SGA-13 Hunt and Run (9 page)

Nekai had decided not to argue. Probably he had seen the determination — what Melena had often called the “stonewall stubborn” on his face. Or maybe he had just accepted that it would be better to get this out of the way once and for all.

Besides, resting hadn’t really been an option. During the hunt there’d been the risk that the Wraith might detect their signals and come looking for either or both of them. Disguising the tracking devices now would only intrigue any Wraith already in the area. They’d either have to flee to another planet immediately — or let the Wraith come, and deal with them once they arrived.

Ronon was all for the latter. He’d been itching to kill Wraith since they’d first attacked his homeworld, and that itch had grown into an all-consuming rage once they’d killed Melena and the rest of Sateda and taken him captive. He’d suppressed the desire while training only by constantly reminding himself that what Nekai was teaching him would make him better able to kill Wraith and in much greater quantities.

Well, now it was time to put that to the test.

So Nekai had headed back toward a cave he’d selected for just such a purpose — the minerals in the walls would make him more difficult to pinpoint, he claimed. And Ronon had selected a likely spot, set a few snares and other traps, and settled in to wait.

And here he was. Waiting.

He hated waiting.

What if there hadn’t been any Wraith in the area already, he wondered for the hundredth time. What if none of them were within range to detect his tracking device? What if he was laying in wait for an enemy that would never show? How long could he wait? A day? Two? Eventually he’d need to move, if only to find food and water. Otherwise when a Wraith did show he’d be too weak to deal with it.

Snap!

Ronon went completely still. His ears strained, trying to pinpoint the location and source of that sound. It had been nearby, certainly, but not right beside — definitely within visual range if he dared to turn his head and look, which he did not. There were dry leaves and small twigs littering the ground here, which was one of the reasons he had chosen this spot. It was all but impossible for anyone to sneak up on him here.

Snap! Crunch! Crack!

Too many sounds, too close together, Ronon decided. More than one pair of feet tromping through the forest on this fine cool day. If they were Wraith there would probably be three of them, two soldiers and one commander, just as there had been before. The last time, Ronon had needed Nekai’s help to finish them off. Not this time.

At least, he hoped not. He had hunted animals without a problem, and had even gotten the drop on Nekai himself this morning. But that had been one man. This was three Wraith. He had never hunted multiple targets before, and suddenly Ronon found himself cursing Nekai’s oversight. Why hadn’t they gone after small packs and prides and other groupings, to get experience for exactly this sort of situation?

True, he had a plan. He thought it would work. But there was no way to be sure. Not until it happened. And if the plan failed? Well, that would be very, very bad.

Ronon waited, unmoving, and listened for more noises. They came soon enough, and confirmed what he had already guessed: three of them, all moving in this direction, all walking together. One of them was a little better at stealth than the other two, who didn’t care what they stomped on or how much noise they made.

Wraith.

Ronon grinned. Let them come, he thought. His hand tightened on the pistol but he still didn’t draw it. Not yet.

He had learned to be patient. At least patient enough to make sure his prey was exactly where he wanted them before he struck.

The noises were drawing still closer, and now Ronon thought he could make out actual footsteps mingled with the other sounds. Two sets, at least — the third was almost more an absence than a presence, a noise that did not accompany one-third of the dry-stick sounds that reached his ears. The commander was not bothering to avoid dry leaves or twigs, he could clearly care less about being undetected, but his step was naturally light enough not to register.

Still, the other noises and the sounds of the two soldiers made tracking their progress incredibly easy.

Ronon finally allowed himself to tense a bit as the three strangers passed into his line of sight. Wraith, just as he’d thought. And they were moving in the same configuration as the first trio he’d met, the commander in the lead and the two warriors flanking and slightly behind him.

Perfect.

Ronon had to force his hand away from his pistol. He had always been an excellent shot, and his time in the Satedan military had honed that skill to a razor edge. Then Nekai had honed it further. Military training taught you to aim for vital organs, to cause the most damage in a single shot. But that often left an opponent bleeding out and staggering around — they were no longer a threat so you didn’t much care how far they got before they finally dropped. Hunting was different. You wanted your prey to stay close — the further it got the harder it was to chase it down again, and the more likely some other predator would try to claim it. So you aimed for incapacitation, joints and killing blows — if you couldn’t kill right away you sought to immobilize your target so you could finish it off quickly.

Plus there was the whole issue of shooting from cover. That had been a completely new experience for Ronon — he had never been the “hide in the bushes, then attack by surprise” type. His attack formations had usually involved head-on charges, shooting and slashing all the way. But his last encounter with the Wraith had proven better than any lecture that such a technique would not be effective here. He couldn’t overpower three Wraith, not by himself. And he could never count on outside help or reinforcements, not even from Nekai. Especially not while hunting — if the Wraith ever figured out how their signals overlapped, they might devise a way to counter that, and then Ronon and Nekai would lose their one advantage, not to mention their one measure of cover.

So Ronon had to take out all three Wraith as quickly as possible, as quietly as possible, and by himself.

Which meant not shooting any of them. Not yet. He couldn’t guarantee he could take them all down before one of them tagged him, or called in help. And he couldn’t take that risk.

Instead, he slowly, quietly shifted his hands forward and lifted the vine he had coiled just in front of his head. It was the strongest one he could find, strong enough to withstand his yanking on it with no ill effect, and he had looped a section of it and made a crude but very effective slipknot. Now he shifted his weight slightly on the thick branch he had chosen for his perch, and raised the loop, gauging the distance to the figures approaching his tree.

They had a tracking monitor, of course. Which meant they could find his position, no matter how carefully he hid.

Fortunately, it had apparently never occurred to the Wraith to look up.

They were about to learn the folly of that particular oversight. Too bad they wouldn’t survive the discovery long enough to pass it along to the rest of their kind.

He would snare the one to the right — a quick toss would put the loop around the warrior’s neck, a sharp tug would tighten it, cutting off the warrior’s air, and then a solid pull would lift him off his feet and into the air, hiding him within the thick canopy. To his companions it would seem as if the warrior had simply vanished. At the same time, a branch snare would strike the warrior to the left, knocking him off his feet and distracting him long enough for Ronon to kill the snared warrior and then shoot the downed one as well. That would leave only the commander, confused and alone. He’d be searching the trees for Ronon by then, but Ronon would have switched perches as soon as the first warrior was dead, and for all their skills the Wraith were hardly woodlands masters. He would be able to escape the Wraith commander’s detection, sneak around, and take him out from behind before the Wraith could figure out what to do next.

Assuming everything went according to plan.

Time to find out, Ronon told himself. He hefted the loop. The Wraith were almost directly beneath him now, and he tossed the vine down and out, making sure to give it a small snap of the wrist so the loop floated wide rather than closing up.

It settled perfectly around the warrior’s neck.

Ronon gave the rest of the vine a sharp tug, and it tightened obediently —

 
— and caught on a protrusion of the warrior’s heavy breastplate.

Nine hells!

The vine went taut as the warrior pulled it to its full extension, and the impact stopped him short. It didn’t lift him off his feet, however, and with the loop snagged it didn’t interfere with his breathing at all. All it did, in fact, was alert him and his companions to the fact that there was someone or something in the trees just overhead.

Not surprisingly, the warrior raised his stun-rifle and opened fire on the canopy.

The second warrior stepped forward, shifting to get past his commander and get a cleaner line of fire — and the branch snare struck him full in the chest. Exactly as planned.

Only he didn’t fall down.

He did stagger back from the force of the blow, but his rifle rose at the same time and he began shooting into the foliage around him. The Wraith weapons were designed to stun rather than kill, so that the Wraith could then feed upon the helpless victim, but they did still produce some kinetic impact, and so the shots tore at the branches and leaves all around.

The commander, meanwhile, had taken a step back. He surveyed the plant carnage calmly, studying the scene — and then he looked up. Right at Ronon. Their eyes met, and the Wraith smiled, showing all his pointed teeth.

Nine hells.

Ronon was up off his branch in an instant. He hurled himself forward, landing full-force on top of the commander before the Wraith could raise his stun-pistol. Rolling forward, Ronon came to his feet just behind the two warriors, who were still firing wildly and had just started to realize there was a foe standing among them. He had his own pistol in hand in an instant, and snapped off a quick shot at the one on the left, wounding the Wraith and sending him to his knees. But that was all Ronon had time for. He could already hear the commander stirring behind him, and in a few seconds he’d have three very angry Wraith on him, and no cover whatsoever. That was a recipe for disaster.

So Ronon did the one thing Nekai had worked so hard to drill into him, the one thing that went against not only all his military training but against the very core of who he was.

He ran.

In four long paces he was hidden from immediate view. In eight even his motion was lost among the trees. In ten he had swung to the right, sliding between two tree trunks. Several more steps put him beside another tree a little further removed, and he caught a low branch and pulled himself up into its leaves. Then Ronon forced himself to take slow, deep breaths to stop his gasps and calm his racing heart, and he tried to listen past the thudding of his own blood.

The Wraith would be after him in seconds, he knew. With the tracking device, he couldn’t hide no matter how good the cover. And though they had no aptitude for this terrain, there were three of them and they could communicate telepathically so they could coordinate without a sound. There was only one of him. He didn’t have any other snares ready. He hadn’t prepared any backup plans. And he had only the one gun and the one knife.

Ronon listened for pursuit, and grinned.

Time to improvise.

There was an old tree up ahead a ways, one that had rotted through and fallen at some point years past. The trunk had shattered when it fell, but large sections still survived, covered in moss and vines. Ronon had noticed it when he and Nekai had first arrived on this planet, and he’d used it for cover once during his training. Now he took a second to orient himself properly and then ran for it as fast as he could. The Wraith would be cautious, fearing a second ambush, but they would still be right behind him. He didn’t have much time.

There was the little clearing the tree’s fall had created, and there were the trunk segments. One of them was a little over eight feet long, almost completely hollowed out by rot and rain and insects, large portions of the top missing completely. Perfect. Ronon skidded to a stop just past it, deliberately took several more steps beyond that, and then carefully stepped to the side and retreated to the trunk, leaving no additional footprints to mark his change of course. That would give him an extra second or two, no more.

He studied the shattered trunk. Moss covered much of it, and vines had already crept around it as well. Rain had made the ground beneath it soft, and it had sunk in slightly. Perfect.

Squatting, he dug his fingers into the crumbly bark as far down as he could. Then, tensing his back and shoulders, he lifted. He felt his muscles pop with the strain as the ground resisted yielding its treasure, but after a few seconds something shifted under his hands. Then the trunk rose suddenly, as if the earth had surrendered all at once.

The ground beneath the trunk had been worn into a small crevice. It was damp and slimy and covered in grubs. Lovely. But Ronon didn’t have time to be squeamish. Making sure his pistol was secure in its holster he stretched himself out in that narrow depression, all the while holding the trunk off with one stiffened arm. Then he slowly lowered it back into place. It didn’t fit into the ground again, of course, but judging from the thin sliver of light along its side it should be close enough that only close scrutiny would reveal it had been moved.