Crossover - Stargate/Gundam Wing (gen) [1 of 2]
.__. As always, when I have several fics I should be writing and nothing works, I end up with a brand new bunny. Damn it, self. At least this one should be short, and the second part's already planned out, but it's also making "oh, what a great PROLOGUE I would make ohoho" noises.
Notes: First time I write Major John Sheppard and Doctor Rodney McKay. For those of you who don't watch Startgate (either Atlantis or SG-1), the show is scifi; the military discovers a network of gates that instantly transport people to wherever they've entered the right series of glyphs as an adress (and a metric fuckton of aliens who hate them and OOPS NOW EARTH IS BACK ON THE GRID.) John and Rodney are from the spinoff series where they go off to another galaxy to find the lost city of Atlantis; John is the maverick Air Force pilot who accidentally ends up on the mission and then ends up the highest-ranking officer, and Rodney is the abrasive genius scientist who's surprisingly brave when he's not busy freaking the hell out. They're on the same exploration team. This story happens post-first season, when after a year of being cut off from Earth and surviving on their own they manage to reestablish contact, and briefly go home. As for Gundam Wing, it's post-Endless Waltz.
Genre: Action, character interaction, Asuka is a nerd. Gen.
Summary: Rodney is looking for new personnel for Atlantis; instead he finds a new project. John isn't looking for anyone, but he might find someone anyway.
So far none of the people John had met today were people he wanted to take back to Atlantis with him. The geeks at Area 51 were exactly how John would have pictured people working at a "secret" military base targeted by so many conspiracy crazies a year ago, back when his thoughts on aliens could be summarized with 'makes for fun movies'. White coats and pocket protectors, and their heads so far up in theoretical conjectures it was a wonder Major General Hopkins hadn't assigned more Airmen to make sure they didn't walk into walls.
John hoped Rodney knew how to sort diamonds in the rough from rocks, because it would be a waste of fuel and resources to stuff the Daedalus full of personnel they would lose at the first trial by fire. He didn't hope too hard, though, because he was pretty sure Rodney owed his Head Scientist position to being the most polyvalent of them all -- certainly not to his talents in personnel management.
Of course, John wasn't very likely to be involved in those decisions anyway. He hadn't been anyone's choice for a military leader; he'd be lucky enough to be sent back as Second in Command of whoever they appointed as Base Commander for Atlantis if he was sent back at all, forget being in a position to select the men he knew they needed.
Ahead of them, leaning over the shoulder of a very surprised scientist, Rodney was saying "Oh, don't worry," in that snide tone that made John wish for popcorn. John aimed a little 'what can you do' shrug at General Hopkins and ambled closer, trying not to grin. (It wasn't like he didn't appreciate Hopkins making an effort at small talk, but between a discussion about the most recent crazy person testing the security of the base and Rodney unleashing verbal hell, he knew which grabbed his interest the most.)
"If I have enough clearance for all your top-secret projects ever, I certainly have enough clearance for your time-wasting little pastimes." Rodney stole the man's mouse and clicked back with a harrumph. "I probably should be glad it isn't porn."
Hah. With the limited amount of personal files the first wave personnel all been able to bring John would have bet Rodney knew all the porn available on Atlantis by heart, even the niches he usually wouldn't care much about. John sure did.
"May I?" he inquired.
The scientist -- a Dr. Laurent -- looked up at General Hopkins for confirmation; when she gave a dry little nod, he sighed and nudged his chair back to allow access. John leaned in over Rodney's shoulder.
Schematics. Huh. Another alien craft, no doubt. It didn't remind him of Ancient tech at all; maybe Goa'uld or... something else entirely. Some kind of reactor core, joints, weirdly shaped air foils, fuselage -- wait a minute.
Usually he tried not to think of people as nerds -- pot, kettle, and he knew a lot of charming nerds...
Rodney gave a jaundiced look at the screen. "Hmph. Might as well be porn. Cartoon nerd."
The first inkling John had that Dr. Laurent might not do too badly in Atlantis was when the man, instead of being cowed, started in on a slow-blooming smirk. "Uh huh? Come on."
And then he was bouncing off his chair -- with a lot of energy for a fifty-year-old -- and stalking his way to a door at the other end of the room, passing a lot of intrigued scientists. It was the first time in a while that John saw someone doing that "Of course you'll follow me, you have to follow me, why do I even need to slow down and check" routine on Rodney rather than the other way around. Rodney stood looking offended for all of three seconds before he went charging after Laurent.
"There is absolutely no way we will get Doctor McKay to follow the visit schedule, is there?" Hopkins inquired, looking wholly unsurprised.
"Afraid not, ma'am," John apologized, and fell into step with her as they followed.
Beige corridor, high-security gate, gray, concrete-walled corridor, another gate -- this one demanded retina scans on top of their access cards. The hangar behind it was wide, several tennis courts long and at least three stories high. Scientists puttered around several piles of what at first glance looked like so much scrap metal.
"...had them for the last, oh, almost six months now, and we still don't know where the heck they're coming from," Laurent was saying happily as he led Rodney around an olive-green pile and into the central aisle. "It's not any civilization we know and we haven't even pinned down the alloy."
"What, don't tell me you bunch of idiots can't even work out the composition!"
"Oh, we have the composition -- mostly trinium, fifteen percent iridium, a few trace elements -- but we have no clue on Earth how they managed to gel together like that. This alloy is -- shouldn't be, but is -- entirely electrically non-conductive, and if it hadn't come down in a shuttle it would have passed us right by, because it cannot be detected by radar."
Laurent turned to face Rodney, grinning proudly, and rested a hand on a white-painted wall of metal. The paint was gouged and scored in a lot of places, tinted dark with smoke; underneath the metal was faultless, gleaming with an odd, wet gunmetal sheen under the ceiling lights.
John was watching Rodney step over a pile of strangely segmented, round-tipped blocks and onto a flatter part when the perspective snapped into place.
Rodney was standing in the palm of a hand. A giant, articulated metal hand.
"... Holy fuck."
At his side General Hopkins gave a little snort and mercifully pretended not to have heard. John craned his neck as he walked down the aisle, skirting the piles of scrap metal to have enough space to see it in its entirety.
"I'll be damned. It is a giant robot."
Laurent was still grinning like a proud papa as Rodney McKay, notorious underminer of everyone's pride but his own, stared dumbfounded at a green-eyed helmeted face almost as big as he was tall.
"So. Does my taste in geek porn meet with your approval?"
--
A half-hour later Rodney was still poking around the hangar, and John was pretty sure that unless he handcuffed himself to his desk Dr. Andrew Laurent (Ph.Ds in Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics, whatever the hell that was) would be onboard the Daedalus when it made its trip back to the Pegasus Galaxy. Not that Rodney had asked yet, but John knew his teammate.
John had found himself a perch on a black-painted shoulder to watch. There were five distinct piles in the hangar, four of them mostly arms and legs and pieces of weapons, scrap metal puzzles with too many missing pieces; the one he sat on was now nothing but an upper torso and a head, standing upright, held propped up on strange protrusions emerging where shoulder blades should be. It was the highest vantage point, good for keeping track of where his head scientist was.
The robot in the middle, the most complete, white and red and blue, had been at some point in the last six months equipped with a black leg, in an effort to make one whole robot out of all the parts; an olive green arm waited on the ground to be attached to the shoulder socket and there were still a great number of holes in the body plating. John gave the black cheek he was leaning against a consoling pat. "I'm sure he'll run even faster with your leg, buddy."
It was really hard not to anthropomorphize them. No matter how much denial Rodney engaged in, it was pretty obvious they had been made in the image of humans -- if humans with very exaggerated proportions. Five-fingered hands, two eyes, two arms and (really long) legs...
"... Still," came Rodney's voice, drifting up. "Six months and you haven't figured out anything."
"I wouldn't say anything--"
"Six. Months."
Rodney appeared ass first out of an access panel on the middle robot's flank.
"Yes, well, dilemma here. The amount of rare metals in this alloy already makes it much too expensive to mass-produce, even if we did figure out how to replicate the process. Training someone to operate it -- a highly complex machine that we don't fully understand and which might never become useful -- that's even more expensive, and possibly pointless. And the civilization responsible for it hasn't popped up on the radar as a threat yet, and a half-dozen other species have. Hence the very puzzling, very fascinating side project." Laurent gave a disgusted grimace. "We work on it when we have time, but it's so low priority it might as well be a giant paperweight."
Another scientist nodded, glum-faced. "The operating system, now, it sure isn't Linux. Or God forbid Windows. We've been making some headway understanding the decision trees, but this is ... well. Complex. Not out of reach, I mean, nothing like what the Asgard use, but..." She bit her lip. "More than we humans can currently do. It doesn't help that there's passwords up the wazoo."
John gave the black robot head a last pat and slid off to the ground, ambling to the other robot. The trio of scientists were climbing scaffolding to get to the torso, still muttering technobabble away.
"The thrusters in the... er, wing, though..."
Rodney snorted loudly. "Please, 'wing' is so unscientific." He leaned forward to put his hand on a big chin and cautiously climbed the face. "Besides there are lots of aliens who are shaped roughly like humans out there, you can't anthropomorphize everything. Just because it vaguely looks like... It could be back-mounted tentacles."
"Or palm tree branches!" added Laurent, mock-innocent.
"You laugh, but wait and see. With all the weird unnecessary decorations --" He waved toward a golden 'eyebrow', and almost slid and fell on his ass on the slick metal, which would have been bad; John had to catch his elbow -- "for all we know it's a ritual leaf umbrella."
John rolled his eyes, at the lack of acknowledgement and the denial both, and climbed on the face-mask after him. He wondered vaguely if the makers of the robot had pushed it far enough to model a nose and mouth underneath the plating. Now that would be kinda creepy.
Rodney was crouched at the edge of the mask, shining a light in one of the cracked green glass eye; John joined him.
"Psst, Rodney. You were supposed to find us good scientists to take home, not invite yourself to play with their toys."
Rodney rolled his eyes at him. "Psst, Major, someone who has the mental flexibility to take this kind of tech in stride and repair it even though it's so completely different from what they have been trained on is someone we want. It's a great test!"
"Uh huh," said John, not even a little convinced. "Well, have fun with your big robots."
"You're just jealous because it won't light up for you like one of your slutty puddlejumpers."
John drew up in offense. "Hey! My puddlejumpers are not slutty. I can't help it if they find my genes superior. I bet this handles like a drunk, plodding tank anyway. I don't care how many dampeners they've got, you'd probably get thrown around with every step it walked. Who wants to pilot something that clumsy?"
"Uh huh," said Rodney, just as convinced as John had been a second ago; and then he turned away like he'd actually won the argument already and there was no point continuing. "Minions!"
Laurent and the woman scientist stared at him, and another techy guy.
"So we have plating that blocks any and all kinds of radiations. We have a cockpit that, if it wasn't dinged to hell and back, would be perfectly airtight and then some, and which seems at first look to have several hatch doors in a row. We have a rather small yet very efficient nuclear core. And the thrusters, there, and there... and there... And who can tell me what this is?" he asked, pointing imperiously at something on another of the piles.
"I always thought it looked like an oxygen machine. Air purifier unit?"
"Uh huh. Presumably there's one in each of them. And when we add all that, what do we get?"
There was a little moment of silence.
"... You're kidding me," said John when he got it. "This thing is spaceworthy?"
Rodney made a dismissive hand gesture and smirked his 'see? I so win' smile. "The military grunt got it before you lot, did you get your doctorates in a Happy Meal or what?"
And as Laurent and the other two protested, John eyed the propped up black robot, remembered the protrusions on the back of the one they stood on, and threw his counterattacking shot. "... Yeah, sorry Rodney... It's an angel. It's totally supposed to be an angel."
He couldn't enjoy the totally disgusted look Rodney sent him very long. Hopkins was coming back, boot heels striking the pavement hard with each step. This was not yet a 'hurry hurry hurry, we have five minutes before explosion' kind of walk, but definitely not a 'everything is well within the base' either. She had two Airmen in tow.
He didn't bother with the scaffolding, just hopped to the shoulder and jogged down the arm, where he dropped to the ground. "General Hopkins, ma'am?"
She was opening her mouth to tell him when the hangar doors slammed closed and the intruder alarm started blaring, which made an explanation rather moot.
--
"Isn't he kind of undersized for a Jaffa?"
Clustered around a computer, they watched the progress of the intruder -- what the cameras could catch of his progress -- through the base. The woman General -- what was her name, Hopsomething, had taken the spot in front of the monitor, and was barking out short orders as she coordinated her troops through her headset. After watching the intruder mow down half a platoon she wasn't too eager to risk the corridors without a good reason, which Rodney thought showed a higher than usual IQ for a member of the military.
"Also dressed very modern for a Jaffa," John pointed out. The man wore jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt; arguably Rodney wasn't an expert in alien fashion, but he was tempted to agree.
It figured that one of the most secure facilities on the planet would get breached on the day John and Rodney visited. Really, he should have expected it.
An Airman was swept off his feet and thrown over scrawny shoulders to crash on the ground. Rodney was disturbingly reminded of Lieutenant Aiden Ford, doped up on Wraith enzyme. He sneaked a look at John, but he was hard to read at the best of times and right now his expression was all intense concentration; no way to figure out if he'd been reminded of Ford as well. Uncomfortable, Rodney looked away.
"At least it's very unlikely he's interested in the contents of a hangar that has been on the backburner for the last six months," Laurie... Lozenge... robot-geek said, grinning wide and nervous. Rodney groaned and glared at him.
Not that he believed in Murphy's Law. Much.
"He's through the fourth layer of security and almost to the Bloc C labs," one of the Airmen reported tersely. "And -- he's gone."
Rodney nudged the woman General a bit so he could call up the floor blueprints. She narrowed her already wrinkly eyes at him.
"Don't you have sensors in the air ducts?"
"We do," she retorted. "We also have welded steel grates."
"Well, either he evaporated through concrete walls or he transformed into a rat and wriggled through," he snapped right back.
Then he straightened up. Ah.
Apart from a couple of detours, the intruder's path had been pretty straightforward. Either he was going for the labs, or...
"I'm going to cut power," he told John, and started running toward the robot-pile, already running through schematics in his head. The reactor core had a rather elegant design, and they couldn't actually get into the cockpit to power it down from that end, but if he cut through a few lines -- alright, not this one, it would backflow and explode, and probably take a chunk of desert with it. Maybe --
"McKay!" yelled John behind him.
Rodney had been conditioned to that voice. He dashed for the closest cover he could get, dove between the robot's arm and its flank, and flattened himself on the ground.
Overhead a metal grate ricocheted off weird alloy and clanged loudly to the ground. Rodney saw John rush past.
The intruder was rappelling down from the hangar ceiling, zipping down so fast for a second Rodney thought he wasn't going to slow down in time to absorb the impact with the top of the black helmet-head. And then he was crouched down low and John was taking position and oh hell, Rodney had been right. All the computers were mere terminals; destroying them wouldn't affect the data, which was stored in another room. But the artifacts themselves...
John would cover him. Rodney scrambled up the arm, dove in the hollow of its neck for cover, and crawled as fast as he could for the torn-up and as of yet still missing panels on the other side of that big green chest-thing.
Then there was a gunshot behind him and John yelling and he turned back just in time to see Jaffa-boy do a tarzan over the divide between the two robots. The intruder let go of the grappling gun -- seriously? those existed? -- at the apex of his swing, clearing the last of the distance in a long flying arc and oh hell why was Rodney not running yet, why was he throwing himself down by the hole in the plating, those were feet thumping on the chest globe-thing and he'd been right, right, right, why couldn't he have been right faster, which cable was --
Ghhk. Pressure point. He knew it was a pressure point, he knew his shoulder blade wasn't really shattered, but it hurt like fire anyway and left his hand numb; his wrench clanged down into a dark hole full of wires and bearings. He tried to flip on his back and kick up, but he only managed an uncoordinated flop as the mystery intruder chose that time to haul him back and up on his feet one-handed, and oh, no way was he human.
Something beeped, and John was yelling something in his "you put him down right now" voice that Rodney didn't catch in detail, god he hated the human shield gig -- and then oh hell he'd left his stomach behind.
He fell backward for a very long second of heart-stopping visceral terror, his legs and heels glancing off metal; the impact along his back that brought him to a sudden stop was more stunning than painful but he didn't notice. The back of his head banged into something that made his vision white out for a second, and then something was landing on him and knocking the breath out of him. He struggled, choking, trapped on his back with his legs up in the air, hands searching for something to grab onto.
"Stop," someone snapped. Rodney froze by pure reflex.
Then with a loud grating noise the cockpit hatch slid closed.
And then Rodney was alone in the dark with an alien commando.
Next.
--------------
-A Jaffa is a member of a slave race, they are humans who have been modified to have a pouch in their belly that holds a larval Goa'uld; they also tend to be really strong and stuff. A Goa'uld is a snake/worm like alien that gets inside people, wraps itself around their spinal cord and brain, and takes over. They also pretend to be gods a lot. >_>
-A Puddlejumper is a spaceship that can be operated by someone who has the Ancient gene (John does naturally, Rodney by gene therapy). There's a mental/telepathic component to Ancient technology.
-Trinium is an imaginary metal used in Stargate; Iridium is a real metal that you find very rarely on Earth (total weight of "native" iridium is I think something like three tons for the whole planet), but which you find more of in asteroids.
-Mechatronics is alas not the study of mechas. It's "the combination of Mechanical engineering, Electronic engineering, Computer engineering, Control engineering, and Systems Design engineering in order to design, and manufacture useful products. Mechatronics is a multidisciplinary engineering system design, that is to say it rejects splitting engineering into separate disciplines." Gasp a real science! The coincidence was just funny to me.
... Okay I'm a nerd. .__.
Notes: First time I write Major John Sheppard and Doctor Rodney McKay. For those of you who don't watch Startgate (either Atlantis or SG-1), the show is scifi; the military discovers a network of gates that instantly transport people to wherever they've entered the right series of glyphs as an adress (and a metric fuckton of aliens who hate them and OOPS NOW EARTH IS BACK ON THE GRID.) John and Rodney are from the spinoff series where they go off to another galaxy to find the lost city of Atlantis; John is the maverick Air Force pilot who accidentally ends up on the mission and then ends up the highest-ranking officer, and Rodney is the abrasive genius scientist who's surprisingly brave when he's not busy freaking the hell out. They're on the same exploration team. This story happens post-first season, when after a year of being cut off from Earth and surviving on their own they manage to reestablish contact, and briefly go home. As for Gundam Wing, it's post-Endless Waltz.
Genre: Action, character interaction, Asuka is a nerd. Gen.
Summary: Rodney is looking for new personnel for Atlantis; instead he finds a new project. John isn't looking for anyone, but he might find someone anyway.
So far none of the people John had met today were people he wanted to take back to Atlantis with him. The geeks at Area 51 were exactly how John would have pictured people working at a "secret" military base targeted by so many conspiracy crazies a year ago, back when his thoughts on aliens could be summarized with 'makes for fun movies'. White coats and pocket protectors, and their heads so far up in theoretical conjectures it was a wonder Major General Hopkins hadn't assigned more Airmen to make sure they didn't walk into walls.
John hoped Rodney knew how to sort diamonds in the rough from rocks, because it would be a waste of fuel and resources to stuff the Daedalus full of personnel they would lose at the first trial by fire. He didn't hope too hard, though, because he was pretty sure Rodney owed his Head Scientist position to being the most polyvalent of them all -- certainly not to his talents in personnel management.
Of course, John wasn't very likely to be involved in those decisions anyway. He hadn't been anyone's choice for a military leader; he'd be lucky enough to be sent back as Second in Command of whoever they appointed as Base Commander for Atlantis if he was sent back at all, forget being in a position to select the men he knew they needed.
Ahead of them, leaning over the shoulder of a very surprised scientist, Rodney was saying "Oh, don't worry," in that snide tone that made John wish for popcorn. John aimed a little 'what can you do' shrug at General Hopkins and ambled closer, trying not to grin. (It wasn't like he didn't appreciate Hopkins making an effort at small talk, but between a discussion about the most recent crazy person testing the security of the base and Rodney unleashing verbal hell, he knew which grabbed his interest the most.)
"If I have enough clearance for all your top-secret projects ever, I certainly have enough clearance for your time-wasting little pastimes." Rodney stole the man's mouse and clicked back with a harrumph. "I probably should be glad it isn't porn."
Hah. With the limited amount of personal files the first wave personnel all been able to bring John would have bet Rodney knew all the porn available on Atlantis by heart, even the niches he usually wouldn't care much about. John sure did.
"May I?" he inquired.
The scientist -- a Dr. Laurent -- looked up at General Hopkins for confirmation; when she gave a dry little nod, he sighed and nudged his chair back to allow access. John leaned in over Rodney's shoulder.
Schematics. Huh. Another alien craft, no doubt. It didn't remind him of Ancient tech at all; maybe Goa'uld or... something else entirely. Some kind of reactor core, joints, weirdly shaped air foils, fuselage -- wait a minute.
Usually he tried not to think of people as nerds -- pot, kettle, and he knew a lot of charming nerds...
Rodney gave a jaundiced look at the screen. "Hmph. Might as well be porn. Cartoon nerd."
The first inkling John had that Dr. Laurent might not do too badly in Atlantis was when the man, instead of being cowed, started in on a slow-blooming smirk. "Uh huh? Come on."
And then he was bouncing off his chair -- with a lot of energy for a fifty-year-old -- and stalking his way to a door at the other end of the room, passing a lot of intrigued scientists. It was the first time in a while that John saw someone doing that "Of course you'll follow me, you have to follow me, why do I even need to slow down and check" routine on Rodney rather than the other way around. Rodney stood looking offended for all of three seconds before he went charging after Laurent.
"There is absolutely no way we will get Doctor McKay to follow the visit schedule, is there?" Hopkins inquired, looking wholly unsurprised.
"Afraid not, ma'am," John apologized, and fell into step with her as they followed.
Beige corridor, high-security gate, gray, concrete-walled corridor, another gate -- this one demanded retina scans on top of their access cards. The hangar behind it was wide, several tennis courts long and at least three stories high. Scientists puttered around several piles of what at first glance looked like so much scrap metal.
"...had them for the last, oh, almost six months now, and we still don't know where the heck they're coming from," Laurent was saying happily as he led Rodney around an olive-green pile and into the central aisle. "It's not any civilization we know and we haven't even pinned down the alloy."
"What, don't tell me you bunch of idiots can't even work out the composition!"
"Oh, we have the composition -- mostly trinium, fifteen percent iridium, a few trace elements -- but we have no clue on Earth how they managed to gel together like that. This alloy is -- shouldn't be, but is -- entirely electrically non-conductive, and if it hadn't come down in a shuttle it would have passed us right by, because it cannot be detected by radar."
Laurent turned to face Rodney, grinning proudly, and rested a hand on a white-painted wall of metal. The paint was gouged and scored in a lot of places, tinted dark with smoke; underneath the metal was faultless, gleaming with an odd, wet gunmetal sheen under the ceiling lights.
John was watching Rodney step over a pile of strangely segmented, round-tipped blocks and onto a flatter part when the perspective snapped into place.
Rodney was standing in the palm of a hand. A giant, articulated metal hand.
"... Holy fuck."
At his side General Hopkins gave a little snort and mercifully pretended not to have heard. John craned his neck as he walked down the aisle, skirting the piles of scrap metal to have enough space to see it in its entirety.
"I'll be damned. It is a giant robot."
Laurent was still grinning like a proud papa as Rodney McKay, notorious underminer of everyone's pride but his own, stared dumbfounded at a green-eyed helmeted face almost as big as he was tall.
"So. Does my taste in geek porn meet with your approval?"
--
A half-hour later Rodney was still poking around the hangar, and John was pretty sure that unless he handcuffed himself to his desk Dr. Andrew Laurent (Ph.Ds in Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics, whatever the hell that was) would be onboard the Daedalus when it made its trip back to the Pegasus Galaxy. Not that Rodney had asked yet, but John knew his teammate.
John had found himself a perch on a black-painted shoulder to watch. There were five distinct piles in the hangar, four of them mostly arms and legs and pieces of weapons, scrap metal puzzles with too many missing pieces; the one he sat on was now nothing but an upper torso and a head, standing upright, held propped up on strange protrusions emerging where shoulder blades should be. It was the highest vantage point, good for keeping track of where his head scientist was.
The robot in the middle, the most complete, white and red and blue, had been at some point in the last six months equipped with a black leg, in an effort to make one whole robot out of all the parts; an olive green arm waited on the ground to be attached to the shoulder socket and there were still a great number of holes in the body plating. John gave the black cheek he was leaning against a consoling pat. "I'm sure he'll run even faster with your leg, buddy."
It was really hard not to anthropomorphize them. No matter how much denial Rodney engaged in, it was pretty obvious they had been made in the image of humans -- if humans with very exaggerated proportions. Five-fingered hands, two eyes, two arms and (really long) legs...
"... Still," came Rodney's voice, drifting up. "Six months and you haven't figured out anything."
"I wouldn't say anything--"
"Six. Months."
Rodney appeared ass first out of an access panel on the middle robot's flank.
"Yes, well, dilemma here. The amount of rare metals in this alloy already makes it much too expensive to mass-produce, even if we did figure out how to replicate the process. Training someone to operate it -- a highly complex machine that we don't fully understand and which might never become useful -- that's even more expensive, and possibly pointless. And the civilization responsible for it hasn't popped up on the radar as a threat yet, and a half-dozen other species have. Hence the very puzzling, very fascinating side project." Laurent gave a disgusted grimace. "We work on it when we have time, but it's so low priority it might as well be a giant paperweight."
Another scientist nodded, glum-faced. "The operating system, now, it sure isn't Linux. Or God forbid Windows. We've been making some headway understanding the decision trees, but this is ... well. Complex. Not out of reach, I mean, nothing like what the Asgard use, but..." She bit her lip. "More than we humans can currently do. It doesn't help that there's passwords up the wazoo."
John gave the black robot head a last pat and slid off to the ground, ambling to the other robot. The trio of scientists were climbing scaffolding to get to the torso, still muttering technobabble away.
"The thrusters in the... er, wing, though..."
Rodney snorted loudly. "Please, 'wing' is so unscientific." He leaned forward to put his hand on a big chin and cautiously climbed the face. "Besides there are lots of aliens who are shaped roughly like humans out there, you can't anthropomorphize everything. Just because it vaguely looks like... It could be back-mounted tentacles."
"Or palm tree branches!" added Laurent, mock-innocent.
"You laugh, but wait and see. With all the weird unnecessary decorations --" He waved toward a golden 'eyebrow', and almost slid and fell on his ass on the slick metal, which would have been bad; John had to catch his elbow -- "for all we know it's a ritual leaf umbrella."
John rolled his eyes, at the lack of acknowledgement and the denial both, and climbed on the face-mask after him. He wondered vaguely if the makers of the robot had pushed it far enough to model a nose and mouth underneath the plating. Now that would be kinda creepy.
Rodney was crouched at the edge of the mask, shining a light in one of the cracked green glass eye; John joined him.
"Psst, Rodney. You were supposed to find us good scientists to take home, not invite yourself to play with their toys."
Rodney rolled his eyes at him. "Psst, Major, someone who has the mental flexibility to take this kind of tech in stride and repair it even though it's so completely different from what they have been trained on is someone we want. It's a great test!"
"Uh huh," said John, not even a little convinced. "Well, have fun with your big robots."
"You're just jealous because it won't light up for you like one of your slutty puddlejumpers."
John drew up in offense. "Hey! My puddlejumpers are not slutty. I can't help it if they find my genes superior. I bet this handles like a drunk, plodding tank anyway. I don't care how many dampeners they've got, you'd probably get thrown around with every step it walked. Who wants to pilot something that clumsy?"
"Uh huh," said Rodney, just as convinced as John had been a second ago; and then he turned away like he'd actually won the argument already and there was no point continuing. "Minions!"
Laurent and the woman scientist stared at him, and another techy guy.
"So we have plating that blocks any and all kinds of radiations. We have a cockpit that, if it wasn't dinged to hell and back, would be perfectly airtight and then some, and which seems at first look to have several hatch doors in a row. We have a rather small yet very efficient nuclear core. And the thrusters, there, and there... and there... And who can tell me what this is?" he asked, pointing imperiously at something on another of the piles.
"I always thought it looked like an oxygen machine. Air purifier unit?"
"Uh huh. Presumably there's one in each of them. And when we add all that, what do we get?"
There was a little moment of silence.
"... You're kidding me," said John when he got it. "This thing is spaceworthy?"
Rodney made a dismissive hand gesture and smirked his 'see? I so win' smile. "The military grunt got it before you lot, did you get your doctorates in a Happy Meal or what?"
And as Laurent and the other two protested, John eyed the propped up black robot, remembered the protrusions on the back of the one they stood on, and threw his counterattacking shot. "... Yeah, sorry Rodney... It's an angel. It's totally supposed to be an angel."
He couldn't enjoy the totally disgusted look Rodney sent him very long. Hopkins was coming back, boot heels striking the pavement hard with each step. This was not yet a 'hurry hurry hurry, we have five minutes before explosion' kind of walk, but definitely not a 'everything is well within the base' either. She had two Airmen in tow.
He didn't bother with the scaffolding, just hopped to the shoulder and jogged down the arm, where he dropped to the ground. "General Hopkins, ma'am?"
She was opening her mouth to tell him when the hangar doors slammed closed and the intruder alarm started blaring, which made an explanation rather moot.
--
"Isn't he kind of undersized for a Jaffa?"
Clustered around a computer, they watched the progress of the intruder -- what the cameras could catch of his progress -- through the base. The woman General -- what was her name, Hopsomething, had taken the spot in front of the monitor, and was barking out short orders as she coordinated her troops through her headset. After watching the intruder mow down half a platoon she wasn't too eager to risk the corridors without a good reason, which Rodney thought showed a higher than usual IQ for a member of the military.
"Also dressed very modern for a Jaffa," John pointed out. The man wore jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt; arguably Rodney wasn't an expert in alien fashion, but he was tempted to agree.
It figured that one of the most secure facilities on the planet would get breached on the day John and Rodney visited. Really, he should have expected it.
An Airman was swept off his feet and thrown over scrawny shoulders to crash on the ground. Rodney was disturbingly reminded of Lieutenant Aiden Ford, doped up on Wraith enzyme. He sneaked a look at John, but he was hard to read at the best of times and right now his expression was all intense concentration; no way to figure out if he'd been reminded of Ford as well. Uncomfortable, Rodney looked away.
"At least it's very unlikely he's interested in the contents of a hangar that has been on the backburner for the last six months," Laurie... Lozenge... robot-geek said, grinning wide and nervous. Rodney groaned and glared at him.
Not that he believed in Murphy's Law. Much.
"He's through the fourth layer of security and almost to the Bloc C labs," one of the Airmen reported tersely. "And -- he's gone."
Rodney nudged the woman General a bit so he could call up the floor blueprints. She narrowed her already wrinkly eyes at him.
"Don't you have sensors in the air ducts?"
"We do," she retorted. "We also have welded steel grates."
"Well, either he evaporated through concrete walls or he transformed into a rat and wriggled through," he snapped right back.
Then he straightened up. Ah.
Apart from a couple of detours, the intruder's path had been pretty straightforward. Either he was going for the labs, or...
"I'm going to cut power," he told John, and started running toward the robot-pile, already running through schematics in his head. The reactor core had a rather elegant design, and they couldn't actually get into the cockpit to power it down from that end, but if he cut through a few lines -- alright, not this one, it would backflow and explode, and probably take a chunk of desert with it. Maybe --
"McKay!" yelled John behind him.
Rodney had been conditioned to that voice. He dashed for the closest cover he could get, dove between the robot's arm and its flank, and flattened himself on the ground.
Overhead a metal grate ricocheted off weird alloy and clanged loudly to the ground. Rodney saw John rush past.
The intruder was rappelling down from the hangar ceiling, zipping down so fast for a second Rodney thought he wasn't going to slow down in time to absorb the impact with the top of the black helmet-head. And then he was crouched down low and John was taking position and oh hell, Rodney had been right. All the computers were mere terminals; destroying them wouldn't affect the data, which was stored in another room. But the artifacts themselves...
John would cover him. Rodney scrambled up the arm, dove in the hollow of its neck for cover, and crawled as fast as he could for the torn-up and as of yet still missing panels on the other side of that big green chest-thing.
Then there was a gunshot behind him and John yelling and he turned back just in time to see Jaffa-boy do a tarzan over the divide between the two robots. The intruder let go of the grappling gun -- seriously? those existed? -- at the apex of his swing, clearing the last of the distance in a long flying arc and oh hell why was Rodney not running yet, why was he throwing himself down by the hole in the plating, those were feet thumping on the chest globe-thing and he'd been right, right, right, why couldn't he have been right faster, which cable was --
Ghhk. Pressure point. He knew it was a pressure point, he knew his shoulder blade wasn't really shattered, but it hurt like fire anyway and left his hand numb; his wrench clanged down into a dark hole full of wires and bearings. He tried to flip on his back and kick up, but he only managed an uncoordinated flop as the mystery intruder chose that time to haul him back and up on his feet one-handed, and oh, no way was he human.
Something beeped, and John was yelling something in his "you put him down right now" voice that Rodney didn't catch in detail, god he hated the human shield gig -- and then oh hell he'd left his stomach behind.
He fell backward for a very long second of heart-stopping visceral terror, his legs and heels glancing off metal; the impact along his back that brought him to a sudden stop was more stunning than painful but he didn't notice. The back of his head banged into something that made his vision white out for a second, and then something was landing on him and knocking the breath out of him. He struggled, choking, trapped on his back with his legs up in the air, hands searching for something to grab onto.
"Stop," someone snapped. Rodney froze by pure reflex.
Then with a loud grating noise the cockpit hatch slid closed.
And then Rodney was alone in the dark with an alien commando.
Next.
--------------
-A Jaffa is a member of a slave race, they are humans who have been modified to have a pouch in their belly that holds a larval Goa'uld; they also tend to be really strong and stuff. A Goa'uld is a snake/worm like alien that gets inside people, wraps itself around their spinal cord and brain, and takes over. They also pretend to be gods a lot. >_>
-A Puddlejumper is a spaceship that can be operated by someone who has the Ancient gene (John does naturally, Rodney by gene therapy). There's a mental/telepathic component to Ancient technology.
-Trinium is an imaginary metal used in Stargate; Iridium is a real metal that you find very rarely on Earth (total weight of "native" iridium is I think something like three tons for the whole planet), but which you find more of in asteroids.
-Mechatronics is alas not the study of mechas. It's "the combination of Mechanical engineering, Electronic engineering, Computer engineering, Control engineering, and Systems Design engineering in order to design, and manufacture useful products. Mechatronics is a multidisciplinary engineering system design, that is to say it rejects splitting engineering into separate disciplines." Gasp a real science! The coincidence was just funny to me.
... Okay I'm a nerd. .__.