Someone Else's Sky (3/?)
Well, it's been quiet around here for a while, and I know that's largely my fault, so here's something that will hopefully kick-start things: the long-awaited part 3!
Part 1
Part 2
Part III
As Colonel Sheppard and his men led them into the city, Inara found herself wondering if any of the others realized how far from home they truly were. Studying her shipmates, she saw wonder on almost every face, but not the dread that curled tightly in her stomach, except...
Simon. Where most of the crew looked amazed and River blissful--probably due to her certainty that the Alliance couldn't reach them there--the expression on Simon's face was somewhere between dread and dismay.
Yes, Inara thought sympathetically. You see it too, don't you?
It made sense. Most of Serenity's crew hadn't exactly spent a lot of time on the core planets, except for herself, Simon and River. And possibly Shepherd Book, although no one was quite sure with him. The rest didn't know, though they might suspect, just how far this city was beyond anything even Sihnon and Londinium had to offer. That tiny room that Colonel Sheppard had herded them all into wasn't like any lift she had ever seen before--not if it could transport them from the outskirts of the city, only feet above the water, to the top of the central tower if the view she was seeing was real.
Wherever they were...River was right, this was not Alliance territory. What she wasn't sure about was whether or not that was a good thing.
Colonel Sheppard--who had apparently dropped back to cover the rear--flashed her a sympathetic smile. She recognized the type instantly--this was a man for whom flirting was as natural as breathing, but who rarely meant anything by it except a means to hide some other part of himself that he didn't want people to see. "Impressive, isn't it?" he asked.
She decided to humor him for the moment; he'd learn soon enough. "I was born on Sihnon," she admitted, "but I've never seen anything like this."
"Yeah, they don't have anything quite like it on Earth either, though I know some New Yorkers who would probably argue the point," he replied easily, not noticing at first that she'd stopped dead in her tracks, her heart suddenly pounding for reasons that had nothing to do with his charm. When he did notice, he stopped and glanced back with a puzzled frown. "Ma'am?"
"Did you...did you say Earth?" she blurted out, her prized control once more deserting her with frustrating ease.
Both eyebrows shot up, his frown deepening warily even as his voice remained casual. "So you've heard of it?"
Merciful Buddha...she'd heard stories and legends all her life that there were those who had chosen to stay behind when humanity abandoned Earth-that-Was, but she'd never expected to come face to face with living, breathing proof of it! No wonder this place was so clearly devoid of any stamp of the Alliance.
She forced a smile onto her face, but her heart was pounding with a sudden adrenaline rush that had nothing to do with Colonel Sheppard. "You might say it's something of a legend where we come from."
His frown relaxed into an easy smile although there was still something a little suspicious in his eyes. "Know the feeling. I had a similar reaction when Dr. Weir told me we'd be coming here."
She cocked her head, feeling her eyebrows knit together in confusion--wonderful, already this place was almost as bad for her composure as the Captain. "I don't understand."
"Atlantis?" he prompted.
Inara shook her head. "So this world is named after an ancient myth from Earth-that-Was, I still don't--"
"Not named after. This world *is* the myth," he explained.
She stared. "But that would have to mean that the Atlantean culture was capable of interplanetary travel."
Sheppard nodded. "Yeah, exactly..." Then something seemed to register and his face dipped into a frown again. "Wait a second--Earth that was what?"
Renci de Fozu... Inara's stomach clenched in apprehension. How could Sheppard be from Earth and not remember that most of her population had left for the stars generations before? And how was it possible that there was a human civilization that reached them ten thousand years before that, yet never been discovered by the diaspora of humanity? "Abandoned. Almost five hundred years ago."
~+~+~+~
Okay, granted, John Sheppard's tolerance for the weird had increased exponentially since he'd casually seated himself in that chair in Antarctica, but this was pushing it even for him. Earth *abandoned*? And during what, the Renaissance?
Huh. Then again, according to at least one of the SG-1 mission reports he'd managed to read before leaving the planet, at least one Goa'uld had still been kidnapping people off the planet during the Dark Ages, so maybe it wasn't completely off the wall. But the Goa'uld didn't know about Atlantis, or at least not how to get here--that was apparently half the point of being in such a hurry to find it, to get here first. The only aliens who'd transplanted humans to this galaxy were the Ancients, and they hadn't dropped by Pegasus for a hell of a lot longer than five hundred years, with or without human cargo.
Much as he would have liked to get the answers to some of those questions before the briefing, though, Elizabeth was already waiting outside the briefing room for them, her keen eyes quickly singling out Reynolds from his crew. "Captain Reynolds?" a hand was extended which the captain accepted. Sheppard found himself exchanging a nervous glance with Lorne.
"I'm Dr. Weir," she continued with a welcoming smile. "Welcome to Atlantis."
"Y'know, I keep asking and nobody seems inclined to give me an answer makes any sense," Reynolds drawled, letting his hand drop back to his side where anyone without a military background probably wouldn't notice it coming to hover inches from his gunbelt. "How come none of mine ever heard of a world called Atlantis?"
"Well, truthfullly it's not the name of the planet," she clarified. "It's the name of the city--we never did find out the name of the planet."
Ford had tried to name it once, though, and he'd brushed him off; John couldn't help but feel a twinge of regret about that, now that the lieutenant was missing.
Elizabeth gestured to the door behind her. "Please, join me."
Now came the fun part, squeezing the crew of Serenity, her armed escort, Dr. Weir and Dr. Zelenka along with a few too many curious onlookers into the briefing room, which was probably designed for about half that number. McKay was nowhere to be seen, but knowing him he'd probably be along soon enough. Sheppard's eyes flickered from Ronon--who'd apparently invited himself to join the security detail--to the big guy Reynolds had called Jane, trying to decide which of the two would probably win if things degenerated to a fistfight. His money was tentatively on Ronon, but he didn't want to make the mistake of underestimating the other guy...or any of the rest of them for that matter.
Miss stream-of-consciousness caught his eye at that and flashed him an enigmatic, knowing smile--almost as if she knew what he was thinking--and that was disturbing on a whole other level.
As soon as as many as could had taken seats, John took his place standing at attention behind Elizabeth's chair. She noticed this and shot him a look that conveyed her annoyance, but there was no way he was trusting the newcomers with her life or anyone else's until he knew a hell of a lot more about where--or maybe even when--they came from. He noticed covertly that the cowgirl of Serenity's crew had taken up the same position behind Reynolds' chair--huh.
Not quite annoyed enough to press the issue, Dr. Weir proceeded with the introductions. "You've already met Colonel Sheppard, Major Lorne, Lieutenant Chavez and Sergeant Markham. This is Dr. Zelenka, Ronon Dex, Dr. Beckett, Teyla Emmagen, Dr. Heightmeyer--" She could have kept going, but Reynolds interrupted.
"Lot of doctors you've got here," he sounded amused. "We've just got the one, there, and his sister." He pointed to the puritanical young man and the girl with the unnerving stare. "This some sort of hospital?"
Elizabeth laughed lightly. "No, only Dr. Beckett, Dr. Heightmeyer and Dr. Biro of the doctors in this room practice medicine. I'm a doctor of political science, Dr. Zelenka is a physicist--"
"'Political science'?" the one called Jane snorted. "Ain't that one of them ox-moron things?"
Reynolds allowed himself a dry smile. "The articulate one there would be Jayne. As you can see, he ain't had much in the way of schooling, but not a bad man to have at your back, provided you don't make the mistake of trusting him."
"I'll...keep that in mind," Elizabeth responded, sounding a little startled by the rather blunt, critical assessment.
"It appears you've got quite an interesting variety of individuals represented here, Doctor Weir," spoke up a salt-and-pepper haired man who'd been quiet up until this point. John noticed with a start for the first time that he was wearing a priest's collar--something just as unsettling as some of the rest of his crewmates' garb. "Soldiers and scientists--not an easy balance to maintain."
"Not always, no," Elizabeth admitted with another warm smile. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name, Father--"
"Shepherd," he corrected and Atlantis' Sheppard coughed in surprise. "Shepherd Derrial Book. I suppose you might say I'm...Serenity's chaplain. Unofficially," he amended when the captain shot him an indefinable look.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Shepherd. I'd offer to introduce you to our chaplain, but unfortunately he was killed in the last Wraith attack and I haven't had the chance to recruit a new one yet."
"Wraith?" the woman standing at Reynolds' shoulder asked. "What's a Wraith?"
Pretty much everyone already living on Atlantis turned to stare at her at this point. Teyla took a step forward, frowning. "How is it possible that you live in this galaxy and do not know of the Wraith?"
"Seems there's a number of things we don't know about that you folks take for granted, and contrarywise," Reynolds commented.
The woman John had been talking to earlier--the elegant one--snorted inelegantly. "You don't know the half of it, Mal. They came here from Earth."
Shock rippled through the room on both sides--John's side reacting pretty much the way he had to her initial recognition of the name, and the rest of the visitors exchanging startled glances.
"That true?" Reynolds demanded.
"Yes, but how--?" Elizabeth now sounded about as dumbfounded as he'd felt. John grimaced sympathetically.
"You mean, folks really did stay behind like in the stories?" the petite grease monkey chipped in. "It ain't used up after all?"
"Used up?" John's voice chimed in with Elizabeth's at this new piece of information.
"Is it just me, or is this conversation suddenly taking a turn for the confusing?" Hawaiian-shirt piped up. "Especially considering we haven't even finished the introductions? Hi, I'm Wash, by the way--husband to the lovely, intimidating Zoe."
"I think I left confused behind a while ago," Sheppard admitted. "I'm about halfway through baffled and well on my way to completely bewildered."
"Now you know how I feel," the teenage girl with the creepy knowing eyes spoke, and everyone else stopped. She grinned, turning the full force of that smile on the Atlanteans. "You got tired of jumping from jewel to jewel along the same chain, so you found a new necklace. A firefly was never supposed to ride the Pegasus, but you broke a star, two stars, and the universe doesn't take kindly to the murder of her children. You tore a hole in the womb and so here we are, born before our ancestors into an Ancient sky that was never ours."
Elizabeth frowned, leaning towards the girl. "Wait--are you saying...that you're not just from a different galaxy, but a different reality as well?"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Reynolds interrupted, holding up both hands. "Shen me...different *galaxy*?"
"Yes," Zelenka nodded. "We are in what our people know as the Pegasus Galaxy."
"Good Lord," Shepherd Book murmured. "The distance involved...even traveling at the speed of light it would be impossible to reach the Pegasus Galaxy from ours within a single lifetime--"
"Yet here you are, and here we are," Zelenka agreed. "And yet it is you who appear to have no Stargate and no hyperdrive."
Everyone turned to look at the petite one in coveralls. "We never had the need for nothing more'n a pulse drive out in the Black; even if there was something more to be had, I never knew it." She looked distressed by this suggestion.
"If Kaylee don't know it, we don't have it," Reynolds agreed with a nod. "So if'n we really are where you folks think we are...how did we get here, and how do we get home?"
(Continued...)
Part 1
Part 2
Part III
As Colonel Sheppard and his men led them into the city, Inara found herself wondering if any of the others realized how far from home they truly were. Studying her shipmates, she saw wonder on almost every face, but not the dread that curled tightly in her stomach, except...
Simon. Where most of the crew looked amazed and River blissful--probably due to her certainty that the Alliance couldn't reach them there--the expression on Simon's face was somewhere between dread and dismay.
Yes, Inara thought sympathetically. You see it too, don't you?
It made sense. Most of Serenity's crew hadn't exactly spent a lot of time on the core planets, except for herself, Simon and River. And possibly Shepherd Book, although no one was quite sure with him. The rest didn't know, though they might suspect, just how far this city was beyond anything even Sihnon and Londinium had to offer. That tiny room that Colonel Sheppard had herded them all into wasn't like any lift she had ever seen before--not if it could transport them from the outskirts of the city, only feet above the water, to the top of the central tower if the view she was seeing was real.
Wherever they were...River was right, this was not Alliance territory. What she wasn't sure about was whether or not that was a good thing.
Colonel Sheppard--who had apparently dropped back to cover the rear--flashed her a sympathetic smile. She recognized the type instantly--this was a man for whom flirting was as natural as breathing, but who rarely meant anything by it except a means to hide some other part of himself that he didn't want people to see. "Impressive, isn't it?" he asked.
She decided to humor him for the moment; he'd learn soon enough. "I was born on Sihnon," she admitted, "but I've never seen anything like this."
"Yeah, they don't have anything quite like it on Earth either, though I know some New Yorkers who would probably argue the point," he replied easily, not noticing at first that she'd stopped dead in her tracks, her heart suddenly pounding for reasons that had nothing to do with his charm. When he did notice, he stopped and glanced back with a puzzled frown. "Ma'am?"
"Did you...did you say Earth?" she blurted out, her prized control once more deserting her with frustrating ease.
Both eyebrows shot up, his frown deepening warily even as his voice remained casual. "So you've heard of it?"
Merciful Buddha...she'd heard stories and legends all her life that there were those who had chosen to stay behind when humanity abandoned Earth-that-Was, but she'd never expected to come face to face with living, breathing proof of it! No wonder this place was so clearly devoid of any stamp of the Alliance.
She forced a smile onto her face, but her heart was pounding with a sudden adrenaline rush that had nothing to do with Colonel Sheppard. "You might say it's something of a legend where we come from."
His frown relaxed into an easy smile although there was still something a little suspicious in his eyes. "Know the feeling. I had a similar reaction when Dr. Weir told me we'd be coming here."
She cocked her head, feeling her eyebrows knit together in confusion--wonderful, already this place was almost as bad for her composure as the Captain. "I don't understand."
"Atlantis?" he prompted.
Inara shook her head. "So this world is named after an ancient myth from Earth-that-Was, I still don't--"
"Not named after. This world *is* the myth," he explained.
She stared. "But that would have to mean that the Atlantean culture was capable of interplanetary travel."
Sheppard nodded. "Yeah, exactly..." Then something seemed to register and his face dipped into a frown again. "Wait a second--Earth that was what?"
Renci de Fozu... Inara's stomach clenched in apprehension. How could Sheppard be from Earth and not remember that most of her population had left for the stars generations before? And how was it possible that there was a human civilization that reached them ten thousand years before that, yet never been discovered by the diaspora of humanity? "Abandoned. Almost five hundred years ago."
~+~+~+~
Okay, granted, John Sheppard's tolerance for the weird had increased exponentially since he'd casually seated himself in that chair in Antarctica, but this was pushing it even for him. Earth *abandoned*? And during what, the Renaissance?
Huh. Then again, according to at least one of the SG-1 mission reports he'd managed to read before leaving the planet, at least one Goa'uld had still been kidnapping people off the planet during the Dark Ages, so maybe it wasn't completely off the wall. But the Goa'uld didn't know about Atlantis, or at least not how to get here--that was apparently half the point of being in such a hurry to find it, to get here first. The only aliens who'd transplanted humans to this galaxy were the Ancients, and they hadn't dropped by Pegasus for a hell of a lot longer than five hundred years, with or without human cargo.
Much as he would have liked to get the answers to some of those questions before the briefing, though, Elizabeth was already waiting outside the briefing room for them, her keen eyes quickly singling out Reynolds from his crew. "Captain Reynolds?" a hand was extended which the captain accepted. Sheppard found himself exchanging a nervous glance with Lorne.
"I'm Dr. Weir," she continued with a welcoming smile. "Welcome to Atlantis."
"Y'know, I keep asking and nobody seems inclined to give me an answer makes any sense," Reynolds drawled, letting his hand drop back to his side where anyone without a military background probably wouldn't notice it coming to hover inches from his gunbelt. "How come none of mine ever heard of a world called Atlantis?"
"Well, truthfullly it's not the name of the planet," she clarified. "It's the name of the city--we never did find out the name of the planet."
Ford had tried to name it once, though, and he'd brushed him off; John couldn't help but feel a twinge of regret about that, now that the lieutenant was missing.
Elizabeth gestured to the door behind her. "Please, join me."
Now came the fun part, squeezing the crew of Serenity, her armed escort, Dr. Weir and Dr. Zelenka along with a few too many curious onlookers into the briefing room, which was probably designed for about half that number. McKay was nowhere to be seen, but knowing him he'd probably be along soon enough. Sheppard's eyes flickered from Ronon--who'd apparently invited himself to join the security detail--to the big guy Reynolds had called Jane, trying to decide which of the two would probably win if things degenerated to a fistfight. His money was tentatively on Ronon, but he didn't want to make the mistake of underestimating the other guy...or any of the rest of them for that matter.
Miss stream-of-consciousness caught his eye at that and flashed him an enigmatic, knowing smile--almost as if she knew what he was thinking--and that was disturbing on a whole other level.
As soon as as many as could had taken seats, John took his place standing at attention behind Elizabeth's chair. She noticed this and shot him a look that conveyed her annoyance, but there was no way he was trusting the newcomers with her life or anyone else's until he knew a hell of a lot more about where--or maybe even when--they came from. He noticed covertly that the cowgirl of Serenity's crew had taken up the same position behind Reynolds' chair--huh.
Not quite annoyed enough to press the issue, Dr. Weir proceeded with the introductions. "You've already met Colonel Sheppard, Major Lorne, Lieutenant Chavez and Sergeant Markham. This is Dr. Zelenka, Ronon Dex, Dr. Beckett, Teyla Emmagen, Dr. Heightmeyer--" She could have kept going, but Reynolds interrupted.
"Lot of doctors you've got here," he sounded amused. "We've just got the one, there, and his sister." He pointed to the puritanical young man and the girl with the unnerving stare. "This some sort of hospital?"
Elizabeth laughed lightly. "No, only Dr. Beckett, Dr. Heightmeyer and Dr. Biro of the doctors in this room practice medicine. I'm a doctor of political science, Dr. Zelenka is a physicist--"
"'Political science'?" the one called Jane snorted. "Ain't that one of them ox-moron things?"
Reynolds allowed himself a dry smile. "The articulate one there would be Jayne. As you can see, he ain't had much in the way of schooling, but not a bad man to have at your back, provided you don't make the mistake of trusting him."
"I'll...keep that in mind," Elizabeth responded, sounding a little startled by the rather blunt, critical assessment.
"It appears you've got quite an interesting variety of individuals represented here, Doctor Weir," spoke up a salt-and-pepper haired man who'd been quiet up until this point. John noticed with a start for the first time that he was wearing a priest's collar--something just as unsettling as some of the rest of his crewmates' garb. "Soldiers and scientists--not an easy balance to maintain."
"Not always, no," Elizabeth admitted with another warm smile. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name, Father--"
"Shepherd," he corrected and Atlantis' Sheppard coughed in surprise. "Shepherd Derrial Book. I suppose you might say I'm...Serenity's chaplain. Unofficially," he amended when the captain shot him an indefinable look.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Shepherd. I'd offer to introduce you to our chaplain, but unfortunately he was killed in the last Wraith attack and I haven't had the chance to recruit a new one yet."
"Wraith?" the woman standing at Reynolds' shoulder asked. "What's a Wraith?"
Pretty much everyone already living on Atlantis turned to stare at her at this point. Teyla took a step forward, frowning. "How is it possible that you live in this galaxy and do not know of the Wraith?"
"Seems there's a number of things we don't know about that you folks take for granted, and contrarywise," Reynolds commented.
The woman John had been talking to earlier--the elegant one--snorted inelegantly. "You don't know the half of it, Mal. They came here from Earth."
Shock rippled through the room on both sides--John's side reacting pretty much the way he had to her initial recognition of the name, and the rest of the visitors exchanging startled glances.
"That true?" Reynolds demanded.
"Yes, but how--?" Elizabeth now sounded about as dumbfounded as he'd felt. John grimaced sympathetically.
"You mean, folks really did stay behind like in the stories?" the petite grease monkey chipped in. "It ain't used up after all?"
"Used up?" John's voice chimed in with Elizabeth's at this new piece of information.
"Is it just me, or is this conversation suddenly taking a turn for the confusing?" Hawaiian-shirt piped up. "Especially considering we haven't even finished the introductions? Hi, I'm Wash, by the way--husband to the lovely, intimidating Zoe."
"I think I left confused behind a while ago," Sheppard admitted. "I'm about halfway through baffled and well on my way to completely bewildered."
"Now you know how I feel," the teenage girl with the creepy knowing eyes spoke, and everyone else stopped. She grinned, turning the full force of that smile on the Atlanteans. "You got tired of jumping from jewel to jewel along the same chain, so you found a new necklace. A firefly was never supposed to ride the Pegasus, but you broke a star, two stars, and the universe doesn't take kindly to the murder of her children. You tore a hole in the womb and so here we are, born before our ancestors into an Ancient sky that was never ours."
Elizabeth frowned, leaning towards the girl. "Wait--are you saying...that you're not just from a different galaxy, but a different reality as well?"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Reynolds interrupted, holding up both hands. "Shen me...different *galaxy*?"
"Yes," Zelenka nodded. "We are in what our people know as the Pegasus Galaxy."
"Good Lord," Shepherd Book murmured. "The distance involved...even traveling at the speed of light it would be impossible to reach the Pegasus Galaxy from ours within a single lifetime--"
"Yet here you are, and here we are," Zelenka agreed. "And yet it is you who appear to have no Stargate and no hyperdrive."
Everyone turned to look at the petite one in coveralls. "We never had the need for nothing more'n a pulse drive out in the Black; even if there was something more to be had, I never knew it." She looked distressed by this suggestion.
"If Kaylee don't know it, we don't have it," Reynolds agreed with a nod. "So if'n we really are where you folks think we are...how did we get here, and how do we get home?"
(Continued...)