Space Pirates

Chapter 5

A/N: An unexpected free evening came up and I managed to write an update. It's a bit on the short side, but it's a set-up for the next major plot points.

Silence filled the ship. Neither Teyla nor Ford had spoken since they had left the orbit of the nameless planet on which they had been stranded for the past three days. No one spoke of the team mate they were leaving behind. While Ford tried to keep the ship steady in orbit, Teyla tried to find some instruments that would tell them anything about where they were located relative to Atlantis. They had both been on the flight to the planet, but since they hadn't been the ones doing the flying, they hadn't paid attention to the flight plan.

Teyla pressed another button and an image appeared on the small screen built into the console. It showed a stationary green dot and two rapidly approaching red dots, which were clearly heading directly for the green dot. It took her less than a second to figure out what she was seeing. She had managed to activate some form of sensors. They were no longer flying blind.

„Lt. you should see this. I believe we are about to be attacked. We must leave orbit as fast as possible." Teyla said with urgency.

Ford stared at the controls in front of him, feeling panic welling up. It had been mostly luck that he had gotten the ship into orbit. It must have had some sort of autopilot function that had settled them into a position orbiting the planet after taking off. He could feel himself starting to sweat as Teyla watched him expectantly waiting for him to plot a course to escape certain death.

„Lieutenant"„ Teyla asked him sharply, as if it was going to help him any.

In desperation, he punched a button. Something popped up on a screen in front of him. It looked like a menu of some sort. The alien characters filling the screen told him nothing, anything could be written there.

„We have no time. They will reach our position any moment."

Ford was about to snap at Teyla angrily, telling her to do a better job when the ship jolted and they were thrown forward in their seats. A second, more violent blast followed after they had barely had time to recover from the first one. A high-pitched wailing started, probably some sort of alarm indicating that they had suffered damage to a vital part of the ship. It was now or never. Ford started pressing random buttons on the console in front of him. More alarms sounded, but the ship lurched forward and accelerated away from the red dots on the screen that Teyla had brought up. Their attackers didn't seem to pursue them. Still they were far from safe. They were still flying blind, the alarm blaring loudly throughout the ship. Teyla fervently tried to bring up a star map on the screen to try and find out were they were headed, when suddenly the ship rocked violently, and slowed down. They seemed to be pulled towards something, and what Ford assumed to be the controls, didn't react anymore

„Uhm, I think we just got too close to a planet." Ford said, while trying to gain back altitude. „At least something is attracting us."

„We are going to crash?"

„Probably, yes. I don't know why we can't go back up." Ford said helplessly, as both he and Teyla sat in silence waiting for the impact to end their blind descent.

----------

Rodney wasn't cold anymore. The bone shattering shaking had finally stopped, and numbness had replaced the terrible cold that permeated his body to the core. Rodney knew what that meant; it meant that he was dying. After the cold and the shaking, everything went numb, and warm, and then you died. There was nothing he could do. John would have fought until the last minute, no matter how hopeless the situation, But John was dead; he had killed him. John had fought him until the last moment. Rodney blinked. He could see it clearly. Right in front of him, where the ray of sunlight fell on the floor through the entrance, he could see John. He was lying on his back, head turned away from Rodney. His uniform was torn and soaked with blood that was pooling around his body in threatening quantities. This couldn't be real, a small part of Rodney's brain protested, but the voice of reason was weak. He was too far gone to listen to it. The man he had come to save lay before him, murdered by him.

----------

„John, John!" Someone was shaking him and calling out his name. „John, please wake up. This can't be happening. Please wake up," the frantic voice insisted.

John opened his eyes and saw a panicked Rodney looming over him.

„Oh God, thank you, I thought you were-,Are you all right?" Rodney asked with concern.

John took a moment. They were still in the puddle jumper. The pain had lessened, but blood had now seeped through his shirt. He could already feel the effects of blood loss.

„No, Rodney, I'm not all right. I have been shot,"he said, trying to get Rodney to understand what was happening. Even though John now knew that this was only the world of his dreams, and that his real body was still lying in a cell on a nameless planet, he didn't want to loose the only place he could escape to, even if it was only in his mind. The people of Atlantis were his only friends.

„What can I do?" Rodney asked.

„We have to go back to Atlantis, Dr. Beckett can fix this." John hoped that it was true. The friendly doctor had taken an evil turn lately.

„We can't go back there. They won't let us be together." Rodney protested.

„I don't want to die, Rodney. Atlantis is our only option. Do you want me to die?"

„No, no, of course not. But Dr. Weir will be angry with us. Very angry. She will have us executed. We'll be dead if we go back." Rodney stammered.

„I don't want you to die, we won't go back. Do you have a planet in mind"„ John decided to play along. Even though he knew that Rodney was only a figment of his mind, over the weeks, he had grown attached to him. Just because he wasn't real, it didn't mean that John's feelings weren't real. He really didn't want Rodney to die.

----------

Their descent seemed to last forever; the wait for the end. Ford tried to think of something substantial, something meaningful for his last moments, but all he could think of was how utterly he had failed his team. They were all going to die because he had failed them.

Teyla, instead of the traditional Athosian prayer to prepare for death, was apologizing. Apologizing for not having done more to save her team mates, for not having done more to deliver her people from the Wraith, for not having been a better leader to her people. But she also was confident that she had made the right choices for her people when she had sought an alliance with the Atlantians.

Neither of them saw it come when the ship finally struck the surface by crashing into a lake. The force of the impact knocked all three occupants of the ship out before the realized what was happening. The ship hurtled down to the bottom of the lake, and then rose to the surface, floating. Small cracks sustained in the impact with the solid ground allowed water to slowly seep into the interior of the ship ,it would only be a matter of time until the ship sank.

TBC (Hopefully by the next weekend)