Chapter Three
The moonless sky is bright nonetheless. Refineries process the spoils of war, and their collective light reflects off low-hanging rain clouds that refuse to relinquish their payload. The wooded area scales one mountain and then another and the two travelers make their way through, stumbling over fallen trees and scrub.
"It's not like you think, Colonel," Carson begins.
"I really don't want to talk about it," Sheppard replies.
"At least I was trying to save lives." He can't help but feel sickened when he remembers the slow, persistent bootfalls, a pause, a shot, and the bootfalls continuing. He walks on ahead of John for a few yards before realizing that the colonel has stopped.
He turns to see John standing there, hands folded over the rifle he carries. His downcast eyes reveal nothing.
"There were a dozen of us carrying out the operation. What did you see me do?" John asks, still not looking up.
Carson considers this for a minute. "I saw you…" and then he's not certain what he saw. "I saw someone shooting wounded men lying in their sickbeds."
"That wasn't my question."
"I don't need your bloody questions, Colonel. You bombed a hospital, murdered helpless patients…"
"Don't talk to me about murderers, Carson. Who started this war? Who invaded a peaceful nation? Who destroyed an entire civilization?"
"I repeat, Colonel. I was trying to save lives, not shoot bedridden…half of them were just lads."
It is chilly in the night. The clammy air has seeped into Carson's bones, made him feel old and delicate. He walks on, ahead of John, trusting that he hasn't gone too far. The technology sector is not a long distance, especially if they travel a direct route over the mountains. They will make it by morning, if they make it at all.
The concussion Carson suffered earlier is still with him. He has moments when he's literally walking in his sleep, and his stomach roils at the same time that it asks to be filled. From time to time, he hears Sheppard breathing behind him.
When Carson pauses for a moment, the Colonel passes the physician and walks on.
"Colonel?" Carson asks. The other man says nothing.
For a while they walk in silence, places switched, separate. Then John stops all of a sudden. He turns to face Carson.
"Do you think I would do that?"
Beckett stands quietly. He doesn't know what to say.
John asks, with more insistence, "Did you see me do that?"
It's not a statement or a question; it sounds more like a plea.
Carson straddles the indistinct area between skepticism and concern. "You don't remember?"
John looks up, as if answers were floating in the sky. "Sometimes I'm confused."
Beckett's torn between what he wants to believe and what he doesn't. He saw men shooting but, when he takes a moment to pull it all to mind, he realizes that he viewed the event from behind a blinding veil of fear. Perhaps Carson watched John and others go from bed to bed taking the lives of helpless patients, or perhaps he never saw John raise his weapon until the Colonel heaved back and knocked him senseless. Doubt has its benefits.
"I'd think you'd remember a thing like that, confused or not, Colonel."
Sheppard looks at him but says nothing.
Finally, Carson says, "No, John." He uses his first name. "I didn't see you shoot anyone."
"I didn't shoot you, either."
"Aye."
They walk on, more or less side by side. The skies clear in the night, but the moon has already set and soon a hint of blue appears on the horizon. Just as the sun is about to emerge, the two stop to rest at the crest of the lowest mountain in the range, the last barrier between them and the technology sector, between them and Rodney.
They see the large, bubble-tent buildings strung out over a broad, verdant valley amid a small ramshackle town. Morning crews make their way to the area, their vehicles tiny from this distance. In a couple of hours, John and Carson will be close enough to consider rescuing Rodney and getting to the gate. In a couple of hours, they will have to see eye to eye to make this happen.
Nothing stands between Carson Beckett and his conscience. He knows that some of the people he saved eagerly plundered Iban, took what they could carry. Some of them stormed private homes, stood the mothers and fathers and children living there up against thick plaster walls and shot them all to death. Then, as if they had not done enough, the Berlish, liberators of the oppressed Ibani people, carried off household goods and jewelry, and sometimes pulled wedding rings off lifeless hands.
Carson knows that he saved the lives of people who did these sorts of things. Were it not for the guns, real and figurative, held against his head…
"There's always root."
Now that he knows that Rodney is alive, now that he and the Colonel are together and off to rescue one of their own, Carson almost forgives himself. He's tended criminals and good people in two different galaxies, didn't pass judgment on any of them and knows that heaven or hell waits him for that.
In the past day, Carson has been forced to work for the Berlish, and then was highjacked by John Sheppard to an Ibani outpost. Now they have returned to Berlish territory to regain McKay and escape via the gate, which stands not far from the technology sector itself. Sometimes Carson forgets which side he is on in every sense of the word. Everybody seems equally insane and without principles.
They hatch their plan during the daylight, holding out in the woods, eating rema berries and bafin fungus, which tastes a lot like morels back on Earth.
That night, the plan takes on substance. Sheppard and Beckett leave their hiding place and begin their final task before heading for the gate.
OoOoO
John has found a Berlish uniform hung on a wash line. He looks like a regular soldier. Carson has kept on his own uniform, which is dark blue. His profession is recognizable by the badge he wears: a warped caduceus with a heart superimposed over the silhouette of a rifle. They do not hide when they come down to the valley because they look like people who belong there: A Berlish doctor and soldier.
"What was McKay working on?" John peers into army housing and lab buildings, looking for McKay or some sign that he lives there.
"He didn't say. He came in from the front lines with a fractured collarbone and hypoglycemia."
"Front lines. Rodney? That must have been a sight."
Sheppard's brittle chuckle keeps Carson winding in and out of thinking that Sheppard's on the level. They have been in desperate situations together, but nothing quite like this. Until today, the doctor's always trusted John.
Carson says, "He told me he wasn't doing much good in the labs."
From a distance they hear someone speaking quickly with a slight coloration of whining in his voice. A man in a white lab coat stands before a Berlish soldier. The man holds his left arm in a self-splint and Carson doesn't need to see his driver's license to know who it is.
"I'm not asking you to build a space station. I'm asking you to move some equipment for me!"
"Do it yourself," the soldier says.
"Hello? Injured, here!" McKay indicates his arm.
The soldier shrugs. McKay gives the sigh of the ages and retreats into the bubble tent where he has obviously been working.
"Found our man. That was easy," the Colonel says, almost to himself. He eyes Beckett and the badge on his uniform shirt.
They walk together to McKay's tent. The lazy soldier squats by the doorway, eating a candy bar. He stands when Beckett and Sheppard approach, and places his hand on the firing mechanism of his own weapon when he notices the Colonel carrying a rifle of his own.
"It's safe," says Carson. "I'm a doctor. This is my private bodyguard. I've come to examine Dr. McKay's shoulder." He hands his identification to the soldier. They are allowed to pass.
The Lanteans enter the bubble tent, which on the inside looks even more massive than it does from without. Electronic equipment and lab tables fill the entire space, which is easily as large as Carson's field hospital. The Berlish are as advanced scientifically as people on Earth, so everything looks strange and familiar at the same time.
"Whatcha doin', McKay?" Sheppard calls to the physicist, who drops the box he is struggling to lift with one arm.
"Oh!" Rodney looks up in surprise but doesn't move, as if he's been caught in a lie. He breaks into a smile. "You're here, alive!" And his shoulders relax as if they've been tensed unendingly since the moment they were all taken. McKay approaches Sheppard in the familiar way he always has.
Sheppard stiffens and backs away. "I asked what you were working on," he says. "Don't you want to tell me?"
McKay tenses up, again. He fidgets and clears his throat. "T-top secret. Utterly classified." He gives a lopsided grin. "I'd tell you but then I'd have to kill you."
"There's root, McKay. You could always kill yourself," Sheppard says.
The hair on the back of Carson's neck feels as if it's standing up. "Colonel…" he says. "What are ye on about? This is a rescue, right?"
"Stay out of this Carson," Sheppard warns. He turns to McKay, again. "You're working on the sound, aren't you?"
McKay's eyes widen but he says nothing, as John approaches with the rifle held a little higher, a little more dangerously, which gives Carson a little more of a kick in the gut. Carson follows the Colonel, feeling the adrenalin pour into his system.
McKay's eyes shift around. "No, I'm not. Sound? What sound?" He is so bad at this.
"Don't lie to me, Rodney. You think I'm stupid?"
"N-no, of course not."
"What sound is this, Colonel?" Carson is immediately beside Sheppard. He notices John's body language, the tenseness, aggression, even.
John continues, his fury unabated. "Tell him, McKay. Tell Beckett all about it. I'm sure it'll interest him."
McKay looks over at Carson, his eyes pleading like those of the helpless soldiers in the army hospital, the soldiers who were murdered in their sickbeds.
Carson blinks the image away. He says, "Colonel…" to bring his friend back.
"Tell him, McKay!"
The physicist raises his hands. Rodney was once shot by Sheppard. Carson didn't witness it, but he remembers the aftermath very, very well.
"Colonel," Carson repeats. "Please put down the gun."
"McKay!" There's no getting through to Sheppard, as he aims his rifle at McKay's head and holds it there.
McKay flinches. "It wasn't my idea!" he shouts. "They forced me to!"
"Rodney, what are you talking about?"
"They told us—there was a team working on it—they told us what they wanted was a sound that could kill someone from a distance. So I…I did what they told me to do. And it's designed to kill more than just people. It's supposed to kill humans, animals, plants, everything!"
The bubble tent is silent but for McKay's panting breaths. Sheppard doesn't seem to be breathing at all, as he holds the rifle, taking dead aim at his good friend. Carson hears the blood rushing through his own veins, feels his pulse pounding behind his eyes.
He leaves Sheppard's side and walks to McKay, whose arms are still raised, even though one of his collarbones is broken. He takes McKay's left arm and holds it gently and places it against McKay's chest.
"You developed this…this sound?" Carson asks.
McKay shakes his head. "I didn't do much at all. I did so little they sent me to the front instead." He stares at Sheppard as he says this. "And that's the truth, Colonel."
John is silent, but he lowers the gun and rubs a hand over his face.
"I'm overheated," Rodney says, his eyes never leaving Sheppard. "Help me with my coat."
Without even thinking about it, Carson stands in front of Rodney, unbuttons the coat and carefully removes it.
"Sheppard's going to kill me!" Rodney whispers.
Carson looks back. Sheppard seems a bit more composed, a little less murderous.
Rodney winces when he moves his left arm, so Carson places it against his chest to hold it steady.
"You need a sling and a swath," he says, trying to be a doctor, again, instead of a mediator.
"Later," McKay replies, as he slowly moves his right hand down and around and over into the small of his back. He's been watching Sheppard steadily, but now looks at Carson. Despite having known Rodney for years, Carson has never seen this expression before and it freezes the blood in his veins.
"It won't hurt," McKay says, conspiratorially.
Carson notices the pistol drawn from the waist of McKay's pants for the thinnest sliver of time before he realizes exactly what McKay intends to do with it.
"No, Rodney!" the doctor shouts, moving to push the weapon up and out of the way.
"God damn it, Carson! Move!" the colonel bellows from behind him.
Carson isn't big or strong or anything like that. He hasn't got big muscles but he does have will, the will to live and the will to set things right. McKay's injury puts the physicist off balance and he teeters on the cusp of falling. Beckett puts some shoulder into it and shoves him sideways, as Sheppard's roar to get out of the way rolls right past him. With one useless arm and the pistol in his hand, Rodney has no way to grab anything to stop himself. He falls to the floor roughly and the weapon he's holding goes off with a surprisingly quiet sputter, as a blue-green light erupts from the muzzle.
It's not a bullet gun. McKay's got something else, something new and shiny and unpredictable. Carson doesn't feel a point of impact as much as he feels his entire body becoming unhinged, collapsing. There is no explosion as with a gun, but a rumble that builds in his brain that gets louder and louder and then…
"Oh, no!" McKay intones.
"McKay, you son of a bitch!"
"Hold it, Colonel! Don't come any closer."
It's all falling apart for Carson. Someone catches him as he stumbles backwards.
"Shit! I've got you, Car..."
TBC
