SGA - 14 - Death Game (15 page)

“Yeah.” John’s mouth was set in a grim line beneath the shades. “That. I’m starting to wonder what the deal is here.”

“You think it’s something like that?” It made sense. Teyla could see how it might be. “Tolas is definitely hiding something, but I would guess that most of the Pelagians don’t know, anymore than most of the Olesians did.”

“The answers are on that island ahead of us,” John said, gesturing with his chin. “This business about a High King and games in honor of the gods. The Games of Life?”

“What if the gods are Wraith?” Teyla blurted. She stopped, thinking about it.

John nodded slowly. “It makes sense. We’ve seen that before, back in the Milky Way. Alien predators setting themselves up as gods to get a never ending stream of stuff without having to do any work. Only in this case, the tribute isn’t stuff. It’s people.”

“Food for the gods,” Teyla breathed.

“I’ll bet you my last cigar,” John said.

“What is a cigar?”

“Never mind.” He shook his head. “Why run around Culling when they can sit on their asses and have the locals bring them tribute? Lazy bastards don’t even have to get up and do any work.”

Teyla smiled grimly. “We, at least, make them work for it.”

“They’ve got the technology to carry off the god thing. You’ve got to have a big technological gap to do that. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” John quoted.

“Who said that?”

“A guy on Earth named Arthur C. Clarke. The Wraith have that kind of advantage here, and it’s the perfect place to do it. It’s got a big population, but unlike Sateda these people don’t have the technology to get it. Ronon would see through their stuff and know it was Wraith tech, not magic. You couldn’t pull that kind of scam there. You couldn’t pull it on the Genii. But these guys aren’t there. They could get by with it.”

Teyla leaned on the ship’s rail. “So now we are being taken to the gods.”

“They’re not sure whether we’re the real thing or not,” John said. “If we really are from another planet, the Wraith will want to question us. If we’re not…” He shrugged. “We’re tasty and crunchy.”

“I will know,” she said. “I will know when we are close enough if you are right and there are Wraith here.”

John nodded seriously. “That will give us an advantage. We know what they are, but they don’t know what we are. They’ll think we’re just more little rabbits.”

“Not El-ahrairah himself.” Teyla could not help but smile. “O prince of rabbits!”

He glanced at her sideways. “I hope I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeves.”

“We have the radio,” she said.

“And we know Wraith tech. They don’t know that we know it. That’s a big thing.” John put his elbows on the rail and leaned beside her, as if also admiring the view of the sea. “We need to wait for the right opening, gather the intel and make the move when we’re ready.”

“Hopefully that will be with Lorne and a squad of Marines behind us,” Teyla said.

“Hopefully.” John lifted his head, looking toward the distant horizon. “I hope Zelenka and Ronon are doing ok.”

“So do I,” she said.

Chapter Fifteen

Radek and Ronon watched as the ship came closer, leaving off waving their arms when it became clear that the ship had seen them and altered its course to intercept them. As it came nearer, they had a better look at it. It was most probably a merchant ship. A single bank of ten oars on each side swept in time, and it was low and not particularly streamlined. An upper deck perched awkwardly astern laden with cargo lashed on with ropes, while on the forward deck a bunch of small livestock in crude cages made a variety of alarmed noises. Some of them looked like pygmy goats.

The men on deck were lean and bearded, wearing sweaty linen tunics that came to their knees, but they called out readily enough as they came alongside the little fishing boat.

“We have been shipwrecked!” Radek called back. “We are the only survivors!” Which sounded much better than ‘we are aliens from another planet who have stolen this boat without knowing how to sail it.’ That seemed a potentially problematic story. Stealing boats might be as illegal here as it was on Earth. It probably was.

In no time at all the sailors threw down ropes, and Ronon climbed up easily. Radek looked at the swaying rope with trepidation. This had never been his favorite part in the gymnasium. In fact, he’d never managed to climb the rope in his life.

Ronon leaned back over the side. “Give me your hand,” he said, and pulled Radek up as though it were nothing.

Towering over the sailors on the deck, his massive forearms bared, Ronon looked like some hero out of legend. They gave him a wide berth.

The one who might be the captain, a little better dressed, spoke. “You don’t look like fishermen,” he said doubtfully.

“My friend here is a warrior of great renown,” Radek said, pushing his glasses back up on his nose. “We took passage with the unfortunate fishermen, but last night there was a terrible storm.”

The captain eyed Radek skeptically, though he seemed to accept readily enough that Ronon was a mighty warrior. And certainly they knew there had been a storm. That was absolute truth.

Ronon looked dour and flexed a few muscles for effect.

“I am a scribe,” Radek said, waving his forefinger about. “I tell his mighty deeds.” He was suddenly very grateful that his polytechnique school had required ancient history. He could manage all these cultural things as well as Teyla. And certainly he could play the scribe.

At that there were a few nods and grins. The captain looked at Ronon, or rather looked up at Ronon. “He’s yours?”

“Yeah,” Ronon said.

The captain shrugged. “To each his own! It’s good luck to rescue the shipwrecked. After all, one day it may be us. We’re bound for the Holy Island with cargo. We’ll take you and your boy there if you like, and then you’re on your own.”

“Sounds good,” Ronon said gruffly.

Radek felt the blood rush to his face. Oh really. That sort of ancient cultural thing.

One of the crew looked at Ronon speculatively. “You’re not planning to enter the Games of Life are you? Because I’d put some money on you.”

“I might,” Ronon said even more dourly. Apparently he thought the role required extreme taciturnity.

Rather than…whatever Radek’s required.

“Tell me of these games,” Radek said chipperly. “My friend is ever anxious to try his sword against new opponents.”

From the gales of laughter that broke forth Radek gathered this was a worse double entendre in their language than in his native Czech, and he cursed the Stargate’s translations for the millionth time. It probably didn’t bear repeating in Satedan either, from the way Ronon gave him an absolutely incredulous look underneath his brows.

“You are ambitious, little man!” the sailor who had mentioned the games said.

The captain frowned, however. “You do not know of the Games?”

“We’ve come a long way,” Ronon growled. “I’m not looking for trouble.” He frowned in a way that suggested that anyone who helped trouble find him might not be made very happy. “And if you’ve got any water it would be a good thing.”

At that a skin bag of water was produced, and Ronon drank before he passed it to Radek. The water was stale, but Radek hadn’t realized quite how thirsty he was. Yes, it had only been ten or twelve hours, but they had been exerting themselves quite a lot, swimming in the towering waves and then bailing. He stopped himself before he finished the skin, both because he remembered that it was a bad idea to drink too much at once, and because Ronon might also want more. He had not drunk deeply before he passed it on.

Most of the sailors had lost interest and gone back to their work, and even the captain was forward looking up the mast at something.

“What the hell?” Ronon said in a low voice.

“I do not want to say we are from another planet,” Radek said. “That might be very imprudent.”

“No shit, with Wraith here,” Ronon said. He hunched his shoulders as though the transmitter was still there beneath his skin, a habit that would no doubt die hard. But Carson had removed the transmitter more than a month ago. The Wraith could no more find Ronon than any other individual human on this world. “Did you have to say…”

“I do not need to know what I said,” Radek said quickly. “We need to know how long it is going to take us to get to a port and what is going on and how we can get passage from this island to the mainland where the gate is. Unfortunately we have nothing to trade at the moment.”

“Nothing you’d like.” Ronon grinned wolfishly, and it took a moment for Radek to realize that was a joke.

“Very funny,” Radek said.

Ronon stretched his arms and cracked his knuckles. “Wonder what these games are. Maybe I could win us some money.”

“If they have a coinage based economy,” Radek said. “Perhaps some sort of gladiatorial combat?”

Ronon nodded. “If it’s to the touch it might be worth a try. I don’t know what these guys think is good.”

“You are very good,” Radek said. He’d heard Sheppard all but wax rhapsodic about the Satedan’s fighting skills, and it took quite a lot to impress the colonel. “If it is not mortal combat it might be worth a try. It sounds as though these people have gambling, and perhaps you could win passage.”

“Everybody has gambling,” Ronon said. “I’d try it. See what you can find out.” He stood up and leaned on the rail in the wash of the wind.

“I should find out?”

“You’re the talker, aren’t you?” Ronon looked at him sideways. “What do I keep you for?”

“You are getting too much into this role,” Radek grumbled, but he ambled back along the deck to try to strike up a conversation with the captain.

***

The jumper took off from the island very precisely. Carson was being incredibly careful. Which suited Rodney just fine. He was all in favor of not crashing the jumper again. And not repairing the jumper again. He would really like to find everyone, go home, have dinner, and sleep in his own bed sometime this year.

“Ok,” Major Lorne said, coming forward and sitting down in the shotgun seat ahead of Rodney. “Let’s head back toward the gate. We’ll start there and fly concentric circles going out, starting with, say, a ten kilometer radius and working our way out in 20 km increments.”

“That’s going to take quite a bit of time,” Carson said.

Lorne nodded. “Yep. But if they’re on hand held radios we need to make at least a couple of passes within range or we may miss them, and the range varies based on weather, humidity, and whether or not they’re indoors. It’s more likely they’ll be close to the gate than on the other side of the planet, so let’s start near the gate and work our way out. That way the other side of the planet is the last choice.”

“That actually made sense,” Rodney said.

Lorne looked over his shoulder at him. “Thanks, doc. I do try to make sense sometimes.”

Carson shook his head. “Where could they have gone?”

“They got off the island somehow,” Lorne said. “We’re just going to have to make radio sweeps. Unless Dr. McKay can do something with the life signs readings?”

“Sorry, no,” Rodney said shortly. “Dr. McKay cannot. The people on this planet are human. Which means there’s no possible way to tell the difference between our people and them on the life signs detector. And the EM fields given off by our equipment are too faint to pick up unless we’re right on top of them. At which point we would have had them on the radio for ten minutes already.”

“I can’t believe they’re missing again,” Carson said.

“Yes, well,” Rodney snapped. “Maybe it’s time to face the facts that we aren’t very good at this. Week before last we were taken prisoner by the Olesians and tied up in a hut. The week before that Cadman and I got sucked up by a Wraith Dart. Two weeks before that we spent 24 hours running around the woods in deadly solar radiation trying to catch Off-His-Gourd Ford while Ronon wanted Carson to operate on him in the wilderness with a penknife and a toothpick like something out of MacGyver. Before that…oh yeah. Before that we were besieged by an incredible number of pissed off Wraith. It’s just possible that we’re doing it wrong!”

Carson looked at Lorne as if to say, what did you expect?

“Well, what do you suggest, doc?” Lorne said. “Pack up and go home?”

“No.” Rodney set his jaw. “There’s too much to learn here.”

“Then we take some chances,” Lorne said. “I’m sure if you don’t like being on the gate team that Dr. Zelenka wouldn’t mind taking your place.”

“Zelenka?” Rodney could hardly believe his ears. “Zelenka doesn’t even like to go off world! And he’s agoraphobic or something.”

“You’re claustrophobic,” Cadman pointed out from behind Rodney’s seat.

“Was anybody talking to you? I think not,” Rodney snapped.

“I’m just saying,” Cadman said.

“It’s much worse to be agoraphobic than claustrophobic, from the point of view of a gate team,” Rodney said. “After all, we don’t do a lot of spelunking. But we do kind of have to be outdoors under the sky.”

“I thought you didn’t like that,” Lorne said.

“Only when there’s dangerous solar radiation,” Rodney replied doggedly. “You were incredibly careless. I bet if Carson checked your sperm count he’d be appalled.”

Cadman made some noise that sounded like a stifled sob.

“I don’t need his bloody sperm count!” Carson said. “It’s not a fertility clinic around here!”

“My sperm are just fine,” Lorne said, but he didn’t sound too confident. As well he should not. It was no laughing matter.

Cadman made another strangled noise.

“Look,” said Carson in his best consulting physician tone, “It’s not as though he won’t make more. The kind of long term radiation damage you’re talking about, Rodney, is not something you’re going to get in a day from solar radiation on a habitable planet. The human body is a lot more resilient than you think. In eight to ten weeks Major Lorne’s sperm will be entirely normal. Unless he were planning on impregnating someone immediately, he’d probably be fine. And you know that sperm quality doesn’t necessarily have any physiological side effects. Most men with poor sperm motility don’t even know they have a problem.”

“Do we have to keep talking about this?” Lorne asked.

They were all spared replying by Cadman interrupting. “Look!” she said, pointing ahead. “That can’t be good.”

They were passing over desert and scattered oases, the green of the canopy of groves of palm trees bright against the sands. One, however, was different. A dark line cut across the green, a trail of broken trees and snapped off branches, culminating in a dark spot nearly at the edge of the desert.

“Something crashed,” Cadman said.

Rodney cursed.

“They hit the energy shield too,” Carson said. “Oh, hell.” He had already begun the turn to investigate. Even from this distance it didn’t look good. This was not a controlled landing like theirs. This was much, much worse.

“Ok,” Lorne said, standing up. “Everybody, it’s search and rescue time. Cadman, you take the perimeter.”

Rodney felt ill. They passed close over, seeking a landing site just beyond the trees, and he saw what was left of the other jumper. It lay half buried in dirt and sand, the windshield broken and one of the drive pods completely missing, its side scorched as though by fire. If Sheppard and Teyla had been lying injured in that thing for two days… He couldn’t help but imagine, though he would much rather not. If they’d been lying dead in that thing for two days, while he couldn’t get the crappy DHD to work…

“Dr. Beckett?” Lorne said.

“As soon as we’re down,” Carson said grimly, and Rodney knew he was thinking the same thing. Or perhaps blaming himself for the time lost when they skimmed the energy field themselves. “I’m on it.”

Lorne clasped his shoulder briefly. “I know you are, doc,” he said. “Let’s move out!”