Disclaimer: All characters, names, settings etc belong to their respective copyright holders, only much of the plot, Night Wolf and a few other things are of my own creation (but inspired from many things under copyright, which aren't mine).
Welcome, this is a sequel to two (or three, but mainly two) of my previous stories; Sorcery, UNITed, Independence, Space and UNIT: Night Wolf – Beginnings (and to a lesser degree Alexandria Auction). I will attempt to explain events thus far, but it will make more sense to read Sorcery or Night WolfNight Wolf is shorter and more relevant to this story, however Sorcery also contains all the action different POV/style as Night Wolf
Chapter 01
"Hmm, hmmm...hmm hmm…hmm…hmmm"
Captain Chris Rogers slowly turned around in his chair as his Secondary Systems Coordinator hummed to himself, he'd actually been humming to himself for the last few minutes, and generally it wasn't bad. His SSC officer didn't usually hum, but then they weren't usually tasked with what was generally considered one of the more boring jobs that they could be doing.
After he was commander of a 400 meter long, 220 meter wide and 180 meter high ship which could be out doing an array of useful things…instead they were cleaning the upper atmosphere of space junk.
Sorcerer Lieutenant Harry Potter didn't realise he was humming, he was keeping his eye on the transmats that were going on, watching the sensor analysis as it came in and assigned it to the matter transmission lab to transmat the vacuum and the space junk there-in from contaminating space and Earth's orbit.
Harry could think of other things to be doing, but as the people down in Diplomacy and Linguistics had (in addition to the Captain) explained it was all part of their (ie UNIT and Night Wolf's) deal with the UN…and by that extension several other countries which had agreements with the UNIT and others which were only with the UN. The deal meant a sizeable amount more money for Night Wolf's budget, which had already born its fruits for the last 2 years. More money meant more ships and more updates, more Thylacines and more money for research and development. The fact that the Australian Gibson Desert Research and Shipbuilding facility had churned out 4 more ships in the past 2 years was evidence of that, plus the ship he was on had practically been taken apart and rebuilt was further evidence of that.
But Harry couldn't believe how much space junk, both the big and the minute collected around their planet, all those left over bits and pieces from the American, Russian, Chinese and British space programs, then there was the various tiny pieces of alien debris, things that had been chipped off during 'diplomatic problems' with alien races (ie battles), and whatever else liked to fall through the interstitial array of whatever from dimension to dimension and land itself clogging up the 'sky' of Earth.
The sensor representation of the area 'below' the UNIT Vessel; Australian Space Core Ship Hattah seemed to be littered with multiple contacts, that never seemed to change, despite the large containers within the ship which said otherwise.
"Harry." Scr Lt Harry Potter looked up his finger poised over a command.
"Sir?"
"Enjoy watching The Italian Job?" Captain Chris Rogers asked with a smile. Harry raised and eyebrow.
"Sorry captain…didn't…"
The captain waved it aside.
"Go take a break Harry, it's approaching lunch, anything happens…"
"Other than space dust…lots and lots of space dust…and the ISS's orbit…" Harry muttered quite loudly making the captain chuckle.
"Yes precisely, get something, get refreshed, in case we do get some dangerous space dust mites coming to attack us."
"And our carpets…" Harry said with a grin, pushing himself off the chair and away from his position located at the rear of the bridge behind the captain and walked out the door towards the middle of the ship where off the central corridor was the mess, and therefore food.
As he walked Harry stretched out all his joints, he was tempted to stretch out his wings, but aside from ripping his shirt, he'd have to go back to his position on the bridge after lunch, and while no one had any problem with the whole wings thing, he did, sitting for long periods with them out, it was just better to wait until evening (or whenever his particular shift ended, which if there was a battle, or any other encounter could be whenever the people stopped shooting at them and nothing else on the ship was exploding).
Harry reminded himself he'd have to come up with a movie with a catchy song to send back to Hermione, considering he'd been humming the The Italian Job 'theme song'…what made her send that movie. Harry didn't know.
They'd been sending movie recommendations occasionally with whatever communications they sent whenever they communicated.
They hadn't caught up 'face to face' in a while, with him on a ship and her frequently on a planet, ship or Earth it was slightly hard to arrange a time to catch up, have a conversation which didn't involve looking into a camera or writing a letter.
Harry smiled to himself just remembering the last time the 'Hogwarts gang' had got together a year and a bit ago…5 years or so after the end of Hogwarts, five years since he'd finished Voldemort…
They'd caught met up at Harry's house in Australia it was either that or Ron's flat which Harry had seen and thought it was best that they all meet at his house.
It was great hearing about everyone's lives again, after their (well his and Hermione's) sporadic contact with the others from the wand using world.
Some of them thought he and Hermione had run off and eloped…Hermione had almost choked on her food when Neville had suggested that.
It probably had something to do with the fact that they both answered the questions of 'where have you been' etc with vague 'here and there' answers…there was also the question why they were un-contactable by owl, which while not impossible meant only a collection of things, obviously one of those was marriage to someone you considered a member of your family…although this was the wand using world so…
But they eventually got that Harry and Hermione were off doing what they wanted, Hermione was a Archaeologist and Linguist and Harry was off doing the mysterious 'something' of which he wouldn't speak.
Even if he did tell them what he was doing some how Harry couldn't see all his close Hogwarts friends believing or understanding that 'I'm the Secondary Systems Co-ordinator for a human built space craft' as being what he actually spent his time doing.
But it was better than doing nothing, he'd tried that shortly after 'disposing of Voldemort'. He'd tried the doing nothing sort of thing and ended up returning to Night Wolf on an accelerated course…only to be ordered on six months leave.
Ordered on holiday, both Remus and Hermione had had a good laugh at his expense for that one, not that his 'adventures' in America were (totally) a holiday, but at least there were no major ramifications as a result of the events he was present and participated in, considering he'd been ordered to participate in said events.
Harry walked along one of the central corridors of the ship, walking of his lunch and stretching his legs prior to returning to duty, he liked to walk at least half the length of the ship from the ship's mess up to the forward sections of the ship where the gravity became lessened as you moved further out of the gravity field generated by fields at the rear of the ship.
It was passing one of the cargo areas that was being used as storage for some of the space junk they'd already transmatted aboard, along with other things that were to be moved to Earth when they transferred, it wasn't out of the ordinary for things to move slightly in the lessened gravity so Harry walked in, just to check, just in case something hadn't been security properly.
Harry looked around as the noise increased, it took him less than a second to realise what the noise was, less than a second passed as he hit his radio by his ear.
"This is Potter, Security squad to forward cargo 3. Potter, bridge." Harry turned around counting backward the seconds, from UNIT's history, research and knowledge they had anything from 30 seconds backwards to prepare. Harry looked into the corner of the cargo area where a camera and some other equipment was located to give a full view of the cargo area.
"Harry? Report." Said the captain's voice into his ear.
"Re-materialisation of a TARDIS in progress." Harry looked over to where there appeared to be wind lapping around the cargo area, although the shape of the craft was not appearing, yet, it meant they had a few more seconds. "Shape not yet visible, I'd guess at least 15 seconds more." There was a very slight pause.
"We'll move to a high orbit, Harry I want you to supervise whoever it is."
"Captain?"
"You've been personally briefed by the General in the procedure should we need to disable who ever it is."
"Sir. Diplomacy…?" Harry began to ask.
"On standby, just in case."
Harry nodded to the camera as the security squad walked in handing Harry a holster for a S/K-2 the more compact version of the S/K-1.
"The vessel is coming in over there, go invisible, reveal on my order."
"Sir."
Harry walked over and stood out of sight and waited as the TARDIS ground its way into normal space time.
They had maybe 10 seconds until it became visible, the noise was intensifying, the groaning grating noise filling the cargo area.
Harry ran though the training he'd received in his head.
It was among many things the 'how to disable a Time Lord', disable, rather than kill.
Harry remembered himself and a few others from the various ships, Outposts and the Research Base watching a very grainy surveillance footage from the 1970s. A sharp blow to the left shoulder would disrupt a vital nerve cluster on a Time Lord, disabling them.
They'd had to sign an array of extra clauses to their existing Amended Articles to learn this and other knowledge, that the Brigadier had learned from his 'friend'.
UNIT had encountered a few Time Lords, the Master being one, who wasn't any friend to Earth most of the time, and the Doctor, who was all things considered a mixed blessing.
The Brigadier even acknowledged this…"He, all of him is a friend…to me personally…and to Earth, but the Doctor at times fails to consider both the smaller and larger picture, preferring to 'leave them you to clean up', as he said often."
The information was imparted in confidence, following a promise the Brigadier made to his friend some time ago…Lethbridge Stewart wasn't breaking it in principle, the information was never published for all to see, and the video footage was part of the Brigadier's personal archive.
Harry now watched as a space time craft a 'TARDIS' made its final groans into reality and a shape began to pulse and flash.
"Ah…well…" Harry muttered to himself as the shape of a 1960s British police box coalesced into being.
--//
There it is, end of chapter one.
If you want you can hum the Doctor Who theme music if you want at this point.