James Swallow - Halcyon

He pulled himself into the vessel and a creeping chill settled on him. The same crawling spook house vibe he felt the last time he'd boarded a Wraith craft was there in an instant, the itch like spider webs on his skin. And the smell, that battery acid stink, hanging in the cold still air. Sheppard flicked the torch on his P90 on-off to test it, and then moved forward, the butt of the boxy weapon pressed into his shoulder. There was a dull vibra tion coming up through the floor, a sense of something powerful building up to speed. Now and then, a rumbling shudder would twitch through the walls.

As far as the Atlantis expedition had been able to discover, Wraith ships had little in the way of interior variation, structured inwardly like a spade-shaped ribcage with internal spaces. Previous jaunts on board these craft meant Sheppard knew some of the basic layout, like where to find the hibernation chamber or the holding areas; but he was working blind here, trying to second-guess Scar. If the alien was one of the Wraith `officer class' then he was on board this tub because he had a goal in mind. The bridge? Engineering? A weapons deck? Do these Hive Ships even have those things? The gaps in Sheppard's knowledge were infuriating. He came to a fork in the corridor and hesitated.

"Okay," he said, after a moment. "Reny, Meeny, Miny, Mo."

Above him, set in a socket on the curved ceiling, a ball of optic jelly watched the colonel making his choice.

"Sheppard, you idiot!" yelped McKay. "Are you…? Is he actually doing that stupid eeny-rneeny thing to find his way around?" In a vain attempt to provide some sort of assistance to Vekken and his soldiers, Rodney had-at gunpoint-been made to tap back into the Hive Ship's internal sensor systems. The large glassy screens in the nexus chamber showed dozens of views through fish-eye lenses, some watching empty compartments of the vessel, others catching glimpses of Wraith as they moved about the starship, hunting and feeding. By sheer chance, McKay had caught the colonel on camera.

"Still alive," Vekken seemed surprised. "Your commander has more resilience than I would have credited him with." The adjutant threw a glance over his shoulder at the Lord Magnate, who was in heated discussion with the late Kelfer's subordinates.

"Behind you! Behind you!" snapped Rodney at the monitor display. A second optical feed from an area further down the same corridor showed a lone Wraith creeping toward the colonel, who seemed oblivious of the alien's stealthy approach. "This is like watching one of those idiotic slasher movies!" He slapped at the control console. "Sheppard! It's behind you!"

"Perhaps if you call out a little louder, he might hear," said Vekken archly.

McKay spun around, galvanized into action. "He might hear this!" The scientist snatched at the bag of equipment that the Halcyons had taken from him at the dolmen and tore it open, grabbing at the radio inside. He hesitated for a second, twisting the dials on the top of the walkie-talkie. He couldn't remember the frequency! That was the stupid bloody military for you, changing the channel setting for every bloody mission, and Rodney could never remember which was which. "Sheppard!" he barked into the pickup. Nothing. He fiddled with the dial again. "Sheppard, watch your back-"

Vekken plucked the radio from his grip. "You will desist, Dr. McKay." He handed the device to one of his soldiers. "If he attempts to use this communicator again, wound him."

"Yes sir."

"He'll be killed!" blurted McKay.

"Possibly," agreed Vekken, "but you should be more concerned about your own safety. The Magnate has given you an order. Fulfill it."

eppard, watch…ack

The sound from the radio was so quick and so distorted that for a moment it sounded like some random squawk of static and not actually a human voice at all. "Rodney?" Sheppard froze, straining to hear; and in that second he caught the sound of something else entirely. A bare footstep, claws ticking over chitinous deck plates.

John swung the P90 around and thumbed the switch. The compact torch blinked on and caught the newly awakened Wraith in a halo of harsh white light. The alien's skin was still wet with processing fluids from the hibernation process, and its skin was tight over gaunt muscle and bone. More than anything, the ghoulish creature looked ravenous.

It moved fast; Sheppard's first three-round burst went wide, the tongue of yellow fire from the P90's muzzle cutting the air where it had crouched a heartbeat earlier. He swept the gun back and forth, working the trigger, eschewing the method of short and controlled bursts for something closer to the spray-and-pray technique. The Wraith was almost on him when John's attack connected and the bullets marched across the killer's torso in a line of black impacts. It didn't go down straight away; the Wraith were tough like that. Before it could recover, Sheppard advanced a step and fired twice more, aiming for the collection of organs in the chest cavity that approximated a human heart. With a rattling gasp, the Wraith collapsed and John realized he'd been holding his breath the whole time. He puffed and checked the machinegun's clear plastic magazine. Third of a clip gone and he'd only taken out a single Wraith. He was going to have to find a solution to this situation that didn't involve bullets.

Sheppard moved forward down the tunnel, continuing on. He got ten steps before the vibration coming up through his boots changed tempo, becoming a resonating howl of motion and sound. The deck shifted beneath him in pulsed, shuddering tremors.

"We cannot land!" called the pilot from the cockpit compartment. "Your Highness, the ground is unstable!"

Ronon pushed Linnian aside and pressed his face to the glass oval of the gyro-flyer's porthole. Beneath them he could see low buildings, the green cylinder of a parked Puddle Jumper. As he watched the surrounding trees wafted back and forth as if a stiff wind was blowing. One of the watchtowers crumpled abruptly at the midpoint and fell away, collapsing in a heap. "It's an earthquake."

"This region is geologically inactive," Erony countered. "It's the vessel."

The doctor crowded in beside the Satedan. "Oh my. Do you see there?" He pointed to the hillside. "Landslide."

Dex followed his direction and saw great clods of earth falling away from the shallow hill, uprooting trees as they disin tegrated. Pale, bluish-white rock was revealed underneath; but no, not rock. It glittered dully in the daylight, the color of oiled, beaten metal. "They're raising the ship," he said it aloud, unable to believe the evidence of his own eyes. Ronon shouted out a command down the length of the cabin. "Back us off, now! Get us away from the hill!"

The gyro-flyer's rotors buzzed and the aircraft retreated into a hover, just as coils of dust and earth boiled up from around the perimeter of the concealed craft. The ground cracked apart with a hoarse roar, and the Hive Ship's drives swelled to optimal power. Ronon watched the hill rise from its setting and tremble, shaking off the accumulated camouflage of countless years. Stone and wood, earth and grass fell away and flocks of birds were unseated from their roosts.

Erony's pilot kept them level with the craft as it slowly rose above the tops of the trees, a deluge of rendered soil raining down across the landscape. Torn free from its hiding place, the Wraith Hive Ship cast a monstrous arachnid shadow, the ponderous and deadly mass drifting upward into the sky in defiance of gravity.

"We are too late," breathed the woman.

Beckett blinked. "Well. It's not every day of your life that you get to see a hill take off and fly away."

"How long must've that ship been down here to get grown over like that?" demanded Mason. "Two hundred years? Five hundred? More?" He fixed Lady Erony with a hard, angry stare, daring her to answer him.