“Pisani to the Bridge, we’ve got a problem!”

“What is it, Doctor?” Mac asked while pacing at the front of the bridge. “I’m a little busy up here – ”

Busy would be overselling what he had been doing. He’d been, like the rest of the bridge crew, trying to come up with some sort of rescue plan for the away team on the surface. Transporters were out. Shuttles were untested and, with the storm raging below, likely impossible as well.

He wasn’t that far off from hoping for some level of divine intervention when he collided with Willow Beckman, who had just appeared in front of him like they’d both been trying to pass through the same door.

A door, the rational part of his brain reminded him, didn’t exist.

“I think I found your problem,” Mac finished.

“Beckman’s on the bridge?” Blake asked.

“Yup.”

“On our way.”

Willow, for her part, had a faint little smile, shrugged her shoulders and raised her hands sheepishly, like a child caught stealing from the cookie jar. Which, compared to Mac, she basically was.

“Mind telling me why you’re on the bridge, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“Never mind why, how?” Cat asked from the helm.

“Don’t have time, but later,” Willow said to Cat quickly. Then turned to Mac, that smile growing, verging on troublesome. “I have an idea on how to rescue our people.”

He couldn’t help the pained groan that escaped him. He knew that smile. Knew that confident tone that Willow was speaking with. He’d heard it all too often from his left when he served on Atlantis. Heard it way too much from his right ever since he’d taken command of Republic.

The harbinger of a ballsy plan. High risk, high reward.

The type of plan he spent years avoiding. The sort he’d spent the last few years actively learning to appreciate, if not tentatively embrace. He was still far too much of a by-the-book sort, but the singular most important skill of a captain, as he’d learned, was knowing when to listen to his crew and just when to adopt their crazy antics and run with it.

“I’m not going to like this, am I?” he finally asked.

“I don’t think anyone is going to like this,” Willow said. “Especially the Witches.”

“The what now?” Cat asked.

Willow’s golden eyes flicked to the viewscreen briefly. “No shuttle is getting through the cloud layer. Or likely getting from the edge of the field to the monolith without getting hit by lightning either. But what if the shuttles didn’t have to fly through the worst of the storm?”

“Lieutenant, get to the point.” Mac’s grumble was enough motivation for Willow to continue.

“Two runabouts for lifting off all of the away team off the ground. We’ll want the best pilots for those.”

“Hence the Witches,” Cat interrupted. “Go on.”

“We take Republic down through the storm. All power to shields and engines. Plunge through the cloud and then use the ship as an umbrella to shield the runabouts as they quickly nip down, pick everyone up and then punch back to the ship.”

“You know,” a voice said from the back of the bridge, standing behind the XO’s seat, “not a bad plan. The ship can handle static electricity a lot better than a runabout could. One minor problem though.”

“What?” Mac asked of his XO, Sidda having appeared sometime during Willow’s outlining.

“Who’s going to fly Republic?”

“I will,” Willow answered immediately.

“You’re on restricted duty,” Sidda countered. “Doctor’s orders.” Her attention shifted to Mac. “Of course…” she trailed off with a mischievous shrug of her shoulders.

“Commander Sadovu, you’re leading the rescue team,” Mac ordered, pointing to one of the turbolifts at the back of the bridge. “Lieutenant Saez, pick another pilot and get two runabouts ready right now.”

“Oh drat,” Sidda said triumphantly as she turned to leave the bridge, “I’m not here to be a rules stickler.”

“Like you ever are,” Mac said to Sidda’s back. Then he turned on Willow, pointing at the now vacant helm station. “This is a starship, not a shuttle. That’s a storm, not controlled flight space around shipyards. And whatever you do, I do not want this ship crashing. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Captain,” Willow said confidently, stepping past him to her station when he nodded.

Cat Saez waited for Willow to be seated before she leaned in and whispered in her ear. “For a bus driver, you’re insane.”

“Fuck you,” Willow replied.

With Sidda and Cat gone, Mac surveyed the bridge and started towards his seat but stopped a half step in front of the helm and ops. “I hate this plan,” he said quietly.

“Can I make a small adjustment to the plan?” Jenu Trid asked. “We’ll need to tell the away team on the ground we’re coming, but comms are still completely useless.”

“It’s going to be a bit hard to miss a starship hanging overhead attracting all the lightning,” Mac said, then shook his head. “What do you have in mind?”

“Using the main deflector to induce pressure waves in the atmosphere to announce our arrival before we get there.”

“You want to turn the main deflector into a speaker?” Mac continued shaking his head in resignation. “The Commodore said there’d be days like this.”

“Actually, she’s the inspiration behind the idea,” Jenu continued.

Mac’s brow furrowed, then realisation hit him. “Nothing, and I mean nothing, from Kolar Blight. And nothing Classical Pop either.” Then more realisation settled in. “Gabs is down there. Oh, that’s good. She’ll know it’s us if she hears music.”

Jenu nodded in understanding. “Got something just perfect for this, boss. I think you’ll love it.”

“I hope so,” he said as he climbed the stairs to his seat, reaching out for the open comms button on the armrest.

“All hands, general quarters,” he announced to the crew. “Set condition blue throughout the ship. This is not a drill. Condition Blue.”

Only then, as the lights dimmed, and klaxons started to warble, did he sit down.

“Lieutenant Jenu, all power to shields and engines. And inform Atlantis of our rescue plan. Lieutenant Beckman, you can begin your descent.”

Commands given, messages sent, Republic started to descend towards the surface of Leytan III, the planet welling up larger and larger in the viewscreen, the angry storm right at the center of it.

“You confident about this?” Trid asked Willow.

“We have to leave. But not without everyone first,” the godling answered.

“I meant taking the ship down and back up again.”

“Oh, getting down is the easy part,” Willow confessed. “It’s the getting back up that’ll be the fun part. Ready to make some fancy power adjustments on the fly?”

Trid chuckled briefly. “Let’s do this.”