“Right. Thanks for clearing that up.” Kennedy gave a nod, and scratched at his arm. He felt a faint crawling sensation on his flesh and dismissed it. The aliens on this ship had precious little to say, and so far all his attempts at a conversation had been non-starters. He glanced away down the corridor. He still had half his shift to go before Major Lorne sent someone to relieve him, and like most guard duty, this job had nothing to break up the monotony. The interior of the Asgard ship was almost identical throughout; Kennedy idly wondered if maybe the aliens saw colors in a different way to humans, and what looked like plain metal to him was actually highly decorated to the Asgard. Or Risar, or whatever they want to call themselves —
The sound was so quick, so fleeting that he almost missed it. A scratching, skittering, something with too many legs running across bare steel. His hand went to the grip of his P90. “Did you hear that?”
The Risar cocked its head. “I heard nothing.”
The corporal sighted down the barrel of the submachine gun, bringing the butt plate tight to his shoulder. For a moment, he thought he saw a blurred shadow at the corner of his vision. “Over there…”
Then the sound again, this time from the other end of the corridor. He spun in place, bringing the weapon to bare. Suddenly he was sweating. Kennedy thumbed off the safety catch. In the places where the glow-lamps on the walls didn’t work shadows fell in deep patches. He saw movement, arachnid shapes with shiny chitinous carapaces and iridescent wings.
The Risar watched him in expressionless silence.
He glared at the alien. “Are you blind?” he demanded. “Don’t you see them?”
“I do not understand what you are referring to,” it replied.
The tap-tap-tapping became a rattle, then a thunder. The shadows were marching closer, thickening, growing in depth, coming at him with needle-sharp mandibles and scraping claws. Both ends of the corridor were choked with insects, a tidal wave of them, threatening to engulf him. Kennedy squeezed the trigger and fired bursts of rounds into the darkness, but the bullets whined away harmlessly.
Suddenly the Risar was upon him, strong, slender fingers grabbing at his weapon. “Cease fire,” it said. “There is no enemy here.”
“Get off me!” he shouted, and brought his head forward, butting the alien in the chin. It grunted and staggered from the impact, but didn’t release him. “They’ll kill us both!” The insect-sound was everywhere now, inside his head, echoing through his bones, and his flesh crawled with the proximity of them.
He had to escape. Had to find somewhere safe, a place where the monstrous bugs could never get inside.
On the Risar’s belt was a glowing yellow-white orb. Kennedy snatched it up and brandished it at the door to his back.
“Desist,” said the alien, but he was already at the hatch. With a hiss, the doors to the cell parted and the corporal stumbled inside, dragging the Risar with him. The creature clawed at his arm and he swatted it away, slamming it into the wall with a roundhouse punch.
But the sound did not abate; if anything, it grew louder. He was dimly aware of three figures standing in the centre of the chamber, hands palm-to-palm like the members of some strange séance. Wraith, said a far distant voice in his mind, an echo of something Major Lorne had once told him, they mess with your head.
“No,” he snarled, forcing the sound away, trying to focus. His fingers felt slippery around the P90, and when he looked down the weapon was covered in blurry, crawling shapes, indistinct ghost-things that nipped and whispered over his hands.
He cried out in alarm, and it seemed to break the spell; the trio of Wraith turned from their circle.
In one fluid movement they fell upon him, razor-toothed maws in the palms of their hands reaching for him. Together, they tore the life from his flesh, feeding until he was ashes. The Risar, bleeding thin grayish fluid from a cut on its head, died next, caught as it stumbled away down the corridor.
Giddy with the violent pleasure of the nourishment, the three Wraith paused, listening to the serene voice in their heads.
It is time, it told them. Do as I command you.
She felt the pain again, and this time it almost forced her to the ground. Teyla staggered and fell against one of the control room’s consoles for support. A tight gasp escaped her lips.
Fenrir’s hologram materialized next to her. “Are you unwell?” There were a pair of Risar in the chamber, and as one they turned to face her, ready to follow any orders the Asgard would give.
“Something is wrong.” She bit out the words. The agony lanced through her head, bringing tears to her eyes. Amid the pain she could sense the echo of a voice, a thought, a feeling. A cold, calculating anger. “The Wraith…”
One of the consoles chimed and a Risar glanced at it. “Warning,” it explained, likely more for Teyla’s benefit than any other reason. “Weapons fire detected, tier nine.”
Fenrir’s face stiffened. “The holding cells.” The holographic image froze for a split-second as processing power was diverted to some other task. When it refreshed, the Asgard’s dark eyes were drawn into tight slits. “A Risar is dead.”
The blinding headache suddenly abated, and Teyla drew in a gasp of air. “The Wraith have escaped.”
“You seem to be certain of this.”
She nodded. “The Wraith elements in my DNA provide me with a certain…insight.” Teyla took a deep breath. “Before, I sensed something, but it was so fleeting I couldn’t be sure.” The moment of psychic contact she sensed had to be overspill from a communication directed to the prisoners, a telepathic message so strong it could be sent over interstellar distances. Only a Hive Queen was capable of such a feat.
“Extrasensory perception,” remarked Fenrir, “a most unique phenomenon.”
“This is not random,” she told the Asgard, reaching for her radio. “They have chosen this moment for a reason.”
“Attempting to isolate intruders,” said the other Risar. “Scans are inconclusive. Repairs to internal sensors remain incomplete. Unable to locate targets.”
Teyla raised the walkie-talkie to her lips. “Colonel Carter, do you read me? We have a situation.”
Lorne gave the colonel a look; both he and his commander heard the warning in the Athosian’s tone.
“Carter here,” said the colonel, raising her voice to be heard over the thrumming of the engine core. “Teyla, what’s going on? Corporal Kennedy missed his check-in.”
“The Wraith prisoners are free,” came the dour reply. “The corporal has most likely been killed.”
Lorne swore under his breath and ratcheted the slide on is P90. He grabbed his radio and toggled it to the all-units guard frequency. “All teams, go to alert. We have Wraith targets in the clear, repeat Whiskey-Tangos loose on the ship. Weapons free.”
He had barely said the words when the chatter of gunfire sounded from the upper level of the engine chamber.
“Contact!” snapped Carter.
The hatches hissed open and a trooper fell backwards into the room, retreating along the upper gantry, his assault rifle firing bursts from the hip. A pair of ragged Wraith hurtled after him; one held a pistol in either hand and came on, blazing away with each weapon; the other marched a dying man in before him as a human shield, feeding on his fresh kill even as he moved.
The major and the colonel took aim and opened fire, their shots flashing off the metal and plastic of the raised platform; but the predatory aliens were moving fast, dodging and slashing with their claws.
The second Wraith snarled and pitched the near-dead corpse of its feeding victim into the air, off the gantry and down. The soldier bounced off the protective field around the spinning energy-exchanger rings of the drive core, and fell with a sickening crack into a heap.