He had been surprised by their willingness to listen to him. Even if it was only one of them who listened to him. Daniel, he would make sure to remember that name and the one the name belonged to. After they had left he locked down the gate and begun to pull apart this MALP they had left behind to reach its power source. The thing he finally concluded to be powering the machine seemed rather crude with its yellow outside and two wires poking out of it, but with any luck it would allow him to activate a console and write the feedback signal instructions in his head.
Deeming the rest of the device to be too primitive to be of any use he unlocked the gate and dialled back to the lab. Another long trek brought him back into the lab where he begun to separate a console from the rest of the systems to use as little power as possible from the power source. When he had severed all connections from the console to the rest of the lab he took the power source and begun to interface it.
The technology used in it seemed to closely resemble technology they had abandoned in favour of crystals many millions of years ago, but it still used the same kind of energy which ran through the crystals so he was hopeful he could get it going. To his relief the console powered up when he pressed the red wire to one part of the control crystal and the black wire to another.
Yet for all his relief the console showed it only had a few hours of power left so he had to get moving. Returning to the front of the console he immediately begun to move the information in his head straight into the console. Even with the advanced Alterran technology it took him five hours to download the information into the console with him simply standing there and thinking about it. Yet when he tried to move the information to the device given to him by Daniel he found that the device only fit the information for slightly more than one of the signals.
Quickly he looked through the memory of the console he deemed it sacrificable and returned to the interior of the console to get the memory unit. If the Tau'ri could download things from Alterran equipment to their own memory cores they should be able to download from the Alterran memory cores to their own equipment. With the core extracted from the console he put it in one of his pockets and sat down with his back to one of the consoles to think over his position.
He was a lone Alterran in Avalon, a galaxy which they had used mostly for experiments and their government, it had been the center of their empire and had relied on the other galaxies for materials and equipment. He needed to leave the galaxy and with any luck he could trade with the Tau'ri for a lift there, cause as far as he knew the only Alterran facility left standing which could be of any value in Avalon was the lab and three other places which all had problems according to the DHD. One was a place he could really use, a potentia factory, but sadly it was far from being completed. The second was a processing plant dedicated to the construction of Vis Uban, which was the third place, and that was far from completed. He could still have used the city as a base if he had the technology and resources to fortify it, but he would need drones, shield generators, plenty of potentias and most of all he would need help to man the city. As it stood he had nothing of that.
Then there was also the matter of Atlantis. Through the city's DHD he had learned many things about the situation even if the DHD offered only limited information. Still he had read on one of the Alterran consoles about the approaching Wraith fleet and their need for potentias to raise the city's shield. He was not in any position to help them, yet it was part of the duties that the repository had given to him.
Then there was the other three great races, the Furlings had been a dying race when the Alterra first retreated to Avalon and the DHDs in their galaxy reported no activity since the Alterra had fled from Atlantis, the DHD on the Nox world did not respond so it was probably destroyed. But at least he had heard about Asgard activity now, even if the DHDs in their galaxy reported the last activity there to be several years ago. But until he could contact the Asgard he would have to rely on the Tau'ri for aid, in exchange for knowledge.
Lastly was his personal situation. He had no power which was bad. His body was still changing to Alterran standards, while the most important changes had been made the godlike power part would take many months, possibly years, until it was completely done. He also lacked food and water even if his Alterran physiology did not require as much as a normal jaffa or human. Weapons and shields was also a problem for him, with those he could have raided some of the old Alterran ruins which the jaffa now occupied to full fill many of his needs, with his new knowledge of technology he could already pinpoint twenty or so smaller power generators on his old homeworld. Another future need was manpower, one man could probably build an empire, but one man would not be able to sustain that empire.
On the plus side he was alive. He was making contact with a seemingly friendly race. He had a lab he could use as a base which was good. On top of that he had three facilities which would need repairs or completion, but it was still better than starting over from nothing.
As he stood there thinking he came to think of something and he quickly pulled the power source from the console before he evacuated the lab and hurried down to the gate. Running by the DHD he stroked it with a hand to dial the gate and ran through it as the wormhole was established.
On the other side of the gate he was faced with compact darkness when the gate shut down behind him but after stumbling up to the DHD he established a wormhole back to the planet with the lab to get some light. To his left he could see the tunnel leading away to the pile of incoming materials and to his right another tunnel winded off to the end of the production line and the storage of outgoing goods. The blueprint in his head also told him the control room he was looking for was right in front of the gate through a door. Carefully he tried to force the door open but to no use as it was operated by the sensor next to the door. So he carefully released the cover of the sensor, took out the power pack and used it to power the sensor to release the lock so he could force the door open.
Inside the control room two big and two small consoles sat with dark screens. He knew the small one to the left in the room was connected to the intake of the facility, the large one on the far side of the room controlled the production in the entire facility and the small one to the right controlled the storage room and kept a count of everything in there. The last large console which pointed at the gate was used for communications and orders coming from the building site. It was the right console which had caused him to run like mad to the facility.
With the power pack he managed to get some power to the console, just enough to access the inventory records. Like he guessed when he had thought of how to power the facility again, the ZPMs driving the facility had not run out of power until many years after the last Alterran had abandoned the place. Some of the things supposedly stored in the facility made him almost droll. Clearly someone had ordered things from the facility not needed in Vis Uban, unless someone had changed the design from what was in his head to include more than a few DHDs and gates, a few plasma weapons exclusively used on capital ships, hyperdrives, infantry weapons and shields, beam weapons, cloning machines and ship based generators among other things.
Apart from the lack of potentias it was an almost perfect way of starting over for him. But it would have to lay there waiting for him just a while longer since he lacked the power to activate the lights in the facility and without them he did not even think about going there since the tunnel was suppose to only be traveled by hover sleighs even under normal operations and the best of times.
Before he had the time to get anything else out of the console it shut down and the screen turned black again. He could have used more power to explore the rest of the consoles but for now it would have to do. So with the power pack in hand he walked back to the active gate and stepped through it.
Back on Jobos he hurried back to the lab but once inside he found himself wondering what to do until his meeting. In the end he ended up sitting there waiting and feeling the changes happening in his body on a molecular level from the time the sun went down until it rose again which due to the orbit of the planet was well over eighteen hours. Then he begun his trek down to the gate and dialled the meeting planet.
Once there he begun to mess around with this MALP the Tau'ri had brought with them, he did not want to ruin it, but perhaps he could learn a thing or two from it. His decision to take it apart did not seem to sit well with the older man who came through the gate in front of Daniel and the Jaffa who said "Come on, those things cost a lot to buy."
Unless their technology was smaller than he had imagined it did not seem like they had chosen to accept the deal. "No DHD for me to fix? I guess you didn't like my offer then?" He asked Daniel as he approached the DHD.
"Hold on a minute." The old man said and positioned himself between Mokar and the DHD. "There's no need to leave just yet."
"I was not planning to leave old man. I am only locking the gate so we don't get any unwelcome visitors." He said as he stepped around the man and let his hand rest on the DHD. "Since you have come here without a generator for me or the DHD for me to fix I will assume you either have a counter offer for me or you are here to bring me back to Terra with force, something I do not think Daniel would be capable of allowing."
"We're certainly not here to force you anywhere Mokar." Daniel said as he approached while the Jaffa seemed to stand guard in the background.
"Daniel, the big boys are talking." The old man said with a hard look to Daniel, who stepped away, before turning back to him. "As you guess we have another offer for you, but the old offer still stands like you made it. We simply have a ship waiting for a signal from us to beam them both down here."
Dam, he had not expected them to bring a ship to this. "Then what are you waiting for? I am here and ready to hold up my part of the deal."
Someone of the three must have sent the signal because to the side he saw a bright light and the next second a female stood there with the DHD and held something, a black square, in her hand which still seemed rather small to be a generator. "We just needed to send the signal." The old man said with a smile which probably was suppose to mark superiority. "This is Colonel Samantha Carter, you will be instructing her on the repairs of the DHD."
"It's a true pleasure to meet you." Carter said as she approached with her hand in front of her.
Seeing Mokar's confusion at the gesture Daniel hurried up to them. "You're supposed to shake the hand, like this." Daniel joined his hand with Carter's and waved it slightly up and down. "It's a normal way of greeting on our world."
These Tau'ri certainly had developed many strange habits since the Alterran had left, none the less he grabbed her hand and shook it. "I would very much like to begin with the DHD now."
"Of course." She said as she hurried back and folded open the thing in her hand. "I will be recording this for the future if that's fine with you."
"That will be acceptable." He said and she hurried to put down the thing on the ground. "There is a much faster way to determine what is missing, but since I am the only Alterran that option is not for you and I will show you how to manually do it."
"General O'Neill does have the ATA gene needed to use your machines." She said motioning towards the old man.
"Then an Alterran or one of the servant race must have mated with the he is not an Alterran. So please be quiet and listen to what I say, since you are recording it I will only say it once." He said as he begun his long explanation of how to manually determine and restock empty substances.
Many long hours later he sealed the DHD back up and restarted it.
"You really did it." She said and looked in awe at the DHD.
"Yes, I could have done it much faster, but since you needed to learn we had to do it the hard way." He said as he diagnosed it for further problems. "Many of the DHDs in this galaxy are old and they may soon begin to lose power, I will not be able to charge them all on my own. That duty now lies with you."
"How will we know which DHDs have run out of power?" She asked as they walked over to the other three.
"That is one of the many feedback signals from the gate. When a DHD is starting to go low on power it starts sending out messages in the gate network so an Alterran can come and fill it up. Or at least that is how it is meant to work, in all the knowledge i have there is no case outside of a laboratory where a DHD have been drained. But I suspect the time for their first refill is drawing near."
"You're saying the whole network of gates could stop working any time?"
"I'm saying the DHD network could begin to shut down in a couple of years, the DHDs which aren't used will surely work for many millions of years to come, but those who are used many times each day will soon lose power." He said as they returned to the others and he turned to the old man he assumed was O'Neill. "I have given you a working DHD General O'Neill, I suggest you give me the generator or at least let me inspect it."
"That is not going to happen until you show us the data on the signals." O'Neill said.
"Come one Jack, he fixed the DHD like promised. It's not like he can take the generator and run." Daniel said from behind.
"Daniel's right Sir. The DHD is working as it should, it's not only working but we can study it and learn from it." Carter said. "We could probably create a cold fusion reactor from this, or how to transport huge amounts of energy without the use for cables."
"I do have the information about the signals here General." He said and handed Carter the Tau'ri memory unit. Clearly she was the most suited to confirm it. "Your memory core was however insufficient and only the information about one of the signals could be downloaded onto it. I will give you the rest when I have my generator."
"Carter." O'Neill said calmly as the female returned to her hand carried device which seemed to be some kind of console as she could connect the memory unit with the device.
"On it Sir." She replied as he heard clicks coming from her direction. Half a minute later she looked up from the device. "It seems to be solid Sir."
"Fine. Bring it down." O'Neill said seconds before Carter was gone in a bright light and then returned a short while later the same way with a large grey box at her feet. "Do your inspection, but don't try anything."
"I want this deal to succeed as much as you do General. You have materials and manpower, I have knowledge I'm sure you could use." He said as he walked up the the grey box that Carter was opening to reveal three spheres connected by two tubes. Now this looked much more like a generator to him, so he turned to Carter "How much power does it yield?"
"Enough to dial the gate. We're using a more powerful version to power our ships and if tuned correctly two of these would be able to power the control chairs in Atlantis and Antarctica." She replied with a smile. This was better than he could have hoped for and it didn't seem to use that much Naquadah to run. "In the current configuration we can expect one of these to last up to five years on a single Naquadah generator core." She continued as she picked up one of five small metal pieces which fit into the top of the generator.
"If what you say is true then it will fill my needs." He said as he lifted it up to feel the weight. It was not light, but if he got the production facility up and running he was sure he could fix that flaw with some of the Alterran materials and alloys. "This material, Naquadah as you call it, the material we built the gates from. It's not one I will have trouble finding, can the configuration be changed so the yield increases in exchange for life expectancy?"
"Of course. I'll need a few minutes but it's not too hard." She said as she begun to pull the generator apart. As her hands moved quickly to do the configuration his eyes moved even faster to memories just how she did it. He was not a scientist or something similar, but his Alterran knowledge allowed him to roughly understand and judge the design and the parts in it. It was not as crude as he would have thought it to be, but even he could judge several small points which could be improved upon, like switching from the cables and wires the Tau'ri seemed to prefer to the much better crystals or changing the generator to work on the resonance frequency of the Naquadah to increase the yield further. But these small things he would keep to himself, the Tau'ri were using the same generators for themselves it seemed and it would not do for his not to be more advanced. "There we go, I've increased the yield by five times, it won't last as long, maybe a year, but it'll still hold together."
"Thank you Colonel Carter." He said as they closed the box and he heaved it up on his shoulder. "General O'Neill, thank you for the generator, the rest of the information on the signals can be found on an Alterran memory unit I have placed inside your MALP."
As he placed his hand upon the DHD and dialled home he could see Daniel coming up to him. "Mokar, we still have another offer for you."
"So I've been told. But first I want to get the generator somewhere safe." He said as he walked up to the wormhole and let the generator pass through.
"Sir, I think we've tried to dial the planet he just sent the generator to but we failed to get a lock." Carter said from the DHD where she was looking at the symbols entered.
"Allow me." He said as he hurried down to the DHD to look through the logged dials. "Colonel Carter is correct General O'Neill, a little over three years ago there was an attempt to dial that world from Terra. But the DHD on your side did not reply when asked who was dialling and so the receiving DHD refused the wormhole."
"You're telling us the DHD knew there wasn't one of you guys at the controls so it didn't even tell it was there?" O'Neill asked.
"Yes, the DHDs have many functions beyond that of dialling another gate. Many of these functions are exclusively useable by Alterra, like me. Any attempts at overriding that part of the programming would result in the destruction of the DHD and possibly the gate depending on how much power the DHD can produce, at the moment the one I fixed will be able to do so." He said without hesitating. The last part he had made up but that they did not know.
"We'll try not to fiddle with it too much then. Won't we Carter?" O'Neill said looking at Carter.
"Yes Sir." Carter replied.
"You did say that you had another offer for me General O'Neill. Now that everything else is out of the way, maybe we could focus on that to keep the threats of imminent danger to a minimum?"
"Good thinking." O'Neill said as Carter handed him the portable console. After inserting a far smaller version of the Tau'ri memory unit on the console he handed it to Mokar.
When he saw the address he frozen. It was one all too familiar to him, yet he would have hoped to avoid or bury and destroy the evidence about its existence if he found any.