30. High Noon

John had to literally pull Ronon back from shooting every Wraith they came across. They needed stealth, so John was constantly dragging the larger man into small recesses or around corners in order to avoid a confrontation. He knew that he could not actually drag Ronon anywhere he didn’t want to be dragged, so it was a measure of agreement between them that Ronon allowed himself to be manhandled.

Teyla looked just as eager to start a fight but she understood the game plan and covered their six as they methodically worked their way into the interior of the ship. The place smelled like a strange combination of rancid rot and compost, almost swampy but damp and cold like a cave. They eventually hit a wider hallway that was lined with cocoons.

Cocoons, holding people.

They all seemed to be asleep, or in a coma, and John figured they had been drugged somehow to keep them complacent. Teyla and Ronon looked angrier and angrier the more cocoons they passed, but John’s eyes were on the LSD, following the dots. Three people had been separated from the others in the time it took John to successfully dock the gateship where it wouldn’t be tripped over—the cloak would keep it from being seen, but no one would miss walking into it.

It felt like forever before they found their people, who were all socked into their own cocoons. Ronon and Teyla quietly and quickly pulled them out while John oriented himself towards the direction of the missing three. Ronon leaned over his shoulder while Teyla dealt with reviving the survivors enough so they could walk. John regretted not bringing a med kit along, it would have had smelling salts. The longer it took for them to wake up, the more dangerous it was for all of them. The two Marines pulled out faster than the two scientists, but none of them were McKay or Ford.

“We go after them, we’ll give up our advantage. We can’t stay in the shadows forever.” Ronon pointed at the three dots.

“One of them is McKay,” John replied, although he knew it was a nonsensical answer. He didn’t like the guy and Ronon had no idea who he was, so it was the most pointless thing he could have said. He turned to Teyla. “Can you get these people back to the gateship?”

She nodded as she helped one of the scientists to stand.

“I keyed it to you and Ronon, it will open and let you inside before closing up again. You can’t fly it, but it will be safe place. Once Stackhouse recovers he can pilot it, if necessary.”

She frowned, unhappy to be relegated to waiting for him, but one of them had to get the others to relative safety, and John honestly figured Ronon would probably be better in a fire fight if it came to that, as he had been going up against the Wraith for years.

Teyla seemed to follow the same thought process, though, and eventually nodded.

“What…what you doing?” Stackhouse coughed, holding himself against the wall.

“Getting our people back. Go with Tey—The Emmagen, keep the civilians safe, don’t start any fights.” John snapped in his best “I’m the officer here, soldier” voice, which was sorely underused but apparently still effective. Stackhouse gave him a sardonic, barely-there salute but turned to help get the others moving as ordered.

It would be a miracle if the lot of them weren’t discovered on the trek back to the ship, but the whole operation was one long, long Hail Mary pass and there wasn’t much John could do about that.

He and snuck forward and down into the bowels of the ship. The walls got closer, the doorways thinner, and the smell worse but it was clear they were heading into an important area. The three life signs he was tracking kept blinking encouragingly. When they heard voices, they crouched down and crabwalked to a doorway that opened into a large vaulted room, where Ford and Kavanagh and McKay were on their knees before a hideous, tall female-looking Wraith. A queen, John’s memory helpfully supplied. Ronon raised his gun, but John put his hand on it, shaking his head. Around the room were scattered a large number of Wraith, both the tall hunters and the stocky drones. John had no doubts that a shootout would end badly for them, without some kind of advantage other than surprise.

His memory kept tracking, though, with the information Atlantis had shared with him about the Wraith filling his head. He motioned for Ronon to stay where he was, and hoped the guy would know when the time was right. John crept away, looking to find a way to go high. The vaulted ceiling had a lot of openings, and all John needed was one.

---

The queen was hysterically bizarre, a cross between a bad 80s new wave video and a cheap horror movie villain. She moved with elegance and grace, but it reminded Mer of a spider and he was creeped out enough without that image. Her red hair flowed beautifully as she screeched through her pointed teeth, and it was such a dichotomy of natural beauty and stomach-curdling ugliness that Mer felt like he was in shock. Although, he thought that it was a fair bet that he actually was in shock.

Ford looked stern and self-sacrificing, Kavanagh as if he was going to piss himself if he hadn’t already, and the Queen kept howling about finding Earth. Mer guessed that somehow, the weird mind tricks of the Wraith extended, in the case of Queens, to a form of mind reading and she had picked up on the images of Mer’s homeworld as it had filtered through their drugged consciousness. Not enough, though, to tell her where Earth was, and Mer appreciated small favors.

It was clear that Ford was going to fall on his sword before giving anything up, and Mer was willing to try, but Kavanagh was the weak link. It was no surprise that she focused on him first.

“You could save yourself. Worship me. Tell me what I want to know and live,” she snarled, dragging a finger along Kavanagh’s cheek in a parody of seduction.

His jaw worked uselessly in fear for a second before he rallied. “I’m an engineer! I don’t know how to get to Earth from here!”

“Then you are useless to me,” she said simply, pulling back her feeding hand to strike.

“Wait! I know who does! I can tell you who knows!” Kavanagh screamed.

The Queen paused, then lowered her hand.

“Fuck you, Kavanagh, you going to sell out your whole fucking planet?” Mer shouted before a drone hit the back of his head to shut him up.

“He knows! McKay knows where Earth is and how to get there! Just don’t kill me!” Kavanagh was pleading and Ford looked ready to murder him personally, if only he could.

She gave Mer a long look, then turned back to Kavanagh. “I think you know more than you admit.” She struck, her hand slamming into chest. He screamed as she loomed over him. Mer could almost see her reading Kavanagh’s mind, sorting through the morass of stupidity and cowardice to find what she needed to know as his body aged and he screamed and screamed and screamed.

Mer almost didn’t register when a shot rang out and Kavanagh went silent. He blinked to see the Queen holding up her hand, a bullet hole cut cleanly through it, although it was already starting to heal. She shrieked in frustration, but Kavanagh was dead at her feet, shot through the heart. The Wraith around them went crazy with activity as more shots rang out, as well as the sound of something that sounded a lot like a zat. The Queen was under heavy fire from above and Mer was doing his best not to end up the same way, falling down to make himself a smaller target. The Wraith were ignoring him, though, and that was enough to allow Mer to scramble to the edge of the room.

“FORD!”

Mer looked up to see Sheppard in some kind of cubby hole in the ceiling, throwing his P-90 straight down into the fray. Ford caught it like a circus performer and used it to push back the Wraith who were trying for him, laying down controlled fire. The zapping sound kept on and Mer tried to figure out what the hell he was supposed to be doing, if anything. He hated feeling helpless more than any other emotion he could name, but it was a time for firepower, not intelligence. He stayed low, trying to remain invisible.

Sheppard came loping in, not quite running, and looking like he was in pain which Mer figured he probably was. It was hard to make out what was going on but Mer knew Ford would run out of bullets soon. He looked for Sheppard and saw him improbably running along the long table that was in the middle of the room swinging one of the drone’s machete-like swords while Ford and some huge giant held back the Wraith fighters with careful shots. There was long screeching like nails on a chalkboard that Mer knew instinctively was the Queen shouting in rage, but it was cut short with a wet hacking sound.

Then all hell broke loose.