Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 25

Chapter 25 - Time And A Half

The brief brightness of the matter stream quickly resolved itself, and Eventus found himself standing on the bridge of the Daedalus.

“I have to admit.” He said as he looked around for a moment before focusing on the Asgard that was working at a very different looking control station. “I am moderately impressed. Because we'd been trying to figure out receiverless matter transposition for several million years.”

That wasn't an exaggeration on his part either, the latest tests he knew about had barely been able to transmit something a handful of meters away from the transmission pillar.

“You can thank our Asgard friends for that.” Caldwell offered as he rose from his chair and walked forward to offer a hand.

“I wouldn't mind doing that.” Eventus returned with a smile as he shook the man's hand. “Always wanted to talk to an Asgard. But the last time we ran into them was a couple thousand years before I was born.”

Which was really a scathing critique on his peoples general unwillingness to keep in contact with other near peer species given they'd left a bunch of Stargates in the Asgard's galaxy.

“Yes.” The Asgard put forward in a tone that suggested he was particularly annoyed at something. “The Trellanor subspatial fissure incident where a world from this galaxy ended up in our own.”

Eventus smacked a closed fist into his hand as that filled in the rest of the blanks. “Oh right! The early projected wormhole tests. I remember reading about that in the cleanup files.”

“We did apologize for that… Right?”

The Asgard stared at him for a moment before giving the slightest nod of its head. “Several times, after your people's return to the Milky Way galaxy.”

“Well.” Eventus said as his shoulders slumped slightly. “Better late than never I suppose.”

“We probably shouldn't keep Doctor Weir and Colonel Everett waiting.” Caldwell put forward, reminding Eventus why he'd been beamed over in the first place.

“Ah right.” Eventus muttered before shooting an apologetic look over to the Asgard. “Talk more later?”

“That would be acceptable.” The Asgard returned with a nod.

“We're good to transport down then, Hermiod.” Caldwell said, and the Asgard reached over in response and quickly moved several crystal controls.

Once more a flash of energy engulfed him, and then he and Colonel Caldwell were standing in Atlantis's control room.

“It's good to be back.” Eventus said as he felt the distinctive hum of the city slowly coming back to full wakefulness. 

“Colonel Caldwell, Evan.” Weir greeted as she walked over, looking remarkably refreshed for someone who had no doubt spent the past several days being run nearly as hard as Eventus himself had. “That was quite the show you put on up there.”

“Remind me to show you records of the Siege some time.” Eventus offered with a grin. “Thousands of hives, at least ten times that in cruisers, and enough wreckage that the planet actually ended up with an orbital ring. Which should have still been up there but isn't for some reason I'd really like to know.”

And the fact the planet was still pretty much as they'd left it told him it hadn't fallen to Lantea either. Extraordinarily deep oceans or not there wouldn't have been much left of a planetary surface left after being bombarded by hundreds of thousands of armor chunks dozens of meters in diameter.

“We already saw the hologram.” Weir put forward in a somewhat apologetic tone. “If you'll follow me, Colonel Everett is already waiting in the conference room.”

“The hologram?” Eventus asked as he stood there trying to figure out which she might be talking about.

“The one that played automatically in the hologram room.” Weir answered just a tad bit impatiently as Caldwell gave a nod and walked past.

“Every room in the city is a hologram room.” Eventus pointed out. “The projection systems extend across the entire radius of the city. “During the siege when we sank the city we even used them to project a sun and sky onto the inner surface of the shield bubble.”

Weir sighed, and he got the distinctive sense that she thought he was nitpicking instead of genuinely curious. “The room with the octagonal platform and interface pilith.”

“You mean the core interface room?” Eventus asked as he finally recalled just what she was referring to. “Then you're talking about the holographic message Councilor Melia left behind.”

He had made it a point to ignore as much of what that woman produced as possible, which was really the only sensible thing to do when dealing with the representative of the cultural shapers since manipulation might as well have been their favorite pastime.

“For your own sake I'd suggest forgetting pretty much everything that hologram said and showed you.” He warned her, visibly grimacing in awareness that what he was about to say would likely just cause the expedition to investigate it more but knowing there was no helping it. “Councilor Melia was the representative of our cultural shapers, any message she left you would have been heavily dramatized to lead you in a certain direction.”

“You're saying it was propaganda?” Weir said, skepticism ripe in her voice at the claim.

“A close enough analogy.” Eventus admitted with a heavy sigh. “My people had many many flaws Doctor Weir. And a profound sense of thinking they always knew best was one of their larger ones.”

“I hadn't noticed.” Weir returned with the slightest lilt of amusement in her voice.

Eventus gave an acknowledging half nod at that as he held back a chuckle. “Fair enough. I suppose we shouldn’t keep your other Colonel waiting then.”

The walk to the rooming question was short, a purposeful design choice Eventus knew since the whole point of that particular room had been holding quick meetings with people who had come through the stargate.

The two military men were already seated at the horseshoe configured table. And a quick look at Everett gave Eventus the distinct impression of a man who had far too large of a stick up his ass for his own good.

“You would be the Ancient then.” Everett said as he got to his feet and took a moment to examine Eventus with a critical eye.

“What gave it away?” Eventus asked with just the slightest hint of sarcasm as he looked down at himself in an overly exaggerated fashion. “The generic white on white outfit made of meta-materials you likely don't even have names for yet?”

“Funny.” Everett stated in a voice that suggested he thought it anything but. “But this isn't the time for jokes. We're tracking a fleet of twelve more hives less than three days out from Atlantis.”

“Likely the Queen who sent the three hives we just destroyed.” Eventus offered as he circled around to sit down at the further end of the table from the pair. “Or possibly an allied Queen who tricked the one in charge of that fleet into attacking first as a test of what level of defense we're capable of putting up.”

“And the result of either would be?” Weir inquired as she circled around to sit next to the pair of military officers. 

“Her trying to figure out if it is worth it.” Eventus explained, unfortunately aware that there wasn't much more they could do to tilt things their way at this point.

“Then we should take the fight to them.” Everett insisted as he sat back down. “With the Enterprise weapons and the Daedalus's beaming tech we should be able to make short work of them.”

“No, we couldn't.” Eventus returned simply, starting to get the distinct sense of why Caldwell and not Everett had been given command of Earth's second starship. “Twelve hives, twenty four cruisers, and five to ten thousand fighter craft.” 

“The Enterprise could take out maybe a quarter of that before being overwhelmed. Your ship, even with a ZPM boosting it, could take out maybe a handful more of the larger ships with strategic use of the Asgards transposition technology. The only way for either of our ships to survive such an attempt would be for you to hand your ZPM over to me to install on the Enterprise as it uses the same shield design as Atlantis itself.”

“Of course.” He continued as Everett opened his mouth to likely suggest they do just that. “That wouldn't give my ship the firepower to stop the Wraith fleet before they scattered. And as I told Colonel Caldwell, that will just lead to a repeat of what happened ten thousand years ago with us being left to hide under the ocean.”

Leaning forward and resting an arm on the table, Everett waited silently for a moment before speaking.

“So what would you suggest then?”

“The same thing I suggested to Doctor Weir when I was last here but that she couldn't pull off due to a lack of skilled pilots.” Eventus returned with a pleasant smile. “Use your new ship to tow the defence satellite into geosynchronous orbit over Atlantis, fix it up, and wait.”

“Because that's going to be your main defense while I'm gone.” He finished, leaning back in this chair and waiting for the obvious question.

“While you're gone?” Caldwell obliged as a look of concern settled across his features.

“You'll be happy to know I've confirmed the location of two more Explorer class vessels.” Eventus lied, since it was technically only the Aurora that had been confirmed at this point. “So after a few hours of downtime, I'm going to head out in the Enterprise to begin recovery operations.”

“And if possible I'd really appreciate it if you'd lend me Sheppard and McKay for that, as I've been running myself absolutely ragged the past two weeks and could really use a couple people to help spread the neural interface load.”

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Author's Notes: It’s probably for the best he didn’t mention to them that the displaced planet ended up infested with dimensional horrors.

But that's probably for the best.