Because you guys deserve it, here's another chapter!
Impact plus 1 hour 25 minutes
Each time she woke up, it was the same thing: first, confusion and disorientation, followed by panic as the darkness and sense of weight pressing down on her provided tangible reminders that she was buried alive. Slowly, then, she remembered where she was, and why -- and that there were people out there doing everything in their power to dig her free. With slow, shallow breaths, she calmed herself and made herself remember that since she could hear voices outside her tomb, there must be air getting in and out.
Elizabeth swore to herself that if -- when she got out of this, she'd never, ever make light of Rodney's claustrophobia, or any of his other phobias, ever again.
A hand touched her own: warm small fingers, not Caldwell's big rough ones. "Keisha?" Elizabeth asked. Even after the rescue effort had begun, the young woman had stayed with her, rubbing warmth into her cold flesh and talking softly to her.
"No, ma'am. I'm Cora Ludwick, and I'm a medic. I'll just be taking some readings from you."
Firm fingers gripped her wrist, counting off a pulse. From the sound of her voice, this Cora sounded as young as Keisha. Children, the world was in the hands of children ... and Elizabeth smiled to herself in the dark, amused to find herself having such thoughts at her age. She tried to match a face to the name, and vaguely remembered a serious, intense red-haired young woman who had come to the bridge once to ask Caldwell a question. He'd addressed the young woman as Ludwick, she thought -- it was an unusual name, easy to remember.
Her instinct, in every new situation, was to try to learn as much about the people around her as possible -- and her gift was the ability to retain it, faces and names and personal details. It was one of the things that made her good at what she did. The Daedalus, though, was an ever-changing kaleidoscope of new faces and names. One of the reasons why she'd wanted to come along on this trip -- although she hadn't told Caldwell -- was to become better acquainted with the command crew of the Daedalus, including its captain. Since it seemed that they'd be working together for the foreseeable future, regardless of how either of them felt about it, she thought it was high time she started trying to learn what made the man tick. You learned a lot about a person by watching the behavior of those under their command ... especially in the military.
And despite her many personal differences with Caldwell, she liked what she had seen on the Daedalus. The ship was run with far tighter authority than Elizabeth would ever want to see on Atlantis -- and she did hope, still, that Caldwell never ended up in Sheppard's position, at least not while she was governor of the city -- but the people that she had met here were happy, content and busy. It was obvious that they respected Caldwell highly and wanted to please him. And he had a good eye for people; Airman Keisha Seavey was a good case in point, very young and shy at first glance, but made of solid stuff in a crisis.
"Dr. Weir?" She became aware of the medic talking to her, and realized that her mind had drifted. "I need you to answer some questions for me. Dr. Weir?"
She answered a few simple questions of the "what is your name, what day is it" variety, alarmed that the answers were sometimes difficult to find. It became even harder when they ventured into "where does it hurt" territory. It definitely did hurt somewhere, but Elizabeth couldn't figure out exactly where. Things seemed to grind together inside when she moved, so she had stopped moving and wasn't eager to begin again. There was a wet feeling in her chest when she inhaled. She couldn't really feel her legs at all, and this was the first time she'd noticed, which also alarmed her. She asked the medic if it was true that the worst wounds hurt the least.
"It depends on where and how you're hurt," Cora Ludwick said, unhelpfully. Like most of the military medical personnel that Elizabeth had dealt with, she had a brisk, no-nonsense manner that seemed to imply a person's medical problems were their own fault. Her fingers on Elizabeth's arm were not at all gentle, not like Keisha's.
Somewhere above Elizabeth, there was a grinding, shifting noise. Cora's firm grip withdrew from her wrist. Dust sifted down onto her face, and Elizabeth closed her eyes and struggled to control her breathing. They were digging her out as fast as they could safely do so, and beyond that, she simply had to trust in Caldwell and his crew -- that they wouldn't crush her, that they would rescue her before she suffocated or died of internal injuries.
You couldn't do everything yourself. She'd long known this. Sometimes you had to let go and allow other people to do their job.
"You idiots, what are you trying to do, crush her like a pancake?"
... and then there was Rodney, the ultimate control freak. Elizabeth couldn't help smiling at the sound of his voice. Caldwell had told her that one of her people had been killed -- Dr. Estvaag, and she'd been, in part, passing the time by mentally composing her letter to Estvaag's family. But the rest were ... well, Caldwell hadn't actually said all right, but ... not dead. And that had been good to know.
Hearing Rodney's voice, though, sounding just like it did when he was berating somebody back in his labs on Atlantis, eased something inside her chest that had nothing to do with whatever was broken down there.
"Dr. McKay, everything is under control here." She recognized the weary-sounding voice of Caldwell's second-in-command, Perry.
"Excuse me, I don't think so! She's under that, isn't she? Elizabeth's under that! And your fumble-fingered morons are throwing chunks of metal around like frisbees without a single regard for the physical stresses that the overall --"
"Dr. McKay," Perry cut in smoothly, and Elizabeth's grin grew a little wider, imagining the look on Rodney's face as he sputtered to a stop. "You're not in charge here. Please stop criticizing my staff's performance or I will have you escorted from the bridge."
Rodney made a faint choking noise and then, "Excuse me!"
Elizabeth decided that, as entertaining as this was, she'd better intercede before Rodney burst a blood vessel or Perry shot him. "Rodney," she said as loudly as she could, which wasn't very loud.
From the response, though, she may as well have shouted. Elizabeth listened nervously to the rapid flurry of scrambling and sliding, hoping that he didn't accidentally bring the pile down on top of her with his eagerness to get around it. There was a grunt and an annoyed exclamation as someone was obviously shoved out of the way, and then a hand touched hers. Large, warm, moist and awkward, it could only belong to one Rodney McKay, and she knew it even before he said her name softly: "Elizabeth?"
"Rodney, please stop bothering Caldwell's crew. They're trying to dig me out." She curled her fingers up around his. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, actually. For a wonder." He tried to make it sound light, but his voice broke in the middle.
"Caldwell told me ... about Dr. Estvaag. Greta. I'm sorry, Rodney." She knew how seriously he took his responsibility to his scientists. He yelled at them, belittled them, ignored them and occasionally left the more sensitive ones in tears -- but when one of them didn't make it home at the end of the day, no one felt it more deeply than Rodney.
"Yeah. Me too." His fingers returned her pressure, a little less tentative, a little more confident.
"How are the rest of them?"
"Scared. Shaken up. Useless. About like you'd expect." His hand twitched as he talked -- clearly he was gesturing with the other hand, while the one holding hers was moving instinctively. Elizabeth felt herself smiling again, but it dropped away as his voice faltered and his words came slower. "There are ... injuries. Dr. Pierce has a twisted ankle. Miko got burned and cut up her arm pretty bad on shrapnel. Zelenka ... he's ... pretty bad, Elizabeth."
"How bad?" she asked quietly. It was a little harder to talk now, and there was a coppery taste on the back of her tongue.
"Bad." His restless fingers stilled, and gripped hers tighter, as if holding onto a lifeline.
She wanted to ask, wanted to know more ... but told herself it didn't matter, that it wasn't as if she could help Zelenka or comfort him, wasn't as if knowing the extent of his injuries would do any good for either of them. And she could feel Rodney's fingers trembling slightly in her own. So she held his hand, and he held hers, and she felt herself slip away as if she'd come untethered from the world, to the sound of groaning metal above her and Rodney speaking her name.
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Impact plus 2 hours 5 minutes
They'd sent a MALP through the gate, and found it to be a spacegate, orbiting a world that showed no sign of current inhabitants, only faint traces of overgrown roads and long-ruined cities. At any other time, Atlantis's scientists would have been drooling over the possibilities of the millennia-old ruins, but right now the idea of exploring a strange planet was the last thing on everyone's mind. The ruins would wait. Their friends and colleagues might not.
The Daedalus's emergency beacon came from a different planet in the system, much farther from the sun. Repeated attempts to raise the ship had not received any response. The beacon continued to transmit, although the Wraith distress call had shut off. That could be good or bad, Sheppard thought.
"We've been able to use the two beacons to get an estimate on the Daedalus's position." A short, energetic Polish scientist, whose name Sheppard remembered as something like Wladyslav, demonstrated on the display screen at the head of the conference table. "Unfortunately it's a long flight by puddlejumper from the gate to the planet where we believe the Daedalus has crashed ... which also seems to be the planet where we were getting the Wraith signal from."
"How long is long?"
Wladyslav frowned. "Twenty hours, give or take. Which means it'll be nearly a two-day round trip. We can't assume that the planet has a breathable atmosphere, so we'd better be prepared for the possibility that we won't be able to replenish anything on the other end."
"Can the life support on the puddlejumpers handle that kind of trip?" Sheppard asked.
There was a brief pause. The foremost expert on the jumpers was Zelenka, who, obviously, wasn't there. After a moment Simpson spoke. "I don't see why not. It would limit how many people you could carry in the jumper, though."
"How limited?"
"I'll need to run some numbers," she admitted.
"Do it," Sheppard said. "We're going to need enough jumpers to carry everyone on the Daedalus in one trip, if that's possible. It might not be comfortable, but I want to know if we can do it."
There was a short pause and then Lorne spoke. "Sir, can I point something out?"
"Go ahead, Major."
Lorne cleared his throat. "I'll be blunt here. There may be Wraith in that system, sir."
"It's possible," Sheppard said.
The major hesitated again. "Sir, I'm not sure it's advisable to send most or all of our jumpers on a two-day trip when we have no ready means of escape and don't know what's out there. I know it's not something we want to contemplate, but if the Wraith turn up, it's a real possibility that we may lose at least some of them on this trip. We still don't know what took down the Daedalus."
"We can't leave our people there, Lorne."
"I'm not saying we should, sir. But I don't know how wise it is to risk our entire puddlejumper fleet on a rescue when we don't ... I'm sorry, sir, when we don't know if there is anyone to rescue."
There was an awkward silence. Sheppard had to look away from Beckett and Teyla's sympathetic eyes. Elizabeth should be here. She should be making this decision. At this moment, she would be counseling the course of prudence -- he could almost hear her -- and he'd be pressing to take out all the jumpers in a rescue effort. They would go back and forth, and somewhere in the middle they'd find the compromise that would work and bring everyone safely home.
It was impossibly hard, arguing both sides to himself. He knew that Lorne was right. They had no idea if anyone was alive on the Daedalus, no idea if the Wraith beacon had already brought a Wraith fleet down upon it. It would be foolhardy and stupid to risk all the puddlejumpers on a rescue, maybe leaving Atlantis wide open to future Wraith attacks and lacking a tremendous strategic advantage if they couldn't send jumpers through the gate.
At the same time, there were people out there, maybe hurt, maybe dying. People he cared about. Rodney. Elizabeth. What if they got there with one or two jumpers and found everyone on the Daedalus critically injured? What if he had to choose between people he cared for, more than he'd ever cared for human beings before -- this one stays and dies, this one goes and lives?
How could you make a decision like that? How did Elizabeth do it?
Sheppard took a deep breath and clenched his hands into fists. "We'll take some of the jumpers," he said. "Half of them, maybe. Simpson, I'm still going to need those calculations. I need to know how many people I can carry in each jumper. And I'm going to need pilots."
"You can count on me for that, sir," Lorne said without hesitation, and then, after the briefest pause, "I don't know if I should have --"
"You should have, Major. I'm glad you did." Sheppard's eyes swung around to Beckett. "I'm going to need medical staff --"
"Ready to go in fifteen minutes," Beckett said. "And I am going, Colonel; you can't keep me here. Just don't make me fly one of the bloody things."
Despite the urgency of their situation, Sheppard felt a slight grin twitch at his mouth. "Wouldn't dream of it, Doc."
"Colonel." Teyla's voice was soft, but tense. "Ronon and I would like to come."
No, Sheppard's brain screamed at him. It was bad enough that two of the most important people in his life were in danger, maybe injured or dead. Putting the rest of them into danger too -- he didn't think he could handle that. Still, he swallowed back emotion and tried to make the most sensible decision, tried to convince himself that he was making his choices for the good of Atlantis and not because it was what he wanted. "Teyla, I'm sorry. I need you to stay here. With the entire command staff gone, I'm going to leave Atlantis in your hands. I don't have a choice. I know how much you want to go, but I need you more here."
He could see the bitter disappointment in her eyes, but also acceptance.
"You're welcome to try to make me stay, Sheppard," Ronon rumbled.
"Wasn't planning on it, big guy. You and Beckett are my team this time. Lorne, I want -- let's see, how about five jumpers for the first wave? If it goes smoothly, we can send more. I'll take one, Lorne, and you've got another. I need you to put together three more crews, in addition to your own. One pilot, one additional Marine plus a medic on each team. Beckett chooses the medics, you choose the rest. Oh, Simpson ... I want one scientist, too, in my jumper. Just in case. Somebody with an engineering specialty. And I want volunteers only, you got it? They need to know it could be dangerous. We rendezvous in the jumper bay in half an hour."
They all nodded, and the meeting broke up. Sheppard was the last to leave the room, and outside he found Teyla waiting for him, looking expectant. "We'll have to talk and walk," he told her.
"I know." She strode swiftly, keeping up with him. "I wanted to tell you that I believe you are doing an excellent job, especially considering ... circumstances. I think you are a good leader, John."
For some reason he couldn't name, that meant more to him than he would have guessed. Maybe his emotions were just on edge right now, because it took him a moment to be able to answer. "Thanks, Teyla. Really. Thanks." After a pause he said, "I'm sorry about asking you to stay behind. I know how much you want to come. Believe me, I know. But I need you here." And this was true in more ways than one -- he just couldn't lie to himself. Knowing that at least one member of his small Atlantis family would remain safe helped him hold it together for the rest of them.
She smiled at him. "I know, and I understand. It is the right decision, however difficult it is for me to accept." Taking hold of his arm, she halted him, and gripped his shoulders to do that Athosian head-bob-thing with him. It was all Sheppard could do not to fidget in his impatience, but he made himself stand still, for Teyla's sake. When she drew her head back, he was startled to see tears standing in her deep brown eyes. She smiled at him, a bit shakily, and the tears came free to leave shining trails down her cheeks.
"Bring them back safely, John," she said in a voice so soft it could barely be heard. "Please bring them home safe."
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TBC