SGA-13 Hunt and Run

by Rosenberg, Aaron

  “Why do you care so much what happens to me?” Ronon asked softly. “Why should any of this matter to you?”

  “Why?” For a second Nekai seemed startled by the question. Then he leaned forward again. “Because, Ronon Dex — I was just like you.” He nodded at Ronon’s expression. “Yes. I am a Runner as well.” Nekai shifted around and raised his jacket and shirt slightly — even in the dim lighting Ronon could see the massive scar across the other man’s back. It looked to be right about where he bore his own recent wound.

  “My people, the Retem, resisted the Wraith’s dominance,” Nekai continued, restoring his clothes and leaning against the wall again. “The Wraith slaughtered them and destroyed our planet completely. It is little more than cinders now.” The bitterness in his voice was unmistakable. “Those they did not kill they captured, to serve as slaves — and as food.” He glanced away. “I was one of those they took alive — they felled me before I could throw myself upon my blade. I had been one of our people’s finest warriors, and had killed several Wraith before they were able to subdue me, so they decided to make me an example.” His lips twisted in what Ronon took to be grief and pity and possibly disgust. He was starting to see that there was far more to this man than he had realized.

  “They made you a Runner?” Ronon prompted, when Nekai fell silent, no doubt as haunted by his memories as Ronon was by his own.

  The question roused Nekai again. “Yes,” he agreed. “Implanted the tracker in my back, just as you have in yours, and released me on the nearest planet. Then they hunted me.” He met Ronon’s gaze again. “I stood and waited for them, just as you did. I wanted nothing more than to throw myself upon them and die in battle, so that I might join the rest of my people in the afterlife of our forefathers.”

  Ronon was almost afraid to ask. Almost. “What happened?”

  To his surprise, Nekai laughed, a grim sound but one with some genuine humor. “The first Wraith to catch me was too disappointed to kill me. ‘There is no sport in this,’ he complained when I hurled myself at him. ‘Run away, little human, and keep running. Give us a reason to chase you. Show us you are the warrior we took you for, not a sniveling coward who throws his life away for no reason.’ And then he walked away.”

  Ronon blinked. “I would have torn his heart out for speaking to me in such a way!”

  “I felt the same way,” Nekai agreed. “His contempt made me furious. But then I thought about it, and realized he had been right.” He nodded. “Yes, he was right. Trying to get myself killed like that was the coward’s way out. A true warrior would do as much damage to his enemy as possible, for as long as possible. And that’s what I was determined to do.”

  “So you went after him and killed him?”

  Nekai shook his head. “No. I ran.” This time his laugh was entirely at Ronon’s expression. “Are you horrified? But if I’d attacked him again right then, he just would have killed me or recaptured me and that would have been that. In order to do serious damage to them, I needed to regain my strength and find a way to fight back. That meant time to plan, time to heal. And in order to gain time, I had to keep out of their reach. So I ran.”

  “For how long?”

  His companion sighed. “Two years.”

  Ronon stared at him. “Two years?”

  “Yes. I had little choice — no weapons, no armor, no allies. My only hope was to keep moving and to hope something changed.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I got lucky,” Nekai admitted. “I found one of the ancestral rings — you know of them?” Ronon nodded — they had the strange circular portals on Sateda as well, and the elders knew the secret of activating them. “I’d seen them back on my homeworld,” Nekai continued, “and when no one else was around I snuck over to this one and managed somehow to get it open. That took me to another world. The Wraith came after me fast, before I had a chance to really get my bearings, but I managed to active the ring again, this time to a different world, and fled through that to one as well. That continued for a while — I’d reach a world and stay only long enough to find whatever food and water I could, then flee to the next before the Wraith could arrive. Usually I just foraged for fruit and nuts and, when I was lucky, meat. But finally one time I passed through and spotted a curl of smoke not far away.” He smiled, remembering. “It was a village. Not big, but big enough for my needs. They were hunters and fishermen, judging by the trappings, and everyone except a few women and children were out when I reached the outermost hut. They were a bit primitive, technologically speaking, but I found a dagger, a spear, and a bow and arrows.” His smile turned sharp. “And now I had weapons.”

  “You fought back.” It wasn’t a question.

  Nekai nodded. “Oh, yes. The same Wraith came for me, the one who had let me live that first time. He found me huddled over and growled ‘Still you throw your life away? Then this time I will not refuse such a gift!’ And then he grabbed my shoulder, no doubt to drain my life from me and toss my shattered body aside.”

  “But you were feinting,” Ronon guessed. “Drawing him in.”

  “Exactly. As soon as he touched me I spun around and impaled him on my new spear. Then, while he was staggering back clutching at it, I grabbed his own gun and shot him with it. In the head. Three times.” Nekai’s smile wasn’t pleasant. “Then I cut off his head, just to be sure.”

  Ronon nodded. He could hardly blame the other man. If he ever faced the Wraith who had released him, he would no doubt be just as brutal. Some things could not be forgiven.

  “Now I had real weapons,” Nekai concluded. “A Wraith pistol to go along with my spear and bow and knife. And I also had this.” He tossed something at Ronon, who caught it reflexively. It was a small tablet, the entire front a small blue screen. There was a grid patterned across it, with a glowing green dot in the center, and around it a pulsing red circle.

  “What is it?” Ronon studied the image. “What is this dot and why is it throbbing?”

  “It’s not.” Nekai glanced around again, listening carefully. Then he gestured. “Come on.” And he began crawling back out of the cave.

  “I thought we needed to stay out of sight,” Ronon asked even as he followed the other man. He was happy to get out of that tight space, to breath fresh air again and to stand up straight, but at the same time he didn’t want to present the Wraith with an easy target. Not now, when he was just beginning to believe that it might be worth surviving a little longer.

  “We do, but a minute or two won’t give them enough time to pinpoint us, and I can’t show you how this thing works if we’re that close together.” Once they were out, Nekai moved away, stopping perhaps forty paces from Ronon, who still stood right by the mouth of the cave. “Okay, look at it again.”

  Ronon glanced at the screen and saw that now there were two red circles. One was still around the green dot but the other was a short distance away. And neither of them were pulsing — they both glowed steadily.

  “It’s a tracking monitor,” Nekai explained. “It shows the tracking devices they implanted in us. This is how they find us.”

  “Not much of a range,” Ronon commented, studying the screen again. Given the distance between them, and the spacing on the monitor, he guessed it had an effective range of a mile, perhaps less.

  “It’s set to close-range right now,” Nekai replied. “It took me a while when I first acquired it, but I eventually figured out how to scale in or out. Trust me, it’s got enough range to cover the entire galaxy.” He gestured at the device. “That’s how they find me no matter what planet I go to. Once they reach the planet themselves they can zoom in to pinpoint my exact location.”

  Ronon frowned. “But before, in the cave, it was pulsing.”

  “Exactly!” Nekai started walking slowly back toward him. “Keep your eyes on the screen,” he instructed. Ronon did so, and saw that as the two circles — his and Nekai’s — overlapped, their edges began to waver. They flickered more and more, thei
r shapes wobbling, until Nekai was standing beside him again and the circle was only a faint shape brightening and dimming randomly around the green center dot.

  “I met another Runner once,” Nekai said, taking the monitor back from Ronon. “I’d just happened to look at the monitor — not much point in it usually, since it just shows my own location — and there was a second circle! I used the thing to find him, and that’s when I discovered what happens when two Runners are less than ten meters apart. The circles overlap! Apparently the Wraith never expected Runners to meet, so they didn’t take any precautions against it — the tracking devices cancel each other out when they’re this close together.”

  Ronon understood the implications at once. “So as long as we stay close, they can’t track us.”

  “Exactly!” Nekai grinned, a predatory look, and Ronon knew his own expression matched it. “We can get the drop on them.”

  “Excellent.” Something didn’t make sense, though. “What about that other Runner?” he asked. “The first one you found? Where is he? Two are strong but three would be stronger.”

  Nekai nodded. “They would, yes.” He looked away. “I found out something else that day, too. Because the first thing we did when we met and realized we were both Runners was agree to remove each other’s tracking devices. Then they wouldn’t be able to track us at all.”

  Ronon nodded. It made perfect sense — render the trackers useless, or better yet remove the tracking devices but keep them operational. Then you could use them to bait an ambush. “What went wrong?” Obviously something had, since Nekai still had his tracking device.

  “They’re rigged, the devices,” Nekai answered quietly. “If you tamper with them — they explode.” He didn’t have to explain beyond that. “But if we can’t remove them, at least we can negate them,” he added, shaking off the memory. “Which means we can turn the tables on the Wraith.” He studied Ronon. “So, what do you say now? Still want to throw yourself at the nearest Wraith and go out in a blaze of glory?”

  Ronon smiled and stroked the pistol at his side. “No. Not any more.” He faced the smaller man. “Teach me how to hunt. Then I will show these Wraith what happens when they allow a Satedan to live.”

  “Good.” Nekai clapped him on the back. “We’ll start at once. But for now — ” he gestured to the cave entrance. “We should get back inside. They might have noticed us while we were separated.”

  Ronon nodded, but hesitated a second before crouching and ducking back into the cave. “Is this part of being a hunter?”

  “What, sitting in narrow spaces for extended periods?” Behind him, Nekai laughed. “Oh yes, my friend. A very big part.”

  Ronon sighed. Still, if it meant being able to kill many Wraith, it would be worth it.

  Chapter Seven

  “You’re dead.”

  “What? No!” Ronon rose from his crouch, but slowly. It wouldn’t do to move too quickly — not with a pistol pressed against his temple like that.

  Nekai lifted the pistol, then holstered it. His reply was a single word: “Again.”

  Ronon was still processing recent events. “How did you find me?” he demanded. “I was careful!”

  “Not careful enough,” his mentor told him.

  “I watched where I stepped.” Ronon insisted. “Nothing but solid rock. No tracks.”

  That got a smug smile from the other man. “Too bad you didn’t look up.”

  Ronon glared at him. “Explain.”

  “You did a good job with the tracks,” Nekai agreed. “But you forgot that the ground isn’t the only way to keep track of someone’s progress. You brushed against branches, vines, tree trunks — you bent leaves and disturbed moss.” He shook his head. “It was even easier than following footprints — at least this way I didn’t have to stoop.”

  Ronon sighed. “This isn’t working,” he complained, leaning against the nearest tree. “It’s been weeks, and I’m not getting any better. Actually, I think I’m getting worse.”

  “Learning to hunt takes time,” Nekai told him, but he perched on a nearby tree root himself. “There’s a lot to cover. And I’ve got to unlearn you a lot as well.”

  Wasn’t that the truth, Ronon thought, idly drawing, spinning, and holstering his pistol in a single move. Before Nekai, he had thought he was an expert fighter, a trained warrior and strategist capable of handling any combat situation. But it turned out that was only true for open warfare. This was hunting, the art of tracking prey and then moving in silently, striking without warning and killing quickly and quietly, and for that he had no background. In fact, much of his prior military training directly contradicted what he needed here — he’d been taught speed over stealth, maximum damage instead of subtlety. This was all different. He really did have to forget half of what he knew so that he could learn a new way of doing things.

  Fortunately, Nekai was proving to be a patient teacher. No, that wasn’t really true — he wasn’t patient, not in the sense of waiting for Ronon to figure things out on his own or leaving him time to get things right. But he was persistent, and dogged. And he yet to explode at Ronon, to insult him or belittle him or call him stupid — all standard tactics in Satedan military training, getting the recruit angry enough to focus past the pain and fatigue. Nekai kept telling Ronon he was doing well, that this took time, that he had fine skills and excellent potential, but he also never let up. This, too, was a whole new way of doing things.

  Case in point — Nekai leaned back on his perch and shut his eyes. “Two hundred,” he announced softly. “One ninety-nine. One ninety-eight. One ninety-seven . . .”

  Ronon rose with a groan. He had already learned that Nekai didn’t kid about training, not at all. If he was counting down, he meant it — and when he reached “one” he would open his eyes and shoot Ronon where he stood if he was still in sight. And the Wraith stun-pistol Nekai used — apparently his backup weapon, but since Ronon now had his usual pistol and no intention of ever giving it back Nekai was using the stun-pistol entirely these days — hurt like hell when it hit you. It didn’t stun Ronon completely, not on the first shot, but it did stop him in his tracks, and Nekai had no compunctions against following that first hit up with two or three more to make sure he’d put Ronon down.

  One of these days, Ronon swore to himself, he was going to turn the tables on the stocky Retemite. He was going to sneak up on Nekai and stun him instead. That thought was now just as powerful a motivation as the idea of killing more Wraiths in keeping him moving and training.

  Which meant that perhaps Nekai’s way wasn’t all that different from Satedan methods after all. .

  * * *

  Ronon woke up at dawn two months later to discover that he was alone. That wasn’t entirely unusual — Nekai often woke before him and scouted the area, or found some sort of food.

  Food — that had been another new experience. Ronon had never hunted before. Now he was learning how to hunt Wraith, but he was also learning to hunt animals. They kept moving, switching to a new planet every two to three days so the Wraith couldn’t pinpoint their location during the times when they were far enough apart that both their tracking signals would be clear, and Nekai could tell at a glance whether a planet held edible flora and fauna. Ronon was learning how as well. It had to do with recognizing various plants, noticing telltale hints of poison in their fruit or nuts or roots, but also in searching for and reading animal tracks, teeth marks, dung, and other signs. Now he knew the difference between marks made by a small burrowing mammal and a large, poisonous reptile, and could tell whether fluttering overhead was from harmless birds or dangerous bats or deadly winged snakes.

  Even so, the first time he’d had to shoot an animal he had found it incredibly hard. He had lowered his pistol several times before finally taking the shot. And it had been set on stun, because a killshot from the weapon would have charred the creature and left it inedible.

  “Why is it,” he had wondered out loud after the beast had falle
n and he and Nekai had crouched beside its still form, “that I can shoot a man or stab him or cut him without a second’s hesitation, but I could barely bring myself to shoot this thing?”

  “Because the man was trying just as hard to kill you,” his mentor had pointed out. “This beast wasn’t doing anything to us. It couldn’t hurt us if it tried.” Judging from the sharpened horn gracing the animal’s brow, Ronon wasn’t entirely convinced of that, but certainly it had made no move toward them. It had raised its head in alarm when Ronon had lowered his weapon the second time, its delicate ears swiveling toward the faint noise, but had looked poised to run away rather than to charge.

  “Don’t feel bad for not wanting to kill it,” Nekai had assured him. “That’s natural. It means you’re not mean-spirited — you kill it because you have to, not because you want to. But you do have to. We need to eat to survive, and this creature wasn’t smart enough or fast enough to escape you. That makes it prey.” He’d pulled a knife from somewhere — Ronon was never entirely sure where his mentor stashed all the knives he seemed to carry — flipped it over so the blade was resting atop his palm, and had offered it hilt-first to Ronon. “Now you have to finish the job.”

  Ronon had forced himself to slit the creature’s throat, making sure the cut was fast and smooth so it felt no pain. He had lost whatever food had already been in his stomach the first few times Nekai had shown him how to skin, gut, and dress an animal, but by then he was able to handle the chore without difficulty or pause. Nekai was right — they needed to eat. And any beast foolish enough to be taken down by them probably deserved it. Especially since they never killed more than they needed, which meant it was only the slowest, stupidest animals around that became their prey. That had made it a little easier, but not a lot.

  This morning, however, was different. Ronon knew that at once, because not only was Nekai gone, so were all traces that he had ever been there. All except for one.

  Sitting atop a small rock not far from his head was a device Ronon had never seen away from Nekai before. The tracking monitor. And under it was a single scrap of paper.