SGA-13 Hunt and Run (25 page)

“And then you were on your own for five years after that?”

“Yep.”

Rodney was having trouble processing that. “How the hell did you survive that long?” he finally blurted out. Well, he wasn’t known for beating around the bush. “I mean, those first two years you had a whole team with you, and your signals cancelled each other out. But the last five it was just you, and nothing to shield you from the Wraith!”

“I was lucky,” Ronon told him bluntly. But after a second he added, “and well-trained. All those skills Nekai taught me? They kept me alive.”

“I assume the Wraith came after you?”

“All the time,” Ronon answered. “They had my tracking device visible on their monitors now, but even so they were cautious. For two years, every time they found a Runner a pack of hunters wound up dead. That helped me — it meant they didn’t just charge in. They took their time. And that gave me time to notice them coming, and set up a proper welcome.” Rodney saw a flash of lesser darkness in the shadows, and realized Ronon had grinned. He shuddered. He’d seen that grin far too many times, always right before Ronon shot something. Or someone.

Something else was bothering him, though. “Beckett never said anything about explosives.”

Thanks to their narrow confines, Ronon heard him. “You mean on the tracking device?” He laughed once, a sharp, bitter sound rather than his usual amused chuckle. “That’s because there weren’t any.”

“Nekai lied about the explosives?” It made sense, though. What better way to keep the team together than to make them think they had to stay together?

“I wasn’t sure,” Ronon admitted, “not until Beckett examined me. But I’d suspected. I’d actually wondered about it back when I was still with them, that and a few other things.” He shook his head. “Nekai needed to remain in control. So he kept us in the dark as much as possible, and lied to us when he thought it would help.” He shrugged. “I tried removing the device myself, right after I got away, but I couldn’t get the right angle. And I couldn’t trust anyone to help me.”

“Until you met us.” Then Rodney flashed back to their first encounter with Ronon, and how the Satedan had taken Teyla hostage and had ordered Beckett to remove the tracking device at gunpoint. “Or maybe trust isn’t the right word there, either.”

Ronon grunted. “I trust you now,” he admitted softly. Rodney was surprised how much he appreciated that simple statement. And he trusted the big guy, too.

Not that he was about to tell him that.

“So you think it’s still Nekai himself?” he asked after a minute.

“I don’t know,” Ronon replied. “Maybe. Or maybe the others just kept up what he’d started.” He shifted again. “I know one thing, though. They’ve taken it a step further.”

“How’s that?”

“When I left, Nekai was talking about killing anyone who crossed their path, Wraith or not,” Ronon pointed out. “But this trap was way out in the middle of nowhere. No one was going to happen across it.”

“So they’re actively hunting humans now as well,” Rodney agreed. “Swell.”

He waited a second, but Ronon didn’t say anything else, so after a minute Rodney leaned back and closed his eyes. But sleep wouldn’t come.

“They don’t know it’s you, do they?” he asked finally.

“I doubt it,” Ronon answered. “No tracking device, and I didn’t see anyone watching us.”

“Sheppard and Teyla might let your name slip.”

That got one of Ronon’s more typical chuckles. “They won’t talk. At least, not the way the V’rdai are hoping. Sheppard won’t give them anything.”

“Well, what now?” Rodney asked. “We can’t just stay in here forever.”

“No, we can’t,” his companion agreed.

“So what do we do?”

Again he caught a quick glimmer of the Satedan’s grin. “They’re hunting us,” he replied. “So we hunt them first.”

Rodney woke to a world of hurt.

“Oh, ow!” he complained, shifting slightly and producing a wave of sharp pain across his back, shoulders, and neck. Another twist and his legs and butt joined in, all protesting angrily.

“Shhh,” Ronon warned beside him.

“What do you mean, ‘shhh’?” Rodney snapped, but quietly. “We’re trapped in a tiny cave somewhere on a godforsaken planet in the middle of nowhere! Who’s going to hear me?”

“The people hunting us.”

That shut Rodney up, but only for a second. “Oh right, because they’re going around and putting their ear to every rock and cliff and hillside they can find, just on the off chance they’ll hear us in this little cave nobody knows exists?” He tried stretching again, but only succeeded in banging his elbow, forearm, and wrist on the low ceiling. The new injuries joined the chorus of older ones in shrieking at his misuse of his own body.

“Sound carries,” Ronon answered softly. “And we have no way of knowing if these walls have cracks in them. Our voices could be heard miles away.”

“But if they were,” Rodney argued, “wouldn’t that make us impossible to locate by sound alone?” He grinned, and was pleased to discover his face was one of the only parts of him that didn’t hurt. Thank God for small favors!

“Best not to chance it,” was all his companion replied. Which meant Ronon knew he was right but couldn’t admit it. The pleasure of winning yet another argument helped offset the pain of sleeping curled up in a hard rocky niche but didn’t drive it away completely.

“What time is it?” Rodney asked, though he did whisper the question. “How long have we been in here?”

“It’s almost dawn,” Ronon told him. “We slept maybe four hours.”

“Four hours? I’m useless without at least six.”

“Guess you don’t sleep much, then,” his companion said, and Rodney could tell the big lug was grinning.

“Ha ha, very funny. So when are we getting out of this lovely little hole in the wall? Dawn?”

But Ronon shook his head — Rodney’s eyes had apparently adapted enough to their environs that he could see the motion, even though the Satedan’s features were still a blur. “Too early,” came the answer.

“Too early? What are you talking about? We have to go find Sheppard and Teyla. We’ve got to get the Jumper up and running again. We’ve got to call Woolsey and let him know where we are!”

His companion turned and looked down at him. “They’ll be waiting for us at first light,” he explained. “It’s the best time to hunt — the prey’s still tired, not fully alert, and the early light can be misleading, even blinding at the right angles.”

“Oh.” Rodney thought about that. “So what do we do?”

“We wait until mid-morning. They’ll be getting restless by then, which means they’re more likely to make mistakes.”

“Great. So what do we do until then?”

Beside him, Ronon leaned his head back against the cave’s curving wall. “Sleep,” he answered. And within seconds he was doing just that.

Swell. “I can’t just go to sleep upon command!” Rodney whispered, but Ronon didn’t react. The Satedan had demonstrated plenty of times that he possessed that military knack for falling asleep instantly, though Rodney knew if there was danger Ronon would be awake again at once and fully alert. But he didn’t share that skill. He needed quiet, and calm, and a comfortable bed, and a soft pillow, and a warm blanket, and music playing, and —

Before he could even finish his list, Rodney was asleep. .

*
 
*
 
*

“What is your name?” The masked figure loomed over Sheppard, leaning in close enough that he could make out angry blue eyes through the tinted goggles.

“Mickey Mouse,” Sheppard replied. He resisted the urge to spit, but did deliberately stick out his bottom lip. That caused his answer — and the hot air that went with it — to angle directly into his questioner’s face. The goggles fogged instantly, making the figure recoil and tear them off so he could see properly. Yep, blue eyes, and set in a narrow, pale-skinned face, Sheppard noticed. Human, unquestionably, but then he’d already figured their captors weren’t Wraith. This just wasn’t their style.

“Tell me the truth!” His interrogator struck him hard across the face, the blow knocking Sheppard’s head back against the rock behind him.

“Sure,” he answered, wincing slightly as he shifted away from the boulder. “What do you want to know?”

“Who are you, and why are you here?” The blue-eyed man demanded.

“We’re here because you idiots tried to blow up our ship!” Sheppard snapped, and instantly regretted it as his captor struck him again. “Look,” he continued more quietly, when the pain had died down enough for him to think clearly again. “What do you want from me? We’re not a threat to you — hell, I don’t even know who you are! And we only came this way because we picked up the distress signal you left on that shuttle. Let us go and we’ll leave and you’ll never have to see us again.”

The man laughed, a short, bitter sound. “You think I’d fall for that?” he asked. “You were just in the area and heard the distress signal? You’ll leave and never come back? Sure.”

“I didn’t say we were in the area,” Sheppard pointed out. “You’ve probably got scanners — you know we came through the Stargate. But yes, we’ll leave you alone. We aren’t interested in whatever you’re doing. We only came because we thought you needed help.”

“Or because you thought we were helpless,” the man corrected angrily, “and wanted to take us when we couldn’t fight back.” He hit Sheppard again, but this blow was more of an afterthought, a casual backhanded slap not really meant to hurt but that showed how helpless Sheppard was at the moment.

And that was plenty helpless.

Their captors had half-led, half-dragged him and Teyla across several foothills and to a small ledge along one of the steeper hills. They’d both had their hands bound behind them already, and gags tied across their mouth, but once they reached the ledge their legs were tied as well. A small smokeless fire provided a little heat and light against the cold winds that had risen as the sun had vanished, just enough warmth to keep Sheppard and Teyla from freezing to death as they huddled together, shivering.

Two more strangers had arrived just after dark, carrying on a whispered conference with the original four, but that seemed to be the extent of the group. They’d kept their facemasks and goggles on, at least as long as Sheppard could see them, so he hadn’t gotten a good look at anyone, but they were all armed, all wore the same armored jumpsuits, and all moved with the grace of experienced hunters. Which they clearly were, given how easily they’d captured him and Teyla.

The question was, what had they been hunting with that shuttle and now here on this miserable excuse for a planet?

And what did they do with their captures? .

*
 
*
 
*

He’d apparently exhausted his captor’s patience, because Sheppard found himself being hauled to his feet and dragged back to the fire at the center of the ledge. Teyla was still there, and Sheppard was glad to see she didn’t look hurt in any way. Either these guys weren’t willing to interrogate a woman or they’d simply decided to start with him and keep at him until he broke. Or died.

Sheppard hoped they were patient.

“Are you all right?” Teyla asked softly as the blue-eyed captor
shoved Sheppard hard enough to make him stumble. She caught
him on her shoulder before he could bash his head against the rocky ground, and with a few nudges and hip-checks helped him twist around so he could sit upright again.

“I’ll live,” he replied just as quietly, “or at least I will until they get tired of this game.”

He’d wondered how sharp the blue-eyed man’s hearing was. It proved to be sharp enough. “You think this is a game?” the man demanded, grabbing the front of Sheppard’s shirt and hauling him up again, far enough that Sheppard’s knees were off the ground. The captor was still hunched over at that point, and Sheppard realized he’d be as tall as Ronon if he stood up fully. Great.

“This is no game,” the man continued, shaking him vigorously. “This is your life! You will tell us what we want to know if you wish to have any chance to survive to the morrow!”

One of the other captors approached, resting a hand on the first one’s arm. This one was shorter, and something about the gait suggested female to Sheppard, though he couldn’t be sure. If it was a woman, she was slender enough that any curves were hidden by her jumpsuit. “Enough,” she said, and her voice
, though deep, confirmed his guess as to her gender. “You won’t get anything out of him that way.”

The first one dropped Sheppard like a heavy trash bag. “Maybe not,” he agreed, “but it makes me feel better.”

The second captor studied Sheppard and Teyla for a second, and he wondered if he might have found a potential ally. Her next words crushed that hope. “I say just kill them and be done with it,” she offered, her voice showing no more concern than if she’d been commenting on a distant rock formation. “Kill them, go after their friends, and move on.”

“We need to know who they are, where they came from, and what they know,” the blue-eyed man insisted. “They could be bait!”

“They are bait,” the woman replied. “Bait for their friends. Bait we’re using in our trap. Not bait for a trap for us.”