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Waterworld Two didn't try to kill John, but that didn't make him any less anxious about getting the desalinization tanks filled and Atlantis back into space. He'd taken a sample of the water before it had gone through the filters, and he hadn't liked the look of the microbes with the razor-toothed suction mouths.
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Amazon jungle planet was pretty to look at, but John should have known better than to “touch” it, and he even landed in a clearing. He wanted to watch the mini-pterodactyls, see what they ate, and was so focused on them that he didn't notice the yellow thorned vine until it yanked him off his feet by the ankle. The organic rope reeled him in toward a gaping red mouth that had row after row of teeth. John's hands ripped up grass and dirt, clawing for purchase, wild panic making him briefly stupid until he finally remembered the P-90 digging into his chest. Flipping onto his back, P-90 in hand, he tore the fleshy maw up in a spray of bullets and an explosion of yellow fluid. The creature shrieked, the tongue let go to be sucked back into the safety of the jaws, and John crab-scuttled from the warty gray head ducking back into a mossy tree hollow.
John shoved himself to his feet and ran – hobbling – back to the 'jumper. He didn't look at his throbbing ankle until he was back on Atlantis, in the infirmary, drops of blood marking his path. The “vine” had ripped him up just as badly as he'd torn up the mouth, the gashes so deep he thought he could see the bone.
“Son of a...” John muttered. Cleaning the wound was going to hurt worse than receiving it. He grabbed iodine, broad-spectrum antibiotics, gauze, tape, suture kit just in case, and mumbled a quiet thank-you to the ever considerate Dr. Keller who couldn't stomach the thought of John dying of an infection or the flu.
Because he knew how bad this was going to be, John wedged himself into a corner with the supplies out of kicking range. Stiffening every muscle in his body, John closed his eyes, poured the iodine, and screamed the same scream from when the iratus bug was killing him.
That was when he remembered why solitude sucked. He managed, when the pain devolved from a burning to a throb, to suture the worst of the gashes, wrap the ankle and saturate himself with antibiotics using Eekala's handy hypospray injector that meant no blown veins or air-bubbles getting into his blood stream.
But alien bacteria have always been persistent little bastards. Two days later, John woke up with his ankle on fire and his skull cracking to the tune of his heartbeat. There was to be no hunting armored pigs on prairie world today; standing for ten minutes made his head feel like it was splitting open, and he could only imagine what the thunder of a P-90 would do to it. He stationed Atlantis close to the planet's moon – like Earth's moon, rocky and without atmosphere and much gravity – in case he needed to make an emergency landing then slept.
John dreamed in hazy visions that molded to his reality. Sometimes, he thought he heard Carson's accent and felt the Scottish doc's proximity hovering over him, fussing and tutting. Carson became Keller, going back to Carson, back to Keller, telling John to take it easy and rest. Carson-Keller turned and hissed at Rodney to keep it down. Teyla would back them up, calmly, while Ronon was less tactful with threats and growls.
“You look like crap, Sheppard.”
“I feel like crap, McKay.”
“That's what you get for letting your guard down around the pretty flowers.”
“Rodney!”
“What? It's true. Even you can't deny it's true, Teyla.”
“I should have been there.”
John sighed. “It's cool, big guy. I'm still alive.”
“Doesn't change anything. Someone should have had your back.”
“You'll always have my back.”
John thought he saw Ronon smile. “Damn right.”
“We should let him rest.”
“No,” John croaked. “You can stay. Bored, wanna talk.”
Rodney moved closer to the bed, sitting in a chair. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I...” John opened his eyes, wanting to see McKay better.
Rodney was gone, the room empty and quiet.
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When lying around amplified the body-aches, John took a break from sleeping by shuffling through the empty halls with a blanket around his shoulders: watering the plants Eekala had given him, checking the sensors in the control room, standing out on the balcony – safe behind the shield – and staring at the glowing blue crescent of the planet.
The third day of being ill, the fever less burning but his energy barely existent, he stepped out onto the balcony and...
Saw nothing. No moon, no curved sliver of blue, no stars. Nothing, absolute nothing.
John swallowed, his heart pounding, his body shrinking back, and his mind going straight to black holes, alternate universes and the things Rodney had said they couldn't begin to imagine. Then Atlantis' lights rippled across something – a pillar, pockmarked like the organic walls of a Wraith ship, yet red and wet as freshly butchered meat. This pillar, this whatever-it-was, could not possibly be measured as it made Atlantis the size of a child's hand-held toy. John knew that somewhere in the darkness above and below was a ceiling and floor, the pillar thickening where it connected, or began its connection.
“What the hell?” John whispered. Atlantis glided lazily past, back into the nothing.
He stared eternity in the face, nothing and everything, no beginning and no end. Cold and empty and forever.
So much like being buried alive.
It scared the hell out of John. Terrified him like nothing ever had – not portals to other galaxies, not man-eating aliens or life sucking insects. He wanted to run to the smallest room, cower in the tightest corner with head covered, surround himself in solid surfaces and pretend he was anywhere but where he was. His upper body curved, needing to move away, but his legs were petrified and refused to budge.
If this was eternity, what he had to look forward to, then he didn't want it. There needed to be an end. There had to be an end.
Light shimmered off another meat-pillar, this one on the left. John swore he saw it undulating the way muscle will beneath the skin, and it made his stomach turn.
He wasn't prepared for the swarm of lifeforms detaching from the fleshy support. Blood-red leeches the size of Rodney's whale, bristling with groping filaments all over their bodies, surrounded Atlantis. The tendrils shot out, snapping back when they hit the shield, each snap jolting John's body and heart. Then came the kamikaze runs, worms slamming themselves into the shield over and over and over until finally bursting – popping – in a watery explosion of blood and organs that the rest of the leeches happily licked up with their filaments.
John's stomach did several flips and his throat several swallows to keep the bile down. “Oh hell no.” He bolted back inside to the chair room and, gambling on this being the something-not-imagined rather than an alternate universe, opened up a hyperspace window. In and out, that was it, and then he dashed back to the balcony.
Stars dotted the blackness. John had to grab the railing to keep from sagging in relief. This eternity he would meet head on any day because at least it had something. He turned to go back in only to stop and squint at what he could only describe as a blue-silver mass – like a slug made the size of his fist by distance - hovering in space.
“Now there's something I couldn't have imagined,” John said. He headed quickly back into the chair room and into hyperspace where it was safe.
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The planet's name Eekala's little translator deciphered into English letters as Xenhiazeck - John just called in Planet Xen - and it was like stepping into the love-child of Blade Runner and Star Wars. He guided Atlantis through cities sitting on violet pillars of anti-gravitation – cities that shrunk Atlantis back to the size of a toy and ships that made her like a doll house. There was no shortage of landing sites located below the cities in brackish water iridescent with chemicals that burned when Atlantis touched down, smothered when the city-ship settled.
Stepping onto the balcony to get the lay of the land beneath the floating cities made John choke. He could taste the chemicals on his tongue, sharp and acidic, and felt his bronchial tubes cringe in disgust. The sky was dark gray - an oily burnt umber across the horizon - and the black water going on forever. The cities' coned underbellies rained viscous mud that wasn't mud or water. Then there were the ships, some as small as 'jumpers, others great geometric islands, all of them the same color as the “ocean” around them. Xen made the backstreets of New York seem scoured with bleach.
The 'jumper was the right size to move through the towers, pyramids, and skyscrapers of the cities. From what John could see, each city was built in levels, so clustered and compact it was hard to tell where one level began and another ended, and tangled throughout were ribbons of walkways and streets hugging buildings or arching over each other, packed with the living. Lining the wider streets were smaller structures – shops and bazaars where the locals clustered thick.
John landed the 'jumper on what he took to be a parking platform (according to the other hover-crafts and mini-ships parked there) and took the rest of his tour on foot, paying close attention to the markings on metal signs that had to be street names.
The profuseness of lifeforms made his brain try to overload: Humanoids with tails, wings, horns, fur or scales. John side-stepped out of the way of a seven-foot blue wolf-man and almost clipped the spindly arm of a six-foot bird-man that clacked its beak at him. There were two-legged things, four-legged, six- and eight-legged, and a being like a transparent worm oozing clear liquid from tiny spikes all over its body. John thought he was doing a pretty good job at keeping himself composed and nonchalant, but he couldn't get his hands to stop shaking and his heart to stop pounding. Neither Star Wars nor Star Trek had anything on this mess of alien life, and it both mystified and terrified John. Twenty minutes into his walk and he was forced to turn back, doing his best to keep his gait casual all the way to the 'jumper, and return to the open halls and clean air of Atlantis.
He sat in the 'jumper as he stared through the window at the 'jumper bay, chuckling softly and a little hysterically. He rubbed his hand over his stubble-rough jaw then face, pausing over his eyes.
“Oh man, this is freakin' nuts.” When he'd first stepped through the gate – not onto Atlantis, but Athos – this, this planet, these lifeforms were what he'd been expecting to find. Then Jinto had stumbled out of the woods, human and harmless, and John recalled having felt a small sense of relief over it. There'd been so much to take in and so little time to process that his first alien acquaintance being human had been a grounding point for him that had allowed him to take everything that followed in perfect stride.
This planet, these natives were going to take time to process. Obviously, the Ancients had never been to this galaxy.
John waited until the next day to push for a longer tour, walking farther past small shops and restaurants. Some practices, it seemed, really were universal, and he had to clench his jaw to keep from chuckling over a pair of giant slugs having a romantic dinner out on a veranda. Their waiter looked like a giant amber and black-speckled ant with horns.
Other practices were new and disconcerting. He'd thought the various lifeforms lining the streets, chirping and warbling and pacing to be prostitutes. Then a thick-muscled wolf-man handed a lithe snake-man a hand-full of shiny red stones, the snake-man pocketed the stones, and the two began fighting – fists, claws, biting, snapping, leaping, fur flying but never any blood. When wolf-man slammed snake-man into the wall, wolf-man sauntered off all toothy smiles, while snake-man picked himself up, brushed himself off, and resumed pacing.
John hadn't realized he'd been standing there staring the entire time until some eight-legged cockroach-thing clipped his shoulder. He moved on, turning his heated face away from other engagements the complete opposite of venting rage, right out in the middle of the streets, where other lifeforms stood and watched.
As overwhelming as the floating cities were, being the obvious social epicenter of this galaxy, they were addicting to explore. And the more John explored, the longer he lasted, his walks increasing from minutes to half hours to hours, ending when his addled brain needed a break.
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Day and night were separated by lesser degrees of darkness. Daylight was the umber strip on the horizon, blazing slick amber in the early hours, and night was ash gray replacing umber. It was depressing to look at, like having reached rock bottom in choices of habitation, so John ditched the habit of standing out on the balcony and surrounded himself with the bright, prismatic beauty of Atlantis' interior.
The only setback was the damn solitude: walls that never answered back, video games spouting the same hackneyed phrases, and movies John had so memorized that he played them out perfectly in his dreams. It was enough to get him to risk making idle conversation with a few shop owners, most of whom weren't keen on talking unless he bought something, which, obviously, he couldn't. Those he did manage to get to open up refused to go beyond yes, no, maybe, sure and other single-syllable words. Not a bad thing, really, as the translator needed time to reprogram the words into Eekala's language so they could be translated into English.
It was a week later that John, bored out of his skull, fiddled with Atlantis' communications relay to see if he could pick up transmissions. He'd never been big into eavesdropping, but it was either that or risk throwing his laptop out the window when Silent Hill went on the fritz again. Most of the laptops were starting to limp, and John needed the fresh ones for Atlantis. Therefore, for the sake of his sanity, he eavesdropped, working the translator overtime, and stumbled on a transmission in a painfully familiar language.
John stiffened, tilting his head to one side, filtering out the crackle and hiss of static.
“We.... join.... now... and.... great!”
Heart thudding, John typed the commands Rodney had shown him that would clear up garbled transmissions.
“We... go live... to the field where we... to coach... the play.”
Chuckling, grinning like a kid at Christmas, John sat back with his feet propped up on the console's edge. He heard enough to recall having watched this game on TV when he was fourteen.
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Searching communications became John's new hobby. He heard football games from the seventies, old ads and jingles, and dialog from TV shows he'd watched as a kid. There had to be a century of signals out there – radio and TV – wayward as a runaway looking for home, bouncing from satellites, amplified by the energy of suns or shot forward and backward in time through black holes and inexplicable anomalies.
John really didn't care how it was happening; he was just glad it was happening. Maybe, just maybe, if he searched hard enough and listened long enough, he'd finally know if it was safe to come home. Until then, he was content with having something else to entertain him.
Not that Xen wasn't entertaining. Another week passed, then another and another, and John felt like those hosts on those TV shows about how to tour other countries. He knew the best places to eat, shop and loiter around in by the number of lifeforms gathered – not that he could eat or buy anything, and not that he wanted to, although he would have to start thinking about obtaining some local currency... legally, of course. Eekala's trees were fat with fruit but the freeze-dried meat packets were running low, and John had run out of peanut butter as his protein replacement.
After five weeks, John's impression that the cities might be a little lax when it came to law enforcement was made fact. He started noticing the same hover-crafts, the same single-transports, circling like flies around Atlantis. One day, he arrived just in time to see a small transport take a few pot-shots at the shield then take off like a kid after TPing someone's yard. John, however, wasn't worried. It would take an armada and a couple of years of non-stop firing to make so much as one of the ZPMs flicker. Rodney and his geek team had also modified the shields, allowing for windows to open up large enough for a 'jumper to slip through and nothing else.
Atlantis herself was safe. John, on the other hand, couldn't say the same for himself. It was only a matter of time before the “flies” got it through their heads to follow the 'jumper and keep tabs on its pilot. John asked one of the more talkative shop owners – the wrestler with the spine-length purple Mohawk - if ship hijacking was common. Mohawk read John's question on the translator, nodded curtly, and muttered a few words in a language that sounded a little like Italian with drawn out vowels and a few hisses.
“If someone has lost a large ship,” John read, “they will board another's ship, change the systems, commands, make it their own and leave before the real crew comes back.”
John grimaced. It seemed rather pathetic for carjacking to be another universal practice. On the other hand, “No bloodshed?”
Mohawk read the question and shrugged. “Depends. If you are going to take a ship, you take one with the smallest crew. They are less likely to try to take the ship back. A larger crew, or a ship belonging to a supply-carrying company, you can be sure you will be chased down. Possibly killed for taking the ship.”
John snorted. Anyone who tried to take Atlantis would be in for a rude awakening, and that included if they attempted physical brutality as a way to “persuade” John to pilot. It was also pathetic that John was so used to it (yes, mostly with puddle jumpers, but it all came down to forced-piloting) that he had back-up plans on top of back-up plans when it came down to an avid interest in his gene but not the state of his health.
So far, though, he had yet to be approached, and another week came and went. The safer bet would be to just leave, go to a less inhabited world and hang out there. But the reason he was hanging out in the first place was because he had no immediate desire to go back to wandering from planet to planet, and he sure as hell had no desire to put up with future games of “guess what'll kill you.” Here, on this literal cesspool, there were beings to ask whether something might kill him – beings to talk to, period – sights to see, natives and their worlds to become acquainted with without actually going to their world, and cultures to get to know before he accidentally insulted someone into shooting him. This – this world and its people – this was the way to go, the way to explore the galaxy. Everything he needed was right here, and he was going to take every advantage of it before he resumed wandering.
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Another week began with John waking up to remembering that today was the day Ronon had died. It was the only reason he ever looked at the calendar on his laptop, still counting the days passing on earth. After showering, shaving and putting on his dress-blues, he pulled out the tea-set Teyla had given him – Rodney had one, too, for the day they could no longer be together as a team – brewed the tea, and performed the ceremony in Ronon's room. He sat on the floor and poured then scooted around to the other side of the tray to take the cup.
“To my friend and brother,” he said, and drank. There followed a solemn four minutes of silence – it had taken four minutes for Ronon's heart to stop, six minutes for back-up to arrive.
Afterwards, he cleaned up, changed into his off-world gear, and went exploring.
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John knew he was being followed after taking five steps from the 'jumper. As much as he hated putting any more distance between himself and the little ship, he forced himself onward, feigning being oblivious, until he spotted his stalker out of the corner of his eye – a flash of tawny fur and a bushy tail darting in and out of buildings and crowds. John was ready to settle for it being a giant mutant squirrel when said mutant squirrel darted out into his path, chattering and reaching a very human-like hand toward his hair.
John backpedaled right into a lamppost. “Whoa, hey!” The creature, vaguely humanoid, ran clawed fingers through his hair in wide-eyed fascination. She – so obviously a she in a sleeveless violet shirt hugging her curves and skin-tight pants of shimmering brown tight around slender thighs and calves - was covered in gold and dark-orange fur, thin around the face and thick from the head down the back to the tail. Her high-pitched chatter was fast, so fast the translator could barely keep up.
“Dark fur, pretty, nice, I like, nice fur, warm blood.” She stepped back from petting him and gestured sharply for him to follow. “Come, talk, Ge'kia talk, talk to you, now, come, talk, he wants... talk... you... now...”
Of all the thousands of questions racing through John's brain – who are you, what are you, what do you want with me, how did you find me, who's Ge'kia? - the one that came out was a surprisingly clear-headed and suspicious, “Why?”
Squirrel-girl twitched her head inquisitively until John showed her the translator. She perked and, when she answered, talked at a more reasonable speed.
“You own the big, pretty bright ship with all the pretty lights, right?”
Considering John's ship was the only one standing out like a lotus in a garbage heap, he nodded. “Yeah?”
“Ge'kia is my boss. He wants to talk to you, your captain, whoever flies the ship. He wants to know things.”
John narrowed his eyes dangerously. “What kind of things?”
“Ship things,” squirrel-girl said, unfazed. “Business things. He wants to know who you work for, if you work for anyone. He will hire you, if you don't. Ge'kia, he owns a shipping business. A very good shipping business, one with lots of ships and that pays well. You would be stupid to pass up his offer... if you are not in a business.” She took John's hand and tugged. “Come! You must talk to him; he is eager to talk.”
John pulled back. “How eager?”
The suspicion, it seemed, only now registered with squirrel-girl. She gaped obtusely at him a moment then broke out into high, chittering laughter as though John were the silliest thing she'd ever met.
“Ge'kia is a business man. He will not hurt you. He is eager to talk before someone else hires you. You will see. Come on.”
John really didn't have much of a choice in the end. Squirrel-girl's grip was iron tight, and her claws made squirming free impossible. She led him through narrow streets and back alleys until they came out of the filth into a little garden courtyard that was the backyard of a small, cozy restaurant with a patio and a few outdoor tables. The table squirrel-girl took him to was ridiculously small within the group that surrounded it – a mix of species, most of them humanoid, armed to the teeth as they sat in ornate metal chairs sipping from dainty glass cups.
Squirrel-girl chattered, pointing excitedly at John.
The center of the throng looked at John through smoke-lensed spectacles. He was old, really old, heavy set with age, the skin of his face like weather-worn rock with its crags and fissures of creased skin sagging thick at the jaws. He was bald. In fact, there wasn't a single thread of hair on his body: no eyebrows, no eyelashes, not even stubble. He was dressed in layers of cloth and leather with belts around his waist and chest like his version of a tac-vest.
Squirrel-girl pointed at the old man. “Ge'kia.”
Ge'kia waved his hand at the unoccupied chair in front of him. John slowly eased himself into it as he eyed the old man's entourage. A six-foot and then some creature with ebony fur, narrow equine face and a row of webbed spikes from skull-top to reptile tail stood behind the old man with thick arms folded. To Ge'kia's left, a younger man, just as hairless, lean and very much an extra from Mad Max in dress. To the old man's right, a woman draped loose-limbed over her chair, hot-pink hair having somehow been pulled through a bright-orange stocking cap. There was another pro-wrestler, female version, her mane white with cream stripes; a sapphire snake-man bobbing his head on his long neck as his tongue flicked to taste the air; and another hairless man so muscular his neck was more a thick strip of skin between his head and body.
John tried his damnedest to force unconcern. He melted into his seat despite taut muscles, folded his arms across his chest, and regarded Ge'kia with the long-suffering look of one who had better things to do. It was either that or come off as dangerous and deadly, which obviously wouldn't have sat well with this armed and brooding bunch. The twitchy young hairless guy was drumming his fingers on the handle of the big-ass gun at his waist.
Ge'kia started talking, nice and slow for the translator to keep up. The language was smooth, its inflection a little Italian, the vowels, Ss and Hs drawn out.
“You have a very impressive ship, sir. Are you the captain?”
John nodded rather than waste time with translating a verbal answer.
Ge'kia took a dainty sip from his tiny cup, fat pinky held out and everything. “It is very impressive. Tell me, are you in the shipping business? A vessel such as that must carry much cargo.”
John shook his head. “No, I'm not in any shipping business. Just wandering, exploring.” He turned the translator so Ge'kia could read it.
The old man inclined his head in approval. “I would like to extend employment to you then, if you will take it. The pay is good, with benefits, and the job will not be so difficult for a ship such as yours. I have been watching your ship. I have seen others attack it, hoping to take it as theirs, and its shield has yet to even waver. It is a good, strong ship, but it took a number of days to track one of your crew down to bring you this offer.”
John decided not to correct him on the number of Atlantis' crew.
“Will you take it?”
John studied Ge'kia then his group, each one impassive as a blank page. But where expressions failed, words said plenty, and Ge'kia's succinct proposition was to the point. The man was eager, possibly even desperate, and as congenial as the man sounded in tone, it made John immediately cautious. He'd assumed it was a pirate thing to take someone else's ship; he hadn't considered that hijacking might be nothing more than a matter of business, and if desperation was Ge'kia's motivation, then John needed to word his answer carefully.
He also needed the money, seeing as how his meat was running a little low, and he could use a local opinion on what the hell was edible on this world.
Amending his original decision about verifying the number of crew, John leaned forward, resting his arms on the table and placing the translator between them. “Okay, here's the thing. I'm the captain, and I'm also the crew. Big as my ship is, she's actually not that hard to fly if all you're doing is going from point A to B and not doing a lot else in between. I'm also the only one who can fly her. And by that, I really, literally, mean the only one in this particular galaxy. You have to have a certain genetic structure – something in your body – to operate her, and I'm the only one who has it. Just a little something I want to make painfully clear to you. Atlantis answers to no one but me.”
Ge'kia's pudgy brow furrowed, fat skin puckering and forming deep runnels. “Of course,” he said in all innocence that didn't make John feel any better. He imagined some smartass among the throng picking their way through systems, plugging in their version of a laptop, hoping to stumble on a weakness or inject some virus that would give them full access to Atlantis.
Only to be sorely disappointed that certain systems would never go online unless John was around to make them go on.
John grinned. “Then, yes, I'd be happy to work for you. Under certain conditions, of course...”
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John was Han Solo, smuggler in a very legal way as per the unspoken stipulations of the shipping industry. It wasn't a bloodthirsty business, but it did play dirty, and Atlantis offered a means of tilting the playing field to Ge'kia's side by shielding his cargo ships.
Because vessels as big as Atlantis had nowhere to land on the planets they were going to, her only real purpose was to protect between taking off and arriving at their destination. Rival companies didn't hesitate to cripple another company's ship the moment it left Xen's atmosphere but couldn't do a damn thing once the destination was reached, or risk the inhabitants of the planet taking the attack as an act of war (some worlds were skittish that way, others perpetually teetering on the brink of conflict with some neighboring system).
Making these runs meant having to have a crew manning communications since John couldn't speak any of the languages. The members of that crew were the former members of Ge'kia's gunship that he would – used to – send on ahead to clear a path by firing stun pulses to temporarily scramble the systems of a rival's attack ship.
On reaching their destination, and if the planet was open to visitors, John would fly them all down to finalize matters and to spend some time out on the town before they were to head back. Paradise planets, ice-planets, planets with islands hovering on unseen clouds of anti-grav: the shipping business had become John's ticket to a risk-free exploration.
There was still the small issue of food. Squirrel-girl...Veeni... being a fellow mammal, usually took it upon herself to help John sort out what he could and couldn't eat, and she kind of, sort of, sucked at it. Cold bloods outnumbered warm bloods in this galaxy it seemed, and most of the warm bloods hadn't evolved away certain feral traits – like eating raw meat. Even when cooked, some foods required powerful digestive tracts to thoroughly process.
Veeni just thought John was being a wuss.
“This is for your own good, John. Stop being weak.”
John pressed his knuckles into the cool metal of the toilet when the third purge shook his body. Veeni had finally gotten it through her head to talk at tolerant speeds for the translator sitting by the bowl.
“I have never met a being as delicate as you.”
Scowling, John pushed away from the toilet when he was sure a fourth purge wasn't forthcoming. He liked Veeni, he did, but there were days he wanted to smack squirrel-girl upside the head. He was lucky she couldn't work the locks because she usually preferred laughing at his weakness in his face.
John rinsed out his mouth, splashed water on his face, shivered the last of the disgust from his body and walked out to see Veeni leaning against the wall with crossed arms and a simpering smile.
“Better?” she said, one furry eyebrow cocked.
When John waggled his hand – so, so – she gave him a reassuring clap on the back.
“You will get used to it.”
The rest of the “crew” was spread throughout the control room. Mils – bald, lean, with alpha male issues – was pacing behind the pink-haired Mi'sia lounging with feet propped up on the console as she read from her small, hand-held data-device. The horse-headed Rith was on the gate-room floor, circling the 'gate like it wanted to bite him. It had taken John forever to explain it wasn't some gaudy decoration taken during the conquest of a lesser race.
No one looked up when he and Veeni entered. John hadn't fooled himself into taking all this as another mission, this crew as his new team. It wasn't an altered version of his old life; he knew it, accepted it and, as he always did, went with the flow of it.
And the flow was him being a necessity and nothing more when it came to matters of the cargo ships and the business as a whole. His only concern was Atlantis, and as long as decisions made didn't upset the welfare of the city ship or include blowing a rival's ship out of the sky, then he didn't care what his position was.
Although Mils couldn't seem to get it out of his head that John – male soldier with his very own kick-ass ship – wasn't a threat to his current status as bosun (Ge'kia staying behind on Xen didn't make him any less of a captain). He eventually looked at John with brief, hostile suspicion that soon tempered down to lukewarm steel. When not giving into his pack-leader paranoia, Mils was a fairly amiable guy.
Without looking up from the screen, Mi'sia gave Mils a whack in a very sensitive area of his anatomy with the back of her hand. “Stop pacing. You are giving me a headache. Done purging?”
It took a moment for John's exhausted brain to register that the question had been aimed at him. This was the third time he'd puked in two days, and it was taking too much out of him.
Mi'sia looked away from her screen long enough to see his answering, affirmative nod.
“You sure?” she said. “Because, so far, you have been rather wrong.”
John scowled. “I'm sure.” He didn't hold up the translator. He'd said the words enough for Mi'sia and everyone else to get the meaning
“He is sure,” Veeni said and gave him a light poke in the stomach with her claw. “This is good for him. Will toughen him up.”
Mi'sia replied with a noncommittal grunt. She was, for the most part, anti-social, only ever contributing to a conversation when correcting someone or establishing her opinion of a matter via airy sarcasm.
Rith was even less talkative than Mi'sia, unless you managed to get him going on just the right topic. Even then, he wouldn't last long, and rarely replied to anything beyond nods, head-shakes or indifferent grunts. Veeni, Mils, and the cargo ship pilots did most of the talking, and laughing when John gagged on something inedible.
John moved over to the screen to watch the final ship on approach, still four minutes out. But since Veeni knew how to open a portion of the shield, he decided to leave it to her and head to the chair early. By the time he got there, Veeni's chatter sounded over the ship-wide comm so that the translator could pick it up. John activated the chair and shot them into hyperspace. Two hours later, they were back on Xen, landed safely for the ships to pull out back to Ge'kia's loading zone to await the next shipment.
Instead of taking the 'jumper topside, they took Mils' hover-craft. Ge'kia was insistent John keep a low profile while on Xen, and that meant no more flying any 'jumpers. Tonight, they were eating out in style instead of the equivalent of a fast-food joint, on Ge'kia as a bonus. No ships crippled and every delivery on time or early had resulted in a bigger income, enough for a little splurging.
They took an outside table surrounded by a small garden and fountains.
“Veeni,” John said, pushing the menu written in alien gibberish away from him, “don't mess with me tonight. My stomach's barely getting over lunch.”
Veeni batted her florescent yellow eyes at him in sickly sweet innocence. “Is little John's stomach weak? I will be kind to it tonight.” She could be quite the little bitch when she wanted to, a harsh promoter of the “tough-love” approach, but she knew when to back off.
“Did you hear what happened to Ceniv?” Mils said, tossing his menu on the table. “On Levis' crew? Got himself shot over a game of Vril. Idiot.”
Rith made a noise between a whuff and a rumble that could mean anything. Veeni snorted. “Serves him right. He was horrible at that game. He was horrible at everything.” Not that it had stopped Veeni from having a little roll in the hay with him, in front of the stargate, more than once according to Mils.
Across from John, Mi'sia slid the knit cap from her head, the hair going with it, revealing a clean pale scalp. It was impossible not to stare, having gone a whole month thinking that hair to be real. Mi'sia tilted her head to one side, her deep amber gaze locking onto his hazel one.
“What?”
Shaking his head, John dropped his eyes back to the menu that was no longer in front of him. Their food arrived ten minutes later, and John poked at it for three minutes before forcing himself to take a tentative bite of some kind of violet squash. When he didn't gag, choke or spit – the stuff tasting a little like boiled carrots – he ventured a few more bites. When his stomach didn't churn, he finished it off and moved on to the “meat”. That, too, didn't try to kill him, and neither did the pale pink fruit with the yellow insides.
Then he took a drink of what he'd assumed was water, and when it burned his tongue, he sprayed it back out all over Mi'sia's shirt. Veeni and Mils burst into hooting laughter, Veeni slapping John's back like a hearty congratulations. John barely registered it, too preoccupied with Mi'sia's twisted expression of disgust.
“Ah, crap, Mi'sia, I'm so sorry.” He grabbed the cloth napkin, was about to help her clean up when he thought better of it, and held it out until she took it. “I didn't do that on purpose,” he glared at Veeni, “I swear.”
Mi'sia shook her head. “It is all right. You did not get that much on me.” Her cool expression didn't give John the impression of it being all right. But like a mother jaded to the antics of her bratty kids, she wiped her shirt and resumed eating.
When dinner was, thankfully, over, Mils grudgingly let Rith use the hovercraft to take John back to Atlantis. During downtime, Ge'kia's crew had their individual homes located in a complex owned by Ge'kia – like an apartment building. It was a load off John's mind, not having to accommodate the crew when back on Xen. Veeni was too curious for her own good, Mils John doubted he would ever trust, and there was just no getting to know Rith and Mi'sia. He didn't mind flying with these people, liked hanging with them fine when food wasn't involved, but he sure as hell didn't want to live with them. He owed it to his sanity.
Once John was back on Atlantis (he was able to open a portion of the shield by remote) he went straight to the communications console and activated it, letting the junk signals stream in. For once, he didn't have to break out any rations or have a bucket nearby for other matters. And after a little fiddling and sifting, he landed on the garbled last inning of a baseball game.
This was how he liked his downtime: alone and nostalgic.
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Date: 2008-03-23 06:49 pm (UTC)From:But it seems too good to be true....
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Date: 2008-03-24 02:13 am (UTC)From: