Chapter Four
By the time they got back to the jumper, Rodney hadn't managed to warm up and Sheppard's teeth were chattering.
The bonfire that Sheppard had stoked that morning had died down but there were enough flames to get it swiftly back into life. Rodney shoved Sheppard into the jumper, quickly threw an armful of wood onto the fire and then followed inside. He debated about turning the heat back on but it was going to take time to warm up and at this stage the fire was probably just as effective. Instead he went for the med kit and threw it on the bench while Sheppard just stood there shivering and dripping on the jumper floor.
Rodney reached behind the CO and grabbed the sleeping bag that Sheppard had yet to use. Tossed it at him.
"Get out of your uniform and wrap yourself in this."
Sheppard unhooked his vest, and managed to start shucking the rest of his BDU while Rodney located a survival blanket and ripped it out of the plastic bag. He then tackled the med kit and checked the contents again. There were tweezers, gauze, iodine, tape, Band-Aids as well as a pair of latex gloves that Rodney didn't hesitate in snapping on because quite frankly he never wanted to touch another alien leech with his bare hands as long as he lived.
As Sheppard pulled off his t-shirt Rodney got a glimpse of even more squirming lengths of leech circling the lower half of Sheppard's torso like a living tattoo.
"Shit," he exclaimed on behalf of both of them.
That got Sheppard's attention and for the first time the LTC noticed that this legs weren't the only thing providing a convenient snack. Sheppard couldn't seem to find an appropriate response except to let out a groan of disgust and he doubled his efforts to strip down to his underwear.
Rodney noted disconcertingly that Sheppard was trying to his best to appear to be in control but he was about one step away from panicking. Rodney recognized the signs well. He also recognized the sign that his friend was teetering on the brink of hypothermia. The air temperature wasn't cold today but it wasn't exactly tropical. Perfectly fine with some layers of clothing but not so fine when cold, wet or half naked. He went over with the survival blanket, wrapped the metallic sheet around his friend's shoulders before placing the sleeping bag around him as a way to prevent any more loss of body heat.
Sheppard unlaced his soaking wet shoes and kicked them off before removing his socks. He let out a gasp. One leech had somehow managed to find its way into his left boot. It was attached to his big toe.
Somehow this one leech caused him more offence than all the other leeches put together.
"Get them off," he said in his best command tone of voice. To Rodney it seemed more like a plea than a command.
"I'll do my best," replied Rodney trying his best to be reassuring. He picked up the med kit and then led Sheppard out to the log by the fire and sat him down. "Where do you want me to start?"
"Anywhere," groaned Sheppard.
It was at times like these – not that there had been many – when Rodney sincerely wished he paid more attention to Carson and less time berating him about medicine being a voodoo science. As Ernest Rutherford had so tactlessly said, "Physics is the only real science. The rest are just stamp collecting". The human body refused to produce unambiguous results in the way that physics overwhelmingly said 'yes' or 'no' and in the way that physicists and mathematicians prized. Biology always had an acceptable variation on normal that Rodney found irritating even though he'd eventually been forced to acknowledge that despite it all, physicists didn't know everything and they weren't good at figuring out how to cure diseases. If Carson had been here Carson would have said something wise and pinpointed just the right course of action. Unfortunately Carson wasn't here so Rodney voted for pulling the leeches off as quickly as possible.
He started on the left leg getting rid of the one on the big toe first. He yanked it off and threw the bloated body into the fire. There was an audible pop as it swelled and burst. Then he picked up speed aiming to get rid of them swiftly rather than prolong the agony, more than aware that every time he pulled one off it was taking a piece of skin and a small chunk of flesh with it, leaving a circle of exposed sub dermis. Maybe, he thought, maybe they might have dropped off after feeding but then again when had they encountered anything in the Pegasus Galaxy that voluntarily gave up before, during, or after feeding?
He kept pulling and throwing, the sounds of exploding leeches like gunfire or popcorn depending on a person's mental disposition at the time. He kept count and finished the left leg by pulling off leech number twenty-five and flinging it into the flames.
Keeping up his frenetic pace he moved to the right leg and ignored the fact that the wounds bled freely for longer than he would have liked. The little bastards were obviously injecting anti-coagulant just like their Earth counterparts. He tried to remember where he'd pulled off the first leech, back at the river, and scouted around for the wound. Having located it, he sighed with relief when he found a clot beginning to form. One less thing he had to worry about. If Sheppard was stuck with wounds that wouldn't heal it would only be a matter of time before infection set in and killed him.
The right leg yielded a count of thirty. Rodney concentrated on breathing through his mouth to prevent himself from throwing up and tried to ignore the fact that blood coated both legs, rolling lazily down to the ankles before dripping slowly along Sheppard's instep and onto the sand. Sheppard was being stoic about the experience, trying to sit still, shut up and leave Rodney to concentrate on the task at hand. That didn't make Rodney any happier because Rodney had always regarded someone complaining bitterly as a great indicator of their state of health. People who complained and bitched weren't suffering too much and people who hardly complained at all were in pain or unconscious. Unfortunately that left him wondering whether Sheppard's silence was due pain or due to the sick fascination of watching leeches growing fat and sated on his own blood.
At least the blood wasn't leaking from a vein or an artery and that was about the only comforting thought Rodney had.
Both legs were now clear, except for the endless clusters of insect legs. He moved to the torso.
"Um, could you raise your arms for me?" He was being exceptionally polite and deferential – well, as polite as he could be for someone not trained in medicine or having any sort of bedside manner whatsoever. To raise his arms Sheppard had to let the survival blanket and sleeping bag fall away and Rodney hoped the heat from the fire would keep his body temperature stable enough to pull the remaining blood suckers off.
He applied himself with record speed to the leech circle, allowing himself to sit back and rest after the last one of the group of fifteen found itself being barbecued on top of the charcoal heap that had once been its buddies.
Sheppard had wrapped the reflective blanket around himself again then folded the sleeping bag over the top. He'd stopped shivering. That had to be a good sign, or at least Rodney hoped it was a good sign.
Opening up the med kit, Rodney took out the tweezers and braced his already throbbing back for scrunching up at an odd angle. There had to be a better way to do this because picking 390 individual segmented insect legs off the military commander of Atlantis was going to take forever. He sighed, figured he would start back at the beginning, down at the big toe, and work his way up from there.
He squinted, grabbed one of the hook structures, firmly grasped and then yanked much like he had with the main body of the leeches. He just hoped he was getting the remaining parts embedded in Sheppard's skin. Carson endlessly lectured them about the dangers of being bitten, stung or otherwise annoyed by alien insect populations but apart from the iratus bug, which was a really, really big bug, no one had taken much notice. Except for Rodney who spent his time smearing himself with DEET and lip balm before departing on any off world mission much to Sheppard, Teyla and Ronon's continual amusement.
"If you ever decided to give up being a scientist, you'll have a great future as a beautician."
Rodney blinked and looked up from his tweezing effort. The insect legs were obscured from the blood but Rodney didn't want to waste the iodine or gauze trying to clean up the mess twice. Not when he had a delicate stomach. He may have felt bad but Sheppard appeared to have perked up somewhat, now that he was leech free and the blood flow had slowed to a trickle.
Rodney decided that instead of complaining he would rise to the occasion and take the verbal bait. "Are you expecting me to be upset by the thought of being paid to pluck and shape the eyebrows of gorgeous women?"
Sheppard smiled slightly. Rodney prided himself on the fact that he was getting better and better at trading insults with Sheppard and starting to win. Practice with Sheppard meant he was also holding his own when stuck on Lorne's team and the marines played their favorite game of 'annoy the scientist'.
"I bet they're not all gorgeous," said Sheppard.
"True but don't beauticians get to do Brazilian waxes?"
Sheppard's eyebrow went up. "Touché, McKay."
"Yes, I know, shocking. The Great Geek, Dr. McKay knows these things."
"Just don't start saying that shit around the squads. You'll get them started and the conversation will end up in porno land in about two seconds flat."
"Porno land. Where is that exactly?" Rodney kept tweezing as he said it, wondering whether he should just keep going and to hell with his back, or take a break and let himself whine about his back.
"I hear it's out in the Indian Ocean. Like a secret military base. Known but unknown."
"Sounds like a great place for a vacation," said Rodney. Then he decided he could take it no longer. He stopped tweezing, stood up, arched his back slightly to work out the kinks.
"Sore back?" Sheppard asked. Not that it wasn't obvious.
"Yeah," replied Rodney because there wasn't a lot else to say. His back was aching and the immediate crisis seemed to have been averted and he wanted to have a break.
"Give me the tweezers. I'll keep going."
Rodney paused and thought it was a perfectly fine idea, because of course, the man was probably highly motivated to be rid of any evidence of his unscheduled swim in the river. Rodney didn't blame him one bit, and would have kept going… But for his back. He handed the tweezers off to Sheppard.
He arched his back again, and then bent over, mumbling, "Just give me a minute and I'll be fine."
"Uh huh," said Sheppard, clearly not believing him. Rodney watched as Sheppard concentrated on pulling some more insect legs out of his skin.
"Seriously. My back's just not up to this."
"You're starting to sound like Dr. Smith."
"I don't see any robots around here, or underage boys."
Sheppard snorted, but somehow didn't break his swiftly established tweezing routine. "As long as you don't start calling me a babbling booby, I'll be happy."
It was then that Rodney got a glimpse of Sheppard's body again and there was a dark halo of blood pooling around the band of the underwear, slowly beginning to congeal. He felt his heart seem to pause before beginning again with a resounding thud. Suddenly, despite all of his best efforts, he felt sick. He sat down on the log next to the happier Sheppard.
"You're not going to puke are you?"
Rodney shook his head, then thought maybe he should tell the truth because his stomach wasn't cast iron to begin with and he'd never been able to tolerate the sight or smell of blood. The only person he knew that was impervious was his lab partner Tracy who was odor-blind to certain scents. Unaffected by the aroma of blood she didn't mind the sight much either and she'd done her second degree in medicine. Rodney's crush had ended shortly after she got her doctorate in astrophysics and she'd gone off to do premed. He never did like overachieving show-offs who couldn't stick to one specialty, particularly when the overachieving show-off was smarter than him.
He took a deep breath. Sheppard was relying on him. He had to get his shit together and be dependable. He grabbed the tweezers back, got working again, finished off both legs in fifteen minutes, got the line of chitin out of Sheppard's back, and left Sheppard to tackle his stomach and pull out a nasty cluster from around his navel because Rodney's mind had moved to other matters.
Such as finding a way for Sheppard to clean up and heading back to the river and retrieving the water container. His mind settled upon the bucket, and it instantly occurred to him that perhaps the person who had packed the jumper wasn't an idiot after all. He removed it from under the bench seat and went down to the sea's edge, filling the bucket and bringing it back to sit beside the fire. He had no idea what the melt point was for stainless steel but putting it directly into the fire was probably not a good idea. He then went back to the jumper and grabbed one of Sheppard's wet and dirty socks and tossed it into the bucket, completing his brilliant idea that boiling the water would sterilize the water and the sock at the same time. He also remembered Carson's advice about getting stranded and how salt was a good way to clean wounds. This would allow Sheppard to use the sock as a washcloth before applying copious amounts of iodine, just to be on the safe side.
Hey, maybe he wasn't so bad at the whole survival thing. After all, he was definitely getting into the spirit of the situation. If only Sheppard didn't look so bemused by the sight of his sock being boiled in sea water.
"Here's what I think we should do…"
Sheppard raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything.
Rodney continued, "If you can take things from here, I want to go back and get the water container while I can. It's a one hour return trip maximum."
"Great plan. Did you miss the part where I got covered in leeches?"
"Yes, well, interestingly enough I know not to go anywhere near that particular area of river. I'm wading in, avoiding the drop, and maybe using a sturdy branch to fish the container closer to me. Then I'll just grab it and head back here."
"Did you just say 'sturdy branch'?"
"Yes. Did you just ask another question?"
"I'm pretty sure if you could hold your horses for an hour, I can go with you."
"Right. You're going to bandage yourself up, get back into your wet clothes, wet socks and wet boots and walk for an hour while I talk to you non-stop and you can do the solider thing and protect me from nasty wildlife and bad ass aliens."
"Did you just say 'bad ass'?"
"Cut that out! Seriously." Rodney was getting incredibly irritated with how lightly Sheppard seemed to be taking the situation now he was free of his uninvited guests.
"Okay, I'm sorry. Sometimes it's just too easy…" Sheppard looked down at his blood covered feet and wiggled his toes. "Look, I just don't want you out there wandering around by yourself."
"You said there wasn't any animal life."
"We didn't think there was anything in the river either."
"I think if there were bigger, non aquatic forms of life on this planet, we would have heard them by now. Or seen them."
"You've become disturbingly confident all of a sudden. I seem to remember you having an issue with wildlife sneaking into the jumper."
"Look, Colonel, you can't guard me every single second and I for one would like to feel as if I'm contributing." Rodney didn't add the rest of his sentence. The bit about Sheppard reminding him of Todd and wanting to be alone for an hour just to get his thoughts straight and not be forced to sit around and watch Sheppard scrape off his own dried blood.
Sheppard took his sweet time but a long last nodded. "Okay. You can go. But I want you to take the P90."
Rodney's mouth dropped open at that declaration. "You never let me touch the P90. The last time I picked it up, you smacked me over the back of the head." Rodney's indignation at being cuffed by Sheppard came back as if it had happened yesterday. Actually, it had been three weeks ago.
"That's because the P90 is more difficult to handle. Pull the trigger on it and you've killed everything standing around in your path."
"So that's a bad thing."
"Normally, for you, yes. But for now, no. It means if you get into trouble, pull the trigger, aim in the general direction of whatever's in your way and then run like hell back here."
"What are you going to use?"
"The hand guns. The grenades. My knife if bullets and explosives don't made a dent."
Rodney nodded, went back into the jumper and tentatively picked up the P90. It was lighter than he expected, even though he knew it mainly consisted of polymers. He had to admit to nervousness around the weapon and also a thrill of excitement. It was like getting to handle strong acids in his chemistry class for the first time. You could do a lot of cool reactions with acids. You could also burn a hole in your hand at the same time. Actually, come to think about it that was when he'd given up chemistry in favor of cosmology and astrophysics. He'd never been one for danger. Of any type. His brain was far too good at weighing up factors and calculating risk automatically and instinctively. In the 17th century he would have been the man funding the expeditions to the great unknown parts of the world, not the man in charge of the expedition, or even part of the expedition. While men were hacking their way through the South American undergrowth, dying of malaria and assorted tropical diseases, he would have been back in his home complaining bitterly to his friends that they were taking a jolly long time to fetch his requested plant specimens.
He took the weapon back to the waiting Sheppard who showed him through the basics. Sheppard gestured to the rotary selector below the trigger.
"S is for safe, 1 is for semiautomatic and A is for automatic. You just thumb it and you're good to go."
Rodney nodded, concentrating on the instructions.
"When you've got it set to A it's a two stage trigger. Pull it right back and it's an automatic, pull it half way and you can fire off small bursts. The recoil is not too bad so don't worry about bracing it too much."
Rodney frowned, taking it all in, concentrating. Now he had his chance he didn't want to get it wrong. That was the one thing he was always good at. His capacity to take in new information at the blink of an eye.
Having shown him the basics, Sheppard handed the weapon over.
"Clip it to the front of your vest, and remember, don't thumb it off S until you're sure you want to shoot. Okay?"
"Yes Dad. I'll have the car home by midnight."
"The whole sarcastic come back is usually my thing Rodney."
Rodney clutched the P90 trying to appear as if he was confident, instead of nervous and reluctant and a teeny bit scared.
"I guess you're a bad influence, Colonel."
The half naked man sitting on a log in front of a fire, coated in blood, laughed. "I've always wanted to be a bad influence on someone. I can cross another goal off my list."
Feeling not particularly brave, Rodney did as was instructed and clipped on the sub machine gun.
Kitted up and read to go, he turned and began to walk away. It was time to get it over with. He wondered why he did these things to himself. Get all confident and determined and then have second thoughts. Why couldn't he just be like Todd and Sheppard and all those other jock types who set their minds to a task, no matter how juvenile or pointless, and just got on with it without over analyzing the details?
He'd only managed to take about ten steps when Sheppard called out to him again.
"The container is going to be heavy when you fill it. Are you sure you're okay with trying to carry it back?"
He didn't bother to turn around because he knew if he turned around he'd change his mind and he'd be saying, yes, he'd wait on Sheppard to get more mobile, that it seemed perfectly okay if Sheppard decided to go on a mild hike while covered in oozing sores, that once more Rodney McKay had to be taken care of at any cost.
"Yes. I'm fine. I'm good. See you in an hour or so."
Then he began the hike to the river.
((--))
Dr. Elizabeth Weir had taken some time to adjust to her role as the civilian leader of Atlantis. It had taken time to adjust from the conciliatory approach of a diplomat to a more hardened woman who did what she needed to defend the city.
She decided that she was getting a little too hard in her approach of late because why else would she be officially listing Rodney and John as MIA?
Elizabeth looked up from her laptop and surveyed her always clean desk and stopped typing. She always efficiently did her allotted work for the day, never made messes. Everything in its place. Everything put away. A clean desk was the sign of an organized mind.
She was sick of being neat and efficient.
One part of her firmly believed that there was a good chance they were alive, that they'd come back. Months later, bruised and battered from wear and tear, but they'd roll off the Daedalus or through the stargate and she'd smile at them, make a welcome home speech and Atlantis would be back to the way it was. The other part of her, the more realistic part , told her that unless there was some sort of miracle it was entirely possible that Rodney and John were dead.
The leader part of her, the part that knew that there would be casualties on her watch, the part that begged the President for a shot at the assignment because she'd always been ambitious, knew that the people on Atlantis needed security and predictability. They needed to know that they had a lead scientist, and a military leader for Atlantis. Spending months in limbo not knowing what was happening just prolonged the agony and there was no way of knowing what had happened until the Daedalus completed a SAR mission.
The bottom line was that she was short of a Commander for Atlantis and a Team Lead for the scientists. As much as she wanted to keep hope alive she also knew that she'd eventually need replacements and unfortunately she knew that Caldwell would be one of them. She felt trapped. Damned if she did, damned if she didn't. Her behavior would be called into question by SGC if she didn't deal with the situation and her behavior would be called into question by the occupants of Atlantis if she did.
She held her finger over the mouse before she tagged her electronic signature to her request. Part of her knew that SGC would expect the report to be sent across in a data burst as soon as possible. The other part told her to wait.
((--))
He dreamed that night of a mission gone bad. He hadn't thought of it in a long time, having developed the much maligned but highly effective psychological skills of simply pushing an incident out of his mind and pretending to forget about it until he really did forget about it.
Like most zoomies he was an adrenaline junkie. He didn't exactly admit to enjoying a flight into the middle of hell because that was the sort of crazy talk that could get the wrong sort of attention. But on a late night, on his few off-duty days over a beer with his fellow pilots, they all talked about the same thing: the heightened reaction time, the sense of urgency, the speed, the need to get things done. That it was on their shoulders – a situation they didn't mind because there was something powerful about being that responsible.
Being a pilot in the middle of a war zone was just the thing for people who liked to saunter up to the edge, look over it, and give a one fingered salute to death.
His current assignment was to fly MEDEVAC missions, usually into hot LZs behind enemy lines. In the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom the enemy line was just about everywhere, mainly because in the rugged Afghanistan terrain it got a little hard to tell who owned what.
Afghanistan, like most theatre of operations, had shitty flying conditions. Power lines strung across power pylons that no one knew about, or hadn't bothered to pass along to the air force, treacherous terrain, mountains every damn where, and hellish weather that could melt paint in summer and freeze your spit as soon as it left your mouth in winter. It also had earthquakes. He preferred to be in the air when they happened. His mission took him, as it so often did, perilously close to South Waziristan, the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Where everyone was pretty sure Bin Laden and the Taliban were hanging out and anyone nursing a cause, grudge or homicidal tendencies were going through to get into Afghanistan.
So they crewed up the CH-46, he flew into the area, the frag destination taking them to a small village. The village was in the process of burning to the ground and the ground held a combination of wounded US soldiers, and wounded civilians. He didn't have to look far to see the civilians consisted of children. Three of them.
He really hated trying to transport children. With his helmet on, he shouldn't have been able to hear them screaming, except the sound bled over his crew's radios. He listened to the kids screaming in pain. Heard them screaming in terror when they were loaded. Screaming for their parents. They cried and cried and they could not be consoled. It broke his heart so much that he hated them for it and then he hated himself for hating kids whose only crime was standing in the open when an RPG hit the ground.
Shit.
He landed, and the four corpsmen on board grabbed the litters, got the hell out and started loading wounded as fast as they could. One of the corpsmen grabbed an injured child, forgoing the litter, and scrambled on board. He was pursued by the unhappy parents, who didn't see that their only son needed medical attention, just that he was being taken from his village. They tried grabbing him back.
The hillsides were crawling with grunts trying to find the last of the insurgents. The sounds of gunfire echoed around the area, as well as the sound of mortar fire. On top of that he'd just been radioed that another CH-46 was coming in to pick up any leftovers and he'd have to clear before it could land.
Amidst the controlled chaos his crew chief, sitting behind the .50 caliber machine gun, spotted some movement on a hillside that didn't appear to be generated by a guy in a US Army uniform but more by two guys bracing themselves over a boulder and clutching a 30-year old Soviet RPG-7.
"Sir, I think we need to move. We've got enemy at our nine."
That was all he needed. "Can you clear them?"
"Yes sir, I'm going to try."
The crew chief started firing at the hillside. This didn't deter the men one bit. Knowing Sheppard's luck they were probably mujahideen. They'd spent their teens and twenties fighting the Soviets and now the US had moved in they figured they'd wile away their forties by fighting someone else. In war, you always hoped the other guy blinked. The mujahideen never blinked, they just stared at you, right in the eyes, all the way to hell.
The day kept getting better and better.
Sheppard turned around to check on progress. He yelled over to the corpsmen trying to wrestle the kid back off his parents. "What the fuck is going on!"
"They won't let us take the kid on board, sir!"
He didn't have time for this. He didn't have time for niceties, or gently explaining the situation when none of them spoke the language above the basics. He had lives at stake.
"Get them out right fucking now! I don't care how you do it!"
The corpsman said, "Yes, sir." Then he held one arm around the boy and unholstered his sidearm. It was enough to get the mother wailing in alarm but they didn't have any choice. They backed off, the father grabbing the woman by her arm. They ran from the helicopter, making for cover.
His other corpsmen piled on board with one last litter and he was simultaneously lifting up and cycling the door closed and his crew chief's finger was permanently on the trigger of the machine gun and for some reason the two Afghanis were still standing and trying to aim their RPG in the general direction of the CH-46.
"Put some damn effort into your aim, Chief!"
"I'm trying! Those fuckers keep using the boulder for cover."
Sheppard was rapidly getting some air between the ground and feeling just a tiny bit like maybe, just maybe, they had Lady Luck on their side when he heard his Crew Chief – his name had been Mickey Adams – mutter "oh shit" and he instinctively held his breath while trying to make any kind of maneuver that might get them out of harm's way.
The warhead clipped into their back rotor and tail, exploded, sent the whole thing into a spin. They circled around, and dropped. Lady Luck helped out by giving their attackers lousy aim, the warhead spending most of its explosive capacity in other directions, and the CH-46 being fifty feet in the air.
It still didn't make the landing any easier.
The CH-46 came down promptly, pitched forward, the blades hit the ground, chomping grass and dirt before buckling, debris was flying everywhere, something sliced his arm, something else smacked him in the forehead, clunking him hard enough that the helmet seemed redundant, chaos smashed him and his copilot in three different directions at once. Dazed, bleeding, he took his helmet off because he thought it would clear his head. There was panicked yells from his men and the still conscious wounded and the kid - the kid that he'd just had snatched from his parents - was screaming like a banshee.
He managed to turn himself around in the pilot's seat and found out that the kid was howling because his would-be rescuer, the guy who had forced his parents out at gunpoint, was now a mangled body. The back of his CH-46 was a mess of wounded, dead and dying. There was so much blood he could have done some finger-painting with it, the back half of the helicopter was on fire and he wasn't sure how any of them were going to make out alive.
He turned his attention back to the wailing child and the child looked him straight in the eyes, opened his mouth and vomited. A black coil like a snake rolled out of his mouth, down to the ground where it writhed and then scuttled towards one of the men strapped into a litter. Sheppard opened his mouth to scream a warning and then-
He woke up abruptly with a startled intake of breath, half sitting up, heart pounding. He glanced over to the other bench to see if he'd managed to wake up Rodney. Two open eyes stared back at him so he knew that he hadn't gone unobserved.
That was the problem with being stuck in a small space with someone else. No privacy. They got to know the quirks.
((--))