Hahaha - more epic crack from the depths of my troubled mind... Thanks for the reviews! :D
TUESDAY:
"Incoming wormhole!"
Elizabeth Weir raced across the balcony to the control centre, gripping the back of Peter Grodin's chair so tightly that her knuckles turned white. "IDC?" she asked with a frown.
The Englishman's eyes flitted across the display as he waited. "It's Lieutenant Ford," he announced after a terse moment. "But I don't understand – they only left an hour ago..."
"Lower the shield!" Weir barked, already halfway down the stairs. The worry was evident in her voice as she skidded to a halt just behind the armed marines who were on Gate duty. Knowing SGA-1 and their track record for coming back injured, she glanced over her shoulder to Peter. "Get Beckett and a med team in here."
Grodin nodded, already reaching up to his headset.
Two seconds later, SGA-1 came barrelling through the Gate, looking like they'd been running for their lives. "RAISE THE SHIELD!" Sheppard hollered, wheeling around and taking aim with his P-90.
Hearing the barely concealed undertone of blind panic in the normally level headed Air Force man's voice, Peter slammed his hand down onto the console before John had even finished his sentence. The iris gently hummed into life, its multi-coloured surface rippling as something collided with it. Everyone in the room unconsciously winced at the sound.
As soon as the Gate shut down, all four members of Atlantis' premiere away team sank to the floor with relief.
"Major?" Elizabeth asked, kneeling down next to the wild-haired soldier. "What happened?"
"We're not going back there," came the mutinous response from the John Sheppard shaped mud mound. "No way, no how, never in a million years."
"But I thought P6X-777 was meant to be uninhabited..."
"It's not!" Rodney shrieked, on the verge of complete hysteria. He flung out an arm, splattering mud on the floor. "It's not and we're not going back!"
"Easy, doc," Ford panted, resting a soothing hand on the Canadian's shoulder. "We're HOME now, okay? They can't get us here."
"Who can't get you?" asked Weir, who was becoming more alarmed by the minute. "What the hell happened?"
"We don't wanna talk about it," John replied quietly as he crawled across the now rather mucky Gate Room floor to check on McKay. "Let's just declare it a bust and move on."
"Tough," the expedition leader shot back, giving her Chief Military Officer a stern glare. "Protocol dictates that every off-world mission must be documented."
"You can take that protocol and stick it right up your..."
"John!" Teyla snapped from her position next to Aiden. "That is not a very nice way to talk to Dr Weir."
The pilot had the grace to look sheepish and nodded. "Sorry," he muttered. "It's just... Can we not talk about it here?"
Elizabeth studied SGA-1 closely. None of them appeared to be hurt (which was a miracle) but all of them were apprehensive and more than a little bit shaken by whatever had happened on the planet. They were also covered from head to toe in mud and debris, and each was soaked to the bone. Nodding, she relented. "Alright," she agreed, "you've got a point. Get yourselves checked out and meet me in the conference room in an hour."
Beckett burst through the doors with his med team. "Alright, who's hurt and how bad is it?" he asked, his eyes sweeping across the floor.
"We're all okay, doc," Sheppard said as he got to his feet. "Just a bit shaken is all."
"I'll be the judge of that," the Scotsman replied darkly before he whisked them all off for a thorough check up.
Forty five minutes later, SGA-1 were assembled in the conference room having been given the all clear by Carson. Well, he'd cleared them physically at least. He'd had to give John and Rodney some fairly strong sedatives to calm them down enough to be able to examine them without the hysterical yelling.
Elizabeth stared at her premiere away team, not sure whether to be worried, angry or deeply amused. Ford and Teyla both looked like they'd been dragged through a hedge backwards – the Athosian still had a variety of twigs and leaves stuck to her hair, none of which she appeared to be paying any attention to. Aiden, meanwhile, looked like he'd gone body boarding UNDERGROUND, what with all the mud and slime coating his uniform.
But it was John and Rodney that really caught her attention.
Having been given said tranquillizers by Beckett, they both looked for all the world like two very sleepy little boys. John had sunk down low in his chair and was glancing around the room owlishly, his hair sticking out at even crazier angles than normal thanks to the ridiculous amount of slime that he appeared to be coated in. Rodney, meanwhile, seemed to be almost nodding off in his chair. His encounter with Sheppard's alarm clock the day before had left him with two whopping black eyes which, combined with his sleepy demeanour and pilfered blanket, made him look like a raccoon trying to hibernate.
She cleared her throat, wincing guiltily when the boys jerked upright. "So," she began, not sure how to broach the subject, "who'd like to tell me just what the hell happened on P6X-777?"
SGA-1 exchanged dark glances.
"Lock it out of the Gate system," McKay muttered. "Mark it as a no go area, forget the damn place."
Elizabeth quirked up an eyebrow. "And why might that be, Rodney? I can't just delete a potential Alpha site just on your say so."
Ford gave a shudder. "Yes you can, Ma'am," he said in a strange voice. "It's no good as an Alpha site anyways."
Dr Weir resisted the urge to bang her head on the table. She instead looked to Teyla, hoping that the young woman might be the voice of reason. "Teyla?"
The Athosian scowled. "It is a most unpleasant world, Dr Weir," she stated calmly. "There are many... issues... with the planet."
"Such as?"
There was a rebellious silence. "Come on!" she snapped, banging her palm against the table and making Sheppard and McKay jump again. "I need details, people! What's wrong with P6X-777? Why are you two in such a mess?" she demanded, pointing at Ford and Teyla before rounding on John and Rodney. "And why did Carson have to sedate the pair of you?"
McKay shrank down so far in his seat that the only part of him visible was from the nose up. Ford and Teyla crossed their arms and glowered.
Trying hard not to start throwing things, Elizabeth looked to John hoping for some semblance of sanity from her Chief Military Officer.
"There were... creatures," the Air Force Man said, somewhat cryptically, after a brief pause. "And the weather is just... insane."
"What do you mean by that?" asked Weir, glad that she was finally getting somewhere but not liking what she was hearing.
"The climate of the planet is most peculiar," offered Teyla, wincing at the memory. "I have never seen anything like it before."
"Rodney? Care to explain?"
McKay stared at a spot on the table in front of him. "Well... when we arrived it was sunny and actually quite pleasant," he said in an eerily calm voice. "But after about ten minutes it wasn't so nice." He closed his eyes and a hand appeared from under the table and blanket to rub at his head. "There was some... rain..."
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. "And what's the matter with rain?" she asked.
"Dr Weir," Ford began, "this wasn't no ordinary rain. This was a... a torrent."
There was a sigh from John. "Basically, it went down like this," he said around a yawn so large that Elizabeth thought that his head might split in two. "Everything seemed perfectly nice and safe when we first stepped through the Gate. Like Rodney said, that lasted all of ten minutes. As for what happened next..." he trailed off, scratching his ear lethargically as he thought about the most succinct way of describing what happened, "let's just say that the heavens didn't just open, they exploded."
Finally, we're getting somewhere! Weir thought to herself. "So there was a storm?"
There were nods from the team. "It was unlike any kind of weather I have ever witnessed," the Athosian added after a moment. "And as such, the deluge that we found ourselves caught up in made the surrounding terrain rather unstable." She motioned between herself and Aiden.
"We, uh, that is to say, there may have been a slight... landslide," Ford said, wincing at the memory. "There was a lot of water," he added when he saw the incredulous look that the leader of Atlantis was giving him.
"I see," Elizabeth muttered darkly. "So you're saying that a bit of mud and water is reason enough to lock out the address from the database?"
"There was a bit of wind too," John said petulantly. "Quite a lot, actually."
I am NOT going to bang my head against the wall, Weir thought to herself. I'm NOT... Out loud, she said, "Quite a lot of wind? A bit breezy was it?!"
"What my team-mates are trying to say is that THE STORM was more of a... well, a hurricane," Rodney muttered, curling up in his blanket at the memory.
"You've got to be kidding me..."
"Nope, sorry 'Lizabeth," John said, grinning in a very drugged way. "It made the one we had here look like a day out at Disneyland."
"Ok, so it isn't exactly Club Med but..."
"You're forgetting the creatures, Elizabeth," Rodney cut in, waving a hand drunkenly. "You can't forget them." He shuddered slightly, gripping his blanket tighter. "I know I certainly won't for the foreseeable future."
"Ah yes," Weir replied. "The creatures. Let me guess – were they killer rabbits?" She realised that her sarcasm wasn't appreciated by the team when she was treated to several scathing glares and THE EYE from McKay. "Ok, that was uncalled for and I apologise," she said, backtracking, "but if I am going to declare the location off limits I need all the details."
Aiden stopped trying to pick the encrusted mud and gunk from his uniform and stared at her. "They kinda looked like... komodo dragons," he volunteered.
"Yeah, like the ugliest crocodiles you've ever seen," John added. "And about ten times as mean."
"They were very fast," Teyla said. "Much faster than your Earth versions."
"How do you know what crocodiles look like?" asked Elizabeth, momentarily distracted.
"Dr Grodin was kind enough to show me a nature documentary," the Athosian replied in a slightly insulted tone of voice. "I was curious to see what animals Earth has. And I can state with authority that the creatures we encountered were much faster and stronger than their Terran counterparts."
"Ok, so you also met some fast, angry, alien crocodiles. How big were they?"
John held his hands out wide. "Big," he said simply, stretching his arms out as far as they would go to try and demonstrate the size of the monsters he and his team had encountered. "Like, really big." He paused for a moment, looking at his still outstretched arms and shrugged. "I'm thinking maybe the size of a small pony at least."
"Dr Weir, these things were insane," Ford said, nodding at John's size description. "We didn't even do anything. They just took one look at us and that was it."
"I don't like them," Rodney said in a very small voice, "and they don't like us. Well, that is they probably like us as a meal but they aren't friendly. Did I mention that they had HUGE teeth? They did. They were really, really, really big. Probably snap you in two as soon as look at you. And they're mean. Did I mention that already? They're really, really mean. And fast, don't forget that. I've never seen a crocodile move that quick before. Seriously, they were like racehorses, the speed they were going. And they..."
"Easy, McKay," John said, patting his geek on the head gently to cut off the panicky babble. "They can't get you now, buddy."
Elizabeth was now somewhere beyond alarmed. "WHAT?!" she shrieked. "How many were there?!"
"Hundreds," Rodney said automatically.
"Three," Teyla corrected gently.
"Three?! For the love of..."
"YOU DIDN'T SEE THEM!" Ford yelled.
"Lieutenant..."
"Aiden is correct," the Athosian said. "You were not there. You did not see how they reacted."
"Are you seriously telling me that a bit of water and mud and wind and... and three alien crocodiles is your explanation as to why I have to lock out the address for P6X-777?"
"Tell you what, Liz, why don't you go there and see for yourself? Then you can come running back here screaming while we get to say 'told you so'," John snapped. "And don't come crying to us when you get eaten!"
Weir took a deep breath, trying to remind herself that the team were all in varying stages of shock. She wouldn't smack Sheppard for that remark. She knew he was THE DEFIANT ONE of the group and was probably just feeling overly protective thanks to whatever it was that they had encountered on the planet. "Okay," she conceded after several moments. "Okay, you win. P6X-777 is now officially on the list of banned planets. I'll get Peter to lock out the co-ordinates."
There was a visible ripple of relief from SGA-1.
"Now go and get some food and get cleaned up." She gave the assembled team another look before adding, "Perhaps not in that order though."
They trooped out of the room and towards hot water.
"Do you know, I'm convinced that this galaxy has something against us," Rodney said as he picked at the sandwich in front of him. SGA-1 had decided to get clean and warm up before attempting to go to the mess. They all reasoned that it would be safer that way – the last time anyone had gone in whilst being coated in mud/gunk/something unspeakable, the cooks had literally gone bananas.
It had taken three weeks to fix all the damage to the city and for those responsible to be released from the Infirmary.
"Seriously, when you look at it statistically it's amazing that we're still all here," the Canadian continued. He tore off a bit of the crust of his sandwich and fiddled with it.
"What d'ya mean, Rodney?" John asked, sipping gingerly at a cup of piping hot soup.
"I mean if you look at the number of times we've escaped certain death by the skin of our teeth against the number of missions that have been totally FUBAR, for want of a better expression, the figures make for interesting reading."
Ford raised an eyebrow. "Aw, doc, you say that as if all our missions go badly."
"You'd be surprised."
Sheppard frowned and looked closely at his geek. He knew that their latest mission had been a bit on the close side but surely not all of them were as bad as McKay made out? He said as much, and then added, "Didn't your mother ever teach you not to play with your food?"
"Sorry?"
The pilot motioned to the small pile of torn up bread that was now covering nearly half McKay's plate. "What did that sandwich ever do to you, buddy?"
Rodney gave a half smile and pushed his plate away. "Look guys, I'm being serious. Do you have any idea how many times we've been ambushed, shot at, kidnapped, nearly eaten by Wraith, trapped, encountered freakish weather, injured and so on and so forth?"
"I would imagine that it is quite a high number judging by how agitated you are by it," Teyla said, placing a calming hand on the scientist's back. "Really, Rodney, you should not make yourself distressed like this."
"I can't help it," McKay replied in a low voice. "I'm telling you, this galaxy has it in for us. It's like we're walking around with massive targets on our backs!"
John couldn't help but chuckle at that mental image. "McKay, it's not as if we're living in a damn HOTZONE or anything! We've just had a bit of bad luck of late is all. Things'll change, you'll see." He looked closely at his team-mates – Ford was practically asleep in his chair, while Teyla seemed to be somewhere beyond exhausted. Even Rodney looked tired which, given the man's unusual sleeping habits, was a rare thing indeed. If any of them were feeling as weary as he was, he imagined that they were about ready to drop.
"Bed," he announced abruptly. "Come on, kids."
Groaning, they all pushed themselves up from their seats. As they exited the mess hall, Teyla and Ford went left towards their respective quarters. There were mumbled 'good nights' as the two dragged their aching bodies in the direction of their beds.
John and Rodney went right.
As they shuffled along, Sheppard took a really good look at his friend. The physicist looked wrecked. When he bumped into the wall for the third time, the Air Force man decided to help him along a little. He clamped an arm around Rodney's shoulders and gently manoeuvred him away from any obstacles. "So, what are we gonna do tomorrow?" he asked conversationally. "You know," he expounded, seeing the confused look on McKay's face, "with our enforced down time courtesy of Beckett?"
Rodney shrugged slightly. "Dunno," he ground out around a huge yawn. "Thought I might find a couple of cool Ancient devices to sneakily test out." He looked over to Sheppard as an idea struck him. "Or maybe I might build a go-kart."
John stopped in his tracks, his jaw dropping. "A what?" he managed to ask after several attempts.
"A go-kart," McKay repeated slowly, staring at Sheppard as if he had just fallen to Earth from Mars. "You know, four wheels, an engine, built to race around at really, really, really fast speeds?"
"I know what a damn go-kart is, Rodney!"
"Then why are you staring at me as if I'd just told you the love of my life was a Wraith named Sue?"
The Major shuddered slightly at that particular mental image. "Because I never would have pegged you for a petrol head," he replied.
Rodney grinned. "Ah, you know so little about me, Major. I'll have you know that I can build just about any type of vehicle you could imagine. After all, I built a fully functioning lawn mower from scraps in my dad's garage when I was six so a go kart is literally child's play." He paused for a moment, thinking, before adding, "That statement doesn't include a Jumper, in case you were wondering. I can't build those... yet. "
John's face split into a grin that made him look like a ten year old. "Would you build me a go-kart?" he asked, trying hard not to start hopping up and down in his excitement.
"I don't see why not..."
"And then if you built another one, we could maybe have a race?"
Rodney started to grin too. "I think I can manage that," he announced.
"I'm thinking we should do that then set up an obstacle course in one of the abandoned labs or something."
The boys both laughed delightedly at that idea. "BEFORE I SLEEP, I'm gonna check how many damaged MALPs we have," Rodney said. "Just to make sure that there's enough parts for two karts. I don't want to get your hopes up and not be able to deliver."
John grimaced at that – he didn't want Rodney to stay up all night tinkering with the MALPs just to make a couple of go-karts. "Can you check from your room?"
McKay rolled his eyes. "Major, I'm not that tired nor have I lost all sense of logic. Of course that's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to drag myself all the way to the Jumper Bay tonight." He paused as another massive yawn overtook him. "I'm just gonna have a look at the reports and then go to bed."
They set off down the corridor again. When they reached Rodney's room, John followed his scientist in.
"What are you...?"
"I'm just gonna make sure that you do what you said, buddy," Sheppard replied casually. "You need to sleep. Those sedatives were pretty strong and if you fall asleep at your desk, you won't be in any state to tinker tomorrow, will you?"
"You're probably right," McKay conceded, booting up his laptop. "And your concern is touching – in a slightly disturbing way."
The pilot smiled. "Hey, I'm just doing this for my own personal gain," he said, although both men knew he didn't really mean it. "I want a go-kart and that's not gonna happen if you throw your back out."
The Canadian typed something on the keyboard and a series of reports flicked up on the screen. "We're in luck," he said after a few moments. "According to this, there are three unusable MALPs. Which means that we have more than enough parts for two go-karts along with spares for both."
John clapped him on the shoulder gently. "Great," he said, reaching over and shutting the laptop lid down. "Bed, now," he ordered gently.
Rodney didn't need much persuading and as soon as he was settled, John left him. As he climbed into his own bed, he groaned as the aches and pains began to catch up with him. Soon though, the sound of the ocean and the drugs in his system pulled him into a deep sleep.
Tee hee! Ah, the thought of John and Rodney racing around the corridors in Atlantis is just too good to pass up! Leave me some reviews and you might just get to see the results...
More soon!
