Chapter 207 - Ancient Politics - Part 1
Doctor Weir, Colonel Sheppard, and a dozen marines who had probably heard the word cow on the radio and decided they needed to see this all stared at the creature Eventus had brought to the partially defunct atrium with varying degrees of disbelief.
“I found it next to my quarters, and I think it belongs to you.” He said, enjoying the dumbfounded looks on their faces a good bit more than he probably should given the circumstances.
Doctor Weir and Colonel Sheppard exchanged glances, clearly trying to push the other into taking the lead on this. As was rather predictable given their positions however Sheppard quickly gave in, taking a half a step forward towards the cow only to pause, eyeing its long horns warily before seeming to think better of the move and glancing questioningly back over at Weir instead.
“You didn’t bring any cattle through the Stargate while I was gone. Did you?”
“No,” Weir shook her head. “Lab mice continue to be the only animals cleared for travel through the gate.” She turned a frown on Eventus. “If this is some kind of joke, I’m not sure I get it.”
“That makes two of us,” Eventus chuckled. “Thor beamed it down, I think it’s either part of some long running Asgard joke that’s the origin of your cattle abduction mythos or something he flash cloned as one part traditional welcoming gift and one part political commentary.”
A series of complicated expressions flashed across Weir’s features before settling into the sort of annoyed acceptance of someone who knew they weren’t going to enjoy the direction things were heading but saw no real way out of avoiding it.
“And why do you think it belongs to us?”
“Because it’s an Earth cow.” Eventus said simply.
Sheppard made an odd face. “Are there non-Earth cows?”
Eventus shook his head. “Not in Pegasus, we went in a different direction with things here. A creature kind of like the Mastadge’s your people encountered on Abydos. They fit the same general ecological niche as aurochs did on Earth, just better because of their ability to function in most types of environmental extremes.”
“That’s very… Informative…” Weir cautiously put forward. “But what exactly do you want us to do with a cow?”
“If I had something specific I wanted done with the cow I wouldn’t be handing it off to you.” Eventus returned dryly. “The only thing I ask is if you send it back to the SGC with Sam, try and have her get a picture of General O’Neill’s face when it walks through the gate.”
“Now,” he continued, not giving the two a chance to object. “I have to go install the two ZPM’s I brought back from Janus’s lab, meet up with Helia on the Tria to work out how her crews return to the city is going to work out, meet up with Trebal after that, get the Goa’uld and Tok’ra’s apartments set up, get Melia and Rayla’s apartments set up, and then pass out in the hot tub for twelve hours with the do not disturb unless there’s a planetary apocalypse sign up.”
With that he used a mental command to activate the heavy fog setting of the atrium’s weather simulation system and stepped back seemingly disappearing into the suddenly appearing mist.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“And you’re sure they’re not going to make us explode?” McKay asked as Eventus placed the second of the two new Potentia into its cradle.
It was a valid question all things considered as that had been what Janus’s sabotage would have caused. However, for all the man's scientific genius, he hadn’t been particularly creative with how he had arranged for that to happen.
“I fried the embedded nanomachines and reformatted the energy flow control crystal to remove Janus’s modifications. Unless he randomly manifested the ability to embed technology inside the pocket universe they’re as clear as a freshly created ZPM.”
With that he tapped the two Potentia on their bottoms, causing them to recede into the core and light up with a cheery glow as they locked in and synchronized with the already active one in providing energy to the city.
Taking a moment to check the power flow rates on the control station, he gave a small nod before turning to McKay with a grin. “See, everything's working perfectly.”
“Let's just hope it stays that way.” McKay muttered, eyeing the core pedestal as if it might turn into a bomb at any moment.
Eventus shot the scientist an amused look. Don't worry, if on the off chance it turns out I did miss something I set up a fail-safe that will dump the power into an experimental subsystem that will drain the two ZPM's in a way that shouldn't be able to do any damage to us.”
There was a better than average chance it would displace one of Lantea's moons to another dimension though, but it was either that or trying to dial a wormhole to the Ori galaxy.
“Anyways,” he continued, taking a moment to place the covers back on the Potentia slots before heading towards the door. “I have a meeting with Helia to get too, if nothing's gone wrong in an hour feel free to head down to get lunch.”
With that he left the central power room, heading to the nearby translocation booth and selecting the receiving chamber closest to Orbital Transfer. The ring chamber was already fully powered up when he walked in. However it still took several minutes for him to get back a security confirmation from the Tria’s receiving unit.
Stepping into the center of the ring platform, he triggered them with the interface on his belt and then stood there patiently as the rings rose up around and with a flash of light moved him onto the Tria.
The rings collapsed back down into the deck of the Tria's ring room revealing Helia and Security Officer Quinn already waiting for him. Their presence likely a big part of what had taken so long for the security authorization.
“High Councilor,” Helia greeted with a somewhat tired smile. “Thank you for making time to see us so swiftly.”
Eventus returned her smile with one of his own. “You were second on the mornings list after making sure the two Potentia I grabbed from Janus's secret lab wouldn't explode when plugged into the city.”
It was clear Helia didn't know what to say to that as she just exchanged an uncomfortable glance with Quinn. “...Yes, well, I'm glad to say our issues are nowhere near that severe.” She motioned to the open passage behind her. “If you'll follow us to the meeting room.”
“Of course,” Eventus agreed, silently hoping they would at least have chairs in the room as he followed the pair through the winding corridors of the Explorer class vessel.
“Is something wrong with the ship's translocation booths?” He inquired with a slight frown after the third darkened one they passed.
“We disassembled most of the internal translocation system as part of an attempt to construct a submolecular synthesizer that could be used to replace the burnt out portions of our hyperdrive.” Helia explained as they continued to make their way through the ship. “As you can imagine from where the Asgard found us the attempt was unsuccessful.”
“I assume the Wraith took out your repair bay then?” Eventus guessed, since otherwise they should have been able to use the bay's equipment to construct the parts they would have needed to properly build one.
“In the same ambush that killed most of our engineering team.” Helia confirmed with a grim nod. “If the old Council was still around I would lodge a major failure complaint about the dangerous loss of sensor range in the upgraded explorer class design.”
“It was deemed an acceptable risk given the necessary space required to install the phasic particle lance.” Eventus grumbled. “Personally I would have just designed a new hull from scratch that would allow for both. But you know how the council could be when it came to anything without a thousand cycles of testing behind it.”
“I actually do not.” Helia admitted. “The closest I ever came to personally interacting with any of the old council was in the award ceremony for our successful rescue of the research team from the Galatea research outpost.”
Eventus frowned, wracking his mind for several seconds for why that sounded familiar. “Was that the research outpost where they were trying to engineer humanoid androids remotely controllable in a manner similar to drones?"
From what he could recall, the idea behind that particular project had been to try and minimize the amount of crew needed on starships without impacting long term combat efficiency in a manner somewhat similar to how the Asgard did things. It had died the same death all similar programs tended to however in that there were some hard limits to the number of such platforms a human mind could control without a large amount of adaptive secondary systems to pick up the slack.
“No,” Helia shook her head. “That research outposts was working on a way to copy higher dimensional superstructures onto android bodies.”
“Oh for the love of…” Eventus muttered under his breath as a feeling of impending dread crept up on him. “Please tell me you didn't leave the test units in storage when you evacuated the research team?”
“Of course.” Helia confirmed, shooting him an odd look. “Without living people there the likelihood of the Wraith discovering the research outposts location was vanishingly small. So everything was set into standby mode with the hope that the team may someday be able to return there and continue their work.”
“Great,” sighed Eventus as his worst fears were confirmed. “You're going to have to give me the spatial location of that planet so I can warn the humans not to visit there due to a high likelihood of insane escaped androids.”
It wasn't a sure thing of course, but historically there had been something like a 99 percent chance of insanity when you tried to copy a soul. And his people never locked things down as well as they should, so at least one reactivation and escape was almost assured.
Helia threw a glare over her shoulder. “That is a ridiculous assumption. The researchers followed long term storage procedures to the letter.”
“Tell you what,” Eventus narrowed his eyes at the woman. “When you've spent three hundred and fifty cycles in the maintenance corps you can lecture me about the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of standard long term storage procedures. Till then however you're just going to have to trust my experience with just how lackluster those standards can be.”
The real problem of course was that then standards were meant to cover things up to a set degree above known standards. Which shouldn't have been a problem but was because so much of what researchers worked on involved plumbing the depths of the unknown for new ways to do things that the standards failing became an inevitability instead of an unlikelihood.
“The fact that you were the longest surviving maintenance corps member of our time does not mean that you are automatically right.” Helia countered as she came to a stop in front an open door through which Eventus could see a somewhat recognizable woman amongst the trio of uniformed people already sitting in wait.
“Commander Trebal.” Eventus greeted the woman, hiding his surprise at her presence.
“High Councilor,” Trebal returned with a nod.
“Commander Trebal is here to help set up the parts transfer and repair schedule for the Tria.” Helia offered as she walked in and took a seat at the farthest edge of the round table. “I thought it would be prudent however if we also used the time to discuss the Atlantis habitation issue.”
Taking a moment to try and figure out of this was an attempt at an ambush, or just Helia trying to save time, Eventus decided it probably didn't matter and followed the woman in to take his obvious spot in the sole open chair.
“All right then, where do you want to start?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author's Notes: The first chapter of the new 1500 minimum word count and bi weekly schedule. Which as is often normal for me ended up a couple hundred words above the minimum. Oh well, I suppose that's not a bad thing.