Weir turned to the gate operator. “You heard him. Open the gate.”
The operator keyed in the address and looked over at Zelenka before touching the final symbol. He nodded once, and the last glyph was entered.
Immediately, the Stargate fired up. The vacant surface filled with bubbling energy and an event horizon formed, bursting into life and shimmering with that strange, unnatural glow.
Almost immediately, the lack of power was apparent. The event horizon flickered and the lights around the edge of the Stargate dimmed. The vortex buckled, warped and finally sheered away. There was the faint sound of machinery winding down, and then nothing. The Stargate was as dead as it had been before.
Weir turned to Zelenka urgently. “Well?” The monitors were filling with data and Zelenka’s eyes flicked across the rows of numbers and symbols. “We’ve lost the connection,” he said.
“But did it work?” she asked. “Did the databurst get through?”
Zelenka looked up, concern etched into his face. “It was sent. Something went through the wormhole. Whether anyone was listening, that I don’t know. We can hope.”
Weir looked back at the now-silent gate, consumed with an impotent frustration. She had hoped at least for confirmation that the message had been delivered. Without that, the knowledge that they had sent potentially life-saving technology through the wormhole just added an extra layer of uncertainty.
“Yes, we will,” she said, half to herself. “We’ll just have to hope.”
Ronon slipped his gun from his furs. The hunters had become uneasy, and the effect was contagious. The further they went, the darker it got. Surrounded by shadows, it was easy to start getting jumpy.
“What is it?” he hissed to Orand.
“The others sense something,” he replied, keeping his voice low. “I can feel it too. It’s like when…” He trailed off.
“Like when what?”
“Let’s just keep going,” said Orand, taking his jar’hram from his back and hefting it in his free hand.
They pressed on, heading ever downwards. The rock around them closed in, glazed with ice. Ronon couldn’t sense anything. There was nothing but the distant, echoing cracks of the ice and the soft footfalls of the hunters.
Then he heard it.
“What’s that?” he said, whirling round and pointing his gun into the darkness behind them.
“What?” said Orand, coming to his side. His eyes were wide with fear.
“Something back there. Like a… whisper.”
“Ancestors preserve us…” breathed Orand. “We’ve got to move faster.”
He hissed an order to the hunters, and they started traveling quicker. It wasn’t easy — the dark was almost complete, and the rock corridor was uneven and twisting.
“Orand, you’re gonna have to tell me what this is about,” said Ronon, jogging to keep up.
“Maybe you don’t have them on your world,” said Orand, pushing the pace further. “They come at random, and you can’t fight them. We’ve lost so many to them.” He shot Ronon a worried glance. “They come to cull.”
At that, Ronon felt a tremor pass through him. So the Wraith were here.
“You might not be able to fight them,” he growled, looking about him eagerly, “but I can.”
“I don’t think —”
Orand was cut short. There was a cry of alarm from up ahead.
“They’re here!” came a strangled shout from one of the hunters.
In the narrow confines of the tunnel, all became confusion. The hunters started to run, pushing past one another, stumbling against the rocks.
Ronon whirled round. The swishing sound was getting louder. He couldn’t see a thing.
“Stand your ground!” he shouted to the others, but it was too late. Like a startled herd of animals, the hunters were running. They’d become the prey, darting down the tunnels like rabbits. Orand went after them, leaving Ronon alone at the rear.
He tried to make out what had got them so terrified. As their lights disappeared into the gloom it got even harder to make anything out. Keeping his gun raised, he followed them, scouring the dark to see what was going on.
The swishing got louder. He looked over his shoulder. There was something materializing behind him, emitting its own light. It was above him, hard against the roof of the tunnel. For a moment, he thought it was a figure transporting in, but the shape never solidified.
Ronon felt a rush of fear.
That was crazy. Even locked in the middle of a Hiveship, surrounded by his mortal enemies, he hadn’t felt that kind of fear. What was getting into him? He flicked the gun setting to ‘kill’, and the white light flashed along its flank.
He forced himself to stop running and turned to face it. There was a face there, narrow and arrogant, distorted with anger. There were hands outstretched, fingers extended. It rushed toward him, arms grasping. Everything was insubstantial, hard to make out.
He fired off three rounds. The bolts of energy screamed off, each perfectly aimed. They went straight through the apparition, shattering ice and rock beyond it. The ghost swept towards him.
“OK, that’s no Wraith,” he muttered, turning tail and running after the hunters. As he went, he could feel the apparition’s presence coming up behind him. His heart started beating out of control, sweat breaking out across his forehead. He tried to fight it, but the fear built in his throat.
He sped onward, not risking turning. The tunnel continued to plunge down, taking him deeper and deeper into the planet’s core. Soon he could see the lights of the hunters again. He spun round quickly and loosed another volley.
Same result. Nothing hit. But this time the apparition responded.
Crackling energy streaked from its ghostly fingers, aimed right for him.
Ronon sprang away from the blast, rolling as he hit the floor. The jagged rocks bit into his flesh, and he staggered as he found his feet again. Something hot had torn right past his shoulder.
He scrambled down the tunnel after the hunters, fear now thick in his throat. Orand was right. They couldn’t fight this. Forgetting his training, forgetting his weapon, forgetting the mission, Ronon Dex ran for his life.
“I’m a genius!” cried McKay, enjoying the familiar warm glow of success. It was almost his favorite feeling. His absolute favorite involved Samantha Carter from SGC, and was not something he dwelt on very much these days.
Sheppard looked up wearily. He’d been dismantling, carrying, fixing and testing for what seemed like hours, and McKay even began to feel a little sorry for him.
“That’s great, Rodney,” Sheppard said. “Wanna tell me why?”
McKay favored him with his patent self-satisfied smirk. “Because, my good Colonel, I have restored power to the Jumper.”
He picked up a small control panel and entered the command. Lights flickered on along the length of the rear bay. With a further press, the inner bulkhead doors slid open and the dark interior of the cockpit emerged. The windshield was covered with snow, but everything looked in working order.
“I gotta hand it to you,” said Sheppard, looking relieved. “You sure know when to pull the rabbit out of the hat.”
McKay knew Sheppard didn’t usually enjoy paying compliments, but he could see the man was impressed.
McKay flicked a few more switches and a series of secondary systems began to power up. “It’ll take a while for everything to get back up to speed,” he said. “Some of the damage is irreparable and we’ll be a little shaky for a while. I don’t reckon we’ll get more than a single flight, but we’ve got enough to get us home.” Then a worried frown creased his forehead. “That is, of course, if we can get the Stargate to open. And of course we don’t really know what went wrong last time, so we’d have to try and figure that out before making the jump to Atlantis. And if that’s not possible, we might still be stuck here. Though of course, we can now get into orbit if we really have to, although how much that’ll help when we’re…”