A/N: Deepest thanks to my ingenius betas, Klostes, Pranksta and Aslowhite. I'd also like to thank those of you who have provided feedback. I am grateful for your support.
Part 1, Chapter Nine
Kali is home to some beautiful weather. Ronon, Teyla and McKay sit beneath an odesin tree not far from the Institute, eating its ripe, pear-like fruit. A gentle breeze blows around lush grasses that carpet the expansive, tree-dotted field that surrounds the Institute. Nevillus isn't there, but he packed a basket with meat, breads and drinks and gave it to Ronon so he and his friends could eat together outside.
Included in the basket is a book written by Dinstard Pistoule titled The Known World, in which the Kalian treasure writes about physics, philosophy and the beauty of personal expression and individuality. McKay thinks that this is the best book he has ever read.
"'We learn by observation'," McKay reads. "'As our society loses its variety, as the arts are denied a place in our schools and the sciences are restricted to what is already revealed, we begin to forget how to see, how to question and how to grow as a species'."
They are silent for a few moments, until McKay reaches for another fruit and a flask of water.
McKay says, "Pistoule is Thoreau. He's also Newton and Einstein."
"He's almost nothing, now," says Ronon.
McKay pauses for a second, then continues eating.
"Dr. Pistoule is getting stronger," Teyla says. She has been quiet this day, which is usual for her lately. "He has gained weight. The doctors will soon begin working to restore his mind."
"I wonder what Pistoule will say about his experiences in prison," McKay muses, caressing the page from which he has just read. "Assuming he remembers anything, that is. Speaking of which, Teyla…"
"You want more water?" Ronon hands him a flask.
McKay looks at him quizzically and indicates the full container in his hand. He waves away the offering. "You've noticed that I'm capable of watering myself, now, haven't you?" Teyla and Ronon exchange a look. McKay has noticed them doing this a number of times, and it bothers him.
"The doctors are hopeful," Teyla murmurs.
"Yes, I'm sure they are." McKay can't help feeling irritated. "And I'm also certain that they wouldn't say so if they were not. After all, everyone's so open and honest here, aren't they?"
Ronon drinks from the flask. "It's a screwed-up society, McKay. Hardly anybody talks about how they really feel."
"So I've noticed," he says, flipping closed Pistoule's wonderful book and slowly climbing to his feet. "And apparently you two have taken the local customs to heart. Or perhaps I didn't get the memo on Teyla and Ronon's backstory."
They look at McKay with guarded expressions. "Okay. Whatever. When you're ready to fill me in, I'll be around."
This is a while after Teyla's rescue. McKay's lungs are still tired and old-feeling, but he takes walks and, when no one's looking, bobs around in the exercise pool just outside the main Institute building. Since he's annoyed, McKay feels like striding away from his teammates, but can't move that swiftly, yet. Instead, he clutches The Known World to his chest and makes his way back to his room with careful steps.
So much conspires against him. An outing several days ago to the crash site revealed that the jumper had been removed from its resting place in the distant forest.
"The government must have taken it," Nevillus said. "They may suspect that you will return here, so we must not linger!"
McKay was dismayed. He hoped to fix the craft or obtain the transmitter beacon. More than anything, he wanted to be useful again. The journey to the crash site exhausted him. He returned to the Institute with nothing to show for his efforts, fell into bed and slept for 12 hours.
Eight days later, the morning of their picnic, a message came through from Nevillus's contact, a lone employee within the prison friendly to their cause, saying that Sheppard is gravely ill and must be extracted with all due speed. Many schemes to gain Sheppard's release have been drawn up and scrapped since Teyla's rescue. Even now they have only the flimsiest contrivance and barest supplies with which to work.
Ronon refused to allow Teyla and McKay to accompany him back to the moon.
He said, "I have enough manpower. I don't need either of you."
Teyla, prickling with outrage, stood her ground and told him, "I will be going. You will not stop me."
Ronon looked at Teyla and tipped his head towards Rodney. "McKay's sick. He can't come."
In the silent moment that followed, Rodney saw their glances, as swift and as telling as so many of late, but these were different. The mission could fail. Rodney felt orphaned, already, like Teyla, like Ronon and, for all he know, like Sheppard, as well.
"You should ask him what he wants," Teyla said, as she and Ronon glared at each other.
"You need to stay here with him," Ronon replied, struggling to control his words.
Rodney protested, said he was fine to go, that he wanted to go. Neither the Athosian nor the Satedan appeared to have heard him, as they were caught in a staring contest, arguing loudly without uttering a single word.
Finally, Ronon relented. Still angry, he stomped away, leaving Teyla standing there clenching and unclenching her fists.
Their picnic signaled a truce. The trio wanted to share a meal together—possibly their last—and McKay is sorry to ruin it. Ronon and Teyla will be leaving the next morning to rescue Sheppard. This is not a good time for taking umbrage.
OoOoO
Eighteen hours later, McKay crouches inside an aging prison transport unit. It had malfunctioned earlier in the day and, as it is crucial to the execution of the rescue, he has secured a place on board in exchange for fixing the problem and ensuring that it stays fixed. Ronon isn't happy about this at all, and he's gone to the trouble of forcing McKay into a protective vest, padding for his elbows and knees, and other gear, including a heavy, hard-form helmet that smells of old sweat.
Teyla spent the pre-dawn hours alternately meditating and stretching and running out to the end of the grassy field and back again. Once inside the ship, she keeps asking McKay if he is feeling up to all of this.
"Wouldn't miss it for the world," he says, which doesn't really answer her question.
Rodney's rescue was a stroke of luck. Teyla and Pistoule were freed by force. No one knows exactly how it will go with Sheppard.
Nevillus comes aboard the transport, bringing with him Lomis and Munn, who work with him at the Institute. He sits beside Rodney, who is pulling together a toolkit to take with him.
"I am sorry that we must leave so suddenly," the Kalian says. "Our friend in the prison was vague about your commander's condition. They know only that something is being done to him and he can no longer be expected to wait for rescue."
Rodney looks up, as another jolt of worry lances through him. "Of course you can't be more specific," he grumbles.
The literal-minded Nevillus fails to hear the sarcasm in McKay's voice.
"The machine," he answers.
"What about it?"
"We don't know where it came from or exactly what it does. It was tried on others so that they would come back and extol the beauty and kindness of the government. Perhaps they wished for your Colonel to believe this so that he would make your world similar to ours."
McKay grabs a large duffle, the one that contains the black pills that he's been taking and other medical supplies. "Sheppard doesn't have that much authority. None of us do. We agreed to share information, that's all."
He pauses as he tries to bring down his heart rate. All of this suffering, theirs, Sheppard's, for nothing.
"Why did your people elect these idiots?" he says, shoving the duffle to the side.
Nevillus blinks at him. "Elect?"
Ronon enters the transport carrying additional supplies, a few weapons among them. He drops his load and crouches in front of McKay.
"It's a bad plan, but it's all we got," he tells him.
McKay looks at him resignedly, because nothing will ever surprise him again. With an eye roll he says all that he needs to.
Ronon continues. "The Resistance did good getting you, Teyla and Pistoule. But there's only couple of guns left and just this one ship." He lays a hand on Rodney's shoulder. "We don't know what's going to happen, McKay. Keep your helmet on and stay low."
Teyla's anxiety is so strong, McKay feels it radiating from her as she listens to Ronon and Nevillus go over the plan. Ronon is calm, but then he was never held prisoner on the moon. He doesn't have memories of that to poison his confidence, but he keeps a close eye on the jittery Teyla who does. McKay takes one of the pills and tries to silence his own wheezing breaths.
The transport is an older unit that was put out of service years before. Nevillus and the few other Kalians with him believe that no one guarding the prison will expect rebels in disguise to release Sheppard using an old transport ship. McKay shakes his head. He's glad that no one on this world has ever heard of a Trojan horse.
OoOoO
En route to the moon, no one speaks very much.
A few minutes from their destination, McKay's stomach begins flipping around. He's not well enough to handle anything terrible.
Ronon and four others are costumed for the mission. Teyla and Nevillus are among those dressed as prisoners. Lomis and Munn have acquired disciplinarian's uniforms. They have volunteered out of gratitude to Ronon, who helped bring back their dear Pistoule. Once inside the jail, they will locate and retrieve Sheppard. No bomb blasts are planned this time. It is a stealth mission, or, at least, it's supposed to be.
The access hatch opens as the transport lands, and everyone except the Kalian pilot and McKay leaves the vehicle. McKay feels his chest tighten up a little bit and breathes slowly, evenly, to keep himself together. He closes the access door, checks the instrument panel for what he's certain is the first of a thousand times.
Then he waits.
OoOoO
Ronon Dex suspects that McKay sabotaged the transport unit just so he'd have to come along to keep it running. He is royally pissed off about this, but has decided to say nothing until they are back on the planet safe and sound. He walks from the idling transport and crosses the landing area.
Kalians use stun rods for close-contact battle and weapons that fire energy blasts for distance shots. In his right hand, Ronon holds a stun rod, which are easy to come by on Kali. His left hand holds Teyla's arm in a grip he has no choice but to make uncomfortably strong. His teammate's face and hair are hidden behind a prisoner's hood, for she is recognizable among their group. She trembles.
"Teyla," he warns.
"I am playing," she replies from behind the hood. "Any arriving prisoner would be frightened."
"You aren't playing."
Ronon didn't want her along for this any more than he wanted McKay. They are willing but also dangerously unstable. He knows this because Teyla's been alternating between stony silence and fits of fury ever since he brought her to the Institute. She promised to remain in control for Sheppard's rescue, but Ronon doubts she can pull it off. McKay, equally disturbed in his own way, carries Dinstard Pistoule's book with him everywhere, as if it were holy and protective. He brought it with him today, in fact.
When he was a runner, Ronon feared for his own life. Today he thinks of Sheppard, of the other people he cares about, and his own survival seems inconsequential in comparison.
Nevillus walks beside him. He has been at Ronon's side before, when they came to find McKay, Teyla and Pistoule. As they were those other times, Nevillus's eyes are sharply focused on every detail around them. This is different from the silky looks he gives Ronon and reveals surprising strength. Strong or no, Nevillus is nervous. His facial muscles twitch ever so slightly.
"Do you remember the way?" he whispers, touching Ronon's arm as if it were a talisman.
"Yeah."
Munn pulls Nevillus sharply by the arm. He is supposed to be a prisoner arriving for his sentence, not a friend of anyone in the group.
The flight tarmac is very broad. It takes several minutes to reach the thick metal door of the high-security entrance, where prisoners are brought when they first arrive. Because transports have their own security personnel, only two disciplinarians guard this door. Ronon and Lomis overtake and kill them quickly and quietly by holding stun rods at full power against the backs of their skulls.
"It is not a bad way to die," says Lomis to Ronon, as if the Satedan cares. "The pain lasts for but a few seconds, then…" He makes brief flashing motions with his hands, like tiny fireworks.
"I would like to torture them instead," says Munn. "Like they tortured our beloved Pistoule."
"Shhh!" Nevillus admonishes. "Use all caution! This is not like the times before. I feel it."
Ronon feels it, too. He ran for seven years. Throughout those dark days, something like a voice in his head was always informing him about his environment. The voice screams at him now, but only he can hear it.
Since the entrance guards are dead, Teyla's hood is removed, her hands untied, so that she can participate. Arriving prisoners are given a brief medical examination. The entrance hallway leads directly to the facility, down one dim corridor, then two more.
A lone nurse works the clinic at this late hour. She sits reading a magazine while seven patients languish under her care. When Ronon enters, she doesn't look up. In a moment, she is stunned and dragged to an empty bed at the far end of the room.
Glancing from cot to cot, Ronon can't tell which patient might be Sheppard. Most lie curled up, heads buried in their hands, shaking from whatever is making them ill. Ronon thinks of what Nevillus said about allowing people to linger and die.
When Ronon finally casts eyes upon Sheppard, he feels as sick as when he saw McKay here. There is almost nothing left to the man. He is deeply unconscious and, incredibly, a tube runs from an IV stand, depositing a milky substance directly into his belly.
"Do not remove it!" Nevillus warns. "We'll take the entire unit with us and sort it out later."
So Ronon hands his blast weapon to Teyla, and does what he did before with McKay—gently wraps the man in a sheet and carries him from the clinic out into the hallway. The Satedan's belly has healed up nicely; it doesn't protest as he holds Sheppard close, as he would a child, as the rescue team scurries back along the narrow passage. Were it not for the voice in his head, Ronon would think that they had succeeded.
Teyla walks beside the bundle in Ronon's arms. She calls John's name a few times, until her teammate shushes her.
"Not now," he says, relieved that this time she doesn't bristle at having to wait.
They make it halfway to the tarmac entrance when a tremendous explosion rocks the confined area. Lomis and Munn, struck by energy fire, fall dead. Chunks of blasted wall and pulverized stone blocks fly about, and Ronon turns away, using his body to shield Sheppard from this debris. He notices Teyla and Nevillus momentarily stunned, righting themselves and standing tall to meet their fates.
Time, luck and everything else have run out. It is a trap.
TBC…
