Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 49

Chapter 49 - Games and Prizes

“They were going to what!?” Eventus demanded as he stared at McKay through the hologram being projected into the Navis's secondary control room.

“Use their ship to jump the Navis into hyperspace.” McKay repeated, looking about as happy at the idea as Eventus felt.

The truly annoying thing was that as insane as it would have been for them to attempt that given the size and condition of the Traveler vessel, it might have worked.

Tracking ships through Hyperspace was extraordinarily difficult under the best of circumstances, and the Enterprise's design had sacrificed a good two thirds of its long range sensor capability in exchange for the phasic lance. Making it all impossible for that specific modification of the Explorer class to track ships in that manner, and cutting the range at which it could detect opening or closing hyperspace windows down to a mere dozen light years.

“You know there's a very good chance that would have…” Eventus trailed off, not sure how to put it in a way that wouldn't sound horrible.

“Torn us apart and scattered our molecules across several solar systems.” McKay said in a snappish tone. “I know, which is why I didn't wait to pump the bridge full of that incapacitating agent.”

It really was nice to have people around willing to take decisive action when it was needed Eventus thought to himself as he sent the mental command to launch a drone. Taking more than a little satisfaction in the way it punched through the Traveler ships shields without effort and severed the primary power conduits leading to their hyperdrive.

“I disabled their hyperdrive.” He informed McKay as he focused his mind back on the holographic interface. “Do you want me to send the rest of Lorne's team over to secure Larrin and her people? Or would you rather handle that yourself?”

“The rest of Lorne's team.” McKay said as he focused on the large control station. “And my team if possible. It looks like they were trying to workaround the ATA gene. Not very effectively, but their attempts have sectioned off a number of secondary systems. And while I could spend the next three days bypassing that, I have a number of more important systems to get back online.”

“You also have to lift the lockdown on the Navis's primary systems.” Eventus reminded him as he sent the messages to the two groups.

“It's on the list.” McKay groused. “I just wanted to finish locking down the docking port first so we wouldn't have any people with guns trying to kill us.”

That made Eventus's fingers twitch slightly, and he wondered if it would be too much to ask for them to bring back one of the Traveler's handheld particle weapons for him to take apart for a comparative analysis with his own people's personal sidearms.

“Be careful if you do run into any of Larrin's people.” He warned as he remembered the weapons ability to punch through bulkhead doors. “I've never seen those weapons of theirs before, so I don't know how the protective plating on that suit will hold up.”

McKay turned to him, the armored suit doing an admirable job of conveying a general feeling of skepticism. “Something the Ancients have never seen before? Color me interested.”

“Most of our weapons research focused on the larger scale.” Eventus confessed. “And the rest tended to deal with the development of things for fighting specific types of non-humanoid threats.”

“I suppose you didn't exactly have a lot of people to fight prior to the Wraith.” McKay muttered as he turned back to the console. 

Certainly not as far as Eventus had known prior to becoming high councilor, but since then there had been several hints he had discovered in the archives that suggested purposeful deception in the histories of certain developments.

“Okay.” McKay finally said as he entered a final command into the console before heading towards the door. “That should keep anyone from coming over from the other ship. Now map mode, lead me to the control chair.”

Pausing at the doorway Eventus could see an annoyed twitch of the armored scientist's shoulders. “No, the other control chair. If I wanted to go to the bridge I'd just say bridge.”

“The verbal interface isn't that smart.” Eventus offered as he directed the hologram to follow McKay. “You'll have to specify weapon control chair if you don't want the one on the bridge.”

“Fine.” McKay groused. “Map mode, lead me to the weapons control chair.”

“You'd think the Ancients of all people could build a verbal interface that didn't require exact words only.” He complained as he began walking.

“We could.” Eventus told him. “It was just extraordinarily illegal to do, so the only ones even approaching that level of complexity were the city ship cores.”

McKay stopped and glanced back at him. “Wait, really?”

“Yup.” Eventus confirmed as he motioned for the man to keep walking. “Anything even approaching artificial intelligence was for all intents and purposes banned. There was a single exception made during the Wraith War, but that ended up going a direction most of my people didn't agree with so a vote was held and the vast majority voted to literally scrap the project.”

“And by a direction most of you didn't agree with you mean?” McKay inquired with a suddenly cautious tone.

Letting out a sigh, Eventus briefly considered trying to dodge the question before deciding it was better to admit to this failure then cover it up till the Expedition ran into it directly. “They built human shaped bodies, didn't want to fight the Wraith, and requested we remove the attack command in their base code.”

“Oh. That's a lot less bad than I thought it would be.” McKay admitted as they reached the bulkhead door to the reinforced room that held the weapons control chair.

“No.” Eventus disagreed with a somewhat sad shake of this head. “It was an ethical failure on our part that occured because most of my people believed that machines without souls can't possibly be sentient.”

McKay's helmeted head was turned in a way that suggested the man was staring at Eventus now. “Souls? Really?”

“Technically they would be stable self-sustaining matrices of multidimensional energy that act as a sort of partial source for memory and consciousness. ” Eventus explained, knowing McKay would likely appreciate the scientific explanation more than the shorthand. “They're why you see that pathway of light when using a Stargate, restoring life is possible up to nearly a day after death, and Ascension can occur.”

“Suuure.” McKay drawled, clearly skeptical despite the way it was phrased. “And I'm sure when I die there'll be a line at the pearly gates where I'll wait to be judged for my sins.”

Siince they were already having this particular conversation, Eventus supposed it couldn't hurt too badly to go all the way with it.

“From what I've picked up of your various religions, the closest one to accurately portraying what we know of how such things work would probably be Buddism. As souls basically cycle through the universe again and again in new bodies till they reach the point of Ascension.”

“Now I know you're just messing with me.” McKay muttered as he opened the door and continued into the room.

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Author’s Notes: Actually he’s being pretty honest. Mind, that doesn’t mean it’s completely right as only the Ascended might know what happens between a person dying and their soul appearing back in the universe with no memory of their previous life. But it happens. And has resulted in a number of dramatic romance stories.