Hunt and run

Chapter Fifteen

“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 glimpses 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.

“Barely,” Frayne grumbled, but the orange-haired man looked intact when he stood up a short distance away. “Damn near lost my eyebrows!”

“That would have been a good look for you,” Setien told him, springing up from behind a small cluster of rocks. She looked completely unfazed, her cheeks flushed and her eyes dancing even though she was covered in dirt and grass and bits of burnt bark. “That was glorious!”

Adarr was wiping himself off. “I’m fine,” he acknowledged. Then he grinned at Ronon. “Looks like it worked.”

“Definitely.” Banje looked exactly as he had — if he’d gotten covered in debris it didn’t show. “Nice idea.”

Turen was fine as well, and crouched to pull a piece of shattered Dart from a nearby tree. “Strange material,” she murmured, running her fingers along it. “Like metal, but not quite.”

Ronon noticed a piece near him as well, and tugged it from the ground where it had lodged. It was long and narrow and pointy, possible the tip of the Dart’s nose. Held in one hand, it was almost like a naked blade, though one without a handle or hilt. He waved it about a little, considering the heft, a new idea forming.

“Think you could make something out of this?” he asked Turen, showing her his find.

The little Hiñati woman examined it, then nodded. “It’s strong and sharp,” she said, “and sturdy enough to withstand deep space. I don’t have all the proper tools, but I could manage to do something with it, yes.” She grinned up at him. “You want a sword.”

“I do, yes.” Ronon’s people carried swords and knives as well as guns, and he missed the familiar weight of a blade in his hand. “I bet this stuff could cut through Wraith armor, too.”

“Probably,” she agreed. She began scanning the area, retrieving a few other likely pieces, and Nekai let that continue for a minute before he called them all together again. He had something in his hand as well, and several of them gasped in surprise when they saw what it was. It looked a lot like the consoles that stood beside each ancestral ring, only significantly smaller.

“This must be how the Dart opens a ring,” Nekai explained, holding it up for them to see better. “I’m thinking it could come in handy.”

“Definitely.” Adarr was clearly itching to study it. “I could wire it into one of our shuttles and we could fly through rings just like they do! Or we could rig a handle for it, and use it to open them before we reach the clearing, so we can just jump through! Or — ”

“There are a lot of possibilities,” Nekai agreed, cutting him off, “but we’ll worry about that later. Right now we need to get moving. Killing a trio of hunters is one thing. Destroying a Dart is another. The Wraith will definitely notice that, and they’ll send more Darts to investigate.” He clapped Ronon on the shoulder. “It was an excellent idea, and I’m sure we’ll use it again, but not today. Time to return to base.”

Ronon nodded and fell in line with the others as they prepared to move out. But he kept the Dart fragment clutched in his hand, and there was a small smile on his face. Shattering that Dart had been his idea, his plan. His kill. Something the V’rdai had never managed to do before.

Something he fully intended to do again. And again.

The Wraith would learn to fear him. To fear the V’rdai.

And then they would die.