STARGATE:
THOSE LEFT BEHIND
Chapter 1: Unexpected Company
It was quiet on the Ascension. By the ship's clock, we had forty-five minutes before we reached our destination. Being unable to sleep in any case, I got up and dressed. I only had a few things in my wardrobe. Some were clothes I had acquired from markets all over the Pegasus Galaxy. Others had been made for me out of gratitude. I swept through them and grabbed my long grey greatcoat, a gift from the Travelers for my help. It seemed like everything besides the coat had patches. That was the way things were with clothes that belonged to someone with a lifestyle like mine. They started out looking good and then received vigorous combat scarring.
Eventually I emerged, fully dressed in my 'captain's uniform' and made my way to the bridge, passing through the sporadic design work or my ship which switched back and forth between the cleanliness and sophistication of Ancient technology and the big, industrial designs of the Travelers which looked a bit like the inside of a chemical processing plant.
When I finally reached the bridge, it was empty. My crew of nine was all asleep or busy elsewhere. This, however, was not true of Elizabeth, the tenth member of the crew who never slept and who was technically everywhere on the ship. She materialized in her holographic form next to the Captain's Chair as I sat down.
"Good morning, Aiden." she said politely; I grunted.
"There's no morning in hyperspace, or in normal space." I grumbled. She raised an eyebrow.
"Bad night?" she inquired casually. I settled into the chair more and gazed blindly out of the main viewport. The streaming white lights of hyperspace filled the window.
"Couldn't sleep." I muttered blearily.
"You know, I'm interested in who decided to crash a ship on New Athos too." she said with a hint of reproach after a long silence. I shifted in my seat.
"I don't really care who they are. All I care about is whether or not they're a threat. And given the message that Halling sent I'm beginning to suspect that we're dealing with a pretty big threat." I answered. I knew my lack of sleep had made me irritable, but there was nothing to be done about it.
Six hours ago I had received a message from Halling, the new leader of the Athosians, reporting the crash of an enormous ship on New Athos. He had wisely kept everyone away from the impact site, but he had called back shortly afterwards to report that there were explosions coming from where the spacecraft had landed, as well as the troubling smoke rising from the immense rift it had made in the surrounding pine forest and landscape it had made when it had come down after appearing suddenly in the sky.
New Athos was one of several worlds I had placed under my personal protection ever since I had been gifted the Ascension by the Travelers, including Childhood's End, Brennann, Estrella and Xaer among several others. This being the case, I had immediately set course for New Athos to investigate. And now here we were, almost there, with little or no information on what we'd be facing.
"Do we know anything about this mystery ship?" I inquired. Elizabeth gave me an unconcerned look.
"Apart from that it's a mystery? No, not a thing. The description that Halling gave was confused at best, given that he saw it as it was roaring through the sky as a fireball. I tried to render an example but there was just too little data." She shrugged her illusory shoulders. "I suppose we'll find out what we're dealing with when we get there, which shouldn't be much more than thirty minutes from now." There was another long pause. Finally, with a tentative tone to her voice, she tried to continue.
"You know, last time we visited the Yard, I spoke with Ladon." I turned to her and raised an eyebrow.
"I talked with him about restoring the ZPM Manufactory." she continued. I sat up a little straighter and gave her a stern look.
"Really?" I said. She looked up at the ceiling in apparent exasperation at my annoyance with her breaking of the chain of command in such a way and sighed.
"Yes, Ford, I did. I tried to strike a deal with him about getting a ZPM for our ship when the plant was operational again." she said. I narrowed my eyes.
"And what did he say?" I asked patiently, though she must've heard the growing anger in my voice. She knew I disliked the Coalition in general and the Genii in particular, even though I had a working business relationship with them. She could also tell I was angry with her over her acting without my permission.
"Well he said we had nothing that would convince them to part with even one ZPM. So, given that we've used up the supply of ZPMs we got from the Quindosim Brotherhood at Castle Brennann by giving them to Childhood's End and the Travelers, we have exactly zero chance of getting any more." she finished. I looked away.
"So?" I grunted. Elizabeth gave me a frustrated look.
"I would think you would've wanted one in case you ever decide to go back-" she started. I spun the chair to face her and held up a finger in warning.
"Don't." I said in a dead flat monotone of warning, "Just don't." She pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow of her own in disapproval, but held her non-existent tongue. I turned back to the front window and silence fell again over the bridge.
"Well I suppose it doesn't matter. Even if we had one, I'd need to modify the hyperdrive and various other systems for the journey." she said quietly. When she neglected to say more, I let it go. I didn't want to talk about that. Not now. Not yet. But I still felt I should say something. Finally, I gave in. You couldn't stay angry at the one person who understood you for long.
"Thanks for trying." I said quietly. She nodded in understanding.
When we hit the fifteen minute mark, Elizabeth sounded the wake-up alarm, a brief two-note klaxon. It took my nine-person crew about eight minutes to ready themselves and a further two to gather from their various corners of the ship. While we waited, I decided to try and mend the atmosphere and turned back Elizabeth's hologram which had begun to wander around the bridge.
"Larrin called the other day." I said. Elizabeth turned back to look at me as she stood by the internal security console.
"She wants me to name some of the new Traveler ships and rename some of the old, restored Grondian ones. Apparently all the new captains want my 'blessing', as it were, given how much I've done for them." I said nonchalantly. This earned me an amused grin.
"You have a fan-base! How surprising!" she chuckled, her smile widening. I must've blushed because she burst out laughing.
"She's also offered me some good deals for the locations of those Ancient ships we found." I went on. The laughter stopped. Now it was Elizabeth's turn to raise an eyebrow.
"You want to sell the Hydra, the Delphi and the Agamemnon to her? Are you sure that's a good idea?" she asked incredulously. I chuckled.
"What am I going to do with them? It's not like I have the means to put them back together. And the Travelers can use every ship they can lay hands on." There was a pause while Elizabeth looked down as if in thought. It was somewhat of an illusion for my sake though, given that she had all the computing power of the Ascension at her disposal.
"What did she offer you?" she asked finally. I shrugged.
"A heaping of supplies, some more refitting work on all those smaller ships we have in the bays, and fuel for our maneuvering thrusters among many other things, all of them important. In case you haven't noticed we've gotten ourselves pretty beat up over the past five years. Actually you'd probably know better than me since your run most of this ship at all times." I retorted. She rolled her eyes.
"Yeah, well, in spite of the good work we've been doing keeping this ship together and patching her up, we need to hit a dry-dock sooner or later or this thing's going to be all patches and no ship, if you catch my drift?" I said exasperatedly, "And it just so happens that those three ships are enough to cover the bartering cost of a refit on New Grondia as far as Larrin is concerned."
Elizabeth gave me a concerned look. "Are you sure you want to sell those other ships? I ask because given the general patchwork nature of the ship we're already flying around in, I thought you might just prefer something a little more…solid." she said. I gave her a stern look.
"I'm not giving up my ship. It's my ship and she's more reliable and powerful than anything else out there. She just needs a refit." I said with all the authority I could muster. Elizabeth looked me up and down, and then shrugged her shoulders in acceptance. At this point the bridge doors slid open and the crew began to wander in and take their seats or standing positions. I rotated my chair around to watch them. Lennann, Arorree, Shaal' Maia, Harrick, Illidin, Thoren Axton, Jeremiah, Roland of Mordecai and Kiryk, most of all Kiryk, who'd saved my life on half a dozen counts. They were my crew and each of them had chosen to follow me in my war against the Wraith, either because they felt they owed me a debt or of their own free will. Together we'd set out to give the Wraith a solid fight, defending worlds from being culled and helping those factions who would fight them as we did.
Of course that had been when we started out. Now of course the Wraith were starting to pull together, making it harder to find a battle where victory was assured. These days, Hive Ships only traveled in groups of four or more, plus support cruisers, making any direct confrontation potentially fatal. And with the other aforementioned groups like the Travelers and the Coalition preparing their own major offensives, things were looking to be escalating all out of whack. These days we generally stuck to the small group of worlds we had sworn to defend from the outset, including Xaer, Childhood's End, Mordecai, Napali-Nui and a few others. All of us had worlds we cared for among those we protected.
For me, it was New Athos. They had put their trust in the Atlantis Expedition, which Elizabeth and I had once been a part of. Then Atlantis had abandoned the Pegasus Galaxy and left everyone it had previously placed under its protection to fend for their selves. That's not to say the Athosians couldn't stand up for themselves. They were a tough bunch. You had to be tough in a galaxy like the Pegasus where any moment could bring death from the skies. But while they could put up a decent fight, they were no match for the technology, organization, strength and sheer numbers of the Wraith, which is where we came in. In just a few months most of the small Wraith factions had learned that it was too much trouble to come after planets we protected. Now of course it was getting difficult. Many human populations had been totally destroyed and the solidifying larger Wraith factions were growing ever more desperate, basically descending to the level of fighting over scraps. Any human population was an adequate target.
So in short, the galaxy had changed a lot since I had first arrived. It was no longer a game of hit-and-run. Now it was a matter of hunkering down and defending our assets until the real fireworks started, which was why this new ship was such a worrying thing. If a new player joined the game, then I had no idea which way events would go next. They might upset the balance of galactic power...again.
"Preparing to drop out of hyperspace…" Arorree announced as she took the pilot's chair behind mine and slid it up its angled rail-ramp to the control consoles arranged in a semi-circle at the top overlooking the bridge. The Ascension was a hybrid Ancient/Grondian/Traveler vessel, the only one of its kind so far, designed to be the most powerful, agile and durable ship it was possible to build with such technologies. It could hold itself in a fight with two Hive Ships, possibly three, which was good, given how often we got into fights. But it had the added bonus of not having the bridge of the ship be on the outside of the craft like Ancient vessels.
The room's main 'window' was really just a wraparound and incredibly detailed view-screen taking in data from the sensors and rendering it into ultra HD-quality images. It was all the benefits of a window and screen combined, without any actual window. Unfortunately, the ship's designer had taken a cue from the Ancient Aurora-class cruiser and designed the bridge interior in a similar fashion. This meant that Arorree had sit in the middle of the room on a chair that slid up and down an angled rail whenever she got in and out of it. This also meant that most of the time she was above everyone else like some loony tyrant on a throne, surrounded by semi-solid holographic consoles and controls with just a few meters between her and the bridge's ceiling.
As for me, I sat in front of her at the base of the platform with two other chairs on either side. This resulted in my feeling like Captain Picard from The Next Generation upon sitting down. On one occasion I was tempted to say 'Make it so, number one.', but refrained from doing so given that no one, except maybe Elizabeth, would know what I was talking about. From my left, Harrick, my weapon's officer, had taken his seat and powered up his own console.
"Shall I raise shields as we exit?" he asked, turning to me. I waved my hand in dismissal.
"I don't think we have to worry about a giant flaming wreck on the surface shooting at us." I answered. The ship shuddered briefly and the white lights of hyperspace in front of me vanished as real space rushed up to fill the main view-screen.
"Dr. Weir," I said to Elizabeth, using her old name, "run a full sensor sweep of the planet's surface." Her holographic self, which had moved back to the side of my chair, nodded in response and closed her eyes. On the main 'window' the approaching blue green sphere of New Athos was engulfed by a grid of green lines which pulsed and flickered, each square rapidly lighting up and dimming as it was analyzed. Finally, on the South-Western continent, one square turned red and peeled itself away, grew larger and formed itself into a little window on the side of the screen. It showed a magnified view of the landscape below, which was almost all forest...except for the small red circle marking the Athosian settlement and the enormous black trench of scorched earth about five miles East of it. The trench terminated twelve miles South-West of the settlement, running diagonally across the landscape as presented. At its end was an enormous plume of thick black oily smoke.
"Ford, I'm getting some odd readings from that smoking crater." Elizabeth said. There was a worried tone in her voice that set me to worrying as well.
"Like?" I asked curiously. The plume of smoke was suddenly filled and surrounded by little blue dots, most of which were moving slightly, some alone and some in groups.
"Those are radiation signatures, low-level and mostly benign. What's strange is that they're moving..." she said. As she spoke, two of the small groups of dots came together. Instantly two dots in one of the groups turned red and faded out. Then the remaining dots clustered together, mingling and dancing around each other. Seconds later, three more dots faded out.
"Okay, now what's going on?" I asked. Elizabeth frowned.
"It appears they're eliminating each other." she said, the confusion as clear in her voice as it had been in mine, "I'm trying to focus in on the crash site further but those radiation signatures are sticking primarily to the foliage and tree cover. I can't see through it. Not from this distance at any rate."
When three more dots turned red and vanished, I rose from my chair in frustration.
"Okay, enough of this." I said, turning to the rest of my crew, "Kiryk, Thoren, Lennann, you're with me. I'm taking one of the Jumpers down to the surface. Grab something from the armory and meet me down in Bay 12." I said in my Captain's Voice, one which I had honed over the years into a tone that brooked no disobeying. Elizabeth, however, wasn't happy.
"Is this a wise move Ford? I could bring us in closer and try to adjust the focus of the scanners." she suggested. I shook my head and turned to leave.
"No. I want to see this for myself. And if this is a threat, I want to know for sure."