything up to "Before I Sleep".

Sequel/Season: Season One

Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams. . . .

Authors Note: This is only my second Atlantis story and I still feel as if I'm getting acquainted with the characters yet. Please don't hold it against me. My first Atlantis attempt was "Storm Surge" and is available at this site, my web page and Wraithbait.

Thanks to gaffer for being a terrific beta reader.

CHAPTER ONE – TWINKLE, TWINKLE

"When we get to the other side, you'll need to be sure to . . ." Major John Sheppard rolled his eyes as Dr. Rodney McKay continued to spout rapid-fire instructions to Atlantis control. Did the man never shut off? Normally McKay's brand of super intelligent ADHD was bearable, but today it was only adding to the headache he hadn't been able to shake all morning. Descending out of the jumper bay, heading for the world the scientists had designated PX3-922 was a little late to start complaining about it.

"Be quiet for a sec, I'm trying to concentrate." John's softly uttered words had the desired effect, and cut the scientist off mid-sentence. Never mind that the jumper handled the journey through the event horizon virtually on automatic or that Rodney was well aware of that fact – it brought a half second of blissful silence. John hoped that it would last long enough to get them through the wormhole.

No such luck.

McKay was halfway through a sarcastic rebuttal as John felt the familiar effect of demolecularization. Good old McKay, he thought, spreading good cheer throughout the universe on yet another level. The rest of McKay's response died away as they rematerialized on PX3-922.

It had been one thing to see the moonscape in brief glimpses transmitted by the tumbling MALP that had suddenly found itself in zero-G, but it was quite another to see that same moonscape spread out before them like a pale, silvery blanket of rolling hills. There was something hypnotic about the luminescent surface that had him blinking in an effort to re-gather his thoughts.

John didn't remember any such effect back in the control room. Of course they had been pretty busy with trying to shut off a previously unknown alarm. It had taken a couple tense minutes before they knew for sure that the cause of all of the blaring noise was the city reacting to something on the opposite side of the wormhole. The telemetry from the MALP hadn't been very helpful, only alerting them to the fact that the gate was in space and in an environment that was likely not suitable to any form of life as they knew it.

After forty-five additional minutes of debate, keyboard tapping and out-right arguments they had managed to come to two conclusions. One was that, while the alarm was consistent with some of the other systems the Ancients seemed to use often, they didn't know whether it was meant to be a warning or a distress call. The second was that unless they rescued this MALP, they would be down by one more – something that they could hardly afford with such finite resources.

And so it had been decided that they would proceed cautiously through the gate, do a cursory look-see for the source of the signal and recapture the MALP so that its data could be studied.

Shaking off his initial lack of concentration as headache related, John managed some neutral 'mission is normal' comment to Atlantis before the wormhole winked out behind them. About that time, McKay's power of speech seemed to return as well.

"This is incredible," he murmured, gesturing toward the glistening surface as it reacted to the jumper's lights, shimmering in iridescent purples and blues. "This moon has some amazing photo-electric properties. And the potential power output --"

"It is indeed beautiful," Teyla spoke up, summing up everyone else's thoughts in a few concise words.

"Yeah, it is pretty neat looking," Ford put in from the co-pilot's seat.

"Beautiful? Neat looking?" McKay looked at the two of them as if they only had one brain between them. "Do you have any idea what this means? I'm actually picking up increased energy readings when the jumper's lights shine against the surface. Whatever that is down there, it's capable of producing energy pretty quickly – like mini solar collectors, there for the taking. Can you imagine what will happen when this system's sun –"

"Could this," John gestured out of the view screen, trying to find the appropriate term, "effect have anything to do with why we got that alarm back on Atlantis?" It wasn't hard to guess that McKay's next logical move was going to be to want to take some of the granules back with them.

"Possibly . . . maybe . . . likely," McKay prevaricated. "Whatever. The benefits could be huge. We can put them in isolation canisters and then we would -" Rodney paused, then grunted. "That's odd."

"What's odd?" John wanted to know. If there was one thing he'd learned in the Pegasus galaxy, it was that odd was rarely anything good.

"The signal that raised the alarm on Atlantis is gone. It seems to have faded away - probably about the time the gate closed. Why would that happen?"

"Maybe the Ancients used it so that they'd know that there wasn't an atmosphere on the other side of the gate," Ford offered.

"Why would we not have received similar warnings previously?" Teyla asked.

"Maybe it was broken before?" Ford shrugged.

"Can you tell where the signal was coming from?" John asked.

"If I knew that, I would have told you by now. It seems to have come from everywhere at once – possibly refracted by the surface. Maybe with a few calculations . . . "

"Well, Sherlock." John called up a holographic representation of the moon as it orbited a gas giant. "While you're trying to solve that mystery, the rest of us are going to see about rescuing a MALP."

"Yes . . . why don't you . . . " McKay's voice showed that he had already mentally disconnected from the conversation.

"Major! Look!" Teyla's voice, edged with tension, was enough to draw him abruptly from his search for the missing equipment. He followed her gesture toward the right side of the view screen. At first he didn't see anything. Then, partially buried in the side of a rolling mound of moon dust, two sides of a hexagonally shaped building came into view. He had to blink to be sure his eyes weren't deceiving him. Obligingly, the onboard computer selected the area and displayed a magnified image for them all.

"Rodney, any -"

"I'm on it," McKay replied before he could complete the question. This time the soft beeps were in rapid-fire succession.

"It looks kind of like a buried fort," Ford said as he took in the translucent image. "But why would you put a fort on the moon in the middle of nowhere? It doesn't look like it has much protection. And there doesn't seem to be any life on the planet."

John couldn't disagree with him, and even with an untrained architectural eye he had a distinct suspicion that the Ancients had something to do with this building.

"I'm picking up extremely low level energy readings," McKay said, "almost too low to be read on the scale. They were practically undetectable against the background energy of the moon surface. If we didn't know where to look our instruments would have completely missed it."

"So what you're saying is that it sounds like someone was maybe trying to hide it?" John asked?

"Oh, I'd say definitely."

"And maybe we should check it out?" John's tone was deliberately leading. "For purely tactical and scientific purposes, of course."

"Oh, absolutely. Of course." Rodney agreed quickly, a smug smile lighting his features.

Teyla looked at them. "Are we not due to return to Atlantis within a short time frame after retrieving the machine?"

"There is plenty of time," John assured her. "We're just going to drop in low for a quick look around, then we'll grab our MALP and go home." His shrug clearly asked 'what could be easier?'. But Teyla didn't look convinced; obviously she didn't yet understand the relationship between men and abandoned forts.

"Major," McKay interrupted the 'trust me' look John was attempting to use on Teyla. "Does that look familiar to you?"

John turned back to the screen and dropped all pretense that their mission remained the same.

(to be continued tomorrow)