Fic: Cross Product, Part 5 of 6
Fandom: Stargate (Atlantis/SG-1 cross)
Title: Cross Product, Part 5
Author: Quasar
Rating: R this part, NC-17 for the whole story
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Spoilers: specific references up to Conversion, vague ones up to Allies
Warnings: violence, mention of non-con
Date written: July 2006
Length: ~7500 words for this part
Summary: McKay burns his hands and gets shot, but not in the head.
Sheppard gets a crash course in jumper flying and goes on a running
tour of Atlantis. Teyla takes matters into her own hands.
Links to Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
John was the first to get to the gate room, adjusting his gear on the way. He looked over the pallets being prepared and had a word with the techs who'd be pushing them through the gate.
McKay was next, carrying his gear rather than wearing it and followed closely by Carter with an armful of equipment. She immediately claimed his backpack and started to stow the things she was carrying.
McKay snapped at her as John manhandled him into a flak vest. "Careful with that, it's --"
"I know, Rodney," said Carter, pulling out one of McKay's shirts to wrap the fragile equipment in. "Why don't you let me worry about this stuff while you get yourself ready?"
"Forget the P-90," said John, who knew how bad McKay was with the recoil. "Just your sidearm and a zat, that will be good enough." He tightened the straps on McKay's thigh holster, carefully not looking to see if McKay had noticed how erotic this was. John was already half-hard, but that was nothing new; he nearly always went into a situation like that, at least until the projectiles started flying.
Lastly he handed McKay the zat. "You know how to use this?"
"Yes yes, I have actually been off-world, you know. Once. But it was with SG-1, so that's worth --"
"Great, can you show me how?"
McKay looked at him uncertainly.
"I'm serious -- my expedition wasn't issued any of these things."
"Oh. Right. Well, you arm it like this --" The snake-like weapon rose up as if ready to strike. "And fire with this, here. Unless they're really hopped up on something, the first shot stuns, the second kills, and the third --"
"Disintegrates, yeah, I knew that much."
"The range is about twenty meters. It will fire again as fast as you can press it, and it takes about ten minutes of continuous fire to run out of charge. It's pretty hard on computers and other equipment, so be careful where you aim it."
John smirked. McKay hadn't even seen Atlantis yet, and he was already protective.
Mitchell showed up next, with three volunteers -- he had managed to drum up one more, after all. John looked at them and had to shake his head in surprise.
Mitchell did the honors. "Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, this is --"
"Major Lorne and Lieutenant Cadman, I know." He grinned at their surprised looks. "But I don't know you," he said to the third, a tiny blonde who looked about fifteen.
"Lieutenant Jennifer Hailey, sir!" She saluted.
For all that Mitchell had said he'd be choosing people with gate experience, she looked like she was straight out of the Academy. But she must be good, or she wouldn't be at the SGC. He set his doubts aside as Jackson and O'Neill entered the gate room, rigidly not speaking or looking at each other.
"Nine minutes, sir," Carter said.
O'Neill clapped his hands and rubbed them. "All right kiddies, listen up. Mitchell's the ranking officer, but Sheppard has the inside scoop on Atlantis -- so he calls the shots for the initial incursion. Once the situation is stable," he said to Mitchell, "you'll either report to Sumner or the other ranking officer present who actually belongs to the expedition, or take command yourself. Use your judgment."
"Yes, sir."
"We'll send the Odyssey to pick you up, but they have to come back from Chulak first -- so it'll be about a month before they can get to you guys. Tell the folks from the expedition we haven't abandoned them, and we're not abandoning you. Daniel . . ."
Jackson looked up from a check of his weapons with lifted eyebrows.
"Say hi to little Jack for me." O'Neill nodded to Sheppard. "All yours."
John crossed his hands over his P-90. "We have evidence that Atlantis has been taken over by a group called the Genii. We know Dr. Weir is a prisoner, and she said there weren't many Genii there, but she couldn't be specific about numbers on either side. We don't know who else survived from the original expedition or from the Daedalus.
"The bad guys are humans with a strong military tradition and a bad attitude. Their uniforms are green and their standard weapon is a heavy, ugly handgun with ten bullets that takes about a minute to reload. But they've probably stolen weapons and maybe uniforms from the Atlantis team, so be ready for automatic weapons. They may also have Wraith stunners -- alien-made energy weapon, makes a white flash and shorts out the nervous system, but we've never seen anyone die from it, even after multiple hits.
"We'll go in concealed in supply crates. The real supplies will go through the gate first to tie up their inspectors. Then the crate with me, McKay, and Hailey, followed by Mitchell and Jackson, then the last one with Lorne and Cadman. We need to take the control room right away -- then we can get intel from Dr. Weir and plan how to secure the rest of the city.
"We'll attack with zats so we can shoot first and sort out the good guys later. Everybody know what Dr. Weir looks like? Good. Don't shoot her, but anyone else is fair game, no matter what uniform. Arm your zats before going through the gate. When we open fire, they'll probably close the shield and block further arrivals -- that means nobody fires until the last pallet is through the gate, clear?
"There are stairs both up and down from the gate level and concealed lines of fire all over the place, so we need to make the most of surprise. The control level is on an open balcony straight ahead and up from the gate; that's where the most important targets will be. Next most important is anyone who seems to be in charge, anyone holding a weapon or a radio, anyone trying to get away, and lastly anyone still standing."
"Four minutes," said Carter over the intercom from the control room.
"All right, let's get loaded up." John looked up to the blast window, where O'Neill was talking to the other end of the wormhole. "I hope to hell they open that shield," he muttered.
The first pallet was already trundling up the ramp to the gate. John followed McKay to the third pallet and helped him squeeze into a corner of the crate. McKay was white-faced and wide-eyed, trembling faintly.
"Kick that lever to bring down the two side walls of the crate, sir," said the technician handling the pallet.
"Good, thanks." John glanced over to where Cadman was adjusting Hailey's flak jacket, then crouched into the crate and pressed a quick kiss to the down-turned corner of McKay's mouth. "Atlantis is beautiful, Rodney. You're going to love it."
McKay took a deep breath and nodded.
Then Hailey hopped in, and within seconds they were rumbling up the ramp toward the event horizon.
-----
"What was that?" Sheppard asked.
Rodney couldn't move.
Sheppard prodded his shoulder. "Rodney? What just happened? Did they get disintegrated, or what? Rodney!"
Rodney staggered, and his paralysis broke. He drew a deep, shuddering breath, checked to make sure the dart wasn't in sight, then ran out the door of the outpost. "Get to the jumper!" he yelled. "Come on, hurry!"
"The jumper's gone," shouted Sheppard, on his heels.
"No, it's not!" Rodney followed the footprints in the sand right up to where they disappeared, and two steps beyond. The puddlejumper sprang into being around him.
"Whoa!" exclaimed Sheppard as he entered.
Rodney holstered his gun and dove for the access under the DHD. "You fly," he said, pushing Sheppard toward the pilot's seat. "You're better at it, anyway."
"What! McKay, I've never flown one of these --"
"Don't worry, you're a natural. Just think about getting us back to the gate ahead of the Wraith!" Rodney crawled under the console and began frantically swapping circuits to make the DHD do something it wasn't designed to do: take over control of an open Stargate.
Sheppard took the controls, and within seconds they were hovering. "How do I know the way back to the gate, or where that Wraith thing is?" he demanded. Something must have appeared on the heads-up display, because a moment later he said, "Oh. Cool."
"Just get us moving!" Rodney snapped.
"Yes sir, General McKay, sir!"
Rodney ignored the jibe as he felt the light press of acceleration straining the inertial dampeners; that meant Sheppard was learning the controls already. He juggled the crystals, nearly dropping the one he needed. "Is it just the one dart?"
"Dart, you mean the ship? Um . . . yeah, there's only one on the display."
"Okay, when you get close enough to shoot --"
"Shoot!?"
"-- be sure to aim at the nose of the dart only. Teyla and Ronon's signatures will be stored in the rear section -- that's our only hope of getting them back."
"Wait, you want me to get in a dogfight with an alien ship on an alien planet in an aircraft I've never even flown before?"
Rodney shoved the last crystal home. "Our Sheppard fought a dozen of them his first day in this galaxy, and won."
"Where are the firing controls on this thing, anyway?" Then: "Oh."
Rodney pulled himself up to the co-pilot's seat and slammed a hand on the DHD. "Yes!" he crowed as the inset in the corner of the screen showed the wormhole closing. "Now he can't get away."
"Guess we got him right where we want him," said Sheppard weakly. "And here he comes."
"It's okay, we're still cloaked," Rodney said, watching the dart hunt back and forth. Then it aimed straight at them, and he realized, "But flying this low, you'll kick up sand --"
The dart fired, Sheppard dodged, the jumper lurched. The cloak flickered a moment, then steadied; the DHD spat a shower of sparks.
"Dammit!" Rodney dropped down to check his handiwork. Of course the improvised circuit was the first to overload. He wasn't going to be able to repair that quickly. He sat up again and stared blindly out the window, trying to think as Sheppard pulled the jumper up away from the betraying sand.
"Okay, I think I'm getting the hang of this," Sheppard said.
"He's dialing out again," Rodney pointed out. "I can't stop it from here. Set me down near the gate."
"What?"
"It's the only way I can keep him from getting away!"
"But you'll be naked out there!"
"So distract him!"
"I think I can do a little better than that." Sheppard maneuvered closer to the Stargate, his eyes flickering to the display that showed the dart coming around to fly into the newly-formed wormhole.
"Sheppard, what are you doing? You should have put me down!"
"Too late for that now," Sheppard muttered absently.
"He's getting too close."
"Wait for it . . ."
"Sheppard!"
At last the jumper fired a single drone. It whirled in a bewildering spiral and struck the ship's nose, obliterating the long stinger on the front. The dart yawed to one side but didn't veer since the shot had taken out its directional controls; it was flying purely on momentum now -- straight into the event horizon. Its broken nose clipped the edge of the gate on the way through.
"Oops," said Sheppard.
"Follow him, follow him, before the wormhole closes!" Rodney yelled, thumping the console.
Sheppard turned the jumper and zipped toward the gate.
"You should have set me down to close it, then this wouldn't have happened," Rodney muttered darkly.
"What do we do if there are more of those Wraith things on the other side?" Sheppard asked as the jumper lined up.
"Then we run. But if we're lucky, he might have gone for an uninhabited planet first. Two jumps home to make sure we couldn't follow him."
"If we're lucky," said Sheppard, watching the gate loom larger. "Here goes nothing."
-----
He should have expected it, but when John saw Kolya standing on the balcony in an Atlantis uniform with red panels, fury clutched him by the throat. He had to breathe shallowly to keep himself from snarling, and he knew McKay, plastered against his side and facing back toward the gate, could feel the reaction.
The Genii commander was saying something threatening to Weir -- who wore rumpled civilian clothes -- and was half-shielded by her body, but that might be a coincidence since he didn't seem to be paying attention to the crates coming in. The two stood almost at the limit of that twenty-meter range McKay had mentioned, but Kolya was surely the most important target in the room. John just hoped the zat's aim was straight, since he wasn't used to sighting this kind of weapon.
McKay tapped John's hip to signal that the last pallet was through the gate, then shifted a little to take aim at one of the soldiers approaching their crate. John waited a five count to give Lorne and Cadman time to orient themselves, then shouted "Now!" and squeezed the firing button.
Kolya went down in a blue cone of lightning, but the edge of it caught Weir as well. Other zat blasts took down all the nearby targets on the gate level, but more soldiers were already moving forward with weapons raised. A 9mm barked somewhere, and John shot the two guards running to the front of the balcony. Most of the ones carrying P-90s were already down; the last was a confused woman firing fiercely into the crates of real supplies. John picked off one of a pair coming down the broad stairs, and someone else got the other.
More Genii fell, and now the only fire coming at them was from shielded positions around corners and behind pallets. Bullets splintered the front of their crate. John yelled "Scatter!" and kicked the lever to bring down the sides. Hailey went left, firing steadily. John pushed McKay off the pallet and followed him to the right.
Mitchell and Jackson were fast and accurate, hitting targets even when only a head or arm was visible. Lorne and Cadman had already cleared the guard positions at the rear of the room. No one was moving on the balcony.
And then it was quiet. The room was littered with bodies, mostly bloodless, about half of them in Atlantis uniforms and the rest in Genii green. John didn't pause for breath, but hauled McKay to his feet. "Come on!" He charged for the stairs.
At the top, he saw that Kolya and Weir were both conscious but barely moving. He shot Kolya again, not caring if that counted as a killing shot, and kicked a gun away from the body. He moved on to the console where he slammed a hand on the lockdown control. Doors slid, dropped, and spun shut, and the room was secure.
Mitchell clicked the mike on his shoulder. "SGC, we have control of the Atlantis gate room."
"Good luck with the rest of it," said O'Neill's voice over multiple radios. "We'll hope to hear from you soon. SGC out." The wormhole dissolved.
Someone moved nearby, and John spun with his weapon ready. A wide-eyed man crouched near the DHD with hands half-raised.
John shot him. "Sergeant Darfman, I presume?" he growled at the crumpled figure.
"These ones are all out," said McKay, checking the other bodies around the balcony. He was breathing heavily but seemed unhurt.
"Good. They need to be secured before they wake up." Dammit, John hadn't remembered to bring restraints.
"Mitchell's taking care of it."
Sure enough, on the gate level, Mitchell was making liberal use of a handful of plastic ties. Hailey and Lorne were both down, being tended by Jackson and Cadman. John wiped a tickle of blood from his cheek, decided it was just a scratch, and turned to Weir.
"Elizabeth, you okay?"
She nodded, trying clumsily to sit up. "Who --?"
McKay bent to help her.
"Dr. McKay!" she gasped. "I wasn't expecting to see you here."
"Oh, you know, just came to save the day. And I brought help!" he said smugly. "This is Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard. He's from, uh, from an alternate universe."
"It's a long story and I'll need your help with that later," said John, "but for now just take it that I know Atlantis pretty well. Tell me where your people are being held."
"Most are in cells -- Ancient cells --"
"In that obelisk-shaped building just north of the central tower? I know it." He nodded.
"But some of us -- myself, Dr. Grodin, Dr. Beckett, Captain O'Neill, and Colonel Caldwell -- have been held separately on the lower levels of this building."
John noted the gaps in the list of command personnel. No Sumner, no Zelenka, yes Grodin, check -- and Captain O'Neill? But that wasn't what he needed to focus on now. "Rodney, would you -- oh, hell." This McKay didn't know the Atlantis systems like the back of his hand.
While McKay helped Weir crawl into a chair, John woke up a console and got it to display city schematics. He saw at once that the city was shielded. That meant they had a ZPM, so why hadn't they dialed Earth? He shook that mystery out of his head and zoomed in on the central tower.
"Where are they exactly?" he asked, following Weir's shaking finger as she pointed out the areas. "Okay. How many other Genii are here? Do you know where they're stationed? Who's second in command after Kolya? Did they have time to raise the alarm?" He snapped out the questions almost faster than she could answer them.
Mitchell came up to the command level to tie up the guards and 'Sergeant Darfman.' "Evening, Dr. Weir," he said as he rolled Kolya over to pull his arms back.
"Put extra restraints on that one," said John harshly, hand clenching over the 9mm on his thigh. "Did he hurt you?" he asked Weir abruptly.
He could see finger-shaped bruises coming up on her neck, but she shook her head. "Nothing to speak of. They need our cooperation to control the city systems, so we haven't been treated too harshly. At least the command staff haven't. It's been mostly just threats and a few . . . examples." She swallowed.
"Right. Mitchell, what's our situation?"
"We have eighteen captured and three dead hostiles -- one from friendly fire, two double-shot with zats. Hailey took a bullet in the leg; she can shoot, but she can't run. Lorne got clipped in the shoulder and hit his head on the way down. He's out with a concussion, but he isn't bleeding too bad."
John ran a hand through his hair. "Okay. Hailey, Jackson, and McKay will stay and hold the control room. You need to check over what the Genii have done here and make sure they didn't booby-trap anything. Mitchell and Cadman will go to the lower levels of this building -- Dr. Weir can tell you where -- and free the command personnel. I'll go after the other prisoners."
McKay stepped forward. "You shouldn't go alone. You need backup."
Mitchell nodded. "He's right. Daniel can --"
"Daniel and Hailey can handle the control room," McKay interrupted. "Hailey's almost as fast with computers as I am, and Dr. Weir will be helping them. I'll go with you."
"It's a long way, Rodney," John warned.
"I've been working out -- part of my PT after the, um, parasite thing. I can keep up."
"You need someone with you that at least a few of the prisoners will know," said Mitchell. "Otherwise they'll think it's a trick."
"Fine, okay!" John snapped. "Rodney's with me." He knew Jackson might be more suited for the job, but he'd feel better with McKay at his side.
Weir showed Mitchell the tower layout while Jackson helped Hailey up the steps. John eyed the bandage wrapped around her thigh just below the bottom of her flak jacket and shook his head. "You're too tall, Lieutenant. If you were a little shorter, that vest would protect you down to the knees."
"Very funny, sir," she gasped, limping toward a seat.
"Dr. Weir will show you how the systems work. Lock the doors behind us and don't let anyone in. If we don't pull this off . . ."
"We can go through the gate," Weir said confidently. "We have allies who will shelter us, even if they won't fight the Genii directly."
"Yeah, that might work." But John knew how widespread the Genii friends network was in Pegasus.
"Good luck, Colonel Sheppard, Colonel Mitchell. I have to thank you--"
"Thank us when we're done, ma'am," said Mitchell.
"Let's get moving," John said. "Ready, Rodney?"
McKay had gone wide-eyed and thin-lipped again. Probably he was regretting his insistence on coming.
John bumped shoulders with him and said, "Didn't I tell you it's beautiful? Wait 'til you see the transporters."
McKay's eyes flicked toward him nervously. "Are you going to kiss me again?" he murmured.
John winked. "Later," he promised, and nodded at Weir to unlock the doors.
-----
"I'm guessing uninhabited," Sheppard said when they got their first look at the new planet.
"Maybe uninhabitable," said Rodney, laying a hand on the console so he could call up atmospheric sensor readings. The landscape stretching before them was rough and craggy, with a patchy greenish-gray carpet of something moss-like in the low-lying areas. The sun looked small and anemic in a sky of dark indigo. "Well, the atmosphere's only a little toxic, so a few minutes' exposure probably won't hurt us. There's oxygen, but the air's really too thin to breathe."
"Why do I feel like we're falling?" Sheppard kept twitching at the controls, raising and lowering the jumper in an odd cycle.
Rodney switched readouts. "Small planet, low gravity. The jumper has artificial gravity, of course, but it adapts to local conditions when possible. Hmm, a little under point three gees -- that's the lowest I've ever seen for a planet with a Stargate. Aside from space gates, of course."
"Oookay." Sheppard jerked the jumper up again, then lowered it more smoothly. "That's going to take some getting used to."
"Wait until you try walking in it."
The dart had crashed a few hundred meters beyond the gate after plowing a darker green furrow through the plant stuff. Rodney breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the rear section was intact. So was the pilot compartment, but there was no sign of movement there.
"Set us down over there," Rodney said. "No, not right next to the dart! A little ways behind it, just in case."
"In case what?" Sheppard asked, but he landed where Rodney indicated. "I thought you said we couldn't breathe the air, anyway."
Rodney stood, nearly hitting the ceiling, and headed for the storage compartments in the back of the jumper. "There's enough atmosphere that we don't need full pressure suits. Which is good, because we don't stock those in the jumpers. But somewhere around here -- ah, yes! -- we have some SCBA units for emergencies. Here."
He pulled off his computer pack and strapped the SCBA over his shoulders instead, checking the tank levels quickly. While Sheppard was figuring out his own breathing unit, Rodney closed the bulkhead door to preserve the atmosphere in the front of the jumper, then grabbed one of the remote control units and turned off the cloak. They were going to be visible anyway as they approached the dart; he just hoped the Wraith pilot was really unconscious.
He tossed a pair of goggles at Sheppard and pulled on some of his own. "Ready?" he asked. At Sheppard's nod, Rodney hit the hatch release. He worked his jaw to pop his ears, then slipped the regulator in his mouth.
The gray-green plants turned out to be spongy and crackly underfoot, and there was a faint haze hanging just above them. Rodney hoped it was water droplets and not vengeful mist-beings or worse, some allergenic pollen. He carefully didn't breathe through his nose, but the air stung his nostrils even so. He held his gun ready as they walked toward the rear of the dart. The crunch of their bounding footsteps sounded faint and far away in the thin air.
The dart's canopy was still closed and opaque, and Rodney didn't want to take the risk of opening it, so he just waved Sheppard to stand back while he holstered his gun and considered the problem. He didn't have enough air to sit down and write an interface program, or the right equipment to detach the rear section and carry it home, so he was just going to have to remove the data storage unit for the culling transporter and hope it could be reinstalled in one of the other cannibalized darts they had lying around Atlantis.
It was a good thing his combat knife was Ronon-approved, Rodney thought as he braced a knee on the back of the dart and began carving into its thick skin. Perhaps the Satedan would stop complaining about sharpening Rodney's knife when he learned it had been used to save him.
There were a couple of secondary power conduits in the way, and Rodney hissed as the hot, sinewy cables stung his hands. He should have brought gloves, but it was too late for that now, so he just pulled his sleeves down and tried to ignore the heat. At last he found the memory unit nestled like some vital organ, with power and data cables running in and out in multiple directions. He had to remove them in the correct order or the memory would be wiped.
As he sliced through the first cable, there was an angry blaaat followed by a shrill whistle from further forward. Rodney cursed and cut another cable, yelping as it seared his fingertips. With flinching urgency, he reached for the next.
"McKay?" Sheppard's voice sounded muffled and distant. "Cockpit's opening."
Rodney spat out his regulator, gasping more from pain than lack of air. "Shoot the pilot!" he yelled as he dug under the unit for the next-to-last cable. "Every bullet you have! Don't let him reach the self-destruct!"
Shots rang out, but Rodney didn't look up from his work. He had a bad feeling the self-destruct would be triggered anyway, as soon as he severed this last cable. And sure enough, there was the familiar escalating whine.
"Run!" he bellowed at Sheppard as he struggled elbows-deep in the dart's slimy innards, trying to pull the data unit free. The damn power conduit was in the way again; he tore through it in one vicious motion. Sheppard grabbed his arm, helping him slide down from the dart, pushing him to hurry.
Running in low gravity quickly turned into an awkward swooping galumph. Rodney couldn't breathe or see properly. His hands burned, his lungs burned, the back of his neck burned as the dart lit up behind them.
The shockwave squeezed his ribs, lifted him off his feet, and tumbled him down onto the spongy ground with Sheppard falling child-light on top of him. Rodney caught a whiff of something foul and caustic, then clamped his mouth and eyes shut. His arms were wrapped around the memory unit, and he couldn't find his regulator just by twisting his head.
Then gentle hands were patting his face, feeding him the mouthpiece and straightening his goggles. He still couldn't see normally, and half the outer and inner surfaces of his body felt like they were on fire, but Sheppard helped him up and guided him back to the jumper and pressed him into a seat. His eardrums registered the return of normal air pressure, and after a minute his lungs and sinuses started to feel better too.
He opened stinging eyes to find Sheppard staring at him worriedly with goggles pushed up to disarrange his hair even more than usual. "Hey there. You okay?"
Rodney gulped back a near-sob, looking down at the ugly thing in his arms that he hoped held two of his teammates. "Not really, no."
"Well, um . . . before you pass out or whatever, can you tell me how to get this thing back to Atlantis?"
Rodney started to laugh and choked it off before it could turn into something hysterical. This Sheppard had never even seen a DHD before -- of course he was lost.
He stood shakily and stowed the Wraith data unit in a storage bin, then shucked the SCBA and goggles. His hands were red and blistered and tended to curl into defensive claws when he wasn't paying attention. "You'll have to fix the DHD first, since it shorted out," he said. With a task to focus on, his thoughts began to steady into familiar patterns. At least this was a problem he could solve. "I'll show you what to do."
-----
McKay was duly impressed by the transporters, but then he peppered John with questions as they detoured to lower-traffic routes. Did the transporters use the same de-molecularization technology as the gates, were the life-support systems still running with the city on the ocean surface, how much power was needed for the city to fly? This McKay might be in decent shape, but he couldn't keep talking while running up and down stairs. The running seemed to take second priority for him.
At least they hadn't run into any Genii yet. John paused in front of a door to let McKay catch his breath. "You didn't have this many questions when we arrived here in my universe," he grumbled.
McKay snorted. "Of course I did. I just didn't expect you to have answers."
"Look, we're going to be a little exposed on this next part here, so keep your head down. After that, we're in the building where the prisoners are and there should be about a dozen guards posted, so keep your voice down. Got it?"
McKay nodded and made a lip-zipping motion, then raised his zat.
John waved a hand at the door sensor.
"Do you need the Ancient gene for that?" McKay asked, then winced. "Shutting up."
John sighed and led the way out onto the darkened pier, keeping an eye out for threats from above as well as ahead. McKay glanced up once as well and had to be jostled into motion again after he glimpsed the night sky framed by soaring towers.
They entered the obelisk building from the northwest side, which John guessed would be a less busy approach. Sure enough, it was unguarded. When they were in, McKay persuaded the door not to open from the outside, so they wouldn't have to worry about reinforcements arriving. He might not be as familiar with the Ancient systems as the other Rodney, but he was still pretty good; John was glad he'd come along.
The guards turned out to be on the stairs. John gave McKay a finger to the lips and a stay-here motion, before creeping up as high as he could below them without being seen. Then he whipped around the corner and fired twice through the railing. Both guards dropped.
"These zat things aren't bad," John mused as he stripped the guards of their weapons (Earth issue) and their radios (Genii issue). "Could use more range, but they're quieter than Wraith stunners."
Thanks to the quiet weapons, he took out another pair of guards in the southeast stairwell -- after McKay sabotaged that door too -- without raising an alarm. But one of the third pair got off a shot at him, and after that came a frantic period of running and tracking people by radio and climbing into weird ambush positions. John wished he'd found time to get a life-signs detector out of one of the jumpers. The Genii net tightened around them until he ended up using McKay as a decoy -- unintentionally, but effectively.
"I can't believe you did that!" McKay hissed at him. He was the only person John knew whose voice could crack on a whisper. "I got shot!" He fingered the tear in his flak vest anxiously.
"I didn't plan it that way, Rodney. It just happened." John stuffed more guns and radios in the pockets of his own vest.
"Hello! Shot? In the chest?!"
"Better than the head. Shhh," John said, listening to a Genii radio. He grinned. "Sounds like the command staff are on the loose."
Then there was only the last pair of guards on the level with the cells, and finally they were liberating prisoners, four and five from each cell. Since the locks had been programmed not to respond to the ATA gene, McKay had to jimmy the first two sets of controls. After that, there were enough science personnel free to do it themselves, and things went faster.
John was stunned and delighted to find Ford in the third cell, as baby-faced and brown-eyed as ever. Ford was suspicious at first, until McKay insisted that John had come with him from the SGC; then he accepted a confiscated gun and told John where to find Bates and Markham.
He spotted a few Athosians in the mix, so he wasn't completely surprised when Teyla showed up in the sixth cell. John caught her arms unthinkingly as she came out and started to bend his forehead to hers, but she put him in a headlock.
"Uh, hi, Teyla," he gasped into a familiar-smelling elbow. "Nice to see you too."
She released him and stepped back. "You know my name."
John rubbed his neck. "Long story. Didn't mean to startle you."
She sighed. "I apologize for my reaction. We . . . have not been treated well."
Inside the cell, Miko Kusanagi was weeping in Kate Heightmeyer's arms, both of them very far from their usual well-groomed selves. Dr. Simpson and a woman John didn't recognize stared at him with angry, haunted eyes.
"I knew I should have killed that bastard Kolya," John growled, and gave Teyla his P-90.
She tilted her head. "Kolya was not the one most responsible." There was a dark bruise on her jaw, although she moved as lithely as ever.
"He was in command. He had to know about it." He couldn't tell her about what Kolya had done in his universe that made him so sure the commander would sanction rape and torture while standing back to keep his hands clean.
As he headed for the next cell room down the corridor, a voice came over the city-wide intercom system. "Invaders from Earth!"
"Who's he calling an invader?" Ford muttered.
"I have access to control and weapons systems. You will let my people go, or the city -- and Dr. Beckett -- will suffer the consequences."
"Who is that?" John asked, sure he knew the voice but unable to place it.
"Tyrus," Ford sneered. "Kolya's second in command."
John frowned. "What control systems is he talking about?"
Mitchell's voice sounded over the SGC radio on John's shoulder. "Daniel, what's going on?"
"We're fine here," Jackson responded at once. "Dr. Weir says there's an auxiliary control room."
"Aw, hell!" said John. "That's where the weapons chair is. If he puts Beckett in that chair, anything could happen."
"But that doesn't make sense," McKay said. "Auxiliary control shouldn't have access unless primary control hands it over or goes off-line."
"Get back to the control room," John told him. "Take anyone who knows the Atlantis systems -- Grodin, if you can find him. See if you can stop Tyrus from tapping in. Cut off all his power, if you have to."
McKay nodded and started off.
"Ford, take someone and go with McKay." Most of the Genii were captive by now, but any still free would be both smart and sneaky.
"Right. Markham --"
"Wait, not him. I may need him," said John. Markham was the shortest Marine in sight. John would have preferred a small woman, but Hailey was wounded and too far away, Teyla had disappeared, and the others in that cell weren't combat trained. Maybe Markham would be small enough.
As Ford got someone else to escort McKay, John headed for the stairs. He stopped cold when he found Teyla crouching over one of the Genii guards -- apparently just returned to consciousness -- with her hand down his pants. Several Marines stood around looking unhappy.
"Tell me where she is," Teyla hissed at the man, her arm twisting sharply.
He screamed, high-pitched and agonized.
"Teyla?" John said, baffled and concerned.
"Do you wish me to remove it entirely?" Teyla asked. "I could ensure that you will never hurt another woman again."
"No! No! Don't, I'll -- she's -- she's quartered on level fifteen near the base of the control tower, west side. But I don't know if she's there right now -- aaah!"
With one last vicious jerk, Teyla pulled her hand free -- fingertips bloody -- and stood up. Then she kicked him hard in the crotch. He screamed again and curled into a ball.
"Whoa, Teyla, what the hell was that?" John demanded. His groin was shriveling away from its usual combat-ready state.
Her eyes were harder than he had ever seen them, like Ronon's eyes when he faced a Wraith. "Perhaps you do not know me as well as you think," she said. "I must go." She hoisted the P-90 and ran down the stairs.
"Teyla, wait! Markham, come on." John ran after her, but by the time they reached the pier level she had already disappeared, and there was no time to look for her. John cursed and headed for the chair room.
On the way, they listened to Tyrus's escalating demands and Weir trying futilely to negotiate with him. The man was getting desperate, insisting that all the command staff and everyone who had arrived from the SGC should surrender to him. He wasn't going to get what he wanted, but he might cause a lot of damage before they could stop him. Even if they locked him out of the system, he still had Beckett as a hostage.
As they got close, John explained his plan to Markham. There was one way to get into auxiliary control that the person inside couldn't close off: the tubes that led from the drone bay to the chair room. With the drones nearly used up, access was easy. Sort of.
"I don't think I'll fit in one of those tubes, sir," Markham whispered as they approached the vast bay beneath the chair room.
"I know, dammit, but we have to try!"
"And even if I get in, what happens if he fires a drone?"
"I promise you, Beckett really doesn't want to do that. The chair probably won't even respond to him." At least John hoped so.
His nerves tingled as they reached the last corner; someone was there ahead of them. John went low and led with his zat.
A man was boosting someone in black fatigues -- Cadman? -- into one of the launch tubes. He heard them coming and whirled to point a Wraith stunner at John, leaving Cadman to dangle.
"He's with us, sir," said Markham quickly. It was unclear which of them he was speaking to.
John straightened and disarmed the zat. "I'm Colonel Sheppard," he said shortly. "You must be Captain O'Neill."
"That's right." The face under the light brown brush cut was youthful, but surely older than twenty. As he got closer, John saw that one of his eyes was pure black.
"Shit," he breathed. That explained the extra years. "Tell me you're not hopped up on that damn enzyme."
O'Neill eyed him suspiciously. "No. I'd rather go through morphine withdrawal ten times over than do that again."
"Hello, could I have a hand here?" came Cadman's muffled voice as her legs kicked.
They helped her squeeze in, but it was clear she wasn't going to make it. She wormed as far as the first bend, and then they had to pull her out.
"Sorry, sir," she said, hair plastered to her red face.
"We'll think of something else," said O'Neill.
"Like what?" John asked. "Tyrus is half nuts. He isn't going to wait much longer before he tries something."
Then a new voice sounded on the Genii radio strapped to Sheppard's wrist: "Father?"
"Sora? Where are you?"
"I, I am -- unh! Teyla Emmagan is with me."
"Emmagan! You would not dare to harm her. We have been friends for years. Your honor will not permit --"
"Honor?" Teyla's voice was low and furious. "Where was honor when you let those monsters in our cell? Where was friendship when you turned your eyes aside?"
"Father, she has a knife!" Sora sounded frightened, vulnerable, not like the bitter, hardened beauty who had lost her father in John's universe.
"You would not!" Tyrus roared.
"No? If you think I have any restraint or compassion remaining, think again! That was all burned away as I watched your men torture my friends."
"I have a hostage too! Shall I shoot Dr. Beckett and let you hear his screams?"
John shifted uncomfortably as they heard a Scots burr in the background, words running together in alarm.
There was a long pause, then Teyla continued, her voice calmer but still cold enough to burn. "It comes to this, Tyrus. One of us wants vengeance more dearly than the safety of the hostage. Dr. Beckett is my friend, but so were the women who shared my cell these past weeks. And you, Tyrus? Which do you care for most: revenge on the Lanteans, or your daughter's skin and innocence preserved?"
This time the silence seemed to stretch forever. Then, "Don't hurt her," Tyrus pleaded, almost sobbing. "I'll do anything, I'll surrender, just don't hurt my daughter!"
John met O'Neill's stunned gaze for a moment, then they both raced for the stairs to the chair room.
After a minute, Beckett came over the radio. "Tyrus has untied me and handed me a gun. Teyla . . . don't hurt the lass!"
"She is unharmed," Teyla said shortly.
As soon as the door opened, O'Neill stunned Tyrus. John checked the room quickly for further threats or booby-traps, then slumped against a console. It was over.
Part Six
Title: Cross Product, Part 5
Author: Quasar
Rating: R this part, NC-17 for the whole story
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Spoilers: specific references up to Conversion, vague ones up to Allies
Warnings: violence, mention of non-con
Date written: July 2006
Length: ~7500 words for this part
Summary: McKay burns his hands and gets shot, but not in the head.
Sheppard gets a crash course in jumper flying and goes on a running
tour of Atlantis. Teyla takes matters into her own hands.
Links to Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
John was the first to get to the gate room, adjusting his gear on the way. He looked over the pallets being prepared and had a word with the techs who'd be pushing them through the gate.
McKay was next, carrying his gear rather than wearing it and followed closely by Carter with an armful of equipment. She immediately claimed his backpack and started to stow the things she was carrying.
McKay snapped at her as John manhandled him into a flak vest. "Careful with that, it's --"
"I know, Rodney," said Carter, pulling out one of McKay's shirts to wrap the fragile equipment in. "Why don't you let me worry about this stuff while you get yourself ready?"
"Forget the P-90," said John, who knew how bad McKay was with the recoil. "Just your sidearm and a zat, that will be good enough." He tightened the straps on McKay's thigh holster, carefully not looking to see if McKay had noticed how erotic this was. John was already half-hard, but that was nothing new; he nearly always went into a situation like that, at least until the projectiles started flying.
Lastly he handed McKay the zat. "You know how to use this?"
"Yes yes, I have actually been off-world, you know. Once. But it was with SG-1, so that's worth --"
"Great, can you show me how?"
McKay looked at him uncertainly.
"I'm serious -- my expedition wasn't issued any of these things."
"Oh. Right. Well, you arm it like this --" The snake-like weapon rose up as if ready to strike. "And fire with this, here. Unless they're really hopped up on something, the first shot stuns, the second kills, and the third --"
"Disintegrates, yeah, I knew that much."
"The range is about twenty meters. It will fire again as fast as you can press it, and it takes about ten minutes of continuous fire to run out of charge. It's pretty hard on computers and other equipment, so be careful where you aim it."
John smirked. McKay hadn't even seen Atlantis yet, and he was already protective.
Mitchell showed up next, with three volunteers -- he had managed to drum up one more, after all. John looked at them and had to shake his head in surprise.
Mitchell did the honors. "Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, this is --"
"Major Lorne and Lieutenant Cadman, I know." He grinned at their surprised looks. "But I don't know you," he said to the third, a tiny blonde who looked about fifteen.
"Lieutenant Jennifer Hailey, sir!" She saluted.
For all that Mitchell had said he'd be choosing people with gate experience, she looked like she was straight out of the Academy. But she must be good, or she wouldn't be at the SGC. He set his doubts aside as Jackson and O'Neill entered the gate room, rigidly not speaking or looking at each other.
"Nine minutes, sir," Carter said.
O'Neill clapped his hands and rubbed them. "All right kiddies, listen up. Mitchell's the ranking officer, but Sheppard has the inside scoop on Atlantis -- so he calls the shots for the initial incursion. Once the situation is stable," he said to Mitchell, "you'll either report to Sumner or the other ranking officer present who actually belongs to the expedition, or take command yourself. Use your judgment."
"Yes, sir."
"We'll send the Odyssey to pick you up, but they have to come back from Chulak first -- so it'll be about a month before they can get to you guys. Tell the folks from the expedition we haven't abandoned them, and we're not abandoning you. Daniel . . ."
Jackson looked up from a check of his weapons with lifted eyebrows.
"Say hi to little Jack for me." O'Neill nodded to Sheppard. "All yours."
John crossed his hands over his P-90. "We have evidence that Atlantis has been taken over by a group called the Genii. We know Dr. Weir is a prisoner, and she said there weren't many Genii there, but she couldn't be specific about numbers on either side. We don't know who else survived from the original expedition or from the Daedalus.
"The bad guys are humans with a strong military tradition and a bad attitude. Their uniforms are green and their standard weapon is a heavy, ugly handgun with ten bullets that takes about a minute to reload. But they've probably stolen weapons and maybe uniforms from the Atlantis team, so be ready for automatic weapons. They may also have Wraith stunners -- alien-made energy weapon, makes a white flash and shorts out the nervous system, but we've never seen anyone die from it, even after multiple hits.
"We'll go in concealed in supply crates. The real supplies will go through the gate first to tie up their inspectors. Then the crate with me, McKay, and Hailey, followed by Mitchell and Jackson, then the last one with Lorne and Cadman. We need to take the control room right away -- then we can get intel from Dr. Weir and plan how to secure the rest of the city.
"We'll attack with zats so we can shoot first and sort out the good guys later. Everybody know what Dr. Weir looks like? Good. Don't shoot her, but anyone else is fair game, no matter what uniform. Arm your zats before going through the gate. When we open fire, they'll probably close the shield and block further arrivals -- that means nobody fires until the last pallet is through the gate, clear?
"There are stairs both up and down from the gate level and concealed lines of fire all over the place, so we need to make the most of surprise. The control level is on an open balcony straight ahead and up from the gate; that's where the most important targets will be. Next most important is anyone who seems to be in charge, anyone holding a weapon or a radio, anyone trying to get away, and lastly anyone still standing."
"Four minutes," said Carter over the intercom from the control room.
"All right, let's get loaded up." John looked up to the blast window, where O'Neill was talking to the other end of the wormhole. "I hope to hell they open that shield," he muttered.
The first pallet was already trundling up the ramp to the gate. John followed McKay to the third pallet and helped him squeeze into a corner of the crate. McKay was white-faced and wide-eyed, trembling faintly.
"Kick that lever to bring down the two side walls of the crate, sir," said the technician handling the pallet.
"Good, thanks." John glanced over to where Cadman was adjusting Hailey's flak jacket, then crouched into the crate and pressed a quick kiss to the down-turned corner of McKay's mouth. "Atlantis is beautiful, Rodney. You're going to love it."
McKay took a deep breath and nodded.
Then Hailey hopped in, and within seconds they were rumbling up the ramp toward the event horizon.
-----
"What was that?" Sheppard asked.
Rodney couldn't move.
Sheppard prodded his shoulder. "Rodney? What just happened? Did they get disintegrated, or what? Rodney!"
Rodney staggered, and his paralysis broke. He drew a deep, shuddering breath, checked to make sure the dart wasn't in sight, then ran out the door of the outpost. "Get to the jumper!" he yelled. "Come on, hurry!"
"The jumper's gone," shouted Sheppard, on his heels.
"No, it's not!" Rodney followed the footprints in the sand right up to where they disappeared, and two steps beyond. The puddlejumper sprang into being around him.
"Whoa!" exclaimed Sheppard as he entered.
Rodney holstered his gun and dove for the access under the DHD. "You fly," he said, pushing Sheppard toward the pilot's seat. "You're better at it, anyway."
"What! McKay, I've never flown one of these --"
"Don't worry, you're a natural. Just think about getting us back to the gate ahead of the Wraith!" Rodney crawled under the console and began frantically swapping circuits to make the DHD do something it wasn't designed to do: take over control of an open Stargate.
Sheppard took the controls, and within seconds they were hovering. "How do I know the way back to the gate, or where that Wraith thing is?" he demanded. Something must have appeared on the heads-up display, because a moment later he said, "Oh. Cool."
"Just get us moving!" Rodney snapped.
"Yes sir, General McKay, sir!"
Rodney ignored the jibe as he felt the light press of acceleration straining the inertial dampeners; that meant Sheppard was learning the controls already. He juggled the crystals, nearly dropping the one he needed. "Is it just the one dart?"
"Dart, you mean the ship? Um . . . yeah, there's only one on the display."
"Okay, when you get close enough to shoot --"
"Shoot!?"
"-- be sure to aim at the nose of the dart only. Teyla and Ronon's signatures will be stored in the rear section -- that's our only hope of getting them back."
"Wait, you want me to get in a dogfight with an alien ship on an alien planet in an aircraft I've never even flown before?"
Rodney shoved the last crystal home. "Our Sheppard fought a dozen of them his first day in this galaxy, and won."
"Where are the firing controls on this thing, anyway?" Then: "Oh."
Rodney pulled himself up to the co-pilot's seat and slammed a hand on the DHD. "Yes!" he crowed as the inset in the corner of the screen showed the wormhole closing. "Now he can't get away."
"Guess we got him right where we want him," said Sheppard weakly. "And here he comes."
"It's okay, we're still cloaked," Rodney said, watching the dart hunt back and forth. Then it aimed straight at them, and he realized, "But flying this low, you'll kick up sand --"
The dart fired, Sheppard dodged, the jumper lurched. The cloak flickered a moment, then steadied; the DHD spat a shower of sparks.
"Dammit!" Rodney dropped down to check his handiwork. Of course the improvised circuit was the first to overload. He wasn't going to be able to repair that quickly. He sat up again and stared blindly out the window, trying to think as Sheppard pulled the jumper up away from the betraying sand.
"Okay, I think I'm getting the hang of this," Sheppard said.
"He's dialing out again," Rodney pointed out. "I can't stop it from here. Set me down near the gate."
"What?"
"It's the only way I can keep him from getting away!"
"But you'll be naked out there!"
"So distract him!"
"I think I can do a little better than that." Sheppard maneuvered closer to the Stargate, his eyes flickering to the display that showed the dart coming around to fly into the newly-formed wormhole.
"Sheppard, what are you doing? You should have put me down!"
"Too late for that now," Sheppard muttered absently.
"He's getting too close."
"Wait for it . . ."
"Sheppard!"
At last the jumper fired a single drone. It whirled in a bewildering spiral and struck the ship's nose, obliterating the long stinger on the front. The dart yawed to one side but didn't veer since the shot had taken out its directional controls; it was flying purely on momentum now -- straight into the event horizon. Its broken nose clipped the edge of the gate on the way through.
"Oops," said Sheppard.
"Follow him, follow him, before the wormhole closes!" Rodney yelled, thumping the console.
Sheppard turned the jumper and zipped toward the gate.
"You should have set me down to close it, then this wouldn't have happened," Rodney muttered darkly.
"What do we do if there are more of those Wraith things on the other side?" Sheppard asked as the jumper lined up.
"Then we run. But if we're lucky, he might have gone for an uninhabited planet first. Two jumps home to make sure we couldn't follow him."
"If we're lucky," said Sheppard, watching the gate loom larger. "Here goes nothing."
-----
He should have expected it, but when John saw Kolya standing on the balcony in an Atlantis uniform with red panels, fury clutched him by the throat. He had to breathe shallowly to keep himself from snarling, and he knew McKay, plastered against his side and facing back toward the gate, could feel the reaction.
The Genii commander was saying something threatening to Weir -- who wore rumpled civilian clothes -- and was half-shielded by her body, but that might be a coincidence since he didn't seem to be paying attention to the crates coming in. The two stood almost at the limit of that twenty-meter range McKay had mentioned, but Kolya was surely the most important target in the room. John just hoped the zat's aim was straight, since he wasn't used to sighting this kind of weapon.
McKay tapped John's hip to signal that the last pallet was through the gate, then shifted a little to take aim at one of the soldiers approaching their crate. John waited a five count to give Lorne and Cadman time to orient themselves, then shouted "Now!" and squeezed the firing button.
Kolya went down in a blue cone of lightning, but the edge of it caught Weir as well. Other zat blasts took down all the nearby targets on the gate level, but more soldiers were already moving forward with weapons raised. A 9mm barked somewhere, and John shot the two guards running to the front of the balcony. Most of the ones carrying P-90s were already down; the last was a confused woman firing fiercely into the crates of real supplies. John picked off one of a pair coming down the broad stairs, and someone else got the other.
More Genii fell, and now the only fire coming at them was from shielded positions around corners and behind pallets. Bullets splintered the front of their crate. John yelled "Scatter!" and kicked the lever to bring down the sides. Hailey went left, firing steadily. John pushed McKay off the pallet and followed him to the right.
Mitchell and Jackson were fast and accurate, hitting targets even when only a head or arm was visible. Lorne and Cadman had already cleared the guard positions at the rear of the room. No one was moving on the balcony.
And then it was quiet. The room was littered with bodies, mostly bloodless, about half of them in Atlantis uniforms and the rest in Genii green. John didn't pause for breath, but hauled McKay to his feet. "Come on!" He charged for the stairs.
At the top, he saw that Kolya and Weir were both conscious but barely moving. He shot Kolya again, not caring if that counted as a killing shot, and kicked a gun away from the body. He moved on to the console where he slammed a hand on the lockdown control. Doors slid, dropped, and spun shut, and the room was secure.
Mitchell clicked the mike on his shoulder. "SGC, we have control of the Atlantis gate room."
"Good luck with the rest of it," said O'Neill's voice over multiple radios. "We'll hope to hear from you soon. SGC out." The wormhole dissolved.
Someone moved nearby, and John spun with his weapon ready. A wide-eyed man crouched near the DHD with hands half-raised.
John shot him. "Sergeant Darfman, I presume?" he growled at the crumpled figure.
"These ones are all out," said McKay, checking the other bodies around the balcony. He was breathing heavily but seemed unhurt.
"Good. They need to be secured before they wake up." Dammit, John hadn't remembered to bring restraints.
"Mitchell's taking care of it."
Sure enough, on the gate level, Mitchell was making liberal use of a handful of plastic ties. Hailey and Lorne were both down, being tended by Jackson and Cadman. John wiped a tickle of blood from his cheek, decided it was just a scratch, and turned to Weir.
"Elizabeth, you okay?"
She nodded, trying clumsily to sit up. "Who --?"
McKay bent to help her.
"Dr. McKay!" she gasped. "I wasn't expecting to see you here."
"Oh, you know, just came to save the day. And I brought help!" he said smugly. "This is Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard. He's from, uh, from an alternate universe."
"It's a long story and I'll need your help with that later," said John, "but for now just take it that I know Atlantis pretty well. Tell me where your people are being held."
"Most are in cells -- Ancient cells --"
"In that obelisk-shaped building just north of the central tower? I know it." He nodded.
"But some of us -- myself, Dr. Grodin, Dr. Beckett, Captain O'Neill, and Colonel Caldwell -- have been held separately on the lower levels of this building."
John noted the gaps in the list of command personnel. No Sumner, no Zelenka, yes Grodin, check -- and Captain O'Neill? But that wasn't what he needed to focus on now. "Rodney, would you -- oh, hell." This McKay didn't know the Atlantis systems like the back of his hand.
While McKay helped Weir crawl into a chair, John woke up a console and got it to display city schematics. He saw at once that the city was shielded. That meant they had a ZPM, so why hadn't they dialed Earth? He shook that mystery out of his head and zoomed in on the central tower.
"Where are they exactly?" he asked, following Weir's shaking finger as she pointed out the areas. "Okay. How many other Genii are here? Do you know where they're stationed? Who's second in command after Kolya? Did they have time to raise the alarm?" He snapped out the questions almost faster than she could answer them.
Mitchell came up to the command level to tie up the guards and 'Sergeant Darfman.' "Evening, Dr. Weir," he said as he rolled Kolya over to pull his arms back.
"Put extra restraints on that one," said John harshly, hand clenching over the 9mm on his thigh. "Did he hurt you?" he asked Weir abruptly.
He could see finger-shaped bruises coming up on her neck, but she shook her head. "Nothing to speak of. They need our cooperation to control the city systems, so we haven't been treated too harshly. At least the command staff haven't. It's been mostly just threats and a few . . . examples." She swallowed.
"Right. Mitchell, what's our situation?"
"We have eighteen captured and three dead hostiles -- one from friendly fire, two double-shot with zats. Hailey took a bullet in the leg; she can shoot, but she can't run. Lorne got clipped in the shoulder and hit his head on the way down. He's out with a concussion, but he isn't bleeding too bad."
John ran a hand through his hair. "Okay. Hailey, Jackson, and McKay will stay and hold the control room. You need to check over what the Genii have done here and make sure they didn't booby-trap anything. Mitchell and Cadman will go to the lower levels of this building -- Dr. Weir can tell you where -- and free the command personnel. I'll go after the other prisoners."
McKay stepped forward. "You shouldn't go alone. You need backup."
Mitchell nodded. "He's right. Daniel can --"
"Daniel and Hailey can handle the control room," McKay interrupted. "Hailey's almost as fast with computers as I am, and Dr. Weir will be helping them. I'll go with you."
"It's a long way, Rodney," John warned.
"I've been working out -- part of my PT after the, um, parasite thing. I can keep up."
"You need someone with you that at least a few of the prisoners will know," said Mitchell. "Otherwise they'll think it's a trick."
"Fine, okay!" John snapped. "Rodney's with me." He knew Jackson might be more suited for the job, but he'd feel better with McKay at his side.
Weir showed Mitchell the tower layout while Jackson helped Hailey up the steps. John eyed the bandage wrapped around her thigh just below the bottom of her flak jacket and shook his head. "You're too tall, Lieutenant. If you were a little shorter, that vest would protect you down to the knees."
"Very funny, sir," she gasped, limping toward a seat.
"Dr. Weir will show you how the systems work. Lock the doors behind us and don't let anyone in. If we don't pull this off . . ."
"We can go through the gate," Weir said confidently. "We have allies who will shelter us, even if they won't fight the Genii directly."
"Yeah, that might work." But John knew how widespread the Genii friends network was in Pegasus.
"Good luck, Colonel Sheppard, Colonel Mitchell. I have to thank you--"
"Thank us when we're done, ma'am," said Mitchell.
"Let's get moving," John said. "Ready, Rodney?"
McKay had gone wide-eyed and thin-lipped again. Probably he was regretting his insistence on coming.
John bumped shoulders with him and said, "Didn't I tell you it's beautiful? Wait 'til you see the transporters."
McKay's eyes flicked toward him nervously. "Are you going to kiss me again?" he murmured.
John winked. "Later," he promised, and nodded at Weir to unlock the doors.
-----
"I'm guessing uninhabited," Sheppard said when they got their first look at the new planet.
"Maybe uninhabitable," said Rodney, laying a hand on the console so he could call up atmospheric sensor readings. The landscape stretching before them was rough and craggy, with a patchy greenish-gray carpet of something moss-like in the low-lying areas. The sun looked small and anemic in a sky of dark indigo. "Well, the atmosphere's only a little toxic, so a few minutes' exposure probably won't hurt us. There's oxygen, but the air's really too thin to breathe."
"Why do I feel like we're falling?" Sheppard kept twitching at the controls, raising and lowering the jumper in an odd cycle.
Rodney switched readouts. "Small planet, low gravity. The jumper has artificial gravity, of course, but it adapts to local conditions when possible. Hmm, a little under point three gees -- that's the lowest I've ever seen for a planet with a Stargate. Aside from space gates, of course."
"Oookay." Sheppard jerked the jumper up again, then lowered it more smoothly. "That's going to take some getting used to."
"Wait until you try walking in it."
The dart had crashed a few hundred meters beyond the gate after plowing a darker green furrow through the plant stuff. Rodney breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the rear section was intact. So was the pilot compartment, but there was no sign of movement there.
"Set us down over there," Rodney said. "No, not right next to the dart! A little ways behind it, just in case."
"In case what?" Sheppard asked, but he landed where Rodney indicated. "I thought you said we couldn't breathe the air, anyway."
Rodney stood, nearly hitting the ceiling, and headed for the storage compartments in the back of the jumper. "There's enough atmosphere that we don't need full pressure suits. Which is good, because we don't stock those in the jumpers. But somewhere around here -- ah, yes! -- we have some SCBA units for emergencies. Here."
He pulled off his computer pack and strapped the SCBA over his shoulders instead, checking the tank levels quickly. While Sheppard was figuring out his own breathing unit, Rodney closed the bulkhead door to preserve the atmosphere in the front of the jumper, then grabbed one of the remote control units and turned off the cloak. They were going to be visible anyway as they approached the dart; he just hoped the Wraith pilot was really unconscious.
He tossed a pair of goggles at Sheppard and pulled on some of his own. "Ready?" he asked. At Sheppard's nod, Rodney hit the hatch release. He worked his jaw to pop his ears, then slipped the regulator in his mouth.
The gray-green plants turned out to be spongy and crackly underfoot, and there was a faint haze hanging just above them. Rodney hoped it was water droplets and not vengeful mist-beings or worse, some allergenic pollen. He carefully didn't breathe through his nose, but the air stung his nostrils even so. He held his gun ready as they walked toward the rear of the dart. The crunch of their bounding footsteps sounded faint and far away in the thin air.
The dart's canopy was still closed and opaque, and Rodney didn't want to take the risk of opening it, so he just waved Sheppard to stand back while he holstered his gun and considered the problem. He didn't have enough air to sit down and write an interface program, or the right equipment to detach the rear section and carry it home, so he was just going to have to remove the data storage unit for the culling transporter and hope it could be reinstalled in one of the other cannibalized darts they had lying around Atlantis.
It was a good thing his combat knife was Ronon-approved, Rodney thought as he braced a knee on the back of the dart and began carving into its thick skin. Perhaps the Satedan would stop complaining about sharpening Rodney's knife when he learned it had been used to save him.
There were a couple of secondary power conduits in the way, and Rodney hissed as the hot, sinewy cables stung his hands. He should have brought gloves, but it was too late for that now, so he just pulled his sleeves down and tried to ignore the heat. At last he found the memory unit nestled like some vital organ, with power and data cables running in and out in multiple directions. He had to remove them in the correct order or the memory would be wiped.
As he sliced through the first cable, there was an angry blaaat followed by a shrill whistle from further forward. Rodney cursed and cut another cable, yelping as it seared his fingertips. With flinching urgency, he reached for the next.
"McKay?" Sheppard's voice sounded muffled and distant. "Cockpit's opening."
Rodney spat out his regulator, gasping more from pain than lack of air. "Shoot the pilot!" he yelled as he dug under the unit for the next-to-last cable. "Every bullet you have! Don't let him reach the self-destruct!"
Shots rang out, but Rodney didn't look up from his work. He had a bad feeling the self-destruct would be triggered anyway, as soon as he severed this last cable. And sure enough, there was the familiar escalating whine.
"Run!" he bellowed at Sheppard as he struggled elbows-deep in the dart's slimy innards, trying to pull the data unit free. The damn power conduit was in the way again; he tore through it in one vicious motion. Sheppard grabbed his arm, helping him slide down from the dart, pushing him to hurry.
Running in low gravity quickly turned into an awkward swooping galumph. Rodney couldn't breathe or see properly. His hands burned, his lungs burned, the back of his neck burned as the dart lit up behind them.
The shockwave squeezed his ribs, lifted him off his feet, and tumbled him down onto the spongy ground with Sheppard falling child-light on top of him. Rodney caught a whiff of something foul and caustic, then clamped his mouth and eyes shut. His arms were wrapped around the memory unit, and he couldn't find his regulator just by twisting his head.
Then gentle hands were patting his face, feeding him the mouthpiece and straightening his goggles. He still couldn't see normally, and half the outer and inner surfaces of his body felt like they were on fire, but Sheppard helped him up and guided him back to the jumper and pressed him into a seat. His eardrums registered the return of normal air pressure, and after a minute his lungs and sinuses started to feel better too.
He opened stinging eyes to find Sheppard staring at him worriedly with goggles pushed up to disarrange his hair even more than usual. "Hey there. You okay?"
Rodney gulped back a near-sob, looking down at the ugly thing in his arms that he hoped held two of his teammates. "Not really, no."
"Well, um . . . before you pass out or whatever, can you tell me how to get this thing back to Atlantis?"
Rodney started to laugh and choked it off before it could turn into something hysterical. This Sheppard had never even seen a DHD before -- of course he was lost.
He stood shakily and stowed the Wraith data unit in a storage bin, then shucked the SCBA and goggles. His hands were red and blistered and tended to curl into defensive claws when he wasn't paying attention. "You'll have to fix the DHD first, since it shorted out," he said. With a task to focus on, his thoughts began to steady into familiar patterns. At least this was a problem he could solve. "I'll show you what to do."
-----
McKay was duly impressed by the transporters, but then he peppered John with questions as they detoured to lower-traffic routes. Did the transporters use the same de-molecularization technology as the gates, were the life-support systems still running with the city on the ocean surface, how much power was needed for the city to fly? This McKay might be in decent shape, but he couldn't keep talking while running up and down stairs. The running seemed to take second priority for him.
At least they hadn't run into any Genii yet. John paused in front of a door to let McKay catch his breath. "You didn't have this many questions when we arrived here in my universe," he grumbled.
McKay snorted. "Of course I did. I just didn't expect you to have answers."
"Look, we're going to be a little exposed on this next part here, so keep your head down. After that, we're in the building where the prisoners are and there should be about a dozen guards posted, so keep your voice down. Got it?"
McKay nodded and made a lip-zipping motion, then raised his zat.
John waved a hand at the door sensor.
"Do you need the Ancient gene for that?" McKay asked, then winced. "Shutting up."
John sighed and led the way out onto the darkened pier, keeping an eye out for threats from above as well as ahead. McKay glanced up once as well and had to be jostled into motion again after he glimpsed the night sky framed by soaring towers.
They entered the obelisk building from the northwest side, which John guessed would be a less busy approach. Sure enough, it was unguarded. When they were in, McKay persuaded the door not to open from the outside, so they wouldn't have to worry about reinforcements arriving. He might not be as familiar with the Ancient systems as the other Rodney, but he was still pretty good; John was glad he'd come along.
The guards turned out to be on the stairs. John gave McKay a finger to the lips and a stay-here motion, before creeping up as high as he could below them without being seen. Then he whipped around the corner and fired twice through the railing. Both guards dropped.
"These zat things aren't bad," John mused as he stripped the guards of their weapons (Earth issue) and their radios (Genii issue). "Could use more range, but they're quieter than Wraith stunners."
Thanks to the quiet weapons, he took out another pair of guards in the southeast stairwell -- after McKay sabotaged that door too -- without raising an alarm. But one of the third pair got off a shot at him, and after that came a frantic period of running and tracking people by radio and climbing into weird ambush positions. John wished he'd found time to get a life-signs detector out of one of the jumpers. The Genii net tightened around them until he ended up using McKay as a decoy -- unintentionally, but effectively.
"I can't believe you did that!" McKay hissed at him. He was the only person John knew whose voice could crack on a whisper. "I got shot!" He fingered the tear in his flak vest anxiously.
"I didn't plan it that way, Rodney. It just happened." John stuffed more guns and radios in the pockets of his own vest.
"Hello! Shot? In the chest?!"
"Better than the head. Shhh," John said, listening to a Genii radio. He grinned. "Sounds like the command staff are on the loose."
Then there was only the last pair of guards on the level with the cells, and finally they were liberating prisoners, four and five from each cell. Since the locks had been programmed not to respond to the ATA gene, McKay had to jimmy the first two sets of controls. After that, there were enough science personnel free to do it themselves, and things went faster.
John was stunned and delighted to find Ford in the third cell, as baby-faced and brown-eyed as ever. Ford was suspicious at first, until McKay insisted that John had come with him from the SGC; then he accepted a confiscated gun and told John where to find Bates and Markham.
He spotted a few Athosians in the mix, so he wasn't completely surprised when Teyla showed up in the sixth cell. John caught her arms unthinkingly as she came out and started to bend his forehead to hers, but she put him in a headlock.
"Uh, hi, Teyla," he gasped into a familiar-smelling elbow. "Nice to see you too."
She released him and stepped back. "You know my name."
John rubbed his neck. "Long story. Didn't mean to startle you."
She sighed. "I apologize for my reaction. We . . . have not been treated well."
Inside the cell, Miko Kusanagi was weeping in Kate Heightmeyer's arms, both of them very far from their usual well-groomed selves. Dr. Simpson and a woman John didn't recognize stared at him with angry, haunted eyes.
"I knew I should have killed that bastard Kolya," John growled, and gave Teyla his P-90.
She tilted her head. "Kolya was not the one most responsible." There was a dark bruise on her jaw, although she moved as lithely as ever.
"He was in command. He had to know about it." He couldn't tell her about what Kolya had done in his universe that made him so sure the commander would sanction rape and torture while standing back to keep his hands clean.
As he headed for the next cell room down the corridor, a voice came over the city-wide intercom system. "Invaders from Earth!"
"Who's he calling an invader?" Ford muttered.
"I have access to control and weapons systems. You will let my people go, or the city -- and Dr. Beckett -- will suffer the consequences."
"Who is that?" John asked, sure he knew the voice but unable to place it.
"Tyrus," Ford sneered. "Kolya's second in command."
John frowned. "What control systems is he talking about?"
Mitchell's voice sounded over the SGC radio on John's shoulder. "Daniel, what's going on?"
"We're fine here," Jackson responded at once. "Dr. Weir says there's an auxiliary control room."
"Aw, hell!" said John. "That's where the weapons chair is. If he puts Beckett in that chair, anything could happen."
"But that doesn't make sense," McKay said. "Auxiliary control shouldn't have access unless primary control hands it over or goes off-line."
"Get back to the control room," John told him. "Take anyone who knows the Atlantis systems -- Grodin, if you can find him. See if you can stop Tyrus from tapping in. Cut off all his power, if you have to."
McKay nodded and started off.
"Ford, take someone and go with McKay." Most of the Genii were captive by now, but any still free would be both smart and sneaky.
"Right. Markham --"
"Wait, not him. I may need him," said John. Markham was the shortest Marine in sight. John would have preferred a small woman, but Hailey was wounded and too far away, Teyla had disappeared, and the others in that cell weren't combat trained. Maybe Markham would be small enough.
As Ford got someone else to escort McKay, John headed for the stairs. He stopped cold when he found Teyla crouching over one of the Genii guards -- apparently just returned to consciousness -- with her hand down his pants. Several Marines stood around looking unhappy.
"Tell me where she is," Teyla hissed at the man, her arm twisting sharply.
He screamed, high-pitched and agonized.
"Teyla?" John said, baffled and concerned.
"Do you wish me to remove it entirely?" Teyla asked. "I could ensure that you will never hurt another woman again."
"No! No! Don't, I'll -- she's -- she's quartered on level fifteen near the base of the control tower, west side. But I don't know if she's there right now -- aaah!"
With one last vicious jerk, Teyla pulled her hand free -- fingertips bloody -- and stood up. Then she kicked him hard in the crotch. He screamed again and curled into a ball.
"Whoa, Teyla, what the hell was that?" John demanded. His groin was shriveling away from its usual combat-ready state.
Her eyes were harder than he had ever seen them, like Ronon's eyes when he faced a Wraith. "Perhaps you do not know me as well as you think," she said. "I must go." She hoisted the P-90 and ran down the stairs.
"Teyla, wait! Markham, come on." John ran after her, but by the time they reached the pier level she had already disappeared, and there was no time to look for her. John cursed and headed for the chair room.
On the way, they listened to Tyrus's escalating demands and Weir trying futilely to negotiate with him. The man was getting desperate, insisting that all the command staff and everyone who had arrived from the SGC should surrender to him. He wasn't going to get what he wanted, but he might cause a lot of damage before they could stop him. Even if they locked him out of the system, he still had Beckett as a hostage.
As they got close, John explained his plan to Markham. There was one way to get into auxiliary control that the person inside couldn't close off: the tubes that led from the drone bay to the chair room. With the drones nearly used up, access was easy. Sort of.
"I don't think I'll fit in one of those tubes, sir," Markham whispered as they approached the vast bay beneath the chair room.
"I know, dammit, but we have to try!"
"And even if I get in, what happens if he fires a drone?"
"I promise you, Beckett really doesn't want to do that. The chair probably won't even respond to him." At least John hoped so.
His nerves tingled as they reached the last corner; someone was there ahead of them. John went low and led with his zat.
A man was boosting someone in black fatigues -- Cadman? -- into one of the launch tubes. He heard them coming and whirled to point a Wraith stunner at John, leaving Cadman to dangle.
"He's with us, sir," said Markham quickly. It was unclear which of them he was speaking to.
John straightened and disarmed the zat. "I'm Colonel Sheppard," he said shortly. "You must be Captain O'Neill."
"That's right." The face under the light brown brush cut was youthful, but surely older than twenty. As he got closer, John saw that one of his eyes was pure black.
"Shit," he breathed. That explained the extra years. "Tell me you're not hopped up on that damn enzyme."
O'Neill eyed him suspiciously. "No. I'd rather go through morphine withdrawal ten times over than do that again."
"Hello, could I have a hand here?" came Cadman's muffled voice as her legs kicked.
They helped her squeeze in, but it was clear she wasn't going to make it. She wormed as far as the first bend, and then they had to pull her out.
"Sorry, sir," she said, hair plastered to her red face.
"We'll think of something else," said O'Neill.
"Like what?" John asked. "Tyrus is half nuts. He isn't going to wait much longer before he tries something."
Then a new voice sounded on the Genii radio strapped to Sheppard's wrist: "Father?"
"Sora? Where are you?"
"I, I am -- unh! Teyla Emmagan is with me."
"Emmagan! You would not dare to harm her. We have been friends for years. Your honor will not permit --"
"Honor?" Teyla's voice was low and furious. "Where was honor when you let those monsters in our cell? Where was friendship when you turned your eyes aside?"
"Father, she has a knife!" Sora sounded frightened, vulnerable, not like the bitter, hardened beauty who had lost her father in John's universe.
"You would not!" Tyrus roared.
"No? If you think I have any restraint or compassion remaining, think again! That was all burned away as I watched your men torture my friends."
"I have a hostage too! Shall I shoot Dr. Beckett and let you hear his screams?"
John shifted uncomfortably as they heard a Scots burr in the background, words running together in alarm.
There was a long pause, then Teyla continued, her voice calmer but still cold enough to burn. "It comes to this, Tyrus. One of us wants vengeance more dearly than the safety of the hostage. Dr. Beckett is my friend, but so were the women who shared my cell these past weeks. And you, Tyrus? Which do you care for most: revenge on the Lanteans, or your daughter's skin and innocence preserved?"
This time the silence seemed to stretch forever. Then, "Don't hurt her," Tyrus pleaded, almost sobbing. "I'll do anything, I'll surrender, just don't hurt my daughter!"
John met O'Neill's stunned gaze for a moment, then they both raced for the stairs to the chair room.
After a minute, Beckett came over the radio. "Tyrus has untied me and handed me a gun. Teyla . . . don't hurt the lass!"
"She is unharmed," Teyla said shortly.
As soon as the door opened, O'Neill stunned Tyrus. John checked the room quickly for further threats or booby-traps, then slumped against a console. It was over.
Part Six