Reminder:
"This is spoken English."
"This is spoken Czech."
This is a thought.
Previously: Anna connected with Collins' mother on Earth, and maybe with Radek a little bit as he filled in a couple of the years they missed.
Chapter 74. Going Back Out.
"Have fun, miláčku."
Officially, that was the most non-worried Anna had ever heard Radek about her trips to the mainland. Or maybe he was just so absorbed in his work that he forgot to worry about her. The mainland was almost as safe as Atlantis itself was. Maybe even more so. Sometimes people got hurt on the mainland, but more the scrapes and bruises kind of hurt. On Atlantis, shocking was the likely method of injury… which could easily lead to electrocution.
"Thanks! And you, um…" She shrugged. "You have fun, too?"
Chalkboard blues instead of his khakis: a telltale sign that he was leaving Atlantis today, too.
"Hilarious," Radek said. He smiled at her over his computer screen. "I have to leave with Major Lorne's team in… damn. Ten minutes." He sighed and stood up, shutting off his computer's screen. "It's hard to get everything done. I don't know how Rodney does it…" He frowned, paused. "Do not tell him I said that."
Anna laughed, and walked around Radek's desk to show him a couple of notes stuck to his tablet's main screen. "I won't, but I actually know how Doctor McKay gets everything done." Because he delegated half of it to Radek. She left Radek to come to that conclusion himself from the bullet list of items from Doctor McKay.
"At least, he's not here today."
Radek wasn't paying attention. That was okay with Anna. She left him leaning on his elbows looking at his screen, and headed to the Jumper Bay.
Doctor Beckett wasn't going to the mainland today, which was new for Anna. She'd never been to the mainland with any other doctor. Doctor Adams wasn't exactly thrilled to be going, but he liked to get out of the little infirmary on Atlantis. Anna happened to know that, for Adams, though, "getting out" usually involved practicing his racquet ball out on the plaza.
Griffin waited next to Jumper Four to take them. Anna had never met him, since he was part of the Daedalus crew, but he was apparently a very good pilot and a natural ATA gene carrier. Anna could see that Doctor Adams hadn't arrived yet, but Griffin wasn't growing any gray hairs from it. He brushed his mustache once when he saw Anna.
"Anna Zelenková, check." Griffin made a show of marking her on his passenger list, two names long, and then looked at her. "What's your business on the mainland?"
Anna shrugged, going to stand next to him to see his checklist. "Nothing, really. It's a day off."
Griffin nodded with a grin. "Hey. Mine, too."
Anna smiled as she walked past him to the pilot's seat. She sat in the copilot's chair and turned toward him as he went through a pre-flight checklist. He didn't even look at the list on his tablet, though. He'd obviously done this a dozen times or more. "What are you going to do there?"
"Bird watching."
Anna nodded slowly. She couldn't think of anything more boring, but Radek liked birds, too. Well, pigeons. "I used to go bird watching, sort of, when I was little. Mostly pigeons. There aren't a lot of birds in the city."
"Ah," Griffin smiled and shook his head. "That's just because you don't know where to look."
Griffin's enthusiasm was almost contagious. Almost. Anna couldn't imagine being so interested. "Any birds you want to see there?" she asked.
"There's supposed to be a brown eagle that lives on the mainland, near the ocean, so I might have to go for a little walk to see it." He took a deep breath and then nodded, apparently to himself. "Yep… like the Spanish Imperial eagle. A little different, of course. But I'm no ornithologist."
Anna shook her head, unsure how to respond. "Me, either."
Mercifully, Doctor Adams showed up a second later with all his medical items in tow. He insisted that Anna stay in the copilot's seat and sat on the bench in the back. He started counting bandages for some reason.
Anna thought hard about a map to the mainland and in a moment the bright colors overlaid the windshield looking into the Jumper Bay. "What's our course?" she asked, looking at Griffin.
Griffin nodded as though impressed. "You have the ATA gene?"
"Yeah. I had my first Puddle Jumper flying lesson a few days ago."
"Oh, right." Griffin hesitated for half a moment to lay out the course over the ocean toward the mainland. Pretty much the same course that Anna had flown. He glanced at Anna. "You want to take the controls?"
Anna grinned. "Can I?"
Griffin got out of the pilot's chair and stood back so Anna could take it. "I'm not sure if this is going to be a relaxing activity for my day off, but who really wants to be chauffer on his day off, either?"
Anna jumped into the pilot's chair and took a hold of the controls. She didn't worry about it too much when Doctor Adams offered a well-meaning objection in the back. Something about getting there on time so they could get back before nightfall.
"Nah, it'll be fine. It's a short trip. A couple of minutes isn't going to make much of a difference." Griffin leaned back in the copilot's chair and waved his hand in the air in front of him. "Alright, Anna. Take us out."
#
"Well, that was a waste of time," Radek mumbled, dialing the 'gate back to Atlantis.
"Welcome to 'gate travel!" Reed leaned up against the side of the DHD and contemplated the buttons that Radek was pushing. "It's usually pretty boring. And if it's not boring, I guess, most of the time you're dead. So I don't really know what to think about that."
"That's not true." Lorne chuckled. "We've had our share of excitement."
"Not since Radar^ joined the team," Reed mumbled. "Now… I'm not sure if that means you're a good luck charm, or bad."
Radek tried to think while he dialed. He wasn't sure if it was just his anxiety talking, but he thought some of the missions were downright terrifying. Even if nothing really happened. "I don't know. Some of them were exciting."
Coughlin looked up briefly to add to the conversation. "Ooh. Pigeons."
Radek couldn't help but laugh. That mission, his first mission, had been the best. He still visited the pigeons on a weekly basis, but only late at night when he could be assured no one would see him sneaking through the botany department to say hello to some birds.
Even Radek had to admit he was helplessly strange sometimes.
The 'gate whooshed with the unstable vortex before settling into the placid pool. Lorne sent their IDC and waited to be given the clear. "Just be careful what you wish for, guys…" Lorne warned and walked through the 'gate first.
Radek stepped through at approximately the same time as Reed and stepped out in the 'gate room. He didn't know when he'd get used to that. It was still fairly disorienting.
Elizabeth approached with a tight smile. "You're back early."
"Uh, Jenev is kind of a closed society," Major Lorne said. His face gave the distinct impression that he thought it was as much of a waste of time as Radek did. "Very polite, but completely uninterested in having anything to do with us."
"Better that than hostile, I suppose." Elizabeth faced Lorne more directly. She was about to ask him to do something. Something she felt bad about asking. Radek couldn't help but sigh. So much for getting some work done. "Colonel Sheppard's team is three hours overdue."
"Wouldn't be the first time," Lorne reminded with a smile. "Any radio contact?"
"None since they left." And she was worried.
Radek wasn't actually sure why. Sometimes when Colonel Sheppard's team was on a mission, Rodney was virtually impossible to reach, no matter how big of an emergency they were having on Atlantis. The two-hour check-in was never guaranteed, though Radek waited patiently for it every time.
"Well, you know those guys…" Lorne said, almost echoing Radek's thoughts exactly.
"What do I know about those guys?" Elizabeth asked.
That they never played by the rules, for a start?
"They tend to get all caught up in whatever it is they're doing, and sometimes they don't check in. They forget how much you worry," Lorne said with a pointed look at her. Elizabeth returned the glare. "That we worry. Collectively, I mean."
Radek grinned at his inept attempt to cover up that he wasn't actually worried in the slightest. Even though disappearing for hours wasn't standard operating procedure for Sheppard's team, it wasn't as though it never happened, either.
"Yes, we do," Elizabeth agreed, and looked at everyone in Lorne's team.
Radek supposed he might have been imagining it, but she smiled at him.
"Yeah…" Lorne sighed. He grimaced and looked back to Reed, then Radek, finishing with Coughlin. Coughlin didn't look too interested one way or another. "Okay, you guys, looks like we're heading back out."
Radek was about to ask if it was necessary that he come while the Stargate's lights wheeled and locked in the address for the new planet. Then Elizabeth spoke up.
"Thank you, Major."
Lorne gave Elizabeth a nod. "Not a problem."
Planet to planet to planet. It was enough to make some people's heads spin. Radek looked around the dense forest they stepped out into. First, he looked at the DHD, and then at the surrounding silent forest. All he could hear were birds and insects. It was hot and sticky.
"Spread out," Lorne ordered Reed and Coughlin before tapping Radek's vest. "You're with me, Doc."
"Yes, Major."
Radek hurried to keep his steps in pace with Lorne's. It was still a bit difficult, but easier these days than his first with the team. He kept his eyes up, having learned from experience to never let his guard down. Reed was basically Radek's school of hard knocks on the back of the head if he wasn't paying attention. He'd walk up behind him, and—
Whack.
A well-meaning thump on the back of the head. Radek didn't know what he'd done to suddenly be treated like a child whenever he went outdoors. Radek had learned a couple of Reed's tricks of staying silent in the woods. Not that he could do them himself. He could just see it coming.
Lorne whipped out his life-signs detector, another piece of technology that was useless in Radek's hands. Although, ironically, if it was broken Radek could usually fix it. "You and me," he mumbled, pointing at the flashing white lights on the screen. "Reed and Coughlin."
"What was their mission?" Radek asked. He really ought to pay attention when Rodney was saying things sometimes…
"Following up a tip from one of Teyla's friends on a ZPM," Lorne answered.
"Right. That again." It felt like much of the offworld teams' time was taken up by following up dead-end lead after dead-end lead to find the elusive power source. Reverse-engineering a ZPM was out of the question at the moment. For one thing, the raw materials were oddly absent.
Lorne shook his head in disappointment. "They're not at the coordinates they were meeting."
"That makes sense, doesn't it?" Radek wondered. Unless Teyla's friends liked to do top-secret ZPM business out in the middle of the woods. That wasn't much beyond the realm of possibility now that Radek was really thinking about it…
"If you really believe they went to get a ZPM …" Lorne gave Radek a sideways glance.
Radek didn't believe that, but if he didn't, that meant that they went to yet another planet. If they went to another planet without radioing Atlantis first, they must have been taken without their consent. If that was true… "They could be anywhere right now."
"What?"
"If they aren't on this planet, then they must have been taken somewhere else."
Lorne put his life-signs detector to one side. "We're assuming they're not on this planet, now?" He didn't pause long enough for Radek to say he wasn't assuming anything, he was just realizing how difficult it was to track people when Stargates were involved. "You're right. They should be here, but they aren't. If they aren't on this planet and they didn't check in, they were taken off-world against their will."
"Yes?" That seemed like a reasonable guess to Radek. He had the moment of self-congratulations that he was getting good at this whole off-world thing.
"Can you get the last few addresses dialed from the DHD?" Lorne asked. "Just in case?"
Just in case…? Radek rolled his eyes. "Ještě něco?" *
"So you can," Lorne guessed.
Radek sighed. "You don't know how difficult that would be. If it's possible at all."
"Well, of course it's difficult or I would do it myself. Not really my skill set." Lorne grinned.
Radek stomped toward the DHD. He didn't care if the whole forest heard him. The worst part of it was that if Rodney were here he could probably do it, no problem. "You people are always asking for miracles."
Lorne laughed and threw his arms wide. "Is it my fault you deliver?"
Things
* Anything else?
^Explanation of Radek's nickname "Radar" in chapter 69. tl;dr: Radar is a character in M*A*S*H. As Reed puts it, Radar has this sixth sense, hearing helicopters before they get there and whatnot, so it's ironic because Radek never sees anything coming. It's a compliment, though, because everybody loves Radar, right? Also, Coughlin points out, he's "awkward as hell and from a place no one ever heard of."
Thank yous and Etc.
MissMeow1968- Funny you should mention it, but I was just considering a situation somewhat like that for Anna in the far-flung future. And by that I mean around March next year, far-flung. I'm glad you still like the way it's developing, though.
Next time: Into the woods. But without all the music. And more of the woods.