Star Granger Season 1 - Chapter 12
Thoughts
"speech"
"Goa'uld speech"
SG SG SG SG SG SG SG
October 23rd 1997 – Battersea Power Station
Prime Minister Blair has been standing in front of Precious and the fighter for half an hour now, saying nothing. We had him sit in the fighter. We took him up for a bit inside the production hall; just to convince him Precious is a real thing, and not an elaborate hoax. R even let him hold the controls for a bit. That made Precious hit one of the upper floors, but hey – hardest material known hits unbreakable charmed concrete. No worries.
"You say this runs on some kind of cold fusion?" he finally asks.
"Generally speaking," Keira explains. "Infinitesimally efficient energy control and channelling is a better description for it. If we'd tried and run this process inside one of our reactors, we could potentially blow up the planet."
"And you put this thing in the centre of London?!" Prime Minister Blair is almost apoplectic at the thought.
"Well, sir. We are not even dreaming of trying it with our own reactors. When we'll get to the point of trying to make our own power reactors, we'll probably do it on Tristan or Chagos or somewhere similarly remote. Though," she says in an afterthought, "When blowing up planets, the blast point is less critical, so an off-planet R&D centre should be in the plans."
Unbelievable just how 'Off Planet' became a common term in a span of days
"And you can understand this technology?" He asks.
"The energy parts? Sure, mostly. nothing revolutionary there." Keira answers. "Yet…" she then adds, "It's the computers we don't understand at all for now. Their scientific base is completely different to our own. We don't even have the scientific theories to start and describe most of it." Calvin elaborated.
"We spent trillions on energy research and development. All we got are more bombs and radiation, and now you just 'understand this'?"
"Did you ever have a 'so that's how they did this!' moment?" Keira answers.
"Indubitably," the Prime minister mumbles. "First time I've signed a government document without reading it first…"
"We understand the mechanics, and the science – nothing new. The reactor's construction is innovative, but it's more of an engineering issue, than scientific advancement. Now that we have a working example – it's quite easy to copy and even improve upon.
"The second issue is the Naquadah metal. This reaction works only with refined Naquadah, and since there is no Naquadah on earth – we couldn't have possibly made this leap in science. There's a limit to just how much a scientist can hypothesise non-existing materials, before he or she is laughed out of academia. See what happened to poor Dr Jackson – and apparently, he was right the whole time."
This is getting long…
I conjure a set of armchairs for us to sit on. And receive a thankful nod form the Prime Minister. A tea set appears as we sit. Dobby discovered us, almost as soon as headquarters was set – no idea how.
"What do you know about the Americans?" The Prime Minister asks, after taking a sip.
"Not much, sadly. We couldn't interrogate them without giving out much more information of our own, than I was comfortable with, sir." R answers.
"Or being more heavy-handed with memory charms, then we are comfortable with. And leaving them with holes in their memories, they will have a difficult time to explain." Harry adds.
"From what little information we have, we can deduct the following:" R returns to the report.
"They have a General led program, which means budget and personnel.
"Their field team was led by Colonel Jonathan O'Neill – He's a long-time special Ops. specialist, and was off the books for a while, usually, meaning black ops. He was discharged with honour, following some personal tragedy, and was recalled to duty about a year ago – no details.
"Captain Samantha Carter is a decent fighter pilot. Met her once or twice in Tabuk. She logged an impressive number of missions, flying F16s for the 14th. Made a good name for herself for actually hitting her targets."
"Did her Doctorate, at Cornell, after the war. Mechanics of micro-wormholes. Science has moved on, but back then, it was break-through research. She's of the bright ones, sir." Keira adds grudgingly.
"Then there are Teal'c and 'Master' Bra'tac – I'm not certain what the title 'master' indicates." R goes on with the explanation. "According to Captain Carter, they are Jaffa. Genetically modified by the Goa'uld to be slaves, soldiers, and carriers of larval Goa'uld till maturation. She said they will die without the Goa'uld larva – We don't know why."
"Took some blood and tissue samples when they were unconscious," Seth elaborates. "Their DNA differs from our own by about 3.5 percent. That means, they are not from Earth. Not really human, as we, here on Earth, define the term. Though there must be an ancestral connection. Also, their blood tests show no white cells, so maybe the Goa'uld larva acts as their immune system?"
"When I was possessed. Isis had the ability to heal my body, unbelievably fast - even for a witch," I remark.
"What else do we know?" Prime Minister Blair asks, tabling the medical discussion.
R continues the brief: "They obviously know about the Goa'uld and see them as enemies."
Rightly so!
"Apparently they have some experience off planet. They have alien allies, alien arms, and they probably did save the Earth a few days back. We have nothing which could have handled the two monstrosities, which arrived at Earth's orbit."
"Yet, being Americans, they probably have a hand in having angry aliens coming to destroy the Earth in the first place." the Prime Minister remarks, mostly to himself.
"What I don't understand is how?" Calvin says with a tad of frustration in his voice.
We all look at him, questionably.
"It's quite obvious that they don't have a space capable vessel. Certainly not an inter-planetary one. That O'Neill chap is supposedly the head of this off planet unit, and he had no clue – about space survivability, cargo manipulation, shuttle limitation – nothing."
"And he was a tad too eager to get his hands on that broken-down space fighter." R agrees.
"I just can't understand how they do it".
"Do what, exactly?" the Prime Minister asks.
"Get off planet, and to other worlds, without a ship."
There's a lull in the conversation, while we ponder this mystery. The Prime Minister finally shrugs, in all our names.
"I can ask the president, but then they'll probably want to know all that we know. And will expect to lead our Joint operation." He says dejected. "If they have a brigade class military action on the issue. There will be oversight. Last thing we need is a Congress sub-committee breathing down our necks. Especially not a secret operations committee, which doesn't need to give an account to general politics. Never mind the general public."
"There's another issue," Harry remarks. "Our American mutual friends are much stricter about the statute. They will be all over us like a rash, as soon as they get even a whiff of mages being involved. We must keep the Americans out of it, at least until we can have part of the operation moved off planet."
"Sorry," the Prime Minister chuckles. "It's a bit surreal that I'm holding a serious discussion about off planet bases, when my afternoon schedule handles waste disposal.
"Let's sum it up? We have Precious," he smiles at me, "Which is a working, space worthy, shuttle, with lasers, shields, and a not-so-cold fusion reactor that can power metropolitan London for years, and will probably not blow up the Earth while doing so. We also have a space-fighter which doesn't work. We have computers we can't even start to understand. Alien enemies with mile-large spaceships, which can probably blow up the Earth, too. All of this is dependent on a metal, which isn't available on earth.
"Oh right," he adds. "We also have an American Air Force playing space cowboys."
We all nod in general agreement.
"This was established as a research and think tank – what do you think our next steps and goals should be?"
"We should probably start with clean energy," R offers. "If we can develop and sell Earth made reactors, we can make enough money to at least partially finance this thing, in the long run. We can also put Hermione, and Co. on the path to being rich, which was part of the deal, if I remember right. And, we can finally start doing some good for this poor planet"
The Prime Minister nods at that.
"We should establish an off-planet location for R&D and manufacturing. The moon might be a good place for a start. There are many things we don't want to do on Earth – Energy testing, weapons development, ship building, and magic. This will be much easier and less expansive to do, since we have the shipping issues covered. With some luck the moon might even be inside the rings range.
"We also must find out just why Hermione here is the only person able to operate most of the new technology, and either solve this, or find a way to work around it. Otherwise, it will be our most serious bottleneck.
"If all moves forward, right about springtime next year, we should have enough information to start the planning phase for both ships and weapons, so we can potentially be ready for early production, about a year from now."
Famous last words.
Again, Prime Minister Blair takes a long moment to consider the information.
"There's an issue which bothers me…" The Prime Minister smiles ruefully, at the astonished looks he was receiving. "Right, there are hundreds of issues bothering me, but one that seems to be at the logical heart of this plan. You say energy is the first step, and explain that this metal, Naqua?"
"Naquadah, sir." R helps prime Minister Blair up.
"Right, Naquadah – You say it's in the heart of the technology, the source of the energy, and the building of the ships, yet you can't mine it on Earth. Won't we need power and ships to get to the Naquadah, which is needed to generate the power and build those same ships? Do I miss something?"
Harry smiled thinly.
"Come sir, let me show you something", he says, as he gets up, and waits for the Prime Minister to get up and follow him. He takes us through a side door, none of the others has even noticed till that moment.
Inside, there's a hall containing piles and piles of broken grey metal. There are also a couple of mostly whole space-fighters and some crates piled in the corner.
"Up there are two, mile long, ships, mostly built of Naquadah, drifting around. One of them is in pieces, yet the other is still whole enough to probably hold parts we can salvage, research and maybe even use. In any case, there is enough Naquadah up there to build, and power the Earth, and a dozen ships, if they're of sensible size, Sir"
"When did you find the time to collect this, without us noticing?" R asks, torn between anger and amusement.
"last night, after you went home? – we took my parents to the moon. We promised them a visit, as soon as we'd know Precious is viable for the trip." I say, smiling a bit.
"It was their price for letting us dropout of high school."
October 24th 1997 – Battersea Power Station
"Please don't take Precious for pleasure cruises any more. At least not without a notice and company?"
I hate being ashamed of myself.
"Promise, but it might not be an issue for much longer," Harry smiles.
"What else did you not tell us?" R asks exasperatedly.
"It wasn't the time, but the broken fighters are not the only interesting things up there." I answer, with a smile. I turn my attention to Seth. "Sorry, but the limitation on this technology just got even more crucial. The debris field seems to be drifting, and with only me – we're too limited in exploring it."
He certainly understands the impotence and feels the pressure.
"I still don't have an Idea, except for the traces in Hermione's blood, which we can now identify as Naquadah. Can't research just how it got there, unless we manage to put our hands on a living Goa'uld." He's frustrated now. "What would you have me do, inject someone with liquid Naquadah? I'm a Doctor, not an Alchemist!
"Listen, and please don't take it as a criticism. If need be – we'll approach an alchemist about this, but we did agree to keep other magical users out of this, for now." I tell him placatingly.
"Maybe you can try it on me fist?" Harry offers. "We wizards are very hard to kill, or even harm. And worse case, we can get me to a healer in seconds."
"Still it is unapproved human testing." He mumbles.
"Just who are you planning to approach for approval?" R asks.
"And what kind of research are you planning, without access to Goa'ulds?" Calvin asks.
"By the way, Goa'uld are sentient, so even with access to one, it will be unethical, by the same criteria." Keira remarks.
"How would you introduce the metal into a person's bloodstream?" I ask.
"Usually, heavy metals are introduced into the bloodstream either by physical contact, inhaling, or they are infused in some food one is eating. All those require quite an extended exposure to have any noticeable influence, and the metals will be expelled over time, when the exposure ends.
"Before anyone asks, short, or limited exposure will usually do no harm. At least no lasting harm. It's the long-term exposure which has severe influence on the body – prime of which are all kinds of cancer."
"So, mid-term task – Calvin, R and I must find a way to bypass this limitation, or build devices, using this technology, without this trigger. Short term – we must have more people operating this." Keira replies.
"How much Naquadah do I have in my blood?" I am genuinely interested to know.
"Not much, actually." Seth replies "What I can't understand is just why this contamination isn't lessening, now that you are no longer exposed to Isis. Also, you said yourself that mages are harder to harm, and quick to heal. So, a) you are not representative for the rest of us, and b) one would have expected your contamination to lessen much faster, but it doesn't lessen at all – I can't find any explanation for that.
"I did contaminate a group of lab rats. Good news – they show no ill effects. The opposite, in fact – they look to be more energetic than the control. Sadly, it will take years to learn about long-term issues. Time, we don't have – I know!" he concludes with some frustration.
"I took one of the rats and put it on precious controls. The rat turned those on – I can't explain it." I say.
"Makes perfect sense though." Keira responds.
Really?
"Right! Those Goa'uld are parasites, right? They can't do anything by themselves, unless possessing someone. They will need a fail-safe mechanism to ensure only possessed people are able to activate any of their tools. Otherwise the rabble might use their tech against them. That's what Darth Vader would have done. If only he'd read the list, that is." Calvin states.
The list?
"And humans are surely not the only species they possess in the whole galaxy." Keira agrees.
R's amused. "You're such a geek Cal. But you're probably right. Seth – many contaminated rats please. We'll devise some contraption to hold them in touch with the right surfaces.
"Better make those white mice – we'll need all the help we can get, up there" Calvin sniggers.
"And Seth?" R is ignoring Calvin.
He nods at her.
"Please test this with Harry. As he said – he's hard to damage. A little Naquadah in the blood won't do him harm, and will give us important information, at the very least."
Seth Nods again.
"Got a word from the Prime Minister this morning." R moves the conversation onwards.
We all look at her expectantly, while she says nothing.
"All right, girl – out with it!" Beatrix chuckles.
"He said 'Go'" She smiles.
Cries of excitement are all around.
"We have a budget of up to 10 mil' till the end of the year, and he expects a budget proposition, of up to half a billion, for next year's operations, by the end of November. We'll need an industrial and military economist to start like yesterday.
"He is also ready to gradually transfer a combined unit of air supported SBS. About an extended troop in size, under our command, as needed. Under my command!" R enthuses.
"We'll be needing some of those pilots soon."
"Finally, Harry, Hermione, you will need to create that tech company of yours soon, so we can start planning on marketing power plants. I can put you in touch with a friend of mine. He did Electrical engineering with me, and is a senior product for a Power management systems company – he'll be able to help you start."
We've just been insulted, I reckon. Though I've lost her at 'engineering' so probably rightly so…
"Anything else before going out for a pint, to celebrate?"
"Just one thing," Beatrix cut in. "I think I've found something in my mother's notes."
She puts an enlarged, quite grainy, picture on the table, then opens an old looking notebook on a page containing a decently detailed drawing of the same object. There's a large question mark underneath the drawing. It is a large metal ring, some 20 ft in diameter. The circle of the ring is covered with markings. The drawing shows those to be constellation symbols.
"According to my mother's notes, the Langfords found this in their 29 Giza excavation. She writes that no one knew what this might be. In any case, this is the only find that stands out."
Geometric calculator?
Fleur takes a better look at the journal. "That's a Galaxy map." She says. "See here? Those are the 39 constellations of the Avalon galaxy. Other galaxy's maps will have the relevant number and symbols of constellations for those. You learn it for Astronomy NEWTs. Supposedly you can plane routes using this."
"You learn this for Aritmancy NEWTs too," I join in. "it's a way to represent geometric lines in a three-dimensional space.
"Linear?" Calvin asks.
I have no idea what he means, and shrugs. "Each straight is represented by six constellations and an origin one.
"Vectors!" Keira concludes.
I hate being ignoramus.
"That's mostly the reason why Aritmancy is Octal. Got this question wrong, on my NEWT, since I didn't do seventh year." I conclude dejectedly.
"What I'm trying to say is that this," I point at the picture, "can probably be used as Astronomy, or Aritmancy Abacus, but then, why make it so large?"
"So, in Goa'uld context – this might be a navigation tool?" Keira asks with interest.
"If it was small enough to handle." I shrug.
"The Centaurs might know more," Fleur offers.
"I'll try and speak with Firenze?" Harry offers.
"Real Centaurs?" Beatrix asks in wonder.
"You should see the Unicorns then," Harry smiles. "Though I hope for you that they won't let you near." He laughs.
"We're done?" R asks. "All right – celebratory drinks on the queen, then."
Harry stops me before I follow the group.
"Astria Porta?" He whispers to me.
"Chappa'ai" I answer quietly.
"The Arch?"
I shrug.
"We should tell someone about Merlin and the things," I add with some guilt in my voice. He just nods in agreement.
"Beatrix?" I call out. She's the last of the group, and almost at the door. "A word?"
Harry leads us through a door I didn't pay attention to, up till now. Beatrix didn't even notice it being there.
"We openly admitted having secrets," Harry answers her unasked question, and she acknowledges the fact.
"These," Harry motion at the equipment and artefacts around, "were taken out of a secret cavern, which might have been made by Merlin."
"The wizard?" she asks,
"The Alteran." I'm not really answering.
"Why are you showing this to me?"
I show her Merlin's book and give her the translation table. I'm doubtful that she'd ever met this rune before, anywhere. "You won't be able to take anything out of this room. Probably only Harry can. Outside the unique script, this is basically a proto-Latin text." I explain. "We would like you to read this through, and we'll hold this conversation then."
All right!
This is the end of Season 1 of this story.
I will go on posting regularly, starting with chapter 1 of the second season, on Thursday - two weeks from now. Expect season 2 to be much more action packed. Not all Goa'uld Ha'tak will survive it.
Now's the time to give a huge shout to flyboy38, my new beta, who took the time to make sure this chapter is a much better read than former ones. Future chapters will be edited too, and we will gradually go back through former chapter, to make it all better.
Having said that, I'm still in need for someone British to go over this story as well, and help my British characters talk and act as they should. SO if anyone's interested - please send me a message.
Cheers!
SFD