Again he was greeted by compact darkness when the gate shut down behind him and he fumbled around the room until he found the DHD and dialled the gate to get some light. Then he proceeded to get one of the generators into the control room and plugging it into the console he had used before. When he plugged it in he saw the consoles in the room coming to life and through both windows he could see the internal lights illuminating the facility. When he heard equipment starting to move far away, deep into the facility, he moved to the console which controlled production and paused the production. He had power, but he would not waste the materials he had on creating a city for himself, at least not yet.
The console controlling incoming reported most basic materials to be in abundance while some rare substances, like Naquadah, was lacking. The console which controlled the production in the facility showed that it was processing mostly building materials, but here and there in the cue someone had inserted the odd component, a hyperdrive here, a plasma cannon there and some other things in between.
The console which controlled the use of the gate however was much more interesting. It showed that four hover sleighs awaited permission to come through the gate. But he would let them wait since he didn't have the power to retrieve them. It did however show that some of the mining operations they had created were still standing. They would surely serve him well when he could establish a working infrastructure.
For now they had to wait as he left the control room and walked down the tunnel to the outgoing goods storage. With the lights now working he could see down the tunnel and the reason they used hover sleighs, the tunnel was simply holes in the walls of the facility with a thin walkway going between them.
The first step onto the walkway felt all too familiar to the trials he had endured. It creaked and swung but he hurried over to the other side to avoid putting more stress on it than he had to. Beneath him he could see machines packed closely together and force fields running between them to guide the pieces into the next machine.
It took him several minutes to cross to the other side but once there he came up to the large doors which led into the four storage rooms where finished goods were placed. Next to each door a console used to manually recover things from storage sat. When used the console would activate machinery inside the vault which would collect the storaged part and place it in a container which would slide through the wall so the user could pick it up.
Strangely enough the container leading to the class four vault, the vault used to hold the most dangerous things that should not be handled by anything living, was open. Class three vaults held the dangerous thing they'd needed to be careful with, like weapons, bombs and similar things. Class two held all other devices while class one vaults held things like building materials and other things that no one used directly.
Still all four vaults had the same console to manually take things out of them if needed. In the container by vault four lay a small black box with a silver emblem stamped into the front in the form of a circle with several spikes pointing outwards in a fashion that made it feel like it was three dimensional.
The box however did not belong in the class four vault, it was dangerous in the wrong hands, but in the hands of a machine it was useless. Still it would not have come from this facility, it was not designed to build the content inside the box. Only a few dozen labs in the Alterran domain had been approved to produce it due to the risk it involved so this find was valuable beyond imagination.
As careful as he could he lifted the ornate box out of the container and placed it close to the walkway. Then he proceeded to withdraw a personal shield and a stunner gun from the third class vault. Now he could hopefully scavenge some things from the Alterran ruins the Jaffa had taken for themselves.
From the second class vault he also retrieved a bag along with some supplies. For a facility meant to build their newest city the facility sure had created many things meant for war over the years. With a steady hand he put the black box into the bottom of the bag, careful not to damage the seal that kept the content inside. Then he slid the shield beneath his shirt to hide it and put the gun inside his waistband before carefully moving back to the gate room.
There he carefully placed the bag on the floor and searched out the potentia factory through the DHD. The DHD of the potentia factory reported vacuum, but no direct or indirect exposures to space. The equipment controlling the building process seemed to be located just beyond the DHD and the DHD reported it to be intact.
Even to an Alterran exposure to space was definitely not healthy, but he would remain conscious for at least five minutes if he was careful, held his breath and made sure the shield would protect his precious air. With determination he put the generator right in front of the gate before he went to the control room to prepare the facility to be linked with the construction equipment on the potentia factory so it could send a list of required parts to the processing plant.
When all the preparations were complete he dialled the gate to the potentia factory and calculated the path of exit before taking the generator in his arms, taking a deep breath and configuring the shield. Then he stepped through into the vacuum of the gravityless room on the other side.
His trajectory sent him flying towards the DHD which he managed to catch with his foot. Thankfully a majestic glass ceiling opened up to the star the factory orbited to give him plenty of light. To better align himself for the next flight he pulled himself so that he was lying on top of the DHD, then he pushed off and the input console of the equipment begun to grow bigger in front of him, still the maneuver had cost him a minute.
Once at the console he begun to search for the second potentia socket, which was meant to be used when the first potentia ran dry during long and big projects. It took him well over two minutes to find the socket and as he pried open the panel and begun to connect the generator to the equipment he felt the oxygen in his blood diminishing. When the generator begun feeding power into the equipment he felt the artificial gravity activate and the air in his lungs mixed slightly as he fell a few centimeters onto the equipment, enough to let new oxygen come into contact with the walls of his lungs.
With what little oxygen he had left in him he got onto his feet and hurried over to the gate, gracing the orb of the DHD to dial it with one hand as he past it. As his feet found their way onto the three steps up to the gate one of his feet caught the upper edge of one and he fell head first into the gate.
With a thought the shields configuration changed and he felt the wet kiss of green grass on his face as he slipped through the gate and onto the ground. His thoughts of home when he dialled the gate had brought him to the lab and high above on the cliff face he could see lights shining from the lab out into the darkening landscape. Still before he could return to the lab to deal with the forcefield and possibly sleep for a few hours he needed to finish the startup of the equipment.
For a few minutes he lay there with his face buried into the grass to recover his breath, then he got up and dialled the gate back to the processing facility. There he knelt down by the box and pressed his hand to the silver colored symbol. With a thought he broke the seal of the box and hoped the shield would protect him if the content inside had escaped from the containers over the years. With a steady hand he removed the lid of the box and saw the five vials inside to be intact, still containing the grey powder.
Still careful not to break the vials he picked two of them up, put the lid back on the box and sealed it again. Normally a full box would be used, but as far as he knew they were the only five vials left in existence so he would save the others until a time when he needed them. With the two vials in his hand he dialled the potentia factory and prepared himself before stepping through.
This time there was no flying involved as he came through the gate, instead the artificial gravity made sure he could get to the console much easier. Still he was on the clock as he powered up the equipment which consisted of the core which controlled the building process and three console which controlled different things, one large and two small.
On either side of the core two pillars stood. With a wave of his hand over the top of one pillar a panel with a rack full of vials came out of it. To no surprise all twelve of them were empty, so he quickly replaced two of them and closed it. With the touch of a few buttons he activated the shield meant to contain the construction site, it was weak but as long as nothing too bad happened it would hold. With some more button pressing he released the content of the vials into the construction area and saw a cloud of grey particles float away from him.
With the final preparations done he hurried back to the gate and dialled it back to the processing facility. He still had a minute or two of air, but there was nothing more for him to do here for now, so he stepped through it.
Back in the processing facility the console for incoming and outgoing goods showed an extensive list of goods required to finish the building of the potentia factory, still it was far less than he would have thought. With the tap of a few buttons he ordered the facility to prioritize the items needed while another set of buttons powered up one of the waiting hover sleighs which waited in the bowels of the facility while slaving it to the building equipment so he did not have to carry anything himself.
The construction console showed a forty week deadline until it had constructed all the pieces necessary to complete the potentia factory. Then it would probably take some time for them to be installed. But he had a few things to do meanwhile.
After a quick tour to the lab planet to recover the last generator he walked through the control room and a maintenance door into the actual production facility with the generator flung onto his shoulder. On instinct he moved towards a nearby staircase and moved down eight levels to the only lab in the facility.
After packing up the generator he placed it on the single workbench which sat against one of the walls. As he stepped away from the bench a force field formed around the generator. Slowly a holographic representation of the generator was built up from one side to the other.
With his hands he begun to pull apart the hologram into the most basic components in an effort to figure out the inner workings of the generator. Using simulation modules not in many millions of years before the creation of the facility he begun to understand the function of each circuit board.
When he thought he understood the generator he begun to create control crystals to replace the circuit boards and changed the primitive Tau'ri materials to more advanced Alterran materials. What it left him with was far too large for him even if its weight was far less, so he pulled it apart again and sized it down to fit into the potentia sockets. With the current configuration he had cut down its power yield significantly, but he when he changed the low quality Tau'ri Naquadah for the much higher quality Alterran version the yield increased almost ten fold compared to the original design even if it would burn out much faster.
Until someone more proficient in technology could look at it the new design would have to do. It was not the potentia they had relied on for many millions of years, but it would be sufficient for much of his simpler needs. Using the console in the room he saved the design into the database of the facility and shut down the rest of the lab before taking the generator with him.
Once back in the control room he ordered the facility to create ten of them as soon as possible, even prioritising them before the pieces of the potentia factory. Even with the limited power supplied by the two Tau'ri generators which were now plugged into the facility they were simple and cheap to create for the facility. Then he went back to the lab to rest and eat.
A few hours later he was back in the processing facility and collected the one generator that had been completed so far. With the generator in one hand he entered the control room and slid the other hand over one of the walls. On the wall a cover swung open to allow access to the four potentias which normally powered the facility. After removing the four drained potentias he inserted the new generator before closing the cover again. The new power source would significantly increase the number of machines operating at the same time.
With a while left until the next one was complete he headed over to the DHD and searched through his mental list of all planets the Ancient had constructed something on for one to raid for supplies. The one he decided to go for held two labs which they had used to experiment with transportation technology. It was here they had developed the transporters used on Atlantis and later their limited beam transports.