Nightfall Page 9

  Soonir nodded. “The ones that Takkol and the other elders refuse to acknowledge, people denied even the most basic treatment because they or members of their family are known to support me and my views.”

  “How many more are there?” Keller asked.

  “We have an extensive funeral ground outside,” muttered Gaarin.

  “We do what we can to ease their suffering,” added Soonir. “Some recover. Many do not.”

  Jennifer pulled open the zipper of her backpack. “Will you let me help?” She drew out a sampling kit and cracked the case, removing a handful of surgical syrettes. “I need to take a few drops of blood from people with the sickness.” Soonir’s face stiffened; as the doctor suspected, the request she made had serious significance on Heruun.

  “She’s very good at what she does,” insisted Rodney. “She’s saved a lot of lives.”

  “I can take the blood back to Atlantis and analyze it. If we can understand what’s happening to your people when they’re taken, then maybe we can find out how to cure this sickness.”

  Gaarin shared a look with his leader and after a moment Soonir nodded. “Very well.” He took one of the medical samplers from Keller’s hand and held it up to the light. “Show me what must be done.”

  The deeper Teyla and Ronon moved through the seemingly endless corridors, the more she feared she would never see the light of day again. Fleeing from the confinement level, they moved upward with the alien giants dogging them at every step. They had little time to stop and consider their course of action; the humanoids did not give them the chance.

  “We’re being herded,” said Ronon, his face showing disgust at the idea. But outmatched as they were, making a stand would be pointless. Finding a way out, to freedom, was the only viable option still open to them.

  On the upper levels the corridors changed. The damage they had seen in places elsewhere was much more widespread here. Whole lengths of passageway were flame-scored, panels broken or missing, the overhead illumination inert.

  In one such area, Teyla’s fingers brushed something on the wall and she drew in a sudden breath.

  Ronon came closer. “What is it?”

  “Here…” She gingerly pressed her hands into the strange, fleshy knot of matter that wound around an exposed power conduit. “Is that what I think it is?”

  He nodded grimly. “Wraith technology.” He poked it with a finger, and the fatty mass recoiled slightly. It sat strangely among the blackened metal and melted plastic, utterly wrong and out of place. “A power regulator node, I think.” The Satedan nodded to himself. “Yeah. I’ve seen these on Hive Ships.”

  Teyla examined the device. “What is it doing here? It makes no sense.”

  After a moment Ronon spoke again. “It’s a patch.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Someone has cannibalized pieces of a Wraith ship to fix this damage. They didn’t have a regulator so they rigged a piece of Wraith tech to do the same job.”

  “Is that possible?”

  He gestured at the throbbing node. “Seems so.” Ronon moved on, tapping and probing at the walls. In the dimness it was hard to see, but the sound of his fist rapping on steel and then something that had to be bone, was stark and unmistakable. “More here,” he told her. “Looks like epidermal plates from the hull of a dart or a scoutship. It’s been welded in place over a busted panel.”

  A crackling hum echoed down the corridor; ahead of them, it branched at another intersection. She shot Ronon a look and he nodded to her.

  Silently, they made their way forward. Teyla kept low and peered around the corner. What she saw made her hesitate. “Do you see them?”

  Dex nodded. “Heruuni.”

  “I think you misunderstand who is in charge,” Aaren was saying.

  “And I think you don’t understand the seriousness of what’s going on here,” Sheppard replied. “This is a potential hostage situation, and I don’t risk the lives of my people unless I have to!”

  The elder smirked. “Then perhaps you need a lesson in boldness.”

  The colonel’s jaw set. The man was letting his bravado run away with him. “Now just a damn minute,” he began, but it was already too late. Aaren punched his fist in the air, and with a ragged shout, his guard surged forward, up the ridgeline.

  Major Lorne scrambled to block their path, but there were too many of them. The Heruuni dashed out across the open space, shouting and firing their rodguns. Aaren went after them and Sheppard gave chase, cursing the man’s stupidity to his back. He saw a flash of movement off to the right and there were the rest of the elder’s men, boiling up from the gulley in a crude attempt at a pincer movement.

  “They’ll be cut to pieces…” Lorne snarled.

  Sheppard shouted a command. “Pop smoke!” The airmen did as ordered, and a rain of cylindrical grenades arced through the air, trailing thick jets of white mist. Furious, he grabbed at his radio and snarled into it. “All units, we’re going in now! Deploy, deploy, deploy!” He shot Laaro a severe look. “And you’re not gonna move from this spot, get me?” The boy nodded sheepishly.

  Sergeant Rush’s voice answered him. “Colonel, what’s happening? We’re not in position —”

  “Forget it, just move in!” He glared at Lorne as the rattle of rodguns reached his ears. “So much for stealth! Aaren’s just screwed the whole operation!”

  McKay’s head snapped up as the sound of shouting came to his ears. “What was that?”

  “Attackers!” The cry echoed down from the upper floor, followed by the distinctive click-snap of guns coming to the ready.

  Rodney found Gaarin glaring at him with newfound anger. “Wait, no —” His next words were drowned out by the clatter and whistle of shots being fired. At his side, Keller flinched as the first salvo of crude bullets peppered the walls of the old barn with a sound like handfuls of gravel against a tin sheet.

  The people with the sickness could barely stir beyond moans of fear, the more able of them stumbling out of their beds, panic in their eyes. Armed rebels raced into the room, forming a cordon around Soonir.

  The rebel leader had the sampler tubes clutched in his fist, and he came at McKay, his face a mix of emotions. “Did you do this? Did you bring them to us?”

  “No!” But Rodney knew that might not be true; both he and Keller had hidden microtransmitters in their gear that anyone could have located, if they knew what to look for. But surely the locals didn’t have the technology for that. Unless… He swallowed hard.

  “Was this all a trick?” Soonir shook the blood-filled syrettes at Keller. “Did you lie to us?”

  “Never,” she insisted. “We don’t know anything about this!”

  A fresh hail of rodgun rounds clawed at the walls and outside, someone screamed in pain as a shot struck flesh.

  “The guards!” The shout came from the spotter on the upper level who had first cried out the alarm call. “Takkol’s men have come!”

  The first wisps of white smoke curled in through the barred windows and under the gaps around the door.

  Sheppard went up and over, racing into the wall of haze. He didn’t have to look to know that Lorne was right behind him, a pace or so back and to the left, covering him as he moved. He couldn’t see much, only shadows and vague shapes, but he had the route to the farmhouse mapped out in his head. Thirty seconds from the ridge to the wall at a full-tilt run, he told himself, less if I don’t stop to smell the roses.

  With the Wraith stunner in a two-handed grip, the colonel moved in a quick zigzag motion, staying as close as he could to the thickest coils of the smoke; but he’d been right about the breeze. It was blowing steadily in off the lake, diffusing the smokescreen with every passing second.

  He heard the snapping drone of something zipping past his ear and he ducked away as rodgun shots nipped at the dirt. Someone ahead of him shouted out in pain and crumpled to the ground. Sheppard skirted around the dead man; it was one of Aaren’s guards, blown back
off his feet into a snarl of robes, his face a ruin of blood and bone.

  The colonel glanced up, tracking the trajectory of the kill-shot, and through a momentary break in the smokescreen he saw a rebel with a rifle aiming right back at him. On the run, Sheppard released a pulse-bolt from the alien pistol and hit his mark. The rebel shooter fell soundlessly, instantly shocked unconscious. He dropped from the upper level balcony, tumbling headfirst over a rail and through the thatched roof of a pod-hut.

  Lorne raced past and Sheppard fell in with the major, pacing him. They reached the porch of the main building as gunfire hissed and buzzed around them, the chemical taint of the white vapor coating their throats. Lorne nodded at the wide wooden door blocking the entrance and Sheppard returned the gesture. The colonel planted a heavy boot right at the point where a carved lever-lock held the door closed. It splintered and broke, and the doors groaned as they fell open. Two rebels waiting for them inside were dispatched with a brace of stunner blasts.

  “Breach and clear!” ordered Sheppard, and they entered, guns high.

  A woman with a rifle at her side and blood on her face from a gash on her scalp bounded into the room. “Aaren has the voyagers are with them,” she gasped. “The guards have already killed three of our men! They’re going to overrun the farm!”

  “What?” Rodney heard the pure shock in Keller’s voice.

  “They are here for you,” Gaarin told Soonir. “They must not be allowed to take you! Takkol will have his victory!”

  “No, the sick —” Soonir reached out toward the people in the beds.

  “You must go!” Gaarin turned his attention to the other rebels. “Take him to the tunnels, get him away as quickly as you can!”

  The rebel leader rounded on McKay and almost threw the blood vials at him. “Is this what you wanted from us, voyager? Take them, then! Give them to your master!”

  “Master?” Rodney shook his head. “We’re not working for Takkol or the Aegis! You have to believe me!”

  Soonir was already being led away. “How can I?”

  “Wait, no, this isn’t what we wanted…” Gaarin stood in front of McKay to stop him following.

  The other rebel shoved Rodney back with the heel of his hand. “I should kill you for this,” he grated. “It would be fitting!”

  “No,” called Soonir. “No more death! I will not have it.”

  “I’m sorry!” Rodney yelled, as the rebel leader left them behind.

  He looked up and found Gaarin glaring at him. “We are all sorry, voyager,” he growled. “Takkol will ensure we are so.”

  McKay groped for something to say, but in the next second he was covering his ears as a flash bang grenade went off down the hall, the flat concussion hammering through the building.

  There were four of the locals in the corridor, working silently under the glow of a lamp-globe that floated over their heads. They were patching other parts of the damaged metal walls, drawing jagged-edged pieces of Wraith bone-amour from an anti-gravity cart. One of them used something that had to be a molecular welder to bond the salvaged plating to the scorched surfaces. None of them spoke as they went about the duty.

  “They move like machines,” Teyla noted. She was right; their actions were stilted and unnatural.

  He nodded. “No sign of any of those creatures, either.”

  “Shall we take the other path, then? Avoid them?”

  Ronon shook his head. “No. Let’s go take a look.”

  The four figures — three men and a woman — showed no sign of noticing their approach, and when Teyla spoke to them they still did not react.

  “Hello? Can you hear us?”

  “Look,” said the Satedan, indicating the woman. “Remember her?”

  Recognition bloomed on Teyla’s face. “The Heruuni woman from the farm. The one we saw taken by the creatures.”

  Ronon waved his hand in front of the woman’s face, snapped his fingers; nothing. “Hey,” he snapped, raising his voice. “I’m talking to you.”

  The woman’s eyes were vacant and expressionless.

  “It’s as if they’ve been conditioned,” said Teyla. “Put into a waking trance…”

  Ronon stepped in front of the woman from the farm and blocked her path. “Stop what you’re doing,” he demanded, using the ‘command’ tone of voice they had taught him in his combat training on Sateda.

  To his mild surprise, that had the desired effect. The four of them immediately halted.

  “Suggestibility,” Teyla noted. “They’re no better than drones in this state. Mind-controlled, just waiting for the right instructions.” She glanced at him. “For someone to give them orders.”

  “That, I can do,” said Ronon. “How do we get out of this place?” he demanded, searching their faces for any signs of consciousness; he found nothing but blank, mute stares. It was, in its own way, unnerving. Ronon turned to another of them, a man with a shorn skull and faint tattooing. “Tell me where the exit is!”

  All four of the Heruuni turned as one and pointed down the corridor.

  “That is progress,” Teyla allowed.

  “Reckon so.” Ronon prodded the man in the chest. “You will show us where it is.”

  He got a languid nod in return, and with halting steps, the man began to wander away, off into the darkness.

  Moving quickly and carefully, Sheppard and Lorne went from room to room, calling out “Clear!” each time they found an empty chamber, and using the stunners when opposition came at them. They halted at a closed door and shared a look.

  “Where’s this band of dangerous militants Aaren was talking about?” said Lorne. “These guys are just day-players. They barely know how to put up a fight.”

  Sheppard nodded. Only a handful of the rebels they had encountered seemed to have anything like a basic tactical sense. Most of them had surrendered the moment they were threatened, and some didn’t even appear to be able to work their weapons correctly. These people weren’t exactly the heavily-armed band of marauders that the elder had painted them as.

  From the opposite end of the building came the crash-whump of a flash bang, and over the radio the colonel heard Sergeant Rush’s voice. “South entrance secure. Resistance is minimal.”

  “Roger that,” Sheppard replied. “Hold your position and make sure that Aaren’s yahoos don’t shoot anyone else.”

  “Wilco,” said the sergeant.

  “He’s not gonna like that, sir,” Lorne noted.

  “I don’t care what he likes, Major. I’ve had enough of people on this planet yanking our chains. Go!” He moved up toward the door and shouldered it open.

  An empty wicker chair tumbled out of the way and the two officers found themselves inside a large barn filled with beds and scared people.

  “What the hell…?” Lorne halted, panning his weapon over a sea of frightened faces.

  Sheppard caught sight of McKay and Keller across the room, with an armed local towering over them. “Drop the gun!” he shouted. “Right now!”

  “It’s okay!” Rodney replied, gingerly reaching up to take the man’s rifle. “Don’t shoot him.”

  The tall rebel’s shoulders slumped and he released his grip on the rodgun. Sheppard was there in a heartbeat, the stunner still at the ready. “You okay?” He directed the question at Keller, and the doctor gave him a shallow nod; she looked frustrated and weary.

  “Yes, we are fine,” McKay added. “Thanks for asking.”

  “What part of the words sit tight did you not understand?” Sheppard glared at the scientist. “I told you to say in the settlement. Did I leave any kind of ambiguity in that statement?”

  “We got blood samples!” McKay retorted, as if that was explanation enough.

  “They don’t call me ‘colonel’ because I like fried chicken, McKay. I’m the ranking officer here, and when I give an order I expect it to be obeyed!”

  “They had guns,” Rodney countered.

  Sheppard prodded him in the chest. “So did y
ou.”

  “And what would a shoot-out have done for us?” Keller broke in. “We need the trust of these people!”

  He shook his head. “Yeah, well, I think that ship has already sailed.” The colonel shot a look over his shoulder. “Lorne! Get your men in here, secure these people.”

  As the major spoke into his radio, there was a commotion at the other entrance to the barn. Aaren entered, his face like thunder, together with a knot of his guards and several marines trailing with him. “Sorry, sir,” said the sergeant with them, “I tried to stop him.”

  “Just for once, Rush, would it kill you to bring me some good news?”

  Aaren waggled a finger in Sheppard’s face. “Soonir has escaped! You allowed this to happen, Colonel, with your delays and indecision!”

  “You jumped the gun,” Sheppard replied. “That’s on your head, pal.”

  The elder gestured at the sick scattered around the room. “Take the prisoners back to the settlement.”

  “They aren’t militants,” said the tall rebel. “They’re our families, afflicted with the sickness that you pretend does not exist!”

  “You lied to me,” Sheppard said, in a low, dangerous voice. He took a step closer to Aaren and the elder’s men came forward; in the same moment Lorne, Rush and the other marines had their weapons raised. “This place is packed with non-combatants. You wanted me to raid a hospital.”

  “The militants escaped in the confusion,” Aaren retorted. “We know they have an underground network of passages in this area. They must have slipped away...” He straightened and fixed Sheppard with a hard gaze. “You will help us track Soonir. I saw your devices. You will be able to find him for us.”

  The colonel grunted. “You just don’t know when to quit, do you?” He turned to Lorne and shook his head. “Secure your weapons. We’re done here. Assemble our people and head back to the gate.”

  The major saluted and moved off.

  “You are going to leave?” Aaren was surprised.

  “Not all of us.” Sheppard replied. “Not until we find Ronon and Teyla.” He nodded to McKay and Keller. “Come on.”