“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.