A/N: Here's chapter 3!

And thank you guys for reviewing, it made me positive about this story! Nemesis recently and Thor mentioned the generator etc. So I used that knowledge here. I'm just hoping that you can be patient with me, because I'm trying to do this my way and I'm at least trying to get as much information as possible about how these things work, but it's not too easy.

Have a nice day/evening, guys!. :)


Chapter 3: Awakening

Jack passed Sgt. Siler and nodded his greeting as he made his way through Stargate Command. He made his way up the spiral stairs to the briefing room and swiftly crossed it with his long, wide steps. Within a matter of seconds he reached the grey door to the general's office and knocked.

"Come in," he heard George's voice call, Jack opened the door and stepped inside.

"General," Jack greeted as he closed the door behind him. General Hammond looked up at him from where he sat behind his desk.

Jack stepped closer, "You wanted to see me, sir?"

"Yes, Jack, have a seat," George said and indicated with his hand the chair opposite the desk.

"Is this about Carter?" Jack asked cautiously while sitting down, his eyes showed a worry he masked within seconds.

"No, colonel, major Carter and Dr. McKay are not scheduled to arrive at Alpha Site for another two days."

"Ah, yes… of course," Jack said, feeling stupid for jumping to conclusions.

"Actually, colonel, I wanted to see you to discuss that report of yours that is very much overdue," George said.

"Ah, you see, sir," Jack said and shifted in his seat. But before he could continue there was a knock on the door. Both Jack and George turned to the door as Sgt. Harriman stepped into the room, looking particularly uncomfortable.

"Sirs," Walter greeted. Jack and George waited for him to continue but Harriman stood silently by the door, looking almost as if he wished to escape.

"…Was there anything you wanted, sergeant?" Jack eventually asked.

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

"For what?"

"For having to be the one telling you the following, sir. It's about major Carter and Dr. McKay, sir."

"Have they arrived already at Alpha Site?" Hammond asked, a hint of surprise in his voice.

"No, sir," Walter said, shaking his head. "The Arcanum has gone missing, sir."

Jack immediately turned to look at George, who looked as shocked as Jack felt. Jack slowly turned back to Harriman, "What do you mean 'gone', sergeant?"

"Gone as in disappeared, sir. The scientists at Alpha Site sent us a radio transmission a few minutes ago saying that they were following the ship on their radar when suddenly there was an explosion and then the ship wasn't on the radar anymore. They're gone, sir."


A heavy cloak seemed to hang over her head, she couldn't see anything, let alone feel anything. Sam felt like she was in a vacuum, not sure what exactly was going on. Her every move felt like it came with a delayed reaction, every thought seemed to come slowly to her head, almost as if her entire being was wading through thick syrup.

Trying to focus, Sam tried to recall what had happened and where she was. She didn't remember much really, she had just begun working on the ship's crystals when everything had shook violently. She tried to recall if she had heard anything, but she couldn't quite remember. It was possible that she had heard a loud bang from below, coming from somewhere in the engines, but she wasn't sure.

All she knew was that the shaking had flung her back at a cabinet and she had been knocked unconscious, which meant that was probably what she remained as. She needed to wake up, she needed to make sure the ship was still intact. What if they had been attacked and boarded by Goa'ulds? What if she and Rodney were captives? Rodney! What if he was hurt, or worse…

She needed to regain consciousness to figure out what was going on. Slowly she tried to clear her mind, but found the process slow and tiresome. She refused to give in though, trying to keep her focus on getting out alive. For awhile she felt like she wasn't making any progress when suddenly things started becoming clearer and a sharp pain intruded her head. She hissed slightly, but still knew it was a good sign that she would soon awake. Finally she managed to get control of her eyes and opened them, the blinding light cut in to them like knifes and she swiftly closed them again. She felt herself being overpowered by the dark once more, but fought to regain control.

You can't give in now, she thought to herself. You can't go back to sleep now.

Slowly she opened her eyes yet again, this time with more caution. The light didn't hurt as much, but she still felt delirious.

Where was she? She looked around and realized that she was lying on the ground, she frowned in confusion.

Oh, right, the ship shook and I fell.

Sam's mind was clearer now and she was certain this time that she had heard a bang before falling unconscious. Very slowly she sat up from the ground, supporting herself heavily on her shaking arms. The movement unsettled her stomach and she leaned back to try and repress the nausea. She was painfully reminded of a few months back when she had been in a similar predicament. Trapped on a spaceship somewhere in space…

Sam moved her hand up to her forehead and hissed as she came in contact with a warm liquid, she looked at her fingers.

Blood. Probable concussion. Yep, just like last time, eh, Sam?

But it wasn't really like last time, now was it? There was one major difference this time around. Rodney. This time she wasn't completely alone on the ship and she had to find him to make sure he was alright. Sam doubted she'd be able to do this once again if she was all alone.

She pushed herself up from the ground, leaning against the cabinets behind her.

"…Rodney," she called, but it came out barely louder then a whisper, if anything at all. Her head ached so much that she wasn't even sure if she had been able to make a sound by any means.

She staggered over to the door, it didn't open automatically for her. She raised her hands to the doors and started prying them open. It was hard work for someone as weakened as her, but eventually she got them open enough to squeeze through. She leaned heavily against the wall before continuing.

"Rodney," Sam called again, this time louder. She waited a few seconds, but there was no response. Everything was quiet. Too quiet, she noted. She couldn't even hear the low hum of the engines.

"McKay!" Sam called, starting to make her way through the hallway while leaning against the wall.

There was silence for a few seconds and Sam wondered where he could possibly be.

Suddenly his voice broke the air, "Sam?"

"McKay!" she called again, this time with a relieved smile on her lips. She staggered forwards. "Where are you, Rodney?"

"I'm on the bridge."

She followed his voice until she stood outside the bridge's closed doors. Taking a deep breath she started prying the doors open with her fingers, this time around it was more exhausting and when she finally managed to get them open she felt her head spinning. She squeezed through the doors and tried to focus on McKay or, she quickly noted, both of them. She was seeing double after the recent happenings and had to wait a few minutes until there was only one McKay left in her line of sight. She noticed that he was standing with his back towards her.

"Rodney?" she called cautiously and he turned around to face her. "Are you injured?"

"I think I am," he said feebly and Sam hurried closer, leaning heavily on the control panel to keep from falling.

"Where?" she asked and she saw his unfocused eyes. Sam pulled a deep breath, she remembered that look clearly. Rodney was going into a state of shock. "Rodney!"

Slowly his head turned in her direction and she continued with a gentle tone, "Where, Rodney? Where are you injured?"

He immediately reached out his hand to her, waving it in front of her face.

"My pinkie, Sam. I think I broke my pinkie. Can you tell me if it's bleeding, Sam? Is it bleeding?"

Sam frowned at him, he had definitely come out of that shock quickly. Sam shook her head slightly and turned her attention to his hand, "Rodney…"

"Oh, god, it's bleeding isn't it? I'm going to have to amputate it, there's no saving it no-" Rodney rambled quickly, Sam felt her headache increasing.

"Rodney!" she interrupted and he stopped rambling long enough to watch her. "Is that all?"

He frowned back at her, "What do you mean 'is that all'? I think it's broken, Sam."

"Can you bend it, Rodney?"

He kept frowning at her, "Of course I can't."

To prove his point he held up his hand and started bending each one of his fingers, one by one, when finally coming to his pinkie he scrunched up his face but it bended none the less. Amazed by this, Rodney looked down at his finger, "Hey, what do you know… I could bend it."

"Fascinating," Sam said sarcastically. "I doubt it's broken, Rodney."

"Yeah, well, it still hurts," Rodney whined before glancing at her, his eyes focused on the bleeding wound on her forehead. "You injured?"

"No, just a scratch really," she said hastily and shook her head, an action which she soon regretted as the headache intensified and she slumped down in a chair close by, hoping that Rodney hadn't seen her brief lapse of strength. Thankfully, he hadn't. Instead he had turned to look out the gigantic window, a frown upon his face.

"Sam, where are we?" he asked and she followed his gaze. She looked out at the black space and shrugged.

"I don't know, Rodney. I was hoping you could tell me."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I'd like to know what happened, to begin with."

"You're assuming I'm responsible for this! You are jumping to conclusions, Sam, you have to let me defend myself before you jump at my throat!"

"Rodney!" Sam raised her voice and he looked back at her shamefully. She raised an eyebrow and waited for him to talk.

"Alright!" he said eventually, throwing his arms into the air. "So I might have accidentally done something that sent us off into hyperspace."

"Yes, I gathered as much, Rodney. I want to know what you did," Sam said slowly.

"Well, I pressed the oval button there," Rodney said and pointed to the control panel. "And a red light started flashing, so I pressed the same button to make it stop. Needless to say, that didn't work. So I pushed a few other buttons and well… I don't think you should combine some of the buttons I pressed because an explosion rocked the ship. I tried to regain control, accidentally hit the hyperdrive button and… here we are now."

"I think there was a second explosion…," Sam said distantly, trying to remember the events but feeling the memories fade away from her again. "And if it hit us as we entered hyperspace it might have affected our jump, perhaps throwing us somewhat off course or affecting the acceleration. I can't say for sure though, but if it has… well, we'll just find out about that later…"

"Hey, Sam," Rodney called and Sam looked up at him, "This is just a piece of cake for the two of us, right? I mean, this can't be too bad, we ought to be able to have it fixed in no time… right?"

"Honestly, I don't know, Rodney," Sam said with a sigh, "I haven't even had the time to check the engines, and we don't know exactly what's damaged."

Sam looked down at the black control panel, not a single light was shining back at her. She tried pressing a few of the buttons but got no response.

"The engine seems to be dead, we have no operational controls available. The two explosions must have damaged the engine, it's possible that the generator got a bruising as well, I should have a look at that later."

"Any idea what buttons I might have pressed to… do this?" Rodney asked cautiously.

"The only thing I can tell you, besides that you pressed the hyperdrive, is that you pressed the cloaking-button."

"You mean… I accessed the cloaking device? That was why the red light flashed?"

Sam nodded in response.

"So… are we cloaked?" Rodney asked but shook his head and quickly answered his own question, "Of course we aren't, the engines are offline, there's nothing to power a cloak at the moment."

"Hey, Rodney?" Sam asked. "Were you awake when we were in hyperdrive or did you wake up after we stopped?"

"After we stopped, why?" Rodney asked but quickly caught on to her line of thought. "I didn't tell the engine to stop, technically we ought to still be in hyperspace at the moment. So why aren't we? The hyperdrive is engineered by the crystals and the generator, if one or both is broken the hyperdrive would be out of order."

"Exactly. And in this case, I really think it is both," Sam said. "I didn't take a good look at the crystals before I got here, but I had pulled the compartment out to check them. It's very possible one of them might have taken a hit from something during the violent shakings… and if they have…"

"…we need to find spare crystals, because if we don't, we won't be able to jump into hyperspace again. We can fix the generator, most likely, but we'd still need a crystal," Rodney finished.

"I wonder how long we were knocked out…" Sam thought out loud.

"Yes, well… We can check the oxygen-meter for that later, right now we need to concentrate on the task at hand. Fixing the engine so that we can fly back the way we came from," Rodney said.

"And which way would that be?" Sam asked.

"Well, obviously, behind us, Sam," Rodney said and looked at her as if it was the most understandable thing in the universe.

Sam slowly shook her head and Rodney's eyes widened.

"What do you mean 'no'?" he asked quickly.

"Take a look, Rodney," Sam said and Rodney turned back to the window. He tried desperately to figure out what she meant but found the spinning of the ship to be not only annoying, but while looking at the stars at the same time it made him feel a bit nauseous. Rodney stopped in his line of thoughts.

"Oh, please tell me no one's rotating! Please tell me the stars aren't rotating, Sam!" Rodney said. "I mean, I know stars can, and most often do, rotate in an orbit around itself or around an other star, but please, don't tell what I think is happening here..."

"Well, McKay…" Sam said slowly. "The stars are rotating. But what's really rotating at that speed is us… The Arcanum is rotating in space without the power of the engines to prevent it from doing so. Who knows how many laps we've turned around our own axle…"

"So, basically… we don't know what direction we came from. But if we can get the engines online we should be able to look that up… on… the… radar…" Rodney's voice faded away as he had, in the 

middle of speaking, turned towards the radar panel and saw that it had all but completely been destroyed, its circuits looked damaged all the way from where Rodney stood.

"How is that possible?" Rodney asked, pointing at the shattered radar. "There was no explosion on the bridge. The only way for that to have happened is if… a flow of energy must have been released when the engine exploded and the radar must have been in direct contact with the energy outlet, whole thing's probable serial wired… Other controls might be damaged the same way…"

Sam heaved a deep sigh and massaged her temples, the pain in her head was increasing.

Rodney watched her for a second, before quietly asking, "What do we do now?"

Sam looked back at him and shrugged. "We do what we do best; Try to solve this problem. We check out the oxygen-meter to see how much we have left and how much we've lost, then we look at the generator and crystals before having a go at the engine, I suppose. Let's see if this is fixable and go from there."

"Great…"


A/N: And that's that chapter! I hope you liked it!
I feel kinda bad for Sam and Rodney, I mean... the bad things just don't seem to stop, their situation isn't looking very bright at the moment.
No engine, no radar, headinjury, injured pinkies, etc.
Well, if you want to know what will happen to them, just stay tuned. I'll try to update a new chapter within a week.

In the next chapter: Daniel and Teal'c learn about the accident and Jack lets his emotions flare. Meanwhile, Sam and Rodney try to figure out how to get back home.