But as abruptly as the ambush had begun, it ended. "Enough!" roared a voice, and the Wraith spat and disengaged, leaving Dex and Sheppard panting hard with adrenaline and exertion.
And there was Teyla, stumbling on shaky feet ahead of a hard-faced Wraith overlord, clutching at her neck where a heavy silver collar ringed it. Ronon bared his teeth in fury. There was a thick cable snaking away from the device to the Wraith's clawed hand, a steel leash of the sort one might use on an attack dog. "Drop your weapons," hissed the alien, "or the female dies."
The barrel of Sheppard's P90 sank a little but he held on to the gun. Ronon still had his particle magnum pistol in his grip, ready to use it. Dex locked eyes with the Wraith, measuring the ways in which he might kill it.
"You must be Scar," said the colonel, and pointed at his face. "The one eye is a dead giveaway. It's a cool name. I bet the lady Wraiths love it. Let me ask you, though. Have you ever seen The Lion King?"
"Drop your weapons," repeated Scar, "or Tey-lah will choke to death on her own blood." He did something to a control on the leash and Ronon heard cogwheels clicking. Teyla coughed and sank to her knees, pulling at the necklet.
"Let her go!" snapped Dex, taking aim at Scar's face.
"I can increase the pressure with a single touch of the dial I hold in my hand." The Wraith licked its lips. "Only you can save her. You know how."
The Athosian woman gasped as she tried to suck in air. Ronon heard Sheppard curse and saw the colonel unclip his gun and let it fall.
"And you," Scar told Dex.
Ronon's thumb moved toward the stun/kill stud on the magnum's grip. He was furious that this creature would try and use a warrior like Teyla as some kind of bargaining chip. He let the gun drop to aim at the woman. "You think you have an advantage. Maybe I'll take it away, shoot her myself. What would you do then?"
"Ronon!" said Sheppard in a horrified voice.
The Wraith studied him for a moment, and then laughed. The sound was a hollow rattle. "Humans. You are so entertaining. It is almost a pity that you are prey." Scar's eyes flashed with anger. "You cannot deceive me. You are different from the hunters, who care only for their idiotic games and status. You won't kill one of your own."
"Specialist!" Sheppard snarled, spitting out Ronon's former rank like a command. "Drop your weapons! That's an order!"
And the truth of it was, the Wraith was right. "Fine." He opened his hands, letting the pistol and the sword go. This alien was smarter than he had expected.
Scar laughed once more and touched the collar controller, letting Teyla breathe properly again.
She choked and wheezed, gulping in breaths. "I... Am sorry, colonel..."
"It's okay," said Sheppard. "Where's Bishop?"
Teyla threw Scar a venomous glare. "He is dead. They fed upon him."
The Wraith leader barked out guttural instructions in its own language, and the rest of its pack gathered up the Atlantis team's gear, bundling it into the parked Jumper. Scar plucked Ronon's heavy pistol from the hands of another Wraith and ran his fingers along the length of the breech, sniffing it.
"Why don't you take a look down the barrel while you're at it?" rumbled Dex. "I'll even hold it for you."
Scar came closer. "You are a Runner. A lucky survivor. Tell me, were you the only one we spared when my kindred culled your planet?"
His muscles tensed with a sudden violent impulse. "I'll kill you for that!"
The Wraith continued to stroke the gun, completely unconcerned. "No," it replied, "you will not."
The last thing the Satedan saw was the muzzle snap up to face him and a crippling blast of blazing red fire.
"Ronon!" cried Teyla, scrambling forward. Scar jerked her leash and she gagged, tripping over again.
The Wraith grimaced at the particle magnum and made a negative noise. "A brash and crude tool, much like its owner," he purred, tossing the pistol away to land near Dex's body.
"You son of a bitch," spat Sheppard. One of the other Wraith hit him in the back of the knees and he fell. The alien held him there with an iron grip. "You got what you wanted, you didn't have to shoot him!"
Scar whipped the stolen Beretta pistol from his belt and held it at Sheppard's head. "Energy weapons are so inelegant, do you not agree, human? A single bolt and your target is dispatched. Where is the sport in that?" He weighed the handgun in his grip. "But this... A ballistic firearm, yes? Chemical reactions projecting small metal warheads. You strike your prey with this, and they will not perish straight away." The pistol barrel dropped to Sheppard's chest, to his stomach. "Such ugly wounds left behind, plentiful with pain and suffering. The prey might take hours to die... And the taste is so much richer."
John tensed, waiting for the bullet to come; but instead he was dragged to his feet and thrust toward the Puddle Jumper. Scar came after him, pulling at Teyla. "What kinda mind-games are you playing?"
"No games," replied Scar, "only rules. Obey and the female lives. Disobey and you will watch her suffocate, before I turn you over to my pack."
"What do you want from us?" husked Teyla.
"The blood of the Enemy runs in your veins," he told the colonel, licking at the air. "I smell it on you. You will pilot this craft for me, and take us to the device the Ancients built on this planet."
"The dolmen?"
Scar smiled widely. "The dolmen, yes."
"John, you can't do it-"
Sheppard silenced Teyla with a morose look. "What choice do I have?"
"Go away!" snapped McKay, waving his hand in the face of the Halcyon technician hovering beside him. "Stop lurking around me, it's really very distracting!"
"Doctor," warned Kelfer, "he is merely there to render assis tance to you."
"Really?" Rodney turned from the console and made a face. "Well, how about he renders assistance by going away. Do something useful, get me coffee or something, but don't keep spying over my shoulder!"
Kelfer nodded to the technician, who said something rude under his breath and walked away. "We are merely keeping an eye on your progress, nothing more."
"Is that so?" He tap-tapped the silver Atlantis laptop that Kelfer's men had produced just after his arrival. "And were you `keeping an eye' on this when your monkeys tried to break my computer?"
The other scientist colored a little. "We were interested in your cogitator device."
Rodney's laptop had been taken along with the rest of his gear when Lord Daus's covert squad of soldiers had abducted him from the dolmen, but there were clear knife marks around the hinges where someone had manhandled it in a vain attempt to boot up the machine. "Yeah, well you almost broke it completely." He sneered, and pantomimed an idea occurring to him. "Kelfer, here's a thought. Try to stay with me on this one, I know you find it hard to deal with sentences that have a lot of words in them-but how about, in future, you people just leave stuff alone that you're too dumb to understand?" He pointed at the laptop and then the controls in the Hive Ship's nexus chamber. "That goes for anything, Earth tech, Wraith or Ancient! If you'd had that in mind, we wouldn't be in this mess today!"
"Forgive us," Kelfer bit out, sarcasm boiling from his words, "we poor fools on Halcyon do not have the breadth of experience of such a genius as you. Please do take pity on us, oh wise one, and grant us some your magnificent knowledge." The man came closer, his fists balling. "Or perhaps I will have you struck about the head until your disrespect for my high office is beaten from you!"
Rodney managed a weak grin, a little afraid that he might have gone a bit too far. "I don't disrespect your rank, Kelfer," he replied, "it's just you I can't abide." McKay turned his back on the Halcyon chief scientist and frowned at the read outs on his computer. Under other circumstances, he might have been enthused by the chance to tap directly into the core systems of a Wraith Hive Ship, with the chance to learn more about the aliens and their technology from the very source itself. Not so today, however; through the patchy interface he'd forged via the crude Halcyonite electronic
s to the Wraith organic matrix, Rodney had already passed by whole storehouses of data on weapons, drive systems and bio-ware. He was concentrating on the matter of the Hive Ship's complex hibernation systems, and with every keystroke the thought of his teammates was there in the back of his mind. McKay was sure that Daus would have Sheppard and the others killed if he decided it would motivate Rodney's efforts, and he didn't want to have that on his conscience.
The detached, clinical element of McKay's analytical mind found the Wraith fascinating in their own way. A lethal merging of the human organism with the malleable DNA of the predatory Iratus insect, they were formidable. The accelerated regenerative abilities they showed and the basic toughness of the Wraith were factored directly into the hibernation systems of the ship. It was highly unlikely a regular person could have survived for long in the torpid cold-sleep of the hive, but the Wraith on this craft had been dormant for millennia. These guys had been settling in for a nap around the same time that Rodney's distant ancestors were living in mud huts and trying to perfect that wheel thing.
But not any more. They were waking up, here and now, and not for the first time in the last eighteen months McKay was wishing the whole Atlantis expedition had never even happened. But, he reflected, the Wraith would have woken up again one day, especially with idiots like Keifer poking sticks into their nests. It was better that they were here in the Pegasus Galaxy to do something about it, than being none the wiser back on Earth until the day the sky turned black with Hive fleets. If only he could do something about this ship, right here and right now. The other, bigger, fate-of-the-human-race stuff he could get to later on.
Data streamed past his eyes, each line of dense Wraith code revealing more than the next, gradually compounding and confirming McKay's worst speculations. He had never wanted to be so wrong in all his life, and yet there it was. "Oh. Crap." The awakening Wraith were just the tip of the iceberg.
A wet hiss drew Rodney from his work and he turned at the sound of the nexus chamber's main hatch. He didn't think he could feel any worse about the situation, but as Vekken and Daus entered the control center, he realized that wasn't true at all. Suddenly his worries contracted to surviving the next few minutes without being shot or skewered with a sword.
The Lord Magnate said something low and fierce to Kelfer and then strode across the room, homing in on McKay. Other robed scientists and lackeys scattered to get out of their ruler's path, obviously afraid to be anywhere near him.
"Doctor," began the Magnate, with chilly, false humor, "please forgive the manner in which you were brought here. It was for your own protection, and for the good of the Halcyon nation."
For a moment, Rodney found himself thinking of someone else's well being instead of his own. "You ordered the raid on the dolmen. Those men in the gray were yours, and you let them shoot at your own daughter." The words had no weight. They were just a bald, hard statement of fact. McKay searched Daus's eyes and saw one tiny glimmer of emotion, but then it was gone so fast he thought he might have imagined it.
"Affairs of state often compel a man to do things that he might otherwise wish to avoid," offered the ruler, "as you now understand I must compel you."
"Why..." He shook his head. "Why didn't you just ask us for help? We would have come here freely, with dozens of people, we would have helped you deal with this! You didn't have to shoot me and threaten the lives of my friends!"
Vekken inclined his head. "What must your world be like, Doctor? Is it so open that no man must conceal his strengths from another? On Halcyon we cannot be so naked before the enemies of our clan."
"None must know of this vessel," said Daus. "It has been the most closely guarded secret of the Fourth Dynast. It is the root of our power."
"Does Erony know about it?" Rodney demanded.
Daus frowned. "Not the whole truth."
McKay felt disgust rising inside him. "You even lie to her."
A nerve in the Magnate's jaw twitched with repressed annoyance. "Do not dare judge me, outworlder. I hold your life in my grip." He pushed forward to peer at the computer. "What progress have you made in suspending the Wraith's awakenings?"
When the scientist didn't speak, Vekken made a show of revealing the hilt of his sword. "The Magnate asked you a question. You will respond to it. What progress have you made?"
The answer burst from him in an exasperated rush. "None! Okay? None at all, not a bloody bit!"
Kelfer gritted his teeth. "So much for your superior knowledge."
"Oh yeah, like you could do any better-" Rodney's words were choked off as Daus's arm came up in a flash of motion, and the Magnate's thick fingers gripped his throat. "Ack!"
"You dare to defy my will?" he roared. "Weakling, intellectual fool! I demand that you put the Wraith back to their slumber, and by the blades, you will do it!"
McKay coughed and wrenched himself free. He gave a ragged-throated cry. "I can't! Don't you understand, it's already too late!" Rodney turned to the laptop and drew a series of windows on to the screen. In turn, the largest of the glassy Wraith monitor panels illuminated with strings of alien text. "The hibernation system runs from a central command cluster, and once it reaches a point of, uh, critical mass, the hive cells start a total shutdown. We are too far along in the process to halt it." Rodney threw up his hands. "The truth is, you were too far along a year ago! Now there's no way to stop them all defrosting!"
Kelfer's face drained of color. "How... How long until they are all conscious?"
"It's a matter of weeks," he said bleakly. "By then, every single one of the hundred thousand or so Wraiths on board this ship will be awake and hungry."
There was silence in the chamber at Rodney's pronouncement. "Impossible," began Daus, and he turned to glare at Kelfer, searching for support to his denial.
The Halcyon scientist sat heavily on a makeshift chair and ran a trembling hand through his thinning hair. "Great blades," whispered Kelfer, "we are truly doomed."
"I'm not done talking yet," McKay said carefully. "There's more."
"More?" Kelfer yelped. "This nightmare grows worse?"
The main screen flickered and scrolled through a sequence of complex graphics. "I was running a search program I designed through the ship's logs, looking for information, stuff from the last entries before the Wraith crew went into cold-sleep and set the ship down on automatic. I found this." The display showed an image of an ovoid object, clearly of Wraith manufacture, drifting in orbit between two dragonfly-wing solar panels. "This is a beacon, I think. The Hive Ship left it in orbit before it made planetfall on Halcyon however many centuries ago. It went active recently."
"The Lieutenant Colonel was telling the truth," murmured Vekken, "there was a Wraith device circling our world."
Daus gave a curt nod. "Your leader Sheppard claims he destroyed this thing. If he did not lie, then of what import is it?"
McKay grimaced. "Quite a lot, if it sent out any signals to other Wraith Hives!" He pointed at the screen. "If that rang the dinner gong loud enough, then there's likely to be more ships on their way here, other Hive Fleets with thousands more Wraith." The scientist paused for breath. "You are, to put it very mildly, quite screwed."
"Scar!" spat the Magnate, wheeling around in an angry turn. "That filthy alien whoreson! He did this!" Daus advanced menacingly on Kelfer. "You allowed it to happen! It was your fault!"
Vekken saw the question on Rodney's face. "A Wraith, the one we named `Scar', we believe it was the commander of this vessel. There was an accident some time ago and it escaped from its hibernation capsule..."
"It was your blind tampering!" Daus thundered at the scientist. "We never did determine what havoc he wrought while he was loose on this ship! You assured me he did nothing!"
"I... I believed so..." Kelfer managed. The man was collapsing before McKay's eyes, his arrogance vanishing like vapor. "How could I have known?"
"Scar must have set a stealth program running," said Rodney, "we've seen that
sort of thing before. It works very slowly, in the background. It can stay undetected for years. He must have set up a protocol to activate the beacon, and it took all this time just to get around to it."
"We captured the Wraith attempting to activate one of their screamer-ships," noted Vekken. "It could not be broken, so we deposited it in the hunt enclosure to become a training target."
"I should have killed him!" snarled Daus. "Killed him and coated his bones in gold for the trophy hall, then hung you from the gibbet, Kelfer!"
"There's no guarantee a signal was sent," Rodney broke in, trying to calm the situation, "the odds are fifty-fifty the beacon was even transmitting!"
Vekken was the only one who remained cool and emotionless throughout the whole display, never once taking his eyes from McKay. "What can we do to protect ourselves, Doctor? You are as much at risk as we."
Sheppard's words echoed in Rodney's mind. They were an off-world team, on terra incognita, and they were not, under any circumstances, to let it get out that the city of Atlantis was intact. But did that apply here? A moment ago McKay told these men that the Atlanteans would have helped them if only they had asked, and now the adjutant was doing just that. He swallowed hard. "First we have to deal with the Hive Ship here." Rodney gestured at the walls. "Back on Atlantis we have access to powerful explosive devices -"
"Back on Atlantis?" Vekken pounced on his words. "You said the city was destroyed. You lied to us."
Rodney shook his head. "Does that matter now? Listen to me, we have atomic weapons that produce destructive force through nuclear fission, bigger than anything you could create."
Kelfer gave a distracted nod. "I am aware of the theoretical science behind such munitions."
"We can detonate a nuclear device inside this ship and destroy it. You won't be able to live nearby for a few hundred years, but I'm guessing we're somewhere pretty remote right now, and it's a better option than a global culling."
Daus became very still. "What you suggest would mean obliterating a hoard of the most advanced technologies on our planet. Your plan would kill every potential Hound on this vessel."
Stargate Atlantis: Halcyon Page 23
