Chapter Text
The cryo wasn’t so bad.
Sure, it left a bad taste in your mouth and made you pretty stiff, at best it seemed to have taken several hours to get warm after waking, gave you a killer headache, and some people were even getting sick to their stomachs…
Ok, so the cryo was pretty bad.
Belle was still dizzy from it, and though it didn’t feel like time had passed, she knew it had. Three years’ worth. As she walked down the corridor back towards her quarters, she realized that she didn’t feel very different than the day they left. There was a cut on her hand that still stung. The taste of Nick’s last kiss before the cryo was still in her mouth. She wasn’t even hungry, having eaten just before they entered the pods. It felt like only a few seconds had gone by, rather than a few years.
Eli and Colonel Young were making rounds to check on the people coming out of cryo- apparently Eli had been one of the first to wake. People were hugging and a few were crying, but Belle was just concentrating on walking straight. The more she moved, the more her head seemed to clear. Maybe she just needed to get her blood pumping again.
She heard Nick’s voice over the speaker announcing that Destiny was heading towards a star to replenish its power reserves, and that everyone should report to their quarters for some non-cryo sleep until the job was done. The ship was flying on autopilot now. Belle rolled her eyes and made her way towards the control room. As expected, Nicholas was sitting in the captain’s chair, staring out the windows into space.
“What happened to non-cryo sleep?” she asked softly, and he turned to face her, surprised.
“You know me too well.” He got up from the chair, walking over to hug her.
“What’s wrong? Something’s eating at you, I know it is.”
“These readings. They’re not consistent with what they should be, not if the ship was heading on the path that we thought it was on before.” He gestured to the screen, and Belle bent over it, squinting. Her vision was slightly blurry from sleep, but she could make out the numbers without too much trouble.
“It’s like… it can’t be.” She said, scrolling through the list of numbers.
“You see it, too?”
“It’s like it’s… turning around?” Belle looked up at him, shocked. The Destiny’s autopilot system should be routed to take them deeper into space, not back the way they came! Yet, here they were, and those were the readings, and after they passed through the star this ship was going to turn around and head towards Earth. “Why’s it doing that? We’re three or four billion light years away from home- why turn around? We won’t make it back within our lifetimes!”
Nicholas took over scanning through the database, trying to access some of the flight records. An idea was forming in his head, and however insane, it just might be the only explanation for what was going on.
“Follow me on this one.” He said, slipping his glasses on. “We think the Ancients programmed this ship to go out into space looking for some sort of intelligent, higher being.”
“God.” Belle said, preferring to say things frankly.
“God, if you will.” Nicholas conceded with a shrug. “Now, they ascended before they could board the ship and finish the mission, meaning that we don’t know exactly what happened to them, but we know the ship is intelligent.” He glanced up from the screen for a moment, looking for confirmation. Belle nodded.
“Following. Keep going.”
“So far the only things it knows about us have been what Eli and I were feeding it to get us out of trouble-”
“Like when the life support system was failing.” Belle remembered him mentioning something about that when they first boarded the ship, but the memory was fuzzy.
“Exactly. Now, remember when Telford was trapped on the alien seed ship?”
“Yes…”
“They couldn’t communicate because they didn’t speak the same language, so they put him in one of the cryo pods. The technology was telepathic- it allowed him to communicate with the aliens on the ship through memories.” He was still going through old flight records, but Belle was beginning to understand what he was getting at.
“And you think the Destiny picked up thoughts from us while we were in the pods.” Belle nodded slowly. It was a good theory, really.
“And since it knows that most of the current inhabitants want a different thing than what the ship was originally set to do, it’s altered our course.” Nicholas finally stopped scrolling, pointing at a section of data that seemed to differ from the rest. “This is where our inhabitance of the ship begins. We know for a fact that we went into FTL a few minutes after the gate closed-”
“You can’t open a Stargate in FTL, though.” She was following until he tried to show her this. Everyone on board knew about the “no gates in FTL” rule. You couldn’t get a lock on the coordinates that way.
“Yes, but my point is this.” He pointed to the block of numbers before they came. “Look at the distance. Before we got here the thing was moving so slowly that it couldn’t have been traveling in FTL.”
“It was drifting?”
“Apparently the ship only went so far in FTL before it just started to drift. It would have needed to stop to set up all those Stargates, anyways, and if the Ancients couldn’t board during FTL-”
“Then it would make sense for the ship to be drifting as much as possible, so that they could board whenever they needed to.” Belle finished, smiling. “And then once we boarded the FTL settings kicked in.”
“Meaning that three or four billion light years might not be as unachievable as we thought.” Nicholas sighed, sliding back down into the chair.
“What’s wrong?” Belle asked, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Are you still…”
“Yeah.” He admitted. They’d had the conversation about Destiny’s mission before. When it had seemed as if there was no hope of ever getting home, he’d been perfectly comfortable with advocating continuing out into the stars, but now… now he was torn. Taking the ship back for further study from Earth was a possibility, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to miss whatever else was out there.
“Are you going to tell them?” She wouldn’t force him to, and he knew it.
“I don’t have much of a choice.” Nicholas shook his head slowly, removing his glasses and sliding them into a pocket. “If we keep going out into space we’ll have to have a crew out here at all times to fly the blasted thing, and I can’t explain to them why we can’t use autopilot.”
“Ok.” Belle said. She knew how tough this was going to be for him. Honestly, she wouldn’t have minded staying out here forever before, but now… now they had a chance. “I think we should get working on some numbers before we let them know, though.” Numbers that might equate to time, preferably. The Colonel would want to know as much as possible.
“Agreed.” He leaned over to grab a notepad and pencil, but Belle stopped him.
“Sleep now. There’s nothing you can do until we’re through the star, and you know you won’t be able to function without rest.” She pulled him to his feet, guiding him back down the hallway to the quarters they shared.
Sleep would be a good thing for both of them at this point. The air was full of possibilities, and she could already feel them beginning to infect her. Best sleep while she still cared about getting rest.
X
The Colonel came into their quarters two days later. They’d hardly left the room except for food and to check numbers from the bridge, scribbling calculations on walls and any sheets of paper they could find. Eli was in on their theory as well, and he thought it was not only possible, but that it had a good chance of working.
“Alright, Rush. What’s going on?” he asked. They had passed through the star, and the ship was beginning the procedure to turn around and head back towards Earth. It was a good thing the number crunching was going faster than expected, otherwise they wouldn’t have had anything solid to give him.
“Destiny is turning around.” Belle said quickly, jotting down a number. Eli and Nicholas were finishing up with the last piece of information.
“What?” Colonel young stood, dumbstruck. Those were words he had definitely never expected to hear. While Nicholas worked through the last of the numbers, checking and double checking the results, Belle and Eli explained their theory to the Colonel.
Destiny was a sentient ship, and during cryo had managed to look at the minds and memories in the pods, and the autopilot rerouted its course back to Earth. There were a few technicalities that she babbled through as best she could while Young launched rapid-fire questions at her, but that was the gist of what was going on.
“We won’t reach Earth within our lifetimes, though.” He said.
“That’s what we thought, too.” Nicholas finally stopped frantically writing numbers to look up at him. “But we checked the flight records and found out that, for the majority of the time that Destiny has been in space, it’s been drifting.”
“Meaning what? I’m not a scientist, I need things spelled out for me.” Young was clearly becoming annoyed.
“Dr. French and I ran the numbers, and as long as we spend the majority of the time in FTL, we should be able to make it back within the decade.” Nicholas said. “It’s looking like about eight to ten years. You can check the autopilot course yourself, if you like.” Young still looked suspicious.
“What about the drones? Won’t we have to go back through that?” he asked.
“I already checked that.” Eli said. “Destiny is taking us on an exterior path, around the drones. It’ll add a year or two to the journey, but I’d say it’s worth it.”
“So… this is a possibility? We’re really going home?” the Colonel asked.
“I think it’s best we keep it on a need-to-know basis for now.” Nicholas said. “We’ll stop at a stargate to resupply soon, and the less people get their hopes up, the better. Let’s get on a solid platform towards making it to Earth before we tell them.”
“You know, for once I actually agree with you.” The Colonel said, nodding.
“This is a very delicate situation, Colonel.” Rush said, glancing over at Belle, who nodded in agreement.
“We can take care of the technicalities for now, but it’s probably a good idea if you prepare the higher authority figures for the news.” She wanted things to go as smoothly as possible- if something went wrong it would all come down on Nick’s head, and Eli’s, too. Possibly hers, but she could handle herself. It was more worrisome about the violent reaction of some of the passengers and crew towards the two men who could make or break the journey.
“You two know better than most that this place is a breeding ground for gossip,” the Colonel sighed, “But I’ll do what I can.”