Hours later she felt a little less determined, but she doggedly dialed again. Eventually she was bound to find a viable address. When it happened at last it took several seconds to sink in. She'd pushed the six coordinates, heard the chevrons engage, pushed the point of origin, and moved to dial again so mechanically that she barely noticed the seventh chevron locking. It was the whoosh of the event horizon cascading out toward her that drove it home; she'd found her place to go.
And she'd have to hurry now.
Hand over hand, she guided herself along the console, onto the handrail along the gallery and down the stairs. As she reached the last step and ran out of rail, she hesitated for a moment, then caught the whisper of the event horizon and used it as a beacon to orient herself. Mere steps into that no-man'sland between the stairway and the Stargate she tripped over a piece of metal she'd never considered might be there. She pitched forward without time to brace herself and came down hard on more debris, pinning her right arm under her body. The snap of breaking bone was audible even muffled by her body and clothes.
Old women's bones! Curse them!
For a few seconds she lay there, panting against the agony in her wrist, half tempted to just quit fighting, wait for death, and have it over with. Except, she'd never quit anything in her life. She didn't have it in her. With a furious cry she pushed herself to her knees and carefully tucked the injured hand into her jacket. Then she started crawling forward, scrabbling across rubble and bodies, no longer caring if the departed might feel desecrated. She had to make it before the gate shut down. If she didn't, she knew she wouldn't have the strength to try again. Once she stopped to listen out for the soft gurgle coming from the Stargate, found she was still on track and closer, much closer now.
Without warning the pile of rubble gave under her weight. She curled up as best she could to protect her broken wrist and, in a small avalanche of debris, she tumbled downhill and into the wormhole, which swallowed her shout of triumph.
By fall of dusk the town of Iraklia on Paphos III was well and truly decimated. An honest day's work, Ronon thought with a surge of disgust he didn't bother to hide. Nobody cared, because it didn't matter. You could be disgusted all you liked, you'd still do the bidding of the Behemoth. Same as the Commander, who even now was strutting across what had been the town's market square, scratching his nether regions and adjusting his pants before sending a one-eyed glare at a handful of survivors. Bruised and battered and bloodied- likely as not half of them wouldn't live through the night-the townspeople huddled between a detachment of hulking, grinning guards. The Commander hawked up a gob of phlegm, spat at them, and strode on toward a hastily erected tent where he'd take his supper.
A lazy southerly breeze lifted wads of smoke from smoldering houses and still burning piles of corpses. As the smoke rose, it dropped flakes of oily ash, gummy like glue, that stuck to your skin and hair and clothes as a constant reminder of what you'd done that day. It also dropped a blanket of smell, the uniquely terrible stench of roasting flesh that seemed too heavy with sin to be carried off on mere air.
The spoils of war.-
Maybe he'd simply chosen wrong, once upon a time.
No, that wasn't fair. Not fair to himself. Not fair to his calling. Not fair to people like John Sheppard and Teyla Emmagan-or Dr. Weir who had been a warrior of words rather than the sword.
Ronon made a conscious effort to rein in the well of grief the memory had unleashed. The Behemoth would sense it and turn it against him. It always did, exploiting any scrap of emotion its components could offer. Some enjoyed feeding it; Ronon didn't. It wasn't what he'd signed up for.
Maybe it was.
He'd stopped caring by then.
Except, he looked at the wholesale slaughter and devastation around him and found he still cared.
Get beyond it. You haven't got a choice.
A few houses over, a couple of soldiers dragged another townsman-hardly more than a boy, this one-from the blazing ruin that had been his home. He was blackened by smoke, coughing and spluttering, his clothes literally burned off his back, but he was still kicking at the soldiers. Brave but stupid, as the boy should know. This was by no means their first visit to Paphos III, and word tended to get out quickly. After this, Ronon very much doubted that any town on the planet would ever fall behind on its tithe again, no matter how severe the summer drought or how lousy the harvest.
Without apparent reason, the two soldiers changed course, dragging their captive toward him. Ronon knew what was to come as soon as he sensed the will of the Behemoth stirring. After all, he'd asked for it. Their faces expressionless, the men stopped before him and dropped their captive like a sack of garbage. The youngster sagged to his knees, eyes raised and defiantly staring at Ronon. Tears-of fury rather than of pain or fear-had tattooed pale patterns onto soot-stained skin. This one wouldn't beg, which was a relief.
Against his will Ronon's fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword. This must be what it felt like to be possessed by one of those Goa'uld Sheppard and the others had told him about. He didn't even begin to fight it. He'd tried before, countless times, failed countless times. One thing he had learned, though; the quicker he smothered his own volition, the more merciful the victim's death would be. So he pretended to be a specta tor, somewhere outside his body, uninvolved and emotionless, there only to judge the neatness of the kill.
It was swift and it was fast, and Ronon spun away as soon as it was done to avoid the accusation staring from dead eyes. The setting sun, dyed crimson by the haze of smoke above the town, caught on the edge of Ronon's blade and triggered an explosion of reds. Struggling to contain his rage, he wiped the blade on his pants and sheathed it. Then, in a back corner of his mind, hopefully safe from the Behemoth's prying, Ronon offered a brief prayer for forgiveness to the youngster and whatever deities the boy might have believed in.
He'd never have thought that, one day, he'd wish for the Wraith back. Much as he'd hated being a runner, at least they'd left his will alone. Had he chosen to do so, he could have killed himself and ended it at any time. He'd willed himself to survive instead. But this was different. The tiny assembly of metal and silicone the Wraith had implanted in his back to track his movements had never been part of him. The Behemoth was, and by his own choice. The fact that he'd been lied to didn't matter. Not to him. Experience should have taught him better.
After the screaming confusion of Charybdis had chewed him up and spat him out, he'd woken on the shores of an Atlantis radically different from anything he'd known. A patrol had found him and brought him before the Ancestors.
Teyla's saintly Ancestors.
Suave and slick, as silky as their robes and wavy locks, and so persuasive you could talk to them for days without getting a single straight answer and never even notice it.
Oh, they'd been kind enough at first. They'd fed him and clothed him and, while they were at it, healed his injuries with gadgetry Dr. Beckett would probably have given his right arm just to clap eyes on. They'd instructed him in Wraith-free Ancient history, and a what a tale of miracles it was; unheard of achievements in culture and science, up to and including nearimmortality. Somehow they managed to make you believe you were blessed just by having the privilege of hearing the fairytale.
Only, they left out a few salient details. Or, if they didn't sin by omission, they embellished the facts.
Like the one about how they'd picked up where the Wraith had never had a chance to leave off. Ronon had seen it with animals; if there was no predator-and there was none strong enough or advanced enough to defy the Ancestors-they'd spread like wildfire and wreak havoc on everything and everyone that got in their way. Naturally all was done with the best interest of the Pegasus galaxy at heart. Lesser races had to be put in their place at regular intervals, lest they developed the gall to resent their slavery. So much for this whole ascension and non-interference thing-if these Ancestors here had ever toyed with the idea of ascension, they didn't mention it. They liked their current plane of existence just fine.