SGA-13 Hunt and Run (13 page)

That was fine. Ronon judged Frayne to be twitchy and a complainer, neither of which sat well with him. Adarr was friendly — maybe too friendly, the kind who wanted to sit up all night swapping stories and being buddies. Ronon didn’t need that when he was trying to sleep. He had the feeling Banje would be quiet but not rude, and that was ideal in a tentmate. Especially if they were going to be getting into combat situations.

Because no one had told Ronon yet exactly what the V’rdai did. He got that the name spoke to some vengeance, and that was fine with him, but how exactly? What was their structure? What were their plans, their strategies? How did they intend to hurt the Wraith? He was itching to know, but figured this was a test, the first of many. They were waiting to see how long before his curiosity won out over his discipline and he started asking questions.

He was determined to wait them out.

“That’s our tent,” Banje continued, gesturing at the second of three that formed a neat row beyond the fire. “Frayne and Adarr are to the left, Turen and Setien to the right. Nekai’s is over there.” That was a fourth tent, a short distance away from and behind the others. The commander clearly liked his privacy. Or maybe the others just felt it was a mark of respect — Nekai hadn’t seemed too concerned with distance when they were curled up in a cave hiding from the Wraith.

“We don’t bother with a proper mess,” Ronon’s guide was saying. “Not enough of us to need one. We keep the fire going during the day and use that for any cooking, and we rotate chores. Can you cook?”

Ronon shrugged. “Well enough.” They’d handled things the same way back in his unit, and he hadn’t been the best at preparing meals but he hadn’t been the worst, either.

“Fine. Stores are there” — another tent, this one much bigger — “and basic equipment’s over there” — another large tent beside it. He eyed Ronon, specifically his attire — he was still wearing the loose shirt and drawstring pants the Wraith had given him upon his capture, now spattered with mud and blood and filth from the past three months. “We’ve got some clothes that’ll probably fit you. Boots’re a little tougher, but we’ll see what we can do. Setien’s a fair hand at cobbling, though you’d never know it — if we don’t have anything that fits she can probably put something together.”

Ronon and Nekai had shucked their atmospheric suits after the initial introductions, and now Banje eyed the leather coat around Ronon’s waist, his bland features wrinkled in distaste. “You plan on wearing that?” was all he said, but the tone spoke volumes.

“No.” Ronon didn’t bother to explain further. Maybe by the time he figured out what he wanted to do with the trophy, he’d be comfortable enough with the others to feel like talking about it. Maybe.

“That’s Nekai’s pistol, isn’t it?” Frayne asked from behind Ronon. He was gesturing to the weapon at Ronon’s side.

“Not anymore,” Ronon told him. He grinned, and the smaller man backed away a step. Yes, definitely twitchy.

“How’d you get his gun?” Adarr wanted to know.

Ronon shrugged. “I asked.” The answer apparently stunned the others into silence, and after a second the tour continued.

The dome was well laid-out, in proper military fashion. The space had been divided into quadrants. There were chemical latrines off in the far corner of one quadrant, showers in another, equipment and stores in a third, and the one airlock centered in the wall of the fourth. The fire was at the center, with the tents just behind it. The rest was open space. Plenty of room to train, to spar, to pace. The supplies, what Ronon saw of them, were a strange mixture. Some looked like military issue, no-nonsense and sturdy. Others were clearly handmade, though those ranged from crude to elegant, from barely lashed together to cunningly fitted. Then there was everything in between, most of which looked as if it had been purchased at some rural bazaar. Considering they had access to an ancestral ring, Ronon guessed that some of the materials had been purchased on various worlds, and others had been crafted here. It gave the dome a more eclectic feel, softening the military edge but not disguising it completely.

“Water’s reclaimed from the air, and recycled from waste,” Banje mentioned. “We ration it, both for drinking and for cleaning, so don’t make a mess.” They’d returned to the area around the fire. “Food’s a mix of rations and whatever we can bring back from a hunt. Not a lot of frills here, but it’s solid and safe.” He turned to face Ronon. “Any questions?”

Ronon could almost hear Adarr and Frayne hold their breath, so he deliberately opened his mouth as if to speak — then shut it again. “Nope,” he finally drawled before dropping to his haunches and then stretching out beside the fire. The other two men goggled at him.

“That’s it?” Frayne couldn’t help asking. “‘Nope’? You’re in this dome with five other Runners, you have no idea who we are or what we’re doing, and you don’t have any questions? None at all?”

Ronon shrugged, putting all the nonchalance he could into that gesture. “Figured you’d tell me anything I needed to know,” he said slowly. Then he smiled.

“Ha!” Adarr crowed. The tall thin man slapped his leg. “He totally suckered you, Frayne! He didn’t ask a single question — but you did! You owe me one week of dish-scraping duty!”

“Aw, man!” Frayne hung his head, but after a second he laughed, too. “Yeah, you got me good, I’ll admit it. Nicely played, man.” He dropped down across from Ronon and gave him a friendly nod. “Nice one.”

“Thanks.” Banje and Adarr settled down as well, though Ronon noticed Banje sat so he could keep an eye on the airlock. Setien and Turen had already been by the fire and had watched the whole exchange, barely hiding their laughter. “So, now that your wager’s settled, somebody care to fill me in?”

Turen glanced toward Nekai’s tent. The others all looked at Banje. Interesting. He nodded slightly but didn’t say anything himself. After another second, Adarr cleared his throat.

“We’re hunters,” he offered hesitantly. “We hunt the Wraith instead of the other way round.”

“That much I gathered,” Ronon told him, but he was careful not to snap at the tall man — at least Adarr was trying to answer his question. “So, what, you hunt in teams? All together? You use this as a base and strike from here, or this is a bolt hole and only gets used between hunts? You target Darts and Hives, or places you know the Wraith will be, or one of you plays bait and the rest set an ambush? You’ve got weapons stashed away, or it’s strictly gun and knife work?”

Frayne, Turen, and Adarr stared. Setien grinned. Banje’s only reaction was a slight smile and a quick dip of his chin.

“Ancestors, you thought of all that just now?” Frayne asked finally. “Where’d you learn all that stuff?”

“You were a Specialist, right?” Banje asked softly. It wasn’t really a question, but Ronon nodded anyway. “You had your own unit.” He glanced around at the others. “So did I. Adarr and Frayne were soldiers — they never had to worry about mapping out a mission, just following orders.” His matter-of-fact tone prevented them from taking insult — it wasn’t a slight on their ability, just a statement about their lack of strategic training. “Turen’s people didn’t have a standing military — when they had to fight they did, but it was more individualistic. Setien — well, she’s a special case.” Off to the side, Setien straightened, shoulders back, chest forward — proud, not angry. “She was a specialist of a different sort. She pulled solo missions.” That meant an assassin, Ronon translated in his head. Or a saboteur. Or a spy. No wonder she was so confident — she was used to fighting without any backup at all.

“These are the kind of questions a good commander asks when given a mission,” Banje continued, now more to the others than to Ronon. “Finding out the mission parameters so you can plan accordingly for you and your team.” His eyes held a new measure of respect. “They’re exactly the questions I asked when Nekai first recruited me.” The gasp Frayne and Adarr were unable to hide only confirmed the awe they held for Banje. Nekai might be their overall leader, the man with the plan and the vision, but Banje was their unit commander, the one who actually held them together and took charge of the missions. Winning his trust and respect were imperative if Ronon wanted to stay here.

Fortunately, it looked like he was off to an excellent start.

“Missions vary in length, size, and number,” Banje was now talking directly to Ronon. “We never work from here — this location has to remain secure at all times. We take the shuttles — we have two others besides the one you and Nekai used, one up here and one down there — to the planet below and then jump from there. Typically we work in three- to six-man teams, though obviously we’ll be able to go up to seven now.” Another mark of a good commander — even though Ronon didn’t have his full trust yet, Banje was already planning how to include him in their missions. He wasn’t about to leave a valuable resource untapped. “Most often we jump together to a random world, scout a location well away from any settlements, dig in, and send one of us out as bait. When the Wraith show up we ambush them instead. Weapons are what you see here.” He gestured at his own side, and all around them. “We don’t have anything strong enough to take out a Dart, much less a Hive.” A quick, wolfish grin flickered across his lips. “But we’re working on it.”

Ronon nodded. A good, thorough briefing. He only had one more question. “When do we start?”

A few of the others grinned, but Banje shook his head. “Not yet,” he replied. “At least, not you.” Neither his voice nor his eyes held any malice. “Sorry.”

“I get it,” Ronon assured him. “You want to make sure I can be trusted first. And you need to see how I handle myself as part of a team. That’s fair.”

The answering nod from Banje was well worth the effort Ronon had made to rein in his own impatience
. “Figured you’d understand,” was all the black-eyed man said, but those three words conveyed a hidden level of praise. Ronon knew Banje wouldn’t have expected any of the others to appreciate his decision as easily or with as little explanation — he’d probably had to explain it in detail to each one in turn, when they were the new recruits. Ronon wondered about the timeline of this unit — who had come first? Who had been second? He knew Adarr has been the most recent before him, but that was as far as his knowledge went. Clearly he’d have to learn more about the V’rdai, both the individuals and the team. That would come with time.

Off which, right now, he had a surprising abundance. Only a few months before he’d been alone in the woods on a strange planet, unarmed and barely clothed, wounded and grief-stricken and enraged, ready to throw his own life away against the first Wraith he saw. Now he had weapons, allies, new skills, and a clear purpose: kill as many Wraith as possible. If that took him years, that was fine. He could wait. His grief was still there, raw and hot and threatening to overwhelm him at any second, but having a purpose helped. He could distract himself by planning, by training, by fighting. The grief became something he could use, something to help motivate him.

It was strangely comforting to know, glancing around at these other men and women as they sat joking and laughing, that he was among people who understood. Each of them were Runners like him. Each of them was the last member of their respective races. Each of them had suffered a loss as extreme as his own. And each of them had survived it, had been found by Nekai, and had come together to form this unit, the V’rdai.

It was like finding a second home.

And Ronon discovered he was determined to make his place among them.

Over the next week, Ronon did exactly that. He did his share of the chores, he sat with the others around the fire, he checked and cleaned weapons, he slept, he traded stories.

Some of the V’rdai were more closemouthed than others. Setien, he learned, had a hundred tales of missions she’d gone on, foes she’d defeated, enemies she’d crushed single-handedly. To hear her tell of it, she had been a one-woman army, and had helped her people, the Mahoiran, defeat many other worlds where many of her peers had failed and where whole armadas had lost before. If not for the way she moved, with the reflexes of a natural warrior, Ronon would have assumed she was exaggerating. As it was, he was half-convinced, or at least he believed half of what she said about herself might be true.

Adarr was equally talkative, but not about himself. When asked, he always claimed he hadn’t been anything special, just another Fenabian warrior, and that he had no idea why the Wraith had let him live when the rest of his people had been slaughtered or enslaved. What he lacked in self-confidence however he made up for in good nature, and he was happy to talk about his people, his family, old legends, boyhood exploits, and anything else that came to mind. After only a day Ronon was doubly glad he hadn’t been asked to bunk with the tall, pale man — he’d never have gotten a second’s sleep.

Turen was friendly and willing to talk, but though she held up her end of any conversation she rarely said anything about herself or her people. Frayne was even more close-lipped — of all the V’rdai he was the one who made it clear he still didn’t trust Ronon or completely accept him, though he was starting to relax that mistrust a bit. Ronon didn’t blame him. Given what they had all been through as Runners, they should be cautious. And if Frayne’s caution bordered on paranoia, well, better to be safe than to be tricked by anyone.

Banje rarely spoke at all, though it didn’t seem to be anything against Ronon — he was just as quiet with the others. Most of his responses were a few words, and only when asked a direct question. The rest of the time he simply sat back, watched, and listened.