Chapter 43: This human demanded to speak with you
It seemed to be my week for idiotic behaviour. I had thought I'd have a chance to exit the Wraith Dart once in the Dart Bay before I was discovered. What I didn't consider was the other Darts also returning to the bay on autopilot. The Hive parked all the Darts in the same part of the Bay so when my canopy opened there were four or five Wraith nearby. Before I could think to activate the TED they drew their stunners and motioned for me to climb down from the Dart.
"Take me to your Queen," I demanded imperiously, hoping they'd think I was part of the betrayal against Atlantis. The Wraith glanced uneasily at each other before motioning me to follow them. My time spent helping Doctor Zelenka proved useful in a way I hadn't expected. I'd spent hours studying the Hive ship schematics, enough to know they actually were taking me in the direction of the Queens chambers. I was cut off from John and I had no idea where on the ship Rodney and Ronan might be ... my mind was racing furiously as I considered and discarded a number of actions I could take to get us all out of this.
"Why do you interrupt me?" the Queen hissed furiously at my Wraith escorts when we arrived at her chambers.
"This human demanded to speak with you," one of them was brave enough to reply.
"You imbecile," the Queen stepped down and backhanded him furiously, sending him careening into the nearest wall. She turned back to the other Wraith, glancing at me for the first time.
"You," she growled menacingly.
"Me," I smiled condescendingly but quaked nervously inside. "I wondered if you recognised me back on Atlantis ... I guess the answer was yes."
"I am Wraith," she hissed and arched her head mockingly. "We do not notice our food ... one human is much the same as another."
"Now that hurts," I deliberated turned my back on her and made a show of looking around the chamber. "Got rid of the disco lights I see ... kind of looks a bit boring now don't you think?"
"Leave us," the Queen commanded the other Wraith, "and take that with you." She gestured towards the Wraith she'd rendered severely unconscious.
"You intrigue me," the Queen mused, stalking towards me. She was almost as tall as Ronan and I couldn't help but feel intimidated as she loomed over me.
"I wish I could say the same about you," I looked her in the eye with a glare, "but we both know I'd be lying."
"There is much that I could offer someone like you," she said in invitation.
"Someone like me?" I queried. "I thought you said one human was just as good as another?"
"I saw you on Atlantis," the Queen admitted, "I know that you possess the gene of the Ancients."
"So you did notice me," I shook my head at her. "You know lying is really not very nice."
"You may think yourself superior," the Queen turned to glare at me, "but you gave away much at our last meeting. I know that you possess Wraith genetic material also ... a rare combination indeed."
"I flew a Dart into your ship," I scoffed in disbelief. "Any idiot could have worked that out!"
"Don't you want to save the lives of your friends?" the Queen went down the blackmail path again.
"We've already had this conversation," I pointed out, as I continued to stroll around her chamber like I owned the place.
"But this time I really do have Doctor McKay and his ... bodyguard," she hissed again, pushing her chin out and looking down her nose at me. "They are waiting in our food storage chambers this very moment."
"If I know Ronan," I taunted her, "he's already escaped with McKay. He'd be insulted if I gave you anything in exchange for his life."
The Queen growled in frustration, stalking back to her throne and throwing herself down on it. She arranged her posture regally, clearly struggling to control her temper.
"Why are you here?" the Queen demanded suddenly.
"You betrayed Atlantis," I said heatedly, "and that pissed me off. I knew we should never have trusted you ... you're evil and a civil war isn't gonna change that."
"It is unfortunate Doctor Weir did not consider your opinion before agreeing to the alliance," the Queen smiled mockingly. "If she had listened to you we would not be heading for Earth and our new feeding group."
"You're going to Earth?" I asked sickly, thoughts whirling as I tried to decide if she was bluffing. "The data you send ... you used it to mine our database for information."
"That is correct," the Queen hissed in pleasure, rising again and striding arrogantly towards me. "With the information we stole we were able to modify our engines. Within days we will arrive at your planet and then ... we will feed."
"I don't think so," I yelled, slamming a mental blow at her before she could raise her defences.
The strength of my mental attack along with the element of surprise caught her off guard. I succeeded in bringing her to her knees briefly, before she rallied and slowly struggled to her feet. Even though I didn't have TED to expand my abilities I still had my Wraith gene. And I had the burning anger I felt towards her – for her initial treatment of me months ago, her deliberate betrayal of the alliance with Atlantis, and most especially for her plan to spread the plague of her race on Earth.
Just hitting her mentally wasn't enough – I badly wanted to beat the crap out of her too and in her weakened and distracted condition I thought I'd even have a chance against her far superior strength. Taking advantage of the small window presented to me while the Queen regained her composure from my first mental blow, I slammed a second one her way, accompanying it with a spinning roundhouse hit of my right arm across her chest. She staggered backwards as I spun again, slamming my left elbow into her spine, all the while bombarding her mind with telepathic daggers.
It wasn't going to be that easy of course. Roused by the sounds of battle from the Queen's chamber, the guard stationed in the corridor nearby came to investigate. Sensing his presence through the mind of the Queen I let go my attack on her briefly to turn and deal with the guard. His mind was weak in comparison to the Queen and it took only seconds for me to render him unconscious without having to lay a finger on him. Whirling back to face the Queen I discovered those few seconds were enough for her to recover some of her equilibrium.
My head rocked back as her fist connected with my jaw. It was my turn to stagger back as she followed her first hit with a kick to the gut. Gasping for breath I looked up to see her raising her hands to either side of my head. I felt the force of her mind against my own ... bracing myself I pushed back. The physical combat ceased as we each slowly straightened until we were facing each other in the centre of the room only a few steps apart. She pushed and I pushed back so that neither of us made any ground in bringing the other down.
"Listen, Wraith bitch," I growled. "You are not gonna bring me down. I held you off last time we met and I've been practising since then."
"We shall see," she hissed, narrowing her eyes as she renewed her attempt to squash my mind.
"Is that the best you can do?" I taunted her, hoping to distract her enough that I could get another sharp mental dagger through her defences.
The Queen did a hissing kind of roar and increased her attack on my mind. I was convinced at that point that she was giving me everything she had ... but somehow I was holding her off. I'd been taunting her when I said I'd been practising but clearly I actually had improved in mental strength. My experiments and research with the TED must have had the added bonus of enhancing my use of the Wraith genes in general.
I let her push against my mind for a few moments, hoping to wear her out. There came a point at which I felt if I held her off any longer my final strike wouldn't be as strong as I could possibly make it. Again I felt the need to make the defeating blow both physical and mental. I did a spinning kick into her midsection at the same time as I sent the sharpest, fastest telepathic dagger I could construct at her mind.
The kick knocked her on her arse and the mental blow made her eyes roll back in her head. As if in slow motion the Queen fell sideways and lay motionless on the floor. Not waiting to see if I'd actually killed her I ran from the chamber and made my way into the depths of the ship. My plan was to get back to the Dart Bay but first I had to find Rodney and Ronan because there was no way I was leaving without them.
Sometime during my fight with the Queen the Hive ship had dropped out of hyperspace - I knew it was a weakness in their technology because they had to stop and give the organic components time to recover. As I ran down the first corridor the ship shook with the force of an explosion on the hull. Someone was firing on us ... John! Wishing I had some way to contact him, I sent up a silent pray that he'd managed to disable the hyperspace engines to give us more time to stop the threat to Earth for good.
Wraith were running around the corridors in far greater numbers than the last time I'd toured a Hive ship. I was forced to duck into corners and behind pillars repeatedly, making for a much longer journey to the food storage chambers than I would have liked. I was heartened after visiting three different chamber locations to find two individual units that had clearly held captives now escaped. Of course Ronan would have had his knife – that's where John had gotten the idea before giving me my knives!
Now what did I do? John was outside the ship in an F302. Rodney and Ronan were running around somewhere inside the ship. And none of us had any way to contact each other. Could there possibly be anything more frustrating about this situation? Leaving the food storage section I headed back towards the Dart Bay. I wasn't going to fly out of the Hive without doing something for the others but maybe with TED I would be able to communicate with everyone.
I hadn't even made it half way to the Darts when the ship started shaking again with external weapons fire. This time I didn't think it possible that John was inflicting the damage – I could sense the ship listing slightly at what must have been severe systems failures. Doctor Weir must have sent the Daedalus, and maybe even the Orion to stop the Hive ships before they were out of range of Atlantis. The ship shook and I had trouble steadying myself as I tried to increase my pace.
Wishing Wraith ships had windows so I could at least look outside to see what was happening, I briefly considered tapping into the system to get an update. The risk that I'd alert the Wraith to my location and maybe in the process mess up whatever plan John and the others were enacting was too great so in the end I decided against it.
My luck at avoiding the Wraith soldiers running all over the ship had to run out sometime. I rounded a corner only a few metres away from the Dart Bay entrance and slammed into a two man Wraith guard detail. They'd obviously been warned about my mental prowess because they stunned me before I had a chance to do anything.
"
Waking up hours later in the Wraith cell was just a little too recognisable to be comfortable. I opened my eyes to that familiar ceiling and groaned at the stunner headache I'd acquired. A guard appeared at my door almost immediately, glancing at the door control to retract the door.
"The Queen wants to see you," he hissed, urging me to follow him from the cell.
"Are you sure?" I asked nonchalantly, "because the last time I saw her she was lying unconscious and bleeding on the floor."
"If you attempt anything I will stun you again," the Wraith ignored my comment, pushing his stunner into the middle of my back and poking me every time he thought I was moving too slow. The bombardment of the ship had stopped and from what I could tell as we walked towards the Queens chamber, the Hive was in dismal shape. Praying that meant the Daedalus had won the fight I allowed myself to be taken before the Queen again.
"We've got to stop meeting like this," I uttered the cliché with a nasty smile, feeling a sense of pride when I realised the Queen was much the worse for wear after her encounter with me.
"The only reason you have not been drained of life," the Queen hissed, "is because of your Ancient gene. You will serve the Wraith as we plan our next attack against Atlantis."
"What makes you think I'd ever serve you," I looked her up and down distastefully.
"You may have been able to resist the will of one Queen," she replied, "but it will be a different story when my sister Queens join me in controlling you."
"That might look like a good plan from your side," I counselled her, "but it won't work. When Atlantis discovers I've been held captive by you they won't let me anywhere near anything Ancient."
"You are valuable to the Lanteans," the Queen countered. "They will try to rescue you."
"No one is –" I broke off when the sounds of Wraith screams of pain began echoing from the corridors. The Queen hissed in fury. Glancing a command at the Wraith who'd escorted me to the chamber and remained to stand guard, she strode towards the door.
I looked at the guard just in time to see the flash of stunning blue shooting towards me.
Authors Note:
From Sabina's point of view that's pretty much the end of No Man's Land so apologies for the sort of cliffhanger (especially after I said I didn't like them!). The next two chapters take place between the end of No Man's Land and the beginning of Misbegotten. I'll edit and post them tomorrow.
Thanks to Allie108 and CanadianHalliwell for your reviews of the last chapters ... Sabina did sort of get herself in trouble but she caused a bit too so it's all good! Thanks for joining the story Daedaim - that must have been a mammoth reading effort!
Just as another aside, this episode had another favourite Rodney line - "I suppose I'd rather die as a hero than as a meal." with a close second "I would prefer to dedicate my last breath of air to getting more air."