So he waited.
Ronon wasn’t sure how long he’d rested — he’d slipped into a light doze, conserving energy and resting but still alert enough that he could wake at any time — before something woke him. He blinked once, twice, careful not to stretch or yawn as he glanced around. He could just make out Nekai between the roots but the V’rdai leader didn’t move a muscle. Between them Adarr was up in the branches of another tree, and he was so still Ronon thought at first he was looking at a collection of sun-bleached sticks. Frayne was on Ronon’s other side, as were Banje and Setien, and he didn’t dare turn his head to look at them but he guessed none of them had made the noise he’d heard through his sleep. Which meant it was probably Turen.
And that meant she was coming their way. And hopefully leading the Wraith behind her.
After a few seconds Ronon heard a sound again, followed quickly by another. Footsteps. Someone running — and the gait was rapid, meaning someone with short legs moving quickly. Definitely Turen. Then he picked up other noises behind those, slower and heavier. More footsteps, larger and longer and less hurried.
Wraith.
Moving slowly and carefully to avoid making any noise, Ronon eased his pistol from its holster. He raised it in one smooth arc, keeping it close to the tree trunk he was nestled against so its barrel wouldn’t gleam or protrude. The copse was right before him, and he would have a clear line of sight on anyone moving into or through it. He held his breath and tensed his trigger finger as the footsteps drew closer.
A second later a slight figure burst into the copse, white hair gleaming in the comparatively bright light. Turen. She got a little more than halfway across the space before she stumbled and dropped to one knee. But Ronon wasn’t fooled. Not after sparring with her. He couldn’t imagine the agile little woman tripping on anything.
But her pursuers didn’t know that. They came into view a few seconds later, slowing as they spotted their prey apparently downed by a stray root or rock. There were three of them again, one commander and two warriors, as before — Ronon suspected that was their standard configuration, at least when hunting. He sighted down his barrel, targeting the commander’s head. Then he waited, tracking the Wraith as it moved in for the kill. Shooting now would risk them turning and fleeing back into the forest if they didn’t go down with the first barrage. Better to wait until they were dead center, then gun them all down.
Of course, that meant the Wraith were getting closer to Turen. She was still on the ground, hunched over, hands against her stomach, as if she’d injured herself when she fell. Ronon couldn’t see the Wraith warriors’ faces through their masks, but the commander was openly gloating.
“Well, well,” he was saying softly, his words a snakelike hiss through his pointed teeth. “Turen Masaglia of the Hiñati. We’ve been hunting for you for quite some time, my dear. You’ve certainly led us on a merry chase. But it ends now.” He extended one hand, the life-sucking organ in his palm clearly visible and took another step closer. He was almost near enough to reach her now.
“Yes, it does,” Ronon heard Turen say quietly. Then she had turned, rising to her feet as she moved, her blades flashing out and around and down. They were little more than a flicker in the light, but the Wraith commander stumbled backward, a cry on his lips as he stared at the bloody stump where his hand had been.
Before he could voice that cry, Ronon shot him. The red bolt struck the Wraith in the right temple just as another shot caught him in the throat, and the commander convulsed as his body fell backward, a third shot striking him even as he toppled. He was dead before he hit the ground.
The others had opened fire on the two warriors, and Ronon quickly switched to them as well. It was difficult to tell who hit whom, but within seconds both warriors were also dead, and Turen was standing alone in the copse.
She knelt quickly and checked all three bodies before nodding. The others emerged from their cover and converged on her and on their fallen prey.
“You all right?” Nekai asked her, and Turen nodded quickly. She wiped her blades — two long, wicked-looking daggers — on the commander’s torso before replacing them in sheaths strapped to her thighs. Then she flashed Ronon a brilliant smile as if to say “See? Told you you should see me with blades in my hands.”
Banje had dropped to a crouch beside the commander and was checking not his body but his wrist, the one that still had a hand attached. “Damn,” he muttered quietly, holding up the limb for the others to see. “Shattered. Must have caught a stray bolt.”
There was a device on the dead Wraith’s wrist, a familiar-looking screen though this one was cracked and blackened and smoking. A tracking monitor.
“We only have two,” Banje explained to Ronon, rising to his feet again after appropriating the commander’s stun-pistol. “Nekai has one and I have the other.” He raised his right arm to show the tracking monitor strapped there. “They tend to damage easily, and we haven’t been able to recover any others intact.”
Out of the corner of his eye Ronon saw Nekai’s brow furrow and his mouth turn down at the edges. When he glanced over, however, the Retemite was as stone-faced as ever. Odd. He’d seemed displeased about Banje’s statement. But was it because they hadn’t been able to acquire more than two of the monitors — or because someone besides him had one?
The others had checked over the warriors’ bodies, and collected their stun rifles and knives. “We should get moving,” Nekai instructed. “Best not to linger by the bodies. Back to base.” He nodded at Ronon. “Good job on your first mission. You fit in just fine.”
Setien clapped Ronon on the back, staggering him slightly from the force of the blow. “Absolutely!” she agreed cheerfully. “You are now truly one of us!”
Turen and Adarr both smiled their assent, and Banje nodded. Even Frayne grunted what might have been approval, or at least wary acceptance. Ronon allowed himself to smile as well. He felt like one of them, to be honest, and it was a good feeling. It had been too long since he had been part of a team, with comrades he could count on. Not that he was ready to trust them completely yet, but that would come in time. For now it was good to know someone else had his back in a fight — and to know they trusted him to have theirs.
They had almost reached the ancestral ring when Banje motioned the others to stop. They did at once, freezing as the Desedan cocked his head to one side, listening intently. Then he gestured to the sides and they all dove for cover.
“What is it?” Frayne whispered as they wriggled behind trees and rocks and bushes. “More hunters?”
Banje shook his head and gestured up toward the canopy and beyond. Then Ronon heard it. A faint droning sound that quickly grew to a high-pitched scream that made his head pound.
A ship.
And he recognized that particular pitch, which cut into his thoughts and his ears alike. This wasn’t just any ship.
It was a Wraith Dart.
“Is it after us?” Adarr asked from behind a tree trunk. “Are they hunting us with ships now?”
“Unlikely,” Nekai answered softly, almost invisible within a scraggly bush. “It’s probably just on its way to somewhere else.”
Ronon considered that for only a second. “Does it have a tracking monitor?” he asked, his words little more than a whisper through clenched teeth.
“It might,” Nekai admitted. “We don’t know — so far we’ve only seen hunters with them, and they’ve all been on foot. Why?”
Ronon was thinking fast. “If it doesn’t have one, it won’t know about us,” he answered. “But it may know about the hunters we just killed. And it may realize they’re dead.”
“It may,” Banje agreed. “They’re telepathic, and if it knows other Wraith are on this world it may call out to them as a matter of course.” The scream had faded now, and Ronon found he could think straight again. The Dart had moved on.
“Which means it may track them down when they don’t answer,” Ronon continued his thought. He ros
e from his crouch.
“Where are you going?” Nekai demanded sharply, half-rising as well.
Ronon glanced at him but didn’t stop. “To kill a Dart,” he replied as he passed. “Anyone care to join me?”
To his credit, Nekai considered for only a second before abandoning his cover completely. “You’re insane,” he pointed out as he closed the distance between himself and Ronon. “We don’t have anything that can take down a Dart.” But he was grinning as he said it.
“We don’t need to take out the Dart,” Ronon replied, a plan already forming in his head. “We just need to take out the pilot. The rest will take care of itself.” He glanced around, gauging the distance back to the copse. “But we have to hurry — if he gets there before we do, we’re sunk.”
Nekai nodded at Banje, who immediately popped to his feet. “Back to the copse,” the Desedan ordered. “Fast as you can! Move!”
And then they were off at a run. Ronon let his body settle into a long, loping stride, his legs covering the ground swiftly, his blood singing through his veins. He didn’t care if the others were with him or not at this point. All he cared about was the lone Wraith approaching that clearing. The three they’d just killed, it had been impossible to tell who had fired the killing shot. But not this time.
This one was all his.
Chapter Fourteen
“So what’s the plan?” Nekai asked, sprinting to catch up to Ronon as they ducked through the woods.
“We wait until the Dart reaches the bodies,” Ronon replied between gasps. He was pushing himself as fast as he could through the foliage — any faster and he’d trip over a root and go flying — and he was impressed but not completely surprised that the shorter Retemite was keeping up. “The pilot sees the dead bodies, leaves the Dart to investigate, and we take him out while he’s on the ground and vulnerable.”
“Won’t work,” Banje told him from his other side. The Desedan wasn’t even breathing hard as far as Ronon could tell, but somehow he was keeping up without having to run at all. “Dart pilots don’t leave their ships except inside a Hive.”
“He’ll have to in order to check the bodies,” Ronon argued.
“No, he won’t,” Nekai said. “He’ll just beam them up.”
Ronon almost slammed into a tree as he turned to stare at the V’rdai leader. “Beam them up? What’re you talking about?”
“How’d they catch you?” Adarr asked from just over his shoulder. “Didn’t they beam you up in a Dart?”
Ronon shook his head, trying to keep up his pace, avoid trees, and follow this conversation all at the same time. “They blew up a hospital,” he said, trying to tamp down the pain before it could overwhelm him again. “I was in it with — with someone. The blast knocked me back, and then the Wraith entered. I fought, they knocked me out, and I woke up in a Hive, strapped to a table.” He forced himself to focus on the table, on the procedure, on the Wraith leaning over him leering. That way he didn’t have to think about Melena, or about seeing her outlined in the blast for an instant before it vaporized her.
It almost worked.
“The Darts have transport systems,” Adarr was explaining. “They dematerialize you and beam you up into some sort of storage cell within them. Then when they get back to the Hive they rematerialize you in one of their holding pens. You’re stunned for a bit, so you can’t put up a fight.” The tall man shuddered, clearly remembering the experience firsthand.
“So the pilot won’t bother to check the bodies on the ground,” Nekai finished. “He’ll beam them up into his Dart and bring them back to the Hive that way. If they were alive when he reached them, they’ll still be alive when they’re rematerialized. If they were dead, it doesn’t much matter.”
Ronon nodded. Okay, plan number one shot down. Time to come up with a plan number two. “What if one of us plays dead among the corpses?” he suggested, taking a short hop over a protruding tree root as high as his knee. “Once inside we overpower the pilot and take over the Dart.”
The others were all shaking their heads. “It doesn’t work like that,” Nekai told him. “They don’t beam you up into a passenger seat or a cage, there’s no room for that in a Dart. You’re just a collection of excited atoms, floating in a little cylinder or something somewhere, until they put you back together again.”
Something about what he’d just said struck a chord somewhere within Ronon’s brain. He tried to focus on it. They were almost back to the copse now. No sign of the Dart yet, so that was good, anyway — it meant they might have a few minutes left to figure out a proper plan.
“Excited atoms,” he repeated. Yes, that had been it. “Whatever they beam up is just a bunch of excited atoms floating around in a tube somewhere inside the Dart.”
“Exactly.” They were within sight of the copse, just shy of their previous ambush positions, and Nekai slowed to a stop and turned to study Ronon. “You have an idea?”
Ronon nodded. He beckoned Adarr closer, and then grabbed one of the Wraith stun-rifles the tall man was carrying, souvenirs from the recent hunt. “These things,” he said, turning it over in his hands. “They’ve got energy packs.” He glanced up at Adarr. “Can you overload them?”
Adarr scratched his nose and studied the other rifle, which he was still carrying. “I think so,” he said after a second. “Yes, I think so. But what good’ll that do? They’ll just explode the second someone tries to use them again.”
“Right — or the second the energy is removed from its casing,” Banje stated, catching on. He nodded at Ronon, a slight grin on his face. “Nice.”
Nekai had figured it out as well. “You want to overload these two rifles and put them back on the Wraith,” he stated out loud, probably as much for himself as for the others who had now joined them. “When the pilot beams them onto the Dart the energy from the rifles will be released. They’ll already be primed to explode, and with nothing else to contain the energy that’s what’ll happen. They’ll blow up the Dart from the inside.”
Ronon nodded. “I hope so. If it doesn’t work, all we’ve lost is two stun-rifles. The pilot won’t even know we were here.”
Nekai nodded to Adarr. “Do it.”
The tall man immediately crouched down, his long, deft fingers removing a panel on the first stun-rifle to reveal the energy compartments within. Turen joined him, taking the other rifle from Ronon — she lacked Adarr’s training or way with machines but she had quick fingers and sharp eyes, and mimicked what he did. Within a minute they were standing again, the two weapons held gingerly before them. Ronon noticed that the glowing spheres on the sides of the rifles were now throbbing dangerously.
“Put them on the bodies,” Nekai instructed, and Adarr and Turen hurried to do so. They had just ducked back under the cover of the trees when they all heard that distinctive scream somewhere up above. It was growing louder by the second. “Everybody down!”
Ronon crouched behind a thick set of exposed roots. The others found similar hiding places. There was no time to climb among the branches, but it shouldn’t be necessary. The Dart pilot wasn’t looking for them, and wouldn’t be able to go below the tree canopy regardless. They were safe here. For now.
The scream grew in intensity, once again making Ronon’s ears ache and his head throb, and then a long, pointed shape appeared in the sparse foliage above the copse. Long and pointed and narrow, he’d always thought the Darts looked more like predators than vessels, almost like the head of a vicious bird-beast with its long sharp beak and the curving jaws to either side and the bony ridges above and in back. The cockpit was a single dark bubble like a deformed black teardrop down the middle, and it stood out against the pale bone-like hull. The whole ship seemed organic, but that was because it was — Wraith vessels were grown rather than built.
And this one was now hovering over the copse just beyond them. Its engine noise was now so piercing Ronon had to clap his hands to his ears to keep from screaming himself at the pain. He caught glimp
ses of the others doing likewise. It was a good thing they were hidden, because none of them would be able to draw a weapon, much less fire it, if the Dart were to come after them.
Fortunately, the Dart pilot had other things on his mind. Like the three dead Wraith crumpled on the ground below it. After a few seconds a greenish-white beam shot from the belly of the ship, enveloping all three bodies. Squinting hard, Ronon thought he could still make out the throbbing dots of the rifle energy packs through the overall glow. Then the beam’s light intensified, and the bodies vanished within it. He watched closely as the beam withdrew, recoiling back into the Dart. It winked out, and the ship pivoted, its long nose turning back in the direction of the ancestral ring.
The scream grew louder. The Dart was getting ready to return home.
And then it exploded.
Ronon threw himself down as the blast flattened the trees around them, chunks of organic metal flung every which way like jagged missiles. The Dart had released a tremendous burst of energy as well, green-white like its transport beam, and that wave incinerated the first row of trees and blackened the next, the ones Ronon and the others had hidden behind. He felt it singe the hairs on his head and on his outflung arms, and his entire body tingled from the heat. Then it dissipated, and he glanced up and around.
The copse was now a charred circle in the forest, the very ground there torn apart and in some places melted to glass from the force of the explosion. The trees they had used for shelter were bent and bowed away from the impact, and many of them were charred and still smoldering, their leaves burned away. He held his breath as he looked for signs of the other V’rdai, releasing it slowly as he saw heads and shoulders and limbs rise into view.
“Everyone okay?” Nekai called out, his voice a little shaky. The V’rdai leader rose to his feet from behind what had been a sturdy tree and was now a hollowed-out, smoking piece of trunk.
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