"Yes." Rodney blinked. How odd. His brain had been completely aware of that fact from the instant the idea had occurred to him, but at the same time it wasn't until Kelfer said it out loud that McKay realized that this course of action was a suicidal one. "Yes," he repeated, a peculiar kind of calm settling on him, "let's get to it, then."
Kelfer gave him a shaky nod and walked to one of the other control pedestals, quickly manipulating the organic switches and buttons.
"What are you doing?" Rodney turned to see Daus call out across the nexus chamber. "Kelfer? Those systems are not to be tampered with! Kelfer, answer me!"
"This must be done," said the scientist distractedly.
McKay's heart leapt as new data filtered in through the crude interface between the Wraith ship and his laptop computer. Complex new code strings and power distribution curve algorithms ticked across the screen. He saw at once how to make the overload happen; it would be a question of routing energy from the bio-reactors along dead and redundant ganglia, letting it rise to supercritical levels...
"First Scientist and Duke Kelfer, by my command you will step away from that mechanism!" Daus strode forward, Vekken and his men at arms all ready for imminent violence. "Stop this mutiny!"
"One moment more," Kelfer began.
There was a double detonation, twin barks of noise like a shotgun releasing both barrels, and Kelfer was jerked away from the console, struck by an invisible hammer of force. Smoke coiled from the gun muzzles concealed in the ornate scrollwork along the length of the Lord Magnate's sword.
McKay went to the man and felt his stomach knot at the ugly wound in Kelfer's torso. The Halcyonite scientist tried to push a word from his trembling lips, but there was only the hiss of bloody froth. There on the deck, Rodney watched the life fade from him.
Anger propelled McKay back to his feet and he whirled. Daus was close, the keen curve of the swordgun hanging at head height between them. "All those who disobey me are traitors," grated the Magnate, a mad glitter in his eyes, "and the reward for perfidy is murder!"
"You just shot that man in cold blood," Rodney retorted. "And you're not even remorseful, are you? Not one little bit. Is there anything that actually matters to you apart from power? Anything? Anyone?"
Daus's face softened and the sword dipped an inch. "Nothing I have done has been for myself. My every waking action is in service of my world, my people. My family." He nodded to one of his men, and the soldier moved Kelfer's body away. "Any man who defies me I will kill in the same manner."
"You have to let me destroy this vessel!" spat McKay.
"Never -"
The deck trembled and shuddered as something in the depths of the Hive Ship came to life. Fines of dust trickled from the ceiling overhead as the chamber's bone pillars creaked.
Rodney grabbed at his laptop as the readings displayed there spiked. "I think... This ship's alive."
Sheppard turned the Puddle Jumper in a tight banking maneuver and circled the encampment. At first glance it looked a like a mine head, just a couple of stone blockhouses, tents and some watchtowers; but second time around he saw the archway constructed into the face of the steep-sided hill that rose up over the compound, and like one of those weirdo dot pictures they always had at the mall, the shape of the landscape suddenly shifted in his perception and John saw it, as clear as day.
There was the edge of the broad, shield-shaped fuselage, buried under a carpet of grasses and younger trees. There were the bony spikes fanning out from the concealed hull, green with creepers and other plant growth. A Hive Ship, hiding in plain sight, camouflaged beneath centuries of mud and earth.
Scar clicked his amusement. "My craft. My home. At last."
"Might want to think about doing a little spring cleaning," sneered Sheppard, "looks a little overgrown from up here."
"Your mockery will not help you when your usefulness comes to an end, human," replied the Wraith. "And with regard to that... Land this craft." He pointed. "There. Close to the Hive."
Sheppard counted his blessings. The launch bays on most Hive Ships he'd encountered were on the ventral side of the hull, and in the case of this one that meant they were buried in the dirt. The last thing he wanted was to take the Jumper inside the alien vessel. Outside, there were still escape options. I hope, he told himself. He brought the Ancient shuttlecraft down easy, very much aware of Scar's tight grip on the controls for the choke collar around Teyla's neck. They were coming up to the point of no return here and the last thing he wanted to do was give the Wraith an excuse to kill the Athosian woman.
Through the trees he saw a silver object low to the ground and recognized the shape of a Fourth Dynast gyro-flyer. The helicopter was heavily decorated with golden detailing and bright heraldry across the gleaming chrome hull. Only Daus would have a ride that pimped, Sheppard thought, and if his high-and-mighty Lordship is here, then maybe McKay 's not far away either. It made sense; if the man had a Hive Ship on his land, then why not kidnap the most qualified guy from Atlantis to take a look at it?
Sheppard gently turned the Jumper in a hundred-and-eighty degree yaw before settling the craft on the grass. Here we go. Last chance we're gonna get to take these creeps.
"The hatch," ordered Scar, and John obliged. But instead of letting the drawbridge drop slowly, he stabbed a key that let it fall open with a crashing slam of noise. The distraction provided the instant he needed, and he vaulted out of the pilot's chair and threw himself bodily at the Wraith commander.
"Teyla, run-!" he cried, but Scar's arm blurred and the colonel felt a punishing blow impact on his jaw, knocking him aside. He struck the Jumper's deck and rolled.
"Crude," said Scar, a mocking lilt to the word. "Is that the most sophisticated escape attempt you could concoct? If all your warriors are as obvious as you, your human militias will not survive for long against us." He gurgled a command to the other Wraith, and two of them grabbed at Teyla, dragging her out of the Jumper.
She spat and clawed at them, fighting to break free with no success. Scar watched the Wraith exit the ship, then turned to face Sheppard.
"Let the woman go," said John. "You don't need her."
"I disagree." Scar drew the gun from his belt. "A lure is always a valuable commodity when one is hunting."
"Take me instead, then."
Scar made that irritating clicking noise again. "You have proven yourself too wild to be trained. You would not make a decent Hound. So now you will gain the rewards for your disobedience." The Wraith's hand twitched and he recognized the feeding maw in its palm. Sheppard saw Colonel Sumner again in his mind's eye, the man's life draining away before him. Scar read the fear on John's face and grinned broadly. "No, human, I will not take my nourishment from you. I imagine a specimen as inferior as yourself would leave a poor taste." He threw back his head with a snort of laughter. "Besides, one of your soldiers already slaked my thirst. I am quite sated for the moment... And there is always the woman if I become hungry again."
That was enough to propel John Sheppard up from his feet, the combat knife he'd palmed during the scuffle flicking out.
Scar met him with the barrel of the Beretta and fired twice into his chest at close range. John felt burning hot rods of pain lance into his ribs and his sternum, the sudden impacts striking him back and away across the Jumper's forward compartment.
"Die slowly, human," grated the Wraith. "Know that you will not be the last of your kind I kill today." Toying with the pistol, Scar wandered away, leaving the colonel in a heap on the decking.
Teyla ran for the Jumper and made it three steps before the collar began to bite. She dropped to her knees and kept pushing forward, her vision turning gray as the open hatch loomed in front of her. She blinked away tears of agony, holding herself up from the ground.
Scar's hateful smile appeared before her. "Where are you going, Hound? I did not release you from your leash."
She tried to call out Sheppard's name, but her voice was stolen away. F
aint gasps of air came in choking rattles.
The alien grinned. "You will not defy me again, prey. You are the last one of your war band that lives, and you want more than anything to take revenge for the death of your comrades, yes?" He pulled her to her feet. "So you will not defy me again, because for every moment you live you may entertain a little longer the fantasy of killing me yourself." Scar leered over her. "And I know your kind, Tey-lah. I know you want that more than you want to die."
She didn't resist him; the Athosian let herself go slack, as if she were defeated, and after a moment the collar retracted.
Teyla looked up and spat into Scar's face. She tensed for a blow, but none came. Instead, the alien wiped the spittle away without expression and took the steel leash in his hand. With a jerk of his wrist, he pulled her away from the Jumper and toward the ragged entrance cut in the flanks of the Hive Ship.
Ronon. John. And now I am alone. She forced the thoughts away and concentrated on the cable connected to her heavy necklet. The Wraith's arrogance will be its downfall, she decided, her eyes flint-hard with determination. I swear on my father's grave, Scar will not leave this ship alive.
In basic training, recruit John Sheppard had been unfortunate enough to have a firearms instructor who went by the name of Master Sergeant Gunn. It seemed like a joke when he first heard it, but after he'd stood in front of the man and weathered the force five tirade of creative invective the training sergeant poured on anyone who failed to be an outstanding marksman, John had quickly leaned that 'Big' Gunn had a knowledge of weapons and their destructive capacity greater than any man he'd ever met. Gunn was a veteran, and would gladly display the place where he had been hit by a 5.56 bullet from an AK47 to trainees who demonstrated any squeamishness about the tools of the military's trade. He made Sheppard's squad use pig carcasses for target practice so that they would understand the lethal damage a bullet could do on a piece of unprotected flesh. Never mind the fact that most of Gunn's charges would end up shooting missiles at over-the-horizon targets from twenty thousand feet up; he wanted them to know the results of pulling a trigger.
Eventually, someone in the squad was nominated to ask Gunn what it felt like to get shot; and when Recruit Sheppard put the question to the man, his answer was hard and to the point. You like bowling, Sheppard? He had asked. Ever drop a ball on your foot? Well, kid, you think about lying on your back right there in the number one lane, and you get your buddy to stand over you with a twelve pound ball in his sweaty grip. Then you let him drop it on your chest. Take that and cross it with a red hot poker being slammed through your gut and you got about a tenth of what it feels like to take a round. You following me, Recruit?
"Yes, sergeant," the colonel said thickly, his voice faint to his own ears. He could taste blood on his lips and there was a feeling like jagged glass in his torso each time he took a breath. "Did I bust a rib...?"
Sheppard looked around, his vision swimming as the Jumper's cabin gradually came into focus. With care he hauled himself up to a sitting position and pulled open the front of his jacket. Inside, the thick, high-impact Kevlar body armor was distorted and tight across his chest. Two warped coins of metal-the flattened heads of the bullets from Scar's shots-were embedded in the dense plastic weave, the surrounding fibers knitted together where the heat from the rounds had melted them. John moaned as he released the Velcro straps on the armor and let it fall away. He probed gingerly at the spots on his torso beneath the bullet impact points and got fresh hits of pain from both. Sheppard peered down the front of his undershirt and saw ugly bruises already turning yellowish-purple. "Ow," he declared, with feeling.
As quickly as he could manage, the colonel rooted through a medical kit for field dressings and an analgesic gel, then plundered the Jumper's weapons locker for a fresh P90 submachine- gun and as many sticks of ammunition as he could carry. He took a swig of water from a canteen to wash the coppery taste of blood from his mouth and winced as he took a deep breath. "You're still alive, John," he said aloud, reflecting on the accuracy of Sergeant Gunn's description. "Even if it does hurt like hell."
Sheppard forced the pain to the back of his thoughts and slipped out of the Jumper, moving quickly toward the hull of the grounded Hive Ship.
The Halcyons had built a short stone tunnel up to the side of the Wraith vessel, hiding the place where their engineers had cut into the exterior ten generations ago. The slice through the alien fuselage was a rough-edged wound that had never been allowed to close, kept open with giant sutures and heavy clamps of rusty metal. Typically, two Fourth Dynast riflemen were permanently stationed in this antechamber, standing at arms around the clock under the light from chemical lamps. Scar's cohorts had made short work of them, and Sheppard's lip twisted as he came across the desiccated corpses of what had been young men only hours earlier.
He pulled himself into the vessel and a creeping chill settled on him. The same crawling spook house vibe he felt the last time he'd boarded a Wraith craft was there in an instant, the itch like spider webs on his skin. And the smell, that battery acid stink, hanging in the cold still air. Sheppard flicked the torch on his P90 on-off to test it, and then moved forward, the butt of the boxy weapon pressed into his shoulder. There was a dull vibra tion coming up through the floor, a sense of something powerful building up to speed. Now and then, a rumbling shudder would twitch through the walls.
As far as the Atlantis expedition had been able to discover, Wraith ships had little in the way of interior variation, structured inwardly like a spade-shaped ribcage with internal spaces. Previous jaunts on board these craft meant Sheppard knew some of the basic layout, like where to find the hibernation chamber or the holding areas; but he was working blind here, trying to second-guess Scar. If the alien was one of the Wraith `officer class' then he was on board this tub because he had a goal in mind. The bridge? Engineering? A weapons deck? Do these Hive Ships even have those things? The gaps in Sheppard's knowledge were infuriating. He came to a fork in the corridor and hesitated.
"Okay," he said, after a moment. "Reny, Meeny, Miny, Mo."
Above him, set in a socket on the curved ceiling, a ball of optic jelly watched the colonel making his choice.
"Sheppard, you idiot!" yelped McKay. "Are you...? Is he actually doing that stupid eeny-rneeny thing to find his way around?" In a vain attempt to provide some sort of assistance to Vekken and his soldiers, Rodney had-at gunpoint-been made to tap back into the Hive Ship's internal sensor systems. The large glassy screens in the nexus chamber showed dozens of views through fish-eye lenses, some watching empty compartments of the vessel, others catching glimpses of Wraith as they moved about the starship, hunting and feeding. By sheer chance, McKay had caught the colonel on camera.
"Still alive," Vekken seemed surprised. "Your commander has more resilience than I would have credited him with." The adjutant threw a glance over his shoulder at the Lord Magnate, who was in heated discussion with the late Kelfer's subordinates.
"Behind you! Behind you!" snapped Rodney at the monitor display. A second optical feed from an area further down the same corridor showed a lone Wraith creeping toward the colonel, who seemed oblivious of the alien's stealthy approach. "This is like watching one of those idiotic slasher movies!" He slapped at the control console. "Sheppard! It's behind you!"
"Perhaps if you call out a little louder, he might hear," said Vekken archly.
McKay spun around, galvanized into action. "He might hear this!" The scientist snatched at the bag of equipment that the Halcyons had taken from him at the dolmen and tore it open, grabbing at the radio inside. He hesitated for a second, twisting the dials on the top of the walkie-talkie. He couldn't remember the frequency! That was the stupid bloody military for you, changing the channel setting for every bloody mission, and Rodney could never remember which was which. "Sheppard!" he barked into the pickup. Nothing. He fiddled with the dial again. "Sheppard, watch your back-"
Vekken plucked the radio from his grip. "You wil
l desist, Dr. McKay." He handed the device to one of his soldiers. "If he attempts to use this communicator again, wound him."
"Yes sir."
"He'll be killed!" blurted McKay.
"Possibly," agreed Vekken, "but you should be more concerned about your own safety. The Magnate has given you an order. Fulfill it."
eppard, watch ...ack
The sound from the radio was so quick and so distorted that for a moment it sounded like some random squawk of static and not actually a human voice at all. "Rodney?" Sheppard froze, straining to hear; and in that second he caught the sound of something else entirely. A bare footstep, claws ticking over chitinous deck plates.
John swung the P90 around and thumbed the switch. The compact torch blinked on and caught the newly awakened Wraith in a halo of harsh white light. The alien's skin was still wet with processing fluids from the hibernation process, and its skin was tight over gaunt muscle and bone. More than anything, the ghoulish creature looked ravenous.
It moved fast; Sheppard's first three-round burst went wide, the tongue of yellow fire from the P90's muzzle cutting the air where it had crouched a heartbeat earlier. He swept the gun back and forth, working the trigger, eschewing the method of short and controlled bursts for something closer to the spray-and-pray technique. The Wraith was almost on him when John's attack connected and the bullets marched across the killer's torso in a line of black impacts. It didn't go down straight away; the Wraith were tough like that. Before it could recover, Sheppard advanced a step and fired twice more, aiming for the collection of organs in the chest cavity that approximated a human heart. With a rattling gasp, the Wraith collapsed and John realized he'd been holding his breath the whole time. He puffed and checked the machinegun's clear plastic magazine. Third of a clip gone and he'd only taken out a single Wraith. He was going to have to find a solution to this situation that didn't involve bullets.
Sheppard moved forward down the tunnel, continuing on. He got ten steps before the vibration coming up through his boots changed tempo, becoming a resonating howl of motion and sound. The deck shifted beneath him in pulsed, shuddering tremors.
Stargate Atlantis: Halcyon Page 26
