Again, your feedback is most appreciated! Especially the info about terms for military medical personnel ... I think I'll go on using "medic" and "corpsman" -- they're probably generic enough to work.

Impact plus 4 hours 50 minutes

It was starting to get cold inside the ship. Working to free Elizabeth on the bridge, Rodney could see his breath, and he'd borrowed a pair of gloves from one of the soldiers because his fingers were getting numb.

The military personnel had finally relented enough to allow Rodney a certain amount of latitude in orchestrating Elizabeth's rescue. All he'd had to do was walk up behind the two engineers who were trying to design a pulley system to lift the beams off of her and pointed out six different errors in their calculations that most likely would have resulted in the unstable ceiling collapsing on all of them. Shortly after that, he was pushing them around as if they were his own people. He'd even brought up a couple of "his" scientists from the cargo bay to help calculate brace points for the pulleys.

Elizabeth wavered in and out of consciousness. One of the medics had started her on an IV to keep her hydrated, so now her rescuers had to work around medical equipment as well. Rodney paused, when he could, to hold her hand for a few minutes and talk to her. He should have begrudged the time, time that he could have more logically spent trying to save her life -- but, strangely, he found that he didn't, any more than he'd resented the many hours that he'd spent in the infirmary with Teyla and Ronon while waiting for Sheppard to recover from the retrovirus or the late nights talking with Beckett over a bottle of Athosian wine after the fiasco on Hoff.

He had spent his life considering other people a waste of time, a mere distraction from the thrill of discovery. Science was far more fulfilling than human relationships could ever be. And he'd had to come to another galaxy to learn otherwise ... had to leave Earth in order to meet people who filled an empty place inside him that science had never managed to touch. He had never noticed this hole in his life, and now it was like the elephant in the room, a yawning blackness that threatened to swallow him whole if even one of his handful of truly important people vanished from his life.

It was a kind of vulnerability that he'd never known before. Sometimes he both feared and resented it; sometimes he wanted to hand in his resignation and flee back to a nice safe lab on Earth, where no one tried to be his friend, no one came to drag him away from his computer for a late-night poker game or went looking for him on Atlantis's balconies when he was lonely and introspective. And he also knew that he'd never leave voluntarily. They'd have to hook cables to him with a puddlejumper in order to drag him away from that beautiful city and her wonderful, seductive technology -- her wonderful, irritating, brave, stubborn people who made him feel accepted in a way he'd never known before.

Now one of them was slowly dying under a pile of rubble, while another was pinned to the wall with a bar of steel through his chest. And the others ... Rodney checked his watch as he sat on the edge of a defunct console for a quick snack break, and was amazed to find that nearly five hours had passed since the crash. Their sudden disappearance must surely have been noticed back on Atlantis. Sheppard must be going out of his mind.

"How's it coming along?"

Rodney looked up, warily, as Caldwell approached him. Contrary to what he'd told Radek, he didn't distrust everyone's motives. Caldwell, however, was one of those people who set off all his hypersensitive alarm bells. Rodney didn't really dislike him, at least not any more so than the average specimen of humanity, but he also didn't trust the man not to completely screw over Atlantis and everyone in it. The worst part was ... if Caldwell ever did something like that, he'd do it for all the right reasons. Caldwell was the sort of man who'd blow up a planet and kill billions of people -- no matter how much it hurt him personally, no matter how many of his friends and family were on that planet -- in order to save the galaxy. Sheppard, and most of the other people that Rodney had allowed himself to become close to, were the sort who'd save one person's life even if it cost the galaxy.

Two sets of principles ... two ways to be a hero. There had been a time when Rodney had fallen squarely in the Caldwell camp. These days ... he didn't know. He only knew that while he might trust someone like Caldwell to save the world, he'd far rather have someone like Sheppard at his back.

"I'd say that's a question which can be answered perfectly well by observing the evidence at hand," Rodney retorted, gesturing with his half-eaten PowerBar while continuing to make notes on a pad of paper resting against his knee. Bits of gray and red were actually visible now as they uncovered Elizabeth. There was one huge beam still pinning her down; since they didn't have the equipment or manpower to remove it fully, the plan was to lift it a little bit and then slide her out. "Since you're here, Colonel, make yourself useful. I need to talk to, um --" He snapped his fingers and pointed.

"Major Perry," Caldwell supplied dryly. At some point he'd gotten somebody to bandage his forehead, which meant that he was no longer walking around looking like a casualty of war, although there was still a rusty stain of blood down the side of his face.

Rodney rolled his eyes impatiently. "Yes, him."

Looking slightly amused despite the obvious strain he was under, Caldwell crooked a finger at his second-in-command, who came loping over. Perry was a skinny guy in his forties, and prior to this whole situation, in all the times he'd been on the Daedalus Rodney had hardly seen him around at all. He got the impression that Perry generally stayed in the background and took care of the daily minutiae so that Caldwell could sit on the bridge and look heroic doing captainly things. Working with Perry over the last couple of hours, though, Rodney had discovered, somewhat to his surprise, that he kinda liked the guy. Perry didn't take any nonsense, from his own people or Rodney or anyone else, but when you made a suggestion he'd listen quietly and attentively, absorbing every word, and he never dismissed an idea out-of-hand without thinking it through. Which probably made him a prime candidate for saboteur, dammit. So far, Rodney had come up with a reason to suspect every single person he'd run into, which was starting to make him think that there was some kind of flaw in his detecting methods.

Rodney gave Perry the latest numbers and angles for connecting grapples to the beam, and watched in satisfaction as the other man nodded, asked a couple of halfway intelligent questions and, after taking a look at Caldwell and getting an affirmative node, hurried off to oversee hooking up the cables. Glancing over at the Colonel, Rodney found that Caldwell was eyeing him with sardonic amusement.

"I certainly hope that you and Weir never get together and decide to take over my ship. You'd have a bloodless coup inside half an hour."

"It's not my fault if your crew has finally acknowledged my obvious genius and leadership skills." Rodney crammed the rest of the PowerBar into his mouth and stood up; he went on talking through the food. "To answer your blatantly obvious question, we're actually almost there. As soon as we clear enough debris from around her legs that the medical staff can get a backboard under her, we'll be ready to tilt the beam and get her out." He paused, frowning. "Er ... Hermiod, the engine repairs ... how is that coming along, anyway?"

Caldwell raised his eyebrows. "The genius Dr. McKay doesn't know the answer already?"

Rodney attempted to fix him with a glare. What was it with the military and making fun of him? It wasn't as if he bothered them! Well, except pointing out their obvious stupidity, but he only did that for their own good. "Hermiod won't tell me anything."

"All he says is that he's working on it. He thinks it'll be another few hours before we have power ... if not longer. Apparently it's pretty badly trashed."

Rodney waited to see if the man would mention the sabotage, but he didn't. Fine, so Rodney wasn't going to be in the loop. He'd just make his own observations, then. After all, he was an outsider and so the logical person to observe the crew members and figure out which one was responsible for the sabotage. Like a detective, a regular Sherlock Holmes. Of course, he wasn't dumb enough to actually try to apprehend the saboteur himself. He'd find the person, tell Caldwell -- assuming it wasn't Caldwell -- and let the Daedalus's security forces take it from there ...

They continued moving debris away from Elizabeth's legs. She seemed to be unconscious again, and didn't respond when Rodney called her name and nudged at her foot.

A firm hand closed over his wrist. "Don't do that," Dr. Ling snapped at him. "Don't touch her, don't move her, understand? We have no idea what the extent of her injuries are."

Rodney yanked his arm free of her grip and stood up, Ling rising with him. "I'm not going to break her by touching her foot! She's not hurt that bad."

Ling took a step closer to him, standing on tiptoe to bring her face up towards his. "Dr. McKay, as miserable a specimen of humanity as you seem to be, I'm willing to acknowledge your expertise in matters of physics. Kindly grant me the same courtesy in medicine. I am the expert here, not you --"

"For whatever that's worth," Rodney sneered back. "There's a reason why they call medicine an art. It's about as much a science as astrology."

Ling drew a deep breath and spoke between clenched teeth. "For some reason, Dr. Weir and Radek both seem to consider you their friend. I'm not entirely sure why. So far, I have seen absolutely nothing to give me the impression that you are anything other than a cowardly, egotistical man who cares nothing for the welfare of anyone but himself. If you are truly interested in seeing your so-called friends get out of this situation alive and intact, then you will do what the medical staff tells you and you will stop jeopardizing their lives through your own laziness and ego."

Rodney floundered around through about fifteen different levels of That's not fair! before he finally managed to say: "You don't know me. You have no right -- no right to say that about me."

"You're right, Dr. McKay," Ling said quietly. "I don't know you. All I know is what I've observed. And nothing that I have seen gives me the impression that you care about anyone or anything other than yourself. If that is how I see you, as a person who doesn't know you very well, then I think I'd be asking yourself how your 'friends' perceive you and how long they'll be willing to put up with you if you continue treating them as you do."

"Don't judge me!" Their argument was starting to attract attention from several people around them, who had stopped moving pieces of rubble in order to watch. Even Caldwell was staring curiously. "Get back to work!" Rodney yelled at the nearest engineer, who hastily scuttled off to continue hooking up cables.

"We're wasting time," Ling told him. "Again. I think your friends' lives are more important winning an argument, don't you?" And with that, she marched off towards the medical staff who were setting up equipment.

He couldn't let her have the last word, not after all of that. "For the record, I don't like you at all!" And she'd just jumped to #1 on his Wraith saboteur list, if for no other reason than because he really hoped it was her so he could have the satisfaction of wiping that self-important look off her face in front of Caldwell.

"Fortunately, my respect for you is so low that I really don't care," she shot back over her shoulder.

"Hag!" It was a low blow, but the woman was, after all, about ten years older than Rodney, and she'd asked for it.

Ling snorted. "Is that the best you can do? Please." She knelt down beside two of the medics and proceeded to completely ignore Rodney as she demonstrated her plan for removing Elizabeth to her assistants with broad hand gestures.

Caldwell looked, in Rodney's opinion, obnoxiously amused by the whole thing. "About that mutiny, Dr. McKay? I take it back. I think you'd be dealing with a counter-mutiny in no time flat, and she can use a gun, which is more than I can say for you."

"What is this, let's all pick on Rodney day?"

"Dr. McKay? Colonel?" One of the engineers approached, very nervously. "We're ready to hoist the beam."

"Oh really? Well, it seems that we're just waiting for the harpy, then."

Ling continued to ignore him as she and the medics knelt on opposite sides of Elizabeth's still body. "On three," Ling murmured. "One, two, three ..." The backboard went in, and Elizabeth did not even twitch. Rodney realized that his hands were clenched so tightly that his stubby fingernails dug painfully into his flesh. Despite the cold, his palms were slippery with sweat.

"She's secured, Doctor."

Ling looked up -- at Caldwell, not Rodney -- and nodded. "Ready."

Perry signaled his people. The beam groaned, shuddered and began to lift, and Ling's team moved with astonishing speed, sliding Elizabeth out and down the canted floor. "She's clear!" Perry yelled and the beam crashed back down, shaking the room and making Rodney jump.

For the first time in five hours, he could see Elizabeth's face -- pale, bruised, covered with dried blood on one side. Her eyes were closed and he could see that her parted lips were cracked and dry-looking. Ling was checking her over with practiced hands, murmuring results that one of the medics scribbled down, while the other one took blood pressure and temperature readings.

"She looks like hell," Rodney said, forgetting himself enough to lean over Ling. He got a dirty look for his troubles.

"People generally tend to be a bit of a mess after being trapped in rubble for hours, Dr. McKay -- I'm sorry she doesn't measure up to your standards." While he tried to think of a way to explain that he hadn't meant it that way, as well as clamp down on the extremely colorful array of insults that were right on the tip of his tongue regarding Ling's medical qualifications and lineage, the doctor straightened up and pointed to him. "Do you want to be useful? Take one end of the stretcher. Since we've got her strapped down anyway, we may as well move her down to the cargo bay. She's stable enough to move and it would be easier to treat her if she's with the others."

"I--You--We -- oh, fine." There was a time to argue and, for a change, a time to do as he was told. Rodney gripped the end of the stretcher at Elizabeth's feet. In a way he was glad that he couldn't see her face anymore. She looked so small and helpless, lying there.

Due to a realistic assessment of his own fighting skills -- not cowardice, dammit -- he still had no intention of confronting the mystery saboteur himself ... however, with this many fighting-type people around him, he was bound to be able to find one who'd be willing to beat the crap out of that mysterious person for doing this to Elizabeth and Radek.

If it turned out to be Ling, then that was just an added bonus.

------

Impact plus 6 hours 15 minutes

"You should probably sleep, if you can."

Sheppard snorted. "Not exactly in a sleeping mood right now, Doc."

"I know that. But we've got a long flight in front of us, and you may need to be on your toes when we get there."

Sheppard sighed, leaned back in his seat and stretched. They'd been on autopilot for hours; the other three had settled down in the back, where Ronon was entertaining himself by systematically cleaning his knives, while Beckett checked and rechecked the medical equipment, and Simpson ... did whatever bored engineers did.

He could probably leave the controls alone -- there were no obstacles anywhere near them, nothing but the other jumpers flying in formation -- but he didn't like having nobody in the pilot's chair. Especially not with the possible threat of Wraith closing in.

"Care to take the wheel for a while, Carson?"

"I'd frankly rather walk barefoot over hot coals with needles in them. I don't suppose that's an option, is it?" Carson asked hopefully. "Ah, didn't think so." He stepped back so Sheppard could swing himself out of the chair, then lowered himself very nervously. Sheppard gave him a pat on the shoulder and went to join the others in the back.

Simpson looked up at he sat down on the bench next to Ronon. "I've been going over the data on the planet where the Daedalus appears to have gone down. I think I'm getting a better idea of what we'll be looking at when we get there."

"Spill it." Sheppard rummaged in his vest for a PowerBar, or whatever else was available. He wasn't quite ready to face an MRE yet.

"It's a cold world, and a large one -- about half again as big as Earth in radius. Most of the world appears to be too cold to be habitable. There are some open areas of ocean -- probably much more saline than Earth's oceans -- and the rest of the planet is pretty damn cold and frozen. I'm also picking up some spectacular storm systems."

Sheppard peeled a PowerBar as he leaned over her shoulder, trying to glean what he could from the half-comprehensible readouts on her laptop. "Are we talking like ... surface of Neptune cold, or Michigan in winter cold?"

"Depends on where you are. Judging from albedo, there's a sort of a summer zone around the equator and south of it -- actual vegetation, open water, temperatures on the daytime side of the planet in the forties."

"That's still Fahrenheit."

Simpson nodded. "Yep."

"I wouldn't call that much of a summer, Doc."

"Yes, well, the northern hemisphere is in winter -- we're talking about -150 at the pole, getting towards a relatively balmy zero or so as you go towards the equator."

Sheppard whistled. "And I thought Antarctica was cold. Where's the Daedalus in all this? Can you tell?"

Simpson frowned and shook her head. "Still working on that. The atmosphere is scattering the signal and making it extremely difficult to localize until we're closer. It's definitely in the northern hemisphere somewhere, but beyond that, I can't really narrow it down."

"The cold side," Sheppard said softly.

She looked up at him, met his eyes. "Yes, Colonel. The cold side."

Ronon spoke up for the first time, and Sheppard was reminded of the fact that, even though the man dressed and talked like a barbarian, he did in fact come from a technologically advanced world. "Atmosphere? Oxygen?"

"Yes on both. Breathable, I'd say -- maybe a little thin by our standards, about equivalent to a few thousand feet of elevation, but enough that they won't have to worry about air, at least."

Sheppard let out a slow breath. It still wasn't good, but it was looking more hopeful. "Life signs? Energy readings?

Simpson shrugged. "Too far away to tell. We'll have to be a lot closer before I can pick up anything like that."

Well, it was something. Sheppard settled back on the bench and looked towards the cockpit. "How's it going up there, Carson?"

"Just fine, Colonel, just fine." From the sound of his voice, the man was totally rigid.

"Relax a little bit, Carson. It's on autopilot, and there's nothing out here to run into even if you tried."

There was a strained snort of a laugh. "Colonel, believe me, I can probably find something to run into even if we're in empty vacuum."

"Well, we are in empty vacuum, so let me know how that goes, Doc." But Sheppard was well aware that Carson's tension wasn't just because he didn't like to fly. They were all going to be very much on edge until they got to that world and found the Daedalus. Leaning his head back against the wall, Sheppard hunted around in his vest pockets. It had to be here somewhere ... aha. He pulled out a deck of playing cards, utterly tasteless ones with naked women on them. Elizabeth would probably have had a fit if she'd seen them. Sheppard loved them. Rodney'd picked them up for him on Earth somewhere, and had slid them across a lab table to him late one night, after making Sheppard swear that he would never, ever make Rodney try to play card games with him.

Rodney. Damn. How in the hell had an abrasive, arrogant scientist managed to get so tangled up in his world that he couldn't imagine life without him? If the Daedalus hadn't survived the impact, if Elizabeth and Rodney were dead ... where did he go from there?

Sheppard shuffled the cards with a quick snap of his wrist and held out the deck to Ronon. "Hey, big guy, you ever play Go Fish?"

Ronon looked back at him with his "Earth people are crazy, and I hope it's not contagious" expression. "I have ... fished," he said. "I take it you mean an Earth game, like that 'poker' you taught us."

"Poker. Heh. Poker is for wimps." Sheppard did a fast side-shuffle on the cards and set the deck between them. "Fish, now ... that's a man's game. Cut 'em."

------

TBC