Stargate Atlantis: Flight

Chapter 3 - A Challenge

Rodney had his eyes closed again.

"Maybe I should just stay here and analyse the readings I took from the gliders?" he said, studying the red glow as the afternoon sun tried to penetrate his eyelids.

"It'll be fine, McKay!" came John's voice from in front of him. "You just have to sit there and let me do all the work!"

"That's the problem!" said Rodney, through gritted teeth. "If my mind has nothing to do it gets filled with things like, oh, I don't know, my imminent, gruesome death, smashed to pieces on the stony desert floor, or if I survive that, ripped apart by some kind of horrific beast, so horrific they don't even seem to have a name!" His voice became higher, his words tumbling over each other in his panic.

He felt a prod on his shoulder. "Rodney, open your eyes." Rodney's eyes flew open and their wide panicked blue looked into calm, reassuring hazel. "It'll be fine."

John turned to face the edge of the cliff again. "You ready?" he said. "Because I'm running and you're coming with me!"

"No! Not ready!" squeaked Rodney.

"Three!"

"I said no!"

"Two!"

"Really, Sheppard, no!"

"One!"

"Oh, this is not happening!"

"Go!"

John ran down the ramp, and Rodney, with no choice in the matter, ran with him, eyes tight shut, scream strangled in his throat. The tandem glider launched and rose into the air, catching the updraft perfectly, soaring smoothly and banking to turn. John aimed for a hot spring over which several gliders were slowly spiralling upwards. From there he would make his way to the large stone column that stood in the centre of the others, where Hadra had said they could meet the elected council and take part in a celebratory banquet.

John and his team had been surprised when Hadra had said they could all travel in tandem gliders to the central column. Teyla and Ronon could have been described as somewhat apprehensive, Rodney blatantly terrified. The tandem gliders were bigger, with a double harness so that the passenger travelled behind and above the pilot.  A fourth glider was to bring their packs and weapons. Ronon and Teyla set off first, each with a J'Bari pilot; Rodney had taken a little longer to convince.

"Are your eyes still shut, McKay?" asked John. "You're missing a great view!"

"As long as we're missing any obstacles, including, say, the ground, then that's all I need to know," Rodney replied, his voice strained.

"Oh, come on, you fly in Jumpers all the time, what's so different?" asked John.

"There's a bit more between me and a plummeting, screaming drop to the unforgiving earth than a flimsy harness of unknown provenance, that's what's so different!" spluttered Rodney.

"Do you think it's Wraith?" asked John.

"No. I don't know yet," Rodney replied uncertainly. "It has similarities. Almost like it's pre-Wraith, proto-Wraith, or some kind of parallel development with Wraith-tech. Oh."

"What?"

"I forgot to keep my eyes closed," said Rodney. John had caught the thermal and they were rising steadily, the landscape revolving in slow circles around them.

"I suppose it's pretty amazing, in a vomit-inducing kind of way," Rodney said.

"Hey, you're not going to, are you?" said John, conscious that he was in the firing line.