Mark walked into the cockpit and was struck back to the wall; his gun and radio fell to the floor. The blue skinned woman was walking towards him. Unable to run Mark tried to fight her off. She quickly overpowered him and lifted him by the neck. She brought her hand forward onto his chest and began to feed.
Mark was screaming, the pain was unbearable; he saw his life flash before him. He began to realise that this was it, he wasn't going to escape.
"Mark! Take off now!" came down the radio, shocked the Wraith turned and Mark pulled a knife from his jacket and lodged it firmly into the head of the Wraith. It loosened its grip and died.
Mark ran to the cockpit and began to fire up the engines. The jumper sprang to life and lifted from the floor, with the cloak still on Mark flew up and followed the dart.
As they reached orbit they saw the battle, jumpers and the Virtue were desperately trying to hold off the hive-ship long enough for us to get on board.
He saw the turret turn to aim at the dart.
Mark hit the radio and shouted down the line "Lucas the dart in front of me is friendly, do not fire!" he insisted.
I saw it, the turret was powering up, "I should have gone back to Atlantis" I said to myself.
The turret was ready to fire, I braced for the explosion but then nothing. The turret turned and fired on another dart.
As my dart pulled into the hangar of the virtue I surveyed the damage. The hangar was in flames and the door seemed to have blown off and I could see flashes of colour emanating from inside the ship. The Wraith must have gotten aboard.
Scrambling for the brakes I managed to stop the dart, it seemed to be very easily piloted but in future I was going to stick to jumpers. As I exited the dart I saw a damaged jumper become visible beside me. Could it be Mark? I sure hoped so.
As the hangar door opened I pulled up my gun, I saw the Wraith approaching the jumper whilst it was on the ground. I couldn't be sure it was him.
To my relief, Mark stepped out of the ship. It took me a second to recognise him, he looked different somehow, older. Realisation struck me as he drew near, he was fed on.
"Are you okay?" I asked him
"Yeah, but I never want to see one of those things ever again!" he told me
"Well this might not be the best time but I think the Virtue has been boarded. There appears to be shooting in this corridor" I informed him.
We both geared up the remainder of the ancient weapons and headed into the dull corridor.
"Lucas we are aboard with enough fuel to keep us going for longer than we thought. Get us the hell outta here!" I shouted down the radio.
I got no reply but the ship sped up and I saw the Wraith ships disappear.
Slowly we moved into the corridor. I saw dead bodies littering the area. Not wraith, Human. The Wraith were shooting to kill!
I saw the line of ancients who were trying desperately to get through, to reach the safe areas of the ship. They were losing ground and were being forced back.
I found the group commander. "What the hell is going on here?" I asked, "There are twenty Wraith through this gap and another ten assaulting the bridge. We need to get through and help Lucas!" he told me. "Okay, are there any other ways out of here? On the other ship there were crawlspaces. Surely the Virtue has them as well." I said. "Yes, we have them but once you go through you can't turn back, you'll be killed if you get into trouble and we can't risk any men to follow you." He told me, I could sense that he wasn't optimistic about this fight. "Doesn't this ship have a fighting force?" I asked. "Yes but they are stuck in the lower decks. An explosion destroyed the access ways." He told me "We are on our own and we are pilots not soldiers.". "Hold this line, we'll take the flank and try and cut them into two groups." I told him and Mark and I ran to the nearest tunnel and went back in.
I wasn't happy having to do this again, the last time we lost Sara, in fact each time I had encountered the Wraith I had either lost someone or someone had been fed on.
I hoped the pattern would change this time.
We crawled for a few minutes and I looked down. I could see the Wraith force. I quickly strapped an explosive to the hatch and kicked it down.
I moved just in time as the explosion hit the roof of the tunnel. I looked down and the Wraith were gone, most of them lying burnt on the floor. We both dropped down and took a look around before heading back to find the other ancients.
We found them and together we moved forward to the bridge. We entered through the rear entrance and found Lucas and 4 other officers hiding behind chairs and desks fighting a Wraith force. We entered guns firing and managed to push the Wraith back to the hangar bay. We clamped all the ships and deactivated the rear forcefield. We had successfully repelled them with minimal casualties.
Cleaning up the ship was a long and arduous task. We first took all the bodies, Wraith and human and burned them before releasing their ashes to space. We then began to repair the ship.
Our jumper inventory was down 30. For the next mission we'd have to collect 12 fuel canisters, enough for a few hours at high speed, enough to reach the other city of the ancients and enough to find us a ZPM.
Our jumper was fixed and we managed to pull all the fuel from the dart. The Dart was our secret weapon, our plan 2. If the jumpers were being slaughtered we would use the dart to swoop up everything there.
I was glad I wasn't chosen to fly the dart again. It wasn't fun the last time and this time we were going so deep into fortified Wraith space that I wasn't sure we'd be able to survive this next jump.
We were near to the Wraith's homeworld. I wasn't sure what to expect, the third planet of that system was a Wraith fuel depot and that was where we were going to raid. This time we were all going in cloaked, picking up the fuel and cloaking again before they could see us.
It seemed simple but like everything else on this little trip I knew it wouldn't be.
I heard Lucas over the radio once more. He informed the crew that there was less than two hours before we arrived at our next destination.
The fear built up in me once again but I knew it was nearly over. The struggle would be done once we had gotten the fuel. The Virtue would be cloaked as long as possible but we were running short on power and if we weren't fast enough they would be forced to decloak.
Still worried by the thought of entering the Wraith's home system, I felt worried, not for me but for Mark. After his previous encounter I didn't know whether he had it in him to fight off the Wraith. I hoped that it wouldn't come to it but strangely enough I got the feeling it would.
I tried once again to catch some sleep.
Swerving to avoid the fire from the turrets, I hit into an incoming dart. We stayed up but our cloak began to fail. I heard a loud scream from behind me and saw only a dead body, a skeleton. I heard a growling sound from behind me and I turned. There was a Wraith.
It lifted me up and fed on me. I looked out of the front window and we were heading towards the floor, I saw the ground heading towards us, heading at us at high speed.
I woke up again, no longer as scared. I wasn't sure how to take that. Was my fear of the Wraith disappearing? Or did I no longer care?
I heard the familiar call to stations and I headed towards my jumper. We were not in such a hurry this time. We knew we had the element of surprise and the fact that we would be invisible until we activated the transport sensors.
I entered the jumper and saw Mark was already there. He was piloting the jumper this time around. It was my turn to fire the transporters.
Worryingly Mark was enthusiastic, I was almost scared out of my skin. I felt every turn we made in the ship, especially at these speeds.
Swallowing, I prepared for our descent as our speed began to lower. I felt the jolt as we were once again released into the atmosphere.
The Wraith were already on alert. Their turrets were deployed, their ships were in the air and they had soldiers on the ground.
I hoped that was all they had.
TO BE CONTINUED…