Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 94

Chapter 94 - Spaaace

One of the things Eventus had done while working on the outposts systems was to use its communications system to send out a general response ping to see which, if any, facilities might still be active in the solar system.

He’d gotten back a grand total of three responses. A defunct terraforming facility on Venus, an automated mining facility inside the atmosphere of Jupiter, and a dimensional research facility in orbit of Pluto.

That didn’t mean that was all there was of course since his people were notorious for hiding facilities anywhere they could get away with it. But it did give him a good idea of just how thorough various groups had been in cleaning out his people’s leftovers. Which was why he was currently flying the jumper through a quadrant based search pattern over the moon's surface.

“It’s not very impressive so far as moons go.” Vala idly mused, watching the mostly uniform surface of Luna pass rapidly by below them.

“Millions of years of dirt and debris will do that.” Eventus offered, taking a moment to mark another quadrant of the moon off as empty of any hidden structures the jumpers sensor package could detect. “It was a lot more impressive millions of years ago when you could properly see the orbital station’s armored hull.”

Vala glanced over her shoulder to where Daniel was engrossed in his laptop before shaking her head. “Still nothing.”

Daniel looked up at her. “Hmm? Did you say something?”

“Nothing, Daniel.” Vala answered primly as she turned back to the front of the cabin with a smug look on her face.

“I was sure that one would get him.” Eventus muttered in annoyance before turning to Vala with a slight frown as a thought occurred. “But how did you know I wasn't being serious?”

“You have a tell.” Vala said, her lip twitching in amusement. 

“I do not.” Eventus shot back, certain the body swapped woman was bullshitting him. “I always cleaned up on my team's version of poker night.”

“Maybe they were just really bad liars.” Vala countered speculatively.

Eventus opened his mouth to protest only to shut it before saying anything, because she was absolutely right about his people not being very good at lying. Oh, they could obfuscate or deflect with the best of them, but lying directly was a rare enough thing they just didn’t get a lot of practice with it.

“I still say you’re hi–” He stopped mid sentence as a brief spike of photonic energy drew his attention to the sensor readout, and he slowed the jumper to crawl as he worked to isolate whatever it was the ships sensors had picked up.

“Find something?” Vala probed in interest.

“Maybe.” Eventus admitted, adjusting the waveform analysis slightly towards the theta band only for the reading to seemingly vanish. “Might just be particle refraction from the regolith. But something about it seems off.”

As if it had been waiting for him to say that the reading reappeared, this time more towards the Ito band, and he once more adjusted the sensors to try and to hunt down the oddity.

“It’s possible…”

The spike disappeared again, and his eye began to twitch in annoyance since that all but confirmed it was some sort of reaction to his scanning attempt.

“Someone was a little too smart for their own good.” He muttered to himself as he turned his full focus onto the cat and mouse game. “After all, intermittent readings can be mistaken as random, but responsive readings, while harder to pinpoint directly, mean intelligent design.”

“Got you!” He finally exclaimed, grinning in excitement as the jumper's viewscreen shifted to show a small unremarkable looking rocky outcropping less than a half dozen miles from their current location.

“It's a rock.” Vala deadpanned.

“A holographic projection of a rock.” Eventus corrected, mentally directing their vessel to begin a cautious approach. “With an adaptive field generator set to project false sensor returns.”

Vala pulled a hair scrunchy from one of her pockets and tossed it at Daniel who flinched at the impact and looked up at her. 

“What?”

“Looks like he found something.” Vala said, motioning to the rock on the display.

“And it’s one of ours.” Eventus added in as the jumper received a tight beam interrogatory challenge.

Closing his laptop and stowing it away in the bag at his feet, Daniel walked over and leaned on the corner of Vala’s chair as he began to read through the small text scrolling by on the display.

“Why does this read like it doesn’t want you here?” The Archeologist asked after a moment.

“Because it doesn’t.” Eventus told him, taking a moment to bypass a redirection attempt as their jumper passed below the hundred meter mark of its approach. “Even with me providing the right codes it’s tried to convince me to leave, forcefully redirect me into a holding orbit, and now it’s attempting to use an old council override to order me away under the threat of correctional penalty.”

He could all but feel the automated systems grudging acceptance as he provided his High Councilor access codes, and the hologram vanished so they could actually see the shielded landing bay they were on approach to.

“Huh.” Vala muttered, tilting her head slightly as they passed through the force shield keeping the atmosphere in. “Think there’s anything valuable here?”

The moment their jumper set down the sensors showed a half dozen dormant systems beginning to flare back to operation, and one in particular caught Eventus’s attention.

Not even hesitating, he shot to his feet as a mental command to the jumper caused the hidden charging unit on the wall to pop open, and he grabbed the weapon from it before turning to the others. “There’s a long term stasis unit in the base that’s starting its wake up sequence. Stay here.”

Triggering the doors and offering a quiet apology to the sleeping Rayla as he passed, Eventus ran towards the landing bay’s control console desperately hoping whichever councilor had built the facility hadn’t decided to be an asshole and air gap the system.

They thankfully hadn’t, however it quickly became clear they also hadn’t wanted the wake up sequence interfered with. As the moment he isolated and shut down the first command two new ones appeared to take its place. He was better then the computer’s limited adaptability of course, though it was still a slow process to cut off each of the new sequences while hunting down the code that was generating them.

He had nearly isolated it when a blue holographic head snapped into existence over the controls, and the Lantean cringed in recognition.

“Whoever you are, you must stop, it is of utmost importance that I be allowed to wake and finish my mission.”

“Oh fuck that.” Eventus muttered, ignoring whatever message Janus had left behind as he finished isolating the scientist’s control program. “You’re staying asleep till I can get a marine battalion up here with a psi-blocker and heavy duty straight jacket.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Author’s Notes: I want to say Eventus is over-reacting, and he may be, but Eventus isn’t going to take any chances given how bad that particular Ancient can be when it comes to listening. And hey, he does have a pretty good reason for it given how Janus screwed him over once already.