SESSION 3

Rush was removing the dressing from his temples as she entered the Chair Room. It was Brody who was operating the console today and he was silently typing in the instructions, ignoring her arrival. She approached Rush unceremoniously grabbed his jaw to title his head to the side. He petulantly waited for her to finish her examination as she spoke quietly, so Becker wouldn't hear her:

"For a moment there, we thought that you and colonel Young settled things between you," he bore his eyes into hers and, with displeasure, she saw how reserved his face seemed.

"Things between us were settled a long time ago. We hate our guts and don't trust each other," he said, also quietly.

"You seemed all chummy yesterday during the movie."

His mouth twitched.

"Yes, well, 'Casablanca' does that to people."

"Rush, we need for people to see that things are getting better. There is no time for fighting."

"Yes, that's why we don't do that anymore." She cast him an angry glare and he sighed heavily. "Ok, listen. For the two of us everything is clear. Colonel Young is a grown man and I am as well, even thought not a very impressive one. And men have their ways of going about things like that. What has happened, has happened. And we will eventually come to terms with it but it takes time. Is that understandable enough for you?"

"Yeah, I guess…" and it was. Her father was a similar kind of man, colonel Young especially reminded her of the pops. Once, when he was still working, he and his best friend argued about some problems with the business and they both got carried away a bit. They haven't seen or heard of Bob for two weeks after that but when the playoffs started, he showed up on their doorstep, exchanged glances with her dad, handed him a six pack… and suddenly it was like nothing ever happened.

Maybe that's one of the reasons she fell for Everett, he was thought and wise, and so much like her dad… These things never work out in the end.

Rush nodded his head and pressed his mouth into thin line, sitting in the chair. They all could see how he hated it, the pain, the nausea, and they couldn't blame him. As the restrains closed with a snap, he flinched, he did every time. TJ took her position behind the chair, near the wall. She had to be there but she didn't want Rush or Brody see that she was turning her eyes away during the process. She didn't want to watch anyone suffering, especially not willingly. As he convulsed in custody of the device, Tamara had to squeeze her eyes shut.

Some minutes later, when she was making sure nothing was worse then previous two times – they learned pretty fast lo leave Rush in the chair instead of moving him to the infirmary – the whole ship shook violently and they both tumbled to the ground.

"Wha…?" Rush mumbled, trying to remove himself from her grasp on the floor, failing. TJ's radio came to life with Young's voice:

"TJ, bring Rush to the control room!"

She pushed the button on the device, not taking it out of it's holster. "Sir, he only now finished the neural-transfer procedure, he's in no shape to move!"

"Damn it!" Young's voice sounded angry and anguished. Destiny shook again and sound of metal bending sounded somewhere in the distance.

"What's going on?!" Tamara shouted into the speaker, at the same time trying to subdue Rush, who was scrambling into a half kneeling position, drawing a disoriented gaze over the room.

"We're under attack! We need Rush!" was the answer and then Young started shouting orders to other soldiers onboard.

"T-take me there…" she heard Rush say as he tried to grab her shoulder but his hand slipped.

"You can't…" TJ started but was interrupted by him barking out: "Brody!"

The other scientist didn't have the same doubts she did. He approached them and helped Rush to his feet, throwing her a fleeting look. They both staggered for a moment, adjusting their grips on each other as Brody swung Rush's arm over his shoulder. They made their way to the door but as another tremor went through the walls, they had to stop to keep their footing. The only thing Tamara could do at this point was to go to them, take Rush's other arm and help them.

When they arrived to the Control Room, all other occupants looked at them for a moment. Eli cast a worried glance at Rush's bloodied face – she didn't have time to dress his wounds and the blood was dripping down his chin and onto his shirt – but the young man had no time to comment as the console he had in front of him beeped twice and a moment later there was another quake.

Colonel Young waited silently for them to approach and have Rush seated in front of another console, which he gripped tightly with one hand, other instantaneously beginning to tap shakily on the surface.

"Scott says there is only one vessel." Young said. "But they are heavily armed."

"H-ow does t-the, uh, vessel l-look like?" Rush asked, still typing. Some diagrams and a visual of Destiny's layout showed on the big screen in front of them.

"Scott described it as a huge brick with hemispheres on the sides."

Rush muttered something under his breath and said, louder:

"It's the Kiekst'Raaths. They're an aggressive tribe of thieves."

"How do you know that?!" Young demanded, visibly shaken.

"The S'hottoss showed me." Rush closed his eyes and put a shaky hand to his forehead, his whole body titled to the side for a moment. He straightened when he realized he was about to fall of the chair.

"You knew there were space pirates here and you didn't tell us?!" Eli demanded, his face shocked and angry. Young looked as if he was about to ask the same thing.

"The possibility of e-encounter was minimal…"

"You should've told us regardless!" Young snapped and the room shook again. A red light started blinking on the console and Rush cursed.

"Whatever," Rush answered. "Now is not the time for arguing. Young, we have two options. Either we answer with fire, which might not be a good idea since the installation is unstable, or we could communicate with them and lie our way out of the situation."

"What do you mean?"

"We could threaten them with revenge, they're not the brightest race around. There is only one problem."

"What would that be?" Young grunted and Rush swept some hair off his face.

"They're telepaths, like the S'hottoss. That means whoever would be to communicate with them, would have to have a fair grip on what they're thinking. Basically, they would have to lie to themselves in order to lie to them."

"Why don't you do it then? You're good at lying to everyone," Young said venomously and the two men glared at each other amongst shaking of the ship. TJ, from where she was standing could see something dark pass through Rush's eyes and they settled on the empty impassiveness they saw there after his return.

"If you wish to risk them gaining access to what I keep in my head at the moment, yeah, sure – why not. But I think you'll manage just as well."

They eyed each other, a clash of wills. TJ, Eli and Brody watched silently, taking in what Rush was implying to process it later, after the mess is over.

"You sure that blasting them to pieces isn't better?" Young muttered and Rush shook his head. "Your previous attempts of dialing Earth only served to weaken the system, some components not possible to fix at the moment. We could succeed or we could be shredded to pieces. Besides, we don't have full control over the targeting system. You need to trust me on this one."

The colonel looked as if he wanted to say something unpleasant to that but kept silent. Finally, with hesitation, he nodded his head.

"How will we do it?"

"When I came back onboard, I adjusted the communication system to accommodate a telepathic connection," Rush answered and made a move to stand up. If it wasn't for Young's quick reaction, he would fall to the floor.

"Uh… Eli" the scientist muttered, sitting back "bring me the device I've been working on"

Some time ago Eli found Rush sitting on the Observation Deck in the middle of the night, tempering with a small console. It had many plugs and wires on the side and looked to Eli like a prop for a B-class sci-fi movie. Rush never told him what it was.

When the Math Boy returned to the Control Room, Destiny was giving away sounds as if it was about to explode. In the corridors, people were running in panic, stopping him every few steps to ask what was going on. The military tried to calm everybody down without much success as they seemed uncertain themselves. Some pipes were hissing, in one of the corridors someone was trying to put out fire shooting from a conduit. It looked much worse here than in the Control Room.

Rush took the device from him and beckoned Young to come closer. He touched the screen and it lit with numbers in Ancient symbols. Nicholas connected it to the bigger console with a plug on the side, then handed Young a cable with what looked to be a pulse-clip, instructing him to put it on his finger.

"Now listen carefully," Rush said, piercing the colonel with deadly serious eyes, his brows creased. "There will be pain. You can't let it knock you out, just… bear with it. They will try to scan your memory, the link will prevent some of it but you must be focused all the time. They communicate mostly with images and feelings. Think of the S'hottos, try to remember how they looked, how they looked at you. Try to feel angry but not frustrated. I'll help you on the way."

Young nodded silently, taking in what Rush said. They were going to fool the attackers into thinking that harming them might mean revenge. He focused on that. Rush glanced at him once again and typed something on his console. After a moment one of the lights lit and he pressed another button. A big holographic screen came to life in front of them, showing what might be a face.

The Kiekst'Raaths looked very similar to S'hottoss, the only difference was that the one they were seeing had braided hair on the top of his head and a spiky armor on his arms. As soon as the image appeared, TJ noticed Rush's face scrunched in what might be fear, he seemed to fold in on himself.

Young put a stern, angry expression on his face as he looked at the creature. And then he lurched backwards as if hit with an invisible force, his eyes going wide with shock. Surprisingly, it was Rush who supported him. He looked as if he was running on adrenaline as he positioned himself behind the Colonel.

"Leave him, it's normal," Rush muttered to TJ, when she made a move to go to her superior, who seemed to be barely able to sit straight. She swallowed hard but remained where she stood.

"Suck it up, Young," Rush growled silently and Young nodded his head. He again made an angry face, even thought he was sweating profoundly. "Think of the S'hottoss," Rush kept muttering. "Do you remember the defense system on the Icarus base? Remember the cannons. Imagine the U.S.S. Hammond, it's weapons firing. The Goa'uld Mother Ship blown to pieces."

He kept muttering about visions of war and destruction and they could all see that the Kiekst'Raath's demeanor slowly changed. His massive arms dropped a fraction and he flared at them with his beady eyes. TJ saw Rush's hand clasp around Young's arm, his thin fingers boring into the colonel's muscle. This, surprisingly, seemed to have a calming effect on the taller man, as if it altered his attention from the pain he was undoubtedly feeling inside his skull. With concern the paramedic noticed that a droplet of blood appeared under the Colonel's nose.

To the others it seemed as if ages have passed before the Kiekst'Raath let out a huff through it's nose and his image disappeared. In the same moment the colonel slumped in his seat and clenched his temples with his hands, groaning silently. Rush was still holding his arm but gentler now, as more of support than anything else. He patted Young on the back and murmured:

"Well done, Colonel," with that, he cautiously made his way to the wall seat and closed his eyes. TJ went straight for the colonel.

"Make him lay down, give him some painkillers," Rush said and she looked at him incredulously. "I'll take care of everything here."

"You should lay down as well," she said but was grateful for him wanting to help.

"I'll be fine," he answered, not looking at them. He took hold of Young's radio as he stood to leave the room. She heard him call Scott through the device before he disappeared behind a corner.

She went back to tending to Young.

***

Even thought the attack was strong, there wasn't much damage to the ship, at least not to the habitable areas. The repair teams were already working on fixing everything and it looked quite good.

There were lots of injured though. As the turbulences started, lots of people were thrown around, not able to protect themselves from harm. A lot of them were in the Mess Hall at the time, where it was almost too easy to crash into something. There were broken bones, fractures and flesh wounds, preventing TJ from leaving the infirmary for most of the day. Scott came by later on to inform her and the recovering Colonel that him, Eli and Rush managed to calm down rest of the crew and explain what happened. Wray took care of organizing cleaning parties and so far everything was running smoothly.

After she made sure the Colonel was resting comfortably in his quarters – he seemed quite shaken with the whole telepathic ordeal – she decided to grab something to eat and catch up on some well deserved rest.

***

When she woke up the next day, she guiltily remembered that she completely forgot to check up on Rush. She was fairly sure that he left his wounds not cleaned, maybe washing his face if luck was on her side.

He didn't even look up when she entered the Control Room. Eli was silently working on his side of the hob but he cast her a quick smile and nodded. Rush was scribbling away, from time to time reacting to a beep of the console by pressing a button or two. There was a holo-screen in front of him flashing some symbols and he seemed to simultaneously scan the content with fleeting looks. He was missing his t-shirt, the once white shirt visible under the vest he seemed to always have on. TJ could only guess that the tee was drying in his private room after an attempt to wash off the blood stains.

"Good morning, gentlemen," Tamara said for the sake of politeness towards Eli. She approached the Doctor's workstation but he stopped her with an outstretched hand, not bothering to look up. "I ate, I slept, I'm busy," he snapped, obviously irritated.

"Yeah, fine. Just let me look at the wounds," she said, a bit taken aback by his anger. Since he came back, there weren't many temper flares on his side and none of them was this obvious. He waved his hand at her, as if she was a pesky fly buzzing next to his ear.

As she tried to ignore him and reached for his temple (she did that a couple of times before, he never objected), he snarled and swatted her hand away, quite forcibly. "For fucks sake, just leave me the hell alone already!" he barked, his accent thickening. Both she and Eli looked at him in shock.

"Since yesterday, there isn't five minutes of peace!" he yelled, flailing his hands wildly. "You people bother me all the time! Questions! Problems! Tha'kanush me sathio! Av meneet ti han'tha tush…" he kept on ranting, not realizing he switched to Ancient. They kept staring. In the meantime, Chloe came in, probably to take Eli to breakfast as they usually ate it together these days. She joined them in her silent astonishment and Rush stopped himself only when he noticed her frightened expression. His face, by now twisted with rage of unknown origin, softened and he had the decency to look embarrassed.

"I… I'm terribly sorry," he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck "I honestly don't know what came over me…"

"Doctor Rush, your nose is bleeding," Chloe said, pointing at his face. Indeed, a small trickle of blood was making its way down Nicholas's face and he touched it, looking at his fingers.

"I-it's nothing…" but it was something as he grunted and staggered to the wall seat.

"Well this is new," TJ said, checking his eyes. He seemed disoriented. "Did you see it happening before, Eli?" she asked in the general direction of the young man.

"Do you mean the nosebleed or the crazy mood swing?"

"Both."

"He was always bitching around but it was quite calm here these days… Oh, and I saw a bloodied hankie in his pocket but figured it to be him ignoring need of a shower. God knows he does that…"

"I'm still here, you know," Rush muttered and Eli cringed. Chloe left the room without another word.

"Not for long if I have anything to say about that. Infirmary, now," TJ said, helping him to his feet. He leaned heavily on her shoulder and for a moment she felt his hot breath on her neck.

As soon as they arrived, TJ was swept away by her two little helpers of the day – Park and Jenkins (the latter hesitated as she saw Rush at the paramedic's side) and only managed to make Nicholas take a seat on a makeshift bed.

He sat there and watched her work. She was gentle with her patients – he knew there were many, he helped assessing the damage yesterday and Wray, of course keeping him personally responsible for the magnitude of it, yelled the exact numbers in his face. He didn't feel guilty, he was fairly certain he had no reason to – the only thing that was his fault, was not telling them of the danger even existing. It wouldn't help much, anyway. It would only serve in people worrying even more. He did everything in his power to save their lives and helped afterwards. Even if it meant him collapsing in his room later that night.

Now it was lieutenant Johansen's responsibility to deal with the people. God only knew the lass was good with that. She was spending a lot of her time near him and Nicholas could see how people were kind and respectful towards her. A bit too respectful for his taste but it was a fact well known to him that it was a PR thing, so to speak. He had the means, had the knowledge and yet, he didn't have it in him to respect the morons so they didn't respect him back. They gave their trust to nice people. It annoyed the crap out of him sometimes but now, he mostly didn't care.

Tamara did. She liked people to like her. He suspected it was a female thing. Gloria was like that too. Maggie as well. He could understand that, even if he didn't agree with this kind of hypocrisy.

He was about to grab some painkillers on his own and leave her to her work but stopped himself when he saw Young coming into the infirmary. He figured that the colonel would turn to TJ, who was on the other side of the room and he would leave then, unnoticed.. To his surprise, Everett slowly made his way in his direction.

"Rush," he nodded his head, standing in front of him.

"Young," he answered wondering what did the soldier want from him. "You should be resting. The connection is strenuous for non-telepaths."

"You lived with it for more than a week, I think I can handle one time. Miss Armstrong informed me you had some sort of weird attack earlier," Young said, oddly with no hostility in his voice.

"Nothing serious, I'm all right," Rush answered, trying to sound nonchalant.

"Of course," Young muttered and made a step towards the scientist. He leaned in closer and said quietly, so no one else could hear him: "Listen, I think we both know you're not all right. You can hide it from TJ but I watch and I see. And if you know what's wrong I think you should tell me, so we can think of something to do about it. Because whether I like it or not, we need you and I will do everything to get these people home, even if it means being nice to you"

They glared at each other, their past encounters hanging in between them. But they also kept in mind that this had to stop, otherwise they would never be able to work together. And at some point, they both realized that stubbornness will get them nowhere. This was probably the most difficult part but on the rocky planet they came to a situation where there were only two options: Survival or cooperation. The first didn't work then so it was time for the latter now.

Rush nodded tiredly.

"During my first session I acquired some information about the neural interface device. As I suspected, it is a very early design. There were some notes that mentioned side effects it might have on a representative of the Ancient's whilst a long term usage. Headaches, slight depression, sleep disorders. It is caused by electric activity increase, which in turn causes a slight swelling of the brain tissue. My guess is, since humans are not as evolved as the Ancients were, the effect is more… drastic."

"What does that mean?"

Rush hesitated. He seemed vulnerable and almost scared.

"I think that with every use of the chair pressure in my scull is growing and will eventually cause internal bleeding and death."

Young stared at him intently for long enough to make Rush feel uncomfortable.

"Why didn't you tell us that?" he demanded finally, his voice stern.

"Seriously, Colonel." Rush said, throwing him a glance from under his eyebrows "I know you don't much care about my wellbeing. But some might not be pleased with their hope being taken away from them in the form of my death. I merely wanted to avoid unnecessary fuss."

"We could have thought of something…"

"You know as well as I do we couldn't."

"And you still want to continue? Even knowing what it might cost you?"

"I have no choice, don't I? My only weapon to protect myself with from you backfired at me," Rush said, a bit bitterly. Young didn't answer for a moment.

"How much do you think you can take without killing yourself in the process?"

"Three, maybe four sessions. But that wouldn't be the kind of life I would like to keep."

Young looked at him questioningly.

"Even if I succeeded and kept my life, the rest of it would be spent in constant pain. The pressure wouldn't go away. It would drive me mad or transform me a blabbering idiot, spending his days on asking for more morphine. I wouldn't want that, Colonel. Of course, there is the possibility that the next session will reveal the master code and everything will be fine. I wouldn't count on it, though."

His face was sorrowful, somewhat resigned. Young felt uneasy, not really sure what to say. What did one say to someone who was facing his own death willingly to save 70+ lives? Luckily, Rush saved him the trouble.

"Colonel, please leave this information to yourself. I especially don't want Eli or Lieutenant Johansen to know." All Young could do was to nod his head. Rush shot him a humorless smile and stood up. He went to the corner of the room, where medical equipment and medications were stored and started rummaging through the black cases. When he found what he was looking for, he smiled again and turned to leave.

"Have a nice day, Colonel," he said over his shoulder, already opening the bottle of painkillers he just stole from the infirmary.