Disclaimer: Yes, yes, I know I haven't been around in the past…year. But I'm still alive; I've just been extremely busy! For those of you wondering, I am still working on my other stuff, so expect to see it soon! I don't own Stargate Universe, the characters or anything else except the things I create in here, so DON'T SUE ME!
My mission, it began so long ago. I can still recall the exact time that I'd set foot aboard this ship, the Vortrleqa, in order to help it carry out its mission. Everyone on board was a volunteer; some had families that they fully intended to meet again as soon as they completed the first part of their journey. Our mission, was to use the Vortrleqa to reach the surrounding galaxies in their local clusteral group, and to explore the worlds their robotic duplication ships, the Bleadas, had found and seeded with their own unique gateways. The voices of my shipmates and superiors are still fresh in my mind. So much so, that I can still hear them. Our conversations play back over and over again in my dreams; haunting me all this time.
"Have you finished resetting the quantum regulators yet?" Uchrish, he was my commanding officer; the engineering master of the Vortrleqa. He wasn't supposed to be here as a permanent fixture of the ships systems. No, he only agreed to help get this ship's mission off the ground and help begin the exploration and cataloging of the worlds we seeded in all of the new galaxies. Once this task was complete, he was to use the Vortrleqa's gateway to return home; to New Al-Terra, a mere six years by Old Al-Terra time standard.
"Yeah, I finished that about a quarter cycle ago; I've been tryin' ta get ahold of you." He was pissed at me; he always got like this whenever the Vortrleqa dropped out of FTL. We currently had an away team out exploring one of the new worlds within rage of the Gateway, seeing if it would be suitable as world to use as a beachhead for this galaxy; so far, we haven't really found one.
"Dammit! What the hell is wrong with this ship!" The Vortrleqa's been having more than her fair share of troubles lately; the communications system hasn't been working quite right, doors have been getting stuck closed, lights are flickering all over the ship, showers aren't turning on or off...little things that are nothing but minor annoyances. The thing is; we designed this ship in such a way, that nothing on this ship is minor. No, we built this ship to last a million years regardless of maintenance, and practically forever with inhabitants. The Vortrleqa was supposed to be our lasting masterpiece: something to preserve our memory, even long after its mission is over and the rest of our kind have gone extinct. We built this ship to witness the very end of reality itself, but none of that will matter if we can't isolate what's causing all of these problems!
Everything was just becoming too much for me to bare, and if my commander's less than accommodating persona kept chugging away as it has been ever since I woke up from my hibernation pod, then the Vortrleqa's mission might just end here. My work station lit-up with some kind of alert, but I ignored it as I looked right into Uchrish's face;"With all due respect, your attitude isn't helping, sir." I spat the words half aloud, half below my breath. There were a lot of other crewmembers surrounding us working their tails off, the last thing they need is to hear their two highest department heads squabbling like an old married couple, at least, that's what I think. Uchrish on the other hand, with his bad temper and no-nonsense attitude obviously sees things a whole lot differently then I do.
"What was that, I didn't quite catch it?" He was challenging me again; Shija, I hate it when he does that. There are times when I just want to strangle the man, or possibly even shoot him with a phase-pistol, no-rig the deck-plating to electrocute him as soon as he set-foot on it; a nice and clean demise to such a person. And I can think of one or twenty people on board whom would help me with such a task. In fact, now that I think about it, I don't think there's a single person on the ship that wouldn't miss the man...he was just a bastard to everyone in general. That's right, that's were it first hit me; this all really was playing out like some kind of plan of subterfuge. Rushed and poorly planned, but still, that's exactly what it all was. And whoever or whatever was causing all of these things to happen was using everything we had built to work against us. Though I wouldn't realize the true scope of what was really going on for quite some time, I did suspect that there was more than one entity behind this; all working against this ship to stop its mission, not necessarily the crews. At least whoever was working to stop us had the decency to at the least allow us the chance to get off with our lives.
With so many things coming to realization in my head all at once, I looked away from the gaze of my commanding officer for that moment and turned my attention back to my station so that I could shut off that damn beeping, but as I looked at its warning, I realized something else. My own eyes widened as the sum of my thoughts started merging in the wrong form.
I cursed; "Shit!" What the computer was displaying scared me shitless...it was so bad, that I ran away; right out of engineering at my top speed. Oh sure, I could hear him shouting at me as I sprinted out of the main bay section to relative safety, but things were worse then I had thought...far worse. So many things were running through my head at the time and none of them very pleasant either. I'm sure I said something cryptic and satisfyingly simple as I left, I'm positive I did; what else could get him to stop his banter mid-rant and activate the emergency evac-order. Scratch that, what I should really say is that I hope that I had said something to have shut the man up, all because of what had happened next. An explosion rippled through the ship, point of origin: The primary engineering section, right were I had just been. The explosion must have knocked us out of FTL, because the one of the last things that I can remember of that day, was the force of an atmospheric shock-wave working in tandem with my body's relative inertia, and the force of both slamming into the wall at the end of the corridor.
~~+++==X==+++~~
My eyes shot open, and I found myself in my stasis-pod. I gag as the sickly taste of half-putrid bile starts to force its way up through my throat. I try to reach up for the mask covering my mouth and nose, but my hands and arms are still being held in place. Panic fills my body as I feel myself suffocating from the blockage. Then at the last minute, I force a breath down my throat, and swallow it all whole. The tenseness in my shoulders and back starts waning, and my pulse starts to slow.
'What the hell was that?' I ask myself. Looking around the small pod, I can't seem to recall what it's for...or for that matter, what I'm doing in it. 'Actually, that's a good question: Who am I?' Was everything I saw all just a dream? I can remember it, I know I can...it was all just there, so bright and clear, so what's happened? My eyes start to feel heavy, as does the rest of my body. I'm falling back asleep again. I don't want to sleep again, so I fight it...but it's too little, too late. Once again, I'm taken over by the darkness.