Nightfall

Chapter Fourteen

The wooden door rolled back on its stays with a groan and Ronon heard a ripple of fear sweep down the length of the enclosures. Takkol and the other elders retreated like startled animals, pushing themselves as far as they could into the shadowed corners of the cages.

The troop of Wraith marched up the central corridor with the one bearing the commander’s sigils at their lead. He wore a fanged smile that was hideous to behold.

Ronon knew what would happen next. He took Keller’s hand and pulled her away from the wooden bars. “Get behind me,” he grated.

She could read his intentions in his expression. “You’re in no condition to fight,” she whispered urgently. “Don’t do anything crazy!”

“Too late to play it safe now,” Ronon stifled a cough and nodded to Lieutenant Allen, ignoring the stab of pain from the muscles in his neck.

The officer returned the nod; she would follow his lead.

The Wraith commander drew level with their cage. “It has been decided that your value to our clan is negligible.”

“Y-you’re going to let us g-go?” stammered one of Takkol’s adjutants, desperation raw and pitiful on his face.

“In a way,” replied the commander. “Open the pens,” he ordered, and a pair of warriors moved forward to unlock the heavy iron chains holding shut the cages.

“Stay back, you fool!” cried Takkol, but it was too late for the other man. He took two steps toward the opening doorway and another of the Wraith surged at him. A thin scream echoed as the warrior ripped into his chest and fed upon him.

Cries of alarm joined the scream; if Ronon had harbored even the slightest doubt that the Wraith had come to execute them all, it vanished now.

In the first seconds, the Satedan had the advantage; there was only one way into the enclosure where they stood, and that meant the Wraith had to come in single-file. The first into the cage approached him, claws raised. The dart-daggers concealed in Ronon’s palms had grown warm and sweat-slick as he had waited for the inevitable attack, and now he threw them, left and then right. He cursed as the first one went wide, his sickness-blurred vision making him miss; he was dimly aware of the small blade bouncing off the alien’s chest amour and clattering to the floor

The second dagger found purchase in the hollow of the alien’s throat and it wailed, clutching at its neck. Ronon went in and followed up the attack with a punch that drove the dagger still deeper; the memory-metal of the blade was designed to expand on contact with organic matter, growing to twice its width in a matter of moments. The Wraith fell to its knees, vomiting black fluid.

Chaos was all around him as the Wraith began their cull of the prisoners. There were screams and yelling, the ozone stink of a stunner discharge. He glimpsed Keller swinging a heavy clay bowl into the face of the Wraith commander, knocking him off balance.

Allan came up from a crouch with the other dagger in her fist and struck at another of the Wraith warriors, dislodging its helmet. It turned on her as the blade-tip scraped over its bare shoulder and the creature viciously shoved her back. Ronon moved to help her, but he was sluggish and his joints ached with each motion.

The Wraith planted its hand on her chest and hooted with pleasure as it began to feed off her. She screamed, the flesh of her face turning grey, becoming taut across the bones of her skull.

Ronon kicked low and connected with the Wraith’s knee, smashing bone. The creature twisted and dropped, freeing Allan from the death grip. She pitched forward, wheezing, and shoved the dagger into the warrior’s eye socket. The Wraith tumbled over in a twitching heap.

He caught the lieutenant and heard her gasp; in the space of just a few seconds, the Wraith had drained decades from her life. The young woman he had spoken to before was twenty, thirty years older in aspect, her buzz-cut hair streaked with grey and her face lined. “Behind you!” she husked.

Ronon turned and punched blindly. He was rewarded by a howl and the sensation of cartilage snapping beneath his knuckles. The Wraith commander spun backwards, out of the cage proper and into the confusion of the corridor beyond, blood gushing in a fan from his crushed nose.

But these were only minor victories in the melee. Ronon saw Takkol’s men becoming food for the Wraith, while the former elder stumbled on his robes as he tried to flee the killing.

The Satedan grabbed Keller’s arm and dragged her out of the cage, with Allan hobbling along behind. “We have to fall back,” he shouted. “Find another way out!”

They pressed into the cluster of survivors, Takkol, the medical team and the last of the Atlantis airmen with them, but the further back they retreated down the corridor, the clearer their situation became.

“There’s no other way out of here,” the lieutenant coughed. “There’s only one exit from this place, and the Wraith are between us and it!”

“They’re going to butcher us like herd animals!” moaned Takkol.

“Not without a fight,” said Ronon.

The smooth metallic lines of the control chamber lit by cool yellow-white illumination were gone, replaced by something dirtied with oily residue. There was a smoky, cloying burnt-meat stink that hung in the air.

Teyla shoved the sparking remains of a computer panel off her legs and struggled to her feet. She shuddered as she surveyed the room; the Queen’s suicidal attack would have killed her just as it had torn apart Fenrir’s Risar, had she not sensed that tiny moment of thought before the implanted bio-charge exploded. It was horrific to conceive; the Wraith Queen had willingly given her own life in order to destroy the command centre of the Aegis, and although she had not fully succeeded — a testament to the resilience of Asgard technology — the consoles and holographic screens all around the chamber were flickering and incoherent. The alien had done much damage.

And for Fenrir’s cryogenic capsule was at the heart of it all, the impact point of the detonation. Coolant pipes spat foam, forming hazy clouds of ice crystals in the frigid air. The whole forward section of the suspension module had been ripped open and blackened by thermal damage, heat-warped fingers of broken metal twisted and bent by the force of the blast.

Teyla’s hand went to her chest. He had to be dead. He could not have —

“Tey…la…” The voice was faint and labored. It took her a moment before she realized it was not a synthetic echo, but the real thing.

“Fenrir?” She rushed forward, slipping over newly-formed patches of ice and shallow drifts of broken glass. She found a foothold on the side of the ruined cryo module and pushed up until she was kneeling atop the frost-rimed surface of the machine.

From this angle, it appeared as if a monstrous blade had slashed along the length of Fenrir’s capsule. The pod, sealed closed for generations, was open to the air and ruined, the fragile life within moments away from death. She glimpsed pallid flesh moving amid the smoke and vapors, and Teyla fanned them away.

A spindly, childlike hand emerged from the cold fog and grabbed her wrist. She reached down into the flickering glow of the pod’s interior and found the alien there, his chest fluttering as he fought to breathe. Teyla’s eyes were stinging and she blinked furiously. She tried to pull Fenrir up, but he was caught beneath a distended piece of machinery; his bird-thin limbs were atrophied and weak, so much so that she feared she would snap his bones if she pulled too hard.

The Asgard’s head turned, revealing a half-coronet made of hair-like wires and smooth crystal spheres about the back of his skull. Snaking cables that pulsed with light extended away, doubtless toward the interface that married Fenrir to the systems of the Aegis.

“Teyla,” he repeated. “I am sorry I deceived you. Perhaps now I have done my penance…” The Asgard gasped as pain lanced through him. “We should…have been open with each other… Perhaps this is fitting. I will go to be with my kindred…and be forgiven.” He blinked, his heavy lids closing slowly.

“Fenrir, no!” cried Teyla. “Please, you must hold on! If you perish, there will be no-one to control this ship, it will be lost! The Wraith are already on board…”

He gave a pained nod. “I sense them. Yes. Moving. I cannot stop them.”

She squeezed his frail fingers. “Then help me stop them! Hold on!”

“You…cannot do that alone.” He sucked in a shuddering breath. “I will…bring you the help you require.”

The crystal spheres clustered around the interface crown began to glow.

McKay followed the others to their feet as the webbing across the cell door vibrated and reeled back into the chitinous walls. The four Wraith warriors on guard had been joined by the scientist-type he remembered encountering down on Heruun. The alien glanced at them all in turn with sly, open avarice.

“My Queen has opened the way. The Asgard ship will soon be under the control of my clan. If you wish to live, you will help us understand its mechanisms.”

Sheppard shrugged. “Hey, I can barely change a light bulb. Can’t help you with any space doohickeys, pal.”

This seemed to amuse the alien. “Not you.” He nodded at Lorne. “Nor you. You are warrior drones, without the intellect required for such tasks.”

“I’ll have you know I’m an ace at sudoku,” Lorne sniffed, moving to join Sheppard where he blocked the path toward Carter and McKay.

The Wraith scientist pointed at the others. “These two, the female and the inferior male.”

“Inferior?” echoed McKay. “I resent that!”

“We won’t help you,” Carter said firmly. “We’ll resist you every inch of the way.”

The Wraith grunted. “And how will you do that?”

Carter was about to say something more, but from nowhere a white nimbus of light surrounded her and vanished with a humming crackle.

“Huh,” said Sheppard, a grin forming on his lips. “That way, maybe?”

The alien shouted out a command, but it was too late; the transport effect flared again, and when it faded he was alone inside the cell.

The Wraith commander advanced, the corridor’s floorboards creaking as he came ever closer. His head turned, lips peeling back to show wet fangs. “Surrender. It will pass quicker if you do not fight us.”

Ronon Dex was aware of his heart hammering in his chest, his pulse rushing in his ears; the sickness in his blood was sapping his strength, draining his will even as he stood here and did nothing. He shook his head to dispel the miasma in his thoughts; he rejected the fatigue in his bones, the desperate need to slump to the wall and let the blackness take him.

No. He was Satedan. He would die on his feet, meeting death as he had life, head-on and without compromise.

A strange calm came over him, and he felt a smile pull at the corner of his lips. In the rare moments of introspection spared him by the world, Ronon had always suspected that his end would come in battle, and at the hands of the Wraith. No simple, quiet ending for Specialist Dex, no soft and restful deathbed. From the moment they had smashed his world and made him a Runner, Ronon had known he would die with blood in his teeth, his hands around the neck of his enemy. He nodded to himself. There was something right about it.

He glanced at Keller, her pretty face pale with fear. His only regret was the others would share his fate; they deserved better, not to die out here, thousands of light years from their homeworld.

“Surrender!” hissed the Wraith again.

“Come and make me,” he snarled, spreading his arms.

But without warning Keller’s hand was on his arm, pulling back. “Ronon!” she cried. “The floor!”

He had a moment to register what she said before the slats below them shattered, as stone hammers crashed into the wood from beneath, sending storms of splinters flying.

Sam gasped in surprise as the Wraith holding chamber shifted and reformed into the command deck of the Aegis. “Huh,” she managed “Well, that was unexpected.”

The acrid tang of melted plastic and stale smoke wreathed the air around her and she coughed.

“Colonel!” shouted Teyla, from across the room. “You’re safe!”

“Thanks to you, I imagine.” She glanced around. “What happened in here?”

“The Wraith Queen destroyed herself, with an explosive device implanted in her body. She was trying to kill Fenrir.”

“She…succeeded.”

Carter was startled by the second voice; she immediately recognized the thin, reedy accent of the Asgard. “But the cryo pod…” She pointed at the wrecked device, still spewing icy foam.

Teyla’s expression was grim. “He does not have very long.”

Sam nodded and picked her way around a fallen stanchion to one of the consoles that was still operable. “You brought me back… What about Colonel Sheppard and the others on the Hive Ship?”

“There was a power fluctuation…” Fenrir managed. “They are aboard, on the lower decks…”

She moved her hands over the bowed control panel, shifting the oblate key-spheres back and forth. “The Wraith sent over boarding parties,” she began.

“I am…aware,” said the Asgard. “They slipped in…undetected. Pierced the hull…” He coughed, as if he felt the wounds to his ship as much as if they were injuries to his flesh.

Carter frowned as she tried to navigate the complexities of the Asgard system; parts of it were familiar to her, but others were labyrinthine, layered puzzles that she had never encountered before. She could sense Fenrir was trying to open the Aegis to her, but he was faltering with every breath. On a tertiary hologram screen, she saw a cluster of dots indicating the trackers belonging to Sheppard and the others, in a corridor close to the main engineering decks; the Asgard had been as good as his word. But she could also see other dots clustered nearby — Wraith. The alien trace was fuzzy and indistinct, wavering between a ghost-image and solidity. Something about the aliens was making it hard for the ship’s already-damaged internal sensors to read them.

She automatically reached for her radio, only to remember that it had been taken along with all the equipment they had on them when they appeared on the Hive Ship. Without any weapons to defend themselves, Sheppard and his team would be easy prey for the Wraith invaders.

A thought suddenly occurred to her. “Fenrir! This ship has a data-matter converter, right? You can construct objects from stored information patterns…”

The alien nodded jerkily. “I will provide you with… That facility.”

“And access to the transporter system records,” she added, thinking aloud. “When you beamed us off the ship, the matter patterns of everything we had on us would have been recorded…” Carter gave a quick grin as she found what she was looking for.

A few quick commands and an object shimmered into being on the panel before her; an Atlantis-issue walkie-talkie, synthesized from the ground up, molecule by molecule. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands. “Just like the real thing. Let’s see if this works.” Carter ran the converter again, this time sending a newly-formed device elsewhere.

Sheppard gingerly picked up the radio from where it had appeared on the floor before them, holding it by the antenna as if it were the tail of a poisonous snake. “Okay, that’s odd,” he admitted.

A short way up the corridor, Major Lorne leaned in against the side of an intersection, peering into the dimness. “There’s a whole bunch of them up there, Colonel,” he reported. “Half a dozen Wraith, I’d guess.”

“Oh, great,” said McKay. “Out of the frying pan.”

“Rodney —”

“Colonel Sheppard?” Carter’s words crackled from the walkie-talkie. “Do you read me, over?”

“Sam?!” said McKay. “Where is she?”

“Quiet!” Sheppard retorted, and raised the radio to his lips. “I’m here, Colonel. Are you okay?”

“I’m a few levels above you, on the command tier with Teyla and Fenrir. He’s badly hurt, John. The Queen tried to kill him.”

His lips thinned. “Understood. We got a situation ourselves. Wraith, a whole bunch of ’em blocking our path. There’s no way we can get past.”

“I have intermittent internal sensors, I see them.”

“Feel free to beam them out into deep space, if you’d like,” said Lorne.

“No can do, Major,” Carter replied. “The internal sensors can’t lock on to their bio-signs…” She paused. “Stand by, I’m sending you some ordnance. Wait one.”

“How’s that gonna work? We lost all our stuff on the Hive,” said McKay. The question had barely left his mouth when a flash of transporter glow blinked in the middle of the floor, revealing a couple of G-36 assault rifles and a P90, along with a pile of ammunition.

“Never mind.” The Major’s face creased in a grin and he grabbed one of the rifles, slamming a twin-drum cyclic magazine into the G-36. “Merry Christmas!”

Sheppard took the other rifle and tossed the submachine gun to McKay. “Thanks for the care package,” he said to the radio. “We’ll deal with these creeps and then rendezvous with you.”

“Negative,” said Carter. “I’m plotting the movements of the Wraith from up here. It looks like they’re moving toward the computer core.”

“They could shut down the ship,” noted McKay, “or worse.”

“Rodney’s right,” came the reply. “The primary matter converter array is down there. If they take control of that, they can make copies of anything in the Asgard database.”

“Oh crap,” said Sheppard. “Like weapons?” He hefted the assault rifle in his hand.

“Like weapons,” Carter repeated. “For starters.”

Color drained from McKay’s face. “The collapsar device. The blueprints will be in Fenrir’s database!”

“Can’t it be shut down from the bridge?” asked Lorne.

McKay shook his head. “It’s a stand-alone system, like the Asgard core on the Odyssey. Even if you isolated it from the rest of the Aegis, it can still operate independently.”

Sheppard spoke into the radio once again. “Colonel? I copy your sitrep, over. We’ll move in and take the converter out of commission.”

“Roger that. I’ll do what I can to help you from up here. Good luck.”

The survivors reeled backward as part of the floor of the animal enclosures gave way, planks ripping and falling into space, cascading down over the boughs from the main trunk of the city-tree. The Wraith went with them, screaming and howling. Through the gaps Ronon saw men hanging from ropes of vine, swinging back and forth beneath the enclosure. Some of them had rodguns that chattered rapid-fire rounds into the aliens, knocking them off their handholds and tearing them open.

The Wraith commander was still clinging to a broken support beam, his claws digging into the wood as he pulled himself back up, inch by shuddering inch.

“Stay back from the edge,” said Lieutenant Allan. “It could give at any second.”

“Maybe,” Ronon ignored her advice and stepped forward, feeling the twisted flooring bow beneath his weight.

The commander met his gaze and spat at him. Clinging to its handhold with one arm, it snatched at the pistol holster on its belt, grabbing at a stunner weapon. Balance lost, the Wraith began to lose its grip.

Ronon shook his head “Bad choice,” he said, holding out a hand to assist the alien.

There was a moment of surprise on the Wraith’s face when he could not understand why a mortal enemy would offer to save his life; then Ronon grinned wolfishly.

“Nah,” he said, the open hand curling into a fist, “just kidding.” He put all his effort into a savage punch to the Wraith’s face. The impact dislodged the commander’s grip, and with a hate-filled snarl, he fell, down and down toward the rusty landscape below. The alien vanished into the lower canopy of trees and was gone.

The figures on the rope-vines swarmed up toward the wrecked enclosure and clambered inside. Ronon blinked as one of them pulled a thin cloth scarf from around his face.

“Ronon Dex,” said Soonir, with a cocksure smirk. “We saw the Wraith coming. I thought you and your people could use the help of me and mine.”

“How did you do that?” said Keller.

“The lower enclosures are the oldest structures in the settlement,” he noted. “The stone hammers are used when we must demolish them.” The rebel leader grinned. “This seemed the most expedient way to deal with the Wraith.”

“You could have killed us all!” shouted Takkol, forcing his way forward. The decking beneath his feet gave an ominous moan and he faltered, his fury waning for a moment.

“I could have left you all to perish,” Soonir retorted. “It is your idiocy that has led our world to this invasion!”

“Hey!” shouted Keller, her strident tone surprising everyone, Ronon included. “Now is not the time for this! We need to get out of here before this place comes down around us!”

Soonir gave a nod. “The healer’s point is well made.” He signaled to his men to draw up the ropes. “Follow the tethers. My men will lead you to a platform below this one.” He offered a vine to Ronon, and eyed him. “That is, if you can manage it…” Soonir was staring closely at Dex’s face, at his pale, drawn features.

Ronon ignored the pounding headache in his skull. “I can manage,” he replied, and snatched the rope from the other man’s hand.

Sam heard the sound and turned away from the bridge console. It was unlike any cry she had ever heard before, an alien moan from an alien throat.

“Fenrir…” Teyla tried to hold the Asgard up, but he was limp in her hands. Carter saw his chest rise and fall in ever slower stutters, his breath whispering from his tiny mouth in puffs of vapor. “We have to help him!”

Carter came closer. “I’m sorry, Teyla. There’s nothing we can do.”

“Humans,” came the whisper. “You are so like us and so unlike us.” The Asgard’s expression was pained as he worked to force out every word. “We share so many things. Wonder and daring. Greatness and folly. Sorrow…and regret.”

“The Wraith will not take this ship,” Carter said quietly. “I promise you that.”

“I believe you.” Fenrir’s head lolled and his dark eyes found Teyla. “You… You must survive, Teyla Emmagan. Guard the new life within you, nurture it.” His thin hand fell to her belly. “It is your future.”

“I will,” she told him. “I can do nothing else.”

And then there were no more breaths from the Asgard’s silent form, no more words. In a very human gesture toward so alien a being, Teyla reached up and closed Fenrir’s eyes, then gently lay him down inside the broken cryo capsule.

Sam felt the ghost of the same hollow feeling she had experienced when the planet Orilla had destroyed itself in front of her; it was a terrible emotion to consider, the raw loss of being a witness to the extinction of an entire species.

“Now they are truly gone,” said Teyla quietly. “The Asgard are no more.”

Sam spoke again after a moment. “If I have learned anything after over a decade in this job, it’s that the universe has ways of confounding your expectations.” She reached out and touched the other woman’s arm. “Come on. He protected us. Now we have to do the job of the Aegis, protect Heruun and our people down there.”

Teyla nodded. “In his honor, I will do so gladly.”

Rodney pressed himself as flat as he could into the lee of a support beam and gritted his teeth. He felt the numbing edge of static backwash from the Wraith stunner blasts arcing past him, and he was in no rush to meet one full-on. McKay was far more familiar than he wanted to be with the highly unpleasant after-effects of taking a hit from the alien weapons. It had happened with enough regularity that it sometimes kept him up at night, wondering about how many neurons the stun shots fried each time; the very thought of losing some of his precious brain cells made Rodney feel quite unwell.

Blind-firing, he poked the muzzle of the P90 out into the corridor and let off a burst of rounds, but it didn’t seem to slow the return fire from the Wraiths. Across the corridor, similarly in cover behind another pillar, Sheppard was aiming down the barrel of his assault rifle and planting careful three-shot clusters in the enemy line; further back, lying prone so he presented a smaller target, Lorne laid down cover fire, trying to keep the Wraith off-balance. It didn’t seem to be working, though.

“They’re dug in tight,” called the major.

“Yeah, I’m getting that,” Sheppard replied dryly. “We should have asked Carter to magic us up a bunch of grenades.”

McKay chanced a look around the support. Between the two sides of the firefight, a handful of Risar stood mute and confused, blinking and clutching at the air, completely oblivious to the bullets and energy bolts streaking past them. One of the organic drones was clipped by a blast from a Wraith warrior and stumbled to the floor without a cry.

“What is wrong with those things?” said Lorne. “They’re right in the line of fire!”

“Fenrir,” said McKay. “He’s not controlling them any more. Without any orders, they’re just going around in circles.” As if to underline his statement, the lights along the floor dimmed for a moment, and in concert the Risar reached for their heads.

At the far end of the corridor, where the passageway branched toward a heavy hatch, the Wraith warriors had ripped out a wall panel for use as a makeshift barricade. Behind them, he could pick out one of the black-tunic-wearing scientist caste working at the controls to the door. For a second he thought it was the same Wraith they’d left looking like a fool back on the Hive Ship; but then there was no way he would have been able to get over to the Aegis this fast. The truth was, it appeared relatively rare to find differentiation between the different Wraith sub-groups; from the research started by Carson Beckett three years back, it seemed that each of them were formed in egg-sac pods as basic ‘blanks’, and then transformed in utero by the injection of biochemical triggers by a Queen. It wasn’t much different from the way hive insects worked on Earth. The right mix of genetic code could create a low-smarts, high-strength warrior, a thinker for the scientist caste, a ship commander, even a new Queen.

There was a sparking and a cough of smoke from the hatchway, and Rodney’s heart sank as the doors slid open, granting the Wraith scientist access. A stun bolt hissed past him and he yelped, ducking back into cover.

“We’re out of options. I’m gonna rush them,” said Sheppard. “On three.”

“Three what?” McKay snapped back. “Bad plan! You step out, they’ll cut you down!”

“Then how —?” Lorne was starting to speak when lights went out in the corridor, and for one stark moment the only illumination was the muzzle flare of the rifles.

“What the hell?” said Sheppard.

There came a sound that made Rodney’s skin crawl, a weird keening moan that echoed down the corridor. With a start, he realized it was coming from all around them.

“The Risar…” said Lorne. “It’s them.”

The lights flickered and came back, both humans and Wraith brought to pause by the brief blackout. The moaning grew louder, more strident. The Asgard drones were agitated, clawing at themselves and stumbling against the walls.

“Oh no.” Rodney felt a jolt of comprehension. “Fenrir… I think he’s dead.”

One of the Wraith warriors fired a shot into the shambling, directionless Risar and knocked it to the deck; it was a grave mistake. As one, the rest of the drone-creatures howled incoherently and surged toward the Wraith barricade, into the teeth of the alien weapons. The densely-muscled Risar attacked on reflex, shattering the line. Without their Asgard creator to guide them, they had become primitive and animalistic, reacting to only the most savage and basic of instincts.

Sheppard shot the others a look. “C’mon, move up! This might be the only chance we get.” He broke from cover, moving and firing, with Lorne charging after him. McKay swallowed hard and followed.

Teyla placed her hands on the half-spheres of the control console as Colonel Carter had shown her, and moved them gently. On the holographic screen in front of her, a disc of color turned and flexed, showing the power train from the energy reactor in the heart of the Aegis.

“Careful,” said Carter. “I need you to manually regulate the flux from the core while I fire up the sub-light drives.”

“I understand,” she replied, although she had only the most basic grasp of what the colonel was actually doing. The Asgard ship’s controls were not like those of Wraith ships; there was none of the unearthly sense-connection between flesh and machinery.

Carter’s hands moved over the neighboring panel in long loops, as panes of data unfolded in the cold air before them. Teyla saw an exterior view flicker into life on the large oval screen. There, blotting out the distant ball of Heruun’s orange sun, was the monstrous arachnid silhouette of a Hive Ship. She saw it shift. “They are turning,” she reported. “They see us moving.”

“External sensors are picking up energy transfer.” Carter chewed her lip. “Yes, there. The Wraith are charging weapons.”

“Will they risk firing on us? Do they not wish to keep this craft intact?”

The colonel glanced at her. “My guess is they’ll be more than happy to put a few dents in it if they have to. And worst-case scenario…”

“They will destroy it if they cannot possess it.”

Carter nodded. “Here we go, sub-light engines to one quarter thrust.”

On the screen the Hive Ship slipped away, turning even as it dropped past them.

Teyla studied her console. “The shields… The indicator ribbon here is barely a third full.”

“I know. We’ll have to do what we can to avoid getting tagged —”

The decking beneath their feet rocked and pitched; on the power screen, a schematic of the Aegis flashed up, a series of red circles appearing all along the aft of the vessel were the first salvo from the Hive Ship impacted.

“Or not,” Carter frowned. “We have to get some distance, give the weapons grid time to charge up, otherwise they’ll pick us apart.”

Teyla’s mind raced. She had been both the hunter and the hunted, on foot in the forests of Athos and on other worlds across Pegasus; but the rules of the hunt there or here in the void of space were still basically the same. Evade your enemy. Deny them their advantage. Strike from cover.

She nodded at the exterior view. “We should make for Heruun. The planet’s ice halo. We could lose them in the clutter.”

The colonel angled the ship and applied more power to the drives. “Good call. I’m taking us in.”

Sheppard’s rifle ran empty and he spun it about as he advanced, slamming the skeletal butt of the G-36 into the chest of the Wraith warrior blocking his path to the computer core chamber. The alien cried out as it was knocked back over a shallow railing; built for the diminutive Asgard, the safety rail only came up to the Wraith’s knees, and it tumbled headfirst to the chamber’s lower level twenty feet below.

The colonel threw a glance over his shoulder as Lorne and McKay followed him in, both men laying down blasts of gunfire. The few remaining Wraith outside had been mauled by the wild Risar, but in their uncontrolled state there was a chance the drones might turn on the humans as well. They had to move quickly.

The core chamber reminded Sheppard of an amphitheatre, with tiered concentric levels dropping downward to an open area in the centre. A broad column of crystalline circuitry glowing with power dominated everything, and from it extended spokes of Asgard technology that connected to other, smaller cylinders of systemry around the edges of the room. Hanging over the floor were glass maintenance platforms with no visible means of suspension.

Lorne dispatched a pair of armed Wraith left behind to guard the entrance as Sheppard dropped into a crouch, reloading his weapon. On the lowermost level the other Wraith were reacting to their presence, firing stun blasts toward them, moving into cover. The larger group of them were clustered around a cylinder of smoked glass; glowing blue vanes circled around it, humming with power. Sheppard spotted one of the Wraith leather jacket brigade working a console under the watchful eye of a senior warrior. The soldier Wraith looked familiar; he had been in the control room when Fenrir had first brought the Atlanteans aboard the Aegis. The colonel raised his rifle, but the angle was poor. He couldn’t draw a bead on either of them from here.

Lorne voiced the question forming in Sheppard’s thoughts. “What are they doing down there?”

McKay made a face. “That cylinder… It’s the matter converter platform.”

A sphere of white light appeared inside the smoked glass and then faded away; the panels retracted to reveal a barrel-shaped object half the height of a man. It was constructed out of the same featureless, matte grey metal that formed the walls of the Asgard starship. About the sides of it, there were rings that pulsed slowly with dull red color.

Sheppard’s throat went dry. “Rodney. Is that what I think it is?”

Two of the Wraith warriors gathered up the device and removed it from the converter; in doing so they turned it, revealing an oval plate attached to the side of the object. On it was a single Asgard rune, a simple vertical line like a downward knife cut. The symbol ‘isa’.

“Oh no,” managed McKay.

“I really hate it when you say that,” said Lorne. “So that’s a bomb?”

Rodney nodded. “And then some.”