SGA - 14 - Death Game (17 page)

“Oh yeah.” John leaned back against the wall. “There’s no question that a helicopter, or a plane with a vertical takeoff, like a Harrier, can go places most aircraft can’t. The problem we’ve never been able to solve is payload size. Even the biggest copters are a fraction of the size of a big plane. The vertical takeoff requires too much power. You can’t get something the size of a C-40 in the air from a vertical takeoff.” He shrugged. “Apparently the Wraith can. Which is going to be a big, big problem to us in the future.”

“So even though the cruiser is quite large, it may be in a fairly small space?” Teyla thought she had followed all that.

“Bingo. And you’re right that around the palaces is our best bet. The question is how to figure out where.” He looked around, back toward the higher ground behind them, where the villas and palaces clung to the terraces of the island. “We need to get up to the top,” he said. “If we can get an overview, we can probably spot it.”

“That area looks crowded,” Teyla observed. “There are many houses, and surely there are many people about.”

John nodded. “We wait until later.” She followed his glance out to sea, to the spreading clouds rising in white billows in the afternoon sunshine. “It looks like we’re going to get a thunderstorm later on. We can move under cover of the weather. And that will give them a while to hunt around for us, maybe spread out and think we’ve gotten back down to the harbor or aboard a ship. Let’s stay put for a while, and make a move when we’ve got weather and evening to help us.”

“I agree,” Teyla said, though her agreement was not really necessary. He was in charge, and she had little reason to ever dispute his professional decisions. Whatever else John Sheppard might be, he was an excellent commander. She had thrown her lot in with the men from Earth out of necessity, but she stood by her decision. If she had had all the time in the world to consider, she could not have done better. “We will wait,” she said.

Chapter Eighteen

The midday sun beat down on desert and Stargate. Rodney stood in the shade of the back of the jumper, the open wormhole shimmering like a mirage before him. He put his hand to his headset and glanced at Major Lorne as he spoke into it. “I’m telling you, Elizabeth, we’ve been back and forth for hours.”

“We’ve flown a full, low-altitude grid between the crash site and the Stargate,” Lorne added. “It’s only about 40 miles. No radio signals, no life signs, nothing. Most of it is flat, open dunes. From 600 feet we’d see them, even if they were dead.”

“What do you recommend, Major?” Elizabeth Weir’s voice was crisp, but it betrayed her concern.

“Subcutaneous transmitters,” Rodney said. “We all need to be outfitted with them.”

“I’m talking about a solution for now, Rodney,” Elizabeth replied by radio.

“If they didn’t walk back toward the Stargate, they went in a different direction,” Lorne said. “Probably toward the canal or river. If it were me, I’d follow the water, especially in this heat.”

Rodney decided to ignore the fact that Lorne had said before that if it were him, he’d walk back to the Stargate. “There were settlements along the river visible from the air,” Rodney broke in. “If they were hurt they might have gone to the locals for help.”

“Our next step is to expand the search along the river and canal,” Lorne said. He glanced at Rodney as though expecting argument, but Rodney wasn’t about to give him one. “We’ll make another low altitude search, this time going northward. We’ll find them, Dr. Weir. Dr. Beckett said he didn’t think that the amount of blood in the jumper suggested a life-threatening injury. They’re probably holed up somewhere with shade and water. And there’s a good chance that an expanding sweep will locate Ronon and Zelenka too.”

“All right,” Elizabeth said. “Stay in touch. I’ll expect a check back in six hours.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lorne said and nodded at Rodney, who tapped the ship’s controls to release the gate. Its blue glow snapped off.

Carson shook his head. “Aye, I’m with you about the subcutaneous transmitters. Next time.”

“Provided there is a next time,” Rodney said darkly.

***

 “The problem is,” Radek said, looking about the busy marketplace, “that we are very conspicuous.”

“I thought the problem was that we were lost on a strange planet with no gear, no money, no laptop, no radio and no way to get home,” Ronon said.

“That too.” Radek pushed his glasses up on his nose again. “But you must admit that our appearance is memorable.” Or rather, that Ronon’s was. Radek’s shirt and pants might be odd, but the scientist himself did not look entirely out of place on the Holy Island. His hair, his size, his demeanor were all nondescript. On the other hand, Ronon turned heads wherever he went. Six foot four and built like a brick wall waiting for someone to punch it, Ronon was the kind of man who made people get out of his way and remember his passing. “You look like a warrior, my friend,” Radek said. “You would be less noticeable if you were dressed as the warriors here are.”

Ronon shrugged. “Not like we can buy clothes. And I could mug somebody, but that would start trouble.”

“Yes, I should think it would,” Radek said quickly. “The last thing we need is whatever passes for the police looking for us. That will make it considerably harder to find Colonel Sheppard and Teyla.”

“Enough standing around,” Ronon said. “It shouldn’t be hard to find out where the procession went. Everybody saw it. We go that way, we see where they’re keeping them. We figure out a way to bust in. Let’s do it.” He strode off up the street in the direction of the imposing buildings at the top of the hill.

Radek blinked. “This is like stealing a boat, isn’t it?” he said as he followed. “The same sort of foolproof solution.” Still, he supposed this was how the action hero thing worked.

The marketplaces around the palaces were busy, crowded with festival goers, and to Radek’s surprise no one paid them much attention. There were variously dressed shoppers, presumably travelers from many different lands who had come to the Holy Island for the games, and perhaps everyone assumed they were from some place on the edges of their known world. Or maybe they thought that they were just odd. In any event, they moved freely through the crowds, and a few judicious questions about the upcoming games gathered some useful information.

Radek excused himself from a conversation with a potter selling his wares in an open stall and made his way back to Ronon. “I have found where the contestants come out of the labyrinth,” Radek said in a low voice. “Down the other side of the hill from the port, behind the palaces, there is a rough gully. There is a place down there where select spectators and the High King go to watch the end of the course. Other than the King’s guests, the others are chosen by lot and there are people who resell their chits for huge amounts. Very expensive tickets to scalp!”

“That sounds about normal,” Ronon said.

“Yes, it does.” Reassuringly normal, in fact. “There is a path that goes to it. It is not secret at all.”

“Which means it’s guarded,” Ronon said thoughtfully. “Probably not as much as it will be once the games start, but they’ve probably got some guys down there to keep people from going in and hiding stuff that will give contestants an edge.”

Radek nodded. “That is what I would do. I would hide things already inside to make sure my contestant won.” He looked at Ronon, the beginning of an idea forming. “So we go in?”

“It’s the place we know Sheppard and Teyla will be,” Ronon said. “Could work. But I’d rather get them out of someplace less guarded. Once the games start, every guard in town will be around making sure nobody interferes. I’ve done security for big festivals before.”

Radek looked at him sideways. One more snippet, he thought. One more hint of who Ronon had been before Sateda fell. He could see that Ronon had been the kind of young man put on crowd control at festivals, flexible and with good judgment. “It is a thought,” Radek said. “The contestants are in the palace now, going through some kind of dedication ceremony.” He shrugged. “That would be hard to get them out of.”

“Yeah.” Ronon scratched his beard absently. “Let’s work our way over to the palace and get as close as we can. See how many entrances and guards. Tell you what. You stay here, talk to people and find out as much as you can about the opening of the games and where the contestants are kept tonight. I’ll take a look around. Meet you back in an hour.”

“That works well enough for me,” Radek said.

***

John looked down from the sparse shelter of a twisted cedar tree on the hillside, squinting into the gathering dark. By dint of a laborious climb, he and Teyla had worked their way to the top of the hill behind the palaces, slipping through alleys and yards, climbing over walls and refuse heaps. They didn’t smell very good, but they had at last gained the top slopes, left devoid of buildings for obvious reasons. It was too steep to build, and the rocky, precipitous slope had nothing to recommend it except the view it gave of the city and sea below. If this island were on Earth it would probably be a scenic overlook, but here it was nothing. A few struggling trees clung between rocks, stunted by the continual winds off the sea.

Dusk was falling early. Massive cumulous clouds piled up to the west, hiding the sunset and flashing with lightning in their purple depths. This would not be a very nice place to be in the coming thunder storm. They were going to have to come down before it broke. Too many of the trees bore the marks of being struck by lightning, hardly a surprise considering this was the highest point for miles around.

John wished he still had his binoculars, but he didn’t need them to see what he’d come to see. “There it is,” he said with satisfaction. “Tucked in nice and neat. They are pretty ships, aren’t they?”

Teyla nodded.

The wedge shape of the Wraith cruiser was unmistakable, parked in one of the colonnaded courtyards of the palace below. It wasn’t the largest he’d seen, but it very nearly filled the courtyard, a nice job of flying to land it without clipping the buildings around it. Which meant it would be a nice job to take off without hitting them either. John had spent too many years as a helicopter pilot not to appreciate the difficulty of that.

The ramp was lowered and the cruiser seemed to be powered down, resting on its landing gear with its running lights dark. There were no signs of crew about it.

“Standing down,” John said. “Must be feeling pretty secure.”

“If one of the inhabitants of this world did get aboard they could not fly it,” Teyla said. She looked at him, a wrinkle between her brows. “Are you sure you can?”

“No.” John didn’t particularly like the idea of taking a ship out of that kind of tight parking the first time in the cockpit of a new class. For that matter, the first time in the cockpit of a Wraith ship at all. He’d seen the bits and pieces Zelenka had been putting together of the downed Wraith Dart, and a lot of it was totally unfamiliar. Of course it wasn’t, really. There are only so many ways to put things together so they’ll fly, but it was possible for the interfaces to be so different that it took even a good pilot months to adapt. He’d learned to fly an Osprey, once, but he’d never gotten used to it. And if he’d tried to take off like this the first time in the seat, even without the approaching storm, John knew he’d have bought the farm. “But we can get to the communications gear. If we can send a signal to our folks, we’re good.”

Teyla looked like she liked that idea a little better. “At least we can warn them the Wraith are here,” she said. Her face looked faintly strained.

“Are they?” he asked.

“Oh yes.” Teyla nodded without hesitation. “There are Wraith here, in the palace below. I do not know how many. More than one, less than a hundred. I feel many minds, but not a full ship’s compliment.” Her eyes unfocused, as though looking at something beyond the immediate.

“Don’t,” John said, and grabbed her wrist. He’d seen her try this before, with results both good and bad. “There’s nobody to snap you out of it, and you might give us away.”

Teyla let out a deep breath and looked at him sideways. “You are right,” she said with a relieved expression. “I would not get anything very useful, and they might sense me.”

“Let’s save it,” John said. “And concentrate on getting to the communications gear.”

In the distance there was the first faint rumble of thunder.

“I do not think I can climb down this side of the hill,” Teyla said. “Not with my shoulder useless. We will have to go around.”

John had already figured that. It was way too steep. Teyla couldn’t do it with one hand. “We’ll go down the way we got up and then go around the side. It looks like there’s some kind of garden there. I can’t tell from here how high that wall is, but with trees on both sides we can probably get over there. They build everything in this rough stone with lots of footholds.”

Together they climbed down the hill in the gathering dark. For a moment, as distant lightning flashed and they scrambled around a large boulder, John felt the world shift in a moment of vertigo. Perfect, he thought. That was all he needed. Between his head and Teyla’s messed up shoulder, they weren’t up to their usual standards at all.

“Are you all right?” Teyla asked, her hand to his shoulder.

“Fine,” John said. “I’m good.” She probably didn’t believe him. But he didn’t have energy to waste arguing.

It was almost full dark before they reached the trees along the garden wall. John stopped in the shadow of the wall, ostensibly examining the best way up. If everything would stop tilting it would be easier. He fought back a wave of vertigo induced nausea. It’s not real, he told himself. It’s just your body not being able to match what your eyes see. Just hang on and it will stop, trees and wall and sky all tilting together.

Teyla was examining the wall, exploring the stones with her good hand. “I think we can manage here,” she whispered. “It’s lower toward this end and there is better cover.”

The vertigo was subsiding. “I think you’re right,” he said, and took a step toward her.

Teyla spun around, the broken staff she’d taken from the guard in her hand. There was a flash of silver in the trees, the glitter of long, white hair. Teyla caught the Wraith in the throat with the stick, sent him spinning backward among the scattered leaves beneath the trees. Her next movement turned toward him, dropping into guard again as her eyes widened.

She saw what he didn’t, but in the next instant he felt the cold muzzle against the back of his neck.

“Drop it,” the other Wraith said.