Chapter 87 - Family Road Trip

Chapter 87 - Family Road Trip

Flying a Puddlejumper had been a big part of Eventus’s job back when he was running around Pegasus putting out various fires. So he was fully qualified on all of its systems, and the various mission modifications that could be made to the starship.

He was also more than used to passengers who could get rather argumentative, as his former team had often spent a significant portion of their trips trolling each other to pass the time.

“You know, you'd really think an Ancient starship could go a little faster.” Vala complained as she watched the ground below them pass by.

Vala had come along because Daniel had come along, and Daniel had come along because Stargate Command had wanted someone who could read Ancient to keep an eye on him.

“We're in the atmosphere and under cloak.” Eventus explained, slightly adjusting their course to give an extra few miles of berth to an approaching passenger jet. “Any faster than this and there's a chance we'd be detected by one or more of the humans monitoring systems.”

“I told you to bring a book.” Daniel singsonged, not even glancing up from the tome he was engrossed in.

“Maybe if your people had some that were actually interesting.” Vala shot back.

“They do.” Eventus offered once it looked like Daniel wasn't going to explain the difference between fiction and non-fiction to the body swapped woman. “Try asking some of the female soldiers, if they're anything like the ones on Atlantis they probably have a whole collection of smutty romance novels they trade between themselves.”

“Really?” Vala asked in an intrigued tone.

“Yup.” Rayla confirmed, the Elf still nearly completely focused on the passing ocean being shown on the puddle jumpers forward display. “Laura had this one called Dance of the Elf Prince's Sword that she was going to let me read when she was done. But then she found out I wasn't as old as I looked and got really embarrassed about the whole thing.”

“That was also when I found out what a euphemism is.” She continued, finally looking away from the screen to spin her chair around and focus on Vala. “Did you know that sometimes the word sword means something completely different from a sharp pointy bit of metal?”

“You don't say?” Vala drawled in barely restrained amusement.

“I'm picking up a return from a crashed starship.” Eventus interrupted as he sent the mental command to slow their ship. “Roughly pyramid shaped and it looks to be buried under roughly ten thousand years of sediment.”

Taking a second to bookmark his place, Daniel carefully set the book down on the console next to him before looking up at the sensor analysis that was currently taking up the main display.

“That looks like Ra's.” He offered, studying the somewhat broken pyramidal wireframe with a critical eye.

“I'd guess a Cheops class.” Vala added in as she gave the image a considering look. “Given the timeline I'd say either Ra's or Sokar's since they had their big fight over Earth about then.”

Daniel shot Vala an odd look.

“What?” She returned, sounding slightly offended. “I was the host to a Goa'uld for over a decade you know.”

“Think there's treasure in there?” Rayla asked hopefully.

“Oh a bunch of it.” Vala agreed with a grin. “No idea how we'd get to it though.”

Eventus mentally ran through the various options. “For the Earthlings? I'd say use a shield bubble to displace the water around the ocean floor clear and from there use Tok'ra tunneling crystals to create a watertight pathway down to the wreckage itself.”

“Of course.” He continued as he recorded the location and accelerated the ship back up to speed. “It's probably not worth the trouble it would take to recover given we're talking about ten thousand year old Goa'uld technology that's been sitting buried under the ocean.”

“I wouldn't say that.” Vala disagreed, drawing out the last word almost teasingly. “Potential cargo aside, there was a lot of naquadah used in those old ships.”

The mention of naquadah reminded Eventus of something, and he turned to Daniel with an inquisitive look on his face. “Whatever happened to that naquadah asteroid Anubis tried to blow you up with?”

Daniel frowned at him. “We asked the Asgard to move it somewhere else so the Goa’uld couldn’t use it to blow up the solar system.” His look turned slightly suspicious. “How’d you even know about that though?”

“I read through the mission files the Atlantis expedition brought along.” Eventus answered with a shrug as he turned back to the main display. “And I have to admit, you guys have really been through a lot the past nine years.”

“It wasn’t really that bad.” Daniel muttered.

Taking a moment to slow the Jumper as they approached the projected location of one of his people’s old facilities in preparation for a full scanning pass, Eventus glanced over his shoulder to shoot the archeologist a skeptical look. “Are you kidding? You blew up a sun. The most I ever got to blow up was a small moon. And you wouldn’t believe the amount of paperwork I needed to do to get that authorized.”

It had been especially egregious at the time given it had been infested by some sort of aggressive biological hivemind that had been in the process of converting the moon into a generation ship so it could spread like a plague across the entire galaxy.

A return on the sensor scan dragged his attention back to the cockpit display, and he slowly felt his eyebrows creep upwards as he read over the gathered data. 

“Wow.” Rayla muttered as she studied the display herself. “That’s a lot of warnings.”

“Warnings?” Vala repeated in concern.

“From the remains of Aeolia’s old weather control outpost.” Eventus explained in a distracted tone as he continued to go over the information.

Getting up from his seat, Daniel walked over to stand directly behind Eventus where a quick glance showed the Archeologist now slowly reading the display himself. “Aeolia? The mythical island from Homer's Odyssey?”

“I couldn’t say how it might connect to your myths.” Eventus admitted as he set the system to begin mapping out the ruins of the outpost properly. “But Aeolia was one of the twelve city ships that left for the Pegausus, and the outpost it was connected to was the primary hub for the planet's weather control network.”

They’d settled on a world somewhat similar to Lantea in its water to land ratio, only instead of a single supercontinent its landmass had existed as a large number of small islands.

“Looks like the secondary geothermal generator is still marginally active.” He continued, moderately impressed at that given how long it had been. “But structural integrity looks to be functionally gone on the upper levels, and Aionius particle containment has been compromised to the point where I’m detecting leakage rising up from the seabed.”

“And all that together would mean?” Vala prodded when he didn’t say anything more.

“I can’t say for sure.” Eventus offered after considering the question for a moment. “But if I were to guess, I’d say an odd localized weather event whenever the particle density hits a critical point.”

Daniel’s brow furrowed and he turned to Eventus with an odd look on his temporarily borrowed face. “Where exactly are we at the moment?”

“About three hundred and seventy miles off the eastern coast of the peninsula your people call Florida.” Eventus answered, something about that sounding oddly familiar to him now that the Archeologist had brought up the location.

Nodding as if that made perfect sense, Daniel straightened up and headed back to his seat. “The Bermuda triangle, ships and planes have been lost to sudden weather events there for centuries.”

The name finally drudged up the memory, and Eventus let out a silent groan at having missed the obvious possible connection.

“Right, well, I’ll add the exact location to the list.” He paused in his typing and tilted his head slightly as a followup thought occurred to him. “And see about hunting down the outposts work manual so whoever you eventually send there can shut everything down without accidentally causing a hurricane.”

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Author’s Notes: The thing about writing in a universe where a lot of myths and legends have a kernel of truth to them is that it gives me a lot of room to play around. And well, is it really a susprise the Ancients were responsible for the Bermuda Triangle?