Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 23.5

Chapter 23.5 - From Here To There

“She’s certainly big.” Major Lorne offered as he looked out across the hanger at the now restored form of the Enterprise.

“The design was originally used for long range exploration.” Eventus explained as he considered once again whether he should have repainted the vessel to a more appropriate color for its current name. “Once things with the Wraith went from swatting down the occasional attack to an actual war my people's engineers began slowly upgrading them to their current state.”

“Updating your old stuff to modern standards.” Lorne said as he gave a nod of approval. “We had to do that with a lot of stuff during the world wars.”

Eventus shot the man a pitying look. “Do your people do that thing where they put off upgrading things that should have been upgraded a long time ago?”

“All the time.” Lorne admitted, completely missing the look. “Stargate Command is still using a bunch of stuff made in the eighties.”

“The design we were using for the Explorer class vessel hadn’t had anything updated outside of the sensors, power systems, and labs since before we moved to this galaxy.” Eventus pointed out in a droll tone, still to this very day unsure why the council had deferred updating things like the Hyperdrive and Shields for so long.

“Wasn’t that millions of years ago?” Lorne asked, finally turning away from looking at the ship to shoot Eventus a confused look.

“Yes, yes it was.” Eventus confirmed, letting out a tired sigh after the admittance.

Lorne shook his head in bemusement as Teyla exited the nearby transport booth. “Man. And I thought our government could drag their feet.”

To be fair the historical records Eventus had read said a good portion of that had been his people slowing down time inside the city ships while the galaxy wide terraforming efforts took place. Not the most responsible way to do things he would admit, but after four hundred years of putting out metaphorical fires he could see why the council had thought it a safer option then having millions of bored Lanteans with nothing to do but watch rivers form.

“Any luck?” He asked the Athosian woman as she joined them on the observation platform.

“I am sorry to say Norina continues to be quite adamant in her wish to stay behind with her people.” Teyla demurred as she bowed her head slightly in apology.

“She's probably still upset about you popping in on her while she was in the bath.” Lorne offered helpfully.

“She was an hour late.” Eventus defended. “And if she didn't want me holograming in she should have set the bathroom to privacy mode.”

“On the subject.” Teyla began as she shot Eventus a grateful smile. “Thank you again for showing me how to do that.”

“Still surprised the Earth expedition didn't warn you our facility’s internal sensors include both audio and video pickup.” Eventus muttered as he gave a light shake of his head. “The holographic systems couldn't even work without it since as far as I know we've yet to actually perfect hard light projections outside of strict laboratory conditions.”

He shuddered slightly as the memory of a cleanup operation that had occurred a little over a hundred and thirty years before he had gone into stasis.  “Well, outside of one former researcher that went full Orist and figured out how to create a number of self-sustaining photonic matrices in the shape of winged men and women before sending them out to kill everyone they deemed a sinner.”

“Depopulated the better part of a developing planet before the Council discovered what was going on and sent us in to deal with the problem. One of the few times during my tenure that we were ever authorized to go in with a fully lethal response from the start.”

Playing god had been amusingly fine, but when it crossed the line into actually pretending to be a god, well, there was a reason ‘don’t pretend to be a god’ was one of his people’s few hard rules. It was just a very slippery tip of a pyramid that never ended up with the person in question being anywhere good.

“Don’t know what an Orist is, but depopulating a planet is never a good thing.” Lorne agreed as he seemed to consider something for a moment. “There aren't any of those holographic murder people still around, are there?”

“We brought back one for study.” Eventus admitted as he got a mental ping from the communicator on his collar telling him the last of the team from Earth had finished boarding the ship. “Unless someone brought it back to Earth as a personal project it should still be in an ark shaped containment unit in one of the exotic energy labs.”

Clapping his hands together he gave the two a happy grin. “Okay, looks like the last of Lorne’s team are on board the Enterprise, so are you two ready to head out and save Atlantis?”

Teyla slightly inclined her head. “The Taranians have been an interesting people to spend time with, however I will confess that dealing with their Chancellor has been… Trying, at times. As such I am looking forward to returning to Atlantis to check in on my people.”

Seeing no objection from Lorne, he motioned the two back to the transport booth. Following them in, he switched the panel to the available connections tab and tapped the button that would take them to the warship.

“You know.” Lorne began as with a flash of light they appeared inside a similar booth on the Enterprise. “I’m really glad we didn’t have to walk all the way down there, cause that was a lot of steps.”

“Transport booths are designed to be able to connect to any other transport booth within several kilometers.” Eventus explained as the doors slid open to reveal the interior of the Explorer class vessel. “For anything longer ranged we used rings.”

“Must have been nice.” Lorne offered as Eventus led the pair down the corridor to the open blast door to the bridge. “It used to take me two hours just to fly home and visit my family in LA.”

“Yes.” Teyla added impishly as they entered the vessel's primary control center. “It must have been quite the inconvenience to travel hundreds of miles in the time it often took us to catch dinner for the night.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, Teyla.” Lorne quickly apologized as Eventus took a seat in the captain's control chair and keyed in the launch sequence that would open the doors in the large hanger’s ceiling.

“I know.” Teyla returned, a somewhat muted mirth still filling her voice the first hints of sunlight began to shine in through the bridge's crystalline windows. “But I felt it would be worthwhile to offer a wider perspective on the issue.” 

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Author’s Notes: There seemed to be a general thought that there was an abrupt transition between chapters 23 and 24, so have a surprise extra chapter available to everyone that will maybe help.