She expected John to argue. Perhaps once he might have. Perhaps his respect for Woolsey had increased. Or perhaps he was also so tired that it seemed that the briefing room swam gently before his eyes.
“You’ve done your part,” Woolsey said quietly. “Let me do mine. When we hear anything I’ll call you.”
John nodded slowly. “Ok. Ronon, Teyla, get some rest. You too, Radek. That was a good job out there.”
“Thank you,” Radek said. He sounded vaguely surprised.
“We’re standing down,” he said. “This isn’t going to be over in a couple of days. Let’s get some rest.”
Woolsey got to his feet and went to the door. “Banks, get me a radio link and open the gate for me. I need a line out to Ladon Radim.”
Ronon headed for his quarters, brushing past people without speaking. They would have questions, want to know if they’d found Rodney yet, and he was too tired for any more words. He’d end up stumbling over them the way Zelenka had stumbled on the gateroom steps, the way when he had first come to Atlantis it had been an effort to remember how to talk to anyone.
The halls were still too crowded with all new people who were still being herded through trainings and were free at weird hours rather than busy with work all day. There were too many people he didn’t know, and too many people he did, scientists who didn’t seem to know what to do with themselves without Rodney around. It wasn’t like they didn’t have work to do, but they kept gathering in little knots in the corridors and the mess hall, repeating the obvious as if that would somehow help.
He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t much want to sleep, but it was probably true that they should sleep while they could. Every instinct was telling him to keep moving, that doing anything would be better than doing nothing, and instead they were sitting around waiting to find out if their allies — such as they were — were going to talk to them. It rankled, and there wasn’t anything to do about that either.
It would help if he could stop running over the fight on New Athos in his head, with every wrong move clear to him now. His last shot had been off, clipped the Dart’s stabilizers instead of crippling its wing, and even the one that had told best hadn’t brought the Dart down. Even if the Dart carrying Rodney had gotten away, if they’d had a prisoner to interrogate, they could have found out a lot that would help them now.
If they’d seen the trap sooner, they could have all taken cover, tried to take out the Darts from the shelter of the trees. If he’d seen the pattern in the dives sooner, seen that the Darts had a single target, he would have gotten Rodney to shelter, left him there and come back to fight. Or at least have stuck close, close enough to dive into the culling beam when it took Rodney.
They’d escaped a hive ship before. And, all right, neither of them could fly a Dart, but they’d have figured something out. The Wraith wouldn’t have killed them right off, not if they were after information. Ronon would have gotten Rodney free, and then Rodney would have figured out a way off the hive ship, and then they wouldn’t be searching empty planets and coming up with nothing.
He could still remember how much he’d wanted to kill Rodney himself if Rodney didn’t shut up, that first time they’d been captured together. It wasn’t like he liked being trapped in Wraith webbing so that he couldn’t move, struggling for every finger’s-width that he could move his hand toward his knife, for every deep breath. He didn’t see how it could possibly help to give voice to every terrified thought in your head while you waited.
It had still been better than being alone. Better than waking up in a cell, or cocooned in the long rows of people who were going to be somebody’s next meal, and knowing that there was no one to help you. He was trying not to think about that now, but it wasn’t working very well.
If he’d stuck close, the way he would have back in the days when Rodney couldn’t yet be trusted to hold his own in a fight — but John had said spread out, and there were too few of them to lay down a crossfire otherwise. And Rodney had done everything right, shot straight and true, dodged when he should have. He’d never had a chance to see the second Dart coming in.
No one had seen it in time. They should have done better. For that matter, they should have left men at the gate, or waited at the gate ready for the trap, but John had been convinced it was a trick, children playing games.
He’d heard the distress call played back, and seen Teyla’s face when she heard it. It hadn’t sounded like a boy playing the kind of game he ought to be beaten for. It had sounded like raw panic. A man in fear for his life, or a good actor, a good liar. An agent of the Genii, or a Wraith worshipper.
Ronon had thought it at the time, but he hadn’t said it. It was New Athos, the fields heavy with grain and sleepy in the hot sun, children playing the same games they’d all watched a hundred times. They’d all wanted to believe it was a safe place, the kind of place where a strange call for help was probably just another children’s game.
They’d all spent too long on Earth. He’d still run every morning, sparred with whoever was around when John and Teyla had both been too absorbed in worrying about the future to spend much time in the gym, but it wasn’t enough to keep from getting into the habits of safety. Five months idle was too long to go straight back to the field without time to retrain, to get their edge back.
That apparently wasn’t how John’s military did things. He wasn’t going to argue, but either it was getting to them, or they’d just screwed up with no excuse. They couldn’t afford any more mistakes like that. And now they didn’t even have their scientist to help them figure out what to do next. If Rodney were here, he’d figure out some solution, some way to find whoever they’d lost.
He’d keep working until he found some solution, complaining the whole time, which was all that they could do now. Without the complaining part, which he still didn’t think helped. They’d get information from somebody, and then they’d go get Rodney back and kill the Wraith who took him. They’d make this right.
His mind was on New Athos, not on where he was going, and he nearly ran into someone as she stepped into his path. He was ready to shoulder her aside and keep moving until he saw it was Jennifer. She didn’t ask him anything, just looked up at him with eyes that made her question clear enough.
He shook his head, and then realized she might take that to mean they’d had bad news. Worse news than none. “We don’t know,” he said.
She nodded, her chin up. “Just let me know if you hear anything.”
“Woolsey thinks he can talk to people,” Ronon began, but he really didn’t have the words. “We’re going to find him.”
“I know,” Jennifer said. She nodded and walked on, back straight.
Now he didn’t feel like sleeping at all, but he knew it was time to sleep while they could. He knew the difference between a sprint and long days of running. He could see well enough that was what they were in for.
That didn’t mean he had to like it.
Radek had barely set foot in the infirmary before he was brought up short by Jennifer’s weary “And what happened to you? Slipped on the stairs? Frostbite?” She was cleaning up what he thought looked like the preparations for putting on a cast. He wondered who had broken what.
“Neither,” he said. “I don’t think it is actually cold enough for frostbite.”
“You’d be surprised,” Jennifer said. “You’d think no one had ever seen it snow before.” It was true that the outdoor stairs and walkways were slippery that morning, and metal railings cold, but Radek had sensibly enough changed his usual shoes for the military-issue boots he rarely wore, and also put on gloves when he went outside. Apparently some had not, and were regretting it.