new fic (Postcards from the Edge) SG Universe/SG Atlantis
Title: Postcards from the Edge
Author: karrenia
Fandoms: Stargate Universe/Stargate Atlantis
Prompt: #37 sound
Disclaimer: Stargate Universe and Stargate Atlantis belong to their respective creators and producers, they are not mine nor are the characters that appear here or are mentioned. They are only ‘borrowed’ for the purposes of the story. The story was written for the 2013 Round Sci Fi Mini Big Bang.
Notes: This could be considered more of a fusion or an AU considering the timelines of both shows.
“Postcards from the Edge”” by karrenia
“You pull me through when I felt that I could no longer stand and face the day and you light up my darkest hours, TJ.” Colonel Young stood by his desk with his hands folded behind his back, his back ramrod straight, and to all appearances as if he were a career solider forced to put up with a meaningless inspection by a higher-up.
She had not known, when she received the summons, what to expect, but what he had just said, certainly was nowhere among any of things Tamara Johansen had expected. She had imagined any number of things, but knew better than to let her imagination run rampant.
For her part, she also held herself erect, not letting either her emotions or her rather unpredictable tongue get the best of her.
“Aren’t you being just a little over-dramatic, Colonel Young,” she asked.
“Please, T.J, at this particular moment just calls me Everett.”
“All right, Everett. You know, after everything we’ve been through, it doesn’t feel at all awkward as it hear myself call you by your name.
“I am relieved to hear you say that,” Young replied, “And for that very reason is why I needed to talk to you.”
“In an unofficial capacity, I assume?” she quietly asked.
“I know it’s selfish of me to be more concerned for you as, I don’t if what we have together is what one would strictly call a relationship, given our respective ranks, but….”
“But what?” she asked, nervously tapping the heels of her hand against the sides of her uniform slacks, unaware at the moment that she was biting her lower lip and stared the thick ridge of eyebrows directly above those deep, dark brown eyes that in all the time that she had known him seemed capable of expressing a whole range of emotions, from compassion and anger and back again.
Which made her wonder if this was about their baby, or if something else was bothering him. If it was the former, Tamara Johansen had just come from running a routine ultrasound on herself and had confirmed that the baby’s development was coming along just fine, and was now about eight weeks along.
Everett’s thoughts seemed to run parallel to her own thoughts for his next question was to inquire after her well-being.
Tamara blinked and shuffled her feet a few times, a little taken aback at the nature of the conversational topic, but having long ago learned to school her expressions and body language, simply replied, “I’m fine, thank you, in fact, we’re better than fine.”
Everett sighed and then smiled. “Well, that’s a relief, and on a ship like this, even as huge as it is, we all live too close to one another to keep it a secret for very long.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?” she asked, unable to completely kept the disbelief out of her voice.
“Well, yes, but it that’s not all the only reason why I called you in, but it does help set my mind at ease.”
“I’m glad,” she replied, with a short bark of laughter as after a heartbeat or two he strode the few paces which separated them and placed his hands on her shoulders and titled his head to look her in the face, studying her features, and tracing the lines of her face with his hands. “I love you, I love what we have together, and I wouldn’t go back and change it even were I given half the chance to do so.”
“Even if you could, even if your wife knows about us? Even if it’s a matter of water-cooler gossip?”
“Even then,” he replied.
“Why, Mr. Young, who knew that you were a romantic old-softie at heart.”
“Yeah, who knew? He replied. But, back to practical matters,” he replied, stepping back and placed his hands into the pockets of his uniform slacks. “I’m planning to hold a general senior staff meeting tomorrow at 0900 hours tomorrow morning, but I wanted to run this by you first, in case it was just me being paranoid. But, ever since Colonel Telford’s actions nearly led to the destruction that we’re trying to accomplish here.”
Tamara nodded. “I understand.”
Telford’s betrayal and the knowledge that he’d had been subverted by the Lucian Alliance into sending classified and important information to them had come as a shock to all aboard, no one more so than Everett himself. “Why me?”
“Because I just needed to talk you, because as I grudgingly respect Dr. Rush’s brilliance, every time we talk to each other, it turns into a heated argument, and I wanted to run this by you before I broach the subject with everyone else.”
“The short of it, is that I don’t think we can afford to blindly trust our connections to Earth anymore, and basically I want you to talk to Rush and Eli about whether or not it’s feasible to set up a different communications relay, or the Ancient touch-stones, or if not, if it there’s anyone left alive at the Atlantis expedition. But, try to be discrete, doing so, will you?”
“Woot!” Tamara whistled, “You don’t ask for much, do you. Of course, I’ll do it, as if you ever had any doubt about that, but what happens if we do manage to do so.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he sighed, reaching up to scratch at his chin stubble, before he replied. “Truth to tell, I guess I’ll figure that when the moment comes. And T.J, thank you, thanks for, everything.”
“You’re welcome, Sir, ah, Everett,” she replied, wondering whether or not she should salute and settled on a respectful nod on her way out of the door.
When she was once more standing in the hallway, she heaved a sigh of relief and could not help but feel that something more than was apparent on the surface had just passed between them. She could not quite put her finger on what exactly that something was, but it was a good feeling and one that she intended to savor for a good long time to come.
****
"This ship was launched to solve a mystery, not by arriving at some ultimate destination where all the questions are answered at one time, but by accumulating knowledge bit by bit." Nicolas Rush stated as matter-of-factly as if he were discussing something as mundane as baking bread or something of that nature.
But then, this was Dr. Rush we were dealing with here, thought Tamara, so I guess I should not be that surprised, I mean, after all, it might just be his version of a defense of mechanism, he’s far better with raw data and machines than he has ever shown towards people, with the exception of Eli and maybe Chloe, but then that last one is really messed up.’
“If you would all pay attention,” Rush irascibly said, as if he were reading her mind.
Of late, Tamara had to wonder if after everything both he had been through and all the hours he’d logged with the ship’s inner workings and computer systems if he could. She shook her head at the meandering course her own thoughts were taking and focused back at the task at hand.
“As you all know, the communication array with the Ancient touch stones is up and running, however as Colonel Everett pointed out earlier in this briefing, we have a problem.”
“Which is,” asked Lieutenant Scott.
“I didn’t want to broach the subject until I had all of the facts, and even then I didn’t want to believe the evidence right underneath my nose, but the departure of Telford and his people has led to one inescapable conclusion, and that is, we are very much on our own.”
Ronald Greer felt the lightest touch on his shoulder and he looked to his immediate left and down to see Camille Wray whisper in undertone, “What’s he up to?”
“I get the feeling that there’s much more going on here. Greer shrugged and offered her a reassuring smile. “Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m no expert, but something’s been eating at the chief and it’s not just this ongoing fight with Dr. Rush.”
“You’ll get no argument with me on that score.”
Young cleared his throat, as a non-verbal hint that he wanted the crowd’s full attention and resumed. “The long and short of it, is that I believe that we can no longer trust our connections with Earth, and to that end I think we should attempt to contact the Atlantis expedition.”
“Have you lost your freaking mind, Sir?” Scott exclaimed.
“No, Lieutenant Scott, I’ve given a great deal of thought to this, and it is in our best interests to see whether or not the expedition survived and if so, to reestablish contact with them.
Rush nodded, for once, damping down on his all too obvious antagonism with the other man for the sake of the crew and the challenging and intriguing proposition.
“I’ve run various computer model run the calculations forwards and backwards, and I believe that not only is its possible it’s also probable, with Eli’s help and once we know the approximate coordinates to start sending out our own signal, we’ll have a better idea to best establish a two-communication link.
Young nodded and then said: “Who knows, we could be able to exchange valuable knowledge and data with them, so it would be a win-win situation any way you cared to slice it.”
“Sorry, for the voicing any doubts to your plan, Sir, but that’s gonna take a lot of raw power that the ship may not be able to handle, and what if the power bleed draws our enemies to our position.
“Then we’ll simply have to deal with that when the time comes,” Young replied.
Chloe Armstrong glanced over at where Rush and Eli sat and wondered if now that her own physical and mental changes at the hand of her alien abductor’s could help in any way. When she had first come aboard she had never felt that she either needed or considered part of the crew, just another civilian with a famous father who had one of the many instrumental in getting the Destiny’s mission off the ground.
Sure, she had and Matthew Scott had been in a relationship, but that wasn’t want defined her, so she’d been treading water, waiting, waiting for what even in her own mind was a big indefinable gray area. Now, almost three years later, she was different, just how different, was again, in a word, complicated.
She had been captured, and had her mind and body altered in ways that she still not did not quite understand; and still felt as if she remained very much an outsider looking in.
However, the knowledge of the mathematical computations that had been jammed into her head were valuable to solving the many mysteries that had to be solved, and they only had a narrow window of opportunity in which to solve them.
“We’re gonna to do this?” exclaimed Eli Wallace, his mobile features transitioning back and forth between shock, eagerness, and excitement.
“Yes,” Rush replied. “But it won’t get down unless you let me get back to work.” He liked and admired the Eli’s enthusiasm and equally brilliant mind, but there were few things than over-eagerness that could ruin any given enterprise and potential cost lives. It would not harm the kid any if he learned to curb some of that enthusiasm for when it was really required.
“Can we pull this off?” asked Greer.
“Only God and the devil knows the answer to that Mr. Greer,” replied Rush with a wry half smile, and then wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “And the devil is hedging his bets.” Colonel Young forced back his wry smile at that and then said. “That’s the end to our meeting, then. Everyone can return to their duties, you are all dismissed.”
“Eli, come with me,” Rush said, “We have a lot of work ahead of us.”
Chloe crossed the room and stood facing Rush. “Let me help.”
Rush considered this slip of a girl with an intensity in her eyes far beyond her years, and debated, the changes to her body, the scales that were gradually covering her forearms and shins, and elsewhere,
He’d witnessed the overwhelming compulsion that took her over whenever she succumbed to a trance-like state and perform calculations that even he, with his acknowledged brilliance found both remarkable and a little jealous of it.
In his own way, he had come to care for the girl, and felt a kind of rough empathy for their shared traumatic experience at the hands of their alien abductors, so at last, decision made, he finally nodded.
Rush sighed and then apparently reaching a decision, finally conceded, “I may end up regretting this, but okay, come with us.”
*****
Hopeful Transmissions
Eli had seen Dr. Rush like this before, his focus and attention to the minuscule details of both his calculations and manipulating the ships’ computers and alien technology to the point where he could completely shut out everything and everyone else around him. It was both fascinating to watch and a bit eerie.
He shuffled his feet on the metal deck and returned his concentration to his own calculations. If anyone had bothered to ask his opinion of this endeavor, several hours ago, he might not have been so sanguine about it. After all, what were the chances that even if they were successful in contacting the Atlantis expedition, that there would anyone left alive to answer? And even if they did, what was to say that they’d welcome their home away from home in the Pegasus Galaxy?
Eli cleared his throat and realized that his was getting more than a little ahead of himself. After four years of living and working aboard a ship like the Destiny, the luster of space exploration had begun to wan somewhat, and the danger of first contact and other such wonders while they still had an endless source of wonder for him, he had come to realize that with the wonder came the risk to life and limb.
Speaking of risk, ‘he thought, ‘I figure it was an unspoken understanding when we all signed up for this gig, I just didn’t figure that it would hit me so close to home.’
Eli thought about Chloe’s transformation, and he winced. With treatment, and the passing of time most of the scales had subside; the whole business still left him feeling as if there might be something more that he could do or say, to make it, if not better, at least be there for her. They had become much closer of late, and would hate to lose what they had together.
continued in "Assumptions of Risk"
Author: karrenia
Fandoms: Stargate Universe/Stargate Atlantis
Prompt: #37 sound
Disclaimer: Stargate Universe and Stargate Atlantis belong to their respective creators and producers, they are not mine nor are the characters that appear here or are mentioned. They are only ‘borrowed’ for the purposes of the story. The story was written for the 2013 Round Sci Fi Mini Big Bang.
Notes: This could be considered more of a fusion or an AU considering the timelines of both shows.
“Postcards from the Edge”” by karrenia
“You pull me through when I felt that I could no longer stand and face the day and you light up my darkest hours, TJ.” Colonel Young stood by his desk with his hands folded behind his back, his back ramrod straight, and to all appearances as if he were a career solider forced to put up with a meaningless inspection by a higher-up.
She had not known, when she received the summons, what to expect, but what he had just said, certainly was nowhere among any of things Tamara Johansen had expected. She had imagined any number of things, but knew better than to let her imagination run rampant.
For her part, she also held herself erect, not letting either her emotions or her rather unpredictable tongue get the best of her.
“Aren’t you being just a little over-dramatic, Colonel Young,” she asked.
“Please, T.J, at this particular moment just calls me Everett.”
“All right, Everett. You know, after everything we’ve been through, it doesn’t feel at all awkward as it hear myself call you by your name.
“I am relieved to hear you say that,” Young replied, “And for that very reason is why I needed to talk to you.”
“In an unofficial capacity, I assume?” she quietly asked.
“I know it’s selfish of me to be more concerned for you as, I don’t if what we have together is what one would strictly call a relationship, given our respective ranks, but….”
“But what?” she asked, nervously tapping the heels of her hand against the sides of her uniform slacks, unaware at the moment that she was biting her lower lip and stared the thick ridge of eyebrows directly above those deep, dark brown eyes that in all the time that she had known him seemed capable of expressing a whole range of emotions, from compassion and anger and back again.
Which made her wonder if this was about their baby, or if something else was bothering him. If it was the former, Tamara Johansen had just come from running a routine ultrasound on herself and had confirmed that the baby’s development was coming along just fine, and was now about eight weeks along.
Everett’s thoughts seemed to run parallel to her own thoughts for his next question was to inquire after her well-being.
Tamara blinked and shuffled her feet a few times, a little taken aback at the nature of the conversational topic, but having long ago learned to school her expressions and body language, simply replied, “I’m fine, thank you, in fact, we’re better than fine.”
Everett sighed and then smiled. “Well, that’s a relief, and on a ship like this, even as huge as it is, we all live too close to one another to keep it a secret for very long.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?” she asked, unable to completely kept the disbelief out of her voice.
“Well, yes, but it that’s not all the only reason why I called you in, but it does help set my mind at ease.”
“I’m glad,” she replied, with a short bark of laughter as after a heartbeat or two he strode the few paces which separated them and placed his hands on her shoulders and titled his head to look her in the face, studying her features, and tracing the lines of her face with his hands. “I love you, I love what we have together, and I wouldn’t go back and change it even were I given half the chance to do so.”
“Even if you could, even if your wife knows about us? Even if it’s a matter of water-cooler gossip?”
“Even then,” he replied.
“Why, Mr. Young, who knew that you were a romantic old-softie at heart.”
“Yeah, who knew? He replied. But, back to practical matters,” he replied, stepping back and placed his hands into the pockets of his uniform slacks. “I’m planning to hold a general senior staff meeting tomorrow at 0900 hours tomorrow morning, but I wanted to run this by you first, in case it was just me being paranoid. But, ever since Colonel Telford’s actions nearly led to the destruction that we’re trying to accomplish here.”
Tamara nodded. “I understand.”
Telford’s betrayal and the knowledge that he’d had been subverted by the Lucian Alliance into sending classified and important information to them had come as a shock to all aboard, no one more so than Everett himself. “Why me?”
“Because I just needed to talk you, because as I grudgingly respect Dr. Rush’s brilliance, every time we talk to each other, it turns into a heated argument, and I wanted to run this by you before I broach the subject with everyone else.”
“The short of it, is that I don’t think we can afford to blindly trust our connections to Earth anymore, and basically I want you to talk to Rush and Eli about whether or not it’s feasible to set up a different communications relay, or the Ancient touch-stones, or if not, if it there’s anyone left alive at the Atlantis expedition. But, try to be discrete, doing so, will you?”
“Woot!” Tamara whistled, “You don’t ask for much, do you. Of course, I’ll do it, as if you ever had any doubt about that, but what happens if we do manage to do so.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he sighed, reaching up to scratch at his chin stubble, before he replied. “Truth to tell, I guess I’ll figure that when the moment comes. And T.J, thank you, thanks for, everything.”
“You’re welcome, Sir, ah, Everett,” she replied, wondering whether or not she should salute and settled on a respectful nod on her way out of the door.
When she was once more standing in the hallway, she heaved a sigh of relief and could not help but feel that something more than was apparent on the surface had just passed between them. She could not quite put her finger on what exactly that something was, but it was a good feeling and one that she intended to savor for a good long time to come.
****
"This ship was launched to solve a mystery, not by arriving at some ultimate destination where all the questions are answered at one time, but by accumulating knowledge bit by bit." Nicolas Rush stated as matter-of-factly as if he were discussing something as mundane as baking bread or something of that nature.
But then, this was Dr. Rush we were dealing with here, thought Tamara, so I guess I should not be that surprised, I mean, after all, it might just be his version of a defense of mechanism, he’s far better with raw data and machines than he has ever shown towards people, with the exception of Eli and maybe Chloe, but then that last one is really messed up.’
“If you would all pay attention,” Rush irascibly said, as if he were reading her mind.
Of late, Tamara had to wonder if after everything both he had been through and all the hours he’d logged with the ship’s inner workings and computer systems if he could. She shook her head at the meandering course her own thoughts were taking and focused back at the task at hand.
“As you all know, the communication array with the Ancient touch stones is up and running, however as Colonel Everett pointed out earlier in this briefing, we have a problem.”
“Which is,” asked Lieutenant Scott.
“I didn’t want to broach the subject until I had all of the facts, and even then I didn’t want to believe the evidence right underneath my nose, but the departure of Telford and his people has led to one inescapable conclusion, and that is, we are very much on our own.”
Ronald Greer felt the lightest touch on his shoulder and he looked to his immediate left and down to see Camille Wray whisper in undertone, “What’s he up to?”
“I get the feeling that there’s much more going on here. Greer shrugged and offered her a reassuring smile. “Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m no expert, but something’s been eating at the chief and it’s not just this ongoing fight with Dr. Rush.”
“You’ll get no argument with me on that score.”
Young cleared his throat, as a non-verbal hint that he wanted the crowd’s full attention and resumed. “The long and short of it, is that I believe that we can no longer trust our connections with Earth, and to that end I think we should attempt to contact the Atlantis expedition.”
“Have you lost your freaking mind, Sir?” Scott exclaimed.
“No, Lieutenant Scott, I’ve given a great deal of thought to this, and it is in our best interests to see whether or not the expedition survived and if so, to reestablish contact with them.
Rush nodded, for once, damping down on his all too obvious antagonism with the other man for the sake of the crew and the challenging and intriguing proposition.
“I’ve run various computer model run the calculations forwards and backwards, and I believe that not only is its possible it’s also probable, with Eli’s help and once we know the approximate coordinates to start sending out our own signal, we’ll have a better idea to best establish a two-communication link.
Young nodded and then said: “Who knows, we could be able to exchange valuable knowledge and data with them, so it would be a win-win situation any way you cared to slice it.”
“Sorry, for the voicing any doubts to your plan, Sir, but that’s gonna take a lot of raw power that the ship may not be able to handle, and what if the power bleed draws our enemies to our position.
“Then we’ll simply have to deal with that when the time comes,” Young replied.
Chloe Armstrong glanced over at where Rush and Eli sat and wondered if now that her own physical and mental changes at the hand of her alien abductor’s could help in any way. When she had first come aboard she had never felt that she either needed or considered part of the crew, just another civilian with a famous father who had one of the many instrumental in getting the Destiny’s mission off the ground.
Sure, she had and Matthew Scott had been in a relationship, but that wasn’t want defined her, so she’d been treading water, waiting, waiting for what even in her own mind was a big indefinable gray area. Now, almost three years later, she was different, just how different, was again, in a word, complicated.
She had been captured, and had her mind and body altered in ways that she still not did not quite understand; and still felt as if she remained very much an outsider looking in.
However, the knowledge of the mathematical computations that had been jammed into her head were valuable to solving the many mysteries that had to be solved, and they only had a narrow window of opportunity in which to solve them.
“We’re gonna to do this?” exclaimed Eli Wallace, his mobile features transitioning back and forth between shock, eagerness, and excitement.
“Yes,” Rush replied. “But it won’t get down unless you let me get back to work.” He liked and admired the Eli’s enthusiasm and equally brilliant mind, but there were few things than over-eagerness that could ruin any given enterprise and potential cost lives. It would not harm the kid any if he learned to curb some of that enthusiasm for when it was really required.
“Can we pull this off?” asked Greer.
“Only God and the devil knows the answer to that Mr. Greer,” replied Rush with a wry half smile, and then wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “And the devil is hedging his bets.” Colonel Young forced back his wry smile at that and then said. “That’s the end to our meeting, then. Everyone can return to their duties, you are all dismissed.”
“Eli, come with me,” Rush said, “We have a lot of work ahead of us.”
Chloe crossed the room and stood facing Rush. “Let me help.”
Rush considered this slip of a girl with an intensity in her eyes far beyond her years, and debated, the changes to her body, the scales that were gradually covering her forearms and shins, and elsewhere,
He’d witnessed the overwhelming compulsion that took her over whenever she succumbed to a trance-like state and perform calculations that even he, with his acknowledged brilliance found both remarkable and a little jealous of it.
In his own way, he had come to care for the girl, and felt a kind of rough empathy for their shared traumatic experience at the hands of their alien abductors, so at last, decision made, he finally nodded.
Rush sighed and then apparently reaching a decision, finally conceded, “I may end up regretting this, but okay, come with us.”
*****
Hopeful Transmissions
Eli had seen Dr. Rush like this before, his focus and attention to the minuscule details of both his calculations and manipulating the ships’ computers and alien technology to the point where he could completely shut out everything and everyone else around him. It was both fascinating to watch and a bit eerie.
He shuffled his feet on the metal deck and returned his concentration to his own calculations. If anyone had bothered to ask his opinion of this endeavor, several hours ago, he might not have been so sanguine about it. After all, what were the chances that even if they were successful in contacting the Atlantis expedition, that there would anyone left alive to answer? And even if they did, what was to say that they’d welcome their home away from home in the Pegasus Galaxy?
Eli cleared his throat and realized that his was getting more than a little ahead of himself. After four years of living and working aboard a ship like the Destiny, the luster of space exploration had begun to wan somewhat, and the danger of first contact and other such wonders while they still had an endless source of wonder for him, he had come to realize that with the wonder came the risk to life and limb.
Speaking of risk, ‘he thought, ‘I figure it was an unspoken understanding when we all signed up for this gig, I just didn’t figure that it would hit me so close to home.’
Eli thought about Chloe’s transformation, and he winced. With treatment, and the passing of time most of the scales had subside; the whole business still left him feeling as if there might be something more that he could do or say, to make it, if not better, at least be there for her. They had become much closer of late, and would hate to lose what they had together.
continued in "Assumptions of Risk"