SGA - 14 - Death Game (25 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Teyla crept forward, peering around the corner. The corridor broadened out into a large chamber, though she could only see part of it from her vantage point. It looked like another cave, but instead of being partially filled with a frigid lake, this one seemed to be filled with pits of fire. The floor was uneven, marked with narrow paths between sharp stalagmites, though even those paths were broken and a person crossing them would have to stop and carefully climb over the stones. Here and there, among the stalagmites and stones, vents of steam emerged unexpectedly from the ground, shooting into the air in great gouts, rendered pink and red by the lights below.

No, thought Teyla, there were no real fires. Those were lights. But the steam was real, as was evidenced by one of the men leaping backwards from the edge of a vent, holding his scalded arm.

At the edge of the chamber were the four thugs they’d encountered before, now armed with the butts of torches they’d picked up along the way. They had a prisoner with them, the girl who had stood with Nevin on the ship from Pelagia.

Crowding up behind Teyla, he let out a gasp. “That’s my sister,” he whispered urgently. “That’s my twin sister, Ailan!” He turned, clutching at John’s arm. “You’ve got to do something!”

John grimaced.

Two of the thugs were arguing, apparently debating the best way across the chamber. On the other side, a darkened doorway with carved lintels made it plain what the goal was. As they watched, more vents erupted in steam, almost obscuring completely the narrow, winding paths.

“This is a wretched place,” Teyla whispered to John. “I am not sure there actually is a safe way across it, except by chance.”

“Tell me about it. These guys have been going crazy with the hydraulics.” John hefted the butt of the torch himself, then ground out the flame against the stone.

“You’re not going to challenge those men,” Teyla said, her brows rising. “Four to one?”

“I don’t have much choice, do I?”

One of the men seemed to have prevailed to his companions, and now he and another thug converged on Ailan, pointing to the maze. She shook her head. One of them hit her hard across the face, snapping her head back. He pointed to the path, his hand raised for another blow.

Nevin scrambled up, Suua catching onto him. “Let me go!” Nevin pleaded, struggling hopelessly against Suua’s strong grip. “I have to help my sister!”

“They want her to walk the path for them,” Teyla said grimly. “To find the safe way through. That way, if there are traps to be tripped it is she who will be badly burned.”

John looked from Teyla to Suua. “Let’s take them,” he said.

***

Carson Beckett eased the jumper around in a long turn while Major Lorne leaned over the back of the pilot’s seat. The skies above the island had cleared of the night’s rain, and it was a lovely, bright day. “Having trouble finding a parking place, doc?”

“Just a bit,” Carson said. “This island is heavily populated. I don’t want to set it down in the middle of the street. Even cloaked, people will notice the ship when they walk right into it.”

The cloak did nothing to render the jumper immaterial. Anyone who touched it would know it was there. The island was rocky and a great deal of it that was level enough to land on was covered in trees. Some of the city streets were wide enough, but they were also busy. Crowds of people were out and about, bustling from place to place or doing their marketing in the city’s squares and streets. The chances of landing without making most of the city aware of them were slim.

“Unfortunately,” Lorne said. He tightened his grip on the back of the seat. “How about we go around the other side again? Some of those orchards over on the back side of the island might be spaced enough that we could set down without hitting trees.”

“If you say,” Carson said. “I don’t think there’s enough room anywhere except in the big plazas and such. But we can’t do that without people seeing us.”

“What if we don’t land at all?” Rodney said. Carson twisted around to give him a dubious look, but Rodney persisted. “What if we just hover? Can’t we let some people out?”

“Sure,” Lorne said. “If you don’t mind jumping.” Carson swept back over the city at a couple of hundred feet, wide plazas and narrow streets opening before them, all studded with trees and market stalls.

“I was thinking like on a roof or something,” Rodney said. “There are all these big, wide roofs. Carson could hover a few feet above the surface and we could get out. Climb out on a roof and then get down from there.”

Lorne’s face broke into a wide smile. “I think you’ve got something there,” he said. “Nobody’s going to walk into us by accident if we’re parked on the roof!”

***

 “Hey you!” John shouted. It wasn’t the most memorable speech he’d ever made, but they weren’t really giving him points for that.

It did get the guy’s attention. The biggest of the thugs turned around. “You got a problem?” he yelled.

John nodded. “Yeah. I’ve got a problem. You.”

The thug didn’t seem disturbed. “Yeah? You and what army?”

“This army,” Teyla said serenely behind him. She and Suua stepped out, one on each side, each with a torch stick in hand. “I would let go of that girl if I were you.”

Instead he gave her a vicious shove and Ailan went sprawling on the sharp stones beside the path. Behind Teyla and Suua, Nevin lunged out, Jitrine holding on to his injured arm.

The guy laughed. He was almost as big as Ronon, only hopefully not as fast. “Women and a little kid. Yeah, you try it.”

“Suit yourself,” John said, stepping forward into guard, covering Teyla’s left so she could attack with her good side. Teyla’s good side with sticks was better than both his sides, any day. Three on four wasn’t bad odds. Time to plow on in. He rushed forward, stick in hand.

By himself. Three of the thugs bore down on him, and he barely countered their moves.

“What the hell?” John yelled.

Teyla waded in next to him, smartly rapping with her stick the guy who had nearly decked John. “I am sorry! I thought it wiser to let them come to us.” She spun around in a flurry of kicks and movement, letting the momentum of her attacker carry him past her straight into Suua’s fist. One down.

“Let them come to us?” John was incredulous. “They’re on the edge of a steam pit!” He ducked under the flailing club of one of the thugs, unfortunately catching the second man’s blow right across his back. That hurt.

Teyla reversed direction, coming around in a long kick that barely missed John and connected with the man’s knee, dropping his leg out from under him. “We had the better ground,” she said serenely.

“So what?” John hit the man in the back of the head, knocking him sprawling. He didn’t seem inclined to get up.

He heard rather than felt the blow coming, in the rush of air preceding it. The third man’s torch butt connected with his left side, full force and momentum behind it, right on the sore ribs from the crash. John staggered backwards, unfortunately completely fouling Teyla in the process. It was about all she could do not to hit him with the attack she had half completed.

The man’s second blow hit Teyla as she backpedaled, catching her in the upper left arm. The cry that escaped her lips was unexpected. He’d never heard her cry out, no matter how hard she was hit. This blow hand landed on her bad shoulder.

John lowered his head and butted the man in the stomach, which did in fact distract him from Teyla. Unfortunately, it also brought the man’s club down on his back again. John staggered, the world spinning around him momentarily. Bad plan, hitting something with his head, he thought belatedly. Very bad plan.

He raised his head in time to see Suua catch the man around the throat, shaking him like a terrier with a rat.

John took a deep breath, straightening up. Oh yeah. Bad plan. The dizziness made the room seem to swoop around him. Teyla had stepped back, her lips white, her arm once again at an odd angle. The blow had popped her shoulder out again.

“Stay back!” The fourth thug had retreated to the edge of the steam pits, and he held Ailan before him, a stick against her throat forcing her head up. “Don’t come any closer!”

He could break her neck that way, John thought, without very much effort at all. It would be a stupid thing to do, because then he wouldn’t have a hostage, but the wild look on the man’s face suggested that maybe he wasn’t thinking that clearly. He could kill the girl in a panic, even if it doomed him with her.

“Stay back! I mean it!” Inch by inch, he backed out onto the narrow path, dragging Ailan with him.

“John,” Teyla said warningly, probably some prelude to something about asking him if his head were bothering him or did he need his sunglasses.

“These things always seem like a good idea at time,” he said. “I’ll get her.” Suua was still holding on to the third man, the best fighter, and Teyla’s shoulder was out again. “I’m fine. It’s no problem.” He advanced onto the edge of the path.

Yeah, that was real steam. He could feel the sticky heat on his arms, condensing on his forehead and hair. The vent screens were backlit with eerie red and yellow and orange lights, as though he walked on a narrow path over a pit of flames. The flames weren’t real, but the steam could scald and burn. And the vents turned on and off.

John jumped back as one opened to his right, sending a jet of steam taller than his head. If he’d been standing over that, he’d be very sorry right now.

“You get back!” the thug yelled, dragging Ailan with him. He was awfully close to a vent, the girl twisting as she tried to get away from the heat she could surely feel.

John held out his hands, the stick in his right. “I just want the girl,” he said. “You can go. Run. Sure. I don’t care. I’m not trying to win.”

“Course you’re trying to win!” The guy’s eyes were slitted against the steam. “You want to take me down, is what.”

“Just give me the girl and you can go,” John said. “Nobody’s going to win, don’t you see? We’re all going to be food for the Wraith.”

“The gods said the winner goes free a rich man!” Back and back, into the heart of the maze. One of the vents opened behind him, just missing him and Ailan, John creeping cautiously after.

“They’re not gods,” John said. “They’re Wraith. They’re parasites who live on you people, feeding on you when they want to. This is just an excuse to get some suckers in here and harvest them.”

He didn’t buy it. John could see that in his face. So much for talking. “Look, just give me the girl.”

Ailan squeaked as he grabbed her tighter, her feet almost off the ground.

“Take her then!” The guy shoved Ailan at him hard, and they both went over, falling among the sharp stones and steam vents. Fortunately, they didn’t land on a live one, but the hot grate was enough to burn his hand where he’d flung it out to catch himself, the rocks digging bruisingly into his side.

Ailan screamed, which pretty much covered up any other noise. Like the noise of the guy rushing him with his stick.

John caught the blow on his left forearm. It missed Ailan’s head, but he felt the shock all the way to the tips of his fingers. The momentum shoved him back on to the vents.

John rolled to the side, orange and red lights playing as he rolled over them. If the vents opened right that second, he’d be steamed like dry cleaning.

He hooked the guy’s feet with his, trying to trip him while evading the blows from the stick. Not good. There was a rock to his left. He couldn’t roll any further.

Heat blasted just behind him, a vent opening.

So not good. He had to get up. He was never going to win this way.

Grabbing the big rock, John staggered to his feet, blows raining down on his back. This guy didn’t hit as hard as Teyla, but he hit pretty hard. He was barehanded, his stick lost in the scuffle on the floor. Beneath his feet the vent hissed, the panels starting to turn.

And suddenly the lights came on. The entire cave was flooded in light of bright fluorescents. The red and orange lights died, the steam switching off at the same moment.

The guy blinked owlishly in the sudden brightness, and John clipped him in the jaw with a roundhouse. He went down like a sack of grain. Got to go ahead and win.

In the bright lights the room was transformed. It no longer looked like a chamber from hell, but instead a kind of cheesy stage set, with big boulders concealing what was no more than a bunch of lights and effects.

Their party seemed as confused as the thugs, looking around incredulously. Only Teyla seemed to have taken it in stride, half way out on the path toward him, her left shoulder clutched in her right hand. “John? Are you all right?”

“Great,” John said, aware that he was rolling like he was drunk. “It’s all good here.”

She clearly didn’t believe him, but Teyla bent down and helped Ailan to her feet instead. “Are you hurt?”

The girl shook her head, her eyes wide, a long mark down the side of her face where one of them had hit her.

Nevin ran out, Jitrine following him as quickly as she could, her robes caught up in her hand.

“Ailan! It’s all right!” Nevin called. “You’re safe! These are my friends! We came to rescue you!” He threw his arms around his sister, and she buried her face against him.

Jitrine stopped beside John, looking up at him, an expression of concern on her face. “What did you do? Why did it stop?”

John shook his head, drops of condensed steam and sweat falling from his hair. “I don’t know,” he said. “It didn’t look good for a minute there. I don’t know what happened.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

In the control room, Radek slumped forward over the key panel, his eyes on the monitor. “That was almost not in time,” he said.

“You’ve got them, right?” Ronon asked.

Radek’s fingers flew over the symbols on the unfamiliar touchscreen. “I’ve turned the steam off and the overhead lights on. I haven’t turned the cameras off for that room yet. It seemed less of a priority.”

“So they know,” Ronon said. “The Wraith know somebody spoiled their party. They know we’ve got the control room. Which means they’re on their way down here.”

“There is that,” Radek said. He didn’t take his eyes off the monitor. “Shutting down the water, that is it there. Main pump off. Backup pump off. I am leaving the special lights on and bringing up the general safety lighting throughout the complex.” He stroked the board with satisfaction. “Locking the movable floors in the safety position. All traps turned off, in the maintenance mode.”

“Right.” Ronon hauled him out of his chair by the back of his shirt. “Time to go.”

“I think you are correct,” Radek said, grabbing onto his glasses as Ronon let forth a salvo with his energy pistol into the servers and monitors. They exploded most satisfactorily in clouds of sparks and smoke, and he flung up his hands to shield his eyes from the glare.

“Here.” Ronon thrust the two Wraith stun pistols taken from the dead controllers into Radek’s hands. “Let’s get out of here. Do you know how to shoot one of these?”

“Um…” Truthfulness was probably the better part of valor. “No.”

“Then stay behind me.” Ronon plunged into the hallway, pistol at the ready.

“Where are we going?” Radek demanded, following after.

“To find Sheppard and Teyla,” Ronon replied. “Where else?”

Radek shrugged. “Where else indeed?”

They dashed through the halls, not bothering to dodge cameras now, though some of them were no doubt active. Even if the cameras were still operative, without the control systems the Wraith would not be able to use them to spy on what happened within the maze. They might not know where the Wraith were, but the Wraith were also now essentially blind. They could not track them, or the contestants. Radek thought with satisfaction that many of the traps, like the steam room, could not be reactivated without the controls that were now destroyed. Presumably the water hazards would all empty swiftly, the water flowing downhill to the storage cisterns without the pump to bring it to the upper levels. In a few minutes the maze would be oddly silent, the flowing water stilled. Perhaps this would save more than a few lives, those of contestants still trapped within the maze. Whether they might have a chance of escape, or would simply be hunted down by the Wraith later, he could not guess.

Ronon dodged around corners, checking ahead with a speed that Radek did not understand. How could he tell so quickly if the corridor ahead were full of Wraith or not?

Fortunately, it was not far to the steam room. The big set piece trap of the maze, it was near the end, with only a few corridors leading on from there, providing a last opportunity for any teams that had beaten the steam room to betray one another. No doubt this was very entertaining for the Wraith. It seemed the sort of game they would enjoy.

Ronon barreled ahead of Radek into the steam room. “Wraith! They’re on the way!”

Sheppard looked around with an expression of utter amazement. “Ronon?” Then he saw Radek and boggled again. “Zelenka?”

“We gotta get out of here,” Ronon said. “The cameras were still live when the steam went off. The Wraith will be coming.”

Teyla looked at Radek with a gratifying expression of thanks, putting two and two together quickly. “You turned the steam off?”

“I did,” Radek said modestly. “We are quite a good team, Ronon and I.”

To his surprise, Ronon nodded solemnly. “That’s true.”

Sheppard looked from one to the other, questions like ‘how’ and ‘why’ dancing in the air over his head, then apparently decided that all explanations could wait until later. “We’re glad to see you,” he said. “Are those spare stunners?”

“Yeah. One for you and one for Teyla.”

Radek passed them over gratefully. Better nearly anyone else than him.

The elderly woman Radek had seen on the monitors came over, standing beside Sheppard. “Is there a moment for me to see to Teyla’s shoulder? She will be in much less pain and better able to fight if I do it first.”

Radek looked at Teyla, only now aware of the drawn expression on her face. The drape of her jacket mostly hid the shape of her left arm, but now that he looked something wasn’t quite right.

“I can go on,” Teyla said, her words sharply enunciated.

Sheppard looked from her to the older woman and back. “Do it,” he said. He forestalled Teyla’s protest with a hand on her sleeve. “It only takes a minute, and you’ll feel a lot better if you let her pop it back in.”

She gave him a hard look. “If you think we have a minute.”

***

Carson Beckett came around for another pass at the roof he had selected, a broad expanse only a block or so from the courtyard where the Wraith ship was parked. It looked like it was part of the palaces. Below it, a hillside dropped sharply away, though a road meandered along it. Halfway down there was a courtyard ornamented with bright, waving flags, as though for some sort of festival. There were people in the streets, a busy market set up.

However, the palace roof itself seemed safe enough, quiet and deserted. There were no guards on the roof, which made sense as there was really no way for anyone to get up there from the ground. Clearly the Wraith were not expecting any kind of assault from the air.

Major Lorne looked over the Marines in the back. Cadman was adjusting the chin strap on her helmet. “Everybody ready?”

“Ready, sir,” Cadman said.

Rodney checked his P90 for the millionth time, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. This was so not going to be fun. In fact, experience had taught him exactly how not fun it could be. This was one of those occasions where ignorance was indeed bliss.

“You stay back, doc,” Lorne began quietly, then broke off as Carson started swearing under his breath, his head going up like a hunting dog’s. “What is it?”

Carson put the ship over again lifting to circle around rather than set down. “The Wraith cruiser just started powering up.”

Rodney snapped around. “Why?”

“I don’t know, do I?” Carson said grimly. “But it’s not good news.”

***

Her shoulder did indeed feel better, Teyla thought, letting John help her put her jacket back on and taking up the Wraith stunner in her right hand. There was no question the muscles were torn, however. If and when they got back to Atlantis she no doubt had several weeks of anti-inflammatories and physical therapy ahead of her. When, not if, she corrected herself. Surely it would be possible. Surely, if Radek and Ronon had found them, with all of a strange world between them, anything might now be possible!

“Get down!” Ronon yelled from by the door, and Teyla flung herself behind one of the ornamental stalagmites that littered the floor of the steam room, Radek to her left and John to her right.

John was crouching on the grate of a big steam vent. He looked down doubtfully. “They can’t turn this back on, can they?” he said to Radek.

“Not a chance.” Radek shook his head. “We did a very thorough job, Ronon and I.”

A blue Wraith stun beam cut the air above the stone he sheltered behind, heralding the arrival of the Wraith. Beside the door, Ronon’s energy pistol spoke loud. Ronon was flattened against the wall beside the door, and ducked out to get off one shot. He pulled his head back in time before a barrage of blue fire answered.

“Four to six,” Teyla guessed aloud. “Based on the concentration of fire.”

John nodded, and she saw that he’d come to the same conclusion himself.

“There will be more,” Radek said. He looked decidedly scared. Teyla thought Radek was not used to being pinned down by enemy fire. It had not happened on the few occasions he had been offworld before.

She looked at John. “Is there a plan?”

He nodded sharply, his eyes on Ronon, waiting for a move that would cover him to get off a few shots. “We take the cruiser.”

Radek swore in Czech. “How do you think we will fly this Wraith cruiser?” he asked.

John glanced back and forth between them, Teyla with her Gift that allowed her to interface with Wraith technology, Radek with his knowledge of systems and the beginning of a reading knowledge of Wraith. Surely with their help he could figure out how to fly it. He believed he could fly anything. Unfortunately, she was uncertain whether or not that was true.

“We’ll manage between us,” John said. “Now let’s get out of here. Radek, stay back with Jitrine and the kids until we’ve cleared them out. Teyla, go left.”

“You do not have to tell me twice to stay,” Radek said fervently.

She waited until Ronon fired again, and then in the moment when the Wraith would assuredly have their heads down, dashed left and closer, to the shelter of a boulder nearer the door. As she dove behind it, she got off two sharp shots into the doorway. It was impossible to see what she might be shooting at, or if she’d hit anything, but at least fire from a different direction might confuse them.

One second, and John was moving, right and forward, to a new position. The stalagmites that had afforded the Wraith such pleasure as obstacles to the humans were now providing them with cover. Turn about was fair play. Not that Teyla ever cared much about playing fair.

Ronon glanced back, then with John covering him ducked out again. The stun beams narrowly missed him. They would have hit, if he had ducked out at full height, rather than with his head two feet lower than normal. He got off several shots before he got back.

The volume of fire had decreased markedly. One or perhaps two shooters were firing now. Teyla pegged another three shots through the doorway, but whether or not she hit anything was impossible to tell.

Ronon looked back at John again, and she saw his almost imperceptible nod. John rocked forward on the balls of his feet, ready to go. Ronon lunged for the doorway, John a step behind, going for the frame as Ronon threw himself flat just inside, laying down a thick barrage.

Teyla moved, left and forward again, coming to the edge of the doorframe under the cover of Ronon’s shots. So close to the Wraith. She barely even had to try to get a sense of them. She could hear them speaking mind to mind as though they were shouting.

Fall back! Fall back to the entrance and pick them off when they come out!

The Wraith Lord who commanded them had better sense than to get into a situation where his men must rush out of a narrow entrance against defenders. Better to turn it around. There was one exit from the maze. Sooner or later they would have to chance it. They would have to rush from a doorway against five or six times their number armed with energy weapons. There were no other options.

Or they might wait, stalemated. But even then sooner or later they would have to do something. There was no food in the labyrinth, though there was water aplenty. Sooner or later, the people in the maze would have to try to break out, and they would be waiting for them.

“Ronon!” Teyla shouted. “They are backing off!”

Ronon rolled out of the doorway, landing almost against her foot and getting swiftly to his feet. “How do you know?”

“I hear them,” she said.

He looked skeptical. Of course. Ronon did not entirely believe in her Gift, had not really seen her use it.

“John! The Wraith are withdrawing!” she yelled. Even on the other side, he should hear her.

He looked at her and nodded once, keeping up the occasional shot into the doorway.

The incoming fire from the Wraith dwindled, then finally ceased.

Teyla closed her eyes. A moment, a touch… She could risk so much. She would not have to go deep or far. They had pulled back to the entrance, one hapless spectator outside chosen to be fed upon so that a wounded man might regain his strength. She could feel the outside wind on her face, the bright sun cutting at last through scudding clouds…

“Teyla?” John was beside her, his hand on her sleeve. “Are you ok?”

She opened her eyes. He looked concerned and unshaven, but at least he was not wobbling on his feet. “They have pulled back outside, to the doorway. They know we have to come out that way, and then we will be emerging from a small space into a wide field of fire. They have us. This is not the first time someone has rebelled in the maze, though this is the first time anyone has reached the control room. They are uneasy. They do not know why this has happened, how someone could have known what to do.”

Beyond John, Radek looked decidedly self-satisfied.

John scratched his ear contemplatively, while Ronon cast glances through the door. He didn’t seem entirely confident in Teyla’s pronouncement of what the Wraith were doing.

John glanced over at Radek. “You’re absolutely positive there’s no way they can turn the traps back on?”

“Positive,” the scientist nodded.

“Do they know you turned everything off?”

Radek put his head to the side. “Almost certainly not. They would not have been able to see anything except this room on the cameras after I began. I did this room first, as you were in here, and then did the cameras before I moved on to the other systems. They would have lost the cameras first, and unless there is some sort of entirely independent secondary internal sensor system, which I doubt, they would have no way of getting any information from inside the labyrinth.”

John nodded slowly. “So they can’t see us or what we’re doing, track us, or tell what the status of their traps is.”

“Essentially, yes,” Radek said. “They may be able to reset some of the traps manually, like the pump for the water, but I think they would have to get to the pump room and do it from there. I have fragged the interfaces, as you would say.”

Ronon looked back at him. “What’s the plan?”