AN: PurpleYin,animals are a big part of this story. Actually, they are an integral part of the plot, but perhaps not quite in the way you might expect. It'd be interesting to know if anyone has guessed where this is going, but don't say it out loud if you have. Thanks as always for the reviews! NebbyJ, the different biomes are also a huge part of the plot, as everyone will begin to see in this chapter.
Chapter Six
Process of Elimination"How much longer before he wakes up?"
"Rodney, you can't rush these things. He'll wake up when his body is good and ready. I told you, he's fine, so stop worrying."
John listened to the conversation and quickly pieced together he was the object of discussion. He heard their voices fade to his right and figured they were walking away. He knew he should get up, but just for a few minutes more he wanted to remain down. His arm felt much better, indicating Beckett had worked his voodoo magic, voodoo in McKay's eyes at least. Sheppard held Carson's profession in higher esteem, especially after Beckett had talked them through the fiasco with the tic-wraith and then saved him again when he was changing into a wraith. If it weren't for Carson, he wouldn't be here.
He heard footsteps approaching, but made no move to open his eyes and join the living. His memories had caught up with his mind and he wasn't eager to have to deal with a new set of problems.
"You need to wake up now Major, it's time." Beckett instructed gently.
John debated the wisdom of refusing to cooperate, before letting his eyes slide open softly. "I'm awake," he said.
Beckett smiled. "I know you were."
"I was hoping I'd wake up and this would've been a bad dream."
"Only in the movies, Major." Beckett peeled back the bandages covering his arm and seemed pleased. "Your arm looks good. How do you feel?"
John was overcome with a sneeze right at that inopportune moment. Beckett handed him a tissue and eyed Sheppard critically. "Would you believe I feel fine?" Sheppard asked. He actually did. His arm only suffered from a mild ache, and despite the typical congestion with a head cold, he felt close to normal.
"I would, actually, Motrin is a miracle worker. Eight hundred milligrams IM should keep you settled for a while."
Sheppard wondered just how long he'd been out for. "Did you try to contact Atlantis?"
"Rodney did. We got through and let them know about our run-in with the resident life-forms."
"Has McKay made any progress?"
Beckett shook his head. "We were waiting for you to wake up before making any decisions. Apparently, Rodney has some theories."
Sheppard nodded, and got to his feet, pleased to find he could use his clawed arm fairly well. He took the time to examine their new surroundings and realized they had been deposited in an alpine area this time. The trees were stunted and consisted of mostly coniferous trees, with the spare elder and ash intermixed. There was a large amount of dead undergrowth littered among the pine trees, and the hoary threads of what he'd heard his father call moose hair hung amongst the branches. He didn't even know what the correct name of the stuff was, but it looked like the brown lichen you would find on the artic tundra, except it was draped in the trees like dental floss.
"Pretty." Sheppard observed. "Not too hot, not too cold. I could live with this."
"Sure, until the bears show up." Beckett grouched. "Or the snow."
Sheppard raised an eyebrow. "Bears?"
"Where's a bear?" Rodney approached Beckett and Sheppard. "I don't see a bear?"
"There isn't a bear." Sheppard answered. "Beckett was saying there might be bears."
"I like bears." Rodney had always enjoyed the zoo displays with the sun bears and the polar bears. He smiled remembering a documentary of a famous Alaskan polar bear that he'd watched; Binky was his name. He had a thing for balls.
Beckett looked at McKay. "I didn't say I didn't like bears," he said crossly.
"Enough with the bears." Sheppard said. "We need to get out of here, and McKay, you wouldn't like a bear if it was trying to eat you. Bears do that, you know."
"Only if they're threatened." Rodney defended. "The same as you and me."
"Fine," Sheppard growled. "I'll remind them of that when they're chasing us up a tree."
"I thought you said enough with the bears?" Beckett interjected.
"Yes, I did." Sheppard drawled. "McKay, Beckett said you had some theories as to what's happening?"
Rodney seemed to gather himself. "Oh, right. It's kind of interesting, actually. I think we're on the same planet," he indicated for Sheppard to follow him towards the DHD. "Do you remember I said it was odd the consoles were identical?"
Sheppard nodded. He also remembered not fully comprehending McKay's problem with the identical appearance. He looked at the DHD that McKay was indicating, and he compared it with the mental picture from the DHD from their desert location. It was definitely the same but he still didn't understand the significance.
"No two DHD's are the same, or so we thought. The reason is because on almost every planet we've gated to, there's been one gate. Now, there has been the occasional exception, Earth being the most notable, but on Earth we didn't have a DHD to compare, well not until we blew up the Russian's DHD, but the other was in Antarctica and "
" McKay, just give me the point." John interrupted. Rodney had this ability to prattle on with as much extraneous information as he could manage to expand upon.
Rodney scowled at Sheppard, but abbreviated his comments. "The point, Major, is that we can conclude that an identical DHD would indicate the same location. As in, we're still on M3M-552."
"You're sure?" Sheppard asked.
"Reasonably. It stands to follow, that if the gate system was randomly dumping us on other planets, their gates would work. We've had the same conditions at all three gates. If it was a problem with the entire gate network, Doctor Beckett and all our supplies shouldn't be here." Rodney explained.
John considered McKay's statements. His assumptions seemed logical, but that didn't do anything to get them home. "Can you fix it?"
"Fix it?" Rodney shook his head. "I don't know. When they discovered the Antarctica gate, the wormhole had jumped tracks when an energy beam struck the gate as they left a different planet. Carter couldn't get them home because she kept dialing Earth's address, and they were already on Earth. It's a different situation."
"And we know we're not on the planet where Atlantis is, because we're actually connecting." Sheppard said. "So what if we dial a different planet?"
"Wouldn't that be risky?" Beckett asked. He knew that before they gated to other planets, they sent a MALP through to verify the safety of their destination. They didn't have a MALP.
"We could have Atlantis check it out first, since we have the benefit of radio contact." Rodney hypothesized. "At the very least it might help pinpoint the problem by eliminating other possibilities. Right now I'm not a hundred percent certain the problem is here. It might be Atlantis."
John realized he hadn't considered the possibility that the problem wasn't on their end. "Are other teams experiencing problems?"
"Elizabeth said we're the only team out. When we failed to make it back she called off the other planned expeditions." McKay remembered. He also remembered asking if Zelenka had made any progress. Elizabeth assured Rodney that the Czech was searching the Ancient databases for any clues to the problems while Grodin put the Atlantis gate through a systems check that had turned up problem-free.
Sheppard made his decision. "We'll do it, but we go together, and we take everything with us. We don't know if we'll end up somewhere else on this planet, and if we do manage to gate off this world, we won't be coming back."
"What if we end up where the wolves were?" Beckett asked. "That's where it returned you two before."
"Good point. We'll have to be ready to gate out immediately. We can only hope they've dispersed after we left." Sheppard replied.
"Hope is for fools and children, Major." McKay declared.
"When did you become such a pessimist, McKay?"
"When my parents told me Santa Claus was a myth," Rodney snapped. "I was four."
"Santa's a myth?" Sheppard smiled.
"Funny." McKay shoved more materials into his pack. He'd made the mistake of assuming they'd be here for a while and had unrolled his sleeping bag. He swore the military designers had a screw loose when they created these things. When you were given the item, it was nice and compact, but after the first unraveling you realized that it was physically impossible to return the bag to its original size. It always stayed larger than it should; despite all of the sitting, pulling, and shoving he tried. He hated that bag.
"While you wrestle with your gear, I'll dial home and bring Doctor Weir up to speed." Sheppard grinned as he watched McKay struggle clumsily with the military issue bag. He knew the trick needed to roll it up properly, but he wasn't going to tell. Rodney was smart; eventually he'd figure it out.
"Major Sheppard, Peter says the MALP shows sunny skies and warm temperatures on M46-378. You have the all-clear." Weir's voice filtered over the radio from far across the galaxy.
"Copy that, Atlantis. We'll radio home when we arrive at our destination, or what we hope will be our destination." Sheppard answered dryly.
"Good luck, Major, Atlantis out." The wormhole disengaged.
John took a deep breath. "Dial it up, McKay." There wasn't anything else to say. They knew they might be walking into a death trap if they gated back to the wolves' location, and they might end up on the other planet, or a new location on this planet.
In the distance, a loud growl echoed. It started low, but rose in volume to become long and deep, a guttural primitive sound. Sheppard's eyes widened. McKay looked at Beckett, as if blaming him for the new development. "Is that " Rodney began.
" a bear." Sheppard finished for him. "Dial, McKay." Sheppard didn't even pull his eyes from the gate. This was getting ridiculous.
McKay swallowed. "Dialing." he said.
The gate engaged before they saw any sign of the animal responsible for the sound. Sheppard figured it might not be a bear, for all they knew, but it sure sounded like ones from Earth. He wasn't about to wait around to find out. "Let's go." He called, and waited until Beckett and McKay had left, before walking backwards into the event horizon, watching as long as his eyes could see. Just before he was sucked through, he thought he saw movement, but if it was a figment of his mind or an actual bear, he didn't have time to find out.
The first sensation he was aware of was the heat. It was hot, and not hot like the desert they had gated to when this fiasco began, but a stifling, sticky heat that reached into the pit of your belly and ripped the breath from your lungs. He looked around with growing disgust, dropping his pack with extra force. "This isn't M46-378."
"This is a bigger problem then I thought." McKay agreed. He was already examining the DHD. "It's identical. We've got to be on the same planet."
"How's that possible?" Beckett asked, perplexed.
Rodney was already running ideas and possibilities through his mind. "I have an idea. Major, I want us to dial Atlantis again, and go through the gate."
"You know what's going on?" Sheppard asked.
"Not entirely, but I'm beginning to get more of an idea. If I'm right, we'll come out where those wolf things are, so we need to be prepared to dial up as soon as we arrive." McKay explained.
Sheppard thought of asking for a more detailed explanation but changed his mind. He trusted that McKay knew where this was going and if his theories were correct, he'd explain it in depth at that point. There was definitely something hinky going on, that much was clear. The fact that every new gate seemed to be situated in a different biome wasn't lost on him.
This biome was the rain forest variety and he'd hate to see the size of snakes that grew here. The jungle was teeming with raucous birdcalls and insect chatter. It made his skin crawl, thinking about the amount of bugs that were probably in that forest. Sheppard realized Beckett and McKay were staring at him. He cleared his throat and tightened his vest. "Fine. Do your thing McKay."
Rodney pressed the same familiar symbols in quick order and the wormhole engaged predictably on schedule. He sent his IDC and waited. Elizabeth answered a few seconds later. "I take it you are still on M3M-552?"
"Yes, we are. Elizabeth, I have an idea. We're going to go through again, and if I'm right, we'll be activating the gate immediately after we arrive on the other side. I don't expect when we do that we'll wind up back home, but we'll have to go through the motions, so don't be alarmed."
"Understood. Atlantis out." Weir replied.
McKay hesitated before turning to Sheppard. "Major, you should probably go first this time."
John grinned like a Cheshire cat, but stepped through the gate without commenting. McKay followed closely behind Beckett, who was looking decidedly worried. As much as McKay was adapting to living under constant pressure, Carson was struggling to avoid it as much as possible.
Sheppard wasn't surprised to see the gate did deposit them where the wolves attacked. McKay had implied that was exactly what would happen, and usually, after a few slips here or there, Rodney had a handle on a situation. He scanned the tree line and realized it was clear. He also noticed a good portion of those he'd shot down were considerably chewed, and torn apart; cannibalism of their own kind. That bothered him, even though he knew they were wild animals, it wasn't typical for wolves. This indicated a hunger level that would explain the overwhelming attack and the level of perseverance the animals had displayed in the face of the P90.
John didn't recall seeing any higher order animals of the four-legged variety in this area. It was possible they had decimated their hunting grounds leaving little recourse for food. If that were the case, he could only hope their habitat was a distance away and it would take time for them to travel back towards the gate if they were able to detect their presence.
The slurping sound told him the gate had regurgitated McKay and Beckett. He turned in time to see McKay beaming as he realized he'd gotten one thing right. He also remembered they needed to gate out of here. "McKay?" he prompted.
"I know. I'm on it. I'm going to dial M46-378. If I'm right, we'll be back at the jungle." Rodney approached the DHD, and placing his gun on the console, tapped the correct symbols.
"Are you sure, Rodney?" Beckett was looking more nervous than before.
"Reasonably." McKay avoided eye contact with Carson.
Beckett looked towards Sheppard, who shrugged. John knew there wasn't a lot to lose at this point. The MALP had already verified the safety of M46-378. It was unlikely anything had changed, so either they'd end up there or the rain forest. Of course, there was the chance that Rodney was wrong in his assumption, and they'd end up someplace entirely different.
Sheppard realized the blue puddle had settled comfortably into a flat entrance to their next destination, and Rodney and Beckett were waiting for him to say the word. The hounds from hell hadn't made an appearance, always a good thing, and here they were off again. This was getting tiring. If everything looked good at the next spot, he was going to call it a day. They needed sleep and he could feel the ache in his arm beginning to grow with a persistent need, and another sneeze was building uncomfortably in his nose.
"Let's see where the rabbit hole takes us this time," and he walked in without a backward glance, trusting they'd be right behind.
