A/N: I promised to post tonight, so I post tonight... Two chapters! Enjoy.
Ch. 11
At the distant rumble of explosions, Rodney tore off to the bridge. He expected to see pillars of flame rising like miniature nuclear explosions, but all he saw was a monolithic column of black cloud rising like some fantasy movie beast about to devour the sky. It made Rodney feel suddenly small, incredibly vulnerable, and wanting to slink off into some hole to hide. He gaped at its size, and felt his heart plummet like a stone into his stomach.
"Great crap!" he breathed. He was mesmerized probably for seconds, but those seconds felt like an eternity. A sudden onslaught of urgency snapped him from it, and he reached for the com he'd finally thought to grab from his room on the way to the bridge.
"Carlyle, this is Rodney. Please tell me you have the transporters up."
The com crackled. "The shields are ready to go but we're still working on the transporters. Nothing big, just replacing a few parts."
"Well step on it! That prairie fire isn't going to go all polite and wait around for us to finish." Rodney wanted to charge back and handle the repairs himself. It was a strong urge, but not strong enough. He wanted more to wait and see if someone, anyone, made it out of that rock maze and smoke alive. He started pacing as he waited, never taking his eyes from the view screen. He didn't dare look at his watch and acknowledge time in anyway. It dragged like nails digging into the skin until Rodney started nibbling a cuticle to siphon some of his agitation.
So he didn't know, and didn't care, how much time had passed when the first scatterings of people came charging out of the rock-maze toward the Daedalus. They flowed toward the ship, like water flowing from a breached dam. Rodney's body went stick rigid and he craned his neck trying to discern faces. He would have verbally smacked down anyone else for doing the same; everyone was too far away and might as well be colorful ants.
Rodney darted from the bridge to the nearest emergency exit. They would need one open since the transporters didn't work. It would be slow, but at least they would be able to see each face before entering the Daedalus one at a time, seeing who belonged and who didn't. Rodney's hands shook getting the door open, then clamoring down the ladder. He dropped to the ground and headed at a fast walk toward the approaching horde. He jumped a little when a marine moved ahead on the right. Rodney hadn't even realized anyone had followed.
The masses closed the distance enough for Rodney to see faces – Ronon's Elizabeth's, Caldwell's. Rodney almost crumpled to the ground in relief.
"It's about damn time!" he crowed in a cracked voice.
Ronon broke into an even faster run to meet up with McKay. "Wasn't an easy go," he said. "Could hardly see."
Rodney nodded, then scowled. "Whatever, we need to get everyone on board, now. We have the shields ready..." he looked up at the sky that was turning gray as though a storm were inching its way in. "Where's Sheppard? He should have been back by now."
About then, Rodney realized how perfectly quiet it was. No more thunderous explosions, and no distant mosquito whine of an F-302.
Rodney tapped his com. "Carlyle, we need that transporter now!"
SGA
When his chair hit the ground, John tugged and tore at the harness, squirming and yanking his arms and body free. The struggle made his ribs throb mercilessly. He grimaced, grunting from the pain until he finally managed to slip free. John lurched to his feet and stumbled limping away from the chair in the general direction he'd last seen the pirate ship. It was mostly guesswork. He couldn't see a damn thing through all the smoke that poured into his lungs, searing them. He coughed a cough that made his ribs cramp and his breath catch. John flapped his arm until the sleeve of his jacket fell over his hand, and used that end of the sleeve to cover his mouth and nose. He pushed Sherbet's head down into his jacket with the tips of his casted hand.
The going sucked more than words could describe. Between his tired body, pained feet, and heart laboring out of exertion and fear, he kept pulling in deeper breaths that brought smoke with it. His eyes watered, blurring his vision, deepening the fog around his world.
He didn't see one of the ships landing legs until his shoulder clipped it. The impact hurt like hell but that didn't stop him from wanting to hug the thing. With a triumphant, hysterical chuckle, he pushed forward beneath the ship's belly, past the lowered ramp, and beyond toward the rock maze. No obstacles except the smoke and the walls of jagged, red-brown rocks rising up around him as he entered the maze. The smoke wasn't quite so bad, in that he could see a few more feet ahead, which was better than nothing.
Problem was, he'd already taken in enough smoke to create a few obstacles of a different color. It was hard to breathe, making it hard to focus. He stumbled into the rocks surrounding him like walls, and leaned up against them for support.
"Ah crap!" he coughed. He wasn't quite sure the direction to go, and although this rock maze wasn't an actual maze, the wrong turn would make finding the exit a painfully slower process.
During the transition from one rock wall to the next, John's foot snagged on a tangled clump of grass sending him flying face-first toward the dirt. He twisted enough not to land on Sherbet, which meant landing on his side. Pain shot through his flank and he gnashed his teeth trying not to cry out. Sherbet bounded out of his jacket, two feet away, and sat back yeeping at him.
John rolled onto his hands and knees. "Coming buddy," he gasped. "Just – just give me a minute."
The air was fresher toward the ground – that was the rule, and actually not a misconception. John began crawling, just for a little while in order to catch his breath and decrease the coughing. Sherbet bounded back and forth, yeeping, as though trying to encourage John to pick up the pace.
"I'm not naturally four-legged, pal," John rasped. "This is as fast as..." He was interrupted by a sudden, vicious kick straight to his already cracked ribs that sent him slamming into the ground. John cried out, only to have that interrupted by a kick to the chest that shoved the breath right out of him.
"Well, well, little beast. Fancy running into you here." Another kick drilled straight into his stomach. "It does pay to linger, doesn't it?"
It took John way longer than it should have to get the air sucked back into his lungs. Even when he managed it, it took just as long to get through bouts of harsh coughing before he could speak.
"What the hell..." he gasped. "Are you... doing... here?"
"I was attempting to track down your friends, but it seems they got ahead of me. Suppose you'll just have to do." Another kick to the stomach, and just when John had managed to get his breath back. Baldy crouched, grabbing John by the sleeve at his shoulder, hauling him to his feet then slamming him into the rough rock face. John was going to die of suffocation long before Baldy had finished beating the crap out of him.
"You..." John coughed painfully, "stuck around... Just to hunt... us down? Not even gonna try..." he coughed again, "to get away? What the hell is wrong... with you?"
"Oh I'm not sticking around, little beast. I plan on leaving, and you're coming with us. If I can't have your ship I can at least have the satisfaction of breaking your skinny neck."
"So your engines do work?"
Baldy pulled John away from the rock wall. "Enough to get us off the ground and to some place less deadly. Don't think this is over, little beast. We can still fire from the ground. Your ship tries to take off, we'll be ready."
"Then why are you wasting time shoving me around? That fires almost on us!"
Baldy didn't answer. He shoved John forward, which only did to send him sprawling flat on his face again. John barely got to lift his head when Baldy grabbed him by both the shoulders of his jacket and pulled up. John unzipped his jacket during the transition, enabling himself to slip out and stumbled out of Baldy's reach. Whirling around and managing not to fall again, he pointed a stiff, shaking finger at the pirate.
"Look pal. Why don't you stick your pride where the sun don't shine and leave me alone so you can save your own ass! You're wasting freakin' time!"
Again, baldy didn't answer, didn't remark. He just strode forward straight at John, forcing John to stagger backward to stay out of reach. McKay was right. John had pissed this guy off something fierce, enough to risk himself just for a little drawn out vendetta. People tended to get stupid when they panicked, but dropped even more I.Q. points when they gave into the need for revenge.
Or baldy was hoping to use John as a bargaining chip. Either way, both goals were idiotic. Caldwell wasn't going to give up his ship and sacrifice hundreds for one man.
Desperate, angry, vengeful – John was surprised baldy wasn't drooling and gibbering in baby-talk.
John's heel hit a dip in the ground, destroying his balance to have him slamming into the ground onto his back. Baldy took the advantage and moved in on John. John, however, was knocked breathless, not senseless, and kicked out slamming his foot exactly where he'd told baldy to shove his pride. Baldy gasped and groaned, while John cried out in pain.
"Son of a... Crap!" John shoved the pain to the back of his mind, and rolled onto all fours to scramble back onto his feet and away from the bald man. He stumbled, limped, and lurched through the thickening smoke that hid the walls and stacks of rock that he barely avoided colliding with.
"You won't be getting too far in this mess, little beast!" Baldy called. "I'll find you, and make you suffer until our very last breath!"
John gritted his teeth at suddenly being thrust into the middle of some cliché horror movie. He actually anticipated the snarling purr of a chainsaw at any moment. Or perhaps baldy preferred machetes.
"I can hear you, little beast. Not quite steady on your feet. Doesn't help your cause much."
"And talking constantly doesn't help yours!" John snapped, then coughed, which increased his disadvantage. He couldn't see squat through the smoke and stinging tears in his eyes. He clipped and bounced off of rock-faces that loomed out of the shadows like some magician's trick. Hide the obstacles with a veil then yank that veil away when John was just a foot away. His arms began to throb, but not as bad as his feet that felt like they were developing hair-line cracks.
A sharp, solid weight slammed into him between his shoulder blades, sending him back to the ground on his chest. He tried to get up, only to have something else hard, solid, and uneven smash into his back right on the same spot. John glanced back to see a boot, a leg, and baldy connected to it. Even through the haze of smoke, John was still able to catch the white of teeth from the man's smile. Baldy increased the weight on his foot that dug and pushed into Sheppard's back, bending his spine in the wrong direction, and flattening his ribs.
"I intend to make this slow for you, little beast," baldy rasped.
John had several pithy replies for that, just not the lung capacity to say anything. His heart was beating at the speed only pure, irrational terror could produce. It thrashed around against its prison of bone slowly closing in on it. John was sure it would explode long before he suffocated. The question was, would he burn? Or would baldy use his body to bargain with, maybe to get the Daedalus, maybe just to get his recharger back. Either way, the man didn't care weather what he bargained with lived or breathed.
John suspected he wasn't even going to be bartered anytime soon. This was all one hundred percent vindication.
It sucked to be useless.
John heard echoing from a far away place a high-pitched growl. He saw something bright within the dark density of the smoke come flying at baldy's knee and latch on. Baldy bellowed out a throaty cry of pain, lifting his boot away, freeing John's ribcage to expand pulling in the fresher air that lingered near the ground. John blinked away tears and looked back to see baldy hopping around trying to swat at something skittering all over his leg like a turbo-charged snake. He finally got in a lucky swipe sending the blazing ribbon of fur flying into the smoke with a pained squeak.
"Sherbet!" John cried. He tried to scramble in the direction Sherbet had been tossed, but baldy was on him, pulling him to his feet by the collar of his sweater. The collar cinched tightening around John's neck. In both panic and desperation he slammed his elbow back right into baldy's face. Baldy released John to stagger back, so John spun around, swinging his cast right up against baldy's head. Baldy's head rebounded off the cast, then again off a wall of rock. Instead of going down, he swayed and lurched like a drunkard straight at John. Without thinking, without realizing, the small cool weight that had been forever bumping John's wrist since he escaped from the storage closet slid into his hands. Baldy reached for him, snarling. John thrust his arm forward with everything he had left, burying the wire shiv deep into baldy's chest. Baldy jolted to a halt, sucking in a wheezing gasp. He looked down in astonishment at the piece of cable sticking out of his chest. He looked at John in the same manner, then back at the shiv. He tightened a meaty fist around it, trying to pull it out, but couldn't thanks to all the blood. Baldy turned and began to stagger away into the smoke, fading like a spirit.
John didn't waste time seeing if he would return. He turned in the opposite direction and pushed forward, pulling the sleeve of his sweater over his hand and covering his mouth with it.
"Sherbet!" he called, and coughed, just once. The pain in his ribs was too excruciating. He gasped, uttering a broken cry, and dropped to his knees. "Sherb..." he didn't have enough clean air in his lungs to finish. The world spun and tilted. John looked up to where the sky was supposed to be, at the light trying to push its way through the roiling mist of soot. Everything was gray, black, and highlights of sickly amber turning everything dusk.
Shapes moved through the smoke-like dust. Dark bodies stained by that dust, nothing more than humans shapes, marching and marching and marching. John fell to his hands to crawl after, ducking his head away from the dust that tasted bitter like ashes, old sweat, and blood. If you couldn't walk, you crawled. So John crawled, hand, knee, hand, knee, scraping up clouds of dust of his own. The destination didn't matter, just moving.
A bright body, too small to be human, materialized from the veil of dust and smoke, and yeeped. John lifted his heavy head and smiled.
"H-hey Sherb," then coughed. It hurt to breathe, and hurt even more to talk. Sherbet yeeped, then bounded forward to lick at John's filthy hand. He bounded away, then back, then away, yeeping to urge John on. John grabbed the trailing strap of the leash and held on.
"Lead the way, buddy."
Sherbet yeeped, and trotted forward. John crawled as quickly as his hurting body would let him, letting the sudden tautness of the leash guide him when he almost veered. The bodies in the dust closed in around him. He could feel them brushing past him. Faces looked at him, leering, coveting. They were all the same, masked in filth, featureless, not really people, just bodies - shells. He felt their hands brush his back, his legs. They wanted his clothes. Their's weren't enough. Never were, never will be. John shivered and cringed away from them.
"No," he moaned, and crawled faster, scraping his knees and his palms over rough dirt and razor sharp grass. He felt like he was trying to breathe a mixture of oxygen and cotton that was stuffing into his lungs, and even on his hands and knees he swayed. But he kept moving. They didn't come back for you when you stopped, and John was useless now. They wouldn't care if he dropped. They wouldn't come back for him. The moment he dropped, they would take his clothes, and he would be left dieing naked, buried by the dust.
Or burned. Burned while he was still alive. It felt so hot.
The leash tugged, and Sherbet yeeped continuously, frantically. He sounded afraid.
"Sherbet!"
Sherbet whined. John let go of the leash. If he had to die, he should be the only one. Sherbet didn't deserve it.
What was Sherbet even doing here?
"Sheppard!"
John kept crawling, just for the sake of it. He never could go down without a fight.
Then hands were on him, all over him, pulling at him, his clothes, his arm, his shoulders. Sheppard let out a hoarse shout of panic and bucked away.
"No, I'm not dead yet! I'm not dead...!"
"Of course you're not dead! Sheppard, calm down! It's us, me and Ronon."
Hands pulled on him, dragging him away. He fought them. Even when the voices penetrated with their familiarity he still fought them.
"Nooooo!"
Thick arms wrapped around his chest, pinning his arms to his sides, so he kicked out instead. Hands grabbed him by the face, forcing him to look right up into the blue eyes and soot-stained and terrified visage of McKay.
"Sheppard," McKay gasped, coughing hard afterwards. "Sheppard, it's us. It's all right, you'll be all right, just calm down."
John gaped. He inhaled with the intent to say something when the breath caught in his overstuffed lungs. His body jolted and jerked in a fit of coughing that was agony when his ribs seized up on him, going solid to neither expand nor contract. It was official – he couldn't breathe. He tried, but it was as though a wall had formed within his trachea. John arched his back to dislodge it, and managed something that allowed him a choking whimper.
"McKay!" Ronon snarled. "He can't breathe."
John wheezed, just a tiny stream of breath, but it wasn't enough. Black motes and blinding lights sparked in his eyes. His heart was thrashing again, and this time he knew it was going to explode, any minute now.
"We won't make it back in time. Carlyle! tell me you've got the transporters working. Please!"
John was maneuvered for a hand to start pounding on his bruised back. "Come on, Sheppard, breathe!"
"His lips are turning blue!"
White light surrounded John, sucking him into a cold void, then spitting him out on the other side. More hands grabbed him, and he felt himself suddenly airborne. He landed on a soft surface. Something was placed over his face, something that brushed his mouth and nose with cool, sweet air. And it still wasn't enough. He coughed, feeling something warm slid down the corner of his mouth. The mask was removed, and the warm liquid continued on down his jaw, then his throat.
"Oh my gosh! Please tell me that's because he coughed too much and not because a lung's punctured."
Shapes danced over John, human shapes in clean clothes, not one with the dust, not shadows. A voice with an accent yelled for someone to prep a chest tube and hands finally removed the clothing he fought so hard to keep, leaving him cold.
"Hang on, son," said Carson.
John heard a subdued little yeep, then the black motes outnumbered the flashing lights, and joined to drop him into darkness.
SGA
"Dr. McKay, would you please leave that mask on."
Rodney was a robot. The obedient seen and not heard robot, placing the oxygen mask back to his face. He heard the same rather emotionless voice command him to take deep breaths, so he did, his lungs catching on a cough. He irritably swiped at the tears produced by the cough. He wanted to see every damn moment of what was happening, because he'd never been able to before. He couldn't say why, and didn't care what difference it would make, just that he preferred it to waiting without the watching.
He was probably wrong. Watching was probably worse. He Just – didn't – care.
Carson and his team were all over Sheppard cutting up his black sweater too dark to show soot stains. They tossed it aside in a heap on the floor, and the pressure bandages along with it, then surged even tighter obscuring Sheppard's pale, bruised, filthy body. The obscuring part didn't come quite in time to hide them inserting a tube between two of Sheppard's ribs – rather fragile looking ribs. They looked like brittle little sticks trying to poke through Sheppard's skin. Rodney found it morbidly fascinating in that he wanted to look away, knew he should, but couldn't quite get his eyes to follow any commands. He'd always thought bones to be thicker, although probably not the ribs.
Medical jargon was tossed around, enough for Rodney to translate into 'punctured and collapsed lung' and 'blood filling the cavity around one lung.' He saw blood fill the tube, and that's when he finally looked away, down at Sherbet curled in his lap, breathing shallow. Rodney took the oxygen mask from his face and placed it over Sherbet's little head.
"Dr. McKay!" the nurse snapped, rushing over from making sure Ronon kept his mask on to take Rodney's mask.
Rodney snapped his head up pouring every ounce of terror and anger that was boiling him up inside into his gaze. "In a minute!"
The nurse flinched to a halt and worked her mouth soundlessly. Rodney finally pulled the mask from Sherbet when his own lungs began to tighten. He continued this back and forth, concentrating on it to the point that everything around him stretched into distant sounds and actions.
The next time Rodney brought the mask to his face, another mask appeared covering Sherbet's head. Rodney looked up into the nervous but apologetic face of the nurse. She smiled waveringly at him, then placed her hand on his shoulder. "You should lie back," she said, applying pressure to his shoulder. "It'll help."
Rodney nodded heavily, and moved carefully so as not to jostle Sherbet too much. He eased his aching back into the pillows of the upraised head of the bed. Then he sighed releasing all agitation and adrenaline from his sore body in that single breath. He closed his eyes for a moment during this lull between controlled frantic and the possibility of someone shouting for a defibrillator. The call never came.
What had Rodney's eyes snapping open was the sudden decrease in noise. His gaze went straight to Sheppard's bed where the Daedalus physician and two nurses lingered cleaning up the mess and making sure Sheppard was settled. He had a blanket pulled up stopping just below the drainage tube, and an intubation tube shoved down his throat.
Rodney had been through this song and dance before. It was to help John breathe while his lungs recovered. Still didn't mean Rodney had to like it. He scowled at the apparatus hanging out of the side of Sheppard's mouth as though it were the cause of their current ills. Rodney knew that it wasn't, he just liked to have something to vent on, and he refused – this time around – to let John be the scapegoat for his fury.
A hand on Rodney's shoulder made him start and whip his head around to face Carson. Carson snatched his hand back and winced.
"Sorry, lad. Didn't mean to startle you."
Rodney relaxed and moved his mask aside so he could talk. "It's inevitable, Carson. I'm going to be jumpy for a while. How's Sheppard? What happened to him? Was it smoke or a broken rib?"
Carson placed his hand on Rodney's shoulder, applying pressure until Rodney got the hint to lean forward. Carson lifted both Rodney's jacket and shirt to place the stethoscope to his back. "Both, actually. Breathe in."
Rodney sucked in a breath, then coughed it back out. Beckett moved the membrane to the other side of Rodney's back and told him to breathe again.
"I'd rather not," Rodney rasped, but did anyways. His lungs tickled, but he managed not to cough this time.
"Hm," Carson said. "I think it best if you'd stay overnight so I can monitor your O2 stats. And continuing the answer to your question; a broken rib punctured his lung, causing it to collapse. The other lung was on the verge of collapse due to the smoke. But we got him in time and both lungs are already reinflated. There wasn't too much blood. The lad's bloody lucky the transporters were brought back online. It would have been pulling it too bloody close if you'd brought him back on foot. He shouldn't be needing the tubes for long, but he'll probably be out of it for the rest of the journey."
Rodney nodded wearily. Now that Carson had given him the good news, all he wanted was for his voodoo highness to go practice his art elsewhere. Rodney wanted to sleep.
Rodney flopped his hand onto his lap and the lump of fur curled there. He looked down at Sherbet sprawled on his lap with his head engulfed in the oxygen mask. Sherbet's flanks were rapid as they rose and fell.
Carson sighed and shook his head. "I'm not a bloody vet," he said, placing the stethoscope to Sherbet's chest, then sides.
"He's got lungs and a heart," Rodney said. "What's so different about that?"
"They're smaller, so I'm not quite sure what abnormalities I should be listening for. But so far things sound good. No crackles or the like. Sherbet was closest to the ground so any smoke intake was probably minimal. I think the little bugger's just tired."
"Hey," Rodney admonished. "That little 'bugger' is why Sheppard's alive. We never would have found John if Sherbet hadn't been calling out. And from the look of things when we found the Colonel, Sherbet had been doing a pretty darn good Lassie impression leading John out of that rock maze."
Carson's eyebrows shot to his hairline. "Did he now?" He looked down at Sherbet, and scratched him between his large ears. "I always thought him a loyal wee bairn but not quite to that extent. He is a smart one."
A nurse approached and handed off a set of scrubs to Carson. Carson then held them out for Rodney to take. "I had a hunch you'd be wanting out of smoked clothing."
Rodney sat up straighter, taking the scrubs. "Yes. It keeps sparking these cravings for ham."
Carson chuckled softly, patting Rodney on the shoulder before shifting over to Ronon's bed. The Satedan was sprawled out on the bed, and the mask did nothing to stifle the Mack truck snoring.
Rodney gathered Sherbet into one arm as he shuffled out of bed to change in the nearest bathroom. He paused when passing John's bed, grimacing at the mechanical rise and fall of his chest that was too blasted unnatural for comfort. But, hey, at least he was breathing. At least they were all breathing, which might not have been the case had things gone a different way.
Had John not done his job.
Rodney moved closer to John's bed, moving the man's uncasted arm enough to set Sherbet against John's flank. He then lightly patted John's arm.
"Would have been better if you came back in one piece," Rodney said. But he, like everyone else, would settle for John coming back alive, again and again and again. They couldn't exactly afford to be picky.
SGA
There wasn't much to see on the view screen thanks to the solid wall of smoke rolling over it, except when a strong enough gust of wind scattered it. Through the holes in the smoke Elizabeth could see the bright orange flicker of flames licking up the prairie grass leaving a trail of smoldering ash and charred plant life. She also saw, in the distance to the left, birds bursting from the ground where the fires hadn't touched yet.
"Shields are holding sir," said one of the deckhands. "We have sublight, and hyperdrive's almost back on line."
Caldwell moved from behind his chair to the front to seat. "Good, take us up, then."
The only sign that they were moving was the low hum of the engines powering up, then the smoke diminishing as the Daedalus pulled away. A different kind of flame swept over the view screen as the Daedalus climbed up out of the atmosphere into the star-pricked blackness of space. Elizabeth had never been comfortable with space travel unless it was through a gate. All that empty, vacuum openess – cold and endless – made her feel no bigger than a grain of sand and vulnerable as too thin glass. All that was in the past now. She smiled and sighed in body-melting relief to see all that endless dark.
She lingered until the announcement came that the hyperdrives were ready, and Caldwell gave the order for the drives to be engaged. Once Elizabeth saw the cloudy tunnel of hyperspace, she finally left the bridge to head to the infirmary and check on her people.
It had been so damn close she was still shuddering over it. The remaining pirates escaping the fire were now locked in the brig to be dealt with later. They'd come running, begging asylum, and didn't even object to being zatted and practically stripped searched. Something the Geneva Convention would probably frown about, but there was nothing truly wrong with a little extra precaution. Chances were good they would probably be incarcerated on some scarcely populated Milky Way world. No way were these thugs stepping one foot on Earth.
Elizabeth slowed when she entered the infirmary. She looked between John and Rodney – Rodney decked out in scrubs and snoring through the oxygen mask on his face. Ronon in the next bed out-snoring him. John wasn't allowed to snore with a tube doing the breathing for him. Carson had assured – during the debriefing before the Daedalus was ready to take off – that the tube was just a precaution to make breathing less of a hassle, and would probably not be in for long.
It still made her stomach recoil. John was supposed to have sit this one out, which had been ridiculous from the start with them being seriously out-maneuvered and out-manned. Rodney had explained how John had ended up in the infirmary with a chest tube sticking out of him. He'd been flying an F-302. One would think him the safest out of all of them (barring those remaining at the Daedalus) in an F-302. The sky was pretty much John's territory. But then even birds don't fly forever. The only reason Elizabeth could see for John getting shot down was thanks to his already damaged body catching up to him with pain and exhaustion.
It made her physically sick. She had to keep reminding herself that John would be fine, that things weren't as bad as they looked, and soon they would be arriving at Earth and beamed into the safety of the SGC. They would be on vacation – officially this time, so long as no other pirates decided to make a grab for the Daedalus.
Satisfied, at least, to see her people on the mend, she turned and headed from the infirmary to her quarters. There, she curled up on her bed, and allowed herself the luxury of pretending everything that had happened nothing more than a bad dream.
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TBC...
A/N: Only the epilogue to go.
