Author's Note:I finally finished this chapter. I would have finished it earlier, but my 'Introduction to the Novel' course decided to do possibly one of the most horrible books ever written, and my muse made a 'tactical retreat' for two weeks. Anyway, it finally came back, and here is the next chapter. Enjoy!
SG-20
Episode 1
"Flash Drive"
As it turned out, the ship's rather spacious control room was just at the end of the hallway. It was a large room, clearly taking up a good deal of the front of the ship, with two tiers of consoles arranged in a smooth arc facing the large monitor that was currently displaying the space outside. They looked around at the apparently abandoned controls in surprise.
"Ah. So the two strangers have got out of their little predicament." an alien voice announced. Christine felt the point of a rod-weapon press into her neck.
"Hello." she stated, releasing her grip on the energy pistol. It clattered nosily to the floor as she turned around.
The alien woman, both remaining members of SG-13, and two of the armor-clad humans stood behind them, all weapons leveled.
"The reptile should drop his weapon as well, unless he has an extreme death-wish." the alien stated. Ka'cha'nay's weapon clattered to the floor alongside Christine's as he, too, turned to face their foe.
"Did you seriously think that I wouldn't notice that you had disabled two parts if myself?" the alien questioned. "And what's this? You stole one of our specialized weapons? You probably assumed you could use it." The alien grabbed the weapon out of Christine's belt. "Unfortunately-"
Some instinct, or perhaps a deeply-buried courage, seemed to take control of Christine's actions for the second time that day. She grabbed onto the weapon's handle, prepared to wrest it away.
She never needed to. The instant her hand touched the handle, the weapon released a burst of greenish energy that caught the alien directly in the midsection. All five of their opponents doubled over in extreme pain.
"So that ... explains it. You're..." the alien woman gasped. "...one...of..." But she never gathered enough strength to finish the sentience. Mortally injured, she collapsed and died.
Her former servants, no longer trapped in her control, collapsed in shock.
"I think they're all right. Probably just stunned." Christine stated, kneeling down to check their pulse.
"If them all right, should we worry about who flying the ship?"
"Alright, 'Nay, you keep an eye on them. I'll see if I can figure out how to pilot this thing." Christine stated, carefully stepping up to the main control panel, and hitting a few buttons.
They must have been the wrong ones.
The starship heeled over, suddenly rolling end for end. The darkening sky in the view screen were replaced by the view of a planet's surface, approaching rapidly.
"Wrong controls!" Ka'cha'nay yelled.
"I'm trying!" she yelled back, hitting a few more buttons,then threw some sort of lever she hoped was the forward thrusters.
The ship jerked, yawed violently, then came to a screeching halt.
"Maybe we should find instruction manual." Ka'cha'nay stated.
Christine stared at the control board for a second, either trying to familiarize herself with the controls, or trying to catch her breath.
"I don't know why I didn't notice this before!" she suddenly stated. "This script-" she pointed to a label above a row of gauges "it's Ancient Greek, or something very close to it."
"You read it?"
"Yep." she stated, absentmindedly, muttering something about Greek verbs and reaction-control thrusters under her breath. After a moment's pause, she slowly slid two levers downward, then hit another control. Very gently, the ship slid forward, slowly heading higher into the planet's atmosphere.
"I found DHD!" Ka'cha'nay announced, pointing to one of the secondary consoles, where an array of buttons marked with various chevrons. "That odd. These Milky Way symbols." he announced, getting up to inspect it closer.
"That's impossible. Every super-gate we've encountered is designed to dial a eight-symbol addresses."
"These still the Milky Way..."
The ship came to a sudden and violent halt, throwing everyone forward.
"What that?"Ka'cha'nay demanded.
"I didn't hit anything." Christine stated.
"But I did." a voice announced from behind them. They spun.
Megan, one of the former members of SG-13, stood behind them, staff weapon armed and leveled.
"You killed me." she stated. "but the Dryad do not die. The memories linger. The humans...the humans must die!"
The staff weapon clicked, and Christine had just enough time to dive out of the way before a plasma blast struck the console directly behind where she had been standing. The console exploded in a shower of sparks. 'Nay had already ducked out of the way, and was returning fire with his captured energy pistol.
Megan, or whatever she now was, retreated, stopping long enough to blast the secondary console she had been standing next to into a smoking ruin. Them the doors whooshed closed behind her, and they heard the weapon fire again. The doors glowed and a wisp of smoke appeared as the plasma welded the metal together.
"What she damage?" Ka'cha'nay asked.
"All the main controls are gone, and she blasted something called 'super-drive controls' or something like..." Christine's face went white, and she rushed around frantic, hitting a few dozen buttons before she found the switch for the internal scanners.
"What?"
"I think she just set the hyperdrive to overload."
"Can you switch off?"
"She's completely destroyed the controls. All I could do is plug crystals together and hope-"
"Me thinks we have another problem." Ka'cha'nay stated, pointing at the floor.
The vine tattoo encircling the dead alien's neck had begun to flash red with rapidly increasing speed.
"Is that what I think it is?"
"Personal Self-Destruct. Keep enemies from learning about their species and technology, like Wrath used to do." Ka'cha'nay stated, grabbing the drag handle of Charles's combat vest and dragging him to safety behind a console.
Christine went to grab the armor-clad human, but 'Nay grabbed her leg and pulled her behind the console just as the light went completely red. A strange muffled beep sounded.
Half a second later, a tremendous explosion echoed through the ship.
Carefully, they sat up to survey the damage. By some fortunate chance, the ship's outer hull, though badly dented by the explosion, had not been punctured. However, the same could not be said for the rest of the room. The control consoles were wreaked, bent, and thrown about. The door had been blown completely out of the wall, along with a good bit of the wall.
The console they had hidden behind was no different. The entire control surface had been blown away, showering the area in fragments of crystal.
"Come." Ka'cha'nay stated. Christine looked up from staring at a fragmented control crystal in complete shock.
"Where?"
"Escape pods. Whoever that was acted like she was trying to get away, so she must have some way off the ship."
"Good thinking."she stated, getting up. They headed for the now-absent door, 'Nay supporting the unconscious Charles.
It wasn't that hard to identify which room contained the escape pods. No sooner had they entered the hallway than a tremendous thundering roar came from one of the starboard compartments, announcing the launch of some sort of emergency escape pod.
They stumbled through the door to gaze upon a disappointing sight- four Goa'ould-style escape pods, each with a large hole blasted through it's critical components.
"Great." Christine stated.
"Ring transporter?"
"It wouldn't work. Even if we're in range of the surface, the exterior rings would still conserve our momentum."
"So?"
"We'd be moving at the same speed as the ship when we landed."
"Ouch. Maybe there a ring transporter on surface?"
"Can't hurt to try."
The ring room was just as they left it. Christine rapidly located the ring controls under a small sliding panel on the wall. However, a few button-presses revealed that their suspicions were true- no other platform existed on the planet below.
"We in trouble." Ka'cha'nay stated.
"Maybe not. You remember the reports from nine years ago, when the Ori tried to build their first supergate?"
"Middle of Ori crisis. Vala smashed Tel'tack to stop it fitting together. Her got pulled through a black hole trying to escape, ended up in Ori galaxy."
"She was using a ring transporter to escape, right?"
"Yes."
"And the black hole was caused by a gravity field projected through a stargate, right?"
"Yes."
"'Nay, do you still have your GDO?"
'Nay rolled up his sleeve, revealing the small Asgard device.
"And SGC put ring device in gate-room last year." he stated, catching on. "But how we get ring beam to go through gate?"
"I don't think we'll need to. I think we should just be able to lock onto their platform and beam normally."
"Will work?"
"Let's see if we can dial the SGC first."
Ka'cha'nay quickly punched up the dialing program, and entered the symbols for Earth. To his great surprise, seconds after hitting the seventh symbol, the buttons on the tiny screen turned green, marking a successful connection
"Problem." he stated, entering the IDC code.
"What?"
"Time slow, so Stargate far away. IDC maybe mess up, not open Iris."
"I don't think the Iris will stop the matter stream."
"Not worry about that. Worry about them shoot at us."
"This ship is probably going to explode in the next few minutes, and even if it doesn't, it'll burn up from an uncontrolled decent into the atmosphere."
'Nay said nothing, but moved as quickly as he could to the center of the ring platform, still supporting the unconscious Charles.
Christine carefully hit the first two buttons of the ring sequence, and was about to press the third when an awful realization came over her.
"Someone's going to have to stay behind and run the controls."
"No" 'Nay said. "You get on platform, too."
"But someone's going to have to press the last button, and we can't press it from the-"
"No need press button." 'Nay stated, spinning his captured handgun carefully, as though testing the balance.
She grinned and stepped up onto the ring platform, and 'Nay took careful aim before throwing his weapon at the console. However, his aim was slightly off and it clattered against the wall.
"Not hit." he stated.
Christine handed over her weapon, and he once again took careful aim before hurtling it at the console. This time, however, the grip thudded against the correct button.
The last thing they heard before the beam consumed them was the dreadful whine of the ship's hyperdrive overloading.
Author's note: Well, what did you think? Leave a review and let me know!