Reminder:
"This is spoken English."
"This is spoken Czech."
This is a thought.
Previously: Radek, Rodney, and Lorne found treasure (last chapter) in that Atlantis lookalike.
Chapter 106. The Tower.
Colonel Sheppard pursed his lips as he leaned in to see what they'd hauled out of Agartha's buried ruins. He looked impressed, reaching into the bag and pulling out one of the pistols.
"Ancient handgun, huh?" he wondered, turning it first one way and then another.
Radek could hardly wait to get it back to Atlantis to subject the thing to a series of tests and scans. He was by no means trigger-happy, but even he wanted to try shooting it. A little bit. It wouldn't be dangerous, not like Rodney's idea of testing a new shield by asking Sheppard to shoot him.
"Looks like it, sir," Major Lorne said. "There's over two-hundred down there in the room we found. They don't seem to require the Ancient gene to work, either."
"Think you can slip them into your negotiations?" Rodney asked.
"Depends." Sheppard put the gun back into the sack and looked at Rodney, looking unimpressed again. "Find any ZPMs down there?"
"Well, no."
"Not ones with any power, anyway," Radek added.
Because they had found depleted ZPMs, thanks to Rodney's panicked solution to render the drones inert. Of course, his idea had made the drones completely useless to their new trading friends. It was something akin to stealing a neighbor's gun and then offering to buy his extra ammunition at a discount.
But, of course, one could hardly blame them for stealing their neighbor's gun when the neighbor held the local town in terror by popping off a few shots whenever he went to town just to remind them he had the ability.
Colonel Sheppard seemed unhappy, though not surprised, about the revelation of a ZPM-less exploration. He put his sample pistol back in the sack and then nodded. "Yeah, I think we can toss that in on top of everything else. We are giving them quite a few medical supplies, not to mention contacts with our other trading partners."
"Oh, yeah, did the Athosians get here?" Coughlin asked, looking around as if he expected to see, perhaps, a specific Athosian.
"Yep." Sheppard nodded and gestured back toward the tower in the far distance. "Along with a few teams of scientists. They were reassigned here for a while. Not just to find more stuff in Agartha, but to, you know, help them out with anything they might need."
A few teams? Radek wanted to object, but he didn't. Rodney stayed quiet through the whole thing, though he couldn't he happy with losing underlings to assign work to.
"Colonel Sheppard."
The hair on the back of Radek's neck briefly bristled at the sound of a familiar voice, the rhythm of an Athosian, a voice that only brought on bad memories. Uncomfortable memories at the least, anyway.
"Yeah." Colonel Sheppard spun toward him. "Iskaan, right?"
"Yes." Iskaan stood at the Athosian version of attention, his eyes briefly falling over the colonel's companions. He hesitated slightly at seeing Radek, or else it was Radek's imagination. "The people are hosting a banquet in your honor."
"A banquet?" Major Lorne looked hopeful.
"Again?" Colonel Sheppard was obviously less enthused. "Oh, fine, whatever. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we take all your stuff back through the Stargate with us." At everyone's confused and concern look, Sheppard added, "For a fair price, of course!"
"Of course. And what is that fair price, sir?" Major Lorne asked.
"Medical supplies," Sheppard said, "lots of them. And help learning how to use them. And also help restructuring their government when the time comes, which may keep our anthropologists happy and busy for years."
"And us," Iskaan said. "New trading partners with a host of other contacts."
Colonel Sheppard nodded, as though he'd forgotten that. "Yeah, well, we're practically giving them that. The Athosian contact is more for the benefit of the Athosians… but it worked out nicely for everyone, didn't it?"
"I think so." Iskaan didn't seem to realize he was speaking out of turn at this point, but his agreement seemed to be all Colonel Sheppard needed.
Radek waited for the colonel and Iskaan to walk away a few steps ahead of them before muttering to Rodney, "Worked out for everyone."
"Yeah, I guess it did…" McKay arched an eyebrow at Radek. "That's weird."
"I don't trust it," Major Lorne said nearby.
With a roll of his eyes, Sheppard started the long trudge toward the castle, the Athosians following closely after. "Can't you guys just let good things happen?"
"No," Rodney said, and Lorne shook his head to agree.
"You know, I used to be more optimistic than this," Radek said.
"I bet you didn't," Rodney shot back.
Radek grinned, but kept quiet.
Rodney was right. He didn't used to be more optimistic. Most of his adult life he spent just waiting for the unspectacular and unavoidable end to come. He knew his academic career would be over with just one misplaced calculation in college. He knew his wife wanted divorce. He knew he'd only be working on spaceships for as long as the American government decided to fund them.
Academia, wives, and American government were not known to be instillers of great optimism.
Conversation resumed in a completely different direction when they met up with the other team. Sheppard praised the food and the straight-backed chairs as surprisingly comfortable. They arrived in the village to find that the spread of food was exactly as he described, but the chairs were more benches.
Radek was fine with that.
The Athosians mingled with their new trading partners expertly, and Sheppard made small talk with one of the more finely-dressed female denizens of the planet. Sheppard pretended to be surprised and flattered at how popular a subject he was among those of the female persuasion, but Radek imagined this sort of thing happened to him all the time.
Rodney gave a sigh. "Nice to be romantically attached, isn't it?"
"Mm?" Radek wasn't sure whether it was or not, but that may have been because he wasn't sure if he was or not.
"Oh, come on, what do you mean?" Rodney pounced on a plate of what looked like beef jerky and added to his already loaded plate. "'Mm,' what does that mean, 'mm'?"
"It doesn't mean anything," Radek objected. "I was always bad at romantics. Why do you think I'm divorced?"
"Oh." Rodney gave a long nod as though he knew something that everyone else didn't. That was usually true, but not usually about things like this. "The grass is always greener, eh?"
Radek paused, trying to sort that out. He couldn't. "What?"
Rodney started to give a long-winded explanation that didn't make much sense. He finally caught on that Rodney was making allusion to relationships with other women, and not the one he was supposedly romantically attached to.
These days, such a thing never happened. He was too busy and everyone on Atlantis knew him too well as Rodney's assistant. Even though he wasn't Rodney's assistant. When he was younger… when he was younger, the story was quite nearly the same. It was too difficult and time-consuming to attract the attention of one woman, let alone any more. If it ever happened, it was an accident.
If a single woman was ever present in his life, that seemed to be an accident, too.
The Athosians and the planet natives started dancing together, serenaded by Iskaan's panpipes and a few other instruments. None of the Atlantis team, except for one anthropologist, joined in the fun. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves enough just watching.
A girl Radek noticed had been standing near Iskaan nearly the whole time ran out to join the best of the planet's natives to dance. She was a whirl of skirts and flying hair with feathers tied in. She never seemed to tire, twirling as the music accelerated. Eventually, everyone fell away from the song, out of breath and breathlessly watching her. Some clapped as they watched, others just stood mesmerized.
The girl's dance finished as Iskaan's song flourished. With a pleased smile, she took a low bow toward the applauding crowd and ran over to Iskaan. He caught her in his arms, not unlike the way he'd seen him holding Anna in the puddle jumper. Radek didn't know whether to be pleased or disgusted, glad or angry.
Iskaan turned with the girl in his arms and, when they'd come full circle, he kissed her.
Not unlike the way he'd seen him kissing Anna in the puddle jumper.
A/N: Sorry that was so short, but… you know, it's fine. Anna didn't have anything to do.
Next time: We need to have a talk.