Post by Akren Garkos on Feb 9, 2013 12:55:53 GMT -5
N.B.:[/i] This post takes place in 2009 A.D., shortly after the event of the STARGATE: ATLANTIS Legacy series.
Olaf made his way through Square of Remembrance, stopping quickly to pay his respects to the departed dead by the Wall of Remembrance itself, before continuing on his way; walking casually to the outskirts of the city; checking every now and again that he wasn't being followed.
Although it was not unusual for members of the Tollan to go wandering in the wilds - walks in the hills, forrests and fields surrounding the capital city had become commonplace as a relaxation activity now the Gaadmer had restored much of their ravaged home world - the novelty was somewhat rarer after dark (the Curia having imposed a curfew on unaccompanied explorations in the wild without first lodging a travel log with the Ministry of Health), & dusk was fast approaching. Even in his line of work - Olaf was both a scientist & a spy - it would not do to be stopped by guards from the Ministry of Justice - the Tollan judiciary force - nor easy for him to explain why he was wandering alone in the wilds when everyone else was turning in for the night.
Checking one more time ensure he wasn't being followed - his days as a former spy and espionage agent for the Tok'Ra having taught him to never be too careful, or too trusting - he made his way down one of the lesser known pathways, strode a short distance through a large field of Tollanan grassland and made his way into the ever-darkening woods.
Once he was properly inside the boundaries of the forrest and was sure he wouldn't be seen - or followed - he stopped to let his eyes adjust. His eyes teared up & a smile played itself upon his lips as he beheld the beauty all around him: trees, plants and other shrubbery abound & small animals, some lizards, some mammals - all genetically re-egineered by the Gaadmeer from extrapolated DNA records from previously extinct species preserved from the original Tollan home world, Tollan - scurring about here & there. It still amazed him that not a scant few years early that New Tollana was a virtually, near-toxic wasteland. Even with all the work the Tollan & their allies had done in reclaiming New Tollana from the clutches of the vile Goa'uuld System Lord Anubis, never in his wildest dreams did Olaf ever expect to see such a rapid recovery progress in his lifetime. The Gaadmer, genetic engineers of the highest order, had done much to help restore New Tollana to it's former glory, readressing the imbalance of nature with their marvelous & precious control of genetics. Afterwards, they had simply let nature thrive.
And thrive it had. Olaf was startled to see a winged, bat-like mammal with four legs, two sets of leathery wings - the large set for gliding, the smaller for flight control and direction - & six eyes fly low over head. Startled, he let out a small laugh, load in the silence, as the creature - a gozbaat he remember from his biology lessons in school - swopped to a tree nearby, resting for a moment before gliding, near silently and suddenly as it had appeared, on it's way again. It was the first flying creature he had seen in the wild that wasn't on a holo-recording or in a zoo - all flying species had long since died out on Tollan before it's destruction, and like so many species, this one was newly reintroduced to New Tollan's ecosystem by the Gaadmer - & he delighted at the trill of seeing one alive - something he had never thought to see in his life - in the wild. It was a rare & precious treat, one he would carry in his memory always.
Looking about again to ensure he wasn't being followed - or that his laughter had alerted something bigger and wilder nearby - Olaf continued on his journey deep into the forrest, making his way through paths unseen and trials that only he knew of, until he reached a certain rockface, stopping at a cragg in the rock facing a nearby stream. At first notice, the rock would appear completely natural and inconspicuous to all but the most trained of eyes. Only a slight vibration & a tinge of warmth - barely noticeable under the warmth of his palm - belied it's true nature.
Taking one last look around to ensure he definitely had not been followed, he raised his left arm, pointing the Tollan phase-shifting device on his wrist at the rock face, and depressed a button. The rock took on an inverted, warped appearance as the phase-shifter literally rearranged atoms at the subatomic level, allowing solid matter - in this case Olaf himself - to pass through another solid object : the wall. For that, in truth, what it was, a thin wall with a specially modulated two-way shield behind it - keyed to his unique biorhythm - desgined to hide what was beyond. As Olaf stepped through the rock face, he experienced the slight tingling sensation that always came with phase-shifting through solid-matter, feeling a slight resistence as he passed through the shield & into the space beyond.
His eyes readjusting to the brighter lighting inside the space he now occupied, Olaf looked about the chamber, identifying the door he was looking for, walking up to it and punching in a series of codes as the door hissed open, revealing a oval room with a panel on one wall. Stepping into the space, he waited until the door closed behind him before engaging the required sequence on the wall panel - another security measure - Goa'uuld-designed transport rings - another marvel of the Ancients adapted by the parasitic Goa'uuld now in wide-spread use across the galaxy - sweeping to encompass him, a flash of light blinding him momentarily as the rings swept downwards into a specially-made Tok'Ra tunnel below him, the ring transporter disengaging and retracting back into the roof from whence it came.
Smiling to himself - the tunnel had been engineered from crystals grown especially for the purpose left over from his days as a Tok'Ra operative - he made his way down the tunnel, walking several miles until the tunnel plateaued, ending in what seem to be a dead end.
"Este omni et fargo" He said aloud to no-one in particular, the words rolling off his tongue, the wall in front of him morphing into the entrance to yet another chamber where before there had only been solid rock.
The last of his security measures circumvented, Olaf walked into the room beyond, the wall morphing back into solidarity behind him as he surveyed the laboratory before him. One wall was completely covered by a holographic interface, a nearby terminal streaming a mixture of data in Ancient, Goa'uuld, Tok'Ra, Tollan, Wraith, Asgard and Gaadmeri - the written language of the Gaadmer - in a seemingly nonsenical, endless stream of information. Nearby was a typical work bench that one might find in any scientist's lab on numerious worlds used by numerious species throughout the galaxy, another workstation also located nearby, various samples strewn about the place, viles of hair here, a blood sample there, a petree dish there: even a severed hand from a Wraith and a dead symbiote - perserved in a pickling jar - were nearby.
However, all these paled in comparison to the large cylinder in the corner at the far end of the room. A mammoth construct, it reached fully from floor to ceiling, taking up the entire corner as if it has grown out of the wall - which it had, in part - various tubes, pipes, and what looked liked tendrils coming out of the cylinder, some flowing over the floor, others rigged to the ceiling, still others tapping into the soil below, drawing nutrients directly from mother New Tollana herself. A marvel of hybrid engineering from many advanced technological species, it was a miss-mash of technologies that has taken Olaf years to perfect into an wholistic, intergrated system.
What had started out as a mere experiment in genetics and a way to explore evoluntionary pathways had instead become his life's work, made all the more pointent since the death of his beloved symbiont, Verak. Closing his eyes, he let his tears flow freely down his face, remembering the horrible day that a botched mission into Wraith territory during his station on Atlantis had gone so incredibly wrong. Captured for a second time by the Wraith, he had been tortured to the breaking point, his symboint doing all it could to keep him alive until rescue had arrived. By then, the damage to host and symbiont had been too great, and Verak had sacrificed his life in order to reverse some of the damage done to Olaf by the Wraith, scarificing his life in order to save Olaf's own.
Opening his eyes, he wiped his tears - his face still flush with emotion - as he approached the cylinder in the corner, the humanoid form within a mere shadow against the frosted glass, a thin, veiny membrane visible between the glass and the prone form within. It had not been until recently - not until the Expedition's 5th year in Atlantis in fact - that Olaf had been provided with the final pieces of the puzzle in the form of the hybrid Wraith Michael's experimental notes & a blood sample of Teyala & Kaanan's son (which he had expertly misapproperiated from Altantis' med labs when no-one had been looking) for his plan had presented itself. And now, his project was nearing completion, the final pieces of the puzzle falling into place. All the remained was for the transfer. And for that, he would need access to certain very special facility run by Stargate Command on the Tau'ri homeworld.
Walking over to a nearby console, he depressed a few buttons, bringing up a holographic display of a Tel'Tak - a Goa'uuld mid-range bomber/cargo ship, the image minimising to the top right-hand side of the screen before pressing more button, this time overlay a map of the nearby forrest, a blinking red dot showing the location of the ship. Zooming out, the map then displayed a blue dot - his current location - before plotting the fastest, most direct route between the two, ensuring to account for security patrols (which he had conveniently ripped from the Ministry of Justice database using his skills learnt whilst a Tok'Ra operative and his knowledge of Tollan systems). Turning on his heel, he made he way to the cargo ship, cautiously starting the engines and scanning for signs of trouble before cloaking the ship and heading back the way he had come, before ringing aboard the cylinder containing his life's work, having bypassed his own security protocols to do so.
Frowning once, a genuine look of regret on his face, he issued one final command by remote: Self Destruct. He could ill afford anyone stumbling upon his lab, nor his research, and so it was with a heavy heart that he set the timer on a delayed countdown before plotting a course out of the atmosphere of his home world and out of New Tollana's solar system. By the time the lab detonated and Tollan security forces arrived, the lab would be a smouldering, unsalvageable pile of hard, cold slag. By then, he would be long gone.
Several hours past as he journeyed through hyperspace to the Sol System, existing hyperspace on the fringe of the solar system, passing by the planet Pluto, the hard ball of icy rock visible out the main viewport as his ship re-cloaked and made it's way in system: it would not do to have the Tau'ri alerted to his presence before his mission was complete. He passed the time travelling in system by going over schematics of the facility he planned to infiltrate, pouring over the data one last time in order to ensure complete success. Failure was not an option - he had come to far and committed too much - years, resources, a life lost, and more - to turn back now.
Going back into the cargo hold, he beheld his life's work floating in the cylinder against the wall, having stabilised his precious cargo during the journey through hyperspace hours prior. Walking up to it, he pressed his palm against it, the glass cool to the touch, gazing at the form shrouded within, before working on a nearby console. It had taken him many months and utilising all his contacts, both as an Ambassador and as a former spy for the Tok'Ra, to obtain the information he sought, as well as acquire the specific parts he had needed to modify the vessel he now occupied in order to execute this plan. But then again, this plan had been years in the making - literally - and and had consumed with an intensity and passion he had not felt since the days of the reclamation of his once-ravanaged home world from the clutches of the Goa'uuld System Lord Anubis. The irony that Olaf had heavily utilitised Anubis' own research, as well as replicating some of the technology Anubis was prone to use in his experiments to further his own goals was not him.
Finishing his work, Olaf stepped back and waited as the proper sequences were ignited and executed in precise order, watching anxiously as the first the fluid drained from the cylinder, then initiated the reanimation sequence, after which the cylinder retracted to unceremoniously dump the limp form of the occupant within on the floor nearby, landing face down with a gentle thud. Olaf winced visibly as he made his way over to the figure, using a handheld scanner to check for vital signs. He could account for many variable, but he was still at the whimsy of the hands of fate when it came to certain aspects of his plan. This - and perhaps the final stage of his apln, as yet unexecuted - were but one of them.
Looking at the scanner feed, he breathed a visible sigh of relief, the tension he never realised he had leaving his body, as the scanners confirmed what he so desperately sought: the being was completely healthy. All vital signs were active - better than active, they were thriving - except for higher brain functions, which remained ominously dark. The being before him was fully functional, in all aspects but one: it was utterly, completely, brain-dead. Nodding to himself, Olaf couldnt but help suppress a smile - all was as it should be. Making his way back to the command console in the pilots carriage, he doubled checked his figures as the ship's proximity alert sounded: the cargo ship had entered Earth's atmosphere.
Following a preselected course, it silently and invisibly made it way towards it's destination as Olaf went back to the cargo hold, walking over to a nearby locker and opening it, donning the silver jumpsuit inside, before gathering his supplies, checking each one by one, before dragging the prone form over to the ring platform nearby,. Propping it upright, he waited unit the ship reached it's co-ordinates before issuing a verbal command.
"Computer" He stated, remote active ring platform on mark, then auto-pilot the ship out of Earth's atmosphere and directly into the primary star of this solar system. All other systems, including life support, are to be deactivated and power routed to shields until target destination is reached and this ship is destroyed. If unauthorised attempts to board this vessel are made, you are to overload the engine and detonate immediately upon reaching a safe distance between this ship and it's pursuers. Authorisation Alpha Gamma Epsilon"
"Command acknowledged" Came the reply.
Bracing himself, Olaf shouldered the weight of the figure next to him, one arm around his shoulder, the other about his waist.
"Execute" Olaf said, taking a deep breathe as the ships rings activated, depositing him on terra firm before whisking away to fulfil it's own destruction.
Breathing in a deep taste of cold terran night-time air, he made his way over a nearby rise to regard the secure compound before him: his objective lay inside, so close, yet still so far from reach.
Smiling broadly to himself, Olaf set his features in one of grim determination as he made his way towards the facility and his new destiny. . . .
Olaf made his way through Square of Remembrance, stopping quickly to pay his respects to the departed dead by the Wall of Remembrance itself, before continuing on his way; walking casually to the outskirts of the city; checking every now and again that he wasn't being followed.
Although it was not unusual for members of the Tollan to go wandering in the wilds - walks in the hills, forrests and fields surrounding the capital city had become commonplace as a relaxation activity now the Gaadmer had restored much of their ravaged home world - the novelty was somewhat rarer after dark (the Curia having imposed a curfew on unaccompanied explorations in the wild without first lodging a travel log with the Ministry of Health), & dusk was fast approaching. Even in his line of work - Olaf was both a scientist & a spy - it would not do to be stopped by guards from the Ministry of Justice - the Tollan judiciary force - nor easy for him to explain why he was wandering alone in the wilds when everyone else was turning in for the night.
Checking one more time ensure he wasn't being followed - his days as a former spy and espionage agent for the Tok'Ra having taught him to never be too careful, or too trusting - he made his way down one of the lesser known pathways, strode a short distance through a large field of Tollanan grassland and made his way into the ever-darkening woods.
Once he was properly inside the boundaries of the forrest and was sure he wouldn't be seen - or followed - he stopped to let his eyes adjust. His eyes teared up & a smile played itself upon his lips as he beheld the beauty all around him: trees, plants and other shrubbery abound & small animals, some lizards, some mammals - all genetically re-egineered by the Gaadmeer from extrapolated DNA records from previously extinct species preserved from the original Tollan home world, Tollan - scurring about here & there. It still amazed him that not a scant few years early that New Tollana was a virtually, near-toxic wasteland. Even with all the work the Tollan & their allies had done in reclaiming New Tollana from the clutches of the vile Goa'uuld System Lord Anubis, never in his wildest dreams did Olaf ever expect to see such a rapid recovery progress in his lifetime. The Gaadmer, genetic engineers of the highest order, had done much to help restore New Tollana to it's former glory, readressing the imbalance of nature with their marvelous & precious control of genetics. Afterwards, they had simply let nature thrive.
And thrive it had. Olaf was startled to see a winged, bat-like mammal with four legs, two sets of leathery wings - the large set for gliding, the smaller for flight control and direction - & six eyes fly low over head. Startled, he let out a small laugh, load in the silence, as the creature - a gozbaat he remember from his biology lessons in school - swopped to a tree nearby, resting for a moment before gliding, near silently and suddenly as it had appeared, on it's way again. It was the first flying creature he had seen in the wild that wasn't on a holo-recording or in a zoo - all flying species had long since died out on Tollan before it's destruction, and like so many species, this one was newly reintroduced to New Tollan's ecosystem by the Gaadmer - & he delighted at the trill of seeing one alive - something he had never thought to see in his life - in the wild. It was a rare & precious treat, one he would carry in his memory always.
Looking about again to ensure he wasn't being followed - or that his laughter had alerted something bigger and wilder nearby - Olaf continued on his journey deep into the forrest, making his way through paths unseen and trials that only he knew of, until he reached a certain rockface, stopping at a cragg in the rock facing a nearby stream. At first notice, the rock would appear completely natural and inconspicuous to all but the most trained of eyes. Only a slight vibration & a tinge of warmth - barely noticeable under the warmth of his palm - belied it's true nature.
Taking one last look around to ensure he definitely had not been followed, he raised his left arm, pointing the Tollan phase-shifting device on his wrist at the rock face, and depressed a button. The rock took on an inverted, warped appearance as the phase-shifter literally rearranged atoms at the subatomic level, allowing solid matter - in this case Olaf himself - to pass through another solid object : the wall. For that, in truth, what it was, a thin wall with a specially modulated two-way shield behind it - keyed to his unique biorhythm - desgined to hide what was beyond. As Olaf stepped through the rock face, he experienced the slight tingling sensation that always came with phase-shifting through solid-matter, feeling a slight resistence as he passed through the shield & into the space beyond.
His eyes readjusting to the brighter lighting inside the space he now occupied, Olaf looked about the chamber, identifying the door he was looking for, walking up to it and punching in a series of codes as the door hissed open, revealing a oval room with a panel on one wall. Stepping into the space, he waited until the door closed behind him before engaging the required sequence on the wall panel - another security measure - Goa'uuld-designed transport rings - another marvel of the Ancients adapted by the parasitic Goa'uuld now in wide-spread use across the galaxy - sweeping to encompass him, a flash of light blinding him momentarily as the rings swept downwards into a specially-made Tok'Ra tunnel below him, the ring transporter disengaging and retracting back into the roof from whence it came.
Smiling to himself - the tunnel had been engineered from crystals grown especially for the purpose left over from his days as a Tok'Ra operative - he made his way down the tunnel, walking several miles until the tunnel plateaued, ending in what seem to be a dead end.
"Este omni et fargo" He said aloud to no-one in particular, the words rolling off his tongue, the wall in front of him morphing into the entrance to yet another chamber where before there had only been solid rock.
The last of his security measures circumvented, Olaf walked into the room beyond, the wall morphing back into solidarity behind him as he surveyed the laboratory before him. One wall was completely covered by a holographic interface, a nearby terminal streaming a mixture of data in Ancient, Goa'uuld, Tok'Ra, Tollan, Wraith, Asgard and Gaadmeri - the written language of the Gaadmer - in a seemingly nonsenical, endless stream of information. Nearby was a typical work bench that one might find in any scientist's lab on numerious worlds used by numerious species throughout the galaxy, another workstation also located nearby, various samples strewn about the place, viles of hair here, a blood sample there, a petree dish there: even a severed hand from a Wraith and a dead symbiote - perserved in a pickling jar - were nearby.
However, all these paled in comparison to the large cylinder in the corner at the far end of the room. A mammoth construct, it reached fully from floor to ceiling, taking up the entire corner as if it has grown out of the wall - which it had, in part - various tubes, pipes, and what looked liked tendrils coming out of the cylinder, some flowing over the floor, others rigged to the ceiling, still others tapping into the soil below, drawing nutrients directly from mother New Tollana herself. A marvel of hybrid engineering from many advanced technological species, it was a miss-mash of technologies that has taken Olaf years to perfect into an wholistic, intergrated system.
What had started out as a mere experiment in genetics and a way to explore evoluntionary pathways had instead become his life's work, made all the more pointent since the death of his beloved symbiont, Verak. Closing his eyes, he let his tears flow freely down his face, remembering the horrible day that a botched mission into Wraith territory during his station on Atlantis had gone so incredibly wrong. Captured for a second time by the Wraith, he had been tortured to the breaking point, his symboint doing all it could to keep him alive until rescue had arrived. By then, the damage to host and symbiont had been too great, and Verak had sacrificed his life in order to reverse some of the damage done to Olaf by the Wraith, scarificing his life in order to save Olaf's own.
Opening his eyes, he wiped his tears - his face still flush with emotion - as he approached the cylinder in the corner, the humanoid form within a mere shadow against the frosted glass, a thin, veiny membrane visible between the glass and the prone form within. It had not been until recently - not until the Expedition's 5th year in Atlantis in fact - that Olaf had been provided with the final pieces of the puzzle in the form of the hybrid Wraith Michael's experimental notes & a blood sample of Teyala & Kaanan's son (which he had expertly misapproperiated from Altantis' med labs when no-one had been looking) for his plan had presented itself. And now, his project was nearing completion, the final pieces of the puzzle falling into place. All the remained was for the transfer. And for that, he would need access to certain very special facility run by Stargate Command on the Tau'ri homeworld.
Walking over to a nearby console, he depressed a few buttons, bringing up a holographic display of a Tel'Tak - a Goa'uuld mid-range bomber/cargo ship, the image minimising to the top right-hand side of the screen before pressing more button, this time overlay a map of the nearby forrest, a blinking red dot showing the location of the ship. Zooming out, the map then displayed a blue dot - his current location - before plotting the fastest, most direct route between the two, ensuring to account for security patrols (which he had conveniently ripped from the Ministry of Justice database using his skills learnt whilst a Tok'Ra operative and his knowledge of Tollan systems). Turning on his heel, he made he way to the cargo ship, cautiously starting the engines and scanning for signs of trouble before cloaking the ship and heading back the way he had come, before ringing aboard the cylinder containing his life's work, having bypassed his own security protocols to do so.
Frowning once, a genuine look of regret on his face, he issued one final command by remote: Self Destruct. He could ill afford anyone stumbling upon his lab, nor his research, and so it was with a heavy heart that he set the timer on a delayed countdown before plotting a course out of the atmosphere of his home world and out of New Tollana's solar system. By the time the lab detonated and Tollan security forces arrived, the lab would be a smouldering, unsalvageable pile of hard, cold slag. By then, he would be long gone.
Several hours past as he journeyed through hyperspace to the Sol System, existing hyperspace on the fringe of the solar system, passing by the planet Pluto, the hard ball of icy rock visible out the main viewport as his ship re-cloaked and made it's way in system: it would not do to have the Tau'ri alerted to his presence before his mission was complete. He passed the time travelling in system by going over schematics of the facility he planned to infiltrate, pouring over the data one last time in order to ensure complete success. Failure was not an option - he had come to far and committed too much - years, resources, a life lost, and more - to turn back now.
Going back into the cargo hold, he beheld his life's work floating in the cylinder against the wall, having stabilised his precious cargo during the journey through hyperspace hours prior. Walking up to it, he pressed his palm against it, the glass cool to the touch, gazing at the form shrouded within, before working on a nearby console. It had taken him many months and utilising all his contacts, both as an Ambassador and as a former spy for the Tok'Ra, to obtain the information he sought, as well as acquire the specific parts he had needed to modify the vessel he now occupied in order to execute this plan. But then again, this plan had been years in the making - literally - and and had consumed with an intensity and passion he had not felt since the days of the reclamation of his once-ravanaged home world from the clutches of the Goa'uuld System Lord Anubis. The irony that Olaf had heavily utilitised Anubis' own research, as well as replicating some of the technology Anubis was prone to use in his experiments to further his own goals was not him.
Finishing his work, Olaf stepped back and waited as the proper sequences were ignited and executed in precise order, watching anxiously as the first the fluid drained from the cylinder, then initiated the reanimation sequence, after which the cylinder retracted to unceremoniously dump the limp form of the occupant within on the floor nearby, landing face down with a gentle thud. Olaf winced visibly as he made his way over to the figure, using a handheld scanner to check for vital signs. He could account for many variable, but he was still at the whimsy of the hands of fate when it came to certain aspects of his plan. This - and perhaps the final stage of his apln, as yet unexecuted - were but one of them.
Looking at the scanner feed, he breathed a visible sigh of relief, the tension he never realised he had leaving his body, as the scanners confirmed what he so desperately sought: the being was completely healthy. All vital signs were active - better than active, they were thriving - except for higher brain functions, which remained ominously dark. The being before him was fully functional, in all aspects but one: it was utterly, completely, brain-dead. Nodding to himself, Olaf couldnt but help suppress a smile - all was as it should be. Making his way back to the command console in the pilots carriage, he doubled checked his figures as the ship's proximity alert sounded: the cargo ship had entered Earth's atmosphere.
Following a preselected course, it silently and invisibly made it way towards it's destination as Olaf went back to the cargo hold, walking over to a nearby locker and opening it, donning the silver jumpsuit inside, before gathering his supplies, checking each one by one, before dragging the prone form over to the ring platform nearby,. Propping it upright, he waited unit the ship reached it's co-ordinates before issuing a verbal command.
"Computer" He stated, remote active ring platform on mark, then auto-pilot the ship out of Earth's atmosphere and directly into the primary star of this solar system. All other systems, including life support, are to be deactivated and power routed to shields until target destination is reached and this ship is destroyed. If unauthorised attempts to board this vessel are made, you are to overload the engine and detonate immediately upon reaching a safe distance between this ship and it's pursuers. Authorisation Alpha Gamma Epsilon"
"Command acknowledged" Came the reply.
Bracing himself, Olaf shouldered the weight of the figure next to him, one arm around his shoulder, the other about his waist.
"Execute" Olaf said, taking a deep breathe as the ships rings activated, depositing him on terra firm before whisking away to fulfil it's own destruction.
Breathing in a deep taste of cold terran night-time air, he made his way over a nearby rise to regard the secure compound before him: his objective lay inside, so close, yet still so far from reach.
Smiling broadly to himself, Olaf set his features in one of grim determination as he made his way towards the facility and his new destiny. . . .
