Disclaimer: I do not own any rights to the Stargate franchise or its storylines. My intention is not infringe upon those rights, so please don't sue me.
The Young Weapon
Chapter 2: The Assailant Revealed
Back on the Atlantis base, Dr. Jennifer Keller was adjusting the vitals on the recovering members of SG-8. Mr. Woolsey walked into the infirmary followed shortly by Colonel Sheppard who had just returned from an Air Force board meeting on Earth.
Dr. Keller greeted both men with a cheery attitude despite the current situation. She removed the helmet from her orange protective suit as she moved the plastic curtain which surrounded a section of the infirmary. "Hello, Mr. Woolsey, and welcome back Colonel Sheppard. Congratulations on your promotion, Sheppard. What can I do for you?"
"Thank you" replied Sheppard, "we just came to check up on SG-8's status. They aren't too banged up, are they?"
"Well, other than a few sprains and bruises," assured the doctor, "they'll be fine. Despite the fact that these two men were placed in a wall, the attacker fired automatic gunfire into the wall before putting them in there creating air holes, which allowed for them to breath."
"Then what's with the plastic?" said Sheppard.
"And where is Captain Murphy?" followed Woolsey.
"When we ran a scan on Gibbs and Simon, we found a foreign element in the nerve system running along their spinal chords," explained Keller. "It doesn't appear to be affecting them apart from their injuries, but you never can be too careful. As for the Captain, he hasn't returned. But his subcutaneous transmitter is still working, so at least we know he wasn't killed by the attacker."
"How do you figure it was an active human assailant?" asked Woolsey.
"There was a message on the opposite wall inscribed with the same gunfire: 'STAY OUT'" said Sheppard.
"Once the rest of SG-8 was extracted from the wall and brought back to base, I noticed there was blood in Lieutenant Gibbs' mouth," explained Dr. Keller. "It couldn't have been his own because when we examined him, there weren't any visible lacerations in his mouth or anywhere else on his body, nor that of his teammates. The attacker left SG-8 without a scratch."
"Which means we're not dealing with an amateur… maybe military-trained?" asked Woolsey.
"It's a little too early to say…" Sheppard rebutted.
Dr. Keller nodded in agreement. "SG-8 reported that they couldn't see whatever or whoever was staging the attack. But before Lt. Gibbs was stunned, which he could tell wasn't by a Wraith-class stunner; he seemed to bite down on something before he became unconscious. I just sent the sample to the lab to be analyzed."
"So as far as we know," summarized Woolsey, "it's not an animal we're dealing with."
"Hey, you never know," grinned Sheppard, "in this galaxy, anything can happen."
At that moment, an Asian man in medical uniform walked into the infirmary and handed Dr. Keller the clipboard he had in his hand. Dr. Keller received it and began to read it. A troubling expression crept over her face as she read on.
"You gonna tell us, Doc?" asked Sheppard. "What does it say?" As Dr. Keller described the results of the blood analysis, Mr. Woolsey and the Colonel perked up in surprise.
Before she could explain further, there was an abrupt interruption caused by a voice on the base's intercom system: "SG-1 and SG-4, please report to the briefing room…"
The two men stood up to leave. "You need to come up to the briefing with this," Sheppard requested. "The rest of the team is gonna want to know about this, along with what Zelenka and his team found out." Then both men and Keller exited the infirmary…
*****
Senior personnel from all the departments, McKay, Teyla, Woolsey, and SG-4 gathered in the briefing room, and as they sat at their seats, Sheppard and Keller opened up with the mission briefing:
"We've come across a slight obstacle on P5X-434. SG-8 returned yesterday at 0900." Sheppard stated. "They were ambushed by an assailant who is yet to be identified." Dr. Keller stepped forward with the test results in hand.
"According to the analysis of the blood found in Lt. Gibbs' mouth, SG-8 was attacked by a Replicator." The room reflected the same reaction as Sheppard and Woolsey. "But there was also human DNA cells fused with the nanites. This might explain why when Lt. Sullivan used his Lantean detection device, he detected everyone but the assailant; the scanner couldn't distinguish between the two anatomies, so it barley detected the attacker at all."
One soldier from SG-4 spoke up. "How can we be sure that there isn't more than one attacker?"
"I can answer that!" Zelenka leapt out of his seat with his data screen. "We took a closer look at the readings the research team brought back from the planet's complex system. We were unsuccessful in locating any camera recordings of the corridors at the time of the attack. But we were able find something better." He turned on his data screen and the briefing room's LCD screen activated to display the layout of the research facility. "The heat generated from the planet's core powers a unique detection system which can scan for heat signatures located within the rooms and hallways."
His fingers flew across the screen as the image of the layout focused on the hallway adjacent to where the three soldiers of SG-8 were found unconscious.
As the camera panned to adjust to the wall's view, the screen revealed one figure representing Gibbs' heat signature. As the multi-colored soldier stood guard in the hallway, a short figure emanating slight radiation crept out from the far corner. It appeared to be a female with long curly hair and an athletic build. After rounding the corner, she simply walked towards the lieutenant and stood behind him.
She placed her hand over his mouth and the next image the people of the briefing room saw was Gibbs falling to the ground as the female caught him to let him down easily. She remained stationary for a few moments while small red dots trickled from her left hand to the ground beneath her. She ripped a strip of fabric and seized the belt from Gibbs' unconscious figure to tie around her hand. After securing the belt tightly across her palm and wrist, she dragged Gibbs to a dark corner.
"That explains the blood…" Dr. Keller suggested.
"I don't get it, why didn't Gibbs see her?" inquired McKay.
Before anyone could answer him, the female shifted quickly and flattened herself against the nearest wall. The uniformed Lt. Simon speaking on the radio was seen walking towards Gibbs. While briskly walking down the corridor, he obviously passed the female figure who glared at him, ready to pounce.
As Simon was about to turn the corner where Gibbs laid, the female wrapped her arm around his neck and he also fell to the ground. She quickly looked around before taking Lt. Simon's automatic weapon. She cocked the gauge of the gun and sprayed gunfire along the wall. She dropped the gun and picked up Lt. Gibbs, but turned towards the footsteps of the oncoming military man entering from the next hallway.
The female stood still on one side of the hallway while Captain Murphy ran into the scene of the attack to find the two members of SG-8 lying on the ground. As the alert man scanned the empty hallway, the female playfully crept around him and waved a hand across his shoulder, at which he immediately reacted to. She slid her arm into the middle of his back and he hit the stone floor.
Before shoving the third man into the wall, she removed the radio strapped to his shoulder and the IDC pad from his wrist. She turned towards the oncoming footsteps of multiple pursuers and, with Captain Murphy's weight hoisted on the arm around her shoulder, ran out of the screen's visual range. The screen switched off and a deep murmur flooded the room.
McKay's pessimistic voice lifted over the many side conversations: "Great…a 90-pound assassination machine who takes prisoners. This universe is never boring, is it?"
"It hasn't been confirmed that anyone else has visited that facility for a long while," Teyla countered. "Most likely, she was just defending her territory."
Captain Hale, leader of SG-4, interrupted. "I don't think so…the way she was circling those guys before whatever she did to knock them out, it showed all the signs of a hunter."
"I agree," said Sheppard, "but like Teyla said, we haven't found any evidence to suggest that she aiming to take us out. I'm thinking she took Murphy along with his radio and IDC pad to get a heads-up if we go back there. Though I still can't figure out why those guys couldn't see her."
Zelenka interjected with his scientific opinion once more. "When we were watching the footage, we noticed that she was giving off slight forms of radiation. At first, we thought it was just body heat, but perhaps her body gives off the same radiation that an Ancient invisibility device does--"
"We need to go back there." The murmurs fell silent, and the attention of the room was once again focused on Colonel Sheppard, who was still standing at the front of the room next to Dr. Keller.
Woolsey broke the silence. "This thing obviously knows the layout of this complex better than we do. With those abilities and the skills of a hunter, we would be going in blind."
"If what Zelenka said is right," Sheppard said, "she might try to dial in with the IDC and sneak into onto the base. If she can extract the IDC from Murphy along with other sensitive information about Atlantis, we would probably be able to track her, but she could do some serious damage."
McKay finally gave into Sheppard's plan. "We could probably calibrate the devices to detect heat signatures instead of life signs."
Sheppard turned to Woolsey. "All we need is the go-ahead…"
The room full of scientists and soldiers alike turned toward the civilian lead administrator. He looked back into the anticipating face of Colonel Sheppard and replied, "So authorized. Proceed with the mission, Colonel." Then, in a matter of seconds, the briefing room was empty…
*****
After strapping up and calibrating the detection devices, SG-1, SG-4, and Zelenka's science team met in the Gate Room. As the inner circle of the Gate rotated and locked onto the seventh glimmering symbol, the horizontal flush of water whooshed from the Gate and settled into a calm rippling plane.
As the eleven Atlantis members were about to step through into P5X-434, Sheppard was stopped in his tracks by Dr. Keller's radio call.
"Infirmary to Colonel Sheppard: there's been an update from Gibbs and Simon," she called through the static of his shoulder radio.
"This is Sheppard," he answered, "talk to me."
"One of the medical staff was trying to run a body scan on Lt. Gibbs," she said, "when he noticed that Gibbs wasn't responding to the doctor. We put them both under the scanner and discovered that other than there heartbeats, every cell in their bodies has been rendered dormant. I checked the results twice before I remembered that foreign element that was detected earlier."
Eager to return to the planet, Sheppard asked impatiently, "I need you to get to the point, Jennifer."
Jennifer complied. "It seems the foreign element released an enzyme that rendered there bodies dormant, a lot like the parasite that took over McKay's brain a couple months ago."
"Oh, don't remind me," McKay groaned at the memory.
"I think we need to bring the attacker back before it gets any worse. Although the enzyme hasn't shown any Replicator characteristics, she might be able to point us in the right direction." Keller suggested.
"What makes you think she would know how?" Sheppard asked.
Keller's static voice sprung from the radio speaker. "While watching the video in the briefing room, I noticed that she struck the soldiers at specific points on their bodies so as to knock them unconscious without killing them," which would suggest that she has thorough knowledge of the human anatomy.
"I suggest we apprehend her first, and then decide whether it's safe to bring her back to base," said Teyla.
"Alright, let's go!" ordered Sheppard.
And with their anti-Replicator weapons in hand, the eleven-man team walked through the Gate. They were immediately pulled into the aqua-blue tunnel of the Stargate wormhole, before entering the sunny but frigidly cold climate of P5X-434…