“I don’t have a choice,” Ronon replied. “Rodney needs to fix the Jumper so we can leave. You need to make sure he’s safe enough to do that. The V’rdai we captured could get loose. There could be other dangers here. And now the Wraith are on the way. You both need to stay here and protect Rodney. But someone has to go after Nekai. We can’t leave him at our backs — we’d never wake up.”
“I’ll take care of him, then,” Sheppard offered. “You and Teyla stay here with Rodney.”
But the Satedan was already shaking his head. “You don’t know Nekai like I do,” he pointed out. “I know how he thinks. I know how he hunts. I can anticipate that. You can’t.”
Sheppard stared at him for a second. “You’re just doing this to avoid having to put up with Rodney,” he accused finally. Ronon laughed even as Sheppard sighed. He knew arguing about it was hopeless. And Ronon was right — he was the only one of them who stood a chance against the V’rdai leader.
“Good luck,” he told his friend.
“Don’t leave without me,” Ronon replied. He was already turning back toward the rocks in the direction of the wrecked V’rdai shuttle — Sheppard had missed seeing that firsthand, but Rodney had told them all about it. Within seconds Ronon had slipped between two rocks and was only a shadow. A rapidly receding shadow.
Sheppard started to turn away when he noticed something. There was a small, dark shape where Ronon had been, a patch against the gray rocks. Too small to be a weapon, but too even to be a stray shadow or a natural indentation. Curious, he walked over to check it out. What he found was a small, dark metal square with a faintly glowing rectangle inset on one side. He recognized it immediately.
The tracking monitor.
“What — did Ronon drop it?” Teyla asked when he rejoined her and showed her the device.
“Not likely,” Sheppard answered, studying the object. “He’s not that careless, and this is too important.” He tossed it from hand to hand. “I’m betting he left it behind deliberately. This way we can tell exactly where Nekai is.”
“But he cannot!” Teyla pointed out.
“No, he can’t,” Sheppard agreed. “He’ll have to do it the hard way.”
“Do you think he will be all right?” Teyla asked, scanning their surroundings again.
“I think he’ll be fine,” Sheppard replied. “I hope we can say the same for us. Rodney, hurry it up!”
“Don’t rush me,” Rodney snapped, still working. “Unless you want to crash before we even make it off of this planet’s ridiculous surface!”
Sheppard shook his head. Ronon had completely disappeared already. Barring any sudden problems, Sheppard knew he wouldn’t see his friend again until they were almost ready to leave this place. Or until Ronon had settled his dispute with Nekai for good.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Ronon paused once the Jumper was out of sight. He had to shift his focus now. It was all too easy to fall into camaraderie and carelessness when he was with his friends. He knew he could count on them to watch his back, even Rodney. But out here, it was just him against Nekai. One on one. He had to be completely alert, as sharp as he’d ever been, and fully self-sufficient. There wasn’t anyone to cover for him if he made a mistake, and any errors could be fatal.
Taking a deep breath, Ronon closed his eyes and forced himself to relax. Being tense when hunting wasn’t a good thing. People assumed it was because if you were tense you were alert, cautious. But tension actually made you paranoid and jumpy — you started at everything, overreacted, overcompensated. And when you were up against someone clever, someone who could plan and prepare and set snares, that meant you could get distracted by obvious dangers and overlook the more subtle signs that pointed to a trap. Better to be calm, cool, and careful. Nekai had taught him that.
Nekai had taught him a lot.
But not everything, Ronon reminded himself. Yes, Nekai had taught him how to hunt. But he’d had six years since then, five of them completely on his own. He’d learned new tricks, things the V’rdai leader probably didn’t know because he didn’t have to. There were a lot of situations a lone Runner came up against that a group never would, and because of that Ronon had been forced to adapt and to find new solutions.
And he had. He’d grown. He’d improved. He’d become a better hunter than he’d ever been with the V’rdai, and a better Runner than any of them. He thought about what he’d heard Adarr and that other V’rdai saying — the legend of a lone Runner who’d evaded the Wraith for years, and who no longer had a tracking device so he could strike at will. All true. And to them it had sounded like an impossible fantasy, a fairy tale. But it was his life.
He was more than a match for any of them now.
Even Nekai.
Which didn’t mean this was going to be easy. He had to watch out for overconfidence. Nekai knew it was him by now, of course — Adarr would have told him after he’d helped Sheppard and Teyla escape. So the V’rdai leader would be setting traps and leaving clues with Ronon in mind. He knew how Ronon thought, how he hunted, how he fought, and he’d take full advantage of that knowledge.
Except that Ronon had changed. And he was willing to bet Nekai hadn’t.
That didn’t make the man any less dangerous. But at least it was a familiar danger, and one Ronon thought he could work around.
He was about to find out if he was right.
A few hours later, Ronon stopped and crouched to study the ground. He’d backtracked to the ledge the V’rdai had used as their staging area and base camp when they’d captured Sheppard and Teyla. The spot was long since deserted now, of course, and scrubbed clean of any trace of the V’rdai, but Ronon had felt it was as good a place as any to start. He knew Nekai had been here, after all, so he figured he could start here and then expand his search outward, circling until he found the Retemite hunter’s tracks.
Most of the ledge was bare rock, which meant no tracks except for bits of stray dirt the V’rdai had apparently tracked in from elsewhere. That wasn’t much help — there was too little dirt and it was too scattered to yield even one partial bootprint, much less a clear set of tracks. But the outcropping the hunters had used as their entryway led to a small clearing between several small boulders, and enough dirt had collected there to give the rocky surface a solid coating. The space had been brushed clean, of course, but staring at it intently Ronon saw what looked like a hint of prints nonetheless, visible as faint depressions just beneath the top layer. He smiled. They’d been left by a man, average height judging by the stride, a little heavy from the weight of the indent but still light on his feet from the evenness front to back.
Nekai.
Ronon’s smile changed to a frown. His old mentor was getting careless — or was he? Nekai had shown nothing but cunning in the trap he’d laid to damage their Jumper and bring them here — never mind that the initial idea had been Ronon’s, all those years ago — and in the snares Sheppard and Teyla had described when explaining how they’d been captured. And Nekai knew he was liable to be followed and even hunted now. Why would he be so sloppy, then? To come back here, where Ronon was sure to look for him, and then not brush the tracks clear completely? Something didn’t add up.
Ronon studied the small clearing again. Then his gaze drifted to the rocks just beyond them, the cluster those almost-vanished tracks directed him toward. He crept over to the nearest boulder there, and then stretched as high as he could, his fingers scrabbling for purchase. After a second he managed to get a passable handhold with his right hand, and hauled himself up far enough to wrap his left arm around the top.
Not the most graceful climb, but it did the job, and a few seconds later he was straddling the boulder. From here he had a clear view of the areas in front and in back, and he studied the stretch behind the boulder as closely as he could from this vantage.