Chapter 2

Pain. Pain and aching. That's all Jacob could feel. The throbbing in his head was so strong that he had to slowly, force his eyes open. The pain was a sharp stabbing sensation that seemed fixed on his temples. His sight was blurred. He blinked and rubbed his eyes in an attempt to focus his vision.

As his vision focused, he noticed that he wasn't the only one struggling with forehead pain. The next thing he noticed was that all power apart from the emergency reserve appeared to be offline. He forced himself to stand. He stood still for a few minutes before turning around to see a few of his bridge crew doing the same.

"Get me Engineering." Jacob shouted, unintentionally. His inner ear was slightly off. He coughed and caused his ears to pop.

"Engineering reporting, sir." Lieutenant Dunn shouted.

"Thank you Lieutenant." Jacob nodded.

"What, sir?" Wayne asked.

"Thank you." Robyns shouted at the Lieutenant.

"No problem, sir." Wayne replied. Jacob shook his head with a small smile.

"Engineering here." A female voice said over the radio.

"Report." Jacob ordered. Wayne started a forced coughing.

"Well, sir, we're attempting a restart of all Neutrino-ion generators and all four Naquadah fusion reactors." The women informed.

"How long?" Jacob asked as the whole ship sprang to life. Lights increased in brightness and the entire vessel lit up.

"Done sir." The female engineer said happily.

"Does that mean all of our systems are back online?" Jacob asked.

"Most sir. Our shields are on recharge and the sub-light engines are offline. Looks like a few conduits overloaded because of whatever the hell happened, sir." The engineer replied.

"How long until repairs are complete?" Robyns asked.

"Well, an hour at the most. But for you sir, twenty minutes." The engineer chucked.

"Good job." Jacob smiled before the channel closed.

"Lieutenant, activate sensors. Locate the taskforce and Rivendell." Robyns ordered.

"Yes, sir." Wayne nodded.

Alison was laid on her back. Her eyes snapped open and her hand immediately went to her forehead as pain stabbed at her skull. She groaned in pain and rubbed her head. She closed and opened her jaw. The lights were still on, which meant that the city still had power. That was good because the shields and Arwin would still be online.

"Arwin?" Sheppard asked, with a shout.

"Yes Governor?" Arwin appeared in a shimmer.

"Report." Alison shouted, sitting up.

"All systems one-hundred percent operational. Most of the crew are unconscious. A few, including yourself, have awoken from the deep sleep that was the result of the pressure your bodies came under from the hyperspace journey." Arwin informed.

"Hyperspace shouldn't do that." Alison shouted, confused. She forced a cough and her hearing returned.

"Sensors report that the hyperspace window was modified." Arwin said, bringing up a small screen showing the sensor data.

"Modified how?" Sheppard asked.

"Unknown. Data unavailable." Arwin replied.

"Alright. Have you ran any diagnostics?" Alison asked, getting to her feet.

"No Governor." Arwin shook her head.

"Well activate low level diagnostics." Sheppard ordered.

"One moment, please. All systems appear to be fully functional, apart from ZPM and power flow." Arwin reported.

"What's wrong?" Alison asked, confused and watched as a few more control room staff rose from their 'naps'.

"An overload in the primary conduit caused a feedback loop and has cracked the crystalline casing of module three. This is causing shortfalls in the power needed to maintain all flight needed systems." Arwin explained.

"What can we do to fix this problem?" Sheppard asked, helping a technician to his feet.

"Nothing." Arwin replied.

"Nothing?" Alison repeated, confused.

"Nothing can be done while in flight. The Primary conduit can only be repaired when it is being unused and it is needed for flight. The ZPM is un-repairable. We need to land Rivendell to affect repairs." Arwin explained, changing the screen to show a diagram of the primary conduit.

"Where's Task-force Sagittarius?" Alison asked as she watched the control room techs starting to straighten up and getting back to running the city's systems.

"Task-force Sagittarius has been scattered all around the city. All scans indicate that all taskforce crew appear to be suffering from the same side effects as the city's inhabitance." Arwin informed as the screen changed to show the surrounding space.

"Good, where's the Achilles?" Sheppard asked while rubbing the back of her neck.

"The Achilles is five-thousand kilometres aft of the city." Arwin said, highlighting a ship on the screen.

"Hail the Achilles." Sheppard ordered a technician.

"Yes, ma'am. Holographic communications activated." The technician informed.

Robyns sat, looking around the bridge. He was watching his crew running around, trying to find out what happened. He looked out at the space beyond the Achilles. A beautiful purple gas cloud hung in space and that, apart from the stars filling the background, was the only noteworthy feature in nearby space.

"Sir, Governor Sheppard is requesting permission for a holographic transmission." Wayne informed.

"Granted." Robyns nodded. With a flicker, Alison Sheppard appeared on the bridge of the Achilles.

"Admiral, we have a situation." Alison said, concerned.

"What's wrong Governor?" Jacob asked, rising to his feet.

"One of our Zero Point Modules has a crack in it and we need to replace it with one of the Task-force's modules." Sheppard informed. While it was true that all Tau'ri ships were equipped with ZPM's to increase their overall performance, Task-force Sagittarius hadn't been equipped with Zero Point Modules ever since they'd been deployed on the Aschen boarder.

"I'm sorry Governor, but Sagittarius doesn't have any ZPMs." Jacob replied.

"I'm sorry?" Alison asked, confused.

"Task-force Sagittarius doesn't have any modules. We haven't had a ZPM since we were deployed on the Aschen boarder." Robyns answered.

"Why not?" Sheppard asked, even more confused.

"It's standard procedure for the Aschen boarder. Every ship deployed there has never been allowed to carry ZPMs in case the Aschen managed to capture the modules." Jacob informed.

"Well, that complicates things." Sheppard groaned.

"How so?" Robyns asked as he sat back down.

"Well, we can build ZPMs, but it'll take time and resources we don't have on board. The only other option is landing the city somewhere. It'd be better if we knew where we were." Sheppard answered.

"Well, how many hyperspace capable probes do you have?" Robyns asked.

"We have nine on board." Alison remembered.

"The Achilles carries four at all times." Jacob added. At that moment, the hologram of the Governor split into two, the second hologram changed appearance to display Arwin.

"Yes Arwin?" Jacob asked, looking at the hologram of Rivendell's A.I.

"Governor, Admiral, I've triangulated out location." Arwin informed. The two waited for Arwin to continue.

"Well Arwin?" Jacob exhaled.

"We're on the edge of the Milky Way galaxy." Arwin replied.

"Then we don't have to do anything. Just send a ship back to Jericho to get a ZPM for the city." Alison sighed in relief.

"I'm afraid that isn't possible Governor." Arwin shook her head.

"Why not?" Admiral Robyns asked.

"Because, while I was scanning local space in an attempt to triangulate our position, I discovered a twenty-two percent exotic difference." Arwin informed.

"What does that mean?" Robyns asked, confused. Alison's face suddenly fell as she figured it out.

"It means, that there is a twenty-two percent difference between the stars my sensors show and the star charts in my database." Arwin explained.

"What stars?" Sheppard asked.

"Dakara, Chulak, Erebus, Abydos, Vis Uban, Asch, Hebridan, Cimmeria, Langara, Tegalus, Orban, Galar, K'tau, Svoriin, Argos, Dar Eshkalon, Delmak, Latona, Juna and Icarus." Arwin listed.

"That's a lot of planets." Wayne said in shock.

"It's a big galaxy. 20 planets isn't a huge difference." Sheppard reminded.

"I'm still stuck on how this happened." Jacob admitted.

"From the exotic particles that my sensors detected, there is a high possibility that we are in an alternate reality." Arwin informed.

"Okay, but how?" Robyns asked.

"I can only guess with the data I have." Arwin replied.

"Guess then." Jacob snapped.

"According to sensors, some burst of energy must have excited the dark matter particles and hit the hyperspace window. Somehow, this must have caused us to cross into an alternate reality." Arwin explained.

"Is there a way back? How about building a drive that'll take us home?" Wayne asked.

"Not possible." Arwin informed.

"Why?" Dunn asked.

"Because there are so many realities, there'd be no way to find our original home." Sheppard explained.

"Let's get through our current situation. We need to launch all of our hyperspace capable probes to search for a habitable world to set down on." Jacob said, cutting into the conversation.

"Yes, lets." Alison nodded.

"What about Jericho?" Wayne asked.

"What about it?" Alison questioned, with confusion written on her face.

"Well, it wasn't one of the worlds Arwin said no longer exist." The Lieutenant answered.

"That's a good point. We already know it has several years worth of resources." Jacob nodded.

"We should still look for different systems." Sheppard warned.

"Why? We know where it is and what it has." Jacob asked, confused.

"Because we are in an alternate reality. We don't know if the planet is still habitable or if it is unclaimed. We need to find a planet that is both." Alison replied.

"Alright, we'll do it your way. Prepare your probes and we'll prep ours. Send us coordinates you want us to send them to." Jacob nodded.

"Right away, Admiral." Arwin nodded, before disappearing.

"Thank you, Admiral. I'll be in touch." Alison smiled, before disappearing also.

"Lieutenant, program the probes and send them to the coordinates provided by Arwin. I'll be in my ready room." Robyns nodded.

"Aye, sir." Wayne nodded as he watched the Admiral leave the room.

The three drone launch bays of Rivendell opened their doors to launch nine probes that were glowing red. They were bigger and bulkier than drones, but that wasn't surprising considering they had more equipment and a hyper drive.

The nine probes all lined up several miles from Rivendell, and all opened hyperspace windows. They entered their windows to begin their mission to find a suitable planet for Rivendell.

Robyns had returned to his ready room to try and figure out how to get through the current situation. He was looking over his orders again. The orders that had led him here. He looked at the stacks of data pads and screamed in anger. With a single swipe of his arms, most of the pads flew across the room and scattered along the floor. A smashing caught his attention. He got up and stumbled over to a broken picture frame. It was an antique frame that held a picture of his daughter and wife.

He picked it up and held it for a few minutes before a tear rolled down his cheek. He started crying, quietly at first, but soon he couldn't hold in the pain. He picked off the broken glass and took the picture out of the frame. With his index, he stroked the image. His wife and daughter were smiling. They were both stood wearing beautiful white dresses on a sunny day, with an apple orchard behind them. This picture had been taken at the family ranch on Rayn.

His daughter would be all alone for the rest of her life. She was currently studying on Earth to become an officer in the Navy. Following in her father's footsteps. His wife had died in the Genii Wars five years ago. The war started when the Genii attacked Rayn. His wife had died in the bombardment. He was supposed to visit her the week the wars started, but the task-force had been placed on high alert and his leave had been cancelled.

He should have been there. If he'd been there, then the Achilles would have been in orbit to defend the farming world. But he wasn't. His wife had died and three generations of his family history had been burned by the Genii nuclear fire. He slowly dragged himself over to the wall and buried his head into his pulled up knees.

Robyns walked onto the bridge with strength and purpose in his stride. His uniform was buttoned up and crisp like always.

"Lieutenant, get me Governor Sheppard." Jacob ordered.

"Yes, sir. She's activating holographic communication system, now." Wayne informed. The Admiral sat down in his chair waiting. Alison appeared on the bridge of the Achilles with confusion on her face.

"Admiral, what can I do for you?" Sheppard asked, still confused.

"I'm about to send a transmission to the entire fleet. I'd appreciate it if you put my transmission on the city wide PA system. I'll be ordering the captains of every vessel to do the same." Jacob informed.

"Of course, Admiral. May I ask what this transmission is about?" Alison asked, crossing her arms.

"You may not, Governor. All you need to know is that we need everyone focused on the here and now." Robyns shook his head.

"Alright, we'll stand by." Alison nodded, annoyed. Her hologram flickered out and Jacob nodded to Lieutenant Dunn.

"All captains have replied. They're standing by." Wayne informed.

"Good, put me on." Jacob nodded. Wayne typed in a command then nodded to the Admiral.

"This is Admiral Jacob Robyns." Jacob began. He had planned his entire speech, but now it seemed to have vanished from his mind.

"I have a few things to tell you and now is the right time to tell you all. Arwin has analysed the sensor data from our recent battle and has determined why we passed out during travelling through hyperspace. It appears that during the engagement, the enemy's weapons fire hit the hyperspace window and excited the dark matter. The side effects of this event weren't apparent until a few hours ago." Robyns recited now that his practised speech.

"It would appear that we have travelled to an alternate reality. We are no longer in the universe we know and there is no way back. You will never see your families again and for that, I'm truly sorry. But our orders have not changed. We will protect Rivendell and do our duty to the Federation. Thanks for your time." Jacob said. He looked over to the stunned Lieutenant who closed the channel without looking at the console.

The entire bridge crew had already known their situation. They knew because Arwin and Sheppard had told the Admiral in front of all of them. They were all shocked that the Admiral had just told the entire taskforce. His character made them all think that he was going to wait until they had reached a planet to call home, before saying anything. But he hadn't done that. A hologram flickered onto the bridge and moulded into the form of Governor Sheppard.

She looked furious. Her face was a bright red, her hands were by her side and her fists were rolled into fists. Her eyes were full of rage.

"Admiral, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Alison shouted with rage. Jacob merely stood up and walked off of the bridge.

"Where the hell is he going?" Sheppard asked, angered.