Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 97

Chapter 97 - The Approaching Storm

Placing the final silver needle into the last of the empty pinholes in the metallic stand, Thor flexed the protoform body's hand a final time before looking over to Sigyn for confirmation on his time.

“Fifty two point seven seconds.” She confirmed, noting the numbers down on the testing chambers central control station. “Well within the baseline we established before you entered the temporal acceleration field.”

An absolutely enormous waste of energy given they had needed to accelerate the flow of time within the testing facility by a factor of nearly three hundred. But there had been no other alternative given the unfortunately rapid rate at which the rest of their population’s genetic structure was now decaying.

“That is highly promising.” He put forward as he strode back over to stand in front of the control station.

“Indeed.” Sigyn agreed. “You have already passed the point at which dexterity loss began to set in with our own designs.”

Which wasn't entirely surprising to Thor given what he knew of the Lantean’s heavy focus on understanding the connection between consciousness and the higher layers of multi-dimensional space. Though the similarities of the technology to that utilized by the mortal enemy that had nearly driven them to extinction, continued to leave a small but nagging worry in the back of his mind.

“And there continues to be no corruption in the quantum crystal processors keron pathways?” 

“None.” Sigyn confirmed with the slightest bit of annoyance in her tone.

“Then we should move on to testing my emotional responses.” Thor said, seeing no point in putting that particular unpleasant task off any longer than necessary.

Sigyn nodded, moving the primary control crystal to a different interface point on the console’s surface before turning it slightly to send out the signal to whoever it was she had decided to bring in for the task.

The photon eruption of a translocation beam briefly lit the chamber, and Thor glanced over at the arrival point only to grimace despite himself at the Asgard now standing there.

Staring at Sif for a moment longer than was probably warranted given the circumstances, he turned back to Sigyn with a slightly frown on his face. “You could not have requested O'Neill's assistance for this?”

“It was considered.” Sif admitted as she studied his protoform body with a critical eye. “However it was decided I would be a better choice given the task requires inducing the full breadth of emotional reactions.”

She paused and tilted her head slightly. “Unless there is something new you wish to disclose to us about your relationship with the human?”

“No.” Thor admitted with a sigh, unsurprised that she had decided on that of all things to begin with. “Though his talk of fish can be quite relaxing at times.”

“Fish?” Sif inquired in an odd tone.

“It is not important.” Thor said, well aware that would be unlikely to sate Sif's curiosity. “We should move on to the tests.”

For a moment he was worried Sif would push the question, thankfully however she gave a nod of agreement.

“I see you have chosen to restore your original appearance.”

“Yes.” Thor confirmed cautiously, something in the tone of his former partner's words putting him on edge. “I used a compilation of recordings from fifteen thousand years ago.”

“You should alter it to how you looked twenty-five thousand years ago.” Sif criticized with a small huff. “The loss of musculature did you no favors.”

Thor felt his eye twitch. “My musculature was functionally unchanged between those time periods.”

Sif glanced over at Sigyn. “Have you performed the memory tests yet? Because I fear Thor may be suffering from at least some degradation in his long term recollection of events.”

“Those were the first tests we performed.” Sigyn confirmed in a distracted tone. “And you've sufficiently covered annoyance at this point, so please attempt to move on to something else.”

That was likely to be easier said than done Thor knew. For as much affection as they had once held for each other, the stress of their people's millennia of war against the Replicators had taken its toll.

“You still have me as the redirect for your priority contact code.” Sif suddenly digressed in an oddly accusatory tone. “You promised to change it after the last time.”

“I received a priority message while under temporal acceleration?" Thor inquired, tilting his head as he went over the list of those who wouldn't have known he was indisposed during the past few days. “Was it a member of SG1?”

“It was not one of your pet humans.” Sif returned with a light huff. “The Lantean Eventus contacted us from his people's outpost on Earth. He wished our people to act as the neutral party for a trade agreement between his people and the humans.”

Thor blinked in surprise, that being one of the last things he had expected to hear given how strict the Lanteans had been with humans in the past.

“Following procedure I told him you were currently out on a mission.” Sif continued. “And then gave agreement that you would be free to oversee the trade deal seven Earth days from now.”

“Thank you.” Thor said, mind racing as he tried to work out just what it was that might have driven the Lantean to make such a decision. “Has there been any new information discovered about the Ori?”

“One of their Priors arrived on Pertho yesterday.” Sif confirmed with a nod. “Peaceful contact was attempted via drone and showed promise at first, however upon meeting our emissary in person the Prior declared us to be abominations and refused any further discussion. From there he was escorted back to the Stargate, and upon reaching it attempted to induce an explosive overload via unknown methods.”

A spark of anger shot through Thor at that, tempered only by the knowledge that Sif's choice of words suggested the Prior hadn't actually succeeded in his attempt to murder the Asgard on that world.

“How was he stopped?”

“The Stargate was translocated into high orbit.” Sif explained. “After which the outpost's entire complement of Ymir combat drones were utilized to neutralize him.”

“And drone losses?” Thor inquired in interest.

“Seventeen out of twenty two.” Sif said, the number enough to make Thor wince given how close that suggested the fight had been. “He utilized telekinesis to seize control of the kinetic momentum of the drones weapon pulses. It is likely the full number would have been lost, however the drone controller was able to successfully modify one of the drones anti-gravity generators into an effective pulse bomb that was able to bypass the Prior's telekinetic control.”

“I see.” Thor muttered, his fingers twitching slightly at the sudden desire to end the testing so he could go over the combat records in full. “Then the warning was not misplaced.”

“I would not know.” Sif deadpanned. “You secured that information above my level of access.”

His former wife had never particularly enjoyed being kept out of the information cycle. But her current position in the ministry of discovery was a level below that which would be needed to access information on Ascended encounters.

“That should be enough.” Sigyn interjected suddenly, causing Thor to let out a small breath of relief.

“Was there anything else of importance that you feel should be relayed then, Sif?”

Sif smiled in a way that instantly put Thor on edge. “Yes. The human Daniel Jackson appears to have become a female.”

Thor blinked in surprise, then blinked again as he tried to work out just how that might have come about.

“Also.” Sif continued with a slight smirk as she shifted her gaze to the lower portion of his body. “When you go to Earth this time, make sure not to forget that you once again require pants.”

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Author's Notes: This was originally going to be half of a single “other guys” chapter. But it just kept ballooning till it reached the point of a full chapter. So enjoy your full chapter view of the life of Supreme Commander Thor and all he has to deal with.