Raiders of the Seven Systems by ltlj, commentary by teenygozer 3/7
Title: Raiders of the Seven Systems
Author: ltlj
Fandom: SGA
Commentator: teenygozer
Story without DVD commentary: Right here!
Rot7S Commentary Part 2
John's POV:
The Athosians moved their base camp at random, more of that Lost theme: once they had a home world, but now they are itinerant wanderers, essentially homeless, but John had to admit that he was fond of this particular planet. The stargate was in a valley with lush tropical vegetation, surrounding a ruined Ancient site with white stone pillars. There was a round section of grassy field in the center, with the remnants of a few shallow fountains, probably the remains of a park. It made a good spot for the Athosians to put up their tent-huts, for the open cooking fires they still preferred, and for John to play football with the kids. It's a lovely picture painted here; they've made a little haven of peace for themselves.
The Vengeance of Athos was currently resting on one of the ruin's big open platforms, having its engines worked over. John was sitting on the deck in the hold, updating the ammo inventory on one of their little datapads, while Teyla and some of the others worked to sort out their latest stolen cargo. They were separating it into things they could use and things to sell, always a tough job because the Athosians tended to collect stuff like magpies. "You don't need five bales of whatever the hell that is," John told Teyla, partly amused and partly exasperated.
"But it could prove useful," Teyla protested, running her hands over the silky fabric. If she'd said, "We can make sparkly curtains and throw pillows from it!" she'd have won the argument.
Then Halling leaned in through the inner hatch. "John, the ATA has failed again. Could you...?"
John sighed, and pushed to his feet. "Sure."
Teyla looked up, frowning. "Again?"
Halling made a helpless gesture. "Perhaps our new friends will be able to tell us why."
John followed Halling back up through the ship toward the bridge area. Most of the systems were shut down, making the compartments and accessways strangely quiet; John always thought the ship just felt wrong once it had been landed on a planet and partially powered down. Wrong as in empty, dead, and vulnerable.
But it was necessary, and he knew it was helping. McKay and Carter had gotten the Vengeance's Ancient cloak to work, and fixed a dozen chronic problems on the other three ships. John thought they had more than paid back the effort of rescuing them, and kept expecting them to ask to leave. He was of two minds about that: he knew how dangerous Pegasus could be. Safety meant numbers, and McKay and Carter would be safer with the Athosians. But having them here was still uncomfortable for him. If it was permanent, you'd get used to them, he told himself. Maybe he needed to just suck it up and get over it. They know too much about him by virtue of the fact that they come from the same place, plus they ask questions. It never occurs to John that he could and should be asking questions, uncomfortable questions, of them.
When John reached the cockpit he heard McKay saying, "That doesn't make sense, he's just back in the cargo area, right? It shouldn't fail at that range."
Half the consoles were open, tools and sensors and electronic innards strewn everywhere. Carter, Selana, and McKay were sitting in the middle of it; John wasn't sure where Halling had fit in, unless he had been perched on top of the console.
Selana shook her head, studying the schematic on her datapad. "We believe something is fundamentally wrong with our connections between the Ancestors' technology and our own. It fails intermittently, and we have not been able to trace the errors."
"We've been lucky," John admitted, edging his way past them to the pilot's console. "It's never failed at a critical moment."
"Never during a battle?" Carter asked, frowning.
"Well, yeah, but not a critical moment during a battle." John, sweetie, I don't think "critical" means what you think it means. John drew his knife and put the tip against the heel of his hand.
He saw Carter wince. She said, "There's got to be a better way."
"That's what everybody says." John put his hand against the access plate, feeling the Ancient tech warm to life again.
McKay snorted. "Yes, but this is barbaric."
John couldn't let that one pass. "The Genii had a guy with the gene, from some backwater planet where the Ancients had a city once. They had him strapped to a table with half a dozen tubes in him gradually siphoning off his blood. That's barbaric." He looked at McKay deliberately. "This is just inconvenient. Now, are we done?" I wondered if that was why John might be so averse to the expedience of simply siphoning off a pint of his own blood into a bag via a tube, the way we do when we donate blood, and have the Athosians keep it refrigerated for much easier use -- the memory of this terrible thing he'd seen making it impossible to bear having a simple needle or tube stuck in his arm. I also wondered if the guy John spoke of survived being siphoned, or if the Genii would be so stupid as to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. If they did kill the guy, was it possibly because they now had John, a much stronger gene carrier and they wanted to teach John a lesson in obedience by killing the guy? The Genii never would have thought John's escape could happen in a million years.
I find it interesting that John is finally parting with personal info, but it's not about sharing, he's trying to score something off of someone else with it.
Carter looked up, her mouth set in a sympathetic line. "We're done."
John climbed out of the cockpit, and made it almost to the lounge area before McKay caught up with him. Ducking under one of the Athosian hangings, he said, "Sheppard!"
John stopped, reluctantly. "What?"
McKay looked around, as if checking to see who was listening. Nobody was; this part of the ship was deserted, with everyone working either in the cockpit or the hold, or outside. McKay lowered his voice from its usual carrying tone, and said, "Why do you do this for these people?"
John considered pretending not to know what "this" meant, yeah, if John wanted to be particularly maddening, he'd ask, "Doing what?" with that patented CO-enraging smile in place, but decided he would rather argue than obfuscate. He said pointedly, "I'm one of these people, McKay."
McKay waved a hand in frustration. "But that was just because there was no other choice, right?"
That...was a weird question. "There were other choices. I like it here." John couldn't quite figure what this was about. "What's it matter to you?"
McKay stepped back, folding his arms and lifting his chin. "Nothing. I just wondered." Don't back down now, idiot! SHARE, dammit! First time in his life Rodney ever played it close to the chest, and he picked a hell of a time to start.
Fine, John didn't have time to deal with this. Keeping his voice just even enough to make it a threat, he said, "Wonder about something else," and walked away down the corridor.
***
Rodney's POV:
Dammit, Rodney thought with a grimace. That went well. He was starting to think Carter might be the tiniest bit right about his crappy interpersonal skills. Ya think?
"You should not push him so hard," Teyla said, from the hatchway.
Rodney flinched guiltily, trying to remember just what it was he had said. Nothing too incriminating, or Sheppard would still be in here, probably punching him. He tried to bluff it out. "Oh, and why is that?"
Teyla stepped into the lounge. She didn't look angry, at least. "I know that your world is lost to you, and I understand something of what that is like. Because of the Genii, we will never be able to return to Athos, though we were lucky in that many of our people escaped to accompany us."
That caught Rodney by surprise. Okay, well...yes. It's partly that." Rodney had heard about Athos, but for some reason he hadn't thought to compare it to their own situation. Earth was taken over by the Trust, Athos had been bombed and rendered uninhabitable by the Genii. All right, so maybe they did have that in common. Rodney is not in the habit of putting himself in other people's shoes.
She added, "I know that having found another refugee from your world, you do not wish to be parted from him."
Rodney could hardly tell her he was more interested in not being parted from Sheppard's powerful expression of the Ancient gene. But...maybe it wasn't only that. He had trouble reconciling crazy Sheppard the Genii-killing pirate with the Sheppard that he saw here in camp. The one that played half-assed games of football with the kids, who got up before dawn to go running, and wandered around barefoot and unshaven in the evening. The adorkable, disheveled Sheppard who looks like he wouldn't hurt a fly is getting under Rodney's skin. The one the Athosians seemed to think was fragile. Frustrated, he asked her honestly, "Why doesn't he want to talk about Earth? What the hell happened there?"
Teyla shook her head, her mouth tightening as she considered the question. For a moment he didn't think she was going to answer, then she said reluctantly, "I do not think it is Earth. I think he does not want to talk about any part of the past." She hesitated again. "You know the Genii killed his friend. They also used one of their captive Wraith to torture John, allowing it to feed on him, and then forcing it to return what it had taken."
Rodney felt sick. He had seen some of the Ancient material on the Wraith, the descriptions of the war, the hellish way the Wraith had used the human populations of Pegasus as cattle. "How did he get away?"
"He persuaded the Wraith to help him, and they escaped together." TODD!!
"That's...somehow not entirely a surprise." Rodney hesitated, struck by an unpleasant thought. Sheppard also had the air of a man who collected strays. "It's not still around here somewhere, is it, because--"
Teyla gave him a look, as if he had implied their camp had a vermin problem. "No. Once they had escaped, he killed it."
"Oh." Rodney shifted uneasily. "That was efficient of him." Play your cards wrong and you could be the next recipient of John's oh-so-efficient attention, Rodney.
"It asked him to, because it was one of the last of its kind. It did not wish to be alone." Teyla lifted a brow at him, as if no more needed to be said. It's a rather evocative image: Todd, the lost Wraith, with no home to go to, preferring to die under the open sky than live among non-Wraith, and it fits in with the Lost theme we have going here.
Watching her walk away, Rodney thought that she was right, there wasn't anything else to say. Sheppard wanted to be here, with these people. No amount of talk was going to change that. That's what I was afraid of, he thought, wincing. You're not going to do something irredeemably stupid, are you, McKay? McKay? MCKAY!?
***
John ran into Zoe in the corridor, coming in with a basket of Charin's homemade medicines to re-stock the ship's tiny sick bay. She stopped John, frowning, and took his hand to look at the new cut. "The ATA failed again? Even with you in the hold all day?"
John admitted it with a shrug. "We were due for another fluctuation."
She shook her head, resigned. "It's getting worse, isn't it?"
John nodded. Selana had a chart to keep track of the inexplicable failures Selana has MS Excel?! But seriously, OC Selana kind of plays computer girl as we go through this story. She's always the one taking readings or taking a station on a ship. The percentages weren't promising. "It's lucky we found Carter and McKay."
"I hate to say we were due some luck." Zoe shifted the basket onto her hip. "Nothing chases it away faster." This line of dialog has a very strong Firefly style. The character has retained her signature universe's slightly depressed, yet folksy mode of speech in the transplant to SGA.
John started to step past her, then found himself hesitating. "Do you trust them?"
Zoe leaned back against the bulkhead, giving the question serious consideration. John placed a lot of value on her judgment. Even in the time she had been with them, it was apparent that her ability to keep her head in a crisis was almost preternatural. He didn't think he could survive being thrown into another universe or dimension or whatever it was that had happened to her, it would appear Zoe also hasn't shared anything at all about her life before being saved by the Athosians, at least not the way she had, just picking up and going on with her life. Finally, she said, "I want to trust them. The thing about this tech is that it's so easy to use and learn. Then it breaks down--"
"And you're looking at a box of pretty crystals and air, with no idea what the hell to do." You know, this is actually something the show has never addressed: who makes the crystals we see people making repairs with on the show? Is there a great recycling project on Atlantis where damaged parts of the city are cannibalized and the crystals are used to replace burned out crystals in working parts of the city? We've also seen crystal technology being used by the Goa'uld, but it's all based on Ancient tech -- there MUST be someone, a factory on some planet somewhere, that makes these crystals. We've never seen it, though! John rubbed his eyes. It was an ongoing nightmare; they just didn't know enough about this technology. "Yeah."
"That's about it," Zoe agreed. She shrugged. "We haven't given them reason not to trust us." She added, with more than a tinge of grim resignation, "But then, some people don't need reason."
That one, John knew all too well. It's not just that John can't take concern shown for him, or people being nice to him, it's as if he's actively waiting for the next blow.
***
It was three days later, and John was sitting at the fire outside Halling's tent with most of the others. Insects were singing in the trees past the ruin, and twilight was darkening the sky to purple-gray. People were gathered in family groups around the various tents, and the kids were playing noisily, a last burst of energy before they had to wind down for sleep. Dinner that night was tuttle root soup, which weirdly, John was starting to develop a taste for. Then we can assume Teyla didn't make it.
"We must think of a good target to test our new cloaking ability," Teyla was saying. "The first time we will have a great advantage of surprise."
John nodded, poking absently at the rooty bits with his spoon. Yum! The rooty bits are the best part! "They'll think it's the cloaked jumper. While they're looking for it, we can bring the Vengeance in."
"Are we going for goods, or damage?" Zoe asked, watching John thoughtfully, as if she already knew he had an idea.
"Both?" Ronon suggested. He was sitting to one side of the fire, sharpening his sword. He had already finished his meal, tending to eat with the efficiency of someone used to starving and scrounging for years. Ronon has shown himself to be the ever-practical one in this story, the one who keeps on-point during missions when others are arguing amongst themselves, so "both" is probably quite doable and what they would have done if they'd gotten the chance. He may not have been a runner in this AU, but it sounds as if he's still had a pretty bad time of it. Given how modern Sateda looked canonically, I'm assuming they refused to buckle under the Genii's rule and their world is as destroyed as it would have been had the Wraith slapped them down.
"I think there's two possibilities," John said, looking up. "The stronghold in the asteroid field, or their homeworld."
Everybody got quiet for a long moment. Halling said, "The homeworld supplies their ships and the stronghold. Cutting them off would greatly curtail their activities."
Teyla's eyes were on the fire, her face lost in thought. "But if we destroyed the stronghold, we could take control of the Ancestors' warship."
John wanted that warship, even damaged as it was, with a bone-deep need. John's instinctive attraction to Ancient ship tech might be the deciding factor in this equation. Ship first, homeworld later.
Halling nodded slowly. "With the help of our new friends, we could learn much from it."
"Do they want to join up with us for certain?" Zoe asked, and it was hard to tell from her tone whether she thought it was a good thing or not. "Because somehow that's not the impression I got."
"I have spoken with them about it," Halling told her. "I have said we will be happy to take them to a destination of their choosing, or to give them gate addresses to planets that are safe from the Genii. But they have said they wish to stay for now."
Teyla shook her head. "Being with us does give them an opportunity to work with the Ancestors' technology that they may not be able to find anywhere else."
Of course, Teyla is entirely wrong -- Atlantis would give them that opportunity, not that she knows about that. But it's as if she's making excuses for them to be sticking around rather than seeking another (and possibly more malevolent) reason. So what is up with McKay and Carter sticking around when they can leave at any time, and presumably know how to dial Atlantis? In a way, easy access to a stargate is to the SGU as cellphones are to a tale set in the X-files universe: a too-easy fix for a problem. Just as excuses must be made as to why Mulder & Scully can't just use their cellphones to call for help, the SG writer has to figure out why her characters don't just dial the damned gate and go home when there's a gate just sitting there and nobody between them and it. I'm guessing part of it is that they are happy to help fix the tech this little group needs fixed because they are genuinely grateful for the rescue and are worried that they might get into trouble with their mutual enemy if it isn't fixed, but suspect that they are sticking around to get a feel for the people involved for the inevitable future negotiations -- seeking out new life and new civilizations is their geeky little scientist mandate as well the one inculcated in them by years with the SGC -- and, yes, because of their massive interest in Sheppard. Which is to say, Sam is just as interested in reuniting with Sheppard, as a fellow American and Earth-born human being, as well as his gene, as Rodney is, and she's pretty much doing exactly the same thing Rodney is, except she's doing it better. And, well, *saner*. OTOH, I have to assume there's an entire contingent of people out there, combing the galaxy and freaking out that Carter and McKay are lost in space, so I am a little surprised at the leisurely quality of our scientific duo's pace in returning, or in even phoning, home.
"They're coming," Ronon said quietly.
John looked to see McKay storming up along the path from the landing platforms, waving his arms, Carter following at a more normal speed. This was a fairly common performance at mealtimes. When McKay reached the fire, John said, automatically, "Don't panic, we saved you some."
"No, that's not it! I--" McKay stopped, switching from frantic to pleased and self-conscious in a heartbeat. "Oh, you did? Thanks." That whole thing where he's not really used to people being nice to him is something he shares with John. Then he switched back to frantic. "We've been working on something, a new interface for the ATA--"
Halling sat up, putting aside his bowl. "This will stop the intermittent failures?" he asked hopefully. The intermittent failures were the bane of Halling's life.
McKay waved that off. "No, it just means you won't need Sheppard anymore." Calling Doctor Freud, your slip is showing!
Halling stared. John blinked. Teyla shook her head. Ronon and Zoe exchanged a look.
Carter said quickly, "Uh, he didn't mean it like that. Rodney, explain a little further."
"What?" Distracted, McKay looked around, seeming to realize what he had said. "Oh. No, no, I meant you won't need the ritual blood sacrifice to keep the ATA active. We have a substitute that isn't physically painful."
"They are not ritual blood sacrifices," Teyla said with annoyance. This now reminds me of Ronon saying (with annoyance), "I didn't say it was magic!" in The Shrine.
Everybody looked at John again. If McKay was right... John said, slowly, "Okay, what is it?" John's default setting is, "What's the cloud surrounding this silver lining?" In this case, his paranoia is well-founded.
McKay sat down on a camp stool. "The Ancient Technology Activation is a field, constantly broadcast by the devices that use it. Originally we know it was a protective measure, a safeguard against the Wraith stealing and using the Ancients' weapons and defensive devices like the cloak and personal shields--"
Carter interrupted, "We still don't understand everything about the way it works, but because your ship's cloak was installed with a mix of Ancient and Athosian technology, its ATA is fluctuating, and it keeps losing the initialization data it collects whenever it comes into contact with you or your DNA." Huh, good technobabble! And it even makes sense!
McKay finished, "This will boost the ATA's transmissions. You'll have to wear it somewhere on your body, I'm thinking a black wristband will do the trick, but it's small, and will be less inconvenient than repeated self-mutilation." He gestured at John, impatient and elated. "Well? Do you want to test it or not?"
Everybody looked at John. Biting his lip, he considered it a moment, but if this was true... He couldn't see a downside here. "Yeah, let's try it."
John had been thinking they meant something more the size of a life-signs detector, but it turned out to be tiny, barely the size of a watch battery. They ran tests that night, and McKay and Carter spent the next day tweaking it, and they discovered that John did have to wear it against his skin.
But the long and the short of it was, it worked. Yeah, John; even works when it's doing stuff you have no idea it can do.
***
They had a party the next night, a real one, with Halling breaking out the homemade wine. They built a big bonfire up on one of the Ancient foundations, a tall platform that gave a good view of the ruin and the valley beyond. The sky was clear and full of stars, the night was just cool enough to make the fire comfortable, and John was feeling reasonably content. He was stretched out on his side, looking out at the ruin, with Teyla, Zoe, Ronon, Halling, Selana, McKay and Carter, and a dozen or so Athosians from the Vengeance's crew gathered around, talking and laughing. John had to admit that the "blood sacrifice" method had had its drawbacks, and he was relieved to see the end of it. It had always felt like a desperate stop-gap measure, a sign of how badly things could go wrong.
Everybody had had more than a few drinks, and it was around that point that McKay suddenly turned to John and asked, "How did you escape from Earth?"
John looked up to see all the Athosians watching him worriedly. Zoe was keeping her expression perfectly noncommittal, though Ronon looked a little edgy, which probably meant that he was curious too, but not much liking McKay's method of asking. But John sighed, and thought, why the hell not? After the transmitter, maybe he owed McKay an answer. Interesting, here we see John views the giving of information and the doing of favors in a system of barter; we've already seen that he cannot easily take someone being kind to him just for the sake of kindness, it's like he feels he has to somehow pay for it. Rodney did him a favor and he's getting an answer from John that he probably wouldn't have gotten otherwise. The others have also done favors and kindnesses to John, but they do not burden him with questions about his past...though, affronted as they are on John's behalf, apparently they are curious, too. "I was at McMurdo when it was overrun by the Trust. We didn't-- I didn't know about the stargate base up there before then. But the Trust tested everybody, found I had something called the Ancient gene, and I got locked up with the other gate personnel, as an alien." It was weird how that memory still stung, of being told he wasn't human. "A Colonel named Sumner was planning a breakout. There were two BC303s up there, they were going to steal them, head for the Pegasus supergate. I didn't know any of the details."
McKay gestured impatiently, slopping wine out of his cup. "But you're a pilot, and you have the Ancient gene, and they were running to Pegasus. Didn't they understand that--"
John interrupted, "I have -- had -- a bad record. Sumner knew about it. He decided I wasn't worth taking a chance on and he told me I wasn't getting a slot on either ship. In John's view, he of the "never leave a man behind" credo, this has got to be something of a cardinal sin committed against him, but I don't get the feeling that John really blames or hates Sumner as much as I would in the same situation. It actually feels like John sort of blames himself! Also, I can't help but think Sumner took some sort of instant, deep emotion-based vs. logic-based hatred to John during the stress of the terrible situation they had all been plunged into. It's hard to believe he'd leave a fellow member of the American military, not just behind, but locked in a jail cell with no way to defend himself; it's also difficult to believe he'd leave a gene-bearer behind knowing how important the gene was going to be for their survival--and he did know, because he sent Ford for Janet. John never says why his record is bad, but if had been all that horrifically bad in this AU--different from what we know it to be in our universe, where he disobeyed a direct order to try to save his men--the Air Force would have given him a dishonorable discharge or tossed him in the USDB at Fort Leavenworth, not transferred him, even if to a punishment post. Sumner was being over-the-top unreasonable here, especially given that he knew there was no way a gene carrier could plot with the Trust, as the Trust would have them dissected in any case. Do you know what the Trust did to Ancient gene carriers?"
"Yes," Carter said, and there was something under her quiet voice that told John that she did know, that maybe she had seen it. I was terrified we'd find out later in the story that they had killed Jack. To this day, I'm still terrified they killed the emo!codger (my nickname for Jack's clone) or Lorne, who isn't in this fic.
"What did they do?" Teyla asked softly. John had never told her this part. He had never told anybody this part.
McKay answered for him. "They dissect them." He sounded sick. I get the feeling that if Sumner somehow made it through and showed up in the Pegasus galaxy, he'd be toast, because a lot of people would happily see him dead after hearing this sad tale.
John wanted to get through the rest of the story. "They broke out, and a young lieutenant named Ford let me out of my cell anyway. Ford always shows up to save John's butt in the 11th hour, against all odds. We've all taken Ronon to our hearts, but should remember Ford for his habit of last-minute heroics. I headed for the hangars, figuring if I couldn't find something to fly out in, I'd just walk out." This foreshadows John's suicide attempt later in the story, we have an example that he would rather be dead than captured, even before all the torture he endured in the Genii's hands.
"Of Antarctica?" Carter lifted her brows. HEE! If someone lifts his or her brows, you're reading an ltlj story! I've noticed this slightly odd turn of phrase as a signature character reaction in every story she's written. I've also seen the occasional newbie fic writer use it and wonder if they cribbed the phrase from her.
"Yeah. It wasn't an ideal solution." John hadn't wanted to die, but he had known it would be better than being recaptured. "But their plan went to hell, and people were getting cut off from the ships. I ran into Ford again, and this time he had a doctor with him, named Janet. She was wounded." Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw Carter move, almost flinch, but when John looked up at her, her face was blank. This interests me--apparently Carter does not want to share the info that she knew Janet. It's not just John playing his cards too close to his vest, it's Carter, too. Does Carter think that if she shares her friendship with Janet with this group, John will assume she was part of the same group who was going to leave John in a jail cell in Antarctica, and that he might react badly because of it? Because Carter doesn't even share that she was/is military, let alone that she knew what was going on re: the Trust, but John has to know she knows something. And yet, and yet, he doesn't call her on it, and he totally could. It's very odd. I think I shall call this The Dance of the Pirate Code--a complicated dance where everybody protects his or her soft underbelly but nobody wins or gets anywhere. "She was important, and Sumner had sent Ford specifically to get her. She was a xenobiologist, she knew all about the gene, and besides the fact that they needed every medical doctor they could get, Sumner knew she'd come in handy once they got to Pegasus. Ford said if I helped them, Sumner would have to take me along. Ford, the ever-optimistic young man who cannot conceive of his CO's dishonorable behavior. I thought he was being optimistic, but what the hell. We made it to the launch bays, but we were still cut off from the BC303s. There was a jumper there. I didn't know what it was, but Janet said I might be able to fly it, so we took it. That's pretty much it."
McKay cleared his throat. "What happened to the others?"
"Both BC303s got blown up before they reached the supergate. Janet..." This part still hurt. Two BC303s get blown up and all on board are lost, but that doesn't affect John, who values the personal over the big picture, anywhere near as much as Janet's death. Janet was given into John's care, even if only for a few minutes, and she didn't make it, and that is what he regrets the most. John didn't know if things would have gone better, been different, if Janet had lived. But he thought maybe he and Ford might have been more careful if they had had somebody else depending on them. "We didn't think she was badly wounded, we thought she was going to be okay. But all the running, must have...torn something loose. We tried everything in the medical kit, but... When we got to Pegasus, it was just me and Ford."
Nobody said anything for a while, lost in their own thoughts, their own memories of losses. Then McKay cleared his throat. "I have a suggestion. For a mission." He threw a look at Carter, who was watching him with a trace of wariness. "We know the location of an Ancient site. The last time we were there, it had intact crystals."
John sat up. "Seriously?"
McKay gave him a look. "No, I thought I'd just get your hopes up for nothing. Yes, I'm serious. We could give you the coordinates, and we could check it out. It's not particularly dangerous, as far as we could tell, but you have the cloak now, so...it would make a nice test run." He stared at Carter, and said pointedly. "Right?"
Carter blinked rapidly, then pressed her lips together. She finally said, "It's worth a shot, yes."
John thought maybe she had wanted to hold the location in reserve, as a bargaining point in case their new allies tried to turn on her and McKay. She didn't know them all too well yet, and that kind of insurance was only sensible. John does that thing here where a character explains things away and generously assumes innocent motives for another character's odd behavior rather than investigating further, like Teyla did earlier. Sadly, I've seen people do this in real life. "It's not a burglar breaking in, it's just the damned cat running around" may be true ninety-nine times out of a hundred, but that hundredth time, it's a burglar! He looked at the others. "Well?"
"New crystals would certainly be useful," Teyla said, with a seasoned trader's reserve. Selana ruined it by practically bouncing with happiness. HA! She's young, she'll learn how to play it cool eventually!
"It would aid our other endeavors," Halling agreed, and John knew he was thinking about the Genii homeworld. Or what could possibly become the ex-Genii homeworld, if they played their cards right.
Ronon shrugged, eyeing McKay thoughtfully. "If he's telling the truth, sure." Would somebody please listen to Ronon?
Zoe frowned a moment, then gave John a measured nod. "We need the supplies."
John agreed, this was an opportunity they couldn't pass up. "Okay," he said. "We can take the Vengeance out tomorrow."
And everybody had another drink. Yeah, they're gonna need it.
***
Later, in the privacy of the tent they had been assigned, Rodney was a little drunk and trying to get ready for bed. It appears Rodney & Carter's relationship has progressed under the duress of their adventures, as we haven't heard any creepy stalkery nonsense from Rodney despite their sharing a tent--they seem to be in that mutual-respect, but still crabby, sibling-style place we saw at the end of fourth season. The place was a little stuffy and redolent of alien goatskin and incense, but other than that it was warm, dry, and comfortable.
Behind him, Carter tugged the doorflap into place and said quietly, "What are you doing, Rodney? We agreed that we were going to fix as many of their systems as we could, then leave and contact them again later."
"They need the crystals." Rodney lifted his chin stubbornly. "You know we could make much more extensive repairs--"
"Yeah, I know." Carter, *not* a crazy person, assumes they can always come back and make the more extensive repairs later. She watched him with an unflattering degree of suspicion. "Is that it?"
"Of course that's it," he said, and almost believed it himself. I cannot help but think he knows what he's planning is bad and wrong; otherwise, he'd share the info with Sam. But once again, because someone is playing their cards too close to their vest, nobody wins.
***
Avast, me proud beauties! Another chapter, sighted ahead!
Rot7S Commentary Part 4
***
Author: ltlj
Fandom: SGA
Commentator: teenygozer
Story without DVD commentary: Right here!
Rot7S Commentary Part 2
John's POV:
The Athosians moved their base camp at random, more of that Lost theme: once they had a home world, but now they are itinerant wanderers, essentially homeless, but John had to admit that he was fond of this particular planet. The stargate was in a valley with lush tropical vegetation, surrounding a ruined Ancient site with white stone pillars. There was a round section of grassy field in the center, with the remnants of a few shallow fountains, probably the remains of a park. It made a good spot for the Athosians to put up their tent-huts, for the open cooking fires they still preferred, and for John to play football with the kids. It's a lovely picture painted here; they've made a little haven of peace for themselves.
The Vengeance of Athos was currently resting on one of the ruin's big open platforms, having its engines worked over. John was sitting on the deck in the hold, updating the ammo inventory on one of their little datapads, while Teyla and some of the others worked to sort out their latest stolen cargo. They were separating it into things they could use and things to sell, always a tough job because the Athosians tended to collect stuff like magpies. "You don't need five bales of whatever the hell that is," John told Teyla, partly amused and partly exasperated.
"But it could prove useful," Teyla protested, running her hands over the silky fabric. If she'd said, "We can make sparkly curtains and throw pillows from it!" she'd have won the argument.
Then Halling leaned in through the inner hatch. "John, the ATA has failed again. Could you...?"
John sighed, and pushed to his feet. "Sure."
Teyla looked up, frowning. "Again?"
Halling made a helpless gesture. "Perhaps our new friends will be able to tell us why."
John followed Halling back up through the ship toward the bridge area. Most of the systems were shut down, making the compartments and accessways strangely quiet; John always thought the ship just felt wrong once it had been landed on a planet and partially powered down. Wrong as in empty, dead, and vulnerable.
But it was necessary, and he knew it was helping. McKay and Carter had gotten the Vengeance's Ancient cloak to work, and fixed a dozen chronic problems on the other three ships. John thought they had more than paid back the effort of rescuing them, and kept expecting them to ask to leave. He was of two minds about that: he knew how dangerous Pegasus could be. Safety meant numbers, and McKay and Carter would be safer with the Athosians. But having them here was still uncomfortable for him. If it was permanent, you'd get used to them, he told himself. Maybe he needed to just suck it up and get over it. They know too much about him by virtue of the fact that they come from the same place, plus they ask questions. It never occurs to John that he could and should be asking questions, uncomfortable questions, of them.
When John reached the cockpit he heard McKay saying, "That doesn't make sense, he's just back in the cargo area, right? It shouldn't fail at that range."
Half the consoles were open, tools and sensors and electronic innards strewn everywhere. Carter, Selana, and McKay were sitting in the middle of it; John wasn't sure where Halling had fit in, unless he had been perched on top of the console.
Selana shook her head, studying the schematic on her datapad. "We believe something is fundamentally wrong with our connections between the Ancestors' technology and our own. It fails intermittently, and we have not been able to trace the errors."
"We've been lucky," John admitted, edging his way past them to the pilot's console. "It's never failed at a critical moment."
"Never during a battle?" Carter asked, frowning.
"Well, yeah, but not a critical moment during a battle." John, sweetie, I don't think "critical" means what you think it means. John drew his knife and put the tip against the heel of his hand.
He saw Carter wince. She said, "There's got to be a better way."
"That's what everybody says." John put his hand against the access plate, feeling the Ancient tech warm to life again.
McKay snorted. "Yes, but this is barbaric."
John couldn't let that one pass. "The Genii had a guy with the gene, from some backwater planet where the Ancients had a city once. They had him strapped to a table with half a dozen tubes in him gradually siphoning off his blood. That's barbaric." He looked at McKay deliberately. "This is just inconvenient. Now, are we done?" I wondered if that was why John might be so averse to the expedience of simply siphoning off a pint of his own blood into a bag via a tube, the way we do when we donate blood, and have the Athosians keep it refrigerated for much easier use -- the memory of this terrible thing he'd seen making it impossible to bear having a simple needle or tube stuck in his arm. I also wondered if the guy John spoke of survived being siphoned, or if the Genii would be so stupid as to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. If they did kill the guy, was it possibly because they now had John, a much stronger gene carrier and they wanted to teach John a lesson in obedience by killing the guy? The Genii never would have thought John's escape could happen in a million years.
I find it interesting that John is finally parting with personal info, but it's not about sharing, he's trying to score something off of someone else with it.
Carter looked up, her mouth set in a sympathetic line. "We're done."
John climbed out of the cockpit, and made it almost to the lounge area before McKay caught up with him. Ducking under one of the Athosian hangings, he said, "Sheppard!"
John stopped, reluctantly. "What?"
McKay looked around, as if checking to see who was listening. Nobody was; this part of the ship was deserted, with everyone working either in the cockpit or the hold, or outside. McKay lowered his voice from its usual carrying tone, and said, "Why do you do this for these people?"
John considered pretending not to know what "this" meant, yeah, if John wanted to be particularly maddening, he'd ask, "Doing what?" with that patented CO-enraging smile in place, but decided he would rather argue than obfuscate. He said pointedly, "I'm one of these people, McKay."
McKay waved a hand in frustration. "But that was just because there was no other choice, right?"
That...was a weird question. "There were other choices. I like it here." John couldn't quite figure what this was about. "What's it matter to you?"
McKay stepped back, folding his arms and lifting his chin. "Nothing. I just wondered." Don't back down now, idiot! SHARE, dammit! First time in his life Rodney ever played it close to the chest, and he picked a hell of a time to start.
Fine, John didn't have time to deal with this. Keeping his voice just even enough to make it a threat, he said, "Wonder about something else," and walked away down the corridor.
***
Rodney's POV:
Dammit, Rodney thought with a grimace. That went well. He was starting to think Carter might be the tiniest bit right about his crappy interpersonal skills. Ya think?
"You should not push him so hard," Teyla said, from the hatchway.
Rodney flinched guiltily, trying to remember just what it was he had said. Nothing too incriminating, or Sheppard would still be in here, probably punching him. He tried to bluff it out. "Oh, and why is that?"
Teyla stepped into the lounge. She didn't look angry, at least. "I know that your world is lost to you, and I understand something of what that is like. Because of the Genii, we will never be able to return to Athos, though we were lucky in that many of our people escaped to accompany us."
That caught Rodney by surprise. Okay, well...yes. It's partly that." Rodney had heard about Athos, but for some reason he hadn't thought to compare it to their own situation. Earth was taken over by the Trust, Athos had been bombed and rendered uninhabitable by the Genii. All right, so maybe they did have that in common. Rodney is not in the habit of putting himself in other people's shoes.
She added, "I know that having found another refugee from your world, you do not wish to be parted from him."
Rodney could hardly tell her he was more interested in not being parted from Sheppard's powerful expression of the Ancient gene. But...maybe it wasn't only that. He had trouble reconciling crazy Sheppard the Genii-killing pirate with the Sheppard that he saw here in camp. The one that played half-assed games of football with the kids, who got up before dawn to go running, and wandered around barefoot and unshaven in the evening. The adorkable, disheveled Sheppard who looks like he wouldn't hurt a fly is getting under Rodney's skin. The one the Athosians seemed to think was fragile. Frustrated, he asked her honestly, "Why doesn't he want to talk about Earth? What the hell happened there?"
Teyla shook her head, her mouth tightening as she considered the question. For a moment he didn't think she was going to answer, then she said reluctantly, "I do not think it is Earth. I think he does not want to talk about any part of the past." She hesitated again. "You know the Genii killed his friend. They also used one of their captive Wraith to torture John, allowing it to feed on him, and then forcing it to return what it had taken."
Rodney felt sick. He had seen some of the Ancient material on the Wraith, the descriptions of the war, the hellish way the Wraith had used the human populations of Pegasus as cattle. "How did he get away?"
"He persuaded the Wraith to help him, and they escaped together." TODD!!
"That's...somehow not entirely a surprise." Rodney hesitated, struck by an unpleasant thought. Sheppard also had the air of a man who collected strays. "It's not still around here somewhere, is it, because--"
Teyla gave him a look, as if he had implied their camp had a vermin problem. "No. Once they had escaped, he killed it."
"Oh." Rodney shifted uneasily. "That was efficient of him." Play your cards wrong and you could be the next recipient of John's oh-so-efficient attention, Rodney.
"It asked him to, because it was one of the last of its kind. It did not wish to be alone." Teyla lifted a brow at him, as if no more needed to be said. It's a rather evocative image: Todd, the lost Wraith, with no home to go to, preferring to die under the open sky than live among non-Wraith, and it fits in with the Lost theme we have going here.
Watching her walk away, Rodney thought that she was right, there wasn't anything else to say. Sheppard wanted to be here, with these people. No amount of talk was going to change that. That's what I was afraid of, he thought, wincing. You're not going to do something irredeemably stupid, are you, McKay? McKay? MCKAY!?
***
John ran into Zoe in the corridor, coming in with a basket of Charin's homemade medicines to re-stock the ship's tiny sick bay. She stopped John, frowning, and took his hand to look at the new cut. "The ATA failed again? Even with you in the hold all day?"
John admitted it with a shrug. "We were due for another fluctuation."
She shook her head, resigned. "It's getting worse, isn't it?"
John nodded. Selana had a chart to keep track of the inexplicable failures Selana has MS Excel?! But seriously, OC Selana kind of plays computer girl as we go through this story. She's always the one taking readings or taking a station on a ship. The percentages weren't promising. "It's lucky we found Carter and McKay."
"I hate to say we were due some luck." Zoe shifted the basket onto her hip. "Nothing chases it away faster." This line of dialog has a very strong Firefly style. The character has retained her signature universe's slightly depressed, yet folksy mode of speech in the transplant to SGA.
John started to step past her, then found himself hesitating. "Do you trust them?"
Zoe leaned back against the bulkhead, giving the question serious consideration. John placed a lot of value on her judgment. Even in the time she had been with them, it was apparent that her ability to keep her head in a crisis was almost preternatural. He didn't think he could survive being thrown into another universe or dimension or whatever it was that had happened to her, it would appear Zoe also hasn't shared anything at all about her life before being saved by the Athosians, at least not the way she had, just picking up and going on with her life. Finally, she said, "I want to trust them. The thing about this tech is that it's so easy to use and learn. Then it breaks down--"
"And you're looking at a box of pretty crystals and air, with no idea what the hell to do." You know, this is actually something the show has never addressed: who makes the crystals we see people making repairs with on the show? Is there a great recycling project on Atlantis where damaged parts of the city are cannibalized and the crystals are used to replace burned out crystals in working parts of the city? We've also seen crystal technology being used by the Goa'uld, but it's all based on Ancient tech -- there MUST be someone, a factory on some planet somewhere, that makes these crystals. We've never seen it, though! John rubbed his eyes. It was an ongoing nightmare; they just didn't know enough about this technology. "Yeah."
"That's about it," Zoe agreed. She shrugged. "We haven't given them reason not to trust us." She added, with more than a tinge of grim resignation, "But then, some people don't need reason."
That one, John knew all too well. It's not just that John can't take concern shown for him, or people being nice to him, it's as if he's actively waiting for the next blow.
***
It was three days later, and John was sitting at the fire outside Halling's tent with most of the others. Insects were singing in the trees past the ruin, and twilight was darkening the sky to purple-gray. People were gathered in family groups around the various tents, and the kids were playing noisily, a last burst of energy before they had to wind down for sleep. Dinner that night was tuttle root soup, which weirdly, John was starting to develop a taste for. Then we can assume Teyla didn't make it.
"We must think of a good target to test our new cloaking ability," Teyla was saying. "The first time we will have a great advantage of surprise."
John nodded, poking absently at the rooty bits with his spoon. Yum! The rooty bits are the best part! "They'll think it's the cloaked jumper. While they're looking for it, we can bring the Vengeance in."
"Are we going for goods, or damage?" Zoe asked, watching John thoughtfully, as if she already knew he had an idea.
"Both?" Ronon suggested. He was sitting to one side of the fire, sharpening his sword. He had already finished his meal, tending to eat with the efficiency of someone used to starving and scrounging for years. Ronon has shown himself to be the ever-practical one in this story, the one who keeps on-point during missions when others are arguing amongst themselves, so "both" is probably quite doable and what they would have done if they'd gotten the chance. He may not have been a runner in this AU, but it sounds as if he's still had a pretty bad time of it. Given how modern Sateda looked canonically, I'm assuming they refused to buckle under the Genii's rule and their world is as destroyed as it would have been had the Wraith slapped them down.
"I think there's two possibilities," John said, looking up. "The stronghold in the asteroid field, or their homeworld."
Everybody got quiet for a long moment. Halling said, "The homeworld supplies their ships and the stronghold. Cutting them off would greatly curtail their activities."
Teyla's eyes were on the fire, her face lost in thought. "But if we destroyed the stronghold, we could take control of the Ancestors' warship."
John wanted that warship, even damaged as it was, with a bone-deep need. John's instinctive attraction to Ancient ship tech might be the deciding factor in this equation. Ship first, homeworld later.
Halling nodded slowly. "With the help of our new friends, we could learn much from it."
"Do they want to join up with us for certain?" Zoe asked, and it was hard to tell from her tone whether she thought it was a good thing or not. "Because somehow that's not the impression I got."
"I have spoken with them about it," Halling told her. "I have said we will be happy to take them to a destination of their choosing, or to give them gate addresses to planets that are safe from the Genii. But they have said they wish to stay for now."
Teyla shook her head. "Being with us does give them an opportunity to work with the Ancestors' technology that they may not be able to find anywhere else."
Of course, Teyla is entirely wrong -- Atlantis would give them that opportunity, not that she knows about that. But it's as if she's making excuses for them to be sticking around rather than seeking another (and possibly more malevolent) reason. So what is up with McKay and Carter sticking around when they can leave at any time, and presumably know how to dial Atlantis? In a way, easy access to a stargate is to the SGU as cellphones are to a tale set in the X-files universe: a too-easy fix for a problem. Just as excuses must be made as to why Mulder & Scully can't just use their cellphones to call for help, the SG writer has to figure out why her characters don't just dial the damned gate and go home when there's a gate just sitting there and nobody between them and it. I'm guessing part of it is that they are happy to help fix the tech this little group needs fixed because they are genuinely grateful for the rescue and are worried that they might get into trouble with their mutual enemy if it isn't fixed, but suspect that they are sticking around to get a feel for the people involved for the inevitable future negotiations -- seeking out new life and new civilizations is their geeky little scientist mandate as well the one inculcated in them by years with the SGC -- and, yes, because of their massive interest in Sheppard. Which is to say, Sam is just as interested in reuniting with Sheppard, as a fellow American and Earth-born human being, as well as his gene, as Rodney is, and she's pretty much doing exactly the same thing Rodney is, except she's doing it better. And, well, *saner*. OTOH, I have to assume there's an entire contingent of people out there, combing the galaxy and freaking out that Carter and McKay are lost in space, so I am a little surprised at the leisurely quality of our scientific duo's pace in returning, or in even phoning, home.
"They're coming," Ronon said quietly.
John looked to see McKay storming up along the path from the landing platforms, waving his arms, Carter following at a more normal speed. This was a fairly common performance at mealtimes. When McKay reached the fire, John said, automatically, "Don't panic, we saved you some."
"No, that's not it! I--" McKay stopped, switching from frantic to pleased and self-conscious in a heartbeat. "Oh, you did? Thanks." That whole thing where he's not really used to people being nice to him is something he shares with John. Then he switched back to frantic. "We've been working on something, a new interface for the ATA--"
Halling sat up, putting aside his bowl. "This will stop the intermittent failures?" he asked hopefully. The intermittent failures were the bane of Halling's life.
McKay waved that off. "No, it just means you won't need Sheppard anymore." Calling Doctor Freud, your slip is showing!
Halling stared. John blinked. Teyla shook her head. Ronon and Zoe exchanged a look.
Carter said quickly, "Uh, he didn't mean it like that. Rodney, explain a little further."
"What?" Distracted, McKay looked around, seeming to realize what he had said. "Oh. No, no, I meant you won't need the ritual blood sacrifice to keep the ATA active. We have a substitute that isn't physically painful."
"They are not ritual blood sacrifices," Teyla said with annoyance. This now reminds me of Ronon saying (with annoyance), "I didn't say it was magic!" in The Shrine.
Everybody looked at John again. If McKay was right... John said, slowly, "Okay, what is it?" John's default setting is, "What's the cloud surrounding this silver lining?" In this case, his paranoia is well-founded.
McKay sat down on a camp stool. "The Ancient Technology Activation is a field, constantly broadcast by the devices that use it. Originally we know it was a protective measure, a safeguard against the Wraith stealing and using the Ancients' weapons and defensive devices like the cloak and personal shields--"
Carter interrupted, "We still don't understand everything about the way it works, but because your ship's cloak was installed with a mix of Ancient and Athosian technology, its ATA is fluctuating, and it keeps losing the initialization data it collects whenever it comes into contact with you or your DNA." Huh, good technobabble! And it even makes sense!
McKay finished, "This will boost the ATA's transmissions. You'll have to wear it somewhere on your body, I'm thinking a black wristband will do the trick, but it's small, and will be less inconvenient than repeated self-mutilation." He gestured at John, impatient and elated. "Well? Do you want to test it or not?"
Everybody looked at John. Biting his lip, he considered it a moment, but if this was true... He couldn't see a downside here. "Yeah, let's try it."
John had been thinking they meant something more the size of a life-signs detector, but it turned out to be tiny, barely the size of a watch battery. They ran tests that night, and McKay and Carter spent the next day tweaking it, and they discovered that John did have to wear it against his skin.
But the long and the short of it was, it worked. Yeah, John; even works when it's doing stuff you have no idea it can do.
***
They had a party the next night, a real one, with Halling breaking out the homemade wine. They built a big bonfire up on one of the Ancient foundations, a tall platform that gave a good view of the ruin and the valley beyond. The sky was clear and full of stars, the night was just cool enough to make the fire comfortable, and John was feeling reasonably content. He was stretched out on his side, looking out at the ruin, with Teyla, Zoe, Ronon, Halling, Selana, McKay and Carter, and a dozen or so Athosians from the Vengeance's crew gathered around, talking and laughing. John had to admit that the "blood sacrifice" method had had its drawbacks, and he was relieved to see the end of it. It had always felt like a desperate stop-gap measure, a sign of how badly things could go wrong.
Everybody had had more than a few drinks, and it was around that point that McKay suddenly turned to John and asked, "How did you escape from Earth?"
John looked up to see all the Athosians watching him worriedly. Zoe was keeping her expression perfectly noncommittal, though Ronon looked a little edgy, which probably meant that he was curious too, but not much liking McKay's method of asking. But John sighed, and thought, why the hell not? After the transmitter, maybe he owed McKay an answer. Interesting, here we see John views the giving of information and the doing of favors in a system of barter; we've already seen that he cannot easily take someone being kind to him just for the sake of kindness, it's like he feels he has to somehow pay for it. Rodney did him a favor and he's getting an answer from John that he probably wouldn't have gotten otherwise. The others have also done favors and kindnesses to John, but they do not burden him with questions about his past...though, affronted as they are on John's behalf, apparently they are curious, too. "I was at McMurdo when it was overrun by the Trust. We didn't-- I didn't know about the stargate base up there before then. But the Trust tested everybody, found I had something called the Ancient gene, and I got locked up with the other gate personnel, as an alien." It was weird how that memory still stung, of being told he wasn't human. "A Colonel named Sumner was planning a breakout. There were two BC303s up there, they were going to steal them, head for the Pegasus supergate. I didn't know any of the details."
McKay gestured impatiently, slopping wine out of his cup. "But you're a pilot, and you have the Ancient gene, and they were running to Pegasus. Didn't they understand that--"
John interrupted, "I have -- had -- a bad record. Sumner knew about it. He decided I wasn't worth taking a chance on and he told me I wasn't getting a slot on either ship. In John's view, he of the "never leave a man behind" credo, this has got to be something of a cardinal sin committed against him, but I don't get the feeling that John really blames or hates Sumner as much as I would in the same situation. It actually feels like John sort of blames himself! Also, I can't help but think Sumner took some sort of instant, deep emotion-based vs. logic-based hatred to John during the stress of the terrible situation they had all been plunged into. It's hard to believe he'd leave a fellow member of the American military, not just behind, but locked in a jail cell with no way to defend himself; it's also difficult to believe he'd leave a gene-bearer behind knowing how important the gene was going to be for their survival--and he did know, because he sent Ford for Janet. John never says why his record is bad, but if had been all that horrifically bad in this AU--different from what we know it to be in our universe, where he disobeyed a direct order to try to save his men--the Air Force would have given him a dishonorable discharge or tossed him in the USDB at Fort Leavenworth, not transferred him, even if to a punishment post. Sumner was being over-the-top unreasonable here, especially given that he knew there was no way a gene carrier could plot with the Trust, as the Trust would have them dissected in any case. Do you know what the Trust did to Ancient gene carriers?"
"Yes," Carter said, and there was something under her quiet voice that told John that she did know, that maybe she had seen it. I was terrified we'd find out later in the story that they had killed Jack. To this day, I'm still terrified they killed the emo!codger (my nickname for Jack's clone) or Lorne, who isn't in this fic.
"What did they do?" Teyla asked softly. John had never told her this part. He had never told anybody this part.
McKay answered for him. "They dissect them." He sounded sick. I get the feeling that if Sumner somehow made it through and showed up in the Pegasus galaxy, he'd be toast, because a lot of people would happily see him dead after hearing this sad tale.
John wanted to get through the rest of the story. "They broke out, and a young lieutenant named Ford let me out of my cell anyway. Ford always shows up to save John's butt in the 11th hour, against all odds. We've all taken Ronon to our hearts, but should remember Ford for his habit of last-minute heroics. I headed for the hangars, figuring if I couldn't find something to fly out in, I'd just walk out." This foreshadows John's suicide attempt later in the story, we have an example that he would rather be dead than captured, even before all the torture he endured in the Genii's hands.
"Of Antarctica?" Carter lifted her brows. HEE! If someone lifts his or her brows, you're reading an ltlj story! I've noticed this slightly odd turn of phrase as a signature character reaction in every story she's written. I've also seen the occasional newbie fic writer use it and wonder if they cribbed the phrase from her.
"Yeah. It wasn't an ideal solution." John hadn't wanted to die, but he had known it would be better than being recaptured. "But their plan went to hell, and people were getting cut off from the ships. I ran into Ford again, and this time he had a doctor with him, named Janet. She was wounded." Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw Carter move, almost flinch, but when John looked up at her, her face was blank. This interests me--apparently Carter does not want to share the info that she knew Janet. It's not just John playing his cards too close to his vest, it's Carter, too. Does Carter think that if she shares her friendship with Janet with this group, John will assume she was part of the same group who was going to leave John in a jail cell in Antarctica, and that he might react badly because of it? Because Carter doesn't even share that she was/is military, let alone that she knew what was going on re: the Trust, but John has to know she knows something. And yet, and yet, he doesn't call her on it, and he totally could. It's very odd. I think I shall call this The Dance of the Pirate Code--a complicated dance where everybody protects his or her soft underbelly but nobody wins or gets anywhere. "She was important, and Sumner had sent Ford specifically to get her. She was a xenobiologist, she knew all about the gene, and besides the fact that they needed every medical doctor they could get, Sumner knew she'd come in handy once they got to Pegasus. Ford said if I helped them, Sumner would have to take me along. Ford, the ever-optimistic young man who cannot conceive of his CO's dishonorable behavior. I thought he was being optimistic, but what the hell. We made it to the launch bays, but we were still cut off from the BC303s. There was a jumper there. I didn't know what it was, but Janet said I might be able to fly it, so we took it. That's pretty much it."
McKay cleared his throat. "What happened to the others?"
"Both BC303s got blown up before they reached the supergate. Janet..." This part still hurt. Two BC303s get blown up and all on board are lost, but that doesn't affect John, who values the personal over the big picture, anywhere near as much as Janet's death. Janet was given into John's care, even if only for a few minutes, and she didn't make it, and that is what he regrets the most. John didn't know if things would have gone better, been different, if Janet had lived. But he thought maybe he and Ford might have been more careful if they had had somebody else depending on them. "We didn't think she was badly wounded, we thought she was going to be okay. But all the running, must have...torn something loose. We tried everything in the medical kit, but... When we got to Pegasus, it was just me and Ford."
Nobody said anything for a while, lost in their own thoughts, their own memories of losses. Then McKay cleared his throat. "I have a suggestion. For a mission." He threw a look at Carter, who was watching him with a trace of wariness. "We know the location of an Ancient site. The last time we were there, it had intact crystals."
John sat up. "Seriously?"
McKay gave him a look. "No, I thought I'd just get your hopes up for nothing. Yes, I'm serious. We could give you the coordinates, and we could check it out. It's not particularly dangerous, as far as we could tell, but you have the cloak now, so...it would make a nice test run." He stared at Carter, and said pointedly. "Right?"
Carter blinked rapidly, then pressed her lips together. She finally said, "It's worth a shot, yes."
John thought maybe she had wanted to hold the location in reserve, as a bargaining point in case their new allies tried to turn on her and McKay. She didn't know them all too well yet, and that kind of insurance was only sensible. John does that thing here where a character explains things away and generously assumes innocent motives for another character's odd behavior rather than investigating further, like Teyla did earlier. Sadly, I've seen people do this in real life. "It's not a burglar breaking in, it's just the damned cat running around" may be true ninety-nine times out of a hundred, but that hundredth time, it's a burglar! He looked at the others. "Well?"
"New crystals would certainly be useful," Teyla said, with a seasoned trader's reserve. Selana ruined it by practically bouncing with happiness. HA! She's young, she'll learn how to play it cool eventually!
"It would aid our other endeavors," Halling agreed, and John knew he was thinking about the Genii homeworld. Or what could possibly become the ex-Genii homeworld, if they played their cards right.
Ronon shrugged, eyeing McKay thoughtfully. "If he's telling the truth, sure." Would somebody please listen to Ronon?
Zoe frowned a moment, then gave John a measured nod. "We need the supplies."
John agreed, this was an opportunity they couldn't pass up. "Okay," he said. "We can take the Vengeance out tomorrow."
And everybody had another drink. Yeah, they're gonna need it.
***
Later, in the privacy of the tent they had been assigned, Rodney was a little drunk and trying to get ready for bed. It appears Rodney & Carter's relationship has progressed under the duress of their adventures, as we haven't heard any creepy stalkery nonsense from Rodney despite their sharing a tent--they seem to be in that mutual-respect, but still crabby, sibling-style place we saw at the end of fourth season. The place was a little stuffy and redolent of alien goatskin and incense, but other than that it was warm, dry, and comfortable.
Behind him, Carter tugged the doorflap into place and said quietly, "What are you doing, Rodney? We agreed that we were going to fix as many of their systems as we could, then leave and contact them again later."
"They need the crystals." Rodney lifted his chin stubbornly. "You know we could make much more extensive repairs--"
"Yeah, I know." Carter, *not* a crazy person, assumes they can always come back and make the more extensive repairs later. She watched him with an unflattering degree of suspicion. "Is that it?"
"Of course that's it," he said, and almost believed it himself. I cannot help but think he knows what he's planning is bad and wrong; otherwise, he'd share the info with Sam. But once again, because someone is playing their cards too close to their vest, nobody wins.
***
Avast, me proud beauties! Another chapter, sighted ahead!
Rot7S Commentary Part 4
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