Jo Graham - Unascended

“Jumper two, what’s your status?”

“The Asgard ship is losing altitude,” Rodney said. “At least, it was.”

“What do you mean, was?”

The ship’s course was leveling out, and there was no more smoke streaming from its stern. “I think they’re making repairs.”

“Stay on them! Don’t give them time to make repairs!”

“Again with the backseat driving!” Rodney dived on the Asgard ship in what he hoped was an appropriately menacing fashion. The jumper’s proximity alarms screamed warnings, but he ignored them, bringing the jumper low enough that its shields were skipping off the surface of the Asgard ship’s shields like a stone off water.

The Asgard ship kicked upward, and he had to veer upward himself to avoid a collision. It began climbing again away from the patchwork of woods and farmland below them, nose up. Whatever damage he’d done wasn’t enough to force it down.

“Come on, damn it!” He was falling behind, and the ship’s sensors blared an alarm; he was fixed in the Asgard ship’s rear sights. “No, no, no… ” He forced the jumper into an improbable series of rolling turns, weaving to avoid letting them lock their weapons onto the jumper as a target. “This is not good!”

“Jumper two, report!”

“I can either fly or talk!” Rodney snapped.

“Damn it, McKay!”

The Asgard ship was ascending more sharply, making no more effort to fire on him, but leaving him behind as it climbed high above the rolling hills beneath them. Any minute now it would be out of range of even drones.

He knew now how the rest of his team must have felt as the Dart had swept him up. He’d been taken by the Wraith, and his friends had moved heaven and Earth to get him back, and he wasn’t about to let Ronon and Elizabeth slip through his fingers now.

The computer reminded him that drones were ready to fire.

“Yes, yes, fire drones,” he said, sending the drones diving toward the Asgard craft. Two of them smashed into the rear shields, and he had the satisfaction of seeing it waver, some of their energy penetrating. The ship was trailing smoke again, whatever repairs its crew had made no longer holding together.

The next two drones struck home at the rear engines, and the starboard engine sputtered and died. The ship’s climb halted, and it began to lose altitude again. “See how you like that,” he said triumphantly. “Yes!”

In retrospect, he thought the next second, firing a third pair of drones might have been a mistake. They sought out the Asgard ship’s engines unerringly, and smashed into the port engine like a pair of bullets crashing into a plate glass window.

“No, no, no,” he moaned. The ship’s descent went from an easy glide to a precipitous dive. Ahead, rolling hills were turning into the rockier foothills of a looming mountain range. “No!”

“What?” John demanded over the radio. “Jumper two, what’s your status!”

“They’re going to crash,” Rodney said. There was nothing he could do but watch as the Asgard ship plummeted toward an unforgiving mountainside.