Behind the Jumper, its two sister ships came in like loosed arrows.
“They’re almost on us,” said Rodney. “Now’s the time for some of that impressive Han Solo pilot stuff. Any time now, Sheppard. Any time.”
“Quiet,” the colonel growled. He sent a mental command to the controls in his hands and from the rear of the Jumper came the smack-whump sound of the drone launchers. Twin streaks of yellow shot away, spinning along corkscrew paths toward the fleeing alien craft. The first drone closed to impact range, but suddenly found itself tumbling through empty space as the target abruptly changed from a horizontal flight path to a vertical one. The second drone looped in and detonated, switching at the last second to a proximity fuse. A globe of fusion fire expanded outward and clipped one apex of the fleeing craft; it flipped over and began to zigzag, a plume of gas crystals trailing out behind it.
“Hit but no kill,” Sheppard said aloud.
“Two more —” began McKay.
“I’m on it,” he replied, flinching as a disrupter beam flashed across the Jumper’s blunt nose. Sheppard tuned out everything else and let himself feel the genetic connection to the Ancient ship’s flight controls; at times it was almost as if the Jumper could respond to him before he had fully formed a thought in his brain, but it wasn’t something he could just force to happen. It had to come through instinct, through pure reflex.
“Sheppard!” Out beyond the canopy, the surface of the moon was looming as the engagement brought them ever closer to Heruun’s primary satellite.
“Hush.” In his mind’s eye he saw the two alien attackers closing the distance, the beam weapons lashing out. The colonel’s hands worked the controls, letting his training take over. Don’t think about it, John, just do it.
In a split-second he cut forward thrust and applied it in reverse, dropping the Jumper’s velocity from blindingly fast to almost nothing. The gravity generators inside the cabin whined as they tried to bleed off the energy state change without smearing Sheppard and McKay over the inside of the canopy.
The alien ships were quick and they reacted, vectoring away in opposite directions; but that was what Sheppard wanted them to do. This time, four drones were unleashed after the ship to the port and before it could jink away, the missiles bored into it and exploded. The blast wave clipped the Jumper and the ship bucked like a loosed bronco.
McKay gripped the console in front of him, white-knuckled. “Gee, do you think you could get a little closer to the fireball next time?” His words dripped acid sarcasm. “I felt that! I could have burned my eyebrows off!”
Sheppard was already applying power to the drives as the undamaged craft came back toward them; wary now, it flicked to the right and left, up and down, while still maintaining a lock at the six o’clock position behind the Puddle Jumper.
The colonel searched for the ship that had taken the near-hit and dove at it. As he predicted, it was sluggish, the sharp, gravity-defying course changes it had made before now reduced to twitching, stuttering motions that skidded across the black sky.
His eyes narrowed. “You’re not going anywhere, buddy,” he said quietly. At the last second, Sheppard released two more drones and pivoted the Jumper; it was a risk, but his options were shrinking by the second, and he knew that the alien ships only had to be lucky once to turn the Jumper into a drifting, frozen wreck.
The drones hit the damaged ship and destroyed it. The resultant flash of fusion discharge flared in the dark and buffeted the Jumper. Sheppard turned into a jousting head-to-head with the last alien ship, riding the shockwave. He gambled that the detonation would fog any sensors on the other craft long enough for him to gain the advantage.
He was right; but he was wrong.
The alien ship did something unexpected, veering sharply away from the blast — but not toward open space. Instead, it swept past the Puddle Jumper so closely that Sheppard had a momentary glimpse of his own face, a distorted reflection off the silvery triangular hull as it flashed by.
The alien craft blindly clipped the Jumper’s port side outrigger and ripped it away with a concussive screech. Power rose and fell and the Ancient vessel moaned like an injured animal. Sheppard flinched as a spike of sympathetic pain shocked him. The enemy ship vanished behind them, coming apart from the force of the collision; the Jumper was more hardy.
Outside the canopy, the black of space became the washed-out grey of lunar regolith. Sheppard cursed as the controls refused to answer his inputs.
“We’re going down!” said Rodney, finding his voice again.
“Yeah,” said the colonel, through gritted teeth. “I think that’s a given.”
The Risar remained mute as it carried Teyla back to the holding chamber. The cell could have been the very one she and Ronon had been deposited in upon their arrival; it seemed as if every chamber in the alien ship was constructed from a modular palette of identical components. The restraint field snapped off and she gasped in a breath of air, but before she could react the platform tilted to dislodge her, and she staggered to stop herself falling over. If she had considered it, Teyla might have had a chance to try a second escape attempt before the door slid silently shut, but her attention was taken by a more immediate matter.
On one of the formless sleeping pads lay Ronon Dex, his skin waxy, his breathing shallow. There was a water dispenser nozzle fitted into an alcove on the far wall and she cupped a little in her hands, bringing it to him. His eyes flickered open and he drank.
“Teyla?” He blinked at her, as if he was waking from a deep slumber. The Satedan’s brow furrowed, half in annoyance, half in confusion. “Where…?”
“The cell, again.” she explained. “They tried to do something to you…”
“Who?” Ronon winced, as if trying to remember was painful to him. “We… Should be on Atlantis…”
“Atlantis? Ronon, we’re on Heruun. We were on Heruun,” she corrected herself, frowning again. “The Risar captured us.”
“What?” He shook his head. “I don’t… I can’t think straight…” Ronon’s hands tightened into claws and he attempted to pull himself up to a sitting position. When Teyla helped him, he tried to push her away, but there was no strength in him. It was a troubling thing to witness; Ronon was one of the strongest, most vital men Teyla had ever met, but now here he was, weak and vulnerable, laid low by the technology of the Risar.
“Colonel Sheppard is searching for us,” she told him. “He’ll come for us.”
Ronon managed a nod; even the effort of that seemed to drain him.
With a cloth from her pocket, she dabbed at the drying streaks of blood on his face. As she did so, a new and troubling thought occurred to her, a moment of unpleasant clarity as she realized what the Satedan’s condition reminded her of; the people in Kullid’s sick lodge. Weakened and disoriented, touched by the malady of the Aegis.
“Need to rest,” Ronon husked. “Just a while. Tell Sheppard… I’ll be there.”
Teyla nodded, fighting down her fears. “I’ll tell him.”
McKay didn’t really remember the moment when the Puddle Jumper actually hit the surface of Heruun’s primary moon. Perhaps that might have been a good thing, in retrospect, maybe some basic animal part of his hindbrain taking pity on the rest of him, blotting out the bone-crushing hell of the impact so he would be spared the trauma.
But he remembered what the screeching meant. The high-pitched, screaming whistle coming from the hairline crack slowly making its way down the short axis of the canopy glass. Beside him, Sheppard was lolling over the pilot’s station, blinking away the shock of what could only be called a ‘landing’ by the most generous of critics.
“Any one you can walk away from,” he muttered.