Evacuation Drills

Disclaimer: All characters and references to Stargate Atlantis belong to some lucky people who unfortunately aren’t me.

Author: Diamond-Raven

Rating: PG

Characters: Eldon (the ex-convict from ‘Condemned’ who the team brought back from Olesia), John Sheppard, Rodney McKay

Summary: Their enemies wouldn’t wait until an opportune time to attack them, so Colonel Sheppard had long ago decided that they wouldn’t conduct their emergency drills as if they would. An evacuation drill seen from Eldon’s POV.

XXXXX

Eldon shouldered his way past a chatting Major Lorne with his dinner tray and headed towards the garbage can. He narrowly avoided tripping over Ronon’s legs along the way and he could see Teyla elbowing him and telling him something which resulted in Ronon giving him an apologetic shrug and pulling his legs in.

Eldon dumped the contents of his tray into the garbage and tossed his tray into the waiting bin. Taking an exaggerated step over Ronon’s now out of the way legs, he gave the tall Satedan a smirk.

Ronon narrowed his eyes at him and Teyla laughed. “Have a good night, Eldon.”

“You too, Teyla.”

“Night, Eldon,” Colonel Sheppard called, giving him a mini salute with his fork.

“Night, sir.”

Dr. McKay had looked up when he heard his voice and he waved his knife at him. “That analysis better be the first thing I see in my inbox tomorrow.”

“It’s already in there, Dr. McKay.”

Dr. McKay narrowed his eyes at him, letting him know without words that he’d be checking. “Cheeky bastard, aren’t you? What are convicts coming to these days?”

Colonel Sheppard laughed and Eldon bade his boss a good night and headed towards the door. His boss’ abrupt manner had jarred him a bit when he first met the man on the penal colony and started working for him, but in the year and a half that he had been living in the city and working for him, he’d grown accustomed to the chief scientists’ manner. He’d learned more from Dr. McKay than he could have ever hoped to on Olesia. Not to mention that it was due to Dr. McKay’s efforts that he became an accepted member of the science team much faster than he would have thought and was even allowed to go on some off world missions.

He reached his quarters and let himself in and settled before his laptop. He opened his email and scrolled through the barrage of announcements concerning upcoming sports games and lost property and trade opportunities until he came to the official emails from Colonel Sheppard. There were always of highest priority and had to be read before anything else. The subject line simply said: ‘Drills’ as it did every week. Eldon opened it and immediately skimmed over the small introductory paragraph which they all knew by heart. Then he came to the two little options on the bottom, both of which had little boxes next to them, out of which only one was ever selected. Most people would have the ‘you are NOT chosen to select a drill time this week’ ticked off. That was the one he had gotten every single week since he had first gotten to Atlantis. This time, he had the ‘you are chosen to select a drill time this week’ ticked off.

Grinning to himself, he let out a quiet cheer and let his fist gently pound his desk. If he gave himself away then Colonel Sheppard would be irritated with him and the drill would be compromised. But he was still beyond thrilled. He’d been waiting for this for months!

About two years ago, Colonel Sheppard had changed the manner in which their drills were conducted. He didn’t like only having the military involved in the drills and having the drills only during pre-determined times. He had successfully argued with Dr. Weir that the civilians would have to be evacuated in the same manner as the military when it came to an emergency and that the process would be much easier on everybody and less stressful if everybody had a job to do and got a chance to practice. Having the drills at random times during the day or night also ensured that people got accustomed to dropping everything and getting their evacuations duties done in the shortest time possible no matter what they had been doing. Their enemies wouldn’t wait for everybody to be ready to evacuate, he’d argued, so they shouldn’t conduct their training as if they would.

Every single week, the Colonel sent out an email to everybody and the computer would randomly pick one person to be the drill initiator for that week. Not even the Colonel knew who it would be, and that person was supposed to initiate a drill anytime during the week. Keeping the drill initiator’s name a secret also helped make the drill as spontaneous and real as possible.

Letting his chair slide back, Eldon stuck his feet onto his desk and started thinking about exactly when he would initiate the drill. Usually they never had a drill the very day that the email got sent, so doing it tonight would mean that everybody would really have to be on their toes to keep or beat their previous times.

But what time? They’d had drill during dinner last week and at 0630 the week before. It was definitely time for a night time drill. Definitely. Grinning, he twirled his chair around and started thinking about what kind of drill to pick.

They had had a lockdown drill just last week, meant to prepare them for an emergency when the city initiated a lock down on her own for medical reasons or due to a malfunction. He could also do a hostile takeover drill, which was to prepare them for the event of the city being invaded and the expedition not having enough time to evacuate or being cut off from the gateroom. But the most fun were evacuation drills. Since they had to physically pick up and take everything they needed through the gate and not just move themselves and some equipment through the city to designated safe zones, evacuation drills were the most complicated and took the longest. And what would be a better drill to practice in the dead of night than the longest and most complicated drill? Eldon smirked to himself. Oh, this was going to be fun.

XXXXX

At exactly 0124, Eldon’s alarm went off. He quickly silenced it and picked up his radio. He didn’t start getting dressed yet. He had to wait until the drill started before starting his duties, just like everybody else.

Fumbling for his radio on his night stand, he slipped it on and tapped it.

“Eldon to control.”

“This is control. Go ahead.”

“Initiating an emergency evacuation drill.” He felt the grin spread over his face as he said it. He wished the technician would somehow acknowledge that wow, Eldon was chosen to pick the drill time! But of course, that wasn’t the point of the drill and it had been the computer who had picked Eldon, but still.

“Acknowledged.” Immediately after the connection between them was cut off, Eldon heard the internal communications turn on and the technician’s voice filled the silence of the slumbering city.

“This is an emergency evacuation drill. Repeat: We are launching an emergency evacuation drill.”

Then the high pitched siren kicked on, screeching through every room in the city. Eldon leapt out of bed and started yanking on his clothes, barely hearing the loud blaring of the siren. It would turn off after a few minutes anyway. It’s main purpose was to wake everybody up and tear even the most engrossed scientist away from their computer screens.

Making sure his radio was secure in his ear, Eldon grabbed his small pack from beside the door and raced out, heading towards the gateroom to start his evacuation duties.

Along the way, he wove amongst other members of the expedition going about their duties without complaint. Marines raced past him, snapping thigh holster buckles shut and Dr. Esposito ran past, throwing her hair up in a messy bun, only wearing one sock and hollering into her radio for her evacuation team to start shutting down the naquadah generators in their assigned sections.

Reaching the gateroom, Eldon dodged in and hurried down the steps towards the small closets which housed their emergency rations. Sergeant Niles was already there, catching the frozen food items Dr. Collins was tossing him from inside the freezer they had in there. Eldon saw that the Sergeant already had two of the freezer boxes filled and Eldon squeezed in beside Dr. Collins and started dragging out the boxes filled with MREs. He loaded them into a trolley, calling out how many he had loaded as the Sergeant kept catching bags of frozen vegetables.

XXXXXX

“Shit!” Rodney groaned as the night technician’s voice blared through the loud speakers, quickly followed by the siren. John was already out of bed, yanking his clothes on and sticking his radio into his ear.

“Have I mentioned I hate that alarm?” Rodney yelled over the noise, jumping out of bed and fumbling his pants on.

John laughed, leapt over the bed and grabbed Rodney’s head with two hands. He had Rodney’s radio in his hand and crammed it into his ear and then gave him a hard kiss.

“I’ll see you in seven minutes.”

“Five.”

John shot him a grin and leapt over the bed and ran for the door, grabbing his pack along the way. “Don’t go overestimating yourself, McKay.”

“Never!” Rodney yelled after him, yanking on his boots and pressing his radio and demanding updates from his teams.

As soon as his feet were in his boots, he grabbed his pack from beside the door and then was out the door, running for the lab.

XXXXXX

Eldon secured the last container on the trolley and started steering it towards the gate where people were already lining up, their packs filled with toiletries, camping supplies, extra clothes, emergency rations, first aid kits and some personal effects on their backs and whatever they were responsible for carrying in their hands or on their trolleys. Dr. Esposito was clutching one of the naquadah generators in her arms and Dr. Keller had a folded up IV pole sticking out of her pack and about a dozen IV lines draped around her neck. Dr. Parrish had bags of seeds taped to his pants and was carrying a small olive sapling in a pot – which apparently was a very versatile plant. Major Lorne was shouting orders and directing people, his jacket on backwards and six P-90s slung around his neck. The blaring siren had turned off and the technician was calling out the minutes as they passed, letting them know how slow or fast they were being.

Eldon glanced at Sergeant Niles as the tall marine shut the closet and hurried over to him. “Do you have the trolley, Sergeant?”

“I got it, Eldon. Go.”

Not wasting another second, Eldon raced back up the stairs to the control room to do one of the most important duties of all.

Dr. McKay had pulled him aside months ago and told him that in addition to securing the food rations, Eldon would have one of the most important duties during evacuations.

They needed Colonel Sheppard with them when they went through that gate and they all knew it, except for the Colonel himself. The Colonel had already assigned himself the duty of setting the self destruct and being the very last person through the gate, which meant that if he didn’t make it, the rest of them would still be safe. Eldon didn’t understand why the Colonel didn’t understand that they might be physically safe but completely lost without him, but if Dr. McKay’s attempts at hammering this point into their military commander’s head hadn’t worked, Eldon’s own attempts wouldn’t work. Instead, Eldon was assigned to be the reason the Colonel would always head towards that gate before the self destruct went off. The Colonel wouldn’t think twice about staying behind if there was somebody still stuck in the city, but if the timer was counting down and Eldon was still stubbornly glued to his side, the Colonel would go through. No amount of orders, yelling and threats would make Eldon go through that gate before the Colonel, and the Colonel knew it. Dr. McKay and Eldon had practiced too many scenarios for Eldon to be swayed by even the most vile threats and dangerous glares. The Colonel would never risk Eldon’s life for another, which was why Dr. McKay had given Eldon this duty.

Everybody else had evacuation duties which took too much time to complete and Eldon was the only one who had the time and the lack of fear which would allow him to remain behind until the city blew itself up if the Colonel wasn’t heading through the gate. The Colonel and Dr. McKay had had a few very loud arguments about that decision, but Dr. McKay and Eldon had been firm. If the Colonel refused to see how much his presence was needed by his own people, they would take matters into their own hands.

The Colonel was standing in front of the large schematic showing every life sign in the city. His hair was in worse disarray than it was during the day, one of his boots wasn’t tied and Eldon noticed that the pack he had slung over his shoulder had a tag that said ‘R. McKay’. Swallowing his smile, Eldon hurried over and watched the Colonel having five conversations at once, three over the radio, two with two separate technicians, a tablet in his hands as his eyes never strayed from the large schematic, watching the white dots hurrying towards the gateroom.

When every white dot had gathered in the gateroom below them, the Colonel instructed the rest of the technicians to head down to the gateroom. As the dialing technician leapt out of his chair and hurried downstairs the Colonel stepped up to the DHD and started pretending to dial an address.

Eldon heard a click from the loudspeakers and knew that the Colonel had just turned on the city wide speakers.

“Everybody is present and accounted for in the gateroom. Initiating dialing sequence for the alpha site.”

Eldon glanced over the railing and saw everybody shifting out of the way. Even though they weren’t going to actually activate the gate, it was important for everybody to practice standing in the right spot for when the backwash would sweep out of the gate during a real evacuation.

“Stable wormhole established. Start moving through, people. Clear the area immediately infront of the gate as soon as you’re through. Group leaders, start doing head counts as soon as you’re through.”

The first three teams composed of strictly military personnel walked through the large archway of the gate and moved as far from the gate as they could. Then the mixed groups of both military and civilian personnel started going through. It was very smooth going, everybody having done this drill more times then they could count. It didn’t matter that it was 0130 in the morning and nearly all of them had been sleeping in their beds mere minutes before.

When the last group had nearly passed through the gate to stand on the other side of the gateroom, the Colonel initiated the fake self destruct Atlantis allowed them to use to practice. She would demand the proper codes, give them an accurate count down and then turn off all the lights for a few seconds to simulate the self destruct.

The Colonel set the timer for 20 seconds and then initiated it.

Glancing up at him, the Colonel gave him a small smile. “Let’s go.”

They took off, racing towards the stairs and then down, Eldon sure to stay half a step behind the Colonel. They reached the gate with lots of time to spare and walked through. As soon as they were through, the Colonel hit the stop button on his stop watch and shielded it from everybody else’s view as he inspected it.

Everybody stared at him with wide eyes, waiting for him to tell them how long they had taken. Their record for an evac drill was 6 minutes and 31 seconds. Their night time drills were always slightly slower than their day time drills, so Eldon didn’t think they had beaten their time.

The lights all flickered for a few seconds as Atlantis finished simulating the self destruct.

Then the Colonel glanced up, his face carefully blank. “Everybody accounted for?”

One by one, the group leaders told him their members were all present and accounted for. Satisfied that the drill had been done correctly, the Colonel gave them all a smirk before glancing at his watch again.

“Not bad, folks. Especially considering it’s 0130. Not bad at all. Remind me what our record for evac drills is again?”

“6 minutes and 31 seconds, sir.” Major Lorne piped up from amongst his group.

“Right. Well. 6 minutes and 31 seconds is tough to beat. Very tough.” The Colonel glanced at them all and wiggled his eyebrows.

Teyla raised her eyebrows and Eldon could see her giving the Colonel a strained smile. Eldon was amazed that the Colonel would mess around with Teyla like that at 0130 in the morning when she was holding a box of medical supplies and had a heavy medical scanner strapped to her back.

The Colonel quickly avoided her gaze, probably knowing that he would be paying for this in a few hours during sparring practice.

“Our time for tonight’s evac drill is 6 minutes and 37 seconds.”

A chorus of cheers and some groans echoed around them. Eldon gave a cheer, since their record time was for a day time drill. “That’s awesome!”

The Colonel shot him a grin. “Yes, it is. This is a good time, people. Especially considering what time it is. Everybody deserves a pat on the back, and everybody deserves to sleep in a bit. Night shift, you’ll get an extra hour of sleep tomorrow night before your shift starts, and for the day shift and swing shift, you’ll start your shifts an hour later. We all get to sleep today for an extra hour. That means PT and debriefings and breakfast are all moved over for an hour. Clear?”

An echo of “Yes, sir” came from the military and a “Sounds good, Colonel” came from the civilians. Then the Colonel told them to get back to bed and they all started trudging back through the gate and back up the stairs, returning their equipment to where it came from and heading back to bed.

Eldon followed Dr. Collins back to the food storage closet to help him put everything back. He didn’t care that they hadn’t beaten their previous time. They had done a really good job and all of them knew it, but Eldon had been the one to call this drill, which made him feel extra proud.

Dr. Collins opened one of the freezer boxes and threw him a grin and told him he’d done a great job. Eldon smiled back, realizing for the millionth time how lucky he was to have ended up being allowed to live in this amazing city and be with these wonderful people. He knew that no one was safe anywhere in their galaxy, but at least here he had a fighting chance.