auburnnotlisa (Auburn & Mona) (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} auburnnotlisa) wrote,@ 2006-04-23 17:03:00 |
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| Entry tags: | ard |
Ardhanarishvara Part Nine
Header & Disclaimer in Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Caveat Lector.
The jumper bay echoes with a loud clang and a spat of furious Czech as one of the Marines fumbles a shell from the pallet. Zelenka is on him like a rabid monkey, hands flying even faster than Rodney's own usually do, pointing and waving a finger in the much larger man's face, ending with a furious "BOOM!" The Marine goes red and then white under Zelenka's tirade, while his two team mates wrestle the shell full of napalm and High Explosive back onto the transport pallet.
Beside him, Sheppard leans against the wall, arms crossed, the picture of the casual flyboy – girl – except for her grim expression. The other pilots are waiting on her orders, none of them but the youngest, newest Air Force lieutenant, Palecki, looking excited. But Palecki's green, just came in with the last Daedalus visit, and can be forgiven. Rodney's not sure the kid's even been off-world before. He wonders if he shouldn't take the lieutenant aside and give him some sage, Rodney McKay save-your-life advice since he's an old veteran.
He decides against it. It might spook the civilians riding along. Not that any of them are pilots, but they'll be in the seats, working the lifesign detectors, ready to testify the mission was conducted with full civilian oversight from start to finish. No one is going to stick Sheppard with another black mark if he and Elizabeth have their way.
The scientists are bunched together, standing a little to the side of the pilots, all of them watching and listening to Sheppard.
"We're taking six jumpers," Sheppard says. "Everyone's simmed this to death with the water canisters on the mainland. Don't make the mistake of thinking that's the same thing as a real mission. You won't have a wingman. You'll stay cloaked at all times, in radio contact with Jumper One. We will proceed through the stargate in sequence to Heka and assume grid position before flying to the target. Everyone has a co-pilot. Your co-pilot will double-check the life sign detectors before you deploy your payload. If you register anything bigger than one of those lizard-dogs, you will abort. Is that understood?"
Lorne nods, so do Palecki, Miller, Reyes, and Crown. Simpson and the rest of the scientists bob their heads as well.
"All right," Sheppard says with a sharp nod of her own. She pushes off the wall and strides toward Zelenka. Rodney trots after her after nodding to Simpson, who will be overseeing the system she and Zelenka designed while flying with Lorne. She looks nervous, which he thinks makes a lot more sense than Palecki's bounce and grin. The others scatter to their assigned jumpers.
"Zelenka!" Sheppard shouts over the clatter and ringing of the next two pallets of shells being wheeled in.
Zelenka spins in place, his hair flying up, eyeglasses glinting. The roof of the jumper bay is open to add some natural light and a beam of it catches on him. Rodney's stomach rolls. It looks just distinct enough to evoke a culling beam.
"What? What? We are busy here, Colonel."
"Everything ready?"
"Yes, of course, everything is ready," Zelenka snaps. His attention is already back on the Marines handling the shells. "Be careful with those, you oafs!" He mutters something about their mothers and swine in Czech, giving Rodney a warm thrill of pride. Before working with Rodney, Zelenka would never have dreamed of cursing and bossing big, tough Marines.
Sheppard stares at the shells, too. Her expression is unreadable. "Then, let's get this show on the road."
"Colonel, you must remember," Zelenka mutters, still frowning at the Marines, "you will have to hover the jumper while we secure the shells in the belly harness and connect the release-and-detonation module to the jumper's instruments. You cannot land the jumper again until you have either launched the ordnance or had it removed."
"Shove it, Zelenka," Sheppard replies, unconcerned. She touches the hull of Jumper One and it responds, the rear entrance hatch lowering.
"Hah!" Zelenka snorts. He's already waving one of the Marine teams over. "Please hover the jumper in the center of the bay for loading, Colonel."
"I've done this before," Sheppard says. She glances over her shoulder. "Coming, Rodney?"
"Yes, right behind you, let's just do this," Rodney says. He follows Sheppard in and starts a systems check as soon as the jumper goes live for Sheppard. Sheppard's calling up HUDs in a dazzling fast flicker from screen to screen, running her own personal checklist on the jumper. One thing he and Sheppard always agree on is running a flight check. Not that they always have the luxury of doing so.
"Everything good to go?" she asks without looking away from the displays.
"Yes." Rodney double-checks the hybridized bomb launch controls that are spliced into the drone firing system. "We already know this works. We tested it on the mainland."
"This isn't a test." Her voice is tense enough to make him look over at her. Admittedly, she's right. If something went wrong on the mainland, they would just drop the water-filled shell mock-ups and land. Even if the shells didn't release, the jumper could come down on them with nothing more than a wrecked belly harness. The ordnance they're going to carry through the gate is a souped-up super-napalm that will burn fiercer than white phosphorus once it's lit, and a High Explosive charge shaped to detonate and spread the payload over the greatest area possible. Rodney doesn't want to find out how good the jumper's insulation from inside a premature blast.
"Everything checks out," he says quietly.
"Good." Sheppard taps a control. "You know, you don't need to come with me."
"Yes, I do."
"I don't need a co-pilot, not that you're much of a pilot – "
"Hey!"
A quick smile softens the dig. "Good enough, I guess. Just, this is a military operation, start to finish."
"No, it isn't, Sheppard. I'm along as Elizabeth's proxy. She authorized this."
Sheppard hums under her breath. "Okay."
The jumper slips forward out of its charging berth and to the center of the bay, hovering at the optimum height for the Marines to bolt the shells into the belly harness. Rodney activates his radio. "Radek, I want you to double-check every one of the charges on those bolts. If even one of them doesn't blow properly, the payload is going to end up scattered God knows where instead of on target."
"If you had given me two more weeks, I would have given you fire-and-forget targeting system!" Zelenka snaps back. "Mated with the jumpers' drone system instead of this – this bastardization."
"No time to waste, and no materials either, Doctor," Sheppard cuts in.
Rodney's pretty sure Zelenka mutters bullshit to that, but it isn't clear enough to call him on it.
Sheppard's on the radio to Lorne. "Major. Once the gate is dialed into Heka, I'm going to drop my jumper down to the gateroom. When your payload is secure, assume a stacked position above Jumper One and clear the bay for Jumper Three to load. Miller, Crown, you follow in the same sequence. Palecki, Reyes, you'll have to wait until the rest of us have cleared the bay before you can load. Palecki, you load out and gate through immediately. Reyes, you're the last. When you come through the gate, it will shut down. We'll remain on the Atlantis command channel unless circumstances change. Back up channel is Nine. Everyone straight?"
Five confirmations. Rodney ignores them. Why haven't they included a video feed from the belly harness? The jumper's underside is a complete blind spot. The inertial dampeners mean they can't even feel the addition of the extra weight of the shells as they are bolted into place and the wiring hooked up. "Radek? Are you done?"
"I will tell you when idiots are finished – Stop!"
"What?!"
"Do not force the bolt, fool. You're cross-threading it," Zelenka snaps at someone.
Rodney covers his eyes. "We're going to blow up. All of us. In a blaze of shame."
A grim look from Sheppard. "They're ground troops, Rodney, not flight crews. They'll learn."
Rodney. Check system."
It all comes up green, the connections between the jumper and its added-on human armament responding to his thoughts. Sheppard glances at him. Rodney nods. "It's working, Radek."
You may move the jumper out of the way now, Colonel," Zelenka radios.
"Walk your people to the front of the jumper so I can see you're all clear," Sheppard told him. A moment later, Zelenka and four Marines pull the half-empty pallet of shells forward of the jumper's viewport. The biggest Marine gives them a wave.
"Clear."
Sheppard rotates the jumper to face the gate when they drop through the bay to the gateroom. "Control, this is Jumper One. Dial PR3-987."
Jumper One, this is Atlantis Control. Initiating wormhole." Chuck sounds calm as always. Rodney believes Chuck would sound calm if a platoon of Wraith charged through the gate.
"Copy that, Control."
Wormhole open, Jumper One.
"Copy."
The lower doors to the gateroom iris open, and Sheppard settles the jumper down through them. Rodney watches the bronze walls slip by in front of the viewport until they are dropping to sit in front of the shimmering circle of the stargate.
"Major. Load up," Sheppard says.
"Copy, Jumper One."
A sharp burst of static blasts them both, making Rodney flinch and Sheppard frown. "Colonel Sheppard." Elizabeth, of course. She'd looked at the mission prospectus, complete with operation title, that Sheppard handed her, along with Rodney's estimates of how long it would take to manufacture the napalm and delivery system and sighed. "This long?" Sheppard had shrugged. "The survey we flew yesterday showed a population just under a hundred thousand. All of it engaged in either growing staples or skour. Clearing it will take repeated missions, even if they don't replant. This is the plan." She'd looked at the schedule of missions and swallowed. Rodney had been stunned too, when Sheppard showed up, telling him just how much ordnance they'd need. But Weir had swallowed hard, again, and given them the go ahead.
"Copy, Control," Sheppard replies in a monotone. "What's the word? Do we have a go?"
"Go. Cleo. Repeat, Cleopatra."
"Copy, Cleopatra," Sheppard repeats. "Jumper Two, Cleo. Check in."
"Jumper Two, copy, Cleo, clearing the bay now."
"Three, copy."
"Four, copy."
"Jumper Five, I copy." Palecki's voice cracks. Reyes follows, deep and placid. "Six, good to go."
Sheppard taps off her radio. "Fucking Cleo." Then she flashes an adrenaline-fueled grin at Rodney. "Ready?"
"Like you have to ask," he says with a snort.
When Crown reports in, Sheppard clicks her radio back on. She slips on those black aviator glasses that hide all expression so well, nods – to herself it seems – sharply. "Cloak up and follow me, kids." The jumper slides into the event horizon as if on a track. They exit into the last rays of the Hekan sun dropping, swollen and red, to the horizon. A HUD displaying their jumper as a dot above the grid representing the skour fields pops up. The deep gold light flares through it, reflecting off Sheppard's sunglasses, the glare making Rodney squint. Sheppard's already taking the jumper up, assuming the flight control overview.
"Life signs?" she asks.
Below them, there's a shimmer-shiver in the event horizon. On the HUD, another dot appears: Lorne, Simpson, and Jumper Two.
Rodney ignores it, leaving the flying to Sheppard, and calls up the jumper's life sign detector display. The village where they met the Hekans for the first time is a hotspot, too many lifesigns to count visually. The jumper cooperatively offers a count in the bottom of the display. In Ancient. Rodney scans the fields. They're empty. He locates a line of dots and correlates it: workers – women – trudging along a path between the fields, coming in from a long day in the fields.
"They're leaving the fields now."
"We want the women completely clear before we do this," Sheppard says, voice tight, face set. Rodney refrains from snarking back.
Palecki and Reyes's jumpers arrive and assume position, forming on Jumper One; Palecki as the final point of a two jumper wing trailing from the right side. Jumper Two takes a tail place, like a rudder on the formation. There's no banter on the radio.
"So, is this where we play Ride of the Valkyries?" Rodney asks. "I brought my iPod."
Sheppard flips him off.
She turns the jumper to their first target, which lies in a valley sixty kilometers from the stargate: a fourth village, not as large as the one near the stargate, but surrounded on all sides by acre upon acre of skour. The last glimmer of the sun slips under the western horizon – Rodney calls it west just because it's easier to think of it that way – as they make their first fly-over.
The fields are empty. The valley is already slipping into dusk, while the jumpers are still high enough to have some light. Rodney sucks in a deep breath as Sheppard angles the jumper down. A targeting display pops up, concentric circles narrowing to a single red dot. The jumper shifts sideways, and a second blue circle overlays the first. Sheppard fires the instant she has target lock. The drone control slaved into the release charges blows the bolts holding one of the napalm shells under the jumper's belly. The jumper angles up and away before the shell detonates, raining burning chemicals down, filling the dusk with terrible light.
Each jumper follows Sheppard, laying down napalm over their targets, working a grid pattern in turns, methodically wiping out the skour. The fires burn in great veils reaching into the darkness, curtains of flame, wavering before the wind the jumpers can't feel. Rodney gulps, glad he didn't eat earlier. He imagines being in the village and the fire raging all around him, the choking smoke and heat, ash falling, sparks...All it would take is one spark, drifting on the wind, to light the thatched roofs they'd glimpsed in the first survey.
"Do you think the villagers will go down to the river?" he asks.
Sheppard's face is unreadable. "No way to know."
Unless they come back. Rodney knows now he never wants to come back and see the results of what they've done here and will do again and again.
Palecki whoops as he releases his last shell. "Like the wrath of God!" Rodney risks a glance at Sheppard, dimly lit by the HUDs, flying by instrument, and sees the muscle in her jaw twitch, the taut tendon along her neck.
"Shut up." Someone else radios. Crown, probably. Palecki is silent as they fly back to the stargate and dial Atlantis.
"Everything went all right," Rodney says.
Sheppard slips off the sunglasses that make her thoughts even more of an enigma. "Zelenka and Simpson did good work," she says finally. Nothing about the mission.
Rodney tells himself the jumpers are proof against vacuum. They're sealed.
He can't smell smoke.
Part Ten
