Four people in green camouflage fatigues came through a heavily fortified door together. They had been called soldiers, scientists, scholars, warriors, and government agents. For the past years, however, what they had truly been were adventurers. Day after day they had stepped through a portal into the unknown and faced challenges and dangers for which there was no way they could have prepared. Yet through cunning, determination, and the sheer luck of heroes they had managed to prevail time and time again, staving off destruction and winning rewards of knowledge and technology. They were SG-1.
They stood in the "Gate Room" deep beneath the earth in an underground complex known as "The Mountain", more formally called Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Base. In the center of this room stood a strange ring that had a diameter of twenty two feet—large enough to drive a truck through with ease. A ramp led up to this giant device. Surrounding the ring on all sides were soldiers dressed in combat gear on full active alert.
As SG-1 prepared for another of their missions, the group walked to the bottom of the ramp. Colonel Jack O'Neill was the leader of the team. He had a deep love for and loyalty to each of his three companions but had developed a casual, nearly sarcastic way of observing everything around him that made him seem slightly disinterested. That couldn't be further from the truth, unless of course, the other members of the team were talking about physics, archaeology, equations, or mythology.
Which was something they were doing almost all the time. Slightly in front of him was a blond haired woman with bright, intelligent eyes talking to a relatively young, brown haired man wearing glasses. The woman's name was Samantha Carter, a name that the top physicists in the world would recognize. Talking with Major Carter was Daniel Jackson who looked a bit out of place in the uniform, not as athletic as the other team members.
The final regular member of the team was Teal'c, who was not actually regular at all. He was a Jaffa, a humanoid implanted with an alien symbiote with the sole purpose to serve as one of the guards of the alien race and regard them as gods. Yet, Teal'c had turned against his masters, denied their godhood, and even destroyed the one who had enslaved him. Yet, despite this treachery against the aliens, he was possessed of a loyalty unsurpassed. He felt no loyalty to those who would enslave his people, but the greatest of gratitude and kinship to those who helped free them.
The team was met at the bottom of the gate by a stern-looking, boldly bald man. General Hammond could be stern when necessary, a highly practical man, however he cared for each and every one of the personnel under his command. Having shared numerous near-death experiences with SG-1, though, he had a particularly deep respect for them. He went over the mission goals with the team once more as they prepared to leave.
Colonel O'Neill nodded to the general and let him know they were well prepared with a characteristically flippant summary: "Right. So, go to the other world and make friends with everyone. Try not to make many enemies. Bring back good stuff. Don't bring back bad stuff. Try not to kill stuff, but if we got to we got to. Avoid dying as much as possible. I think we got it."
A sarcastic reply like that to a general and base commander would earn most soldiers some serious discipline. Fortunately, he knew that General Hammond knew that he had earned the right to get away with remarks like that. Instead of a reprimand, the general simply agreed but with a final reminder. "And don't forget to come back."
O'Neill nodded again, wryly. "Right." He turned towards the portal and threw his hand up as a sort of half-wave of goodbye. After thousands of missions, some of the thrill of departing across the galaxy had worn off.
Up in the control center, the technicians began to dial the gate. The gate began to spin, the 39 unique symbols whirling around at an increasing pace. One by one, seven of the nine chevrons on the gate were engaged and locked in place. After the sixth chevron locked, the room began to fill with ambient energy until, finally, the seventh symbol was locked in place.
When that happened, the empty space inside the ring was filled with an explosive discharge of energy and spatial distortion. The distortion field rapidly expanded out of the gate and then seemed to implode backwards like an underwater explosion. When it settled, the gate looked like it held a rippling pool of water suspended vertically in the air, but only in two dimensions.
Major Carter was the first to step through the gate. From all appearances she was just walking into water. She was followed by Colonel O'Neill, then Daniel Jackson. Teal'c was the last to go through the portal, symbolically taking up a rearguard position.
For an instant they each felt the sensation of being within an immense tunnel of energetic light and a disorienting sense of a loss of all directionality. Then they were decorporealized and their entire physical being converted into a form of energy. It was a feeling they had felt each time they had stepped through the Stargate, yet still something to which they could never fully get accustomed.
That was when something went wrong.
Back in the SGC, just heartbeats after SG-1 stepped through the gate, the blueness of the wormhole suddenly turned pitch black and winked out. For just a moment, tiny tendrils of shadowy energy snaked around the Stargate like black lightning. Then it was gone.
Hammond looked up at the control room. "Did they make it through to the other side before that happened?" he demanded. The technicians in the control room had no idea.
Colonel Jack O'Neill knew something was wrong even before he was fully reintegrated at the other side of the wormhole that had shunted him across the galaxy. During transit there was always some sense of reality, though it was incredibly brief and had no analog to what can be described by the physical senses. Jack couldn't explain it to anyone, even other Stargate travelers, but he knew that things had "turned" strangely and it was as if the path had suddenly become "dark", if that meant anything in such a state.
When he did finally become fully integrated was when he noticed just how really bad things were. He knew they hadn't reached P8F-202, their intended destination. For one, P8F-202 was a much brighter place than the gloom into which he had arrived. Second, P8F-202 had a Stargate on the other side. The odd portal he had just come through was not a Stargate. Perhaps most telling of all, the probe they had sent over to their intended destination had sent back telemetry that had no indication of the walking dead. This place had plenty of them.
As soon as he was able to process the thought, he turned towards Carter, "What the h—," he started to ask, but was cut off as a rotting human corpse swung a clawed hand at his throat and he was forced to duck.