A Legacy left Behind - Initial encounters

Part 4

Defense Outpost

Antarctica

The next day

Determined to get his way before the dreaded military goon took the bona-fide Ancient away from his domain for gods knew how long, Dr. McKay strode into the dark alcove in the infirmary where they had hidden Sheppard. The pilot was still sleeping the day away peacefully; a tiny glitch which the scientist corrected promptly by the virtue of bellowing in the vicinity of his ear to "WAKE THE HELL UP RIGHT NOW! TIMES A WASTING MAJOR!!!"

He'd had enough painful experiences waking up slumbering military types with marginal ATA impressions by grabbing them; precaution saved him from the swinging left fist that went past where his jaw would have been otherwise.

Sheppard came blearily awake and Rodney did not give him a chance to have any coherent thought, let alone speech. He manhandled the Major out of the bed and through the infirmary, past the corridor and towards the Chair at the centre. He had thrown some loud intimidating scientific jargon and veiled comments about impending catastrophes at the nurses who had tried to hinder the kidnapping of their charge on the way. He was feeling quite smug about the successful completion of the first part of his mission.

He pushed the still half asleep Major (really, didn't these military people train to get up at the crack of dawn at the tiniest noise and start running in the mud or something?) on to the Chair not so gently. The whole place lit up like a Christmas tree the moment the Major's behind made contact with the alien metal.

Since he was not the horrible bastard who ate subpar scientists for breakfast despite what his minions believed, he dumped a packet of juice and an apple on the Major's lap for breakfast as well. Besides he would never eat a subpar scientist for breakfast, he had standards and allergies. He would rather feed them to an unstable miniature black hole in a controlled environment and study the power fluctuations.

While the pilot drank his juice, he lined up the programs he had uploaded to his various waiting monitors and got them on standby to run on the Chair's command.

"Alright, I need you to run these for me. You should be able to see the programs through the link and I need you to start with the complete system archives back-up; push it to background and then start the full system diagnostic on the environmental setups. I'm pretty sure they are still calibrated to cater to the millennia old inhabitants. It's about time we got some proper heating running in this place, now that the power levels are back to where they should be. Hey, can you tell me how you did that by the way? Maybe make a copy of the program and save it to my PDA so I can run it remotely when things go out of whack again?"

..........

John was sitting on the Chair sucking on his juice sulkily even as his mental link with the Chair blossomed in his mind, welcoming him like an old friend. It was amused at the antics of the dux physicus (lead scientist). Things were nowhere near as dire or urgent as the scientist liked to insinuate, it assured. But it would be more efficient if the programs he had created were to run as requested so that the control core could re-orient itself for John's people. So John did as requested by the Ancient interface; not the harping doctor who rudely dragged him out of his much needed and enjoyed sleep.

He also went through the basic operating directives the Outpost had as well. He realized that this was actually a landing platform belonging to a much bigger structure that was left behind as an independent point of defense or offense, depending on the need. He felt a deep sadness and longing that encompassed its whole being at the memory of the separation. It was as if the other structure left behind a part of its consciousness here as well, to wait for a long time, buried under the ice alone until it found its purpose and completed its part of the great and most important mission it had ever undertaken.