Shep H/C Pic-Fic Challenge: The Specimen Strikes Back (Chapter 9)
Title: The Specimen Strikes Back
Author: nacinom
Rating: PG13
Characters: John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, drama
Spoilers: Set during Season 3, soon after "Sunday"
Chapter word count: 3588 (Chapter 9 of 12-ish)
Disclaimer: The SGA world is not mine. I wrote this story for fun not profit.
Summary: The team is split up by difficult circumstances. Her Wraith detector tingling, Teyla wakes up alone in a very strange place. The last thing she remembers was that Sheppard had been with her. Will anything stop her from finding out what the heck is going on?
Acknowledgements: Thanks to coolbreeze1 for the very cool pic prompt and to my super beta editors:
amycat8733and firedew1.
Written for: The sheppard_hc 2013 Summer Pic-Fic Challenge
----------------------------------------------
Chapter 9
As she followed John out of the elevator into the deck-one corridor, Teyla forced aside the distracting thoughts of self-recrimination that were squabbling in her head. She should not have lost her temper with Kermit, but her blood had practically boiled over when it had used its belief in a deity to justify its abominable actions. She had wanted to scare the furry creature into feeling at least a speck of remorse or humility. But despite how good it had felt to see it quake in fear, it had been a waste of her and John’s valuable time.
“Let’s stick to the Wraith stunners and the ralbrak’s banana guns,” John said over his shoulder. They were advancing cautiously through the corridor, hugging the left side of the wall. “Not worth the risk of bullets ricocheting off these metal plates.”
“Alright.” She already held one of each weapon in her hands. Neither required a two-handed grip, a definite advantage over the P90. Although the more destructive properties of the later might begin to quench her thirst to wreak as much havoc as possible to this space vessel and its crew.
She took another glance back at the corridor that extended four stargate widths from the elevator door they had just left. No one was at their heels. The six entrances they had passed remained shut.
“There’re life signs on the other side of the doors,” John said. “Maybe, they’re keeping the civilians in lockdown.”
“That would be a wise precaution,” she said. In the silence of the hall, their whispered conversation sounded inordinately loud. “They are not broadcasting an alarm or other ship-wide communication. They must rely heavily on personal comm devices.”
“Yeah, Worf was chatty on its comm unit.” The drawl of in John’s voice oozed bitterness.
While Teyla had given him a brief summary of all that she had seen and done since she awoke in the lowest deck of the ship, John had told her nothing of his experiences. Through the video monitor, she must have seen only a mere glimpse of what that ralbrak had put him through. She had no idea how long he had been tortured, let alone for what reason he had been chosen for this special treatment. She strongly suspected that it had something to do with his ATA gene and Ancestor heritage. That seemed to be a theme common to the kinds of trouble that preferentially latched on to him. John had also not had the time to describe how he had managed to get himself free, take one ralbrak hostage, and, most fittingly, place his torturer in the restraints that had held him down.
John suddenly stopped. He raised his left arm, elbow bent, hand clenched in a fist-the signal to halt. He dropped down to one knee. She mimicked his stance with a little more grace.
“Four blips in the elevator behind us and six moving on the other side of that.” John pointed to their destination, a closed bulwark across the corridor. Hopefully, it opened into or near the shuttle bay.
He stuck his ralbrak gun into the side of his tac vest. Eyes never darting away from the life sign detector in the palm of his left hand, he retrieved a grenade from a compartment and handed it to her.
“Can you throw it when they open the bulkhead?”
He left unsaid that, because of his injuries, he did not feel confident that he could make the throw himself. She did not need to ask him if he was in pain. The grit of his jaw and the lines around his eyes and mouth told the story. One of John’s many fine qualities was that he never inflated his abilities to perform a task while on the job. When lives were in danger, he always held realistic expectations for himself and for those under his command. That was one reason why they had, thus far, managed to survive so many dangerous situations.
She estimated the distance and judged it to be well within her range. “It will not be a problem. But an explosion might trigger the closing of breach containment shields between compartments. We will have to run for it.” She had learned much from lunchtime chats with Laura Cadman and the other female soldiers under John’s command. No matter how far flung the galaxy and planet of their births might be, women enjoyed conversations about a disparate range of topics, often linked together by threads that would leave most men dumbfounded because they tended to think more linearly.
John withdrew one of the C-4 detonators from another compartment of his tac vest. “I’d rather risk that than be stuck in the middle of a crossfire with nothing to use as cover.”
“Agreed.” There was no use dwelling on how slim their chances of survival were with either option.
“Wait until one or two of them come through, then launch it over their heads.” John palmed the detonator in his hand. “Hopefully, the C-4 in the elevator won’t punch through the outer hull. I’d hate to be sucked out into space.”
“It might be more pleasant than what they have planned if they catch us.”
“That’s not happening,” he said. “Ready?”
“Yes.” While she maintained pressure on the grenade’s safety lever, she removed the safety clip and pin.
The long barrel of a weapon peaked through the partially open bulkhead entrance, immediately followed by a guard wielding what appeared to be bigger version of the banana guns. Another similarly armed guard moved a step behind the first one.
“I’ll cover you.” John fired sweeps of blue laser from his ralbrak gun. The first guard staggered backwards into its companion before either of them could fire. “Now!”
She rose up and threw the small explosive device. The corridor ceiling was tall enough to allow for a reasonable trajectory. She ducked back down at the same time that John must have triggered the C-4 detonator.
Bright red flames and an acrid smoke shot out from both blast sites.
The concussive sounds from the elevator explosion swept up from the other end of the corridor and met up with that from the grenade blast, echoing back and forth. The whole ship shuddered under her feet. A high pitched horn blared and paused at regular intervals, seven seconds by her count. Jets of pinkish froth sprayed out from small, star-shaped nozzles that protruded at the midline of the mirrored ceiling panels. A gob of foam fell on John’s matted-down hair and slid down his forehead.
He wiped it away with his sleeve. “Fire retardant,” he said.
The playful gleam in his eyes told her that some had also fallen on her hair, which hung around her face in a tangled mess-the clips she used to keep it up had not been with her clothes. At least, the loose hair kept her neck warm.
Without waiting to be asked, she grabbed John’s good arm and used her own momentum to help him stand up. She took his six and kept a steady stream of ralbrak gun fire behind them while they ran down the corridor. By the time they reached their destination, the return fire had sputtered to silence.
Around the area of the grenade explosion, mirrored panels littered the floor. Even though they had not shattered, she and John avoided stepping on them with their socked feet. They also tried their best to skirt around the mess produced by the body of the ralbrak John had shot and the scattered remains of the other one. Apparently, the latter had tried to rise to its feet right before the explosion decapitated it and tore its torso into unrecognizable chunks.
The ugly taste of bile rose in her throat. She had been in many combat situations and she had killed before, but never in such a gruesome fashion.
Fortunately for them, there had been no automated lockdown of compartments. When they reached the still open bulkhead entry, John clutched her sleeve to stop her. After he tucked the Wraith gun under his arm pit, he pulled out the LSD.
“Two moving blips, both at two o’clock.” John had to shout to be heard over the commotion made by the horn. He put the LSD away and adjusted his grip on the ralbrak gun.
“I shall take the left one,” she said.
“Let’s do it.”
They burst through the entrance firing at their designated spots. Her target slammed backwards against a wall and slid to the floor. Its purple uniform and fur were drenched by yellow-orange blood that poured out of the gaping wound in its chest.
John had hit the other ralbrak in the shoulder. It wiggled on the floor in an attempt to reach for the weapon that had fallen from its grasp. With the ball of her foot, she swept the gun out of its reach. The gun slid into a puddle of blood, shredded fur, and entrails-parts of the two dismembered corpses that also decorated the floor and walls of this antechamber, which was only a few steps wider and longer than her quarters in Atlantis.
Her stomach wanted to revolt, but she would not let it. No time for weakness. One small consolation was that, oddly enough, the dead ralbraks smelled no worse than the live ones. Either that or the natural stench of this vessel and its inhabitants had completely dulled her olfactory sense.
She put a foot on the back of the live ralbrak and shifted her weight to it. The tears to the back of its uniform revealed bloody shrapnel wounds. It hollered either in pain or in anger, or both. She exerted more pressure and it stopped its movements. She pulled out the stunner.
“Teyla, wait. We might need it to open this.” John pointed to a control panel on the left of the second set of bulkhead doors. “I’m pretty sure your magic wand won’t work.”
She rotated her stance so that she could look towards John and keep an eye on the fallen guard. The panel had no visible buttons to press. It was a smooth, black oval surface decorated along its middle by a foot long, vertical pink line which was crisscrossed near the top by three horizontal lines of the same color. “It is a different design from the elevator and door control panels I managed to open before.”
John hovered the palm of his hand over the shape. “I think it’s a biometric scanner. We’ll need your new friend to give us a hand.”
“It is eager to help us,” Teyla said.
Together they rapidly pulled up and dragged the ralbrak to the panel. It blabbered away incessantly, but neither she nor John was interested in turning on the translator to understand what it had to say. Most likely it was something about their impending, horrible deaths. Some messages came through crystal clear despite language barriers.
While they worked in tight proximity, she became increasingly worried by the labored sounds of John’s breathing and the beads of sweat that glistened on his forehead despite the continued chilly temperature. She abstained from voicing her concern. Escape was the only thing that would ameliorate John’s worsening condition. And posing useless questions about how he felt would only make him waste energy he did not have to hide the visible toll his injuries were inflicting on him.
Despite his debilitated state, in a few brisk moves John put the guard in a choke hold. To enhance the dramatic effect, he pointed a ralbrak gun to the side of its head. With those incentives, she did not have to overexert herself to pry open the ralbrak’s fist and force its splayed hand onto the pink silhouette.
The black panel emitted a rising musical scale of chirps. At each note, the color flickered through a different range of the color spectrum before it settled to a golden glow. Grinding noises sent unpleasant shivers down her back as the heavy bulwark slowly slid open. In a swift motion, she retrieved one of her weapons and stunned the ralbrak.
“Very efficient.” John let the unconscious body collapse to the floor. He retrieved the LSD from his trouser pocket. They moved to the side to remain hidden from the still opening entrance.
“Five more blips close by on the other side of that. It’s got to be the transport bay.”
Teyla nudged her head toward the corridor they had left behind. “Is anyone coming from over there?”
“Not yet, but it’s time to set up another distraction.” He pressed the C-4 detonator that he held in his hand to trigger the explosive device he had planted in his former torture chamber. Strong tremors shook the floor under their feet.
“I hope that Worf was still in there,” Teyla said.
“Yeah.” He retrieved a flash bang and with an underhand motion tossed it into the entry way. “Fire in the hole.”
They both hunkered down against the bulkhead wall, eyes downcast, and hands cupped over their ears.
She felt the reverberations through wall. Raucous screams on the other side were followed by an eerie silence, broken by a few distant moans.
“Let’s go,” John said.
They rushed into the transport bay. Through the smoke wafting about from the flash bang she saw three ralbrak writhing on the floor. Their hands were splayed over their ears and their eyes were tightly shut-no eyelids just mere slits in the facial fur. She had never seen anyone react so strongly to the flash bangs; perhaps the ralbrak’s hearing and vision were more sensitive than a human’s.
Not taking any chances with how quickly they might recover, Teyla stunned them out of their misery. Tempting as it might be to shoot them with their own ralbrak weapons, she did not have it within herself to cause further injury to the wounded no matter how little regard she had for them. However, their uninjured comrades were a fair target for the more damaging weapons. She raised the ralbrak gun to the next approaching guard, but John got to it first with his stunner.
“Let’s avoid kill shots,” he said.
Teyla usually did not question John’s orders in the field, but this time the words flew out of her mouth before she could rein them in. “I do not believe that such mercy will gain us any favors with them.”
John shook his head. “It’s not that. The more of them alive in here, the less likely that the ship’s commander will vent the bay into space to get rid of us.”
She felt bad for glaring at John for taking her shot. Why had she become so bloodthirsty? “I see your point.”
She had much to learn about combat in a space vessel, but she sincerely hoped her future would not be fraught with more opportunities to expand her education. Between their present predicament and their recent encounters with Herick and Jamus on their space station, she’d had enough of space adventures.
She and John remained in the periphery of the bay to protect their backs while they surveyed the area. The flight deck bore a remote resemblance to the one on the Daedalus, which Teyla had visited on several occasions when that ship had been docked in Atlantis. But this hollowed space appeared more disorganized or, at the very least, more cluttered by equipment, containers, tools, and assorted mysterious objects.
A few steps away from the smoke-filled bay entrance stood the polished mauve forms of what had to be two of the ralbrak transport shuttles mentioned by Kermit. The vessel design-a thick disc perched on top of four stout pillars and capped by what looked like an inverted bowl-differed strikingly from that of the boxy puddle jumpers and insect-like Darts. And, given that their girth approached the size of the entire gateroom in Atlantis, these vessels were obviously not meant to travel through the rings of the Ancestors.
The shape and color reminded Teyla of one of Charin’s most treasured possession, a tea set used only for special occasions. “It looks like a saucer.”
“Whoa … it’s a UFO,” John said.
Despite her complete confidence in John’s proven, uncanny ability to fly anything, Teyla felt reassured at his apparent familiarity with the ship design. “You have previously seen this type of space vessel?”
“Huh? No … not really. I’ll explain later.”
The temporary lull in the action was broken when blue beams struck only a few paces to her left. Teyla and John ran in a zigzag pattern to avoid being hit. They had almost reached the closest shuttle when she felt a scorching pain just below her left hip. She stumbled and would have fallen if John hadn’t caught her. He put an arm around her waist to steady her gait. They ducked behind one of the four, wide support pillars of the nearest shuttle and returned fire. One ralbrak fell and a second retreated to the other side of a short row of barrels. No matter how many times they hit it, the ralbrak guns did not damage the improvised barrier.
“You’re bleeding,” John said.
Teyla fired once more before she glanced down to check her upper thigh. The initial breathtaking pain had dulled to a more manageable burning sensation. A non-alarming quantity of blood seeped through a tear in her trousers.
“It is only a flesh wound,” she said.
John was too busy shooting to notice her discomfort and argue with her. “Cover me. I’m going to switch to the P90. It’s time to do some structural damage.”
“Yes,” she said. “We are past the stage of worrying about ricocheting bullets.”
“Way past.”
A moment later, the familiar sound of the P90 was like music to her ears. The bullets punched through the barrels. A black liquid spurted through the holes. Probably more frightened by the sound than the actual damage caused by the bullets, the ralbrak tried to dart away from its hiding spot. John’s next sweep of bullets hit it in the legs. The ralbrak fell to the ground, bellowing. Pleased with the results, Teyla put away the ralbrak gun and stunner to wield her own P90.
“Remember, avoid kill shots,” he said.
“Of course.”
“Four more incoming,” John said. “They’re trying to surround us.”
They moved along the rear circumference of the vessel. Its icy surface was seamless.
“I do not see an obvious entrance or control panel,” Teyla said.
“Me neither. Let’s check out the other one. You first.”
John began to fire the next round. She clenched her teeth and ran. Her form not quite as smooth as it would have been without a leg wound, but she covered the distance well enough. She steadied herself against the shuttle and laid the cover fire, while John ran to join her. His stride was fine, but he held his upper body stiffly. He sighed heavily when he plunked himself down next to her.
Unfortunately, like its sister, this ship also did not have an open entry. Fear of not having a viable escape option started to gnaw away at her. Dying for the cause of defeating the Wraith made sense to her, but their deaths in this alien vessel seemed utterly pointless.
“Holy crap.” John touched her shoulder. “Look, Wraith Darts.”
All that Teyla could see were the last two ralbrak transport shuttles and more piles of equipment and other goods. “Where?”
John pointed to the outermost left corner of the trapezoid-shaped flight deck. “Over there.”
On her tiptoes she could barely see beyond the stacks of containers that had blocked her view. But there they were: three deeply grooved dark grey forms that looked like the squashed down skull of a long-beaked prehistoric bird.
“I wonder how they managed to capture those,” she said.
“I dunno, but we just found our ride. Get ready, I’m going to toss another flash bang.”
And he did, to a splendid effect.
With the closest trio of pursuers incapacitated, John and Teyla reached the three Darts safely. The ugly things were parked in a row perpendicular to the bay doors. Undoubtedly, they were a better escape option than the transport shuttles. John already knew how to control the Darts. He would not need to waste precious time-time that they did not have-to learn to fly an alien ship. However, especially after her recent experience with Jamus, Teyla dreaded the idea of being dematerialized into a Dart’s storage buffer while leaving the entire burden of the rescue to John. A man who, despite his brave face, looked more and more like he should be relegated to the infirmary.
But what other choice did they have?
With her weapon poised to fire at the first sign of new pursuers, she hunkered next to the wing of the first Dart. John walked right past her.
“John, what is the matter?”
“We’ve got to take the one at the far end,” he said.
Teyla caught up with him. “But why?”
“It’s the one we were chasing when we got snatched by the ralbraks.” He ran his fingers along the flank of the cockpit. The dark grey canopy shimmered open.
She scrutinized the Dart he had selected. It looked indistinguishable from its two neighbors. “Are you certain that it is the one that culled Rodney and Ronon?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We just got lucky.”
The crooked smile on his grimy, pale face was infectious.
Go back to C hapter 1.
Author: nacinom
Rating: PG13
Characters: John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, drama
Spoilers: Set during Season 3, soon after "Sunday"
Chapter word count: 3588 (Chapter 9 of 12-ish)
Disclaimer: The SGA world is not mine. I wrote this story for fun not profit.
Summary: The team is split up by difficult circumstances. Her Wraith detector tingling, Teyla wakes up alone in a very strange place. The last thing she remembers was that Sheppard had been with her. Will anything stop her from finding out what the heck is going on?
Acknowledgements: Thanks to coolbreeze1 for the very cool pic prompt and to my super beta editors:
amycat8733and firedew1.
Written for: The sheppard_hc 2013 Summer Pic-Fic Challenge
----------------------------------------------
Chapter 9
As she followed John out of the elevator into the deck-one corridor, Teyla forced aside the distracting thoughts of self-recrimination that were squabbling in her head. She should not have lost her temper with Kermit, but her blood had practically boiled over when it had used its belief in a deity to justify its abominable actions. She had wanted to scare the furry creature into feeling at least a speck of remorse or humility. But despite how good it had felt to see it quake in fear, it had been a waste of her and John’s valuable time.
“Let’s stick to the Wraith stunners and the ralbrak’s banana guns,” John said over his shoulder. They were advancing cautiously through the corridor, hugging the left side of the wall. “Not worth the risk of bullets ricocheting off these metal plates.”
“Alright.” She already held one of each weapon in her hands. Neither required a two-handed grip, a definite advantage over the P90. Although the more destructive properties of the later might begin to quench her thirst to wreak as much havoc as possible to this space vessel and its crew.
She took another glance back at the corridor that extended four stargate widths from the elevator door they had just left. No one was at their heels. The six entrances they had passed remained shut.
“There’re life signs on the other side of the doors,” John said. “Maybe, they’re keeping the civilians in lockdown.”
“That would be a wise precaution,” she said. In the silence of the hall, their whispered conversation sounded inordinately loud. “They are not broadcasting an alarm or other ship-wide communication. They must rely heavily on personal comm devices.”
“Yeah, Worf was chatty on its comm unit.” The drawl of in John’s voice oozed bitterness.
While Teyla had given him a brief summary of all that she had seen and done since she awoke in the lowest deck of the ship, John had told her nothing of his experiences. Through the video monitor, she must have seen only a mere glimpse of what that ralbrak had put him through. She had no idea how long he had been tortured, let alone for what reason he had been chosen for this special treatment. She strongly suspected that it had something to do with his ATA gene and Ancestor heritage. That seemed to be a theme common to the kinds of trouble that preferentially latched on to him. John had also not had the time to describe how he had managed to get himself free, take one ralbrak hostage, and, most fittingly, place his torturer in the restraints that had held him down.
John suddenly stopped. He raised his left arm, elbow bent, hand clenched in a fist-the signal to halt. He dropped down to one knee. She mimicked his stance with a little more grace.
“Four blips in the elevator behind us and six moving on the other side of that.” John pointed to their destination, a closed bulwark across the corridor. Hopefully, it opened into or near the shuttle bay.
He stuck his ralbrak gun into the side of his tac vest. Eyes never darting away from the life sign detector in the palm of his left hand, he retrieved a grenade from a compartment and handed it to her.
“Can you throw it when they open the bulkhead?”
He left unsaid that, because of his injuries, he did not feel confident that he could make the throw himself. She did not need to ask him if he was in pain. The grit of his jaw and the lines around his eyes and mouth told the story. One of John’s many fine qualities was that he never inflated his abilities to perform a task while on the job. When lives were in danger, he always held realistic expectations for himself and for those under his command. That was one reason why they had, thus far, managed to survive so many dangerous situations.
She estimated the distance and judged it to be well within her range. “It will not be a problem. But an explosion might trigger the closing of breach containment shields between compartments. We will have to run for it.” She had learned much from lunchtime chats with Laura Cadman and the other female soldiers under John’s command. No matter how far flung the galaxy and planet of their births might be, women enjoyed conversations about a disparate range of topics, often linked together by threads that would leave most men dumbfounded because they tended to think more linearly.
John withdrew one of the C-4 detonators from another compartment of his tac vest. “I’d rather risk that than be stuck in the middle of a crossfire with nothing to use as cover.”
“Agreed.” There was no use dwelling on how slim their chances of survival were with either option.
“Wait until one or two of them come through, then launch it over their heads.” John palmed the detonator in his hand. “Hopefully, the C-4 in the elevator won’t punch through the outer hull. I’d hate to be sucked out into space.”
“It might be more pleasant than what they have planned if they catch us.”
“That’s not happening,” he said. “Ready?”
“Yes.” While she maintained pressure on the grenade’s safety lever, she removed the safety clip and pin.
The long barrel of a weapon peaked through the partially open bulkhead entrance, immediately followed by a guard wielding what appeared to be bigger version of the banana guns. Another similarly armed guard moved a step behind the first one.
“I’ll cover you.” John fired sweeps of blue laser from his ralbrak gun. The first guard staggered backwards into its companion before either of them could fire. “Now!”
She rose up and threw the small explosive device. The corridor ceiling was tall enough to allow for a reasonable trajectory. She ducked back down at the same time that John must have triggered the C-4 detonator.
Bright red flames and an acrid smoke shot out from both blast sites.
The concussive sounds from the elevator explosion swept up from the other end of the corridor and met up with that from the grenade blast, echoing back and forth. The whole ship shuddered under her feet. A high pitched horn blared and paused at regular intervals, seven seconds by her count. Jets of pinkish froth sprayed out from small, star-shaped nozzles that protruded at the midline of the mirrored ceiling panels. A gob of foam fell on John’s matted-down hair and slid down his forehead.
He wiped it away with his sleeve. “Fire retardant,” he said.
The playful gleam in his eyes told her that some had also fallen on her hair, which hung around her face in a tangled mess-the clips she used to keep it up had not been with her clothes. At least, the loose hair kept her neck warm.
Without waiting to be asked, she grabbed John’s good arm and used her own momentum to help him stand up. She took his six and kept a steady stream of ralbrak gun fire behind them while they ran down the corridor. By the time they reached their destination, the return fire had sputtered to silence.
Around the area of the grenade explosion, mirrored panels littered the floor. Even though they had not shattered, she and John avoided stepping on them with their socked feet. They also tried their best to skirt around the mess produced by the body of the ralbrak John had shot and the scattered remains of the other one. Apparently, the latter had tried to rise to its feet right before the explosion decapitated it and tore its torso into unrecognizable chunks.
The ugly taste of bile rose in her throat. She had been in many combat situations and she had killed before, but never in such a gruesome fashion.
Fortunately for them, there had been no automated lockdown of compartments. When they reached the still open bulkhead entry, John clutched her sleeve to stop her. After he tucked the Wraith gun under his arm pit, he pulled out the LSD.
“Two moving blips, both at two o’clock.” John had to shout to be heard over the commotion made by the horn. He put the LSD away and adjusted his grip on the ralbrak gun.
“I shall take the left one,” she said.
“Let’s do it.”
They burst through the entrance firing at their designated spots. Her target slammed backwards against a wall and slid to the floor. Its purple uniform and fur were drenched by yellow-orange blood that poured out of the gaping wound in its chest.
John had hit the other ralbrak in the shoulder. It wiggled on the floor in an attempt to reach for the weapon that had fallen from its grasp. With the ball of her foot, she swept the gun out of its reach. The gun slid into a puddle of blood, shredded fur, and entrails-parts of the two dismembered corpses that also decorated the floor and walls of this antechamber, which was only a few steps wider and longer than her quarters in Atlantis.
Her stomach wanted to revolt, but she would not let it. No time for weakness. One small consolation was that, oddly enough, the dead ralbraks smelled no worse than the live ones. Either that or the natural stench of this vessel and its inhabitants had completely dulled her olfactory sense.
She put a foot on the back of the live ralbrak and shifted her weight to it. The tears to the back of its uniform revealed bloody shrapnel wounds. It hollered either in pain or in anger, or both. She exerted more pressure and it stopped its movements. She pulled out the stunner.
“Teyla, wait. We might need it to open this.” John pointed to a control panel on the left of the second set of bulkhead doors. “I’m pretty sure your magic wand won’t work.”
She rotated her stance so that she could look towards John and keep an eye on the fallen guard. The panel had no visible buttons to press. It was a smooth, black oval surface decorated along its middle by a foot long, vertical pink line which was crisscrossed near the top by three horizontal lines of the same color. “It is a different design from the elevator and door control panels I managed to open before.”
John hovered the palm of his hand over the shape. “I think it’s a biometric scanner. We’ll need your new friend to give us a hand.”
“It is eager to help us,” Teyla said.
Together they rapidly pulled up and dragged the ralbrak to the panel. It blabbered away incessantly, but neither she nor John was interested in turning on the translator to understand what it had to say. Most likely it was something about their impending, horrible deaths. Some messages came through crystal clear despite language barriers.
While they worked in tight proximity, she became increasingly worried by the labored sounds of John’s breathing and the beads of sweat that glistened on his forehead despite the continued chilly temperature. She abstained from voicing her concern. Escape was the only thing that would ameliorate John’s worsening condition. And posing useless questions about how he felt would only make him waste energy he did not have to hide the visible toll his injuries were inflicting on him.
Despite his debilitated state, in a few brisk moves John put the guard in a choke hold. To enhance the dramatic effect, he pointed a ralbrak gun to the side of its head. With those incentives, she did not have to overexert herself to pry open the ralbrak’s fist and force its splayed hand onto the pink silhouette.
The black panel emitted a rising musical scale of chirps. At each note, the color flickered through a different range of the color spectrum before it settled to a golden glow. Grinding noises sent unpleasant shivers down her back as the heavy bulwark slowly slid open. In a swift motion, she retrieved one of her weapons and stunned the ralbrak.
“Very efficient.” John let the unconscious body collapse to the floor. He retrieved the LSD from his trouser pocket. They moved to the side to remain hidden from the still opening entrance.
“Five more blips close by on the other side of that. It’s got to be the transport bay.”
Teyla nudged her head toward the corridor they had left behind. “Is anyone coming from over there?”
“Not yet, but it’s time to set up another distraction.” He pressed the C-4 detonator that he held in his hand to trigger the explosive device he had planted in his former torture chamber. Strong tremors shook the floor under their feet.
“I hope that Worf was still in there,” Teyla said.
“Yeah.” He retrieved a flash bang and with an underhand motion tossed it into the entry way. “Fire in the hole.”
They both hunkered down against the bulkhead wall, eyes downcast, and hands cupped over their ears.
She felt the reverberations through wall. Raucous screams on the other side were followed by an eerie silence, broken by a few distant moans.
“Let’s go,” John said.
They rushed into the transport bay. Through the smoke wafting about from the flash bang she saw three ralbrak writhing on the floor. Their hands were splayed over their ears and their eyes were tightly shut-no eyelids just mere slits in the facial fur. She had never seen anyone react so strongly to the flash bangs; perhaps the ralbrak’s hearing and vision were more sensitive than a human’s.
Not taking any chances with how quickly they might recover, Teyla stunned them out of their misery. Tempting as it might be to shoot them with their own ralbrak weapons, she did not have it within herself to cause further injury to the wounded no matter how little regard she had for them. However, their uninjured comrades were a fair target for the more damaging weapons. She raised the ralbrak gun to the next approaching guard, but John got to it first with his stunner.
“Let’s avoid kill shots,” he said.
Teyla usually did not question John’s orders in the field, but this time the words flew out of her mouth before she could rein them in. “I do not believe that such mercy will gain us any favors with them.”
John shook his head. “It’s not that. The more of them alive in here, the less likely that the ship’s commander will vent the bay into space to get rid of us.”
She felt bad for glaring at John for taking her shot. Why had she become so bloodthirsty? “I see your point.”
She had much to learn about combat in a space vessel, but she sincerely hoped her future would not be fraught with more opportunities to expand her education. Between their present predicament and their recent encounters with Herick and Jamus on their space station, she’d had enough of space adventures.
She and John remained in the periphery of the bay to protect their backs while they surveyed the area. The flight deck bore a remote resemblance to the one on the Daedalus, which Teyla had visited on several occasions when that ship had been docked in Atlantis. But this hollowed space appeared more disorganized or, at the very least, more cluttered by equipment, containers, tools, and assorted mysterious objects.
A few steps away from the smoke-filled bay entrance stood the polished mauve forms of what had to be two of the ralbrak transport shuttles mentioned by Kermit. The vessel design-a thick disc perched on top of four stout pillars and capped by what looked like an inverted bowl-differed strikingly from that of the boxy puddle jumpers and insect-like Darts. And, given that their girth approached the size of the entire gateroom in Atlantis, these vessels were obviously not meant to travel through the rings of the Ancestors.
The shape and color reminded Teyla of one of Charin’s most treasured possession, a tea set used only for special occasions. “It looks like a saucer.”
“Whoa … it’s a UFO,” John said.
Despite her complete confidence in John’s proven, uncanny ability to fly anything, Teyla felt reassured at his apparent familiarity with the ship design. “You have previously seen this type of space vessel?”
“Huh? No … not really. I’ll explain later.”
The temporary lull in the action was broken when blue beams struck only a few paces to her left. Teyla and John ran in a zigzag pattern to avoid being hit. They had almost reached the closest shuttle when she felt a scorching pain just below her left hip. She stumbled and would have fallen if John hadn’t caught her. He put an arm around her waist to steady her gait. They ducked behind one of the four, wide support pillars of the nearest shuttle and returned fire. One ralbrak fell and a second retreated to the other side of a short row of barrels. No matter how many times they hit it, the ralbrak guns did not damage the improvised barrier.
“You’re bleeding,” John said.
Teyla fired once more before she glanced down to check her upper thigh. The initial breathtaking pain had dulled to a more manageable burning sensation. A non-alarming quantity of blood seeped through a tear in her trousers.
“It is only a flesh wound,” she said.
John was too busy shooting to notice her discomfort and argue with her. “Cover me. I’m going to switch to the P90. It’s time to do some structural damage.”
“Yes,” she said. “We are past the stage of worrying about ricocheting bullets.”
“Way past.”
A moment later, the familiar sound of the P90 was like music to her ears. The bullets punched through the barrels. A black liquid spurted through the holes. Probably more frightened by the sound than the actual damage caused by the bullets, the ralbrak tried to dart away from its hiding spot. John’s next sweep of bullets hit it in the legs. The ralbrak fell to the ground, bellowing. Pleased with the results, Teyla put away the ralbrak gun and stunner to wield her own P90.
“Remember, avoid kill shots,” he said.
“Of course.”
“Four more incoming,” John said. “They’re trying to surround us.”
They moved along the rear circumference of the vessel. Its icy surface was seamless.
“I do not see an obvious entrance or control panel,” Teyla said.
“Me neither. Let’s check out the other one. You first.”
John began to fire the next round. She clenched her teeth and ran. Her form not quite as smooth as it would have been without a leg wound, but she covered the distance well enough. She steadied herself against the shuttle and laid the cover fire, while John ran to join her. His stride was fine, but he held his upper body stiffly. He sighed heavily when he plunked himself down next to her.
Unfortunately, like its sister, this ship also did not have an open entry. Fear of not having a viable escape option started to gnaw away at her. Dying for the cause of defeating the Wraith made sense to her, but their deaths in this alien vessel seemed utterly pointless.
“Holy crap.” John touched her shoulder. “Look, Wraith Darts.”
All that Teyla could see were the last two ralbrak transport shuttles and more piles of equipment and other goods. “Where?”
John pointed to the outermost left corner of the trapezoid-shaped flight deck. “Over there.”
On her tiptoes she could barely see beyond the stacks of containers that had blocked her view. But there they were: three deeply grooved dark grey forms that looked like the squashed down skull of a long-beaked prehistoric bird.
“I wonder how they managed to capture those,” she said.
“I dunno, but we just found our ride. Get ready, I’m going to toss another flash bang.”
And he did, to a splendid effect.
With the closest trio of pursuers incapacitated, John and Teyla reached the three Darts safely. The ugly things were parked in a row perpendicular to the bay doors. Undoubtedly, they were a better escape option than the transport shuttles. John already knew how to control the Darts. He would not need to waste precious time-time that they did not have-to learn to fly an alien ship. However, especially after her recent experience with Jamus, Teyla dreaded the idea of being dematerialized into a Dart’s storage buffer while leaving the entire burden of the rescue to John. A man who, despite his brave face, looked more and more like he should be relegated to the infirmary.
But what other choice did they have?
With her weapon poised to fire at the first sign of new pursuers, she hunkered next to the wing of the first Dart. John walked right past her.
“John, what is the matter?”
“We’ve got to take the one at the far end,” he said.
Teyla caught up with him. “But why?”
“It’s the one we were chasing when we got snatched by the ralbraks.” He ran his fingers along the flank of the cockpit. The dark grey canopy shimmered open.
She scrutinized the Dart he had selected. It looked indistinguishable from its two neighbors. “Are you certain that it is the one that culled Rodney and Ronon?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We just got lucky.”
The crooked smile on his grimy, pale face was infectious.
Go back to C hapter 1.