A muchly-belated thank you
This one's for otterwort, in gratitude for the adorable retro laptop (RIP, but it served me well while it lasted). She asked for Zelenka and otters; otters are easy, but Zelenka's still a challenge for me. A good challenge, though.
(Crossposted to Wraithbait and IJ.)
Title: A Brush With Adventure
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Summary: Zelenka's watching the waves, and the waves are watching him back.
Spoilers: A passing reference to first season's "The Storm" and "The Eye".
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Stargate: Atlantis is the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Double Secret Productions, Gekko Productions, Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, and the Sci-Fi Channel; characters, situations, etc. of Stargate: Atlantis are included in this work under the principle of Fair Use, and no infringement of copyright is intended. All other components of this work are © 2008 Liz A. Vogel.
A Brush With Adventure
by Liz A. Vogel
The surf slisched over the sun-baked sand, leaving thin tracers of foam as it receded. The endless blue-white of the sky, eerily free of gulls, arced over ocean as far as the eye could see.
Zelenka followed the wave out to its lowest point, planted the sensor on its long spike as firmly as possible, and noted the time and serial number on his data pad. Since the initial survey had found nothing harmful in the area, he was working barefoot, and his toes dug involuntarily into the wet sand. He shaded his eyes to look out over the painful brightness of the water, then backed up as the wave rolled back in, to spare the already-damp hems of his rolled-up trouser legs further soaking.
That had been the last of his sensors, so he returned to where he'd left his gear well above the high water line and tucked the data pad into his satchel. For miles up and down the coastline, he knew, other temporary draftees to the tiny Meteorology department were planting similar devices. With luck, the information on tidal patterns would help give them advance warning of any more surprises like last year's storm. In the meantime, he'd completed his section with half an hour to spare before his scheduled jumper pick-up.
Down the shore a way, a long, narrow spit of sand and rocks jutted out into the water. He meandered toward it, relaxing into the sense of immense age that radiated from the place. Ten thousand years ago, the same waves had washed up on the same beach; no doubt ten thousand years from now, they would still be doing so. He pulled his shoes back on as he reached the peninsula, for the surface was rockier than it had looked from a distance. He picked his way carefully along the length. The water was darker out here, a steely grey beyond where it broke against the rocks. Thick, tangled streamers of seaweed clung to the stone, swelling and receding with the motion of the water.
He'd been watching it, half-hypnotized, for some time before he realized the seaweed was watching him back.
Beady black eyes stared up from amidst the kelp-like ribbons. Zelenka jumped back, startled, and the eyes vanished without so much as a ripple. He edged cautiously away, not turning around until he was nearly at the other side of the little cape, only to find another pair of eyes staring up at him. These too vanished. Zelenka decided he'd much rather be back on the beach, and headed there with as brisk a stride as the rocky footing would allow.
As he retreated, a small brown face poked up at the very end of the point. Its whiskers twitched, and its bright black eyes followed Zelenka's progress unblinkingly.
*
"Everything okay, Doc? You seem a little jumpy."
Zelenka shook his head as he settled in next to Major Lorne. "I think there is some type of fauna here that the survey missed."
"Anything dangerous?"
"I did not get a good look," Zelenka admitted.
"Well, we can send out another team to check it out later." Lorne raised the jumper and sent it skimming along the coastline. "Let's just get everyone picked up so we can get back to the city."
Lorne was wet to the chest, Zelenka noticed, and looked more than a little cross about it. "Did you have a problem placing your sensors?" he asked. Even the pilots had been drafted by Meteorology, since they were out here anyway.
"I found a sinkhole," Lorne griped as they swooped down to the next pick-up site. "I got out okay, but right now I don't care what's out here, unless it's got a spare pair of dry fatigues."
Zelenka grinned, but carefully repressed his chuckle until he could step out of the jumper to help the next draftee load her equipment.
*
Five days later, most of the sunburns had faded, the meteorologists were in raptures about their new data, and the interminable weekly departmental meeting was finally wrapping up.
"Okay, last order of business, people," McKay announced. "I've had three complaints in the last two days about parts going missing, and I've got better things to do with my time than track down five-finger discounts on capacitors. There's a requisition system in place; use it." He glared around the room briefly, then waved in the general direction of the door. "Right, that's it. Let's get back to work."
Zelenka hung back to avoid the stampede, and ended up leaving with McKay. "You know, Catterhill's figures on the power consumption ratios are not as unreliable as you made them out to be."
"Are you kidding? They're practically gibberish!" McKay flailed with the hand that wasn't holding his laptop, and proceeded to criticize the hapless technician's conclusions, methodology, and ancestry. Zelenka patiently argued mathematics back, so that by the time they arrived at his laboratory, McKay was criticizing his ancestry.
Zelenka was left to work in peace, and did so contentedly until late that afternoon. A faint shudder in the floor pulled him out of his calculations. His first thought, as was everyone's at any disturbance, was Wraith attack!, but when several moments passed without any city-wide alarms, he closed his laptop and headed out into the hall to investigate.
He had pulled up at the doorway of the lab a few rooms down from his own and was still absorbing what he saw when McKay came fuming up behind him. "What the hell...?"
They both stood at the door, staring at the smoldering wreckage of one of the test-beds they'd rigged up for powering small Ancient devices. The room was blackened to the walls, and the city's air circulation system was only just beginning to clear the stench of burnt electronics. Fortunately no-one had been present at the time of the explosion, but the set-up was obviously a total loss.
As more personnel came to see what the commotion was about, McKay and Zelenka began picking through the debris. As far as they could determine from the charred remains, the explosion was caused by a key power-regulating component that was somehow suddenly not there. McKay ranted at full steam for half an hour about the stupidity of whichever so-called scientist had thought removing that was a good idea; Zelenka kept his doubts to himself. He simply couldn't imagine anyone who had access to the lab being foolish enough to steal the component and not at least switch the power off.
That wasn't the last straw, however. What really set McKay on the warpath came the next day, when he stumbled in to find that someone had taken the carafe from the Physics lab coffeemaker during the night, and his morning fix had dripped all over the floor, where it hadn't evaporated entirely on contact with the burner.
"Okay, that is just wrong!" McKay wailed, staring at the wasted coffee. Zelenka, arriving on his heels, had to agree.
McKay soon had a sizeable portion of the science staff whipped into searching for the coffeepot and the perpetrator. McKay himself, of course, had to leave for a mission briefing about the time the search turned from frantic to tedious, but he departed with dire threats about what would happen if the culprit wasn't waiting in custody when he returned. This Zelenka ignored, but he did keep the search going. He too was fed up with the thefts, and at the rate they were going, somebody was going to get hurt.
As the day stretched on, more and more of the searchers drifted away to other tasks. Zelenka himself had long since abandoned any real expectation of finding anything, and resolved to take the problem to Weir in the morning. He was just having a look into one last room when he heard a faint scratching sound, as of something small being dragged over the floor.
The lights were sparse down here, low in the city's architecture. He peered into the shadowy corners. "Who is there?"
More dragging, and an oddly galumphing thump.
"Show yourself!" Zelenka demanded, and briefly considered the lack of wisdom in mounting this search unarmed.
Something skidded across the floor and into his ankle. He jumped, looked down, and blinked at what appeared to be the missing Physics lab coffee pot.
He glanced up just in time to glimpse what might have been beady black eyes in a small, brown, bewhiskered face, before they disappeared into the shadows. Zelenka held very, very still, then slowly edged one hand up to touch his radio.
"Colonel--" No, Sheppard was off-world, with McKay. "Major Lorne," he whispered.
"Doctor Zelenka? Is that you?"
He raised his voice a tiny fraction. "I am under West pier, level three, past the desalinization plant. Can you come down here, please."
"Sure, Doc. On my way."
Reassured, Zelenka carefully bent down and picked up the carafe. The laboratory-quality glass was undamaged, although the metal rim showed a number of scratches. He paused, pondering, then set the carafe back down and shoved it in the direction from which it had come.
A brown blur popped out of the shadows, batted the carafe back at him, and disappeared again.
By the time Lorne arrived, Zelenka was sitting cross-legged on the floor, enthusiastically playing coffee-pot hockey with his mysterious companion. The brown blur checked sharply at the major's entrance and ducked back into its hiding place, leaving the carafe unreturned. Lorne reflexively aimed his P-90 at the movement, and the barrel-mounted light briefly revealed a sinuous, sleek-furred body, finished with a long, flat tail that flicked in their direction as the creature doubled back on itself and disappeared into an air vent.
Lorne and Zelenka looked at each other. "Was it just me," asked the major, "or was that...."
"It seems we have a house-guest," the scientist replied.
With some idea of what to look for, Zelenka was able to recalibrate the life-signs detector Lorne had brought, and they started tracking the animal. It had evidently become quite familiar with the city's air ducts and service shafts, and their trail soon began to resemble a Brownian motion experiment. But finally they traced it through an empty room lined with cupboards and alcoves, and Lorne said, "Hey, Doc, is this the stuff you're looking for?"
The power regulator sat atop a small pile of crystals, wire, pens, and other shiny or crinkly things that had gone missing. At a rustle from the far corner, the two men turned to find their quarry staring worriedly at them from across the room. It edged back toward its stash, and they got their first proper view of it. Perhaps half a meter long, with short legs supported by clawed flipper-like feet, it regarded them with wide liquid eyes, its long sweeps of whiskers waving with the twitching of its black button nose. It reached the pile and looked up at them with a small brrrrp? noise.
As Zelenka collected the items, the otter-like creature reared up and attempted to bat them back out of his hands. When it was unsuccessful, it sat down and emitted a series of piteous, squeaking cries.
"I am sorry," Zelenka told it sincerely, "but we must have this equipment back. And some of it would be dangerous to you." The creature only squeaked louder and more distressingly.
When the louder, deeper, and far more threatening sound came from behind them, both men froze before turning around very slowly. The second creature was three times the size of the first, and despite having the same sleek fur, bright eyes, and clever whiskers, it wasn't nearly as cute. Possibly this was due to the vicious-looking teeth it was baring at them.
Lorne brought his P-90 to bear. The second animal growled deeper, and the first cried louder. "Don't shoot it," Zelenka pleaded. "I think it is only protecting its young."
"That's swell, Doc, but it's between us and the door," countered Lorne.
The larger creature looked at the smaller one, then at the items Zelenka held, and gave a screeching growl. Zelenka also looked at the items, then at the crying youngster, then back at the items.
Then he very slowly and carefully bent down, put the coffee pot on the floor, and slid it toward the near-otter parent.
The creature batted the carafe toward its pup, who promptly stopped crying and batted it to Zelenka again. They went around like this a couple of times, then the parent swatted the pot in Lorne's direction.
Lorne stared. The near-otter barked once, sharply.
And with a sigh, Lorne slung his P-90 over his shoulder, settled on the floor next to Zelenka, and shoved the pot toward the pup, who chirped happily.
As the game continued, Lorne said, "I hope somebody comes down to relieve us eventually."
"As long as it is not McKay," Zelenka answered, putting a bit of backspin on the carafe. "If he did not try to fight the animals for the coffee pot, he would probably try to teach them general rules of the Canadian Curling Association."
(Crossposted to Wraithbait and IJ.)
Title: A Brush With Adventure
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Summary: Zelenka's watching the waves, and the waves are watching him back.
Spoilers: A passing reference to first season's "The Storm" and "The Eye".
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Stargate: Atlantis is the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Double Secret Productions, Gekko Productions, Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, and the Sci-Fi Channel; characters, situations, etc. of Stargate: Atlantis are included in this work under the principle of Fair Use, and no infringement of copyright is intended. All other components of this work are © 2008 Liz A. Vogel.
A Brush With Adventure
by Liz A. Vogel
The surf slisched over the sun-baked sand, leaving thin tracers of foam as it receded. The endless blue-white of the sky, eerily free of gulls, arced over ocean as far as the eye could see.
Zelenka followed the wave out to its lowest point, planted the sensor on its long spike as firmly as possible, and noted the time and serial number on his data pad. Since the initial survey had found nothing harmful in the area, he was working barefoot, and his toes dug involuntarily into the wet sand. He shaded his eyes to look out over the painful brightness of the water, then backed up as the wave rolled back in, to spare the already-damp hems of his rolled-up trouser legs further soaking.
That had been the last of his sensors, so he returned to where he'd left his gear well above the high water line and tucked the data pad into his satchel. For miles up and down the coastline, he knew, other temporary draftees to the tiny Meteorology department were planting similar devices. With luck, the information on tidal patterns would help give them advance warning of any more surprises like last year's storm. In the meantime, he'd completed his section with half an hour to spare before his scheduled jumper pick-up.
Down the shore a way, a long, narrow spit of sand and rocks jutted out into the water. He meandered toward it, relaxing into the sense of immense age that radiated from the place. Ten thousand years ago, the same waves had washed up on the same beach; no doubt ten thousand years from now, they would still be doing so. He pulled his shoes back on as he reached the peninsula, for the surface was rockier than it had looked from a distance. He picked his way carefully along the length. The water was darker out here, a steely grey beyond where it broke against the rocks. Thick, tangled streamers of seaweed clung to the stone, swelling and receding with the motion of the water.
He'd been watching it, half-hypnotized, for some time before he realized the seaweed was watching him back.
Beady black eyes stared up from amidst the kelp-like ribbons. Zelenka jumped back, startled, and the eyes vanished without so much as a ripple. He edged cautiously away, not turning around until he was nearly at the other side of the little cape, only to find another pair of eyes staring up at him. These too vanished. Zelenka decided he'd much rather be back on the beach, and headed there with as brisk a stride as the rocky footing would allow.
As he retreated, a small brown face poked up at the very end of the point. Its whiskers twitched, and its bright black eyes followed Zelenka's progress unblinkingly.
*
"Everything okay, Doc? You seem a little jumpy."
Zelenka shook his head as he settled in next to Major Lorne. "I think there is some type of fauna here that the survey missed."
"Anything dangerous?"
"I did not get a good look," Zelenka admitted.
"Well, we can send out another team to check it out later." Lorne raised the jumper and sent it skimming along the coastline. "Let's just get everyone picked up so we can get back to the city."
Lorne was wet to the chest, Zelenka noticed, and looked more than a little cross about it. "Did you have a problem placing your sensors?" he asked. Even the pilots had been drafted by Meteorology, since they were out here anyway.
"I found a sinkhole," Lorne griped as they swooped down to the next pick-up site. "I got out okay, but right now I don't care what's out here, unless it's got a spare pair of dry fatigues."
Zelenka grinned, but carefully repressed his chuckle until he could step out of the jumper to help the next draftee load her equipment.
*
Five days later, most of the sunburns had faded, the meteorologists were in raptures about their new data, and the interminable weekly departmental meeting was finally wrapping up.
"Okay, last order of business, people," McKay announced. "I've had three complaints in the last two days about parts going missing, and I've got better things to do with my time than track down five-finger discounts on capacitors. There's a requisition system in place; use it." He glared around the room briefly, then waved in the general direction of the door. "Right, that's it. Let's get back to work."
Zelenka hung back to avoid the stampede, and ended up leaving with McKay. "You know, Catterhill's figures on the power consumption ratios are not as unreliable as you made them out to be."
"Are you kidding? They're practically gibberish!" McKay flailed with the hand that wasn't holding his laptop, and proceeded to criticize the hapless technician's conclusions, methodology, and ancestry. Zelenka patiently argued mathematics back, so that by the time they arrived at his laboratory, McKay was criticizing his ancestry.
Zelenka was left to work in peace, and did so contentedly until late that afternoon. A faint shudder in the floor pulled him out of his calculations. His first thought, as was everyone's at any disturbance, was Wraith attack!, but when several moments passed without any city-wide alarms, he closed his laptop and headed out into the hall to investigate.
He had pulled up at the doorway of the lab a few rooms down from his own and was still absorbing what he saw when McKay came fuming up behind him. "What the hell...?"
They both stood at the door, staring at the smoldering wreckage of one of the test-beds they'd rigged up for powering small Ancient devices. The room was blackened to the walls, and the city's air circulation system was only just beginning to clear the stench of burnt electronics. Fortunately no-one had been present at the time of the explosion, but the set-up was obviously a total loss.
As more personnel came to see what the commotion was about, McKay and Zelenka began picking through the debris. As far as they could determine from the charred remains, the explosion was caused by a key power-regulating component that was somehow suddenly not there. McKay ranted at full steam for half an hour about the stupidity of whichever so-called scientist had thought removing that was a good idea; Zelenka kept his doubts to himself. He simply couldn't imagine anyone who had access to the lab being foolish enough to steal the component and not at least switch the power off.
That wasn't the last straw, however. What really set McKay on the warpath came the next day, when he stumbled in to find that someone had taken the carafe from the Physics lab coffeemaker during the night, and his morning fix had dripped all over the floor, where it hadn't evaporated entirely on contact with the burner.
"Okay, that is just wrong!" McKay wailed, staring at the wasted coffee. Zelenka, arriving on his heels, had to agree.
McKay soon had a sizeable portion of the science staff whipped into searching for the coffeepot and the perpetrator. McKay himself, of course, had to leave for a mission briefing about the time the search turned from frantic to tedious, but he departed with dire threats about what would happen if the culprit wasn't waiting in custody when he returned. This Zelenka ignored, but he did keep the search going. He too was fed up with the thefts, and at the rate they were going, somebody was going to get hurt.
As the day stretched on, more and more of the searchers drifted away to other tasks. Zelenka himself had long since abandoned any real expectation of finding anything, and resolved to take the problem to Weir in the morning. He was just having a look into one last room when he heard a faint scratching sound, as of something small being dragged over the floor.
The lights were sparse down here, low in the city's architecture. He peered into the shadowy corners. "Who is there?"
More dragging, and an oddly galumphing thump.
"Show yourself!" Zelenka demanded, and briefly considered the lack of wisdom in mounting this search unarmed.
Something skidded across the floor and into his ankle. He jumped, looked down, and blinked at what appeared to be the missing Physics lab coffee pot.
He glanced up just in time to glimpse what might have been beady black eyes in a small, brown, bewhiskered face, before they disappeared into the shadows. Zelenka held very, very still, then slowly edged one hand up to touch his radio.
"Colonel--" No, Sheppard was off-world, with McKay. "Major Lorne," he whispered.
"Doctor Zelenka? Is that you?"
He raised his voice a tiny fraction. "I am under West pier, level three, past the desalinization plant. Can you come down here, please."
"Sure, Doc. On my way."
Reassured, Zelenka carefully bent down and picked up the carafe. The laboratory-quality glass was undamaged, although the metal rim showed a number of scratches. He paused, pondering, then set the carafe back down and shoved it in the direction from which it had come.
A brown blur popped out of the shadows, batted the carafe back at him, and disappeared again.
By the time Lorne arrived, Zelenka was sitting cross-legged on the floor, enthusiastically playing coffee-pot hockey with his mysterious companion. The brown blur checked sharply at the major's entrance and ducked back into its hiding place, leaving the carafe unreturned. Lorne reflexively aimed his P-90 at the movement, and the barrel-mounted light briefly revealed a sinuous, sleek-furred body, finished with a long, flat tail that flicked in their direction as the creature doubled back on itself and disappeared into an air vent.
Lorne and Zelenka looked at each other. "Was it just me," asked the major, "or was that...."
"It seems we have a house-guest," the scientist replied.
With some idea of what to look for, Zelenka was able to recalibrate the life-signs detector Lorne had brought, and they started tracking the animal. It had evidently become quite familiar with the city's air ducts and service shafts, and their trail soon began to resemble a Brownian motion experiment. But finally they traced it through an empty room lined with cupboards and alcoves, and Lorne said, "Hey, Doc, is this the stuff you're looking for?"
The power regulator sat atop a small pile of crystals, wire, pens, and other shiny or crinkly things that had gone missing. At a rustle from the far corner, the two men turned to find their quarry staring worriedly at them from across the room. It edged back toward its stash, and they got their first proper view of it. Perhaps half a meter long, with short legs supported by clawed flipper-like feet, it regarded them with wide liquid eyes, its long sweeps of whiskers waving with the twitching of its black button nose. It reached the pile and looked up at them with a small brrrrp? noise.
As Zelenka collected the items, the otter-like creature reared up and attempted to bat them back out of his hands. When it was unsuccessful, it sat down and emitted a series of piteous, squeaking cries.
"I am sorry," Zelenka told it sincerely, "but we must have this equipment back. And some of it would be dangerous to you." The creature only squeaked louder and more distressingly.
When the louder, deeper, and far more threatening sound came from behind them, both men froze before turning around very slowly. The second creature was three times the size of the first, and despite having the same sleek fur, bright eyes, and clever whiskers, it wasn't nearly as cute. Possibly this was due to the vicious-looking teeth it was baring at them.
Lorne brought his P-90 to bear. The second animal growled deeper, and the first cried louder. "Don't shoot it," Zelenka pleaded. "I think it is only protecting its young."
"That's swell, Doc, but it's between us and the door," countered Lorne.
The larger creature looked at the smaller one, then at the items Zelenka held, and gave a screeching growl. Zelenka also looked at the items, then at the crying youngster, then back at the items.
Then he very slowly and carefully bent down, put the coffee pot on the floor, and slid it toward the near-otter parent.
The creature batted the carafe toward its pup, who promptly stopped crying and batted it to Zelenka again. They went around like this a couple of times, then the parent swatted the pot in Lorne's direction.
Lorne stared. The near-otter barked once, sharply.
And with a sigh, Lorne slung his P-90 over his shoulder, settled on the floor next to Zelenka, and shoved the pot toward the pup, who chirped happily.
As the game continued, Lorne said, "I hope somebody comes down to relieve us eventually."
"As long as it is not McKay," Zelenka answered, putting a bit of backspin on the carafe. "If he did not try to fight the animals for the coffee pot, he would probably try to teach them general rules of the Canadian Curling Association."