Teyla had decided to go around the back of the Stargate and look for her teammates. She had avoided many wraith along the way, thanks to her ability to be able to sense them. She had just gone past the gate, she had her scanner out but it wasn't really helping, she could only use it's short range scan or little animals like mosquitoes started showing up on the short range scan she usually sensed the wraith before they showed up. So far she had been unable to find Sheppard, Ronon or McKay, she had considered using her radio, but the wraith didn't yet know where she was and both Sheppard and Ronon had their radios off, she didn't want the wraith to know where McKay was either. It simply wasn't worth it.
She sensed a single wraith not to far infront of her. She looked down at her scanner, annoyingly it wasn't showing up yet.
Teyla decided to keep going forward and as soon as the wraith showed up on her scanner she'd know it's exact position and be able to avoid it.
Sure enough she hadn't gone very far when the scanner picked it up, Teyla frowned at it; it was picking up two life signs, but she only sensed one wraith. Oh, that was not good. She looked down at the scanner, the wraith and person were no more than ten meters from each other, but strangely neither life sign was going anywhere. She watched them for a while, still neither life sign moved.
Teyla ran towards where they were. She came to the edge of a clearing and looked into it, in the middle of the clearing, ten meters from each other, was Sheppard and a wraith. She quickly understood why neither of them advanced, Sheppard had his P90 raised and was pointing it at the wraith, the wraith had it's stunner raised and was pointing it at Sheppard. If Sheppard fired his P90 the wraith would have time to fire it's stunner before it died, and their would be no guarantee Sheppard would be able to kill it before it stunned him. If the wraith fired first Sheppard would be able to fire his P90, wounding and possibly killing, depending on when it had last fed, the wraith before he went down. The wraith would just be waiting until some of its friends came.
Teyla fired at the wraith, she knocked it down, but didn't quite kill it, Sheppard finished it off.
Teyla came into the clearing, realising that when she'd left him, Sheppard had been with Ronon, and he'd been unconscious.
"Teyla," acknowledged Sheppard, Teyla noticed he had a painful looking bruise on the side of his head where Ronon had hit him.
"How are you feeling?" she asked him.
"Not exactly good, but I'll live," replied Sheppard.
"Do you know where Ronon is?" questioned Teyla.
"No, the wraith separated us."
"Oh."
"I know where McKay is," added Sheppard, as if trying to make up for not knowing where Ronon was.
"You do?" Teyla was surprised.
"Yeah, I radioed him after the wraith split up me and Ronon."
"Where is he?" Teyla wanted to know.
Sheppard sighed.
"He's somehow managed to fall of the cliff and land in the same tree I did. He said he was hurt. How do we get there?"
Sheppard knew they needed to get to McKay as soon as possible, the wraith would know where he was because he'd used his radio several times. Soon a dart would get him.
"We are just past the Stargate, we need to go that way," Teyla replied, pointing.
"No problem."
Teyla led the way, they avoided the Stargate because the wraith would probably be expecting them to go near it so could be waiting. Sheppard had his scanner out, but was looking for Ronon, not wraith, Teyla always sensed the wraith long before they showed up on the scanner. Teyla was frowning.
"What?" asked Sheppard, already knowing that it would be something to do with wraith.
"We have wraith on both sides of us. They are headed towards the Stargate. If they plan to stay at the gate and guard it, it will be impossible to get close enough to meet Atlantis's back up when it comes, unless someone is already there," Teyla told him.
Sheppard knew what that meant; they needed to go back to the gate, but that would mean abandoning McKay. So they could either go to the gate, or help McKay, and there was no way Sheppard was about to leave McKay to get caught. There was only one answer; they were going to have to split up.
"Okay, you head back to the gate, you're faster than I am, you've more chance of getting there before the wraith. I'll go help McKay,"
"I am not sure splitting up is a good idea, Colonel," Teyla informed him.
"I'm not leaving McKay to the wraith," retorted Sheppard. "You go back to the gate, I'll get McKay."
Teyla didn't argue anymore, there wasn't enough time for it. She just gave a quick nod and set off at a run for the Stargate. Sheppard kept his scanner out and continued forward.
Ronon ran onwards, the wraith still on his tail, stupid creatures. He had already gone past the wraith base and into more jungle. It was only his amazing stamina and his guns good firepower that had kept him alive, he was avoiding all clearings; there were a lot of darts following his progress. Normally he would have stopped and fought, but he was so hugely and totally outnumbered that the fight would have lasted just second, and he wouldn't be the winner. So Ronon ran further forward.
McKay was hiding in the leaves of the tree, there was a dart circling up above, where was Sheppard? McKay had told him where he was so that Sheppard could help him, not so he could be ignored. Of course, if Sheppard had turned up at that present moment the dart would probably get him. Meaning he could be hiding in the cover of the jungle, waiting for the dart to get close enough so he could shoot it down, McKay hoped so. Other wise, if he didn't turn up soon it would mean the wraith had gotten him. Unfortunately all McKay could do was hide in his tree and hope Sheppard, Teyla and Ronon were still alive. McKay had turned his radio off, not wanting to lure anymore wraith to him, so he'd just have to wait and hope. Oh, how he hated the waiting game, he liked to be the person who tried to help the poor sucker who'd managed to get themself stuck someplace dangerous.
There was always the chance that Sheppard was lost. He'd had told him that he didn't know how far from the gate he was or how to get back to it, so it was very likely he was lost. Brilliant. The only person who knew where he was was probably lost. McKay didn't fancy his chances of getting off the planet.
Sheppard saw light in the trees ahead, and smiled, he'd made it without wraith problems. He burst out of the trees and stopped at the edge of the cliff.
"McKay!" he called.
McKay emerged from the trees branches.
"Colonel, get back in the jungle! There's a dart!!" he shouted.
"Huh?"
Sheppard frowned, then heard the all to familiar whine behind him, he dived to the side to avoid the culling beam, nearly falling over the cliff, and watched helplessly as it swept up McKay. He'd made McKay come out of his hiding spot, and as a result the dart had gotten him. Sheppard fired at the dart, wanting to bring it down without damaging the buffer. The bullets found their target. The dart went down on an angle, no only going over the cliff, but going quite a long way from the bottom of it too. From the top of the cliff Sheppard could just see a small curl of smoke in the distance. He took out his binoculars and zoomed in as far as possible on the dart, it didn't look too damaged. Because the dart was still mostly intact, Sheppard was pretty sure he could get McKay out of the thing.
Now he had to get to it. He climbed up part of the cliff before, so it couldn't be too hard to climb down it. Sheppard grabbed the longest vine he could find and tied one end securely to a tree, he threw the other over the edge of the cliff. It didn't go the whole way down, but that was fine, he'd just climb the rest of it without some sort of rope.
Sheppard began the long climb down.
Teyla arrived at the Stargate just before the wraith did. She had just enough time to hide herself in the bushes before the wraith came into sight. They had apparently come to look at the DHD. They studied it for a while, then gave up, and took up positions guarding the Stargate. Now if Atlantis sent Puddle Jumpers for back up, like they usually did, it would hit right into the wraith. Teyla couldn't decide whether that was a good thing or not. She guessed they had just under an hour before Atlantis sent help, she hoped she could remain undiscovered until then.
Sheppard's vine ran out about half way down. Sheppard frowned, he was sure it was still quite a long way down, he'd been hoping that it would last further than half way, but apparently not. Sheppard cautiously let go of the vine with one hand and took hold of the cliff face, he took his other hand off the vine and began to slowly climb downwards, if he fell this time he was going to end up as a Sheppard pancake. He heard a faint whine in the air. A wraith dart! Just what he didn't need. Sheppard looked up, had it seen him? It was a very long way up, well above the top of the cliff. Sheppard hadn't realised just how far down he'd gone. The dart hadn't spotted him, it flew out of sight. Sheppard breathed a sigh of relief, and continued his slow descent. He had to remind himself not to look down; because when you were half way down a sheer cliff face seeing how you would fall if you let go is not a good idea.
Sheppard had been climbing for ten minutes when he heard yet another whine. He flattened himself against the cliff face as much as he could , and looked up at it. He had no need to worry about it, he could only just make out its dart shape he'd gone so far down the cliff. Soon it slew out of his sight completely. Sheppard resumed climbing.
Five minutes later he slipped, the part of the cliff he was standing on crumbled and his handholds broke off. He fell…
Thirty centimetres of falling later he landed on his feet at the bottom of the cliff.
Sheppard wished he'd bothered to look down sooner. He was faced with more jungle. Sheppard set his scanner to look for wraith technology, like McKay had shown him, and set it to long range scan, that was just about all he new how to do on the scanner, as well as using the life sign detector of course. He set off into the jungle in the direction the scanner was saying the downed dart was in.
The stupid jungle was even thicker at the bottom of the cliff, Sheppard had taken out his knife and was cutting his way through, glancing at his scanner every now and then to correct his direction.
Ronon had finally managed to lose the wraith following him and had turned around and was making his way back to the Stargate, maybe he'd get back in time to meet Atlantis's back up. He turned his radio back on, at the very least he would be able to radio them.
Ronon had his scanner out on life sign detection an he saw three big enough to be wraith life signs to his left. He got his gun ready and followed them, he was going to have the satisfaction of killing the three of them. He waited until they were in a clearing, then he fired multiply shots at all three of them. The wraith never even knew what hit them, they were dead before they hit the ground. Ronon felt a bit better after that. He continued towards the Stargate.
Teyla waited at the Stargate, they had to have been there for five hours! The wraith still hadn't moved, as soon as a Puddle Jumper came through the gate it would smack right in to all of them.
Teyla decided that was good.
Weir looked at her watch, it was official, SGA-1 were late back, as usual. She was pretty sure they managed to get into trouble some how or other more often then not, although she supposed this time it wasn't really their fault. If they were late back it probably meant that it was a wraith planet. Oh God, she'd sent four people to a wraith home planet and left them there for five hours. She had been hoping they would arrive back on time with the information needed, unfortunately, they hadn't, so she had to send them back up and things would start to get complicated if they weren't found straight away.
Dr Weir decided to send two Puddle Jumpers. She tapped city communications.
"Major Lorne, this is Weir, please report to my office immediately," she announced.
Lorne was there pretty quickly.
"Yes ma'am?" asked Lorne.
"Colonel Sheppard's team is late back. We need to send two Puddles Jumpers as back up. Get them ready as soon as possible," ordered Weir.
Lorne looked a bit uncomfortable.
"I'm afraid most of the people with the Gene are off world and not due back for a while," he told her.
Weir sighed. "Okay, who do we have left?"
"Doctor Beckett, a technician and me."
"Right. You take a team in one Puddle Jumper , get Beckett and the tech in the other, have Beckett fly it, but in you find any one injured Beckett can look after them and the tech can fly it. Oh, and tell Beckett these orders are directly from me, he should not argue quite as violently if he knows it's a direct order."
Lorne nodded. "I'll have the Jumpers ready to go in five minutes," he assured her.
"Thank you," replied Weir as he left the room.
Authors Note- Please review!! Please tell me if you like my crazy humor!!