"I've never been what you'd consider civilized," growled Dex, before turning away. "I need some air." He stalked away and out of the gallery.
"Teyla," said Sheppard. "Go after him. Make sure he doesn't break anything." The Athosian woman moved away, clearly content to be free of the company of Daus and his nobles.
"I think I have upset him," Muruw's words were arch and dismissive.
"Oh trust me, you'll know when he's upset," said McKay. "He'll leave a trail of destruction and everything."
Daus gave a sage nod. "Ah, a thought occurs to me. I think I understand the root of Ronon Dex's choler." The Magnate glanced at Sheppard. "He is a Runner, yes? Perhaps his experi ences as quarry in the cruel games played by the Wraith clouds his impressions of us. I assure you, we are very different to those creatures."
Sheppard watched the other man carefully. "I have no doubt you believe that."
Teyla's concern became an outright, fully blown worry when she found a third member of the airship's crew lying unconscious on the decking. She followed the path of open hatchways and insensate soldiers to an open bay in the belly of the ship, a few frames down the hull from the observation gallery.
The bay was open to the air along its length, and through it she could see the continual melee of the little war raging back and forth. Ronon was at the far end, strapping himself into a leather webbing rig attached to a fat drum of steel cable. He was quite furious.
"Ronon, what are you doing?"
He threw her a quick glance. "What does it look like? I'm going to put a stop to their damn game."
"I dislike this as much as you do, but if you go down there, you will be killed! What do you expect to accomplish?"
Dex kicked at a switch and the cable brake released. "You heard him in there. Fighting stops when victory is declared. The victor is the man with both flags." He drew his particle magnum and his short sword from inside his greatcoat, and stepped to the edge. "I'll see you in the winner's circle."
Before she could stop him, Ronon stepped out into thin air and fell away from the airship. The cables played out, dropping him down with a screech of cogs. Teyla saw him fall free of the rig and land in a tuck-and-roll. He came up fighting, stunning two men with gun blasts and knocking another down with the flat of his sword. Then he vanished into the battle smoke, toward the pole where the tan pennant was snapping in the wind.
In the observation gallery, cries of alarm and shouts of anger warred with a grating alert siren.
"Someone has descended into the engagement!" snapped Baron Noryn. "This is a gross breach of the rules!"
"It's the Runner!" called another man, peering through a telescope. "He's violated the field of conflict!"
All eyes turned to Sheppard, and he could have sworn there was amusement on Vekken's lips. "What is the meaning of this?" demanded Daus.
"Ah," said John.
Chapter Four
Ronon kept low, dodging between what little cover he could find on the battlefield, doing his best to avoid the combatants and taking them out from range when they left him with no choice. He halted in the shade of an overturned steam truck to catch his breath, checking the charge on his pistol.
Dex's anger enveloped him with a steady, drumming fury. His dislike of these self-styled `nobles' had gradually ramped up from the moment they had crossed paths with them on M3Y465, little by little their contemptuous and faintly mocking manners grating more and more on his patience. He might have been able to tolerate their foppish conduct and the way they played at being soldiers, if they hadn't brought them to see this pathetic game that masqueraded as a real war.
Honor and duty, those were ideals that Ronon understood. Once upon a time, he might have even been willing to die for them; but things were not the same now. Years of fleeing from arrogant hunters had taught him differently. The Satedan had learned the hard way that true battle brought no glory, no favor. It was nothing but blood cost after blood cost, and no amount of accolades or pieces of shiny metal pinned to a man's chest could balance the butcher's bill. That lesson had been a harsh one, harsh enough to end all life on his homeworld.
He cast a cold-eyed glance up at the airship overhead. These aristocrats, floating over the carnage in all their finery, heavy with hollow decorations and toy weapons, they understood nothing. He imagined them stripped of their privileges, without bodyguards to defend them, facing a true enemy, facing Wraith. Dex doubted if more than a handful of them would have the spirit to fight for their lives. They were nothing but spoilt, arrogant children, and he was sick of their little games.
The Runner burst from cover as a trio of tancoats marched past him. With a blow from the curved pommel of his short sword, Ronon felled the first man and shot another at pointblank range with his pistol, the red flash of the stun bolt knocking his target down. The third tancoat was on his guard, and fired his lance-rifle. Dex twitched away as a volley of needleshot cut through the air where he had been standing, and he threw himself at the soldier. The last man cried out as Ronon bunched a fistful of his uniform and pulled him off-balance. He took a head-butt across the nose and his eyes rolled back, insensate. By the time he hit the mud, Dex was already sprinting through the thin haze of smoke, zigzagging around tumbleweed clumps of razor wire and rusted tank traps.
Ronon hopped over trenches, ignoring shouts of alarm and sporadic flashes of gunfire. The soldiers saw him and their first reaction was uncertainty; he could read the question on their mud-stained, smoke-dirty faces. Who is that man? Whose side is he on? With no sigils or sashes, no uniform as they understood it, the troopers didn't know what to make of him. Their enemy today wore powder blue, and Dex's clothes of tawny leather matched no uniform they had ever seen.
His greatcoat flapped open like the wings of a raptor bird as he threw himself over a revetment and on to the foot of the hill where the tan banner was based. Ronon saw the thin gun slits of a low bunker, and emerging from a vent in the roof, a whitepainted flagpole from which the Baron Noryn's battle standard hung.
"Hoi!" shouted a voice. A concealed trapdoor in the hillside flapped open, revealing a tancoat wearing a forage cap laden with officer braid. "Blade's sake, who are you? Name and unit, man, or I'll take you apart!" He had a bell-mouthed blunderbuss in his grip.
"Specialist Ronon Dex, Satedan Regulars." He gave a grim salute with his particle magnum.
The tancoat officer blinked in confusion. "Eh? I've never heard of that division. What's your Dynast, whose side are you on-
From nowhere, a mortar shell exploded nearby and the con cussion made the soldier flinch. Dex took the opportunity and struck the man with a snap shot, grabbing him and dragging his body out of the foxhole. "Mine," he told the unconscious officer. "I'm on my side."
Ronon dropped through the open hatch; as he guessed, the inside of the hilltop was lined with tunnels leading up to the bunker at the crown. Holstering the pistol, he fished in the deep pockets of his coat and retrieved a trio of stubby black cylinders. What was it that Sheppard 's people called them? Flash-bangs. He smiled coldly. The directness of the name appealed to him. Dex pulled the pins on the stun grenades and threw the cylinders hard down the tunnel, into the heart of the bunker, then ducked down and pulled his coat flap over his face.