James Swallow: Nightfall

The kid’s mother came to him, her face a mix of elation and anger. “Why did you run away?” she asked him. “If you had only waited until morning —”

The stern guy — Sheppard had him pegged now as some kind of authority figure, a guess based on the number of bangles jingling up and down the length of his right arm — waved her into silence and approached the group. “Is the boy right? You came through the portal of light?”

“The Stargate,” said McKay. “That’s right.”

“I’m Colonel John Sheppard and this is my team. We’re from a place called Atlantis, maybe you’ve heard of it?” added Sheppard. “We’re not invaders, we’re just here looking for… For information.” He gestured to the others to lower their weapons.

“I do not know this ‘Atlantis’. I am Elder Aaren. And I must ask you, what do you seek on Heruun? If you’re here to trade, I warn you we want for very little.” The man moved carefully, and Sheppard was aware that the men on the ridge with the tubular rifles were following his every move, ready for a signal to open fire; but his team knew how to play these kinds of confrontations from mission after mission in the field. No sudden moves, just nice and easy.

“We seek information about the Wraith,” said Teyla. The reaction from the locals was the same one John Sheppard had seen a hundred times across the Pegasus Galaxy; cold, hard fear.

“The Wraith.” Aaren said the name and then spat in the dirt. “Thank the Aegis that they have been banished from our world. You will find no trace of them here.”

Sheppard and McKay exchanged glances. “Is that so?” said Rodney. “Banished, huh? You guys are lucky, then.”

“Luck has no bearing on it,” came the reply. “The Aegis protects us from their predations.” Aaren beckoned the colonel toward him, with other hand waving down the guns of his men. “Come. See for yourselves.” The man’s manner changed from wary mistrust to smugness in a heartbeat.

“What about Laaro?” said Ronon. “He said his father is lost. You people were out looking for him?”

“We were looking for my son!” said Laaro’s mother. “His father… He…” She broke off and shot a look at the elder.

Aaren leaned closer to speak to Sheppard in a low voice. “The boy is…troublesome. He brings nothing but worry to poor Jaaya, here. He doesn’t quite understand how things work.”

“Right,” Sheppard replied carefully. To be honest, he was having trouble understanding how things worked around here as well, but he kept that to himself for the moment.

“His father is well. He’ll be coming back tonight.”

“From where —?” Keller started to ask the question, but Aaren was already moving off, beckoning once more.

Laaro was being alternately hugged and scolded by Jaaya, and he trailed her up toward the ridge, throwing Sheppard and the others a glum, defeated look.

“So, we’re going with them, then?” said McKay.

“I guess so,” said the colonel, his eyes never leaving the boy’s.

The walk back to the settlement took a while, but the trail was easy going and the two groups moved in a wary lockstep. Rodney McKay kept pace behind Sheppard, half so he could listen in on the colonel’s conversation with Aaren, but also so he could keep someone between himself and the guys handling the lion-cat-things.

The pre-dawn light was emerging at the horizon, an orange-pink band pushing blue into the dark sky overhead.

“Their clothes,” began Keller, apparently thinking out loud as she studied the locals. “Some of them, they’re like a burnoose, those wrap-around things. All lightweight stuff. Kinda Arabian-looking.”

“Maybe,” offered McKay. “This is a savannah region, probably similar to, oh, Southern Africa back home. Figures that they’d have similar dress sense to folks from those places.” One of the animals made a grumbling snarl and pounced on something at the side of the road. Rodney heard a squeal and the crunching of bone as its handler pulled it off its kill. “Oh. Snack time. How nice.”

Keller blinked. “That’s a big kitty, all right.”

“Just as long as it doesn’t want me to pet it,” he replied.

“Ah, lions don’t bite you. Not unless you annoy ’em, or something.”

McKay arched an eyebrow. “You’re from Wisconsin. What makes you a safari expert all of a sudden?”

“Hey, I must have watched Born Free about a million times when I was Laaro’s age.” She grinned. “You know? Born Free, as free as the —”

“I know how it goes,” Rodney retorted, cutting her off in mid-flow. He sniffed and glanced up.

Keller followed his gaze, staring at the fading glow of the glittering banner in the sky. “What is that up there?”

“Ring system,” he explained, “like Saturn has. Ice and dust particles, mostly, held in check by gravitation and —”

“Huh.” Jennifer smiled slightly. “Guess you must have been more a Star Wars kind of kid.”

Rodney shrugged. He didn’t see what bearing that had on anything. “I owned a light saber,” he admitted.

“Owned, or still own?”

He glanced away. “It’s mint in box , okay? And quite rare.” A few steps ahead, Sheppard was walking in conversation with Aaren, and Rodney found himself listening in once more.

“So, this ‘Aegis’ that you spoke about. You said it protects you. It’s a device? A person?” McKay could imagine the direction the colonel’s thoughts were taking. Were the locals using Ancient technology of some sort to drive off the Wraith? The Atlanteans had seen that kind of thing before, on other worlds like the Cloister planet, Proculus and Halcyon.

“It’s not our place to question the nature of the Aegis,” said Aaren, politely but firmly. “It simply is .”

McKay rolled his eyes. So it was another gods-in-the-sky thing then. Great . That was the problem about traveling around this galaxy, where the feeding patterns of the Wraith made sure that hardly anyone ever got their civilization up past their equivalent of the Middle Ages. Nine times out of ten, every new world they went to was just like a visit to the Renaissance Fair. The thing was, every time they did meet people with a tech level closer to Earth’s, they usually ended up being very unfriendly.

“Your people don’t mind being defended by a mysterious benefactor?” Sheppard pressed the point a little more.

Aaren smiled and shook his head. “That is like asking what holds up the sky or who built the moons. These things exist. And we are grateful for them.”

The colonel changed tack. “So, what happened with Laaro’s father?”

“Ah, Errian, yes.” The Elder glanced up the road and his voice dropped; Laaro and Jaaya were only a few meters away, at the head of the party. “The boy lacks discipline, you see. He has no patience to wait.”

“He’s a kid,” said Sheppard. “Kids aren’t real big on waiting for things.”

“Just so,” nodded Aaren. “Errian is one of the Taken. He has been graced several times now. It comes to me as a surprise that the boy has not made his peace with it.”

“Taken.” Sheppard repeated the word and shot a warning look at Rodney.

Aaren was still nodding. “Like all those so chosen, Errian went from his bed in the night, while the settlement slept.”

The man’s words chilled McKay, in their matter-of-fact manner. His thoughts raced; in his book taken was just another word for culled , a nicer term to cover up the cold horror of being captured by the Wraith. “But you said the Wraith don’t come here,” Rodney pushed forward, and Aaren glanced at him.

“Not for a long time, no, not since before the Aegis came.” He gestured at Laaro and his mother. “Jaaya has tried to impress upon her son the reality of the matter, but he resists all good sense. Against my words, he still came out here all alone, as if he thought he could bring his father back himself.” The Elder shook his head, as if the idea was the height of idiocy.