Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 63

Chapter 63 - Preparations

Due to the sheer length of time that had passed since they had fled their home galaxy the Ori had been a bit of a complicated subject for his people. And by the time Eventus had been born, public perception had more likened Oriism to a general type of religious extremism then an actual group of people.

Actual information on the Ori, or at least what they still had records of, had of course been available in various databases if someone wanted to dig it out. But ancient Lantean history hadn't exactly been a big draw when there were so many new and exciting things to discover.

Knowing for a fact that the Ori would one day be everyone's problem however, Eventus had dug up everything he could on them. Unfortunately none of that had turned out to be particularly useful so far as the idea of planning a war was concerned.

Which had left Eventus with no choice but to fall back on the old human axiom of there being no kill like overkill.

“This is supposed to be a weapon?” Sheppard asked skeptically as he looked down into the storage crate containing the prototype nullray projector.

“The most dangerous one in here.” Eventus confirmed as he pulled down a case containing a quartet of graviton rifles. “I'd tell you what it does, but you'd be duty bound to tell Doctor Weir, and she'd feel the need to tell a bunch of others.”

“And that would be bad because?” Sheppard inquired idly as he moved to look at a box of destabilizer pistols.

“Because the Ori's servants can read minds.” Eventus said as he pulled one of the rifles out and began running its gravitational field generator through a stability check. “And if they read from one of your people what the weapons can do, they'll know if they need to avoid them or not.”

More specifically the Ori would be much more careful with their beachhead if they knew he was handing the humans a weapon capable of nullifying the basic fundamental forces and cutting an active stargate apart.

Sheppard looked over at him with a frown. “I feel like I should warn you, mind reading or not there's no way General O'Neill will send teams out with unknown kit.”

Setting the rifle back in the case, Eventus shook his head in bemusement. “Of course I'm going to tell him, he's high enough in your chain of command that the information will only get back to those who absolutely need it.”

He cocked his head in consideration as a memory surfaced. “Also with everything I've read about the man, I'm pretty sure he knows how to keep people out of his mind.”

It was unlikely O'Neill would be able to keep out a dedicated instead of cursory telepathic probe of course, but even his people hadn't been able to reliably do that without technological assistance.

“Don't touch that.” Eventus warned upon noticing Sheppard reaching for an armband with a triangular blue crystal on it. “It's a prototype multidimensional cloaking device I tried putting together from a blueprint I borrowed from one of Janus's secret labs. I don't know if he screwed up the design or I did putting it together. But the dimensional shifting is unstable enough that one out of every five uses ends up with only the bracer reappearing.”

Which had made absolutely no sense to Eventus since whatever happened to the test dummies on those attempts should have also been happening to the bracer itself.

“Trying to figure out how to weaponize the effect?” Sheppard asked, as he pulled a small roll of red electrical tape out of his pocket and tore off a piece to stick on the shelf under the device.

“No.” Eventus admitted, walking over to the currently active molecular assembler array to check its progress. “Dimensional weapons, like temporal ones, are just a bad idea in general because they tend to cause lingering effects in the region of space they’re used in. With how low priority it was I was always just too busy to take the time needed to safely dispose of it.”

A sadly common occurrence with things that couldn't just be tossed into a plasma furnace.

“We should have another hour before the first of the psionic nullification field generators are complete. That should give us enough time to finish moving these weapons.”

“Which reminds me.” He continued, looking over at the nearly two dozen crates with a frown before glancing around the suspiciously empty storage bay. “How come you're the only one helping me with this?”

Sheppard shrugged. “McKay's busy putting together a team to handle the repairs on the Navis while he's gone, Ford's off on a scouting mission checking up on those Wraith hives, Teyla's getting ready for our trip to Earth, and everyone else free is running around helping the Doc with that vaccine thing.”

“Teyla's coming to Earth?” Eventus asked in surprise, unable to really begrudge their choice to focus on the vaccine.

“I promised to take her to O'Malley's.” Sheppard confessed with a grin that slowly morphed into a rather impressive accusatory glare. “And someone suggested she formally petition the IOA for aid.”

Which Eventus had done because Stargate Earth had a bad habit of hiding behind their bureaucracy as an excuse for not helping out their more primitive offworld allies.

“It’s not my fault your people keep hiding behind cost and paperwork as excuses for not properly funding your attempts to become an intergalactic power.” He returned smugly. “Now grab a crate, we have manual labor to do.”

Sheppard glanced down at large metal crates with a frown. “Those gotta be what, a hundred pounds each?”

“The crates themselves are a lightweight trinium alloy.” Eventus offered as he bent down and grabbed the handle, lifting it up one handed without issue. “So I’d say closer to forty of your pounds empty and eighty to a hundred full.”

“Probably be faster if I hopped over to one of our store rooms and got a dolly then.” Sheppard said, glancing around the storage room with a speculative look in his eye. “Unless you guys have something similar around here?”

“Over in the wall.” Eventus said, motioning to a slightly raised panel next to the door. “There’ll be some anti-gravity field projectors you can clamp onto the crates that should be able to reduce their effective weight by roughly ninety percent.”

Giving a nod, Sheppard walked over and tapped the panel with a finger, the mental command connected to the contact all that was really needed to cause the rack inside to slide out of the wall and display its held tools.

“So you're taking Teyla out to dinner on Earth?” Eventus teased, not willing to let the chance that particularly phrasing had provided him go.

“I wanted to take her somewhere nicer.” Sheppard confessed with a shrug as he grabbed a pair of the handle shaped devices. “But O’Malley’s was bought out by the airforce a few years back due to an SG1 incident so it was the easiest place to get quick clearance for.”

Eventus blinked in surprise, not having expected anything but a denial in response to his joke given how dense the two had been about the whole thing in the show. “Um, well, I guess congratulations are in order then. So who ended up winning the betting pool?”

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Author’s Notes: For anyone wondering why it feels like Eventus might have forgotten he has an elf shaped someone that he has many an explanation to give to, that’s because he has. But I'm sure that will be fine and have no annoying consequences for anyone.