They had made it away from the crevice and back to the boulder where they’d first seen it when a shot from somewhere zinged past Sheppard’s head, just missing his left ear. “Down!” he ordered. Teyla dropped to a crouch and he did the same, taking up cover behind the boulder. He returned fire, but he wasn’t entirely sure which direction the shot had come from. Their assailants could be anywhere.
“We need to get back to the ship!” Teyla offered, shooting past the boulder as well. But Sheppard had had time to think, and shook his head.
“No,” he decided. “We don’t want to lead them to the Jumper. If Rodney can get it up and running again, he and Ronon can call Atlantis for help. But if we get pinned down there, we’re sunk.” Teyla nodded, as he’d known she would. She understood tactics well enough to see his point. “Right now,” he continued, “our job is to give them as much time as possible to effect repairs. And maybe take down whoever these guys are in the process.” He squeezed off another round.
“We can stay here for now,” Teyla pointed out, “but they know this land and we do not. They have the advantage.”
“I know.” Sheppard rubbed at his temple. “And we can’t contact Ronon and Rodney, in case they’re monitoring — it’s possible these guys haven’t noticed them yet, and I’d like to keep it that way.” He frowned. “We’ll think of something.”
He ran out of time, however, as the boulder shuddered in front of them. And then shifted — toward them.
“Run!” he shouted, leaping to his feet and backpedaling rapidly as the boulder began to roll — directly toward him and Teyla. They abandoned all hope of cover fire and dove to the sides as it rumbled across their path and down the mild incline, narrowly missing them both.
“Nice trick,” Sheppard admitted, pushing himself back up to his hands and knees. He wasn’t surprised to find another gun barrel in his face, and let hands strip away his radio and submachine gun without a fight. “You probably had that boulder rigged for just that purpose, right? Best cover around, so you knew we’d hide behind it, and then you send it after us and catch us with our pants down.” The strangers didn’t reply, but he could sense their smiles even through their mottled facemasks. “Smart.” One bound his wrists while another kept him under guard. Two more did the same with Teyla.
“So which one of you did I push into the crevice?” Sheppard couldn’t resist asking. The one with the gun stepped forward slightly, the barrel poking him in the chest. “Yeah, sorry about that.” He shrugged. “Can’t really blame me, right?”
They still didn’t answer. Instead the one who had bound his wrists nodded to the others, and they turned toward the hills. The gunbearer shifted behind Sheppard and prodded him in the back, forcing him into motion. Teyla was ahead of him, the two of them kept ten paces apart. These guys were well-trained, Sheppard had to admit. Well-trained and well-equipped, and clearly after something.
The question was, what?
He only hoped Rodney was making headway on the Jumper. And that Ronon had heard the shots. Right now, that was all he could ask.
Time would tell if it was enough.
“Did you hear that?”
Rodney glanced up. “Did I hear what?”
“That.” Ronon wasn’t even looking at him — the big muscle-bound Satedan was staring off into the surrounding hills, his whole body tensed, head up, nostrils flared. He looked like a hunting dog and any second he expected the big man to go bounding off and return with a duck hanging from his mouth.
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“There!” Now Ronon did glance at him, more of a glare really from beneath those heavy brows. “That! That was gunfire!”
Rodney frowned. Had he heard something just then? It was hard to be sure. He thought he might have, but maybe it was just because Ronon had told him there was something to hear. Sounds — or the absence thereof — could work that way. You could hear things just because you were listening for them. Especially if they were already supposed to be faint.
“I don’t know,” he admitted finally, much as he hated that particular phrase. “Maybe.” He glanced around. “You think Sheppard and Teyla are in trouble?” Ronon wasn’t listening to him. He had gone back to gaze toward the horizon. “Ronon?” Rodney didn’t care for it when the big oaf stared at him, but he liked being ignored even less. “Are they in trouble?”
“Yes, they’re in trouble,” Ronon replied after a minute. He shook himself and turned his attention fully upon Rodney, making him squirm. “And so are we. We need to leave here. Now.”
“I’ve only just started isolating the damaged areas,” Rodney protested. “It’ll take me another few hours to get the Jumper operational again — at the least!”
But Ronon wasn’t listening. He simply grabbed Rodney’s arm and began hauling him away from the ship. “We can’t stay here,” he explained softly as he moved toward the hills.
“What? Wait!” Rodney tried to free his arm, but it was like a fly struggling against a vise grip. “We can’t just leave the ship here!”
“That’s exactly what we can do,” Ronon retorted. “We’re too vulnerable here.”
“Then we should get it up and running as soon as possible,” Rodney argued. “The sooner we’re off this world the better.”
Ronon was already shaking his head, and he hadn’t stopped moving. “Too late for that,” he said. “There’s no time.”
“Are we going after Sheppard and Teyla, then?” That did make some strategic sense, Rodney admitted to himself — three guards instead of one would afford him more protection while he worked. He could get the comm link up and running first, and let Sheppard or Teyla call in to Atlantis while he moved on to the navigation and propulsion systems. But his self-appointed shepherd was shaking his head again.
“We can’t go after them.”
“What? Why not?” Rodney struggled against the Satedan’s grip again. “Come on, you said they were in trouble!”
“They are.”
“So we need to help them!”
“It’s too late for that,” Ronon replied. He still hadn’t slowed down. The Jumper was almost completely lost in the shadows behind them now, because this world’s sun was already drifting down toward the horizon.
“Too late?” Rodney felt a chill wash over him. “You mean they’re — ?”
“I don’t know,” Ronon admitted. “Either they’ve won free, in which case they’ll find us later, or they’ve been captured, in which case we will need to plan their rescue.”
“You don’t think they’re dead?” That was a relief! Rodney might enjoy busting Sheppard’s chops from time to time — okay, so most of the time — but he actually respected the commander. And Teyla was one of the few people in Atlantis he actually liked.
“Not dead, no. They’re bait.”
“Bait? For what?” The chill grew worse. “For us?” He yanked on his arm again. “I can walk on my own, you know — I’m not an infant!”
Ronon released him suddenly, making him stumble and barely catch himself. “Then keep up.” The Satedan drew his sword with his newly freed hand — the other already held his pistol — and lengthened his stride. Rodney had to jog to keep pace.
“So you think they’ve been captured?” Rodney asked again a few minutes later. They were in the hills proper now, and it was getting dark enough that he barely caught Ronon’s answering nod. “And whoever did it is using them as bait to lure us in?” Another faint nod. “Why?”
“They know we’re still out here,” Ronon answered absently. “They need to take care of that. This is how they do it.”
Rodney studied the bigger man’s back. “You seem awfully sure of that,” he noted. “What’s going on here?”
“I’m trying to keep us alive,” was the answering growl.
That kept Rodney quiet for a minute — but only a minute. “No, really,” he started again as they clambered over some rocks and up a small cliff face. “You know something. Don’t you?” He felt as much as saw Ronon tense. “I’m right, aren’t I? Of course I am. You do know something! I thought so! You’ve been acting strange ever since that ship.” He grabbed Ronon by the shoulder, but quickly let go as the bigger man swung back to face him. “Tell me!”
“I recognized the trap,” Ronon admitted softly. “The ‘ship in distress’ gambit. I’ve seen it before.” He shook his head, his long braids whipping about. “It took me too long, though. I should have noticed it at once.”
“You saved our lives,” Rodney pointed out.
“But not our ship,” Ronon snapped. “And we’re still stuck here. Still being hunted. I was sloppy.”
“Okay, so you were sloppy. You still saved us. Again.” Rodney glanced around, not sure what he expected to see — the sun had set completely now, and it was dark enough that he could barely make out his companion’s glare in the deepening night. “But that’s not all of it, is it?”
Even without being able to see it fully he knew Ronon was glaring at him — he’d come to recognize the feel of that particular response. “No,” the Satedan ground out after a long pause. “I know who’s after us.”
“You do?” That didn’t exactly make Rodney feel better. “By reputation, or personally?”
Again the hesitation before Ronon answered. “Personally. And we have to watch our every step from here on out.”
“Who is it?” Rodney wanted to know. Well, no, deep down he didn’t want to know at all. But he needed to know.
The answer was one he hadn’t expected. “Runners.”
“Other runners?” Rodney stared at him. “Like you?”
He felt the air move as Ronon shook his head. “No. Not like me. Not any more.”
“Then like what? Who are they? How do you know them? What do they want?” Rodney was both horrified and fascinated. Before they’d met Ronon they’d never even heard of a Runner, but apparently the concept was legendary among all the worlds touched by the Wraith — a lone individual, caught by the Wraith but released and then hunted down. For sport. Most Runners didn’t last very long, a week or two at most — they were said to be chosen for their cunning and their skills but the Wraith had been hunting and killing for centuries.
Ronon had been a Runner for seven years.
If these others were even half as good at hunting and fighting as he was, they had a serious problem on their hands.
“Not now,” Ronon answered shortly. “Not here. We’re not safe.”
Rodney took that in. “Okay, yes. Safe. Safe would be good,” he agreed. He was babbling, he realized, and forced himself not to say another word. Instead he followed as Ronon continued into the mountains, taking a winding path Rodney knew was meant to throw off anyone trying to track them. At last they paused, and Ronon knelt, brushing dirt and small rocks and dead brush back from the stone wall beside them. Behind the debris was a small dark opening.
“Get in,” he told Rodney. His tone made it clear this wasn’t a request.
Rodney’s first impulse was to argue. He didn’t like small dark spaces, and he didn’t like being ordered around, and he didn’t like not being told everything at once. But he also didn’t like being shot at or taken captive, and he was fairly sure he would like being killed even less, so he held his tongue, dropped to his knees, and crawled through the opening.
It widened slightly about twenty paces in, and the ceiling rose enough that he could sit up without bashing his head on the rocks above. Beyond that it narrowed again. Far enough, Rodney decided, and leaned back against the cool stone. He heard rustling from the opening.
A moment later Ronon joined him. “I covered the opening again,” he explained quietly, his voice little more than a gruff whisper. “They won’t find us here.”
“Good.” Rodney closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he opened them again and fixed Ronon with the sternest glare he could muster, especially considering he could barely see the big lug. “Now talk. Who are these Runners, how do you know them, and why are they doing this to us?”
For a second he thought Ronon was going to refuse. But then the big Satedan seemed to reach a decision. He nodded slightly, and grimaced as if in pain. Then he began to speak.
“It was seven years ago,” he started, his voice soft and his eyes somewhere far away. “I had just been captured by the Wraith . . . .”
“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you all!”
Ronon lashed out blindly, tears still stinging his cheeks and blurring his vision. But his fists did not connect and he spun around from the force of his empty blows, toppling himself to the ground. He lay there for several seconds, groaning, just letting the pain and rage and grief overwhelm him.
“Melena,” he sobbed. He could still picture her face, still see her when he closed his eyes — and still gape in horror as she died inches from him, torn apart by one of the many explosions that had wracked their planet. Melena was gone. So was Sateda. He was all that remained.
Why hadn’t the Wraith killed him as well? That was the question that tore at him. It was one of the few things that had kept him going, burning inside him throughout the torture and the taunts and the waiting. Why was he still alive?
The Wraith were hardly known for their mercy. Nor could it even be called mercy, taking a man and sparing his life after slaughtering his entire world and killing the woman he loved. That was the worst kind of torture. But that didn’t explain why they had let him go.
Because they had let him go. Ronon was under no illusions about that — they hadn’t allowed it. He hadn’t escaped, hadn’t outsmarted or outmaneuvered or outfought them. He had been caught, he had been toyed with, and he had been released.