STARGATE ATLANTIS: Dead End

by Chris Wraight

  A second jar’hram was hurled up at the lone beast. Ronon saw the shaft shiver as it hit, and the razor-sharp blade sunk deep into the buffalo’s heavy stomach. A huge roar went up, and the creature turned to face its tormentor. The spear-thrower, now bereft of his weapon, danced away and shrank back into the snow. With his white furs on, even Ronon had difficulty seeing where he’d gone.

  The buffalo was becoming enraged. It reared up on its massive hind legs, before crashing its hooves back to earth. The snow flew up, and the earth shuddered under the impact. Ronon had difficulty keeping his feet. Out of immediate danger, he crouched down in the ice, panting for breath, looking for a chance to get involved.

  The bulk of the herd was now moving away. Despite their huge size, the creatures seemed terrified of the hunters. Some of Orand’s group were driving them further off. Others were ensuring the separated animal couldn’t get back to rejoin the herd. More jar’hram flew through the air. Each time they landed, a fresh bellow of pain and rage rose from the lone buffalo.

  Ronon rose, hefting his shaft lightly in his hands. Adrenalin had kicked in. Despite the long chase he found he still had reserves of strength. It was time for him to make a contribution. He pulled his spear back over his shoulder and hurled it at the buffalo with an almighty heave. The blade flew in a spinning arc, before clattering uselessly against the animal’s thick hide. With dismay, Ronon saw the jar’hram slide ineffectually down the buffalo’s flanks and into the snow.

  There was no scorn from the others. Some of their spears had also failed to penetrate the animal’s protective layers of fur, and the remaining hunters were too busy keeping themselves alive to pay much attention to Ronon’s actions. Despite this, the Satedan felt a burning sense of failure. Without his spear, he was useless to the hunt. He shrank back away from the beast, wondering what to do.

  “Stay in the circle!” cried Orand sharply.

  The young hunter was to Ronon’s right, and hadn’t dispatched his spear yet. Ronon looked quickly across at the others, and saw that the party had formed into a wide ring. With the bulk of the herd driven off, the isolated animal was surrounded. There was no escape. The lone buffalo seemed confused and weary. Every so often it would make an attempt to charge free of its tormentors. When it did so, a fresh spear would spin up from a hidden hand, provoking a fresh lurch and stagger from the wounded animal. The snow was now stained with dark blood, and the bellows from the creature were becoming strangled and hoarse.

  Ronon stayed where he was, watching the buffalo warily. It was a precarious occupation, being part of a living barrier. There were now half a dozen spears sticking from the buffalo’s body, and they swayed strangely as the beast wallowed and reared. Despite its wounds, the vast creature was still on its feet. The bellows rising from its cavernous ribcage now sounded more like pleas for help than roars of aggression. They were not answered. The rest of the herd had been driven some distance away. The hunters who had chased them off were returning. The game was entering its final stages.

  The wounded buffalo turned away from Ronon, and challenged the hunters on the other side of the circle. There were few jar’hram left to throw. Then the Satedan spotted something lying in the churned-up snow. It was his blade, miraculously unbroken by the trampling hooves of the buffalo. With a sudden inspiration, Ronon realized he could get it. He stole a glance towards Orand, but the hunter was preoccupied with maintaining the stranglehold on the prey. Without waiting for doubt to cloud his judgment, Ronon sprinted forward. The spear was only a few yards ahead, half buried by the blood-stained slush.

  As he did so, the buffalo turned. Its enraged eyes flashed, and it bore down on him. Ronon normally thought of himself as a big man; under the gaze of a rampaging White Buffalo he felt like an insect. This was dangerous. The Runner half-heard Orand’s urgent shout, but there was no choice, he was committed. The buffalo careered towards him, throwing slush into the air like a ship surging through the waves.

  Ronon stooped down and picked up the jar’hram while still at full-tilt. He could smell the acrid musk of the wounded buffalo, its fur waving wildly as it careered onwards. Sliding and skidding, Ronon changed direction, scrabbling to get away. The thud of the creature’s hooves shook the ground beneath him.

  He lost his footing on the churned-up snow, staggering as he ran. The gap closed. He felt his heart thumping heavily in his chest, he dreadlocks flailing, his furs streaming out behind him as he ran.

  He was too close. The buffalo was on him. He could feel its bellowing breath against his shoulders. His legs burned, his arms pumped, but he knew it was no good.

  He was going to get run down.

  Teyla sat against the rough-cut stone wall, enjoying the warmth of the fire. There were voices all around. The womenfolk and children of the settlement had gathered in one of the larger chambers and were chatting and laughing amiably. The smaller boys ran around with sticks, mimicking the actions of the great hunt. The girls sat quietly, absorbing the deft movements of their mothers as they wove more plains-grass artifacts.

  There seemed remarkably little disharmony in the Forgotten, Teyla thought. There were few quarrels, and no raised voices. The entire settlement seemed to realize their debt to one another. Perhaps the harshness of their predicament had forced them to become a uniquely cooperative people. Or maybe the absence of the Wraith had enabled them to lead lives of relative peace and security. But Teyla felt there was something more to it; they seemed almost too passive, too secure in their settled ways. Even during the team’s short stay on Khost, Teyla had seen that their situation was hopeless. If the winters carried on getting worse, then the Forgotten way of life would soon be wiped out.

  Teyla watched Miruva laughing and gossiping with her friends as she wove. The girl’s face was alive with delight, and her smooth features were illuminated by the flickering light of the hearth. Teyla knew that she had potential. Not all the Forgotten women were destined to live their lives sewing and darning the furs of their men.

  The Forgotten girl seemed to sense she was being watched, and turned to look at Teyla. The Athosian smiled, pushed herself up from the wall, and walked over to Miruva, picking her way past the scurrying children carefully.

  “It is easy to lose track of time in this place,” said Teyla. “How long have we been here?”

  Miruva looked up at the light-traps in the rock ceiling.

  “It is now late afternoon,” she said. “You have seen a typical morning in this settlement. If you want to leave and help your friends, I won’t be offended.”

  Teyla shook her head. “There is not much I can do to assist Dr McKay and Colonel Sheppard,” she said. “And it is just as useful for us to learn more about your situation here.”

  Miruva put her weaving down. “Is there anything in particular you’d like to know?”

  “There is one thing,” Teyla said, sitting down beside her. “We are here because we believe the Ancestors may have had something special planned for you and your people. This planet is the furthest we have ever traveled within the Pegasus galaxy. There seems to be something unique about your world. Do your people have any histories concerning the plans of the Ancestors?”

  Miruva shook her head. “To be honest, until you arrived, I had begun to doubt whether they even existed at all.”

  “Oh, they do exist,” said Teyla. “The full story is somewhat complicated, but there are many worlds throughout this galaxy which bear their mark. Your portal is not the only one. If your gate were working properly, you too could leave Khost and seek a better home.”

  Miruva’s eyes lit up briefly. “Is that why you’re here? To lead us away from Khost?”

  Teyla began to wonder if she’d suggested too much. Sheppard wouldn’t thank her for planting ideas in the heads of the Forgotten. “We will have to consult with your leaders first,” she said. “But Dr McKay and Colonel Sheppard are working to repair your portal. Once this is done, we will have to see what we can do to help you. You can be assured
of one thing: we will not stand by while your people are driven to starvation.”

  Miruva took Teyla’s hand in hers. “From the moment I saw you, I knew that you were here to lead us to freedom,” she said. “This is the time our people have been waiting for.”

  Teyla felt uncomfortable; she had allowed her liking for the Forgotten to get the better of her. Once people thought you were their redeemer, then things became difficult. “Well…” she began.

  But then there was a sudden loud swishing noise. All around her, women and children jumped to their feet in panic. The flames in the hearth guttered and waved wildly.

  “What is happening?” asked Teyla with alarm.

  Miruva looked back at her in terror, scrambling to her feet. “Banshees!” she cried. “Run! The Banshees have come for us!”

  Sheppard took a good look at the scenery. The air was as clear as glass, the sky an icy blue, almost green at the furthest point from the horizon. The only sign of cloud was in the far distance. Beneath the sky’s wide dome the mighty ice sheets sprawled, and in the weak sunlight they sparkled like swathes of diamond. Mighty snowdrifts were piled up against each other in the lee of the rock formations around the settlement. Out on the flats, the exposed ice mirrored the cool blue of the sky. Sheppard was not a man given to hyperbole or artistic reflection, but even he had to admit that the view was something close to pretty special. He wondered why he never remembered to take a camera out on these trips. One day, when he was surrounded by grandkids in a rocking chair, he’d regret it.

  The thought of kids brought painful memories of Nancy to the surface almost at once. This was unusual; he didn’t think of her often. But that didn’t mean his failure with her didn’t rankle. Occasionally, it occurred to him that his career had finished off pretty much every relationship he’d ever had: his father, his ex-wife, even the burgeoning friendship he’d enjoyed with Lieutenant Ford. As the sun bathed the ice before him in a frigid light, he found himself wondering whether it was all worth it. Was the chance to die on an ice-ball at the wrong end of a distant galaxy really worth losing everyone he cared about? It was a question he didn’t like to think about too much.

  “Colonel, may I ask if you’re here to help, or is your primary function on this mission to admire the view, lovely as it is?”

  The acidic sound of Rodney’s sarcasm broke his train of thought. With a weary sigh, Sheppard turned from the vista before him and re-entered the Jumper rear bay.

  “If I remember,” he said, “it was you who told me to get the hell outta your way while you did… whatever it is you did. Again.”

  McKay scowled. “That was then. This is now. And right now, I need your help.”

  McKay looked back over the mess of instrumentation cluttering the cramped interior of the Jumper. Most of it had been pulled from panels in the interior wall — the craft looked as if it had had its guts torn out — and the rest had come with McKay, part of the Swiss Army knife of tools and spare parts he always had stowed away somewhere.

  “We’ve got some burned-out sections of transmission circuitry here,” said McKay, scowling at the twisted wires in front of them. “Even I can’t do much with those. But, as I like to say on such occasions, where there’s a Rodney, there’s a way. I’ve bypassed a couple of the worst affected systems and rigged up some proxy solutions to cope with the gaps. It’s fiendishly complicated, but I reckon it’s all in place now.”

  “Fiendishly complicated, eh?”

  McKay gave a smug smile and turned back to the tangle of electronics. Like a worried mother adjusting her son’s clothing on his first day in school, he tweaked at a few nodes and adjusted a pair of esoteric-looking crystals. The mix of Ancient technology and Earth engineering made an unusual pairing, but for all the man’s bluster, Sheppard knew that McKay was the foremost expert on such things in the galaxy.

  “Now, I’ve not tried to get everything up and running at once,” said McKay, looking nervously at his jury-rigged contraption. “Just primary life support and some core structural functions. Trying to get it to fly might blow the few remaining circuits for good, so we’ve got to be careful.”

  “Careful. Right,” said Sheppard. “What do I do?”

  McKay handed him a couple of transparent rods. They were clearly of Ancient design, though they were plugged into a collection of McKay’s own pieces of kit.

  “This is a replacement for your normal mode of interface,” he explained. “I don’t want anyone trying to use the main instrument panel yet. Think of it as a bypass into the basic systems of the Jumper.”

  Sheppard frowned. He had the uncomfortable feeling he was being wired for an experiment, and wouldn’t have been surprised if the electrodes had given him a shock.

  “You’re making me nervous, Rodney,” he said, taking a rod in each hand. “What’s the drill? Click my heels and say ‘There’s no place like home?’”

  “Nice,” said McKay. “Now listen. I’m going to feed a little power to the system now. It’s more or less all we’ve got left in the portable units, so it needs to kick-start the reserve packs in the Jumper. When I say ‘Go’, do whatever it is you do that starts-up the Jumper.”

  Sheppard lifted an eyebrow. “Whatever it is I do? You want to be more precise?”

  McKay scowled. “Just remember, if you leave it too late we’ll lose the power. Lose the power and we could damage the Jumper’s few remaining relays. Damage those, then we…”

  “I get it. Flip the switch, Dr Frankenstein.”

  McKay shook his head and delved back into the heap of wires. After a few more moments of fiddling and tweaking, he stood back. “Alright,” he said. “Here we go. Three, two, one… zero!”

  Nothing happened.

  McKay stood back, scratching his head.

  “That’s odd. I could’ve sworn — ”

  Suddenly, a spasm of power surged through the rods in Sheppard’s hands. Pain bloomed up from the conductor, and he had to fight not to drop them like red-hot pokers. But the flash of power began to ebb almost as soon as it had begun and he scrambled to summon the mental activation commands. Normally, it was so easy. A second or two passed, and the power flow ebbed further.

  There was a bang, and one of McKay’s linked machines started to bleed smoke. A power cable snapped free of its moorings and snaked towards Sheppard, spitting sparks. Another unit burst into flame, and a shower of red-hot metal exploded from one of the ceiling compartments.

  Sheppard staggered backwards, caught his heel on something and fell heavily. The rods clattered to the floor as he sprawled backwards, cracking his head on a bulkhead, and crumpled to the floor. As abruptly as it had been established, the link severed.

  McKay stumbled over to him, waving fronds of smoke away. “Are you OK?”

  Sheppard shook his head, groggy. “Yeah, reckon so,” he mumbled. His vision was shaky. Or was that the smoke? “Sorry. Guess I blew it.”

  McKay squatted down beside him, looking at Sheppard’s head with some concern. “Well, you certainly produced some fireworks,” he said. “That was unexpected. But otherwise I’m pretty happy with the way things worked out.”

  Sheppard stared. “Happy?” He pushed himself upright, shaking his head to clear his vision. There was a throb in the back of his skull, but he ignored it as he looked over at the McKay’s cluster of equipment. Against all his expectations, a series of lights were happily twinkling. There was a faint hum. Systems were operational. There was even a low heat returning to the air around them. “Well, I’ll be…”

  McKay patted him on the shoulder. That was unusual, the man was clearly pleased with himself. “See? What did I tell you? Genius.”

  Ronon didn’t see his life flash before him. All he felt was frustration. This was a bad way to die.

  A few more paces, and he saw the shadow of the beast fall over him. He screwed his eyes closed, gritting his teeth and waiting for the lancing of the hooves.

  It never came. There was an almighty bellow, rending
the air around him, and the pursuit suddenly stopped. Ronon kept going, legs scything through the snow. Only after he’d covered another few meters did he slow, finally turning to see what had happened. His heart was hammering

  The White Buffalo was writing in pain, twisting and shaking its head frantically. A jar’hram protruded from one of its eyes. Orand let slip a cry of triumph, and the hunters cheered. Ronon bent double, leaning the shaft of the jar’hram against his knees, gasping for breath. The cold air made his lungs ache, but he was just glad to be breathing. That had been too risky.

  But it wasn’t over. The buffalo was sent mad by Orand’s spear. The bellows became a frenzied trumpeting, and it reared again on its massive hindquarters, waving its head from side to side in agony.

  “Fall back!” cried Orand, seeing the danger.

  It was too late. Blind to all but its fury and pain, the buffalo crashed back on to four legs and charged headlong at the source of its misery. Orand, now empty-handed, turned to flee. Like Ronon before him, he was too slow, and too near. The Buffalo surged towards him, head low, streaming blood from its sides.

  Despite his condition, Ronon stumbled into action again, running back toward the rampaging buffalo. He still had the jar’hram in his hands, though he didn’t trust a throw. There wasn’t time. Orand was just yards away from the slicing, churning hooves, moments from being crushed. All depended on a clean thrust.

  Ronon held the jar’hram high over his head with both hands. He closed fast. Half of him screamed to retreat — this was the monster than had just nearly killed him. The other half, the warrior half, kept him going. Never leave your comrades behind. That’s what he’d learned on Sateda, and the principle didn’t change with the planet.