Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 96

Chapter 96 - Ethical Issues

Ten minutes of going over Janus’s files was enough for Eventus to be both amazed by the man’s genius, and utterly loathe the depths that he had fallen to without a supervising body to keep him in check.

“He was designing a biological weapon system to destroy the Wraith.” Eventus admitted to the patiently waiting pair as he continued to read through the scientist’s patchwork notes.

“Like some sort of virus?” Daniel inquired in worry.

Eventus gave a sad shake of his head. “If only. Think more like the super soldiers the Goa’uld who called himself Anubis built. Only possessing self assembling cybernetics, the ability to self replicate through natural biological function, and an inheritable control system that would relentlessly drive them against the Wraith.”

It was like the Asurans all over again, only without the omnipresent threat of them going the direction of the Replicators and trying to eat the entire universe.

Daniel frowned at the text on the display. “Wouldn’t that level of mind control be against a large number of your people’s laws?”

Glancing over his shoulder at Daniel, Eventus couldn’t help the odd look that flashed over his features at the Archeologist actually being aware of that.

“I’ve been going over Doctor Weir’s notes on Rayla.” He explained with a flush of embarrassment.

“He was worried I’d be a bad role model.” Vala interjected in an over exaggerated whisper.

“I’d certainly hope so.” Eventus agreed with an idle nod. “Rayla has more than enough good role models at this point with the Athosians and Atlantis Expedition that she needs someone around to show her how to work around the rules to get what she wants.”

He knew he probably shouldn’t be encouraging those kinds of things given Rayla’s already exemplified inclination to ignore things she didn’t like. But that sort of lateral thinking had saved his own life on more than one occasion, and as annoying as Vala was to some, she was also remarkably skilled at the various matters she put her mind to.

A complicated expression flashed across Vala’s features. “You know, I’m really not sure how to feel about that. I mean yes, I’ll fully admit I have a bit of a history of trouble following me around. But less than half of those are actually my fault.”

“Less than half?” Daniel repeated in a tone that practically dripped doubt.

Vala pouted at him. “Okay, maybe a little more than half. But only if you count things that happened because the people I was working with proved to be less than trustworthy.”

“Moving away from Vala’s questionable past.” Daniel said, glancing back over to the stasis pod for a moment. “What are you planning to do with everything here?”

“I’m going to need to bring Janus back to Atlantis for treatment.” Eventus lied, since he really didn’t want to heal the Scientist using his own abilities given that would have him up and about within hours instead of the months if not years he was thinking about dragging it out. “As for the ZPM’s, assuming they’re not boobytrapped I’ll bring two back to the city and leave you the other to keep this base running.”

Fully restoring power to Atlantis would make things so much easier in the long run. And best of all it would mean he would be able to install the Tria’s ZPM onto the Enterprise. Which would come in very handy if the Ori ever got one of their Supergate’s set up.

“Daniel nodded before his eyes suddenly widened. “Oh! That reminds me. Jack wanted me to ask if you’d be able to take a look at a sabotaged ZPM we got our hands on a while ago?”

“Sabotaged?” Eventus asked, furrowing his brow in throat as he tried to figure out why that sounded so familiar.

“Camulus coated it in something that reacts explosively to electricity.” Daniel admitted. “We’ve had people working on trying to undo it for months now. But unfortunately they haven’t had any luck.”

“I can certainly take a look at it.” Eventus offered, working through when in his schedule he could fit that in. “But It’s going to have to be after my vacation with Xiaoyi."

He was looking more and more forward to that at this point too, because if finding Janus was any indication of how this search was going to go he was absolutely going to need it.

“Hold on, you’re going with representative Shen?” Daniel stated, sounding oddly put out about the idea for some reason.

“It's not a date.” Eventus quickly protested so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea. “She just offered to show me some of the sights in China. And since it's been several decades since I've had time completely off, I said yes.”

Not that he would be against getting to know her better, or even a quick hookup, but it was probably for the best that he didn't mention either of those things with Vala around.

“Wait.” Daniel began, frowning worriedly at him. “You're going to China for that?”

“Yes?” Eventus confirmed, pretty sure he'd mentioned that multiple times already. “I know I told you I was taking a couple days off after this.”

“You did.” Daniel agreed slowly. “But you never mentioned going to China. Does the SGC know?”

Eventus cocked his head slightly as he considered the Archaeologists question. “I arranged it with Xaioyi, so I rather figured they already knew about it since she would have had to arrange the whole trip with her government.”

Daniel's eye twitched, and Eventus got the distinct sense that there were several things the Archeologist really wanted to say right now but was holding himself back from actually doing.

“While I understand why you might not know this, China's government is actually extraordinarily authoritarian.”

“No, I actually do know that.” Eventus corrected. “Doctor Weir explained to me about the general political circumstances of your planet before I came. Though she was oddly brief on an area called the middle east for some reason.”

Not that he really blamed her, because there was really no way to sugarcoat that particular mess.

“Then why would you go there!?” Daniel exclaimed. “Or expect them to tell us things!?” 

“I'm a Lantean.” Eventus said, eyeing the clearly distressed Archeologist oddly as he tried to work out just why the body swapped man was so concerned. “What do you think they're going to do? Kidnap me?”

“Possibly!” Daniel shrieked, throwing up his arms in a clear sign of exasperation.

“Well that would just be silly.” Eventus countered, shaking his head in amusement at the thought. “Part of my job was unkidnapping people, trust me when I say trying that on me would just be asking for a bad day.”

“Boys.” Vala interrupted before the clearly agitated Archeologist could argue more. “As much fun as it is to see someone else causing Daniel to make noises like that. It’s been almost thirty minutes since we came down here, so we should probably get around to contacting that little ship of theirs in orbit before they think something happened.”

“That’s… Actually a good idea.” Daniel grudgingly admitted, glancing over the lab’s control stations with a frown. “Can we contact them from here? Or are we going to need to return to the Jumper?”

“I don’t want to lower the facility's damping field till I finish locking down the network.” Eventus admitted, having no idea what else Janus might have left in wait for such a circumstance. “So it’ll have to be the Jumper.”

“All right.” Daniel returned with a nod, turning towards the door and motioning for Vala to follow. “We’ll head back to the Jumper then. Just… Don’t do anything catastrophic while we’re gone.”

Vala glanced between them for a moment before holding up a finger. “About that Diamond?”

Eventus rolled his eyes and took a moment to bring up the control system for the molecular synthesizer. A few inputs and a swirling of energetic particles later there was a geometrically perfect icosahedron diamond the size of Vala’s head sitting on the synthesis pad.

“Thanks!” She chirped happily, grabbing the diamond before turning to Daniel with a grin. “Now we can go.”

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Author’s Notes: Daniel’s really not used to being the only “adult” in the room. So the constant lack of what he considers “common sense” has kind of been wearing on him.