James Swallow - Halcyon

With a savage grunt of effort, Ronon used the daggers as pitons, advancing up and away from the brink in a march of cutting wounds across the organic hull. He knew from past experience that Wraith craft were sheathed not with rigid and inflexible matter, but with fleshy material that could bend and deform under impacts from micrometeorites or ballistic weapons. He found a shallow duct and scrambled into it, breathing hard. The wind was rushing over the hull now, as the Hive Ship began to pick up speed. Ronon cast around and saw the gyro-flyer, below and to the starboard side, the rotor blades chopping through the air as it raced to keep up.

Sheathing the daggers, Dex swallowed down his tense adrenalin aftershock and fired his pistol point-blank into the skeletal duct. Bone and cartilage shattered around the intake, and almost as quickly a thick gel began to ooze over the new wound, hardening to scab it closed. Ronon drew his short sword, took a deep breath, and plunged himself into the cut, forcing his way through the exterior hull.

Sheppard found himself wishing for a ball of string or a piece of chalk. "A bag of bread crumbs, even," he said to the air, "or better yet, a deck plan." He had a pack of chemical glow-sticks, but nowhere near enough that he would have been able to mark the path. At what seemed like the hundredth T-junction he'd passed in the past ten minutes, the colonel halted and flashed the P90's torch down the branching corridors. He found himself thinking of the adventure games he used to play as a kid on his cousin's computer. "You are in a maze of tunnels, all alike," he grimaced. "Huh. I always liked first-person shooters better, anyhow."

In answer, a pulse of sound echoed down the corridor to his right, followed by a faint crash of impact noise. It sounded suspiciously like gunfire. "I was just kidding," added Sheppard, training his weapon. The sounds repeated, this time in rapid succession. The colonel strained to hear. He couldn't be sure, but one of the noises sounded a lot like a Wraith blaster, and the other some kind of energy weapon.

It came again, and with it an angry snarl. An angry human snarl.

"Ronon?" Sheppard flicked the P90's fire select switch to fully automatic and set off at a swift pace, homing in on the sounds of the firefight.

The passageway opened out into an inverted bone bowl, a strange colonnade where other corridors fed away like threads from the center of a web. There were glistening lens-screens on some of the walls and Scar moved to them, manipulating controls with quick, deft motions. Liquid sounds came from some of the doorways as irises made from leaves of razor-edged chitin worked shut, closing off avenues of approach behind them. Teyla watched Scar working the controls. That he knew this ship intimately was obvious, and she had no doubt he had been fully aware of how the vessel would be affected by the destruction of the dolmen. He was waiting, she realized, biding his time out in that enclosure, looking for the tools he needed to reanimate his ship, his crew. And Daus gave them to him without knowing it. He gave him us. The cruel irony of it was heavy in her chest. The arrival of the Atlanteans had merely allowed the Wraith commander to advance his plans, instead of waiting for the return of his kindred. Teyla tried to imagine the depths of hate it would take to live for so long, to hold out against the animal madness broadcast by the dolmen. There could be no other feeling inside that being but the need for revenge.

Scar noticed Teyla watching him and paused. "Speak," he told her.

"Where are you taking me?"

He ran a finger over a spot on the screen. "To my rightful place. To my throne," Scar smiled, the word entertaining him. "These prey rule their world through force of arms, and so by that measure I will soon be the new Lord Magnate of Halcyon." He clicked with soft laughter, but beneath the studied amusement was a dark streak of lethal antipathy, surfacing in his eyes. "I'll take the title just before I raze this planet to ashes."

Teyla saw a glimmer of imagery flash past on the screen, a display of the Hive Ship's internal spaces. Green glows surrounded a section several compartments away, nestled in the dense core of the vessel's meat. She felt an abrupt stab of understanding. They were moving toward the heart of the Hive Ship, toward what could only be the vessel's command center.

A pattern of blinking dots overlaid itself across the image and Scar gave an annoyed growl. He waved his hand over the console and it went dark. He spat out more commands in the Wraith language, and suddenly the pack were melting away, falling into shadowed corners or pressing themselves into alcoves where the corridor's gloomy illumination did not fall. In moments, it was almost as if Teyla and Scar were the only two in the room. She sensed their anticipation, stinging at her mind as the charged air before a thunderstorm might prickle her bare skin.

Now there were new sounds filtering up through the corridors that remained open to the chamber. Voices and footsteps, the sound of heavy boots against the deck plates. She looked at Scar and with theatrical indolence, the Wraith placed a hand to his lips in a gesture of silence.

The moment snapped and Teyla realized that the alien was laying an ambush for whomever it was that approached them. She bolted forward, opening her mouth to cry out, and the choke collar reacted instantly. The rings around her neck contracted to half their diameter, turning her shout into a wordless yap of noise, no more human than the bark of a graywolf. Furious, Teyla spun about, digging her fingers into the flesh of her throat, her nails scratching at her tawny skin as she pulled at the strangling necklet. Every noise she tried to make was incoherent, and the agony of the device was terrible.

Her vision fogged. Scar was gone, hidden away like his kindred, leaving Teyla wheezing like an elderly woman. She sagged against the curved wall as the first of the men came into the circular room. They had gas lanterns that popped and fizzed in the half-light.

"There!" A voice cried out and yellow glows hovered toward her. "Don't fire, she's not one of them…"

Another person spoke, a stiff voice used to wielding authority and being obeyed. "What in wound's sake is going on here? Get her over here."

Teyla held up her hands to warn them off, shaking her head and mouthing `No,' over and over. She backed away but they followed her in, unaware.

"It's all right, girl, we won't hurt you," said the first voice, and now she could make out the silhouettes of Halcyon riflemen, their high hats, brocade coats and their long-lance rifles.

"Stay away," she forced the words to her lips but the sound that emerged was a rattling hiss; and then it was too late to stop it.

Shapes moved in the deep shade of the chamber, fast and deadly. Men cried out and screamed. Teyla dropped to the floor as gunshots rang out, ripping swarms of needle-rounds cutting past her and white sheens of stunner fire answering them back. Blood glistened as a lantern was tossed into the air, the pool of yellow light whipping around and catching frozen images of the Wraith attack before it shattered against the deck. A heavy form crumpled into a heap close to her and she came face to face with a dead man, the papery skin of his cheeks hollow against the bones of his skull. The Wraith had fallen on the trooper in an instant, a dozen of them ripping the years from his life before his body could hit the ground.

He had something held in the death-grip of his fingers; a curved fighting knife with a serrated edge. Blocking out the terrible melee around her, Teyla pushed forward and grabbed the weapon, taking it and folding it to her chest. Hope flared inside her. If she could get away while they were still feeding, perhaps the blade might be enough to work open the collar's locks.