SGA-13 Hunt and Run (18 page)

This was different.

Ronon could tell that this had once been a major city. He was guessing a million inhabitants, possibly more. A few buildings still rose as much as ten stories into the air, and their jagged tops proclaimed that once they had reached far higher, daring to graze the clouds themselves. The streets were broad and straight, the city laid out in a neat grid broken here and there by circles — those might have been for traffic, or for use as parks and gathering places, or perhaps both. They were covered in dust and debris now, of course.

But a city this size had possessed advanced technology, on a par with the cities of his own world. They’d probably had some sort of security force, both for internal conflicts and for potential invasions through the ancestral ring. Those guards would have possessed body armor, maybe energy rifles, possibly even explosives.

Things they could definitely use.

“Come on, come on,” Frayne urged as they scouted down one of the streets. “Let’s go! The sooner we snatch and grab, the sooner we’re back.”

Ronon laughed at the smaller man’s impatience. “What’s your hurry?” he asked. “You that eager to get your butt whipped in the ring again?” Setien and Frayne had been sparring when Nekai had announced it was time for another mission. Not surprisingly, the orange-haired Yadonite had been losing. Badly.

“I don’t like places like this,” Frayne grumbled in reply, shrugging off Ronon’s dig. “Remind me too much of home.”

That one Ronon couldn’t argue, and so saw no need to comment. He’d learned a lot about the other V’rdai over the past eight months, and he was comfortable with all of them now, just as they were comfortable with him. Ever since that first hunt, when he’d led them to taking down their first Dart, he’d been fully accepted as part of the team. Even Frayne had never doubted him again. That didn’t stop the shorter man from griping about Ronon occasionally, but that was just Frayne. He wasn’t happy unless he had something to complain about. And if there wasn’t anything? He would invent something. Ronon was fairly certain it was just a pose, and that it amused Frayne to come across as a constant complainer. Fairly certain.

In this case, though, Ronon knew the concern was genuine. Frayne’s homeworld, Yadon, had been one of the few worlds the Wraith had allowed to advance technologically, a place of vast oceans and towering cities. The people there flew from place to place because there was no other way — the waters were too turbulent to allow for sea travel, and land was sparse enough that it was completely covered by the metropolises that housed the many Yadonites. That was why Frayne was such a good pilot. As with all his people, he had learned early, and practiced often. Ever since his world’s destruction, however, he had been uncomfortable in anything more populous than their own dome. Even small villages made him jumpy.

Being in a large city like this, especially one this badly damaged, had him jumping at shadows and starting at the slightest breeze.

“Been a little while, at least,” Ronon commented, kicking a pile of cloth and bones out of his path. “That’s a good thing.” It was, too. Clearly this city had been hit some time ago, long enough that the bodies had all disintegrated down to the bones. He shuddered to think of walking this giant mass tomb a few months or years earlier, when the corpses were still rotting. “Means no fresh food, though.”

His companion grunted. “Not likely to find anything like that here, anyway,” he pointed out, his eyes still restlessly scanning ahead of them. “Everything’d be processed.”

“Right.” Ronon hadn’t thought about that. It had been so long since he’d been in a proper city, and even then he’d been in the military. All of their food had taken the form of hard, long-lasting rations. Whenever he’d been on leave Melena had made salads and other meals with fresh meat and fruit, so he’d simply assumed that was what civilians ate all the time. But of course they hadn’t. He felt a sudden, sharp pang of renewed sorrow. She’d saved the good stuff for when he’d visited.

“Might be able to find some decent gear, if we can locate a security station,” Ronon pointed out, forcing his thoughts back to the present. “Body armor, weapons — boots.”

That got a laugh from Frayne. “What, Setien’s work not to your liking?” the little man teased.

Ronon frowned down at his feet. “She’s good,” he answered. “Not her fault she didn’t have much to work with.” He’d been able to get clean clothes, good and sturdy, from the stores the V’rdai had collected. But they hadn’t possessed any footwear large enough to accommodate him — Adarr had small feet for a man his height, and Setien’s were large for a woman but not for a man, so the team had never had a need to collect bigger shoes or boots. Setien was good with leatherworking — her father had taught her, she’d revealed during one of the rare times she’d talked about the family she’d lost long before the Wraith had appeared — and she had cobbled together a pair of sandals for him at first, so he’d at least have something to protect his soles from rough terrain. Later she’d found enough leather scraps to put together a pair of patchwork boots. They were the right size, and as solid as she could make them, but none of the scraps had been bigger than his fist so there was as much stitching as material protecting his feet. And nowhere near enough cushioning.

Every chance they’d had since then, Ronon had searched for a proper pair of boots. And every time he did, Frayne had needled him about it.

But never within Setien’s hearing.

Still, the orange-haired Yadonite had brought more than one pair of boots to Ronon’s attention. None of them had fit, but the smaller man was trying. That made up for all the teasing.

They reached one of the circles in the road, and Ronon saw that both his guesses had been correct. The road swept around the space, linking to another road that cut across and creating a wide intersection, but in the center was an area that had clearly been grass and bushes and possibly small benches. Both decorative and functional, restful and productive. Ronon glanced around again, this time noticing how the architecture was handsome and smooth and attractive without being garish or purely ornamental. Whoever these people had been, they had built well.

But their very prosperity had no doubt attracted the Wraith’s attention. And led to their demise.

Down the way, Ronon spotted Banje, Setien, and Adarr. They had reached a similar intersection level with his own. “Find anything?” Setien shouted over to him.

Ronon shook his head. “Nothing so far.”

“Neither have we.” She waved. “First one to find the fruit gets first dibs!” Then she and her teammates were off again.

Ronon shook his head, laughing. Setien and her fruit! He hadn’t really believed her the time she’d threatened to beat him for the last fig they’d found on one world — until she’d tackled him and wrestled it from his grip. Now he knew to give her a wide berth when anything like that was involved.

“We’d better keep up,” Frayne said, and Ronon nodded and followed him further down the road. They both kept their eyes peeled, but so far there was nothing. The buildings all seemed to have been workplaces, not factories or homes, and the ones they did search had nothing in them but rubble and shattered desks and chairs and what must have been monitors of some sort. All completely useless to them.

“Let’s hope the others are having better luck,” Ronon muttered as they exited enough of the dust-coated offices. “It may be that all the homes and markets were on the other end of the city. And we may not have enough time to reach them before Banje orders a retreat.”

“Fine by me,” Frayne replied. He shuddered. “Being closed in by all this death gives me the creeps.”

A sudden flicker of movement caught Ronon’s eye, and he spun, dropping to a crouch even as his pistol cleared its holster and came up, targeting what he was seeing. Then he lowered it again as his brain caught up, resolving the motion into Adarr racing toward them.

“Come quick!” the tall Fenabian gasped as soon as he was close enough. “We found something!”

“Something good or something bad?” Ronon asked as he and Frayne closed the distance to their teammate, who spun and headed back the way he’d come, with them right behind him. He figured whatever they’d found wasn’t a threat or he’d hear gunfire. Unless it was something too big for the three of them to handle in which case Adarr would have cautioned them to quiet. Right now the pale, lanky mechanic seemed far more interested in speed than stealth.

“Good,” Adarr replied. “Maybe. We need Frayne.” Ronon and Frayne exchanged a quick glance, both of them feeling a rising excitement. Frayne was far and away the best pilot they had — he’d proven that when Nekai had finally let him handle the shuttle on the way to one mission, and he’d set it down so gently they hadn’t even known he’d landed until he powered the engines down. If Banje wanted him specifically, it could only mean one thing — they’d found a ship!

Ronon had already heard the stories behind the V’rdai’s three existing shuttles. Nekai had found one himself, before meeting any of the others. It had been intact and abandoned, and he had simply taken it and left before anyone could come looking for it. He and Turen and Banje — they had been the first two he’d recruited, at least among the surviving V’rdai — had discovered the second outside a small village by a lake somewhere, a hole through its front and a dead man in the pilot’s chair. The village had contained nothing but bodies, clearly the victims of a Wraith attack. They had managed to repair the damage enough to get the craft spaceworthy again.

The third one had been discovered only a few months before Ronon’s arrival. Adarr was part of the V’rdai by then, and when the team had happened upon a small spaceport he’d been able to rebuild a working shuttle from the wreckage of the five different ships that had been unlucky enough to be sitting there when the Wraith had struck.

But if it was a question of checking to see if a craft still worked, they’d want Adarr. So why send for Frayne? Unless they had something they thought could fly, and didn’t know how it worked. If anyone could figure out a spaceship’s controls, it would be Frayne.

Sure enough, after another ten minutes of running, Adarr led them into a wide, open area to one side of the city. There were a few low buildings here, each one with a pair of wide doors across the front. Hangars. Wreckage littered what had clearly been a landing strip of some kind, and Banje and Setien were checking out a shape that looked surprisingly intact.

A shuttle. Or at least a small spaceship of some sort. Even from here Ronon could tell that much.

“We think it might still work,” Banje told them as they slowed and walked the last few feet to join him. “But we have no idea how it works, or what it’s capable of.”

Frayne nodded, his eyes already working their way over the hull. “Spaceworthy, definitely,” he announced absently, studying it — his usual grumpiness disappeared completely as he considered the puzzle before them. “Not interstellar, though — not with those engine ports.” He circled it. “Limited shields, no significant weapons. Another shuttle, definitely, but strictly short-range. It’d fit through the ring, though. We could use it to get back and forth to the base, if we could bring it there, but that’s about it. And that’s assuming I can figure out the controls once we get it open.” He didn’t sound too worried about that, though, and neither was anyone else. If it could fly, Frayne could fly it.

Banje shook his head, clearly frustrated. “Three is all we need for that,” he said. “Any more and we risk drawing attention to ourselves. Looks like we leave it.”

He turned to walk away, but Ronon held up a hand to stop him. “This thing can fly?”

It was Adarr who answered him. “I think so — I’d have to go over its systems more carefully, but I’m pretty sure I can get it to power up, and the engines themselves are undamaged.” He glanced around. “If necessary I can probably replace anything I can’t repair.”

“What’re you thinking?” Banje asked Ronon quietly. The two of them had established a strong rapport over the past eight months. They thought a lot alike, though Banje was more cautious and Ronon took more risks. Never stupid risks, though, and the Desedan knew that. He also knew that Ronon was always looking for new ways to kill more Wraith.

“I’m thinking we could use this thing after all,” Ronon replied, still playing with ideas as they formed. “Not for us, though. Just as bait.”

“Bait?” Setien laughed. “It’s an old shuttle in a burned-out spaceport on the edge of a ruined city. Who’re we going to lure here with that?”

“Nobody.” Ronon grinned at her. “But it won’t be here. Good bait has to be somewhere the prey can see it.”

Frayne groaned. “Why do I get the feeling I’ve just been volunteered for something I really won’t like?” But Ronon saw how the Yadonite’s eyes kept straying back to the shuttle. Frayne loved to fly, and did so any chance he got. And this was a new ship, one he’d never tested before.

“Don’t worry,” Ronon assured him. “You’ll have the easy part.” He looked at the others. “Adarr, I’ll need your help. I can handle the rest myself.”

Banje studied him, then shook his head. But all he said was, “Setien, go find Nekai. Tell him Ronon’s having another one of his crazy plans.”

Setien nodded. “Don’t kill anything until I get back!” she demanded, taking off at a dead run. Within seconds she had vanished among the buildings.

Ronon had already pulled Adarr over to the shuttle, and gestured at its engines. “How stable are these things?”