The Messenger
Author's Note: I'm not exactly sure where the idea for this one-shot came from. However, if you don't like main character death, then don't read this. It also has mind-rape, the act of one being invading and controlling another beings mind. If you read, please review and give me feedback.
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 belongs to MGM. Warhammer 40k belongs to Games Workshop. I own nothing here.
It was a small dead planet on the edge of the galaxy. Nothing had lived here for a long time. It was completely empty save for a large network of artificial caverns that went deep beneath the planet's surface. It was here where there entered the second group life forms to be on the planet for sixty million years. The first group had came and set up a Stargate before fleeing in terror, not even bothering to destroy the gate as they left.
In a small room, hollowed out from the rock, a stargate flared to life. Colonel Jack O'Neill was the first one out, followed by Dr Daniel Jackson, Major Samantha Carter and Teal'c.
Jack looked out at the underground complex they found themselves in. He mock shivered.
"Whoooo, spooky. What is this place again Carter?"
"I don't know sir," she answered truthfully. "It was one of the addresses in the Ancient database. There were a lot of Ancient notes about this place but Daniel couldn't translate them. Don't you pay any attention to our mission briefing sir?"
"Nope," he replied breezily. "Daniel, why couldn't you translate it?"
The archaeologist was on his knees looking at the walls.
"It was an obscure dialect, Jack," he said absentmindedly. He continued to examine the walls. There appeared to be an alcove set in the wall.
"Hey guys. Come look at this."
The alcove was empty save for a few odd metallic tubing that came down from the top of the alcove. Jack went with the standard response used whenever he came face to face with advanced alien technology.
"Carter, what am I looking at?"
"I…don't know."
"You don't know?"
"Well, it doesn't seem similar to any alien technology we've encountered before. If I were to guess, I'd say that it's some sort of power cable or something. It looks like it was supposed to be connected to something."
They explored further into the tunnels, with Teal'c taking point. He was the first to notice the change. Slowly, the tunnels had gone from being carved in rock to having metal walls. The metal was strange; different from anything they had seen before. And then there were the symbols.
Strange alien hieroglyphs decorated the walls. They only had a passing similarity to Goa'uld hieroglyphs. At least Goa'uld symbols looked sane. These ones bent at strange angles and seemed to warp geometry. Daniel had attempted to study them before actually getting physically ill from looking at them so closely. After he had vomited in a corner, even he'd decided that sometimes curiosity was bad for you.
Jack had had enough.
"That's it. We're turning back. I'm not walking any further into a tunnel filled with…death pictures."
The rest of the team unanimously agreed with him. The whole complex seemed to give off an evil feeling. Even Teal'c was getting creeped out. The turned around and walked back the way they had come.
It was a few more minutes before Teal'c's keen senses alerted him to something.
"O'Neill!"
"Yeah?"
"This is not the way we came!"
It was true. Somehow, their sense of direction had been turned on their head. Instead of heading back to the gate, they had wandered even further into the tunnels. A sickly green glow now seemed to emanate from the walls.
Eventually, after much turning back and changing of direction, they reached a chamber lined in that unidentified metal. The hieroglyphs were mercifully absent in this room.
There were two alcoves in the room, exactly like the one Daniel had found earlier. These ones were still filled however. Inside each alcove was a strange statue made of the same sort of strange silvery metal. The statues were surprisingly humanoid in shape however. They looked nothing more than metal skeletons gripping strange looking staffs.
The center of the room was taken up by something that vaguely resembled a Goa'uld sarcophagus. It was made of the same metal that seemed to be everywhere.
"What is all this? Teal'c, have you ever seen anything like this before?"
"No O'Neill, I have not."
Daniel was looking at the skeletons. He looked up.
"The architecture seems to be somewhat Goa'uld like in nature, but I've never seen anything like it before. It's like someone mixed Goa'uld and Ancient architecture together."
He continued talking before trailing off as he saw Sam.
"Sam, what are you doing?"
Sam didn't know what she was doing either. Something was calling to her. Something alien. Something that demanded to be released. She was helpless to resist.
In a trance-like state, she walked over to the great sarcophagus in the middle of the hall, before pressing her hand onto a large hieroglyph that was inscribed on the metal coffin.
The symbol began to glow green and a faint rumbling began to emanate through the complex. Sam collapsed limply on the ground. She was alive and aware. She could see what was happening but her body would just not move. She was breathing, but only shallowly, as if nearly all of her energy had been sucked into the sarcophagus.
Slowly, ever so slowly, it began to open.
"Major!" Teal'c roared as he sprang forward only to be stopped as the two statues leapt out of their alcove, trailing wires behind them. Their staffs glowed and began to crackle with arcane green lightning.
"What the hell!?" Jack cried. Wordlessly, both he and Teal'c raised their P90's and opened fire on the metal skeletons.
The bullets ricocheted off the skeletons without any noticeable effect. They continued to slowly advance forward into the gunfire. Behind SG-1, the doors to the chamber slid shut.
Both of them raised their staffs, somehow eerily reminiscent of a Jaffa warrior taking aim with his staff weapon. Green lightning filled the room as they fired.
Teal'c through both luck and his incredible Jaffa reflexes was able to duck down as a crackling green blast tore through the air directly above him. Jack was not so lucky. The green beam hit him directly in the chest.
Sam watched in horror as in a split second, her commanding officer was flayed alive, his skin disintegrating in layers under the beam. Momentarily, a blackened skeleton stood there, before even that dissolved into dust. She would've screamed but like the rest of her body, her lungs were gasping, sucked of energy by whatever lived in the slowly opening crypt. Silent tears poured down her cheeks.
The second skeleton stopped firing and simply swung it's staff at Teal'c. The blade cut through him like it was butter. There was no blood. A second later, the two bisected halves collapsed to the floor before disintegrating into dust. Sam tried to move her hands to grab her gun, to do anything!
But the force still held her down, helpless to do anything but watch as her friends died.
Daniel had pulled out his own gun and was firing maniacally at the creatures, without effect. One of them swung the blunt end of its staff and bludgeoned him into unconsciousness. It picked him and placed him at near the sarcophagus, next to Sam. She tried to reach out to his still form but could not. The detached scientific part of her mind wondered why they were being spared.
The sarcophagus opened completely open and an elegant silver metal arm reached out. It was made of the same metal as the skeletons but it seemed so much fluid and graceful. A tall figure climbed out. Sam recognised its presence. It was the same thing that had drained her willpower, leaving her like puppet with cut strings.
It was humanoid and yet so incredibly alien at the same time. A tall muscular being made of the strange metal, only with a reddish gold tinge to it. Its metallic skin seemed almost liquid as it rippled.
The two metal monsters knelt down and bowed to it, their staffs on the ground.
Its mind seemed to open into Sam's, a rush of alien feelings and emotions coursing through her brain. Nearly all of them were incomprehensible to her. All save one. Hunger.
Daniel was just beginning to wake up when he found himself lifted into the air by an invisible force and carried to the metallic alien-thing. Its hand reached down and grabbed him by the head.
Daniel got off one brief scream before his body was vaporised in a brief flash of light. The feeling of hunger in Sam's mind died down slightly, but was still as omnipresent as it always had been.
The being turned to Sam, it's face filled with a terrible and cold beauty. It radiated a sense of wry amusement.
Stand
She started as she felt the invisible bonds release before her muscles jerked uncontrollably, dragging her up until she stood in front of it. The being then spoke, in a smiling tone that seem filled with mocking, thoughtless cruelty.
"One of the Young Races? I suppose I must thank you for awakening me."
Sam's only response was to lift her P90 and fire at the being that had caused her so much pain, the being responsible for the murders of her team-mates.
The bullets stopped and froze in the air just before hitting the alien. It plucked one out of the air with a delicate hand.
"Projectile weapons? Hopelessly primitive projectile weapons too. Honestly, I thought this next time might prove challenging."
It breathed out a theatrical sigh.
"Oh well. I'll have to make do. I guess little challenge is better than no challenge at all."
Her gun was useless. She reached for her grenade only to have her fingers pass through it like it wasn't there. The being laughed.
'Yes, I noticed your grenades. I removed them when I was immobilising you earlier and replaced them with illusion. Wouldn't have hurt me anyway. But I didn't want you to hurt yourself."
She spat at him. It laughed even harder.
"Now, is that anyway to treat your god? Bow, little mortal. Bow and worship me and I may just spare your miserable life."
Now it was her turn to laugh.
'A god? I've heard that line before!"
It turned and looked into her eyes. And more horribly, she made the mistake of looking into its. As she stared into the glowing blue pits, she screamed as alien knowledge entered her head.
This was a being that had seen suns born and suns died. This was a being that had killed billions and manipulated even more for the sake of its own insatiable hunger. It was ancient, so incredibly ancient. Millions of years were as only a blink of an eye to this being. And to think, they had called the Ancients ancient!
The Ancients were only children playing with what they didn't understand compared to this being. It had seen the ends of Eternity and beyond.
She collapsed screaming, her mind folding under the weight of the knowledge of how insignificant she was, how the entire human race was.
How could she have ever tried to defy such a being? They were beyond such petty ideas of morals. The laws of physics were as playthings to this being. It's mocking, arrogant laughter echoed in her mind, ripping it apart.
BOW!!
Her legs folded beneath her as she found herself prostrating herself to the being and begging it for forgiveness. Tears ran down her face. Tears of shame. Shame for how she could have ever thought that she could disobey this glorious golden god.
Enough
"That was very amusing. I might not eat you after all. You would make a nice pet."
She fell back onto the cold metal floor. When the alien's thoughts receded, her mind was hers again. She found herself weeping again at the terrible ease at which the being had taken her mind and moulded it so she for a brief moment, worshipped it. What the hell was this?
"I am known by many names," the being said as if in response to her stray thought. "Some call me Artemorra, others call me Sathsarrion. Some call me Mohagg and some call me Harrimoch. I am Jackal God and Deceiver, Trickster and God. But I prefer the name Mephet'ran, the Messenger. Now tell me little morsel, how did you get to this tomb?"
Before she could answer, a cold chill seemed to spear her mind as its gaze looked into her mind. Old images showed up before her sight as it searched her memories before coming up with the image of a stone ring.
"A Stargate? That wasn't in my tomb when I went to sleep. What are they?"
She closed her eyes in pain as her mind was violated once more.
"Oh. How primitive. Far more advanced than I expected of anything in this little backwater galaxy but still…for a moment, I thought there might have been a race that was challenging. And now your memories tell me they're extinct. What a pity."
It reached down and stroked her cheek with one of its metallic fingers. She shivered as her skin went numb from the beings touch. She tried to get away but found herself paralysed once more.
"And now," Mephet'ran said with deliberate cruelty as it plucked her GDO transmitter from her vest. "You will tell me the iris code and Stargate address for the Stargate on that planet you call Earth."
She gasped as she attempted to get out of its clutches. It chuckled.
"Yes, I could just pluck the address and iris code directly from your mind if I wished. I could simply open the gate myself and deactivate the iris through the wormhole if I wished. But I won't. I want you to tell me, Samantha Carter. I will make you want to tell me. Simply so that deep down, you'll know that it was your fault that your homeworld was invaded, that it was your fault that humanity died. And die it will, for throughout this dirtball, my army of metal slaves awake."
It looked upwards, as if it was envisioning it already.
"I have seen it in your mind. The Goa'uld, the Nox, the Asgard, you humans. So many Young Races have grown proud and arrogant in the years since we left. I shall break that pride and show them that their masters have returned. A great crop was sown in the galaxy a long time ago and now we return to reap."
Fin