Aaron Rosenberg: Hunt and run

“Is everything set?”

A shadowy figure moved through the dark, feet placed precisely to create no sound and leave no trace. She stopped beside two other shadows; these crouched down, fingers flickering as they worked.

“Almost, Lanara,” one replied softly.

“Good here,” the other, Misa, added, straightening.

“And here,” the first one, Adarr, agreed, standing as well.

“Fine. Move out.” Lanara turned and retraced her steps just as silently as before, now with two additional shadows at her back. “Ready, Nekai,” she called as she neared.

“On your mark,” a new voice answered, its words emerging without a point of origin.

Lanara shifted, sliding beyond the edge of the dark. She paused only long enough for Misa and Adarr to join her. “Mark.”

Behind them, a light began to blink on a panel. And somewhere, a klaxon began to wail. But here there were none but shadows to hear it.

“Now,” Lanara whispered as they departed, “we wait.”

“Okay, this is ridiculous,” Rodney commented as he strapped himself in. “Does anyone else think this is ridiculous?”

“No, Rodney, no one does,” Sheppard replied, most of his attention on the console as he powered up the Jumper and signaled the monitor crew to activate the gate. “It’s just you.”

“What’s ridiculous?” Teyla asked, and Sheppard rolled his eyes at her. Why did she have to encourage Rodney’s rants? Ronon, at least, knew better than to answer.

“This.” Rodney indicated the Jumper and them. “This mission. Some ship we’ve never heard of before sends out a distress call and we go running to the rescue? Why? What are we, the interstellar version of AAA? ‘Oh, don’t worry, ma’am, it’s just your drive coil — we’ll have you flying again in no time’?”

“We help people,” Sheppard reminded the scientist through gritted teeth, even as he maneuvered the Jumper through lift-off and through the gate in front of them. The familiar distortion kept him from adding anything else for a second. “It’s what we do,” he finished after he’d recovered from the disorientation. As always, he wondered if that would ever disappear — would he ever be able to pass through a gate without his brain and his senses taking a few seconds to adjust?

Probably not.

Now that he was able to focus again, however, he started checking their surroundings. The gate they’d come through was the free-floating kind, he saw, and it hung in outer space, its rippling surface and the glowing sigils around it edges providing weak illumination against the stark backdrop of space and distant stars. There wasn’t any sign of a ship nearby, so he began scanning for the distress signal. There!

“I’ve got a lock on it,” he told the others. “Maybe ten, fifteen minutes away. Hang on.” And he set the Jumper to close in on the other ship’s coordinates.

“Yes, but why do we do it?” Rodney was insisting. “It’s a valid question, you have to admit. Why do we help these people? Our mission is to explore this region, to catalog everything we find, and to improve our own knowledge, technology, and resources. How does fixing the flat on someone’s space jalopy add to any of that?”

“They might be a new race we have not encountered before,” Teyla pointed out. “And by helping them we earn their good will.”

“Great, that and two bucks’ll get you a cup of coffee,” Rodney muttered.

“It’s karma,” Sheppard told him. “You help them and sooner or later it comes back to you. That’s how the universe works.” At least he fervently hoped so — admittedly he was still waiting for returns on many of those investments.

“It’s not about getting something back,” Ronon announced. Sheppard turned around, surprised the big guy was even participating — usually he stayed silent during these constant arguments, watching the rest of them and frowning as if they were behaving like idiots. Which, admittedly, they often were. Teyla and Rodney were staring at the Satedan as well. “You help because it’s the right thing to do,” he continued. “That’s what separates us from animals.”

Not surprisingly, Rodney recovered from the shock first. “Wow, thank you for that staggering insight,” he sneered. “Ironic, hearing a lecture on morals from an unfeeling caveman.” Ronon glanced at him, not even a glare really, and Rodney shrank back but didn’t apologize. Then again, when did he ever?

“Ronon is not unfeeling,” Teyla defended her friend. She ignored the ‘caveman’ comment — they were all used to Rodney’s snide remarks, especially toward Ronon. “He has feelings just as anyone else does. But he has learned to do what is necessary, and to do so without that hesitation which could be fatal.”

“A fact,” Sheppard hastened to point out, “that’s saved your butt more than a few times.”

“Yes yes, I’m grateful for his reflexes and his martial skills,” Rodney acknowledged. “But that has nothing to do with this. We help others because it’s right? Because it shows we’re not animals? That’s just an excuse not to think about it. Really, I want to know — what do we get out of this?”

“Maybe,” Sheppard growled, reaching the all-too-familiar limit of his tolerance for Rodney, “they’ll have some magic way to shut you up. That would be worth any price.”

Teyla laughed and even Ronon grinned.

“Oh, ha ha,” Rodney grumped. But at least he didn’t continue the argument. Sheppard estimated it would take at least a minute before the scientist burst out with something inane again.

By then they’d be at the other ship. Hopefully that would keep him too occupied to speak further.

“There she is,” Sheppard pointed out a few minutes later, cutting Rodney off mid-breath and mid-argument. The silence had only lasted a minute before Rodney had felt compelled to pick up the same whine as before. But seeing the ship materialize on-screen brought his scientist self to the fore, and cut off any other complaints he might have been about to make."

“Standard configuration for a local ship,” Rodney confirmed after a second of scanning the readouts. “Short-range, too. What’s it doing way out here? Have we got any planets within range?”

“A few,” Teyla responded, tapping her own console for confirmation. “But none inhabited. That is strange.”

“Are you picking up anyone onboard?” Sheppard asked. He was already looking the other ship over, trying to decide the best angle from which to approach. They’d use the Jumper’s ceiling hatch rather than the rear cargo door — it was smaller and wouldn’t leak out as much of the cargo bay’s atmosphere. There were ports on both sides, so he’d pivot the Jumper, bringing it in on its side so the ceiling hatch lined up with one of those. It would be easiest to come at it from the far side, looping under and around. That’d also give him a chance to make sure there wasn’t anyone lurking beneath it, too. He’d had a few too many ambushes sprung on him not to be cautious.

Behind him, Ronon obviously shared his concerns. “No outward weaponry,” the Satedan pointed out. “No shields, either. Definitely not a military vessel or even a proper scout ship. Most likely civilian, possibly merchant.”

“Which again begs the question, what is it doing out here?” Rodney interrupted himself as his console chimed. “I’ve got life-signs!” he announced. “Seven of them, all strong.”

“Hailing now.” Teyla was already typing in commands. “No reply,” she said after a moment.