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Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 18
🕑 Added 2024-11-28 17:43:14 +0000 UTCChapter 18 - The Other Guys
“So.” John began as he and the rest of his team waited for Weir to call them into her office. “Any luck with that bypass you were working on to let us connect the ZPM without inviting more trouble to our doorstep?”
“I was close.” McKay said with a smirk that told John the man believed he’d figured out something particularly clever. “But then I realized I was over thinking the problem. Because we don’t need to plug the Zed-PM into the city to dial Earth, just the gate.”
“We can do that?” John asked in consideration as he thought back to the rather hefty power transfer system they’d needed to pull off something similar on Earth.
“It’ll take a few days for my team to put a cradle together that can handle the voltage.” McKay admitted. “But yes. Then it'll just be a matter of disconnecting the gate from the power mains and connecting it to the Zed-PM and we'll be good to go.”
The wormhole that had been active since they arrived shut down, and he could see Doctor Weir close her laptop before motioning for them to enter.
“Looks like we're up.” John said before walking in, the other three following him without a word.
“That was Chancellor Lycus.” Weir offered in a tired tone once they had all entered.
“Oh no.” John muttered, able to sense the direction this was heading from those words alone.
“Oh yes.” Weir confirmed with a grimace as she motioned that they were free to take a seat. “The good news is that he's changed his mind about how welcome we are on Taranis.”
“And the bad news?” John asked, fully aware by now how these things went.
“The bad news.” Weir continued with a sigh. “Is that his reason for changing his mind is because of Eventus triggering a series of earthquakes that have devastated the entire region.”
That was several degrees worse then John had imagined, and from the sharp inhale of breath Teyla made he wasn't the only one.
“How many died?” The Athosian asked.
“Too early for them to tell.” Weir admitted with a grim look on her face. “But we're sending two jumpers with rescue teams to help out.”
“Got it.” John said as he began planning out the team deployments. “You're going to want Adams and Morgan on this, they used to be USACE so know their way around disaster recovery. I assume you want us flying point with things?”
“No.” Weir returned with a shake of her head. “I'm sorry to say I'm going to be putting your team on Ancient handling duty.”
He'd been more than a little afraid it would be something like that, but given they had the most experience with Eventus he supposed it made sense.
“Do I really need to be there for that?” McKay inquired hopefully. “It's just, with the Zed-PM I have a lot of work to get done if we want to use it to contact Earth.”
“Didn't you just say you were having your team take care of that?” John said as he turned a skeptical look to the man, moderately sure he just wanted to avoid heading into a disaster area.
“It doesn't matter.” Weir put forward in an encouraging tone that instantly set John's hackles on edge. “As our foremost expert in Ancient technology they're going to need you there most, Rodney. Because whatever Eventus was doing, it knocked out nearly all of the facility's systems, and their head scientist is currently missing after she tried to gain access to the chamber Eventus locked himself in.”
Worry flashed across McKay's face. “You don't think he…?”
“Na.” John reassured him, giving the man a bit of a break since he had missed out on the latter part of their brief time on Dagan. “Sanir shot him and all he did was roll his eyes and stun her.”
He gave an acknowledging tilt of his head before continuing. “Well, and write something in Ancient on her forehead with one of those charcoal pencils they had lying around.”
“I believe he mentioned it was the Ancient word for fool.” Teyla added in helpfully as the corner of her lips twitched slightly in suppressed mirth.
“So yea.” John continued with a wry grin. “Slightly petty, but other than that he seems to be a pretty turn the other cheek kind of Ancient, so assuming something didn't happen to her on the way to the chamber, he probably just stunned her and stuck her in a closet or something.”
Which to be perfectly honest he had been tempted to do to McKay on more than one occasion.
Weir nodded in agreement as she gave them a somewhat awkward smile. “That matches what we've been able to dig up on him in the database so far. Honestly? Reading through his team's work reports, he comes off almost like a less restrained version of General O'Neill.”
“I'll admit.” John said as he considered the comparison. “I did kind of get that feeling from him.”
If he was going to put it into words, he'd probably say they both had the same sort of everyman energy to them. Which wasn't exactly a bad thing given he was pretty sure most of Stargate Command would follow General O'Neill through a minefield if it came down to it. But it did leave him feeling just a tad cautious around Evan since officers like that could be absolute bears when they thought they were doing the right thing.
“So, did the Taranians say anything about what he did to cause the whole place to start shaking?” He asked Weir, wanting to avoid his team going into a situation like that completely blind if they could help it.
“According to Chancellor Lycus the only systems they still had working other than the doors were the Stargate and short range communications.” Weir offered as she opened up her laptop and waited patiently for the twenty seconds it took the device to come out of sleep mode.
“Okay.” John said as he turned to their resident genius. “Any ideas what he could have done to cause a bunch of earthquakes, McKay?”
The Canadian scientist let out a put upon sigh as he rolled his eyes in clear exasperation at the question. “Well, given what he told Elizabeth about the facility, I'm guessing something that took a lot of power.”
“So no.” He returned, knowing McKay would take that as a personal affront and try to prove him wrong.
“Not for lack of trying.” McKay insisted as he turned a glare to John. “But other than the gate address there’s nothing in the database on the facility.”
John frowned in annoyance, having thought there would at least be some information on the place they could use. “The Ancients really didn’t label things well, did they.”
“No.” McKay agreed as he motioned with his almost omnipresent table to one of the walls. “But in this case I’m guessing it was like that weapon testing facility we’ve been on the lookout for and a purposeful disconnect between the facilities file and its gate location.”
“Speaking of which.” Weir said as she looked over at Teyla. “With Eventus’s help we were able to locate the historical records of the Lantean city on Athos. So if you’d be interested in looking those over when your team gets back, I can send a copy over for you?”
“That would be much appreciated, Elizabeth.” Teyla offered with an appreciative incline of her head. “While we have legends, I had always wondered how much more there might be to the story.”
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Author’s Notes: Poor Ford… Even in my story I can’t think of a lot to do with the guy given his position as military guy is already sort of filled by Shepherd.
Also, for those in the US, happy turkey day!
Comments
Nato J
Has Dante thought about have stealth suits (cloaking technology) made for his people to infiltrate behind enemy lines since Goa'uld have Traz'tal Royal Stealth Suit for Ashraks they could have taken from his people knowledge in Home Galaxy.
Eternity Smut
Damn that's sad though with access to the facility he should be able to reversed some fatalities. Either using the a modified healing kit or whatever facilities used on the ship. Those ancient healing things are ridiculous . Either way can't really say it's not their fault at the same time it does show that Eventus has a very ancient mentality even though he looks "human".
Jarrik32
I take back my earlier statement. The conversation between Eventus and Weir won't be the 'fun' one. It'll be the one between the Chancellor and the space janitor. As if that guy isn't fuming I'll eat my hat as I seriously doubt "better a few dead than everyone dead after you spent a year ignoring the hazard alerts the system kept throwning at you" will go down well especially because it IS the unvarnished truth. Plus no matter what else happens Evan is still going to be leaving with a massive part of 'their' heritage and depending on how much they irritate him in the mean time quite possibly flipping them the bird in some manner on the way out. Say what you like about SGC/SGA but at least they have some degree of root access to ancient systems. The locals are not so lucky.
Killerdrone
I have the feeling that causing death like this wasn't a big problem for the Lanteans. We've seen that ancient healing device on earth that the sarcophagus was based on be able to resurrect the dead. So killing who knows how many people in an earthquake would just have the Lanteans resurrecting them if they wanted to.
Fateor
He didn't kill anyone in the facility, but sadly there were settlements in the caldera that didn't have Ancient engineering to protect them from the effects of the quakes.
Eternity Smut
I dont think it killed anybody though from the looks of it. Eventus warned people beforehand throughPA system but I guess the Inertia damper was not working properly on those places probably gave a shaking of their life. Eventus can probably grab a emergency Ancient healing device and tune it for human use within the warship for those that got hit hard by this lol
Jarrik32
Well this promises to be a fun conversation between Eventus and Weir. As I doubt it has escaped anyones notice that Weir has pointedly avoided even trying to talk Evan out of going to Taranis (plausible deniability I'm guessing) while the idea that Eventus is remotely sorry about the Earthquakes beyond 'condolences for the consequences of your stupidity' (if perhaps less blunt) is laughable. For better or worse he wasn't wrong to take immediate action and given the locals ill advised decisions he didn't have any good options just least bad ones. It's kind of hard to argue with 'you redlining the system non-stop for a year straight was going to kill you all'
anthony corcoran
It's going to be amusing when mckay basically points out it's just thag rvan has turned on the child locks to keep them from doing stupid things.
Marius Petrauskas
nice
Eternity Smut
Ah yes just disconnect the stargate. I swear Eventus is going to have a problem with people trying to jerry-rig everything when there's a perfectly safe way to do this when there's a maintenance port nearby that can fit a ZPM. No need to rig. Eventus: Don't do shit with the ZPM The team: Let's do a a bypass with it. What could go wrong :p
