Intro post and fic
Hey guys! Welcome to Stargate Serenity, an open crossover AU. :-) This is set just after "Objects in Space" in the Firefly 'verse, and just after "Beachhead"/"Trinity" for Atlantis/SG-1.
Below is the introductory story for the universe, which I'm writing, but as it's a WIP, PLEASE don't feel you have to wait for it to be finished to post your own stuff! There is no real established continuity--'ships, character interactions, etc. are all pretty much up to whatever you want to see. All that's "canon" for the universe is how Serenity got to Atlantis:
Basically, I'm assuming that the events of these two eps took place very close to each other, timewise. So, the idea is that the combined destruction of 3/4 of a solar system--especially considering the nature of the power source that caused it--and an uber-gate/black hole somehow warped the space-time continuum so badly that it yanked Serenity out of its not-so-peaceful little alien-free future and into Atlantis' present. And, since McKay is strictly forbidden from even *trying* to duplicate those conditions to send her back, the crew is stuck here.
There are a few things I'd like to see, but I'll either write those or issue challenges accordingly. *g*
Anyway, on to the fic!
"Someone Else's Sky"
by Azar
Part I
"Somebody wanna tell me what in the sphincter of hell I'm lookin' at?" Mal asked.
Wasn't more than a few minutes ago, he'd thought the sphincter of hell was exactly what he'd been looking at: what with the whole world going bright white for a bit, brighter even than the sky over Serenity Valley at the height of the Alliance bombardment. Might've still thought he was there, 'ceptin' for the fact that if there was a hell, he was pretty damned sure that at least Kaylee and the Shepherd wouldn't be joining him there. And seeing as how they were standing up on the bridge with the rest of the crew--all of them a mite curious to know what just happened--that shortened the list of possible whereabouts by at least one.
"It's a city," the Doc stated the obvious, yet somehow still managed to sound all skeptical like. "A...floating city."
"How is that possible?" Kaylee asked with a little frown. "I mean, even the Alliance ain't got cities that fancy."
"Not to mention that isolated," Book contributed, taking a step forward with a small frown creasing his features. "It isn't like the Alliance to only settle one part of a planet and leave the rest uninhabited. Nor is it like them to terraform a world with so little...well, terra."
"I'm still stuck on the floating part," Wash pointed out. "How is it doing that?"
Even whilst asking, Wash was already bringing Serenity in closer to try to flush out an answer.
"It must be on some small island," Zoe suggested.
Mal'd be inclined to agree, only now they were close enough to see a bit more of the shape of things. And there weren't no way there was an island in the 'verse with that lopsided taste in hats--the city done lopped way too far over the edge of anything to be sitting on anything. "Right. Either way, I'm not feelin' inclined to drop in and say howdy without a piece more informa--yeow! What in the hell is that?"
"That" was a rippling transparent curtain of what looked like energy that had suddenly started to creep up from the docks of the city towards the sky, causing Wash to bank steeply to get them outta the way and almost topple them all off their feet in the process.
"It's a myth," River said, speaking for the first time as she stepped forward towards the window as though mesmerized. "Only they dug it up and wrung the water out and woke the monsters, and now they can't go home because it's all their fault."
As usual, what she said made no gorramn sense whatsoever, but it still seemed enough to make the doctor nervous. "Captain, whatever's going on here, I'd prefer not to wait around trying to figure it out until the Alliance catches up to us--"
"They can't find us here," his sister interrupted, a luminous smile slowly spreading across her face. "Too many stars and too many possibilities between us. What won't be made can't find what was never born."
Only thing that made sense out of that whole sentence was the first part: hell if Mal knew why, but River seemed to think wherever that bright flash had ricocheted them off to, it was beyond the Alliance's reach. In other words, it was the place he'd dreamed of his whole gorramn life. Maybe there was a God after all.
Simon took a step closer to his sister. "River, are you saying...are you saying this place is safe?"
She gave him a look that hearkened back to the bratty little sister Mal imagined she might've been before the Alliance got to messing with her brain. "It isn't safe. But the people aren't the danger here--they'll protect us, as long as the monsters don't know."
Mal looked at his pilot. Wash shrugged and admitted, "There was a reason we were going to stop on Persephone, besides calling on Badger and dropping off Inara."
Inara. The only one who hadn't come up the bridge but had stayed behind in her shuttle, insisting she had packing yet to do and she trusted them to keep her informed.
"At the least we need fuel," Wash continued. "And no telling where else we might find it if we're that far out."
"Now wait just a gorramn minute!" Jayne put his two coin in for the first time. "Tell me we ain't planning on going in there just on the word of the crazy girl."
Mal made his decision and straightened up. "We're not. But neither am I too keen on ending up dead in the water. Again." He thumped Wash on the shoulder. "See if you can't raise the city, ask 'em if they'd mind dropping that fancy curtain for a bit and letting us in."
~+~+~+~
"You're telling me you've never seen a ship like that before?" Elizabeth asked, frowning.
"Yes, but considering we're in another galaxy, that's not really all that surprising, is it?" Rodney snapped back, his hands flying over the controls as his eyes remained glued to the screen. "That thing shouldn't even be flying. If what I'm reading is even close to correct, it's been rewired so many times it's a miracle it's still in one piece."
She felt her own temper rise at his condescending tone, but clamped down on it. McKay's patience had been a little thinner than usual lately, but considering the bruising his ego had taken that wasn't really surprising. He'd made a mistake of unimaginable scope, and lost the trust of those closest to him in the process; he was hurt and afraid, and as always when confronted with those feelings, he became even more abrasive and critical than usual--trying to convince himself he didn't care. Suppressing a sigh, Elizabeth decided she'd have to speak to him, but later--after the current situation had been resolved.
"Can you at least tell if it's a Wraith design?"
That earned her a sharp look. "It's not, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. It could be Genii or Olesian or some race we've never even heard of that just decided to hate us because we woke the Wraith."
Raising one hand thoughtfully to her lips, Weir stared at the strange ship on the viewscreen for several moments, until it turned to make a closer pass at the city. It didn't appear to be carrying any weapons, but just in case--"Raise the shield."
Muttering something under his breath that was probably "finally," Rodney obeyed and the shimmering dome of light wrapped itself around Atlantis, forcing the strange vessel to bank steeply to keep from getting cut in half by it. She was definitely going to have to have a talk with him later.
"Damn. That's a hell of a maneuver," John commented at her elbow. "Especially considering the size of that thing."
Elizabeth glanced at her military commander, surprised by the admiring tone of his voice. She couldn't remember ever hearing him praise someone else's piloting skills before.
He shrugged. "I mean, I could probably do that in a puddle-jumper, or an X-303, but they're both a hell of a lot smaller and more maneuverable. That's more like barnstorming in the Daedelus."
Suddenly she wanted to meet these strangers--the explorer in her wanted to glimpse the inside of this ship unlike anything they'd ever seen, to meet the pilot who could impress John Sheppard and the engineer who could inspire thinly-veiled envy in Rodney McKay.
"Huh. That's interesting." Speaking of McKay...
She turned to him. "What is?"
He pointed to something on the screen that meant nothing to her. "If they have a hyperdrive, the sensors aren't detecting it, but there's no way that ship would fit through the 'gate."
That got John's attention. "So then how did they get here?" he asked, stepping closer.
"How the hell should I know?" Rodney snapped. "I'm not--wait a second...I think I'm getting a signal from the ship..."
He stopped mid-rant, hands beginning to fly over both the Ancient panel and the keyboard of the laptop connected to it. An instant later, a burst of white noise exploded over the speakers, then gradually resolved itself into intelligible speech as McKay adjusted the frequency.
"...hoping we could maybe stop in for a bit, get some fuel and supplies 'fore heading back out. 'Course, s'up to you considering you've got that fancy shmancy dome thing and all..."
Rodney made a disbelieving face. "'Fancy shmancy,' 'stop in for a bit'...what is this, Wagon Train?"
Elizabeth's back straightened as she raised one hand to her earpiece. "This is Dr. Elizabeth Weir of Atlantis. Who am I speaking to?"
~+~+~+~
Mal stopped speaking to throw a befuddled look in Wash's direction. Atlantis? He didn't remember no planet in the 'verse named Atlantis. Didn't appear that anybody else on Serenity did neither, 'cept for maybe River, who was still staring out the window with that same entranced look on her face.
"Hello?" the woman's--Dr. Weir's--voice crackled through the air once again.
Mal cleared his throat. "Ah, Malcolm Reynolds, captain of the transport ship Serenity. We ain't looking for no trouble, just got a mite off-course and need to restock."
~+~+~+~
Well, this was turning out to be quite an interesting day, Elizabeth thought, looking around her and raising one surprised eyebrow. Malcolm Reynolds was certainly not a name she'd ever expected to hear in this galaxy, at least not without having heard it first in the Milky Way and approved him joining her expedition. Could it be that a culture out here had developed so parallel to their own that even the names were similar? It had happened back home, but humans in the Pegasus galaxy had been planted here long before humans on Earth had anything resembling culture.
Colonel Caldwell would probably remind her at this point of the danger of indulging her curiosity, but Caldwell and the Daedelus were at least two days out still on their last trip back from Earth. Which, among other things, left their usual landing pad empty.
"You say the ship doesn't have any weapons?" she asked Rodney, just to be sure.
"It doesn't appear to, no, but I imagine if they overloaded the reactor powering it, it would have the same effect," he shot back.
She ignored him, turning instead to John. "Take a security team down to the East Pier. Just in case."
He nodded and ducked out of the room, while she turned her attention back to their visitors. "Captain Reynolds? We're going to lower the shield..."
(Continued...)
Below is the introductory story for the universe, which I'm writing, but as it's a WIP, PLEASE don't feel you have to wait for it to be finished to post your own stuff! There is no real established continuity--'ships, character interactions, etc. are all pretty much up to whatever you want to see. All that's "canon" for the universe is how Serenity got to Atlantis:
Basically, I'm assuming that the events of these two eps took place very close to each other, timewise. So, the idea is that the combined destruction of 3/4 of a solar system--especially considering the nature of the power source that caused it--and an uber-gate/black hole somehow warped the space-time continuum so badly that it yanked Serenity out of its not-so-peaceful little alien-free future and into Atlantis' present. And, since McKay is strictly forbidden from even *trying* to duplicate those conditions to send her back, the crew is stuck here.
There are a few things I'd like to see, but I'll either write those or issue challenges accordingly. *g*
Anyway, on to the fic!
"Someone Else's Sky"
by Azar
Part I
"Somebody wanna tell me what in the sphincter of hell I'm lookin' at?" Mal asked.
Wasn't more than a few minutes ago, he'd thought the sphincter of hell was exactly what he'd been looking at: what with the whole world going bright white for a bit, brighter even than the sky over Serenity Valley at the height of the Alliance bombardment. Might've still thought he was there, 'ceptin' for the fact that if there was a hell, he was pretty damned sure that at least Kaylee and the Shepherd wouldn't be joining him there. And seeing as how they were standing up on the bridge with the rest of the crew--all of them a mite curious to know what just happened--that shortened the list of possible whereabouts by at least one.
"It's a city," the Doc stated the obvious, yet somehow still managed to sound all skeptical like. "A...floating city."
"How is that possible?" Kaylee asked with a little frown. "I mean, even the Alliance ain't got cities that fancy."
"Not to mention that isolated," Book contributed, taking a step forward with a small frown creasing his features. "It isn't like the Alliance to only settle one part of a planet and leave the rest uninhabited. Nor is it like them to terraform a world with so little...well, terra."
"I'm still stuck on the floating part," Wash pointed out. "How is it doing that?"
Even whilst asking, Wash was already bringing Serenity in closer to try to flush out an answer.
"It must be on some small island," Zoe suggested.
Mal'd be inclined to agree, only now they were close enough to see a bit more of the shape of things. And there weren't no way there was an island in the 'verse with that lopsided taste in hats--the city done lopped way too far over the edge of anything to be sitting on anything. "Right. Either way, I'm not feelin' inclined to drop in and say howdy without a piece more informa--yeow! What in the hell is that?"
"That" was a rippling transparent curtain of what looked like energy that had suddenly started to creep up from the docks of the city towards the sky, causing Wash to bank steeply to get them outta the way and almost topple them all off their feet in the process.
"It's a myth," River said, speaking for the first time as she stepped forward towards the window as though mesmerized. "Only they dug it up and wrung the water out and woke the monsters, and now they can't go home because it's all their fault."
As usual, what she said made no gorramn sense whatsoever, but it still seemed enough to make the doctor nervous. "Captain, whatever's going on here, I'd prefer not to wait around trying to figure it out until the Alliance catches up to us--"
"They can't find us here," his sister interrupted, a luminous smile slowly spreading across her face. "Too many stars and too many possibilities between us. What won't be made can't find what was never born."
Only thing that made sense out of that whole sentence was the first part: hell if Mal knew why, but River seemed to think wherever that bright flash had ricocheted them off to, it was beyond the Alliance's reach. In other words, it was the place he'd dreamed of his whole gorramn life. Maybe there was a God after all.
Simon took a step closer to his sister. "River, are you saying...are you saying this place is safe?"
She gave him a look that hearkened back to the bratty little sister Mal imagined she might've been before the Alliance got to messing with her brain. "It isn't safe. But the people aren't the danger here--they'll protect us, as long as the monsters don't know."
Mal looked at his pilot. Wash shrugged and admitted, "There was a reason we were going to stop on Persephone, besides calling on Badger and dropping off Inara."
Inara. The only one who hadn't come up the bridge but had stayed behind in her shuttle, insisting she had packing yet to do and she trusted them to keep her informed.
"At the least we need fuel," Wash continued. "And no telling where else we might find it if we're that far out."
"Now wait just a gorramn minute!" Jayne put his two coin in for the first time. "Tell me we ain't planning on going in there just on the word of the crazy girl."
Mal made his decision and straightened up. "We're not. But neither am I too keen on ending up dead in the water. Again." He thumped Wash on the shoulder. "See if you can't raise the city, ask 'em if they'd mind dropping that fancy curtain for a bit and letting us in."
~+~+~+~
"You're telling me you've never seen a ship like that before?" Elizabeth asked, frowning.
"Yes, but considering we're in another galaxy, that's not really all that surprising, is it?" Rodney snapped back, his hands flying over the controls as his eyes remained glued to the screen. "That thing shouldn't even be flying. If what I'm reading is even close to correct, it's been rewired so many times it's a miracle it's still in one piece."
She felt her own temper rise at his condescending tone, but clamped down on it. McKay's patience had been a little thinner than usual lately, but considering the bruising his ego had taken that wasn't really surprising. He'd made a mistake of unimaginable scope, and lost the trust of those closest to him in the process; he was hurt and afraid, and as always when confronted with those feelings, he became even more abrasive and critical than usual--trying to convince himself he didn't care. Suppressing a sigh, Elizabeth decided she'd have to speak to him, but later--after the current situation had been resolved.
"Can you at least tell if it's a Wraith design?"
That earned her a sharp look. "It's not, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. It could be Genii or Olesian or some race we've never even heard of that just decided to hate us because we woke the Wraith."
Raising one hand thoughtfully to her lips, Weir stared at the strange ship on the viewscreen for several moments, until it turned to make a closer pass at the city. It didn't appear to be carrying any weapons, but just in case--"Raise the shield."
Muttering something under his breath that was probably "finally," Rodney obeyed and the shimmering dome of light wrapped itself around Atlantis, forcing the strange vessel to bank steeply to keep from getting cut in half by it. She was definitely going to have to have a talk with him later.
"Damn. That's a hell of a maneuver," John commented at her elbow. "Especially considering the size of that thing."
Elizabeth glanced at her military commander, surprised by the admiring tone of his voice. She couldn't remember ever hearing him praise someone else's piloting skills before.
He shrugged. "I mean, I could probably do that in a puddle-jumper, or an X-303, but they're both a hell of a lot smaller and more maneuverable. That's more like barnstorming in the Daedelus."
Suddenly she wanted to meet these strangers--the explorer in her wanted to glimpse the inside of this ship unlike anything they'd ever seen, to meet the pilot who could impress John Sheppard and the engineer who could inspire thinly-veiled envy in Rodney McKay.
"Huh. That's interesting." Speaking of McKay...
She turned to him. "What is?"
He pointed to something on the screen that meant nothing to her. "If they have a hyperdrive, the sensors aren't detecting it, but there's no way that ship would fit through the 'gate."
That got John's attention. "So then how did they get here?" he asked, stepping closer.
"How the hell should I know?" Rodney snapped. "I'm not--wait a second...I think I'm getting a signal from the ship..."
He stopped mid-rant, hands beginning to fly over both the Ancient panel and the keyboard of the laptop connected to it. An instant later, a burst of white noise exploded over the speakers, then gradually resolved itself into intelligible speech as McKay adjusted the frequency.
"...hoping we could maybe stop in for a bit, get some fuel and supplies 'fore heading back out. 'Course, s'up to you considering you've got that fancy shmancy dome thing and all..."
Rodney made a disbelieving face. "'Fancy shmancy,' 'stop in for a bit'...what is this, Wagon Train?"
Elizabeth's back straightened as she raised one hand to her earpiece. "This is Dr. Elizabeth Weir of Atlantis. Who am I speaking to?"
~+~+~+~
Mal stopped speaking to throw a befuddled look in Wash's direction. Atlantis? He didn't remember no planet in the 'verse named Atlantis. Didn't appear that anybody else on Serenity did neither, 'cept for maybe River, who was still staring out the window with that same entranced look on her face.
"Hello?" the woman's--Dr. Weir's--voice crackled through the air once again.
Mal cleared his throat. "Ah, Malcolm Reynolds, captain of the transport ship Serenity. We ain't looking for no trouble, just got a mite off-course and need to restock."
~+~+~+~
Well, this was turning out to be quite an interesting day, Elizabeth thought, looking around her and raising one surprised eyebrow. Malcolm Reynolds was certainly not a name she'd ever expected to hear in this galaxy, at least not without having heard it first in the Milky Way and approved him joining her expedition. Could it be that a culture out here had developed so parallel to their own that even the names were similar? It had happened back home, but humans in the Pegasus galaxy had been planted here long before humans on Earth had anything resembling culture.
Colonel Caldwell would probably remind her at this point of the danger of indulging her curiosity, but Caldwell and the Daedelus were at least two days out still on their last trip back from Earth. Which, among other things, left their usual landing pad empty.
"You say the ship doesn't have any weapons?" she asked Rodney, just to be sure.
"It doesn't appear to, no, but I imagine if they overloaded the reactor powering it, it would have the same effect," he shot back.
She ignored him, turning instead to John. "Take a security team down to the East Pier. Just in case."
He nodded and ducked out of the room, while she turned her attention back to their visitors. "Captain Reynolds? We're going to lower the shield..."
(Continued...)