The Stars My Destination (SGA, Sheppard/McKay, PG)
Title: The Stars My Destination
Author: Alassenya
Artists: danceswithgary, laisserais
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Genre: Adventure
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay (pre-slash)
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~17,800
Warnings: None that I can think of.
Beta: Kapuahi
Fest: Posted as part of the fixitstory / fixitstory challenge 2014.
Summary: Vegas-verse. McKay rescues Sheppard from the desert, then has to convince him to join the Pegasus Expedition.
Author's Notes:
1. Spoilers for 5-19 "Vegas" - and you really need to have seen the episode for this to make any sense.
2. This is not our world, so organizations, legislation and customs may differ slightly from those we know.
3. The title is taken from a poem within Alfred Bester's novel "Tiger! Tiger!". There is no real connection between this story and the novel, apart from the metaphor of a return to life after a long time dying.
4. The PlayStation 3 supercomputer is real. Look it up.
Art Posts:
danceswithgary did a wonderful cover and wallpaper which you can see at Dreamwidth, LiveJournal or AO3.
laisserais did a cover and several other amazing illustrations you can see at Dreamwidth and LiveJournal.
Prologue: Nevada
Sheppard was dying.
He was surprised -- and very grateful -- to find that it wasn't as painful as he had thought it would be. He'd seen men die in agony, screaming and cursing until the darkness finally and mercifully took them. He'd seen men who wanted to scream but couldn't because of the blood gurgling out of their throats. He'd seen men who had never had the chance to scream as their bodies were ripped apart. In comparison with them, he was lucky: all he had was some pain in his chest and side from the bullets, and a feeling of lassitude.
He wondered if he ought to try and get back to the road, to flag down a car ... but on second thoughts, there was no need for that. The burning trailer behind him would be enough of a beacon to someone inclined to stop, and by the time the fire died down he would be beyond help. He staggered up anyway, more to give himself the illusion of doing something useful than anything else, but only made it a few steps before stumbling, dizzy with loss of blood, onto the sand.
He lay on his back and looked at the sky for a little while. It was appropriate, he thought, that he should die in the desert -- maybe it was what he had been looking for subconsciously ever since Afghanistan. At least he'd managed to accomplish something good right at the end. Maybe it wasn't enough to make up for all the wrong choices he'd made before, but at least he could hold his head up and say he'd tried.
The irony of timing would have made him laugh if he could -- that he should have to die now, just when he'd stumbled across a cool half-million in untraceable cash. He could have made a new life for himself, far away from here. He could have left John Sheppard behind and become a different man, a better man. He could have ... no, there was no use thinking of what he could have done. He wouldn't be doing anything anymore.
It wouldn't be long now, he reasoned. There would be a light in the distance and music all around him, and if he was lucky and God took pity on him and forgave the many, many sins he'd committed, he'd see his mother again. He closed his eyes and tried to picture her in his mind, but after thirty years without her there was little left but a vague impression -- a soft laugh, a gentle fragrance, the feeling of warmth and safety and the knowledge of being loved. He ached to feel that again; to feel wanted and cherished and welcome, no matter what he did. It was a long, long time since he'd been loved.
He heard a voice babbling somewhere, but he didn't recognize it. It didn't sound like his mother, or even Chris, which was disappointing, and the tone was -- he strained to hear -- more frantic than soothing. He tried to open his eyes, but couldn't; he couldn't move anything now. Maybe someone had stopped to look at the fire and had found him lying there. It didn't really matter. They were miles away from help, and if he wasn't dead now he would be very soon. He was ready to let go.
Even though he was expecting it, the bright light took him by surprise.
1 Rescue
Fifteen minutes earlier
Zelenka frowned. "That transmission would've been stronger in any other reality exposed to the rift."
"They could be in a lot of trouble right now," McKay said, looking at Woolsey.
"They could, but we can't help them," Woolsey replied.
"We could -- "
"Could we establish a rift large enough and stable enough to send a fleet of ships through to any other universe -- and bring them back afterwards?"
Zelenka and McKay both shook their heads.
"No," added McKay. "We don't have a power source anywhere near large enough."
"Exactly," said Zelenka. "And besides, more than one alternate reality could be affected -- it would take weeks to determine which one received the strongest signal, and if there were Wraith in a position to pick it up."
"And by then it would be too late," McKay sighed.
Woolsey nodded. "So, we have no option but to trust to luck that the Wraith might not get the signal -- and if they do, that human ingenuity will find a way to save Earth. Right now, I have a situation here that needs containing. I've sent out some troops to secure the area, and I'll need the both of you to work on any identifiable components of the Wraith device and see if we can get anything useful out of them."
"From what the A-10s sent back, I doubt there'll be much," Zelenka wasn't hopeful.
"Sir," Harriman piped up, "the A-10s are making another pass, I'm getting visual now."
They watched the feed as the plane approached the large black plume of smoke that was billowing out of the ruined trailer. They saw the dusty red car a short distance away, and the body slumped over against its side.
McKay felt a pang as the camera passed over Sheppard's body. For a short time there, he'd hoped ... but it was no use. The man was dead.
The A-10 turned and flew over again, more slowly this time, keeping upwind of the plume. It was clear that there would be very little to salvage from the trailer, and McKay wondered how much time he'd have to waste on it before Woolsey was satisfied.
Then he saw that Sheppard was moving.
"He's alive!" he exclaimed.
All eyes were suddenly riveted on the man who was dragging himself to his feet and moving away from the car. McKay felt a surge of hope. Sheppard was alive!
"Not for much longer, I suspect," Zelenka muttered as they watched Sheppard stumble and fall. Then he was out of sight as the plane passed over the wrecked trailer.
"We have to pick him up," McKay told Woolsey.
Woolsey said nothing.
"We have to pick him up," McKay repeated. "He's injured. He's ... he could be dying."
"The marines will bring him back once they've secured the area."
"He'll be dead by the time they get there."
"Quite possibly."
"And that's OK with you?"
"He served his purpose. If he dies, this just tidies up loose ends."
McKay grew pale. "I knew you were cold-blooded, but this is going too far. We have to get him back."
"Give me a reason."
"You already have a reason. We owe him, Woolsey. We owe him. If it hadn't been for his intel we wouldn't have been able to take out the transmitter in time and Earth would be facing a Wraith invasion. He's saved millions -- billions -- of lives. Isn't that worth anything to you?"
Woolsey frowned at him. "You do realize what you're asking, don't you? If we pick him up we'll have to bring him into the Stargate program, and frankly, he doesn't inspire me with confidence."
"His record is lousy, I'll admit that," McKay conceded. "But he made the right decisions when it counted. He's the sort of man we can use in Atlantis."
Woolsey said nothing.
"Come on," McKay pleaded. "He's already signed the non-disclosure agreement. He's already seen the Darts and the Wraith and the chair. He's not going to be any more of a risk tomorrow than he was this morning."
Woolsey rubbed his temple and McKay bit his tongue firmly to keep from saying anything further. He'd made his argument, but it was Woolsey's decision, and he'd learned to give the man a few seconds to think of all the alternatives.
Finally Woolsey sighed. "All right. Get yourself geared up and take a portable transmitter with you. I'll alert the Daedalus and SGC."
"Thanks," McKay didn't stop to analyses why he felt so overwhelmingly grateful and turned to the nearest marine. "Equipment room. Now."
It took more minutes than he cared to think about to get a portable transmitter, a tac vest and a handgun issued, but finally he was able to tap his headset.
"Daedalus? McKay ready to beam."
He had to give Hermiod his due: he was on the bridge of the Daedalus for no more than two seconds, barely long enough to take a breath, and then he was back in the Nevada desert, in the open. There was a plume of black smoke behind him (and he really didn't want to think about the radioactive particles that might be going up with it) but he quickly dismissed it and scanned the ground. The footage they'd seen had shown Sheppard moving away from the car, so with luck he should be ... right there.
"Please don't be dead, please don't be dead," he muttered, as he ran over. He dropped to his knees beside the body, which seemed so much smaller and fragile-looking now than he remembered from a few hours earlier. Sheppard looked to be in a bad way -- there were bloodstains over his chest and abdomen, and if he was breathing at all McKay couldn't tell. He checked the carotid pulse and felt a wave of relief - it was very weak, but it was there.
"Oh, thank God you're alive. Just stay that way until we get to SGC, will you? I don't want this all to have been for nothing."
He pressed the transmitter patch onto Sheppard's sternum and tapped his radio. "Daedalus, two to beam up."
Once more, there was the dizzying glimpse of the Daedalus, and then they were in the triage area of SGC's infirmary. Dr Fraiser was there, already in scrubs, and she stepped forward to greet him.
"He's alive -- but only just," McKay blurted, scrambling to his feet. "At least two wounds to the torso but no Wraith marks. And no appreciable radiation contamination, thank God," he added, registering the scanner in his hand.
"Thanks, Dr McKay, we'll take it from here."
The medics moved in, lifting Sheppard up onto a trolley and moving him into a bay. There was a flurry of movement as clothing was cut off and cannulas and airways were inserted, even as Fraiser was starting her examination, and then Sheppard was hidden from view.
McKay stood there for a few minutes longer, hoping that Sheppard would survive, hoping that this Sheppard would have the gene and agree to come to Atlantis; hoping that SGC would agree to take him; hoping -- desperately hoping -- that one day he would understand just why McKay couldn't let him die.
~~~~~
The next morning found McKay finishing up his after-action report for General Landry. He was debating with himself the relative merits of staying at SGC to monitor Sheppard's recovery and heading back to Area 51 to examine the wreckage from the trailer. On balance, he was inclined to wait at SGC. The chance of finding anything useful from the wreckage was very low, and he could trust Zelenka to let him know if they did. At SGC, on the other hand, he could get a head start on personally vetting the next batch of scientists due to rotate into Atlantis while he waited for Sheppard to wake up.
He had just thrown the fourth personnel file across the room -- seriously, how these morons function? They might have higher degrees but they had no more capacity for original thought than a robot -- when there was a knock at the door. It was Woolsey, requesting an update.
"So, Dr McKay, I hear your rescue venture was successful. How is he?"
"So far, yes. Dr Fraiser tells me that he should pull through. And even better, Keller ran a full genome screen overnight -- Sheppard has the strongest expression of the ATA gene she's ever seen. I can't wait to see O'Neill's face when he gets that news!"
"You knew that already, though, from the alternate universe."
"I suspected it, but we all know that the alternates are not exactly the same. And I didn't know how strong it was going to be. Frankly, I was astonished when Keller told me the exact result. As soon as he's conscious I'm going to see what he can do with SGC's collection of Ancient devices. I'm sure he'll be able to activate at least a few, if not all." He chuckled, maliciously. "That will teach General O'Neill to play prima donna."
"I'm sure the general will be heartbroken," Woolsey noted, in a dry tone.
"Hah! I suspect that in spite of all his bitching about light switches, he secretly enjoys his special status. Well, he won't get to enjoy it much longer."
"You seem very confident that you can recruit Sheppard."
"He doesn't have many options."
"I'd hate to see you force him into this, McKay. I know we need the gene, but that could backfire in a big way if he decides he doesn't want to be there. He could destroy the city if he touches the wrong control panel."
"I'll put in failsafes."
"You can't put in failsafes against the ATA gene. At least that's what you've been telling me the last two years."
McKay sighed, reluctant to admit that he was unable to outsmart the Ancients most of the time. "You're right, it doesn't. From what I've seen with the General O'Neill and with Colonel Sheppard in the alternate universe, the ATA gene overrides just about anything else."
"So what else can you do?"
"I don't know. Appeal to his better nature?"
"Are you sure he has one?
"Of course I'm sure. We have a smoking wreck in the desert that proves it. Besides, Colonel Sheppard did, and I refuse to believe that this man is fundamentally different."
"I'm not so sure that I can agree with you there. I've spent much of the morning reading about the various alternate realities SGC has encountered to date, and there have been some significant personality differences." Woolsey sighed. "It makes me wish I'd studied more philosophy in college. I think I would have been better able to consider the essential similarities and the basis for divergence between each alternate universe and our own."
McKay grunted. "If you ask me, philosophy is the dim-witted leading the blind through a maze in complete darkness. Or perhaps merely the human equivalent of Brownian motion."
"Interesting metaphor."
"Descriptive, anyway."
"I suspect you have no time for the mental discipline it requires."
"The nearest I ever got to studying philosophy was reading Popper's Conjectures and Refutations. At least it had some relevance. And as for mental discipline, the scientific method is discipline enough for me. Observation, hypothesis, experiment, data -- all essential steps, ignore them at your peril."
"I find that an interesting statement from someone who usually pulls off the impossible at the last minute."
"That's because you rarely see the three or four failed attempts that precede the successful one," admitted McKay in a rare moment of candor.
"I have to wonder if Sheppard is going to be one of your failures. He's not the sort of officer we would select for Atlantis."
"No, but he should be. Possession of the ATA gene has outweighed negative selection factors in nearly fifty percent of the military and scientific personnel so far, and in almost all cases that practice has been justified. I don't think Sheppard's case will be any different."
"So you still adhere to your hypothesis that John Sheppard is the key difference between our universe and the one you visited three years ago?"
"It was the only difference I could detect in the short time I was there. And it's a valid assumption, based on the evidence. The city came alive for him in a way it never did for us. With his gene activating everything in sight, they found things in the first weeks that we took years to discover. They used the gateships from week one, they found ZPMs, they found ancient starships ..."
"I understand," Woolsey interrupted. "But while that would have made a significant difference five years ago, what good will taking Sheppard to Atlantis do now? With Beckett's gene therapy well-established in the expedition members, do we really need him?"
McKay stared at him, incredulous. "Of course we need him! The gene therapy only gives us a pale imitation of the ATA gene, you know that. You've seen what O'Neill can do with Ancient tech here on Earth -- he can activate things no one else can. Sheppard's gene is even stronger."
"Bearing in mind the several close shaves O'Neill has had, I'm not sure that's a good thing."
"We'll make sure he gets properly briefed. And Ellis can assign him a marine escort for the first few weeks if you're worried. He won't go wandering off into the unexplored sections ... at least, not without us knowing about it. And I could make up a briefing pack for him, to let him know the most important things."
"SGC already runs a full preparation course for people going to Atlantis."
"That covers only the basics. He'll need to know a lot more about the city before he sets foot there, because yes, he could inadvertently activate something dangerous. And he'll need some orientation before we can take him off-world. He'll need to know about the Athosians and the Genii and the Replicators -- "
"McKay," Woolsey interrupted, his voice low and troubled. "This John Sheppard is not going to be the commanding military officer. He's not the man you met in the other universe. He has different life experiences, different expectations, a different attitude."
McKay swallowed. "I know that. I do. But I also know that the minute he steps into the city, he'll respond to her -- and she to him. Once he's there we'll be able to do so much more. I have boxes full of artefacts that we still can't identify or use because O'Neill refuses to spend any time in Atlantis. With Sheppard in the city, the productivity of the scientific teams will more than double."
"And so will the risks. I'm not sure that's a good enough case for taking him."
"We need him, Woolsey. You'll see."
Woolsey pursed his lips and considered that. "Maybe. But you still have to convince him it's a good idea, and that's not going to be as easy as you think."
McKay thought about that for a moment, then shook his head. "He'll go. He won't be able to turn it down."
Woolsey continued to look skeptical but McKay refused to be cowed. Now that he'd found his Sheppard, the possibility that he might not choose Atlantis was unthinkable.
~~~~~
He had to wait another day before Sheppard was deemed fit for visitors, but he pressed on with the task of getting the detective cleared for the Pegasus mission. As soon as he was given the go-ahead by Dr Fraiser the next afternoon he hastened to the infirmary, stopping by the mess to pick up some chocolate pudding cups as a way to induce high blood sugar levels -- and thereby a favorable mental outlook -- before he began his pitch.
Sheppard was awake when McKay got there, but unfortunately he was still on clear fluids only, so his effort was wasted. He put the pudding cups down on the nearest monitor and regarded them mournfully.
"Thanks for the presents," said Sheppard with a wry smile, "but you know, even when I'm back on solids, I'm not really a dessert sort of person."
McKay sighed. He tapped his fingers on the bed frame, trying to work out how best to start his pitch. He had a difficult task ahead of him and he needed every advantage he could get.
Sheppard raised an eyebrow at him, and McKay had a moment of disorientation as he remembered the other Sheppard -- Colonel Sheppard -- looking at him in exactly the same way. The next words tumbled out without even thinking. "I've been looking for you for a long time, you know."
The eyebrow rose another notch. "I'm not exactly mobile at the moment, McKay. If you can't find a sick man in an infirmary, you can't be that much of a genius."
Embarrassment flooded through him and he felt his face reddening. "Not today, idiot. I meant that I'd been looking for you since I met the John Sheppard from another reality. Unfortunately all I had was the name, and I wasn't even sure about the spelling. Do you know how many men there are in the United States with names that are variants of 'John Sheppard'? Well over two thousand. And a surprisingly large number of them have served in the military. I tried to filter them on date of birth, service, achievements, but never found you."
"You were wasting your time anyway, my file would have been sealed."
"Oh, please, as if that would be hard to get around. No, it was there all right. I just discounted it the first time around." He grimaced at the memory -- he hated it when his algorithms proved unreliable. " Eventually I came to the conclusion that you didn't exist, either through not having been born or having died young. When I saw your name on the police reports they sent us, I told myself it couldn't possibly be you, it was too much of a coincidence. But I pulled your personnel file anyway, and when I saw the photo ... well, there you were." He showed Sheppard the file photo on his tablet. "You've let yourself go a fair bit since you joined the police, by the way."
"Thanks, McKay, way to make me feel even worse."
"Yes, well, armed with the additional biographical data, I went back to the military databases and of course it had been there along. I'd actually discarded the file without even looking at it, because the thought that you might have been dishonorably discharged never crossed my mind."
"Fancy that. Just goes to show you shouldn't jump to conclusions." The tone was dry, but the tightness around Sheppard's jaw showed how uncomfortable he was with the conversation.
Ouch. McKay realized he had better try and get the man into a better mood if he was to have any chance of achieving his aim. "My thoughts exactly. You're very disconcerting at times. But, well, anyway ... once I'd read the file I got my ex-wife to do a little digging in DC -- lovely woman, we get on so much better since the divorce -- and she managed to get hold of a couple of things that weren't on the official record."
"Like?"
"Like a very long encrypted email sent from your CO in Afghanistan directly to General de la Tour at the Pentagon, which was considerably more illuminating than the sanitized report that went to Allied Joint Forces Command and USMECOM."
"You hacked the DOD?"
"I didn't, she did. Not that it was difficult -- they never delete anything, so you just have to know where to look in the backup files."
"Shit."
"Oh, I don't know ... it gave me a much clearer idea of the conditions that led you to do what you did." His voice dropped, and he added, "I'm not blaming you, you know. God knows I've managed to kill people I was trying to help. You were trying to rescue someone you cared about. That is never a bad thing."
"Tell that to the others who died. Tell that to their relatives and friends. It was a bad thing to them, all right."
"I'm sorry."
Sheppard shrugged.
McKay sighed. There was so much more that he wanted to say, so much that he wanted to tell this Sheppard, but it was far too soon.
"So the email indicated that you and your lover weren't quite as discreet as you thought you were."
Sheppard closed his eyes. "Chris Stanton."
"Yes, yes, I know. What of it?"
"His name was Chris Stanton. He was a good soldier. He deserves to be remembered for who he was, not just his association with me."
McKay looked down at the man in the bed and wondered how a man with such scruples on one hand could be so lax on the other. But then people had always been a mystery to him.
"Very well then, you and Stanton weren't quite as discreet as you ought to have been."
"I thought you said that people weren't prepared to go on record about us."
"They weren't. From what I gathered, your CO had his own suspicions. The fact that no one would corroborate them just made it easier for your father to get the matter handled quietly."
"That's dad," sighed Sheppard. "Always worried about appearances."
"Well, for once I think it worked in your favor. I don't think you would have had a good time in Leavenworth if all the facts had been made public and you'd gone to jail."
Sheppard shrugged.
"Of course, it didn't surprise me. That you were gay, I mean. After all, I had the advantage of having met Colonel John Sheppard in the other reality."
Sheppard looked up, astonished. "He was gay?"
"Yes, he was. In fact he was involved with -- well, with someone in the city. Apparently in his universe the American military had achieved a state of enlightenment some decades previously, so being gay wasn't an issue."
"Lucky him."
McKay bit his lip. "Well, he had his own burdens to bear. Life in the Pegasus Galaxy is never easy. But that brings me back to the reason I'm here. I'm trying to get you a place on the Pegasus expedition."
That was an even bigger surprise to Sheppard, judging by the way his eyes widened. "Why?"
"You have something we need."
The disbelieving eyebrow made a reappearance. "You need a wrecked Camaro or a Johnny Cash poster? Because that and the clothes I had on are my only possessions."
"No, not them. And not the half-million dollars we found in your car either," he added, with a slightly sardonic smile.
Sheppard winced, then tried to shrug and winced again. "I figured I could put it to better use than the Wraith could."
McKay leaned closer and dropped his voice. "You were going on the run, weren't you? You ditched your job, left your apartment key in the door, and headed west with enough untraceable cash to live very comfortably for a good long while -- possibly the rest of your life if you went to somewhere with a decent rate of exchange."
"And if I was?"
"If you were, what the hell possessed you to confront that Wraith? Why risk your future for near-certain death?"
Sheppard shrugged. "Didn't really think about it."
McKay snorted. "That I can believe. Do you ever plan anything or do you always act on impulse?"
"Plans never survive first contact with the enemy. A successful tactician has to be able to improvise."
"Well, I grant that you improvised in a way that benefitted Earth. That sort of thinking we can use in Atlantis."
"Yeah, till the first time I fuck up and I'll be on the next ship back.'
"The first time you fuck up, you'll probably die."
"I guess that will save on the transport costs then."
"Don't joke about it, Sheppard. We ship too many people home in body bags as it is." McKay gave a brief shudder and went on. "If we sacked everyone who ever made a mistake we wouldn't have anyone left. When mistakes happen in Pegasus, we learn from it and move on. You ... you can help us."
"Why? You've survived so far without me."
"Only by the skin of our teeth. And there are so many ways we could all have died ..." He closed his eyes for a moment, memories overcoming him. "The first year was very hard for us. We knew it was going to be a one-way trip but none of us realized just how bad it was going to be. Many of us died. We lost two of our four military officers in the first week, leaving a young major in charge. We lost more people to disease and accidents. Then we discovered the Wraith and things got really bad. We struggled on; we made alliances with various native groups and established trade partnerships, but we had little to trade except our labor, and by the time the Wraith attacked Atlantis, we were in desperate straits. When the Daedalus turned up ten months later we were down to forty percent of our original complement."
Sheppard winced. "That's a hell of an attrition rate."
McKay nodded, fighting down the familiar grief. "Things were a little better after that -- we had contact with Earth and regular supply runs. In fact the second and third years of the expedition went pretty well. Then we lost our Chief Medical Officer -- and that was a double disaster, because he had the strongest expression of the gene in the city. We tried to convince General O'Neill to take over as our military CO or even as the mission leader, but he wasn't prepared to leave Earth, and I'm not sure that the IOA would have agreed anyway. At least Carson managed to engineer a retro-viral delivery system for gene therapy, so about half of us have some functionality, but none of us is nearly as strong as Carson was."
Sheppard grunted. "Get to the point, McKay. Why do you need me?"
"The gene."
"What gene?"
"The Ancient Technology Activation gene - ATA for short. It allows people -- "
" -- to activate Ancient technology?"
McKay huffed. "I didn't name it, all right? But yes, that's exactly what it does. It was a failsafe the Ancients used to prevent their technology getting into the hands of the Wraith or any other enemy."
"And we are descended from these Ancients."
"Exactly. The gene has no significance on Earth so no one knew anything about it until we encountered their artefacts. Then we found that only a few people could get them to work. It took a while to work out how to test for it, but we've screened most of the military and defense scientists now and it's pretty rare. Strong expression -- which you have -- is even rarer."
"So basically you're saying that you don't want a pilot or detective, you just want someone to switch things on for you."
McKay shuffled his feet and wondered how he could make this more attractive for Sheppard. "Well, your military skills will be useful, of course, and another pilot would make life easier for everyone in the city, but primarily, yes, your role would be to help the scientists."
"Huh."
Sheppard didn't sound too impressed, and McKay frantically sought other incentives. "I'll try and get you onto an off-world team. I can't promise, but there have been occasions where a strong gene carrier would have helped, and I'm sure that I can convince Woolsey that you'll be an asset off-world. Colonel Ellis might be a little more resistant, but I think once you get there and he sees what you can do, he'll come around. And we can always use another pilot."
"So what kind of airframes do you have? Ospreys? Harriers? Those dart thingies? Or just helos?"
"No darts, no helicopters. Gateships."
"What's a gateship?"
"It's a small ship that -- astonishingly enough -- flies through a stargate."
He saw Sheppard's eyebrow rise yet again.
"Look, I told you I didn't get to name things. It looks like a lopsided tin can. It has anti-gravity and inertial dampeners. It holds about ten people. It's watertight and airtight. It copes with atmospheric and space flight and it even makes a handy submarine, if you don't go too deep."
"That ... doesn't make sense. The structural requirements alone -- "
" -- are irrelevant. Anti-gravity. Inertial dampeners. Force fields." McKay waved his hands. "Normal design limitations, aerodynamics, engineering constraints ... they don't apply. This is alien technology, thousands of years ahead of what we've developed ourselves. Think of what it would be like, flying something like that."
"I'm not sure I want to fly a tin can," Sheppard muttered. He cast a sideways look at McKay, a speculative gleam in his eye. "Those darts looked pretty sweet though."
McKay was struck with inspiration -- it might be stretching the truth a little, but then, he was recruiting, it was allowed. And he'd square it with Woolsey later if he had to -- a gift certificate for his favorite online music store would probably do the trick. "We do have a small team trying to reverse-engineer the darts, but since the retro-virus was developed and we had more gateship pilots it's not been a high priority. If we had someone to assist them with the practical aspects of the project they would make more progress." He paused, noting the slight change in Sheppard's expression, then went on. "Of course, we could use someone with your background as a test pilot anyway. For all we know there could be more alien craft out there to examine, and we wouldn't always have the time to get help from Earth."
There, he could almost see Sheppard's thoughts scrolling in front of him, his expression flickering as the considered the possibilities. Sheppard was hungry to fly again, he knew it, and any moment now he'd get the answer he was hoping for ...
"Can I think about this?"
McKay swallowed his disappointment -- or, at least, he tried to. "Hmmph. Of course. I can see it's a very difficult choice - unemployment, poverty and disgrace on the one hand, or a well-paid job and the chance to fly alien spaceships in another galaxy on the other. Obviously you need time to think it over."
Sheppard didn't quite snort, but it was a close thing. "Well," he drawled, "when you put it like that ..." He paused. "Though if Woolsey gives me back my half-million, I wouldn't be poor."
"It's not your half-million, it belonged to the Wraith."
"He's not going to be needing it."
"Neither will you if you come to Atlantis. It's a barter economy there, so your salary will accumulate, apart from what you spend on your Daedalus allowance each run - which is based on mass and volume, not money. Coffee, Coca-Cola and chocolate are the usual staples, but you'd be surprised what becomes important when you only get a delivery once every seven or eight weeks."
"I bet." He took a breath. "I still need to think about it, all right?"
McKay nodded reluctantly. "Daedalus is in orbit now -- they were a fortnight into their transit when we got the call about the Wraith killings, which is why we ended up gating back -- and they have a little over a week before setting off, so you have that long to make your mind up. Try not to leave it until the last minute, though."
2 Revelation
That night, when the infirmary was quiet and the only other occupant (a marine sergeant who had broken his leg) was asleep, Sheppard lay awake and thought about his future -- all the possible futures.
McKay had given him some food for thought. That his alter ego in another universe was more successful than he was hardly surprising, since pretty much everyone he'd worked for in the last ten years had told him he was a Class A fuck-up, but that this Colonel Sheppard could be both successful and openly gay was a revelation. For the first time in years he began to wonder if perhaps his career would have gone better if he hadn't spent so much energy on hiding his sexuality, on arranging and covering up every trace of his liaisons. What could he have achieved if he hadn't been forced to hide so much of himself?.
He thought about Chris Stanton. Chris had been the one bright spot of his life in Afghanistan. They had kept each other from going crazy in the seven months they'd been together. It hadn't even been about the sex really, since they'd only managed that a few times. Just being with Chris -- talking, watching a movie, going for a run around the base together -- had enabled John to get through the days and nights without succumbing to the mindless insanity of war. And then Chris's helo had been shot down, and his own had followed, and the nightmare had rolled over him like a wave, almost drowning him.
There had been days when he wished he had drowned.
The hate mail had started about a month later, after the funerals and the hearing but before the official report had been promulgated. He'd already run the gamut of being shunned by his colleagues and suffering "accidental" damage to his kit. He'd dodged one attempt at beating him up but failed in another, and only the timely arrival of the camp adjutant had prevented him from broken bones -- as it was, he'd peed blood for a week. The letters were just the icing on the cake.
He thought about the nights he'd sat with his gun in his hand, cleaning out the insidious and ever-present sand, loading and unloading, caressing the cool metal that could be his gateway to oblivion. More than once he'd put the barrel in his mouth. More than once he'd held it to his temple. He never knew what had stopped him from squeezing the trigger all those nights, but something had, and now, for the first time in years, there was a door in front of him that didn't lead all the way down to hell.
He had a choice now.
He wasn't sure he had the courage to make it.
McKay was right about one thing, though -- the chance to work on alien technology; the chance to go to another galaxy; the chance that maybe he could fly an alien spaceship -- they were incredibly compelling reasons to go. Test pilot for an alien fucking spaceship -- how cool was that? It was every boy's dream, and he wanted it so much he could taste it.
On the other side, however, there was the decidedly unattractive prospect of being back in uniform and subject to all the military rules and regulations, not to mention the fact that sooner or later he would fall foul of whoever was in command. McKay hadn't talked about the military commander, but anyone who was happy to work with that stick Woolsey had to be a spit-and-polish, rules-and-regulations sort of an officer, and Sheppard didn't deal well with that type.
He could envisage it now -- the initial rush, the exhilaration as he ran around discovering everything he could. Then the minor irritations would start to niggle at him -- the rules, the petty regulations that served no logical purpose except to make small men feel important. Then he'd start pissing people off and getting the shitty little jobs in exchange. Then he'd start taking risks, and people would start to avoid him. Before long he'd be the outcast again, the loner, the expendable one, the one they picked only when there was no other option available.
Around 4 a.m. he came to the conclusion that he would have to turn the offer down, and closed his eyes and clenched his jaw against the pain. It always hurt more when you could see what the alternative might have been.
~~~~~
He was expecting McKay back the next morning, but no McKay appeared. In fact he had no non-medical visitors at all and was feeling very sorry for himself by lunchtime. The physiotherapy session had gone reasonably well, Dr Fraiser was very encouraging, and the nursing staff kind and helpful, but he had got to the point where sleeping all day was no longer an option, and he was bored.
It was with mixed feelings that he watched McKay stroll in around 2pm, smiling and confident. "Afternoon, detective, have you come to a decision yet?"
"Look McKay, it's a very generous offer, and I'm grateful, I really am, but I can't take it up."
McKay's eyes widened in dismay. They were a startling blue, Sheppard noticed, and showed every small shift in emotion.
"What?"
"I'm not going to Pegasus."
"Why not?"
Sheppard sighed. He'd been prepared for McKay's disappointment, maybe some contempt, but this complete devastation was unexpected. He tried to find the words to express how he felt,
"I can't go back into uniform."
"Why not?"
"Because ... look, I fucked up, all right? It's there in black and white for everyone to see. Even if the file is sealed, the fact that it was a dishonorable discharge is still on the database. How long do you think it would be before the rumors started? How long would it be before they know I'm gay? How long before the soldiers decide they aren't going to take orders from a faggot Air Force officer? That's not going to be good for anyone." He ran a hand through his hair. "I'm sick of hiding. I'm sick of pretending to be something I'm not. I was going to take that money and go somewhere where I could be me, just me."
"Oh." McKay was silent for a few seconds, his face showing every emotion in turn -- despair, resentment, resignation and then, oddly, it brightened into hope., "Is it the job or the uniform?"
"They go together."
"Not necessarily. Restoring your commission is the easiest way, but it's not the only way. It's a scientific mission, after all. What if I could get you a place on the expedition as a scientist? -- a civilian, not subject to idiotic military rules?"
Sheppard was stunned. That changed things completely. "That ... that would be ... could you do it?"
"I'm the Chief Scientific Officer, I pick the scientists."
"But I don't have a doctorate. You said all your scientists had doctorates."
"I can make an exception in your case."
"Why?"
McKay rolled his eyes. "We need you."
"You keep saying that. But all these exceptions and exemptions ... I don't want to be a charity case."
McKay twitched and his face started to go red. Sheppard wondered if he was about to have a stroke from sheer frustration -- if so, then he was about to set a record for bombing out of a job.
"Look, you're not some stray dog I've decided to adopt. We need you. We desperately need your gene. All the rest -- the math, the piloting, the military experience -- that's a bonus. Nice to have, but not essential. I'd take you on as janitor if I had to."
"Well, gee, thanks, McKay."
"I'm serious. You have something extremely valuable to us and I'm trying to make sure that you get a fair deal for it. I thought you'd want your military rank back, but if you don't want that, then I'll try my best to get you what you do want."
Sheppard thought about that. It was a long time since he'd had anyone fight for him. And even though McKay was open about what the expedition would get out of it, he felt that McKay was honestly on his side against the monolithic Establishment.
"Could I fly these gateships if I wasn't in uniform? And do the other stuff -- test pilot? Off-world team?"
"Of course. It's the gene that matters, not the rank."
McKay took a deep breath and looked directly into his eyes. John couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a look so intense, so focused on him. It almost made him shiver.
"Atlantis is not Earth, Sheppard. Look you've already seen how different Stargate Command is from a normal military establishment. Atlantis goes so far beyond that you just can't imagine it. Rank, race, orientation, degrees, specialization ... all of that is irrelevant. We're fighting for survival in a hostile galaxy and prejudice has no place there."
"So what does matter?"
"Intelligence. Lateral thinking. Creativity. The gene."
"Sounds like anarchy to me."
"No, that's not it. I'm not saying there is no rank, of course there is. And there is authority and structure -- there has to be. But the structure reflects the needs of the mission, and it's flexible because it has to be. Rigidity gets you killed. Even Woolsey knows that now."
"Woolsey?" There had to be a story there.
McKay brushed it off. "So in Atlantis, what you do depends more on what you can do than on what your position number says -- and no one has just one job. Botanists become sharp-shooters, grunts become diplomats, physicists become plumbers, and anyone who has the gene helps the scientists with the tech, because that is our primary mission, and has been since day one. We have to find out as much about the Ancients and their technology as possible, in order to have a chance at defending Earth."
"I thought you said the Wraith didn't know where Earth is."
McKay hesitated -- had he said something he shouldn't? John wondered.
Slowly, significantly, McKay spoke again. "We didn't know about the Wraith when we went to the Pegasus galaxy."
"So -- " John broke off as one of the nurses came over with a dressing tray.
McKay stood up and pushed his chair back against the wall. "I've said enough for the moment. More than enough. I'll let you think about it for a while. If I have time I'll come back this evening, otherwise I'll try and visit in the next day or two."
With that, he turned and left.
~~~~~
After the dressing change and the inevitable analgesic-induced nap, followed by another visit from Dr Fraiser, John finally got the chance to ponder the conversation with McKay, especially the last few minutes. Two fragments in particular kept rolling around in his head: "... our primary mission ... defending Earth" and "We didn't know about the Wraith ..."
The two statements didn't really make much sense together, and it had been niggling at him in the intervening hours. Why did they need to defend Earth if they didn't know about the Wraith? Why take the huge risk of a one-way trip to another galaxy? Unless ...
It couldn't be ... could it? More aliens? Other aliens?
It was the only explanation he could think of.
He sat there, dumfounded for the umpteenth time since he'd met Woolsey -- and could that have been only four days ago? Aliens in this galaxy, too. It had to be true -- there was no other scenario that incorporated all the information he had accumulated in the last few days.
But how could they keep this a secret? There were satellites all around Earth, telescopes pointing in all directions, radio receivers in every city. Surely some of them had picked up anomalies? There was no way they could have hidden ships in orbit and weapons discharges - even if the US government had suppressed publication, there were others who weren't as quick off the mark, and there were always maverick publications willing to risk a legal battle for a good story. He had no idea how they had done it, but somehow they had managed to keep interstellar travel and space wars out of the public knowledge.
The really frustrating part was that he couldn't even begin to verify what McKay had told him about the Wraith, let alone try to research previous alien incursions. Any attempt on his part to hunt through internet archives and foreign newspapers would bring him to the attention of whoever it was monitoring the secret, and given the non-disclosure agreement he'd signed, he'd probably disappear, and not in the way he'd been planning.
Still ... he'd seen the Wraith with his own eyes, and the creature had definitely seemed alien even when made up to look like human. He'd felt that tingle in his head when the guy had stared at him over the card table, and again when he'd encountered Todd in his cage at Area 51. He was in no doubt at all that he had met and fought with something that had no connection to Earth.
So if he could vouch for two alien creatures in the flesh, and he could accept the several alien spacecraft that he'd seen in the hangar, he should be able to accept that there were other aliens as well, out to destroy or conquer Earth. And that inevitably meant that there was a third, friendly group as well -- after all, someone had to have given them the cloaking technology to hide all this from the satellites and ground sensors.
At least three alien races out there ... it was mind-blowing.
And they -- Earth's fledgling space forces -- were engaged in interstellar and intergalactic war, right out of E. E. Smith and Robert Heinlein and Star Wars. It was like a Boy's Own adventure come true.
And he had a chance to be a part of it.
He spent the next hour in vivid fantasies of himself as intergalactic hero, battling enemy spaceships and accepting the grateful adoration of his handsome wingman, before falling asleep.
It didn't seem to cross his mind that he was already a hero to those who mattered.
~~~~~
He woke sometime the next morning to find himself looking up at an Air Force general. He tried to straighten up -- it was a reflex he couldn't shake -- but the movement tugged at his wounds and he winced instead.
"Relax, son," the general said, pulling the chair up and sitting down. "No need for formality here."
John tried to relax, though it was never easy in the presence of senior officers. Too many of them were friends of his father; too many of them were enemies. This one wore a name badge saying "O'Neill", which rang a bell in his memory though he couldn't place it immediately.
"What can I do for you, sir?" he asked. It was probably the politest greeting he'd given a general in years, but he was feeling off-balance and unsure, and he was stuck here with no escape for the time being.
"You can save me from a fate worse than death," O'Neill replied, brown eyes twinkling, as he leaned back and propped his feet up on the bed.
His jaw dropped. A fate worse than death? What the hell did that mean? "Sir?"
The man grinned. "I'm Jack O'Neill, and until you popped up the other day I had the dubious honor of having the strongest ATA gene expression in SGC."
Oh, of course. "Dr McKay mentioned your name yesterday. He said they wanted you in Atlantis."
"Yeah, that's where you can help. See, the threat level to Earth has just jumped up a few levels. That Wraith transmitter is the biggest threat to the planet since ... well, you're not cleared for specifics yet. But even though they think that the transmission didn't reach Pegasus in our universe, they can't be sure. So the president wants to pull out all the stops to get the Atlantis expedition supplied with everything they need, just in case. And what they need, more than anything else, is a strong gene carrier, because as much as I hate to admit it, McKay is right -- the key to winning the war lies in Ancient technology, and we can't study it without one. Beckett's retrovirus just isn't strong enough."
"You don't want to go yourself?"
"Hell, no. There's no place for me there other than as light switch, and I can't think of anything more boring. Not to mention the fact that I'd strangle McKay if I was forced to live in the same base as him for more than a few days, and while that would be a truly cathartic experience, I have to admit it would set us back several years. No, I'm better placed running Homeworld Security ... plus I have personal reasons for not leaving Earth at the moment."
John shook his head slightly. Homeworld Security? Had he mis-heard?
"No, you didn't," O'Neill answered, just as if he had asked out loud. "I said Homeworld. I coordinate the defense of Earth against several hostile alien races."
And there it was, casual confirmation of what John had painstakingly extrapolated from the previous conversation with McKay. But "several hostile alien races" -- how many? What did they look like? How did they communicate? And for that matter, why were they at war and not in some interstellar federation like in Star Trek? -- that completely stunned him, and it was a few seconds before he could take in what the general was saying.
"... so while I agree with him in principle, it's just not going to be me. I've done my stint on the front lines, and frankly I can be more use to SGC where I am now than in Pegasus. You, on the other hand, have no strong ties here, a set of military skills that matches my own, close enough, and a nice line in creative problem-solving that will keep Woolsey on his toes -- which is a personal bonus for me but I'm not discounting it."
John struggled to get his thoughts in order. "I told McKay I don't want to go back into uniform."
"I know. I'd prefer it if you did, because I'd have a little more control over you ... but only a little. Every US citizen in the Stargate program answers to me, military or civilian, so it doesn't matter that much. And considering that DADT is still in force, it's probably better for everyone if you go as a scientist."
John looked up, expecting to see the usual sneer that accompanied statements like that. But there was no sneer on O'Neill's face, just a trace of sympathy.
"Is my record going to be common knowledge?"
O'Neill shook his head. "No. Oh, I can't guarantee that no one will know, because it will be there in your record, and Atlantis is full of people who could hack into the Pentagon in their sleep, but ... it won't matter. Not there."
That correlated with what McKay had said, but John still had trouble believing it. "Do you normally recruit failures like me?"
O'Neill sighed. "You really do have some issues, Sheppard. Maybe Janet is right and you need more time ... but we don't have time. Daedalus leaves in a week and it would be best for everyone if you're on board.
"Why is everyone assuming I'll join you guys?"
"Because there's no reasonable alternative. You know that as well as I do. There's nothing for you here -- you're estranged from your family, you avoid all your friends, you were barely getting by in Vegas, and you'd already left that life when we rescued you."
O'Neill paused, as if waiting for some affirmation or agreement from John, but there was nothing he could say. It was all true. He had nothing. In fact he had less than nothing, but still ... he was determined not to sign his life over to the Pentagon again. He just couldn't go through all the bullshit again, the useless rituals and shibboleths of military life.
"You'll do well in Pegasus, you know. There's a lot of scope for you there."
He struggled with the thoughts that were tumbling through his head. Why didn't this guy see that this was a really bad idea? "I don't follow orders," he blurted out.
"Oh yes, you do. You just don't follow stupid orders."
John opened his mouth then shut it again. It was what he'd said to himself more than once, but he'd never expected to hear it from a general. Did telepathy go with freaky alien genes?
O'Neill laughed. "Not a mind-reader. It just goes with the territory. Janet has a theory that the ATA gene is linked to certain character traits, like impulsiveness, creativity, strength of will and inability to tolerate fools, and that has interesting sociological implications that Danny believes may have contributed to the collapse of the Atlantean society both in Pegasus and here on Earth.
"Huh?"
"Yeah, that's what I said. You can talk it over with Danny later if you're really interested. Just be prepared to listen for a few hours -- it's hard to get him to stop once he gets on that particular hobbyhorse."
"Who's Danny?"
O'Neill frowned. "Dr Daniel Jackson, archaeologist, anthropologist, linguist, trouble magnet extraordinaire ... haven't they started you on the orientation vids yet?"
"Er, no."
"Sheesh, they're wasting time. We only have a week to get you sorted."
"Sir ... I haven't said I'll go."
O'Neill looked at him, and for the first time Sheppard could see the tempered steel core under the affable exterior. "Son, are you seriously trying to tell me you can walk away from this?"
Sheppard tried hard not to squirm in his bed. "Are you ordering me to go?"
"No. I could. I don't want to, but I could. I'm asking you, and believe me, I'm asking you nicely. One of us has to go to Atlantis, because they do need a natural gene carrier, and it really could be the difference between life and death for them ... and for the continued existence of Earth. I'm asking you to go because you're younger, faster, and more likely to survive there than I am."
Well, when the general put it like that ... and it wasn't like John didn't want to go. He just hated painting himself into a corner, and he suspected that once he said yes he was going to be locked into this Stargate program for the rest of his natural life, even as a civilian. Still, there was no way that Atlantis could be worse than Vegas, and he'd hacked that for five years.
Seriously, what did he have to lose? It wasn't like they were going to let him walk out of here with the cash, anyway, and knowing what he did now he'd be under surveillance for the rest of his life, so he might as well sign on for the adventure and get to have some fun.
"OK, sir, I'll do it."
"Terrific." O'Neill picked up a small briefcase and pulled out some papers. "I'd leave them here for you to read at your leisure, but we're short on time. Initial the bottom of every page, sign the flagged boxes and I'll get Janet to organize your orientation ASAP."
John took the papers and the pen, but still he hesitated. He hated being pressured to do things in a hurry; it always led to trouble. He looked up at O'Neill and saw the understanding in his face. Maybe this time he could trust them ... after all, they knew the absolute worst about him and were still prepared to trust him.
The forms indicated he was to be taken on as Scientific Officer, Grade 3, starting ... four days previously.
"Sir?"
"What?"
"The starting date ..." He wasn't entirely sure, but he suspected it was a federal offense to falsify DOD employment records like this.
O'Neill waved away his concern. "You killed a Wraith. I call that acting on behalf of SGC, so we may as well pay you for it. Besides, we're not supposed to treat outsiders here. You want to get that nice Dr Fraiser into trouble?"
"No, sir."
"So just sign. We'll get everything else fixed up later."
He signed form after form -- acceptance of employment, personal particulars (already filled in and indicating that his current address was apparently the BOQ at Peterson Air Force Base); starting salary (a whole lot more than what he had been getting as a detective, even without allowances); payment details (already filled out with his bank account number); Retirement Fund; Next of Kin / Emergency Contacts (he hesitated there, but finally filled in his father's name -- it had been on his previous records, after all, and he was surprised that they hadn't pre-filled this form too); and, finally, that part of the Defense Secrecy Act that promised dire retribution if he should reveal any information deemed prejudicial to the security of the nation.
As soon as John had signed the last form, the general's demeanor changed from affable do downright scary.
"OK, son, now you're officially under my command, let's get a few things straight. I don't care who you sleep with. I don't care what your politics are. I don't even care about your father -- he doesn't have nearly as much influence as he thinks he does. I understand that in the field you can't always follow the book and you can't always carry out orders as originally planned. That's life in a war zone. I also understand that creative solutions can sometimes piss off the guys back in command HQ. That's life all over. You do something crazy to keep our people alive and I'll back you to the hilt. But ... if you ever set out to undermine the authority of Stargate Command I will personally come out there and kick your ass so hard you'll go into orbit. You understand?"
John swallowed. "I understand. Sir."
O'Neill stared at him -- through him -- a few seconds longer, and John wondered again about that telepathy thing, but he was determined not to back down, and held his gaze steady. Whatever it was that O'Neill saw, it must have reassured him, because he slowly leaned back in his chair.
"You'll do." He nodded, then collected up the sheaf of papers and returned them to the briefcase. "Right. Orientation. Obviously you won't be able to do much physically until you get to Atlantis, but that leaves more time for you to catch up on what we've been doing here for the last fifteen years. I'll get Janet to start you on Danny's videos, and once you're done with those, there's a list of essential mission reports to read. I'll let McKay and Zelenka brief you on Atlantis itself -- as a gene carrier you'll have to be extremely careful until you've learned your way around. The quartermaster will arrange for you to be kitted up in the next couple of days. Weapons certification can probably wait until the last minute -- I don't anticipate any problems there and I don't want to risk Janet's temper if you damage something. OK. Any questions?
"None right now, sir. I may have some later, though."
"If McKay, Woolsey and Janet can't answer them, they know how to contact me."
He stood up and turned to eave, then swung back to face the bed. "Oh, one last word of advice. Don't piss off McKay more than you can help. He's irritating as hell, he's the rudest man you'll ever meet and he barely tolerates anyone with an IQ less than 150. But he has done more, single-handedly, to keep the Pegasus Expedition alive than any other person. His continued health is an absolute priority. If he likes you -- and I know he does, he went to considerable effort to rescue you -- you'll have a fairly easy time of it. If you piss him off too badly you may as well come home on the next ship because he will make your life a living hell."
John stared. He knew McKay was not exactly the most socially-aware person, but O'Neill was describing some sort of psychopath genius. "Is he really that bad? He seems OK to me."
O'Neill grinned. "Sheppard, he's worse."
Continues here
Author: Alassenya
Artists: danceswithgary, laisserais
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Genre: Adventure
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay (pre-slash)
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~17,800
Warnings: None that I can think of.
Beta: Kapuahi
Fest: Posted as part of the fixitstory / fixitstory challenge 2014.
Summary: Vegas-verse. McKay rescues Sheppard from the desert, then has to convince him to join the Pegasus Expedition.
Author's Notes:
1. Spoilers for 5-19 "Vegas" - and you really need to have seen the episode for this to make any sense.
2. This is not our world, so organizations, legislation and customs may differ slightly from those we know.
3. The title is taken from a poem within Alfred Bester's novel "Tiger! Tiger!". There is no real connection between this story and the novel, apart from the metaphor of a return to life after a long time dying.
4. The PlayStation 3 supercomputer is real. Look it up.
Art Posts:
danceswithgary did a wonderful cover and wallpaper which you can see at Dreamwidth, LiveJournal or AO3.
laisserais did a cover and several other amazing illustrations you can see at Dreamwidth and LiveJournal.
Prologue: Nevada
Sheppard was dying.
He was surprised -- and very grateful -- to find that it wasn't as painful as he had thought it would be. He'd seen men die in agony, screaming and cursing until the darkness finally and mercifully took them. He'd seen men who wanted to scream but couldn't because of the blood gurgling out of their throats. He'd seen men who had never had the chance to scream as their bodies were ripped apart. In comparison with them, he was lucky: all he had was some pain in his chest and side from the bullets, and a feeling of lassitude.
He wondered if he ought to try and get back to the road, to flag down a car ... but on second thoughts, there was no need for that. The burning trailer behind him would be enough of a beacon to someone inclined to stop, and by the time the fire died down he would be beyond help. He staggered up anyway, more to give himself the illusion of doing something useful than anything else, but only made it a few steps before stumbling, dizzy with loss of blood, onto the sand.
He lay on his back and looked at the sky for a little while. It was appropriate, he thought, that he should die in the desert -- maybe it was what he had been looking for subconsciously ever since Afghanistan. At least he'd managed to accomplish something good right at the end. Maybe it wasn't enough to make up for all the wrong choices he'd made before, but at least he could hold his head up and say he'd tried.
The irony of timing would have made him laugh if he could -- that he should have to die now, just when he'd stumbled across a cool half-million in untraceable cash. He could have made a new life for himself, far away from here. He could have left John Sheppard behind and become a different man, a better man. He could have ... no, there was no use thinking of what he could have done. He wouldn't be doing anything anymore.
It wouldn't be long now, he reasoned. There would be a light in the distance and music all around him, and if he was lucky and God took pity on him and forgave the many, many sins he'd committed, he'd see his mother again. He closed his eyes and tried to picture her in his mind, but after thirty years without her there was little left but a vague impression -- a soft laugh, a gentle fragrance, the feeling of warmth and safety and the knowledge of being loved. He ached to feel that again; to feel wanted and cherished and welcome, no matter what he did. It was a long, long time since he'd been loved.
He heard a voice babbling somewhere, but he didn't recognize it. It didn't sound like his mother, or even Chris, which was disappointing, and the tone was -- he strained to hear -- more frantic than soothing. He tried to open his eyes, but couldn't; he couldn't move anything now. Maybe someone had stopped to look at the fire and had found him lying there. It didn't really matter. They were miles away from help, and if he wasn't dead now he would be very soon. He was ready to let go.
Even though he was expecting it, the bright light took him by surprise.
1 Rescue
Fifteen minutes earlier
Zelenka frowned. "That transmission would've been stronger in any other reality exposed to the rift."
"They could be in a lot of trouble right now," McKay said, looking at Woolsey.
"They could, but we can't help them," Woolsey replied.
"We could -- "
"Could we establish a rift large enough and stable enough to send a fleet of ships through to any other universe -- and bring them back afterwards?"
Zelenka and McKay both shook their heads.
"No," added McKay. "We don't have a power source anywhere near large enough."
"Exactly," said Zelenka. "And besides, more than one alternate reality could be affected -- it would take weeks to determine which one received the strongest signal, and if there were Wraith in a position to pick it up."
"And by then it would be too late," McKay sighed.
Woolsey nodded. "So, we have no option but to trust to luck that the Wraith might not get the signal -- and if they do, that human ingenuity will find a way to save Earth. Right now, I have a situation here that needs containing. I've sent out some troops to secure the area, and I'll need the both of you to work on any identifiable components of the Wraith device and see if we can get anything useful out of them."
"From what the A-10s sent back, I doubt there'll be much," Zelenka wasn't hopeful.
"Sir," Harriman piped up, "the A-10s are making another pass, I'm getting visual now."
They watched the feed as the plane approached the large black plume of smoke that was billowing out of the ruined trailer. They saw the dusty red car a short distance away, and the body slumped over against its side.
McKay felt a pang as the camera passed over Sheppard's body. For a short time there, he'd hoped ... but it was no use. The man was dead.
The A-10 turned and flew over again, more slowly this time, keeping upwind of the plume. It was clear that there would be very little to salvage from the trailer, and McKay wondered how much time he'd have to waste on it before Woolsey was satisfied.
Then he saw that Sheppard was moving.
"He's alive!" he exclaimed.
All eyes were suddenly riveted on the man who was dragging himself to his feet and moving away from the car. McKay felt a surge of hope. Sheppard was alive!
"Not for much longer, I suspect," Zelenka muttered as they watched Sheppard stumble and fall. Then he was out of sight as the plane passed over the wrecked trailer.
"We have to pick him up," McKay told Woolsey.
Woolsey said nothing.
"We have to pick him up," McKay repeated. "He's injured. He's ... he could be dying."
"The marines will bring him back once they've secured the area."
"He'll be dead by the time they get there."
"Quite possibly."
"And that's OK with you?"
"He served his purpose. If he dies, this just tidies up loose ends."
McKay grew pale. "I knew you were cold-blooded, but this is going too far. We have to get him back."
"Give me a reason."
"You already have a reason. We owe him, Woolsey. We owe him. If it hadn't been for his intel we wouldn't have been able to take out the transmitter in time and Earth would be facing a Wraith invasion. He's saved millions -- billions -- of lives. Isn't that worth anything to you?"
Woolsey frowned at him. "You do realize what you're asking, don't you? If we pick him up we'll have to bring him into the Stargate program, and frankly, he doesn't inspire me with confidence."
"His record is lousy, I'll admit that," McKay conceded. "But he made the right decisions when it counted. He's the sort of man we can use in Atlantis."
Woolsey said nothing.
"Come on," McKay pleaded. "He's already signed the non-disclosure agreement. He's already seen the Darts and the Wraith and the chair. He's not going to be any more of a risk tomorrow than he was this morning."
Woolsey rubbed his temple and McKay bit his tongue firmly to keep from saying anything further. He'd made his argument, but it was Woolsey's decision, and he'd learned to give the man a few seconds to think of all the alternatives.
Finally Woolsey sighed. "All right. Get yourself geared up and take a portable transmitter with you. I'll alert the Daedalus and SGC."
"Thanks," McKay didn't stop to analyses why he felt so overwhelmingly grateful and turned to the nearest marine. "Equipment room. Now."
It took more minutes than he cared to think about to get a portable transmitter, a tac vest and a handgun issued, but finally he was able to tap his headset.
"Daedalus? McKay ready to beam."
He had to give Hermiod his due: he was on the bridge of the Daedalus for no more than two seconds, barely long enough to take a breath, and then he was back in the Nevada desert, in the open. There was a plume of black smoke behind him (and he really didn't want to think about the radioactive particles that might be going up with it) but he quickly dismissed it and scanned the ground. The footage they'd seen had shown Sheppard moving away from the car, so with luck he should be ... right there.
"Please don't be dead, please don't be dead," he muttered, as he ran over. He dropped to his knees beside the body, which seemed so much smaller and fragile-looking now than he remembered from a few hours earlier. Sheppard looked to be in a bad way -- there were bloodstains over his chest and abdomen, and if he was breathing at all McKay couldn't tell. He checked the carotid pulse and felt a wave of relief - it was very weak, but it was there.
"Oh, thank God you're alive. Just stay that way until we get to SGC, will you? I don't want this all to have been for nothing."
He pressed the transmitter patch onto Sheppard's sternum and tapped his radio. "Daedalus, two to beam up."
Once more, there was the dizzying glimpse of the Daedalus, and then they were in the triage area of SGC's infirmary. Dr Fraiser was there, already in scrubs, and she stepped forward to greet him.
"He's alive -- but only just," McKay blurted, scrambling to his feet. "At least two wounds to the torso but no Wraith marks. And no appreciable radiation contamination, thank God," he added, registering the scanner in his hand.
"Thanks, Dr McKay, we'll take it from here."
The medics moved in, lifting Sheppard up onto a trolley and moving him into a bay. There was a flurry of movement as clothing was cut off and cannulas and airways were inserted, even as Fraiser was starting her examination, and then Sheppard was hidden from view.
McKay stood there for a few minutes longer, hoping that Sheppard would survive, hoping that this Sheppard would have the gene and agree to come to Atlantis; hoping that SGC would agree to take him; hoping -- desperately hoping -- that one day he would understand just why McKay couldn't let him die.
~~~~~
The next morning found McKay finishing up his after-action report for General Landry. He was debating with himself the relative merits of staying at SGC to monitor Sheppard's recovery and heading back to Area 51 to examine the wreckage from the trailer. On balance, he was inclined to wait at SGC. The chance of finding anything useful from the wreckage was very low, and he could trust Zelenka to let him know if they did. At SGC, on the other hand, he could get a head start on personally vetting the next batch of scientists due to rotate into Atlantis while he waited for Sheppard to wake up.
He had just thrown the fourth personnel file across the room -- seriously, how these morons function? They might have higher degrees but they had no more capacity for original thought than a robot -- when there was a knock at the door. It was Woolsey, requesting an update.
"So, Dr McKay, I hear your rescue venture was successful. How is he?"
"So far, yes. Dr Fraiser tells me that he should pull through. And even better, Keller ran a full genome screen overnight -- Sheppard has the strongest expression of the ATA gene she's ever seen. I can't wait to see O'Neill's face when he gets that news!"
"You knew that already, though, from the alternate universe."
"I suspected it, but we all know that the alternates are not exactly the same. And I didn't know how strong it was going to be. Frankly, I was astonished when Keller told me the exact result. As soon as he's conscious I'm going to see what he can do with SGC's collection of Ancient devices. I'm sure he'll be able to activate at least a few, if not all." He chuckled, maliciously. "That will teach General O'Neill to play prima donna."
"I'm sure the general will be heartbroken," Woolsey noted, in a dry tone.
"Hah! I suspect that in spite of all his bitching about light switches, he secretly enjoys his special status. Well, he won't get to enjoy it much longer."
"You seem very confident that you can recruit Sheppard."
"He doesn't have many options."
"I'd hate to see you force him into this, McKay. I know we need the gene, but that could backfire in a big way if he decides he doesn't want to be there. He could destroy the city if he touches the wrong control panel."
"I'll put in failsafes."
"You can't put in failsafes against the ATA gene. At least that's what you've been telling me the last two years."
McKay sighed, reluctant to admit that he was unable to outsmart the Ancients most of the time. "You're right, it doesn't. From what I've seen with the General O'Neill and with Colonel Sheppard in the alternate universe, the ATA gene overrides just about anything else."
"So what else can you do?"
"I don't know. Appeal to his better nature?"
"Are you sure he has one?
"Of course I'm sure. We have a smoking wreck in the desert that proves it. Besides, Colonel Sheppard did, and I refuse to believe that this man is fundamentally different."
"I'm not so sure that I can agree with you there. I've spent much of the morning reading about the various alternate realities SGC has encountered to date, and there have been some significant personality differences." Woolsey sighed. "It makes me wish I'd studied more philosophy in college. I think I would have been better able to consider the essential similarities and the basis for divergence between each alternate universe and our own."
McKay grunted. "If you ask me, philosophy is the dim-witted leading the blind through a maze in complete darkness. Or perhaps merely the human equivalent of Brownian motion."
"Interesting metaphor."
"Descriptive, anyway."
"I suspect you have no time for the mental discipline it requires."
"The nearest I ever got to studying philosophy was reading Popper's Conjectures and Refutations. At least it had some relevance. And as for mental discipline, the scientific method is discipline enough for me. Observation, hypothesis, experiment, data -- all essential steps, ignore them at your peril."
"I find that an interesting statement from someone who usually pulls off the impossible at the last minute."
"That's because you rarely see the three or four failed attempts that precede the successful one," admitted McKay in a rare moment of candor.
"I have to wonder if Sheppard is going to be one of your failures. He's not the sort of officer we would select for Atlantis."
"No, but he should be. Possession of the ATA gene has outweighed negative selection factors in nearly fifty percent of the military and scientific personnel so far, and in almost all cases that practice has been justified. I don't think Sheppard's case will be any different."
"So you still adhere to your hypothesis that John Sheppard is the key difference between our universe and the one you visited three years ago?"
"It was the only difference I could detect in the short time I was there. And it's a valid assumption, based on the evidence. The city came alive for him in a way it never did for us. With his gene activating everything in sight, they found things in the first weeks that we took years to discover. They used the gateships from week one, they found ZPMs, they found ancient starships ..."
"I understand," Woolsey interrupted. "But while that would have made a significant difference five years ago, what good will taking Sheppard to Atlantis do now? With Beckett's gene therapy well-established in the expedition members, do we really need him?"
McKay stared at him, incredulous. "Of course we need him! The gene therapy only gives us a pale imitation of the ATA gene, you know that. You've seen what O'Neill can do with Ancient tech here on Earth -- he can activate things no one else can. Sheppard's gene is even stronger."
"Bearing in mind the several close shaves O'Neill has had, I'm not sure that's a good thing."
"We'll make sure he gets properly briefed. And Ellis can assign him a marine escort for the first few weeks if you're worried. He won't go wandering off into the unexplored sections ... at least, not without us knowing about it. And I could make up a briefing pack for him, to let him know the most important things."
"SGC already runs a full preparation course for people going to Atlantis."
"That covers only the basics. He'll need to know a lot more about the city before he sets foot there, because yes, he could inadvertently activate something dangerous. And he'll need some orientation before we can take him off-world. He'll need to know about the Athosians and the Genii and the Replicators -- "
"McKay," Woolsey interrupted, his voice low and troubled. "This John Sheppard is not going to be the commanding military officer. He's not the man you met in the other universe. He has different life experiences, different expectations, a different attitude."
McKay swallowed. "I know that. I do. But I also know that the minute he steps into the city, he'll respond to her -- and she to him. Once he's there we'll be able to do so much more. I have boxes full of artefacts that we still can't identify or use because O'Neill refuses to spend any time in Atlantis. With Sheppard in the city, the productivity of the scientific teams will more than double."
"And so will the risks. I'm not sure that's a good enough case for taking him."
"We need him, Woolsey. You'll see."
Woolsey pursed his lips and considered that. "Maybe. But you still have to convince him it's a good idea, and that's not going to be as easy as you think."
McKay thought about that for a moment, then shook his head. "He'll go. He won't be able to turn it down."
Woolsey continued to look skeptical but McKay refused to be cowed. Now that he'd found his Sheppard, the possibility that he might not choose Atlantis was unthinkable.
~~~~~
He had to wait another day before Sheppard was deemed fit for visitors, but he pressed on with the task of getting the detective cleared for the Pegasus mission. As soon as he was given the go-ahead by Dr Fraiser the next afternoon he hastened to the infirmary, stopping by the mess to pick up some chocolate pudding cups as a way to induce high blood sugar levels -- and thereby a favorable mental outlook -- before he began his pitch.
Sheppard was awake when McKay got there, but unfortunately he was still on clear fluids only, so his effort was wasted. He put the pudding cups down on the nearest monitor and regarded them mournfully.
"Thanks for the presents," said Sheppard with a wry smile, "but you know, even when I'm back on solids, I'm not really a dessert sort of person."
McKay sighed. He tapped his fingers on the bed frame, trying to work out how best to start his pitch. He had a difficult task ahead of him and he needed every advantage he could get.
Sheppard raised an eyebrow at him, and McKay had a moment of disorientation as he remembered the other Sheppard -- Colonel Sheppard -- looking at him in exactly the same way. The next words tumbled out without even thinking. "I've been looking for you for a long time, you know."
The eyebrow rose another notch. "I'm not exactly mobile at the moment, McKay. If you can't find a sick man in an infirmary, you can't be that much of a genius."
Embarrassment flooded through him and he felt his face reddening. "Not today, idiot. I meant that I'd been looking for you since I met the John Sheppard from another reality. Unfortunately all I had was the name, and I wasn't even sure about the spelling. Do you know how many men there are in the United States with names that are variants of 'John Sheppard'? Well over two thousand. And a surprisingly large number of them have served in the military. I tried to filter them on date of birth, service, achievements, but never found you."
"You were wasting your time anyway, my file would have been sealed."
"Oh, please, as if that would be hard to get around. No, it was there all right. I just discounted it the first time around." He grimaced at the memory -- he hated it when his algorithms proved unreliable. " Eventually I came to the conclusion that you didn't exist, either through not having been born or having died young. When I saw your name on the police reports they sent us, I told myself it couldn't possibly be you, it was too much of a coincidence. But I pulled your personnel file anyway, and when I saw the photo ... well, there you were." He showed Sheppard the file photo on his tablet. "You've let yourself go a fair bit since you joined the police, by the way."
"Thanks, McKay, way to make me feel even worse."
"Yes, well, armed with the additional biographical data, I went back to the military databases and of course it had been there along. I'd actually discarded the file without even looking at it, because the thought that you might have been dishonorably discharged never crossed my mind."
"Fancy that. Just goes to show you shouldn't jump to conclusions." The tone was dry, but the tightness around Sheppard's jaw showed how uncomfortable he was with the conversation.
Ouch. McKay realized he had better try and get the man into a better mood if he was to have any chance of achieving his aim. "My thoughts exactly. You're very disconcerting at times. But, well, anyway ... once I'd read the file I got my ex-wife to do a little digging in DC -- lovely woman, we get on so much better since the divorce -- and she managed to get hold of a couple of things that weren't on the official record."
"Like?"
"Like a very long encrypted email sent from your CO in Afghanistan directly to General de la Tour at the Pentagon, which was considerably more illuminating than the sanitized report that went to Allied Joint Forces Command and USMECOM."
"You hacked the DOD?"
"I didn't, she did. Not that it was difficult -- they never delete anything, so you just have to know where to look in the backup files."
"Shit."
"Oh, I don't know ... it gave me a much clearer idea of the conditions that led you to do what you did." His voice dropped, and he added, "I'm not blaming you, you know. God knows I've managed to kill people I was trying to help. You were trying to rescue someone you cared about. That is never a bad thing."
"Tell that to the others who died. Tell that to their relatives and friends. It was a bad thing to them, all right."
"I'm sorry."
Sheppard shrugged.
McKay sighed. There was so much more that he wanted to say, so much that he wanted to tell this Sheppard, but it was far too soon.
"So the email indicated that you and your lover weren't quite as discreet as you thought you were."
Sheppard closed his eyes. "Chris Stanton."
"Yes, yes, I know. What of it?"
"His name was Chris Stanton. He was a good soldier. He deserves to be remembered for who he was, not just his association with me."
McKay looked down at the man in the bed and wondered how a man with such scruples on one hand could be so lax on the other. But then people had always been a mystery to him.
"Very well then, you and Stanton weren't quite as discreet as you ought to have been."
"I thought you said that people weren't prepared to go on record about us."
"They weren't. From what I gathered, your CO had his own suspicions. The fact that no one would corroborate them just made it easier for your father to get the matter handled quietly."
"That's dad," sighed Sheppard. "Always worried about appearances."
"Well, for once I think it worked in your favor. I don't think you would have had a good time in Leavenworth if all the facts had been made public and you'd gone to jail."
Sheppard shrugged.
"Of course, it didn't surprise me. That you were gay, I mean. After all, I had the advantage of having met Colonel John Sheppard in the other reality."
Sheppard looked up, astonished. "He was gay?"
"Yes, he was. In fact he was involved with -- well, with someone in the city. Apparently in his universe the American military had achieved a state of enlightenment some decades previously, so being gay wasn't an issue."
"Lucky him."
McKay bit his lip. "Well, he had his own burdens to bear. Life in the Pegasus Galaxy is never easy. But that brings me back to the reason I'm here. I'm trying to get you a place on the Pegasus expedition."
That was an even bigger surprise to Sheppard, judging by the way his eyes widened. "Why?"
"You have something we need."
The disbelieving eyebrow made a reappearance. "You need a wrecked Camaro or a Johnny Cash poster? Because that and the clothes I had on are my only possessions."
"No, not them. And not the half-million dollars we found in your car either," he added, with a slightly sardonic smile.
Sheppard winced, then tried to shrug and winced again. "I figured I could put it to better use than the Wraith could."
McKay leaned closer and dropped his voice. "You were going on the run, weren't you? You ditched your job, left your apartment key in the door, and headed west with enough untraceable cash to live very comfortably for a good long while -- possibly the rest of your life if you went to somewhere with a decent rate of exchange."
"And if I was?"
"If you were, what the hell possessed you to confront that Wraith? Why risk your future for near-certain death?"
Sheppard shrugged. "Didn't really think about it."
McKay snorted. "That I can believe. Do you ever plan anything or do you always act on impulse?"
"Plans never survive first contact with the enemy. A successful tactician has to be able to improvise."
"Well, I grant that you improvised in a way that benefitted Earth. That sort of thinking we can use in Atlantis."
"Yeah, till the first time I fuck up and I'll be on the next ship back.'
"The first time you fuck up, you'll probably die."
"I guess that will save on the transport costs then."
"Don't joke about it, Sheppard. We ship too many people home in body bags as it is." McKay gave a brief shudder and went on. "If we sacked everyone who ever made a mistake we wouldn't have anyone left. When mistakes happen in Pegasus, we learn from it and move on. You ... you can help us."
"Why? You've survived so far without me."
"Only by the skin of our teeth. And there are so many ways we could all have died ..." He closed his eyes for a moment, memories overcoming him. "The first year was very hard for us. We knew it was going to be a one-way trip but none of us realized just how bad it was going to be. Many of us died. We lost two of our four military officers in the first week, leaving a young major in charge. We lost more people to disease and accidents. Then we discovered the Wraith and things got really bad. We struggled on; we made alliances with various native groups and established trade partnerships, but we had little to trade except our labor, and by the time the Wraith attacked Atlantis, we were in desperate straits. When the Daedalus turned up ten months later we were down to forty percent of our original complement."
Sheppard winced. "That's a hell of an attrition rate."
McKay nodded, fighting down the familiar grief. "Things were a little better after that -- we had contact with Earth and regular supply runs. In fact the second and third years of the expedition went pretty well. Then we lost our Chief Medical Officer -- and that was a double disaster, because he had the strongest expression of the gene in the city. We tried to convince General O'Neill to take over as our military CO or even as the mission leader, but he wasn't prepared to leave Earth, and I'm not sure that the IOA would have agreed anyway. At least Carson managed to engineer a retro-viral delivery system for gene therapy, so about half of us have some functionality, but none of us is nearly as strong as Carson was."
Sheppard grunted. "Get to the point, McKay. Why do you need me?"
"The gene."
"What gene?"
"The Ancient Technology Activation gene - ATA for short. It allows people -- "
" -- to activate Ancient technology?"
McKay huffed. "I didn't name it, all right? But yes, that's exactly what it does. It was a failsafe the Ancients used to prevent their technology getting into the hands of the Wraith or any other enemy."
"And we are descended from these Ancients."
"Exactly. The gene has no significance on Earth so no one knew anything about it until we encountered their artefacts. Then we found that only a few people could get them to work. It took a while to work out how to test for it, but we've screened most of the military and defense scientists now and it's pretty rare. Strong expression -- which you have -- is even rarer."
"So basically you're saying that you don't want a pilot or detective, you just want someone to switch things on for you."
McKay shuffled his feet and wondered how he could make this more attractive for Sheppard. "Well, your military skills will be useful, of course, and another pilot would make life easier for everyone in the city, but primarily, yes, your role would be to help the scientists."
"Huh."
Sheppard didn't sound too impressed, and McKay frantically sought other incentives. "I'll try and get you onto an off-world team. I can't promise, but there have been occasions where a strong gene carrier would have helped, and I'm sure that I can convince Woolsey that you'll be an asset off-world. Colonel Ellis might be a little more resistant, but I think once you get there and he sees what you can do, he'll come around. And we can always use another pilot."
"So what kind of airframes do you have? Ospreys? Harriers? Those dart thingies? Or just helos?"
"No darts, no helicopters. Gateships."
"What's a gateship?"
"It's a small ship that -- astonishingly enough -- flies through a stargate."
He saw Sheppard's eyebrow rise yet again.
"Look, I told you I didn't get to name things. It looks like a lopsided tin can. It has anti-gravity and inertial dampeners. It holds about ten people. It's watertight and airtight. It copes with atmospheric and space flight and it even makes a handy submarine, if you don't go too deep."
"That ... doesn't make sense. The structural requirements alone -- "
" -- are irrelevant. Anti-gravity. Inertial dampeners. Force fields." McKay waved his hands. "Normal design limitations, aerodynamics, engineering constraints ... they don't apply. This is alien technology, thousands of years ahead of what we've developed ourselves. Think of what it would be like, flying something like that."
"I'm not sure I want to fly a tin can," Sheppard muttered. He cast a sideways look at McKay, a speculative gleam in his eye. "Those darts looked pretty sweet though."
McKay was struck with inspiration -- it might be stretching the truth a little, but then, he was recruiting, it was allowed. And he'd square it with Woolsey later if he had to -- a gift certificate for his favorite online music store would probably do the trick. "We do have a small team trying to reverse-engineer the darts, but since the retro-virus was developed and we had more gateship pilots it's not been a high priority. If we had someone to assist them with the practical aspects of the project they would make more progress." He paused, noting the slight change in Sheppard's expression, then went on. "Of course, we could use someone with your background as a test pilot anyway. For all we know there could be more alien craft out there to examine, and we wouldn't always have the time to get help from Earth."
There, he could almost see Sheppard's thoughts scrolling in front of him, his expression flickering as the considered the possibilities. Sheppard was hungry to fly again, he knew it, and any moment now he'd get the answer he was hoping for ...
"Can I think about this?"
McKay swallowed his disappointment -- or, at least, he tried to. "Hmmph. Of course. I can see it's a very difficult choice - unemployment, poverty and disgrace on the one hand, or a well-paid job and the chance to fly alien spaceships in another galaxy on the other. Obviously you need time to think it over."
Sheppard didn't quite snort, but it was a close thing. "Well," he drawled, "when you put it like that ..." He paused. "Though if Woolsey gives me back my half-million, I wouldn't be poor."
"It's not your half-million, it belonged to the Wraith."
"He's not going to be needing it."
"Neither will you if you come to Atlantis. It's a barter economy there, so your salary will accumulate, apart from what you spend on your Daedalus allowance each run - which is based on mass and volume, not money. Coffee, Coca-Cola and chocolate are the usual staples, but you'd be surprised what becomes important when you only get a delivery once every seven or eight weeks."
"I bet." He took a breath. "I still need to think about it, all right?"
McKay nodded reluctantly. "Daedalus is in orbit now -- they were a fortnight into their transit when we got the call about the Wraith killings, which is why we ended up gating back -- and they have a little over a week before setting off, so you have that long to make your mind up. Try not to leave it until the last minute, though."
2 Revelation
That night, when the infirmary was quiet and the only other occupant (a marine sergeant who had broken his leg) was asleep, Sheppard lay awake and thought about his future -- all the possible futures.
McKay had given him some food for thought. That his alter ego in another universe was more successful than he was hardly surprising, since pretty much everyone he'd worked for in the last ten years had told him he was a Class A fuck-up, but that this Colonel Sheppard could be both successful and openly gay was a revelation. For the first time in years he began to wonder if perhaps his career would have gone better if he hadn't spent so much energy on hiding his sexuality, on arranging and covering up every trace of his liaisons. What could he have achieved if he hadn't been forced to hide so much of himself?.
He thought about Chris Stanton. Chris had been the one bright spot of his life in Afghanistan. They had kept each other from going crazy in the seven months they'd been together. It hadn't even been about the sex really, since they'd only managed that a few times. Just being with Chris -- talking, watching a movie, going for a run around the base together -- had enabled John to get through the days and nights without succumbing to the mindless insanity of war. And then Chris's helo had been shot down, and his own had followed, and the nightmare had rolled over him like a wave, almost drowning him.
There had been days when he wished he had drowned.
The hate mail had started about a month later, after the funerals and the hearing but before the official report had been promulgated. He'd already run the gamut of being shunned by his colleagues and suffering "accidental" damage to his kit. He'd dodged one attempt at beating him up but failed in another, and only the timely arrival of the camp adjutant had prevented him from broken bones -- as it was, he'd peed blood for a week. The letters were just the icing on the cake.
He thought about the nights he'd sat with his gun in his hand, cleaning out the insidious and ever-present sand, loading and unloading, caressing the cool metal that could be his gateway to oblivion. More than once he'd put the barrel in his mouth. More than once he'd held it to his temple. He never knew what had stopped him from squeezing the trigger all those nights, but something had, and now, for the first time in years, there was a door in front of him that didn't lead all the way down to hell.
He had a choice now.
He wasn't sure he had the courage to make it.
McKay was right about one thing, though -- the chance to work on alien technology; the chance to go to another galaxy; the chance that maybe he could fly an alien spaceship -- they were incredibly compelling reasons to go. Test pilot for an alien fucking spaceship -- how cool was that? It was every boy's dream, and he wanted it so much he could taste it.
On the other side, however, there was the decidedly unattractive prospect of being back in uniform and subject to all the military rules and regulations, not to mention the fact that sooner or later he would fall foul of whoever was in command. McKay hadn't talked about the military commander, but anyone who was happy to work with that stick Woolsey had to be a spit-and-polish, rules-and-regulations sort of an officer, and Sheppard didn't deal well with that type.
He could envisage it now -- the initial rush, the exhilaration as he ran around discovering everything he could. Then the minor irritations would start to niggle at him -- the rules, the petty regulations that served no logical purpose except to make small men feel important. Then he'd start pissing people off and getting the shitty little jobs in exchange. Then he'd start taking risks, and people would start to avoid him. Before long he'd be the outcast again, the loner, the expendable one, the one they picked only when there was no other option available.
Around 4 a.m. he came to the conclusion that he would have to turn the offer down, and closed his eyes and clenched his jaw against the pain. It always hurt more when you could see what the alternative might have been.
~~~~~
He was expecting McKay back the next morning, but no McKay appeared. In fact he had no non-medical visitors at all and was feeling very sorry for himself by lunchtime. The physiotherapy session had gone reasonably well, Dr Fraiser was very encouraging, and the nursing staff kind and helpful, but he had got to the point where sleeping all day was no longer an option, and he was bored.
It was with mixed feelings that he watched McKay stroll in around 2pm, smiling and confident. "Afternoon, detective, have you come to a decision yet?"
"Look McKay, it's a very generous offer, and I'm grateful, I really am, but I can't take it up."
McKay's eyes widened in dismay. They were a startling blue, Sheppard noticed, and showed every small shift in emotion.
"What?"
"I'm not going to Pegasus."
"Why not?"
Sheppard sighed. He'd been prepared for McKay's disappointment, maybe some contempt, but this complete devastation was unexpected. He tried to find the words to express how he felt,
"I can't go back into uniform."
"Why not?"
"Because ... look, I fucked up, all right? It's there in black and white for everyone to see. Even if the file is sealed, the fact that it was a dishonorable discharge is still on the database. How long do you think it would be before the rumors started? How long would it be before they know I'm gay? How long before the soldiers decide they aren't going to take orders from a faggot Air Force officer? That's not going to be good for anyone." He ran a hand through his hair. "I'm sick of hiding. I'm sick of pretending to be something I'm not. I was going to take that money and go somewhere where I could be me, just me."
"Oh." McKay was silent for a few seconds, his face showing every emotion in turn -- despair, resentment, resignation and then, oddly, it brightened into hope., "Is it the job or the uniform?"
"They go together."
"Not necessarily. Restoring your commission is the easiest way, but it's not the only way. It's a scientific mission, after all. What if I could get you a place on the expedition as a scientist? -- a civilian, not subject to idiotic military rules?"
Sheppard was stunned. That changed things completely. "That ... that would be ... could you do it?"
"I'm the Chief Scientific Officer, I pick the scientists."
"But I don't have a doctorate. You said all your scientists had doctorates."
"I can make an exception in your case."
"Why?"
McKay rolled his eyes. "We need you."
"You keep saying that. But all these exceptions and exemptions ... I don't want to be a charity case."
McKay twitched and his face started to go red. Sheppard wondered if he was about to have a stroke from sheer frustration -- if so, then he was about to set a record for bombing out of a job.
"Look, you're not some stray dog I've decided to adopt. We need you. We desperately need your gene. All the rest -- the math, the piloting, the military experience -- that's a bonus. Nice to have, but not essential. I'd take you on as janitor if I had to."
"Well, gee, thanks, McKay."
"I'm serious. You have something extremely valuable to us and I'm trying to make sure that you get a fair deal for it. I thought you'd want your military rank back, but if you don't want that, then I'll try my best to get you what you do want."
Sheppard thought about that. It was a long time since he'd had anyone fight for him. And even though McKay was open about what the expedition would get out of it, he felt that McKay was honestly on his side against the monolithic Establishment.
"Could I fly these gateships if I wasn't in uniform? And do the other stuff -- test pilot? Off-world team?"
"Of course. It's the gene that matters, not the rank."
McKay took a deep breath and looked directly into his eyes. John couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a look so intense, so focused on him. It almost made him shiver.
"Atlantis is not Earth, Sheppard. Look you've already seen how different Stargate Command is from a normal military establishment. Atlantis goes so far beyond that you just can't imagine it. Rank, race, orientation, degrees, specialization ... all of that is irrelevant. We're fighting for survival in a hostile galaxy and prejudice has no place there."
"So what does matter?"
"Intelligence. Lateral thinking. Creativity. The gene."
"Sounds like anarchy to me."
"No, that's not it. I'm not saying there is no rank, of course there is. And there is authority and structure -- there has to be. But the structure reflects the needs of the mission, and it's flexible because it has to be. Rigidity gets you killed. Even Woolsey knows that now."
"Woolsey?" There had to be a story there.
McKay brushed it off. "So in Atlantis, what you do depends more on what you can do than on what your position number says -- and no one has just one job. Botanists become sharp-shooters, grunts become diplomats, physicists become plumbers, and anyone who has the gene helps the scientists with the tech, because that is our primary mission, and has been since day one. We have to find out as much about the Ancients and their technology as possible, in order to have a chance at defending Earth."
"I thought you said the Wraith didn't know where Earth is."
McKay hesitated -- had he said something he shouldn't? John wondered.
Slowly, significantly, McKay spoke again. "We didn't know about the Wraith when we went to the Pegasus galaxy."
"So -- " John broke off as one of the nurses came over with a dressing tray.
McKay stood up and pushed his chair back against the wall. "I've said enough for the moment. More than enough. I'll let you think about it for a while. If I have time I'll come back this evening, otherwise I'll try and visit in the next day or two."
With that, he turned and left.
~~~~~
After the dressing change and the inevitable analgesic-induced nap, followed by another visit from Dr Fraiser, John finally got the chance to ponder the conversation with McKay, especially the last few minutes. Two fragments in particular kept rolling around in his head: "... our primary mission ... defending Earth" and "We didn't know about the Wraith ..."
The two statements didn't really make much sense together, and it had been niggling at him in the intervening hours. Why did they need to defend Earth if they didn't know about the Wraith? Why take the huge risk of a one-way trip to another galaxy? Unless ...
It couldn't be ... could it? More aliens? Other aliens?
It was the only explanation he could think of.
He sat there, dumfounded for the umpteenth time since he'd met Woolsey -- and could that have been only four days ago? Aliens in this galaxy, too. It had to be true -- there was no other scenario that incorporated all the information he had accumulated in the last few days.
But how could they keep this a secret? There were satellites all around Earth, telescopes pointing in all directions, radio receivers in every city. Surely some of them had picked up anomalies? There was no way they could have hidden ships in orbit and weapons discharges - even if the US government had suppressed publication, there were others who weren't as quick off the mark, and there were always maverick publications willing to risk a legal battle for a good story. He had no idea how they had done it, but somehow they had managed to keep interstellar travel and space wars out of the public knowledge.
The really frustrating part was that he couldn't even begin to verify what McKay had told him about the Wraith, let alone try to research previous alien incursions. Any attempt on his part to hunt through internet archives and foreign newspapers would bring him to the attention of whoever it was monitoring the secret, and given the non-disclosure agreement he'd signed, he'd probably disappear, and not in the way he'd been planning.
Still ... he'd seen the Wraith with his own eyes, and the creature had definitely seemed alien even when made up to look like human. He'd felt that tingle in his head when the guy had stared at him over the card table, and again when he'd encountered Todd in his cage at Area 51. He was in no doubt at all that he had met and fought with something that had no connection to Earth.
So if he could vouch for two alien creatures in the flesh, and he could accept the several alien spacecraft that he'd seen in the hangar, he should be able to accept that there were other aliens as well, out to destroy or conquer Earth. And that inevitably meant that there was a third, friendly group as well -- after all, someone had to have given them the cloaking technology to hide all this from the satellites and ground sensors.
At least three alien races out there ... it was mind-blowing.
And they -- Earth's fledgling space forces -- were engaged in interstellar and intergalactic war, right out of E. E. Smith and Robert Heinlein and Star Wars. It was like a Boy's Own adventure come true.
And he had a chance to be a part of it.
He spent the next hour in vivid fantasies of himself as intergalactic hero, battling enemy spaceships and accepting the grateful adoration of his handsome wingman, before falling asleep.
It didn't seem to cross his mind that he was already a hero to those who mattered.
~~~~~
He woke sometime the next morning to find himself looking up at an Air Force general. He tried to straighten up -- it was a reflex he couldn't shake -- but the movement tugged at his wounds and he winced instead.
"Relax, son," the general said, pulling the chair up and sitting down. "No need for formality here."
John tried to relax, though it was never easy in the presence of senior officers. Too many of them were friends of his father; too many of them were enemies. This one wore a name badge saying "O'Neill", which rang a bell in his memory though he couldn't place it immediately.
"What can I do for you, sir?" he asked. It was probably the politest greeting he'd given a general in years, but he was feeling off-balance and unsure, and he was stuck here with no escape for the time being.
"You can save me from a fate worse than death," O'Neill replied, brown eyes twinkling, as he leaned back and propped his feet up on the bed.
His jaw dropped. A fate worse than death? What the hell did that mean? "Sir?"
The man grinned. "I'm Jack O'Neill, and until you popped up the other day I had the dubious honor of having the strongest ATA gene expression in SGC."
Oh, of course. "Dr McKay mentioned your name yesterday. He said they wanted you in Atlantis."
"Yeah, that's where you can help. See, the threat level to Earth has just jumped up a few levels. That Wraith transmitter is the biggest threat to the planet since ... well, you're not cleared for specifics yet. But even though they think that the transmission didn't reach Pegasus in our universe, they can't be sure. So the president wants to pull out all the stops to get the Atlantis expedition supplied with everything they need, just in case. And what they need, more than anything else, is a strong gene carrier, because as much as I hate to admit it, McKay is right -- the key to winning the war lies in Ancient technology, and we can't study it without one. Beckett's retrovirus just isn't strong enough."
"You don't want to go yourself?"
"Hell, no. There's no place for me there other than as light switch, and I can't think of anything more boring. Not to mention the fact that I'd strangle McKay if I was forced to live in the same base as him for more than a few days, and while that would be a truly cathartic experience, I have to admit it would set us back several years. No, I'm better placed running Homeworld Security ... plus I have personal reasons for not leaving Earth at the moment."
John shook his head slightly. Homeworld Security? Had he mis-heard?
"No, you didn't," O'Neill answered, just as if he had asked out loud. "I said Homeworld. I coordinate the defense of Earth against several hostile alien races."
And there it was, casual confirmation of what John had painstakingly extrapolated from the previous conversation with McKay. But "several hostile alien races" -- how many? What did they look like? How did they communicate? And for that matter, why were they at war and not in some interstellar federation like in Star Trek? -- that completely stunned him, and it was a few seconds before he could take in what the general was saying.
"... so while I agree with him in principle, it's just not going to be me. I've done my stint on the front lines, and frankly I can be more use to SGC where I am now than in Pegasus. You, on the other hand, have no strong ties here, a set of military skills that matches my own, close enough, and a nice line in creative problem-solving that will keep Woolsey on his toes -- which is a personal bonus for me but I'm not discounting it."
John struggled to get his thoughts in order. "I told McKay I don't want to go back into uniform."
"I know. I'd prefer it if you did, because I'd have a little more control over you ... but only a little. Every US citizen in the Stargate program answers to me, military or civilian, so it doesn't matter that much. And considering that DADT is still in force, it's probably better for everyone if you go as a scientist."
John looked up, expecting to see the usual sneer that accompanied statements like that. But there was no sneer on O'Neill's face, just a trace of sympathy.
"Is my record going to be common knowledge?"
O'Neill shook his head. "No. Oh, I can't guarantee that no one will know, because it will be there in your record, and Atlantis is full of people who could hack into the Pentagon in their sleep, but ... it won't matter. Not there."
That correlated with what McKay had said, but John still had trouble believing it. "Do you normally recruit failures like me?"
O'Neill sighed. "You really do have some issues, Sheppard. Maybe Janet is right and you need more time ... but we don't have time. Daedalus leaves in a week and it would be best for everyone if you're on board.
"Why is everyone assuming I'll join you guys?"
"Because there's no reasonable alternative. You know that as well as I do. There's nothing for you here -- you're estranged from your family, you avoid all your friends, you were barely getting by in Vegas, and you'd already left that life when we rescued you."
O'Neill paused, as if waiting for some affirmation or agreement from John, but there was nothing he could say. It was all true. He had nothing. In fact he had less than nothing, but still ... he was determined not to sign his life over to the Pentagon again. He just couldn't go through all the bullshit again, the useless rituals and shibboleths of military life.
"You'll do well in Pegasus, you know. There's a lot of scope for you there."
He struggled with the thoughts that were tumbling through his head. Why didn't this guy see that this was a really bad idea? "I don't follow orders," he blurted out.
"Oh yes, you do. You just don't follow stupid orders."
John opened his mouth then shut it again. It was what he'd said to himself more than once, but he'd never expected to hear it from a general. Did telepathy go with freaky alien genes?
O'Neill laughed. "Not a mind-reader. It just goes with the territory. Janet has a theory that the ATA gene is linked to certain character traits, like impulsiveness, creativity, strength of will and inability to tolerate fools, and that has interesting sociological implications that Danny believes may have contributed to the collapse of the Atlantean society both in Pegasus and here on Earth.
"Huh?"
"Yeah, that's what I said. You can talk it over with Danny later if you're really interested. Just be prepared to listen for a few hours -- it's hard to get him to stop once he gets on that particular hobbyhorse."
"Who's Danny?"
O'Neill frowned. "Dr Daniel Jackson, archaeologist, anthropologist, linguist, trouble magnet extraordinaire ... haven't they started you on the orientation vids yet?"
"Er, no."
"Sheesh, they're wasting time. We only have a week to get you sorted."
"Sir ... I haven't said I'll go."
O'Neill looked at him, and for the first time Sheppard could see the tempered steel core under the affable exterior. "Son, are you seriously trying to tell me you can walk away from this?"
Sheppard tried hard not to squirm in his bed. "Are you ordering me to go?"
"No. I could. I don't want to, but I could. I'm asking you, and believe me, I'm asking you nicely. One of us has to go to Atlantis, because they do need a natural gene carrier, and it really could be the difference between life and death for them ... and for the continued existence of Earth. I'm asking you to go because you're younger, faster, and more likely to survive there than I am."
Well, when the general put it like that ... and it wasn't like John didn't want to go. He just hated painting himself into a corner, and he suspected that once he said yes he was going to be locked into this Stargate program for the rest of his natural life, even as a civilian. Still, there was no way that Atlantis could be worse than Vegas, and he'd hacked that for five years.
Seriously, what did he have to lose? It wasn't like they were going to let him walk out of here with the cash, anyway, and knowing what he did now he'd be under surveillance for the rest of his life, so he might as well sign on for the adventure and get to have some fun.
"OK, sir, I'll do it."
"Terrific." O'Neill picked up a small briefcase and pulled out some papers. "I'd leave them here for you to read at your leisure, but we're short on time. Initial the bottom of every page, sign the flagged boxes and I'll get Janet to organize your orientation ASAP."
John took the papers and the pen, but still he hesitated. He hated being pressured to do things in a hurry; it always led to trouble. He looked up at O'Neill and saw the understanding in his face. Maybe this time he could trust them ... after all, they knew the absolute worst about him and were still prepared to trust him.
The forms indicated he was to be taken on as Scientific Officer, Grade 3, starting ... four days previously.
"Sir?"
"What?"
"The starting date ..." He wasn't entirely sure, but he suspected it was a federal offense to falsify DOD employment records like this.
O'Neill waved away his concern. "You killed a Wraith. I call that acting on behalf of SGC, so we may as well pay you for it. Besides, we're not supposed to treat outsiders here. You want to get that nice Dr Fraiser into trouble?"
"No, sir."
"So just sign. We'll get everything else fixed up later."
He signed form after form -- acceptance of employment, personal particulars (already filled in and indicating that his current address was apparently the BOQ at Peterson Air Force Base); starting salary (a whole lot more than what he had been getting as a detective, even without allowances); payment details (already filled out with his bank account number); Retirement Fund; Next of Kin / Emergency Contacts (he hesitated there, but finally filled in his father's name -- it had been on his previous records, after all, and he was surprised that they hadn't pre-filled this form too); and, finally, that part of the Defense Secrecy Act that promised dire retribution if he should reveal any information deemed prejudicial to the security of the nation.
As soon as John had signed the last form, the general's demeanor changed from affable do downright scary.
"OK, son, now you're officially under my command, let's get a few things straight. I don't care who you sleep with. I don't care what your politics are. I don't even care about your father -- he doesn't have nearly as much influence as he thinks he does. I understand that in the field you can't always follow the book and you can't always carry out orders as originally planned. That's life in a war zone. I also understand that creative solutions can sometimes piss off the guys back in command HQ. That's life all over. You do something crazy to keep our people alive and I'll back you to the hilt. But ... if you ever set out to undermine the authority of Stargate Command I will personally come out there and kick your ass so hard you'll go into orbit. You understand?"
John swallowed. "I understand. Sir."
O'Neill stared at him -- through him -- a few seconds longer, and John wondered again about that telepathy thing, but he was determined not to back down, and held his gaze steady. Whatever it was that O'Neill saw, it must have reassured him, because he slowly leaned back in his chair.
"You'll do." He nodded, then collected up the sheaf of papers and returned them to the briefcase. "Right. Orientation. Obviously you won't be able to do much physically until you get to Atlantis, but that leaves more time for you to catch up on what we've been doing here for the last fifteen years. I'll get Janet to start you on Danny's videos, and once you're done with those, there's a list of essential mission reports to read. I'll let McKay and Zelenka brief you on Atlantis itself -- as a gene carrier you'll have to be extremely careful until you've learned your way around. The quartermaster will arrange for you to be kitted up in the next couple of days. Weapons certification can probably wait until the last minute -- I don't anticipate any problems there and I don't want to risk Janet's temper if you damage something. OK. Any questions?
"None right now, sir. I may have some later, though."
"If McKay, Woolsey and Janet can't answer them, they know how to contact me."
He stood up and turned to eave, then swung back to face the bed. "Oh, one last word of advice. Don't piss off McKay more than you can help. He's irritating as hell, he's the rudest man you'll ever meet and he barely tolerates anyone with an IQ less than 150. But he has done more, single-handedly, to keep the Pegasus Expedition alive than any other person. His continued health is an absolute priority. If he likes you -- and I know he does, he went to considerable effort to rescue you -- you'll have a fairly easy time of it. If you piss him off too badly you may as well come home on the next ship because he will make your life a living hell."
John stared. He knew McKay was not exactly the most socially-aware person, but O'Neill was describing some sort of psychopath genius. "Is he really that bad? He seems OK to me."
O'Neill grinned. "Sheppard, he's worse."
Continues here