In the end, the only remotely workable solution in the jumper was for everyone to pack together on the floor at the front of the craft like canned sardines. Lying down not really being practical, they sat with their backs against the navigation panel, some of them wedged in or around the control chairs.
There was a great deal of grumbling and groaning about this, and if anyone shifted even slightly, everyone else felt it. Reed had the worst of it, naturally, though Lorne had done the best he could, placing Reed next to one of the jumper's walls. The only person that fit between Reed and the co-pilot's chair was the dainty Janella, and she did her best to be still while she was awake, but whenever she drifted off, she'd start trying to turn over or otherwise find comfort that simply didn't exist. This would disturb Reed, which would in turn wake her up, starting the process over again.
Nobody else was getting much sleep either.
"George, you know the joke about the crowded subway?" Wilson ventured at one point.
"How's that?" George asked.
Wilson promptly replied, "My rib, is it crushing your elbow?"
"What? Oh, sorry."
And so it went. The conditions were too cramped and awkward to begin with, but it also happened that many of them were distinctly uncomfortable with each other. It's nearly impossible to sleep in close proximity to someone who you don't feel at ease with, particularly if you have to actually be in physical contact with that person. Most of the team did not seem aware that this was one of the primary reasons they couldn't sleep, but Lorne was only too conscious of the fact, and felt it was because he was failing to get any sort of unit cohesion going.
That failure stung much more deeply than his failure to get the jumper working. Together with his own weariness, the combined failures were beginning to chip at his nerves and confidence, which was in turn damaging his ability to put on a brave face and add an upbeat spin to things.
But Helton broke first, "This is ridiculous! We'll never get any rest this way!"
Coughlin opened an eye and muttered in some annoyance, "You're welcome to step outside and try your luck in the swamp."
"Like I'm the only one thinking it!" Helton snapped.
The civilians couldn't really be expected to help having frayed tempers. They hadn't been trained how to behave under adverse conditions. Lorne knew what it was to be deprived of sleep, to be hurting and worn out and harassed and wanting to pick a fight with just about anybody because he felt bad. It had been part of his training, before he'd ever joined the Stargate Program. And then, during his first year with the SGC, he'd gone to P3X-403 and learned what tolerating the intolerable really meant.
Everybody thought it was the military guys who'd get snippy and vicious when things got bad, but that was actually when most of them shone most brightly, because inadequate living conditions and hazardous situations were exactly what they'd signed on for and been trained to handle. The harder they had to work just to survive, the less energy they wasted being cranky about it.
It was the sitting around, not really doing anything, just waiting (and failing) that drove soldiers to madness. And sometimes even cruelty, just to alleviate the monotony. That's what had happened on P3X-403. Three months of nothing. It was enough to turn anyone sour. And then had come the fear and the violence and death. Having something to fight aside from each other had come as a relief, one that brought with it an edge of guilt, as the bodies began to pile up on both sides.
"It's still better than attending a Christmas party where you pretend to be friends with coworkers you can't stand or don't even know," Souci was pointing out in reasonable tones.
Oh here we go again, Lorne sighed inwardly, bracing himself against his own impulse to retort.
With most civilians, you took them out of their comfort zone and they suddenly started acting infantile. Usually because they were scared. But also because they didn't know what to do, or how to react. Even field researchers were not prepared for the psychological impact of being totally cut off from any support not because they were in a little pocket of wilderness, but because they were on an entirely separate planet so many miles from home that it boggled the mind just to consider it.
"You're only saying that because you're practically on top of Major Lorne," Helton exclaimed angrily, "Which is where you've wanted to be since you first noticed him months ago. I was there, remember?"
"Wes!" George rebuked, as Souci protested, "That's not true!"
"Then what were you staring at him for?" Helton pressed.
"Is this really the time?" Lorne inquired, but nobody was interested in his view of matters.
"I was trying to ignore my salad," Souci told him, "You were there when I had a word with the team that traded for that limp lettuce. Salads are bad enough without substandard ingredients. Can I assume you remember that too?"
It was actually not lettuce. But it was similar enough that everyone called it lettuce. The Atlantis Expedition got it in trade from one of their Pegasus Galaxy allies. For awhile, they'd been getting sort of browning, almost dishrag looking leaves, but recently Lorne had noticed an uptick in the quality of lettuce, and now absently wondered if Souci had something to do with it. He also wondered why Souci had been eating a salad, limp or otherwise, if she didn't like them.
But the team was still arguing.
"Oh please, if it was just the one time I might buy that, but come on, Rissa..." Helton drove the point home, "Even Major Lorne knows you're not as bad a shot on the firing range as you pretend to be, and he's your instructor. I don't think it takes a genius to figure out-"
"Stop it, Wes!" Souci interrupted loudly, clearly embarrassed.
Lorne wished they'd go back to complaining about Christmas. And that they'd act their age. Twenty-six and thirty-five was way too old to be acting like this, even if the situation was uncomfortable and they were tired, bruised and scared. Besides, Lorne was all of those things too, and having to be the adult breaking up spats between people who should know better was wearing out his patience. Eventually, taking calming breaths while reminding himself of his purpose and their value wouldn't be enough and he'd snap. Then they'd finally know what a bad situation looked like.
Then he realized that one of the civilians wasn't pitching in.
He turned to look at Janella. Naturally, she was awake too. Even if she had managed to nod off, all the arguing would've wakened her. She was curled up to fit into the small space she and Reed were occupying, and was using Reed's shoulder as a pillow, though she was careful not to disturb his ribs as she did so. Noticing Lorne's attention, Reed looked over top of her. He briefly glanced past Lorne at the three squabbling infants, who were now desperately trying to drag Wilson and Coughlin in with them. Then he met Lorne's gaze with a raised eyebrow.
Without moving, Janella watched the two airmen as they quietly conveyed their bemused annoyance concerning the mouthier members of the team, who were working very hard to make the worst of a bad situation. Like Lorne, Reed was somewhat resigned to it.
The both of them had been on a sufficient number of missions to know that interrupting now wouldn't improve the situation. It would most likely simply cause the civilians to turn on them instead of each other. Because, for the most part, telling civilians to shut the hell up was the equivalent of tyranny in their eyes, no matter what the reason.
One had to accept that civilians didn't work like military men, otherwise they'd've gone into the military. Not only accept it, but also respect it. After all, civilians could sometimes accomplish wonderful things. But only if they had the freedom and confidence to do so.
At the heart of Lorne's military service was the desire to ensure that his family and loved ones had freedom and security to pursue their lives without fear. He had learned, gradually, to realize that he had the same commitment to strangers. And, yes, even to familiars who annoyed him. It was his job. And that job had never been more essential to do, and do correctly, than with the Stargate Program. The Goa'uld wanted to enslave humanity. The Wraith wanted to eat it. The stakes had never been higher. The importance of supporting and protecting those who were developing the solutions and establishing the safe havens to retreat when such became necessary had never been greater.
But sometimes that was a little hard to remember over all the annoying noise those people were generating with their mouths.
"I'm a little bit busy right now, Rodney," Sheppard grumbled, clearly annoyed about being summoned while in the middle of a monster hunt.
And, as it happened, the middle of the night.
Neither he nor Rodney nor any number of other people were likely to feel a moment's peace until this thing was resolved. In fact, Rodney had barely even noticed when the sun went down, too busy with his work to pay attention to such minor matters as time of day.
"Believe me, nobody wants you to find that thing faster than I do," Rodney assured him quickly, "But seeing as neither you nor anybody else has seen it in an hour, I doubt if the interruption will do much harm. Besides, you needed to see this for yourself."
Even as Rodney spoke, they entered the jumper bay. The lights were on to accommodate the tech team already present, revealing in full the vast interior of the bay, with its multiple tiers of jumpers. Most sat like slumbering leviathans, inert and lightless. Those with the ATA gene could normally subconsciously feel the power sleeping under the surface, like a pulse of life. Only people like Rodney, who had artificially received the ATA gene after first encountering the jumpers had any real awareness of the difference, but Rodney was sure Sheppard noticed something was amiss without knowing what it was the moment he walked into the room, for he looked vaguely unsettled almost at once.
Zelenka, heading the tech team in the bay, noticed their arrival and waved them towards the jumper his team had gone over first, before reporting what they'd found to Rodney, who had gotten hold of Sheppard immediately after confirming the worst.
The fact that the jumper was parked in the middle of the floor, its hatchway open and lights hung on its interior would've been all the clue Rodney would have needed if Zelenka's team hadn't been there.
Sheppard stopped before entering the jumper, "Rodney… are all these jumpers dead?"
"Yes," Rodney replied, "But it's so much worse than that."
The Colonel's eyebrows went up at that and he seemed to have difficulty swallowing the information, hesitantly asking, "Worse… how?"
Rodney sighed, and led the way into the jumper before answering. Zelenka's team had not come across this particular issue by chance, but at Rodney's direction, after he had discovered another piece of bad news, which he now proceeded to relay to Sheppard.
"Elizabeth thought Major Lorne's team was overdue for a check-in," Rodney said in a low voice, "So she had the Gate Tech try to dial the planet and see what was going on," he shook his head, "But the 'Gate control panel is totally dead. Somehow, none of the Atlantis sensors noticed, even though they definitely should have. So of course we went here next, because the jumper's have built-in DHDs," he pressed one of the symbols on the aforementioned system, but the panel didn't light.
"You're sayin' we went from flickering lights to essential system malfunctions without even a warning?" Sheppard asked, "And that we're stuck here?"
"No," Rodney replied, "No, what I'm saying is that these systems were disabled the minute Lorne's jumper went through the 'Gate, at the same time of the first power surge, but none of us noticed, and neither did Atlantis. Every system's monitor in the city should be going nuts, but Atlantis doesn't realize it's under attack," he paused to let it sink in, then drove the point home, "Whatever this is, the Atlantis computers and sensors don't register it as a threat."
"Well I for one feel very threatened, Rodney!" Sheppard snapped.
"That's not the point!" Rodney snarled back, for it had been a long, trying day and he hadn't even had a chance to stop and eat dinner yet, and he was in no mood to coddle Sheppard's entirely fake intellectual weakness, "The point is that this thing is just toying with us. The power surges, the lights, sensor echoes…. If this thing can disable an entire jumper bay, there's no telling what else it's capable of. But so far… it's like it's just playing. Wasting our time."
"Or buying time," Sheppard realized, saving Rodney the trouble, "But buying time for what?"
"I don't know," Rodney admitted painfully, "Maybe to learn about us or our technology. It so far has only affected the Ancient tech, nothing else. So maybe it doesn't understand ours yet. Or maybe it has to… I don't know, rest after taking out a major system."
"And the creature is just to keep us distracted until it does that?" Sheppard guessed idiotically, then started using his head and concluded, "Or to help it learn about our responses."
"That's my theory," Rodney said, "Otherwise it doesn't make sense for the creature to even be here."
"But why draw so much attention?" Sheppard wondered, "We might not have noticed anything was wrong until now. Why not wait and see how long it would take us to notice and then start trying to get our attention with malfunctions and a pest control problem?"
"Exactly," Rodney said.
"Colonel Sheppard," Elizabeth's voice came on the earwig, entirely too calm to be natural, "I think you should come see me in my office. I appear to have an unexpected guest."