Puddle Jumper? What the hell kind of a name was that for a ship?
After a moment, McKay's voice came over the speaker. He sounded irritated — more irritated than usual. "Ali, this is Flight. I thought we were going with Gateship."
Sheppard rolled his eyes. "Negative, flight."
"Standby…" said McKay. In the background his voice drifted just within range of the mic. "It's a ship that goes through the gate!" After a beat he huffed, "Fine." Then he came back properly over the speakers. "Puddle Jumper, you're clear for launch."
Sheppard's grin said `about time'. Placing his hands on the controls he brought the ship to life. "Dial it up, Lieutenant."
The gate symbols were still indelibly imprinted into his mind, and Ford inputted them quickly into the small DHD device mounted between himself and Sheppard. As he did so the ship lifted into the air, hovering as the turntable beneath it twirled open like the iris back at Stargate Command. Slowly, with a grace no human-built aircraft could ever manage, the Puddle Jumper sank through the opening and into the gate room below. Through the cockpit window Ford could see Dr. Weir and Dr. McKay watching in open-mouthed astonishment as the ship descended and hovered before the open wormhole.
Weir's voice came over the radio. "Be safe."
Sheppard didn't answer, but Ford caught the smile that twitched his lips just before the engines roared and the ship accelerated through the wormhole. They were going so fast the ice-cold trip was over almost before it had begun and suddenly they shot out into black space, the blue-white planet glistening like a jewel before them. It looked beautiful, breathtaking, just like the pictures of Earth from the Shuttle back home. Stupidly, he wished he'd brought a camera. His dad would have loved this…
Something rippled across the window, and he realized that Major Sheppard had engaged the ship's stealth mode. Ford glanced over at him. "Looks like you've got the hang of it."
"I tell you what, Lieutenant," Sheppard said, failing to hide the awe in his voice. "I know a few fighter pilots who'd kill to fly this thing…it's like it reads your mind."
Without warning a heads-up display appeared, focusing on a target on the surface of the planet below. Startled, Ford said, "Did you do that?"
"I was just wonderin' where we go from here."
"So that would be a yes." Awesome! Of course, once they were on the ground and didn't have the ship to do the thinking for them, things might not go so smoothly. "How do we find them once we land?"
The Major nodded. "I've been thinking about that too." All of a sudden a small PDA unit on the cockpit wall next to Sheppard began to glow. Cautiously he pulled it off and studied it, exchanging an astonished glance with Ford. After a moment he said, "Now I'm thinking of a turkey sandwich…" He looked around expectantly, but nothing happened.
"Worth a try," said Ford.
Shrugging his agreement, Sheppard pocketed the PDA and took the ship down low over the hostile, alien world.
Far below them, deep in the Wraith hive, Teyla sat in silence. There was no way to measure the time down here in the unending darkness, but Toran's screams had stopped long ago and no one had spoken since he had been taken. Teyla knew with a certainty as final as death that she would not see him again, just as she would never again see her mother. Across the pen Colonel Sumner sat with a rigid back, locked in frustration. He had tried to force the door, to pry open the bars with his bare hands, but escape was impossible. She could have told him as much, but Teyla knew he would not believe her and she suspected that the attempt helped him deal with the terror they all felt. It hovered in the air like the dank smell of death that surrounded them, and its chill was as deathly as ice. Fear could kill you, she'd seen it happen. She'd seen people freeze in terror, watching and doing nothing as the Wraith beam swept down and took them away.
But not her, not Teyla Emmagan. She would never succumb to fear, she would never give the Wraith that satisfaction. They might kill her, but they would not make her bend or tremble.
A scuff of feet took them all to alert, a burst of adrenaline pumping hard through her blood as the Wraith returned. This time, when it stepped into the pen the creature's dead eyes locked onto Colonel Sumner. He met the lifeless gaze with a defiance Teyla hoped to match when they came for her. They stared at each other, the Wraith and Sumner, and it felt like forever before the creature turned and left the cell. It had not laid a hand on the Colonel, yet he knew what he must do. With one parting look at his men he followed the Wraith to his death.
In all her life, Teyla had never seen a man act with more bravery or dignity and it shamed her that she had once thought ill of him. She watched until he had disappeared into the shadows and flung out a prayer for the protection of his soul.
Chapter Eight
John Sheppard brought the ship — the Puddle Jumper — down in a small clearing among sparse trees. It didn't seem a whole lot different from Teyla's planet, and he considered briefly why a world in a completely differently galaxy might look so much like home. Perhaps the Ancients were keen gardeners and had spent their time sowing seeds as well as humanity? Or maybe he had better things to think about. Dismissing the thought, he removed his hands from the controls, and the cockpit powered down.
Nodding at Ford, he slipped from his seat and gave the order to move out. With a quiet hiss the back door opened and a scent of damp leaves and pine drifted into the ship. Picking up his P90, Sheppard let Stackhouse lead the way out, himself, Ford, and the other SOs following.
The air was cool and damp, the forest silent as his boots thumped down onto soft dirt. He did a slow three-sixty, weapon raised, listening hard. Nothing. So far so good… "Teams of two," he told Stackhouse. "Learn what you can and lay down defenses as you see fit. I want to be able to light this place up if we have to. Two clicks on the radio means you're clear to talk."
"Yes, sir."
"Do not engage the enemy," he added, preparing to move out. "Ford, with me."
The kid fell in beside him, barely concealing his enthusiasm. It made Sheppard feel older and more seasoned than his years suggested, and he wondered if this was what desk-jockeys like O'Neill called the `burden of command'. He knew, just as Dr. Weir did, that some or all of them might not make it back. And as much as she had given them the go, it had been at his urging. This was his plan, and the lives of these seven men lay firmly in his hands.
It was enough to make anyone grow up fast.
The thing about fear was that you couldn't just ignore it. You couldn't pretend it wasn't there, jut out your chin and keep going, because one day, right at the worst possible moment, you'd slip and fall, and that fear would come bursting out and leave you shaking and helpless. Colonel Sumner had seen it happen. No, the thing with fear was that you had to embrace it. You had to know it like the enemy, you had to understand how it made you think and feel, and how much it twisted your mind and your reason. Once you knew all that it couldn't surprise you. It couldn't control you, you controlled it. And as he was led through endless echoing corridors, never far from the stench of death, Sumner needed all the control he could muster.
Truth was, he was terrified.
These things — these creatures — were like nothing he'd ever encountered. If he'd believed in Good and Evil he'd have called them devils. Their dead eyes were like mirror-glass, their skin that of a corpse. Their demon mouths, stinking of death and corruption, made him want to vomit. These were no snakeheads, no Goa'uld — they at least had all the human failings of vanity, greed and egotism. But these Wraith… They were closer to the beasts than humanity, cunning beasts that hungered only for hunting and-
His thoughts were derailed when he found himself being led into a giant room. Its edges were lost in shadows that looked like cloisters, its cone-shaped ceiling soaring up almost too high for him to see and its honeycombed surface glowing a soft gold. And all around, at the periphery of his vision, he could glimpse whispers of movement. Dark shapes flitting around the edges of the room, shadows within shadows.