Still don't own any of this :{ credit goes to MGM.
I hope you have enjoyed the story so far, I had a suggestion from Karli82 while I was midway through writing this chapter to go back and do a flashback. Well I hope this is to your taste, as there will be several more like this going back even before they got on board Destiny. Thanks for your kind reviews, it helps me to carry on with this story.
Three years, two months and nine days ago,
Eli stood on the observation deck for what felt like hours, watching the waves of the FTL wash over the ships' faintly glowing yellow shields. He felt he could stand here forever, but he still had more systems to shut down and had to make a start on repairing his pod. With a sigh he walked off back to his quarters where he was using the one remaining active control interface console to access the ships systems and database.
As he sat there working, Destiny was watching the files he was going through and decided to assist him. Ginn appeared next to Eli. He looked over at her and said solemnly, "So I'm already hallucinating, fantastic. I've only been at this for a few hours and already I can't leave myself alone."
"I am not a hallucination" she whispered, " I am the embodiment of Destiny's Artificial Intelligence Subsystem."
"Alright then, how about telling me where I can find some spare power conduits to fix the stasis pod.?" As he watched, the avatar of Ginn flickered and looked back at him thoughtfully. "Spare system components are in the second cargo bay from the front of the ship." She told him. With that she vanished. 'Hm,' he thought, trying to reason with himself, 'maybe I noticed that when I was going through the ship specs and my subconscious just thought it would tell me?'.
He spent the next few hours looking for it on the map and trying in vain to find a pressurised path to the cargo bay. It wasn't easy. It was one of the many areas of the ship that had suffered an impact when the drones smashed into the ship, so the main access corridor to that section was buckled and the alternate routes were open to space. No go. He sighed, and wiped a drop of sweat from his eye. Even with a space suit he would not be able to get there because there was just no path, even the elevators wouldn't operate as the shafts were twisted.
Wait! He sat up straight and stared at the kino dispenser. The elevator shaft, could he manage to crawl through there while wearing a space suit?
Several hours later Eli stood at the shaft access corridor, the last remaining pressurised access. He opened the access and sent an armful of kinos into it on search mode. He had absolutely no idea which direction the storage bay was in, as the shafts were like mazes, as when he had tried to trace a route using the ships mapping software it had turned up an error message telling him this was not a recommended path to take and promptly locked it out with a code. After many attempts to override the code for a couple of hours he gave up and made his way down to the space suit storage room, his eyes gritty and tired. They had found these suits originally abandoned by the gate room in crumpled piles. At the time Dr Park had wondered what they were doing there, but they didn't worry too much as they would be needed soon in order to retrieve more water.
Eli spent another couple of hours trying desperately to figure out how to put the space suit on alone. He had, of course, worn the suit before, but then he had Dr Park to help him do up the various clasps and check all of the hundreds of seals on the joints. After battling with the thing and putting on several pieces the wrong way he had begun to sweat. Eventually he walked to his quarters to pick up as many kinos as he could carry. It was difficult, as the suit was not an easy thing to wear.
On the way to the shaft entrance he passed Brody's workshop, and picked up another few items he thought may be useful.
His kino pad beeped, one of the floating camera balls had mapped out a route to the forward storage area he was heading for. Pressing a few buttons he replayed the footage from that kino and his heart sank when he saw the amount of damage the shaft had sustained. There was no way he could get through the several sections of buckled sharp metal, and several of the areas he needed to crawl through had a shield for a floor.
He knew he had to try, it had already been three days and his time was running out, and if he couldn't fix the pod he would have to turn off life support, and of course, he would….die. He didn't want to die. In that sudden moment he realised he remembered his family, how his mum used to wake him up in the mornings to go to one of his many job interviews. How his grandparents used to come round and treat him to some home made baking. He could still taste it!
Then he thought of all the people on Destiny, and realised that they were his family too, how Colonel Young was like a father figure to him, Dr Rush, while being an ass, always seemed to go easy on him, and then there was Chloe. Oh how he wished he had the guts to make a move on her before Lt Scott, but of course he hadn't. His mind flashed back to the task at hand. He had to act on his will to survive.
He pressed a few more buttons on his kino remote and sent the remaining camera balls to try to find a safer route to that section. There had to be one. While he was waiting he used the last of the duct tape to attach Brody's telescopic magnetic tool grabber to two of the kinos. He hoped the power conduit wouldn't be too big or too heavy for the magnets and kinos to manuovre through the hull breeches. A beep chirped from his remote. That was odd, he didn't think that the Kino's would find a different route so fast. He looked at it, and a path with red sections was laid out, much shorter than the one he had found, but he hadn't sent any kinos that way. Another beep. A message came up on the display 'Power Relays are made from a Non Ferrous material and are located inside sealed crates, this route allows sufficient space for you to crawl to the designated area. Be careful, Eli Wallace.'
This was beyond crazy, he always suspected the ship was intelligent, and Rush swore by that every time somebody tried to question why the ship did what it did. Then there was the time he had mentioned Dr Franklin appearing on the bridge. Everybody including himself was ashamed to admit he thought he was mad. Now he understood, the ship really was intelligent and was trying to help him. "Why didn't you tell anybody of your existence before?" He asked. He waited with bated breath for his remote to beep.
Nothing happened. In fact, now that he thought about it, the whole concept of the ship being sentient sounded insane. Maybe it was him going insane? Suddenly He was aware of an acute feeling of being watched. He turned around slowly to see Ginn staring at him. "You're not really Ginn are you?" he whispered. "No, Eli Wallace, as I said before, I am the Embodiment of Destiny's artificial intelligence system." "Hm, muttered Eli, so I'm not going mad then. Yet. OK, well can you at least not appear as my girlfriend, it's hard for me knowing that she's trapped in quarantined memory with Amanda Perry."
Ginn shimmered a bright golden colour for a moment, and when Eli looked again a woman wearing some kind of uniform with shoulder length black hair was looking back at him. "I did not understand, forgive me, Eli Wallace." She murmured. " I must apologise for not making my prescence known sooner but you must understand, this is not my crew. You are merely descendants of my creators who are trapped here against your will, and have been trying to find your way home ever since." As Eli took this in, she continued.
" If I had shown myself earlier they would have demanded that I take them home. I cannot jeopardise the mission, and for that I am sorry. However, there is a gate within each galaxy capable of connection to the next galaxy, using this system currently would take thirty two trips before you reached Earth. I was never meant to create a wormhole over such a great distance, nor am I able to open the gate to these gates as I am not as powerful as I once was. However, I can educate you how to repair my systems and how to access these gates along the way." "Woah!" Was all Eli could manage to say. "Call me just Eli by the way. Can I call you Destiny?"
"That will be acceptable, Eli Wallace" She smiled as she said this, almost as if she were trying to wind him up.
To be Continued.
Well everyone this chapter fought me a little, reviews as always would be appreciated, more of Eli to come along with some history on the Ancients. I thought I would open up a few avenues to explore in later chapters by providing a way for them to dial Earth and Earth to dial Destiny. Hope you enjoyed this chapter, I will try and upload a new chapter every weekend and as always I hope that future chapters will be longer.
Thanks for reading.