Clones, Stargates and Guardians, oh my! - Chapter 10 (part 2)

Author: Dgre

MyKai immediately realized something was wrong.  He had been experiencing uneasiness which he put down to this invasion of what he assumed were friendlies, but there were a lot of them.  The women and the clones milled around the great hall, and they were suggesting offering food and drink to the newcomers.  Several of the women were attempting to cuddle the raccoon, which he was irritably resisting, telling them in now uncertain terms that he was not a puppy.  Groot stood off to the side, smiling at everybody, and answering every question with “I am Groot.”  Quill, for his part, was trying to get to know some of the ladies, Quill charm working overtime.  The Space Force team were more serious, gathering information and trying to put together a plan, but the atmosphere in the hall was lending itself to an eventual big party.

The clones heard the scream, their hearing far better than anyone else’s.  MyKai immediately looked around the hall, did not see his queen, and shot out of the hall and up the stairs, followed by the other clones, and behind them, the SP team and the Guardians.

The Wraith had made his way to the corridor just above the hall, and there he stood, Dgrequeen in his clutches.  She squeaked faintly when she saw MyKai, but the Wraith was already feeding on her, and she was fading away.

MyKai stood very still, his gaze speaking silently of murder.  The Wraith stared back with equal hate, but he had stopped feeding.  Dgre hung in his arms, the feeding hand still attached to her chest.  The Wraith recognized MyKai as the one he had fought earlier, and he knew he could not kill him by feeding, but he had other skills and he had his razor sharp claws.  He understood the clones’ weakness now, their dependence on the yellowish fluid that animated them, and their inexplicable devotion to these human females.  He also understood that he had this one’s female.

He reversed his feeding and let a little bit of life flo back into her.  She didn’t struggle because she knew it was useless, but she was terrified that MyKai was going to do something foolish.  She shook her head when he stretched out a hand for her, warning him.

“Release her,”  MyKai said.  “Release her, and I will let you live.”

“Stand aside and clear my way out, and I will let her live.”

“I will escort you to the Stargate myself.   No one will harm you.  Restore her and let her go.”

The Wraith snorted his contempt.  “She will take me to the Stargate, and no one will stop me.  You … whatever you are … and the weakling humans.  None of you will stop me.  No one can stop US!”

“I won’t take you,”  Dgre said.  “I’ll fight you the whole way, you’ll have to drag me, and you don’t dare kill me in front of him.  And it’s a long way to the Stargate.” 

“You will obey me,” the Wraith hissed.  He couldn’t conceive of any human who could defy him.  “You will …”

He made the mistake of loosening his hold on her just enough so he could look her in her eyes.  Despite her weakness, Dgre brought up the hand she’d been holding on to the Wraith’s feeding hand and drove her stiffened fingers into his near eye.  He shrieked, an unearthly sound that echoed through the castle and caused shivers in everyone who heard it.  Every Kai clone already not there came running.

But they weren’t fast enough, not even MyKai, delayed a half second by his anguish as the Wraiths feeding hand slammed tighter on Dgre’s chest and drained her.  MyKai reacted, ut he couldn’t stop the damage that had been done.  His brace shot out, wrapping around the Wraith’s wrist, pulling it away, but Dgre hung in his grasp, nearly dead but not quite.

“STOP!”  MyKai screamed.

The Wraith, blue fluid leaking from his ruined eye, grinned, baring his pointed teeth.  “She is not dead yet, but I can end her.  Let me go.”

“Restore her,” MyKai said, as calm as he had ever been.  “I know you can do it.  Restore her now, or I will cut off your feeding hand.”  He tightened his brace filament for emphasis.  

The Wraith snorted again.  “If you do that, I cannot restore her and she will die.”

MyKai swallowed his grief.  “If she dies, I will cut your hand off and you will die a slow, painful death by starvation.  And I will sit with you and watch.”

For the first time in his long life, the Wraith felt fear, considering the death every Wraith dreaded above all, starvation.

“I will watch you die slowly,” MyKai continued, his heart breaking for his queen.  “And then I will gather my brothers and bring your corpse through the Stargate to your home world so that your kind can see what was done.  Oh, don’t doubt we will find it, and we will cut off the feeding hand of every Wraith we find, until your kind are extinct.  Believe me when I say this.  We are already dead, so we can’t die.  But you can.”

The Kai clones gathered in the corridor nodded and murmured their assent.

“Right there with you, brother,” said Rocket, giving the Wraith his deadliest raccoon stare.

“Take me to the Stargate and I will give you back your human,” the Wraith said, bargaining now.  

“Restore her at the gate and you may go,” MyKai agreed.  “But we will still come after you.”

The Wraith sneered.  “So be it.  But that is a war you will not like.”

*****

When they reached the gate, the Wraith, who had carried Dgre’s limp form the whole way, turned and faced his enemies.  MyKai’s brace filament had not loosened the whole way, and blue fluid leaked around the Wraith’s wrist where the filament had cut into the flesh.

“Behold,” the Wraith said, and life flowed back into Dgre’s body.  As she slid from the Wraith’s grasp, Teyla and Ronin gathered her up.  Without retracting his brace, MyKai knelt down to her, and she weakly lifted her arms to wrap around his neck.

The Wraith tugged a little at the brace filament around his wrist.  “Time of honor your part of the bargain and let me go.”

MyKai disentangled himself from his  beloved queen and stood up.”Yes,” he said.  “I said you could go.”

With one flick of the brace, MyKai cut the Wraith’s feeding hand off.  “But I also promised to end your kind,” he said.  He ended the Wraith’s anguished shrieks by kicking him backwards through the Stargate.

Clones, Stargates and Guardians, oh my! - Chapter 10 (part 1)

Author: Dgre

Franks was livid.  When Jones reported to Remmy qpwhat had gone down at that strange castle, Remmy wisely relayed the information by telephone so as not to be within striking distance of the boss’s wrath.  And he was wrathful indeed.

“You’re telling me,” Franks screamed into the phone, “that a bunch of fancy freaks who live in a CASTLE with a bunch of women, for fuck’s sake, took my crack team hostage?  That’s what you’re telling me?”

“Sorry, Boss,” Remmy said, wearing heavily.  Would he ever dare walk into the office again?  If he couldn’t make this right, he, Jones, and the whole team were dead men walking.  Franks had no shortage of replacements.  “I think we’re up against something here that we’ve never seen before.”

“Well, that just means I have to send in the BIG GUNS, which you are not, right?”  He couldn’t see how white Remmy’s face had turned, but he wouldn’t have cared.  His thoughts were on the alien he owned now.

****

Rodney put his head in his hands.  Nobody knew exactly how he was able to track everyone and what they were doing at any one time, and he liked to keep it that way ( although he sometimes lost the connect and usually panicked when he did), but sometimes he wished he didn’t have this power.  But Rodney studied the Stargates more than even the experts of the Space Force and he knew more than anyone about the capabilities of the gates.  Except Col. Carter, of course, who wasn’t adverse to sharing information with him.  They had speculated together that the aliens who had built the Stargate system had done a lot more than that.

“Hiya, Roger!  Whacha doin’?”

Rodney felt a headache begin to form.

“Oh, it’s you.”  He looked over at the raccoon thing, who was scratching his crotch and eating yet another raspberry pastry.  “There’s something going on at the APEC castle, which is none of your business.”

“Really?”  The raccoon leaped up onto the desk, scattering crumbs everywhere, and stared curiously at Rodney’s video connection with the Atlantis Stargate through which he was communicating with the Space Force on Earth.  “I heard about this castle.  Is the Wraith there?”

Rodney sighed.  “Possibly.  Or it could be a criminal gang we’ve been tracking, if you must know.”  It was useless to try and keep anything from this nosey creature.  “I don’t know how they could be connected, or why they’d go there.”

“Cool.   Hey, Quill!” He shouted into his communicator.  “Drax, Groot!  You gotta see what’s goin’ down on Earth.  Say, Roger, maybe Shepard would wanna get in on this action.”

Rodney’s headache bloomed.  “It’s Rodney or Dr. McKay to you, and yes, I will inform Lt. Col. Shepard.”

Rocket shrugged.  “Ooh, tetchy.”

Within the minute, Shepard and the team, still in San Francisco, looked at each other.  “Thanks for the info, Rodney, we’ll look into it.”  He grimaced. “The APEC castle, great.  Does Rodney know how much I hate going there?

Ronin grinned.  “I’ve never been, but I’d like to see the place.”

Teyla merely rolled her eyes.

*****

The Wraith, happy to be taken to the APEC by Franks and a driver in a big black SUV that they parked just inside the tree line outside the mysterious castle.   Remmy and various thugs followed in another SUV and parked behind them.  The Wraith sized up the stone walls of the mysterious structure and knew he would be able to climb them easily.

“Remember,” Franks said, “you get to the gate and let us in, and we’ll do the rest.  I’ll give you whatever you want.”  He exchanged a glance with his driver, who understood that he had no intention of honoring that promise.  Franks’ mind was on the riches that must lie inside that huge place.  The Wraith was his to command as long as he could provide untainted humans for food, and maybe he could even force the clones to do his bidding.  He’d heard they were devoted to their ladies.  Take one or two of them, and …

“Yes,” the Wraith said in his raspy voice.  “You promised me unlimited access to the Stargate if I do this for you.”

“Sure, sure, we’ll get you home in no time.  Remmy!”  He spoke into the walkie. “Get ready, we’re about to go in.”

“But first,” said the Wraith, who had no intention to stand by his “deal”, and reached for Franks, “ I need to fortify myself.”

*****

Afterwards, having feasted on Franks and his driver, and ignoring the other SUV that was speeding away as fast as it could go, he walked toward the castle.  He climbed the stone wall with ease and he was inside the castle.

****

Ronin marched straight up to the heavy, carved gate of the castle and pounded on it, sending thunder rolling through the outer keep and into the main hall.  Something on the wall next to the gate crackled.

“There’s a speaker you can use to announce yourself, bub,” said a very dry voice.

Shepard sighed, and leaned over to the speaker.  He was not happy for his team to have been joined by the raccoon creature, who was snickering into his .. . hand … paw?  Now he feared he was about to be confronted by some self-important butler. “Lt. Col. John Shepard, of the Space Force, Atlantis.  There’s a hostile alien loose in the area, and we got word of a disturbance in your, uh …” Shepard looked up at the ramparts, “castle.”

“We were attacked by criminals,”. Said the voice.  “We’re handling it.”

“Good,” Shepard said, looking at his motley team.  “Good.” Nobody had a suggestion about what to do next.

Except Ronin.

“I say we go in anyway,” he growled, clutching his weapon tighter,

Teyla put her hand on Ronin’s arm to calm him (because she was the only one who could get away with that).  “Sir,” she said into the speaker,”do you mind if we come in anyway?  We’re wanting to liaison with local people, especially in these troubled times.”

The speaker crackled again.  “Is that guy who looks like Jason Momoa with you?”

Ronin gritted his teeth and growled again.  “I really want to meet this guy.”

“Uh,” Shepard looked uncomfortable.  “Yes.  Yes, he is.”

“You can come in,” the speaker voice said, and it seemed there was a note of disgruntlement.  “Our ladies want to talk to him.”

The gate swung open.

****

The Wraith prowled silently.  He had eluded the notice of the clones on the battlements, and now he was scoping out the many empty corridors of the castle.  Perhaps he could find a place to hide away and take as many humans as possible without being detected by the clones, before he escaped.  The rest of them were down in the main hall, or in another part of the castle interrogating the captured spies.  The women the Wraith sought were either locked away in their quarters, or they were in the main hall, gathered around the Space Force team,  the Wraith was as yet unaware of.  He was formulating a plan to free Franks’ men, not because he was concerned for them, but because he was interested in the equipment Franks had told him they brought with them.  If it was useful in hunting humans, he wanted it, and he’d need one or two of the criminals to show him how it all worked.

He could sense that there were living humans behind some of the doors, but those doors were thick and securely locked.  Besides, he couldn’t track the strange lifeless yet alive beings that guarded them, whether any were in the rooms or not, and he had no desire to encounter them.  But he resolved to find out more about them once he was back among his own species.  Solving their mystery might give the Wraith the means to defeat Atlantis.

****

Dgre, like the other castle ladies, was fascinated by Ronin and his close resemblance to an Earthside action star.  He was visibly discomforted by the women gathered around him, bombarding him with questions he couldn’t really answer, not being who they thought he was.  Shepard, Teyla, and the

 Guardians hid their grins and conferred with the more security-minded clones.  This place and its inhabitants were equally fascinating to them, even as they tried to stay on the topic of the criminal invasion.

Dgre, deciding she’d never get close enough to Ronin to ask questions, decided to go back to the apartment she shared with MyKai.  She had things to do, and she could pump MyKai for information later.  He was deep in conversation with the Lieutenant Colonel anyway, so she left the hall and went up the stairs.

Where she met the Wraith.