SGA-13 Hunt and Run (26 page)

“How do you know that?” Those blue eyes were wide, darting here and there. Sheppard could almost smell the tall man’s panic. “How can you be sure?”

“We’re not part of a trap,” Sheppard offered. “We were just trying to help.” He was glad Rodney wasn’t here to tell him “I told you so” about the danger of helping strangers, though he hoped the scientist would get here soon. Or rather, he hoped Ronon would get here soon, and would have Rodney safely in tow. He wasn’t sure how much longer these people’s patience would hold out.

His comment earned him a swift, hard kick from the woman. He managed to twist enough to take it in the side instead of the head, but the tip of her boot caught him right between two ribs, producing an explosion of pain all along that part of his torso. “Shut up!” she warned him in a hiss. “Bait doesn’t get to talk!”

“Then why does he keep telling me to?” Sheppard muttered, winning a second kick for his sense of humor. I always knew being a smart-ass would be the death of me, he thought as he determined to lie there and shut up rather than give her another excuse. Not that it seemed she needed one.

“Leave them,” one of the others called out
 
— Sheppard thought it was the one who’d arrived last the night before —
 
and the other two obediently turned and rejoined their three companions on the far side of the ledge. Sheppard waited until they were safely ensconced before crawling back over to Teyla and pulling himself up to a sitting position again.

“You really should stop antagonizing them,” she advised once he was able to lean back against the rocks next to her and catch his breath.

‘I know,” he agreed. “But I can’t help it.” He grinned at her. “Besides, if I can get them angry they may get sloppy. And I’ll take any advantage I can get.”

“What will you do with it, though?” she asked. She gestured around them with tilt of her head and a shrug of her shoulders. “We are bound hand and foot on a ledge in a mountain range on an unfamiliar planet. They have our weapons and clearly know this planet well, plus they have set various snares across its surface. Even if we manage to escape this camp of theirs, where would we go?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. He sighed. “But I’m sure the others are still out there.” He deliberately didn’t use their names, or give any indication how many there were, just in case their captors were listening somehow. “If anyone can find us, they can.” “They” meaning Ronon. “We just have to stay alive until then.”

Teyla arched an eyebrow. “So your plan on how to stay alive is by provoking our captors?”

“No, by not answering their questions,” he told her. He lowered his voice to barely a whisper. “And as long as I’m irritating them, they’ll respond by kicking and slapping me. They’ll be too focused on that to consider killing me — punching is more immediate. It’s when they calm down and decide we’re useless that we’re in trouble.”

She nodded slightly, showing she understood both what he was suggesting and that they couldn’t let their captors overhear. “Should we try feeding them information to make ourselves more valuable?”

“No. Once you start talking about real things it’s hard to stop.” Sheppard thought about the anti-interrogation courses he’d had, years before during his Air Force pilot’s training. “Plus if we start trying to tell them some details while holding back or lying about others, we’ll be inconsistent. Better to just not tell them anything. If they question you, give them nonsense answers. Ask questions in return. Start talking and veer completely off-topic. As long as they’re listening, we’re safe.” Relatively so. A lot depended upon who these people were, what kind of training they’d had, and how hardened they were to cold-blooded murder.
 
If they were hunters, they might be used to killing animals but not people, and especially not people they’d already captured and rendered helpless. If they were soldiers, they might be more callous. Sheppard hoped that wasn’t the case — a good soldier knew when a hostage had outlived his usefulness, and was prepared to kill that hostage before he could become
 
a liability.

Movement caught his eye, and he glanced up to see one of the other captors approaching them. This one was male, he guessed, and no taller than the woman had been but broader. His steps were heavier but just as smooth, with the grace of a hunter and the assurance of a leader. This had to be the group’s commander.

“You said you came through a Stargate,” the man said without preamble. He crouched down, putting himself at Sheppard’s eye level, but stayed carefully just beyond lunging distance. The pistol at his side looked familiar, and at first glance Sheppard felt a chill. That was Ronon’s pistol! But a second look corrected his mistake — the weapon did look very similar, but it was not identical. Still, that was odd enough to stand out. The only other time they’d seen weapons like Ronon’s were with the Travelers, and Sheppard didn’t think those nomadic people would suddenly stoop to kidnapping and torture, even if they did decide to abandon their ships long enough to descend to a planet. Could this man be a rogue Traveler, or have some sort of alliance with them? Sheppard hoped the latter wasn’t the case. He and the Travelers’ leader, Larrin, hadn’t parted on the best of the terms, but he still hoped they might become allies — or more — some day.

“That’s right,” Sheppard answered. “But I’m sure you knew that already. Didn’t you use one to get here yourself?”

The man ignored the question. “Why did you call it that?” he asked instead. “A ‘stargate’?”

“Would you prefer ‘ancestral ring’?” Sheppard asked him. “It’s just a name,” he answered quickly, as he saw the other man tense. “That’s what we call it, because that’s what it does — it opens a gate between the stars.” He didn’t bother to explain about the Stargate’s history on Earth, or how Daniel Jackson had helped decipher that one and had translated the Goa’uld word “Chaapa’ai” as “stargate.” He doubted his captor would care for the lecture, and he didn’t want to risk mentioning anything about Earth or about Atlantis.

“Who is ‘we
’
?” the man demanded, leaning forward slightly but still maintaining that safe distance. This guy was good, Sheppard realized. Careful and constantly alert but not on edge like the taller man. He’d be a hard one to provoke.

“My friends and I,” Sheppard answered. “What do you call it?” He decided to take a risk. “Astria Porta? The Portal?”

The first term — the original Ancient name for a
Stargate — got no reaction. At the second one, however, the man went rigid. He uncoiled a second later, though it took another moment before his fingers released their grip on his pistol. Interesting, Sheppard thought. “Portal” was what the Wraith called it.

“How did you access it?” the man continued after a short pause. From the way his words emerged half-hissing, Sheppard guessed he was gritting his teeth under that mask. Mentioning the Wraith term had definitely struck a nerve.

“You push these big flat buttons on this panel thing right in front of the ring itself,” Sheppard answered, adopting a casual tone. “If you hit the right ones, the whole thing — ” the man’s hand lashed out and caught him on the cheek, not hard but a stinging blow nonetheless, and he stopped talking.

“How did you learn of the Stargates?” the man demanded. Sheppard noticed his use of the term and some of his feigned humor evaporated. This guy had been well trained, enough so that he knew to use Sheppard’s own term rather than revealing his. That suggested a military background. And from their captive standpoint, that didn’t bode well.

“We discovered one and managed to get it to work by accident,” Sheppard told him, which was true enough as far as it went. The fact that this had been on Earth, galaxies away, and that there was now an entire agency dedicated to the Stargates and their use — that was all stuff the stranger didn’t need to know. “How about you?”

“Where is your ship from?” the man asked next, again ignoring Sheppard’s question completely. “We have not seen anything like it.”

“I don’t really know,” Sheppard lied easily. “We just happened across it and liked it, so we took it.” He shrugged. “No one else was using it at the time.” The puddle jumpers had been docked in several hangars in Atlantis, of course, but it was interesting that the design was unfamiliar to the hunters. The Ancients had used them regularly, and several of the races here in the Pegasus galaxy recognized them from old descriptions and drawings. Either these people came from planets the Ancients hadn’t visited, or none of them were in a position to have access to such archives.

The stranger studied him quietly for a moment. “You will tell us what we want to know,” he said finally, his voice quiet and certain. “The only question is how much pain you and your companion will endure before you reach that point. For your own sake, I suggest you drop this pose and answer us fully and honestly when we return.” Before the last word was out of his mouth he was rising to his feet again, and stalking quietly across the ledge to rejoin the others.

“Return?” Teyla asked once they were alone on their side again. “Where do you think they are going?”

Sheppard watched as their captors conversed quietly, then split into two groups. Four of them — including the leader, the tall man, and the woman — moved quickly and quietly to the end of the ledge, then turned and pulled themselves up onto a smaller outcropping perhaps eight feet over their heads. That piece of rock was evidently just one end of a jutting cliff, because once atop it the trio disappeared from view. The remaining two shifted to positions against the wall where they could watch Sheppard and Teyla easily, then sank down into crouches again, breaking open some sort of food bars and passing a canteen back and forth. They both kept their weapons ready, however.

He squinted up at the sky. The first tendrils of light were snaking across, filtering into the nighttime gloom and softening it as they touched. It was almost dawn.

“They’re going to hunt,” he answered Teyla, deliberately turning away from the guards so they would have a harder time making out what he was saying. “They’re hunting our friends.”

She nodded. “Dawn is a good time to hunt.”

“Yeah, it is.” He gave her a quick, reassuring grin. “But it doesn’t work so well if your prey’s waiting for you.”

And if he knew anything about Ronon, the big Satedan would be doing exactly that.

Sheppard just hoped Ronon was ready for these three. Because they obviously knew what they were doing, and they were deadly serious about it.

Then again, so was Ronon.

“Let’s go.”

Rodney came awake slowly, groaning as Ronon nudged him again with his boot tip. “Leave me alone,” he whined under his breath. “Just let me sleep.”

“No time. We’ve got to get moving.”

“Can’t you just kill them all and come get me when you’re done?” Rodney asked, still refusing to open his eyes or uncurl from the position he found himself in. At least with his head resting on his arms he didn’t have to use the cave wall as a pillow. He was sure once he tried to straighten up, however, his entire body would inform him of the folly of such a sleeping position.

“What if they find you while I’m gone?” Ronon asked him. “You going to be able to defend yourself against a pack of trained hunters?”

That was a valid point, and Rodney finally, reluctantly blinked and looked around. Yep, still in the cave. “Fine, I’m awake,” he grumbled. “What time is it?”

“An hour or so before noon,” came the answer. “Come on.” Ronon turned and led the way back out of the cave, and Rodney slowly followed, after taking a minute or two to unbend himself and to rub some circulation back into his protesting limbs. Getting out of the cave and being able to stand up straight and stretch was a relief, though as he’d suspected it was followed by a fresh wave of aches and pains.

“Remind me never to go camping with you again,” he told his companion, who seemed none the worse for the night’s cramped accommodations. And the answering grin told him Ronon was enjoying his misery a bit too much.

“If you’re all done,” the Satedan said finally, “let’s go.”

“Where are we going, exactly?” Rodney asked as he followed the big man down out of the hills. He drew a food bar from one of the pouch-pockets along his leg and munched as they walked, then sipped a bit from the canteen hanging from his belt. It was a good thing Sheppard never let them go anywhere without emergency rations! The food, water, fresh air, and exercise were helping his brain unfog more quickly. “Are we going to go find Sheppard and Teyla?”

“Not yet,” Ronon replied. He was walking half-crouched — which meant he was now only the height of a normal man, Rodney thought — and studying the ground before each step.

“What? Why not? We have to find them and rescue them before these old friends of yours kill them!” Rodney half-trotted to catch up, determined to face Ronon and convince him, when the big Satedan’s arm shot out. Rodney ran right into the muscular obstacle and bounced off it, falling on the ground a few feet behind his previous position.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, but Ronon now held up that hand, palm out, and Rodney quickly quieted. He watched as his companion crouched down and tapped the spot Rodney had been about to step upon. The touch produced a strange, muted echo. A second, harder tap, almost a punch, and the ground caved in, revealing a deep hole.

“How did you know?” Rodney asked, staring. He had almost stepped in that!