Since most of the action in Air, part 3 is taking place either on the desert planet or on Earth and Elsa doesn't go to either of the two I had the nice opportunity to have a nearly completely freestyle chapter (only one scene is from the episode itself). ;) I hope you enjoy it is much as I did writing it. :D
Disclaimer: Everything related to Frozen is owned by Disney and everything related to the Stargate Franchise is owned by MGM.
Elsa had around half an hour of quiet staring at the console before Lisa Park entered the control room and checked something at one of the consoles. She had left the room a while earlier to see the team off to the desert planet.
"Umm, Elsa?", she suddenly spoke. Elsa looked up.
"Yes, Lisa?"
"I know that we have more important matters, but..." Lisa hesitated a bit. "Your makeup is still smudged and it honestly looks a bit creepy."
"Faen!", Elsa cursed in Norwegian. "I totally forgot. Thank you for reminding me." She took a look at the console again. Still no relevant results found. How huge was that database? Or didn't she use the correct search terms? It likely wouldn't change anything if she'd go for a few minutes and fix her makeup.
"If somebody looks for me, I'm in my quarters." Elsa just wanted to walk out of the room when Dr. Park interrupted her.
"And where are those?"
Elsa sighed. She really wasn't her usually collected and correct self today. Either it was the unusual environment or the growing headache because of the increasing levels of CO2 in the air. Probably it was both. She went back to her console and marked her quarters on a new overlay for the ship's map.
"I've started an overlay for marking quarters of the crew. Maybe you can get others to add in theirs. It's labeled 'crew quarters'. Now, excuse me, please." The blonde left the room and went straight for her quarters.
After having arrived there Elsa grabbed her backpack that still stood next to the door and put it on one of the stools next to the table to unpack its contents. She put the two laptops, any electronic utensil and the books including the photo album on the desk and rummaged through the remainder of the pack. Soon after she had what she needed: a bottle of makeup remover and some cotton rounds. She walked towards the mirror she had noticed earlier. Like on the windows the outer edge was obscured by a patina, but for now it would suffice.
When the woman saw her reflection inside the mirror she nearly broke out in laughter. She really was a creepy sight with those black streams that had flown from her eyes along her cheeks. She briefly wondered why no one else had dared to comment on her makeup.
She placed her glasses on the table and with a trained hand she removed any traces of makeup that she had on her skin in turn revealing the young face that belonged to her just as her powers did. She wondered when she'd again be able to show her true face among the people. For nearly 150 years she had hidden herself from humanity and she was sick of it. She knew the reasons why she did it and she still considered them sound, but that didn't change how she felt about it.
Elsa sighed and went to her bag to search for new makeup to apply. There was her emergency wash bag in which she knew wasn't any makeup, a skirt about which she wondered how that ended up in the backpack, a towel, a brush and her emergency clothes. But no makeup. She thought back to her quarters on the base and where she had kept her makeup. It had been on a rack with other mostly unimportant stuff – at least for the evacuation – and she remembered that she hadn't bothered with that rack at all.
Great job, Elsa, she thought and rested her head on her right hand. It seemed that she would get her wish sooner than she thought. Maybe the gloomy lighting conditions on the ship would help her to disguise herself a bit longer though.
She picked up her glasses again and decided to go for a little walk before returning to the control room and her search tasks that were likely still running.
At first Elsa was walking aimlessly until she had gotten the idea to finally visit the observation deck. She went from the corridor that went along the room into the observation deck and immediately froze. On the other side of the room were three enormous windows that occupied the complete side. She guessed that it were nearly ten meters in total. In front of the windows was a railing of around one meter height. A bit left and right of the center near the railing were two massive, yet elegantly sloped columns that supported the ceiling. On the right side of the room she could see a table with a few chairs and a lounge for around three people. The left area was occupied by what appeared to be a bar. There was also a smaller table accompanied by a few lounge chairs. In the center, not far away from the columns was a bench.
Even more impressive than the room itself was the view out of the windows. Elsa could see an orange glowing, massive nebula in the distance amid the sea of stars the ship was lost in. At the lower part of her view she could also see the bow of the ship. She knew from schematics that it was shaped like an arrow when seen from above with convex curves on the left and right and a slightly concave curve on the back where its engines resided. The surface of the ship she could see in front of her was covered in various brown to dark gray, metallic structures the purpose of which she could merely guess.
And Elsa wasn't alone. Only now did she really notice the person standing at the railing behind one of the columns. She had long, black hair and was wearing a pink coat. It was Chloe Armstrong. Elsa wanted to turn around and leave the young woman alone when she remembered what she had said to Chloe's father right before his passing. No, she wouldn't go back on her word.
Slowly she moved towards the railing, circumventing the bench on her way there, and stopped in the middle of the railing with around two meters distance to Chloe. Placing her hands on the metallic surface and gazing at the nebula she thought how she would best approach the topic. Luckily for her the other woman went first.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?", Chloe asked and Elsa could hear her voice still shaking. Elsa wanted to reply something, but Chloe continued before she had the chance. "How can something so beautiful be so dangerous?"
Elsa gulped. Beautiful, powerful, dangerous, cold. She hadn't ever thought about space this way, but only about her powers, a long time ago. Back then she had been afraid of herself, of her potential to hurt others, to hurt her sister. But she had learned to master it, to control it, to not have herself consumed by fear. She didn't fear space however, despite it being even more deadly than her ice.
"Only because something is dangerous does not mean that we should fear it. As long as we respect it and are aware that every step we take could backlash we shouldn't be afraid to revel in its beauty", Elsa said after a few seconds.
"I miss him."
"I know how you feel. In my live I have witnessed many deaths. The close ones were the worst."
"How do you cope with it?"
"I live on." Chloe finally turned away from the scenery outside the ship and looked at her with a raised eyebrow. "Don't get me wrong. I miss all of them dearly, but they wouldn't want me to mourn their loss for the remainder of my life. They'd want me to honor their legacy, to keep them in my heart so that I can relish the memories of them when I feel happy and to have the memories encourage me when I'm at my worst. They wouldn't want me to stop leading my live because of their passing."
Elsa could see the words sinking into Chloe's consciousness just as she could see her eyes glancing over again. What she didn't expect however was that the young woman tackled her into a hug, threw her arms around Elsa's neck and began to cry onto her shoulder. The blonde was shocked for a moment, but then she put her arms around the other's body and gently stroked her back. Between sobs she could hear sentences like "It hurts so much". For a while Elsa continued with her petting until she remembered something from a time long ago when she had thought she had lost the one person she had held most dear. Softly Elsa began to sing.
"Sadness swirls within me like the snow. I've frozen out the only friend I'll ever know. There's no way I can win, but I wish that I had been there for her long ago. Life's too short."
She could feel the girl in her arms calming down again. She hadn't expected that this little song she had come up with all those years ago when she was sitting in her own dungeon would help her to calm down a woman that has lost her father on a spaceship billions of light years from Earth. Then again she hadn't expected back then to find a way to control her powers. Life for sure was a strange thing and at least for her definitely not short.
A few more minutes passed until Chloe slowly broke away from Elsa. She could see the tears that had flown down the young woman's cheeks seconds ago. Now and then there was still a sob, but it seemed she had cried the worst out of her body. Only time would tell though how she would cope with this.
"Thank you, Elsa."
"It was nothing."
"I... I think I'll go to my quarters now."
"If you need someone to talk to, you can come to me, no questions asked."
A little smile spread on Chloe's face and Elsa reached for one of Chloe's hands to gently squeeze it, to show her that she was really here. She would be the stable mountain amidst this raging blizzard for this woman. At least she would try.
Wiping away her tears Chloe left the observation deck. Elsa's gaze lingered for a while on the now empty door frame before she looked back out into the darkness that was filled with light. She got lost in her thoughts again. There's beauty and there's danger here.
After a while Elsa had found the will to continue her way to the Interface Control Room. On her way there however she passed the open doors of a room that she hadn't seen yet. Not that she had seen every room that was currently accessible, but the room itself looked different from mere crew quarters. There were various beds of around one to one and a half meter height in the room with racks filled with unknown devices on the head of the bed. Entering the room she noticed a few desks and tables that were distributed among the room. In front of one of the desks the ship's medic was sitting and sifted through what looked like their medical supplies. A smile spread on Elsa's face. Of course there would have been an infirmary on the ship.
She knocked on the metal frame of the door upon which Tamara Johansen looked up into her direction.
"I see that you found an infirmary", Elsa said once she had the attention of the other woman.
"Yes." TJ smiled though it was a tired smile. "I don't know the meaning of most of the devices though." She gestured towards the beds.
"Once we've solved the air problem I'm sure that there'll be the one or two of the engineers who will help you."
"If we solve it, Elsa. It's getting harder and harder to breathe by the minute. In a few hours we won't be able to do much work anymore."
"Now let's not get pessimistic, shall we? I'm sure that the team on the planet will find something and I haven't given up hope to find something in the ship's stores."
"At least one of us hasn't lost her optimism then." The woman who was in her early thirties sighed and buried her head in her hands. After a few seconds she looked up again. "What am I even doing here? I should be in Seattle for two weeks, teaching classes. And yet I'm on the other side of the universe and additionally I'm thrown into the role of a doctor which I don't know enough about. I'm merely a medic." TJ seemed close to tears. Elsa walked over behind the other woman and began to gently massage her shoulders. The effect was immediate. Elsa could feel the body below her relax significantly. Elsa grinned. It seemed that someone was a savorer.
"I can't tell you why you're here and not in Seattle", Elsa began after a few minutes of silence which had only been disturbed by noises that sounded like purring from Tamara's direction. "But you're here and among all of us you are the person with the most medical knowledge and experience. It will be hard, I'm sure. We're short on supplies, we don't know the devices here and what dangers might lie beyond the gate. But I'm confident that we'll pull through this, that you will pull through this. You must not fear your lack of knowledge, instead you should be eager to fight it." Elsa remembered her own past with this. She not only had feared her powers, but she also had feared that she didn't know anything about them. And while she had learned to control them it had taken a while more till she learned that she didn't need to fear the unknown either. In a way this was also similar to her first weeks of regency. Her father and her tutors had prepared her for her future as good as they could, but they couldn't prepare her with experience. She had needed to tackle this on her own once she had thawed her kingdom and had one worry off her back. And she had managed to do it, with as much confidence as the young monarch could muster back then.
"Thank you, Elsa", TJ said softly and seemingly content in the situation she was in right now. Elsa smiled and slowly ceased her massaging.
"You're welcome." She stepped away a bit from the other woman. "You know what we'll be doing once we've solved our breathing problem? I will ask Colonel Young to allow you access to the communication stones with a higher priority so that you can take medical lessons on Earth to increase your skills."
TJ got up from her seat and hugged Elsa. "Thank you!" Elsa returned the hug and shortly after the two broke away from each other again. Elsa could see that Tamara's eyes had glazed over, but she also smiled.
"You'll be okay?", Elsa asked.
"Yeah." She wiped away any wetness that might have started to leave her eyes, then focused on Elsa's face. "You look quite refreshed, you know that? It seems as if you look ten years younger."
Oh no. Think, Elsa, think! "I... uh..."
Just in this moment someone appeared in the door frame. It was Colonel Young accompanied by Chloe.
"I hope I don't interrupt anything?", he asked.
"No, sir, we're just done", TJ replied after a short hesitation.
"Good. TJ, I want you to come with me and Chloe. I'm going to report to Earth and I need you to take care of whoever happens to take control of my body."
"Understood", the medic said and with a last judging look at Elsa's face she left the infirmary.
That had been a close call. It was clear now that she couldn't hide herself forever. But she'd prefer not to confront the others with the truth while they were amidst a life or death situation. Also she still wanted to postpone it as long as she could.
She took a deep breath and reeled in her thoughts again. She thought back to the two discussions she just had. It seemed that she'd become the counselor of this ship. And if she added Eli to this mix maybe their mentor or what seemed more appropriate considering the age difference between her and the others some kind of motherly figure. Keeping in mind that she had never had a child herself that thought stirred her maternal instincts. With a grin she shook her head. Likely the CO2 was getting to her head. She left the infirmary and finally went back to the control room.
Once Elsa entered the Interface Control Room she was immediately greeted by Lisa Park.
"Hi again, Elsa. I see you've fixed your makeup?" Elsa just wanted to confirm the other woman's question when she continued. "You look good." It wasn't merely the sentence itself that confused her, but more so the intonation. It sounded as if Lisa had been a kitten that was ready to jump at her prey. Was she flirting with Elsa?
"Th-thank you", Elsa stuttered and went straight for her console. Not now. Not in this situation. There were more important things to do. Like saving everyone's lives aboard.
She looked at her console and her eyes went wide. There was a search result! It was the name of the compound the Ancients apparently used to fill the CO2 scrubbers in the first place. With it was a list of attributes of the compound that her search queries had reacted to. Elsa selected the entry so that she would see more details. According to the time stamp the entry was found around half an hour ago. That must have been shortly after she had entered the observation deck. Hopefully she hadn't wasted important time with her detour there and to the infirmary. The entry also listed the amount of which Destiny had been shipped with and it should be more then enough if the stuff had been packaged correctly. With a few further commands she checked where she would find this magic compound and as she looked at the map her heart sank. Most of it was located in holds that were in those areas of the ship that they didn't have access to. A smaller amount however was available in a cargo hold that was accessible to them. For now it would need to suffice. First she'd need to find it however. It would be best to ask Colonel Young to give her a small search group so that they could find the material faster.
Elsa just wanted to turn when said person entered the room, alongside Chloe and TJ. But something about the Colonel looked different. His whole posture was different, but more importantly his eyes moved among the details and occupants of the room like the eyes of a bird of prey. Colonel Young normally had a certain warmth in his eyes, but these eyes had a calculating cold. These were Colonel Telford's eyes, no doubt. Remembering that Young had wanted to report to Earth she assumed that it was indeed Telford that was looking around the room and that she didn't just imagine it. She honestly couldn't stand the man. He had made advances on her once, but she had declined him. He hadn't bothered her anymore, but she had always noticed the greedy looks he had given her. If she wouldn't have the ability to defend herself she wouldn't want to be in the same room with him alone. Thankfully she didn't need to think about this as she wasn't alone.
"This is the Interface Control Room. We discovered that for now it's one of the rooms with the best access to the ship's systems", TJ explained to Colonel Telford and whoever inhabited Chloe's body. "Elsa, Dr. Park, Colonel Young and Chloe are using the communication stones. These are Colonel Telford and Dr. Mehta. Dr. Mehta, these are Dr. Lisa Park and Elsa Agdarsdatter." The Colonel and the Doctor nodded towards Elsa and Lisa and the two women in turn nodded back.
"Did you find anything that can help to solve the air problems", Colonel Telford asked.
"No, sir", Dr. Park answered first.
"Not yet, sir", Elsa lied with a neutral poker face. She wouldn't dare to tell him the truth. He wasn't the one who was physically here on this ship and the only military officer she would respond to right now was Colonel Young, the real Colonel Young.
"Keep working." The Colonel turned around and left the room together with Dr. Mehta and TJ.
"Somehow I'm glad that he didn't come through the gate with us", Elsa confessed after she was sure that the group was out of hearing range.
"Yeah, I can understand that. That guy is giving me the creeps", Lisa replied.
"A pity though that Colonel Young won't be here for quite some time. I've found that there is some of the substance we need in a cargo hold in the area accessible to us."
"You lied to Colonel Telford?!", Lisa asked with wide eyes.
"Yes, I did and I don't regret it." Elsa grinned. "I'll go and take a look at this cargo hold. Hopefully I can find something without a big search team. Otherwise I'll need to wait until Colonel Young is back." Taking one last look at the map she left the control room.
It didn't take Elsa long to reach the elevator that should take her to the deck the cargo hold was on. She pressed the button outside its door and waited. However the door did not open. Maybe because the elevator had been defective. She didn't want to wait for one of the engineers to take a look at it, especially since she didn't have a radio and thus would need to walk back to one of the occupied areas. She looked around and noticed a ladder that went straight from one deck to the next. It seemed that she'd need to do this the hard way. Carefully the woman climbed down the old ladder which at least appeared more firm than some of the outer hull of the ship.
Three decks later she had reached the cargo hold's deck and first needed to pause. It wasn't lacking physical exercise however that forced her to stop – even without any training on Icarus base she was still in pretty good shape – but the increasing amount of CO2. In this area the air seemed even worse than in the areas near the gate room. Likely the CO2 scrubber that sustained this area was far worse off than the others.
After a few minutes she had collected herself enough to continue her journey and a short walk later she stood in front of the bulkhead door of the cargo hold and pressed the button on the door control. To her great relief the door opened and revealed a dark room. The lights of the corridor didn't reach far into it, but she could make out two rows of crates in front of her that stretched into the distance. Each row seemed to have a height of three crates each whereby each crate had a size of around one meter on each side.
Elsa looked at the sides of the door frame she stood in and noticed a switch next to the inner door control that hopefully was the light switch. She pressed it and saw as all the lights in the room came on with a buzzing sound. The more light flooded the room the more her hope sank. Despite being one of the smaller cargo holds it was still around 25 meters long and 12 wide. The rows of crates continued all the way back into the depths of the room. To the right side of the door was merely one row of crates after which the room ended with one meter to spare. To the left were five rows. Thus the door wasn't located at the center of the room's side.
Feeling small she first peeked behind the row to her right and upon seeing nothing but the wall of the room and the row of crates she turned around and looked between the other gaps between the rows. How should she find the scrubber compound in here? With her powers she would have been able to reach the topmost crates, yes, but moving them around was an entirely different topic. Additionally she'd need a bit of space to put the crates on she'd move around. It seemed however that the Ancients had thought of this as the last row of crates she inspected didn't occupy the whole 25 meters to the back, but stopped around 5 meters before that. She also noticed a console at the far side of the room.
Carefully looking at the crates Elsa walked along the row towards this console. The crates stood directly next to each other with nearly no gap between them. The base unit seemed to indeed be a bit more than one meter, but some crates were two of these base units long and fewer even three. Maybe they contained bigger equipment that couldn't be packaged into the smaller crates.
Upon reaching the console she switched it on and was greeted by a list of goods that were contained in this cargo hold. Having remembered the name of the compound she found out quite fast that indeed some of it was contained in this cargo hold, but with no apparent information about its exact location. On the side of the screen there was however a highlighted option to retrieve a selected good. So Elsa selected the needed compound and confirmed that she wanted to retrieve it.
Once she had pressed the button she could hear a strange noise from above her. She looked up and noticed what seemed to be a crane that could move along the whole of the cargo hold. Elsa smirked. So that was how it worked. The system knew where each good was and so it was the system's job to rearrange the crates to get whatever good a user needed.
Her grin however didn't last long as she noticed that the crane didn't move. Now that she thought about it the sound that she was hearing sounded extremely like an electric motor that didn't have any grip. She looked back at the screen and her suspicion was confirmed as she saw a notice that read 'malfunction' in Ancient.
Better call in the cavalry now. While she did have a bit of experience with electric motors out of curiosity she had no clue how Ancient motors worked nor did she have the ability to concentrate good enough right now to figure it out herself.
Fifteen minutes later she was back in the gate room. Dr. Brody and Sergeant Riley were standing at one of the consoles and Lisa Park was standing at the other one. A few soldiers were in the room as well.
"Is Colonel Young back from Earth again?", Elsa asked as she entered.
"In theory, yes", Sergeant Riley replied. "At least Chloe is herself again, but the Colonel was drugged by TJ after Colonel Telford overused his injured body."
She just wanted to ask Dr. Brody whether he would come with her to the cargo hold to repair the crane when the Stargate lit up. It began to rotate and after one rotation it stopped again and the wormhole appeared with a clicking sound followed by the usual outbreak of the unstable vortex. Brody and Riley both left the console to walk towards the gate and the soldiers in the room positioned themselves in defensive stances.
Through the gate appeared Dr. Rush carrying along Dr. Franklin who seemed to be unconscious with a wound on his right shoulder.
"Here they are", Riley said and he, Brody and some soldiers hurried towards the two newcomers.
"Hurry up. Hurry up", she heard one of the soldiers say as they helped Rush to lower Franklin onto the floor. "Come on, help him, help him."
"What happened?", another soldier asked.
"Greer... Greer shoot him", Rush replied panting heavily. "Water." He hold out his hand in the hope of getting a canteen of water. "Water." Riley handed him his from which Rush drank greedily.
TJ also came running into the room and immediately attended to the wounded man on the floor.
"That was my ration for the day", Riley commented as Rush had nearly emptied his bottle. The Sergeant took back his flask and walked back towards the consoles.
"What's going on?" This question had come from Colonel Young who had entered the room supporting himself on the rifle he used as a crutch.
With a sound of collapsing waves the gate shut down.
"We've had a lovely day at the beach", Rush joked. Behind him the Stargate vented steam into the room with a hissing noise. "How about you?"
"Why is Franklin wounded?"
"He, Palmer and Curtis wanted to go to one of the other planets." Curtis must have been one of the soldiers. "Eli couldn't stop the other two so I had Greer shoot Franklin so that we don't loose the remote." He paused a bit. "And him."
"Can we dial the other planets?", the Colonel asked into the direction of the two consoles.
"Not right now, no", Dr. Brody supplied.
"Then dial Eli. Tell him to dial the planet they went to and to check in on Curtis and Palmer."
"Yes, sir", Sergeant Riley replied.
"Colonel, may I speak to you, please?", Elsa asked just as the Colonel wanted to leave the gate room again.
"Of course. How can I help you?", he asked. As the only one on this ship who knew about her powers as well as her real age he had a certain respect for her. Precisely what she didn't want, but what she always got when she needed to reveal herself.
"I have found some of the compound we need in one of the cargo holds we have access to." She saw a glimmer of hope in the Colonel's eyes, so she felt bad for having to crush it again. "However the room operates automatically and the crane that is needed to move the crates seems to have a defect."
"Dr. Brody, would you or some other engineer lend Elsa a hand to repair a crane in one of the cargo holds?"
"Yes, Colonel. I'll grab my gear."
"I should also mention that the hold can only be reached by a ladder currently. And the air conditions are even worse than here", Elsa mentioned, looking from the Colonel to Brody.
"Okay. You both get out of there if it should get worse, understood?"
"Yes, sir", both Brody and Elsa confirmed.
"Here, take a radio, just in case." The Colonel handed the blonde one of the said devices which she hung onto one of the belt loops of her jeans.
It took Dr. Brody a while to collect all tools that he might need to repair the Ancient motor, but half an hour later the two of them were standing on the hold's floor again, pausing to collect themselves.
"Thank you for relieving me from 'gate duty'. An electro motor is just what I need as a distraction", Brody said once he was able to breath more or less normally again.
"You're welcome", Elsa replied with a grin. "We should however restrict our talking to the necessary so we don't spend too much air." He merely nodded in response and Elsa led the both of them to the cargo hold.
Once they had entered the door she could see how the engineer's eyes went wide. That had been her reaction as well. So many crates with so much Ancient stuff. A dream come true and yet the sheer mass of crates made one pale at the same time considering that they needed to find a needle in a haystack.
"Up there", Elsa pointed towards the crane.
They walked to the console were Elsa had repeated her request of the compound so that Brody could hear for himself the noises of the motionless motor. Now they just needed to reach the motor. They looked around the row of crates next to the wall and noticed a ladder reaching up towards the crane's moving platform. That made it easier. While the man climbed up towards the crane Elsa positioned herself at the console so that she could initiate the request again if he notified her. The system itself meanwhile had given up again to move the crane and thus the only sound that could be heard in the room aside from the omnipresent, low and humming noise of the ship were Brody's steps on the ladder.
Because of the position of the motors behind the supporting bars of the crane Elsa couldn't see much of Brody's work, but she could hear it. Noises that she associated with an engineer at the work without a doubt. In the meanwhile she decided to take a look at the list of goods again. Maybe something they could use hid itself in there. She saw an entry mentioning clothes upon which Elsa smirked that it was probably the usual, standard white garb of the Ancients. While she wasn't a fan of these – she had seen them once when she saw the Asurans that had invaded Atlantis – it was better than nothing considering that most of them merely had the clothes they wore or happened to bring along with them. Elsa herself merely had a few undergarments, night clothes and exercising clothes that were part of her emergency supply bag and that skirt that for some reason found its way into her bag. Then again she would be able to create clothes for herself if the need should arise. She just hoped that there was some place on the ship to clean the crew's clothes.
Reading further she saw that there also seemed to be a supply of seeds. Now the Arboretum room made even more sense. She'd definitely need to show this to Dr. Park. The woman would probably kiss her for this news and Elsa didn't know whether she'd like that or not. If given the choice she definitely preferred women, but considering her immortality she didn't like the idea to enter a relationship to just see the other one age and die.
Next up came an item that roughly translated as 'I repair'. According to the description attached to the entry it was some kind of repair robot that might be able to repair the hull breaches. Once they managed to find it. She glanced up at Brody who still seemed to work at the crane's drive.
Another entry was about some kind of medical bed that seemed to be able to heal injuries. Now that would be pretty neat especially considering that they were low on any medicine that there was. And each and every injury would strain these resources further. Again they would need to have the crane repaired to find it. Though most likely this bed was in one of the larger boxes. If only there was some possibility to find out what the system knew about the crate's positions.
Wait a minute. Elsa didn't know whether it was the lack of oxygen or the stress of the day as a whole that made her forget what she was good at: working with and inside computer programs. She had a master's degree in computer science and more experience than anyone else on this ship. And the information about each crate's location had to be somewhere inside the computer right in front of her!
She went to work right away, but the console was stubborn. It didn't give her access to any of its backing databases. Elsa wanted to hit the console's frame in frustration when she noticed something that looked suspiciously like an access port. And to her delight it even looked like one of the usual Ancient access ports. Something like an Ancient version of USB Elsa had often joked as these ports were available on Atlantis as well and were useful for various tasks. Now all she needed was her laptop and her breakout cable with the adapters.
"Brody?", she called the engineer up on the crane.
"Yes?"
"I have a backup plan in case you can't manage to repair the crane. I'll be in my quarters quickly and be back as fast as I can. You'll be okay?"
"Yeah, I will."
"Good. See you soon."
It had taken Elsa nearly half an hour to reach her quarters, stuff her laptop and the breakout cable into the backpack and to come back to the cargo hold. That included the necessary breaks to catch her breath, because of the air.
"I'm back", she said into the direction of the crane. "Any progress?"
"Not yet, though I have a clue", came the reply.
She put her laptop next to the console, powered it on and logged in. Then she used one of the adapters of the breakout cable to connect the access port with the USB port of her laptop. The custom hardware drivers, which she had to develop for her trusty four year old PowerBook, came to life and soon after they announced that they had connected to something that identified – in Ancient – as 'Cargo Hold 3, main console'. In addition a warning appeared that told her that the used protocol was an old version that was not properly supported, because no where on any Ancient outpost they had encountered a version of that protocol as old as this. She'd need to cross her fingers that at least the base commands were the same. Elsa wasn't in the mood to debug the drivers just now. She checked what kind of services the console provided over the access port and to her satisfaction the request was answered without error. The console claimed to support both shell as well as file access. She connected to the console's remote terminal which luckily didn't require her to enter a password or some other means of authentication. A quick check of the running processes revealed one she was looking for. After all 'crate database' sounded rather suspicious. Using a bit of her experience to navigate the Ancient operating system that at its core seemed to be the same the much younger Atlantis computers were based on she was able to locate the database file and to copy it to her laptop using the file access service.
With the help of a tool to handle Ancient database files she was able to view its contents. Though again she got the warning that the version was older than what the tool knew about and that she would have to proceed with caution. If they all managed to survive this she'd definitely need to improve the tools and the drivers so that they would work even with this ancient variant of Ancient soft- and hardware. Elsa glanced at the battery indicator. Of course these improvements would only be of use if she'd find a way to charge her laptop, because in one and a half hour it would merely be a fancy paper weight. She reduced the backlight as much as possible and switched the laptop to a low energy mode. That gained her another quarter of an hour.
Without hesitation she began to analyze the database she had gotten hold off. Sadly her tool didn't support the format of the data's names so she needed to rely on the data values alone. So she first looked for the name and description of the scrubber compound which would help her to find the unique identification number of the corresponding database entry. With that she could check the other tables which would hopefully reveal first the identification entry of the crate and then the location. Or alternatively that in a specific location that specific crate was located. The identification number of the compound was easy to find, but the next step in her argumentation proved difficult as the number appeared multiple times in the database. Probably some additional accounting.
"Elsa, please try it again", Brody requested after around ten minutes of her working on the database.
"Do you think it's safe for you up there?"
"We don't have time for me to climb up and down, just do it." He sounded harsh, but it was probably because of the air.
The blonde reached for the console, selected the CO2 scrubber compound and confirmed the retrieval. "Done."
She heard the sound of the motor again, but it sounded different this time. Not like the useless spinning as before, but more melodic. And sure enough the crane started to move to the left and away from her. Both her and Brody wanted to shout out in joy when a loud thud occurred. The crane stopped suddenly with the engineer nearly falling down of it.
"Brody!"
The engineer had managed to grab a hold of the supporting bar of the crane. Slowly he lifted himself up. Panting heavily he lay down on the crane's platform.
"Are you all right?"
"Y-yes. Just out of breath."
After a few minutes of heavy breathing he was collected enough to take a look at the crane again.
"Bad news. One of the gears has broken. I don't think I'll be able to fix it now. Not with that little amount of oxygen that we have left."
A thought occurred to Elsa. "With the gear fixed it would work, yes?"
"Probably." That was good enough. "But I don't have the right materials and tools to do that right now."
"Then head back to the gate room, please. I'll try to put my backup plan to work."
"Even if you find the correct crate, how will you be able to open it? It will either be at the top or in between. Both are equally unreachable without the crane."
"I'll call for backup then. Till then it would be best if only I use up oxygen down here."
"Okay then." He slowly moved back to the wall along the crane's platform and down the ladder. "Take care and good luck."
"I will and thank you."
Elsa waited a little while until she was sure that the man had left the area. She then climbed up the crane's ladder and went to where the crane had broken down. Breathing heavily she took in the cog wheels that were part of the crane until she noticed one that was split in half. Carefully she removed both pieces and studied them as intensively as possible. She then concentrated on the vacant axis and let her powers flow. It was much more straining than she was used to, but in the end she had pulled it off. A cog wheel made out of the hardest and most stable ice she was able to conjure under the current conditions was sitting on the axis fitting snugly into the neighboring gears. She walked back to the wall, nearly losing her balance once out of dizziness and climbed down the ladder again. Without any further hesitation to collect her breath she went to the console and requested the material again.
Like before the crane started to move again, but this time it did not break down. The crane went left till it had reached the fourth row and lowered itself to grab a crate. It then moved up again and placed the crate without any gap next to another one on the incomplete row in front of Elsa. She turned around to look at the console which told her that the retrieval was still in progress. She now noticed her heart beating faster, though she did not know whether it was because of the tension or the increasing lack of oxygen. The crane returned with another crate which he didn't place on top of the other one, but next to it on the floor. The crane went back to the top and stopped there. A quick glance at the console told Elsa that this had to be the crate she had been looking for.
Eagerly she stepped towards it and slowly lifted its top. On the left were eight cylinders of approximately twenty centimeters in diameter and to the right were a few smaller boxes. Elsa picked up one of the cylinders. It was surprisingly heavy, around five kilogram. But she smiled as she read the compound's name on the cylinder's side. She had found it. She turned off the console, closed her laptop – she would retrieve it later – and put two of the cylinders into her backpack. She hadn't expected however that the ten kilogram she now had on her back would tax her as much as they did.
Panting even more heavily than before she walked out of the cargo hold and reached for her radio.
"Colonel Young, this is Elsa. I found it. I repeat, I found the-" Just then her legs gave in and she fell face forward to the floor. She had been able to break her fall a bit, but it wasn't enough.
"Elsa? Elsa, come in? Elsa?!", was the last she heard out of the radio, before she succumbed to the darkness that clouded her eyes.
Slowly Elsa felt her senses return to her again. She could feel the hard floor she was lying on. For some reason it didn't feel as hard as she remembered Destiny's floors though. Also it smelled different, less like mechanical, recycled air, but more like fresh air, filled in with the smells of wood, stone and furniture. She also noticed the absence of the low humming noise that had been omnipresent on the ship. And now that she thought about it she also missed the feeling of her backpack against her back, pressing her to the floor.
She opened her eyes which widened right away as they didn't notice the dimly light corridors of the Ancient ship, but instead a sight that she hadn't seen in more than a century. It was a corridor in Arendelle's castle that she was lying in. And now she also understood why the floor didn't feel as hard. She had been lying on one of the carpets that were placed in various corridors.
Carefully she stood up. Why was she here? Was that a dream? She had dreamed of the castle before, but somehow this felt different, almost real.
While trying to remember where exactly she was right now in the castle she noticed the sound of muffled voices. They came from a door next to her. She recognized this door. It was the door of the great hall. Hesitantly she reached for the door handle, pressed it and slowly opened the door. As she looked into the hall nothing in the world could have prepared her for what or better whom she saw standing in the center of the large room and chatting with each other. There were Kai and Gerda, the two head servants of the castle. There was Ingunn, her niece. Next to her was Kristoff together with his trusty reindeer friend Sven. What surprised her the most however was the pair that she nearly hadn't recognized. It was her parents. Looking just like the day they had left for their fateful journey. Now that Elsa thought of it all of them looked rather young. Kristoff and Sven appeared to be around the age they had met Anna during the Eternal Winter. Ingunn however looked around 18 years old and Kai and Gerda were in their forties to early fifties as well.
"Elsa!", her mother exclaimed happily and walked towards her, her father following closely behind. Whatever this was it felt too real. Tears started to build up in her eyes. Her parents stopped around one meter in front of her, looking unsure of how they should handle their daughter. But Elsa had enough of this. She wasn't the fearful little thing anymore from 150 years ago who had been fighting for control over her powers. No. Finally she was able to do what she should have done back then. She tackled her mother for a hug, fearing for a minute that she would simply pass through the figure in front of her like she had passed through Anna. But nothing of that sort occurred and she found herself hugging her very solid mother and her father soon joined in. Her tears were now running freely.
"Mama! Papa! I've missed you so much!" She felt like her eight years old self again, before the isolation from the world and her sister, and before she learned to fear her powers.
"Oh, my sweet, dear Elsa", Idun said while gently stroking her daughters head. "How I have longed for the moment to have you in my arms again. We are so sorry that we didn't see that the answer was love."
"We are so proud of you", her father chimed in.
Elsa was totally at a loss of words. She didn't mind however. Right now she was very content in being in the middle of a hug with both her parents.
"I am sorry to interrupt this, but it isn't her time yet", a new voice sounded from behind Elsa. A voice she knew very well, whose owner she had missed in this gathering. Slowly Elsa broke the hug with her parents and turned around. Sure enough her younger sister was standing there wearing the same outfit she had worn earlier in her quarters. "Um, hi, together!", she said accompanied by an unsure wave.
"Anna!", Elsa said what everyone in the room thought. Now Elsa was even more at a loss as to what this had been. If it had been a dream then why would Anna be in her Ancient influenced outfit and not in something more fitting for the castle? Then again Elsa still felt the jeans and the shirt she had been wearing all day which didn't fit in with the outfits of the others either.
Slowly Anna came forward. "It's good to see you all again." Her gaze shifted from her parents, to her husband and his childhood friend, to her daughter and finally to the two servants that had been like grand parents for Elsa and Anna.
Elsa could see that Anna was restraining herself, holding herself back, but why? Her mother seemed to notice as well and simply decided to break whatever resolve her younger daughter had by hugging her. It seemed to work as soon enough Anna was crying just like Elsa had been moments ago. Like before Agdar joined in and just then Idun reached out and pulled Elsa into the hug as well.
They stood like this for several minutes rejoicing in the feelings they couldn't have for one and a half centuries. Finally however Anna broke the hug. "That felt good and all and I'd really like to stay and enjoy more." She glanced at Kristoff at this. "But we can't stay."
"What do you mean 'we can't stay'? What is this, Anna", Elsa asked her younger sister.
"It's what lies beyond death."
"You mean, I'm dead?"
"Not if I have a say in it. It's not your time yet, Elsa. And neither is it mine." So this wasn't a dream at all. Elsa was dead, or if she believed her sister at least near dead. But why would her sister want her to live on? Weren't all these decades enough?
Suddenly an all too familiar sound could be heard behind her. It was a clicking noise and the grinding of stone upon stone. She knew what she would see once she turned around and wasn't disappointed for a Stargate had appeared in the middle of the great hall. It looked different however. It had the overall appearance of a Milky Way Stargate with its gray stonelike texture and its rotating inner ring, but it seemed a bit smaller like the gate on Destiny. The chevrons weren't orange, but had the blue hue of the Pegasus Stargates and the symbols weren't the usual constellations of the Milky Way gates either. They seemed to be the cryptic symbols of Destiny's Stargate with their hollow and filled dots, the dashes and the tildes. Elsa noticed how the gathered group of people moved to the side of the gate as if they knew that standing directly in front of the forming wormhole would be deadly. Though Elsa wondered how deadly something could be if one was already dead. They all watched in silence as the gate dialed a nine symbol address. Elsa couldn't see the two bottom chevrons of the gate as they were beneath the great hall's floor, but for two locks no other chevron had lit up. The final symbol came to line up with the chevron at the top.
"Chevron nine is locked", Anna said with a grin. Once the chevron slid back into place the familiar clicking noise of an activating Stargate occurred and the unstable vortex leashed out along the gate's central axis. Mere moments later the wormhole had settled in the lightly waving puddle that illuminated the great hall further.
"Your style of travel is truly impressive", remarked Agdar and smiled at his two daughters.
Anna walked over to Kai and Gerda and hugged them as well as her own daughter and Sven.
"I miss you feisty pants", Kristoff joked and gently kissed her on the lips.
"I miss you, too, my reindeer king." She wiped a tear away.
"Can't you stay any longer?"
"No, Kristoff, you know I can't." Anna hugged her husband and then came back to where Elsa and their parents were waiting, her gaze on the floor. Elsa took this as a cue to do the same round of farewell, though without kissing Kristoff.
Now both her and Anna were standing in front of their parents again and the two sisters decided to hug them together. They didn't hug as long as previously and soon enough the two sisters broke away again.
"Will I ever see you again?", Elsa asked before she turned towards the gate.
"You'll be fine, Elsa", her father said with as much love in his eyes as he could possibly muster.
"We'll wait for all eternity if need be", her mother said wiping away a tear from Elsa's cheek..
Elsa's body had already turned towards the gate, but her view still lingered on the people she had missed for so long. Then however she felt a hand reach for her and Elsa's eyes locked with those of Anna who had been standing next to her.
"Are you ready?", the strawberry blonde asked.
"No, but I'm sure that I wont get any more ready", the older sister replied with a nearly breaking voice. A look into Anna's eyes told her that her younger sister understood completely what Elsa was going through.
"Then let's go", Anna finally said with a firm voice, though Elsa was sure that this was merely a facade. Once Anna took the first step towards the gate Elsa moved as well. They entered the event horizon together and Elsa's senses went numb again.
When her senses returned she felt that she was lying on a soft, comfortable mattress. She could feel a blanket above her body and the air she inhaled smelled recycled though not as stale as before. A low humming noise filled her ears. She was back on Destiny. Slowly she opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling above her. She heard a noise from outside her view and soon enough a female face with blonde hair entered it. It was TJ.
"Hey, Elsa. Good to have you with us again."
Slowly Elsa sat upright and looked around. She had expected to be in the infirmary, but instead she was in her quarters. And a look outside the window told her that the ship was flying faster than light again.
"What happened?", Elsa asked.
"When you didn't answer, Colonel Young sent a team to look for you. They found you unconscious near the cargo hold with a heavy bag on your back. They brought you to the infirmary, but you didn't seem to have any severe injuries. You likely collapsed out of a combination of exhaustion and lack of oxygen. The Colonel ordered to bring you here after we had resolved our breathing problems and since I don't know the devices inside the infirmary good enough I couldn't really object."
"Did the compound I had found help?"
"Yes, it did. Though Lieutenant Scott also had brought back limestone from the planet just as the countdown had run out."
"Palmer and Curtis?" Elsa noticed that TJ hesitated to answer this question. She bit her lower lip and looked around the room. Finally however she answered.
"They didn't answer when Eli dialed the planet they had gone to. Probably they were dead even before we jumped to FTL." Elsa's eyes widened. If only she had found the compound earlier. This way they had lost three souls already during their first day on the Ancient ship.
"It's been a long day for all of us. Best you rest a bit more", TJ finally said and Elsa merely nodded, lying down again. Without a further word the medic left the room and closed the quarter's doors again.
Elsa felt the exhaustion of the day overwhelm her. Why didn't you let me die, Anna, were her last thoughts as she slowly drifted into a restless sleep.
Well... that was quite an eventful chapter, don't you think? :)
Lisa Park having an eye for Elsa (then again she went around with many people on the ship in the series ;) ), Telford having made advances to Elsa (poor Elsa...) and then there's not only an appearance of Kristoff, but of Idun and Agdar as well.
Regarding the Norwegian curse word "Faen": it can roughly be translated as "Damn it!". And most likely you won't see Elsa curse that often, she's afterall rather polite and correct. But after a day like that plus less oxygen than preferred one might loose one's temper...
The next chapter will need around one to two weeks and will of course be Darkness. There I'll also reveal whether the ice gear Elsa had created will have any consequences for her cover. ;)
Update: A few small corrections.