James Swallow - Nightfall

“ Roger that. I’ll do what I can to help you from up here. Good luck. ”

The survivors reeled backward as part of the floor of the animal enclosures gave way, planks ripping and falling into space, cascading down over the boughs from the main trunk of the city-tree. The Wraith went with them, screaming and howling. Through the gaps Ronon saw men hanging from ropes of vine, swinging back and forth beneath the enclosure. Some of them had rodguns that chattered rapid-fire rounds into the aliens, knocking them off their handholds and tearing them open.

The Wraith commander was still clinging to a broken support beam, his claws digging into the wood as he pulled himself back up, inch by shuddering inch.

“Stay back from the edge,” said Lieutenant Allan. “It could give at any second.”

“Maybe,” Ronon ignored her advice and stepped forward, feeling the twisted flooring bow beneath his weight.

The commander met his gaze and spat at him. Clinging to its handhold with one arm, it snatched at the pistol holster on its belt, grabbing at a stunner weapon. Balance lost, the Wraith began to lose its grip.

Ronon shook his head “Bad choice,” he said, holding out a hand to assist the alien.

There was a moment of surprise on the Wraith’s face when he could not understand why a mortal enemy would offer to save his life; then Ronon grinned wolfishly.

“Nah,” he said, the open hand curling into a fist, “just kidding.” He put all his effort into a savage punch to the Wraith’s face. The impact dislodged the commander’s grip, and with a hate-filled snarl, he fell, down and down toward the rusty landscape below. The alien vanished into the lower canopy of trees and was gone.

The figures on the rope-vines swarmed up toward the wrecked enclosure and clambered inside. Ronon blinked as one of them pulled a thin cloth scarf from around his face.

“Ronon Dex,” said Soonir, with a cocksure smirk. “We saw the Wraith coming. I thought you and your people could use the help of me and mine.”

“How did you do that?” said Keller.

“The lower enclosures are the oldest structures in the settlement,” he noted. “The stone hammers are used when we must demolish them.” The rebel leader grinned. “This seemed the most expedient way to deal with the Wraith.”

“You could have killed us all!” shouted Takkol, forcing his way forward. The decking beneath his feet gave an ominous moan and he faltered, his fury waning for a moment.

“I could have left you all to perish,” Soonir retorted. “It is your idiocy that has led our world to this invasion!”

“Hey!” shouted Keller, her strident tone surprising everyone, Ronon included. “Now is not the time for this! We need to get out of here before this place comes down around us!”

Soonir gave a nod. “The healer’s point is well made.” He signaled to his men to draw up the ropes. “Follow the tethers. My men will lead you to a platform below this one.” He offered a vine to Ronon, and eyed him. “That is, if you can manage it…” Soonir was staring closely at Dex’s face, at his pale, drawn features.

Ronon ignored the pounding headache in his skull. “I can manage,” he replied, and snatched the rope from the other man’s hand.

Sam heard the sound and turned away from the bridge console. It was unlike any cry she had ever heard before, an alien moan from an alien throat.

“Fenrir…” Teyla tried to hold the Asgard up, but he was limp in her hands. Carter saw his chest rise and fall in ever slower stutters, his breath whispering from his tiny mouth in puffs of vapor. “We have to help him!”

Carter came closer. “I’m sorry, Teyla. There’s nothing we can do.”

“Humans,” came the whisper. “You are so like us and so unlike us.” The Asgard’s expression was pained as he worked to force out every word. “We share so many things. Wonder and daring. Greatness and folly. Sorrow…and regret.”

“The Wraith will not take this ship,” Carter said quietly. “I promise you that.”

“I believe you.” Fenrir’s head lolled and his dark eyes found Teyla. “You… You must survive, Teyla Emmagan. Guard the new life within you, nurture it.” His thin hand fell to her belly. “It is your future.”

“I will,” she told him. “I can do nothing else.”

And then there were no more breaths from the Asgard’s silent form, no more words. In a very human gesture toward so alien a being, Teyla reached up and closed Fenrir’s eyes, then gently lay him down inside the broken cryo capsule.

Sam felt the ghost of the same hollow feeling she had experienced when the planet Orilla had destroyed itself in front of her; it was a terrible emotion to consider, the raw loss of being a witness to the extinction of an entire species.

“Now they are truly gone,” said Teyla quietly. “The Asgard are no more.”

Sam spoke again after a moment. “If I have learned anything after over a decade in this job, it’s that the universe has ways of confounding your expectations.” She reached out and touched the other woman’s arm. “Come on. He protected us. Now we have to do the job of the Aegis, protect Heruun and our people down there.”

Teyla nodded. “In his honor, I will do so gladly.”

Rodney pressed himself as flat as he could into the lee of a support beam and gritted his teeth. He felt the numbing edge of static backwash from the Wraith stunner blasts arcing past him, and he was in no rush to meet one full-on. McKay was far more familiar than he wanted to be with the highly unpleasant after-effects of taking a hit from the alien weapons. It had happened with enough regularity that it sometimes kept him up at night, wondering about how many neurons the stun shots fried each time; the very thought of losing some of his precious brain cells made Rodney feel quite unwell.

Blind-firing, he poked the muzzle of the P90 out into the corridor and let off a burst of rounds, but it didn’t seem to slow the return fire from the Wraiths. Across the corridor, similarly in cover behind another pillar, Sheppard was aiming down the barrel of his assault rifle and planting careful three-shot clusters in the enemy line; further back, lying prone so he presented a smaller target, Lorne laid down cover fire, trying to keep the Wraith off-balance. It didn’t seem to be working, though.

“They’re dug in tight,” called the major.

“Yeah, I’m getting that,” Sheppard replied dryly. “We should have asked Carter to magic us up a bunch of grenades.”

McKay chanced a look around the support. Between the two sides of the firefight, a handful of Risar stood mute and confused, blinking and clutching at the air, completely oblivious to the bullets and energy bolts streaking past them. One of the organic drones was clipped by a blast from a Wraith warrior and stumbled to the floor without a cry.

“What is wrong with those things?” said Lorne. “They’re right in the line of fire!”

“Fenrir,” said McKay. “He’s not controlling them any more. Without any orders, they’re just going around in circles.” As if to underline his statement, the lights along the floor dimmed for a moment, and in concert the Risar reached for their heads.

At the far end of the corridor, where the passageway branched toward a heavy hatch, the Wraith warriors had ripped out a wall panel for use as a makeshift barricade. Behind them, he could pick out one of the black-tunic-wearing scientist caste working at the controls to the door. For a second he thought it was the same Wraith they’d left looking like a fool back on the Hive Ship; but then there was no way he would have been able to get over to the Aegis this fast. The truth was, it appeared relatively rare to find differentiation between the different Wraith sub-groups; from the research started by Carson Beckett three years back, it seemed that each of them were formed in egg-sac pods as basic ‘blanks’, and then transformed in utero by the injection of biochemical triggers by a Queen. It wasn’t much different from the way hive insects worked on Earth. The right mix of genetic code could create a low-smarts, high-strength warrior, a thinker for the scientist caste, a ship commander, even a new Queen.