AUTHOR'S NOTE:
(1)- Sorry for the long wait. Due to COVID-19 (I'm an essential worker) and the wildfires nearby, it's been an interesting few months.
(2)- I have borrowed passages and specifics from the book, movie, and show. They will not be marked or different in any way.
(3)-I'm really f*cking bad with languages and I don't trust Google Translate to translate things perfectly so: *This means the characters are speaking a foreign language*;whereas: *This means they're speaking an alien language*.
(4)-Forgive me for any grammatical/spelling/sentence structure errors. I do not have an editor.
Disclaimer:I do not own 'Stargate: SG-1', nor do I own 'Alien vs Predator'. I do not own any of the characters nor creations (i.e the xenomorph, or the Yautja), though all Original Characters are mine. I do not receive any compensation for my work. Pre-established characters will act Out-Of-Character at times, especially as the story progresses. The timeline in this story will deviate from the Stargate timeline, starting with episodes being switched around and/or completely left out/changed (and sometimes new "episodes"), and more heavily as the story goes on.
Enjoy…
THE PYRAMID
The three unblooded crept into the ooman village, the storm and snow that raged around them not at all hampering their progress. The thermal netting they wore beneath their armor kept the three warm and unbothered by the cold that would otherwise adversely affect the tasks ahead of them.
This was their kv'var chiva, the ritual that would make them Blooded warriors, full members of their clan, worthy to hunt bigger prey and to bring honor and glory to themselves. But first…
Careful not to attract the attention of the nearby group of hairless, clawless primates, the three warriors stopped just inside the building of glass. Two of them hung back, near the opening while their self-appointed leader procured a device from the pouch he carried. Roughly the size of their hand, the je'din was a smooth, three-sided device with a pointed top.
Their leader carefully set the je'din on the snow covered ground, quickly examining it for any flaws. When satisfied there were none, he gently tapped the pointed top with the pad of one digit. The device lit up for a mere second, before it sputtered out.
*S'yuit-de.* The warrior closest to the door scoffed. *Idiot. Push harder.*
The leader gave a low growl in response but did so. Nothing happened.
*Perhaps 'look-out' would be more within your capabilities.* The third warrior mocked. *How do you expect to hunt anything if you cannot activate a simple je'din?*
*Ell-osde' pauk. Shut up, I have it.* Using more force, the leader tapped the top a third time. This time, the device lit up with a soft, golden glow. A hum could be heard only by their ears, telling them it was working. *Come, we begin now.*
~*~QUINN~*~
Quinn checked the winch system, trying to keep his balance against the heavy winds. The snow continuously built up against his goggles, making it damn near impossible to see. Cursing under his breath, he reinforced the bright red tent over the system, trying to make sure it wouldn't be blown away in the storm. Normally, he'd let the beakers be, let them deal with the issues that were cropping up but Weyland and that damned Stafford were down there as well and if he lost the two of them, he and his men wouldn't get paid.
That was unacceptable.
So he was first watch out in this fucking storm, making damn sure there was no chance of the winch and pulley being destroyed, and checking to make sure no other team showed up to take the job, let alone sabotage his equipment.
Satisfied the tent wasn't going anywhere for the time being, he turned around and found himself face to face with a monster.
Quinn stepped back in surprise. The creature stood almost a foot and a half taller than himself. It was decked out in shiny armor plating, and the mask over its face had small tusks protruding from where he assumed the mouth to be. His impression of the creature took less than half a second before his training kicked in. Quinn brought his G36 up, firing the moment he could.
He barely got three shots off before something slammed into him from the side, knocking him clean off his feet. He crashed into a wooden structure just off to the side of the gaping hole in the ice, the gun slipping out of his grasp. With an angry yell, he was back on his feet in seconds, grabbing the first thing his hands made contact with. He hit the creature as hard as he could, but the creature raised an arm to block and the thick wood shattered into splinters.
The creature roared. Quinn spotted his gun not too far from where he was and dove for it, but mid-jump he felt the creature hit his ribs, sending him instead down the hole.
Desperately, Quinn grabbed at the walls and the cabling of the winch system, looking for anything that would slow him down. He yanked his ice axe from his belt and struck it into the ice, spraying shards everywhere. For a moment it looked like it would actually work, then Quinn lost his grip on the axe. He screamed as he disappeared down the tunnel.
~*~BASE CAMP~*~
"Say again, Nostromo, I cannot hear you! Please repeat!"
The incoming transmission from the ship was breaking up. The tone was urgent, but no words could be made out. Mikkel tried tuning the frequency but threw the headset down in disgust when the entire transmission cut out. "To hell with it. Sven! Find Quinn, tell him we can't get the radio to work with all this interference."
Sven nodded and headed out, making a beeline for the pulley system. Instead of Quinn, all he found was Quinn's weapon and some splintered wood. His eyes slowly traveled to the hole and his gut practically dropped to the ground. "Fuck."
~*~THE PYRAMID~*~
Miller
"Stay close, Adria." Aaron murmured to his student as the group made their way into the pyramid. As they walked, Lex dropped a glowstick every ten feet, marking a path back. They would glow for several hours before fading.
Aaron took in their surroundings, overwhelmed by what he was seeing. There were ancient writings and pictograms everywhere, covering practically every wall. Large statues loomed over them, depicting two creatures in battle. It was like nothing Aaron had ever seen, both on Earth and offworld. 'Daniel would have one hell of a time if he saw this,' he thought to himself.
Beside him, Adria was taking picture after picture of their surroundings. "This is incredible," she told him.
"Yeah," was all he managed in return. The bad feeling was returning, closing in fast. "Adria—"
"Dr. Miller!" Thomas called out to him. "Come look at this."
Aaron and Adria made their way over to the wall his colleague was at, studying hieroglyphs. "Look here. I recognize the Egyptian but not the other two."
"The second is Aztec," Aaron identified. "Pre-conquest era. The third is Cambodian; looks like a mixture of Bantu and Sanskrit."
"Then you were right," Weyland said to him, looking over his shoulder. "The pyramid contains all three cultures."
"That's what it looks like." Aaron noticed Adria staring at the hieroglyphs intently. "Can you translate them?"
She bit her lip, focusing. "...you may-choose?-to enter. Those who choose may enter?" Adria looked up at him. "That doesn't sound right."
"It's like an ancient welcome mat," James Montgomery commented dryly.
"Who taught you to translate?" Aaron ignored the comment.
"Funny, he kinda looks like you," she answered wryly, adjusting her camera.
Aaron smiled a little. "Well, it's not 'choose', it's 'chosen'. Only the chosen ones may enter." The feeling of dread in him grew, though he wasn't sure why.
"I've never seen anything like it," Thomas said. "It's like some kind of hybrid language, containing both Egyptian and Aztec characteristics."
"Well, the readings I'm taking are strange," Montgomery said. He'd moved an opposite wall, taking a spectral analysis. "This reading says the stone is at least twelve-thousand years old."
"What!?" Adria sounded astonished.
Aaron's face tightened. "Take another reading."
"This is the third one I've done. They all say the same thing."
That didn't make any sense. That meant the pyramid was far older than the ones in Egypt, built long before Ra found Earth. Was it possible a Goa'uld was on the planet before Ra? Or some other alien race? The possibilities filled Aaron's mind, swirling around as he tried to make some kind of sense of it all. Had they, the SGC, been wrong this whole time? It was starting to look like it. Maybe the Goa'uld weren't the first after all.
"Let's keep moving." Weyland's voice brought Aaron back to reality. "There's more I want to see."
Aaron gestured for Adria to go first, after Verheidan.
As they made their way deeper into the pyramid, none of them noticed when a single stone sank into the floor behind them.
~*~CENTRAL CORE~*~
At the heart of the vast central chamber was a deep pool of freezing vapor, not unlike the kind created by liquid nitrogen. Large, thick chains of a material not found on Earth ran from the ceiling down, disappearing into the pool.
The trigger unknowingly tripped by the humans activated, causing the chains to start moving, slowly pulling something from the vapor pool. Slowly, a xenomorph queen was lifted.
Built around the queen was a simple but intricate machine, holding her firmly in place. A complex web of pipes and tubes pierced her body in numerous places. The machine that held her prisoner was of yautja design, containing features familiar to only them. The chains continued lifting the creature; shackles were attached to every limb and several places on her back. There were even holes punched through the edge of her crown-like head, allowing chains to be run through them, securing her further.
The chains reached a certain point and locked into place, holding the monstrously beautiful creature high in the air, a great black dragon caught mid-flight; a thin sheet of ice covered the xenomorph's head, residue of the vapor that stored her.
The ice began to crack.
The twin mouths of the queen began to move, snapping at the air. She was beginning to wake, struggling and straining against the chains in vain. The machine held.
~*~SACRIFICIAL CHAMBER~*~
Adria
The chamber they entered was nearly pitch black. The crew worked quickly and within minutes, the room was flooded with bright light, revealing a moderately sized chamber. Most notably, in the center of the room were seven slabs, set up in a circle, head to head. They circled around a carved stone grille that was built into the floor. Beneath that, all was dark. On each slab rested a mummified corpse.
Weyland touched one of the stone slabs. "These are…?"
"Sacrificial slabs," Miller answered.
"Just like the Aztecs and the ancient Egyptians. Whoever built this pyramid believed in ritual sacrifice," Dr. Burns explained.
Adria was staring at the far wall, where a mound of pristine human skulls were stacked neatly, about six feet high. "You can say that again."
"They're almost perfectly preserved." There was awe in Dr. Burns voice.
Adria made her way over to a slab, examining the remains closely. Like the others, this one had been freeze-dried by the harsh environment. Flesh and tendons still clung to the bones. The long-dead body wore a ritualistic headpiece and a heavy, jeweled necklace, its stones and metals gleaming dully under a millenia's worth of dust and ice crystals. She could see no sign of injury beyond a large gaping hole in the lower ribcage. Each mummified face was contorted, jaws open wide as if they were frozen in agony. Adria winced at the thought of whatever device would cause such a traumatic wound, before raising her camera once more.
Meanwhile, Miller looked around the room in more detail, noting the darkened spots that stained the surface—a silent testament to the slaughters this chamber had witnessed in the past. "Those who were chosen would lie here," he told the others. "They weren't bound or tied in any way. They went to their deaths willingly… men and women. It was considered an honor."
"Lucky them," Lex answered, her voice dry. She ran her fingers along a circular, bowl-like indentation at the base of the slab. "What was this for?"
Miller shrugged. "Opinions vary. Some archaeologists believe that's where the heart was placed after it was torn from the body."
Weyland was shining his flashlight through the grate on the floor. "Look at this."
Max Stafford crouched down beside the design, struck a flare and dropped it through, watching it fall. Everyone in the room heard when it hit something.
"How far down does it go?" Weyland asked.
"Hard to tell." Stafford got on his knees, getting as close to the grate as he could. "Maybe a hundred feet. It looks like there might be another room down there."
Adele Rousseau stayed close to Weyland, one hand on the pistol she carried in her belt as the two of them slowly walked around the room, taking in the vast amount of skulls and bones stacked along walls and in the corners. "There must be hundreds of them." His voice was quiet.
"At least," she agreed. Rousseau stopped beside Adria, taking in the corpse with not a little disgust. Her eye was caught by the hole in the body. "What caused this?" She tucked one finger into the cavity.
Adria shrugged. "It was common in rituals to take the heart of the victim."
"That's nice. But that's not where your heart is." The woman leaned in closer. "In fact, it looks like the bones were bent straight out." Rousseau met Adria's eyes. "Something broke out of these bodies." Adria glanced at Miller, who had been listening carefully. His expression was unreadable as he returned to the body he was examining.
A low corridor hidden between two ornate columns caught Adria's eye when she turned back to Rousseau. Flashlight in hand, Adria cautiously made her way toward it, shining her light into the gloom, hidden from the brighter lights that filled the rest of the chamber. She couldn't make out any details hidden beyond the entrance.
Carefully stepping over a skeleton, Adria moved inward, holding the flashlight tightly. Behind her, Rousseau followed. "Do you see anything?"
Adria did see something, or so she thought. She was forced to crouch low to the ground as the ceiling sloped downward sharply, bringing an end to the small chamber. "I'm not—" Adria screeched as something dropped onto her back from the narrow ceiling. She stumbled backward out of the small chamber, tripped over herself and landed with a crash on the floor. With a clatter, the thing—heavy and pale white, with multiple crablike legs—landed on the tiles next to her head. She felt a cold tail lash against her face.
Miller was by her side in a second, dragging her off the floor and away from whatever it was that attacked her. "Are you okay? What happened?" He asked urgently as the others surrounded the creature.
Breathing heavily, Adria nodded. "What the hell is that thing!"
The creature, whatever it was, was about the size of a bowling ball. It looked like a mutated crab, without the claws. It had a long tail off the back, and when stretched out on its back, the creature was approximately two feet long. From its belly was a long, petrified tentacle that reminded Adria of an umbilical cord.
Dr. Burns cautiously prodded it with his foot. When it didn't move, he crouched down, getting a closer look at it.
"Be careful," Stafford warned.
"Whatever it is, it's been dead awhile," Burns said. "The bones have calcified."
Lex looked at Adria, who still hadn't quite recovered from her scare. "You must have dislodged it from a crack in the ceiling."
"No idea how long it's been there, but the temperature has kept it preserved," Montgomery told them, also examining the creature closely. "It looks like some kind of scorpion."
"No, this climate's too hostile for a scorpion," said Lex.
"Ever seen anything like it?" Miller asked. Lex shook her head.
"Maybe it's a species that's never been discovered before," Burns said thoughtfully.
"Maybe." Lex's tone was doubtful.
Miller brushed the dust and ice off the back of Adria's coat. "You sure you're alright?" He asked her, concern heavy in his voice. "You aren't hurt?"
"I'm fine." Adria had calmed considerably in the few minutes that passed. "I wasn't expecting spiders as big as my face to be down here."
He ruffled her hair reassuringly as Stafford said, "With that bit of excitement over with, let's move to the lower room."
~*~ICE GROTTO~*~
Quinn's body resided near the tunnel entrance, covered in a light frost, unconscious from when he hit the bottom of the tunnel.
When he finally came to, he groaned. Everywhere hurt. He was cold, so cold. And he could tell he'd broken a lot of bones, though he wasn't sure which ones. His heart was beating slowly and as he blearily looked around, he could see some blood.
He glanced over to where the tunnel began and saw the creature that had sent him down the tunnel. Except there were three of them. Quinn held his breath as they drew closer, wondering if they saw him.
Quinn held his breath as the creatures walked straight past him. They were so close he could have reached out and touched them. After a moment, Quinn craned his neck to see where they were going. He could see two of them headed for the pyramid. Just when Quinn thought he was safe he turned his head, just to see the third creature standing over him, wrist-blades extended.
Quinn's scream was cut short.
~*~SARCOPHAGUS CHAMBER~*~
"We're below the sacrificial chamber." Lex's voice echoed as she checked her digital watch. Ahead, the faint glow of the dying flare confirmed her words. The small group made their way to the flare, looking up. They could see light from the floodlights set up in the sacrificial chamber and hear the faint voices of the team above them. They had left behind about half their people to get started on identifying and sorting everything in the sacrificial chamber.
Adria glanced around the chamber they were in, taking in her surroundings. After her scare with that weird crab creature, she was on high alert for any other small surprises.
"Is that what I think it is?" Lex's voice caught everyone's attention.
The light from the flashlights revealed a large crate sitting on top of a raised, tiled platform two steps high. The object itself was fifteen feet long and four feet tall, resembling a coffin. It was constructed of dully gleaming metal coated by a thin film of glittering ice.
"A sarcophagus," Miller breathed, moving toward the object. For just a moment, his fears and worries were forgotten. He ran his hands gently over the gleaming surface. This was unlike any other sarcophagus he'd ever seen. On the lid were three dials, one increasingly larger than the other. "This is incredible."
Weyland had moved up beside him, taking it in. "Can you open it?" He asked.
"No." Even if Miller wanted to, he doubted he could. The inscriptions on the sarcophagus weren't hieroglyphs, nor pictograms, or anything else that he recognized. Instead, lines and dots covered the lid and sides, forming what he assumed could be some kind of written language, but definitely nothing he recognized. "I don't know what this is, but we should proceed with extreme caution, Mr. Weyland."
Weyland scoffed, waving off Miller's concerns. "Verheidan, Stone, get this thing open."
"I really think we should wait on this," Miller insisted. "Who knows what's inside?"
"Only one way to find out," Verheidan said gruffly, pulling a crowbar out of his backpack. "Move." He shoved past Miller. As soon as Miller and Weyland were out of the way, Verheidan and Stone jammed the crowbar into the first opening they could find and began to wrench the lid open.
"Come here." Miller pulled Adria back several feet, watching and waiting for something to come out.
At first, it seemed the two men would be unsuccessful in prying it open. Then there was a sudden pop! and with a hiss, the wall of the sarcophagus began to slide outward automatically.
"Watch out!" Stone called as he and Verheidan scrambled out of the way, off the platform. At a safe distance, all of them watched as it slid to a smooth stop.
Weyland waited a moment to see if anything else would happen, then looked to Miller expectantly. "Well, Dr. Miller, You're the expert. What do you suggest we do now?"
With some apprehension, Miller approached the sarcophagus, peering inside. "Wow," he breathed.
"What's inside?" Adria asked.
"Come take a look."
Inside the sarcophagus were three artifacts. To Adria, they looked like futuristic guns. The one in the middle was at least as long as her forearm, while the other two were about half the size. All three of them were made of a material she couldn't identify.
Montgomery leaned in close, using his flashlight to illuminate every inch of the weapons. "Any ideas what exactly these are?"
"Nope," Miller answered breezily. "You?"
"Not a clue."
Stafford rolled his eyes. "Well it's a good thing we brought the experts."
"Yeah it is a good thing," Montgomery said enthusiastically. "Cause this is like finding Moses' DVD collection."
Weyland stepped away from the sarcophagus as he began to cough; deep, wracking coughs that made his entire body shake. Stafford handed Weyland a portable oxygen tank and with shaking hands, Weyland held the mask to his face, taking deep breaths.
"You okay?" Adria asked him.
Weyland nodded. "Little too much excitement," he answered hoarsely.
Lex nodded. "Alright, that's enough for today then. We've been at it for awhile so we're going to set up base camp tonight on the surface and get back at it first thing in the morning."
"You can go Ms. Woods," Stafford replied, his attention back on the weapons. "We're going to stay here."
"No." Lex's voice was final. "You wanted to leave without proper prep and we did. You wanted to be the first ones here, we are. You've claimed the find. It's yours. Now we move as a team and we're done for the day."
Adria agreed with Lex. She was eager to get back and see what Doctor Burns had found so far. "What do you want to do about these, Mr. Weyland?" Stafford asked in regard to the three guns.
"Take them. We can run tests on the surface."
"No!" Miller exclaimed, immediately alarmed. "No, don't touch them!"
Verheidan had already reached in and picked up the two smaller guns. Stafford ignored Miller's warning and gripped the third, pulling it up out of the sarcophagus. The moment Stafford removed the final gun, a hidden trigger activated with a deafening CLICK! The sound echoed around the chamber ominously.
For a moment, nothing. Then the walls of the chamber began to move. The way they had come in was sealed as a wall behind Lex opened up, revealing a long dark corridor.
Up in the sacrificial chamber, Burns, Rousseau, and the other five members of the expedition braced as the walls began to move, the entrances sealing as huge blocks of stone slid down from the ceiling. "Get something under there!" Rousseau yelled to two scientists near a closing gap. The scientists shoved the closest heavy metal case under the slab but it was easily crushed.
The team was trapped inside.
"Is everyone alright?" Thomas asked as Rousseau began looking for some kind of escape.
~*~PYRAMID ENTRANCE~*~
Just as the three unblooded entered the pyramid, the nature of their homing signal changed, the pulse becoming more insistent. The three of them exchanged concerned looks at the sudden change in their plans, and together they sprinted into the pyramid.