STARGATE UNIVERSE: Air (24 page)

“Sorry…”

Young entered the gate room, and resisted the urge to glance over his shoulder at Master Sergeant Greer. The Marine was only doing his job, making sure that Young stayed standing, but the colonel was already starting to quietly resent having to lean on the young man for support. His legs felt like they were wrapped in needles, and every step he took, a little shock of agony went up his spine and rattled around his skull.

T.J. had offered him something for the pain, but he had told her to keep it. Medical supplies were too important to dole out without good reason; and Everett Young’s reason wasn’t anywhere close to good. But he couldn’t stay in that cabin any more. People needed to see he was still alive, see that a senior officer was there to lead them. The alternative was to load even more pressure on to Scott, and he had enough; that or let Rush continue to pretend he was running this ship.

Sergeant Riley had contacted him over the radio, and the technician’s excited tone was the first positive thing Young had heard since they’d fled here from Icarus. The colonel found him at one of the copper-sheathed consoles at the back of the chamber.

“I think I got it,” he told him, as Young and Greer approached. “It wasn’t even that hard to find. It’s right here in the dialing program.” Riley tapped the screen, and on it Young saw something that looked a lot like the activation subroutines in use at Stargate Command, only here the familiar strings of angular constellation symbols were replaced with combinations of dots, circles and wavy lines.

He gave the non-com a level look. “You’re sure?”

Riley nodded. “Yes sir. It’s an eight symbol gate address input.”

“You can dial this thing to Earth?” said Greer.

The other man nodded. “There’s no point of origin indicated, though, but that might vary based on the location of the ship. And unlike the Giza-type Stargates, there’s only thirty-six symbols, not thirty-nine.”

“Thirty-six,” echoed Young, “Same as the Pegasus Stargates.”

“That’s right.” Riley nodded again. “I’m assuming that the ninth symbol represents some x-factor distance equation.”

Young suspected that the sergeant would start giving him chapter and verse on the whole structure of the new kind of gate they’d discovered on the ship, but he didn’t have time to listen to it. “I don’t care about the details,” he said. “Start dialing.”

Riley reached for the control pad, and then paused. “Don’t we want to bring Dr. Rush in on this?”

Young gave him a look. “You said this wasn’t that hard to find?”

“No sir.”

The colonel nodded. “Then he probably already knows and didn’t tell us.” He pointed at the console. “Get to it, Sergeant.”

Eli worked through a dozen more levels of the ship’s — no, scratch that, the
Destiny
’s — subsystems, and it seemed like the deeper he went, the more he found. The size of the database on board the vessel defied measurement, so it seemed; and the problem was, with a library that big, locating a single book, such as the one labeled
How Not To Suffocate And Die
, was like finding your actual needle in a haystack. As much as he searched, however, he couldn’t stop his thoughts from wandering back to the events that had brought them all here.

And Rush’s comment continued to nag at him.
There’s more than one video
. The question was,
How many more?

“Who is this Lucian Alliance, anyway?” The question slipped out before he was aware of thinking it.

Rush looked up. “Where did that come from?”

“I want to know who to blame for this,” Eli told him.

“If it
was
them…” muttered Brody.

“All right,” said Rush. “I suppose your security clearance is a moot point now we’re all out here. They’re a largely-human coalition from various Milky Way planets, that formed in the power vacuum left when the Goa’uld were defeated.”

“The Goa’uld…” Eli repeated. The name felt odd as he said it.

“An intelligent parasitic ophidian life form,” offered Brody. “They used human hosts, and ran slave empires under the guises of mythological deities.”

“Right. Of course.” Eli decided to accept that at face value and move on.

“The Lucian Alliance are criminals, mostly,” continued Rush. “A street gang with starships.”

Eli considered that. “How did they find out about Icarus? Wasn’t it like, double secret?”

“Yes.” Rush frowned. “I suspect there was a leak somewhere. Someone working on the inside, feeding them information.”

“On the base?” Eli felt a chill at that; the idea of someone willingly opening the door to the death and destruction he’d seen made him feel sick.

“Or Earth,” said Rush, looking away. “The legend surrounding the ninth chevron has been floating around our galaxy for a very long time, in different forms.”

Eli’s hand closed around the remote control pad for the kino he’d left bobbing in the air nearby, and he activated it, careful not to let Rush see him do it. He had a sudden feeling that what the man said next would be worth recording.

Rush pointed at the star map screen. “We found it means a variety of things to different cultures. Historical remnants appear on worlds in our home galaxy and out in Pegasus. Some believed that the Ancients received a subspace signal so old that it must have originated from the first intelligence to arise after the Big Bang, and that the ninth chevron was the only way to reach them. Some said it was a key to the universe itself, and once unlocked, you would gain untold power.” He paused, musing on his own words, apparently unaware of the kino drifting nearby. “If the Lucian Alliance learned we had discovered the address and a means to dial it, they would want that information.”

“Enough to kill for it,” Park said, grim-faced.

Eli couldn’t help but glance around at the dull iron walls, the dim lighting and the bleak, metallic décor. “This ship is a source of untold power?”

A smile flickered over Rush’s face. “No, not literally. It has more to do with what this ship is doing, it’s mission of exploration and the information that the
Destiny
is capable of gathering.”

He was starting to get the measure of it now. “If you know how to use it.”

Rush nodded. “Yes. Perhaps the grand sum of that knowledge could lead to a powerful understanding of the universe.”

Eli saw that look in the man’s eye again, that glint of deep
need
. “That’s what you’re after, isn’t it? That’s why you risked everything to get here.” His lips thinned. “You think this ship is going to make you all-powerful or something crazy like that.” He had a sudden mental image of Rush plugging himself into some vast Ancient machine and transforming himself with a blast of cosmic energy, like something out of an old Jack Kirby comic.

Rush gave him a patronizing look. “Eli, if there was a way to safely send all these people home and return with a properly skilled team to pursue this mission as intended, why wouldn’t I want to do that?”

Admittedly, he didn’t have an answer for that. “I don’t know.”

“Now,” he said turning to shoot a glare at the kino. “Shut that thing off.”

Eli gave a sheepish grin. “You saw that, huh?”

Rush was going to say more, but a tinny chime from his console drew the scientist’s attention. A new star map appeared on the display, and he quickly brought it up on the large holographic pane. Eli crowded in to get a better look, and Brody and Park followed.

“Planets,” said Park. The imager projected a series of worlds on the monitor, one after another, lines of data scrolling quickly past each one before the display shifted.

“What is it doing?” said Brody.

Rush tapped his chin. “I attacked the life support problem every way I can think of. I asked the computer to look for any possible resources on board that might help us. But now it seems to be looking
outside
the ship.”

Suddenly, the search program froze and an indicator panel appeared over the display. Rush’s manner immediately became one of alarm. “No…” he muttered.

Eli looked back at the hologram; he was reminded of the kind of pop-ups he saw on his PC whenever the machine suffered a blue-screen-of-death crash error. Rush was already on his way out of the room, and Eli called after him. “What’s wrong?”

“Someone’s dialing the gate,” he replied.

Young used the gate room console to support his weight, watching Riley as the sergeant’s hands danced over the touch screen and interface wheel. He looked up to see Lieutenant Scott enter the chamber as the Stargate began to spin. Unlike other gates he’d seen, the chevrons on this one all lit up immediately, and instead of rotating an inner ring of symbols, the entire structure of the device spun, passing through a slot in the deck and a glowing orb at the twelve o’clock position. Each time a dot-dash symbol passed under the orb, the glyph would illuminate, sending the gate spinning back the opposite way until another fragment of the address locked in.

“Sir?” said Scott, coming closer. “Are we—?”

“Going home?” finished the colonel. “Let’s hope so.”

Some of the other evacuees had been drawn by the noise of the rumbling Stargate, and among them Young saw Rush arrive with Eli, Brody and Park in tow.

Rush looked surprised to see him “Colonel Young? You’re up.”

He returned a neutral nod. “Nice to see you too, Rush. I did order you to report to me.”

The scientist ignored the comment, nodding toward the gate. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to dial Earth.”

Rush shook his head, his jaw stiffening. “This is a mistake—” he began.

Young spoke over him. He wasn’t in the mood to be second-guessed by the man. “Riley thinks he found the address for home.”

Rush’s dismissive look at the sergeant made it clear what the scientist thought of that. “His understanding of Ancient is marginal at best, Colonel.”

Riley shot him a look. “I know enough to recognize a reference to Earth.”

“He said it wasn’t that hard to find.” Young said it without weight, but the unspoken half of the sentence hung in the air.
So why didn’t you mention it, Rush?

“No, no…” He was saying, shaking his head. “This is a complete waste of power we may need. You need to stop doing this, right now.”

“We have the address back, all we need is the right point of origin,” said Scott, weighing in.

Young nodded “And we’ve got thirty-six tries to find it.”

Rush’s voice turned icy. “We have barely enough power to operate the main systems! This ship simply doesn’t have the capability to dial Earth!”

 “Really?” The colonel eyed the scientist. “See, that’s news to me.”

“He didn’t tell me that either,” offered Eli. Brody and Park exchanged nervous glances but said nothing.

Rush shot Eli an irritated glance. “That’s because I’ve only just learned so myself.” He turned to Wallace, looking for support. “Eli, you know what I’ve been doing—”

“Even if it doesn’t work,” Young went on, “the people aboard this ship need to see us try.”

The scientist was incredulous. “So you’re going to drain what little power we have left for the sake of a morale boost? That is absurd!”

He was going to say more, but the deck beneath their feet lurched and Young felt a brief sense of arrested motion wash over him. He heard a surge in rhythm of the ever-present engine noise, and suddenly the Stargate halted its spin and went dark. Riley muttered a curse and tapped fruitlessly on his console.

“What was that?” said Scott. “Felt like before, like something shifted…”

Young spoke into his radio. “Anybody got a visual outside?”

After a moment, Tamara Johansen’s voice answered him. “
Colonel, I’m here with Chloe on the observation deck. It looks like we’ve dropped out of faster-than-light travel
.”

“Copy that,” he said with a nod. “Stand by. Report if anything changes.”

“It won’t,” said Rush, as he hurried to the console where Riley stood. “At least, not for the moment.”

“Because we were draining power?” said the sergeant.

Rush pressed the other man out of the way with a brusque wave of his hand. “No. If I’m right, the gate should begin to dial any moment.”

As if it had been waiting to hear those words, the white chevrons flashed on once again, and the Stargate started to spin.

“How did you know that would happen?” said Scott.

“In the control room, we saw a scan report,” Rush told him. “The ship detected a planet with a Stargate on it within range, one that may have what need.”

“What?” Young’s brow furrowed. One second Rush was telling them they were deep in unknown territory, the next he was talking about the gate network. “How the hell are there even Stargates out here? Aren’t we light-years from anywhere?”

“The Ancients launched a number of unmanned ships in advance of this one,” said the scientist, working the console. “They were programmed to gather data and resources to manufacture Stargates and then deposit them on habitable worlds. Any relevant information is relayed back here and helps plot the course of the
Destiny
.”

“That’s the name of this vessel,” Eli offered. “
Destiny
. Little showy, if you ask me.”

Now the man was talking about
other
Ancient ships apart from this one? Young felt like he was running to keep up. “So you’re telling me this ship knows that we’re in trouble?” On the console, a seven-symbol address had locked in.

Rush nodded. “Yes, exactly, because I
told
it we were. We’re essentially flying on autopilot. The ship may have stopped when it was within range of a Stargate regardless of our need, but I have good reason to believe it is actively helping us to survive—”

The rest of his words were lost in the churning roar of the Stargate as it opened a wormhole through space-time, the strange shimmering energy wave swelling out before collapsing back into a rippling vertical pool of silver light.

Young stared into the event horizon, musing. “So what we need is on the other side of that wormhole?”

“At an educated guess, yes,” raid Rush.