Title: Among the Honorable
Author: stella_pegasi
Rating: K+
Words: 2,869
Spoilers: None
Warnings: Mention of death (minors and adults) due to disaster. (Minor whump to main characters.)
Characters: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex, Teyla Emmagan, Carson Beckett, others, original characters.
Summary: Atlantis responds to a natural disaster off-world.
Disclaimer: I do not own them; I would have treated them better.
Notes: Written for SGA_Last Fiction Writer Standing (sga_lfws) warm-up round on LiveJounal
Was asked to write two stories of different genres and stories could or could not be related.
Prompt selected was "A man is known by the company he keeps."
Among the Honorable
"Any word back from the geologists as to how big this thing was? Sheppard was sitting in the conference room with Woolsey, Major Lorne and Captain Waters.
"No, Dr. Zelenka left a few minutes ago with a seismograph to at least measure the aftershocks. At this point all we know is that the initial quake devastated Balar City; reports coming in from the first teams we sent in are horrifying."
Sheppard slumped back in his chair; he was operating on about an hour's sleep and he was already exhausted. The mayor of Balar City contacted Atlantis at about 0230 hrs pleading for help. A large 'earthquake' had just struck the city and the devastation was widespread. They had immediately sent a medical team, a science team, two SO teams and a combat engineer unit to Balar City to assess the damage and the needs. Ronon had also gone with the first group; he felt he could be more help there than sitting around planning the rescue mission. Captain Isaacs, Dr. Zelenka, EMT Sergeant Jones, and Captain Harvick of the engineering unit had reported back and plans were now underway to get personnel to the city.
Sheppard rubbed his eyes and looked over at Woolsey who was going over the list of medical supplies that Dr. Keller had requested. "Did you reach the coalition council?"
A look of disgust passed across Woolsey's face but he quickly put on his diplomatic face, "I spoke to a 'representative' who told me he would let the council know about the quake and they would be in touch. That was three hours ago and I haven't heard anything."
"Yeah…we are sure to ...uh…get assistance from that group." Sheppard got up, walked over to the counter and poured himself another cup of coffee; he had lost count on how much coffee he already had.
"I wouldn't hold my breath, colonel, no matter how cooperative we are with them; many of the council still blame Atlantis for all the problems in Pegasus. Ah…Doctors, thanks for taking time to meet with us." Woolsey addressed Drs. Keller and Beckett as they entered the conference room.
Keller took a seat next to Sheppard and she didn't miss the colonel's exhaustion; it was evident from his pale skin and dark circles under his eyes. "Have you had any sleep, colonel?"
He looked at her with the famous 'Sheppard look' which he realized never worked with any of the doctors but he always tried. "I'm fine…peachy."
"Peachy? Not how I would describe that pallor, colonel; I believe you need to get some sleep before you gate to Balar City. Don't make me have to order you, colonel, too much of ordering you around will go to my head." Jennifer smiled modestly at the frowning colonel.
"Yeah, doc, like that hadn't happened already." Sheppard said, not completely sure he was kidding.
The group spent the next fifteen minutes finalizing the logistics of moving as many people and supplies to the planet and while keeping sufficient security on Atlantis. Keller reported that she would manage the patients on Atlantis while Dr. Beckett triaged patients on scene. Thirty minutes later, the Atlantis rescue team gated to the planet.
Balar City was the capital city of Panceras, a planet located in a remote area of Pegasus. As with all planets the Ancients had seeded, it was very earthlike and fairly advanced. Located so far away from the main concentration of Wraith, Panceras was spared from cullings since the reawakening of the Wraith. Their civilization had been allowed to evolve along its path without interruption for hundreds of years; a luxury not often found in the Pegasus galaxy.
Most of the city buildings, some ten stories tall, were made of stone or concrete. As the first jumper, piloted by Sheppard exited the gate, which stood on a hill above the city, the Atlantians had their first look at the devastation.
"Unbelievable, there's hardly a building standing. Radek, Burgess, and I were here about three months ago when they dedicated the new science department at the learning society. That was a new building and I don't see it now." Dr. Rodney McKay was sitting in the co-pilot's seat across from Sheppard leaning onto the cockpit dash to view the destruction.
Sheppard tapped the COM button on the jumper console to radio the other jumpers. "This is jumper one, I'm going to do a fly-over of the area; proceed to the landing zone and begin off-loading supplies." A chorus of 'yes, sirs and understood's' echoed from the speaker and the six jumpers that were accompanying them descended toward the city.
McKay was pointing out the window toward a huge chasm on the outskirts of the city. The ground had been split in two, a huge fissure that looked about a mile and a half long, varying in width leading from the base of a ridge through the edge of Balar City.
Sheppard banked the jumper around and descended to get a closer look at the fissure. Near the base of the mountain the opening in the surface was narrow, merely a crack where it first appeared but as it extended toward the city it began to get wider and deeper, then abruptly ended, about a quarter of a mile from the coastline.
"Rodney, I'm going to pass over the trench; watch the HUD for life signs. Everyone else see if you can spot any survivors." Sheppard eased the jumper into a lower altitude and made a slow pass over the area. There was a considerable amount of debris in the trench; as they approached what appeared to be a residential area, it looked like several houses had been sucked into the crack.
"There are life signs down there." McKay said excitedly.
Sheppard tapped the COM, "Lorne, on the west side of the city there is a huge fissure in the surface, several life signs, I repeat several life signs detected, sending coordinates. Get teams of engineers and Marines over here, ASAP; they will have to go by land." Sheppard turned the jumper toward the city center.
"Colonel, where are you going? We need to get down there." Beckett was agitated.
"Carson, there isn't anywhere to land and we don't have any digging equipment with us. Let's get to the staging area and we can start helping from there." Sheppard knew that wasn't going to satisfy Beckett but then, it didn't satisfy him either.
The staging area was chaotic but Sheppard recognized that it was organized chaos; two jumpers were alternately gating back to Atlantis to transport more personnel. As they exited the jumper, Sheppard saw several Athosians leaving the jumper that landed before them. They were carrying ropes, shovels, and axes and whatever else they thought would help to find survivors. Some of the younger Athosians were carrying out baskets of fruit, bread, and dried meat and headed toward the mess tent where several of the residents of the city were being fed.
Merdus Cambain, mayor of Balar City, spotted the new arrivals and headed straight for them. As he approached them, Rodney, Beckett, and Teyla left them to start helping with the rescue.
"Mr. Woolsey, Colonel Sheppard, how can we ever thank Atlantis for helping us. Your people were here within such a short time after my call; we have never been through anything like this before. We are most grateful."
"Mayor Cambain, we are more than happy to help; our planet has suffered devastating quakes, and unfortunately, we are quite familiar with search and rescue efforts. We are simply glad that we were here to help," Woolsey said.
Sheppard was anxious to get moving, "Gentlemen, if you will excuse me, I am going to go find my XO and see what our status is at the moment." Woolsey nodded and Sheppard headed toward the military command center.
The next seventy-two hours were filled with triumph and tragedy; there were miraculous rescues and devastating discoveries. Sheppard was taking a forced rest on a cot in the medical tent. Dr. Beckett had insisted, possibly because the colonel nearly passed out while he was getting an update on the injured.
Sheppard slept for almost four hours amid the chaos in the medical tent. When he woke up, he didn't try to move. He was stiff and sore from moving debris, his hands cut and bruised as was his leg from falling through a pile of wood into a room inside an apartment building. The only good thing about that was he fell in front of a frightened family of five who were huddled together in the only clear spot in the room.
He gazed about the medical tent and saw Atlantis personnel, Pancerans, a few Athosians, and people from other planets, all tending to patients under Beckett's watchful eye.
He thought back to the last three days and visions started flowing through his mind. Sergeant Johnston, the big Marine, carrying a tiny girl he had rescued. Bruised and bloody, she was laughing at the goofy faces the sergeant was making and clutching her pet, a little cat-like animal. Sheppard had found out later that Johnson, after rescuing the little girl and her parents, went back into dangerous rubble to rescue her pet.
Not all the memories were pleasant, he wouldn't soon forget the tears trailing down the faces of some of his most stalwart Marines when after six hours of furiously digging to get to the nursery in the medical center, they found only two of the eight infants and three of the five nurses alive. The Marines couldn't have reached the nursery any faster than they did but they were going to live with those images for a very long time.
Sheppard decided that he needed to get up and he had just managed to struggle upright when a Panceran ran into the tent yelling, "They are alive, please come help us, they are alive but I can't get to them." Sheppard jumped up and ran over to the disheveled, anxious man.
"Where are they?" The man pointed toward the east. Sheppard motioned for a group of Marines standing nearby to follow him and ran toward the rubble of what was the man's daughter's home. When they arrived, they found the small house had collapsed. Asking the distraught Panceran where the survivors were located, he directed them to the back corner.
Sheppard and the Marines began to pull and pry wood, stone and remnants of furniture and possessions away. They worked without stopping for nearly two hours, more and more volunteers coming to help them. Under all the debris there was a family of four who were alive; no survivors had been located in over eighteen hours and everyone was looking for a miracle. They cleared an opening large enough for someone to slip in and Sheppard dived in to the darkness.
Landing on his side on something hard, Sheppard winced from the pain, muttering, "Way to go, John." He heard a whimper and turned on his flashlight, discovering a small boy about eight years old, hiding under a table. Sheppard crawled over to him.
"Hey, how ya doing?" Sheppard reached out, lifting the boy's head to look at him.
Pale blue eyes looked into his green ones and the boy said, "Help them, I can't get them out." He pointed to his left.
Sheppard turned the light and could see a pile of debris with a very small gap that he thought he might be able to see through. He slid the couple of feet over to the debris wall; shining the light into the darkness, he could make out two shapes curled up together.
One of the shapes began to move and Sheppard heard a very faint voice, "Is someone…there? "Please…help…us."
"Hey, I'm here, I'm John, we'll get you out. First I want to get the boy out, then you, just hang in there."
"You have…to get our…little girl out; she is only two months old."
"She's with you?" Sheppard asked and the father answered yes. "OK, don't worry; we'll get you all out."
Sheppard yelled up at the others to lower a rope and small harness to him. As he strapped the young boy into the harness, he asked him his name and his sister's.
"I am Focan; my sister…is Vesele, get them out of there." His voice was hoarse.
Sheppard finished hooking him up and before he called for the Marines to pull the child up he put his hands on the boy's shoulders, "Focan, I will get your family out of here, I promise." Smiling, Sheppard told the Marine holding the rope to pull the boy up.
He then turned his attention to moving some of the debris blocking the other three victims. It was slow going; above him, the Marines had removed more debris providing him with more light as well as help. Ronon dropped down into the small area beside him.
"Hey, big guy; thanks, I could use the help." Ronon just patted him on the shoulder and started helping remove debris. They worked for another twenty minutes to get a large enough opening to pass the infant through.
"OK, we should be able to get the baby through here; can you hand her to me?" Sheppard waited and soon two tiny feet appeared in the opening. He slipped his hand under the baby and pulled her through. She wasn't crying after being jostled around and that concerned him.
"We have the baby; send down the rope and something to secure her in." He called up and heard Lorne answer that they were getting a basket ready to send down.
Ronon was continuing to dig out the debris so that they could get her parents out. As soon as the baby was safe, Sheppard turned to help Ronon and as he pulled a piece of debris away, the debris above them came crashing down.
"Lorne, what the hell just happened?" Rodney was standing at the edge of the now sunken debris.
"Doc, the roof caved in." Lorne turned to Captain Isaacs and yelled, "Get more people here now and find Dr. Beckett."
There was a small tunnel in the debris that appeared to reach almost to the level that John and Ronon were at. Before Lorne could stop him, McKay slid into the hole.
"McKay, come back here." Lorne was too late, McKay was out of sight.
As more help arrived, they began to remove debris from the area as quickly as they could. The debris that had fallen in on top of the colonel and Ronon was not as dense and they made quick work of getting the rubble out of the way. Lorne yelled for a spotlight on the area; the light revealed an area about ten feet below where McKay was trying to free Ronon's legs from underneath a large piece of wood.
"Get out of the way, major, I'm gonna go down there." Lorne turned to see Beckett about to descend into the opening.
"Wait, doc, let's get a rope around you, we'll lower you down."
Within minutes, Beckett was next to McKay helping to lift the wood from Ronon's legs. The Satendan managed to turn over, "Sheppard, he was right next to me."
Beckett and McKay began to dig to Ronon's left and soon uncovered Sheppard who was groggy but awake. Beckett yelled up for a harness to get Sheppard out but the colonel stopped him.
"No, no..." he struggled to stand, "can't go yet, promised Focan to get his parents out." Sheppard began to pull debris away from the area where the parents were trapped.
Beckett called out to the parents, "Can you hear us?" A faint yes drifted from behind the debris; Beckett said, "OK, let's get them out."
It took a while to move the debris enough to get to the parents but once they had an opening big enough, Ronon crawled in and pulled both the mother and father to safety.
Sheppard was sitting on a piece of concrete, an oxygen mask on his face, watching the others. Teyla was holding the infant, kneeling next to the girl's mother, smiling. Rodney, cut and bruised from diving into the debris to rescue them without a thought to his own safety, was sitting on the ground in front of him. Ronon was leaning on the crushed frame of a vehicle and Beckett was still tending to everyone's needs. He never worried about them being by his side when he needed them, they never let him down.
Focan spotted him and ran over, hugging him; he smiled at the colonel, "Thank you for saving them." The boy then ran back to his father who nodded his thanks.
Surrounded by Atlantis personnel and people from all over Pegasus who had gated to help, Sheppard reflected on the old adage that 'a man is known by the company he keeps.' The company he was keeping consisted of the most honorable people he had ever known. He wasn't certain if that made him honorable but it certainly made him a very lucky man.
The end…
Author's Notes: When I read one of the challenge prompts, "A man is known by the company he keeps.", I thought immediately of the wonderful and most honorable volunteers who recently came to the aid of the people of Haiti and Chile after the devastating earthquakes they suffered. I wanted to honor them for they make us more honorable by their deeds.