Fic: Patchwork [SGA] 1/3
Patchwork
Author: Auburn
Codes:
Stargate Atlantis, gen, Rodney McKay, John Sheppard, Season 5, rated R, ~18,500 words, 130 KB, 9.15.08, standard disclaimers apply.
Notes:
Beta-ed by dossier and springwoof.
Summary:
People are all made up of pieces of each other. Sheppard and McKay are just more obvious about it.
As one complete html file here.
the business at hand
Rodney took the seat between John and Keller. Woolsey kept his eyes down, but as usual he was reading from paper files, and that was no different than any other morning staff meeting from before, so Rodney absolved him of avoidance. There was no reason Keller - it was Keller now, not Jennifer, he couldn't be casual with someone so uncomfortable around him - couldn't meet his gaze or John's, though. Yet solidarity didn't explain why the three of them always sat on the same side of the table now. It was just easier to not see.
Sometimes he wanted to ask her why she found both of them so horrifying or why she didn't hand over treating them to Biro or one of the other doctors since she did. She wasn't to blame for what had happened, so why did she get to act guilty and uncomfortable? She wasn't the one living with this.
She hadn't lost anything.
Keller stared straight ahead. So did Rodney.
What Sheppard did, he didn't know; he'd have to look and he hadn't for the last week.
Ronon grunted at him from opposite and Teyla smiled. Rodney made himself smile back. At least his face hadn't changed.
Lorne and Radek filled out the last two places in the regular gathering. Lorne's face never really gave much away and today seemed no different. Radek's gaze skittered away from Rodney's eyes, landed on the hand resting on the laptop Rodney had just put down before him, and jerked away. Nothing new there either.
"Coffee," Radek murmured. "Major? Rodney? Would you like - "
"Yes, yes," Rodney snapped, "of course I want coffee. When have I ever not?"
Radek slid his chair back and headed for the sideboard where a coffee maker and mugs were set up every morning. He slopped coffee over the lip of one mug when Rodney reached for it. It stung and Rodney shook the brown droplets off convulsively, flicking them onto Radek's uniform shirt. Radek stumbled back, mumbling, "Sorry, sorry," staring.
Everyone stared. Everyone always stared now and Rodney was already tired of it.
"Just set it down," he told Radek, reining in his temper, snatching stinging fingers back and hiding them in his lap, aware of John's uneven gaze on them and feeling guilty as though he had been careless with someone else's possession.
He used his left hand to lift the coffee to his lips and set it down again, fidgeting the mug into the bar of morning light gleaming over the glossy wood of Woolsey's imported from Earth table, lining it up so the light fell over the surface of the coffee itself, turning it brown rather than black, concentrating on the way the liquid shivered and rippled before settling.
John already had a mug before him, of course, and traced a fingertip over the lip when Rodney glimpsed him inadvertently. Rodney averted his gaze immediately, disturbed by the mismatch all over again. Every glimpse from the corner of his vision insisted he sat next to a stranger.
Woolsey finally looked up after Radek took his seat again.
Rodney gave him pointers for looking at himself and John without flinching, without looking at just the parts that were the same. Maybe there was something to all those negotiation skills diplomats were supposed to have. Woolsey could probably sit down and discuss knitting with Madame Lafarge.
"Let's begin," Woolsey said. "It's been a week. What have you found out, Dr. Keller?"
Rodney felt her flinch beside him.
"It's extraordinary work, far beyond anything medicine on Earth can approach, despite the unacceptable and unethical aspects of what those 'doctors' did." A red flush of embarrassment colored her face as everyone looked at John or Rodney. "There's really nothing for me to do. Everything works. There are no signs of rejection. I think the appearance may eventually become less...differentiated."
Woolsey folded his hands together. "I see," he said. "Is there any valid medical reason not to restore Colonel Sheppard and Doctor McKay to full duty?"
"Well, no," Keller replied with obvious reluctance. She darted nervous glances down the table at Rodney and past him to John. "Though I think they should both continue their sessions with Dr. Moktefi."
"Colonel Sheppard?" Woolsey asked.
John lifted both of his mismatched hands and wiggled the fingers. It made Rodney's skin crawl. "I'm fine. Still can't play the piano, but no hands of evil impulses or strangled subordinates so far."
Woolsey swallowed a small snort of near laughter. "I'm pleased to hear that." He switched his attention to Rodney. "How are you, Doctor McKay?"
"Fine. I'm fine." No use mentioning the nausea curling in his belly, since it had been a constant since their return and it was all in his head anyway. He wished John hadn't mentioned piano. He hadn't played in years, but now all he could think of were Sheppard's hands on ivory keys. Just the hands. He kept his eyes open to banish the image.
Woolsey studied him for another moment.
"All right, let's move on to the next portion of the agenda. Is it worth it, if there is any possibility of re-establishing contact with Ixtian Station, to do so?"
Ixtian Station.
handbook
Our ancestors chose to build our home in orbit over a nearly lifeless planet where they had constructed a facility to manufacture potentia. Construction of potentia was deemed too dangerous to conduct on a planet with a population or even an ecosystem. Thus we are descended from workers, maintainers, technators, programmers, and managers who commuted via rings to the planet and lived at a safe distance aboard Ixtian Station with their families and support services.
During the Wraith War, more and more potentia were required by the Alterans of Atlantis to power shields, weapons, hyperdrive ships, and experiments. Our ancestors stripped safety protocols down to the narrowest margin as priorities changed in the face of the Wraith threat. While many non-essential personnel were evacuated from Ixtian Station, many brave others chose to stay.
The location of our home and the potentia facility were a closely held secret to safeguard Ixtian against the Wraith finding us. Only the most trusted captains of Alteran ships were given our stellar coordinates. Only the highest members of the Council of Atlantis possessed the stargate address.
All this security did keep any Wraith from ever reaching our stellar system.
Instead, our ancestors were forced to endure the Destruction and the Isolation.
The Alterans of Atlantis understood the devastation inherent in a flawed potentia and the resulting destruction of the planet our habitat once orbited proved their wisdom in keeping that danger separate from our home. Recordings from the time of the devastation speak of material fatigue and an overload that resulted in a chain reaction. The destruction tore the potentia facility and the planet apart so violently pieces impacted our home's anti-collision shields, but Ixtian survived.
Pieces also tore through the Scipia, the last Alteran ship, which remains docked to the station to this day, before its crew had a chance to undock and raise their own shields, leaving it too damaged to ever fly again.
Others hit the stargate itself, sending it spinning far out into space, far beyond the range of ourdialing device. It would be centuries before the stargate reoriented and returned itself to its preprogrammed orbit.
By then there was no answer from Atlantis or any other Alteran outpost.
Our ancestors were marooned, with only the materials already aboard the station to support themselves.
The collected essays in this text are intended to explore what this meant for the men and women who guided the formation of our society in the aftermath of the Destruction.
From the introduction to: Essays on the Early Post-Isolation Station Managers of Ixtian Habitat, 0002 to 2441 PI, ed. Educator Aldweh Sirin, Educator Fant Paran, Historian Hadow Tweel. Distributed: 5647 Post-Isolation.
Translated by Dr. Wilhelmina Bancroft, Linguistics Department, Atlantis Expedition, [date redacted]
condemned out of hand
"Uh, guys, it was a metaphor."
John really hadn't expected them to listen to him and they didn't.
He'd meant it. Just not literally, or at least not without giving it some thought; he would give his right arm for McKay. Hell, he'd die for him.
He hadn't been expecting this, whatever this was, though.
Director of Station Security Hanabui had just looked at him and said, "You are ustra," and then the quick march into the medical lab, hands tied behind him, thugs with their big mitts locked around his biceps, and, Christ, McKay was still in the tank, unconscious and vulnerable, and he wouldn't have a clue what had happened to John.
So not good.
"Really, we aren't related, if that's what's got your panties in a twist."
Yeah, he should have known that wasn't going to fly.
He should've kept his big mouth shut. The Ixtian had knocked Rodney out when they arrived at the hospital, cleaned him up and shoved him in a tank of goo. The Director of Station Security had arrived to find out what exactly had happened. Then John had been introduced to the head doctor, Wuiper, and listened with about half his attention while looking down at Rodney suspended in the tank. He'd tried to imagine McKay going through life with a prosthetic hand and winced.
"He is a valuable man," Hanabui commented.
"The most important man in the city," John replied absently. He clenched his own hands into fists. Rodney needed both his hands.
"Important to you personally?"
"Yeah, we're like brothers. I'd die for him."
The Ixtians seemed to have taken him literally.
He tried to fight as the security thugs dragged him to another tank of goo, but Wuiper was there with an injector that hit John's neck and stung like hell, right before everything went all wiggly and melty.
John heard himself giggle and was horrified in a distant way. Manly Lieutenant Colonel's didn't giggle in public. Or at all. But especially not when people were taking off his clothes and it tickled. He tried to wriggle away but the nice big men were still there, holding him down. He tried to stop giggling then, but there hands everywhere and the light on the ceiling kept expanding and contracting and he couldn't squirm away.
Wuiper shot him up with something else when John tried to rear up and get away one last time. It flooded through him in a tide of warmth that made everything seem fine and he just sighed as they wiped him down with something cold then slid him into the blood-warm goo.
He tried to yell as the lid closed over his face and the goo rose over his lips, but his limbs were already so heavy and numb, and the goo slid inside.
The lights went out.
eye of the beholder
Rodney looked at himself in the mirror with John Sheppard's eye. The hazel was as familiar as his blue. Any accusation in it was his own. He knew that. John Sheppard's hand clutched at the edge of the sink, knuckles white under skin still darker than Rodney's.
Dr. Moktefi would have a field day if she could really see inside his head.
After one breath and then two, he blinked. He picked up his razor and finished shaving. He'd always been right-handed, but he'd begun using his left hand more and more since returning. Sheppard was right-handed too, but he didn't like to think about that, because Sheppard didn't have a choice anymore, so he concentrated on not cutting his face.
hat in hand
Elizabeth's subspace ghost had uploaded a list of the places where she and the other disembodied Replicator rebels had occupied computer systems, complete with gate addresses. A long list, though it shouldn't have surprised Rodney. He knew not every planet could have been crushed under the boot heel of Wraith domination. Even dwarf galaxies were vaster than the mind could conceive and humans were stubborn creatures. There had to be places in Pegasus where they hadn't given up on technology.
Woolsey authorized some discreet - read cloaked - missions to check out the possibility of alliances.
The first three were washes, not much more advanced than the Genii and not interested in poking their heads up for the Wraith to play whack-a-mole.
Address four, which the database didn't even list, but dialed without problems, turned out to be space gate. The MALP went tumbling away, whirling images of an asteroid belt, a G-type star, and the gate transmitting back, along with its other sensor readings.
No planet.
At least, no planet any longer, just the wreckage of one, the detritus spun out in an arc along the path of its orbit.
"Is that recent?" Sheppard asked, looking at the pictures from the MALP. Rocks and dust, asteroids that might qualify as planetoids, a world reduced to gravel. Most were dark, shadowed, but the local star colored the hemispheres facing it gray and ruddy, tan, umber and ochre, fogged in dust that almost glittered; it was pretty, in as much as it was wreckage. Sufficiently tremendous destruction had its own beauty, like violence.
"That depends on your definition of recent, Colonel," Rodney said.
"Is recent," Zelenka confirmed. "Perhaps eleven, twelve thousand years old."
"I meant did it happen after the Replicator ghosts were there, actually." Sheppard folded his arms and frowned at the big screen after he spoke.
"Obviously not, there are no radiation or energy readings beyond the stargate itself," Rodney told him.
Woolsey pursed his lips. "Well. MALPs are expensive pieces of equipment. Do you believe you could recover this one?
"Sure," Sheppard said before Rodney could. "We can stabilize it with the magnetic grapples Zelenka fixed up on Jumper Three. Once it's not tumbling, we'll seal the cockpit, kill the gravity generators in the cargo compartment, open the hatch and I'll just back the jumper around it."
"It's not that easy!" Rodney complained.
"I'll match velocity." Sheppard gave him a look like he felt hurt that Rodney didn't trust his mad piloting skills. "It'll be just like jumping between moving cars."
"Oh God."
"Come on, Rodney, let's go get the SGC's toy back."
"Can we take lunch? Because I skipped breakfast - "
"You skipped breakfast?'
"I was rudely dragged away before I could get through the line, if you'll remember, Sheppard." By Sheppard, he didn't bother adding.
Sheppard grinned at him, obviously remembering.
"Come on, McKay, it'll be good for you to get out of the city and your labs for an hour or two. You won't even have Ronon trying to steal your lunch."
"Hmph."
Ronon and Teyla were on New Athos, helping re-establish the few hybrids that had survived the destruction of Michael's proto-empire a few months back. They were probably digging or building or doing something dirty and exhausting. A few hours in a jumper with Sheppard were infinitely preferable.
"Fine."
"How long do you think it will take you?" Woolsey asked.
"Oh, maybe three hours," Sheppard answered. "We'll take a tour around, see if there's anything to see that the MALP missed."
"Three hours?" Rodney demanded on the way to the jumper bay. "Are you insane? I should refuse to go. You've jinxed us."
Sheppard's eyebrows nearly hit his hair line.
"Jinxed."
"Ever hear of the Minnow?" Rodney asked him darkly.
Sheppard honked like the jackass he was when he laughed.
scaphoid
The corruption of the habitat's datacore post-noncorporeal replicator incursion stressed the Ixtian beyond their normal limits. The introduction of outsiders exacerbated the situation, possibly triggering a xenophobic reaction, despite initial good relations between Colonel Sheppard, Dr. McKay and the Station Manager Steikes.
Misunderstandings were inevitable.
The Ixtian obviously had no need for the medical pharmaceuticals Atlantis normally trades, but expressed interest in exchanging repair work on several damaged systems and obtaining raw materials in exchange for control crystals they possessed the facilities to grow in zero-gee.
Neither Colonel Sheppard or Dr. McKay can be blamed for failing to realize the extent of the Ixtians need for raw materials or the more bizarre adaptations their society had made to stringent conservation and recycling over ten thousand years of isolation not just from other people but from any resources outside their habitat. They approached the prospect of diplomatic and trade relations between Ixtian and Atlantis in good faith.
The events that ensued can only be described as unfortunate.
Further contact with the Ixtian may be worth exploring, but should be undertaken via a diplomatic team dispatched aboard either the Daedalus or the Apollo and provided with a cargo of raw organics and water for collateral. Appendix C of Dr. McKay's report includes a list of potentially useful technology the Ixtian possessed, obtained from his observations while aboard the habitat and the data he downloaded from their systems to facilitate his escape.
From the pre-report notes of Dr. Alan Chawpat, Socialogy Department, Atlantis Expedition, [date redacted]
a feast for the eye
Rodney started pulling in scanner readings, analyzing them with little more than glance, because aside from his genius, he'd been doing this for a while now. Practice did at least lend speed, if not perfection, to repetitive tasks. Checking the sensors had become routine.
He pinged the MALP and received an answering ping, then found it moving away from the stargate at a steady rate on a trajectory that matched the force that had accompanied it out of the wormhole into zero gee.
And there beyond the reach of the MALP's limited sensors, he noticed something else.
Something else that looked a lot like a giant silver cigar keeper just beyond the asteroid belt, so close to the stargate that he and Sheppard could both even see it through the front view port with their bare eyes. "Look up," Rodney squeaked.
"Whoa," Sheppard breathed, voice husky and cracked.
"Space station," Rodney identified it, but he felt awed too, not that he'd showed that to Sheppard. Sheppard teased him enough as it was. Rodney studied the data the jumper's scanners gathered and added, "Actually, I think habitat would be the proper term. It's - "
Sheppard glanced at the numbers, leaning sideways into the co-pilot's space, left hand braced on the armrest just beneath Rodney's wrist. Honestly, let someone touch him and he practically leaped out of his skin to get away, but Sheppard had no sense about anyone else's personal space. Someday, Rodney would remember to ask Moktefi about that. Of course, she would just give him that hangdog look of hers and ask what he thought it meant and why it mattered to him, so he should just save his effort for something useful. He stared at the numbers as they finally registered and his mouth dropped open a little.
"Big," Sheppard said.
Rodney snapped his mouth shut.
"Yes, yes, it's big."
"Let's go check it out," Sheppard suggested and headed the jumper toward it. The closer they got, the bigger the habitat seemed, until its scarred metal hull filled the view port, an anti-collision shield shimmering like a second skin over it, and Rodney's eyes were wide as his open mouth.
"Really, really big," he mumbled and his hands stilled on his laptop keyboard for the first time.
Sheppard shared a glance with him, looking just as overwhelmed, hazel eyes dark and big, reminding Rodney of when they'd both been new to this and everything had been amazing.
"Yeah."
a foot in both camps
Five minutes later, after a dial-in to update Atlantis, John started his approach, slow and easy, because the habitat had not only spin but was tumbling end for end. The spin likely provided cheap gravity courtesy of Coriolis force pushing everything out against the inside skin of the habitat. He'd read a lot of science fiction sitting in ready rooms and flight lines and in BOQs on bases with nothing better to do over the years and wondered if there would be gliders or other ways of utilizing the low to near zero gravity that should hold sway near the center axis of the habitat. Of course, Ancient construction usually came equipped with artificial gravity, so there might be no fun to be had, but it still remained cool to consider.
When they came close enough, a HUD popped up, dividing the habitat into a three dimensional green gridwork before them, teeming with life signs. For the first time, John really got that they were looking at something at least the size of Atlantis, though differently proportioned.
"Well, that answers that question," was Rodney's only comment. He had been busy analyzing another set of numbers while John brought the jumper closer and closer.
He could guess what Rodney had been looking for in those numbers, too.
People meant power and power for a habitat the size of the one before them might very well mean a zero point module. Of course, if the habitat's people had one, they needed it, so they would be unlikely to part with it. Unless they knew how to make them. In which case, Rodney would want to learn to fish even if he couldn't have a fish dinner.
John's hands started sweating at that thought. Rodney had him well trained. You could spot an Atlantis vet anywhere just by how they breathed a little faster and got bright eyed if you even whispered, "Z.P.M." It had become positively Pavlovian at this point. Though with less spit in John's case, as adrenaline always left him with a dry mouth.
He shook his head to clear the stray thoughts and began checking for any sort of docking area while keeping the jumper clear of the habitat. If it hadn't been for the tumble, he would have spiraled parallel to the length of the habitat, but he suspected the docks would be at the ends anyway. Coming about, he glimpsed one blunt end for the first time.
"Holy crap!"
"What?" Rodney's gaze snapped up from the laptop and his mouth dropped open again. "Sonovabitch."
John hoped there were docks at the other end too, because nothing and no one would be going in at the end he saw now. It was a dock, but it was also completely occupied by the twisted and torn wreckage of a starship. The hull had been torn open, major portions of it exposed to vacuum, the hyperspace engines completely gone, along with the bridge, and most of its cargo hold. Only the lack of gravity kept the warped wreckage clamped to the habitat's dock.
"You think it was hit while it was docked?" Rodney murmured from beside him.
"Had to be," John answered, because he was a hot pilot, but he knew the impossible when he saw it and flying that crippled ship went beyond his or anyone's skills. Nothing that messed up could have been successfully docked without inflicting more damage to the station. He wondered how many of its crew were aboard and how many made it into the station when it was hit, as well as what hit it. Wraith wouldn't have left the habitat intact.
Rodney had gone back to typing again. The key clatter sounded comforting. Staring at that long dead ship, John felt glad for the company of his friend and even for Rodney's narrow focus of concentration. Two of them mooning over what must have been a horrific attack or disaster would make each other feel worse.
"Hunh."
Rodney's grunt drew John out of his own funk.
"What?"
"Well..."
"Spit it out."
"Charming."
"Rodney."
"Fine. The secondary motion," Rodney hand made a move that either meant the cartwheel tumble of the habitat or a limp-wristed robot wave, "was not original. The impacts on the ship threw it into the current motion and they've used up ten thousand years of luck in that it didn't send the whole thing careening into the asteroid belt, because that shield they've got would never have held up this long under a constant heavy bombardment."
"And here I thought they did that just to make docking interesting," John volleyed back.
Rodney gave him a wide-eyed look. "Oh, no. No, no, no." He breathed in and went on, "No, no, no, no. No, you are not trying to dock with that thing. Not with me in the jumper."
"Relax, Rodney, we still don't know if there are any docks at the other end."
John took the jumper around to check it out even as he soothed Rodney though, and, sure enough, there were jumper-sized docks at the other end. They appeared to be functional. Compensating for spin and tumble would be tricky, but John knew he could manage. No worse than landing an Osprey with instruments on a carrier in a storm. He matched speed and motion with the habitat and said, "I say we try it."
Rodney just moaned.
metacarpals
to: Director Richard Woolsey
from: Dr. Alan Chawpat
date: [redacted]
subject: Ixtian technology
The ornate jewelry that Colonel Sheppard observed a significant proportion of the population wearing proved to be in fact part of the Ixtians information processing interface.
The ubiquitous goggles provided a visual display similar to a HUD in conjunction with a wireless connection to the station operating systems. Sensors in the hand devices picked up movements coordinated to virtual command consoles, allowing the Ixtian to work from anywhere on the habitat.
A drawback of the system lay in its lack of hardware backup. When their datacore became corrupted, they had nothing that wasn't hooked into the system. Whether this oversight resulted from over reliance on the high performance Ancient datacore and operating system or the Ixtians' depleted resources has yet to be determined. But lacking hard copy or backups they could reload, they found themselves without sufficient knowledge to institute badly needed repairs in the wake of a major system collapse.
Dr. McKay, with his laptop full of diagnostic programs and in-depth knowledge of Ancient systems, must have seemed too good to let go. The possibility that the cultural misunderstanding over Colonel Sheppard's status as ustra was deliberately engineered in an attempt to isolate and retain Dr. McKay, must be considered if the SGC decides to contact them again.
Alexei Petrescu pointed this last out to me. I don't know how valid the worry is, but maybe someone should take it to the military, since they're in charge of security offworld?
Alan Chawpat
eyes wide open
It only took about five minutes for Rodney to ascertain the habitat didn't have a ZPM, while John did the whole meet and greet with the locals, all of them fumbling a little because Ring Speak had changed a little since the last time any of the habitat's people went through and picked up an update apparently. They sounded old fashioned to John's ear when he radioed for permission to dock. Even over the radio he picked up on their excitement, though.
A group met them as they came through the airlock.
Everyone blinked a little on seeing each other. The locals were all not just bald, but nearly hairless. Eyelashes seemed to be the extent of what was tolerable. They stared at John and Rodney, gazes just a little up, and he assumed they were as startled by their hair as he was by their lack. John realized that he and Rodney, in their fatigues, tac vests, and arms, must look drab and dangerous next to the bird of paradise brightness of the locals' dress; which was layered, colorful, and thin, since no real weather meant not much need for protection.
"Hiya," John said with a little wave toward the foremost local, a tall guy in blue and tangerine pants and a long green duster.
Number One Guy's bare head either had been tattooed or painted in decorative patterns. A set of red-lensed goggles dangled around his neck and what John would bet was a mike and earpiece was curled into his ear.
The others behind Number One Guy were dressed a little duller. Most of them still had their goggles over their eyes. Four of them had weapons in holsters at their waists. The guns looked like hand stunners - more Wraith design than Ancient or human, nothing like Ronon's - which made sense on a space station. Projectile weapons like his P90 might hole something more important than a body. He stifled a moment of disappointment; he really wanted to find one of those pulse pistols sometime, but it looked like it wouldn't be today.
Number One Guy brought his fists together before his chest, tapping the knuckles against each other and said, "Greetings."
John rested his hands over the stock of his P90 and smiled back, nodding, "So, we were just checking things out in the neighborhood, saw your place, and thought we'd stop by, see if anyone here would be interested in exchanging some information or goods, maybe talk about some trade? I'm Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, by the way, and this is Doctor Rodney McKay. We're both explorers."
McKay gave him a dirty look and corrected, "I'm a scientist."
Number One Guy frowned for a few seconds and behind him another person flicked her fingers like mad through the air, catching John's attention. The silver rings and tip caps were all connected to a heavy bracelet and it all looked a little like what the Wraith queens wore and a lot like the Goa'uld hand devices he'd seen back on Earth.
Hand-dancer stopped her fidgeting after a second and Number One Guy's expression cleared.
"I am Station Manager Steikes."
"Nice to meet you."
"It has been a very long time since anyone came to Ixtian Station," Steikes said slowly. "We welcome you."
phalanges
From what we've extracted from Atlantis' records, even the Ancients couldn't build a space habitat without industrial accidents. (We'll have to consult Engineering on some of this, it's way over my head. I'm assigning Devendra to translating the stuff on potentia - which we've all agreed refers to zero point modules - since the Physics Department always asks for her anyway.) I've gone over what Dr. McKay brought back from Ixtian and I don't know if they weren't bothering to keep decent records or if it's all corrupted or incomplete, but I've still been able to piece together an idea of their history.
Alan, they have a recorded history of over ten thousand years! Not just bits and pieces and trying to figure out a lost language, either. It's all in an Alteran variant we're already familiar with.
Okay, where was I?
Until the habitat had been assembled far enough to generate its own gravity, work was done in zero gee. Crush wounds and broken bones from working with equipment that still possessed mass and inertia were common. Maintaining the station also involved the danger of being crippled. There are lists of casualties. I'm looking at them now. Ouch. Apparently the Ancients didn't have anything like OSHA.
Hmn. All right. It looks like they were cutting a lot of corners since Ixtian was built during wartime. This journal entry says optimum solutions were sacrificed in the name of speed. Casualties were expected and factored into the estimated time of completion. The medical care facilities aboard the habitat were geared to returning workers to the job as fast as possible.
So the Ancients did possess the technology to regrow severed limbs using nanite technology, but they didn't bother with it for workers at Ixtian. Too dangerous as well as energy and time consuming. By the way, Alan, I'm starting to agree with the rest of the expedition. The Ancients were a bunch of arrogant, egotistical jerks. All the workers building the station were human, so no one really gave a damn about their medical care. It does explain why none of the Ixtian have the ATA gene.
It says here that grafting took far less time and every worker assigned to build the station had signed off on donating any useful body parts in the event of their death.
I haven't found anything that can help McKay or the Colonel yet, but I'm going to keep looking.
Transcript of recorded notes for a first draft report from Dr. Wilhelmina Bancroft, Linguistics Department, Atlantis Expedition, to Dr. Alan Chawpat, Socialogy Department, Atlantis Expedition, [date redacted]
hand in the till
Sweat glued Rodney's hair to his head. He scrubbed his fingers through it and then rolled his shoulders, trying to give the tense muscles in his back some relief. The heat in the badly vented and claustrophobic work space kept him from stiffening up too much, but they paid for it in lack of breathing room and air growing more and more stuffy.
One of the Ixtians he was working with ran a cloth over his head, wiping away a shiny coating of perspiration without affecting the paint.
Rodney had begun to understand why the Ixtians eschewed hair; it held dirt and sweat and had to be filtered out of everything from the water reclamation systems to the air circulation systems. Of course it went back to the organics systems to be broken down and returned to the habitat's hydroponics facilities; even the dust from the air filters was reclaimed. He was valiantly refusing to think about any of that whenever he ate, since Sheppard wouldn't let him subsist on emergency MREs from the jumper.
He turned back to the access panel, crouched, and hooked his laptop into the diagnostic port. At least three of the crystals controlling the recirculation subcenter had been blown out. He'd pulled those already, but he suspected at least two more were damaged as well, even if they weren't blackened and cracked. He didn't want to wedge his shoulders back into a space designed for a double-jointed midget if he didn't have to, though, so he'd test first before pulling them.
At least the Ixtian had spare control crystals. They weren't as rare and valuable as ZPMs, obviously, but Atlantis went through them like a kid with candy, and finding a source made doing a little quick and dirty repair work well worth it even in his estimation.
Plus getting the air moving again in a full third of the habitat would make him breathe easier too.
"Okay," he muttered to himself, "okay, what have we got?" He loaded his diagnostic and set it running, shifting a little to ease the weight and pressure on one knee.
"Everything going okay?" Sheppard asked from over his shoulder.
Rodney jolted and smacked the top of his head against the upper edge of the access panel opening. He barely held onto the laptop balanced on his knees, while resisting the urge to put one hand to his head and rub.
"Damn it, Sheppard!"
"Sorry 'bout that."
"Oh, I'm sure."
The laptop beeped, bringing his attention back to its screen.
Rodney snapped his fingers at one of the Ixtian scientists he'd been working with all day. Tweedledee or Tweedledum. "You. Tweety."
"Tweel," the scientist corrected him.
"Whatever, come here. See this?" Rodney pointed at the screen. "Here's where most of your problems are coming from. These crystals can look perfectly fine to the naked eye and still be only working at half normal capacity. It's what has your systems messed up. They can't handle a normal load. It's a long, dirty job, but I'd advise you to go through every subcenter and test for damage or things are just going to get worse and worse."
"I see. The Station Manager would have to authorize that."
"Whatever, it's your problem. I'm going to pull these and replace them," Rodney dismissed him. "That'll have the recirculators functioning again since they're on a separate power grid."
He unhooked the laptop and handed it to Sheppard, then reached into the opening with one arm, feeling for the crystals blindly. A sharp piece of metal scraped his wrist, making him curse. The energy overload had torn up the paneling around the crystal array and froze the tray that usually pulled outward for maintenance in place. "Crap."
Rodney pulled his arm out and stared at the blood beading on the scrape.
Sheppard set his hand on Rodney's shoulder and said, "Maybe you need to take out another wall panel."
Rodney glared at the next panel, which had warped out of true. "Not without a cutting torch. It's stuck." He sighed. "I'm just going to have to do it by feel. You can hand me the replacements when I get the duds out."
He shoved his arm back inside and knee-walked as close the wall as he could before twisting his shoulders and sticking his head inside too. The blue glow of the good crystals threw black, sharp edged shadows in unfamiliar shapes. He still couldn't really see the second tray of crystals, but with a grunt, he leaned further in and got his hand on them.
The damaged crystals were all the way to the back, of course. Rodney groped and drifted his fingertips over them, counting as he fingered them. Three to the side from the left. His thumb wouldn't reach. He squeezed the wafer thing crystal between his index and middle fingers and wiggled it loose. Finally it snapped out of the port. He let it rest on top of the others and felt to the side for the last one.
Five to the side, second row. This was entirely too much like working on the air conditioning on his Volvo, though with less grease. He turned his arm, trying to get a grip on the crystal and the sharp edge of the broken panel cut him again, making him hiss.
"McKay?"
"I've almost...got...it."
He got his thumb on it and pulled. He could feel the whole tray rack move. Stubborn piece of Ancient junk, Rodney thought spitefully, jerking harder. The groan from the tray hardly registered, because the reluctant crystal was finally coming loose. One more jerk and it would come free.
The shriek of metal tearing loose and falling morphed into his own scream as the dangling panel came loose and fell, shearing through his arm like a guillotine, smashing into the tray of crystals and sending a shattered piece straight into Rodney's eye.
lunate
to: Director Richard Woolsey
from: Doctor Jennifer Keller
date: [redacted]
subject: re: quarantine
We're calling it Chromohydrans lornei celeris. It's incredibly opportunistic. It appears that AR-2 picked it up when they crossed a dry river delta while returning to the stargate. From what we've uncovered so far, it looks like chromohydrans is responsible for all the empty niches in P4M-33V's biota.
if thy right hand offend thee
Rodney's scream ripped John's sense of time into pieces, leaving him with shattered memories afterward of the next moments.
Scarlet painted his face, his shirt, the walls, the floor, lines of droplets flung through the air in flailing trajectories of agony and shock.
He caught Rodney's elbow, but his other hand slipped through a gush of warm wetness, slick raw flesh and bone ending where Rodney's hand was gone, blood still pumping from the sudden stump.
Rodney's face had gone colorless, the wide emptiness of his mouth stretched into a breathless keen, and John wrestled him down to the floor. A stiletto thin shard glittered in one eye, fluid running like thick tears over his cheek. John bit back a moan at the sight. Rodney's other eye was dilated and dark, not seeing anything through the shock.
"God damn it, somebody get me a tourniquet!" he shouted at the Ixtians.
"Where's my hand? Where is it? John...John...John...why can't I see it? What happened - aaaaaaaaaaah!" Rodney gasped. "Do something, someone, oh God, not my hand."
He had to keep Rodney still. If he kept thrashing around he could drive the crystal through the orbit of his eye and into his brain. How was he even still conscious?
“I'm here,” John told him helplessly. “I'm here.”
"John," Rodney repeated, suddenly, frighteningly calm. "I'm going to bleed out."
"No, you're not."
"I don't want to die here."
"You're not going to," John swore.
Rodney's calm didn't last and he jerked and heaved, trying to pull his wounded arm close to cradle it to his torso. He'd always been stronger than John gave him credit for being. It took all John's strength to hold him down.
No one else moved; they seemed frozen in horror. Then one of the maintainers ran and another began scrambling his hands through the air, communicating with someone at the Station control center. John couldn't let himself feel it yet. He knelt with one knee on Rodney's upper arm and the other on his shoulder, weight poised over his torso.
"Rodney, Rodney, look at me, don't look away, just look at me," John chanted. He tore his belt loose and jerked it free of the belt loops. "Don't move. Don't move, just look at me, that's right, keep your eyes - keep your head still."
The belt only slowed the bleeding, but Rodney had gone still. His breath whistled in and out through clenched teeth and the silence echoed as loud as his scream.
Tweel dropped down to his knees, bright clothes soaking up blood, and opened a cannister of something.
"What the hell is that?" John demanded as Tweel shoved Rodney's seeping stump straight into the cannister and pulled it out. Rodney whimpered, high and breathless. His torso heaved under John, twisting in the mindless instinct that told the lizard brain the flee pain.
"Emergency epoxy for hull leaks," Tweel said as he set the bottom of the cannister against the thick epoxy and pressed a button. A spark of blue electricity hit the epoxy and it solidified immediately. "It will stop his bleeding out until we can get him to medical care."
"Oh God, oh God, oh God, my hand," Rodney whimpered. He was staring at the epoxied stump. "My hand."
"No, Rodney, look at me," John told him. He caught Rodney's chin in his hand and turned his face away from the amputated limb. "Trust me. I'm going to get you home and Keller's going to take care of you - "
"Is she going to give me a new hand!?" Rodney screamed at John. "I'm crippled! Oh Jesus, fucking God, it hurts, John. My hand, my eye, I'll be half blind, they'll send me back - " He blinked and John watched the shard in his eye shift as Rodney's eyelid brushed it. "They'll send me away." The high whimper that followed cut John as sharply as the crystal sliced at Rodney, a vivid sense of sympathetic pain almost paralyzing him.
"I won't let them," he lied.
"It has to come out," Tweel said.
John nodded. Every time Rodney opened his mouth, it affected the shard in his eye. He tightened his hand on Rodney's jaw. "Hold still."
Rodney's jaw muscles rippled under his fingers. Tweel leaned forward and took hold of Rodney's skull, a hand on each temple.
John reached for the shard. He had to do this. Rodney's eye was unsalvageable, but his brain was still in there. He knew which mattered more to Rodney, no matter how horrified and in pain he was now. The sharp edged crystal sliced into his finger and thumb immediately. He tightened his grip anyway and pulled the length of it out, trying to keep it straight and avoid doing anymore damage. He flung it away as soon as he had it free of the eye and Rodney screamed again as his eyelid, bleeding where the edge of the crystal had cut it every time he blinked, closed over the ruin of his eye.
He pulled Rodney up and wrapped his arms around him, letting him cry out into his neck and shakeuntil he went terrifyingly limp. Only the fast, uneven whisper of hot breath against his throat kept John from panicking.
"You've got doctors - ?" he started to ask Tweel.
Tweel nodded. "Wedee has already called for an accident response team. If you can - I can help you and we can carry him and meet them sooner," he answered.
John struggled to his feet still holding onto Rodney. Tweel took some of his weight and they started at a staggering run down the station corridor, leaving a line of bloody footsteps marked behind them.
Don't die, don't die, please, he thought, the plea matching every beat of his heart, don't die, I don't want to do this without you. He had to hold it together. Couldn't afford to think if Rodney was right or of what would happen when they made it back to Atlantis.
Atlantis wouldn't be the same without Rodney. Nothing would be. Especially John. He hadn't been since they met.
Fall apart later, he told himself, when you know if he's even going to live through this, harsh in his own mind. He pulled Rodney's unconscious body a higher against him and urged Tweel to move a little faster down the corridor, lying to himself the whole time.
They would save Rodney, they would get back to Atlantis, and everything would be all right.
In the back of John's mind, a ghost named Holland laughed.
hamate
to: Director Richard Woolsey
from: Dr. Alan Chawpat
date: [redacted]
subject: ustra
At some point in their history after the destruction of the planet and the ZPM factory, after scavenging everything useful they could from the Scipia, the Ixtian were faced with a grim choice. Their habitat would support a limited population indefinitely, but the closed system would inevitably fail if they stressed it beyond its perimeters. It wasn't been built to be self-sustaining.
They instituted population controls. The penalties for disregarding them were severe. In time, the way of life that grew up around those penalties, and the practice of ustra, have become so entrenched in the Ixtian mindset that they can't conceive of not applying those same laws to anyone - even those from outside Ixtian.
Even those who could have helped free them of ustra.
Part Two
Author: Auburn
Codes:
Stargate Atlantis, gen, Rodney McKay, John Sheppard, Season 5, rated R, ~18,500 words, 130 KB, 9.15.08, standard disclaimers apply.
Notes:
Beta-ed by dossier and springwoof.
Summary:
People are all made up of pieces of each other. Sheppard and McKay are just more obvious about it.
As one complete html file here.
the business at hand
Rodney took the seat between John and Keller. Woolsey kept his eyes down, but as usual he was reading from paper files, and that was no different than any other morning staff meeting from before, so Rodney absolved him of avoidance. There was no reason Keller - it was Keller now, not Jennifer, he couldn't be casual with someone so uncomfortable around him - couldn't meet his gaze or John's, though. Yet solidarity didn't explain why the three of them always sat on the same side of the table now. It was just easier to not see.
Sometimes he wanted to ask her why she found both of them so horrifying or why she didn't hand over treating them to Biro or one of the other doctors since she did. She wasn't to blame for what had happened, so why did she get to act guilty and uncomfortable? She wasn't the one living with this.
She hadn't lost anything.
Keller stared straight ahead. So did Rodney.
What Sheppard did, he didn't know; he'd have to look and he hadn't for the last week.
Ronon grunted at him from opposite and Teyla smiled. Rodney made himself smile back. At least his face hadn't changed.
Lorne and Radek filled out the last two places in the regular gathering. Lorne's face never really gave much away and today seemed no different. Radek's gaze skittered away from Rodney's eyes, landed on the hand resting on the laptop Rodney had just put down before him, and jerked away. Nothing new there either.
"Coffee," Radek murmured. "Major? Rodney? Would you like - "
"Yes, yes," Rodney snapped, "of course I want coffee. When have I ever not?"
Radek slid his chair back and headed for the sideboard where a coffee maker and mugs were set up every morning. He slopped coffee over the lip of one mug when Rodney reached for it. It stung and Rodney shook the brown droplets off convulsively, flicking them onto Radek's uniform shirt. Radek stumbled back, mumbling, "Sorry, sorry," staring.
Everyone stared. Everyone always stared now and Rodney was already tired of it.
"Just set it down," he told Radek, reining in his temper, snatching stinging fingers back and hiding them in his lap, aware of John's uneven gaze on them and feeling guilty as though he had been careless with someone else's possession.
He used his left hand to lift the coffee to his lips and set it down again, fidgeting the mug into the bar of morning light gleaming over the glossy wood of Woolsey's imported from Earth table, lining it up so the light fell over the surface of the coffee itself, turning it brown rather than black, concentrating on the way the liquid shivered and rippled before settling.
John already had a mug before him, of course, and traced a fingertip over the lip when Rodney glimpsed him inadvertently. Rodney averted his gaze immediately, disturbed by the mismatch all over again. Every glimpse from the corner of his vision insisted he sat next to a stranger.
Woolsey finally looked up after Radek took his seat again.
Rodney gave him pointers for looking at himself and John without flinching, without looking at just the parts that were the same. Maybe there was something to all those negotiation skills diplomats were supposed to have. Woolsey could probably sit down and discuss knitting with Madame Lafarge.
"Let's begin," Woolsey said. "It's been a week. What have you found out, Dr. Keller?"
Rodney felt her flinch beside him.
"It's extraordinary work, far beyond anything medicine on Earth can approach, despite the unacceptable and unethical aspects of what those 'doctors' did." A red flush of embarrassment colored her face as everyone looked at John or Rodney. "There's really nothing for me to do. Everything works. There are no signs of rejection. I think the appearance may eventually become less...differentiated."
Woolsey folded his hands together. "I see," he said. "Is there any valid medical reason not to restore Colonel Sheppard and Doctor McKay to full duty?"
"Well, no," Keller replied with obvious reluctance. She darted nervous glances down the table at Rodney and past him to John. "Though I think they should both continue their sessions with Dr. Moktefi."
"Colonel Sheppard?" Woolsey asked.
John lifted both of his mismatched hands and wiggled the fingers. It made Rodney's skin crawl. "I'm fine. Still can't play the piano, but no hands of evil impulses or strangled subordinates so far."
Woolsey swallowed a small snort of near laughter. "I'm pleased to hear that." He switched his attention to Rodney. "How are you, Doctor McKay?"
"Fine. I'm fine." No use mentioning the nausea curling in his belly, since it had been a constant since their return and it was all in his head anyway. He wished John hadn't mentioned piano. He hadn't played in years, but now all he could think of were Sheppard's hands on ivory keys. Just the hands. He kept his eyes open to banish the image.
Woolsey studied him for another moment.
"All right, let's move on to the next portion of the agenda. Is it worth it, if there is any possibility of re-establishing contact with Ixtian Station, to do so?"
Ixtian Station.
handbook
Our ancestors chose to build our home in orbit over a nearly lifeless planet where they had constructed a facility to manufacture potentia. Construction of potentia was deemed too dangerous to conduct on a planet with a population or even an ecosystem. Thus we are descended from workers, maintainers, technators, programmers, and managers who commuted via rings to the planet and lived at a safe distance aboard Ixtian Station with their families and support services.
During the Wraith War, more and more potentia were required by the Alterans of Atlantis to power shields, weapons, hyperdrive ships, and experiments. Our ancestors stripped safety protocols down to the narrowest margin as priorities changed in the face of the Wraith threat. While many non-essential personnel were evacuated from Ixtian Station, many brave others chose to stay.
The location of our home and the potentia facility were a closely held secret to safeguard Ixtian against the Wraith finding us. Only the most trusted captains of Alteran ships were given our stellar coordinates. Only the highest members of the Council of Atlantis possessed the stargate address.
All this security did keep any Wraith from ever reaching our stellar system.
Instead, our ancestors were forced to endure the Destruction and the Isolation.
The Alterans of Atlantis understood the devastation inherent in a flawed potentia and the resulting destruction of the planet our habitat once orbited proved their wisdom in keeping that danger separate from our home. Recordings from the time of the devastation speak of material fatigue and an overload that resulted in a chain reaction. The destruction tore the potentia facility and the planet apart so violently pieces impacted our home's anti-collision shields, but Ixtian survived.
Pieces also tore through the Scipia, the last Alteran ship, which remains docked to the station to this day, before its crew had a chance to undock and raise their own shields, leaving it too damaged to ever fly again.
Others hit the stargate itself, sending it spinning far out into space, far beyond the range of ourdialing device. It would be centuries before the stargate reoriented and returned itself to its preprogrammed orbit.
By then there was no answer from Atlantis or any other Alteran outpost.
Our ancestors were marooned, with only the materials already aboard the station to support themselves.
The collected essays in this text are intended to explore what this meant for the men and women who guided the formation of our society in the aftermath of the Destruction.
From the introduction to: Essays on the Early Post-Isolation Station Managers of Ixtian Habitat, 0002 to 2441 PI, ed. Educator Aldweh Sirin, Educator Fant Paran, Historian Hadow Tweel. Distributed: 5647 Post-Isolation.
Translated by Dr. Wilhelmina Bancroft, Linguistics Department, Atlantis Expedition, [date redacted]
condemned out of hand
"Uh, guys, it was a metaphor."
John really hadn't expected them to listen to him and they didn't.
He'd meant it. Just not literally, or at least not without giving it some thought; he would give his right arm for McKay. Hell, he'd die for him.
He hadn't been expecting this, whatever this was, though.
Director of Station Security Hanabui had just looked at him and said, "You are ustra," and then the quick march into the medical lab, hands tied behind him, thugs with their big mitts locked around his biceps, and, Christ, McKay was still in the tank, unconscious and vulnerable, and he wouldn't have a clue what had happened to John.
So not good.
"Really, we aren't related, if that's what's got your panties in a twist."
Yeah, he should have known that wasn't going to fly.
He should've kept his big mouth shut. The Ixtian had knocked Rodney out when they arrived at the hospital, cleaned him up and shoved him in a tank of goo. The Director of Station Security had arrived to find out what exactly had happened. Then John had been introduced to the head doctor, Wuiper, and listened with about half his attention while looking down at Rodney suspended in the tank. He'd tried to imagine McKay going through life with a prosthetic hand and winced.
"He is a valuable man," Hanabui commented.
"The most important man in the city," John replied absently. He clenched his own hands into fists. Rodney needed both his hands.
"Important to you personally?"
"Yeah, we're like brothers. I'd die for him."
The Ixtians seemed to have taken him literally.
He tried to fight as the security thugs dragged him to another tank of goo, but Wuiper was there with an injector that hit John's neck and stung like hell, right before everything went all wiggly and melty.
John heard himself giggle and was horrified in a distant way. Manly Lieutenant Colonel's didn't giggle in public. Or at all. But especially not when people were taking off his clothes and it tickled. He tried to wriggle away but the nice big men were still there, holding him down. He tried to stop giggling then, but there hands everywhere and the light on the ceiling kept expanding and contracting and he couldn't squirm away.
Wuiper shot him up with something else when John tried to rear up and get away one last time. It flooded through him in a tide of warmth that made everything seem fine and he just sighed as they wiped him down with something cold then slid him into the blood-warm goo.
He tried to yell as the lid closed over his face and the goo rose over his lips, but his limbs were already so heavy and numb, and the goo slid inside.
The lights went out.
eye of the beholder
Rodney looked at himself in the mirror with John Sheppard's eye. The hazel was as familiar as his blue. Any accusation in it was his own. He knew that. John Sheppard's hand clutched at the edge of the sink, knuckles white under skin still darker than Rodney's.
Dr. Moktefi would have a field day if she could really see inside his head.
After one breath and then two, he blinked. He picked up his razor and finished shaving. He'd always been right-handed, but he'd begun using his left hand more and more since returning. Sheppard was right-handed too, but he didn't like to think about that, because Sheppard didn't have a choice anymore, so he concentrated on not cutting his face.
hat in hand
Elizabeth's subspace ghost had uploaded a list of the places where she and the other disembodied Replicator rebels had occupied computer systems, complete with gate addresses. A long list, though it shouldn't have surprised Rodney. He knew not every planet could have been crushed under the boot heel of Wraith domination. Even dwarf galaxies were vaster than the mind could conceive and humans were stubborn creatures. There had to be places in Pegasus where they hadn't given up on technology.
Woolsey authorized some discreet - read cloaked - missions to check out the possibility of alliances.
The first three were washes, not much more advanced than the Genii and not interested in poking their heads up for the Wraith to play whack-a-mole.
Address four, which the database didn't even list, but dialed without problems, turned out to be space gate. The MALP went tumbling away, whirling images of an asteroid belt, a G-type star, and the gate transmitting back, along with its other sensor readings.
No planet.
At least, no planet any longer, just the wreckage of one, the detritus spun out in an arc along the path of its orbit.
"Is that recent?" Sheppard asked, looking at the pictures from the MALP. Rocks and dust, asteroids that might qualify as planetoids, a world reduced to gravel. Most were dark, shadowed, but the local star colored the hemispheres facing it gray and ruddy, tan, umber and ochre, fogged in dust that almost glittered; it was pretty, in as much as it was wreckage. Sufficiently tremendous destruction had its own beauty, like violence.
"That depends on your definition of recent, Colonel," Rodney said.
"Is recent," Zelenka confirmed. "Perhaps eleven, twelve thousand years old."
"I meant did it happen after the Replicator ghosts were there, actually." Sheppard folded his arms and frowned at the big screen after he spoke.
"Obviously not, there are no radiation or energy readings beyond the stargate itself," Rodney told him.
Woolsey pursed his lips. "Well. MALPs are expensive pieces of equipment. Do you believe you could recover this one?
"Sure," Sheppard said before Rodney could. "We can stabilize it with the magnetic grapples Zelenka fixed up on Jumper Three. Once it's not tumbling, we'll seal the cockpit, kill the gravity generators in the cargo compartment, open the hatch and I'll just back the jumper around it."
"It's not that easy!" Rodney complained.
"I'll match velocity." Sheppard gave him a look like he felt hurt that Rodney didn't trust his mad piloting skills. "It'll be just like jumping between moving cars."
"Oh God."
"Come on, Rodney, let's go get the SGC's toy back."
"Can we take lunch? Because I skipped breakfast - "
"You skipped breakfast?'
"I was rudely dragged away before I could get through the line, if you'll remember, Sheppard." By Sheppard, he didn't bother adding.
Sheppard grinned at him, obviously remembering.
"Come on, McKay, it'll be good for you to get out of the city and your labs for an hour or two. You won't even have Ronon trying to steal your lunch."
"Hmph."
Ronon and Teyla were on New Athos, helping re-establish the few hybrids that had survived the destruction of Michael's proto-empire a few months back. They were probably digging or building or doing something dirty and exhausting. A few hours in a jumper with Sheppard were infinitely preferable.
"Fine."
"How long do you think it will take you?" Woolsey asked.
"Oh, maybe three hours," Sheppard answered. "We'll take a tour around, see if there's anything to see that the MALP missed."
"Three hours?" Rodney demanded on the way to the jumper bay. "Are you insane? I should refuse to go. You've jinxed us."
Sheppard's eyebrows nearly hit his hair line.
"Jinxed."
"Ever hear of the Minnow?" Rodney asked him darkly.
Sheppard honked like the jackass he was when he laughed.
scaphoid
The corruption of the habitat's datacore post-noncorporeal replicator incursion stressed the Ixtian beyond their normal limits. The introduction of outsiders exacerbated the situation, possibly triggering a xenophobic reaction, despite initial good relations between Colonel Sheppard, Dr. McKay and the Station Manager Steikes.
Misunderstandings were inevitable.
The Ixtian obviously had no need for the medical pharmaceuticals Atlantis normally trades, but expressed interest in exchanging repair work on several damaged systems and obtaining raw materials in exchange for control crystals they possessed the facilities to grow in zero-gee.
Neither Colonel Sheppard or Dr. McKay can be blamed for failing to realize the extent of the Ixtians need for raw materials or the more bizarre adaptations their society had made to stringent conservation and recycling over ten thousand years of isolation not just from other people but from any resources outside their habitat. They approached the prospect of diplomatic and trade relations between Ixtian and Atlantis in good faith.
The events that ensued can only be described as unfortunate.
Further contact with the Ixtian may be worth exploring, but should be undertaken via a diplomatic team dispatched aboard either the Daedalus or the Apollo and provided with a cargo of raw organics and water for collateral. Appendix C of Dr. McKay's report includes a list of potentially useful technology the Ixtian possessed, obtained from his observations while aboard the habitat and the data he downloaded from their systems to facilitate his escape.
From the pre-report notes of Dr. Alan Chawpat, Socialogy Department, Atlantis Expedition, [date redacted]
a feast for the eye
Rodney started pulling in scanner readings, analyzing them with little more than glance, because aside from his genius, he'd been doing this for a while now. Practice did at least lend speed, if not perfection, to repetitive tasks. Checking the sensors had become routine.
He pinged the MALP and received an answering ping, then found it moving away from the stargate at a steady rate on a trajectory that matched the force that had accompanied it out of the wormhole into zero gee.
And there beyond the reach of the MALP's limited sensors, he noticed something else.
Something else that looked a lot like a giant silver cigar keeper just beyond the asteroid belt, so close to the stargate that he and Sheppard could both even see it through the front view port with their bare eyes. "Look up," Rodney squeaked.
"Whoa," Sheppard breathed, voice husky and cracked.
"Space station," Rodney identified it, but he felt awed too, not that he'd showed that to Sheppard. Sheppard teased him enough as it was. Rodney studied the data the jumper's scanners gathered and added, "Actually, I think habitat would be the proper term. It's - "
Sheppard glanced at the numbers, leaning sideways into the co-pilot's space, left hand braced on the armrest just beneath Rodney's wrist. Honestly, let someone touch him and he practically leaped out of his skin to get away, but Sheppard had no sense about anyone else's personal space. Someday, Rodney would remember to ask Moktefi about that. Of course, she would just give him that hangdog look of hers and ask what he thought it meant and why it mattered to him, so he should just save his effort for something useful. He stared at the numbers as they finally registered and his mouth dropped open a little.
"Big," Sheppard said.
Rodney snapped his mouth shut.
"Yes, yes, it's big."
"Let's go check it out," Sheppard suggested and headed the jumper toward it. The closer they got, the bigger the habitat seemed, until its scarred metal hull filled the view port, an anti-collision shield shimmering like a second skin over it, and Rodney's eyes were wide as his open mouth.
"Really, really big," he mumbled and his hands stilled on his laptop keyboard for the first time.
Sheppard shared a glance with him, looking just as overwhelmed, hazel eyes dark and big, reminding Rodney of when they'd both been new to this and everything had been amazing.
"Yeah."
a foot in both camps
Five minutes later, after a dial-in to update Atlantis, John started his approach, slow and easy, because the habitat had not only spin but was tumbling end for end. The spin likely provided cheap gravity courtesy of Coriolis force pushing everything out against the inside skin of the habitat. He'd read a lot of science fiction sitting in ready rooms and flight lines and in BOQs on bases with nothing better to do over the years and wondered if there would be gliders or other ways of utilizing the low to near zero gravity that should hold sway near the center axis of the habitat. Of course, Ancient construction usually came equipped with artificial gravity, so there might be no fun to be had, but it still remained cool to consider.
When they came close enough, a HUD popped up, dividing the habitat into a three dimensional green gridwork before them, teeming with life signs. For the first time, John really got that they were looking at something at least the size of Atlantis, though differently proportioned.
"Well, that answers that question," was Rodney's only comment. He had been busy analyzing another set of numbers while John brought the jumper closer and closer.
He could guess what Rodney had been looking for in those numbers, too.
People meant power and power for a habitat the size of the one before them might very well mean a zero point module. Of course, if the habitat's people had one, they needed it, so they would be unlikely to part with it. Unless they knew how to make them. In which case, Rodney would want to learn to fish even if he couldn't have a fish dinner.
John's hands started sweating at that thought. Rodney had him well trained. You could spot an Atlantis vet anywhere just by how they breathed a little faster and got bright eyed if you even whispered, "Z.P.M." It had become positively Pavlovian at this point. Though with less spit in John's case, as adrenaline always left him with a dry mouth.
He shook his head to clear the stray thoughts and began checking for any sort of docking area while keeping the jumper clear of the habitat. If it hadn't been for the tumble, he would have spiraled parallel to the length of the habitat, but he suspected the docks would be at the ends anyway. Coming about, he glimpsed one blunt end for the first time.
"Holy crap!"
"What?" Rodney's gaze snapped up from the laptop and his mouth dropped open again. "Sonovabitch."
John hoped there were docks at the other end too, because nothing and no one would be going in at the end he saw now. It was a dock, but it was also completely occupied by the twisted and torn wreckage of a starship. The hull had been torn open, major portions of it exposed to vacuum, the hyperspace engines completely gone, along with the bridge, and most of its cargo hold. Only the lack of gravity kept the warped wreckage clamped to the habitat's dock.
"You think it was hit while it was docked?" Rodney murmured from beside him.
"Had to be," John answered, because he was a hot pilot, but he knew the impossible when he saw it and flying that crippled ship went beyond his or anyone's skills. Nothing that messed up could have been successfully docked without inflicting more damage to the station. He wondered how many of its crew were aboard and how many made it into the station when it was hit, as well as what hit it. Wraith wouldn't have left the habitat intact.
Rodney had gone back to typing again. The key clatter sounded comforting. Staring at that long dead ship, John felt glad for the company of his friend and even for Rodney's narrow focus of concentration. Two of them mooning over what must have been a horrific attack or disaster would make each other feel worse.
"Hunh."
Rodney's grunt drew John out of his own funk.
"What?"
"Well..."
"Spit it out."
"Charming."
"Rodney."
"Fine. The secondary motion," Rodney hand made a move that either meant the cartwheel tumble of the habitat or a limp-wristed robot wave, "was not original. The impacts on the ship threw it into the current motion and they've used up ten thousand years of luck in that it didn't send the whole thing careening into the asteroid belt, because that shield they've got would never have held up this long under a constant heavy bombardment."
"And here I thought they did that just to make docking interesting," John volleyed back.
Rodney gave him a wide-eyed look. "Oh, no. No, no, no." He breathed in and went on, "No, no, no, no. No, you are not trying to dock with that thing. Not with me in the jumper."
"Relax, Rodney, we still don't know if there are any docks at the other end."
John took the jumper around to check it out even as he soothed Rodney though, and, sure enough, there were jumper-sized docks at the other end. They appeared to be functional. Compensating for spin and tumble would be tricky, but John knew he could manage. No worse than landing an Osprey with instruments on a carrier in a storm. He matched speed and motion with the habitat and said, "I say we try it."
Rodney just moaned.
metacarpals
to: Director Richard Woolsey
from: Dr. Alan Chawpat
date: [redacted]
subject: Ixtian technology
The ornate jewelry that Colonel Sheppard observed a significant proportion of the population wearing proved to be in fact part of the Ixtians information processing interface.
The ubiquitous goggles provided a visual display similar to a HUD in conjunction with a wireless connection to the station operating systems. Sensors in the hand devices picked up movements coordinated to virtual command consoles, allowing the Ixtian to work from anywhere on the habitat.
A drawback of the system lay in its lack of hardware backup. When their datacore became corrupted, they had nothing that wasn't hooked into the system. Whether this oversight resulted from over reliance on the high performance Ancient datacore and operating system or the Ixtians' depleted resources has yet to be determined. But lacking hard copy or backups they could reload, they found themselves without sufficient knowledge to institute badly needed repairs in the wake of a major system collapse.
Dr. McKay, with his laptop full of diagnostic programs and in-depth knowledge of Ancient systems, must have seemed too good to let go. The possibility that the cultural misunderstanding over Colonel Sheppard's status as ustra was deliberately engineered in an attempt to isolate and retain Dr. McKay, must be considered if the SGC decides to contact them again.
Alexei Petrescu pointed this last out to me. I don't know how valid the worry is, but maybe someone should take it to the military, since they're in charge of security offworld?
Alan Chawpat
eyes wide open
It only took about five minutes for Rodney to ascertain the habitat didn't have a ZPM, while John did the whole meet and greet with the locals, all of them fumbling a little because Ring Speak had changed a little since the last time any of the habitat's people went through and picked up an update apparently. They sounded old fashioned to John's ear when he radioed for permission to dock. Even over the radio he picked up on their excitement, though.
A group met them as they came through the airlock.
Everyone blinked a little on seeing each other. The locals were all not just bald, but nearly hairless. Eyelashes seemed to be the extent of what was tolerable. They stared at John and Rodney, gazes just a little up, and he assumed they were as startled by their hair as he was by their lack. John realized that he and Rodney, in their fatigues, tac vests, and arms, must look drab and dangerous next to the bird of paradise brightness of the locals' dress; which was layered, colorful, and thin, since no real weather meant not much need for protection.
"Hiya," John said with a little wave toward the foremost local, a tall guy in blue and tangerine pants and a long green duster.
Number One Guy's bare head either had been tattooed or painted in decorative patterns. A set of red-lensed goggles dangled around his neck and what John would bet was a mike and earpiece was curled into his ear.
The others behind Number One Guy were dressed a little duller. Most of them still had their goggles over their eyes. Four of them had weapons in holsters at their waists. The guns looked like hand stunners - more Wraith design than Ancient or human, nothing like Ronon's - which made sense on a space station. Projectile weapons like his P90 might hole something more important than a body. He stifled a moment of disappointment; he really wanted to find one of those pulse pistols sometime, but it looked like it wouldn't be today.
Number One Guy brought his fists together before his chest, tapping the knuckles against each other and said, "Greetings."
John rested his hands over the stock of his P90 and smiled back, nodding, "So, we were just checking things out in the neighborhood, saw your place, and thought we'd stop by, see if anyone here would be interested in exchanging some information or goods, maybe talk about some trade? I'm Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, by the way, and this is Doctor Rodney McKay. We're both explorers."
McKay gave him a dirty look and corrected, "I'm a scientist."
Number One Guy frowned for a few seconds and behind him another person flicked her fingers like mad through the air, catching John's attention. The silver rings and tip caps were all connected to a heavy bracelet and it all looked a little like what the Wraith queens wore and a lot like the Goa'uld hand devices he'd seen back on Earth.
Hand-dancer stopped her fidgeting after a second and Number One Guy's expression cleared.
"I am Station Manager Steikes."
"Nice to meet you."
"It has been a very long time since anyone came to Ixtian Station," Steikes said slowly. "We welcome you."
phalanges
From what we've extracted from Atlantis' records, even the Ancients couldn't build a space habitat without industrial accidents. (We'll have to consult Engineering on some of this, it's way over my head. I'm assigning Devendra to translating the stuff on potentia - which we've all agreed refers to zero point modules - since the Physics Department always asks for her anyway.) I've gone over what Dr. McKay brought back from Ixtian and I don't know if they weren't bothering to keep decent records or if it's all corrupted or incomplete, but I've still been able to piece together an idea of their history.
Alan, they have a recorded history of over ten thousand years! Not just bits and pieces and trying to figure out a lost language, either. It's all in an Alteran variant we're already familiar with.
Okay, where was I?
Until the habitat had been assembled far enough to generate its own gravity, work was done in zero gee. Crush wounds and broken bones from working with equipment that still possessed mass and inertia were common. Maintaining the station also involved the danger of being crippled. There are lists of casualties. I'm looking at them now. Ouch. Apparently the Ancients didn't have anything like OSHA.
Hmn. All right. It looks like they were cutting a lot of corners since Ixtian was built during wartime. This journal entry says optimum solutions were sacrificed in the name of speed. Casualties were expected and factored into the estimated time of completion. The medical care facilities aboard the habitat were geared to returning workers to the job as fast as possible.
So the Ancients did possess the technology to regrow severed limbs using nanite technology, but they didn't bother with it for workers at Ixtian. Too dangerous as well as energy and time consuming. By the way, Alan, I'm starting to agree with the rest of the expedition. The Ancients were a bunch of arrogant, egotistical jerks. All the workers building the station were human, so no one really gave a damn about their medical care. It does explain why none of the Ixtian have the ATA gene.
It says here that grafting took far less time and every worker assigned to build the station had signed off on donating any useful body parts in the event of their death.
I haven't found anything that can help McKay or the Colonel yet, but I'm going to keep looking.
Transcript of recorded notes for a first draft report from Dr. Wilhelmina Bancroft, Linguistics Department, Atlantis Expedition, to Dr. Alan Chawpat, Socialogy Department, Atlantis Expedition, [date redacted]
hand in the till
Sweat glued Rodney's hair to his head. He scrubbed his fingers through it and then rolled his shoulders, trying to give the tense muscles in his back some relief. The heat in the badly vented and claustrophobic work space kept him from stiffening up too much, but they paid for it in lack of breathing room and air growing more and more stuffy.
One of the Ixtians he was working with ran a cloth over his head, wiping away a shiny coating of perspiration without affecting the paint.
Rodney had begun to understand why the Ixtians eschewed hair; it held dirt and sweat and had to be filtered out of everything from the water reclamation systems to the air circulation systems. Of course it went back to the organics systems to be broken down and returned to the habitat's hydroponics facilities; even the dust from the air filters was reclaimed. He was valiantly refusing to think about any of that whenever he ate, since Sheppard wouldn't let him subsist on emergency MREs from the jumper.
He turned back to the access panel, crouched, and hooked his laptop into the diagnostic port. At least three of the crystals controlling the recirculation subcenter had been blown out. He'd pulled those already, but he suspected at least two more were damaged as well, even if they weren't blackened and cracked. He didn't want to wedge his shoulders back into a space designed for a double-jointed midget if he didn't have to, though, so he'd test first before pulling them.
At least the Ixtian had spare control crystals. They weren't as rare and valuable as ZPMs, obviously, but Atlantis went through them like a kid with candy, and finding a source made doing a little quick and dirty repair work well worth it even in his estimation.
Plus getting the air moving again in a full third of the habitat would make him breathe easier too.
"Okay," he muttered to himself, "okay, what have we got?" He loaded his diagnostic and set it running, shifting a little to ease the weight and pressure on one knee.
"Everything going okay?" Sheppard asked from over his shoulder.
Rodney jolted and smacked the top of his head against the upper edge of the access panel opening. He barely held onto the laptop balanced on his knees, while resisting the urge to put one hand to his head and rub.
"Damn it, Sheppard!"
"Sorry 'bout that."
"Oh, I'm sure."
The laptop beeped, bringing his attention back to its screen.
Rodney snapped his fingers at one of the Ixtian scientists he'd been working with all day. Tweedledee or Tweedledum. "You. Tweety."
"Tweel," the scientist corrected him.
"Whatever, come here. See this?" Rodney pointed at the screen. "Here's where most of your problems are coming from. These crystals can look perfectly fine to the naked eye and still be only working at half normal capacity. It's what has your systems messed up. They can't handle a normal load. It's a long, dirty job, but I'd advise you to go through every subcenter and test for damage or things are just going to get worse and worse."
"I see. The Station Manager would have to authorize that."
"Whatever, it's your problem. I'm going to pull these and replace them," Rodney dismissed him. "That'll have the recirculators functioning again since they're on a separate power grid."
He unhooked the laptop and handed it to Sheppard, then reached into the opening with one arm, feeling for the crystals blindly. A sharp piece of metal scraped his wrist, making him curse. The energy overload had torn up the paneling around the crystal array and froze the tray that usually pulled outward for maintenance in place. "Crap."
Rodney pulled his arm out and stared at the blood beading on the scrape.
Sheppard set his hand on Rodney's shoulder and said, "Maybe you need to take out another wall panel."
Rodney glared at the next panel, which had warped out of true. "Not without a cutting torch. It's stuck." He sighed. "I'm just going to have to do it by feel. You can hand me the replacements when I get the duds out."
He shoved his arm back inside and knee-walked as close the wall as he could before twisting his shoulders and sticking his head inside too. The blue glow of the good crystals threw black, sharp edged shadows in unfamiliar shapes. He still couldn't really see the second tray of crystals, but with a grunt, he leaned further in and got his hand on them.
The damaged crystals were all the way to the back, of course. Rodney groped and drifted his fingertips over them, counting as he fingered them. Three to the side from the left. His thumb wouldn't reach. He squeezed the wafer thing crystal between his index and middle fingers and wiggled it loose. Finally it snapped out of the port. He let it rest on top of the others and felt to the side for the last one.
Five to the side, second row. This was entirely too much like working on the air conditioning on his Volvo, though with less grease. He turned his arm, trying to get a grip on the crystal and the sharp edge of the broken panel cut him again, making him hiss.
"McKay?"
"I've almost...got...it."
He got his thumb on it and pulled. He could feel the whole tray rack move. Stubborn piece of Ancient junk, Rodney thought spitefully, jerking harder. The groan from the tray hardly registered, because the reluctant crystal was finally coming loose. One more jerk and it would come free.
The shriek of metal tearing loose and falling morphed into his own scream as the dangling panel came loose and fell, shearing through his arm like a guillotine, smashing into the tray of crystals and sending a shattered piece straight into Rodney's eye.
lunate
to: Director Richard Woolsey
from: Doctor Jennifer Keller
date: [redacted]
subject: re: quarantine
We're calling it Chromohydrans lornei celeris. It's incredibly opportunistic. It appears that AR-2 picked it up when they crossed a dry river delta while returning to the stargate. From what we've uncovered so far, it looks like chromohydrans is responsible for all the empty niches in P4M-33V's biota.
if thy right hand offend thee
Rodney's scream ripped John's sense of time into pieces, leaving him with shattered memories afterward of the next moments.
Scarlet painted his face, his shirt, the walls, the floor, lines of droplets flung through the air in flailing trajectories of agony and shock.
He caught Rodney's elbow, but his other hand slipped through a gush of warm wetness, slick raw flesh and bone ending where Rodney's hand was gone, blood still pumping from the sudden stump.
Rodney's face had gone colorless, the wide emptiness of his mouth stretched into a breathless keen, and John wrestled him down to the floor. A stiletto thin shard glittered in one eye, fluid running like thick tears over his cheek. John bit back a moan at the sight. Rodney's other eye was dilated and dark, not seeing anything through the shock.
"God damn it, somebody get me a tourniquet!" he shouted at the Ixtians.
"Where's my hand? Where is it? John...John...John...why can't I see it? What happened - aaaaaaaaaaah!" Rodney gasped. "Do something, someone, oh God, not my hand."
He had to keep Rodney still. If he kept thrashing around he could drive the crystal through the orbit of his eye and into his brain. How was he even still conscious?
“I'm here,” John told him helplessly. “I'm here.”
"John," Rodney repeated, suddenly, frighteningly calm. "I'm going to bleed out."
"No, you're not."
"I don't want to die here."
"You're not going to," John swore.
Rodney's calm didn't last and he jerked and heaved, trying to pull his wounded arm close to cradle it to his torso. He'd always been stronger than John gave him credit for being. It took all John's strength to hold him down.
No one else moved; they seemed frozen in horror. Then one of the maintainers ran and another began scrambling his hands through the air, communicating with someone at the Station control center. John couldn't let himself feel it yet. He knelt with one knee on Rodney's upper arm and the other on his shoulder, weight poised over his torso.
"Rodney, Rodney, look at me, don't look away, just look at me," John chanted. He tore his belt loose and jerked it free of the belt loops. "Don't move. Don't move, just look at me, that's right, keep your eyes - keep your head still."
The belt only slowed the bleeding, but Rodney had gone still. His breath whistled in and out through clenched teeth and the silence echoed as loud as his scream.
Tweel dropped down to his knees, bright clothes soaking up blood, and opened a cannister of something.
"What the hell is that?" John demanded as Tweel shoved Rodney's seeping stump straight into the cannister and pulled it out. Rodney whimpered, high and breathless. His torso heaved under John, twisting in the mindless instinct that told the lizard brain the flee pain.
"Emergency epoxy for hull leaks," Tweel said as he set the bottom of the cannister against the thick epoxy and pressed a button. A spark of blue electricity hit the epoxy and it solidified immediately. "It will stop his bleeding out until we can get him to medical care."
"Oh God, oh God, oh God, my hand," Rodney whimpered. He was staring at the epoxied stump. "My hand."
"No, Rodney, look at me," John told him. He caught Rodney's chin in his hand and turned his face away from the amputated limb. "Trust me. I'm going to get you home and Keller's going to take care of you - "
"Is she going to give me a new hand!?" Rodney screamed at John. "I'm crippled! Oh Jesus, fucking God, it hurts, John. My hand, my eye, I'll be half blind, they'll send me back - " He blinked and John watched the shard in his eye shift as Rodney's eyelid brushed it. "They'll send me away." The high whimper that followed cut John as sharply as the crystal sliced at Rodney, a vivid sense of sympathetic pain almost paralyzing him.
"I won't let them," he lied.
"It has to come out," Tweel said.
John nodded. Every time Rodney opened his mouth, it affected the shard in his eye. He tightened his hand on Rodney's jaw. "Hold still."
Rodney's jaw muscles rippled under his fingers. Tweel leaned forward and took hold of Rodney's skull, a hand on each temple.
John reached for the shard. He had to do this. Rodney's eye was unsalvageable, but his brain was still in there. He knew which mattered more to Rodney, no matter how horrified and in pain he was now. The sharp edged crystal sliced into his finger and thumb immediately. He tightened his grip anyway and pulled the length of it out, trying to keep it straight and avoid doing anymore damage. He flung it away as soon as he had it free of the eye and Rodney screamed again as his eyelid, bleeding where the edge of the crystal had cut it every time he blinked, closed over the ruin of his eye.
He pulled Rodney up and wrapped his arms around him, letting him cry out into his neck and shakeuntil he went terrifyingly limp. Only the fast, uneven whisper of hot breath against his throat kept John from panicking.
"You've got doctors - ?" he started to ask Tweel.
Tweel nodded. "Wedee has already called for an accident response team. If you can - I can help you and we can carry him and meet them sooner," he answered.
John struggled to his feet still holding onto Rodney. Tweel took some of his weight and they started at a staggering run down the station corridor, leaving a line of bloody footsteps marked behind them.
Don't die, don't die, please, he thought, the plea matching every beat of his heart, don't die, I don't want to do this without you. He had to hold it together. Couldn't afford to think if Rodney was right or of what would happen when they made it back to Atlantis.
Atlantis wouldn't be the same without Rodney. Nothing would be. Especially John. He hadn't been since they met.
Fall apart later, he told himself, when you know if he's even going to live through this, harsh in his own mind. He pulled Rodney's unconscious body a higher against him and urged Tweel to move a little faster down the corridor, lying to himself the whole time.
They would save Rodney, they would get back to Atlantis, and everything would be all right.
In the back of John's mind, a ghost named Holland laughed.
hamate
to: Director Richard Woolsey
from: Dr. Alan Chawpat
date: [redacted]
subject: ustra
At some point in their history after the destruction of the planet and the ZPM factory, after scavenging everything useful they could from the Scipia, the Ixtian were faced with a grim choice. Their habitat would support a limited population indefinitely, but the closed system would inevitably fail if they stressed it beyond its perimeters. It wasn't been built to be self-sustaining.
They instituted population controls. The penalties for disregarding them were severe. In time, the way of life that grew up around those penalties, and the practice of ustra, have become so entrenched in the Ixtian mindset that they can't conceive of not applying those same laws to anyone - even those from outside Ixtian.
Even those who could have helped free them of ustra.
Part Two