SGA-13 Hunt and Run (15 page)

“So are you,” Turen admitted, brushing herself off. “I’m impressed — most non-Hiñati can’t even touch me.”

“I believe it.” Ronon shook his head. “I thought you had me there for a minute.”

She grinned at him, a friendly smile but one filled with clear pride — and perhaps a little longing. “You should see me with blades in my hand,” she assured him quietly.

“It’s true,” Adarr agreed from the sideline. “When we hunt Turen prefers blades to guns, and once you see her in action you’ll know why. They’re like flickers of light!”

Ronon studied the tiny woman with new respect. He’d heard stories of the Hiñati fighters and their speed and skill with swords and knives, but he’d never met one in person. Because of her size and looks he hadn’t taken Turen for a true warrior, but of course it made sense that the Wraith would have kept one of the finest of the Hiñati to turn into a Runner. He’d certainly know better than to underestimate her again!

“We’ll have to spar with blades next time,” he told her. Then he added, “I have a feeling I could learn a lot from you.”

That was exactly the right thing to say — Turen’s grin widened into a beaming smile, and her cheeks flushed slightly. “Any time,” she assured him.

“Any time except now,” Nekai corrected. He’d approached while they were still talking in the ring, or at least Ronon assumed so — he hadn’t seen the V’rdai leader during the match itself, though admittedly he’d been a little distracted. “Right now we have more important things to do.”

Ronon glanced at the Retemite but didn’t ask the obvious question. It had only been two weeks,
 
and demanding answers from Nekai would only make him look insubordinate. That was no way to win the others’ trust.

Fortunately, in this group he didn’t have to say a word. “Are we going hunting?” Adarr asked.

Nekai nodded. “Everyone suit up.” He met Ronon’s eye and gave him a quick, predatory grin, a look Ronon had come to know well during his training. “Everyone.”

Ronon took it as a good sign that no one protested once Nekai’s meaning sank in. Frayne scowled for a second, but then shrugged. Banje nodded. Setien grinned, and Turen smiled. Adarr was the most effusive, but Ronon had already realized that the tall thin man was the most outgoing of the unit.

“Your first hunt with us!” He told Ronon as they all trooped over toward the airlock and the rack of atmosphere suits beside it. “This is going to be great!”

Ronon nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak at the moment. He hadn’t dared expect that he’d be included in this mission. But he was thrilled that he was. His involvement was a clear message from Nekai to the others, saying that he was truly one of them and that he had Nekai’s full trust. The fact that the others had more or less accepted that decision meant they were starting to trust him as well.

But far more importantly, Ronon was tired of sitting around waiting. He had spent three months training with Nekai, and then two weeks here in this dome, waiting. Now, finally, they were going to hunt. They were going after the Wraith.

And Ronon fully intended to return with the blood of at least one more Wraith on his hands.

Not that one was enough. Not by a long shot. But it would do for a start.

“I hope wherever it is we’re going has fruit trees.” Setien licked her lips. “It’s been far too long since we’ve had fresh fruit.”

“You and your fruit fetish,” Frayne said, laughing as he dodged her lazy backhanded swipe. “I swear, you like fruit better than you like men!”

“Fruit doesn’t disappoint,” she retorted, laughing in turn as Frayne blushed bright red. “Find me a man who can hold up and I’ll consider changing my priorities.” Her gaze swept Ronon, bold and daring, but he refused to react. Setien was an interesting woman, and certainly striking, but he wasn’t interested. It was far too soon for him to even consider another relationship.

Instead he watched the front, where Nekai and Turen had taken the pilot and co-pilot chairs. The rest of them were hanging onto the grips spaced along the sides, just like in a military drop. The handholds were too high for Turen to reach comfortably, which was presumably why the diminutive Hiñati was sitting up front instead and Banje was back here with them.

Nekai aimed the shuttle for what looked like the valley where he and Ronon had found it. As they drew close Ronon scanned the immediate area, looking for signs of a similar craft, but he didn’t see one.

Not surprisingly, Banje noticed his search and guessed the reason behind it. “Twenty kilometers to the southwest,” he answered softly. “It’s got a tarp over it, just like this one had — you wouldn’t be able to spot it from the air.”

Ronon nodded, mentally mapping out probable locations. Twenty kilometers made sense — they were ten to fifteen from the ancestral ring, which put it roughly between the two shuttle locations but kept them far enough apart that anyone searching for one would never stumble across the other.

“One stays by the dome at all times?” he guessed out loud, and Banje nodded. That was exactly how he’d have done it, too — keep one ship close at hand for an emergency escape. With three shuttles you could do that, have one on the planet at all times in case it was needed, and have one at either location as necessary. But that begged another question. “How’d you get your hands on three shuttles?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Adarr answered, his chuckle threatening to turn into a giggle. His fingers were even whiter than the rest of him where they gripped the handhold. Apparently the thin man was a nervous flier. “They had two before I joined, but I helped them get the third one — it might have been this one, I can’t really tell them apart all that well. But we were on this one planet, it had the most glorious trees, I remember their leaves were like sunbeams, all slender and golden, and we — ”

“Enough yammering!” Frayne told his bunkmate sharply, giving him a glare to accompany the harsh words. “Just because you can’t handle flying doesn’t mean the rest of us should have to listen to you going on and on!”

“He asked,” Adarr mumbled, but his cheeks were flaming and he looked down at his feet. “I was just trying to tell him — ”

“We scrounged them,” Setien cut in, clearly hoping to shut down an argument in the making. “Most of the time we wind up on an uninhabited world, but sometimes we find one with actual settlements. And occasionally” — her eyes flashed — “it’s someplace the Wraith have destroyed. They don’t bother with the tech — no reason to, when theirs is better — so they leave everything behind.” She rapped one hand against the hull beside her. “This one we scavenged from a dead world. The body was intact but the systems were dead. Adarr found parts from others to fix it. He’s very good with machines.”

The tall man brightened. “I don’t like to fly them, but I can repair them,” he agreed, happy for the praise. He was like a big puppy, Ronon thought, all long limbs and enthusiasm. Yet again he wondered why the Wraith had chosen him to survive as a Runner — and just how long he would have survived without Nekai’s intervention. Probably as long as he would have, he admitted privately to himself, which meant he had no room to criticize the other man.

There was something that still didn’t make sense to him, though. “You were able to find and repair a shuttle but couldn’t get any weapons beyond pistols and rifles?” he asked. “And no armor either?”

This time it was Banje who answered. “The Wraith transport most of their victims,” he reminded sharply. “Weapons and armor, too. Anyone they’ve killed — ” he shrugged, but for once Ronon saw a flicker of emotion on the other man’s face: pain. “The bodies are too badly damaged to salvage anything, including their gear.”

Clearly the Desedan had suffered a horrible loss, just as they all had. From what he’d said Ronon guessed that someone close to the man had been among the “too badly damaged.” He didn’t press the issue. Banje had answered his question.

Their landing was just as rough as the one on the moon had been, and all of them clung to their handholds as they were jostled about. “Let me pilot next time!” Frayne complained as he struggled to his feet again, wincing slightly — the little man’s arms were long enough to reach the grip without a problem but stretching that far put him off-balance and he’d wound up dangling from it when the ship had tilted and scraped its way to a stop.

“Frayne’s a really good pilot,” Adarr whispered to Ronon as they waited for Nekai to power down and open the airlock. “He had a fighter of his own, back on his world.”

That explained a lot about the little man, Ronon thought as they stepped back out into the valley and covered the shuttle with the tarp again — judging from the marks on the ground Nekai had gotten within a few meters of the ship’s earlier position, which was actually fairly good. Frayne must come from one of the few worlds beside Sateda advanced enough to actually have fliers. He was fast enough and alert enough to have been a good fighter pilot, and his twitchiness would actually be an advantage in the air where he’d need to fire upon foes before they could target him back. Perhaps the orange-haired man had given the Wraith such competition in the air that they’d assumed he’d be just as effective on the ground, and that’s why they’d opted to turn him into a Runner.

Or perhaps it had amused them to see someone so talented in the air be so clueless on the ground. It was hard to say.

The team continued to banter as they made their way to the ancestral ring, but once there Banje motioned them to silence. There was no telling what world they’d wind up on once Nekai opened a portal, or whether there might be settlements nearby. Or Wraith. Adarr whispered to Ronon that once they’d stumbled through a gate, only to find a squad of Wraith warriors standing guard there. Only the fact that the Wraith clearly hadn’t been expecting them, and Turen and Banje’s fast reflexes, had allowed them to kill the closest and scatter the rest while the portal closed and Nekai quickly dialed a new location. They’d barely made it through the new portal in time, and then they’d had to hide until they were sure the Wraith hadn’t followed them.

“How does Nekai know what to dial?” Ronon asked softly, as much to himself as to the others, but Turen heard him.

“We found something on one of the Wraith we killed, a while back,” she explained softly. “A little plaque with line after line of symbols. The same symbols as that console.” She gestured toward Nekai with her chin. “It was a list of places. So far, every one Nekai’s tried has been a proper world.”

Handy, Ronon thought. Nekai must have been consulting that list somehow when the two of them had used the rings, or he’d learned a few of the numbers by heart. Ronon certainly wasn’t complaining. He remembered hearing tales of rings that floated in outer space, or stood deep beneath seas or even ice or dirt. Good to know they wouldn’t be walking into one of those!

Nekai worked his magic on the console while Banje and the others stood to the far side of the ring, weapons at the ready. Ronon was still unaccustomed enough to the rings that he started slightly when its surface plumed outward, earning him a few chuckles and snorts from the others, but that was fair enough. The new recruit always got picked on a bit, and he’d been surprised so far how little of that he’d had to put up with. The fact that he was a Runner like the rest of them had certainly made some difference, since they knew exactly what he’d been through and respected the fact that the grief and pain were still very raw for him, and Nekai’s personal training and invitation had most likely helped as well, but still Ronon had expected a few more pranks and jokes at his expense. Perhaps his sparring with Setien first had also done away with those, he thought as they stepped through the portal one at a time. The others had seen he was not to be trifled with, and so had left well enough alone.

Ronon found the trip through the ring disorienting but forced himself to keep moving, staggering after Turen as the team marched quickly across the small clearing and into the bushes beyond. There was no sign of Wraith presence yet, so Banje and Nekai allowed them a few minutes to get their bearings.

The trees they took cover under proved to be heavy with native fruit. There were both something that looked like perfectly spherical green grapes but proved to be utterly inedible — eliciting a cry of outrage from Setien and a “Never disappoints, hm?” from Frayne — and something like an apple but blue-black and juicy-sweet like a plum. After Banje used a small chemical tester to make sure the fruits were safe to eat — though Setien had already demonstrated that by shoving a whole one in her mouth, chewing, and swallowing triumphantly — they all devoured as many as they could stomach of the second kind, and harvested great handfuls more to secret in various pockets and bring back with them. Once their hunger was sated, Banje had them form up again and they moved out.

They trekked for an hour, perhaps a little more, before Nekai returned from scouting ahead and signaled that he’d found a suitable spot. The others followed him to a small copse of trees in the middle of a denser forest. The copse had enough space for Ronon to stretch out both arms and not graze a tree at all, but the branches overhead still filtered some of the sunlight, creating a soft dappled haze instead of a harsh glare. Just beyond the copse the trees were older, taller, thicker, and set more closely together, providing more shade and cover but allowing less room to maneuver. They were perfectly placed to provide shelter when setting an ambush.

“Turen, you’re up,” Banje told the tiny Hiñati, who nodded and took off at a run in the direction Nekai pointed. “Everyone else, fan out within the trees. Keep to within two meters of each other, though, otherwise your devices will show on the monitors.”