Act Three
Time moved at a snail's pace. It seemed to Rodney like he had been holding his breath for hours. He knew it couldn't have been more than a few seconds, though, because he hadn't passed out.
The Wraith was still poking about the area, kicking through brush, poking at a few of the dangling vines of thorns. Several times, his eyes scanned over the rock face and went right over Rodney's little hiding hole. Shaking, Rodney had to fight the urge to push himself back into the cave. It was best to stay still and not draw attention.
Finally, the Wraith nodded to himself and pulled some sort of mechanical device out of a place on his belt. He spoke into it briefly and a moment later the unmistakable sound of a Wraith dart faded into existence overhead. A beam shone down and scooped up the Wraith a moment later.
As the sound of the dart faded back into the sky, Rodney released a shaky sigh of relief, his head dropping down into his arms.
That had been far too close.
Rodney allowed himself a moment to just lay there, face down, breathing deeply to settle himself and contemplating what might have happened if he had been just a few minutes later getting into his little cave. There was no doubt in his mind that he would not be alive right now.
It was probably ten minutes before he felt safe enough to move again. Slowly, hands still shaking despite his best efforts, Rodney pushed himself up and back into the cave. He groped around in the darkness for the flashlight again. When it turned on, he couldn't help but flinch at the sudden light.
Too much light. It was too much light. It was like shining a beacon out in the night. Scrambling, he started piling small stones up at the base of the entry hole to the cave, behind the wall of thorns. When that still wasn't enough, he struggled out of his tac vest and took off his jacket. He wadded it up and used it to cover the remainder of the hole. After that was done, he found that he still couldn't stop fidgeting.
He got up and paced the tiny space. It was barely large enough to allow two steps from one end to the other; in other words, way too damn small. There were several thousand pounds of stone over his head and no real indication of how stable it was. Even so, going back outside was still ten times more terrifying.
Stuck between rock and... well... more rock. God, this was a nightmare!
"There's no way," he said to himself, voice cracking a little in panic, "there is no way I am going to make it through this. Thinking like Ronon. Thinking like Sheppard. What was I thinking, thinking like that? Survive, evade and... god! What the hell is that R for!"
Feeling a headache coming on, he pressed the heel of one hand into an eye socket, still pacing back and forth.
"Okay, okay, okay," he chanted like a mantra, "think, think, think, think, think. Gotta come up with a plan to get through the day tomorrow. Something that gets me out of this damn tomb. God knows I'm gonna go crazy enough just getting through the night."
You need to get some sleep, Rodney. Sheppard's voice was in his head again. And, he might add, saying something incredibly stupid. You're going to be no good if you don't get some rest. It's what you gotta do in situations like this; take care of yourself and stay sharp.
"Yeah right," Rodney muttered to the voice that was reciting Sheppard's training lessons, "that may be all well and good for you, Colonel, but us mere mortals who are panicking don't exactly have that option!"
Rodney stopped pacing, dropped his hands to his sides and looked skyward.
"Great," he said, "now I'm talking back to the tiny Sheppard inside my brain."
With a long-suffering sigh, Rodney massaged his temples and allowed his legs to crumple, depositing him on the ground. He rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head forward, stretching out the tense muscles in his neck.
Those were never going to un-knot themselves again. Ever.
Where had he been in his thought process before that Wraith had scared the living shit out of him? Oh yes. Trap. And then what?
Just setting a trap and taking out a Wraith or two was the equivalent of poking a sleeping lion with a cattle prod and then waiting around to see what it would do. He needed to figure out what to do after that. What he needed was an advantage.
And all of a sudden, it came to him. God, he had been so dense! What had brought them to P14-626 to begin with? Energy readings! Energy readings of the type that, in the Pegasus Galaxy, you only found in Ancient facilities. If there was anything that Rodney McKay knew what to do with, it was an Ancient facility with all sorts of interesting devices and equipment. And, Ancient tech was the one thing on this god-forsaken planet that he would be able to use and the Wraith wouldn't.
He needed to find the source of those energy readings.
How the hell was he going to go about doing that? Without using the scanner, there was no way he could track that down. He needed to be able to use something or this was a fool's hope.
"Wait," he said aloud, his fingers snapping in thoughtful reflex, "it's a larger energy signature than life signs. So it should be easier for the scanner to pick up. The Wraith were tracking the LSD because I was using it at full power to pick them up. If I use it at a lower power instead, I may be able to read that energy signature without giving myself away."
How certain is 'may be able to?' Sheppard's voice pushed its way in again.
Rodney sighed, dropping his head to his knees again. "Damned if I know," he found himself admitting. It was a moment of weakness, to be sure; Rodney McKay admitting that he didn't know something. It didn't really matter that he was really only admitting it to himself.
Why the hell was Sheppard in his head, anyway? Last time it had been Sam Carter and that was way more pleasant. Couldn't he even get his own girlfriend's voice in his head?
Jennifer. She was probably freaking out by now. Small, slight, and even less fighting ability than Rodney had. But still, he wouldn't have been surprised if she had pinned Sheppard to the wall and demanded a debrief as soon as the rest of SGA-1 had come back Rodney-less. Ronon might have tried to stop her, but she probably had some sort of medical paralytic agent ready for him.
Oh yeah. Rodney was hopelessly in love.
"Huh," he chuckled with a small, crooked smile on his face, "if I don't make it back alive, she'll kill me. All right, then, McKay. Time to man-up. As soon as it's light enough out, clear the road a little bit, then find that Ancient facility."
The rest of the night was spent in and out of similar babble as Rodney used what resources he had to design a trap capable of taking out a Wraith. He ventured out a couple times to find some large branches or some strong vines, but most of the night he was holed up in the tiny cave. Another of the power bars was gone before sun up, but he had several deadly-looking sharpened branches cobbled together into bundles before then.
By the time the sun shone orange above the horizon and Rodney ventured out to begin moving again, he was short on sleep and even shorter on food, but a lot longer on determination and plan.
As she watched the stars whizz past outside the starboard-facing window in the Daedalus' mess hall, Jennifer Keller realized that she had been perfectly horrible to John Sheppard. The Kindle that she had thought to bring along to pass the day-long trip sat unused on the metal table before her. She stared at the window with a listless expression, absently fingering her radio earpiece with the hand that her head was leaning in as she slouched in the uncomfortable chair.
The waiting was terrible; the curse of inter-stellar distance. Rodney would have been able to give her exact numbers on the amount of time and energy it was going to take to reach P14-626. But, of course, he wasn't there. He was busy running for his life on the distant planet, possibly drained of life already.
And that was the moment that she realized that she had treated Sheppard badly. The man had been trying to spare her that exact experience; finding the man she loved abandoned as a lifeless husk following a Wraith feeding. She had seen the results of a feeding before, of course. As the CMO of the Atlantis expedition, she could hardly have avoided the sight of it. But somehow, the thought of it being Rodney...
As quietly as she could, she suppressed the sob that was attempting to find its way out of her throat.
"The waiting sucks," Sheppard's voice suddenly popped into existence behind her. She spun around in her chair to find him standing just a few feet away, a mug full of something in hand. "Mind if I join you?"
"Please do, Colonel," she said gesturing to one of the other chairs, "it'll save me from going bibbeldy."
"Bibbeldy?" Sheppard asked, folding himself into the metal chair. "Can't say that's one I've heard before. Sounds like it fits, though."
"Teyla and Ronon?"
"Telya is in her bunk, meditating. Ronon's disrupting traffic patterns all over the ship with a run. They're both trying to say that they're fine, but they're both dealing with the stress, too. Never figured you for the brooding type, though."
"Colonel, about earlier, back on Atlantis..."
Sheppard put up a hand and waved her off. "Don't go there, Doc, it's fine," he said, "I'm freakin' out, too."
"Yeah, but you're not running around threatening air force officers with bodily harm when you have no skill to back it up."
"Colonel Caldwell might say differently," Sheppard said with a nonchalant shrug, "we're all worried, Doc. Some of us just have different training. To be honest, I'd be worried about you if you weren't freakin' out right now."
Jennifer gave a faint smile as the unspoken passed between them. Rodney had had his heart broken before, by the botanist Katie Brown, thanks to a simple miscommunication. He had moped about it for weeks. And his feelings for Jennifer were obviously far more intense. Sheppard was actually worried about what would happen if Jennifer chose to break his friend's heart. The members of SGA-1 were notoriously protective of each other. And the other three circled the wagons around Rodney faster than you could blink.
"Do you really think he has a chance?" Jennifer asked Sheppard. "Out there, on his own like that?"
Sheppard looked like he was about to give his automatic response, but he seemed to bite it back at the last moment. He considered for a moment, then leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table.
"A chance? Sure. Everyone has a chance and Rodney is more capable than people give him credit for. But, honestly, it's not the greatest chance in the world. It wouldn't be for me, either. I wasn't about to leave him back there without at least trying to go after him, but..."
"You think we should go in prepared for the worst."
Sheppard bobbed his head back and forth noncommittally. It was painfully obvious that he was wrestling with his own doubts and hopes. "I think... that I'm not ready to think that yet. But I know we'll find him alive and kicking." He paused, giving a wry smile. "Probably screaming, too."
The corners of Jennifer's mouth twitched up into the faintest of smiles. Then she shook her head as it faded just as quickly. "So... you think his odds are terrible, but you still know that he'll make it."
"Bet'cher ass."
"That doesn't make any sense."
Sheppard shrugged. "Nah, it makes perfect sense. This is Rodney we're talking about. Have you seen anyone laugh in the face of the odds like he does? Besides, when he needs to, he can run really, really fast."
In spite of herself, a chuckle bubbled up from Jennifer's stomach and pushed its way out through her mouth. "His legs are perfectly healthy, at that," she said.
"Look, Doc, I was freakin' out before, too," Sheppard said after they had both calmed down somewhat, "I didn't want you along at first, for obvious reasons. But now that I think about it, I'm glad you're along. We're probably going to need you."
"Do you know how much food he had along with him?"
Sheppard gave a non-committal grimace. "He usually stashes some extra power bars in his vest. I can't imagine that he has more than… five or six? Other than that, though? Should be just water. He gets testy when he hasn't eaten in a while, but I gotta admit that I've never seen him go this long. What can we expect?"
"If he's careful, that and adrenaline may get him through," Jennifer answered, "but it's going to be bad when he crashes. He may be incoherent or dry-heaving, depending on how long it's been since he ate."
"It can really get that bad?"
"Rodney tends to be pretty careful about it. I think we can count on him managing it fairly well. Just to be sure, I've got something to boost his blood sugar levels when we find him."
A long moment of silence passed between them as they both stared out the window at the passing stars.
"After this, I need you to read me into that whole hypoglycemia thing," said Sheppard.
"Sure," Jennifer said, absently.
The sun rose on P14-626 without so much as another noise moving around outside of Rodney's cave. He wasn't sure if the local wildlife sensed his presence and steered clear, but there wasn't so much as a squeak of a rodent or the flap of wings of something nocturnal on the hunt. Rodney was okay with this, since it meant fewer threats to have to deal with; he had enough to worry about.
Once it was light out, he was on the move once more. A part of him was glad not to be stuck in the tiny cavern any longer, with its tiny space and its thousands of kilos of rock over his head and god knew what else threatening to come down on him. But then again, a part of him wanted to just stay holed up in there, hidden, in the sanctuary that had gotten him through the night.
During the course of the night, while he was working on his little project of stone knives and bear skins – minus the bear skins – he had had to eat two more of his power bars. That left him with two. He ate one of them as he began his hike toward the power source, hoping that it would steel him for the day ahead. He hiked along, making a bee-line for the power reading, scanner running on as low a level of power as he could manage and still pick anything up. It was nerve-wracking to have to be blind to the presence of the Wraith, but he didn't have a choice.
It was several hours into the day before Rodney's scanner began to show faint shadows of much smaller readings. They flitted in and out of range and flickered randomly, but they were definitely life signs. It wasn't good enough to track precisely where they were or where they were going, but he knew he needed to keep away from them. And so, whenever one popped up in front of him, he turned his path 90 degrees to avoid it. Soon, however, it meant that he was heading in circles.
The faint, flickering life signs kept popping up in a fairly consistent wall between Rodney and the power source. He had hoped not to have to do it, but it was time to set his little trap and get past one of them. He chose a spot with a lot of cover and some large, leafy trees and set to work as rapidly as he could, hoping that he could get set up before he was found.
The Wraith Blade known as Stalker was proud of his record. No human had ever escaped him. There was no culling in which Stalker was present that a human meant to be fed upon had escaped. His hive depended upon him to find the unfindable. And now, this human from Atlantis was attempting to evade him. Ha! An Atlantean he may be, but no Ancient and certainly no match for his skill.
The human had gone the better part of the past day evading capture and Stalker had had to admit that perhaps he had been killed by some wild animal. However, that was disproven around mid-day when others had began to report a weak signal popping up here and there, moving seemingly at random. And now, it had stopped moving.
The human had finally made a mistake and it would prove to be his last. Stalker claimed the right of the kill for himself. He was looking forward to drinking in the human's disbelief and despair.
Stalker's instruments showed the signal of the human's device getting stronger as he approached. The trees had thickened and Stalker had to tear some thorns apart to move into the area. Perhaps the human was under the foolish impression that the thick woods would be a suitable hiding place. Ultimately, it didn't matter, though; the human would die for what it had done to Red Star the day before and his death would sustain Stalker in turn.
Soon, the Wraith was nearly on top of the signal. It was steady, now, not flickering or fading in or out. Stalker looked about the relatively open space, puzzled. He should have been close enough to see the human.
His boot ran into something, causing him to halt. Slowly, he brushed some leaves off of the hard object and found there a small device of Ancient origin, laying on the ground. He tilted his head, confused.
And that was when the world exploded. Something whooshed through the air, sounding heavy-leaden. Stalker whipped around just in time for a bundle of wooden stakes, weighed down with stones and suspended from something long and white, to swing into him, pushing its way through his chest and carrying him along. Stalker felt himself impact with a tree and everything went black.
Rodney was shaking. He sat in his perch in the tree for a long moment, breathing deeply. It felt like he stared at his handiwork for an hour, but he knew it wasn't more than a few seconds. Still shaking, he carefully lowered himself from the tree branch and ran across the clearing. He scooped up the ancient scanning device and turned it off, shoving it into his vest before drawing his Baretta and cautiously approaching the motionless Wraith.
The thing was pinned against the tree, Rodney's bundle of stakes having driven through his chest, pushed onward by the mass of the stones he had included at the back of the bundle. The emergency bandages he had used as the ropes for the pendulum now hung slack from the tree limb above.
For several long moments, the Wraith remained lifeless and for a moment, Rodney dared to think that perhaps, maybe, he had managed to kill it.
That illusion was shattered when the Wraith suddenly sprang to life again, just as Rodney got within reach. The Wraith's feeding hand shot out and Rodney jumped back in a panic, squeezing off a shot from his gun as he cringed. He continued to shoot, over and over, emptying his clip into the thing. His finger kept squeezing the trigger a few times afterward, for good measure.
Rodney paused with his eyes closed, as if to open them would break whatever magic spell was keeping him alive. Finally he cracked one eye open, then the other, to look at the Wraith. More than one of his shots had landed in the Wraith's head, finally ending the thing in a grizzly mess. There was no sign of the Wraith regenerating.
"Oh, god," Rodney realized, "that was loud. Really, really loud. Gotta go. Go now."
He turned to start running the direction the Wraith had come from, hoping against hope that he had time to get through the Wraith line. At the last moment, he paused, grabbed the Wraith's stunner, and then high-tailed it as fast as his legs could carry him.
He ran until his legs and his lungs burned. He crashed through branches and brambles, and underbrush, heedless of the scrapes and scratches they were leaving on his face and arms. He ran until he could simply run no further, then jogged to a halt in the midst of a small clearing, surrounded on all sides by high trees and thick bushes. He doubled over, putting his hands on his knees and sucking wind noisily.
"Holy crap," he wheezed, "I can't believe I just did that. What the hell was I thinking?"
As soon as he had enough breath, he stood up straight again and checked the scanner, using the least amount of power he could. The energy reading was still present, and he saw no life signs in his immediate area. He sighed in relief.
"Okay, okay, okay," he said, half-chanting it to himself like a mantra. He began to pace the small clearing in anxiety. "Just poked the dragon with a hot poker. And the dragon is gonna be pretty pissed."
He couldn't help it. He starting laughing. "Oh, god! What was I thinking? They're gonna hunt me down and suck every little bit of energy out of my body! I couldn't just stay nice and safe in the cave. Oh, no, no, no! I shoulda just stayed low and waited it out!"
Knock it off, Rodney, Sheppard's voice was in his head again. What's done is done. What's your next step?
"It doesn't freaking matter now, does it?" Rodney asked the open air. "And I'm talking back to the fake Sheppard in my head again! Brilliant! Panicking. I'm panicking after my plan went exactly as planned. Why am I doing that?"
Slowly, Rodney raised his hands to look at them. His fingers were shaking and try as he might, he could not get them to stop. He was fairly certain the adrenaline from springing his trap had worn off.
"Are you kidding? Blood sugar low that fast? I only have one power bar left."
And just like that, his stomach tied itself into a knot. That power bar became simultaneously the most desired part of his gear and a nausea-inducing device of torture. He wasn't sure if eating it would help or would make him puke. He knew that feeling, knew what it meant.
One power bar to get him through however long the afternoon was on this damn planet. And that was if the Daedalus was able to locate his sub-coetaneous transmitter and transport him right away. It would be longer if Sheppard and the rest of the team actually had to find him.
And what the hell did that R stand for, anyway? It was still nagging him and it kept coming back at the most inopportune moments!
And that was something that he shouldn't even be worrying about, clearly. That meant that he wasn't thinking right and that needed to stop right now if he was going to get through the next few hours.
Decision made, he tore into his last power bar and began to munch on it slowly as he resumed his hike.
Sheppard swept on to the deck of the Daedalus bridge, Teyla, Ronon, and Jennifer in tow. In the captain's seat, Caldwell sat grim-faced, yet seemingly impassive, staring at a readout on the bridge's HUD. It depicted a planet and a bright point in its orbit, rendered in wire-frame CGI.
"You wanted to see us, sir?" Sheppard asked as he approached.
"There's been a development," Caldwell said. Never taking his eyes off the HUD, he indicated the screen with a point of his finger. "That's a reading of P14-626 from our long-range sensors."
"That a Wraith ship?" Ronon rumbled out.
"I'm afraid so," Caldwell confirmed, "hive ship. it's taken up a geo-stationary orbit around the planet, over the area near the stargate."
"It must have come after we left," said Teyla, "I did not sense any Wraith in orbit or on the planet until they came through the stargate."
"Well, that certainly makes our job harder," said Sheppard.
"More to the point," said Caldwell, "it doesn't bode well for Doctor McKay."
"Sir, you're not thinking of...?"
"The thought did cross my mind," Caldwell admitted, "but no. We're most of the way there already, we might as well see what we can do. But I am going to change the plans slightly."
"How?" asked Ronon.
"Well, for one thing, we're going to be entering orbit opposite the hive ship, so we can stay in the sensor shadow of the planet."
"Wouldn't that put us on the other side of the planet from Rodney?" Jennifer asked, tentatively.
"Yes," said Caldwell, "which is going to prompt us to do some fancy footwork with the teleporters. I've got Hermiod on the problem, now. He's trying to push their limits, but there are some risks involved."
"Such as?" Teyla asked.
"To my understanding, if Hermiod ends up pushing the range too far, or if anything goes wrong, your molecules could be scattered across the atmosphere."
Sheppard swallowed, trying to put as good a face on it as possible. "I could think of worse ways to go out," he said with a nervous-looking smirk. "What else?"
"Once you're on the planet, you have four hours to find Doctor McKay," said Caldwell, "I don't want to give the Wraith any more time than that to detect us."
"Wait a second," said Sheppard, "if we can't teleport close to the gate to begin with, it may take us that long just to get to the area!"
"Like I said, Hermiod is working on the problem," said Caldwell, "we're still several hours out. I'm sure he'll have something by then. Either way, four hours is all I can risk."
Caldwell turned around to look Sheppard in the eye as Jennifer and the rest of SGA-1 drew in closer to their leader.
"You should all be ready in case there's nothing we can do in that amount of time," said Caldwell, "because once four hours are up, with or without you and Doctor McKay, the Daedalus is heading back to base."
