Apologies for the long delay. It's been tough writing. Anyway, apologies for any mistakes, but I wanted to just get this out and done. Hopefully it'll get me back on the horse!
The additional suits sped up the work on the dome by a significant amount. Young could see that Rush was finding it extremely frustrating that he was not able to participate, his hand still being splinted. Still, with the additional suits, there was no reason not to start training up more crew in their use and it provided an added incentive for the cross training between science and military crew members.
Once the actual construction work started up Young was taking his shifts in the shuttle and barely saw Rush in the daytimes. When they weren't actually moving construction parts with the shuttle, Young and Scott were training up Volker, TJ and Greer in flying it. Surprisingly enough Volker grasped the basics reasonably quickly, enough that Young was planning that he should arrange Volker some in atmosphere training the next time they stopped at a planet for long enough. He also requested, via Camile, that Volker, with less flight time of any kind than Greer and TJ be given some simulator time back on Earth if possible.
Young himself was too busy to take any leave time on Earth. He had had his briefing with O'Neill and Telford, and thankfully, O'Neill had supported his statement that with so many crew involved with the repairs to the dome and the setting up of the second hydroponics area, that there was no-one to spare to exchange with Telford's scientists. The only scientists who were being allowed through were working with Rush setting up the new hydroponic facilities.
The spare warehouse room had taken some time to clear, but once empty enough, Young had delegated Rush to connect it into the water, air and power systems sufficiently to allow gardening. It did indeed keep Rush busy, increasing and altering the lighting, connecting water pipes and increasing the airflow as around him crew members and scientists set up crates welded into long troughs and other containers, a new moon pool of dome glass and deep sealed bins of waste matter being composted down anaerobically.
One thing he knew for certain, was that Rush had no energy to pursue any other projects, as he was falling into Young's bed exhausted almost every night. Mostly Young just threw an arm over him and went to sleep, but nights when Rush seemed in particular pain from his healing hand or stiff from hunching over, Young was tempted to do...something. Something to make him relax, or elicit the wry half smile from the other man. Somehow he could never find enough of a reason or an excuse to do it.
xxxoooxxx
It was almost two weeks before the dome was finally roofed over. A further day for Brody to check panels, seals and joints and finally, he and Rush pronounced it air tight.
It seemed like the entire crew was on tenterhooks the morning of the pressurizing of the dome and certainly there were more of the crew on the bridge and in the core room watching the dome on the sensors as air flooded back through the newly repaired vents.
Young announced a small celebration in the Observation Lounge and authorised an extra meat and fruit addition to the evening meal and Becker offered a newly blended variant on the caffeinated tea drink made with the dried skin of one of the fruits. The mild caffeine hit made a surprising amount of impact on the decaffeinated crew and the celebration was upbeat with quite a bit of dancing.
xxxoooxxx
Rush watched Calvos and Eli who were sitting at the bar area, rather than dancing, playing some Lucian Alliance game which looked a bit like Backgammon. More to the point he was watching Calvos watching Eli. Calvos was considerably more circumspect than Eli, who couldn't hide an emotion for love nor money. Calvos was pleasant and friendly, nothing that anyone could consider inappropriate, but his obvious affection and interest in Eli still showed. Rush wondered if that was how he looked when he interacted positively with Young or if he managed to keep a more neutral expression. Not that they interacted positively in public. As if Young had heard his thoughts, he turned from speaking to the crew man who had just entered, and walked over to Rush.
"The count down clock just started." Young said.
"How long?" Rush asked.
"Two hours ten. Seed ship is manoeuvring to dock."
"Not long till we leave." Rush noted. "Who has the bridge shift tonight?"
"Varro."
Rush frowned. "Does he have in-FTL experience?"
Young shook his head. "No way are you taking his shift." He said quietly.
Rush let the frown become a scowl as he turned to stare at the window where he could see the seed ship coming in towards them. "Forgive me for having some concern for the ship and crew."
"I know you." Young said. "And you're in the same position as I am, and the rest of the working parties, in serious need of sleep."
"And it's time for bed?" He queried with a sideways look at Young.
Rush surprised himself with how easy it was to say it to Young. He didn't want to go to bed alone though. In the last month, he'd had four nights alone and they were cold. After being so solitary for so long, it was incredibly easy to just accept Young in his space, to become accustomed to sleeping in Young's bed each night.
"Yeah. It's time for bed."
xxxoooxxx
The kino floated through the stargate and they crowded round the screen waiting to see what the planet was like. They had only been in FTL for a week or so, before they dropped out here, in range of two planets, one locked out and the other available.
Rush was at the gate console, tapping away with both hands at the controls around the video feed.
The splint had come off of Rush's hand, and TJ had prescribed some gentle exercises to build strength. With limited success, Young had pressured Rush into doing them mornings and evenings as he was pretty certain he would ignore them otherwise.
Young leaned over Rush's shoulder to look at the pictures on the screen.
The sky was a slightly greenish blue, with white cumulus clouds. The area they were looking at looked like a series of small islands in a wide open lake like area. The stargate sat several metres above the level of the lake on it's base. Something like reeds, but leafier was growing around the edge of the island and the ground was covered in a moss like growth.
What was most surprising though was the bridges. Made of some brown substance that they could not identify at first glance, they spanned the water between the islands, apparently set on pilings into the lake bed.
"Wow." said Eli. "Bridges. Does that mean there's people there?"
"Aliens maybe." Young said "The Novus settlers never got out of their own galaxy."
"I don't see anyone around." Brody said, manipulating the kino to spin on it's axis and give them a view all round. "Just more of those bridges. Maybe it's deserted."
"They're obviously made by someone." Eli said
"Okay. How long have we got on the clock?" Young asked.
"Two days unless I override." Rush said. He stepped round Young to go to the other console, leaving the rest of them watching the kino feed. "Destiny is indicating this planet is a food and water resource."
"Anything in particular?" Young queried.
"No." Rush replied shortly.
"What do the sensors say?" Young asked, trying to be patient. "Any radio signals from the planet?"
Rush squinted at the screen, Young walked over and handed him his own reading glasses. Rush snorted, but held them up to his eyes to read the text.
"No radio." He said shortly. "But those are still bridges."
"Okay." Young said. "It's a food resource, so I can't ignore it. We'll send a team through. Scott, you can take Greer, Eli, Barnes, Hansen and Marques as a investigating party and I'll have a foraging party make ready."
"I'm going." Rush said, still staring at the screen.
"Are you?"
"There's some unusual readings here." Rush looked up from the screen. "Unusual radiation, nothing that we've previously come across."
"Is it dangerous?"
"No, and it's something that won't show up on our equipment, I'll need to reconfigure a Kino remote to pick it up."
Young frowned. "You can send Eli."
Rush scowled back. "With all respect to Eli's scientific abilities..."
"Hey!" Eli interrupted, but Rush ignored him.
"...he's a maths graduate," he said sarcastically, "this is a little beyond him at the moment."
Young looked at Rush. It was true that he'd been cooped up for weeks, and Young didn't doubt there were odd readings, just that they were as important as Rush was intimating they were. He shrugged.
"Fine, if TJ signs you off as fit to go, then you can join the party."
TJ's only stipulation had been that under no circumstances was he to stress his hand or fire a gun as the recoil was liable to damage the newly healing bones and weakened muscles. Rush had just snorted.
Young sighed when Rush told him and walked down to the gate room to see the party off and wait with the foraging crew for news it was safe to go through.
xxxoooxxx
They stepped out onto the mossy island, the soldiers moving out instantly, scanning the area cautiously while Rush and Eli stepped away from the gate. Eli crouched, cutting samples of the "moss" and other plants and stuffing them in pots for testing while Rush shut down and reopened the gate. Packing the samples quickly, Eli rolled the container back through the gate as Scott pulled out his radio.
He radioed in that the area around the gate was deserted and they stepped away, a few minutes later the gate opened again and a handful of crew walked out with carry baskets.
"We're to collect more of the reeds sir," Airman Christophides informed the Lieutenant, "and collect further samples."
"Stay within sight of the gate." Scott instructed. "We're moving out to investigate."
Closer to, the bridges and pontoons between the low lying islands could be seen to be constructed of reeds bound in tight bundles with further plaited reeds, forming quite an even surface, attached to posts that looked like plastic from a distance, but up closer appeared to be some sort of compacted substance. There were markings on the posts, indented into the surface as if the posts had been made with the markings on there, but their meaning was not apparent in any way.
Rush crouched by a post and poked at the surface of a bridge then stood and carefully tested his weight on it with a single foot. Some of the bundles were more degraded than others which looked quite new, as if some had been replaced, but the structure itself seemed sound.
"They look quite primitive but seem strong." He reported, and stepped out onto the pontoon bridge.
"Environmentally friendly." Eli offered.
The bridge barely moved and he walked the short distance to the next island. The others watched, Greer, Scott and Barnes with guns held loosely ready to react.
Nothing happened.
"Looks safe enough." Greer said.
Scott gestured him forward and they walked to the next island to join Rush.
None of these islands were at the height of the island that held the gate, and most were obscured by the plants that clustered waist high and sometimes more round the edge of the islands. There was another island visible maybe half a mile away which rose higher than the gate island and Eli pointed at it.
"We'd get a better look around from there." He said.
Scott nodded. There was still no sight or sound of anything sentient here and although they could all hear creatures moving in the water and among the plants there was nothing to be seen.
As they moved away from the Gate, the water appeared to get shallower and the plants taller. The sky was very blue, more so than it usually was on Earth, almost cartoonish. The second island they walked across led to a different sort of bridge, curving up over the clear water underneath and with guard rails.
"For boats?" Greer asked looking over the edge, down at the water, from the top of the arch.
"Your guess is as good as mine Sergeant." Rush said, joining him, knocking the knuckles of his left hand against the material the guard rail was made of. "It's the same material as the posts though."
The hill was obvious from the top of the bridge and from there they could see some sort of structure, open-sided with a roof, on the top of the tallest island.
"We still making for there Lieutenant?" Greer asked, indicating the structure as Scott joined them.
"It's the best vantage point." Scott said.
From the next island it was still possible to see the hill rising above the plants and via a winding route, with several backtracks on dead end islands, they made their way towards it. They scared up several groups of creatures as they travelled, a number of odd creatures which swam across the surface of the water like ducks, but didn't appear as if they could fly and a cloud of insect like life which they all backed off from until they had dispersed.
"I think there are people here." They all turned to look at Airman Marques.
She pointed at a patch of sky just above the skyline where there was a break in the clouds.
"That looks just like a contrail."
They stared at it.
"Yep." Scott said. "That does look like a contrail."
"Which suggests that the people here are technologically advanced." Rush said. "And that we may be in a first contact situation, based on the fact that they don't seem to think that the Gate is anything of importance."
They made their way across another couple of the pontoons and were finally at the pontoon leading to the hill with the structure, before Greer, in the lead stopped.
"I can hear something." He called back.
They stopped again and faintly, there was a humming, which seemed to come from two directions, and as it increased in volume, seemed to break into two or more individual sounds.
They scaled the hill. The structure was very much as they had first seen it an open sided gazebo type structure. What they hadn't seen from the distance was the pillar with an obvious sign on the top. It was a little low for humans, around thigh height and was obviously a display. Rush examined the panel on the top, an angled board of the same material with a picture with captions in the borders. The picture was unclear, as if some of the picture had not been printed, or wasn't visible. He took a picture of the board with his phone and stuffed it back in the cargo pocket of his borrowed BDUs.
The humming was getting closer and he turned to where the soldiers were staring out towards the horizon. In the distance, a number of boats came into view around one of the islands. In the distance, Rush could also see a greyish smudge on the horizon, which might, if he squinted, be some sort of city.
The apparent boats got closer. At a distance it was hard to see what they were.
"Binoculars?" Rush asked Greer. Greer pulled out a rifle scope from a pocket.
"Good enough." Rush said.
Greer lifted it the scope to his eye and pointed it toward the boats.
"Optical binoculars should be easy enough to make in the manufactory." Rush told the sergeant as he focussed the sight on the boats. "Dome glass, the lenses are a standard geometric shape."
"They look armed." He reported, and passed the scope to Scott.
Rush decided he regretted the fact he was unarmed.
"Are you sure staying here is a good idea?" Eli said a little frantically. "I mean they have guns."
"So do we." Rush said sharply.
"Shooting first in a first contact situation is usually not a good idea." Scott said.
Rush thought it sounded as if he was reciting something learned, which did not fill him with confidence.
"Ducking first usually is though." Greer muttered next to Rush.
Rush snorted. As usual he found he trusted Greer's assessment of the situation as more realistic.
The boats drew closer, the noise of whatever was powering them sounding like a buzzsaw, with a rushing hissing noise over them.
"May I see, Lieutenant?" Rush asked.
He pointed the scope at the boats and took a good look. They were skimming over the surface of the water, didn't seem to be sitting lower in the water like a true boat would. Rush could hear the pregnant pause as they waited for him to speak again.
"They aren't boats." Rush said. "They look like hovercraft or those rafts with the fan on the back the way they are travelling over the water."
"Does that matter?" Eli asked.
"Yeah." Greer said grimly. "Hovercraft can travel on land as well. Especially real flat land like most of it around here."
"Oh crap." Eli said in a voice Rush considered way too loud considering their situation.
"Only if they are hostile." Scott said.
"We can only hope they aren't." Rush's voice was decidedly cynical as he handed the scope back.
There was a rush of sound, a whoosh followed by a thumping deadened sound. Water fountained up behind them where whatever projectile it was that had passed Greer by about a foot smacked into the marshy pond.
"Fuck!" Eli yelped.
"First contact my ass!" Greer yelled, whipping up his gun to point it at the boats.
Scott pulled his radio to his lips, yelling instructions to the foraging team to send any civilians back and hold the gate.
"Hold the rear!" He ordered Airman Christophides.
They turned and ran. More projectiles rained down around them, mostly hitting the water, but one that had hit a bridge in front of Rush was splattered in a reddish gloopy puddle. Rush paused a moment to poke at it, and was forced to wrench his finger painfully away from the gluey substance.
"Keep away from the projectiles!" He yelled. "It's some sort of glue."
"Glue?" Scott yelled from the end of the bridge ahead of him.
"You get stuck in it, you aren't going anywhere!" Rush called back sharply, which no doubt is the whole point."
He leapt over the puddle of glue and ran as Scott yelled out.
"Avoid the gunk!"
They dodged the projectiles successfully enough. Rush was panting hard and Greer dropped back to pace him.
"You okay?"
"I'll manage." Rush gasped back. "Do you get the impression we're being herded?"
"Back towards the gate?" Greer queried.
"Yes."
There was a pause while they pounded across a rippling pontoon.
"Yeah." Greer replied, breathless. "Seems that way."
They skidded across another island, and another, and onto a arch bridge. As soon as his feet hit it, Rush could feel it shifting. He didn't dare stop. A few paces ahead of him Greer slowed slightly, looking over his shoulder as the bridge moved again.
With a rush of air past him, a projectile hit the bridge directly in front of him and the whole structure dropped out from underneath his feet. There was a moment of falling, his stomach lurching before he hit the water, face first, passing only a couple of feet down before his face was pressed into the surface of the bridge now underwater.
He tried to push away from it, to get his feet under him, push his head above the water but his feet slipped and slid. He was winded, and struggled not to panic, having his face trapped underwater bringing back sense memory that made his heart pound even faster, made his desperate to inhale. He opened his eyes, but could see nothing, a brackish muddy sea of muck.
He pressed his lips together and pushed up with his hands and his face finally broke the surface. His mouth opened involuntarily and he hauled in a lungful of mixed air and muddy water then coughed. He paddled desperately to keep his head above water. The substance that was so adhesive in the air was slick under water and his feet skidded over it as he tried to stand.
"Rush!" Greer's shout was a welcome sound behind him as he struggled to breath.
A hand grabbed his collar and pulled, dragged him through the water and suddenly his feet caught on the submerged bridge. He pushed himself to standing with Greer's help.
"We gotta go Rush!"
Greer tugged him along, out of the water.
"Where are the others?" Rush asked as they scrabbled up the bank.
"Leaving." Greer said. "We don't wanna get left behind."
"And the ones behind us?"
"They'll have to find a way round. It's too deep to wade."
His soaked clothes chafed as he ran, but there was no chance to stop. The weapons of the unseen aliens were still herding them towards the gate. To his relief, Eli and Christophides who had been behind them caught up with them three islands later, as soaked as they were, but alive. As the reached the gate it was open, Scott waving them through as they ran through it.
xxxoooxxx
Young was glad to see all of the crew members who had left the ship come back through the gate.
"They were definitely herding us off their planet." Greer said. "I'm pretty certain that gunk wouldn't have killed us, just trapped us."
Young nodded. "But they didn't actually hit any of you."
"Don't really think they were trying sir."
"Okay, go get yourselves cleaned up."
As the last of the party cleared out of the gateroom, Young walked over to Rush who was the last to walk towards the door.
"Are you okay?" Young asked Rush.
Rush stopped and gave him a surprised look as if he was not expecting Young to have asked, brows furrowing a little. "Yeah," he said after a moment, "I'm fine."
"Come on." Young said, and left the room.
He walked out, but rather than taking the more usual left hand turn he hung a right and then another until they were in a quiet corridor.
"You look like crap." He said, and before Rush could react, stepped forward and wrapped him in a hug.
There was a moment's startled jerk from Rush, then he softened into the hug. Young could feel the cold water from Rush's soaked clothes soaking into his uniform, but he wasn't sure he cared. He was wearing black anyway.
"It was pretty hairy there for a while." He said into Rush's neck, knowing what he really meant was I was worried you guys weren't coming back.
"I know." Rush said quietly and wrapped his arms round Young's waist.
Young was pretty certain that meant Rush understood what he had not said as well as what he had. They stood there for a moment, wrapped together, then Rush pulled back. Young let go of him instantly, but Rush didn't pull away fully, just enough to look into Young's face. His brows furrowed again, then he leaned forward and pressed his lips to Young's.
Young was startled for a moment, then wrapped his arms back round Rush and kissed back gently. It only lasted for a few seconds, but somehow it said what neither of them could say aloud.
It seemed to finish naturally and they both stepped back a little, just enough to leave a gap between them. Not enough that anyone watching would think it innocent though, Young thought.
"You should go get TJ to check you out as well." Young said huskily. "Yeah." Rush said. "When we're out of here."
"You're soaking wet."
"It'll wait." Rush countered.
"My other shirt and pants are clean." Young said. "It's on my chair in my quarters. Closer."
"Thanks." Rush said.
"Get changed and I'll meet you on the bridge." Young told him. "Don't want you getting pneumonia."
Rush regarded him for a moment, making Young uncomfortable, wondering why Rush did it. Then he leaned forward and brushed his lips over Young's again.
"Thanks." Rush said, nodded and walked away. Young watched him leave, trying to calm his breathing.