Jo Graham - Death Game

“There will be more,” Radek said. He looked decidedly scared. Teyla thought Radek was not used to being pinned down by enemy fire. It had not happened on the few occasions he had been offworld before.

She looked at John. “Is there a plan?”

He nodded sharply, his eyes on Ronon, waiting for a move that would cover him to get off a few shots. “We take the cruiser.”

Radek swore in Czech. “How do you think we will fly this Wraith cruiser?” he asked.

John glanced back and forth between them, Teyla with her Gift that allowed her to interface with Wraith technology, Radek with his knowledge of systems and the beginning of a reading knowledge of Wraith. Surely with their help he could figure out how to fly it. He believed he could fly anything. Unfortunately, she was uncertain whether or not that was true.

“We’ll manage between us,” John said. “Now let’s get out of here. Radek, stay back with Jitrine and the kids until we’ve cleared them out. Teyla, go left.”

“You do not have to tell me twice to stay,” Radek said fervently.

She waited until Ronon fired again, and then in the moment when the Wraith would assuredly have their heads down, dashed left and closer, to the shelter of a boulder nearer the door. As she dove behind it, she got off two sharp shots into the doorway. It was impossible to see what she might be shooting at, or if she’d hit anything, but at least fire from a different direction might confuse them.

One second, and John was moving, right and forward, to a new position. The stalagmites that had afforded the Wraith such pleasure as obstacles to the humans were now providing them with cover. Turn about was fair play. Not that Teyla ever cared much about playing fair.

Ronon glanced back, then with John covering him ducked out again. The stun beams narrowly missed him. They would have hit, if he had ducked out at full height, rather than with his head two feet lower than normal. He got off several shots before he got back.

The volume of fire had decreased markedly. One or perhaps two shooters were firing now. Teyla pegged another three shots through the doorway, but whether or not she hit anything was impossible to tell.

Ronon looked back at John again, and she saw his almost imperceptible nod. John rocked forward on the balls of his feet, ready to go. Ronon lunged for the doorway, John a step behind, going for the frame as Ronon threw himself flat just inside, laying down a thick barrage.

Teyla moved, left and forward again, coming to the edge of the doorframe under the cover of Ronon’s shots. So close to the Wraith. She barely even had to try to get a sense of them. She could hear them speaking mind to mind as though they were shouting.

Fall back! Fall back to the entrance and pick them off when they come out!

The Wraith Lord who commanded them had better sense than to get into a situation where his men must rush out of a narrow entrance against defenders. Better to turn it around. There was one exit from the maze. Sooner or later they would have to chance it. They would have to rush from a doorway against five or six times their number armed with energy weapons. There were no other options.

Or they might wait, stalemated. But even then sooner or later they would have to do something. There was no food in the labyrinth, though there was water aplenty. Sooner or later, the people in the maze would have to try to break out, and they would be waiting for them.

“Ronon!” Teyla shouted. “They are backing off!”

Ronon rolled out of the doorway, landing almost against her foot and getting swiftly to his feet. “How do you know?”

“I hear them,” she said.

He looked skeptical. Of course. Ronon did not entirely believe in her Gift, had not really seen her use it.

“John! The Wraith are withdrawing!” she yelled. Even on the other side, he should hear her.

He looked at her and nodded once, keeping up the occasional shot into the doorway.

The incoming fire from the Wraith dwindled, then finally ceased.

Teyla closed her eyes. A moment, a touch… She could risk so much. She would not have to go deep or far. They had pulled back to the entrance, one hapless spectator outside chosen to be fed upon so that a wounded man might regain his strength. She could feel the outside wind on her face, the bright sun cutting at last through scudding clouds…

“Teyla?” John was beside her, his hand on her sleeve. “Are you ok?”

She opened her eyes. He looked concerned and unshaven, but at least he was not wobbling on his feet. “They have pulled back outside, to the doorway. They know we have to come out that way, and then we will be emerging from a small space into a wide field of fire. They have us. This is not the first time someone has rebelled in the maze, though this is the first time anyone has reached the control room. They are uneasy. They do not know why this has happened, how someone could have known what to do.”

Beyond John, Radek looked decidedly self-satisfied.

John scratched his ear contemplatively, while Ronon cast glances through the door. He didn’t seem entirely confident in Teyla’s pronouncement of what the Wraith were doing.

John glanced over at Radek. “You’re absolutely positive there’s no way they can turn the traps back on?”

“Positive,” the scientist nodded.

“Do they know you turned everything off?”

Radek put his head to the side. “Almost certainly not. They would not have been able to see anything except this room on the cameras after I began. I did this room first, as you were in here, and then did the cameras before I moved on to the other systems. They would have lost the cameras first, and unless there is some sort of entirely independent secondary internal sensor system, which I doubt, they would have no way of getting any information from inside the labyrinth.”

John nodded slowly. “So they can’t see us or what we’re doing, track us, or tell what the status of their traps is.”

“Essentially, yes,” Radek said. “They may be able to reset some of the traps manually, like the pump for the water, but I think they would have to get to the pump room and do it from there. I have fragged the interfaces, as you would say.”

Ronon looked back at him. “What’s the plan?”

John nodded to the hallway. “We can’t go that way. They’re waiting for us, and we can’t get out through that kind of fire with three stunners. So we need to go another way.”

“What other way?”

Jitrine broke into a wide smile. “The door we came in!”

“Exactly,” John said. “It ought to be easy to go back up, with all the traps disabled and the lights on. We go back up to the courtyard of the palace, rush that door, and go for the cruiser.”

“That’s a plan,” Ronon said. “You know the way?”

John winced. “Teyla and I got here…kind of a roundabout way. Jitrine? Suua? Do you guys know how to get back up there?”

Suua nodded gravely. “We can retrace our steps.”

“I remember,” Nevin piped up. “I remember exactly.”

“Ok.” John picked up one of the fallen sticks and handed it to Suua. “Let’s go. Teyla?”

“I know. On six.” She couldn’t help but smile. Yes, they were still trapped in the labyrinth, but things were decidedly looking up.

The puddlejumper came to rest on the roof of the palace, Carson carefully letting it come down easy, just in case the roof wasn’t strong enough to hold it. At the first sign of buckling or damage he could lift again. But the stone pillars seemed sturdy, possibly stronger in terms of loadbearing than most modern architecture on Earth allowed, and the jumper settled without problems at all.