Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 7

Chapter 7 - Unannounced Maintenance

Of all the things his people built that would last for millennia under some of the most detrimental planetary conditions imaginable, everyday clothing was apparently not one of them. As Eventus had unfortunately discovered when he'd gone to check his own stored garments and only found piles of dust with slightly corroded metal clasps where they should have been.

Which meant his only set of clothing was the one he had gone into stasis with, at least, until he could get the city's fabricators back online. 

A task that would require locating a Potentia so he could bring the city out of safe mode, extensive work by whatever repair robots were still around to get the fabricators working again, and an emergency election to gain the needed authority to actually reactivate them since a full power loss would have kicked them into an automatic lockdown for security reasons.

Well, that or several years of bypass work, but his plan was a lot faster and less annoying than that. 

Of course, having something to wear other than his standard whites was only one of an ever growing list of reasons he wanted to get the city's molecular fabricators back online. Hence the reason he had snuck out of his quarters after a moderately pleasant nights sleep and made his way to the control tower where he was currently looking over the display pieces in the gate rooms overlook office as he waited for her to get in.

“schedule Tso to replace Grodin until…” Weir said as she walked into the room, only to trail off mid sentence as she noticed Eventus standing there. 

“I’ll call you back. Something just came up.” She quickly finished as she shot him a cautious look. “Eventus. Can I help you with something?”

It was clear the question she really wanted to ask was ‘how did you get in here without anyone noticing’, though she was apparently too trained of a diplomat to just out right ask him. Something Eventus found more than a bit disappointing given he had kind of wanted the excuse to spin a crazy story to cover up his use of the maintenance passageways.

“I was hoping we could discuss the Potentia issue.” Eventus put forward as Weir walked around the desk to take a seat before motioning that he was free to do the same.

“Potentia?” Weir repeated in confusion. “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that word.”

“I believe you call them ZPM’s.” Eventus returned as he walked over to the desk and settled into one of the chairs. 

Weir grimaced. “Ah, well, as you know we haven’t exactly had any luck in locating those.”

“Which is why I'm going to help.” Eventus said simply. 

The look of consternation on Weir's face at his words was more than a little amusing, and he could all but see her trying to work out how to take control back of the conversation.

“Not that we don't appreciate the offer.” Weir finally began. “But why the sudden change of heart?”

“I ran a preliminary maintenance diagnostic on the city while I slept.” Eventus admitted truthfully, leaving out that he had been planning to do this even if the results hadn't been what they were. “And the damage was at a level where the only way I can even begin work on various things I was hoping to get done is by bringing the city's first order self repair systems back online. Which can only be done when the city is no longer running in safe mode.”

He gave her an awkward smile. “Though I'm sorry to say that even if I am able to retrieve a ZPM, it will likely be several months before I can allow you to use it to go home.”

“Explain.” Weir ordered before catching herself with a wince. “The last please, as I have to assume you have some reason for saying that.”

He shook his head lightly in amusement at the slip. “Right now the city is in what your people might consider a low powered safe mode. Inserting a ZPM into the central power hub will automatically cause the city to leave low power mode, and part of doing that involves the city going through a sequence of pre-programed actions that I can't stop.”

Exemplifying his people's standard way of looking at things, it was unfortunately only possible to alter the city's ‘run on boot’ programs after the city was already fully online.

“One of those pre-programed actions is to send out a coded galaxy wide subspace confirmation pulse that will cause any still active Lantean facilities in the galaxy to send back either an ‘I am here and online’ or ‘I am here and in distress’ signal.”

A bit of a stretch to say 'all’ if he was being honest, since anything without power, a working subspace transceiver, or specifically programmed to ignore that signal wouldn't respond.

“This signal.” Weir put forward in a suspicious tone. “Would the Wraith be able to pick it up?”

“The city's pulse?” Eventus began as he tilted his head slightly in consideration. More than a little glad he hadn't needed to directly point out to Wear that risk. “Not unless they've improved their technology significantly in the past ten thousand years. The 'I am here’ responses, also probably not.”

He visibly winced and leaned forward in his chair. “The 'I am here and in distress’ responses however are designed to be detectable by anyone.”

Not the brightest idea on the designer’s part given the war going on, but they had likely thought their superior hyperdrives would let his people respond faster than the Wraith could.

“Would there even be any of those after all this time?” Weir inquired in a skeptical tone.

“We were fighting the Wraith for five hundred years.” Eventus answered as he gave a shrug to suggest he wasn't sure. “And since most of our ships are equipped with emergency stasis pods, barring an imminent attack, I plan to delay triggering that particular response until such a time as we have access to a hyperspace capable vessel on the off chance there actually turns out to be a Lantean crew somewhere in need of rescue.”

It was clear Weir was warring with herself now that he’d put forward the idea that there might still be other members of his people around, though he suspected she would be a lot less enthused about that if she knew how heavily skewed his people’s military was towards certain personality types and ages.

“Doctor McKay and Teyla mentioned that you believe there might be Lantean warships that are still recoverable?” Weir put forward, following his mention of gaining access to a hyperspace capable vessel to its likely end in a respectable show of low information puzzle solving.

“The most likely is the Hippaforalkus.” Eventus confirmed, though the man in question had much preferred to go by Ralkus when he was alive. “It was being repaired in a mostly automated underground drydock. And once we evacuated personnel from those types of locations the Wraith tended to ignore them as being more trouble than they were worth.”

Completely sensible on the Wraith’s part given his people had purposefully used automated facilities like that as sacrifices to drain the Wraith’s numbers during the later days of the war.

“And you think you would be able to get the… Hippaforalkus, operational?” Weir inquired, cringing slightly at the name. 

“Assuming the drydock’s still intact?” Eventus put forward as he furrowed his brow in consideration. “Probably a week or two to restore all its systems.”

They’d only really left it behind because even fully operational there had been no way to actually get the ship past the Wraith when they were actively blockading the planet.

“But of course, that’s with me running the repair sequence.” He continued as he shot Weir a knowing look. “For your people I’d say it would probably take a couple months to restore the ship to minimal combat levels.”

Though that was more because they’d have to repair everything by hand instead of utilizing the drydock’s systems.

“Circling back to the ZPM’s, the list Janus gave the other you is probably still our best bet outside of the production facility itself. And before you ask, no, all I know about the production facility was that it was somewhere in orbit of this galaxy’s central singularity.”

That wasn’t to say Atlantis couldn’t produce them itself, but he knew enough about the process to know that the result of doing so resulted in neutral energy generation at best unless you had at least three ZPM’s working together in parallel on it. Something to do with the additive thinning of subspace-time caused by the devices working together like that partially duplicating the environmental subspatial effects around supermassive black holes.

“I’m sorry to say we’ve already crossed off all but two of those locations.” Weir returned apologetically. “And Major Shepherd’s team is set to depart shortly to investigate a forth.”

Clapping his hands together he put on a purposefully exaggerated grin of happiness. “Excellent! Then I will go along with Major Shepherd. Utilization of the city’s scouting drones should make the task of determining whether there is one there or not a rather simple affair.”

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Author’s Notes: I spent yesterday in a bunker, so have the longer than normal chapter I wrote during it.