Aaron Rosenberg - Hunt and run

They split into three teams: Nekai and Turen, Ronon and Frayne, Banje and Setien and Adarr. Again, smart. Each team had a heavy-hitter: Nekai was a good enough hunter to count, even if he didn’t have the same physical combat skills as Ronon or Setien. Something they’d proven in the ring, Ronon remembered with a grin, thinking back to one of the few times they’d been able to coax the Retemite into joining their sparring matches. He was good, but Ronon had put him on the ground almost immediately. And he and Setien were still a dead match for best hand-to-hand combatant in the unit.

Each team also had a spotter, since Turen had the best eyes in the V’rdai, with Banje, Frayne, Adarr, and Ronon himself not far behind. Adarr was their only real mechanic, but Frayne knew enough to fake it, especially around anything with an engine. Plus Banje was the only one who could really keep Setien in line, and Turen would sulk if she didn’t get paired with Nekai — the little Hiñati had it bad for their leader, though she was careful to keep things professional. No romance among Runners. It produced too many entanglements, clouded judgment, dulled reflexes, contradicted survival instincts — all of which could be fatal.

“Move out,” Banje ordered, and the teams scurried down the hill, splitting off only once they’d reached the edges of the city proper. Two-man teams meant their tracking devices would still overlap signals, but it wasn’t as secure as three or more, so they had to move fast. Scout the city, look for anything worth salvaging, regroup, and get out again.

They’d done this many times over Ronon’s tenure with the V’rdai. But always before it had been a village or town, where they could grab food and maybe some clothes. They had enough weapons, at least in terms of personal armaments, and those places were too small and too primitive to have any decent armor or heavier equipment, so food and clothing were about it.

This was different.

Ronon could tell that this had once been a major city. He was guessing a million inhabitants, possibly more. A few buildings still rose as much as ten stories into the air, and their jagged tops proclaimed that once they had reached far higher, daring to graze the clouds themselves. The streets were broad and straight, the city laid out in a neat grid broken here and there by circles — those might have been for traffic, or for use as parks and gathering places, or perhaps both. They were covered in dust and debris now, of course.

But a city this size had possessed advanced technology, on a par with the cities of his own world. They’d probably had some sort of security force, both for internal conflicts and for potential invasions through the ancestral ring. Those guards would have possessed body armor, maybe energy rifles, possibly even explosives.

Things they could definitely use.

“Come on, come on,” Frayne urged as they scouted down one of the streets. “Let’s go! The sooner we snatch and grab, the sooner we’re back.”

Ronon laughed at the smaller man’s impatience. “What’s your hurry?” he asked. “You that eager to get your butt whipped in the ring again?” Setien and Frayne had been sparring when Nekai had announced it was time for another mission. Not surprisingly, the orange-haired Yadonite had been losing. Badly.

“I don’t like places like this,” Frayne grumbled in reply, shrugging off Ronon’s dig. “Remind me too much of home.”

That one Ronon couldn’t argue, and so saw no need to comment. He’d learned a lot about the other V’rdai over the past eight months, and he was comfortable with all of them now, just as they were comfortable with him. Ever since that first hunt, when he’d led them to taking down their first Dart, he’d been fully accepted as part of the team. Even Frayne had never doubted him again. That didn’t stop the shorter man from griping about Ronon occasionally, but that was just Frayne. He wasn’t happy unless he had something to complain about. And if there wasn’t anything? He would invent something. Ronon was fairly certain it was just a pose, and that it amused Frayne to come across as a constant complainer. Fairly certain.

In this case, though, Ronon knew the concern was genuine. Frayne’s homeworld, Yadon, had been one of the few worlds the Wraith had allowed to advance technologically, a place of vast oceans and towering cities. The people there flew from place to place because there was no other way — the waters were too turbulent to allow for sea travel, and land was sparse enough that it was completely covered by the metropolises that housed the many Yadonites. That was why Frayne was such a good pilot. As with all his people, he had learned early, and practiced often. Ever since his world’s destruction, however, he had been uncomfortable in anything more populous than their own dome. Even small villages made him jumpy.

Being in a large city like this, especially one this badly damaged, had him jumping at shadows and starting at the slightest breeze.

“Been a little while, at least,” Ronon commented, kicking a pile of cloth and bones out of his path. “That’s a good thing.” It was, too. Clearly this city had been hit some time ago, long enough that the bodies had all disintegrated down to the bones. He shuddered to think of walking this giant mass tomb a few months or years earlier, when the corpses were still rotting. “Means no fresh food, though.”

His companion grunted. “Not likely to find anything like that here, anyway,” he pointed out, his eyes still restlessly scanning ahead of them. “Everything’d be processed.”

“Right.” Ronon hadn’t thought about that. It had been so long since he’d been in a proper city, and even then he’d been in the military. All of their food had taken the form of hard, long-lasting rations. Whenever he’d been on leave Melena had made salads and other meals with fresh meat and fruit, so he’d simply assumed that was what civilians ate all the time. But of course they hadn’t. He felt a sudden, sharp pang of renewed sorrow. She’d saved the good stuff for when he’d visited.

“Might be able to find some decent gear, if we can locate a security station,” Ronon pointed out, forcing his thoughts back to the present. “Body armor, weapons — boots.”

That got a laugh from Frayne. “What, Setien’s work not to your liking?” the little man teased.

Ronon frowned down at his feet. “She’s good,” he answered. “Not her fault she didn’t have much to work with.” He’d been able to get clean clothes, good and sturdy, from the stores the V’rdai had collected. But they hadn’t possessed any footwear large enough to accommodate him — Adarr had small feet for a man his height, and Setien’s were large for a woman but not for a man, so the team had never had a need to collect bigger shoes or boots. Setien was good with leatherworking — her father had taught her, she’d revealed during one of the rare times she’d talked about the family she’d lost long before the Wraith had appeared — and she had cobbled together a pair of sandals for him at first, so he’d at least have something to protect his soles from rough terrain. Later she’d found enough leather scraps to put together a pair of patchwork boots. They were the right size, and as solid as she could make them, but none of the scraps had been bigger than his fist so there was as much stitching as material protecting his feet. And nowhere near enough cushioning.

Every chance they’d had since then, Ronon had searched for a proper pair of boots. And every time he did, Frayne had needled him about it.

But never within Setien’s hearing.

Still, the orange-haired Yadonite had brought more than one pair of boots to Ronon’s attention. None of them had fit, but the smaller man was trying. That made up for all the teasing.