"What's that?" Moffatt said quietly, pointing.
They had been walking for a while, the terrain always getting lower, but also increasingly rocky. The sky was now pitch black, so Taylor had ordered every member of both teams to don their night vision goggles. It would be bad enough in normal gravity, but when it was thirty-four percent higher than Earth's, a single slip would be considerably more painful and damaging here.
Taylor followed Moffatt's outstretched finger to a distant, faint cluster of lights. It looked like a small outpost or village from this distance. Moffatt's eyesight and observational skill were two more reasons why Taylor was glad to have the medic on his team, because the buildings were over a mile away and at least four hundred feet below them – they had only recently discovered they were on a plateau above a vast undulating plain. The plain itself seemed to be mostly featureless, except here, where it was positively littered with rocks, boulders, small hills, trenches and large clumps of the spiky grey shrub they had encountered – it all had an oddly unnatural feel to it.
Slipping his goggles up and turning them off, Taylor pulled a set of high-tech binoculars from his tactical vest and raised them to his eyes. With their own in-built light amplification active, he zoomed in on the light cluster.
"I think we can safely say we've found something. Good spot, Kelly."
The buildings were squat, angular and tough-looking – resembling reinforced military bunkers more than anything else. Their walls were angled at forty-five degrees to the ground, made out of a combination of what looked like concrete and steel. Ragged banners fluttered from strange looking flagpoles. He clicked the night vision off. With the structure's own surprisingly dim lighting, he could just make out colours – browns, reds, blacks and bright, shining silver.
Taylor lowered the binoculars, and carefully made his way to the edge of the precipice, lying down and raising the binoculars again. Alongside him, Halverson, Moffatt and Werner followed suit, producing their own binoculars. Jarvis and the five marines stayed back and kept watch for any unwelcome surprises.
"Definitely not Asgard in design, but it looks like reasonably new construction, and the design would suggest a race with a tech level somewhere close to our own." Halverson whispered.
"Looks to me like a bunker, or some kind of military installation." Werner said.
"So why aren't all the buildings inside that fence? Looks almost like a farm or a ranch in a way."
The fence in question was at least three metres high and very long. It appeared to be composed of jagged metal spars, and it seemed to completely enclose the odd looking area of boulders and rugged terrain beneath them, an area of several square miles. Only two of the flat bunker like buildings sat inside the perimeter.
"No...no, not a farm. It's more like a zoo enclosure...or a safari park. It's like an artificial environment." Halverson said, perplexed.
"I think you're right. So what are they keeping there? And who's they?" Taylor said.
"I don't know if you're right about that – I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that look like a gun turret on the roof of the biggest building?" Werner said, fidgeting uncomfortably. Something felt very wrong about this to him.
"Yeah, but I don't know what kind of weapon. Looks almost…wait…movement." Moffatt breathed.
"Got it." Taylor whispered, switching back to night vision and zooming the stabilised binoculars in on Moffatt's second catch of the day.
The smaller of the two structures within the fence had just opened on one side, and out of this opening a man sprinted. He ran wildly, looking back over his shoulder as he did. For a minute, they watched as he tried to get as far away as possible from the building he'd come from, hiding behind rocks before moving on, searching desperately for a good hiding place.
The small building opened again.
"Oh my God." He murmured to himself, hearing similar remarks from Halverson, Moffatt and Werner.
The creature exiting the building was bipedal, but otherwise completely inhuman, covered as it was in dense fur. With its hunched back and long horizontal neck belying its height, Taylor couldn't tell how large it was, but compared to the human who had exited minutes before, he guessed it stood at least eight feet off the ground. It didn't help that it wore strange, asymmetrical armour over its torso, apparently consisting of strips of hide and metal plates. The alien possessed long but immensely powerful looking front limbs, each ending in a hand with three digits. It's rear legs were hunched, like those of a dog, and built in a way that suggested enormous power. Behind it a long, thick tail swayed. But the single most disconcerting thing was its head. He'd seen a head like that before – an angular, evil looking skull with two circular eyes that burned brightly in the infrared of night vision, between which there was a long tapered muzzle, and at the back of the skull, two sharply pointed, forward facing ears.
"Oh my God…that looks a lot like a…a…" Halverson began.
"A werewolf." Taylor finished. He shuddered involuntarily, despite himself. Something told him what they were witnessing would not end well, but he knew he couldn't take his eyes off what was about to happen.
"It's...hunting him."
As the lone human stumbled through the rough terrain, Taylor and his team could only watch as the alien werewolf moved closer and closer, circling around the doomed man with blinding speed. Every time he snapped his head to look, the creature was already gone, moving silently and swiftly to its next position. Every time this happened, it moved closer to its prey.
The man must have known there was no hope – he stopped, bent down, and picked up the largest, most pointed rock he could find. There was no way he could have known the alien was directly behind him, creeping steadily closer, now only twenty feet away from him. It lunged, rushing towards its prey, all pretence of stealth forgotten. The man whirled at the sound of his attacker.
"We have to help him!" Moffatt hissed.
Taylor was already bringing his carbine up and sighting through it when he heard the terminal, terrified scream intermingle with vicious snarling. The scream ended abruptly, replaced with a chilling gurgle. Taylor let the carbine drop – shooting the creature now would serve little purpose except to give away their position.
"There's another one." Halverson said, trying to disguise the fear and horror in her voice.
The lycanthropic alien wandered into the brightly lit area between the buildings, it's arms cradled a weapon resembling a huge, vicious looking battle-axe or halberd. A second, larger werewolf without a weapon but with more armour appeared from a different building, approaching the first with speed. As it neared the first it struck with a ferocious backhand – the smaller alien dropped it's weapon as it flew backwards several metres under the force of the blow.
"In this gravity…how strong is it to do that?" Werner asked hesitantly. Nobody answered, because nobody wanted to consider how disturbing the answer would be.
As they watched, unable to look away, the fight continued. The two aliens were ripping each other apart now, slashing and clawing at each other with savagely long talons, landing open palm punches and trying to topple each other with surprisingly intricate and well executed sweeps and kicks. This went on for almost five minutes, with neither combatant appearing fatigued or troubled by its injuries, the fight losing none of its ferocity.
The larger alien toppled the smaller one with a swift kick and rushed in with his jaws gaping. Even at this distance, Taylor could see row upon row of evil-looking fangs, more like the mouth of a dinosaur than a dog. The long, curved fangs sank into the neck of the fallen alien, decisively ending the fight with a pool of blood on the sandy ground. The smaller werewolf twitched for a moment, before becoming still. Within seconds, a dozen more of the aliens poured out of the buildings to surround the victor.
"I think we just saw somebody being promoted." Halverson suggested.
"I've suddenly got a bad feeling about this – I don't think they're going to be friendly." Taylor said. Nobody disputed or contested this idea.
"Major…I think we should consider getting back to the gate and getting off this planet." Werner said, with an urgency in his voice that Taylor completely understood.
"I think you're right. Jarvis?" Taylor replied.
The former Royal Marine Commando stood up from where he'd been crouching, with his night vision goggles down, and moved over to his commanding officer.
"We're leaving, I want you on point. Take – "
"Major…" Halverson murmured fearfully.
"Wait. Take the same path we took, as soon as – "
"Major, they just looked straight at us. They know we're here. They're pointing at our position and talking. And…oh no. Some of them are running this way. Fast."
Taylor's blood chilled. What had changed? What had happened to alert the aliens to their presence? There had been no radio transmissions, nobody had raised their voices – and if the wolf analogy held, the wind was blowing the wrong way for them to have picked up their scent. All that had changed was that Jarvis had stood up.
"Jarvis – are your goggles using IR illumination?" Taylor whispered hoarsely.
"Yes sir."
"Turn it off! Everybody, turn off anything putting out infrared light, now! They can see infrared!"
Hurriedly, every soldier struggled to disable the IR lamps on their goggles and turn off infrared range finders. Moffatt and Halverson had nothing emitting – the binoculars worked exclusively with ambient radiation. All they could rely on for navigation now was passive infrared and light amplification.
"Dave…they're closing fast." Halverson said anxiously. She was right; he could already hear the aliens howling and snarling as they drew near at terrifying speed.
"Everyone, back to the gate, now!" Taylor said. He slipped his night vision goggles down, careful to make sure they weren't emitting anything, and watched as the rest of the two teams jogged past him before setting off himself.
"Nesbitt, Llewellyn, how's the gate coming?" he said into his radio as he tried to catch up with the rest of his team.
There was no response.
"Jarvis, keep trying to raise the gate, the terrain may be blocking our signal."
Having found a route back up a thirty-foot rock face, jumping and crawling from boulder to boulder, both teams had resumed jogging, but the Stargate was at least twenty minutes away. Behind them, they could hear the aliens – they were close. The lycanthropic creatures were not coming to welcome the explorers, that much was obvious to Taylor. As he picked his way through the last section of the heaped rocks, feeling pebbles and fragments of rock slip away under his feet, he heard and felt hundreds of small metallic objects moving at incredible speed slam into the rock all around him. He saw a brief flash of fiery orange. Close by, one of the marines screamed. They were being shot at by alien projectile weapons.
"Keep moving but return fire!" Taylor yelled, pulling himself back onto reasonably level ground. He saw that the marine who'd been hit wasn't down, but he was clutching a bloody wound in his shoulder and trying to raise his M4 carbine. Ahead of him, Jarvis stopped, turned and sprayed the LMG behind Taylor. Something alien yelped angrily.
Taylor kept moving. As sporadic gunfire erupted around him, his radio crackled.
"Llewellyn, is that you? Stand by." he yelled over the bark of several assault rifles. He spun, quickly surveying the scene.
"Jarvis! Rocket, there!" he yelled, pointing. Instantly, the sergeant slung his LMG even as he shrugged the AT4 launcher off his shoulder, raising and aiming the disposable anti-tank and anti-structure weapon in one fluid movement. Within three seconds, the missile had left the tube and streaked towards Taylor's designated target.
Taylor watched as the warhead slammed into the unstable outcrop they had just climbed and detonated, but he wasn't taking any chances. Swiftly, he discharged the compact grenade launcher on his carbine, watching the 40mm high explosive grenade smash into the exact same spot. Unable to deal with the overwhelming explosive force, the mass of rock separated as the Major had intended, taking most of the rock face with it – including the route the humans had used to climb. A dense wave of boulders, stone and dirt rained down on the approaching horde of slavering alien warriors, crushing and maiming many of them and making it almost impossible for the rest to follow straight away. Taylor felt somewhat gratified – not only had his desperate plan worked and bought his people more time to escape, but Sergeant Jarvis hadn't paused or questioned the order for a second.
"Everybody, move, move, move! Llewellyn, go!" Taylor yelled as he resumed moving towards the Stargate.
"Sir! We've been trying to get in contact with you! SG-3 dialled us fifteen minutes ago. They're still on the other side of the gate, they were sent to retrieve us or at least warn us. Dr Jackson discovered something about the tablet."
"Let me guess – 'under no circumstances go to PX2-95Y, lest you get hunted by alien werewolves'. Thanks, we've just discovered this for ourselves. If you encounter them, they have natural night vision, and can see infrared. Plan accordingly."
"Sir, there's something else. Something strange happened when I installed the crystal." Llewellyn said.
"Lieutenant, unless it is extremely relevant to our current situation, I think it had best wait. E.T.A. sixteen minutes. Don't dial the gate until you see us coming, I don't want to risk any of these things getting through. That's assuming the gate's working… the gate is working, isn't it?" Taylor responded.
"We dialled out successfully, but there's a hitch. We'll have to leave the control crystal in this DHD – the gate shuts down the moment it's removed." Llewellyn said.
Taylor was still jogging, but between the high gravity, low oxygen and rough terrain, he was already out of breath. But his brain was still as sharp as ever.
"Negative – I don't want them following us through. If you can't get the gate to stay open without the crystal for one trip, I want you to load the DHD with all the C4 and demo charges you can, and have a detonator ready. Once we're through, we'll blow it from the other side, and if necessary, the naquadah reactor as well. With luck, that'll seal the gate. Taylor out."
The terrain was tough, and it reminded Taylor of Afghanistan's mountains. Although the incline wasn't much by Earth standards, the high gravity and low oxygen made it feel far worse. They were retracing the same route they'd already travelled, so he knew the ground levelled out soon, but his lungs were still aching. Ahead of him, he saw that Moffatt had used her initiative, and brought the oxygen tank from her medical kit with her, and was now dispensing a little to each member of the team.
After a few minutes, Major Werner fell in next to him.
"Your stunt with the rocket bought us a little time, but not much. We can hear more of those damn things approaching from all sides, how the hell are we going to last another twelve minutes?" he asked.
"I have a few ideas."
Taylor stopped and held his breath. From behind him, he could hear something new, a deep, droning hum. Something that wasn't being made by a creature, but by a machine, and getting closer. He looked over his shoulder, and immediately wished he hadn't.
The alien aircraft was only a few hundred metres away when it fired. Two bolts of bright blue-white light appeared from its underside and sped towards them like miniature comets.
"Everybody down!" Werner yelled as the alien missiles streaked closer, slamming into the rock nearby, showering Werner and Taylor with hot gravel. The ground shook with tremendous force as two blue fireballs erupted. As the craft sped closer, Taylor got a good look at it. It was shaped like an arrowhead split down the middle, with a bullet placed between the two halves.
Taylor suddenly realised that the two points of the split arrowhead were spitting orange tracer – no, not tracer he thought. Every single minute projectile was glowing orange.
Thousands of tiny explosions in the rock were racing towards them. They were being strafed.
"Open fire!"
As the 5.56mm rounds from six carbines and two light machine guns filled the sky, the skin of the alien fighter erupted in sparks. But the craft continued to advance, apparently unfazed by the incoming fire. Cascades of orange and yellow poured off its skin as it sped closer, and Taylor wondered if their weapons had any effect whatsoever. As it came close enough for Taylor to contemplate using his grenade launcher on it, a trio of small explosions signified a successful hit, and the craft abruptly veered away trailing black smoke, the strafing run ended – to Taylor, the pilot presumably had more important things to worry about than shooting the alien invaders. One of the marines whooped with joy as the aircraft careered wildly around the sky, it's engines screaming, before dropping suddenly and smashing into the rock half a mile away with a huge orange and black fireball.
"Keep moving! The ones behind us won't take long to catch up." Taylor yelled. Let's just hope there aren't any in front of us, he thought.
The column of ten exhausted humans traipsed across the red rock. The ground had almost levelled out now – they weren't moving uphill anymore, but the terrain was still pitted and craggy, and they had a dense field of boulders to pass, still with five minutes to go before they were back at the gate. Taylor had seen this terrain travelling the other way, but they'd picked a different route.
Somebody screamed bloodily, the sound disappearing into the darkness.
"Garcia!" somebody shouted in an American accent.
Adrenaline flooded tired bodies. Nervous marines raised their assault rifles, they could hear the enemy, they knew one of them had fallen, but they didn't know where the enemy was.
From his vantage point at the rear, Taylor could see better than the others, and his blood ran cold as he saw dozens of pairs of bright, glowing eyes in the darkness to both sides of the column, hiding amongst the boulders. The aliens flanked them – Taylor knew now they weren't just being attacked, or repelled as invaders, they had been hunted from the beginning, the various attacks herding them. These creatures were more like wolves than he had thought; they were also intelligent, sapient, technically advanced, but still consummate pack hunters – and the thought was terrifying.
And one of the pairs of eyes was sprinting for the middle of the column – Halverson and a marine in its sights.
"Plan B, flanks!" he yelled.
Every human suddenly slipped their night vision goggles up and sparked a magnesium survival flare. The light of nine flares was bright enough to force them to squint, and Taylor was counting on the sudden bright light having blinded the werewolf aliens, especially in the infrared spectrum. Mere seconds later, a dozen grenades flew through the air into the boulder field – some of them, Taylor knew, were standard fragmentation grenades that would hopefully injure or kill enough of the aliens to improve their own odds of survival, and some were flash-bangs, intended to further disorient their attackers with blinding light and sound.
The aliens were screaming, and Taylor could now see most of them without night vision, clutching their eyes and howling. Some of the marines opened fire, and he could even hear the report of at least one pistol.
There was only one more element in Plan B. The humans were exhausted, but under threat of being mauled and eaten by alien werewolves, they found they could produce a surprising turn of speed.
