AN: I've had this on my computer for years and a scene in World War Z reminded me of this unfinished story. I'd thought I'd post it and see if there's enough interest out there for me to finish it.
Summery: Sheppard faces his worst nightmare.
The clowns? Oh, yeah, the clowns. We fight them too - entire armies, spilling out of Volkswagens. We do our best to fight them off, but they keep sending 'em in!
Season 2 — The Hive
Genres: General
Characters: Sheppard/McKay
Rating: T for violence
Setting: Post Season Five
Disclaimer: Contains recycled material.
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Two Clowns Short of a Three Ring Circus
by Fandomatic
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Chapter One
Dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved cotton shirt, John Sheppard paused expectantly, waiting for McKay to respond with more enthusiasm about the two football tickets in his hand. After saving Earth from a Wraith infestation, the Atlantis military commanding officer found himself in a unique position to cash in on earth's gratitude. With Atlantis docked on Earth and safely cloaked in San Francisco's harbor, he intended to catch up on leave time and enjoy some of the perks.
No, Dr. Rodney McKay wasn't paying attention to him again. He had that occupied look that said his brain was out to lunch, despite his repeated claims as the authoritative multi-tasking master. He tucked the tickets away. There was one sure way to ramp up the attention span and get the ball rolling. All he had to do was reach out and fondle a few pretties.
"Didn't I say no touching? What part did you not under—"
"It's just a ball, Rodney." Sheppard innocently smiled and tossed the metallic ball back and forth between his hands and wondered if Rodney would make the connection and remember.
McKay briefly came up to give him a scathing look and divided his attention between his screen and the ball slapping between Sheppard's palms. "'Just a ball' doesn't come close to describing that indescribable, incredibly complicated, ancient technology that you seem to have to juggle every time you come into my lab. You know, you're like a little kid — you have to grab everything." He settled his nose into the screen again.
"You don't know what it does," Sheppard smiled knowingly. "It looks like that training droid, you know, Luke Skywalker with the lightsaber." He held it out and buzzed Rodney's space. "Only less prickly."
"Well, if you get zapped, don't say I didn't warn you." Rodney tried to ignore the invasion.
"You've had it for years and it's never," the ball swooped, "done," and dived across the screen, "anything."
Annoyed that his concentration was broken, McKay swiped at the ball hovering around his ears. "Stop clowning around! Anyway, it's broken. I already tried turning it on … repeatedly."
The ball hesitated in mid-flight in front of McKay's eyes, which grew bigger when the ball started humming and his head snapped around.
"Oh, no no no no no! Don't even think it, Colonel."
The colonel grimaced and straightened with all the play sucked out of him. He tried to reverse the thrumming that he could feel building in the device. "You said it's broken." Did his voice sound a little weak?
"You didn't!"
"I can't control what I think, Rodney!" Sheppard looked at the activated ball like it was a grenade. "'Don't think about pink elephants' means everyone's thinking about pink elephants! So when you say don't think about it, I can't help but think it! But this is a first because it's never done that before!"
McKay scrambled out of his chair. "If you'd stop clowning around like a little kid all the time—"
"I wasn't…" Sheppard's jaw muscles jumped. "Okay, maybe a little clowning, but it won't turn off."
"Really? What'd you do? Here, give it—"
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Sometime later, three men watched the two figures on the screen freeze and exchange shocked looks as the ball's light grew in intensity between their locked fingers. A high-pitched, oscillating whine rose in tandem with the light.
Radek Zelenka looked up from the monitor that had briefly filled with a white glare and subsided to an empty room.
On the screen, the ball in question briefly hovered, the glowing light abruptly died and the ball dropped to the Atlantis lab floor with a hollow thunk, bounced and rolled under the table.
Zelenka soberly picked up a computer tablet that had leads attached to a now secured ancient ball inside a very solid, ballistic glass box and turned to the Atlantis commander and Colonel Caldwell who were standing in the same spot McKay and Sheppard had occupied earlier.
"And that is when Rodney and Col. Sheppard's life forms and subcutaneous transmitters disappeared off our scanners."
Caldwell glowered at the jailed ball, as if to blame it for his troubles. "We launched a full military sweep and came up with nothing," he confirmed soberly. "Sheppard and McKay are not on Earth."
Richard Woolsey's wrinkles deepened in the somber moment as the three silently observed the dead ancient ball that stubbornly refused to give up its secrets. "Well, what did you find out about the ancient device?" he prodded Zelenka.
Radek pushed his glasses up. He was not sure he could provide the hope they wanted. "Not much because the device remains dormant, but it also lost about half of its mass. There is a good chance the beam transported them … somewhere else. Hopefully with controls." Zelenka blinked nervously into the growing silence and added unnecessarily, "Meanwhile, they are … poof!"
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Sheppard and McKay rematerialized together in the same frozen pose with their fingers tangled around a much smaller version of the ancient ball. The lesser object slipped through their combined fingers and the artifact dropped toward the floor, where it also bounced with a solid sounding thud and rolled between their feet.
The noise was jarring, but the Wraith lab cluttered with Wraith tech was frightening.
"Oh, no," moaned McKay.
"Holy crap!" whispered Sheppard and felt his hair bristle as he groped for his non-existent sidearm. "And me without my panzer!"
"Oh, this is really, really, really, really, really bad." McKay's head jerked from horrifying sight to equally horrifying sight, confirming what Sheppard already processed — they were completely surrounded within horrifying Wraith walls.
The chamber they found themselves in was roughly round in shape with several tables scattered around the perimeter. Walls, black and covered in a leathery coating tougher than rhino hide, cast the rib-like structure in an ominous gloom, lending definition to the bones and sinuous character of a Wraith-grown space.
Searching for weapons, Sheppard's pockets were almost empty of anything useful. Besides a smartphone, tickets, wrist watch and a small knife, he only packed a wallet loaded for leave. He held up his extended pocket knife and grimaced.
"Oh, perfect!" McKay hissed. "You're really going to maim someone now!" And he dived for the ancient ball on the floor.
One look at Rodney's regulation blue uniform and John could see the doctor wasn't packing any weapons either. Sheppard darted toward the doorway and checked the exterior hall. "It's clear." The passageway was empty and the ship was eerily quiet. "For now."
"Oh, great! This is just impossible!" McKay held the ball that had shrunk to the size of a golf ball in one hand and examined its surface, turning it between his fingers. "I don't even have my computer tablet! We are so unprepared for this. And I need my computer because this ball is much smaller and totally different from the original, and not having my computer effectively reduces my ability to do anything — especially, because having it could mean the difference between us finding our way home or not finding our way home and being stuck here, wherever here is!"
"You mean Pegasus?"
"I'd assume so. The evidence is overwhelming."
The colonel was already back among the lab tables methodically searching the room. "Then help me look for a weapon."
"Like they'd conveniently leave a weapon lying around in here!"
"Rodney!"
The impatience in his tone with the scientist's pessimism must have worked because McKay halfheartedly started sifting through the odd piles of abandoned debris.
Col. Sheppard's careless rummaging sent a few long poles knocking against each other. He picked them up and swung experimentally. They shattered on impact into rotting toothpicks. Sheppard disgustedly crushed the stub into a fibrous handful and dusted it off on his jeans.
"Could you be any louder!" McKay hissed.
Sheppard's grip tightened on the knife. "There's nothing here."
McKay straightened with realization and started going through his jacket pockets. He pulled out an ancient scanner and dropped the ball inside the pocket. "Hello, hello." McKay's happy voice immediately drew Sheppard's eyes and Rodney held up the ancient scanner that glowed in his hand.
"Right." Sheppard nodded with relief and headed for the doorway again. "That's even better. You can lead from behind," and he held the extended pocket knife ready in front of him, trying not to feel seven kinds of foolish.
Dr. McKay concentrated on bringing up a floor plan, which Sheppard ogled over his shoulder. "Looks like a ship schematic."
"Uh huh," Rodney agreed. "Dart bay, that way," and he pointed to the left. "I think."
"Hostiles?"
"Getting there…" McKay frowned at the screen. "Hmm, that's strange."
"What?"
"Shhh!" Rodney glanced around the Wraith walls again, listening. "Do you hear that?"
"Hear what?!"
"Exactly. I don't hear anything and I'm not showing any Wraith on the scanner." McKay's fingers flew over the controls. "Oh no." He looked worried. "They're not hibernating … because this ship is dead! Dead in the water — or, rather, adrift in space."
"All right, that's not so bad," Col. Sheppard relaxed his grip on the pocket knife. "That's an entirely different problem."
"Not so bad?" Dr. McKay parroted in astonishment. "Right, as in, not so bad because guess who gets to fix this problem? Oh, it's me, isn't it? And me without my essential computer equipment, which is not here because it's in my lab where I'm supposed to be working! So excuse me for being just a bit overwhelmed by the fact that I've been reduced to the equivalent — and let me put it in terms you might understand — of a hockey player trying to play hockey without a stick! So while it may not be so 'bad' that I don't have to worry about becoming someone else's meal and getting the life sucked out of me while I'm fixing, yet again, one of your mistakes — which, I might add, is the problem — I'm definitely worried about getting our next meal and all the meals in between! This isn't exactly a Carnival Cruise."
"I'm sorry! Now, can we move on?" Sheppard pulled him into the hall. "There's got to be some power and systems running because we're not freezing or floating and you can still yell."
"Oh, you think power is going to solve all your problems? Well, think again, because it's hopeless! At this power-level reading, not much is working and even if I could fix the ship — which would be a miracle — without Teyla, there's no way to actually fly the ship! Which brings me back to the fixing part because if the ship were fixable, the Wraith could be — I don't know — out shopping for parts and could show up any minute now wondering why Goldilocks is under the hood with a pocket knife and a Wraith primer!" McKay stabbed at the scanner forcefully.
"Rodney, I was thinking of 'ET phone home.'" Sheppard pulled his smartphone from his pocket and waved it at him. "Let's start with that."
"Oh, and tell everyone we're in the neighborhood!" he griped, but he took the phone thoughtfully, glanced at the menu and snorted. "Of course, there's no bars in this neighborhood."
"Bad neighborhood," John agreed. "Which means patching it through the ship's subspace communications."
"With a smartphone?" McKay cried. "That's really going to work with Wraith tech! Why don't you just shoot me now — Oh, right! How forgetful of me," Rodney directed a scathing look in his direction. "You can't shoot me without a gun!"
"Rodney, it's possible, right?"
"Barely," Rodney muttered and scrolled through John's menu. "What? Guns and Glory? Really? How do you live with yourself?"
John protested, "I've got plenty of good apps on it."
"Speedometer? Trapster?"
John smiled. "I like to go really fast."
"Yeah, those are really going to make the ET phone home device sizzle." Rodney rolled his eyes. "I don't think you're going to get a speeding ticket in this derelict."
"First we contact Atlantis," John ignored him and doggedly ploughed on, "Then maybe find out where the hell we are and if they left any weapons or darts lying around. Then, if there's enough time, you can knock yourself out under the hood."
"Well, that sounds more like a scavenger hunt than a plan," Rodney grumped but he focused on the scanner and conceded, "Power is good. It's quite comfortable, actually. Seems a little bit warmer than the usual Wraith hive. Ah, here we go. Closest power control station is that way … maybe."
The Colonel knew why McKay threw in the qualifier. Wraith halls didn't follow the human convention of a grid pattern. The main corridors branched off like a vascular system into different feeders that served a section. And no two ships grew alike.
The power station Rodney wanted to access was fairly close to the outer bulkhead which proved even more troublesome since it became even more isolated by compartmentalized bulkheads the closer they came to the outer wall. It served hull integrity, but it made it even more difficult to get around.
When they finally found the chamber, Rodney made himself comfortable under the console where he cut out an opening and started working on bypassing the Wraith access gene with the ancient scanner and a few live wires. It took him over thirty minutes to find the right connections with the scanner and then manually bridge the connections with the wire.
"I don't have full access, but this should do. I have power diagnostics and subspace communications." Rodney rose from under the console with the scanner in hand and he tapped the controls. Interested, John joined him in front of the hologram screen where a diagram flickered and solidified into the usual Wraith waterfall display.
"Hmm," Rodney scrolled over the schematic which looked to Sheppard like a negative of some blood vessels until he realized the power lines defined the ghostly hallways. The red lines converged on two yellow dots, one of which moved when Rodney moved the ancient scanner. "We're on a cruiser class. Look here," he pointed, "This narrow cell is the shortcut we missed."
"That can't be a dart bay." John stabbed at the closest big chamber that was aft of their position without a hull nearby.
"Cargo, I think."
John's lips lifted in a barely contained sneer. "Great." They both knew what 'cargo' meant.
Rodney did something else and the map wavered and shrank in size. Blocks of gray obscured over a fourth of the ship and McKay blew out his cheeks. "Not much is working. Power grid is out in these sections and the bulkheads are closed. Looks like damage. I don't see a way to access the dart bay on our side, but see there?" He traced a route from the power station. "We'll have to cross through several sections to get to this service hanger. It's intact."
"Does it have a dart in it?"
McKay gave him an exasperated glare. "I don't know! Look, this is comparable to reading a Ouija board and about as accurate! All I can tell from here is that the power flow into it is miniscule, which is not a good sign."
"Okay, darts are iffy. That leaves us with communications. How long will it take you to install a galactic phone?"
"Look, let's be clear about this. There's no two-way communication involved here. It's more like a Bat signal — since that's all I'm going to get out of your smartphone with apps like Speedometer, Trapster, and Gymtechnik."
"Don't be so negative." Sheppard gestured helplessly at the phone. "Until you've tried Speedometer in a puddle jumper, you haven't lived." He crossed his arms and smirked.
Rodney brightened with envy. "Really? You didn't! You'd have to turn off the cloaking to get GPS tracking. That's..."
John smiled broadly and he supplied the word McKay didn't want to admit, "Cool?"
"I was going to say reckless."
"The cloaking just happened to fail, miserably." Sheppard couldn't repress his delight. "When we get back, you should check that out — with me — because it might fail again."
Rodney tried not to grin and failed. "Sounds fun — I mean, for scientific reasons, of course, you'd need me there to fix it."
"Speaking of fixing things, how long will it take you to get this galactic phone operational?"
"My Wraith's not that good. Maybe two," he shrugged, "or four hours." McKay turned the smart phone over in his hand thoughtfully. "Anyway, there's only enough power for a weak SOS. It'll take days to store up enough for something that Earth can detect from Pegasus. I'll probably have to modify the drive to divert enough power and there's no telling from here how badly it's damaged."
"Then I think we should split up. I want to check out that hanger and look for some weapons." He'd need something if the signal attracted bad guys.
"If you're going to leave, then leave me the knife." Rodney held out his hand and John looked at him like he'd grown two horns. "Oh, come on! I need it to cut through the wall and tap into the power!"
"Oh." John handed over his only weapon and thought it was just as well. He wasn't that good at opening doors. "Look, I'll be back before you're done here and we can go find the drive together. Just … stay out of trouble."
Rodney snorted as he crawled back under the console. "Right. I'm not the one that dropped the ball."
"Right," John muttered and set off down the hall toward the helm to access the central corridor.
With the cruiser schematics in mind, Sheppard took his time exploring the cruiser along the way to the service hanger. But as soon as he saw the mangled darts suspended from the rafters, he lost interest in the rest of the ship. There was room for six darts; however, only three of the bays were in use. The ships were in pieces and some of them were missing critical parts, like engines and wings and cockpits.
These craft looked like they'd been salvaged for parts from a battle — an epic battle that had left these craft torn apart and crushed like inconsequential insects. As he examined the damage, his respect for the weapon that brought the Wraith darts down grew to apt admiration, but his disappointment was bleak. Between them, there weren't even enough parts to complete half a dart.
Leaving the mystery of the darts' demise, Sheppard explored the rest of the hanger looking for anything useful. The hanger didn't contain much else other than three closed doors, but he didn't have a clue which doorway to attack. A work bench along the far end had the equivalent of a Wraith crowbar laying on it — which looked exactly like every other crowbar in the universe, so John collected it and went to work on door number three.
It took more than a few tries to get the door to short open and he was rewarded by a view of decaying hexagonal cells lining the chamber that dwarfed a small control station. Some of the cells still contained liquid and their hoses snaked to other cells containing a hybrid of dead biological and machined parts. The broken cells lay with their exposed machinery under a layer of dust. The intact cells concealed a hazy irregular shape behind their membranes. Even intact, the cells looked dead, like they'd been paused midway in some Frankenstein experiment, suspended in time.
John walked into the plant and decided the Wraith didn't store anything remotely useful to his immediate survival in a "hybrid plant," although the installation was something Rodney would love to explore. The thought brought his hand up to his ear, tapping the non-existent headgear to check in with McKay.
The automatic reflex reminded him that McKay was working under a handicap without his equipment. He juggled the crowbar to look at his watch and resolved to get back to Rodney. The weight of the tool wasn't the familiar bantos sticks, but it felt solid like his P-90.
As he worked his way back to the main corridor, the path was familiar and the tension eased in his shoulders when the corridors led where he expected. So when he heard the footsteps, his first reaction was that McKay must have finished early, but the multiple footfalls accompanying it put his feet in motion before his brain caught up.
Sheppard skidded around the forking hallway and ducked back into the shadows, flattening his body against the wall of the Wraith ship. He edged deeper into the darkness behind the hall ribs that supported the junction ceiling and hoped that his blue cotton shirt would blend in well enough under the dim lighting.
It was unexplainably odd that the civilian clothes felt more foreign in that moment than the Wraith walls protecting him. His grip tightened on the crowbar in his hands as the footfalls turned into four distinct gaits that marched in rhythm and steadily grew louder.
"Crap," he mouthed silently and gritted his teeth.
The scraping sound grew closer and louder and then the junction filled with colorful movement that shocked his eyes with dizzy patterns of confusion. He blinked and tried to absorb the flash of bright green fabric, purple Pokka dots, rainbow stripes and fuzzy orange halos that floated by. He stared with disbelieving eyes and tried to process the image and calm his racing heart as the footsteps receded. There had been a moment when he could have sworn there were fake flowers blooming out of a Wraith rifle.
"Wake up, John," he whispered and pinched his bicep which smarted. "Okay, that hurt." But he knew what he saw and what he saw came straight out of nightmares.
With a small shudder of apprehension, he peeked into the empty junction before he crept out and hid next to the corridor wall that echoed with footsteps. John snuck a look in and confirmed again that there were four clowns dragging two people as they marched in step down the Wraith corridor. They carried Wraith rifles over their shoulders with bizarre flower bouquets sprouting around the bulbous muzzles. The troupe mocked a minuteman march with plastic flowers quivering and flopping with every rhythmic step while they effortlessly pulled along their victims behind them with one hand. The strength it took to drag a human with one arm in the collar, half lifting the body off the floor, could only be done so easily by a Wraith.
"Well, that's different," he murmured softly and frowned in confusion after the disappearing clowns.
John Sheppard had never liked clowns. He found them plastic and as fake as their painted expressions. Such a face hid something from the rest of the world, something shameful, evil — even a bit unnerving. But he'd learned to suppress those instincts in civilized company. Suddenly, right there, he confirmed everything he'd always suspected about clowns. His eyes narrowed. If the Wraith were disguised as clowns, they were up to something extra special.
"I hate clowns," John snarled as he realized the clowns were headed straight toward Rodney.
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