Stargate Atlantis: Even in the Distance
By Reyclou
Chapter Two: Song of Sorrow
A soft whining sound echoed through the massive Jumper bay as Jumper Three settled on the bay floor, announcing its return from a dismal duty. The copper-brown body of the craft was darkened by a layer of blackened soot; even the vessel’s wide windshield looked hopelessly filthy from flying through smoke and airborne grime. The rear hatch cracked open even before the craft came to a full rest, small avalanches of powdery ash spilling from the widening doorway. Elizabeth and a team of medical staff took a cautious step back as the short ramp fell into place, sending a cloud of fine debris wafting over the audience. Instinctively, hands covered mouths in vain attempt to keep from breathing in the vile stuff. The bright eyed woman, however, straightened against the cloud.
While they wasted little time in assembling a rescue team fit for fire duty, the intense fire had burned much longer than the control team had anticipated. Such fires could blaze for hours, as this one had done and then some. The flames danced and stormed across the landscape well into the night. Lorne’s team, willing to risk personal safety for quick salvation, sped back through the gate within the hour of Rodney and Ronon’s frazzled return. The brilliant light of the widespread fire gave them light enough to search by, but the fresh desolation of scalding ash did not ease their burden. Teams had to wade through burnt brush, careful to avoid hot spots, pulling back when the wind threatened to bring the fire down on them. Things looked up when the fist limb of the search revealed no bodies within the immediate area around the Gate, yet as the search dragged on through the 895 night, spirits began to sink. They found a shallow river a short distance from the Gate, but it looked as though the fire had already come and gone. If Teyla and John had been there, no sign of them remained. With the aid of the Jumper, Lorne’s team easily searched the area of land two people could have run given the conditions, but even flying just above the smoldering wreckage, they found nothing but the unforgiving wrath of nature—at least, until the sun found the dejected team on the native’s doorstep.
“Welcome back,” Elizabeth greeted as Major Lorne stepped down out of the bowls of the small vessel. Streaks of dirt and ash covered his clothes. Where wrinkles creased his youthful face, pale lines stood out against his blackened skin. Soot caked his hair, brown locks in desperate need of both a shower and a comb. If Elizabeth had not known better, she would have thought he was a fireman, though she did not know any fireman who carried military issue submachine guns strapped to their chest. Lorne returned her hail with an empty look in his blue eyes, as if he hand not heard her. Nervous, Elizabeth frowned at his hollow eyes. Lorne had a teddy-like quality about him, a boyish charm that never failed even in times of uncertain doom. He always tried to laugh off aggression, yet met it with no less determination, but that man was nowhere to be seen. The airman before her seemed a grizzled mockery of the amiable Major Lorne—beaten, battered, defeated. “…it’s good to have you back, Major.”
Lorne looked away before he responded with a soft, “Yeah,” and nothing more. His broad shoulders slouched in dismay, he strode away in search of a doctor and the hottest shower he could find. Elizabeth’s frown deepened before her eyes turned once again to the Jumper. She breathed a sigh of contented relief when, out of the dark of the ship, emerged a ruffled, filthy, but breathing Teyla Emmagan, a blanket wrapped around her dirtied shoulders. Her hair, which at one point had been pulled back in a tight ponytail, now hung in a limp, matted mess of dirt and sweat. Elizabeth ignored the smell of scorched hair, noting burns on the woman’s arms and streaks of black where flames had licked her smooth features. Her wounds appeared to be nothing gravely serious, but they were wounds that would take time and great pain to heal properly. Yet still, Teyla, ever the example of grace in chaos, held her head to a noble height.
“Oh my, Teyla!” Elizabeth rushed forward, offering the other woman a loose hug—careful not to aggravate unseen burns. Teyla accepted the embrace. “Are you okay?” she asked as she pulled away, studying where tears and sweat had cleared trails down Teyla’s bronze skin. What trials the younger woman had faced off-world had not been a happy experience. The phrase “hell and back again” came to Elizabeth’s mind. She did not think she truly understood those words until that moment.
Teyla nodded gracefully, if absently, brown doe-eyes looking lost but appreciative. “I am fine, Dr. Weir. Our captors did no further harm to me.”
“Captors?” Elizabeth exclaimed. “You were captured?”
“It is a long and difficult story, Doctor,” Teyla sighed, weariness in both her eyes and her tone. “The natives found us shortly after the fires broke out. They took us back to their village, intending to hold us there, but I believe they had a change of heart with they saw the Jumper.”
Elizabeth nodded, relieved that their long search was over at last. She said ‘our’ release. Elizabeth thought, elation coursing through her. So Lorne found them both, thank God! We can put all this miserable business behind us! Relief flooding her being, Elizabeth again straightened. “And Colonel Sheppard? How is he?” she asked, wondering why John had not been the first off the Jumper. If she knew him at all, he would be itching for a shower and a good night’s sleep in his own bed.
Teyla’s shoulders sagged, though she held strong to the resolve years as leader of her village had beaten into her. She took a moment to collect worried thoughts. Something sunk in Elizabeth’s gut, but she patiently waited for the woman to continue. Teyla’s eyes darted away for just a moment as she settled on her words. When her reply came, it came cool, practiced, but disheartened.
“Fear was not the sole factor in their decision to release us, Dr. Weir,” the Athosian swayed out of weariness, the saddest of words easily slipped from her lips—like poetry. “We were allowed to depart on humanitarian grounds; to care for our wounded,” her eyes fell and Teyla turned her head away from Elizabeth—downward, as if ashamed of her report, “And our dead.”
Green eyes darkened in confusion. “Dead?” Elizabeth whispered, just as another procession started down the short ramp of the Lantean Jumper. Carson walked at the head of a gurney, carefully guiding its precious cargo down to the Lantean bay. Like a father loosing his child, the doctor fought with all the ferocity in his heart to keep his patients alive and kicking, but when he lost that battle, Carson became quiet, morose, almost peaceful in his sorrow. Two nurses brought up the other end. Carson did not speak a single word as he descended the ramp. Indeed, no one made a sound as the somber scene unfolded before them. A black body bag lay on the gurney, the body within of tall height and noble stature. While the layers of polyethylene obscured the body’s features, the wells of pain in Carson’s eyes told all that he could not say.
John Sheppard was not coming home.
“No…” she whispered, moving to intercept the gurney. Carson held out caring arms to stop her, taking her by the elbow and guiding her away from the grim reality laid out for all to see. The two nurses took over, moving the gurney.
“No, love,” He cooed in his calm Scottish brogue. “You don’t want to remember him like this. Leave it to us, now.”
The cold feeling in her gut shot straight to her throat and Elizabeth lost the ability to speak. This just could not be happening. It had to be some kind of mistake—a trick, a prank—but no one laughed as the nurses wheeled on toward the infirmary—no, the morgue. How could this be? Teyla seemed fine, for all intents, but that thought left her mind almost before it arrived. She knew why. Teyla lived because of John, he had saved her.
He had died saving her.
As much as she wanted to push past Carson and run after the solemn team, she feared her legs would give out if she tried to move. Teyla put a comforting hand to her shoulder, lending her own strength in solidarity. Elizabeth wanted to acknowledge her—nod, smile, speak, anything—but she could do nothing but stand there, utterly shattered as the cart wheeled John away.
oOo
Elizabeth stared at the hands folded in her lap. They no longer seemed to be a part of her. They moved in a way foreign to her, looked ever so different, so old. She found a spot on her left hand that she had never noticed before, just between the two knuckles of her thumb. These had to be someone else’s hands tucked neatly into each other—someone else’s wrinkles, someone else’s nails, someone else’s life. Ever since Carson wheeled out that black bag on a silver stretcher, she just could not accept this turn in her life. Maybe she was still in bed, fast asleep. Any moment, she would jolt back to consciousness to find John trying to squish pennies in the sliding doors—or maybe she would find him kicking back in the common room. She wished she would wake up to some blaring klaxon and some urgent problem.
But not this. No, not this.
Not the briefing she had feared since she first recognized John as the military commander of Atlantis—the briefing in which she would force his team, his compatriots, to explain the intricacies of his demise. She would have to listen, have to file a report—a long drawn out report with forms and high speech. She would have to say things, distant things, things leaders said about their fallen subordinates. Some would be kind and truthful, others would be cold and decisive—things she had to say to put this all behind her, to do what was best for the city, to do what would please the military.
Lorne would take over, at least for now. It wasn’t that she had anything against the young major, she rather liked the man, but the military would not leave him in charge for long. They’d want someone older, wiser than and as far removed from John Sheppard as they could find. If they didn’t reassign Caldwell, the man they had originally picked to replace her first military commander—Colonel Sumner—they would find someone else, someone with medals, grey hair, and a dismal attitude. They would send her another Sumner, another Everett, someone who could take John’s job, but never John’s place. On paper, they would have a replacement, but no one they could send would ever live up to him. No, that void would remain for a long, long time.
Elizabeth stretched the hands that were not her own and looked up to meet the somber faces of Sheppard’s team, joined by Major Lorne and Dr. Beckett, in the circular conference room. Rodney stared at the edge of the conference table. Redness circled his eyes as automatic doors swung closed around them, sealing their voices from the public. Ronon, stoic and emotionless as ever, slumped idly in his chair, looking to the others but never keeping eye contact long enough to convey any sense of his thoughts. Major Lorne’s shower had done little to brighten his spirits, and the now unspoken mantle of ranking military officer weighed heavily on his broad shoulders. Carson—while quite familiar with death, yet still innately sensitive to it—took his time fiddling with his tablet, drawing up charts and signing off on this and that. Finally, Teyla sat gracefully perched at the edge of her seat. Having cried all her bitter tears in private, she sat still and silent, ready to perform he solemn duty to report the last gasping breaths of one Colonel John Sheppard.
“What happened, Teyla?” Elizabeth asked in a voice little more than a whisper. She tried to instill strength in her spine, telling herself this was no different than any other mission wherein they had lost valuable personnel—no man or woman on this expedition was any less important than the next—though, somehow, she could not bring herself to believe it.
“As we have discussed, these are a reclusive people,” Teyla began, as if to defend their ways. “They believe their ability to hide and the secrecy of their existence saves them from the Wraith. Indeed, their underground shelters have saved them in the past. While they refused all attempts at negotiations, they allowed us to leave without incident. At the time, we did not think them to be a violent people,” the woman slowly glanced to the Canadian scientist and the two shared a look of sorrow. When he broke eye contact, returning his sad attention back to the table, she directed her speech back to Elizabeth. “At first, we thought them merely frightened of our technological superiority, many worlds are wary of weapons such as ours. However, I think now that it may have been an act to lure us into a false confidence, so as to take us by surprise. I believe that they thought it would be easier to dispose of us if they did not fight us face to face.”
Elizabeth clamped down on the sore spot in the back of her throat. She was not going to cry. This. Was. No. Different.
“Scorched earth,” Rodney mumbled, rubbing at the edge of the table with his thumb.
Ronon raised a suspicious brow, looking between Elizabeth and Rodney. “Scorched earth?”
“A military policy famously employed by the Russians during the Napoleonic Wars,” replied the physicist. Some faint sense of confidence returned to him with the chance to recite from his mental encyclopedia. “The Russians could not face the invading French forces head on, so they fell into an organized retreat wherein they burned every city and every crop in Napoleon’s path. The French army eventually captured Moscow, but the harsh northern winter took them by storm—literally. Robbed of a reliable food supply and unused to the cold climate, Napoleon’s men fell to the hunger and the cold.” Rodney’s smile held no humor.
The Satedan stared at him with unblinking eyes. Major Lorne pointedly cleared his throat. “I think the point Dr. McKay is trying to make is that natural forces turned the tide of a war,” he scratched the side of his head. “I think the same principle applies here. The natives couldn’t take you on their own, so they torched the field hoping that would take care of the problem.”
“And it almost succeeded,” Teyla conceded softly. “The last ball of fire struck just before the Gate. Colonel Sheppard covered me when it struck ground, though he suffered grave injuries for it,” she paused a moment, swallowing her words. “The fire cut us off from the Stargate. With the inferno closing in on us and only moments to act, we had no choice but to run as far as we could,” her eyes dropped lower. “It was difficult work for him but we made it to a small stream that divided the field. It had dried considerably in the sparse rain. With the wind in our favor, I set a counter fire to burn away from us, keeping the greater fire at bay. It was by that fire that the natives found us. I knew that, with Colonel Sheppard as he was, I could not fight both them and the fires, so we surrendered and were taken back to their underground village. I think when they saw what they had done to the colonel up close… it changed them in some way. They took pity on him and did what they could with what they had, but…” her eyes fell again, dropping to the hands folded in her lap. Elizabeth wondered if Teyla recognized her own hands. “He looked so desperate, so tortured,” she coughed out her words, insistent they be heard yet unwilling to speak their truth. “His skin—burned, raw, and swelling—then the light in his eyes just…” she trailed off into harsh coughing. The team waited patiently as she gathered her composure. The smoke on 895 had been thick; Carson had all but explained what that could have done to her throat with its caustic breath. Teyla sniffed as her gaze returned to Elizabeth, that same noble determination in her watery eyes. “By the time Major Lorne’s team found the encampment at daylight—he was gone.”
No one dared speak for a sacred moment. No one dared make eye contact for fear they would impinge on something personal, something fragile. Each fell to his own memories, his own mourning.
Carson whispered a weak agreement. “Aye,” he added, his voice gaining strength as he tried to explain what had happened to the pilot in the only way he understood. He studied his tablet, as if reciting a prepared speech. “According to my preliminary observations, third degree burns over much of his body all but destroyed his nervous system, weakened his defenses and circulatory systems. Added to that, the consistency of the smoke in the air ripped up his lungs and throat, the heat of which caused severe…” Carson’s voice faded. The tablet slipped from his fingers. Frustrated, he clenched his eyes shut at his own lack of willpower. “Oh, I can’t do this,” he hissed. “It was incredibly painful—inhumane, if you ask me. Forgive me for stating it so coldly, but it is what it is. In that light, was merciful that he…” Carson cut himself off, realizing the harshness in what he was about to say. He pulled blue eyes away from Elizabeth, breathing deeply to cool his reddening cheeks.
“They let us return with him, against their better judgment,” Teyla returned. “Perhaps, that is something.” Elizabeth knew by the flickering pain in Teyla’s eyes that she mourned for both the colonel and his murderers.
Lorne shook his head and sat forward. “Anyone else think they did that just so we wouldn’t accidentally toss a nuke back through the Gate?” Ronon grunted something that sounded like an approval. Promptly, the major turned to Rodney. “We can still do that, can’t we?”
Rodney straightened and opened his mouth to answer, but Elizabeth cut him off. “Enough, Major,” she pressed, before turning to medical doctor and the Athosian leader, respectively. “Thank you, Carson. Thank you, Teyla. This has been one of the hardest a days I think we have ever had to face. John is… was… a good man, and a good friend. He did not deserve this,” her green eyes settled on the airman. “Nor do I think it would honor his memory to retaliate. If these people want their solitude so badly, then they shall have it. We will not offer them trade, nor will we make any effort to contact them again,” her gaze lingered on Major Lorne until he acknowledged her with a half-hearted nod of his head. “Now, I think it would be best if you all took some time off to recoup and get your thoughts together. Please, take whatever time you need.”
The others slowly nodded their consent before moving to take their leave. Elizabeth gathered her things quickly, a sharp yet hollow authority to her movements. She snatched up her tablet, rose and strode out of the conference room with hardly a look to the rest of John’s team. She did not mean to be rude or callous; she just had to get out of there, away from the confrontation, away from reality. Away.
She promised herself she wouldn’t cry when she reached her office. She would set down her tablet, draw up the proper papers, and dive in. She would say what she had to say to please who she had to please without showing any hint of how weak she felt on the inside. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered when she had lost the ability to lie to herself.
By Reyclou
Chapter Two: Song of Sorrow
A soft whining sound echoed through the massive Jumper bay as Jumper Three settled on the bay floor, announcing its return from a dismal duty. The copper-brown body of the craft was darkened by a layer of blackened soot; even the vessel’s wide windshield looked hopelessly filthy from flying through smoke and airborne grime. The rear hatch cracked open even before the craft came to a full rest, small avalanches of powdery ash spilling from the widening doorway. Elizabeth and a team of medical staff took a cautious step back as the short ramp fell into place, sending a cloud of fine debris wafting over the audience. Instinctively, hands covered mouths in vain attempt to keep from breathing in the vile stuff. The bright eyed woman, however, straightened against the cloud.
While they wasted little time in assembling a rescue team fit for fire duty, the intense fire had burned much longer than the control team had anticipated. Such fires could blaze for hours, as this one had done and then some. The flames danced and stormed across the landscape well into the night. Lorne’s team, willing to risk personal safety for quick salvation, sped back through the gate within the hour of Rodney and Ronon’s frazzled return. The brilliant light of the widespread fire gave them light enough to search by, but the fresh desolation of scalding ash did not ease their burden. Teams had to wade through burnt brush, careful to avoid hot spots, pulling back when the wind threatened to bring the fire down on them. Things looked up when the fist limb of the search revealed no bodies within the immediate area around the Gate, yet as the search dragged on through the 895 night, spirits began to sink. They found a shallow river a short distance from the Gate, but it looked as though the fire had already come and gone. If Teyla and John had been there, no sign of them remained. With the aid of the Jumper, Lorne’s team easily searched the area of land two people could have run given the conditions, but even flying just above the smoldering wreckage, they found nothing but the unforgiving wrath of nature—at least, until the sun found the dejected team on the native’s doorstep.
“Welcome back,” Elizabeth greeted as Major Lorne stepped down out of the bowls of the small vessel. Streaks of dirt and ash covered his clothes. Where wrinkles creased his youthful face, pale lines stood out against his blackened skin. Soot caked his hair, brown locks in desperate need of both a shower and a comb. If Elizabeth had not known better, she would have thought he was a fireman, though she did not know any fireman who carried military issue submachine guns strapped to their chest. Lorne returned her hail with an empty look in his blue eyes, as if he hand not heard her. Nervous, Elizabeth frowned at his hollow eyes. Lorne had a teddy-like quality about him, a boyish charm that never failed even in times of uncertain doom. He always tried to laugh off aggression, yet met it with no less determination, but that man was nowhere to be seen. The airman before her seemed a grizzled mockery of the amiable Major Lorne—beaten, battered, defeated. “…it’s good to have you back, Major.”
Lorne looked away before he responded with a soft, “Yeah,” and nothing more. His broad shoulders slouched in dismay, he strode away in search of a doctor and the hottest shower he could find. Elizabeth’s frown deepened before her eyes turned once again to the Jumper. She breathed a sigh of contented relief when, out of the dark of the ship, emerged a ruffled, filthy, but breathing Teyla Emmagan, a blanket wrapped around her dirtied shoulders. Her hair, which at one point had been pulled back in a tight ponytail, now hung in a limp, matted mess of dirt and sweat. Elizabeth ignored the smell of scorched hair, noting burns on the woman’s arms and streaks of black where flames had licked her smooth features. Her wounds appeared to be nothing gravely serious, but they were wounds that would take time and great pain to heal properly. Yet still, Teyla, ever the example of grace in chaos, held her head to a noble height.
“Oh my, Teyla!” Elizabeth rushed forward, offering the other woman a loose hug—careful not to aggravate unseen burns. Teyla accepted the embrace. “Are you okay?” she asked as she pulled away, studying where tears and sweat had cleared trails down Teyla’s bronze skin. What trials the younger woman had faced off-world had not been a happy experience. The phrase “hell and back again” came to Elizabeth’s mind. She did not think she truly understood those words until that moment.
Teyla nodded gracefully, if absently, brown doe-eyes looking lost but appreciative. “I am fine, Dr. Weir. Our captors did no further harm to me.”
“Captors?” Elizabeth exclaimed. “You were captured?”
“It is a long and difficult story, Doctor,” Teyla sighed, weariness in both her eyes and her tone. “The natives found us shortly after the fires broke out. They took us back to their village, intending to hold us there, but I believe they had a change of heart with they saw the Jumper.”
Elizabeth nodded, relieved that their long search was over at last. She said ‘our’ release. Elizabeth thought, elation coursing through her. So Lorne found them both, thank God! We can put all this miserable business behind us! Relief flooding her being, Elizabeth again straightened. “And Colonel Sheppard? How is he?” she asked, wondering why John had not been the first off the Jumper. If she knew him at all, he would be itching for a shower and a good night’s sleep in his own bed.
Teyla’s shoulders sagged, though she held strong to the resolve years as leader of her village had beaten into her. She took a moment to collect worried thoughts. Something sunk in Elizabeth’s gut, but she patiently waited for the woman to continue. Teyla’s eyes darted away for just a moment as she settled on her words. When her reply came, it came cool, practiced, but disheartened.
“Fear was not the sole factor in their decision to release us, Dr. Weir,” the Athosian swayed out of weariness, the saddest of words easily slipped from her lips—like poetry. “We were allowed to depart on humanitarian grounds; to care for our wounded,” her eyes fell and Teyla turned her head away from Elizabeth—downward, as if ashamed of her report, “And our dead.”
Green eyes darkened in confusion. “Dead?” Elizabeth whispered, just as another procession started down the short ramp of the Lantean Jumper. Carson walked at the head of a gurney, carefully guiding its precious cargo down to the Lantean bay. Like a father loosing his child, the doctor fought with all the ferocity in his heart to keep his patients alive and kicking, but when he lost that battle, Carson became quiet, morose, almost peaceful in his sorrow. Two nurses brought up the other end. Carson did not speak a single word as he descended the ramp. Indeed, no one made a sound as the somber scene unfolded before them. A black body bag lay on the gurney, the body within of tall height and noble stature. While the layers of polyethylene obscured the body’s features, the wells of pain in Carson’s eyes told all that he could not say.
John Sheppard was not coming home.
“No…” she whispered, moving to intercept the gurney. Carson held out caring arms to stop her, taking her by the elbow and guiding her away from the grim reality laid out for all to see. The two nurses took over, moving the gurney.
“No, love,” He cooed in his calm Scottish brogue. “You don’t want to remember him like this. Leave it to us, now.”
The cold feeling in her gut shot straight to her throat and Elizabeth lost the ability to speak. This just could not be happening. It had to be some kind of mistake—a trick, a prank—but no one laughed as the nurses wheeled on toward the infirmary—no, the morgue. How could this be? Teyla seemed fine, for all intents, but that thought left her mind almost before it arrived. She knew why. Teyla lived because of John, he had saved her.
He had died saving her.
As much as she wanted to push past Carson and run after the solemn team, she feared her legs would give out if she tried to move. Teyla put a comforting hand to her shoulder, lending her own strength in solidarity. Elizabeth wanted to acknowledge her—nod, smile, speak, anything—but she could do nothing but stand there, utterly shattered as the cart wheeled John away.
oOo
Elizabeth stared at the hands folded in her lap. They no longer seemed to be a part of her. They moved in a way foreign to her, looked ever so different, so old. She found a spot on her left hand that she had never noticed before, just between the two knuckles of her thumb. These had to be someone else’s hands tucked neatly into each other—someone else’s wrinkles, someone else’s nails, someone else’s life. Ever since Carson wheeled out that black bag on a silver stretcher, she just could not accept this turn in her life. Maybe she was still in bed, fast asleep. Any moment, she would jolt back to consciousness to find John trying to squish pennies in the sliding doors—or maybe she would find him kicking back in the common room. She wished she would wake up to some blaring klaxon and some urgent problem.
But not this. No, not this.
Not the briefing she had feared since she first recognized John as the military commander of Atlantis—the briefing in which she would force his team, his compatriots, to explain the intricacies of his demise. She would have to listen, have to file a report—a long drawn out report with forms and high speech. She would have to say things, distant things, things leaders said about their fallen subordinates. Some would be kind and truthful, others would be cold and decisive—things she had to say to put this all behind her, to do what was best for the city, to do what would please the military.
Lorne would take over, at least for now. It wasn’t that she had anything against the young major, she rather liked the man, but the military would not leave him in charge for long. They’d want someone older, wiser than and as far removed from John Sheppard as they could find. If they didn’t reassign Caldwell, the man they had originally picked to replace her first military commander—Colonel Sumner—they would find someone else, someone with medals, grey hair, and a dismal attitude. They would send her another Sumner, another Everett, someone who could take John’s job, but never John’s place. On paper, they would have a replacement, but no one they could send would ever live up to him. No, that void would remain for a long, long time.
Elizabeth stretched the hands that were not her own and looked up to meet the somber faces of Sheppard’s team, joined by Major Lorne and Dr. Beckett, in the circular conference room. Rodney stared at the edge of the conference table. Redness circled his eyes as automatic doors swung closed around them, sealing their voices from the public. Ronon, stoic and emotionless as ever, slumped idly in his chair, looking to the others but never keeping eye contact long enough to convey any sense of his thoughts. Major Lorne’s shower had done little to brighten his spirits, and the now unspoken mantle of ranking military officer weighed heavily on his broad shoulders. Carson—while quite familiar with death, yet still innately sensitive to it—took his time fiddling with his tablet, drawing up charts and signing off on this and that. Finally, Teyla sat gracefully perched at the edge of her seat. Having cried all her bitter tears in private, she sat still and silent, ready to perform he solemn duty to report the last gasping breaths of one Colonel John Sheppard.
“What happened, Teyla?” Elizabeth asked in a voice little more than a whisper. She tried to instill strength in her spine, telling herself this was no different than any other mission wherein they had lost valuable personnel—no man or woman on this expedition was any less important than the next—though, somehow, she could not bring herself to believe it.
“As we have discussed, these are a reclusive people,” Teyla began, as if to defend their ways. “They believe their ability to hide and the secrecy of their existence saves them from the Wraith. Indeed, their underground shelters have saved them in the past. While they refused all attempts at negotiations, they allowed us to leave without incident. At the time, we did not think them to be a violent people,” the woman slowly glanced to the Canadian scientist and the two shared a look of sorrow. When he broke eye contact, returning his sad attention back to the table, she directed her speech back to Elizabeth. “At first, we thought them merely frightened of our technological superiority, many worlds are wary of weapons such as ours. However, I think now that it may have been an act to lure us into a false confidence, so as to take us by surprise. I believe that they thought it would be easier to dispose of us if they did not fight us face to face.”
Elizabeth clamped down on the sore spot in the back of her throat. She was not going to cry. This. Was. No. Different.
“Scorched earth,” Rodney mumbled, rubbing at the edge of the table with his thumb.
Ronon raised a suspicious brow, looking between Elizabeth and Rodney. “Scorched earth?”
“A military policy famously employed by the Russians during the Napoleonic Wars,” replied the physicist. Some faint sense of confidence returned to him with the chance to recite from his mental encyclopedia. “The Russians could not face the invading French forces head on, so they fell into an organized retreat wherein they burned every city and every crop in Napoleon’s path. The French army eventually captured Moscow, but the harsh northern winter took them by storm—literally. Robbed of a reliable food supply and unused to the cold climate, Napoleon’s men fell to the hunger and the cold.” Rodney’s smile held no humor.
The Satedan stared at him with unblinking eyes. Major Lorne pointedly cleared his throat. “I think the point Dr. McKay is trying to make is that natural forces turned the tide of a war,” he scratched the side of his head. “I think the same principle applies here. The natives couldn’t take you on their own, so they torched the field hoping that would take care of the problem.”
“And it almost succeeded,” Teyla conceded softly. “The last ball of fire struck just before the Gate. Colonel Sheppard covered me when it struck ground, though he suffered grave injuries for it,” she paused a moment, swallowing her words. “The fire cut us off from the Stargate. With the inferno closing in on us and only moments to act, we had no choice but to run as far as we could,” her eyes dropped lower. “It was difficult work for him but we made it to a small stream that divided the field. It had dried considerably in the sparse rain. With the wind in our favor, I set a counter fire to burn away from us, keeping the greater fire at bay. It was by that fire that the natives found us. I knew that, with Colonel Sheppard as he was, I could not fight both them and the fires, so we surrendered and were taken back to their underground village. I think when they saw what they had done to the colonel up close… it changed them in some way. They took pity on him and did what they could with what they had, but…” her eyes fell again, dropping to the hands folded in her lap. Elizabeth wondered if Teyla recognized her own hands. “He looked so desperate, so tortured,” she coughed out her words, insistent they be heard yet unwilling to speak their truth. “His skin—burned, raw, and swelling—then the light in his eyes just…” she trailed off into harsh coughing. The team waited patiently as she gathered her composure. The smoke on 895 had been thick; Carson had all but explained what that could have done to her throat with its caustic breath. Teyla sniffed as her gaze returned to Elizabeth, that same noble determination in her watery eyes. “By the time Major Lorne’s team found the encampment at daylight—he was gone.”
No one dared speak for a sacred moment. No one dared make eye contact for fear they would impinge on something personal, something fragile. Each fell to his own memories, his own mourning.
Carson whispered a weak agreement. “Aye,” he added, his voice gaining strength as he tried to explain what had happened to the pilot in the only way he understood. He studied his tablet, as if reciting a prepared speech. “According to my preliminary observations, third degree burns over much of his body all but destroyed his nervous system, weakened his defenses and circulatory systems. Added to that, the consistency of the smoke in the air ripped up his lungs and throat, the heat of which caused severe…” Carson’s voice faded. The tablet slipped from his fingers. Frustrated, he clenched his eyes shut at his own lack of willpower. “Oh, I can’t do this,” he hissed. “It was incredibly painful—inhumane, if you ask me. Forgive me for stating it so coldly, but it is what it is. In that light, was merciful that he…” Carson cut himself off, realizing the harshness in what he was about to say. He pulled blue eyes away from Elizabeth, breathing deeply to cool his reddening cheeks.
“They let us return with him, against their better judgment,” Teyla returned. “Perhaps, that is something.” Elizabeth knew by the flickering pain in Teyla’s eyes that she mourned for both the colonel and his murderers.
Lorne shook his head and sat forward. “Anyone else think they did that just so we wouldn’t accidentally toss a nuke back through the Gate?” Ronon grunted something that sounded like an approval. Promptly, the major turned to Rodney. “We can still do that, can’t we?”
Rodney straightened and opened his mouth to answer, but Elizabeth cut him off. “Enough, Major,” she pressed, before turning to medical doctor and the Athosian leader, respectively. “Thank you, Carson. Thank you, Teyla. This has been one of the hardest a days I think we have ever had to face. John is… was… a good man, and a good friend. He did not deserve this,” her green eyes settled on the airman. “Nor do I think it would honor his memory to retaliate. If these people want their solitude so badly, then they shall have it. We will not offer them trade, nor will we make any effort to contact them again,” her gaze lingered on Major Lorne until he acknowledged her with a half-hearted nod of his head. “Now, I think it would be best if you all took some time off to recoup and get your thoughts together. Please, take whatever time you need.”
The others slowly nodded their consent before moving to take their leave. Elizabeth gathered her things quickly, a sharp yet hollow authority to her movements. She snatched up her tablet, rose and strode out of the conference room with hardly a look to the rest of John’s team. She did not mean to be rude or callous; she just had to get out of there, away from the confrontation, away from reality. Away.
She promised herself she wouldn’t cry when she reached her office. She would set down her tablet, draw up the proper papers, and dive in. She would say what she had to say to please who she had to please without showing any hint of how weak she felt on the inside. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered when she had lost the ability to lie to herself.