O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O

Chapter 10 – All We Have

Rodney groaned, shaking his head and cracking his eyes open as he tried to orient himself. Why was everything sore all of a sudden? Double images of everything eventually merged into one hazy one as he looked around. The window in front of him was shattered, a gentle wind brushing his hair against his forehead. Where was he again? He craned his neck around, to see gear strewn around the back of the cabin, ok, he was in a jumper. One step closer to knowing what was going on was a good start. He passed his gaze over the several cases of equipment that had popped open, their contents now adorning the rear compartment in a fine mess. McKay paused his examination of his surroundings as he eyed a body in the back. A teammate? Injured maybe? And then he saw the fiery red hair and his eyes snapped open as the day's events came racing back through his mind. Sora, a second round with the Genii, culminating in his suicidal plunge toward the ground.

Fuck! He was fucked! A prisoner again. He put a hand up to his face in frustration. This never should have happened again. But wait, he looked back over at the body, not stirring. He was the only one awake, maybe the only one alive, he hadn't checked on his captor. Wait, wasn't it captors, as in plural? Where had the second one gone? He squinted, trying to focus again, scrubbing at his face to try to wipe away the weariness from his vision as he looked around the jumper again. He saw a pair of legs sticking out from beneath a large black case against the rear hatch, also not moving.

Realizing he needed to take advantage of the fact that he was the only one up and about, he went to raise himself out of his control chair and find something to secure the other two people with, only to be jerked back into the seat as he went to stand up, something pulling across his chest. He collapsed back into the chair as a pain ignited in his chest, he tried to muffle his outburst not wanting to alert either of the currently unconscious companions, but he was unable to suppress it completely and a whimper escaped his mouth. Ok, unbuckle the seatbelt first, then personal inventory, and then secure the Genii.

He reached over with a shaky hand and unbuckled his jumper harness before using his offhand to lift up his shirt and try to see what was wrong with his chest. He focused his gaze on his bared torso, wincing sharply as he took in the mottled shades of blue and greens that painted a stripe across his chest along where the harness had held him. "God, I look like a watercolor painting," he muttered quietly to himself. As much as it hurt, he couldn't curse it too much, the harness had done its job and prevented him from going through the windshield or flying back against the wall, he appeared to have fared better than his companions.

He gently pressed against the bruising, trying to determine if it was just bruising or something worse. He flinched violently as he ran his fingers down the right side of his torso, feeling something hard shift under the skin. Had to be broken ribs. Fuck, again, but taking care of them would have to wait. Had to secure the Genii before they woke up.

He moved all of his limbs to make sure they were in working order, and finding no other areas of extreme discomfort save his already injured arm, about half the sutures were split but the blood had mostly dried along the edges, they must have crashed awhile ago if that had been the case. He silently thanked his good fortune that he was the first one to awake, assuming the other two were still alive.

He bit his lip as he slid to the edge of his seat, then steadying himself against the control panel he managed to rise to his feet. Everything ached as he maneuvered between the two seats up front and back toward the rear compartment, weaving around the gear scattered about the cabin. His boot hit caught on something, almost enough to make him lose his balance. Cursing and looking downwards, pulling a leg back to kick the offending item, he stopped and picked it up instead. It was gun that Kessler had been threatening him with. He stuck it into the holster on his borrowed uniform and continued on.

He reached Sora first; she was lying on her side with her back against one of the benches, blood leaking down the side of her face from a gash on her forehead. He slowly lowered his fingers in front of her mouth, feeling a hot exhalation of air, enough to suggest she was breathing and alive. For the moment bypassing a more thorough medical exam, he quickly snatched handcuffs dangling from her belt, pulling one arm toward him and then reaching for the other. Sora reacted sharply to his motion, emitting a sharp yelp as her eyes opened, wandering around for a moment before focusing in on him.

"Stop..." She weakly tried to pull her left arm away from him but he tightened his grip and snapped the pair of handcuffs on before she could start struggling too much. There were some incomprehensible moans from her as she tried to figure out what happened and why it hurt.

"Hurts…bastard." He watched her for a moment, she seemed close to tears, again trying to move her left arm back toward her side, clenching and unclenching a shaking hand.

McKay narrowed his gaze, focusing on her left arm for the cause of her complaints, noticing that the arm hung at the wrong angle and the shoulder looked odd somehow.

"Looks like you busted your shoulder," he didn't remove the cuffs but did put an arm behind her back and helped her sit up and lean against the leg of a bench.

Sora still wasn't totally with it, whimpering softly as her eyes roamed around the inside of the jumper as she experienced the same disorientation that McKay had just gone through.

"You stay put, I'm gonna check on your buddy," he said, wanting to get him secured as well before Sora's mutterings roused the man.

He slowly stood back up, and made his way to the rear of the jumper. He looked down at the case sitting on top of Kessler's legs; it was black and plastic, about two feet by three feet with a red cross insignia on the lid. Despite the total mess he was in, he couldn't help a breathless chuckle at the fact that the man had been hit with the medical case, irony never failed to lighten a dismal situation. He bent down to roll the medical case off the Genii, not trusting that he was strong enough yet to lift it up. Carson insisted on packing large amounts of medical paraphernalia in each one, he knew it wasn't light.

He winced as he hunched down to roll it off the man, not pushing it too far on the assumption that he would soon have need of it. Kessler was on his back, his chest rising and falling suggesting that his collision with the wall during the crash hadn't been fatal. The lower half of his body told a different story. Something white poked through his black pant leg which was wet with what Rodney assumed with blood. The leg had an open fracture; Kessler wouldn't be chasing after him or intimidating him any time soon. He figured he probably didn't need to secure the man, considering the condition he was in, but he search him for any concealed weapons, confiscating the one he found in a leather ankle holster and sticking it through his belt.

He knelt down further, patting the man on the cheek, "Wake up, sleeping beauty." When there was no reaction he hardened his blow a bit until the man slowly began to rouse.

Kessler was quicker to orient himself, immediately locking eyes with Rodney as an angry scowl formed across his face. "What the fuck…did you do?"

"We crashed," he said, flashing a glance back over to Sora to see her watching their exchange, not moving about, just content to rest for the moment and avoid aggravating her injuries.

Kessler grumbled something under his breath. He leveled a punch at McKay, finding that violence had worked previously, and snapped, "You look at me, we weren't done."

A vein bulged in McKay's neck as he snapped his head upwards, spots momentarily dancing across his vision as he wrapped his hands around his torso as it lit up with pain again. After breathing heavily for a moment he turned back to Kessler, sheen of sweat beginning to form on his forehead.

He managed to relinquish the tight grip he had over his ribs and pulled the gun out, turning back to Kessler. McKay was pissed now. He'd helped the soldier, made sure he was still alive, and the guy still thought he was in charge. The anger from the previous thirty-six hours boiled in his veins. Everyone had ordered him around, beat him up, he was done with this man's arrogance and cruelty. He raised the gun and brought the barrel of it down over Kessler's injured appendage with a medium strength blow.

"AHHH!" Kessler immediately curled forward, clutching at the aggravated injury, seething silently for a moment.

As Kessler worked to recompose himself, McKay went back to cradling his own torso with his injured arm as he began speaking in a determined voice, "You listen here, up until a few moments ago, you were in charge. That's not the case now, is it? I have the weapons, and have more mobility than you or your partner. That makes me in charge. You're done using threats and violence and telling me what to do."

Through a snarled expression and bloodshot eyes Kessler looked up at him with rage in his eyes, "And just what do you plan to do? Kill me," he said in an amused tone, "You're a spineless coward. It's not in you."

"You're right; I'm not going to kill you. I'm going to get myself out of this royal mess you've put me in. You can just wait there until I do decide what I am going to do." Rodney looked back over at Sora who still hadn't spoken; her eyes were half closed, perhaps focusing on blocking out the pain.

"Sora, you alive over there?"

"Barely," she mumbled, "No thanks to your failed acrobatics."

McKay waited to see if she was going to speak again, but with no further response, he moved away from Kessler who was still glaring at him but not moving either, perhaps realizing that it would only hurt him more. He scooped a data pad off the ground from where it had fallen after the crash, the screen was cracked but the sturdy device's hardware was still intact, booting up as he turned it on. He sat on the bench opposite Sora, connecting his data pad into a port on the wall as he began examining the damage.

His brow creased as the jumper's schematics didn't come up on the screen like they should have. He limped his way to the front, gently lowering himself back into the control chair and trying the port up there, nothing, again. McKay put his hands on the controls which should have responded to his gene and activated at least something. Again, nothing. Something was wrong; he bent down and pulled the latch to release the panel that would allow him access to the data crystals and Lantean tech that allowed the jumper to operate. A thick black smoke escaped from the panel, causing him to sit back up and turn his head away to breathe real air instead of the smoke. He put a hand down to fan it away, peaking down and seeing that the smoke was clearing he went down for a second look. Four of the seven crystals were totally demolished, a fifth cracked. Many wired were blackened and melted together. The best he could deduce was that a small fire must have lit in the compartment when they crashed.

"Damn it."

Kessler looked over at him, "What, realize that maybe your brilliant plan to crash wasn't really all that brilliant?"

"The jumper's fried. I can't fly us back."

Kessler just sneered, "So what do you propose? We swim back to your marvelous city? Hell, we don't even know where we are! Face it, Dr. McKay, we may not be dead yet, but you've put us well down that path."

McKay pulled one of the broken crystals out of its slot, holding it up to the light to examine it more closely, no, there was no way he could fix this, "Just shut up and let me think. It's not like a stupid grunt worker like you is going to come up with a plan."

Ok, they had a medical kit to treat any immediate injuries. They should have enough water and MRE's to get them through at least a week, each jumper was well stocked in case teams got stranded. That still left them no way to signal for help. He pulled up a map on the planet on his data pad and pin point their location on it. They were well-inland on the mainland. A blue dot close to their location called his attention and his eyes lit up as he started to formulate a plan.

With a new burst of energy he shuffled over to the medical case and popped the lid, looking through to see what exactly they had. They had five vials of morphine, each good for approximately six hours. Kessler seemed to be in the most pain at the moment, but he didn't know if he was ready to assist the man who had kidnapped him and forced him out here in the first place. As he rolled the vials in his fingers he decided to take a look at Sora first. He dragged the bulky medical case along the floor over to where she still hadn't stirred from.

"You ok?"

"No, I'm hurt, and your handcuffs are making what would be moderate discomfort absolute agony."

"We have to get your shoulder back in its joint; I think I can do it."

She started to scoot away from him as he moved to place a hand on her shoulder, "You think? What kind of medical training does an engineer have?"

He scratched his head for a moment, "I got my first-aid badge back when I was a boy scout."

She looked at him puzzled, not sure what a boy scout was, "Does that qualify you for fixing this," she said, motioning to her arm.

"Well…not exactly…"

She winced and scooted further away from him until she was halted by debris blocking her way along the bench and snarled at him, "Then get away from me. This is your fault in the first place. You're not about to go making it worse."

"You're trigger happy friend over there isn't going to be any help and we need to go find help. This planet is huge; the chances of them finding us aren't good. That means it's you and me."

She looked up at him, a pained expression on her face, "And when…Dr. McKay, did this change from you to us? If I remember correctly it's you holding the gun. Doesn't seem like much of a team effort here."

"We're all hurt. My ribs are busted and I can't go it alone. That means it's you and me."

"And me? You planning on leaving me here to die?" Kessler asked from his end of the jumper, "Maybe I was wrong and you do have the balls to off me."

McKay smiled, "I don't plan on hauling your ass with me if that's what you're wondering."

Kessler opened his mouth to protest but McKay turned away from him for the moment and back to Sora, the one he would need mobile to be able to pull this off. "You're right; I do have the gun for once. You guys have had your chance to run the show and cut me up and threaten to shoot me. I do think it's my turn. So I'm going to fix your shoulder the best I can and we are going to get out of here. The choice you do get is this, morphine or not. We have six vials, that's two for each of us. It's gonna hurt like a bitch when I roll your shoulder back into its joint, and it'll hurt a lot later on. You want to use one of yours now or hold off?"

Sora glared at him, perhaps for the first time understanding what it meant to have someone else make decisions for you, much as they had in kidnapping him. "I'll go without. Just do it."

He took the key to the handcuffs out of his pocket and using it to unlock the cuff on her injured arm. Not trusting Sora to not try anything he snapped the vacant cuff around a bench leg so she couldn't try to hit him and make off. He helped her sit up, firmly grabbing the shoulder between two flat palms. He used his injured arm to stabilize against and his good one to give the joint one solid jerk in the right direction.

Sora cried out sharply and then went limp, passed out. He gently felt around the shoulder to make sure it was in. He wasn't much of a physician, that was Carson's department but it didn't look deformed anymore, just swollen and probably sore as hell. He fashioned a makeshift sling from some bandages he pulled from the medical kit and then wrapped some around her chest and injured arm a few times to secure the limb against her chest like he'd seen a medic do in the field the one time that this had happened to a soldier in their company before they could get him back to the infirmary.

He applied a few butterfly bandages to the cut on her forehead and then leaned back against the bench himself for a few moments, his ribs throbbing in complaint from the constant moving he'd been doing. He took shallow breaths to try to lessen the flare of pain he felt each time his lungs expanded.

Kessler watched as he did all of this, not commenting on anything.

McKay was perfectly content to ignore the man as well, they hadn't exactly started off on great terms and things hadn't improved any since then. He glanced out the window; they seemed to be under thick tree-cover. Alright, break was over. Time to get up, he told himself as he groaned and leveled himself up to a sitting position on a bench, using it to steady himself as he stood up and pulled two medium sized backpacks down from the netting, they hadn't been shaken loose in the crash. He quickly let his gaze dart around the jumper floor until he found the case labeled food and water. Popping that he packed two gallon jugs full of water into each bag followed by six MRE's for each of them and a few handfuls of extra powerbars into his own.

"So what, you're going to take all the supplies and leave me here?"

McKay responded to Kessler's inquiry without turning to face him, "Some of the supplies. I'll leave you your bit too."

"You really think that you can get out of here without me? I'm trained in wilderness survival; the most nature you've probably seen is the ocean outside your lab window."

"Did that training include how to get around on a broken leg? Because between Sora's shoulder and my ribs we aren't carrying you."

"Leaving me here is akin to murder. I thought you Lanteans with your code of ethics were above that."

"Eh, I'm a bit greyer in that area. Sure, that applies to friends, not so sure about a man who pulls a gun on me several times and takes a knife to me."

"And you plan to go where? From what I understand we're a long ways away."

"The Athosians have a settlement about twenty miles from here. Sora and I will go. As for you, you can do what you want. Drag yourself out of here and crawl into the woods if it pleases you, or wait and we'll maybe come back for you with help when we get there."

"That's if you get there. I don't put much faith in your chances."

McKay closed up the packs, having put some of the medical equipment in his. He turned to Kessler and shrugged, "That's your choice. But look at it this way; we're the only chance you have. So better start praying we get there or you will die out here."

"Fuck…" A groan came from next to McKay prompting him to look down at Sora as she opened her eyes and went to rub her injured arm lightly.

"Yeah, dislocated shoulders will do that. Unfortunately, we're going to have to get moving here in a few minutes. He pushed three tablets into her hand and set a water bottle next to her.

"What's this, poison to put me out of my misery?"

"Nothing so grim, painkillers. Not much, but they'll dull it a bit. You're gonna start hurting one we get moving. We both are."

She eyed him wearily but downed them two at a time before slumping back against the case she had ended up leaning up against when passing out.

Rodney scooted the case with the remaining water and food toward Kessler. "This is what you get to survive on. I trust you know how to ration it." He put the pair of hypodermics in the case as well, "This is morphine. It's a strong painkiller; each dose'll last six hours so only use them when it really starts to hurt." Tossing a bottle of aspirin into the case he commented, "Aspirin, a weaker painkiller. I'll leave you to bandage your own leg; I'm not feeling that much empathy for you at the moment. I'll leave you the rest of the medical case as well."

"That's your plan, to just leave me here and hope I can survive? Brilliant."

McKay shrugged again and went back to unlocking Sora's cuff that he had secured to the bench leg, "It's all we got thanks to you. If I remember correctly, I was innocently slumbering when you guys decided to start this mess."

Sora winced as he helped pull her to her feet and helped her sling the backpack over her good shoulder. He put his own on and scooped up his data pad with the map loaded onto the screen, taking one look back before the two headed out into the forest.

O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O