The seedship was five days out, but was within range to have a full exchange of data with Destiny. This seedship was completely intact, barring a few minor problems from millennia of use. Rush felt positively gleeful.

As well as having fully charged in the nearest suitable star in order to bring power to Destiny, Seedship two was bringing a selection of other materials including water and some more metals and minerals that looked like they were probably destined for the power control systems.

Chloe, Barnes and Varro had agreed not to mention the seedship to anyone until he had had a chance to discuss it with Young, or at Barnes' insistence if Young was not out of the infirmary within two days, with Scott and Camile. Rush had argued the need to keep the information under wraps whilst there were so many unknowns, and whilst Telford was around but had finally ceded the argument when Chloe weighed in on Barnes' side. Barnes had stated bluntly that if Rush did not agree to this she would simply tell them herself in two days time. Rush had been quite impressed with Barnes' ability to argue with him to be honest. He was definitely stealing her for the science team, she was wasted as a soldier.

He had ceded control of the Command chair back to Chloe and was in the Core room, reviewing the annotated plan of Destiny's systems. Whilst he and Young had been out of commission, Brody and his team had fully patched the leak in the cold zone. Now they had to move on to the power conduits, the power that the Seedship was bringing was useless if it could not be transferred successfully to Destiny.

He sat there and worked through the plans tracing the lesser conduits that they had identified back to the larger ones, but his mind kept drifting. Finally, with a huff he stood and made for the infirmary.

Susannah was sitting behind the counter, crushing something in the recently made mortar and pestle.

"Nick." She greeted him. "You're up late. How is the wrist."

Rush shrugged flexing it slightly. "Aches a little."

"Here to see Everett?"

Rush scowled.

"Oh hush." She chided him. "You're allowed to care about your friends," she smirked, "and there's no-one here to see you. He's going to be fine, we're pretty certain now. He's asleep."

Rush walked over to Young's bed. He still looked a mess. His hand was strapped up in the splints that had been made for Rush himself, his leg immobilised in something similar and his face was heavily bruised. Rush ran a finger down Young's cheek, feeling the scuff of his stubble against his fingers.

"You better be up and about soon." He murmured. "I'm not keeping this ship out of the hands of Telford wi'out you." He gave a rueful smile. "And it's just too quiet wi'out you to argue with."

He stayed for half an hour or so before leaving, but rather than making for bed, wandered back to the Core room.

Something about the schematic was bothering him. The conduits were a series of closed systems which linked into Destiny's main power cells. Whilst it was possible to open connections between systems, a redundancy in case of damage, the default setup was that there were separate power conduit systems for the various areas of the ship and some systems had their own power connection. Not all areas of the ship or ship's systems needed power at the same strength, so this made sense for those with differing requirements. Down the centre of the ship were two high tension power conduits.

As he stared at the plan again, he realised what it was. The high tension power conduits which ran down the core of the ship were not connected to the docking assembly for the seedship. He checked it again. No, the docking assembly was not connected into the high power conduits from the main power reserves at all.

So how the hell did Destiny and the Seedship transfer power?

xxxoooxxx

Rush watched Young from where he stood just outside the door, out of sight of most of the room. Young was sitting on a bench, the leather and metal cast strapped round his leg up on a box and his splinted hand resting on the table next to him. He had evidently finished his food, put his spoon back in his bowl and was staring vaguely across the room. Young's expression was a little wistful and Rush realised there was a good chance he was staring at TJ.

Young had been kept in for observation for a further forty eight hours after Rush had escaped. He had spent the first twenty four of those largely unconscious due to painkillers, and the second twenty four mostly arguing with TJ and Susannah about whether he should be allowed to work. Rush would not have admitted to having dropped into the infirmary several times each day if asked, but his mind had kept turning back to Young throughout the day and the night.

This morning, the medics had finally agreed to release him, but with some heavy conditions. Unable to put any weight on his foot, and with his hand damage preventing him using crutches, he was not mobile at all at the moment and he would not be fully mobile for weeks. Eli's "kino sled" idea had been repurposed to a "kino-chair" and Young had been forced into it.

After a significant amount of argument and Susannah-enforced lunch in bed, Young had finally acquiesced and floated out of the infirmary in the direction of the Bridge. Rush had made his way to the core room to catch up with Volker about the next stage of the mining he was proposing and had not seen him since.

Cole walked out of the mess hall forcing Rush to walk in unless he wanted to look suspicious. He walked up to the counter where he took the plate that Becker held out, not looking at what it was, and turned to look for a seat. Young was watching him expectantly, and Rush walked over and sat next to him, trying to glance round to see what he'd been looking at. It wasn't TJ, she wasn't here.

"You weren't at the meeting earlier." Young said.

"I was busy." Rush said.

Young regarded him. "I would have thought you'd want to be involved in the conduit repair?"

Rush shrugged. "Brody's more than capable of it." He said dismissively. "It's more an engineering issue."

Young gave him a momentary suspicious look then leaned in a little with a smile. "I haven't had a chance to thank you."

Rush turned away. "Nothing to be said." He poked at the 'stew' on his plate. "What is this?"

"Hotpot." Young said. "It's actually got meat in."

There was a pause while Rush sampled the food and found it edible. He looked back up. "I'm…glad, you're..." he paused, "not dead, I guess."

"I'm glad too." Young agreed. "Could have put a crimp in my lifestyle."

Rush snorted.

Young gave him a gentle shove with his shoulder. "At least my damn knee is getting a rest."

Rush could not help but chuckle at that. He schooled his face back into a more serious look and dropped his voice. "We need to talk."

"What about?"

Rush looked around and dropped his voice to a whisper. "I have an update on our power situation. Come down to the small conference room and I'll show you."

"So," Young asked as Rush pushed his kino-chair into the core room. "What's new?"

Rush closed the bulkhead door behind them and sat down in a seat by Young.

"We have another Seedship on it's way."

Young started in surprise.

"Who knows?" He asked. "You've evidently kept it a secret."

"You, me and Chloe, Barnes and Varro who were on the bridge. It was Barnes who saw the communications trail between Destiny and the seedship."

Young shifted his shoulders then leaned in again. "What's it coming for?"

"It's bringing us power." Rush said. "It refuelled in the nearest appropriate star and it's coming here to dock with Destiny and refuel us."

Young could feel himself relax. "That will give us weeks of power." He said. "And if it can refuel and come back, it will mean we can continue to repair Destiny at a sensible rate until she's spaceworthy again."

Rush nodded. "We could also possibly transfer a small crew onto her to investigate what gates are available from the star that she's refuelling in."

Young nodded back thoughtfully. "And you don't want to tell Telford or Gutierrez because you think it will start them off on another round of attempting long distance gate travel."

"Which at the moment is tantamount to suicide." Rush said sourly. "I'm working on understanding the power conduit system. We still don't really understand why the other Destiny sustained damage while she was attempting to dial out in a star."

Young frowned. "The ship was handling too much power which overloaded the systems." He said.

Rush scowled. "Typical simplistic response. There are hundreds of potential questions that we need to ask before we start messin' around with that level of power flow again!" He snapped. "Which systems overloaded? Which power conduits were not strong enough to manage the power flow? Were they not strong enough because they were too old and damaged, or because they were not designed to take that amount of power?"

Young put his hands up in surrender. "Yeah, of course. So," he sat back in his chair again, "we need to discuss how we're going to handle this with David and Gutierrez, 'cause," he cut in quickly before Rush could interrupt, "I'm pretty certain that they're gonna notice the arrival of a third ship."

Rush tapped his fingers in the table top irritably. "I need more time to understand the conduit system." He said. "I can't give you the evidence we need to get them to hold off, unless I understand the systems and the risks better."

Young nodded. "Telford's not back for two days and I'm not expected to check in for another four." He put his hand down flat on the table. "You have two days."

xxxoooxxx

The eureka moment came rather unimpressively, after a good night's sleep in Young's bed and a quite reasonable breakfast.

Rush had begun to manually trace the conduits with coloured highlighting on the plan. He was focusing on the largest, theoretically highest powered, conduits. The pertinent realisation came to him whilst sitting in the gateroom avoiding the rest of the science team for some peace and quiet. Sat on the mezzanine level, legs hanging over the edge and the laptop next to him he looked down at the gate through the rails. It occurred to him suddenly that he had been an idiot of an order of magnitude comparable with Volker.

He was tracing individual conduits out from the main power reserve one by one, not knowing what they were connecting to. What he really needed to do was work backwards. The gate was one of the systems on the ship with the highest power requirements. To the extent of his awareness, the only system that probably took more power than the gate was the faster than light drive. He also knew exactly where the gate was on the plan and understood how its systems worked. He had his Rosetta Stone to understand the power conduits.

"It's dinner time." Young interrupted his research several hours later. "And as you didn't think to join us for lunch, I'm making it mandatory."

"What?" Rush's mind took a moment to release his train of thought and to process what Young had said. "I was busy." He replied, carefully noting his thoughts in a text file. "This is important. I need to follow it through."

Young chuckled. "I guessed. That's why I brought it here."

Rush finally looked up. Young was in his kino chair and was holding a tray with plates on, on his lap.

"Burgers." He said. "Kinda. Destiny burgers."

"No doubt Eli was in raptures." Rush noted.

Young grinned. "Take your dinner."

Rush saved the file then took the tray Young was sliding towards him one handedly. Young maneuvered the chair out, over the edge of the staircase and level with the floor, so he was able to slide himself carefully sideways off the chair and onto the floor next to Rush.

"So, what's so important?" Young asked taking his plate back.

"Just work on the power conduit problem." Rush said dismissively.

Young gave him a long look.

"Give me a chance to eat my dinner and I'll give you a full briefing," Rush said, "in your quarters, so I can bring my notes and take you right through it."

Rush flicked his eyes across at the two soldiers who were chatting quietly whilst they were on duty in the gate room in case of gate activation. Young followed his gaze and then nodded.

"Fine."

xxxoooxxx

"Okay." Young said when they had decamped to his quarters. "What's the secret?" He pulled the kino-chair up to his desk.

Rush pulled up a stool and sat himself down next to Young.

"I've been following the power conduits back from the gate. It's a system I know so I can use it to understand the power systems that feed it."

Young nodded in understanding.

Rush put his laptop onto the desk in front of them and pulled up the schematic he had been working on.

"There's something I'm not getting here," he said irritably, "but I've been able to follow most of it. There are high tension power conduits down the centre of the ship."

He leaned forward and gestured at the conduits which he had highlighted in a shocking pink colour. Young followed his fingers as he scrolled the display and traced the line back to the main power reserve.

"Okay." Young said again. "That's the main ship's battery, right?"

Rush made an affirmative noise. He scrolled the display back in the other direction, forwards, towards the bow of the ship.

"The pink lines stop." Young noted. "Then you have more pink lines again. Where do they go and why do they stop."

"Exactly what I'm looking into," Rush said, "and I think we've got a bigger problem to worry about."

"What's that?"

Rush scrolled across. "This is the gate." He indicated a system on the schematic. "And this is the power conduits that feed it."

Young looked at the specific lines among many on the diagram, which had been coloured hot pink.

"Okay." He agreed.

Rush traced the lines back to Destiny's main power reserve.

"That's the main power reserve." Young said.

"Exactly." Rush agreed. "And these conduits marked up like these are the conduits which handle the highest power levels on Destiny. You can see there are similar conduits from the ram scoops in the wings as well." He scrolled forward towards the bow again. "This, the point where these high tension conduits stop right at the front, is the docking assembly for the seedship. And, like you just pointed out, there's a gap, between the conduits that connect to the seedship and the conduits that connect to the main power reserve."

Young squinted at the diagram. "Okay. What's in the gap."

"I think," Rush said, enlarging the map, "it's another power reserve. A forward reserve."

Young stared at the map.

"I think it's broken," Rush continued. "At least partially. It explains why Destiny is not holding more than 40% of its potential power reserve. It should have two power reserves and one of them is not working properly. Even with the amount of damage Destiny has taken, the low level of power retention didn't make sense."

"Is it working at all?" Young asked.

"It's been working enough to transfer power to and from the seed ship." Rush said. He spun the diagram to show the underside and the power conduit connections between what he was positing was the forward reserve and the seedship docking array.

"So why would Destiny have two power reserves?"

"Lots of reasons," Rush said absently, zooming in further. "A back up power source in case the main power reserve had to be taken offline; a separate power source for high risk work; or a power flow manager, like a reservoir to manage inconsistent water flows. That's why it's connected to the docking array, to manage inward flow, and why I think it's connected here."

He pointed at an area which Young recognised immediately. "That's the area that blew out, Brody's team are fixing the conduit and the hull in there. The cold zone. And that's the area you think is the research labs and secondary computer core."

Rush nodded. "If they were undertaking scientific experiments or had a highly complex computer array there, if it were me, I'd want a power source which would be at a remove from the main power reserve, prevent fluctuations in power due to ship manoeuvres and gate use."

"Makes sense." Young agreed. "So that's where your problem is?"

"That's where the problem is." Rush said. "The forward reserve itself is damaged and can't hold power consistently. Which wasn't a problem before as it was still transferring through to the main reserve. But I think that our explosion blew out the control systems that transfer power into and out of and through this forward reserve into the main reserve. The damaged systems which we haven't got to yet, haven't identified yet, from the explosion are these here, connected into the forward reserve. It doesn't matter if Brody fixes that conduit, and it doesn't matter how much power the seedship is bringing us, if we can't transfer it to Destiny."