Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 104

Chapter 104 - Just Another Tuesday - Part 4

Mitchell flicked off the transmission button on his radio and looked over to them. “Okay so, Colonel Pendergast is saying that General O’Neill wants to know if there’s anything in the place that might be useful in fighting our many varied enemies?”

Eventus glanced over to where Daniel was using a digital camera to take pictures of the various log entries. “You know General O’Neill best, Daniel. Would he want a completely honest answer for that? Or an answer that would save your people a large amount of trouble in the long run?”

“Honest answer.” Daniel said without even taking a moment to consider the question.

“All right then.” Eventus sighed, knowing he was probably going to regret this. “While technically speaking this is a scientific outpost with no weaponry. If the focusing rings were to be reoriented into a different configuration the station could give a passable impression of the fictional creation you call the Death Star.”

The whole structure was a giant focusing array meant to punch a hole between dimensions, focus that energy into a beam instead of at a specific point in space and there really wasn’t a lot in the universe that could survive being hit by it.

“This place can blow up planets!?” Mitchell all but yelled in clear aghast.

“Theoretically.” Eventus confirmed with a nod.

Mitchell held up a finger and shook it before walking over to the corner of the room. “This is why everybody is always annoyed with you people.” He muttered as he flicked back on his radio. “Yeah, okay, so Eventus says the place has no weapons but can be reconfigured into a superweapon.”

“What kind of superweapon?” Pendergast's voice returned in a tone of worry.

“Death Star, sir.” Mitchell confirmed with a wince.

Nearly a full minute passed before Pendergast's voice returned. “General O'Neill is saying we're to blow the place up once you're clear and it's safe to do so.”

“Huh.” Eventus muttered in surprise. “I really didn't expect that.”

“Didn't expect what?” Vala inquired idly as she leaned over next to him.

Eventus pointed at the still conversing Mitchell in the far corner of the room. “General O'Neill wants us to blow the place up instead of leaving it intact for their people to go over.”

“He probably doesn’t want some Goa’uld secretly taking the place over and using it to destroy Earth.” Vala tilted her head slightly in seeming consideration. “At least, that’s what I’d be worried about with how many of them are still out there.”

That made some sense Eventus supposed, though it did leave him wondering just what all the non-Ba'al Goa'uld were getting up to given the show had just kind of handwaved them away.

“Out there doing what?”

Vala shrugged. “Not much really. Yu’s surviving concubines are doing the whole undercover princess thing on a couple of his old worlds. Kali and Anat vanished.” She leaned over and pitched her voice into a whisper. “Probably killed each other knowing the way those two always went at it.”  

“Zirstyr finally managed to off old Wepwawet and is trying to fixup her own throneworld. Badb is trying to track down wherever Ba’al hid Morrigan–”

“According to the Tok'ra, he had her executed.” Daniel added in.

“Oh.” Vala exclaimed, sounding particularly happy about learning that. “I’ll have to send old Badb a congratulatory gift basket then.”

She shook her head and sighed. “Generally though, they’re just trying to keep their heads down since pretty much everyone out there now has a kill on sight policy.”

That was actually kind of depressing to hear given Eventus knew it wasn’t entirely impossible for a Goa’uld to change their way of thinking. Though given her circumstances it was more than a bit odd to hear Vala seemingly lament about that policy.

“Okay boys and girls.” Mitchell announced as he walked back over. “General O’Neill wants this place gone, so the Prometheus is reading its nukes and waiting on us to shut down what needs to be shut down.”

Daniel grimaced, turning away from the control station to stare at Mitchell with a distinct look of worry on his face. “There’s a lot here, we’re talking research notes, daily logs, personal accounts.”

“And several hundred romance novels.” Eventus added in to get the general point across that the information wasn’t particularly important so far as these things went.

“The point.” Daniel scowled at him. “Is that a good portion of the information here might be unique. So we should try our best to preserve it before we go blowing the place up.”

“Unique doesn’t mean important.” Eventus pointed out. “There’s millions of years of similar junk information stored away in Atlantis’s database.”

To the point it made up the vast majority of Atlantis’s database in a manner not dissimilar to what the human internet was on the road to becoming.

“If it was considered junk information, why did your people preserve it?” Daniel pressed on in an expectant tone that suggested he already had some idea of the answer.

“Because it’s a record of that which has passed.” Eventus said, knowing from the slight feeling of guilt now gnawing at him at the thought of leaving behind the research stations records that the Archeologist had won this one.

“Exactly.” Daniel returned smugly.

“That’s all well and good.” Mitchell interjected. “But I’m guessing from the fact that Eventus didn’t just suggest it, that we can’t just hook up a laptop and download a copy of the files before we go.”

Eventus shook his head. “This is a high security facility, the only location that direct data transfer can occur is the computer core. And that involves the physical transfer of data storage crystals.”

Too much chance of energy based lifeforms escaping containment attempts by utilizing open data transfer pathways otherwise.

“All right.” Mitchell said, seeming to sense where this was going as he glanced over at the still open facility map. “And the computer core would be?”

A few key presses highlighted a room about two hundred meters and several floors away from their current position.

“That’s a lot of red dots.” Mitchell muttered as his eyes traced across the various paths that could be used to reach the location.

“Too many.” Eventus confirmed. “You’d never make it without being jumped by something you probably wouldn’t survive.”

“I bet they’d just bounce off your personal shield though.” Vala put forward innocently as Daniel turned an almost pleading look on Eventus.

“Barring a few rare outlier’s, yes.” Eventus reluctantly admitted. “But that would mean leaving you three to return to the Jumper on your own.”

“We could always wait here.” Vala added, glancing around the room. “Single door, no large air vents. Long as the door locks it wouldn’t be that hard to hold.”

Mitchell rolled his eyes. “Or, the rest of us can just go back to the Jumper now, take the ship out before you lift the lockdown so there’s no chance of something getting in, and have the Prometheus beam you out after you grab the crystals.”

Eventus momentarily blushed in embarrassment, having completely overlooked that possibility as an option given how new of a general tool Asgard transporters were. “Right, well, I suppose that’s somewhat as a plan.”

“Great.” Mitchell agreed with a nod before pulling off his radio and tossing it to Eventus. “Keep the line open so if something goes wrong the Prometheus will know to pull you out.”

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Author’s Notes: Next chapter, the crew of the Prometheus listens to Eventus Doomguy it through a bunch of alien monsters. Because really, what else could he do given the circumstances.