Chapter 2: A Change in the Wind ​





Stargate Command

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Carter was working long after she was supposed to have knocked off when the the incoming traveller alarms began blaring and, as with the rest of SG-1 she ran for the command centre overlooking the gateroom as the event horizon snapped on with the Iris covering it. "Incoming IDC. It's SG-6." Walter said with a moments panic, "They're giving the emergency code.""Open it!" Hammond said as he turned to face the stargate, the iris schlicked open and the team members of SG-6 came through the gate... or at least most of them did and with them were half a dozen serpent guard who . Before Walter or Hammond could act Carter had the phone in hand. "Medical Emergency in the gateroom!" She ran after Jack, Teal'c and Daniel to emerge into the gateroom that had turned into the scene of a particularly gory final destination flick. The wounded that SG-6 and the Serpent Guard had brought in were straight from a horror film. Janet bolted over to one man, at least Carter thought it was a man due to the broad shoulders, who appeared to be completely missing his epidermal layer, and the flesh beneath...She promptly threw up on the ramp.The poor man, the LIVING, man looked like someone had taken to him with a flensing kit. Where his skin was Carter realised she really didn't want to know. Meanwhile Jack was confronting the SG-6 team leader, "Barnes, what the hell!" Jack said pointing at the Serpent Guard."No choice jack. You ever seen a Jaffa wet themselves..." He said with defeat in his voice, Teal'c merely raised an eyebrow, "No Teal'c I don't mean metaphorically. I mean these guys were literally pissing and shitting themselves, you see any staff weapons? We didn't make them toss em, they didn't have em when we stumbled across them." He turned back to one of the stretchers on whom the subject was deathly still. "Shit, Fischer..." He hung his head...Hammond looked at the report like it had just walked off of the set of a Scifi. Before him the remains of SG-6 were sitting dejected in the chairs on one side of the table, SG-1 sat on the other to offer their 'expert opinion', the opinion of which the included 'Sounds like Terminator' featured prominently..."General, it wasn't like a nightmare made flesh. It flat out was." Colonel Barnes said as he answered a remark Hammond had made, "We arrived to conduct a survey of the planet and had been going pretty well I thought before we stumbled across a Jaffa patrol, fifteen, twenty I can't remember..." Janet had suggested that SG-6 be temporarily suspended due to PTSD, "They were in a bad way, three or four were being carried, you saw some of them, bodies half gone, skin flayed off... well they were Serpent Guard so we were naturally suspicious, but these guys, their courage had been burned completely away by what it was they had seen and they... sir... they surrendered to us on the spot and begged us to take them away like a couple of kids told they wouldn't be allowed to touch the Playstation for a week if they didn't behave."He paused. "We were headed back to the gate to report in, perhaps get them medical help at least, but on the way we were ambushed. Five goddamned metal skeletons stepped out of the woods in lockstep with one another, gleaming like the goddamn silverware drawer, eyes glowing emerald and their weapons..." Barnes went silent and another of SG-6 spoke."It was like bottled green lightning sir... rods of green lightning. They opened fire on us, well, the Jaffa, I don't think they were trying to attack us, but ... but we tried to defend them and goddamn if it didn't do anything, out MP-5's didn't even fucking scratch them sir, it was like shooting at a damned Abrams for all the good it was doing, but Barnes dropped one with the grenade launcher on his M-16 and we cheered..." He petered off as Barnes took the tale back up."Fischer died then, they may not have been trying to hit us, but... the one I blew apart, it .. healed... and got up. It was the one that killed Fischer. He... you know those anatomy books in school, how there is the skeleton page, and those plastic see-through overlay pages, each with a layer printed on it so you can see the progression? Well imagine one ten thousand pages thick, their weapons, beams of green lightning peeled him like the first hundred pages of that goddamned textbook."Hammond looked at Doctor Frasier and she sighed. "The description... well it fits the injuries of most of our subjects, though several of the Jaffa wounded appear to have had their injuries inflicted by... frankly impossibly sharp blades, sharp enough that they make my surgical scalpels look like i'm trying to open people up with a blunt rusty spoon...""Yeah, the Jaffa spoke of the skinwalkers." Another of SG-6 said shuddering. "They are like the ones we saw, but instead of guns they have knives for hands and they wear the skins of those they kill... I never want to see one.""But... we ran... we ran hard trying to take everyone with us. We bolted for the gate and after a couple minutes.... well they let us go." Barnes said with something close to terror in his voice. "I saw it as we dialed in to make a run for it. Just before we entered I turned... They surrounded us on the bluff. At least a hundred of the things and one stood there, seven, eight feet tall, it's body far far more ornate than the rest a goddamned cape flowed around it's shoulders and the staff it carried ... it was studying us sir. As I'm about to wet myself and run... it just turns around and so do the rest, you know the rest of the story sir..."Jack sat in his quarters on the base studying the footage taken of the wounded, and videos of the interviews that had been taken from each of them. Before Mayweather could realize and try and sequester the 'prisoners' from the Serpent Guard Hammond had agreed to open the gate to Chulak and allow them to return there with their wounded comrades. But it struck Jack, the interviews with the Jaffa, the answers from them were too similar, too alike, almost like a rehearsed story. But if that was the case, why did they agree to simply return?Had they been suborned perhaps? They didn't have any weapons when they were on earth, not even something as simple as a zat, so they can't have been smuggling a weapon. Mind Control? Simple indoctrination making them view thing.... no, he'd known Teal'c too long to believe something that simple was the answer. As there was a knock at the door Jack paused the footage. "Come in." He called out and Teal'c entered the room and sat down, rigidly, on the chair at the table. "What's up T?""I have been thinking over the interview tapes from the captured Jaffa." Teal'c said."Yeah, so have I, something just didn't ring true..." Jack said,"You recall how they told the story about how these 'necrons' made the attack, the metal dead come to wreak revenge?" Teal'c asked, though he knew the answer. Jack wasn't nearly as oblivious as he tried to convince others he was."Yeah, it gave me the heebie-jeebies." Jack confessed."And I O'Neill, but I suspect for very different reasons." Teal'c admitted.Jack sat up and looked deep into Teal'c's eyes. "Why....?""Because in our tongue. There is no such word as Necron." Teal'c confessed.