Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 18

Chapter 18 - The Other Guys

“So.” John began as he and the rest of his team waited for Weir to call them into her office. “Any luck with that bypass you were working on to let us connect the ZPM without inviting more trouble to our doorstep?”

“I was close.” McKay said with a smirk that told John the man believed he’d figured out something particularly clever. “But then I realized I was over thinking the problem. Because we don’t need to plug the Zed-PM into the city to dial Earth, just the gate.”

“We can do that?”  John asked in consideration as he thought back to the rather hefty power transfer system they’d needed to pull off something similar on Earth.

“It’ll take a few days for my team to put a cradle together that can handle the voltage.” McKay admitted. “But yes. Then it'll just be a matter of disconnecting the gate from the power mains and connecting it to the Zed-PM and we'll be good to go.”

The wormhole that had been active since they arrived shut down, and he could see Doctor Weir close her laptop before motioning for them to enter.

“Looks like we're up.” John said before walking in, the other three following him without a word.

“That was Chancellor Lycus.” Weir offered in a tired tone once they had all entered. 

“Oh no.” John muttered, able to sense the direction this was heading from those words alone.

“Oh yes.” Weir confirmed with a grimace as she motioned that they were free to take a seat. “The good news is that he's changed his mind about how welcome we are on Taranis.”

“And the bad news?” John asked, fully aware by now how these things went.

“The bad news.” Weir continued with a sigh. “Is that his reason for changing his mind is because of Eventus triggering a series of earthquakes that have devastated the entire region.”

That was several degrees worse then John had imagined, and from the sharp inhale of breath Teyla made he wasn't the only one.

“How many died?” The Athosian asked.

“Too early for them to tell.” Weir admitted with a grim look on her face. “But we're sending two jumpers with rescue teams to help out.”

“Got it.” John said as he began planning out the team deployments. “You're going to want Adams and Morgan on this, they used to be USACE so know their way around disaster recovery. I assume you want us flying point with things?”

“No.” Weir returned with a shake of her head. “I'm sorry to say I'm going to be putting your team on Ancient handling duty.”

He'd been more than a little afraid it would be something like that, but given they had the most experience with Eventus he supposed it made sense.

“Do I really need to be there for that?” McKay inquired hopefully. “It's just, with the Zed-PM I have a lot of work to get done if we want to use it to contact Earth.”

“Didn't you just say you were having your team take care of that?” John said as he turned a skeptical look to the man, moderately sure he just wanted to avoid heading into a disaster area.

“It doesn't matter.” Weir put forward in an encouraging tone that instantly set John's hackles on edge. “As our foremost expert in Ancient technology they're going to need you there most, Rodney. Because whatever Eventus was doing, it knocked out nearly all of the facility's systems, and their head scientist is currently missing after she tried to gain access to the chamber Eventus locked himself in.”

Worry flashed across McKay's face. “You don't think he…?” 

“Na.” John reassured him, giving the man a bit of a break since he had missed out on the latter part of their brief time on Dagan. “Sanir shot him and all he did was roll his eyes and stun her.”

He gave an acknowledging tilt of his head before continuing. “Well, and write something in Ancient on her forehead with one of those charcoal pencils they had lying around.”

“I believe he mentioned it was the Ancient word for fool.” Teyla added in helpfully as the corner of her lips twitched slightly in suppressed mirth.

“So yea.” John continued with a wry grin. “Slightly petty, but other than that he seems to be a pretty turn the other cheek kind of Ancient, so assuming something didn't happen to her on the way to the chamber, he probably just stunned her and stuck her in a closet or something.”

Which to be perfectly honest he had been tempted to do to McKay on more than one occasion.

Weir nodded in agreement as she gave them a somewhat awkward smile. “That matches what we've been able to dig up on him in the database so far. Honestly? Reading through his team's work reports, he comes off almost like a less restrained version of General O'Neill.”

“I'll admit.” John said as he considered the comparison. “I did kind of get that feeling from him.” 

If he was going to put it into words, he'd probably say they both had the same sort of everyman energy to them. Which wasn't exactly a bad thing given he was pretty sure most of Stargate Command would follow General O'Neill through a minefield if it came down to it. But it did leave him feeling just a tad cautious around Evan since officers like that could be absolute bears when they thought they were doing the right thing.

“So, did the Taranians say anything about what he did to cause the whole place to start shaking?” He asked Weir, wanting to avoid his team going into a situation like that completely blind if they could help it.

“According to Chancellor Lycus the only systems they still had working other than the doors were the Stargate and short range communications.” Weir offered as she opened up her laptop and waited patiently for the twenty seconds it took the device to come out of sleep mode.

“Okay.” John said as he turned to their resident genius. “Any ideas what he could have done to cause a bunch of earthquakes, McKay?”

The Canadian scientist let out a put upon sigh as he rolled his eyes in clear exasperation at the question. “Well, given what he told Elizabeth about the facility, I'm guessing something that took a lot of power.”

“So no.” He returned, knowing McKay would take that as a personal affront and try to prove him wrong.

“Not for lack of trying.” McKay insisted as he turned a glare to John. “But other than the gate address there’s nothing in the database on the facility.”

John frowned in annoyance, having thought there would at least be some information on the place they could use. “The Ancients really didn’t label things well, did they.”

“No.” McKay agreed as he motioned with his almost omnipresent table to one of the walls. “But in this case I’m guessing it was like that weapon testing facility we’ve been on the lookout for and a purposeful disconnect between the facilities file and its gate location.”

“Speaking of which.” Weir said as she looked over at Teyla. “With Eventus’s help we were able to locate the historical records of the Lantean city on Athos. So if you’d be interested in looking those over when your team gets back, I can send a copy over for you?”

“That would be much appreciated, Elizabeth.” Teyla offered with an appreciative incline of her head. “While we have legends, I had always wondered how much more there might be to the story.”

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Author’s Notes: Poor Ford… Even in my story I can’t think of a lot to do with the guy given his position as military guy is already sort of filled by Shepherd.

Also, for those in the US, happy turkey day!