sga_flashfic | Before the Sun (Gods and Monsters Challenge)

sga_flashfic Gods and Monsters Challenge

Title: Before the Sun
Rating: PG-13, some language
Pairing: Gen
Spoilers: none

Summary: Because one episode is not enough about the furlings. Historical au speculation. For the Gods and Monsters Challenge.

A/N: this is the first piece of SGA fanfiction I’ve ever written. Part of a much larger mythos I’ve had kicking around in the back of my head for ages.

“So what’s McKay found now?”

Teyla smiled ruefully and shook her head as Ronan caught up with her in the control room corridor, “I am uncertain, though he did mention something about it being ‘bigger than the Aurora’. Perhaps another Ancient ship adrift in space?”

“Huh, didn’t turn out too useful last time.”

“True, though that was unfortunate.”

He grunted, they had reached the conference room. Sheppard slouched in his usual seat around the table, Teyla and Ronan joined him, both sitting on the opposite side leaving space for Rodney. Mr. Woolsey appeared shortly, hands full of file folders and took his place at the head of the mahogany oak table, shuffling papers and clearing his throat. Sheppard quirked his eyebrow but didn’t say anything, swiveling his chair lazily from side to side.

The silence stretched and suddenly McKay was there, bustling in loudly, arguing with Radek, both of them nearly bursting with the excitement of their discovery.

“Ah, Doctors, would you care to explain in further detail what you’ve found?”

McKay turned to the room, a smirk breaking out across his face as Radek plugged his tablet into the Atlantean projector unit.

“Yes, let me introduce you all to a little something we’ve found called Project Hyperion...”

She had brought her own imaging software, similar to but vastly superior in its motility and manipulation. The entire unit was self contained in a slender personal finger computer. a flick of her wrist brought up the interactive blueprints, spidering out around her in a complicated web of electric blue threads.

The ship was barely forty percent finished, a hallowed husk of a shell and a core drive. Materiel delays drove back their start on secondary systems and fine tuned controls, manual interfaces, everything to make it serviceable. She stood in its empty bowels, surrounded by the gut deep thrum of the engine pumping out energy to the rest of their equipment, the prefab settlement a hundred yards away.

The PFC adjusted to bring up a complementary view, enveloping her in plans for the rest of the engine compartment. It filled in all the details still missing, matching seamlessly together with the parts of the ship they had managed to construct.

“Architect?”

Turning, “Yes?” her eyes never left the graceful lines of what could be.

“A blip just appeared on the edges of our sensor array, they are not responding to hails. Captain Macohan is requesting we evacuate the sight.”

“The wraith?”

“Unconfirmed but it seems a likely explanation.”

Her lips twisted wryly, “I thought they said this location could never be discovered?”

The rhetorical question made the young assistant uncomfortable. He twisted his face to remain neutral an repeated, “Perhaps we should go.”

“If it is the wraith, I’d rather be here. Get everyone else out.”

“But Captain--”

“Has no authority over me.”

The radio on the young man’s neck crackled, spitting static and a frantic voice. His eyes widened comically and she turned him forcefully around, propelling him towards the exit where a half dozen other people on the project were scrambling to evacuate. The entire ship shook with the ground, showering show everywhere as it fell through uncompleted sections of the hull. Only the pale blue glow of the engine offered any warmth, completely contained and stabilized, physically emitting nothing.

She flicked snow off her wrist and shut down the PFC. Her own radio squawked from its place on the room’s lone console,

“St. Claire, furling or no, the counsel has charged me with your safe keeping, now I demand that you return to Base Point immediately. Confirmed Wraith cruised entering orbit. I repeat--”

She slapped irritably at the little device, cutting off the voice and muttered, “Not leaving, not like this.” The ship shook, more snow filling in the cavern, outside the air whistled ominously, she could almost image the whine of ships.

Simulation equipment lay scattered on every surface and plugged into every connection. She pocketed her PFC and went to work ripping out every terminal interface as the floor shook again, scattering tools. Distantly she heard the unmistakable sound of explosives going off, the wraith would penetrate the outer doors easily enough, no worried about damaging the Atlantean technology they no doubt sought. To herself she grinned crookedly, wouldn’t they be disappointed to find no Zero-Point power modules.

She worked faster, secure in the belief that the rest of the tech crew would have had time to pack up the rest of the ship’s sensitive areas. Footsteps rang out in the corridor, pounding on the mostly finished deck plating, then on the door to her cavernous chamber.

“Bugger,” she threw the last of the hand monitors into a pile by the main reactor. She thumbed her PFC back to life, interfacing with the main computer wirelessly, calling up the self-destruct protocols. The comm unit slipped back onto her neck and she tapped it back on. A cacophony of voices talking over one another burst forth before the Captain’s voice silenced them all with a word.

She cleared her voice, “Captain? What’s the situation out there?”

“St. Claire? Where the hell are you?”

“Engine room. I’m alone for the moment but the wraith are knocking on the door,” significant pause, “will you stop them?”

“Do you have any idea how many recourses have gone into this project Doctor?”

“Perfectly. But I must inform you, I have orders too; now, will you stop them?”

“No.”

“Then get out of here. Trust me, you wont want to be around when this thing goes.”

“You can’t--”

Master Architect Lylith St. Claire cut off the transmission and carelessly tossed the comm onto the top of the pile. She could feel the mindless, clawing hunger behind the door, rattling the weakening alloy. It was an animal hunger, filled with stray and fleeting thoughts, such alien thinking, it made the back of her neck itch, too much, too familiar to--

She gave the Icar a minute, eyes glued to the room’s only entrance. Beneath her feet the floor rumbled softly, time was up. Mercilessly her finger stabbed down, activating the self-distruct. The PFC bleeped piteously and nothing happened, the entire engine structure grinding against itself, the sound whining higher and higher.

She cursed, the door finally gave way a little, enough to let in a wraith, not one of their brute ground soldiers, a scientist. His gun was already coming up, tracking her as she dove under the main console. Shots splattered off the controls, hitting the reactor column. They glanced of the coolant casing, charing the cool blue metal. She scrabbled underneath the consoles’ seat for her bag, drawing out a sleek black blaster. Not regulation, not like Pegasus’s clunky energy weapons.

More wraith poured through the crumbling door, scattering throughout the thundering room. She pulled up a diagnostic screen on the PFC, shooting blindly over her head. The destruct algorithm refused to initiate, blinking angrily at her. A secondary window swung up on her left, warning her about containment failure in coolant tank one.

“What, what, what?” she dodged a trio of shots and slid out from behind the console, firing rapidly. She ran to wall, ducking into a stair alcove and climbing up towards the second level, eyes running through the live-feed monitoring the engine core. It was about to get very cold or very very hot. It was not a flaw.

A wraith waited for her at the top, snarling harshly, bringing his weapon to bear almost before she had a chance to turn around.

“Fuck it,” she hurled the PFC without thinking, clipping him sharply in the face, already running, barreling into the wraith’s center of gravity, into the railing; above their heads the coolant tank cracked, groaned and shattered, tank two followed closely, freezing the engine with a wheeze.

She never hit the ground.

“You don’t think the fact that they completely lost contact with this high priority project isn’t a little...suspicious? Or I don’t know, at least indicative that something really really bad happened?”

McKay waved away Sheppard’s skepticism, “Really not the point.”

The Colonel arched a dark eyebrow and swiveled his chair some more.

Radak cleared this throat, “Part of the report seems to indicate that Project Hyperion was, uh, considered somewhat radical by certain members of the Atlantean council. They also reference a ‘Master Architect Sinclaire’.”

This time Woolsey spoke up first, “And the significance of this is?”

“There is no Doctor Sinclaire or St. Claire or even just Claire listed amongst the Atlantis population. Nor is there any other reference to such a position. According to linguistics, it’s something of an anomaly.”

“Yes, anyways, as fascinating as all this is, the point,” Rodney shot an irritated look from Sheppard to Radek, “the point is that the Hyperion was supposed to be a ship to outstrip anything the Ancients had ever built, maybe even Atlantis. The people who pushed the project through billed it at a warcraft to end all war. Now, I think that definitely sounds like something worth checking out.”

Sheppard tilted his head marginally and swung back to glance at Woolsey who seemed to mull the information over for a minute before nodding.

Together, the team stood from the table with the parting reminder,

“Just watch yourselves, yes?”

End.