Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 155

Chapter 155 - Walking Softly

Having spent the entirety of his moderately enjoyable meal of roasted lizard flank watching Teal’c and Ishta strategically dance around each other. Eventually they had reached the rather amusing point of the night where it was clear both of the pair wanted to have a private conversation but didn’t want to be the one to actually bring it up as an option. 

Which played into what Eventus needed perfectly, so, waiting for Ishta to step away to get her drink refilled he leaned over towards Teal'c. “Would you cover for me while I snuck over to the outpost facility?”

Teal'c frowned. “Why?”

Eventus sighed, hating himself just a little for what he was about to say. “Because you're all too young.”

The single eyebrow Teal'c raised in response asked the question of just what he meant by that clearly enough that no actual words were needed.

“So long as it's left operational someone, someday, will end up using it as a weapon.” Eventus explained in a dire tone. “A weapon that can strike through any stargate, at any time, and was specifically designed to be able to bypass any known type of defensive shielding.”

At the time the only ways to protect against the energy wave had been high level temporal fields, moving whatever you wanted to protect a significant distance out of normal dimensional phase, and the subspatial shielding used on cityships.

That last however had only been a theoretical, and one Eventus wasn’t too keen on testing given the likely loss of the cityship that had disappeared on its way out of the galaxy.

“So it's better for everyone's sake if I sneak in there and install a few programing lockouts that make the system report insufficient energy for operation.”

Because he figured he might as well lean into that at this point given how many other leftover technologies the denizens of the galaxy ran into with that problem.

“I too have had concerns about the weapon’s continued existence.” Teal'c acknowledged with a slight tilt of his head. “However I lack the ability to grant you access to it.”

“Gaining access shouldn't be a problem.” Eventus admitted. “I just need you to make sure I'm not missed by anyone while I do it.”

“That should not be a problem.” Teal’c agreed, turning to Ishta as she returned with her now full mug of Jaffa beer. “Eventus wishes to allow us privacy to discuss issues of importance. So will be returning to the room I procured for him for the night.”

Ignoring the fact that the Jaffa had seemingly had that story ready to go, Eventus nodded and played along. “I’m hoping the rest of your council will at least have come to some kind of agreement with each other by tomorrow morning.”

Ishta’s eyes flicked between Teal’c and Eventus with thinly veiled suspicion for several seconds before she seemed to come to some sort of decision and plopped back down in her seat. “An extreme hope, but as long as your willingness to assist my people in freeing ourselves from the last shackles of our former oppressors remains I suppose it is not one I find the need to argue with.”

The warning in her words was clear enough to Eventus, however helping to fix the Jaffa’s immune system issue was something that had been on his list of long term goals since he had first made it. So he just offered the woman a nod of acknowledgement, before pushing himself out of the chair and heading out of the small eatery.

Dakara’s large red sun was beginning to dip down under the horizon when he exited, with the later hour seeming to correspond to a general increase in Jaffa foot traffic. Wandering the streets a bit, he eventually found an unwatched alley to slip into whereupon he used a mental command to invert his personal shield and with a shimmer vanished from sight.

While a personal shield couldn't fully duplicate the effects of a personal cloaking device, it could certainly get close. The three main differences were that a personal shield could only dampen, but not entirely eliminate sound. It couldn't compensate for the displacement of air as you moved. And it didn't disrupt the formation of footprints in applicable ground types.

None of which really mattered since the Jaffa were using themselves as the only method of detection. Which was kind of worrying to think about given at least some Goa'uld had personal cloaking devices of their own.

He made his way to the entrance of the facility, and slipped past the two guards flanking the puzzle door that very much hadn't been in the facility blueprints he'd dug up. Hanging a left down the faux stone corridor in front of the control room, he continued on for a half dozen meters before reaching an apparent dead end.

Taking a second to check his interface and confirm that nobody else was anywhere near a position where they might see him, he let the cloak drop before placing a palm on a completely unremarkable brick in the wall in front of him.

An infrasonic tone echoed out, and millennia of dust fell off the wall as the harmonic resonance caused the wall's molecular structure to temporarily destabilize.

Stepping through, he was greeted with a stairwell of the same faux stone as the rest of the facility.

Taking a moment to check the blueprints, he confirmed that heading up from here would take him to the primary maintenance passages for the devices emitter and focusing array. Not exactly what he was interested in so instead he turned and began the trek down the stairs instead towards the power systems and primary control matrix.

It took him nearly ten minutes to make his way down to the primary control matrix, a long enough time that he had become thoroughly sick of the omnipresent tanish brown stone that had been used as a surface for absolutely everything.

“Seriously.” He muttered under his breath. “I get they were going for a certain aesthetic, but that doesn’t mean you can't add some color to things.”

Pushing in the raised stone next to the doorway, the sounds of moving stone echoed out as the door slowly ground open in what he highly suspected was a purposefully dramatic design choice.

Walking into the room, the lights on the walls flickered to life revealing the large crystalline pillar of the central control matrix ringed by a series of thankfully normal control stations.

“All right,” He cracked his knuckles. “Let's see what we got.”

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Author’s Notes: Cut to tomorrow morning when Teal’c shows up with a small smile on his face and several people are very confused at why. Not Eventus though, he just rolls his eyes.