Act One
Sheppard skidded on his back along the floor of the Atlantis 'gate room and lurched to a halt. Debris from the explosion that had hurled him through the 'gate clattered to the floor in hot chunks nearby and he covered his face and head as best he could in defense. His ears rang for several long moments afterward. However, he felt the strong hands of his teammates helping him to his feet. As his vision cleared, he found Teyla on one side, holding his arm, and Ronon nearby on the other.
The stargate had gone dark sometime before his senses recovered and as his hearing returned, he looked about for his final teammate. McKay was no where to be found.
"Where's Rodney?" the Colonel asked in alarm as he got his feet under him again.
"He did not come through the stargate," Teyla stated grimly, confirming the worst.
Sheppard was in motion almost instantly, taking the stairs up to the control room two and sometimes three at a time. Ronon and Teyla trailed after him. "Chuck, dial that planet back!" Sheppard barked as he careened around the door frame and practically bowled into the erstwhile Canadian 'gate technician.
"I can't, the address won't lock in," Chuck said, frantically working the controls.
"No, no, no, that isn't it," came the heavily Czech-accented voice of Radek Zelenka from another set of controls, "the stargate at that address is no longer reading as active. Something has shut it down."
John pounded a fist on the console and rolled his eyes skyward before whirling on Radek. "You mean, like a Wraith dart exploding right next to it?"
Radek shook his head doubtfully, his fingers still working at the keys of his computer as he pulled up reading after reading to try and determine what had happened. "stargates more robust than that."
"Well, then what!"
"From this end, everything is working," Radek insisted, "whatever it is, it happened at other stargate. And since we can't make connection, we can't determine a cause."
"Well, you better find a way and fast!" Sheppard shouted. "McKay is still stuck on that planet! By himself! With Wraith in the area!"
"What's happening," Richard Woolsey demanded as he swept into the room from his office. The balding man looked none too happy to have been interrupted from his regular work. But Sheppard had come to recognize when the older man's irritation was tempered with concern. It was evident that having Atlantis' flagship 'gate team return with flaming debris and missing a man had rattled Woolsey.
"Wraith showed up while we were returning to the 'gate," Sheppard reported, "it shut down before Rodney came through and we can't redial."
"A system error?" the expedition leader asked, turning to Radek.
The Czech shook his head almost absently, the majority of his focus still on his computer as he pulled up screen after screen of information and ran diagnostics. "Not that we can see," he said, "and no problems with the hardware at this end, either. Whatever it is, it's at other end."
"We gotta get back there before McKay gets himself fed on," said Ronon, darkly.
"If we cannot use the stargate, perhaps we should use the Daedalus," Teyla suggested.
"Right, it's in orbit," Sheppard said, holding a hand up in realization, then whirled back around to Chuck, "get Colonel Caldwell on the line, fast!"
"Hold on," Woolsey ordered, "that may not be workable."
A dread silence fell on the control room as Sheppard slowly turned to regard Woolsey with a spark of anger in his eyes. There wasn't a single person in the room who wasn't aware of Sheppard's no-exceptions leave-no-man-behind policy. Over the course of the past year it had butted up against Woolsey's pragmatic approach on more than one occasion, with spectacular results more often than not. Add in the fact that McKay had become Sheppard's close friend over the course of the expedition and this was a situation rapidly approaching the powder keg stage.
"Don't you dare do this, Woolsey," Sheppard ground out, glaring daggers, "not to me. Not to McKay."
For a split second, the room felt as though it was going to explode as the two men stared each other down across the consoles. But, it was Woolsey who blinked first, holding up a placating hand a second later; a second that felt like hours to the rest of the expedition members in the room.
"That isn't what I mean," Woolsey said, taking a few slow steps toward Sheppard as the whole room breathed a sigh of relief. "At the Daedalus' top speed, P14-626 is more than a day from here. Even if the Daedalus were to leave right now, McKay would still be stranded in hostile territory for more than 24 hours."
"So you're saying there's no point?" Ronon growled, hovering a step closer to Sheppard's shoulder.
"No, I'm saying that we should be prepared for the worst."
Teyla rested a hand on Sheppard's shoulder. The gesture seemed to soften and stifle the biting remark that Sheppard quite obviously had prepared for Woolsey. "Perhaps this conversation would best be continued in your office, Mister Woolsey?" She gestured with her eyes to the rest of the room and the expedition members who were gathering, all watching the exchange with baited breath, waiting to learn if the fate of the expedition's Head of Science would be decided right then and there.
For his part, Woolsey seemed to snap out of the battle of wills in which he was engaged and quickly glanced about the room. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. "Quite right, Teyla," he agreed, "Chuck, please contact the Daedalus and request Colonel Caldwell join us. Let them know it's an emergency. Doctor Zelenka, if you could join us as well."
Woolsey then turned on his heel and wordlessly headed back to his office. Sheppard marched after him with Teyla and Ronon close behind. Zelenka tapped out a few more key strokes, scrambled to unhook his laptop from the console while barking out orders to the rest of his team present in Czech, then jogged off after them.
Why wouldn't those damn life-suckers leave, already?
Still hunkered down in his impromptu hiding place in the abandoned town on P14-626, Rodney watched the Wraith with mounting panic. A couple of them had inspected the face-down stargate, then moved on to the broken remains of their downed dart. They had been elbow-deep in the smoking guts of the thing for what by now felt like hours to McKay. Several Wraith drones, the soldiers with the unnecessarily horrifying and faceless masks, patrolled the area while they worked. Rodney watched them, his heart pounding and his breath caught at the very top of his throat.
Dammit, what were they doing?
As one of the drones passed a little too near – which, frankly at this point, would have been within ten parsecs, in Rodney's opinion – McKay ducked as far back into the shadows as he could. He could just barely see the drone's feet through a small gap between the broken wood and the dirt floor. He literally held his breath as the drone hesitated, his feet spinning as he turned to survey the area and then moved on. McKay let his breath out again slowly, careful not to make any noise. Then, he took a couple of breaths, counted to three, and carefully peeked back out through the broken wood to see where the Wraith were.
Three of them were just finishing up whatever they were doing with the downed dart. There was an audible hum from the ruined machinery before the white light of the Wraith culling beam sprang to life and four more Wraith materialized out of the device. Rodney couldn't help the exasperated sigh that escaped his lips.
Great. More of them. Rodney decided that it was only a matter of time before they discovered that he was there. And then what? Well, they would make a quick nosh out of him and move on, that's what. Or maybe he would get stunned and then end up in one of those damned cocoons again. Or maybe one of them would be informed enough to recognize that he was from the Atlantis expedition and then he would be taken to their Queen to be tortured for information in horrible, freaky, alien, life-sucking, bug-people ways.
Yeah, that would be his luck.
He really should have been running. He was good at that. After five years of being on a 'gate team with Colonel Disaster, he had gotten very, very good at that. Of course, the rest of the team was always there to cover his expeditious retreat. Not so much, this time.
Finally, the Wraith convened with the leader who then signaled for them to move off to another area. Even so, it was a good ten minutes of complete silence from the surrounding area before Rodney dared to move a muscle. It was another fifteen before he decided to risk peering out from his hiding place to check for the Wraith.
Cautiously, Rodney looked up and down the main street of the abandoned village. Seeing no indication that the Wraith had remained in the tiny, ruined town, he slowly emerged from the broken building and approached the downed stargate. He paused near the remains of the DHD and just stared at the gigantic ring.
"Okay," he whispered to himself, half in panic, "the stargate is down. Face-down. Very, very face-down. And the DHD is totaled besides. Which means, no dialing out or in. No way off this god-forsaken rock except by starship. Okay. Okay. No panicking. Stay calm." He started to pace around the ring, keeping a distance as if the offending device would suddenly jump to life, somehow. "They have to have tried to dial back in by now, which means that they know the stargate is inactive. Zelenka will be able to tell that the problem is at this end, so… nothing they can do. So… so I'm screwed. Royally, astronomically screwed." He stopped in his tracks, scrubbing his hands over his face. Then he caught himself, his hands balling into fists. "No. I'm not going to panic. Need to think. If anyone can think their way out of a problem, it sure as hell would be me. So… what happens next? What happens next is… Sheppard. Sheppard happens next. He leaves no one behind, ever, so he'll go on the warpath. If they can't use the 'gate, he'll make them do something else. Only other option is a ship, so he'll badger them into sending the Daedalus. The distance from here to New Lantea is… so that means… more than a day for them to get here. And we're back to being screwed!"
Rodney suddenly became aware that he had said that last word a little too loudly when he heard something, some creature or another, go skittering off from a small hole near the foundation of a ruined building. He clamped a hand over his mouth, as if to physically stop his panicked tirade, and froze. For a long moment, he listened to the silence around him for any sign that he had been discovered. No other movement was apparent, but Rodney suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable. The idea entered into his head, then, that the Wraith might return to the only stargate on the planet, whether or not it was functional. Rodney wasn't able to flip the gate over, but the Wraith, with their remaining darts, certainly could.
He had to leave. He had to hide. He had to buy time. Sheppard would come for him. So would Teyla and Ronon.
But where to go? It wasn't like they had a pre-arranged rescue site on this random little abandoned world in the middle of nowhere.
Wait. Was it in the middle of nowhere? Just where was the nearest habitable planet, anyway?
No, no, that didn't matter. Open space was between them.
Okay, now he was starting to think about stupid things. "Jesus, McKay," he whispered to himself, "knock it off and just go somewhere. It doesn't matter."
Tree-line. Sheppard had told them to make for the tree-line, earlier. Cover. Yes. That was what Rodney needed. Get out of sight, then make a plan.
Rodney took off at a run for the woods just outside the west end of town, heading toward the setting sun, opposite the direction that the Wraith had gone. The trees and the underbrush could provide him some cover for a little while. Then, he could take stock, see what he had available to him and make a plan. It's what Sheppard would do. In point of fact, it's what Sheppard had trained Rodney to do during those interminable wilderness training sessions he had insisted on back in the early days.
God, he was going to have to admit to Sheppard that he had been right about those damn training sessions.
As Rodney broke through the first layer of trees and started picking his way into the woods, through the underbrush, he grudgingly dredged up those lessons from the early days in his mind. He had had occasion to think about some of the material in bits and pieces over the years. But this was liable to take every little tidbit of information that Sheppard, Ford, and Teyla had shoved down his throat during that first year.
The whole damn thing had started with an acronym; SER. Most of the material had fallen into the categories of the first two letters. S was for survive. E was for evade. Things like how to traverse terrain without being seen and make fires so that they wouldn't give off smoke.
But what was the R for? Rodney couldn't remember. Nugget after nugget of information passed through his brain, one by one. Each of them fell into the categories of survival or evasion. If he didn't remember what the R had stood for, it was going to bother him. Just what he needed in a crisis; something nagging at the back of his brain.
Rodney trudged his way further into the woods and finally came to a small outcropping of stone that emerged from the hill side. It was low and hollow, just large enough to slip inside, yet not so deep that it would be dark. It was reasonable cover for simply staying out of sight for a while, though it probably would make for a lousy shelter. He figured it would do for the moment, long enough for him to stop, catch his breath, take stock, and come up with a plan of some sort. He took a quick look around for any indication that he had been spotted, then ducked under the outcropping.
First things first, you look at what'cha got, he heard Sheppard's voice in his head, the memory of that long-ago training session, see what's available to you and what you can use to hold out for as long as possible.
He started emptying his pockets. One by one, he placed the myriad of objects he had with him on the ground. His M9 Beretta, an extra clip of ammo, five power bars, his tablet PC with three hours of battery life remaining, a flashlight, his life signs detector, a Swiss army knife, a small tool kit, some water purification tablets, a water bottle, a lighter, a mylar thermo blanket, his radio, some sterile bandages, a couple of extra control crystals that he carried around just in case he ever needed to replace one, and a magnet.
"Why do I have a magnet?" Rodney wondered aloud, his voice flirting with falsetto. He figured he had probably put it in one of his vest pockets during some past mission – magnets had a lot of applications when it came to working with tech – and had just forgotten to remove it.
It wasn't a lot. For one thing, fifteen bullets was barely enough to kill one Wraith at full strength, let alone however many were running around this place. All he had were two clips of fifteen rounds. He might be able to take out two. And his food supply was dismal. Five power bars to get a hypoglycemic through a whole day and more? That was going to get real ugly real fast. The LSD was going to be very useful, though. He could use that to see approaching Wraith before they saw him. If he was able to use that to stay out of their way, he might be able to get through this without the Wraith ever even knowing that he was still on the planet. So far, for all the Wraith knew, all four members of SGA-1 made it through the gate before it went down. The LSD could help McKay keep it that way.
Time was a wastin', Rodney realized a moment later. The sun on this world would be setting soon. One by one, he tucked everything back into their proper locations on his vest. The LSD he kept out in his hand, turning it on with a thought that was transmitted through the artificial Ancient Technology Activation gene he carried; the virtue of an injection from Doctor Carson Beckett years before. Several dots appeared on the small screen. Most of the dots were in clusters of two and three. It looked as though the Wraith had fanned out into the woods for some reason. Rodney picked a direction where it seemed that there was a hole he could get through without being seen and struck out.
Sheppard leveled a cold gaze at Woolsey, Caldwell, and Zelenka in one, fell sweep. He could not believe what he was hearing. He had somewhat expected this reaction from Woolsey and Caldwell. But Zelenka? That one had taken him by surprise.
"Am I seriously the only one in the room who thinks Rodney's still alive out there?" he asked with barely contained anger.
"No," came the deep, rumbling reply from the Satedan with the similar disposition looming near his shoulder.
"Rodney is more than capable," Teyla said in much more measured tones, from somewhere near John's elbow, "I am certain he is managing. To simply leave him on that planet..." She trailed off into a heavy silence. It was clear that she could not bring herself to mention the alternative.
John allowed himself one moment to assess his own reactions to the conversation. His two teammates on either shoulder were really almost symbolic in a way; Sheppard himself was torn between wanting to punch Caldwell in the face, the way Ronon clearly did, or calmly rationalizing things to the Colonel, as Teyla was prepared to do. As angry as he was, though, he knew that a shouting match wasn't going to help McKay. This was one of those times where John needed to feed off of Teyla's calm, not Ronon's impulse.
"No one is questioning his abilities, but let's be realistic," said Caldwell, "we have no idea how many Wraith are on that planet. Even the best of the best couldn't evade a hoard of enemies. And Doctor McKay's skills at evasion are questionable on the best of days."
"Dunno," Ronon rumbled, "he runs pretty fast, when he needs to."
"I gave him SER training myself," Sheppard stated, "he may be a pain in the ass, but when it comes self-preservation Rodney's a champion. And he's resourceful. Trust me, he's still alive."
"You can't know that," said Caldwell.
"And you cannot know that he is dead," said Teyla.
"Exactly!" Sheppard agreed with his teammate.
"Everyone, please," Woolsey broke in, his diplomatic skills clearly kicking in, his tone of voice as even as possible, "this sort of speculation is getting us nowhere. Doctor Zelenka, what is the status of the stargate right now?"
"Atlantis' stargate is fine," said the Czech, "no problems with software or hardware. Gate will dial but… no answer. Like disconnected telephone. The problem is not here. Whatever happened, it happened with gate on P14-626. And we can't fix it from here."
"Meaning that the Daedalus is McKay's only chance," said Sheppard, "and the longer we sit here talking about it, the longer he has to hold out for."
"Rodney may try to repair the gate on P14-626," Zelenka suggested, "if he does, we may be able to dial again. Or he may dial in."
"It's out in the open," said Ronon, shaking his head dubiously.
"There is no way that he would be able to remain at the gate," Teyla agreed.
"Look, there's no way on or off that planet unless we go out there and get him or the Wraith do," said Sheppard, "I'd rather rescue him from a hiding place with some Wraith in the area than from a cocoon in the middle of a hive ship."
"We'd have to postpone our return trip to Earth," said Caldwell.
"So postpone it!" Sheppard exclaimed, throwing his hands wide. "We're talking life and death, here! And Sir, to be frank, this expedition can't afford to loose McKay. By extension, neither can the Daedalus. We all know it."
Zelenka muttered something. John's Czech was laughable at best, despite five years of the scientist's frustrated tirades. But the jist was clear; "what are the rest of us brainiacs? Chopped liver?" From the length of the muttering, John imagined that it contained a few more colorful metaphors. Clearly, Radek was torn, in this argument. Rodney was his friend, even though neither of them would ever admit it, openly. He certainly didn't want to see McKay get killed, whatever the circumstances. But for John to have implied that the science staff couldn't possibly get along without Rodney McKay, with only the humble offerings of the rest of the geniuses on the team? That was a blow to Radek's pride.
Inwardly, John sighed. He would have to arrange for some chocolate to find its way to Radek later.
"I tend to agree with Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard," said Woolsey, "though, perhaps not so intensely." He cast a silencing look at Zelenka. "Even though the chances are slim, this is a life and death situation. If we leave Doctor McKay on the planet, it is certain he will die. If we send the Daedalus to rescue him, there is at least a chance he'll still be alive. I think that's worth a couple days' delay getting back to Earth."
"And if McKay does manage to get the stargate on the planet up and running? Or if Doctor Zelenka can find a solution from here?" Caldwell asked. "We'll have gone to a potentially hostile planet for no reason."
"There are no solutions here," Zelenka insisted, crossing his arms over his chest indignantly, "there is nothing wrong with this stargate. Nothing to fix."
Caldwell sighed heavily, clearly mulling it over. John fought the overwhelming urge to throw a hook shot at Caldwell and forced himself to see things from the Colonel's perspective. As CO of the Daedalus, Caldwell was responsible for the lives of everyone aboard. He had to weigh those lives and the risk he was exposing them to against the possibility that Rodney, one man, was even still alive to be rescued. It wasn't that Caldwell didn't care or that he wanted McKay dead. Caldwell could be a bastard sometimes, but not that kind of one. It was just numbers; cold, hard numbers.
God! John hated numbers like that! Especially since they made the whole thing sound rational.
"All right," said Caldwell at last, "let's go get our wayward head of science. We'll break orbit in an hour. If you three want to come along, be at the gate room in 30."
With that, the Colonel swept out of the room without even waiting for so much as Sheppard's enthusiastic "Yes, sir!" A moment later and they all heard the tell-tale sound of the Daedalus' Asgard transporter beam sweeping him up.
Sheppard wanted to break from the room, head straight for the supply locker, restock his ammo and supplies, and head out. But, even though time was of the essence, he knew he had to make certain it was all right with Woolsey. He looked to the head of the expedition in askance.
"By all means, go," Woolsey said, "I'll keep Major Lorne's team on standby in case we have any contact from Doctor McKay."
"I'll keep monitoring things from the 'gate at this end," said Zelenka, leaving his spot by the wall and practically running from the room.
As one, the remaining three members of SGA-1 rushed from the room.
"That took long enough," Ronon grumbled.
"No argument here," Sheppard agreed.
It hadn't taken very long for Rodney's luck to start going south. As he hiked along below the ridgeline, one eye on the terrain and the other on the life signs detector, he had watched as the Wraiths' search pattern had taken them almost directly into his path. There was a Wraith just on the other side of the ridgeline right now, in fact, and another off in the distance on the same side as Rodney. He tried to parallel them as best he could, trying not to move any closer to either Wraith, hoping they would miss him.
It would have been easier to walk along the ridgeline itself. He could have made faster time and maybe gotten out in front of them. But the risk of his silhouette being seen against the brighter sky was much greater; too great. Below the ridgeline was best, even if it was slower. There was less risk of being noticed and shot with a stunner, this way. That was another thing that Sheppard's SER training had taught him.
Still, the paths of the two Wraith kept closing in on him, slowly but surely. His own path of safety kept getting narrower and narrower.
Scratch this moving around, thing. He needed to hide and fast.
As if in answer to his prayers, McKay spotted an outcropping of rocks up ahead. It was a steeply sloping pile of boulders and rocks that didn't look terribly stable, but had plenty of nooks and crannies to hide in.
He swallowed hard, thinking of the small, enclosed, dark space he was going to have to squeeze into. With the way his luck was running, one of the Wraith would probably stumble into an unstable section and send the whole thing crashing down on top of him.
"Crushed by rocks or drained by a Wraith," Rodney quietly muttered, "this is so unfair."
Resolutely, he turned off and tucked the life signs detector into its place on his vest and made his way toward the rocks.
The loose boulders and smooth, worn formations formed a small dell on this side of the ridge. Two slopes of rocks tumbled over it on either end of the formation. Rodney began climbing his way up the rocks on the near end, hoping that the large boulder that was in the middle of them would give them some stability. There weren't any promising hiding places on the lower side of the dell, so he had to hope that there was something up higher.
As Rodney scampered over the rocks, practically on all fours into order to keep his balance and stay hidden, one of the large stones that he grasped shifted suddenly. The stone itself didn't fall, but the movement set off a small cascade of motion. A small hail of stones went clattering down the side of the dell.
"No, no, no!" Rodney exclaimed in a whisper, his free hand grabbing at empty air as if to catch the stones as they fell. But there was nothing that he could do. He froze, waiting to see what would happen, watching the wooded space below.
Terror gripped his chest as he spotted a whip of white hair among the green foliage. As the stones came to a rest nearby, the Wraith turned to look his direction and gave a shout. Rodney had just enough warning to duck out of the way of the Wraith's stunner blast. Desperately, he ducked as low as he could behind the boulder.
With one Wraith below him heading his direction and another on the other side of the ridge line, Rodney was trapped in the midst of the unstable rock formation.
A rock and a hard place. The metaphor was just a little too thick for Rodney's liking.
