FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE: DISTRACTIONS
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The still cloaked jumped lowered itself down over the courtyard, right above the large corral of meeners that had, only recently, hidden Sheppard and, later, Teyla and Travis. Lorne had the invisible ship facing into the courtyard, trying to maintain the illusion as long as possible.
In the back, Stackhouse and Dunne had clipped the ropes to their waists—the same ones they'd used when they'd "snuck" up on Captain Godfrey and rescued McKay—and Johnson opened the back hatch. Greene and Beckett instinctively moved to protect McKay, though the only thing they were facing out the back was the blank stone wall of the Citadel.
Lorne took one more look around, making sure no one was watching, then gave the "go" order with his hand.
In seconds, the two soldiers were sliding down the ropes out of the back, landing right in the middle of the meeners. Anyone watching would have been shocked to see two men appear as if from thin air, but they moved so quickly, they might also have wondered if they'd imagined them. As soon as they were down, Stackhouse and Dunne unclipped the ropes—which the soldiers still in the jumper quickly drew back up—and then the two men started untying any of the meeners that were tied down and cutting saddle cinches.
Stackhouse paused a few times, when he found that many had already been cut.
Shaking the question off, he returned to his work.
Before long, they had them all cut, and Stackhouse was moving to the front of the stall, to the gate. Dunne moved to the back.
Up above, the jumper had closed the back hatch and had lifted again to check the status of the procession. Johnson and Greene both stood ready to drop the ropes again to pick up their two men on the ground, the latter poised to hit the hatch release the moment he was ordered to.
Beckett just held Rodney's arm, staring down at the inert features, waiting.
And up in front, in the pilot's seat, Major Lorne started released a slow breath, patiently looking for the right moment to tell his men on the ground to act...
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The two captains leading the captives up the hill were provided their new orders from a runner from the Citadel, and the bleak expressions on their faces showed exactly what they thought of them. Still, orders were orders, and they were soon passed around among the twenty some odd guardsmen surrounding the prisoners.
No one looked happy.
Elizabeth's smile finally fell, sensing the change. Her eyes were drawn to the Citadel, knowing exactly who was to blame.
"Back off!" one of the captains suddenly yelled at the crowd, "or we'll be forced to take measures!"
"Oh, yeah?" someone in the crowd mocked, "whatcha gonna do? Shoot us?" And he laughed, as did a large number of others.
"It's what we've been ordered to do," the captain replied, and he made a hand motion in the air to his men. Abruptly, rifles were cocked and pointed out towards the crowd.
The laughter died instantly.
"Now back off! Now!" the captain yelled.
"Are you serious?" a woman asked, holding a child in her arms closer to her chest. "You'd shoot your own people?"
"It's not up to us," the captain said. "And I will not ask again."
Curiously, no one in the crowd moved. They seemed almost too surprised to shift backwards. That and the sheer number of them—no one would be able to move fast.
"Move BACK!" the captain ordered.
"Now, now, hey," Sheppard said, raising a hand, "Let's calm down. I'm sure if these people just—"
"You are not to speak anymore," the other captain barked, a dark, burly man as broad as the other captain was skinny. He stared blackly at the colonel. "This is your fault."
"Oh," Sheppard's eyebrows lifted, "really? Because I don't remember giving you the order to shoot your own people."
With impressive speed, the same captain pulled a gun and pointed it at Sheppard's head. "Don't tempt me, prisoner."
The crowd didn't like that, and an angry murmur started to escalate.
Sheppard held up both hands now, but he didn't speak again.
Elizabeth, however, felt no such disinclination. "Captain," she said, her voice lowering in pitch as she spoke over John's shoulder, "Colonel Sheppard was only suggesting that, perhaps, you are escalating this to something dangerous, when it was nothing more than a...a bit of fun. Perhaps if you explained to the people why—"
"QUIET!" the captain pointing the gun at Sheppard yelled, pointing it now at her and pulling back the hammer. "I can kill a woman as easily as a man, prisoner!" Elizabeth grimaced at that, but did as she was told, shutting her mouth.
However, the crowd was not about to let that go.
"Hey, leave her alone!" a man near the guards yelled.
"She's not saying anything wrong!" someone else added.
"Stay back!" the first captain yelled, still brandishing his rifle at the crowd. "Stay back!"
"This is wrong!" a large man on the far side of the road yelled. "They're not hurting anyone!"
"And you can't threaten your own people! How dare you!" a woman yelled. "We won't leave!"
"I said, stay back!" the skinny captain yelled again. "Now! Or we will fire!"
But the crowd was no longer a crowd. With the unstoppable force of an ocean wave, they turned into a mob and pushed towards the guardsmen.
The captain fired a warning shot in the air. Several other of his men followed suit.
People in the crowd started to scream, especially the ones with children, and they started to try and push away from those who didn't want to leave, but too many wanted to stay.
More shouting, angry and irate, erupted from the mob, and they swelled inwards again. The meeners started to huff and jump, getting nervous. They were being pushed from all sides now. More warning volleys were sent into the air, but, as with last time, it only made things more mad.
"Make me a way through!" the first captain yelled over the roar of the crowd, looking the guardsmen in the front.
And, for the first time, shots were fired directly into the people. The crowd's furious roar was drowned out by screaming now, as people finally understood that the guards really would fire on them. People started pushing all sorts of ways, trying to get out of the now incredibly small feeling space.
The guardsmen pushed their meeners forward, the animals putting their heads down in order to use their horns as big horned sheep would, and started knocking over and through people, creating a sort of corridor. Elizabeth found herself holding on to Sheppard tightly as their meener was roughly pulled forward, forced to a speed that seemed irrational when there was so little room. She tried to see if anyone had actually been hit, but the running, screaming people were such a blur around them, it was impossible to tell. Travis, Teyla and Ronon were dragged behind, forced to match the pace being set.
Guardsmen continued to fire into the crowd, and the people continued to scatter. Some pissed off Garillions threw rocks, but it only made things worse, as the guards couldn't tell the difference between the sound of a rock hitting a rock wall and a bullet.
For a moment, Sheppard thought of using the distraction, but the chaos was too much. He didn't think he could get them all away, not without hurting more of the people of this City.
Hissing a swear, he looked up when they emerged onto a clearer road, and he recognized it as the one he'd followed just six hours ago when it was still night. It seemed oddly quiet after the mess they'd just left, and lonely.
And he looked up...the Citadel was almost on top of them now.
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"Now!" Lorne yelled into his radio.
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Sheppard's head snapped up, having heard Lorne's voice loud and clear over the radio.
So did the rest of his team, and they all turned to stare at him with wide eyes.
And, unfortunately, so did the guards right around them.
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Stackhouse swung the gate to the corral open, and Corporal Dunne fired his gun in the air behind the meeners, shouting "Hyah!" at the same time. He shot again, slapping rumps and getting the meeners to move. "Move, move, move!" he yelled at them, quickly jumping up onto the fence railing when a few threatened to kick their back hooves at him. Another shot in the air and the meeners were practically climbing on top of each other to try and get out of the corral.
Stackhouse fell back against the corral fence, half-pushed by the swinging gate, trying to get out of the way as the terrified ram-headed horses stampeded past him. Then he got into the spirit, yelling "hyah," and laughing as they barreled down the road away from the Citadel—straight for Sheppard and the others.
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"What is that!" one of the guards demanded, reaching for Sheppard's radio.
"Um..." Sheppard looked down at his shoulder, then lifted his head slowly. His brow was furrowed, his ears catching something rumbling. He looked past the guard up the road, and his eyes widened. "I think it's a stampede," he replied.
The guard stared at him, then turned his head forward. All around the prisoners, the guards had stopped, staring nervously up the road.
When the first meeners came around the corner, charging, screaming and terrified, down the road towards them, the captain in front wheeled around.
"DISPERSE!" he ordered. "SPREAD OUT! HURRY!"
The guards wheeled around, and the prisoners were turned with them. They scattered in all directions, Sheppard and Elizabeth finding themselves being whipped down an alleyway off to the left without about six or seven guards, Teyla and Travis down another with about eight more, and Ronon down a third with the rest.
The meeners continued to fly down the central road, though some turned to follow the alleyways. It was like a flood of muscle was chasing them.
The captain and the guards with Elizabeth and Sheppard turned them down hill, and they careened around corners, narrowly missing hitting all manners of people in their wake. Behind them, other guards in the city tried to intercept the stampeding meeners chasing them, but when they attempted to jump on the meener's backs, they fell to the ground as the saddles slid off.
It was a damned effective distraction!
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The ropes were dropped out the back of the cloaked jumper, and a grinning Stackhouse and Dunne quickly climbed back up to the back slapping applause of the men inside the jumper. Lorne radioed Caldwell that they'd been successful.
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TBC...