Here's TWO, yes TWO new chapters.
Review reply.
Incognito: Yes. Thinking about ACT. Don't worry, it'll all work out. Well, the Ancients always did seem to have a back up plan didn't they, Ancient is close to Latin, so I made the name from a Latin and an English word, figure it out.
Mathax: That's good to hear. It's all in chapter three. Yea, the writers left a couple of holes in the technological department, I think it's because they wanted to be able to do things with it that they couldn't do if they locked the technology to much, I try to lock it down as much as possible but I'm trying to lock it open, so I can use it without limitations, you'll notice it on the repair bots in the fourth fifth of the story.
Glaziola: Well from my experience, writing said is the best way, instead of writing, stated, declared, answered or other endings, after a while you just ignore it because it's always there, if you instead write it only every once in a while it'll give more effect because it's different from the normal
Read chapter 2, it's over 3000 words of description on the Stargates and other things, and if you don't like it don't read it.
To the rest: Thanks for the nice words and positive comments.
Without further ado I give you: Episode 2.
Destiny. Edge of Unnamed Galaxy. Power left for ten days.
Eli had tried to fix the stasis pod but it was to damaged to be repaired so after four days he decided to abandon the broken pod and focus on improving the safety and comfort for the crew when they woke up as much as he could. It had ended with him writing a list of things to do, the list looked like this:
Lock the gate. That way they where safe in case someone decided to try to dial Destiny.
Diagnose the entire ship and start the repair bots. Hopefully some of the damage could be fixed that way.
Explore some of the dangerous parts of the ship that Young had forbidden the crew to explore. He hopped that he could find some supplies that the crew could use when they wake up.
Lastly he'd written: Upload consciousness into Destiny's database. That way he'd be able to survive after Destiny lost her power to primary systems, or at least his mind would.
Eli was standing in the gate room looking at the console that controlled the gate.
"Well then, let's lock this thing down so you guys won't get attacked while you sleep." Eli said to himself while he pressed a couple of buttons that locked the gate so it couldn't receive or send wormholes.
Next he went to the control interface room and started a complete diagnose of the ship, something that they had never done due to their lack of resources to fix anything, but now that they had two repair bots they hopefully could fix some minor systems and structural damage.
"Oh, this is bad" Eli said as he saw several areas turn red or orange indicating how damaged that section was, a clock appeared in the center of the screen counting down from twenty minutes.
"Well I guess I'll just do something else in the meantime, let's start with the program to download me into Destiny's database then." He then pulled up a new window and started to type the program for the interface chair that would download his mind into Destiny and allow his mind to live on even if his body died.
Twenty minutes later he heard a sound from the console telling him the diagnose was done.
"Well then, let's see what we've got here." he said as he brought up the diagnostics window. "Crap"
Over 80% of Destiny was marked as red or orange.
"Well then we better get started then."
He brought up the program for the repair bots and chose:
"Priority one, primary systems, damaged.
Priority two, primary systems, destroyed.
Priority three, anything, any damage."
As he ran the program he could hear how the two repair bots started to move in a nearby room.
"So what's left to do now? Looks like the only thing left to do is to start explore the ship"
He brought up a map and started to map out routes to any area of the ship which still had atmosphere.
"Well might as well start with the closest one and work my way to the front, if I have the time."
He went out of the control room and went to get a Kino sleight, he didn't really hope to find something worth bringing back, but maybe just in case he found something useful he might only have one chance to bring it back with him.
Then he went and got one of the ancient environmental suits and put it on the sleight before going back to the control room.
Once he got back he started to put on the suit which took the better part of four hours.
When he eventually was done and had managed to get dressed, in all the parts of the suit except for the helmet which he left on the sleight, he walked up to the console again and said "Gravity begone" as he turned the gravity off and activated the magnets in the suit.
"Well that should buy me some extra time." he looked at the clock showing remaining time before running out of power. "Oh, come on, four hours? That's the time it took me to get dressed. Well guess I better get started then."
He had in fact gained eight hours meaning he had four extra hours to explore the ship.
Eli started to walk towards the closes unexplored area of the ship, it took him almost an hour to reach that area, but at least now he was close to several damaged parts of the ship, as he opened the first door all he saw was a lot of empty space, it looked like a storage room of some sort but he couldn't tell what was suppose to be stored here so he just moved on after looking for any damage in the room and only finding a power cable which he easily fixed even in the suit. On the door he wrote OK with a chalk, to indicate that it was safe to enter, before he moved on.
Behind the next door he found a large stack of boxes but also a large part of the exterior wall was gone and the shield was all that held the air inside. He opened one of the crates and found small brown bars which looked like chocolate. Not feeling for a snack at the moment he threw a couple of the bars on the sleight but they missed and hit the opposite wall where they where smeared on the wall as the gravity was still deactivated.
"Note to self, gravity is still turned of."
Not feeling like eating anything that was stuck on a wall he took up a few more and put them in a bag he brought with him that contained some spare parts and other small things he thought he'd need. This door he drew a happy face but also wrote STOP so they knew that there was something good in there but that it was dangerous. He then pressed some buttons on his left arm sending a message to destiny which raised that rooms priority on the repair list.
He then moved on to the neighboring door where he found a similar stack of crates which contained a blue bar, he bagged some of these to and marked this in the same way because this room had lost the entire wall and large sections of the floor and roof was missing, he also raised it's priority, but not as much as the previous room due to the extensive damage it had suffered.
Similar things happened behind the next few doors he opened, some had crates and some of them did not, some of the crates contained bars but most of them where empty, the rooms with bars got a priority raise and the rest would have to wait for their turn. He finished this section of the ship, which was located at the front of the right wing, and as he started to go to the next section he heard a repair bot approaching.
"Where's your buddy?" He asked it "Well I guess the ship found something more important to fix than these rooms."
Next he went to a heavily damaged section at the beginning of the needle shape where he hoped to find something more useful then food and broken walls, not that food wasn't important but the expedition had enough to go around for the next months without rationing it.
What he found wasn't what he hoped for and he almost feel out of Destiny as an entire room was gone.
"Well I guess that's why it was off limits."
He then closed the door and wrote SPACE on the door to warn the rest of the crew and put that room at the lowest priority to make sure that whatever resources the repair bots where using wasn't wasted on rebuilding an entire room. After that he went back to their quarters and found some rope which he started to tie to anything nearby before stepping through anymore doors.
He continued to work his way through the ship for the rest of the day and the day after that but found nothing of use to him, he did however raise the priority of several rooms and corridors. One of the corridors had lost part of its roof and floor but he managed to check two doors and they looked like real quarters with beds and other things you'd like to have in a room including tables and chairs, couches and what looked like one man showers.
"Great, this will be something for them when they wake up." Eli had said as he once again remembered that he would not be there with them, as these thoughts hit him he had felt how a tear drop was starting to run down his face, wiping it away he turned around and continued the exploring. As he came back from his second day of exploring he thought about removing the suit but soon decided otherwise, it would take to long to remove it and putting it on again would take even longer. So he slept in the suit for a couple of hours before the sound of one of the repair bots walking past him coming from the direction of the rooms with the bars and walking towards the new found quarters and its corridor.
"Where should we start today then?" He asked the air, bringing up a map of the ship he could see that several corridors and rooms now where repaired, but they where all on the other side of a heavily damage part of the ship, a section he'd been avoiding at all times, he had sent a Kino inside the first day and the only thing remaining was the ceiling.
He had managed to explore over 25% of the damage parts of the area around the Stargate and the rooms that the crew had occupied. He then decided to record an explanation of what he'd discovered and what the symbols on the doors meant.
"Hello guys.
It's me, it's day six of solitude, eight days left before Destiny shuts of life support and then maybe one more day if I manage to concentrate some of the air in one room.
Nevertheless I've done some exploring of the forbidden areas, I've drawn or written something one the doors to indicate what's behind the, on some I've written OK, that means no danger but also nothing useful, on others I've written STOP or SPACE, you should stay away from those rooms, their either damaged or gone entirely depending on what I've written, if it's STOP then someone should use a suit to check before you start to use that room, on the ones with SPACE written on them the rooms are gone entirely and you should not even try to check those out.
Also I've drawn smiley-faces on some doors to indicate a good thing, found some kind of bars that, wait I've got some of them here." he then reached and grabbed the bag and pulled out a brown and a green which he'd found in another room.
"I've been to busy to actually eat something, so here's the first impression of them." he took a big bite of the brown one chewed and swallowed.
"It tastes very different from what we eat here, this one tastes like spicy meat and has the consistency of a very tender piece of meat. Let's see or rather taste what the green one tastes like." He then took an even bigger bite of the green one and expected it to taste like apple or something green, instead he started to sweat and ran away from the recording Kino. After thirty minutes he got back to the Kino.
"Thes nut fer enyone wit thest bubs" He tried to say as his face was red as a tomato and extremely swollen, he shut down the Kino and walked to the canteen and started to drink as much water as he could, a couple of hours later the swelling had died down and he started recording again.
"As I tried to say, the green bar is not for anyone with taste buds, it felt the way I imagine rocket fuel tastes like when it's powering a rocket, a lot of pain and heat. Comparing this and wasabi would be like comparing wasabi and ice cream if wasabi was the ice cream, might work as a way to kill animals without shooting them.
But never mind, another discovery is something you'll like, it's a corridor with what looks like a set of quarters of the luxury model. The corridor's a bit damaged but the repair bots are working on it rights now as well as on mayor systems that are damaged or so I hope, I've only seen one of the bots at any time so I don't know if one of them has gone missing, if it's in some other part of the ship or I'm just seeing one at a time.
I've programmed them to repair what mayor systems are damaged first, destroyed mayor systems secondly and lastly anything else that they can fix. I've also prioritized the rooms where these bars where found including the one where I found the green once, there might be more then just them there, the rooms which are gone are set to lowest priority so they'll most likely still be gone when you wake up in three years.
Oh and I've also locked down the gate so no one can dial in or out without first unlocking it. I know Rush can do that so no worries there and I've started to work on a program to upload myself into Destiny if I survive until the last day." As he said that he started to cry, it took him a minute to bring himself together before he continued
"In a couple of hours I'm taking one of the Kino sleights and will be going to the middle section of the ship, hopefully there will be something that can be of use to you when you wake up. It's a dangerous path, the only thing left of the corridor leading there is the roof, but with any luck I'll be able to get there by belly surfing the sleight across the gap.
There's no air in the corridor and so I'll have to seal the suit properly.
Good luck guys, if I don't make it I'm going to miss all of you."he sobbed.
"This is Eli signing of."
As Eli turned the of the Kino he broke down and started to cry, he cried until there was no more tears, when he'd stopped crying he opened up his download program and started to work on completing it, after a few hours he was done and happy with the result. Saving the program he then made his way to the chair and prepared it so all he'd have to do was get in the chair, then he put it in standby so it wouldn't drain any power. After that he made his way to the door outside the corridor, when he got there he sealed the door behind him and ordered Destiny to empty the room's air. After all the air in the room had been pumped out he overrode the door to the corridor and opened it, he closed the door behind him and locked it so the expedition wouldn't be able to open it unless he gave them the code. As he was standing on the other side with the sleight he said as silent prayer before putting the sleight in front of him and turning of the magnetic bots, he then put his feet against the wall and pushed while putting the sleight under his chest. He was traveling towards the opposite wall very fast and he realized that he'd smash the suit against the wall if he didn't slow down so he tried to use the Kino he brought with him to use as a break, but his momentum was to great and he got closer and closer every second.
Just as he was nearing the wall a power cable exploded inside the wall sending a debris field across his path and a large chunk of the wall right on a collision course, at the last moment he pushed of the sleight and as the large wall chunk crashed into the sleight he turned on the magnetic boots and managed to land on a small ledge two meters bellow the door but just where the wall had exploded, he looked inside the crack and saw another room through the crack, he managed to squeeze through the crack but as he entered the other room he saw his air supply starting to diminish rapidly it went down from five hours and fifteen minutes to thirty seconds.
"Oh shit." He ran to the door and struggled tried to open the door but to no avail, he realized that the door wouldn't open without the air in the other room, he ordered Destiny to pump out the air as he watched his air timer continue to fall, five seconds. He heard a beep, opened the door ran inside, closed the door and ordered Destiny to pump the air back in. Just as the clock reached zero he felt air starting to find it's way inside the suit and he took a deep breath. He then opened the bag and took out the recording Kino that he'd been using.
"Hello guys, I'm on the other side but unfortunately the sleight's broken, so I doubt that'll be able to get back, to dangerous to just jump cause if I get stuck in the middle I'll have nothing to push of with. I'll continue to look through this section of the ship and tape it with the Kino and send it back to the other side. Eli out."
He bagged the Kino and looked around himself, he was standing in what looked like a junction, there was three other doors to chose from. He moved towards the left one, but stopped and realized that the suit wasn't going to help him now since there was no air left in it, so he removed the entire suit except the boots, which he needed to walk. He then went back to the door he came through and marked it with SPACE, after that he went to the left door and opened it only to find it a small closet, he went back and tried the right door and here he found another closet which also where empty.
As he went to the last door he hopped that there was something behind it and when he entered the room it was as empty as the previous two, he cursed loud and long, as he turned around he saw that the light over the button next to the door he'd come from was amber and not the red it was supposed to be with space on the other side, taking a chance he walked up to the door and as it opened he saw one of the repair bots running away into a small hatch that he'd missed in his panic, as Eli had lost several kilos over the last days from all the running he barely managed to squeeze through the hatch and emerge on the other side where he was greeted by a huge room which must have left only one very small corridor on either side of the room.
As he crawled out of the hatch and wiped away some of the dust that had gotten on his legs and hands he was amazed by the size, not knowing where to start searching the room he decided to sit down and have one of the brown bars, he didn't feel like trying any other color without knowing where to find water, just in case there was something similar or worse than the green bar. As he sat there eating the bar he thought about him being there, several million light-years from Earth without anyway home, but still he was happy. Life's strange he thought before swallowing the last of the bar, all around him there was crates, crates and more crates.
"This will take a week to look through. Well better get started then."
He went to the closest box and opened it, inside was water, and so was the next and the one after that, so much in fact that the crew could survive on it for more then a year. Putting the lid back on he went to the next crate and found it to be opened and the lid placed besides the container. Eli tensed up as he realized that there was someone else who had opened the crate. Looking around he wished he'd brought a gun or anything to be used as a weapon. Eli span around as he heard something nearby, then it came from the other direction, and the from the first, the all of a sudden one of the repair bots dropped down into the crate and the other one emerged from the shadows.
"Don't do that, this feels like a bad horror story as it is."
He jumped up to the container and saw that it contained a brownish powder inside.
"So this is the place you get your materials from"
Looking around himself he saw that the boxes in the room looked like they where put into a grid with the box containing the powder being the largest, he also noted that the repair bot barely had taken anything out of the box and that there where no other open boxes that he saw.
When he looked at the direction of the water-filled crates he saw that all of the crates where he found water was in the same part of the grid.
He begun to open more boxes in the powder section and found only powder, thinking of a connection he checked more boxes where he found the water and true enough there where only water in them.
"Looks like I won't have to open all of the boxes after all."
Jumping to another pile of boxes 10 meters away he opened one up and found more bars, but these where white, opening another box he found small gold-bronze marbles, when he reached down and touched one his finger got sticky.
"Honey or syrup?"
He licked his finger and felt the sugary taste of syrup in his mouth.
"Oh, this is some treasure hoard right here, let's see what's in the other boxes"
When he landed on the next tower of boxes he saw a datapad, not a Kino remote, on one of the boxes. He jumped down and grabbed it, as it powered up at his touch it showed a square with white lines going across creating a grid.
"The room, it's a map." Eli said as he realized what he'd found.
In each grid there was ancient words, some saying water, others saying material.
"So, if the waters here and then material must be the powder, and here's food, so that means I'm here" he pointed with his finger at a spot in the middle of the room.
"This looks interesting, Robots, wonder what those might be."
He walked up to the crates in that grid and opened the lid, inside was a repair bot, he powered it up and it looked like it was working, he opened the rest of the ten crates and found three more repair bots and four boxes which each contained four small cylinder shaped objects, in the last two he found a grey-silver sand.
"Nanites? Thought those where invented later."
He activated the remaining repair bots and by using the datapad he managed to get them going on the same programing as the previous two, these bots went to the same crate and got some material, but even when four bots grabbed full loads did the amount reduce noticeably.
"Young is going to be happy about this."
He looked at the sixteen cylinders and then scratched his head.
"Where's the on button on you?"
He looked back at the nanites and then at the datapad. He took the datapad and looked through what was on in, most of it was corrupted but there were bits and pieces of files that read: mend… security… eat… drink… clean…
"So if found something to mend the ship with, guess the nanites are the security, the bars and marbles are food and water is drink and so these must be clean."
Looking at the underside Eli found a small button, which he pressed, but instead of starting to clean the place the cylinder projected a spherical shield.
"So protection maybe? Where's clean then?"
He looked at the map again and saw a small word marked, clear. He walked up to the location and found a crate with small half spheres which he activated and put down, the moment it hit the ground it rushed away leaving a trail of clean floor behind.
"Guess the ship could use some cleaning after all these years."
He started up fourteen more and then put the lid back on.
"I'll leave the rest for the crew to find and use."
He walked up to the other crates and put everything back inside and then he headed for the closest door. On the other side he found a corridor, seeing that he came from the aft he walked forward and passed through a lot of doors until he arrived at a room with a console. He stepped up to the console and went to work on bringing up a map of the ship, he noticed his location was just behind the most frontal room and that the door was heavily encrypted, another thing he saw was that some areas that he'd set as priorities had either changed from red to orange or disappeared entirely from the list of damaged or destroyed sections.
"Well at least she's in better shape now then before."
He looked at the door and was tempted to hack it, but he walked away and chose another part of the ship to explore.
Destiny. Unnamed galaxy.
Power left for less then one day. Eli's siting in front of the console at the front of the ship, he pulls out the Kino from the bag and turns it on.
"Hello guys.
It's day eleven, which means that I've got one more day before I'm done.
I've found many things in the forward area of the ship, most notably are four more repair robots, sixteen what I think are shields and two crates of nanites.
Don't be alarmed by the nanites, they're security, at least that's what I think they are. Also I found some cleaning robots, so the ship should be nice and clean when you wake up.
I've found a door that I can't open even with the master code, I'm working on it now so hopefully I'll have it open before I run out of air, it's at the very front of the ship so I wonder what's here, as far away from the Stargate as possible and protected by a code longer and harder to crack then the master code.
I'm just hopping that curiosity won't kill the cat, me being the cat here, I hope that the ship will be in a better shape when you wake up thanks to what I've done here.
This is Eli, signing of for now."
Eli got up, shut of the Kino and went to work on the console trying to crack the code, he sat there for hours until the console beeped warning him of the time left.
Ten minutes.
Eli pulled out the Kino and started it.
"Hello again guys.
I've got ten minutes left of power and then I'm done.
No luck breaking the code, it's more complex then just a part of the Ancient DNA, but it seems similar but longer.
I hope you've got more luck then me.
I've programmed this Kino to find a repair bot and follow it back to the aft section where you're sleeping; it'll then find a suitable place, land and shut of.
Good-bye guys, I miss you all.
This is Eli, signing of for the last time."
Eli sent away the Kino and watched the screen.
Five minutes left.
"Think Eli, think.
Use that big fat head of yours. The codes have similarities to the master code. The master code is based on Ancient DNA. This is longer and more advanced then that, but is it a more advanced Ancient DNA or something they saw as more advanced?"
As he talked to himself the console beeped again.
One minute left.
"Could it be that easy?"
Having come to the realization that humans are the second generation of Ancients he enters the parts of human DNA that we all share.
The console light up and the door opened.
Thirty seconds left.
Eli runs inside the room, looks around, along all four walls are stasis pods.
Twenty seconds left.
Eli looks at the room; the rooms shaped like a trapezoid with the wall the furthest away only having one pod and the rest of the walls having thirty-three pods each. Making it a total of a hundred pods in the room.
Fifteen seconds left.
"Come on." He looks at the pods, all of them full, except for the single pod on the opposite wall.
Five seconds left.
Has at the pod, pressing the buttons to open it.
Zero seconds left
As the pod opens Eli feel the air around him starting to thin out, as power is gone.
Luckily the pods have their own power source. He steps into the pod and as it starts to close Eli passes out, the pod closes and Eli goes into stasis. On a nearby terminal a message appears.
"Connection to second primary power storage repaired, power storage capacity at 60% of designed capacity. Power levels at 34% of capacity"
An avatar of Destiny's AI appears and walks up to Eli's stasis pod.
"Good work Eli, maybe this will work after all." Before she goes she puts her hand on the outside of the pod and as she removes it the form of a hand has been melted in the frost on the inside of the pod.
THE END
Hope you liked this.
It's the entire second episode.
So in the next one we'll see Sheppard, O'Neill, Jackson, McKay, Teal'c and the rest of the crew back at Earth on Atlantis.
Please review or send me a PM and tell me what you think.
Re-wrote small parts of the story, this is the best episode yet so no big changes, polished large parts of the story and clean it up in general.