Can't Find My Way Home #5
Title: Can't Find My Way Home
Rating: PG for now
Spoilers: SGA: The Last Man, FF: Serenity
Pairing: Eventual Jayne Cobb/ Ronon Dex
Genre: Crossover
Warnings: None for this chapter.
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, don't take this too seriously.
Summary: Timelines diverge by converging.
Previous:
1. Man of Steel
2. Keys to the World
3. Lost
4. Gone Away
5. House is Not a Home
"What happens when Virgil's lost as well?"
Jayne blinked and tried opening his eyes again as he tried to figure out what the noise was. Found River standing at the foot of the ladder, tilting her head like she was listening to the hallway. "Huh?"
"Our guide. He pretends not to mourn, but not for us."
He wanted to ask her what the hell she was doing, standin' there in his room, but then he remembered. Shifted his eyes off of her, real quick, and took a moment to ponder on the idea that this was his life now.
He wondered if she was standin' there because she needed someone to tell her something she already knew. Needed to know something because someone told her, and not because she was reading them. A little bit of normality after all the mess.
Or maybe she just needs somethin'.
"Not rightly sure he'd appreciate either of us knowing that," Jayne finally responded, pushing himself into a sitting position.
"I know I'm not supposed to be here." Her mouth quirked apologetically and she adjusted her grip on the ladder. "But we're all three here and none of us are where we're supposed to be."
"Okay," Jayne shrugged, rubbing a hand over his face, trying to gauge her stance, see if this was one of her good days. "How are you feeling?"
River cocked her head. "Bad. Doesn't matter. There is business to attend to."
"Yeah," Jayne agreed, wishing it could all just wait a few more gorram minutes. Long enough for some coffee, at least. Time enough to splash some water on his face. But River continued.
"You were prepared for this. Expecting Death. Waiting for it. Foreknowledge."
"Dunno what you're on about," Jayne glanced over to the gun rack and away. Overreaction ain't gonna help nobody. "But I ain't hearin' none of your accusations right now, dong ma? I ran fast as I could, girl, and-"
"Not us. Your brother. Blood for air and choking cough."
"Aw, hell," Jayne waved a dismissive hand, covering his relief. "That ain't no secret. You were the one that set the course."
"I just meant that you were ready to mourn. Just not the right people."
"Yeah. Okay." Jayne sighed. This is going nowhere. "So what's your excuse?"
River smiled a little, then, self-effacing. "Insanity and mind reading, or haven't you heard?"
"Right." Jayne sat up straighter, then. Started planning. "Speakin' of your right frightenin' mind, you probably best be careful pokin' in where you ain't already known."
"You worry for his privacy?"
"I worry about him havin' cause to shoot you. He'll probably think you're a witch or some such."
"He doesn't frighten easily."
"But he startles real easy, dong ma?" Pulling his boots on, he considered. "Hell, it ain't like you're gonna mind me anyways. I'm just sayin' to. Uh. Mind your mind. And if you find yourself listenin' in, well. Tell me if you learn anything useful."
River nodded her understanding. "We're not where we're supposed to be, but he's the one that's lost."
That ain't useful. Jayne took a moment to stretch out his leg, feeling old wounds pull against the muscle. "Near's I can tell, bunch of his folks died too. Anyway, ain't rightly our first concern, we already got troubles need seein' to." He stood up and headed towards the ladder, waving River to go up ahead.
"Aye aye, Captain," she said, one foot on the bottom rung.
Jayne closed his eyes. "Don't. I ain't him, and you know it."
He waited a moment, and followed her up.
---
River stood, and gathered up her artwork. It was time.
Walking is serious business. Can't do it wrong, nightmares will follow, drag back holds on a mind. Forcing daylight into a darkness can be dangerous. But there's things to be done, seeds to be sown. Life can't happen before the planting.
Her steps were so slow that the metal warmed beneath her feet as she moved, and she was careful not to drop anything. The characters on Mal's marker were barely dried.
She'd wanted to join Jayne and Ronon, earlier, wanted to go with them to find a good place for Simon, who's quiet now, like the rest. You don't even know that there's any good in this world. It's a strange lack of knowledge. Cats in boxes. But Serenity's floor was hard and cold and she could do better for him, if they'd let her.
Jayne had told her to stay behind, but he'd promised to do what he could before leaving. He'd been kind when he said it, like he could be when he wanted. There hadn't been as much guilt as there usually was.
Feeling too bad about everything to feel bad about any one thing.
Continuing out into the late afternoon, she spotted them at the top of a nearby hill, the highest point in the middle of the valley. Seemed sunnier. No stones to make the ground hard underfoot, and no trees to block it from the sky.
She let herself listen. Jayne thought it wasn't good enough, was afraid of her reaction and that she'd have a tantrum over it, worried about Ronon's reaction. He was trying to form with defenses and arguments already, rehearsing safely in his head because he hadn't seen her coming yet.
He'd found the closest point to the sky they could reach, and land soft enough to dig.
He's better at finding the best in the worst than he thinks. Don't tell him you know it.
She arrived in time to watch Jayne and Ronon finish lowering the last body into the ground. Ronon stepped aside as she drew near, and she caught a general sense of this is not my place as he moved.
It was the first time anyone had drawn away from her out of respect, rather than fear, and she would have liked to think about that a little more. But now wasn't the time for it, and she'd promised not to push, not to listen more.
Jayne was watching her, but now that she'd arrived, she couldn't stop herself from staring down into the hole. There was only one grave, but they lay side by side. Closer than they'd been most of their lives. Dressed in black plastic, they all looked the same now. Like they were a matched set. Uniform and unified.
She knew they weren't buried that way so they'd be together after death, though, even if Jayne had entertained the thought when he'd been shoveling. It was just quicker to dig that way.
"I don't know who-" she broke off, shifting the load in her arms. "Where these go."
"Simon's right there," Jayne voice was quiet as he pointed to the body lying on the end. River nodded and handed him the marker. It was rough, wood torn from a shipping crate and hewn to a point, and it left a splinter in her hand. She ignored the intrusion, and handed Jayne Kaylee's marker when he reached out.
Within too few moments, four markers had been pounded into the dirt, and Jayne was looking at her with a puzzled expression, eyes darting from hers to her hands.
Glancing down, she saw the fifth marker she'd begun to prepare, and she stood, turning her head to see Ronon standing with his back to them, facing the burnt structure down below the next hill. She resisted the urge to look to Jayne for reassurance. She didn't need it.
"I didn't know what to write." She held the plank of bare wood out to Ronon. "You lost people too, but you're here. With us, and. You should. There's paint inside," she stopped herself again, trying not to babble. "I could go and-"
Ronon took the marker, then reached over to take the mallet from Jayne. After driving it into the ground a few feet away from the grave, he stood again, eyes on the wood like it was something more than a plank, like he knew what it was supposed to be even better than she did.
"Thanks," he said, talking out of the side of his mouth, like he was trying not to get caught speaking, and the three of them stood there, not knowing what came next.
"Figure we should say some words?" Jayne spoke into his chest like he didn't want to be heard, either.
She couldn't blame him for how final it sounded, and she wanted to disagree, contradict, but the words weren't there. Trying to find them just broke something loose in her head, and she couldn't keep up. She wanted the distraction, but it was so unfair.
Jayne might have been saying something, it sounded like a prayer, but River couldn't be positive. Wasn't sure that she heard right. Wasn't sure of anything, really, until she felt Jayne's hand take hers to press a handful of dirt into her curling palm.
She felt like she'd missed something important, then, but her feet remembered, and then her hands. She stepped close to the edge of the grave, dropping the dirt onto Simon's body. Watched some of it scatter, carried by a slight breeze to land on Kaylee, lying next to him.
It wasn't until she smiled at the sight of it that she realized she didn't know when she'd started crying.
---
Ronon didn't know exactly how far his invitation extended, so he tried not to touch anything as he surveyed the kitchen. It was unexpectedly warm and lived in, for being on a ship. It had been a home. Still was, maybe, but it wasn't his.
Everything here was well used and a little imperfect. The table and chairs were wooden, things he would have expected to see in his mother's house, but not on a ship. Old and comfortable.
Their technology, as far as he could tell, looked more like Earth technology than Ancient, except for when it didn't. A year ago, he might have thought about it, or waited for McKay or someone to ask.
He sat at the table and listened. The ship was silent, everything still and distant, or maybe it was the people. Jayne had mentioned something about getting cleaned up, and the girl- River, had run back into the ship before they'd finished backfilling the grave.
After a while, he heard tired, heavy footsteps in the corridor, and Jayne was entering the room, looking exhausted and drained, like he wouldn't have left his room if he'd been given the choice.
"Thanks," Jayne said. "For helping with everything." It wasn't the sort of thing that needed a response, but Ronon nodded anyway, and watched Jayne begin to prepare some food, which appeared to be blocks of varying shades of unpleasant.
He found himself missing Atlantis for the first time in weeks. Sitting at a table like this, he figured he had it in him to be missing a lot of places.
As if on cue, he heard his radio chirp to life. Pointing at his ear while looking at Jayne, he raised his head and responded.
"Ronon here."
"Ronon!" Zelenka's voice sounded surprised, but that wasn't unusual. "I am coming to see this ship of which you spoke."
"I'll come and meet you on the trail," he stood, hand going to his hip, checking for the gun he knew was there..
"No need. It is easy enough to follow. The jumper will drop me off in a few moments."
"Thanks," Ronon said, stopping himself from asking how they'd managed to get one to the alpha site, and turning again to Jayne. "He's on his way." Alone, he didn't add, because he wasn't sure if it meant anything yet.
"Shiny," Jayne nodded, handing over a plate. Grabbing his own, he started moving from the kitchen. "We'll meet 'em out front."
---
Thankfully, Zelenka didn't seem to want to talk, not about Atlantis and the alpha site. There was a large bruise over one side of his face, and shadows under his eyes behind his glasses.
If he'd been McKay, he wouldn't have shut up about it. But Zelenka threw himself into the workings of the ship like it was the only thing worth considering, and he didn't say much. Just asked Jayne questions he had no answers for, and asked River questions he couldn't understand the answers to.
"You got any idea what he's doing?" Jayne asked, at one point, ducking his head back into the engine room, suspiciously watching Zelenka running diagnostics and muttering to himself.
"No," Ronon smirked. "But it's the kind of thing I'm used to not getting."
---
It took Zelenka less than an hour to find out what was wrong.
"There is good news and there is also bad," he said, warily accepting a cup of coffee from River as he sat down and pulled up some images on his tablet. "The errors in the systems can be repaired, and from what I can see, it would be simple enough to interface and calibrate new sensors. The ships workings are fairly basic, if a little. Well. Yes."
He sighed, rubbed a hand through his hair, and Ronon could see the exhaustion, the mind about to derail. He wondered if he should have pressed him to talk more. Asked him again about how things at the alpha site were going. If he was okay.
But Ronon didn't want to talk about being okay, either, and he wasn't sure he had the right to ask, anymore. He tried to focus. "What's the bad news?"
He caught Jayne's eyes darting nervously towards River, like he was concerned about her reaction, maybe, or her presence, but she was still. Staring at a piece of wire sticking out of the engine like she'd never seen anything so amazing. Wraith kills aside, it was hard to imagine the basis for Jayne's apparent respect.
They're probably close to kin. Cousins, maybe.
Zelenka shook himself and answered. "For one, we do not have access to the sensors you need, and we have no means of building them. But that is only a minor detail, as I do not know that it is an undertaking worth doing in the first place."
The other two were silent, letting the news sink in, so Ronon prompted him further. "What do you mean?"
"This ship does not possess hyperdrive capabilities. Therefore, it cannot go very far or very fast. The fuel required simply does not exist in a prepared state, and we do not have the capabilities to retrofit a different power supply. Even if we could find a fuel source, the ship could break orbit, but there is nowhere it will be able to reach. There are simply no planets nearby enough for the ship to make it, not at the current levels."
"You're tellin' me we'd wind up on the drift?" Jayne growled as he considered. "We're ruttin' stuck here?"
"That appears to be the case," Zelenka raised his hands in an attempt to placate the man. "But you do have access to the gate system."
"Right, well there's a problem with that. Places we been- the places we need to go ain't got nothin' like those gates. Ain't never even seen one of 'em until yesterday."
"Fascinating," Zelenka said, turning back to his tablet.
"What the hell d'you mean?"
"I was able to pull a large amount of data from the ship's navigation, and found it quite puzzling, to tell you the truth. I thought it had merely been scrambled somehow, but…" He began to type, and after a moment, apparently found what he was looking for.
"The information in your navigation systems," Zelenka stated, as if that explained everything. "At first glance, it is merely wrong. The measurements are just a little bit off. Let us say that you were using this data to find a planet with another gate. Most of the worlds, there is not this problem. But with these three," he pointed to the map on the screen, "you would not be able to get a lock, and would need to recalibrate. It seems that they are simply just, ah. Edged out of range."
Jayne looked like he was ready to try beating the point out of Zelenka, who was ignoring him as he continued. "Given what we know of drift, your maps look to be several hundred years ahead of what the solar system actually looks like. From where did you say you came?"
"They said something about Earth," Ronon offered when Jayne hesitated, sensing that it might be relevant.
"Yeah, Earth That Was," Jayne rolled his eyes. "Already told you. Got destroyed hundreds of years ago."
"No it wasn't," Zelenka offered as he glanced at Ronon, surprise evident on his face. He took his glasses off. "I do not have the tools to be one hundred percent positive, but I believe you have traveled much farther through time and space than you may have intended."
River stared, and Jayne scowled. his voice was a deadly monotone. "What the hell's that mean?"
Zelenka's eyes darted towards Ronon nervously. "You're three million light years off course, and about five hundred years in the past. And I am sorry, but for now, I can see no way in which you will be able to return."
6. Still Standing
Rating: PG for now
Spoilers: SGA: The Last Man, FF: Serenity
Pairing: Eventual Jayne Cobb/ Ronon Dex
Genre: Crossover
Warnings: None for this chapter.
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, don't take this too seriously.
Summary: Timelines diverge by converging.
Previous:
1. Man of Steel
2. Keys to the World
3. Lost
4. Gone Away
5. House is Not a Home
"What happens when Virgil's lost as well?"
Jayne blinked and tried opening his eyes again as he tried to figure out what the noise was. Found River standing at the foot of the ladder, tilting her head like she was listening to the hallway. "Huh?"
"Our guide. He pretends not to mourn, but not for us."
He wanted to ask her what the hell she was doing, standin' there in his room, but then he remembered. Shifted his eyes off of her, real quick, and took a moment to ponder on the idea that this was his life now.
He wondered if she was standin' there because she needed someone to tell her something she already knew. Needed to know something because someone told her, and not because she was reading them. A little bit of normality after all the mess.
Or maybe she just needs somethin'.
"Not rightly sure he'd appreciate either of us knowing that," Jayne finally responded, pushing himself into a sitting position.
"I know I'm not supposed to be here." Her mouth quirked apologetically and she adjusted her grip on the ladder. "But we're all three here and none of us are where we're supposed to be."
"Okay," Jayne shrugged, rubbing a hand over his face, trying to gauge her stance, see if this was one of her good days. "How are you feeling?"
River cocked her head. "Bad. Doesn't matter. There is business to attend to."
"Yeah," Jayne agreed, wishing it could all just wait a few more gorram minutes. Long enough for some coffee, at least. Time enough to splash some water on his face. But River continued.
"You were prepared for this. Expecting Death. Waiting for it. Foreknowledge."
"Dunno what you're on about," Jayne glanced over to the gun rack and away. Overreaction ain't gonna help nobody. "But I ain't hearin' none of your accusations right now, dong ma? I ran fast as I could, girl, and-"
"Not us. Your brother. Blood for air and choking cough."
"Aw, hell," Jayne waved a dismissive hand, covering his relief. "That ain't no secret. You were the one that set the course."
"I just meant that you were ready to mourn. Just not the right people."
"Yeah. Okay." Jayne sighed. This is going nowhere. "So what's your excuse?"
River smiled a little, then, self-effacing. "Insanity and mind reading, or haven't you heard?"
"Right." Jayne sat up straighter, then. Started planning. "Speakin' of your right frightenin' mind, you probably best be careful pokin' in where you ain't already known."
"You worry for his privacy?"
"I worry about him havin' cause to shoot you. He'll probably think you're a witch or some such."
"He doesn't frighten easily."
"But he startles real easy, dong ma?" Pulling his boots on, he considered. "Hell, it ain't like you're gonna mind me anyways. I'm just sayin' to. Uh. Mind your mind. And if you find yourself listenin' in, well. Tell me if you learn anything useful."
River nodded her understanding. "We're not where we're supposed to be, but he's the one that's lost."
That ain't useful. Jayne took a moment to stretch out his leg, feeling old wounds pull against the muscle. "Near's I can tell, bunch of his folks died too. Anyway, ain't rightly our first concern, we already got troubles need seein' to." He stood up and headed towards the ladder, waving River to go up ahead.
"Aye aye, Captain," she said, one foot on the bottom rung.
Jayne closed his eyes. "Don't. I ain't him, and you know it."
He waited a moment, and followed her up.
---
River stood, and gathered up her artwork. It was time.
Walking is serious business. Can't do it wrong, nightmares will follow, drag back holds on a mind. Forcing daylight into a darkness can be dangerous. But there's things to be done, seeds to be sown. Life can't happen before the planting.
Her steps were so slow that the metal warmed beneath her feet as she moved, and she was careful not to drop anything. The characters on Mal's marker were barely dried.
She'd wanted to join Jayne and Ronon, earlier, wanted to go with them to find a good place for Simon, who's quiet now, like the rest. You don't even know that there's any good in this world. It's a strange lack of knowledge. Cats in boxes. But Serenity's floor was hard and cold and she could do better for him, if they'd let her.
Jayne had told her to stay behind, but he'd promised to do what he could before leaving. He'd been kind when he said it, like he could be when he wanted. There hadn't been as much guilt as there usually was.
Feeling too bad about everything to feel bad about any one thing.
Continuing out into the late afternoon, she spotted them at the top of a nearby hill, the highest point in the middle of the valley. Seemed sunnier. No stones to make the ground hard underfoot, and no trees to block it from the sky.
She let herself listen. Jayne thought it wasn't good enough, was afraid of her reaction and that she'd have a tantrum over it, worried about Ronon's reaction. He was trying to form with defenses and arguments already, rehearsing safely in his head because he hadn't seen her coming yet.
He'd found the closest point to the sky they could reach, and land soft enough to dig.
He's better at finding the best in the worst than he thinks. Don't tell him you know it.
She arrived in time to watch Jayne and Ronon finish lowering the last body into the ground. Ronon stepped aside as she drew near, and she caught a general sense of this is not my place as he moved.
It was the first time anyone had drawn away from her out of respect, rather than fear, and she would have liked to think about that a little more. But now wasn't the time for it, and she'd promised not to push, not to listen more.
Jayne was watching her, but now that she'd arrived, she couldn't stop herself from staring down into the hole. There was only one grave, but they lay side by side. Closer than they'd been most of their lives. Dressed in black plastic, they all looked the same now. Like they were a matched set. Uniform and unified.
She knew they weren't buried that way so they'd be together after death, though, even if Jayne had entertained the thought when he'd been shoveling. It was just quicker to dig that way.
"I don't know who-" she broke off, shifting the load in her arms. "Where these go."
"Simon's right there," Jayne voice was quiet as he pointed to the body lying on the end. River nodded and handed him the marker. It was rough, wood torn from a shipping crate and hewn to a point, and it left a splinter in her hand. She ignored the intrusion, and handed Jayne Kaylee's marker when he reached out.
Within too few moments, four markers had been pounded into the dirt, and Jayne was looking at her with a puzzled expression, eyes darting from hers to her hands.
Glancing down, she saw the fifth marker she'd begun to prepare, and she stood, turning her head to see Ronon standing with his back to them, facing the burnt structure down below the next hill. She resisted the urge to look to Jayne for reassurance. She didn't need it.
"I didn't know what to write." She held the plank of bare wood out to Ronon. "You lost people too, but you're here. With us, and. You should. There's paint inside," she stopped herself again, trying not to babble. "I could go and-"
Ronon took the marker, then reached over to take the mallet from Jayne. After driving it into the ground a few feet away from the grave, he stood again, eyes on the wood like it was something more than a plank, like he knew what it was supposed to be even better than she did.
"Thanks," he said, talking out of the side of his mouth, like he was trying not to get caught speaking, and the three of them stood there, not knowing what came next.
"Figure we should say some words?" Jayne spoke into his chest like he didn't want to be heard, either.
She couldn't blame him for how final it sounded, and she wanted to disagree, contradict, but the words weren't there. Trying to find them just broke something loose in her head, and she couldn't keep up. She wanted the distraction, but it was so unfair.
Jayne might have been saying something, it sounded like a prayer, but River couldn't be positive. Wasn't sure that she heard right. Wasn't sure of anything, really, until she felt Jayne's hand take hers to press a handful of dirt into her curling palm.
She felt like she'd missed something important, then, but her feet remembered, and then her hands. She stepped close to the edge of the grave, dropping the dirt onto Simon's body. Watched some of it scatter, carried by a slight breeze to land on Kaylee, lying next to him.
It wasn't until she smiled at the sight of it that she realized she didn't know when she'd started crying.
---
Ronon didn't know exactly how far his invitation extended, so he tried not to touch anything as he surveyed the kitchen. It was unexpectedly warm and lived in, for being on a ship. It had been a home. Still was, maybe, but it wasn't his.
Everything here was well used and a little imperfect. The table and chairs were wooden, things he would have expected to see in his mother's house, but not on a ship. Old and comfortable.
Their technology, as far as he could tell, looked more like Earth technology than Ancient, except for when it didn't. A year ago, he might have thought about it, or waited for McKay or someone to ask.
He sat at the table and listened. The ship was silent, everything still and distant, or maybe it was the people. Jayne had mentioned something about getting cleaned up, and the girl- River, had run back into the ship before they'd finished backfilling the grave.
After a while, he heard tired, heavy footsteps in the corridor, and Jayne was entering the room, looking exhausted and drained, like he wouldn't have left his room if he'd been given the choice.
"Thanks," Jayne said. "For helping with everything." It wasn't the sort of thing that needed a response, but Ronon nodded anyway, and watched Jayne begin to prepare some food, which appeared to be blocks of varying shades of unpleasant.
He found himself missing Atlantis for the first time in weeks. Sitting at a table like this, he figured he had it in him to be missing a lot of places.
As if on cue, he heard his radio chirp to life. Pointing at his ear while looking at Jayne, he raised his head and responded.
"Ronon here."
"Ronon!" Zelenka's voice sounded surprised, but that wasn't unusual. "I am coming to see this ship of which you spoke."
"I'll come and meet you on the trail," he stood, hand going to his hip, checking for the gun he knew was there..
"No need. It is easy enough to follow. The jumper will drop me off in a few moments."
"Thanks," Ronon said, stopping himself from asking how they'd managed to get one to the alpha site, and turning again to Jayne. "He's on his way." Alone, he didn't add, because he wasn't sure if it meant anything yet.
"Shiny," Jayne nodded, handing over a plate. Grabbing his own, he started moving from the kitchen. "We'll meet 'em out front."
---
Thankfully, Zelenka didn't seem to want to talk, not about Atlantis and the alpha site. There was a large bruise over one side of his face, and shadows under his eyes behind his glasses.
If he'd been McKay, he wouldn't have shut up about it. But Zelenka threw himself into the workings of the ship like it was the only thing worth considering, and he didn't say much. Just asked Jayne questions he had no answers for, and asked River questions he couldn't understand the answers to.
"You got any idea what he's doing?" Jayne asked, at one point, ducking his head back into the engine room, suspiciously watching Zelenka running diagnostics and muttering to himself.
"No," Ronon smirked. "But it's the kind of thing I'm used to not getting."
---
It took Zelenka less than an hour to find out what was wrong.
"There is good news and there is also bad," he said, warily accepting a cup of coffee from River as he sat down and pulled up some images on his tablet. "The errors in the systems can be repaired, and from what I can see, it would be simple enough to interface and calibrate new sensors. The ships workings are fairly basic, if a little. Well. Yes."
He sighed, rubbed a hand through his hair, and Ronon could see the exhaustion, the mind about to derail. He wondered if he should have pressed him to talk more. Asked him again about how things at the alpha site were going. If he was okay.
But Ronon didn't want to talk about being okay, either, and he wasn't sure he had the right to ask, anymore. He tried to focus. "What's the bad news?"
He caught Jayne's eyes darting nervously towards River, like he was concerned about her reaction, maybe, or her presence, but she was still. Staring at a piece of wire sticking out of the engine like she'd never seen anything so amazing. Wraith kills aside, it was hard to imagine the basis for Jayne's apparent respect.
They're probably close to kin. Cousins, maybe.
Zelenka shook himself and answered. "For one, we do not have access to the sensors you need, and we have no means of building them. But that is only a minor detail, as I do not know that it is an undertaking worth doing in the first place."
The other two were silent, letting the news sink in, so Ronon prompted him further. "What do you mean?"
"This ship does not possess hyperdrive capabilities. Therefore, it cannot go very far or very fast. The fuel required simply does not exist in a prepared state, and we do not have the capabilities to retrofit a different power supply. Even if we could find a fuel source, the ship could break orbit, but there is nowhere it will be able to reach. There are simply no planets nearby enough for the ship to make it, not at the current levels."
"You're tellin' me we'd wind up on the drift?" Jayne growled as he considered. "We're ruttin' stuck here?"
"That appears to be the case," Zelenka raised his hands in an attempt to placate the man. "But you do have access to the gate system."
"Right, well there's a problem with that. Places we been- the places we need to go ain't got nothin' like those gates. Ain't never even seen one of 'em until yesterday."
"Fascinating," Zelenka said, turning back to his tablet.
"What the hell d'you mean?"
"I was able to pull a large amount of data from the ship's navigation, and found it quite puzzling, to tell you the truth. I thought it had merely been scrambled somehow, but…" He began to type, and after a moment, apparently found what he was looking for.
"The information in your navigation systems," Zelenka stated, as if that explained everything. "At first glance, it is merely wrong. The measurements are just a little bit off. Let us say that you were using this data to find a planet with another gate. Most of the worlds, there is not this problem. But with these three," he pointed to the map on the screen, "you would not be able to get a lock, and would need to recalibrate. It seems that they are simply just, ah. Edged out of range."
Jayne looked like he was ready to try beating the point out of Zelenka, who was ignoring him as he continued. "Given what we know of drift, your maps look to be several hundred years ahead of what the solar system actually looks like. From where did you say you came?"
"They said something about Earth," Ronon offered when Jayne hesitated, sensing that it might be relevant.
"Yeah, Earth That Was," Jayne rolled his eyes. "Already told you. Got destroyed hundreds of years ago."
"No it wasn't," Zelenka offered as he glanced at Ronon, surprise evident on his face. He took his glasses off. "I do not have the tools to be one hundred percent positive, but I believe you have traveled much farther through time and space than you may have intended."
River stared, and Jayne scowled. his voice was a deadly monotone. "What the hell's that mean?"
Zelenka's eyes darted towards Ronon nervously. "You're three million light years off course, and about five hundred years in the past. And I am sorry, but for now, I can see no way in which you will be able to return."
6. Still Standing