A Puddle Jumper, a Wraith, and a Case of Beer
My little typing fingers are on fire right now! Hello, Muse. Where have you been all summer?
Title: A Puddle Jumper, a Wraith, and a Case of Beer
Word count: ~4,300
Warnings: Some language, post-season 5, set after "Enemy at the Gate"
Summary: John and Ronon, a jumper, some beer, some Wraith, trouble...
Huge thanks to my beta, everybetty! Oh, and this little story is also doing double duty on my H/C Bingo card, fulfilling the "Stranded/survival scenario" square.
Here's the first of three stories written for Help_Pakistan, won by bria67. The Prompt I was given was as follows:
A couple of weeks ago on Twitter Joe was asked how he'd rewrite the ending of SGA and he answered that Ronon and John would steal a puddle jumper and set up a new series: Wraith Hunter. I know he was joking but I actually really like this idea, I can imagine the IOA not letting them take Atlantis back to the Pegasus Galaxy and I can see John and Ronon stealing a puddle jumper to go back and continue the war against the wraith. I would really like to read a story about this, when they are back to the Pegasus Galaxy and how their lives would be... I've always liked the friendship between Ronon and John. So, if you could write a John-Ronon friendship story, placed in that time, with some John whump, it'd be awesome.
I couldn’t quite figure out how John and Ronon would get a jumper to Pegasus since the only gate to Pegasus from Earth is through Atlantis (which was in San Francisco, last we saw). Either Atlantis had to be back in Pegasus, or the Daedalus took them… This is what my muse came up with…
What could go wrong?
Five years in Pegasus, and John should have known never to ask that question. It had started innocently enough. After months on Earth and then weeks flying Atlantis back to Pegasus, John had happened to be looking at Ronon when Woolsey announced that all offworld missions were going to be put off indefinitely until everyone, and the city, settled back into a normal routine. Ronon’s patience had visibly snapped like a rubber band stretched too thin, his complexion going pale and his eyes bugging out of his head.
And so a plan had hatched. John and Ronon would “escape” in a jumper for a few days to chase after some Wraith, or as John had put it to Woolsey the night he’d sought the expedition leader out and talked him into the whole thing, they would “gather a little intel before Ronon ran off half-cocked.” The plan had been to pop in on a few different worlds and check things out. John had loaded the back of the jumper with a few cases of beer, enough to keep Ronon occupied and drinking while he sent furtive messages back to Atlantis of where they were, where they were heading, and that they were safe.
“Oh, shit!” John screamed as they popped through the wormhole onto Planet Number Four and found an entire contingent of Wraith standing around the gate. He cloaked immediately but not before several of the Wraith began firing at them. The jumper shuddered, tilting wildly to the side.
“Sheppard!”
“I got it!” John’s hands tightened around the controls, his knuckles going white. The craft jerked under his grasp, and he yanked the controls back, forcing the jumper up and over the trees. Gradually, they straightened out, but alarms blared in the small cockpit as more blasts from the Wraith weapons rocked against the hull.
John’s thoughts immediately went to the amount of damage they had suffered, and the HUD in front of him popped up. Data streamed past him, as fast as the canopy of trees rushing beneath the careening vehicle. His fingers were going numb, but he didn’t dare loosen his grip.
“Lost the left engine, cloak is down…wait, it’s back up,” he gasped, trying to both read the screen and fly level. “Losing power fast. Don’t know how much longer I can keep her in the air.”
“Over there,” Ronon said, leaning forward and pointing through the HUD.
John saw the spot, a small stretch of grass and stones halfway up a mountain. It was the only visible area not covered in thick forest. He veered the ship toward it, feeling it tremble beneath him. “Come on, just a little bit farther,” he coaxed. The jumper dipped, and a panel behind his head exploded in a shower of sparks, but the cloak held.
The power levels dipped suddenly, and it was all John could do to keep the jumper in the air. Another flashing alarm wailed in response and he winced at the sound. A few more seconds. They just needed a few more seconds and he might be able to set the jumper down relatively gently. “Brace yourself,” he called out as it jerked and shuddered again, then started to roll.
The lights flickered, and for a moment, the inertial dampeners blinked out. John felt the jumper’s back end sliding out behind him like a truck on icy roads. The trees were getting closer, and he could see individual branches as the forest flashed by. The small stretch clear of trees was still too far away.
Just a few more seconds, a few more seconds, a few more…
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
“Sheppard? Buddy?”
John heard Ronon’s voice, but it was far away, muffled under a buzzing, ringing drone in his ears. A warm hand on his shoulder tightened its grip, and John groaned.
“John, wake up.”
Wake up? Where the hell were they? He became suddenly aware of the buttons on the jumper’s front console pressing against his face and digging into his cheek, his arms hanging at his sides, the control sticks wedged against his chest. He blinked open his eyes to see a blur of colors beneath him, lights flashing and dancing across the control panel.
“Sheppard,” Ronon said again, and this time he shook John’s arm.
Pain lanced through his chest at the movement, and he cried out, squeezing his eyes shut and attempting to curl around the agony. He lifted both arms and managed to flop one of them onto the console, but his coordination was completely skewed.
“Sorry.”
“Help…up…” he muttered. He grit his teeth when the throbbing in the center of his chest intensified, but a second later he felt hands under his arms easing him back in the chair.
“You okay?”
“Shit,” he breathed out. He brought a hand up to rub his sternum, glancing down to make sure he hadn’t actually impaled himself on anything. There was no blood, and sitting upright and not with all of his weight against the jumper controls was slightly more comfortable.
“I checked the perimeter,” Ronon said, sitting down in the seat next to him. “It will take a while for the Wraith to reach us, but one of the engine pods was sheered off in the landing. Don’t think this one will fly again.”
“We make the clearing?” John asked. The buzzing in his head was finally quieting down and he sucked in a careful breath, testing how far he could push his ribs.
“Not quite, but close. We’re up the mountain a ways but still in the trees. That should give us a little bit of cover.”
John nodded, rubbing his chest again. The pain was centered on his left side, but near the sternum, and each breath felt like a twisting knife. Cracked ribs at least, maybe broken. Possibly a cracked sternum as well. He didn’t know if that was even possible, and frankly, didn’t really want to find out. Not like this. His head was clearing, though-aching a little but nothing like what it should feel like if he had a concussion.
Small miracle there, he thought, looking at the smashed controls on the console.
“We should either set up some defenses and get ready to dig in, or take our chances up the mountain, away from the crash site,” Ronon said, studying him. It would be John’s call, not only because he was the team leader but because he was the most injured, and what they did would be directly dependent on his physical condition and abilities.
John nodded then braced himself against the chair as he pushed himself up straight. The pain in his chest amplified, but it was not unbearable.
“We stay with the jumper, wait for Atlantis to come for us,” he said after a moment.
Ronon’s eyes narrowed. “How does Atlantis know where we are?”
“You didn’t think we could just slip out of the city with a jumper without anyone even trying to stop us, did you? I cleared it with Woolsey. Gave him a list of planets we’d be checking out.” John shifted in the chair and hissed in pain. “When we don’t check in on time, they’ll try to contact us and we can beg for rescue then.”
“You’ve been in contact with them the whole time?” Ronon leaned back, his arms folded.
“Every time you went back to grab a beer,” John answered.
Ronon turned toward the back of the jumper. “It’s smashed. Didn’t survive the crash.”
“The beer?”
“Yep.”
“That explains why it smells like a bar in here. You okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said with a shrug. “I’m better at crashing than you.”
John grunted then winced at the throb that elicited from his cracked and/or broken ribs. “No argument there,” he muttered. “Help me up. We’ve got work to do.”
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
John climbed up the mountain toward the jumper, using the rocks to pull himself along. The pain in chest had abated at first, but after the constant exertion of the last hour and a half, it was back, pounding fiercely against every movement. An ache in his stomach had started as a slow burn, but cramps were now lancing through his gut and he didn’t want to think about what that might mean. They had crashed high up on the mountain as well, and the air felt thinner with every breath he sucked in.
At least that’s what he kept telling himself. It was the altitude. He knew now that there was no way he could have made it very far if they’d tried to make a run for it on foot. The jumper offered protection and supplies, and it still had a little bit of power. The first thing John had checked was the cloak and it was miraculously still intact. The destroyed area around the jumper was as clear an indication of where they were as any, but at least he could pretend they were a little bit hidden behind the cloak. If all else failed, he could switch the cloak to a shield and hope their power lasted until Atlantis sent help.
He’d left Ronon farther down the hill setting a few final traps and signals. They’d used every last grenade in the jumper, which hadn’t been that many to begin with. If the Wraith came from the direction they both anticipated, they might be able to take a few of them out before-
“Aaaaggh!” John cried out as his foot caught on a rock and he slammed chest first into the ground. A flash of light blazed behind his eyes, whiting out the world around him. He instinctively breathed deeply, but that only made the pain worse.
“Sheppard?”
John banged his fist into the ground. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sit up. A small part of his brain told him he needed to calm down and breathe slowly, but the lack of oxygen was causing black spots to dance across his vision. The pain in his chest squeezed against his lungs, and he felt his stomach roll with nausea.
“John, what’s wrong?”
Ronon was suddenly there, lifting him. John tried to help him, but he could hardly move. His arms and legs felt like dead weights as Ronon rolled him over onto his back. His face hovered over John’s looking panicked.
A trickle of air eked its way past the wall of pain, chasing away the gray haze threatening to pull him under. “Oh, God,” he moaned.
“What happened?”
He moaned again, still pulling in too little oxygen. Air, he needed air. “Breathe,” he whispered. “Can’t…”
The world grew hazy around him, and he was only vaguely aware of Ronon manhandling him to his feet and dragging him through the woods. The next time he was fully coherent again, he found himself sitting on the floor of the jumper and leaning against the bench. An oxygen masked was strapped to his face, the cool stale air blowing relief into his lungs.
He lifted his head and looked around, belatedly spotting Ronon moving around beside him. Ronon stopped what he was doing to peer into John’s face.
“Better?”
John nodded, still not ready to talk. He pulled in as deep a breath as he could, stopping only when his ribs twinged, and reveled in his ability to breathe again.
“You look like crap,” Ronon said, studying him. “Water?”
John frowned. His head felt disconnected from the rest of his body. Breathe. He just wanted to breathe. Ronon held the canteen out, shaking it in front of and John finally nodded, licking his lips. His chest burned, a sharp pounding ache above his heart. He wasn’t sure he could actually swallow the water, not with the way his stomach was churning. He pulled the mask down and sipped at the canteen, swirling the water around in his mouth and then leaning over to spit it out. “Thanks,” he whispered.
Ronon smiled, patting him on the shoulder. “Stay here. I’ve got a few more traps to set.”
“’Kay.”
Ronon was gone before John could say or do anything else. He looked around the jumper, staring at the med kit open next to him, its contents strewn all over the floor. The oxygen mask was still hanging around his neck, and he pulled it off, turning the oxygen flow off. He was okay now. Breathing hurt, but not so badly that he couldn’t do it at all.
The forest outside was eerily quiet and John stared at the trees waiting for Ronon to return. The Wraith were out there. They would have begun pursuing the jumper as soon as they’d flown through the gate. He tried to remember if they had any darts, but he didn’t recall seeing any. They probably would have seen a dart by now anyway. A glance at his watch told him they’d been on this planet for almost two hours. That left another two hours before they were late for their check in with Atlantis. How soon would Woolsey get worried and try to call them? John had been calling in early on the other planets. Would Woolsey assume something was wrong when he didn’t radio in on the same schedule?
He rolled to his knees with a grunt, grabbing onto the bench when pain stabbed through his chest. In two hours, the Wraith on the ground would reach them. They had to be ready. He thought suddenly of the cloaked jumper. They still had power. He wasn’t going to be much help to Ronon in a fight, but if he could bring the scanners up…
He crawled to the front and pulled himself back onto his chair. Hunching over seemed to ease the pain a little bit, and he pressed a hand to his stomach. As long as he didn’t breathe too deeply, he could manage it. With one hand, he tapped at the console in front of him and smiled when the HUD popped up.
“Yes,” he hissed. He tapped the radio in his ear. “Ronon, I’ve got the scanners on the jumper working.”
“Where are the Wraith?” Ronon asked immediately. He sounded slightly out of breath and John wondered where he was. A dot appeared on the map in front of him signaling Ronon’s location. He was almost directly down the hill from their crashed ship, about 300 yards away.
John widened the scan and grimaced at the dozen smaller dots that appeared on the edge of the screen. “On their way,” he said. “I’m reading at least a dozen of them coming toward us from the direction of the gate, about a mile out.”
“I’ll start picking them off,” Ronon said, and John could hear the smile in his voice.
“Be careful.”
He could have told Ronon to come back to the jumper, but Ronon had been fighting the Wraith long before John had known aliens and other worlds even existed. The excitement was clear in his voice too. This is what Ronon had been clamoring to do over the last few months, and he was more likely to disobey John’s orders than to come back to the jumper.
Ronon acted quickly, and John followed his every movement on the HUD. The Wraith clearly knew where the jumper had crashed-at least the general area-and they began fanning out as they hit the bottom of the mountain. Based on their formation, it wouldn’t take long for them to literally stumble into the cloaked ship. Sooner or later, they would find them.
Ronon moved around behind them, and John had to clamp his mouth shut against the urge to whoop in excitement when two of the Wraith dots disappeared almost simultaneously. The other Wraith stopped in their tracks and Ronon’s dot pulled away from them.
It was both exciting and nerve-wracking to watch the battle play out on the HUD. John had no idea what the terrain looked like, or what the Wraith were doing in response to Ronon’s movements. Could they see him? Were they shooting at him? Was Ronon hiding behind thick cover or out in the open? He watched Ronon’s dot swing around behind the Wraith to the other side.
“Yes,” he hissed, when another Wraith dot disappeared. His own pain was nearly forgotten, and he thought that at that moment, he would give almost anything to be out there with his friend.
The Wraith were shifting now, splitting apart as they moved up the hill. Just as John thought they should be reaching the first of the traps he and Ronon had set, he heard a grenade blast echo up through the trees. Two Wraith in the middle of the line faltered, and one of the dots faded to nothing.
“That blast took out one Wraith,” he whispered into his radio. “The other one’s not moving. They’re directly up the mountain from your current position.”
“Got it,” Ronon whispered back.
John watched Ronon’s dot move up the hill, slowing down as it hit what had to be a steeper area. The other Wraith not affected by the grenade continued to move up the hill. So far, none of them were on a direct course toward the jumper, and John focused his attention back on Ronon.
Ronon’s dot was close to the Wraith’s-three maybe four yards away. John could have sworn the Wraith’s dot was fading, but it was still there. He jerked as Ronon’s dot suddenly lunged forward, then winced when the movement pulled at his ribs.
“Dammit,” he muttered, rubbing his chest.
Ronon’s dot and the Wraith’s merged into one as the two tussled, and clearly the Wraith was not as far gone as John had imagined. He kept his gaze riveted on the fight, and almost missed the single dot coming up behind him.
At the sound of a leaf crunching outside the door of the jumper, he froze. He didn’t dare turn around, but he could see the dot on the HUD standing just a few feet from the back ramp. Had it seen him? He didn’t think so. The jumper was still cloaked, so as long as the Wraith kept moving and John kept quiet, it would miss him completely.
Except that it wasn’t moving. It stood frozen in place, and John wondered if it sensed something was wrong. He twisted around slowly in his seat, easing his weapon out of its holster. As he turned, he saw the ground behind the jumper, torn apart by the crash landing.
Stupid, he thought. The churned up ground made a perfect path straight to the jumper. His only chance was if the Wraith somehow believed that the jumper had hit the ground then bounced back up, traveling farther before finally crashing to a stop. It was a long shot, but the Wraith had yet to turn toward the back hatch and come charging at him. He pushed up from the chair and raised his gun.
The Wraith was staring up the mountain, giving John a perfect profile view. It had a stunner weapon raised as it scanned the trees in front of it, tilting its head like a dog. John inched forward, tightening his grip on his gun. He took another step forward, finding the Wraith’s head in his sights.
The sound of glass crunching under his boot sent shards of fear racing through him. He glanced down in surprise, seeing one of their broken beer bottles under foot. By the time he had snapped his head up again toward the Wraith, the creature was spinning around and leveling its weapon toward him. John fired, hearing his own gunshots ring out in the jumper but seeing only the enveloping blast from the stunner rifle sailing toward him.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
He came to abruptly, aware of the forest moving around him. He was being dragged through the trees. He glanced down to see his boots bouncing across grass and rocks, but no amount of willpower could make his legs move.
Or his arms, he realized. He was still numb from the stunner shot, his arms and legs tingling the most. He could just see a blur of gray through the trees. The jumper. He vaguely recalled catching the blast in the chest and falling backward onto the jumper’s console. He let his head drop forward, seeing the thick arm of the Wraith holding him by his vest as it pulled him through the forest.
What the hell? He forced his hands to curl into fists, but he was unable to maintain that for more than a few seconds. The only advantage to being shot with a stunner was that it muted out the pain in his ribs and stomach.
He felt the Wraith jerk him up to his feet, and a second later, it slammed him into a tree, pinning him against the trunk with its feeding hand. The nerves along John’s back ignited from the impact and he groaned. He needed to move, fight back. Something. He managed to twitch his leg, but nothing more. The Wraith pressed harder against his chest, snarling.
I’m dead, he thought. It’s over. The pressure of the Wraith’s hand against his already injured sternum overcame whatever relief he’d felt before from the numbing blast. Fire crackled through his entire body, and the pain constricted around his chest to cut off his air supply.
He heard an animal roar behind him, and the discharge of a familiar weapon. The Wraith screeched in response, but all John could see was the ground rushing up toward him as the creature let go of him. He collapsed on the ground and let his face bury itself in the grass, feeling numbness and pain zap in and out, relief and agony vying for power. Sounds of a fight clattered around him, the distinct thud of flesh against flesh.
Another screaming roar cut through the forest, overriding all other sound. John blinked at the tears streaming from his eyes. The pain was worst at the center of his chest, just the way he remembered the last time he’d been fed upon.
“John!”
He felt hands on his shoulders and back, dreadlocked hair brushing against his cheek as Ronon bent over him. The sky slid across John’s vision as he was rolled onto his back, and he threw his head back in agony at the movement.
“Sorry, buddy, it’s okay. It’s dead.”
He couldn’t breathe again, but he reached up for Ronon’s arm and snagged his sleeve with his fingers. “How…”
“What?” Ronon asked, bending closer.
“How much…”
Ronon frowned, looking panicked. John groaned, writhing in the grass, but forced his attention back on his friend. He had to know.
“How much…did…it take?” he finally wheezed.
Ronon pulled at his vest, unzipping it and running his fingers over John’s chest. John arched his back with a scream, choking against the air that refused to seep into his lungs.
“Nothing,” Ronon cried out. “It didn’t take anything. There’s no blood.”
Spots flashed across John’s vision, and for a second he saw the jumper’s HUD again. The spots turned into Wraith lifesigns, and they crowded against him, merging into a dark shadow at the bottom of his line of sight. He moaned, feeling his body shudder.
“Hold on, buddy,” Ronon begged. A hum of noise sounded above him and John looked up, startled, just as two jumpers uncloaked and began easing through the trees toward the ground.
“Guess I’m not mad at you about telling Woolsey we were leaving,” Ronon said, waving his arm at their rescue. “Kind of liked the idea of just you, me, a jumper and some beer, though.”
“Me too,” John whispered, because finally his lungs had decided to cooperate with him again and breathe in precious oxygen.
Shouts followed seconds later, with Ronon answering and yelling for help. John lay still, and frankly didn’t think he could have moved even if he’d wanted to. He caught a glimpse of Teyla and Rodney before Keller kneeled down in front of him, shouting out orders to whoever else was with her before sliding an oxygen mask over his face.
“Hey, Colonel, we’ll get you out of here in no time.”
John nodded and felt himself being shifted to a stretcher. More conversation drifted around him, and he heard distant gunfire and shouts that more Wraith were coming, but he closed his eyes, content to let his people take care of the situation. When the world beyond his closed eyelids grew dark, he forced himself to open his eyes. Ronon and another Marine were settling his stretcher on a jumper bench, and Keller was kneeling by his side. John flinched at the quick sting of an IV being inserted into his arm.
McKay and Teyla were the last to run into their jumper, and then John felt the rumble of engines as the craft lifted off the ground. McKay set his arms on his hips, staring down at John with the expression of a parent who’d caught his errant child only seconds before he ran into oncoming traffic.
“I guess this means your report to Woolsey regarding the status of the Wraith in the Pegasus Galaxy will say something along the lines of ‘Still here, not good’?”
John smiled under the mask, the influx of oxygen dampening the fiery pain flooding through him. That and whatever Keller had just injected into his IV. He gave McKay a thumbs up, smiling wider at the scientist’s eye roll.
“That was fun,” Ronon said, clapping him on the shoulder. “We should do it again.”
The jumper was wavering in and out of focus, and exhaustion pulled at him. “Anytime, big guy. Anytime,” he slurred. He felt himself sliding into a drug-induced stupor and he fell into the peaceful, painless darkness as the jumper sped through the air toward home, hoping that anytime didn’t actually mean sometime soon.
END
Title: A Puddle Jumper, a Wraith, and a Case of Beer
Word count: ~4,300
Warnings: Some language, post-season 5, set after "Enemy at the Gate"
Summary: John and Ronon, a jumper, some beer, some Wraith, trouble...
Huge thanks to my beta, everybetty! Oh, and this little story is also doing double duty on my H/C Bingo card, fulfilling the "Stranded/survival scenario" square.
Here's the first of three stories written for Help_Pakistan, won by bria67. The Prompt I was given was as follows:
A couple of weeks ago on Twitter Joe was asked how he'd rewrite the ending of SGA and he answered that Ronon and John would steal a puddle jumper and set up a new series: Wraith Hunter. I know he was joking but I actually really like this idea, I can imagine the IOA not letting them take Atlantis back to the Pegasus Galaxy and I can see John and Ronon stealing a puddle jumper to go back and continue the war against the wraith. I would really like to read a story about this, when they are back to the Pegasus Galaxy and how their lives would be... I've always liked the friendship between Ronon and John. So, if you could write a John-Ronon friendship story, placed in that time, with some John whump, it'd be awesome.
I couldn’t quite figure out how John and Ronon would get a jumper to Pegasus since the only gate to Pegasus from Earth is through Atlantis (which was in San Francisco, last we saw). Either Atlantis had to be back in Pegasus, or the Daedalus took them… This is what my muse came up with…
What could go wrong?
Five years in Pegasus, and John should have known never to ask that question. It had started innocently enough. After months on Earth and then weeks flying Atlantis back to Pegasus, John had happened to be looking at Ronon when Woolsey announced that all offworld missions were going to be put off indefinitely until everyone, and the city, settled back into a normal routine. Ronon’s patience had visibly snapped like a rubber band stretched too thin, his complexion going pale and his eyes bugging out of his head.
And so a plan had hatched. John and Ronon would “escape” in a jumper for a few days to chase after some Wraith, or as John had put it to Woolsey the night he’d sought the expedition leader out and talked him into the whole thing, they would “gather a little intel before Ronon ran off half-cocked.” The plan had been to pop in on a few different worlds and check things out. John had loaded the back of the jumper with a few cases of beer, enough to keep Ronon occupied and drinking while he sent furtive messages back to Atlantis of where they were, where they were heading, and that they were safe.
“Oh, shit!” John screamed as they popped through the wormhole onto Planet Number Four and found an entire contingent of Wraith standing around the gate. He cloaked immediately but not before several of the Wraith began firing at them. The jumper shuddered, tilting wildly to the side.
“Sheppard!”
“I got it!” John’s hands tightened around the controls, his knuckles going white. The craft jerked under his grasp, and he yanked the controls back, forcing the jumper up and over the trees. Gradually, they straightened out, but alarms blared in the small cockpit as more blasts from the Wraith weapons rocked against the hull.
John’s thoughts immediately went to the amount of damage they had suffered, and the HUD in front of him popped up. Data streamed past him, as fast as the canopy of trees rushing beneath the careening vehicle. His fingers were going numb, but he didn’t dare loosen his grip.
“Lost the left engine, cloak is down…wait, it’s back up,” he gasped, trying to both read the screen and fly level. “Losing power fast. Don’t know how much longer I can keep her in the air.”
“Over there,” Ronon said, leaning forward and pointing through the HUD.
John saw the spot, a small stretch of grass and stones halfway up a mountain. It was the only visible area not covered in thick forest. He veered the ship toward it, feeling it tremble beneath him. “Come on, just a little bit farther,” he coaxed. The jumper dipped, and a panel behind his head exploded in a shower of sparks, but the cloak held.
The power levels dipped suddenly, and it was all John could do to keep the jumper in the air. Another flashing alarm wailed in response and he winced at the sound. A few more seconds. They just needed a few more seconds and he might be able to set the jumper down relatively gently. “Brace yourself,” he called out as it jerked and shuddered again, then started to roll.
The lights flickered, and for a moment, the inertial dampeners blinked out. John felt the jumper’s back end sliding out behind him like a truck on icy roads. The trees were getting closer, and he could see individual branches as the forest flashed by. The small stretch clear of trees was still too far away.
Just a few more seconds, a few more seconds, a few more…
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
“Sheppard? Buddy?”
John heard Ronon’s voice, but it was far away, muffled under a buzzing, ringing drone in his ears. A warm hand on his shoulder tightened its grip, and John groaned.
“John, wake up.”
Wake up? Where the hell were they? He became suddenly aware of the buttons on the jumper’s front console pressing against his face and digging into his cheek, his arms hanging at his sides, the control sticks wedged against his chest. He blinked open his eyes to see a blur of colors beneath him, lights flashing and dancing across the control panel.
“Sheppard,” Ronon said again, and this time he shook John’s arm.
Pain lanced through his chest at the movement, and he cried out, squeezing his eyes shut and attempting to curl around the agony. He lifted both arms and managed to flop one of them onto the console, but his coordination was completely skewed.
“Sorry.”
“Help…up…” he muttered. He grit his teeth when the throbbing in the center of his chest intensified, but a second later he felt hands under his arms easing him back in the chair.
“You okay?”
“Shit,” he breathed out. He brought a hand up to rub his sternum, glancing down to make sure he hadn’t actually impaled himself on anything. There was no blood, and sitting upright and not with all of his weight against the jumper controls was slightly more comfortable.
“I checked the perimeter,” Ronon said, sitting down in the seat next to him. “It will take a while for the Wraith to reach us, but one of the engine pods was sheered off in the landing. Don’t think this one will fly again.”
“We make the clearing?” John asked. The buzzing in his head was finally quieting down and he sucked in a careful breath, testing how far he could push his ribs.
“Not quite, but close. We’re up the mountain a ways but still in the trees. That should give us a little bit of cover.”
John nodded, rubbing his chest again. The pain was centered on his left side, but near the sternum, and each breath felt like a twisting knife. Cracked ribs at least, maybe broken. Possibly a cracked sternum as well. He didn’t know if that was even possible, and frankly, didn’t really want to find out. Not like this. His head was clearing, though-aching a little but nothing like what it should feel like if he had a concussion.
Small miracle there, he thought, looking at the smashed controls on the console.
“We should either set up some defenses and get ready to dig in, or take our chances up the mountain, away from the crash site,” Ronon said, studying him. It would be John’s call, not only because he was the team leader but because he was the most injured, and what they did would be directly dependent on his physical condition and abilities.
John nodded then braced himself against the chair as he pushed himself up straight. The pain in his chest amplified, but it was not unbearable.
“We stay with the jumper, wait for Atlantis to come for us,” he said after a moment.
Ronon’s eyes narrowed. “How does Atlantis know where we are?”
“You didn’t think we could just slip out of the city with a jumper without anyone even trying to stop us, did you? I cleared it with Woolsey. Gave him a list of planets we’d be checking out.” John shifted in the chair and hissed in pain. “When we don’t check in on time, they’ll try to contact us and we can beg for rescue then.”
“You’ve been in contact with them the whole time?” Ronon leaned back, his arms folded.
“Every time you went back to grab a beer,” John answered.
Ronon turned toward the back of the jumper. “It’s smashed. Didn’t survive the crash.”
“The beer?”
“Yep.”
“That explains why it smells like a bar in here. You okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said with a shrug. “I’m better at crashing than you.”
John grunted then winced at the throb that elicited from his cracked and/or broken ribs. “No argument there,” he muttered. “Help me up. We’ve got work to do.”
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
John climbed up the mountain toward the jumper, using the rocks to pull himself along. The pain in chest had abated at first, but after the constant exertion of the last hour and a half, it was back, pounding fiercely against every movement. An ache in his stomach had started as a slow burn, but cramps were now lancing through his gut and he didn’t want to think about what that might mean. They had crashed high up on the mountain as well, and the air felt thinner with every breath he sucked in.
At least that’s what he kept telling himself. It was the altitude. He knew now that there was no way he could have made it very far if they’d tried to make a run for it on foot. The jumper offered protection and supplies, and it still had a little bit of power. The first thing John had checked was the cloak and it was miraculously still intact. The destroyed area around the jumper was as clear an indication of where they were as any, but at least he could pretend they were a little bit hidden behind the cloak. If all else failed, he could switch the cloak to a shield and hope their power lasted until Atlantis sent help.
He’d left Ronon farther down the hill setting a few final traps and signals. They’d used every last grenade in the jumper, which hadn’t been that many to begin with. If the Wraith came from the direction they both anticipated, they might be able to take a few of them out before-
“Aaaaggh!” John cried out as his foot caught on a rock and he slammed chest first into the ground. A flash of light blazed behind his eyes, whiting out the world around him. He instinctively breathed deeply, but that only made the pain worse.
“Sheppard?”
John banged his fist into the ground. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sit up. A small part of his brain told him he needed to calm down and breathe slowly, but the lack of oxygen was causing black spots to dance across his vision. The pain in his chest squeezed against his lungs, and he felt his stomach roll with nausea.
“John, what’s wrong?”
Ronon was suddenly there, lifting him. John tried to help him, but he could hardly move. His arms and legs felt like dead weights as Ronon rolled him over onto his back. His face hovered over John’s looking panicked.
A trickle of air eked its way past the wall of pain, chasing away the gray haze threatening to pull him under. “Oh, God,” he moaned.
“What happened?”
He moaned again, still pulling in too little oxygen. Air, he needed air. “Breathe,” he whispered. “Can’t…”
The world grew hazy around him, and he was only vaguely aware of Ronon manhandling him to his feet and dragging him through the woods. The next time he was fully coherent again, he found himself sitting on the floor of the jumper and leaning against the bench. An oxygen masked was strapped to his face, the cool stale air blowing relief into his lungs.
He lifted his head and looked around, belatedly spotting Ronon moving around beside him. Ronon stopped what he was doing to peer into John’s face.
“Better?”
John nodded, still not ready to talk. He pulled in as deep a breath as he could, stopping only when his ribs twinged, and reveled in his ability to breathe again.
“You look like crap,” Ronon said, studying him. “Water?”
John frowned. His head felt disconnected from the rest of his body. Breathe. He just wanted to breathe. Ronon held the canteen out, shaking it in front of and John finally nodded, licking his lips. His chest burned, a sharp pounding ache above his heart. He wasn’t sure he could actually swallow the water, not with the way his stomach was churning. He pulled the mask down and sipped at the canteen, swirling the water around in his mouth and then leaning over to spit it out. “Thanks,” he whispered.
Ronon smiled, patting him on the shoulder. “Stay here. I’ve got a few more traps to set.”
“’Kay.”
Ronon was gone before John could say or do anything else. He looked around the jumper, staring at the med kit open next to him, its contents strewn all over the floor. The oxygen mask was still hanging around his neck, and he pulled it off, turning the oxygen flow off. He was okay now. Breathing hurt, but not so badly that he couldn’t do it at all.
The forest outside was eerily quiet and John stared at the trees waiting for Ronon to return. The Wraith were out there. They would have begun pursuing the jumper as soon as they’d flown through the gate. He tried to remember if they had any darts, but he didn’t recall seeing any. They probably would have seen a dart by now anyway. A glance at his watch told him they’d been on this planet for almost two hours. That left another two hours before they were late for their check in with Atlantis. How soon would Woolsey get worried and try to call them? John had been calling in early on the other planets. Would Woolsey assume something was wrong when he didn’t radio in on the same schedule?
He rolled to his knees with a grunt, grabbing onto the bench when pain stabbed through his chest. In two hours, the Wraith on the ground would reach them. They had to be ready. He thought suddenly of the cloaked jumper. They still had power. He wasn’t going to be much help to Ronon in a fight, but if he could bring the scanners up…
He crawled to the front and pulled himself back onto his chair. Hunching over seemed to ease the pain a little bit, and he pressed a hand to his stomach. As long as he didn’t breathe too deeply, he could manage it. With one hand, he tapped at the console in front of him and smiled when the HUD popped up.
“Yes,” he hissed. He tapped the radio in his ear. “Ronon, I’ve got the scanners on the jumper working.”
“Where are the Wraith?” Ronon asked immediately. He sounded slightly out of breath and John wondered where he was. A dot appeared on the map in front of him signaling Ronon’s location. He was almost directly down the hill from their crashed ship, about 300 yards away.
John widened the scan and grimaced at the dozen smaller dots that appeared on the edge of the screen. “On their way,” he said. “I’m reading at least a dozen of them coming toward us from the direction of the gate, about a mile out.”
“I’ll start picking them off,” Ronon said, and John could hear the smile in his voice.
“Be careful.”
He could have told Ronon to come back to the jumper, but Ronon had been fighting the Wraith long before John had known aliens and other worlds even existed. The excitement was clear in his voice too. This is what Ronon had been clamoring to do over the last few months, and he was more likely to disobey John’s orders than to come back to the jumper.
Ronon acted quickly, and John followed his every movement on the HUD. The Wraith clearly knew where the jumper had crashed-at least the general area-and they began fanning out as they hit the bottom of the mountain. Based on their formation, it wouldn’t take long for them to literally stumble into the cloaked ship. Sooner or later, they would find them.
Ronon moved around behind them, and John had to clamp his mouth shut against the urge to whoop in excitement when two of the Wraith dots disappeared almost simultaneously. The other Wraith stopped in their tracks and Ronon’s dot pulled away from them.
It was both exciting and nerve-wracking to watch the battle play out on the HUD. John had no idea what the terrain looked like, or what the Wraith were doing in response to Ronon’s movements. Could they see him? Were they shooting at him? Was Ronon hiding behind thick cover or out in the open? He watched Ronon’s dot swing around behind the Wraith to the other side.
“Yes,” he hissed, when another Wraith dot disappeared. His own pain was nearly forgotten, and he thought that at that moment, he would give almost anything to be out there with his friend.
The Wraith were shifting now, splitting apart as they moved up the hill. Just as John thought they should be reaching the first of the traps he and Ronon had set, he heard a grenade blast echo up through the trees. Two Wraith in the middle of the line faltered, and one of the dots faded to nothing.
“That blast took out one Wraith,” he whispered into his radio. “The other one’s not moving. They’re directly up the mountain from your current position.”
“Got it,” Ronon whispered back.
John watched Ronon’s dot move up the hill, slowing down as it hit what had to be a steeper area. The other Wraith not affected by the grenade continued to move up the hill. So far, none of them were on a direct course toward the jumper, and John focused his attention back on Ronon.
Ronon’s dot was close to the Wraith’s-three maybe four yards away. John could have sworn the Wraith’s dot was fading, but it was still there. He jerked as Ronon’s dot suddenly lunged forward, then winced when the movement pulled at his ribs.
“Dammit,” he muttered, rubbing his chest.
Ronon’s dot and the Wraith’s merged into one as the two tussled, and clearly the Wraith was not as far gone as John had imagined. He kept his gaze riveted on the fight, and almost missed the single dot coming up behind him.
At the sound of a leaf crunching outside the door of the jumper, he froze. He didn’t dare turn around, but he could see the dot on the HUD standing just a few feet from the back ramp. Had it seen him? He didn’t think so. The jumper was still cloaked, so as long as the Wraith kept moving and John kept quiet, it would miss him completely.
Except that it wasn’t moving. It stood frozen in place, and John wondered if it sensed something was wrong. He twisted around slowly in his seat, easing his weapon out of its holster. As he turned, he saw the ground behind the jumper, torn apart by the crash landing.
Stupid, he thought. The churned up ground made a perfect path straight to the jumper. His only chance was if the Wraith somehow believed that the jumper had hit the ground then bounced back up, traveling farther before finally crashing to a stop. It was a long shot, but the Wraith had yet to turn toward the back hatch and come charging at him. He pushed up from the chair and raised his gun.
The Wraith was staring up the mountain, giving John a perfect profile view. It had a stunner weapon raised as it scanned the trees in front of it, tilting its head like a dog. John inched forward, tightening his grip on his gun. He took another step forward, finding the Wraith’s head in his sights.
The sound of glass crunching under his boot sent shards of fear racing through him. He glanced down in surprise, seeing one of their broken beer bottles under foot. By the time he had snapped his head up again toward the Wraith, the creature was spinning around and leveling its weapon toward him. John fired, hearing his own gunshots ring out in the jumper but seeing only the enveloping blast from the stunner rifle sailing toward him.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
He came to abruptly, aware of the forest moving around him. He was being dragged through the trees. He glanced down to see his boots bouncing across grass and rocks, but no amount of willpower could make his legs move.
Or his arms, he realized. He was still numb from the stunner shot, his arms and legs tingling the most. He could just see a blur of gray through the trees. The jumper. He vaguely recalled catching the blast in the chest and falling backward onto the jumper’s console. He let his head drop forward, seeing the thick arm of the Wraith holding him by his vest as it pulled him through the forest.
What the hell? He forced his hands to curl into fists, but he was unable to maintain that for more than a few seconds. The only advantage to being shot with a stunner was that it muted out the pain in his ribs and stomach.
He felt the Wraith jerk him up to his feet, and a second later, it slammed him into a tree, pinning him against the trunk with its feeding hand. The nerves along John’s back ignited from the impact and he groaned. He needed to move, fight back. Something. He managed to twitch his leg, but nothing more. The Wraith pressed harder against his chest, snarling.
I’m dead, he thought. It’s over. The pressure of the Wraith’s hand against his already injured sternum overcame whatever relief he’d felt before from the numbing blast. Fire crackled through his entire body, and the pain constricted around his chest to cut off his air supply.
He heard an animal roar behind him, and the discharge of a familiar weapon. The Wraith screeched in response, but all John could see was the ground rushing up toward him as the creature let go of him. He collapsed on the ground and let his face bury itself in the grass, feeling numbness and pain zap in and out, relief and agony vying for power. Sounds of a fight clattered around him, the distinct thud of flesh against flesh.
Another screaming roar cut through the forest, overriding all other sound. John blinked at the tears streaming from his eyes. The pain was worst at the center of his chest, just the way he remembered the last time he’d been fed upon.
“John!”
He felt hands on his shoulders and back, dreadlocked hair brushing against his cheek as Ronon bent over him. The sky slid across John’s vision as he was rolled onto his back, and he threw his head back in agony at the movement.
“Sorry, buddy, it’s okay. It’s dead.”
He couldn’t breathe again, but he reached up for Ronon’s arm and snagged his sleeve with his fingers. “How…”
“What?” Ronon asked, bending closer.
“How much…”
Ronon frowned, looking panicked. John groaned, writhing in the grass, but forced his attention back on his friend. He had to know.
“How much…did…it take?” he finally wheezed.
Ronon pulled at his vest, unzipping it and running his fingers over John’s chest. John arched his back with a scream, choking against the air that refused to seep into his lungs.
“Nothing,” Ronon cried out. “It didn’t take anything. There’s no blood.”
Spots flashed across John’s vision, and for a second he saw the jumper’s HUD again. The spots turned into Wraith lifesigns, and they crowded against him, merging into a dark shadow at the bottom of his line of sight. He moaned, feeling his body shudder.
“Hold on, buddy,” Ronon begged. A hum of noise sounded above him and John looked up, startled, just as two jumpers uncloaked and began easing through the trees toward the ground.
“Guess I’m not mad at you about telling Woolsey we were leaving,” Ronon said, waving his arm at their rescue. “Kind of liked the idea of just you, me, a jumper and some beer, though.”
“Me too,” John whispered, because finally his lungs had decided to cooperate with him again and breathe in precious oxygen.
Shouts followed seconds later, with Ronon answering and yelling for help. John lay still, and frankly didn’t think he could have moved even if he’d wanted to. He caught a glimpse of Teyla and Rodney before Keller kneeled down in front of him, shouting out orders to whoever else was with her before sliding an oxygen mask over his face.
“Hey, Colonel, we’ll get you out of here in no time.”
John nodded and felt himself being shifted to a stretcher. More conversation drifted around him, and he heard distant gunfire and shouts that more Wraith were coming, but he closed his eyes, content to let his people take care of the situation. When the world beyond his closed eyelids grew dark, he forced himself to open his eyes. Ronon and another Marine were settling his stretcher on a jumper bench, and Keller was kneeling by his side. John flinched at the quick sting of an IV being inserted into his arm.
McKay and Teyla were the last to run into their jumper, and then John felt the rumble of engines as the craft lifted off the ground. McKay set his arms on his hips, staring down at John with the expression of a parent who’d caught his errant child only seconds before he ran into oncoming traffic.
“I guess this means your report to Woolsey regarding the status of the Wraith in the Pegasus Galaxy will say something along the lines of ‘Still here, not good’?”
John smiled under the mask, the influx of oxygen dampening the fiery pain flooding through him. That and whatever Keller had just injected into his IV. He gave McKay a thumbs up, smiling wider at the scientist’s eye roll.
“That was fun,” Ronon said, clapping him on the shoulder. “We should do it again.”
The jumper was wavering in and out of focus, and exhaustion pulled at him. “Anytime, big guy. Anytime,” he slurred. He felt himself sliding into a drug-induced stupor and he fell into the peaceful, painless darkness as the jumper sped through the air toward home, hoping that anytime didn’t actually mean sometime soon.
END