SG Nova Roma - Chapter 2.7

7 – Entering Destiny One

(Spera – Bridge – Day 37, 1603)

Spera had entered Galaxy Destiny One early in the morning. Vale and Teldy had commanded the first two shifts. Three minutes ago, Jennifer Hailey had relieved Teldy. She was sitting in the command chair, watching the telemetry from the sensors. ~Only one Gate in range, but its better then nothing.~ When they had begun the crossing, Spera had been fully stocked. And even now, they had several weeks’ worth of supplies left. But it couldn’t hurt to get a lay of the land. If they were in an area where resources were scare, they would have to come up with plans to deal with it.

“Alex, drop us out of FTL.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Patterson said. “Dropping us out now.”

The ship dropped out of FTL and the countdown clock popped into existence on several screens. ~Five hours, we’ll have to be quick.~ Hailey activated her radio and contacted Colson. NR-2 was on-duty for this shift. And because Hailey was running backend from the bridge, Alison Porter would go with them instead. Colson said that he would gather the team in the Gate Room, after which he cut the channel.

Trying to distract herself, Hailey got up made her way to the forward section of the bridge. They had reconfigured the bridge during the crossing. The consoles were designed so that they could swap functions without needing any physical modifications. The two L-shaped consoles at the front of the bridge were Science One and Two now. As for the three consoles directly in front of the Command Chair, those now were now the two Flight Control stations and Tactical-slash-Communications. Tactical was in the middle, with the Flight Controls flanking it on both sides.

Hailey sat down behind Science Two and waited for the MALP telemetry to appear. It hadn’t been easy, but they had managed to tap their probes into the consoles. Originally, they had only had one MALP. But in the weeks since, they had managed to put together two more. She leaned back and hoped that things were going well in the Gate Room.

(Spera – Gate Room – Day 37, 1610)

Alec Colson made sure that he had all his gear. When the roster of NR-2 had been drawn up, there had been an issue. Jennifer Hailey was a Major in the US Air Force, but the rest of the team was civilian. So setting up a chain-of-command was a problem. But NR-2 needed a second-in-command, in case Hailey wasn’t available. After some discussion, Alec had gotten the job. Which meant that now, he was in charge of the team.

“Nervous?” Porter asked.

“Yes,” Colson began. “It’s odd. I used to run a multi-million dollar company and I never fretted. But leading a team of four people and I’m scared to death.”

“Did leading that company include travelling through a wormhole and visiting a planet billions of lightyears away from home?”

“Good point.” Colson said with a smile.

Xander Henderson gestured to Colson. While Colson and Porter had been talking, Henderson had dialed the Gate and send MALP One through the wormhole. Now the probe’s feed was coming back to Spera. Colson looked at the screen. The planet was a desert. ~Just like the first planet Destiny’s crew visited.~ But that planet had white sands, while this planet appeared to have red sand. There were also small patches of grass scattered across the image. From what they could see, the planet orbited a single star.

“Looks like the sun is setting,” Porter said.

“Okay, here we go,” Colson began as he walked towards the Gate. “Weapons at the ready.” ~I can’t believe I just said that.~ He drew his sidearm and stepped through the Gate.

(F1Z-008 – Desert – Day 37, 1611)

Porter had been right. The sun was indeed setting. Despite this, it was still forty degrees centigrade. ~We have to be out of here before the sun rises again, or we’ll be cooked alive.~ The planet was called F1Z-008 by the computer. All the planets in the previous galaxy had started with a E and the computer had apparently decided to start the names in this galaxy with a F. He scanned the area around the Gate, but there was nothing there. As he did so, the rest of the team came through the Gate and down the ramp.

“Is it me, or is it really hot here?” Aranov said.

“Nope,” Bennett began. “It’s really hot here. And its night now, so daytime would be really bad news from a biological point of view.”

“Yeah,” Colson said. “We need to get moving.” ~But which way?~ He decided to keep it simple and pointed straight ahead. “For now, let’s head straight. We’ll take it one hill at a time.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Aranov said.

The team walked away from the Gate. Alec thought that – despite the heat – was actually a nice world. The desert continued as far as the eye could see. But something about it seemed off. ~What am I missing?~ He reached the top of the next hill and whistled. Standing in the middle of the sands were the remains of a small town. The hill he was standing on now was part of a ridge, which had hidden the ruins from the MALP’s camera. The rest of the team joined Colson on the hill.

“Whoa,” Aranov began. “Where did that come from?”

“Well, you’re the archaeologist,” Colson said.

“Good point,” Aranov said. “Let’s go take a closer look.”

The team began heading towards the ruins.

(F1Z-008 – Desert, Town Ruins – Day 37, 1735)

The town did not have much technology. There was no electricity, no computers and no indoor plumbing. But they had found several printed books. They were not in the best condition, but they were still readable. The real problem, however, would be translating them. The books were not in any known alien language.

~And I doubt that these people will have heard of English or Russian.~ Aranov thought.

He was standing in the remains of a house. The place had simple, wooden furniture. Which, he wrote in his notebook, meant that the planet either had forests somewhere. Or the locals knew how to use the Gate and imported wood from off-world. Another thing the furniture made clear was that the locals were humanoid. The shapes of the items didn’t make sense for none-humanoid people. Besides the books, he had also taken several candles and some of the table ware. The latter was made from metal and was dusty and rusty.

He made his way out of the house and looked around the town. There were several houses, a saloon and a stable. In the middle of the town was a large well. The stable had the remains of some kind of beast of burden. Two of them had been fitted with a saddle. Nikita took out his camera and walked into the saloon. He had already taken plenty of photos, but he wanted another look at the place. ~I wonder if there are more towns.~ He made his way to the bar and began looking for any clues.

“So, how do you like the place?” Porter said as she walked it.

“Well, we have a humanoid race. And from the looks of the place, they were at about the same level of technology as the Wild West,” He paused as he spotted a piece of paper in one of the cabinets and grabbed it. “And from the looks of it…” He studied the piece of paper. “…this is not the only town they have.”

He handed the piece of paper to Porter. It was a map of the region. The Stargate was marked on it, as was the town they were in now. But the map showed two more towns. There was, however, a problem. The two towns were many clicks away and it would take two hours to get there on foot. Aranov activated his radio.

“Aranov to Colson.”

=/\=Colson here. What’s up, Nikita?=/\=

“I’ve found a map with two more towns on it, but they are too far to hoof it there. We’ll need one of the Jumpers if you want to get a closer look at them.” And he figured it couldn’t hurt to see what the Jumper’s sensors made out of this place.

=/\=Sounds good to me.=/\= Colson said. =/\=I’ll make the call.=/\=

The radio went silent. Nikita looked around the saloon. There was an upper floor with several rooms, which he presumed had been available for rent. While Colson made the call, he decided to take a closer look upstairs.

(Spera – Gate Room – Day 37, 1740)

Vale watched as Jumper One made its way through the Stargate. The wormhole closed two seconds later. He had overheard the conversation between Colson and Hailey, but had not spoken up. Hailey was running this shift, so he wanted her to make the call. And she had decided to send the Jumper. ~Knowing more about the locals can’t hurt.~ And they still had no idea who had build the berserker drones and the command ships. ~Maybe the locals have more information on them.~ He left the Gate Room and headed for his quarters.

“You have really settled in.” A female voice said.

He turned to see Octavia the Elder – well, the image of Octavia the Elder – smiling at him. The artificial intelligence that ran Spera had not shown itself since they had arrived. But now it was projecting an image of his mother and walking next to him. ~This is no coincidence. We enter a new galaxy and she shows up? No, there is something going on.~

“Indeed we have,” He began. “It’s a bit cramped. But it’s home.”

“Yeah, the Ancients based me on the Seed Ships that travel ahead of Destiny. And as Alec suspects, they kind of build me on the cheap,” She paused. “Well, except the Relay Factor on the lower decks. In their arrogance, they did indeed presume that they would never need me as an Alpha Site.”

Vale nodded. Spera had just confirmed their theories about herself. ~Some people would label me crazy for talking about a ship this way.~ Not that he cared. Maybe it made him a hopeless romantic, but he preferred to think of Spera as a lady. And a living, breathing thing with a personality of her own. Of course, the AI made it easier to do so.

“Not that I mind a good chit-chat every now and then, but…”

“…Why am I here?” Octavia-Spera smiled. “I can see why General O’Neill put you in charge. You care about your people and you don’t do nonsense. And you are right, I am not here to chit-chat.” She paused. “We have just entered a new galaxy. It took Destiny just a tick over a year to cross this galaxy. But more importantly, I wanted to tell you that this galaxy is not uninhabited. I can’t tell you how long it will you take you to get there, but there is an area ahead which is densely populated. The problem is that I can’t tell by which species. Because Colonel Young and his crew boarded after the ship passed through the area, there is no detailed information on it. Just long-range scans.”

“So, besides several possible wars…” Jackson and Miller had send their findings to Spera by means of the DSI-Network. Which meant the report was also in the computer’s memory. “…we now have a major mystery to deal with it. And there is also the issue of who or whom built the control ships and the berserker drones. Because my instinct tells me that if we don’t figure out who made those drones, it will come back to bite us in the rear.”

“Sounds like a totally accurate sum of the situation to me.” Octavia-Spera said. “Good luck.”

And with that, she faded away. ~She’ll be back.~ Vale entered his quarters. The walls had been upgraded with sheets of wood, which had been painted white. It didn’t make the room any bigger, but it felt larger. He sat down on his bed and reached underneath it. First, he pulled out a wooden folding table. It wasn’t very big, but it was big enough to hold the second item he pulled out. Said object was a laptop that Vale used to write his reports. He put the laptop on the table and got to work.

(Spera – Bridge – Day 37, 2104)

The clock hit zero and Spera jumped back into FTL. While their first stop in this galaxy had not yielded any resources, NR-2 had brought back plenty of items from the planet and a load of questions. Aranov was hard at work turning the space between the Bridge and the Airlock into a large Science Lab, where they would try to find some answers.

And it was not the only room being set up at the moment. The rest of the rooms in the Wraith expansion had finished growing and were now being decorated for their functions. ~Like the rest of this ship, they won’t be luxurious, but they will work.~ As she sat in the command chair, Hailey got the feeling that Spera was more ready for whatever lay ahead then her crew. So she leaned back and waited for Spera to tell her what that was.