SGA-13 Hunt and Run (35 page)

“Yes. Well.” Rodney gulped. “It’s a team effort, of course.”

Sheppard bit back his smile as he took the controls and powered up the Jumper. The engines hiccupped a little and the liftoff was a little jerkier than he’d have liked, but the ship seemed to be spaceworthy again. “So long, mudball,” he said under his breath as the small world fell away behind and beneath them. “Don’t bother to write.”

“Did you get the cloak working again?” Ronon was asking Rodney as Sheppard zeroed in on the local Stargate and gave the Jumper as much speed as he thought she could handle.

“Of course,” came the immediate reply.

“Good. We’re going to need it.”

“Expecting trouble, Ronon?” Teyla asked him from her customary place beside Sheppard.

“Always,” the Satedan answered. “But especially now.”

“You figure the Wraith are on their way,” Sheppard guessed. “Nekai and his partner split up after we took down the others, so he was exposed long enough for them to get a lock on his location.” He didn’t need to see his friend’s nod to know he was right. Part of him was a little surprised Ronon didn’t want to stay and kill whatever Wraith actually showed up, but he figured that was less about Ronon losing his hatred for them and more about him realizing they might not make it back to Atlantis if they didn’t leave now. Fighting long odds was one thing, but throwing your life away against impossible odds was another. And Ronon was too canny and too determined to go for the latter.

“Gate’s coming up,” he announced a few minutes later. “At current speed, we’ll hit it in two minutes max. Rodney, how close do you think we need to be for you to unlock it without setting off whatever booby trap Nekai left for us?”

“There’s no way to say for certain,” Rodney answered, all snark set aside as he focused on the situation at hand. “If it was tied to his DHD, we disabled that already, so there may not be a problem at all. If he hacked the gate itself, he might have programmed a feedback loop or some sort of recursive error like an impossible dialing combination — if that’s the case I should be able to break it as soon as the Jumper’s within its usual dialing range. If he figured out a way to hardwire the lock, however, I’ll need to remove it from the gate itself.”

They looked at Ronon, but he shook his head. “When I was with them, we rarely took ships through a Stargate,” he explained, “and the DHD wasn’t attached to anything. They’ve done that since. There’s no telling what else they’ve added.” He frowned. “But Nekai isn’t good enough with computers to hack into anything. And he prefers to keep his solutions simple and direct. He’ll have the explosives on the gate itself, and the lock, too, I’m guessing.”

“Right, gate it is, then. I’ll put us a little ways off, just in case that motion-sensor’s already been activated.” Sheppard adjusted their trajectory slightly, and a minute later started firing the braking thrusters. The Jumper slowed and then came to a stop. The Stargate hovered in space a short ways ahead of them and off to one side, starlight and stray wisps of sunlight casting the glyphs on each face into deep shadow.

“I’m on it,” Rodney announced, snapping his helmet into place — he’d pulled on the spacesuit as soon as they’d lifted off from the planet and Sheppard had decided not to argue about it. The others had donned their MOPP suits, just as a precaution. “Hopefully this won’t take long.”

“I can help,” Ronon offered, but Rodney shook his head.

“You’d only get in my way,” the scientist explained, but not meanly. And it might even be true with something like this — Sheppard could see how two men, both trying to deactivate a bomb, could trip each other up. Especially if they had different ideas about what needed to be done.

Ronon shrugged and settled back into his seat as Rodney opened the bulkhead door and stepped through to the cargo hold. A minute went by and then they felt the Jumper rock slightly as he opened the ceiling hatch and slipped through it.

“I’ve reached the gate,” Rodney reported through the suit comms a few minutes later. “And I found the explosives, Your friend didn’t do things by half-measures, did he? There’s enough here to blow up anyone coming through, plus our ship, and possibly that planet we just left as well.”

“He liked to be thorough,” Ronon agreed. “Watch out for a secondary charge tied to the first — cut the first without deactivating the second and it’ll go off and ignite the larger charge along with it.”

“I see it,” Rodney acknowledged. “Nasty. I can take care of that, though — short loop here to bypass that, a shunt over here to reroute this, a . . .” his words trailed off as he worked, though Sheppard could still make out an indistinct mumbling from time to time. This part he wasn’t worried about, though. It would take a lot to out-paranoid Rodney McKay.

Finally Rodney spoke again. “All set,” he said. “I’m coming back in.”

“Nasty piece of work,” he explained once he was safely back in the Jumper again.

“What about the lock?” Teyla asked. “Did you have any luck discerning how he managed that?”

“Oh, that’s taken care of,” Rodney assured her. He grinned, clearly pleased with himself. “Turns out he went low-tech on the lock — magnetically clamped an iron net across the outer ring, then ran a small electrical charge through it. The charge actually courses through the ring as well, tripping whatever sensors it’s got, and the gate thinks it’s butted up against something big and solid and utterly immovable. The gate won’t open as long as that charge remains — it thinks it’s buried, specifically against a slab of iron or some other highly magnetic mineral, and its own safety protocols keep it locked up tight.” He held up what had looked like an empty mesh bag he’d been trailing when he returned, and which the others now realized was the net in question. “Clever, too — I wouldn’t have thought of locking a gate that way, but it definitely works. I’ll have to keep it in mind next time I go somewhere and don’t want Woolsey sending babysitters after me.”

“Except that we’re usually through the gate in front of you,” Sheppard told him dryly, provoking a snort from Ronon and a smile from Teyla even as Rodney grimaced. As he made the crack Sheppard repositioned the Jumper, aiming it at the gate, and was just inputting Atlantis’s dialing code when an alarm flashed on one of the consoles.

“Someone is approaching in hyperspace,” Teyla warned, scanning the readings. “They’re targeted on the Stargate, and about to drop back into normal space. The energy signature is Wraith.”

“Cloaks up!” Sheppard announced, activating the Jumper’s stealth technology. Then he skipped the little ship sideways so it was on the gate’s far side, and spun it on its axis until it was pointing a little ahead of the Stargate. This way the Jumper’s guns would be facing whatever came through — assuming they popped out of hyperspace facing the other way. He tried not to think about what would happen if they were facing this direction instead.

He watched intently, hands poised above the controls, as the patch of space just off to the side of the Stargate flickered and shimmered. It blurred and seemed to bend and swirl, and then a long, blunt nose pierced that disruption. A vaguely triangular body followed, jagged and dangerous and too unevenly textured to be strictly manufactured. And it just kept coming, growing larger and larger as more slid through the subspace window and dominated the space around them.

“Hive ship!” Teyla whispered unnecessarily. They had all seen the Wraith command ships far too many times already. As they watched, the Hive ship took up a position a short ways in front of the Stargate — though with its back to the gate, Sheppard was happy to see — and then smaller, sleeker vessels burst from its sides and streaked toward the planet Sheppard and his crew had so recently left behind.

“They’re after Nekai and the other V’rdai,” Sheppard said, a little amazed despite himself. He’d guessed the Wraith would be closing in on the Runner-hunters, but he’d figured a few Darts, not an entire Hive ship! Ronon’s former friends must have pissed the Wraith off one too many times. He glanced at Ronon, and thought he saw a flicker of concern and maybe guilt for a second, but then his friend’s face went back to its usual scowl. What was he thinking? Was he regretting leaving them there like that? They could have brought the V’rdai with them, trussed up in the Jumper’s cargo hold, but what would they have done with the Runners then?

“Can you get us out of here?” Rodney asked from behind him, interrupting Sheppard’s musings. “Or are we stuck?”

“We’re not stuck,” Sheppard assured him. “I just have to figure out our next move.” He thought about it, and gauged the distances involved. “Okay, I think this’ll work. Teyla, I need you to dial another gate for me — not Atlantis but one we know, and one we can visit without anyone shooting at us.”

“What about the Tower?”

“Do it,” Sheppard agreed. They had visited that planet, and its ruined remains of a Lantean city-ship, some time ago, but still maintained good relations with the people there. “Don’t activate it yet, though — wait until I give the word.”

“Understood.” Teyla’s fingers danced across the dialing console, and then she paused and waited. While she was doing that, Sheppard slid the Jumper quickly but quietly behind the Hive ship, putting them between the Wraith and the gate. Even at this close range the Wraith wouldn’t be able to penetrate their cloak without a targeted scan, and why would they scan behind them when they were already focused on the prizes they expected to find on the planet nearby?

“Get ready,” Sheppard warned once they were in position. “Okay, now!” He gunned the Jumper’s engines as Teyla activated the gate. He watched the familiar flicker of light and lightning, followed by the burst of color and light and what looked like, but wasn’t, water as the Stargate activated, the flume erupting from its center like a volcano. The energy-surface was still settling when they pierced it and entered the distortion that carried them across the stars. A minute later Sheppard was able to shake his head and clear it enough to regain control of the Jumper and to notice the planet down below. The single spire rising above the trees was unmistakable.

“Okay, find us a different gate now, one out in space somewhere,” he instructed, and took them back through the second Teyla had entered their new destination. He jumped them twice more before he felt it was safe to head for Atlantis itself — it wasn’t that the city didn’t have defenses, or that the Wraith didn’t know where it was, but he still didn’t like the idea of anyone tagging along behind him.

But finally he shut down the Jumper, safe within Atlantis’s docking bay, and pulled off his helmet. “We’re home,” was all he said, but it was enough.

For now. He sighed as he stood and made his way toward the airlock, knowing Woolsey would be waiting to hear all the details of their mission, and what had happened to delay them afterward. Sheppard glanced over at Ronon, who stared back at him, his face as blank as usual, and wondered exactly how much he should say about the men and women who had attacked them, or their connection to the big Satedan he considered one of his closest friends.

“Well, it’s about time!” Mister Woolsey was sitting in his office as usual, and set aside whatever report he’d been studying as Sheppard led his team in. “We’ve been trying to contact you for almost thirty-six hours. It was supposed to be a simple rescue mission.”

“Things didn’t exactly go as planned,” Sheppard told him, stopping in front of the Atlantis commander’s desk and standing more or less at rest, military style, with his hands behind his back, legs slightly apart. One of the things he did like about Woolsey was that the man didn’t stand on ceremony, but he also knew the former NID agent appreciated an observance of basic protocol. It also gave him the opportunity to gesture to his three teammates, warning them to keep quiet and let him handle this.

“Elaborate, please,” was all Woolsey replied, leaning forward and steepling his hands. Clearly Sheppard wasn’t going to get off the hook so easily.

With a sigh, Sheppard began his report. “The distress signal was a trap,” he explained. “The shuttle was empty but had been rigged to show fake life signs. It also had a bomb set to detonate when we reactivated our engines. Ronon realized something was wrong and Rodney confirmed the falsified readings, but we didn’t manage to get away in time. The explosion damaged our Jumper and we had to set down on the nearest habitable planet.” He took a breath. “Which was exactly what the people who’d set the trap had planned.”

“They called themselves the V’rdai,” he continued. “They’re freedom fighters, waging war against the Wraith — and anyone they think might be working with them.” He shrugged. “We just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“So what happened to these V’rdai?” Woolsey asked. “Did they attack you on the planet’s surface? Are they still at large? Why didn’t you contact us to let us know your situation?”

“The Jumper’s communications systems were down and we were too far from the gate to access it,” Sheppard continued. “Rodney had to repair them, and the engines, and the life support. Teyla, Ronon, and I fended off the V’rdai while he got us spaceworthy again.”

“I take it you were successful, since you’re here and not there,” Woolsey remarked dryly. When he’d first come to Atlantis he’d seemed devoid of all humor, but since then he’d displayed a wry sense of humor, and often slipped barbs into conversation — especially if he was irritated or didn’t like someone. The fact that he was making quips now meant Sheppard still wasn’t out of the woods yet.