Halcyon

Chapter Eleven

Through the gyro-flyer's porthole, Carson saw the eggshaped hot-air balloon drifting over the high barrier fence around the compound, watching blinks of light signal from the skeletal gondola tethered beneath it.

"We are over the hunting enclosure now," he heard Linnian say behind him. "Highness, the border guards are querying our approach."

"They see my seal upon this flyer's hull well enough," Lady Erony's reply was terse. "I do not need to justify my arrival to a mere guardsman."

"Nevertheless, they will be bound-bound to inform your father of your presence here," continued the adjutant, "and he will be displeased."

"Then let him be."

Dr. Beckett turned away from the oval window as the gyroflyer descended and went low over the treetops. Linnian was already stalking back toward the flight deck, his posture tense and annoyed. Carson watched him pause to whisper orders to one of the riflemen standing at arms. Close to the soldier were two figures in heavy metal armor, so steady and unmoving that he might have thought they were statues had he not known better. The Hounds stood at attention, their stylized wolf-head helmets bowed in obedient submission. Beckett's fingers gripped the seat arms. It didn't matter how the Halcyons dressed them up, it still set his nerves on edge being this close to Wraiths.

"My mother always said they can smell fear, like a scent in the air."

He glanced at Erony and gave a weak smile. "I thought that was dogs."

"They killed her, you know," The admission fell from Erony's lips, out of nowhere, and Carson felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the young woman. "She took a splinter out on a sortie when I was a child, and I never saw her again. Just the withered husk of what she used to be." The proud and severe mask slipped, and Beckett found himself looking into the real Erony, the girl with fears and doubts and sorrows that she would never dare to show to her peers.

"I'm sorry," he told her, although the words were weak. In his line of work, Carson had often had the terrible duty of carrying news of a death to loved ones, and no matter how many times he said those platitudes, there was always a void inside him that went with them.

"Yes," Erony replied, "you are. So many say that they regret her passing, those who knew her and fought alongside her, but it is merely lip-service to her memory. You never even met my mother, and yet you keenly feel her death."

"I'm a doctor. If I didn't care about people I wouldn't be doing this job."

She looked away. "Halcyon has treated you Atlanteans poorly, and yet you still offer our commoners aid. You squander resources on people who cannot serve to strengthen your nation. You talk when you should fight. You fight when you should retreat. Why? I do not understand you."

"It's who we are, lass. Being strong does not automatically mean you have to become the bully in the playground. Strength is nothing without responsibility or conscience."

The mask moved back into place, her face hardening. "My father once told me that conscience and ethics are words that weak men hide behind when they cannot find the courage of their convictions."

"And what do you think, Your Highness?" Carson gave her a level stare. "Do you believe that compassion is a weakness?"

Whatever answer she might have given him was forestalled as Linnian returned to the cabin. There was a commotion visible in the compartment beyond and Beckett felt his stomach lurch as the flyer dropped toward the ground. "My Lady, one of our observers spotted the body of the Runner from the air. We are descending to make a closer inspection."

"The body?" Carson pushed out of his chair, aware of Staff Sergeant Mason coming up with him. "Is he alive?"

"That is not clear. You should remain on board until we-"

"Not bloody likely, mate," grated Mason, and shoved the adjutant aside as the aircraft's landing skis bumped against the ground.

Beckett grabbed the strap of his medical kit and hauled it after him, following Mason as the SAS soldier cut a wedge through the wary Halcyonite troopers.

The staff sergeant roared out orders to the riflemen with such force behind them that the conscripts jumped to obey him without even thinking, their years of unquestioning service to their superiors conditioning them for instant obedience. Mason led Beckett through a stand of knee-high grasses, a clearing that slanted down toward rocks and tall trees. The rattle of the gyro-flyer's rotor blades beat at his back in throbbing pulses of wind.

"Watch it!" snapped the sergeant, pulling the doctor to one side to avoid a headless corpse sprawled on the ground. "Clean kill," Mason noted dispassionately.

Carson grimaced at the decapitated Wraith and moved on, catching sight of a slumped shape in leather and buckskin. "There! Over there!"

Ronon Dex's complexion was sallow, and Beckett pressed a finger to the carotid artery in the man's neck. Something fluttered weakly against his fingertip and Carson blew out a breath. "He's alive."

"Been shot," noted Mason, pointing at the concentric rings of scorching on Dex's tunic. The soldier recovered something from the grass; Ronon's pistol. "With this, I reckon." Mason peered at the weapon. "Set for stun, looks like. Lucky for him."

The doctor stood and shouted at Linnian's men for help. Quickly, they had Ronon inside the flyer and Beckett jammed an injector full of stimulants into the meat of the Satedan's thigh.

Dex moaned and his eyes fluttered open. "Who…?"

"Ronon, it's Dr. Beckett. Take it easy, laddie, you've been out for who knows how long."

The Runner growled and hauled himself up. "Give me room," he snarled. "Where… Where's the Wraith?"

"What Wraith?" said Erony.

"Scar!" he spat. "Wanted to kill me. Didn't see me switch modes on the gun. He has Sheppard and Teyla."

Mason frowned. "Where's Private Bishop?"

Ronon shook his head. "Dead."

"We came here as soon as we could," continued Carson. "Colonel Sheppard had a Puddle Jumper, do you have any idea where it is?"

"No." Dex leaned heavily against a seat and shook his head, fishing in his pocket. He produced the hand-held scanner that he had taken from the Jumper. "Track the ship with this."

Carson took the device. "Aye, that would work…" The doctor's words trailed off as he glanced down at the screen on the Ancient scanner. Trails of energetic waveforms like electroencephalograph patterns flexed across the panel, becoming more energetic by the second. The device gave out a warning chime and the readings went off the scale. At the same instant, Beckett heard a cry of alarm from one of the riflemen still outside the grounded flyer.

He turned in time to see a brilliant flash wash through the portholes on the starboard side of the aircraft. Linnian reeled backward, clutching at his eye.

"What the hell was that?" demanded Mason, "a nuke strike?"

Erony's face went deathly pale. "The… The dolmen…"

A thunderous wall of displaced air rolled over them from the tree line and suddenly the flyer was rocking on its skids, buffeted by a hurricane-force wind.

Carson fell hard against Erony and heard inhuman screams filling the flyer's cabin. His blood ran cold as he realized that it was the Hounds that were howling, the clawed nails of the armored Wraith tearing at their steel helmets and twitching in fury.

With a screech of bending metal, the Wraiths peeled back the howling canine faces of their headgear and revealed their own terrible aspects. Carson had never seen such an expression of utter, animal hate on a Wraith as he did now; the vicious arrogance of the aliens he had witnessed before was absent, and it its place was something base and malignant. He felt as if he were seeing the black hate for all life at the heart of every Wraith, incarnate there in their eyes.

They exploded into violent motion. Moments earlier the cabin of the royal flyer had seemed wide and open; now it was a cramped killing floor, the two mad Wraiths eager to murder every human inside. Carson heard the sickening crack of a broken neck as the nearest of the Wraiths punched into the spine of a riflemen caught fleeing for the open hatchway. The other launched itself at Linnian's cowering form in the aisle beside the starboard seating. Heedless of his own injuries, Ronon Dex crashed into the Wraith and wrestled it away, smashing through ornate stained-glass lamps on the cabin walls.

The report from a long-lance rifle bellowed inside the flyer and Carson tasted acrid steam in the air. The nearer Wraith screeched and attacked the rifleman who had fired at it, ignoring the collection of needle-shot embedded in its chest. The discharge was horribly loud inside the cabin and Beckett's hearing rang with the echo.

He grabbed Erony's arm. "Is there another hatch?"

"This way!" she nodded, pulling him toward the back of the gyro-flyer.

Carson hazarded a glimpse over his shoulder, and immediately regretted it. The Wraith dispatched the rifleman with a ripping slash from its claws, but it did not stoop to feed upon the soldier. Instead, it came over the opulent velvet chairs like a raptor. Beckett swung his medical bag at it, but the Wraith was moving with insane speed, and it batted him away. Carson lost his footing and collided with a support stanchion. The alien punched Erony, knocking a push-dagger from her grip, and the woman skidded back against the curved inner walls of the compartment. Beckett heard the Wraith give out a shrieking hiss. Orange fire flashed at the periphery of his vision and brass car tridges glittered as someone discharged a weapon, but Carson's attention was locked on the angry Wraith as it made ready to claim the Halcyonite noble as another victim. Beckett reacted, all the frustration and annoyance of the past few days forming into fists. "Get off her, ya scunner!" he shouted, and punched the attacker hard in the rib. "Picking on girls, eh?"

He regretted the words the moment he said them. The Wraith yowled like a wildcat and spun about, pouncing on him. The air in Beckett's lungs came out of him in a whoosh as the alien slammed him against the carpeted decking, lighting sparks of pain behind his eyes. Foul, acidic breath caressed his face and the Wraith showed its teeth, hissing.

Carson was not an aggressive man, but he had grown up in a tough neighborhood, among those who liked to live up to a belligerent reputation, and he understood very well the principles of violence. Beckett brought his shoulders forward and butted the Wraith hard on the nose, with a satisfying crunch of bone. The alien reeled back, put off by such a sudden attack from its prey and hesitated a moment too long.

From behind him, staff sergeant Mason jerked the trigger of his L85 assault rifle and blew the creature off its feet with a stuttering discharge of bullets.

Carson rolled over and came face to face with the second Wraith, its neck twisted at an incorrect angle. Ronon Dex was hunched nearby, panting and sweating.

Erony came to him and helped Beckett into a chair as Mason and the riflemen dragged the dead Hounds out of the flyer. He looked up and found Ronon watching him. The Satedan had the ghost of a smile on his lips.

"Not bad, little man," said Dex. "I didn't think you had that much fight in you."

"I'm Scottish," he said glumly, "it's genetic."

"You attacked a Wraith bare-handed," added Erony, "you fought well."

"Only because I had no choice," Carson insisted, wincing at the building headache in his skull. "You want to understand us, lassie? That's it, right there. We don't fight because we want to. It's our last choice."

"On my world, it is always the first," admitted the woman.

"Now you're getting it."

Mason climbed back into the cabin as Beckett moved to Linnian's side, examining the adjutant's injured eye. "Doc, I did a sweep of the clearing. Jumper put down here, like Ronon said it did, but it's long gone now. We got no rads in the air, but the weather's going mad out there."

"Wound's sake," breathed Erony as she peered out at the threatening, turbulent sky, "had we been airborne when the shockwave struck, we would have been thrown into the trees."

Dex gathered up the Ancient scanner from where it had fallen in the melee, working the device. "If I read this right, then it looks like Sheppard headed north."

"What about this Wraith, the one called Scar?"

Ronon frowned. "He had Teyla captive. My guess is he made the colonel fly them out of here."

"But where to?"

Erony's lips thinned to a line. "North, you say?" She sighed. "I know where they are going."

"Highness, do not speak further!" Linnian managed weakly. "These outworlders must not be party to such important matters!"

"Hush," insisted Carson. "Erony? Is there something we should know?"

The noblewoman threw a look to one of her riflemen. "Inform the pilots to raise the flyer and take us northwards. Our destination will be the protected lands of the Fourth Dynast." The soldier saluted and disappeared into the cockpit. "At best speed, we will reach them quickly, but I have no doubt your colonel's aircraft will be there before us."

"Mistake," whined the adjutant. "Do not speak of it!"

"There is a truth," she began, as the aircraft left the ground, "a hidden truth that my Dynast keep from the world, a truth that even I am not fully party to." Erony sagged, as if the weight of what she was about to reveal was dragging her down. "I gave my oath to hold this sacred, but now I fear more silence may doom my planet to extinction."

Beckett took a seat across from the young woman, and listened carefully as she told them the Lord Magnate's best-kept secret.

The ship had been constructed before any of the Wraith that now called it home had even been born; although `constructed' might not have been the right way to describe it. Wraith vessels were not so much things of iron and steel, of plastic and glass, creations of artificial materials like the vessels built by the humans, the Goa'uld, the Asgard or the Ancients. Wraith craft were hatched; they were spun and carved into being, melded together out of matter more akin to bone and gristle than to titanium plate and silicon wafer. Electrochemical processes and nerve ganglions transmitted data and commands about the flesh of the Wraith Hive Ship. Organic bioluminescence and exothermal chemistry provided light, heat and breathing gasses. Skeletal matter formed the hull spaces and fuselage. The Wraith were parasites inside the gut of the craft, they probed and manipulated the simple brain to perform its flight tasks for them. And even, with a science now lost to all but a few castes of their kind, they found a way to warp the structure of reality so that rips into hyperspace could carry them from world to world, feeding, multiplying, culling.

This ship's mind had long since faded into docility, anything but the most basic cognitive functions still active, poked and prodded by the idiot flailings of the men-apes that discovered it. Once, at the heights of its prowess, the ship had been a living embodiment of fear. The vast shape of its insectile form, a giant mirror of the Iratus that had given birth to Wraithkind, it would drift above human worlds and strike terror into every prey that saw it. It had been glorious, then. To feed and feed, unfettered by everything except hunger. The Hive ate well and prospered; until the Enemy opposed them.

So began the long war, and along the way the Wraith lost something of themselves. The more they fought, the more they broke apart into factionalism, clan against clan, jockeying for the best feeding sites. In the end they had their victory, but the price was a high one. With the Enemy scattered, the galaxy was theirs-but food became scarce and the divisions of the war split wide. Wraith fought Wraith, and all the while the survivors of the great adversary sniped at them from every shadowed corner. Word of the Sleep began to spread. The Wraith were to embrace slumber and allow their feeding grounds to lie fallow and rebuild. Some would stay to stand sentinel; the rest would take the Sleep of millennia.

And so this Hive Ship came to this world for one final feast before venturing into hibernation; but the Enemy were waiting, and they had poisoned the prey, shielded them with their hateful technology. In the end, after many on both sides had fought and died, the vessel had fallen to earth and lay there, a wounded behemoth, its crew going insane with rage and hunger. Their only escape was to Sleep. The ship would wake them when it was time.

That time was now.

Inside the hibernation vault, the cells where Wraith still lay dormant took on a tepid white glow. First in ones and twos, then in clusters that faded into life, the neural links between the sleeping aliens and their vessel bringing both into gradual wakefulness.

Daus's elite corps of riflemen, his personal guard, had been deployed throughout the Hive Ship on his arrival. A contingent of them was stationed in the chamber, standing in a nervous ring on the bone walkway that extended across the open space. Their heads lifted to watch the patterns of light moving over the hexagonal hive cells. Sounds like eggshells cracking hissed and sputtered through the metallic air of the vast room. Wraiths, their minds shocked out of cold-sleep by the discharge from the shattered dolmen, reached out to peel back the fibrous sheaths that held them in stasis, spilling glutinous suspensor fluids out in a thick, cloying rain.

Naked, hateful and starving for the taste of their prey, the crew of the Hive Ship began to awaken. They had not fed in thousands of years, and the hunger they felt overwhelmed any reason they might have had. Pale and muscular bodies ripped themselves from the hibernation cells and scrambled across the walls, guttural screeches echoing as they spat out hunting calls.

The riflemen shone lamps into the darkness, casting pools of yellow sodium glare across the fluted curves of the bone walls. Shadows jumped and moved, drawing blares of nervous gunfire from fearful men. The Halcyons were used to being the hunters, the superiors in their dealings with the Wraith; but today those roles were reversed. The aliens swarmed upon the men in their black greatcoats, corpse-white forms rising up from beneath and falling upon them from above. In short order the crashes of gunfire were silenced and replaced with the howls and chatter of a feeding frenzy.

It was hard to make out details of exactly what was going on inside the hibernation vault. The screen in the Hive Ship's nexus chamber relayed visual data from one of hundreds of optical sensor orbs about the vessel's interior, and the images were attuned for Wraith eyes, not human ones; nevertheless, the shocked silence that hung in the room was proof enough that the Halcyon scientists were more than clear about the fate of the riflemen.

Rodney McKay's hand crept to his mouth. "We are so dead."

Kelfer was slumped beside him, the science minister now a paper-thin sketch of the man he had been. The scientist could not bear to watch the horrors unfolding on the screen. What he had witnessed in the past few days had finally broken him, as the facts he based his life around had come to pieces. McKay might have been able to spare a moment of pity for the guy, had he not been partially to blame for the danger that everyone on Halcyon was now facing.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Rodney had been clinging on to the idea that he would, as he so often did, blossom under the pressure of the situation and come up with a brilliant solution that saved his life and those of everyone else around him; but as he watched the shadowy forms of the Wraith butchering those hapless soldiers, his heart felt like a fist of ice in his chest and the intellect he loved to trumpet was frozen with horror.

Everyone in the nexus chamber turned in fright as the hatch irised open, all of them expecting a flood of Wraith to boil in through the doorway; instead the Lord Magnate stalked in, followed by Vekken and a gaggle of panicked soldiers. All the men had their weapons out and Rodney saw smears of oily alien blood on their tunics.

Daus spied McKay and aimed a swordgun at the scientist. "You!" he thundered. "You did this to defy me, eh? You set them loose!" He advanced, fingering the trigger mechanism in the bowl hilt of the wicked blade.

Rodney recovered just enough to be incredulous. "What? No! That's insane! You think I'd wake up the Wraith just to get at you? I don't want them loose any more than you do!"

The Magnate's swordgun quivered. His fury was barely under his control and he wanted someone to take it out on, someone to blame no matter how undeserving they were. Daus roared wordlessly and dashed a trolley of equipment to the deck, stamping to his adjutant's side. "Vekken! Gather all the men and corral these alien abominations, force them back into their hives at blade point if you must, but do not let them run wild! This is my ship! Mine!"

McKay listened to the man's rantings and just like that, he had a solution. He crouched, speaking quietly into the First Scientist's ear. "Kelfer, listen to me. Vekken's troopers won't be able to stop the Wraith, we both know that. It's up to us to deal with this, you and me."

"How?" moaned the other man. "We are doomed."

"Help me with this." Rodney gestured to the control console. "You've been poking around in this derelict for years and you know the layout better than me. Help me access the main nerve cluster for the power systems."

Kelfer's eyes focused on him. "For what reason?"

"Hive Ships draw power from bio-reactors. If we alter the energy flow, unbalance the reaction, we could create a feedback loop."

McKay saw the light of understanding in the other man's expression. "A chain reaction. Yes. It could be done."

"Help me do it, Kelfer."

The scientist got shakily to his feet. "McKay," he husked, "this… This deed will be most destructive. It will destroy every living thing inside the vessel." Kelfer hesitated. "Us."

"Yes." Rodney blinked. How odd. His brain had been completely aware of that fact from the instant the idea had occurred to him, but at the same time it wasn't until Kelfer said it out loud that McKay realized that this course of action was a suicidal one. "Yes," he repeated, a peculiar kind of calm settling on him, "let's get to it, then."

Kelfer gave him a shaky nod and walked to one of the other control pedestals, quickly manipulating the organic switches and buttons.

"What are you doing?" Rodney turned to see Daus call out across the nexus chamber. "Kelfer? Those systems are not to be tampered with! Kelfer, answer me!"

"This must be done," said the scientist distractedly.

McKay's heart leapt as new data filtered in through the crude interface between the Wraith ship and his laptop computer. Complex new code strings and power distribution curve algorithms ticked across the screen. He saw at once how to make the overload happen; it would be a question of routing energy from the bio-reactors along dead and redundant ganglia, letting it rise to supercritical levels…

"First Scientist and Duke Kelfer, by my command you will step away from that mechanism!" Daus strode forward, Vekken and his men at arms all ready for imminent violence. "Stop this mutiny!"

"One moment more," Kelfer began.

There was a double detonation, twin barks of noise like a shotgun releasing both barrels, and Kelfer was jerked away from the console, struck by an invisible hammer of force. Smoke coiled from the gun muzzles concealed in the ornate scrollwork along the length of the Lord Magnate's sword.

McKay went to the man and felt his stomach knot at the ugly wound in Kelfer's torso. The Halcyonite scientist tried to push a word from his trembling lips, but there was only the hiss of bloody froth. There on the deck, Rodney watched the life fade from him.

Anger propelled McKay back to his feet and he whirled. Daus was close, the keen curve of the swordgun hanging at head height between them. "All those who disobey me are traitors," grated the Magnate, a mad glitter in his eyes, "and the reward for perfidy is murder!"

"You just shot that man in cold blood," Rodney retorted. "And you're not even remorseful, are you? Not one little bit. Is there anything that actually matters to you apart from power? Anything? Anyone?"

Daus's face softened and the sword dipped an inch. "Nothing I have done has been for myself. My every waking action is in service of my world, my people. My family." He nodded to one of his men, and the soldier moved Kelfer's body away. "Any man who defies me I will kill in the same manner."

"You have to let me destroy this vessel!" spat McKay.

"Never — "

The deck trembled and shuddered as something in the depths of the Hive Ship came to life. Fines of dust trickled from the ceiling overhead as the chamber's bone pillars creaked.

Rodney grabbed at his laptop as the readings displayed there spiked. "I think… This ship's alive."

Sheppard turned the Puddle Jumper in a tight banking maneuver and circled the encampment. At first glance it looked a like a mine head, just a couple of stone blockhouses, tents and some watchtowers; but second time around he saw the archway constructed into the face of the steep-sided hill that rose up over the compound, and like one of those weirdo dot pictures they always had at the mall, the shape of the landscape suddenly shifted in his perception and John saw it, as clear as day.

There was the edge of the broad, shield-shaped fuselage, buried under a carpet of grasses and younger trees. There were the bony spikes fanning out from the concealed hull, green with creepers and other plant growth. A Hive Ship, hiding in plain sight, camouflaged beneath centuries of mud and earth.

Scar clicked his amusement. "My craft. My home. At last."

"Might want to think about doing a little spring cleaning," sneered Sheppard, "looks a little overgrown from up here."

"Your mockery will not help you when your usefulness comes to an end, human," replied the Wraith. "And with regard to that… Land this craft." He pointed. "There. Close to the Hive."

Sheppard counted his blessings. The launch bays on most Hive Ships he'd encountered were on the ventral side of the hull, and in the case of this one that meant they were buried in the dirt. The last thing he wanted was to take the Jumper inside the alien vessel. Outside, there were still escape options. I hope, he told himself. He brought the Ancient shuttlecraft down easy, very much aware of Scar's tight grip on the controls for the choke collar around Teyla's neck. They were coming up to the point of no return here and the last thing he wanted to do was give the Wraith an excuse to kill the Athosian woman.

Through the trees he saw a silver object low to the ground and recognized the shape of a Fourth Dynast gyro-flyer. The helicopter was heavily decorated with golden detailing and bright heraldry across the gleaming chrome hull. Only Daus would have a ride that pimped, Sheppard thought, and if his high-and-mighty Lordship is here, then maybe McKay 's not far away either. It made sense; if the man had a Hive Ship on his land, then why not kidnap the most qualified guy from Atlantis to take a look at it?

Sheppard gently turned the Jumper in a hundred-and-eighty degree yaw before settling the craft on the grass. Here we go. Last chance we're gonna get to take these creeps.

"The hatch," ordered Scar, and John obliged. But instead of letting the drawbridge drop slowly, he stabbed a key that let it fall open with a crashing slam of noise. The distraction provided the instant he needed, and he vaulted out of the pilot's chair and threw himself bodily at the Wraith commander.

"Teyla, run-!" he cried, but Scar's arm blurred and the colonel felt a punishing blow impact on his jaw, knocking him aside. He struck the Jumper's deck and rolled.

"Crude," said Scar, a mocking lilt to the word. "Is that the most sophisticated escape attempt you could concoct? If all your warriors are as obvious as you, your human militias will not survive for long against us." He gurgled a command to the other Wraith, and two of them grabbed at Teyla, dragging her out of the Jumper.

She spat and clawed at them, fighting to break free with no success. Scar watched the Wraith exit the ship, then turned to face Sheppard.

"Let the woman go," said John. "You don't need her."

"I disagree." Scar drew the gun from his belt. "A lure is always a valuable commodity when one is hunting."

"Take me instead, then."

Scar made that irritating clicking noise again. "You have proven yourself too wild to be trained. You would not make a decent Hound. So now you will gain the rewards for your disobedience." The Wraith's hand twitched and he recognized the feeding maw in its palm. Sheppard saw Colonel Sumner again in his mind's eye, the man's life draining away before him. Scar read the fear on John's face and grinned broadly. "No, human, I will not take my nourishment from you. I imagine a specimen as inferior as yourself would leave a poor taste." He threw back his head with a snort of laughter. "Besides, one of your soldiers already slaked my thirst. I am quite sated for the moment… And there is always the woman if I become hungry again."

That was enough to propel John Sheppard up from his feet, the combat knife he'd palmed during the scuffle flicking out.

Scar met him with the barrel of the Beretta and fired twice into his chest at close range. John felt burning hot rods of pain lance into his ribs and his sternum, the sudden impacts striking him back and away across the Jumper's forward compartment.

"Die slowly, human," grated the Wraith. "Know that you will not be the last of your kind I kill today." Toying with the pistol, Scar wandered away, leaving the colonel in a heap on the decking.

Teyla ran for the Jumper and made it three steps before the collar began to bite. She dropped to her knees and kept pushing forward, her vision turning gray as the open hatch loomed in front of her. She blinked away tears of agony, holding herself up from the ground.

Scar's hateful smile appeared before her. "Where are you going, Hound? I did not release you from your leash."

She tried to call out Sheppard's name, but her voice was stolen away. Faint gasps of air came in choking rattles.

The alien grinned. "You will not defy me again, prey. You are the last one of your war band that lives, and you want more than anything to take revenge for the death of your comrades, yes?" He pulled her to her feet. "So you will not defy me again, because for every moment you live you may entertain a little longer the fantasy of killing me yourself." Scar leered over her. "And I know your kind, Tey-lah. I know you want that more than you want to die."

She didn't resist him; the Athosian let herself go slack, as if she were defeated, and after a moment the collar retracted.

Teyla looked up and spat into Scar's face. She tensed for a blow, but none came. Instead, the alien wiped the spittle away without expression and took the steel leash in his hand. With a jerk of his wrist, he pulled her away from the Jumper and toward the ragged entrance cut in the flanks of the Hive Ship.

Ronon. John. And now I am alone. She forced the thoughts away and concentrated on the cable connected to her heavy necklet. The Wraith's arrogance will be its downfall, she decided, her eyes flint-hard with determination. I swear on my father's grave, Scar will not leave this ship alive.

In basic training, recruit John Sheppard had been unfortunate enough to have a firearms instructor who went by the name of Master Sergeant Gunn. It seemed like a joke when he first heard it, but after he'd stood in front of the man and weathered the force five tirade of creative invective the training sergeant poured on anyone who failed to be an outstanding marksman, John had quickly leaned that 'Big' Gunn had a knowledge of weapons and their destructive capacity greater than any man he'd ever met. Gunn was a veteran, and would gladly display the place where he had been hit by a 5.56 bullet from an AK47 to trainees who demonstrated any squeamishness about the tools of the military's trade. He made Sheppard's squad use pig carcasses for target practice so that they would understand the lethal damage a bullet could do on a piece of unprotected flesh. Never mind the fact that most of Gunn's charges would end up shooting missiles at over-the-horizon targets from twenty thousand feet up; he wanted them to know the results of pulling a trigger.

Eventually, someone in the squad was nominated to ask Gunn what it felt like to get shot; and when Recruit Sheppard put the question to the man, his answer was hard and to the point. You like bowling, Sheppard? He had asked. Ever drop a ball on your foot? Well, kid, you think about lying on your back right there in the number one lane, and you get your buddy to stand over you with a twelve pound ball in his sweaty grip. Then you let him drop it on your chest. Take that and cross it with a red hot poker being slammed through your gut and you got about a tenth of what it feels like to take a round. You following me, Recruit?

"Yes, sergeant," the colonel said thickly, his voice faint to his own ears. He could taste blood on his lips and there was a feeling like jagged glass in his torso each time he took a breath. "Did I bust a rib…?"

Sheppard looked around, his vision swimming as the Jumper's cabin gradually came into focus. With care he hauled himself up to a sitting position and pulled open the front of his jacket. Inside, the thick, high-impact Kevlar body armor was distorted and tight across his chest. Two warped coins of metal-the flattened heads of the bullets from Scar's shots-were embedded in the dense plastic weave, the surrounding fibers knitted together where the heat from the rounds had melted them. John moaned as he released the Velcro straps on the armor and let it fall away. He probed gingerly at the spots on his torso beneath the bullet impact points and got fresh hits of pain from both. Sheppard peered down the front of his undershirt and saw ugly bruises already turning yellowish-purple. "Ow," he declared, with feeling.

As quickly as he could manage, the colonel rooted through a medical kit for field dressings and an analgesic gel, then plundered the Jumper's weapons locker for a fresh P90 submachine- gun and as many sticks of ammunition as he could carry. He took a swig of water from a canteen to wash the coppery taste of blood from his mouth and winced as he took a deep breath. "You're still alive, John," he said aloud, reflecting on the accuracy of Sergeant Gunn's description. "Even if it does hurt like hell."

Sheppard forced the pain to the back of his thoughts and slipped out of the Jumper, moving quickly toward the hull of the grounded Hive Ship.

The Halcyons had built a short stone tunnel up to the side of the Wraith vessel, hiding the place where their engineers had cut into the exterior ten generations ago. The slice through the alien fuselage was a rough-edged wound that had never been allowed to close, kept open with giant sutures and heavy clamps of rusty metal. Typically, two Fourth Dynast riflemen were permanently stationed in this antechamber, standing at arms around the clock under the light from chemical lamps. Scar's cohorts had made short work of them, and Sheppard's lip twisted as he came across the desiccated corpses of what had been young men only hours earlier.

He pulled himself into the vessel and a creeping chill settled on him. The same crawling spook house vibe he felt the last time he'd boarded a Wraith craft was there in an instant, the itch like spider webs on his skin. And the smell, that battery acid stink, hanging in the cold still air. Sheppard flicked the torch on his P90 on-off to test it, and then moved forward, the butt of the boxy weapon pressed into his shoulder. There was a dull vibra tion coming up through the floor, a sense of something powerful building up to speed. Now and then, a rumbling shudder would twitch through the walls.

As far as the Atlantis expedition had been able to discover, Wraith ships had little in the way of interior variation, structured inwardly like a spade-shaped ribcage with internal spaces. Previous jaunts on board these craft meant Sheppard knew some of the basic layout, like where to find the hibernation chamber or the holding areas; but he was working blind here, trying to second-guess Scar. If the alien was one of the Wraith `officer class' then he was on board this tub because he had a goal in mind. The bridge? Engineering? A weapons deck? Do these Hive Ships even have those things? The gaps in Sheppard's knowledge were infuriating. He came to a fork in the corridor and hesitated.

"Okay," he said, after a moment. "Reny, Meeny, Miny, Mo."

Above him, set in a socket on the curved ceiling, a ball of optic jelly watched the colonel making his choice.

"Sheppard, you idiot!" yelped McKay. "Are you…? Is he actually doing that stupid eeny-rneeny thing to find his way around?" In a vain attempt to provide some sort of assistance to Vekken and his soldiers, Rodney had-at gunpoint-been made to tap back into the Hive Ship's internal sensor systems. The large glassy screens in the nexus chamber showed dozens of views through fish-eye lenses, some watching empty compartments of the vessel, others catching glimpses of Wraith as they moved about the starship, hunting and feeding. By sheer chance, McKay had caught the colonel on camera.

"Still alive," Vekken seemed surprised. "Your commander has more resilience than I would have credited him with." The adjutant threw a glance over his shoulder at the Lord Magnate, who was in heated discussion with the late Kelfer's subordinates.

"Behind you! Behind you!" snapped Rodney at the monitor display. A second optical feed from an area further down the same corridor showed a lone Wraith creeping toward the colonel, who seemed oblivious of the alien's stealthy approach. "This is like watching one of those idiotic slasher movies!" He slapped at the control console. "Sheppard! It's behind you!"

"Perhaps if you call out a little louder, he might hear," said Vekken archly.

McKay spun around, galvanized into action. "He might hear this!" The scientist snatched at the bag of equipment that the Halcyons had taken from him at the dolmen and tore it open, grabbing at the radio inside. He hesitated for a second, twisting the dials on the top of the walkie-talkie. He couldn't remember the frequency! That was the stupid bloody military for you, changing the channel setting for every bloody mission, and Rodney could never remember which was which. "Sheppard!" he barked into the pickup. Nothing. He fiddled with the dial again. "Sheppard, watch your back-"

Vekken plucked the radio from his grip. "You will desist, Dr. McKay." He handed the device to one of his soldiers. "If he attempts to use this communicator again, wound him."

"Yes sir."

"He'll be killed!" blurted McKay.

"Possibly," agreed Vekken, "but you should be more concerned about your own safety. The Magnate has given you an order. Fulfill it."

eppard, watch…ack

The sound from the radio was so quick and so distorted that for a moment it sounded like some random squawk of static and not actually a human voice at all. "Rodney?" Sheppard froze, straining to hear; and in that second he caught the sound of something else entirely. A bare footstep, claws ticking over chitinous deck plates.

John swung the P90 around and thumbed the switch. The compact torch blinked on and caught the newly awakened Wraith in a halo of harsh white light. The alien's skin was still wet with processing fluids from the hibernation process, and its skin was tight over gaunt muscle and bone. More than anything, the ghoulish creature looked ravenous.

It moved fast; Sheppard's first three-round burst went wide, the tongue of yellow fire from the P90's muzzle cutting the air where it had crouched a heartbeat earlier. He swept the gun back and forth, working the trigger, eschewing the method of short and controlled bursts for something closer to the spray-and-pray technique. The Wraith was almost on him when John's attack connected and the bullets marched across the killer's torso in a line of black impacts. It didn't go down straight away; the Wraith were tough like that. Before it could recover, Sheppard advanced a step and fired twice more, aiming for the collection of organs in the chest cavity that approximated a human heart. With a rattling gasp, the Wraith collapsed and John realized he'd been holding his breath the whole time. He puffed and checked the machinegun's clear plastic magazine. Third of a clip gone and he'd only taken out a single Wraith. He was going to have to find a solution to this situation that didn't involve bullets.

Sheppard moved forward down the tunnel, continuing on. He got ten steps before the vibration coming up through his boots changed tempo, becoming a resonating howl of motion and sound. The deck shifted beneath him in pulsed, shuddering tremors.

"We cannot land!" called the pilot from the cockpit compartment. "Your Highness, the ground is unstable!"

Ronon pushed Linnian aside and pressed his face to the glass oval of the gyro-flyer's porthole. Beneath them he could see low buildings, the green cylinder of a parked Puddle Jumper. As he watched the surrounding trees wafted back and forth as if a stiff wind was blowing. One of the watchtowers crumpled abruptly at the midpoint and fell away, collapsing in a heap. "It's an earthquake."

"This region is geologically inactive," Erony countered. "It's the vessel."

The doctor crowded in beside the Satedan. "Oh my. Do you see there?" He pointed to the hillside. "Landslide."

Dex followed his direction and saw great clods of earth falling away from the shallow hill, uprooting trees as they disin tegrated. Pale, bluish-white rock was revealed underneath; but no, not rock. It glittered dully in the daylight, the color of oiled, beaten metal. "They're raising the ship," he said it aloud, unable to believe the evidence of his own eyes. Ronon shouted out a command down the length of the cabin. "Back us off, now! Get us away from the hill!"

The gyro-flyer's rotors buzzed and the aircraft retreated into a hover, just as coils of dust and earth boiled up from around the perimeter of the concealed craft. The ground cracked apart with a hoarse roar, and the Hive Ship's drives swelled to optimal power. Ronon watched the hill rise from its setting and tremble, shaking off the accumulated camouflage of countless years. Stone and wood, earth and grass fell away and flocks of birds were unseated from their roosts.

Erony's pilot kept them level with the craft as it slowly rose above the tops of the trees, a deluge of rendered soil raining down across the landscape. Torn free from its hiding place, the Wraith Hive Ship cast a monstrous arachnid shadow, the ponderous and deadly mass drifting upward into the sky in defiance of gravity.

"We are too late," breathed the woman.