Disclaimer: I do not own any rights to the Stargate franchise or its storylines. My intention is not infringe upon those rights, so please don't sue me.
Author's Note: This is only the third chapter I've posted up, but comments from the readers are very much appreciated. I would love to know how well I'm doing or if I suck altogether…
The Young Weapon
Chapter 3: From Hunter to Capture
Once inside the stone facility, Teyla and the science team strapped into protective suits and scanned the hallway where SG-8 was attacked to find signs of the foreign bacteria affecting Lt. Gibbs and Lt. Simon. They set up in the control room to study the samples while Sheppard, McKay, and Captain Leonard of SG-4 explored the other hallways located deeper within the facility. After an hour of traveling and descending down stairs, they were dropping glow sticks to mark their path when they received a radio call from Dr. Zelenka:
"We've scanned the area to discover that the origin of the bacteria were the lights attached to the hallway ceiling. We've sealed off the area for now, so we will decontaminate and will join you shortly."
"Copy Zelenka. We'll get back to the Gate in six hours to report back to Keller on Atlantis," Sheppard responded while taking out his Lantean device. On the small silver hand-held screen, there were four clustered, orange-yellow dots representing them, along with a separate red dot in transit beeping a few levels down. "Meanwhile, we're closing in on our slippery friend."
"I still don't understand why we didn't bring guys," McKay shrilled. "Three armed men were hoodwinked by this girl, what makes you think us three can take her down and bring her back?"
"First of all," Sheppard reeled his head towards McKay and whispered, "so long as you can shut up, we can maintain whatever element of surprise we have to our advantage. Plus, we have scanners, ARWs, and the benefit of hindsight. Have a little faith, Rodney."
They continued to make their way down to the core of the facility when the separate red dot stopped moving and remained stationary in the level below them. Sheppard slightly opened the door to the floor below and poked his anti-Replicator weapon in both directions. He waved the rest in and they crept down the hall.
At the end of the corridor, they arrived at a door leading to another large room where the red dot was located. The colonel flattened himself against the wall to the right of the door and placed his hand on the door handle. He mouthed a countdown and when the door flew open, they all pointed their weapons into the dark room, where they heard a muffled voice calling out from the darkness.
The three men's flashlights scanned the dark abyss attempting to locate the voice when McKay tripped over something attached to the floor. Before McKay hit the floor, all three weapons were already pointed at the obtrusion resting against the wall: an ebony-skinned, muscular man tied by the knees and wrists with a gag over his mouth.
"Murphy!" gasped McKay as he stood up from the soot-ridden floor. "You're alive! My God, you scared the crap out of me!"
"Of course he's alive!" Sheppard whispered as he unsheathed his knife to cut the captain's restraints. "Are you injured?"
"I'll live, sir. She carved something into me, though," Murphy replied. "The attacker was female, 5'9'', long bro--"
"Yeah, we know, Murphy" Sheppard interrupted, "mission's to find her and bring her back." He removed a sidearm from his holster and gave it to Murphy, and all three men cleared out of the room to find their hidden hunter…
Sheppard pushed the button on his radio to contact the group of scientists in the control room. "Sheppard to Teyla: bogey's comin' your way!"
As the hand-held device tracked the female attacker's heat signature which had doubled-back to return to the surface level, the four men twitched in every direction, emptying every corner of the hallway.
Captain Leonard approached the door leading to the facility's upper levels. He was about to access the stairway when the door slammed into his face, breaking his nose and throwing him to the ground.
McKay and Murphy instinctively pointed their anti-Replicator weapons toward the entrance but were disarmed before they could mount any defense. The next thing they knew, they both felt a jolt of electricity surge through their spines and they fell to the ground - a sensation all too familiar to Captain Murphy.
A pair of armored fists rained down on Sheppard as he fell to the ground with his other team members. The upstairs access door closed while he writhed in pain on the hallway floor. The space between them began to shift in color and dimension, and his attacker was revealed as the athletic female attacker seen the briefing room video.
Her long brown hair was draped over her steel-padded soldiers and cast a shadow over her glaring brown eyes. Her rose lips were upturned in a smirk while she assessed her success under the fluorescent lamps illuminating the hallway.
In a different situation, Sheppard would have found her attractive. He would probably be hitting on her if she wasn't hitting him.
He attempted to pull a knife before the young woman's foot slammed on his wrist. With the buckled boot pinning his broken wrist to the dirt-ridden stone floor, she crouched down to knock him unconscious with one violently fluid movement. After picking up the anti-Replicator weapons and throwing them down the corridor, she grabbed his other wrist and dragged him to the opposite side of the hallway.
"I'm pretty sure nobody's told you this, Sheppard" she muttered as she turned over his limp body onto his side, "but you're so predictable. I still can't figure out how you've survived in this universe for so long. In the future, I recommend you change your style." She reached behind her to unsnap an item from her belt: a severed appendage of a small animal or insect, "but for right now, I win this round." With the item in hand, she ripped open the colonel's sleeve, and the smirk was wiped from her face.
Her forehead furrowed into stressed seams as she examined Sheppard's immaculate arm, free of bruises or scars. She ripped open the sleeve of his other arm to found the same result.
"What the hell?" she muttered. Placing the appendage on the floor next to Sheppard, she went to pick up his head when a burst of energy flew down the hall and engulfed her torso, causing her to convulse and finally fall to the ground next to Sheppard.
Teyla kept the end of her anti-Replicator weapon pointed towards the young woman lying next to Sheppard as she crouched next to him to shake him. The other soldiers from SG-4 followed her down the hall to care for Captain Leonard, McKay, and the injured Murphy.
"John…" she said as she shook his shoulder. "John!" she repeated, and he slowly regained consciousness. Teyla helped him rise to a sitting position, taking care not to touch his broken wrist. "Are you alright?" Sheppard held up his forearm. "Other than that…"
"Just bruised my pride, I guess. I've been a colonel for a few weeks and then…" he trailed off as Teyla stared at him with obvious boredom. He turned and nodded at the body lying on the floor. "Who's this chick, anyway? You ever seen her before?"
Teyla stood up and walked over to the woman. "I cannot say that I have…" She flicked away a lock of curls to check her pulse when she saw a black marking located on the middle of her neck comprised of three dots and two bold vertical lines, the last of which connected to an inverted have crescent. Teyla recognized the symbol and looked at Sheppard.
Sheppard understood Teyla's implication. "Although, that does look a lot like Ronon's tattoo - Satedan military…"
Teyla stood up and motioned to the other soldiers to come and restrain the attacker. As they secured her wrists with plastic cuffs, Teyla turned back to Sheppard. "Lieutenant Sosa received a radio call from Dr. Keller about ten minutes ago while guarding the Gate. She said that the medical conditions of Lieutenant Gibbs and Simon have not change and suggest that we bring back the young woman back to Atlantis."
"Alright, then…" Sheppard agreed. He sluggishly attempted to lift himself from the ground before Teyla reached out to help him. His raised finger prevented her from performing any other assistance. He shook his head a little and stood up on his own. "I can do this…my sinuses are little cleared up…but I'm fine." And while the tense Teyla finally relaxed by letting a slight smile creep into her face from the ends of her lips, Sheppard hobbled down the hall leading up to the surface…
*****
In a small stone village on the post-Renaissance setting of Edowin, young girls playfully skipped along the lanes of the street market occupied by food and product merchants, and boys threw a small felt ball to each other while running back and forth in revolving intervals.
Up in the heart of the Thumin Mountains, the few members left of the Satedan army had set up a military instruction school to train the raising adults of the village how to defend their new home.
In one of the granite rooms of the mountains, a muscular six-foot-tall soldier sparred with an almost equally skilled adolescent male. An audience of old soldiers and new trainees watched while two men in a marked section of the room struck at each other with their bronzewood batons.
The muscular man's long locks snapped back and forth while the adolescent student attempted to disarm his instructor. The man deflected the student's strikes with what seemed like little effort until the student charge forward and spun to deliver a backswing to the man's torso and wrist. But the student's victory was short-lived as the disarmed man punched the boy's side and caught the forearm in his grip, flipping him onto the padded ground. Slightly embarrassed and sustaining minor injury, the teenager was helped off the mat by the instructor.
"Not a bad start," the muscular man encouraged, "but I'd probably suggest you shield your left side a little more. I can tell you're right-handed, but don't let your opponents see that." A small grin flashed across the student's bruised face. "Besides, you lasted a lot longer than most of my students…" he smirked as his gaze floated across the stone room to the other instructor Tenek - an adult man with black, cropped hair, matching in age with the instructor.
"Don't look at me like that, Ronon," the man muttered, and then turned to speak to the other students. "Take a break, guys. When we get back from the village feast, we'll start training on automatic weaponry." When the teenagers had departed, Tenek noticed the blood dripping down from Ronon's forearm.
The two men chatted while walking from the descending mountain trail towards Tenek's home in the Satedan community, "I was never your student, Dex. We grew up on the same street, we worked at your father's repair shop together, and if I remember correctly, you were the one who ended up following me to military school. The only reason you won that fight while we were on leave was because we were sparring on the mud-soaked terrain behind your house."
Ronon grinned at his childhood friend. "Yeah, and the sun was in your eyes. And you saw Hemi's sister in the street behind me," he chuckled, "still doesn't change the fact that I have bragging rights…however little I get to use them."
"Hey, that day wasn't exactly a loss for me," Tenek rebutted. "Divya ended up taking me home that night and - *ahem* - treated my wounds… a year later, we got married. I count that as a win." Both men let out a boisterous laugh and turned the corner into the front yard of Tenek's home to find a caramel-skinned woman with flowing black waves of hair stepping over the threshold. Tenek walked up to embrace the woman with the basket in hand, and the three of them walked into the stone cottage. They all sat at the table in the kitchen while Divya dressed up Ronon's wounds.
"Thank you for all of this, Divya," Ronon gestured to his arm and the crumb-ridden plates on the table.
"It is certainly my pleasure to have someone who enjoys my cooking," she tweeted. "Do you have a place to stay for the night?"
Ronon shrugged. "Actually, I'm not gonna be staying for very much longer. I think I'll be heading back soon." Before he could continue, a small giggling child ran into the kitchen carrying a felt ball in her pudgy hands. She squatted behind Ronon's chair and playfully peeked over his shoulder to Tenek, then leapt out and pounced onto the man's lap.
"Ronon, this is my three-year-old daughter. Nieka, say hi," Tenek whispered to the child.
"Hi Wonin," the little girl cooed. The father kissed and tickled the child while she squealed gleefully. The playful atmosphere of Tenek's home warmed Ronon's heart, but the grin from his face slowly disappeared as the ghosts of his past sullied the wonderful moment.
He shifted his chair and stood up from the table. "I'd better get going. Thank you again for dinner, Divya."
The father shooed his daughter off to bed to stop Ronon before he walked out the door. "Hold on, Ronon. What's your rush? You alright?"
"I'm fine," Ronon scoffed, "I just gotta get back before my friend sends a team to look for me." Tenek hesitated but finally gave in to Ronon's departure. He held out his hand and Ronon firmly clutched it with his own. "Thank you, Tenek. I, uh, haven't felt this at-home in a long time." He removed his gun from the hook on the front door and strapped it onto his waist, then he stepped over the threshold and ventured down the village street towards the Stargate…
*****
Mr. Woolsey sat in his office with the Lantean setting sun's rays shining in. Suddenly, he heard the familiar whoosh of the activating Stargate on the floor below and rushed to the control room down the hall. After ordering the energized shield to be raised to cover the Gate, Chuck received a streaming signal on the control room's main screen.
"It's Ronon's IDC," Chuck said. "He's dialing in 38 hours early."
Woolsey ordered Chuck to drop the shield and casually descended the stairs into the Gate room. The security officers of the Gate room aiming their weapons at the Stargate lowered their arms when Ronon stepped through the rippling plane of water.
"Welcome back, Ronon," Woolsey greeted. "How were the talks with your people on P4D-716, and your fellow Satedans residing there?"
"Pretty good," he replied as the Stargate powered down. "The Edowin Counsel agreed to trade their harvest for medical supplies from Atlantis, but only on the condition that we send someone over to fix a problem with their ZPM-powered irrigation system… I don't recommend sending McKay, though - they have a custom of sharing fruit with each other at the end of their meetings," he added.
The Atlantis commander nodded his head. "That will have to wait until our current situation is resolved." He began walking back up the stairs, "we'll brief you in a moment, but for now, the Daedalus is in orbit for a com-link meeting." Then Woolsey ascended the stairs once more and Ronon was left standing in the Gate room. Feeling out of place with little to do, he walked out of the spacious room and into the hallway where he ran into Amelia Banks.
"Hey, Mia," Ronon called out, "where's Sheppard, Teyla, and McKay?"
"Well, you've been away for three days - a lot's happened since then," Amelia responded. Ronon stared at the control room technician while he expected explanation, and she finally gave in. After explaining the events of the past few days and strolling along Atlantis' corridors, Ronon tried to mask his feelings of offense.
"And no one tried to call me before they went back?" Ronon asked.
"Yeah, about that…" she trailed off. "Sheppard gave everyone strict orders not to contact you while on your visit to the Satedan settlement. Besides, I think Sheppard needed a softer touch on this particular mission, since they were up against an opponent they couldn't even see."
"Oh, please…as if Sheppard's touch is any softer than mine," Ronon humphed.
Before they could discuss further, a monotone male voice rang over the base's speaker system. "Unscheduled off-world activation!"
Ronon and Amelia doubled back to the Gate room and arrived just when Sheppard, being assisted by Teyla, and McKay walked through the Stargate. SG-4 and Captain Murphy followed close behind carrying a make-shift gurney with the unconscious female attacker.
Dr. Keller entered in through the opposite hallway with assistant medical personnel. She pulled out a penlight to examine her pupils when the young woman on the gurney suddenly began to violently convulse.
"Contact the infirmary," Keller ordered, "tell them to move a crash cart and ventilation system to the central isolation room! We're coming in with a seizing patient…Let's move!" Keller and the four other uniformed doctors rushed to push the padded gurney down the set of stairs and into the southbound hallway, and then disappeared around the corner…
