Even before she was aware of doing it, Teyla flung herself in the other direction, diving for the cover of a control console.
In the churning core of the organic implant inside the Queen’s abdomen, bio-chemicals mingled with Wraith blood and triggered a catastrophic release of burning energy.
In less than a heartbeat, the alien evaporated, becoming the core of an exothermal detonation that ripped apart Fenrir’s Risar and tore into the Asgard’s vital life-support frame.
Chapter Fourteen
The wooden door rolled back on its stays with a groan and Ronon heard a ripple of fear sweep down the length of the enclosures. Takkol and the other elders retreated like startled animals, pushing themselves as far as they could into the shadowed corners of the cages.
The troop of Wraith marched up the central corridor with the one bearing the commander’s sigils at their lead. He wore a fanged smile that was hideous to behold.
Ronon knew what would happen next. He took Keller’s hand and pulled her away from the wooden bars. “Get behind me,” he grated.
She could read his intentions in his expression. “You’re in no condition to fight,” she whispered urgently. “Don’t do anything crazy!”
“Too late to play it safe now,” Ronon stifled a cough and nodded to Lieutenant Allen, ignoring the stab of pain from the muscles in his neck.
The officer returned the nod; she would follow his lead.
The Wraith commander drew level with their cage. “It has been decided that your value to our clan is negligible.”
“Y-you’re going to let us g-go?” stammered one of Takkol’s adjutants, desperation raw and pitiful on his face.
“In a way,” replied the commander. “Open the pens,” he ordered, and a pair of warriors moved forward to unlock the heavy iron chains holding shut the cages.
“Stay back, you fool!” cried Takkol, but it was too late for the other man. He took two steps toward the opening doorway and another of the Wraith surged at him. A thin scream echoed as the warrior ripped into his chest and fed upon him.
Cries of alarm joined the scream; if Ronon had harbored even the slightest doubt that the Wraith had come to execute them all, it vanished now.
In the first seconds, the Satedan had the advantage; there was only one way into the enclosure where they stood, and that meant the Wraith had to come in single-file. The first into the cage approached him, claws raised. The dart-daggers concealed in Ronon’s palms had grown warm and sweat-slick as he had waited for the inevitable attack, and now he threw them, left and then right. He cursed as the first one went wide, his sickness-blurred vision making him miss; he was dimly aware of the small blade bouncing off the alien’s chest amour and clattering to the floor
The second dagger found purchase in the hollow of the alien’s throat and it wailed, clutching at its neck. Ronon went in and followed up the attack with a punch that drove the dagger still deeper; the memory-metal of the blade was designed to expand on contact with organic matter, growing to twice its width in a matter of moments. The Wraith fell to its knees, vomiting black fluid.
Chaos was all around him as the Wraith began their cull of the prisoners. There were screams and yelling, the ozone stink of a stunner discharge. He glimpsed Keller swinging a heavy clay bowl into the face of the Wraith commander, knocking him off balance.
Allan came up from a crouch with the other dagger in her fist and struck at another of the Wraith warriors, dislodging its helmet. It turned on her as the blade-tip scraped over its bare shoulder and the creature viciously shoved her back. Ronon moved to help her, but he was sluggish and his joints ached with each motion.
The Wraith planted its hand on her chest and hooted with pleasure as it began to feed off her. She screamed, the flesh of her face turning grey, becoming taut across the bones of her skull.
Ronon kicked low and connected with the Wraith’s knee, smashing bone. The creature twisted and dropped, freeing Allan from the death grip. She pitched forward, wheezing, and shoved the dagger into the warrior’s eye socket. The Wraith tumbled over in a twitching heap.
He caught the lieutenant and heard her gasp; in the space of just a few seconds, the Wraith had drained decades from her life. The young woman he had spoken to before was twenty, thirty years older in aspect, her buzz-cut hair streaked with grey and her face lined. “Behind you!” she husked.
Ronon turned and punched blindly. He was rewarded by a howl and the sensation of cartilage snapping beneath his knuckles. The Wraith commander spun backwards, out of the cage proper and into the confusion of the corridor beyond, blood gushing in a fan from his crushed nose.
But these were only minor victories in the melee. Ronon saw Takkol’s men becoming food for the Wraith, while the former elder stumbled on his robes as he tried to flee the killing.
The Satedan grabbed Keller’s arm and dragged her out of the cage, with Allan hobbling along behind. “We have to fall back,” he shouted. “Find another way out!”
They pressed into the cluster of survivors, Takkol, the medical team and the last of the Atlantis airmen with them, but the further back they retreated down the corridor, the clearer their situation became.
“There’s no other way out of here,” the lieutenant coughed. “There’s only one exit from this place, and the Wraith are between us and it!”
“They’re going to butcher us like herd animals!” moaned Takkol.
“Not without a fight,” said Ronon.
The smooth metallic lines of the control chamber lit by cool yellow-white illumination were gone, replaced by something dirtied with oily residue. There was a smoky, cloying burnt-meat stink that hung in the air.
Teyla shoved the sparking remains of a computer panel off her legs and struggled to her feet. She shuddered as she surveyed the room; the Queen’s suicidal attack would have killed her just as it had torn apart Fenrir’s Risar, had she not sensed that tiny moment of thought before the implanted bio-charge exploded. It was horrific to conceive; the Wraith Queen had willingly given her own life in order to destroy the command centre of the Aegis, and although she had not fully succeeded — a testament to the resilience of Asgard technology — the consoles and holographic screens all around the chamber were flickering and incoherent. The alien had done much damage.
And for Fenrir’s cryogenic capsule was at the heart of it all, the impact point of the detonation. Coolant pipes spat foam, forming hazy clouds of ice crystals in the frigid air. The whole forward section of the suspension module had been ripped open and blackened by thermal damage, heat-warped fingers of broken metal twisted and bent by the force of the blast.
Teyla’s hand went to her chest. He had to be dead. He could not have —
“Tey…la…” The voice was faint and labored. It took her a moment before she realized it was not a synthetic echo, but the real thing.
“Fenrir?” She rushed forward, slipping over newly-formed patches of ice and shallow drifts of broken glass. She found a foothold on the side of the ruined cryo module and pushed up until she was kneeling atop the frost-rimed surface of the machine.
From this angle, it appeared as if a monstrous blade had slashed along the length of Fenrir’s capsule. The pod, sealed closed for generations, was open to the air and ruined, the fragile life within moments away from death. She glimpsed pallid flesh moving amid the smoke and vapors, and Teyla fanned them away.
A spindly, childlike hand emerged from the cold fog and grabbed her wrist. She reached down into the flickering glow of the pod’s interior and found the alien there, his chest fluttering as he fought to breathe. Teyla’s eyes were stinging and she blinked furiously. She tried to pull Fenrir up, but he was caught beneath a distended piece of machinery; his bird-thin limbs were atrophied and weak, so much so that she feared she would snap his bones if she pulled too hard.