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Crossover - Stargate/Gundam Wing (gen) [2 of 2]
Total Word Count: ~8 200. This part: ~4 900.
Part 1
The peculiar green glow of a monitor booting up in a dark room was so intimately familiar that for a second it didn't seem alien at all. He could see the edges of screens and buttons and instruments, and it was a lot more reminiscent of a jet fighter than a Goa'uld Death Glider.
It didn't make the writing that scrolled down the screen easier to read.
It certainly didn't make the crazy commando guy any lighter on him, or the wet warmth any less...
"Oh my god, you're bleeding on me."
The spate of rapid-fire typing continued uninterrupted. Outside the cockpit Sheppard was banging away on the hatch and trying to get his fingers in a crack, rather fruitlessly, as Rodney could have told him.
Only he had more urgent things to tell him. "Major, the crazy alien is bleeding on me. Major?" Visions of death plagues and dangerous chemical addictions ran through his mind. Oh god, what if he wasn't a Jaffa, what if he was a Goa'uld, and Rodney conveniently trapped here with his big juicy tempting brain. It would take only a hop and a wriggle to get him snaked.
He wriggled to free one of his hands, got a faceful of bristly hair as a result and then an elbow slamming on the inside of his wrist and pinning it down on the armrest. He protested loudly -- it wasn't a scream, John was the one screaming, it was merely an irritated, very virile yell -- and started struggling anew. Only the crazy alien guy had apparently trained in full-body contact fighting in tight enclosed spaces too, because in less than a second he had wriggled around on hands and knees on top of Rodney and was shoving Rodney's arms back down against his sides and under him where they were pretty much stuck. Rodney tried kneeing him in the back (something in his spine popped), and grinned ferociously when the alien pitched forward and banged his forehead on something.
Huh. There was a gun under his nose. Okay then.
The guy pulled out the security harness and snapped it on, except Rodney was pretty sure your arms weren't supposed to be caught underneath. Then adding some more indignity to the affront he turned around and sat on Rodney's stomach again. He had the pointiest bones Rodney had ever had the displeasure to feel; he would have to tell John he'd lost his title.
"You know, I have to tell you that you won't get away with it, I mean, you guys never get away with it, seriously you shouldn't even bother. Hello, you're in the middle of a military base?"
Something blinked red on the screen; the commando guy grunted a little "huh" sort of noise. He twisted around, felt for Rodney's pocket (Rodney didn't yelp at all, he wasn't sure how Sheppard knew to be alarmed and noisy outside again) and emerged with a screwdriver.
Screwdrivers were apparently universal, because he seemed perfectly satisfied wriggling his way between Rodney's thighs (oh god) and under the console.
"McKay? McKay, status!"
"Major, I have a Jaffa commando between my legs and the headache of the century and oh, yes, someone threw me down in a hole and landed on top of me, what do you think my status is?"
"--Between your okay, you down here! We have enough missiles in this base to blow you to smithereens, you're not going anywhere, so don't make it even worse for you and get out of here now."
<.SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED.>, said a metallic, vaguely feminine voice. <.SIXTY SECONDS BEFORE TERMINATION.>
"... Oooor we could talk, talk is good, communication is great, I'm sure there's a way we both get what we want--"
A wriggle, a click, and the countdown stopped. "Alright," said the commando. He had a dry, vaguely nasal voice. "Open the hangar. I'll drop him off on the desert road outside."
Silence outside.
He reclined on top of Rodney again, his back to Rodney's chest, wriggled a little and shuffled in a weird sideway position. Rodney went ghhk, or something like it. "Listen, I realize I am eminently comfortable, but--"
"This is a one-person cockpit," said the commando. He slid a keyboard out of the side and started typing away.
"Oh. Right." The clearance between keyboard and seat visibly hadn't been made to accommodate both his and Rodney's thighs. Actually, since his knees would have been almost banging into the front console if he could only put them down, Rodney was starting to think it hadn't even been made to accommodate a reasonably-sized person, either. (Also, the weight of his legs was starting to pull his knees toward his chest, damn gravity. His hips were killing him. Maybe he ought to kick his heels into the instruments, but the displays were already cracked to hell and back and still stubbornly glowing, so likely it would only get him sore heels.)
"Um, yeah," said John from outside. "Is that your only demand? Because --"
"Yes."
Then again at least kicking the displays would be doing something. Rodney hated being held hostage like he hated lemons and complete imbeciles.
Major Sheppard had gone into his patient-but-needling negotiating voice. The alien was ignoring him. Also still bleeding. His arm was streaked with dark wet lines all the way up to his shoulder. He didn't deign to act like he noticed. Maybe he was drugged. Maybe he was just crazy.
... Actually Sheppard's voice was closer to patient-because-I'm-planning-something-that'll-bite-you-in-the-ass. Rodney took in a deep, bracing breath and waited.
Type-type, type-type... type... type-ty...
Rodney smothered a yawn, and realized with faint surprise that he was getting pretty relaxed.
"It won't matter," the commando said, but he sounded a little weird to Rodney... a little muffled, a little thick.
"Yeah?" replied John from a century away. Maybe a mile. Something far away. "Well, we've got to try it anyway."
Rodney wondered vaguely what he was on about, even as the commando toppled back on him in slow motion.
It was like he'd gotten rid of all his bones. He was squishing Rodney a little. Blanket-warm. Rodney didn't even mind the bleeding anymore.
The lit screens and dancing LEDs painted the inside of his eyelids pretty colors.
--
He woke up in stages, to the sounds of typing and a peculiar numbness in his hands that told him his blood flow had been restrained too long. His head was muzzy.
The commando had apparently found somewhere to park his ass that wasn't on top of Rodney anymore. He'd wedged his back against one of the arm rests; his legs were braced on both sides of the cockpit. He'd found a way to unhook the keyboard and prop it up on his thighs; Rodney wasn't sure how he could see what he was typing, with his back turned on the front screen like that.
The biggest problem was that he was facing Rodney, even if he was paying more attention to the keyboard. Eyes just barely cracked open, Rodney tried to discreetly wriggle his arms free.
"He's awake," said the commando, casual and uninterested.
Outside a machine was powered down. After a couple of seconds, John answered. "He is? Thanks. Hey, Rodney, how are you doing?"
Rodney had no words to explain exactly why the intruder's perfect calm and indifference scared him possibly more than if he had been tense and ready to shoot everything in sight. Alright, no, a guy on edge and on a hair trigger was dangerous, too, but...
It was like none of their actions were going to make a difference. And considering that Rodney was still trapped in here and they still hadn't managed to force the cockpit open...
The guy could have been pissed enough to send them little Rodney-chunks as a message, and nothing, no one could have stopped him.
"Peachy, Major, what do you think?" He took a deep, bracing breath. No torture yet. So far this wasn't such a bad kidnapping, as those things went. Which meant of course it was likely going to go south in a pretty spectacular way. "Ix-nay on the gard-asay eam-bay?"
"You know, the Pentagon is starting to get really interested in this alloy," John replied mock-cheerfully, which Rodney took to mean it also, of course, blocked Asgard teleport beams.
Sheppard had to be going a little crazy out here. Maybe even half as crazy as Rodney. He shifted his arms, and sucked in his breath when his blood started flowing back into his hands.
"Hey," said the Major. "My name's John. What's yours?"
In the muted green light the commando looked young to Rodney's eyes. Then again Ford had been young too, and he'd been a really good Marine anyway. Besides who knew how long aliens lived. Teal'c, for example...
There was a pause, long enough that Rodney thought he was going to ignore the question.
"Zero-one will do."
Rodney snorted before he could think better of it. "That's not a name, and not even a very good codename."
"All my other codenames are obsolete. Call me whatever you want."
... Oh hell, he wasn't merely a highly-trained commando, he was weird in the head too. Rodney wasn't even sure how to explain but his gut had gone tight at that tone of voice -- too calm, indifferent and polite, like discussing the weather. It was never good. In his experience it always came attached to brainwashed fanatics and sociopaths.
"... Alright, why not," said John, in that placid, 'pacify the natives' tone. "I suppose you've heard already but his name is Rodney. He's probably the best friend I've got," he continued, adding a little teasing cheerfulness to his voice. Building a rapport, trying to make Rodney feel real to the man. "Though I think his best friend is Carson, our medical doctor. I feel very slighted."
The commando let out a vaguely amused snort. "So long as he doesn't touch anything I have no intention of hurting him."
"... Oh. Neat."
"Huh. That's surprisingly generous of you," Rodney said. Also weird. Why take a hostage, if not to use him as leverage? ... Likely to stall the enemy, prevent them from using lethal gases instead. If that was all he needed Rodney for, then he -- "You think you can leave."
The commando looked at him, an intense, piercing gaze.
"You think it still works, you can make it work. If you really wanted to self-destruct--"
"The self-destruct is my second option," Zero-one corrected him. "It's still on the table as a possibility."
He went back to typing. Rodney could hear John groan in frustration from there.
He checked out the cockpit, watched the lines and lines of alien letters unroll. The script looked sort of familiar, actually, much like the resemblance between Cyrillic and the roman alphabet, or even Ancient script. The numbers especially...
"What are you coding?" he asked, throat a little dry.
"Editing the operating system to compensate for external damage."
Rodney couldn't help it, he made a little interested noise. "... Are you sure you know how to do that? Because I really don't want to be in your robot when it faceplants because you edited out the line that makes it know how to walk."
He won a whole fourth-of-a-second of attention, mostly in the form of a dismissive, 'do I question your ability to tie your shoelaces?' glance. It wasn't a look he was very familiar with, at least not from that end of it.
"Okay, seriously, what do you want?"
"This unit back, or failing that, destroyed. I'm not interested in your other secrets."
"... Not the other units?" John asked cautiously.
No answer. Rodney took it to mean that he thought they were already destroyed enough. He had to admit, they looked it. Sure, the alloys and the bearings in the joints were all very interesting, but they weren't revolutionary, just slightly more efficient ways of doing the same things Earth could already do. The rest was so much scrap. Whoever had exploded them had been cautious, thoroughly shredding the chest areas. The computers and reactors were total losses.
"It's not like we stole them, you know, they just kind of fell on us. I'm sure there's some way to get to a compromise."
Zero-one kept typing, ignoring John entirely. Rodney racked his brain for something else to say.
"Aha! Your shoulder. You should get that treated before you bleed out. Or catch an infection, or tetanus. Or worse, give me tetanus. Because while the sleeping gas didn't affect you as long, it did affect you and obviously we have compatible physiologies."
The commando blinked, looked down at his arm -- then brushed his hand against his other arm, where the line of a scar cut across the outside of his arm just under his shoulder.
"Oh, good, you'll be symmetrical again. Um, random question, do you get shot a lot?"
"It's been a while."
"... Is that a nostalgic face? Major, I am locked in with a lunatic. An alien lunatic. He is bleeding on me. I think you haven't given enough thought to this very serious issue!"
John drawled through the crack in the door, "Hey, hope you don't mind, taking out the whole base in one big explosion is one thing, but we have a strict 'no infecting Rodney with alien tetanus' policy." Rodney glared in his direction in protest, though it wasn't direct line of sight. He was sure Sheppard was aware of his utter contempt anyway.
Zero-one gave a faint snort.
"... oh my god," Rodney whispered urgently. "Major, keep going, he laughed."
Zero-one looked down at him and arched an eyebrow.
"... Haha. Ha. ... Goddamn it, this is ridiculous." He wriggled one of his hands free, though he was still trapped at the elbow, and waved it in a little irritated arc. "I don't suppose you'll let me overpower you?"
"Sorry."
Oh god help him, John was laughing. And it wasn't a pretend-laugh, either.
"Alright, guys," he said, still chuckling. "I've got an idea."
Typetype. "Go ahead."
"It's out of the question for us to just up and let you go, of course. You did break into a highly classified research center..." A pause. "So what we're going to do is open the hangar, and you can walk a bit thataway into the desert--"
"Major!" someone yelled from the side -- that old woman, General Hopsomethings. Oh, so she was still around, and all offended to boot. Rodney could have told her it was useless. When John had an idea in his head...
"And then we can talk face to face. And you can stretch your legs and piss or whatever. Building trust, yeah? Because we're pretty deadlocked here."
"And how do you propose to keep him from leaving with Doctor McKay?!" the old biddy General retorted. But she didn't know John like Rodney did; he was sure to have a really unconventional, possibly illegal idea, but one that would yet make a perfect sort of sense.
"Easy. I'll secure myself to the outside of the robot."
"Oh, great idea!" Rodney yelled back. "Give him two hostages instead of one! I take back everything I ever said about you having at least one more brain cell than the usual military issue!"
"... But I won't tie myself too tight, so if it goes too fast, or too far, I'll probably fall to my death."
Rodney could picture his face in his mind right then, that quiet, confident, lethal sheen in his eyes. But he didn't get -- he didn't, what was the angle --
"What do you think, Benny? You look like a Benny to me."
Rodney stared at the commando in horror. He had stopped typing, his whole body gone perfectly still.
"That's -- are you crazy?" the General asked.
"No, see... He thinks his robot can get up now, with no additional repairs -- he wouldn't trust us to do them for him, so obviously what works right now is good enough. That means he could leave even if we didn't open the hangar for him. That thing would go through the roof like tissue paper. Thing is, he'd also topple me off and I'd likely break my neck, plus he'd step on a lot of our men ... And how hard is it to infiltrate a base the way you did it, and not kill a single person? Hm, zero-one?"
Rodney stopped breathing. Zero-one's brow was furrowed, his eyes narrow.
"It's... doable."
John snorted. "Gotta be easier if you didn't bother, though. With your level of skill, the way you've been trained... But you were so careful not to break anyone."
Oh, thought Rodney. Oh. He stared at the commando, trying to read his face, to figure out what John had right through the hatch. Zero-one still looked cold to him, utterly dispassionate.
Then he sighed. "... Alright."
"Whee. I love negotiations." A couple of screens flickered to life, though the images looked weird; after a second Rodney realized they were all either infrared or electrical images. But there was only one man sitting on the robot, one who was waving his hand for someone to throw him a rope. "...Oh. General?"
"... You are a lunatic. Alright, permission granted. Just be aware that we've got every missile this quadrant of the globe aimed your way, Zero-one."
"Acknowledged."
He tugged Rodney's legs down and under the front console -- oh god ow -- , and shifted around to lay down on him again. There really wasn't enough space in that stupid cockpit.
"Why couldn't you be a sexy blonde alien girl," Rodney muttered under his breath, but then the commando was slipping his hands in box-things and grabbing -- oh, like joysticks, only horizontal -- and Rodney forgot to protest. He couldn't see the buttons he pressed, the levers he might be activating instead, but he tried to remember the play of muscles and tendons, so that maybe later...
A massive arm -- the only one the robot had left -- slowly rose from the ground, dinged metal screeching; one of the screens showed a brief shower of sparks. The arm folded, the hand curved, came to rest almost in touching distance of John.
He could have crushed him to death right there. Rodney didn't breathe until it stopped moving, cupped like a metal cage to keep the human from falling.
The robot sat up. Rodney had a 'aha' moment about the disproportionate length of the legs, the only way they would counterbalance the rest of the body enough to get it back up again if it were to be knocked down. And then... oh, they were high. The robot wobbled on its legs for a minute; Rodney desperately fought not to say a thing. Zero-one definitely wasn't at the right angle to operate the commands; the upper edge of the box-things dug into the backs of his wrists. If he was distracted at a bad time the oscillations of the huge frame could very rapidly escalate past recovery and crash them.
Rodney was secured; the flight harness seemed solid. John would end up a pancake.
"Hm. Lost another gyro."
"Oh damn it. Did you need to tell me that? We're going to crash. We're totally going to crash. There'll be an electrical fire and we'll burn to death before anyone can get us out, and then the reactor will explode and take out the base and the nearby town will get showered in debris--"
"We're not going to crash. I've fought with worse." A pause. "The reactor is better shielded than that."
"Well, that's good to know!" Rodney exploded indignantly. "An alien kid tells me his alien robot isn't going to explode... Huh. Actually, it is good to know. Uh. Are you sure?"
Zero-one sighed, or maybe it was a snort. "Yes. Stop talking."
The robot limped slowly, almost ponderously, to the nearest wall. There was another long metallic screech when it lifted a leg high enough to step over it, and the whole several tons of robot were perfectly balanced on one single, rather small foot. Rodney scrunched his eyes closed.
Clang. Screeeeeeech... Thump.
Outside John went woo-hoo. Rodney wished he could say he was surprised.
The robot kept walking, crossing through a hastily evacuated tarmac and right up to the rows of wire fence. Of which there were a lot, and to Rodney's eye they seemed a bit too narrowly spaced out to allow the robot to navigate each in turn.
The robot paused. Zero-one took a minute to look at the readouts and screens.
"John. Hang on."
The low, almost subliminal thrum of the reactor kicked up a couple of notches. An engine spluttered; Rodney heard an explosion. Small one, his brain automatically classified, and called to mind the schematics he'd built of the robot to try to figure out what it was and how badly they were doomed.
And something was obviously wrong with the cameras because it seemed like they were all slowly angling upward, as if --
"Woohoo!"
-- oh god they weren't on the ground anymore, they were in flight -- well, hovering, more like -- and the explosion had likely been one of the thrusters and it was a matter of seconds before another one failed and they fell!
"Calm down. Just burned debris. Readout is still within parameters."
"Yes well I can't read your readouts, and you're obviously suicidal like every single pilot I ever met in my life, so excuse me if I don't believe --"
Clank. The whine of the thrusters died down. Zero-one turned his head just enough to arch an eyebrow at him; Rodney fell silent.
They walked out into the desert.
--
"I think that's far enough," said John after a minute or two. He could have admired the view, enjoyed the sheer delight in being carried so high over the ground, with nothing between him and the air but a hand that might let go any time; but the voice in his headset was starting to sound cranky, and he'd pushed General Hopkins far enough. He was already pretty surprised she'd let him go ahead with his scheme.
"You're on your own from here on, Major," she said. "If it crashes and burns..."
"Thank you, ma'am," he said, and he even meant it. The military didn't accept 'my subordinate didn't want to obey so I let him do whatever he wanted, I wash my hands of the result' as an excuse. This... This was closer to 'I'm taking a chance on you. Don't drop the ball on me.'
The robot came to a stop; the hand flattened out. John took it as an invitation to let go of his ropes and step on it. He crouched low, allowing it to slowly move to the side without tumbling him over the edge, and watched as the hatch opened. First a heavy panel opened out like a drawbridge, and then, a little farther inside, panels slid away into the walls, screeching like nails on a chalkboard.
<.SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED. TEN MINUTES BEFORE TERMINATION.>
"I'll reset it as needed," Benny-zero-one said. John nodded. Made sense. For all he knew John was planning to shoot him the second he came out of his protective shell.
The wind blew through the desert. John hopped across to the hatch and sat down in the middle, crossing his legs. "Hey there." He rested his hands on his knees, visibly empty.
The robot's pilot looked at him for another few seconds from deep inside his darkened lair, then he pushed himself up and off Rodney's lap, a hand braced on the ceiling. Something went click.
Flight harness undone, Rodney squirmed free of the chair and scrambled out past him on hands and knees through the hatch, then jumped to his feet. One instant later he was back on all fours. "Okay. Kind of high. Okay." He crawled to John, who obligingly shuffled to the side to leave him some space away from the edge.
John squinted against the sunlight. Benny was sitting on the edge of the pilot's chair, hands loosely linked, hanging between his knees. His arm seemed to be done bleeding, though it was still streaked with drying red that he didn't bother wiping away.
"... Alright." He leaned into Rodney and whispered, "Is it me or is that a little like taming a wild beast? I should have brought bacon."
"Major, if you ask me if you can take him home --"
John blinked. Ooh.
"-- I'll kick you over the edge right now -- Major, no. Just, no."
John nodded and went "Alright, alright," like he actually meant it, and left the little seed of possibility alone in that fertile back corner of his brain. "Okay, I think it's traditional to exchange demands, and then we can try to see about compromises. What do you want?"
"My mobile suit."
Mobile suit, huh. Funny name. He had a mental picture of a giant gold-plated tuxedo. Might not be very diplomatic to point it out, though. "How come it's here if it's yours?"
"It was supposed to be destroyed. Sent into the sun."
Okay, yeah, that'd take care of pretty much anything, no matter how strong the alloy.
"Well, someone can't aim, I see," Rodney said waspishly.
Benny threw him a sharp, not-joking look. "Something interfered." The look he sent John next wasn't any softer -- possibly harder even, determined. "I will not leave my mobile suit in anyone's hands. This is non-negotiable. I will not let you study the computers, the reactor, or the programming."
"But you don't mind about the armor?" John confirmed.
"We already know how to destroy it," he replied tersely. "If you figure out how to mass-produce it, be my guest."
"Huh. How non-negotiable ...?"
There was a long, long pause. Rodney almost spoke, but John rested a hand on his arm to stop him, to keep waiting.
"I -- made a promise -- not to kill anymore." His hand curled on the armrest almost tenderly; briefly, he looked -- John wasn't sure, depressed? No, sad -- just a tiny bit, and the sadness didn't make him seem any less determined. "This is the only cause I would break it for."
John gave a slow thoughtful nod. "... And you think we'd use the technology the same way your people did." Because it was pretty obvious why someone like him would be so intense about getting rid of the technology -- someone had misused it, badly. And then when he went to find it, he found it in the middle of a military complex that stockpiled weapons and shielding from a dozen different cultures.
Benny gave him a narrow-eyed look that screamed 'yes, you would'. It made him look younger, though, and John knew it was useless to try to guess at offworlders' ages but his estimate dropped five years from the original mid-twenties.
"Say, kid, you ever meet an alien?"
Slow blink. "... Present company excepted?"
Yep, that particular feeling was pretty much confirmed.
"Wait, you're not a Jaffa?" Rodney said, incredulous. "But you -- okay, show us your stomach."
"What?"
"Jaffa are a variation on Homo sapiens," John explained casually. "They'd still look human, when dressed."
The pilot frowned, but lifted the bottom of his shirt. No X-shaped scar. Other scars, though. He wasn't really surprised.
"I'm not saying the tech couldn't be misused," he said quietly. "But here the existence of aliens is so far top-secret, which kind of limits the usefulness of a giant robot. In space, though..."
Rodney blinked at him, arching his eyebrows. "Major, are you recruiting?"
"Yeah, I think I am."
"Well." Rodney tilted his head back, giving the robot -- the mobile suit -- a long, quizzical look. "I can understand how in a battle amongst humans it would seriously be nothing but overkill begetting escalation. Major case of overcompensating, there..."
Benny snorted quietly.
"I don't know how much a non-disclosure agreement would be worth in your situation, kid." John rubbed the back of his head. "But, yeah, aliens. Some of 'em want to enslave us, some of 'em want to eat us... Personally I'm mostly concerned about the second type, but that's because in general people are real hard to convince to sign peace treaties with their food."
He didn't bother to hide the weariness that rose at the thought, the countless Wraith hives culling people like cattle. He didn't need to hide or fake a thing. He met Zero-one's eyes, let him read his face.
"Why do they not feed from animals?" he asked, cautiously, eyebrows furrowed, like he still wasn't entirely believing him, just humoring him until he figured out the logic.
"Not a clue. You'd think they would, huh? Humans must be more troublesome than cows. They just don't, so either they can't or they have a 'it's not tasty if the prey isn't smart enough to make us work for it' thing going on." He sighed, shook his head. "They're... kind of human-shaped, too, so perhaps we're the only species close enough to provide what they need. No idea."
Once again, he waited, Rodney shuffling uncomfortably at his side. He could see the idea of the Wraith making its way through Zero-one's brain, the furrowed brow that was less annoyance or puzzlement, more of a 'damn it.'
He gave the last push, and then let the answer fall where it would.
"They're looking for Earth."
The desert wind whistled across the cockpit's opening, ruffling the wire of John's headset, the bottom of Rodney's shirt, even the boy's dark bangs.
"... I'll need more proof," Zero-one said.
John grinned wide and toothy. "I think we can get you that."
--
Oh god, so many questions unanswered. Okay, yes, sequel is likely. XD
Part 1
Rodney is looking for new personnel for Atlantis; instead he finds a new project. John isn't looking for anyone, but he might find someone anyway.
The peculiar green glow of a monitor booting up in a dark room was so intimately familiar that for a second it didn't seem alien at all. He could see the edges of screens and buttons and instruments, and it was a lot more reminiscent of a jet fighter than a Goa'uld Death Glider.
It didn't make the writing that scrolled down the screen easier to read.
It certainly didn't make the crazy commando guy any lighter on him, or the wet warmth any less...
"Oh my god, you're bleeding on me."
The spate of rapid-fire typing continued uninterrupted. Outside the cockpit Sheppard was banging away on the hatch and trying to get his fingers in a crack, rather fruitlessly, as Rodney could have told him.
Only he had more urgent things to tell him. "Major, the crazy alien is bleeding on me. Major?" Visions of death plagues and dangerous chemical addictions ran through his mind. Oh god, what if he wasn't a Jaffa, what if he was a Goa'uld, and Rodney conveniently trapped here with his big juicy tempting brain. It would take only a hop and a wriggle to get him snaked.
He wriggled to free one of his hands, got a faceful of bristly hair as a result and then an elbow slamming on the inside of his wrist and pinning it down on the armrest. He protested loudly -- it wasn't a scream, John was the one screaming, it was merely an irritated, very virile yell -- and started struggling anew. Only the crazy alien guy had apparently trained in full-body contact fighting in tight enclosed spaces too, because in less than a second he had wriggled around on hands and knees on top of Rodney and was shoving Rodney's arms back down against his sides and under him where they were pretty much stuck. Rodney tried kneeing him in the back (something in his spine popped), and grinned ferociously when the alien pitched forward and banged his forehead on something.
Huh. There was a gun under his nose. Okay then.
The guy pulled out the security harness and snapped it on, except Rodney was pretty sure your arms weren't supposed to be caught underneath. Then adding some more indignity to the affront he turned around and sat on Rodney's stomach again. He had the pointiest bones Rodney had ever had the displeasure to feel; he would have to tell John he'd lost his title.
"You know, I have to tell you that you won't get away with it, I mean, you guys never get away with it, seriously you shouldn't even bother. Hello, you're in the middle of a military base?"
Something blinked red on the screen; the commando guy grunted a little "huh" sort of noise. He twisted around, felt for Rodney's pocket (Rodney didn't yelp at all, he wasn't sure how Sheppard knew to be alarmed and noisy outside again) and emerged with a screwdriver.
Screwdrivers were apparently universal, because he seemed perfectly satisfied wriggling his way between Rodney's thighs (oh god) and under the console.
"McKay? McKay, status!"
"Major, I have a Jaffa commando between my legs and the headache of the century and oh, yes, someone threw me down in a hole and landed on top of me, what do you think my status is?"
"--Between your okay, you down here! We have enough missiles in this base to blow you to smithereens, you're not going anywhere, so don't make it even worse for you and get out of here now."
<.SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED.>, said a metallic, vaguely feminine voice. <.SIXTY SECONDS BEFORE TERMINATION.>
"... Oooor we could talk, talk is good, communication is great, I'm sure there's a way we both get what we want--"
A wriggle, a click, and the countdown stopped. "Alright," said the commando. He had a dry, vaguely nasal voice. "Open the hangar. I'll drop him off on the desert road outside."
Silence outside.
He reclined on top of Rodney again, his back to Rodney's chest, wriggled a little and shuffled in a weird sideway position. Rodney went ghhk, or something like it. "Listen, I realize I am eminently comfortable, but--"
"This is a one-person cockpit," said the commando. He slid a keyboard out of the side and started typing away.
"Oh. Right." The clearance between keyboard and seat visibly hadn't been made to accommodate both his and Rodney's thighs. Actually, since his knees would have been almost banging into the front console if he could only put them down, Rodney was starting to think it hadn't even been made to accommodate a reasonably-sized person, either. (Also, the weight of his legs was starting to pull his knees toward his chest, damn gravity. His hips were killing him. Maybe he ought to kick his heels into the instruments, but the displays were already cracked to hell and back and still stubbornly glowing, so likely it would only get him sore heels.)
"Um, yeah," said John from outside. "Is that your only demand? Because --"
"Yes."
Then again at least kicking the displays would be doing something. Rodney hated being held hostage like he hated lemons and complete imbeciles.
Major Sheppard had gone into his patient-but-needling negotiating voice. The alien was ignoring him. Also still bleeding. His arm was streaked with dark wet lines all the way up to his shoulder. He didn't deign to act like he noticed. Maybe he was drugged. Maybe he was just crazy.
... Actually Sheppard's voice was closer to patient-because-I'm-planning-something-that'll-bite-you-in-the-ass. Rodney took in a deep, bracing breath and waited.
Type-type, type-type... type... type-ty...
Rodney smothered a yawn, and realized with faint surprise that he was getting pretty relaxed.
"It won't matter," the commando said, but he sounded a little weird to Rodney... a little muffled, a little thick.
"Yeah?" replied John from a century away. Maybe a mile. Something far away. "Well, we've got to try it anyway."
Rodney wondered vaguely what he was on about, even as the commando toppled back on him in slow motion.
It was like he'd gotten rid of all his bones. He was squishing Rodney a little. Blanket-warm. Rodney didn't even mind the bleeding anymore.
The lit screens and dancing LEDs painted the inside of his eyelids pretty colors.
--
He woke up in stages, to the sounds of typing and a peculiar numbness in his hands that told him his blood flow had been restrained too long. His head was muzzy.
The commando had apparently found somewhere to park his ass that wasn't on top of Rodney anymore. He'd wedged his back against one of the arm rests; his legs were braced on both sides of the cockpit. He'd found a way to unhook the keyboard and prop it up on his thighs; Rodney wasn't sure how he could see what he was typing, with his back turned on the front screen like that.
The biggest problem was that he was facing Rodney, even if he was paying more attention to the keyboard. Eyes just barely cracked open, Rodney tried to discreetly wriggle his arms free.
"He's awake," said the commando, casual and uninterested.
Outside a machine was powered down. After a couple of seconds, John answered. "He is? Thanks. Hey, Rodney, how are you doing?"
Rodney had no words to explain exactly why the intruder's perfect calm and indifference scared him possibly more than if he had been tense and ready to shoot everything in sight. Alright, no, a guy on edge and on a hair trigger was dangerous, too, but...
It was like none of their actions were going to make a difference. And considering that Rodney was still trapped in here and they still hadn't managed to force the cockpit open...
The guy could have been pissed enough to send them little Rodney-chunks as a message, and nothing, no one could have stopped him.
"Peachy, Major, what do you think?" He took a deep, bracing breath. No torture yet. So far this wasn't such a bad kidnapping, as those things went. Which meant of course it was likely going to go south in a pretty spectacular way. "Ix-nay on the gard-asay eam-bay?"
"You know, the Pentagon is starting to get really interested in this alloy," John replied mock-cheerfully, which Rodney took to mean it also, of course, blocked Asgard teleport beams.
Sheppard had to be going a little crazy out here. Maybe even half as crazy as Rodney. He shifted his arms, and sucked in his breath when his blood started flowing back into his hands.
"Hey," said the Major. "My name's John. What's yours?"
In the muted green light the commando looked young to Rodney's eyes. Then again Ford had been young too, and he'd been a really good Marine anyway. Besides who knew how long aliens lived. Teal'c, for example...
There was a pause, long enough that Rodney thought he was going to ignore the question.
"Zero-one will do."
Rodney snorted before he could think better of it. "That's not a name, and not even a very good codename."
"All my other codenames are obsolete. Call me whatever you want."
... Oh hell, he wasn't merely a highly-trained commando, he was weird in the head too. Rodney wasn't even sure how to explain but his gut had gone tight at that tone of voice -- too calm, indifferent and polite, like discussing the weather. It was never good. In his experience it always came attached to brainwashed fanatics and sociopaths.
"... Alright, why not," said John, in that placid, 'pacify the natives' tone. "I suppose you've heard already but his name is Rodney. He's probably the best friend I've got," he continued, adding a little teasing cheerfulness to his voice. Building a rapport, trying to make Rodney feel real to the man. "Though I think his best friend is Carson, our medical doctor. I feel very slighted."
The commando let out a vaguely amused snort. "So long as he doesn't touch anything I have no intention of hurting him."
"... Oh. Neat."
"Huh. That's surprisingly generous of you," Rodney said. Also weird. Why take a hostage, if not to use him as leverage? ... Likely to stall the enemy, prevent them from using lethal gases instead. If that was all he needed Rodney for, then he -- "You think you can leave."
The commando looked at him, an intense, piercing gaze.
"You think it still works, you can make it work. If you really wanted to self-destruct--"
"The self-destruct is my second option," Zero-one corrected him. "It's still on the table as a possibility."
He went back to typing. Rodney could hear John groan in frustration from there.
He checked out the cockpit, watched the lines and lines of alien letters unroll. The script looked sort of familiar, actually, much like the resemblance between Cyrillic and the roman alphabet, or even Ancient script. The numbers especially...
"What are you coding?" he asked, throat a little dry.
"Editing the operating system to compensate for external damage."
Rodney couldn't help it, he made a little interested noise. "... Are you sure you know how to do that? Because I really don't want to be in your robot when it faceplants because you edited out the line that makes it know how to walk."
He won a whole fourth-of-a-second of attention, mostly in the form of a dismissive, 'do I question your ability to tie your shoelaces?' glance. It wasn't a look he was very familiar with, at least not from that end of it.
"Okay, seriously, what do you want?"
"This unit back, or failing that, destroyed. I'm not interested in your other secrets."
"... Not the other units?" John asked cautiously.
No answer. Rodney took it to mean that he thought they were already destroyed enough. He had to admit, they looked it. Sure, the alloys and the bearings in the joints were all very interesting, but they weren't revolutionary, just slightly more efficient ways of doing the same things Earth could already do. The rest was so much scrap. Whoever had exploded them had been cautious, thoroughly shredding the chest areas. The computers and reactors were total losses.
"It's not like we stole them, you know, they just kind of fell on us. I'm sure there's some way to get to a compromise."
Zero-one kept typing, ignoring John entirely. Rodney racked his brain for something else to say.
"Aha! Your shoulder. You should get that treated before you bleed out. Or catch an infection, or tetanus. Or worse, give me tetanus. Because while the sleeping gas didn't affect you as long, it did affect you and obviously we have compatible physiologies."
The commando blinked, looked down at his arm -- then brushed his hand against his other arm, where the line of a scar cut across the outside of his arm just under his shoulder.
"Oh, good, you'll be symmetrical again. Um, random question, do you get shot a lot?"
"It's been a while."
"... Is that a nostalgic face? Major, I am locked in with a lunatic. An alien lunatic. He is bleeding on me. I think you haven't given enough thought to this very serious issue!"
John drawled through the crack in the door, "Hey, hope you don't mind, taking out the whole base in one big explosion is one thing, but we have a strict 'no infecting Rodney with alien tetanus' policy." Rodney glared in his direction in protest, though it wasn't direct line of sight. He was sure Sheppard was aware of his utter contempt anyway.
Zero-one gave a faint snort.
"... oh my god," Rodney whispered urgently. "Major, keep going, he laughed."
Zero-one looked down at him and arched an eyebrow.
"... Haha. Ha. ... Goddamn it, this is ridiculous." He wriggled one of his hands free, though he was still trapped at the elbow, and waved it in a little irritated arc. "I don't suppose you'll let me overpower you?"
"Sorry."
Oh god help him, John was laughing. And it wasn't a pretend-laugh, either.
"Alright, guys," he said, still chuckling. "I've got an idea."
Typetype. "Go ahead."
"It's out of the question for us to just up and let you go, of course. You did break into a highly classified research center..." A pause. "So what we're going to do is open the hangar, and you can walk a bit thataway into the desert--"
"Major!" someone yelled from the side -- that old woman, General Hopsomethings. Oh, so she was still around, and all offended to boot. Rodney could have told her it was useless. When John had an idea in his head...
"And then we can talk face to face. And you can stretch your legs and piss or whatever. Building trust, yeah? Because we're pretty deadlocked here."
"And how do you propose to keep him from leaving with Doctor McKay?!" the old biddy General retorted. But she didn't know John like Rodney did; he was sure to have a really unconventional, possibly illegal idea, but one that would yet make a perfect sort of sense.
"Easy. I'll secure myself to the outside of the robot."
"Oh, great idea!" Rodney yelled back. "Give him two hostages instead of one! I take back everything I ever said about you having at least one more brain cell than the usual military issue!"
"... But I won't tie myself too tight, so if it goes too fast, or too far, I'll probably fall to my death."
Rodney could picture his face in his mind right then, that quiet, confident, lethal sheen in his eyes. But he didn't get -- he didn't, what was the angle --
"What do you think, Benny? You look like a Benny to me."
Rodney stared at the commando in horror. He had stopped typing, his whole body gone perfectly still.
"That's -- are you crazy?" the General asked.
"No, see... He thinks his robot can get up now, with no additional repairs -- he wouldn't trust us to do them for him, so obviously what works right now is good enough. That means he could leave even if we didn't open the hangar for him. That thing would go through the roof like tissue paper. Thing is, he'd also topple me off and I'd likely break my neck, plus he'd step on a lot of our men ... And how hard is it to infiltrate a base the way you did it, and not kill a single person? Hm, zero-one?"
Rodney stopped breathing. Zero-one's brow was furrowed, his eyes narrow.
"It's... doable."
John snorted. "Gotta be easier if you didn't bother, though. With your level of skill, the way you've been trained... But you were so careful not to break anyone."
Oh, thought Rodney. Oh. He stared at the commando, trying to read his face, to figure out what John had right through the hatch. Zero-one still looked cold to him, utterly dispassionate.
Then he sighed. "... Alright."
"Whee. I love negotiations." A couple of screens flickered to life, though the images looked weird; after a second Rodney realized they were all either infrared or electrical images. But there was only one man sitting on the robot, one who was waving his hand for someone to throw him a rope. "...Oh. General?"
"... You are a lunatic. Alright, permission granted. Just be aware that we've got every missile this quadrant of the globe aimed your way, Zero-one."
"Acknowledged."
He tugged Rodney's legs down and under the front console -- oh god ow -- , and shifted around to lay down on him again. There really wasn't enough space in that stupid cockpit.
"Why couldn't you be a sexy blonde alien girl," Rodney muttered under his breath, but then the commando was slipping his hands in box-things and grabbing -- oh, like joysticks, only horizontal -- and Rodney forgot to protest. He couldn't see the buttons he pressed, the levers he might be activating instead, but he tried to remember the play of muscles and tendons, so that maybe later...
A massive arm -- the only one the robot had left -- slowly rose from the ground, dinged metal screeching; one of the screens showed a brief shower of sparks. The arm folded, the hand curved, came to rest almost in touching distance of John.
He could have crushed him to death right there. Rodney didn't breathe until it stopped moving, cupped like a metal cage to keep the human from falling.
The robot sat up. Rodney had a 'aha' moment about the disproportionate length of the legs, the only way they would counterbalance the rest of the body enough to get it back up again if it were to be knocked down. And then... oh, they were high. The robot wobbled on its legs for a minute; Rodney desperately fought not to say a thing. Zero-one definitely wasn't at the right angle to operate the commands; the upper edge of the box-things dug into the backs of his wrists. If he was distracted at a bad time the oscillations of the huge frame could very rapidly escalate past recovery and crash them.
Rodney was secured; the flight harness seemed solid. John would end up a pancake.
"Hm. Lost another gyro."
"Oh damn it. Did you need to tell me that? We're going to crash. We're totally going to crash. There'll be an electrical fire and we'll burn to death before anyone can get us out, and then the reactor will explode and take out the base and the nearby town will get showered in debris--"
"We're not going to crash. I've fought with worse." A pause. "The reactor is better shielded than that."
"Well, that's good to know!" Rodney exploded indignantly. "An alien kid tells me his alien robot isn't going to explode... Huh. Actually, it is good to know. Uh. Are you sure?"
Zero-one sighed, or maybe it was a snort. "Yes. Stop talking."
The robot limped slowly, almost ponderously, to the nearest wall. There was another long metallic screech when it lifted a leg high enough to step over it, and the whole several tons of robot were perfectly balanced on one single, rather small foot. Rodney scrunched his eyes closed.
Clang. Screeeeeeech... Thump.
Outside John went woo-hoo. Rodney wished he could say he was surprised.
The robot kept walking, crossing through a hastily evacuated tarmac and right up to the rows of wire fence. Of which there were a lot, and to Rodney's eye they seemed a bit too narrowly spaced out to allow the robot to navigate each in turn.
The robot paused. Zero-one took a minute to look at the readouts and screens.
"John. Hang on."
The low, almost subliminal thrum of the reactor kicked up a couple of notches. An engine spluttered; Rodney heard an explosion. Small one, his brain automatically classified, and called to mind the schematics he'd built of the robot to try to figure out what it was and how badly they were doomed.
And something was obviously wrong with the cameras because it seemed like they were all slowly angling upward, as if --
"Woohoo!"
-- oh god they weren't on the ground anymore, they were in flight -- well, hovering, more like -- and the explosion had likely been one of the thrusters and it was a matter of seconds before another one failed and they fell!
"Calm down. Just burned debris. Readout is still within parameters."
"Yes well I can't read your readouts, and you're obviously suicidal like every single pilot I ever met in my life, so excuse me if I don't believe --"
Clank. The whine of the thrusters died down. Zero-one turned his head just enough to arch an eyebrow at him; Rodney fell silent.
They walked out into the desert.
--
"I think that's far enough," said John after a minute or two. He could have admired the view, enjoyed the sheer delight in being carried so high over the ground, with nothing between him and the air but a hand that might let go any time; but the voice in his headset was starting to sound cranky, and he'd pushed General Hopkins far enough. He was already pretty surprised she'd let him go ahead with his scheme.
"You're on your own from here on, Major," she said. "If it crashes and burns..."
"Thank you, ma'am," he said, and he even meant it. The military didn't accept 'my subordinate didn't want to obey so I let him do whatever he wanted, I wash my hands of the result' as an excuse. This... This was closer to 'I'm taking a chance on you. Don't drop the ball on me.'
The robot came to a stop; the hand flattened out. John took it as an invitation to let go of his ropes and step on it. He crouched low, allowing it to slowly move to the side without tumbling him over the edge, and watched as the hatch opened. First a heavy panel opened out like a drawbridge, and then, a little farther inside, panels slid away into the walls, screeching like nails on a chalkboard.
<.SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED. TEN MINUTES BEFORE TERMINATION.>
"I'll reset it as needed," Benny-zero-one said. John nodded. Made sense. For all he knew John was planning to shoot him the second he came out of his protective shell.
The wind blew through the desert. John hopped across to the hatch and sat down in the middle, crossing his legs. "Hey there." He rested his hands on his knees, visibly empty.
The robot's pilot looked at him for another few seconds from deep inside his darkened lair, then he pushed himself up and off Rodney's lap, a hand braced on the ceiling. Something went click.
Flight harness undone, Rodney squirmed free of the chair and scrambled out past him on hands and knees through the hatch, then jumped to his feet. One instant later he was back on all fours. "Okay. Kind of high. Okay." He crawled to John, who obligingly shuffled to the side to leave him some space away from the edge.
John squinted against the sunlight. Benny was sitting on the edge of the pilot's chair, hands loosely linked, hanging between his knees. His arm seemed to be done bleeding, though it was still streaked with drying red that he didn't bother wiping away.
"... Alright." He leaned into Rodney and whispered, "Is it me or is that a little like taming a wild beast? I should have brought bacon."
"Major, if you ask me if you can take him home --"
John blinked. Ooh.
"-- I'll kick you over the edge right now -- Major, no. Just, no."
John nodded and went "Alright, alright," like he actually meant it, and left the little seed of possibility alone in that fertile back corner of his brain. "Okay, I think it's traditional to exchange demands, and then we can try to see about compromises. What do you want?"
"My mobile suit."
Mobile suit, huh. Funny name. He had a mental picture of a giant gold-plated tuxedo. Might not be very diplomatic to point it out, though. "How come it's here if it's yours?"
"It was supposed to be destroyed. Sent into the sun."
Okay, yeah, that'd take care of pretty much anything, no matter how strong the alloy.
"Well, someone can't aim, I see," Rodney said waspishly.
Benny threw him a sharp, not-joking look. "Something interfered." The look he sent John next wasn't any softer -- possibly harder even, determined. "I will not leave my mobile suit in anyone's hands. This is non-negotiable. I will not let you study the computers, the reactor, or the programming."
"But you don't mind about the armor?" John confirmed.
"We already know how to destroy it," he replied tersely. "If you figure out how to mass-produce it, be my guest."
"Huh. How non-negotiable ...?"
There was a long, long pause. Rodney almost spoke, but John rested a hand on his arm to stop him, to keep waiting.
"I -- made a promise -- not to kill anymore." His hand curled on the armrest almost tenderly; briefly, he looked -- John wasn't sure, depressed? No, sad -- just a tiny bit, and the sadness didn't make him seem any less determined. "This is the only cause I would break it for."
John gave a slow thoughtful nod. "... And you think we'd use the technology the same way your people did." Because it was pretty obvious why someone like him would be so intense about getting rid of the technology -- someone had misused it, badly. And then when he went to find it, he found it in the middle of a military complex that stockpiled weapons and shielding from a dozen different cultures.
Benny gave him a narrow-eyed look that screamed 'yes, you would'. It made him look younger, though, and John knew it was useless to try to guess at offworlders' ages but his estimate dropped five years from the original mid-twenties.
"Say, kid, you ever meet an alien?"
Slow blink. "... Present company excepted?"
Yep, that particular feeling was pretty much confirmed.
"Wait, you're not a Jaffa?" Rodney said, incredulous. "But you -- okay, show us your stomach."
"What?"
"Jaffa are a variation on Homo sapiens," John explained casually. "They'd still look human, when dressed."
The pilot frowned, but lifted the bottom of his shirt. No X-shaped scar. Other scars, though. He wasn't really surprised.
"I'm not saying the tech couldn't be misused," he said quietly. "But here the existence of aliens is so far top-secret, which kind of limits the usefulness of a giant robot. In space, though..."
Rodney blinked at him, arching his eyebrows. "Major, are you recruiting?"
"Yeah, I think I am."
"Well." Rodney tilted his head back, giving the robot -- the mobile suit -- a long, quizzical look. "I can understand how in a battle amongst humans it would seriously be nothing but overkill begetting escalation. Major case of overcompensating, there..."
Benny snorted quietly.
"I don't know how much a non-disclosure agreement would be worth in your situation, kid." John rubbed the back of his head. "But, yeah, aliens. Some of 'em want to enslave us, some of 'em want to eat us... Personally I'm mostly concerned about the second type, but that's because in general people are real hard to convince to sign peace treaties with their food."
He didn't bother to hide the weariness that rose at the thought, the countless Wraith hives culling people like cattle. He didn't need to hide or fake a thing. He met Zero-one's eyes, let him read his face.
"Why do they not feed from animals?" he asked, cautiously, eyebrows furrowed, like he still wasn't entirely believing him, just humoring him until he figured out the logic.
"Not a clue. You'd think they would, huh? Humans must be more troublesome than cows. They just don't, so either they can't or they have a 'it's not tasty if the prey isn't smart enough to make us work for it' thing going on." He sighed, shook his head. "They're... kind of human-shaped, too, so perhaps we're the only species close enough to provide what they need. No idea."
Once again, he waited, Rodney shuffling uncomfortably at his side. He could see the idea of the Wraith making its way through Zero-one's brain, the furrowed brow that was less annoyance or puzzlement, more of a 'damn it.'
He gave the last push, and then let the answer fall where it would.
"They're looking for Earth."
The desert wind whistled across the cockpit's opening, ruffling the wire of John's headset, the bottom of Rodney's shirt, even the boy's dark bangs.
"... I'll need more proof," Zero-one said.
John grinned wide and toothy. "I think we can get you that."
--
Oh god, so many questions unanswered. Okay, yes, sequel is likely. XD
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