The Lost

Chapter Twenty-two: Duty

Eva Robinson was still in the control room when Colonel Sheppard came in escorting a blond woman in her thirties who looked none too happy to be escorted. Though he didn’t touch her, her body language was stiff and her angry stride and clenched jaw spoke volumes. Sheppard, for his part, sported a heavy growth of beard, and sand had caked and dried in his graying hair. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he moved with wary tension, like a man who needs to be given a wide berth.

Dr. Zelenka did not hesitate to approach him. “How is Carson?” he asked.

“He tore up his arm pretty bad, but he and Teyla are both on their way to the infirmary,” Sheppard said in a low voice.

Zelenka frowned. “What happened to Teyla?”

“She hurt her hip. Might have broken something.”

Sheppard was interrupted by Mr. Woolsey coming out of his office, his right hand extended. “Miss Radim! It’s a pleasure to welcome you back to Atlantis.”

“It would be more of a pleasure if your intentions were not so perfidious,” the woman replied. “This blatant disregard for our alliance will not be tolerated by the Genii. This warship…”

“Perhaps you will join me in my office,” Woolsey said smoothly, with a glance at Colonel Sheppard. “And we can get to the bottom of this. I assure you that we value our alliance with the Genii greatly.” His eyes fell on Airman Salawi at the near board. “Airman, will you arrange for a courtesy tray? Right this way, Miss Radim.”

The woman preceded him into the office, followed by Sheppard. The door hissed shut behind them.

“What’s a courtesy tray?” Airman Salawi appealed to Zelenka.

At the other end of the terminals Banks stood up. “It’s a tea and coffee service with some light snacks. You call it down to Sergeant Pollard or whoever’s in the kitchen and then run down and get it. It’s a thing they do when they have important visitors. I’ll show you.”

“Thanks,” Salawi said, going down to join her.

Zelenka looked worriedly toward the office door, where behind the glass Sheppard and the woman were taking seats in Woolsey’s visitors chairs.

“Who is she?” Eva asked him.

“She is Chief Scientist Dahlia Radim,” Zelenka said. “She’s a Genii engineer, and also happens to be the sister of their head of state. And she does not look happy.”

“Perhaps this mission didn’t go well,” Eva said.

Zelenka gave her a rather penetrating gaze over the top of his glasses. “You think not? Two people injured out of the team of three we sent, and Colonel Sheppard looking like something the cat dragged in? An unexpected Ancient warship almost crashed on our doorstep, and never a word about the information they went to get? And the Genii furious?”

“I thought the Genii were our allies,” Eva said, dredging the memory out of the reams of briefings she’d read in the past few weeks.

“That is the present theory, yes.” Zelenka pushed his glasses back up on his nose.

“Two people injured,” Eva said slowly, seeing again the way Sheppard had stopped and dropped his voice to talk to Zelenka. “That’s not good.”

“No, it is not.” Zelenka went around her to examine something on the board behind her, looked up at her swiftly. “They are friends, both of them. Close friends. Teyla and Carson both. We have been here more than five years together. We are like family. I watch Teyla’s son for her. For Carson I was a pallbearer. I would be off down to the infirmary now to see how they are, but…” He spread his hands, gesturing to the control room and the Stargate beyond. “I am on duty. I have the watch, and you have seen how fast things can happen around here.”

Eva grabbed at the thing she thought she must have misunderstood. “A pallbearer?”

A flash of a smile illuminated his face. “It is a long story. I do not have time for that one just now, but I will tell you another time.”

“Ok,” Eva said. “I’d like to hear it.”

Everyone in the control room was trying not to stare at the windows of Woolsey’s office, stealing occasional glances, passing the word to others or speaking quietly into headsets. By now half the city would know who was injured and who was here. Nothing ran as quickly as gossip in a small world where everyone mattered to one another. A unique community, she thought, like the seed of something entirely new.

At the SGC she had never forgotten that she was in a real place. Yes, it was a little strange going to work in Cheyenne Mountain, knowing that there was a gate to other worlds a few floors away, talking to people who went back and forth through space like it was nothing. But at the end of the day you got in your car and you drove home. You were in Colorado, in an ordinary American city, a not very famous or interesting city where people went to the dentist and had baby showers and visited their Aunt Erma in the assisted living place out on the interstate.

Atlantis was something entirely different.

Eva looked through the window, frowning. Sheppard moved stiffly in his chair, as though everything hurt. The scientist, Dahlia Radim, was talking, anger evident in every gesture. Woolsey was placating. His bland attentive expression was exactly what one is supposed to learn to convey neutral interest. He had been to school, that one. He knew all the tricks. But this had to count as the management school of hard knocks.

Airman Salawi came up the steps with a tray, coffee and hot water and tea bags and a plate of little cookies looking like they’d just been taken out of a box. “Should I just go in?” she asked Zelenka.

“Knock at the door and Mr. Woolsey will motion you in if it is appropriate,” he said. “He can see you. Don’t be nervous.”

Salawi gave him a big smile. “Thanks, doc. You’re swell.” She walked over to the office door, balancing the tray carefully.

Zelenka shook his head. “Kids today. Do they say swell again? It sounds to me like something out of an Andy Hardy movie.”

“I guess they do,” Eva said. She glanced at Salawi, who had been beckoned inside and was trying to put the tray down on the desk without dropping it in Sheppard’s lap. “You like the training? Like the kids?”

“Let us say I am gentler about it than Rodney would be.”

“Than Rodney would be,” she repeated.

Zelenka shrugged self-depreciatingly. “It is a mania with me. I will not stop speaking of the lost. I will not say their names in hushed voices, as though I were afraid to invoke them. I will not paint them saints or less than they were.”

“You don’t think they’re going to find Dr. McKay?” she asked quietly. That was the question that everyone had, but no one would ask.

Zelenka’s blue eyes were frank, though his voice was low. “I think it is very unlikely that Rodney is still alive. It is unlikely he survived his first interrogation. I have seen the Wraith drink from someone, from a prisoner bound to a chair. I have seen how it goes. And I am not certain that I can wish Rodney still alive for days and days of that.”

Eva swallowed hard, but she had to ask. “And the prisoner. Did he die?”

Zelenka’s mouth twisted wryly. “It was Colonel Sheppard. So, no.”

Dick Woolsey opened the door to his office courteously. “Banks, will you show Miss Radim to guest quarters where she can rest? Also, please see if you can find her some clean clothing while her own is washed.” He gave Dahlia Radim his best smile. “We will make arrangements immediately to contact Chief Radim and apprise him of the situation. You are welcome to speak with him of course, and there will be no constraints whatsoever on your conversation.”

“Thank you,” Dahlia Radim said. Her voice was still frosty, but she was no longer shaking with anger.

“Banks?”

“I’d be delighted, ma’am,” Amelia Banks said. “Right this way.”

“Colonel Sheppard, if you would stay.” Woolsey kept his voice neutral until the door closed again. Sheppard looked ragged. By his own admission he’d only slept five hours in more than three days. That knowledge tempered him somewhat. But.

“Sure,” Sheppard said, dropping back into the visitor chair as Dick went around his desk to resume his own seat. “I know what you’re going to say, and…”

“Colonel Sheppard,” Dick broke in. “What were you thinking? Do you have any idea what the ramifications of bringing that Ancient warship here are?”

“We can’t keep it,” Sheppard said, scrubbing his hand over his chin. “We’ve got to give it back to Ladon Radim.”

“Of course we have to give it to Ladon Radim!” Dick was finally starting to lose his temper, and he reined himself in. “We can’t possibly do anything else under the circumstances. Keeping it would be a declaration of war for all practical purposes!”

“Then I don’t see what the problem is,” Sheppard began. “I told her we’d give it to them.”

“Do you understand the political consequences of having an Ancient warship and then just giving it away? Do you have any idea what the IOA or General O’Neill are going to say about how we found an Ancient warship that could be critical to us, an operational Ancient warship, and then we gave it to the Genii? We gave spacefaring capability to our shakiest and most powerful ally?”

Sheppard blinked. “You didn’t say that when I called in and told you what the deal was.”

“That is because what you told me was an entirely different circumstance. It’s one thing for us to render technical assistance with a salvage operation in order to build good will with an ally. It’s another thing to give them a goddamed warship!” Dick never lost his temper, but it was gone now. “As long as we never had it, as long as it was a Genii salvage project we were assisting with, we could go along. But the minute you brought a functional Ancient warship here and landed it in Atlantis, you changed the entire game!”

“I had to,” Sheppard said. “The ship wasn’t in good enough shape to make the Genii homeworld, and Carson and Teyla both needed medical attention. Dahlia couldn’t fix the ship, and it was barely spaceworthy enough to get here.”

“And do you know why you couldn’t fix the ship?” Dick asked sharply. “Have you thought through that one? Why you were wandering around in the desert in the first place being attacked by wild animals?”

Sheppard nodded, his face closing. “Because I didn’t return to Atlantis to get a technical crew to accompany us.”

“Yes.” Dick took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Not so hard. No point in belaboring the point. “I know that you don’t want to replace Dr. McKay on your team, but the lack of technical skills nearly got all of you killed. It is essential that you maintain a team that is able to deal with the common challenges you face, and at present without Dr. McKay that is not the case.” He folded his hands on the desk before him. “Therefore, as of now, Dr. Zelenka is on the gate team.”

Sheppard lifted his eyes. “Radek Zelenka isn’t…”

“Qualified to be on the gate team? Then name someone else. Dr. Kusanagi? Dr. Sauneron?” Dick was adamant. “You have to have someone with the requisite technical skills on the gate team. That’s not negotiable.”

He expected Sheppard to argue, but instead he nodded slowly. “Ok. It’s Zelenka then. Until Rodney gets back.”

“Until Dr. McKay returns and is able to resume his duties,” Dick agreed.

“Dobrý Bože! You are shitting me,” Radek said. He stared at John, wishing that he were more certain it were a joke.

“No.” John looked terrible, and as he hadn’t been to his quarters yet to clean up, he smelled like four days in the field.

“I have a bad leg,” Radek said. “And I have not fired a pistol in four years. I have never fired a P90 in my life! I cannot see across the gate room! I cannot see you standing there without my glasses! ím jsem si tohle zasloužil, John! I am forty-three years old, not some strapping young Marine!”

“You'll do fine,” he said. “You always do fine when you go offworld.”

“Which I try not to do unless I absolutely have to!” Radek snapped. “And when I do I have to be carried about like a parcel! I am not Rodney McKay, action hero!”

“You're exaggerating,” John said patiently. “You don't have to be carried around like a parcel.”

“All of this running and jumping and shooting things…”

“That's not what we need you to do,” John said. “We need you to fix the jumper. You can do that, right?”

“Well, of course I can do that. Who do you think fixes the jumpers when you bring them in torn to hell and back because you have done something bizarre and courageous? But you are talking about going to combat situations. I am useless in that. I am nothing but a dead weight.” Radek kept talking faster and faster, as though the sheer number of his words could wear John down. “I do not do the hand to hand combat, the stick fighting! I am five foot four! Do you think I will be karate chopping people?”

“Teyla's five-foot four.”

“Teyla is a very cute and adorable tank dressed up as a beautiful woman,” Radek said. “She could break my neck with her little finger.”

“Well, right now she's stuck in the infirmary having an x ray to see if her hip is broken because we couldn't fix the jumper,” John snapped. “Look, you don’t have a choice. I don’t have a choice. This is the way it’s going to be. So haul yourself up and get with the program.” He turned around and walked off, leaving Radek gaping after him.

Radek stood for a long moment, until he could stop breathing quite so hard. The entire gate room was trying very hard not to stare at him.

“Well,” he said casually, and wandered back toward his station on the upper tier. Dr. Robinson was still standing there, looking like she was trying as hard as anyone not to appear to be listening to things that were not her business. And yet of course she’d heard every word. “Well, I seem to be on the gate team.”

There. He said it, this thing that scared him to death. “I suppose there is nothing for it.” Was that what Rodney would say, casual and cool as a pickle? Was that how a hero would sound when asked to do something far beyond his physical capabilities? Sure, yes, I will do it, no problem.

“I guess so,” Dr. Robinson said quietly.

“It is very inconvenient,” Radek said with a shrug.