A/N: First off, thanks for the reviews. Even the flamers, as their comments gave me a good laugh.
To my unsigned reader who seemed to think I didn't update "jack shit" since I posted chapter 1 of this story: I actually did update my transformers fanfiction. I say this because, as will become clear during this chapter, it is that very story that this one crosses over with, not the base TF Movie universe which has too many plot holes and flat characters for me to honor with any crossover.
Worry not, since it's not necessary to read that, but if you don't want to wait for TF: Prime Divide universe lore to be explored in later chapters of this, a lot of the tech/supernatural/spiritual elements have been thoroughly explored there.
Chapter 2: Perfectly Reasonable Conclusions
"-. .-"
Blindness. The complete lack of form and visual light perception. Not an easy way to live, suffering from it. Yoda never truly felt afflicted with it, despite how strong the Dark Side of the Force had been up until his departure from his dimension. Clouded his vision had been by it for the longest time, true, but the Dark Side itself had definitely not been undetected. Like a blindfold blocking his sight, he would always know when it was there.
That had changed since reaching the latest universe on their multi-dimensional travels. Bright everything was whenever Yoda closed his eyes. Too bright, he could say. Different, the cosmos. Calm and content, until he cast his mind in it. Then… the Jedi master felt as if under a microscope. His meditation had been cut short because of it, the first few times. But he persevered, despite how frustrating and futile his efforts always proved to be.
No matter how far and how long he "looked" from the Spire's meditation chambers, he could find no trace of the Dark Side. While he was "looking" towards the part of the solar system where the black ship was, other than the skin-crawling feeling of being watched (by something that had nothing to do with the alien ship itself) he felt nothing. Looking upon the Earth, other than the strangeness of this universe's Force he still felt nothing. There were the normal emotions of people, but no dark tendency for the Force itself. And yet his first hopeful thought – that there was only light in The Force here – could not be true, for there was always a light and a dark side of the Force.
That could only mean that the Dark Side could somehow stay completely undetectable in this dimension.
"Or that there is no Dark Side of the Force because there is no such thing as The Force."
Master Yoda's eyes snapped open at the unfamiliar voice, but that was as far as his reaction went. Simply because his mind stumbled at the sight around him. Or complete lack of sight. Pitch black everything was. Everything except himself and the person a few meters in front of him. A man it was, or an apparition that had taken the guise of one. With black hair and eyes, and proper human proportions for the limbs and body. Normal, the sight might have been, the black void of their meeting place notwithstanding.
If not for the agelessness of his face and the scintillating mass of white light that made up his indistinguishable vestment.
With caution honed over several lifetimes' worth of years, Yoda pushed himself to his feet. Curious the feel of a floor beneath him was, given that this place was just a mental construct.
"Actually it isn't," the man told him.
Brown eyes narrowed in caution as a green-skinned head tilted in suspicion. Read his thoughts could he?
"I don't need to," the unknown apparition followed, but didn't explain any further.
There were several options here, but Yoda decided on the most straightforward. "… Who are you, might I ask?"
The floating man had a deep, rich voice that was filled with mirth. "Who is but the form following the function of what, and what I am is a messenger." He smiled. It was a lopsided, oddly friendly sight. "At least that's what my twice-great-grandson would say. He always did like V's alliterations."
Yoda blinked and reevaluated his situation and the person before him. During the months spent in his latest student's original Earth, he had been exposed to the entertainment industry and fictional works of that planet on various occasions. The graphic novel focused on a certain dystopian version of Great Britain had been one of the better examples of human imagination, if somewhat disconcerting. Try as he might, however, he could not figure out why the one in front of him would allude to it.
It was at odds with everything he knew about ascended beings. The one in front of him could be nothing else.
"Because your student's databases include every possible thing about ascension and the ones undertaking it," the man chided, sounding less amused than before. "There are assumptions that should never be made by anyone about certain things. Ascension is one of those things. But you know this." Black eyes sharpened as the unknown vision crossed his arms. "After all, it is part of why you offered to accompany him on his journey, isn't it? Although we both know that the main reason for joining him is a lot less encouraging."
It wasn't a question.
Yoda's eyes narrowed as he thought about his situation, but he needed more information. "Brought me here you have. Wherever here is. Why?"
"No one brought you here," the man seemed serene. Yoda couldn't sense anything through the Force from him. "You managed to tune in yourself. Despite the handicap that those from your dimension have to cope with."
Yoda's thoughts came to a halt before they could roam the many implications of the second part of that statement. All of a sudden, he had a feeling that he was in for some nasty shocks.
Assumption that was confirmed almost immediately, when the man uncrossed his arms and extended one straight at him. "There are many assumptions we need to get rid of. That the shocks will be 'nasty' is just one of many." His tone was serious and his hand was set as though preparing to turn a latch. "But first, let's cure your blindness."
There wasn't even the barest a moment's delay before the surrounding blackness shattered into a billion pieces.
"-. .-"
There really was no magical world on this version of Earth. Not that Harry had expected anything else, after getting essentially no readings of any magical creatures or wards on the planet. But he'd gone looking anyway, using the Marauder in orbit to beam himself all over Britain, from King's Cross to the Leaky Cauldron to even Hogsmeade and Hogwarts. He didn't find even a trace, not even ruins. Or even historical accounts that carried hints of their involvement. Kind of disquieting really, to know that the Wizards of his world had been so good at hiding or obliviating the knowledge of themselves to the point where their existence had no bearing in the grand scheme of things. It was strange, to see that success on their part from the other side of the fence. If it even qualified as success.
All the while he made sure not to be caught on video of course. The blunders he'd committed during his first interdimensional trip never really lost their clarity, since his memory was perfect so time couldn't gnaw at the recollection. That, and he didn't want to take any risks now that he knew there was something in this universe that could give Alteran technology pause, however small. It was why he'd not activated any active scans on the new satellites he deployed, and why he didn't use hyperspace jumps to reach the planet quickly. Instead, he brought the Marauder to Earth under cloak, at the highest sublight speed he could manage without relativistic problems cropping up.
He also wanted to do something with his time, while the Marauder's computer searched the Internet and compiled all the information that had anything to do with giant robots and a host of different other things that could be relevant to the situation, according to some parameters he set. Since it was seeking the information through the world's info network, it was limited to its speed, especially since many data centers and supercomputers lacked outgoing wireless links of any kind, so he didn't have as many wireless waves to leverage as he would have liked.
He missed master Yoda's dimension already, with their so very superior intergalactic network.
Oh well.
After analyzing the behavior and information provided by the short-lived satellite he deployed to Saturn's moon the previous day, he concluded that the cloak did work, but that active scans could be detected if not intercepted. That meant it was safe enough to take passive visual, IR and other readings (he didn't hold much hope for anything outside the visible spectrum, but it was the principle of the thing). He also noted that the subspace transmissions themselves hadn't been detected.
Harry still decided to keep them at a minimum, at least until he found whatever organization or governments on Earth knew about the creatures, if any. After seeing a space jet / robot detecting his scans, he wasn't going to bet that subspace communications were outside their ability to monitor. It COULD be that it wasn't just the active scans that were picked up by the space jet robot, but also the increased data streams that resulted from the spike in information being relayed.
Camelot's sensors were up and running of course, monitoring everything moving in normal space and hyperspace alike, the latter reaching throughout the Orion arm and large swaths of the ones adjacent to it. Strangely, nothing was moving in hyperspace, and no subspace transmissions were taking place either. No other evidence of spacefaring civilizations showed up. As if this version of the Milky Way had none of that. The aliens / robots here in the system must have come from the other side of the galaxy or a different one entirely. And they either weren't communicating at all for some reason, or they did it through means that had no subspace or electromagnetic basis. The former could mean the ones here were a splinter faction or some extragalactic group lost to the stars. The other didn't bear thinking about.
Quantum entanglement communicators could perhaps work, but any communication link of that type disconnected when one of the transmitters entered hyperspace or was otherwise subjected to space-time distortions. It was why the Alterans had abandoned it in favor of subspace transmissions and, later, the long-distance mental communication device.
Now that was a worrying thought: that whatever those things were had something like that available to them.
Harry shook his head as he walked down the street. All this thinking was making it impossible to enjoy the view and the sounds. So much for taking some time to relax.
Another element in the readings he gathered (before the life of the satellite was cut short) caused a fair bit of incredulity as well. It was something he never considered to be possible: the structure of the ship and the robot that took out his satellite both existed on multiple phases at the same time. All phases that Alteran technology was aware of actually. It was baffling. Also, it was an absurd advantage. It made phase-shifting completely useless against whatever those things were. The only reason the cloak hid his satellite at all was because it wasn't based on phase shifting technology. It was also why the shot managed to affect the satellite in the first place.
It was an odd thing, that effect. The shot was some sort of anti-matter charge, mixed with an energy he'd never come into contact with or found in the Alteran database. Like the weapon that fired it, it existed on all phases. That meant the shot was only stopped on the primary phase, but not the others. That alone would have been fine (without the existence on the primary phase, the shot itself could have been intangible for all that the satellite was concerned), but the impact caused some bizarre cascade reaction to force all the energy on the upper phases into the primary one, multiplying the power of the attack by several factors. Enough to take out the shield immediately.
It didn't help that the guided energy weapon was of the type that maintained its potency in space, rather than losing it with distance as most energy guns tended to. It indicated a significant level of advancement (in that field at least) because it always took a while for a civilization to overcome the degenerative effect that cosmic radiation and the vacuum of space had on such things. Although most solutions led to the usefulness of plasma beam weapons taking a huge hit inside a planet's atmosphere, especially if there was a lot of oxygen and nitrogen around.
Harry was really curious if that problem, at least, still plagued those robots and whoever made them.
There was a silver lining at least. Since there weren't any "free" phases for them to move between, they couldn't possibly use phase shifting for themselves either. Well, unless they wanted to blow themselves up, like that disaster of all sniper shots had upon impact.
Harry didn't even want to imagine having to fight one of those things if it could turn intangible or invisible at will. Or both. He'd win, sure, but not without a lot of property damage or possible bystanders getting injured. Not to mention the frustration.
On the other hand, he did relish the thought of going head to head in a jet fighter or in the Marauder against that blasted jet robot creep.
Not that he was planning on it. As a matter of fact, he had a battle satellite standing by in Camelot's main cargo bay, waiting for deployment. There was no way that jet could put a scratch on it, despite that rifle apparently firing some sort of null charges capable of taking out any system. The shield of the satellite was the best there was, not counting the domes of Atlantis-Class City Ships and the shields of Aurora-class vessels.
On the flip side, there was that voice at the back of his mind that said the alien jet probably had enough speed and agility to avoid the plasma weapons that satellite used. It may be that drone weapons were the only things that could surpass that versatility. The satellite would probably handle anything else they had though, as long as it wasn't as fast as that annoying creep.
He had programmed his constructors to make a couple more of those offensive satellites too, equipped with faster laser weapons and missiles. The former had the speed, the latter had intelligent guidance.
Still, better to err on the side of caution until he could reassess the situation. He'd flaunted his technology from the get go when he appeared above Babylon 5 and it ruined half the city's systems. Not to mention that he relied on it so much that a great plan backfired so badly that thousands of people died in the fallout. And a lot of master Yoda's teachings had been about being calm and thorough before he acted, assuming time allowed, lest he did something he'd regret later.
It wouldn't be too much longer anyway. He'd know what step to take next in about two hours if things went well and his fresh (exploration, not military) satellites made it to Saturn on time, which they would.
Harry had deployed three satellites to Saturn: one to orbit the moon Mimas, where the black ship was, one that would travel between the other major moons, and one for the planet itself. He would never remotely access more than one at a time, just to be sure they wouldn't be found, but he wanted to know if there were other ships hidden around the planet, and without the range of active scans he needed to get in close. The one around Mimas would constantly move in order to avoid the patrols of the jet, if it was still there. He'd also sent some to the other planets in the system, but only one for each. They would automatically gather information but only send it when remotely accessed by him, or when they detected danger despite the cautionary measures.
Maybe it was paranoid, but better safe than sorry. It wasn't just him in a big empty city anymore.
That made Harry smile wryly. The others had not been pleased when he refused to take anyone along with him on the scouting trip. And telling them that Silima would maintain a live extension in the Marauder's computer didn't set them at ease either. And he didn't even mention that the AI's link strength would be as low-key as possible. Again, to avoid being detected until he was sure whether or not those machines or whoever made them could detect the transmissions. Whether planet-side or somewhere in orbit, Harry was certain the alien race had sent some of those robotic probes or scouts to Earth.
Come to think of it, the only person who didn't have anything to say about his trip was Master Yoda. But then he'd told them earlier that he'd try to meditate on the situation and try to find out why the Force was so abnormal and how the Dark Side could hide so well here. Harry honestly wished him luck. Anything that could worry Master Yoda and stump him to such a degree was worrisome, to say the absolute least.
Having finally given up on his search for Magical Britain, Harry Potter decided he'd had enough of Britain as a whole and had the Marauder beam him across the Atlantic and well into North American territory.
An hour later, he entered a cafe feeling rather ambivalent. The break he took had been wonderful, or would have been if not for him being alone. Maybe he should have let one of the others come with him after all. Then this visit to the Niagara Falls would have been marvelous instead of simply pleasant. The sound of the massive waterfall and the sight of the everlasting rainbow above it would have made the risk, minimal as it was, worth it.
Putting the issue out of his mind, he looked for a seat. He didn't find one near the window, but the distant thrum of the great falls was an ever present murmur even with the closed door keeping the world out. Ordering some hot chocolate and some snack or other, he pulled a laptop out of his bag, set it on the tabletop and opened it.
He didn't really need it, since he would be mentally analyzing the information, but the computer (earlier beamed into being based on a decent but not too ostentatious model found online) would be a nice deterrent against attention. The point was to make him seem no different from any other tourist while he telepathically probed surrounding people. It was a minor trick really, sending a word or image into their surface thoughts and letting the people's own minds conjure up related images, even prompt them to start conversations between themselves.
He discreetly sent words and images (robot, aliens, space ship and transforming robot were the main terms) while he checked search results on his laptop. Or pretended to, since he was mentally interfacing with Silima's extension instead, and through it the surveillance satellite deployed in orbit. The sweep of the Internet had yielded many results, most of them easy enough to dismiss as unfounded conspiracy theorist gathering grounds. That itself wasn't surprising, since any intelligent organization worth its salt knew better than to have their mainframes connected to the rest of the Internet, or possess any sort of wireless capabilities. So he wasn't surprised that the Intelligence agencies he hacked (all of them really) didn't have any information he was looking for. A lot of other incriminating, highly morally questionable data did make it into his so-called hands, but nothing about giant robots.
Two websites caught his attention however. One was The Real Effing Deal and was apparently being run by some kid that had just started college: a Leo Spitz. It had some videos about "giant robots the government doesn't want you to know about." That implied that the things weren't human made. The bigger point of interest was the second website though. Giant Effing Robots. Harry would have snorted at the result of the trace on it (the owner lived with his mother and manned a deli by day) if the website wasn't so much better encrypted than the other one in comparison. By the pitiable standards of Earth anyway.
Information compiled there from old newspaper sources and online conspiracy sites raised a red flag around Mission City. Some terrorist attack involving experimental robots happened on the same day that Hoover Dam was completely obliterated over the course of less than an hour.
…
Wait, what?
Blinking, Harry mentally ran through the information again. How on earth did that even happen? Unless someone blew the dam apart deliberately, but with Earth's current technological level it could only have happened if the dam had been stuffed full of explosives well in advance. More importantly, how did the cover-up for that entire mess even work?
More telling was that the videos and written information on that website called the things giant alien robots. That confirmed the theory about them being constructs belonging to some other civilization not native to the Sol System. How would someone who sold meat for a living possibly know all that though? Or have access to videos of those machines, however choppy?
Theories about secret agents were already swimming and taking form in Harry's mind when an alert sounded at the back of his head. Not showing any outward signs, he opened a viewscreen in his mind's eye. It was a live transmission from the Marauder, of several meteors that had come out of nowhere and entered the atmosphere in a cluster, almost on the other side of the planet from where the ship itself was located. They were pretty large, but were already breaking apart in fiery pieces on reentry. Still, he narrowed his eyes at the sight – they looked pretty sturdy and metallic – and considered starting his active sensors to scan them better when his attention was diverted again.
A collective hush fell over the establishment. Harry blinked and brought his focus back to his immediate surroundings and traced the source of the sudden disquiet. His eyes alighted on the flickering TV mounted above the bar the same moment a deep, grating voice started to speak from the mouth of the metal devil displayed on it.
"Citizens of the human hive, your leaders have withheld the truth. You are not alone in the universe. We have lived among you, hidden, but no more. As you've seen, we destroy your cities at will," images of some of the world's sprawling metropolises flashed in quick succession, along with shots of Paris being attacked by more of those things (the meteors he'd let past were really two-legged machines), as well as missiles of considerable explosive capacity. "Unless you turn over this boy."
Harry had already begun to trace the transmission and tuned out everyone else.
Great. So either he was dealing with delusional AIs on some weird manhunt for a dorky-looking kid, or this was just a ruse by some secretive race deliberately making humanity think the robots were the actual aliens.
How marvelous.
"-. .-"
It took five minutes for Harry to find the transmission's source. Or, well, one of the sources. One of the many, many sources. One of the many out of a myriad.
His thoughts raced as he applied a notice-me-not to himself and slipped out of the café, feeling ambivalent to hear everyone else dismissing the whole event as some hoax. :Silima, guide me to a secluded spot.:
:Uploading guide line to virtual HUD.: A line made of blue light appeared before him, along with a minimap at the corner of his vision. Who needed augmented reality eyewear when you had technopathy?
Truth was that Silima had worked through Harry's ever present necklace to find the source before the ugly face even disappeared from the TV screen. And bystanders' phones. And laptops. And tablets. And whatever else.
However, for the sake of thoroughness Silima had also done a sweep of the planet's satellite network through the Marauder's computers and found that it wasn't just one source, but many. The hack seemed to originate from every single television channel, telephone and Internet relay on the planet, as well as every public server and database there was, with very few exceptions. The five minutes were spent trying to separate the fake signals from the real, only to reach the conclusion they were all real points of origin. That answered the question of how the message could be transmitted through every electronic device people owned. Except his own laptop, which actually lacked connectivity hardware (he'd been mentally dictating what the screen would show).
None of his findings painted a very promising picture. There was no way the aliens could overtake the entire communication networks – all networks – of the planet through a single access point. Phone lines, TV broadcast carriers and Internet providers just weren't interconnected the way required for it. To do it would mean having some agent or other at every physical origin point, or having prior control of said points. But that only opened another can of worms and questions, like why they only now overtook the communications if they'd been "living among you" as the creep had said. Or why they released their hold on the electronics of the world at all, after only a brief spiel.
Unless they hadn't? Harry frowned as he finally found a relatively secluded spot and beamed straight to the Marauder's control chair.
There obviously wasn't any sort of invasion force blockading the planet. However, he couldn't account for anything on the surface, having kept from making the more blatant of his active scans. Now, though, he wondered if maybe he should have just started them from the beginning, stealth or no stealth. If he had, he'd have known about those meteors not being real meteors immediately.
Not that he'd have had much time to react to the information. Those things had apparently approached the planet at FTL speeds despite being little better than comets. They'd only slowed down to reasonable speed just outside the Earth's low orbit, at which point they proceeded to crashland and… attack Paris apparently. And a splinter group had assaulted a US Navy fleet as well, bringing down a whole naval carrier if the sight in the Atlantic Ocean was anything to go by. At least rescue crews had already been mobilized.
Closing his eyes, Harry pushed the sensors to full power and began to scan both the planet's surface and the three main orbital blankets of terran satellites. That jet of before had proven capable of staying undetected until it entered combat mode (possibly by diverting all energy emissions into a higher phase?), but maybe not all of them had scrambling systems. Even if he ultimately decided not to get involved (unlikely as it was) he still wanted to capture one of the things and take it apart. He'd prepared a restraining field platform for the precise purpose of capturing one of those robots for study. The value of multi-phase physical manifestation would have been enough incentive even without other technologies built into them. Sure, he'd had to magically expand the Marauder's cargo hold to make vertical room for the thing, but it hadn't been that much of a hassle. He was probably going to make it standard practice anyway, that type of magical modification.
Moments after he engaged the sensor suite, the surge of the beaming system sounded again, and the light deposited Harry on the main catwalk of a TV relay not too far from the Algonquin Provincial Park. The light hadn't even completely disappeared when he cut the air with a two-fingered swipe. The severing charm cut neatly through metal. Three more sketched a full square. A final, telekinetic tug pulled the main relay node out, right into the path of a handheld scanner. One second to do a thorough scan and cast a stasis charm, one more for Silima to use the Marauder's transporter system to materialize a replacement in the air right next to the first. A third second for him to install the replacement with a mentally tweaked Reparo.
The transporter's beam took him and the original equipment away just as the cuts in the metal faded as if they'd never been. As he expected, the stasis charm on the relay node didn't survive the beaming (he was finding out new things every day) so he cast it again while the Marauder's microlab came online. It would only take a moment, but he wasn't taking any chances. Just before he'd beamed to Earth SIlima had noticed that all the origin points of the alien ultimatum were disappearing en masse, somehow. In a way that software alone didn't account for.
Bad enough already that the standard terran binary code of the transmission seemed to be interposed with symbols he'd never seen before. Controlled environment was the name of the game here.
The electro-gravitic pedestal grew out of the floor so he set the crude machinery on it, at which point the forcefield engaged, sealing it inside an anti-gravity bubble. Most of the scanner waves and beams were invisible to normal eyesight, but not all. The ones that did cross into the visible spectrum were bright indeed. It made the space inside the field shine white for the one second it took to study the relay node all the way to nanoscopic level and beyond.
Harry turned away, looking instead at a newly emerged holoscreen. The findings were… strange. But they confirmed his suspicion: it really was quantum entanglement. A quantum entanglement communication device build out of interlocking nanobots shaped a lot like spiders. The device was rapidly deteriorating because the nanobots themselves were breaking apart with alarming speed. Not because of some self-destruct measure or other but because they were just that poorly made.
But then that was the whole point wasn't it? The more he examined the results of the scans, the more deductions his mind performed and it made him feel a strange mix of disbelief and grudging respect. The nanobots were a disgraceful example of nanotechnology, but only when compared to a proper application of the concept. When you took into account that they were made from the same, third-rate materials and alloys Earth used for (in this case at least) TV relays, they became utter masterpieces of engineering. It took a special brand of genius and precision to make working nanites from silicon and – Harry squinted – self-replicating non-biological DNA? Well, that was definitely a different tech evolution path.
Looking at the software side, Harry could only understand it because the code was mostly in binary, despite the appearance of those unknown glyphs that accompanied miniscule particles of that energy no Alteran had ever seen before. Clearly the nanites had been dumbed down in order to ensure compatibility with a more primitive tech level, especially in terms of materials. He sent a command to syphon the exotic energy from the dying nanites for later study while he inspected the programming. There were only two protocols. One governed self-replication: the nanites would constantly make more of themselves from surrounding material while reintegrating into the human-made system, waiting for a remote command that would engage the second protocol.
Said second protocol was to swarm together and form a quantum communication receiver that would take over the relay and transmit whatever the master code ordered. The energy needed to make that happen was the simple electricity in the human-build network. It was also enough to fry the nanites in moments but the code accounted for that and kept replacing the ones that fell apart. Incidentally, this was why the image kept flickering. Harry James Potter had never seen swarm tactics applied to something like this, but it made him think of the Wraith, which didn't do anything good for his mood.
How long ago had this unknown alien race planted the initial nanite colonies? It must have been years, decades even, otherwise there wouldn't have been enough of them to take over the entire world's networks in the manner he'd just been witness to. Unless the machines "living among them" had hunted down all relays, but if they had enough units for that they'd have invaded long ago. So that couldn't be the case.
The replication rate seemed to be quite low too, but even then it was sufficient for a nanite colony planted in the USA to spread throughout the nation via regular communication and even power lines. More alarming, an infection to an internet relay in, say, Washington could reach France and everywhere else across the Atlantic through the internet lines in the oceans. Had done it most likely, over the past years. Maybe since right after the Mission City and Hoover Dam fiasco happened. Even a brief USB or power connection could transfer a few nanites to some civilian's portable computer and the infection could be spread with none the wiser.
Yes, it had taken a long time. But the method was also undetectable to human security sweeps, and to any advanced society not quite at nanite research level yet. The poor quality of the nanobots seemed counterproductive – the transmission about that Sam Witwicky person had probably fried 95% of them all – but 5% was more than enough, hell one nanobot was enough, for the infection to spread again, waiting for some time in the future when an invasion might or might not take place. One button and every single wide-reaching communication system would be taken out, or disrupted for just as long as it was needed to establish a beachhead.
And unless you could build nanobots specifically designed to replicate and hunt down the infesting ones, there was no way to truly eradicate them even if you did know they were there. Unless you had something like beaming technology, which was more advanced than that by miles anyway.
Bloody hell.
He immediately ordered Silima to begin production of a nanite strain that would achieve exactly that.
:Already underway, young master.: Her serious voice sounded in his mind. :Shall I have one produced in the Maraduer's lab once the baseline is complete?:
:Yes. But make adjusting for non-ideal materials a priority, even if it takes longer.: With no trinium, naquadah and most importantly neutronium available on Earth, allowances had to be made. He did have the materials, and could have just programmed his normal nanites to do the task. But after seeing the foreign malicious strain, doing something better or at least similar under the same constraints was a matter of pride.
Going back to the intelligence reports, Harry grimly beheld the conclusions of his analysis (which had taken just a few minutes but seemed to have lasted much, much longer), then a small, almost invisible grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. Maybe not the most natural reaction to the current situation, but still. An advanced civilization that had pursued an evolutionary path radically different to the Alterans' own. This was what he'd started dimension-hopping for. This was what he'd been seeking!
He was going to beam one of those robots straight to the pre-arranged containment unit the first chance he got.
One last look at the state of the relay node revealed that the QEC device had broken down beyond use. Just as well. QEC transmissions may not be traceable, but there was no way to be sure that the creators didn't have some way to home in on the device itself, or the strange energy particles running through it. Leaving the lab to the task of syphoning off that unusual energy and recording the glyphs for later perusal, Harry walked out. He could have beamed to the control chair again, but the minute it would take him to walk to the cockpit would allow him to check the information gathered about that Samuel Witwicky person that the aliens were sending robots after.
The beginnings of the file Silima had compiled painted the guy as pretty normal. But ten seconds in, Harry did a double take. A small one, but he still did it. And it wasn't just because of the more recent pictures of the guy. True, they made him look a lot better than the one on the driver's license that the robot transmission had shoved in everyone's face. But it was the type of pictures they were that raised eyebrows: they were all small. There were plenty surveillance recordings of him reading hours away in various libraries and bookstores across the USA, or eating in a restaurant or other (he'd taken intestate summer road trips the previous two years apparently), but photos were another matter entirely. Other than a couple of old pictures from cached archives, there were no photos of him online besides the type found on IDs and diplomas.
And there were a lot of diplomas. Kept on the down low, but not exactly hidden from the public. All legitimate.
The wizard's eyebrows twitched, then steadily kept rising and rising the more he read. No major degrees yet – thank God for that, since the guy was just a few months older than he was – but there were at least two dozen areas that the guy had minored in. Mechanics, electrical engineering, biology, biochemistry, astronomy, physics, astrophysics, computer programming, the list went on and on and on. What the hell was this guy? Had Hermione been born male in this dimension or something? He did have brown eyes, though the hair was cut short and didn't have any curls he could see.
There was even a professional certificate for Ping-Pong floating in the midst of everything, of all things.
As if those "secret" titles weren't enough, he'd just started his first term at Princeton, more specifically the Master of Public Affairs offered through the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Though it only made Harry wonder why the guy would bother with the ruse of attending college at all. While it should have been impossible for so many titles to be accumulated so fast, there was a clear and very real presidential order in place that decreed he was allowed to take ANY exam whenever he wanted. It even had its own web page on the US Government's website. True, there were no links leading to it anywhere, but that didn't matter, since the people in the know would only have to type it in the address box of a web browser in order to confirm Sam's permission to completely disregard proper educational procedures whenever he felt like it.
The entire picture was more than a little fishy, and the last annotations on the file Silima had compiled gave birth to Harry's suspicion that Sam Witwicky was probably a member of the alien race who'd defected. All evidence suggested that the son of Ron and Judy had been totally normal, even somewhat of a wimp and a loser, until the second year of High School. But then he'd somehow been at ground zero during the Mission City disaster and become a super-polymath immediately after, one that apparently had government backing.
It was almost painfully obvious that the original Sam had died and been replaced, hopefully with the parents' consent. Unless Sam had always been the alien but the "terrorist attack" exposed him to the relevant authorities who'd miraculously not taken him to a lab for dissection.
If the guy hadn't been leading a relatively innocent life for the past few years, Harry would have been worried that he'd been taking over the Government or something. As it was, his initial theory seemed to be the most likely scenario. The question now was whether the alien race were as humanoid as Sam appeared, or if they had some shapeshifting ability. That, or maybe some holographic technology that allowed him to disguise himself.
Both were equally probable, given that the Dr. R. Hatchett listed as his personal physician didn't seem to exist outside the medical file submitted to Woodrow Wilson School as part of the admission folder. Silima had dug deep, but she didn't find what the "R." stood for anywhere. She had, however, discovered that Samuel Witwicky was sharing a dorm room with none other than Leo Spitz of all people.
Now what were the odds of that being a coincidence?
By the time he reached the one-man bridge, Harry had switched to the file of Mikaela Banes, Sam's (apparently) perfectly real human girlfriend.
That was when the wizard came to a complete halt in the door and felt his left eye twitch.
If this was a case of an alien infiltrator being sent to sabotage a planet only to go native after falling in love with a smoking hot and hypercompetent human woman, Harry was taking his friends and spaceships and leaving.
Fortunately, he was immediately given a good reason to abandon that train of thought: the Marauder had finished the sensor sweep.
:I have identified the two biggest points of interest.: Silima's voice sounded in his mind. :I would suggest examining the one in orbit first.:
It was a telecommunications satellite that came up as totally ordinary on all sensors, except the visual ones that noticed a strange attachment at the end facing away from the planet. Now sat in the control chair, Harry brought the image up on the Marauder's front view window and zoomed in. The sat in question was literally on the horizon, nearly beyond the Earth's curvature, even at that height, but the zoom function still closed in up to a dozen feet or so, to give a complete view of the target.
Well what do you know? The attachment looked a lot like the alien nanobots, only much larger in scale. It was entwined with the satellite by means of dozens of thin tentacles.
Harry would have beamed the entire thing to the cargo hold right then, if not for the girth. It was too wide to fit, and he did want an intact specimen. And while it looked like a satellite, he didn't rule out the possibility of it being capable of transforming into something or other. If only he'd made a wider holding platform.
Fortunately, the second point of interest gave him a better option, even if it did cause a feeling of urgency to erupt inside him for a moment. The Marauder locked on a point a couple dozen miles from Princeton. A full zoom revealed none other than Sam Witwicky and his girlfriend, huddled together with their backs at the wall of a dilapidated building on the edge of a scrap yard. A large, black and yellow robot stood sentry nearby, but was still dwarfed by the junk piles all around. Some distance away, two smaller robots seemed to be hovering over – what was this, an all-star reunion? – Leo Spitz.
Damn. How the hell had the guy managed to get himself captured already? Unless the robots were his creations. Guards maybe? If he was an alien that went turncoat, it made sense he'd do what his kind were best at, which was robotics apparently. The things did seem to be made from car parts, something that supported his assumption. As did the manhunt that had just been launched by the world's governments.
Harry looked at the sight grimly for a moment, but he couldn't help the feeling of opportunity that flashed over his face. He couldn't help it in the face of the realization that the yellow sentry bot was a perfect fit for the forcefield restraining platform he'd put together.
Then again, if they were made from car parts, they were probably very poor facsimiles of the genuine article.
Oh well.
Decision made, Harry Potter locked the transporter on the three humans and the yellow robot and beamed himself to the cargo hold, where he telekinetically tapped the controls that would deploy the platform. He wasn't going to take risks, even if the things turned out to be Witwicky's. The yellow construct would be going in the holding field.
Once everything was in place, he mentally ordered the four targets beamed over. He felt somewhat guilty at the fleeting thought of how convenient the manhunt was, but no one could deny that offering people shelter and protection was a great way to establish trust.
Later, he would curse himself for not contacting them beforehand.
When three startled and confused humans materialized facing away from him, Harry Potter barely had time to be surprised by the failure message returned from the single robotic target. Three standing humans became two, because Sam Witwicky fell to all fours the moment he appeared, and Harry could only look on in shock as he grabbed his head with one hand and, after haltingly trying to utter something or other, released the most wretched, horrible scream of agony he'd ever heard.
The thick, space-warping dome of electric light that literally exploded from him when the scream reached its peak barely gave Harry enough time to raise a shield.
"-. .-"
The world tilted dangerously. Tilted and refused to snap back into place. Instead, there was a flash of blinding white and the sensation of spark-crushing agony as his whole frame seemed to try and rend itself apart all at once. For one endless moment he could think of nothing except how different the blinding light was compared to what that color normally meant – strength and calm and home – then his spark gave a mighty pulse, and time rushed back into its proper rhythm, pulling with it a deluge of processor-rattling sensor feedback.
Proximity sensors came back online first , followed the suite of gravimeters. They told him he was lying on his side on battered concrete. Touch sensors confirmed it a nanosecond later, then the growing data streams were finally joined by hearing, smell and the electromagnetic sensor suite. Optics came online last, and after flickering static the visibility resolved itself and showed nothing but the corner of a dilapidated warehouse, the base of a scrap pile, and the Bag of Tricks.
Bumblebee's entire existence zeroed in on the sight of the seemingly innocent-looking yellow backpack.
He was on his knees instantly, scanners sweeping the space in front of him with the urgency of a desperate person whose last reason to live had just been taken away. A beam so wide and bright sketched the surrounding area that it may as well have been a pane of glass. The suddenness of his movement almost sent him falling over, but he was saved from another crash by something – which he'd later learn was Skids – but he couldn't be bothered to even look around for what it was in that moment. Not with his internal chronometer scrambled – hat had never happened – and not when Mikeala and Sam were gone.
His vocalizer sputtered uselessly when he tried to shout, even though it had been fixed months prior. Someone or something was trying to get his attention by yelling, but he barely heard them and it was all he could do to stay coherent in the face of the tremors running through him, and the disjoined data scrolling every which way through his glitching HUD. Energy surges were still frying his inner systems – all internal energy can be controlled through willed moderation, he tried to remember, that is the basis of Circuit-Su. He tried to consciously control the power rushing through his circuits, but for every success he suffered a setback when energon only partially transmuted from inert to volatile form burst out of weakened lines or throbbed painfully inside his pumps.
Metallikato is a physical discipline that can control the Protos – the primordial material that all Cybertronians are made of – regardless of the frame's integrity, or lack thereof, Sam's voice sounded in his mind again. Sam's, because Optimus never could get his helm out of his aft and acknowledge their real relationship. And Prime didn't think Bumblebee knew. Of course he knew! But no, let's let keep forcing the "youngling" to pretend ignorance. Let's continue to preserve the Universe's worst kept secret out of some misplaced feeling of guilt.
Bumblebee forced himself to stand, only to nearly topple over. The only reason he didn't collapse again was because his shoulder met the nearest scrap mound instead. Whatever processes he could scrape together set to work on getting his inner workings back in some semblance of order. The ones he didn't allocate to that end were left to try and get an idea of what in the Pit had just happened.
One moment he was standing guard over Mikaela and Sam – Sam, who for the first time in Bumblebee's recollection was more distraught than he was, distraught and utterly furious – then there was a flare of horrible pain and every other type of sensory feedback. Next thing he knew he'd collapsed and Sam was…
Sam was gone.
The thought made him jump away from the trash heap holding him up and start scanning the immediate area again. This time, he couldn't blame the results on damaged hardware. In the background, one of the twins shouted or cursed – in surprise and alarm at his erratic behavior, he'd later learn – but he still didn't pay attention. Scan completed, he ran it again, then a third time but each time he couldn't… didn't… wouldn't accept the report. Even the most advanced disintegration weapons always left a trace, and yet he wasn't finding any. Even tuning into the higher phases, the ones that were filled with strange things and stifling energies on every planet except their own – he found nothing.
Despair threatened to bubble over, but the ache in his Spark was still an ache, not agony. The wound where the creator-bond to Optimus once was still flared raw, but the one to Sam was still intact. The relief almost sent him back to his knees, but there was too much else going on.
Someone or something had just tried to blast him apart at atomic level. Him and the humans both – no, it wouldn't have failed for the humans if that was the case, and the bond with Sam was fine. His mind dove through it and followed it… upwards. Astonishment mounted more and more as the link kept rising and rising and rising and…
Bumblebee's processor stalled when he reached the inexplicable conclusion: his charge and bond-brother was in fragging space. How in the…
A space bridge. It had to have been. The Fallen was definitely old enough to know of it.
Barely avoiding a glitch from the shock, he tried to remotely activate the quantum locator Mikaela had agreed to have installed instead of her left-most molar. The relief when he got a response was impossible to describe, but it was short-lived, because she, too, was in bloody orbit.
Inbound comms were coming from several different Autobots, but Bumblebee ignored them all with the single-mindedness of someone who'd lost everything within the span of a single hour, and was about to lose all odds of recovering the last thing that kept him going, kept him fighting for his life in the face of a broken spark bond. Battle protocols he'd never himself used started to be drawn up from scratch, dug up from memory of past lessons stored in the recesses of his spark. Disintegration never really worked on their kind, not when they were made of material that was by nature self-determined on all levels of the material plane. That much, at least, Primus had gotten right. But occasionally a race or other figured out a disintegration ray that could actually put a good enough effort that they felt it.
And yet there'd never been anyone who actually managed to get the concept to a level that could incapacitate them, however briefly. The Fallen must have done something to improve it. Bumblebee supposed he must have been doing something in the eons between his disappearance and the present.
The question would have been why, in the Pit, The Fallen would even bother sending that transmission to the world if he'd been able to do this all along. But the thought didn't even form in the face of the realization that if the bastard was old enough to be familiar with space bridges, then he was also more than old enough to be familiar with dematerialization. And that while it might not work on Cybertronians, it could be a great way to incapacitate Autobots with how low on Energon they all were. Or, rather, were supposed to be, as far as everyone knew.
The knowledge that the Energon problem had been solved failed to lift Bumblebee's spirits for the first time ever, because Sam and Mikaela had been kidnapped from right under his nose. That was what had just happened, Bumblebee thought with a flash of rage that he'd never felt for anyone, not even Megatron.
He paused in his battle software upgrade, then wiped the nascent code clean. He had a different, better option. While Protos – glad I don't have to call it something dumb like Transformium, Sam had said – could be affected by dematerializers, however briefly, Energon could not be destabilized against their will at all. Not unless another one of their kind mixed theirs in and tried their hardest for hours at a time, and only when they were locked in stasis. The substance was as much their lifeblood as it was a vessel of their will, and it worked against any attempt to alter their base makeup even without active application of Diffusion principles.
A martial art which the Autobot knew very, very well.
His spark gave a new pulse, deliberate and far-reaching for once. A third of his energon transmuted from fluid state to energy. It suffused his every particle, every bit of his armor and the protoform beneath. The leftover charge which escaped his body melded with one, final scan of the area. Skids and Mudflap lit up on his now stable HUD like bot-shaped flares. They were both behind him, standing – uncertain and freaked out by him suddenly glowing blue and shooting sparks everywhere, he'd later learn – but his focus had already been captured by something else. Something small, tiny really, which should have stood out on his sensors all along, but for some reason hadn't.
The yellow Autobot crouched and reached down at the rough concrete slab, next to where the Bag of tricks still lied. A simple manipulation of his palm's EM field produced enough of an electro-gravitic charge to lift the tiny Allspark shard from the unseemly dust and into the air.
For a fleeting moment, Bumblebee had the impulse to growl and destroy it out of resentment, but he pushed it aside with an ease that surprised him. Or perhaps it didn't surprise him at all, given that the idea that immediately followed was so much more mad.
The needle-sized piece of metal floated insultingly languid above the bot's palm. Sam had taken to always carrying it around after a month or so following Mission City. Originally he'd been planning to use it as a decoder for rebuilding the Cube from the data anchored in the subspace pockets tied to his neurons – something they were all still trying to figure out the intent behind, or had been before the past's day disaster happened. But Sam ultimately changed his mind. The reason had been one of the few things he ever refused to elaborate on. Something about "weird time shit." Those had been his exact words.
Later, when Orion brought it up while the three of them were having one of their shared Dreams (and the capital was always so important), Sam said that no, his reason and the way he phrased it had nothing to do with any webcomic.
Oh Primus… Metaphysical being or no, the star-shaped kid was just two years old and couldn't survive away from his parents! Unless he'd been swept away on the Astral plane (or some of the upper phases that always gave Bumblebee a processorache when he tuned into them while on Earth), Sam and Mikaela's insubstantial kid was probably with them in Space right now.
:Orion!:
There was no direct bond between Bumblebee and him, but they'd become quite adept at using their shared link with Sam to communicate. But Orion still couldn't or wouldn't speak normally, and the sounds, images and impressions relayed now were as far away from reassuring as they could possibly be. Flashes of disorientation, Sam collapsing and screaming, a bunch of drones of random size and make swarming them from all over. Orion would have probably relayed more, but their exchange was cut off abruptly.
Bumblebee's spark contracted as the bond link with Samuel clenched in pain. The kind of pain that preceded the death of the person on the other end. Bumblebee would know. He'd lived – barely –through that exact experience less than an hour before. Was still living through it now, and steadily losing the bandaid equivalent that Sam had applied to his broken link to Optimus to dull the suffering.
He stared, numbly, at the Allspark shard hovering above his palm.
It was hard to believe that everything from the failed disintegration to the present had happened in the span of a single minute. Bumblebee knew that he should probably think twice about what he was planning. Maybe he should accept the comm link from Jazz at least, since with Optimus' death – Bumblebee's spark clenched every time he thought about it – the saboteur was the only other bot still alive who was in on everything that had been happening on Earth. It would probably help soothe his likely frantic worry, since whatever Skids and Mudflap had told him couldn't have been very encouraging.
But he also knew that he was going to do what he was planning regardless, and second-guessing would only waste time that Sam might not even have.
So before Skids and Mudflap could even balk at what he was doing, Bumblebee jumped to his feet, braced himself, opened his chest hatch as wide as possible and drove the Cube shard straight into his spark chamber in a single move.
Optimus would have reprimanded and made him feel guilty for putting himself at risk without even having to raise his voice. Sam would have needed to put in more effort to make him regret it, given the insane stunts he'd pulled himself, but he'd have still managed it eventually. Especially since he was one of four people who knew that the Allspark had been corrupted and was more liable to turn them crazy and warped beyond help. But reaching escape velocity took a lot of power, and while Bumblebee had the Energon, he doubted it would leave enough to make a difference against the likes of The Fallen and whatever Nemesis knockoff was likely stationed in orbit once he did reach space.
And neither of those two was around anymore to tell him off, now were they?
The cube shard disintegrated and released an immense volume of information he could make no sense of. Then there was the pure, insubstantial Energon once it was past the forcefield and inside the star that was his life. It energized his spark beyond all conceivable limits, but even so the bot felt the malignant strains of will and intent that immediately tried to spread through it. He didn't really have much idea of how to counter it, but it never came down to it. Before he could even doubt the sanity of his despair-driven maneuver, the dark will uncovered something in his Spark, something he'd never known was there at all. Something unique and secret, a potential that had never been realized.
Power unlike anything Bumblebee had ever felt flooded through a backdoor to his soul. It eradicated the imperfection that the Allspark shard had carried. More than that, the power was accompanied by feeling and thought belonging to neither the shard nor himself. Complete surprise was the first thing the yellow autobot distinguished. Surprise that wasn't his own. The next moment was an eternity during which he felt as though he were being examined under a lens, with his every secret, big and small, laid bare. It almost became too much to cope with, but then everything cleared as if by someone undeniable will and his world turned calm, still and painless.
Beyond the backdoor was darkness. Darkness and one long, wide and bright channel of light, at the other end of which was a mind the size of a galactic arm.
"-. .-"
Seeing his would-be guest collapsing with a scream right as he materialized would have been enough of a shock on his own. The explosion of unclassified energy was the second shock in half as many seconds. Harry still managed to raise a shield in front of himself, which led to the third surprise of the past minute: there was no pressure. Some of the electric light did come to a half, but it only faded and flickered to nothing without putting any strain on the protego.
Letting it fade, he noted that Mikaela Banes and Leo Spitz seemed to be fine as well. For a definition of the term at least.
"Sam!" The woman knelt next to a suddenly still – too still – Samuel Witwicky and started to check his life signs manually. "Sam, talk to me! What's wrong?" Harry felt honestly terrible at the frantic worry there. It would have behooved him to step forward then, perhaps rush to check what had gone wrong with his intended guest. But he jerked in place when alarms suddenly blared in his head, alerts about the foreign energy flooding the ship's systems and scrambling code. Unknown symbols began to mix with Alteran runes all over the data network.
Silima was already scrubbing and replacing lost software, isolating the symbols for later study or at least pushing them aside as she worked on the essentials. But the precious seconds Harry spent forced to add his mind to the process, to push out the energy that accompanied the data, did their part in eliminating the possibility of him having the first word in what was rapidly becoming the disaster of all first contact situations in the history of ever.
He came back to himself to see Spitz no longer looking around while gasping something in Spanish. The newly-minted student was staring at him. There could have been a number of reasons for that, but the words that came out of the guy's mouth were not what he expected at all.
"Oh, mon dios!" He breathed out, but Harry doubted it was awe at the sight of him for some reason. "Uhm… hey foxy chick…" He said in a strangely detached voice.
"What?" She snapped, half-panicked and half angry, not even looking up from pressing her ear to Sam's chest.
His stare was somewhere between wild and vacant, but his voice was just as numb as before. "Those robots. They into Star Wars or something?"
Some TV show or film, most likely. Despite the situation, he made a note to search the Internet for it later as he took off in a quick stride. The room sensors were still offline, but he didn't need them to know that Witwicky wasn't doing well.
Mikaela Banes wasn't with her back to him, thankfully. She only had to lift her gaze to see him, but her glare made him falter in his step. Even stranger, her stare then switched into something like shock, then stunned surprise and, finally, incredulity.
That was as far as their interaction went, because their attention was arrested by strange and most definitely unwelcome chimes and metallic shearing sounds coming from up ahead. Harry looked past the three humans and couldn't prevent his eyes from going wide at the sight of the nearest crate of nanites moving under its own power. It was changing form like some sort if unholy puzzle. The sight was – alarmingly – mirrored by the restraining array he'd intended to trap the yellow robot in. Blue light and lightning coursed over its surface as it grew poor imitations of limbs and stumbled due to loss of balance.
His danger sense flaring, his eyes snapped back to the crate. Where it had once been a sealed container featuring the lowest of virtual intelligences, the magnetic clasp mechanism of the lid had somehow integrated the main body. Under three pairs of disbelieving eyes – and Witwicky didn't count, as he was insensate – the crate jumped in place and changed into something that might have looked impressive if Harry wasn't completely focused on the sight of two, malicious red eyes.
The danger sense went from code yellow to black in an instant. The rise of fear in both humans made it clear enough that they weren't responsible. "Get down!" Harry yelled as he lunged forward. His jump cleared fifteen feet and ended with a flip that carried him over the startled humans. He landed with his lightsaber already out and moving in an arc. The first swing deflected a plasma ball into the far wall, the second intercepted a beam from a second weapon that had formed on the other makeshift arm of the bizarre creature. Harry couldn't help the flash of outrage at the sight of the thing controlling his nanites. He deflected the next plasma blast straight back, but instead of the crate-bot exploding, the energy just got absorbed.
Of course, Harry internally snarled. Alteran nanites were specifically designed to absorb all type of energy. When a third plasma beam gun formed on the shoulder of the robot that looked like a lego gorilla. Harry wasn't worried, but instead of lasers the gun released a rapid-fire hail of bullets. He met the first one with his lightsaber blade easily enough, but the result was less fortunate than he expected. Instead of deflecting it, the blade only melted the bullet.
He hissed when the superheated trinium struck his shoulder and managed to eat through the metal nanoweave robe he was wearing, despite the enchantments on it. And when the woman he was protecting made a strangled sound of pain Harry decided that enough was enough. Protego. A shield of force formed in front of his outstretched hand. Its surface flickered when the attacks met it, but the strain was manageable. On the left side of the cargo hold, the restraining platform had come alive and was trying to tear itself from the floor, with very limited success. Since it didn't have any weapons out, Harry decided to ignore it in favor of the immediate threat.
Looking over his shoulder, he saw the young woman holding her hand against her bloody shoulder. Despite himself, Harry felt his respect for her rising a few notches. That was a painful wound and she'd barely screamed. And then she reached down to lift her long trouser leg, exposing a handgun sheathed around the ankle.
Well. He'd think twice about showing her his back next time.
Danger nudged his mind, so Harry's gaze snapped back to the mindless enemy, which had, of course, switched targets to the other three organics.
"Oh no you don't!" Not dropping the shield, he clamped a telekinetic hold on it and hurled it into the far wall with his mind.
Or, at least, that had been the original plan. Instead, he was forced to extend the shield in front of the others at the last moment when his attempt at telekinesis did absolutely nothing. "Merlin's balls!" What the hell kind of energy was that that it made them untouchable to telekinesis?
As if in response to his curse, the robot stretched its weird, blocky legs like a sumo wrestler and opened its crate latches on both sides. Spider-shaped bots spilled out even as the weapons fire continued. Extending a finger of his lightsaber hand, he tried to transfigure one into a dead rat (always evoked good memories of Pettigrew, that one) but it didn't work. The blue energy did flare on the surface briefly though. That confirmed one theory.
The robots had little resemblance to Alteran constructors, but they did give Harry a chance to check something he'd always forgotten to test properly. "Well," he said with grim amusement as his shield stayed strong. "I always wanted to test the energy absorption against a lightsaber." Spitz made an odd noise at the back of his throat, but Harry ignored him. He threw his blade forward and it passed through a gap he willed in his shield. It cut through three of the fifteen tech-bugs before they'd cleared even half of the 8 meter distance. Five more met a similar fate, and the others were rent to pieces during the saber's return journey.
Only for the annoyances to reform almost immediately, sans the nanites that had been melted to slag. "Right." So they were intelligent tech bugs. Good to know. "Of course! How could I possibly hope for anything less than the biggest of all first-contact clusterfucks?"
"Can't you just beam them into space?" Witwicky's girlfriend suddenly asked him. Glancing back, he was surprised to see her brandishing her gun one-handed – pretty steady too – in the direction of the crate-bot. She probably wasn't sure the bullets would go through the shield, but she looked determined not to leave Witwicky's side even if it failed. She was an impressive woman, he'd give her that.
"Not at the moment." He wasn't going to tell her that the energy surge from Witwicky had messed up his whole ship. Silima was still struggling to reactivate the essential systems. The silver lining was that the shield generator (which included the cloak),the sublight engine and hyperdrives had gotten through just fine, since they were especially well protected and shielded. Of course, the last two didn't matter much with the navigation systems messed up as they were.
The restraining platform thing (Harry shortened it to RPT for simplicity's sake) had evolved an arm out of one of the force-projection hula circles. And a force-based arm cleaver of some sort. But it was still stuck in place and harmless, despite its huge size.
The first spider-bot had just made it within a foot of the shield. That was his cue, Harry supposed. With a slight push of the hand, the force field rammed forward, pushing along all the bugs. With a mental switch, he got the field to wrap around them and the crate-bot in one, large bubble.
After a moment of deliberation, he opened a momentary gap in the field and sent the strongest cutting curse he could at the crate-bot. Instead of slicing it in half, like it had done every single time to a fully evolved sheet of Vorlon armor, it didn't even leave a scratch. So that confirmed that direct effect spells and powers didn't latch onto them for some reason.
Not showing openly how much that rattled him, he closed his lightsaber and clipped it to his belt. Then he used his now free hand to throw a fireball. He dropped the field but brought another up around the creatures immediately and the resulting explosion. The sound and sight of a fiery eruption was like a balm on his heart. He was just sad that he'd had to keep it sealed, so no wave of hot air wafted over him and his company. It kind of dulled the exhilaration really.
Once the flames died along with the oxygen, he was satisfied to see that the temperature had most definitely lefts molten parts around the edges. He was good with fire. Also, that told him that effects summoned through magic or whatever else were still fair game.
For a moment, Harry considered just holding the things there and running more tests, but Banes was bleeding pretty badly and Witwicky's life force was all over the place. He didn't want him to cause another one of those energy fields before he could get him into a shielded area.
So, brow furrowing, he clenched his extended, open hand into a fist. The force sphere managed to crush all the things together into a tighter ball, but it was mostly because of the fluid characteristics of the nanites. He was only glad they needed to be clumped together in large numbers in order to store any sort of AI. He did not relish the thoughts of little drops and puddles of devil nanites spreading through his ship.
Good. While he couldn't just crush the things, at least it was because Alteran technology was just that tough this time, instead of some inexplicable energy with inherent shielding properties.
That was when the RPT finally managed to pull itself from the floor with a metallic groan.
Harry dropped the shield he was holding around himself and the others, reached for the newborn forcefield-loving robotic beast with his other arm, wrapped it in its own forcefield (he had to stretch his will a bit, due to its sheer size) and threw it through the air until it crashed into the crate-cube / nanite monstrosity. Finally he had all threats contained in the same spot, which meant his left hand was free once more. He already knew what he was going to do.
Lifting his hand to shoulder level, palm-up, he called a very powerful flame in the space above it. The strongest he knew.
This was the biggest and most bizarre thing he'd encountered while researching the strange behavior of magic, and more specifically its behavior away from his planet of origin: Fiendfyre was absurdly, hilariously easy to control in space.
Alas, his plan would not bear fruit. The foreign energy animating what used to be his technology flared like one, single whole and rushed out of the restraining shield like a sole, focused bolt of lightning. The sound of a distant storm echoed around the hold. He snuffed the fiendfyre and threw a forcefield in front of himself and the humans by instinct, only to be stunned when two rifts in space opened on both side of it – no, a single space-time anomaly. Like a tunnel with only the opposite ends. The energy flew through it like one, single, thick arc of bright blue and white light.
It made him whirl around instead of just craning his neck this time, though he didn't cancel the shield, however inadequate. The sight that met him was that of Spitz and Banes shying away from Samuel Witwicky. He was still on his back, but his eyes were half-open, and despite the pain all over his face, the sweat pouring off it, he was absorbing the energy through his outstretched hand.
Harry stared, letting the protego fade along with the attention he'd been devoting to it. If this didn't confirm Witwicky was a different race altogether, nothing would. All that remained was to discover a completely unique internal anatomy and physiology and the conclusion would be irrefutable.
After about six seconds, the last of the energy was syphoned off and the space-time rift closed as well. Harry almost turned around to watch the view accompanying the noises of dead metal crashing into a useless heap. But Witwicky pressed the same hand to the floor and set off different sort of alert in his head. An alert, not an alarm. The energy that had proven slightly more resilient than expected against Silima's purging protocols began to flow back through the ship's systems, along with the malignant code. Flow back and leave the circuits altogether, traveling through the wall, floor and ceiling plating and converging on the palm drawing it back to the source.
On the one hand, Harry was pleased since it meant the Marauder would be back online fully in minutes instead of the hour he'd have had to spend helping the purge along. On the other hand, it meant that he wouldn't have any of that code and energy to study later.
At least he still had the nanites from the relay.
More worrisome was the advanced technopathy Witwicky was showing. He didn't want to think about the implications of the energy allowing him to bypass the DNA lock on Alteran systems, but he couldn't discount the possibility of it given what had just happened. He and him were going to have words.
Unfortunately, his thoughts were derailed right after he reached his internal resolution. Once Witwicky finished reclaiming the last of the energy, he gave him a blank look of – what the hell? – exasperated recognition and fell into a dead faint a second time.
"Sam!" The woman shouted, crawling forward on her knees again. "Dammit, Sam, this is the worst possible time!"
Oh bloody hell!
A long jump brought him straight to the guy's side, where he dropped to a knee and laid his hand on his forehead, the other on his chest.
"No! You stay back!" He only stopped because he heard the gun being cocked. Looking up, he glanced at her, then at the barrel of the weapon inches from his face. Really? "I'm only going to make sure he's fine." Mentally keeping the trigger inert, he grabbed her wrist and raised an eyebrow, being more than satisfied when she yelped and dropped the white rabbit she was suddenly holding by the back legs. "Like this." His skin glowed gold with the power of Alteran healing, and then so did hers. Since the makeshift bullet had come out the other side of her shoulder, he only had to heal the damage, which was easily accomplished.
Mikaela gasped and scooted away when he finally let go. Spitz shrieked as he finally gave in to his second panic attack of the day, but he was speaking Spanish so Harry tuned him out. The girl, though, instead of the bouncing bunny was staring at him with that weird shock / recognition mix that was her initial reaction upon seeing him. "I'm just making sure your boyfriend's fine," he told her.
And proceeded to do just that.
Closing his eyes, he mentally dove into his unexpected patient's biological systems. Or tried. He barely had time to notice the bizarre internal makeup – heart in the middle of the chest, both lungs with full lobe sets but the third ones both being smaller – before his impression shifted to a fully visual image of outer space with a star right in front of him. Blue star with golden solar winds and a corona of shifting white energy tendrils not unlike those of an ascended being.
In the Marauder's cargo hold, Harry James Potter was tossed away from Samuel James Witwicky by a burst of electricity supplemented by a wave of force. He crashed on his back with a grunt, several feet away. "Ack! What the bloody… grrmph!" Grunting, he pushed himself from his back to the side, then pulled himself to his knees as the aftershocks faded.
That confirmed the whole different race bit, if nothing else.
Shaking his head, he threw Witwicky a glare but looked up when his girlfriend finally asked the million dollar question. "Who are you? And where are we?" Well, questions.
With a deep sigh – really, the Potter luck was in full swing, couldn't this day end with something other than the disaster of all first-contact situations? – he climbed to his feet and answered. "My name is Harry James Potter." Spitz paused in his panic attack to cry out to his God and start a totally new one. "And you're currently aboard my scout frigate known as the Marauder."
To keep with the theme of her reactions thus far, Mikaela Banes threw her eyes upwards and groaned in something half-way between despair and frustration. The glower she sent him next and the accompanying question was what really threw him for a loop though. "Lift up your fringe."
Harry stared at her.
She stared right back.
Then he slowly, with mounting disbelief he hoped didn't show on his face, did as she asked, revealing the scar he'd never bothered removing.
"Unbelievable." She said flatly, then looked down at her unconscious boyfriend with something equal parts disbelief and annoyance. "Damn you, Sam! 'Weird time shit' does NOT cover this!"
Under circumstances even remotely subject to common sense – because Harry Potter knew better by now than to consider anything about that situation normal – that would have been the perfect opening for a long overdue discussion. But the Potter luck proved to have not run its full course just yet. So instead of getting answers to such questions as, say, How the hell do you know of me, his attention was instead demanded by the Marauder's sensor suite.
The sensor suite that had just come back online at last, and detected a flaming meteor on a collision course with the ship despite it being fully cloaked still.
Flaming meteor located just a mile away and traveling, against all laws of common sense, upwards from the planet below at absurd speeds.
There was barely any time to form a thought by the time the object collided with the shield.