James Swallow - Nightfall

Allan came up from a crouch with the other dagger in her fist and struck at another of the Wraith warriors, dislodging its helmet. It turned on her as the blade-tip scraped over its bare shoulder and the creature viciously shoved her back. Ronon moved to help her, but he was sluggish and his joints ached with each motion.

The Wraith planted its hand on her chest and hooted with pleasure as it began to feed off her. She screamed, the flesh of her face turning grey, becoming taut across the bones of her skull.

Ronon kicked low and connected with the Wraith’s knee, smashing bone. The creature twisted and dropped, freeing Allan from the death grip. She pitched forward, wheezing, and shoved the dagger into the warrior’s eye socket. The Wraith tumbled over in a twitching heap.

He caught the lieutenant and heard her gasp; in the space of just a few seconds, the Wraith had drained decades from her life. The young woman he had spoken to before was twenty, thirty years older in aspect, her buzz-cut hair streaked with grey and her face lined. “Behind you!” she husked.

Ronon turned and punched blindly. He was rewarded by a howl and the sensation of cartilage snapping beneath his knuckles. The Wraith commander spun backwards, out of the cage proper and into the confusion of the corridor beyond, blood gushing in a fan from his crushed nose.

But these were only minor victories in the melee. Ronon saw Takkol’s men becoming food for the Wraith, while the former elder stumbled on his robes as he tried to flee the killing.

The Satedan grabbed Keller’s arm and dragged her out of the cage, with Allan hobbling along behind. “We have to fall back,” he shouted. “Find another way out!”

They pressed into the cluster of survivors, Takkol, the medical team and the last of the Atlantis airmen with them, but the further back they retreated down the corridor, the clearer their situation became.

“There’s no other way out of here,” the lieutenant coughed. “There’s only one exit from this place, and the Wraith are between us and it!”

“They’re going to butcher us like herd animals!” moaned Takkol.

“Not without a fight,” said Ronon.

The smooth metallic lines of the control chamber lit by cool yellow-white illumination were gone, replaced by something dirtied with oily residue. There was a smoky, cloying burnt-meat stink that hung in the air.

Teyla shoved the sparking remains of a computer panel off her legs and struggled to her feet. She shuddered as she surveyed the room; the Queen’s suicidal attack would have killed her just as it had torn apart Fenrir’s Risar, had she not sensed that tiny moment of thought before the implanted bio-charge exploded. It was horrific to conceive; the Wraith Queen had willingly given her own life in order to destroy the command centre of the Aegis , and although she had not fully succeeded — a testament to the resilience of Asgard technology — the consoles and holographic screens all around the chamber were flickering and incoherent. The alien had done much damage.

And for Fenrir’s cryogenic capsule was at the heart of it all, the impact point of the detonation. Coolant pipes spat foam, forming hazy clouds of ice crystals in the frigid air. The whole forward section of the suspension module had been ripped open and blackened by thermal damage, heat-warped fingers of broken metal twisted and bent by the force of the blast.

Teyla’s hand went to her chest. He had to be dead. He could not have —

“Tey…la…” The voice was faint and labored. It took her a moment before she realized it was not a synthetic echo, but the real thing.

“Fenrir?” She rushed forward, slipping over newly-formed patches of ice and shallow drifts of broken glass. She found a foothold on the side of the ruined cryo module and pushed up until she was kneeling atop the frost-rimed surface of the machine.

From this angle, it appeared as if a monstrous blade had slashed along the length of Fenrir’s capsule. The pod, sealed closed for generations, was open to the air and ruined, the fragile life within moments away from death. She glimpsed pallid flesh moving amid the smoke and vapors, and Teyla fanned them away.

A spindly, childlike hand emerged from the cold fog and grabbed her wrist. She reached down into the flickering glow of the pod’s interior and found the alien there, his chest fluttering as he fought to breathe. Teyla’s eyes were stinging and she blinked furiously. She tried to pull Fenrir up, but he was caught beneath a distended piece of machinery; his bird-thin limbs were atrophied and weak, so much so that she feared she would snap his bones if she pulled too hard.

The Asgard’s head turned, revealing a half-coronet made of hair-like wires and smooth crystal spheres about the back of his skull. Snaking cables that pulsed with light extended away, doubtless toward the interface that married Fenrir to the systems of the Aegis .

“Teyla,” he repeated. “I am sorry I deceived you. Perhaps now I have done my penance…” The Asgard gasped as pain lanced through him. “We should…have been open with each other… Perhaps this is fitting. I will go to be with my kindred…and be forgiven.” He blinked, his heavy lids closing slowly.

“Fenrir, no!” cried Teyla. “Please, you must hold on! If you perish, there will be no-one to control this ship, it will be lost! The Wraith are already on board…”

He gave a pained nod. “I sense them. Yes. Moving. I cannot stop them.”

She squeezed his frail fingers. “Then help me stop them! Hold on!”

“You…cannot do that alone.” He sucked in a shuddering breath. “I will…bring you the help you require.”

The crystal spheres clustered around the interface crown began to glow.

McKay followed the others to their feet as the webbing across the cell door vibrated and reeled back into the chitinous walls. The four Wraith warriors on guard had been joined by the scientist-type he remembered encountering down on Heruun. The alien glanced at them all in turn with sly, open avarice.

“My Queen has opened the way. The Asgard ship will soon be under the control of my clan. If you wish to live, you will help us understand its mechanisms.”

Sheppard shrugged. “Hey, I can barely change a light bulb. Can’t help you with any space doohickeys, pal.”

This seemed to amuse the alien. “Not you.” He nodded at Lorne. “Nor you. You are warrior drones, without the intellect required for such tasks.”

“I’ll have you know I’m an ace at sudoku,” Lorne sniffed, moving to join Sheppard where he blocked the path toward Carter and McKay.

The Wraith scientist pointed at the others. “These two, the female and the inferior male.”

“Inferior?” echoed McKay. “I resent that!”

“We won’t help you,” Carter said firmly. “We’ll resist you every inch of the way.”

The Wraith grunted. “And how will you do that?”

Carter was about to say something more, but from nowhere a white nimbus of light surrounded her and vanished with a humming crackle.

“Huh,” said Sheppard, a grin forming on his lips. “ That way, maybe?”

The alien shouted out a command, but it was too late; the transport effect flared again, and when it faded he was alone inside the cell.

The Wraith commander advanced, the corridor’s floorboards creaking as he came ever closer. His head turned, lips peeling back to show wet fangs. “Surrender. It will pass quicker if you do not fight us.”

Ronon Dex was aware of his heart hammering in his chest, his pulse rushing in his ears; the sickness in his blood was sapping his strength, draining his will even as he stood here and did nothing. He shook his head to dispel the miasma in his thoughts; he rejected the fatigue in his bones, the desperate need to slump to the wall and let the blackness take him.