Four
He sits at his station and pretends to be going through the agenda for today and the last two mission reports the respective teams sent him, but what he really does is brooding. Of course, if anyone asked him, he would claim to be frowning over that strange incident with the population of M7R-563 that Hauptmann Kessler describes in her report, but in truth his mind is still caught up with last night's fight with Laura. How could she have been so blind as to not realizing that this hadn't been one bit about jealousy but only about her tendency to keep all kinds of stuff from him? Easy, a treacherous little voice answers, because you are jealous, and she's able to read you pretty well.
Shut up, he thinks. He's not jealous. He knows that Will Meyers is married – hell, the request to bring his wife to Atlantis had to go over his desk as well – and besides… besides… besides he's fucking jealous of the fact that his girlfriend is spending some of her precious downtime with a married Marine Sergeant or with a Scottish doctor or with… He takes a deep breath. This is getting him nowhere. He's on duty, and there shouldn't be anything distracting him.
Besides, the other people in the Control Room are already giving him wary glances… well, they've been giving him wary glances and avoided talking to him unless it was necessary ever since a few days ago. In fact, for the last three or four days, the only one willing to put up with him off-duty had been, well, Laura. Laura who'd…
"Unscheduled off-world activation!", Banks suddenly barks from her station as the 'Gate activates and he can't help jumping at the sudden noise. Damn, he thinks. Laura was right. They should have just gone to bed and talk this out later. Probably would have saved him from four hours of tossing and turning.
But he manages to gather his decorum pretty fast, as he stands up and walks over to Banks, asking her: "Who is it?"
She turns around, already a worried frown on her face. "It's… Sergeant Meyers' IDC, sir." He checks his watch. Dammit. That's too early for their first check-up. Which can only mean… emergency. Laura… Laura had been scheduled for that trade mission.
Alright, no more thinking now. He taps his headset, in command mode. "Security to the 'Gate!" And to Banks: "Lower the shield."
Banks hits a few commands and the force field is lowered. Immediately two figures stumble through the 'Gate, the bigger one supporting the smaller one. It's only Sergeant Meyers and Teyla, who's obviously just barely conscious. Only… these two. No Jennifer Keller… and no Laura Cadman. Crap.
He's down at the ramp in the blink of an eye. "Sergeant, what the hell happened?" Meyers looks at him, unhappy and ashamed and slightly out of breath.
Without taking any breath, he immediately answers. "Genii… got… the Doc and the Lieutenant. Lieutenant… ordered me out…" Genii. Laura in the hands of the Genii. Push it away, Lorne, push it away and bury it deep and switch off your heart. You've got a job to do.
"Alright, Sergeant, get Teyla and yourself to the infirmary. Banks, call Mr. Woolsey and Colonel Sheppard. And someone get me Ladon Radim ASAP!" Immediately, the Control Room team gets into gear. Two members of the security team assist Meyers in getting Teyla to the infirmary, while Banks informs Woolsey and Sheppard of the situation and Alsgard is sending out hails to all relais stations that serve as connections to the regular Genii outposts.
He's back at his station, already putting together a standby SAR team and then going through their logs on regular and irregular Genii activities of the last three months, checking if any of these took place in the vicinity of M5K-758, the target planet Laura's team went to. Alsgard is already getting answers from the relays, but no Ladon Radim yet.
By the time, Sheppard and Woolsey make it to the Control Room he has singled out ten possible spots of trouble and Alsgard is getting closer to reaching Radim at any minute. Also the infirmary has told them that Teyla is merely suffering from the impact of a stunner beam and that Meyers is pretty eager to tell them what exactly happened. Both Sheppard and Woolsey immediately appear in front of his station. "What's the status, Major?" After ten minutes of furiously working, he needs to take a deep breath to tear himself away from his monitor.
"Sergeant Meyers should be up here any minute. Alsgard is preparing a comm rendezvous with Ladon Radim. And I've already set up a standby SAR team and transferred the ten most probable groups responsible for this to both your accounts." Woolsey nods.
"Good work, Major." In the same moment, Meyers arrives back at the Control Room and Woolsey beckons the Sergeant and Sheppard into the conference room. He's already resigned himself to stay outside and find something to keep him busy to distract him, but shortly before entering the room, Sheppard says something to Woolsey. Then the Colonel turns around again and gestures for him to follow them into the conference room.
He takes care not to jump up from his seat but to maintain a professional façade, busy but controlled and focused. If he wouldn't concentrate on that, he'd probably already gated to that planet and gutted everyone who'd let that happen. Inside the conference room, Sheppard and Woolsey have already taken their seats, while Meyers remains standing at attention, with his back rigid. The Sergeant tries to simply stare at the wall opposite him, but he can already see shame in his eyes.
As he takes his seat, Sheppard simply gestures at Meyers. "At ease, Sergeant." In a textbook move, Meyers changes his posture, but the rigidness doesn't leave him.
"Please, have a seat, Sergeant.", Woolsey offers.
But all he gets from Meyers is a very formal "I'd rather keep standing, sir." Sheppard and Woolsey share a look that says very clearly that they already know Meyers is everything but ready to talk to them. But when a Marine makes up his or her mind, nothing short of a nine-millimeter can change that. And sometimes not even that helps.
"We aren't here to reprimand you, Sergeant. It's quite alright to sit down." Obviously, Woolsey still has to learn a lot about Marines.
"Thank you, sir, but I would rather…" Sheppard throws him a look that tells him "Hey, you've been on a couple of missions with this guy. Make him fucking sit down already."
So he clears his throat and says softly: "Just sit down, Sergeant." It's taken him quite an effort not to insert any "fucking", "bloody" or the like into that sentence and to say it without any other undertone than a little weariness, but he's got the distinct feeling that part of Meyers' display of Marine hard-headedness has something to do with the fact that Laura Cadman's boyfriend is one of the officers present. But he really doesn't want to shout at Meyers… well, not much. All he wants is to know what the hell happened back on that planet.
To their collective surprise, that soft command actually makes Meyers sit down, although still with his back rigid and his gaze focused solely on the wall behind Woolsey. "Now, Sergeant, please tell us everything from the beginning." And so Meyers starts to tell them in very formal, clipped tone how everything had been fine at the beginning and suddenly went down the drain.
All throughout this, Sheppard keeps sneaking him glances, but he manages to hold up the professional façade, even when Meyers tells them that Laura has been wounded in the skirmish. It's becoming obvious very fast to him that Meyers feels guilty for letting their attackers escape with Laura and Keller, although he'd just been following orders. And if Laura hadn't ordered him to stay behind and get Teyla back to Atlantis, there would have been no one able to tell them what happened… and the three last chevrons of the planet the two women were probably brought to. Meyers probably knows all of that himself, but he knows well enough that things like this are no match against a guilty conscience.
When Meyers is done, Woolsey is the first to speak up again. "Well, Sergeant, thank you for your very helpful report. You are excused now." That's the first time Meyers removes his gaze from the wall, as if waking up from a daze. It's pretty clear that he's suffering from shock. Sheppard seems to have seen it as well and just gives the Sergeant a short nod. He gets up, still a little beside himself, to leave the room and in the same moment Alsgard hails Woolsey, telling him that they have a contact with Ladon Radim. Immediately, they all get up to leave the room.
But before he can follow Woolsey and Sheppard to the screen in the Control Room, Meyers clears his throat and says, still rather quietly: "Sir, can I have a word with you?"
He'd love to tell the Sergeant to go back to the infirmary, get some sedatives and head for his quarters, because he wants to be there when they question Radim, but Meyers looks genuinely distressed. "Sure. What is it?"
He's not quite sure what's coming now, but he has the distinct feeling that it has something to do with Laura and the capture. "I… want to apologize, sir."
Well, that's not what he expected. But maybe it's just seeing merry mischievous Sergeant Will Meyers all cast down and very Marine that surprises him so much. "For what?"
"For letting them take the Lieutenant. And Dr. Keller, of course." Meyers still tries to avert his eyes, and that's telling him a lot. For example that he isn't only ashamed to admit to his boss that he let his girlfriend and the base's CMO get captured on his watch but also that he probably considers Laura a friend – although he's sure that Meyers would never admit to that – and feels like he failed her.
That only adds to his own guilty conscience at accusing Laura of passing too much time with Meyers – or any other guy on the base, that is – and he hopes that he can reassure Meyers enough with simply saying: "Lieutenant Cadman ordered you out. You did the right thing, Sergeant."
That prompts a rueful half-grin from the Sergeant. "Still… thought you'd kill me if I got back without them, sir."
Well… for a moment he had felt like ripping Meyers' head off. But then he'd tamped down the immediate surge of worry and fear in favor of keeping a clear head and up until now he's been able to hold his usual iron clamps around his heart. "I don't kill subordinates who listen to orders, Sergeant."
"That's what I was hoping for, sir." Finally. The old Meyers is slowly returning, and that's even kind of reassuring. "By the way… she put up a hell of a fight. They both did."
He's sure they did. Wouldn't have been like Laura Cadman at all if she'd just let someone drag her through the 'Gate. And it's sure also part of her effort that Keller didn't cower in fear. In a sense, that makes him damn proud of his Laura and even more sorry that he'd let his exhaustion get the better of him and let his jealousy prevail the day before. "Yeah, that's the Atlantis women we all know." And then, on an impulse and because he feels like he owes that to Meyers, he says: "I'll keep you in the loop, Sergeant."
Meyers looks a little surprised. Obviously not what he has expected from his boss. "Thank you, sir. I'm sure… I'm positive we'll find her. Them."
He nods. They will. They don't have any other option left, anyway. "I know. Now, come on, get going, Sergeant."
Meyers recognizes a dismissal when he sees one. "Yes, sir." With a last casual salute he's gone, hopefully to the infirmary or his quarters, but if the Sergeant is anything like himself in that regard it'll probably be more like the gym or the shooting range. And he doesn't blame him.
However, he still has a job to do. He walks over to the screen where Ladon Radim is crouching in front of one of their stationary MALPs. He can see that Sheppard and Woolsey both try to be civil, but that so far Radim hasn't had any satisfactory answers for them. He comes to stand at Sheppard's right, folding his arms, resolved to let Sheppard do all the talking.
"So you're telling us you don't know of any groups of regular or irregular Genii who might have teamed up with Hybrids?" Of course. That was to be expected. Even if they knew, they'd be destined not to tell them, because that would result in very strained diplomatic relations.
Radim nods. "Yes. I know you don't believe me, but I'm positive that I haven't heard anything about something like this. I'd have told you immediately, honestly." Sure. Just like he'd told them the truth when they'd used them to stage a coup a few years back. Or when, time and again, Atlantis teams have been ambushed by people in Genii uniforms or with Genii weapons.
"We know that, Mr. Radim. But please, check again if there are any known groups on planets with the combination we just gave you. Our soldier was absolutely sure that he recognized Genii uniforms." Woolsey is still trying to be diplomatic, and again he's grateful that he doesn't have to lead this conversation. He'd have much more difficulties to remain civil.
Radim shrugs. "Could have been stolen uniforms. Time and again, that happens."
Sheppard takes a deep breath, and it's obvious that his patience is already starting to run out. "Then, Radim, for the sake of the friendship between our people, please try to find out if there have been any bigger quantities of stolen uniforms."
The Genii leader is very aware of the fact that he should better try to stay on their good side in this, so he makes an effort to hide his disinterest and says: "We'll try, Sheppard. And we'll give you word once we hear anything about these men." Well, there's a good Genii.
Sheppard wants to answer something, but Woolsey, not oblivious to the growing impatience and probably worried about the diplomatic relations between Atlantis and the Genii, manages to be faster. "We really appreciate this, Mr. Radim. Thank you for your time. Atlantis out." When the screen is blank again, Woolsey turns around to face his two ranking officers. "Well… any suggestions?"
They look at each other, and then Sheppard speaks up again: "We need to send a team to M5K-758 and question the people there and to see if the DHD tells us anything about where they went. I'll get Rodney on the case. Major, I want you to give out the order to look out for every little suspicious bit to all the teams currently off-world or scheduled to go off-world in the next two days." He wants to acknowledge and get to work immediately, but Woolsey gives Sheppard a look that says pretty clearly "I'm still your boss, no matter how often you forget that." and Sheppard clears his throat and says: "That is, if Mr. Woolsey approves of this."
"Of course I do." Yep, Woolsey knows how to needle Sheppard every once in a while, although he starts to suspect that by now it's become a kind of ritual between the two of them rather than serious differences.
"Thank you, sir." And of course the sarcastic answer that almost borders on insolent is part of the ritual as well. "Anyway… I better go and tell Ronon and Rodney about this…" Yeah, better Sheppard than himself, he thinks. Both Ronon and Rodney seem to have taken an interest in Jennifer Keller, and he really doesn't want to tell either of them that she happened to disappear on a mission that had been deemed perfectly save. "… and then see how Teyla's doing." Of course. That was to be expected. As a matter of fact, it surprises him that it comes pretty late, considering how protective Sheppard always is of Teyla.
Woolsey just nods. "See that you do, Colonel. And I want all of you in the conference room in two hours. I trust you to have a few more leads by then." With that, he disappears into his office.
The minute Woolsey has shut his door, Sheppard turns to him and says in a voice low enough that he's the only one hearing it over the buzz of the Control Room: "I know you'll be hearing this a lot in the next few hours, but: We'll find them. I want you to remember that. And I need you to stay sane. So don't you dare work yourself to death with this one."
Well… that surprises him a little. Probably Sheppard's way of telling him not to lose his head over his girlfriend. Thing is: The only way to keep him away from letting his worry prevail is work, work and even more work. He sighs. "Wouldn't dare dream of it, sir."
"That's my second-in-command. Get to work." Sheppard claps him on the shoulder, and he just gives him a nod to go back and carry out his tasks.
A/N: Yet another chapter... but don't get used to it ;) I just really wanted to upload this one, because several people have been asking for "the other side of the fence", and I didn't want to let you hanging because on Monday I scamper off home again, with no laptop and no back-up hard-drive (my dad lets me use one of his flash drives, at least for my text files... TPTB bless my dad ;)) and don't know when I'll be able to up-date again.