This is a Stargate SG-1/Firefly crossover, dealing with the Firefly universe post-BDM (with some reference made to content in Those Left Behind), and the Stargate universe sometime in season, uh, well, sometime before Teal'c goes on tretonin where it's Daniel rather than Jonas – so let's say 5-ish. Any information about either series revealed beyond that is not automatically valid for this AU. The story is a completed draft at 16 chapters.

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Chapter One: Not Kansas. Not Even Colorado, For Cryin' Out Loud!

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"Well, it is definitely Ancient, I'm sure of that." The confident tone in which Daniel Jackson made this pronouncement as he peered up over his glasses from under the brim of his floppy hat did nothing in particular to appease the man he was speaking to.

"Right. Daniel, you've been staring at those rocks for four and a half hours now, and all you can say is that it's 'definitely Ancient' when you were 'pretty sure it was Ancient' a minute after we got here? Haven't you got anything more useful yet? Like maybe what this place is, or what that doohickey fascinating Carter does? Anything?"

As Daniel squinted at him with an expression long ago mentally dubbed 'annoyed geek face #5', Jack O'Neill rocked once back and forth on his feet in some impatience for the current conversation, hands stuffed into his pants pockets. He wasn't really annoyed with Daniel as much as he was already a bit bored with this mission. The good thing about P3Y-922 was that they didn't have a long hike to the area of interest and all indicators pointed to the place having been empty for a long time - so there were no cranky and unpredictable natives to have to worry about and a sudden Goa'uld visit was highly unlikely. The bad part was that for those same reasons there really wasn't much for him to do at all now that they'd set up camp.

The team were all decked out in desert colored BDUs as the closest analogue to the planet, although it wouldn't have provided them with any kind of proper camouflage were it required. While P3Y-922 was definitively a desert world, the local sand was an unusual red and the buildings they were camped out in were made of a stone that was an even darker hue with purple undertones. Overhead, two suns sat high in the sky, although thankfully the orbit of the planet was large enough that the heat was only uncomfortable rather than unbearable.

As soon as they'd finished the preliminary walk through the site Daniel had parked himself out here near the outer edges of what remained of the complex, immediately losing himself in study of the largest text inscription to be found. As it always paid to be just a bit paranoid while off-world, that left Jack lurking in his general area with nothing to do but stare out at seemingly endless expanses of red sand.

While Jack was out here making sure nothing they'd missed in their initial surveys snuck up on Daniel, Teal'c was inside the intact central portion of the complex with Carter. The largest room there, which was also the central one to the site, contained the Stargate itself and Carter had followed a trace signal to a slightly smaller chamber containing what seemed to be an untouched treasure trove of doohickeys in various states of functionality.

After a put-upon sigh, Daniel managed to keep nearly all of the annoyance out of his voice, though it was obviously a matter of supreme patience and restraint if his expression was anything to go by. "No, Jack. As you can see, there was quite a lot of text here to begin with but it's been out in the elements so long most of it has been worn away entirely." Daniel waved a hand across the expanse of wall in emphasis. The fact that there were markings all across it was clear even to Jack's untrained eye, but the garnet hued stone was worn away into a pockmarked and uneven surface where it was hard to make out much more than vague impressions of deliberate carving – except for just a few spaces that had remained sheltered enough from the elements to indicate the whole surface had once been polished smooth.

Even as much as they'd all seen Ancient script by this point, Jack wouldn't have bet either way as to whether or not it actually was that language on the basis of his own eyes. They'd come across enough bastardized versions of the underlying language by now to know that vaguely similar letter shapes wasn't enough to be conclusive. While Jack was squinting at the wall with little real interest and contemplating the likelihood there would be anything legible (let alone useful) to be had here, the archaeologist continued expounding on the find and explaining his still-tentative identification, "Unfortunately, from what I can make out it's in some kind of obscure dialect of Ancient from the grammar in this nearly complete section over here, actually an almost more primitive form than what we previously saw on Heliopolis rather than the later evolutions we usually see, so I thought if I-"

"Aht! Fine, fine. You ... translate away." O'Neill interrupted the flow of words while gesturing grandly at the wall and then promptly sauntered off to an unreasonable distance for further conversation before the archaeologist could try to explain in detail or declare he needed more time or another team to work on deciphering the text. P3Y-922 had come up randomly on the mission roster and Daniel had been quite excited by the evidence of extensive ruins even before they'd done a thorough enough exploration to realize there was writing on some of them.

At the same time Carter had gotten her first readings indicating a low-level energy signature coming from one of the central buildings that didn't seem to bear much similarity to anything they had encountered before now. While he didn't mind the occasional quiet mission to keep his scientists happy, from the size of the place, the extensiveness of the writings (no matter how illegible), and the fact that Carter had located multiple additional inactive devices in the room where she was currently analyzing the broadcasting one, it was obvious that SG-1 was only here to get a temporary survey of the site's boons and hazards before one of the more specialized long-term study teams took over.

Still, as obvious as that was to him, and therefore indubitably it must be even more so to his geeks, neither one of them would be able to resist asking for just a few more hours or just one more day. It wasn't that he wanted to spend all his time being chased by squads of Jaffa, but sitting around while the two of them tinkered wasn't his idea of fun either. After the first few sweeps, there were only so many times it was actually needful to check the perimeter on a planet that was unoccupied and had just as obviously been that way for quite some time.

Their first thorough explorations upon arriving at the site had made that clear. Even if the thick layers of undisturbed dust and sand hadn't said enough, there were simply too many portable doohickeys sitting around the Gao'uld would have scavenged had they ever been here. The address being part of the Ancient data from when his brains got scrambled by the head sucker added to the unlikelihood that would change anytime soon. Likewise, the miles and miles of sand in every direction were a pretty good indication of no locals to speak of. SG-1's luck being what it was, there were no guarantees, but even they didn't run into trouble every mission. Combining all the MALP's initial readings and their own thorough checks of the site on arrival, this mission was more likely than not to simply involve watching the scientists work.

By the third day of walking the site in between keeping a weather eye on Daniel, the Colonel was increasingly bored and seriously lamenting what a shame it was he'd already managed to run the batteries down on his Game Boy. Worse, he'd forgotten to replace his backups since the last research mission. While looking for some other way to entertain himself, O'Neill started going through a mental checklist of options. He'd already bugged Daniel in the last ten minutes, and Carter had given him that look only an hour or so ago. Teal'c was on his own watch and wouldn't want to be distracted, at least not again today, even though it was more a formality than anything. It hadn't been that long since lunch. Which left him with pretty much no options in the entertainment department, aside from another walk around the ruins staring out into sand and more sand, and Teal'c was already doing a bang-up job on that front.

With nothing better in the offing, he found an empty spot with a good overview of the area and sat back against an upright column of stone separate from the walls around it. Jack assumed from the prominence of its position that it had probably been the Ancient equivalent of a 'welcome' or 'you are here' sign back before all evidence of text had worn away. It seemed like a good enough place to relax for the duration. He figured he'd take a nap until it was time to herd the scientists to their next meal, and adjusted his cap downward over his eyes to do just that.

SG-1 was not generally inattentive or careless, but there was only so long it was reasonable to remain on high alert on a clearly deserted planet. The other three members of the team were elsewhere doing their own things, and with his back to the wall and his eyes closed, Jack O'Neill was in no position to notice the previously unmarked span of stone behind him flash to life with runes for a few seconds when he leaned back against it.

At that same instant, another device hummed to life in a different part of the complex, and that could have potentially clued the team in to the fact something was happening. Unfortunately, it was located in an otherwise empty chamber just off the room containing the Stargate and appeared to be a large, octagonal slab of the same rock material as the walls and floor. Since it was also lacking in any visible ornamentation when they'd explored the room earlier, the team had dismissed it as an empty pedestal for some now missing artifact. They'd have surely paid it more attention if they had been able to detect the buried connections running under the floor and through the wall into the adjoining chamber where it hooked into the DHD itself.

All of the devices of obvious interest were located elsewhere, and that's where the team was concentrating their attention. So even if there had been a great light show of blinking indicators when it turned on (instead of only a very slight power spike), no one would have been there to see it. In the given circumstances it would have taken an extraordinary event of luck for the activation of the device to have been detected, so SG-1 continued about their mission oblivious to the fact that something had changed.

A couple days later Jack was supervising as they were finally, finally packing up everything and getting ready to leave. SG-21 would be taking over in a week or so, extensively cataloging the site as a follow-up to this assessment visit, but that wasn't his problem. Nope, Jack O'Neill and the rest of SG-1 would be moving on to some other excitingly new planet - after a bit of downtime, anyway. While Carter and Daniel were obviously somewhat displeased about having to give up their shiny new toys to the other geeks, he was certainly more than ready to step back through the gate to the mountain and leave this place behind, and Jack suspected Teal'c was just as happy to get a move on. Not that it was easy to tell under all that stoic facade, but Jack thought so. The happy thought of a mission completed without incident kept him preoccupied all through the repacking process, and soon enough the gear was ready and his team was gathered, so it was time.

"Dial us home, Daniel."

They sent the FRED with the equipment that wasn't being left behind for the science team through first, and then SG-1 stepped through the event horizon with the assumption in all their minds that they'd find their next steps clanking down on the metal of the gate room ramp in the SGC. Unbeknownst to them, the activated device in the next room surged once before shutting itself back off again.

All was quiet on the planet until an hour later, when the gate reactivated. No one came through, although the MALP that had been left off to one side at the base of the gate began to pan its camera arm around, taking in the empty room illuminated only by the rippling blue-toned light coming off the Stargate. Through the speaker on the device, the voice of General Hammond of the SGC asking for SG-1 to report in and explain why they were overdue bounced off the walls of the empty complex.

When SG-3 was sent through several hours later to attempt to find and/or rescue SG-1, they didn't discover any better answers about what had happened to the errant team. From what SG-1 had reported during their various check-ins, the site was exactly as it had been described. There were no signs of a struggle and none of the devices scattered around the site seemed to be doing anything, nor did they show any sign of having been recently activated. When one of their Gate experts was sent through to attempt to discern the last dialed addresses on the gate by examining the DHD, the man reported that so far as he could tell SG-1 had dialed Earth and nowhere else. That SG-1 had dialed Earth was known, since the FRED loaded with equipment had shown up in the gateroom at the scheduled return time, but the lack of any further activity was puzzling. The monitoring devices SG-1's Samantha Carter had reported installed on the planet were all in place, functioning correctly, and showed no indication of any kind of ship activity around the planet. All of those results were rechecked several times, but no discrepancies could be found, and thus, absolutely no explanation for the absence of SG-1 presented itself.

Left with no indication of what had happened to the SGC's premiere team, the proposed long-term stay of a research group at the site was put on indefinite hold. A number of the scientists at the SGC complained bitterly about that, but with no idea what had gone wrong on the planet, it wasn't a risk General Hammond was willing to take, and his superiors agreed with him. Despite that, he still expected SG-1 to come waltzing back through the Gate at any time, explaining how yet another unbelievable set of events had happened to them. Although as the days began to pass in increasing number with no sign of the missing team, that became harder and harder to keep believing.

When the wormhole spat them out, SG-1 did not find themselves on the metal ramp of the Gate room as they expected. Instead, they found themselves stepping out of a Gate on a desolate planet. The climate felt very similar to the planet they had just left, although the coloration of the terrain around them, while also being barren, was in a far more Earth-typical palette. The new location also lacked any evidence of structures or ruins of structures. There was nothing in particular to be seen except the Stargate itself, which had a great deal of sandy soil built up around its base. The distant horizon was visible across endless-seeming spans of flat and lifeless terrain in all directions, stretching as far as the eye could see. From the intensity and positioning of the single sun situated overhead, Jack guessed it was probably around mid-afternoon local time.

The situation was as lacking in promise as it was in explanation, and that made Jack feel extra cranky. "Daniel! This is not the SGC. Surely you know the address for home by now?"

Before Daniel got too far in his vehement denials that he had, in fact, dialed Earth, Carter interrupted, "Uh, sir, we have a bigger problem here."

"Indeed," Teal'c agreed solemnly.

Taking another look around for himself, no one had to clarify. Jack had already seen what they had, he just hadn't been the first to register its significance. There was no DHD. It was about now it also occurred to O'Neill that the equipment they'd sent through just ahead of themselves had not arrived here with them either. An additional oddity, but not the most relevant one as anything truly useful, like say a naquada generator that would allow them to manually dial the Gate, had been left behind on P3Y-922 anyway. Wherever it was they were, there was no easy way back home.

While the rest of the team was taking in the particulars of their current situation, Daniel was still spluttering denials. "I dialed Earth, Jack! I don't know how we could have ended up here... wherever here is. Could there be another Earth Gate like the one in Antarctica?"

Jack brushed aside answering the archaeologist in favor of asking his own questions of the only one of them likely to have a clue what had gone wrong. "Carter, any idea what happened? Or where the heck we are? Or even better, how to get us home?"

"I'm afraid not, sir." She had stopped to pull some kind of doohickey out of her pack and turn it on while they'd been talking, and she consulted it intently before continuing. "I'm not picking up any kind of radio or other transmission signals that would indicate we're on Earth. Once it gets dark I may be able to figure out our relative location from the stars," she paused in fiddling with the instrument to look him in the eye. "I am getting an unknown faint energy signature some distance off in that direction," she gestured vaguely off to the left. "If there are people here, we might be able to obtain some kind of power source to dial the Gate manually. Without a DHD or any of our portable generators we don't have a lot of options, Colonel."

Readjusting his sunglasses, O'Neill gestured grandly towards the same horizon Carter had just indicated, since there was no point in lingering here. "Well, campers, I guess we move out in that direction."

Nothing like a long hike across a desolate planet, Jack thought sarcastically. At least they weren't being chased by hordes of angry Jaffa. Yet. He really should have learned better than to complain he was bored by now.

They had been walking for some little while already when Daniel piped up again. Honestly, Jack was a little surprised it had taken this long, but glances at the man had shown he was deep in thought as they'd walked along, his brow almost comically furrowed. "So, what do you think happened? I definitely dialed Earth, so something else must have interfered. If we didn't end up at a Gate on Earth, did we end up jumping to one somewhere between Earth and P3Y-922? And why would that have happened? Last time a Gate went to the wrong location it was because an energy beam struck the Gate and caused it to jump, but there shouldn't have been anything back on that planet to cause this."

Unsurprisingly, being the only one of them with extensive technical knowledge of the workings of the Gate, Carter replied. "Without any idea of where we've ended up or what happened back on P3Y-922, there's really no way to tell what malfunctioned. Hopefully we'll be able to find something other than barren wasteland on this planet or we're in real trouble. I have a couple theories, but ..." and at that point, Jack tuned the actual words of her reply out in favor of just listening to the cadence of her voice. She'd already said she didn't really know, and anything after that was just speculative technobabble she'd repeat if it became relevant.

It was right about two and a half hours of walking by his watch before some variation that wasn't minor scrub brush appeared on the horizon. It seemed to be some kind of outcropping in the distance that was too regular to be natural rock. The land had gradually become more uneven as they'd moved along and the strange rocks were placed atop a plateau that dropped off to a much hillier region below. As they got close enough, Carter identified the grouping as the source of the strange low-level energy reading she'd detected. Still, they were nearly on top of the stones before they could make out anything other than rock. Once they'd reached them and circled around to get a better look, however, it became apparent what they were and why they were setting off Carter's doohickey.

Each of three smoothed, short pillars was topped with an odd little holographic projector showing a smiling person. It was obvious they were some kind of grave marker or memorial. Daniel and Carter were both fascinated – her with the technology and him with the prospect of a new, previously unencountered civilization. Unfortunately for both Daniel's enthusiasm and their prospects of finding help, the three stones were still the only evidence they could see of any kind of man made development in the area.

"Someone had to have put this memorial here, and it's not likely they would have bothered with something like this if no one was going to come back and visit it. Of course with this level of technology, the settlement these people are from doesn't necessarily have to be within walking distance. They could be all the way on the other side of the planet for all we know," Daniel mused absently, clearly intrigued. "Actually, they wouldn't even have to even be on this planet at all."

"That would be most unfortunate, Daniel Jackson." Teal'c had a real gift for understatement, Jack mused.

"Well, let's hope they are around, huh? You getting any other readings from elsewhere to give us a direction to go from here, Carter?"

The doohickey came back out. Carter looked at it fairly intently for a while, fiddling with the settings, but in the end she said, "No, sir. I'm not getting anything else."

By this time, the sun in the sky that had been beating down on them had finally started to inch nearer the far horizon. They hadn't left P3Y-922 early in their day, and now they had been walking across a deserted, arid plain for a couple of hours. If it was getting on down to evening already locally, perhaps it was time to set up camp and settle in for the night and hope a fresh start in the morning might give them some better idea of where to go from here. It was tempting to go on through the night, because they did not have the extra water and supplies they would need for a prolonged stay in a place like this, but they were all already tired, except for maybe Teal'c, and there were no obvious signs here to show in which, if any, direction they might find the people who had built the small set of memorials.

There was also a little bit of hope that they might be able to see some kind of lights in the distance once it got dark, and Carter needed to be set up to observe the stars anyway to see if they could figure out at least what part of the galaxy they were in. Regardless of how they spent their night, they were going to be in trouble pretty fast if they didn't find some kind of civilization - or at the very least sources for food and water. The SGC always made their teams pack as much as was feasible to carry, just because of the likelihood of strange and unexpected delays like this. However, the stationary nature and duration of the mission they'd just been on meant they didn't have a whole lot in the way of backup supplies at the moment.

Several hours later, once they'd unpacked their gear and settled in long enough to give Carter time to do some calculations, it was definitively confirmed they were not on Earth. Even though Carter had already said it was unlikely from the lack of detectable electronic activity and atmospheric pollutants – not to mention that the weird tombstones they'd found were definitely not standard Earth tech in their time - there had still been a part of him hoping they'd found another Earth Gate. If they were on Earth, even if they were in some back end of beyond desert somewhere, or hell, accidentally traveled in time again, they had a better chance of survival than if they had ended up on a wholly uninhabited planet who knew where. Carter was attempting to use her laptop to calculate from the star positions exactly where they were, but knowing they weren't on Earth or any of the planets they'd already visited was enough to be going on with right now.

There was no luck on the spotting distant lights front, either. It pretty much looked as if the plan would have to be to pick a direction at random at the first sign of morning light and hope for the best. Definitely not one of their better plans. It did occur to him there might be a better chance of them finding people, or at least water before they ran out, if the team split up to search in different directions. The very real possibility of them running into potentially hostile natives without each other as backup did not sit at all well, though. Someone had put up those markers. Mourning their dead didn't necessarily make them friendlies.

As he'd been thinking the options over, Carter had petered off in the science talk about star positions and the group had settled in to eat. Daniel took it upon himself to take up the slack of conversation over their MREs. "It's a very strange monument, really, so far as burial customs go. It's not part of a larger burial ground as far as I can tell, and there's no notation that it's commemorating deaths related to a specific event - which would explain the isolation from whatever the usual burial ground is. It seems unlikely they would have incorporated such a fancy display if no one visited the site, though."

"Well, I can't be entirely sure without taking them apart, but so far as I can tell, the devices aren't that much more sophisticated than devices we have on Earth now, thanks to the alien technologies we've acquired. Which means they wouldn't work indefinitely without replacement parts or recharging. That doesn't mean there will be people nearby, though. It could be here because it's commemorating some out-of-the-way crash site for an advanced civilization. Although from this level of tech, I should be getting other readings than just from these devices. Well, unless they are way beyond us technologically, and the memorials don't bear that out."

The two scientists spent a little more time speculating, but O'Neill just let the voices of his team wash over him without adding any commentary. It wasn't too long before they were settling in for the night to sleep in their regular watch pattern, as they would be better off getting a fresh start as early as possible. The heat of the sun beating down on them in the midday hours hadn't been unbearable, but in such a barren place, it hadn't been exactly fun, either. Hopefully the new day would bring something more promising than this one had.

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A/N: I have no idea if the funereal scene at the end of Serenity is supposed to be taking place on Haven, Mr. Universe's moon, or somewhere else entirely. As far as I'm aware, the only indicator given script-wise is "a desert planet" so for the purposes of this fic, I'm placing it in the location that's most convenient to this story.

This story has been sitting in my projects folder, ostensibly complete, for about two years now. There are parts I'm quite happy with, and others I really still feel lack a certain something. However, it seems clear at this point that if I don't start posting I never will, so I'm calling it ready.