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Chapter 15: Leverage

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From his vantage point flat on his back looking up at the structure's overhead beams, John saw the boy sitting there, his legs dangling, unafraid of heights. 'And apparently not afraid to be close to us.' It made him miss his own childhood belief of thinking he was indestructible. That everyone he loved would remain safe, well, alive to be with him forever. His mother's illness and death had robbed him of that false security forever.

Putting aside those grim thoughts, he began the herculean task of sitting up. Sensing his struggle, Rodney rolled over to face him. Sighing at his friend's stubbornness, Rodney sat up himself and put his arm around John's waist and levered him up until he could rest his back against a nearby bench.

Finally positioned upright, John tilted his head and whispered up to the boy. "Hey, can you hear me?"

In a voice a little louder than John's had been, the boy answered him back. "You don't have to worry anyone will hear you. Rest of the town's way back in front of the stables. Even the soldiers' perimeter is twenty paces from the building."

"Why aren't you staying away from us?" John asked. "Aren't you afraid we'll make you sick?"

"Nah. This can't be worse than the time I got sick from eating a toad on a dare," the little boy bragged.

That reference made Rodney turn away and hurl again.

Undeterred by one of the men getting sick, the boy continued, "Besides, Mr. Kannar said I'd have to touch something to get sick like the others. Ah crap, that was a secret I was to keep."

"No worries," John easily forgave. "Mr. Kannar and I made that secret up together. And speaking of secrets, can you talk alone with Mr. Kannar and tell him something for me?"

"Sure. What should I tell Mr. Kannar?"

"Tell him to argue against us being trading back." John ignored Rodney's outraged, "Tell him what?!"

The small face from the rafters frowned down at John. "But I thought you wanted to go home. Even Mr. Kannar wants you to go home."

"Both those things are true. However, sometimes you have to pretend you don't want something that you really want badly. Because sometimes when people know you want something, they don't give it to you to be …" John wracked his brain for the right word so the child would understand him, "…well, to be mean. That ever happen to you? You said you wanted something, and someone didn't give it you just to be mean?"

"Yeah. This cool rock I saw in the river. Never should have told my cousin Idner I wanted it 'cause then he took it and he didn't even like it." The scowl on the boy's face proving he was still upset by that unfairness.

"Yup. Exactly," John sympathized with the boy's sense of being wronged.

"This pretending, it's this thing …I think it's called strategy. Mr. Kannar is training me to be a soldier like him when I'm bigger," the boy proudly declared.

"You're already on your way to being a good one," John praised, was really liking this kid. 'So don't get him in trouble with his people to save your own hide,' he chided himself.

"That's what Mr. Kannar says too." The boy started to crawl back along the rafter to the window but stopped and his preceptive little gaze centered on John. "You got sick before everyone else. Did you touch something you shouldn't have too?"

"Boy did he," Rodeny grumbled.

John shot a glare at Rodney for his censure, before he looked up to the boy. "Yeah, kinda. Sometimes being a soldier isn't so much fun."

"Mr. Kannar says that too. Says it's kinda like taking medicine. Sometimes it tastes horrible going down, but you gotta swallow it so you can get better. In soldiering, you do things that don't make you feel good so you can make your world better."

Rodney, wholly missing out on the altruism lesson in the kid's statement, muttered under his breath, "Considering I took Kannar's herbal concoction; I'd say beware of taking any medicinal advice from him, kid."

"McKay," John admonished under his breath. To the kid he whispered, "Kannar is lucky to have you as a trainee. You're already making him proud."

Kid beamed at the praise. "I'll go give him your message."

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Meanwhile Dr. Beckett was trying to make a medical breakthrough, without much success. He wasn't one to be volatile, throw things or tantrums, but his nerves were nearing the breaking point. So when a vial slid off the counter and shattered on the floor, he let out a litany of curses his mother would have washed his mouth out with soap if she heard. Even in his adulthood.

"I take it things are not going well."

He nearly startled as the female voice spoke from behind him. He sighed before facing his visitor. "I wish I had good news."

Elizabeth gave a bittersweet smirk. "That's not really how things are going lately." She approached the doctor's table, eyed up the vials, recognized the ATA serum but nothing else. She picked up the serum. "How come things created for good outcomes also have such bad ones too. Is it God telling us to not get too proud, that what mankind makes can never truly be good?"

Carson was thrown a bit, hadn't had such a conversation with Dr. Weir before. "My mother said you should put God in everything you do, gives it a better chance of not blowing up in your face."

Elziabeth's expression lightened a fraction. "Smart woman."

"Aye, very," Carson agreed but then hesitated. "I must not have listened to her well enough because this is the second serum I've created for good that's gone…horribly wrong," his voice thready on the last words. Wished he had learned his lesson to not mess with the natural order of things! But now, like the Iratus bug Retrovirus, his Ancient gene therapy had unforeseen side effects. He felt so utterly to blame and fully useless.

"Carson, I know your intentions were good for both of those serums," Elizebath said with conviction, holding his eyes with her own. "Regardless of their negative side effects, I can give you many reasons why you were right to create each of the serums in the first place."

Carson sighed. "My logical, medically trained brain knows that but…" he grimaced, "…my heart …feels just awful. Especially since I'm having no luck trying to minimize the ATA's effect on DNA already coded with the Ancient gene."

"I know that you usually brainstorm with McKay, but maybe Dr. Zelenka can be helpful," she suggested, the though having come to her on the way to the doctor.

Beckett's eyes lit up. "But I thought you needed him on stargate repair duty?"

"We're not making much progress there and without the ZPM, it's not like he can work on restoring the shield or our cloaking. So should I send him your way?"

"That would be great. Rodney always has scientific insights I wouldn't think of." Then he got a melancholy expression on his features. "Of course Colonel Sheppard can be counted on to come up with the out of the box ideas which defy my medical degree and Rodney's countless doctoral degrees but usually end up working."

"Yes, John's a man of unusual insights," Elizabeth drawled, allowed a gleam of humor in her tone. "Knowing him, he is creating havoc for his captors."

Reading the worry under her façade, Carson laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. "I will figure out how to undo the ATA's damage and bring him home."

Her smile was supposed to be trusting but it fell short, only managed to be hopeful as she replied, "I know you will. I'll see to it that Dr. Zelenka gets here shortly." Then she left, neither of them knowing if they had done the other's morale any good.

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Kannar wasn't sure if it was a blessing or a curse that he couldn't meet with his father in private to further his plan. Alone, his dad might grill him too intensely, but with an audience, his dad couldn't accuse him of being up to something.

Of course, they had to be stuck with the last person he wanted there voicing his unwelcome opinions: Olpwen. It was little consolation that Olpwen was as unhappy with Kannar's present as Kannar was with his.

Pointing an accusing finger at their military leader, Olpwen raged, "This is on your head. You brought them here and now we are all suffering your poor judgement."

"They were my leverage to get the power source and my team back here in one piece," Kannar tightly explained, though he knew it would do him no good. And he was right.

"Leverage you wouldn't have needed if you performed your duties as well as you bragged you could! You promised there would be no way they could learn our location. Now they are two of them here!" Olpwen turned his accusing finger from Kannar toward the general direction of the building the Atlanteans were being held in. "And now some of our people are infected! You should have planned for more stargate jumps, should have flown to another planet instead of leaving from here."

"Oh, now you're an expert military tactician!" Kannar divisively shot back, ached to get in the man's face but his father stepped up to him.

Sakar gave his son a quelling look but at his son's eyeroll at Olpwen's dramatics, he had to hold back a smirk. But when he turned back to Olpwen, his face was all high councilor serious. "Thinking of how we could have prevented this is wasting time our people do not have. We have no medicine to treat this outbreak and Huzarn can give me no set timeframe when the seizures may start."

Olpwen's usual bluster faded as he paled, had hoped their doctor would deem the illness was already at its worst. "Seizures?"

Sakar sighed. They all had to face the grim facts. "If this illness is what the Lantean has, we don't know how long or to what exposure will lead to the same physical symptoms he's been experiencing."

"But…but we don't know we have what he does!" Olpwen stammered, thought they would have mild symptoms to go along with their mild exposure to the Lantean's illness, did not reckon it to become life threatening. "Maybe this is something else. The other Lantean isn't sick."

Kannar was about to contradict Olpwen but his father broke in first.

"Actually, he is ill as well," Sakar reported the bad news to his fellow councilmember. "Someone delivered water just inside the door and the scientist was throwing up. Considering his longer exposure to the Colonel, it's not surprising he fell ill too. He might have been the one to carry the illness to the rest of us as we didn't confine him right away and had him interacting with our people to check the power source. Now our own people may be infecting the rest of us."

Kannar hated to hear the guilt lacing his father's supposition, like he felt at fault. Wanted to reveal his deception to his father but couldn't. He knew that sometimes it was better to scheme alone rather than condemn others along with him. And he also had to take Sheppard's advice to heart. He couldn't guide this conversation too hard toward an exchange, should, in fact, protest when that option was presented. He held back a smirk. The Atlantean Colonel was a wily one indeed. Protesting what they both wanted, badly: Genius.. if it didn't blow up in their faces.

Olpwen seemed unnerved by the thought he could get ill too, regardless he had tried to keep his distance from the ill Lantean. "The Lantean having the seizures, Huzarn believes he will not get well?"

"How would our benevolent doctor know?! He was too cowardly to treat him," Kannar snapped, ashamed of his people and their contempt to all others that were not among their number. His father put a calming hand on his shoulder, and it worked, had Kannar's temper leveling out, causing him to remember that he had a part to play.

Kannar knew he could raise their fears to push his agenda. All he had to do was tell them that, at the gate, he had guessed Sheppard would die from his illness and Sheppard hadn't contradicted him. But he shied away from that dark prediction being true for Sheppard's sake. And then there was the fact that he needed his people to not see this illness as a death sentence IF they received medical treatments from Atlantis. A made-up treatment, yes, but that was for him to know, not his people. Through all his internal debating, he decided it best he keep silent. Knew, at this crucial crossroad, he shouldn't appear to steer their path.

"Huzarn seems certain the Lantean Colonel will succumb to his illness. As will the scientist," Sakar repeated their doctor's diagnosis.

"And our people, what chance do we have to survive this sickness?" Olwpen demanded, though his thoughts were on his own survival first and foremost.

Sakar rubbed his brow. "Little. We have no basis to treat this illness. Not knowing if it's an organic virus, nanites, or some untested experiment of theirs. And should it be more scientific than medical in nature, you know our knowledge is great but our resources are primitive. The Lanteans, however, place a high value on their own survival. If they do not have a treatment for this illness, they will devise one. They would never allow this outbreak to go unchecked among their own kind."

"What good is their treatment to us?! They would relish us all dying out," Olpwen's hatred for all the Lanteans brimming to the surface.

Sakar shared a look with his son, hoping they were thinking along the same lines of a solution. But his son shied away from his gaze, making Sakar's gut churn. His son was up to something. 'Isn't he always. I have to trust him. And I do…except when it comes to him thinking to safeguard himself.' Swearing to safefuard his son, no matter his secret plans, Sakar shared aloud his own plans. "The Lanteans don't have to wish us well, only have the desire to get back what they lost."

At first Olpwen clearly was confused by Sakar's wording but then, when what he was proposing became clear to him, his color rose in agitation. "No! No! We have finally gained a power source for our shields. I will not barter it back to those Lantaens to help them save themselves."

Kannar gave a scoffing laugh. "You forget it doesn't power anything. Our base won't activate the crystal."

"Not yet. But we haven't given much effort to repair it. And besides, I would destroy the crystal before returning it to the Lanteans!" Olpwen vitriolically vowed.

Sakar sought to return logic to the debate. "You destroy the power crystal and you may be destroying any chance we have to survive this sickness." Seeing Olpwen chewing on that, he pressed his advantage. "I think we must offer a trade to the Lanteans. We will give back the crystal and their people in exchange for a treatment."

Kannar almost sighed, knew this was the perfect opening for his subterfuge protesting. "No. That's a bad idea. You ask for a treatment and they will know we are weak, vulnerable to an attack."

Sakar almost gritted his teeth at his son's forceful resistance to a trade. This was the area he needed his son's support, had bet heavily on having it. "What choice do we have? Simply let our people die? Maybe our entire race?"

It was Olpwen who came to Sakar's defense in their debate. "We must survive, for the generations to come."

Kannar held back a snort only by the slimmest measure. Generations to come?! Olpwen had no children, only cared for his own life. Kannar found it wasn't hard, more like enjoyable, offering up a contradiction to the selfish jerk's words. "And if the Lanteans are the enemies to our people that they have been in the past? Then they will take this opportunity to wipe us out. Even if not for the long-held grudges between our races, they could do it in retribution for stealing their power source, for killing twelve of their people. By offering up this trade, we run a greater risk than sickness." His words were met with silence, and he cursed himself for playing the devil's advocate too well. Was thinking how to soften his objections when his father spoke.

"But you said these Lanteans had honor. In the council meeting, the Lantean Colonel offered us an alliance, not annihilation," Sakar slowly repeated, knew it was in line with his son's earlier defense of the Lanteans. Didn't know what was changing his son's mind now.

"That was before we locked him in a building, waiting for him to die!" Kannar's true frustration lending to his act. "And what if we damaged the crystal when we brought it here, that our base isn't the reason it won't work. What bargaining power do we have offering to return a useless crystal and two men that might infect their own people with their illness?!"

Olpwen found something good in Kannar's opposition. "They just might infect their own people. If we return them."

Understanding Olpwen's sick train of thought, Kannar couldn't hold back his disgust. "Yeah, great. From wanting to broker a bargain for your own survival to hoping the men we barter back to them kill their race instead of ours. You really let your prejudice guide all your decisions, don't you."

"My decisions did not get us here!" Olpwen raged.

"Yes, yes they did," Kannar coldly refuted. "The bomb, you pushed for that. It's hard to negotiate for peace with the blood of twelve of their people on our hands."

"Your hands," Olpwen sneered but he stumbled back as Kannar advanced toward him with a deadly glint in his eyes.

Sarak intervened by grabbing Kannar's arm and stepping in his path. "This isn't helping save any of us!"

"He thinks he can vote on a path and not take any responsibility for the consequences," Kannar railed back, part of him knew his anger wasn't all directed at Olpwen but his father too. They took votes, decided people's fates, the laws but they didn't carry the taint of spilled blood on their hands.

Knowing his son's anger was with him as well, Sakar fisted his hand in his son's shirt and shook him, drawing his sons' eyes to him defiantly. "Will the Lanteans go for this trade? Their people returned and the crystal for a treatment? Or will they simply attack us knowing some of our numbers are weakened?" He saw the hesitation in his son's eyes, knew it was not on deciding on an opinion but what his son would answer him. Dropping his voice, so it seemed more a personal entreaty from father to son, he asked, "Kannar, I'm listening to you, like you wished. I need your guidance. Can we trust the Lanteans to be honorable? To see our trade in a fair light?"

Kannar knew his father was putting his total trust in him. 'And I'm deceiving him. Playing him as much as I'm playing Olpwen and the rest of our people.' It felt shameful but he couldn't confess now. Especially since the damn deceitful plan was working. Meeting his father's gaze head on, he gave his truthful assessment. "I believe they are honorable. They will trade the return of the crystal and their people for a cure to the illness. And Colonel Sheppard will see that they don't seek retribution for their dead."

Taking his son's words as fact, Sakar made his decision. "Fine. We need to contact the Lanteans."

But Olpwen had to have his say in the outcome. "I agree this is the best course of action, but we should retain one point of leverage over the Lanteans. We give the crystal and the scientist back to the Lanteans but not the Colonel." Kannar was about to violently oppose this caveat, but Olpwen continued before he could. "We need proof that the treatment the Lanteans provide to us will indeed cure our people. We will witness its healing of their Colonel so we can be assured that it will save our people as well."

Sakar couldn't find fault in Olpwen's plan. For as much as he and his son wanted to trust the Lanteans, Sakar still had his reservations. Generations of his people had suffered because they trusted the Lanteans before, he vowed his generation would not make that same mistake. "I find that to be a reasonable stipulation we can enforce."

Kannar still heartily wanted to shoot Olpwen's proposed condition down but facing his father and reading his set features, he knew he wouldn't be successful. Damn it! He wanted Sheppard to get treated as soon as possible, yes, but knew the man's chances of surviving were higher in Atlantis with all the best medical technology available. If Sheppard was forced to be treated in their village, it would be harder with their rudimentary conditions of oil lamps, herbs, cloth for bandages and hatred for all Lanteans in leu of bedside manners to offer him and his medical team.

And yet, Sheppard's own words made Kannar ultimately give a nod to his father in favor of Olpwen's provision. Since Sheppard believed he would die if he went through another stargate, Kannar reasoned that it just might turn out to be a good thing if the Atlantean remained with them to be treated.

Kannar almost smirked. If Olpwen knew he was actually helping the Colonel's odds for survival, he would be spitting mad.

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TBC

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Thanks to all those taking time to read this tale! And much gratitude to my lovely reveiwers who keep me typing up chapter after chapter of this story!

Have a great day!

Cheryl W.