Genre: Sci-Fi/humor
Category: Stargate: Atlantis/Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I crossover
Main characters: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagen, Ronon Dex, Elizabeth Weir, and Anitra Vallya (as LS Female Revan), Carth Onasi, and Bastila Shan
Rating: K+ (maybe T later? not sure, I haven't gotten there yet)
Setting: For KotOR, only a few Star Maps in (i.e., Anitra hasn't discovered she's Revan yet but they're off Dantooine); for SGA, sometime in the third season or so. I don't keep up with the show as strictly as I should so I can't tell you the exact episode or anything.
Pairings (if any): All hetero, probably nothing serious; tentative Carth/Revan, plus other fun stuff.
A Galaxy Far, Far Away
Chapter One
Anitra Vallya was nervous. No, she reconsidered, not nervous. More like…terrified to the point that concentrating on this idiotic mission is the only thing that will help me stay sane.
The hollow drip of ice-cold water onto slick metal floors echoed around them, providing an offbeat rhythm to the fast tempo of their boot steps. Every distant groan, creak, and scrabbling—whether imagined or real—made the Jedi's shoulders tense a little more as she strained to look ahead through the gloom that saturated the Hrakert Rift station with the same bone-chilling cold as a fog. Groups of crazed Selkath, driven past the brink of sanity by some unknown entity, had already assaulted them and died beneath their lightsabers several times by now. She had come to expect them every time the small party opened a new door, but they weren't what she feared. Neither did she fear the firaxa sharks looming outside the windows at every observatory, watching them as a cat eyes fish in a bowl.
No, it was the choking closeness of the rooms, the way no natural light penetrated these depths. There was only the abysmal, impenetrable depth of the ocean beyond where even light lost its way, and the discomforting gleam of warning strobes flashing a dull red on airlock doors. It was the stale, rotting air: not fresh like the spray on the vast ocean's surface, but dank and suffocating, the smell enough to make her lungs feel poisoned with every breath. It was the knowledge that there was enough pressure weighing down on every square inch of this base that, should the tiniest crack appear, they would all be crushed instantaneously.
Anitra hated hanging her life on such a precarious thing.
Bastila, a too-large flight jacket engulfing her slender frame against the chill, followed on her right. She was more stony-faced than usual, the only indication that the base might be getting to her, too. Though Anitra suspected it was just as likely the younger woman was picking up on her own nervousness through their bond, she couldn't help wondering if Bastila had some indisposition against small, dark, damp places. Didn't everyone?
Carth, probably sensing Anitra's discomfort as well, brushed her shoulder lightly as she came to a stop at a corridor juncture after a particularly loud groan from somewhere beyond them. Startled, she spun on her heel and faced him. "What?" The whisper came out much fiercer than she'd intended, and she winced apologetically at him.
He lifted his shoulder in a tiny shrug of acceptance, one of the many gestures that had become part of a silent language between them. "I thought I heard something from in there." He nodded toward a door about fifty feet down the left side of the hallway ahead of them. "Might be survivors."
"He's right," announced Bastila. "There might be more miners trapped in there… it looks like an airlock."
Anitra sighed but started down the corridor. "Right, like the last surviving miner we discovered? 'Fast food for fishies, ahahahahaha!'" She mimicked the crazed cackle of the man who had refused to step out of the weapons locker earlier.
"Surely they can't all be insane," Bastila replied coolly. "Honestly, must you be so childish?"
"She's nervous," Carth said, surprisingly jumping to her defense. "Don't tell me you can't feel it, Miss I-have-a-special-bond-and-don't-you-forget-it!"
"I'm not nervous," Anitra muttered as she pressed the release for the airlock prep chamber door, which opened into a room with a few shelves of old enviro suits. "And knock it off."
Entering the chamber, she pushed a loose clump of jet-black bangs behind one ear and scanned the airlock console. The airlock was apparently clear and ready to be opened up to the base, though the readout didn't tell her any more than that. There was still a murmur of voices from beyond the thick doors—a trap? There was no prickle of warning in the Force—something she had come to sense carefully for in dangerous areas since her training as a Jedi—so she punched the first airlock release and ushered her team into the small room. Carth moved swiftly to the second console to close the door behind them and opened the next door before Anitra's sudden claustrophobia had a chance to take hold.
"Hey!"
Anitra and Bastila both reflexively whipped out their lightsabers—Bastila's gold, Anitra's a brilliant emerald—and dropped into a fighting stance as the muzzles of four different weapons bristled at them from the group of people standing in the middle of the room. After a moment of tense silence in which no shots were fired, Anitra relaxed and lowered her saber, though she kept it ignited.
"It's alright," said the dark-haired man at the front of the group, cautiously lowering his gun a few inches and surveying her warily with pale green eyes. "We're not going to hurt you. Uh… mind lowering that thing for a sec?" His gaze strayed to Carth, who was still holding his pistols and prepared to shoot at a moment's notice.
"We mean no harm," added a shorter, bronze-skinned woman to his right, her voice soothing. The towering, dreadlocked giant of a man on the leader's left glowered at them with an expression that was a direct contrast to her words, but he lowered his own weapon—a hefty-looking blaster of indeterminate make—a few reluctant inches.
Keeping an eye on them, Anitra nodded shallowly to Carth before looking back at the group—and more importantly, the thing behind them. It was odd enough that none of them was wearing anything close to the Selkath mining uniforms everyone else on the base had been, but the fact that there was a massive, upright ring filled with an undulating liquid just a few feet away was a little more alarming. Was this the Manaan Star Map? But it looked nothing like the others, and these people were certainly neither holograms nor Rakata. Realizing the leader was still tensely eyeing her lightsaber, she switched it off and took a step forward. "Who are you?"
The man relaxed as first Anitra's, then Bastila's sabers hissed into silence. "We could ask you the same thing," he said guardedly. "You guys look like you stepped right out of Star Wars."
"Sheppard!" An anxious-looking man with receding brown hair reproached him. "You can't say that!" He paused, then looked back at Anitra, curiosity obviously overcoming his sense of propriety at the other man's remark. "That being said, are those really-"
Whatever he was about to say was abruptly cut off as a rending, metallic groan roared around them. Anitra's stomach rose to her throat as she realized exactly what it was. Bastila voiced her fears, her voice somehow rising above the din.
"The airlock is going to give way!"
Sheppard's eyes widened as an ear-splitting crack sounded from the outer doors on the right side of the chamber. They bulged inward, sprays of water forcing their way through. "GO GO GO!" he yelled frantically. His team needed no further urging, but spun and darted into the rippling surface of the ring, vanishing as though through a curtain. Anitra was frozen in terror until she realized someone—Sheppard—had roughly grabbed her wrist and yanked her toward the ring.
The wrenching squeal of foot-thick metal tearing under the strain was deafening, and it kept getting louder as time seemed to shudder to a halt. Dreamlike, Anitra glanced over her shoulder, her other hand floating out behind her to grab whoever was closest. Carth was already sprinting forward, one hand on Bastila's back, propelling her ahead. The two of them collided with her, sending them all sprawling through the air—
The collapsing airlock roared mightily as the ocean won the war of pressure and surged into the room. Anitra closed her eyes and prayed…
A/N: Would you believe this is my first Stargate fic? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE review! Let me know if this is worth continuing! .
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate: Atlantis, Star Wars, lightsabers, Manaan, or any of that other stuff, nor am I planning on making money with this. If I did, John Sheppard would be my husband and we would be Jedi swashbucklers on Corellia.