fic: SGA Circle
Okay, back here when I requested prompts, fabu gave me Rodney liked to be in on the ground floor, in the inner circle, in the know.
Three thousand words later, I tried to reply in comments and drove myself crazy, so here's the whole darn thing.
Rodney liked to be in on the ground floor, in the inner circle, in the know. He shoved the sweat out of his eyes with an impatient hand, pulled another crystal, and held it in his mouth, careful to wrap his lips over his teeth. Exiled to Siberia, he’d spent two weeks in virtual isolation before a one two punch of unlocking the Ancient code responsible for interpolation of astrometric distances and tweaking the flow rate on the distillery bought him enough access to the middle management of the base that he could actually work on something useful. At that point, his innate genius pulled him into the programming circle where he was able to pick up enough Russian to follow conversations, if not actually say anything more than good night, good morning, and a string of syllables appropriate for dropping something metal on a fragile body part. He wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, but the first time he used it, he got a huge paw slammed onto his back and a grin from the base commander. Good enough for him.
What he did not like, he thought, as he shifted the crystal into the primary slot, rerouted control past the missing section of the DHD, and fumbled for the connector pins, was being alone, without a guard, supplies, or even a tent, in a semi-habitable wilderness, with no one but trees to talk to. The incomprehensible babble of a foreign language would be better than being alone. He’d even take the non-verbal mocking of the marines. With the pins re-seated, he slid the panel cover far enough to shield his eyes if it blew, then reached under it to get the power supply close enough to arc. If he could establish a pathway, then maybe … . The conduit spat out sparks, but physics won and the damaged area was just too extensive. He ducked down, pulled as much play out of the cable as he could, and tried again, earning himself a soldered crystal and a stinging burn on his index finger. He stuck the burned finger in his mouth, then pulled it out hurriedly, wary of germs and dirt and the distance between himself and med bay, but it hurt, so he stuck it back in. His knees ached, and he dropped to sit fully, rotating to put his back against the column of the DHD. Shit. He’d been here a whopping three minutes and he had no idea how long Woolsey would take sending a rescue party. Days, maybe. He was going to need a volleyball by then.
---:::---
“Rodney, go!” John shouted. Ronon skidded to a stop on the gate’s base. Of all of them, Teyla was the only one with any sense, and she continued through the puddle of the event horizon. Rodney stood behind the DHD, mulish. “Rodney. Now!”
“Go! Look, you fly the jumpers better than I do, and I can fix the gate. Go! If i'm not right behind you, come get me.” Rodney nodded, not at John, but behind him, and John felt Ronon grab the back of his vest and throw him into the gate. He landed on Atlantis side and was taking a step back toward the blue shimmer of the portal when it blinked out.
Ronon caught his fist on the way up and said, “He was right. Let’s go get him.”
John bit back the first three words that he wanted to say and turned to face the balcony. “Gate damage and malfunction. Rodney’s still there. Chuck, what’s the nearest gate? Ronon, go grab a first aid kit and find Zelenka.”
“Zelenka is here. What do you need me to do?”
“Assemble what you need to help Rodney fix the gate.” Radek nodded and turned away, and John added, “Hey! Also, anything you’ve got to make a jumper go faster.”
“You want me to modify a jumper before you leave?” Radek asked. “Yes, yes of course. But the first aid kit…?”
Chuck hollered down, “MR3-N72 is closest. Distance from that gate to M8P-798 at jumper speeds is … approximately 87 hours.”
John showed his teeth. From Zelenka’s reaction, it wasn’t a smile. “A little over six days, on a planet alone, after throwing me through a gate? If he isn’t injured when I get to him, he will be soon after.”
---:::---
Rodney slid the outer panel back into place to protect the interior workings of the DHD and walked to the shade of the conifers, unzipping the tac vest and sliding it off his shoulders. He comforted himself with the knowledge that this planet was completely deserted. The last Wraith attack had cleared the settlement here and had been what damaged the gate to begin with. There were no locals, there was no way for the gate to activate, and he was here with no fauna larger than a wallaby, so long as he stayed where he was and out of the reach of the carnivorous flora about a half day’s hike to the south. He patted the tree next to him. “Tell you what, you don’t eat me, I won’t eat you. Deal?” He broke a power bar in half, shoved half of it in his mouth, wrapped the other section carefully and put it back in his vest. Not that he was hiking anywhere. He was staying right here, next to the gate, where his team could find him. Soon. Oh please, soon.
---:::---
John cut the briefing short, and Woolsey let him. Five minutes in the infirmary with Keller, ten in his quarters with shampoo, and he hit the jumper bay doors as Ronon did.
Ronon lugged the duffel of water and food to the jumper and John hung back and called Teyla. “I’m at the jumpers.”
“Very good, as am I.” The doors slid open and she stepped through, a bag over her shoulder and her hair, still wet, pulled back in a band.
John grinned, then shook his head. “We are travelling light this trip. Straight out, straight back. Stay here and get your own stuff done.”
“And keep an eye on things.” She tapped her earpiece.
He nodded. “That too. Thank you.”
“Bring him back safely.”
As many years as he’s known her, the forehead thing still had the feel of ritual, something shared. He grabbed her hand, the closet to a hug he could do outside sickbay. “Hey, Teyla ….” He couldn’t think of how to say it, but she smiled at him.
“I will. Here, you will want this.” She handed him the bag and walked to where Ronon was standing over Zelenka. He followed. John tapped the bigger pelican case with his toe. “This the gate stuff?”
“No, I have loaded already the equipment Rodney will need to repair the gate, plus the travel set of replacement crystals. Unless the main power set is destroyed, he should be able to do anything short of rebuilding it with that material.” Zelenka patted the carry case at his feet. “This is the jumper kit, and I promise you, I will not leave this bay until I’ve done everything I can to make this jumper move more swiftly.”
“Actually, doc, yes, you will. Let’s load up.” He threw a friendly arm over Zelenka’s shoulder and walked him up the ramp as Ronon hefted the two larger cases and Teyla slid the smaller one in as the ramp closed. John settled himself in the pilot’s seat as she walked around the jumper to stand against the wall in front of them and wave. He saluted back as he guided the jumper through the skylight.
---:::---
Rodney knelt by the stream and resolutely kept himself from considering bacterial count, fish feces, or water snakes as he refilled his canteen. Teyla had spent most of a walk from some gate to some village talking about a tree native to several planets in this galaxy. The roots were dried and ground into a tea that was used for meditation, the bark was soaked, pounded and used as grain, and the leaves were wrapped around meat filling and eaten. The locals called it a feast tree. She’d pointed out several examples of it, noting the distinctive leaf shape and bark. He had no idea what it looked like. His stomach growled.
---:::---
John wished for rear view mirrors. Zelenka’d been silent since Chuck cleared them to go. He really didn’t want to turn around to see, but … he glanced to the side. Ronon was taking up the co-pilot’s chair and a good bit of the area around it as well, his head tipped back, not quite snoring. He set the autopilot and swiveled the chair. Zelenka had the back panels open and was holding the laptop with one hand, tapping at it with the other.
“Should I say I’m sorry for kidnapping you?”
“Are you?”
“What?”
“Sorry.”
John considered. “Not really.”
Zelenka shrugged. “Then why lie?”
“You don’t seem all that put out.”
Zelenka shifted the laptop to his off hand, then reached down and unsnapped the pocket of his cargo pants. He reached in and pulled out a tube of toothpaste and one of the travel toothbrushes that no one liked. He let them fall back in and tapped at the keyboard again. “Let us say that I am not completely surprised.”
“Oh. Um.”
“You are team.”
“Yeah, well, thanks.”
“You might get some sleep as well. I will need you in … about three hours.”
---:::---
The extended battery that all of them carried lasted for eight hours of constant use. Turning it off and on still used some power, so Rodney opened up one word document and made notes as quickly as he could, typing as quickly as his fingers would go, leaving in ‘teh’s and not bothering to go back and take out the ‘and’s that seemed to start most of his sentences. He didn’t bother coding or organizing, and just used paragraph breaks to separate reminders to Zelenka, a particularly pithy turn of phrase that someone might want to use at his eulogy, a teasing note to Teyla about her fondness for the hair care regime that Jeanne supplied her in boxes marked for Rodney. He saved at the end of every sentence when the battery icon started flashing, so he didn’t lose more than a few words when it died.
Eight hours wasn’t long enough.
---:::---
When John opened his eyes, Zelenka was using Ronon as human scaffolding. He was holding part of the ceiling with one hand and Zelenka’s laptop with the other and he had wires draped over both arms. Some of them sparkled and Zelenka’s hair was all standing on end. Right. Business as usual.
“Was that three hours?”
Ronon grunted and Zelenka answered, “A bit more than four, actually. I’m having difficulty reconfiguring the drive system while it’s actually in use because of,” he looked up at the both of them and shook his head, “because of issues that neither of you particularly care about. This would be much easier if we were on the ground.”
“Ride’s not smooth enough for you?” John stretched and his back and hip popped. He winced at the volume. Ronon cocked one eyebrow and smirked. Asshole. Young, flexible asshole. His day would come.
Zelenka fixed him with a steel blue eye. “Not being able to access the outer panels is hampering my efficiency.”
“We could probably rig a space suit for you, doc. I bet we’ve got duct tape and a plastic bag in here. Ronon, switch out.” John took the laptop and slid his arm behind Ronon’s to catch the conduit cording. Ronon kept one hand on the ceiling panel until he could catch a hard-side case with his ankle and drag it over for John to stand on. John rolled his eyes as he did so, then stepped on and pushed up on the loose panel. “There a reason we can’t let this hang?”
“Yes, the connection point is permanent, so in order to have the slack to connect -
“Doc.”
“Yes?”
“That’s all I needed. I say, ‘Is this necessary?’ You say, ‘Yes.’ The rest is for you, not me.”
Zelenka turned his attention back to the laptop. “Rodney has you well trained.”
“Nah, Lorne just doesn't have you trained. Easier that way around.”
Ronon snorted in agreement or possibly in humor and John played Christmas tree, complete with tinsel, for about half an hour longer than his shoulders really wanted him to.
---:::---
Rodney broke the half of a power bar into two sections and ate one. He’d wait until midnight for the rest. The water helped. He could drink directly from the stream, but quite honestly, the plastic tang from the canteen was soothing. He sat in the circle of bare dirt he’d scraped clear before building a campfire, carefully keeping it small enough to not risk setting the branches over him on fire. It was too small, really, to give much heat, but the night was warm and his socks were dry and there weren’t any predators on this planet. The trees were just trees and their needles made the soil here too acidic for the triffids and he had nothing to worry about. He was completely safe. The fire popped, the resin of the branches sharp in his nose, and he got up to widen the cleared area by another six inches. Wouldn’t do to start a forest fire, after all. The others would tease him, when they came. Because they would. Soon.
---:::---
“I’ll need you to take the engines offline.”
“No.”
“I can increase our speed by twenty seven percent.”
“Good, now figure out how to do it without bringing us to a stop.”
“But -“
“Doc, remember that whole not explaining thing?”
“Yes?”
“Works both ways.”
The string of Czech was long, but muttered softly enough that John could ignore it.
---:::---
The needles were too short to weave into a net, rocks were slowed by the water too quickly, but Rodney found that if he held very very still, the fish would investigate his feet, and he could grab them. More precisely, he could grab one after a great many tries at holding very very still. But that one was surprisingly tasty when unevenly roasted over his little campfire.
---:::---
“Shifting to manual control,” John answered. The jumper purred under his hands. Then it lurched and John clutched at the console, a small petty part of him relieved to see Ronon at his right flail as badly. “Doc?”
“Expected!” Zelenka said, then resumed muttering a steady stream of syllables, some of them in English and of those most of them insults to varied persons including the ancients, Rodney, John, Woolsey, Elizabeth, a Professor Wrenya, and General Hammond.
The jumper started a slow roll and John corrected course to bring the yaw back under control. It had been a while since he’d wished for a five point harness. A clang startled John, and the dampners came back on line with a grind like hitting sand.
“There. That’s done. Twelve hours out, 23 or so to go.”
“Seriously?” John scanned the console, but half of it was dark. “That’s really good, doc.”
“I’ve dropped the shield to minimal levels. Modify the sensors to alert us and evade for anything larger than microscopic debris.”
“Got it. Still, that’s a hell of an increase, doc. Can we do this permanently?”
“We are burning fuel at seven times the normal rate.”
“That would be a no, then. Wait, these things hold … Will we have enough to get back to the working gate?”
“We will repair the gate at that end.“
That would be another no, John thought.
Zelenka rolled Ronon’s coat and shoved it on the bench in back. The panel above him, still uncovered and with a handful of hemostats hanging from it, lit the area. “I will sleep now. You will be very quiet.” John nodded. Ronon looked up from Teyla’s bag and waved the deck of cards she’d packed. John grinned as Ronon shuffled.
----:::---
The rising sun caught him in the eyes and he was cold and the ground was hard and his fire’d gone out and there was dirt inside his ear and his clothes were damp with dew, he hoped, oh god, please be dew, but he couldn’t smell anything other than the failure of his own antiperspirant yesterday when the DHD had blown as they set foot on this planet and he hated this entire planet with its cold fish and wet stream and pokey tree needles and man eating plants and non-functional gate and bright white sun and dirt.
He indulged in half a power bar for breakfast, checked the burn on his finger for bubbling, oozing, spots or any sign of medical issue that he could do exactly nothing about anyway, and went to wash his face in the stream.
---:::---
“Do you have any fours?”
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
---:::---
Pegasus trout, Salvelinus Pegusi Moronis because any species stupid enough to stand in the shade of a predator merited moronis, wasn’t quite as tasty two days in a row and Rodney was eyeing a brightly colored berry and desperately trying to remember bits of conversation that he’d tried equally hard to ignore at the time.
He stared at the DHD. Cannibalizing the laptop would give him nothing useful. They’d not been able to synthesize the crystals themselves and too much depended on scavenging and reusing the ones they could find. The battery in the digital camera wouldn’t give him enough juice to do anything useful. While he had the camera out, he took a picture of the stream, and his campfire, then the damage on the DHD. Standing on the edge of the gate stage, he noted where the corners of the viewfinder were, then mindful of the very flattering photo of Teyla in the mess hall with his and John’s hair cut off and Ronon wholly decapitated, scratched markers in the dirt well within those points. He set the camera to three second standby and found a stick to scratch what he could remember of the Botany lab energy usage pattern spikes.
---:::---
“Planetary map up. Show current location and location of Stargate.” The lasergrid on the screen obliged. “Scan for human-sized life forms.” A red dot popped up next to the blue one, and John carefully didn’t sigh in relief. Zelenka, on the other hand, whooped. “Put on the coffee, Rodney, we’re coming in.”
---:::---
Rodney set his laptop on the conference table and sat in his usual seat. He pulled open his meeting laptop and opened the downloaded photos and started transcribing them into something more usable by the engineering team assigned to the energy drain masquerading as bio-controls for greenhouses.
Woolsey walked in, tapped his papers, and asked, “So, how was your little camping trip?"
Rodney looked over the top of the monitor at him and started to say something he’d probably eventually regret, but Sheppard’s hand came down heavy on his shoulder. Sheppard said, “Rodney’s idea of roughing it is a hotel without high speed internet, but I was surprised. He had himself a nice little base camp set up.”
Teyla joined them, setting her mug carefully on the table before her before seating herself, “I am glad to hear that our instruction was well learned. Rodney and I have often spoken of native foodstuffs available on many planets and silent hunting techniques.”
“Another week and he’d have found a caffeine source. He’d set up a whiteboard on the ground by the time we got there.” John sat across from Teyla, nodding as Lorne walked in.
Zelenka settled next to Rodney. “The actual numbers from which you still have not shared.”
“Had to get a full stomach first, right, McKay?” Ronon slapped him on the back hard enough to rattle his teeth, then took his usual position, holding up the wall behind Sheppard. “Priorities.”
“Yes, well, while I am happy to have my priorities and my wilderness skills affirmed,“ Rodney chose to ignore the snort from across the room, as he said that, “perhaps we could get through this meeting, as I have a lab that actually needs me, and-“
“And that would be my cue,” Woolsey said with a chuckle as he ruffled his ever-present stack of papers. “Very well…”
(end)
Heh, there are people who can write short. I appreciate those who can contain a single thought in a small number of words. Like haiku, that takes skill, to encapsulate something worth saying in only a few breaths. I cheerfully admit that I can’t. I have grocery lists that run more than a hundred words and have been known to footnote weekend to-do lists. I don’t do drabbles because the idea of a precisely 100 word limitation seems arbitrarily restrictive. We assigned an arbitrary word count on C_D once and I spent 45 minutes writing the story, then an hour and a half getting rid of the 20 extra words to bring it under 500. I got it down to 499 words, using MS Word’s wordcount function to check my word count, posted it, copy-n-pasted it with no changes to Skyehawke, where the wordcount was 502 words. At that point, I pretty much threw my hands in the air, said “Fuck it” and promised my sanity that I wouldn’t fall prey to the temptations offered by drabble communities.
Because clearly, I like prompts. I'm just ridiculously verbose.
Three thousand words later, I tried to reply in comments and drove myself crazy, so here's the whole darn thing.
Rodney liked to be in on the ground floor, in the inner circle, in the know. He shoved the sweat out of his eyes with an impatient hand, pulled another crystal, and held it in his mouth, careful to wrap his lips over his teeth. Exiled to Siberia, he’d spent two weeks in virtual isolation before a one two punch of unlocking the Ancient code responsible for interpolation of astrometric distances and tweaking the flow rate on the distillery bought him enough access to the middle management of the base that he could actually work on something useful. At that point, his innate genius pulled him into the programming circle where he was able to pick up enough Russian to follow conversations, if not actually say anything more than good night, good morning, and a string of syllables appropriate for dropping something metal on a fragile body part. He wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, but the first time he used it, he got a huge paw slammed onto his back and a grin from the base commander. Good enough for him.
What he did not like, he thought, as he shifted the crystal into the primary slot, rerouted control past the missing section of the DHD, and fumbled for the connector pins, was being alone, without a guard, supplies, or even a tent, in a semi-habitable wilderness, with no one but trees to talk to. The incomprehensible babble of a foreign language would be better than being alone. He’d even take the non-verbal mocking of the marines. With the pins re-seated, he slid the panel cover far enough to shield his eyes if it blew, then reached under it to get the power supply close enough to arc. If he could establish a pathway, then maybe … . The conduit spat out sparks, but physics won and the damaged area was just too extensive. He ducked down, pulled as much play out of the cable as he could, and tried again, earning himself a soldered crystal and a stinging burn on his index finger. He stuck the burned finger in his mouth, then pulled it out hurriedly, wary of germs and dirt and the distance between himself and med bay, but it hurt, so he stuck it back in. His knees ached, and he dropped to sit fully, rotating to put his back against the column of the DHD. Shit. He’d been here a whopping three minutes and he had no idea how long Woolsey would take sending a rescue party. Days, maybe. He was going to need a volleyball by then.
---:::---
“Rodney, go!” John shouted. Ronon skidded to a stop on the gate’s base. Of all of them, Teyla was the only one with any sense, and she continued through the puddle of the event horizon. Rodney stood behind the DHD, mulish. “Rodney. Now!”
“Go! Look, you fly the jumpers better than I do, and I can fix the gate. Go! If i'm not right behind you, come get me.” Rodney nodded, not at John, but behind him, and John felt Ronon grab the back of his vest and throw him into the gate. He landed on Atlantis side and was taking a step back toward the blue shimmer of the portal when it blinked out.
Ronon caught his fist on the way up and said, “He was right. Let’s go get him.”
John bit back the first three words that he wanted to say and turned to face the balcony. “Gate damage and malfunction. Rodney’s still there. Chuck, what’s the nearest gate? Ronon, go grab a first aid kit and find Zelenka.”
“Zelenka is here. What do you need me to do?”
“Assemble what you need to help Rodney fix the gate.” Radek nodded and turned away, and John added, “Hey! Also, anything you’ve got to make a jumper go faster.”
“You want me to modify a jumper before you leave?” Radek asked. “Yes, yes of course. But the first aid kit…?”
Chuck hollered down, “MR3-N72 is closest. Distance from that gate to M8P-798 at jumper speeds is … approximately 87 hours.”
John showed his teeth. From Zelenka’s reaction, it wasn’t a smile. “A little over six days, on a planet alone, after throwing me through a gate? If he isn’t injured when I get to him, he will be soon after.”
---:::---
Rodney slid the outer panel back into place to protect the interior workings of the DHD and walked to the shade of the conifers, unzipping the tac vest and sliding it off his shoulders. He comforted himself with the knowledge that this planet was completely deserted. The last Wraith attack had cleared the settlement here and had been what damaged the gate to begin with. There were no locals, there was no way for the gate to activate, and he was here with no fauna larger than a wallaby, so long as he stayed where he was and out of the reach of the carnivorous flora about a half day’s hike to the south. He patted the tree next to him. “Tell you what, you don’t eat me, I won’t eat you. Deal?” He broke a power bar in half, shoved half of it in his mouth, wrapped the other section carefully and put it back in his vest. Not that he was hiking anywhere. He was staying right here, next to the gate, where his team could find him. Soon. Oh please, soon.
---:::---
John cut the briefing short, and Woolsey let him. Five minutes in the infirmary with Keller, ten in his quarters with shampoo, and he hit the jumper bay doors as Ronon did.
Ronon lugged the duffel of water and food to the jumper and John hung back and called Teyla. “I’m at the jumpers.”
“Very good, as am I.” The doors slid open and she stepped through, a bag over her shoulder and her hair, still wet, pulled back in a band.
John grinned, then shook his head. “We are travelling light this trip. Straight out, straight back. Stay here and get your own stuff done.”
“And keep an eye on things.” She tapped her earpiece.
He nodded. “That too. Thank you.”
“Bring him back safely.”
As many years as he’s known her, the forehead thing still had the feel of ritual, something shared. He grabbed her hand, the closet to a hug he could do outside sickbay. “Hey, Teyla ….” He couldn’t think of how to say it, but she smiled at him.
“I will. Here, you will want this.” She handed him the bag and walked to where Ronon was standing over Zelenka. He followed. John tapped the bigger pelican case with his toe. “This the gate stuff?”
“No, I have loaded already the equipment Rodney will need to repair the gate, plus the travel set of replacement crystals. Unless the main power set is destroyed, he should be able to do anything short of rebuilding it with that material.” Zelenka patted the carry case at his feet. “This is the jumper kit, and I promise you, I will not leave this bay until I’ve done everything I can to make this jumper move more swiftly.”
“Actually, doc, yes, you will. Let’s load up.” He threw a friendly arm over Zelenka’s shoulder and walked him up the ramp as Ronon hefted the two larger cases and Teyla slid the smaller one in as the ramp closed. John settled himself in the pilot’s seat as she walked around the jumper to stand against the wall in front of them and wave. He saluted back as he guided the jumper through the skylight.
---:::---
Rodney knelt by the stream and resolutely kept himself from considering bacterial count, fish feces, or water snakes as he refilled his canteen. Teyla had spent most of a walk from some gate to some village talking about a tree native to several planets in this galaxy. The roots were dried and ground into a tea that was used for meditation, the bark was soaked, pounded and used as grain, and the leaves were wrapped around meat filling and eaten. The locals called it a feast tree. She’d pointed out several examples of it, noting the distinctive leaf shape and bark. He had no idea what it looked like. His stomach growled.
---:::---
John wished for rear view mirrors. Zelenka’d been silent since Chuck cleared them to go. He really didn’t want to turn around to see, but … he glanced to the side. Ronon was taking up the co-pilot’s chair and a good bit of the area around it as well, his head tipped back, not quite snoring. He set the autopilot and swiveled the chair. Zelenka had the back panels open and was holding the laptop with one hand, tapping at it with the other.
“Should I say I’m sorry for kidnapping you?”
“Are you?”
“What?”
“Sorry.”
John considered. “Not really.”
Zelenka shrugged. “Then why lie?”
“You don’t seem all that put out.”
Zelenka shifted the laptop to his off hand, then reached down and unsnapped the pocket of his cargo pants. He reached in and pulled out a tube of toothpaste and one of the travel toothbrushes that no one liked. He let them fall back in and tapped at the keyboard again. “Let us say that I am not completely surprised.”
“Oh. Um.”
“You are team.”
“Yeah, well, thanks.”
“You might get some sleep as well. I will need you in … about three hours.”
---:::---
The extended battery that all of them carried lasted for eight hours of constant use. Turning it off and on still used some power, so Rodney opened up one word document and made notes as quickly as he could, typing as quickly as his fingers would go, leaving in ‘teh’s and not bothering to go back and take out the ‘and’s that seemed to start most of his sentences. He didn’t bother coding or organizing, and just used paragraph breaks to separate reminders to Zelenka, a particularly pithy turn of phrase that someone might want to use at his eulogy, a teasing note to Teyla about her fondness for the hair care regime that Jeanne supplied her in boxes marked for Rodney. He saved at the end of every sentence when the battery icon started flashing, so he didn’t lose more than a few words when it died.
Eight hours wasn’t long enough.
---:::---
When John opened his eyes, Zelenka was using Ronon as human scaffolding. He was holding part of the ceiling with one hand and Zelenka’s laptop with the other and he had wires draped over both arms. Some of them sparkled and Zelenka’s hair was all standing on end. Right. Business as usual.
“Was that three hours?”
Ronon grunted and Zelenka answered, “A bit more than four, actually. I’m having difficulty reconfiguring the drive system while it’s actually in use because of,” he looked up at the both of them and shook his head, “because of issues that neither of you particularly care about. This would be much easier if we were on the ground.”
“Ride’s not smooth enough for you?” John stretched and his back and hip popped. He winced at the volume. Ronon cocked one eyebrow and smirked. Asshole. Young, flexible asshole. His day would come.
Zelenka fixed him with a steel blue eye. “Not being able to access the outer panels is hampering my efficiency.”
“We could probably rig a space suit for you, doc. I bet we’ve got duct tape and a plastic bag in here. Ronon, switch out.” John took the laptop and slid his arm behind Ronon’s to catch the conduit cording. Ronon kept one hand on the ceiling panel until he could catch a hard-side case with his ankle and drag it over for John to stand on. John rolled his eyes as he did so, then stepped on and pushed up on the loose panel. “There a reason we can’t let this hang?”
“Yes, the connection point is permanent, so in order to have the slack to connect -
“Doc.”
“Yes?”
“That’s all I needed. I say, ‘Is this necessary?’ You say, ‘Yes.’ The rest is for you, not me.”
Zelenka turned his attention back to the laptop. “Rodney has you well trained.”
“Nah, Lorne just doesn't have you trained. Easier that way around.”
Ronon snorted in agreement or possibly in humor and John played Christmas tree, complete with tinsel, for about half an hour longer than his shoulders really wanted him to.
---:::---
Rodney broke the half of a power bar into two sections and ate one. He’d wait until midnight for the rest. The water helped. He could drink directly from the stream, but quite honestly, the plastic tang from the canteen was soothing. He sat in the circle of bare dirt he’d scraped clear before building a campfire, carefully keeping it small enough to not risk setting the branches over him on fire. It was too small, really, to give much heat, but the night was warm and his socks were dry and there weren’t any predators on this planet. The trees were just trees and their needles made the soil here too acidic for the triffids and he had nothing to worry about. He was completely safe. The fire popped, the resin of the branches sharp in his nose, and he got up to widen the cleared area by another six inches. Wouldn’t do to start a forest fire, after all. The others would tease him, when they came. Because they would. Soon.
---:::---
“I’ll need you to take the engines offline.”
“No.”
“I can increase our speed by twenty seven percent.”
“Good, now figure out how to do it without bringing us to a stop.”
“But -“
“Doc, remember that whole not explaining thing?”
“Yes?”
“Works both ways.”
The string of Czech was long, but muttered softly enough that John could ignore it.
---:::---
The needles were too short to weave into a net, rocks were slowed by the water too quickly, but Rodney found that if he held very very still, the fish would investigate his feet, and he could grab them. More precisely, he could grab one after a great many tries at holding very very still. But that one was surprisingly tasty when unevenly roasted over his little campfire.
---:::---
“Shifting to manual control,” John answered. The jumper purred under his hands. Then it lurched and John clutched at the console, a small petty part of him relieved to see Ronon at his right flail as badly. “Doc?”
“Expected!” Zelenka said, then resumed muttering a steady stream of syllables, some of them in English and of those most of them insults to varied persons including the ancients, Rodney, John, Woolsey, Elizabeth, a Professor Wrenya, and General Hammond.
The jumper started a slow roll and John corrected course to bring the yaw back under control. It had been a while since he’d wished for a five point harness. A clang startled John, and the dampners came back on line with a grind like hitting sand.
“There. That’s done. Twelve hours out, 23 or so to go.”
“Seriously?” John scanned the console, but half of it was dark. “That’s really good, doc.”
“I’ve dropped the shield to minimal levels. Modify the sensors to alert us and evade for anything larger than microscopic debris.”
“Got it. Still, that’s a hell of an increase, doc. Can we do this permanently?”
“We are burning fuel at seven times the normal rate.”
“That would be a no, then. Wait, these things hold … Will we have enough to get back to the working gate?”
“We will repair the gate at that end.“
That would be another no, John thought.
Zelenka rolled Ronon’s coat and shoved it on the bench in back. The panel above him, still uncovered and with a handful of hemostats hanging from it, lit the area. “I will sleep now. You will be very quiet.” John nodded. Ronon looked up from Teyla’s bag and waved the deck of cards she’d packed. John grinned as Ronon shuffled.
----:::---
The rising sun caught him in the eyes and he was cold and the ground was hard and his fire’d gone out and there was dirt inside his ear and his clothes were damp with dew, he hoped, oh god, please be dew, but he couldn’t smell anything other than the failure of his own antiperspirant yesterday when the DHD had blown as they set foot on this planet and he hated this entire planet with its cold fish and wet stream and pokey tree needles and man eating plants and non-functional gate and bright white sun and dirt.
He indulged in half a power bar for breakfast, checked the burn on his finger for bubbling, oozing, spots or any sign of medical issue that he could do exactly nothing about anyway, and went to wash his face in the stream.
---:::---
“Do you have any fours?”
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
---:::---
Pegasus trout, Salvelinus Pegusi Moronis because any species stupid enough to stand in the shade of a predator merited moronis, wasn’t quite as tasty two days in a row and Rodney was eyeing a brightly colored berry and desperately trying to remember bits of conversation that he’d tried equally hard to ignore at the time.
He stared at the DHD. Cannibalizing the laptop would give him nothing useful. They’d not been able to synthesize the crystals themselves and too much depended on scavenging and reusing the ones they could find. The battery in the digital camera wouldn’t give him enough juice to do anything useful. While he had the camera out, he took a picture of the stream, and his campfire, then the damage on the DHD. Standing on the edge of the gate stage, he noted where the corners of the viewfinder were, then mindful of the very flattering photo of Teyla in the mess hall with his and John’s hair cut off and Ronon wholly decapitated, scratched markers in the dirt well within those points. He set the camera to three second standby and found a stick to scratch what he could remember of the Botany lab energy usage pattern spikes.
---:::---
“Planetary map up. Show current location and location of Stargate.” The lasergrid on the screen obliged. “Scan for human-sized life forms.” A red dot popped up next to the blue one, and John carefully didn’t sigh in relief. Zelenka, on the other hand, whooped. “Put on the coffee, Rodney, we’re coming in.”
---:::---
Rodney set his laptop on the conference table and sat in his usual seat. He pulled open his meeting laptop and opened the downloaded photos and started transcribing them into something more usable by the engineering team assigned to the energy drain masquerading as bio-controls for greenhouses.
Woolsey walked in, tapped his papers, and asked, “So, how was your little camping trip?"
Rodney looked over the top of the monitor at him and started to say something he’d probably eventually regret, but Sheppard’s hand came down heavy on his shoulder. Sheppard said, “Rodney’s idea of roughing it is a hotel without high speed internet, but I was surprised. He had himself a nice little base camp set up.”
Teyla joined them, setting her mug carefully on the table before her before seating herself, “I am glad to hear that our instruction was well learned. Rodney and I have often spoken of native foodstuffs available on many planets and silent hunting techniques.”
“Another week and he’d have found a caffeine source. He’d set up a whiteboard on the ground by the time we got there.” John sat across from Teyla, nodding as Lorne walked in.
Zelenka settled next to Rodney. “The actual numbers from which you still have not shared.”
“Had to get a full stomach first, right, McKay?” Ronon slapped him on the back hard enough to rattle his teeth, then took his usual position, holding up the wall behind Sheppard. “Priorities.”
“Yes, well, while I am happy to have my priorities and my wilderness skills affirmed,“ Rodney chose to ignore the snort from across the room, as he said that, “perhaps we could get through this meeting, as I have a lab that actually needs me, and-“
“And that would be my cue,” Woolsey said with a chuckle as he ruffled his ever-present stack of papers. “Very well…”
(end)
Heh, there are people who can write short. I appreciate those who can contain a single thought in a small number of words. Like haiku, that takes skill, to encapsulate something worth saying in only a few breaths. I cheerfully admit that I can’t. I have grocery lists that run more than a hundred words and have been known to footnote weekend to-do lists. I don’t do drabbles because the idea of a precisely 100 word limitation seems arbitrarily restrictive. We assigned an arbitrary word count on C_D once and I spent 45 minutes writing the story, then an hour and a half getting rid of the 20 extra words to bring it under 500. I got it down to 499 words, using MS Word’s wordcount function to check my word count, posted it, copy-n-pasted it with no changes to Skyehawke, where the wordcount was 502 words. At that point, I pretty much threw my hands in the air, said “Fuck it” and promised my sanity that I wouldn’t fall prey to the temptations offered by drabble communities.
Because clearly, I like prompts. I'm just ridiculously verbose.