James Swallow - Halcyon

Almost as quickly as they attacked, the Wraith were either dead or retreating.

"What the hell was that all about?" said the Private.

Teyla's brow furrowed as the sense of the feral minds brushed against her psyche. "He's out there… Watching. He's testing us. Measuring our skills."

"Contact!" cried Sheppard, as the first three Wraiths dropped from the trees overhead. On full automatic, he tore a fist-sized wound in the killer that went for his chest, blasting the alien around into a lethal pirouette.

The crackling howl of Ronon's energy pistol sounded through the air, two shots in as many heartbeats killing a second Wraith attacker before the beast's corpse could strike the forest floor.

The third was already sweeping in and went at the colonel with a massive club cut from a rough-hewn section of tree branch. Sheppard ducked and dodged a blow that could have caved in his skull, but the strike caught his P90 and the submachinegun spun from his grip and away. John went low as the alien reversed his attack and threw out two quick kicks to the knee, hard and accurate blows that would have shattered the bones of a normal human being. The Wraith gave a cursory grunt and threw itself at him, striking the colonel with a bodycheck that slammed the wind from his lungs. Sheppard cried out as the creature flattened him into the ground. Its face was just inches away from his, and the monstrous aspect of the Wraith was mad with wild hunger, strings of drool looping from its wicked snaggle teeth.

He fought back with the only weapon he could reach. Sheppard's combat knife came up in a blur and he buried the black carbon steel blade in the Wraith's eye socket, down to the hilt. The alien screamed and rolled away, clawing at its face. Dex threw him his P90 and John caught it, delivering the coup de grace to the howling creature with a single squeeze of the trigger.

Sheppard rocked back on his haunches. "Dang. That was a close one."

Ronon bent to recover the colonel's knife just as the staccato rattle of gunfire filtered through the trees. "Teyla!" snapped Dex.

"More of them, six o'clock!" shouted Bishop, pivoting on one knee to unleash another burst of fire at the advancing foe. His assault rifle's breech snapped open on an empty chamber and he tore out the ammunition clip. "Reloading!"

Teyla heard the call and turned to cover the soldier as the next wave of Wraiths ran at them. She lay down an arc of punishing fire, killing another and knocking back two more; but they were being hard pressed now, the pale-skinned creatures shifting to get behind them, blocking the route back to the clearing and the parked Puddle Jumper. Bishop slammed a new magazine into his weapon and continued shooting.

The Athosian felt her own gun run dry and quickly swapped out a fresh magazine of transparent plastic, the bullets inside rattling against one another. If these Wraiths had been armed with energy weapons, then this fight would have already been over, she realized. All they had were primitive clubs and axes with flint heads; but even those would be deadly if the aliens got close enough.

"What the hell?" She heard a note of panic in the soldier's voice and to her alarm, Bishop aimed away into the trees and fired shots at nothing. "Shadows!" he shouted. "Bloody shadows!"

"Private!" she shouted, "it's the Wraith, they're trying to deceive you! Playing tricks on your mind!" Teyla pulled him to his feet. "Concentrate!"

"Y-yeah," Bishop blinked, like he was waking from a doze. "I got it."

"Teyla! What's your situation?"

She grimaced at the voice from the radio, firing again. "Heavy Wraith contact, Colonel! We're cut off from the Jumper!"

"Find cover and dig in," replied Sheppard, "we'll come get you once we deal with our own pest problem."

Bishop jabbed a finger. "That way! Trees are thicker, it'll slow the buggers down!"

She let the soldier lead the way, sending out pulses of gunfire as the Wraiths came running after them, clambering along the branches of trees over their heads, shrieking and throwing stones. Teyla had never seen such behavior from the aliens before; the orderly and coldly vicious manner they usually displayed in combat was gone, replaced with wild and brutish attacks that bordered on frenzy.

The Athosian woman dispatched another Wraith, sending it wailing to the earth from a perch above; and then she felt it again. The pressure of one mind, hard and invasive inside her skull. Teyla could taste the raw need, and through the alien's senses it was almost as if she could hear the rapid hammering of her own heart. The Wraith the Halcyons called Scar was in her head, taunting her, and with abrupt shock she realized that he was laughing.

Alarm flooded her with adrenaline. "Bishop, no!" she cried, too late to stop him. The soldier took one step too far and stumbled. Beneath them the leaf-strewn ground gave way and disintegrated, a false trapdoor of weak wood and woven grasses yawing open. Teyla and Bishop fell into the concealed pit, tumbling against one another to land hard in the black, choking mud. She struck a half-buried stone and the light behind her eyes dimmed. Teyla's vision went to gray haze, then to blackness and silence.

"Back!" snapped Ronon, sending red streaks of energy past Sheppard and into the advancing rank of feral Wraith. Most of these creatures were barely equipped, their usual armor of chain mail and nacreous hides missing or stripped. That meant that logically they'd go down easier; the reverse seemed to be true, however. Sheppard gritted his teeth and fired on another. These untamed creatures were uncontrollable, moving without the first thought toward their personal safety, driven only by an insane hunger. Already, the colonel had seen some of the Wraith dropping back from their chase in order to savage their own fallen comrades, fighting amongst themselves to feed on their dead. John took the opportunity to introduce them to a couple of fragmentation grenades that he lobbed into the middle of the squabbling pack.

The diversion was enough to get them away, and back toward the safe ground of the Jumper. Without energy weapons, there was no way the marauding wild Wraith would be able to inflict damage on the Ancient ship. He sprinted into the clearing as Ronon cracked off shot after shot at the enemy. The Satedan's pistol was glowing hot at the muzzle. Sheppard tore the handheld from his pocket and stabbed at a pre-set code key string. In return, the Puddle Jumper's rear hatch dropped open to admit them.

"Teyla!" he shouted into his radio. "Teyla, Bishop, do you read me? We're at the Jumper!" Nothing but dead air answered him. He swore under his breath as Dex rounded the back of the shuttlecraft.

"Nothing else is moving out there," said Ronon, "at least not for the moment."

"Get in," snapped Sheppard. "I need to re-arm. Those creeps will be back."

Dex followed him inside as the hatch closed again. He stopped dead as he realized they were alone in the ship. "Where are the others?"

Grim-faced, the colonel threw a nod at the dense tree line.

The sudden silver-white flash of the wormhole's formation made Carson flinch back a little in surprise. The strange cloud of energy the Stargates emitted on activation reminded him of a plume of water, a geyser-like spring of light and color that seemed to unfold from the very air itself. Beckett had heard veterans of the SGC refer to the effect as a `kawoosh', as a nod to the sound it made as it crashed through molecules of stressed oxygen; try as he might, though, the doctor couldn't hang such a playful name on a discharge of exotic radiation that could engulf anything it came into contact with.

He fingered the combat walkie-talkie in his hand, switching the device to the pre-arranged channel for the mission, and in return he heard the hiss of static in his wireless earpiece that told him it was working. Nearby, Staff Sergeant Mason, his face impassive, approached the event horizon of the Gate as close as he dared. With each footstep, the mechanical turrets surrounding the Stargate whined and moved, steadily tracking Mason, ready to open fire if he flaunted Daus's commands and ran for the wormhole. The doctor counted at least a half-dozen cannons trained on them. Mason recovered a radio from his belt and weighed it in his grip. At last, he met Beckett's gaze.