Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 121

Chapter 121 - Secrets of the Past - Part 2

Carter looked between Jack and Daniel for a moment before grimacing. “It's, well sir, I think you're going to want to listen to the hologram.”

That was moderately unhelpful as an answer given Jack only knew a handful of words in Ancient. But he supposed Carter wouldn't be asking him to do it if she didn't expect something to come of it.

“Allright Carter, but unless she's talking about cheese that was left out in the sun too long, I'm not likely to get it.”

A sudden tugging on the sleeve of his dress uniform drew Jack's attention to the young Elf, who was biting the bottom of her lip slightly as she stared up at him. “Do you want me to try switching the language to English?”

“You can do that?” Carter asked in surprise.

“Maybe.” Rayla said as she turned to study the hologram. “It looks like a standard holographic message template. And those usually adapt themselves to whatever language they detect being used when activated. This one's probably using Lantean instead of English because the portion of the system in the museum was connected with my mind when it was activated and the base language I was programmed with was Lantean.” 

“Wish you guys would have done that for your writing.” Jack muttered, the hundreds of timeloops he'd spent learning Ancient still the occasional recurring nightmare for him.

“Oh!” Rayla suddenly exclaimed, hopping in place like a happy child a third her age. “I know that one too! Eventus explained it when I asked him why he needed to learn written Chinese even though he could speak the language.”

Jack instantly focused in full on her words, because he just knew this was the type of thing several rather important people were probably going to want to know.

“Logographic languages are ass, and their complexity means they quickly diverge from any base seed if there isn't a sustained attempt to enforce uniformity.”

“Are ass?” Jack repeated to be sure he had heard the Elf right.

Rayla ducked her head. “I was quoting dad.”

The sudden change of address hit Jack with a familiar pang of regret, but it was an old enough wound at this point that UT thankfully didn't linger.

“Um, Jack.” Daniel interjected, worry clear in his voice in a way that instantly set Jack on guard. “I think I just heard the hologram mention Hathor.”

Jack felt his eye twitch.

“Yeah…” Carter hemmed. “That’s kind of why I wanted you here sir, there were a few recognizable names that I figured you and Daniel needed to hear.”

Glancing back at the hologram, Jack weighed the options before deciding it was unlikely anything bad would come of letting the Elf make the attempt.

He nodded to her. “You know what kid, sure, go for it.”

Rayla smiled up at him before walking over to the hologram and holding up a hand. “Um. Excuse me. Is there any chance you could switch to language Thirteen-A instead? Because none of the humans here really speak Lantean.” She briefly glanced over her shoulder at them before turning back to address the hologram again. “Also maybe increase your volume to normal speaking levels, humans don't really have as good hearing as we do so the dramatic whisper probably isn’t having the intended effect.”

“Thirteen-A?” Jack asked Daniel in an aside.

“The indicator tag the Ancients assigned to English.” The Archeologist whispered back.

The hologram began flickering slightly, and for a brief moment Jack swore he heard an electronic whine before the projections form stabilized in a pose completely different from the one it had been in before the Elf had made her verbal request.

“To she who has opened my vault, know that I am Lucina, last protector of the Roman people.” It began speaking in perfect English.” And I leave this message as a monument to my life and failure. In hopes that you may be able to use that which I leave behind to protect the people of Earth where I have failed.”

“I was born five thousand and seven years after the return to Diana of Latona and Daniel of Jackson.”

Jack slowly turned his head to stare at Daniel, who all of the sudden seemed to be doing an admirable impression of a very confused deer staring into a pair of rapidly approaching headlights.

“An unlikely pairing who met while working to drive the Goa'uld from Earth. A mission that ended with their disappearance shortly after my thirteenth birthday.”

A sudden suspicion formed, and Jack felt his shoulders slump because he just knew in his bones that this was probably going to feed into several people’s time travel paranoia.

“I do not know if they died or Ascended, though I would like to believe if it was the latter they would have at least left me a goodbye note.”

“You'd certainly think.” Jack muttered under his breath.

“From there I was raised by my uncle Janus, until he and his apprentices departed in search of an uncertain future.”

Carter was frowning in a way that Jack knew meant she now had several questions she desperately wanted to voice.

“Eventually I was able to join up with a handful of other direct descendants in the heavily damaged remains of the Olympus outpost under Mount Vesuvius.”

The hologram took a moment to offer them a melancholy smile before continuing.

“It was a pleasant few centuries, eventually however one by one the others began to vanish. And it was through that action that we began the hunt for our most despicable foe, Hathor.”

Jack couldn't help the grimace that flashed over his features at the confirmation of that particular Goa'uld's name.

“For over a thousand years we fought against her uncanny ability to bend the minds of others, till in the end it was only Virbius and I left. However Hathor had not escaped without loss herself. One by one her hidden strongholds had fallen, her caches of technology had been destroyed, and we had at last located what we believed to be her last bastion.”

Somehow Jack got the distinct sense from the hologram’s tone that there was a but coming.

“We snuck in using stealth shrouds, placing remote activated implosion devices on key architectural supports throughout the bastion while Hathor herself slumbered unaware in her healing unit. Or at least, so I believed.”

“And there it is.” Jack murmured, moderately amused by the idle nod of agreement from Carter.

“We activated the devices, watching the stone of the bastion collapse into itself and seemingly end Hathor's life with unbecoming glee. At which point we returned to Olympus and let exhaustion claim us.”

The holographic woman suddenly flinched, briefly glancing over her shoulder in clear confusion at something they couldn't see.

“That was the trap, for Hathor had somehow corrupted Virbius, and during my slumber he set the outposts geothermal tap to an irreversible overload.”

“Hold on.” Daniel muttered, shaking off his earlier shock to stare at the hologram in a way Jack was well acquainted with from years of watching his semi-obsessive friend dig into lost histories. “Does that mean–”

“By the time I awoke magma had already filled much of the outpost, and was only being held back by the quickly fading crystal-cells of the outpost's life-protection systems that had prioritized my survival over all else. I grabbed what I could, and barely made it to the translocator before the outpost was overcome entirely.”

Squeezing her fists together, the woman making the recording took a breath.

“The translocator deposited me here. An unfortunately brief reprieve given the ashfall from Vesuvius's eruption has already begun to bury the city, trapping me within this installation's purification field.”

She frowned, glancing over her other shoulder as the confusion from earlier seemed to momentarily resurface.

“Unable to draw energy from Olympus, and with the solar collectors already covered by ash, the crystal-cells here have less than a day left at most before reaching a point of near total entropy. At which point I will be forced to either accept my end, or run through volcanic outgassings without meaningful protection in hopes the combination of my mothers amplification pendant and my own abilities can help me stave off death long enough to move past all that which has already killed those who lived within the area."

“Not exactly a winning choice amongst the pair.” She offered with a self pitying laugh. “But with the risk of a human or worse recovering the amplification pendant from my corpse I suppose it really wasn’t a choice at all. So I have set my end in motion, and locked the pendant away in one of this installation’s storage vaults so you who come after may be able to us–”

She cut herself off, spinning in place only to stumble back half a step in seeming surprise at whatever it was she was seeing.

“Really? After all this time…” Seconds of silence passed, and it was clear she was listening to something that hadn’t been caught by whatever recording mechanism the Ancients had used. “My choice… All I have to do is let go…”

A handful of seconds more passed before the woman glanced down at the floor and then seemed to steel herself. “What about Hathor?”

She sighed and gave an almost rueful shake of her head. “I already made my choice, so I suppose it’s not.”

With that she seemed to relax, glowing in a way that was instantly recognizable to Jack before the holographic form flickered back to its original position at the start of the message.

“To she who ha–”

Turning to the introspectively starring Daniel, Jack couldn't quite help the grim that formed on his lips. “So I guess congratulations are in order, it was apparently a girl.”

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Author's Notes: I'd guess there's about one more chapter left in this little side story before we switch back to Xiaoyi and Eventus's morning after. Which is sure to be completely uneventful.