Nightfall Page 3

  “We’re being followed,” said Teyla quietly, darting her eyes behind her.

  Sheppard nodded. “I had noticed.” It was hard not to. A troupe of bronzed kids, a mix of them maybe eight to twelve years in age, were pacing the three Atlanteans a little way behind them. Every now and then, a new child would slip out of a side avenue and join the bunch. They talked among themselves, pointing and giggling. “We’re like the circus come to town, I guess.” He smiled to himself, amused by the idea of how Ronon and Rodney would be dealing with the same thing.

  It wasn’t just the children that were interested, though. Adults studied them from slat-windows or through half-open doors, but with an altogether more watchful and wary manner. For his part, John continued to smile a tight-lipped, neutral smile at all of them, and kept his hands away from the P90 strapped to his chest. He gave one man a jaunty nod and a “Howdy!” In return, the guy turned away and set off at a pace along a connecting rope-bridge. Sheppard shrugged. “Something I said?”

  “They’ve never seen voyagers in the settlement before.” Laaro emerged from the lee of a overhanging branch up ahead and approached them. He nodded at the children. “It’s all new to them.”

  “Not to you, though,” said Keller wryly.

  “No,” Laaro agreed, playing it nonchalant in front of the other kids.

  Sheppard had to hold down a smirk at the youth’s air of studied coolness. “You got over this side of the town pretty quick.”

  “I know all the short-cuts,” he explained airily.

  “How is your father?” Teyla asked.

  A shadow passed over the boy’s face. “He’s resting now. But I…”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I just wanted to make sure he was going to get better. Kullid knows all about that sort of thing.”

  “The healer,” explained Keller, off a look from the colonel. “He was with Errian when we found him?”

  Laaro pointed up along the curving thoroughfare. “The sick lodge is just ahead. He’ll be there. He’ll know what to do.”

  Sheppard threw Teyla a level look. “Let’s go introduce ourselves, then.”

  The sick lodge was a wide wooden disc wedged between two large tree trunks, held up by a fan of saplings cut from the living tree itself. Rattan window shades had been propped open to let in the morning air, but the place still had the faint scent of illness about it. Clockwork fans extending from the walls chattered slowly as they rotated, and all around Teyla saw low cots arrayed in circles. Many of them were occupied, mostly by men and women of a similar build to Errian. The Athosian woman found something about the place slightly disturbing; the quiet. The people in the beds did not moan or cry out. They seemed hollow and drawn, bereft even of the energy to do any more than lie dormant and breathe. One of them caught her eye — a man around her own age, or so she assumed — as he reached for a lacquered cup of water. Every move he made seemed like a huge effort, and she saw a twitch of palsy in his fingers as he eventually took his drink.

  Teyla looked to Keller. “What is wrong with them?”

  The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not certain…”

  “There is no special name for it,” said another voice. “We just call it ‘the sickness’ and leave it at that.” A striking young man emerged from behind a hanging muslin curtain. “Jennifer…” he said, with a wan smile, the woman’s name sounding odd in his accent. “These are more of your people?”

  “I brought them here,” insisted Laaro, as if that fact would entitle him to something.

  “Colonel Sheppard and Teyla Emmagan,” said Keller, indicating them in turn.

  He bowed slightly. “My name is Kullid. How can I help you?”

  Jennifer’s manner changed before Teyla’s eyes. Outside on the walkway she had seemed enraptured by the alien world around them, almost enthusing over every new sight and sound; but the moment they had entered the sick lodge she became focused and intent, her medical training taking over by instinct. She reacts to this the way I would react to the sight of an enemy; her skills come to the fore.

  “Actually, maybe we can help you,” Keller began. “If there’s a disease here, we have a lot of medicines where we come from. We might be able to find a cure —”

  Kullid shook his head. “It’s not a disease, not in the manner of something that can be spread by infection. This malady is inflicted upon our people.” His manner grew grave and Teyla saw him shoot a look at Laaro, as if he didn’t want to say too much in front of the boy.

  Keller’s mind was working as she studied the patients in the room. “Disorientation? Chronic fatigue, physical weakness?”

  Sheppard frowned. “The same as —”

  “My father,” Laaro broke in, swallowing hard. Abruptly the deliberate bravado the youth had shown outside melted away and all at once he was just a scared little boy. “He’s worse. Worse than he was the last time. I knew it would happen if he went to the Aegis again… I knew it…” He trailed off.

  Kullid put a friendly hand on Laaro’s shoulder. “I’ll come to your lodge later, before the celebration, see to him, yes?” Laaro looked at the ground and nodded. “But you should go home now.” He ushered the boy out toward the door.

  Laaro composed himself and looked at Sheppard. “If you need a guide, I can do it. Come find me.”

  “Will do,” said John.

  The moment the boy was gone, Keller shrugged off the medical pack she was carrying. “His father has this… ‘Sickness’ too?”

  Kullid nodded. “At first it was only one or two of the Taken and Returned who had it, and then they would recover in a few days. Now…” He spread his hands, taking in all of the sick lodge. “More.”

  “Laaro said the last time,” noted Sheppard. “How many times has his dad gone missing?”

  “This is the fourth Returning for Errian,” Kullid replied grimly.

  “I want to draw some blood,” said the doctor. “Maybe run an analysis?” She pulled a syrette from her pack.

  The Heruuni healer held out a hand to stop her. “It… You must not.”

  “She’s offering to help. We all are,” Teyla told him.

  “I can’t let you.” Kullid was shaking his head, making dismissive gestures with his hands even though the tone of his voice said the exact opposite of his words. “I’m sorry. You must go. Laaro should never have brought you here.”

  Keller held out the injector. “If this is some local taboo thing, then you do it. Just put the needle in the vein.”

  “No!” he snapped. “Please don’t ask me any more!”

  Teyla felt the tension in the room jump a notch as one of the less listless patients around them reacted to some new arrivals. She turned, her hand dropping by reflex toward one of the fighting spars sheathed on her thigh.

  Elder Aaren and a trio of men bearing similar golden bracelets of rank filled the sick house doorway; Teyla recognized one of them as the man who had disappeared in the street after Sheppard had greeted him.

  Aaren’s expression shifted from annoyance to suspicion and then finally settled on a forced geniality. “What brings you here, Colonel Sheppard?” It was less a question, more a demand. “This really isn’t a suitable place for voyagers.” He gave Kullid an acidic glance.

  “I’m a doctor,” Keller replied. “A healer. We have a lot of experience with infections, and we could help —”

  Aaren cut her off with a tight, false smile. “No need. The Aegis will provide, and our friend Kullid has everything else in hand.” He beckoned them with the same gesture he had used before, out in the grasslands. “Come now. Elder Takkol would be most distressed to learn you were in this place.”

  “Who?” said Sheppard.

  “The settlement leader,” explained Kullid. “Elder Aaren’s superior.”

  Aaren nodded. “He asked me personally to see to your well-being. He looks forward to meeting you at the feast…” At a nod from the elder, the three larger men standing silently behind him took a step f
orward; a thinly-veiled threat lay beneath their manner and Sheppard saw it, stepping into their path.

  “Hey, how you guys doin’?” he asked mildly. The colonel’s eyes said something very different, however.

  Keller spoke again, her tone rising. “I’m not going to stand by and —”

  “Jennifer,” Teyla silenced her. “Perhaps we should respect the elder’s request. We are guests on his world, after all.”

  “You are, certainly,” Aaren insisted.

  The doctor looked down at the syrette in her hand, and then returned it to her pack with a frown. “Okay,” she said at length, clearly unconvinced.

  “My men will escort you back to Jaaya’s lodge,” Aaren insisted, before any more words could be spoken. In a silent line, they followed the elder’s guardians out and back into the bright sunshine of the morning. As they walked away, Teyla caught the sound of two men arguing; the words were indistinct, but she knew it was Aaren and Kullid.

  “That was… Interesting,” said Sheppard, in low tones that didn’t carry to the ears of their erstwhile new companions.

  “Some of those people were dying,” hissed Keller, drawing a sharp look from Teyla. “We can’t just walk away from that!”

  “We’re not walking away,” John insisted.

  “Looks that way to me, Colonel,” Keller retorted. “It looks exactly like that.”

  “The direct approach is not always the best one,” Teyla explained. “We cannot afford to disaffect these people. Your actions may have angered them. They may have cultural strictures against alien intervention.”

  Keller sniffed. “What kind of strictures do they have about letting sick people die?”

  Sheppard threw her a look. “Look, Doctor, I know your heart’s in the right place, but trust me, you try to bulldoze these people and they’ll dig their heels in. I know Aaren’s type, I’ve dealt with them before.” He sighed. “Too many damn times.”

  The other woman lent in closer and when she spoke, she said the words that John Sheppard had been thinking. “That wasn’t about any ‘taboo’ thing back there. We stuck our nose in the wrong place and the people in charge didn’t like it. We saw something we weren’t supposed to.”

  “Maybe so,” he agreed, “but still, we’re supposed to be playing this sortie on the down-low. We’re not here to mount a humanitarian mission. This is a reconnaissance.”

  “I think the mission has changed, Colonel,” Keller replied. “It changed the moment we stepped through the Stargate.”

  Sheppard blew out a breath. “Story of my life.”

  They walked in silence for a while before Teyla spoke again. “John…” She said his name like a quiet challenge.

  He didn’t look at her. “Go ahead, say it.”

  The Athosian grimaced. “I think Doctor Keller is right. We should consider being more… Candid about our purpose here on Heruun. If only to build some trust with these people. We cannot expect them to be open with us if we keep things from them.”

  Sheppard eyed her. “I’m not ready to do that yet. We’ve only just got here. There are still too many unknowns…” He stopped and gave a dry, humorless chuckle. “Like that’s a change from the usual.”

  But the fact was, John didn’t like it any better than she did. He thought about the reasons they were here, and for a moment, he was back there in Atlantis’s control room, his arms folded across his chest as he watched Zelenka and McKay give an animated briefing in front of one of the big screens.

  Radek pointed at a single star out at the edge of a nebula. “M9K-153, according to the Ancient database, an Earth-normal world with a planetary Stargate.” The Czech scientist adjusted his glasses.

  “Ordinary and uninteresting, rather like my colleague here,” added McKay, ignoring the affronted look his comments brought him, “or at least it was until recently.” Rodney worked a datapad and remotely toggled a series of sensor overlays, placing one on top of another. “We’ve been monitoring Wraith activity as far as the city’s sensors can scan, keeping a check on the battle lines in the fight with the Asuran replicators…”

  Sheppard nodded. He knew all this; heck, he’d been instrumental in kicking off the whole Wraith-Replicator punch-up. “The more of them that wipe each other out, the better it is for the rest of us. What does all that have to do with some backwater planet?”

  “There’s been some unusual activity around 153,” said Zelenka.

  Standing opposite from him, Colonel Carter ran a hand through her blonde hair and studied the display. “Define ‘unusual’.”

  Zelenka nodded. “I will. We didn’t catch it before because we weren’t looking for it. But a few weeks ago this happened…”

  “This is a playback of a real-time feed from the sensors,” added McKay.

  Sheppard watched as the scanner showed the appearance of what was definitely a Wraith scout vessel at the edge of the star system. The glowing target glyph drifted closer toward planet M9K-153, and then vanished without warning.

  “Gone,” said Rodney.

  “Destroyed,” clarified Radek. “There was an energy release consistent with a reactor explosion, but no sign of any enemy craft in the area. It seems to have just… Blown up.”

  Carter shrugged. “A Wraith scout suffered an engine malfunction. So what?”

  “That was my first assumption, too,” said McKay, “and just as incorrect as yours. Look at this.” He tapped the datapad and Sheppard watched a replay of what he had just seen.

  “That’s the same thing. Why show it to us again?”

  “Aha,” McKay grinned. “That’s just it. It’s not the same display. Check the timestamp. This is months before.”

  “And here’s another. And another.” Zelenka pulled up four replays, all of which showed a Wraith scout ship entering the 153 system and coming to an untimely — and baffling — end.

  “We dragged all this data together from dozens of different places, the city sensor logs, astronomical records, even material we salvaged from Wraith ships.” Rodney tapped the screen. “Something weird is going on out there, something that can apparently swat starships out of the sky just like that.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis.

  Carter nodded slowly. “Well, I’m interested.”

  “And so are the Wraith,” added Radek. He worked the controls to zoom out from the nearby stellar group to a wider zone of local space. “We’ve been picking up increased chatter between vessels in one of their clans.”

  “It’s encrypted, so we can’t read it,” said McKay, “but combined with pattern matching of their ship movements and we’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s going on.”

  On the screen, a single glyph detached itself from a larger fleet and followed a course toward a white dwarf star several light years distant from M9K-153. “That’s a Hive Ship,” said Carter. “They’re bringing in the bigger guns.”

  John mulled it over, trying to imagine how he would have addressed the same problem. “They’ve had their nose bloodied. They wouldn’t just send in a capital ship, not if there’s a chance it’d go the same way as the scouts.”

  “Yeah,” sniffed McKay. “Kaboom.”

  “The Wraith are staging here,” said Carter, pointing at the dwarf star. “Waiting for something.”

  “But we don’t know what,” admitted Zelenka.

  John looked over at his commanding officer. “So, what do we do about it?”

  Carter nodded at the screen. “We go to M9K-153 and take a look.”

  “And if there are people living there? What do we tell them? Hey, how are you, nice to meet you, don’t want cause a panic but there’s a Wraith warship floating around one hyperspace jump from your front door…”

  “Atlantis has had enough problems with Wraith sympathizers, Genii and Replicators…” She met his gaze. “Until you find out for sure what’s going on, this information remains classified among our personnel, Colonel.”

  Sheppard blinked away the moment of memory. Carter’s orders made
sense on one level; if his team had come through the gate spouting doom-laden warnings about a Wraith invasion, there was no way of knowing how the locals would react. At best they’d cause a panic, at worst they might end up burned at the stake, or something equally unpleasant. But still… He didn’t like keeping secrets. It cut against his grain.

  John was aware of Teyla watching him. “How are we to proceed, Colonel?” She asked the question with careful formality.

  “Same way we always do. Figure it out as we go.”

  The sun had set by the time the celebration for the Returned got under way, and it seemed as if the entire population of the tree-village was packed into the central town square, along with braziers and big iron griddle troughs laden with food.

  Of course, the square was actually oval in shape, and the whole idea of having naked flames burning in a place that was made almost entirely of wood did not sit well with Rodney McKay, even if the locals seemed unconcerned by it. He followed the rest of the Atlantis team into the open area, all of them in turn moving under the hawkish gaze of one of Aaren’s so-called ‘assistants’. Sheppard had told him of his encounter with the elder at the sick lodge; apparently the leaders of the settlement didn’t like the idea of outsiders — voyagers, as they insisted on calling them — wandering around unsupervised. There hadn’t been a threat, per se, but it had been clearly implied that this wasn’t the done thing. Ronon, typically, didn’t react well to that. Rodney could almost hear the Satedan bristling at any suggestion of being told what to do.

  “Huh,” said Keller quietly. “A few beer coolers and this could be a tailgate party.” The whole celebration-feast-whatever-it-was had the manner of a summer barbeque to it, informal and relaxed, although McKay had to admit he wasn’t feeling any of that at all. He never liked parties. It was a deep-seated disdain for them he’d developed as a teenager; they always seemed so staged, so false, just a place to parade yourself around and mingle. Well, Rodney McKay did not do mingling. It wasn’t his thing.