Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 13

Chapter 13 - The Little Details

“Only six?” Weir repeated into his ear, the radio signal coming through the open gate with the same clarity John had come to expect by this point.

“Yea.” He returned, only to pause as he remembered that Weir was one of those people who tended to prefer every detail up front. “Well, seven if you count Sanir, but after she sold us out to the Genii, Allina apparently doesn’t.”

“So this Sanir was a spy for the Genii?” Weir asked after a moment of silence.

“Don't think so.” John confessed, the few words he'd exchanged with the woman suggesting more of an opportunist bent. “My guess is the Genii rolled in a few weeks after the culling and offered to help out the survivors.”

Mainly because some of the group's clothing had been a bit too modern looking for the pre-industrial society they had claimed to be from. Not that he’d normally think much of that outside a mental footnote, but the ‘around the camp’ dresses he’d seen Sanir and Allina wearing had also had a very ‘Genii’ style to them.

“And the chances the rest will decide they'd rather side with the Genii?” Weir put forward.

John grimaced, glad Weir wasn't actually here to see it given she'd have taken it for more than it was. “Before Evan decided to pull his Jesus act with Allina? I'd probably have put it at fifty fifty. After? Ninety ten in our favor.”

He was honestly more worried about Evan given everything that had happened. Because he'd seen looks like Allina had been shooting the Ancient before on several of the Athosians when they’d first arrived, and more often than not it had ended with people sharing a bed together who really shouldn’t have been.

“Well, it is technically their people’s ZPM.”

“Yep.” He agreed.

“And it is our fault the Wraith woke up when they did.”

“I’ve kind of been working up to mentioning that.” He confessed, more than a little glad the others had followed suit. “Didn’t want a repeat of our first run-in with the Genii.”

“So I suppose six more people wouldn’t be overly impactful to our supply situation.”

“Least so long as we keep them away from the coffee.” He added, still wondering who’s bright idea it was to send a bunch of soldiers and scientists halfway across the universe without a few actual coffee plants to use to set up their own supply.

“Yes, well, hopefully that won’t be a problem for much longer now that we have a ZPM.” Weir returned with a sigh. “But you have the okay to bring them to the city.”

“Great, we'll be sending McKay back right away with the ZPM then. Just make sure he doesn't try to plug it in.” 

Because he’d seen the look Evan had given McKay every time the scientist had mentioned his plan to disable the city’s recall signal, and it hadn’t been one filled with confidence in McKay’s ability to actually do so.

“Though that reminds me.” He continued with a frown. “That dart still on course?”

“Yes.” Weir admitted in an odd tone. “The city hasn't stopped counting down its distance to lunar orbit since Eventus set up the automatic defense program.”

Weir gave a light laugh across the radio. “If I didn't know better, I'd almost think it was annoyed the dart is taking so long to get here.”

“Let's hope not. The last thing we need is Atlantis deciding we're its new live in maids. Anyways, see you in a bit, Shepherd out.”

Cutting off his radio, he walked back to the others who were gathered in wait around the DHD.

“So good news.” John announced as he rejoined them. “Weir okayed the six of you coming back to Atlantis with us.”

Not that he ever really expected she wouldn’t given the circumstances, but this wasn’t one of the times he wanted to guarantee things only to turn out to be wrong.

“So does that mean she's going to send over a gate ship to help them pack up?” Evan asked as he glanced over to the still active gate.

While that would certainly have been nice, it ran into the unfortunate problem they always seemed to run into when the idea of using the Puddle Jumpers came up.

“Not enough pilots for that.” John admitted with a grimace. “Outside of me we have two that can more or less fly in a straight line, and one who very much can't.”

Beckett really was his own worst enemy when it came to utilizing neural interfaces.

“Also we call them Puddle Jumpers.” He added in to keep McKay from trying to insist they go back to his original idea now that he discovered the Ancients had apparently called it the same thing.

“I like it.” Evan said as he took a few steps over to the DHD and pulled out the thing John was pretty sure at this point was the Ancient equivalent of the tablet McKay always carried around. “Good at naming things my people were not.”

John turned to McKay and motioned to the gate. “McKay, you're clear to take the ZPM back to Atlantis. We're gonna stay behind till Allina can gather up her people.”

“Ford.” He continued as McKay all but ran through the open gate. “Stay here and dial up that desert planet we visited a couple weeks back and just keep the connection going till we get back. That way the Genii can't dial in.”

Evan frowned suddenly, looking down at his tablet for a moment before hooking it back into this belt. “Okay, I'll admit that's a simpler solution than the one I had planned.”

That felt to John like something that could be either good or bad for them, but it was probably better to find out just what it was now then have the Ancient try it again later and leave them out of luck. “And that would be?”

“I was going to try and set up a block on incoming wormholes till we next dialed out.” Evan explained, which would be a moderately useful ability to have, if John didn't sense a but in there.

“Try?” 

“The Wraith alterations preventing most forms of wireless access are still in place.” Evan said with a motion to the DHD. “So I was about to attempt initiating one utilizing manual access to the dialing units hardware.”

“That sounds like something that might take awhile.” John said as he gave Ford the nod to go ahead with his order.

“Which is why I'm not doing it.” Evan agreed as he shot John a grin. “The maintenance team had a saying, try not to overthink things that might have relatively simple solutions.”

“We call it the KISS principle.” John offered as he began walking back to the castle ruins. “Stands for keep it simple, stupid.”

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Author’s Notes: Next chapter, we return to the city for consequences.