34. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

John let himself collapse, stumbling backwards into Ford, hoping the young Marine officer would catch him. Ford did, wrapping his arms around John’s torso and dragging him down to the ground in a controlled fall.

The landing on the planet had not been what John would call whisper-soft, in fact it was more like dropping an egg on concrete but speed mattered more than finesse. Especially after Ronon announced a hull breech at 50,000 feet. It was better than a failure in the vacuum of space or during atmospheric entry, but it still wasn’t good, and John had arrowed the ship for the flattest surface McKay could find. They landed like a prop job skidding down a run way in bad weather, but they landed, and as far as John could tell the ship was still officially in one piece.

And so was he.

Ford gave him a quick once over before standing up and running over to where McKay was grinning.

“We did it, McKay!” Ford yelled, grabbing a slightly dazed Haworth in a one-armed hug. He held his hand up for a high-five with Ronon, who looked at his hand quizzically. “You slap it! In celebration, because we made it,” Ford said exuberantly, and John cringed on his behalf before Ronon slammed his hand into Ford’s. Ford was a Marine, though, and took it with a pained shout of victory.

“You! Rowan, can you tell us how many Wraith are onboard?” McKay snapped his fingers.

“Ronon Dex.”

“Right. Dex. Well?”

“Number’s been dropping. Less than ten thousand now.”

John’s stomach dropped. Ten thousand Wraith. He glanced at McKay who looked as sick as John felt. Even Ford lost some of his exuberance at that announcement. Everyone stood around, frozen in the moment of victory combined with a real fear of what was to come next.

“McKay, send Stackhouse and Haworth back to the ship, have them fly out and dial Atlantis from the space gate. We need help, and we’ve got thousands of survivors to get out of this fucking thing alive if we can.”

Haworth had migrated over to a different console. “As far as I can tell, this is one of the Ancient’s terraformed worlds; should look a lot like British Columbia outside.”

McKay snorted. “Don’t they all? I leave home to go to exotic alien worlds and they all look like Mother’s summer estate. Well at least the air will be breathable.” He turned to Stackhouse. “Get out, get us some back up. Let Elizabeth know we’re going to need every jumper and someplace to temporarily stash five to six thousand people that isn’t Atlantis. Be careful on the way, because I’m sure the Wraith are more interested in hari kari than having a snack but that doesn’t mean it’s safe.”

“Ronon, go with them.” John motioned over to Stackhouse, who tried not to frown.

“No.”

“You’ve still got a tracker in your back. We know the gateship cloak blocks it. You aren’t safe here, and neither are we.”

“Wait, what? Tracker? You’re a Runner?” McKay pointed at Ronon accusingly. Ronon pulled himself up to full height and looked down on McKay like he wanted to step on him.

“Drop me off wherever. Some Hive will pick up the signal and come for me.” Ronan snapped, stalking towards the door.

“Not what I meant. Ronon!” John yelled, trying to get him to stop despite being stuck on the floor.

“Ronon Dex.”

Ronon brought himself up short at Teyla’s use of his name, but he kept facing the door.

“It is time to stop, Runner. The Lantean doctors can perhaps remove the tracker, so you will let us try to help you. Go to the ship as Sheppard asks, and we will determine your path when there are not thousands of people to transport and settle.”

Ronon turned, bowed his head to her and then to John before walking out. Stackhouse and Haworth scrambled to catch up to him.

Ford went back to guarding the door, with Stackhouse gone. McKay and Teyla stood by the navigation console, looking at John who was very happy to be sitting on the kind-of disgusting floor. It was a bit squishy, more like a gym mat than a solid floor. At that point, he didn’t care.

“Ford, we need a recon of where we are. Get me a sitrep.” John waved a lazy hand at the door, his head buzzing with endorphins and pain, and not giving a damn that he technically was not in the command structure at all.

Teyla stepped over to where Ford was looking conflicted. “I wish to understand our situation better, as well. Together, it will be safer.” She turned to nod at McKay. “Stay here, stay armed. We will remain within shouting distance.”

McKay just nodded, leaning heavily against the navigation console and staring at the floor. John understood how hard the come-down from a crisis could hit a person, so leaned back on his hands to enjoy the silence. He also appreciated the complete, utter lack of need for him to move any body part, almost all of which were throbbing in promise of future agony.

McKay launched himself off the console, stalked over to John with a half-mad look in his eyes and stepped over him, straddling John’s legs. He crouched down, grabbed John’s shirt and pulled him into a searing kiss. John’s arm flailed for purchase until he got one hand set against the floor, the other twisted in McKay’s shirt.

The kiss was hot and wet, and McKay smelled sweaty and human and John would have been hard if his body weren’t halfway to collapse. He opened his mouth to let McKay in, wanting taste and heat, the salt of McKay’s mouth on his tongue. McKay groaned, his tongue darting out to skim over John’s, their lips mashed together painfully. McKay yanked himself back but did not release his grip.

“You insane fucker, we should be dead.”

John’s brain felt like syrup, pleased and sweet and turned on. He smiled, knowing he probably looked deranged. “You’re welcome.”

McKay leaned forward to whisper against his lips. “Asshole.”

John smiled as he kissed McKay, drifting his free hand to rub over McKay’s hard on. McKay swatted at his hand and stood up, stepping away. “I don’t need to be serviced, thanks.”

Annoyed at having the one thing that felt good right then taken away, John glared at him. “Liar.”

“Maybe you can’t tell the difference, but I wasn’t...never mind.”

“You weren’t what? Sucking my face? Taking advantage? Because from here I think that’s all you know how to do.”

A look of pure fury whipped across McKay’s face before he shut it down. “Nice way to kill the afterglow, Sheppard.”

“Is that what we were sharing? Felt more like foreplay.” John ran a hand over his groin. His cock still wasn’t in the game, but that wasn’t the point.

“Oh, did the hookers on the Strip teach you those moves? Because I can tell it’s practiced.” McKay sneered with more venom than the situation warranted, in John’s opinion.

“Hell I taught them. Jesus, you’re an asshole. I was just going to give you a hand!” John bit out the comment, leaning back on his hands again as the creeping sensation of imminent pain started up again. It must have shown on his face despite himself, because McKay crouched down again, although to his side instead of over his legs.

“You’re out of practice playing the hero, Sheppard. How badly did you hurt yourself?”

John thought he was going to get whiplash from McKay’s mood swings. “I’m fine.”

“Bullshit. But if that’s how you want to play it.” McKay shook his head and stood up just as Ford and Teyla reappeared.

“Lieutenant?” John asked before McKay could commandeer the situation again.

Ford grimaced. “Still a hell of a lot of Wraith, sir. But they don’t care about us, seem to be busy killing each other off.” Ford did not even notice that he had called John “sir” and John was not about to point it out, despite being uncomfortable with the old military appellation.

Teyla nodded. “They are also ignoring the cocooned people, who are themselves still unconscious.”

McKay nodded. “I figured the webbing has a chemical compound that puts them into some kind of hibernation state. We’ll want medical to take samples, something like that could be helpful if we can manufacture it.”

John stared at where McKay was looking thoughtfully at the wall, his mind completely absorbed with the science and not all the comatose people. Looking over at Ford, John sighed. “Then we’ll keep them there as long as we can. Might make transporting them easier if we don’t have hundreds waking up at the same time.”

“Yes, but…” Teyla stopped, grimacing. Something about her posture pulled McKay back into the moment.

“What? What are you picking up?” McKay grilled her.

She frowned. “Not a queen, if you were concerned about that. It is simply that this place, this ship, is dying.”

“Yeah, we got that,” John snapped. The pain in his legs was starting to blossom now all the endorphins were tapering off.

Teyla sighed. “Have you not noticed?”

“Noticed what?” McKay glanced around, looking carefully at the consoles.

“This ship is organic, Rodn—Mer. It is a living thing which is being killed from the inside out.”

John snatched his hands off the floor, barely managing to keep from toppling over when he did.

“Ewww.” McKay—Mer—scrunched his face up in disgust. “Although that makes sense. Hmmm.” He walked over the wall and started poking at it. Ford just looked freaked out.

“How?” John finally asked.

Teyla visibly paused to think about her answer. She looked around, as if listening to something. “It is, I think, the life cycle of a queen? It has a consciousness that is murky and old. But it is dying, and it knows it is dying, and welcomes death.”

John found her whole speech creepy. “How the hell do you know that? Are you telepathic?”

McKay stepped between them, as if protecting Teyla from an attack. “None of your damn business, Sheppard. The point she’s trying to make, if you are too busy being in agony to figure it out, is that when the ship dies it will start to decay.”

Ford shook his head. “We’ve found old, abandoned hive ships before. They were husks but they weren’t decayed.”

“Exactly. Abandoned. Probably given up for a newer or bigger model. We’ve never found a hive ship where the queen died without an heir because they rot after the Wraith kill it, and each other.”

John finally got it. “Shit. We have to wake everyone up anyway.”

“Exactly.” McKay groaned.

John’s LSD suddenly chirped. He picked it up. “Oh, hey, it’s a text message from Stackhouse.”

McKay stomped over. “They can do that? Why didn’t anyone tell me they could do that?” He reached for the LSD with “grabby hands” but John yanked it out of his grasp.

“Uh uh. Mine.”

“You are such a fucking child! Fine!”

“Gentlemen,” Teyla said, slicing through their verbal slap fest. “What does Stackhouse say?”

Trying not to cringe at her wordless rebuke, John read the message. “Beckett’s coming through the gate to operate on Ronon, and Lorne is putting together a small platoon. Dr. Weir is coming over on a later run, once the platoon is here and we’ve got some security on the ground.”

Ford groaned. “Great. We better go out to greet ‘em, otherwise they’ll just set up a Wraith shooting gallery.” He paused. “Not that I’m opposed to that.”

“Me neither, Lieutenant, me neither,” John sighed.