MORE THAN JUST PRETTY FACES
By TIPPER
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN: NERVE-WRACKING
"Well," Sheppard said, blowing the air out of his cheeks slowly as he watched Blobby swim in the air currents, "that's a problem."
"Do you think it knows the jumper is there?"
"Oh, yeah," Sheppard nodded, "I'd say that was a good bet."
Teyla frowned, "But...do you think it has—"
"Sucked all the power from it? No idea. It only seems to feed on power sources that are actually on and we left nothing on except..."
"The cloak," Teyla finished.
Sheppard grimaced, then nodded.
"If it has fed on the power that provides the cloak for the jumper, is that all the power the jumper has?" Teyla asked.
Sheppard pursed his lips, looked down, "I don't..." Suddenly, he looked up and arched an eyebrow at her.
"Oh. Wait. He's awake now, right?" He tapped the radio on his vest, "McKay."
Heavy static answered him, then, faintly, "Ronon here."
"Ronon, get me McKay."
"I can't."
"What? Why?"
"He's unconscious."
"What? Again? Why?"
"I set his leg. He passed out."
"Oh...great. Wonderful. Wake him up."
There was a pause in response to that, then, "I'd rather not. Is it important?"
Sheppard clapped a hand to his forehead, groaning in exasperation. Man, he missed having a marine on his team! Dragging the hand down his face, he released a heavy sigh and looked up again at the energy creature.
Blobby was still swimming along the air currents, looking to be enjoying himself. Or herself. Did it have a gender?
"Yeah, it's important," he answered finally. "But," he frowned, "It can wait a little bit. We'll contact you again in about fifteen minutes. Be ready to wake him then."
"Okay."
"Sheppard out."
Teyla eyed him, eyebrow arching curiously. "It can wait?"
"Let's see if the jumper's there and cloaked still. If not...well, then we'll talk to Rodney. If the cloak is still in place, then...well...then we fly it out of there."
Teyla frowned. "But the creature—"
"One step at a time," Sheppard replied. He blew the air out his cheeks and looked at the bridge. "First, let's just get across that, then we'll worry about the jumper."
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Teyla nodded, and, taking in a fortifying breath, started to move through the brush to get closer to the bridge. When they were as close as they could get without leaving the shelter of the jungle, she stopped.
Her feet suddenly became frozen to the ground. Her brow furrowed, and she found herself awash with hesitation, remembering how this whole mess had started. All the self-doubting emotions she'd felt earlier came back in a flood, and her breath caught, making the swaying bridge loom impossibly large and impassable in her sight.
A hand touched her shoulder lightly, the rough fingertips just touching her skin.
Teyla turned to look at Sheppard, not hiding the anguish on her face. He drew his hand back, his expression firm.
"It wasn't your fault," he said softly.
He had obviously seen her hesitation...and guessed the reason. When he saw her gaze grow skeptical, he smiled sweetly at her. It was his, "I meant it" smile. She frowned, and looked away, back to the terrible bridge.
"You are kind, Colonel, but you are wrong," she replied, the words spilling out before she could stop them. "It was my fault. I tipped the bridge. And I was the reason we had to cross it in the first place. I told you the villagers were trustworthy, and they were not. And the reason we are even on this planet is because—"
"There was an Ancient outpost here," Sheppard interrupted, a hint of anger in his tone. "Don't go taking on all of Atlantis's decisions and making them your own, Teyla. We would have checked it out, regardless of whether you knew the natives or not. It was a bonus that you knew them, not a deciding factor."
Teyla frowned, "Yes, but—"
"But what? All of a sudden you can predict the future? You can see into the hearts of men and know all their secrets? Christ, Teyla, you can't protect us against every eventuality. As much as I wish you had a magic crystal ball that could determine whether we'd be safe or not, you're not a witch or a seer. You're just human, like the rest of us." He gave a small smile, "Okay, maybe you're a little better than human with that Wraithdar of yours, but you're still, ultimately, human."
Her eyes softened a little, and she looked down.
"One of these days, Teyla," he noted quietly, "we're going to lose someone. Whether it's Rodney, me, Ronon...or you...I don't want it to happen, but you know as well as me that our luck can't hold out forever. And when it happens, we'll need the strength to keep moving on. This day has tested the limits of our ability to do that. And you passed the test. We all did."
She looked up again, her brow furrowed.
Sheppard suddenly smiled, "Of course, Rodney wasn't awake for most of it..."
The smile came unbidden to her own lips, and she chuckled a little as she looked again to the rope bridge.
"So...we just keep moving," she said.
"We do."
She nodded, then looked back at him. With the briefest of smiles, she was on her feet and headed for the bridge, no more hesitation in her step.
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Sheppard paced Teyla easily, following her as she crossed the bridge with surprising ease for someone who, a moment ago, had looked terrified at the thought. Now she attacked the obstacle with her usual grace, moving swiftly and keenly to the other side.
He wasn't quite so graceful, trying not to jump at every flash of white color in the underbrush and tip the bridge again.
But nothing attacked them.
It was horribly easy. They were on the other side and crashing through the jungle in mere minutes. Sheppard wasn't sure whether to be thankful, or even more worried. After the day they'd had, it seemed too simple. In other words, he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Blobby had, obviously, taken care of every Wraith dart in the area. If there were any Wraith left on the ground, they were on foot and, he guessed, probably watching the Stargate. Or...where they had left the jumper. If the Wraith had guessed where it was. Maybe they wouldn't put Blobby's presence and it together...maybe...
He really, really hoped, though, that the Wraith were all gone. The only thing that suggested to him that they may not be was the fact that Blobby was still here. If the Wraith had arrived by the Stargate, the creature would likely have followed them back through the Stargate when they left, or fed on the Stargate's power...but Blobby would have been a lot larger if it had fed on the Stargate's power. So, that suggested the Stargate had not been used.
Of course, if the Wraith arrived by ship—whether by Hive or Cruiser, then perhaps they were gone, flown back to the ship or ships that had brought them here in the first place, and somehow avoiding Blobby on the way. But then, why hadn't Blobby, who was obviously not organic, gone to feed on the smorgasbord that a Hive or Cruiser represented up in the space around the planet?
Unless...maybe Blobby couldn't sense that sort of power across such a distance? If its ability to find a power source was similar to a dog's sense of smell for food, then perhaps it had a limited range?
He mulled that over as they approached the area where they had left the jumper, slowing as Teyla slowed. It'd be really helpful to ask McKay these questions...
Teyla came to a stop near the edge of the clearing, and they both studied the seemingly empty space with obvious relief. The cloak was still working. The whole area was in deep shadow, Blobby's form blocking the sunlight as effectively as any natural cloud formation, but there was still enough light to see the faint indentation in the grass where the hatch of the jumper was pressing it down.
"It has not sucked the power from the jumper," Teyla whispered gratefully, looking up at the overhanging black mass. It completely filled all of the visible sky here.
"Yeah," Sheppard said, frowning a little. "But then, why is Blobby hovering over it?"
"Perhaps," Teyla arched an eyebrow, "it can sense it, but not find it? Whatever the cloak does that prevents the Wraith sensors from finding it, also prevents the creature from finding it?"
Sheppard just shrugged, and looked around the field. "Do you sense any Wraith nearby?"
Teyla closed her eyes a moment, then shook her head. "No. Just...very faintly. Far from here. In fact..." She opened them again, and looked around. "I am not sure there are any Wraith left on the planet at all." She glanced at Sheppard, "But that doesn't mean there aren't any villagers watching this clearing, if they have guessed that we landed here and have hidden our ship."
Sheppard grimaced—he had forgotten about them. He wasn't going to ask Teyla if she thought the villagers would still be looking for them. The Wraith were currently probably only stopped from culling this planet by the presence of Blobby, and the possible promise of the villagers still capturing the Atlantians for them. Still, she had just told him something he'd been wondering about.
"So, there are Wraith ships in space?"
She looked at him, frowning. The she closed her eyes and settled her breathing.
The silence that wrapped around her then was strange, bringing the other sounds of the jungle into almost stark relief. Nervous birds chattered, critters slid through the undergrowth, and animals padded the ground all around them. And, above it all, the soft hiss of Blobby, charged and hungry, floating just over the tops of the trees like a heavy morning fog.
Nerve-wracking.
Finally, she opened her eyes and looked at him.
"There are three Wraith cruisers in the atmosphere," she said with total certainty. He nodded.
"And on the planet?"
She grimaced, then shook her head. "I can not be certain. I do not think there are any still on the surface, but..." She shrugged, obviously recalling the way Bob floated around Atlantis under her nose for almost two weeks. Even after she learned how to contact the Wraith as a collective, she had not known for certain he was here until she had "heard" him contact the Wraith on the ships in her mind.
"Okay," Sheppard said, looking back at the clearing, "for now, let's assume we've got Wraith and villagers watching this clearing."
"I will go first," Teyla said, looking up at Sheppard. "If anyone is watching, they will try to stop me. If there are not..."
"Wait," Sheppard reached into his vest and pulled out his scanner. Holding it up, he studied the life signs registering on it for a moment, before making a decision. He nodded to her.
"As Rodney said earlier, there are too many life signs on this thing. I can't tell whether there are bad guys around or not. All I can say is that there are at least five life signs on this registering as strongly as we are. The could be animals..."
"Or humans and Wraith," she finished. He nodded. She grimaced, "We could go seek them out first."
"If it's an animal, I don't want to go looking for trouble. And if it's a human, there may be more outside the scanner's range, watching their backs." He looked up, peering intently at the area where he knew the jumper to be. "What it comes down to..."
"Is that, whoever they are, we need to draw them out," she finished.
"Yup."
"Then we do this the old-fashioned way," she quipped, using a phrase she'd heard Sheppard use often when Rodney couldn't get them out of trouble with something Ancient.
He smiled at her, "Yeah. Looks like."
She nodded, then turned and readied herself for the maneuver.
"I've got your back," he said, watching her.
"I know," she replied, stepping out of the underbrush and into the clearing.
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TBC...