Aaron Rosenberg - Hunt and run

Sheppard hoped they were patient.

“Are you all right?” Teyla asked softly as the blue-eyed captor shoved Sheppard hard enough to make him stumble. She caught him on her shoulder before he could bash his head against the rocky ground, and with a few nudges and hip-checks helped him twist around so he could sit upright again.

“I’ll live,” he replied just as quietly, “or at least I will until they get tired of this game.”

He’d wondered how sharp the blue-eyed man’s hearing was. It proved to be sharp enough. “You think this is a game?” the man demanded, grabbing the front of Sheppard’s shirt and hauling him up again, far enough that Sheppard’s knees were off the ground. The captor was still hunched over at that point, and Sheppard realized he’d be as tall as Ronon if he stood up fully. Great.

“This is no game,” the man continued, shaking him vigorously. “This is your life! You will tell us what we want to know if you wish to have any chance to survive to the morrow!”

One of the other captors approached, resting a hand on the first one’s arm. This one was shorter, and something about the gait suggested female to Sheppard, though he couldn’t be sure. If it was a woman, she was slender enough that any curves were hidden by her jumpsuit. “Enough,” she said, and her voice, though deep, confirmed his guess as to her gender. “You won’t get anything out of him that way.”

The first one dropped Sheppard like a heavy trash bag. “Maybe not,” he agreed, “but it makes me feel better.”

The second captor studied Sheppard and Teyla for a second, and he wondered if he might have found a potential ally. Her next words crushed that hope. “I say just kill them and be done with it,” she offered, her voice showing no more concern than if she’d been commenting on a distant rock formation. “Kill them, go after their friends, and move on.”

“We need to know who they are, where they came from, and what they know,” the blue-eyed man insisted. “They could be bait!”

“They are bait,” the woman replied. “Bait for their friends. Bait we’re using in our trap. Not bait for a trap for us.”

“How do you know that?” Those blue eyes were wide, darting here and there. Sheppard could almost smell the tall man’s panic. “How can you be sure?”

“We’re not part of a trap,” Sheppard offered. “We were just trying to help.” He was glad Rodney wasn’t here to tell him “I told you so” about the danger of helping strangers, though he hoped the scientist would get here soon. Or rather, he hoped Ronon would get here soon, and would have Rodney safely in tow. He wasn’t sure how much longer these people’s patience would hold out.

His comment earned him a swift, hard kick from the woman. He managed to twist enough to take it in the side instead of the head, but the tip of her boot caught him right between two ribs, producing an explosion of pain all along that part of his torso. “Shut up!” she warned him in a hiss. “Bait doesn’t get to talk!”

“Then why does he keep telling me to?” Sheppard muttered, winning a second kick for his sense of humor. I always knew being a smart-ass would be the death of me, he thought as he determined to lie there and shut up rather than give her another excuse. Not that it seemed she needed one.

“Leave them,” one of the others called out — Sheppard thought it was the one who’d arrived last the night before — and the other two obediently turned and rejoined their three companions on the far side of the ledge. Sheppard waited until they were safely ensconced before crawling back over to Teyla and pulling himself up to a sitting position again.

“You really should stop antagonizing them,” she advised once he was able to lean back against the rocks next to her and catch his breath.

‘I know,” he agreed. “But I can’t help it.” He grinned at her. “Besides, if I can get them angry they may get sloppy. And I’ll take any advantage I can get.”

“What will you do with it, though?” she asked. She gestured around them with tilt of her head and a shrug of her shoulders. “We are bound hand and foot on a ledge in a mountain range on an unfamiliar planet. They have our weapons and clearly know this planet well, plus they have set various snares across its surface. Even if we manage to escape this camp of theirs, where would we go?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. He sighed. “But I’m sure the others are still out there.” He deliberately didn’t use their names, or give any indication how many there were, just in case their captors were listening somehow. “If anyone can find us, they can.” “They” meaning Ronon. “We just have to stay alive until then.”

Teyla arched an eyebrow. “So your plan on how to stay alive is by provoking our captors?”

“No, by not answering their questions,” he told her. He lowered his voice to barely a whisper. “And as long as I’m irritating them, they’ll respond by kicking and slapping me. They’ll be too focused on that to consider killing me — punching is more immediate. It’s when they calm down and decide we’re useless that we’re in trouble.”

She nodded slightly, showing she understood both what he was suggesting and that they couldn’t let their captors overhear. “Should we try feeding them information to make ourselves more valuable?”

“No. Once you start talking about real things it’s hard to stop.” Sheppard thought about the anti-interrogation courses he’d had, years before during his Air Force pilot’s training. “Plus if we start trying to tell them some details while holding back or lying about others, we’ll be inconsistent. Better to just not tell them anything. If they question you, give them nonsense answers. Ask questions in return. Start talking and veer completely off-topic. As long as they’re listening, we’re safe.” Relatively so. A lot depended upon who these people were, what kind of training they’d had, and how hardened they were to cold-blooded murder. If they were hunters, they might be used to killing animals but not people, and especially not people they’d already captured and rendered helpless. If they were soldiers, they might be more callous. Sheppard hoped that wasn’t the case — a good soldier knew when a hostage had outlived his usefulness, and was prepared to kill that hostage before he could become a liability.

Movement caught his eye, and he glanced up to see one of the other captors approaching them. This one was male, he guessed, and no taller than the woman had been but broader. His steps were heavier but just as smooth, with the grace of a hunter and the assurance of a leader. This had to be the group’s commander.

“You said you came through a Stargate,” the man said without preamble. He crouched down, putting himself at Sheppard’s eye level, but stayed carefully just beyond lunging distance. The pistol at his side looked familiar, and at first glance Sheppard felt a chill. That was Ronon’s pistol! But a second look corrected his mistake — the weapon did look very similar, but it was not identical. Still, that was odd enough to stand out. The only other time they’d seen weapons like Ronon’s were with the Travelers, and Sheppard didn’t think those nomadic people would suddenly stoop to kidnapping and torture, even if they did decide to abandon their ships long enough to descend to a planet. Could this man be a rogue Traveler, or have some sort of alliance with them? Sheppard hoped the latter wasn’t the case. He and the Travelers’ leader, Larrin, hadn’t parted on the best of the terms, but he still hoped they might become allies — or more — some day.

“That’s right,” Sheppard answered. “But I’m sure you knew that already. Didn’t you use one to get here yourself?”