Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 147

Chapter 147 - Late Night Meetings

With the gifts handed out Eventus had explained the situation with their Goa’uld guest to Rayla, who had been more than happy to lend a hand watching over her. Which had led to them gathering up a few necessities for the woman, and then heading down to the impromptu gate ship hanger where a handful of bored looking soldiers were still watching over the similarly bored looking Yami.

“Rayla.” Eventus said, motioning to the seated Goa'uld. “Meet Yami.”

“Hi.” Rayle greeted with a cautious wave.

The Goa'uld's gaze went from Rayla's near platinum hair, to her pointed ears, before settling on her vibrantly blue eyes. “And what species is she?” 

“I'm an Elf.” Rayla offered helpfully.

“An Elf?” Yami repeated as if she couldn't quite believe it.

“I grew her in a biopod.” Eventus explained, not seeing any reason to hold back that information given the Goa'uld would almost certainly hear it from elsewhere soon enough.

“I'm zero point zero two percent jellyfish.” Rayle added happily, causing Eventus to sigh in exasperation.

“She's genetically divergent enough from human norm that attempting to take her as a host would be about as risky as a pre-Jaffa Goa'uld attempting to switch human hosts.”

Which, according to Tok'ra provided files, was basically a coin flip and why the older System Lords did everything they could to keep their current hosts.

“Then she is to be my jailer?” Yami inquired, idly studying Rayla in a way that made the Elf fidget slightly.

“She'll be keeping you company for the next day or two while I convince the Free Jaffa Nation not to sell their souls to the Ori.” Eventus clarified.

Yami scowled. “You will be treating with the Jaffa?”

“Yes.” Eventus nodded. “But don’t worry, I won’t be offering to turn you over to them or anything like that.”

“Only torture and execution would await me if you did.” Yami said, crossing her arms and leaning back into the seat. 

“These Jaffa don’t sound very nice.” Rayla put forward with a frown.

“They were bred to be the enforcers of the System Lord’s will over the masses, niceness was not a prerequisite for that task.”

“Oh please.“ Eventus muttered, rolling his eyes at the overblown claim. “I might not know a lot about Goa’uld history, but I seriously doubt there was any organized eugenics plan for the Jaffa given the way the System Lords basically just threw armies of them at each other and then let the winner grab up any survivors for their own.”

Even if they hadn’t done that, the System Lords would have needed to provide consistent birth control to their troops to keep cross breeding from occurring during the tragic events that tended to follow in the aftermath of armed conflicts. And the Lantean really couldn't see them bothering given the generally low level of care they seemed to show for most Jaffa as anything but disposable troops.

“But no.” He admitted with a sigh. “Most Jaffa aren’t very nice, though that’s more because of cultural reasons than anything biological driving them. Unfortunately they are also the largest remaining military force in the galaxy. Which means them falling under the sway of the Ori would be really bad for the rest of the people living here.”

“If you were to assist my people in regaining control of our worlds and servants there would be little to no risk of that occurring.” Yami put forward innocently.

Eventus turned a heavy lidded stare at the woman, unable to believe that she had just asked for his assistance in re-subjugating the Jaffa. “Really?”

“I had to ask.” Yami shrugged. “But consider before you refuse that whatever war you are clearly planning to fight would be much easier to win with the assistance of our former manpower and industrial base then it would without.”

“I have other less morally dubious plans in the works for making up for the current shortfall of manpower and industry.” Eventus told her, unsurprised that she had been able to work out that he was running face first into those limits given her access to at least some of the IOA’s classified files. 

Turning her gaze towards Rayla, Yami raised a single eyebrow in an unvoiced question that left Eventus once more rolling his eyes. “No, I’m not planning to grow an army of elves to use as soldiers.”

At the moment he wasn’t even planning to grow a small hamlet of them. As while Rayla was proving the genetic structure and aesthetic design was workable in an actual lifeform. There were still several psychological questions at play alongside basically all of the planetary prep work he still needed to do before starting on a full population.

“We’re too high maintenance to be soldiers anyways.” Rayla offered helpfully, the oddity of the statement enough for Eventus to turn a look of confusion at the Elf.

“You’re too high maintenance?” He repeated.

Rayla nodded. “That’s what John said when I asked if I should join the army for a few years like Indiana Jones did.”

“Right…” Eventus drawled, glad he had missed that particular conversation. “Moving on to the reason we’re having this conversation tonight instead of tomorrow.”

Taking a few steps into the gate ship he set the repurposed gift bag he was carrying down next to Yami.

“What is that?” She asked, eying the bag with thinly veiled caution. 

“Pajamas, slippers, a sleeping mask, toiletries, and the first four books in the Song of Fire and Ice series.” Eventus told her. “I doubt that suit is comfortable to sleep in, and General Landry said no to turning off the lights. So I picked a couple things up from the SGC's guest supplies to make the next few days a little more bearable”

He didn't expect a few small gestures like this to overly affect Yami's opinion of her situation. But he wanted to make it abundantly clear that he wasn't going to treat her with anything even approaching the level of hostility the SGC had treated Camulus with.

“I see.” Yami murmured, staring at the bag for several seconds before glancing up at the very visible soldiers arrayed against the wall outside the gate ship's hatch. “Given Tau’ri sensibilities, you may wish to suggest to the General in charge of this facility that he limit the guards watching this vessel to women.”

Eventus looked at the soldiers, taking specific note now that it had been called to his attention of how there didn’t appear to be a single woman amongst them.

 “Yeah…” He agreed with a tired sigh. “I suppose that would probably be a good idea for a number of reasons…”

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Author’s Notes: Not that Yami really cares as the soldiers are aesthetically pleasing enough that in other circumstances she wouldn’t entirely mind them watching her get naked. But she’s trying to be at least somewhat accommodating of how the various parties involved in things would feel. Though to be fair most of the soldiers wouldn't exactly mind her getting naked either, they just can't say that out loud.