From the scientist's glower, John inferred that any further cursing would probably be directed toward him.
"Your input is most helpful, Colonel, thank you."
Teyla watched her team leader dump the contents of a large, nearly overflowing gear bag into one washer. "Do you change clothing more often than I realized?"
Her curious expression didn't fool John for a second. "Very funny. No, I stick to one uniform per day, except when something in Rodney's lab goes boom, or I have to crawl through ten thousand years of dust in the outer areas of the city, or-and I'm just picking an example at random- a recon mission turns into finger painting with six-year-olds."
"The Rianns demonstrated deep trust by allowing you to interact with their young."
"And I'm all warm and fuzzy about that, but even these spiffy Ancient washers took three cycles to get that green gunk out of my jacket." As he spoke, a pair of brightlypatterned boxers slipped out of his laundry pile and glided to the floor, proving once again that this galaxy really was out to get him.
Eyes glittering behind his glasses, Radek peered down at the fabric. "Are those airplanes?"
With reflexes that surprised all three of them, John snatched up the shorts and shoved them into the washer. "Some people have differential equations. I have airplanes. You want to put money on which one girls go for?"
Radek was still searching for a response when Teyla offered, "I am not convinced that either design would have a noticeable effect on any interpersonal situations… at least, not a positive effect."
Her sense of humor was becoming more Earth-like all the time. John flashed an approving grin at her.
Swiftly changing the subject, Radek asked, "Daedalus has finished off-loading supplies, has she not?"
Despite the innocence of the scientist's tone, John knew damn well what the real question was. The ship's arrival hadn't become a highly anticipated event because Hermiod's company was so enjoyable. "This morning," he confirmed. "Mail call will probably be tomorrow after dinner."
Radek broke into a wide smile, but an announcement over the citywide communication system cut off any reply he might have made.
"Unscheduled offworld activation."
Not a big shock. These days they had more unscheduled activations than scheduled ones. The emergence of the Asurans had thrown a serious wrench into Atlantis's standard operating procedure, assuming such a thing had ever existed. Having demonstrated in short order that they were not to be taken lightly, the replicator bastards had been testing the waters on a number of planets. They didn't seem interested in conquest, just information- and the occasional opportunity to put some of their revitalized, hard-wired aggression to use. And if they ran into a team from the city they were so obsessed with commandeering, well, that was just convenient, wasn't it?
John's team alone had run into them on three separate worlds and observed that their tactics had changed each time. He had a different word for the situation, and it wasn't family-friendly. On each mission, the team had hustled back home earlier than planned, often with weapons-fire singing past them all the way to the gate. He was willing to bet that Major Lorne's team had just found themselves the lucky recipients of the Asurans' attention this week. What fun.
A low rumble sounded, reverberating through the floor strongly enough for John to feel a faint tremor through his boots.
That, on the other hand, was not typical.
Apprehensive, he cast a glance across the room at Radek, finding him equally startled and equally concerned.
"That could not have been the jumper-could it?"
"No," John replied, his resolve drawn less from what he knew to be true than from what he needed to be true. Granted, they were fairly close in the relative sense to the bay that housed Atlantis's "puddle jumper" spacecraft, but for anything happening in there to be felt this far out…
The trio waited, all clearly hoping to hear a radio call that would reassure them. After a few seconds, the call came, but Lorne's ever-present calm had obviously been shaken.
"Medical team to the jumper bay!"
Everyone reacted in the same instant. Teyla was the first one through the door, but John's longer strides overtook hers halfway down the corridor. Adrenaline keeping his pace at something just below an all-out sprint, he barreled into the transporter at the end of the hall and reached for the control panel just as Teyla flung herself inside.
Instantly they found themselves outside the jumper bay. With his teammate on his heels, John burst through the hangar's double doors and immediately was suckerpunched by a rush of smoke.
Almost before he could grasp the implications of that, the haze began to clear, whisked out of the cavernous room by some kind of Ancient fire-suppression system. When he could see, he reflexively wished for the blindness back.
Jumper Five, having returned from its first mission after a long grounding for maintenance, was now grounded in the ugliest sense of the word. John was surprised that the craft had made it back at all. One of its engine pods was now a blackened gash in the jumper's side.
"Pro boha," murmured Radek from behind them, breathing heavily from the run.
The jumper's hatch opened with a weary shudder. "Some help here!" yelled Major Lorne from the rear compartment, seemingly trying to perform triage on three of his men at once.
Beckett would be here in seconds, no doubt, but seconds looked to be a precious commodity. John dashed up the ramp to one wounded Marine, Teyla to another. The Athosian smoothly took the field dressing out of Lorne's hand and knelt down to stanch the blood flowing from the sergeant's upper leg wound.
"They reacted so freaking fast, sir." Shaking his head, Lorne addressed his CO while turning his attention toward a corporal with a messy laceration above his right eye. "It was almost like they were anticipating us. And that hit on the engine pod-Colonel, I swear to God that we did everything we could think of."
"I don't doubt it, Major." Dropping to his knees with an inelegant thud against the unforgiving deck, John glanced at the remains of the jumper's first-aid kit and then at the face of the lieutenant lying beside it. Harper, he recalled. Matt Harper. Less than two years out of ROTC at Oklahoma-or was it Oklahoma State? Another mom-and-apple-pie kid, another officer who'd done everything ever asked of him and now had a hole in his chest to show for it.
John swallowed a curse and leaned in to apply pressure to the wound. Time to be The Colonel. "No lying down on duty, Harper. That's strictly a commander's privilege."
Harper blinked at him with unfocused eyes. "Sir," he managed. "Don't know. .what happened."
"Doesn't matter right now," he said, forcing himself to ignore the blood welling in the young man's mouth. "Just hang in there, all right? You're gonna be fine."
Harper's response was a weak cough and an expression of growing fear. As he feebly reached out, John seized his wrist with one hand, maintaining pressure with the other. "Hey," he offered, aware that he sounded just a little desperate. "Remind me again where you went to school. Was it OU or OSU? It's almost football season back home, and I can't be mixing up my guys' loyalties when the game tapes start coming in." Even as he finished the sentence, the Marine's eyes were sliding shut. "Lieutenant! Stay with me here, damn it-"
He felt Harper's breath stutter just as Carson Beckett and his team moved in to take over. As John got to his feet and climbed down from the hatch, Teyla came to stand beside him, her features deeply saddened. They watched the medics, hearing the eventoned instructions passed back and forth as if working on nothing more than a broken finger. John suspected Teyla wasn't convinced by the calm. Having flown his share of med-evac missions half a lifetime ago, he sure as hell wasn't.