Chapter 35 - Departure
With the now growing lifeforms securely locked away in biolab seventeen, the only thing left on Eventus's list had been a quick trip down to orbital transfer building three to resupply the Enterprise's matter stores via the building's ring array. A task that had taken all of five minutes due to the fact that the Explorer class had been designed with the idea of rapid resupply via matter stream in mind.
Which had left him with just enough time to grab a late lunch of Earth food from the mess hall before heading back down to orbital transfer to translocate himself up to the ship since he really didn't want to bother Hermiod given he was probably in the middle of going over the overly large data file right now.
Or at least, that had been the plan.
"Doctor… Zelenka was it?" He asked the scientist who appeared to be in the middle of cursing at the console along the hexagonal control room's rear wall.
"Oh!" Zelenka exclaimed in a slightly embarrassed tone as he turned around. "Evan, I was just… Well. You probably already know."
"Random power spike investigation?" Eventus tried, since that seemed the most likely given his recent activities in the location.
"Yes." Zelenka confirmed with a nod. "That, I've spent the past ten minutes trying to get this
fucked up thing to explain itself and all it's been giving me are errors."
"That station is locked to matter stream regulation." Eventus explained, feeling just a little bad about unintentionally wasting the man's time like that.
He pointed to the console up against the rightmost wall. "That one would be power flow control. Though I'd rather you didn't mess with it right now given I was just about to ring up to the Enterprise."
"Ring…" Zelenka began, only to trail off as his eyes went wide in realization. "
Of course! I was wondering why some of the code looked familiar. You know, we've been trying to figure out if Atlantis had anything other than the transport booths since we discovered them."
Frowning slightly the scientist took a moment to look around the room with a new eye. "A ring system seemed most likely given you're the original inventors of the technology, but we haven't been able to find any, and the Daedalus's set weren't able to connect with anything in the city so we had just begun to rule it out entirely."
"The city has three" Eventus offered, figuring out he might as well make it up to the man for dragging him out here. "Orbital transfer one, three, and five. On piers one, three, and five. Which were used for orbiting vessel resupply and direct personnel transfer."
"There used to be a fourth set in the gate room." He continued as he walked over to the console Zelenka was just at and changed the system back to the personnel setting so he could actually use the rings. "But they were removed during the war after the Wraith captured a registered set and used it to translocate a plasma bomb through the stargate shield."
The city had automatically contained the blast with a force field so it didn't end up doing any damage, but it had still been a close enough call that the Council hadn't wanted to risk keeping the rings in place.
"You can do that?" Zelenka asked, furrowing his brow in clear concern.
"The gate shield was originally attenuated to allow pass through of ring system matter streams." Eventus reassured Zelenka as he finished up with that and walked over to one of the inset storage units, tapping it slightly and sending the mental open command. "That was adjusted at the same time the control tower ring system was removed."
It was still attenuated to allow pass through of the short range translocation booth matter stream however, but reintegration from that was handled by the city, and it had stricter safeguards in place then the mostly autonomous ring system did.
Frowning at the empty charging rack he moved over to a similar unit on the other side of the room and opened that, letting out a sign of relief whence found a single semi transparent guest visor on one of the racks.
"Here catch." He said as he tossed the device to Zelenka, wincing slightly when the man nearly fumbled and dropped it to the floor. "That's one of the guest visors that should allow you to see the city's digital layer. The little blue crystal on the right turns it on and the little red one next to it turns it off. Everything else can be controlled via mental or verbal commands."
Zelenka looked down at the device in his hand for a moment before looking back up at Eventus. "That's… I don't… I'm very confused right now…"
Eventus shrugged. "If they're going to have you running around the city investigating minor problems you might as well have something that makes the job easier."
Honestly, Zelenka just radiated such a general feeling of being under-appreciated that Eventus had wanted to give him a small leg up with things to make the scientist's job easier.
"Anyways." He continued as he walked back to the door. "I have a recovery mission to get to, so I hope the city's not too hard on you while I'm gone."
Passing through the doorway he turned down the hall and headed away from the control center, quickly arriving in the circular room that contained the ring transport. Walking to the center of the room, he tapped his foot on the activation trigger and then watched the rings rise up from their recesses before the room vanished in a flash of light as he was translocated to the ring room on the Enterprise.
"I wonder if I should have warned him about messing around with the spectrum settings." He mused as he made his way to the bridge, giving a jaunty wave to the surprised member of Lorne's team he passed along the way.
It wasn't particularly dangerous, but things could get awkward for Zelenka since Eventus doubted any of the expedition's clothing was opaque to all the various spectrum's the visor's sensors covered.
"Evan." Lorne greeted with a smile as he entered the Bridge. "Didn't know the Daedalus beamed you up yet."
"I took the rings up." Eventus said as he plopped himself down in the empty captain's chair. "Still working your way through the ship's flight manual?"
"Page five hundred thirty seven and counting." Lorne returned with a nod as me motioned to the station he was sitting at. "Colonel Caldwell wants me to write up an abbreviated version once I finish."
As far as Eventus knew the current flight manual was nearly nine hundred pages long, and had been written specifically for people unable to just download the information into their head as part of an early push to include non-Lantean's in defensive operations.
It hadn't worked out for a number of reasons that mostly laid at the foot of Lantean ego.
"Understandable." Eventus admitted, truly wishing the man luck with that since the more people who could run the ship the better. "Is McKay and his team on board?"
"They transported up about an hour ago." Lorne confirmed. "I think McKay's currently looking over the available cabins."
Given they were literally all the same outside of location and room orientation that did leave Eventus to wonder what in particular the man was looking for in regards to room choice. But he supposed if it kept the scientist from peppering him with questions about the ship's power systems he could leave him to it.
A quick mental command sent a departure notice to Atlantis and Daedalus, at which point he set the navigation system for the reported coordinates of the Aurora and with the flick of a mental switch engaged the ship's hyperdrive.
"Now." He continued as he focused on Lorne. "What is this Star Trek thing I keep hearing people talk about?"
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Author's Notes: Really, Zelenka is like a giant puppy, you can't help but feel bad for him.
And I'm sure giving Eventus an excuse to know about Star Trek will have no long term repercussions at all.
