Hundreds of trees whispered in the light breeze that was sweeping the forest, birds were twittering in the top most branches. Leaves were falling slowly and silently down to earth, as the warm months of what was the Pegasus equivalent of summer changed into autumn. The colours of each leaf differed, most had the beautiful red, brown and gold colourings as was common on most planets, but the further into the forest some of the leaves were black, as though they had died. The tree trunks as well seemed to be a darker shade of brown, if not black the further into the forest you went. But ignoring these unsettling facts, the forest was a perfect picture of tranquillity. Not a sound could be heard apart from the tweeting of birds, until something disturbed the silence.
"Can we please have a rest?" Colonel John Sheppard closed his eyes in despair, as the grating sounds of Doctor Rodney McKay's incessant whining started up again. He had been complaining almost the whole way, and had only stopped when Ronon had turned menacingly on him with his hand resting on his blaster.
John had enjoyed the few moments of peace, before the scientist could resume his usual chatter. In a way McKay's gibbering was comforting, it meant that nothing was wrong. It was if the scientist ever became quiet that you had to worry, that usually meant that he was in trouble.
"For the last time Rodney," John said with patience acquired by being on the same team as McKay for three years "we'll stop when we reach the settlement. You said that you detected some energy readings from that direction, and we're following them."
"Yes, well…" Before McKay could reply a building became visible between the trees, Rodney's eyes widened and he pulled out his hand held scanner. John motioned for Teyla to watch their six, and he heard Ronon walking towards him.
The runner came beside him; neither of them spoke for a while as they continued to walk towards the large building looming up before them.
Finally Ronon broke the silence,
"I don't like this, Sheppard. Something feels wrong." John nodded, he knew better then to dismiss Ronon's 'feelings'. He called back to Teyla,
"Teyla do you sense anything?"
"No Colonel, as far as I am aware there are no Wraith on this planet." John nodded again, he trusted Teyla but he to had a feeling that something wasn't right with this planet.
The only person who seemed oblivious to any such feeling was Rodney, he had his head buried in his scanner, trying to find out the source of the readings which were no doubt coming from the big, scary looking building in front of them.
Finally they reached the tree line and peered out towards the building, it was situated in the middle of a meadow or what had once been a meadow. Now it was a charred mass of burnt grass and flowers, with the horrific sight of bones dotted around the building. With Ronon by his side he moved quickly into the open, his eyes flitting all around the clearing checking for any sign of movement. When nothing happened he moved towards one of the piles of bones and bent down to study it, he was no expert at this stuff but this looked like it had been there for years.
Surely they should have decomposed, he knew for a fact that it took a couple of hundred years for bones to completely decompose but these looked like they'd been here for a bit longer than that.
"Sheppard." John looked up at the sound of his name, to see Ronon stood by a section of the wall that appeared to be a door. Rodney was staring wide eyed around the place, whilst Teyla was patiently trying to get him to move faster.
"After you Ronon." John said jovially, as he reached the runner and stared at the section of the wall that was the door. Ronon smirked, and pulled out his blaster ready to shoot a hole in the door.
"What? You can't just shoot it!" Rodney practically yelled,
"Why not?"
"Because this looks like Ancient design, we can't just blast a hole in the side of some Ancient building!"
"Yes we can."
"No we can't! Look the Ancients must have put some kind of opening mechanism around here somewhere! It'd be better to open the door then blast it open!"
Ronon put his blaster back in it's holster, his expression mutinous. John and Teyla were close to laughing, but one glance from Ronon soon had them looking serious. They searched around for some sort of device that could open the door, but nothing turned up. There were no lit panels anywhere, and Rodney was looking sulky.
"Can we try my way now?" Ronon asked trying to keep the smirk off his face but failing miserably, Rodney didn't say anything but simply glared up at the building.
Ronon pulled out his blaster and fired a single shot at the door. Instead of blasting a nice hole in the metal, the door seemed to absorb the shot. The whole team stared at it in disbelief,
"Okay, how did it do that?" John said to no one in particular, when no one answered he walked towards the door and put his hand against it. The metal was warm, probably from the blast. Slowly he moved his hand an inch or two to the left and he found something sticking out, he ran his hand over it and the door opened silently.
"Ha, see I told you there'd be something like that!" Rodney shouted in glee, "See you guys never listen to me, and I'm nearly almost always right! Ha, well come on then let's go in."
For a few seconds John was speechless with shock, normally Rodney would be the last person to tell them to go into a strange building where anything could be lurking. Finally he managed to regain his composure, and walked smartly through the open door and into the corridor beyond. As he entered the long corridor he noticed that bits of rubble littered the floor around him, it seemed that an air assault had been carried out and bits of the ceiling had caved in.
He heard the other three carefully walking through the open door, he didn't turn back but instead walked further down the corridor towards another door not to far away. As he drew closer to it, an inexplicable feeling of uncertainty flickered through him. He mentally shook himself to try and collect his thoughts, but he could still feel something in his gut that was telling him that this was a bad idea.
He ran his hand along the wall and the door opened with a soft 'whoosh'; the first thing that hit him was a terrible stench of rotting flesh. He began to cough, trying hard not to retch.
"What the hell is that smell?" Rodney asked faintly, as he too fought the urge to throw up.
"I believe it is the stench of rotting flesh." Teyla answered, she had moved past John into the darkened room. Her well-trained eyes flitting across every inch of ceiling, wall and floor and finally spotting the outline of five rotting corpses lying haphazardly on the floor. She turned away quickly; the stench and sight were making her eyes water.
"Wraith." Ronon said simply, he seemed the only one not affected by the horrific sight and smell. He followed Teyla into the room and knelt down next to one of the bodies, he examined it closely, amazingly he did this without touching the body at all.
"This Wraith wasn't killed by the others, or any other creature. There's no external wounds, it must have been something else. Possibly something in the air or..."
"WHAT?" Rodney practically yelled, "There might be an air born pathogen in here and no one bothered to TELL ME!"
"Rodney, if there is an air born pathogen currently in this room then there would have been no way for us to detect it. And also all of us have most likely been exposed, we should contact Atlantis and let them know of our predicament." Teyla looked around at her fellow team members, two of whom nodded their approval. Rodney however was too engrossed in realising his own mortality to notice.
John nodded slowly, trying to think about what was best. Clearly Teyla's idea was the best course of action, but that would mean sending Carson and a medical team over in HAZMAT suits.
"Let's have a scout around first, we have no idea if whatever killed these Wraith really was air born! Let's check it out first. McKay can you work these consoles?" He turned to see the scientist's eyes wide, his mouth opening and closing slowly. He looked like a fish that had just seen a rather large shark coming towards it.
"Rodney?"
"Hmm?"
"Consoles, go work"
"Oh what? Oh right. Now you need me, a minute ago it was 'oh be quiet McKay' now its…"
"It's still 'be quiet McKay', but now it's got an additional bit of 'try to get these consoles to work'." John smirked as McKay walked towards the nearest console, a quiet victory for Sheppard.
"What about the um... Wraith?" Rodney asked from his position by the console, Ronon walked noiselessly towards the first and unceremoniously slung it over his back. He then quickly moved over to the door and out into the corridor, probably to dump them in the forest somewhere. Quickly Ronon returned for the other four corpses, and finally the job was done. Rodney thankfully began to get to work on those consoles, his brow furrowed in concentration.
John moved to the door so that he could routinely check outside, he didn't want to be caught out at all. The Wraith had managed to sneak up on him too many times before; this was one of the times when he wanted to outsmart them. If they were still around here.
The minutes trickled past, punctuated by the occasional grunt from Rodney or the occasional yelp as something in the console electrocuted him. John couldn't help but smile as Rodney began to mutter to himself, about how he was too good for this kind of work and why didn't machines respect him?
Ronon was leant against a wall, fairly near to the scientist just in case anything went wrong. Teyla was stood further down the room, her eyes flickering from side to side as she tried to see through the enveloping darkness.
Please do review, I like to know what you guys think of my stories. It helps me become a better writer :) And thanks to all of those who have reviewed already. Hopefully I've managed to keep mistakes to a minimum, and thanks again.