Nightfall Read online

  Nightfall

  James Swallow

  An original publication of Fandemonium Ltd, produced under license from MGM Consumer Products.

  Fandemonium Books

  PO Box 795A

  Surbiton

  Surrey KT5 8YB

  United Kingdom

  Visit our website: www.stargatenovels.com

  ©2011 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. All Rights Reserved. Photography and cover art: ©2004-2011 MGM Global Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER Presents

  STARGATE ATLANTIS™

  JOE FLANIGAN TORRI HIGGINSON RACHEL LUTTRELL JASON MOMOA

  with PAUL McGILLION as Dr. Carson Beckett and DAVID HEWLETT as Dr. McKay

  Executive Producers BRAD WRIGHT & ROBERT C. COOPER

  Created by BRAD WRIGHT & ROBERT C. COOPER

  STARGATE: ATLANTIS ©2004-2011 MGM Global Holdings Inc. STARGATE: ATLANTIS is a trademark of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER ™ & ©2011 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  WWW.MGM.COM

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written consent of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Barry Swallow, for tales of rocketships and distant worlds.

  The events depicted in Nightfall take place during the fourth season of STARGATE ATLANTIS, between the episodes “The Seer” and “Miller’s Crossing”.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  CHAPTER ONE

  He had disobeyed before.

  He had done it so many times that it had become a joke among many of the adults in the settlement. He saw it, in smirking asides or quick grins, in comments made that they thought would fly above the head of a youth. There’s Laaro, they might say, the reckless boy who climbed atop the grain silo roof on a dare and fell in. The careless boy who tried to swim the shallow lake where the root-taps grow. And then they would shake their heads at his folly, as if they felt sorry for him. But no, not for Laaro. For his mother and father.

  He paused in the undergrowth and crouched low. His heart was hammering in his chest, so loud in his ears he would have sworn they could hear it all the way back to the lodge house. Larro chanced a look behind him, through the snarl of twisted scrubland, off in the direction of home; and he immediately regretted it. Rods of faint yellow lantern-light bobbed and shifted, sweeping this way and that across the grasslands, coming closer. On the cool, still air of the night he could hear the grunt and spit of mai cats on their leashes, pulling at his scent. With them, the rumble of adult voices, most distinctly the dry snap of the Elder Aaren’s words.

  A tremor of fear shot through the boy’s body and he let it go, for one moment wondering how he might be treated if he turned back and went to them. He studied his bare arms, his thin shirt. Perhaps, if he bit himself, drew blood, ripped his clothes, he might sell them on the idea he’d been chased by a wild mai.

  Laaro’s teeth bared in a smile. They would never believe me. He had told tales too many times to be trusted now. He could come home with the head of a Wraith in his back pocket and Aaren would be the first to claim he had made it from sticks and mud.

  The smile became a grin. Somehow that seemed funny to him. Somehow, that was enough to push him back to his feet, from the undergrowth, back to running. Laaro’s bare feet pat-pat-patted across the earth, as he zigzagged wide of the well-worn hunting trails.

  I will not go home. Not yet. The boy’s jaw set firmly, but his outward defiance was weakening by the moment. He had been out here in the savannah since second sunset, moving in the pattern that his uncle Haafo had taught him, the way that a tracker would loop back and forth, as they searched for animal signs before a hunt. The quarry he tracked was the most important he had ever hunted; his father Errian.

  Laaro’s mistake had been to speak of this idea to his mother, and in turn she had told Aaren, her face all pinched and sad as it had been since Errian’s disappearance. Aaren, blunt and graceless like a mud bovine, made stern rebukes and waggled his fat fingers at the boy. Aaren told him it was not the business of a youth to interfere in the order of things; and then he had forbidden Laaro to leave the settlement.

  All of which showed how little Aaren understood Laaro. Why else had he climbed the silo, swum in the lake? Because he had been told not to do it. Someone slow and ugly and old like an Elder couldn’t understand that challenge was what Laaro looked for every day of his life. It was that or boredom — the tedium of schooling and housework had to be broken by something.

  But still he felt his resolve faltering. If Aaren was out here, then his mother knew he’d fled. He saw Jaaya’s pinched face again in his mind’s eye and felt a stab of guilt. Laaro didn’t want her to be sad; he wanted to come home having rescued Errian, and reunite his parents. To be the hero for real that he was in his games and play.

  Fear seeped into him, pushing aside his boldness. He was caught between two compulsions; what scared him more? The thought of the punishment he’d get if he let himself be caught, or the fear of what lay out in the night? Not the mai cats or the arachs, but the bigger, less definite things. The Giants that hid in the stars. Maybe even the Wraith.

  Reflexively, he looked up and saw the glittering ring of the sky river that bisected the night above, from horizon to horizon; and beyond the great moon with its smaller brother peeking over its shoulder. Laaro shivered and moved on carelessly, his foot catching an exposed root.

  The boy grunted and stumbled, turning in place as a strange new sound reached his ears. It was like thunder, it was like the roar of a great cat, it was like the crash of a cloudburst. It was all these things and none of them.

  Panic seized him. Suddenly, he felt lost. Laaro looked around, abruptly aware that he had gone beyond the limits of his own explorations. His gaze found motion and light, down in a shallow vale where pillars of old brown rock five times the height of the boy stood sentinel.

  The light was a cool silver, glittering and shifting. It reminded him of moonlight cast off water; and in a swift, dizzying rush, Laaro realized where he was.

  The Gateway.

  There were many rules Laaro was happy to break, many adult edicts he would ignore without a care in the world — but the Gateway… To come here without the blessing of the Elders was said to mean death. Uncle Haafo had told him stories of the ghostly guardians there that allowed only the chosen, the knowers of the symbols, to approach the great ring of grey metal. Some said that voyagers could come and go through the centre of the Gateway, to other places — even to the stars, although Laaro doubted that could be possible. He had never seen voyagers; only the Elders had, in the years before his birth. Everyone knew how long it had been since the Gateway had opened; ever since the coming of the Aegis and the Giants.

  And then there were the other stories. The old, terrible stories of the Wraith, the monsters that ate men like an arach would kill a click-beetle.

  With a shriek of sound the shimmering light vanished, plunging the vale into darkness once more. Laaro blinked furi
ously, his night vision lost to him for a moment where he had been staring at the brightness in the ring. In his fascination he had meandered further down the shallow incline, almost to the shadow of one of the outermost pillars. The boy hesitated, the question on his lips; what had come through the Gateway? He backed off, staying low, desperately trying to look in every direction at once —

  — and bumped into something soft, covered in cloth.

  Laaro spun about and found himself staring at figure a good head taller than he was, clad in a dark, matt clothing that seemed to suck in the faint light from the night sky; and the face…

  Pale skin and wide eyes caught the lunar glow, and Laaro glimpsed a mouth open in an ‘O’ of fury. The intruder howled and the boy screamed back at it, unable to stop himself. Wraith! his mind cried, and he threw out his hands, swatting at the alien.

  Laaro hurled himself away and broke into a full-pelt run, charging toward the lip of the shallow valley as fast as his legs could propel him. Sharp beams of light stabbed out after him, trying to fix Laaro in their centre. He clawed at the ridge as he pulled himself up it, frantic to escape. The question as to what he was more afraid of had been answered for him, and now all he wanted was to get away, to find an adult even if it was Elder Aaren.

  But on the lip of the ridge there was another one; this figure was larger, and for a second Laaro thought it might have been one of the Giants. The chasing lights caught up to them both and he saw clearly a man. He was broad across the chest, his face a dusky shade a little lighter than Laaro’s, and his hair was wild in thick locks that cascaded down over the shoulders of his leather jerkin. In one hand he held a weapon that dwarfed the spindly rodguns used by the Elder’s watchmen.

  The warrior — and Laaro knew without question that the man could be nothing else but that — threw him a look of grim amusement and holstered the pistol with a flick of the wrist. Then, without pause, he rocked off his feet and grabbed Laaro by the scruff of the neck, lifting him clean off the ground. Before the boy could argue, he was being carried back down into the valley of the Gateway. The warrior dropped him to the dirt, and Laaro landed hard, smarting.

  “Take it easy, Ronon,” said a woman’s voice, her words pitched high with concern. “It’s just a little kid.”

  Anger pushed Laaro back to his feet. He tried to make his voice firm, but it trembled slightly at the end of his words. “I’m not little,” he snarled, looking up to see four more figures emerging from the shadows to join the warrior.

  “Ah,” said another female, coming closer. “He has fire in him.” Laaro saw a woman with auburn hair and a careful, measuring gaze. She had the same look to her as the warrior did — he imagined she would be a keen fighter if pushed to it — but where the big man was all feral energy, she was calm and metered.

  Laaro swallowed hard. Were these people from another settlement, perhaps from the northern tribes? He had to warn them. “I… I saw a Wraith!” He managed, the words tumbling from his lips. “Over there!” He pointed at the stone columns.

  “Oh, hardly.” The strangers all carried small metallic lanterns that cast a powerful pool of light, and another man stepped into the glow from the direction Laaro had indicated. The boy flinched, recognizing the face he had seen lit by moon-glow only moments before. “That was me.” The man looked down his nose at Laaro, as if he thought the youth might be poisonous.

  He felt foolish. The new arrival was not Wraith at all, but just pale of face in a way that the boy had never seen before. Glancing about he saw that only the warrior and the auburn-haired woman had skin like his; he looked beyond the lantern glow and saw there the other woman, the one who had called him little. She had long hair the color of straw pulled back in a tail, and on her face there was an expression of apologetic kindness.

  Along with the one who had screamed and frightened him so, there was the last of them, who had had spiky black hair and a wry smile playing about his lips. All three of the pale-skinned people wore similar clothing, all in jackets the color of berrywater.

  The one who smiled stepped forward and offered Laaro a hand in greeting, looking him in the eye. The boy understood immediately that he was being measured, but the man’s gaze didn’t feel like the accusatory glares of Elder Aaren. When he spoke, the dark-haired man didn’t use the tone of voice that most adults did when conversing with a child, as if being younger somehow meant you were an idiot. He talked to Laaro as if he were speaking to an equal.

  “Hi there. You’re out a little late, aren’t you? Isn’t this a school night?” His smile deepened. “My name’s John, John Sheppard. What’s yours?”

  The kid took the colonel’s hand and shook it firmly, not giving in to the fear playing around in his eyes. “I’m Laaro. Are you… Northerners, John-John-Sheppard?”

  Sheppard smirked. “Just John is fine. And, uh, no, not exactly. We’re from a bit further away than that.”

  “A lot more,” added Ronon, earning him a look from the boy.

  “You’re… From the stars?”

  McKay frowned. “He catches on quick.”

  Laaro fixed him with a hard state. “I’m very clever.”

  “Then you two should get on fine.” Sheppard gestured at his team. “Laaro, these are my friends. This is Teyla and Jennifer. These guys are Rodney and Ronon, who you already met. We’re, uh —”

  “Voyagers?” asked the boy.

  He nodded. “I guess that’s as good a name as any.”

  The boy nodded back at him, thinking for a moment. Then he cleared his throat, speaking with the kind of careful formality that only a child could muster. “Um. Then, uh, welcome to the planet Heruun.”

  “Thank you,” said Teyla. “We’re sorry if we scared you.”

  “I wasn’t scared,” the kid lied immediately. “I was just… Surprised.”

  Rodney made a Yeah, Right face and Ronon caught it, pointing at the boy “You screamed louder than he did, McKay.”

  “That wasn’t a scream, all right?” Rodney sniffed. “It was an exclamation.” He waved at Laaro. “He could have been anything.”

  “A Junior Genii?” Sheppard offered mildly.

  Keller chimed in. “Maybe a pint-sized Replicator?”

  “Why were you out here all alone?” asked Teyla.

  Laaro’s face creased and Sheppard saw immediately that the emotional rollercoaster this kid was on was threatening to throw him off. “I… Wanted to track him down. Rescue him.”

  “Rescue?” Keller repeated the word with a frown. “Rescue who?”

  The answer came out in a rush. “My father. After the wane-night of the greater moon, when he disappeared —”

  But the boy never got the chance to finish his sentence. Sheppard saw Ronon’s expression shift in an instant from watchful amusement to a warning glare. He knew that look from experience; it meant trouble was coming.

  “Hear that?” The Satedan’s particle magnum pistol was already clear of its holster. “We got company,” he grated, panning his gun upward toward the valley ridge.

  Sheppard brought his P90 submachine gun up to his shoulder, aware of Teyla doing the same at his side. He heard the mutter of voices and an odd sound that reminded him of growling engines.

  A heartbeat later, harsh lanterns from the ridge were sweeping the ground around them and the colonel saw men with spindly rifles being led forward by animals straining against heavy leashes. He blinked in the light, his thumb on the gun’s safety catch.

  Keller’s voice came from behind him. “Those are lions,” she said evenly, in a way that suggested she didn’t believe her own eyes.

  The doctor wasn’t far off; the growling wasn’t from motors, but the big cats themselves, pawing at the earth and spitting. There were three of them, and as Jennifer had noted, they looked a hell of a lot like lions, but with sharper, more triangular skulls. They had the same kind of teeth, though. Lots and lots of teeth.

  “Nobody said anything about us gating into the middle of Wild Kingdom,”
said McKay with a grimace.

  “Take it easy,” Sheppard retorted, making the casual words into a command.

  “Laaro? Laaro!” A woman called out the boy’s voice, and John guessed that she had to be his mother. By the way the kid’s shoulders sank there was no other person it could be; the big cats didn’t seem to faze him at all, but the ire of his mom… Well, Sheppard could relate. He’d heard his own name called in just the same way when he’d been Laaro’s age.

  Figures detached from the main group and came scrambling down toward them, but the cats remained where they were, snarling and pulling on their leashes. Like the boy, they were regular humans, all of them with the rangy look of people who lived off the land and worked it hard in return. There wasn’t a fair face among them, their skin-tones ranging from warm browns to deep ebony; they looked on Sheppard and his team with suspicion.

  A man with a stern expression shot the boy an acid glare and then turned the same look on the colonel. At his side was a woman wearing her hair in a high top-knot; Sheppard saw the family resemblance between her and Laaro immediately, confirming his earlier thoughts.

  “Who are you?” demanded the man. “We saw the flash from the Gateway…”

  “They’re voyagers,” said Laaro, putting emphasis on the word, “from the stars. They… Perhaps they can help me!”

  The kid’s mother came to him, her face a mix of elation and anger. “Why did you run away?” she asked him. “If you had only waited until morning —”

  The stern guy — Sheppard had him pegged now as some kind of authority figure, a guess based on the number of bangles jingling up and down the length of his right arm — waved her into silence and approached the group. “Is the boy right? You came through the portal of light?”

  “The Stargate,” said McKay. “That’s right.”

  “I’m Colonel John Sheppard and this is my team. We’re from a place called Atlantis, maybe you’ve heard of it?” added Sheppard. “We’re not invaders, we’re just here looking for… For information.” He gestured to the others to lower their weapons.