"Not Sheregesh, of course, and not an Elven forest, but still very pretty."
That was how I commented on the landscape that opened up to me after the Jumper emerged from the Stargate. It had already become a habit to immediately activate the cloak and pull hard up to change any possible trajectory that might be traced.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean no one is watching you. Especially when you've flown halfway across the galaxy to find one person.
Landscapes of the new world.
"I thought we agreed to avoid words that might be unclear," Teyla said. The girl was sitting in the seat next to me, while Alvar was sprawled in the seat behind her, enjoying the view.
"I don't mind," the Ermen man said. "Sometimes it's pleasant to hear about distant worlds where they've never heard of the Wraith."
You'd be pretty surprised, brother, to know that they've never heard of the Stargates, Atlantis, or human life in other galaxies on my Earth either.
"All right, let's start the search," I activated the scanner program Chaya had written.
The sentient we were looking for, marked by a pulsing blue dot, was far to the north. I suspected he was either in the tree line at the foot of huge snow-capped mountains or scrambling around in the rocks.
Well, not as bad as it had seemed at first. I just hoped he wasn't wandering through catacombs.
But not ten minutes into our flight, with the Stargate barely within the Jumper's scanning range, fate had its say in our afternoon.
"Is that what I think it is?" Alvar tensed when he saw a dozen or so red dots far behind us. Some were moving faster than the others, and that was the signal that the day was no longer going to be dull.
"Wraith," Teyla said grimly.
"Correction," I sighed. "A mess of Wraith. Including darts. Judging by their course, their beacon tracking on our unknown friend's signal works just fine too."
"So there'll be a fight," Alvar climbed out of his seat and headed into the aft of the ship, getting ready for battle. "I have a suggestion, Mikhail."
"You think we should first watch how good he is and only then join the fight, coming to the rescue at the last moment?" I clarified.
"Exactly," he said. "On my planet, they say: 'Great minds think alike.'"
"So do we," I agreed. "Except in the saying, it's not about great minds."
From the look on Teyla's face, it was clear Earth's folklore had piqued her interest, but the girl decided to save her curiosity for a better time.
* * *
An energy pulse crossed the clearing with a sharp crack, spreading in a flash across the Wraith soldier's body. For a moment, he froze, took one more step, but then caught a second shot.
Only then did the enemy collapse to the ground like a sack.
Another soldier behind him charged after the man tearing through the bushes. Too stupid to recognize the obvious ambush, he ran a few meters along the faint trail leading into the foothills before his leg went out from under him.
Sharpened stakes set into parallel wooden drums pierced his leg clean through, leaving him neither the chance to escape nor to take up a convenient position to defend himself.
Just then, a man in garb that looked more like rags sewn from various pieces of fabric and strips of leather jumped down from the crown of a nearby tree. The Wraith soldier clearly heard the thud of a landing and a couple of quick steps behind him. But try as he might, he couldn't turn enough to aim at his foe. And the latter was experienced enough not to show any mercy.
Seizing the moment when the Wraith posed the least danger to him, the man was suddenly at his back. Hands clamped around the enemy's neck, and in the next instant, there was a characteristic crack. The soldier went limp and fell to the ground in an unnatural position.
The Runner shoved the energy pistol into his hip holster and pulled the heavy Wraith energy rifle from under the corpse. Right now, he needed all the firepower he could get.
And a Wraith shock rifle, standard issue for their soldiers, would definitely not be amiss.
A Wraith shock rifle.
The Wraith shock rifle, like all their small arms, wasn't designed to kill. Practice easily showed that it fired an energy pulse that made every muscle in the victim's body tense and relax at once. This led to temporary paralysis, which was all the Wraith needed to either beam a victim up to their ship or feed on them on the spot.
For an ordinary human, one hit was enough. For a Wraith or someone who'd been hit many times before, at least two were needed.
The time it took to regain consciousness depended solely on the victim's stamina. As did many other things.
But it was better to have such a weapon at hand than not have it at all. Or have too little of it.
Only the hearing he'd honed over the years as a Runner, reacting to the barely audible crack of branches behind him, saved his life. His trained body dove on its own into the brush, away from the corpse.
A white-blue energy pulse flashed through the space where he'd been standing a moment ago. But, as expected, it gave his enemy no result.
Jumping to his feet, the Runner had time to scrutinize his new foe. It was a Wraith tracker. And that was bad.
Firing the rifle at the enemy, then waiting for him to take cover and not get a shot in the back, the man bolted. Twisting his trail and never moving in a straight line for more than two or three seconds to prevent the Wraith from taking aim, he plunged into the thick of the forest. Unlike most of the galaxy's inhabitants, the Runner knew very well that the Wraith's small arms became useless even with a small obstacle between them and their target.
Foliage and branches were perfect for that.
The tracker knew that too and chose to give chase rather than waste shots at the man's back.
Among all the Wraith he had encountered over his years on the run, trackers were the most dangerous. They could read tracks, navigate terrain superbly. They sometimes had body enhancements that let them better withstand radiation on certain planets, see in the dark, run farther and faster, and jump better than ordinary Wraith soldiers.
At first, he'd mistaken them for Wraith commanders, who also were usually armed with nothing more than a hand stunner pistol and wore more elaborate clothing than the soldiers. But the differences were obvious to anyone who had encountered both types.
Wraith commanders usually didn't work with each other or band together in squads to track a single Runner. They had numerous units of ordinary soldiers for that.
Trackers, though... they worked in groups, knew all about ambush tactics, pursuits, and much, much more. Where there was one, there would certainly be others.
And it was also proof that he'd given them a good pounding on the previous planet. Usually, Wraith trackers were sent after he'd slaughtered a dozen or two of their dumb soldiers on a particular world. But by then, he'd already gotten to the gate and left that world, leaving several deadly "surprises" near the Ring of the Ancestors.
That had to be taken into account when planning his actions. Under no circumstances could he allow the Wraith to find the cave that hid his shelter. Which meant he had only one way to save himself: kill them all.
Lost in thought, he almost missed the Wraith scout who jumped out in front of him. The Wraith also hesitated, but his right hand was already coming up, the stunner pistol in its grip...
A Wraith hand stunner pistol.
Apart from its shape, compactness, and the ability to fire one-handed, the weapon was no different from the rest of the enemy's small arms. A shot or two and he'd be paralyzed.
And the tracker would be happy to feed on him.
Maybe so, but not today.
"Catch!" he shouted, throwing his trophy rifle at the Wraith.
Naturally, the Wraith didn't react like a human would, instinctively trying to catch it. The tracker stepped aside, but that was enough for him to miss his shot—the Runner dodged and yanked his short blade from the scabbard he never parted with, even in his sleep.
His first thrust went straight for the stunner pistol's muzzle. The well-honed blade sliced into the glowing energy cells, making the weapon useless for another shot. The tracker understood that too.
He tossed the damaged weapon at his prey and attacked without a second's delay. But other than his hands—one of which was deadly to any living being—he had nothing else. He never had time to draw his dagger.
The Wraith tracker attacked in the classic style of his kind—arms spread and slightly raised above his shoulders as he launched himself at the Runner. The latter stepped aside and slashed at the right hand, which bore the deadly feeding organ on its palm, smiling as the hand came off at the wrist.
A grimace of pain crossed the Wraith's face. But that kind of serious injury wasn't especially dangerous to their kind—the Wraith's regeneration was hundreds, if not thousands of times better than humans'. The Runner had seen their wounds close right before his eyes more than once.
The tracker lunged for him again. And that was what brought things to a rapid end.
The man stepped aside, letting the enemy pass on his right. At the same time, he slashed at the Wraith's torso from the side of his severed arm. The blade sliced easily through his insides, forcing him to slow down long enough to grasp the severity of his predicament.
And in the same moment, the man took the Wraith's head off with a single motion. Putting holes in bodies or maiming them was a waste of time. To buy yourself some time, you had to kill, not wound.
The Runner examined the damaged stunner pistol and concluded the weapon was beyond repair. Tossing it aside, he took off running again.
With every kilometer he put behind him through the forest, he was drawing the enemy farther and farther from the cave system he'd chosen. Over years on the run, he'd come to believe he knew his enemy fairly well.
The Wraith followed his trail, but they had no precise location on the Runner on a given world until they came through the gate. That gave him a decent head start—time to set a few traps, equip ambush sites, and get some rest. The farther a new world was from the previous one, the better his chance the Wraith wouldn't arrive right on his heels.
That's what had happened this time. He'd enjoyed a few days' respite before they came again. The fact that the Wraith had sent trackers fairly quickly indicated their impatience. That hadn't happened before.
Chasing Runners, the Wraith didn't usually make hasty moves. He didn't know exactly why such beings as him existed—sport, hunting, training, entertainment, self-assertion?
In essence, none of that mattered. Only survival—his own, and that of the other humans without whose help it was very hard to live. You always needed ammunition, food, medicine.
But above all, you needed doctors, healers who could at least try to remove the tracking implant from his back. But so far, he'd not met a single physician capable of doing that.
After the most recent events, he hadn't even tried. Too many people died every time he turned to someone for help. The Wraith weren't inclined to make life easy for their Runners.
A month ago, he'd come upon a settlement on another world he'd never been to. A doctor who'd tried to cut the tracking device from his back had given him the address. Nearly two thousand people lived in the town where he had hoped to rest and regain his strength. The locals—open, friendly folk—took him in and fed him. Their healer, a funny old man who was known as an excellent doctor among his own people and on many other worlds, with a tiny pair of glasses on his nose, had proved caring and talkative. When he learned about the device implanted in his guest's spine—the reason the Runner had appeared in his home—he agreed readily to try. But, despite his attempts, like dozens of doctors before him, he had been unable to remove the Wraith transmitter. The Runner's back had gained one more scar.
He had stayed only one night—to regain the strength sapped by the operation. Sleeping in a real bed, under a soft blanket, without fear of falling into the enemy's hands, had seemed like a gift from the gods. For the first time in years, he'd been able to rest properly. Then he'd left in the morning, hoping to throw the Wraith off his trail. Passing through dozens of worlds ravaged by Wraith scouts, he returned to the town to replenish his supplies, since the locals had treated him kindly last time. And he saw the outcome with his own eyes. Every inhabitant was gone and their homes were in ruins. No one survived—though he found no bodies, there was no reason to doubt their fate. Wraith fighters circled in the sky—either finishing their harvest or waiting for the Runner himself. It had been a miracle that he'd managed to set an ambush at the Ring of the Ancestors and escape.
He'd only found this planet recently. Untouched by human or Wraith hands, it was lushly overgrown, with plenty of vegetation to lose himself in from ground hunting parties. Dense tree crowns prevented enemy fighters from finding and beaming him up—they'd prowled the environs for days while he hid in a cave. Judging by the fact that the ships had left and a large ground squad had come, the Wraith had failed to find him. So the Runner had decided he could settle here for a while—to sleep and gather his strength.
Now he didn't stop, changing worlds one after another, never staying anywhere for long.
Noticing two Wraith soldiers ahead of him a little lower down the hill, he didn't hesitate. Whether on purpose or by chance, they had reached the trail leading to the path to his mountain shelter. That could not be allowed.
With a good run-up, he leaped at his enemies. The Wraith noticed him only at the last moment. Kicking the first in the torso with both feet, the Runner knocked both of them down, then, immediately back on his feet, slashed the first Wraith's neck. The severed head flew into the bushes.
The second grabbed for his weapon, but the man was faster. A thrust to the shoulder, a sweeping slash across the chest, a kick to the gut, and a finishing blow as the Wraith fell. The blade's tip went cleanly under the jaw, punched through it, and into the brain. The enemy fell still without ever having a chance to resist.
"That's better," the panting Runner said, looking around. No other Wraith were nearby. So he shoved the bodies off the trail down into the ravine and stashed the two rifles among the roots of a large tree.
He had to keep moving. Soldiers didn't operate alone—there had to be a commander or tracker nearby. Wraith fighters were too stupid to act independently. Which meant there had to be at least one within reach...
A couple of minutes later, he understood why there was no Wraith commander near his men. It also explained their sluggish behavior when they had run into him.
The barely visible forest path that local animals used to reach a clearing of sweet berries caught his eye. And there, among the bushes, stood a Wraith commander in full height. His snow-white long hair, black clothing, and ankle-length cloak were unmistakable.
The stunner pistol lying on the ground under his right hand, along with a couple of noticeable stones by the roadside, told the Runner why the commander hadn't left that spot.
"You could at least have watched where you were stepping," the man muttered, picking up the weapon of the enemy who had died to a trap. But the Wraith's twisted mouth and glassy eyes made it clear he was not in any condition to hold a conversation. The dead don't talk to the living.
The Wraith commander had died thanks to another trap the Runner had set here. The victim had caught it with one leg. He'd stepped on the flat base of a primitive lever mechanism with a platform studded with stakes on the opposite side. The sharpened wooden pikes had rammed into his chest and neck, leaving multiple internal injuries.
Not even a freshly fed Wraith could come back from that.
Taking the stunner pistol and frisking the body, the man turned to continue his hunt. At that exact moment, he took a sharp, powerful blow to the face that knocked him several meters off the trail.
Before he could get up, a Wraith tracker was already on him. A kick to the face threw the Runner onto his back, the next knocked the stunner out of his hand. Spinning on his heel, the tracker sent the man flying with a kick to the chest.
Falling on his back, the man barely managed to inhale when the now all-too-familiar convulsion seized his body. And by "familiar," one had to understand both memory and pain.
But he had already been paralyzed by a stunner more than once, so, slowly, forcing his pain-racked body to obey, he began getting up and drew his blade. Inglorious, perhaps, but he had one chance to kill the monster and earn himself a hope of survival.
"You've been at large for far too long," the tracker rasped in his face, pointing the stunner at his victim.
The Runner managed to slip past the first shot on his right, closing the distance to a couple of meters. Stunners had serious problems with their rate of fire, but... this tracker was obviously a veteran of many battles and had learned the man's tricks. Breaking contact and dodging the thrust meant for his heart, the Wraith shot him in the chest.
The man collapsed like he'd been cut down, watching the tracker bend over him with fading consciousness. Ripping his rags open, the Wraith raised his right hand above the defeated victim, revealing his feeding organ—an elongated slit in his palm that let him feed on humans.
"Of all the Runners of our hive, you are the sweetest and most worthy prey," the Wraith said, jerking his hand toward the man's chest.
On the verge of losing consciousness, the Runner felt his eyes flare in pain—some flash of light had blocked his view of the Wraith and the whole world.
"I see they really don't like to chat, do they," someone's voice said at the edge of his awareness. "Let's grab this one."
* * *
His face burned with a cold that ripped through his body like a stunner shot. The man let out an inarticulate sound and jerked, trying to hit the dark figure in front of him. His vision hadn't focused yet, but his last memories demanded he fight for his life.
But his fist met only an impenetrable wall. And he was pretty sure he'd broken at least a couple of fingers.
"You really aren't much of a talker, are you," a somehow familiar voice said. The Runner, purely on reflex, threw another punch, but it hit the same mysterious barrier. Which, for some reason, flared with a green light. "Take it easy, man; we're your friends here."
The pain finally ripped away the fog in his head and before his eyes, and the Runner realized he was not in the forest. He'd been in developed worlds a couple of times—until the Wraith had destroyed them. He knew well enough what a space or atmospheric ship looked like. He was inside one now. For some reason, he had no jacket on, his torso was bare. His back hurt terribly...
Two men and a woman stood before him, all three in matching gray-blue suits reinforced on their limbs and torsos with something like thin armor. One of the men was middle-aged, roughly his own age. The tanned woman with brown hair and the other man with short, clearly recently grown dark hair were ten or fifteen years younger.
What alarmed him wasn't that they'd ended up on the same planet as him and the Wraith, but that they weren't holding any weapons. Although there was plenty in the small ship's aft compartment where the four of them were. Not just unfamiliar firearms, which the Runner had used recently—until he ran out of ammo. The weapons lay on the seat next to his blade. Along with several Wraith stunners—a pair of pistols and a couple of rifles. Something told him these were indeed the weapons he'd had on him and had acquired in battle as trophies.
"Who are you?" He tensed, trying to put as much space as possible between himself and the strangers. He needed room to maneuver. "What do you want?"
"Straight to the point," the older man snorted. "Alvar."
"Teyla Emmagan," the girl introduced herself.
"Mikhail," the third man gave his name. Looking closely at him, the Runner noted with surprise that the man was wrapped in a half-transparent greenish haze. It seemed he was the one the Runner had tried to attack upon waking. And his voice sounded very much like the one the man had heard before things went dark.
Mikhail. Kind of a Lantean.
"What do you want from me?" the Runner didn't respond to their attempt at politeness. Right now, he had thought through at least three ways to escape. If only he knew how to leave the ship...
"We need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle," Mikhail said calmly.
"What?" the Runner frowned.
"Ah, nobody in this galaxy knows the classics," the youngest of them sighed. "All right, joking aside. We saved your life and we're not going to play nobles. I'll be honest—you're not exactly the guy I was looking for. But I think you can be useful to us, and we can be useful to you."
"That brings us back to my original question," the Runner made a quick move to the side and grabbed his blade. Stepping back toward the cockpit (the only spot with a view of the forest, and therefore the exit), he pointed the weapon at Mikhail. "What do you want from me?"
"You'll laugh, but help," Mikhail answered.
"Don't come closer!" the Runner warned.
"Or what?" the young man took a step forward without the slightest hint of fear and walked straight onto the point of the blade. Instead of a horrible wound in the center of his chest, the blade simply bounced off his figure. The Runner's injured hand flared with fresh pain. "I think it's already clear that you won't be able to hurt us. And should you, to those who saved you from the Wraith beacon in your spine?"
"What are you—" the Runner said, stunned, and reached for his back. He could feel numerous old scars... and a sticky bandage in the center of his spine. Exactly where a couple of doctors had claimed the Wraith beacon was. "How is that possible!? No doctor I know has been able to remove it...!"
"That's exactly why I'm offering a partnership," Mikhail extended his hand. "You're a fighter. The way you shredded the Wraith was impressive to all of us. We'd be glad if you joined our team..."
"Thank you for your help, if you're not lying, of course. But I don't work in a team," the Runner cut him off. "I'm a loner. And I intend to leave. Now."
"Your right," Mikhail agreed. "You're seeing us for the first time; it would be foolish to trust us in such a situation, but... in a way, I know you. You're a good man. And you're definitely not alone, Kilrik."
The Runner felt everything inside him coil up into a tight spring.