Team, Week 2: In That Sleep of Death (1/4)
Title: In That Sleep of Death
Author: coolbreeze
Genre: Team
Prompt: "To be or not to be"
Word Count: 32,500
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Some descriptions of violence, set mid-season 3 between "Phantoms" and "Sunday"
Summary: With the Wraith culling in earnest across the galaxy and mysterious mercenaries attacking defenseless villages, Team Sheppard chases after a possible weapon left behind by the Ancients in an abandoned outpost. They return empty-handed, but increasingly strange behavior causes them to question just exactly what they might have discovered after all.
Notes: Huge thanks to my always awesome beta, everybetty. This story took a drastic turn in the revision phase (much to my panic) with much better results, and super huge thanks to tridget for coming in at the last minute for some great direction and feedback on this story. You guys are great!!!
Note: All illustrations are by tridget, who went above and beyond for this one!
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In That Sleep of Death
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause - there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
-Hamlet, 3:1, William Shakespeare
PART 1
"You know what this reminds me of?" John asked, grabbing at the low hanging branch in front of him and snapping it off the tree, out of his way.
"A jungle?" Rodney huffed behind him. He was winded and barely had enough breath to put two words together, and yet John still heard the sarcastic, snappish tone.
"This is a jungle," Ronon called out, at least a dozen feet ahead of them. He was having far less difficulty with the terrain than the rest of them. John scowled at him and took another step forward, almost twisting his ankle on a tree root covered in underbrush.
The bushes behind him rustled and snapped as Rodney did his own flailing. "Thank you, Mr. Obvious," he muttered.
"It reminds me of a dog, chasing its tail," John continued. He wiped his forearm across his forehead, knowing he had succeeded only in smearing sweat and dirt all over his face. "Looks hilarious. Unless you’re the dog."
Teyla was a few paces in front of him and she turned at his words, arching an eyebrow. "I do not follow."
"The dog, it runs in circles, chasing after its tail but never catching it. Endless circles. Around and around." He grabbed another branch, almost tore it off, then decided to let it snap back behind him with a whack.
"Sheppard!"
He grinned at Rodney’s squawk as the branch slapped the scientist’s chest. Teyla rolled her eyes and continued walking after Ronon, who was now at least twenty feet ahead of them. It was hotter than hell and muggier than New Orleans in July, but she looked like she’d hardly broken a sweat. John blinked as a drip of moisture wound its way around his eyebrow and down the side of his face.
"I understand the image of the dog chasing its tail," she said as she moved. "How does it relate to this mission?"
"Oomph," John grunted as Teyla stepped past a branch and let it snap into his arm. Sly dog. She would pay for that one. "McKay or someone finds an obscure reference in the Ancient database to a ‘great weapon to fight the Wraith,’" he said, "and we go running after it like Pavlov’s dogs."
"What is it with you and dogs today-" Rodney’s voice cut off behind him, followed by a heavy thump and a moan of pain.
John stopped, turned, and dragged himself back to the scientist, carefully picking his way. He held a hand out and helped his teammate up to his feet. Rodney looked murderous as he rubbed the dirt off his hands on his pants.
"You okay?"
"No, I am not okay," he huffed. "I am trudging through a jungle, dying of heat stroke, and being eaten alive by bugs. There’s not even a path. Why isn’t there a path through this Godforsaken vegetative hellhole?"
John slapped at a bug, smearing the little bastard into his neck, and smiled. Rodney’s face darkened at the sight.
"You’re the one who came across the reference to a powerful Ancient weapon," John said, uncapping his canteen and handing it over to Rodney, who chugged half of it in a single swallow.
"It’s not my fault the Wraith are on the rampage," he answered. Water dripped from the side of his mouth.
John ripped the canteen out of his hand in disgust and shoved it back into the holder on his belt. He had less than a third of it left, they had at least an hour’s hike back to the gate, and they’d seen no sign of anything remotely man-made, or Ancient-made, since arriving.
"Found something," Ronon called out through the trees.
Check that. He turned back and began pushing through the underbrush toward the sound of Ronon’s voice. It wasn’t until he was a dozen feet from the man that he realized he was standing next to not just a steep hill but a building, overgrown with vines and trees. Ronon rapped his knuckles against the side, and John heard the metal wall echo. Teyla stood next to him, studying the canvas of vegetation.
"Oh, thank God," Rodney huffed, catching up to them. "Something’s here."
"Something was here," John corrected. "My confidence in your vague ‘great weapon’ allusion is waning."
"There is an entrance here," Teyla said, interrupting Rodney before he launched into the same diatribe of how he hadn’t written anything in the Ancient database and couldn’t be blamed for its lack of clarity that they had all been subjected to a half an hour earlier.
It took several minutes for them to cut through the branches, revealing a dark tunnel. John led the way, moving cautiously, using the flashlight on his P90 to light the way. It was thankfully cooler inside the outpost-which, as it turned out, was built into the hill. The deeper they went, the less jungle growth they encountered, giving him a small ember of hope that maybe this time, the dog would actually catch its tail.
"Is your confidence waxing yet?" Rodney whispered as they stepped into a round room at the end of the entrance hall. The floors and walls were ornately decorated, the Ancient style unmistakable.
"Wax on, wax off," John muttered, moving cautiously along the perimeter and glancing down two other dark hallways branching off from the room. "No lights," he called out. "Didn’t the Ancients have a thing for automatic lights?"
"No power equals no lights."
"Which way?"
"What am I, Ans-"
"Answer Man-yes, we know. And no, you aren’t." John gestured toward the nearest hallway. "This way, then."
He didn’t wait for anyone’s reply, but a few seconds later, he heard them moving behind him. Flashlight beams danced across the walls and floors as they moved. He blinked at the sensation of a breeze, scrunching his nose up at the stench of rotting vegetation. Despite the slight current of air, the smell felt like it was growing thicker the farther they moved down the hallway.
"There are doors along the walls," Teyla called out a few minutes later.
John stopped, studying a slight indent next to him. It certainly looked like a door, but it was sealed tight. No power, no lights, no automatic doors. Ronon pushed against another door ten feet down the hall, to no avail.
"We’ll keep going until we hit the end of the hall or an open door," John said.
"And if don’t find an open door?" Rodney asked.
"There’s always grenades."
It was too easy, some days, pushing the physicist’s buttons. He heard the scientist groan, then mutter under his breath about soldiers and bombs and obsessions over blowing stuff up. With a grin, John took point again and continued leading them through the complex.
In the end, they found one open door halfway along the second hallway. It led into a large room with tables and equipment-most of which looked broken and useless to John-scattered throughout. Rodney moved forward quickly, his scanner out and his face glowing. A gaping hole in the far wall and ceiling let in enough natural light that John flipped his flashlight off. He let the P90 hang from the clip on his vest and rested his hands on top.
"This looks promising," Rodney said, moving to one of the tables along the wall and bending over an elaborate box.
"This looks old," Ronon said. John looked over to see a smile split the Satedan’s face. "Ancient, even."
"Nice one, Chewie," John said. He looked up and traced the ceiling beams to a large, round lamp at the center. Branches grew inward from the broken wall and ceiling, bringing with it mold and mud, and John sniffed at the dank, pungent odor in the room.
"This is definitely Ancient," Rodney piped up, missing Ronon’s joke completely.
"Don’t touch anything until you know it’s not going to blow up," he warned. He stepped forward, glancing down as he picked his way across the room. He saw the puddle of water-he really did-but he thought nothing of it. It wasn’t deep, but as he stepped down, he felt his foot slip. Mold grew under the warm-water puddle, and the deep tread of his boots had no chance of maintaining a grip on the smooth metal floor.
He cried out in surprise as his leg shot out from under him. His arms flailed up and behind him, seeking balance, while the P90 swung dangerously close to clocking him in the face. He saw Ronon and Teyla lurch forward and Rodney spinning around fast. He grabbed instinctively at the broken table off to his side and felt the jagged edge of the metal sink painfully into the soft flesh of his palm as his weight shifted backward.
He hit the ground a split second later, snapping his head back and slamming it into the floor. Stars erupted in his vision, orbiting across the ceiling at a dizzying speed. The P90 landed with a dull thud on his chest.
"John!"
He heard Teyla’s voice floating distantly around him, but he couldn’t see beyond the flashes of white spots. He groaned in response, forcing air into lungs that had momentarily been stunned frozen.
"Oh, crap," Rodney’s voice muttered. If John wasn’t trying so hard to breathe, he might have been worried by the scientist’s tone.
"What?" Ronon was worried. John would let him handle it.
"He surprised me. I…I’m not sure, but I hit something over here…"
"You said don’t touch anything."
"I didn’t mean to!"
A humming sound was growing louder-loud enough that John was finally forced to acknowledge that it was coming from the building and not inside his head. The light above him was on as well. Strange. Rodney had said there was no power here. No power, no lights.
Teyla suddenly appeared, kneeling and peering down at him in concern. She glanced up at Rodney and Ronon, then the light overhead. It was green, a bright fluorescent green. A throbbing pain began pounding against the back of John’s head where he’d slammed it against the floor, and water was seeping into his pants and t-shirt. He should get up. It was a long walk home, and the thought of doing it soaking wet…he shivered.
"Something’s happening!" Rodney’s voice, loud, high-pitched, panicked, and echoing around the room. The light above John was flashing now. Or maybe that was just in his head. Whatever it was, the bright flares were burning painfully against his retinas. He closed his eyes with a moan, felt Teyla’s hand on his arm, then heard the rest of his teammates cry out in pain. Something hard landed across his chest in time with the thud of things falling to the floor around him.
He opened his eyes just as a blaze of green exploded out of the ceiling, bathing the entire room in its glow for a full second before disappearing with a snapping pop.
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Carson snapped his gloves off and tossed them into the nearest bin, missing completely.
"And none of you lost consciousness?" he asked again. He walked across the room and swiped at the gloves, throwing them with force into the trash. When no one answered, he stood, facing Colonel Sheppard and his team.
They were staring at each other, looking a little confused and lost. Alarm bells rang in his head, but he pushed it back, forcing an expression of calm over his face. Ronon and Teyla both sat on a gurney, their legs swinging gently beneath them. Rodney was staring at the floor, looking like he was attempting to solve a complex math equation in his head. John lay on another gurney with his eyes closed, holding an icepack to the back of his head and hissing as Marie cleaned out the gash on his hand.
Rodney finally looked up and shrugged. "I ducked down when the lights started flashing, then it was dark-relatively speaking, anyway. Just the sunlight from the hole in the wall. Then… No, I’m pretty sure we weren’t unconscious."
He sounded far from sure about that. Carson scratched his chin, considering. He’d run scans on all of them as soon as they’d stumbled in, but so far, nothing out of the ordinary had turned up on the tests he’d run. "And you all saw this green light?"
"Kind of hard to miss," Rodney huffed. "It was this big, flashing bulb in the middle of the ceiling."
"No power, no light," John mumbled.
"There must have been some power," Rodney said.
"So you all ducked for cover, and then immediately came back here?"
"Colonel Sheppard’s hand was bleeding," Teyla explained. John scowled.
Carson had heard the story from each of them already, but he asked again, wanting to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.
"Pretty much," Ronon said with a shrug.
Rodney glanced around the room. "Where’s my stuff?"
Carson pointed to the table the team had dropped all of their equipment on as they’d entered. They hadn’t even stopped by the armory to unload their weapons, and given their current dazed looks, maybe it was better that they didn’t handle their weapons for the rest of the night.
"I’ll get someone to return your weapons to the armory," he called out.
Rodney waved a hand at him, going straight for his backpack and scanner. Ronon hopped off the table and headed for their equipment as well. Elise came in, holding an IV bag and stepping around Carson to head toward the colonel. Carson nodded absently at the nurse, wracking his brain for a reason to keep them all here. Something was wrong. He didn’t know what, but he knew this team-knew how they should be behaving. They were too…subdued, maybe, was the word he was looking for.
"Aw, Doc. No IV. I don’t need an IV," John griped, trying to sit up. He managed a few inches before he groaned and flopped back down, gripping the icepack tighter to his head.
"You lost a fair amount of blood from that cut," Carson said. "Not to mention you’re all dehydrated from walking through a hot jungle. I ought to put all of you on IVs and keep you for observation."
"I’m not staying," Ronon announced.
"Same," Rodney said next to him.
Teyla slid off the gurney. "Did you find something in the tests you ran?"
Carson sighed. He hadn’t found anything. He knew he was a little over-protective at times, and he wondered if he was reading too much into the situation. They had, after all, just trekked through a jungle for hours on end. Anyone would be tired and a little subdued after a day like that.
"The tests came back normal-" he started.
"Great, I’m starved. Let’s go," Rodney said, stepping toward the infirmary doors, Ronon right behind him.
"Sounds good," John said, and this time he managed to sit all the way up, pulling his injured hand away from Marie. The gash re-opened, and a fresh welling of blood dripped across his palm.
"Not you," Carson barked, pointing at the colonel. The others may have been fine, but John did have an injury. Two, in fact. He turned back to Ronon and Rodney. "The rest of you will go get something to eat, drink lots of fluids, and come back here in no less than two hours for another checkup before you go off to bed. Not to the lab, Rodney. Bed."
"Are you asking me out?" Rodney said, smirking. John snorted behind him, then hissed when Marie began working on his hand again.
"Ach, I don’t know why I put up with the lot of you. If you’re not back here in two hours, you will be my guest for 48 hours observation. In isolation."
Ronon and Rodney spun on their heels, darting out quickly. Teyla walked over to John’s bed, patting his leg. "Will you be alright, John?"
"I’ll live," he grumbled. He opened his eyes to smile at Teyla but caught sight of Marie prepping a syringe instead, a suture kit laid out on a small table next to him. He groaned, closing his eyes.
Teyla squeezed his shin in sympathy, then turned to Carson. "See you in two hours," she said before exiting the infirmary.
At least one of them listened to him. He shook his head, then stepped forward, pulling on a fresh pair of gloves. He peered down at the gash on John’s hand, grimacing at the ragged cut. "Looks like you’re going to need some stitches, Colonel. Let’s get you taken care of."
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The pain in his hand was pissing him off, and the morning sunshine streaming through the windows was making his head pound.
"I’m fine, Doc," John snapped. "I want out."
Carson ignored him, studying the computer tablet. He was frowning slightly, but that could have more to do with John’s foul mood than whatever he was reading. He scratched his chin, then tapped the tablet, pulling up another screen.
John sighed loudly, curling his left hand into a fist and staring up at the ceiling. The other hand lay carefully on his lap, heavily bandaged and sore as hell. He was lashing out and acting like a petulant child, but knowing that and controlling it were two different things. He’d fallen asleep after they’d stitched his hand up and while they were bandaging it, and then they’d left him in the infirmary for the night. When he’d woken up again, sometime around 2am, the night-shift doctor had decided to keep him until morning.
Carson set the tablet down on the table next to the bed, then dug into his pocket for a thermometer.
John looked over at him with a grimace. "You just took my temperature. I am not running a fever."
The doctor smiled slightly, almost patronizingly, and held the thermometer up in his hand. "Marie took your temperature over an hour ago."
"They’ve taken my temperature fifteen times. How the hell am I supposed to sleep with people poking stuff in my ears all night? And you’re not exactly quiet around here."
"You have a deep cut in your hand, you spent an indeterminate amount of time laying in a puddle of mud, mold, and rotting plants-"
"Seconds, at the most."
"-and then you walked through a hot jungle before finally getting it cleaned and bandaged. The chances of you picking up an infection in the cut is fairly high, and I don’t want to take any chances on you catching something nasty."
Without waiting for a response from John, he stuck the thermometer in his ear, pinning his head to the pillow with his other hand. John clenched his jaw, waiting for the doctor to finish. He understood what he was saying, and he might have even agreed with him, if he’d gotten more than an hour’s sleep since 2 that morning.
"How’s the headache?"
"Gone."
Carson sighed. "John…"
"Fine," John huffed. "I have a headache, but if your staff knew how to whisper and walk without stomping and turn off these damn beeping machines, I probably wouldn’t have a headache at all because I would have gotten a full night’s rest. "
This prompted another exam of the bump on the back of his head and a penlight being flashed in his eyes. The result was the same as yesterday: no concussion, just a bruise. John could already feel that the swelling had gone down significantly.
In short, he was fine.
"Alright, Colonel. We’ll go ahead and get you released but you’re on light duty for a few more days until that hand heals a little more. No sparring, no running, no missions."
"Doc!"
"No arguments. I’ll prescribe something for the pain that you can take as needed and an antibiotic regimen to stem off any infection.
Being pissy wasn’t working. He took a deep breath, trying to get Carson to see reason. "Look, Carson. I understand you’re just trying to help, but I don’t have time to sit around on light duty. The Wraith have stepped up their activities all over this damn galaxy, and on top of that, we’ve got some rogue mercenary group wreaking havoc on our allies. I need to be out there doing something."
The Scotsman folded his arms, his face darkening, and John stifled a sigh. Apparently, trying to sound reasonable wasn’t the right tactic this morning.
"I am well aware of what is going on and what all of the gate teams are facing, Colonel. My staff has been working to the point of exhaustion trying to keep you all healthy."
John held up his hand. "Whoa, doc. I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t. I’m just…" He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep well last night, I have a headache, and my hand hurts like hell. I just want to go back to my quarters."
The tension in Carson’s shoulders visibly eased, and he nodded. "I understand. I’ll get your medication for you in a minute and then you’re free to go. But you’re still on light duty until further notice."
John forced a small smile, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He shouldn’t have expected anything less. They’d changed him into scrubs at some point the night before, while he’d still been asleep, and he glanced around the room looking for his clothes.
Carson seemed to read his mind. "Your clothes were taken down to Laundry and aren’t done yet. You’re welcome to wear the scrubs back to your room, but just make sure to bring them back."
"Got it." He moved to slide off the gurney.
"Not so fast," Carson interrupted. "I’m serious about taking it easy. Get some rest and let your hand heal, and maybe you can be back on full duty in a few days. Push yourself and let it get infected, and you could find yourself off your feet for weeks."
John rubbed his face, grumbling in reply. The doctor disappeared for a few minutes, long enough for John to slip into his boots. When he returned, he handed him two containers-the painkillers and antibiotics-with instructions on when and how often to take them, as well as several plastic bags to cover his hand when he showered.
John headed straight for his room, relishing the hot shower even though he had to leave his right hand hanging outside of the shower curtain. Shampooing one-handed was harder than he liked to admit, but soon he was clean, wearing his own clothes, and ironically not tired at all.
"Weir to Sheppard."
Saved by the bell. Kind of.
"Sheppard here," he answered promptly. "What’s up?"
"Are you free to meet right now?"
John was already walking across his room, tucking in his shirt. "On my way," he quipped. Light duty always included meetings, but this time he was glad for the distraction. He felt antsy, and he walked quickly through the halls, forcing scientists and soldiers alike to step out of his way as he moved.
"You look more tired today than you did yesterday," Elizabeth said, looking up from her computer. Her eyebrows rose in surprise and an expression of concern twisted the corners of her mouth.
"That’s because some churlish doctor decided to keep me all night in the infirmary, and it’s impossible to sleep in the infirmary."
The concern morphed into amusement. "Churlish?"
"Yes," John replied, folding his arms and settling into the chair across from her desk. "Churlish."
She leaned forward, seriousness crowding back into her expression. "There’s been another attack."
John sighed, fatigue suddenly seeping into him. "The mercenaries?"
"Looks like it." She handed him her computer tablet with the latest report. "Lorne’s team returned late last night. The villages around the gate had been razed, and the farm fields were still burning."
He scowled, glancing through the brief description on the screen in front of him. "We’re sure this wasn’t the Wraith?"
"No desiccated bodies. A number of villagers, killed by gunfire."
"Damn."
"I got the brief report from Rodney on your mission yesterday. No luck at the outpost, I take it?"
"Pavlov’s dogs," he muttered, skimming through Lorne’s report again.
"What?"
John waved his bandaged hand at her. "Never mind. The outpost was definitely Ancient, but most of the doors were sealed shut. There was no power to the place-"
Except for that flashing green light.
"-and the one room that was open was nothing but broken stuff and mold and jungle creep."
"Rodney wants to go back."
John raised his eyebrows.
"In a jumper, of course. He argued quite passionately that we couldn’t just give up on the place after one brief walk-through. It was definitely Ancient in origin, and there were sealed rooms that might contain something useful."
John leaned forward and pinched the bridge of his nose. His headache was coming back and his hand had never quite lost its throbbing ache, despite the painkillers he’d taken. He needed a nap.
"A jumper will never work-the jungle’s too thick."
"Should I put the outpost mission back on your team’s rotation then? When you’re back on full duty, of course."
"Short answer-yes. But I’m a little more concerned about these ongoing, mysterious non-Wraith attacks. Whoever these bastards are, they’re wreaking havoc and we’ve made no progress on finding out who they are or where they’re coming from."
"Alright, I’ll let Rodney know," Elizabeth answered. She eyed John a moment, then stood up. John followed suit immediately, handing her back her tablet. "Get some rest, John. You look exhausted."
He grunted in reply, too tired to respond.
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John crashed hard in his room. When he woke up, he blinked at the clock and saw that nearly four hours had passed. He stretched out stiff muscles, feeling the ache of having slept in the same position for too long. He stumbled out of bed, yelping when he used his injured hand to push himself to his feet, and padded to the bathroom.
When he emerged a moment later, he felt much more awake. He smiled at the sight of a food tray on the small table next to his bed and a handwritten note from Carson to eat everything and take his pills. John did so gladly, the gash in his hand throbbing.
He and Ronon had a standing reservation for Small Gym #4 every day from 1430 to 1530-whether they were there to use it or not-and he wondered if the big guy was working out on his own. It was just a few minutes before 1500 now. John slipped on a pair of running shoes and headed for the gym. He heard the clatter of sticks and grunts of exertion before he’d even opened the doors, and smiled at the sight of Teyla dancing across the gym, the sticks in her hand spinning like pinwheels as she advanced on Ronon.
John slipped along the wall to the bench on the far side, watching them fight. Teyla had worked Ronon into a corner, but John knew from experience how fast Ronon could move despite his size. He proved it again a second later when Teyla lunged with a swing that would have smacked across his back and dropped him to the floor. He ducked and rolled, coming up behind her and swinging his own bantos rods.
Bantos was an Athosian martial art, and Teyla an expert. It leveled the playing field against the bigger, stronger man. John watched her recover from her miss to counter the swing easily. They twisted and spun again, back across the floor. John grabbed Ronon’s canteen and took a swig of water, mesmerized by their movements. Some day, perhaps, he might be able to fight with the fluidity and grace that Teyla seemed to do unconsciously, but he was far from that moment now. He stared down at his bum hand, flexing his fingers and wincing when that pulled against the tender skin beneath the thick bandage.
He heard a grunt, then the thumping of a body hitting the mat. He glanced up to see Teyla twirling a stick in her hand and standing over a sprawled Ronon. They were both sweating and breathing hard, both grinning at the exertion and adrenaline of a full sparring match. After a second, Teyla relaxed and held a hand out to Ronon, pulling him up to his feet.
She turned to John, a smile splitting her face. "It is good to see you out of the infirmary," she said.
"Wasn’t supposed to stay there all night," he muttered.
She moved to the bench, grabbing a towel and wiping the sweat off her face. Ronon held out his hand for the water bottle, which John tossed awkwardly with his left hand.
"How is your hand?" Teyla asked, grabbing her own bottle.
"Sore. Not allowed to spar or run for a few days."
"It is good to let it heal."
John narrowed his eyes, suspicious. Had Carson called them up and told them to make sure he took it easy? He wouldn’t put it past the doctor. His intentions were good, but he tended to be a little overly cautious at times with his patients.
For good reason. John sighed at the thought. Carson was just doing his job, and he was damn good at it. He stifled the grumpiness he’d felt most of the day and smiled at Teyla.
"Yeah, it is," he said. "I’m on light duty for a few days, so no team missions for the rest of the week."
Ronon tossed the empty water bottle back toward John. "Let’s go again," he said to Teyla.
She shook her head, but she stood up anyway, swinging her sticks around and loosening up her shoulders. "You have already run to the north pier and back this morning. Are you sure?"
Ronon’s answering grin bordered on manic. John grinned in response, watching the two of them square off and cursing the sharp pain jabbing at his hand. Within seconds, the sticks were flying a hundred miles an hour again, the two fighters lunging, ducking, spinning, and jumping like it was a dance they’d choreographed down to tenths of a second.
Teyla was moving in on him again, but this time, Ronon flicked his sticks one direction, twisted in the opposite as he swept a leg out, and with a cry, popped up and lunged forward simultaneously. Teyla’s sticks flew through the air, clattering against the wall, while she stumbled backward and landed with a heavy whack. John had never seen that move. Neither, apparently, had Teyla.
"You have got to teach me that," he breathed, impressed.
Ronon shot him a grin, then extended a hand out to Teyla and pulled her to her feet.
"That was impressive," she agreed.
The two of them sat down, Teyla next to John and Ronon on the floor. They were both breathing heavily. Ronon took a long drink from his canteen then pinned John with a stare.
"What?" John finally asked.
"We going back to that outpost?"
"Eventually," he answered slowly. "Why?"
"McKay wants to go back. Told me to tell you we should go."
John smiled, imagining how the conversation must have gone. "And were you supposed to tell me the part about McKay trying to get you to talk me into this?"
Ronon didn’t answer. He took another long sip from his canteen, but his eyes glinted with amusement.
"Yeah, thought so." He held up his hand. "We can’t go till Beckett gives me the all clear, but I’ve already talked to Elizabeth about it."
Ronon nodded, then froze as a thought occurred to him. John could almost see it bursting from the man’s expression. "No power. No jumpers. I’m going to have to carry a generator when we go back, aren’t I?"
Teyla laughed, and John grinned, holding up his hand. "I think I’ll still be too injured for any such heavy lifting."
Ronon scowled and rolled onto his knees, popping up to his feet. Behind him, the door to the gym slid open, and a young woman in Athosian garb poked her head in.
"I apologize for the disruption," she said, her gaze landing on Teyla. "There is a situation regarding the new housing locations that requires your attention."
John glanced from the woman to Teyla. He’d almost forgotten about the small group of Athosians currently living on Atlantis, their homes washed out in a recent spring flood. They’d been working on relocating some of the tents and re-building the ones destroyed in the storm.
"What is wrong?" Teyla asked, straightening up.
"A disagreement over where the new homes should be placed."
Teyla’s face darkened. "Garrod?"
"Yes, and Resik. Both want their tents placed on a small hill overlooking the river. Your mediation would be greatly appreciated."
Teyla sighed. "Those two have bickered since the moment they learned to speak." She nodded her head. "Very well. I will join you in a moment."
"Thank you, Teyla," the woman said, relief visible on her face. She stepped back, letting the doors slide closed, and John heard her footsteps echoing down the hall.
"Everything okay?" he asked.
Teyla gathered up her bantos rods and stuffed them into her bag. "It is a minor quarrel, easily resolved," she said. "They are like two children, always fighting over what the other one has." She glanced up at Ronon, who was spinning the bantos rods in his hands and warming up to fight again. "I would say that I am sorry to cut our session short, but I am not sure that is the case after that last fight."
Ronon’s grin grew bigger, and John couldn’t help up smile in response. Speaking of kids. Ronon was as big a kid as any of them, when he stopped thinking about the Wraith and being a runner and the destruction of his world and people for a few minutes.
Ronon jabbed his sticks at John. "You can’t fight?"
The smile dropped into a disgruntled scowl. "No," he pouted. "Not yet."
"Think Sergeant Campbell’s got a training class starting in a few minutes. I’ll be over there if you need me."
"Don’t kill my Marines!" John called out as Ronon spun on his heel and jogged out of the small gym. "He has entirely too much energy today," he muttered.
Teyla threw her head back and laughed, a deep rich sound. She pulled John to his feet, patting him on his shoulder as they walked out of the gym.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Teyla stood from the table, stretching out her back. Garrod and Resik had bickered and nitpicked for the first hour, almost causing both her and Halling to throw their hands up in despair and let the pair fight it out. Eventually, she’d steered the conversation away from them and toward the other Athosians who’d lost their homes.
And then something miraculous happened. With the focus off of the two men and what they have or didn’t have, the conversation became productive. With a little prodding from Teyla, they were soon laying out the benefits and disadvantages of each place relative to the needs of each family. Hours later, Halling rolled his map of the area up with a smile as Garrod and Resik slapped each other’s backs, friends again until the next squabbling argument.
"That was well handled," Halling said, once the two men were gone.
Teyla finally let loose the deep sigh she had been holding back. "If they spent as much energy on community endeavors as they did arguing with each other, they would accomplish many great things."
"Our people are not yet prepared for such greatness," Halling said with a smirk.
Teyla laughed. "Perhaps you are right."
"It is their family tradition after all. I find it somewhat comforting."
"I had the same thought earlier," she agreed. "And we made much progress on repairing the damage of the flood and resettling our people."
"We did. I have spoken with the engineers here and they are eager to help us rebuild as well." He paused, glancing at her. "I have been meaning to ask you. How was your mission yesterday?"
Teyla shrugged. "Colonel Sheppard compared us to animals chasing their tails, which turned out to be an apt analogy. The weapon Doctor McKay hoped to find was either not there, or not immediately obvious."
"That is unfortunate."
"Yes, it is. We need to gain an edge against the Wraith, but I fear we cannot continue to pin such high hopes on anything the Ancestors left behind. So much time has passed…" Her voice trailed off as she thought of the sealed doors they’d passed. "Perhaps a second visit will be more successful."
Halling gestured toward the door, and the two of them stepped out of the common room and into the hall. "You are returning?"
"We were not there long before the colonel cut his hand and we were forced to return. There was no power in the facility either, so our ability to explore was limited. I believe we are planning to return as soon as John is back on full duty."
They walked slowly down the wide hall. People sat in chairs or stood in small groups chit-chatting and greeting each other as they might have had they been sitting at home in front of their tents or around fire pits, and Teyla reveled at the sight of her people so close to her. It had been a while since she’d spent any length of time with them, something she realized she should not put off.
"And what of the mercenary group attacking defenseless villages?"
Teyla shook her head, sighing. "We have learned very little. They are elusive, striking fast and leaving almost no sign of their identity or origin behind them."
A small baby squawked in a cradle, waving her fists as they passed, and Teyla paused to pick her up. The child was only a couple of months old, and the last few nights had been filled with her crying. The young couple and their baby had taken residence in the room right next to Teyla’s, and she’d been acutely aware of each time the child awakened.
Teyla grinned at the small baby, bouncing the child in her arms. She glanced up at Halling to see him smiling fondly at the two of them. "And how is Jinto these days?"
Halling rubbed a finger under the baby’s chin, eliciting a giggle. "Growing too fast, as usual," he replied. He straightened, patting Teyla on the shoulder. "I will talk to the engineers tonight about our plans."
"Thank you, Halling."
He waved again, disappearing down the far end of the hall. The child gave a whimpering cry, squirming in Teyla’s arms, and she began to rock her gently.
"And how are you this day, Ennaeya? You should be very tired, given how little you slept last night."
"Oh, Teyla, I did not mean to impose," a young woman called out, hurrying over to Teyla’s side and holding her arms out for the baby.
Teyla pressed her cheek against the side of the child’s head, inhaling the clean scent. "It is no bother at all." She kissed her lightly, then lifted the infant into her mother’s arms. The young woman beamed, a proud, first-time mother. "It is good to be around such a new life," Teyla said. "It is reminder of all the good in life we still enjoy, despite the struggles."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The mysterious mercenaries had attacked again. Not that any of them should be surprised by this anymore, but it was not exactly the way Rodney wanted to start off his day.
At least it wasn’t the Wraith, although these phantom warriors were proving to be as elusive and destructive as… Okay, he amended. Not as destructive as the Wraith, but if the Wraith only attacked two or three villages on a planet, then within each village, relative to that, they were equally…bad.
He groaned, shaking his head. He was over-thinking this too much.
"What I really don’t like," he snapped at a passing scientist, a nuclear engineer giving him a bug-eyed stare, "Whether it’s the Wraith attacking-because they always are-or the Genii wannabes of the week, is everyone on the base asking what happened to my ‘great weapon against the Wraith’ or my ‘great defense against everything.’ It’s not mine!"
The squirrelly man flinched, skittering to the other side of the hallway. He’d stopped walking as he’d shouted at him-What was his name again?-but he forced himself to start moving again toward his lab. The morning’s briefing had been long and torturous, and he’d couldn’t help but think of Sheppard’s analogy of the dog running in circles.
He was the dog, chasing after every little juicy tidbit some egotistical Ancient asshole had left in the database. It wasn’t just about weapons. There was so much in the database, so many advances that he could make, winning a dozen Nobel prizes in the process, if only he could think of the right keywords to search out the good information, extract the gems from the Ancient pile of Swiss-cheese shit that was the database.
He sighed, trudging through the hallway with a cup of coffee in one hand and his laptop in the other. It wasn’t quite that simple, but as an analogy, it was on par with Sheppard and his dogs.
"And to top it all off, I didn’t even get breakfast," he announced, walking into his lab. The woman at the computer right next to the door jumped, squealing a little in surprise.
Rodney breezed past her to the tables set up in the center of the room, plopping down across from Radek Zelenka. The woman near the door-apparently, it was Let’s forget everyone’s name today Day, because he couldn’t even come up with the first letter at the moment-was new and still adjusting to Rodney’s "management style." In fact, he was surprised she wasn’t crying. She seemed to do that a lot. Homesickness, probably.
Radek was glaring at him.
"What?" he asked, exasperated.
The Czech said nothing, but he glanced at the woman sitting near the door then pointedly looked at Rodney.
"I am tired and hungry and I haven’t had my coffee yet." And he couldn’t figure out what Radek was trying to tell him with a few blinks and an eyebrow wiggle.
"I saw you with two cups in the hallway this morning," Radek said.
"That was before the briefing. Any coffee consumed before a briefing is automatically neutralized by the endless dronings of bureaucrats-"
"Weir," Radek supplied.
"-pseudo-scientists-"
"Carson was there as well?"
"No, actually he wasn’t. By pseudo-scientists, I am referring to anyone in the," he raised his hands, curling his fingers into imaginary quotation marks, "life sciences. And let’s not forget all the soldier boys and girls."
"Colonel Sheppard."
Rodney sat down on at the table. "He wasn’t there either. Bastard. No one notices when he doesn’t show up, but I’m two minutes late and I have fifteen people calling me on the radio to find out why I’m not in the meeting."
Radek snorted and settled back to whatever the hell he was working on. Rodney flipped his laptop open and took a long swig from his coffee cup as his programs booted up. The first box showed his fruitless efforts to pull up anything more on the Great Weapon his team had failed to find the day before.
"Why are people always complaining to me about not finding what they need in the Ancient database? Do they think I wrote it all up and can find anything and everything at the drop of a hat? That I’m purposely being obtuse about a weapon that could destroy the Wraith because I like all of the attention?"
He downed the rest of his coffee and slammed the mug down on the table right as the woman who sat near door walked behind Zelenka. She jumped again, walking faster toward the far door leading into another wing of labs. Rodney felt a perverse pleasure in her reaction.
Bet she moved to a new lab by the end of the week.
"Can you stop with the talking and banging of cups? I am trying to work here."
Rodney narrowed his gaze. "Feel free to go somewhere else," he hissed. He glanced back at his screen, the cursor in the search box taunting him. They had to go back to that outpost, and yet when he’d said that in the meeting, everyone had looked at him like he was half out of his mind. Like he didn’t repeatedly save everyone’s collective asses on a near daily basis. Why were they still questioning him?
He looked up in time to see Radek rolling his eyes. "Have you looked over the last simulations? I think we are close to field testing these power upgrades."
"Yes, yes, yes. Pulling those up now."
They worked in silence for a moment as Rodney let his attention zero in on the simulation results. They looked good, and he was anxious to push this project forward. The Wraith and the mystery mercenaries could get in line behind the constant demands just living in Atlantis put on him. This particular project would increase their power by at least 30 percent, which they sorely needed, if everything ran according to plan.
Ha! Like anything ever ran according to plan.
"How was yesterday’s mission?" Radek asked, peering over the top of his screen. "Did you find anything?"
Rodney scowled, then remembered he hadn’t been in the meeting that morning. He unleashed again, ranting against the obscurity of the Ancients, the shoddy construction of their 10,000-year-old outposts, and their repeated tendency to leave dangerous equipment lying out in the open just waiting for him to set off. He was starting in on the theory that one of the Ancient assholes erased just enough of the database to send future generations to their deaths as some twisted joke when Radek held up his hand.
"Is Colonel Sheppard alright?"
Rodney’s rant sputtered to a stop. "What?"
"You said Colonel Sheppard was injured?"
"He’s fine," Rodney dismissed, but then it occurred to him that he hadn’t actually asked anyone. No one would be holding him up as the standard bearer for great friendship, but they knew that going in. Something clicked in his brain-was that the reason Elizabeth had turned down his request to return to the outpost immediately? He really should track Sheppard down. He’d tried to get Ronon on his side, promising him all of his dessert for the next month-like he was actually going to follow through on that one-if he convinced Sheppard to go back right away, but Sheppard would want to go back to the outpost anyway, just to make sure they hadn’t missed a possible weapon against the Wraith.
"That is good news."
"What is? We need to go back to the outpost, not sit here on our thumbs messing with these…," he waved at his computer, "mindless power upgrades."
Radek narrowed his eyes at him but didn’t respond to the jab at the power upgrades. It had been the Czech’s idea to begin with. He could finish it without Rodney’s help. As painful as it was to admit, Zelenka was no idiot.
"I wonder what the machine did, with the flashing green light?"
Rodney shrugged. "Disco ball gone wrong? I don’t know. Asshole Ancients with their stupid weapon references…"
"But there was no power."
"Not in the outpost, in general. There was a surge or something from that damn box. Now will you stop with the chattering? I’m trying to work here."
Radek sighed, scooting a little farther down the table, away from Rodney. "If only they had a machine that made you more pleasant. Perhaps quieter and less moody," he mumbled-almost inaudibly but not quite. Still loud enough for Rodney to hear.
Rodney grabbed his mug, stared at the coffee dregs at the bottom, then slammed it down on the table again, standing up.
"I need more coffee. Don’t slack off while I’m gone."
Onwards to Part 2
Author: coolbreeze
Genre: Team
Prompt: "To be or not to be"
Word Count: 32,500
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Some descriptions of violence, set mid-season 3 between "Phantoms" and "Sunday"
Summary: With the Wraith culling in earnest across the galaxy and mysterious mercenaries attacking defenseless villages, Team Sheppard chases after a possible weapon left behind by the Ancients in an abandoned outpost. They return empty-handed, but increasingly strange behavior causes them to question just exactly what they might have discovered after all.
Notes: Huge thanks to my always awesome beta, everybetty. This story took a drastic turn in the revision phase (much to my panic) with much better results, and super huge thanks to tridget for coming in at the last minute for some great direction and feedback on this story. You guys are great!!!
Note: All illustrations are by tridget, who went above and beyond for this one!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In That Sleep of Death
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause - there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
-Hamlet, 3:1, William Shakespeare
PART 1
"You know what this reminds me of?" John asked, grabbing at the low hanging branch in front of him and snapping it off the tree, out of his way.
"A jungle?" Rodney huffed behind him. He was winded and barely had enough breath to put two words together, and yet John still heard the sarcastic, snappish tone.
"This is a jungle," Ronon called out, at least a dozen feet ahead of them. He was having far less difficulty with the terrain than the rest of them. John scowled at him and took another step forward, almost twisting his ankle on a tree root covered in underbrush.
The bushes behind him rustled and snapped as Rodney did his own flailing. "Thank you, Mr. Obvious," he muttered.
"It reminds me of a dog, chasing its tail," John continued. He wiped his forearm across his forehead, knowing he had succeeded only in smearing sweat and dirt all over his face. "Looks hilarious. Unless you’re the dog."
Teyla was a few paces in front of him and she turned at his words, arching an eyebrow. "I do not follow."
"The dog, it runs in circles, chasing after its tail but never catching it. Endless circles. Around and around." He grabbed another branch, almost tore it off, then decided to let it snap back behind him with a whack.
"Sheppard!"
He grinned at Rodney’s squawk as the branch slapped the scientist’s chest. Teyla rolled her eyes and continued walking after Ronon, who was now at least twenty feet ahead of them. It was hotter than hell and muggier than New Orleans in July, but she looked like she’d hardly broken a sweat. John blinked as a drip of moisture wound its way around his eyebrow and down the side of his face.
"I understand the image of the dog chasing its tail," she said as she moved. "How does it relate to this mission?"
"Oomph," John grunted as Teyla stepped past a branch and let it snap into his arm. Sly dog. She would pay for that one. "McKay or someone finds an obscure reference in the Ancient database to a ‘great weapon to fight the Wraith,’" he said, "and we go running after it like Pavlov’s dogs."
"What is it with you and dogs today-" Rodney’s voice cut off behind him, followed by a heavy thump and a moan of pain.
John stopped, turned, and dragged himself back to the scientist, carefully picking his way. He held a hand out and helped his teammate up to his feet. Rodney looked murderous as he rubbed the dirt off his hands on his pants.
"You okay?"
"No, I am not okay," he huffed. "I am trudging through a jungle, dying of heat stroke, and being eaten alive by bugs. There’s not even a path. Why isn’t there a path through this Godforsaken vegetative hellhole?"
John slapped at a bug, smearing the little bastard into his neck, and smiled. Rodney’s face darkened at the sight.
"You’re the one who came across the reference to a powerful Ancient weapon," John said, uncapping his canteen and handing it over to Rodney, who chugged half of it in a single swallow.
"It’s not my fault the Wraith are on the rampage," he answered. Water dripped from the side of his mouth.
John ripped the canteen out of his hand in disgust and shoved it back into the holder on his belt. He had less than a third of it left, they had at least an hour’s hike back to the gate, and they’d seen no sign of anything remotely man-made, or Ancient-made, since arriving.
"Found something," Ronon called out through the trees.
Check that. He turned back and began pushing through the underbrush toward the sound of Ronon’s voice. It wasn’t until he was a dozen feet from the man that he realized he was standing next to not just a steep hill but a building, overgrown with vines and trees. Ronon rapped his knuckles against the side, and John heard the metal wall echo. Teyla stood next to him, studying the canvas of vegetation.
"Oh, thank God," Rodney huffed, catching up to them. "Something’s here."
"Something was here," John corrected. "My confidence in your vague ‘great weapon’ allusion is waning."
"There is an entrance here," Teyla said, interrupting Rodney before he launched into the same diatribe of how he hadn’t written anything in the Ancient database and couldn’t be blamed for its lack of clarity that they had all been subjected to a half an hour earlier.
It took several minutes for them to cut through the branches, revealing a dark tunnel. John led the way, moving cautiously, using the flashlight on his P90 to light the way. It was thankfully cooler inside the outpost-which, as it turned out, was built into the hill. The deeper they went, the less jungle growth they encountered, giving him a small ember of hope that maybe this time, the dog would actually catch its tail.
"Is your confidence waxing yet?" Rodney whispered as they stepped into a round room at the end of the entrance hall. The floors and walls were ornately decorated, the Ancient style unmistakable.
"Wax on, wax off," John muttered, moving cautiously along the perimeter and glancing down two other dark hallways branching off from the room. "No lights," he called out. "Didn’t the Ancients have a thing for automatic lights?"
"No power equals no lights."
"Which way?"
"What am I, Ans-"
"Answer Man-yes, we know. And no, you aren’t." John gestured toward the nearest hallway. "This way, then."
He didn’t wait for anyone’s reply, but a few seconds later, he heard them moving behind him. Flashlight beams danced across the walls and floors as they moved. He blinked at the sensation of a breeze, scrunching his nose up at the stench of rotting vegetation. Despite the slight current of air, the smell felt like it was growing thicker the farther they moved down the hallway.
"There are doors along the walls," Teyla called out a few minutes later.
John stopped, studying a slight indent next to him. It certainly looked like a door, but it was sealed tight. No power, no lights, no automatic doors. Ronon pushed against another door ten feet down the hall, to no avail.
"We’ll keep going until we hit the end of the hall or an open door," John said.
"And if don’t find an open door?" Rodney asked.
"There’s always grenades."
It was too easy, some days, pushing the physicist’s buttons. He heard the scientist groan, then mutter under his breath about soldiers and bombs and obsessions over blowing stuff up. With a grin, John took point again and continued leading them through the complex.
In the end, they found one open door halfway along the second hallway. It led into a large room with tables and equipment-most of which looked broken and useless to John-scattered throughout. Rodney moved forward quickly, his scanner out and his face glowing. A gaping hole in the far wall and ceiling let in enough natural light that John flipped his flashlight off. He let the P90 hang from the clip on his vest and rested his hands on top.
"This looks promising," Rodney said, moving to one of the tables along the wall and bending over an elaborate box.
"This looks old," Ronon said. John looked over to see a smile split the Satedan’s face. "Ancient, even."
"Nice one, Chewie," John said. He looked up and traced the ceiling beams to a large, round lamp at the center. Branches grew inward from the broken wall and ceiling, bringing with it mold and mud, and John sniffed at the dank, pungent odor in the room.
"This is definitely Ancient," Rodney piped up, missing Ronon’s joke completely.
"Don’t touch anything until you know it’s not going to blow up," he warned. He stepped forward, glancing down as he picked his way across the room. He saw the puddle of water-he really did-but he thought nothing of it. It wasn’t deep, but as he stepped down, he felt his foot slip. Mold grew under the warm-water puddle, and the deep tread of his boots had no chance of maintaining a grip on the smooth metal floor.
He cried out in surprise as his leg shot out from under him. His arms flailed up and behind him, seeking balance, while the P90 swung dangerously close to clocking him in the face. He saw Ronon and Teyla lurch forward and Rodney spinning around fast. He grabbed instinctively at the broken table off to his side and felt the jagged edge of the metal sink painfully into the soft flesh of his palm as his weight shifted backward.
He hit the ground a split second later, snapping his head back and slamming it into the floor. Stars erupted in his vision, orbiting across the ceiling at a dizzying speed. The P90 landed with a dull thud on his chest.
"John!"
He heard Teyla’s voice floating distantly around him, but he couldn’t see beyond the flashes of white spots. He groaned in response, forcing air into lungs that had momentarily been stunned frozen.
"Oh, crap," Rodney’s voice muttered. If John wasn’t trying so hard to breathe, he might have been worried by the scientist’s tone.
"What?" Ronon was worried. John would let him handle it.
"He surprised me. I…I’m not sure, but I hit something over here…"
"You said don’t touch anything."
"I didn’t mean to!"
A humming sound was growing louder-loud enough that John was finally forced to acknowledge that it was coming from the building and not inside his head. The light above him was on as well. Strange. Rodney had said there was no power here. No power, no lights.
Teyla suddenly appeared, kneeling and peering down at him in concern. She glanced up at Rodney and Ronon, then the light overhead. It was green, a bright fluorescent green. A throbbing pain began pounding against the back of John’s head where he’d slammed it against the floor, and water was seeping into his pants and t-shirt. He should get up. It was a long walk home, and the thought of doing it soaking wet…he shivered.
"Something’s happening!" Rodney’s voice, loud, high-pitched, panicked, and echoing around the room. The light above John was flashing now. Or maybe that was just in his head. Whatever it was, the bright flares were burning painfully against his retinas. He closed his eyes with a moan, felt Teyla’s hand on his arm, then heard the rest of his teammates cry out in pain. Something hard landed across his chest in time with the thud of things falling to the floor around him.
He opened his eyes just as a blaze of green exploded out of the ceiling, bathing the entire room in its glow for a full second before disappearing with a snapping pop.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Carson snapped his gloves off and tossed them into the nearest bin, missing completely.
"And none of you lost consciousness?" he asked again. He walked across the room and swiped at the gloves, throwing them with force into the trash. When no one answered, he stood, facing Colonel Sheppard and his team.
They were staring at each other, looking a little confused and lost. Alarm bells rang in his head, but he pushed it back, forcing an expression of calm over his face. Ronon and Teyla both sat on a gurney, their legs swinging gently beneath them. Rodney was staring at the floor, looking like he was attempting to solve a complex math equation in his head. John lay on another gurney with his eyes closed, holding an icepack to the back of his head and hissing as Marie cleaned out the gash on his hand.
Rodney finally looked up and shrugged. "I ducked down when the lights started flashing, then it was dark-relatively speaking, anyway. Just the sunlight from the hole in the wall. Then… No, I’m pretty sure we weren’t unconscious."
He sounded far from sure about that. Carson scratched his chin, considering. He’d run scans on all of them as soon as they’d stumbled in, but so far, nothing out of the ordinary had turned up on the tests he’d run. "And you all saw this green light?"
"Kind of hard to miss," Rodney huffed. "It was this big, flashing bulb in the middle of the ceiling."
"No power, no light," John mumbled.
"There must have been some power," Rodney said.
"So you all ducked for cover, and then immediately came back here?"
"Colonel Sheppard’s hand was bleeding," Teyla explained. John scowled.
Carson had heard the story from each of them already, but he asked again, wanting to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.
"Pretty much," Ronon said with a shrug.
Rodney glanced around the room. "Where’s my stuff?"
Carson pointed to the table the team had dropped all of their equipment on as they’d entered. They hadn’t even stopped by the armory to unload their weapons, and given their current dazed looks, maybe it was better that they didn’t handle their weapons for the rest of the night.
"I’ll get someone to return your weapons to the armory," he called out.
Rodney waved a hand at him, going straight for his backpack and scanner. Ronon hopped off the table and headed for their equipment as well. Elise came in, holding an IV bag and stepping around Carson to head toward the colonel. Carson nodded absently at the nurse, wracking his brain for a reason to keep them all here. Something was wrong. He didn’t know what, but he knew this team-knew how they should be behaving. They were too…subdued, maybe, was the word he was looking for.
"Aw, Doc. No IV. I don’t need an IV," John griped, trying to sit up. He managed a few inches before he groaned and flopped back down, gripping the icepack tighter to his head.
"You lost a fair amount of blood from that cut," Carson said. "Not to mention you’re all dehydrated from walking through a hot jungle. I ought to put all of you on IVs and keep you for observation."
"I’m not staying," Ronon announced.
"Same," Rodney said next to him.
Teyla slid off the gurney. "Did you find something in the tests you ran?"
Carson sighed. He hadn’t found anything. He knew he was a little over-protective at times, and he wondered if he was reading too much into the situation. They had, after all, just trekked through a jungle for hours on end. Anyone would be tired and a little subdued after a day like that.
"The tests came back normal-" he started.
"Great, I’m starved. Let’s go," Rodney said, stepping toward the infirmary doors, Ronon right behind him.
"Sounds good," John said, and this time he managed to sit all the way up, pulling his injured hand away from Marie. The gash re-opened, and a fresh welling of blood dripped across his palm.
"Not you," Carson barked, pointing at the colonel. The others may have been fine, but John did have an injury. Two, in fact. He turned back to Ronon and Rodney. "The rest of you will go get something to eat, drink lots of fluids, and come back here in no less than two hours for another checkup before you go off to bed. Not to the lab, Rodney. Bed."
"Are you asking me out?" Rodney said, smirking. John snorted behind him, then hissed when Marie began working on his hand again.
"Ach, I don’t know why I put up with the lot of you. If you’re not back here in two hours, you will be my guest for 48 hours observation. In isolation."
Ronon and Rodney spun on their heels, darting out quickly. Teyla walked over to John’s bed, patting his leg. "Will you be alright, John?"
"I’ll live," he grumbled. He opened his eyes to smile at Teyla but caught sight of Marie prepping a syringe instead, a suture kit laid out on a small table next to him. He groaned, closing his eyes.
Teyla squeezed his shin in sympathy, then turned to Carson. "See you in two hours," she said before exiting the infirmary.
At least one of them listened to him. He shook his head, then stepped forward, pulling on a fresh pair of gloves. He peered down at the gash on John’s hand, grimacing at the ragged cut. "Looks like you’re going to need some stitches, Colonel. Let’s get you taken care of."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The pain in his hand was pissing him off, and the morning sunshine streaming through the windows was making his head pound.
"I’m fine, Doc," John snapped. "I want out."
Carson ignored him, studying the computer tablet. He was frowning slightly, but that could have more to do with John’s foul mood than whatever he was reading. He scratched his chin, then tapped the tablet, pulling up another screen.
John sighed loudly, curling his left hand into a fist and staring up at the ceiling. The other hand lay carefully on his lap, heavily bandaged and sore as hell. He was lashing out and acting like a petulant child, but knowing that and controlling it were two different things. He’d fallen asleep after they’d stitched his hand up and while they were bandaging it, and then they’d left him in the infirmary for the night. When he’d woken up again, sometime around 2am, the night-shift doctor had decided to keep him until morning.
Carson set the tablet down on the table next to the bed, then dug into his pocket for a thermometer.
John looked over at him with a grimace. "You just took my temperature. I am not running a fever."
The doctor smiled slightly, almost patronizingly, and held the thermometer up in his hand. "Marie took your temperature over an hour ago."
"They’ve taken my temperature fifteen times. How the hell am I supposed to sleep with people poking stuff in my ears all night? And you’re not exactly quiet around here."
"You have a deep cut in your hand, you spent an indeterminate amount of time laying in a puddle of mud, mold, and rotting plants-"
"Seconds, at the most."
"-and then you walked through a hot jungle before finally getting it cleaned and bandaged. The chances of you picking up an infection in the cut is fairly high, and I don’t want to take any chances on you catching something nasty."
Without waiting for a response from John, he stuck the thermometer in his ear, pinning his head to the pillow with his other hand. John clenched his jaw, waiting for the doctor to finish. He understood what he was saying, and he might have even agreed with him, if he’d gotten more than an hour’s sleep since 2 that morning.
"How’s the headache?"
"Gone."
Carson sighed. "John…"
"Fine," John huffed. "I have a headache, but if your staff knew how to whisper and walk without stomping and turn off these damn beeping machines, I probably wouldn’t have a headache at all because I would have gotten a full night’s rest. "
This prompted another exam of the bump on the back of his head and a penlight being flashed in his eyes. The result was the same as yesterday: no concussion, just a bruise. John could already feel that the swelling had gone down significantly.
In short, he was fine.
"Alright, Colonel. We’ll go ahead and get you released but you’re on light duty for a few more days until that hand heals a little more. No sparring, no running, no missions."
"Doc!"
"No arguments. I’ll prescribe something for the pain that you can take as needed and an antibiotic regimen to stem off any infection.
Being pissy wasn’t working. He took a deep breath, trying to get Carson to see reason. "Look, Carson. I understand you’re just trying to help, but I don’t have time to sit around on light duty. The Wraith have stepped up their activities all over this damn galaxy, and on top of that, we’ve got some rogue mercenary group wreaking havoc on our allies. I need to be out there doing something."
The Scotsman folded his arms, his face darkening, and John stifled a sigh. Apparently, trying to sound reasonable wasn’t the right tactic this morning.
"I am well aware of what is going on and what all of the gate teams are facing, Colonel. My staff has been working to the point of exhaustion trying to keep you all healthy."
John held up his hand. "Whoa, doc. I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t. I’m just…" He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep well last night, I have a headache, and my hand hurts like hell. I just want to go back to my quarters."
The tension in Carson’s shoulders visibly eased, and he nodded. "I understand. I’ll get your medication for you in a minute and then you’re free to go. But you’re still on light duty until further notice."
John forced a small smile, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He shouldn’t have expected anything less. They’d changed him into scrubs at some point the night before, while he’d still been asleep, and he glanced around the room looking for his clothes.
Carson seemed to read his mind. "Your clothes were taken down to Laundry and aren’t done yet. You’re welcome to wear the scrubs back to your room, but just make sure to bring them back."
"Got it." He moved to slide off the gurney.
"Not so fast," Carson interrupted. "I’m serious about taking it easy. Get some rest and let your hand heal, and maybe you can be back on full duty in a few days. Push yourself and let it get infected, and you could find yourself off your feet for weeks."
John rubbed his face, grumbling in reply. The doctor disappeared for a few minutes, long enough for John to slip into his boots. When he returned, he handed him two containers-the painkillers and antibiotics-with instructions on when and how often to take them, as well as several plastic bags to cover his hand when he showered.
John headed straight for his room, relishing the hot shower even though he had to leave his right hand hanging outside of the shower curtain. Shampooing one-handed was harder than he liked to admit, but soon he was clean, wearing his own clothes, and ironically not tired at all.
"Weir to Sheppard."
Saved by the bell. Kind of.
"Sheppard here," he answered promptly. "What’s up?"
"Are you free to meet right now?"
John was already walking across his room, tucking in his shirt. "On my way," he quipped. Light duty always included meetings, but this time he was glad for the distraction. He felt antsy, and he walked quickly through the halls, forcing scientists and soldiers alike to step out of his way as he moved.
"You look more tired today than you did yesterday," Elizabeth said, looking up from her computer. Her eyebrows rose in surprise and an expression of concern twisted the corners of her mouth.
"That’s because some churlish doctor decided to keep me all night in the infirmary, and it’s impossible to sleep in the infirmary."
The concern morphed into amusement. "Churlish?"
"Yes," John replied, folding his arms and settling into the chair across from her desk. "Churlish."
She leaned forward, seriousness crowding back into her expression. "There’s been another attack."
John sighed, fatigue suddenly seeping into him. "The mercenaries?"
"Looks like it." She handed him her computer tablet with the latest report. "Lorne’s team returned late last night. The villages around the gate had been razed, and the farm fields were still burning."
He scowled, glancing through the brief description on the screen in front of him. "We’re sure this wasn’t the Wraith?"
"No desiccated bodies. A number of villagers, killed by gunfire."
"Damn."
"I got the brief report from Rodney on your mission yesterday. No luck at the outpost, I take it?"
"Pavlov’s dogs," he muttered, skimming through Lorne’s report again.
"What?"
John waved his bandaged hand at her. "Never mind. The outpost was definitely Ancient, but most of the doors were sealed shut. There was no power to the place-"
Except for that flashing green light.
"-and the one room that was open was nothing but broken stuff and mold and jungle creep."
"Rodney wants to go back."
John raised his eyebrows.
"In a jumper, of course. He argued quite passionately that we couldn’t just give up on the place after one brief walk-through. It was definitely Ancient in origin, and there were sealed rooms that might contain something useful."
John leaned forward and pinched the bridge of his nose. His headache was coming back and his hand had never quite lost its throbbing ache, despite the painkillers he’d taken. He needed a nap.
"A jumper will never work-the jungle’s too thick."
"Should I put the outpost mission back on your team’s rotation then? When you’re back on full duty, of course."
"Short answer-yes. But I’m a little more concerned about these ongoing, mysterious non-Wraith attacks. Whoever these bastards are, they’re wreaking havoc and we’ve made no progress on finding out who they are or where they’re coming from."
"Alright, I’ll let Rodney know," Elizabeth answered. She eyed John a moment, then stood up. John followed suit immediately, handing her back her tablet. "Get some rest, John. You look exhausted."
He grunted in reply, too tired to respond.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
John crashed hard in his room. When he woke up, he blinked at the clock and saw that nearly four hours had passed. He stretched out stiff muscles, feeling the ache of having slept in the same position for too long. He stumbled out of bed, yelping when he used his injured hand to push himself to his feet, and padded to the bathroom.
When he emerged a moment later, he felt much more awake. He smiled at the sight of a food tray on the small table next to his bed and a handwritten note from Carson to eat everything and take his pills. John did so gladly, the gash in his hand throbbing.
He and Ronon had a standing reservation for Small Gym #4 every day from 1430 to 1530-whether they were there to use it or not-and he wondered if the big guy was working out on his own. It was just a few minutes before 1500 now. John slipped on a pair of running shoes and headed for the gym. He heard the clatter of sticks and grunts of exertion before he’d even opened the doors, and smiled at the sight of Teyla dancing across the gym, the sticks in her hand spinning like pinwheels as she advanced on Ronon.
John slipped along the wall to the bench on the far side, watching them fight. Teyla had worked Ronon into a corner, but John knew from experience how fast Ronon could move despite his size. He proved it again a second later when Teyla lunged with a swing that would have smacked across his back and dropped him to the floor. He ducked and rolled, coming up behind her and swinging his own bantos rods.
Bantos was an Athosian martial art, and Teyla an expert. It leveled the playing field against the bigger, stronger man. John watched her recover from her miss to counter the swing easily. They twisted and spun again, back across the floor. John grabbed Ronon’s canteen and took a swig of water, mesmerized by their movements. Some day, perhaps, he might be able to fight with the fluidity and grace that Teyla seemed to do unconsciously, but he was far from that moment now. He stared down at his bum hand, flexing his fingers and wincing when that pulled against the tender skin beneath the thick bandage.
He heard a grunt, then the thumping of a body hitting the mat. He glanced up to see Teyla twirling a stick in her hand and standing over a sprawled Ronon. They were both sweating and breathing hard, both grinning at the exertion and adrenaline of a full sparring match. After a second, Teyla relaxed and held a hand out to Ronon, pulling him up to his feet.
She turned to John, a smile splitting her face. "It is good to see you out of the infirmary," she said.
"Wasn’t supposed to stay there all night," he muttered.
She moved to the bench, grabbing a towel and wiping the sweat off her face. Ronon held out his hand for the water bottle, which John tossed awkwardly with his left hand.
"How is your hand?" Teyla asked, grabbing her own bottle.
"Sore. Not allowed to spar or run for a few days."
"It is good to let it heal."
John narrowed his eyes, suspicious. Had Carson called them up and told them to make sure he took it easy? He wouldn’t put it past the doctor. His intentions were good, but he tended to be a little overly cautious at times with his patients.
For good reason. John sighed at the thought. Carson was just doing his job, and he was damn good at it. He stifled the grumpiness he’d felt most of the day and smiled at Teyla.
"Yeah, it is," he said. "I’m on light duty for a few days, so no team missions for the rest of the week."
Ronon tossed the empty water bottle back toward John. "Let’s go again," he said to Teyla.
She shook her head, but she stood up anyway, swinging her sticks around and loosening up her shoulders. "You have already run to the north pier and back this morning. Are you sure?"
Ronon’s answering grin bordered on manic. John grinned in response, watching the two of them square off and cursing the sharp pain jabbing at his hand. Within seconds, the sticks were flying a hundred miles an hour again, the two fighters lunging, ducking, spinning, and jumping like it was a dance they’d choreographed down to tenths of a second.
Teyla was moving in on him again, but this time, Ronon flicked his sticks one direction, twisted in the opposite as he swept a leg out, and with a cry, popped up and lunged forward simultaneously. Teyla’s sticks flew through the air, clattering against the wall, while she stumbled backward and landed with a heavy whack. John had never seen that move. Neither, apparently, had Teyla.
"You have got to teach me that," he breathed, impressed.
Ronon shot him a grin, then extended a hand out to Teyla and pulled her to her feet.
"That was impressive," she agreed.
The two of them sat down, Teyla next to John and Ronon on the floor. They were both breathing heavily. Ronon took a long drink from his canteen then pinned John with a stare.
"What?" John finally asked.
"We going back to that outpost?"
"Eventually," he answered slowly. "Why?"
"McKay wants to go back. Told me to tell you we should go."
John smiled, imagining how the conversation must have gone. "And were you supposed to tell me the part about McKay trying to get you to talk me into this?"
Ronon didn’t answer. He took another long sip from his canteen, but his eyes glinted with amusement.
"Yeah, thought so." He held up his hand. "We can’t go till Beckett gives me the all clear, but I’ve already talked to Elizabeth about it."
Ronon nodded, then froze as a thought occurred to him. John could almost see it bursting from the man’s expression. "No power. No jumpers. I’m going to have to carry a generator when we go back, aren’t I?"
Teyla laughed, and John grinned, holding up his hand. "I think I’ll still be too injured for any such heavy lifting."
Ronon scowled and rolled onto his knees, popping up to his feet. Behind him, the door to the gym slid open, and a young woman in Athosian garb poked her head in.
"I apologize for the disruption," she said, her gaze landing on Teyla. "There is a situation regarding the new housing locations that requires your attention."
John glanced from the woman to Teyla. He’d almost forgotten about the small group of Athosians currently living on Atlantis, their homes washed out in a recent spring flood. They’d been working on relocating some of the tents and re-building the ones destroyed in the storm.
"What is wrong?" Teyla asked, straightening up.
"A disagreement over where the new homes should be placed."
Teyla’s face darkened. "Garrod?"
"Yes, and Resik. Both want their tents placed on a small hill overlooking the river. Your mediation would be greatly appreciated."
Teyla sighed. "Those two have bickered since the moment they learned to speak." She nodded her head. "Very well. I will join you in a moment."
"Thank you, Teyla," the woman said, relief visible on her face. She stepped back, letting the doors slide closed, and John heard her footsteps echoing down the hall.
"Everything okay?" he asked.
Teyla gathered up her bantos rods and stuffed them into her bag. "It is a minor quarrel, easily resolved," she said. "They are like two children, always fighting over what the other one has." She glanced up at Ronon, who was spinning the bantos rods in his hands and warming up to fight again. "I would say that I am sorry to cut our session short, but I am not sure that is the case after that last fight."
Ronon’s grin grew bigger, and John couldn’t help up smile in response. Speaking of kids. Ronon was as big a kid as any of them, when he stopped thinking about the Wraith and being a runner and the destruction of his world and people for a few minutes.
Ronon jabbed his sticks at John. "You can’t fight?"
The smile dropped into a disgruntled scowl. "No," he pouted. "Not yet."
"Think Sergeant Campbell’s got a training class starting in a few minutes. I’ll be over there if you need me."
"Don’t kill my Marines!" John called out as Ronon spun on his heel and jogged out of the small gym. "He has entirely too much energy today," he muttered.
Teyla threw her head back and laughed, a deep rich sound. She pulled John to his feet, patting him on his shoulder as they walked out of the gym.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Teyla stood from the table, stretching out her back. Garrod and Resik had bickered and nitpicked for the first hour, almost causing both her and Halling to throw their hands up in despair and let the pair fight it out. Eventually, she’d steered the conversation away from them and toward the other Athosians who’d lost their homes.
And then something miraculous happened. With the focus off of the two men and what they have or didn’t have, the conversation became productive. With a little prodding from Teyla, they were soon laying out the benefits and disadvantages of each place relative to the needs of each family. Hours later, Halling rolled his map of the area up with a smile as Garrod and Resik slapped each other’s backs, friends again until the next squabbling argument.
"That was well handled," Halling said, once the two men were gone.
Teyla finally let loose the deep sigh she had been holding back. "If they spent as much energy on community endeavors as they did arguing with each other, they would accomplish many great things."
"Our people are not yet prepared for such greatness," Halling said with a smirk.
Teyla laughed. "Perhaps you are right."
"It is their family tradition after all. I find it somewhat comforting."
"I had the same thought earlier," she agreed. "And we made much progress on repairing the damage of the flood and resettling our people."
"We did. I have spoken with the engineers here and they are eager to help us rebuild as well." He paused, glancing at her. "I have been meaning to ask you. How was your mission yesterday?"
Teyla shrugged. "Colonel Sheppard compared us to animals chasing their tails, which turned out to be an apt analogy. The weapon Doctor McKay hoped to find was either not there, or not immediately obvious."
"That is unfortunate."
"Yes, it is. We need to gain an edge against the Wraith, but I fear we cannot continue to pin such high hopes on anything the Ancestors left behind. So much time has passed…" Her voice trailed off as she thought of the sealed doors they’d passed. "Perhaps a second visit will be more successful."
Halling gestured toward the door, and the two of them stepped out of the common room and into the hall. "You are returning?"
"We were not there long before the colonel cut his hand and we were forced to return. There was no power in the facility either, so our ability to explore was limited. I believe we are planning to return as soon as John is back on full duty."
They walked slowly down the wide hall. People sat in chairs or stood in small groups chit-chatting and greeting each other as they might have had they been sitting at home in front of their tents or around fire pits, and Teyla reveled at the sight of her people so close to her. It had been a while since she’d spent any length of time with them, something she realized she should not put off.
"And what of the mercenary group attacking defenseless villages?"
Teyla shook her head, sighing. "We have learned very little. They are elusive, striking fast and leaving almost no sign of their identity or origin behind them."
A small baby squawked in a cradle, waving her fists as they passed, and Teyla paused to pick her up. The child was only a couple of months old, and the last few nights had been filled with her crying. The young couple and their baby had taken residence in the room right next to Teyla’s, and she’d been acutely aware of each time the child awakened.
Teyla grinned at the small baby, bouncing the child in her arms. She glanced up at Halling to see him smiling fondly at the two of them. "And how is Jinto these days?"
Halling rubbed a finger under the baby’s chin, eliciting a giggle. "Growing too fast, as usual," he replied. He straightened, patting Teyla on the shoulder. "I will talk to the engineers tonight about our plans."
"Thank you, Halling."
He waved again, disappearing down the far end of the hall. The child gave a whimpering cry, squirming in Teyla’s arms, and she began to rock her gently.
"And how are you this day, Ennaeya? You should be very tired, given how little you slept last night."
"Oh, Teyla, I did not mean to impose," a young woman called out, hurrying over to Teyla’s side and holding her arms out for the baby.
Teyla pressed her cheek against the side of the child’s head, inhaling the clean scent. "It is no bother at all." She kissed her lightly, then lifted the infant into her mother’s arms. The young woman beamed, a proud, first-time mother. "It is good to be around such a new life," Teyla said. "It is reminder of all the good in life we still enjoy, despite the struggles."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The mysterious mercenaries had attacked again. Not that any of them should be surprised by this anymore, but it was not exactly the way Rodney wanted to start off his day.
At least it wasn’t the Wraith, although these phantom warriors were proving to be as elusive and destructive as… Okay, he amended. Not as destructive as the Wraith, but if the Wraith only attacked two or three villages on a planet, then within each village, relative to that, they were equally…bad.
He groaned, shaking his head. He was over-thinking this too much.
"What I really don’t like," he snapped at a passing scientist, a nuclear engineer giving him a bug-eyed stare, "Whether it’s the Wraith attacking-because they always are-or the Genii wannabes of the week, is everyone on the base asking what happened to my ‘great weapon against the Wraith’ or my ‘great defense against everything.’ It’s not mine!"
The squirrelly man flinched, skittering to the other side of the hallway. He’d stopped walking as he’d shouted at him-What was his name again?-but he forced himself to start moving again toward his lab. The morning’s briefing had been long and torturous, and he’d couldn’t help but think of Sheppard’s analogy of the dog running in circles.
He was the dog, chasing after every little juicy tidbit some egotistical Ancient asshole had left in the database. It wasn’t just about weapons. There was so much in the database, so many advances that he could make, winning a dozen Nobel prizes in the process, if only he could think of the right keywords to search out the good information, extract the gems from the Ancient pile of Swiss-cheese shit that was the database.
He sighed, trudging through the hallway with a cup of coffee in one hand and his laptop in the other. It wasn’t quite that simple, but as an analogy, it was on par with Sheppard and his dogs.
"And to top it all off, I didn’t even get breakfast," he announced, walking into his lab. The woman at the computer right next to the door jumped, squealing a little in surprise.
Rodney breezed past her to the tables set up in the center of the room, plopping down across from Radek Zelenka. The woman near the door-apparently, it was Let’s forget everyone’s name today Day, because he couldn’t even come up with the first letter at the moment-was new and still adjusting to Rodney’s "management style." In fact, he was surprised she wasn’t crying. She seemed to do that a lot. Homesickness, probably.
Radek was glaring at him.
"What?" he asked, exasperated.
The Czech said nothing, but he glanced at the woman sitting near the door then pointedly looked at Rodney.
"I am tired and hungry and I haven’t had my coffee yet." And he couldn’t figure out what Radek was trying to tell him with a few blinks and an eyebrow wiggle.
"I saw you with two cups in the hallway this morning," Radek said.
"That was before the briefing. Any coffee consumed before a briefing is automatically neutralized by the endless dronings of bureaucrats-"
"Weir," Radek supplied.
"-pseudo-scientists-"
"Carson was there as well?"
"No, actually he wasn’t. By pseudo-scientists, I am referring to anyone in the," he raised his hands, curling his fingers into imaginary quotation marks, "life sciences. And let’s not forget all the soldier boys and girls."
"Colonel Sheppard."
Rodney sat down on at the table. "He wasn’t there either. Bastard. No one notices when he doesn’t show up, but I’m two minutes late and I have fifteen people calling me on the radio to find out why I’m not in the meeting."
Radek snorted and settled back to whatever the hell he was working on. Rodney flipped his laptop open and took a long swig from his coffee cup as his programs booted up. The first box showed his fruitless efforts to pull up anything more on the Great Weapon his team had failed to find the day before.
"Why are people always complaining to me about not finding what they need in the Ancient database? Do they think I wrote it all up and can find anything and everything at the drop of a hat? That I’m purposely being obtuse about a weapon that could destroy the Wraith because I like all of the attention?"
He downed the rest of his coffee and slammed the mug down on the table right as the woman who sat near door walked behind Zelenka. She jumped again, walking faster toward the far door leading into another wing of labs. Rodney felt a perverse pleasure in her reaction.
Bet she moved to a new lab by the end of the week.
"Can you stop with the talking and banging of cups? I am trying to work here."
Rodney narrowed his gaze. "Feel free to go somewhere else," he hissed. He glanced back at his screen, the cursor in the search box taunting him. They had to go back to that outpost, and yet when he’d said that in the meeting, everyone had looked at him like he was half out of his mind. Like he didn’t repeatedly save everyone’s collective asses on a near daily basis. Why were they still questioning him?
He looked up in time to see Radek rolling his eyes. "Have you looked over the last simulations? I think we are close to field testing these power upgrades."
"Yes, yes, yes. Pulling those up now."
They worked in silence for a moment as Rodney let his attention zero in on the simulation results. They looked good, and he was anxious to push this project forward. The Wraith and the mystery mercenaries could get in line behind the constant demands just living in Atlantis put on him. This particular project would increase their power by at least 30 percent, which they sorely needed, if everything ran according to plan.
Ha! Like anything ever ran according to plan.
"How was yesterday’s mission?" Radek asked, peering over the top of his screen. "Did you find anything?"
Rodney scowled, then remembered he hadn’t been in the meeting that morning. He unleashed again, ranting against the obscurity of the Ancients, the shoddy construction of their 10,000-year-old outposts, and their repeated tendency to leave dangerous equipment lying out in the open just waiting for him to set off. He was starting in on the theory that one of the Ancient assholes erased just enough of the database to send future generations to their deaths as some twisted joke when Radek held up his hand.
"Is Colonel Sheppard alright?"
Rodney’s rant sputtered to a stop. "What?"
"You said Colonel Sheppard was injured?"
"He’s fine," Rodney dismissed, but then it occurred to him that he hadn’t actually asked anyone. No one would be holding him up as the standard bearer for great friendship, but they knew that going in. Something clicked in his brain-was that the reason Elizabeth had turned down his request to return to the outpost immediately? He really should track Sheppard down. He’d tried to get Ronon on his side, promising him all of his dessert for the next month-like he was actually going to follow through on that one-if he convinced Sheppard to go back right away, but Sheppard would want to go back to the outpost anyway, just to make sure they hadn’t missed a possible weapon against the Wraith.
"That is good news."
"What is? We need to go back to the outpost, not sit here on our thumbs messing with these…," he waved at his computer, "mindless power upgrades."
Radek narrowed his eyes at him but didn’t respond to the jab at the power upgrades. It had been the Czech’s idea to begin with. He could finish it without Rodney’s help. As painful as it was to admit, Zelenka was no idiot.
"I wonder what the machine did, with the flashing green light?"
Rodney shrugged. "Disco ball gone wrong? I don’t know. Asshole Ancients with their stupid weapon references…"
"But there was no power."
"Not in the outpost, in general. There was a surge or something from that damn box. Now will you stop with the chattering? I’m trying to work here."
Radek sighed, scooting a little farther down the table, away from Rodney. "If only they had a machine that made you more pleasant. Perhaps quieter and less moody," he mumbled-almost inaudibly but not quite. Still loud enough for Rodney to hear.
Rodney grabbed his mug, stared at the coffee dregs at the bottom, then slammed it down on the table again, standing up.
"I need more coffee. Don’t slack off while I’m gone."
Onwards to Part 2