Nine

'It's Our Destiny'

John Sheppard tries to access the controls of the ship on the bridge through the interface chair but they are somehow all wrong.

'Have you got access yet?' Col Telford asks, impatient to get the ship under his command.

'Well, it's all a bit screwy... not wired up right, as though she's been messed with...' John tries again but is having a hard time getting anything coherent from the systems. 'Like she's rewritten all her commands and...' He can feel a surge of great resistance from within the ship, as though it is deliberately trying to block his mind.

'Is this something you have done?' David asks Lilion directly.

'No, we can't access her the way you can... but Destiny has been travelling for a long time, maybe she's just evolved.'

'Evolved?' David is sceptical at her answer. 'How about Todd's holographic computer programme, could that have effected the systems?'

'I can hear you know!' Todd re-materialises in the bridge room and glares at David. 'And no, I haven't affected any of the controls John is currently trying to access. My programme's core function is to preserve my identity, any other functionality is very limited. This ship is far too smart to allow me full access. Although it did occur to me that it is almost human in its ability to...'

'How about the previous crew, did they have the Ancient gene?' Ronon cuts through Todd's long-winded explanation. 'Could they have booby-trapped it so it didn't fall into enemy hands?' Ronon turns to Teyla for support for his idea but she seems pre-occupied with her own thoughts.

'I think we should try and search the ship for any stasis pods, just in case we can't get control and have to abandon her... can you find any signs of life John?' Something on board the ship is making Teyla very uneasy. Not Wraith, but something similar, her senses are telling her there is a very real threat. 'I am not convinced that we are alone.'

'That makes sense, can you find any sections of the ship that may hold stasis pods?' David acknowledges Teyla's suggestion.

'I'm having a hard time trying to get into the systems, let alone find any kind of map for you to follow... it's as though there has been someone else in here...argghh! ' John slumps forward, out of the chair as he passes out from the strain of trying to gain control of Destiny.

'John!' Teyla and Lilion rush to catch him as he falls. John comes back round again and shakes his head, trying to clear it. 'It's not just me in there, someone is trying to stop me, someone who has managed to override the Ancient gene and is very possessive about the ship! Ouch, my head, worse than brain freeze.'

'Brain freeze? What kind of weapon is this?' Lilion asks, intrigued.

'No, no it's when you eat ice-cream...never mind...another time. OK, help me up big guy and I'll have another go.' Ronon helps John to his feet.

'I think I know what the problem is,' David has a sinking feeling at the thought just occurring to him, 'the SG crew previously on board Destiny had a scientist called Dr. Nicholas Rush, he tried to access the ship through the chair once, without success we all thought but maybe... if some part of him is in the system, he would want the ship for himself.'

'OK, so I'm looking for a Dr. Rush. Let's see if I can find him, this could take some time.' John raises his eyebrows and tries the chair again.

Teyla is impatient to get to the bottom of what is irking her. 'Look, I am sensing something on board, not a Wraith but something like it. Why don't Ronon and I start a search of the ship. If John finds anything useful, you can let us know over the communication system.'

John nods at Teyla and says to David 'You know, Sir, if her spidey-sense is tingling, you should take notice.'

David nods at Teyla's suggestion. 'Lilion, you stay with me and John for now.'

'I can accompany you if you want, Teyla, I can open doors if that is useful.' Todd moves towards a locked door and waves his hand in a theatrical way as the door opens.

'How do we know you won't just lock us in somewhere?' Ronon asks, levelling his blast gun at the hologram.

'Don't shoot!.. I've tried that, it didn't work out so well.' Lilion warns Ronon.

Teyla lays a hand on Ronon's arm. 'You are forgetting, if Todd hadn't sacrificed his life, we would all have been dead long ago. Perhaps this time round, we should all try a bit more trust. If I tell you the direction that I am sensing something, can you open the doors in that direction?' Teyla asks Todd.

'Certainly. Lead the way!' Todd bows and allows Teyla to go first through the door he opened.

On Atlantis

Torr switches his gaze from Samantha back to Rodney then back to Samantha again. These Ancients were taking along time to process his suggestion. The silence stretching out between them all is suddenly punctuated by a siren, the city's alarms triggered by the unstable planet below. The sound jolts Samantha back to the reality of the situation, Torr is right, Earth is no longer their home, if Stargate Command had survived the asteroid hit two thousand years ago and managed to organise an evacuation of the planet it would not be to anywhere in this solar system and they have no clue as where to start looking, at least New Lantea is a familiar and safe place for the city.

'Let's do this.' She replies grimly. 'Freya set a destination to New Lantea, Pegasus Galaxy, jump to FTL as soon as the city is ready.. and Rodney, see if you can turn that damn siren off!'

The city of Atlantis sits in orbit for a minute or two more and then the FTL engines fire up and she jumps away just as the Earth cataclysmically explodes, hurling molten debris into the moon and knocking it out of orbit onto a path of destruction for the whole solar system.

On board Destiny

Teyla's instincts are telling her that they are very close to whatever it is that's worrying her. She raises her hand and both Ronon and Todd stop behind her. She pulls out her blast gun and whispers to them 'Whatever it is I am sensing, it is very near.'

They have been walking for about an hour through the corridors of Destiny and have arrived in a desolate, fire burnt stretch. Scorch marks run along the twisted bulkheads of the corridor and the floor is littered with blast rubble. Ahead of them the corridor ends in a sealed blast door that has taken heavy fire.

'It's behind that door.' Whispers Teyla, moving cautiously forward.

'I am afraid I cannot open that door, the ship won't allow it.' Todd replies loudly.

'Ssshh!' Ronon goes to move Todd out of the way of the door but his hands fall through the hologram and he stumbles forward, falling onto the blast door with a loud resounding thud that echoes through the corridor.

Todd stands with his hands on his hips and shakes his head at him. 'And you want me to be quiet, so much for the element of surprise!'

'I keep forgetting that you are just a hologram...' But Teyla interrupts them. 'Listen! Do you hear that?' From behind the blast door can be heard a low roaring sound, like waves on a beach.'What is that?'

'Only one way to find out!' Ronon regains his composure and raises his gun level to where the control panel should be for the door. ' When I fire, get ready to run.' Teyla hides on the other side of door, gun drawn ready as Ronon starts a countdown from three.

'Wait! I can cause a distraction.' Todd runs back down the corridor and stands waiting for whatever is behind the door.

In the Bridge Room on Destiny

Slowly John is beginning to piece together a coherent image of the ship as he tries to gain control of her while sitting in the interface chair. As he works through the systems, Destiny recognises the Ancient gene and starts to work with him. He finds Dr. Nicholas Rush's ego sitting in a computer simulated version of the view deck.

'Hi, I'm guessing you are Dr. Rush. My name's..'

'I know who you are, John Sheppard. What do you want with my ship, now...I'm guessing that you are trying to take over my Destiny?'

'Well, technically it's our Destiny, Stargate Command's ship...'

'Don't try and be smart with me. I've seen how she responds to you. You have something she understands, I have been here a very long time, I know how she ticks.'

'Yes, yes you have. In fact for over two thousand years. She's made it home to earth and...'

'I know, that's why I'm here, watching, ringside seat.' Dr, Rush interrupts him, indicating to the windows.

'Watching what?' John glances up at the view-deck windows to see a molten, boiling planet beginning to break apart.'

'The end of the world.'

'The end of..?'

'Yes, that is Earth.' Dr. Rush reads his thoughts. 'Well, a complicated computer rendering of it, but yes. The end of the world is nigh.' he adds with a hollow laugh.

John Sheppard rips his subconscious away from the controls of the ship and leaps from the interface chair making both David and Lilion jump. 'Earth!' He yells and starts running to Stargate room. 'I've just seen the Earth explode, we have to warn Atlantis!'

Behind the Blast Door

Ronon fires a single well-aimed shot at the control panel junction and the heavy blast door starts to slide open. From inside the sound of roaring becomes louder. Both Ronon and Teyla hold their positions each side of the door while Todd stands and stares into the room beyond, almost unable to comprehend what he is seeing.

What he, Torr and Lilion thought were incorporeal mutations of space rats were clearly anything but. Coalescing into huge, shifting forms, these fearsome creatures are swarming over row upon row of stasis pods, rasping their long teeth over the cases, making the glass shriek and roar. Inside the pods it is clear that the bodies are long since dead and desiccated into little more than dust and ashes. Here and there, the stasis pods are cracked and open and the contents presumable eaten by these vampirical creatures. For a split second they carry on with their repetitive behaviour and then, as one, they turn, notice the open door and Todd standing in the corridor outside.

With a shriek the creatures pour towards the open door as Todd yells at Ronon and Teyla to set their blast guns to burn whatever emerges through the door. As the first creature exits the door Ronon and Teyla start firing and do not stop till every single one of the strange entities is piled up in a smoking cloud of burning ash.

'What are they?' Teyla drops to her knees, exhausted from the effort and coughing with the smoke.

'What did Lilion call them? Fritters? They certainly are now.' Ronon sits down next to her, his throat dry from the smoke and heat and kicks at the ashes.' A small cloud rises up and then sinks again.

'What we saw must have been small emanations of the larger form of these creatures, perhaps the young. They gave no sign that they were …' Todd shudders and walks into the stasis pod chamber.

'I am not sensing any more. We must have killed them all.' Teyla gets to her feet and follows Todd. 'It looks as though no one survived, trapped in here with those... things.'

The three of them check every stasis pod in the room but there are no survivors.

'There may be other stasis chambers, this is a big ship.' Ronon indicates back to the corridor. ' We ought to continue our search. There's nothing more we can do here.'

Teyla nods in agreement and they head on back up the corridor and find another route back towards the ship's bridge. 'We will have to have a proper burial for those poor souls, I will ask Colonel Telford about organising it later.'

'And a clear out of the rest of these.' Ronon strides ahead, blasting away at any small fritter that should happen to drift into the corridor.

In the Gate Room

John dials in the chevron code for Atlantis but the gate does not connect. He retries but gets nothing. 'Damn!' He thumps the console in annoyance.

'What exactly did you see?' asks Lilion and John explains again his virtual meeting with the ego of Dr. Rush and the view of Earth exploding. 'But you didn't see Atlantis?'

'It must have been destroyed in the blast.' John shakes his head, appalled at the thought. That's why we can't dial the gate.'

'Not necessarily.' Lilion briskly moves to the nearest console table. 'You also can't dial the gate when travelling FTL. I calibrated some long range sensors before we left for Atlantis so Todd could keep an eye on us...' Lilion spends a few minutes calling up a 3D computer model of the solar system. 'So, this is us here... and this is Earth. Now if I play back the recording from the last twenty four hours...there! That's Atlantis above the planet.'

They watch as the planet starts to explode and, just before the final explosion, Atlantis disappears.

'There!' David points to where Atlantis was. 'It just disappeared.'

'Jumped to FTL speed. My guess is they are headed for New Lantea. We should follow them' Lilion adds.

'Wait a minute... that's a big presumption on your behalf why New Lantea?' David asks immediately suspicious of her motives to get them to return to the Pegasus galaxy.

'This system will become more and more unstable as the debris field from Earth spreads out and hits other planets, it has already sent the moon off into a new orbit. The solar system is no longer habitable, where else is there to go that you all know so well?'Lilion finishes her reasoning triumphantly, while in the back of her mind is the thought that Destiny will soon be in the Pegasus galaxy.

'Well, you can't reason with the logic.' John chimes in.

'We have no idea what awaits us in the Pegasus galaxy. I think we should at least wait till we can contact Atlantis.' David replies.

'Perhaps I can put your mind to rest, Colonel Telford. New Lantea is indeed, uninhabited and still pretty much as you left it. My ship had lain undiscovered there for two thousand years. You will be safe there.' Todd re-materialises back in the gate room.

'Well we can't go back to New Lantea because of the Stargates... where are Teyla and Ronon?' David looks around for the other two.

'Ah, they are heading for the bridge. We found a stasis room but alas, all were long dead. It turns out those fritters are not quite as harmless as we thought!'

Back in the Bridge Room on Destiny

'How many weeks will it take for them to arrive back at New Lantea?' Colonel Telford is pacing up and down the bridge room trying to formulate a plan from the destruction of Earth and the sudden disappearance of Atlantis. '...and if we leave now, we will arrive pretty much at the same time as them. But we can't get too close to New Lantea, assuming that is their final destination, because of the gates.'

'I can call up a map of the galaxy for you, there are many planets nearby that are no longer inhabited.' Lilion tries to be helpful.

'We would want somewhere isolated and off the map...'

'Well, there is always the Outlaw zone. It's a long way from New Lantea, a long way from anywhere. I would doubt there are any stargates there.' Lilion calls up a virtual map of the Pegasus galaxy on one of the consoles. 'That's the Outlaw Zone, there. It's been uninhabited for hundreds of years. Nothing happens out there at all. It's about as off the map as you can get.'

'Sounds like a plan. We can contact Atlantis as soon as we arrive.' John examines the map of the Outlaw Zone. 'Teyla, Ronon, you happy with this?'

'It will be good to return to Pegasus, there seems to be nothing for us here now and Torren is on Atlantis, I would prefer to be near him.' Teyla smiles at Lilion, knowing she is keen to return to her home.

'Ronon?'

'Time to go home.'

'Do I get a say in this?' Todd asks. David laughs. 'I guess you are going wherever the ship goes, so no, not really. Plot a course for the Outlaw Zone, Pegasus Galaxy, John can you get Destiny to jump to FTL?'

John sits in the interface chair. 'Yes, Sir.'

Destiny's engines fire up and the ship jumps to FTL, skimming through the universe once more to Return to the Pegasus Galaxy. Behind them, the moon spins on a collision course with Mars as the molten remnants of Earth swirl into new formations across the solar system.