"Okay, Major, hold still."
Lorne hadn't even noticed when Helton turned his attention from Reed, and despite the instruction, he still reacted when the gauze Helton was using found the edge of the openly bleeding gash on his left temple, which stung like hell and was especially startling because Lorne hadn't particularly noticed he'd been hurt in the crash until just now.
"Ow," Lorne objected with a flinch, "I'm alright, Doc. I'm fine. Go check everybody else."
"They'll keep," Helton replied evenly, keeping his attention on his work, "No one gets to cut in this line. Now quit moving around. This is a bad enough angle as it is."
Lorne sighed and obeyed, "You're enjoying this aren't you?"
Helton was notorious for bucking authority figures, and just a few weeks ago he and Lorne had been on a mission together that was supposed to be strengthening ties between the Lanteans and one of the many peoples out here in the Pegasus Galaxy. Unfortunately, the settlement leader and Helton hadn't exactly hit it off, and Lorne had been forced to intervene. Helton had been steaming angrily over it ever since, and Lorne couldn't help but feel that the indelicate touch he was enduring now was payback.
"I don't know what you're talking about, Major," Helton replied, but a grin played around his mouth and his hazel eyes sparkled as he spoke, "I'm just doing my job."
"Sure," Lorne muttered, but realized that this was no time to be antagonizing the man.
At the very least, he should wait until Helton's hand was farther away from his eye.
Finally Helton left him alone and found somebody else to harass. His victim of choice was George, who didn't seem to appreciate the effort very much.
"I'm not hurt, get on with you," George's voice cracked through the jumper like thunder, for the man had been born into the world without any concept of volume control, and his natural setting was loud, whether he was pleased or angry.
George was typically an energetically good-humored man (some might even say jolly, and he could impersonate Santa with the best of them when it suited him), but he abhorred doctors, and suffered routine physicals with vehement complaints.
"Back in my day, nobody bothered you if they couldn't see intestines or bone sticking out where they shouldn't!" George continued with all the force of a winter gale.
Since George was only about fourteen years older than Lorne, Lorne was convinced this was a gross exaggeration, because surely things hadn't changed that much in a little over a decade. Then again, Lorne had spent most of his adult life in the Air Force, and the military was big on regular physicals, especially once you joined the Stargate Program. Sometimes Lorne felt like it was just to give the medically trained personnel something to do so they didn't get bored and start causing trouble by performing dangerous experiments. Anyway, Lorne didn't know what George's problem with the medical profession was, and he figured it was none of his business.
Helton only annoyed George briefly, however, as he actually wanted to move Reed to somewhere more practical and just wanted to make sure nobody would hurt themselves getting out of the way.
Once Lorne figured out Helton's plot, he started working on where people would need to move to get out of the way, and how to rearrange the materials within the jumper to make a relatively flat place for the doctor to work. Easier said than done, considering the angle of the jumper's floor.
Lorne wasn't keen on going outside just yet and, even if he had been, he certainly had no intention of hauling a wounded and unconscious man out into the open without taking a good look around first. He knew something of what lay outside. They had gone way off course before they landed, but Lorne had still seen plenty of the terrain on the way down. The only thing that concerned him was that the jumper might start sinking. But he didn't weigh that as a likely scenario, and certainly didn't think it was going to be sinking rapidly. And that meant giving Helton his head for the moment. Once the medical matters were seen to satisfactorily, they could move on to other things.
One problem at a time.
Sometimes being Carson Beckett's friend could be a real chore. The man was relentlessly cheerful and thoughtful and nice to everyone, which always left Rodney hyper-aware of his own shortcomings in those departments. But Christmas was always the real headache.
Carson was a consummate Christmas Lover, to such a degree that he'd started talking about having a party all the way back in September, though he hadn't brought it up with Elizabeth until the beginning of November, which seemed early, but was of course necessary for getting the clearance and making arrangements among all the staff. After all, Carson wasn't throwing some office party for the medical department. He and his fellow Christmas nuts were trying to throw a party for the entire city.
It was a hugely complicated undertaking, and that in addition to his regular duties as the Chief Medical Officer, which was why he had enlisted so much help from the time he'd first conceived the notion up to now. Besides Carson, the Gate Tech (whose name would probably come to Rodney… eventually) had probably put in the most hours. But any number of people had helped out with the planning, arrangements, gathering of appropriate material and then practicing their arts and crafts. Most of the décor was made from off-world material and designed and put together by the hands of Lanteans.
Mercifully, Carson had left Rodney out of his planning. Okay, so maybe it hadn't been mercy on Carson's part so much as wiggling out of it on Rodney's. He had been keeping himself carefully buried in work for two months, only to have his final escape cut off by somebody deciding to send Major Lorne's team instead of his (well, Colonel Sheppard's, but that was just splitting hairs). The least Lorne's Team could've done was bring Rodney along.
Rodney needed to track down Sheppard. The man had some serious explaining to do.
After checking a few of Sheppard's more usual haunts, Rodney realized there was only one place Sheppard could be, and that was with Ronon Dex and Teyla Emmagan, who had both been helping to disarrange the city to make way for decorations, though neither of them had much of a clue as to what the big deal was. Both were familiar with celebrations, of course, but apparently Santa hadn't made it to the Pegasus Galaxy. Even magic reindeer had their limits.
Sure enough, Sheppard was hanging from a balcony railing while Ronon passed up the end of a homemade garland. Several volunteers from the botany lab, led by Doctor Katie Brown, had gotten together to find a reasonably safe alien plant that looked passably similar to the sort of plants garlands were made out of back home. Even Rodney had to admit that the similarity was impressive. Aside from a bit of a glittery silver sheen and notable lack of pine cones, the Lantean made garlands looked just like the pine garlands one would find back home.
"I still don't get it," Ronon was telling Sheppard, "You go out into the snow, cut down a bunch of trees, and drag them into your houses to celebrate it being the middle of winter?"
"No!" Sheppard exclaimed, then paused for a moment, fiddling with the end of the garland before admitting, "Well yes. Kind of. Not really," he shook his head and started attaching the garland along the outside of the railing as he talked, "It's more about… family and togetherness… I don't know. Touchy feely crap isn't my thing, okay?"
"Dr. Beckett informed me that it had a great deal to do with a child," Teyla offered helpfully, then revealed her own bafflement by adding, "A child who was also a star?"
While Sheppard and Ronon tried to break their necks with the garland, Teyla was sensibly hanging tinsel on the unsensible evergreen that had been cut for the occasion.
"Eh… that's mostly just for the Christians," Sheppard answered Teyla.
The tinsel had been put together by a combination of several lonely Marines and some of the more attractive (and available) astrophysicists from Rodney's own department. The tree had been cut down and transported from the mainland by some confused but cooperative Athosians, who were persuaded to come back to Lantea specifically as a favor to Carson (to whom they felt indebted for having looked after their medical needs so attentively even right at the start when tensions between the Lanteans and Athosians were high), as they knew the mainland best and would know where to find a tree matching his specifications. A less confused but still more cooperative jumper pilot (Rodney thought it might've been Lt. Edison, but he wasn't completely certain; mainly because he wasn't sure he remembered which one was Edison) had ferried the tree back, probably strapped onto the roof of the jumper or something. Rodney didn't know the logistics, and didn't care to either. The tree had been installed in the primary mess hall by the same Athosians and the jumper pilot.
Ronon frowned at that, "I thought Dr. Beckett was from Earth?"
Though both Teyla and Ronon were familiar with multiple planets, and there being multiple tribes or cities on said planets, they tended to not have a firm grasp of countries, and so mostly just thought of the Lanteans as being from Earth and didn't recognize the different flag patches on their jackets indicating countries of origin/affiliation. It was just as well. Being from different countries didn't seem as significant when you were one of a handful of people from Earth, facing a galaxy of unknowns.
"It's not a planet," Rodney broke in, impatient to speak with Sheppard, "It's a religion."
"Exactly," Sheppard said, "For Christians, it's a baby in a manger. For everyone else, there's Santa and eight tiny reindeer. It all amounts to pretty much the same thing."
It didn't, and Sheppard was smart enough to know it, but Rodney didn't call him on it, because he wasn't here to discuss orthodoxy or holiday mythos, and didn't want to get lost on a side tangent before he'd had a chance to make Sheppard hear his complaint.
"Did he say rain deer?" Ronon asked of Teyla in a low voice, "I thought this holiday was about winter and snow."
Teyla merely shook her head, no more enlightened than he on the subject.
Unsurprisingly, Helton pulled Lts. Wilson and Coughlin to help him move Reed once he was ready to move the injured man. It wasn't only because Helton didn't like Lorne. It was also because, aside from Reed himself, Wilson and Coughlin the burliest guys available inside the craft; both were taller and heavier than Lorne by a good margin and he'd be the first to admit they were a good deal stronger as well. Between the awkward positions they had to work from to move Reed, and the fact that Reed was bigger than any of them except maybe George, their size and strength might be an important advantage.
Anyway, Lorne wasn't going to complain if he wasn't asked to do the heavy lifting. Certainly it made his life a lot easier, and left him free to focus on other matters.
Like how best to scale the jumper's slanted interior to reach the hatch at the back, which he anticipated having to open manually. Fortunately, the Ancients, clever designers that they were, had realized that the little craft might possibly either lose power entirely or suffer from any number of systems malfunctions for one reason or another (such as the present one of having been disabled by an outside force), potentially trapping its occupants. So beneath a panel near the floor at the back, there was a little wheel for cranking the hatch open.
"We should check out the surrounding area," Dr. Souci speaking practically in his ear startled Lorne; even though the space was limited, he hadn't expected her to suddenly be all but on top of him, "We need to find whatever system or device knocked us out of the air. Disable it before anyone comes looking for us, so they don't wind up down here too."
Marissa Souci was a slight but shapely blond who looked a good deal younger than her thirty-five years (a fact that had clearly not escaped her), a look she accentuated by her choice of ponytail hairstyle and whatever mascara she used to make her eyes pop. She had the carriage and tone of a woman used to getting her way because she was typically right. Like most of the geek squad, she was almost unnaturally brilliant and well-suited to her most unusual job.
However, she was an explorer, here to study the ecology of the various worlds the Lanteans visited. Despite her unexpected prowess on the firing range and skill at operating a jumper (both of which she liked to downplay for reasons Lorne was unclear on), she was not a field tactician. While she had almost read Lorne's earlier thoughts, that task was actually a few steps ahead.
"First we need to check our equipment," he told her, "See what still works."
"None of the Ancient tech is gonna function," Souci opined, with a toss of her head that caused the end of her long ponytail to snap Lorne in the back of the head, "Whatever took out the jumper was clearly targeting the technology. Otherwise it would've taken out the probes we sent here earlier."
Lorne had considerable experience with egotistical scientists, though this one in particular, as he had been her primary instructor on both the firing range and inside the jumper. Her tendency to dismiss anything she hadn't thought of herself as irrelevant was aggravating, but Lorne knew that provoking her was a mistake, as a temper of fire lay behind those ocean blue eyes.
With slow, deliberate caution, Lorne replied, "Yeah… maybe."
"What other option is there?" Souci asked, her impatience with Lorne's failure to fully agree with her only thinly concealed; he'd have to tread lightly if he didn't want to set the ecologist off.
Fortunately, he had a great deal of practice at playing the unassuming, simple minded Air Force Major. He'd also had considerable practice at letting the air out of ego balloons gently. Most important of all, he'd learned that a lot of people needed a little help taking off the presumption blinders, but that they'd resent it if they realized it was happening before they were ready.
He didn't want any friction with this team that didn't have to be there. They had enough problems without personal conflicts. So he answered Souci in one of his more blithe tones, as if his alternate explanation didn't really matter, even though it patently did.
"It may have left the UAVs alone specifically because they were unmanned," he said, offering her an off-hand sort of grin, "It could be that the device was targeting us."
Souci was not amused. In fact, quite appropriately, she looked a little bit scared.