FanFic100: #069 Thunder
“Mh. I really thought it would be bigger.” Oh… that is a new voice. Or at least it’s not yet in her data storage so she activates a few more sensors to get its full scope.
“Wha… Lieutenant!” Yes, her sensors have registered that voice before. It’s one of the new Gifted Ones, as they had called the descendants of their creators when they had first come to the city and woken them from their thousands of years of sleep, only later learning that they call themselves “humans”. Her sensors had registered him before although never so close. Since the first time she did… she’d been secretly plotting the probability that he would chose her as his first ever jumper.
However, the other voice - it’s a female one, as her vocal analyzing routines have told her - simply answers, sounding… amused… that’s what her sensors recognized, “No idea what you thought but I meant the ship.”
“Yeah, Major, dirty little mind you’ve got there.” Oh, and she knows this voice. It’s the one they call Sheppard. Does this mean… she does a few calculations and feels satisfied that the chances that the new one will take her have increased tenfold.
The reason for this is very simple. She knows that Sheppard is somehow in charge of some of the Gifted and the other humans and that he is making all the Gifted fly - even those that aren’t as talented as Sheppard. For example the one with the funny accent that is sometimes even too much for her speech processors and whom they call Carson. The humans decided to call them “puddle jumpers” and even though they have a different name for themselves - positively unpronounceable for a human, Gifted or not - they simply started to adopt it.
“I do not have a ‘dirty little mind’, sir.” The voices are coming closer and her passive sensors finally pick up their bio signatures. They confirm what the audio sensors told her: Three humans, two male, one female - the males are both Gifted, the female is not, and one of the males is Sheppard.
“Yeah, right, whatever. Now, do you want to get it over with or not?” Get it over with what? Could it be that… Oh, she’s a little surprised that her calculations were that good because the one called Sheppard just opened her bay door and enters the cockpit, followed by the male Sheppard called Major and the female that was called Lieutenant - and now that she can pick up visuals, she uses Atlantis’ databases to confirm her own identifications… yes, the two are Major Evan Lorne and Lieutenant Laura Cadman, both among those Sheppard is responsible for.
The males take places in the two front seats and the female behind the one called Lorne. Then Sheppard puts his hands on the controls and she feels the immediate link between him and her KI and can’t wait to fulfill his command to shut the bay door and ascend the tower towards the sky of Lantea.
One of the humans - they call him McKay - likes to treat them like machines, tell them they aren’t more than the sum of their mechanical parts… but she knows better because despite everything he thinks… she does have those things the humans call “feelings” and right now giddy anticipation at what is hopefully to come is the predominant one. She always likes to get to know to new Gifted Ones and according to the data bases Lorne is almost as Gifted as Sheppard.
Ah, but how she likes being flown by Sheppard. His steady self-assurance and trust in himself - and her - make it easy for her to be a compliant good little jumper, as McKay likes to call them when they ‘behave themselves’. Then they are out of the jumper bay, flying away from the city and the more Atlantis and its influence over her get out of focus, the freer she is to analyze the two new passengers… only she has to be careful or Sheppard will notice that she’s just a little distracted.
There is Lorne, of course, but she did some evaluation on him before… so she concentrates on Lieutenant Cadman, who is sitting behind him. According to the data base, she’s beneath him in the hierarchy but she doesn’t look inferior - in fact, after piecing together the information on both her and Lorne and running them through comparison algorithms she comes to the conclusion that they are equals who balance out each other’s weaknesses with their respective strengths, even if Cadman is missing the Gift. She, for her part, still seems to be what humans like to call amused but takes a lot of care to conceal it as well as she can.
“Well then, Major… your turn.” Sheppard takes his hands away from the controls and part of his professional calm leaves her. Every time he does this… it makes her a little sad.
However, this time… she doesn’t even have time to get used to this special form of loneliness because now suddenly Lorne puts his hands on the controls. Her audio sensors only register Cadman muttering, “Yeah, go Cardinal, sir!” and then… boom. Something hits her with the force of the kind of thunder only Lantean thunderstorms can generate. Before she knows what she’s doing she’s… shaking because of the intensity of a Gift almost as strong as Sheppard’s and intimidation and annoyance hitting her.
She really doesn’t want it but the shaking is still bad enough that her passengers nearly tumbled from their seats and she can hear the three of them cursing under their breaths. Well, more or less. The first one to say something more than just bits of foul language is Sheppard, “Geez, Major, what the hell did you do?”
“Yeah, I’d like to know that as well,” comes from Cadman who is furtively rubbing the knee that got hit during the shaking. Out of habit she does a quick scan and detects a rapidly forming bruise but the way Cadman tries to conceal the injury she knows hurts a lot from other humans tells her that it probably wouldn’t be a wise move to tell the humans. Also… McKay would probably think she’s malfunctioning again and start to dig around in her circuits and she hates it when someone does that.
“Hey, I didn’t do anything. It was all the damn jumper’s fault.” What? It was not! Or at least not intentionally. All that happened was that she had been overwhelmed by the sheer force of dislike he had communicated with every little piece of his mind. Usually, it’s not a problem for her when Gifted Ones have problems with adapting to her at first because they don’t have the means to communicate it so strongly. But this one… he has a natural ability to communicate with her, just like Sheppard, only he doesn’t want it and therefore can’t control it.
She wants to tell him that but she gets unexpected help… from Cadman. “Yeah, sure, sir. It’s the ship’s fault.” Luckily, she has already learned about the notion they call “sarcasm” from other jumpers who had to endure much more of McKay than her and additionally Cadman really doesn’t look like she believes Lorne’s protests. And Cadman does another thing that makes her like this human even though she isn't Gifted. She smirks and adds, “You know what I think, sir? She didn’t like your attitude.”
“Watch it, Cadman,” Lorne growls but… she’s surprised to detect something other than the malice he wants to project with his voice in the undertones and in his bearing. He isn't really furious at Cadman. Instead… he likes the clearly irreverent tone. The signs are very, very subtle… too subtle for the unbelievably blind human eye and deaf human ear to pick them up but to her the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth and the underlying laughter in his voice are clear.
“No, actually… I think Cadman’s right, Major.” Ah, Sheppard. A while ago she had overheard one of the very few female Gifted telling a male non Gifted that he was her “knight in shining armor” in jest when he had helped her carry something heavy into her passenger compartment and because all these strange human expressions have caught her interest, she had asked - well, rather cajoled and begged - Atlantis to go and look it up in the vast treasures of data the humans brought with them to their new home. Today she probably found her own knight in shining armor.
Cadman for her part obviously likes the comment as well because the expression on her face is very similar to the one McKay wears when he admonishes one of his subordinates with “I told you so.” Similar to those subordinates, Lorne doesn’t look happy and not very much inclined to try it another time and she isn't even sure if that isn't a good thing. “I saw that, Cadman.”
“What, sir?” This time, Cadman tries to appear harmless but then she smothers something with her hand, her shoulders are shaking almost invisibly… the corners of her mouth are tugging upwards relentlessly…
“Are you laughing, Lieutenant?” Lorne is trying to look stern and to everyone else he’s probably doing a good job… but she did register the slight rise of body temperature in the area of his cheeks and the almost undetectable acceleration of his heart beat at seeing Cadman barely being able to contain the laughter. She compares this to the data she has on the human physique and it doesn’t quite correspond with the results she would get from him if he was really furious at Cadman. Oh. This is starting to become interesting.
The Lieutenant clears her throat and then tries to school her features back to serious. “No, sir. There’s no reason to laugh… right?”
“Okay, soldiers, that’s really enough pigtail pulling for today. Let’s get this orientation flight over with, right?” Despite his efforts to call his subordinates to order, Sheppard doesn’t appear to be minding their antics very much. And he just gave her a new expression to ponder.
Lorne, however, still isn't inclined to get back to the controls and turns back to Sheppard, with something of an… evil grin? Would that be the right expression? Well, with something like that on his face, anyway. “Sure, sir… but not until the Lieutenant here tells me what’s so funny about the jumper ‘not liking my attitude’, as she so nicely put it.”
Now Cadman rolls her eyes but complies when Sheppard raises his eyebrows at her and says nonchalantly, “Isn’t it obvious? This girl is actually able to withstand a flyboy’s charm… and she told you very clearly what she thought of your attitude.” Cadman had clearly tried to say it matter-of-factly but… recently she had found an entry on “flirting” while browsing through the human’s databases in a short moment where Atlantis’ attention had been elsewhere, and Cadman has just displayed astonishingly many little signs. Looking Lorne in the eyes, a little smile, her tongue very, very quickly darting out of her mouth to touch her lips…
To this, Lorne only gives her another of those evil grins - which does generate an amazing reaction from Cadman because her bio signs reader tells her that now the Lieutenant’s cheeks are warming up to a considerable degree and her blood pressure is increasing for as long as he looks at her - and growls, “I’ll give you ‘able to withstand a flyboy’s charm’, Lieutenant.” What…
Before he can put his hands on the controls again, it’s Sheppard’s turn to speak up again, although it’s in a strangely suppressed tone… as if Sheppard also has difficulties holding his laughter back. “Just be gentle with her, huh.”
Then the hands are on her controls again and for a short moment she feels the thunder again… but it only lasts a small moment… then it’s substituted by a reluctant opening of Lorne’s mind. She wonders what could have caused this and goes through the sensor data of the last few seconds. When she finds the exact moment the thunder stopped, she sees Cadman putting a hand on Lorne’s backrest and accidentally brushing his shoulder. That is most interesting and she silently thanks both Lorne and Cadman for giving her this interesting insight into human behavior.
After that little episode… being flown by Lorne starts to become much nicer than his first try had suggested. Sure there’s still this wariness in the back of his mind, a little like an ever present distant thunder… but the longer his hands are on the controls, the more confident he starts to feel and the better he can control his ability to communicate with her… naturally and almost without her having to guide him.
It takes another few moments for Lorne to become self-assured enough to trust himself with flying her and speaking at the same time but then he quips, “By the way, sir… be gentle with whom?”
A sound that the humans call a snort escapes Cadman but Sheppard manages to keep his face straight when he answers, “I have no idea what you had in mind, Major, but I meant the ship. And you do have a dirty little mind.” At this, the laughter Cadman could contain until now finally breaks through and rings through the cabin. Lorne’s reaction it… it doesn’t hit her like his disapproval but it’s still… prominent enough that she is astounded by it. It doesn’t only cause all the little signs she’d registered before but it also elevates his mood enough that the thunder of dislike is pushed in the background by the gentle and warm pitter-patter of joy.
For a moment she wishes… she wishes Cadman was Gifted as well so she could make her see what her laughter - now bubbling in short little gasps rather than the first eruption - does to Lorne so she could maybe explain to her what this whole exchange between Sheppard and Lorne was actually about since she has the feeling that it wouldn’t be such a good idea to make Sheppard see Lorne’s reaction to something Cadman did.
And now… not even Lorne can hold back his pleasure anymore, only manages to contain it into little half-smiles while saying, “Just you wait until we get back to the city, Cadman, and into the work-out room.”
For some reason that only makes her laugh harder… even wiping some tears from her eyes and between gasps she manages to say, “I take it you won’t be gentle then?” This is also Sheppard’s undoing and although her previous data base studying doesn’t give her any clue as to what this and all the following quips and barbs could be about, she’s still glad about it because it makes being flown by Lorne almost as pleasant as being flown by Sheppard.
And so she decides to take it for granted for now and wait with pondering it until she’s back in Atlantis although she has the feeling that the city won’t be very forthcoming with helping her research for this exchange… and hope that Cadman will accompany Lorne whenever he decides to take her as his jumper. The Lieutenant really seems to be the clue for Lorne opening up to her so easily and she really likes it when he does that.
~*~
TBC in Still Remember Which Way to Go.