Understudy

Author: Cheryl W

Author's Notes: In an effort to keep this story moving forward, I'm going to just post short chapters as I write them. So that three chapter story arch I mentioned..it's gonna stretch out over a few more chapters now.

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Chapter 16: Just Deserts

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The sun had yet to make its appearance when John and Ronon entered Tyre's camp, the two Atlantians had said little on their trek, having said it all the prior night. Tyre greeted them with a big smile, "So I guess we're doing this."

"Guess so," John replied when Ronon only glared at the other Satedan. "Not to be ungrateful but your ship looks.." John tried to think of a less harsh description than what came to mind for the boxy ship that had more patchwork soldered on his hull than the rusted out Ford Nova John's grandfather had in his barn covered in bird poop, "…really well broken in," he settled on.

"She's fast and can out maneuver a Wraith fighter," Rakai indignantly bragged, apparently the pilot of the threesome.

John silently scoffed, 'Yeah, right. That box of bolts wouldn't outmaneuver a hot air balloon. This is going to get real interesting real fast if we run into weather on the planet.' He shot Ronon a look and knew his friend was thinking the same thing he was.

"Can we bypass the male posturing and get on with this?! If Yarvell told us right, we don't have a lot of daylight to work with and the nights get too cold to safely be outside..or in an abandoned Wraith command with no active heat controls," Ara brusquely entered the conversation, throwing a pack to Rakai as she stalked for their ship.

Tyre smiled, clapped his hands and announced, "Time to visit someplace new."

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"Your some place new isn't very welcoming," John quipped as the ship rocked and shuddered amid the gales of the sand storm as he viewed the brown out maelstrom from his position in the rear seats of the ship.

Rakai had a white knuckled grip on the ship's controls but he seemed to be fighting a losing battle to keep the ship from being spent away with the hurricane like winds and going into a spin. John equated it with an uncontrolled spin in a helicopter experiencing a loss of tail rotor thrust, a fubar situation he was only too familiar with. "You have to do an autorotation."

"Maybe you missed it but we are trying real hard to NOT rotate!" Rakai snarled through a clenched jaw. The ship groaned suddenly, as if it would tear itself apart, the alien metal hardly seeming a match for the strength of the wind and the sand ripping against it at incredible force.

"No, not rotate.." John began but knew it was useless, flying these space ships didn't require the skills set of pilots…most of the time. "You have to cut the engine and descend.."

"Are you mad?!" Ara shouted, turning in her co-pilot seat to lance him with a killer glare. "The only thing keeping us from dying a horrible death is the engines and the control Rakai has right now."

"What control," Ronon unhelpful muttered under his breath, earning himself Ara's baleful glare too. But Ronon was unfazed by her anger, turned instead to John and command, "John, go take over."

That had three…no four outraged voices protesting. "Not happening!" "Rakai will handle it!" "He tries that and he's getting tossed out of this ship" among John's under his breath hiss of "Ronon, shut up!"

Ronon was unrepentant, had his full attention on John, said lowly for friend's ears only, "I thought you weren't dying today. If you don't pilot this thing, you'll have lied to me."

John felt like Ronon had sucker punched him, growled, "This is not the way to make us one big happy team." Of course Ronon just continued to give him that damn 'I trust you' look. John cursed even as he was undoing his seat restrains, didn't know Ronon was doing the same until his tall friend stood up, stumbled from side to side pinging off the seats as the ship rocked but determinedly made it to the co-pilot's seat. There he fluidly released the co-pilot seat restraint, yanked Ara from the chair and tossed her down the aisle toward the seat he'd vacated. Afraid she'd slam into the wall as the ship buckled from side to side, Ara didn't spare time or breath to rail against Ronon's actions, instead dove for the chair and hastily locked on the restraints.

Flinging himself into the open seat behind the pilot's chair, Ronon gave John's back a companionable pat when the man pinged into him on his wobbly trek to the co-pilot seat. Then John fell more than sat into the co-pilot seat. Locking his restraints, he reached for the controls but Rakai still maintained his grip on the controls, made no move to relinquish his job to the co-pilot's instruments.

"You touch the controls and I'll crash us just to teach you a lesson," Rakai maturely threatened, sparing time to shoot John a venomous glare that proved he wasn't above fulfilling his threat.

Ronon thought about snaking his arms around Rakai's neck and taking the man out of the equation but knew that some switches needed to be activated on Rakai's right side so John could take over, switches John couldn't reach and Ronon didn't know which ones to hit. Turning to Trye in the seat beside him, he growled, "You wanted us along for what we could bring to the mission, well John's the best pilot I've ever seen. Anyone's ever seen. Let him land this thing so we can do what we came here to do. Or have you forgotten the merits of using other's strengths?" he challenged, knew it was one of his Sateda's military main concepts, that together they were strong because each individual's strengths were put to use in a common goal for victory.

Trye contemplated Ronon's words then growled out a command to Rakai, "Rakai, stand down. John's taking over for you."

"I can do this!" Rakai growled. "Don't…"

"Rakai, I gave you your mandate. Follow it," Tyre lowly commanded but there was more menace in the hushed tone than a shout could convey.

Grumbling under his breath, Rakai, reaching for the control on his left hand side, announced, "Turning controls to the co-pilot in three, two, one."

John immediately felt the buck of the now activated controls in his hands, wrestled to keep them from tearing out of his grasp when he loosened one hand to reach for a control in the center console. "This isn't going to be fun but sorry, no refunds are offered at this time," John quipped before he cut the engines and the ship was mercilessly swept to the right under the sandstorm's winds even as John used the nearly dead stick to angle the ship into a descent.

He had to rely on gauges for how close the ground was rushing up to meet them. They were only a few hundred feet from impact when he turned the engine back on and his control stick had full functionality. Hitting the ship's engine thrusters, he yanked up on the controls as the ship surged forward, saw a sand dune filling up the front view window. Gritting his teeth, he wrestled to bring the ship up, felt the bottom of the ship skim over the dune's peak before he managed to gain enough altitude to get above it. Then he abruptly throttled back on the power and dropped them a little roughly but still safely onto the planet's surface.

Motionless in the co-pilot's seat, John let out a shaky exhale, felt almost sick with relief that he hadn't gotten anyone killed, not this time. He felt Ronon's big hand give his shoulder a proud squeeze and it steadied him enough for him to perform the ship's shut down procedures. When the engine's hum disappeared, a stunned but alive crew sat in verbal silence for a few moments. Outside the storm still howled, rocked the ship a bit but it remained reassuringly tethered to the ground.

"Well, John, you're certainly earning your place on this mission," Tyre praised, felt the intensity of Ronon's glare on him and smirked at his friend's flare of jealousy. "Maybe he'll decide to stay on with us when this mission is through. Maybe you both will," because Tyre never missed a chance to dig into a weak spot with a well-placed dagger, of steel or of words.

"The hell he will," Ronon growled, giving Tyre a push back as he came to his feet. Then John was there, between them, giving Ronon a look ordering him to calm down.

Turning to Tyre, John smirked, "I ready am on a team but I'll give you a great yelp review so you'll soon have applicants lining up to join your crew."

Tyre's face creased in confusion but John was already heading down the aisle to the rear of the ship. Ronon gave Tyre a smug, satisfied smirk and followed in John's wake.

A red faced Rakai stood toe to toe with Tyre. "You want him on the team instead of me, huh? Well you can…" But Tyre reached out, gave Rakai a pat on his chest, "No one's replacing anyone, Rakai. You kept us in the air…he brought us into the landing…team work. We used to believe that was our strongest weapon."

"Tell that to the Emperor Kradin who sold us all out to be Wraith chow," Rakai grumbled.

Tyre's eyes darkened with hatred. "Don't speak his name. He no longer is my emperor. If we get enough intel here…"

Ara entered her teammate's discussion. "We can show that bastard how the Wraith plan to betray him, show the counsel how wrong they have been, how they were tricked into a false contract."

"I don't trust any of them to do anything but save their own skins, like they did before!" Rakai countered, didn't understand how Ara could still think the leaders of Sateda could be trusted when all they had done was betray their people.

"They can't be trusted," Tyre coldly vowed. "I've learned trust is a foolish weakness," his eyes drifted to Ronon and John at the rear of the ship. "We will use the intel we get here to support the rebellion on Sateda, will use it so I can splatter Emperor Kradin's blood across his precious throne room. And I won't let anyone stop us from that victory. No one."

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John looked at the Atlantian device in his hand and grimaced. "According to this, we're three miles from the only structure around here, which I'm assuming it's a Sands Casino," he said, but his eyes were skittering over Ronon's shoulder to the gathered Satedans, not liking their confab. Drawing his attention back to Ronon, he stated his trepidation, well one source of it. "I know sand storms. We'll be lucky to manage to crawl on our hands and knees to make it to the Wraith command center. Then the likelihood of us getting back here again to the ship before nightfall and freezing temperatures hit…"

"Yeah, not great odds," Ronon gruffly admitted, his own calculations coinciding with John's. "How long do sand storms last? Can Rakai pilot the ship in a few hours to come pick us up?" The weather situation was only adding more regret to his decision to allow John to be on the mission. And neither one of them was mentioning the fact that the planet's sun might not make another appearance for a week once it went down.

"I've seen sand storms last hours, days, course with this system going supernova, sand storms might be the norm around here," John darkly predicted but at Ronon's scowl, he knew his friend wasn't just frustrated over the weather, no, was heaping guilt on his own head for their predicament. John decided it was time for him to be the optimist. "But I can't believe there aren't long breaks in these types of storms. Unless that Yarvell fella was an ace pilot, he wouldn't have made so many trips here unscathed under these weather conditions. He probably knew the best times to come, which your friends," John sickly enjoyed Ronon's glare at the description, "didn't get out of him before they…well, before Yarvell got scarce."

Though Ronon replaced John's pacific word "scarce" with the word "dead", he agreed with the rest of John's logic. "Ok, so let's assume the storm will abate. Rakai should stay back here and fly the ship to the center when the weather's better."

"And maybe, along the way, he can pick up our sand covered corpses.." John muttered, but then grimaced. Right, he was playing the optimist..it wasn't a role he'd assigned himself in a very long time. 'Course you were the one making jackass promises you have no real way of keeping last night. Just more bravado and we know how that ego trip turned out for thirteen people last time.'

Not liking the dark turn to John's words, Ronon reached out, gave John's shoulder a squeeze, breaking his friend from his bleak revere. "Sateda too had sand storms in their dry region, not to this extreme but me and …well my old team traveled through one once, knew enough to be cautious, to stick together. We can make this trek."

"And Rakai's going to agree to be a taxi driver .." At Ronon's confusion at his term, John clarified, "…stay behind and pick us up, miss the grand adventure?" doubt heavily in his words.

"He'll have to," Ronon firmly decided and was crossing to the Satedas, spoke at the same time Tyre did: "Rakai will stay behind until the storm passes and then pick us up" Tyre announced even as Ronon said, "Rakai stays with the ship until…"

Having followed Ronon and overheard the two men, John pulled on an insincere smile. "Well, guess that's decided. Don't sweat it Rakai, I think you got the easy job," earning him a growl from the man which he chose to ignore. "So, anyone have any mountain climbing rope?"

"Rope?! This place is as barren of rocks let alone mountains as the Yilta region," Ara sneered, shot a contemptuous look to Trye for bringing this imbecile along.

John wasn't deterred, gave a smug smile. "Rope to tie us together, so none of us becomes a sand blasted skeleton extra in a Mummy movie sequel. And goggles, masks, gloves, anything to protect your skin from the sand, though honestly the stuff gets everywhere..and I mean eve…ry…where. Will be picking it out of our…crevices…" tongue in cheek reference he let the aliens ponder…" for a freaking month. Not to mention sand stings like a bitch."

Tyre shot a look to Ronon, like he expected his friend to add a formal directive to John's words that suspiciously sounded like orders from a commanding officer, not a underling. But Ronon was already pulling items out of a bag he'd brought along while Ara started ransacking their ship for the protective gear John had listed, as if she recognized John's authority too. 'Or simply his logic and obvious past experience of such weather,' Tyre consoled him with, had an uneasy feeling that it wasn't Ronon and his companion who would be changing crews. He was hoping he could count on Rakai but the man was more than happily taking a seat in the ship, quite content to not be making the hellish trek outside.

Something twisted in Trye's gut, after all these years being the leader of their threesome, he thought he could step down if Ronon rejoined them, took his rightful place as their leader again. But seeing Ronon so faithfully taking orders from John…it made him reimagine the changes made in Ronon since they'd parted. Changes that didn't fit with the memories, the images he had of the man who had once felt like a brother to him. Ronon wasn't…the same soldier even than he had been. And Tyre didn't like surprises, at all. Determined to learn more about Ronon's time apart from them, what had so changed the man. Prayed that he could still mostly trust him, because he was putting his friends' lives in his hands on this mission. And if Ronon betrayed him…Trye shied away from thinking what he'd have to do if that occurred, just vowed it wouldn't come to that.

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TBC

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Thanks to those still reading! Have a great day!

Cheryl W.