Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 10

Chapter 10 - All That Glitters

“And these spheres of yours will search the valley for you?” Allina inquired as Eventus idly looked around the library the woman had led them too. 

“They’re already doing so.” Eventus admitted to her as the rest of team Atlantis made themselves busy looking over the various documentation her group had gathered about the Brotherhood. “I mentally initiated the search via the control unit's neural interface the moment we walked into the room.”

“That’s amazing.” Allina exclaimed as she reached past him to pull a cloth wrapped bundle off one of the shelves, lightly brushing up against him as she did in a way that Eventus was absolutely sure was intentional. “We’ve been searching for months, and all we’ve managed to find are these.”

She carefully unwrapped the cloth to show an expertly worked square stone plate with odd markings on it. “We believe they are clues the Quindosim left behind to lead the rest of our people to the Potentia in case their order was ever completely wiped out by the Wraith.”

“Forward thinking of them at least.” Shepherd suggested as he idly flipped through a book a quick glance showed was a very stylized retelling of how the Potentia had come to be in the Quindosim’s possession.

Allina followed Eventus as he walked over to take one of the empty seats at the table. “The Ancestor appointed them with the sacred duty of guarding the Potentia, with the promise of a great reward when they returned to claim it.”

Teyla visibly tensed at that, likely worrying about how they were planning to take the ZPM without offering anything of the sort.

“Did they say what that great reward would be?” Eventus asked, mildly curious given his people had very much not been known for rewarding others for doing things like that. Or even asking others to do those sorts of things in the first place.

“I am sad to say that’s been lost to time.” Allina admitted as she turned a melancholy look to the shelves of scrolls and books scattered around the room.

“Well.” Eventus put forward in a questioning tone, doubting his next words would make Team Atlantis very happy, but figuring ten thousand years of dedication deserved some kind of reward “What is it your people would want?”

“Evan.” Shepherd interjected in a disapproving tone as he looked up from his book. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

“They did the work.” Eventus pointed out, noting as he did that Teyla looked very torn at the direction the conversation had taken. “I’m not just going to ignore that and take the potentia back. I mean, even if my people hadn’t promised them that I’d have offered to do something for them since ten thousand years of work deserves some reward.”

“I… That's…” Allina turned an almost lost look to the other members of her group in the room.

“I can't get rid of the Wraith.” Eventus added in, rather suspecting he would be telling various groups that a lot in the coming years. “But with the potentia we could relocate your people to another galaxy where the Wraith can't reach you.”

“Evan.” Shepherd repeated, this time all ambiguity missing from his tone. “The IOA would never allow that.”

Eventus rolled his eyes at the man forgetting they had an entire galaxy to work with. “Not to Earth of course. But there have to be a good number of empty planets with Stargates in your galaxy that we could send them too if they wanted it.”

He was honestly surprised they had never offered that to Teyla's people in canon given all the generally empty planets Stargate Command has visited over the years. 

“The Atlantis gate only connects to Earth.” McKay interjected in annoyance. “And Shepherds right, the IOA would never allow it, even as a stop over point.”

Eventus shot the pair a disbelieving stare for a moment before remembering that it had only been a little over a day and a half at this point since he'd woken up. “That's moderately easy to override. And really, we were only returning there in the first place because that's where we hid a lot of our stuff before evacuating to here.”

“Didn't you get left behind because you couldn't override the lockout?” Shepherd asked, shooting him an odd look.

“The dial out lockout.” Eventus explained in annoyance. “But that was lifted automatically when you dialed in from Earth. The destination lockout just requires a council override authorization, and that's relatively simple for me to get at this point.”

Mainly because everyone else was either ascended, dead, or stuck in stasis in the middle of nowhere. But they didn't need to know that since he 

“While I appreciate the offer.” Allina finally got out, the woman looking much less certain about what she wanted in life than mere minutes ago. “I do not believe my people would wish to start over on an entirely new world.”

Which he supposed was fair enough, since he wouldn't want to do that either without at least a portable molecular assembler to boot strap himself up.

“Well, think it over.” He told her before turning back to the others. “So, find anything interesting in those?”

“Not especially.” Shepherd admitted, seizing on the change in topic for what it was. “Some moderately impressive illuminated manuscripts though.”

McKay held up a somewhat new looking parchment with what looked to be a charcoal rubbing on it. “Well I can at least confirm that a Zed-PM was actually here.”

“Sounds like a win for us.” Ford added in as he glanced over to Eventus. “Assuming we can actually find the thing.”

“They're still running the search.” Eventus said as he took a moment to connect with the interface pad on his belt to check whether anything with the set criteria had been located.

“It looks like they found a partially collapsed secret chamber under the castle.” He continued after parsing through the highlighted records. “But it only seems to be filled with worked gold, silver, and gemstones of various types.”

“You found a secret treasure chamber.” Ford muttered in a tone that suggested he couldn't quite believe it.

“That's probably where the Quindosim stored the trade tithes they collected for allowing gate travelers to use their castle as a rest point.” Allina offered, showing about as much care for the buried riches as Eventus himself had.

“Maybe we should take a look.” Ford said to Shepherd with a distinct interest in this voice. “Make sure the ZPM's not actually in there.”

Shepherd frowned at the Lieutenant. “I'm pretty sure Evan's scanner-spheres would be able to tell if it was.”

He turned to Evantus with a questioning look on his face. “They would, right?”

“Ninety five percentish.” Eventus admitted, making a so-so motion with one of his hands. “You can't really track the energy of an inactive ZPM, so I'm running a shape and material search. And while there's something that fits the shape down there, the material just reads as quartz. So I'm guessing it's probably a ceremonial replica.”

That wasn't to say they couldn't have found some way to trick the limited scanners on the probes, because the galaxy was a very big place. But he distinctly recalled the actual ZPM had been buried in a chamber somewhere a good distance away from the castle, so it was a safe bet that wasn't actually it. 

“Not easy access?” Shepherd inquired.

“Four to five meters of collapsed stone blocking the only…

He paused mid sentence as he felt the interface pad receive a positive return from one of the drones. 

“Found it.” He announced with a somewhat smug grin. “Underground chamber, a little less than a kilometer away. Looks like you're going to have to do a little digging though since the entrance seems to be buried under a couple feet of dirt.”

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Author’s Notes: Poor Ford, he really wanted to see a real buried treasure for once.

What’s this? A double chapter? Why yes, it is, I had a productive day yesterday, so instead of holding it back I figured why not you all at my highest tier with it.