A/N: I'm trying something new out...to put breaks in between sections, since ff.n doesn't like people putting in proper spacing or continuous characters or stuff like that...I created something that it seems to accept and is mildly appropriate to Star Wars stories. Let's see how well it works.

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While Jacen, Jaina, and the bearded older Jedi spoke outside the control room, McKay could not help but start examining the control room around him despite the intimidating presence of the Jedi warriors. The design was clearly Ancient and appeared to be newer technology than Atlantis, but not as new as the outpost planet he had accidentally destroyed. The control systems begged him to examine them as much as the Jedi kept his curious impulses at bay.

"That looks like a control chair," McKay whispered to Carter, pointing at a chair in the middle of the room. "Look how they've modified the tactile interface for three dimensions of control!"

"I see it, McKay," Carter replied in a quiet but stern tone through gritted teeth. "Now is not the time."

"And look at the armoury!" McKay continued, oblivious to Carter's warning. "They actually left weapons behind. I always thought that was pretty inconsiderate of them, not leaving any weapons on Atlantis."

"McKay," Sheppard chimed in. "Not now."

"Look at how this dialing device is tied into the computer system." McKay pointed at a console directly beside him. "It looks like you can upload coordinates directly from..."

"McKay!" Sheppard, Tayla, Ronin, Jackson and Carter all shouted at the same time, startling the Canadian scientist. He looked up and saw that even the stoic Jedi appeared to be annoyed with him.

"What?" Rodney asked innocently. "I'm just getting a head start for when they realize we're friends."

Master Katarn and the twins chose that moment to return.

"Stand down," Katarn ordered his team of Jedi. "Master Skywalker has ordered us to pursue diplomatic relations with the Earthlings."

"See?" McKay said and sat down at the dialing computer. "Now, what are your secrets?"

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Two storeys below the control room, Kyle Katarn, Jaden Corr, Jacen and Jaina Solo sat at a table remarkably similar to the conference table on Atlantis across from Daniel Jackson, Samantha Carter, John Sheppard, and Rodney McKay. Tayla, Ronin, and the other Jedi remained in the control room awaiting the outcome of the meeting.

"Master Skywalker has granted me permission to negotiate on the behalf of the Jedi Council," Kyle Katarn started. "Please tell us about your galaxy."

"We are explorers from a planet called Earth," Daniel said. "Fourteen years ago we began exploring our galaxy using stargates to acquire new technologies and develop friendships to defend ourselves and our allies from an enemy called the Goa'uld – a parasitic snake-like creature that inhabits humans and uses advanced technologies to enslave other humans. About seven years ago we finally liberated their armies from their control and have all but eliminated their threat to the free people of our galaxy. Another alien species, the Ori, attacked our galaxy on a religious crusade to control us and eliminate the ascended Ancients in one of their few stronghold galaxies. We eliminated that threat three years ago and have focused on improving our own technologies and finding ways to improve quality of life on Earth while maintaining the secrecy of the Stargate Program."

"Your own people don't know about what is happening in the galaxy around them?" Jaden asked. "How isolated is your planet from the rest of your galaxy? Do you not have an inter-planetary holonet?"

"I don't even know what a holonet is," Daniel admitted. "But most people on Earth wouldn't accept something out of a sci-fi novel if it was true. And to be perfectly honest, over a sixth of our population is struggling to find food enough to see tomorrow and wouldn't care one way or another if the United States Air Force controlled a dozen space ships or not. At any given time there are civil wars going on in a dozen countries and religious fanaticism has resulted in both terrorist attacks on any nation they can infiltrate and invasions to acquire oil and other resources. Earth is by far not a perfect planet, but we're doing what we can to make it better."

"Try not to oversell us, Jackson," Sheppard quipped. Daniel shrugged in response.

"Why do you need us?" Kyle asked.

"We've been over this already," Jacen muttered impatiently.

Kyle shot him a look of annoyance but said nothing.

"We have a team of people who are stranded on an Ancient space ship on the other side of the universe," Samantha Carter said. "They have no way to get home and we have no way to supply them with anything. They've been out there for three years and the ship is literally falling apart around them while they've been under constant attack."

"What we need is to create a supply line," Sheppard continued. "A means to send supplies and maybe personnel to them from Earth. We don't need anything more than long-term access to your stargate here on Centrepoint station."

"We'd also like the opportunity to examine your technology," McKay said. "This Centerpoint station of yours? It's newer than Atlantis. A lot newer. We want to see what we can learn from it to improve our own technology back home."

"And anything else you might be willing to let us look at," Daniel said. "We understand that you have very limited knowledge of Centerpoint. Since the technology is one were familiar with, we'd be willing to offer our general expertise on Ancient technology to help you understand and use it better."

Think about it, Jacen thought to the other Jedi in the room through the Force. These people have power sources that could give an X-wing planetary strength shielding and turbolasers. These people could help us liberate the galaxy from the Sith again.

"I will need to consult with Master Skywalker on the particulars of what may interest the Jedi Order," Kyle said and started to stand up.

"Before you do that," Daniel interrupted. "Our people are on a very strict timeline on Destiny, the ship on the other side of the universe. We need to contact them immediately and send supplies otherwise they could all die in very short order."

"Jaina?" Kyle asked sceptically.

"The ship is suffering from power supply issues," Jaina elaborated. "It can only hold forty percent of its original designed capacity and there is an enemy fleet barricading the stars it can recharge from. Among the supplies are sixteen power generators that have been designed to augment Destiny's batteries to provide it enough power to survive an extended journey to the next galaxy."

"Sixteen Mark V naquadah generators can do a lot more than that," McKay said arrogantly. "They'll provide enough power that they can run all essential systems without even tapping into their batteries unless they go into battle."

Kyle regarded the Earthlings for a moment and returned his gaze to Jaina.

"Will sending these supplies have any impact on Centerpoint or the Corellian system?"

"No," Jacen said. "Centerpoint is designed for this. It'll know what to do to protect everyone."

"Forgive me, Knight Solo, but I'd rather hear this from your sister."

Jacen rolled his eyes, but turned to look at his sister with everyone else.

"He knows this system better than anyone," Jaina admitted and gestured to the Earthlings. "And, truth be told, the best experts on this technology are probably across the table from us."

"We can run some simulations with your people," Samantha offered before McKay could speak.

"A joint venture of goodwill," Daniel added with a small shrug and a disarming smile.

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While Jaina Solo, Jaden Corr, Samantha Carter, and Rodney McKay worked on the simulations to prove to Kyle that Centrepoint would not blow itself up if it tried connecting to Destiny, Jacen Solo and Daniel Jackson sifted through the database to learn more about the builders of the station.

"So if these Ancients were the ultimate power in the universe," Jacen said. "How did they die out?"

"They didn't," Daniel said, not looking away from the gate coordinates listed on the terminal in front of him. "Not all of them, anyway. They were infected with some sort of super virus that killed off most of them, but the rest ascended to a state of pure energy."

"I know some Jedi Masters who have done that," Jacen said. "When they died their consciousnesses were preserved in the Force."

"Did you see this?" Daniel asked. "There are some explanations about the nine chevron addresses."

"No," Jacen said and pulled his chair over so he could see Daniel's screen.

Destiny – The greatest ambition of the Acnoya Era Alterans. Upon the discovery of a pattern in the residual microwave background radiation that proved too regular and unnatural in origin, the ship Destiny and the fourteen seed ships were constructed and sent to populate the universe with stargates. The seedships, advance scouts for Destiny that placed the stargates, were designed to determine key points of the messages in this radiation while Destiny analyzed and oversaw their efforts. Ultimately, on the completion of this mission, all of the stargates would be activated to create a transceiver network that would transmit the full message back to Earth.

Supplement entries: Destiny Technical Overview, Contingency, Gamble, Finale, Master Code, BRMP.

"Well, Rush already determined the Master Code," Daniel said. "Let's check out Contingency."

Contingency – A million years after Destiny's departure, the Alteran High Council decided that Destiny's mission was proceeding too slowly. An increase in curiosity surrounding the mystery led them to decide to augment the Destiny mission with three other ships – Contingency, Gamble, and Finale – each to seed a separate quadrant of the universe. Initial plans to use newer technologies to seed the galaxy with longer range stargates were quashed when scientists recalled that in order for the giant ring of stargates around the universe to capture the entire message of the background radiation, they needed to be within a short range of each other.

Supplement entries: Contingency Technical Overview, Destiny, Gamble, Finale, Master Code, BRMP.

"This is bad," Daniel said. "If Rush has taken Destiny off auto pilot, the entire mission could be in jeopardy. Without a complete ring of stargates, the entire efforts of generations of Ancients could be at risk."

"Try BRMP," Jacen said.

A diagram depicting four different coloured arcs extending out from a single point and covering a quarter of the universe each was displayed above the text.

Background Radiation Master Plan – Developed prior to the decision to build Contingency, Gamble and Finale, the Master Plan for deciphering the message within the background radiation of the universe is a series of instructions for each ship to populate a quarter of the universe by following the message as required. Using the seed ships, the four ships would collect as much data as possible regarding the background radiation message and communicate it to each other using the newly designed subspace communication relays. Using three extra ships with superior hyperdrive technology is expected to reduce the mission time by over 200 million Alteran solar cycles. It was later determined that Altera was the wrong location to activate the network from, so a team of scientists were sent out to determine the best location and construct Centrepoint station. Using supplementary power supplies from nearby planets, Centrepoint was built to be capable of activating the entire network of stargates across the universe to finally determine and process the message hidden in the background radiation.

Jacen and Daniel stared at the screen for a moment in silence.

"So it wasn't that they were stranded out here in this galaxy," Jacen said.

"But they stranded themselves so they could build Centrepoint and finish the network," Daniel finished.

"That means the project that we stumbled on, the JPM, wasn't the first iteration of the design," Jacen said slowly. "But an experiment to see if they could backward engineer the idea for a smaller scale, likely for Atlantis."

Daniel began frantically typing into the terminal and Jacen watched as the archeologist scanned through page after page of data. He finally stopped and jabbed a finger at the display.

A countdown was displayed that sunk both men's stomachs down to their knees – Destiny's mission was under six weeks from completion.

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"As predicted, no risk," McKay said smugly, holding a tablet out to Kyle Katarn. "There is a point-zero-zero-one chance that the Hollowpoint star will flare."

"The safety margin is exceptionally high," Carter said. "Like Atlantis, Centerpoint is built with plenty of safety measures that will shut the stargate down if there is any risk to itself or its inhabitants."

Kyle stared at the screen for a few moments trying to understand the gibberish before him, but he finally came to the realization that the math was way over his head. He looked to Jaden and Jaina, who nodded in agreement with the Earthlings.

"Go ahead and send your supplies," Kyle said.

"It'll take four hours," Carter said. "Destiny has to drop out of hyperspace and let the engines cool for that long before they can return to hyperspace. Activating the stargate will alert their enemies to their location."

"Are you going with the supplies?" Katarn asked.

Carter and McKay exchanged glances for a moment.

"Well, I'm not going to strand myself on a ship with Rush," McKay muttered and retreated across the room.

"No," Carter said. "The crew will need to repair Destiny on their own. We can't send more personnel until we have an established stargate connection from Destiny."

"Sam, we need to talk," Daniel and Jacen approached Carter and the other Jedi. His words came out in a rush to match the borderline-frantic look on his face that he got whenever he had urgently bad news to report. "There are three other ships out there doing a quarter of Destiny's mission each. The mission is estimated to be finished in less than six weeks by Centerpoint's calculation."

"That would mean Destiny isn't far from another set of stargates that would link all the way back to Earth," Carter said. "If that's the case, we should be able to use that route with the gate-forwarding algorithm Rodney and I invented for the bridge between Pegasus and the Milky Way to get everyone home."

"Yes," Jacen said. "But we may not have time to implement it since Destiny is also nearing its end of life."

"What do you mean?" Jaina asked.

"Destiny and the other ships weren't designed to ever come home," Daniel said. "They were designed to oversee the deployment of stargates, gather intel to send back, and then self destruct when the mission was complete. They are programmed only to go as far along as possible until they find another set of stargates and wait there for confirmation that a universe-surrounding network of stargates has been created. The Ancients didn't want their technology just sitting around, so they designed the ships to destroy themselves. This also means that when the crew took the ship off auto-pilot, it interrupted the mission."

"They need to go back," Jacen continued. "They need to go back to the point in space where Destiny was when they took it off autopilot and reengage the autopilot, otherwise this whole mission will be for nothing. Even the slightest gap in the data can ruin everything."

"What mission?" Sheppard asked, joining the conversation. "It's a bunch of old ships spitting out stargates around the universe."

"Come on, John," Daniel pleaded. "You're not even a little interested to find out what the Ancients would spend sixty million years and probably quadrillions of whatever currency they had on to learn?"

"All I'm interested in is getting our people back, Doctor Jackson," Sheppard said, and then remembered that Colonel Carter outranked him. "Provided that is what the Colonel is interested in, obviously."

"If I could make a suggestion," Jacen said. "Let's contact Destiny and let them know we're sending the supplies before they die. After that, you can contact your government about the mission to determine the next step."

"Let's do it," Carter said. "McKay, set up the communication stones."

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Eli and Rush sat in a maddening silence for hours waiting for the communication stones to activate. Rush buried himself in the computer for hours running calculations on various simulations while Eli stared blankly at the ceiling listening to his iPod and wondering if Rush would ever not be an egotistical ass. After he laid there staring at the same rivet for over an hour, the rush of disorientation from the communication stone activating caught him completely off guard. Upon arriving in an obviously Ancient facility, Eli fell off the chair with a startled scream.

"Get a grip of yerself, Eli," the giant warrior, Ronin said to Eli – not Ronin, Rush. Ronin did not look like the type of person to speak with a Scottish accent.

"Yeah, sorry, I was half asleep," Eli said. He stood up and started brushing the non-existent dirt from the shirt of...

Oh. My. God. They put me in Tayla!

"You should probably remove your hands from there," Sheppard said to Eli pointedly.

"Right!" Eli exclaimed, and dropped his hands to his sides. "Sorry about that! Where are we?"

"An Ancient outpost," Rush said, assessing the control panels around them. "Very modern, by Ancient standards, anyway."

"Did we have to bring both of them?" McKay's distinctive voice whined.

"Yes, we did," Daniel Jackson said, drawing everyone's attention to himself. "Nick, Eli, we have some good news and some bad news."

"Worse than our ship running out of power?" Eli asked.

"Yeah," Daniel said. His eyes grew slightly wider, like saucers hiding behind his glasses. "Destiny's on a suicide mission. And it's almost over."

"What do ye mean, 'almost over?'" Rush asked. "Destiny's databank tells me it has about seven hundred and fifty million years until it is done."

Jacen and Daniel launched into the explanation of the other ships they learned about in the Centerpoint database drawing looks of amazement from the two scientists.

"The worst part is, you need to go back," Daniel said. "Back to when you took the ship off auto-pilot and started controlling the jumps. That interrupted the mission. It should also buy you a couple years."

"And we have to figure out what to do with the crew," Sam said. "We're not sure if it would be best to evacuate everyone to a planet and work from there for the recovery process."

"I thought you said you had good news for us," Rush said. "We don't have the power for a jaunt back across two galaxies. We can barely make it out of this galaxy!"

"We have supplies, including some generators," Sheppard said. "We need you to drop the ship out of FTL so we can send them down."

"There is the four hour..."

"We know, Eli," Carter interrupted. "Drop the ship out of FTL and we'll wait four hours before dialing in. We'll send the supplies through and then re-establish contact once you're safely back in FTL."

"Wait five minutes," Jacen suddenly said. Everyone turned to look at him. "Call it a hunch, but five minutes seems about right."

"Sever the connection," Sheppard said to McKay, who quickly flicked the switch on the communication device.

"Home sweet home," Eli said, back in his own body lying on his back.

"Something like that," Rush said. "I'm dropping the ship from FTL in five minutes."

At the appropriate time, Destiny transitioned back into realspace and a warning klaxon blared.

"What's that?" Eli asked, scrambling to his feet.

"We've been located."

"I knew we should've dropped out right away!"

"Have you routed weapons through these consoles?" Rush asked.

"No, targeting is still from the bridge."

Rush and Eli raced out of the room toward the bridge, a slow going process as the ship attempted to pressurize the corridors ahead of them. Every door took several seconds to open, adding up to minutes before they finally reached the bridge.

"I haven't felt any weapon impacts yet," Eli said.

"They must be waiting for something before they kill us," Rush agreed, keying in the code to the bridge. The door swung open and both scientists ran to the controls at the front of the bridge.

"I don't recognize the configuration," Eli said after a minute of examining one of the sensor readouts on the ship before them. "That ship is huge! Almost the size of Destiny. Their power signature looks familiar though."

"That's an Asgard-based sublight drive signature," Rush said. "I recognize it from the Dauntless class ships, but that isn't an Asgard ship."

"They're trying to hail us," Eli said. "Do you want to talk to them?"

Rush answered by hitting the open frequencies button.

"This is Doctor Nicholas Rush aboard Destiny. Who are ye out there?"

"Doctor Rush, I am General Theodore Young of the Taurus-class battle cruiser Everett," a somewhat familiar gruff voice responded. "We've been looking for you."

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