Act Five

As stunner blasts continued to pound against the shield outside and they were joined by weapons fire from the darts, Rodney sprinted back down the stairs and into the control room.

"Power, power, power, power, power," he chanted as he all but collided with the console that still had his tablet attached to it. He all but tore the connectors off of the harmonic controls – as he had already begun calling them – and reached for the crystals in the power control station.

He was having trouble concentrating on the readout. The constant F tone from the speakers in the room combined with the violent sounds from outside was making his head buzz. His fingers shook, which did not help at all either.

For a moment he paused and held up his hand. It continued to shake and he could not make it stop for love or money.

"Oh, that picked a really good time," he practically shouted to the offending extremity. He shook his head and resolved to move on.

The power readings on his tablet were showing stable for now. But a ten-thousand-year-old geothermal power source? Yeah, that could go wrong at any time, especially when drawing as much power as it probably was at the moment. And that was only going to grow as the Wraith continued their attack. Bottom line, he needed to end this and fast.

Frantically, Rodney looked around the room again, searching for something that might indicate that the facility had weapons of some kind, any kind. A screen embedded in the front window had appeared, showing a four-screen view of the area outside and a radar readout of the attacking ship.

"No kidding! Thanks!" he shouted at it.

He looked over console after console with no luck. Life sciences, earth sciences, environmental control. Sure, the Ancients build a super-secret facility to experiment with shields and they find air conditioning more important than being able to fend off a Wraith attack.

That meant that he had the power system and the shield itself to work with to save his exhausted, scared, and hungry-as-hell butt. Since he didn't really feel like blowing up today, that left the shield.

"All this technology and all I have to work with is a shield that is controlled using a damn piano! What good is that?"

The room rattled as one of the Wraith dart blasts hit the ground outside the shield. It galvanized Rodney back into motion and me made for the harmonic controls.

"Okay, okay," Rodney said, looking the controls over. "Variable shield means that I can move it. So, let's try... a B." He pressed his hand down on the last button in the second row. The tone on the speakers changed, more than an octave higher. The room shook again and Rodney watched as the boundary line marked on the Radar screen shifted, became more populated with peaks and valleys in the round. One of the lights indicating a Wraith dart had to quickly shift and bank to avoid crashing into the new boundary.

"Hold on," Rodney said, a realization coming to him, "this place doesn't need weapons. This place is a weapon!" He focused in on one of the dots that represented a dart. "Okay, you creepy, life-sucking bastard. It is explosion time! Let's try a chord! Third!"

With a militant smile that he never would have admitted to, Rodney slammed his hands down on the keys for D, F, and B-flat. The chord sounded on the speakers and he watched the Radar as the boundary of the shield shifted abruptly. Two of the darts banked steeply to avoid the shield's movement, but came away unharmed.

"Oh, you're okay with that, huh? How about a fifth? You like that!"

This time, it was C, F, and A. The whole place shook as the shield moved again and the new chord issued forth. Once again, the darts deftly avoided the move.

It wasn't working.


Sheppard had learned a long time ago that it was generally a good idea to trust Ronon when it came to tracking Wraith. So when the larger man had scowled down at a set of Wraith tracks and suggested that he go on ahead alone to scout, the Lieutenant Colonel was more than comfortable with sending him onward.

Meanwhile, Sheppard, Teyla, and Keller hung back amid a thick stand of trees. Keller kept anxiously looking at her watch and seemed to be going over numbers in her head. John figured that she was going over just how bleak things looked for McKay. He tried to come up with a topic of conversation that would distract her, but not in an obvious way. But try as he might he couldn't think of anything. She probably wouldn't have bit on it anyway.

Teyla didn't really look much better, but she was far more adept at hiding it. She stayed protectively close to Keller, her eyes always on the move. John didn't like the way her feet kept shuffling, ever so slightly. She was clearly nervous and he figured she was probably feeling the presence of the Wraith fairly keenly, especially while waiting with little to do.

A faint rustle of leaves was the only sign that Ronon had returned before he emerged from the trees. Keller jumped and Sheppard and Teyla almost brought their P-90s to bear.

"I hate it when you do that," Sheppard said with mild irritation.

Ronon took it in stride. "Sorry," he rumbled, then chucked a thumb over his shoulder, "somethin' you should see." With nothing further, he turned and headed back into the woods, obviously expecting that they would follow.

He led them to a small clearing ringed with trees. Hanging down from the branches of one of them, long trails of twisted bandages that looked like the ones that were in their first aid supplies dangled. At the other end, they were attached to a small bundle of sharpened branches and rocks.

The victim of the obvious trap was still pinned in place against the tree he had been nailed into by the bundle. The Wraith was unmoving, several bullet holes were in his chest as well, and one in his head.

"That looks like Beretta ammo," Sheppard said as Keller began the grizzly work of looking over the body.

"Good trap," said Ronon, then pointed to the Wraith, "lousy grouping and lots of ammo."

"Rodney has never been the best shot," Teyla said diplomatically.

"Yeah, this is his handy work, all right," Sheppard agreed, "looks like he was still alive and kickin' at least to here."

"This Wraith wasn't killed more than a few hours ago," Keller said, "so he can't be that far from here, right?"

Ronon shrugged. "From the spacing of his tracks, looks like he ran pretty fast that way." He indicated a direction opposite the one they had come.

"Not before taking the stunner," Sheppard said, pointing to the Wraith's empty holster, and not without a hint of professional pride.

Just then, the ground rumbled under them. It wasn't enough to send them stumbling, but it put them back on high alert. The woods were quiet for a moment, then the sound of birds calling on the wing surrounded them.

"What was that?" Keller asked, nervously.

"Shh!" Sheppard ordered, putting up a hand. From behind them, the sound of Wraith darts grew. "Hit the dirt!" he exclaimed, pulling on Keller's backpack and making for the nearest patch of shrubbery. Ronon and Teyla did likewise. They reached their impromptu hiding places just as four darts screamed by over head.

After they passed, the team slowly and cautiously poked their heads out of their hiding places.

"John!" Teyla exclaimed, pointing to a patch of blue sky through the trees. Dust was swirling through the air, there.

"I think McKay's over there," Ronon said, dryly, climbing back to his feet.

"I think you're right," Sheppard agreed, already moving to lead the charge. "Let's get moving!"


Rodney was at a loss. He could not pick out chords fast enough that the shield could be used in the way he wanted; in the way he was pretty sure the Ancients had intended. As blasts from both stunner and dart weapons continued to impact the shield outside, Rodney stared at the harmonic controls in confusion.

There had to be something that he was missing. He had thought about simply pressing keys at random, as fast as he could. But the shield did not seem to be able to maintain integrity that way. When he had tried it, several weak spots had formed in the shield and he had come pretty close to letting a few shots from the darts make it through.

Random keys was noise and noise meant destructive interference. In other words, not good for maintaining a clear line of a wave form. He needed a way to increase the speed at which he created chords and changed between them. If he could just up the tempo a little then he could...

And all at once, the answer hit him. It had been so obvious that he had missed it.

Music.

And with that, all the pieces of the puzzle snapped into place. For the Ancients, the line between science and art was blurred, sometimes non-existent. Thinking back to the control mechanism that had opened Janus' lab on Atlantis, he could hardly believe that he had not reached this conclusion sooner. Janus had used a chord – a major chord appealing to the ear – to open the gateway to his secret lab. Why not use something pleasing to the ear to control this mechanism?

"So, I need a song," Rodney said, thinking aloud, "something fast and with lots of notes. Uh... Beethoven. Scherzo from Symphony 9. Crazy enough it might work. Okay, clinically talented player, let's see what you can do."

For a moment, Rodney hesitated over the controls, wiggling his fingers as they itched in a long-forgotten excitement for the music. He concentrated on the controls, willing them to connect to his brain in the way that Ancient controls did in order to help him make this work. This thing wasn't a piano and it had been years, in any case. He was going to need all the help he could get.

Rodney hit the first few chords as decisively as he could. The music paused as, inside his mind, kettle drums beat out a pause, as if the first few chords had been a warning shot. And then, the real fun began. The music went bananas, tumbling up and down the scales in a long series of rapid chords and notes.

He settled into the music somewhat uncomfortably, feeling somewhat buffeted by the notes as they sounded from the facility's speakers. He had to concentrate on the controls intently, so he could hardly spare any attention for the Radar readout. A small part of his mind desperately wanted to know, though, whether or not it was working. The Ancient system must have understood that because he somehow knew that at least one of the darts had impacted on the side of the shield.

He played on, the music moving up and down the scales with aplomb. Rodney sunk deeper into the music and before long his mind had conjured the entire symphony, though his controls gave him only the tones from the speakers.

Outside, the shield moved in time to the music. Waves spiked outward and dove inward from the facility. Particularly high notes jutted so far out into the area that they began to impact the hillsides, cutting into earth and solid rock without even slowing. Somehow, that information returned to Rodney as well and a thought managed to form itself within the swirling sounds of his symphony.

Now he knew where Ronon's fjords had come from.

And still, he played on. The Wraith darts dodged the wild tendrils of the shield desperately. But, even if they had been able to identify what was happening as music, they never would have been able to recognize the Earth-native melodies and sense of musical scale. One by one, the inevitable happened and the darts began to impact the shield and destruct in exploding balls of fire.

Rodney upped the tempo of the music in his mind, though for some reason it seemed to take a great deal of effort to do so. If there had been any part of him capable of noticing it, he would have seen that the controls were responding faster than he could press them. But the effort was draining every bit of concentration that he had.

He had to hold on. He had to keep that connection to the shield. Long ago, music had meant his life. Now it meant life again.


Aboard the Daedalus, all was an oddly tense quiet. The bridge crew was going about their business like a set of well-oiled machines, never speaking beyond what was strictly necessary to do their assigned tasks. Besides that, everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

While the well-oiled machines did their work, Colonel Caldwell was left with little to do but stare through the window down at the planet below them. It was as if he was willing Sheppard and his team to hurry the hell up. He could almost imagine the younger lieutenant-colonel bounding around like a wannabe superhero, far exceeding his mission parameters just because no one was there to tell him not to. The man was aggravating but, Caldwell had to admit, effective.

Caldwell's attention was drawn back to his well-oiled machine when an indicator sounded from his XO's board. The Lieutenant frowned at his readouts for a moment and tapped a few controls.

"Lieutenant?" Caldwell asked.

"Sir, I'm getting a reading from the Hive Ship," the XO reported.

"What kind of reading?"

"I'm… not really sure, sir."

"Put it up," Caldwell said, indicating the HUD at the front of the bridge. A few taps of the controls and a moment later, the wire-frame image of the planet below and the Wraith Hive Ship beyond came up again. On the eastern horizon of the planet, a tiny dot was speeding away from the Hive Ship.

Caldwell narrowed his eyes at it in suspicion, leaning forward in his seat and gripping an armrest. "What is that?" he asked.

As if in answer to his question, the readout on the HUD suddenly gave a flash from the little dot. It expanded outward in a spherical cloud of even tinier points. Then another flash and another expanding sphere. And another.

"Oh crap," Caldwell muttered under his breath. "keep us out of that thing's line of sight!"

"Aye sir, adjusting course. But it's moving and we're not," said the XO, "odds of us out-running it are slim."

The engines of the Daedalus roared to life and the ship was in motion moments later. Caldwell half-sat, half-fell back in his seat as the ship lurched, his eyes still glued to the bridge's HUD. To his dismay, the expanding concentric rings caught up with the light indicating the position of the Daedalus and bounced back to the dot where they had come from. A moment later and the HUD showed that the Wraith Hive Ship was in motion.

"Dammit!" Caldwell swore, punching some controls on his arm rest. "All hands, duty stations," his voice rang out over the ship-wide PA, "alert status." He then thumbed the PA off again and looked back to his XO. "We're about to be in a firefight. Sheppard just lost his window. Can you get a signal to him?"

The Lieutenant shook his head, still plying his controls. "Negative, sir. There's still too much interference in that area on the planet. We can't get through. Do we break orbit, sir?"

Caldwell would have lied if he had said that he hadn't considered the option. It would have been prudent. It would have been tactically sound. It would have been safest for the ship. It would have been safest for Atlantis, Earth, and the Stargate Program.

Ultimately, though, he shook his head. "No," he said, "we'll hold out and give Sheppard some time. Keep trying him."

Damn. Sheppard was wearing off on him.


The sight that greeted Sheppard and his team as they came to the edge of the tree line was understandably chaotic. They crouched in the bushes nearby, overlooking a gently-sloping caldera-shaped valley. In the center of the valley, a round, bald hill sat and about that hill the strangest Ancient-design shield that Sheppard had ever seen was stretching and flexing, waving about peaks and valleys in a weird, organic sort of way that he had never seen before. Around it, Wraith darts swarmed, dodging shifting tendrils of shield, sometimes impacting on it with giant fireballs. A multitude of Wraith soldier drones marched along the base of the flexing shield, firing their stunners at it as they ran about to dodge it. Dust rose about the area as the shield cut into the landscape, toppling some rock formations and cutting new ones.

"The hell is that!" Sheppard asked over the din.

"Dunno," Ronon responded in kind, "but it's working." With a jerk of his chin, he indicated a wraith dart that had just exploded.

"There must be some sort of base left behind by the Ancestors," said Teyla, not without a hint of wonder.

"Rodney's power readings," Sheppard agreed with a nod.

"Call me crazy, but," Keller ventured, "wouldn't power output like that cause an energy source to deplete pretty fast?"

Keller was right and Sheppard knew it. The power drain Atlantis experienced when its normal shields were in use was proof enough for him. He could only imagine what was going on inside whatever facility there might be under the hill. If Rodney was in there, he was probably scrambling around like crazy trying to keep things up and running.

"We gotta end this and fast," he concluded, "Ronon, take the left and start taking out the drones. Take some shots at the darts if you can, too. Teyla, you do the same on the right. Doc, you hang back here and stay out of sight, but keep your gun ready in case."

"You got it," Ronon said, thumbing his blaster out of stun mode and moving off swiftly. Teyla gave a nod and went in the opposite direction, her P-90 at the ready. Keller awkwardly drew her handgun and flipped off the safety, crouching lower in the bushes.

Satisfied, Sheppard readied his own gun and moved in, straight for the chaos that was the whirling and twisting shield and the battle surrounding it. As he moved in, he picked a Wraith drone and squeezed off a shot. He followed it with another, dropping the Wraith. That drew the attention of several others and he soon found that he was a focus of their attack. He threw himself behind a boulder, obviously newly settled in its place, and out of the way of their stunner blasts. Covered for a moment, he took an opportunity to fire at a dart that was passing overhead. Smoke sprang from its wing and it whirled out of control and into the shield. Then he focused on the drones again, popping out of his cover at odd intervals to fire at them. One by one, they began to go down.

Ronon preferred a much more direct approach. Years of fighting the Wraith had given him a keen sense of their abilities and their fighting styles. Firing off shots from his blaster, he made straight for the nearest group of Wraith. The first to go down was their leader, a more lithe and graceful looking Wraith that was shouting orders to the drones. When the drones turned their attention to him and fired, Ronon stepped aside of it with an impressive jerk of his body. He flowed right into a duck that brought him under the next one and fired at the group, felling a drone. Still moving forward, he dodged another shot and then dropped into a roll, ending while firing again and dropping another drone.

Teyla took a more nimble tact. She darted in and out of trees and boulders, using them as cover as she moved about swiftly. The swirling dust clouds became her allies as well, confusing the wraith drones. In this way, the Athosian rained P-90 fire down upon them from several directions. One drone was felled by a hail of bullets from her gun. Another was confused and met an untimely end when it was thrown by an on-coming tendril of the shield.

Between their assault and the swirling maelstrom of the shield, it wasn't long before the Wraith began to run out of man-power for their attack. Finally, the remaining Wraith darts swept low to scoop up their remaining ground forces and flew off into the distance with a whine. Sheppard called Teyla and Ronon back and they all returned to find Keller, still crouched in the bushes.

"Anyone else think that was kind of easy?" Sheppard asked, suspicion is his voice as he stared off after the retreating darts.

"The fight did seem rather half-hearted," Teyla agreed.

"The Daedalus?" Ronon asked.

"Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of," Sheppard affirmed. He tapped his radio. "Daedalus, this is Sheppard." He was met only with static. He tried again a couple of times before tapping the radio off again. "Looks like we're on our own, still."

In the valley, the whirling tendrils of the shield had ceased moving. The shield settled into a stationary position, defining an odd waving pattern along the ground and spikes protruding from the surface. The dust it had kicked up had begun to settle and they could now see more clearly the hill in the center of it.

"So, seriously," Ronon rumbled, "what is that?"

"Well," Sheppard ventured, stepping back out of the tree line and into the open space to better regard the shield and the hill, "it's Ancient technology, that's for sure. And as far as we know, there's only two people on this planet who can run it and that's me and Rodney."

"Then he must be inside!" Keller exclaimed, stepping out of her hiding place to join him.

"But how do we reach him?" Telya asked.

"Well, can't reach the Daedalus, but..." Again, Sheppard tapped his earpiece to activate his radio. "McKay, this is Sheppard, do you read?" There was static and a long pause, but no response. "McKay, this is Sheppard. You there, buddy?"

"Maybe he can't respond?" Ronon ventured.

Keller took another step closer to the shield and the hill and tapped her own earpiece. "Rodney, it's Jennifer!" she said. "We're outside, but we can't get to you. You need to drop the shield and let us in."

"The Wraith are gone, Rodney," Sheppard pressed, "let us in."

"Yeah, yeah," a voice sounded through the considerable static, somewhat weak and distracted sounding, "just... just gimme a sec..."

There was another unbearably long pause. Sheppard and the rest of the team watched the shield for several agonizing moments, desperately looking for some flicker or dim that suggested it was dropping. Finally, the peak at the very top of the spiky dome vanished. The opening spread outward, jumping over peaks and valleys in one large ring until finally it reached the outline of the wave at the ground.

"There's a... a hatch," Rodney's voice came through the radio, "at the top."

Sheppard and the team were in motion immediately, almost before Rodney had told them about the hatch. They covered the ground quickly. Ronon with his long strides and experience moving quickly overland, was the first to make it to the top of the hill. He scouted the hatch and had declared it secure by the time the others caught up with him.

Sheppard led the way down the stairs and into the Ancient base. He paused for a moment, casting a gaze about the room with that odd sense of déjà vu he always got when he entered rooms where the Ancients had obviously reused designs. For some reason, he always found it weird, even though it made perfect sense for building designs to be reused. It happened on Earth all the time, after all.

Keller pushed past him and made her way over to the dirty, tired, and shaking figure leaning over the console at the very front of the room. She didn't even spare a glance at the rather impressive-looking fiery pit on the other side of the window.

"Rodney?" she asked, swinging her backpack off and resting it on the console. "Are you all right?" Immediately, she began to pull some items from her bag. The first to come out was a blood sugar meter. Gently, she took one of his hands and pricked a finger. He didn't even respond. Keller took the strip and plugged it into the meter and set it aside to let it take its reading. "Hey, you with us?" she pressed, turning his face to her.

"I gotta siddown," Rodney muttered, his knees beginning to buckle.

"Whoa!" Keller exclaimed, reaching to steady him.

Sheppard covered the rest of the distance over to them in a couple of strides. Between him and Keller, they managed to move Rodney away from the front console and over to a wall nearby before sitting him down against it.

The blood sugar meter chirped, indicating that it had a reading. Keller grabbed it and checked the number, her face twisting into a scowl. "Yeah, I don't like that number," she said, pulling a field injector from her bag. She brought it back over to Rodney, efficiently found a vein in his arm, and injected its contents. "Just a little something to help your blood sugar," she told him, "you should start to feel a little better soon."

Ronon had taken up a post near the stairs and was acting as watch. He turned back to Sheppard with a quick glance. "They might come back. We should get outta here."

"Maybe with the shield down, the energy signatures aren't so bad down here," Sheppard mused. He tapped his earpiece again, hoping against hope to get a radio signal through. "Daedalus, this is Sheppard," he said, looking up through the hatch, as if he could see the ship in orbit above.

To his relief, a static-mangled voice answered. "Sheppard, what's your status down there?" It was Caldwell, sounding frazzled.

"We found our wayward scientist," Sheppard replied, "he's in pretty bad shape. We could use a beam out."

"We're in the middle of a firefight up here," said Caldwell, "we'll have to do some fancy flying. Stand by."

"Wait!" Rodney exclaimed. "We can't just leave this place to the Wraith, ATA gene or no."

"That is a fair point," said Teyla, "even though they cannot use it now, it does not mean they will not be able to figure it out in time."

Rodney waved a tired hand toward the window and the lava pit outside it. "Overload that thing," he said, "make a volcano outta this place. Should take care of it."

Sheppard nodded, moving over to the controls and Rodney's discarded tablet. "Talk me through it, fast," he said.

Even in the state he was in, it only took Rodney about five minutes to instruct Sheppard on setting the Ancient system to overload. It turned out that it had not been a possibility that the Ancients had overlooked. They had even thought about setting a time-delay. Sheppard set the timer for five minutes, but held off on hitting the start button until he heard back from Caldwell.

He only hoped it wouldn't be long.


Things got pretty hairy pretty fast aboard the Daedalus. Not only had the hive ship moved in to attack, they had released their darts to harry them. At the helm, Caldwell's XO was pushing his flying skills to the limit, dodging as much fire as he could to try and keep strain off the Asgaard shields.

"See what you can do about getting us closer to Sheppard's position," Caldwell ordered him, gripping the armrests of his seat as fire rocked the shields and the ship in turn.

"Do my best, sir, but that's where the hive ship is moving in from," the XO nodded, feverishly plying his controls.

Caldwell punched the control on his armrest to activate the radio. "Hermiod, this may be the closest we can get. Can you pick up Sheppard's team?"

"I am reading their subcutaneous transmitters, Colonel," the alien voice replied, "but we are still a fair distance from what I would consider a safe line of sight. However, it is feasible."

"I'll take it. We'll try to minimize the time the shields are down. Be ready to grab 'em on my mark."

"Standing by."

With time short, Caldwell decided to fill in both his XO and Sheppard at the same time. He punched his radio controls again and dialed up Sheppard. "Colonel Sheppard, we have a small window. We're going to drop shields and pick you up within about five seconds. You set down there?"

"Stand by, sir," came the reply. There was a short pause, then Sheppard's voice came back on. "Our window is about four minutes and thirty before this place blows, so any time you wanna do this is fine by us."

"Right. Stand by for beam out." Caldwell keyed in Hermiod on the engineering channel again. "All right people five second window. Drop shields, beam, raise shields. In three… two… one… Mark!"

"Dropping shields!" the XO exclaimed. The ship was almost immediately buffeted by the full force of weapons fire.

"I have them," came Hermiod's voice a moment later.

"Shields up!" said the XO. Behind them, somewhere on the bridge, some electrical panels were blowing out. Caldwell could hear the tell-tale sound of a fire extinguisher.

"Good! Set a course and get us the hell out of here!" Caldwell barked.

The Daedalus broke orbit swiftly, turning its aft section to the enemy and letting the shields take the full force of the Wraith weapons fire. As soon as they were clear enough of the planet, a hyperspace window opened and the ship slipped through into faster-than-light travel.

On the surface of the planet below, a new volcano erupted, wiping out any trace of the Ancient facility.


Back on Atlantis, almost a day later and with P14-626 a distant memory and dozens of light-years away, Rodney was contentedly sitting on one of the Infirmary beds, chowing down on a tray full of food with one hand. Jennifer had Rodney's other hand and was once again stabbing a finger with her blood sugar meter.

"You almost done doing that?" Rodney asked around a bite of something resembling roast beef.

"Last time, I promise," Jennifer said in a mock tone of placation, plugging the test strip into the meter, "I just want to make sure you've leveled off." The device chirped and she turned it to show him the number. "And it looks like you have."

"Good. Does that mean I can have my computer back?" Rodney asked, reaching for his cup of blue jell-o, "because I am bored to death, here."

Jennifer sighed a long-suffering sigh, a smile lighting her features as she packed the blood sugar meter back into its pouch. "Only if you use it for solitaire, because I'm keeping you off active duty for the next twenty-four hours."

"Oh come on!" Rodney exclaimed. "I have so many ideas to work on! I mean, it never even occurred to me to try and use the shield as a weapon. I gotta follow up on it."

"Dost mine ears deceive me?" came the voice of John Sheppard as he strolled into the room. He walked over to the nearest counter and leaned against it with a smirk. "Is Doctor Doctor M Rodney McKay actually volunteering for more work?"

"Oh, hey! No, no, no, no, no," Rodney protested, wagging a finger in Sheppard's direction, "I will cop to being a coward, a weakling, and an arrogant ass. And that last one, because, really, what don't I have to be arrogant about?"

Just outside of Rodney's line of sight, Jennifer shook her head and rolled her eyes at the lieutenant colonel. Sheppard's smirk deepened in reply. The communication was clear; they both knew better.

"But a shirker?" Rodney continued, scooping a spoonful of jell-o out of its little plastic cup, "no, no, no, my friend. That is one thing that Rodney McKay is not. Particularly when there's something really cool to work on." Somehow, Rodney actually managed to put the spoonful of jell-o into his mouth while wearing a look of abject pride.

"None the less," Jennifer said, beginning to move off and return to her regular work, "you've been through a lot. Take a day off. Doctor's orders."

"Sucks having a doctor for a girlfriend, huh?" Sheppard said when he thought she was out of earshot.

"I heard that!"

"You trying to get me in trouble?" Rodney asked as Sheppard wandered closer.

"It's what I'm here for," Sheppard replied with a sarcastic grimace. He suddenly turned more serious as he lighted on the edge of the bed that Rodney was sitting in. "Actually, I came to check up and you and to apologize for getting you left behind like that."

"Oh, you are such a martyr!" Rodney exclaimed. "Please, John! You and I both know it wasn't your fault, so don't even go there. I mean, one of these days, you'd think I'd be able to start keeping up with the rest of you guys. But apparently, I'm doomed to be the slow, clumsy one for life." He gave a sigh, pushing aside the emptied food try. "It's so embarrassing, having to be baby-sat all the time."

"I don't keep people on my team who need to be baby-sat, Rodney," Sheppard said with a frown, "and you proved it with all this. You kept your head and stayed alive in a rough situation. I've been stuck behind enemy lines alone before. Believe me, it ain't easy. You did a damn good job staying alive."

"Ronon'll probably disagree with you."

"Ronon's a survivalist freak-baby."

"Good point." Rodney gave another, long drawn out sigh. "Oh, all right, fine. I'll stop beating myself up about it. Just gimme a couple days on it, all right?"

"I will if you will," Sheppard replied, his smirk returning. He gave Rodney's shoulder a playful nudge and began heading for the door. "Twenty four hours. I don't want to see you in your lab."

Rodney waved his hand after him dismissively. "Yeah, fine, fine, fine. Oh hey!" He looked up at Sheppard's retreating form, stopping the lieutenant colonel in his tracks. When Sheppard had turned back, he continued. "Something's been bothering me. The whole time, I couldn't remember what the R in SER stands for."

Sheppard took a few steps back in Rodney's direction, a look of sheer, uncomprehending confusion on his face. "Seriously?" he asked, his voice rising a tone a step or two, "Rodney, it really scares me what your sizable mind ends up forgetting, sometimes."

"Yeah, yeah, would you just tell me so I can stop worrying about it?"

Try as he might, Sheppard couldn't erase the incredulous look off his face. "SER," he said, "S. E. R. Survival, evasion, and rescue. That wasn't foremost on your mind at the time?"

"Ah!" Rodney said, tossing a hand up with realization. "That explains it. Didn't have to bother remembering it. Rescue is your department and you're good at it and will do it unless you're dead, so I didn't ever have to worry."

"Didn't have to worry!"

"Hey, as vast as my intellect is," Rodney said, absently waving a hand in the direction of his own head, "there's still only so much space up here. Why should I bother remembering something that's not important?"

Still giving Rodney a look that clearly said he thought the scientist was stark-raving mad, Sheppard gave a slow nod. "We're going to have a long talk about what's important in the field."

"Ah, ah, ah!" Rodney exclaimed, holding up an index finger and giving a smug grin, "not for twenty-four hours, remember?"

"You would remember that!" Sheppard shook his head, still bewildered, and turned to leave. "I'm gonna go find Ronon and have a sane conversation."

Still wearing his smug grin, Rodney wiggled his fingers in a wave at Sheppard's retreating form. Once he was alone again, the scientist settled back against the pillows for a much-deserved break.


Thanks for reading, everyone! This was my first "full-length" fic for SGA and I really had a lot of fun writing it. I hope you all had as much fun reading it.

When I write fics, especially for television shows, I tend to think very visually. In my head, this looks like an episode. I decided to really push that idea for this fic, hence the teaser and five acts format. I really wanted this to feel like you could sit down in front of the TV for an hour and watch this as an episode, mini-cliff-hangers and all.

I only got into the Stargate franchise as a whole when I caught a rerun of "Sunday" on the channel formerly known as SciFi. I suddenly found that I couldn't get enough Atlantis and burned through all five seasons in a few weeks. Damn me for getting into this show after it ended. I have yet to tackle SG-1, since ten seasons is a little intimidating, but I try to compensate with research where I can. Please tell me if I've screwed up something fundamental. My heart definitely lies with Atlantis, though.

So, again, thanks for reading. And always remember; fanfic authors love feedback!

Ciao!