Once the pain from his hands began to subside, which took about three days, Rush began to actually realise that there would be some sort of long term effects from his injuries. The worst being the cold, which woke him shivering in the night. The second night he had to ask for another blanket and the bone deep cold didn't go away.

Doctor Macarthur had opted to continue to visit, returning day times. She and TJ arranged to run a series of medical assessments with on the crew, which meant a seemingly endless stream of crew entering and leaving the infirmary. Rush found the fact they could simply leave irritating, but the fact that a few stopped to talk to him, broke up the day a little.

Susannah was no longer in Chloe's body, was now exchanging with Camile who could productively use the time in Homeworld Command. It took a little while for Rush to adjust to the change, but it seemed to him that Camile's body suited her more. Chloe, when she finally came into the infirmary for her medical, also confided in him that she had reached her tolerance level for time spent with her mother, who whilst her drinking had decreased, was still very demanding and acting extremely over-protectively.

Rush wasn't sure whether he was pleased at the availability of an expert in what was wrong with him, or irritated with being fussed over. Susannah turned out to be reasonably interesting which was a boon, as there was little else he could do except talk. She had a reasonable knowledge of opera and classic literature at least and her ideas about statistical modelling of epidemics had produced some very interesting discussions. Rush had tweaked her curiosity when he directed her to the Ancient's data on the Ancient Plague in the database. He smirked, gratified and amused when he noticed her stealing any unoccupied moment to pore over the data which had been translated, rubbing a strand of Camile's hair between her fingers.

As he had promised, Young returned in the evenings to play chess. Rush was almost desperately grateful for his company by the end of day two but kept his face blank. Young on the other hand seemed to take a perverse delight in poking fun at his bandaged hands.

"You know." Young told him conversationally on the third day, as he set up the chess board again. "If putting you in mittens was all it takes to make you take a break I would have had TJ do it months ago."

Rush scowled at him.

"Nice to know you care." He snapped "If all it took for people to start taking a real interest in my general wellbeing was being almost frozen to death, I'd ha' been better advised to find some travelling companions with more concern for my personal wellbeing."

Young's eyes lifted slightly but remained shadowed under his brow, face still tilted towards the board so it was hard to read his expression. Young held Rush's gaze for a few moments and Rush thought he was going to reply, but finally Young looked back to the board. He carefully turned the board so Rush had control of the white pieces this time. "Your move." Young said tightly, not looking up.

Rush studied the board. He could hear TJ moving around the storage area, the rustling suggested she was checking the hanging bundles of herbs drying in loose fabric bags in front of the air vent. The silence stretched on slightly too long, the bed moving slightly as Young shifted his weight. Rush could see his body language had closed in on itself, shoulders tight and head angled downwards to the board rather than Rush.

"Pawn to king's three." Rush said, watching for a reaction.

Young moved the piece and finally sat back staring at the board, face impassive, his non-expression a blank wall. They went through a handful of moves, the only words spoken Rush's instructions to move pieces. Rush's eyes kept flicking up to Young's face.

Somehow his response had had some sort of effect, but Young's face was neutral, and he had no idea what the reaction was, just that there was one. It wasn't even a new conversation. They'd said the same things on previous occasions.

"Queen's rook to Rook four." Rush said.

It was a stupid move, one a beginner would make and he made it deliberately trying to get a response, but Young didn't gloat, didn't even smile, just took the piece and made his move.

The game continued, Rush trying to concentrate solely on the game, but again his eyes kept flicking to Young's face. He realised he was throwing the game, making moves simply to get a reaction. Maybe he should just give up, claim tiredness. Maybe he should say something.

He was staring down at the board, trying to work out his next move, how to salvage the game, when Young spoke, making him jump.

"So, Brody says that they're going back to the kitchen tomorrow."

The complete change of topic threw him totally. He looked up at Young, staring.

"I'm sending a larger party this time with kino sleds to retrieve any usable equipment." Young continued. "Becker is going to look at the objects there."

"Ah, yes…that'd make sense."

Young looked at him. "Are you alright, Rush?"

"Yes, I'm fine. Ah, well, it'd be a benefit if they could access the possible storage tomorrow as well."

"That was Brody's intention." Young said nodding. "They'll be taking a kino with them, and you'll be able to keep track of proceedings, give advice."

Rush looked down at his hands.

"I'm not sure I'll be much use with a kino remote." He said.

"If Susannah won't let you out for a break, I'll have someone here to be your hands."

Rush scowled, back on familiar ground.

"I'd really think that now I'm out of the danger zone so to speak, I could be allowed to sleep in my own quarters at least." He groused.

Young laughed.

"You'll have to ask her about that in the morning, but I'm pretty certain she doesn't trust you not to unwrap your hands and start doing stuff you shouldn't."

Rush huffed out a breath that was almost a laugh.

"I'm bored, not an idiot."

That elicited a grin from Young.

"Opinions may differ on that one." Young looked back down at the board. "Your move."

The atmosphere appeared to have unfrozen and Rush relaxed back into the game and the gentle banter.

Young was still in significant pain from his knee the next morning, but he took a walk down to the infirmary to find Rush and Susannah first thing, rifle-crutch thumping on the decking. They were talking by Rush's bed. Susannah looked up as he walked in, but continued talking to Rush whilst she was redressing his hands.

Young hadn't heard the first part of the conversation but it appeared Susannah was allowing Rush out of the infirmary to the bridge on the agreement that she got to come along as well, her attitude a mixture of resigned tolerance and genuine curiosity. Young silently agreed, she had already proved she had the ability to stay out of the way and in the background every time they had a meeting or played chess in the infirmary, and she'd be able to keep Rush in line. The thought made him grin, finding anyone capable of reining Rush in was a small miracle.

Susannah finished with Rush and turned to him. "Good, just the person I wanted to see." She told him, walking over to the desk where TJ was sitting. TJ grinned at him as Susannah reached down behind the desk.

"You need this." Susannah told him.

She handed him the cane. The body of it was a coppery tube, and looked like it had been cannibalised from part of Destiny's systems, the handle was something Young guessed was carved herbivore horn and the ferrule some sort of unidentifiable soft plasticky stuff.

TJ slipped out from behind the table and took his rifle. "I didn't expect you to be doing anything that silly." she said with a smile, "So it's taken us a little while to get this made."

Young heard a snort from Rush behind him.

"The height should be right," Susannah said, "it's made in direct comparison to your rifle and your height from your medical. It also weighs less that a third of the weight of your rifle."

Young leaned on the cane, it was the right height, and the handle considerably more comfortable than the rifle stock. He turned it over in his hands, it was beautifully made, he realised Rush was watching him holding it. He gave Rush a questioning look although there was no way that Rush had made it himself.

Rush ignored the unspoken query. "Makes you look like a proper cripple," Rush said, with amusement in his voice, faintly mocking.

"Rush." TJ's voice held a warning tone, with a flinty look in the glance she shot him.

"Don't you say anything to dissuade him from using it." Susannah chided.

"Well," Rush conceded, "it's a better look than the post apocalyptic walking wounded."

"You sound like Eli." TJ said. "He must be rubbing off on you."

Young could see mischief in her eyes, but Rush scowled. Young took a few tentative steps on the cane.

"Well, it's much better than the rifle." He said. "Anyway, I came down to let you know Brody's party have left, we'll be coordinating from the bridge. Eli and Volker are already up there, keeping an eye on things."

Rush was sliding off the edge of the bed in seconds, stamping his feet into his shoes and making for the door.

"Whoa, whoa!" Young limped over, leaning on his cane. "Wait for the rest of us."

The walk up to the bridge was almost funny, Rush almost childlike in his desire to get there walking ahead and then pausing to let the other's catch up as Susannah made sharp comments about pity for the injured or him leaving her old bones behind. Young had no idea how the woman got away with it, as pretty much anyone else would have been cursed at, but Susannah got snorts, sarcasm and resignation. TJ was carrying Young's rifle and handed it off to an airman for the armoury at the first opportunity. He was a little pleased that her relentless pursuit of medicine hadn't dulled her military training to not leave weapons unsecured.

Young had to admit the cane was considerably more comfortable and faster to walk on, if it did indeed, make him feel like a "proper cripple". It was only until it healed up though. He repeated this to himself, the voice sounding very much like TJ's in his head, take it easy now, and it'll heal up quicker.

Leaning on the rail by the command chair, Young watched Rush as they stood on the bridge. The barely concealed frustration had evaporated the moment they had arrived and he was wandering round consoles, staring at readouts. Susannah was following him in curiosity and it wasn't long before he had pressed her into being his hands, a task which she seemed more than happy to perform as long as he explained what he was doing. Sat at a console with him leaning over her shoulder she had dragged Camile's hair back off her face, twisted it into a tight knot and jammed a pen through it to hold it up. Strangely it looked very stereotypically oriental, but very unlike anything Camile normally did with her hair.

"Get back here." Rush snapped at Susannah, who had turned sideways away from the console so as not to stick Rush with the pen.

"You can wait just a second." She said, giving him a look that was both amused and derisive.

"I need you to bring up the sensor readings from the FTL engine, I need to check the power usages."

She laughed. "And exactly how am I meant to do that?" she snapped back.

Young smiled. Rush and Susannah seemed to have dropped into a reasonably easy acquaintance. Susannah was not easily cowed, argued back when he failed to explain what he wanted, demanded answers with an amused tolerance which appeared to work on him. Young wondered if there was something else about her which made him tolerate her more than other people, or if it was the fact that they were more contemporaries in age and background than Rush was with most people on this ship. Although Young thought Susannah might be older still than Rush, who was only a few years older than Young himself.

He realised that TJ had stayed on the bridge, a rare occurrence, but understandable in light of what had happened to TJ and the others on the last expedition and also the fact there were no patients in the infirmary. She was standing at the railing and had been watching him watching Rush. As he looked up at her she smiled at him and rolled her eyes, looking over at Rush and back at him. Young shrugged and gave her a half smile before turning back.

Scott was in the chair and caught his eye.

"You wanna sit?" Scott queried.

"No," Young said, "keep it. I'll be fine."

He heard a tutting from TJ behind him, but moved over to stand next to Rush and look over Susannah's shoulder where she was manipulating the kino feeds under Rush's direction, both feeds patched into the secondary console. The feed was following Brody's party as they travelled the same route as previously, quicker this time and pulling kino sleds. He shifted his weight to his good leg and leaned on his stick.

It took about a further twenty minutes for the party to arrive at the kitchen and by that point Young's legs were beginning to protest. He took a step back, stifling a hiss and flushed a little as Susannah and Rush spun to stare at him, followed by Eli and Volker who were at the other two consoles. Susannah scooted out of the chair.

"Sit." She said. "It's not as if you can be any worse with the console than I am."

Rush snorted, but Young's knee was giving him enough grief that he moved round Rush and sat. He could hear Becker's voice over the kino as he started giving orders to the airmen to stack items on the kino sleds and Brody's voice further away, almost out of hearing. Rush leaned forward, resting his forearm on Young's shoulder, Young could smell the antiseptic smell of the dressing next to his cheek.

"Swap to the kino following Brody." Rush told him. "Drag that red button up to centre screen."

Young did as asked and the red button bloomed into the second kino feed. Brody's party had just left the kitchen area and were passing down a corridor, pretty much indistinguishable from any other of Destiny's corridors. They watched intently. Young shifting slightly to accommodate the weight of Rush who was leaning on his shoulder, head forward and so close his hair was almost brushing Young's head.

The group seemed to be travelling through a reasonably untouched area, passing under only one small hull breach, sealed by the shields, footsteps echoing in empty halls. They ignored side passages, continuing towards the most easily accessible of the large areas.

There were several hatches that were jammed or otherwise non-functional, and each time either Brody managed to open it from their end or Eli managed to work around it from this end. Each time Young couldn't help a stab of anxiety shooting through him, warning him of the potential for disaster here, his mind replaying the image of the frozen room on the last mission. He shifted nervously, and hissed when he bumped his knee against the console. Rush looked down at him warily, but he just shook his head and motioned that Rush should return to watching the kino feed

Practically every time though the causes were burned out squingies (and Young thought Eli should really think harder about his choices for component names) or faulty relays. It was time consuming to identify the cause but the resolution was usually quick once figured out, and the party moved on.

It seemed too easy. Young's brain kept asking him, why was it so easy? And if it was so straightforward, why hadn't they done this before? But it hadn't been as easy to get this far, to reach the kitchen, and before the map had been discovered all exploration was working blind.

"We're here." Said Brody, as the group stopped before a large doorway, similar but a little larger and a little taller than the entrance to the bridge. "Are we ready?"

Eli picked up the radio and Young heard him in double echo back through the kino. "Sensors aren't showing anything dangerous in there."

Brody took an audibly deep breath and hit the door release.

"Holy frigging cow." Brody's voice was hoarse.

Racks of shelves stretched out ahead down a wide aisle. Many were empty or almost so, but there were still crates of varying sizes on over half the shelves, rank after rank of them, stretching away down the warehouse sized room, all labelled in Ancient script.

"It's like Area 51 or something." Eli breathed.

"I can assure you it's nothing like Area 51." Rush said, sourly but almost absently.

Young looked over as Eli stared across at Rush.

"You're kidding me right?"

Young shook his head.

"Why did no-one EVER think to mention Area 51 actually exists?" Eli complained.

"Never came up in conversation." Volker muttered. "It's not like we can go there."

"No, but…"

"Focus Eli!" Rush snapped.

There was silence as they all watched the kino feeds. Brody and his team walked into the room, Ramirez pulling a second kino out of his backpack and setting it free. There was a tapping from Eli's console and a second video feed popped up, the kino spinning 360 degrees to pan around.

"Why hasn't this all been used up?" Volker asked.

The kino's floated around for almost a minute before Rush evidently spotted something.

"Pan left." His weight shifted further forward onto Young as Young manoeuvred the kino around. "There, that's your reason."

Along the wall there were a series of empty racks, fifty, seventy, maybe more. At the nearest end, still racked, was a maintenance robot, the same as they had left on the outside of the hull, but this one had an ominous looking scorch mark coming out of the panelling on one side. The kino floated around it.

"The last one here, and broken." Said Rush.

The group had evidently noticed the damaged drone also as he could hear their voices approaching the kino.

"Looks pretty fried." Brody reported, moving in to look at it. "It's one of the maintenance drones. The last one I guess. Explains why none of this stuff has been used in a while. Nothing to use it."

Young picked up the radio.

"Pretty much what Rush was saying. Can you identify any of the other crates?"

Brody stepped in front of the kino lens and looked at them.

"There's some squingies several aisles down, one of the crates was open. But a lot of this stuff is nothing we've come across yet. There's what looks like panelling stacked at the far end. I'm hoping it's hull panels and bulkheads so we can repair some of the breaches. If we're lucky there will be dome panelling."

The bridge crew watched as the exploratory party started to open crates, Brody chalking on the side of any crates holding anything identifiable. Rush and Eli were stopping the kinos intermittently to translate crate labelling, although it appeared that only about half the crates were labelled.

"I don't think we're going to be able to empty this room for hydroponics." Volker said.

"I'd agree with you on that." Young said. "No way are we going to be able to move that much stuff out."

"Where would we even store it?" Eli asked. "Maybe the other room is emptier. I mean they've had several million years to use up all the spare parts right?"

"Your guess is as good as mine." Young said.

"Probably better." Muttered Rush.

Young shook his head disbelievingly.

Rush continued. "I could really do with taking a look at…"

"No." Susannah cut him off sharply. "You are going nowhere. None of the four of you I've been treating are going anywhere, and I've made that perfectly clear to Lieutenant Johansen, Sergeant Greer and Corporal Barnes also. You are off strenuous duties until I'm satisfied you are all recovered, you especially."

Rush huffed, but said nothing, opting to watch the rest of the exploration. Young let them continue for another hour, recording and tagging identifiable items, and establishing that among other things there was indeed a significant amount of hull plates and bulkhead panels at the far end of the room.

"Lets just hope that the other room has the dome panels in." Eli said. "I could do with some fresh greens, and I NEVER thought I'd EVER say that."