Confirming Carter Bk. 02 Daedalus Ch. 08

The adults laughed, and Carter motioned everyone around to the back of the jumper.

"The gate at Anchorage was moved away from the city long ago, so we'll have to go by jumper." She said as she led them inside. "We've cleared a lower landing bay on the east pier, so we can get into the city easily. That's the section that we'll be bringing on line first. After we look around there, we can go to other parts of the city, to give you an idea of that needs to be done."

Larrin had moved to the front, and taken the right hand seat. Carter waved the others forward, and lowered jump seats for herself and Pharris.

"Any time you're ready, John." She said lightly.

Interior-Anchorage

1200 Hours

Sheppard raised the jumper, then dialed the gate. After the vortex receded, he spoke quietly on his radio. The jumper dropped, then moved forward into the wormhole. A moment later, they exited through the other gate, and he climbed to treetop level, moving slowly toward the tower in the distance. As the tower grew larger, he steered to the right, then turned sharply to the left when they reached an opening in the trees.

"Much of the city is buried, or covered by forests." Carter told them. "We're still doing structural inspections. We know that Anchorage isn't space worthy, but we're debating about whether its safe to raise her, to see if we can remove some of the debris from the upper levels without using manual labor. We may even clear a site, and move her, but again, that's in the future."

"The stardrive still works?" Larrin asked, turning in her seat.

"Yes. It's been powered up twice by us. Once two years ago, then again the day we took possession."

Sheppard guided the jumper down a long sloping tunnel of trees, then they passed underground. They could see an open bay door ahead of them, and a moment later, they were inside it. Bringing the jumper to a stop, he lowered the rear door, and motioned for Larrin to step out ahead of him.

When they exited, Carter saw that both boys were wearing harnesses, with a leash attached to the back. Another shorter leash, joined them together.

"No! You didn't!" She laughed, looking up at Ronin.

"Her idea." He said, nodding at Tammy as he handed her the reins.

"I am not chasing these two all over this city." She said as she shook the reins. "Giddyup...go!"

"A practical solution to an age old problem." Arrin laughed. "I wish I had thought of it when my children were young."

She grinned at him. "Andi will be with us in a moment. She had to make a stop on the way down. Oh, here she comes now."

"Good morning, and welcome to Anchorage." Samuels said warmly. "We'll be taking a porter up several levels to the production center first, then we'll make a stop so we can show you quarters for personnel. So if you'll follow me..."

She led them through a doorway and down a short hallway to a porter. She tapped on a series of symbols as the doors closed, and then opened almost immediately.

"We're on the other side of the pier now, about ten levels up." She said as they stepped out into a long, high ceilinged room. The aisle they stood in was lined on both sides with rows of shiny machines and equipment for a hundred meters in every direction. "Feel free to look around, and let me know if you have any questions. Samantha, Tammy, or John can tell you what the various machines are. Everything is labeled. I don't have the ATA gene, so I don't read ancient."

"Really, this treatment you mentioned didn't work for you?" Arrin asked.

"No, and I tried twice." Samuels told him. "It's effective in about eighty percent of the people that test positive for the gene, and there is a small chance, slightly under one percent, that the treatment can have an adverse, or negative reaction. We can review the data with your doctors, so they'll know who might be at risk."

"What are these machines for?" Pharris asked. "What did they do?"

"This side of the aisle, from here, all the way to the far corner, are food processors. Raw materials drop down these chutes in the ceiling, is sterilized, then fed into the machine, which can make any number of foodstuffs, either packaged, or loose, which drop through another chute, here, at the base of the machine, into another processing room for further packaging or routing for shipment."

She turned around and pointed in the other direction. "On the other end of this side. The machines are setup to make a wide range of devices and components out of metal and plastic. The same thing for the other side of the aisle." She blushed and grinned as she shrugged and pointed toward the last section. "I have no idea what any of those over there do."

"I'm sorry we don't have anyone to show you how to operate one, but we had to send people back to Atlantis for an ongoing project. We should have them back next week."

"What kind of project?" Arrin asked, walking over and squatting next to a machine.

Samuels looked over at Carter, and she nodded.

"We needed them for drone production, to replenish the cities defenses." She told him. "Anchorage has a chair weapons platform, just like Atlantis has, that controls the cities defenses, and the stardrive. Most systems can be operated from remote locations, but the chair ties everything together for the operator to access easily."

"The next ten floors in this section of the pier are all production, manufacturing, and storage areas." She went on, telling them about the area they were in. "The adjacent sections have shops for servicing equipment, vehicles and vessels, up to a small transport. The problem is, the access ports are buried, and are really meant to be used in space for the larger stuff."

"You can repair ships here?" Larrin and Pharris asked at the same time.

"Yes, the city is equipped to do it. But we don't have personnel trained for that yet." Samuels said as she turned toward the doors. "We can move that up on the schedule, but until we get these lower levels raised above ground, there really isn't any point."

"Can you do it in Atlantis?" Larrin asked.

"We have the same shops in Atlantis, but because the city sits in the water, those bays are not easily accessible. To use them right, we'd have to take the city into space, so vessels could be moved right in from orbit."

"Depending on how pressing the problem is, that's something that we can talk about." Carter said. "Keep in mind, that there is a limit on the size of ships that these shops can handle. From what I've seen of them, it looks like they can take something up to about five times the size of our jumpers, maybe a little bigger."

"We've been doing database searches for other ancient cities and outposts, and we have records of several space docks that would handle vessels up to an Aurora class cruiser." Samuels said. "We can confirm that at least one was destroyed in the last years of the war with the Wraith, but we're going to be looking for the others. We immediately thought of you when we ran across those records."

"Unless there are other questions, we can go up to the workers quarters." Samuels said. "So if you'll follow me."

She stepped back out into the hallway and led them back to the porter. Keying in another set of symbols as the doors closed.

"If you don't read ancient, how do you know what symbols to press on that panel." Waleen asked as the door opened again.

"Cheat sheet." She grinned, holding up a small piece of paper with strings of symbols, then english written under them. She turned and looked out the door. "Oh...Sometimes my staff plays little jokes on me. Sorry."

They were looking out over the landscape from a long, wide balcony near the top of the central tower. Andi turned around and entered another set of symbols on the panel. When the doors opened, she sighed and stepped out.

"This is where we're supposed to be." She said as she led them down a hallway. "We're on the ground floor of a residential building. There are eight suites, or apartments on each floor. This building has sixty-five floors. The top ten floors have fewer suites, but each is larger. Some of those will be converted for recreation areas and meeting rooms, others will be apartments for managers."

She palmed the panel next to a door and it slid open. "I think this one has three bedrooms, with a bathroom off of each, and one in the central hall, this main room, a kitchen, and something else. You can look around, every suite is different."

"How many people would you put in this space?" Arrin asked as he went over and sat on a couch.

"Three. One in each bedroom." Samuels said. "The main room and the kitchen would be shared."

All four of the Travelers burst out laughing, then went from room to room, their laughter continuing as they went.

"You waste so much space!" Larrin gasped as she fell onto a couch beside Arrin a few minutes later. "Our people will never return to us if you treat them this way!"

"With the number of apartments in this building, we can put at least thirteen hundred people in it, and that doesn't include the top ten floors. There are eighty buildings of this type in the city. That's over a hundred thousand people. There are sixty taller buildings, so that puts us over two hundred and fifty thousand." Samuels looked at Carter and Tammy. "I don't see what the problem is."

"They're saying that we're giving them too much space, Andi." Sam turned and looked at the

Travelers. "We understand that you live in cramped quarters, but you need to understand our ways too. For the ancients that built this city, this would be the home of a family of three, possibly four. We can tell that some of these dwellings were occupied by a single resident."

"Were you to make the choice, how many people would you put in this space?" She asked them.

"We would put fifteen per room, twenty or more in here. The kitchen and small room would be common areas." Arrin said. "One of the bedrooms is larger, so we could put twenty in there as well."

"That's more than thirty thousand people in just this building." Carter said as she sat across from him. "What and how would you feed them? That alone would be a struggle. Would all of them work? I think not. So you'd just be warehousing bodies. You could cut those numbers in half, and still fit your entire population in this city. "

She stretched out on the couch, putting her hands behind her head. "The three people that I would put in here would each work the same shift to give them a chance to share their lives. They'll be productive and happy, and the goods they produce will be worth having, or using."

"But we are so many..." Waleen said.

"I understand, and I'm offering to help you with up to a hundred and fifty thousand of your people. Should we find more ancient cities, we would make more welcome." She smiled at Arrin. "Should you find more ancient cities, we will help you restore them, and you can do as you damn well please with them."

"She's right, our problems are not theirs." Larrin said. "We sound like we would abuse their generosity."

"There are other options for you people, especially here, less so in Atlantis." She looked at Samuels. "Can we go back up to that balcony? I'd like to show them something."

She stood up and waved for the Travelers to follow her. "Tammy, would you keep the boys here? Let them run wild, go jump on the beds or something." She grinned. She followed Andi down the hall to the porter.

When the porter doors opened on the balcony again, she stepped out. "Andi, hold the door. I don't want to get stuck up here." She laughed as she leaned over the rail.

"Look down there." she said, pointing at the forests below them. "There's two million acres of timber down there, billions of square feet of lumber. That mountain range to the west, that's iron, copper, zinc, and granite. The plains to the south and east, excellent farm land. We'll have to do a survey to see what other resources there are on the rest of the planet. We really need to find petroleum reserves. We'll need those for lubricants and plastics."

She turned to face them. "I can only put eighty thousand of your people in this city. But I can put another quarter, to half a million in a twenty five mile radius around it, working the land to produce raw materials for the factories." She smiled as she stepped back into the porter. "I've just taken at least one fifth to almost a third of your population. Does that help?"

"What about the Wraith?" Waleen asked. "Should they attack, those people on the plains would have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The people in the mountains could hide in mines, but..."

"This planet hasn't been attacked by the Wraith for centuries. They haven't come back here because they knew that the city had drones to use against them. If they return, we'll remind them of that. The people that ran the city before us used the cities defenses to protect the planet. They also used them to abuse the people outside the city, which is why they no longer occupy this city."

She led them back to the suite and took her seat on the couch again. "In addition to protection from the city, we would offer shield generators for each settlement, providing even greater protection to the people living there. There's already a shield on the gate like we have in Atlantis. The options I can provide here are much greater than I can provide in Atlantis, and have the benefit to both of us that it reduces costs of importing raw materials for the cities factories."

"So you can control who can get to this world, and defend against those that you do not want on this world. Is that what you are saying?" Pharris asked.

"Yes. We control who comes into Atlantis with a shield." Carter said. "We control the skies around the city with the drones from the chair weapons platform. We'll do the same thing here."

"The other security measure we have here, is we're the only ones that know about this world." She told them. "We have no reason to tell anyone about this city. The Travelers are the only people we have told of it. Since you stand to benefit, we see no reason for you to share that information."

"You've shown us an ancient city, and offered to let our people live and work here, but you haven't told us anything else." Larrin smiled. "We don't know the gate address, or the cities coordinates, so we can't tell anyone if we wanted to."

"We're still just talking, and haven't agreed to anything yet." Carter told her. "There's no need to tell you that yet."

"So they don't trust us." Arrin said to Larrin, smiling slyly.

"I don't trust you, why should they?" Larrin laughed. "Have we told them our secrets, revealed the locations of the worlds we have settlements on? No."

She turned back to Carter. "I'm sorry, Samantha. We have been rude, and ungrateful to every offer you have made since we met. You must think of us as some kind of animals. But I want to change that."

"Larrin, you know we act as a one on the council..." Arrin said quickly, glaring at her.

"If I may." Carter said. "We recently had the same conversation with our homeworld. And even though you do not officially have a world that I am aware of, you do have a central government." She paused, looking between the four of them. "We cannot deal with separate factions within the Travelers. Perhaps it would be best if we tabled our discussions on this for the time being. We have time, we can let things progress slowly, and get to know each other better first."

"I agree, we have things to work out between ourselves, before we can work anything out with you." Waleen said. "I would, however, ask that we still formalize relations, even as we put other plans on hold. We wish you to know that..."

Carter leaned forward on the couch, looking at Arrin. "What is it about us that you don't like?"

"I do not unde..."

"Yes, you do. You've been hostile since you set foot in our city." She said lightly. "We opened our home to you, have been as honest as we can be with you, made no threat against you, yet you seem to grow more hostile the more we offer to benefit your people. Will you tell me why?"

Arrin stared at her for a moment, then glanced at his fellow Travelers.

"I'm afraid of you." He said softly. "You will bring an end to a hundred generations of my people. The Travelers will cease to exist if we follow your course."

"Now that I can understand and believe." Carter said as she sat back on the couch. "Let me be just as honest. I have no interest in ending the Travelers, because I need them, as they are, for my plans to succeed. I'll admit, there is the possibility that if I offer your people too many safe havens, many may want to leave for a different way of life. I have no control over that, but it is not my intent."

"Why do you need the Travelers, Samantha?" Pharris asked. "What do we have to offer that you could want?"

"Many things. Your name, the Travelers are known throughout the galaxy. You have ships, which I need for trade. You have people, that I can put to work producing goods to improve the quality of life for other people in the galaxy, and at some point, help in building roads, hospitals, power plants, more things to help the peoples of Pegasus. And you fight. You stood with us against the Replicators, and give us intel to fight the Wraith. It's in my best interest for the Travelers to exist."

"You speak of your needs, and of doing for others, but you do not say what you get out of this for yourself. Perhaps if we understood that, it might be easier for Arrin to accept." Waleen said.

"I have what I need. Well, not at the moment, she seems to have gone off somewhere. But..."

"We're in here." Tammy called from a bedroom. "Be with you in a minute!"

Carter smiled as she looked at the Travelers. "I have my city, and now this one, and I want to make them come alive again. I want to find other ancient cities and outposts, and make them come alive too. This I want for me, to give me a sense of accomplishment."

"I spent more than ten years with the SGC in the Milky Way, first as an explorer, then fighting an evil that infected that galaxy. We stumbled on it, we went out into the galaxy not knowing what to expect. We did the same thing here. At first, the Goa'uld seemed to be unbeatable. Yet in the end, with the help of friends, and alot of luck, we prevailed. At the same time, my friend Daniel and I learned what we could about, and studied everything we could find on the ancients."

"Master Bra'tac spoke of this, he was a servant of these false gods, and he said you and O'Neill freed him, and his friend Tilk, then fought beside them." Waleen said.

"Teal'c. There's an apostrophe cee...nevermind. When I came to Pegasus, it was to live and work in Atlantis, the city of the ancients. I wanted to study and learn about them, but was interrupted again by war. A war of our own making. Not intentionally, part of it was ignorance, part of it was arrogance, part of it was just plain bad luck."

She paused. "I'm a scientist, that's what I chose to do with my life. I wanted to know how the universe came to be, and how it works. On Earth, I'm one of the foremost authorities on the subject. But fate led me onto a different course, after my people discovered the stargate."

She looked at Pharris, smiling warmly. "I wouldn't give up a minute of the experiences I've had working in the stargate program, but now, I'm so tired of war, and death, and pointless destruction. And now I'm in a position where I can make a difference. I want to make something, I want to help people have a better quality of life, to not live in fear. I know that's too much to ask." She laughed, tears running down her cheeks. "But I want to do it anyway."

"We would join you in that. That is worthy of the risk to our people." Arrin said, "But you are right, many of our people would seek the life you offer, but I think many others would wish to preserve the Traveler way of life, as I do."