Death Game

Chapter Sixteen

Shortly after the sun passed its zenith a servant came along the stern deck with water and bread and cheese, which John and Teyla ate sitting along the rail. John cast an eye forward to the canopied section where presumably Tolas and the most important passengers were. “They’re not starving us anyway.”

“Which makes sense if they’re not sure what we are,” Teyla said. The seas were calm and the skies blue. The galley skimmed over the waves light as a sea bird. It would be an enjoyable adventure, were it not for the end they now suspected waited for them — the Wraith, set up as gods over a captive people who literally provided them nourishment. “Thank you,” she said to the servant, taking the cup from his hand. “May I ask you who the people are on the very forward deck?”

He glanced in that direction. “They are participants in the Games. Competitors in the Games of Life.” He nodded quickly and hurried away, as if he had been told not to spend overly long.

“Competitors in the games?” Teyla said.

John shook his head. “No way.”

From where they were it was easy to pick out Jitrine among the passengers on the forward deck, but she was not the only one who was elderly. There were two men who seemed older than she was, one of whom was crabbed and bent. There were five or six others, a tall bearded man who stared out over the sea, a boy and girl who couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen, and several women who didn’t look like athletes.

Teyla shook her head. “Those people cannot be competitors. Can you imagine Jitrine and that young boy in some kind of sport against the others?”

“Foot races, track and field…” The crease between John’s brows deepened. “Any kind of boxing or wrestling… Can you see Jitrine boxing or wrestling?”

“She is an elderly woman, and she is hale, but no,” Teyla said. “Either these games are not tests of strength and speed, or…”

“They’re a hoax,” John said. “Some kind of excuse to give these people to the Wraith. Jitrine was clearly Tolas’ prisoner too and she said there was a long story about why, about tribute and how the people in The Chora didn’t want to pay it.”

“Because it was too heavy,” Teyla said. It made a grim sort of sense. “The tribute is people, John. Those participants in the games are the tribute. Unwanted people.”

“People somebody has a grudge against,” John said. “Nice. The Olesians at least bothered to accuse people of a crime before they stocked the Wraith’s feeding pen. These guys pretend they’re sending them to compete in the games.”

“It causes less resistance, I imagine,” Teyla said. “After all, if one is not being sent anywhere bad, why should people object?”

“But they do,” John said grimly. “That’s what Jitrine was talking about. Too much tribute. Too many people just disappearing. Too many friends and family asking too many questions. It gets dicey for a ruler to have lots of people disappear.”

“And then we just wander in to fill the quota?” Teyla’s eyebrows rose. “We take two spots and that is two less local people Tolas has to find. No wonder he wants us to behave. If we start raising a fuss, people will wonder about what is going to happen, where people are going. If we are just traveling along nicely, it is nobody’s problem.”

John nodded. “Very convenient. If we don’t turn out to be useful, we count toward Tolas’ tribute.”

“We will have to see what opportunities present themselves,” Teyla said.

John looked at her. “How’s your arm?”

She flexed it experimentally. “It hurts, but it seems that the swelling is better today. I will not be able to fight two handed, but it is my left arm. I can certainly use a pistol, and if I have a stick I will fight one handed.”

He looked as though that was better than he’d feared. He’d seen her fight one handed before with her sticks, and she could usually beat him. And a stick was usually an easy weapon to find.

“How is your head?”

John winced. “Ok.”

“Truly?” Teyla prompted. “Do not tell me you can do things you cannot.”

“I’m still a little dizzy,” he admitted. “It comes and goes.”

Teyla nodded. “We will take this as it comes.” If John admitted to being a little dizzy, he was truly not well. But then it had been less than forty eight hours since he had a concussion. He probably would still be in the infirmary back in Atlantis. “Dr. Beckett would have you still in the infirmary.”

“Yeah, well. Carson’s not here. And if he were, we’d be out of this soup.”

“Let us hope so,” Teyla said.

“There’s some dried blood on the dash,” Carson Beckett said. “Not too much.” He was bent over the console of the wrecked jumper. Through the broken windscreen the air was thick with the birdsong of the oasis, hot and dry. “A bit on the dash and some smears on the armrest, like a man with blood on his hands put them there.”

“How bad is it?” Rodney asked, climbing over the rear seats coming forward.

Carson raised his head. “I’m cautiously optimistic. No bodies. No large amounts of blood. No bullet holes or spent casings. This much blood? Someone injured, yes. But certainly not losing blood in a life-threatening amount. From the location, on the control board, I would guess it’s Colonel Sheppard’s.”

“Wonderful,” Rodney said darkly.

“No sign of Teyla, no blood anywhere else. What have you got back there, Major Lorne?”

Lorne leaned around the door that divided the cockpit from the back. “Two P90s gone, two packs gone, survival gear gone. Teyla’s jacket’s gone. Paper from a field dressing on the floor. Somebody was hurt, but not so badly they didn’t bandage it up with a field dressing and get moving. They took weapons and survival gear, and there’s no sign of a fight. I’m guessing they walked out of here.”

“Why?” Rodney demanded.

“I don’t know,” Lorne said. “How would I know? But it doesn’t look like they were prisoners when they left. They had time to get all the stuff they’d need. They had water, food, medicine.”

“Perhaps they hoped to make it back to the Stargate,” Carson said. “I know that’s what I’d do.”

“Me too,” Lorne said. “And the colonel’s done desert survival before. When I was at the SGC somebody said something about it. Afghanistan, I think?”

“There’s a lot of desert between here and the gate,” Rodney said. “And it’s hot. Did I mention it’s a desert?”

“That’s our next thing,” Lorne said. “We’ll check out the desert between here and the gate. The most likely thing is that they took the survival gear so they’d have a good shot at walking back to the Stargate. Chances are they’re somewhere along the way. If not, we’ll recenter our search pattern here and continue radio calls. They can’t be too far.”

“Not on foot,” Rodney said.

“We’ll find them before lunch,” Carson replied.

“When have I heard that before?” Rodney asked.

Radek strolled along the deck of the merchant ship, wiping off his glasses on the hem of his shirt. Not that it did much good. His shirt was soaking wet with salt water, but at least it got some of the streaks off his glasses. Other than wishing for a hearty lunch, Radek felt — actually, pretty good. He had never thought he was the sort of man to be shipwrecked and spend the night clinging to an overturned boat in a storm and come out of it fresh and cheerful. Perhaps fresh was stating it too strongly, as a hot shower and a very large bowl of soup would be welcome just now. They weren’t dead, and that was quite a lot. Maybe there was something to this action hero adrenaline high that others talked about.

Radek ambled up to the captain where he stood astern and put his glasses back on. He waited for the man to turn to him before he spoke. “So, these games,” he began casually.

The captain gave him a broad grin. “You think your friend might win? There is only one winner.”

Radek put his hands in his pockets. “One winner? How do the games work?”

“It’s one game,” the captain said. “The Games of Life. It’s a game of skill and strength both. It’s good to be a big strong fellow, but that’s not enough.” He tapped his temple. “You have to have it here. You have to have brains. Skill and strength both, or you will not survive.”

“Survive?”

“It can be deadly,” the captain said with a shrug. “If you’re not fast and clever enough.”

“How does it work?” Radek asked. “An arena or…”

“A labyrinth,” the captain replied. “There is a huge maze underground. It has traps, it has dangers, it has monsters in it, they say. There are obstacles and that does not even count the other competitors. The first person to get all the way through the maze is the winner.”

Radek waited, but the captain didn’t go on. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. You go in with no weapons or tools, and you come out at the other end. The first person who makes it is the winner and they are rewarded with a big purse and sent on their way. There are lots of bets placed on who it will be. The gods themselves like to bet. The thing that’s hard, you see, is that you have to solve the obstacles which requires cleverness, but you also have to hold your own against the other competitors in a fight, and there are traps that only a strong man can defeat. So it is a very special champion who can do both.”

Strength and cleverness at once. Radek had a thought. “So do competitors never team up? If my friend and I, for example…”

“One winner,” the captain said. “One of you walks out. That’s the catch. One of you is a rich man and one of you belongs to the gods. People have tried it before, teaming up, but someone always betrays the other at the end. So now everybody knows better than to do it. Why help someone who will stab you in the back at the finish line?”

“Belongs to the gods? Is that a euphemism for death?”

The captain blinked. “No. Belongs to the gods. The competitors are dedicated. They become the property of the gods. One man walks away the winner. The rest belong to the gods to serve them.”

“Not such a good bet then,” Radek said. A very neat way of getting people to place themselves in slavery. Diabolically clever, actually.

“Not if you want to walk away, little man,” the captain said. “You help your friend, but do you think he’ll be the one to let you walk out at the end while he stays?”

“I do see your point,” Radek said. He ambled away, back down the deck to where Ronon stood. Ronon looked up as he approached and he leaned on the rail beside him and related what he had learned.

When he finished, Ronon frowned. “That’s not a plan.”

“Indeed not,” Radek said. “Very clever, of course. A labyrinth, a maze, lots of obstacles… I’m sure it is intriguing.”

“If you could see it.”

“What?”

“If you could see it. How do the spectators see it?” Ronon asked.

Radek blinked.

“Look,” Ronon said. “A bunch of people go underground. They fight. Somebody comes out the other end. So what? That’s boring. It’s only interesting if you can see the fights.” He leaned on his elbows, his eyes on the sea. “On Sateda we had radio, just like you guys do. There were people who narrated sporting events on the radio so if you couldn’t get there you could hear what happened, but it wasn’t the same as being there. Five, ten thousand people would come out for big championships. Huge crowds. That was part of the fun, being there with your Kindred yelling for your champion. If nobody could see it? If it all happened underground and you never had any idea what was going on, just waited for somebody to come out? That’s not exciting.”

Radek nodded slowly, his eyes on Ronon’s face, his mind whirling. At last he said, “My friend, there is something very wrong here. Something on this world is not at all as it should be.”

Ronon looked at him sideways, curiously.

“They are not supposed to have the technology to do this, but they must have a way of seeing what is happening in the labyrinth.”

“They have cameras, like the Genii?”

“Maybe. That is not out of the question. We have seen that the Genii have achieved analog broadcast.” Radek looked around them, up at the mast and forward to the livestock on deck. “But do you see anything to suggest this society has that level of technology? Or that these people know anything about it?”

“No.” Ronon shook his head. “The Genii tech — it’s maybe fifteen or twenty years ahead of where we were on Sateda. Not a full generation. Your stuff is maybe a couple of generations. It’s better.”

Radek snorted. “You mean the stuff you’ve seen is. I did not grow up with this. Do you think we had cell phones and laptops in Czechoslovakia in 1980? I grew up in a house with a woodstove, and then one with a pre-war oil furnace. I did not see a computer except when I went to polytechnique. Nobody had computers at home, not even in the West. In the East? Perhaps a great university would have them. We had the radio and the streetcar. If you were very lucky you might have a TV, and then if you could make the rabbit ears work for you, you might pick up German broadcast television.” Radek smiled. “The station in Nuremburg showed Star Trek in reruns. That is how I saw it, grainy from the mountains, on a black and white television set. But we did not have these things. I was not running around with my laptop talking on my headset then. There is hardly a moment in time of difference between the technology I grew up with and that which you did.”

Ronon blinked. “I thought you guys had all this stuff.”

“It is all new.” Radek shrugged. “Even the Americans did not grow up with all this, though they had more tech in their homes in the West than we had. And much of what you are seeing, Ronon, is Ancient technology. We’ve had it a year, and some of it we can make work. Lots we cannot yet.” He looked out to sea once more. “But it is wrong and you have found it. They must have some way of watching the games. And if they do, they are lying about a great deal, like the Genii, or…”

“Or we’re in a lot of trouble,” Ronon said.