Fic: Flying Low at Night (Farscape/SG-Atlantis), rated R
So the blame for this may be laid entirely at the doorstep of samdonne. I hope this is something like what you were looking for. Oddly enough, it turned out way less angsty than I expected.
Flying Low at Night
Pairing: John Sheppard/Aeryn Sun
Rating: R (language, sex, violence)
Warnings: for Hynerians and Dickensian coincidences
Feedback: makes me do the wacky
Notes: SamDonne may be the inspiration, but I am the only one responsible for this foolishness. Set in the same universe as my story Bellum Interruptum, which you can find here. You don't need to have read it to know what's going on, though.
"You are the one they call Shappard?"
The woman's voice is throaty but clear, and under the running translation in his head John hears clicks and sibilants--she's another one of the Sebaceans so common in this region. Human-seeming, but stronger and longer-lived, from what he's gathered. He's been careful not to ask too much: he doesn't want to give away everything he doesn't know. This place is a war zone, and he can't afford to be just another refugee.
"Sheppard, yeah," he says, and looks around the room. It's a shabby little cafe on a shabby little station. The rest of the tables are crowded--Sebaceans, Luxans, several races he doesn't recognize--but there are no Nebari. Of course: the winners are rarely among the refugees. This table, though, is empty, but for the woman in black leathers with a pistol strapped to her hip.
John's new in town, but not that new: he knows what a Peacekeeper looks like.
She nods once and motions with her chin at the chair across from her. "Sit down."
He shifts his weight, resting his hand on the butt of his own pistol--he ran out of ammo for the P90 and his sidearm a long time ago, but chakkan oil is still easy to get--and sits down, swinging the chair around so he can watch the rest of the room. She raises an eyebrow a millimeter; she could give Teyla lessons in impassivity, he suspects. She's got a bone structure he hasn't seen since the X-Files went off the air, and all the warmth in her face of that pulse pistol at her side.
"What can I do for you?" he asks, deciding charm isn't really the way to go, here. Charm's harder to summon when you're always looking over your shoulder, when there's nobody there to back you up when the situation goes sour. He's settled on cautious as his new modus operandi. It gets him what he needs, if not what he wants.
Two years on the run, one year alone; he's stopped wanting anything a while back. John thinks it's one year; after Ronon left, he stopped keeping track. "Left": it's easier to say than the truth. He doesn't think about the past, doesn't count the days, doesn't wonder why he's still alive and everyone else--so far as he knows--is dead.
He's tried dialing Atlantis periodically; it's a pathological response every time he gets near a functioning stargate. But that seventh chevron never locks. He's not McKay; he doesn't know if one of the turns he took brought him out of the Pegasus Galaxy entirely, or if Atlantis fell, or if they just turned off the lights and went home, shutting down the gate behind them.
It's becoming a moot question, anyway--where he is, there are few stargates and the ones that exist don't look like Ancient construction. He gets around as best he can in the battered jumper, running passengers, grain, and sometimes weapons from planet to planet in this densely-populated sector of space. When Ronon was still with him they'd done some bodyguard work, but as one guy, it's a lot harder. Now he takes what he can get; it's enough, barely, and without the jumper he knows he's dead in the water.
"My name is Aeryn Sun," the Peacekeeper says, watching him carefully.
John nods and makes a noncommital noise. Her expression doesn't change, but a muscle tightens in her jaw: he's failed some kind of test. He's supposed to know who this woman is, and he doesn't. Fuck.
"I understand you have a small ship for contract," she goes on, smoothly, as if he hadn't just been caught out. "I need to shuttle out two passengers, get them to Interion space without being caught by the Establishment. Can you do it?"
"Maybe," he says, cautiously. He tells no one about the cloak, ever. "When do you need it?"
"Soon."
John grimaces. "I've got some stuff to do, it may be a day or so. That fit your schedule?"
Her eyes narrow and she taps a hand on the table softly. Finally she nods. "It will do. The fleet will not be here yet, and the other options are less..."
"Attractive?" John tries for a grin: it feels creaky, as if it needs to be oiled.
She shakes her head, meeting his eyes with an unsettling intensity. "Trustworthy."
He's startled into a laugh. "You think I'm trustworthy? Why?"
She shakes her head minutely and gets up from the table. "You'll take payment in krindars?" At his nod, she continues, "It will be worth your effort. I'll contact you at your berth in two rotations."
John just stares at her as she disappears, sliding through the crowd at the door like a knife. She is certainly not what he expected. He was hoping for a drink, but if he takes the job--a decision he hasn't yet made--he has some work to do. He gives her another few minutes, so she won't think he's following her, and leaves the cafe himself.
On the way back to the docks, he stops at a public information booth. Twenty minutes and the judicious use of boolean searches learned on a far more sophisticated, if less multi-lingual computer system, teach him less than he needs to know, and more than enough to worry him. Why the hell would a woman being hunted by the Peacekeepers, the Scarrans, and the Nebari tell me her name?
+=+=+
"No, don't touch that. Not that, either. No!" Sheppard swats at the lingering foot-hand of the Indari mechanic, who is clearly perplexed and enthralled by the design of the jumper. "Just this, here, okay? I need you to pull these lines and give me something that won't blow under pressure. No," he sighs in response to Terik's chittering. "Not air pressure, stress. Look, fine, you don't need to understand how it works--"
There's a step on the ramp and a shadow in the doorway. It's Sun, as promised, but she's early. He's not ready yet. John points Terik at the lines he needs replaced and goes to the hatch, squinting at her shadow against the brighter lights of the docking tube.
He's managed to get the jumper hooked up to the station, but every new place it's another desperate job. One of these days he's not going to be able to do it, and he'll suffocate while trying to juryrig a connection that doesn't leak all his atmosphere into space. He'd give his last MRE for a working space suit. He'd give his right arm for a mechanic familiar with Ancient tech: hell, he'd settle for Kavanagh. He doesn't allow himself to think about how much fun McKay would have out here, with all the different kinds of technology. Living ships.
"You're not ready yet," she says, without preface. When she frowns, those eyes get cold.
"Minor setback," John says, shifting so she can't see the way the wires are spilling out from the overhead consoles. It really is better than it looks: he's learned a lot in the last couple of years. But there's no need to scare the client.
Potential client.
"We never did talk price," he says casually. The station is overrun with refugees, and John's sure that he could find a cargo pretty easily. As the Nebari approach, ticket prices skyrocket. Anyone with any governmental or military associations is cutting and running--the Establishment, he's heard, spaces them immediately before moving on to pacify the populace. John's seen more than one cargo vessel pressed into service as a passenger carrier, environmentals working past capacity before they even leave the system. It's true the money comes in handy, but he likes to be able to breathe, and he doesn't have the room for more than two others for a long trip.
She nods, slipping a thumb into her gunbelt. "Forty-five," she says, after peering about at the interior of the jumper. "It's smaller than I thought."
"She'll do," says John. He can't help the defensiveness, but at least he hasn't gotten to the point of naming the little ship. It's just a puddlejumper, nothing special. He can't afford that kind of sentimentality out here. "Seventy," he counters. He doesn't think it's greedy to want something to eat other than the play-doh squares they sell in all the markets; but fresh food is expensive, and he's thinking of picking up one of those pulse rifles as well.
"Fifty-five," she says. "It's only two passengers, and they take little room."
"You're not going?"
"I have other plans." She moves her hand the smallest amount closer to her pistol. Okay, then, thinks John.
"Sixty, and they bring their own food."
"Oh, they will." At which she smiles, and his jaw nearly drops. For an instance, so quickly and it's gone, she's gorgeous, her face alight with humor. "Twelve arns, Sheppard. Be ready."
She slips off down the docking tube before he can begin to recover. "Huh."
+=+=+
They arrive, as she promised, twelve arns later--at about the same time the Nebari fleet finally does. The docks are in an uproar, everyone with any cash clustered at the huge bay doors, mashed against the security fence, waving papers, jewelry, and nubile daughters at the shipmasters, desperate for a way off this tin can.
John squeezes through the crowd, waves his pass at the sweating guards, and trots down the aisle to his berth, meager bag of supplies swinging from his left hand. His right hand is always empty, in public. The Uncharted Territories may be Wraith-free, but safe they aren't.
His passengers are waiting at the door to the berth; he doesn't bother wondering how they got through the gate guards. Aeryn Sun's clearly a woman with initiative. She turns as he comes up to the door, raising an eyebrow questioningly. "Food," he says. "Sorry you had to..." His voice trails off as he sees her companions.
The first of them looks like little more than a child: a slim creature of undetermined gender, all red hair and freckles, with immense yellow-gold eyes peering out from under a green hood. That doesn't look so bad; but the second!
"Oh, no," John says. "No fucking way."
The second passenger swivels its floating chair and examines John with disdain. It's green and it's short and reptilian, and John knows just enough about Hynerians to know what it'll do to the inside of his jumper.
"There is no way in hell I'm taking one of those god-damned frogs--"
The Hynerian sneers (John always thought you needed lips for that, but apparently he was wrong) and pokes at Sun with a baton he carries in his lap. "Aeryn, you cannot expect me to travel with yet another of these pathetic creatures! I may be deposed, but I still deserve better service--"
Sun slaps a hand over the Hynerian's mouth, muffling the raucous complaint. When he struggles, she pinches his ear viciously. Both hands wrapped about the wriggling green head, she smiles at John ingratiatingly. "He's really not so bad once you get to know him--Rygel, be quiet!" she hisses. "This is the best I could do! You know what the Nebari would do to you!"
The child brings both hands to his or her face and giggles; John decides it's female, pending new data. "Ninety," he announces to Sun, trying desperately not to smile back. "And he absolutely doesn't get any of my food."
"Pah!" exclaims the frog as Sun takes her hand away. "As if I would--oh, is that fellip nectar in your bag?"
Ignoring Rygel, Sun glares at John, but the noise of the crowd increases, and he can see her eyes flickering as she thinks. "Seventy," she says finally, and counts out half the money into his hands, Rygel muttering impatiently at her side. "You'll get the rest on delivery. Get them to Beldani Secundus, it's deep in Interion space and we have a contact there. Rygel has the information."
"Hope you folks aren't in a hurry," John drawls, tucking the money away and turning to the lock-pad on the berth door. "We can't beat hetch four in this thing, but I promise it'll be safe."
"Yes, right, get us out of here, you humans are all--" Rygel's complaints diminish to a grumpy mutter as John heads down the docking tube.
The ramp opens easily, but the lights do not come up inside the jumper as he enters. He grunts, gun slipping into his hand. There is no one inside and nothing looks disturbed. Except, there should be lights. Lights he thinks at the jumper; nothing.
"Stay there," he snaps, and the others pause in the doorway as he makes his way to the control console.
"What is it?" asks Sun from behind him.
"Fucking hell," swears John, and slams his hand down hard on the console. On an ordinary day, that would result in a flicker of lights and the activation of three or four separate control screens. But on an ordinary day his mechanic hasn't broken in to the ship and stolen one of his control crystals.
Terik didn't even bother to hide his work: the drawer stands open, the slot empty where the crystal was. Two years John's kept this baby going, and one quick-fingered arthropod is enough to shaft him.
"Bastard mechanic stole a part," he admits, looking up at Sun sheepishly. He can't see her face, silhouetted against the light of docks. "We're dead in the water."
"Well, get another one!" demands Rygel.
"He can't," says Sun, and cuffs the Hynerian lightly across the back of his head. When the frog doesn't lose his shit completely, John realizes they've known one another a very long time. It's too painful a reminder, so he ignores it and focuses on the current problem.
"Nobody here makes those parts. We're fucked--unless I can get it back."
"Have you ever fought an Indari?" Sun asks, almost academically. "They use all their limbs to fight with, you know." But there's some humor in her voice, an invitation.
He hasn't, of course; he didn't know what an Indari was until two months ago. "Have you?"
"Oh, yes." She turns away, and John catches a glimpse of her face: she's smiling, her lower lip caught in her teeth. Oh, he thinks. I am so fucking doomed.
But he follows her to the hatch anyway, scooping up another chakkan oil cartridge on the way. "You two stay here," he orders his passengers. "Don't touch anything!"
He's locking the berth door behind him when he hears the the cover of the jumper's cargo hold being opened. God-damned Hynerians.
+=+=+
Sun turns right on the dock, but John shakes his head. "It's like Times Square out there, I don't think we can get through."
"We won't have to," she says and strikes off down the dock, walking briskly. John follows, mystified.
The mystery is solved when she turns suddenly off the main way, ducking into an storage room. In a moment she's on top of a workbench, prying at one of the ceiling panels. It comes down to reveal what looks like ductwork disappearing into the station's innards.
"You've done this before," John comments, and she just gives him an ironic eyebrow before disappearing into the ceiling. Without needing so much as a lift from him, he notes, and then kicks himself. He pulls himself up after her, and finds himself on his hands and knees in the dark, shuffling down a dusty tunnel.
"This will take us up two levels and out past the station security controls," Sun says quietly. "Where is your mechanic likely to be found?"
"I got him in the manufacturing sector, what's that, fourth level?"
"Fifth, actually," she says, "if he's Indari. They have a thing about--"
"--the number five, right," interrupts John. It's no weirder than anything else he's witnessed since he first stepped through the stargate. And it makes a strange kind of sense, given Indari morphology.
They crawl in silence for a few minutes; John tries not to inhale too much of the dust Sun is kicking up. It's fairly quiet but for the shuffle of their bodies and the distant rumbling of the station machinery. "So what's a Peacekeeper doing smuggling a Hynerian and a kid out of Nebari territory, anyway?" He doesn't actually expect an answer, but he figures it's worth a shot. And he suspects that even someone familiar with local politics would find it a strange assortment of interests.
She doesn't answer right away, but it feels more like she's considering what to say than hesitating. "It's better that you don't know," she says finally. "But Rygel is an old... traveling companion. And the Establishment would not deal well with a deposed emperor, no matter how disgraced."
John coughs. "Emperor? You're shitting me."
"I promise he will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about how far he is fallen from his former glory." He can hear the smile in her voice, and he wonders how on earth he could have thought this woman was cold. "And he's not lying: High Command deposed him a long time ago and replaced him with a puppet. When the Nebari came, Bishan folded like a bad hand of cards, but the Hynerians fought hard."
"So, tough little beggars, then." It's hard to imagine: the Hynerians he've met have generally been sly and deceitful, not to mention disgusting in their habits. Warrior frogs is a thought he'll have to reflect on for a while.
"Exactly," she replies, leading him down a left-hand turning that's even narrower than the previous tunnel. After a few paces, she continues. "Your ship is not of Peacekeeper manufacture, or Leviathan, or any other I have ever seen. Did you build it?" Her voice is reflective, but it's clear she knows more than she's letting on. She's fishing for something; John just wishes he knew what.
"Nah, I picked it up a couple of years ago," he says casually. "Found it abandoned on a planet a long way from here. It's pretty sturdy, gets me where I want to go."
"So you are not an engineer, then? Or a scientist?"
The hell? "Who me? Nah, I'm just a pilot. If it flies, I can fly it." He figures a little arrogance is justified: she is a client, after all.
She stops suddenly; what did he say? But it's not him: they're at a ladderway. He's not sure how she's finding her way in the darkness, but she hasn't dropped them down an access shaft into a trash compacter yet, so he follows her instructions and reaches around the corner to the ladder bolted to the wall. "Go up past two entrances and get out at the third," she says from below him.
John swings around, one boot clumsily hitting the wall before he finds purchase on the rungs, and begins to climb. The metal in this shaft is cold, unlike in the ducts, and the rungs are coated with something flaky and sharp. It could be rust, which would worry him, but the rungs themselves seem pretty stable. Now is not the time to worry about how old this station is, John decides, or how far it is to the bottom of this shaft. As they climb it gets easier, gravity decreasing incrementally as they approach the center of the station. It's still a relief when his fumbling hand finds the third opening in the shaft, and he scrambles off the ladder into the tunnel.
"Where now, boss?"
"Go straight," she orders. "We should find an access hatchway along here we can use to get out."
She's right, of course; and within about three minutes they're dropping silently to the floor of an empty machine shop. It's been looted, from the way the cabinets hang open and the crates are upended on the floor. Sun draws her gun and goes to the door; John follows and peers out over her shoulder. Sun's navigation was startlingly precise: they're across the way and two doors down from the shop where John hired Terik.
The broad corridor is mostly empty, and the few people passing by are moving fast, most of them armed and looking nervous. John can't see anyone in uniform, either station security or Nebari. He shrugs and holsters his gun, stepping out into the open.
Sun keeps pace with him, hand on her pistol, scanning the passageway with professional eyes; John begins to wonder if she's actually better than Teyla. And then they're in Terik's shop, where they interrupt not just Terik, but two other Indari rapidly packing up their belongings.
"Going somewhere?" John says lazily, lounging in the doorway. Sun shifts sideways and gives him a nod: he hopes she means she's got the exit covered.
There's a flutter among the Indari, and the one John thinks is Terik speaks. "Nebari is arrival imminent. This three is nest-family, will be abandoning. Not to stop?"
"Not to stop," confirms Sun. "So long as you return the part you stole from his ship."
This is the part where John really resents dealing with non-humanoids; because there's no way in hell to read arthropod body language. Terik waves a foot-hand at him, speaking too rapidly for his microbes to translate beyond a generalized denial and some frantic explanation about his nest-mate's -- "Oh, I so don't need to know that!" John protests. "C'mon, Terik. Just give me the damn crystal and you can go."
"None crystal," claims Terik, resolutely. But at the same time he's saying that, one of his nest-mates moves suddenly toward a small green box sitting on the counter.
Sun raises her weapon. "Don't touch that."
"We're not gonna hurt anyone," John explains. "We just need--"
But the third Indari doesn't wait to hear what John needs, and possibly doesn't know anything about Peacekeeper reputations. He crouches and springs, impossibly fast, over Terik, landing with one foot-hand swinging, knocking Sun's pistol out of her hand and across the floor. John fires, but misses, and then it's all hand-to-hand (so to speak), because it's too small a space and they're all moving too fast for him to risk another shot.
In fights like this he misses his P-90, because even when it was empty it had a nice heft to it: a pulse pistol is made of some kind of light plastic or alloy, and feels no more dangerous than a water gun. So John grabs a metal bar off the counter and uses that instead.
Indari, he learns, are damned fast, and unpredictable. Any three of their five limbs can be coming at you at any time, and they've got some incredible bounce in those legs. On the other hand, their eyes and knees are pretty vulnerable; within about forty seconds the smallest one is down, huddled in a corner and crying pathetically. John would have more sympathy if Terik wasn't clutching that damned green box to his abdomen like a holy medal.
Sun's getting into it with the other guy, stroke and counter-stroke almost faster than John can follow--not that he's got the attention to spare. Terik's got a longer reach than John does; John, on the other hand, has a weapon, and a slow rage that's been growing for the last year. It's a fair match. He jabs, spins, swings at Terik's knees with his metal bar; Terik slaps at him with fast open blows that knock him sideways, two limbs on the ground, one holding the box, and the last two jabbing nonstop at John.
John sees an opening when Terik stumbles over a crate and leaps forward; it was a feint, he realizes only too late, but instead of ducking or pulling away he dives forward, slamming the bar hard against Terik's foot-hand and knocking the box to the floor. He swings the outside of his left foot against it in a perfectly-executed soccer pass--muscle memory is a fantastic thing--and the box goes skittering across the floor. Sun traps it under one boot while she holds her pistol to the eyes of Terik's nest-mate.
"That better be it," John says, over Terik's bereft wailing. "What's it look like?"
He's never seen anyone open a box with her foot before. Sun looks down, just a glance, before returning her gaze to the Indari under her gun. "It's a clear crystal the length of my hand, maybe two denches wide. That it?"
"Sounds right. Can you put it somewhere safe?"
"Done." There's a shuffle as Sun backs away from the Indari two paces. John flexes his hand about his metal bar and does the same. He's at the door before he realizes he could be using his gun, but it seems kind of overkill now.
"Okay, so we're just going to go now. This is all we wanted. No hard feelings, right, guys?"
Terik ignores him and scurries over to crouch next to his nestmates, crooning something indecipherable. John shrugs and tosses the bar back into the shop, where it clatters to the floor. Three of Terik's eyes swivel up towards him and John raises his hands placatingly. "We're going, we're going!"
"Now, Sheppard!" A hand grabs his collar and yanks him backwards into the street.
John stumbles, turns, and races after Sun, who's already halfway to the next bulkhead door. She's moving at a fast and purposeful trot. "What? What is it now?"
She taps her ear--she must have a comms implant--and flicks an eye upwards, towards station-control in the zero-g central hub of the station. "Nebari have taken the station. They'll be taking control of the commercial docks within the arn."
"Fantastic," says John. "This day just keeps getting better and better!"
But they're half the station away from the berth where the jumper is docked, and there's no humor in her eyes when she glances at him and says, "Run."
+=+=+
They don't beat the Nebari to the docks.
Sun leads the way down, taking him down side corridors and chutes he's never seen. John never got around to learning the layout here--it was supposed to be a quick stop for supplies and a load of medical supplies for the refugee camps on Dam-Ba-Da before the electrical system fried out on him. Once he'd have been more careful, gotten to know the ground. Now he can't be bothered.
They've given up all attempt at concealment, John realizes, as they come out of an alley and join the crowds surging in the passageway. Everyone's heading for the docks, fleeing the Nebari: Luxan women carrying toddlers on their shoulders; Sebaceans of every size and color; two Delvians in flowing grey robes; even a group of Hynerians shuffling along like Disney's dwarves, packs slung over their shoulders. "Isn't it a little late for the rush?" he mutters to Sun as she squeezes past him to take the lead. "Anyone with a brain left days ago."
Her jaw tightens as she slides through the crowd, edging past three angry-looking Luxan youths, their tattoos sharp-edged and new. "Given time," she says, "they won't have brains. None of these people will have minds of their own, in a matter of monens." She tosses a glance back at John, her eyes hard, lips pressed together. "You know that, right? What the Nebari will do?"
John shrugs, ducking under a pole. "I've heard a bit. Sounds pretty bad." Officials and trouble-makers get spaced immediately; the rest of the population will slowly be brought into compliance through Nebari mind-control techniques. John doesn't want to believe in the brainwashing, but he's seen too much to reject it out of hand.
She snorts derisively. "Bad. That would be one way to describe it."
So? It's not his problem. John's just here for the job, and if the jumper hadn't glitched he'd be long gone by now. The jumper's cloak will get him away; it's the ace in his hole. Local politics don't worry him much. He doesn't say that, of course--she's a client, and she's the hottest thing she's seen since that grey girl four stations back, and she's better at hand-to-hand than, well, he is. So he puts on a concerned frown and nods earnestly.
She doesn't look like she buys it.
The crowd gets denser, pressing closer and closer, voices crashing against each other and the dull grey steel walls of the station. Anxious stationers smell; John wrinkles his nose. "Hey, Sun," he says, and taps her shoulder. "Can't we take the back way?"
"You're right," she agrees. "This isn't any faster." She looks around; from what John can tell they're about half a klick from the main doors to the docks. Frightened refugees, shopkeepers, and even station security press in on every side. To John's right is a grandmotherly type who looks almost human but for the large green eye in her forehead. She winks at him and John's pretty sure she's about to grab his ass when Sun pulls him forward, knocking against a red-skinned fellow in a puce jacket.
"Sorry, sorry," John says, stumbling after his client. She ignores his muttering and tows him towards the wall. They're in a commercial neighborhood, which ordinarily is full of shops selling touristy junk--cheap souveniers look the same in every galaxy--and clothes and street food; but today all the doors are bolted shut, the windows shuttered. Sun wedges them into a doorway set into a shallow alcove, tucks in behind John, and begins to work on the lock with a small tool from her belt.
John stands as broadly as he can, folding his arms across his chest, and smiles genially at the passersby, trying not to feel the way Sun's elbow is jamming into his side.
"Frell!" she mutters, after a particularly vicious thrust.
Still smiling at a the same group of pissed-off Luxan juvies, John inquires, "Need any help?"
"Do you know how to short-circuit a Kentari box-lock?" she hisses.
"Ah, not really," John replies.
"Then shut--" her voice cuts off as John pulls back into the alcove, squishing her against the door. "What is it?"
"Company," John says, craning his head over the crowd. Pays to be taller than the average Sebacean. "Lots of 'em, in grey uniforms."
There's a grunt behind him, and a wrench that nearly spins John out into the mob. Mob, not crowd, not anymore. The guys in grey are pushing forward through the press of people, who are in turn pushing back: against each other, against the uniforms, against the walls--and against the locked doors to the docking bay. It was loud already, but the voices now have a panicked edge to them, a hint of hysterical terror that reminds him of refugee camps and soccer stampedes, the frantic need to get out. Whoever these guys are--and they have to be Nebari--they've got the locals scared shitless.
"Frell," Sun hisses. "I can't get this open." John glances behind him, casually; she glares at the lock, as if she could fry through it with her eyes. Sadly, John hasn't met anyone in this brave new world with that ability.
"I'm thinking those guys will recognize you, right?" He keeps his voice casual.
She grunts affirmatively, not looking up, but the lock doesn't give.
"Will a pulse pistol get through it?" A thought has occurred to him. He doesn't want to care--caring takes more than he's got available, but he's seen people spaced before. Sun is clean and tough and competent: she deserves better than that. Plus, if she dies John won't get the rest of his pay.
It's loud now, the crowd pressing back from the Nebari soldiers, people yelling unintelligibly, but the silence from behind him confirms what he suspected. They just need some kind of distraction so Sun can blast the lock and get away without the Nebari spotting her. Distraction, distraction. John looks around, trying to find an opportunity. The crowd surges against him and he braces against the wall of the alcove, grunting.
The Luxan kids are still nearby, pushing into the space of a small cluster of blue-skinned women in robes, who push back angrily. That'll do, John thinks. "Take my pistol," he says quietly over his shoulder.
Sun goes still behind him. "What?"
"If they pick me up I don't want the gun on me. They won't know me, I'm not in any of their databanks. You get back to the jumper. The code's 007, I'll meet you there." It's not like she and the frog can do anything with the jumper, even with the code: without the Ancient gene it's no more than a big closet.
He can't see her face, but he senses her hesitation in the way her shoulder tenses against him. She keeps her voice low. "You're sure of this."
"Don't have a lot of choices, do we?"
From where she's crouched behind him, a long-fingered hand slides up his thigh to his holster and unclips it one-handed. John casually unbuckles the belt and lets it fall behind him for her to collect. "Stay low; you'll know when you're good to go," he says, and strolls away from her, not looking back.
Just another face in the crowd, just another scared, angry refugee, bouncing from one group to another. Moving faster as the crowd bunches up, lurching away from the tight pack of Nebari coming down the center of the passageway. There's a flutter above John's line of sight; he cocks his head cautiously and spots movement in the mezzanine on the next levels. These guys are better prepared than he expected, if they've already got surveillance--or maybe even snipers--in place. Shit.
But he's committed now: reversing course would definitely bring more attention than he or Sun can risk. So he keeps moving, and now he's in position, about thirty yards from the doorway, and adjacent to the gaggle of Angry Young Luxans. This is good--he's at an angle to Sun's location, so the Nebari shouldn't be looking that direction in a moment.
No time like the present. John loosens his stance, lets his face soften to dullness, and staggers into the nearest of the Luxan kids. He's learned enough since he hit this sector of space, seen a couple of bar brawls, to "accidentally" hit him behind the knee; the Luxan goes down with a crash and a howl. There's a moment, less than a second, of appalled stillness around them, as the crowd surrounding John and the Luxans press back, pulling away from the danger zone. John sees the three-eyed old woman staring at him, mouthing something at him that he can't hear over the crowd.
And then there's a roar of outrage, and the biggest of the Luxans is swinging at John, his hands empty but huge, looking like malletts. "Fuck!" John gasps and ducks, backpedaling.
"Hey, guys, sorry, I didn't mean to--"
But he really did, and when the guy--John's tempted to dub him Hughie--comes after him again, this time John dodges the punch and swings back.
Ow. Luxan abs are like concrete.
Meanwhile, the crazy old lady with three eyes jumps onto the back of the second Luxan kid--who of course must be Dewey--shrieking like a fishwife, beating him about the head with a large green purse. Bits of dried vegetation fly from the bag with every stroke. Dewey yells in response, flailing his arms around, and knocks over yet another person--some hulking Sebacean type with arms the size of John's thighs--and that, finally, is enough to do it. The brawl becomes a general melee, fast overflowing into the rest of the crowd.
Just before Hughie spins John around and slams a meaty hand across his face, John sees the Nebari soldiers shouting and gesturing, trying to settle the crowd. But there's an empty doorway about thirty yards down the way, and Aeryn Sun is nowhere to be seen.
+=+=+
They don't hold him. The Luxan kids are taking up too much space in the station's limited brig, and it sounds like they're destroying it. John can hear the crashing from three doors away, where he sits quietly with the rest of the less troublesome locals. Two seats away is the crazy old lady, who keeps leaning forward to stare at him around the blue-robed form of the woman between them; John avoids meeting her eyes. All three of them.
There's another howl and the frighteningly-efficient young Nebari clerk purses his lips and gives a pale frown. "Oh, very well," he says to the three helmeted guards in the doorway. "Get them out; they're of no interest anyway."
The guards wave their weapons at the dozen or so battered victims of John's inspiration. "Go home," says the taller guard, his voice hollow from inside his helmet. "The Establishment has no further use for you at this time. Conform and be spared."
"Conform and be spared," mutter several of the detainees as they shuffle toward the door. John follows along gingerly, trying not to look too much like a guy who's been trampled by an elephant seal.
He smiles amiably at the guards as he leaves. John's got a lot of practice at friendly-and-clueless in the last few years, and he's three levels down from station security before he lets the ingratiating smile drop away.
The pass he held for access to the docking bay is lost somewhere in the wreckage of the dockside shopping district, so it's back to the ventilation shafts for him. It takes John some time to find an access port, and he's almost desperate enough to head back up to level 5 to find the entrance by Terik's shop when he gets lucky. He's on the 2nd level above the commercial docks, so this trip should be a lot easier than the one up. Except for the intense pain in his ribs and shoulders, not having slept for a full station cycle, and the constant worry that Sun might have misplaced the damned crystal that started all of this.
Or worse, she might leave him stranded on the docks, having slipped away from the Nebari in the confusion. It's something John himself might do, in similar circumstances; so he knows the sour taste in his mouth is hypocrisy.
He's panting and wobbly when he finally clambers down out of the ducts into a half-empty storage room inside the security cordon. The docks, when he emerges, are under tight security controls. Nebari are everywhere, weapons tracking movement along the docks and in the bay entrances. John isn't challenged, however, and walks nonchalantly down to his berth, trying not to feel the loss of his pistol too obviously.
There's a guard on his portal, some young kid with a pale face and weird black and white hair. But his dark eyes are flat and hard as the biggest jarhead on the SGC payroll; John keeps his hands in sight as he approaches.
"Hey," he says amiably. "Thanks for keeping an eye on things here."
"You are?" snaps the kid, tightening his grip on his weapon. Looks like a pulse rifle.
"Sheppard. I'm the guy owns that boat you're guarding." John smoothly evades the guard's attempt to block the doorway and puts a hand on the control panel. It's been accessed: so Sun made it back after all.
The guard shakes his head. "You will not be allowed to depart; the Establishment has closed the port for the duration of the emergency."
Emergency? Oh, the one where everyone's running away from the Establishment. Well, that makes some kind of We Have Always Been at War With East Asia sense. John nods, pasting back on his eager smile. "Oh, yes. I'm so happy the Establishment is finally here. This station was so ungoverned before you arrived. It feels much more secure now."
That's enough, apparently, to convince the guard he's on the up-and-up. John punches in the code and slips through the door, hitting the latch immediately once he's through so the guard can't see down the passageway to the jumper. One of the advantages of a station is the way hardly anyone can actually see the ships in dock; if they could, the Nebari would be all over the jumper. It's non-conforming, after all.
Sun is waiting in the docking tube, weapon in her hand. John stares at it for a long moment, before she raises an eyebrow and puts it in her holster. "They let you go," she notes.
John shrugs; it was a calculated risk, but not a suicidal one. The jumper is quiet behind her, lights down and no movement to be seen. John wonders for a moment about their passengers, but then the docking tube hums with a deep rattling groan from the jumper.
"He snores?" John's voice sharpens to a falsetto. "Seventy isn't enough for a Hynerian that snores!"
Sun doesn't say anything, just cocks her head, one long hand playing on the butt of her pistol, the other hooked negligently in her belt. She paces forward silently, reminding John vividly of the day he saw Ronon kill three Wraith in less than five seconds. She's got that same kind of smooth and deadly grace, although she's got more secrets than Ronon ever did.
Ronon, who'd died with a grunt and a muttered Satedan swear before dropping like a stone, folding over John's back and carrying him to the floor. Protecting Sheppard, again, like he had from the beginning. Bastard.
Her eyes are grey, John realizes at close range, lighter than he'd thought. She raises a hand and he's not sure if she's going to shoot him or kiss him--instead she pokes him sharply in the stomach. "Ow!"
"You're injured." The tone is clinical, but her eyes crinkle with humor.
John wants to shrug but the last time hurt too much. "Just some bruises, I'll be okay."
"Let me see." Before he has a chance to protest, she's opened his shirt, cool fingers playing over the purple blotches spreading over his ribs. John tries not to twitch as she presses softly against the flesh, eyes hidden under her long lashes. She's shorter than he thought; that same lock of hair has come loose from her clip and is curling against her cheek. As she reaches around him, palpating his ribs cautiously, John takes a long, unsteady breath: she smells of sweat, of dust from the ventilation shafts, of something else, some faint floral odor he doesn't recognize.
She's not human; John doesn't care. It's been a long time since the sight of an Asgard wigged him out--the last time he got drunk, some guy with feathers and scarlet tentacles was pouring his drinks.
Her hands stop prodding at his ribs and slide down to rest on his hips; she tilts her head up to meet his eyes. "You didn't need to do that."
"Uh, do what?"
An eyebrow goes skyward. Well, axis-ward, anyway; there's no sky on a space station. "You do recall starting a riot to give me cover. Or do I need to check you for head injuries, too?" She slips a hand off his hip and places it on his neck, curling fingers up into his hair.
"Ah, no."
They stand there for a long moment, breathing on one another. She's begun to smile faintly; John's making himself remember she's an alien who could break him in two very easily. He hasn't pinned down all the social cues here, and he still wants to get paid.
On the other hand, her hands feel really good.
Just as he's beginning to think he should maybe do something here, she snorts in frustration, mutters something under her breath, and yanks his head down, latching onto his mouth with hers. That feels even better, John realizes, and decides to go for it now that she's answered the question.
Her mouth is amazing: lush and tasty and aggressive like her hands, which are roaming his back, smoothing over the contusions, sending the pain away. She pushes him against the wall of the docking tube, and John grunts softly into her mouth as his back bumps one of the folds where the tube accordians in for storage. She pauses and draws back, but John wraps both hands about her head and dives back into her mouth, pulling her down to the floor with him.
She's his first Sebacean, but the parts pretty much work the same. Unsurprisingly, she makes almost no noise at all--but whispers, "Rygel!" in John's ear, just before he comes. On the off chance John has forgotten about his passengers, twenty feet away, and still sleeping.
It's only later, when he's gone quietly into the front section of the jumper and returned with a clean t-shirt and a water bottle, that the penny finally drops. "Holy shit!" He fumbles the water bottle; Sun catches it neatly and takes a long drink.
"What is it?"
"You said 'humans'! In English." John stares at her in outrage. "Wait a minute," he adds, his brain finally clicking back into gear. "So did the frog! What the hell is going on?" John's gun is on the floor; he's not sure he can reach it before she gets to hers.
The smile that spreads across her face is uninhibited, gleeful, and just a little evil. "I wonder how long you would be," she says in English. Awkward, clunky English, with a strange sibilant accent--but definitely English. "You humans can be slow."
John drops down to a crouch, leaning over her, where she's turning her shirt right-side out. "Humans? You've met more--how? Did you--you've been to Atlantis!"
But the rush of excitement, of hope, for the first time in over two years, is flattened as she shakes her head, her smile fading. "No."
"No Atlantis," John says, and swallows the bitterness. "How, then?"
She stretches and sits up, pulling her leather pants out from underneath her. John winces and hands her the clean t-shirt; she takes it with a nod and wipes the pants clean. "I met someone about ten cycles ago, a human from your planet. He taught me some English."
Ten years ago? The Stargate program was just starting then, but Earth didn't have any interstellar ships, and there were so few Stargates in this region of space. It was the only explanation John could think of, and yet it made no sense; Earth didn't have the power ten years ago to open a wormhole to another galaxy. "Who was he? How'd he get here?"
Her eyes dodge sideways, and she wipes at the pants again, although they're already clean. "He was an astronaut." She shapes her mouth carefully around the word. "And he was caught in a wormhole, brought here by accident. That's all I ever knew."
"A wormhole," John repeats dully. If he were a physicist; hell, if he were McKay, maybe this news would mean something. Maybe it would be enough to figure out a way back ho-- back to Earth. But he's not, and just knowing someone can safely transit a wormhole without a Stargate isn't enough to do him any fucking good at all. He can't conjure a wormhole out of thin air.
He wants to cover his face and go hide in the corner for ten minutes. But he's got a client here, and there's a kid and a frog sleeping on the benches in the jumper. So he runs a shaking hand through his hair and pastes on his laziest smile. "Guess it's a small world after all."
She doesn't buy the smile; but she nods anyway. "I have begun to trust in fate more, these last few years, than I used to."
"Fate." John hasn't trusted in superstition for a long time. "You think it's fate that brought me here? You think fate's got a plan for me? Cause I can tell you, I had a destiny. I had pretty fucking important things to do. And I left people behind. Fate can fuck herself."
There's far too much understanding in those dark eyes. John looks away from her, listens to the sound of the Hynerian muttering in his sleep. Something about Delvian fire silk...
"Fate isn't a person," Sun says finally, pulling her shirt on over her head, smoothing her hair. "It doesn't care about what we think or we want. But you can't fight it; and sometimes..." Her voice trails off as her eyes go distant again. This woman's seen a hell of a lot more than John Sheppard has; he's smart enough to recognize that.
"Sometimes?" He hands her the hair-clip that fell on the floor.
She thanks him with a nod and gathers her hair. "Sometimes its purposes are yours as well. You can't tell until it's over."
"Until you die."
"Maybe not even then." The cool and assessing way in which she meets his eyes makes a chill run down John's back.
But the moment ends; she stands up and buckles on her holster, automatically checking the cartridge on her pistol. John looks around but there's no evidence of anything in the docking tube but the sticky t-shirt on the floor. He picks it up and holds it, awkwardly, as she turns to the dockside hatch.
"Hey," he says, as Sun puts her hand on the latch. "You going to be okay out there?" John wants to pull her back into the jumper, bring her with them on the painfully slow and boring voyage. Tell her stories about space vampires and a city in the ocean, listen to her tales about space battles and lost astronauts. But she's not staying, and he's got more sense than to try to keep her.
The slow smile that uncurls across her face makes him want to--never mind, no time now. "Yes," she says. "I have transport of my own. And Sheppard--" she pauses. "What's your other name?"
He blinks. "John. John Sheppard."
Her eyes widen; her lips twitch. "John Sheppard, then. Tell Rygel, when you get to Interion space, that he needs to introduce you to our mutual friend."
"Huh. He gonna know who you mean?"
She pauses in the hatchway, smiling secretively. "Just tell him. You'll be glad you did. And if he gives you any dren, call him Sparky." Her smile broadens to a grin. "He hates that." And she's gone.
END
*
In other news, I'm having my review today! eeeeks! ::flails::
Flying Low at Night
Pairing: John Sheppard/Aeryn Sun
Rating: R (language, sex, violence)
Warnings: for Hynerians and Dickensian coincidences
Feedback: makes me do the wacky
Notes: SamDonne may be the inspiration, but I am the only one responsible for this foolishness. Set in the same universe as my story Bellum Interruptum, which you can find here. You don't need to have read it to know what's going on, though.
"You are the one they call Shappard?"
The woman's voice is throaty but clear, and under the running translation in his head John hears clicks and sibilants--she's another one of the Sebaceans so common in this region. Human-seeming, but stronger and longer-lived, from what he's gathered. He's been careful not to ask too much: he doesn't want to give away everything he doesn't know. This place is a war zone, and he can't afford to be just another refugee.
"Sheppard, yeah," he says, and looks around the room. It's a shabby little cafe on a shabby little station. The rest of the tables are crowded--Sebaceans, Luxans, several races he doesn't recognize--but there are no Nebari. Of course: the winners are rarely among the refugees. This table, though, is empty, but for the woman in black leathers with a pistol strapped to her hip.
John's new in town, but not that new: he knows what a Peacekeeper looks like.
She nods once and motions with her chin at the chair across from her. "Sit down."
He shifts his weight, resting his hand on the butt of his own pistol--he ran out of ammo for the P90 and his sidearm a long time ago, but chakkan oil is still easy to get--and sits down, swinging the chair around so he can watch the rest of the room. She raises an eyebrow a millimeter; she could give Teyla lessons in impassivity, he suspects. She's got a bone structure he hasn't seen since the X-Files went off the air, and all the warmth in her face of that pulse pistol at her side.
"What can I do for you?" he asks, deciding charm isn't really the way to go, here. Charm's harder to summon when you're always looking over your shoulder, when there's nobody there to back you up when the situation goes sour. He's settled on cautious as his new modus operandi. It gets him what he needs, if not what he wants.
Two years on the run, one year alone; he's stopped wanting anything a while back. John thinks it's one year; after Ronon left, he stopped keeping track. "Left": it's easier to say than the truth. He doesn't think about the past, doesn't count the days, doesn't wonder why he's still alive and everyone else--so far as he knows--is dead.
He's tried dialing Atlantis periodically; it's a pathological response every time he gets near a functioning stargate. But that seventh chevron never locks. He's not McKay; he doesn't know if one of the turns he took brought him out of the Pegasus Galaxy entirely, or if Atlantis fell, or if they just turned off the lights and went home, shutting down the gate behind them.
It's becoming a moot question, anyway--where he is, there are few stargates and the ones that exist don't look like Ancient construction. He gets around as best he can in the battered jumper, running passengers, grain, and sometimes weapons from planet to planet in this densely-populated sector of space. When Ronon was still with him they'd done some bodyguard work, but as one guy, it's a lot harder. Now he takes what he can get; it's enough, barely, and without the jumper he knows he's dead in the water.
"My name is Aeryn Sun," the Peacekeeper says, watching him carefully.
John nods and makes a noncommital noise. Her expression doesn't change, but a muscle tightens in her jaw: he's failed some kind of test. He's supposed to know who this woman is, and he doesn't. Fuck.
"I understand you have a small ship for contract," she goes on, smoothly, as if he hadn't just been caught out. "I need to shuttle out two passengers, get them to Interion space without being caught by the Establishment. Can you do it?"
"Maybe," he says, cautiously. He tells no one about the cloak, ever. "When do you need it?"
"Soon."
John grimaces. "I've got some stuff to do, it may be a day or so. That fit your schedule?"
Her eyes narrow and she taps a hand on the table softly. Finally she nods. "It will do. The fleet will not be here yet, and the other options are less..."
"Attractive?" John tries for a grin: it feels creaky, as if it needs to be oiled.
She shakes her head, meeting his eyes with an unsettling intensity. "Trustworthy."
He's startled into a laugh. "You think I'm trustworthy? Why?"
She shakes her head minutely and gets up from the table. "You'll take payment in krindars?" At his nod, she continues, "It will be worth your effort. I'll contact you at your berth in two rotations."
John just stares at her as she disappears, sliding through the crowd at the door like a knife. She is certainly not what he expected. He was hoping for a drink, but if he takes the job--a decision he hasn't yet made--he has some work to do. He gives her another few minutes, so she won't think he's following her, and leaves the cafe himself.
On the way back to the docks, he stops at a public information booth. Twenty minutes and the judicious use of boolean searches learned on a far more sophisticated, if less multi-lingual computer system, teach him less than he needs to know, and more than enough to worry him. Why the hell would a woman being hunted by the Peacekeepers, the Scarrans, and the Nebari tell me her name?
+=+=+
"No, don't touch that. Not that, either. No!" Sheppard swats at the lingering foot-hand of the Indari mechanic, who is clearly perplexed and enthralled by the design of the jumper. "Just this, here, okay? I need you to pull these lines and give me something that won't blow under pressure. No," he sighs in response to Terik's chittering. "Not air pressure, stress. Look, fine, you don't need to understand how it works--"
There's a step on the ramp and a shadow in the doorway. It's Sun, as promised, but she's early. He's not ready yet. John points Terik at the lines he needs replaced and goes to the hatch, squinting at her shadow against the brighter lights of the docking tube.
He's managed to get the jumper hooked up to the station, but every new place it's another desperate job. One of these days he's not going to be able to do it, and he'll suffocate while trying to juryrig a connection that doesn't leak all his atmosphere into space. He'd give his last MRE for a working space suit. He'd give his right arm for a mechanic familiar with Ancient tech: hell, he'd settle for Kavanagh. He doesn't allow himself to think about how much fun McKay would have out here, with all the different kinds of technology. Living ships.
"You're not ready yet," she says, without preface. When she frowns, those eyes get cold.
"Minor setback," John says, shifting so she can't see the way the wires are spilling out from the overhead consoles. It really is better than it looks: he's learned a lot in the last couple of years. But there's no need to scare the client.
Potential client.
"We never did talk price," he says casually. The station is overrun with refugees, and John's sure that he could find a cargo pretty easily. As the Nebari approach, ticket prices skyrocket. Anyone with any governmental or military associations is cutting and running--the Establishment, he's heard, spaces them immediately before moving on to pacify the populace. John's seen more than one cargo vessel pressed into service as a passenger carrier, environmentals working past capacity before they even leave the system. It's true the money comes in handy, but he likes to be able to breathe, and he doesn't have the room for more than two others for a long trip.
She nods, slipping a thumb into her gunbelt. "Forty-five," she says, after peering about at the interior of the jumper. "It's smaller than I thought."
"She'll do," says John. He can't help the defensiveness, but at least he hasn't gotten to the point of naming the little ship. It's just a puddlejumper, nothing special. He can't afford that kind of sentimentality out here. "Seventy," he counters. He doesn't think it's greedy to want something to eat other than the play-doh squares they sell in all the markets; but fresh food is expensive, and he's thinking of picking up one of those pulse rifles as well.
"Fifty-five," she says. "It's only two passengers, and they take little room."
"You're not going?"
"I have other plans." She moves her hand the smallest amount closer to her pistol. Okay, then, thinks John.
"Sixty, and they bring their own food."
"Oh, they will." At which she smiles, and his jaw nearly drops. For an instance, so quickly and it's gone, she's gorgeous, her face alight with humor. "Twelve arns, Sheppard. Be ready."
She slips off down the docking tube before he can begin to recover. "Huh."
+=+=+
They arrive, as she promised, twelve arns later--at about the same time the Nebari fleet finally does. The docks are in an uproar, everyone with any cash clustered at the huge bay doors, mashed against the security fence, waving papers, jewelry, and nubile daughters at the shipmasters, desperate for a way off this tin can.
John squeezes through the crowd, waves his pass at the sweating guards, and trots down the aisle to his berth, meager bag of supplies swinging from his left hand. His right hand is always empty, in public. The Uncharted Territories may be Wraith-free, but safe they aren't.
His passengers are waiting at the door to the berth; he doesn't bother wondering how they got through the gate guards. Aeryn Sun's clearly a woman with initiative. She turns as he comes up to the door, raising an eyebrow questioningly. "Food," he says. "Sorry you had to..." His voice trails off as he sees her companions.
The first of them looks like little more than a child: a slim creature of undetermined gender, all red hair and freckles, with immense yellow-gold eyes peering out from under a green hood. That doesn't look so bad; but the second!
"Oh, no," John says. "No fucking way."
The second passenger swivels its floating chair and examines John with disdain. It's green and it's short and reptilian, and John knows just enough about Hynerians to know what it'll do to the inside of his jumper.
"There is no way in hell I'm taking one of those god-damned frogs--"
The Hynerian sneers (John always thought you needed lips for that, but apparently he was wrong) and pokes at Sun with a baton he carries in his lap. "Aeryn, you cannot expect me to travel with yet another of these pathetic creatures! I may be deposed, but I still deserve better service--"
Sun slaps a hand over the Hynerian's mouth, muffling the raucous complaint. When he struggles, she pinches his ear viciously. Both hands wrapped about the wriggling green head, she smiles at John ingratiatingly. "He's really not so bad once you get to know him--Rygel, be quiet!" she hisses. "This is the best I could do! You know what the Nebari would do to you!"
The child brings both hands to his or her face and giggles; John decides it's female, pending new data. "Ninety," he announces to Sun, trying desperately not to smile back. "And he absolutely doesn't get any of my food."
"Pah!" exclaims the frog as Sun takes her hand away. "As if I would--oh, is that fellip nectar in your bag?"
Ignoring Rygel, Sun glares at John, but the noise of the crowd increases, and he can see her eyes flickering as she thinks. "Seventy," she says finally, and counts out half the money into his hands, Rygel muttering impatiently at her side. "You'll get the rest on delivery. Get them to Beldani Secundus, it's deep in Interion space and we have a contact there. Rygel has the information."
"Hope you folks aren't in a hurry," John drawls, tucking the money away and turning to the lock-pad on the berth door. "We can't beat hetch four in this thing, but I promise it'll be safe."
"Yes, right, get us out of here, you humans are all--" Rygel's complaints diminish to a grumpy mutter as John heads down the docking tube.
The ramp opens easily, but the lights do not come up inside the jumper as he enters. He grunts, gun slipping into his hand. There is no one inside and nothing looks disturbed. Except, there should be lights. Lights he thinks at the jumper; nothing.
"Stay there," he snaps, and the others pause in the doorway as he makes his way to the control console.
"What is it?" asks Sun from behind him.
"Fucking hell," swears John, and slams his hand down hard on the console. On an ordinary day, that would result in a flicker of lights and the activation of three or four separate control screens. But on an ordinary day his mechanic hasn't broken in to the ship and stolen one of his control crystals.
Terik didn't even bother to hide his work: the drawer stands open, the slot empty where the crystal was. Two years John's kept this baby going, and one quick-fingered arthropod is enough to shaft him.
"Bastard mechanic stole a part," he admits, looking up at Sun sheepishly. He can't see her face, silhouetted against the light of docks. "We're dead in the water."
"Well, get another one!" demands Rygel.
"He can't," says Sun, and cuffs the Hynerian lightly across the back of his head. When the frog doesn't lose his shit completely, John realizes they've known one another a very long time. It's too painful a reminder, so he ignores it and focuses on the current problem.
"Nobody here makes those parts. We're fucked--unless I can get it back."
"Have you ever fought an Indari?" Sun asks, almost academically. "They use all their limbs to fight with, you know." But there's some humor in her voice, an invitation.
He hasn't, of course; he didn't know what an Indari was until two months ago. "Have you?"
"Oh, yes." She turns away, and John catches a glimpse of her face: she's smiling, her lower lip caught in her teeth. Oh, he thinks. I am so fucking doomed.
But he follows her to the hatch anyway, scooping up another chakkan oil cartridge on the way. "You two stay here," he orders his passengers. "Don't touch anything!"
He's locking the berth door behind him when he hears the the cover of the jumper's cargo hold being opened. God-damned Hynerians.
+=+=+
Sun turns right on the dock, but John shakes his head. "It's like Times Square out there, I don't think we can get through."
"We won't have to," she says and strikes off down the dock, walking briskly. John follows, mystified.
The mystery is solved when she turns suddenly off the main way, ducking into an storage room. In a moment she's on top of a workbench, prying at one of the ceiling panels. It comes down to reveal what looks like ductwork disappearing into the station's innards.
"You've done this before," John comments, and she just gives him an ironic eyebrow before disappearing into the ceiling. Without needing so much as a lift from him, he notes, and then kicks himself. He pulls himself up after her, and finds himself on his hands and knees in the dark, shuffling down a dusty tunnel.
"This will take us up two levels and out past the station security controls," Sun says quietly. "Where is your mechanic likely to be found?"
"I got him in the manufacturing sector, what's that, fourth level?"
"Fifth, actually," she says, "if he's Indari. They have a thing about--"
"--the number five, right," interrupts John. It's no weirder than anything else he's witnessed since he first stepped through the stargate. And it makes a strange kind of sense, given Indari morphology.
They crawl in silence for a few minutes; John tries not to inhale too much of the dust Sun is kicking up. It's fairly quiet but for the shuffle of their bodies and the distant rumbling of the station machinery. "So what's a Peacekeeper doing smuggling a Hynerian and a kid out of Nebari territory, anyway?" He doesn't actually expect an answer, but he figures it's worth a shot. And he suspects that even someone familiar with local politics would find it a strange assortment of interests.
She doesn't answer right away, but it feels more like she's considering what to say than hesitating. "It's better that you don't know," she says finally. "But Rygel is an old... traveling companion. And the Establishment would not deal well with a deposed emperor, no matter how disgraced."
John coughs. "Emperor? You're shitting me."
"I promise he will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about how far he is fallen from his former glory." He can hear the smile in her voice, and he wonders how on earth he could have thought this woman was cold. "And he's not lying: High Command deposed him a long time ago and replaced him with a puppet. When the Nebari came, Bishan folded like a bad hand of cards, but the Hynerians fought hard."
"So, tough little beggars, then." It's hard to imagine: the Hynerians he've met have generally been sly and deceitful, not to mention disgusting in their habits. Warrior frogs is a thought he'll have to reflect on for a while.
"Exactly," she replies, leading him down a left-hand turning that's even narrower than the previous tunnel. After a few paces, she continues. "Your ship is not of Peacekeeper manufacture, or Leviathan, or any other I have ever seen. Did you build it?" Her voice is reflective, but it's clear she knows more than she's letting on. She's fishing for something; John just wishes he knew what.
"Nah, I picked it up a couple of years ago," he says casually. "Found it abandoned on a planet a long way from here. It's pretty sturdy, gets me where I want to go."
"So you are not an engineer, then? Or a scientist?"
The hell? "Who me? Nah, I'm just a pilot. If it flies, I can fly it." He figures a little arrogance is justified: she is a client, after all.
She stops suddenly; what did he say? But it's not him: they're at a ladderway. He's not sure how she's finding her way in the darkness, but she hasn't dropped them down an access shaft into a trash compacter yet, so he follows her instructions and reaches around the corner to the ladder bolted to the wall. "Go up past two entrances and get out at the third," she says from below him.
John swings around, one boot clumsily hitting the wall before he finds purchase on the rungs, and begins to climb. The metal in this shaft is cold, unlike in the ducts, and the rungs are coated with something flaky and sharp. It could be rust, which would worry him, but the rungs themselves seem pretty stable. Now is not the time to worry about how old this station is, John decides, or how far it is to the bottom of this shaft. As they climb it gets easier, gravity decreasing incrementally as they approach the center of the station. It's still a relief when his fumbling hand finds the third opening in the shaft, and he scrambles off the ladder into the tunnel.
"Where now, boss?"
"Go straight," she orders. "We should find an access hatchway along here we can use to get out."
She's right, of course; and within about three minutes they're dropping silently to the floor of an empty machine shop. It's been looted, from the way the cabinets hang open and the crates are upended on the floor. Sun draws her gun and goes to the door; John follows and peers out over her shoulder. Sun's navigation was startlingly precise: they're across the way and two doors down from the shop where John hired Terik.
The broad corridor is mostly empty, and the few people passing by are moving fast, most of them armed and looking nervous. John can't see anyone in uniform, either station security or Nebari. He shrugs and holsters his gun, stepping out into the open.
Sun keeps pace with him, hand on her pistol, scanning the passageway with professional eyes; John begins to wonder if she's actually better than Teyla. And then they're in Terik's shop, where they interrupt not just Terik, but two other Indari rapidly packing up their belongings.
"Going somewhere?" John says lazily, lounging in the doorway. Sun shifts sideways and gives him a nod: he hopes she means she's got the exit covered.
There's a flutter among the Indari, and the one John thinks is Terik speaks. "Nebari is arrival imminent. This three is nest-family, will be abandoning. Not to stop?"
"Not to stop," confirms Sun. "So long as you return the part you stole from his ship."
This is the part where John really resents dealing with non-humanoids; because there's no way in hell to read arthropod body language. Terik waves a foot-hand at him, speaking too rapidly for his microbes to translate beyond a generalized denial and some frantic explanation about his nest-mate's -- "Oh, I so don't need to know that!" John protests. "C'mon, Terik. Just give me the damn crystal and you can go."
"None crystal," claims Terik, resolutely. But at the same time he's saying that, one of his nest-mates moves suddenly toward a small green box sitting on the counter.
Sun raises her weapon. "Don't touch that."
"We're not gonna hurt anyone," John explains. "We just need--"
But the third Indari doesn't wait to hear what John needs, and possibly doesn't know anything about Peacekeeper reputations. He crouches and springs, impossibly fast, over Terik, landing with one foot-hand swinging, knocking Sun's pistol out of her hand and across the floor. John fires, but misses, and then it's all hand-to-hand (so to speak), because it's too small a space and they're all moving too fast for him to risk another shot.
In fights like this he misses his P-90, because even when it was empty it had a nice heft to it: a pulse pistol is made of some kind of light plastic or alloy, and feels no more dangerous than a water gun. So John grabs a metal bar off the counter and uses that instead.
Indari, he learns, are damned fast, and unpredictable. Any three of their five limbs can be coming at you at any time, and they've got some incredible bounce in those legs. On the other hand, their eyes and knees are pretty vulnerable; within about forty seconds the smallest one is down, huddled in a corner and crying pathetically. John would have more sympathy if Terik wasn't clutching that damned green box to his abdomen like a holy medal.
Sun's getting into it with the other guy, stroke and counter-stroke almost faster than John can follow--not that he's got the attention to spare. Terik's got a longer reach than John does; John, on the other hand, has a weapon, and a slow rage that's been growing for the last year. It's a fair match. He jabs, spins, swings at Terik's knees with his metal bar; Terik slaps at him with fast open blows that knock him sideways, two limbs on the ground, one holding the box, and the last two jabbing nonstop at John.
John sees an opening when Terik stumbles over a crate and leaps forward; it was a feint, he realizes only too late, but instead of ducking or pulling away he dives forward, slamming the bar hard against Terik's foot-hand and knocking the box to the floor. He swings the outside of his left foot against it in a perfectly-executed soccer pass--muscle memory is a fantastic thing--and the box goes skittering across the floor. Sun traps it under one boot while she holds her pistol to the eyes of Terik's nest-mate.
"That better be it," John says, over Terik's bereft wailing. "What's it look like?"
He's never seen anyone open a box with her foot before. Sun looks down, just a glance, before returning her gaze to the Indari under her gun. "It's a clear crystal the length of my hand, maybe two denches wide. That it?"
"Sounds right. Can you put it somewhere safe?"
"Done." There's a shuffle as Sun backs away from the Indari two paces. John flexes his hand about his metal bar and does the same. He's at the door before he realizes he could be using his gun, but it seems kind of overkill now.
"Okay, so we're just going to go now. This is all we wanted. No hard feelings, right, guys?"
Terik ignores him and scurries over to crouch next to his nestmates, crooning something indecipherable. John shrugs and tosses the bar back into the shop, where it clatters to the floor. Three of Terik's eyes swivel up towards him and John raises his hands placatingly. "We're going, we're going!"
"Now, Sheppard!" A hand grabs his collar and yanks him backwards into the street.
John stumbles, turns, and races after Sun, who's already halfway to the next bulkhead door. She's moving at a fast and purposeful trot. "What? What is it now?"
She taps her ear--she must have a comms implant--and flicks an eye upwards, towards station-control in the zero-g central hub of the station. "Nebari have taken the station. They'll be taking control of the commercial docks within the arn."
"Fantastic," says John. "This day just keeps getting better and better!"
But they're half the station away from the berth where the jumper is docked, and there's no humor in her eyes when she glances at him and says, "Run."
+=+=+
They don't beat the Nebari to the docks.
Sun leads the way down, taking him down side corridors and chutes he's never seen. John never got around to learning the layout here--it was supposed to be a quick stop for supplies and a load of medical supplies for the refugee camps on Dam-Ba-Da before the electrical system fried out on him. Once he'd have been more careful, gotten to know the ground. Now he can't be bothered.
They've given up all attempt at concealment, John realizes, as they come out of an alley and join the crowds surging in the passageway. Everyone's heading for the docks, fleeing the Nebari: Luxan women carrying toddlers on their shoulders; Sebaceans of every size and color; two Delvians in flowing grey robes; even a group of Hynerians shuffling along like Disney's dwarves, packs slung over their shoulders. "Isn't it a little late for the rush?" he mutters to Sun as she squeezes past him to take the lead. "Anyone with a brain left days ago."
Her jaw tightens as she slides through the crowd, edging past three angry-looking Luxan youths, their tattoos sharp-edged and new. "Given time," she says, "they won't have brains. None of these people will have minds of their own, in a matter of monens." She tosses a glance back at John, her eyes hard, lips pressed together. "You know that, right? What the Nebari will do?"
John shrugs, ducking under a pole. "I've heard a bit. Sounds pretty bad." Officials and trouble-makers get spaced immediately; the rest of the population will slowly be brought into compliance through Nebari mind-control techniques. John doesn't want to believe in the brainwashing, but he's seen too much to reject it out of hand.
She snorts derisively. "Bad. That would be one way to describe it."
So? It's not his problem. John's just here for the job, and if the jumper hadn't glitched he'd be long gone by now. The jumper's cloak will get him away; it's the ace in his hole. Local politics don't worry him much. He doesn't say that, of course--she's a client, and she's the hottest thing she's seen since that grey girl four stations back, and she's better at hand-to-hand than, well, he is. So he puts on a concerned frown and nods earnestly.
She doesn't look like she buys it.
The crowd gets denser, pressing closer and closer, voices crashing against each other and the dull grey steel walls of the station. Anxious stationers smell; John wrinkles his nose. "Hey, Sun," he says, and taps her shoulder. "Can't we take the back way?"
"You're right," she agrees. "This isn't any faster." She looks around; from what John can tell they're about half a klick from the main doors to the docks. Frightened refugees, shopkeepers, and even station security press in on every side. To John's right is a grandmotherly type who looks almost human but for the large green eye in her forehead. She winks at him and John's pretty sure she's about to grab his ass when Sun pulls him forward, knocking against a red-skinned fellow in a puce jacket.
"Sorry, sorry," John says, stumbling after his client. She ignores his muttering and tows him towards the wall. They're in a commercial neighborhood, which ordinarily is full of shops selling touristy junk--cheap souveniers look the same in every galaxy--and clothes and street food; but today all the doors are bolted shut, the windows shuttered. Sun wedges them into a doorway set into a shallow alcove, tucks in behind John, and begins to work on the lock with a small tool from her belt.
John stands as broadly as he can, folding his arms across his chest, and smiles genially at the passersby, trying not to feel the way Sun's elbow is jamming into his side.
"Frell!" she mutters, after a particularly vicious thrust.
Still smiling at a the same group of pissed-off Luxan juvies, John inquires, "Need any help?"
"Do you know how to short-circuit a Kentari box-lock?" she hisses.
"Ah, not really," John replies.
"Then shut--" her voice cuts off as John pulls back into the alcove, squishing her against the door. "What is it?"
"Company," John says, craning his head over the crowd. Pays to be taller than the average Sebacean. "Lots of 'em, in grey uniforms."
There's a grunt behind him, and a wrench that nearly spins John out into the mob. Mob, not crowd, not anymore. The guys in grey are pushing forward through the press of people, who are in turn pushing back: against each other, against the uniforms, against the walls--and against the locked doors to the docking bay. It was loud already, but the voices now have a panicked edge to them, a hint of hysterical terror that reminds him of refugee camps and soccer stampedes, the frantic need to get out. Whoever these guys are--and they have to be Nebari--they've got the locals scared shitless.
"Frell," Sun hisses. "I can't get this open." John glances behind him, casually; she glares at the lock, as if she could fry through it with her eyes. Sadly, John hasn't met anyone in this brave new world with that ability.
"I'm thinking those guys will recognize you, right?" He keeps his voice casual.
She grunts affirmatively, not looking up, but the lock doesn't give.
"Will a pulse pistol get through it?" A thought has occurred to him. He doesn't want to care--caring takes more than he's got available, but he's seen people spaced before. Sun is clean and tough and competent: she deserves better than that. Plus, if she dies John won't get the rest of his pay.
It's loud now, the crowd pressing back from the Nebari soldiers, people yelling unintelligibly, but the silence from behind him confirms what he suspected. They just need some kind of distraction so Sun can blast the lock and get away without the Nebari spotting her. Distraction, distraction. John looks around, trying to find an opportunity. The crowd surges against him and he braces against the wall of the alcove, grunting.
The Luxan kids are still nearby, pushing into the space of a small cluster of blue-skinned women in robes, who push back angrily. That'll do, John thinks. "Take my pistol," he says quietly over his shoulder.
Sun goes still behind him. "What?"
"If they pick me up I don't want the gun on me. They won't know me, I'm not in any of their databanks. You get back to the jumper. The code's 007, I'll meet you there." It's not like she and the frog can do anything with the jumper, even with the code: without the Ancient gene it's no more than a big closet.
He can't see her face, but he senses her hesitation in the way her shoulder tenses against him. She keeps her voice low. "You're sure of this."
"Don't have a lot of choices, do we?"
From where she's crouched behind him, a long-fingered hand slides up his thigh to his holster and unclips it one-handed. John casually unbuckles the belt and lets it fall behind him for her to collect. "Stay low; you'll know when you're good to go," he says, and strolls away from her, not looking back.
Just another face in the crowd, just another scared, angry refugee, bouncing from one group to another. Moving faster as the crowd bunches up, lurching away from the tight pack of Nebari coming down the center of the passageway. There's a flutter above John's line of sight; he cocks his head cautiously and spots movement in the mezzanine on the next levels. These guys are better prepared than he expected, if they've already got surveillance--or maybe even snipers--in place. Shit.
But he's committed now: reversing course would definitely bring more attention than he or Sun can risk. So he keeps moving, and now he's in position, about thirty yards from the doorway, and adjacent to the gaggle of Angry Young Luxans. This is good--he's at an angle to Sun's location, so the Nebari shouldn't be looking that direction in a moment.
No time like the present. John loosens his stance, lets his face soften to dullness, and staggers into the nearest of the Luxan kids. He's learned enough since he hit this sector of space, seen a couple of bar brawls, to "accidentally" hit him behind the knee; the Luxan goes down with a crash and a howl. There's a moment, less than a second, of appalled stillness around them, as the crowd surrounding John and the Luxans press back, pulling away from the danger zone. John sees the three-eyed old woman staring at him, mouthing something at him that he can't hear over the crowd.
And then there's a roar of outrage, and the biggest of the Luxans is swinging at John, his hands empty but huge, looking like malletts. "Fuck!" John gasps and ducks, backpedaling.
"Hey, guys, sorry, I didn't mean to--"
But he really did, and when the guy--John's tempted to dub him Hughie--comes after him again, this time John dodges the punch and swings back.
Ow. Luxan abs are like concrete.
Meanwhile, the crazy old lady with three eyes jumps onto the back of the second Luxan kid--who of course must be Dewey--shrieking like a fishwife, beating him about the head with a large green purse. Bits of dried vegetation fly from the bag with every stroke. Dewey yells in response, flailing his arms around, and knocks over yet another person--some hulking Sebacean type with arms the size of John's thighs--and that, finally, is enough to do it. The brawl becomes a general melee, fast overflowing into the rest of the crowd.
Just before Hughie spins John around and slams a meaty hand across his face, John sees the Nebari soldiers shouting and gesturing, trying to settle the crowd. But there's an empty doorway about thirty yards down the way, and Aeryn Sun is nowhere to be seen.
+=+=+
They don't hold him. The Luxan kids are taking up too much space in the station's limited brig, and it sounds like they're destroying it. John can hear the crashing from three doors away, where he sits quietly with the rest of the less troublesome locals. Two seats away is the crazy old lady, who keeps leaning forward to stare at him around the blue-robed form of the woman between them; John avoids meeting her eyes. All three of them.
There's another howl and the frighteningly-efficient young Nebari clerk purses his lips and gives a pale frown. "Oh, very well," he says to the three helmeted guards in the doorway. "Get them out; they're of no interest anyway."
The guards wave their weapons at the dozen or so battered victims of John's inspiration. "Go home," says the taller guard, his voice hollow from inside his helmet. "The Establishment has no further use for you at this time. Conform and be spared."
"Conform and be spared," mutter several of the detainees as they shuffle toward the door. John follows along gingerly, trying not to look too much like a guy who's been trampled by an elephant seal.
He smiles amiably at the guards as he leaves. John's got a lot of practice at friendly-and-clueless in the last few years, and he's three levels down from station security before he lets the ingratiating smile drop away.
The pass he held for access to the docking bay is lost somewhere in the wreckage of the dockside shopping district, so it's back to the ventilation shafts for him. It takes John some time to find an access port, and he's almost desperate enough to head back up to level 5 to find the entrance by Terik's shop when he gets lucky. He's on the 2nd level above the commercial docks, so this trip should be a lot easier than the one up. Except for the intense pain in his ribs and shoulders, not having slept for a full station cycle, and the constant worry that Sun might have misplaced the damned crystal that started all of this.
Or worse, she might leave him stranded on the docks, having slipped away from the Nebari in the confusion. It's something John himself might do, in similar circumstances; so he knows the sour taste in his mouth is hypocrisy.
He's panting and wobbly when he finally clambers down out of the ducts into a half-empty storage room inside the security cordon. The docks, when he emerges, are under tight security controls. Nebari are everywhere, weapons tracking movement along the docks and in the bay entrances. John isn't challenged, however, and walks nonchalantly down to his berth, trying not to feel the loss of his pistol too obviously.
There's a guard on his portal, some young kid with a pale face and weird black and white hair. But his dark eyes are flat and hard as the biggest jarhead on the SGC payroll; John keeps his hands in sight as he approaches.
"Hey," he says amiably. "Thanks for keeping an eye on things here."
"You are?" snaps the kid, tightening his grip on his weapon. Looks like a pulse rifle.
"Sheppard. I'm the guy owns that boat you're guarding." John smoothly evades the guard's attempt to block the doorway and puts a hand on the control panel. It's been accessed: so Sun made it back after all.
The guard shakes his head. "You will not be allowed to depart; the Establishment has closed the port for the duration of the emergency."
Emergency? Oh, the one where everyone's running away from the Establishment. Well, that makes some kind of We Have Always Been at War With East Asia sense. John nods, pasting back on his eager smile. "Oh, yes. I'm so happy the Establishment is finally here. This station was so ungoverned before you arrived. It feels much more secure now."
That's enough, apparently, to convince the guard he's on the up-and-up. John punches in the code and slips through the door, hitting the latch immediately once he's through so the guard can't see down the passageway to the jumper. One of the advantages of a station is the way hardly anyone can actually see the ships in dock; if they could, the Nebari would be all over the jumper. It's non-conforming, after all.
Sun is waiting in the docking tube, weapon in her hand. John stares at it for a long moment, before she raises an eyebrow and puts it in her holster. "They let you go," she notes.
John shrugs; it was a calculated risk, but not a suicidal one. The jumper is quiet behind her, lights down and no movement to be seen. John wonders for a moment about their passengers, but then the docking tube hums with a deep rattling groan from the jumper.
"He snores?" John's voice sharpens to a falsetto. "Seventy isn't enough for a Hynerian that snores!"
Sun doesn't say anything, just cocks her head, one long hand playing on the butt of her pistol, the other hooked negligently in her belt. She paces forward silently, reminding John vividly of the day he saw Ronon kill three Wraith in less than five seconds. She's got that same kind of smooth and deadly grace, although she's got more secrets than Ronon ever did.
Ronon, who'd died with a grunt and a muttered Satedan swear before dropping like a stone, folding over John's back and carrying him to the floor. Protecting Sheppard, again, like he had from the beginning. Bastard.
Her eyes are grey, John realizes at close range, lighter than he'd thought. She raises a hand and he's not sure if she's going to shoot him or kiss him--instead she pokes him sharply in the stomach. "Ow!"
"You're injured." The tone is clinical, but her eyes crinkle with humor.
John wants to shrug but the last time hurt too much. "Just some bruises, I'll be okay."
"Let me see." Before he has a chance to protest, she's opened his shirt, cool fingers playing over the purple blotches spreading over his ribs. John tries not to twitch as she presses softly against the flesh, eyes hidden under her long lashes. She's shorter than he thought; that same lock of hair has come loose from her clip and is curling against her cheek. As she reaches around him, palpating his ribs cautiously, John takes a long, unsteady breath: she smells of sweat, of dust from the ventilation shafts, of something else, some faint floral odor he doesn't recognize.
She's not human; John doesn't care. It's been a long time since the sight of an Asgard wigged him out--the last time he got drunk, some guy with feathers and scarlet tentacles was pouring his drinks.
Her hands stop prodding at his ribs and slide down to rest on his hips; she tilts her head up to meet his eyes. "You didn't need to do that."
"Uh, do what?"
An eyebrow goes skyward. Well, axis-ward, anyway; there's no sky on a space station. "You do recall starting a riot to give me cover. Or do I need to check you for head injuries, too?" She slips a hand off his hip and places it on his neck, curling fingers up into his hair.
"Ah, no."
They stand there for a long moment, breathing on one another. She's begun to smile faintly; John's making himself remember she's an alien who could break him in two very easily. He hasn't pinned down all the social cues here, and he still wants to get paid.
On the other hand, her hands feel really good.
Just as he's beginning to think he should maybe do something here, she snorts in frustration, mutters something under her breath, and yanks his head down, latching onto his mouth with hers. That feels even better, John realizes, and decides to go for it now that she's answered the question.
Her mouth is amazing: lush and tasty and aggressive like her hands, which are roaming his back, smoothing over the contusions, sending the pain away. She pushes him against the wall of the docking tube, and John grunts softly into her mouth as his back bumps one of the folds where the tube accordians in for storage. She pauses and draws back, but John wraps both hands about her head and dives back into her mouth, pulling her down to the floor with him.
She's his first Sebacean, but the parts pretty much work the same. Unsurprisingly, she makes almost no noise at all--but whispers, "Rygel!" in John's ear, just before he comes. On the off chance John has forgotten about his passengers, twenty feet away, and still sleeping.
It's only later, when he's gone quietly into the front section of the jumper and returned with a clean t-shirt and a water bottle, that the penny finally drops. "Holy shit!" He fumbles the water bottle; Sun catches it neatly and takes a long drink.
"What is it?"
"You said 'humans'! In English." John stares at her in outrage. "Wait a minute," he adds, his brain finally clicking back into gear. "So did the frog! What the hell is going on?" John's gun is on the floor; he's not sure he can reach it before she gets to hers.
The smile that spreads across her face is uninhibited, gleeful, and just a little evil. "I wonder how long you would be," she says in English. Awkward, clunky English, with a strange sibilant accent--but definitely English. "You humans can be slow."
John drops down to a crouch, leaning over her, where she's turning her shirt right-side out. "Humans? You've met more--how? Did you--you've been to Atlantis!"
But the rush of excitement, of hope, for the first time in over two years, is flattened as she shakes her head, her smile fading. "No."
"No Atlantis," John says, and swallows the bitterness. "How, then?"
She stretches and sits up, pulling her leather pants out from underneath her. John winces and hands her the clean t-shirt; she takes it with a nod and wipes the pants clean. "I met someone about ten cycles ago, a human from your planet. He taught me some English."
Ten years ago? The Stargate program was just starting then, but Earth didn't have any interstellar ships, and there were so few Stargates in this region of space. It was the only explanation John could think of, and yet it made no sense; Earth didn't have the power ten years ago to open a wormhole to another galaxy. "Who was he? How'd he get here?"
Her eyes dodge sideways, and she wipes at the pants again, although they're already clean. "He was an astronaut." She shapes her mouth carefully around the word. "And he was caught in a wormhole, brought here by accident. That's all I ever knew."
"A wormhole," John repeats dully. If he were a physicist; hell, if he were McKay, maybe this news would mean something. Maybe it would be enough to figure out a way back ho-- back to Earth. But he's not, and just knowing someone can safely transit a wormhole without a Stargate isn't enough to do him any fucking good at all. He can't conjure a wormhole out of thin air.
He wants to cover his face and go hide in the corner for ten minutes. But he's got a client here, and there's a kid and a frog sleeping on the benches in the jumper. So he runs a shaking hand through his hair and pastes on his laziest smile. "Guess it's a small world after all."
She doesn't buy the smile; but she nods anyway. "I have begun to trust in fate more, these last few years, than I used to."
"Fate." John hasn't trusted in superstition for a long time. "You think it's fate that brought me here? You think fate's got a plan for me? Cause I can tell you, I had a destiny. I had pretty fucking important things to do. And I left people behind. Fate can fuck herself."
There's far too much understanding in those dark eyes. John looks away from her, listens to the sound of the Hynerian muttering in his sleep. Something about Delvian fire silk...
"Fate isn't a person," Sun says finally, pulling her shirt on over her head, smoothing her hair. "It doesn't care about what we think or we want. But you can't fight it; and sometimes..." Her voice trails off as her eyes go distant again. This woman's seen a hell of a lot more than John Sheppard has; he's smart enough to recognize that.
"Sometimes?" He hands her the hair-clip that fell on the floor.
She thanks him with a nod and gathers her hair. "Sometimes its purposes are yours as well. You can't tell until it's over."
"Until you die."
"Maybe not even then." The cool and assessing way in which she meets his eyes makes a chill run down John's back.
But the moment ends; she stands up and buckles on her holster, automatically checking the cartridge on her pistol. John looks around but there's no evidence of anything in the docking tube but the sticky t-shirt on the floor. He picks it up and holds it, awkwardly, as she turns to the dockside hatch.
"Hey," he says, as Sun puts her hand on the latch. "You going to be okay out there?" John wants to pull her back into the jumper, bring her with them on the painfully slow and boring voyage. Tell her stories about space vampires and a city in the ocean, listen to her tales about space battles and lost astronauts. But she's not staying, and he's got more sense than to try to keep her.
The slow smile that uncurls across her face makes him want to--never mind, no time now. "Yes," she says. "I have transport of my own. And Sheppard--" she pauses. "What's your other name?"
He blinks. "John. John Sheppard."
Her eyes widen; her lips twitch. "John Sheppard, then. Tell Rygel, when you get to Interion space, that he needs to introduce you to our mutual friend."
"Huh. He gonna know who you mean?"
She pauses in the hatchway, smiling secretively. "Just tell him. You'll be glad you did. And if he gives you any dren, call him Sparky." Her smile broadens to a grin. "He hates that." And she's gone.
END
*
In other news, I'm having my review today! eeeeks! ::flails::