A Rescue Proposed
Cainwen: Okay, please don't yell at me Kyrie, but it demanded to be started! Since I get a better attraction when I can put "John Sheppard" under the main characters, I'm going to start posting this and hope that people will get hooked on this and go read my two prequel tales. So, please review! By the way, an anonymous reviewer says that Beckett is two years younger than Sheppard. I could find this no where in canon, so I'll stick by my assessment that Sheppard is younger. If someone can prove otherwise within canon, I will be happy to adjust.
"Elizabeth! We got a rescue mission," Sheppard announced as he bounced into Dr. Weir's office with Teyla and Drs. Mckay, Heitlmeyer and Beckett in tow.
Dr. Weir looked up from her computer screen. "A rescue? What team?"
"Not a team. A person. One person. A baby," the colonel prefaced his shocker as he leaned on the civilian leader's desk. "Mairghread."
"Mairghread?"
"Cullough's only living daughter."
"A wraith? You want to rescue a wraith?" Elizabeth repeated slowly and incredudously, leaning back in her chair in the attitude she adopted generally before vetoing one of McKay's wackier and riskier experiments.
"Not just any wraith," John tried to explain. "A baby."
"A baby with the knowledge of a 18000 year old wraith and orders to obey us," McKay interjected.
Dr. Weir simply stared at them, clearly waiting for them to put forth more arguments before she shot down their proposal. It generally took less time this way.
"Look, Elizabeth," Sheppard explained, playing along and using his best cajoling, reasonable voice. "Our friendly wraith has given the opportunity of a lifetime. He's trusting us with the most precious thing he has—his daughter, his only surviving child," Sheppard added for dramatic effect and hopefully to evoke pity on the part of Elizabeth, "whom he hid in a stasis pod to save her life in the hopes that one day, it would be safe enough for her. She knows everything he knows and more. She's a three-month-old infant right now. We'd get to raise her, get her to trust us implicitly without any manipulation. Think of all the advantages she could give us."
"Yes yes yes," McKay interrupted impatiently. "Look, Elizabeth, even if this kid knows a tenth of what Sheppard says she knows, she could vastly increase our understanding of wraith technology."
"Dr. Beckett, what's your interest in this?" Dr. Weir asked warily.
"Look, the oppurtoonity to obsarve the development of a female wraith is too big to give oop, Elizabeth. Ah mean, it could be very importan' to the creation of a compleetely sucessful retrovirus," Carson said quickly before Kate jumped in.
"Elizabeth, we all feel we've made some pretty big mistakes in our dealings with individual wraith in the past. If we were to raise Mairghread, it would give us a fresh start, a chance to maybe correct our mistakes and understand how better to deal with them in the future. A willing wraith subject would be far more helpful than an unwilling one," she offered. "It might also boost the moral of the persons who feel some guilt over Michael and Ellia."
"Teyla?"
Teyla gazed calmly at the doctor, with her customary cool demeanor. "We have seen with Ellia that a wraith can be raised to be... compantionate under the right circumstances," she began, "And I believe as well that this perhaps could be used to...atone...for what we did to Michael. We were unsuccessful in bringing him into our...family. Perhaps, since her father has already prepared the way, we will be successful this time."
"Come on, Elizabeth," John wheedled. "If it doesn't work, we put her back in stasis. If it does, we got a huge advantage."
Weir nodded slowly. "I have to think about it. For instance, you said she would be a three months old? How fast is she going to grow up?"
"About a year every two weeks for the first couple months, then accelerating until she's physically about a hundred," John explained causally.
"Okay…but who's going to take care of her until she can take care of herself? What about wraith baby formula? And once she's older, won't she need to feed?"
"I have agreed to help Dr. Beckett care for her; he and Col. Sheppard have been able to simulate wraith breast milk according to the knowledge that was given the Colonel. And he believes that Cullough has provided a means to eliminate her need for human lives," Teyla stated quietly.
"John?"
"I think he left a kinda retrovirus that would keep the genes that allow them as kids to live off normal food 'on'."
"Where are you going to do this? Most of the expedition wouldn't be too keen on having a wraith of any age or size near them," Elizabeth challenged.
"Well, they just finished cleaning the um, the uh, uh, South-west pier didn't they?" Rodney asked impatiently. "Set it up there. They found some uh, nice apartments, I'm sure they would, uh, fit the bill, as it were."
Elizabeth looked guardedly convinced. "The I.O.A. won't like this," she told them.
"They're a bunch of bureaucrats a bazillion light years from here," John scoffed. "By the time they find out, it'll either be a huge success or a failure we've already corrected."
Weir nodded with her you-have-convinced-me-on-a-provisional-basis look and stood up. "Okay. You have a go. But before you go bringing any wraith child out of stasis, I want you to set up those apartments. Air-tight security. No bugs, no glitches. Age appropriate furniture, whatever equipment you need, et cetera, there, ready and waiting. Clothes, food, everything. Got it?" She asked in her warning tone.
John Sheppard flashed her his patented smile, "Got it. Thanks Elizabeth!" he called back as he bounced out of her office, the others in tow.
"Come on guys!" he said enthusiastically as they headed for the nearest transporter. "We got a nursery to decorate!"
TBC
PS-I apologize in advance. I'm better at wraith thoughts.