Chapter One
"Well, this has been a waste of time. Can you say 'Complete waste of time', boys and girls? I knew you could."
Rodney's teammates didn't respond, lost in their own thoughts as the four of them slogged back to the Stargate through a drizzling rain. In lighter times, they might have responded to his incessant complaining with verbal sniping of their own -- but today, they allowed him his own method of coping, as silence was theirs. Several months ago, they had visited this world and agreed to come again at harvest time. Now they had come ... but the world was dead, culled and seared to barrenness where a village had once stood. From the grass growing up through the charcoal remnants of their wooden huts, it looked as if it had happened not long after their first visit.
While Sheppard reported back to Elizabeth through the glowing blue puddle of the Stargate, Teyla sat on a nearby rock, her hands between her knees. From his position by the DHD, Rodney cast concerned glances in her direction.
Ronon knelt next to her. "Wraith?"
She jerked, startled by his presence, and shook her head. "No. They are long gone. It is just ... I had friends here, once."
Ronon didn't answer. He knew of such things, all too well.
Sheppard turned back from the Stargate, looking for his other team members. "Well? Ready to blow this popsicle stand, guys?" His voice was a little too light and loud. This, too, was his way of coping.
After a moment, Teyla shook her head. "If you do not mind, John, I would like to stay and perform a ceremony for the spirits of the dead. It will not take long."
Sheppard looked at her tired face, and nodded. "We can wait. Rodney, shut down the --"
"No, no." She raised a hand. "I would like to do this ... alone. If you do not mind."
"I don't like leaving you alone on a Wraith-culled planet."
Teyla stood and brushed off her pants. Her hair was dark and heavy with rainwater. "There are no Wraith anywhere here. I would be able to tell. I will be perfectly safe, and this ceremony needs to be done in solitude. It is an old one of my people, meant for situations such as this."
Her teammates glanced at each other. Ronon said, "I'll stay with her."
Teyla's sigh was exasperated, but her fond look encompassed all of them. "If you must. I assure you I will be all right."
"Ronon stays." Sheppard's face was grim; clearly, he didn't like splitting up, but he'd learned that the easiest way to lead this particular group of people was to try not to force them to do things they didn't want to do. "How long do you think this will take?"
She shrugged. "Half an hour, no more."
"Okay. If the two of you don't dial into Atlantis in half an hour, we'll come back and get you. Deal?"
"Deal," Ronon said.
Still looking worried, Sheppard turned back to the shimmering gate. "Elizabeth, I'm sending my IDC now. Rodney and I are coming through. Teyla and Ronon have a little business to take care of here, so they'll be along shortly."
"Understood," her small, tinny voice replied.
Sheppard turned to Rodney, made an "after you" gesture. The scientist stepped through the gate, and a minute later, reluctantly, Sheppard followed. The light splintered and vanished behind them, leaving only the still and silent ring of the gate, standing on a small rise in the earth.
"You do not need to stay," Teyla said, looking up at Ronon.
He just lifted a shoulder in a slight shrug. "I'll stay out of the way."
Teyla smiled, and, kneeling on the wet grass, she took a few small items out of her pockets -- herbs, a little candle. She had taken to carrying with her the necessary supplies for the simple form of the ceremony to lay the dead to rest. She did not have to use them often, but one time was far too many ... and this would not be the first time.
She'd just begun to enter a meditative state when the Stargate sprang to life again -- not five minutes after Sheppard and McKay had walked through it. "Damn it!" Ronon hissed, as Teyla scooped up her supplies and sprang to her feet. The two of them made a dash for the trees at the far side of the clearing.
"Why would the Wraith come back?" Teyla asked, unslinging her P90 with her back against a tree. "There is nothing here!"
"Because they're Wraith," Ronon said, and in the Pegasus Galaxy, that was answer enough.
The Stargate field stabilized, but instead of the whine of darts, there was the crackle of their radios and Elizabeth's voice spoke. "Is there a problem on your end? Everything all right over there?"
The teammates looked at each other in confusion. Teyla tapped her radio. "Doctor Weir? I do not know what you mean. We did not call you."
"I know you didn't," Elizabeth said. "But we received Colonel Sheppard's IDC and then the gate shut down without anyone coming through. We were a little worried."
Now the look they exchanged was more than confused -- it was concerned. "Dr. Weir, Colonel Sheppard and Dr. McKay entered the gate a few minutes ago," Teyla said.
There was a brief silence, then Elizabeth said, "And they came straight to Atlantis -- they didn't dial somewhere else?"
"You think we're lying?" Ronon rumbled.
"We are sure," Teyla said, over the top of him. "The gate was dialed into Atlantis so that the Colonel could report to you, and they stepped through it immediately after. They did not have time to dial another address."
This time the silence was longer, and the worry on the other end was palpable. "I see," Elizabeth said. "I'm going to get Zelenka and some of the other scientists down here. Whatever you do, don't use that gate."
"I do not understand," Teyla protested. "My people have been trading with this world for generations. We never experienced any problems, coming or going."
"I understand that, Teyla, but obviously there is some sort of problem, and I'd very much like to know what it is. Just sit tight and we'll call you back in a few minutes. Weir out."
The Stargate's field collapsed, and Teyla, self-consciously, returned her gun to its resting position. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Ronon still held his own gun loose and ready beside his leg. She could have reminded him that there was nothing to shoot here, but this, too, was his way of coping.
"The scientists will determine the problem and find out what happened to the Colonel and Dr. McKay," she told him with considerably more conviction than she felt.
Ronon made a growling sound, deep in his throat.
The mental serenity necessary to properly conduct the Ceremony of Passage had abandoned her, and all Teyla could do was pray quietly to the Ancestors that she would not have to perform such a ceremony for her missing teammates.
------
"This isn't Atlantis."
Rodney was speaking as Sheppard stepped out of the Stargate. He came to an abrupt halt, staring at the mist-draped tree trunks in front of him.
"No kidding, Rodney? Really? Nice to see you're putting all those advanced degrees to good use." He swiveled around, swinging the P90 in a ready position, by habit, before he even consciously realized that he'd done it.
The Stargate they'd stepped into had been in a clearing, but this one was surrounded by towering evergreen trees, pressing close about them. It was difficult to tell the time of day; the sky -- what could be seen of it through the trees -- was flat and gray, and looked poised to rain. From the moss cloaking the massive tree trunks, Sheppard guessed that rain was not uncommon here. Great. Two rainy worlds in a row. Just my luck. The air was brisk and chilly, with an autumn-like sharpness, although the foliage was still green.
"Er ... Colonel." Rodney's uncharacteristically quiet voice brought Sheppard's attention down from the trees. He followed the physicist's pointing finger to the ground at their feet.
"Well ... that's odd."
A trench had been dug under one edge of the Stargate, probably about five feet deep; the dirt was heaped haphazardly around the gate. Sheppard could see disturbed earth around it where other holes had apparently been dug and then sloppily filled in. Some of the digging looked quite old; there were fallen pine needles drifted over it. The most recently-turned earth, however, appeared to be very fresh, maybe only a few days old.
Rodney took a couple of steps backward, nearly bumping into Sheppard. "This is great. We're on the planet of the mole people."
"I'd say getting out of here would be a nice idea."
Too worried even to argue, Rodney made a beeline for the gate's DHD, but stopped short with a small moan. Sheppard might not be a scientist, but he could certainly see what the problem was. The top of the DHD had been smashed, as if someone had beaten it with a rock -- someone insanely strong. He knew how tough the DHDs were; even bullets from an assault rifle just skittered off, unless they happened to hit at just the right angle.
"The deranged mole people," Rodney groaned. He tapped a couple of the symbols on the DHD. Nothing happened. He tapped again, harder.
"Er, McKay, I think it's broken."
"No, it's not. The damage is only superficial. You could destroy the entire top of the DHD and it would still be able to dial the gate -- granted, picking out your address would be the tricky part." He crouched down and gave a small squeak of dismay.
"What? It's broken?"
Rodney made another dismayed sound. "Oh, yuck -- snails. I hate snails."
"Rodney ..." Sheppard broke off, staring at the top of the DHD. "Rodney," he said again, in a completely different tone of voice.
"Oh yeah, would you look at this. The primary control crystal is missing. Well, that's just great. Deranged, Stargate-sabotaging mole people."
"Rodney."
The urgency in Sheppard's voice finally penetrated. Rodney looked up at him in irritation. "You know, I'm kind of busy here--"
"Look at the top of the DHD."
"I know what it looks like, Colonel --"
"Look again, McKay."
Frowning, Rodney scrambled to his feet. He blanched, and reached out to touch one of the gouges in the mangled surface. "Is that ... er, what I think it is?"
"Looks kinda like claw marks, doesn't it?"
Rodney jerked his hand away as if burned. "That's ... bad."
"Well put. And, y'know, I'd kinda like to leave now, before we find out what can leave claw marks in a DHD. Can you fix it?"
"With what, my magic powers?" He heaved a sigh. "Not without a control crystal, I can't."
"And you don't carry a spare one with you?"
Rodney stared at him. "Are you serious? Where would I get one? I know, Colonel -- the next time we gate to a world, I'll just pull the control crystal and take it with me, so we can't dial home. Honestly--"
"McKay, you can rant later; just fix the damn DHD now."
Rodney paused for a moment, completely derailed, before setting off again.
"I told you I can't! Do you think I'm kidding around? Lying? Without the control crystal, we're totally screwed, Colonel. This isn't random sabotage; whoever disabled this thing knew what they were doing."
"So, what are our options, McKay? Work with me here."
"I don't know!" Rodney threw his hands up in the air. "I don't know why we're here, I don't know how to fix the DHD, I don't know, okay? And I hate it!"
"Well ... let's think, then." Keeping one eye on the forest, and ignoring the dirty look that Rodney sent him, Sheppard began to pace across the small patch of undisturbed earth in front of the gate. "We were dialed in to Atlantis, right? And we didn't un-dial. So we must have --" He broke off, head cocked to one side.
Rodney, oblivious, rambled on. "The wormhole jumped, yes. Obviously. There are a lot of things that could have caused that--"
"McKay, shush."
Rodney's mouth snapped shut; his eyes went wide. "What?" he hissed, sidling behind the DHD. "Monsters? What?"
"Thought I heard something." For just a minute, the sound of the wind in the tree branches had seemed to resolve itself into something like words, although he couldn't make them out. Anxiety, he told himself firmly; just the human mind generating patterns out of chaos. "It was just the wind. Go on, Rodney. You said lots of things could make the wormhole jump gates; like what?"
With a final nervous stare at the woods, Rodney began to tick off on his fingers. "Well, based on the SG mission reports -- it could be gate address confusion due to having more than one gate on the destination planet, which we can pretty much rule out because we know there's not more than one gate on Atlantis's planet; we would have had trouble long before now. There's also the possibility of some kind of device interfering with the correct operation of the gate ... or a solar flare or other disturbance in transit ... or a powerful burst of energy at the event horizon of the originating gate, like a bomb --" He stopped, looked up and met Sheppard's eyes with a look of abject horror. "Teyla and Ronon," he whispered.
"Wait ... wait ..." Sheppard was still trying to catch up. "Okay, you're talking about something like -- like you guys did with the Supergate, right? Which would mean -- okay, no. No way." He tried to shut out the horrifying mental image that had just crawled into his brain: the Stargate dissolving in a sheet of flame, Teyla and Ronon's fragile bodies withering like burning paper ... "No."
After another moment of fixed horror, Rodney's face dissolved in relief. "But no, I don't think it could be that, because the energy flare would've had to have preceded us through the wormhole, and we were already in transit. I think. It's not like anybody's ever done experiments to find out what would happen to a gate team caught in the middle, but it's most likely that we would have come out in Atlantis before the gate jumped, if it was going to do that."
"Great. No bomb," Sheppard said, in a tone that left no room for argument. Teyla and Ronon were fine, and even now trying to find them. He was certain of that. Well, almost certain. "And Atlantis will have noticed that we didn't come through, so they'll be looking for us. Right?"
"Right ... but ..." Rodney waved a hand in the air in time with his racing thoughts. "But we don't know, because it's never happened with a gate team in transit -- and there's a chance, too ... I mean, it's not likely, but there's a chance, if something happened to the gate on the Atlantis end, just long enough to cause a brief instability in the wormhole but not enough to actually shut it down, not if it could re-establish a connection with another gate before the wormhole could collapse -- I don't think it's ever actually happened, but -- oh God, that means Atlantis could be gone --"
"Rodney!"
Wide blue eyes met his. "What?"
"No bomb," Sheppard said firmly.
"No bomb," Rodney repeated in a small voice.
"No bomb. And right now the folks back on Atlantis are trying to figure out where we've gone. So let's help 'em out and see what we can figure out about where we are."
Rodney cast a baleful look at the sky, some of his habitual irritability starting to reassert itself. "We're on yet another rainy planet, from the look of things. Do you realize, we've been caught in the rain on nineteen of our last twenty-two missions? Do you know what the odds are against that?"
"I can't believe that you're actually keeping track." Sheppard squatted down and peered into the hole next to the gate. It looked as if someone or something had been trying to undermine the gate itself. There were a few inches of standing water in the bottom of the hole, a legacy of the most recent rain. "What do you suppose they were doing here?"
Rodney leaned over his shoulder. "The anthropologists would probably say it's religious. That's always what they say when they don't understand something, which is most of the time." There was a world of scorn in his words. If medicine was a soft science to McKay, then anthropology was located clear out on the pseudoscience end of things.
"And your thoughts on the matter?"
"Hmm." He studied the hole, and then raised his head, frowning. Standing up, he made a complete circuit of the gate, murmuring small "mm-hm" noises under his breath. Then he stopped in his tracks, staring off through the trees, and reached into his pocket where he kept the scanner.
Sheppard was getting increasingly fidgety, watching him. He couldn't quite pin down what was making him so nervous -- well, aside from the claw marks in the DHD and the overall creepiness of the place, which should be enough to make anyone nervous. But there was more to it. Sometimes he thought he could hear sounds on the edge of his hearing, like -- whispering? But when he concentrated, there was nothing but the sound of pine needles rustling softly in the breeze.
He didn't like it. He wanted to get out of here.
"Care to share with the rest of the class, Rodney?"
"Mmm," was all Rodney said. He waved a hand at the dig marks around the gate. "Notice anything odd about that?"
"Just one thing?"
This earned him the patented McKay look of scorn. "Oh, ha. No, seriously -- are you telling me you don't see it?"
"My patience is running a bit thin, here, Rodney, and I'm also armed. Just tell me what you're talking about."
"The ditches -- diggings -- places that have been dug, whatever you want to call them ... they radiate out from the gate, like the spokes of a wheel." Rodney spread his fingers and moved them out from his chest, demonstrating.
Surprised, Sheppard pivoted in a full circle. Rodney was right: the scuffed and uprooted ground, where holes had been dug and then filled, generally described a series of straight lines angling outwards from the gate. It wasn't really something you'd notice, just looking at the individual diggings; they were scattered, sometimes a little bit off the actual line, and some of them were overgrown while others were fresher. But if you stepped back and looked at the pattern as a whole, it was pretty obvious. There were six lines -- or, depending on how you looked at it, three lines that crossed at the gate.
"Ley lines," Sheppard said without thinking. He'd had a girlfriend in college who'd been into crystals and things.
This time the scorn in Rodney's stare should have wilted the foliage. "Or something," the physicist said. He pointed along one of the faintly visible lines, his finger aimed at the woods. "What do you see?"
"Trees," Sheppard said, just to wind Rodney up. He tilted his head to the side. And then he did see it -- if you angled in just the right direction, you could catch glimpses of some kind of tower on a hill overlooking the area.
"I'm getting energy readings, too." Rodney held up the scanner -- like that helped. "So faint I can't really pin 'em down. Either the power source is almost depleted or it's in some kind of standby mode. But there is something around here generating power."
Sheppard used the muzzle of the P90 as a pointing device. "There's also something capable of leaving claw marks in a DHD. I'd say our first priority is getting off this world. You can bring back a team of scientists and --"
He stopped cold, because the nearly-inaudible whispering that he'd been hearing from time to time suddenly broke across the threshold of sound.
It said, as clear as day: "Get out of here."
Sheppard jumped, and spun around, his P90 wavering wildly across the dim, mist-draped trees. The voice had sounded so goddamned close. "Rodney, that'd better have been you."
"What? What?" Rodney demanded, shrinking back against the DHD and staring at the gun in Sheppard's hands. "Hey, could you not wave that thing around, please? Scientist working here!"
Sheppard lowered the muzzle, but continued to stare at the trees, his eyes flicking from one shadow to another. With the trees blocking what little light came down from the gray sky, plus the hanging tendrils of fog, it was impossible to make out more than vague shapes in the undergrowth. "You didn't hear something? Somebody whispering?"
"Is that a joke?" Rodney demanded. "This better not be some kind of Air Force hazing ritual -- trick the physicist and drag him to a creepy planet, start telling him ghost stories until you have him running around the woods screaming ..."
"It's not a ghost story, Rodney, and it's sure as hell not a joke! I heard something. Someone. Well, I think I did. Are you sure you don't hear something?" He strained his senses, but all he could hear now was the wind.
"All I'm hearing is the sound of you losing your already tenuous grip on --"
"Hush!" Sheppard stalked to one side of the Stargate, then the other, staring out at the forest. He hated the open, unprotected feeling of having nothing at his back to provide cover. There were only the trees in every direction, completely silent except for the swishing of wind through the pine branches. "It told me to leave."
Rodney paled slightly, but managed to keep the irritated edge to his voice, almost covering up the fear. He jiggled something on the scanner, recalibrating it for life signs. "There's no one here, Sheppard. No one but us. It couldn't be, oh, your radio, maybe?"
"It's not my radio, Rodney." But still, feeling self-conscious and trying to ignore Rodney's smug look, he tapped the control. "Ronon? Teyla? This is Sheppard. Anybody reading me?"
"Anybody other than me, that is," Rodney muttered.
No answer came. Sheppard shook his head. "I know it sounds crazy, McKay, but I swear I heard it."
"What sort of voice, then? Male? Female? Old? Young?"
It disturbed him to realize that he had no idea. He'd been able to distinguish the words, but the voice itself was ... almost a non-voice. As if it was speaking ... "Directly into my mind," he murmured.
"What?" Rodney asked sharply.
"I'm hearing a voice, Rodney, and I know I'm not crazy --"
"-- matter of opinion --"
"-- am not crazy," he reiterated with a glare, "which means something else is going on. We know that people on the verge of Ascension can do some pretty freaky things. Any Ascended Ancients hanging around here, you think?"
Rodney flicked nervous glances at the trees. "You know, I really hate to go trusting strange voices out of nowhere and all, but if it did tell you to leave ... maybe your overly friendly ATA gene has activated some kind of danger detection system, and perhaps it actually knows what it's talking about. In which case standing around speculating about it might not be a good idea."
"Well, if we can't get back through the gate without the crystal, there's not a whole lot of point to sitting around here waiting for a rescue party to show up. At the very least, we ought to look around for someplace to spend the night." Sheppard freed a hand from the P90 to reach into a pocket of his vest -- then, frustrated, dug through a couple more. "Rodney, you got paper?"
"What? Why?"
"I'm leaving a note for Ronon and Teyla, in case they follow us."
"Oh, good idea. 'Dear Ronon, Teyla or monster with huge, DHD-destroying claws, we'll be about two klicks north. Love, Sheppard.'" But he was fishing out a notebook and pen as he spoke, and handed them over.
Sheppard scribbled in large letters: WE'RE OK. CALL US. USE CHANNEL 3. -S. He used a rock to weight down the paper on top of the DHD.
"Taught you that method of hiding your tracks in commando school, did they?"
"Thanks, Rodney."
"That's going to be awfully hard to read if it rains, you know."
"Weren't you the one who wanted to get out of here?" Sheppard raised his eyes to the ominous gray sky. "Hey, you -- we're leaving now, okay? Anything to say on the subject?"
"You're talking to your mysterious voice," Rodney said flatly as they left the vicinity of the gate. Sheppard took point.
"Well, it talks to me."
"Is it talking to you right now?" Rodney demanded, waspishly.
Sheppard closed his eyes for a moment. Give him strength. "No, Rodney. It's not. All it's said so far is 'Get out of here'"
"Well, that's unenlightening. It could at least tell you something useful, like, oh, why. It's like one of those idiotic murder mysteries where the victim lives just long enough to gasp out some utterly unhelpful yet amusingly ironic message, the true meaning of which will be perfectly evident only when they've unraveled all the other clues. Is there some unwritten rule that dying people have to speak in riddles? Once, just once, can't they manage to put the useful information first. 'Bob killed me', not 'The killer is named ... gasp' ... thud."
Sheppard fought a losing battle to keep a smile off his face. "I'll remember that in case something kills me, then."
But as they entered the trees, it suddenly didn't seem funny. The mist curled around the tree trunks and hugged the ground, making the world around them soft-edged and strange. Above them, the trees rustled softly, and moisture dripped from the swathes of moss draping their massive limbs. The temperature was chilly, probably in the fifties, and the dampness made it feel even colder. An overgrown path led away from the Stargate ... and also away from the tower that they'd seen through the trees.
"Ehhhh ..." Rodney made a protesting noise like steam escaping from a teakettle, pointing back the way they'd come, as Sheppard started down the forest path.
"We can investigate later. Right now, I want to get some altitude and get an idea for the lay of the land. This is going up. Coming?"
With a final, reluctant glance over his shoulder, Rodney followed.
The trek through the woods was subdued and quiet. Sheppard strained all his senses, P90 at the ready, but the mysterious voice did not come again, and even the occasional hint of whispering had vanished. Rodney muttered complaints under his breath -- Sheppard caught mention of the cold, the damp, mold, allergies, pneumonia, etc. -- but even he kept it down. And it wasn't hard to see why. The forest was strangely, creepily silent. The only sound was the wind in the trees' branches; the snapping of twigs under their feet sounded as loud as gunshots in the near-total silence. Normally, on their travels through the Stargate, a world with such lush plant life would have had birds and small animals in abundance. Here, there weren't even very many insects.
Usually if a world had a lot of plants but no animals, there was a reason for that.
He decided not to mention this to Rodney. Seeing that the scientist's nose was buried in his scanner, Sheppard asked, "Any luck with those energy readings?"
Rodney made a vexed noise, holding the scanner in one hand while tucking the other one under his armpit to warm it up. "Nada. Zip. Still very faint, very hard to pin down. And very few life signs, either."
"Yeah." Sheppard glanced at the tree trunks surrounding them. "I'd noticed."
The path that they had been following finally petered out completely, to Sheppard's annoyance. He struck off through the forest, up the nearest hill.
"I really hope you can find your way back," Rodney grumbled behind him as they scrambled through wet brush.
"I do have some minimal navigation abilities, McKay," Sheppard retorted sarcastically, ducking under a low-hanging creeper vine.
"I hope so, because it would really suck to try to explain to Elizabeth that we spent two weeks on this planet because we lost the Stargate in a jungle."
"Yeah. Point."
It was starting to get dark, and Sheppard wished they hadn't wasted so much time arguing at the gate. The voice had remained silent since its outburst, but whatever the hell it was, he knew that he hadn't imagined it. The back of his neck prickled in that Afghanistan kind of way -- the feeling that an enemy was out there, somewhere, waiting to kill him, but not knowing where it would come from or how it would strike.
He kept glancing at the scanner until Rodney, annoyed, covered it up with one hand. In the twilight under the trees, the glow outlined his fingers and lit up his face in soft bars. "Quit that. I'll tell you if I see something. There's no one out here but us."
Sheppard flicked on the flashlight of his P90. He knew the light would make them a target in the dark woods, but he trusted Rodney to tell him if a life sign showed up on the scanner, and breaking an ankle in a hole in the ground wouldn't improve their situation at all.
As they climbed the hill, the towering trees in the valley gave way to small, gnarly pines and brush. Finally they emerged on top of the hill in a clearing, and Sheppard flicked off the flashlight, allowing his eyes to adjust to the twilight.
The sun had set, and the clouds were stained reddish in a direction that he presumed must be this world's west -- or east, depending on the way the planet turned. There was still enough light to see a carpet of treetops below them, cut by silver threads of rivers. Mountains arose to their right; the hill on which they stood was clearly a foothill, and Sheppard could see that it went up fast and got steep quickly. In the other direction, there was nothing but rolling hills and eventually flatland. He was able to see the top of the Stargate from up here, glimmering in the fading light in the sky, and he lightly cuffed Rodney's arm in triumph. "See? Didn't lose the gate. Nothing to it."
"Hmph," Rodney grumbled, jerking his arm away and staring at the scanner.
The one thing Sheppard could tell for sure was that nowhere, in that great forest spread out at his feet, were there any signs of current habitation. No glimmers of light, no wisps of smoke. As far as he could tell, they were completely alone on this world. The only indication that anyone had ever lived here was the tower that Rodney had seen through the trees, sitting proud and lonely atop a distant ridge on the far side of the valley that sheltered the Stargate.
No, wait. Not tower, but towers, plural. There was another one on their side of the valley, high on the slope of one of the more distant mountain peaks. And there ... turning, Sheppard could just see the top of another, barely visible over the foothills.
He couldn't really make out any details, even through his small field binoculars. They were featureless and gray, entwined with climbing vines and moss. He couldn't tell from here whether they were made of stone or something more high-tech, but they were obviously very old. The ones that he could see appeared to be equidistant from the gate and from each other.
Rodney was motioning impatiently for the binoculars. Handing them over, Sheppard said, "What do you want to bet that there are six of those things?"
"Mmm." Without taking the binoculars from his eyes, Rodney pointed with the hand holding the scanner. "Then there should be one down there, in the flat country. Assuming there's one for every ..." He trailed off, obviously stumped for terminology.
"Ley line."
"... or whatever, then two of them would be hidden from us by the hills behind the gate -- but we should be able to see another one down there. Ah! There is. It's just that the trees are so tall on the flat land that they're hiding it. In fact ..." Rodney took down the binoculars, then put them back to his eyes, then took them down again. "Maybe I'm imagining things, but do you see anything odd about the trees down there?"
"I'm getting really tired of questions like that, McKay."
"Just ... okay, look." Rodney pointed to the most clearly visible tower. Then his finger traced an invisible line from that one, to the one that couldn't quite be seen with the naked eye. His finger kept moving, up to the one on the mountainside.
And Sheppard did see it, even in the twilight. There was very nearly a visible line in the vegetation. Inside the circle that Rodney had marked off, the trees were noticeably taller than the ones outside.
"Okay ... that's really weird."
"Aha! You see it too!"
Sheppard squinted at the tower on the mountainside, its slender shape backlit by the fading sunset colors in the sky. "I'd really like to know what the hell those things are doing."
"See, that's the weird thing. According to these power readings, I can't imagine that they're doing much of anything. Either they've already done their thing, and depleted their energy source, or ..." He looked over at Sheppard with the wide-eyed, "we're screwed" look that John was beginning to dread. "Or they're just powered down and waiting for new victims to come along."
"A few minutes ago, you wanted to go find one and figure out what it did."
"I still do! I'm me, after all! On the other hand, spending the night here isn't exactly making me jump for joy."
Sheppard looked down at the rolling forest below them. The area circumscribed by the towers was quite large; he guessed each one was about eight to ten miles from the gate. They'd have to hike all night to either reach a tower or get outside their area of influence. Heck, it might take longer, because they'd be walking in the dark through unfamiliar forest with no trails. Finding a place to hole up for the night made more sense.
As if in response to his thoughts, a fat raindrop hit Sheppard on the end of his nose. More pattered down around his ears. Rodney let out a long, pained-sounding sigh. "And here I thought it couldn't get worse -- oh!"
Sheppard looked around; Rodney was staring at his scanner. "McKay? Something?"
"I'm getting a life sign." Rodney frowned, holding the screen up in front of his face. "What the hell? That can't be an animal; it's moving too damn fast. A vehicle maybe? Except there's no energy signature..."
"How fast is fast?" Sheppard demanded.
"I don't know. Fifty or sixty kph, maybe?"
"There are animals that can run that fast."
"Oh sure, maybe, but none that you want coming towards you."
"It's coming towards us?"
"Didn't I just say that?" Rodney fiddled with the controls on the scanner. "The one thing I can tell you for sure is that it's not human, Wraith or anything specific that I know how to calibrate for. It's just fast, and alive, and making a beeline for us."
"Where is it coming from?"
Rodney pointed down into the valley where the Stargate was located. "From back there."
"Then let's not stick around here until it shows up." Sheppard gave Rodney's arm a tug, urging the other man in front of him.
"Where are we going?" Rodney demanded, clutching the scanner.
"Up the mountain. At the very least, we'll have high ground and rock at our backs."
"I don't think you realize how fast this thing is coming, Colonel!" Rodney snapped, though he was already climbing for all he was worth. "It'll be here in just a few minutes!"
"Then how about we don't be?"
As Sheppard urged McKay into a trot, the rain began falling in earnest, lowering a gray curtain over the world and making it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of them even with the flashlight. They forged their way through a band of thick brush and then scrambled up a slope of loose, drifted rocks. Pushing Rodney ahead of him, Sheppard turned back to cover the woods with the P90 while Rodney got to the top of the slope. "Where is it now?"
"Closing fast," Rodney reported from above him, over the sound of clattering rocks as he scrambled up the slope without particular care for where he put his feet.
"What's up there, McKay?" Sheppard demanded as he started to climb, dividing his attention between the unstable rocky slope and the dark woods. "Anything we can use for cover?"
"Lots of boulders," Rodney called down. "Some small trees. Colonel, it's going to come out of the woods any minute now. Get up here!"
"What do you think I'm doing?" His feet slipped on the wet rocks, sending him down to one knee with a jolt of pain.
"Sheppard!"
He looked up as he scrambled back to his feet and saw, with horror, that Rodney was actually coming back down to help him. "No! I'm fine! Get back up there and cover me, damn it!"
He made it to the top without incident and ducked behind a boulder. "Now where is it?" he demanded. Rodney was crouched on the ground, one hand on the P90 clipped to his vest and the other holding the scanner.
"Looks like it veered off when it hit the edge of the woods, rather than coming straight for you. It's circling around. Sheppard, I have no idea how it can possibly be moving this fast." Rodney's words were clipped and tight. Sheppard could tell that the other man was staving off panic with everything he had, and felt a sudden rush of pride for the scientist. Rodney had come a long way from the man he'd met in Antarctica two years ago.
"Circling which way?"
"Left. Er, our left." Rodney pointed. "It's behind those rocks right now."
"Those rocks" were a series of wind-sculpted tors, black shapes framed against the darkening sky. Between the rain and the near-total darkness, it was becoming more and more difficult to see anything at all. Sheppard placed himself between the scientist and the rocks, while casting quick looks around him for anything that could provide more cover than the boulders surrounding them. He couldn't make out a damn thing in the dusk, though -- just the amorphous black forms of more rocks.
"What's it doing now?"
Rodney swallowed. "At a guess, I'd say stalking us, maybe trying to figure out what we are. It's just kind of moving around, back and forth -- Damn it, to your right!"
Out of the corner of his eye, Sheppard caught a dark streak of motion, there and gone. He swung around, trying to track on it with the P90, but he couldn't see where it had gone.
"Behind us," Rodney hissed, turning.
"We have to get to some better cover," Sheppard muttered. "Stay beside me. Try to keep out of my line of fire. And turn the screen so I can see it, dammit!" He began backing up the hill, trying to stay between Rodney and the approximate location of ... whatever it was. Rain pattered in the darkness around them. The screen of the LSD was a dancing, glowing blur in the corner of his vision; every time he glanced down at it, all he could see when he looked back towards the boulders was a purplish blot blocking out his night vision.
A sudden, high-pitched shriek shivered the air. Sheppard jumped and nearly squeezed the trigger on the P90. The sound made him think of the noise that eagles made in old Western movies -- or, more ominously, the hunting cry of Ellia the Wraith. But Rodney had said that it wasn't a Wraith --
"Sheppard!" Rodney yelled, as movement flashed in front of him and he caught the quick gleam of a pair of eyes headed straight for him at an impossible speed. His quick, reflexive clutch at the P90's trigger lit up the rocks with a muzzle flash and he caught a brief glimpse of something dark and lithe and big, dodging to one side as bullets strafed the spot where it had just been.
Sheppard released the trigger and stood in the dark and the rain, totally blind with his night vision washed out by the muzzle flash. His heart was hammering against his ribs. Beside him, Rodney was babbling, "Did you get it? Did you?"
"I don't know. Where is it?"
Rodney checked the screen. "Left. Couple hundred meters away. It's not moving, but the life sign's still strong."
Sheppard flicked on the P90's flashlight and swung the light in that direction, illuminating a thousand tiny streaks of falling rain. The light gleamed off wet rocks and the abrupt flash of two eyes like twin lamps in the dark, there and gone as the creature retreated with a hissing sound.
"It doesn't like the light," Sheppard said softly.
"Good! I wish we'd brought a jumper full of floodlights through the gate with us!"
Sheppard played the light back and forth across the field of boulders, trying to find the creature again. He caught a glimpse of fast, furtive movement across one of the open areas and swung the light quickly, in time to catch sight of a glistening wet back lined with dark stripes that might be matted hair or some kind of short spikes. The creature's head went up sharply, swiveling on a short neck lined with more of the hair or spikes, and then it raced forward with another burst of that impossible speed. Sheppard whipped the light around to follow it, and caught it in the act of going right up the side of one of the granite tors. At the top of the stone pillar, thirty feet or more in the air, it crouched down in a dark lump and screamed at them like a giant bird of prey. A crest of dark spikes bristled on its head and trailed down its back -- Sheppard swore that those had been lying down a minute ago, but now they stood up in an aggressive display.
"Jeez," Rodney whispered, mingled fear and awe in his voice. "It's like the world's biggest gecko."
There was, indeed, a lizardlike quality to its quick, jerky movements. But there was also something very wrong about it ... something about the way the legs bent, the unnatural keenness in its gleaming yellow eyes -- something that ran a fingernail down the raw edge of his taut nerves.
"I don't think it's really sure what to make of us," he said softly, backing up the slope with Rodney sticking to him like glue.
"Let's get out of here before it figures it out, then, shall we?" Rodney was obviously trying for a flippant tone, but his voice cracked in the middle.
In the circle of light cast by the P90, the creature ducked its head to one side and flashed behind the stone.
"Crap! Where'd it go? Rodney?"
Rodney sucked in a breath. "It's coming at us again. Nine -- no, eleven, your eleven --"
Sheppard fired again, blindly, in the indicated direction, and the scream that came out of the darkness was the shriek of an animal in pain.
"It didn't even slow down," Rodney gasped. "It's still coming -- shit --"
Between one heartbeat and the next, it was there -- leaping out of the rain and the dark. Sheppard caught a glimpse of jaws wide open, revealing a double row of discolored and irregular fangs. He brought up the P90 but it was just so impossibly fast. It sprang four-legged, like a leaping dog, and its weight bore Sheppard down to the ground. His gun went flying, spinning out of reach; claws ripped down his side in a blaze of pain. His head cracked against the rocks and stars burst in his vision, but still he was strangely clearheaded -- he could smell it, a musty wet animal smell with a heavy metallic overtone like old rotten blood -- he could feel the strange, unnatural heat of its body, like a furnace on top of him, flattening his chest and crushing the breath out of him -- sharp pain of claws digging into his arm -- bony spines on its body, pressing painfully against him -- he managed to get his free hand around one ankle, holding the claws away from his face, startled by the softness of the dark, velvety hair encircling its wrist -- but with one hand pinned and the other occupied, no hands were left free to protect his face, and the jaws opened over him, its rank breath washing across him, inches away --
A burst of automatic weapons fire barked in his ears, and bits of earth and rock spattered his face with a sharp sting. The creature's scream of pain was earsplitting at close range. It sprang away, the hot body vanishing as cold rain poured down onto him and burned against the wounds its claws had left behind. Sheppard gasped for air, willing his deadened limbs to move and pull him upright.
"Sheppard?" Rodney was leaning over him. "Sheppard, get up. Are you -- did it -- did I --"
"I'm fine." Never mind the hot stickiness down his side. He could move, and Rodney's damp hand helped haul him to his feet. He realized -- his brain taking its time catching up with events -- that it must have been Rodney who shot the animal ... without even hitting Sheppard. "Nice shooting," he said, and meant it.
"It's not dead." Rodney's voice shook. "I saw blood, I got it right in the back, but it's not dead. I was afraid I was going to get you too -- I didn't want to keep firing --"
"You did fine." Wincing, Sheppard bent over to feel around in the dark for his P90. "Where did it go?"
"I don't know." Quick rustle as the scanner was pulled out. "Oh Jesus, it's circling us."
Like a shark. Sheppard's fingers closed over the cold metal of the P90's muddy barrel. He staggered a little as he straightened up, lightheadedness washing over him. Keep moving. It'll pass. "All right, we're going to stay back to back, and we're going up the hill, all right?"
"Colonel, we both shot it and it didn't even slow down." There was raw panic building in Rodney's voice.
"Let me get my P90 between its teeth and we'll see how much that slows it down," Sheppard said grimly. "I'll blow its damned head off."
"What if that doesn't kill it!" Rodney's voice rose in a squeak.
"Then we'll try something else! McKay, move it!"
They moved -- back to back, guns out, creeping sideways up the wet, treacherous slope. It was full dark now, the sky just barely lighter than the dark mass of the mountain above them.
"It's staying away from us," Rodney reported breathlessly, studying the scanner. "It's on your side, maybe thirty meters off, pacing us."
Thirty meters was way too damn close, as fast as that thing could move. "We gotta find someplace to take cover," Sheppard muttered.
"There's nothing up here but rocks. Because some idiot wanted to go up ..."
"We'd have been sitting ducks in the woods, McKay!"
"We're sitting ducks here!"
"How close is it now?"
"About the same," Rodney said, and then, "Oh. Damn. Don't go any farther over this way, please."
"Why?" Sheppard twisted his head around, trying to see.
"Because there's a big frikkin' canyon over here. If we keep going this way, we're going to fall in."
Turning his head to the side, Sheppard could just see the place where gleaming wet rocks turned into a pit of impenetrable blackness in the pool of light cast by Rodney's flashlight. He realized that some of what he'd taken for the patter of rain around them was actually the distant crashing of a stream rushing at the bottom of the canyon.
Which meant they were now trapped between the beast and the cliff. Hopefully the creature wasn't smart enough to figure that out.
"So far your ideas aren't working out all that well, Colonel," Rodney said in a voice that trembled only slightly.
"Give me time here. A brilliant plan doesn't happen overnight."
"It'd better happen in the next five minutes, or I'm thinking we're going to be monster chow."
Now that they were standing still, Sheppard could hear an occasional soft click or rustle as the creature moved in the darkness, just outside the glow of the flashlights, its claws tapping on the rocks like the clicking of a dog's footsteps on linoleum.
"We could try splitting up. You stay still, I'll draw it away --"
"The hell you're leaving me alone in the dark!"
"Rodney --" With their backs pressed together, he found that he could actually feel the physicist's body language -- and right now the lines of Rodney's body were settling into a pose of solid obstinacy. "Fine. Fine. No splitting up."
Rodney relaxed just a little. "Good."
Sheppard chewed on his lower lip, straining his eyes to pierce the darkness where the small rustlings let him know that the creature was still out there, pacing, waiting. "Okay, I've got something. We'll rush it."
Rodney's body went rigid. "How is that a plan?"
"Element of surprise. It obviously doesn't like the light. We use the lights to pin it down and then we both open fire."
"The only problem with that, Colonel, is the fact that it is much faster than either of us, and also, P90 fire doesn't seem to hurt it all that much."
"Well, since you don't like any of my plans, it's your turn to come up with something." Sheppard was starting to shiver slightly as the heat seeped out of him, flowing away down his side, trickling into the waistband of his pants. The rain had died away to a light mist, but they were both soaked to the skin. If that thing doesn't get us, the weather will.
"Okay, fine, I will then. Genius at work," Rodney snapped. After a moment's silence, he said, "It doesn't like the light."
"Doesn't seem to, no."
"Might make sense, if it's nocturnal. The light might hurt its eyes. I don't suppose you have any of those interesting little devices that For-- that you military types used on Dagan to completely blind me."
"Flashbangs ... no, but ..." Sheppard grinned. "I do have a couple of flares. Rodney, I hate to admit it, but sometimes you really are a genius."
"Of course, it's possible that light just makes it furious and homicidal," Rodney muttered.
Sheppard unsnapped the pocket of his vest where he kept the flares. A flare gun would have been better, but all he had were a few of the handheld kind. Still ... it was possible that one of these might be capable of temporarily blinding a nocturnal creature, even chasing it away.
Thinking back to the single-minded intent of the beast charging at him, the way it shrugged off the P90 fire, made him shudder. No ... a flare probably wouldn't be enough to chase it away. But it might give them a chance to escape -- if they had somewhere to escape to.
He glanced over his shoulder at the ravine. But, no ... that wasn't going to help. The creature could scuttle up a sheer rock face as if it were on flat ground; they'd be at its mercy if they tried to climb down.
If only they had a puddlejumper. From now on, he was always taking a jumper through the gate. Always. If you couldn't fly to a world, then they just wouldn't go there.
"It's getting restless," Rodney murmured. "I think it's about to try something."
"Then we'll try something too."
"Colonel!"
Rodney didn't have to tell him -- he saw the rush of movement at the edge of the flashlight's radius. The light jerked around wildly as he struck a flare and lobbed it at the dark blur. The white-hot flash seared an arc into his vision as it hurtled towards the creature --
-- which leaped and batted at the flare like a cat, knocking it back towards the two stunned men. They ducked instinctively, and the flare arced over their heads and briefly illuminated the rim of the ravine before plunging down and vanishing.
Screaming in rage and pain, reeking of scorched fur, the beast sprang. Sheppard raked it with P90 fire, nearly staggering off the edge of the cliff from a combination of recoil and a clumsy attempt to dodge its charge without falling into Rodney. Shrieking, the animal vanished in the rain.
"Way to waste a flare, Sheppard," Rodney snapped, once he got his voice back.
"I didn't know it was going to do that. It's so freaking fast." He glanced over the edge of the ravine. The flare had lodged in some tree branches, where it was sparking and spitting, lighting up the treetop and the canyon floor. He watched for a moment to make sure it wasn't going to set fire to the woods, but it seemed that the branches were too wet.
Although if the creature disliked light, setting fire to the woods actually might not be a bad idea. He decided to hold that back as a last resort, though. Arson might be even harder to explain to Elizabeth than temporarily losing the Stargate, especially if there were people living here after all.
"Rodney --"
"I know, I know: 'Where is it'. I think we really hurt it that time. It's run off that way." McKay pointed with the hand holding the scanner.
"I know I got it with the P90 that last time -- got it good. I saw blood fly." Taking a couple of steps forward, Sheppard knelt down and shone his flashlight over the rocks. There were, indeed, swatches and splatters of blood, swirling as the drizzling rain diluted them. Sheppard touched a spot of blood lightly. It was warm, and charcoal black -- the word ichor came to mind. It looked a lot like Wraith blood. Is it a rule that all alien monsters have to have nasty black blood? Carson might know ...
"Um, Colonel ..." There was a slight quaver to Rodney's voice. "It's circling around. Coming back."
"What, again? I emptied half a P90 clip into it!" Sometimes the universe was just not fair. "It shouldn't be able to walk!"
"It's moving slow, but it's definitely moving."
Sheppard planted himself between Rodney and the great, unknown darkness. Playing his flashlight across the field of boulders, he caught movement between two of them. In the brief glimpses that he could get, he could see that the creature was limping badly. He'd definitely hurt it. But his attack should have blown off a limb. And he was uncomfortably aware that he was running low on bullets. He had a spare clip for the P90, and so did Rodney, but after that they'd be down to the Berettas and if machine guns didn't do the trick ...
The creature hissed at the light and darted off behind another rock with a sinuous, scuttling motion. Something about that nagged at Sheppard's memory; he felt as if he'd run into something like this before, a long time ago. He just couldn't quite put his finger on what, exactly.
"Ideas would be good here, Colonel," Rodney said between his teeth.
Sheppard teased another flare out of his pocket, just in case. Not that it had done much the last time, but now he knew better than to throw it -- at their feet, it might help keep the creature away from them, for a little while at least. "Is it possible to use the scanner to find a cave for us? Something defensible?"
"What do you think this is, a tricorder? I could maybe get some data on the composition of the rocks, but it's not like that's going to help unless you've suddenly developed a hidden talent for geology, considering that I -- oh crap."
"What?" Sheppard swiveled around, feeling Rodney do likewise.
"It went into the ravine--" Rodney began, and then the creature erupted almost under their feet -- and this time it was going for Rodney. A powerful blow smashed into his arm, sending the scanner sailing through the air; it crunched against a rock, and bits of irreplaceable Ancient technology went skittering off in all directions. Rodney let out a yell of mingled pain and surprise.
Before Sheppard could get a clear line of fire on the creature without hitting Rodney, it was gone again, vanishing into the rain and the dark.
Rodney was on his knees on the ground, clutching his arm and gasping in pain. Sheppard knelt next to him, wincing as the movement tugged at his own injury. "I think my arm's broken," Rodney stammered, white-faced.
Sheppard prodded at it. "No, I don't think so. But you'll have a hell of a bruise in the morning."
"If we make it to morning." He seemed to be getting his wits about him; his voice had begun to steady, and through the hand resting on Rodney's arm, Sheppard could feel the trembling beginning to ease. "It went after the LSD, Colonel. It figured out what we were using it for."
Sheppard hauled Rodney to his feet, shaking his head all the while. "No way. It couldn't possibly be that smart."
Rodney just pointed at the scattered guts of the LSD with his good hand. "You explain that, then."
He didn't want to try, didn't want to contemplate the idea of a nearly indestructible monster that was smart enough to understand the functions of a piece of technology it had never seen before, wielded by creatures it had probably never seen before either. "Can you fix it?"
Rodney gave him a very dirty look. "Maybe given a few days, a lab and replacement parts. We hardly even understand how these things work when they are working --"
"Hush!"
Rodney didn't have to be told twice; he shut up immediately. Sheppard turned slowly, trying to orient on the sound he'd heard -- the click of claws on stone, not too far away.
He hadn't realized how much they'd been relying on the LSD. They were totally blind now. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Rodney had crouched down to pick up the pieces of the scanner, and he hissed, "McKay! Don't bother with that!"
"These things don't grow on trees, Colonel --"
Beyond Rodney, eyes gleamed gold in the darkness, closing rapidly on the scientist. "Duck!" Sheppard yelled, and fired over Rodney's head. But the creature anticipated the movement and dodged to one side. It was learning very fast indeed. And then what he had feared, happened -- the hammer fell on an empty chamber. He'd run out of bullets. No time to reload.
"Rodney! Gimme your gun!"
Rodney began struggling with the vest clip on the P90. It was obvious that he wasn't going to get it undone in time, and Sheppard fumbled for the spare clip in his own vest while ejecting the old one.
Motion out of the corner of his eye made his head whip around, just in time to see the creature, graceful and perfectly silent, leap at Rodney. The scientist saw it too, but his P90 was tangled up with the vest clip and pointing in the wrong direction. Rather than shooting, he let go of the gun with both hands and tried to roll away. "Sheppard!" he screamed as the beast landed on top of him, knocking him flat -- and then the cry for help turned into a scream of pain, although from this angle Sheppard couldn't see what it was doing to him.
The spare clip for the P90 slipped from Sheppard's rain-wet fingers as he tried to yank it out of his vest pocket -- too fast, too careless, too worried about Rodney; it bounced off into darkness. With a yell of frustration, he drew his 9-mil and aimed for the back of the thing's skull. It jerked its head as he fired, and his shot winged off its scalp -- but that got its attention, and it spun in a fluid, rippling motion and came at him. He fired again and then it was on top of him, all muscle and teeth and spines and rough scales with occasional patches of coarse fur. The claws burned a trail of fire down Sheppard's shoulder and back. He might have screamed; he wasn't sure. Then the ground went out from under his feet, and he was falling, locked together with the creature.
The cliff wasn't sheer, and it was covered with vegetation, slowing their fall in a series of bruising impacts. They struck and rolled and struck again. Sheppard's leg doubled under him -- Oh God, this is going to be bad -- and then the weight of the beast came down on top of him and he felt bone give way, and this time he knew he screamed, long and loud, even as he caught himself with both hands on the trunk of a tree, arresting his fall.
With his cheek pressed against rough, wet bark, he breathed deeply through the initial wave of lightheadedness. He'd broken bones before, and he knew the feeling. He also knew that he was well and truly screwed -- disarmed, injured, and, now, in an environment more favorable to his enemy than to himself. And Rodney was -- what? Hurt, dead?
He opened his eyes to a flickering, red and black world. For an instant he was completely disoriented; then he realized that he was hung up in some of the trees growing along the canyon's walls, and the flare was providing the dim illumination that enabled him to see a dark network of branches around him.
Rodney, he thought, but as he struggled to get himself upright, spurred by the need to get back to the top of the cliff, he looked up and saw the creature clinging to the treetops above him. For a moment they just stared at each other. He could see the dim flash of its eyes in the guttering light of the flare, the narrow inscrutable slits of its catlike pupils. The dark spines on its head and back bristled like the hackles of an angry dog. One of its forelegs was drawn up against its body, and black blood dripped onto the leaves below it.
"Look, I have no clue if you can understand me, but things seem to have gotten a little out of hand here," Sheppard said, staring into the flat yellow gleam of its eyes. "I realize this is your world and we're just guests here. Still, this is a bit rude, don't you agree? Why don't you go your way, we'll go ours, and we can forget all this ever happened."
It opened its mouth, the double row of jagged fangs flashing in the flare's light, and hissed at him.
"Or perhaps not."
Shrieking, it sprang down onto him. Sheppard drew his knife, the only weapon he had left -- as if he could survive hand-to-hand combat with a creature like this, but he didn't intend to die easy. The weight of its body sent them both crashing through layers of branches and into a tangle of brush. Pain exploded behind Sheppard's eyes; his vision went dark, and then came back in wavering snatches. He was going to die now -- he had to die, he couldn't even move to defend himself. But instead there was -- fire? Had he set the woods on fire after all? He blinked to clear his vision, but all he could see was flickering firelight, painting the trees in shades of orange and gold. And then someone was bending over him, a dark shape against the light of the flames. "Rodney," he whispered, gratefully.
Hands caught him, eased him out of the brush onto flat ground. "Shh. It's all right; you'll be all right." Rodney's voice was low and rough and ... wrong? Somehow Sheppard thought it seemed important that he should figure out why, but he couldn't summon enough energy to care before he passed out.
---
TBC
The idea of "useful information first" when someone's on their deathbed comes from Connie Willis's excellent novel novel Passage, which is about researchers studying the afterlife. One of the characters is hung up on the idea that characters in books and movies always start with the least important information: "The locket is hidden in the ..." and then die before they can gasp out the important part. Perhaps Rodney's read the book.
