Of course, Rodney knew that as well. “Hey, wait!” he whined, starting to back up a step but freezing again when the man waggled his head ‘no’. “Look, let’s talk about this! I’m sorry about what they did, okay? I had no part in that! I’m just the scientist, that’s all! I just want to fix my ship and go home!” Sheppard tried not to bristle at Rodney’s calling the Jumper “his” ship, and tensed, waiting for the right moment. “Look, you can come with me!” Rodney offered. “Your ship isn’t working either, right? Well, let me fix this one and the three of us can get out here together! To hell with the rest of them!” Rodney was far too convincing when he said that, Sheppard decided.
But it was convincing the V’rdai as well. “You think we’d abandon our teammates?” the man asked, his voice a low growl as he continued to stalk toward Rodney. “We’re not cowards! We’re V’rdai! We don’t run, we fight!” His attention was entirely upon Rodney now, and the woman’s glances around the area had subsided as well. She was starting to believe that Rodney really was here alone.
Perfect.
“Okay, okay,” Rodney tried again. “How about this, then? You let me fix my ship, and then gather up the rest of your crew and we all fly out of here together. I can drop you guys off anywhere you want — or you can drop me anyplace that has at least a small city, if you’d rather do it that way. How does that sound?”
“It sounds like you’re desperate,” the man answered, and Sheppard privately agreed. The guard was almost close enough to shoot Rodney now, and perhaps thirty feet from Sheppard and Teyla. It was time.
Sheppard nodded, and Teyla responded by rising to her feet. She had her gun out already, of course, and she aimed and fired as soon as she had a clear shot. It winged the V’rdai guard but didn’t take him out, and he spun around to face her —
— and Sheppard’s shot hit him full in the chest. The man collapsed instantly, falling in a limp heap on the hard rocky ground, his gun clattering as it dropped from his hand. Sheppard sighed. The man was dead, no question about it. He wished there had been another way.
“Castor!” The woman had dropped into a crouch as soon as she saw Teyla, and she squeezed off a shot but Teyla ducked back behind a boulder. Sheppard could tell she was trying to decide who to shoot at — Rodney was still frozen in front of her but too far away, Teyla was back out of sight, and he was standing there, bringing his own weapon around toward her. Easy choice. She turned to face him, raising her pistol as well —
— and Ronon shot her in the back. She crumpled without a sound, and not for the first time Sheppard envied his friend’s unusual pistol. The P90s were lethal, but Ronon could set his weapon to stun or to kill. Sheppard could see the woman’s back moving slightly with each breath. The big Satedan had only stunned her.
“Good plan,” Sheppard commented as he and Teyla stepped out and hurried over to meet Ronon by the airlock. Rodney was already working his way down from his vantage point, and joined them a second later.
“Yeah, of course you liked it,” he complained, carefully not looking at the dead male V’rdai. “You weren’t the one playing bait!”
“I wouldn’t have been half as good at it as you were, Rodney,” Sheppard assured him, forcing himself to keep his tone light. That way he could avoid thinking about the man he’d just killed, at least for a little while. “You have that certain look of terror I don’t think I could ever match.”
“Ha ha,” the scientist snapped. “If you’ve had your amusement, do you mind if I get to work?”
“By all means.” Sheppard bent and grabbed the woman under the arms, then hauled her away from the airlock. Ronon was already moving the dead man off to the side, and Sheppard was glad he didn’t have to shoulder that task. “Go right ahead.”
“Thank you.” Rodney turned and raised his hand to the door panel, but Ronon called out and stopped him.
“They’ll have rigged it,” the Satedan warned.
“I guessed as much already,” Rodney snapped at him. “I have done this before, you know.” He opened the panel and checked the wiring. “Just as I thought — the exact same configuration as last time,” he said to himself. “Easy enough to disconnect.” He snipped a few wires, rerouted something else, then closed the panel again and activated the door release. Nothing blew up as it lowered, so Sheppard figured he must have gotten it right.
While Rodney disappeared inside to make sure the V’rdai hadn’t caused any additional damage or left any other presents, the rest of them turned to the two bodies. They stripped off the V’rdai’s camouflaged jumpsuits, facemasks, and goggles, and Sheppard and Teyla quickly donned them and took up the guards’ weapons while Ronon bound and gagged their captive and hauled her off behind some rocks where she wouldn’t be found right away. He was still carrying the man’s body away when Rodney reemerged.
“The interior’s as we left it,” he said. “They didn’t break anything, so it’s just the existing damage I’ve got to fix.” He had his tools with him, and set to work at once, wrestling a battered panel open and removing a mass of burnt-out wiring and circuitry. “Excellent.”
“Can you fix it or not?” Sheppard asked him. He had to raise his voice because the facemask muffled it. Plus the jumpsuit was armored in strategic locations, which made it stiff and heavy. How did the V’rdai stand it? At least Castor had been roughly his height, and these things were made to be a little loose, so it fit him well enough for appearance’s sake. They were also dark enough to hide bloodstains, Sheppard noticed, and deliberately pushed aside the reminder that he was wearing the clothing of a man he had just killed. Teyla had had a little more trouble with hers, since she was shorter than the dark-skinned woman, but hopefully no one would notice her rolled-up cuffs.
“Of course I can fix it!” Rodney snapped. “I just have to replace a few things and reroute some of the systems. It won’t be perfect, but it’ll get everything up and running again, and it’ll hold long enough to get us back home.” Sheppard believed him. Rodney did have a very high estimation of his own abilities, but in all honesty there was a very good reason for that. And he wouldn’t risk his own life on something he didn’t think was fully functional.
“How long?” was Sheppard’s next question.
“A few hours, at least,” Rodney answered. He didn’t bother to snap this time, because he was already focused on the task at hand. Which was fine. The sooner they could get out of here, the better. Sheppard hoped they might manage it before any more of the V’rdai came looking for them.
But he’d never been that lucky.
“Hey!”
Sheppard had been half-dozing where he stood, head bowed against the sun — it was close to noon, and the small orb was almost directly overhead, even its weak rays beating down on him like a sledgehammer. But the shout jerked him awake, and his hand reached instinctively for his P90 before he remembered that he was holding a pistol already and raised that instead.
The exclamation had come from a tall man gliding down from between the nearby boulders, and as Sheppard took in the other man’s mottled gray coverall and headgear he snapped fully awake again. Right, the V’rdai. Apparently the second team had found them.
“What?” he called back, trying to make his voice sound like what little he’d heard from the man he was impersonating. Fortunately the facemask muffled him already, so that would help. He saw the short, broad-shouldered V’rdai right behind the tall one, glancing around as they approached. Teyla was still next to him, Sheppard realized, and Rodney was somewhere, hopefully out of sight — he couldn’t risk checking. But where was Ronon?
“What do you mean, what?” the tall V’rdai — Adarr — replied. He sounded downright pissed. “You were half-asleep!” He was less than forty feet away now.