Amnesty Challenge - Pinpricks
Title: Pinpricks
by ladyjestyr

Challenge: Amnesty Challenge; Darkness
Rating: G
Category: gen
Word Count: a teeny 600-word ficlet
Spoilers: Episode tag for 2x02, "The Intruder"
Summary: Even for an astrophysicist, stars aren't meant to be this close.
Disclaimer: Characters: not mine. Don't sue, I'm poor.
Notes: Originally a concept for the Darkness challenge, which mutated totally after seeing The Intruder. Unbetaed, since I'm still looking for an SGA beta and wanted to get this in before the deadline. [Which I've probably missed, but my time-zone-fu is weak.]

~*~

Rodney knows he’s babbling.

The F302 swoops past pinprick stars, weaves out of its pursuer’s sights, describes tight curves as Sheppard throws it around the sky. Rodney’s questions keep pace with the F302; what does that green flashing light mean? what happened to the inertial dampeners? At least his questions are relevant, he assures himself, and at least he hasn’t started asking any really uncomfortable questions yet.

Questions like “aren’t we getting awfully close to that sun, Major?”, which would only trigger a cool reminder about Sheppard’s correct title – like the man could let anyone forget – and careful nonchalance about the relevant, life-threatening part of Rodney’s enquiry. So Rodney bites his tongue, and wrestles his scanner out of a pocket pinned closed by the harness belt as the star gets closer and brighter. He can find out the bad news by himself – and does, watching cockpit radiation measurements rising far past the point where peace of mind was a fond memory and right into stomach ulcer and hypertension territory. Rodney suspects the rapidly-brewing headache is an early sign of the inevitable brain tumour. To be cut down in his prime by a brain tumour – how ironic. He can almost feel the brain cells dying already – he’ll probably lose at least twenty IQ points before Beckett and his team of witchdoctors will even accept there’s a problem. Rodney’s torn between wanting to live – at least long enough for the Nobel committee to reverse that idiotic statute about not awarding prizes posthumously – and stomach-cramping horror at the thought of living long enough to feel himself growing mediocre.

Mind you, Rodney notes absently as they swing around so the F302’s nose is aimed at the sun’s heart, it may be a moot point. The star is so close that its glare bounces off every shiny surface in the cockpit; Rodney’s definitely going to go blind from photokeratitis. He can see the spots dancing in his vision already. Blind and dying of a brain tumour, assuming Major – Colonel – Sheppard’s bravery doesn’t get him killed first, slowly roasted in stellar fires. Rodney is quite capable of risking his life in a plethora of noble and heroic ways, thankyou very much, but he’s not so keen on other people risking his life. The nameless star gleams unpleasantly, a bright golden ball of incandescent death.

The problem is, of course, that Colonel Sheppard’s right. He’s not risking their necks on pointless heroics, he’s executing the only possible plan to save the Daedalus. Which means that Rodney is even deprived of the satisfaction of pointing out every gaping flaw in Sheppard’s abysmally stupid plan. It’s only his growing conviction that he may as well use his spare brain cells now before they get irradiated into jelly that makes Rodney even bother to point out the danger they’re in.

“You did great back there, Rodney.” Rodney’s snapped from his contemplation of the most life-threatening tan he’s ever had by Sheppard’s sardonic amusement. The stars whirl crazily for a moment as the Colonel sends the F302 swooping back to intercept the path of the Daedalus, and Rodney watches the bastard, radiant, deadly star rise and set across the arc of the figh`ter’s canopy like a time lapse video. He forces himself to relax – deep breaths, in and out, in and out – and focuses blindly on the stars whipping past outside. Pinpricks again, the size they’re supposed to be, against the blissfully dark sky.

Rodney’s never been so glad to see darkness in all his life.

~*~

Edit: Archived at eleanorjane, which is my fic journal.