TEAM WAR: Knock on Wood, "Rise Above the Rest"
Title: Rise Above the Rest
Author: soleta
Team: War
Prompt: Knock on Wood
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard preslash
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Summary: When they lost Atlantis, he'd never thought they'd pay so dearly.
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
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**
John looked up from his desk-crate when the footsteps drew near, but when he saw it was only Rodney he put his head back down. "Tell me you're not the messenger," he said to his desk. He was too fucking tired.
"No," Rodney said, dropping into a cramped bastardization of a yoga pose across from John. He looked like John felt, which was only fair. He'd been driving himself harder than anyone, and he looked like he hadn't eaten in days. John sighed and sat up. Looking at Rodney, all he really wanted to do was feed him a sandwich, or three. And make sure he slept. And…
He carefully put that thought away in a safe place, with all the others. It was something to look at, later.
"So, what?" John waved his hand to get Rodney's attention, and reminded himself to cut off Rodney's caffeine supply until he got at least a shift's worth of sleep.
"I can give you twenty percent thrust," Rodney said, snapping back to reality. "Anything more will crack the casing."
"Shit."
Rodney grinned wearily. "I could build a working hyperdrive that burns human waste in about, oh, six years."
John made a face. "Thanks for that visual."
Just then, the intercom flared to life, scratchy from loose connections. More than half the message made it through, and that meant it was a low priority for the repair team, which was a really stupid way of referring to Rodney and Habika.
"Sheppard to the brid… - … rd to the bridge-"
John rolled his eyes and hit the intercom with the side of his fist. "What have I told you about watching too much Star Trek? Talk to me."
"It's them, they're he -"
John didn't wait for the repeat; he was already up and through the door, Rodney half a step behind him as they raced for the bridge. How the fuck did they find us? They'd done everything in their power to be invisible, nothing but ghosts floating through the Pegasus galaxy. Unless - but John refused to even consider that, since it was impossible.
The bridge was two decks up, buried amidships to protect the precious control computers from stray fire; unlike the Daedalus, whose bridge, senior officers, and main computers had been separated from space and explosive decompression by no more than a quarter of an inch of riveted space-age plastic. He was pretty sure he'd seen Caldwell's body hurled out of those windows.
"Make a fucking hole!" John shouted over the heads of what had to be the entire off-duty crew when he got to the tiny bridge corridor, mentally cursing each and every one of them as he had to squeeze through to the door. He spared one brief glance behind him, but Rodney had already picked up the slack; he was in good voice, and browbeat each and every one of them impartially until they melted away one by one, hopefully back to their bunks. None of them were getting enough sleep as it was.
John ducked his head to avoid hitting the top of the bridge door, which was literally the size of his closet back on Atlantis, and made his way to the helm, which was actually Chuck at a laptop. Lorne was there, and he nodded tightly as John joined them.
"There's no way to tell how many ships they have this time," Lorne said, glancing at the cobbled-together screens they were using as a viewscreen. "But they're out there." They had the screen set to the forward cameras, and the spectacular view of Lothran Alpha and its secondary moon was twisted, riddled with miniature black holes that moved - Rodney had nearly had a heart attack the first time he'd seen their ships, and even now he was furiously trying to reverse-engineer their technology using the few pictures they'd managed to get and the not inconsiderable power of his brain.
"What have they done since they jumped in?" John asked.
"They've cut us off from the 'gate, for one," Lorne said grimly. "That was the first thing they did, before we even got the engines up." Dao, the helmsman, twitched apologetically and Lorne absently thumped him once on the shoulder while he continued. "Then they spread out and started covering our exit lanes."
John looked over the schematic of the solar system that was Dao's main interface with the ship as helmsman. A scattering of red dots were their best guess about the alien's positions - somehow the ships didn't show up on their scanners, and the only way they could track the ships was visually. The aliens liked to play shell games, too, so they were never still. They slipped behind each other, beside and around and under until anyone who watched was nauseous.
John looked over at Hua, monitoring communications. "Any word from Lothran?"
"No, sir," she said, keeping her eyes on the station. Hua had a deep and lingering superstition that the thing she was waiting for always happened whenever she turned her back, which John approved of and encouraged with an eye towards efficiency; if sometimes he had to order her to get off the bridge and get some sleep, well, she wasn't the only one.
When they lost Atlantis, he'd never thought they'd pay so dearly.
"We need a new exit," John said, and Lorne nodded. They'd been caught more than once, and each time John had found a hole, a way out of the trap, but every time the aliens seemed to learn more about the capabilities of the ship and those who crewed her. They were blocking more than half the sky in a sliding, twisting susurration, and John could almost feel them pressing in, hungry for… something. Nobody knew what the aliens wanted. No one had ever seen one, or spoken to one. No one alive, anyway.
That didn't mean they couldn't fight, though. They just had to figure out <¡>how. John grinned, sharp and swift, and Lorne's eyes caught fire when he grinned back, fierce to the last.
"All right," John said, turning around and addressing the whole bridge, "We're going to get out of this. We always have before."
Chuck winced and said, "Does anyone have any wood?"
John rolled his eyes as Rodney's dry voice came from the door. "Try Sheppard's head. There's not much of a difference."
"It is bad luck," Hua said unexpectedly. "It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not."
John spoke before Rodney could say whatever had put the scowl on his face, stabbing a finger in Rodney's direction. "You, quiet." Rodney subsided, but the look on his face said that John would pay for that later. He was okay with that. Rodney moved off to examine the system maps. "You, get our people off the planet," he said to Hua, making plan after plan and discarding them almost as quickly. "Tell Teyla that their path to the gate should be clear. They're to go to the beta site -" The alpha site was home base, and their non-mobile strategists lived there - "and wait for three days. After that we're to be considered lost, understood?"
"Understood," Hua said, sitting a little straighter in her chair, and started speaking soft, singing Cantonese into her earpiece. Teyla's team had another native speaker with them, and they and Dao were the closest thing John had to Navajo codespeakers. Rodney had the best encryption software and tinkered with it constantly to keep ahead of whatever the aliens might be doing, but nobody knew if it was doing any good; the aliens were always there. In any case, John would rather have died than stopped trying. It was just the way he was.
"Why is it that everyone treats space like a two-dimensional plane?" Rodney demanded just behind him.
"Because we don't have 3-D displays," Chuck said slowly. "The Wraith didn't, either, so it hasn't mattered until now."
John was so furious with himself he was having a hard time keeping his breathing under control. He should have thought of that months ago, after he'd proven to be the only one who could keep track of the ever-shifting alien ships in his head - he'd thought it had something to do with his facility with math, or his pilot's training, and never given it a second thought. Stupid!
Rodney's voice came again from behind him, this time very close. "You need holograph tanks."
John turned his head just slightly. "Can you do it?"
"Not in the next five minutes," Rodney said. "Which is when you really need them. But yes, I can."
There wasn't any room for a captain's chair in the closet. John leaned against a handy bulkhead and thought.
"All right," he said finally, and everyone stopped and looked at him, Rodney and Dao and little Sheila Macadams on weapons, Hua staring serenely at her console, Habika wired into the ship's circuits, Lorne and Chuck at the helm. "Listen up," John said, and grinned a slow, shit-eating grin. "This is going to be good."
---
The Flutie started to move, picking up speed as it fired its engines. It set a gently arching course for an obvious hole in the blockade, a spot where two clusters of ships seemed to meet. As it got closer, the encompassing pressure seemed to edge in tighter, crowding around the hole; when there was only fifty thousand klicks left before the Flutie escaped their net, the surrounding clusters broke and reformed, forming an impenetrable wall in front of the ship.
But the Flutie wasn't there anymore.
---
"You've got that course?" John demanded, leaning over Dao with one hand on his console, watching the viewscreen with narrowed eyes. "You're sure? One mistake and we're all history."
"I've got it, sir," Dao said, pulling up another series of diagrams. "Look, Doctor McKay was right -" Their course was outlined in green, and it looked like a tame roller-coaster, with turns, dives, and the death-defying grand finale. Those were the numbers he was most interested in checking, but there was no time. It wasn't so hard, though, to nod and clap Dao on the shoulder, and leave him to commit the numbers. It was Rodney's math, and he trusted Rodney. It was that simple.
"Time to go," John said quietly, and Dao punched up the engines - at twenty percent thrust, goddammit - to five percent light-speed. It would take their antique thes-burners about fifteen minutes to get there, and in the meantime they held to a slightly elliptical course, calculated to pass through their initial plane at a steeper angle and much more quickly than they'd left it. Five silent minutes passed, then ten, and the holes in space did absolutely nothing - or were they whirling faster? It was so hard to tell when they blocked the ambient light around them; at best you saw the angle that resulted when two circular-shaped objects passed each other, and there was no depth to tell you where either of them were.
"Sixty thousand klicks," Chuck read off his screen in a low voice. "Fifty-eight… fifty-five… fifty-two - "
At fifty thousand klicks, the ships closest to them abandoned their pretense of ignorance and swarmed the space in front of them, closing the hole and blocking any chance of escape. John wasn't worried about that, though, because at fifty-one thousand klicks, Dao's first major course change was relayed to the engines, and the ship described a graceful vertical arc, turning upside down and heading back the way they came at twenty percent thrust.
They feinted at four different points of the impromptu blockade, forcing the aliens to react a little more quickly, to block them off at any sign of danger, and above all, to redistribute the mass of ships to a place more of John's choosing. When their visual confirmation of the movement came, John nodded. "Dao, go."
Dao pushed the engines to the limit, getting a little more than twenty percent thrust out of them, and John hit Rodney on the shoulder without taking his eyes off of the screen. They drove toward the other side of the globe without hesitation, with no graceful evasion maneuver implicit in their course, and the alien ships packed themselves together at their apparent arrival point to keep them in. They packed in so tightly, in fact, that they left gaping holes all around -
Which was just what John was counting on.
Dao saw the openings as soon as John did, and brought up the pre-programmed burn on the right attitude thrusters while Rodney carefully tamped down on the left main thruster. That was all they needed, it was perfect; they sailed through one of the larger holes with klicks and klicks of room on all sides.
The bridge's tense atmosphere lightened a little, in relief, and John was quick to say, "We're not home yet." But even he was grinning.
"All right," he said, staring at the plot. "Part two." Dao did his magic and they were off, heading for Lothran Alpha's secondary moon at top speed. It was a third larger than Earth's moon, and much denser; according to Teyla, the tides on Lothran Alpha were spectacular. His plan, with some refinement from Rodney, was to use its gravity, and the planet's, to slingshot the ship around the planet and straight into the Stargate. As far as they could tell, their previous maneuvers had drawn off the ships that had blocked the 'gate. They'd actually watched Teyla's little cloaked shuttle escape through it not five minutes ago, and Hua had reported a one-word, whispered communication on tight-wave just before they disappeared: Good luck.
As they approached the moon's gravitational field, Rodney spoke up. "You might want to hold on to something," he said, suiting action to words. "I'm not entirely sure that the artificial gravity can handle this."
"But the inertial dampeners can, right?" John asked, ignoring the little clutch of fear in his belly at the idea. He knew what happened when five gravities suddenly caught up with you, and had absolutely no wish to find out what happened when over a thousand did the same.
"I'm almost certain," Rodney said, then shrugged. "If you'd had any other, better plans, you would have tried those. There's no point in worrying about it now."
"Oh, it's just for fun," John gritted out between clenched teeth, then forced himself to relax and turn back to the screen, because Rodney was right. They were already committed to their course. They couldn't simply go around the planet because there was a clump of ships waiting for them to do exactly that, but they weren't expecting the Flutie to go through the atmosphere -
John's stomach told him that they were in the grip of the moon's gravitational field. "I'm initiating the counter-burn," Dao said, his face intent as his fingers flew over the keys. "Fifteen percent, now -" The engines kicked in, and John's stomach eased as the engines fought and guided the relentless pull of gravity. The ship picked up speed, gradually at first and then faster as their momentum built up. The shallow skip that Rodney had built into the course passed much faster than John had anticipated, and soon they were free and kicking along at eight percent of light-speed, heading directly for the planet. The 'gate was on the other side, John knew, and he stared at the place in the atmosphere they were going to hit, very soon. He'd never heard of this being done, except in science fiction novels and cheesy Star Trek movies, and while their success with the moon seemed to argue for the technique, the planet was three times the size of its secondary moon and about five times the mass.
It was too late, though, and John grit his teeth and bore down within himself, completely unwilling to show any fear in front of his crew - and no crew could ever be better, he knew with a sudden flash of pride.
They were at the edge of the atmosphere, just inside of the gravitational envelope, and John suddenly wished that he could have seen Earth like this, if only once, before he left it forever. It was beautiful, but it didn't have the same impact as he'd heard, and he could only imagine it was because it wasn't his.
Contrary to John's fears, it worked perfectly. They soared through the atmosphere, gaining speed, and when Dao brought the main engines online again he initiated another course correction, designed to bring them in line with the gates - they weren't going to have many chances to do that, not at ten percent of light-speed.
The course worked perfectly. They emerged from the atmosphere on the other side of the planet, lined up perfectly with the 'gate, and John opened his mouth to order Sheila to dial the 'gate when he froze.
There was a clump of ships between them and the gate. Not a large one, but they didn't need to be large. They didn't seem to have any weapons, or at least they'd never been fired upon, but any contact with their ships or the weird aura around them caused - something. Rodney thought it was complete molecular dissociation. Whatever touched them just disappeared.
"Fuck," John said.
"My thoughts exactly," Rodney said. "What now?"
"Dial the gate." John moved between Chuck and Dao. "We're going to make an end run around them. A Hail Mary."
Rodney groaned, dialing the gate with swift fingers. They'd ripped out the dialing assembly from a downed jumper, and thank god it'd still worked. "I should have known you'd call it that," he said. "You know, it might go better if you implied that you thought this plan had a chance of working."
"McKay!" Lorne said sharply.
"It's all right," Habika said unexpectedly. Everyone on the bridge turned to look at her in surprise; she never volunteered a word if she could help it, and that she would now was almost creepy. "We were worse than dead before. Now we're only almost dead. Things could be worse."
After a minute, Chuck spoke. "I can't believe I agree with her," he said, sounding vaguely horrified.
"I'm trapped on a ship full of pessimists," Rodney groaned.
"That's rich," Lorne muttered, loud enough that everyone could hear him. They all laughed, all except Rodney, and even he had a satisfied spark in his eyes when he folded his arms defensively across his chest.
"It's been a pleasure serving, ladies and gentlemen," John said. "Dao?"
Some hasty course calculations got them started, and Chuck slaved his computer to Dao's in order to help him with any more off-the-cuff courses; the Flutie sailed around the clump at twelve percent of light-speed, describing a perfectly shaped arc.
They didn't catch up until the ship was almost to the 'gate. They were so close -
Alarms went off as something brushed up against the ship, making it lurch, and John had a horrible suspicion as to what that something might have been, a suspicion confirmed when Habika shouted, "Hull breach on deck three aft!" John held his post, willing the ship forward, they were so damn close to the wormhole he could almost smell it -
"They're coming around!" Sheila said, her eyes glued to her screens. "I don't know if we're going to make it -"
The ship staggered again, knocking John off his feet and throwing him down, hitting his head on the corner of Hua's console on the way.
---
Someone was shaking him. This was normal enough that he tried to get up out of his bunk before even opening his eyes, but someone - Rodney - held him down with a careful hand on his stomach. "No, no, don't get up. Oh, jesus."
John opened his eyes and immediately closed them again. "Please tell me my ship is in one piece." The glimpse he'd had of the bridge's ceiling hadn't reassured him at all, although the fact that he had air to breathe was a reassuring sign.
"It's mostly in one piece," Habika called over. She was never happier than when she had something to weld together, and from the satisfaction in her voice John decided that she was probably responsible for keeping his ship mostly in one piece. He winced.
"Someone give me a status report before I court-martial you all," John told the ceiling.
"Two dead," Rodney said softly. "Everyone else will be up and around by tomorrow."
John opened his eyes and stared sightlessly at the ceiling. "Who?"
"Sampaguita and Pyotr," Rodney said. "They were at their stations aft when the bulkhead disappeared. It must have been a near miss," he went on, a little nervous. "There's only about ten square feet missing from the bulkhead, and the metallurgy on the edges should be really interesting."
"That's nice," John said, baring his teeth, and Rodney stared at him. John sighed. "There's only twenty-three of us left," he said quietly, pushing himself up into a sitting position. "Soon there's going to be nobody left who remembers Earth."
"We're going to make it," Rodney said fiercely. "There's not another option."
"Yes, there is." John leaned forward. "I'm dismissing you from ship's company. We can't - we can't afford to lose you."
Rodney stared. His eyes seemed very blue sometimes, and this was one of those times. John looked away.
Rodney's voice was very even. "The only way you're getting me off this ship is if you stun me and carry me off. And then I'd like to see you run this ship with nonfunctioning equipment."
John looked back at him so fast his eyeballs twinged. "You can't do that."
"Never say that to a scientist," Rodney said, grim and smiling, as he started to get up.
"You have to go," John said, a little desperately, snagging Rodney's wrist. He'd grabbed awkwardly and was holding Rodney's wrist like a fold of clothing, but he wasn't letting go. "We can't afford to lose you."
John could almost see the sarcasm on Rodney's lips, ready to be unleashed, but Rodney looked down into John's eyes, and his face softened. "It's all right," he murmured, grabbing John's wrist and pulling him to his feet. "I have a plan."
---
When the next mission rolled around, there was a block of wood installed on a podium next to the brand new holotank. John pointedly rapped it every time they sailed out from then on.
Poll
Author: soleta
Team: War
Prompt: Knock on Wood
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard preslash
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Summary: When they lost Atlantis, he'd never thought they'd pay so dearly.
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
John looked up from his desk-crate when the footsteps drew near, but when he saw it was only Rodney he put his head back down. "Tell me you're not the messenger," he said to his desk. He was too fucking tired.
"No," Rodney said, dropping into a cramped bastardization of a yoga pose across from John. He looked like John felt, which was only fair. He'd been driving himself harder than anyone, and he looked like he hadn't eaten in days. John sighed and sat up. Looking at Rodney, all he really wanted to do was feed him a sandwich, or three. And make sure he slept. And…
He carefully put that thought away in a safe place, with all the others. It was something to look at, later.
"So, what?" John waved his hand to get Rodney's attention, and reminded himself to cut off Rodney's caffeine supply until he got at least a shift's worth of sleep.
"I can give you twenty percent thrust," Rodney said, snapping back to reality. "Anything more will crack the casing."
"Shit."
Rodney grinned wearily. "I could build a working hyperdrive that burns human waste in about, oh, six years."
John made a face. "Thanks for that visual."
Just then, the intercom flared to life, scratchy from loose connections. More than half the message made it through, and that meant it was a low priority for the repair team, which was a really stupid way of referring to Rodney and Habika.
"Sheppard to the brid… - … rd to the bridge-"
John rolled his eyes and hit the intercom with the side of his fist. "What have I told you about watching too much Star Trek? Talk to me."
"It's them, they're he -"
John didn't wait for the repeat; he was already up and through the door, Rodney half a step behind him as they raced for the bridge. How the fuck did they find us? They'd done everything in their power to be invisible, nothing but ghosts floating through the Pegasus galaxy. Unless - but John refused to even consider that, since it was impossible.
The bridge was two decks up, buried amidships to protect the precious control computers from stray fire; unlike the Daedalus, whose bridge, senior officers, and main computers had been separated from space and explosive decompression by no more than a quarter of an inch of riveted space-age plastic. He was pretty sure he'd seen Caldwell's body hurled out of those windows.
"Make a fucking hole!" John shouted over the heads of what had to be the entire off-duty crew when he got to the tiny bridge corridor, mentally cursing each and every one of them as he had to squeeze through to the door. He spared one brief glance behind him, but Rodney had already picked up the slack; he was in good voice, and browbeat each and every one of them impartially until they melted away one by one, hopefully back to their bunks. None of them were getting enough sleep as it was.
John ducked his head to avoid hitting the top of the bridge door, which was literally the size of his closet back on Atlantis, and made his way to the helm, which was actually Chuck at a laptop. Lorne was there, and he nodded tightly as John joined them.
"There's no way to tell how many ships they have this time," Lorne said, glancing at the cobbled-together screens they were using as a viewscreen. "But they're out there." They had the screen set to the forward cameras, and the spectacular view of Lothran Alpha and its secondary moon was twisted, riddled with miniature black holes that moved - Rodney had nearly had a heart attack the first time he'd seen their ships, and even now he was furiously trying to reverse-engineer their technology using the few pictures they'd managed to get and the not inconsiderable power of his brain.
"What have they done since they jumped in?" John asked.
"They've cut us off from the 'gate, for one," Lorne said grimly. "That was the first thing they did, before we even got the engines up." Dao, the helmsman, twitched apologetically and Lorne absently thumped him once on the shoulder while he continued. "Then they spread out and started covering our exit lanes."
John looked over the schematic of the solar system that was Dao's main interface with the ship as helmsman. A scattering of red dots were their best guess about the alien's positions - somehow the ships didn't show up on their scanners, and the only way they could track the ships was visually. The aliens liked to play shell games, too, so they were never still. They slipped behind each other, beside and around and under until anyone who watched was nauseous.
John looked over at Hua, monitoring communications. "Any word from Lothran?"
"No, sir," she said, keeping her eyes on the station. Hua had a deep and lingering superstition that the thing she was waiting for always happened whenever she turned her back, which John approved of and encouraged with an eye towards efficiency; if sometimes he had to order her to get off the bridge and get some sleep, well, she wasn't the only one.
When they lost Atlantis, he'd never thought they'd pay so dearly.
"We need a new exit," John said, and Lorne nodded. They'd been caught more than once, and each time John had found a hole, a way out of the trap, but every time the aliens seemed to learn more about the capabilities of the ship and those who crewed her. They were blocking more than half the sky in a sliding, twisting susurration, and John could almost feel them pressing in, hungry for… something. Nobody knew what the aliens wanted. No one had ever seen one, or spoken to one. No one alive, anyway.
That didn't mean they couldn't fight, though. They just had to figure out <¡>how. John grinned, sharp and swift, and Lorne's eyes caught fire when he grinned back, fierce to the last.
"All right," John said, turning around and addressing the whole bridge, "We're going to get out of this. We always have before."
Chuck winced and said, "Does anyone have any wood?"
John rolled his eyes as Rodney's dry voice came from the door. "Try Sheppard's head. There's not much of a difference."
"It is bad luck," Hua said unexpectedly. "It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not."
John spoke before Rodney could say whatever had put the scowl on his face, stabbing a finger in Rodney's direction. "You, quiet." Rodney subsided, but the look on his face said that John would pay for that later. He was okay with that. Rodney moved off to examine the system maps. "You, get our people off the planet," he said to Hua, making plan after plan and discarding them almost as quickly. "Tell Teyla that their path to the gate should be clear. They're to go to the beta site -" The alpha site was home base, and their non-mobile strategists lived there - "and wait for three days. After that we're to be considered lost, understood?"
"Understood," Hua said, sitting a little straighter in her chair, and started speaking soft, singing Cantonese into her earpiece. Teyla's team had another native speaker with them, and they and Dao were the closest thing John had to Navajo codespeakers. Rodney had the best encryption software and tinkered with it constantly to keep ahead of whatever the aliens might be doing, but nobody knew if it was doing any good; the aliens were always there. In any case, John would rather have died than stopped trying. It was just the way he was.
"Why is it that everyone treats space like a two-dimensional plane?" Rodney demanded just behind him.
"Because we don't have 3-D displays," Chuck said slowly. "The Wraith didn't, either, so it hasn't mattered until now."
John was so furious with himself he was having a hard time keeping his breathing under control. He should have thought of that months ago, after he'd proven to be the only one who could keep track of the ever-shifting alien ships in his head - he'd thought it had something to do with his facility with math, or his pilot's training, and never given it a second thought. Stupid!
Rodney's voice came again from behind him, this time very close. "You need holograph tanks."
John turned his head just slightly. "Can you do it?"
"Not in the next five minutes," Rodney said. "Which is when you really need them. But yes, I can."
There wasn't any room for a captain's chair in the closet. John leaned against a handy bulkhead and thought.
"All right," he said finally, and everyone stopped and looked at him, Rodney and Dao and little Sheila Macadams on weapons, Hua staring serenely at her console, Habika wired into the ship's circuits, Lorne and Chuck at the helm. "Listen up," John said, and grinned a slow, shit-eating grin. "This is going to be good."
---
The Flutie started to move, picking up speed as it fired its engines. It set a gently arching course for an obvious hole in the blockade, a spot where two clusters of ships seemed to meet. As it got closer, the encompassing pressure seemed to edge in tighter, crowding around the hole; when there was only fifty thousand klicks left before the Flutie escaped their net, the surrounding clusters broke and reformed, forming an impenetrable wall in front of the ship.
But the Flutie wasn't there anymore.
---
"You've got that course?" John demanded, leaning over Dao with one hand on his console, watching the viewscreen with narrowed eyes. "You're sure? One mistake and we're all history."
"I've got it, sir," Dao said, pulling up another series of diagrams. "Look, Doctor McKay was right -" Their course was outlined in green, and it looked like a tame roller-coaster, with turns, dives, and the death-defying grand finale. Those were the numbers he was most interested in checking, but there was no time. It wasn't so hard, though, to nod and clap Dao on the shoulder, and leave him to commit the numbers. It was Rodney's math, and he trusted Rodney. It was that simple.
"Time to go," John said quietly, and Dao punched up the engines - at twenty percent thrust, goddammit - to five percent light-speed. It would take their antique thes-burners about fifteen minutes to get there, and in the meantime they held to a slightly elliptical course, calculated to pass through their initial plane at a steeper angle and much more quickly than they'd left it. Five silent minutes passed, then ten, and the holes in space did absolutely nothing - or were they whirling faster? It was so hard to tell when they blocked the ambient light around them; at best you saw the angle that resulted when two circular-shaped objects passed each other, and there was no depth to tell you where either of them were.
"Sixty thousand klicks," Chuck read off his screen in a low voice. "Fifty-eight… fifty-five… fifty-two - "
At fifty thousand klicks, the ships closest to them abandoned their pretense of ignorance and swarmed the space in front of them, closing the hole and blocking any chance of escape. John wasn't worried about that, though, because at fifty-one thousand klicks, Dao's first major course change was relayed to the engines, and the ship described a graceful vertical arc, turning upside down and heading back the way they came at twenty percent thrust.
They feinted at four different points of the impromptu blockade, forcing the aliens to react a little more quickly, to block them off at any sign of danger, and above all, to redistribute the mass of ships to a place more of John's choosing. When their visual confirmation of the movement came, John nodded. "Dao, go."
Dao pushed the engines to the limit, getting a little more than twenty percent thrust out of them, and John hit Rodney on the shoulder without taking his eyes off of the screen. They drove toward the other side of the globe without hesitation, with no graceful evasion maneuver implicit in their course, and the alien ships packed themselves together at their apparent arrival point to keep them in. They packed in so tightly, in fact, that they left gaping holes all around -
Which was just what John was counting on.
Dao saw the openings as soon as John did, and brought up the pre-programmed burn on the right attitude thrusters while Rodney carefully tamped down on the left main thruster. That was all they needed, it was perfect; they sailed through one of the larger holes with klicks and klicks of room on all sides.
The bridge's tense atmosphere lightened a little, in relief, and John was quick to say, "We're not home yet." But even he was grinning.
"All right," he said, staring at the plot. "Part two." Dao did his magic and they were off, heading for Lothran Alpha's secondary moon at top speed. It was a third larger than Earth's moon, and much denser; according to Teyla, the tides on Lothran Alpha were spectacular. His plan, with some refinement from Rodney, was to use its gravity, and the planet's, to slingshot the ship around the planet and straight into the Stargate. As far as they could tell, their previous maneuvers had drawn off the ships that had blocked the 'gate. They'd actually watched Teyla's little cloaked shuttle escape through it not five minutes ago, and Hua had reported a one-word, whispered communication on tight-wave just before they disappeared: Good luck.
As they approached the moon's gravitational field, Rodney spoke up. "You might want to hold on to something," he said, suiting action to words. "I'm not entirely sure that the artificial gravity can handle this."
"But the inertial dampeners can, right?" John asked, ignoring the little clutch of fear in his belly at the idea. He knew what happened when five gravities suddenly caught up with you, and had absolutely no wish to find out what happened when over a thousand did the same.
"I'm almost certain," Rodney said, then shrugged. "If you'd had any other, better plans, you would have tried those. There's no point in worrying about it now."
"Oh, it's just for fun," John gritted out between clenched teeth, then forced himself to relax and turn back to the screen, because Rodney was right. They were already committed to their course. They couldn't simply go around the planet because there was a clump of ships waiting for them to do exactly that, but they weren't expecting the Flutie to go through the atmosphere -
John's stomach told him that they were in the grip of the moon's gravitational field. "I'm initiating the counter-burn," Dao said, his face intent as his fingers flew over the keys. "Fifteen percent, now -" The engines kicked in, and John's stomach eased as the engines fought and guided the relentless pull of gravity. The ship picked up speed, gradually at first and then faster as their momentum built up. The shallow skip that Rodney had built into the course passed much faster than John had anticipated, and soon they were free and kicking along at eight percent of light-speed, heading directly for the planet. The 'gate was on the other side, John knew, and he stared at the place in the atmosphere they were going to hit, very soon. He'd never heard of this being done, except in science fiction novels and cheesy Star Trek movies, and while their success with the moon seemed to argue for the technique, the planet was three times the size of its secondary moon and about five times the mass.
It was too late, though, and John grit his teeth and bore down within himself, completely unwilling to show any fear in front of his crew - and no crew could ever be better, he knew with a sudden flash of pride.
They were at the edge of the atmosphere, just inside of the gravitational envelope, and John suddenly wished that he could have seen Earth like this, if only once, before he left it forever. It was beautiful, but it didn't have the same impact as he'd heard, and he could only imagine it was because it wasn't his.
Contrary to John's fears, it worked perfectly. They soared through the atmosphere, gaining speed, and when Dao brought the main engines online again he initiated another course correction, designed to bring them in line with the gates - they weren't going to have many chances to do that, not at ten percent of light-speed.
The course worked perfectly. They emerged from the atmosphere on the other side of the planet, lined up perfectly with the 'gate, and John opened his mouth to order Sheila to dial the 'gate when he froze.
There was a clump of ships between them and the gate. Not a large one, but they didn't need to be large. They didn't seem to have any weapons, or at least they'd never been fired upon, but any contact with their ships or the weird aura around them caused - something. Rodney thought it was complete molecular dissociation. Whatever touched them just disappeared.
"Fuck," John said.
"My thoughts exactly," Rodney said. "What now?"
"Dial the gate." John moved between Chuck and Dao. "We're going to make an end run around them. A Hail Mary."
Rodney groaned, dialing the gate with swift fingers. They'd ripped out the dialing assembly from a downed jumper, and thank god it'd still worked. "I should have known you'd call it that," he said. "You know, it might go better if you implied that you thought this plan had a chance of working."
"McKay!" Lorne said sharply.
"It's all right," Habika said unexpectedly. Everyone on the bridge turned to look at her in surprise; she never volunteered a word if she could help it, and that she would now was almost creepy. "We were worse than dead before. Now we're only almost dead. Things could be worse."
After a minute, Chuck spoke. "I can't believe I agree with her," he said, sounding vaguely horrified.
"I'm trapped on a ship full of pessimists," Rodney groaned.
"That's rich," Lorne muttered, loud enough that everyone could hear him. They all laughed, all except Rodney, and even he had a satisfied spark in his eyes when he folded his arms defensively across his chest.
"It's been a pleasure serving, ladies and gentlemen," John said. "Dao?"
Some hasty course calculations got them started, and Chuck slaved his computer to Dao's in order to help him with any more off-the-cuff courses; the Flutie sailed around the clump at twelve percent of light-speed, describing a perfectly shaped arc.
They didn't catch up until the ship was almost to the 'gate. They were so close -
Alarms went off as something brushed up against the ship, making it lurch, and John had a horrible suspicion as to what that something might have been, a suspicion confirmed when Habika shouted, "Hull breach on deck three aft!" John held his post, willing the ship forward, they were so damn close to the wormhole he could almost smell it -
"They're coming around!" Sheila said, her eyes glued to her screens. "I don't know if we're going to make it -"
The ship staggered again, knocking John off his feet and throwing him down, hitting his head on the corner of Hua's console on the way.
---
Someone was shaking him. This was normal enough that he tried to get up out of his bunk before even opening his eyes, but someone - Rodney - held him down with a careful hand on his stomach. "No, no, don't get up. Oh, jesus."
John opened his eyes and immediately closed them again. "Please tell me my ship is in one piece." The glimpse he'd had of the bridge's ceiling hadn't reassured him at all, although the fact that he had air to breathe was a reassuring sign.
"It's mostly in one piece," Habika called over. She was never happier than when she had something to weld together, and from the satisfaction in her voice John decided that she was probably responsible for keeping his ship mostly in one piece. He winced.
"Someone give me a status report before I court-martial you all," John told the ceiling.
"Two dead," Rodney said softly. "Everyone else will be up and around by tomorrow."
John opened his eyes and stared sightlessly at the ceiling. "Who?"
"Sampaguita and Pyotr," Rodney said. "They were at their stations aft when the bulkhead disappeared. It must have been a near miss," he went on, a little nervous. "There's only about ten square feet missing from the bulkhead, and the metallurgy on the edges should be really interesting."
"That's nice," John said, baring his teeth, and Rodney stared at him. John sighed. "There's only twenty-three of us left," he said quietly, pushing himself up into a sitting position. "Soon there's going to be nobody left who remembers Earth."
"We're going to make it," Rodney said fiercely. "There's not another option."
"Yes, there is." John leaned forward. "I'm dismissing you from ship's company. We can't - we can't afford to lose you."
Rodney stared. His eyes seemed very blue sometimes, and this was one of those times. John looked away.
Rodney's voice was very even. "The only way you're getting me off this ship is if you stun me and carry me off. And then I'd like to see you run this ship with nonfunctioning equipment."
John looked back at him so fast his eyeballs twinged. "You can't do that."
"Never say that to a scientist," Rodney said, grim and smiling, as he started to get up.
"You have to go," John said, a little desperately, snagging Rodney's wrist. He'd grabbed awkwardly and was holding Rodney's wrist like a fold of clothing, but he wasn't letting go. "We can't afford to lose you."
John could almost see the sarcasm on Rodney's lips, ready to be unleashed, but Rodney looked down into John's eyes, and his face softened. "It's all right," he murmured, grabbing John's wrist and pulling him to his feet. "I have a plan."
---
When the next mission rolled around, there was a block of wood installed on a podium next to the brand new holotank. John pointedly rapped it every time they sailed out from then on.
Poll