The Stars My Destination (continued)
Continued from here.
3 Reservations
McKay was in the lab he had appropriated for his office when General O'Neill strolled in, carrying a sheaf of papers.
"Signed and witnessed, McKay.'
McKay looked up from his tablet, struggling to pull his mind away from the complex physics problem he had been immersed in. "Hmm?"
"Sheppard's papers. He's signed in."
"Excellent." McKay reached over to the box of Ancient artefacts he'd pulled from one of the storerooms and started to get up.
"Not so fast. There are higher priorities for him in the next few days."
"More important than research?"
"Yeah, like healing. You want to risk injuring him some more if one of those doohickeys carries a charge or transports him to another dimension?"
McKay thought about some of the unexpected things previous Ancient devices had done and had to admit that the general had a point. "I suppose you're right."
"Besides, he's got about six hours of orientation videos to get through first.
"You're not giving him the full course are you? He doesn't need to know about all the history straight away, we could do that later, when he's on Atlantis."
"When he's on Atlantis he'll be running around playing with tech and going on missions and getting shot at. He won't have time to catch up on the background if he doesn't do it now. And he needs to know the background in this galaxy so he knows what's at stake."
McKay conceded the point. He couldn't deny that life in Atlantis was hectic, and too often routine matters were pushed aside by the need to deal with emergencies. It really was best that Sheppard get the background information now, while he had the opportunity. "All right, I'll talk to Dr Fraiser, see if -- "
"Already done. She's going to dole them out an hour at a time for the next couple of days."
"Can he read the mission reports, too?"
"I've picked out the top ten. The rest he can read on the Daedalus. Once he's done with the vids we'll need to get him kitted out. I've organized the QM to get started on that. The last day here is for weapons certification."
"That shouldn't be a problem, he seemed handy enough with a pistol."
"Yes, but he'll need to be familiar with the P90 and zats and Wraith stunners too. And no doubt Janet will want to get his immunizations up to date, which will knock him around some."
McKay sighed. There were always too many demands and not enough time.
His phone rang, and he answered it absently. "McKay."
"Woolsey. Any news on Sheppard?"
"Yes, he's signed in and starting on orientation. He'll -- "
O'Neill interrupted him, saying, "Is that Woolsey?"
"Yes."
"Put him on speaker."
Puzzled, McKay pressed the speaker button and replaced the handset.
O'Neill hesitated, then said, "While you're both here, so to speak, I have to tell you something. It's not something I would put on the official record, and normally I wouldn't even mention it, but the situation isn't normal and I won't be there to manage it myself." He paused, and McKay wondered what could be so serious that he was actually volunteering information to his two least-favorite people.
"Look, I've read through Sheppard's files -- all of them -- and I've asked Janet to do a couple of confirmatory tests along with his medical work up. There's no doubt in my mind, though, that he's going to need some careful handling when he gets to Atlantis."
McKay sighed. Was that all? "If you're trying to tell us that Sheppard has a death wish, you're too late, we worked that one out already."
O'Neill had the grace to look embarrassed. "Oh. Well, then. As long as you know."
"It was good of you to overcome your principles to mention it, general," Woolsey's placating tones came through the speaker. "We'll keep an eye on him and I will personally brief Dr Moore and Dr Keller."
"Thanks." O'Neill straightened himself up. "Well, that's all I had to say. Do not break him, McKay, or they'll send me out there to replace him and I will not be happy. Understood?"
"Understood, general."
"Good. Richard, I may not see you before the Daedalus heads out, so good luck."
"Thank you, general."
O'Neill strode out, leaving McKay to stare at the doorway in bemusement. Since when had O'Neill ever noticed psychological issues in SGC staff, let alone taken steps to make sure they were addressed?
"Dr McKay!" Woolsey's voice pulled him out of his thoughts.
"Yes?"
"Have you finished looking through the latest batch of Atlantis volunteers? I need to submit a shortlist to HR so they can start the security screens."
McKay took a deep breath and started to tell Woolsey exactly what he thought of HR and their unbelievable incompetence in applying mandatory selection criteria.
~~~~~
John spent the afternoon alternately watching Dr Jackson's videos -- which were at once mind-boggling and frustratingly uninformative -- and trying to get his mind around the fact that almost everything he had learned at school about human history was wrong. Cro-Magnon man, the development of writing, the building of the pyramids ... all of it influenced by aliens. Instantaneous interstellar travel, cloaking devices, return from the dead ... not science fiction anymore. It made his head spin.
He was glad of the excuse to take a break when the physiotherapist turned up. The breathing exercises went better than the day before, and then he was allowed to take a trial walk around the infirmary. It couldn't have been more than fifty yards or so, but he was exhausted when he returned to his bed.
"There's no way I'm going to be fit to leave in a week," he told Dr Fraiser when she popped in just before the end of the day shift.
"You will be," she reassured him. "You're actually healing very fast, you know, considering how badly you were injured. And you don't have to be fully fit before you board the Daedalus."
"The way the general was talking, I figured I had to be almost combat fit for Atlantis."
She laughed. "He likes to provide incentive, but there's no rush. The trip from here to Pegasus is pretty much a milk run these days anyway, so treat it as convalescent leave. Of course, the sooner you're fit the better, but I don't want you to injure yourself trying to do too much too fast. I'll make sure that the chief medic on board gets a full briefing on your condition as well as a scheduled exercise plan, so you should be cleared for non-combat duties by the time you reach Atlantis."
"Thanks.'
"Has Dr McKay seen you today?"
"No," John replied. He was actually a little disappointed I that -- he'd been sure that the maverick scientist would have taken the first available opportunity to welcome him to the team, but obviously John had dropped off the priority list now that he was signed in.
"He asked me if he could show you around the labs this afternoon but I told him to wait until tomorrow. You need a little time to digest those videos before he finds something else to blow your mind."
"Oh." It was absurd how relieved he felt at that. Any hope that he had concealed his reaction was dashed when Dr Fraiser grinned impishly at him.
"Don't worry, he'll be here at eight on the dot. But you're not allowed out of the infirmary for more than an hour, and only in a wheelchair. And he's not allowed to damage you."
"Is that likely?" he asked, concerned.
"Well, he wouldn't do it deliberately. But alien artefacts aren't always benign, and we've had a few accidents over the years. Dr Zelenka will keep an eye on him, but be careful -- if you get a bad feeling about anything, don't touch it."
"Thanks for the warning. If I don't make it, I want my ashes scattered at sea."
She laughed and left him to watch the videos over again.
~~~~~
As promised, McKay turned up at 0800 and helped him into the wheelchair that had been brought to his bedside early that morning. It only took a few minutes to get to the lab that he and Zelenka had taken over for the time being, and there was an interesting array of odd-looking artefacts on the bench, along with more mundane multimeters and laptops.
"Are all these from Atlantis?" he asked.
"No. Some are from other planets in the Pegasus galaxy and some were found here on Earth."
"What do they do?"
McKay shot him a withering look. "If I knew that, I wouldn't need you to activate them for me."
"We know that this one -- " Zelenka ignored McKay and pointed to a small sphere with several indecipherable markings, " -- is probably a teaching device of some sort. We have seen several others of similar design, and they have been most useful in helping us to understand Atlantis science and history. Unfortunately we have not been able to access the data on this device."
"Does it need some sort of power source?"
"Everything needs a power source. But since we need information from the device before we can determine precisely what sort of power it needs, there isn't much point in wondering about that until it's been activated ... which is what you are here for. So get activating."
Sheppard was a little taken aback by the sharp tone in McKay's voice, and for the first time he saw why the scientist might not be universally admired.
Zelenka sighed. "Rodney, did you remember to eat breakfast?"
"I had coffee in the lab."
Zelenka sighed and fished out a granola bar from his pocket. "He is hypoglycemic," he explained to Sheppard, "and his temper is directly proportional to his blood sugar. Those of us who work with him take the precaution of feeding him on a regular basis."
McKay snatched the bar and bit into it. "Thanks," he muttered. "It's not deliberate," he added, looking up at Sheppard with an almost apologetic expression. "I get caught up in work and forget."
"How could you forget breakfast?" asked Sheppard.
McKay looked slightly guilty.
Zelenka chuckled. "Is easy when you stay up all night working."
"Well, those rift equations won't solve themselves."
"We will have time on the Daedalus to work on the equations."
"But their server doesn't have the capacity to run the simulations. I need to get as much done here as possible before we leave so I can use the three weeks' travel time efficiently. Then I can load up the Hydra array on arrival."
"True. As long it's free."
"Huh. There is nothing more important than analyzing that rift. Anything else can wait."
"Even revisions to the gene therapy?" asked Zelenka. "Keller mentioned she wanted to run simulations running Sheppard's DNA as soon as we get back."
"Hey!" exclaimed Sheppard. "She's using my DNA for experiments? I didn't agree to that."
"Read the fine print," McKay said. "Buried deep in your employment contract there is a clause that says tissue samples may be used for identification and other specifically-authorized purposes."
"Yes, but that's just in case I crash." He looked at their faces. "Isn't it?"
"Not in the Stargate program. You're more than just a flyboy, remember, you're a direct descendant of the Ancients. If Keller can use your DNA to engineer a gene insertion that is more efficient and more effective, then that benefits the program as a whole, hence it is an authorized purpose. It is not, however, more important than ensuring that the remaining Wraith in our Pegasus galaxy don't get that message, and if she thinks she can beat me to the cluster then she is seriously mistaken. She can use the Atlantis server if she doesn't want to wait."
"She'll take it to Woolsey," Zelenka noted. "She hates using the Atlantis server, she says the translation program isn't reliable."
"She can take it to O'Neill for all I care. Continued survival trumps a possible improvement to an existing therapy. And I've told her she needs to put the time in and learn some Ancient."
"You promised her a better translation program last year."
"Priorities change."
Zelenka gave McKay a knowing smile. "I am aware of this, Rodney, but she is the one who will be there with the large needles when you need treatment."
"Huh. Well I can't just magically duplicate the Hydra array. She'll have to take her turn like the rest of us."
Sheppard finally managed to process what he'd been hearing. "Hey, guys, back up a minute. You're saying you have a supercomputer?"
Zelenka and McKay looked at each other and ... giggled.
No really. They giggled.
"We couldn't take the risk," Zelenka managed to say after a few seconds of near-uncontrollable mirth. "Supercomputers are rare and easy to track. Even within the military we couldn't hide one."
"So ..." Rodney was still giggling, "we bought two thousand PlayStation 3 units."
Sheppard gaped. "You have got to be kidding me."
They both shook their heads. Zelenka continued, "We used proxy buyers around the world and shipped them here as air-conditioning equipment, then gated them over to Atlantis. It took weeks to put them together, and set up the programming interface, but it works. Peak output was 600 teraflops a few months ago."
"Wow."
"Well, it's no Road Runner, that's for sure," Rodney added, "but it's enough for us at present."
"Still, that's pretty cool."
Zelenka looked thoughtful. "We must look to the future, though. We have always hypothesized that Atlantis has the equivalent of a supercomputer to support the city's systems but we have never been able to find it. Maybe with your help we can locate it and gain access to more information.
McKay looked at Sheppard, then his eyes glazed over as his brain started evaluating all the possibilities. "We'll have to take him to the chair as soon as we land and see how it responds to him."
"Cha, we should have tried the chair at Area 51," Zelenka said.
"It's not connected to anything here, it wouldn't have helped. But the one in Atlantis ... that will be very interesting indeed."
They both turned to Sheppard, almost-identical predatory expressions on their faces.
"I'm not entirely sure I like the way you're both looking at me. I'm not a lab rat. If I wake up one morning with electrodes in my brain I'm going to be very unhappy."
"Don't worry," McKay patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. "You're a very valuable lab rat. And Ancient technology uses transdermal connections, no electrodes required. Speaking of which, we'd better get started on these artefacts."
~~~~~
Forty minutes later, Sheppard had identified three basic educational devices (geometry, arithmetic and something that seemed to be a weird mix of logic and philosophy, according to Zelenka), one multimeter and one portable battery. At least that was the best approximation they could make from the instruments McKay had with him. There were also five artefacts that seemed to be well and truly dead, with not even the faintest flicker of activity appearing no matter how Sheppard fondled them.
He was vaguely disappointed, but tried not to let it affect him too much. Though he couldn't help asking, "So is this what the rest of my life is going to look like?"
McKay laughed. "Only a small fraction of it. Some things are too big to be portable, so we'll take you to them. And some things need constant contact with the ATA gene rather than periodic activation."
"Weapons, mainly," added Zelenka. "And the city drive, of course."
McKay nodded. "Which makes sense, once you think about it. If the city gets invaded, the enemy can't use anything they find against the inhabitants."
Sheppard nodded. That did make sense. And having read the after-action reports on the Wraith attack, he hated to think what they could have done if they had been able to turn Atlantis' own weapons against the humans.
Which reminded him of a question he'd been meaning to ask for a few days. "McKay, the first day you told me that the Wraith don't know where Earth is."
McKay nodded. "That's true."
"So how come they attacked us? You can't say they turned up here just by chance."
"That's an interesting question," McKay nodded. He took a breath and looked to be on the verge of delivering a lecture when he was interrupted by Zelenka.
"Infinitely-regressing spacetime rift spiral."
"What?"
"Infinitely regressing -- "
"What he's trying to say" McKay said quickly, waving Zelenka into silence, "is that the Wraith in our Pegasus galaxy picked up a signal from some other reality and hurried here without telling any of the other hives. We defeated the hive ship that attacked, but one Wraith officer managed to survive. He built the equipment that created a rift into another reality, where his signal will reach another hive ship, which will hurry to Earth ... and so on, ad infinitum."
"Wow." John thought about that for a minute but it made his head hurt. "That's deep."
"I can show you mathematics later," said Zelenka. "It is in fact very elegant -- "
"Yes, yes," McKay interrupted, "your elegant equations will go straight over his head."
"Hey! I got a math degree."
"Oh, please. You have a degree in applied mathematics, which is only one step up from mechanical engineering."
Zelenka huffed. "Engineering fixes more problems than pure maths, Rodney. Be polite."
"He's already recruited, I don't have to be polite to him." The look on his face took away a lot of the sting and John tried - not entirely successfully -- to hide a grin. McKay might be irritating but he was certainly entertaining, as long as you didn't take things too personally.
"Why wouldn't the Wraith ship send a message to the rest of them before leaving Pegasus?" he asked. "Wouldn't they want reinforcements?"
McKay turned serious again. "There's been a civil war going on for the last couple of years, for a variety of reasons that I won't go into, but they are definitely fighting each other. Many hive ships have been destroyed, there aren't many queens left, and among the remaining few there is much intrigue and jostling for position. If one hive ship managed to attack Earth successfully -- they wouldn't need to conquer us, just capture enough to feed their breeding queens -- they could breed enough drones and grow enough ships to become the most powerful faction in Wraith history."
Zelenka nodded in agreement. "Even though it would be dangerous for them to travel to this galaxy alone, the potential rewards would make it well worth the risk."
Sheppard blinked. "Did you say grow enough ships?"
"Yes, their ships are largely organic in construction."
"Wow." Just when he thought his mind couldn't possibly be blown more than it was, McKay or Zelenka would casually drop something new and startling. At this rate, he was going to be completely dazed by the time they reached Atlantis.
~~~~~
At the end of the hour Zelenka wheeled him back to the infirmary and helped him get out of the chair and into bed. If anyone had told him it would be exhausting to sit in a chair for sixty minutes he wouldn't have believed them, but he couldn't prevent the sigh of relief as his body relaxed into the mattress.
"I feel like I've run a marathon. Who knew that touching things could be so tiring?"
"Wait till you are in Atlantis. Rodney will have you touching things morning and night."
He laughed. "That sounds almost obscene."
Zelenka smiled mischievously. "I did not mean it so, but ... you should know that Rodney likes you. He was quite taken with Colonel Sheppard in the alternate reality, though he won't go into details. I'm not surprised he worked so hard to get you a place in the city."
"You mean he made them give me a place just because he wanted to jump me?"
"No, he made them give you a place because you have a very strong natural gene. You will be a great help to us all. That he finds you attractive is a bonus."
"I hope he doesn't expect me to sleep with him out of gratitude."
Zelenka shrugged. "You could do worse. He is a very generous lover."
Sheppard felt his jaw drop and fought to control himself. "You mean, you and he ..."
Zelenka gave him an enigmatic smile. "To use your own military terminology: you don't ask, I don't tell. But I can assure you that he is a free agent at present. No entanglements."
"Thank you ... I think."
"You're welcome," Zelenka chuckled and head out of the ward.
Sheppard stared up at the ceiling and thought about McKay -- Rodney -- as a possible lover. The man might be a little abrasive at time, but he was brilliant and passionate and not bad-looking, and his face was so expressive that Sheppard just had to wonder what it would look like during sex. As far as physique went, he preferred his partners to be a little more buff, but there was nothing about McKay that was repulsive, and Sheppard didn't kid himself that the hot twenty-something surfers he fantasized about were going to be beating a path to his door anytime soon.
And McKay wanted him there in the Pegasus galaxy with him. McKay had gone to considerable effort to rescue him, according to O'Neill, and (he could read between the lines as well as the next man) had gone toe-to-toe with Woolsey, Landry and O'Neill to get him a place on the mission. That was more than anyone had done for him for a long, long time.
Maybe ... just maybe, Atlantis really would be a new beginning.
4 Resolution
The rest of the week passed in a blur of uniform fittings, kit issue, immunizations, more mission reports and a few more visits to the lab with McKay and Zelenka. Now that he was getting to know them, he could appreciate their double act, with Zelenka acting as straight man for McKay's witticisms. And now that he was aware of it, he could also see remnants of their closer relationship. Zelenka kept McKay supplied with coffee and snack bars. McKay ... well, truthfully McKay didn't do much in return, but he was noticeably less irritable with Zelenka than with any other of the SGC staff. He did bring in large bags of pastries one morning -- to make up for a rather spectacular tantrum the day before -- and gave Sheppard a rueful smile.
"It's a lot easier to do this here than in Atlantis."
"So what do you do when you lose your temper there?"
"Porn, usually."
"What?"
"Porn? Really?"
"Well I can hardly hand over chocolate since the reason I lose my temper is that I have low blood sugar because I've run out of chocolate."
Sheppard had to admit the logic in that argument.
"So my sister -- "
"Your sister? You get your sister to buy you porn?"
"You know, your eyes are so wide open they'd fall out if they weren't attached. And no, she doesn't buy me porn. She does, however, obtain the latest episodes of whatever bromance series is causing people to swoon, and then she downloads the fanfic -- most of which is gay porn. I get a couple of USBs in every mail run. You would not believe how much credit that gets me."
No, he wouldn't. He really wouldn't.
"And to be fair," continued McKay, brushing flakes of pastry off his shirt, "they don't stuff up as badly there. We hand-pick scientists for a reason, and although we have had a few idiots, on the whole they're a pretty good bunch. Don't ever tell them I said that."
"I won't." He was struck by a thought. "So what about the guys? You can't buy them off with gay porn."
"Action films, Playboy digital edition, and whatever the girls trade me for the TV episodes."
"I thought you gave them that as an apology."
McKay gave him a mischievous smile. "No, the fanfic is the apology. I can always tell when they're running low, they get twitchy. And since that's usually around the same time as I'm running low on chocolate, it all works out pretty well."
Sheppard had to laugh. The details might differ, but the black economy obviously stayed much the same no matter which galaxy they were in.
~~~~~
He aced the weapons qualification, of course. He'd used the Beretta throughout his service and it was close enough in length and weight to his own M1911A1 -- if not nearly as pretty -- that even the first shots hit center mass. The P90 was shorter than any assault rifle he'd used before, and the magazine was just plain weird, but he got the hang of it pretty quickly. The Wraith stunner took a little more time, since he'd never fired a weapon that didn't have some sort of kickback, but then as the instructor pointed out, the beam was broad enough that precision wasn't that much of an issue. The zat'nik'tel, though ... that weapon gave him the creeps. It just wasn't natural to have a gun that reared up like a cobra, and the one-for-stun, two-for-kill rule made him hope he never met one in battle. He was able to compensate for the high position of the "barrel" fairly quickly but he never got used to the way it moved, and he was relieved to find that since the Atlantis teams had discovered the smaller version of the Wraith stunner they had relegated the zats to emergency use only.
"And when I say emergency use, I mean 'last resort, every other gun is empty' emergency, not the usual 'we're all going to die' emergency, because that happens every other week," the master sergeant clarified.
"I'll bear that in mind," Sheppard murmured, setting the zat down with a sigh of relief.
He was issued with a Beretta and a thigh holster and spent the rest of the afternoon stripping it down and reassembling it. He was a little slower than he had been ten years ago but he figured he could get back up to his best speed by the time they got to Atlantis. He suspected that three weeks on Daedalus with nowhere to go was going to become tedious, and, while he had plenty of reading material to get through, he would need something to keep his hands busy and his mind relaxed. It was either strip the Beretta or take up knitting, and he didn't think knitting would help against the Wraith.
~~~~~
Sheppard had no special plans for his last night on Earth. He was still in the infirmary but he'd been given a small private room for the last couple of days, and he appreciated the additional privacy. He also appreciated the fact that he didn't have to travel from the residential levels to the infirmary every time he had a dressing change or a physio session.
After laying out his uniform for the morning he settled down with yet another mission report. He was yawning before he'd got even halfway through, and wondered if it would be too unmanly to turn off the light and go to sleep before twenty-one hundred. Dr Fraiser had told him he was healing very quickly but he still felt frustrated that he fatigued so easily. He was hoping to be mission-fit by the time he reached Atlantis but he suspected he might need a little more time.
He heard a mild commotion outside and his nose was assaulted with the pungent aroma of pepperoni pizza. His stomach growled in response, and he reminded himself that he had eaten dinner only two hours before. He shouldn't begrudge the nursing staff their supper, even if he felt they could have asked him to chip in. Somehow he doubted that there were pizza ovens in Atlantis.
Then McKay walked into his room, carrying a pizza box.
Sheppard raised an eyebrow. "You brought a pizza into a hospital and didn't get mugged?"
McKay smiled. "I brought a dozen pizzas, actually -- enough for all the duty staff I encountered on the way from the main gate to the nurses' station. This is the last one."
Sheppard had to admire his strategy. He admired him even more when he produced a bottle of beer out of each side pocket.
"You really know how to show a girl a good time," he drawled.
McKay went pink, which was both amusing and intriguing. Sheppard had been thinking about Zelenka's revelation quite a lot over the last few days. He hadn't seen any overt indication of interest, but he'd caught an odd expression on McKay's face once or twice -- as if he were being assessed against some unknown standard. Maybe McKay was comparing him to the Colonel Sheppard he'd met in another reality (he rather hoped not -- he'd read that particular report with some trepidation, and doubted that he would ever measure up to the other version of himself).
"I just thought you might want a little company. I remember the night before the expedition left -- I didn't sleep at all because I was terrified that I was doing the wrong thing."
"But your trip was one-way. At least I have the option of coming back if I don't like it."
"True. But I think you'll be fine. Honestly, you'll fit in well in Atlantis. And I think ... well, we'll just wait and see."
"What?"
McKay shook his head. "Just a hypothesis. I'll let you know after we get there."
Sheppard looked at him warily, but McKay was busy demolishing another slice of pizza.
"There's one thing I've been meaning to ask," he ventured.
"Yes?" McKay looked up, eagerly.
"I'm kind of curious as to how we don't have enough energy to open a small wormhole over three million light years, but there is enough energy to fly a large spaceship the same distance every two months."
McKay looked disappointed for a second but answered him readily enough. "It's a question of peak energy and containment. The naquadah generators are sufficient to lift Daedalus into orbit or switch to hyperdrive but they aren't capable of the peak energy required to open an intergalactic wormhole. We could hook up a few generators to the gate here but we would still have to draw on the North American grid and the resultant brown-outs would lead to a lot of questions. We took the risk with the initial expedition because it was a one-off, but we can't do it regularly. The zero-point module is the only device we've found so far that has the necessary peak output to open a wormhole over that distance. We can open the gate from the Pegasus side because we have a ZPM. If we find more -- or a way to recharge or manufacture them -- then this gate will be used more frequently. But for now, odd as it seems, the Daedalus is the most cost-effective way of getting there and back."
"Does she ever land?"
"Not this side. We can cloak her, but that takes energy away from the shields and engines, which is not something you want when you're negotiating atmosphere. She lands on Atlantis though."
"Cool."
"Huh. That depends who's driving. Caldwell's good, to give him his due, but the junior officers often have difficulty keeping the ship under control. Still, we haven't crashed yet."
"That's reassuring," Sheppard said, dryly. He wondered if --
"And before you ask, no, don't even bother to ask Caldwell if you can drive the ship yourself. It will only make him bad tempered and Daedalus is too small to avoid him for the entire trip."
"OK." Oh well, maybe there'd be another chance later on. After all, he had to come back for leave sometime, didn't he? And maybe the ship's next CO would be a little more generous.
McKay gave him a look of fond exasperation. "You're wondering if you'll get another chance later on, aren't you."
Sheppard grinned. "Guilty. Hey, I'm a pilot. I can't spend two and a half weeks in a space ship and not want to try her out."
"Well, restrain yourself. You'll have plenty of flying hours in Atlantis."
"In that lopsided tin can you call a gateship?"
It was McKay's turn to grin. "I'll remind you of that when you come back from your first trip. It's a lot more than a tin can."
"Hmm. So you keep telling me."
McKay finished his last slice of pizza and grabbed some tissues to wipe his hands. "Any other last-minute questions about SGC or Pegasus?"
Sheppard shook his head. He was sure he would have questions in a few days, but right now his head was so crammed full of new information that he felt dizzy and off-balance.
"Great. So, how are you at chess?" asked McKay, pulling a small travel set out from his jacket.
"I've been known to win a game or two," said Sheppard with a smirk.
"Hmm. But can you beat the current Atlantis champion?"
"That would be you?"
"That would be me."
"I'll give it a go."
"Stakes?"
Sheppard stared at him. "You bet on chess?"
"How else am I going to gain control of your chocolate stash? You have five kilograms of Lindt in your trunk. I suggest one hundred grams per game."
Sheppard sat up and started setting up the board. "You're on."
~~~~~
On his last morning on Earth, ten days after he had shot an alien in the Nevada desert, Scientific Officer Grade 3 John Sheppard dressed himself in the uniform of the Pegasus Expedition.
He found himself smiling as he looked at the uniform laid out on the chair in front of him. If he was honest with himself he'd missed being in uniform the last few years. It defined him in a way that was familiar to everyone around him, a shortcut to understanding that he'd come to rely on. But the familiarity had come at high cost, and he had promised himself that no matter what, he wouldn't let himself become entrapped in the military machine again.
This, though, was a compromise he could accept. Everyone in Atlantis wore the same uniform, military and civilians alike. It wasn't really like any uniform he'd worn before, though special forces battle dress came closest. It was practical, tough, flame retardant, easy to launder, dried in minutes and didn't need ironing ... every soldier's dream.
The zip-up shirt -- made from some slinky high-tech thermo-regulatory material -- felt relatively insubstantial and way too tight for uniform, but McKay and Zelenka swore it would feel like a second skin in no time. The trousers were microfiber, light and breathable but tough, with multiple pockets, and the boots were the new special ops issue and the most comfortable he had worn in years.
He donned the jacket last, noting how the blue science patches contrasted with the charcoal grey. It was also microfiber but slightly thicker than the pants, and very plain. He couldn't help touching the US flag patch on the left shoulder with a sense of nostalgia. The Atlantis patch on the other shoulder was new to him, of course, but he looked forward to becoming a part of the Atlantis team.
There was no rank insignia whatsoever; not that a scientist needed rank, as such, but there was no epaulet or collar tab or Velcro patch that might carry it for the military members either, and he figured that McKay's fairy tale of rank being unimportant might be closer to the truth than he had realized. There wasn't even a name tag, which told him that the number of people on the expedition was very small -- small enough that every face would be known within a short time. That was both good and bad, but he'd try to be optimistic. He'd just have to be himself and see how it turned out.
Being himself ... that was a new concept to him, and slightly scary. He was so used to hiding, to masquerading as "normal" when at work, that he wasn't sure he could really be himself, even when there was no reason to hide any more. He still found it difficult to accept McKay's reassurances, since it contradicted everything he had ever known about military expeditions, but the orientation vids and the mission briefs he'd read certainly appeared to emphasize outcomes over regulations. And if O'Neill could get away with being a maverick, maybe there really was room for him.
Satisfied with his appearance, he packed away the last of his toiletries in his duffle bag. His standard-issue trunk, filled with his few personal belongings and barter goods -- most of them purchased online and delivered the previous day -- had already been loaded into Daedalus' cargo hold. This bag in his hand was all that he would have available for the eighteen-day trip to another galaxy.
A peremptory knock on his door was followed by McKay entering the room. "Are you ready yet?" McKay was also in uniform this morning, looking very competent and professional, and had his own duffle bag in one hand.
Sheppard nodded and picked up his bag, trying not to wince as the weight -- which in all honesty was less than ten kilograms -- pulled on his newly-healed muscles. "All set."
"Excellent. I'll take you to the boarding point."
"How do we get to the Daedalus? Do we have a shuttle or something? Or do they have a gate?"
"Or something. You'll see." McKay grinned at him, and -- given all that he had seen over the past ten days -- Sheppard wondered what new shock was in store for him.
They walked along the corridor and took the elevator up several floors to reach what appeared to be the twin of the spacecraft hangar Sheppard had seen on his first visit, only this one was empty apart from Zelenka and Woolsey, who were waiting for them, luggage in hand. Woolsey's uniform was identical to theirs apart from having dark red jacket patches instead of blue. Woolsey had assured him, in all seriousness, that there was no curse attached to the red shirt, since it denoted executive and support staff who rarely deployed off-planet, but Sheppard was still glad that he was in blue.
"So, are we waiting for something?" he asked.
"Only for you to get here. Hermiod is picking up some staff from Peterson, then he'll get back to us.
"This is a courtesy to Hermiod," McKay explained, gesturing around him. "He can pick us up from anywhere in SGC, but it's easier when we're closer to the surface, and in defined groups."
"Hermiod?"
"Asgard. Think of him as a small grey version of Spock ... without the sense of humor." Then McKay gave him a bright smile, tapped his earpiece and said, "Daedalus, four to beam up."
The hangar dissolved in a flash of light.
Sheppard had a moment of complete disorientation -- familiar and unfamiliar all at once. He'd felt this before. But how?
"You beamed me out from the desert," he said to McKay as soon as he was capable of breathing.
"Yes. Well, Hermiod beamed you, I just put the locator patch on you."
Wow. He'd been beamed up and hadn't even realized.
He looked around him. They were on the ship's bridge. At least, he presumed that's where they were. It was a lot smaller and a lot darker than the Enterprise, though, more like a warship or a submarine. Well, he thought, that would make sense.
Woolsey turned to their left. "Thank you, Hermiod," he said, solemnly.
Sheppard stared at the small, greyish being who nodded slowly at Woolsey. He'd seen pictures in some of the mission reports but somehow seeing an Asgard in the flesh -- especially when he looked almost exactly like the fabled Roswell grey -- was completely different.
Still, there was one thing he had to do. He walked up to Hermiod's control panel and said, "Thank you. You beamed me from the desert to SGC last week. I'm very grateful."
The alien -- Hermiod -- regarded him impassively for a couple of seconds then inclined his head slowly. "You are welcome." He returned his gaze to the console, ignoring Sheppard completely.
Well. Aliens, huh.
He turned back to McKay, who looked both amused and annoyed. Zelenka shrugged his shoulders as if to say, "Well, what do you expect from an alien?" Woolsey, of course, had already turned away.
The airman who had been waiting patiently for them said, "If you'll follow me, sirs, I'll show you to your cabins."
Zelenka and Woolsey followed. McKay waited for him, muttering, "The alien gets a thank you and I don't?"
"I played with your balls for hours this week, what more do you expect?"
McKay choked and went red -- which, Sheppard had to admit, was more or less the response he'd hoped for.
He stifled a smile. This trip might be a bit less tedious than he had expected.
Epilogue: Atlantis
The planet (New Lantea, Rodney told him) was still a pale blue marble when they dropped out of hyperdrive almost three weeks later. Caldwell had graciously allowed Sheppard and McKay to be there at what was a tense and potentially dangerous moment -- no matter how thoroughly they scanned, there was always the chance of a stray asteroid or comet coming too close, and no one wanted to see what would happen when a starship and an asteroid tried to occupy the same four dimensions of normal space.
Today, though, everything went very smoothly, and Caldwell had a satisfied smile on his face as he ordered them to proceed to the planet.
Sheppard allowed himself to be dragged away from the viewport by Rodney. He would have liked to stay and watch them approach, but he'd stretched Caldwell's tolerance enough this trip and besides, if Rodney were right, he'd get his chance to fly his very own spaceship in the foreseeable future.
Spaceflight, science, new friends, and, best of all, no need to hide any more.
He smiled and mentally saluted the blue sphere as he turned away. He had a feeling he was going to love his new home.
THE END
3 Reservations
McKay was in the lab he had appropriated for his office when General O'Neill strolled in, carrying a sheaf of papers.
"Signed and witnessed, McKay.'
McKay looked up from his tablet, struggling to pull his mind away from the complex physics problem he had been immersed in. "Hmm?"
"Sheppard's papers. He's signed in."
"Excellent." McKay reached over to the box of Ancient artefacts he'd pulled from one of the storerooms and started to get up.
"Not so fast. There are higher priorities for him in the next few days."
"More important than research?"
"Yeah, like healing. You want to risk injuring him some more if one of those doohickeys carries a charge or transports him to another dimension?"
McKay thought about some of the unexpected things previous Ancient devices had done and had to admit that the general had a point. "I suppose you're right."
"Besides, he's got about six hours of orientation videos to get through first.
"You're not giving him the full course are you? He doesn't need to know about all the history straight away, we could do that later, when he's on Atlantis."
"When he's on Atlantis he'll be running around playing with tech and going on missions and getting shot at. He won't have time to catch up on the background if he doesn't do it now. And he needs to know the background in this galaxy so he knows what's at stake."
McKay conceded the point. He couldn't deny that life in Atlantis was hectic, and too often routine matters were pushed aside by the need to deal with emergencies. It really was best that Sheppard get the background information now, while he had the opportunity. "All right, I'll talk to Dr Fraiser, see if -- "
"Already done. She's going to dole them out an hour at a time for the next couple of days."
"Can he read the mission reports, too?"
"I've picked out the top ten. The rest he can read on the Daedalus. Once he's done with the vids we'll need to get him kitted out. I've organized the QM to get started on that. The last day here is for weapons certification."
"That shouldn't be a problem, he seemed handy enough with a pistol."
"Yes, but he'll need to be familiar with the P90 and zats and Wraith stunners too. And no doubt Janet will want to get his immunizations up to date, which will knock him around some."
McKay sighed. There were always too many demands and not enough time.
His phone rang, and he answered it absently. "McKay."
"Woolsey. Any news on Sheppard?"
"Yes, he's signed in and starting on orientation. He'll -- "
O'Neill interrupted him, saying, "Is that Woolsey?"
"Yes."
"Put him on speaker."
Puzzled, McKay pressed the speaker button and replaced the handset.
O'Neill hesitated, then said, "While you're both here, so to speak, I have to tell you something. It's not something I would put on the official record, and normally I wouldn't even mention it, but the situation isn't normal and I won't be there to manage it myself." He paused, and McKay wondered what could be so serious that he was actually volunteering information to his two least-favorite people.
"Look, I've read through Sheppard's files -- all of them -- and I've asked Janet to do a couple of confirmatory tests along with his medical work up. There's no doubt in my mind, though, that he's going to need some careful handling when he gets to Atlantis."
McKay sighed. Was that all? "If you're trying to tell us that Sheppard has a death wish, you're too late, we worked that one out already."
O'Neill had the grace to look embarrassed. "Oh. Well, then. As long as you know."
"It was good of you to overcome your principles to mention it, general," Woolsey's placating tones came through the speaker. "We'll keep an eye on him and I will personally brief Dr Moore and Dr Keller."
"Thanks." O'Neill straightened himself up. "Well, that's all I had to say. Do not break him, McKay, or they'll send me out there to replace him and I will not be happy. Understood?"
"Understood, general."
"Good. Richard, I may not see you before the Daedalus heads out, so good luck."
"Thank you, general."
O'Neill strode out, leaving McKay to stare at the doorway in bemusement. Since when had O'Neill ever noticed psychological issues in SGC staff, let alone taken steps to make sure they were addressed?
"Dr McKay!" Woolsey's voice pulled him out of his thoughts.
"Yes?"
"Have you finished looking through the latest batch of Atlantis volunteers? I need to submit a shortlist to HR so they can start the security screens."
McKay took a deep breath and started to tell Woolsey exactly what he thought of HR and their unbelievable incompetence in applying mandatory selection criteria.
~~~~~
John spent the afternoon alternately watching Dr Jackson's videos -- which were at once mind-boggling and frustratingly uninformative -- and trying to get his mind around the fact that almost everything he had learned at school about human history was wrong. Cro-Magnon man, the development of writing, the building of the pyramids ... all of it influenced by aliens. Instantaneous interstellar travel, cloaking devices, return from the dead ... not science fiction anymore. It made his head spin.
He was glad of the excuse to take a break when the physiotherapist turned up. The breathing exercises went better than the day before, and then he was allowed to take a trial walk around the infirmary. It couldn't have been more than fifty yards or so, but he was exhausted when he returned to his bed.
"There's no way I'm going to be fit to leave in a week," he told Dr Fraiser when she popped in just before the end of the day shift.
"You will be," she reassured him. "You're actually healing very fast, you know, considering how badly you were injured. And you don't have to be fully fit before you board the Daedalus."
"The way the general was talking, I figured I had to be almost combat fit for Atlantis."
She laughed. "He likes to provide incentive, but there's no rush. The trip from here to Pegasus is pretty much a milk run these days anyway, so treat it as convalescent leave. Of course, the sooner you're fit the better, but I don't want you to injure yourself trying to do too much too fast. I'll make sure that the chief medic on board gets a full briefing on your condition as well as a scheduled exercise plan, so you should be cleared for non-combat duties by the time you reach Atlantis."
"Thanks.'
"Has Dr McKay seen you today?"
"No," John replied. He was actually a little disappointed I that -- he'd been sure that the maverick scientist would have taken the first available opportunity to welcome him to the team, but obviously John had dropped off the priority list now that he was signed in.
"He asked me if he could show you around the labs this afternoon but I told him to wait until tomorrow. You need a little time to digest those videos before he finds something else to blow your mind."
"Oh." It was absurd how relieved he felt at that. Any hope that he had concealed his reaction was dashed when Dr Fraiser grinned impishly at him.
"Don't worry, he'll be here at eight on the dot. But you're not allowed out of the infirmary for more than an hour, and only in a wheelchair. And he's not allowed to damage you."
"Is that likely?" he asked, concerned.
"Well, he wouldn't do it deliberately. But alien artefacts aren't always benign, and we've had a few accidents over the years. Dr Zelenka will keep an eye on him, but be careful -- if you get a bad feeling about anything, don't touch it."
"Thanks for the warning. If I don't make it, I want my ashes scattered at sea."
She laughed and left him to watch the videos over again.
~~~~~
As promised, McKay turned up at 0800 and helped him into the wheelchair that had been brought to his bedside early that morning. It only took a few minutes to get to the lab that he and Zelenka had taken over for the time being, and there was an interesting array of odd-looking artefacts on the bench, along with more mundane multimeters and laptops.
"Are all these from Atlantis?" he asked.
"No. Some are from other planets in the Pegasus galaxy and some were found here on Earth."
"What do they do?"
McKay shot him a withering look. "If I knew that, I wouldn't need you to activate them for me."
"We know that this one -- " Zelenka ignored McKay and pointed to a small sphere with several indecipherable markings, " -- is probably a teaching device of some sort. We have seen several others of similar design, and they have been most useful in helping us to understand Atlantis science and history. Unfortunately we have not been able to access the data on this device."
"Does it need some sort of power source?"
"Everything needs a power source. But since we need information from the device before we can determine precisely what sort of power it needs, there isn't much point in wondering about that until it's been activated ... which is what you are here for. So get activating."
Sheppard was a little taken aback by the sharp tone in McKay's voice, and for the first time he saw why the scientist might not be universally admired.
Zelenka sighed. "Rodney, did you remember to eat breakfast?"
"I had coffee in the lab."
Zelenka sighed and fished out a granola bar from his pocket. "He is hypoglycemic," he explained to Sheppard, "and his temper is directly proportional to his blood sugar. Those of us who work with him take the precaution of feeding him on a regular basis."
McKay snatched the bar and bit into it. "Thanks," he muttered. "It's not deliberate," he added, looking up at Sheppard with an almost apologetic expression. "I get caught up in work and forget."
"How could you forget breakfast?" asked Sheppard.
McKay looked slightly guilty.
Zelenka chuckled. "Is easy when you stay up all night working."
"Well, those rift equations won't solve themselves."
"We will have time on the Daedalus to work on the equations."
"But their server doesn't have the capacity to run the simulations. I need to get as much done here as possible before we leave so I can use the three weeks' travel time efficiently. Then I can load up the Hydra array on arrival."
"True. As long it's free."
"Huh. There is nothing more important than analyzing that rift. Anything else can wait."
"Even revisions to the gene therapy?" asked Zelenka. "Keller mentioned she wanted to run simulations running Sheppard's DNA as soon as we get back."
"Hey!" exclaimed Sheppard. "She's using my DNA for experiments? I didn't agree to that."
"Read the fine print," McKay said. "Buried deep in your employment contract there is a clause that says tissue samples may be used for identification and other specifically-authorized purposes."
"Yes, but that's just in case I crash." He looked at their faces. "Isn't it?"
"Not in the Stargate program. You're more than just a flyboy, remember, you're a direct descendant of the Ancients. If Keller can use your DNA to engineer a gene insertion that is more efficient and more effective, then that benefits the program as a whole, hence it is an authorized purpose. It is not, however, more important than ensuring that the remaining Wraith in our Pegasus galaxy don't get that message, and if she thinks she can beat me to the cluster then she is seriously mistaken. She can use the Atlantis server if she doesn't want to wait."
"She'll take it to Woolsey," Zelenka noted. "She hates using the Atlantis server, she says the translation program isn't reliable."
"She can take it to O'Neill for all I care. Continued survival trumps a possible improvement to an existing therapy. And I've told her she needs to put the time in and learn some Ancient."
"You promised her a better translation program last year."
"Priorities change."
Zelenka gave McKay a knowing smile. "I am aware of this, Rodney, but she is the one who will be there with the large needles when you need treatment."
"Huh. Well I can't just magically duplicate the Hydra array. She'll have to take her turn like the rest of us."
Sheppard finally managed to process what he'd been hearing. "Hey, guys, back up a minute. You're saying you have a supercomputer?"
Zelenka and McKay looked at each other and ... giggled.
No really. They giggled.
"We couldn't take the risk," Zelenka managed to say after a few seconds of near-uncontrollable mirth. "Supercomputers are rare and easy to track. Even within the military we couldn't hide one."
"So ..." Rodney was still giggling, "we bought two thousand PlayStation 3 units."
Sheppard gaped. "You have got to be kidding me."
They both shook their heads. Zelenka continued, "We used proxy buyers around the world and shipped them here as air-conditioning equipment, then gated them over to Atlantis. It took weeks to put them together, and set up the programming interface, but it works. Peak output was 600 teraflops a few months ago."
"Wow."
"Well, it's no Road Runner, that's for sure," Rodney added, "but it's enough for us at present."
"Still, that's pretty cool."
Zelenka looked thoughtful. "We must look to the future, though. We have always hypothesized that Atlantis has the equivalent of a supercomputer to support the city's systems but we have never been able to find it. Maybe with your help we can locate it and gain access to more information.
McKay looked at Sheppard, then his eyes glazed over as his brain started evaluating all the possibilities. "We'll have to take him to the chair as soon as we land and see how it responds to him."
"Cha, we should have tried the chair at Area 51," Zelenka said.
"It's not connected to anything here, it wouldn't have helped. But the one in Atlantis ... that will be very interesting indeed."
They both turned to Sheppard, almost-identical predatory expressions on their faces.
"I'm not entirely sure I like the way you're both looking at me. I'm not a lab rat. If I wake up one morning with electrodes in my brain I'm going to be very unhappy."
"Don't worry," McKay patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. "You're a very valuable lab rat. And Ancient technology uses transdermal connections, no electrodes required. Speaking of which, we'd better get started on these artefacts."
~~~~~
Forty minutes later, Sheppard had identified three basic educational devices (geometry, arithmetic and something that seemed to be a weird mix of logic and philosophy, according to Zelenka), one multimeter and one portable battery. At least that was the best approximation they could make from the instruments McKay had with him. There were also five artefacts that seemed to be well and truly dead, with not even the faintest flicker of activity appearing no matter how Sheppard fondled them.
He was vaguely disappointed, but tried not to let it affect him too much. Though he couldn't help asking, "So is this what the rest of my life is going to look like?"
McKay laughed. "Only a small fraction of it. Some things are too big to be portable, so we'll take you to them. And some things need constant contact with the ATA gene rather than periodic activation."
"Weapons, mainly," added Zelenka. "And the city drive, of course."
McKay nodded. "Which makes sense, once you think about it. If the city gets invaded, the enemy can't use anything they find against the inhabitants."
Sheppard nodded. That did make sense. And having read the after-action reports on the Wraith attack, he hated to think what they could have done if they had been able to turn Atlantis' own weapons against the humans.
Which reminded him of a question he'd been meaning to ask for a few days. "McKay, the first day you told me that the Wraith don't know where Earth is."
McKay nodded. "That's true."
"So how come they attacked us? You can't say they turned up here just by chance."
"That's an interesting question," McKay nodded. He took a breath and looked to be on the verge of delivering a lecture when he was interrupted by Zelenka.
"Infinitely-regressing spacetime rift spiral."
"What?"
"Infinitely regressing -- "
"What he's trying to say" McKay said quickly, waving Zelenka into silence, "is that the Wraith in our Pegasus galaxy picked up a signal from some other reality and hurried here without telling any of the other hives. We defeated the hive ship that attacked, but one Wraith officer managed to survive. He built the equipment that created a rift into another reality, where his signal will reach another hive ship, which will hurry to Earth ... and so on, ad infinitum."
"Wow." John thought about that for a minute but it made his head hurt. "That's deep."
"I can show you mathematics later," said Zelenka. "It is in fact very elegant -- "
"Yes, yes," McKay interrupted, "your elegant equations will go straight over his head."
"Hey! I got a math degree."
"Oh, please. You have a degree in applied mathematics, which is only one step up from mechanical engineering."
Zelenka huffed. "Engineering fixes more problems than pure maths, Rodney. Be polite."
"He's already recruited, I don't have to be polite to him." The look on his face took away a lot of the sting and John tried - not entirely successfully -- to hide a grin. McKay might be irritating but he was certainly entertaining, as long as you didn't take things too personally.
"Why wouldn't the Wraith ship send a message to the rest of them before leaving Pegasus?" he asked. "Wouldn't they want reinforcements?"
McKay turned serious again. "There's been a civil war going on for the last couple of years, for a variety of reasons that I won't go into, but they are definitely fighting each other. Many hive ships have been destroyed, there aren't many queens left, and among the remaining few there is much intrigue and jostling for position. If one hive ship managed to attack Earth successfully -- they wouldn't need to conquer us, just capture enough to feed their breeding queens -- they could breed enough drones and grow enough ships to become the most powerful faction in Wraith history."
Zelenka nodded in agreement. "Even though it would be dangerous for them to travel to this galaxy alone, the potential rewards would make it well worth the risk."
Sheppard blinked. "Did you say grow enough ships?"
"Yes, their ships are largely organic in construction."
"Wow." Just when he thought his mind couldn't possibly be blown more than it was, McKay or Zelenka would casually drop something new and startling. At this rate, he was going to be completely dazed by the time they reached Atlantis.
~~~~~
At the end of the hour Zelenka wheeled him back to the infirmary and helped him get out of the chair and into bed. If anyone had told him it would be exhausting to sit in a chair for sixty minutes he wouldn't have believed them, but he couldn't prevent the sigh of relief as his body relaxed into the mattress.
"I feel like I've run a marathon. Who knew that touching things could be so tiring?"
"Wait till you are in Atlantis. Rodney will have you touching things morning and night."
He laughed. "That sounds almost obscene."
Zelenka smiled mischievously. "I did not mean it so, but ... you should know that Rodney likes you. He was quite taken with Colonel Sheppard in the alternate reality, though he won't go into details. I'm not surprised he worked so hard to get you a place in the city."
"You mean he made them give me a place just because he wanted to jump me?"
"No, he made them give you a place because you have a very strong natural gene. You will be a great help to us all. That he finds you attractive is a bonus."
"I hope he doesn't expect me to sleep with him out of gratitude."
Zelenka shrugged. "You could do worse. He is a very generous lover."
Sheppard felt his jaw drop and fought to control himself. "You mean, you and he ..."
Zelenka gave him an enigmatic smile. "To use your own military terminology: you don't ask, I don't tell. But I can assure you that he is a free agent at present. No entanglements."
"Thank you ... I think."
"You're welcome," Zelenka chuckled and head out of the ward.
Sheppard stared up at the ceiling and thought about McKay -- Rodney -- as a possible lover. The man might be a little abrasive at time, but he was brilliant and passionate and not bad-looking, and his face was so expressive that Sheppard just had to wonder what it would look like during sex. As far as physique went, he preferred his partners to be a little more buff, but there was nothing about McKay that was repulsive, and Sheppard didn't kid himself that the hot twenty-something surfers he fantasized about were going to be beating a path to his door anytime soon.
And McKay wanted him there in the Pegasus galaxy with him. McKay had gone to considerable effort to rescue him, according to O'Neill, and (he could read between the lines as well as the next man) had gone toe-to-toe with Woolsey, Landry and O'Neill to get him a place on the mission. That was more than anyone had done for him for a long, long time.
Maybe ... just maybe, Atlantis really would be a new beginning.
4 Resolution
The rest of the week passed in a blur of uniform fittings, kit issue, immunizations, more mission reports and a few more visits to the lab with McKay and Zelenka. Now that he was getting to know them, he could appreciate their double act, with Zelenka acting as straight man for McKay's witticisms. And now that he was aware of it, he could also see remnants of their closer relationship. Zelenka kept McKay supplied with coffee and snack bars. McKay ... well, truthfully McKay didn't do much in return, but he was noticeably less irritable with Zelenka than with any other of the SGC staff. He did bring in large bags of pastries one morning -- to make up for a rather spectacular tantrum the day before -- and gave Sheppard a rueful smile.
"It's a lot easier to do this here than in Atlantis."
"So what do you do when you lose your temper there?"
"Porn, usually."
"What?"
"Porn? Really?"
"Well I can hardly hand over chocolate since the reason I lose my temper is that I have low blood sugar because I've run out of chocolate."
Sheppard had to admit the logic in that argument.
"So my sister -- "
"Your sister? You get your sister to buy you porn?"
"You know, your eyes are so wide open they'd fall out if they weren't attached. And no, she doesn't buy me porn. She does, however, obtain the latest episodes of whatever bromance series is causing people to swoon, and then she downloads the fanfic -- most of which is gay porn. I get a couple of USBs in every mail run. You would not believe how much credit that gets me."
No, he wouldn't. He really wouldn't.
"And to be fair," continued McKay, brushing flakes of pastry off his shirt, "they don't stuff up as badly there. We hand-pick scientists for a reason, and although we have had a few idiots, on the whole they're a pretty good bunch. Don't ever tell them I said that."
"I won't." He was struck by a thought. "So what about the guys? You can't buy them off with gay porn."
"Action films, Playboy digital edition, and whatever the girls trade me for the TV episodes."
"I thought you gave them that as an apology."
McKay gave him a mischievous smile. "No, the fanfic is the apology. I can always tell when they're running low, they get twitchy. And since that's usually around the same time as I'm running low on chocolate, it all works out pretty well."
Sheppard had to laugh. The details might differ, but the black economy obviously stayed much the same no matter which galaxy they were in.
~~~~~
He aced the weapons qualification, of course. He'd used the Beretta throughout his service and it was close enough in length and weight to his own M1911A1 -- if not nearly as pretty -- that even the first shots hit center mass. The P90 was shorter than any assault rifle he'd used before, and the magazine was just plain weird, but he got the hang of it pretty quickly. The Wraith stunner took a little more time, since he'd never fired a weapon that didn't have some sort of kickback, but then as the instructor pointed out, the beam was broad enough that precision wasn't that much of an issue. The zat'nik'tel, though ... that weapon gave him the creeps. It just wasn't natural to have a gun that reared up like a cobra, and the one-for-stun, two-for-kill rule made him hope he never met one in battle. He was able to compensate for the high position of the "barrel" fairly quickly but he never got used to the way it moved, and he was relieved to find that since the Atlantis teams had discovered the smaller version of the Wraith stunner they had relegated the zats to emergency use only.
"And when I say emergency use, I mean 'last resort, every other gun is empty' emergency, not the usual 'we're all going to die' emergency, because that happens every other week," the master sergeant clarified.
"I'll bear that in mind," Sheppard murmured, setting the zat down with a sigh of relief.
He was issued with a Beretta and a thigh holster and spent the rest of the afternoon stripping it down and reassembling it. He was a little slower than he had been ten years ago but he figured he could get back up to his best speed by the time they got to Atlantis. He suspected that three weeks on Daedalus with nowhere to go was going to become tedious, and, while he had plenty of reading material to get through, he would need something to keep his hands busy and his mind relaxed. It was either strip the Beretta or take up knitting, and he didn't think knitting would help against the Wraith.
~~~~~
Sheppard had no special plans for his last night on Earth. He was still in the infirmary but he'd been given a small private room for the last couple of days, and he appreciated the additional privacy. He also appreciated the fact that he didn't have to travel from the residential levels to the infirmary every time he had a dressing change or a physio session.
After laying out his uniform for the morning he settled down with yet another mission report. He was yawning before he'd got even halfway through, and wondered if it would be too unmanly to turn off the light and go to sleep before twenty-one hundred. Dr Fraiser had told him he was healing very quickly but he still felt frustrated that he fatigued so easily. He was hoping to be mission-fit by the time he reached Atlantis but he suspected he might need a little more time.
He heard a mild commotion outside and his nose was assaulted with the pungent aroma of pepperoni pizza. His stomach growled in response, and he reminded himself that he had eaten dinner only two hours before. He shouldn't begrudge the nursing staff their supper, even if he felt they could have asked him to chip in. Somehow he doubted that there were pizza ovens in Atlantis.
Then McKay walked into his room, carrying a pizza box.
Sheppard raised an eyebrow. "You brought a pizza into a hospital and didn't get mugged?"
McKay smiled. "I brought a dozen pizzas, actually -- enough for all the duty staff I encountered on the way from the main gate to the nurses' station. This is the last one."
Sheppard had to admire his strategy. He admired him even more when he produced a bottle of beer out of each side pocket.
"You really know how to show a girl a good time," he drawled.
McKay went pink, which was both amusing and intriguing. Sheppard had been thinking about Zelenka's revelation quite a lot over the last few days. He hadn't seen any overt indication of interest, but he'd caught an odd expression on McKay's face once or twice -- as if he were being assessed against some unknown standard. Maybe McKay was comparing him to the Colonel Sheppard he'd met in another reality (he rather hoped not -- he'd read that particular report with some trepidation, and doubted that he would ever measure up to the other version of himself).
"I just thought you might want a little company. I remember the night before the expedition left -- I didn't sleep at all because I was terrified that I was doing the wrong thing."
"But your trip was one-way. At least I have the option of coming back if I don't like it."
"True. But I think you'll be fine. Honestly, you'll fit in well in Atlantis. And I think ... well, we'll just wait and see."
"What?"
McKay shook his head. "Just a hypothesis. I'll let you know after we get there."
Sheppard looked at him warily, but McKay was busy demolishing another slice of pizza.
"There's one thing I've been meaning to ask," he ventured.
"Yes?" McKay looked up, eagerly.
"I'm kind of curious as to how we don't have enough energy to open a small wormhole over three million light years, but there is enough energy to fly a large spaceship the same distance every two months."
McKay looked disappointed for a second but answered him readily enough. "It's a question of peak energy and containment. The naquadah generators are sufficient to lift Daedalus into orbit or switch to hyperdrive but they aren't capable of the peak energy required to open an intergalactic wormhole. We could hook up a few generators to the gate here but we would still have to draw on the North American grid and the resultant brown-outs would lead to a lot of questions. We took the risk with the initial expedition because it was a one-off, but we can't do it regularly. The zero-point module is the only device we've found so far that has the necessary peak output to open a wormhole over that distance. We can open the gate from the Pegasus side because we have a ZPM. If we find more -- or a way to recharge or manufacture them -- then this gate will be used more frequently. But for now, odd as it seems, the Daedalus is the most cost-effective way of getting there and back."
"Does she ever land?"
"Not this side. We can cloak her, but that takes energy away from the shields and engines, which is not something you want when you're negotiating atmosphere. She lands on Atlantis though."
"Cool."
"Huh. That depends who's driving. Caldwell's good, to give him his due, but the junior officers often have difficulty keeping the ship under control. Still, we haven't crashed yet."
"That's reassuring," Sheppard said, dryly. He wondered if --
"And before you ask, no, don't even bother to ask Caldwell if you can drive the ship yourself. It will only make him bad tempered and Daedalus is too small to avoid him for the entire trip."
"OK." Oh well, maybe there'd be another chance later on. After all, he had to come back for leave sometime, didn't he? And maybe the ship's next CO would be a little more generous.
McKay gave him a look of fond exasperation. "You're wondering if you'll get another chance later on, aren't you."
Sheppard grinned. "Guilty. Hey, I'm a pilot. I can't spend two and a half weeks in a space ship and not want to try her out."
"Well, restrain yourself. You'll have plenty of flying hours in Atlantis."
"In that lopsided tin can you call a gateship?"
It was McKay's turn to grin. "I'll remind you of that when you come back from your first trip. It's a lot more than a tin can."
"Hmm. So you keep telling me."
McKay finished his last slice of pizza and grabbed some tissues to wipe his hands. "Any other last-minute questions about SGC or Pegasus?"
Sheppard shook his head. He was sure he would have questions in a few days, but right now his head was so crammed full of new information that he felt dizzy and off-balance.
"Great. So, how are you at chess?" asked McKay, pulling a small travel set out from his jacket.
"I've been known to win a game or two," said Sheppard with a smirk.
"Hmm. But can you beat the current Atlantis champion?"
"That would be you?"
"That would be me."
"I'll give it a go."
"Stakes?"
Sheppard stared at him. "You bet on chess?"
"How else am I going to gain control of your chocolate stash? You have five kilograms of Lindt in your trunk. I suggest one hundred grams per game."
Sheppard sat up and started setting up the board. "You're on."
~~~~~
On his last morning on Earth, ten days after he had shot an alien in the Nevada desert, Scientific Officer Grade 3 John Sheppard dressed himself in the uniform of the Pegasus Expedition.
He found himself smiling as he looked at the uniform laid out on the chair in front of him. If he was honest with himself he'd missed being in uniform the last few years. It defined him in a way that was familiar to everyone around him, a shortcut to understanding that he'd come to rely on. But the familiarity had come at high cost, and he had promised himself that no matter what, he wouldn't let himself become entrapped in the military machine again.
This, though, was a compromise he could accept. Everyone in Atlantis wore the same uniform, military and civilians alike. It wasn't really like any uniform he'd worn before, though special forces battle dress came closest. It was practical, tough, flame retardant, easy to launder, dried in minutes and didn't need ironing ... every soldier's dream.
The zip-up shirt -- made from some slinky high-tech thermo-regulatory material -- felt relatively insubstantial and way too tight for uniform, but McKay and Zelenka swore it would feel like a second skin in no time. The trousers were microfiber, light and breathable but tough, with multiple pockets, and the boots were the new special ops issue and the most comfortable he had worn in years.
He donned the jacket last, noting how the blue science patches contrasted with the charcoal grey. It was also microfiber but slightly thicker than the pants, and very plain. He couldn't help touching the US flag patch on the left shoulder with a sense of nostalgia. The Atlantis patch on the other shoulder was new to him, of course, but he looked forward to becoming a part of the Atlantis team.
There was no rank insignia whatsoever; not that a scientist needed rank, as such, but there was no epaulet or collar tab or Velcro patch that might carry it for the military members either, and he figured that McKay's fairy tale of rank being unimportant might be closer to the truth than he had realized. There wasn't even a name tag, which told him that the number of people on the expedition was very small -- small enough that every face would be known within a short time. That was both good and bad, but he'd try to be optimistic. He'd just have to be himself and see how it turned out.
Being himself ... that was a new concept to him, and slightly scary. He was so used to hiding, to masquerading as "normal" when at work, that he wasn't sure he could really be himself, even when there was no reason to hide any more. He still found it difficult to accept McKay's reassurances, since it contradicted everything he had ever known about military expeditions, but the orientation vids and the mission briefs he'd read certainly appeared to emphasize outcomes over regulations. And if O'Neill could get away with being a maverick, maybe there really was room for him.
Satisfied with his appearance, he packed away the last of his toiletries in his duffle bag. His standard-issue trunk, filled with his few personal belongings and barter goods -- most of them purchased online and delivered the previous day -- had already been loaded into Daedalus' cargo hold. This bag in his hand was all that he would have available for the eighteen-day trip to another galaxy.
A peremptory knock on his door was followed by McKay entering the room. "Are you ready yet?" McKay was also in uniform this morning, looking very competent and professional, and had his own duffle bag in one hand.
Sheppard nodded and picked up his bag, trying not to wince as the weight -- which in all honesty was less than ten kilograms -- pulled on his newly-healed muscles. "All set."
"Excellent. I'll take you to the boarding point."
"How do we get to the Daedalus? Do we have a shuttle or something? Or do they have a gate?"
"Or something. You'll see." McKay grinned at him, and -- given all that he had seen over the past ten days -- Sheppard wondered what new shock was in store for him.
They walked along the corridor and took the elevator up several floors to reach what appeared to be the twin of the spacecraft hangar Sheppard had seen on his first visit, only this one was empty apart from Zelenka and Woolsey, who were waiting for them, luggage in hand. Woolsey's uniform was identical to theirs apart from having dark red jacket patches instead of blue. Woolsey had assured him, in all seriousness, that there was no curse attached to the red shirt, since it denoted executive and support staff who rarely deployed off-planet, but Sheppard was still glad that he was in blue.
"So, are we waiting for something?" he asked.
"Only for you to get here. Hermiod is picking up some staff from Peterson, then he'll get back to us.
"This is a courtesy to Hermiod," McKay explained, gesturing around him. "He can pick us up from anywhere in SGC, but it's easier when we're closer to the surface, and in defined groups."
"Hermiod?"
"Asgard. Think of him as a small grey version of Spock ... without the sense of humor." Then McKay gave him a bright smile, tapped his earpiece and said, "Daedalus, four to beam up."
The hangar dissolved in a flash of light.
Sheppard had a moment of complete disorientation -- familiar and unfamiliar all at once. He'd felt this before. But how?
"You beamed me out from the desert," he said to McKay as soon as he was capable of breathing.
"Yes. Well, Hermiod beamed you, I just put the locator patch on you."
Wow. He'd been beamed up and hadn't even realized.
He looked around him. They were on the ship's bridge. At least, he presumed that's where they were. It was a lot smaller and a lot darker than the Enterprise, though, more like a warship or a submarine. Well, he thought, that would make sense.
Woolsey turned to their left. "Thank you, Hermiod," he said, solemnly.
Sheppard stared at the small, greyish being who nodded slowly at Woolsey. He'd seen pictures in some of the mission reports but somehow seeing an Asgard in the flesh -- especially when he looked almost exactly like the fabled Roswell grey -- was completely different.
Still, there was one thing he had to do. He walked up to Hermiod's control panel and said, "Thank you. You beamed me from the desert to SGC last week. I'm very grateful."
The alien -- Hermiod -- regarded him impassively for a couple of seconds then inclined his head slowly. "You are welcome." He returned his gaze to the console, ignoring Sheppard completely.
Well. Aliens, huh.
He turned back to McKay, who looked both amused and annoyed. Zelenka shrugged his shoulders as if to say, "Well, what do you expect from an alien?" Woolsey, of course, had already turned away.
The airman who had been waiting patiently for them said, "If you'll follow me, sirs, I'll show you to your cabins."
Zelenka and Woolsey followed. McKay waited for him, muttering, "The alien gets a thank you and I don't?"
"I played with your balls for hours this week, what more do you expect?"
McKay choked and went red -- which, Sheppard had to admit, was more or less the response he'd hoped for.
He stifled a smile. This trip might be a bit less tedious than he had expected.
Epilogue: Atlantis
The planet (New Lantea, Rodney told him) was still a pale blue marble when they dropped out of hyperdrive almost three weeks later. Caldwell had graciously allowed Sheppard and McKay to be there at what was a tense and potentially dangerous moment -- no matter how thoroughly they scanned, there was always the chance of a stray asteroid or comet coming too close, and no one wanted to see what would happen when a starship and an asteroid tried to occupy the same four dimensions of normal space.
Today, though, everything went very smoothly, and Caldwell had a satisfied smile on his face as he ordered them to proceed to the planet.
Sheppard allowed himself to be dragged away from the viewport by Rodney. He would have liked to stay and watch them approach, but he'd stretched Caldwell's tolerance enough this trip and besides, if Rodney were right, he'd get his chance to fly his very own spaceship in the foreseeable future.
Spaceflight, science, new friends, and, best of all, no need to hide any more.
He smiled and mentally saluted the blue sphere as he turned away. He had a feeling he was going to love his new home.
THE END