Disclaimer: Stargate Atlantis - and all the characters and settings related to the show - do not belong to me, obviously. That credit goes to MGM, Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper. The plot of this little story, however, does.
A/N – Hello again, my wonderful, amazing readers! Thank you so much for your continued support – it really means the world to me, and I hope I can keep meeting your very high standards. To that end, here's chapter eleven! I'm sorry it took over a month for me to post it, but unfortunately other things have had to come first. Even so, it's here now (finally) and I really hope you like it. Enjoy!
~ Alone ~
Part Eleven
"C'mon, McKay," Ronon growled, crossing his arms in a way that could only be described as part impatience, part threat. "What the hell are we waiting for?"
The Satedan was stood beside Beckett, Teyla and Lorne inside one of the two jumpers on board the Daedalus, watching Rodney do the final checks on the systems he'd rigged up to try and keep the ship in flight once they entered the treacherous atmosphere of the planet where they'd abandoned Sheppard all those weeks ago.
Even though they knew for certain that Sheppard was on the planet now – something they'd finally been able to confirm by locating the signal from the Colonel's subcutaneous transmitter – it actually didn't do much to lesson Rodney's nerves about the upcoming mission. In fact, being so close now only made him even more anxious…
It was clear just by the looks of determination on the faces of his friends that they were ready to go and get Sheppard back using whatever means necessary, but Rodney understood things about this planet that they just didn't, and he knew that if they weren't careful, they probably wouldn't even make it to Sheppard's location alive, let alone take him home in one piece.
So Rodney did his best to ignore the big Satedan's frustration – and his own growing frustration as well, for that matter – instead focusing all his energy on the task at hand. After all, they were only a few minutes away from flying into somewhat unknown territory; it wouldn't hurt to be absolutely prepared, especially since the only thing they did know about this planet was that it didn't like Ancient technology…
John would definitely kill them himself if they died trying to save him.
Rodney shook his head and carried on working on the jumper, as he had for the last couple of hours, making sure that it would keep them in the air. He was quietly confident that his alterations would be enough, but he didn't voice it. They were all on edge enough already. In fact, Ronon in particular looked ready to push him to the front of the jumper any minute, whether the final checks were done or not…
Rodney sighed, and finally put down his PDA. For once, he understood exactly where the big Satedan was coming from. Despite his nerves, he'd been itching to set off hours ago, but logic had so far prevailed.
But the truth was, he'd done everything he could now. It would either work, or it wouldn't, but there was only one real way to find out.
He put down his PDA and turned to face his friends. It was time to go.
Without even saying a word, he began to move to the front of the jumper, followed closely by Teyla, Beckett and Lorne, who would be joining them on this trip in lieu of Sheppard. Ronon hung towards the back of the jumper, arms crossed but eyes sharp. He was ready to go, that much was clear. They all were.
Rodney sat in the passenger seat without a fight, relieved not to be taking responsibility of piloting the jumper this time. Lorne was easily the superior pilot, bettered only by Sheppard himself, and anyway, Rodney wasn't sure he would have been able to fly the jumper in a straight line at the moment, not with his shaky hands and pounding heart. God, what if Sheppard was already…?
"Rodney," Teyla said softly, her hand resting on his shoulder. She stood behind his seat, looking as calm as ever. She couldn't be though, he knew that. She was probably anxious as the rest of them - just better at hiding it.
Rodney swallowed. "What if…?"
He couldn't even finish the thought, let alone the sentence, but it seemed Teyla understood anyway.
"We will bring him home, Rodney," she said, eyes now fixed to the window as the jumper began to rise up. "One way or another, we will bring him home."
"Yep," Ronon said from the back of the jumper with a certainness that Rodney envied, "We don't leave our people behind."
Rodney took a deep breath and released it slowly. He didn't know why that helped him calm down, but it did. Maybe it was the fact that Ronon, Teyla and Lorne looked ready to take down an army trying to find Sheppard. Or maybe it was the fact that it was Ronon and Teyla who were saying these things – two people who were born on other worlds, but were more like family than anyone else he knew.
Or maybe it was simply the fact that Ronon was right. They didn't leave their people behind, and Sheppard – their leader, their friend – was no exception.
We don't leave our people behind.
Rodney braced himself in the seat as they took off. Beckett, Teyla and Ronon took their seats in the back as well, and seconds later they finally shot free of the Daedalus, heading straight for the planet. He felt sick, anxious, scared and unprepared, but he also felt adrenaline rush through him, as well as a flash of certainty that he honestly wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else; a realisation that took him completely by surprise.
Generally, Rodney hated action almost as much as he hated waiting. Almost. He much preferred to be locked away in his lab, working on some unsolved mystery of the universe or a project that would probably change all life on Earth if only he could get the idiots he worked with to actually pull their weight and help him.
But in this case, with so much at stake, he knew he wouldn't have let anyone go on this mission in his place. This was his friend, and Teyla was right…
One way or another, they would bring him home.
"Pull up! Pull up!"
"Dammit, McKay, I'm trying!" Lorne retorted through gritted teeth. "The controls aren't responding anymore."
"That's…impossible!" Rodney replied, panicked eyes fixed on his PDA. The readings didn't lie though. His alterations had worked…for all of ten minutes. Now they weren't flying anymore; they were falling…
The rain was battering down on them as their decent quickened, making it difficult to see anything out of the front window. All he knew was that they were close to where they'd last detected Sheppard's subcutaneous transmitter; just not close enough...
The jumper, for all intents and purposes, was dead. They were going down hard, and Rodney didn't know how to stop it.
"Obviously not," Lorne said bluntly, then in full commander mode stated, "Everyone, get strapped in. This is going to be bumpy."
They did as he said without a second thought, but Rodney had a feeling it wasn't to make much difference. There was no doubt about it; this was going to hurt…
"Hold on!" Lorne yelled, and Rodney closed his eyes, praying to a god that he absolutely didn't believe in to spare their lives. The jumper was rattling with the pressure of gravity, but there was almost no noise. They were holding their breaths as their free-fall gathered unimaginable speed. The ground was coming up quickly, and Rodney was glad now that he couldn't see it. He didn't want to know how long he had left before –
Rodney didn't get to finish that thought. The ground was coming up too hard, too quickly, and all he could comprehend was the roaring in his ears and the pounding in his chest.
Then, in no time at all, it was over.
"Ow…"
Rodney swallowed, but couldn't seem to make his body do anything else. Even his eyes wouldn't open, though he wasn't sure he wanted them to anyway. Knowing his luck, he'd find himself hanging off the side of a cliff, or a couple of metres away from a group of rabid dogs. Nope, he'd keep his eyes closed, thank you very much…
"McKay, you alright?"
The voice seeped into his battered mind, but he did his best to ignore it.
"I think he banged his head on the console," another male voice stated. A hand reached at his neck, and Rodney wanted to push it away. He couldn't seem to gather the energy though, so he settled for a scowl instead. "He's alive."
Of course I'm alive, you idiots, Rodney thought silently. He would have said it aloud too, but his vocal chords weren't really working either. Damn, his head hurt.
"McKay, get up," came the first voice again. Rodney recognised it this time, though it didn't do a lot to reassure him. His memory was fuzzy, but he had a feeling that yet another of their missions had gone wrong. Surely Sheppard had learnt by now…
Wait, Rodney thought. They were here for Sheppard, not with him.
We don't leave our people behind.
"Rodney?"
"M'okay," he mumbled, trying to pull himself awake. He finally managed to open his eyes, but had to blink several times before the blurriness finally faded. When it did, what he saw didn't really do much to reassure him.
It was darker than he'd expected it would be, which was weird since it had been daytime when they'd broken through the atmosphere towards the place where they'd detected Sheppard's signal. It also felt like they were sitting at an angle, as if they hadn't exactly landed horizontally…
"What happened?" he said, blinking again. As he looked around he noticed that the lights of the jumper had gone off, which went some way to explaining the darkness, although there was some light coming from the back of the jumper. Rodney's head hurt too much to turn around fully, but he assumed the back hatch was open.
Of course the main reason it was dark became immediately obvious as soon as Rodney looked out of the front window. It was covered in branches and leaves, blocking most of the light from breaking through and leaving him with the impression that they were buried under a mountain of trees, although he knew that it was more likely they'd landed on top of one. Rodney squinted. It was still raining as well. Of course, that was probably the least of their problems…
"We crashed," said Lorne bluntly, rubbing at his neck. Rodney could hear shuffling from the back of the jumper, which he assumed meant everyone was okay.
"Into a tree!" Rodney retorted, closing his eyes when his vision swam. "I thought you were supposed to be a good pilot?!"
"I aimed for the trees, McKay," Lorne replied with a long-suffering sigh. "Softened our landing a bit."
McKay considered that, but his head hurt too much to argue any further.
"Speaking of which," Beckett began, reassuring Rodney that the doctor had survived the crash. "What did happen?"
"Lost all control five minutes from the landing site," Lorne reported. He shot Rodney an accusing look, which was a little out of character from the normally calm and unflappable soldier. "All I could do was aim for this patch of trees and hope for the best."
That bit of flying had probably saved their lives, but Rodney didn't acknowledge that aloud. He had other things on his mind now. Like what the hell had happened…
"Rodney?" prompted Teyla softly.
"I'm fine," Rodney sighed and rubbed a hand across his face. "PDA?"
Rodney glanced round the jumper, and watched as Ronon, with a great deal more care than he usually showed, bent over and managed to fish it out from under the piles of equipment strewn across the floor of their fallen jumper. "Here."
Rodney took it, then immediately tried to start it up. "Dead as well," he told them. "Dammit."
"I thought you'd fixed the issue with the Ancient technology," Ronon said accusingly, clearly trying to get a rise out of the scientist.
"Obviously not," Rodney reported angrily. The truth was, he had absolutely no idea why his adjustments hadn't worked, which only served to piss him off even more.
"Rodney…" warned Carson, probably sensing that Rodney was close to erupting.
"Look it doesn't matter now, does it?" Rodney interrupted. "We're stuck in a tree and we have no way to get back to the Daedalus. Some rescuers we are."
"Doesn't matter," Ronon replied, rooting around for his back. He began to gather as many of the supplies as he could.
"Ronon is right, Rodney," Teyla said softly. "We must still try to locate John. We cannot give up now, not when we are so close to finding him."
"Aye, lass," Beckett said, joining Ronon in gathering up as many supplies as he could. "That's the spirit. We're not far away now. Only a short, brisk walk, I'm sure."
"You all seem to be forgetting that we're stuck in a tree," Rodney shot back irritably, although it was half-hearted at best. The truth was, he knew they were right. Even stuck in a tree, they couldn't give up now.
"Have you taken a look out back yet, McKay?" Lorne said, fighting a small smile.
"Of course I glanced – "
"Just look," Ronon replied gruffly.
Rodney bit back a scathing retort, instead focusing on pulling himself out of the passenger seat and turning round without puking. He blinked hard in an attempt to fight against the sudden head rush, and eventually it passed.
Once he got his bearings, he stood on shaky legs and turned his attention to the back hatch, just in time to see Ronon jump right out of it.
Rodney moved forward almost on instinct, although he knew he didn't have any chance of stopping the idiot. What the hell was he thinking…?
"Rodney, Ronon is fine," Teyla said patiently. "Look closer."
So Rodney did, and when he crept forwards, moving closer to the open hatch door, he realised what they were trying to tell them.
"Hey, McKay," Ronon waved. He was standing on the forest floor, looking very much alive. The fact that the ground was only a two or three metres from the hatch of the jumper would probably explain why, but Rodney's brain was still working a little slowly...
"We were lucky," Lorne said from Rodney's side. He reached down to pick up on of their packs. "We hit the trees at just the right speed. Any slower and we would have stopped too far away from the ground to get down safely; any faster and only the ground would've stopped us, and not in a good way."
Lorne dragged the pack forwards, then stood over the edge and let the pack fall down to Ronon's waiting arms. The jumper was clearly at an angle, and now that his brain was starting to catch on to their situation, Rodney had the sudden thought that being on an angle probably wasn't a good thing. It likely meant that they were only seconds away from slipping the rest of the way towards the ground…
"The jumper's not going anywhere," Beckett said, correctly guessing the direction of Rodney's thoughts. "We're well and truly stuck, Rodney, so don't look so worried."
To his credit though, the doctor didn't comment on the clear panic he could probably see sketched across Rodney's face.
Instead Beckett said, "If it was going to fall, it would have done so by now. We're alive, and we're going to stay that way, okay?"
"Yeah, lucky us," Rodney said, peering down to Ronon. It didn't look very far, but he still felt a fluttering in his belly at the thought of jumping down. His head swam again, and this time he wasn't sure if it was his head wound or a sudden bout of vertigo that was causing his dizziness. All he knew for sure was that he didn't want to jump…
Of course, Teyla didn't share Rodney's reservations. Instead she took one last look at him – part sympathy, part exasperation – and then leapt down to the ground with the gracefulness of a cat. Rodney had a feeling that he would probably look like an elephant on roller skates.
"Come on, Rodney," Teyla said encouragingly. She held out her hand, even though he was too far away to grab it. He felt like a child. "Do it for the Colonel. Do it for John."
We don't leave our people behind…
"Fine," he muttered. Honestly, the things he did for John Sheppard…
Then he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and jumped.
The storm rolled on outside, but John was barely aware of anything now but the storm raging in his own mind.
John felt as if he was trapped in a nightmare. He knew it wasn't real, that the things he was seeing were all just figments of his feverish mind, but even with that knowledge he still couldn't prevent a niggling doubt from taking up residence in his thoughts. Because it felt real. It felt terrifying and sickening and confusing and so completely real.
He could actually hear his father raging at him, telling him that he had ruined every opportunity he had ever been given, that he had wasted the life that had been so carefully constructed for him.
He could actually see Holland, and Ford, and countless other men and women – some with names, others nameless, but all laying down their lives for him, on his orders. They died over and over again, right in front of him, and each time he was powerless to stop it happening.
And most of all, he could actually feel every little bit of pain that had come at him from every side, in every form imaginable; everything from his early childhood accidents, right up until the more recent torture and battle wounds he had endured. He remembered how badly it had all hurt the first time, but now, as he lay on the floor of the empty jumper, a broken man in every sense of the word, the pain was going to destroy him. Because he had no defences left. He couldn't do it again. He couldn't…
He gripped his hands tightly, but there was nothing to hold onto; no comfort to be found. John fell in and out of consciousness, of awareness; one minute he was on the battlefield, the next he was in the jumper again.
In feverish desperation, John twisted on the floor of the jumper, trying to get as comfortable as he could whilst the pain raged on. He didn't have enough energy to even lift his head though, so he knew, in a brief moment of clear thinking, that there was nothing he could do to make it any better.
His whole body felt…off. He didn't feel right in his own skin; one minute he felt red-hot, the next he felt ice-cold. There was no pattern to it either, so it kept catching him off guard, making it impossible for him to relax. It was like his own personal hell, complete with a hellhound – in this case, an overgrown puppy - guarding the entrance to what would undoubtedly be his tomb.
Jett – the only companion that he knew was real - had been staring out of the open hatch into the rain soaked treeline for the last couple of hours, ears pricked as if he was picking something up. John, for his part, didn't really care anymore. No matter what was coming now, he had a feeling that it was going to arrive too late.
"Sorry, buddy," John whispered in a final moment of clarity. Jett whined as he turned to look at him but the big dog didn't move any closer. John was glad. He knew that this would be hard enough already without the added guilt of leaving Jett alone. He didn't want to give up, but it was time. "Goodbye, Jett."
Then John took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
This time, he didn't expect to open them again.
"Come on, McKay, hurry up," Ronon called from the front of their tired, sodden troop. They were drenched, but the wind and the rain were showing no sign of letting up. The trees and bushes that they were hacking their way through didn't offer much protection either, but they marched on anyway.
We don't leave our people behind.
"I'm going as fast as I can," Rodney snapped back. He would have said something more cutting, but he was struggling for breath as it was, and he knew that if he wanted to arrive at Sheppard's location in one piece, he would need to conserve as much energy now as possible. Of course the fact that Ronon was setting a pace that would have been difficult even for some of the marines back on Atlantis certainly wasn't making that task any easier...
Rodney swallowed hard as he wiped rain water out of his eyes. His feet kept him moving forward, but his chest felt tight, as if time was pressing in on him. They didn't have much time left, he could feel it, and yet they were so close…
Or at least they thought they were close. His PDA was completely dead, so they were relying on Rodney's memory, and Ronon's sense of direction. What could possibly go wrong…?
"Not to be the child in the backseat or anything, but are we nearly there yet?" Carson asked, clearly ready for a rest.
"Shut up, Carson," Rodney muttered, gasping for breath, although his voice didn't have much bite in it. Rodney was pleased to see that the doctor was finding the march as hard as he was, but the thought didn't bring as much comfort as it usually would.
The truth was, he wasn't sure how much longer he would be able to keep going himself.
Rodney allowed his eyes to close, even as his feet kept plodding forward. He was starting to feel a little dizzy, even with the wind and the rain blasting in his face, and he had a feeling that if they didn't stop for a rest soon, he wasn't going to make it to Sheppard at all…
"McKay!"
Rodney jerked his eyes open, and stumbled to a halt, taking a second to get his bearings. Damn, he must've blacked out for a second, because it had taken him almost walking into Lorne before he'd even realised that the rest of the team had actually stopped walking.
"Rodney," Teyla soothed, steadying him slightly. Annoyingly, she didn't look out of breath at all. "Which way now?"
"Oh," he mumbled, running a hand over his face. He felt cold, wet, tired, and yet oddly wired, making it difficult to concentrate. Still, he had to try…
Rodney closed his eyes as he tried to picture the map in his mind. Lorne had been fairly confident of where they'd crashed so the rest of the journey should have been easy to work out. The trouble was, Rodney was having to rely on his own battered and exhausted brain to get them from A to Sheppard. He was a genius, yes, but he wasn't a miracle worker…
"McKay…" prompted Ronon impatiently.
"Okay, bear right for a couple more minutes, then keep going straight ahead," Rodney replied with a sigh, hoping that he was right. "We should see Sheppard in five minutes, tops."
What state Sheppard would be in when they found him was anyone's guess, but Rodney didn't bother voicing that particular concern. The people standing beside him knew the risks better than anyone, and nothing he said was going to stop them now. Teyla was right; they couldn't give up, not when they were so close.
We don't leave our people behind…
Rodney squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. No matter what, they were going to bring Sheppard home.
A/N – So how was it? Liking the tension and suspense? I hope you're still enjoying the story – if so, let me know, because I'd love to hear from you! The next chapter is shaping up to be my favourite of the whole story so far, and I'm sure you can guess why. Hopefully the wait won't be quite as long, but I know better than to make any promises. Until then, thanks for reading!