Stargate Genesis

Episode 1: Pilot, Part 1

"The Old And The New"

"Wake up Eli."

"Ginn? Is that you?"

Smoke blurred Eli's vision as he stumbled from his stasis pod. He choked and hugged the wall for balance while he tried to get his bearings. The ominous wail of an alarm in the distance was making it difficult to concentrate. He shook himself and took a few faltering steps down the corridor before breaking into a run. Something was very wrong here.

When he reached Colonel Young's pod he had to use both hands and all of his considerable weight to wrench it open. The cool air that billowed out of the pressurized compartment washed over his back as Eli bent double trying to catch his breath in front of the open pod.

"Colonel…," he panted. "I think… Something may have happened with the pods. Most of them haven't–"

Eli stopped cold. He was speaking to a corpse, a gaunt yellow shell with flesh so taught it barely covered its haggard face. It smiled a wide toothy grin at Eli and stared at him with eyes that bulged too far out from its head. The only indication that this monster had ever been the Colonel was that it still wore his jacket with the name "Young" sewn to the front. Eli fell backwards in shock. The sight made him want to run away in terror or vomit, and he chose the former. Back on his feet, he made his way down another row of pods and found them all still shut up tight. He kept his eyes ahead of him, not daring to look inside.

At the end of the row he could see Dr. Nicholas Rush bent over and coughing on the clouds of smoke that seemed to hang over everything. In a rage Eli lifted him up by the shoulders and all but threw him back into his pod.

"What happened?" he demanded. "Young's dead and from what I've seen your pod is the only one that opened like it was supposed to."

"Get off me," said Rush shoving him away. "I don't know what's happened, and anyway your pod opened didn't it?"

Eli thought about this long enough to admit that it had and to wonder why that was. Then he seemed to decide that they had bigger fish to fry.

"Colonel Young is dead," he said slowly. "And something is obviously wrong with the rest of the pods, so what the hell are we going to do?"

Rush scratched his head and looked up at the smoke sliding lazily along the ceiling.

"We need to get to the Chair Room."

~~00~~

The Destiny was in rough shape. Micrometeorites had ripped through everything and emergency shields had activated everywhere to prevent the ship's dwindling atmosphere from being slowly vented into space. In some places bulkheads had given way under the assault and Eli and Rush had to find alternate routes around the debris.

Luckily the Chair Room was relatively undamaged when they arrived and Rush sat down hurriedly. The neural interface clamps came down automatically and started feeding him images of the ship's status as fast as he could process them.

"Oh hell," he said. "Propulsions shot. Not even the thrusters are working and we're drifting towards a star on the outskirts of the target galaxy. The collectors are extended but primary shields are offline. There's no way we'll survive a close enough pass to recharge the ship."

He paused and Eli saw his eyes go wide with panic.

"Oh no… The gate room has been destroyed, along with half the stasis pods."

Somewhere between Eli's ears and brain this information got lost and he just stood there uncomprehending until Rush suddenly jerked backwards in pain.

"What's happening?" Eli asked grabbing hold of the chair and trying to pry the neural clamps off.

"It feels like I'm being pulled into the mainframe. I'm not sure I can stop it," Rush replied.

"No no you cannot leave me here," said Eli still clutching desperately at the clamps around Rush's forehead.

"Eli stop," said Rush firmly. "It'll be okay. Once I figure out what's happening I'll disconnect from the inside. Right now you need to activate the communication stones and get a message to Stargate Command."

"Rush, we are still billions of light years from Earth. There is nothing they can do for us."

"Eli please, I can't fight this much longer and besides, someone ought to know what happened to us."

With that Rush's consciousness was absorbed into the Destiny's main computer, and Eli was once again alone with an empty shell.

~~00~~

In the Communication Room Eli steadied himself against a bulkhead as the Destiny swayed sickeningly beneath him. The alarms were louder here, and a large portion of the ship's outer hull had been patched up with emergency force fields.

The communication stones were strewn across the floor and Eli picked one up at random. He was about to activate it when a thought struck him and he began to rummage around the room for something hard. He found what he was looking for under an overturned table and hefted it appreciatively before dropping it back down and scrapping it heavily across the metal floor. The chunk of space rock left deep white gashes wherever it went and Eli managed to scrawl the words "DO NOT PANIC!" in large reassuring letters.

~~00~~

For Rush the gentle white light that surrounded him was blinding and the sudden silence was deafening. Somewhere beyond this reality the Destiny was dying, and he needed to get back to her, but when he turned to look for a way out what he saw made him want to stay forever.

Amanda Perry stood beside him back in her own body, the one he remembered from Earth. Of course, on Earth he had never had the privilege of seeing her without her wheelchair. He pulled her to him and kissed her tenderly, troubles very nearly forgotten.

"How can you be here?" he asked and looking into her eyes saw the tears forming there for the first time.

"Amanda, please, what's going on?"

"There wasn't enough power," she said. "Several of the pods suffered overloads and the fire suppression systems had to be engaged-"

Sobs overtook her and Rush touched a hand to her cheek and tried to soothe her. She turned away from him.

"When I saw that you wouldn't make it to the next O-Class star I had to do something so I… I reduced power to the shields," she paused to catch her breath. "I didn't know about the asteroid field I... I'm sorry."

Rush pulled her close and tried again to comfort her.

"It's alright," he said. "There was nothing else you could have done, but right now we need to find a way to get those shields back up and revive the people in the remaining pods."

Tears were streaming down her face when she turned back to look at him.

"There's nothing you can do for them," she said. "Even with the shields offline there still wasn't enough power."

Rush stared at her, horror spreading across his face.

"What did you do?" he asked.

Tears dripping from her chin she whispered, "I couldn't let you die, and the pods... well... they were the only thing left to sacrifice."

~~00~~

Eli found himself in the body of Airman Tracy Mitchell and had to take a moment to adjust to the stockier man's lower center of gravity before bolting down the underground passages of Stargate Command. Two near misses and one headlong collision later he burst into the empty office of General Samantha Carter. Having run nearly a quarter mile, he was surprised to find that his borrowed body had barely broke a sweat.

"If you're looking for General Carter, she's in conference room three with Dr. McKay."

Eli turned to see a young medic looking at him with mild concern. Rather than try to explain himself Eli smiled anxiously at her and brushed on past to continue his sprint.

"Look I want to protect Earth as much as the next guy, but you've still got hundreds of drones down there," said Rodney. "All I'm asking is that we come up with some equitable way to divide them between the Arctic Outpost and Atlantis."

"Atlantis has shields and more than enough Zero Point Modules to power them for the foreseeable future," Carter replied. "And on top of that the Wraith have no idea where you are and haven't launched an attack in months."

Rodney looked ready to argue so Carter put a hand up to silence him.

"I understand your concern Rodney, but I will not authorize the transfer of any additional drones to the city while the Lucian Alliance is still active in the Milky Way."

Just then Eli Wallace in the guise of Airman Tracy Mitchell slammed into the locked door of the conference room and collapsed on the ground outside. General Samantha Carter and Dr. Rodney McKay came out to see him being helped up by security personnel.

"I'm fine," he said trying to brush them off.

"You don't look fine Airman," said Carter. "Is there a reason you tried to open that door with your face?"

"I'm not an Airman," said Eli breathlessly. "I'm Eli Wallace and I'm here because the Destiny is in trouble."

McKay and Carter passed each other grim looks. The two of them had spent the last year and a half trying to prepare an evacuation plan for the Destiny upon the reanimation of her crew, but the logistics of launching any kind of meaningful rescue from halfway across the universe had proved more than a little daunting.

"Well we've made some improvements to the naqueda generators," said Rodney. "Maybe if we tied enough of them into the Atlantis Stargate and used the city's ZPMs to pick up the slack we could dial in."

"Rodney we've been over this," said Carter. "There's only so much current you can feed through the capacitor matrix without–"

"Yeah yeah yeah," said Rodney. "But I was thinking about this last night in the tub and if we just reinforce the ancillary capacitors–"

"It won't work," Eli cut in. "The gate room's been destroyed."

Another round of grim looks were passed around, but this time no new suggestions were forthcoming. Every last one of their ideas depended on the Destiny's gate room being operational.

"When you say destroyed…" Rodney began, but Eli cut him off again.

"Look, I appreciate that your trying to help, but rescue wasn't what I had in mind when I came here," he said. "All I want is to say goodbye to my mother, and I'd like to arrange for everyone else to have the same opportunity."

"Now hold on just a minute," said Carter, eyes closed in concentration. "There has to be something else we can do."

Eli scoffed sadly, "not unless you can come pick us up."

Samantha's eyes snapped open and she looked sharply at Rodney who was already shaking his head, no.

"What would it take?" she asked.

~~00~~

Rush felt nauseous, but whether it was from the sudden release of the chair's neural interface or the realization that his life had come at the cost of nearly two hundred others he couldn't be certain. With some effort he removed himself from the chair, and made his way aft. Wreckage from shredded bulkheads was scattered along his path, and puncture wounds sealed up by force fields constantly forced him to double back and seek out less treacherous routes.

Before long he found himself back amongst the stasis pods, and against his better judgment he took a moment to peer inside one. He instantly regretted it. The thing inside wasn't human. It was a skeleton in a skin costume several sizes too small. Its lips were drawn tight and its gaze was fixed into an accusatory stare. The nausea intensified. All of these people dead, yet still judging him from beyond the grave. He hurried on.

Despite the carnage elsewhere on the ship, and despite being many millions of years old, the shuttle looked to be in working condition. As Rush's fingers worked to reactivate its systems his mind rattled off calculations. It had to hold everything. Gate addresses, mission data, the historical archive, Amanda Perry's consciousness, and most importantly the coordinates of Destiny's intended destination. It would all have to fit, but even now he knew it wouldn't.

Sweat dripped from his face while his fingers raced across the shuttle's main control console. Startup routines, docking procedures, thruster controls, even emergency life support subroutines, it all had to go. With one trembling finger Dr. Nicholas Rush wiped the shuttle clean.

~~00~~

"Wait a minute, wait a minute. Are you telling me this ship can reach Destiny?" Eli asked.

"No I'm telling you it will be able to reach Destiny once we bring the wormhole drive online which, I remind you, wasn't supposed to be for another two months," Rodney replied. "But supposing Colonel Sheppard can get a crew together, and supposing the IOA authorizes rushing the Elizabeth into service I might be able to get her there say, sometime next week?"

"Oh no no that's not good enough," said Eli. "There's still probably a hundred people on that ship and we're all about to be burned alive."

"I promise you, I will do everything in my power to get GS-1 up and running in time. Right now I think you need to get back aboard the Destiny and find some way to stall your inevitable demise so that we can come and rescue you," said Rodney in the exasperated voice of a magician asked to perform a miracle.

Eli nodded and raced out of the underground hanger back towards the Communications Room. Once inside he deactivated Airman Mitchell's stone and was transported instantly back into his own body. Disoriented by a sudden ninety degree shift in orientation, he threw his hands out in front of him to catch himself only to discover that he was already on the floor with his knees tucked up to his chest in the fetal position. Apparently Tracy Mitchell had panicked.

"Eli!" yelled Rush, his voice crackling over the radio hooked into his jeans. "Eli if you're there I could use your help in the shuttle. I'm going to transfer over as much of the Destiny's database as it'll hold then detach it before we hit the coronasphere. If we're lucky maybe someone else can finish what the ancients started."

"Rush listen to me," said Eli. "Stargate Command is sending a ship to pick us up. All we have to do is stall for time."

"Ha," Rush laughed. "For how long then? A few million years?"

"McKay says it'll be a week and a half tops," Eli replied. "They've got some kind of new engine based on gate technology."

Rush thought about this for a moment. There was more than enough food and water on board to sustain them for that long. Life support was in shambles, but even running at minimal efficiency the ship's CO2 scrubbers could handle two people.

"Have you got a plan?" he asked.

~~00~~

"I don't believe this," said Colonel Sheppard. "We've spent almost half a million man hours and if you count Todd several thousand Wraith hours not to mention billions a dollars on this thing and now the IOA doesn't even want to use it?"

"And that's exactly why John," said Carter. "This is Earth's first gate-capable ship and it took the resources of twenty-one nations to build. I'm sure you understand why the IOA isn't exactly chomping at the bit to release it before its shields and weapons are fully operational."

"You know what? I do understand," he replied. "But I think it's time the IOA understood something and that's that we don't leave people behind."

"And that's why you're here," said Carter.

Behind her a door slid open to reveal a conference table surrounded by bleary eyed representatives fighting fatigue and looking nervous.

"Well this'll be interesting," said Sheppard as the door closed behind him.

~~00~~

"The collectors are ready, but this far out they'll only be able to provide so much power," said Eli. "The beam will be weak but we should be able to sustain it long enough to slow our momentum considerably."

With a flick of his wrist Rush trained Destiny's main gun on the star directly ahead and fired a stream of highly charged particles into its center. With propulsion offline, this was the closest thing to a forward thruster the ship had.

"Eli where are you going?" Rush asked as Eli started to leave. "We still need to calculate how much time this little maneuver of yours has bought us."

"They can't all be dead," Eli replied. "I'm going to check the pods for myself."

"Eli we have to stay focused," Rush pleaded. "They're gone, and if we're going to survive he have to accept that."

Eli didn't bother to respond. If Amanda had sacrificed them all for Rush then why was he still alive? Something wasn't right about her story, but as he reached the nearest row of pods his heart sank. There was no need to open them. The people inside were nothing but husks. Their limbs were withered and their skin was stretched tight around their mouths and foreheads just like the Colonel's had been. Their eyes bulged and escaped their lids to stare blankly into space. All of them, shadows of the people he once knew.

He kept going. Down one row after another each new pod exactly like the one before. His pace quickened as he rounded a corner to examine another row of pods. Every one of them the same. Every occupant just as dead. His breathing grew labored as he moved down a third row and as he came to the end of a fourth he dropped to the floor and buried his face in his hands. How could this have happened? How could they all be gone?

Suddenly, a figure appeared in front of him flitting in and out of existence in pieces as though it were not entirely there, each piece alternating between translucent and opaque. When it spoke, the voice that emanated from somewhere around its mouth was equally ethereal.

"Eli… Eli can you hear me? It's Ginn," said the figure. "Amanda and I managed to release the quarantine, but I had to scramble my base code to do it. I'm not sure how long this patch will hold, but there are some things you should know."

Eli studied her for a moment. In his grief stricken state her words seemed nonsensical. He struggled to unpack them, to uncover their meaning, but as he did so a terrible possibility began to take shape in his mind. Amanda hadn't escaped the quarantine alone. She had help, and if Ginn had escaped with her that meant they had joint control of the ship.

"Oh no," he said. "It was you wasn't it? You're the reason my pod wasn't deactivated like the others."

Despite her apparent urgency, the holographic Ginn remained silent.

"Why me?" he continued. "Because you like me? Because I'm your friend that makes me more worthy than everyone else here?"

"Eli, please believe me, it was either save a few of you or none of you. There was nothing else we could have done," Ginn replied. "It was the hardest decision I've ever had to make, but I did it for you."

For Eli the horror of Colonel Young's emaciated body paled in comparison to this fresh revelation. In his heart he had blamed Rush for what had happened. Somehow that had softened the blow, but now he was complicit and the guilt flooding in was threatening to drown what was left of his sanity. His life had been paid for with blood.

"There's something else," Ginn continued. "Shortly after we lowered the shields some debris struck the infirmary and we lost the data feed coming from Sergeant Greer's pod. Without the feedback loop we had no way of knowing whether it was still online, and no way of shutting it down if it was. What I'm trying to say is that if the damage to the pod itself was superficial he might still be alive."

~~00~~

Looking out at his newly minted crew, Colonel Sheppard couldn't help but feel a twinge of pride. There had been no shortage of talent to man Earth's first Gate Ship. Many of these men and women were accomplished pilots and skilled soldiers. Still more were renowned scientists and expert engineers. The few he knew from Atlantis, Rodney and Todd, were busy installing the final components of the wormhole drive, but this next bit wasn't for them anyway.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," he said. "The IOA has asked me to impress upon you the importance of this mission."

In the audience a few faces took on quizzical expressions, clearly skeptical of the IOA's enthusiasm.

"Now, I'm not one for drawn out speeches so I'll try to be succinct," he continued. "Nothing could have prepared me for my first trip through a Stargate, and I suspect there is very little I can offer you on the eve of our first gate jump, but what I will say is that there is no more fitting task for our first mission than the rescue of the Destiny and her crew. Whatever strange new worlds we face together, I can promise you that one thing will always remain constant. We do not ever leave our people behind."

~~00~~

Rush's fingers flowed over the console in front of him, meticulously adjusting the resonance of the particle beam, tuning it to squeeze every last watt of power from the collectors while his eyes monitored the data transfer between the Destiny and the shuttle. If Eli's little stunt didn't pan out he wasn't going to be caught without a backup plan.

On the periphery of his vision a red light began to flash menacingly and, turning to look at it, he grimaced as if to ask what more could possibly go wrong. On the view screen hot plasma rippled out from around the beam, and great burning arches flared up from the surface of the star.

~~00~~

Sergeant Greer Coughed and leaned heavily on Eli for support. His right arm hung limply from his shoulder. It had been pinned behind his back for most of the voyage, and what little circulation his body had maintained in stasis hadn't been properly distributed.

"What happened?" he asked.

"It's a long story," Eli replied as a massive shudder ran through the ship and a new alarm began to sound.

"Well give me the short version," Greer insisted, but Rush's voice burst in over the radio before Eli could respond.

"Eli we've got a problem," he said. "The beam is causing the star to produce an abnormally large number of flares and a big one is headed this way."

Eli stumbled out of the infirmary, straining under the added weight of Sergeant Greer. He reached for his radio and fumbled with the call button.

"What's its ETA," hs asked.

"About twenty minutes until impact," came the reply. "Get yourself to the shuttle. Load it with whatever food and supplies we'll need to survive for the next two weeks and I'll meet you there."

Eli quickly explained the situation to Greer before the two of them headed for the nearest supply closet. Eli secured a carton of combat rations and a ten gallon drum of water. Greer hoisted a second drum up under his good arm and ripped a medkit off the wall with his teeth. They made two trips from the closet to the shuttle before hailing Rush.

"We've got everything we need Rush," said Eli.

"I'll be there momentarily," Rush replied.

The data transfer was nearing completion. There was no real reason for him to stay, but Nicholas Rush couldn't seem to pry himself away from the Control Room.

"The mission will go on, but it won't be the same without you old girl," he said, running a hand along a nearby bulkhead.

As he took one last look at the console monitoring the data transfer a new message flashed across the screen in big red letters. "INSUFFICIENT SPACE TRANSFER TERMINATED."

~~00~~

On the bridge, Colonel Sheppard stared intensely at a diagram of his ship blown up on the main view screen. A rotating three-dimensional model of the Elizabeth dotted here and there with sections enlarged around the edges and flashing an angry red.

"Major Burnette," he said. "What is the status of my shields."

"Same as it was five minutes ago," she said with a sigh.

"Excuse me?" said Sheppard. "I don't think I like your tone Major."

"My apologies Colonel," she said. "Same as it was five minutes ago, sir."

"That's better," said Sheppard. "Rodney where are we with the wormhole drive?"

Over the intercom Rodney's voice sounded even more anxious than usual.

"Just a few more seconds," he said.

In front of him a titanium ring was set into a large bulkhead on the inside of the Elizabeth's bow. Around the edge of the ring were one hundred and twenty eight symbols reminiscent of Stargate Glyphs. These had been devised using a combination of data from Earth's most powerful telescopes and the star charts of the ancient database and represented constellations most of which could never be seen from anywhere in the Pegasus or Milky Way galaxies. In the center of the ring a large dome curved out several meters from the bulkhead.

When the wormhole drive was activated, nine of the one hundred and twenty eight symbols would lock into place in a specific order around the ring and the vortex they generated would be deflected off the dome and back into space. There, several hundred meters in front of the Elizabeth, it would expand to many times its original size and provide the ship and its crew with a gateway to impossibly distant galaxies.

Two trapezoidal pillars were positioned on either side of the dome so that the wider faces ran parallel to one another. Three hexagonal housings extended diagonally from the front face of each pillar, and cradled within each housing was a Zero Point Module. As Rodney tapped feverishly at his tablet all six ZPMs receded into their respective pillars and the constellations around the ring of the Elizabeth's wormhole drive lit up.

"That's it. The wormhole drive is online," said Rodney into his radio.

"Major, get us out of here," said Sheppard.

"Aye aye sir," she replied.

A low buzz filled the air in the underground hanger and the platform below the Elizabeth began to glow as a modified Asgard beaming device instantaneously transported the vessel from deep within the Earth to high orbit. Seconds later the wormhole drive ripped a hole through space and time, and Earth's first Gate Ship made its first gate jump.

~~00~~

"Come on Rush what the hell is taking you so long," said Eli to himself.

He and Greer sat fidgeting in the cockpit of Destiny's last remaining shuttle as a wall of white hot plasma and deadly radiation sped toward them. If they didn't detach themselves soon there would be no escaping the inferno. Suddenly the hatch linking the shuttle to the ship swung shut and the airlock decompressed behind it with a hiss.

Eli snatched up his radio in a panic.

"Rush the shuttle is disengaging on its own," he said, but over the radio Rush's voice came through steady and calm.

"I've disconnected it remotely," he said. "I won't be joining you. I just can't leave her behind."

"Rush it's just a ship," said Eli pleading, but Rush only laughed.

"No Eli, she really isn't."

Rush leaned back and allowed the neural interface of Destiny's control chair to pull his consciousness into the mainframe. There, in a simulated void bathed in white light, he took hold of Amanda Perry and kissed her one last time. For a moment, time stood still and they were the only two people in the universe.

From the cockpit of the shuttle Sergeant Ronald Greer and Eli Wallace watched as the Destiny burned with Dr. Nicholas Rush still onboard.

Written by Andrew Marron

Story by Andrew Marron and Caleb Palmquist

Also available at stargategenesis/dot/com