AN: Some spoilers for Atlantis Season 3 here. Enter silly comment here.
Chapter Three
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Moya, Holding Cell 47 (16 arns, 322 microts after contact)The rest of the night, if you could call it that, went on without much of a disturbance. Much being the debatably word. Some three hours or so after they fell asleep, Ronon woke them up in a fit of rage. He ended up kicking something heavy across the room, where it struck the wall and stopped moving.
A droid, or a DRD, to be exact. It added Ronon to the ranks of alien linguistics with its microbe injection.
Rodney sat hovering over the broken DRD the next 'morning', making comments under his breath about its frustratingly complex framework. Without tools, of course, he couldn't just reverse engineer it right there and then. It was also a bit big to just shove in your pocket to take home as a souvenir.
For some reason, the caused Sheppard to have a vivid image appear in his mind of McKay and Weir standing in the 'gate room together. Weir would ask, "Is that a DRD in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?" to which everyone would laugh and they'd all stand around a table and toast to their new alien friends.
Probable alien friends. Maybe. He didn't want to have to kill anyone, but if this didn't work out then he might not have a choice.
"So what's the plan?" said Ronon, after a prolonged silence.
Sheppard sighed. Usually, he'd turn to McKay for the insane escape plans for their prisoner situations in a completely foreign environment. But so far, the scientist had made it absolutely clear that they couldn't possibly rely on his technical skills to escape from a cell made from metal and living tissue. Wraith technology was easy—because it was technology. This was…well, anatomy. Biology. He needed Carson for this department.
"There is no plan yet," he told the Satedan, leaning against the web-like 'bars' that imprisoned them. "Unless negotiating the terms of our surrender counts as a plan, which I'm guessing it doesn't, we're not going anywhere until we talk to Crichton again."
"Heh heh, I can arrange that."
The voice came from outside. Teyla, who had been keeping still until now, stepped up to the bars in anticipation. Through the gaps, they watched as some kind of hovering craft floated down the hall towards them and stopped just in front of their cell. There was small, green, wrinkled creature sitting on top, squinting his globular eyes at Sheppard. He appeared to be evaluating him.
"My name is Rygel the Sixteenth, former Dominar of the Hynerian Empire, ruler of over six hundred billion people," the alien introduced himself in a clearly superior, gravelly voice. "And I can help you escape, if you'll help me in return."
Sheppard thought of himself to be a fairly good judge of character, and he didn't like this Rygel already. Not that he didn't appreciate the little guy's offer, but he was getting the impression that it wasn't a very reliable one. Not to mention the fact that he was only two feet tall and closely resembled a frog. And his breath smelled horrible—kind of like Rodney's after three days of coffee-induced alertness.
"Well, your royal highness," he said smoothly. "It's very nice of you to offer, but I think we can handle ourselves just fine."
"Hmph," the alien grunted. "So you say now, but in just a few arns you'll think differently. If you and I work together, I can get you your weapons back. There's only a couple of other crew members aboard—you can easily overcome them and take over the ship."
Sheppard had no intention of doing such a thing. He kept his mouth shut and stared coldly at the 'former Dominar'. If they hadn't screwed things up already, trusting this wide-mouthed little conspirator would.
After a minute, Rygel the Sixteeth looked grimly satisfied. "Good," he huffed, changing in demeanor entirely. "You're smarter than you look, which is, to say, not very." Casually, his chair floated closer to the panel next to their cell.
"What are you doing?" said Ronon.
"What does it look like, you overgrown Belvarian rodent?" growled the Hynerian. "You passed the blotching test, and now I'm letting you out."
"Test? What test?" snapped McKay, standing to the left of Sheppard's shoulder.
Rygel stabbed a gnarled finger at the last digit on the control panel. "My test," he said. "I don't trust mammals. Your minds are too simple for my vastly superior intellect to comprehend."
The cell door slid open with a slight 'whoosh' and the fourth wall of their prison was suddenly gone. Now something felt awkward…
"And if Colonel Sheppard had accepted your proposal," Teyla said cautiously. "What would have happened?"
"Yotz if I know! You'd have to go through Pilot to get a hold of this Leviathan, and Crichton before that! We'd all rather die fighting for her than let her fall into Plokavian hands."
"We're not Plokavian," Sheppard argued, annoyed that he had to yet again point this out. "I don't even know what the hell that means!"
"Of course you're not Plokavian," said the Hynerian condescendingly. "You'd have to look like melted gorlack and smell worse than a pile of barkan dren. Hmm, now that I think about it, I do see why the boy mistook you for one!" He broke off chuckling at his own awful pun, turned his chair around and started to float away.
Sheppard took a moment to notice the half dozen DRDs surrounding the opening into the corridor outside. This was without a doubt meant to be their escort. It meant they were supposed to follow the little green alien, and John wasn't feeling too great about their destination. Knowing next to nothing about these people, even a polite invitation could mean a short walk to their execution.
"Well, at least we know one thing for sure," he muttered, stepping forward.
McKay rolled his eyes at him, keeping a pace or two behind them as they fell in behind the ex-Dominar's floating chair. "Oh, and what exactly is that, Colonel?"
"They're not Wraith."
"Hmmm, observant as always, aren't we?"
"That's a good thing, Rodney."
"Yeah…until they shove us out an airlock, or worse! I can think of a hundred things this ship might be capable of that could kill us in a split second or less!"
"Great! Why don't you share them with us, Rodney? It'll put everyone in a better mood!"
"Perhaps it is best you save this discussion for another time," Teyla interrupted over the hum of the DRDs that trailed behind.
The rest of the journey was spent in silence—John mad at Rodney and vice versa, and Teyla clearly annoyed with them both for behaving like children in the midst of a crisis. Ronon walked like a statue…a walking statue. Not the kind that just stood there and posed.
Sheppard hoped the look on his face didn't mean he was going to try and overpower Rygel. That wouldn't be good for points in the 'Let's Make an Alliance' show.
Moya, Command Center (16 arns, 1020 microts after contact)
There were two people standing at their destination—a large room that Sheppard indistinctly remembered from their first survey of the ship. This must be their control center, or 'bridge' or whatever strange alien word they had for it. One the far wall, a large window (screen?) displayed a vast field of stars and the ghostlike shape of the dull gray planet several hundred thousand miles away.
One of the room's occupants was Commander John Crichton. The other was a tall, relatively attractive-looking woman with long, black hair. She glanced up at them guardedly as the team entered the chamber behind Rygel. D'Argo was seated on the edge of one of the consoles, swinging his legs in time to a strange tune he was humming. When he saw them, he abruptly went quiet.
"The 'Kavian lovers are here," he stated rudely.
"D'Argo," warned the woman with a stroke of patience. "I want you to go back to the hangar and finished polishing those DRDs for me, all right? You're still very much grounded, young man."
Reproachfully, the boy hopped down to the floor. With one last glare that could have melted a space glacier, he turned his back on the Atlanteans and fled out of the room.
"I seriously don't know where he gets that behaviour from," the black-haired woman said after he'd gone, turning a pair of dark cerulean eyes on Sheppard. She crossed her arms. "Now will one of you kindly explain to me why my son thinks you attempted to kill our Pilot?"
The colonel felt the guilt tap him on the shoulder. That had been Ronon's doing, but Ronon was his responsibility. As the team leader, he was the one accountable. "Yeah, sorry about that," he said with as much sincerity as he could muster. "Everyone's a bit…freaked about all this. We didn't know what to expect, so pretty much everything that's happened so far was just self-defense."
"Is that right?" Her expression didn't change. Neither did her derision. "So what you're trying to tell me is that he…attacked you first?"
"Honey, it's not nice to patronize," said John Crichton. He stood up straight in one abrupt movement and faced them. "They are, after all, fellow Earthlings. We come in peace, take me to your leader, blah blah blah…" He clapped his hands in front of him and rubbed them together. "So, who wants to start first?"
McKay gave him that arrogant, smug glare with half-lidded eyes. "What are you talking about?"
"Well, come on! I've been through your stuff. And I gotta say, they weren't selllin' a whole lot of PowerBars at the last commerce planet, so start yappin'."
"How do you know about Earth?" snapped Rodney. "In fact, why are we the ones that have to explain ourselves? We're not the ones toting around someone who looks like the ungodly lovechild of Kermit the Frog and Yoda, not to mention the gigantic crustacean you've got plugged into that giant pit of terror."
"Why you ungrateful, son of a—little—" Rygel growled.
"Rygel, down," Crichton interrupted. Suddenly, he reached down to his holster and whipped out the pistol weapon he'd been wielding earlier. He pointed it at McKay. "I've done some guesstimating in my time aboard this ship and I'd say Moya's about thirty or forty thousand cubic feet, give or take a dench. You could crawl around on your hands and knees, searching for the place where I put your weapons, but you'd never find it. Think of it as an equation of probability—the number of arns you spend searching one quadrant multiplied by a variable relationship between surface area and volume. That's a lot of Moya."
"All right, we get it. You have us at a disadvantage," Sheppard argued, not happy with the fact this guy was threatening his team member. "Just put the damn gun away. What do you want us to say? Yeah, we're from Earth. We're part of the Stargate program; it's a facility under Cheyenne Mountain. Right now we're on an expedition in a city called Atlantis, which just happens to be located in this galaxy, the Pegasus Galaxy. Does this answer your question?"
"Wait a minute," Rodney said quietly, slowly lowering his arms to his sides. An awestruck look of realization washed over him. "You're John Crichton. The Commander John Crichton who originally founded IASA Farscape project!"
Sheppard turned on him with an incredulous glare. "What?"
Rodney's face lit up like a Lite Brite. "I-i-it's the International Aeronautics and…"
"…Space Association," Crichton finished with him. "So you've heard of me. Good for you."
"But you're supposed to be dead," the physicist complained defensively. "Your test module was ripped apart just outside of Earth's orbit."
"Long story, short version: wormhole. Got lost, fought a war, got married, had a son. Retired. Living well now. You know, it was almost a happy ending until you guys arrived. Now I'm just a…a little curious to find out why it's such a coincidence you guys show up right after we're attacked by a Plokavian war ship, sent hurtling a distance through hyperspace that's not possible into another galaxy, thus exhausting both Moya and Pilot, leaving us stranded in the middle of a no-go zone without a clue how to find Hezmana from here!"
The ferocity in which we was dressing them down matched the gaze of the woman as she stared relentlessly. Sheppard found himself at a loss for words. How could he explain something he couldn't explain?
To some small fortune, he didn't have to. A holographic viewscreen of some kind popped up behind the commander, displaying once more the fact of the ship's pilot—looking somewhat healthier now.
"Commander, there is…another ship approaching Moya," he announced, sounding a cross between perplexed and nervous. "It's fast," he added with evident surprise.
"You've got to be frelling me!" barked Crichton, spinning on the clamshell viewer while the Lantean team continued to watch, stunned. "Wind kind of ship? Is it the Plokavians? Can we Starburst yet?"
"I am trying to determine that," Pilot shot back defensively. "Starburst is out of the question. As for the ship, it's a small transport vessel. And it's…not Plokavian. I don't know what it is."
"Care to wager a guess?" roared the commander.
Pilot grimaced at his console, keeping his well-developed temper at bay. "No, Commander. Wait…the ship is accelerating—it's arming its weapons! Crichton!"
Moya, Hangar (16 arns, 1184 microts after contact)
D'Argo stormed down the hall, ignoring the trail of DRDs that chased after him, creating a symphony of squawks and sputters as they tried futilely to calm him down. He also ignored the pile of inactive DRDs on the bench in the open hangar. He was tired to doing chores, he was tired of being punished unfairly, and he was tired of his parents not believe him about anything! Someone wanted to hurt Moya, to take her away, but all they could think about was these stupid Sebacean people and their stupid cargo!
He thought of talking to Pilot, but he knew from experience that Pilot always listened to his Dad about everything. And Mom. Uncle Rygel never took him seriously, so that left him only one ally left on the entire Leviathan. Gala.
Gala was an Alwek, a race that resembled an animal his dad had told him about called a 'cat', and they were hardly a third the size of his parents—docile and curious, like children. Even though she was a fully-grown woman of her kind, she was like him in a lot of ways. On top of it all, she was utterly incapable of seeing fault in anyone. Her kind had a hard time believing in or grasping the concept of 'wrong', which usually got her into a lot of trouble.
He found her sprawled on top of the module, basking in some invisible light above.
"Hello, Gala," he greeted somberly, kicking lazily at an empty canister on the ground.
"Oh!" she squeaked, jumping around with remarkable reflexes. She leaned over the edge of a crate and blinked at him. "D'Arrrrgo?" she purred. "Didn't'choo go with yourrrr parrrents to the command centerrr?"
"I'm still grounded," he reminded her unhappily. He sat down on an upturned box and looked miserably. "They don't believe me about those Sebacean people. They think I'm making it up."
"Oh," she said again, thinking. "Arrrre you?"
"No! I'm not! I really do hear someone! When the Plokavians were attacking, it told me they were going to come and take Moya away!"
"And 'dis would be wrrrong?" she asked him, lounging again. "Arrre the Pl'kavians the bad guys now?"
"I…I don't know." He felt a little surprise. He really didn't know if Plokavians were bad—he just knew that they wanted Moya. Maybe he'd heard the voice wrong? Why would it lie to him? Was it confused?
He wanted to ask it a thousand questions, but it never really did respond to him at all. It just randomly told him things, or rather…he heard them, like they were part of someone else's conversation, and he was just listening in. Right now, it wasn't saying anything. But he felt extremely scared. Something was coming, and it would hurt them, and he knew it had something to do with those strange Sebacean people!
Suddenly, he realized what he should do. The stranger's ship! He could find out what they were really up to by sneaking into their ship! Maybe he'd find proof that they were lying—that they wre really in league with the bad people coming to hurt Moya!
Renewed by this sudden revelation, he leapt to his feet and ran towards the section of the hangar that housed the Sebacean ship. "Thanks, Gala!" he cried over his shoulder.
"Surrrre," she sighed. "Come back an' play wit' me soon, o-kay?"
D'Argo felt his chest swell with excitement. He'd finally be able to prove that he was right…at least once! He put on an extra burst of speed and went hunting for clues.
Moya, Command Center (16 arns, 1393 microts after contact)
"Move!" shouted both Crichton and Sheppard at the same time.
Before anyone could react to that, the Leviathan shook heavily under impact of an outside shot. Everyone was thrown off balance momentarily—with the exception of Rygel. Pilot's image cut out for a moment and then reappeared.
"Moya's…been hit," he announced forcefully, obviously feeling some of her pain himself. "The attack vessel has…slowed. I'm receiving a message."
"Let's hear it," said Crichton without thinking. "I mean…patch it through."
A moment later, a very tantalizing, contemptuous voice slithered into the chamber that Sheppard recognized almost immediately.
"Strange alien vessel," it hissed. "We are well aware you are not equipped with weapons and are powerless against our strength. We demand that you surrender and permit my brethren to board. We do not intend to cause you any grief."
"Oh, you have to be kidding me," groaned Sheppard. "Yeah, nice try, Wraith!" he shouted, a bit louder. He scanned the ceiling, as if determined to find some trace of the hideous blue-gray face inside the ship. "We're sort of keen on staying alive for the time being. I'm sure our new buddies would rather any alternative over getting the life sucked out of them by you."
There was a moment of shock for everybody. On their end, Crichton and the woman—Aeryn Sun, he remembered suddenly, having heard the name spoke between the commander and the pilot—glowered at him, though somehow realizing that he was better qualified with dealing with this new threat than they were. Crichton, however, did look like he was on the verge of exploding.
"Colonel Sheppard," the Wraith finally said, with a smooth tone that was clearly amused. "This is rather unexpected, meeting you here. You should know how well your reputation precedes you."
"Glad to know I'm admired among you folk," the colonel grated. "Look, we're kind of busy here right now. Why don't you just turn around and go back to where you came from? You're wasting your time if you think your half-assed bluff is going to work."
"Oh, but I think it is," it replied. "Grant us a safe landing in your ship now, or I will have no choice but to rip it apart. It's your choice, Colonel."
"No, that's Moya's choice," Crichton interrupted harshly. "So whatever it is you think you're doing, it's in her metaphorical hands. Pilot?"
"Moya is terrified," Pilot informed them, upset. "She is strongly considering letting them board."
"Well, don't!" Sheppard replied. "That is seriously that last thing you want to do, Moya! I don't know if you can hear me, but you can't go trusting a Wraith, no matter what he says!"
"Sheppard, your words are chosen rather peculiarly, especially considering how you yourself did exactly that…at one time."
The sound of the Wraith's voice had change, and there was a more familiar husk to it. The colonel's entire body went rigid with realization.
"No," he refuted. "No, it can't be…"
"Yes," hissed the Genii's former prisoner. "Unfortunately for you, I still remember our agreement from the last time we met." A thoughtful pause. "I believe all bets are…off."
AN: Methinks this will be a rather long story.