by Stargate
Lorne gave the colonel a look; both he and his commander heard the warning in the Athosian’s tone.
“Carter here,” said the colonel, raising her voice to be heard over the thrumming of the engine core. “Teyla, what’s going on? Corporal Kennedy missed his check-in.”
“The Wraith prisoners are free,” came the dour reply. “The corporal has most likely been killed.”
Lorne swore under his breath and ratcheted the slide on is P90. He grabbed his radio and toggled it to the all-units guard frequency. “All teams, go to alert. We have Wraith targets in the clear, repeat Whiskey-Tangos loose on the ship. Weapons free.”
He had barely said the words when the chatter of gunfire sounded from the upper level of the engine chamber.
“Contact!” snapped Carter.
The hatches hissed open and a trooper fell backwards into the room, retreating along the upper gantry, his assault rifle firing bursts from the hip. A pair of ragged Wraith hurtled after him; one held a pistol in either hand and came on, blazing away with each weapon; the other marched a dying man in before him as a human shield, feeding on his fresh kill even as he moved.
The major and the colonel took aim and opened fire, their shots flashing off the metal and plastic of the raised platform; but the predatory aliens were moving fast, dodging and slashing with their claws.
The second Wraith snarled and pitched the near-dead corpse of its feeding victim into the air, off the gantry and down. The soldier bounced off the protective field around the spinning energy-exchanger rings of the drive core, and fell with a sickening crack into a heap.
Lorne saw the soldier with the assault rifle take a round in his leg and stumble. The armed Wraith dove at him, wild for new prey. He led the target and bracketed it with a full-auto discharge, knocking it down; but incredibly, the alien was still alive. The major ripped out a spent stick of ammunition and slammed a fresh clip into the breech.
“There’s two,” shouted Carter, firing and moving, trying to draw a bead on the other attacker. “There were three in the cell! Where’s the other one?”
The door hummed opened and a dead Risar was thrown into the chamber. Teyla saw the two flash bang grenades that had been stabbed into its flesh and instinctively threw herself away from the corpse, down behind the cover of a console.
The concussion wave clipped her as she moved, the magnesium-bright flare of white light blazing through the room.
Unprepared for the shock effect, the two Risar gave off strange, low groans and touched their faces in a peculiarly human gesture. They blundered about, dazzled and stunned.
Teyla smelled the Wraith before she saw it, sensed it entering the smoke-wreathed room behind her. Snatching the stunner pistol from her belt holster, she pivoted, turning to come up on one knee.
She heard Fenrir call her name in warning. The alien warrior was already upon her, and with a savage kick, it connected with her wrist and knocked the gun flying. She staggered, stumbling backwards, trying not to lose her balance.
It was the same Wraith she and Ronon had encountered in the cells. He gave a hissing chuckle. “You again. I thought I could feel you.” It tapped its head. “In here.” The alien drew two blades from its belt; they were USAF-issue combat knives, and one of them was still wet with human blood. “I wonder, what will it feel like when I kill you?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Rodney reached out and touched a virtual tab on one of the holo-screens. The panel unfolded, panes extending and shifting, infinite boxes building upon one another until they had grown to encompass the entire room. Instead of the data cascades or the unreal images of the star system, new scenery projected itself over the walls of the compartment, building simulated ceilings and walls, sketching in metallic chairs and tables, an arching bench and an enclosed dais; he had the immediate impression of a courtroom.
The detail was indistinguishable from the real thing. McKay and Sheppard were no longer in a cramped room aboard the starship Odyssey, they were standing in a long vaulted chamber on the far distant — and now long since destroyed — planet Hala.
As a last touch, the holo-projectors conjured images of a handful of Asgard, each one standing at a different podium. Most were unadorned, but some wore metallic collars about their throats, ornate devices that appeared to be as much technological as ceremonial.
The last of the aliens to appear stood alone, isolated and off to the far side of the room.
“Fenrir…” muttered Sheppard. There was no-one else it could have been.
McKay glanced around. The illusion of being there was total, the actual walls of the core room hidden beneath the false reality of the Asgard chamber. As long as they didn’t stray to far from where they stood, there would be nothing to break the artifice of it.
One of the Asgard took the tallest of the podia and swept a gaze across the room. “Here comes the judge,” said Sheppard, from the side of his mouth. “This is like A Few Good Asgard…”
“This assembly is gathered to address a matter of most serious import,” said the alien. “Let the record show that I, Thor, First Scientist and Commander, have opened this conclave.”
“That’s Thor…” whispered McKay. “He’s not what I expected.”
“Did you think he’d be taller?” Sheppard eyed him. “And why are you whispering? It’s not like they can hear us.”
Rodney nodded. “I know that,” he said defensively. “I was just, uh, paying attention.”
Another Asgard bowed. “I, Eldir, Healer and Biologist, second the word of Thor.”
The other aliens ranged in a semi-circle bowed their heads and spoke one at a time.
“Freyr, Commander, accedes.”
“Penegal, Counselor, consents to this.”
“Jarnsaxa, Commander, agrees.”
“Hermiod, Engineer, gives consent.”
Sheppard wandered closer to the alien engineer and studied him. “Our little buddy from the Daedalus,” he noted. “Guess this was him in his younger years…”
Thor looked right through the colonel to the podium where Fenrir stood. “You know why you have been called to this place,” he began. “You must answer for your crime.”
Fenrir’s eyes flashed and he looked up. “I committed no crime.” There was real heat in his retort. “What transpired was an accident. I deeply regret it, but it was through no deliberate action of mine.”
“That is open to definition,” said Jarnsaxa; the Asgard’s voice had a slightly feminine timbre. “How would you characterize the action of negligence? Is that deliberate, or not?”
“Warnings were given,” stated Hermiod. “On more than one occasion, as I have documented.” A panel of text floated into being before him, runes filling the space. “They were ignored.”
Freyr leaned forward. “Is that so, Fenrir?”
“I did not ignore Hermiod’s counsel…” muttered the alien. “I merely considered it to be… Too conservative.”
Eldir nodded. “The engineer’s cautious nature is well known to all of us, that is so.” Hermiod made a tutting noise as the biologist continued. “But surely there were other concerns?”
“Nothing I considered insurmountable,” Fenrir replied.
Thor seized on the comment. “So you concede that you were aware the collapsar device was flawed?”
“Not flawed,” came the firm reply, “only untested.”
McKay watched the action unfold, his head going back and forth as if he were observing a tennis match. Fenrir seemed different from the alien he had briefly met aboard the Aegis; this other version of him seemed more arrogant and cocksure, defiant in the face of the assembly’s displeasure.
“And so you deployed an untested device that you were aware could malfunction, within a populated star system.” Freyr’s words were flat and damning. “The result is known to us all.”
“I’ll say,” added Sheppard.
“It was an accident!” Fenrir snapped; McKay had never heard of an Asgard shouting befo
re, but there it was. “The detonation profile was never meant to progress beyond the initial phase! But there was radiation interference —”
“Has that been confirmed?” Penegal, who had remained silent until now, addressed the question to Hermiod. Clearly he was of important rank; when he spoke, the others fell quiet.
Hermiod gave a terse nod. “Yes, counselor. But it was a known phenomena. It should have been guarded against.”
“It was,” insisted Fenrir, “just not well enough.”
A question was forming in McKay’s mind at the same moment Jarnsaxa gave it voice. “Why did you choose this system to test the collapsar device? Why not another, with no indigenous life?”
Fenrir’s hands reached out and clutched the podium before him. “It was the best profile in our database. The presence of life was not an issue. I expected no complications. I was secure in the knowledge of my own skills.”
“Huh,” said the colonel. “Who does that remind me of?”
“Are you ever going to let that drop? I blew up one planet with nobody on it,” scowled Rodney. “He destroyed a whole star system. Big difference.”
Eldir was speaking once again. “Then you are not guilty of negligence. Only arrogance.”
Fenrir drew back. “I have made myself clear. I am not the only Asgard to have made errors in his works.”
“Loki was punished for his misdeeds,” offered Thor, but Fenrir ignored the comment and spoke over him.
“I did only what I thought was right! I did what was needed to forge a way to defend us against the threat of the Replicators!”
“By building an unstable weapon of unmatched lethality?” said Freyr. “Perhaps, if you had remained within your original field of expertise —”
“The losses inflicted on all of us by the Replicators are open wounds,” said Penegal, bringing silence once again. “The worlds they have destroyed, the numbers of our kindred killed…” He gave Fenrir a meaningful look. “We have all suffered great losses.”
“Revenge…” muttered Sheppard, seeing the moment between the two aliens. “Is that what it was about? Fenrir lost someone he cared about to the Replicators, so he went gung ho?”
“But that forgives nothing,” noted Thor. “A terrible error has been made. It cannot be undone. There must be consequences.”
“Here it comes,” said McKay. “They’re going to throw the book at him.”
“I reject the authority of this assembly,” Fenrir sneered. “I reject any edicts you may make!”
Jarnsaxa nodded. “That right is yours, if you wish to be avowed as a renegade. If you wish to follow in the footsteps of Loki and all the others who renounced our ways. But if you make that choice, you will be declared lost. You will no longer be one of us.”
The room was silent for a moment, before Thor spoke again. “I move we declare a punishment for Fenrir.”
“Did the Asgard have the death penalty?” said Sheppard. “Did they even have prisons?”
“I don’t know,” McKay admitted. “I didn’t think they’d ever had need of that kind of thing. They were a highly evolved and intelligent species.”
Sheppard folded his arms. “Those two things don’t automatically make you a saint,” he replied. “Look at the Ancients. Hell, look at the Ori.”
The other aliens spoke again, each one saying the same single word. “Exile.”
“Fenrir,” Thor was solemn, “it is our judgment that you will be banished from the worlds of the Asgard for five hundred seasons.”
“Your body will be placed in stasis aboard your ship,” said Penegal, “and it will roam the galactic clusters, on a course set to return you to Hala when your sentence is complete.”
“Your mind will remain in a wakeful state,” added Thor. “On your journey, you will have time to reflect on the mistakes your haste and belligerence have led to.”
“A penal cruise,” murmured McKay. “That’s why his ship was in the Pegasus galaxy. It would have had to drop out of hyperspace every so often to make course corrections.”
Sheppard gave a slow nod. “And he just happened to find himself in the middle of a Wraith hunting party. There’s a battle, his ship is damaged, he crash-lands on the moon… And the rest we know.”
If anything, the pale flesh of Fenrir’s face was even more pallid than usual. “And if I choose not to agree to your decree?” he demanded.
“Then your exile will be permanent,” said Freyr, with finality. “You will die alone, lost to the Asgard for all time.”
Fenrir looked down. “It seems that I have no choice.” The Asgard’s head snapped up abruptly, and he glared at Thor. “But you will not banish the Replicators so easily! They will destroy us… Or we will destroy ourselves in the fight with them.”
The image froze and disintegrated, becoming grainy clusters of holographic pixels that melted away; once more McKay and Sheppard stood in the middle of the dull grey compartment, the bubble of illusion broken.
“He was right, in a way,” said Rodney. “The Asgard did destroy themselves trying to endure long enough to wipe out the threat of the Replicators. It’s ironic, really. Thor and the others actually used Fenrir’s collapsar technology to destroy Hala’s sun when the Replicators finally overran the planet.”
Sheppard picked up McKay’s data pad and handed it to him. The colonel’s expression was bleak. “We’ve got the whole story now,” he said. “We have to warn the others. Until we know otherwise, we have to consider Fenrir a threat.”
Teyla ducked as the combat knives slashed through air. She felt the wind of the blades passing on her face and pivoted, sending a hard sweep kick out at the legs of the Wraith warrior. He dodged and gave a guttural chuckle, rebounding off a bouncing motion to come at her again. This time he stabbed and slashed, aiming at the centre of her body mass, her abdomen.
The Athosian’s fighting sticks slipped from the sleeves on her thighs and into her hands. She blocked and parried, aware that the bigger, more muscular alien was pushing her back toward the Asgard cryogenic capsule. He stabbed out again, trying to draw blood.
“I know you are with child,” it snarled, “I smell it inside you. It makes you hesitant! The fear makes you slow. Too afraid to exert, to fight!” The warrior laughed again.
“If that comment was meant to intimidate me,” she said between grunts of breath, “then all you have proven is how little you know of Athos’s daughters!” Teyla flicked the sticks around and hit the Wraith in the face with the blunt ends; the blows caught the sensitive sensory pits on the cheekbones and drew a reedy yowl of agony from the alien as it rocked backward.
“I will cut your spawn from you!” Fresh with anger, the warrior went for her once again.
Lorne used the oddly-shaped hand-holds on the plastic ladder to propel himself up to the drive room’s second tier. He led with the P90 and fired off a burst; his target, the Wraith that had used one of his men as a shield, spat at him and threw itself off the balcony, somersaulting to land on its feet across from Carter. “Colonel!” he shouted.
She took aim without looking his way. “I got this,” she replied, and opened fire.
Satisfied Carter was in control down there, Lorne vaulted up the rest of the way to the upper tier. A few feet away, an airman fought face-to-face with a snarling Wraith, the two of them going tug-of-war over the assault rifle trapped diagonally between them. The airman was bleeding from scratch wounds across the face, one eye bloody and gummed shut; the Wraith was attacking in a frenzy and the fight wouldn’t last much longer.
Lorne had emptied half a clip of ammo into the freakish alien and still it wasn’t lying down to die. He dimly remembered something Doctor Beckett had once said about the Wraith, how they regenerated faster than anything, how their bodies appeared to secrete some kind of enzyme that made them ignore pain, set themselves into a berserker rage or something…
The two combatants were too close for Lorne to chance taking a shot; he was good marksman but he wasn’t going to ri
sk it. If in doubt, fall back on traditional methods, he told himself.
The major turned around the very hi-tech, state-of-art submachine gun in his hands and proceeded to use it in the manner of a weapon that his species had been employing since before they walked upright. Lorne clubbed the Wraith hard in the spine with the butt of the SMG and heard a nasty crunch of breaking cartilage. The alien howled and spun about to attack him, slamming the injured airman to the floor. The major hit it again and knocked the Wraith off balance; then before it could shake off the pain, he put the P90 back the way it was supposed to be and squeezed the trigger.
Teyla saw the two Risar that had been stunned by the flash bang grenades shake off the effects and as one, rush the Wraith. The alien heard their heavy footfalls across the steely deck and spun the combat knives about, bringing the pommels to his thumbs. With a sudden, hard strike, the warrior stabbed backward and buried the blades to the hilt in the chests of the Risar drones. Fenrir’s clone-proxies spat grey foam and fell to their knees with airy moans; of the Asgard’s holographic projection, there was no sign.
She took the opening presented to her and slammed the sticks toward the bruises she had made on the Wraith’s face; it blocked her with bone-armored wrist guards. Teyla pressed the attack, regaining some of the ground she had lost.
But something seemed wrong. Many times she had fought the Wraith, many times in hand-to-hand combat just as she did now, and she knew their ways. Wraith warriors did not play the tactical game, they did not wait for opportunity or moment, most certainly not when fighting a single, lightly armed opponent. Teyla kept waiting for the creature to claw at her, to make a pass with the fanged maw in the meat of its hand; but he did none of those things, instead defending, not attacking. Marking time. Waiting for something.
Sam chased the Wraith around the chamber, finding it and throwing bursts of blazing gunfire wherever it paused; she had to concentrate hard. The thing was trying to cloud her mind, to throw off her perceptions. She’d read the reports filed by Colonel Sheppard and other members of the Atlantis military contingent; no-one was quite sure how the aliens did it, the effect was some kind of natural psychic aura they gave off to confuse their prey.
