Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 95

Chapter 95 - The Not So Last Ancient

When Eventus had set out to investigate Earth’s solar system it had been more of a “why not” sort of thing, and he honestly hadn’t expected to find much more than the few defunct facilities he’d located with the outpost. And despite his warning to various people that Janus was probably still out there somewhere, he really hadn’t expected to actually locate the scientist, let alone just happen upon him in stasis on the moon.

But he had, and now, having locked down most of the facilities systems. Was in the process of leading Daniel and Vala through the small facility to manually confirm that Janus was still on ice.

The sound of footsteps behind Eventus came to a stop as the three of them passed through the set of jumper sized doors separating the docking bay from the stargate room, and he glanced over his shoulder to see the pair’s gazes already locked on the far end of the room where the aforementioned structure sat almost imposingly.

“That's a stargate.” The Archeologist muttered.

“Certainly looks that way.” Vala agreed.

With a sigh Eventus turned fully to the pair. “Congratulations, you've learned one of the great secrets of my people, we stuck Stargates everywhere.”

“I'm not really sure that's much of a secret.” Vala returned as she slowly began to make her way into the room. “But I am starting to wonder just how many Stargates this solar system has?”

The general lack of interest she was portraying with her tone was somewhat betrayed by the glint of distinct interest in her eyes, and Eventus glanced over at Daniel to see the Archeologist staring at him with a similar level of hope.

Eventus sighed again, moderately glad they weren't in any rush now because it was probably going to be like this the whole walk. “According to the historical records I've read there were thirteen when we left the galaxy. Though all but the one on Earth were marked with the sigil for nine point access only.”

“Nine point access?” Daniel repeated.

“Seven points for travel within a galaxy.” Eventus began, pointing out the chevrons around the Stargate’s outer ring to emphasize his point. “Eight points for travel between galaxies. And nine points for travel to a specific gate anywhere in the universe.”

In Pegasus the Stargates in their more secure facilities had only been accessible via dialing a nine point address. Something of a double security measure given the only gates in the galaxy capable of dialing a nine point address in the first place had been the ones on their city ships. 

Avalon however had been different, because until the Ori plague there had never been the need to limit the gate network in the way the third generation Stargates allowed them to do. 

“You know.” Vala mused, staring at the Stargate with an odd look on her face. “I always wondered what the eighth and ninth ones were for.”

“Sam always thought the ninth chevron might have been an additional indicator for cases when two stargates were in too close of a proximity to each other to be differentiated with a seven symbol address.” Daniel added in.

An impressively close guess all things considered, but Eventus supposed she wasn’t Earth’s foremost expert on the Stargate system for nothing.

“So, what happened to all those extra stargates?” Vala inquired idly. 

“No idea.” Eventus answered with a shrug. “But if I had to guess I’d say either buried or destroyed.”

Seeing there didn’t seem to be any more questions he continued through the Stargate room, passing through a pair of already open security doors to the room where the system had indicated the stasis chamber was situated.

That room turned out to be what Eventus suspected had been Janus’s main lab. The centerpiece was of course the cog shaped molecular synthesizer about five feet in diameter, though what interested the Lantean was the long term stasis unit set into the left wall within which he could thankfully make out the slightly older form of his people’s most notorious scientific mind.

“Hold on.” Daniel said, eying the three glowing circles inside the triangular power distribution station at the far end of the lab. “Aren't those?”

“ZPMs.” Eventus confirmed with a nod, entirely unsurprised to find them here given Janus had been one of a small number of people with the mental blueprints for their construction. “Yes. Though you probably shouldn't touch them till I have a chance to go over each with a high powered scanner since Janus wasn’t above securing his work.”

The lack of another jumper in the landing bay when added to the information Eventus had gathered from the computer suggested the possibility that Janus might have gotten stuck on the moon somehow. But that possibility had several glaring holes in it given the scientist would have surely set the system to automatically wake him once whatever threat was keeping him from using the stargate was gone.

“Why was the system only set to wake you once an outside party arrived at the facility.” He muttered half to himself as he walked over to the stasis unit's control and began running through its logs.

Daniel walked up to the stasis unit and studied the man inside for a moment with a frown. "Are you sure we can’t wake him up?”

“Yes.” Eventus said as he continued to read over the information on the stasis units primary control display. “Even if I trusted Janus, and I want to make it very clear that I don’t, he rigged the stasis unit to damage his memory for some reason. And that sort of thing can be dangerous under optimal conditions.”

“And by dangerous you mean?” Vala prodded.

Eventus paused in his examination to turn a grim look to the body swapped woman. “The two most common results were what humans would call a psychotic break and schizophrenia.”

Daniel took a step back from the stasis unit.

“Which with Janus, is actually a lot more dangerous than it would be in the case of a normal member of my people.” Eventus continued, figuring it would be better to warn them of Janus’s power beforehand just in case something unexpected happened. “Since he possesses the ability to mentally manipulate various types of energy flows.”

Like the man himself, Janus’s psionic abilities had been recorded as an odd deviation outside of the standard categories his people had tended to manifest. Instead, it had been listed as a sort of hybrid combination between telekinesis, electrokinesis, and pyrokinesis that reportedly allowed for some very odd effects.

“Did you really need us here?” Vala asked as she began to walk a lazy circle of the room.

“Vala.” Daniel scolded, shooting an annoyed glare at the woman.

“What?” She returned with a shrug. “It’s a valid question, there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly valuable here outside of those ZPM things.” 

“I’m not going through one of Janus’s illegal labs without backup.” Eventus offered before stepping away from the stasis controls and heading over to the lab's central workstation. “And while I really would have preferred to have a team of Earth soldiers at my back. This place is shielded against Asgard beaming technology, and Daniel’s people conveniently forgot there was a need for small scale transportation craft when they were designing their space fleet.”

Not that there would have been time for them to fly down given the rush he had been in, but it was the point of the matter.

“Anyway, if you want something valuable I can make you a diamond the size of your head before we go. So just keep watch and don’t touch anything while I try to figure out what Janus was working on here.”

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Author’s Notes: Parts of this are in fact adapted from the comics, though as always when it comes to expanded universe material I’m picking and choosing what works the best for the story being told. And yes, Vala will soon learn that value is very much in the eye of the beholder.