Aaron Rosenberg - Hunt and run

Banje studied him, then shook his head. But all he said was, “Setien, go find Nekai. Tell him Ronon’s having another one of his crazy plans.”

Setien nodded. “Don’t kill anything until I get back!” she demanded, taking off at a dead run. Within seconds she had vanished among the buildings.

Ronon had already pulled Adarr over to the shuttle, and gestured at its engines. “How stable are these things?”

Adarr frowned. “I’d have to go over them carefully,” he replied after a second. “But probably not very.”

“Good.” Ronon laughed at the other man’s surprise. “Now, how easy would it be to push them past their limit?”

“ This is crazy — you know this is crazy.” Frayne didn’t bother to look over at Ronon, but he didn’t have to — the two of them were the only ones in the new shuttle, and his voice carried easily.

“Maybe so,” Ronon agreed absently. “But it’ll work. And it’s better than leaving this wreck back at that city — or trudging through yet another forest, waiting to get jumped.”

The orange-haired pilot shook his head, then stopped and shrugged. “Maybe you’re right,” he admitted after a second. “If I’ve got to go, I’d rather it was out here in space than down there on the ground. Quicker up here.”

Ronon leaned forward — this shuttle didn’t have a copilot seat, so he’d settled for the perch right behind Frayne’s pilot chair — and clasped the other man on the shoulder. “You’re not dying today,” he assured his friend. “And with any luck, neither am I.” He grinned to himself. “But the Wraith are.”

Something beeped on one of the nested consoles, and Frayne hit a few switches and tugged back on the controls. Ronon felt the ship slow, shedding its velocity as it fired reverse thrusters to counter the momentum. Everything shuddered for a few seconds, then stilled completely.

“We’re here,” Frayne announced, flicking a few toggles. He swiveled his chair around and stood. “Didn’t handle too badly, after all that. Not as tight on the axis as our others, though.”

“You did great,” Ronon assured him. And he had. The little Yadonite had figured out the strange shuttle’s controls in less than an hour, and had piloted it here from the planet without incident. Of course, that had been the easy part.

Another beep, and Frayne scanned the displays. “Incoming,” he announced. They both stared out the viewport, looking for any sign of an approaching ship, and after a second Ronon noticed a dull star that was growing larger.

“There,” he said, pointing it out, and Frayne nodded. Together they watched the shape expand, growing from a tiny dot to a small blob to a small triangular shape. After a few more seconds they could see a darker band across the front, which then resolved into a viewscreen as the shape itself became clearly a shuttle. One headed right toward them.

“Let’s hope Nekai knows what he’s doing with that thing,” Frayne muttered, “or he’ll ram right into us and then we’ll all go up.” Privately, Ronon agreed. The V’rdai leader was a competent pilot but not a great one, and this required a very delicate hand. That’s why the plan had been for him to bring their other shuttle close and then let Frayne cross in an atmosphere suit and pilot it the rest of the way.

But Nekai wasn’t always that good at following others’ directions. Ronon suspected it was because he’d been a leader for too long — he was used to giving commands, not taking them. It had been enough of a struggle getting him to go back and retrieve the other shuttle.

“No, it’s too risky,” he’d said when Ronon had outlined his barely formed plan. “Not just for you, but for us. We could lose the shuttle, we could lead the Wraith right back to our base, we could all get recaptured. This isn’t what I’ve trained the V’rdai for.”

“Maybe not,” Ronon had replied, tamping down his anger and impatience, “but it’s what a lot of us were trained for. Just not by you. I had a whole life as a soldier before the Wraith caught me. So did Banje. So did Setien and Adarr and Frayne. We can do this. And we can take our fight with the Wraith to a whole new level.”

Nekai had still shaken his head. “I won’t risk leading them back to our base.”

“You won’t be. Take two or three of the others with you. That way they can’t follow your signal. Adarr, Frayne, and whoever else you leave behind will stay here with me. When you bring the shuttle back through with that device we salvaged from the Dart, the rest of them can join you. Frayne and I will pilot this heap, and you can follow us. Simple.”

Nekai had looked up at him, one eyebrow arched in question. “What makes you think I can find this world again through the ring?”

That had gotten a snort from Ronon. “I know you memorize each combination,” he’d replied too low for anyone else to hear. “You may dial them at random but you never dial the same one twice. You can find it again.” He deliberately didn’t mention the list Turen had told him about — he’d never seen it and decided that if Nekai didn’t want to tell him about that himself, he wouldn’t let on that he knew. Not that it changed anything — it just meant Nekai was memorizing the next address on the list before they left the dome, because he never consulted anything when dialing and Ronon suspected the list was safely back at their base.

They’d locked gazes for a moment, but finally the Retemite had nodded. “All right. We’ll try this crazy plan of yours. But if you get blown to bits, don’t come crying to me.”

“Fair enough.”

That part had gone without a hitch, and a few hours later Nekai and the others had returned with one of their regular shuttles and the Dart’s ring-dialing device. Adarr and Setien had joined him — Adarr had stayed behind to work on the engines and Setien to stand guard — and they’d lifted off again almost immediately. Frayne had been right behind them. It had been a mark of the little Yadonite’s skill that he’d passed the other V’rdai on the way and led them to this spot instead of the other way around. They’d decided not to try taking the shuttles through a ring again, just in case the Wraith had some way to monitor when their devices were used, and had simply flown to a a patch of space within view of the ruined city’s planet instead.

Now they watched as the other shuttle slowed and finally stopped perhaps ten meters away. “Cutting it close,” Frayne muttered. He was already in his atmosphere suit, as was Ronon, but Ronon stayed in place as Frayne moved to the airlock. “Sure you don’t want to just come back with me and forget all this?” The smaller man asked as he cycled the portal open.

“No. This will work.” Ronon gestured toward their waiting teammates. “Go on. Bring them in.”

Frayne shrugged once and raised a hand in farewell. Then he was gone, floating out into space. He moved easily, bridging the distance between the two shuttles just as the other ship’s airlock also opened and Setien leaned out. She caught Frayne’s outstretched arm on the first attempt and hauled him in, then sealed the airlock again behind her. Ronon did the same on his ship.

After a minute he felt a faint shudder and saw the engines of the other shuttle light again. The ship pulled away, and accelerated smoothly — within a minute it had disappeared behind a nearby moon.

Ronon sank down onto the pilot’s chair. Now there was nothing to do but wait.

It felt strange, sitting here in a barely functional shuttle, no shields or weapons, no defenses, no place to hide. After all these months with the V’rdai, he’d gotten used to having them around — because of the tracking devices they were never more than five meters from at least one teammate at all times, and being all alone on this ship made him realize how much he missed that constant company. Even Frayne’s complaints or Adarr’s chatter or Setien’s boasts would be welcome.