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TITLE: Partnership
SUMMARY: Until John arrived on the planet of the Combori, nobody in the Pegasus galaxy had suspected that this cheerful, friendly, trade-oriented people had been keepers of Ancient secrets and technology. Now he and his team-mates must prove their worthiness to take away that which the Ancients left in the Combori's keeping thousands of years ago.
CATEGORY: gen, action-adventure, drama
RATING: PG-13
WORD COUNT: ~13,000 words total, split into five parts
NOTES: Written for the 2007 Stargate Atlantis gen-and-het zine "Taking Flight II", published in May 2007 but up on the internet for the first time now. I'll be posting the other four parts over the next week. And for those of you who prefer SG1 gen-and-het, check out "The Other Life Unlived" over on my SG1 journal.
For other great Stargate Atlantis stories, gen and het, check out the "Taking Flight" and "Taking Flight II" zines by clicking on the graphic below.
Partnership - Part 1
The sun beat down mercilessly in the glittering sand of the Combori arena. John wished for his sunglasses as he squinted at the sky, trying to get their bearings from the combined position of the sun and the 'compass'-like thing he held in his hand that was supposed to point them towards the exit. "Remind me why we're doing this again?"
They were standing in an alien junkyard, with piles of abandoned and unused bits and pieces from a thousand Pegasus cultures. The Combori had been vague on how the setup had been put in place in the first place, and they hadn't inquired about it at the time, too interested in other aspects of the Combori culture to give it any kind of consideration.
John figured he could ask after all this was over. If he had breath to ask.
Just ahead of him, Teyla turned her head slightly, poised to listen for the approach of anything or anyone. "Because you were willing to take on the challenge."
It was an obvious answer to a rhetorical question. If this conversation had taken place two years ago, John would have suspected that Teyla didn't get it. Since it wasn't two years ago, he suspected that she was annoyed with him and deliberately playing obtuse.
John reflected that team-mates with a sense of the wry and a willingness to prod were hazardous to an Atlantis military commander's health.
"You've never seen Blade Runner, have you?" John asked as they reached a set of crossroads between piles of junk, pitching his voice low so it couldn't be picked up by the microphones that were apparently scattered through the terrain.
A quick, quizzical glance flashed his way, but Teyla otherwise kept her eyes watching for the hunters who were after them. "I have not," she said. "Although I believe the marines considered it a necessary part of Ronon's induction to Earth movies."
Yeah, John could believe that. "Remind me to show you it when we get back to Atlantis."
He squinted up at the brilliance of the sky, trying to determine where they were and how long they'd been in 'the arena'. They'd taken his watch, their weapons, and their vests, but allowed his dogtags after John demanded to know just what he could do with them - throw them at people?
They let him keep it.
Teyla touched his arm, brushing the bared skin below the sleeve of his t-shirt to gain his attention. "This way."
John followed her along the avenue she'd indicated, keeping his senses alert for the groups hunting them. According to the Combori challenge master, they would face at least one, possibly four of them, depending on how good he and Teyla were at evading or defeating each subsequent hunter group.
"You know, I agree with Rodney. I don't get how wandering this junkyard is going to prove us worthy of that ZPM."
Rodney's excitement upon discovering that the Combori possessed a 'glowing device of light' that was the pride and joy of their civilisation was only exceeded by the Combori Conclave's delight in discovering that 'the descendants of the Ancestors' had returned to Pegasus when John had brushed up against a wall.
However, as John's team soon discovered, it wasn't enough to just be the descendants of the Ancestors, the team actually had to prove their worthiness to reclaim the treasure.
Rodney had made the quip about reality TV, while John had immediately thought of quests for the holy grail.
The Combori had simply laid the challenges out before them.
Ronon had ended up fighting the Combori champion - a man at least as big as Ronon, and considerably more war-scarred. Exactly what war had scarred him, the Combori refused to say, but the man was good enough to give Ronon a challenge. They fought to a standstill, which seemed to be enough for the Combori.
Rodney had been presented with a crystal motherboard for one of the devices in the palace - broken for so many generations that the dust coating it would have put Vesuvius' Pompeii to shame. He'd scoffed at the apparent simplicity and started reconfiguring the motherboard for energy sources, only to find that the usual reconfiguration lattices didn't work. It had taken a bit of sweat, a lot of complaining, and some serious calming down of Rodney by Teyla before Rodney found a configuration that did work.
And then John and Teyla were sent into the arena.
It didn't look like any arena John had ever seen. It looked like an intergalactic tipyard, full of piles of junk through which threaded narrow paths - one of which John and Teyla were presently making their way along, their senses on the lookout for the hunters that were due to come after them any minute now.
John didn't really think it was a Blade Runner situation.
He was just feeling a bit edgy.
Apparently, the natives of P8X-975 had been known to both Athosian and Satedan for generations - a society that was moderately advanced in technology, but willing to live at a lower technological standard than they could achieve in order to survive the Wraith cullings. However, until AR-1 arrived on the planet, with two members possessing the ATA gene, nobody in the Pegasus galaxy had suspected that the cheerful, friendly, trade-oriented Combori had been keepers of Ancient secrets and technology.
Of which the most prized and most carefully-guarded was a ZPM.
They refused to show it to them, of course. But Rodney's awkwardly-drawn diagram elicited a general nodding of heads from the Conclave. Yes, they had one of those devices. But they were not permitted to give it to just anybody.
"The Combori have been keeping this secret for many generations, John," said Teyla. "You would be cautious, too."
"I don't like it," he murmured as they passed an outcropping of something that looked like crushed car parts, squeezed into rough shapes by forces unknown. Some of the parts looked familiar in a 'I remember seeing those when they used to be whole' kind of way. "Are those Wraith darts?"
Teyla didn't give them anything more than a cursory glance. "They appear to be."
John grimaced, thinking that maybe he shouldn't have let Rodney enthuse him into this. While his friend was a whiner and a grump and a pessimist, the one thing that got him really fired up was Ancient technology and the possibility of a ZPM. And then he became a whiner and a cajoler and a nuisance. "You know, when we get out of this, I'm going to be asking these Combori some really pointed questions."
He caught only the corner of her smile, the diffuse sunlight sliding tan-gold along the line of her jaw an instant before the white-clad hunters whirled out of their concealed hiding spots.
The white clothing was blinding on the eyes - probably intended that way. John only just saw the blow that came at him, and felt the jarring stress of blocking it too late and without sufficient leverage.
He shoved the other man - he presumed it was a man - back, trying to give himself space to see and counter any attacks. Teyla was drawing her attacker away from them - a good tactical move if there weren't more of them around.
John didn't know if there were more of them around. There was no way of telling - the Combori hadn't been so helpful as to tell them how many people were featured in the hunting groups after him and Teyla.
In fact, they'd been quiet on a lot more points than John liked.
He didn't keep an eye on Teyla - she was capable of looking after herself, and if her opponent was more than she could handle then John was in trouble anyway. The guy coming after him seemed more than a match for John - slimmer, yes, but with the wiry kind of muscle that told of significant strength.
Like a ninja without the nunchuks, John thought to himself. Don't close with him. If it came down to wrestling, John would lose. He couldn't watch the chest for the next move, the swathing white was an effective cover. So watch his eyes and try to think ahead.
The man tried to close with him, but John spun him off, using a technique he'd learned against Ronon. Grab the upper arms, swing around, and use momentum to throw him off by stepping aside. It had meant hours of humiliation and training with the younger, fitter man, but as John sidestepped and shoved, he figured it was worth it.
White Ninja Guy only gave further proof to his name by neatly rolling down into the dust over one shoulder and getting up without so much as an 'oof'. He rose nimbly and planted his feet wide in a fighter's crouch. John wondered if he and Teyla could make a run for it, then dismissed the idea.
I'm better with a gun in my hand, he thought as he fell into a matching stance, knees bent, ready to take on an opponent.
White Ninja Guy feinted to the left, John countered him. He tried grabbing hold of the hand that lashed out at him to use as leverage, but the cloth was slippery and slid out from under his fingers. John circled around, trying to work out how to turn this to his advantage.
Okay. Let's close and try something, then... John feinted off to the side, then stepped back. When White Ninja Guy began to follow through on on the defence, John lunged forward, grabbing the man's torso, then twisting them both sideways. The ninja's leg hit the low railing sticking out of a nearby heap, taking them both down amidst a cloud of dust and a clatter of metal parts.
Landing on top of them both, John made use of his advantage and lifted a fist. "Yield." It was allegedly the standard response for defeat of a hunter.
"Yielded," came the husky reply, slightly breathless.
John backed off and turned to see how Teyla was doing.
Of course, she'd already defeated her opponent. She was standing over the kneeling form of the other ninja, with a gun-like weapon pointed at the man's nape. One hand brushed a wisp of hair from her face, with all the nonchalance of a woman who'd just taken a stroll and had the wind blow her hair awry. Very little fazed Teyla. "Your opponent should have a weapon, also, John."
Rather than search the other guy, John moved out of Teyla's line of fire. "Keep a bead on him." Then he turned to look at the man. "Well?"
White Ninja Guy shrugged. "I left it behind at the ambush point over there." He indicated with one hand, still sitting in the dust, his arms around his knees as casually as if he hadn't just fought in the blazing sun. John wondered if there wasn't something in the Lawrence of Arabia robes: the damp patches of his shirt were making themselves known to his skin.
"Right." But John didn't turn around to search. The other man might have yielded, but it went against John's grain to leave an opponent behind him. It was a game, but there wasn't any reason not to treat it as though it was real life. "Teyla..."
"The weapons numb the senses," she said. "A headshot will temporarily paralyse."
John was surprised. "He told you?"
"Ronon was taking an interest in the Combori weapons before you discovered they possessed the technology of the Ancestors."
John vaguely remembered Ronon's deep rumble behind him as Rodney asked various questions of the Combori. He'd heard something about optimum firing phase and had been about to turn around when they reached a room that lit up like a firecracker at John's entry.
Things had gotten a little hectic aftter that.
Both Teyla and her prisoners were waiting for John's decision.
He frowned down at the yellow dust around his feet, thinking. "How temporary is the paralysis?"
"Three thousand heartbeats," answered White Ninja Guy. "A little more for some, a little less for others."
John did some rough math in his head. "Thirty minutes." It would give them enough time to get away. "Is there anything you'd like to share with us before we shoot you?"
White Ninja Guy smiled. "Winning is not the end and all of what you face, John Sheppard."
"That's it?"
The man's smile was a gleaming flash of teeth in a face burned brown by the sun's intensity. A moment later, there was a soft hiss, and a rippling wave of something that hit him squarely in the head. He collapsed like he'd been dealt a blow to the skull, lolling sideways into the dust. A moment later, Teyla was easing her prisoner down to the ground and arranging the folds of his headcloth over his face so he wouldn't end up with a mouthful of dust.
John did the same for White Ninja Guy, as well as arranging the guy so he was on his back and performing a rough search for another one of the weapon Teyla had.
"He said he left it behind at the ambush point," Teyla said, indicating the place from which the white-clad attackers had appeared.
"We'll want to move on fast," noted John as he searched the shapes and patterns of the rubble, seeking the curving lines of the device Teyla had. "Can't see it."
Teyla took two steps over. "We have one weapon."
"I'd prefer it if we had one weapon each," he said with an envious glance at the slim, needle-pointed device she held.
"We do not," she said with her typical practicality and no sign that she was about to surrender the weapon to John. "Should we not keep moving?"
As they moved down the avenue, keeping an eye on the sun and their surroundings, John let Teyla draw slightly in front, fighting down the urge to argue that he should have the weapon and she should navigate. It went against the grain to leave someone else in control of the situation - even someone he trusted.
However, he noted that she'd turned her body away from him to cover the angles he wasn't watching. John had never worked out if Ford had explained it to her, or if she'd just picked it up while on his team. There was no telling with Teyla.
Does it really matter? He asked himself as they passed what looked like the collective volume of thrown-out wiring from the SGC. She's on the lookout, all you have to do is be prepared for the next attack.
It didn't stop him from feeling uncomfortably exposed.
"Did I mention that I hate feeling like I'm in an episode of Big Brother?" John asked.
"Was it not Blade Runner that you referenced?" Teyla inquired wryly.
"It's the same thing. Mostly. Except less people die in Big Brother. Usually."
Teyla rested her hip against a broken stone column and used it as shelter to check around the corner. "You believe that we are likely to die in this encounter?"
He indicated the direction the compass was pointing them. "No. I just have the feeling they haven't told us everything."
They quickly made their way around the corner and through the intersection that followed. "And you did not mention this earlier?"
"No one tells us everything, Teyla. It's endemic around here. Like exactly where we're supposed to go, how long it's going to take us to get there, and how we're going to get there other than following the compass." John's automatically lowered his voice as it echoed too loudly off a nearby metal box. "You know, Requisitions And Supply would love this place."
"Removing them from this place would be like whipping starving herdbeasts from the feed." Teyla said, pausing to flash him a small smile.
John lifted an eyebrow at the saying. Teyla didn't often descend into idiom, but when she did, it was remarkable. And usually a sign that she was tired or annoyed. Since he was pretty sure he hadn't done anything too offensive lately, it probably meant she wasn't at her best. "Do you want me to take point and you navigate for a while?" The fact that he would rather have been point had nothing to do with his question.
She stepped into the shadow of a stone column twice her height to take the sun out of her eyes, and John did the same on his side of the path.
His movement was probably what 'saved' him. The flash of pain in his shoulder was all the warning he had.
His cry of pain as he moved out of the narrow pathway was all the warning Teyla had.
Against the loose slats in the top of the board that hid him from the weapons fire, John took a quick inventory. His right shoulder felt both hot and numb - although he had no idea how that was possible - and his arm wasn't lifting, although his fingers were still clutching the compass. That was a visual check, not a tactile one - he could see the compass in his hand, he just couldn't feel his fingers around it. It was unnerving.
The hissing noise of the weapons discharge from nearby suggested that Teyla was firing back. "John?"
"I'm fine." If fine could be counted as having a shoulder that wasn't working and felt numb along the upper arm, and achey at shoulder and elbow.
"I cannot see them," she said, her back against the column before she spun out and fired off a couple more shots. "Not to aim. Can you?"
John glanced behind him, his back up against a wooden boardlike object with some slatting up the top. Mindful of his shoulder, he shifted himself and tried to see out the slatting. Now, more than ever, John regretted that he hadn't offered to take point in the first place. Teyla was a cool head and a good shot, but didn't have the sniping experience John did. If he'd still been able to shoot, then he would have asked for the weapon off her and done it himself.
"Got any idea how many of them there are?"
"I count at least three," came her answer.
Right. John peered through the slat as Teyla continued firing, mostly blind. He thought he glimpsed one as the man ducked out from behind his shelter. "Ten o'clock," he said. "Behind a reddish metal drum." He glanced across at her. Teyla had taken shelter behind the column again, but her eyes were staring up at the sky.
Worried, John glanced over his shoulder, looking for signs that someone had set up an ambush to come at them from behind. Everything in that direction was silent. "Teyla?"
She spun out from behind the column, setting her sights in the direction of the red drum. John counted four shots before someone managed a return volley and she slipped back into shelter again. A quick peek through the slats showed one down. A white-clad arm was visible by the drum.
"Good shooting," he said as he scoped out the rest of the terrain, looking for the others. "Two-thirty, up high. I think he has a bolt hole. Leave him for the moment..." He waited for the next set of shots, trying to internalise the sounds around him, the noises of the arena and anything that might be out of place.
Teyla slipped out and fired a couple of shots, then slipped back in again.
"Another one?"
"I believe so, Colonel." She was staring up at the sky again.
"What are you doing?" When Teyla looked at him, surprised, John elaborated. "You keep staring up at the sky."
Understanding dawned. "I am visualising where I must shoot."
"Oh." John turned back to the slats before curiosity took hold of him. "Do you usually do that?"
"When I fire? Much of the time, yes. Why?"
He shrugged. "Just wondering."
Teyla turned and fired a few more times, but not responding fire came back. They looked at each other. "Perhaps they have retreated?"
A quick glance through his peephole showed nothing - not even the white-clad hand that had been sticking out. "It's hard to tell. They've backed off for the moment - taken their 'dead' with them."
Her gaze rested on his shoulder. "Your shoulder?"
John rolled it - or tried to. It jerked a little, and the ache renewed itself, allowing itself to be noticed now that he wasn't in the middle of a firefight without a weapon. He tested his fingers around the compass and discovered he could move them, even if he wasn't feeling anything from them. "Looks like I won't be good for much other than holding the compass," he said, switching the compass from one hand to the other by sight rather than by kinesthetic sense.
Teyla didn't disagree, which irked him a little - irrationally, maybe, but irked all the same.
It was Teyla's thought to check the area around the red drum, just in case they'd left behind another weapon, but there was nothing there.
"Guess we continue on, then," John muttered.
- tbc -
Part 2
SUMMARY: Until John arrived on the planet of the Combori, nobody in the Pegasus galaxy had suspected that this cheerful, friendly, trade-oriented people had been keepers of Ancient secrets and technology. Now he and his team-mates must prove their worthiness to take away that which the Ancients left in the Combori's keeping thousands of years ago.
CATEGORY: gen, action-adventure, drama
RATING: PG-13
WORD COUNT: ~13,000 words total, split into five parts
NOTES: Written for the 2007 Stargate Atlantis gen-and-het zine "Taking Flight II", published in May 2007 but up on the internet for the first time now. I'll be posting the other four parts over the next week. And for those of you who prefer SG1 gen-and-het, check out "The Other Life Unlived" over on my SG1 journal.
For other great Stargate Atlantis stories, gen and het, check out the "Taking Flight" and "Taking Flight II" zines by clicking on the graphic below.
Partnership - Part 1
The sun beat down mercilessly in the glittering sand of the Combori arena. John wished for his sunglasses as he squinted at the sky, trying to get their bearings from the combined position of the sun and the 'compass'-like thing he held in his hand that was supposed to point them towards the exit. "Remind me why we're doing this again?"
They were standing in an alien junkyard, with piles of abandoned and unused bits and pieces from a thousand Pegasus cultures. The Combori had been vague on how the setup had been put in place in the first place, and they hadn't inquired about it at the time, too interested in other aspects of the Combori culture to give it any kind of consideration.
John figured he could ask after all this was over. If he had breath to ask.
Just ahead of him, Teyla turned her head slightly, poised to listen for the approach of anything or anyone. "Because you were willing to take on the challenge."
It was an obvious answer to a rhetorical question. If this conversation had taken place two years ago, John would have suspected that Teyla didn't get it. Since it wasn't two years ago, he suspected that she was annoyed with him and deliberately playing obtuse.
John reflected that team-mates with a sense of the wry and a willingness to prod were hazardous to an Atlantis military commander's health.
"You've never seen Blade Runner, have you?" John asked as they reached a set of crossroads between piles of junk, pitching his voice low so it couldn't be picked up by the microphones that were apparently scattered through the terrain.
A quick, quizzical glance flashed his way, but Teyla otherwise kept her eyes watching for the hunters who were after them. "I have not," she said. "Although I believe the marines considered it a necessary part of Ronon's induction to Earth movies."
Yeah, John could believe that. "Remind me to show you it when we get back to Atlantis."
He squinted up at the brilliance of the sky, trying to determine where they were and how long they'd been in 'the arena'. They'd taken his watch, their weapons, and their vests, but allowed his dogtags after John demanded to know just what he could do with them - throw them at people?
They let him keep it.
Teyla touched his arm, brushing the bared skin below the sleeve of his t-shirt to gain his attention. "This way."
John followed her along the avenue she'd indicated, keeping his senses alert for the groups hunting them. According to the Combori challenge master, they would face at least one, possibly four of them, depending on how good he and Teyla were at evading or defeating each subsequent hunter group.
"You know, I agree with Rodney. I don't get how wandering this junkyard is going to prove us worthy of that ZPM."
Rodney's excitement upon discovering that the Combori possessed a 'glowing device of light' that was the pride and joy of their civilisation was only exceeded by the Combori Conclave's delight in discovering that 'the descendants of the Ancestors' had returned to Pegasus when John had brushed up against a wall.
However, as John's team soon discovered, it wasn't enough to just be the descendants of the Ancestors, the team actually had to prove their worthiness to reclaim the treasure.
Rodney had made the quip about reality TV, while John had immediately thought of quests for the holy grail.
The Combori had simply laid the challenges out before them.
Ronon had ended up fighting the Combori champion - a man at least as big as Ronon, and considerably more war-scarred. Exactly what war had scarred him, the Combori refused to say, but the man was good enough to give Ronon a challenge. They fought to a standstill, which seemed to be enough for the Combori.
Rodney had been presented with a crystal motherboard for one of the devices in the palace - broken for so many generations that the dust coating it would have put Vesuvius' Pompeii to shame. He'd scoffed at the apparent simplicity and started reconfiguring the motherboard for energy sources, only to find that the usual reconfiguration lattices didn't work. It had taken a bit of sweat, a lot of complaining, and some serious calming down of Rodney by Teyla before Rodney found a configuration that did work.
And then John and Teyla were sent into the arena.
It didn't look like any arena John had ever seen. It looked like an intergalactic tipyard, full of piles of junk through which threaded narrow paths - one of which John and Teyla were presently making their way along, their senses on the lookout for the hunters that were due to come after them any minute now.
John didn't really think it was a Blade Runner situation.
He was just feeling a bit edgy.
Apparently, the natives of P8X-975 had been known to both Athosian and Satedan for generations - a society that was moderately advanced in technology, but willing to live at a lower technological standard than they could achieve in order to survive the Wraith cullings. However, until AR-1 arrived on the planet, with two members possessing the ATA gene, nobody in the Pegasus galaxy had suspected that the cheerful, friendly, trade-oriented Combori had been keepers of Ancient secrets and technology.
Of which the most prized and most carefully-guarded was a ZPM.
They refused to show it to them, of course. But Rodney's awkwardly-drawn diagram elicited a general nodding of heads from the Conclave. Yes, they had one of those devices. But they were not permitted to give it to just anybody.
"The Combori have been keeping this secret for many generations, John," said Teyla. "You would be cautious, too."
"I don't like it," he murmured as they passed an outcropping of something that looked like crushed car parts, squeezed into rough shapes by forces unknown. Some of the parts looked familiar in a 'I remember seeing those when they used to be whole' kind of way. "Are those Wraith darts?"
Teyla didn't give them anything more than a cursory glance. "They appear to be."
John grimaced, thinking that maybe he shouldn't have let Rodney enthuse him into this. While his friend was a whiner and a grump and a pessimist, the one thing that got him really fired up was Ancient technology and the possibility of a ZPM. And then he became a whiner and a cajoler and a nuisance. "You know, when we get out of this, I'm going to be asking these Combori some really pointed questions."
He caught only the corner of her smile, the diffuse sunlight sliding tan-gold along the line of her jaw an instant before the white-clad hunters whirled out of their concealed hiding spots.
The white clothing was blinding on the eyes - probably intended that way. John only just saw the blow that came at him, and felt the jarring stress of blocking it too late and without sufficient leverage.
He shoved the other man - he presumed it was a man - back, trying to give himself space to see and counter any attacks. Teyla was drawing her attacker away from them - a good tactical move if there weren't more of them around.
John didn't know if there were more of them around. There was no way of telling - the Combori hadn't been so helpful as to tell them how many people were featured in the hunting groups after him and Teyla.
In fact, they'd been quiet on a lot more points than John liked.
He didn't keep an eye on Teyla - she was capable of looking after herself, and if her opponent was more than she could handle then John was in trouble anyway. The guy coming after him seemed more than a match for John - slimmer, yes, but with the wiry kind of muscle that told of significant strength.
Like a ninja without the nunchuks, John thought to himself. Don't close with him. If it came down to wrestling, John would lose. He couldn't watch the chest for the next move, the swathing white was an effective cover. So watch his eyes and try to think ahead.
The man tried to close with him, but John spun him off, using a technique he'd learned against Ronon. Grab the upper arms, swing around, and use momentum to throw him off by stepping aside. It had meant hours of humiliation and training with the younger, fitter man, but as John sidestepped and shoved, he figured it was worth it.
White Ninja Guy only gave further proof to his name by neatly rolling down into the dust over one shoulder and getting up without so much as an 'oof'. He rose nimbly and planted his feet wide in a fighter's crouch. John wondered if he and Teyla could make a run for it, then dismissed the idea.
I'm better with a gun in my hand, he thought as he fell into a matching stance, knees bent, ready to take on an opponent.
White Ninja Guy feinted to the left, John countered him. He tried grabbing hold of the hand that lashed out at him to use as leverage, but the cloth was slippery and slid out from under his fingers. John circled around, trying to work out how to turn this to his advantage.
Okay. Let's close and try something, then... John feinted off to the side, then stepped back. When White Ninja Guy began to follow through on on the defence, John lunged forward, grabbing the man's torso, then twisting them both sideways. The ninja's leg hit the low railing sticking out of a nearby heap, taking them both down amidst a cloud of dust and a clatter of metal parts.
Landing on top of them both, John made use of his advantage and lifted a fist. "Yield." It was allegedly the standard response for defeat of a hunter.
"Yielded," came the husky reply, slightly breathless.
John backed off and turned to see how Teyla was doing.
Of course, she'd already defeated her opponent. She was standing over the kneeling form of the other ninja, with a gun-like weapon pointed at the man's nape. One hand brushed a wisp of hair from her face, with all the nonchalance of a woman who'd just taken a stroll and had the wind blow her hair awry. Very little fazed Teyla. "Your opponent should have a weapon, also, John."
Rather than search the other guy, John moved out of Teyla's line of fire. "Keep a bead on him." Then he turned to look at the man. "Well?"
White Ninja Guy shrugged. "I left it behind at the ambush point over there." He indicated with one hand, still sitting in the dust, his arms around his knees as casually as if he hadn't just fought in the blazing sun. John wondered if there wasn't something in the Lawrence of Arabia robes: the damp patches of his shirt were making themselves known to his skin.
"Right." But John didn't turn around to search. The other man might have yielded, but it went against John's grain to leave an opponent behind him. It was a game, but there wasn't any reason not to treat it as though it was real life. "Teyla..."
"The weapons numb the senses," she said. "A headshot will temporarily paralyse."
John was surprised. "He told you?"
"Ronon was taking an interest in the Combori weapons before you discovered they possessed the technology of the Ancestors."
John vaguely remembered Ronon's deep rumble behind him as Rodney asked various questions of the Combori. He'd heard something about optimum firing phase and had been about to turn around when they reached a room that lit up like a firecracker at John's entry.
Things had gotten a little hectic aftter that.
Both Teyla and her prisoners were waiting for John's decision.
He frowned down at the yellow dust around his feet, thinking. "How temporary is the paralysis?"
"Three thousand heartbeats," answered White Ninja Guy. "A little more for some, a little less for others."
John did some rough math in his head. "Thirty minutes." It would give them enough time to get away. "Is there anything you'd like to share with us before we shoot you?"
White Ninja Guy smiled. "Winning is not the end and all of what you face, John Sheppard."
"That's it?"
The man's smile was a gleaming flash of teeth in a face burned brown by the sun's intensity. A moment later, there was a soft hiss, and a rippling wave of something that hit him squarely in the head. He collapsed like he'd been dealt a blow to the skull, lolling sideways into the dust. A moment later, Teyla was easing her prisoner down to the ground and arranging the folds of his headcloth over his face so he wouldn't end up with a mouthful of dust.
John did the same for White Ninja Guy, as well as arranging the guy so he was on his back and performing a rough search for another one of the weapon Teyla had.
"He said he left it behind at the ambush point," Teyla said, indicating the place from which the white-clad attackers had appeared.
"We'll want to move on fast," noted John as he searched the shapes and patterns of the rubble, seeking the curving lines of the device Teyla had. "Can't see it."
Teyla took two steps over. "We have one weapon."
"I'd prefer it if we had one weapon each," he said with an envious glance at the slim, needle-pointed device she held.
"We do not," she said with her typical practicality and no sign that she was about to surrender the weapon to John. "Should we not keep moving?"
As they moved down the avenue, keeping an eye on the sun and their surroundings, John let Teyla draw slightly in front, fighting down the urge to argue that he should have the weapon and she should navigate. It went against the grain to leave someone else in control of the situation - even someone he trusted.
However, he noted that she'd turned her body away from him to cover the angles he wasn't watching. John had never worked out if Ford had explained it to her, or if she'd just picked it up while on his team. There was no telling with Teyla.
Does it really matter? He asked himself as they passed what looked like the collective volume of thrown-out wiring from the SGC. She's on the lookout, all you have to do is be prepared for the next attack.
It didn't stop him from feeling uncomfortably exposed.
"Did I mention that I hate feeling like I'm in an episode of Big Brother?" John asked.
"Was it not Blade Runner that you referenced?" Teyla inquired wryly.
"It's the same thing. Mostly. Except less people die in Big Brother. Usually."
Teyla rested her hip against a broken stone column and used it as shelter to check around the corner. "You believe that we are likely to die in this encounter?"
He indicated the direction the compass was pointing them. "No. I just have the feeling they haven't told us everything."
They quickly made their way around the corner and through the intersection that followed. "And you did not mention this earlier?"
"No one tells us everything, Teyla. It's endemic around here. Like exactly where we're supposed to go, how long it's going to take us to get there, and how we're going to get there other than following the compass." John's automatically lowered his voice as it echoed too loudly off a nearby metal box. "You know, Requisitions And Supply would love this place."
"Removing them from this place would be like whipping starving herdbeasts from the feed." Teyla said, pausing to flash him a small smile.
John lifted an eyebrow at the saying. Teyla didn't often descend into idiom, but when she did, it was remarkable. And usually a sign that she was tired or annoyed. Since he was pretty sure he hadn't done anything too offensive lately, it probably meant she wasn't at her best. "Do you want me to take point and you navigate for a while?" The fact that he would rather have been point had nothing to do with his question.
She stepped into the shadow of a stone column twice her height to take the sun out of her eyes, and John did the same on his side of the path.
His movement was probably what 'saved' him. The flash of pain in his shoulder was all the warning he had.
His cry of pain as he moved out of the narrow pathway was all the warning Teyla had.
Against the loose slats in the top of the board that hid him from the weapons fire, John took a quick inventory. His right shoulder felt both hot and numb - although he had no idea how that was possible - and his arm wasn't lifting, although his fingers were still clutching the compass. That was a visual check, not a tactile one - he could see the compass in his hand, he just couldn't feel his fingers around it. It was unnerving.
The hissing noise of the weapons discharge from nearby suggested that Teyla was firing back. "John?"
"I'm fine." If fine could be counted as having a shoulder that wasn't working and felt numb along the upper arm, and achey at shoulder and elbow.
"I cannot see them," she said, her back against the column before she spun out and fired off a couple more shots. "Not to aim. Can you?"
John glanced behind him, his back up against a wooden boardlike object with some slatting up the top. Mindful of his shoulder, he shifted himself and tried to see out the slatting. Now, more than ever, John regretted that he hadn't offered to take point in the first place. Teyla was a cool head and a good shot, but didn't have the sniping experience John did. If he'd still been able to shoot, then he would have asked for the weapon off her and done it himself.
"Got any idea how many of them there are?"
"I count at least three," came her answer.
Right. John peered through the slat as Teyla continued firing, mostly blind. He thought he glimpsed one as the man ducked out from behind his shelter. "Ten o'clock," he said. "Behind a reddish metal drum." He glanced across at her. Teyla had taken shelter behind the column again, but her eyes were staring up at the sky.
Worried, John glanced over his shoulder, looking for signs that someone had set up an ambush to come at them from behind. Everything in that direction was silent. "Teyla?"
She spun out from behind the column, setting her sights in the direction of the red drum. John counted four shots before someone managed a return volley and she slipped back into shelter again. A quick peek through the slats showed one down. A white-clad arm was visible by the drum.
"Good shooting," he said as he scoped out the rest of the terrain, looking for the others. "Two-thirty, up high. I think he has a bolt hole. Leave him for the moment..." He waited for the next set of shots, trying to internalise the sounds around him, the noises of the arena and anything that might be out of place.
Teyla slipped out and fired a couple of shots, then slipped back in again.
"Another one?"
"I believe so, Colonel." She was staring up at the sky again.
"What are you doing?" When Teyla looked at him, surprised, John elaborated. "You keep staring up at the sky."
Understanding dawned. "I am visualising where I must shoot."
"Oh." John turned back to the slats before curiosity took hold of him. "Do you usually do that?"
"When I fire? Much of the time, yes. Why?"
He shrugged. "Just wondering."
Teyla turned and fired a few more times, but not responding fire came back. They looked at each other. "Perhaps they have retreated?"
A quick glance through his peephole showed nothing - not even the white-clad hand that had been sticking out. "It's hard to tell. They've backed off for the moment - taken their 'dead' with them."
Her gaze rested on his shoulder. "Your shoulder?"
John rolled it - or tried to. It jerked a little, and the ache renewed itself, allowing itself to be noticed now that he wasn't in the middle of a firefight without a weapon. He tested his fingers around the compass and discovered he could move them, even if he wasn't feeling anything from them. "Looks like I won't be good for much other than holding the compass," he said, switching the compass from one hand to the other by sight rather than by kinesthetic sense.
Teyla didn't disagree, which irked him a little - irrationally, maybe, but irked all the same.
It was Teyla's thought to check the area around the red drum, just in case they'd left behind another weapon, but there was nothing there.
"Guess we continue on, then," John muttered.
- tbc -
Part 2