Derelict. A Stargate - nBSG crossover

[Chris O'Farrell]

Ok.

This is a Stargate / neo BSG crossover I've been thinking about doing on again off again for some time. I'm posting the first chapter now, but its a very weak chapter. Its really just here to show how Season 9 SG1 and Season 2 Atlantis reach the 'split' point. The next chapter will expand it somewhat and introduce the BSG split point. Then the actual crossover will happen in chapter 3. So don’t worry, it will actually get interesting soon, don’t be put off by the huge exposition here.

To the writers of Chronicles of the Crusade, please don't think I've stolen your ideas or anything, I've been writing this thing on again off again for about five months but I'll be damned if its amazingly similar in more then a few ways. Rest assured that it'll get rather different rather fast in the next chapters...but I guess there are only so many ways you can have a crossover fanfic...so there you go.


So I present to you, Derelict.

The ultimate truth of the universe is that it’s infinite.

Infinity is a word that has comparable translations in the languages of advanced societies, but relatively few truly understood, being themselves of finite construction.

This in turn led to most races to simply shut off their awareness of the awesome and overwhelming nature of the void that existed around them, confining their awareness to the country or planet where they were they born. Or perhaps the solar system they lived in. Some more advanced races stretched out their hands to try and control the infinite in their foolish but finite way, building empires and monuments to their supposed divinity across star clusters and Galactic arms, which slowly crumbled away under the steady passage of time.

But millions of years ago, one race attempted to reach beyond their own universe to others that existed somewhere in space time. Their attempts were subtle enough, artificial gateways of a modest size. Experiments were only partially successful as it was found a door was needed on both sides to make any gateway possible without needing fantastic amounts of energy. Strangely, many of these “alternate realities” were found to be so similar to their own, that their counterparts there had in fact made their own gateways which then linked together. Contacting “themselves” was amusing enough, but not exactly useful and fraught with danger to the point that the practice was discontinued and the research forgotten.

For millions of years their civilization grew, touching other Galaxies as they expanded. But even as they gradually evolved towards undreamed of power, heated debate simmered over what to do with it. Eventually a civil war broke out that would render a terrible price on both sides of the debate, wiping an entire Galaxy clean of life. The survivors who remained true to their races original goals fled to a distant Galaxy to start over, after seeding the building blocks of life once more in the Galaxy that had been their home.

There they found a measure of peace for uncounted millennia. But a terrible price would be paid as once again the Universe they sought mastery over frowned upon them. Again their numbers were decimated, their civilization collapsed and those who remained fled back to their old Galaxy to live out the rest of their days, before they died and rose almost as Gods to a higher plain, finally having the control over the very fabric of the universe they had sought for so long, even as finally they understood they could never use it.

However some of their race refused to simply fade into the background, recalling the millions of years when their Empire spanned countless systems in breathtaking splendor. Digging into arcane research, they stumble upon the technology to rip the fabric of the universe and jump to another one separate from their own, answerable to no-one. And there, they founded a new Empire which thrived…for a time.

Chapter One. “Down the Rabbet Hole”.

Battle Cruiser Daedalus.
Docked. Area-51.
Nevada, United States, Earth.
January 10, 2005.



“Daedalus this is Vandenberg, your corridor is clear of all traffic. SatComm is a go. You are cleared for launch.”

“Vandenberg this is Daedalus actual” Colonel Stephen Caldwell replied as he reached the bridge, touching the compact headset/microphone that linked him into his ships communications system. “Do we have an update on the status of Doctor Jackson?”

“Colonel I’m afraid out last update from the SGC still has him indisposed, no indications he is going to be fit to travel anytime soon.”

“Roger Vandenberg, Daedalus out”. Touching the earpiece again to close the channel, Caldwell glanced around the command centre and seeing preparations for launch were well under way, turned to the very non military figure leaning against a bulkhead. Ordinarily he would never tolerate a civilian ‘lounging’ about the command centre but in the case of Doctor Elizabeth Weir he really didn’t have that much of a choice.

Even so, she was a diplomat and a good one. She kept out of the way and didn’t call attention to herself, simply watching as Earths newest Battle cruiser underwent preflight procedures. As she now had discretionary power to use the Daedalus as she saw fit while it was in Pegasus, she had reasonably pointed out that it would be advantageous to establish a friendly relationship between herself and the Colonel in front of the crew. Caldwell was inclined to agree. ‘Dual’ command could rapidly snowball into ‘Duel’ command in a frenzied situation and he knew she was smart enough to not interfere with the running of the ship…but it didn’t mean he had to like the situation. Still he trusted her to respect that this was his ship there could only ever be one Captain.

The newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard on the other hand…he may prove to be problematic. On one hand, he was now officially the ground forces commander for Atlantis Base and his chain of command ended with Dr Weir. Despite that, Caldwell distinctly outranked Sheppard, making for a wonderfully muddy picture in the chain of command. Caldwell couldn’t help but snort at the situation. He didn’t really blame Weir for her loyalty to Sheppard but he hoped that at least she would keep a clear head.

“Well it looks like Doctor Jackson won’t be joining us…again” the Caldwell commented as he stepped around the weapons console and made a beeline for the Captains chair.

“That’s disappointing” Weir noted with a sigh as she levered herself up from her improvised seat. “This is what, the third time he’s missed out getting to Atlantis?”

“Forth actually” Caldwell corrected as he sat down. “He tried to get General O’Neill to let him go when we were sent to defend the city from the Wraith a month back; he didn’t have a hope of course with the ship going into a combat situation. Add to that the initial expedition and Prometheus’s failed attempt…well that’s four in a row”.

“You think the he’ll ever reach Atlantis?” Weir asked with a wry smile. Despite all that her people had learned about Atlantis and the Ancients, Jackson was still by far the foremost expert on them that Earth had. His written and spoken Ancient was superior to anyone else on her team, having been working on the language for close to five years. He had even met more then a few of them over the years before and after he had ascended to the plain of existence that the last of their race now occupied.

Elizabeth had only worked with him for a short time when she had taken command of the SGC and later the Antarctic research program, but in that short space of time she had started to see just how critical he had been to Stargate Command and SG1. He worked effectively in a predominantly military establishment, tempering the often rather direct instincts of Jack O’Neill, complementing the intellectual gifts of Samantha Carter and bridging the gaps earlier on between Teal’c and the SGC as well as many other alien cultures encountered over SG1’s eight near legendary years of operation.

Jack O’Neill of course would have absolutely none of Daniel heading off to the Pegasus Galaxy and had vetoed every attempt but the failed attempt by Prometheus.

There was an amusing irony she thought, that the same women who had derailed the attempt by Prometheus to reach Atlantis last year had also just derailed Daniels most recent attempt …though apparently not completely deliberately this time.

“Alright we’re all on board, lets get the party started” Caldwell said as he eased himself into his command chair. “By the numbers people, let’s make it just like the last time”. There was a shift in the sound the ships power plant was putting out as the antigravity wave generators came online, a deep humming more felt then heard started to permeate the air. The concrete/steal mesh roof above the starship jolted, then steadily retracted to show the twilight of the Nevada sky as the dry-dock illumination wound down. The docking bay emergency personnel scurried into thickly shielded emergency bunkers, ready to respond if something catastrophic happened and the ship came crashing down before clearing the hanger bay.


Idly, Caldwell wondered who they had annoyed to get assigned to that posting on the base.



“All flight systems nominal go for Launch”

“Pilot, up and out” Caldwell ordered, trying not to wince at the thought of over ten billion dollars worth of taxpayers property the size of a skyscraper being suspended by physics he only understood in the most abstract sense.

His fears proved foundless as the ships pilot carefully raised the Daedalus out of her hanger (or more actually the ships sophisticated autopilot raised it under guidance from the pilot) and with a steady grip on her yoke, she throttled up and climbed, accelerating rapidly into the orange/pink dusk which steadily faded to the black of space.

As Daedalus broke orbit, Weir took a final look at her home, thinking of the man who had missed the trip, yet again and wondering if he would EVER get to Atlantis.

She also thought of the poor Vala Maldoran, thinking of what Daniel would do to her when he woke up.



“Colonel, sensors are recording an energy surge along our path, approximately sixty light years distant, ten degrees off our current course” Lt Dave Kleinman spoke up from the ships weapons station, raising his voice just loud enough to be heard over the low level chatter of the dozen or so personnel on the ships bridge.

Daedalus’s mission clock read just over four hours now, with over seventeen days left before the navigational software estimated they would reach Atlantis. The Pegasus Galaxy was unfortunately situated on the far side of the Milky Way, meaning that Daedalus had to cut across a good chunk of the Galaxy to get clear for her run to Atlantis. Theoretically it would be easier to simply head straight ‘up’ from Earth into inter-galactic space, then speed along the top of the Milky Way until they had a clear shot. But it was considered safer to stay inside the Galaxy along a path that took the Daedalus through charted space…just in case early on ‘something important happens to blow up’ as General O’Neill had put it.


Turning away from the simulation being run at one of the secondary consoles, Caldwell strode around the command center to the console ahead and right of his own station, running an eye over the sensor readouts.

“Can you identify the contact?” Kleinman poked at his console, then shook his head.

“Negative. It’s not even showing up on the primary sensor array, just the passive Asgard systems as some kind of energy surge right here” the Lieutenant said, tapping the touch screen upon the blinking yellow icon that had just appeared. The screen expanded into a system view, showing a half dozen planets circling a G2 type star along with the sensor contact, which was clearly nowhere near any of the systems planets. “Sensors indicate its approximately twenty light minutes away from P4X-221.”

Caldwell frowned as he studied the icons. A tingle of curiosity ran through his head as he noted the icon was in fact directly opposite the star from P4X-221 on the same orbital inclination...meaning if this sensor contact was being generated by an installation or ship, it was taking great pains to keep the systems primary between the only planet with a Stargate and itself. And the fact that the Goa’uld inspired sensor systems built into Daedalus couldn’t see a thing there…

“Who owns that system?” Caldwell asked, his curiosity now officially piqued.

Kleinman touched a hyperlink and brought up the planetary listing page. “It was an outpost of the Ancients, but it’s been abandoned for eons. Several SG teams and some of Anubis’s Jaffa had a scuffle there a few years back, back. But no-one actually owns the planet or claims it according to the current SGC records”.

“So what was so important about that particular planet?” Caldwell asked, an uncomfortable feeling starting to work at his mind as Kleinman worked the console.
“According to the logs, the clash was in the middle of that period when Stargate Command and Anubis were turning the Galaxy upside down to try and find the Lost City of the Ancients. The place was an Ancient Outpost. But ultimately it turned out to be relatively low tech; its construction was more in line with the Stone Age rather then Atlantis”.

Unless of course the technology the planet was there to support was elsewhere in the system the Colonel thought to himself. Ordinarily he would simply log the sensor contact and when they dropped out of Hyperspace at Atlantis, pass the information back to Earth for Prometheus to go take a look.

But on the other hand…


“…now less then ten light years away” Caldwell finished up his summery of current events to the trio of figures who had arrived on the bridge. Dr Rodney McKay was barely listening, standing next to the status display window on the port side of the ships bridge and studying at the sensor readouts duplicated on the large screen. John Sheppard was sitting next to Dr Weir, adjusting his flight suit in a vain attempt to straighten up the loose material into something approaching neatness. He had in fact been in the middle of his qualification tests for the F-302 interceptor when the call had come, but had lacked the time to get changed back into his normal duty uniform before reporting to the bridge.

Elizabeth Weir was in fact grateful for the summons; she had been board out of her mind for the last four hours. Although she had two weeks of somewhat important staff meetings scheduled with the new personnel the Daedalus was shipping to Atlantis, they weren’t due to start until they cleared the Milky Way. Meaning she was nothing but a glorified passenger…and was going stir crazy with cabin fever.


“The question is” Caldwell continued as he stepped away from the main sensor display, “Do we stop and take a look or do we just pass the information back to Earth?”

“I say stop and take a look” Sheppard spoke up, glancing towards the Canadian scientist who was still intent on the sensor readouts and tapping furiously away at a modified graphics tablet linked into the ships computer networks. “Prometheus won’t be able to get here for a few hours at best and it’s hardly much of a delay to at least take a look”.

Weir spoke up next, her opinion echoing Sheppard’s.

“Well if it is some kind of fancy technology and Samantha Carter is busy at area 51, Rodney is by far-” “

“We really need to take a look at this” McKay broke in suddenly, then looked around. “Sorry, did I interrupt there?”

Weir resisted the impulse to roll her eyes and end her statement with the most irritating person to hold a conversation with. Instead she simply raised an eyebrow. “Not really, what have you got?”

Touching his pen to the tablet he switched the main screen from a long range sensor readout to a pair of sensor waveforms. “This thing” he started, “is Ancient”.

“And you know this how?” Sheppard asked, wondering if he was going to understand the explanation.

“This energy signature that Daedalus is tracking” Rodney said highlighting the top one, “is a Zed-PM”.


THAT got the undivided attention of the three people listening to him.



“Are you sure about that Doctor?” Caldwell asked his tone not quite on the verge of glee at the thought of being able to get to Atlantis in two days rather then two weeks. “We already ran the sensor data through the ships database and it didn’t match anything, including”-

“-a Zed-PM yes yes” McKay jumped over the Caldwell, either not noticing or ignoring the Colonels irritation at being anticipated and interrupted. “That’s because your sensor profile for a Zed-PM’s energy signature is based on one in real space”. Taking a second to gather his thoughts, McKay then plunged ahead trying to simplify theoretical astrophysics no-one on the ship (excepting Hermiod), would probably understand. “A Zed-PM isn’t a simple energy storage medium, like say an Earth battery. It’s well…a doorway if you will, to an artificial region of subspace and THAT’S where they store the energy. It’s how the Ancients can store huge amounts of energy in such a compact form…because the energy doesn’t actually exist inside the Zed-PM, that’s just the access point for it.


“So are you saying that as we’re in subspace now, we’re about to collide with the stored energy of a ZPM dead ahead?”

McKay simply rolled his eyes.

“It would be kind of stupid for the Ancients to store the energy in hyperspace when they used to fly around it all the time, don’t you think? No it’s simply a lensing effect on the Asgard sensors through the subspace domain the ship exists in. Sort of like a sensor shadow I guess you can call it”.

Sheppard took a few seconds to digest the information, then turned to Caldwell.

“Well it can’t hurt to take a quick look Sir” he shrugged. Weir digested the data for a few seconds.

“Anything else you want to tell us about the readings?”

“Just one thing” McKay said, tapping his portable computer again, bringing up a bar graph. “This is the kind of signature I would expect your typical Zed PM to generate in this kind of situation. And this” he tapped and a second series of bars appeared, matching the previous graph but with much higher peaks “is what we’re detecting”.

“And this means…” Weir asked, waiting for the explanation. McKay frowned.

“I don’t have the first clue. It’s just…weird”

“Ah” she responded, not quite sure what to make of this statement, then turned to Caldwell. “Colonel, take us in please”.



A hole was wrenched open in the fabric of space, blossoming into a swirl of blue light and a spike of EM radiation. Through this rift, Earths newest Battle Cruiser jumped back into the starlit darkness of realspace, closing the gateway behind it as the ships Hyperdrive powered down to standby mode. Her grey hull was lit by the nearby star, but her running lights defined her shape. Bulkier then her sister ship Prometheus, Daedalus was the next generation of USAF Battle Cruiser and carried more firepower then had ever been dreamed of during the 58 years of the US Air Force. Much smaller then most Starships used by the major powers in either the Milky Way or Pegasus Galaxy, only the foolish or stupidly overconfident would dismiss her based on her size. The US (and Earth for that matter) might be relatively new on the interstellar stage compared to some of the races around, but what the humans from the backwater planet lacked in maturity, they made up for in shear ability to cause destruction and chaos. In the eight years of the Stargate program, Earth had smashed empires and destroyed a half dozen alien races that had been founded when Earths population had thought hitting each other with sticks was an awfully good idea.



Victory is a weakness in itself Caldwell thought to himself as the ships primary sensors came back online. We’ve known nothing but victory for the last the last eight years out here, punching way above our weight. It would be all too easy to become as overconfident as the Goa’uld if we loose our perspective. Taking a glance at Colonel Sheppard, now dressed in full field kit, he felt his gut tighten slightly at the opportunity for chaos he saw in the man. Overconfidence in our abilities and skill led to the Wraith being awoken and the forfeiting of millions of lives across the Pegasus Galaxy. He didn’t really blame the Colonel for his attempt to rescue Colonel Summoner and the men taken with him. But the sloppy execution of the raid had lead inexorably down a chain of events to the situation the Atlantis expedition now found itself in. His ‘damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead’ attitude had gotten Daedalus beaten up at the hands of a Wraith fleet. His antagonizing of races like the Geni had simply lead to further conflicts down the line.

Sighing inaudibly and turning back to the forward window, he tried to push all thoughts of Colonel Sheppard from his mind. He didn’t doubt for a second the mans courage or honor. He just needed to find a way to curb his somewhat…enthusiastic…approach to situations before he ended up insulting a high ranking Jaffa’s mother.

“Radar contact, bow, ten degrees port” Lt Dave Kleinman spoke up as the ships forward phased array radar started to sweep space in front of the ship. It only took a few seconds for the computer to isolate the contact dead ahead, steering the beams electronically back and forth several times a second as they mapped out its shape. The algorithms called up by the sensor process decided the location of the passive Asgard contact matched the hard radar target to within six significant figures, which was good enough to change the icon from a yellow question mark to a yellow diamond, signifying a hard unknown contact.

“Pilot, bring us in at an oblique angle, ahead standard. Guns, pipe the sensor readouts to the main display.”

“Roger that” Kleinman said, and worked his console. A few seconds later, the display next to McKay shifted to a wireframe view of the sensor contact as the sublight engines rumbled slightly through the deck plates. Caldwell looked at the first synthetic pictures coming up on the screen…and frowned. Something about the design clicked in his head, but Sheppard got it first.

“It looks just like that Ancient defense satellite that the Wraith destroyed a few weeks ago” the Colonel said as the image slowly rotated in front of everyone.

The station looked almost like a huge asterisks in space. Towers that would have blended in well with Atlantis’s cityscape poked out almost randomly in all directions. Unlike the model seen in Atlantis, a central ‘core’ cylinder ran through the stations centre, defining a ‘North’ and ‘South’ pole that rose perpendicular to systems plane.


“Is there any indication its weapon is armed?” Weir asked, her voice somewhat subdued in volume, almost as if she was afraid of waking the sleeping giant. Or regretting her decision to stop and ‘take a look’.

McKay walked across the bridge to a row of LCD displays mounted down from the ceiling and ran his eyes over them.

“No…no….and no. It looks completely powered down, assuming it is a weapons satellite”.

“Well what else could it be?” Sheppard asked, not taking his eyes off the image as Daedalus slowly drew closer and the wireframe was joined by magnified visual images.

“Maybe it’s a Zed-PM powered coffee peculator, how should I know?” McKay sighed as he turned back to the senior staff. “The point it’s not necessarily a weapons platform. Why would you place a defensive weapons platform with a limited range on the other side of the star your planet orbits?”


Silence greeted McKay’s question as the senior officers mulled over the rather clear problem with its orbital placement.


“Because it is not actually a weapons platform” a new voice joined the conversation from the side of the bridge. Everyone turned and saw the ships resident Asgard stroll onto the bridge. Caldwell acknowledged the aliens presence with a nod. Weir smiled in greeting. McKay raised an eyebrow at his intellectual nemesis and Sheppard simply stared.

“Ok then, what is it?” Weir asked.

The Asgard didn’t answer at first, instead simply narrowing his eyes and returning Sheppard’s gaze until McKay poked the Colonel in the ribs and he got the point. Caldwell worked to keep the grin from his face. He had met over a dozen Asgard during the construction phase of his command and almost all of them had been softly spoken, enlightened beings who tried their best to fit in with the humans at Area-51, while taking in stride the fact that it took a while for humans to get used to their presence. Some were a little excitable in their own way, but still overwhelmingly curious and enthusiastic about their collaboration with Earth.

Hermiod on the other hand…well it wasn’t fair to say he was the opposite of the ‘typical’ Asgard. But he wasn’t shy about letting everyone know what he felt about…well…anything.

Including humanities relative intelligence and maturity for that matter.

“There is an interior area which my scans can not penetrate that appears shielded, but there are no external weapons of any kind, or the large directed energy weapon the Atlantis platform was equipped with. As to what its function is, I could only speculate as to its purpose. Suffice to say, much of the extra technology installed while it is Ancient, is not standard to a station of this design”.

The Asgard turned slightly and glanced out the window at the station, now within easy visual range. A pair of bow mounted fifty million candlepower spotlights were playing over the station, illuminating the strangely chaotic design as they moved to within two hundred meters. The close range was actually quite deliberate, the idea being that if the Platform was a weapons station, Daedalus could better evade a single main weapon at close range rather then at long.

“Well we’re not going to figure anything out standing around” Sheppard spoke up, still unable to stop staring at the Asgard out of the corner of his eye. Hermiod glared at him for a few seconds, then turned and walked off the bridge, muttering in Asgard as he went, probably making uncomplimentary comments which were almost certainly directed at the Lt Colonel. Caldwell’s stoic demeanor cracked and he joined Dr Weir in smirking at Sheppard, who simply looked confused.

“What?!"

[Chris O'Farrell]

*continued, damn word limit!*

Four shafts of brilliant white light illuminated the pitch black interior of the stations airlock accompanied (if anyone had been around to hear it), by the almost musical chime of an Asgard transporter beam. The light faded leaving four figures encased in the blocky, armored white space suits of Stargate Command teams, back to back with their weapons at the ready. Helmet lights popped on, partially illuminating the darkness as the four men slowly looked around.

“Well I didn’t think I’d ever be back here” McKay muttered, just loud enough to be heard over the open comm frequency”.

“Cheer up Rodney” the Sheppard’s voice crackled back over the helmet speakers. “There aren’t any Wraith inbound this time”.

“There isn’t any Peter Godden either” he replied, an unhappy tone in his voice causing the two Atlantis veterans to pause for a second in sober memory of the British scientist who had given his life to slow down the Wraith heading for Atlantis, buying enough time for reinforcements to arrive from Earth.

Predictably, it was Weir who gently broke the moment.

“So what does it look like?” she asked, carefully steering their thoughts away from the past to the present.

“Dark. Its completely powered down in here. I’m going to try to…oh hell”

“What?” Sheppard demanded.

“Uhh for the record, we’re floating in microgravity here. Artificial gravity is offline…and I don’t have anything I can grab onto. Remind me to thank Novak for beaming us into midair.”

“Hang on Doctor” a new voice interjected into the conversation, Weir recognized him as Sergeant Fontaine, one of the marines who had beamed over with McKay and Sheppard to round out their party. “I’m close enough….ok I’m on something like a ladder on the side wall here”.

“Oh, good, can you anchor yourself to it?”

“Sure, just give me a second…”

Each team member was carrying a length of tensile cable mounted on their suit with a multi-clip to tether the user. The Sergeant anchored himself to the wall then pushed back off and helped McKay, Sheppard and their last team member, a Marine named Eustace secure themselves. The two marines secured their lines to the airlock interior then McKay and Sheppard linked themselves to the two men directly. Carefully, the four men manually cracked open the inner airlock hatch and floated down the long drop to the floor, spooling cable as they went. The two marines secured their lines to allow easy access back to the roof (and provide something to grab onto if anyone floated away), then everyone floated off to investigate the structure.

Looking around, McKay instantly saw the stations configuration was somewhat different from the weapons satellite back at Atlantis. Instead of a bare floor with a couple of panels built into the walls, the central area was dominated by three full sized consoles similar to those in the Atlantis control room. Each formed one side of an equilateral triangle; each faced its own holographic view screen apparently floating in midair. There was also a pair of doors the defense satellite had lacked which clearly led to other sections of the station.

“Ok, so now what?” the Colonel asked as he floated up to the nearest console.

“Don’t touch anything” McKay warned as he looked around the walls trying to place which side of station he was on. “The last time I was here Groden decided to start pressing buttons at random and he activated the artificial gravity when I was in midair.”

“Ouch” Sheppard responded as he gripped the edge of the console and maneuvered around the side towards the Marines who were studying a control panel on the wall.

“You REALLY don’t want to know” the Canadian responded. Yes, here it was he thought as he finally found the control he was looking for. “Ok everyone stays on the ground” he said, then tapped the small screen built into the wall.

Air hissed into the tall room with enough momentum to actually push the four man team around slightly. They tightened their grips on their chosen handhelds and a few seconds later their wrist mounted atmospheric analyzers blinked green, followed by the stations internal lights activating and illuminating the huge room quite adequately.

“Nitrogen oxygen mix, it’s safe”. With relief, McKay broke the seal on his helmet and took a deep breath of the air, glad to be out of the claustrophobic helmet. “Activating artificial gravity” he added, and tapped a second icon.

Sheppard felt his lunch slam into the bottom of his stomach and focused on trying not to throw up all over the interior of his helmet. He succeeded, then relaxed his grip and straightened back up, unbuckling his helmet and starting to strip his EVA suit.

“Sheppard, Daedalus. We show the stations systems are coming back online. SITREP?”

“Daedalus this is Sheppard. McKay has life support and gravity restored, situation is clear so far”.

“Configuration is somewhat different from the station back in Pegasus Colonel” McKay jumped in as he struggled out of his space suit which back in real gravity suddenly felt bulky and clumsy. “I’ll need some time to bring the stations mainframe online”.

“Roger that” Caldwell responded. “Be advised we’ve signaled Stargate Command, Prometheus will be here as soon as they finish their current activities at Earth in a few hours, then they’ll take over”.

“Oh? What’s happening at Earth anyway?” McKay asked. They had only left a few hours ago after all and everything appeared normal…as much as normal could be attributed to Stargate Command anyway.

“You’re not going to believe this” Weir started…





Battle Cruiser Prometheus.
Geosynchronous orbit.
United Kingdom, Earth.
January 10, 2005.


“Please”
“No”
“Its just ONE little thing!”
“No.”
“Oh come on WHO is going to miss it?”
“No!
“Well you have to agree it looks good on me”
“….well there is that. But NO!”

Vala Maldoran sighed theatrically as she followed Daniel away from the Transport Ring room on the ship orbiting high above the English countryside. Toying with the delicate tiara she had ‘liberated’ from the underground treasure trove, she wondered if he knew that the diamonds supported in the lattice of crystal were in fact highly prized and absurdly rare Goa’uld stones each worth as much as a fully outfitted Al’Kesh.

She doubted it. But she doubted he would let her keep it. Pity.

Behind her, the rings activated once more bringing Colonel Carmon Mitchell up from the underground vault along with Teal’c, the famous (or infamous depending on who you talked to) Jaffa warrior and now a leader of the Free Jaffa nation.

“Hey Doc, you want to put the encyclopedia Alterian down for a minute?” Mitchell called as he stepped off the ring platform.

“Are you kidding?” Jackson answered, without even looking up. “Do you have any idea what kind of a find this is? I mean it’s a chronicle of the history of the Ancients FROM an Ancient! I mean, it’s priceless!”

“When you say priceless…” Vala started with sudden interest, but was cut off by the ships intercom echoing through the metal passageway.

“Colonel Mitchell, this is Prendergast, please report immediately with your team to the bridge”.

Mitchell who had served on the Prometheus for many months before jumping to Stargate Command knew his way around the large ship and even with Daniel still completely engrossed in the old leather bound book and Vala trying to read over his shoulder every step of the way, managed to get the quartet to the ships command centre without running into too many people.

“Hey Shaft, welcome back!” Colonel Lionel Pendergast smiled as Mitchell led Jackson almost like a blind man onto the bridge…then carefully placed him in a corner where he would be out of the way. THEN he was able to turn around and exchange salutes with the superior officer who in the rush to get into the underground vault, he hadn’t actually seen when he came on board.

“Colonel, always a pleasure” Carmon smiled as he looked out the windows at the softly lit planet sedately rotating under them. It was still one HELL of a view out of the bridge view port, with Earth hanging suspended sedately under the Battle Cruiser and it still gave a secret thrill to him knowing he was really out in space…and it was about now that he noticed Earth was falling away as the ships bow came out and up to point away from the planet. “Uhh…Sir?”

“Afraid we have new orders Colonel. A cargo ship is on its way to take over ring access to the underground vault and the turnover to the UK Ministry of Defense. Teal’c, you of course are more then welcome to beam back down to the SGC before we leave orbit…”

Teal’c inclined his head in a slight bow out of respect for the Colonel. “I would remain on board Colonel Pendergast, I am not due back on Dakara for several days yet”.

“Always good to have you aboard. Dr Jackson?”

“Humph?” Daniel said, finally tearing his attention away from the book in his arms.

“I have some good news for you. Daedalus was outbound to Atlantis but they appear to have stumbled onto some kind of Ancient Space station. Since they have specialists in Ancient technology on board, they’re staying to look the place over until we arrive”.

“They’re staying?!” Daniel asked his eyes going wide. “Then-“

“Your bags were already packed, we beamed them up a few minutes ago” Pendergast anticipated the next question, then looked at Vala. “Assuming your Girlfriend here is willing to let you go of course”.

Daniel slowly turned to face the women next to him, who was now grinning cheerfully.

“Well. I would say negotiations have been re-opened”, Vala said, fingering the pearl colored tiara once again.

[HawaiianOnline]

Very nice and well written too. Do you have more coming, or are you still in the writing phase?

[ggs]

Whoot!

[Spartan303]

Damn good story so far Chris. I can't wait to see where this goes. I was wondering though, will you be udating at the same rate you updated SG1-2003 or will you be updating faster? Either way keep up the good work and I'll be keeping an eye out for this story.

[k.olson]

This IS pretty good stuff. You've got me intrigued. I look forward to the next chapter(s).

[Prince Charon]

Very interesting. Very very interesting.

More soon, please.

BTW, in your .sig, from where did you get the following?

"More unsupported claims. First of all, there is no such thing as EMP is space. "
-Envoy

[Deepthroat]

Very nice start. Can't wait for more.

[Tyr]

very nicely done as always, can't wait for chapter two.

[Gear]

It's very well written, it even feels like an actual episode.

Write more!

[rares127]

I like it !!!
Can't wait for more!!!

[The Sithspawn]

Excellant beginning, I look forward to seeing where you take this fic
Hopefully soon -hint, hint

[Damar]

It's good, can't wait until the Cyclons appear.

[Chris O'Farrell]

Alrighty then. This is a little of a rush, but I wanted to get it out. You should have another chapter tommorow (its really more or less ready now, but oh well) and these will be the last for a few weeks as I have exams I have to work on. This chapter sets up the BSG 'Divergence' from the real timeline. The next chapter will once again be SG1 to set the last of the stage. Then in chapter 4, we get started.



Enjoy.




Chapter Two. “Home”.


Tomb of Athena, Kobal.
Kobal System.
600 Light years from Caprica.
Cylon Genocide + 100 days.

Commander William Adama’s weapon snapped up on pure instinct as the solid rock door to the tomb of Athena slammed shut behind him, plunging the cave into darkness. He could hear the startled gasp of Laura Roslin to his rear over the thunder echoing through the cave and the startled curse of his son as he yanked his sidearm from its holster, but he couldn’t see a damn thing.

Then the room was lit with a bright light.

Even as squinted his eyes shut against it, he realized it wasn’t necessary as the flash like lightning from a thunderstorm vanished as fast as it had appeared. He opened his eyes again as another pair of flashes occurred, a loud click almost like a light switch being flicked echoed…

And he was no longer in the tomb of Athena.

Training drilled into him decades ago came leapt to the forefront as his weapon tracked across a grassy plain that couldn’t possibly exist inside the cave they had been standing in. Insects chirped softly around them and a rumble of thunder from a dozen kilometers away rolled over them before fading into the night.

Night?

His eyes flicked up and indeed the stalactites and rock ceiling that had been suspended above them had been replaced by a night sky full of stars that twinkled serenely. It was all completely impossible, but none the less it was all true.

He felt rather then saw Starbuck and Helo sweeping their rifles as their heads darted left and right in alarm at their change in location, before they both forced themselves to relax and slightly lowered their aim points so they didn’t shoot any of their companions by accident. Turning around, Adama stopped short at what had to be the feature exhibit of wherever they were, six stone monoliths brooding over the small party, each with a string of lights glowing at the base and another sequence at their tips. Sufficient to cast a soft glow over the group, but not enough to ruin their night vision.

“Uh…where the hell are we?” Billy Keikeya asked in a low voice, that sounded both awed and half scared to death.

“I don’t know” Roslin replied slowly as she looked around, trying to take everything in. “Tomb of Athena, I think” she added, saying the only thing that made any sense to her.

“I thought we were already in the tomb” Adama muttered as also turned full circle to see if he missed anything. Strange, the ground under his boot didn’t feel like the soft grass and dirt he expected to feel, instead much harder…almost like rock.

“I think that was just the lobby” Kara whispered, not disguising the awe in her voice as she slowly looked over the monoliths and their alien but familiar patterns.

Laura ignored the chatter as she slowly walked closer to the great slabs of stone, her steps slow and cautious as if she was walking inside a minefield. Adama watched her with interest. Despite his skepticism towards the Presidents claims, he had walked the path to this place with her. Not because he believed…but because she did.

He hadn’t known what he would find at the end and he had truly felt bitter disappointment that all they had appeared to find at the end of their search was the broken remains of a stone tomb.

Then they were here…

“Again the ancient symbols” Laura said. She studied the closest stone, speaking in the slow measured cadence of a teacher. “These patterns...were o*n the original flags of the twelve colonies. Back in the days when the colonies were called by their ancient names”.

Slowly looking back and forth, she pointed along those along the top row of lights that glowed with a faint blue sheen and named each as she came to it. “Aries... Taurus... Gemini... Cancer... Leo... Libra…”

“Virgo…Scorpio…Sagittarius…Capricorn…Aquarius…Pisces” Billy finished, pointing at each of the lower constellations which glowed with a golden light.

“But what does it all mean?” Apollo asked rolling his head back and massaging his neck in frustration…then stopped, letting his jaw drop. “That’s it!”

Everyone craned their necks to the sky. The three other military officers, spacers all, quickly saw what he was looking at but neither the President nor Billy had any clue what had gained their undivided attention.

“It’s Kobals sky” Apollo said softly. “I recognize it from the nights we’ve spent down here. And that” he said pointing towards the North slightly for the benefit of the two civilians “is Aries”. Roslin followed his hand then involuntarily took a deep breath as she saw he was right. Star constellations of course changed configuration depending on which angle you viewed them from. But from the surface of Kobal…there was a perfect match sitting majestically over their heads.

“But what does it mean” Laura asked, not understanding the significance.

“This is the map” Apollo said, almost in disbelief. “This is the map to Earth”.

“Maybe” Adama said, not agreeing or disagreeing. So is Earth in o*ne of these constellations”? Adama pointed to monoliths. Why are there two rows? Why are they divided?”

“The constellations we can see from here…it’s from the upper row” Apollo pointed out, once again staring into the millions of stars that covered the night sky. “If it can be seen from Kobal…”

“It could mean that all of the star patterns seen on the lower rank can be seen from Earth” Roslin speculated.

“I don’t know what good it’s going to do us though” Kara said in a voice thick with disappointment. “I mean, what are we supposed to do? Search the entire Galaxy for one particular star pattern?”

Adamas gut tightened. It was a start, that much was true. But trying to find a planet bassed on nothing more then the fact that it had these constellations somewhere in the sky…

“I think…we’ve seen all we’re going to see” Adama said with a final look at the night sky, the kind one only saw from the highest mountains on worlds without any pollution in the atmosphere, literally covered in millions of points of light. “Helo, did you get a record of this?”

“Yes Sir” he nodded, holding up a small portable camera. Adama nodded.

“Ok. So how do we get out of-”

A light flashed like a burst of lightning once more and then the vista faded to complete darkness.

“-here” finished the Commander in surprise. You just have to ask apparently he thought.

A sound like a metal bar being dropped onto the ground echoed through the cave, then with a grinding sound of rock against rock, the door leading into the tomb slowly pushed open and a rather worried looking Chief Tyrol peaked in.

“Hello? Everyone ok?”

“We’re fine Chief” Adama said back as the group slowly started to walk towards the door, Starbuck stopping to scoop up the Arrow of Apollo which had fallen out of its place. A sense of awe permeated the group. Earth was real.

Despite the enormity of the task facing them, to figure out where it was with this one clue…it was real.

And it was out there, waiting for them.

“Call in the raptors Chief…lets go home”.

Battlestar Galactica
Deep Space.
615 Light years from Caprica.
Cylon Genocide + 101 days.

“We have struggled since the attacks... trying to rely on one another. Our strength and our o*nly hope as a people, is to remain undivided”.

Adama paused as he looked around the hanger bay. It was filled back a good forty meters. In the front, President Roslin and Vice President Gaius Baltar stood with Colonel Saul Tigh, his second in command. Behind them stood the Quorum of twelve who constituted the elected Government of the remnants of the human race and the senior officers from his crew as well as the hanger crew squeezed in behind them.

It wasn’t easy to contain his pride in his crew, his family. They had been through hell over the last few weeks as everything had fallen apart. President Roslin breaking her word to him, then openly defying him. Himself being shot by a trusted officer…who turned out to be a Cylon. His best friend doing his best to drink himself to death. His Son betraying him, his best pilot betraying him…everyone around him abandoning him.

He had let them down.

It hadn’t been an easy realization to come to. Betrayal blotted out all thoughts, all emotions.

All but rage.

It had taken a junior officer brave enough to say it to his face to wake him up to the truth.

He had let them all down.

Over three months ago, President Roslin had come into his office for the first time and started giving him orders to lead the fleet out of the Colonies. It had taken him all the self restraint he possessed not to simply have the Marines through this low level bureaucrat off his ship so he could get back to the business of wining the war. He was going out to start blowing up Cylons. It was his duty afterall. Then she had hit him over the head with a cold dose of reality. He smiled slightly as his thoughts drifted back to that day.

“You don't get it, do you” the woman in front of him finally snapped. “The human race is about to be wiped out! We have fifty thousand people left and that's it. If we want to even survive as a species, then we need to get the hell out of here and start having babies!”

He had simply walked out on her…but the sentence continued to nag at him for hours, until he finally admitted it was time to stop fighting…and start running.

But he knew survival was more then simply getting the hell out of Ragnar station. There were fifty thousand civilians with the fleet. They sure as hell were not military. They simply wouldn’t follow orders without question or accept that they had to run, perhaps even for years without any direction, to find a place to try and rebuild civilization again.

No, they needed hope, something that everyone in the fleet lost with the destruction of their civilization.

So he pulled Earth out of his hat. The legendary 13th tribe of Kobal. It was a complete lie, but it was also said to the surviviors that there WAS hope. That there WAS a plan. That they had a chance to live on. Hope gave people something to fight for, something to die for. But critically it gave them something to live for.

When Starbuck found out he had been lying to her all this time, could he really blame her for then trying to find real evidence of Earths existence?

Who was he to blame a third of the fleet for following the President to Kobal to find Earth, when HE was the one who started it all?

Could he truly hate his Son for standing against him, to protect the democracy that he had sworn to protect, regardless of if the President had broken her promise and her word to William Adama?

Without a doubt he KNEW his deception about Earth had been a necessary one, otherwise the fleet long ago would have self destructed. He wouldn’t hesitated to do it again knowing what had come of it.

Without a doubt he KNEW he had been in the right to arrest the President after she went around him, subverted his officers and put the entire fleet in Danger based on visions that may be from divine intervention or overdoses on drugs.

But…what did it matter if he knew he was right? Oh he had his pride of course, but what would it mean when it destroyed the last remnants of a race he had sworn to protect? Would his pride comfort the families who had been wrenched apart by Roslin subverting half the fleet? Would it get back his best two pilots, without whom the fleet was just that much more vulnerable?

Could it possibly be worth it?

No. he had swallowed his pride and returned to Kobal to reunite the fleet. Regardless if they came up in body bags, he and Roslin were coming back from Kobal. Together.

“We haven't always done all we could to insure that” Adama continued the speech, mere seconds having passed while he reflected on the past. “Many people believe that the scriptures, the letters from the gods, will lead us to salvation”. He glanced at President Roslin and held her steady gaze. “Maybe they will. But ‘the gods shall lift those who lift each other’” he quoted, breaking and sweeping his gave over the rest of his friends. His family.

“And so, to lift all of us, let me present once again the President of the colonies, Laura Roslin”

Applause broke out through the cavernous fighter bay. Polite and proper as benefited a respected public figure walking to the podium as he stood aside, before rapidly falling off.

Like hell.

Stepping forward, he slapped his hands together. And again. And again. He drew curious looks from the mass of people and the President, but he didn’t stop. Then it started.

First one person in the crowd started clapping his hands in time with Adama.

Then a half dozen.

Then a dozen.

Then twenty.

Then fifty.

Slowly even the most shy of the crowd started to join in and soon everyone but the President was slapping their hands together in perfect time. The President herself started at Adama with a completely baffled look on her face, not having a clue why Adama had started the thunderous clapping. Then slowly they sped up. Faster and faster and just as steadily, a smile slowly dawned on her face. Not a politicians smile or one she might show to the media…but her smile. Fighting back tears as the crowd broke into a thunderous applause and cheering. She looked to Adama, now standing precisely in the centre of the front row who completely unabashed continued to clap without pause. And in that glance between the two of them he knew.

His family, divided beyond any possibility he thought of repair, was healing.

Battlestar Galactica
Deep Space.
615 Light years from Caprica.
Cylon Genocide + 102 days.

Vice President Gaius Baltar pulled his glasses from his face in annoyance and tossed them onto his desk as he leaned back in his chair rubbing his face. He had spent the last seven hours racking his brains for meaning, direction, anything from the twelve symbols. But he still wasn’t any closer and he doubted he would be until the Galactica’s navigational computer finished crunching the star patterns.

Technically, he thought this wasn’t exactly a job for a Vice President. But he also knew he was the smartest person in the whole fleet which made him the default choice for trying to solve the enigma.

Which looked to be damn near impossible.

“Oh come on, you can’t be giving up already Gaius” a voice broke into his thoughts from behind him. Sounding both stern and amused at the same time, slender fingers lightly touched his shoulders, gently but expertly working the aching muscles in his neck.

“I never said I was giving up” the Vice President said to thin air as he enjoyed the wonderful sensation of his muscles loosening under the steady pressure. “For that matter I never said anything”.

“But you were thinking it Gaius” the female voice came back softly in his ear, sounding a little sterner. “You know can’t hide your thoughts from me”. A slender finger pressed on the side of the chair, sending it turning to bring the stunning woman into view who had been his constant…companion in one form…or another, for over a year. “You will find the way to Earth because you are destined to lead the way”.

“Oh. Well that’s nice to know, because I have made absolutely zero progress”, he complained. “You’re supposed to be an angle sent here to guide me right? Well” he said, pointing towards the desk covered with pictures of the monoliths, star charts and books galore, “you can start here”

Six laughed, her pale blond hair dancing on her bear shoulders as she shook her head.

“You still don’t understand do you” she smiled; stepping forward and without warning she stepped raised her leg over him and sat, straddling him as she adjusted her scarlet dress slightly. “All this technology, all these resources are useless…the answer has always been in front of you”.

“Really” he said with a thin veneer of sarcasm lacing his words.

“Of course” she said. “We are all instruments of God Gaius” she said solemnly. “Even those of us who are impossibly stubborn and unwilling to admit it”. Her piercing gaze held his, her blue eyes narrowing slightly. “Remember Gaius, All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. We follow the path of God. The players change, but the story remains the same”.

“Was that actually supposed to help me?” Baltar asked, raising an eyebrow. “Or are you just being cryptic for the sake of being cryptic. Again”.

“Your stubbornness is not one of your more endearing qualities” Six sighed, carefully levering herself back up to her feet. “You have eyes to see and ears to hear but you fail to notice anything around you”. The computer terminal pinged. Excited, Baltar turned to it. The results came up onto the computer screens in front of him.

“Well?” Six asked, leaning over till her head was next to his own and her body gently pressed against his…bringing memories to the surface that he brutally forced down before he got distracted.

Of course he was sure was why she had done it anyway.

“The computer has found every one of the star patterns in the first sequence of patterns, the ones that can be seen in the Kobal sky” he said, pointing to the star map. With Kobal in the middle, four red circles surrounded it, one capped it, the sixth was not visible in the top down map but it was there. “Unfortunately it has only found two of the others…and it tried mapping the entire sky from our current location. In fact-”

“Gaius. The key is right in front of you” she said in a slightly exasperated voice, reaching out her arm and lightly moving it along the leather bound copy of the Pythian prophecy that he had sitting on the desk. “As I have told you, we are returning to the beginning of the circle. Seek the answer here”.

“Oh so God left a note for me here did he?”

The Cylon (or her memory) was silent for a few seconds. “Don’t mock God Gaius” she said. Her voice was still friendly enough, but there was a clear undercurrent of warning in it. “His hand might be hard to see at times, but it does touch and guide all of us”. She tapped the book. “Open it to page fifty.”

Deciding not to push the strange relationship with his phantom too far, Baltar opened it and found the page. A quick glance showed a few paragraphs of text, but the page was mostly empty, coming at the end of a chapter.

“Read it” she said, her voice brooking no dissent. Sighing, he sat up straighter and pulled the book closer, then started reading.

“And while the few searched for the path, the six brothers stood in order, forever lighting the path to Kobal, while the six remaining brothers stood in identical order over the gateway to heaven”. He turned an irritated expression upon the haunting, but beautiful woman. “Wonderfully cryptic, but-”

Baltar stopped in mid sentence as the phrase hit him. The import stunned him like a proclamation from on high as the meaning permeated through him. Six’s expression was one of smug satisfaction, like a teacher whose student had finally grasped a concept that had eluded him time and time again.

“Trust in God Gaius, He will guide your hand” she said, and then simply vanished into nothing. Baltar barely noticed, his mind kept furiously circling.

Six brothers…and six more brothers…standing in order.

Putting the book to the side, he brought up the star chart again. Tapping on his keyboard, he set it for a 3D representation and rotated back, holding his distance constant from Kobal. From this angle, he could see clearly the six star constellations. Six points in space. Each more or less the exact same distance from Kobal on all sides. Using the navigational software that was running his program, he measured the distance between each of the constellations ‘midpoints’…each was identical.

His head starting to feel light, he generated a wireframe cube, and then expanded its size until the length of each of its sides was exactly twice the length of each of the constellations to Kobal.

It was a perfect fit. At the exact centre of the cube, the yellow star that represented the Kobal system flashed red. His hands trembling slightly, he selected the two other constellations that the computer had managed to identify and moved the wireframe across and rotated it until two of the faces of the cubes were perfectly aligned with the two midpoints.

And again, a star at the exact centre of the map flashed red. He stared in wonder for a second.

And then bolted for the door.

[HawaiianOnline]

Sweet update. Can't wait for the next chapter, then RL will intervene with the chapter after that. Oh well, it's worth the wait. Good luck with your exams!

[Spartan303]

Very Well done Chris! Definetly cant wait for your next instalment.

[Flying J]

I havent managed to keep up to well with neo-BSG since the first season but this is the kind of thing I loved about it. It had a mix of mystery and science that was what drew me to it. Nice Chris

[Gear]

Exactly, you've once again managed to capture the spirit of the shows you're writing about.

[Damar]

For some reason, i don't think the SGC people will be very happy to deal with Roslin, and perhaps will rather talk to Adama than to Roslin.

And i can forsee the fun problems of Jaffa meeting Cyclons

[RazorSmile]

Hot damn that's good.

[Viper II Fan]

One of the best fan fics I have read. You captured the shows PREFECTLY, excellent work!

[PeaceKeeper_Cmdr]

Cool. I eagerly await the next chapter.

But, uh, just to nitpick, it spelled Kobol. Two o's.

[Chris O'Farrell]

Stargate Command Operations Centre.
Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado
Earth, Milky Way.
January 11, 2005.

“Chevron five, encoded”
Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman glanced over his control boards as power surged through high voltage cables overhead towards the Stargate. The great ring in front of him slowed with a sound of stone grinding against stone, then stopped. On his screen, a star constellation expanded, then shrunk down to the side as the chevron locked in place.
“Chevron six, encoded”
At this point, Walter carefully looked over the Chevron listing down the right hand side of his screen, mentally ticking off each one. Virgo, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces…
“Chevron seven, locked”
There was silence for a second, then with a whirring sound followed by a great whoosh, the unstable vortex short forth, then snapped back into the Naquadah ring as if it was attached by an elastic band.
“Wormhole established. Subspace transmitter is powered and ready” Walter announced.
“Thank you Chief” General Landry nodded, then leaned down to the microphone and slapped the talk button. While there was now a very powerful subspace transmitter hidden among the several dozen aerials that NORAD had placed on top of Cheyenne mountain for more mundane communications, sending a signal halfway across the Galaxy would take ten or twenty times as much raw power as just opening a wormhole and using the much smaller subspace transmitter built into the gateroom computer.

Not that Colorado had a power shortage of course. But people at the power company might get a little suspicious if NORAD kept surging huge amounts of power far beyond its history for official purposes on a regular basis. Even nine years after the program started, every effort was taken to limit the knowledge of its existence to the United States population.

“Prometheus this is Stargate Command, respond”.
There was static for several seconds, then a squealing, then-
“Stargate Command this is Daedalus. Authenticate Charlie Echo One”.
Landry glanced down at Walters computer screen. Authentication codes were assigned by the time of day according to Zulu time and assigned to all SG teams and starships leaving Earth. It was a quick and theoretically unbreakable challenge common to all allied because the combinations were completely random. The code for between 12:00 and 14:00 hours would be…
“Prometheus this is Stargate Actual. I authenticate November Hotel Niner”.
“Stand by one Sir” the distant technician said, then Walters screen dissolved into static which quickly resolved to display Colonel Caldwell sitting in his command chair.
“Stephen, mind telling me where Prometheus is?” Landry asked without preamble.
“Their on their way General” the distant commander replied, glancing at the ships tactical displays. “We have them on long range sensors, they should be here in about five minutes”.
“Fair enough. When they arrive, tell Teal’c that he has received a message from Dakara and he needs to contact Raknor ASAP”.
“Will do Sir”.
“What’s the situation?”
“We have boarding party aboard the station led by Colonel Sheppard. They’re not making much progress apparently, the Ancient language is very archaic compared to more mainstream Ancient”.
“Well I’m sure Doctor Jackson will be happy to lend a hand. Just remember to take him with you when you leave or I’ll never hear the end of it”.
Caldwell grinned. “I’ll try not to forget him”.
“Damn straight” Landry smiled. “SGC out”.
The Stargate hissed then the wormhole vanished.
“Well Chief” Landry said to Walter, looking out at the deactivated ring in front of them, “It looks like Colonel Mitchell’s out of a Geek”.


Ancient Space Station.
Orbit, P4X-221 Star System.
Unclaimed Space, Milky Way.
January 11, 2005.

Colonel John Sheppard turned as the chime of an Asgard transporter rang through the control room. Three columns of light appeared to phase through the roof and crash onto the floor, shimmering for a second before fading to reveal two figures in the military khaki of Stargate Command and one…not. John knew Doctor Jackson and Colonel Mitchell. The final person however…

“Colonel” John greeted the defacto leader of the new arrivals, throwing off a salute to the officer, who waved away such formality and extended his hand which John took. “Good to see you again. I didn’t think it would be so soon though”.
“What can I say; I love a good Space Station”. Sheppard gestured to the man next to him who was looking with great interest towards the computer consoles. “You know Doctor Jackson I presume?”
“Oh. Damn”
Daniel turned back and frowned at that.. “Umm excuse me?”
Sighing, Sheppard reached into one of his utility vest pockets and emerged with a crisp twenty dollar bill, which he handed over to Mitchell, who carefully folded it and placed it back into his own pocket. Daniel stared in confusion for a few seconds.
Then it clicked.
“Wait…you were betting on me actually making it to Atlantis?” Daniel asked with a somewhat amused expression. Sheppard shrugged with a wan smile.
“Well given your history with Atlantis I thought it was a pretty safe bet”.
“I’d have been happy to loose it to be frank” Mitchell added with a smile that looked a little forced. And it wasn’t hard to guess why, given the current situation.
Daniel wasn’t happy with the situation either, despite the fact that he had been trying to get to Atlantis for over a year now. Mitchell had worked his way through a years worth of physical therapy with only one goal in his mind, to join SG1. Then when he finally got released back to active duty status…it made Daniel feel more then a little guilty.

Not enough to stay of course. He turned backed towards Sheppard.

“So Colonel…what can we do for you?”
“Well the good news is that McKay here thinks there is a Zero point module powering the station, which we all want to get our greedy hands on. The bad news is that we can’t find it. The irritating news is that the computer files are written in some kind of formal Ancient script he doesn’t have a clue about”.
“I have a clue just not much of one” the Canadian protested from a few meters away without bothering to look up.
“Whatever!” Sheppard said back with an expression that said he didn’t really care. “So Doctor if you would please…”
Daniels expression brightened as he stepped around the group and up to the console McKay had plugged into. Sheppard turned back and directed his attention to the rather non military women standing next to Mitchell. “And you would be?”
“Vala” the women answered, looking over Sheppard with a practiced eye that missed little. “Vala Maldoran. And you would be?”
“Colonel John Sheppard, United States Air force”.
Vala sighed.
“I’m beginning to see why so many Goa’uld wanted to destroy Earth. It has to be the most incredibly boring planet in the Galaxy! Nothing but ‘Yes Sir!’ ‘No Sir!’ military types who wouldn’t know the meaning of fun if it bit them in the-”
Vala may have continued on her tirade if not for Mitchell hooking a finger through a convenient leather strap on her back and pulling her back towards him.
“Leave the man alone, dear” he said with a slightly amused expression. “Because I’d rather you not annoy the men with the guns to the point where they just decide it’s much easier to shoot you rather then listen to you”.
“Except for the slight fact that Daniel would die as well” she pointed out.
Mitchell raised an eyebrow.
“I said shoot you, not kill you”
“Why is it that all of you want to shoot me?” Vala demanded with an exasperated sigh. “I brought you a map to enough treasure to make us all rich-”
“And forced Daniel into helping you find it”
“But we did find it!”
“And there is still the whole stealing the Prometheus thing”
“…well there is that. But it was all in good fun! Ask Daniel, we had a ball!”

A few meters away, Daniel muttered something under his breath.

“Just stay inside the room”. Mitchell pleaded. “And try not to annoy too many people”.
Scowling, Vala turned with a flick of her ponytail and started to walk around the control room, taking in the gleaming technology and reams of data streaming over the laptops and plasma displays the tech team from the Daedalus had plugged in. A few seconds later, an Asgard transporter beam flashed and Teal’c arrived, holding the large book Daniel had recovered from the vault under Glastonbury tore, which he handed over to the archeologist.
Mitchell turned back to Sheppard who was looking at him like he was deranged.
“She stole the Prometheus?”
Mitchell simply grinned.
“Teal’c, how’s the high council”
“They are well Colonel Mitchell. The debate over the future government of the Free Jaffa has been suspended for a week as several other members of the high council are not on Dakara today”.
“Well that’s good news isn’t it?”
Teal’c considered. “Yes” he agreed after some thought. “The situation is…fluid”.
“Sounds serious” Mitchell said with a frown. Teal’c nodded slowly.
“There has been much dispute over the formation of our new Government”. Teal’c said in a lower tone. “The Jaffa struggled for so long to free ourselves that we gave little thought to how we would govern ourselves after the victory”.
“That doesn’t sound good…on Earth we’ve seen any number of situations like this turn very nasty very fast”.
“Which is why Bre’tac and I campaigned for a truly representative Government that embraced all Jaffa and would let our race find its own destiny”. Teal’c’s expression did not change, but Mitchell sensed the displeasure that rang through his voice. “A Jaffa named Gerak emerged as spokesman for the more traditional ways of the Jaffa. They backed a more restrained change in Jaffa society, talking years or decades to reshape, if they wanted to do so at all”.
“That doesn’t make any sense” Sheppard protested, drawing the Jaffa’s attention. When he had left for Atlantis, John had only a sketchy understanding of the politics in the Milky Way. One of the joys of his new rank however had been spending the last few days taking intelligence briefings on the situation in his home Galaxy. And this didn’t add up.
“Those ‘traditions’ were nothing but an elaborate smokescreen to bind the Jaffa more tightly to the Goa’uld. Often by encouraging fighting among each other and blind obedience…they should be rejecting that past, not embracing it!”.
“Indeed” Teal’c agreed. “But Gerak represents a very significant powerbase of Jaffa in both the size of their armies and worlds they seized from the Goa’uld. A large majority of these Jaffa switched their allegiance after our Victory at Dakara. Most occupied relatively high ranking positions in the service of the Goa’uld and with the deaths of their False Gods, they simply took their place on those worlds”.
Carmon’s felt sour. “And as the votes in the high council are assigned based on military assets…”
“Gerak’s coalition has the numbers to vote him leader of the Jaffa nation” Teal’c finished. His expression broke slightly into a small smile. “However. Bre’tac has suspected that the true size of Gerak’s coalition has been deliberately overstated. The break in these debates will give the council time to investigate their holdings. As well as gain time for negotiations with several of those Gerak represents”.
“So…being off world with your Tau’ri buddies actually saved the day, no?”
Teal’c simply raised an eyebrow.
“Ohhhkay. Baby steps, baby steps” Mitchell muttered to himself. “Come on, Teal’c, Let’s go have a look around the place”.


“Ah! No, go back one. One more. No the other way…yes that’s it!” Daniels enthusiasm had a half dozen technicians looking up curiously as he tapped at a data entry on McKay’s laptop.
“Ok. Activate that and we should get…” Daniel looked up as the holographic monitor activated and lines of Ancient characters started to poor onto the screen. “That”.
“So what have we got?”
“Ok. These” Daniel said, waving his hand over a directory listing “are the stations computer generated logs. These” he added, tapping another set of icons “are links to the stations primary systems”
“Oh goody” McKay said and brought up the logs, flashing down a page of entries. McKay accessed the most recent and redirected the stream to the primary window, expecting the translations of the logs to start rolling down the screen.
Instead, ASCII characters started to randomly scroll onto the screen including a few characters McKay had never seen before, until he killed the stream process.
“What does that mean?”
“The translation matrix doesn’t have a clue. It was programmed based on the work you did on that time loop machine and has no basis here”.
“Those were the days” Daniel muttered.
“Yeah, anyway, we’re going to have to completely reprogram the translation matrix to handle this new variation of Ancient if we’re going to convert the logs to English. But the underlying OS is more or less identical to the mainframe on Atlantis as well as the outpost on Earth, so the application level interface is still functioning”.

Daniel held the Canadian in a level gaze, calmly waiting for him to translate that.

McKay sighed.
“You have to translate the logs yourself. Ok?”
“No problems” Daniel nodded confidently. “Let’s take a look here” he said, tapping the systems link. McKay pulled out one of the control crystals, flipped it over and returned it back to another port on the dusty orange console. Here the Ancient script was much more conventional and Rodney was able to move around the system with only minimal guidance from Daniel. A few false starts later they found what they were looking for and the display shifted to a wire frame view of the station, text highlighting various areas.
“Ok I’ve got the primary power grid system…can you read this?”
Daniel adjusted his glasses and stared hard at the screen. The schematics for the stations power plant were once again labeled in the obscure dialect.
“Sort of…but it’s going to take some time to get a real translation of it. That”, Daniel pointed to one label, “is a transport station”. According to this, the only other way into this room is climbing down a single access shaft through the core of the station. It’s uh…very heavy protected by what looks like solid trinium”.
“Hang on” McKay said, then opened up a new window and logged back into the Daedalus’s external network through the communications gear they had brought on board. The relatively unsecured connection was read only, but a quick login got him the logs of the sensor scans they had been conducting of the station when they arrived. “Take a look at this” he said, lifting the computer for Daniel to get a look. “The one area the Asgard sensors couldn’t scan through was this area in the central core around the engine room. Either they’re hiding something, or they have so much shielding around something down there that its blocking sensor probes”
“Well someone’s going to have to take a look” Daniel commented. Then he got an idea.


“Ten meters on your left guys” Daniels voice crackled over Sheppard’s earpiece. The lights in the outer corridor of the control level only operated on very limited power, just enough to highlight the passageway but not enough to rid the area of the dark shadows that cloaked it. Sheppard and Mitchell swept their P-90’s steadily as they moved forward, the tactical lights slung under the barrels illuminating their path somewhat, Teal’c brought up the rear, keeping an eye on their back trail. The twin doors from the control room lead into the passage that ringed the command centre, providing access to a transport room, lounges, storage rooms, conference rooms and access points to the internal conduits under the command centre. None of the rooms had been of any real note, except for the fact that they had clearly been put in order very carefully as if the Ancients who had crewed this station knew they would never come back.

It was just like they had found Atlantis.
Slumbering.
Waiting.
Derelict

He had walked Atlantis in the middle of the night more then once. The city was so large and the human population so small that one could walk for tens of kilometers and not encounter another human being in a city the size of Manhattan. All that could be heard was the hum of the cities few active systems, the crash of the waves against the ‘shoreline’…and the ghosts of the Ancients who had once inhabited the city.

Moving around the constantly curving passage which looked so much like those back on Atlantis, Sheppard’s thoughts once again returned to the expedition in the Pegasus Galaxy. Intellectually he knew that this station could represent a short cut back to Atlantis, but having the Daedalus just sit still here irritated him. Atlantis had called in for weekly status reports to Earth since obtaining the ZPM and he knew the city was more or less safe, the Wraith convinced it had vaporized in a multi megaton hellfire.
But the situation in Pegasus was deteriorating. The Wraiths activity across the rest of the Galaxy was still increasing far beyond any previous cull, the Geni were unlikely to have found new hobbies and he had just made a promise that effectively meant he would track down Ford, drag his ass back for Becket and get him off the Wraith juice.
The sooner Stargate Command took over this whole space station issue, the better.

“I don’t see it yet Daniel” Colonel Mitchell sent back, bringing Sheppard’s thoughts back to the present. Focusing his own tactical light, Sheppard frowned as he also failed to see the doors of a transport room where Daniel said it should be.
“Well it says it should be there on the map”.
“You want to come out here and have a look? It isn’t here” Mitchell responded, walking a few meters to the outer wall and looking as far down the corridor as he could.
“Ok wait a minute….opps”
“Opps? What opps?”
“Uhh sorry guys, we were reading it upside down. We just overlaid the life signs detector. The room is on the opposite side of the corridor from where you area.”
A quick nod from Mitchell sent Teal’c off with the two officers following him.
“So Daniel, what’s your Girlfriend doing?”
“She is not my Girlfriend the indignant reply came back quickly. “And she is just sitting in the corner pouting because everyone is busy and no-one is paying attention to her…well except Rodney”
“Oh I so am not!”
“You’re drooling all over the console!”
McKay continued to half protest his interest as Teal’c edged his way around the station. His excellent sense of direction let him judge when they were nearing the opposite side of the corridor ringing the control room and this time a brown door was embedded into the inner wall. Gesturing to the two Colonels behind him, Teal’ approached the door, which opened with a slight hiss revealing an empty room and a small control screen embedded in the wall.
“Just make sure she keeps sitting in the corner. I’d rather not have her steel the station out from under us” Mitchell said as he angled his weapon around, shining his light into the room, then gestured everyone to get in.
“I’ll keep an eye on her.

“Use both” Mitchell muttered without activating his radio.

“Ok we’re here” Sheppard said as the three stepped inside. “Now what?”
“Ok there should be two other locations you can transport to on the display. One of them is the stations power room; the other is a hanger bay”.
“Wait this thing has a hanger? Sweet! We should look at that first” Mitchell protested enthusiastically, Sheppard rapidly nodding his agreement.
McKay broke into the conversation with a sigh.
“Yes I’m sure you pilots would dearly love to look at ‘Yet Another Ancient Spaceship’, but can we try to stay on topic for at least five minutes?”
“Spoilsport” Mitchell scoffed, and then frowned. “Hey what do these two red dots on the transport room display mean?” Sheppard looked closer at the display and saw what Mitchell was talking about, two dots that were outside the space stations wireframe, but instead of flashing white, they burned a bright red.
“Those are just the ring rooms on the Daedalus and Prometheus which are not active, feel free not to press them unless you want to have your pattern lost to deep space, otherwise be my guest”.
Mitchell looked at Sheppard.
“You made him a member of your team, why?”


The white flash of the transporter room faded from Camrons eyes as he the sequence completed, the door in front of him opening to reveal a large but only partially lit room.
“We’re in” he radioed, wondering if they could hear him through all the shielding around the room…though the lack of a response suggested they couldn’t.

Teal’c stepped out first, holding his P-90 like an oversized pistol as he swung it around to take in the entire room. Sheppard followed him trying to look everywhere at the same time, then Mitchell brought up the rear. An even dozen holographic monitors circled the room’s walls, all deactivated. A railing matched the circular outer wall, defining a two meter wide walkway around the perimeter that separated the monitors from an inner raised area with a quartet of the now ubiquitous Ancient computer consoles placed equally around the perimeter of the platform.
“Ok, let’s take a look” Mitchell said, then followed the railing to the left with Teal’c in tow while Sheppard broke to the right. A quarter of the way around the room he found a short staircase that provided access to the central core. He jumped up with Teal’c on his six…then felt his jaw drop. Sitting in the middle of the gap between the two consoles were a trio zero point modules. They sat, extended from a triangular power console, lit softly by a spotlight twenty meters above in the dark ceiling.
“John?”
“Yeah?” the Colonels voice echoed from somewhere on the other side of the room.
“We hit the jackpot”
“Hang on, there’s a staircase over here - whoa!” Sheppard breathed as he caught sight of the three power cores.
“Indeed” Teal’c agreed as he joined them, reaching for his radio. “Daniel Jackson, Doctor McKay, can you hear me?”
Static crackled back over the radio.
“There must be too much shielding around the room to get a signal out” Sheppard muttered, looking around the room, then stopping and walking over to one of the consoles. “But if this thing works like the one on Atlantis...” he speculated, then tapped one of the crystals covered in an Ancient symbol he recognized. “McKay, can you hear me?”
There was nothing for a second, then a soft chime sounded through the room.
“Yes, we were wondering what was going on down there”.
“Well it looks like the room is shielded against our radio signals”. Sheppard shrugged. “Or something. But I can confirm that the power core is made up of…THREE Zero Point Modules”.
“THREE” Daniel and McKay simultaneously gasped in astonishment.
“Three” Mitchell confirmed moving closer to Sheppard.
“Well that would explain why the sensor shadow was far more powerful then it should be” McKay commented in a more thoughtful voice. “Can you read how much power they have?”
“All the screens down here are deactivated and most of the lights are off”.
“That would be a no?”
“That would be a no”.
“Well the station is running off secondary power. There is a Naquadah sheathing over most of the central core that is absorbing solar energy and powering the systems we have operational” McKay commented, and then paused. “Wait, are the ZedPM’s sitting inside the console or are they sort of sticking out of it”
“They’re sticking out”
“Ahh see that would explain it, they’re not active in. You’re going to have to push them slightly on the top, they’ll retract into the console and become active, and then we can check their status”.
Sheppard looked at Mitchell. Who looked at Teal’c. Who looked back at them both…all with the same expression on their faces.
“Umm are you sure about that McKay?”
“Of course I’m sure. Look we’re just connecting the ZedPM’s to the power grid so we can have a look. Nothing more, Nothing less”.
The two officers glanced at each other, shrugged and walked out to the central console along with Teal’c.
“On three?” Sheppard said with a raised eyebrow.
“On three” Mitchell confirmed. “One”.
The three stepped up to a ZPM each.
“Two” the three put their hands on top of their chosen power core.
“Three!” and each of them pressed carefully on the top. The three cores started to lower with a whir of motors and they snatched their hands away.
“Ok they’re going in” Sheppard called back…watching as they came flush with the console, then they brightened and a red dot glowed on each of them.
“Excell-”
The station jolted and a roar of a very big machine powering up ripped through the room.
“MCKAY!” Sheppard and Mitchell demanded in unison as the power centre around them shuddered its way to life.

[Chris O'Farrell]

I REALLY hate word limits.

“It’s not me!” the Canadian protested as he hammered the console in a near panic. Seeing no response, he ran around to the next console, scooting the technician sitting there out of the way. The second the Zero point Modules had been inserted, the stations primary systems listing had lit up like a Christmas tree. Technicians were franticly working their own consoles trying to disengage the power systems, but no-one had a clue what was going on.
“McKay, NOW would be a good time to press the stop button” Sheppard’s voice came over the intercom again, understandably concerned as the station rocked again sending a couple of technicians flying into walls.
“Sheppard, Mitchell this is Caldwell, what the hell is going on over there?”
McKay listened as the various officers talked to each other, trying to tune it out. Many of the other civilian technicians who were on their first ever mission with the Stargate program were also near panic, starting to demand that they get the hell out of there, turning into a roaring cacophony that made it impossible to concentrate. Daniel was trying to reassure everyone while he tried to get them back to their stations, listen in on the three way debate between Colonel Mitchell’s team, Colonel Pendergast and Colonel Caldwell AND try to help McKay translate.
It was also clear he was failing at all of those tasks.
“EVERYONE SHUT UP!”
The powerful voice ripped through the noise in an instant, causing everyone to turn and show a rather irritated Vala Maldoran glaring into the group of civilians.
“How in the Galaxy you people managed to take down the Goa’uld Empire I don’t think I’ll ever understand. But if you don’t all get back to work, you are all probably going to die here”.
The technicians started at her. She narrowed her eyes.
“SO GET MOVING!” she shouted and they scattered back to their stations. She gave Daniel a wink, then with perfect nonchalance, walked back to the wall and went back to reading the book recovered from Merlins vault.
Daniel blinked, then turned back to McKay as his radio crackled.
“Doctor McKay, this is Caldwell, come in”
“We’re still here Colonel” McKay spoke as he brought up a screen full of graphs which were rather alarmingly moving from green up through the spectrum towards yellow. “The station is activating”.
“Shut it down!” Caldwell demanded. McKay barely managed not to snap back at the officer.
“I’ve already tried that Colonel” he said, following Daniels directions as he moved through the stations specifications. “The computer isn’t listening to me”. McKay slapped at a crystal on the control pad. “Mitchell, you still there?”
“Right here Doc”
”On the console near the ZedPM’s there should be a crystal control with what looks like two capital letter A’s stuck together at the top, positioned horizontal.”
“Hang on” Mitchell said as Sheppard looked around, then spied the crystal. “Ah! Got it!”
“Ok we found it” Mitchell shouted back into the communications array, trying to be heard over the roar of the technology around them as it powered up.
“Ok, get the crystal and put it into a slot just under the centre module in the power array”.
Sheppard yanked the module out and tossed it to Teal’c who easily slotted it in. A tiny control panel exposed itself.
“Ok it’s in, a control panel just opened up”.
“Good, tap the left side of the panel twice”.
Teal’c tapped then the panel grayed out and shut.
“It just flashed then closed up again”.
“Perfect, I should have control …oh no”.
“What do you MEAN Oh No?” Sheppard demanded.
“I can’t shut down the power flow! The Zero point modals are locked open!”
Cursing, the three joined Teal’c at the Console and started looking for inspiration to shut down the system…somehow.

McKay jumped back into the primary systems as the other technicians tried to find ways to redirect the power. “Well can we pull them out?” Mitchell’s voice asked with the first traces of worry in his voice.
“Not a chance” McKay responded as he swapped two crystals around and brought up another screen. “The modules are locked in. And even if you could pull it free, if it’s not shut down you’ll just destroy half the solar system”.

That comment made Sheppard, Mitchell and Teal’c carefully pull their hands away from the module they had been trying to pull out of the console.

“So what does this mean?” Pendergast broke into the channel. One of the scientists working at the console tossed Rodney a clipboard with some figures he glanced over, then grimaced.
“The ZedPM’s are dumping energy from subspace into realspace at a steady rate. It has to go somewhere. Right now it’s going into the capacitors built on the station but as soon as they are filled, this entire place will explode with enough energy to be seen from Earth in oh…fifty thousand years?”
“So what are our options?” Caldwell asked.
“Either we activate the station or we run”.
“I vote for run if anyone’s interested” Vala chipped in from the seat next to Daniel.
“Seriously, not now, please” he begged, then turned back to the display.
“Well what is this thing supposed to DO?” Caldwell demanded.
“Once again, it could be a giant coffee peculator for all I know, we haven’t had TIME to figure out the stations purpose”.
“Well actually I was looking through that book-” Vala broke in before a glare from Daniel shut her up again.
“Well can we recover the ZPM’s at least?”
“Not while they’re active and locked. The only way to disengage them down is to let the station complete its primary program”.
“Exactly” Vala beamed and reached past Daniel to point at an icon on the display. “You see the-”
“Can we divert the energy from the capacitors somewhere?” Daniel asked McKay who looked up at the technicians, both completely ignoring Vala who was rapidly getting irritated.
“For a limited time, it’s not impossible” one of them said. “If we activate the shield generator, turn on everything on the station and so on we can soak up the power. If we had weapons we could simply shoot away the energy but-”
“It’s only a temporary solution” McKay finished. “Unless we activate the station, and we don’t know what the station does, then-”
“It’s a Gateway to another Universe you idiot” Vala snapped causing heads to turn in the control room and silence on the communications link.

“A what?” Daniel asked looking rather confused while McKay looked interested.
“Look here” she said, slamming the old book down in front of him, which caused Daniel to jump like someone had shot him with a zat. “This text here towards the back talks about some Ancients who left your sorry excuse for a planet to find a new place to do their Empire building. And here” she said with a smile as she turned to page to show a beautifully illustrated picture which perfectly matched the wireframe now flashing with red labels on the view screen, “it talks about their passage into the new Universe-”
“Okay Okay, it’s like um a Quantum Mirror” McKay said for the benefit of everyone still listening in. Where too?”
“Doesn’t say” Vala shrugged. “But if the Gate builders went there, there is a good chance they are still there. Or at least that the place isn’t full of badly dressed eye glowing-”
“Where doesn’t matter” McKay broke in. “Colonel Caldwell-”
“Doctor we don’t have a clue what could be on the other side” Caldwell cut in, anticipating the next question. “Without knowing that, can we really risk opening the gateway?”
“Yes!” McKay responded in a heated voice. “If we don’t, we loose the ZedPM’s, we loose the station…we should be able to shut down the portal after it stabilizes”.
Silence reached through the line for a good five seconds. McKay watched the graphs continue to climb and resisted the urge to start shouting into his microphone boom.
“Rodney, this is Elizabeth. Are you sure you can do this?”
“Yes” he replied automatically as he started programming commands into the mainframe.
“Ok. You have a go. What do you need?”
“Alright listen up” McKay said, still on VOX but addressing the people in the control room. “Everyone here but, Dr Jackson, me and his girlfriend need to get back to the Daedalus now. Sheppard?”
“Here”
“I need your team to get down to the Hanger bay ten seconds ago”
“We’re on it” the response came back as Vala stood up looking rather indignant.
“How come I have to stay?” she demanded.
Daniel simply pointed at the bracelet on her wrist.
“Oh. That” she frowned as she remembered, reaching up to her vest and calmly loosening it to expose a generous portion of her cleavage.
McKay gawked as she reached in and removed a red crystal from in between her breasts, then tightened the black leather back up again. She waved the crystal over her armband then Daniels and both of them immediately flexed and unlocked. Daniel yanked it off and threw it against the wall with relief.
“Now don’t get yourself killed” she admonished him, then grabbed his face and as his eyes widened in surprise, kissed him passionately until his chest felt like it would burst for lack of air, before breaking away and walking to stand with the technicians. She waved with a smile, and then vanished in a flash of light as Daedalus whisked them away.
“And you don’t want to go out with her?” McKay rhetorically muttered as he shook his head and got back to work.


“McKay we’re here, now what?” Sheppard demanded as they sprinted into the hanger bay. The transporter room didn’t actually open onto the bay itself, which was a logical precaution to guard against transporting into a decompressed area. Instead the transport room deposited them in an antechamber with doors to the left and right and a huge vertical door that dominated the far bulkhead. Tapping the control and opening the bulkhead door, Sheppard charged in-
-and came to an abrupt halt, Mitchell and Teal’c narrowly missing slamming into his back as they skidded to a stop.
They stood on a vast raised platform that circled the hanger, which had to be a good two hundred meters in diameter and forty in height, the floor being the very base of the stations central cylinder. Tucked in under the raised platform stretching left and right of them were puddle jumpers, at least ten of them but docking slips for four times as many. Directly opposite them a huge airlock built into the bulkhead allowed access to space. But the hanger was dominated by a huge metal rack that stretched from floor to ceiling in front of them. Mounted inside the rack were four of the strangest looking ships that Sheppard had ever seen. They were long and thin like needles, with what looked like hundreds of antenna neatly folded against their hulls.
“There are three things you have to do. Power the satellites which will generate the portal by connecting them to the grid, launch them and open the hanger doors”. McKay paused. “Not necessarily in that order of course”.
“Of course” Sheppard said trying not to roll his eyes. “How do we do this?”
“Ok there are four power conduits that have to be attached to the grid. Do you remember the grounding stations on Atlantis?
“Yes”
“They’ll look like that”. Sheppard shrugged and clattered down the stairs to the hanger deck with Teal’c close behind, the pair sprinting for the towering framework at the centre. “Colonel Mitchell?”
“Present”
“To your left you should be able to see a control room with a window looking into the hanger bay. Entrance is behind you”. Mitchell looked around, saw the door and jogged back. He activated the door just in time to be thrown from his feet and stumble into the control room as the station rocked violently.
“What the hell was that”? Sheppard and Mitchell demanded simultaneously.
“Shield generator exploding” McKay responded in a tone that suggested they had just asked him how the weather was back on Earth.
“I would suggest you hurry” a new voice cut in, recognizable to most as Hermiod back on the Daedalus, now holding station several billion Kilometers away while Prometheus stayed in close, ready to pull the last people off. “The energy buildup in the capacitors is beyond ninety percent”.
“Great” Mitchell grunted as he got off the deck and slapped the door controls open.
“Sheppard, Teal’c you ready?”

It took John Sheppard approximately twenty seconds to sprint across the metal deck of the hanger bay to the huge framework in the centre. Plus the five seconds it took for him to get back off the floor after the stations shield generator detonated. Hauling himself back up, he closed distance, annoyed to see Teal’c hadn’t fallen with the stations shudder and was waiting at the first station.
“Ok, we’re at the stations, what do we do!”

“Right!” McKay said.
Then he turned to Daniel. “What do we do??!!”
“Hang on I’ve almost got it…just about”…Daniel was furiously scribbling on a pad of paper as he stared at the ‘instruction manual’ that McKay had helped him find in the mainframe.
“Ninety three” percent Hermiod calmly broke in. If he didn’t know the Asgard better, McKay would swear the Asgard was getting a kind of perverse satisfaction at counting down their time to live.
On the other hand, perhaps he didn’t know him as well as he thought.
“Dr Jackson, if you’re going to do something, now would be a good time” McKay muttered out of the corner of his mouth as a rumble started to build in the station, a vibration that steadily grew as Rodney diverted as much of the energy as he dared into the inertial dampeners and artificial gravity systems.
“Okay okay okay I got it!” Daniel said as he franticly finished his scribbles. He grabbed his radio from the console top and clicked three times rapidly for attention. “Colonel Sheppard, Teal’c, on each of the consoles enter the Ancient equivalent of one seven six six two one, then execute”.

Sheppard forced himself through an act of shear will not to hammer the console as fast as his hands would let him and instead methodically touched the strange symbols one after the other, each making sounds like a Pegasus DHD being activated. When all six were lit, he pressed the execute button. Immediately the thick cylinder immediately behind the console jolted then smoothly connected to the conduits that ran into each of the four needle ships. Congratulating himself he looked up to see Teal’c nod, then they both ran for the second station.

Watching them from the control room, Mitchell followed instructions from McKay as he brought the hanger bay launch systems online. He wasn’t as familiar with Ancient technology as Sheppard was but enough in the way of cross training had occurred before he joined the SGC that he was able to manipulate it well enough.
“Six one four four seven two three” he muttered to himself, carefully entering the code on the control station. Obediently, the holographic monitor switched to a wireframe view outside the stations lower core, with the rectangular door flashing green. Trying to ignore the dozen red warning icons flashing he thumbed his headset. “Ok that’s it”.

“We’re good” McKay said with glee, then stabbed down on the control to start the launch sequence. Icons flashed yellow as the computer started to power the servomotors on the hanger bay door. Daniels eyes went wide. “Wait what about Teal’c and Sheppard?”
“Relax, the hanger bay is protected by an atmospheric shield”
“Even with the shield generator destroyed?”
McKay stared at him for a good second, then Daniel grabbed the radio.

“OK that’s it, lets go” Sheppard said as the final column connected and power flowed. A whirring sound, not unlike that of a puddle jumper started to come from the ships. They had reached the base of the stairs when Daniel jumped onto the radio.
“Guys if you’re inside the hanger, get the hell out of there!”
Sheppard and Teal’c didn’t question Daniel when he spoke in that tone. They pumped their legs and it was to their credit had made it to the top of the stairs when the huge bulkhead behind them split down the middle and a starfield became visible.

A high pitched screaming rapidly descended into a roar that built through the hanger bay as the air inside impossibly tried to shift and fill the infinite vacuum outside. Teal’c and Sheppard were thrown off their feet and they grimly dug their hands into the metal mesh that made up the platform, crawling their way forward. Teal’c managed to reach the door first and braced himself against a handhold inside. Sheppard thought felt his grip weakening as the airlock cycled wider and the force of the air increased. There was only a finite amount of air of course in the hanger, but he knew he couldn’t hold on. And just as he thought it, he lost his grip, was yanked backward-
A grand total of one centimeter as Teal’cs hand grabed his wrist.

Moving force, meet unmovable object.

Teal’c’s expression was one of simple determination.
The vacuum would not win. He would not let go.
Even as the air pressure dropped and the temperature plummeted, he refused to be defeated.
Even as the bulkhead his left hand was clamped to groaned in protest at the force being exerted upon it, he refused to let up.
Even as his muscles cried out in pain, he ignored them.
He would not yield.
He did however manage to turn his face enough to see the alarmed face of Colonel Mitchell inside the automatically sealed control room window trying to override the door seal. Teal’c gained his attention and nodded towards the console. Like a true warrior, the Colonel held his gaze for a second, then whirled back to the control panel and slammed his first on a flashing crystal as he shouting into his radio, but Teal’c couldn’t hear as his ears screamed in pain from the pressure drop.
Far ahead of Sheppard, the engines on the four craft ignited, sending the quartet of ships rapidly out where they executed a sharp course change that took them up and away from the hanger. Teal’c’s heart rejoiced at the fact that they had completed their mission. His respect for Mitchell grew as he saw that the Colonel knew where his duty lay and that death while performing ones duty held no dishonor.
But death would not claim him today.
His vision suddenly brightened to a complete whiteout…then faded to reveal the bridge of the Prometheus, whose deck Teal’c and Sheppard rapidly thumped onto.
Mitchell and Daniel instantly leapt forward towards the gasping men and helped them up. Sheppard coughed, then slowly stood and faced Perndergast.
“Colonel” he said in a horse voice. “Permission to come aboard”

Caldwell probably would have thrown him back out the airlock for making such a jest.

Perndergast however chuckled with mirth and gestured to Daniel and Mitchell.
“Get them to the Infirmary” he said, glancing at McKay who after seeing the two were alive, ran over to the sensor readouts on the port side of the Bridge. The stars outside the ship blurred into hyperspace for a split second, then vanished as Prometheus rejoined Daedalus a good forty light minutes distant. The Asgard sensors on both ships had no problems monitoring the station at this distance and eyes were glued to view screens.


The four ships that the station had launched formed a diamond, perfectly on the line between the station and the systems star. Readouts showed the stations ability to store the energy the ZPM’s were force feeding it at just about critical...then a dozen brilliant white beams shot from the station at the speed of light, all focused on the closest ‘ship’. So bright were the beams that they would have blinded anyone within five thousand Kilometers looked at them with the naked eye. As it was, the stay behind drone Prometheus had left lost its IR scanners in milliseconds as they completely burned out from the burst of energy. The first “ship” which had its stern pointed to the station appeared to wrap the energy around itself like a cocoon, then the folded appendages whipped open and a pair of white beams blasted to the next two middle satellites, then they in turn targeted the final of their number, forming a brilliant white diamond hanging in orbit of the systems star. Almost immediately as the loop closed, the star filled interior of the diamond started to shrink as the white beams appeared to thicken, expanding inwards at a steady rate.

“Incredible” McKay commented as he looked over the readouts of the energy being thrown around down there. It was completely staggering, yet the fact that the Ancients had so casually thrown it around almost frightened him. He wondered if those who had built this station had done so in humility, knowing the awesome power in their hands and the possibilities for misuse…or if they had wielded it in arrogance, thinking they could control it without any consequences, for they were the race that had seeded entire Galaxies with life…and death.

“Do we have any idea where this portal leads?” Pendergast said softly from behind him, watching the show so distant that the light would not even reach their position for over half an hour.
“Some idea” McKay allowed. “Doctor Jackson was translating a lot of the book on the fly while we trying to turn the place on. It looks like the Ancients may have seeded the Galaxy on the other side with life, but at a much more accelerated rate then they did over here. And with much greater interaction".
“So you’re saying we might find humans more advanced then us on the other side?”
The Canadian shrugged in a non committal way. “It’s a distinct possibility, yes. Apparently the group of Ancients who built this station took to calling themselves the ‘Lords of Koobal’ or something”.
“The Lords of Koobal?”
“I know” McKay snickered. “Ridiculous isn’t it? Though the book Dr Jackson has suggests that at least some of them return a few thousand years ago.
Their attention was drawn back to the screen as the four sides of the diamond met forming a perfect 2D diamond so bright that only the beam of energy coming from the station showed where the structure was.
Then the beam from the space station cut off and twin huge pulses of energy like the vortex on a Stargate shot out from both sides of the object, reaching back tens of thousands of meters, before snapping back into the white energy field. The nanosecond the vortex was absorbed, the fields glow faded to nothing leaving an almost invisible portal, its presence only betrayed by a steady refraction of the starfield behind it, like a mirage on a highway in summer.

“Well that’s that then” McKay announced as the energy output of the station dropped off till once again it became a derelict.
Albeit an intact derelict.
Pendergast nodded towards the helm.
“Signal the Daedalus and take us back”. Once more the starfield blurred then faded to reveal the station. McKay hurried down to the ships ring transporter which was tied into the stations grid, letting him and get a tech team into the power room in seconds. Walking inside, he quickly accessed the controls which were now agreeably co-operative and grinned as two of the three Zero point Modals unlocked and slowly retracted. The third the computer refused to eject, apparently still powering the portal in some small way. Shrugging, he ever so carefully removed the other two modules and placed them into a pair of foam padded security cases a technician held up for him. Putting the stations computer into standby, the group returned to the transport room, but it was the Daedalus’s ring room he appeared in, not that of Prometheus.
He held out the cases to the smiling face of Elizabeth Weir who was waiting in the equipment bay, then passed them onto a technician who headed aft for the ships cargo bays.
“So what’s going on?”
”We’re heading back to Earth” she said. “With a ZPM at the SGC, we can finally get reliable two way travel to Atlantis up and running. We talked to General Landry and the plan is to install the other into the Daedalus so she can head back to Atlantis in a few days. General O’Neill has assigned Prometheus to stay and start initial investigations on the other side of the portal, assuming it’s feasible”.
“What about Colonel Sheppard?”
“He’s fine” she reassured him as they passed through a bulkhead door towards the central spine of the ship. “They transported him over while you were on the station. Carson says he’ll have a hell of a sore throat for a few days, but no permanent damage”.
“Fantastic…wait…what about Doctor Jackson?”
At that moment a subtle shift in background noise of the ships powerplant said louder then words that the ships Hyperdrive just activated. McKay looked at her and his eyes went wide.
“You didn’t”
She smiled. “He’s been reassigned by the SGC to the effort here. General O’Neil pointed out that he is still the most qualified person on the Ancients…and everyone else who might have been able to spearhead missions to the other side of the portal are either on their way to, or at Atlantis”.
“Did you tell him?”
She shook her head. “They wanted us back to Earth fast. So I didn’t have time”.
“Chicken”. Weir looked at him in mock indignation.
“I am not”
“Chiccccken” McKay confirmed as he started to walk away. As he rounded the corner, the Canadian looked back flapping his arms and making loud clucking sounds. Weir stopped for a second to smile and shake her head, then stepped out of sight as she moved forward. Chuckling, Rodney turned… and saw Hermiod five meters in front of him, the Asgard starting at him with one eyebrow raised in a very good impression of a human frown. The grey Asgard held his gaze for a second, then shook his head and entered the arriving lift to the engine room. The door rolled shut, leaving one very embarrassed Doctor Rodney McKay very much alone.

[jon891]

Very nice story but when will the two sides meet.