It was so beautiful; the swirling vortex of blue and silver seemingly flowing into itself as it made a funnel within itself, fluctuating as it did, it was a thing of beauty. And a beauty of a wormhole, even with the distant voice of Aeryn, telling him that it looked unstable, he still couldn't take his eyes away from the beautiful baby they had just created. He was completely giddy inside. Mama Crichton's baby boy just created a real live wormhole!
John's eyes, dancing with merriment and delight, suddenly widened in alarm. It wasn't even Aeryn's voice telling him to begin evasive maneuvers lest they be pulled in. No, he wasn't sure how he knew this, but something was coming through from the other end.
With speed that bordered on pure instinct, he barely managed to bank his module to the right, as a tubular ship came barreling out. Had it not been for the extremely good reflexes of the 'person' on the other ship, he was fairly sure that they still would have collided.
Using reverse thrusters while forcing his module, with the recent upgrades from Moya, to veer off course from the small craft, he still managed to nick the back edge of the unstable, yet still beautiful, wormhole's event horizon, before returning to back into normal space. The entire module shook as the tail end passed through the proto wormhole, the wormhole itself vanishing into nothingness. Ah, his baby!
John shifted in his seat as he turned to look as far behind him as he could. "Holy crap! Did you see that?" The smile on his face took up almost the entire back seat he was occupying.
"Yes, and I see that, too."
John noted that there was absolutely no happiness in Aeryn's voice, in fact, if he wasn't mistaken, she sounded down right pissed. However, he didn't really have time to dwell on her current state of mind, or just how badly she wanted to throttle him, and not in a nice way, as he noticed the small craft, shaped like a cylinder, not to far away from them. It was the ship that had almost collided with them, the ship that came out of his baby.
The thought that he might be partially, if not fully, responsible for creating the wormhole that had apparently sucked an innocent craft into, what seemed to him to be, hostile territory, did quite a bit to wear away some of that happiness. Not all of his happiness, mind you. After all, he did just create a wormhole!
Flipping a few switches, he turned on his short range communications array.
Um, unidentified…ship. John shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably, not quite sure how to make first contact in this situation, and that was assuming that they could understand his language. Not everyone was blessed with translator microbes. Ah, is everyone ok over there? Even though he couldn't see her, he was sure Aeryn was rolling her eyes at him.
xxxxxxxxxxxx
The ship seemed to lurch forward into the event horizon of the wormhole. No matter what he did, no matter what mental commands he gave, the damn thing just seemed to get sucked in.
Once inside, he was half expecting for his body to be broken down, like it had been those two times he had gone through the gate. But that certainly wasn't the case this time.
Just before the final lurch, a small portion of the screen on the front portal lit up, before a brief harmonic humming enveloped the ship. Outside the ship he could see a faint bubble of purple envelope the ship before either fading away, or simply becoming transparent. Before he knew what was really happening, his ship was actually seemingly steering its way through the wormhole. No breakdown of molecules. He could see, through his peripheral vision, that everything was fully intact. He dared not to move his head; he had this strange sensation that the ship, while seemingly piloting itself, was taking its cues from him. That was something he hoped was patently false, since he had no frickin' clue what he was doing, or supposed to be doing. But the ship just continued to glide through the tunnel.
To make matters worse, at least in his mind, was that this wasn't one long straight tunnel, it seemed as though there were a thousand different routes the ship could travel down at any given second. Even worse was the fact that you really couldn't tell that there was another route you could take until you had taken it, or bypassed it. He was feeling so lost, and he wasn't even out of the damn thing yet.
Then, his current prayers seemed to be answered. There, but a short distance in front of him, was the end of this tunnel. But, God Damn, if there wasn't a small white ship blocking his exit.
He never even had time to touch his controls before the ship veered just off to the side, thrusting him further into his seat, as it automatically adjusted its exit from the wormhole, so as to not collide with the small vessel.
Once they were outside of the wormhole the ship seemed to stop its forward momentum and just drift in space. That was something he was glad about, since moments before entering the wormhole, while he was screaming, the ship was trying to fly at the fastest speeds possible, up to the point of actually entering the damn wormhole.
The ship seemed to pivot on itself. As it slowly rotated, a large sun could be seen coming into view. It was large, and seemed quite active. Something that was quickly confirmed as the damn thing flared. The shields surrounding the ship became visible for a moment; he hoped that meant they were protecting him from any radiation that damn sun was giving off. While, at the same time, the front view port darkened considerable; something he was quite grateful for.
As the ship continued its rotation, he took notice of the planet in front of, or perhaps below, him. The planet appeared to be mostly desert, not all too shocking considering how close to the sun it was. He wasn't quite sure what it would be like down there, should he be forced to land, but he doubted he'd enjoy relocating to a desert planet.
The final thing his eyes came to settle on, just a moment after he noted that the wormhole that had brought him here was no longer around, or perhaps visible, he wasn't quite listening as well as he thought he had when Carter had tried to explain wormhole physics to him, was the small craft he had almost hit.
It was small, almost unassuming. Though, from the detail his front view port was showing him, it almost reminded him of the shuttles you saw in the movies or in clips about NASA. He wasn't quite sure what to make of that. However, he was fairly certain that none of the clips he saw had included a cloud of something resembling smoke coming from the side of the craft.
However, before he could really ponder that, the front console beeped at him once before a man's voice could be heard. Not just a man's voice, but a man who was speaking English. He wasn't quite sure what to make of that.
Um, unidentified…ship; Ah, is everyone ok over there?
Xander wanted to roll his eyes at the question, but decided just to try and answer. He had never really figured out how to use the communications on this ship, it was more of a 'think it; do it' relationship.
"Yea, I think I'm all right." He couldn't help but to shrug to himself. "Just a little shook up, I guess." A few moments later the same voice could be heard, and he was pleased to hear that, whoever it was, seemed to be genuinely relieved. Though, he wasn't sure if it was just about him being ok. He could tell that the man was about to say something, but Xander really didn't like how that ship was leaking something, so he interrupted. "As I said, I think I'm ok, and my ship doesn't seem to be malfunctioning," 'Not that I'd really know if it was.' He told himself. "And while I'm no expert on space crafts, I don't think they're supposed to be leaking like yours is."
Another voice, female this time, came on the line. Now this woman was definitely not speaking English. Hell, she wasn't speaking anything remotely resembling anything he had ever heard for human languages. Not that he knew them all, but her voice seemed to fade in and out at odd places, and stop altogether where it had no business stopping. All in all, it had a completely alien feel to it.
To make matters worse, while he couldn't understand a word, assuming that those were words, he could understand tones, and she was getting progressively more upset, most likely at him, and he wasn't even sure what he did. Finally the English speaking guy came back on the line.
Are you not receiving us? Did you not get it?
Xander shook his head in consternation. "Get what? I couldn't understand a word she was saying!"
xxxxxxxxxxxx
John hit the communications switch a bit harder than he intended when he heard the reply that the other man had made. He and Aeryn shared a glance.
"He understands you, but not me?" She motioned out towards the other ship, and in a curious tone, she continued. "You don't think he is from your home world, do you?"
John shook his head. "As far as I know, Earth has nowhere near the technological know-how to build a ship like that. Small as it is, that ship, and those engines, while somewhat 'star trek' are way beyond us."
"Then what do you think?"
He shook his head. "I'm not sure." Then he flicked the communications array back on.
This may sound like a dumb question, but what language are you speaking?
A short moment passed before he received a reply. English, well, bad English if you want to be specific.
John flipped the switch again before focusing on his passenger.
"Aeryn, could my translator microbes be translating what he said into English; while he's actually saying something else?"
She simply shrugged her shoulders. "I suppose it is possible." She glanced at some flashing lights on her own control panel. "However, now is not the time, we need to contact Moya, and find out if we are indeed leaking plasma coolant on our starboard side, else this control panel is frelled."
After quickly communicating with the other ship and informing the man, Xander, as he had been asked to be called, that he was going to contact his own ship to see how bad his damage was, Aeryn contacted Moya.
John had been less than pleased with the unenthusiastic response he had received about creating his very own wormhole. He had been just about livid when they had told him he was going to have to trash his module because of the leak.
Granted there was no way in hell he would take his beloved module back aboard Moya if there was even the slightest chance of it harming her still developing child. However, when he had informed them that he was taking his module to the mechanic, Furlow, who Rygel had contacted before he and Aeryn had left on this little excursion, just to have D'Argo forbid him from doing so, well that had almost made him laugh. Instead, he had opted to simply call D'Argo a pain in the ass, and he'd be lying if he said that it hadn't felt good.
Hey Xander, you were right. Our ship is damaged. We're going to take it down to the planet where a mechanic can fix her up for us. How about if we meet you down there and figure out what to do next?
He didn't need to wait long for the reply.
Well, seeing as how I'm not in Kansas anymore, I suppose it can't hurt to follow the locals. Just lead the way; I'll try to keep up.
John paused for a moment before confirming. 'Not in Kansas anymore.' That made him pause, because that was definitely one of his expressions. He shook his head, putting it off until they actually reached the planet.
He was brought out of his musings as he caught site of Aeryn flicking off the long range communications link with just a little more force than was necessary.
"Aeryn," He asked in an unsure voice. "You are with me on this; aren't you?"
"Oh, now you think to ask?"
From the tone of her voice, and the tenseness he could feel radiating off of her, he was sure that the opposite was most likely true. He tried to make peace with her, to no avail. He told her that he needed her help, which he always did, she even said so. And what was worse, he knew, no matter what happened, he was winding up in the doghouse on this one
With all that was bound to happen once they got planet side, the fact that he may be meeting with another person from Earth, granted they were flying in tech that the Earth simply shouldn't have, at least not in the time period where he had left, he wasn't quite sure what to think. Beyond that, he still needed to get his ship fixed, somehow pay for it, and go over the data his module recorded.
He really didn't need all of this.
xxxxxxxxxxxx
Aboard the gate-ship, Xander mentally commanded the ship to follow the small ship in front of him, trail of plasma smoke and all, towards the outer atmosphere of the desert planet.
He had no clue how to proceed from here. However, he was extremely glad that Colonel O'Neill had made him take extra provisions of what Jack had thought as a necessity. And seeing as how Jack knew Xander, well, at least he thought he knew Xander, there was quite a bit there.
Landing the craft on the desert planet proved to be no problem. Making sure his supplies were not damaged, and placing a zat in its thigh holster, he sighed as he got ready to disembark from his ship.
A chirruping sound from the console, and a whizzing sound as the door to the side compartment, the same compartment that had provided him with those life sign detectors that seemed linked to the ship, opened.
Pulling out what was inside the console, he looked at the thin band that looked like a headband. Shrugging to himself, he placed it around his forehead before placing his military issue soft-visor cap back on. His eyes shot up as the front portal went back to its usual state of shaded translucency. He also noted, with a small smile, that while another solar flare seemed to come about, beyond a slight amount of more visible light, there had basically been no other side effects.
He shook his head; he loved the marvels this ship could produce. Though, he was still sure that it somehow had to be possible to make it create a Twinkie, well he would take what he could get.
He laughed to himself. "You know, if you could give me a remote for your shields and cloak and stuff, I'd be grateful."
While he hadn't actually expected anything to happen, he had been pleasantly surprised by the same whizzing sounds as before. The compartment slid open once more. This time, within the compartment, was something that looked like half of an egg. It was small and fit in the palm of his hand.
He walked out of the ship. With the remote in his hand, he mentally willed the shields to activate, not wanting to show anyone that he had a cloak on the ship just yet, but he wasn't risking anyone getting inside his ship, for that, he'd let them know he had shielding.
Not too far off in the distance he could see a man and a woman approach him. They looked to be utterly human, though he was fairly sure that the woman had sounded entirely alien while they had been communicating back and forth before coming here. They were both wearing a pair of goggles, the man holding another set, which made them look ridiculous when they got close enough that he could see them.
However, on the chance that this guy, who had the largest shit-eating grin he had seen in quite a while, was the guy he had been talking to, he decided that laughing at them would not go over well, and schooled his features. Only a slight smile graced his face, while he tried to show a cool façade. It was a smile that grew quite a bit, as he heard the other man speak.
It was him. Now it was time to figure out what was going on and perhaps on how to get him and his ship back home.
Little did Xander know, that those same desires were held by the other man, and a certain holographic beacon, proclaiming the bounty of three escaped prisoners, was about to make their stay on this planet, just a bit more interesting.
