Aaron Rosenberg - Hunt and run

Ronon turned to go, then stopped. “But if you ever come after me or my friends again,” he warned, his voice dropping, “I will hunt you down. And I will kill you. It’s your choice.”

“So you’re just going to leave me here?” Nekai called out as Ronon began to walk from the clearing.

“That’s right,” Ronon replied over his shoulder. “I know you’ll figure a way out of that eventually, if the others don’t wake up and get loose and find you first.” He met Nekai’s gaze. “I’d hurry though, if I were you. You’ve been by yourself for a while now — the Wraith will be homing in on your signal.” He could tell that had hit home. “Good luck.”

Then he was beyond the trees, and out of sight. He paused long enough to set Nekai’s belt and pistol down on a nearby rock, somewhere he was sure the other man would find them. No one deserved to be defenseless before the Wraith. With that done, Ronon straightened and began jogging back toward the Jumper, and the others. Back toward his friends. He hoped Rodney had the Jumper fixed by now. This hunt was over, but if they didn’t hurry they might get caught up in another one, and Ronon preferred to face the Wraith on his own terms, not theirs. He frowned and picked up the pace. It was time to go home.

“That’s ridiculous!”

“That’s exactly what I said!”

“No, not that way. Your way. What you’re saying is ridiculous!”

“I know it is! Yet we did it anyway and look where it got us.”

“That’s not what I meant. I am definitely not agreeing with you!” Sheppard scrubbed at his face with one hand, as if that could rub away Rodney’s statements.

“Yes, you are!” Rodney insisted. “I said it was ridiculous right from the start, and you just agreed with me!”

“I didn’t agree that helping was ridiculous! I said you’re calling it ridiculous was ridiculous! You’re just — aaahhhhh!!!” Sheppard threw his hands up in disgust. He could never win! Arguments with Rodney never worked because there were two kinds of logic — real logic and Rodney logic. And never the twain would meet. But in Rodney-logic, Rodney was always right. Period.

It was a relief to spot something moving beyond the boulders, and Sheppard quickly turned all his attention upon the half-seen disturbance. He raised his pistol and took aim as best he could, sighting on the faint play of shadows across the rocks —

— and relaxed as Ronon stepped into view.

“Everything okay?” Sheppard called out as the Satedan approached them. His pistol was safely in its holster, which Sheppard took to be a good sign, though he knew all too well how fast his friend could draw and fire.

“Everything’s fine,” Ronon replied as he rapidly closed the distance. He wasn’t running and didn’t look back, but he was moving quickly nonetheless. “It’s time to go.”

“Good thing I fixed the Jumper then, isn’t it?” Rodney muttered as he opened the airlock and preceded the rest of them inside. “But don’t thank me or anything. I’m just saving all our butts yet again. It’s what I do.”

“Yeah, and it’s a good thing the rest of us took care of those hunters trying to kill us,” Sheppard couldn’t help retorting, “and that Ronon dealt with their leader all by himself, otherwise they’d have cut you down long before you could finish. But that’s okay — that’s just what we do.”

“Yes. Well.” Rodney gulped. “It’s a team effort, of course.”

Sheppard bit back his smile as he took the controls and powered up the Jumper. The engines hiccupped a little and the liftoff was a little jerkier than he’d have liked, but the ship seemed to be spaceworthy again. “So long, mudball,” he said under his breath as the small world fell away behind and beneath them. “Don’t bother to write.”

“Did you get the cloak working again?” Ronon was asking Rodney as Sheppard zeroed in on the local Stargate and gave the Jumper as much speed as he thought she could handle.

“Of course,” came the immediate reply.

“Good. We’re going to need it.”

“Expecting trouble, Ronon?” Teyla asked him from her customary place beside Sheppard.

“Always,” the Satedan answered. “But especially now.”

“You figure the Wraith are on their way,” Sheppard guessed. “Nekai and his partner split up after we took down the others, so he was exposed long enough for them to get a lock on his location.” He didn’t need to see his friend’s nod to know he was right. Part of him was a little surprised Ronon didn’t want to stay and kill whatever Wraith actually showed up, but he figured that was less about Ronon losing his hatred for them and more about him realizing they might not make it back to Atlantis if they didn’t leave now. Fighting long odds was one thing, but throwing your life away against impossible odds was another. And Ronon was too canny and too determined to go for the latter.

“Gate’s coming up,” he announced a few minutes later. “At current speed, we’ll hit it in two minutes max. Rodney, how close do you think we need to be for you to unlock it without setting off whatever booby trap Nekai left for us?”

“There’s no way to say for certain,” Rodney answered, all snark set aside as he focused on the situation at hand. “If it was tied to his DHD, we disabled that already, so there may not be a problem at all. If he hacked the gate itself, he might have programmed a feedback loop or some sort of recursive error like an impossible dialing combination — if that’s the case I should be able to break it as soon as the Jumper’s within its usual dialing range. If he figured out a way to hardwire the lock, however, I’ll need to remove it from the gate itself.”

They looked at Ronon, but he shook his head. “When I was with them, we rarely took ships through a Stargate,” he explained, “and the DHD wasn’t attached to anything. They’ve done that since. There’s no telling what else they’ve added.” He frowned. “But Nekai isn’t good enough with computers to hack into anything. And he prefers to keep his solutions simple and direct. He’ll have the explosives on the gate itself, and the lock, too, I’m guessing.”

“Right, gate it is, then. I’ll put us a little ways off, just in case that motion-sensor’s already been activated.” Sheppard adjusted their trajectory slightly, and a minute later started firing the braking thrusters. The Jumper slowed and then came to a stop. The Stargate hovered in space a short ways ahead of them and off to one side, starlight and stray wisps of sunlight casting the glyphs on each face into deep shadow.

“I’m on it,” Rodney announced, snapping his helmet into place — he’d pulled on the spacesuit as soon as they’d lifted off from the planet and Sheppard had decided not to argue about it. The others had donned their MOPP suits, just as a precaution. “Hopefully this won’t take long.”

“I can help,” Ronon offered, but Rodney shook his head.

“You’d only get in my way,” the scientist explained, but not meanly. And it might even be true with something like this — Sheppard could see how two men, both trying to deactivate a bomb, could trip each other up. Especially if they had different ideas about what needed to be done.

Ronon shrugged and settled back into his seat as Rodney opened the bulkhead door and stepped through to the cargo hold. A minute went by and then they felt the Jumper rock slightly as he opened the ceiling hatch and slipped through it.

“I’ve reached the gate,” Rodney reported through the suit comms a few minutes later. “And I found the explosives, Your friend didn’t do things by half-measures, did he? There’s enough here to blow up anyone coming through, plus our ship, and possibly that planet we just left as well.”