There were a few unspoken but generally understood rules associated with Telford's visits to Destiny via the communication stones. First, nobody should remind Telford that Eli had hundreds of hours' worth of potential blackmail material - otherwise known as "documentary footage" - stored in Destiny's system and backed up on his laptop. There was no telling what scandals Telford could unleash back on Earth armed with information gleaned from even a small sampling of those kino recordings. Second, it was probably better not to mention the fact that the new medicinal herbs currently flourishing in the hydroponics lab, in additional to their usefulness as painkillers and muscle relaxants, produced an extremely pleasant state of euphoria when ingested or smoked. And it was definitely not necessary to inform him that a contingent of the science team had selflessly volunteered as human subjects to study the effects of the aforementioned herbs. Extensively. For science.

Perhaps most importantly of all, Greer, whether on or off duty, was to stay away from Telford unless Young was present to act as a buffer. Preferably, Greer and Telford would never come into contact at all. In fact, if an excuse had to be made to send Greer out onto the hull in a space suit for the duration of Telford's visit, that could and should be arranged.

In Greer's defense, he had done nothing new to provoke Telford since his first offense on Icarus Base. But the three years out of contact with Destiny's crew had not done anything to soften Telford's temperament or blur his memory of old grudges. If anything, in the months since Destiny's crew had awakened from stasis, Telford had managed to make more of a nuisance of himself than ever. From Greer's perspective, it seemed like Telford had given up any pretext of friendship with Young, and that he regarded Rush's every word and move with a degree of suspicion that went beyond even what Greer considered appropriate. As for the man's feelings about Greer, those were uncomplicated and obvious to anyone. Telford hated him, and Greer returned that sentiment in fucking spades.

So when Telford marched into the mess, wearing Young's body, accompanied by Rush's body with someone who certainly wasn't Rush in it, and Greer had not been told to clear out, he knew this was not something that had been run past the Colonel first.

Now, Greer didn't know what the hell Telford's problem was, other than the all too obvious fact that he was a dick. That was okay. He didn't need to know the ins and outs of it - that sort of thing was for Camile and her kind to figure out. All he needed to know was that the man was an enemy, and that it fell to Greer to protect the Colonel and by extension the rest of the ship from his inevitable machinations.

He put down the spoonful of mashed bitter-potato to free his hands, shifted his weight forwards, hoped the motion would be covered by the fact that everyone else in the room had also stopped, looked up.

Everyone knew Telford was trouble, but the top brass kept sending him anyway. All by themselves the fingers of his right hand curled into a fist. And Scott took him by the wrist and pulled. "Stand down, Sergeant."

"You know about this?" Greer asked, just in case it was legit after all. But the LT looked a little queasy himself. It was no surprise when he shook his head and the same certainty that nothing good was happening colored the wariness in his eyes.

"You let me deal with it. That's an order."

Pft. Right. But keeping a low profile until he found out what exactly was going down might work out best. He picked up his spoon again as Scott turned to Telford.

"Sir? Is there a problem?"

"No problem," Telford's smarmy smile looked even worse on Young's face than it did on his own. "Doctor Rush has been removed from the Icarus project and replaced with Doctor Rodney McKay, of whose outstanding work in the Pegasus Galaxy I'm sure you've all heard."

Oh. Oh well damn. Sliding along the bench to put himself in deeper shadow, choking down a cold splash of discomfort, Greer took a closer look at the person behind Telford. You'd asked him before this, he'd have said it would be satisfying to see Rush carry himself like the geek he was instead of the hard man he wanted to be. But there was something kind of pathetic about looking at the little guy now and seeing the nervous, open eagerness to be praised, the defensive twitches of a professional victim.

Rush was a wolf in ram's clothing, but this guy, this guy just looked like a particularly self-satisfied sheep. He gave an awkward wave of acknowledgement and then ducked out of the room. Embarrassed to be looked at? Or up to something?

"Did Colonel Young agree to that?" said Scott, asking the right questions in the right disbelieving tone of voice. Maybe he'd make something of that boy one day after all.

Telford shook his head, with a condescending blend of pity and contempt.. "The longer this goes on, the more you people forget you're in the Air Force at all. Colonel Young's agreement is immaterial…"

Which meant that Colonel Young had not agreed.

"And Colonel Young himself is being retained on Earth for the foreseeable future while an investigation into Rush's probity is carried out."

You see, he'd hoped he was wrong. Greer slid off the end of the bench and into the unlit patch where the moulding of the door blocked the dim floor lights. But he never was. And while he wouldn't want to wish away the Colonel's tendency to excessive forgiveness - he'd profited from it himself, after all - it certainly kept Greer busy. Someone had to step in and deal with the people on whom it was wasted, and Greer was not ashamed to be very good at that.

"So you're..?" Scott was keeping Telford's attention. Good man.

"I am in charge now, Lieutenant. I want you to set up a briefing in the gate room. Everyone on board to be there. I'll address them in half an hour."

I don't think so. Greer waited until Telford stepped forward, closing the distance between himself and Scott for emphasis, and then he slipped around the pillar of the door and was out in the corridor, heading for the stones room, before Telford got it into his head again to sling him back in his cell.

"You can't do that!"

Eli's voice reached him as he rounded the corner outside the stones room. The kid sounded scared and indignant the way he did when some serious shit was going down. Greer put on a burst of speed, skidded around the doorway and into the room. Found McKay there, bending over a laptop that was plugged into the stones console, and damn if that prissy look wasn't the worst thing Greer had ever seen on Rush's face.

He drew up by Eli's side, weight on the balls of his feet, not stopped, just paused. "What is he up to with that thing?"

Eli flashed him a 'thank God you're here' look. "He says he has orders to alter the stones protocol so the connection can't be broken. But I don't think that's what's happening. I don't even know what he's doing."

"That's because you are a badly educated loser who wasted his life on games, while I am a genius who has been studying Ancient technology for a considerable number of years-"

Eli jutted his jaw and narrowed his eyes, but he spoke to Greer rather than to McKay, like he'd given up on making the other man see reason. "He can't know what he's doing because there isn't a manual. It's all guesswork. Nobody knows for sure, certainly not enough to be fiddling around experimenting with them while a connection is in place. You remember Ginn and Amanda Perry being stuck in these things for weeks after their bodies were dead? Did anyone know that could happen, I don't think so!"

Greer remembered that just fine. Truth was the stones had always given him the creeps, and if Eli said McKay didn't know what he was doing, then McKay did not know what he was doing. He drew his gun and took aim at Rush/McKay's shoulder. "You stop whatever it is right now and back away. Stop it now, you hear me?"

"It's fine," McKay spread Rush's hands in a placatory gesture. "Look, I don't particularly want to do this either, but that's what I've been ordered to do. So…" He retreated as Greer advanced, his eyes fixed on the gun, his expression an unlikeable mix of fear and high-minded contempt, as though a threat to his life counted as a moral failing. Like he was disappointed by it. "Don't take it out on me. Because I'm just… I really see what Telford meant about a hostile working environment, now. I must say he rather understated the severity of the situation."

Greer took in the set up of computers around the stones console - a bunch of different colored wavy lines. Lots of math scrolling up the screen. It didn't mean jack to him. But there was an easy-enough way out. Get Young back, let him sort it.

He pulled his sleeve down over his fingers, reached out-

"No, don't do that-" McKay held out a warning hand, and curiously, behind him, Eli covered his mouth with alarm.

Greer pulled the first stone off the plate and tucked it back in its foam recess. Pulled the second.

"Oh, no, no, no," moaned Eli, lurching forward to check the monitors. "He was right in the middle of something. We don't know what kind of effect-"

McKay froze. Rush's eyes closed in the long blink of a change of consciousness as the way he held his body slowly shifted, gaining an impression of heaviness, gravitas. His shoulders slumped as though under a weight.

"Oh," Eli looked up from the computer screen with an exhalation of relief. "Oh, maybe we're all right after all. According to this, they're both back."

Which showed you what you got for relying on technology too much. Because Greer - Greer would have recognized that slouch anywhere. Well shit.

"Doctor Rush?" Eli asked, when Rush did not immediately spring like a jumping jack into action and blame.

Rush opened his eyes slowly, his face very still. He looked at his hands, turning them over as though he had never seen them before. Then he reached up to lay his right palm over the scruff of his beard.

"No," he said carefully, with the faintest intonation of humor. "It's Young. Sergeant, what the hell is going on?"