Confirming Carter Bk. 04 Expansion Ch. 03

"But do you know what she did?" Tammy asked, getting to her feet and looking around the room. "She said no."

The children gasped as they stared at Sam, but Tammy continued her story.

"That's right, she said no." She told them. "She wasn't trying to be mean or anything. If you want the truth, she didn't think she was worthy of the job. Was she wrong or what?"

"Yes!" The kids shouted as a group.

"That's right, she's a great queen." Tammy said, putting her arms around her. "She loves us all so much, and there's nothing in the galaxy more important to her than keeping us all safe."

"But we finally talked her into it, but she said that we had to vote." Tammy went on. "She won of course, that's why she's our queen today. You can go see the ballots over in the central tower. We preserved them so your children's children's children can see who made the world they're going to live in. Wasn't that a kewl thing to do?"

The kids all nodded as they cheered.

"I think we've taken up enough of your time Lorrel." Sam said, backing toward the door.

"We might drop in again kids, so you pay attention to Miss Lorrel." Tammy said as she picked up her tablet from a desk near the front of the room. "I'll be asking questions, so you better be ready."

"Bye boys and girls, it's been fun." Sam said as she pushed Tammy out of the room.

(-)

Interior-East Pier

0900

"God, I can't believe you did that." Sam laughed as they stepped out of the porter.

"What?" Tammy laughed. "All I did was tell those kids how we became queens. I may have polished it up a little, but that's how I remember it."

"I thought it sounded pretty close to what happened." One of their guards said as he stepped closer, looking around as they walked out onto the street.

"Where are we?" Sam asked, glaring at him.

"East Pier maam. This is a production area." He said, looking around and waving the rest of the team closer. "We're going to need you to stay in the bubble..."

He stopped in mid-sentence as Sam turned into an open doorway, pulling Tammy along behind her.

"Wow, it's loud in here." Tammy said, leaning close and almost shouting in her ear.

Sam grabbed a pair of head gear and pulled them on, then handed Tammy a set. She pulled them on, then held her thumb up as she yelled, "That's better."

Just ahead of them, a man with a clipboard was walking toward them.

"You're going to have to leave." He shouted, pointing at the door. "This area is for authorized personnel only."

"I can go anywhere I want pal." Tammy laughed. "I own this joint."

"Be nice." Sam laughed as they kept walking

She looked back over her shoulder and saw the man talking to one of their guards. A few moments later, they heard a long whistle blast, followed by two more.

People started stepping away from machines, taking off their headsets as they did.

Sam and Tammy pulled their headsets off and walked over to a group of workers.

"Who are you two?" One of them asked, stepping away from the group. "You managers or something? Dolf, the foreman, said we were getting a new manager this week."

"Shut up Torin." Another man said as he moved forward. "Don't you recognize them? These are the queens."

Taking a step forward, he dropped to one knee, bowing his head.

"No." Sam said as she reached down, pulling him to his feet. She looked around, then stepped into the middle of the crowd.

"You people are citizens of Atlantis, and you kneel to no one, not to me or my sister queen." She said, her voice rising as she spoke. "We asked you here so we could offer you a better life, and..."

"No one asked me if I wanted to come here." A man said, stepping out of the crowd. "They just loaded everyone in my village into ships and brought us here."

"Do you want to leave?" Tammy asked as she stepped over in front of him. "If you want to leave, we can go get your family and take you over to the gate and send you to any planet you want. If you want to go back to your homeworld, we'll give you supplies and weapons so you can defend yourselves."

"Give it a rest Duris, you know we were going to die if we didn't go with them." Another man said, pushing the man that had spoken.

"If you touch him again, I'm going to knock your ass out." Tammy said as she stepped between them.

"Keep talking." She said as she turned back to the man that had spoken up. "What did he say your name was, Duris?"

"Yes my queen." He said, bowing toward her.

"So were you taken against your will Duris?" She asked. "Tell me what happened."

"The Wraith had come, and they took more than half of my village." He said, looking at her steadily. "Then the fire from the sky came, and in minutes, my village was in ruins."

"There was nothing left." The man who had pushed him said as he looked around at the crowd. "They destroyed our homes, our crops..."

"The next day, your ships came." Duris said, picking up the narrative again. "They offered food, and treated the sick and wounded, then the men with guns said we had to get on the ships..."

"Were you forced to get on the ships? Or did you go because..."

"Everyone I knew was getting on them." Duris told her. "My wife and son had been taken by the Wraith..."

"Did anyone else in your family survive?" Tammy asked him.

"Yes, my youngest son and my daughter. They both go to one of your schools." He said.

"Do you like it here? I mean, if you had a choice now, right this minute." She said, looking him in the eye. "Would you stay, or would you leave?"

"I want to leave...but I can't leave my children." He said looking away from her. "They like it here, and can have a better life here than anything I can offer them, so I won't make them leave."

"I'm sorry Duris, but I can't help you." Tammy said as she took his hands in hers. "I can promise that your children will have opportunities that you never dreamed of, and the galaxy they live in will be a safer place than the one you grew up in."

She turned, looking out over the crowd.

"The threat from the Wraith is nearing its end." She said as she looked out over the crowd, which had grown to several hundred people. "Our people killed all their queens, and eight out of ten of their soldiers. There are idle hives and cruisers circling planets all across the galaxy, and we are capturing or destroying them every day."

"Your children will be safe when they decide to go back into the galaxy. I swear it to you on my soul." She shouted, tears running down her cheeks.

The crowd roared its approval as they swarmed over her. They lifted her onto their shoulders, carrying her through the building.

Their guards surrounded Sam, moving her toward the door, but she managed to stop them, telling them to follow Tammy instead.

They trailed along behind the crowd until they came to a wide raised ledge at the back of the building. They raised Tammy up on it, and when she spotted Sam and their guards, she started motioning for the people to make a path for them.

In less than a minute, Sam was standing beside Tammy looking out over the crowd.

"We want to hear your stories, and what you think of the life we're offering you here in Atlantis." Sam said, shouting to make herself heard. "We can't promise that you'll be happy, but we can promise that you'll be safe, well fed, and doing something that's worth doing."

Several hours passed as people told their stories, or related how they were doing in Atlantis. Their guards finally had to push through the crowd and take them out of the building, and back to the residence.

(-)

Interior-Conference Room, North Pier

1200 Hours

"Have you two lost your minds? Again?" Sheppard asked as they walked in the conference room. He went on when he saw Ronin and Cisco walk in behind them. "And you two. Where were you and your goons while they were out traipsing around all over the city?"

"They could have been killed." He said, standing toe to toe with Cisco. "And it would have been your fault."

"Leave him alone Sheppard." Ronin said as he came over and stood next to him. "The queens were fine. They had their shields on, and six of our guys were with them."

"They were in a production facility surrounded by a couple of hundred workers..."

"Who picked Tammy up and carried her around the building." Cisco said, holding up a tablet.

"You all need to watch this." He said as he started the video so it played on the big monitor at the end of the room.

He let the video play from near the end of Tammy's conversation with Duris, and into her speech about destroying the Wraith.

"This is why we asked them to be our queens, and if we don't let them be who they are, we might as well pack it in and close up shop." He said when the video ended.

"What she said to those people is going to get around, not because it was a good speech, but because she meant it, it was straight from her heart..."

"You still put them at risk." Caldwell said, leaning back in his chair.

"We were never at risk Stephen." Tammy said as she got up and walked around the table, stopping behind Cisco.

She leaned down and kissed him lightly on the cheek and whispered, "I love you too Cisco."

"We had our shields, I had comms, our guards had comms, so help was never more than a couple of minutes away." She said as she strolled around the table, stopping behind Caldwell's chair. "I'm glad you worry about us Stephen, but you really don't have to. Even if our shields failed, Sam and I could have kicked the shit out of enough of those people to make the rest back off and think about it. We would have walked out of that building in one piece, I promise you."

"Play the video from the school Cisco." She told him as she walked back to her seat beside Sam.

"I want that video added to the official history of Atlantis, because I'm not the only one that saw it happen that way." She went on as it ended. "And I want it transcribed and printed as a children's book, distributed free to anyone that wants a copy."

"This isn't what we were told was going to be discussed." Carter said as she looked around the table. "So, unless you want to talk about the catastrophic failure of your emergency response system, Tammy and I will be going to find something else to do."

"We've gone over the..."

"Put a sock in it Cisco." Tammy said, not looking at him. "The house guard only had three items on the failure list, only one of them critical."

"What I want to know, Col. Sheppard, is why the first jumper didn't leave the ground until more than four minutes after the alarm sounded, when your protocols say it should have been onsite in thirty seconds or less."

"Tell me why that happened John. The jumper bay is less than a mile from the residence. Your pilots could have run it faster than four minutes."

"Or we could ask Dr. Keller why the infirmary had no supply of our blood type on hand. They had to move two pints from the medbay in the residence, which took over eight minutes, then another six pints from the med center on the east pier, which took over sixteen minutes."

"If both of us had been inured or wounded, and needed blood, one or both of us would be dead."

"The only thing that worked in your scenario was our warships in orbit going to red alert. Daedalus reported all stations manned in two minutes two seconds, two seconds over the allowable threshold, while the Apollo reported all stations manned in eighty-eight seconds. That should actually read eighty-four seconds, since the logs clearly show Major Lorne doing a five count after the last station reported as manned before he stopped the clock."

"Well done Evan." Sam said, looking down the table at him. "Please pass our thanks along to your crew for an excellent performance under pressure. And tell them that they will each receive five days liberty, to be used as, and when they see fit."

"We're passed the what, and I don't give a damn about the why." Tammy said, looking around the table. "I want to hear short, definitive answers on how you are going to resolve the failures in each of your departments."

"I don't have a short answer for why we didn't have blood on hand." Jennifer said. "The truth is, blood is in short supply, and there's nothing we can do about it."

"How often can blood be donated Jennifer?" Sam asked.

"That depends on what's being taken. You can only donate whole blood every 56 days, but you can donate platelets every 7 days, or plasma every 28 days."

"Fine, plan on Tammy and I donating every sixty days." Carter said. "I used to give a couple times a year anyway."

She looked down the table at Sheppard.

"John, we can't require your guys to donate blood, but we can bribe them. Every pint of whole blood equals one day of liberty, up to a maximum of five days per year."

Sheppard just nodded, but didn't look up, or say anything.

"It's obvious that we're not going to get anything resolved during this meeting." Tammy said as she got up, holding her hand out to Sam. She walked toward the door as she started talking again. "I want an action plan from each department on how performance can be realistically improved, and a revised emergency action plan by close of business on Friday. "I already told Cisco and Ronin that I want drills run at least once a week until you get it right."

"There's no reason for jumpers to be onsite in thirty seconds, or to have marines surround the residence, that's just showing off." She said, stopping at the door. "Give me a more sensible program I can sign off on. This is my life we're talking about. I take it seriously even if you don't."

(-)

Interior-Col. Sheppard's Office, North Tower

1245 Hours

"Goddamit!" Sheppard shouted, picking up a chair and throwing it at the window. The chair bounced off, and he kicked it as he strode across the room.

"It's not that bad John." Caldwell said as he watched him.

"She didn't say anything. Not one goddamn word." Sheppard said softly, looking over at him. "She didn't even look at me."

"Because Tammy is the one that's pissed off about this." Caldwell said. "She's the one that just tore us a new asshole."

"No, the colonel's just as pissed, if not about this, then about something else." Sheppard said, turning to face him. "Ronin told me that this wasn't a scheduled drill. She disabled the monitoring system in the residence, and took off that med bracelet she wears, then sat down to see what would happen."

"Why would she do that?" Caldwell asked him.

"We're about to bring in two million new citizens under their domain, so she probably wants to see how we're going to handle that." Sheppard told him. "You didn't seem very happy about that prospect when you heard about it..."

"It's not the new people I was worried about...it scared me when Tammy said that the Auroras were their ships, that they owned them." Caldwell said slowly. "I didn't understand until she said that they were Atlantis, her and the colonel."

"It took you this long to figure that out?" Sheppard asked, walking over to look out the window. "They're serious about this, both of them. They're going to fill this city, Anchorage too, and they're going to shape this galaxy into what they think it should look like."

"I hope you're going to hang around and help us do that John." Carter said from the door.

"Are you sure you really want me to do that?" Sheppard asked, not turning around. "I keep letting you down...now that cluster fuck last night..."

"John, we gave you an impossible task, and we knew you wouldn't be able to finish it, but you've gotten us off to a good start." Tammy said, holding up her hand as Caldwell made his way toward the door. "You can quit if you want, but we're not going to fire you, because we still believe you're the best man for the job."

"Thank you, but I can't quit. I was never very good at that." Sheppard said as he turned around. "I guess you want to talk about what happened last night?"

"No, we wanted to know if you'd take us up to the station." Carter smiled. "Zelenka is up there with Larrin, and I haven't seen it yet, but I'd like to."

"You can come with us if you want Stephen." Tammy said as she turned toward the door.

(-)

Interior-Space Station Cremonius

1310 Hours

"Atlantis One to Cremonius, request permission to dock." Sheppard said as they approached the station.

"Permission to dock in bay six Atlantis One. We'll be waiting for you."

"Uh...which one is bay six?" Sheppard asked.

"The one with the lights on dumbass." Came the reply.

"Copy Cremonius."

"God I love her." Tammy laughed. She was in the right hand seat, and leaned forward as they got closer. "I didn't realize how big this thing is. Evan said the internal volume is twice that of Atlantis and Anchorage combined didn't he?"

"Yeah." Carter said as she moved up and sat on the edge of the seat next to her. She glanced over at Sheppard and said, "Do a slow orbit before you take us in John."

Sheppard nodded, and they moved slowly up the side of the station, then around the front.

"Oh wow." Tammy breathed as they came around the far side, which was lit up by the lights from inside.

"What's the delay Sheppard?" Larrin asked. "Is there a problem?"

"No problem, we're just taking in the view Larrin." He replied.

"Go ahead and take us in John, it sounds like she's getting impatient." Carter laughed as she slid back into the seat behind him.

"Taking us in." He said as he banked, skimming over the top of the station. They entered the docking bay, and he shut the jumper down as he opened the rear door.

"Get tired of...oh, my queens." Larrin said as she stopped at the foot of the ramp.

"Request permission to come aboard commander." Carter said as she walked down the ramp.

"Permission granted, welcome to the Cremonius." Larrin smiled.

"If the inside is as impressive as the outside..." Carter said.

"It is." Larrin laughed. "Follow me, there's a porter right over here."

"Take me to a teaching machine." Tammy told her as they stepped into the porter.

"There's one on the OPs deck, where Radik and I were working." Larrin said as she punched in a code on the pad.

When the doors opened, they saw Zelenka sitting in front of a terminal, yelling at it in Czech as he stared at the screen.

"He's been doing that for hours." Larrin said softly as they walked toward him.

"What's the problem?" Carter asked.

"I do not know. I cannot understand him."

"What's wrong Radik?" She asked him as they came up behind him.

"Col. Carter..." He said as he started to get to his feet.

"Sit Radik, tell me what has you so upset."

"I am unable to transfer any of the training modules from the database to the teaching machines." He said

"There are modules for all the stations systems?" Tammy asked.

"Yes, several hundred of them. I..."

"Did you check any of the teaching machines to see if they're already loaded?" She asked him.

He stared at her, then shook his head.

She looked around the room, then walked over and pulled a headset off a hook on the wall. A panel lit up when she did.

"How did you know that was there?" Larrin asked as she came over to stand beside her.

"The headsets." Tammy said as she started tabbing through the menus. "Dead giveaway."

Larrin looked at her, then nodded.

"Put this on." Tammy said, holding out the headset.

"You can operate the teaching machine?" Larrin asked as she took the headset and put it on.

"Yeah. You were whining about needing someone who could operate them. So we're going to train you how to use it. If only to shut you up." Tammy laughed.

"That'll teach her to underestimate my girlfriend." Carter whispered, nudging Zelenka with her elbow.

"Ready?" Tammy asked, looking over at Larrin.

Larrin nodded, and Tammy pressed a button, then watched the screen.