09: LTS Vault
"Alright, we're at the coordinates, now what?" Walter asked turning to me.
"Give it a moment," I grin.
Beneath our feet atlantis slowly reorients itself in relation to something unseen. I point at the view out the window as the star and planet move into and then out of the field of view.
One of the airmen is double checking the controls.
"Don't worry, the city knows what it's doing," I tell them.
The briefest whisper of vibration shivers through the deck as the maneuvering engines bring Atlantis to a halt, another shiver almost indetectable and the city slowly rotates around the central tower before it stops again.
You know that feeling in your stomach when an elevator starts to go down, or when you're driving and you go up a hill in the road before suddenly going back down. Imagine that and you'll have a decent sense of the feeling we all felt as atlantis pulsed the engines to push itself down against an imperceptible barrier that seemed to give way without warning before shuddering to a halt.
Sheppard looked out the window and gaped in surprise, "That wasn't there before."
I raise an eyebrow. "Welcome to Absis Caellestum. Please don't go exploring, the automated systems will be moving things around."
"So," John says as I walk towards the transport booth.
"Yes?"
"What was all that," he makes a vague hand motion, "with the rotating the city did?"
"That," I replay copying his vague gesture, "was the city unlocking the door for us to dock."
The structure outside the window is truly massive, while the Alteran facility back at terra was focused solely on power supply, this one seemed to be a museum, examples of technology from the very dawn of my ancestors space age could be found here. I can hear the questions wondering where the structure was hiding before we arrived.
"At one time, this was a museum of science for our people, similar to the role of the smithsonian on earth, the spacecraft here are old, you could almost say that they're ancient," I told Sheppard with a grin. "Examples of every technology milestone, made their way here. But, in the century before atlantis was moved to Pegasus, it became something of a storage vault for things as we set aside various projects in our pursuit of ascension."
John stared at the docking bay outside, we had transited from a transport booth near the city control room, to one near the control room for the docking bay, in which the Atlantis was now comfortably cradled.
Next to Atlantis was a smooth saucer about two thirds the size with the same abstract hull plating the jumpers use. On the opposite side of the control bay there were a series of craft going from the first Alteran shuttle which could pass as a cousin of the shuttles NASA developed, space rated fighter craft, ranging from lightly armored, to veritable tanks, the real prizes are the Alteran battlecruisers.
An older design than their Atlantean counterpart, but armed to the teeth.
Pressing a few commands on the control console a massive crane overhead comes to life positioning over one of the battlecruisers, massive umbilical cables decoupling from the large vessel as the crane gently slide the massive metal arms underneath the vessel in preparation for moving the ship. while a smaller crane began loading the fighters and interceptors into an equally massive carrier.
"What I don't understand is," John said, "if the Atlanteans had access to all of this how the hell did they lose?"
"They didn't," I replied, "they didn't have access that is." I elaborated at his confused expression. "Those you know of as Atlanteans were the caretakers for pegasus. The Alteran responsible for their presence in Pegasus, placed restrictions that would prevent them from removing the city from Pegasus for any great length of time. In fact, had I not arrived when I did, if the city was not returned to pegasus before the end of the year, the database would have purged itself and the technology would have dissolved into component atoms."
"Oh," Sheppard said dropping his shoulders into a slouch.
"Anyway, we, and by we, I mean you, don't have enough people for more than the two ships I'm moving to Atlantis piers. So, don't get greedy, and this base is only accessible when a full Alteran is present."
I examine the displays again, the carrier would be moved to one of the docking slips on Atlantis as soon as the fighter bay was full. Confident that the orders will be carried out, I motioned to John who'd been advising Walter on our progress.
"What now?"
"There is one last thing that needs to be done," I said.
"Don't let me hold you back," John said.
"I understand your curiosity, I'll explain at the next control room," I told him, waiting for him to enter the transport booth before pressing the button.
When the flash of light from the transport faded away and our eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that the technology around us was far older than the section we'd just left. The architecture and design was far older, less refined, but in pristine condition for all the millenia it had waited.
"Where are we?" John asked.
I waved a hand over a podium activating the display and a map appeared showing a truly massive construct with a diameter of two astronomical units. I chuckled at the gobsmacked expression on Sheppard's face.
"Yes it's impressive isn't it?" I said.
Sheppard responded with a low whistle.
"While the technology in this section isn't of much use to us in Pegasus, it is still of use to earth," I grinned. "While much of our infrastructure has been dismantled, and the remnants decayed with age, there was still enough intact to log the activation of the Destiny gate."
I wave a hand deactivating the map before leading him to the control room for the exhibits in this section. "Since then I've been going through what logs the ship has sent, I'm going to use the power stored in the museum's capacitors to send them a care package. There's enough power for the one dial out, and it will take time before the station restores that energy via the solar collectors and neutrino-ion generators. So we'll have to make sure this one counts, yeah?"
Billions of light years away
Eli Wallace looked up from where he'd slouched on the floor of the gate room, the air had grown thin in the time since he'd shutdown everything he could reasonably get away with shutting down. The gate was spinning rapidly and the ship had dropped out of FTL.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no," Eli repeated in a mantra of panick as the lockout program he'd written was overriden and the gate accepted the incoming wormhole.
"Don't do this to me, Destiny!" Eli yelled as he pounded on the control console trying in vain to force the ship to terminate the connection.
Suddenly a surge of power poured into Destiny's systems as the gate accepted the energy transfer from the dialing gate, and the blue of the wormhole snapped into place without the characteristic vortex of destruction.
Eli hefted the P90 he'd appropriated from the makeshift armory, pointing it towards the event horizon as the first repair bot floated out of the watery blue with a soft hum. His jaw dropped in shock at the familiar tool as it was quickly followed by another, and then he lost track of all the things exiting the gate.
The repair bots needed no instruction from him as they quickly exited the gateroom interfacing with the Destiny to determine where their efforts could be directed first.
Eli felt something nudge his leg and looked down to see a smaller bot carring a glowing yellow crystal in it's manipulators. There was a letter attached to the front of the bot.
Eli, this is a potentia, it's also known as a Zero Point Module, the later term was coined by earth scientists. It's a rather powerful source of energy, think of it like a really really big battery. Please wait until the repair drones we've sent have had a chance to repair enough of the main power conduits to support the energy output, then all you will need to do is use the equipment within the bot carrying the ZPM and hook it up to the ship's main power conduit.
I've also included a smaller power unit you can hook into the power system for whatever room you're in to provide enough for life support for that room.
Stay strong Mr. Wallace
Your friendly neighborhood Alteran,
Aikino.
P.S. Colonol John Sheppard of Atlantis says that he's proud of how you're holding up.
P.P.S. Don't try to use the ZPM to dial back, its power is better served keeping the ship in one peice than being wasted on a connection that requires far greater energy to sustain a suitable connection. Given a chance the repair bots, should be able to restore and even upgrade the ship enough that the next time she refills it'll make the amount of power that ZPM is capable of outputting look small.
Eli read the last word and slumped against the wall, his legs suddenly felt very weak.
