Harry looked at his current fleet of ships. Each one was 'painted' with a substance that could change between vantablack and a marble white that reflected light back at exactly one angle, making the white whiter than anything in the universe save a family of beetles where the idea for the white had come from. Because of the formatting of the white paint, it caused a weird visual of the ship where only the area exactly in front of the person was visible to a person looking at it, anything that was a degree off faded from their view. Harry had set some people to thinking up other uses for the paint.
They were all mounted together on the temporary command/hospital ship design, two three point isotoxal stars with a pillar extending upwards. Each of the seven Sapir class ships were docked to the points of the stars with the seventh in the center of the hull. The seven Mage class ships were mounted on the top of the hull on opposite side of where the Mage classes were docked while the seventh ship was docked to the hull in front of the command bulb atop the hull.
The symbol of the Empire, the Deathly Hallows stained each ship in Red, Green, and Blue, the Wand in red, the stone green, the cloak in blue though when all were connected, they did so that the ships' name and the symbol were hidden or shutters covered the Modified Elder Futhark runes, written in such a way it took Starfleet's Universal Translators over four hours to discern it from the full alphabet and a nine thousand word story. A conversation in Elder Futhark with a Vulcan using a UT had had to listen for six hours before a rudimentary translation matrix had been done. Harry had been disappointed. He had wanted it to take longer.
The ships were hidden in a framework Hank had design on a whim as a student at the Academy, a folding frame that could be used as a portable spacedock. It had had flaws so it had never been pressed into service but as a stationary unit, they had cast a fidelius on it then parked the ship in it with its stationkeeping force until it was ready for service.
Harry turned off the screen that showed him the interior of the spacedock and smiled at the twins as they held up the buildings they had made. They were definitely quite Vulcan. Less than three years old and they had built a model castle that was exactly to scale of the castle they lived in.
He pulled them into his lap and smiled. "How about some ice cream?"
They nodded and Rochelle lisped, "Thlimmies?"
Harry wondered what she meant by that but waited for them to stand then took their hands and led them down to the kitchens.
They waved at the house-elves working there. Darby immediately sidled over and Harry told her, "A tin roof sundae for us to share."
"Thlimmies!" Rochelle insisted.
"Right away."
When she returned with the sundae, Harry realized what thlimmies were. Nonpareils. The sundae was covered with peanut comfits. He wondered why she wanted more peanuts on the ice cream but didn't say anything as he helped the twins onto stools then sat across from them at the chef's table.
T'pau settled under the table and Harry said, "Don't feed her peanuts," to Soran. "Sehlats are carnivores, not omnivores."
"Whazat?" Soran asked.
"Carnivores eat only meat," he simplified, not wanting to discuss how some carnivores ate plant matter for various reasons. "Omnivores, like you and I, eat meat and plant matter. Like celery." Though to cater to vulcan sensibilities, the twins ate a carefully balanced meal with transfigured plant matter to meat so if they elected to adhere to their Vulcan background they wouldn't have the memory of real meat.
"Tacos?" Rochelle asked.
"Tacos are an omnivorous food."
"Dinner tacos?" she asked hopefully.
He smiled. "I don't decide dinner, Darby does," he lied.
"Tacos!" she said, turning to Darby. She looked to Harry who shrugged.
"Tacos," Darby confirmed.
Both children cheered.
With the sundae finished, he sent them back to their room with T'pau, followed by one of the house-elves who was charged with watching their every step—there were four with the duty, two for each 12-hour shift.
Harry turned to Darby. "Thlimmies?"
"Yes? You want some, Sire?"
"That's what they're called? That's not her lisp?"
"No. That's the item. Carob covered peanuts, Sire."
Harry rolled his eyes. "Okay. Progress…," he muttered as he walked away. The house-elves giggled at his statement then went back to preparing the meal for the canteen for the various others employed in the castle.
Harry studied the progress of the various projects.
The lightsaber idea was still in its infancy. That was fanciful and mostly pointless. He had allocated only two researchers and minimal money.
The Jumpgate program was in the primary tests stage: the floo on Vulcan was receiving its items but there were transmission issues. The fruit sent had been flash frozen during the trip and shattered on arrival. Or possibly exploded. There were disagreements on just what happened and the memory hadn't arrived yet for Harry to review. The video had been from one bad angle. Harry had pointed out their testing room should have full holo-visuals. It was being refitted.
The Fleet prototypes were complete while the infrastructure was building more infrastructure.
The Voltron project was, annoyingly, Harry found, ahead of schedule. The House-elves and goblins in the fleet had begun working in earnest on seven of the Griffin ships that would then be used to figure out how to make them combine into one massive humanoid bipedal—tank, Harry decided. He couldn't remember the term the show used and didn't care to watch it again. Once when it had aired had been enough.
The language program was going to slowly work, he hoped. Having his people switch from English as their primary language to Elder Futhark was going to take a century or so, he was sure. But most people liked the idea though English would remain the official language of the schools.
He made a note to have one of the new Universal Translators that used bio-neural gel packs instead of crystalline based circuitry to test it around magic. They had determined that the failure points in Federation technology was the crystals. He wanted to find out of the prototype gel packs could be used safely. If they could, Harry hoped they could utilize them in their magitek computers. He tagged that to forward to the Vulcan that acted as his Quartermaster out of their 'embassy' in France.
A chime sounded and he looked up to see Commandant Campbell. "Morning, Commodore. We arrested some smugglers who were using the station to transfer Orion slave girls."
Harry blinked. "What's their criminal record like?"
"Not their first offense as slavers."
Harry put his parchment down and looked at the ceiling. "Do you feel comfortable spacing them?"
Campbell blinked, about to say something then shook his head. "No-not particularly." The Federation had no death sentence for criminals.
"Are they wanted by any other government?" Harry asked.
Campbell turned away and searched their names in the criminal database again, this time looking for non-Federation charges.
"They're wanted by the Andorians for weapons smuggling." Harry shook his head. They were Federation. "The Romulans for stealing a shipment of stembolts." Harry raised an eyebrow. One had to transfer a billion or so at a time to make any sort of profit. "Ahh, the Klingons want them for kidnapping children."
Harry grinned and Campbell shivered at the manic glee in the young man's cold, cold eyes. "Contact the Klingon Ambassador to Earth. Let him know we have them. Then tell the slavers we've informed the Klingons." Harry started to end the transmission then remembered. "Oh, Happy birthday. You're my favorite number."
"Deviant," he replied, smiling at Harry remembering. "Thanks. Never thought I'd live to 69. Neither my dad, granddad, or either of my grandmothers lived this long."
Harry nodded and killed the connection. He turned to Phoenix. "Did I get him a birthday gift?"
"Yes, Sire. A case of 2348 Romulan Ale and a first run print of his great-grandfather's book. You suggested the book?"
"Right, right. Good idea on the ale."
"Thank you, Sire. We have a lot of it to dispense, after all." They had gotten it in an estate sale when Harry had been trying to get the deceased's weapons designer's designs but everything had been in tricorder proof crates with no idea of what was in them. A ferengi had gotten them and they had had to pay through the nose for them. "Anything else?"
Harry shook his head and went back to reading.
He started to say Darby's name when the house-elf appeared with a mug of tea. "Thank you," he told her and she disappeared as he took a sip.
Harry was distracted from his last file on a request to build a giant space-whale—he made a note to have the researcher tested for mind-altering potions—as a giant generational ship capable of housing a billion people for travel through the Galactic Core. Harry added a note to it to also have the man flogged if he sent another one of the requests then erased it, afraid someone might take him seriously. the Imperial Religion was slowly growing. There had been a thousand adherents when he returned. Now there were almost fifty thousand.
The twins wandered into the throne room and dashed over to him, followed by T'pau.
He tossed the parchment aside and picked up the two, making them giggle as he kissed their faces. "Where's Elisabetta?"
"Potty!"
Harry was idly drawing on his notepad as the mediwitch in charge of the program and her Vulcan counterpart briefed his advisory council on their latest setback.
"Did you say you've been able to sequence squibs?" Harry asked, his attention caught by Akonta's speech.
"Yes. All squibs and parents of muggleborns have a specific sequence of nucleotides on the first seven codons of the RNA molecule. All have Adenine, Guanine, and Cytosine in that order, repeated seven times."
"The likelihood of that happening is one in two to the forty-second power," said T'pon.
"I can't do the math in my head," Harry told her.
"The likelhood of it happening is less likely than finding two planets exactly alike," the Vulcan said.
"Ahh, now that one I get. Okay, so then we can make an educated guess that this is likely the sequence that denotes potential magical ability, yes?"
"Potentially," T'pon replied as Akonta nodded.
"Okay, so we can develop a test strip then. Put a drop of blood on it and if it turns purple, your children are potentially magical?"
"That was our exact plan," T'pon said. "But our next step would be to test a mage's blood with the strip."
Harry nodded. "Right, then let me know when it's ready. I'll be whichever number guinea pig you want since I presume you'll test the strips with your own blood first?"
They both nodded then left the room.
Harry was thinking about it all when he had an idea. He turned to his communications terminal and tried to contact the Enterprise. A minute later, Deanna smiled. "Hello, Harry."
"Hey. Has your DNA ever been sequenced?"
"No. Humans and Betazoids have no issue procreating so there was no reason and I've never had an illness that required it."
"Please ask Beverly to do so. I specifically want to know if you have the first seven—" he looked down for the words "—codons of your RNA are AGC repeated in each one."
"Alright, I'll let you know." Before she could ask why, Harry smiled and said, "Thanks. And nice outfit, I presume you've finally talked Riker into a baby?" She was wearing something very slinky and transparent enough he now knew she had a mole onr navel.
"Brenna and I both did but it took some doing. The pictures from Tom and Harlotia finally got him to acquiesce."
He grinned. "G'luck."
Harry shut off the signal and opened a new project folder. Campbell had suggested the idea after seeing the Klingon System Defense Network. A network of automated phaser, torpedo, and galaxy class shielding weapons depots spotted around the system. Harry had rededicated two of their UA systems to building the devices.
Commodore Cantor scowled. Somehow this Harry X had completely turned the command staff of the Enterprise to him along with a number of Admirals and Ambassadors.
He wondered what the significance of this RNA sequence was and sent a command to their medical section to start working on it.
Harry's comm system beeped and he looked at the screen. Lieutenant Commander Chanx, a Denobulan, smiled at him. The man was in charge of the mining operation on the demon planet Harry had been lost on. "Hello, sir. I just wanted to inform you that we found a huge amount of duoterium in the golden sea. Uh, that's what we call the largest liquid mass here."
"The planet's turning out to be very resource rich."
"Yes, sir. I've sent you the contract for us to harvest it. It looks like we'll be able to fuel the whole fleet for two decades with what's here."
Harry typed his name into the contract after reading it—the same provision as his original contracts—and sent it back. "Anything else interesting?"
"We've been stocking the other minerals in warehouses. I don't know if you need it but we've got a few tonnes of gold and various gemstones and the like. In total about fifteen tonnes for all." Since all could be replicated, they were no longer considered precious metals and stones. "Oh. We did find Autumna, too. Like you asked us to look for." A nonreplicable gemstone native to silica based worlds. "Not a lot. Less than a tonne of it so far." It had little value but it had shown a remarkable resemble to magicite when used in runecrafting. It was able to hold an enchantment indefinitely without runic arrays and magicite embedding.
"One of my cargo carriers will be dispatched as soon as possible. They'll also be delivering a mobile warehouse and some recreational facilities. I heard your systems have been fritzy as hell. I've also refitted an erewon class ship that can ferry you to the surface and up to the warehouse and facilities." They had no use for it and using it for his planet's mining was more useful than having it moored on the hull of Peverell One and looking pretty—it had been 'painted' gold by having a three micron thick layer of gold bonded to the hull.
"Thank you, sir. Oh the Oregon, our supplies have arrived early."
"Have a good day," Harry said and ended the signal then looked at his schedule for the next week.
There was a sound of soft speech at the entrance to the throne room then he saw the Imperial Aurors straighten.
The Auror at the front spoke up. "Announcing Nevyn of False Prophets." The name of his village. He had been cast out from his family so he no longer used their name.
"Nevyn," Harry said. "Welcome back."
The old wizard smiled. "Thanks, Sire. I really enjoyed being an illusionist on the Errant Venture." He had spent a year doing sleight of hand and illusions on the ship as an entertainer. "A Bolian princess wants me to perform at her wedding next year. I'm working on a few ideas for it."
"Don't sleep with any," Harry told him. "They have some weird sexually transmitted disease and their bodily fluids do not react well with a human's skin, turning it into a nasty acid. Though do try their tonic water. Delightful stuff. Really calms the nerves."
"I will. I came by to see if you wanted to join us for a poker game tonight? Myrdin is returning from her sabbatical and we're getting the crew together for a game."
"I'll be there unless something comes up."
"Tonight then, Sire. I'm gonna go spoil the hell out of my grandkid. I brought some really, really loud toys and enchanted them completely unsilenceable. Teach my kid to be a noisy brat as a tike."
Harry laughed as Nevyn left.
Before he could get back to reading, he heard a shouted "SIRE!" then a thud and a cry of pain.
His Aurors glared him into place while they prepared for an attack until a limping wizard holding a torn piece of his robes on his nose was escorted in. "He tripped on his robes, sire, as he dashed up the stairs."
"You alright, Toby?" Harry asked.
The wizard nodded, looking at the blood staining his fingers. The female Auror helping him began carefully prodding his nose then whispered a numbing spell and popped the cartilage back into place, eliciting another moan. The numbing spell hadn't been strong enough. She cast "Episkey" next and the nose began to heal the rest of the way. "You'll be fine, sir. But you should see Healer Violets before you go." Harry's personal healer.
He nodded, wiping up the last of the more liquid blood with his sleeve.
"What brings you by?"
"We did it, Sire! You asked for a way to disable enemy ships without damaging them. Well, we think we did it. And it'll work as an area effect weapon!"
He took a sheath of parchment out of his robes and held it out to Harry excitedly.
Harry took it, ignoring the minute blood stains on it. He'd had worse from friends and enemies on him before.
The parchment was covered liberally with runes and vulcan numbers—base 7 was very popular with the research staff. He had to translate using fingers occasionally then he saw what they had done. A magicite conversion wave. It would propagate at the speed of magic—faster than the paltry speed of light—filling a bubble of space with raw magic.
"And these numbers work?"
"Our small scale test destroyed every single nonshielded workstation in the armory. Uh, we, uh, we actually need to expand our budget this year to replace them, Sire," Toby said, cringing. They were already thirty percent over budget for the year.
Harry nodded, not caring. The file said that the wave was so powerful three failing enchantments had been completely revitalized—a number of experiments had been disrupted due to the wave of magic interacting with them.
"Is it going to work in space?"
"We think so. But we need to test it."
Harry nodded. "We'll prep a ship and some starfleet and other empires' probes to test." Probes were incredibly delicate internally even if they were hardened externally. Sensors were delicate systems utilizing every facet of technologies in use, a good test subject.
The twins dashed off the ship and ran to their father as he knelt. They hugged him tightly as their mother and grandparents exited the transport they had used. "Daddy!" both said happily.
"Vulcan is really hot!" Rochelle said as she snuggled against her father.
He nodded. "But you should have both been fine. Biologically, you're both more Vulcan than human."
They looked confused. They knew they were half and half but his terms went right over their head.
"How was the trip?" Harry asked T'ryl.
"My goals while on Vulcan were achieved. Children, it is naptime."
They looked disappointed but went with Elisabetta as Harry stood and touched fingers with T'ryl as her parents greeted him then continued on.
A small smile played over Harry's lips. Her immediate thoughts were of a shower then copulation and a desire to show him the lingerie she purchased on Vulcan after showing him what they had done on Vulcan. The trip hadn't been just to see family but also to hire new staff and purchase the probes. "Your plans are my plans," he said, smiling.
"I must see to the new Vulcans."
He nodded then leaned forward and stole a kiss. Her lips tasted of fruit and he kissed her longer until she pulled away. "Let us return to the castle."
~•~
Harry was lying on their bed, T'ryl straddling his thighs and digging into his back, his occasional groans at the pleasure-pain of her massage loud when a huff sound broke their concentration. T'pau was patrolling the flat and had stopped to look at them then continued on.
She continued on and Harry chuckled. "I think she's jealous."
"She is just informing you that she is patrolling. It is a common trait of sehlat."
"Sciatic."
She moved her hands to his lower back and began massaging there.
"MUMMY!"
Harry sighed as she slid off his back then pulled her caftan on and left the room.
He pulled on his pyjama pants and a shirt then followed her out.
They found the twins in their beds, Rochelle spattered with water, crying, the vase broken and embedded in the walls next to them.
"Y-you summoned the water to you?" he asked as he picked her up.
A/N: So many people think Vulcans eliminate emotions or don't understand them. They do. But they've mastered their own, subjugating emotional responses to logical responses. What they don't understand is how sometimes humans can be incredibly logical yet allow their emotions to override that logic when they know the logical answer is the correct answer. So T'ryl understands when Harry smiles at something she does. He's amused or proud or aroused. And she may be just as much but they don't show that emotional response beyond involuntary responses such as an eyebrow raised or a quirk of the lips if their own emotional control is slipping. And now that the twins are being raised mostly human, she's allowed her own emotional control to lessen but still teaches them how to be Vulcan and human with the help of Harry and their nanny and her own rearing as help.
My headcanon is that vulcans do allow themselves the emotional responses in relationships because while a relationship may have formed logically—'we have similar interests, careers, work together well,' and so on—emotional ties will grow. A seven year need to mate doesn't mean that a Vulcan isn't going to have urges in between, just once every seven years they MUST. So in a home when a Vulcan couple is alone, one might say they love the other. And the other would respond in kind. But in public, a touch of the fingers would keep the world out while the touch-telepaths could send a surge of love feelings or a specific thought without showing emotional responses in public. A "Logical Public NonDisplay of Affection" as it were.
But as T'ryl is on his world, she's accepted that customs are different. She won't share long kisses in public but in a private corridor or a space where it's only them—or "only them" because Aurors don't count—she'll show physical affection and her exploration of human relationships—including fetishism—is logical. Also, for those wondering who I was thinking of when creating her, her name comes from Teryl Rothery and her visuals are Rachel Reilly.