Chapter Eight

Ten Thousand Years Later

Year Two of the Expedition, 1328 hours(Atlantis Base Time)

The wind sailed high up into the air before coming down pulling the snow up from its resting place and spiraling it around before lettting it fall back down to its resting place. The snowy wind continued to spiral and spin through the ruins of the ancient outpost. Some of the walls in the settlement had collapsed with age, others had been knocked down by fierce fighting from the original culling and centuries of other fighting since then.

Captain Kurt Henderson stepped forward with his P-90 at the ready. His military boot dug into the hard snow and it gave a loud crunch as he stepped forward into the settlement. Beside him the loud crunches of Yansons boots could also be heard. They both walked in unison into the village, each one scanned their own side of the village. Yanson had the right side, Kurt had the left side. They both carefully scanned the ruins for any signs of hostiles.

Kurt walked forward and leaned inside the collapsed door of a building, its insides were covered snow and various other debris. Animal tracks criss crossed the inside of the room. There were consoles and other instruments in the room that had long since been fried by extreme cold. Kurt frowned when he saw the skeleton in the corner, he looked over at Yanson and whistled. The Marine turned and saw his Captain motion for him to come to him. Kurt waited for the man to move over to him before he moved into the room. He stepped over any debris on the floor and trudged through the snow towards the body in the corner.

Its bones were obviously very old and several bones were missing from the body of the person. Several other bones had tiny teeth marks on them, the skull was detached and laying next to the body. Kurt bent down and brushed some of the snow away with his gloved hands. It had two other objects near it, one looked like an Ancient scanner while the other looked like some sort of Ancient weapon.

"Look at this," said Yanson pushing the skull over to him with his foot.

Kurt looked down at the skull and saw it. There was a large gaping hole in its temple, the Ancient had commited suicide. Kurt stood and looked over at Yanson. He shook his head and walked out of the building, he turned on his radio as he walked. "Lee, it looks clear down here. You and Doctor Swenson can move to our position now."

"Copy that, were on our way."

Kurt looked up into the hills and saw the two dark objects emerge from the snow and begin to slowly make their way down the hill towards him. They both moved fairly quickly through the snow towards them. The two humans panted as they tried to move their heavier weight and get down the hill quickly.

They reached their team leader and waited for his directions, "we found some Ancient consoles in their, if you want to take a look?"

The doctor smiled and moved off towards the dark doorway, she stepped inside the building and saw Yanson standing inside. Kurt looked over at Lee, "we found an Ancient in their. It looks like he commited..."

A screech broke through the air from the room and both Lee and Kurt sprinted to the building. They ran inside with their guns at the ready. They looked over and saw the Doctor as she stormed out of the building and into the cold day air. Kurt followed her out, "what the hell was that?!"

She turned and looked at him, "theres a dead body in their if you didn't notice!"

Kurt exhaled and looked into the air for a second, he brought his gaze back down to her. He relaxed a bit and lowered his P-90. "Its just some bones of a person who died hundreds of years ago."

She yelled back at him. "Its bones!"

He rolled his eyes, "alright. If you want us to we'll move it out of there."

She nodded in reply at them before turning and looking off into the distance. Kurt walked back into the room and looked at his two other marines. "The doc apparently can't work with the bones in here." The other two men chuckled and looked at the bones. "So were gonna have to move them, I know thats really wierd. But we need to know what the Ancients used this place for."

They both nodded and everyone moved to the bones piled in a corner. Kurt looked over at Lee and shook his head, "god damn this is stupid." Lee smiled as both Lee and him bent down and began to pick up various bones.

"Okay doc, you had better be able to determine what this place was," said Kurt standing next to the Doctor in the building.

"I already have," she replied. "I managed to uplink with the central computer and after going through some of their firewalls and barriers.."

"Wait, why does the computer still have power?"

"Thats just it. This place runs on a ZPM. In fact six of them," she relied to Kurt.

Kurt smiled, "whats their condition?"

"Unfortunetly, all but one are completely depleted. The last ones charge is almost out aswell."

Kurt shook his head and walked across the room, he looked around as he thought about this new information. This was his first chance to make his team the best in the base. Instead of it always being Col. Sheppards team that was the best team and having the praise of Dr. Weir. They always seemed to save the day at the last minute. It drove most of the other team commanders nuts. Their superior was not only in charge of them but he was also allowed to go on missions and his team always seemed to come across the most action.

Kurt had only seen some Wraith twice in his whole time at Atlantis. That was when he had first arrived with the Marines and Colonel Everett during the battle for Atlantis. He had come across one of the pilots of Wraith Dart and it had managed to shoot two of his men before he could put a full clip into its chest. Then later after the battle was over and the Wraith Hive ships were destroyed the survivors of the Wraith assault were still trying to do damage to Atlantis. Him and his security team had come across another Wraith as it placed a grenade where it would blast a hole in the structure. They had pinned it down and the grenade had gone off next to him but it had injured several of his men aswell.

"The good news is," she said waiting for Kurt to turn around. "This place had so many ZPMs for a reason," she said smiling.

"And whats that?," snapped Kurt as his patience began to grow thinner.

"This settlements purpose was to manufacture ZPM's and to load them onto vessels. Thats what that tower outside is for. A ship would descend through the atmosphere and land on that tower where those arms would activate an anit grav field around the ship."

Kurt walked back across the room, past Lee and Yanson. He looked at the Doctor, "Is there any left in storage?"

She smiled and began to type away at her computer, she frowned as the computer tried to firewall her again. She quickly managed to get around that and brought up the settlements inventory. The screen blinked several times and the computer hummed as it acessed the information. "Apparently they still have one shipment left that was supposed to be picked up by a ship called the Nona."