Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 115

Chapter 115 - A General’s Day - Part 2

Hayes crossed his arms and leaned back on the couch. “Which brings me to the other problem with this. Now, I'll fully admit it's been awhile since I served. But I distinctly remember having it hammered into me that the most important thing for any military is their logistics.”

“Pretty much.” Jack agreed cautiously, not sure which of several different directions Hayes might be going with his line of thought.

“Thought so.” Hayes nodded. “So why is it you're using battlecruisers as cargo transports instead of say, oh I don't know, actual cargo transports?”

Jack winced.

“That was a rhetorical question by the way.” Hayes went on, uncrossing his arms to shake a finger at Jack. “Because I know we don't have any cargo transports. Just like I know we don't have any under construction.”

He grimaced. “In fact, we don't have anything under construction right now outside of F-302's and BC-304's.”

“I think the guys over at Area Fifty-One are working on some sort of gate capable hovercraft sort of thing.” Jack offered weakly, well aware that wasn’t what Hayes was talking about but not really having a better answer to give him.

“Jack.” Hayes warned.

“I know, I know.” Jack held up a hand to forestall further judgement and let out a sigh. “But I really don’t know what else to tell you Henry. Because all the decisions around that were before my time. And it’s not like I can just snap my fingers now and have Carter magic up the blueprints for an entirely new class of spaceship.”

As far as he knew, none of the people who usually worked on things like that even had the time to try. Too much to do, and not enough people to do it with seemed like an unfortunate axiom that even the Ancients apparently hadn’t been able to escape. Which did make Jack feel a little bit better about his own troubles if he was being honest.

“What about our allies?” Hayes asked, brow furrowing in thought. “Or hell, all the random Joe Schmoes flying around out there with salvaged Goa’uld cargo ships. 

Jack shrugged and began counting them off. “The Tok’ra are still out of contact. The Jaffa are like five minutes away from a civil war. And the only thing we have that the Hebridians want is Asgard tech that we can’t trade to them.” He began drumming his fingers on his knee as he mentally went over the handful of less above the board allies they had access to. “I suppose we ask around, see if anyone who has ones willing to sell. But given they’ll probably want to trade Naquadah for it I’m not sure how much we’ll come out ahead in the long term.”

Pretty much all of their naquadah was earmarked for either treaty obligations or domestic production at this point. And since the first couldn’t be touched without pissing off a lot of people who they didn’t want to piss off, that only left the second to dip into if they wanted to use the mineral as a tradegood.

“Take it from the Mark Eight budget if you need to.” Hayes ordered.

“Lord knows the only thing those have ever been of any use against is stationary targets.” He muttered under his breath.

“I’ll need that in writing for General Vidrine.” Jack said, knowing the man wouldn’t be willing to give up one of his pet programs without a fight. 

“You’ll have it by tomorrow.” Hayes returned with a nod. “With everything going on with that damn Ancient, we’re going to need everything we can get our hands on.”

“Sir?” Jack asked, not really sure what the man was getting at with that.

Hayes made an annoyed motion towards the stack of reports on his desk. “I can read between the lines, Jack. He wants to turn us into Hawaii. And while that’s a great state to vacation in, with great people, they have less ability to influence policy decisions than New Jersey.” He leaned back and let out a tired sigh. “And I don’t want that for us.”

Personally Jack would have been okay with that since, outside of the whole Pearl Harbor thing, things seemed to be working out pretty well for Hawaii. But he understood where President Hayes was coming from.

“Unless you can get the appropriations committee to start dumping money into off world development I’m not sure there’s much we can do about that.” He admitted honestly before cocking his head. “Well, short of turning down Evan’s deal and politely escorting him off the planet.”

“Not an option.” Hayes answered with a shake of his head. “I have it on good authority that both the Chinese and Russians have already authorized break the bank measures on this. Which means if we don’t agree to it ourselves, in a few years it will be us who are at the distinct technological disadvantage.”

That was more or less what Jack had expected, but part of his job was outlining options, even if those weren’t likely to be taken. “It’s going to be a race the moment that deals done with so long as that stuff can do even half of what he claimed.”

“A race we’re going to be hard pressed to win without risking disclosure.” Hayes agreed tiredly. “Which the various think tanks we have on the issue are pretty sure is what the Ancient actually wants to push us towards."

“Na.” Jack shook his head, more than a little amused they had misjudged the guy that badly. “Evan thinks it’s stupid, but he doesn’t really care whether we keep hiding things so long as it doesn’t put his people at risk. Daniel thinks he’s looking at the issue from a more long term Ancienty perspective.”

“Doctor Jackson also thinks he’s manipulating us somehow.” Hayes pointed out dryly. “A determination that every member of the IOA who's talked to him agrees with.”

That was the sense Jack had gotten too, so he couldn’t really deny the idea. 

“Only theory I have about that is that he wants people around.” He offered after a moment's consideration. “Might have something to do with everyone he used to know being, you know, dead.”

He didn’t know if Ancient’s could even get PTSD, but the way Eventus acted at times reminded him enough of various soldiers he’d known over the years that he wasn’t willing to write the possibility off.

“Doctor Weir’s report suggested the same thing.” Hayes admitted before shooting him an odd look. “Now, what’s this I’m hearing about giant space monsters?”

Jack grimaced, having rather hoped Hayes wouldn’t hear about that till he was in a position to give a more concrete answer. “Carter’s looking into it.”

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Author’s Notes: Jack’s not exactly that far off, after all, Eventus is using various humans to keep himself from overly focusing on the whole “left behind” thing.

Next chapter will be Rayla’s trip to the museum.