(More of "Alone, Part 2," see previous two posts for beginning and next post for conclusion.)
Spoiler:
Of course, it goes without saying that this presents an incredibly opportunity for the crew. Franklin assumes that the Futurans would have stockpiled their naquadria stores, and couldn’t easily have taken all of it with them; the existence of naquadria on the planet wasn’t widespread knowledge, as evidenced by its absence from the Tenaran database. Unsurprising, when one considers how terrifying it would be to learn that one’s planet is made of material that may explode and take half the solar system with it at any time. Furthermore, Franklin believes that this finally satisfies the extent to which the approaching black hole had ravaged Novus’s surface. It hadn’t made sense before, not when the singularity remained so far out, but if the Futurans had been destabilizing naquadria deposits all over their side of the planet, it becomes far more obvious what the reason was. Even if the devastation would have come eventually either way.
Franklin is thoroughly impressed with their findings and wants to continue on with a greater analysis, but he notes that his coworker is quickly becoming exhausted once again. He’s in need of rest, and he could hardly be asked to spend another twenty-four hours doing nonstop work when he’s already been awake so long. He powers down the console Eli’s been working off of, much to the young man’s surprise, and suggests that he try and get some sleep. Franklin is more than capable of using the internal sensors to monitor where he goes on the ship and shift life support as necessary. And he can easily sound an alert when they approach the star, so there’s no danger in his missing all the action. Eli begins to argue that there’s over a thousand more pages of critical information from the Novan database, but Franklin is persistent. The last thing they need is a sleep-deprived individual acting as the sole crewmember in a potential battle situation, an argument that Eli can’t easily refute. Unable to resume working with his terminal shut down anyway, he yawns and stretches before leaving Franklin alone in the bridge.
While he makes his way back down the corridors to his room, Eli begins to realize just how tired he really is. He yawns repeatedly, muttering to himself about the data he should be going over, but doesn’t stop or turn around. When he finally makes it to his quarters, he seals the door and collapses gratefully on the bed. He lies there for a moment, thinking, then gets up and sits at his workstation. First he goes to turn on his personal console, then pauses and instead picks up his laptop, unconnected from the ship’s database or systems. Opening a code-writing program, he mutters that he’ll get to sleep just as soon as he does one more thing, then begins typing as quickly as he can.
More than half a day later, a loud beeping noise from the kino dispenser wakes Eli. He looks around groggily and tries to go back to sleep, but a trio of increasingly-loud beeps from the dispenser finally force him out of bed. Looking up at the ceiling and promising payback for the wakeup call later, Eli runs his hands through his hair and heads to the supply room to grab what’s left of his food.
Carrying a small pail of what looks like pureed peas, he steps onto the bridge shortly after and goes to sit at the console he’d been working on the day before. Then, seeing that a hallucination has yet to materialize, he takes a seat at the command chair. He grins sheepishly for a moment, styling himself as Captain Kirk, then jumps when Franklin steps into his field of view and begins rattling off a series of telemetry statistics. Destiny has made good time returning to drone-controlled space, and he’s timed their drop out of FTL to coincide with the arrival of the massive fleet of command ships he detected earlier. Paying no mind to Eli while he eats his mash, Franklin further explains that he used the exact coordinates of enemy vessels when they dropped out of hyperspace and again when they were destroyed to calculate where the Follower fleet is most likely holding position. If his estimate is correct, they should emerge directly between the two groups. Hopefully, they’ll be too preoccupied with attacking one another to do anything about their arrival and they can recharge without incident. If it comes to a fight, though, Franklin already has the commands keyed in to transfer emergency power to the weapons and shields in less than a microsecond.
Putting his bucket down, Eli turns on the holographic display and asks how long it’ll be until they reach their destination. The navigational hologram flickers to life at the instant that Destiny emerges from FTL, racing towards a yellow star that’s nearly directly in front of it. Seeing his human companion’s stunned expression, Franklin allows himself the smallest of smiles and notes that the answer is "right now." They’ve dived headlong into a maelstrom, with blue and red plasma bolts streaming all around them and coming from everywhere at once. Hundreds of alien attack craft and drones dart after one another relentlessly, some slamming into Destiny’s shields as the unexpected third party plunges forward. Closer to the star, drone command vessels sit far from the conflict, taking evasive action as necessary to avoid bombardment from the Follower warships farther out. A few alien berserkers manage to get through the wall of machine craft, but there are too many drones to start an attack run on their carriers. Even getting close to the command ships appears to be suicide, and more keep arriving with each passing minute.
Grabbing the side of the command chair when a stray energy blast hits near the bridge, Eli shouts that they should probably bring the point-defense array online to knock out any targets that get too close. Franklin says that he’ll activate the weapons system if the shields begin dropping dramatically, but short of that, he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to telegraph their presence. Then two more bolts slam in from the Follower side, prompting Eli to disregard the advice and begin powering the array anyway. He’s unable to open fire before Franklin shuts down his terminal, repeating that they can’t afford to draw attention to themselves. As the ship continues to shake from repeated collisions and stray hits, a furious Eli shouts back that the two sides are well aware that they’ve arrived insystem. They have no choice but to continue through the fighting, and if they can’t at least defend themselves, they’re going to be destroyed. Franklin counters that they should instead devote all power to the shields to ensure they make it to the star, insisting that there’s a good reason not to begin antagonizing the drones that will be made clear in time. The two glare at one another bitterly for a long moment, bathed in the light of passing energy blasts.
On one of the Follower ships, the alien crew has taken notice of Destiny and are ordering their forces to react accordingly. The motherships immediately begin angling to intercept the vessel before it can reach the star, and their strike craft disengage from the drones to beat down its shields. It was, without doubt, a trap designed to lure them out of hiding, and the aliens came prepared. Fifteen vessels in total remain in the fight, though there are debris fields that must be the wreckage of additional ones since destroyed. Out of the survivors, eight are of the class the crew has previously encountered ("Space"), but the other seven are completely different. Four of them are smaller support ships, probably half the size of the more familiar model, and don’t seem to have any strike craft squadrons. It’s the other three that are truly something out of the ordinary, behemoths just beyond the size of Destiny bristling with energy cannons and fighter bays. As viewed on the bridge’s tactical display, Franklin has labeled the small ones frigates, the medium-size ones cruisers and the largest ones dreadnaughts.
Just before the fleet can finish its realignment to bombard the Ancient vessel, though, the drones go on the offensive. With the Follower defense formation dissipated, they scream above and below Destiny paying it no mind whatsoever. Instead they focus all their energies on the aliens, shredding through strike craft and heading directly for the dreadnaughts to press their sudden advantage. Watching from inside, Eli stares in shock as they continue through the conflict without a single blast headed their way. Drones whiz past the bridge windows and arc over the hull, not so much as firing a potshot at the shields as they go. The Followers, caught completely offguard by their enemies’ sudden counteroffensive, do their best to fight back but lose two frigates almost at once. They probably could have repelled this wave of drones and even another had they held position, but now they’ve opened themselves to all manner of flanking actions.
Turning to Eli, Franklin asks if he understands now why he was so insistent on not firing the weapons array. When the young man shakes his head, the AI explains that he looked over all the data collected when the crew brought a surviving drone onboard ("Deliverance"). It didn’t escape his notice that the drones had a priority targeting system, a protocol that gave greater attack preference to alien technologies that posed the greatest threat to them. With their repeated encounters of Destiny--or, more precisely, its repeated victories or escapes--the machines decided that the vessel and its crew represented the most significant danger to their existence since the Ursini. That’s why they went so out of their way to destroy it above all others, even after running into the Followers. But Franklin also noted in the protocol that the rankings could change over time depending on new circumstances; the drones wouldn’t hunt the number one target relentlessly until it was eliminated at the expense of more pressing foes. That’s why he refused to let Eli access the weapons controls, he theorized that if they continued to present no clear threat to the drones, they wouldn’t readjust their priorities to target them. And he was correct. In all likelihood, the mass assault on this star system has put the Followers in their sights for the foreseeable future, and their avoidance of Destiny when it was right in front of them only confirms that belief.
Franklin is thoroughly impressed with their findings and wants to continue on with a greater analysis, but he notes that his coworker is quickly becoming exhausted once again. He’s in need of rest, and he could hardly be asked to spend another twenty-four hours doing nonstop work when he’s already been awake so long. He powers down the console Eli’s been working off of, much to the young man’s surprise, and suggests that he try and get some sleep. Franklin is more than capable of using the internal sensors to monitor where he goes on the ship and shift life support as necessary. And he can easily sound an alert when they approach the star, so there’s no danger in his missing all the action. Eli begins to argue that there’s over a thousand more pages of critical information from the Novan database, but Franklin is persistent. The last thing they need is a sleep-deprived individual acting as the sole crewmember in a potential battle situation, an argument that Eli can’t easily refute. Unable to resume working with his terminal shut down anyway, he yawns and stretches before leaving Franklin alone in the bridge.
While he makes his way back down the corridors to his room, Eli begins to realize just how tired he really is. He yawns repeatedly, muttering to himself about the data he should be going over, but doesn’t stop or turn around. When he finally makes it to his quarters, he seals the door and collapses gratefully on the bed. He lies there for a moment, thinking, then gets up and sits at his workstation. First he goes to turn on his personal console, then pauses and instead picks up his laptop, unconnected from the ship’s database or systems. Opening a code-writing program, he mutters that he’ll get to sleep just as soon as he does one more thing, then begins typing as quickly as he can.
More than half a day later, a loud beeping noise from the kino dispenser wakes Eli. He looks around groggily and tries to go back to sleep, but a trio of increasingly-loud beeps from the dispenser finally force him out of bed. Looking up at the ceiling and promising payback for the wakeup call later, Eli runs his hands through his hair and heads to the supply room to grab what’s left of his food.
Carrying a small pail of what looks like pureed peas, he steps onto the bridge shortly after and goes to sit at the console he’d been working on the day before. Then, seeing that a hallucination has yet to materialize, he takes a seat at the command chair. He grins sheepishly for a moment, styling himself as Captain Kirk, then jumps when Franklin steps into his field of view and begins rattling off a series of telemetry statistics. Destiny has made good time returning to drone-controlled space, and he’s timed their drop out of FTL to coincide with the arrival of the massive fleet of command ships he detected earlier. Paying no mind to Eli while he eats his mash, Franklin further explains that he used the exact coordinates of enemy vessels when they dropped out of hyperspace and again when they were destroyed to calculate where the Follower fleet is most likely holding position. If his estimate is correct, they should emerge directly between the two groups. Hopefully, they’ll be too preoccupied with attacking one another to do anything about their arrival and they can recharge without incident. If it comes to a fight, though, Franklin already has the commands keyed in to transfer emergency power to the weapons and shields in less than a microsecond.
Putting his bucket down, Eli turns on the holographic display and asks how long it’ll be until they reach their destination. The navigational hologram flickers to life at the instant that Destiny emerges from FTL, racing towards a yellow star that’s nearly directly in front of it. Seeing his human companion’s stunned expression, Franklin allows himself the smallest of smiles and notes that the answer is "right now." They’ve dived headlong into a maelstrom, with blue and red plasma bolts streaming all around them and coming from everywhere at once. Hundreds of alien attack craft and drones dart after one another relentlessly, some slamming into Destiny’s shields as the unexpected third party plunges forward. Closer to the star, drone command vessels sit far from the conflict, taking evasive action as necessary to avoid bombardment from the Follower warships farther out. A few alien berserkers manage to get through the wall of machine craft, but there are too many drones to start an attack run on their carriers. Even getting close to the command ships appears to be suicide, and more keep arriving with each passing minute.
Grabbing the side of the command chair when a stray energy blast hits near the bridge, Eli shouts that they should probably bring the point-defense array online to knock out any targets that get too close. Franklin says that he’ll activate the weapons system if the shields begin dropping dramatically, but short of that, he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to telegraph their presence. Then two more bolts slam in from the Follower side, prompting Eli to disregard the advice and begin powering the array anyway. He’s unable to open fire before Franklin shuts down his terminal, repeating that they can’t afford to draw attention to themselves. As the ship continues to shake from repeated collisions and stray hits, a furious Eli shouts back that the two sides are well aware that they’ve arrived insystem. They have no choice but to continue through the fighting, and if they can’t at least defend themselves, they’re going to be destroyed. Franklin counters that they should instead devote all power to the shields to ensure they make it to the star, insisting that there’s a good reason not to begin antagonizing the drones that will be made clear in time. The two glare at one another bitterly for a long moment, bathed in the light of passing energy blasts.
On one of the Follower ships, the alien crew has taken notice of Destiny and are ordering their forces to react accordingly. The motherships immediately begin angling to intercept the vessel before it can reach the star, and their strike craft disengage from the drones to beat down its shields. It was, without doubt, a trap designed to lure them out of hiding, and the aliens came prepared. Fifteen vessels in total remain in the fight, though there are debris fields that must be the wreckage of additional ones since destroyed. Out of the survivors, eight are of the class the crew has previously encountered ("Space"), but the other seven are completely different. Four of them are smaller support ships, probably half the size of the more familiar model, and don’t seem to have any strike craft squadrons. It’s the other three that are truly something out of the ordinary, behemoths just beyond the size of Destiny bristling with energy cannons and fighter bays. As viewed on the bridge’s tactical display, Franklin has labeled the small ones frigates, the medium-size ones cruisers and the largest ones dreadnaughts.
Just before the fleet can finish its realignment to bombard the Ancient vessel, though, the drones go on the offensive. With the Follower defense formation dissipated, they scream above and below Destiny paying it no mind whatsoever. Instead they focus all their energies on the aliens, shredding through strike craft and heading directly for the dreadnaughts to press their sudden advantage. Watching from inside, Eli stares in shock as they continue through the conflict without a single blast headed their way. Drones whiz past the bridge windows and arc over the hull, not so much as firing a potshot at the shields as they go. The Followers, caught completely offguard by their enemies’ sudden counteroffensive, do their best to fight back but lose two frigates almost at once. They probably could have repelled this wave of drones and even another had they held position, but now they’ve opened themselves to all manner of flanking actions.
Turning to Eli, Franklin asks if he understands now why he was so insistent on not firing the weapons array. When the young man shakes his head, the AI explains that he looked over all the data collected when the crew brought a surviving drone onboard ("Deliverance"). It didn’t escape his notice that the drones had a priority targeting system, a protocol that gave greater attack preference to alien technologies that posed the greatest threat to them. With their repeated encounters of Destiny--or, more precisely, its repeated victories or escapes--the machines decided that the vessel and its crew represented the most significant danger to their existence since the Ursini. That’s why they went so out of their way to destroy it above all others, even after running into the Followers. But Franklin also noted in the protocol that the rankings could change over time depending on new circumstances; the drones wouldn’t hunt the number one target relentlessly until it was eliminated at the expense of more pressing foes. That’s why he refused to let Eli access the weapons controls, he theorized that if they continued to present no clear threat to the drones, they wouldn’t readjust their priorities to target them. And he was correct. In all likelihood, the mass assault on this star system has put the Followers in their sights for the foreseeable future, and their avoidance of Destiny when it was right in front of them only confirms that belief.
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