M2L-726 by soleta (debriefing challenge)
Title: M2L-726
Author: soleta
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Length: ~1500
Challenge: Debriefing
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine. I have no right to be playing with them, and will in fact put them back in the box when I'm done.
Summary: Rodney told him so.
AN: By the time I'm finished writing this header, I will be five minutes late for the deadline. Oops. I blame the fact that I got my 'John Sheppard (flyboy)/Rodney McKay (geek)' military-issue dogtags today. I hope the format makes sense.
ETA: huge thanks to libitina for the quick-as-bunnies lookover.
Running, running, running, and then! Oh look! Running some more. John is really getting tired of this scenario.
Not tired enough to stop and turn around and smack some sense into the shaggy people with long pointy sticks, but close. Very close.
He tries to imagine how the briefing is going to go; when-if-when-if they get back to Atlantis, what exactly he's going to say to Elizabeth. It could probably use some practice.
M2L-726 --
We verified the MALP report and sent it back. The area around the gate was abandoned. It was like...
No, no. John ducks around a copse of trees - on the one hand, cover, but on the other hand, when they're the only trees in ten miles, they're not only the first place the people with long pointy sticks would look, they make great cover for the people with long pointy sticks to sneak up from behind and disembowel him. It'd be messy. And if McKay doesn't stop shooting at the people with long pointy sticks behind me, John thinks grimly, I'm going to rip out his toenails and feed them to him.
The area around the gate was abandoned, and we proceeded to search for any local inhabitants or energy signatures; Teyla had never been there, and neither had her people. Dr. McKay found what appeared to be an abandoned treehouse, about five hundred meters from the Stargate. Low technology.
It had been made out of wood, with precisely separated footholds chiselled into a tree wider than his spread arms. It creaked under the most careful footstep. John had told them to stay put and let him check it out.
"Someone's been here recently," John called down to them.
"How can you tell?" Teyla.
"There's a fire. And footprints." They were just the ball of the foot and the toes; these people went barefoot. There was some repair going on, too. It wasn't an abandoned treehouse, or some relic of some dead society, but a lookout post. And someone had left in a hurry, not even stopping to put out the fire.
Something had made John look up. He thinks that maybe it was the noise as they cut the air, or maybe he caught the flicker out of the corner of his eye, but the matter's moot, really. His amazing visual and auditory prowess really isn't the point of the briefing.
The natives had spotted us as soon as we gated in. They had a series of lookouts to warn them of Wraith attacks; as soon as the gate opened the first lookout fired. They were spaced about a mile and a half apart, so by the time we spotted them the signal was ten miles away and moving fast.
"We've been spotted," John shouted down, slinging his P90 and starting the climb down. He jumped the last two feet and raised his gun again. "Let's go meet the friendly natives."
"How do you know they're friendly?" Rodney said scathingly. "Maybe we're Wraith-bait. Maybe we're dinner."
"They haven't tried to kill us yet," John said reasonably. "Considering our track record, I'd say that's friendly enough for me." He pointed. "That way. Move out, people."
Rodney fell in behind him, grumbling. "Dinner. Ceremonial sacrifice. Man-hating Amazonian women. Stone Age Genii clones..."
John turned and walked backwards to interrupt McKay. "Wait, wait. Amazonian women?"
Rodney glared. "Man-hating Amazonian women, Colonel. Think preying mantis. They mate with you, then they kill you."
John considered for a moment. "During or after?"
Their main camp was farther than we'd thought from the Gate, but they were coming to meet us. We made contact about three miles away from the first lookout post. The whole area was miles of grassy plainsland.
The only cover in miles was the very gentle slope of the hill they'd just come over, but maybe they could dig in, or something. Bad tactical situation all around, John had thought first thing.
John now thinks he was understating the case, and tacks a get the fuck out of Dodge to the end.
In neon letters.
Flashing neon letters.
When the native greeting party came within shouting distance, they stopped and just stared, at us and the sky, like they were waiting. We never found out why, or what they were waiting for; it definitely wasn't anything from us.
"Teyla," John grated under his breath. "You're up." He bared his teeth in what might have been called a smile in a galaxy far, far away, but, hey, Pegasus.
Teyla stepped forward. "Do you understand this language?" After a moment, she tried again. "Shoalto v'rai ne?"
Teyla must have tried seven or eight different languages.
McKay got bored after about a second of that - because, attention span? what attention span? - and started tapping his fingers against his thigh, then pulled out his scanner and started fiddling.
John had edged around Ronon and hissed in Rodney's ear, "You're being rude, Rodney."
"Colonel, this is an utter and complete waste of time," Rodney said, without looking up. "There are no, I repeat, no energy signatures on this planet that I can pick up. No energy signatures means no ZPM, no industry, and if we can't even communicate, no food. So where, exactly, do you see the logic in staying?"
One of the greeting party, an old, old man with fancy animal skins wrapped around his shoulders who had been watching the sky all the time Teyla had been trying to communicate suddenly said, "Come," with gutteral emphasis, turned, and walked away. The rest of his party followed.
When Teyla turned to John and raised her eyebrow, he shrugged and said, "The man said come, people."
"Dinner," Rodney muttered.
Now John only wishes he had listened.
They led us about three miles farther into the plain. We tried to ask them where we were going once or twice, but they wouldn't say a word, to us or each other. I was about to give the order to return to the Stargate when our destination came into sight, a stone circle that puts Stonehenge to shame.
"Christ," said John, impressed despite himself.
Rodney snorted. "Ever seen the Great Wall of China, Colonel? It's bigger, and also? It was functional, too."
"Rodney," John said between his teeth, "Let's not insult their religion, okay? Otherwise we really might end up as dinner, and I don't know about you, but I have other plans."
"What, did the Daedalus bring in more football tapes?" Rodney asked. John might even have thought that Rodney was interested if it hadn't been for the cast of his eyes, saying clear as day that he was just waiting for John to say something he could take offense to.
"Football?" Ronon asked from behind them.
"You'll like football. It's a man's sport," said John, grinning at Rodney; he'd never been able to resist that kind of challenge.
"Colonel Sheppard," Teyla said before Rodney could say something gloriously cutting. She nodded at the circle. The natives were getting restless, it seemed; they had paused for a moment to raise their arms in obeisance to the circle, but now they were moving restlessly towards Sheppard and his party, and their spears looked pointier every minute. And sharper.
"Um," said John.
"Ceremonial sacrifice," Rodney said furiously and started backing away. "I am never going to let you forget this, Colonel."
"Assuming any of us live through the next ten minutes, you can remind me all you want, " John said, raising his P90. "Back to the Stargate, people, I'll be right behind you. Go!"
Some of the larger men broke into a jog when they saw the Atlanteans starting to retreat; Rodney backed up faster, until he was at risk of tripping his own feet; Ronon's gun appeared into his hand, without his hand ever going near his holster; Teyla drifted slightly to the right, until she was between the rest of them and the approaching men.
John would have been proud of them if they hadn't been in imminent danger of pointy death.
They started making motions like we might be the sacrificial goat, so I ordered my team to retreat to the Stargate.
Cue running.
He can't figure out why there aren't more people trying to cut them off from either side. If he were the natives, he'd have had people at the Stargate as soon as John and his team had left to cut off any escape attempt, men in the forests on either side of the plains, and far more people in the party that came to meet them. Overkill for four people, maybe, but seriously.
Of course, John still has three miles to run. They might not need more people to catch them.
Ronon looks like he could run all day, and Teyla has the determined look on her face that John has come to associate with extreme competence on her part, but Rodney is fading fast. John can hear him wheezing from two hundred yards. He taps his radio with the hand that isn't clutching his gun like a security blanket and says, "Teyla, Ronon. McKay's not going to make it."
Rodney's voice comes on the line, tired and hoarse. "What an astute observation, Major."
"Colonel," John shoots back. "Teyla, Ronon, go through the gate and get Lorne and his team. When you come back, you cover us as we make a run for it."
"Where are you going to hide?" Ronon asks. He sounds like he's taking a fucking walk in the park, John thinks in disgust.
John says, "I'm taking suggestions, people," and almost steps into a rabbit hole or something. The resulting extremely graceful twist throws him off his balance, and he yells a little as he falls into some kind of hidden hole. The landing knocks the breath out of his lungs.
When he can talk again, John coughs a little, weakly, and interrupts Ronon. "McKay, get back here, there's a cave or something. We'll hide out here until the others get back." He clicks his radio off and lets his head drop back onto the ground with a clunk.
All he has to do until Rodney figures out where the cave mouth is located is wince at how this is going to look in his report.
I fell into a cave like a fool trying not to twist my ankle.
I stumbled across an underground cave while doing fucking mid-air pirouettes. Perhaps I should join the ballet?
Christ, he thinks. Writing mission reports was never this hard on Earth.
He's about to have another go at himself when Rodney falls into the tiny cave headfirst.
I feel better now, John admits with a smirk.
Dr. McKay and I remained undiscovered by the natives while we waited for Ronon and Teyla to return with Major Lorne's team. It's possible that the mouth of the cave was hidden from view somehow.
"The grass is pretty tall up there. Maybe they can't see the cave mouth," John offers.
"Please, Colonel, don't put down to coincidence what can be attributed to sheer incompetence," Rodney snaps.
John stares at him for a long, long moment and finally says, slowly, "You're too damn tense, McKay. You need to get your ashes hauled."
Rodney looks at him, surprised. "Are you volunteering, Major? Because if not, I don't see that I'm ever going to have the chance again, because we are going to die here, and, by the way, have you thought up a way to get out of here? Those walls look pretty damn high to me."
John twitches, all over, and tries to hide his involuntary bodily reaction in a general reshuffling of his limbs. His brain is ticking furiously, but all that comes out of his mouth is "Colonel. And they're seven feet high, Rodney. Even you can climb those." Then, to his horror, his mouth is continuing without the permission of his brain. "And if I were volunteering?"
Rodney snorts. "I'm not that cheap of a date, Colonel, and oh, yes, you're not gay. Now kindly allow me to contemplate my concussion and imminent doom in peace."
Which is, of course, when the cavalry arrives.
Later, when all the dust has settled and John is in his quarters, with instructions from Carson to rest and instructions from Elizabeth to write up the M2L-726 report, he leans back in his chair and eyes the report, sitting innocently on his laptop screen.
Propositioned Dr. McKay.
John thinks, with a smirk, that he might save that copy for himself; he's not sure that Elizabeth is ready to know that much about what's going on in his life. He deletes the last line from the report and emails it to her, prints out his copy, and puts it in his pocket.
Time to make Rodney an offer I won't let him refuse, thinks John, and grins, sharp and mischievous.
Author: soleta
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Length: ~1500
Challenge: Debriefing
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine. I have no right to be playing with them, and will in fact put them back in the box when I'm done.
Summary: Rodney told him so.
AN: By the time I'm finished writing this header, I will be five minutes late for the deadline. Oops. I blame the fact that I got my 'John Sheppard (flyboy)/Rodney McKay (geek)' military-issue dogtags today. I hope the format makes sense.
ETA: huge thanks to libitina for the quick-as-bunnies lookover.
Running, running, running, and then! Oh look! Running some more. John is really getting tired of this scenario.
Not tired enough to stop and turn around and smack some sense into the shaggy people with long pointy sticks, but close. Very close.
He tries to imagine how the briefing is going to go; when-if-when-if they get back to Atlantis, what exactly he's going to say to Elizabeth. It could probably use some practice.
M2L-726 --
We verified the MALP report and sent it back. The area around the gate was abandoned. It was like...
No, no. John ducks around a copse of trees - on the one hand, cover, but on the other hand, when they're the only trees in ten miles, they're not only the first place the people with long pointy sticks would look, they make great cover for the people with long pointy sticks to sneak up from behind and disembowel him. It'd be messy. And if McKay doesn't stop shooting at the people with long pointy sticks behind me, John thinks grimly, I'm going to rip out his toenails and feed them to him.
The area around the gate was abandoned, and we proceeded to search for any local inhabitants or energy signatures; Teyla had never been there, and neither had her people. Dr. McKay found what appeared to be an abandoned treehouse, about five hundred meters from the Stargate. Low technology.
It had been made out of wood, with precisely separated footholds chiselled into a tree wider than his spread arms. It creaked under the most careful footstep. John had told them to stay put and let him check it out.
"Someone's been here recently," John called down to them.
"How can you tell?" Teyla.
"There's a fire. And footprints." They were just the ball of the foot and the toes; these people went barefoot. There was some repair going on, too. It wasn't an abandoned treehouse, or some relic of some dead society, but a lookout post. And someone had left in a hurry, not even stopping to put out the fire.
Something had made John look up. He thinks that maybe it was the noise as they cut the air, or maybe he caught the flicker out of the corner of his eye, but the matter's moot, really. His amazing visual and auditory prowess really isn't the point of the briefing.
The natives had spotted us as soon as we gated in. They had a series of lookouts to warn them of Wraith attacks; as soon as the gate opened the first lookout fired. They were spaced about a mile and a half apart, so by the time we spotted them the signal was ten miles away and moving fast.
"We've been spotted," John shouted down, slinging his P90 and starting the climb down. He jumped the last two feet and raised his gun again. "Let's go meet the friendly natives."
"How do you know they're friendly?" Rodney said scathingly. "Maybe we're Wraith-bait. Maybe we're dinner."
"They haven't tried to kill us yet," John said reasonably. "Considering our track record, I'd say that's friendly enough for me." He pointed. "That way. Move out, people."
Rodney fell in behind him, grumbling. "Dinner. Ceremonial sacrifice. Man-hating Amazonian women. Stone Age Genii clones..."
John turned and walked backwards to interrupt McKay. "Wait, wait. Amazonian women?"
Rodney glared. "Man-hating Amazonian women, Colonel. Think preying mantis. They mate with you, then they kill you."
John considered for a moment. "During or after?"
Their main camp was farther than we'd thought from the Gate, but they were coming to meet us. We made contact about three miles away from the first lookout post. The whole area was miles of grassy plainsland.
The only cover in miles was the very gentle slope of the hill they'd just come over, but maybe they could dig in, or something. Bad tactical situation all around, John had thought first thing.
John now thinks he was understating the case, and tacks a get the fuck out of Dodge to the end.
In neon letters.
Flashing neon letters.
When the native greeting party came within shouting distance, they stopped and just stared, at us and the sky, like they were waiting. We never found out why, or what they were waiting for; it definitely wasn't anything from us.
"Teyla," John grated under his breath. "You're up." He bared his teeth in what might have been called a smile in a galaxy far, far away, but, hey, Pegasus.
Teyla stepped forward. "Do you understand this language?" After a moment, she tried again. "Shoalto v'rai ne?"
Teyla must have tried seven or eight different languages.
McKay got bored after about a second of that - because, attention span? what attention span? - and started tapping his fingers against his thigh, then pulled out his scanner and started fiddling.
John had edged around Ronon and hissed in Rodney's ear, "You're being rude, Rodney."
"Colonel, this is an utter and complete waste of time," Rodney said, without looking up. "There are no, I repeat, no energy signatures on this planet that I can pick up. No energy signatures means no ZPM, no industry, and if we can't even communicate, no food. So where, exactly, do you see the logic in staying?"
One of the greeting party, an old, old man with fancy animal skins wrapped around his shoulders who had been watching the sky all the time Teyla had been trying to communicate suddenly said, "Come," with gutteral emphasis, turned, and walked away. The rest of his party followed.
When Teyla turned to John and raised her eyebrow, he shrugged and said, "The man said come, people."
"Dinner," Rodney muttered.
Now John only wishes he had listened.
They led us about three miles farther into the plain. We tried to ask them where we were going once or twice, but they wouldn't say a word, to us or each other. I was about to give the order to return to the Stargate when our destination came into sight, a stone circle that puts Stonehenge to shame.
"Christ," said John, impressed despite himself.
Rodney snorted. "Ever seen the Great Wall of China, Colonel? It's bigger, and also? It was functional, too."
"Rodney," John said between his teeth, "Let's not insult their religion, okay? Otherwise we really might end up as dinner, and I don't know about you, but I have other plans."
"What, did the Daedalus bring in more football tapes?" Rodney asked. John might even have thought that Rodney was interested if it hadn't been for the cast of his eyes, saying clear as day that he was just waiting for John to say something he could take offense to.
"Football?" Ronon asked from behind them.
"You'll like football. It's a man's sport," said John, grinning at Rodney; he'd never been able to resist that kind of challenge.
"Colonel Sheppard," Teyla said before Rodney could say something gloriously cutting. She nodded at the circle. The natives were getting restless, it seemed; they had paused for a moment to raise their arms in obeisance to the circle, but now they were moving restlessly towards Sheppard and his party, and their spears looked pointier every minute. And sharper.
"Um," said John.
"Ceremonial sacrifice," Rodney said furiously and started backing away. "I am never going to let you forget this, Colonel."
"Assuming any of us live through the next ten minutes, you can remind me all you want, " John said, raising his P90. "Back to the Stargate, people, I'll be right behind you. Go!"
Some of the larger men broke into a jog when they saw the Atlanteans starting to retreat; Rodney backed up faster, until he was at risk of tripping his own feet; Ronon's gun appeared into his hand, without his hand ever going near his holster; Teyla drifted slightly to the right, until she was between the rest of them and the approaching men.
John would have been proud of them if they hadn't been in imminent danger of pointy death.
They started making motions like we might be the sacrificial goat, so I ordered my team to retreat to the Stargate.
Cue running.
He can't figure out why there aren't more people trying to cut them off from either side. If he were the natives, he'd have had people at the Stargate as soon as John and his team had left to cut off any escape attempt, men in the forests on either side of the plains, and far more people in the party that came to meet them. Overkill for four people, maybe, but seriously.
Of course, John still has three miles to run. They might not need more people to catch them.
Ronon looks like he could run all day, and Teyla has the determined look on her face that John has come to associate with extreme competence on her part, but Rodney is fading fast. John can hear him wheezing from two hundred yards. He taps his radio with the hand that isn't clutching his gun like a security blanket and says, "Teyla, Ronon. McKay's not going to make it."
Rodney's voice comes on the line, tired and hoarse. "What an astute observation, Major."
"Colonel," John shoots back. "Teyla, Ronon, go through the gate and get Lorne and his team. When you come back, you cover us as we make a run for it."
"Where are you going to hide?" Ronon asks. He sounds like he's taking a fucking walk in the park, John thinks in disgust.
John says, "I'm taking suggestions, people," and almost steps into a rabbit hole or something. The resulting extremely graceful twist throws him off his balance, and he yells a little as he falls into some kind of hidden hole. The landing knocks the breath out of his lungs.
When he can talk again, John coughs a little, weakly, and interrupts Ronon. "McKay, get back here, there's a cave or something. We'll hide out here until the others get back." He clicks his radio off and lets his head drop back onto the ground with a clunk.
All he has to do until Rodney figures out where the cave mouth is located is wince at how this is going to look in his report.
I fell into a cave like a fool trying not to twist my ankle.
I stumbled across an underground cave while doing fucking mid-air pirouettes. Perhaps I should join the ballet?
Christ, he thinks. Writing mission reports was never this hard on Earth.
He's about to have another go at himself when Rodney falls into the tiny cave headfirst.
I feel better now, John admits with a smirk.
Dr. McKay and I remained undiscovered by the natives while we waited for Ronon and Teyla to return with Major Lorne's team. It's possible that the mouth of the cave was hidden from view somehow.
"The grass is pretty tall up there. Maybe they can't see the cave mouth," John offers.
"Please, Colonel, don't put down to coincidence what can be attributed to sheer incompetence," Rodney snaps.
John stares at him for a long, long moment and finally says, slowly, "You're too damn tense, McKay. You need to get your ashes hauled."
Rodney looks at him, surprised. "Are you volunteering, Major? Because if not, I don't see that I'm ever going to have the chance again, because we are going to die here, and, by the way, have you thought up a way to get out of here? Those walls look pretty damn high to me."
John twitches, all over, and tries to hide his involuntary bodily reaction in a general reshuffling of his limbs. His brain is ticking furiously, but all that comes out of his mouth is "Colonel. And they're seven feet high, Rodney. Even you can climb those." Then, to his horror, his mouth is continuing without the permission of his brain. "And if I were volunteering?"
Rodney snorts. "I'm not that cheap of a date, Colonel, and oh, yes, you're not gay. Now kindly allow me to contemplate my concussion and imminent doom in peace."
Which is, of course, when the cavalry arrives.
Later, when all the dust has settled and John is in his quarters, with instructions from Carson to rest and instructions from Elizabeth to write up the M2L-726 report, he leans back in his chair and eyes the report, sitting innocently on his laptop screen.
Propositioned Dr. McKay.
John thinks, with a smirk, that he might save that copy for himself; he's not sure that Elizabeth is ready to know that much about what's going on in his life. He deletes the last line from the report and emails it to her, prints out his copy, and puts it in his pocket.
Time to make Rodney an offer I won't let him refuse, thinks John, and grins, sharp and mischievous.