Sometime...Somehow... Part III
Hunting the beetles came as easy to him now as long division used to be. His pocket knife, his shoes which had worn through the soles in places, his clothing which were ragged and torn and, of course, his transponder, the most valuable treasure of all, were his only possessions. Rodney kept them all safe in his pockets, or buried in the sand in his cave. But the transponder he kept on him at all times. The transponder was protected above all else. It was his life and hope. He assumed it was still working but there was no way to tell.
His little knife, the blade rusty and dinted from so much use, easily sliced into the upturned creature, bisecting it down the middle. The dark juices of its flesh he swiftly drank; it was the only source of fat in his diet and no liquid that was safe to drink was ever wasted. The beetle's internal organs he mashed into a paste and mixed with the juice of the High Ground Plant, a low growing leafy thing reminiscent of beet tops which roots forced its way right into the rock.
Rodney had once thought to assign the plant a more scientific and proper designation, something in Latin or German, but laughed at himself for how silly he was being. Why bother when it was a genus of exactly one? At least it grew abundantly, its stalks filled with sweet nectar which made the beetle protein much more palatable. Without any extra thought on the matter, Rodney knew he was getting a certain level of vitamin C from the plant since he had not developed any of the illnesses resulting from a lack of it.
Score one for the cast-away. The sorely needed proteins derived from the beetle meat, and whatever fat was present in its body juices; this made up the bulk of his food intake.
In the relative safety of his crawl-space in the Big Mountain, Rodney mashed the flesh with the juices and began eating. His thoughts strayed to food most of the time, and to being warm at night, and to water, and to the hunting of bugs.
But most of all his mind and eyes went to the sky where after nearly three years he still hoped to see a ship. Sometimes he swore he could hear one slicing through the air like a great silver bird, sending out to him its great cry of battle, like a Thunderbird's call when it soars above the plains. But it was just the bitter wind singing through Dune Valley.
No birds flew here that he had ever seen. The circumference of the planet had to be twice that of earth for, when he climbed to the pinnacle of his Big Mountain, he estimated he could see beyond forty miles. On Earth it was twenty miles or so. On Atlantis, twenty-two-point-nine-five-seven-one.
He finished his meal and the empty shell of the Goliath Beetle was tossed onto the growing pile at the very rear of his cave. He had begun saving them when it seemed shameful to waste such a gourde-like receptacle. A few he used, once they were dried out, to collect the water that ran down the sides of Shaded Cliff during the hours of the morning just as the first light of Big Red clamped down on the desert and took the water away into vapour again, but just after the Goliath Beetles had buried themselves back in their sand burrows to wait out the heat of the day. After so many days of hunting, however, he had accumulated exactly one thousand, six hundred – and with today's addition – fifty-three of the bug shells. He averaged one good meal every thirty-five hours. The bugs were highly nutritious, as it turned out.
His mind did its thing and churned out the data even when he wasn't really thinking about anything at all. One night and day equaled almost fifty hours, the planet travelled around Big Red once every three-hundred and six Earth days. He had been on the planet forty-one thousand, three hundred-ten hours, or one thousand, seven-hundred, twenty-one Atlantis days.
Rodney shook his head to rid it of the useless numbers, and kicked his sleeping pile of shards into better form. At least the damn shells had multi-uses. Hundreds he had crushed underfoot and made a bed of springy pieces to lay on. Not as soft as a mattress but not as hard as the sand floor of the cave. If he had to go out in the day for any reason, he wore one as a protective hat. Still the ends of his hair had bleached out from the sun. His hair had not been this sandy-blonde since he was two.
Rodney shook his head. "Gourds, bug-juice, a cave...you've moved up in the world Rodney." Rodney forced his thoughts away from anything of this place, and yet he tried to never think of Atlantis and its cool water, shining towers and trays of food that rivalled the fare served in Earth's best restaurants. And he tried to never think too much o-of...them. It made his heart race and his throat hurt.
But two years-plus on such a lean diet had trimmed his body-fat down to barely acceptable standards for minimal health. The gravity of his new planet (which he had named Gobi Prime in honor of its harsh climate with baking days, bitterly cold night winds, sparse animal and plant life, and water-poor deserts), instead of bulking up his muscles had toned them to coiled ribbons of steel. He supposed Becket would be mostly pleased.
The ironic humor of it hit him and Rodney laughed aloud in the crawl space. His own voice sounded strange to him now and he rarely spoke. At first he had talked all the time, he remembered, back in The City. Among them he had almost never shut-up really.
Then, here, to himself, he had spoken words and words, conversations with the memories of The Team (none of whom were now present and accounted for), but after a few months he decided that it was a sign that he was losing his mind. So he did not talk to his friends so for a while. The isolation, though, was an agony and he soon found himself having entirely new conversations with them. What the hell. No one was there to see him go crazy.
Rodney chewed the last of the stringiest parts of mostly-salty-slightly-sweet bug flesh and halted his thoughts. He didn't want to think right now. On good days, when there was enough food to satisfy him or when the night wasn't as cold as it usually was, he welcomed them into his cave. All except for Jennie. He would never bring his sister here. Rodney suddenly realised that he hadn't contacted her! She would be upset with him about that.
"I must remember to send her a message when I get back." He spoke aloud, and was surprised at how weak he sounded. "Your voice is getting old, McKay." Rodney said again, chuckling just a little. "Oh shut-up Rodney! What do you know?"
XXX
Weir strolled into Zelenka's lab. She realised one day that she had stopped thinking about it as Rodney's lab. Zelenka had been made Atlantis's Lead Scientific Advisor months ago. It was official. Still, it was unsettling to realise she had started to forget Rodney. No longer did she turn a corner and expect to see him marching to lunch or rounding a corner while going at it hard in an uncomfortably loud disagreement with one of his technicians, oblivious to everything else.
Zelenka had earned his promotion and he worked tirelessly to prove himself worthy. Weir suspected he was doing his best to fill the shoes of his absent mentor, or perhaps to ease the now distant ache of his conscience. "Doctor Zelenka," She asked upon entering, "How goes it?"
Zelenka turned, his eyes bright from lack of sleep, but also from, they seemed to say, success. "The ZPM is ready to try. It won't hold a full charge anymore, but we can probably get it up to forty percent."
Weir was pleased. Atlantis had been limping by on dwindling reserves for far too long. "That's excellent. Good work, Radek. I'll tell everyone the news. They'll be so pleased." She looked at him fondly. He was a good man. Perhaps not as brilliant as McKay but he worked as hard and sometimes harder, and he never complained. Plus his team loved him.
Now she had to break the other news to Sheppard. He would not be so pleased.
Understandably Sheppard was unhappy. "So that's it?"
Weir knew Sheppard had taken Rodney's loss harder than anyone and it showed. Where-as the old Sheppard sported an easy manner, liked to laugh and was in general an optimistic person, this Sheppard was a still reflection of him. This Sheppard had lost his quick wit, worked himself to exhaustion and spent his few hours off-duty training by himself. This Sheppard was all business and no play.
Weir had to look away. His eyes were hurt and angry - at her for the most part. "I have no choice but to shut it down. The ZPM is back but not to full power. We can't afford to waste –"
"Waste?"
Weir sighed. They'd had this discussion before. "You know what I mean, John. If the Wraith attack-"
"-those ships have been sitting there for two years and more. If they were going to attack, they would have by now. They don't know we're here."
"You can't know that for certain. Neither our scanners nor the Daedelus's has been able to penetrate the hulls to find out for certain. There could be hibernating Wraith inside those ships."
"Well, if the IOA had any brains, they'd have let us scout-out the damn ships long ago to find out. But instead we sit here and wait." Sheppard shook his head at all idiot bureaucrats everywhere. "What the hell are we waiting for I'd like to know?"
They had shared this conversation too. Weir felt the slow, depressing futility of it all. Rodney was gone. Most likely he was dead and John Sheppard was the only one who refused to believe that. But then he was a man of material things. He believed his eyes, he felt with his hands and his heart, not with science or probable numbers regurgitated from a politician's report. Throwing up his hands on the search for Rodney was not in league with the man's nature, he would fight that inevitability to his last breath. Rodney McKay was his friend and the colonel did not leave a man behind.
"John, I want you to take some leave." Before realising she'd said it, the words were out there, and Weir sucked in a breath.
Sheppard's expression was so shocked; he didn't even blink for a few seconds. "Y-you want me to take leave?" He stared at her like she'd just grown an extra head. His expression then quickly changed to one of a man upon whom the light had dawned. "You think I'm off-base with this, don't you? You think I might jeopardize Atlantis; that maybe I'm becoming obsessive and would rather look for Rodney than do my duty to this city and these people, well you're wrong, Doctor Weir."
"I don't think any of those things, John, but I know an unhappy and exhausted man when I see him."
Sheppard stared back, making no denials.
Weir decided to compromise. "One week. Just one week. Go to Earth, see your family, sit on a beach somewhere and read a book. In the meantime I'll make an appeal to the President and see if I can't get you a few more weeks to search - deal?"
Sheppard, hands on hips and body language so taut she wondered how he was freely breathing, finally nodded his acquiescence. "One week." He agreed. "But I need...I just need to know, Elizabeth. Y'know?"
Yes, she knew that. Even if what Sheppard found turned out to be only...remains. That at least would give him his mission accomplished. Not the end he wished for but an end at least, although it all meant much, much more to him than that. Weir nodded. "I know, and I'm sorry."
Rodney may have been gone, but his ghost still haunted one man.
XXX
Once at dusk they came; the noise; the power; the machine; the Great Thunderbird of his deliverance.
Rodney crawled from his cave to greet the glorious call of the silver bird high in the sky as it flashed to life from the magic portal of the air. But its beak broke into his world already screaming and Rodney knew this was not the beautiful Thunderbird he had been waiting for but a cruel monster hungry for flesh of his particular sort. Rodney dropped to the hard rock, sending pebbles skittering down the face of Shaded Cliff like frightened mice.
His heart had been happy, joyous - thrilled! - for a breath or two, and had then flooded with terror and loathing at the winged killer as it came to earth not a half mile from Mount McKay. It was familiar and not. It's shape recognizable but wrong. Somehow...wrong but he could not remember why.
When the monster was sleeping its bleached children left their mother and wandered here and there. One held up a machine and Rodney remembered that it was a Scanner. If he remained where he was, it would find him. But he dare not move or he would be seen immediately.
Minutes went by and the creatures he remembered as Wraith started walking toward Mount McKay. But Big Red was dipping behind the jagged desert rock and the beetles were already stirring unseen beneath their booted feet. In a moment the hungry bugs began to emerge from their sand-holes. The two Wraith stopped and watched the bugs become tens become dozens become hundreds. They fired upon them with their weapons of light but the beetles kept coming anyway. The Wraith turned and ran back in the direction of their mother.
One was too slow and was brought down by a bug's fleeting jump and heavy strike. Several of the beetle's poison-filled claws ripped into the Wraith's fleshy buttock. Within seconds the Wraith began thrashing on the desert floor, his voice screaming in misery. Then he lay still and the beetles were upon him in a swarm, their black shells blocking out the grey and white skin of the Wraith's body. They ate him alive.
There would be only bones by morning.
The silver Dart rose in a cloud of sand and disappeared into the portal called Worm-hole. Only then did Rodney allow himself to express the grief he well deserved, shedding tears enough to vent his sorrow but not so many so to deplete his body fluids. There was no freedom here.
He walked back to his cave. Examining the body of the Wraith and its implements would have to wait until dawn.
XXX
Weir told Sheppard the good news as soon as he was back from leave. "We have been granted, finally, to take several teams on Jumpers to the Wraith ships providing Zelenka and his team can retro-fit all the Jumpers with cloaks."
She held up a hand at the sudden chatter and high-five's that erupted from the military gathering in her office. As a group they were fed up with the IAO's watchwords of the last three years - "reasonable caution" (which most of the troops heard as "bureaucratic cowardice"), and they were all chomping at the bit.
She underlined it for them. "This operation is under colonel Sheppard's command in league with Colonel Caldwell on the Daedelus. You will fly the Jumpers to the Daedelus first and only then will you approach the Hive ships. You will board whether or not your instruments detect life signs. If there are, you will do everything in your power not to alert the Wraith to your presence if that is at all possible. And in the event that you do find living or hibernating Wraith inside, you are to deliver a nuclear war-head to each of your designated ships, and then get the hell out. Detonate once all the Jumpers have cleared the blast zone and are on their way back to the Daedelus. Any questions?"
Sheppard had come back from his leave little refreshed an anxious to get on with the business of his duties. And to find Rodney. Permission to recon the Hive ships was just a bonus. The massive Wraith ships had sat in space just on the edge of Atlantis's scanners for over two years, unmoving and un-approached.
It was time to shit or get off the toilet.
XXX
Sheppard checked the Jumper's scanners and reported back to Atlantis. "According to this, there's a bare minimum of air inside, and some sections are opened to space. We'll have to get Zelenka's guys in there to try and boost the oxygen levels in the areas still viable, if we even come to that." If the damn thing works at all. Ideally finding a working, abandoned Wraith ship was a boon but they had only been that lucky once.
Sheppard and his team indeed found the ship abandoned. "Weir, this is Sheppard."
"Go ahead."
"All my teams have reported in and we've looked through every part of the ships we can safely get to; there are no Wraith present, living, hibernating or just plain dead."
Sheppard could hear Elizabeth breathe a sigh of relief over the open comm. "Looks like our luck is holding for now. What do you think - can we salvage any of the ships, or at least some of the technology? Any weapons or perchance a ZPM someone forgot to pack?"
John felt a rush of warmth for his leader. Their friendly banter had returned and he for one was not sorry. Weir had a wry sense of humor and he had missed that. "Sorry, boss. Guess our luck's not that good." But that the ships had simply been abandoned in space was a ripe bit of luck. He guessed even the Wraith needed a dumping ground here and there, and Atlantis's world did seem to be along a main travel route for the hated creatures. At least they didn't have to blow the rotting hulks to kingdom come. He said as much to Weir.
"At least that's something. We can save the bombs for another day. See what you can salvage and then tell your teams to hurry home."
"Aye-aye. Sheppard out"
Weir closed the link and returned to her office. Finally she could relax a little. They had all become so used to the tension of the lurking Hive ships she had almost forgotten what it was like to feel at ease.
Weir poured herself a finely brewed coffee, adding a generous dollop of real cream. Finally we can get back to our lives.
XXX
The Wraith bones had been picked clean. Rodney took no delight in the suffering and death of the Wraith. Neither was he sorry to have watched it die. It was simply a thing that happened. You died or you didn't here. There was no orchestra to mark either event.
The uniform of the life-sucker had not been to their taste and the bugs had left it alone. Rodney shook the sand from each piece of the dead Wraith's clothing, piling every item in his arms and carrying them back to his cave on Mount Rodney. Last night he had decided to change the name of his mountain from McKay to Rodney. It was only right. McKay insisted on thinking about everything all the time, but Rodney did all the work!
He sorted through the clothing. The shiny stockings he would save for wearing only on the coldest nights, to make them last as long as possible. The thin tunic was hardly fit for a covering but he supposed he could make use of it some other way, to filter the worst of the grit and "floaties" out of his water perhaps. The shoulder pads were made of thick leather-like material and would make excellent new soles for his shoes. If the boots had been two sizes larger, he would have simple worn them, but he supposed their weird metal construct would have given him blisters anyway. And he could save the tough material for other things.
The Wraith had carried no other tools but for a small hand weapon. Rodney knew it was similar to Ronan's Satedan-engineered blaster. Using its energy for hunting would be foolish since he had already become skilled at killing the jumping Goliath Beetles mid-air with a couple swipes of his knife.
Perhaps he would use it to start a fire. Having a warm fire at night or being able to cook his food would be luxuries. But then he remembered that there were virtually no combustible materials anywhere to be found. He supposed he could try drying the leaves of the High Ground plant and burning those when he had enough of them, but he didn't want to over-harvest and risk depleting the precious vegetable. It was his only source of Vitamin C, and the only thing he had to make the Goliaths taste good.
Perhaps then he would use it to signal a ship, if one ever came again. Rodney stuck the weapon deep into one of the metal boots, dug a hole in the hard sand of the cave and buried it. The other boot he would use to gather water. He could store almost two litres in a boot this big.
He would drink from a silver boot. Rodney was the star in his own fairy tale and he laughed aloud in the confines of the cave, but the sandstone walls swiftly gobbled up the sounds. Rodney hardly noticed his words anymore. His ears listened for running water, wind, bugs...they recoiled from his own voice, and mocked the rare bouts of hysterical laughter they sometimes heard at night on the mountain when he felt the most lonely.
It was McKay laughing, he guessed. But McKay was an idiot. What was there to laugh about?
XXX
Zelenka was almost finished his calculations. With this new program in place, Atlantis would be able to squeeze another twelve percent of power out of the ZPM and some of that could be siphoned off as stored energy for future needs. "Janice?" He said to his assistant.
She left her computer station and walked over to him. "Yes, Doctor Zelenka?"
Zelenka glanced over to her. Janice was nice but her glasses magnified her eyes out of proportion to her face. She peered at him with an owlish expression. "Um, would you take these results to Doctor Weir and let her know we're ready to hook up the ZPM again."
"Yes doctor." Janice disappeared.
Not twenty seconds later, Zelenka heard a scream and raced out into the dim corridor. Janice was on the floor, a creature the size of his forearm attached to her neck, its black and silver body pulsing obscenely. Janice was staring up at the ceiling in deep shock. Janice was still alive and Zelenka recognised the creature. "Oh my god..."
Zelenka raised the alarm.
XXX
Weir bit her bottom lip until it hurt. "An Iratus bug." She breathed the name again so her ears would not deny her. "Iratus bug, my god...how could this happen?" After all they'd been through. After all the sacrifices, the sleepless nights and the exhaustive efforts to keep going they get this!
And Luck, that capricious bitch, had finally turned her traitorous face their way and was now about-facing, leaving them behind once more... "How did they get into Atlantis?"
Sheppard shook his head. "Thankfully it's not they yet, there's only the one. Zelenka's teams and mine are scoping the city to find if there are any more. With any luck..."
Weir had to laugh, and rubbed tired eyes. "With any luck..." It was a running joke now, on all of them. "John," she said. "You know what it means if..."
Sheppard nodded. He had his weapon's safety on but he still held the semi-automatic rifle well ready to fire if without warning the need should arise. "Believe me, I know." With a shiver he recalled his bout with an Iratus "infection" he had acquired via an experimental retro-virus from the creature Ellia, infusing the essence of Wraith and Iratus physiology into him. Becket's magic medicines had stopped the advancement of his transformation, finally eradicating all traces of it from his human cells. There was no way to tell if this Iratus bug was the normal variety or the genetically altered one from Beckett's research.
The memory was not one he cared to dwell on and ever since then he hated all Wraith and all bugs. If it had bad teeth or crawled on the ground he either shot it or stepped on it. "If there are any more, we'll find them Elizabeth. Count on it."
XXX
Rodney looked back. The body of the Goliath beetle lay in two halves where he had left it. But it had left its mark on him too and his back stung horribly. His vision was swimming in the early dawn and his limbs were screaming at him to stop moving. Every twitch brought a rushing fire of pain from his centre to the tips of his fingers and toes.
McKay chastised him for being so clumsy and Rodney yelled back "Well you weren't exactly any help! You and your stupid need t-to analyzing eh-everything." Another spasm clamped his jaw down and for many seconds the only sound that escaped his lips was a pitiful whine. Finally it passed. "You see? You see? You get me into trouble every time."
Besides it hadn't been his fault at all. The new soles on his shoes McKay had fashioned had caught the edge of a small rock and sent him sprawling to the sand. A Goliath beetle, awakened from its sleep, had emerged and with one lightening fast jump, had hooked one claw into the skin of his back, cutting a foot-long swath nearly to the bone, but Rodney had righted himself in time to take the creature out with a well placed blade.
Forgetting about saving the flesh of the bug for an extra meal, he had stumbled back to Mount Rodney and the safety of his cave.
Tears were falling and Rodney couldn't see who was crying. It had to be McKay. "You sniveling moron! It's all your fault and now all you can do is sit around and cry like a bab –A-H-H!" Another spasm pinched off his throat. Words never worked against McKay anyway. He always found some excuse to keep studying or exploring or thinking.
"Way-waste o-of time and f-for what?" Rodney gasped. He should not have listened to McKay. He should have insisted they stay in the cave until Big Red was well in the sky, but McKay was a coward and did not answer him.
When Rodney came to, McKay was gone. The pain had subsided enough for him to sit up on his backside. The Goliath had got only one claw into him so only a small amount of poison had entered his system. Rodney saw that as a bit of luck, but he had never felt such pain in his life and now he was soaked in sweat and shaking with fatigue. Plus it was already dark once more. He had wasted an entire day being unconscious.
"Now I can't get water until tomorrow." Rodney complained. "That's right McKay!" He shouted out the cave opening. It echoed off the sand hills and was lost in the distance. "You'd better run!" Rodney scratched around in the dark for the silver socks and found one, wiping his face with it. "Good riddance." He muttered.
XXX
"You've swept the entire city?" Weir asked. "And there are no more?" Could they be this fortunate? "Are you absolutely certain?"
Sheppard had to concede "There are places aboard Atlantis the bugs could hide, but there is no way any bug or eggs could possibly survive in those locations."
Zelenka added his knowledge to the discussion. "Colonel Sheppard's correct. The only places we haven't searched are the ZPM conduits and the power stores. Nothing would be able to live in such an environment - the radiation alone - it would be impossible."
Weir looked at her two most trusted people. Impossible things had happened well before that day. "John, I need to know for certain that there are no more Iratus bugs in Atlantis."
Sheppard shrugged, helpless. "I can't give a guarantee. All I can assure you is the teams were very, very thorough."
"I will take you at your word of course but..." She knew she was sounding paranoid, "but the Hive ships..."
"...were thoroughly searched as well. We found nothing. Not even a single egg sac. They're clean. And the Jumpers were checked as well. Nothing could have gotten on board without us knowing about it."
She was forced to concede "So the bug was here all the time." It was the only conclusion.
"It must have escaped from Beckett's lab and held up in a hole somewhere until now - an over-sight." Sheppard allowed. "Not a good oversight but at least we caught it in time."
Weir had questioned Beckett on it. "Doctor Beckett still insists that is not the case."
Sheppard did not know what to tell her. "Look - maybe one of Beckett's lab guys doesn't want to admit that he or she screwed up and one of the bugs accidently got out, or one of the eggs somehow made its way out of the lab on someone's shoe."
It wasn't enough, not nearly enough, to satisfy her misgivings. But it was all they had. "Perhaps." She said.
XXX
Killing a Goliath this time was not as easy. His reflexes were sluggish and every so often another spasm of pain would hit him, sending him back to the cave to curl up on his bed of shards and ride it out. If McKay were still around, Rodney knew he would get a long-winded run-down on his pet theories. Lingering neurotoxins from the Goliath scratch causing nerve and muscle spasms, leading to deterioration of his motor controls, pain and general discomfort. Debilitation of motor controls would eventually lead to the inability to effectively hunt the Goliath beetles and so an increasing shortage of life sustaining food. The shortage of food would lead to a wasting of tissues and reduced brain function followed by confusion and lethargy, finally resulting in starvation and death.
"I know." Rodney snarled at McKay, who had come out of nowhere to lecture him on the follies of staying on this god-forsaken planet. "You think I want to stay here? You think I don't want to leave?" McKay went away and Rodney wept the full bodied ragged sobs of a man who had ceased to look to the skies for help.
XXX
Chapter IV soon.