Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 44

Chapter 44 - Flight or Flight

“That’s a starship.” Lorne offered as he stared at the squat vessel currently positioned between them and the Navis on the Enterprise’s central display.

Eventus had somewhat hoped the Travelers wouldn't be at the Navis's location this early, mostly for his own sake, but he supposed he would just have to deal with dashing their hopes directly.

“I'm not sure I would call that a ship so much as a coffin.” McKay muttered as he studied the sensor readout, no doubt seeing the same worrying levels of reactor leakage that he was.

“Let's see what they have to say.” Eventus said as he sent out a standardized hail, only for his look to slowly transform into one of annoyance as the minutes passed by with no response.

“Okay.” He muttered as he set the communications system to holographic mode and initiated a transmission. “We'll just do things the–

“I think they just raised their shields.” Lorne interrupted, and Eventus felt his eyebrow twitch slightly as the hologram on the other ships bridge was cut off before it could even finish forming.

Turning to Lorne, Eventus pointed at the other ship. “You saw it, I tried to be reasonable and discuss things first.”

“Sure.” Lorne agreed with a nod as he considered the other ship for a moment. “But they might be trying to figure out what to do, so it couldn't hurt to give them a few more minutes.”

While it was true they weren't exactly in a rush, and there probably wasn't anything the Travelers could do, that didn't mean Eventus wanted to sit here for however long it would take them to figure that out.

“I'll send a direct transmission first, then we'll give them a half hour to respond.” He countered, setting the communications system to transmit.

“Unknown vessel, this is the Lantean warship Enterprise, here to retrieve the Lantean warship Navis, you have thirty minutes to respond before we begin, Enterprise out.”

A minute passed before McKay looked over to him. “So I was thinking, what about renaming the Navis to be the Millennium Falcon?”

“No.” Eventus deadpanned.

“Come on.” McKay whined. “We can't call a ship, ship.”

“Just because one of your languages decided Navis means ship doesn't mean it actually does.” Eventus shot back, still finding the whole thing rather hilarious. “The Navis was actually named after Navis Pren, the captain of the Explorer that first encountered the Asgard.”

She had been something of a folk hero to the Exploration corps given how rare non-seeded sentient species tended to be in the universe. Sadly however her ship had vanished with all hands long before Eventus's time while investigating a dimensional fissure of some kind.

Personally he gave it fifty fifty odds that the ship had ended up stranded in a parallel dimension somewhere and the crew had just decided to continue on with their whole ‘seek out new life and new civilizations’ mission.

“Also.” He continued, shooting a light glare at the man. “I know that reference now, and you don’t call a warship the Millenium Falcon, you save that for a high speed transport.”

Not that he knew of any still around that they could do that with, but it was the point of the matter.

“You’ve watched Star Wars?” McKay inquired with an accusatory look over to Lorne.

“Don’t look at me.” Lorne protested with a shrug. “I only told him about Star Trek and Lord of the Rings.”

“It was in the copy of your media database that I downloaded.” Eventus offered, still a bit annoyed at how small their digital library had been. “I’ve been watching the movies on it at night while going through various work backlogs.”

Which was seeming more and more like an endless task given how many things there were on an explorer class vessel that should have been automated to streamline operations but hadn’t been for various reasons.

“Huh.” McKay muttered, seeming to consider something for a moment before turning back to Eventus with a focused gaze. “So lightsabers, yea or nay? Because I’ve tried to draw up the blueprints for one and keep running into power supply and containment field issues.”

“You could use a crystal energy cell for power.” Eventus offered as he seriously considered the question. “But what kind of containment field are you attempting to use?”

“Shaped magnetic.” McKay admitted.

“We did something similar with our plasma cutters.” Eventus offered as he brought up a hologram of the device.

Lorne furrowed his brow as he studied the image. “Is that a plasma chainsaw?”

“Technically?” Eventus began as he quirked an eyebrow at the man. “No, as there are no chains involved in its operation. However in operation it shares an extreme visual similarity to chain based cutting implements.”

“Is there any chance I could get a copy of the design documents for that?” McKay asked with a hopeful look over to him.

There was a very real temptation to say yes, just to see what McKay might be able to make with the technology. However Eventus was holding back from offering the expedition anything even approaching weapon technology for a reason, so he gave the scientist an apologetic shake of his head.

“Sorry, but I can send you a copy of the magnetic field equations when we get back to Atlantis if you want?”

McKay's shoulders slumped slightly and he let out a sigh. “It's because–

“Hold that.” Eventus interrupted as a tight beam communications signal issued forth from the Traveler vessel. “Looks like they finally went to have a conversation.”

Sending the mental command to bring the signal up on a display, Eventus visibly cringed at the ramshackle interior that appeared as a backdrop to the wavy haired woman now on screen.

“Whoever you are, we found this ship first, so back off.”

Eventus exchanged an incredulous glance with McKay at the sheer balls it took to try and make that argument given the vast disparity between their two ships.

“No?” He put forward as he focused back on the display. “That is literally my peoples ship, and just because we're a few thousand years later picking it up doesn't mean it's up to grab.”

The woman scoffed at him. “Try another one, the Ancestors have been dead and gone for ten thousand years.”

That was a fair amount of skepticism given the circumstances, however it ignored the rather important reality that was starting the woman in the face. 

“Believe me or not, I'm in control of a fully operational Lantean warship, and the one behind your ship is still under full security lockdown.”

Which was why he couldn't just remotely seize control of the Navis from the Enterprise.

“Maybe.” The woman said in a remarkably unconcerned tone. “But I'm the one who has a bomb strapped to the Ancestral Warships reactor. So either it's ours, or nobodies.”

Mentally directing the Enterprises sensors to run a full sweep of the Navis, Eventus let out an annoyed growl when the only thing that showed up was a pair of semi-shielded life signs.

“I applaud your ability to lie, but not your intelligence for doing so in the face of someone who has sensor systems capable of checking your claims.”

Her eyes darted to the side in a sudden show of nervousness before she steeled herself in a way that left Eventus deciding to cut what was probably some act of pointless bravado off at the knee’s.

“So as my human friends here would say, let's cut to the chase. Who are you, what do you want with a ship you can’t even turn on, and why are you so utterly desperate that you’d risk death to get it?”

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Author’s Notes: Poor Larrin, her bravado is a lot less impressive when she doesn’t have the absolute advantage.