Disclaimer: All characters, names, settings etc belong to their respective copyright holders, only Night Wolf and a few other things are of my own creation (but inspired from many things under copyright, which aren't mine).
Chapter 03
Jack blinked.
Harry wondered if he'd need to stun them.
"Say what now? Why get rid of this we didn't do any of this."
"Uh Jack…We kind of did, Ba'al is our fault and we did come here, in fact if we didn't."
"Daniel you remember the last time I told you to point out my faults in front of the enemy?"
"No."
"Exactly."
"Prometheus has acknowledged message, but they're refusing to manoeuvre towards us. Their commander wants a word."
Jack grinned. Colonel Rogers ignored him.
"See Pendergast will sort it out."
"Sir maybe we should just let them take us to this base, we wouldn't just let some people land their ship on our planet." Carter asked reasonably.
Jack turned in his seat the still lack of gravity still feeling weird.
"Carter don't you want to get Prometheus down on Earth and fix it?"
"Assuming they have the facilities sir."
"There've been…" Jack started to count off ships on his hand.
"Four ships in the battle and then the Djukbinj that arrived just a little time ago, so five ships." Daniel thought slowly as he sounded out the final ship's name from the manner in which Captain Potter had stated it.
"Thank you Daniel."
"All larger than Prometheus."
"And Teal'c." Jack muttered.
"That doesn't mean sir that they have the facilities for our ship. Plus have you seen or heard any Americans?" She muttered the last word.
"Maybe the US forgot to pay their space taxes." Jack turned his attention to the front of the bridge as the middle of the three screens switched from a forward view to an image of Pendergast sitting in Prometheus's bridge with more than a little smoke around it.
"Colonel Pendergast, I have orders from my superiors to escort your ship to a UNIT Research Base away from Earth." There was a pause as Pendergast seemed to be considering it.
"I can't Colonel, literally. Our hyperdrive is I think the technical term is completely fried."
"What happened, the Ancient device shorted out but I didn't register any major problems with the hyperdrive, or the window generators." Lt Col Carter said leaning forward in her seat, Harry adjusted the field of vision so she wouldn't need to lean so far as to be able to be seen by Pendergast.
"No Colonel, however we took some damage from the Goa'uld, their fire took out some of the hyperdrive systems and we cannibalise the rest to get most of our defensive and offensive systems online."
"Oh…then we will need to land on a Earth, we'll need to do a full power down and see how badly everything's been damaged." She turned from the screen to Colonel Rogers.
"Sorry Colonel Carter. Colonel Pendergast your ship still has main engines running?" He direct the question forward and back to Harry.
"Just a moment…" Harry said as the screen on the left of the three forward screens changed from sensors around the ship to a silhouette of the Prometheus. "Just getting it up now, we're still registering full power flow to their engines, they appear to have fully functioning engines capable of maintaining extended operations."
"Yes Colonel, while I am certain that I could there is no planet within range using sub-light engines." Pendergast outlined calmly.
"Harry send them the rendezvous coordinates. Colonel make your way for those coordinates, you won't be needing your hyperspace window generators." Colonel Rogers stated and then looked at Pendergast. "Understand our position Colonel, you've just arrived from another universe, and you brought accidentally" Rogers made sure he emphasized that, he was sure he could hear Diplomacy some distance behind him muttering. "Three enemy craft into Earth's solar system, a couple of hundred million kilometers from Earth. How would you react?" Colonel Chris Rogers hoped linguistics were correct in their assumptions based on the American-centric manner of the Prometheus' crew and their guests that they hadn't had any huge conact situations involving massively revelations on Earth.
"Very well Colonel though General O'Neill has final say on this decision."
Jack looked around.
"Sir?"
"Jack?" Daniel said in a warning tone.
"Fine then we'll go." He said raising his hands and looking to the ceiling, which didn't reveal anything enlightening.
"Harry when're we getting gravity back? I don't want to have to go through hyperspace without some semblance of gravity, not after the last time."
Harry chuckled to himself, it hadn't been that bad for some of the crew who got their less than gravity legs…or had wings to help stabilize themselves.
"Engines and power maintenance are still working out some kinks, we took a pretty hard beating in the final assault sir." Harry said as he looked through the relevant information that was presented to him and put it up on two of the three main screens.
Samantha Carter blinked, watching the streams of information scroll along the screens.
"Mean anything to you Carter?"
"Not as much as I'd like sir."
"We can take forward weapons out of commission, those will need a full check over and parts replaced. Keep energy canons primed just in case. Katrina check with resolute, Indefatigable and Willandra then recall Thylacine squadron. We can still take on our squadron Harry?"
"Uh…yes sir."
"If you can, can we head back to the Prometheus?" Jack O'Neill queried. Harry looked at them.
"Colonel?"
"Well Harry can we?"
"No, we took damage to the bays holding the Platypuses, there's sealant in there holding back vacuum and whatever other damage."
"Teleporters?" Jack asked vaguely.
"Nope, after that battle we had our jammers up past the limit they'll take a while to power down to safe levels, not safe to put anything organic through matter transmission until then." Harry stated.
"You're stuck with us for the duration General." Colonel Rogers met General O'Neill's expression with a slight smile.
"How long is the 'duration'? How long will it take to this 'research base'?" Daniel asked politely.
"50 hours give or take five or so."
"Two and a half days." Jack said immediately.
"Yeah. Give or take." Harry said simply.
"What's the status on the Thylacines, I'm not seeing a full squad Harry." Rogers said glancing at the main displays.
Harry nodded to himself as looked at the information and updates flowing in.
"We've got two on tow, they'll be docking shortly."
"What sort of damage?"
"Minor engines and a cracked support, they went safe, there's a lot of debris out there sir, just in case."
"Good."
"Sir, sensor analysis suggest we set up a beacon for Prometheus so they can lock onto us during our journey, just in case. We don't want to loose them."
"No Harry, I don't think we should test that out with them. Do what they need to, have them work with diplomacy to get it all working. Just make sure it's specific I don't want another battle on our hands."
"Sir."
Jack leant back in the seat and waited, watching the officers…he corrected himself personnel, some of these guys didn't appear to have a rank and watched them work. It was just like being on Prometheus except on Prometheus he could have gone down the corridor, into the elevator and got himself a coffee and returned.
Here though he couldn't even look out the window, what the hell was that about?
Carter would probably know, but she was still muckin' around with the computer screen they were near, he wondered if that was such a good idea letting Carter near the thing, but Captain Potter and the Colonel didn't seem to be bothered by her.
He turned and looked to Daniel, who seemed in one of his 'thoughtful' moods, he'd probably have to slap him out of it if he stayed like that for much longer.
Teal'c…T looked, like Teal'c.
And he…he felt…like he was putting on weight.
"Is it just me or is anyone else feeling like they've had a big lunch and it's just now settling down?" He said aloud to any and everyone.
"No General." Harry smiled to himself. "Captain we've got gravity back, though power management say they're going to keep it low till we're underway. Thylacines are all in and locked down, just awaiting…" He trailed off, the Prometheus had arrived and looking at the visual readings it had taken a bit of a beating, though all its windows appeared in tact. Harry didn't get that, well he knew there was some underlying need psychological need for a window, especially for people coming from ingrained military structures or anything that dealt with manoeuvring in 3D space but the physics of it just didn't work out, a window seriously compromised structural integrity on anything bigger than the platypuses which like the Thylacines had a specially constructed with specific charms, spells and sorcery throughout the process to make the clear substance practically indestructible, though they could only be worked over small to mid-sized things.
Harry wondered whether the designer had considered what sort of effect a high velocity ballistic weapon would do to the window on the ship deprived of any energy shielding, especially on such a visible target…something probably left to their strategists and designers.
"Prometheus is signalling their receipt of our lock on signal they're ready to depart…though they sound unsure of exactly what and how sir." Foster said from across the bridge.
Jack looked at Carter who seemed ready to burst to ask about the 'jump gate'.
"Go on Carter before it gnaws at you any further." He said in a low, amused voice as he crossed his arms waiting and watching, and enjoying the gravity they now had.
"Captain, Colonel…what exactly is the jump gate?"
Jack smiled, Carter was being surprisingly restrained, though peripherally he noticed Danny and Teal'c had perked up out of their…whatever they were doing at Carter's questions, which he expected was going to be 'how, what, where, and probably an extra does of how and 'do you have plans I can go over?'.
"Harry put it up." Colonel Rogers said "Lets get going, tell Prometheus to follow us in."
"Follow 'us' into what…oh…" Jack asked Carter and the others as the forward screens changed to show one large image of…four large long pylons about the length of Prometheus arranged to form a large square sorta circle in space above Jupiter.
"What you were expecting Carter?"
"Well we can rule out that this is something like a stargate." Daniel leaned over to them.
"It does appear different, in every way." Teal'c added, though didn't seem to agree.
"Activate jumpgate sequence." Colonel Rogers stated.
"Jumpgate ready, activating."
Carter watched as energy pulses pulsed in time along all four of the pylons, jumping the gap at the end and joining in the middle opening…
"Oh my…it's a wormhole…a wormhole generator…"
"Not quite no." Harry idly commented.
"Signal to Prometheus to follow our vectors into hyperspace through the jumpgate." Rogers ordered as they moved toward the middle of the jumpgate.
Carter was staring at the main screens in wonder.
Then they reached the centre and transitioned into…red…red and black.
"What…what the…" She turned and looked at Captain Potter.
"Hyperspace." He said at her questioned look. "Prometheus is transitioning to hyperspace." The forward screens divided back displaying data and sensor information with only the middle screen showing a view of Prometheus which had just emerged from the jump-point. "Jump-point closed."
"Confirm with Prometheus that they have a lock on our beacon."
"Lock on confirmed with Prometheus."
"Good, set course for Research Base One."
Harry nodded to himself as the various sensors registered that Prometheus was following beside them on their course towards Night Wolf Research Base.
Harry called up the diplomacy requesting some people up to look after their guests, Rhonda Munro plus some others to come and get them. He was pretty sure that Lt Colonel Carter wouldn't mind sitting on the bridge for half a dozen more hours, but he could see General O'Neill seemingly dropping into neutral state, even more so than Teal'c who seemed content.
A moment later Rhonda Munro arrive some others waiting in the corridor outside the bridge.
"Sorcerer Potter?" She said walking over to him, Harry noticed Daniel Jackson look up from his thoughts
Harry nodded to her as he pushed himself out of his chair to speak against the back of the bridge.
"Munro. Standard diplomacy, give em quarters, answer questions you know."
"Any limitations?" She asked immediately. Harry looked back at Lt Col Carter.
"I think lay off the sorcery…but gage their experiences."
"You think they might not handle it?" She asked curiously.
"What do you think?"
"Hard to say, but I agree with you anything else?"
Harry shrugged. "Tell em I'll have dinner with them to answer any questions that you and your team don't want to answer."
"How much company?" Which Harry took to mean if they want to have a look around how many to go with them…and armed or un-armed.
"Your discretion, maybe secluded until you work it out."
"Sorcerer." She nodded an end to their conversation and a moment later walked out with the quartet.
"Harry I thought I ordered you to look after our extra-universal guests?" Colonel Rogers asked lightly a short while after the bridge had lost their four extras.
Harry stared innocently ahead as the Colonel turned around to look at him.
"Sir…then we got attacked and we're still running with damage…" The captain stared at him an amused expression on his face. "I'm eating with them this evening to explain anything, plus Diplomacy should get the occasional people who are as curious as we are and not bent on killing us or mass universal genocide."
"Fine Harry I agree. How's Prometheus doing with hyperspace?"
"They haven't reported anything to us, we've got a constant check on the beacon, just a steam of information back an forth minute by minute to make sure everything is good a sensor feed as well down the same stream, just in case their sensors don't read the same."
"Good."
--//
Jack leaned back on a quite comfortable chair and watched the screen, he and Teal'c had been watching after a tour of some of the ship, Daniel and Carter had been off, asking questions, finding out stuff.
They had two and a bit days to do that.
Right now they were kicking back watching some videos.
The red and blacky kinda thing that had been showing the outside of the ship had got boring pretty quick.
Jack turned around as Daniel and Carter walked in, Daniel looking through a handheld computer and Carter had a laptop in her hands.
"I've set up a link with Prometheus so I can go over out sensors, the diplomacy team gave me this so I didn't have to sit with them, took us a while to get all the linkages and thoroughfare data set up."
"Carter I only understood half of that."
"I've got a computer so I can look through Prometheus's computer."
"See I understood that."
"Did you uncover the differences between out universe and this one Daniel Jackson?"
"Huh…I'm beginning to."
"Well spill Danny." Jack rose from the chair and moved to sit at the small round table that they had. The room was between their quarters, he was sharing with Teal'c while Carter was in with Danny and this middle room was between. No kitchen and no window, though a pretty big TV.
Daniel nodded and spent a few moments fiddling with the hand held computer before taking the remote off of Jack and switching it.
"Okay…where should I start?" He asked looking around the table. Sam, Jack and Teal'c looked back at him.
"What's with the Aussies being such a…why do they have a whole bunch of space ships?" Jack said after a moment, Daniel smiled.
"That's what I asked, took me a while to get down to it, short answer is Skylab."
"Skylab?" Jack repeated. Teal'c raised an eyebrow in equal query.
"Skylab was NASA's first space station built in the 1970s, it was de-orbited in the late 70s, a few bits broke up, hit Australian soil."
"Yeah…that's what happened in our universe." Daniel started.
"Well what happened here?"
"It was quite a bit larger, I guess owing to various technological or economic leaps. Anyway…when it de-orbited, it hit Australia with a bit more than a few fragments in our universe."
"I'm guessing they weren't happy?"
"No…but that's sort of the middle of the story." Daniel added.
"What's the start then Daniel?"
"This Earth…and this universe seems to have a lot more aliens than ours, and Earth seems to be of some value…or at least they've had more alien visits…and they got a manned mission to Mars in the 1970s."
Jack stared at Daniel, Earth to Mars and back was still a dream for NASA, despite the SGC with their ship/s they still wanted to get there under their own steam.
"So the Australians had a working space program in the 70s?"
"No actually Jack that was the British."
Jack looked to Carter who shrugged.
"It was as surprising for me sir, though I only heard bits of it, I was working with another group from Daniel."
"So the British got to Mars in the 70s…then what?"
"Well…there's a lot of 'incursions' aliens who've tried to invade Earth, seems there's no actual start they're always finding more evidence of it. But what seemed to initiate it was a battle in Shoreditch in London in 1963."
"An alien battle in London."
"They were time travellers."
"Time Travellers?!" Jack exclaimed.
"Well we do know its possible sir."
"With a stargate and some wacky solar flare shenanigans. Why did they go to Earth '63? See Kennedy get shot?"
"Well…here's a picture of some of the destruction." Daniel flicked a button and on the wall showed a building where what might have been doors had been blown clean away, there were patches on the ground where black marks had been burnt onto it."
"Supposedly there were three forces, two looking for another alien's device, this alien was also a time traveller, he'd put this thing called 'a remote stellar manipulator' on Earth." Daniel finished looking at Sam.
"Carter, what's a…"
"Remote stellar manipulator." Daniel supplied at Jack's questioning look.
"Well…stellar is stars…so a device that manipulates stars? That's impossible."
"Did you not manipulate a star when you used a stargate connected to a black hold Col Carter?"
"Yes but…that was…actually that's a good point Teal'c."
Jack grinned and then wished he'd thought of that question to put to Carter.
"So is that where all this starts where you know we split…?" Jack made some odd motion with his hands.
"No, sir, I don't think this universe is like any other parallel universe we've encountered before with the quantum mirror."
"So continuing on, from this 'Shoreditch Incident', which enacted the used the 'Intrusion Counter Measures Group' to coordinate the assault that occurred a few years later UNIT was set up. The United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, which as far as I can tell is sort of like the SGC…only with most of the world operating in some capacity."
"Even us?"
"Well…" Daniel trailed off.
"Daniel."
"Yes Jack?"
"What is it?"
"The US is a bit…proprietary…"
"Which means?"
"They're not a big part of UNIT and prefer to manage things themselves, they also refused to be a part of UNIT's other activities which extend to space travel and ships, which because the US won't be a part of don't know about."
Jack nodded.
"So Britain and Australia entered into an agreement in the late 80s and Australia's now got the biggest shipyard." Carter finished. "Bit of a turn around from our universe isn't it? From what they showed us it puts Area 51 to shame."
Jack listened as Daniel detailed the various things that happened in the 70s that he'd managed to read up on over the past few hours and wondered when they'd be going for some food.
--//
Jack leaned back in his chair, satisfied, that had been one good steak.
What made it even better was that they weren't sitting in a bar and grill somewhere outside of Cheyenne Mountain, but on a space ship, in an alternate universe heading towards a planet somewhere through some sort of space that he didn't really understand. But none of that really mattered, because it was a good steak, no beer though.
"So I guess you have questions that diplomacy didn't answer." Harry said leaning back and looking around at the four people who he'd just had an evening meal with.
He hoped that they didn't ask something complicated to explain, or that needed diagrams.
"How does…?" Both General O'Neill and Lt Col Carter said at the same time.
"Sorry sir."
"No Carter go ahead, I can wait."
"Sir?" She left the question hanging.
"Fine. What's with the red space thing." He said waving his hands around.
"That was sort of what I wanted to know, how does this hyperspace differ from other forms of interstellar travel?"
Harry nodded, of course he'd get asked this one.
"Do you want a simple and easy to understand answer or one where I need to draw diagrams and pictographs?"
"Simple." Jack and Daniel said together.
"Right, just a moment." Harry said pushing himself out of his seat and walking over to where there was some fruit.
When he returned he was holding a knife and an orange.
Samantha Carter eyed the orange curiously.
"So, just to set this straight, your ship uses some sort of engines that generate a hyperspace window allowing your ship to achieve intersteallar flight without all that mucking around with relativity?"
"Yes." Carter beamed. "But how did you know that our ship…you scanned the Prometheus."
"Yes and we compared your engines against ours and what we've seen before."
"This ship has window generators, how is that possible, the variations between this universe and ours even accounting for the similarities the differences between should remove certain styles of tech…"
"Carter!" General O'Neill exclaimed.
"Sorry sir."
"But it is a good question Jack."
"Indeed."
"Certain areas on Earth are subject to massive temporal and dimensional rifts through which technology has been falling sideways through time and through space for…well a while when you get into time travel it's all really subjective don't you find?"
"We find? Carter?"
"You've had a lot of experience with time travel?" Samantha Carter looked like she wanted to interrogate Harry Potter.
Harry nodded with a knowing smile. "Yes, you could say we have more than our fair share of time travellers who range from the megalomaniacs right through the annoying manipulative and condescending."
"Oh yeah, been there." Teal'c raised an eyebrow at O'Neill's comment.
"Moving back to your original question. Hyperspace using a window generator is the tip of the iceberg." Harry said letting the question hang, he'd had both the detailed simple explanation and the complicated one of how it all worked. He preferred the simple detailed one.
Samantha Carter had a wondering look on her face.
"Ok, think of the orange as space." Harry said holding up the orange.
"You can travel through space but there was still going to be things you have to avoid and places you can't go."
"This is like your stargate explanation Carter." Jack O'Neill grinned.
Harry mimicked Teal'c expression and filed 'stargate' away for another question later.
"So when you use the window generators…" He peeled away the rind. "You're skirting the edges between normal space and hyperspace. Ever looked when you're travelling through hyperspace?" Harry shook his head with a chuckle. "Forgot your ship has windows. What can you see?"
"Streaks of blue, white and stars…oh…" Daniel answered.
"Right, so with the window generators you cut down some of the space you're travelling, it's still there and you still have a lot of sense of where you are in relation to real space and everything, switch off your hyperspace engines and you drop back into real space right?"
Carter nodded.
"They also take a huge amount of power in comparison to regular what you call 'sub-light' engines. Which is a bit of a misnomer, because the window generators aren't really light speed engines, but anyways…"
Harry briefly had a flash of amusement the first time he'd been present when some new Night Wolf recruits were told about magic and spaceships. A lot of them had an easier time understanding spaceships than magic, and Harry was assured in his belief that these people with the possible exception of Dr Jackson would be the same.
"So what's the red and black space?"
"That General O'Neill is hyperspace, in actuality. You travel using regular engines, cover more distance," Harry said as he finished peeling a section of the orange. "So you've got hyperspace, then what your ship skirts across, using its window generators, and regulars normal space."
"So what's the draw backs?" Harry looked over to General O'Neill. "If you're ship has three types of engines."
"Thank you sir…that's actually a good question."
"I try Carter."
"Well…the jump engines and jumpgates aren't any use for exploring, you need jumpgates or precise coordinates to lock onto to navigate your way through hyperspace. Once you're in you can only get out with a jumpgate or jumpengines. In order to pierce the gap between normal space and hyperspace you need a brief amount of energy and a particular element to catalyse it." Harry said quickly.
"So a few drawbacks then."
"The benefits are though less of a constant power drain on the hyperspace window generators, therefore less wear and tear on their component parts as well as power generation. It's also quicker and more direct."
"And with a jumpgate presumedly at our destination and one near Earth ships without 'jump engines' can go the distance without any interstellar engines." Carter asked more to herself. Harry nodded.
They were silenced for a moment as Harry peeled the remainder of the orange.
"About these alien invasions…"
Harry sighed and looked around for someone, anyone from diplomacy.
--//
This chapter was going to go on for all of their journey to the base but I thought I'd stop it here and leave the rest and landing for the next chapter.
