SGA drabble: nomenclature
I kind of realized that this wasn't what I wanted to do by around the 1500 word mark and pressed onward, so it's a rather unevenly compressed 3600 words. Still a drabble because for all of the verbiage, it's only got a thimbleful of idea.
The twin origin points were a drabble request about Lorne and McKay and then the somewhat surprising use of McKay's first name by Lorne in "No Man's Land." It's also technically a continuation of a story I started and stopped and may go back to.
I probably get points for effort, although there may be deductions for execution. I just wanted to clear the deck and either drabble about something else more successfully or go back to the WIP.
"This is so not what I had in mind."
Lorne looked up McKay, who was pacing back and forth. The shadows cast by the torch against the cave walls gave McKay a sinister air, as did the 9mm he was waving back and forth a little too freely as he gestured in time with his words.
"Me either," Lorne agreed. Because winding up wounded and trapped in a cave with Rodney McKay had never really been on his to-do list. "Do you want to holster your sidearm?"
McKay stopped and spun on his heel, nearly overbalancing. His gun hand came out to compensate and Lorne tried not to flinch as he kept his eye on which way the barrel was pointed. "How am I supposed to protect you?"
Lorne took a deep breath. It made him whimper. "I'm fairly sure that none of the rocks are going to attack us," he said slowly. "And if they do, I'm also pretty sure that shooting them won't help."
McKay took a deep breath, as if he were getting ready to protest, but no sound came out. Then the torch guttered a little and McKay spun around again, alert and afraid. Lorne knew that he had hit his head when they'd fallen, but he was starting to suspect that McKay had as well.
"Listen," he began carefully. "I think we need to sort out our priorities here. We have to make sure that we're safe, we have to try to contact our teams, and then we have to work on getting out of here. And we're going to need you to put the pistol away because you're going to need both hands free."
He tried not to sound anything less than confident that they'd be able to do all three. Because, truth be told, he was a little fuzzy on what had happened and what their situation truly was. They had been poking around the network of caves and tunnels and then what had either been an earthquake or a bomb had brought the ceiling down on them. He'd lost consciousness, then woken to realize that he had at least a broken rib, possibly three, and a slice that ran down the left side of his face that he suspected would make him look like a demented pirate if it didn't heal nicely.
"McKay?" he called, because the other man was still staring into the blackness with his gun drawn. "Doc?"
Finally McKay turned back, looking at the gun and down at him. "Did you ever read the mission report where we investigated the Wraith transport ship?"
Lorne hadn't read all of the mission reports from the first year, but he'd read that one. It had been handed to him as soon as he'd accepted the job as XO, back when it was assumed Caldwell was going to be CO, and the message had been clear: this is something that will not be repeated. Ever. Now, a year later, McKay was worried that it might.
"There aren't any Wraith here, Doctor McKay," Lorne said. "If there were, they would have fed off of us by now. Did you check the PDA for life signs?"
Lorne tried not to laugh -- because it hurt -- as McKay finally holstered the pistol so that he could pull out his PDA.
"Hibernating Wraith don't display," McKay warned. "And the dots could be anyone."
"There are dots?" He tried to sit up slowly, straightening his back to keep pressure off of his ribs. Rolling over on to his back had nearly made him cry, but he couldn't continue to lie there. Not with McKay teetering on the edge of flaking out on him. He'd read enough of the original batch of reports to know that McKay, for all of his high-maintenance, pain-in-the-fucking-ass antics, had saved Atlantis in general and his team in specific more than once. Which was part of the reason why Lorne was starting to get suspicious that he only got to see the self-absorbed eccentric when everyone else got the hero. "Dots are probably our teammates looking for us, not Wraith."
McKay laughed humorlessly. "The dots were theoretical."
"Oh." Lorne looked around. "Give me a hand up?"
McKay crossed the cave to stand over him. "Are you sure you should be getting up? You could puncture a lung or do some internal damage. Where's Safir when you need him?"
Lorne suspected that Yoni was off with Ronon, which was where he'd been before whatever had happened had happened. Yoni had gone off with Ronon, the marines had been stumbling after Teyla, and he'd been standing with Sheppard watching McKay rant about the state of Ancient technology after exposure to ten thousand years' worth of elemental damage. And then Sheppard had gone off to better hear Teyla on his radio and then boom.
"I'll have better posture if I can stand," he said, having no idea if it was true or not. He just wanted to get up and start doing something. He held up his hand and McKay reluctantly took it, stepping back and bracing himself so that he could hoist.
"Oh, Christ," he breathed as McKay pulled him to his feet. His left side was on fire, pain burning a path from armpit to hip. He tried to breathe through the pain, but breathing hurt so much that he wished he didn't need to. He felt for the wall behind him and leaned back a little, resting his head against it as he kept his back ramrod straight. His eyes were tearing and he closed them.
"Are you okay?" McKay asked quietly, voice full of concern.
The solicitousness surprised Lorne and he opened his eyes. "Yeah," he said, his voice far weaker and breathier than he'd like. "I'll be fine in a minute."
McKay's face soured. "Sure you will," he retorted. "As if I haven't had two years to learn that that's a euphemism for 'I have only limited time until I fall unconscious and die.'"
Lorne smiled. "I don't have Colonel Sheppard's pain tolerance," he assured. "If I'm dying, I'll let you know."
"Unless it's something quiet, like a punctured organ," McKay accused. "And I'm stuck here entombed with your moldering corpse. Or I'll be forced to revert to cannibalism while I wait for rescue."
The headache was starting to grow.
"Why don't we work on getting out of here so I can find Safir?" he asked instead. "Did you try the radios?"
McKay gave him a look that was nothing about sympathy and everything about annoyance. It made him feel better because that was the Rodney McKay he was used to. "Of course I did."
"From where?" He looked around the collapsed cave, trying to get his bearings now that he was standing. The passageway they'd come from -- now blocked off -- was to his left and the console where McKay had been working was behind him. He couldn't turn quickly and he couldn't twist at the waist, so he had to be careful of the loose rocks at his feet as he looked around. "Did you look for the lanterns?"
"Does it matter and no," McKay replied, bending down. They had brought a couple of portable lights with them so that McKay could work indoors, but they had been knocked over in the collapse. The torch they'd lit so that the rest of them could see was still lit, wedged into a crevice in the far wall. In the grand scheme of things, Lorne rather thought that he'd prefer to have busted lanterns than a fire, so he wasn't complaining. He had chem lights in his pack, but he'd rather save them for later.
"Here's one." McKay shook it and it made far too much noise for there to be much hope, but he took it over to the torch and examined it anyway. Lorne couldn't see anything -- the lantern was between the wall and McKay -- so he made his way carefully over to the collapsed exit.
He'd landed on his radio when he'd fallen, but thanks to modern technology, that meant that he'd have a nice bruise on his pectoral and not that the radio was damaged. "This is Lorne. Anyone home?"
Nothing.
"Aha!" McKay crowed and suddenly there was light. Lorne shielded his eyes at the brightness, especially after McKay pointed the damned thing at his face.
"McKay!"
"Sorry, sorry," he mumbled, pointing the light off to the side. "The contacts had been knocked loose."
McKay looked around for a place to put the light and finally settled on a natural ledge across from where he'd found the lantern. He aimed it up at the ceiling and toward the area where Lorne was standing. The cave roof was low enough that the reflected light gave them a sort of cool, ambient glow. It also let Lorne see how bad the blockage was.
"Shit." He pulled out his flashlight and aimed it at the top of the now-closed opening. The blockage was to the ceiling. He pondered climbing up to see how deep it was, but his ribs barked just at the movement of his arm holding the flashlight and he decided to wait a little while.
"See, that's the kind of optimism that's going to keep my barely held in check full-blown panic attack at bay," McKay said from behind him. "Because, I should tell you, Major, that not only am I claustrophobic, but I also have a genuine fear of dying trapped here, hungry and alone. Well, not alone because you're here, but... the point is, Major, that if you start thinking we're screwed, then I'm going to become markedly less useful."
He turned. McKay gave him a look that clearly said "this is important information, use it wisely," and then turned back to the torch so that he could work on the other lantern.
"We've got food, water, and air," Lorne said. "Everyone knows where we are, so it's just a matter of them coming to us or us getting to them."
McKay looked over his shoulder at him. "You suck at pep talks. Is this something endemic to the Air Force or something more widespread? We have limited food and water and it's too soon to tell if we have fresh air coming in. And if everyone else is in the same position we're in? Nobody's coming to get us."
Lorne doubted that the other groups, if they were trapped, were sitting idly waiting for rescue. "Our check-in is in two hours," he said as he gingerly moved closer to the pile of fallen rock. "We miss that, the ready-room team gets activated for search-and-rescue. They know our coordinates on the planet, so it's just a matter of getting to us."
He hissed in pain as he carefully climbed up the bottom edge of the slope. Bracing himself, he held up his right arm, trying to feel for any sort of air flow. There wasn't anything he could tell, but that didn't mean anything. He pushed off with a grunt and got back down to level (relatively) earth.
"Colonel Sheppard left his pack here, so we've got three canteens and at least three MREs," he went on. He didn't know how many McKay had packed, but it was probably more than one. "Plus whatever leftovers you got from the villagers."
McKay's blush was amplified by the torchlight. "Determining how badly the locking mechanism was damaged was hard work," he said in a small voice.
Lorne sighed. "Well, at least you won't be hungry for a while."
"But thinking about our lack of food will make me hungry." McKay didn't look up as he spoke.
"Mind over matter, Doc," Lorne replied easily as crossed to the other side of the cave. "You're supposed to have the greatest mind in the galaxy, so, you know...."
He and Sheppard had given this end of the cave a cursory examination while they'd been waiting for McKay to do whatever the hell he was doing with whatever piece of Ancient equipment that was here -- he still didn't know what it was. This corner had appeared to be a dead end and now, upon closer investigation, it still looked like a dead end. Except now, without the clatter of McKay banging on the Ancient toys, he can tell it's a wall and not just rock from the moutain. And, more importantly, he could hear a quiet whistle. He held up his hand, hoping to feel wherever the air was coming from. He found it, a gentle but steady breath against his hand about level with his chest.
"Hey, McKay, can you shine one of those lights over here?" he called over his shoulder.
The light was on him before he could even pull his knife out.
"Did you find something?"
"Yeah," he replied, trying to work the knife into the crack. "Air."
He could get the knife in a little, but not enough for any real torque, so he stopped before he jarred his ribs again and leaned back against the cool wall and closed his eyes, letting the worst of the pain fade. It wasn't warm in the cave, but he was sweating from the pain and the effort.
The light against his eyelids changed as he could hear McKay's footsteps approach. "Here."
He opened his eyes to see McKay holding out what looked like a miniature crowbar. "What's that?"
"What it looks like," McKay replied. "A lever. It's got more tensile strength than your knife."
Lorne wanted to point out that the problem was not tensile strength -- at least not of his knife. "I thought you were worried about my internal bleeding," he muttered as he sheathed his knife and started to worry the crowbar into the crack.
"You injured still have more horsepower than me," McKay replied. "But if you want, I'll try."
Lorne sighed. He was starting to understand how Sheppard always came back from his team's missions wounded. "No, I'll do it."
He wedged the crowbar in as far as he could get it, then looked at it for a long moment, trying to figure out the best angle of approach for maxumum leverage and minimum crying like a baby from pain.
Counting down from three, he threw his entire body weight into the effort and was rewarded with a chunk of rock coming out of the wall. It would have been a victory except that his momentum took him off-balance and he first bumped into the crowbar with his bad ribs and then bounced off of that and landed awkwardly on the floor after tripping on loose debris.
"Oh, fuck," he shouted as he rolled on to his back.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I should have done it." McKay was at his side, fussing with his shirt and the rocks around him and Lorne wanted to push him and his apologies away but that would require movement and he didn't want to move ever again.
But eventually he knew he had to because there was a sharp rock poking his right kidney.
He didn't realize he'd spaced, but apparently he had because McKay's jacket was rolled up and tucked under his head and McKay was working the hole in the wall with the crowbar with a decent amount of elbow grease and a steady stream of muttered curses and calculations. It sounded a little like McKay was cursing out the laws of physics. Maybe he was.
"Try the radio again," he said when McKay paused to lean against the wall and mop his forehead with the back of a sweaty hand.
"What?" McKay came over to him. "You're barely audible."
"I said try the radio again," Lorne repeated, putting force into his voice he didn't realize he'd lacked. "By the hole."
"Do you think it will work?" McKay asked, pulling his radio out of its pouch. "We don't even know what's on the other side of this wall."
McKay gave him a hopeful look and went back to the wall. Part of him really wished he'd been stuck with his own team not just because Yoni would have had his ribs taped and the marines would have done the heavy digging without asking -- would have refused Lorne's help even if he weren't injured, but also because his team could take care of themselves. They were combat-hardened and the kind of care and leadership they needed from him was both far subtler and much more direct. McKay could save the universe when nobody else could, but he needed hand-holding and guidance and restraint and all of that required energy. Energy that, right now, he wasn't sure he had.
"This is McKay, can anyone hear me?"
There was an awful silence then and just as McKay's features began to crumble with disappointment, they heard it.
"Sir? We read you. Are you okay? Is Major Lorne with you?"
He hissed out in pain as he reached for his radio. "I'm here, Staff Sergeant. We're fine. Is everyone else accounted for?"
"We are not fine," McKay almost yelled. He waved his arms for emphasis, but only Lorne could see them and he wasn't going to laugh no matter how funny it looked. "We are trapped, we are lost, and Major Lorne's injured. Do you--"
"McKay, shut up for a minute." Yoni would be pleased to know that his rebuke got McKay to sit down, sliding gracelessly against the wall like he was running out of steam. "What is wrong with Lorne?"
"Busted ribs, possible concussion," he replied. "Now give me a sitrep starting with who else is missing or injured."
"We are all well," Teyla answered. "We were all outside of the cave network when the collapse happened."
"Sheppard got out?" McKay has worry etched into his face.
"I'm fine, Rodney," Sheppard assured him. "I just had to do a little dive into the end zone to get clear."
"Good, good," McKay said, relieved. "Now how are you getting us out of here?"
The answer is not one that either of them wanted to hear. It would take hours, at the least, to get them free. The wall, once identified from the outside, was thirty meters up from the ground. The two solutions seemed to be a bucket brigade to clear the collapsed tunnel of rocks or getting a puddle jumper and Lieutenant Cadman's engineer team and blowing out the wall. McKay was a virulent opponent of the latter plan, whether it was because it was Cadman or because it involved being on the other side of a controlled demolition Lorne didn't know, until Sheppard told them that it would take three times as long because moving tons of rock wasn't easy, even with a lot of extra marines.
They had to move to the far side of the room to prepare for Cadman's team's work. And that meant getting up.
"McKay!" Lorne appreciated the help -- McKay had become positively solicitous once their rescue was imminent -- but not when McKay kept getting distracted and would move too quickly or too far.
"Sorry, sorry," McKay mumbled in reply, crouching down behind him to lift him up by the armpits. It would get him to standing without compressing his rib cage and, if he could get his feet under him quickly enough, it shouldn't hurt too badly. McKay had bitched about his back when it had been suggested by Reletti, but Teyla and Ronon had bullied him into acquiescing.
"You're allowed to call me Rodney," McKay said as he lifted, a chuff of air directly into Lorne's ear. "Sheppard calls me Rodney. Sometimes. Actually, everyone but you calls me Rodney. At least everyone I'm nominally on a first name basis with."
The lift was successful and once Lorne was standing on his own again, he turned back to McKay and gave him a cock-eyed look. He didn't remember Yoni ever calling McKay anything but by his last name. Ronon, too. "Are we on a first name basis? You never call me.... Do you even know my first name?"
McKay looked annoyed, like he'd offered a gift and it had gone unappreciated. Lorne supposed it was sort of like that and felt a little bad.
"You're like Sheppard," McKay -- Rodney -- explained as if Lorne had missed a very basic point from which all else flowed. "You're military and your first name might as well be 'Major.'"
There was a debate on the logic of that to be made, but it wouldn't be made then and there.
"Hello, sir!" Cadman's voice carried clearly through the hole, now wide enough to pass a football through. "And you, too, McKay. Ready to get out?"
"Hell yeah, Lieutenant," he replied, grinning.
"Oh, god," McKay moaned. "It's the Dynamite Dudette and her henchmen."
Cadman laughed. "Hear that, boys? You've been elevated to henchmen."
Cadman's henchmen rigged their charges and blew out the rest of the wall. From there, it was a matter of the jumper re-approaching the breach -- Lieutenant Paik in the pilot's seat moaning about the lack of rear-view mirrors -- and Hospitalman Fletcher appearing once it had docked. Lorne let the Corpsman do his thing -- Fletcher had the same bedside manner as Yoni, for better or for worse -- and they were on their way home.
The twin origin points were a drabble request about Lorne and McKay and then the somewhat surprising use of McKay's first name by Lorne in "No Man's Land." It's also technically a continuation of a story I started and stopped and may go back to.
I probably get points for effort, although there may be deductions for execution. I just wanted to clear the deck and either drabble about something else more successfully or go back to the WIP.
"This is so not what I had in mind."
Lorne looked up McKay, who was pacing back and forth. The shadows cast by the torch against the cave walls gave McKay a sinister air, as did the 9mm he was waving back and forth a little too freely as he gestured in time with his words.
"Me either," Lorne agreed. Because winding up wounded and trapped in a cave with Rodney McKay had never really been on his to-do list. "Do you want to holster your sidearm?"
McKay stopped and spun on his heel, nearly overbalancing. His gun hand came out to compensate and Lorne tried not to flinch as he kept his eye on which way the barrel was pointed. "How am I supposed to protect you?"
Lorne took a deep breath. It made him whimper. "I'm fairly sure that none of the rocks are going to attack us," he said slowly. "And if they do, I'm also pretty sure that shooting them won't help."
McKay took a deep breath, as if he were getting ready to protest, but no sound came out. Then the torch guttered a little and McKay spun around again, alert and afraid. Lorne knew that he had hit his head when they'd fallen, but he was starting to suspect that McKay had as well.
"Listen," he began carefully. "I think we need to sort out our priorities here. We have to make sure that we're safe, we have to try to contact our teams, and then we have to work on getting out of here. And we're going to need you to put the pistol away because you're going to need both hands free."
He tried not to sound anything less than confident that they'd be able to do all three. Because, truth be told, he was a little fuzzy on what had happened and what their situation truly was. They had been poking around the network of caves and tunnels and then what had either been an earthquake or a bomb had brought the ceiling down on them. He'd lost consciousness, then woken to realize that he had at least a broken rib, possibly three, and a slice that ran down the left side of his face that he suspected would make him look like a demented pirate if it didn't heal nicely.
"McKay?" he called, because the other man was still staring into the blackness with his gun drawn. "Doc?"
Finally McKay turned back, looking at the gun and down at him. "Did you ever read the mission report where we investigated the Wraith transport ship?"
Lorne hadn't read all of the mission reports from the first year, but he'd read that one. It had been handed to him as soon as he'd accepted the job as XO, back when it was assumed Caldwell was going to be CO, and the message had been clear: this is something that will not be repeated. Ever. Now, a year later, McKay was worried that it might.
"There aren't any Wraith here, Doctor McKay," Lorne said. "If there were, they would have fed off of us by now. Did you check the PDA for life signs?"
Lorne tried not to laugh -- because it hurt -- as McKay finally holstered the pistol so that he could pull out his PDA.
"Hibernating Wraith don't display," McKay warned. "And the dots could be anyone."
"There are dots?" He tried to sit up slowly, straightening his back to keep pressure off of his ribs. Rolling over on to his back had nearly made him cry, but he couldn't continue to lie there. Not with McKay teetering on the edge of flaking out on him. He'd read enough of the original batch of reports to know that McKay, for all of his high-maintenance, pain-in-the-fucking-ass antics, had saved Atlantis in general and his team in specific more than once. Which was part of the reason why Lorne was starting to get suspicious that he only got to see the self-absorbed eccentric when everyone else got the hero. "Dots are probably our teammates looking for us, not Wraith."
McKay laughed humorlessly. "The dots were theoretical."
"Oh." Lorne looked around. "Give me a hand up?"
McKay crossed the cave to stand over him. "Are you sure you should be getting up? You could puncture a lung or do some internal damage. Where's Safir when you need him?"
Lorne suspected that Yoni was off with Ronon, which was where he'd been before whatever had happened had happened. Yoni had gone off with Ronon, the marines had been stumbling after Teyla, and he'd been standing with Sheppard watching McKay rant about the state of Ancient technology after exposure to ten thousand years' worth of elemental damage. And then Sheppard had gone off to better hear Teyla on his radio and then boom.
"I'll have better posture if I can stand," he said, having no idea if it was true or not. He just wanted to get up and start doing something. He held up his hand and McKay reluctantly took it, stepping back and bracing himself so that he could hoist.
"Oh, Christ," he breathed as McKay pulled him to his feet. His left side was on fire, pain burning a path from armpit to hip. He tried to breathe through the pain, but breathing hurt so much that he wished he didn't need to. He felt for the wall behind him and leaned back a little, resting his head against it as he kept his back ramrod straight. His eyes were tearing and he closed them.
"Are you okay?" McKay asked quietly, voice full of concern.
The solicitousness surprised Lorne and he opened his eyes. "Yeah," he said, his voice far weaker and breathier than he'd like. "I'll be fine in a minute."
McKay's face soured. "Sure you will," he retorted. "As if I haven't had two years to learn that that's a euphemism for 'I have only limited time until I fall unconscious and die.'"
Lorne smiled. "I don't have Colonel Sheppard's pain tolerance," he assured. "If I'm dying, I'll let you know."
"Unless it's something quiet, like a punctured organ," McKay accused. "And I'm stuck here entombed with your moldering corpse. Or I'll be forced to revert to cannibalism while I wait for rescue."
The headache was starting to grow.
"Why don't we work on getting out of here so I can find Safir?" he asked instead. "Did you try the radios?"
McKay gave him a look that was nothing about sympathy and everything about annoyance. It made him feel better because that was the Rodney McKay he was used to. "Of course I did."
"From where?" He looked around the collapsed cave, trying to get his bearings now that he was standing. The passageway they'd come from -- now blocked off -- was to his left and the console where McKay had been working was behind him. He couldn't turn quickly and he couldn't twist at the waist, so he had to be careful of the loose rocks at his feet as he looked around. "Did you look for the lanterns?"
"Does it matter and no," McKay replied, bending down. They had brought a couple of portable lights with them so that McKay could work indoors, but they had been knocked over in the collapse. The torch they'd lit so that the rest of them could see was still lit, wedged into a crevice in the far wall. In the grand scheme of things, Lorne rather thought that he'd prefer to have busted lanterns than a fire, so he wasn't complaining. He had chem lights in his pack, but he'd rather save them for later.
"Here's one." McKay shook it and it made far too much noise for there to be much hope, but he took it over to the torch and examined it anyway. Lorne couldn't see anything -- the lantern was between the wall and McKay -- so he made his way carefully over to the collapsed exit.
He'd landed on his radio when he'd fallen, but thanks to modern technology, that meant that he'd have a nice bruise on his pectoral and not that the radio was damaged. "This is Lorne. Anyone home?"
Nothing.
"Aha!" McKay crowed and suddenly there was light. Lorne shielded his eyes at the brightness, especially after McKay pointed the damned thing at his face.
"McKay!"
"Sorry, sorry," he mumbled, pointing the light off to the side. "The contacts had been knocked loose."
McKay looked around for a place to put the light and finally settled on a natural ledge across from where he'd found the lantern. He aimed it up at the ceiling and toward the area where Lorne was standing. The cave roof was low enough that the reflected light gave them a sort of cool, ambient glow. It also let Lorne see how bad the blockage was.
"Shit." He pulled out his flashlight and aimed it at the top of the now-closed opening. The blockage was to the ceiling. He pondered climbing up to see how deep it was, but his ribs barked just at the movement of his arm holding the flashlight and he decided to wait a little while.
"See, that's the kind of optimism that's going to keep my barely held in check full-blown panic attack at bay," McKay said from behind him. "Because, I should tell you, Major, that not only am I claustrophobic, but I also have a genuine fear of dying trapped here, hungry and alone. Well, not alone because you're here, but... the point is, Major, that if you start thinking we're screwed, then I'm going to become markedly less useful."
He turned. McKay gave him a look that clearly said "this is important information, use it wisely," and then turned back to the torch so that he could work on the other lantern.
"We've got food, water, and air," Lorne said. "Everyone knows where we are, so it's just a matter of them coming to us or us getting to them."
McKay looked over his shoulder at him. "You suck at pep talks. Is this something endemic to the Air Force or something more widespread? We have limited food and water and it's too soon to tell if we have fresh air coming in. And if everyone else is in the same position we're in? Nobody's coming to get us."
Lorne doubted that the other groups, if they were trapped, were sitting idly waiting for rescue. "Our check-in is in two hours," he said as he gingerly moved closer to the pile of fallen rock. "We miss that, the ready-room team gets activated for search-and-rescue. They know our coordinates on the planet, so it's just a matter of getting to us."
He hissed in pain as he carefully climbed up the bottom edge of the slope. Bracing himself, he held up his right arm, trying to feel for any sort of air flow. There wasn't anything he could tell, but that didn't mean anything. He pushed off with a grunt and got back down to level (relatively) earth.
"Colonel Sheppard left his pack here, so we've got three canteens and at least three MREs," he went on. He didn't know how many McKay had packed, but it was probably more than one. "Plus whatever leftovers you got from the villagers."
McKay's blush was amplified by the torchlight. "Determining how badly the locking mechanism was damaged was hard work," he said in a small voice.
Lorne sighed. "Well, at least you won't be hungry for a while."
"But thinking about our lack of food will make me hungry." McKay didn't look up as he spoke.
"Mind over matter, Doc," Lorne replied easily as crossed to the other side of the cave. "You're supposed to have the greatest mind in the galaxy, so, you know...."
He and Sheppard had given this end of the cave a cursory examination while they'd been waiting for McKay to do whatever the hell he was doing with whatever piece of Ancient equipment that was here -- he still didn't know what it was. This corner had appeared to be a dead end and now, upon closer investigation, it still looked like a dead end. Except now, without the clatter of McKay banging on the Ancient toys, he can tell it's a wall and not just rock from the moutain. And, more importantly, he could hear a quiet whistle. He held up his hand, hoping to feel wherever the air was coming from. He found it, a gentle but steady breath against his hand about level with his chest.
"Hey, McKay, can you shine one of those lights over here?" he called over his shoulder.
The light was on him before he could even pull his knife out.
"Did you find something?"
"Yeah," he replied, trying to work the knife into the crack. "Air."
He could get the knife in a little, but not enough for any real torque, so he stopped before he jarred his ribs again and leaned back against the cool wall and closed his eyes, letting the worst of the pain fade. It wasn't warm in the cave, but he was sweating from the pain and the effort.
The light against his eyelids changed as he could hear McKay's footsteps approach. "Here."
He opened his eyes to see McKay holding out what looked like a miniature crowbar. "What's that?"
"What it looks like," McKay replied. "A lever. It's got more tensile strength than your knife."
Lorne wanted to point out that the problem was not tensile strength -- at least not of his knife. "I thought you were worried about my internal bleeding," he muttered as he sheathed his knife and started to worry the crowbar into the crack.
"You injured still have more horsepower than me," McKay replied. "But if you want, I'll try."
Lorne sighed. He was starting to understand how Sheppard always came back from his team's missions wounded. "No, I'll do it."
He wedged the crowbar in as far as he could get it, then looked at it for a long moment, trying to figure out the best angle of approach for maxumum leverage and minimum crying like a baby from pain.
Counting down from three, he threw his entire body weight into the effort and was rewarded with a chunk of rock coming out of the wall. It would have been a victory except that his momentum took him off-balance and he first bumped into the crowbar with his bad ribs and then bounced off of that and landed awkwardly on the floor after tripping on loose debris.
"Oh, fuck," he shouted as he rolled on to his back.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I should have done it." McKay was at his side, fussing with his shirt and the rocks around him and Lorne wanted to push him and his apologies away but that would require movement and he didn't want to move ever again.
But eventually he knew he had to because there was a sharp rock poking his right kidney.
He didn't realize he'd spaced, but apparently he had because McKay's jacket was rolled up and tucked under his head and McKay was working the hole in the wall with the crowbar with a decent amount of elbow grease and a steady stream of muttered curses and calculations. It sounded a little like McKay was cursing out the laws of physics. Maybe he was.
"Try the radio again," he said when McKay paused to lean against the wall and mop his forehead with the back of a sweaty hand.
"What?" McKay came over to him. "You're barely audible."
"I said try the radio again," Lorne repeated, putting force into his voice he didn't realize he'd lacked. "By the hole."
"Do you think it will work?" McKay asked, pulling his radio out of its pouch. "We don't even know what's on the other side of this wall."
McKay gave him a hopeful look and went back to the wall. Part of him really wished he'd been stuck with his own team not just because Yoni would have had his ribs taped and the marines would have done the heavy digging without asking -- would have refused Lorne's help even if he weren't injured, but also because his team could take care of themselves. They were combat-hardened and the kind of care and leadership they needed from him was both far subtler and much more direct. McKay could save the universe when nobody else could, but he needed hand-holding and guidance and restraint and all of that required energy. Energy that, right now, he wasn't sure he had.
"This is McKay, can anyone hear me?"
There was an awful silence then and just as McKay's features began to crumble with disappointment, they heard it.
"Sir? We read you. Are you okay? Is Major Lorne with you?"
He hissed out in pain as he reached for his radio. "I'm here, Staff Sergeant. We're fine. Is everyone else accounted for?"
"We are not fine," McKay almost yelled. He waved his arms for emphasis, but only Lorne could see them and he wasn't going to laugh no matter how funny it looked. "We are trapped, we are lost, and Major Lorne's injured. Do you--"
"McKay, shut up for a minute." Yoni would be pleased to know that his rebuke got McKay to sit down, sliding gracelessly against the wall like he was running out of steam. "What is wrong with Lorne?"
"Busted ribs, possible concussion," he replied. "Now give me a sitrep starting with who else is missing or injured."
"We are all well," Teyla answered. "We were all outside of the cave network when the collapse happened."
"Sheppard got out?" McKay has worry etched into his face.
"I'm fine, Rodney," Sheppard assured him. "I just had to do a little dive into the end zone to get clear."
"Good, good," McKay said, relieved. "Now how are you getting us out of here?"
The answer is not one that either of them wanted to hear. It would take hours, at the least, to get them free. The wall, once identified from the outside, was thirty meters up from the ground. The two solutions seemed to be a bucket brigade to clear the collapsed tunnel of rocks or getting a puddle jumper and Lieutenant Cadman's engineer team and blowing out the wall. McKay was a virulent opponent of the latter plan, whether it was because it was Cadman or because it involved being on the other side of a controlled demolition Lorne didn't know, until Sheppard told them that it would take three times as long because moving tons of rock wasn't easy, even with a lot of extra marines.
They had to move to the far side of the room to prepare for Cadman's team's work. And that meant getting up.
"McKay!" Lorne appreciated the help -- McKay had become positively solicitous once their rescue was imminent -- but not when McKay kept getting distracted and would move too quickly or too far.
"Sorry, sorry," McKay mumbled in reply, crouching down behind him to lift him up by the armpits. It would get him to standing without compressing his rib cage and, if he could get his feet under him quickly enough, it shouldn't hurt too badly. McKay had bitched about his back when it had been suggested by Reletti, but Teyla and Ronon had bullied him into acquiescing.
"You're allowed to call me Rodney," McKay said as he lifted, a chuff of air directly into Lorne's ear. "Sheppard calls me Rodney. Sometimes. Actually, everyone but you calls me Rodney. At least everyone I'm nominally on a first name basis with."
The lift was successful and once Lorne was standing on his own again, he turned back to McKay and gave him a cock-eyed look. He didn't remember Yoni ever calling McKay anything but by his last name. Ronon, too. "Are we on a first name basis? You never call me.... Do you even know my first name?"
McKay looked annoyed, like he'd offered a gift and it had gone unappreciated. Lorne supposed it was sort of like that and felt a little bad.
"You're like Sheppard," McKay -- Rodney -- explained as if Lorne had missed a very basic point from which all else flowed. "You're military and your first name might as well be 'Major.'"
There was a debate on the logic of that to be made, but it wouldn't be made then and there.
"Hello, sir!" Cadman's voice carried clearly through the hole, now wide enough to pass a football through. "And you, too, McKay. Ready to get out?"
"Hell yeah, Lieutenant," he replied, grinning.
"Oh, god," McKay moaned. "It's the Dynamite Dudette and her henchmen."
Cadman laughed. "Hear that, boys? You've been elevated to henchmen."
Cadman's henchmen rigged their charges and blew out the rest of the wall. From there, it was a matter of the jumper re-approaching the breach -- Lieutenant Paik in the pilot's seat moaning about the lack of rear-view mirrors -- and Hospitalman Fletcher appearing once it had docked. Lorne let the Corpsman do his thing -- Fletcher had the same bedside manner as Yoni, for better or for worse -- and they were on their way home.