SGA-14 Death Game Read online

  He went to the back of the jumper and looked out at the cool desert night, leaning on the doorframe tiredly. Right. Just a minute, and then he’d wake up Lorne and tell him they were ready to go.

  “Are you ok?” Cadman asked softly, her P90 slung against her.

  “Yes,” Rodney said.

  “You look really tired,” Cadman said.

  “Yes, of course I look really tired! I’ve been up for nearly 48 hours!” he snapped.

  “I know,” she said. “You’re really persistent. I have to say that I respect that a lot, the way you stand by your friends.” Cadman shrugged. “Like they stood by you when you and me… When we had that problem.”

  Rodney looked at her, wondering for a moment if she was making fun of him, but her eyes were entirely honest. “Thanks,” he said. It wasn’t like he got many compliments. Not from military and not from women. He expected her to be making fun of him, but she didn’t look like it at all.

  Cadman glanced at him sideways. “I guess we kind of got off to a bad start, huh?”

  “You could call that a bad start,” Rodney said. “But it might be the understatement of the year.”

  “I was actually trying to help you with Katie Brown,” she said. “I mean, I know you really like her and it’s not that you’re a jerk. It’s just that you’re shy and you expect rejection.”

  Rodney blinked. “Did I ask you for psychoanalysis?” he managed.

  “I bet you were the kind of guy who could never get a date in high school and college, which is a shame. You’ve got a lot going for you, under the surface.” Cadman gave him an encouraging smile while Rodney stood there speechless. “Thinking about it now, maybe you thought I was trying to embarrass you or pick on you, and I just wanted you to know that I wasn’t. I think you and Katie would make a great couple. And if you’d ever like any advice or anything, I’d be happy to.”

  “You’re crazy,” Rodney sputtered.

  “Maybe it would help if I told Katie what happened and apologized?” Cadman said. “It’s the least I can do. I’m really sorry if I screwed it up for you, Rodney.”

  “What, because she thinks I’m a mental case?” Rodney demanded. “Yes, that might screw it up just a little!”

  “That was totally my fault,” Cadman said. “I tell you what. When we get back, I’ll go find Katie and explain. That way she’ll know you’re not schizophrenic or something.”

  She was probably making fun of him. She’d say she was going to do that, but it would turn out to be a big joke, and he’d think she was being nice but really she and Katie would be laughing at him behind his back. That’s what always happened. You think a woman likes you, but she’s really telling her friends what a fool you are, passing notes in the back of class and rolling her eyes.

  But Cadman looked serious. If she was playing that game, she was really good at it.

  “Sure,” Rodney said shortly. “Whatever. When we get back. If we get back. I think I’ve got the jumper working again, but if we run into the cruiser we’re screwed anyhow. It’s got a lot more firepower than we do. But at least we can die in the air.”

  Cadman gave him a little smile. “Then I guess we’re ready, huh?”

  “Yes,” Rodney said. “We’re ready.”

  “Maybe you could take a little nap in the back of the jumper while we’re on the way,” she suggested.

  “It’s not that long a flight,” Rodney said, but he had to admit it sounded appealing. While Cadman went outside to tell Lorne the repairs were finished, he sat down in the chair behind the pilot’s seat. Maybe he could just close his eyes for a minute while Lorne herded cats.

  He was asleep in thirty seconds.

  Chapter Twelve

  In the cold hours before dawn, Teyla woke. She thought she heard the quiet sound of the jumper’s engine, but when she jolted to wakefulness it wasn’t there. It was a long moment before she remembered where she was, and why there was not the breathing quiet of Atlantis’ ventilation systems.

  She was in Pelagia in the palace, and Atlantis was far away. The night was silent. There was the distant sound of a dog barking in the city, the rustling of the palm leaves in the garden below. Other than that, there was no sound.

  John Sheppard stood beside the window, the moonlight gleaming off the white bandage on his brow, though his black shirt blended with the shadows. Whatever had wakened him, he did not perceive it as a threat. A threat would have showed in tension in every line of his body, in that questing expression he got, like a hound on a scent. Instead, he looked almost relaxed, leaning against the window frame, looking out into the night.

  Teyla sat up, running her hands over her face to banish sleep from her eyes.

  He looked around sheepishly. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. His hair was mussed and the back was sticking up even more than usual. “For some reason it’s kind of hard to settle down when you’re not sure if you’re a prisoner or not.”

  “You are worrying about Rodney and the rescue team,” Teyla said.

  “They would have been here by now if they weren’t in trouble themselves,” John said, shaking his head. “It’s been thirty six hours. There’s no way Elizabeth hasn’t long since sent a team, whether Rodney dialed Atlantis or not.”

  “You think they ran into the Wraith cruiser?”

  He replied, tight lipped. “It makes sense. I think they’re in trouble.”

  Teyla nodded gravely. Of course he was imagining his people in terrible danger, perhaps dying, while he was helpless to save them. While he did not even know where they were.

  “We’re going to have to get ourselves out of this, and that’s going to involve making friends with these people,” John said. “There’s no way we can get from here to the gate, a couple of hundred miles of desert, with locals hunting us. And if the others ran into the cruiser, we’re going to have to get some local help finding them. When we see this king, I’m going to talk Atlantis up big.”

  “Make Elizabeth proud,” Teyla said with a small smile.

  “Yeah, that. I’ve seen men down in hostile country before.” He did not look at her, only out across the sleeping city. “If the locals are against you, you’re screwed. If they give you a hand, you’ve got a chance of getting your people back.”

  Bits of things clicked together for Teyla. “And that is why you love a good cup of tea.”

  “What?” he glanced around at her.

  “You said it at our first meeting.” Teyla sat crosslegged on the bed. “When you came into our tents with Colonel Sumner. He thought we were a waste of time, we Athosians. Too primitive to be of any use to him. And not worth the effort when I said we did not trade with strangers. And you said that you were not a stranger, that you liked Ferris wheels and things that went very fast. So I asked if you would join us in a cup of tea. I could see Sumner’s disdain written all over him. And you gave me a very strained smile and said you loved a good cup of tea.”

  “Did I say that?” John turned around, leaning back on the window. “I don’t remember.”

  “You said that,” she said.

  “I guess I did.” He shrugged. “Guys like Sumner, they don’t get it. They can’t imagine that anyone would want to live differently than they do.”

  “There is one way, and that is the way of your people,” she said.

  “Nah. They’re the same way to people at home.” John sat down on the windowsill. “There’s one way, and it’s the way of God and the United States Marine Corps. There are four kinds of people in the world—Marines, families of Marines, people not good enough to be Marines, and people who are too stupid to want to be Marines. I’m not saying all the Marines are like this. They’re not. Ford wasn’t. But you get these guys and they don’t see anything else. They literally can’t imagine any other kind of life. They don’t know anything else they might do or be that would be worth anything. If you took away being a Marine they wouldn’t be worth anything to themselves.”

  “You are not like that,”
Teyla said.

  He shrugged again. “I’m Air Force, and it’s a little different. But you get those guys in the Air Force too.”

  “Why are you not one of them?”

  Teyla had expected he would ignore the question, but perhaps the darkness of the room and the lateness of the hour encouraged honesty. Or perhaps he was beginning to trust her a little bit.

  “Never drank the Kool Aid, I guess.”

  ***

  There was this girl. That’s a good way for the story to begin. There’s always a girl, and that’s always a reason. Her name was Mel, and she sat in front of him in Introduction to US/Soviet Relations the first semester of sophomore year. She had short, short hair with a little ducktail in the back, and you could see the back of her neck when she bent her head to take notes, pale skin and that ducktail. Auburn hair, not really red. Blue, blue eyes. The kind of trim, athletic body that girls work really hard for, the body of a fencer. She was a fencer. He heard her talking about it with one of her friends. She was hoping to make the Varsity squad next year, she was that good. And that was saying something. There was a guy on the Varsity squad who was going to the Olympics in Seoul next summer unless he blew it.

  Anyway, there was this girl, Mel. Melissa Hocken. He couldn’t catch her eye in class and say something witty because he sat directly behind her. He couldn’t sit next to her because she always sat with her friends. And there were about 200 people in the class because it was one of the big poli sci courses that fulfilled interdepartmental requirements.

  John tried following her after class, trailing along with his backpack, hoping she’d go to the cafeteria or something. But it was a 9:00 class, and all he discovered was that she had a 11:00 in life sciences.

  There was this girl, and that was really the start of it. That was really the reason, not anything else.

  His mom called him on Monday night two weeks into the year, wanted to know if he’d come home that weekend. A long drive for almost nothing, even if she meant the house in Tahoe. “What for, Mom? You saw me two weeks ago.”

  “I need you to come this weekend, John,” she said, and he thought her voice sounded funny, like she’d been crying. “I’ll see you on Friday night.”

  And because it was his mom he went, even though he might have had plans. He didn’t have plans, not yet, but he might have plans by Friday. Hell, he might have asked Mel out by then. Or at least talked to her. It was a theory anyhow.

  He got into Tahoe late, nearly midnight. It was a seven hour drive. The lights were on and she was in the kitchen. It was spotless, tile topped counters scrubbed clean. “Where’s Dad and David?” he asked, and she put her arms around him too tight.

  “David’s gone to bed. And I don’t know where your father is.”

  John patted her awkwardly, let go. Something wrong, something wrong.

  She held him at arms length, hair set in perfect waves, tipped and streaked just like Crystal Carrington on Dynasty. “Your father is divorcing me.”

  It was a really old story, not much to tell, actually. An affair, of course, but not with a bimbo like you’d expect. She was a torts attorney, thirty, brilliant, with a JD from Stanford and an undergrad from Harvard. They were going to get married. Linda was so much smarter, so much more of a go-getter. She wasn’t some old fashioned boring type who played tennis at the club and supported the symphony. She was partner track.

  And beautiful, of course. Sitting at the genuine antique mission table with its hand embroidered runner, hearing the whole story, John knew his mom wasn’t beautiful. She kind of had been, in the wedding picture circa 1963, but that was twenty four years ago. She was fifty one, the same age as Dad. She dieted all the time, she did Jane Fonda, she used Esteé Lauder and she’d had a face lift last year. But she was dull, dull as old silver. He loved her anyway, because who wants their mom to be a blast? But she was dull. She mostly talked about tennis and wine tasting benefits for the symphony and what he and David were doing in school. She wouldn’t know a tort if it bit her.

  “He didn’t want me to tell you. He wanted to do it himself. But I couldn’t keep it from you boys.”

  David was fifteen. It would be hard to keep it from David, in the same house. Surely David already knew.

  “It’s going to be ok, mom. It’ll be fine.”

  She gave him a brave smile. “Of course I will be. I haven’t worked since we were married. He’ll have to pay alimony, and I’ll get one of the houses. This one, I hope, rather than the Austin house. And David…he’s got to pay child support. And he’ll pay it through the nose. It’s you I’m worried about.”

  John just stared at her.

  “You’re nineteen. He doesn’t owe you a thing. He has no legal obligation to pay for anything for you ever again.”

  ***

  There was this girl. That was what it was really about. Monday after class he walked up to Mel and said, “You were really smart, what you said about Prague Spring. I agree that our response should have been different, and it’s a good idea to examine the difference in our reaction to Prague Spring from the Berlin Airlift in light of our commitment in Vietnam.”

  Mel looked at him suspiciously for a second, then put her head to the side. “Do I know you? Who are you?”

  “John Sheppard,” he said. “I sit behind you. That’s probably why you don’t see me. Because I’m behind you.”

  “Oh.” She looked at him again as if he were some sort of interesting specimen. “You see what I mean about Johnson’s political constraints?”

  “Absolutely,” John said. “I mean, this was totally about not wanting to tie the hands of the next president, and given the domestic situation at the time I’m not sure he could have made a military commitment to help the Czechs even if he wanted to.”

  “A constraint Truman didn’t have.”

  “Right. Different time, different sitch. If it hadn’t fallen apart right on top of the disastrous Democratic convention in Chicago…”

  Mel was smiling at him. That was why he dared. “Do you want to get some lunch?”

  “I have a class…” she said.

  Duh. He already knew that. And it was ten in the morning. “I mean later. At lunchtime.”

  She shrugged. “Ok.”

  ***

  The thing with his Dad blew up at fall break. They were supposed to go skiing, but it was just him and David and Dad. Friday night they skied. It was ok. Nobody talked about anything.

  Saturday they skied in the morning, and when they stopped to get lunch John went to take a shower to warm up. He put on a turtleneck and went to go meet Dad and David in the restaurant.

  Only there was a woman there. She was pretty, with long brown hair like Brooke Shields, and she didn’t look much older than him. She was sitting at the table, holding Dad’s hand on the napkin. She’d never had a facelift, and she looked like a cat in cream in a leather coat and red velvet prairie skirt.

  David looked sick. And also scared.

  He came over to the table. His dad looked smug. “John, I’d like you to meet Linda.”

  She gave him a warm smile.

  “So you’re the bimbo,” John said with a jaunty smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Congratulations. You’ve screwed your way into a lot of money.”

  ***

  His mom cried on the phone. “John, you can’t do this.”

  “Mom…” Everything was like ice around him, a kind of cold fury that made everything cleaner and clearer.

  “John, he’s furious. You can’t do this. You have your future to think about. Don’t you understand that you have out of state tuition at UCLA? There’s no way I can pay that out of the alimony. John, you have to behave.”

  She might as well have been talking to a block of wood.

  ***

  He ran into Mel on Thursday, a day they didn’t have class. He almost didn’t recognize her. She was in Air Force uniform, tight skirt and jacket, sensible black heels, a cap pinned on her head.

  “Wo
ah, Mel!”

  She came over. “I’m in ROTC. Thursday’s drill day. We have to wear our uniforms all day.”

  “Dude.” She looked like some old picture of a WAC or something out of World War II. Nobody could actually do anything dressed like that. Especially carrying her backpack in her left hand.

  She saw where he looked and frowned. “We can’t wear backpacks when we’re in uniform. We have to carry them. Are you going to give me a hard time too, John? Because I’ve heard it all and I’m pretty tired of it.”

  “Me? No. Not me.” He shook his head. “It’s totally cool. I mean, whatever you want to do with your life…”

  “Because I love killing babies,” Mel said. “That’s my big ambition. I want to go find some babies somewhere in the world to kill.”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “Yeah, well, you looked it.” She put her other hand on her hip and looked at him. “Just toss your liberal guilt right here. I’m totally responsible for Apartheid. And Colonialism. It was me. I did it all.”

  “You’ve got a chip on your shoulder,” John observed.

  “Yeah, well. You get asked stupid questions twenty times a day every Thursday. Try walking across the quad with people yelling Fascist at you.”

  “So why are you doing this?” This being the gesture at her circa 1965 outfit, little cap and all.

  “Because I want to be an astronaut.”

  “Serious?”

  “Serious.”

  He couldn’t help but grin. “Like a real astronaut? Like Sally Ride and Judith Resnik?”

  “Yeah.” She grinned back. “And you know your stuff. Most guys couldn’t name two female astronauts.”

  “Sally Ride, first American woman in space. Judith Resnik, killed with Challenger. Dude I’d like to meet is Michael Collins. And I’d pretty much pay an arm and a leg to meet Chuck Yeager.”

  Mel blinked at him. “I had no idea you knew anything about space. You’re not…”

  “A geek?”

  “A geek.” She grinned. “You look like a prep.”