That was enough to propel John Sheppard up from his feet, the combat knife he'd palmed during the scuffle flicking out.
Scar met him with the barrel of the Beretta and fired twice into his chest at close range. John felt burning hot rods of pain lance into his ribs and his sternum, the sudden impacts striking him back and away across the Jumper's forward compartment.
"Die slowly, human," grated the Wraith. "Know that you will not be the last of your kind I kill today." Toying with the pistol, Scar wandered away, leaving the colonel in a heap on the decking.
Teyla ran for the Jumper and made it three steps before the collar began to bite. She dropped to her knees and kept pushing forward, her vision turning gray as the open hatch loomed in front of her. She blinked away tears of agony, holding herself up from the ground.
Scar's hateful smile appeared before her. "Where are you going, Hound? I did not release you from your leash."
She tried to call out Sheppard's name, but her voice was stolen away. Faint gasps of air came in choking rattles.
The alien grinned. "You will not defy me again, prey. You are the last one of your war band that lives, and you want more than anything to take revenge for the death of your comrades, yes?" He pulled her to her feet. "So you will not defy me again, because for every moment you live you may entertain a little longer the fantasy of killing me yourself." Scar leered over her. "And I know your kind, Tey-lah. I know you want that more than you want to die."
She didn't resist him; the Athosian let herself go slack, as if she were defeated, and after a moment the collar retracted.
Teyla looked up and spat into Scar's face. She tensed for a blow, but none came. Instead, the alien wiped the spittle away without expression and took the steel leash in his hand. With a jerk of his wrist, he pulled her away from the Jumper and toward the ragged entrance cut in the flanks of the Hive Ship.
Ronon. John. And now I am alone. She forced the thoughts away and concentrated on the cable connected to her heavy necklet. The Wraith's arrogance will be its downfall, she decided, her eyes flint-hard with determination. I swear on my father's grave, Scar will not leave this ship alive.
In basic training, recruit John Sheppard had been unfortunate enough to have a firearms instructor who went by the name of Master Sergeant Gunn. It seemed like a joke when he first heard it, but after he'd stood in front of the man and weathered the force five tirade of creative invective the training sergeant poured on anyone who failed to be an outstanding marksman, John had quickly leaned that 'Big' Gunn had a knowledge of weapons and their destructive capacity greater than any man he'd ever met. Gunn was a veteran, and would gladly display the place where he had been hit by a 5.56 bullet from an AK47 to trainees who demonstrated any squeamishness about the tools of the military's trade. He made Sheppard's squad use pig carcasses for target practice so that they would understand the lethal damage a bullet could do on a piece of unprotected flesh. Never mind the fact that most of Gunn's charges would end up shooting missiles at over-the-horizon targets from twenty thousand feet up; he wanted them to know the results of pulling a trigger.
Eventually, someone in the squad was nominated to ask Gunn what it felt like to get shot; and when Recruit Sheppard put the question to the man, his answer was hard and to the point. You like bowling, Sheppard? He had asked. Ever drop a ball on your foot? Well, kid, you think about lying on your back right there in the number one lane, and you get your buddy to stand over you with a twelve pound ball in his sweaty grip. Then you let him drop it on your chest. Take that and cross it with a red hot poker being slammed through your gut and you got about a tenth of what it feels like to take a round. You following me, Recruit?
"Yes, sergeant," the colonel said thickly, his voice faint to his own ears. He could taste blood on his lips and there was a feeling like jagged glass in his torso each time he took a breath. "Did I bust a rib…?"
Sheppard looked around, his vision swimming as the Jumper's cabin gradually came into focus. With care he hauled himself up to a sitting position and pulled open the front of his jacket. Inside, the thick, high-impact Kevlar body armor was distorted and tight across his chest. Two warped coins of metal-the flattened heads of the bullets from Scar's shots-were embedded in the dense plastic weave, the surrounding fibers knitted together where the heat from the rounds had melted them. John moaned as he released the Velcro straps on the armor and let it fall away. He probed gingerly at the spots on his torso beneath the bullet impact points and got fresh hits of pain from both. Sheppard peered down the front of his undershirt and saw ugly bruises already turning yellowish-purple. "Ow," he declared, with feeling.
As quickly as he could manage, the colonel rooted through a medical kit for field dressings and an analgesic gel, then plundered the Jumper's weapons locker for a fresh P90 submachine- gun and as many sticks of ammunition as he could carry. He took a swig of water from a canteen to wash the coppery taste of blood from his mouth and winced as he took a deep breath. "You're still alive, John," he said aloud, reflecting on the accuracy of Sergeant Gunn's description. "Even if it does hurt like hell."
Sheppard forced the pain to the back of his thoughts and slipped out of the Jumper, moving quickly toward the hull of the grounded Hive Ship.
The Halcyons had built a short stone tunnel up to the side of the Wraith vessel, hiding the place where their engineers had cut into the exterior ten generations ago. The slice through the alien fuselage was a rough-edged wound that had never been allowed to close, kept open with giant sutures and heavy clamps of rusty metal. Typically, two Fourth Dynast riflemen were permanently stationed in this antechamber, standing at arms around the clock under the light from chemical lamps. Scar's cohorts had made short work of them, and Sheppard's lip twisted as he came across the desiccated corpses of what had been young men only hours earlier.
He pulled himself into the vessel and a creeping chill settled on him. The same crawling spook house vibe he felt the last time he'd boarded a Wraith craft was there in an instant, the itch like spider webs on his skin. And the smell, that battery acid stink, hanging in the cold still air. Sheppard flicked the torch on his P90 on-off to test it, and then moved forward, the butt of the boxy weapon pressed into his shoulder. There was a dull vibra tion coming up through the floor, a sense of something powerful building up to speed. Now and then, a rumbling shudder would twitch through the walls.
As far as the Atlantis expedition had been able to discover, Wraith ships had little in the way of interior variation, structured inwardly like a spade-shaped ribcage with internal spaces. Previous jaunts on board these craft meant Sheppard knew some of the basic layout, like where to find the hibernation chamber or the holding areas; but he was working blind here, trying to second-guess Scar. If the alien was one of the Wraith `officer class' then he was on board this tub because he had a goal in mind. The bridge? Engineering? A weapons deck? Do these Hive Ships even have those things? The gaps in Sheppard's knowledge were infuriating. He came to a fork in the corridor and hesitated.
"Okay," he said, after a moment. "Reny, Meeny, Miny, Mo."
Above him, set in a socket on the curved ceiling, a ball of optic jelly watched the colonel making his choice.
"Sheppard, you idiot!" yelped McKay. "Are you…? Is he actually doing that stupid eeny-rneeny thing to find his way around?" In a vain attempt to provide some sort of assistance to Vekken and his soldiers, Rodney had-at gunpoint-been made to tap back into the Hive Ship's internal sensor systems. The large glassy screens in the nexus chamber showed dozens of views through fish-eye lenses, some watching empty compartments of the vessel, others catching glimpses of Wraith as they moved about the starship, hunting and feeding. By sheer chance, McKay had caught the colonel on camera.