Three hours.

Three hours had passed since they’d exited whatever anomaly had spat Atlantis out so far from home. Far enough from home that sitting in the senior staff conference room they could all just look out the window and look upon the disk of the Milky Way galaxy in all its glory.

And just under three hours since Gabrielle had ordered all department heads to count heads, check everything was working as it should and report here. She’d wanted to give Engineering and her own department long enough to have something to report besides ‘we’re still investigating’.

Gérard Maxwell’s expression as he entered, trailing Rrr like a moon does a planet, told Gabrielle not as much as she’d hoped. She’d been hoping for something definitive, but whatever expression he was wearing was one she just wasn’t that used to. She just didn’t spend a lot of time with the man.

“Looks like everyone,” she announced as Rrr and Gérard sat themselves down. She had Adelinde to her left and she’d asked Doctor Terax to take the other. The Edosian looked as he always did – disgruntled and annoyed at being here. “Lin, how’s –“

“Actually can we start with the issue of who is in command right now?” Maxwell Simmons, the most senior science officer after Gabrielle herself and heading up the department for now, hadn’t just spoken up but rose to his feet as well, addressing all assembled like he was at some conference and he’d just taken the podium to deliver some key point.

Simmons’ gaze fell on Doctor Terax, a smirk forming on his face. “With the captain and first officer not present, command would fall to the most senior officer aboard the ship, yes? And that would be you if I’m correct, Doctor?”

Gabrielle shook her head slowly, sighing at the obvious shenanigans Simmons was playing. He hadn’t been happy when he came aboard Atlantis as a mere officer, not the head of the department. He had jostled and vied for the spot for months and months before Captain Theodoras had resolved the issue with a promotion, elevating her above the man in rank. And he’d grumbled even more when he’d found out she’d been moved up to second officer recently, challenging how she’d do the job and be chief science officer despite the second officer across the fleet typically being a department head anyway.

It was like he had a blind spot for how command of a starship was actually structured. Which perhaps he did if it didn’t suit his particular view of things.

“Sit down,” Terax growled from behind a mug that was just shy of his mouth.

“But you do have seniority in grade, yes?” Simmons continued, doing neither of what Terax had ordered.

“It doesn’t matter,” Terax answered. “Commander Camargo is in charge until such time as the captain says otherwise.”

Simmons looked over the assembled figures at the table and on seeing no sympathetic faces to his plight, huffed and sat himself down, verging on being a sulking child as he did.

“Anyway,” Gabrielle said after a moment, letting Terax’s chastisement settle. “Lin, how’s tactical?”

“There’s an issue with the ventral shield emitters preventing the shields from coming up to full strength along the engineering hull, but otherwise we’re good to go.” Adelinde then looked to her left, at Gérard. It was her duty as first officer to move things along after all. Or so the captain and Mac, then Kendris, had established aboard Atlantis. “Lieutenant Maxwell?”

“Not great, not terrible,” Gérard answered. “Main power on deck twelve should be back online in thirty minutes or less. If you wanted warp drive, I can give it to you, but we’re not going to be pushing higher than six point eight until I get a minimum of twelve hours.”

“And afterwards?” Gabrielle asked.

“High nines, but won’t be certain until we do some repairs.” He reached forward, tapping a control and a holographic representation of Atlantis appeared above the table, transparent blue save for three red sub-structures in the nacelles. “A cracked warp coil in both nacelles,” he continued. “Likely from field stresses feeding back into the coils. Not bad, but we’ll need to purge the nacelles and get in there to make field repairs.”

“That only makes two coils,” T’Val spoke up, pointing at the red highlighted coils.

“This one popped off its alignment tracks.” Gérard caused the second red coil in the starboard nacelle to flash a few times. “It’s sitting mostly in place, but we can’t adjust it to generate a field greater than six point eight with the cracked coils.”

“How long to fix just that coil?” Gabrielle asked.

“Twelve hours,” he repeated. “The welding jobs are quicker and easier, so I wanted to try and do them at the same time. But this coil is going to be a pain. We’ll have to kill the grav plating in the nacelle, let it spin down, get the portable tractors in place and wrench it back on its mounting points.”

Gabrielle rubbed at her face, struggling with the choices before her. Keep the warp drive ready just in case, or bring the ship to a halt and make repairs. How’d the captain make such decisions so quickly?

“Anything else?” Adelinde asked.

“The hull breach we suffered only vented a handful of unoccupied compartments. We’ll have it sealed before the end of the day.” Gérard sat back, turning off the hologram. “Aside from that, we’ve got some interesting scratches along the hull and we’re working to get the shield issue resolved as quickly as we can.”

“Thank you,” Adelinde said. “Lieutenant Simmons?”

“Hmm?” Simmons said, his sulking rudely interrupted.

“Anything to report?” Adelinde’s normally passive tone, least when working, finally had an air of annoyance to her. Though Gabrielle did reckon she could have been projecting.

“We’re lost,” Simmons answered. Then shook his head, huffed once, then brought up his own hologram as he stood. All the better to reach over and point at parts of the hologram. “Mind you, we’re not as far lost as say Voyager ever was, but we’re still decently lost.” The hologram was a representation of the galaxy they could make out the window. But it was surrounded by a few rings of stars, bands crossing through the plane of the galaxy in a few places, clumped up here and there.

“These rings are the leftovers of dwarf galaxies the Milky Way has been devouring for aeons. And Atlantis has managed to find itself somehow right around here.” Simmons’ finger intersected one of the larger blobs of dust floating above the galactic plane. Or was it below? “The Canis Major Overdensity.”

“The what?” Terax asked.

Simmons sighed, another shaking of his head. “The Canis Major Overdensity is a still oft-disputed galactic remnant. Roughly a billion stars, located twenty-five thousand lightyears from Sol and forty-two thousand from the galactic centre.” Then he tapped at the controls in front of his seat and the hologram changed to that of a star with a variety of metrics floating around it. “And this right here, Maxwell’s Star, is a little taste of home.”

“Maxwell’s Star?” Gérard asked. “Bit presumptuous, yes?”

Simmons’ ability to ignore criticism was in full force as he continued with his presentation. “The emission lines and metallicity of the star doesn’t match any other star within fifty lightyears of our current location. It’s a dinky little M3V star that does however match stars within our stellar database.”

“What?” Gabrielle asked, leaning forward. Maxwell Simmons might be an ass of a man, but he never made claims lightly, at least in regards to his chosen fields. That he’d just made that claim meant he had evidence to back it up. “Where?”

“A stellar cluster about halfway between the Federation and the Dominion, observed through telescopes for hundreds of years now. A quick simulation shows that cluster of stars being in an interception point with the Overdensity about seven hundred million years ago.”

Gabrielle felt her brow furrowing for a moment. “This star is from the Milky Way? Here?”

“That is what I said.” Simmons’ annoyance was on full display. “Captured by the Overdensity when it passed through and has been trailing along with it every since.”

“Okay…well, as fascinating as that is, what about the how?” Gabrielle asked. “How did we get here then?”

“No idea,” Simmons answered, turning off the hologram and sitting down. “There’s no sign of the anomaly that brought us here and we’re still in the process of analysing all the sensor readings from our two minutes and fifteen seconds of travel through that…corridor.”

Gabrielle nodded, taking a moment to breathe before turning to Terax. “Doctor?”

“Fifty-seven minor and twenty major injuries. Nothing terribly lasting mind you, should have everyone discharged in a few days.” Terax as always was quick and to the point. “In fact, I’d prefer to be there right now, if I could?”

“Oh, certainly, yes,” Gabrielle said, letting Terax go. She waited for him to leave before turning to T’Val at the far end of the table. “Lieutenant T’Val, how’s the shuttlebay?”

“The rogue shuttle, Ithaca, is beyond repair at this time. Warped structural members from impacting one of the ship’s structural members. The bay team has cleared the wreck and is already stripping it for spare parts.” T’Val turned her attention to Simmons then. “I would also appreciate your assistance Lieutenant in helping to recalibrate the navigational sensors with the main sensor array to ensure their accuracy.”

“I don’t think I’ll have time for that,” Simmons answered quickly.

“Make the time,” Lin spoke up before Gabrielle did. “We’ll need navigational sensors to find our way home eventually.”

“If I must,” he answered.

“Okay,” Gabrielle said, focusing attention on herself. Breath in, a breath out. The crew needed orders and it was her job to give them. Her job. No one else’s. “Right…orders.”

“Oh please,” she heard Simmons mutter but chose to ignore him.

“Gérard, go ahead and get those coil repairs underway. The sooner you start, the sooner they’re done. Gantzmann, full shield repairs will have to wait till Engineering is free. Simmons,” she stopped, looking at him and watching the dismissive look on his face, “Help with the navigational sensors, then I want a full spectrum scan of this system. Every probe, every shuttle and runabout is at your disposal. I want to know everything weird and fancy about this system and why we got spat out here of all places.”

She could see his eyes squint, that look that said ‘What’s your game here?’ as she had just given him free rein to do what he likely had been wanting to do. What she knew she’d have been wanting to do in his place.

“Any questions?” she asked after a few seconds. With a chorus of ‘No’ from around the room and silence from one person, she waved. “Dismissed then folks and be about it.”

Everyone filed out, save for Adelinde, who waited, waited some more, and then spoke when the doors closed. “This would be when I would question some of your orders,” Adelinde said quietly, causing Gabrielle’s anxiety to climb. “In private, away from the crew.”

“But?”

“But I have no questions at this time regarding the orders. Just around your decision-making. Thought-out or gut feeling?”

Gabrielle took a moment, looking at the older woman and trying to pry out what answer she wanted from the stoic mask she was wearing. “I just tried to think of what the captain would say.”

Adelinde nodded, then rose to her feet, preparing to leave like the others. “Don’t be Captain Theodoras, be Captain Camargo. That said, every captain is an amalgamation of every commanding officer they’ve ever had. You’ll be fine.” And then she started for the door. “Oh, I also stayed behind to make sure Simmons didn’t try and ambush you. He’s going to be a problem.”

“Oh, I know that,” Gabrielle said, rising to her own feet and following Adelinde towards the bridge. “It’s why I’m letting him disappear into his work. Hopefully, he’ll get too distracted by some mystery to be much of a nuisance.”