"Yeah." John had thought so too, and he wasn't sure if the fact that she hadn't gone that route made him less suspicious or more so. "Maybe she realized just how badly that would go over." Who knew, it could be common sense. Controlling a hostage was harder than it looked, and Trishen had been working on the Mirror for a while now without success; she knew she needed their help, or specifically Rodney's help. And that she wasn't likely to get it if they thought she was a danger to them.
Once the shuttle was down, John got on the headset and talked Miko through landing the jumper. The jumper's sensors couldn't pick up the cloaked shuttle, though the cloaked jumper appeared as a ghostly outline on the shuttle's display. John figured the two ships crashing into each other at some point would be the perfect cap to this day, but the jumper set down safely on the stony ground about thirty yards away.
They got their SCBAs on, and went out to meet the others. Ronon came down the ramp first, eyeing Trishen warily. She was standing back near her shuttle's open hatch, holding the black sphere that was her portable terminal. She was wearing the helmet part of her environmental outfit, but hadn't bothered with the rest of the concealing suit. With the dead-white skin of her hands visible, it was a lot more obvious what she was. Ronon began, "How do you know-"
John cut him off, "We don't know anything. We just know that this is the deal we made, and so far she's keeping up her end of it."
"Seriously, we've gone over it all already," Rodney told him wearily. "Several times."
Zelenka stopped in the hatchway, peering around Ronon. "Proboha ' He looked at Rodney, his eyes wide above the SCBA mask. "She's a Wraith."
Rodney glared at him in irritation. "What, did you think it was a cruel joke?"
Zelenka gestured in annoyance. "Of course not! But you said she was not like the Wraith of our reality. I was hoping there wouldn't be so much.. with the hands, and everything."
John took Zelenka's arm, turning him so they weren't facing toward Trishen. "Listen, we've got a temporary deal with her, but don't let down your guard, don't let her get you alone." He gave Rodney a meaningful look, including him in the admonition. "Don't forget what she)J is.
Rodney just nodded tightly. With an aghast expression, Zelenka said, "I don't think that will be a problem."
Rodney rolled his eyes. "On that note, let's get to work." He waved imperatively to Trishen, calling her over.
Under Ronon's highly suspicious gaze, they got two laptops set up at the end of the rear cabin, and Trishen put her portable terminal on the ramp. It was a little reassuring that she still seemed just as nervous of them as they were of her.
Miko was using the station tied into the jumper's systems in the cockpit, so she could keep an eye on the HUD. John ended up in the jumper's cockpit with her, Rodney, and Teyla, not so much for a secret meeting out of Trishen's hearing, but because the cockpit was pressurized and they could take off the SCBAs long enough to eat and drink something.
As they stood around knocking back water and power bars, Miko looked up from her laptop to tell them, "We were so afraid! And you all look-"
Rodney interrupted her with, "Work now, sympathy later." He crumpled a wrapper. "I want this over with as soon as possible."
John could get behind that attitude.
Rodney and Teyla went back outside, but the HUD showed that the interference from the Mirror had calmed down enough to send another databurst back to base camp, so John stayed to record a brief report. He just hit the highlights: Wraith, more Wraith, what they were planning to do. Miko added compressed files with copies of Rodney's data on the Mirror, and sent it. It worried him that they hadn't gotten a reply back from the last transmission Zelenka had made. But if it had come during the Mirror's last big discharge, the jumper's comm might not have been able to receive it.
John went back outside, where Teyla and Ronon were standing out in the open space between the two ships. This spot was shadowed by the cliffs, which were striped with red and yellow mineral deposits. The sky was reassuringly empty of anything but the gas giant, growing brighter as the moon moved further out of the eclipse.
Trishen was working on her terminal while Rodney and Radek pointed at different laptop and tablet screens and argued. Ronon stood with one hand not-so-casually on his energy gun. "Everything okay?" John asked.
Ronon shrugged one shoulder. "So far."
Rodney and Radek had to go back and forth into the shuttle a few times, to take special readings or copy over something else from her stored data. John made sure they were never alone with Trishen, while Teyla and Ronon kept an eye on their perimeter. The active cloaks on the ships made things a little awkward, since neither the shuttle nor the jumper were visible unless you were standing in them, and people occasionally got lost moving from one ship to the other and had to be directed back on course.
Then Miko's voice came over their headsets, shouting, "There are Wraith! There are two darts! I mean, incoming!„
"Everybody inside." John turned, scanning the sky. There was nothing visible yet, but the HUD would have picked them up long before they were in visible range.
"Me too?" Trishen asked uncertainly, standing up and clutching her terminal. Zelenka had already shifted his equipment away from the hatch, further back into the rear cabin. Rodney was standing, his eyes on the handheld life signs detector.
They couldn't chance sending Trishen across the open area to the shuttle. "Yeah, you too," John said, trying not to sound too grudging about it.
Trishen edged up the ramp a little, still staying as far away from them as possible.
Miko came out of the cockpit, stepping up beside John, uneasily peering up at the sky. "They should be-Yes, right there."
She pointed and John made out the shape of the darts, nearly lost against the colors of the gas giant. Ronon stepped past Miko, stationing himself between her and the hatch opening; he was watching Trishen rather than the darts.
After an endless moment, John could tell the darts' course was taking them off to the west. He said, "Rodney?"
Rodney shook his head, his eyes on the life signs detector. "There's nothing on the ground." He looked up, squinting to follow the dart's progress. "They didn't beam down."
He and John exchanged a look of weary relief. Yeah, John had had more than enough Wraith for today, too. The darts zigzagged back and forth a few times, then finally turned, heading east. Considering it, John said, "Funny how with this whole moon to search, they're pay ing so much attention to these mountains."
Rodney's brow furrowed suspiciously as he glanced up at the retreating darts. "I'll check again for signal leakage, but if they knew where we were, they'd attack."
Trishen looked at them, at Zelenka clutching his laptop and nervously studying the sky, at Miko still squeezed in between John and Ronon, at Rodney intently watching the life signs detector. Trishen asked, "This is how you live?"
John just looked at her, having no idea what to say to that. They were so much safer, so much better off, than most of the other human inhabitants of Pegasus, that the question was impossible to answer. Ronon looked away, his face set in a sardonic grimace. Teyla said, coldly, "Yes. But we have weapons, and the Ancestors' cloaking devices. Others do not." Canting her head thoughtfully, she added, "They have come this way because they sense your presence, have they not?"