The Lost

Chapter Four: Reluctant Allies

John slid into a chair at the briefing table nursing a cup of coffee. He’d slept badly, but enough coffee would take care of that. Teyla and Ronon were already there, and Carson and Keller came in together. He wondered if they’d actually been invited to the briefing or were just hanging around to find out what the plan was. It wasn’t really a situation where they needed medical advice.

Keller took her seat looking like she hadn’t slept much either, and Carson rested a hand on her shoulder for a moment before he sat down. John thought he probably ought to say something, but he couldn’t figure out what.

“Let me get you some coffee,” Teyla said.

Keller looked up at her gratefully. “Thanks. I can get it, though…”

Teyla was already handing her a steaming cup. “I would offer you tea, but I expect you prefer coffee. It is the least I can do.”

Carson smiled faintly. He had a cup of tea already, cupped in his hands as if to warm them. “My mum always makes a cup of tea whenever something terrible’s happened. I suppose the idea is that if you can still make tea, things can’t be that bad.”

“Things aren’t that bad,” John said, more sharply than he meant to. “We just have a problem here we have to figure out what to do about. Where’s Woolsey?”

“Not here yet,” Ronon said, as if that were helpful. Probably about as helpful as the question. John took a drink of coffee and hoped the caffeine would kick in soon.

Woolsey came in last, his tablet tucked neatly under his arm. John suspected he’d learned in some management book that making people wait for him was better than waiting for them. Maybe it worked. At least, everyone gave Woolsey their attention instead of making small talk about the weather. Maybe they’d run out of things to say about it. It was still cold, and likely to stay that way for a while.

“I’ll start with the good news,” Woolsey said, with a tight smile that didn’t promise too much. “I have heard both from Radim and from… Todd.”

“We can call him something else if you’d rather,” John said. Teyla gave him a sharp look, as if unsure that he was taking this briefing sufficiently seriously.

Woolsey chose to ignore the remark instead. “Both of them are willing to talk. Radim believes his intelligence network may be able to determine whether Wraith worshippers visited New Athos, and possibly even find out which hive they were working for.”

Ronon was leaning back in his chair in what might have looked like a casual pose if you didn’t know him. “Do we like the idea that Radim’s got people working with Wraith worshippers?”

Teyla turned the look on him. “Would we like the idea that he did not? We must get our information from somewhere.”

“What does Todd have to say for himself?” John asked.

Woolsey looked like that hadn’t been a pleasant chat. “He is also apparently willing to talk.”

That seemed too convenient. “Why?”

“I pointed out to him that having Dr. McKay in the hands of a rival Wraith could have serious consequences for him as well as for us.”

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea to play that up,” John said. “We don’t want him to get the idea that it’s a good idea to grab Rodney himself.”

“At least then we might be able to bargain,” Teyla said.

“With a Wraith,” Ronon said, looking skeptical.

“With a Wraith who has depended on our assistance in the past.”

“He is at least willing to talk to us. At the moment, that’s an improvement on our current intelligence. I think we may be able to persuade him that Dr. McKay could provide an unwanted advantage to whichever one of his rivals is holding him.”

“Assuming it’s not Todd,” John pointed out.

“Assuming that,” Woolsey granted him. “But at least with a meeting we may have some chance of finding out if that is the case.”

“So what’s the catch?” John said. “You said this was the good news.”

“Both Radim and Todd insist on a meeting in person.”

“Fine,” John said. “They’re welcome to come to Atlantis. Alone.”

“Yes, I think we’d all prefer that,” Woolsey said. “Unfortunately, we’re in no position to demand ground of our choosing. Radim has requested that we send representatives to the Genii homeworld, and under the circumstances, that does seem reasonable.”

It didn’t seem very reasonable to John. “Because holding Dr. Beckett at gunpoint and stealing our medical supplies was just a friendly gesture.”

“A misunderstanding,” Woolsey said. “Which has been resolved.”

“You can’t blame Radim for what Sora did,” Carson said. “She’s a loose cannon, and always has been.” He looked less troubled by the whole incident than John felt.

“Todd has proposed a site he claims to be neutral ground. PX5-422. According to the Ancient database, it’s uninhabited.”

“I want it checked out in advance,” John said.

“Yes, of course. We’ll send a team, but I want you to leave at once for the Genii homeworld. I’ve been trying to convey a sense of urgency about this to Radim, and it won’t help to keep him waiting.”

“Back up,” John said. “I should go deal with Todd. Teyla and Ronon can go talk to the Genii.”

“I want you to deal with Radim on this,” Woolsey said. “Given what we know about the Genii, I think they’ll prefer to deal with our military commander. I’d like you to take Teyla and Dr. Beckett with you. Ronon, Dr. Keller, I’d like you to handle the meeting with Todd, once our advance team reports back that the site is safe.”

“All right,” Keller said. She sounded a little skeptical. John was more than a little skeptical himself. “We can do that.” She looked over at Ronon, who shrugged a little uncomfortably.

“You don’t want Teyla to come with us?”

Woolsey looked at John. He looked tempted to say something for a moment, and then reconsidered whatever it had been. “I think it’s best if Teyla accompanies Colonel Sheppard and Dr. Beckett,” he said. “Our relationship with the Genii is a delicate one, and I have every confidence in your negotiating skills.”

“Thank you,” Teyla said, inclining her head politely.

“Our relationship with Todd could include him sucking the life out of people if he gets cranky enough,” John said. “I’ll go. If you want to send a military officer to go deal with Radim, send Lorne.”

“Thank you for your recommendation,” Woolsey said. He hesitated just for a moment, and then said, “Please be ready to dial out for the Genii homeworld in twenty minutes. Dr. Keller, Ronon, I’ll let you know as soon as we hear back from the advance team.”

There was an overly quiet pause.

“I’d like a word before we go, if you haven’t got somewhere else to be,” John said evenly.

“Not at all,” Woolsey said.

“I will go and prepare for our departure,” Teyla said, with a careful smile. “Carson, are there medical supplies you should bring with us?”

“I expect I could find some,” Carson said, rising. Ronon and Keller were already slipping out wordlessly.

John waited until they’d all gone before he spoke. “You can’t seriously want to send those two to deal with Todd. Ronon doesn’t have any other setting for dealing with the Wraith other than ‘shoot them,’ and Keller’s a little green for this kind of thing.”

“She has been the chief medical officer in Atlantis for over two years,” Woolsey pointed out. “And she’s worked with the Wraith — and with these particular Wraith — before. Todd was generally cooperative with her attempts to find a way for the Wraith to survive without feeding, which is frankly the closest we’ve come to a good working relationship with him.”

“I just don’t think she has a suspicious enough nature.”

“That would be more suspicious than Dr. Keller but less suspicious than Ronon?”

“Yes,” John said, although he felt he hadn’t exactly won, there.

“Colonel Sheppard,” Woolsey said, looking weary. “Please believe I’ve thought this through. I think our chances of obtaining any useful information from Todd at this point are minimal. We don’t have much to offer him, and we have no reason to believe that he has the information we need. I don’t want to leave any avenue unexplored, but I think our real hopes rest on what we can find out from Radim.”

“You didn’t say that in the briefing,” John said after a minute.

“Would you rather I had told Ronon and Dr. Keller that I think they’re unlikely to find out anything? I would like them to try. If there’s someone you think would be better suited to that mission — besides yourself and the team you’re taking to the Genii homeworld — I’m open to suggestions.”

He wished he had one. “There’s not,” John said.

“Then please trust that Ronon and Dr. Keller can handle this mission,” Woolsey said. “I realize you haven’t always had the best working relationship with the Genii in the past, but I think Radim respects you, for what that’s worth.”

“Probably not much,” John said.

Woolsey looked at him hard. “Is it really your best assessment that we can’t reach a stable truce with the Genii? I’m asking for your professional opinion.”

John took a deep breath and tried for that. “I don’t know,” he said. “Radim keeps saying he wants one. It’s just that he keeps being around when things go wrong between his people and ours. I’m not saying that he’s responsible for what Sora does, or for Kolya killing our people or capturing me or generally being a pain in the ass. I’m just saying he’s been involved in a lot of situations that have left me pretty reluctant to trust him.”

“I’m not asking you to trust him sight unseen,” Woolsey said. “Or at all. But you said yourself in the briefing for the new military personnel that the Genii are our best allies here in the Pegasus galaxy.”

“We need better allies,” John said.

“Maybe so, but that’s not today’s problem.”

“Is there a quota?”

“There are priorities,” Woolsey said. “Dr. McKay is the priority today. Try to get us some way of finding him.”

“I’ll do everything I can,” John said.

“I’m sure you will.”

Ronon was at the rail at the top of the steps in the control room. “So what are we doing?”

“I’m going to go talk to the Genii with Teyla and Carson,” John said. “I’ll get Lorne to take a team and check out the planet where Todd wants to meet. If Lorne clears it, and we’re not back yet, you and Keller go see what he has to say.”

“Just how fast do you think you can talk to the Genii?”

“I can talk pretty fast. How fast Radim’s going to be willing to talk, I don’t know.” John shrugged. “I want you to stay put unless the site is clean. If it seems like Todd’s trying to play us, the mission’s scratched. I’m serious.”

“I’m not going to let Keller walk into a trap,” Ronon said. “If it doesn’t look good, we’ll just stay here and Woolsey can negotiate some more.”

“I’ll say hi to Radim for you.”

Ronon snorted. “I think I’d rather deal with the Wraith. We’ll get in less trouble if we have to shoot them.”

“Think diplomacy,” John said.

“Right.”

He’d prefer to have something to shoot, too, but he was comforting himself with the thought that if this worked out, they’d have a target. That was what they really needed.

“Control, this is Jumper One,” Sheppard said over the radio. “We’re ready to go.”

Radek looked over the console on the upper tier and pushed his glasses back up on his nose. The new gate technicians were all nervous at having to learn the ropes while everyone was under so much pressure. Of course, they would probably have been even more nervous had Rodney been here to find fault with everything they did.

“Copy, Jumper One,” Airman Salawi said from her station below at the gate board. She glanced up at him for confirmation, her hand hovering over the DHD, and he came around the monitors and stood beside her chair. “Not this time,” he said quietly. “We let jumper pilots dial out themselves, using the jumper’s DHD. The city’s systems will bring the jumper down from the bay automatically, and ensure it remains well clear of the kawoosh when the gate opens.”

Salawi grinned. “Is that a technical term, Doctor? Kawoosh?”

“It more or less is.” Radek smiled back. She was a good kid, come here a month ago from the SGC where she’d barely begun her training before O’Neill had sent her to Atlantis. “You people invented it. We just use it.”

“Weren’t you at the SGC too?”

“I was for a year or so,” Radek said. He shifted from foot to foot, gauging the preparations below to a nicety. “I will tell you sometime how Dr. Jackson recruited me. But I have been here more than five years now, so this is home.”

Salawi shook her head. “You must have some stories.”

“I imagine that I do,” Radek said. “But you had best hope that in the future I do not have stories of you.”

“Only the good kind,” Salawi said, grinning. “I wouldn’t mind some stories about me like the ones about Colonel Sheppard.”

“Possibly not,” Radek said, and patted her on the shoulder to soften it. “But there is a high price for stories.”

It had been a year ago that he had come back from an offworld mission, not a bad one at all, to hear what had transpired in his absence — an alien intelligence communicating with Mr. Woolsey and Rodney, Sheppard trapped on the mainland by its machinations. An alien intelligence that had at least once impersonated him to speak with Rodney.

Very weird. He had never had an alien intelligence impersonate him before. He was only sorry that he had missed it.

Or possibly not, when he saw Sheppard.

He was coming out of the mess in the morning, coffee in hand, still a little shy of six o’clock. Sheppard was sitting at one of the tables on the balcony, a mug in front of him, looking out at the sea. He was unshaved, and he slouched in his chair like a man most profoundly tired. There was no one else about.

Radek opened the door and came out, falling into the opposite chair. “Good morning.”

Sheppard blinked like a man called back from dreams. “Radek.”

“Yes.”

“Is it really you or an alien intelligence?”

“I think that it is me,” he said. “I do not feel so intelligent.”

“That’s what you’d say if you were an alien intelligence,” Sheppard said.

“I would,” Radek agreed. “But you will have to take it on faith.”

The sun was rising out of the distant sea, green tropic swells rolling softly under the dawn sky frosted with pink clouds. It was unbearably lovely.

“What the hell,” Sheppard said softly, not looking at him. “We get an alien intelligence, and Woolsey and Rodney both get people telling them they’re great.”

“You are great,” Radek said seriously. Sheppard looked around at that, and Radek shrugged. “You are. If you want me to say so, I shall. Without drugs or alien intelligence or any of that. I am proud to work with you and call you my friend.”

Sheppard blinked and looked away, lashes sweeping shut over bloodshot eyes, tired face heavy in profile. “It was Kolya,” he said. “I know he’s dead. But you know people don’t always stay dead around here. It seemed…plausible.”

“Of course it seemed plausible,” Radek said logically. “It was coming from your mind.”

Sheppard snorted mirthlessly. “Yeah, and what does that say?”

Radek settled back in his chair and took a drink of coffee. “That you are as whacked as the rest of us. We are all a little crazy. It comes with the territory. It seems to me, from what they have said, that the alien intelligence gave Woolsey and Rodney what they felt they deserved.” His mouth quirked. “Which says quite a bit about the size of their egos, actually.” He tried not to look at Sheppard too keenly. “It is a good thing I was not here,” he said.

He felt Sheppard’s glance, though he did not look away from the sea.

“I know far too well what I should have seen,” he said. He considered a moment, but there was truth sometimes in morning, and to gain a truth you must give truth for truth, slice your palm to show that your blood is red. “I should have been on the satellite, not Peter.”

Sheppard did not say anything. There was nothing to say to that. There was only the truth, staring back at them. The sea breeze rolled over them, cool and smelling of salt. The coffee mug was warm in his hands.

“I should have gone,” he said. “But Rodney would not hear it. And so it was Peter.” He took another drink of the coffee, clearing his voice again. “Sometimes I wish that it had been me. And other times I am afraid that I do not.” He shrugged self-depreciatingly, dared a glance at Sheppard. “Survivor’s guilt, I think they call it.”

“Yeah, that’s what they call it.” Sheppard nodded seriously, his eyes on Radek as though for the first time this morning he were actually seeing him.

“It was a little crazy that first year,” Radek said. “Intense. You know. When things are so intense, one feels things too strongly. When each day is a surprise.” He looked at Sheppard sideways. “I have tried to take it as a gift.”

Sheppard nodded, looked away, lifting his chin to the sea. Radek did not expect him to reply, but he thought he saw some of the tension in his face ease.

“That is all we can do,” he said. “We live with it, you and I.” His voice was matter of fact as he went on. “What did Kolya do? Beat you and torture you?”

Sheppard shrugged. “Basically. His usual schtick. Told me he’d killed the science team and he was going to blow up Atlantis and I had to give him the access codes. That kind of thing.”

“At least you did not go there,” Radek said.

“Where?”

“He did not torture your friends.”

Sheppard swallowed. “I don’t… This was about me.”

“Yes, I see that,” Radek said. “Torturing others would serve no purpose.”

“No.” Sheppard’s profile was clean against the morning sky. “He cut off my hand.”

“How very Biblical,” Radek observed. “Or perhaps that is Sharia law.” Sheppard looked at him sharply and Radek shrugged. “Teyla and Ronon would not know, and Rodney never reads anything that is not science.”

“That’s so screwed up,” Sheppard said.

“Yes, well. It is your head, after all.”

Sheppard smiled at that, as though the joke were on him. Which of course it was.

“There is nothing to do but live with it,” Radek said. “Or die.” He took a casual sip of his coffee. “And no, I do not think you are suicidal. If you were, you would only need to stop ducking.”

“That’s true. But I don’t.” Sheppard picked up his own mug and looked at it as if surprised that it were empty. “Like you said. Other times I don’t wish that it had been me.”

“I have tried to take it as a gift,” Radek said. “I do not think Peter would wish otherwise.”

“A gift.” Sheppard looked out to sea, then glanced back at him, one eyebrow quirking. “And that’s what you’ve got for me?”

“That is the thing I have that I think you will accept,” Radek said gently.

Sheppard looked away again, that same smile as though he were the fool. “Right.”

“I also have a bottle of Scotch, but it is six in the morning,” Radek said. “It is perhaps too early to start drinking.”

“Yeah, probably,” Sheppard said.

Radek smiled back. “You know where to find me if you change your mind.”

“Control, this is Jumper One,” Sheppard said over the radio. “Dialing out.”

Radek shifted out of Salawi’s way. “You will see the address lighting on your board, so that you can verify they are going where they intend to. There is the first symbol, you see, the ox head…”

She watched carefully as the symbols lit, comparing them seriously to the address displayed on her computer screen, although of course there was no error. It was not like Sheppard to make careless mistakes. The gate opened in a flash of blue fire.

Salawi smiled at the sight, and Radek couldn’t help smiling himself, remembering his own delight the first time he had seen the theoretical products of wormhole physics made real. It would be a shame to become too used to such sights to appreciate them.

The jumper lowered from the bay above, hovering above the gateroom floor, poised to thread the ring of blue.

“Good luck, sir,” Salawi said into the radio.

“Thanks,” Sheppard said. “We’re probably going to need it.”