AMONG THE STARS - by NotTasha
Okay, so maybe I am a bit evil... but here you go... the next bit
PART 12: SHIPWRECKED
He floated among the stars.
Weightless, he reached out toward them. Fingers spread, the stars seemed to flow right through them, like grains of sand. His feet aimed toward the great ringed planet, as if he might be able to shove off from it, and propel himself into the soft clouds of the supernova.
It was like a dream. He was gliding through space. And he smiled at his simplistic thinking. He should know better. He should be classifying the stars, considering a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. He should divide the stars into white dwarfs and neutron stars, blue giants, red supergiants, red dwarfs –
It's cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere.
He should be thinking about the myriad solar systems. He should be envisioning elliptical orbits, or the dance of binary systems.
Which of the distant suns harbored viable planets? Where were the stargates? Which of these suns had he seen already, standing with his team on one of the sun's orbiting worlds?
I'm all alone, more or less.
He should know. He should be able to pinpoint every world he'd ever visited in the galaxy. He should be able to look here and remember where Hoff orbited. And over there is the Genii homeworld. And that's Lucius's muddle-minded home.
Let me fly far away from here.
And there is Atlantis.
Fun, fun, fun, in the sun, sun, sun
Instead, he floated, looking to the mystic spectacle, and thought the stars were pretty -- their beauty, so intense, it brought tears to his eyes.
Blinking, he looked into the remnants of the supernova, wishing he could've had time to read the data he collected, to understand it.
There was so much more to know.
And he'd dropped it. He had the laptop in his hands and had let it go… stupid.
Everything was blurring, and he realized how impossible it was to float through space, without an environmental suit, all alone. Was he dead?
I want to lie, shipwrecked and comatose,
And yet he glided, and tried not to think about it too much, because the view was so exquisite, so breathtakingly gorgeous.
It was so damn beautiful.
drinking fresh mango juice
He reached out his hands toward the stars as if he might grasp hold of them, as if they might hold onto him, and he floated onward.
His fingers felt numb and as he clasped worthlessly at the stars, he felt cold – cold and alone.
He was lost, surrounded by the things of his dreams. Peaceful… it should be peaceful.
Goldfish shoals nibbling at my toes
But something dreadful pulled at him. There had been a blast. Something terrible had happened.
His head felt leaden, in spite of the weightlessness. His side burned, and he turned slowly, looking and wondering what had become of Sheppard and the jumper.
What had happened to Sheppard? To Teyla? To Ronon? He swallowed thickly, as he looked to the spot where he'd last seen the colonel. Had the colonel survived? Did Sheppard wait too long to leave? He released a sobering sigh, realizing that the colonel's dawdling probably spelled his end.,
Sorry, he thought, floating among the stars, as all around, little balls of red accompanied him -- tiny little crimson beads that floated near him like confetti.
Fun, fun, fun, in the sun, sun, sun
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Sheppard turned the jumper about the moment that the HUD announced the concussion of the silent explosion had past him. He'd been thrown for a moment, but had easily brought the jumper back into control. It seemed a little annoyed with him.
Heading back, the jumper dove and spun, avoiding the slabs of debris that came at him… part of the central core seemed to roll through space, and there was a chair… and there a tabletop. Some sort of silvery packet skated past. He didn't regard it too closely, but he was fairly sure that it was the abandoned Country Captain Chicken. Sheppard hoped it eventually burned up in the gas giant's atmosphere.
And strafing him, glittering as it passed, came the gold and silver -- the booty of the pirates. He swore, neatly avoiding what looked like a bejeweled cup.
His eyes darted through the debris, searching and hoping he didn't find the thing he sought… not like this. His chest felt tight. He could hardly breathe as he stared into the destruction, as he hoped, beyond hope.
"Rodney!" he called over the radio. "Ronon! Teyla!"
No one responded, and he felt his heart chill as he steered the jumper back the way he'd come. His eyes took in the sight. Nothing remained of the space station – nothing!
Goddamn… goddamn…. No… no..!
"Teyla…Ronon…?"
And then Teyla's voice sounded in his ear. "John!" she called, her voice plain with relief. "You escaped? Are you all right?" He found the Ironspot, the weird looking ship with its odd fitting engines and the 'space crane' on its roof.
"I'm fine! I'm fine! You?"
"I am well. Ronon…" a pause as she ascertained an answer. "He is unharmed. We are well."
"Rodney?" Sheppard called again, hoping against hope. There was nothing here. How could he have survived? Nothing left… A horrible loneliness tugged at him as he tried to understand that Rodney was gone -- it felt so wrong.
"Rodney?" he tried hailing again. Then, he called, "Teyla, you got any sign of him?"
"No, colonel," was the solemn response.
Sheppard grimaced. Damn it! Damn it! The dome… was it completely obliterated?
And the HUD lit up, impossibly displaying the shape of the observation deck. He stared at it, wondering what it meant, and then realized with a quick intake of breath, the dome was intact, heading away at a steady clip.
For a moment he was still, watching the display. Oh, thank God!
Hadn't Rix said that the station was made in pieces? Perhaps it could come apart just as easily. The deck, had it shot off like a champagne cork?
"Is he still alive?" he whispered, and a little dot lit up on the HUD. Sheppard felt something unknot inside him. Thank God…
"Teyla!" he shouted. "The dome! The observation deck, it's intact!"
"It is?" she replied, a response so simple and so hopeful that it almost broke Sheppard's heart.
"I'm getting a life sign. I'm going after it! Follow me!"
Another pause, and Teyla came back. "We have a problem," she stated, her voice stilted with distress. "Rix is not responding. We had a rough time in the explosion. He hit his head…" And her voice trailed.
Sheppard bit his lip. "Great. Okay, you stay put. I'm going after Rodney."
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Ronon helped Teyla move the stunned pilot out of his seat. They said nothing to each other, as if mentioning their hopes aloud might dispel them.
Rix blinked at them stupidly, seeming unable to figure out exactly what was going on.
"Hey," he said softly, as they settled him in the seat behind the copilot's chair. "What… What happened?"
"You hit your head, Rix," Teyla told him.
The man seemed to look beyond her. He held a hand to his forehead, bringing it back to find blood. He stared at his reddened fingers for a long moment as if he couldn't quite remember how the blood got there. "Oh," he said softly.
Rix had activated the shields, but a glancing blow from a chunk of the station had rocked the ship, sending it spinning. The inertial dampners had helped, but obviously their quality had degraded. Rix had been sent crashing into the control panel, shutting down the systems.
Apparently he didn't take his own advice about getting strapped in. The necessity of the seat straps was evident now.
Once Rix was settled, Teyla held his face in her hands. His eyes were unfocused, his pupils too big. She hadn't noticed before, but Rix had eyes the color of a green sea. He blinked, seeming unable to clear his vision, hardly even noticing her proximity.
"Rix?" Teyla called his name.
Rix's expression was lost and a little afraid. "What happened?" he asked again, softly. And then, "Who are you?"
"I am Teyla," she explained softly. "There was an explosion."
Rix didn't seem to comprehend her. He squinted a moment and commented, "You're lovely."
Teyla allowed herself a smile at that comment.
"My head hurts," Rix went on, touching his head again, and seeming to be surprised once more by the sight of blood.
"Teyla," Ronon called as he stood, tense, beside the control console. "We're not letting Sheppard go after McKay on his own."
With a nod to Ronon, she stood and stated, "I will fly the Ironspot."
Ronon looked as if he wanted to argue the point, but acquiesced to her pronouncement, and he moved out of her way.
She moved into the pilot seat, and stared at the controls for a moment, not exactly sure what to do. It didn't look like the jumper's control panel – basically, it was the same, but there were coarse-looking toggles added, a clunky bank of switches, and some dials installed in a ham-handed manner. The cool colors she usually saw in the Ancients' equipment was overridden with dark brasses, coppery coils, and – here and there – splashes of acid-bright color from the added gauges.
She'd seen Sheppard and McKay and others fly the jumpers, but she lacked the ATA gene. But she had listened during the lessons Sheppard had offered the scientist, and had heard McKay's iteration of what the controls were actually for – correcting Sheppard's terminology when the colonel started 'making things up'.
And Dr. McKay had helped her in guiding the Wraith ship. He seemed to know intuitively what needed to be done, able to explain how to get the Hive Ship in motion, even though he'd never done anything like it before.
She stared at the controls as she remembered -- already missing Rodney's brilliance, his sometimes caustic, often intense, but always honest demeanor.
We will find him, she reminded herself. We will get him back.
This ship would be different than either the Hive or jumper. There was no mental component. This would be all physical. She had no real experience with this, but she'd watched Rix.
She reached out her hands, grasping hold of the controls as Sheppard might have done. Paused a hand over a gauge, examining what it told her, as McKay would. She flipped one of the switches Rix had fiddled with earlier, and the Ironspot started to move forward. "Strap yourself in," she reminded Ronon.
She watched out of the corner of her eye as Ronon secured Rix. Even the seating area was different than the jumper. Someone had replaced the seats with chairs more plush than they had in their ships. The command chair was downright comfortable.
Maybe the Ancestors weren't right about everything, the Athosian considered. The Bogachiel might have had them on comfort.
The pirate seemed confused by the straps as Ronon fitted him in, and startled. He tried to press himself into his chair, away from the big man. "Who?" the pirate asked, gazing up at him. "Zeno?"
"No," Ronon responded. "Ronon."
"Oh," Rix said softly, looking as if he didn't know what else to say.
Teyla continued her quick exploration of the controls, its mix-mash of technologies, figuring it out as best she could as the ship inched along. She'd get it, she realized, she'd figure it out well enough to follow the colonel. And she looked in the direction he'd headed, remembering what John had said.
The Observation Deck was still intact – Rodney.
She put more power behind the Ironspot and it leapt at her command. She guided the ship forward, increasing the speed as Ronon sat and strapped himself in.
"You think McKay's all right?" Ronon asked, his voice surprisingly soft.
Teyla inclined her head, watching the controls, trying to make sense of the series of strange gauges amid the more familiar Ancient devices. "I believe," she stated, "that if anyone survived the explosion of a space station, it would be Dr. Rodney McKay."
Ronon nodded and settled into his seat as the Ironspot chased down Jumper 5.
--
TBC - go get 'em Teyla!