James Swallow - Nightfall

There was a sparking and a cough of smoke from the hatchway, and Rodney’s heart sank as the doors slid open, granting the Wraith scientist access. A stun bolt hissed past him and he yelped, ducking back into cover.

“We’re out of options. I’m gonna rush them,” said Sheppard. “On three.”

“Three what?” McKay snapped back. “Bad plan! You step out, they’ll cut you down!”

“Then how —?” Lorne was starting to speak when lights went out in the corridor, and for one stark moment the only illumination was the muzzle flare of the rifles.

“What the hell?” said Sheppard.

There came a sound that made Rodney’s skin crawl, a weird keening moan that echoed down the corridor. With a start, he realized it was coming from all around them.

“The Risar…” said Lorne. “It’s them.”

The lights flickered and came back, both humans and Wraith brought to pause by the brief blackout. The moaning grew louder, more strident. The Asgard drones were agitated, clawing at themselves and stumbling against the walls.

“Oh no.” Rodney felt a jolt of comprehension. “Fenrir… I think he’s dead.”

One of the Wraith warriors fired a shot into the shambling, directionless Risar and knocked it to the deck; it was a grave mistake. As one, the rest of the drone-creatures howled incoherently and surged toward the Wraith barricade, into the teeth of the alien weapons. The densely-muscled Risar attacked on reflex, shattering the line. Without their Asgard creator to guide them, they had become primitive and animalistic, reacting to only the most savage and basic of instincts.

Sheppard shot the others a look. “C’mon, move up! This might be the only chance we get.” He broke from cover, moving and firing, with Lorne charging after him. McKay swallowed hard and followed.

Teyla placed her hands on the half-spheres of the control console as Colonel Carter had shown her, and moved them gently. On the holographic screen in front of her, a disc of color turned and flexed, showing the power train from the energy reactor in the heart of the Aegis .

“Careful,” said Carter. “I need you to manually regulate the flux from the core while I fire up the sub-light drives.”

“I understand,” she replied, although she had only the most basic grasp of what the colonel was actually doing. The Asgard ship’s controls were not like those of Wraith ships; there was none of the unearthly sense-connection between flesh and machinery.

Carter’s hands moved over the neighboring panel in long loops, as panes of data unfolded in the cold air before them. Teyla saw an exterior view flicker into life on the large oval screen. There, blotting out the distant ball of Heruun’s orange sun, was the monstrous arachnid silhouette of a Hive Ship. She saw it shift. “They are turning,” she reported. “They see us moving.”

“External sensors are picking up energy transfer.” Carter chewed her lip. “Yes, there. The Wraith are charging weapons.”

“Will they risk firing on us? Do they not wish to keep this craft intact?”

The colonel glanced at her. “My guess is they’ll be more than happy to put a few dents in it if they have to. And worst-case scenario…”

“They will destroy it if they cannot possess it.”

Carter nodded. “Here we go, sub-light engines to one quarter thrust.”

On the screen the Hive Ship slipped away, turning even as it dropped past them.

Teyla studied her console. “The shields… The indicator ribbon here is barely a third full.”

“I know. We’ll have to do what we can to avoid getting tagged —”

The decking beneath their feet rocked and pitched; on the power screen, a schematic of the Aegis flashed up, a series of red circles appearing all along the aft of the vessel were the first salvo from the Hive Ship impacted.

“Or not,” Carter frowned. “We have to get some distance, give the weapons grid time to charge up, otherwise they’ll pick us apart.”

Teyla’s mind raced. She had been both the hunter and the hunted, on foot in the forests of Athos and on other worlds across Pegasus; but the rules of the hunt there or here in the void of space were still basically the same. Evade your enemy. Deny them their advantage. Strike from cover.

She nodded at the exterior view. “We should make for Heruun. The planet’s ice halo. We could lose them in the clutter.”

The colonel angled the ship and applied more power to the drives. “Good call. I’m taking us in.”

Sheppard’s rifle ran empty and he spun it about as he advanced, slamming the skeletal butt of the G-36 into the chest of the Wraith warrior blocking his path to the computer core chamber. The alien cried out as it was knocked back over a shallow railing; built for the diminutive Asgard, the safety rail only came up to the Wraith’s knees, and it tumbled headfirst to the chamber’s lower level twenty feet below.

The colonel threw a glance over his shoulder as Lorne and McKay followed him in, both men laying down blasts of gunfire. The few remaining Wraith outside had been mauled by the wild Risar, but in their uncontrolled state there was a chance the drones might turn on the humans as well. They had to move quickly.

The core chamber reminded Sheppard of an amphitheatre, with tiered concentric levels dropping downward to an open area in the centre. A broad column of crystalline circuitry glowing with power dominated everything, and from it extended spokes of Asgard technology that connected to other, smaller cylinders of systemry around the edges of the room. Hanging over the floor were glass maintenance platforms with no visible means of suspension.

Lorne dispatched a pair of armed Wraith left behind to guard the entrance as Sheppard dropped into a crouch, reloading his weapon. On the lowermost level the other Wraith were reacting to their presence, firing stun blasts toward them, moving into cover. The larger group of them were clustered around a cylinder of smoked glass; glowing blue vanes circled around it, humming with power. Sheppard spotted one of the Wraith leather jacket brigade working a console under the watchful eye of a senior warrior. The soldier Wraith looked familiar; he had been in the control room when Fenrir had first brought the Atlanteans aboard the Aegis . The colonel raised his rifle, but the angle was poor. He couldn’t draw a bead on either of them from here.

Lorne voiced the question forming in Sheppard’s thoughts. “What are they doing down there?”

McKay made a face. “That cylinder… It’s the matter converter platform.”

A sphere of white light appeared inside the smoked glass and then faded away; the panels retracted to reveal a barrel-shaped object half the height of a man. It was constructed out of the same featureless, matte grey metal that formed the walls of the Asgard starship. About the sides of it, there were rings that pulsed slowly with dull red color.

Sheppard’s throat went dry. “Rodney. Is that what I think it is?”

Two of the Wraith warriors gathered up the device and removed it from the converter; in doing so they turned it, revealing an oval plate attached to the side of the object. On it was a single Asgard rune, a simple vertical line like a downward knife cut. The symbol ‘isa’.

“Oh no,” managed McKay.

“I really hate it when you say that,” said Lorne. “So that’s a bomb?”

Rodney nodded. “And then some.”

Ronon emerged into a chamber formed by the natural growth of the great tree’s thicker trunks, following Keller and the others. Flooring had been set across it, and a circular door had been fitted into a curved bole. Two more of Soonir’s men were waiting for them there, one at a viewing slot in the door. He nodded to the rebel leader. “No sign of any more Wraith. The others may not have been alerted yet.”