Departure

At the very last moment, Schuldig baulked.

“It’s safe,” Crawford said.

*Then it’s the one thing about this entire venture that is.* Schuldig cast a wary glance at their surroundings.

*I told you, it was necessary. World domination belongs only to us, remember?*

*But did you have to tell th-*

“I Saw it, Schuldig,” Crawford snapped, “This discussion is ov-”

“Anytime today, thank you gentlemen,” the voice came from above them.

“Ja, ja.” Schuldig waved negligently at their watchers then continued, “But did you have to agree to them making me wear a uniform?”

Crawford pushed Schuldig through the Stargate.

Arrival

“Which one’s supposed to be a telepath?” Rodney sneered.

“The redhead with the Austrian patch,” John replied, eyes on the meet-and-greet below.

Both men were young, fit, alert and for ‘businessmen’, disquietingly unfazed by Atlantis, the Stargate, the whizzy technology and the large number of weapons displayed. John strongly suspected their files weren’t worth the paper they were printed on.

Then the redhead looked directly up at them and grinned, a white flash of Wraithlike hunger that set off every warning instinct John had.

*No ‘supposed’ about it all,* purred a voice in his mind.

“Oh. Oh my,” said Rodney.

Breakfast meeting

“Ooooh! Look!”

Carson followed Laura’s nod toward the commissary balcony,

“The Colonel’s finally got real competition in the Prettiness Stakes.”

Although too far away to hear, the object of their attention turned towards them. She was right, Beckett thought, and even the smirk was similar. The mindreading however was definitely not.

“That’s Schuldig,” Carson disclosed uneasily.

“Really?” Laura started off towards the telepath.

“Love, I don’t thi...”

“C’mon, what have you got to hide?” demanded the secondary posterchild on Atlantis for the style of psychological warfare known as Devastating Bluntness, “Everyone already knows about your Spice Girls fixation and the thimble collection.”

What's for Lunch?

“Ow!”

John bounced backwards from collision with a Rodney-shaped missile.

“You know, I’m really not that hungry and I just realised I left a test running unsupervised except for that moronic French guy who ca…”

John stared in bemusement as Rodney babbled his way to the transporter. What the hell? When was Rodney ever not hungry?

He stepped through the commissary doorway and was immediately impaled by two intent stares and wide, white smiles. Cadman. With Schuldig.

Lieutenant Colonel John Shepherd wasn’t military commander of Atlantis for nothing - he was brave, lucky, devious and smart.

He broke and ran.

First Contact

He pulled the trigger again and again and again and…

“It’s dead, Schuldig. Really, really dead.”

MacKay’s voice was distorted by a smothering, fetid mental miasma. He desperately needed to cleanse himself, scour away the clinging slime. There was a touch; he struck out reflexively, heard Crawford curse, followed by a burst of clean white pain.

“Shield, damnit, shield!”

He grabbed at his shields, yanking them up - all force, no finesse - then found himself on his knees beside the Wraith corpse, worried faces surrounding him.

"Abscheulich!"

"But you found out what we wanted?" Crawford demanded.

What an Arschloch.

“Aber natürlich.”

Delegation

Crawford snapped out of one of his little ‘fits’. Funny, John kept meaning to mention them to Carson, but always forgot about doing so until the next time he saw one.

“You didn’t really need that Kavanaugh fellow, did you?”

“Why?” John quirked an eyebrow.

“Because in about three minutes time he’s going to get his brains puréed into guacamole.”

John followed Crawford’s gaze to the mess table where Kavanagh was currently berating a smirking Schuldig.

“Damn, but that jerk’s got a deathwish,” John muttered as he sped off to rescue the undeserving.

Crawford smirked. He did so love having minions.

Glossary:
Abscheulich - Disgusting/abhorrent/repugnent
Arschloch - Arsehole
Aber natürlich - But of course