SGA-13 Hunt and Run by Aaron Rosenberg Page B

for the weapons when they saw him, but then relax when they noticed Nekai and realized he was still flanked by his guards.
    “Nekai! You’re back!” One of the strangers — a short, slender woman with close-cropped white hair and large, slanting green eyes — hopped up from her crate and rushed over. She hugged him quickly, then stepped back, frowning. “Where’ve you been? We thought maybe you’d been taken.”
    “Sorry,” Nekai told her as he pulled his helmet off. “No way to get word once we’d begun.” He gestured for Ronon to remove his helmet as well, then addressed the others. “Everyone, gather round.” The two left by the fire quickly joined them. “Meet Ronon Dex, former Specialist of the Satedan military. Now a Runner. Just like us.”
    That made Ronon start, and he studied each of these strangers in turn. They were all Runners?
    They were studying him just as closely, and he could see the suspicion on their faces. And the caution that came only from hard experience. It was an expression he knew he carried himself. Yes, they were Runners. He’d never imagined there could be so many of them, much less that they might all be in one place. He would have wondered how each of them had managed to survive, but suspected he already knew the answer to that one. Clearly there was more to Nekai — and his plans — than he had realized.
    “Ronon,” Nekai continued, “this is Turen” — the woman who had hugged Nekai nodded — “Adarr” — one of the two behind him, a lean man nearly as tall as he was with skin the color of bleached bone, spiky white hair, and arctic blue eyes —   “Frayne” — a short man with broad shoulders, long arms, and a fuzz of orange hair across his head and cheeks and jaw —   “Setien” — the other guard, who proved to be a tall, powerfully built woman with thick black hair and regal features — “and Banje” — the last to approach, a man of average height and build with weathered skin, dull brown hair, but sharp black eyes.
    Ronon nodded to each of them, and most of them nodded back, though Adarr and Setien still hadn’t holstered their weapons. “What is this place?” he asked Nekai, though the question was tossed out to all of them. Several of them frowned, and they all turned to the Retemite for his answer. Just as Ronon had thought — Nekai was their leader.
    “This,” Nekai answered, “is our home. Such as it is. We are the V’rdai.” He turned and clasped Ronon’s hand. “And you are now one of us.”

Chapter Eleven
     
    That proclamation brought an instant wave of noise.
    “What?” was the most obvious reply, shouted by several of the others at once. “Have you gone mad?” came from the raven-tressed warrior-woman, Setien. Banje was the only one not shouting. His scowl said more than enough all by itself.
    “Hold on.” Ronon held up his hands, both to ask for quiet and to protect himself in case any of them turned to violence. He left his pistol in its holster, though — no sense antagonizing them. Further. No one responded, so he raised his voice. “Hold on!” That shut them up, and they all turned toward him instead of Nekai.
    “I appreciate being included,” he told them and Nekai, “but I don’t even know what’s going on here. And it’s clear you’re a unit. I don’t want to disrupt that.” He’d figured it was a fair bet that most, if not all, of the others had military training like his own, and the shift he saw from several of them confirmed that. They knew military language, and recognized what he was saying — that he’d respect the chain of command, that he wasn’t here to cause trouble or take over, that if he was included he’d play by the rules. That meant a lot.
    Ronon remembered all too well when his unit back on Sateda had been assigned a new member. The newcomer had been cocky at first, brash and demanding, convinced he knew better than anyone else, including Ronon himself. As a result, he’d