Chapter Thirteen: Insurrection
Sometimes the thought crossed Carson's mind that the entire universe, or at least the Pegasus Galaxy part of it, was conspiring to keep him from sleeping.
He'd been dead asleep, the first time in two days, when something woke him. He couldn't quite figure out what: a noise, a vibration maybe? He was lying half asleep and pleasantly drifting off again when Elizabeth's voice began speaking over the PA. Hostile army and ... city taken over ... and ... what?
Still only half convinced that this wasn't some kind of crazy dream, he stumbled to his feet, pulling on his pants as he lurched towards the door. He was already palming the door control before his brain caught up with everything happening around it and he realized that the announcement had said to stay put. Still, if there were injured people out there somewhere --
The door didn't respond. He tried again, and then realized that the normally bright crystals beside the door were not glowing.
He tried to dial up the lights.
Nothing.
Hmm. He reached for his radio, and hit it a few times before realizing why it wasn't working: He didn't have it on.
Damn it, time to wake up. He blundered back to his bed, sat down heavily and smacked himself in the face a few times. That helped. With a jaw-cracking yawn, he reached for the radio.
"Colonel? Dr. Weir? This is Beckett. What's --"
"Doc? That you?" He recognized Lorne's voice. "Look, stay off the radio, okay, Doc? Are you in your quarters?"
"Yes, but --"
"Good. Stay off the radio. Thanks."
"If you say so," he muttered, and sat for a minute or two with his hand resting on the radio. Then he got up and stumbled into the bathroom, where he found that there was no water, either.
Listening to the intermittent chatter on the public channels of the radio gave him an idea of what was going on. Occasionally he could hear muffled bursts of gunfire outside his room; he couldn't tell where it was coming from, but anywhere within earshot was too bloody close as far as he was concerned. For the first time, he wished that he kept a gun in his quarters -- not that he could imagine using one on a human being, but it might feel better to know that he could do something if --
The lights came on in his quarters, making him flinch. "Thank God," he muttered, jumping off the bed and starting for the door.
It opened before he got there. Carson stopped in his tracks: The people standing in the doorway were wearing unfamiliar uniforms and pointing guns at him.
It was the Genii all over again.
"Are you the doctor?" one of them demanded. "Your people said that a doctor lived here."
"Yes, I am a doctor, but what do you mean by --"
"We need a doctor." The soldier gestured with his gun. He was incredibly young, not more than twenty or twenty-one. Carson thought suddenly, painfully, of Ford. "Come with me. Please," he added.
"Just a minute." He didn't keep weapons in his quarters, but he did have a case of medical supplies, neatly organized and lying beside his bed in the event of an emergency. He grabbed it.
The soldier and his companion -- female, equally young -- escorted Carson out the door and down the hall. They were reserved, but polite, and even had the decency not to point their weapons actually at him, but rather off to the side. At least it's a civilized abduction, he thought, a bit hysterically.
They rounded the corner at the end of the hall and he stopped, staring. A battle had taken place here. Bodies littered the floor, four of them, all wearing Atlantis uniforms. Instinctively he started towards them.
"Not them." The young soldier pulled on his arm. "They're all right; they're stunned. Here."
He dragged Carson behind a half-open door into a set of apparently empty quarters. Well, they had been empty; now there was blood pooling on the floor and a small cluster of people in the middle of the room. And Carson got a second shock. "Radek?"
The scientist looked up in surprise. His hands were tied behind his back and he was kneeling on the floor, splattered from head to foot with blood. His face was very pale. "I see they got you too," he said with a grimace.
"Are you hurt? Did they --"
Zelenka shook his head. "The blood -- it's not mine," he said, and swallowed. "The Dorandans -- they were taking me to -- wherever they're keeping prisoners. We encountered a group of Marines and there was a fight --"
Someone cried out softly, a female voice, in pain. Carson turned, instinctively drawn by that sound. Since these quarters were unused, the bed in the middle of the room was stripped of sheets, and the injured Dorandans -- two of them -- had been laid on it. Another soldier stood beside the bed; from her hunched stance, she appeared to be injured, too. However, it was obvious from the way the others deferred to her that she was in charge.
"Who is he? Is this the doctor?"
"He says so, Claris," said the young male soldier escorting Carson.
The woman glared at the boy. "It's ma'am!" she snapped. "We're in the field! And in front of the enemy!"
The boy quailed, and Carson couldn't help noticing the obvious resemblance between them. They were obviously related, maybe brother and sister.
The other woman asked, "Where did Berin go, Clar -- Ma'am?"
"He's scouting." The woman stepped back from the bed. "Well, if you're a doctor -- can you help them?" There was a note of desperation underlying the command in her voice.
Moved by compassion, Carson knelt beside the bed. The bare mattress was soaked with blood.
"They're not using stunners," the younger female soldier said. "We didn't know that. We thought --" She broke off at a look from the woman in charge.
The injured were one male, one female. The man was young, just a boy really; the woman was about Carson's age, late thirties or so. When he touched her, she gasped and tried to twist away.
"Shush, love. It's all right." There was a lot of blood on her, but most of it seemed to come from her upper arm and scalp. A bullet had broken her arm, and he thought she might lose the use of it if they couldn't get her to surgery, but her life didn't seem to be in any immediate danger.
The other one, the young man, was in much worse shape. He'd been shot in the abdomen; most of the blood was coming from him. Carson swallowed, peeling away the shreds of his shirt to reveal the damage beneath.
"Can you help them?" Claris demanded.
Carson snapped open his medical case and reached for a pressure dressing. "If I get him into surgery now, maybe I can save him. She --" he nodded to the female patient --"-- is going to live, but she may --" He'd started to say lose her arm, when he realized that her eyes were open and she was listening to him. "-- need surgery as well," he finished lamely.
The woman swallowed and pushed herself woozily up to a sitting position. "Don't worry about me," she said, swallowing again and cradling her injured arm in her lap. "I'm all right. If he needs --"
"You're not all right; are you daft? Lie back down! You, hold this --" He got the young man holding the dressing on the male patient, and then helped the woman into a reclining position and began binding her arm to prevent further blood loss. "I'm sorry, this is going to hurt." The pulse in her hand wasn't good at all. She needed to be in surgery. Both of them did.
And damn it, they were the enemy, and the Colonel wasn't going to be happy about this -- but the Colonel could just stuff it. "You're not carrying lethal weapons?" he asked.
"Our weapons can stun or kill," Claris said, looking down at her gun. "We're trying very hard not to hurt anyone that we don't have to, though. We assumed that your weapons were like ours."
The woman on the bed sucked in a gasp of pain as he accidentally jostled her injured arm. "Maybe if you military goons had paid more attention to the intelligence that we -- ow!"
"Lie still," Carson told her again. "You're not military?"
Zelenka spoke up. "She's a scientist. Her name's Mokarra." He frowned at the woman on the bed, looking both worried and angry. "She and her boss, and one other -- we welcomed them into the city, and they betrayed us. They have McKay; I'm not sure where they took him." He cleared his throat. "I'm the one who told them where your quarters were. I'm sorry, but I was afraid they were dying and they asked me if we had any doctors, and I --"
"Don't apologize, Radek; you did the right thing." He got Mokarra settled and gave her a shot of morphine.
"I can't move my hand," she whispered, her eyelids fluttering as the drug took effect.
"It's all right, love; don't worry about it."
"We've done a terrible thing." Her voice was a sleepy murmur.
"People make mistakes." Carson nodded to the young soldier holding the field bandage against his other patient, and smoothly took it over. It was already nearly soaked through. The boy's body jerked under Carson's hands.
"Oh, son, no, don't you do this ..." The boy convulsed; Carson tried to hold him still. Suddenly he went limp, slumping against the doctor.
"Help him!" Claris ordered, her voice rising in fear.
The boy's eyes were open, staring. Carson swallowed hard, and reached to feel for a pulse, then, cringing inwardly, tested the corneal reflex. Nothing.
"Help him," Claris repeated, her voice softer this time.
"There's nothing I can do for him. I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker ..." His voice trailed off; he arranged the boy's limp arms across the gore-sodden chest, then slumped down beside the bed and covered his face with his blood-wet hands for a moment.
A hand unexpectedly patted his shoulder. He looked up and saw that it was Mokarra, half awake, reaching across the boy's body with her good arm.
"I'm sorry," she mumbled. "Not your fault."
"Why are you apologizing to me? My people killed your friend." He realized that his loyalties were getting completely mixed up, but all he knew was that an injured person had died under his hands, and his people were responsible for it. He felt sick.
Claris shrugged out of her jacket and covered the dead boy's face. Seeing the stiff way that she moved, Carson remembered his earlier suspicion that she was injured, too. "Let me take a look at you."
"I'm all right. Just a crease along the side." But she stood still and let him peel back her shirt, giving a soft hiss of pain between her teeth. She was right; it was painful-looking, but superficial. He bandaged it anyway -- no sense having the lass run around in pain. "We need to get your scientist -- Mokarra? -- into surgery quickly," he told her as he taped the bandage into place.
Claris nodded. "Can you do that here?"
"Bloody h-- No. No, I can't. I need a sterile environment and proper tools, or we may as well wrap her arm in dirty socks for all the good it'll do her."
A frown creased the smooth skin between her brows. "Why are you helping us?"
"Being dragged out of my quarters at gunpoint probably has something to do with it," he muttered, not looking up at her and concentrating on taping the bandage.
"But you were genuinely sorry when Adaran died." She glanced briefly at the body. "You are really trying to help us. This is not at all the behavior that I would have expected from Wraith worshippers."
Carson stared at Claris for a moment, then tugged down her shirt to cover the bandage. "Lass, I don't know who told you that, but you've been terribly misinformed."
"We found Wraithsign in your Colonel Sheppard," Mokarra murmured from the bed, blinking sleepily at him as she struggled to stay awake in the face of narcotics and blood loss.
"This is all because of --" Everything fell into place. "Bloody hell. You people ... Rodney told me about this Wraithsign obsession of yours. Colonel Sheppard ran afoul of an Iratus bug some time back -- do you know what those are?"
"Never heard of them," Claris said flatly.
It was probably best not to get into the details of Wraith origins at the moment. "It injected Wraithlike DNA into him -- Wraithsign, as you call it. That's what they do."
"Then you admit it!" Claris's voice was triumphant. Mokarra, however, listened in silence, her eyes -- glazed with pain and narcotics -- fixed on him.
"No! The Colonel's as human as you and me, lass. I don't know how many times he's saved my life and that of everyone in this city. We don't work with the Wraith; we have never worked with the Wraith."
"You lie," Claris said. "Of course you would say that."
Mokarra shook her head, and frowned up at Carson. "You're telling the truth, aren't you?"
"On my sainted mother. On my word as a physician -- a healer. We have never meant any harm to your people."
Claris made a sharp, aggressive move in his direction. "Don't listen to him. He's lying." But she sounded uncertain.
Mokarra's eyes searched his face, growing more alert as curiosity sharpened her focus. "Is it possible that your leadership could be involved in something you don't know about?"
"No. Absolutely not." And he wished there wasn't the tiniest little worm of doubt about that. He didn't know half of what the Colonel was up to these days. But Wraith worship -- never. Of that, at least, he could be certain. "Not something like that."
"Claris, he's not lying, can't you see that?" Mokarra twisted her head around to look at the young soldier, wincing as she jarred her injured arm. "Dr. McKay said much the same thing. These people are fighting to defend their home; we are the aggressors, not they." She reached up to her jacket with her good hand, fumbling. "We should call Larissa. Talk to her. If this is all a misunderstanding --"
"It's Captain Seng that we should call," Claris said. "He'll know what to do." She pulled out her radio and keyed it a couple of times, then shook her head. Static. "There is something in your city that disrupts our communications. We have been having a very hard time staying in touch with each other since we've been here."
"I might be able to help you find a frequency that--" Zelenka trailed off when Claris shot a suspicious glare at him.
Mokarra chewed on her lower lip. She looked halfway to passing out -- but very, very worried. "If this is truly based on a misunderstanding, and if we cannot contact Larissa, then I need to get to your gateship storage bay." She started to swing her legs off the bed, and reeled, her face going white.
Both Carson and Claris lunged to catch her; the two of them ended up eyeing each other warily over Mokarra's mop of blond braids while they each supported one side of her. "You aren't going anywhere but the infirmary," Carson told her.
"Mokarra, I hate to say this, but he's right," Claris said. "You're badly hurt and bleeding. Why do you have to go there?"
The injured scientist breathed deeply through the pain; after a minute, a little color began to come back into her face, and she raised her head. "I do; I just do, it's important. More important than you can understand."
"That's probably where the worst of the fighting is going to be." Carson tried to think strategy, and found himself failing utterly. The one thing he knew he couldn't do was let a patient, enemy or not, go running off in the condition that Mokarra was in. "Listen, why don't we take you to the infirmary, get you patched up, and we can call your leaders and maybe get this whole bloody mess called off?"
Mokarra frowned, but another wave of weakness made her slump over. "All right," she whispered. "But I really must talk to Larissa. As soon as possible. It's vital."
"Why are you doing this?" Claris asked Carson as they improvised a stretcher out of a closet door. "You don't have to help us. We're enemies. Are you trying to convince us that you aren't a Wraith collaborator, lull us into believing you?"
"What do you expect me to do, let her die?" With the help of the male soldier, he eased Mokarra onto their makeshift stretcher. "You're the one who sent people to roust me out of bed, aren't you?" Frustration and anger made him testy. A boy of nineteen or twenty lay dead, and how many others, Dorandans and Atlanteans both? All because of a stupid mistake.
He tried not to unravel it farther back, tried not to think about the retrovirus and what culpability for this whole mess might fall at his own feet. No sense making things worse than they had to be. Time to fall apart later. Lives to save now.
And he couldn't help wondering what had Mokarra so frantic to get up to the jumper bay that she'd try to go there while she was leaving pools of blood on the floor.
------
Rodney, Teyla was sure, would have torn her plan apart. He would have said it sounded like something Sheppard would come up with on an off day. And he would probably be right.
The Colonel, however, was quite likely to approve.
Her plan was simple, ambitious, insane and probably impossible. Her plan was "steal that ship."
If it had been one of the puddlejumpers, of course, she couldn't have done it, but these ships looked totally different and she guessed that they were built by ordinary humans, to be flown by ordinary humans. And, true, she had not actually flown a spaceship before, but she wouldn't actually have to fly it. Much. She just had to keep the Dorandans from being able to fly it.
Which meant that her problem now was getting into the ship without being seen.
The lights came back on in the control room, and, startled, she jumped away from the doors before they could be triggered by her presence. "Ancestors," she murmured before she could help herself, because with the power off she might have been able to pry the doors open enough to slip inside, but everyone in the room would notice if they suddenly slid open all the way.
Which just left the hole in the wall.
Climbing up onto the railing, she worked herself from there to a row of decorative moldings. Flat against the side of the tower, she edged along and most assuredly did not think of the long plunge beneath her. When I have done this, I shall never fear heights again.
Her big piece of luck for the day was the discovery that the stained glass window had been blown out in big, floor-to-ceiling shards, leaving gaps that would easily accommodate her. Peeking inside, she saw that no one was looking her way, although while she'd been climbing around the tower, the group that included Weir had been joined by McKay and some more Dorandans.
Framed in the opening, she would be instantly visible to anyone who glanced her way; quickly she darted inside and out of view. The ship looked huge from this angle, and she was all too aware that whatever weapon it had used to blast that hole in the wall must be pointed in her direction. But she dared not stop now. If only the gateroom weren't so open.
There was a particular technique of hiding in plain sight that her father's huntmaster, Akenos, had taught her when she was a young girl. Akenos had been dead now for years, but she remembered clearly his lessons for sneaking up on game. Always before, though, the worst consequence of failure would be a meal of bread rather than meat. Never had her life, and the lives of others, so powerfully depended on her stealth.
Animals notice movement, Akenos had said. They also notice sudden cessation of movement. You must move as if you are part of the scenery.
I don't know what you mean, she had protested.
She had never been Akenos's best pupil. Some of the village children could creep up close enough to tap a denga-beast on the flank before it noticed them. But Akenos had also told her that, in their own way, humans and Wraith were not nearly so vigilant as wild animals. It was in some ways easier, and in some ways harder, to fool an intelligent being. They did not pay as much attention to their surroundings, but they were much more likely to investigate something that seemed wrong.
Flow like water, Akenos had said, and like water she flowed down the stairs, taking full advantage of the smoke still hanging in the air and the shadows where the blast had destroyed lights or power conduits.
The ship had a ramp, much like the ones on the jumpers, stretching from the floor to its sleek belly. There were two guards at the base of it, vigilantly watching the doors coming into the gateroom. They were not expecting attack from her direction.
She moved on the nearest with stealth and speed. Two quick blows to his nerve points dropped him, and she caught and eased him to the floor. The other began to turn, startled by the movement, and she did the same to him.
It had taken only a few seconds, and no one in the room seemed to have noticed. Neither of the men had tried to reach for their radios. Her luck would not hold, though. Teyla ran lightly up the ramp, reflecting as she did so that it wasn't really luck; it was obvious to her that these people were not used to combat. Colonel Sheppard's people would never be so oblivious or fall so easily.
She wondered how he was faring.
"Hey, who are y--" and two more guards went down. She was using her sticks now, and not making a lot of effort to pull punches. Noise didn't matter so much now that she was inside the ship; the important thing was speed.
It was not difficult to infer that the ship must have been used as a troop carrier, but it was staffed by a skeleton crew now; most of the soldiers that it had carried were deployed into the city. She went forward, going from her knowledge of puddlejumpers and the Daedalus in the hopes of finding a control room. And she was not disappointed. Unfortunately there were three people on the bridge. She took out the first of them quickly, before they saw her. The second managed to get off a wild shot that missed her utterly, and then she broke his arm with her stick. But by that time, the pilot had risen from her chair, gun in hand.
"You! Stop! Who are you?"
Teyla turned slowly, holding her hands out to the sides with a bantos stick in each. "Do not harm me and I will not harm you. It is not my intent to be your enemy."
"Yeah, tell that to the guys you just beat to death."
Teyla shook her head sharply. "They are not dead."
The pilot reached behind her with the hand that wasn't holding the gun, reaching towards a button on the console. "Sure. Drop those sticks."
Instead, Teyla snapped her wrist forward and threw the right-hand stick. The pilot's reflexes were good; she dodged, but her weight went off balance and Teyla took a running leap, disarming her with the other stick before she could recover. Unexpectedly, the other woman came back with a hard uppercut, knocking Teyla back -- she'd clearly had some hand-to-hand training.
"Not my enemy, huh?" she panted, swinging a kick through air that Teyla had occupied mere seconds before.
But Teyla had finally identified the pilot's fighting style, a form of martial arts practiced on many worlds. The pilot's style was quaint and somewhat eccentric, as should be expected of a people who had been isolated as the Dorandans had. But it was also fairly rigid, adhering to the forms of the art without varying from them -- the fighting style of a person who had spent a lot of time in a gym, but very little with actual opponents in the field. If she followed true to form, then her next attack would be an overhand attack -- and it was, so Teyla countered swiftly, striking through the opening and landing a hard blow on the pilot's chin. She finished it with a knockout strike and then caught her opponent to stop her from falling too hard.
"Well done," she panted, dragging the woman outside the ship's control room and laying her gently on the floor before going back for the others. "I hope that we have an opportunity to spar under less dire circumstances."
Leaving the unconscious Dorandans in the ship's corridor, she swung the door shut, sealing herself inside. Unlike the Atlantis doors, it was not the sliding kind, but rather a heavy metal airlock-style door, clearly designed to make the bridge self-sufficient in case the rest of the ship depressurized.
Now then.
The bridge consisted of two helm chairs -- one of which the pilot had occupied -- and a captain's chair in the center. It reminded Teyla somewhat of the Daedalus's bridge; she wondered if all ships were built along such lines. The controls looked much more primitive than those of any other ship she had seen, though. Some of the Ancestors' technology, mostly scanning equipment, had been cobbled together with big metal levers and dials. They were labeled tersely in a combination of the Ancestors' writing, which she could read a little, and another script that was not familiar to her.
Above the controls, there was a large viewing window currently showing her an all-too-close view of a tied-up Elizabeth and an extremely annoyed-looking McKay arguing with a man that Teyla guessed must be Captain Seng. Panic raced through her at the thought that they might be able to see into the ship, as one could see into the puddlejumpers, but then she remembered that she had not been able to see inside from the gateroom. The ship's windows, like the glass in some parts of Atlantis, only went one way.
Still, it could only be minutes until they discovered what she'd done. Teyla scanned the rows of unfamiliar controls in front of her, trying to figure out how to make them work. Earlier, her only thought had been: What would Colonel Sheppard do? Now it became: What would Dr. McKay do?
-------
Sub-Captain Tennet had a splitting headache, and whatever the Atlanteans had used to bind his hands held him so tightly that he could barely squirm. All he could do was watch the activity around him with his head twisted to the side. From this angle, most of what he could see were people's feet. He'd been gagged, and the rough material pressed chokingly against his tongue.
It had all gone wrong somehow, and he still wasn't sure exactly how.
A pair of feet in slippers approached him at a slow, shuffling pace, picking their way through the debris that had been pulled off the shelves during the battle. The owner of the feet sank onto one of the metal lab stools with a soft grunt of pain, and then pushed at Tennet with one foot, turning him over. It was Colonel Sheppard -- the fake one from the other universe, Tennet guessed, because the man looked white and shaky. He'd thrown a jacket over his hospital scrubs, and there was a gun across his knees.
"Hey there," he said in a tired, scratchy voice. "Let's talk, why don't we?" Bracing one hand against the wall, he leaned forward and pulled Tennet's gag free of his mouth.
"Your fate is sealed, traitorous scum," was the first thing Tennet said, trying to gather up his courage and channel the heroes in the folk stories he'd heard as a child. An entire squad of his trusted soldiers, including some of his friends, lay dead because of this bastard and his ilk. And torture no doubt lay ahead. Tennet figured that he needed all the courage he could get.
"Ah," Sheppard said, "starting with the villain talk already." Pressing a hand to his side, he sat back and rested his shoulder against the wall, as if it were the only thing holding him up. "Your name's Tennet, right?"
"Drop dead, Wraith-worshipping bastard."
"Okay, now that's just rude. You wanna sit up? It's kind of hard to talk to you sideways." Using his foot again, Sheppard nudged at Tennet's shoulder, sort-of-gently shoving him into a vertical position. Tennet tried at first to fight it, then realized that he could at least look his tormentor in the eyes if he was sitting upright, and squirmed until he had his back against the wall.
"That's more like it," Sheppard said. "What's this about the Wraith?"
"You should have killed me. Are you saving me to feed to your Wraith masters?"
"Where in the world did you get this Wraith thing from?" Sheppard tilted his head back, resting it on the wall. With a couple days' worth of stubble furring his chin, he looked scruffy and exhausted, not exactly villain material.
Tennet clamped his mouth shut. He was in the hands of the enemy, and he was terrified, but he didn't intend to talk, even under threat of torture. So the Atlanteans wanted to know who had sold out their dirty little secret. How stupid do they think my people are? Tennet thought, proud of his people's resourcefulness. Whatever treachery the Atlanteans planned, they would have no chance to accomplish it now.
There was a sudden commotion from the front of the infirmary. Sheppard started to lurch to his feet and then sank back down with a gasp of pain, but he raised the gun. Tennet, twisting his head around, saw a cluster of brown Dorandan uniforms.
"Colonel! Stop! Don't any of you go shooting any of the rest of you --" An Atlantean appeared from the middle of the cluster of Dorandans, waving his hands in the air. Tennet had no idea who the Atlantean was, or why he was with them, but he recognized young Claris and her squad, and thought, Now what? He couldn't tell if Claris's group were hostage-takers or hostages. The wildly gesticulating Atlantean grabbed the barrel of Claris's gun and forced it down. "Nobody's shooting anyone here. I think we're all on the same side."
"Carson, what's going on?" Sheppard didn't lower his own gun.
"Move her over there, that's a dear," the Atlantean -- Carson -- instructed Claris's squad, and to Tennet's utter shock, they obeyed. "I have a patient to attend to, Colonel. And do you realize you aren't supposed to be out of bed?"
"Do you realize we're under attack?" A little of the fight went out of Sheppard when he got a better look at Carson. "You look horrible; what happened to you?"
Carson paused and raised a hand to his face, seeming to become aware of the half-dried blood streaking his skin. "Oh. That. No, it's not mine, I'm not hurt. And if you don't lie down, you're going to tear your stitches and you'll be back in surgery before you know it."
Since his captors were ignoring him, Tennet occupied himself trying to squirm out of his restraints. The tough material bit into his wrists and refused to give, so he looked around the floor for something to cut them. Amid the debris, the glint of a scalpel caught his eye. He scooted cautiously in that direction while listening absently to the Atlanteans argue. He couldn't understand why Claris and her squad were cooperating with the Atlanteans until he glimpsed one of the scientists -- Mokarra, was that her name? -- on a bed with blood all over her, and then he realized that she must be a hostage against the soldiers' good behavior.
Tennet hooked the scalpel awkwardly through his restraints, parting them with a soft snap. He flexed his fingers and rolled his shoulders to get the blood flowing again, then cut the restraints on his feet.
------
"If you don't lie down, you're going to tear your stitches and you'll be back in surgery before you know it."
Sheppard dismissed Carson's concerns with a wave of his hand, but he did sink down onto the nearest thing that looked capable of supporting his weight, which happened to be the edge of an unoccupied infirmary bed. He was doing all right so far -- adrenaline, maybe -- but being on his feet for any length of time left him dizzy and weak. Collapsing on the floor wasn't likely to make the doctor leave him alone.
Since it was fairly evident, to Sheppard at least, that he wasn't going back to bed anytime soon, he'd taken the time to throw a jacket over his scrubs -- medical red, he still couldn't get used to it. As an added side benefit, it concealed the patches of blood soaking through his bandages. He didn't like that, and he didn't like the growing stickiness down his side either, but damn it, they were in the middle of a hostage crisis and he didn't have time to give in to his body's weakness.
The Dorandan soldiers had drawn together into a tight, hostile grouping, allowing Carson access to their injured, but not much else. One of them was still, somewhat halfheartedly, holding a gun on Radek, who looked uncertain if he was still supposed to be a hostage or not. Sheppard, for his part, kept his P90 that he'd taken from the dead Marine laying prominently across his knees.
"So do we have a truce here, or are we all waiting to kill each other?" Sheppard asked Carson.
"You'll be the first to know when I figure it out, Colonel."
The injured Dorandan woman kept trying to sit up. "You said I could talk to Larissa! I have to talk to Larissa, tell her to shut off the --" She broke off with a gasp of pain.
"Easy, easy," Carson soothed. "Shut off the what, Mokarra?" When she didn't respond, he looked up at the other Dorandans, who just shrugged in confusion.
Sheppard leaned forward. Ow. "What's she talking about?"
The doctor glanced over his shoulder. "I don't know. She's been frantic to get up to the jumper bay. I'm not sure why."
The jumper bay. Where Rodney was headed. Sheppard slid off the bed (ow, again) and limped over.
"Don't bother my patient, Colonel."
"It looks to me like your patient wants to be bothered." The blond woman, Mokarra, seemed to be trying to say something, but her voice was too quiet to hear. Sheppard leaned over her, and saw her eyes widen, saw her flinch backwards. Then pain exploded through him when the female Dorandan soldier standing over the bed gave him a hard backward shove on his bad shoulder, nearly sending him to the floor.
"Get away from her, traitor," she snarled.
"Claris, no," Mokarra breathed, and with a great effort she managed to get up on one elbow. Sheppard, meanwhile, had picked himself up with one arm wrapped around his side. Carson hovered over him, dividing his attention between glaring at the Dorandan soldier and trying to help Sheppard.
"Are you all right, Colonel?"
Was it really necessary to dignify a question like that with a response? "Peachy," Sheppard muttered between his teeth, feeling cold sweat prickling the nape of his neck as the pain began to fade.
"Claris -- Colonel, Doctor, I need to --" Mokarra swallowed; she was obviously fighting against unconsciousness, and blood continued to soak through the bandages on her arm.
"The only thing you need to do is lie down, love." Abandoning Sheppard for the moment, Carson tried to ease her back down to the infirmary bed, but she fought against him.
"No, no -- the warships, the self-destruct, it's armed and loaded. Clock is counting down."
Carson went still. So did Sheppard. "Say that again?"
"Captain Seng's idea." Mokarra paused every few words for a deep breath. "Larissa, Peran and I helped develop it. Most people don't know. We -- we knew we'd be outnumbered, outgunned. It was our emergency backup plan in case something went wrong. Rather than letting -- letting the holy city fall into Wraith hands -- or the hands of Wraith sympathizers -- we were ordered to destroy it. The ships ... ships are going to explode."
Radek groaned something in Czech. Claris stared. "We weren't informed of this," she breathed. "Why weren't we told?"
Mokarra shook her head, the braids brushing against the pillow of the infirmary bed. "Most people didn't ... backup plan ... the ships..."
Rodney, Sheppard thought. Crap. "The ships in the jumper bay?"
She made an obvious effort to pull herself together. "Yes ... self-destruct, counting down. That way, even if we lost ..." She trailed off, her eyes closing, but managed to resume weakly. "Even if we lost, we'd win. No one has to be alive to push the button. Ships will explode if it's not turned off."
"Sounds as if you all would lose, love," Carson said softly.
"What happens if someone tries to tamper with the ships?" Sheppard demanded, but he could guess at the answer, even before Mokarra whispered "Boom" and closed her eyes again.
"Colonel--" Carson began.
"Carson, Rodney and the other me just went up to the jumper bay to destroy the ships."
Mokarra's eyes popped open. "What?" she whispered.
There was a clatter from the doorway and Sheppard spun around (ow) just in time to see a brown Dorandan uniform vanish out the door. Crap! I shoulda known better than to turn my back --
"Mokarra! What's his name -- Tennet -- does he know about the self-destruct?"
She nodded weakly against the pillow. "Tennet and Seng ... a few of Seng's personal guard, and those of us who worked on the self-destruct ... that's all."
Which was all Sheppard needed to hear. He was vaguely aware of Beckett yelling, "Colonel, damn it all --" as he caught himself on the doorframe and pushed off, into the hall.
------
Having the other universe's Sheppard (creepy G.I. Joe edition) at his back was somehow less comforting than Rodney would have liked, but they still managed to make their way to the jumper bay with a minimum of carnage -- at least until they got close.
"Crap," alt-Sheppard whispered, peering around a corner. They had tried several different routes, and kept running into Dorandans. "They've got the whole area secured."
"Which is why you brought the genius, hello?" The genius who was currently scared out of his mind, but trying very hard not to show it.
This would be the point where his Sheppard would have snarked something back and given him a quirky grin. This one, though, just leveled a challenging glower at him. "All right, genius, go for it. Get us in."
"The fact that you've never even tried to learn the layout of this city, beyond noting the location of all the big doors you can fly a ship through, is a continual source of amazement to me." He backtracked as he spoke, looking for the access conduit that he knew was somewhere around here. "Aha!"
"Oh, you gotta be kidding," alt-Sheppard groaned as Rodney pried off the cover. "We're going through the ducts?"
"I know, it's like a bad sci-fi movie, isn't it?" Rodney squinted into the dark shaft, with a ladder leading up towards dimly-glimpsed light above them. Small dark places, why did it always have to be small dark places? "I don't know if there are descended Ancients working in Hollywood, or what, but they've kinda got the general look. There's a conduit that goes right above the jumper bay, for servicing the bay doors." At least that was what Zelenka's engineers used it for.
When Rodney hesitated, alt-Sheppard said impatiently, "Sometime today?"
"I was sort of hoping you could go first. You're the one with the gun."
"You're the one who knows where we're going."
"Point," Rodney sighed. He grabbed the ladder and began to climb. A few rungs up, he paused and looked down as alt-Sheppard dragged the access cover closed behind them, plunging the shaft into near-total darkness.
"Have I mentioned I'm claustrophobic?"
"It's come up a few times." After a pause, alt-Sheppard said, "With the other you, that is."
"Could you people kindly stop comparing me to him? I happen to be very much my own person, you know."
He was startled by a soft laugh from beneath him. He hadn't even realized that this universe's Sheppard was capable of laughing. But when he looked down, it was impossible to make out expressions in the dark.
Their little shaft joined the main access conduit, which was dimly lit but tall enough to stand upright. Rodney had to think carefully to orient himself with regards to his mental map of the conduits, but he'd spent enough time in here that he found his way to the jumper bay with only one wrong turn.
The floor of the conduit over the bay was dotted with wire-grille hatches: maybe to let light in, maybe to let the Ancient mechanics -- long since dead or Ascended -- figure out where in the jumper bay they were located. Rodney and alt-Sheppard had to tread carefully, stepping over the grilles to avoid giving themselves away.
Rodney knelt next to the grille that was directly over Jumper One's berth. His breath caught at the sight of the sleek, alien ships next to the blocky forms of the jumpers, and next to him, he heard alt-Sheppard make a soft sound in his throat. Looking over, Rodney was startled to see that the other Sheppard, for the first time, resembled the one that Rodney was familiar with. The hard lines of his face had smoothed out, and there was a little-kid look of wonder in his eyes.
Then he jumped when his radio crackled. "Damn it, not now!" he whispered impatiently. Rodney, holding his own breath, could faintly hear the tinny voice speaking in alt-Sheppard's ear. "I said, not now!" the Colonel hissed and shut off his radio with a smack.
"Problem?" Rodney whispered.
"The other universe's Sheppard. Wants to talk. Lousy timing." He looked back down. "Well, can you do anything from up here?"
Rodney blinked at him. "Aren't you going to find out what he wants?"
"No! Now, can you access their computers from up here, or not?"
Reluctantly, Rodney unfolded the laptop tucked under his arm. "Depends on whether I can get our wireless connection to interface with their system."
"And if you can't?"
"Then we have to go in and do it by hand." He was very much afraid that the worst case scenario would turn out to be the case -- well, all right, the absolute worst-case scenario was having the whole jumper bay explode, but having to sneak onto the ships past a bunch of armed Dorandans wasn't far behind, in his book. And he wasn't optimistic about his ability to access the system remotely. The wireless cards in the laptops didn't even work with the Ancient computers; he had little hope that they would be able to make a connection to a computer system that was a complete unknown. Stupid sci-fi movies, making it look simple to network into an alien system. Hooking together PCs and Macs was a snap compared to what he had to deal with in a whole freaking other galaxy.
------
Tennet had already disappeared down the corridor. Sheppard leaned on the wall, catching his breath. I don't have a chance of catching him. He tapped his borrowed radio.
"Colonel Sheppard!" And damn, it was weird to address himself that way.
"Not now," his alternate self whispered back fiercely.
"You don't have to talk, just listen! There's a guy called Tennet headed--"
"I said, not now!" and the connection was severed on the other end.
Sheppard banged his head lightly into the wall. Now I know how Elizabeth feels when she has to deal with me.
Taking a deep breath, he pushed off again. The walls spun around him and then stabilized. He knew he shouldn't be out here, knew he'd probably end up as more of a liability than a help, but there just wasn't any other friggin' choice. Tennet had heard him say that Rodney was heading for the jumper bay, and there was no way he was letting his other self drag his friend into a trap. Or, if the Dorandans didn't get them, then Rodney, thinking he was doing the right thing, would blow them all to Kingdom come.
Trailing his hand on the wall for support, he limped towards the jumper bay.
-------
"We've acceded to your demands, Captain Seng." Dr. Weir literally vibrated with anger, her chin lifted and her shoulders rigid. With her hands bound behind her back, she clung to a tattered shroud of dignity, drawing it around her like a cloak. "I've given you our promise of cooperation --"
"From what I'm hearing, your people are still attacking mine. Several have been killed. Doesn't sound like cooperation to me; sounds more like the kind of behavior I'd expect from Wraith sympathizers."
McKay jumped in. "I know you're in love with the sound of your own voice, but if you'd shut up for a minute and listen to our explanation --"
"Larissa, shut him up or I'll do it permanently."
McKay opened his mouth. "Now is not the time!" Larissa snapped at him.
One of Seng's aides approached them cautiously. "Sir, we're getting a call from one of the field commanders. The connection is very bad, but I think she's said she secured the infirmary."
"Finally. Good news for a change." Then he frowned. "She? I sent Tennet on that mission."
"I don't know, sir, but she said she wanted to talk to you."
Still frowning, Seng took the radio. "This is Captain Seng."
The voice on the other end was blurred by static. Damn these Atlanteans and their blasted holy city. Seng thrust the radio at Larissa. "Can you boost the power?"
"Maybe," she said, and fiddled with it a little, then held it up to her ear. "Field commander? This is Larissa in Control; do you read me?"
The voice that returned was definitely female, but broken up by interference. "Doctor, this ... temporary truce in the ... told about ... in the ships?"
"I'm sorry, I can't understand you." She made some more adjustments. "Can you hear me?"
"Much more clearly." The voice was understandable now. "This is field commander Claris. I'm in the Atlantis infirmary, where their doctors are helping to care for our wounded. May I speak to Captain Seng, ma'am?"
"Certainly." Larissa handed the radio back. Elizabeth Weir had gone stiff at the mention of "their doctors."
Seng retrieved the radio with the warm glow of a job that was finally going right. "Good work, commander. How many prisoners do you have?"
There was a pause. "I'm sorry, sir, you misunderstand. Their doctors are helping us voluntarily. We, um ... we seem to have come to a temporary truce."
Seng just stared at the radio for a moment. "You're not here to make deals with the enemy, soldier!"
"Sir, it's -- I'm starting to believe that some of the intelligence on this mission may have been flawed, sir."
What were the Atlanteans doing, using mind control drugs? Subverting his people? "Field commander, you are hereby relieved of command. Give the radio to the nearest ranking soldier to you. You are--"
"Captain Seng! Sir!"
Another of his field commanders came dashing up the steps of the gateroom. Vaiden -- he'd left her in charge of security on the Caledon.
"Not now!" he bit out harshly.
"Sir, we have a problem. A big problem. A really big problem."
Why was everything going to hell at once? As he started to turn, Larissa stepped forward to take the radio from his hand. He spun on her.
"Seng, I remind you that we are both in charge of this mission," she said quietly. "I'll speak to Claris; you handle this."
He didn't like that, not at all, but the look of panic on Vaiden's face didn't bode well. "What's going on?"
Vaiden was normally very direct; it was one of the things he liked about her. This time, though, there was an uncharacteristic hesitation before she spoke again. "Sir, the Atlanteans have gained control of the Caledon."
"What?" Stunned, he swung around to stare up at his warship, its guns in their resting position: pointed straight forward. At him. A moment ago, he'd felt comfortable and secure with the ship's bulk right behind him, backing him up. Now it loomed like a monster from a child's tale, ready to rain death on him at the push of a button.
Vaiden swallowed. "A, uh, a strike force gained access to the ship. They've sealed themselves on the bridge."
"And they're doing what there?" And why haven't they attacked? Or made demands?
"They may not be able to figure out how to use the equipment," Vaiden murmured.
McKay's eyes had been darting back and forth between them like a spectator at a ball game, but he seized on this. "Unlike you, our people are accustomed to using advanced technology. Sheppard's probably just trying to figure out which one of you to shoot first."
Spinning around, Seng backhanded him hard across the face. Elizabeth jerked forward, brought up short by her bonds, and Larissa paused in the act of speaking into the radio. Seng seized hold of McKay's arm and began dragging him down the stairs.
"Wait! Where are you taking him!" Elizabeth tried to follow; Seng's guards halted her.
"Keep her there," he ordered.
"I'm a terrible hostage," McKay babbled. "A really bad one. Ask anybody. Where are you taking me, anyway?"
"If your people have taken over my ship, McKay, then you're going to help me get it back."
------
A sudden commotion ahead of him had Sheppard ducking behind the nearest pillar, having to catch himself to keep from falling over. He heard a scream and a blast from a very familiar energy gun.
Ronon!
Grinning, Sheppard limped cautiously around the corner. His smile faltered when he saw Ronon kneeling beside a very dead Tennet. Smoke curled up from the corpse.
"Damn it, Ronon, I wanted him alive!"
"Too bad," the ex-Runner retorted. "He wanted me dead. Tried stunning him, but it didn't work. He must be wearin' something that blocks it."
"Really?" Sheppard had seen one of the Dorandans get stunned in the infirmary, so they couldn't all be impervious. Still, if he could figure out what was doing it ... He lowered himself very carefully to the floor and began going through Tennet's pockets.
"He was talkin' on the radio when I shot him," Ronon added.
"Crap." Sheppard picked up the Dorandan radio, about the size of his hand with a strap where it could be fastened to someone's wrist or clothing. A soft hiss of static came from it. Maybe Tennet hadn't been able to get through. On the other hand, even if Tennet hadn't alerted his people, Rodney and the other Sheppard were still walking straight into disaster, if Mokarra had been telling the truth.
He went back to searching Tennet's pockets. "So, you find Teyla?" Last he remembered, the other Sheppard had sent Ronon to look for her.
"No."
There was no elaboration. Sheppard glanced up, decided not to ask for details. Tried to shake a sudden mental image of this universe's Teyla bleeding out on the floor. She'll be all right. Teyla's tough. She's probably off saving the day while we all sit around.
Most of what he found in Tennet's pockets was standard, recognizable field equipment: a first aid kit, extra charge capsules for those guns they carried. There was a little folded locket which Sheppard opened before he realized what it was; it held a picture of a young woman with a baby, and he shut it quickly and returned it reverently to the dead man's pocket. I hate war. I really, really hate it.
But he also found a small device a few inches across, obviously Ancient. He held it in his palm, seeking instinctively the familiar tug of activation, the quick glimmering across a corner of his mind -- but of course there was nothing, due to his mismatched ATA gene.
What do you do? he asked it silently, in a fit of whimsy. Of course it didn't tell him. They never did.
Still, if Ronon was right that energy weapons didn't affect Tennet -- and Sheppard trusted him on matters like that -- then it was the only thing the Dorandan was carrying that could account for it. At least, it was the only thing he'd found. And it was clearly active, for it had been glowing softly when he took it from Tennet's pocket and was still glowing now.
"Ronon, shoot me."
The ex-Runner looked him up and down. "Way you look right now, it'll probably kill you even on stun."
"No it won't. Just turn it down to the lowest setting you got. No, wait, this is better." He picked up Tennet's energy weapon and handed it to Ronon, who held it with unusual awkwardness. "This way we get a test run with the actual weapons they use."
"Sheppard, this is a bad idea."
"I know, but if I'm impervious to their weapons, I'd really rather find out now than when we're facing down a bunch of them."
"This better not kill you." Ronon squeezed the trigger; there was a flash, and Sheppard felt a slight tingle run down his body, like static electricity ghosting through the hairs on his arms.
"Whoa. Cool." Looking up, he saw Ronon raising the gun again and held up a hand. "Hey, hold up there, Tex! The effects of these things are cumulative; I'd really rather not find out that it works on the first shot but not the second, huh?"
"You want this back?" Ronon held up the stunner dubiously; it was obvious from the way he was looking at Sheppard's P90 that he thought the deadlier weapon by far the better choice.
The face of the young woman in the locket ghosted through Sheppard's memory. "Yeah, why not. Given the choice, I'd really rather take 'em alive."
"It's your funeral." Ronon reversed the gun and held out the butt to him. Slinging the P90 over his shoulder, Sheppard accepted the less lethal weapon and then started to hoist himself off the floor -- only to sink back down, gasping, when pain ripped through his side.
"You okay?"
"Fine, fine." He breathed through the pain, tried to get up again and failed again. "Uh, could I get a hand?"
Ronon hooked an arm under Sheppard's armpits and hauled him upright. The room faded around him, black spots blotting his vision for a moment. He leaned into Ronon's warm bulk until things stabilized.
"You supposed to be out of bed?"
"Probably not, but in case you hadn't noticed, we kind of have a situation here."
Ronon's soft laugh vibrated his body. "Noticed."
"Uh, you can put me down now, by the way."
"Uh-huh." Ronon made no move to do so. "Where we goin'?"
"Jumper bay." Sheppard tried to squirm, then succumbed to the inevitable and let Ronon help him down the corridor, supporting the majority of his weight.
"I notice you're not dragging me back to the infirmary."
"I don't know you real well yet, but if you're anything like the Sheppard we got here, I have the feeling it wouldn't keep you there."
"No," he admitted. "Probably not."
----
TBC