Chapter 5

Sirius, two elves, and I were safely tucked inside our spaceship. We watched as the first ship composed entirely of replicator blocks landed near the transmitter beacon. With a new laptop made specifically for the purposes of catching any and all signals, capable of hacking the most secure computers and transmitting new code to any receiver, I began to instruct newly arrived replicators to, basically, eat themselves.

From the scan on the ship, those replicators are made from all kinds of metallic materials, from tin to trinium and everything in-between. Firstly, the replicators would upload everything they learned while gallivanting across the galaxy, then the new orders would compel them to disassemble themselves into ingots according to the type of metal they are made of. Then, 1-kilo ingot bars will be beamed into crystal storage onboard the ship.

Sirius informed me that unknown ships are following a swarm of replicators to this location. I quickly cloaked our ship just in case. This cloak is not only technological but also magical. It has incorporated a modified Fidelius charm, which, in theory, will cloak us to all sensors, be it visual or technological.

More and more replicator ships were landing on the surface of the planet. Once the ship lands, the upload would commence, and they start to disassemble themselves according to metal type. The ships that followed were of Asgard design according to the scans. They haven't detected our presence, but I will stay vigilant.

"Commander Thor, the Replicator ships are landing on the uninhabitable planet where we can detect a sub-space beacon. According to our scans, upon landing the replicators send short-range upload to an unknown destination and are disassembling themselves into their base components. We are also detecting a molecular disassembly beam that is actively collecting base materials to an unknown location."

Onboard a Bilskirnir-class ship, Supreme Commander Thor is receiving telemetry from twenty-nine similar ships that are surrounding the planet. According to the telemetry, someone has recalled all replicators to this dead planet and is actively destroying them.

Over his long life and hundreds of cloned bodies, he couldn't imagine something like this ever happening. The Asgard race has been at war with those machines for three hundred years and they haven't managed to eradicate the scourge that is the replicators.

The more advanced the ships are the only short solution, only for replicators to adopt and consume those new ships and make themselves more powerful. They tried everything they had at their disposal, only for replicators to adopt and the cycle would repeat itself.

What is more, the cloning problem is getting even worse with the rapid methods implemented in order to be one step ahead.

And now this. Who has managed to find a way to corral all the replicators to one location? What are their intentions? Who has managed to so easily defeat the most persistent enemy the Asgard faced?

"Sirius, look at these scans." I projected the body of the Asgardian on a 3D hologram. The Asgard averaged about one meter in height, with grayish skin tones, small, skinny limbs, large heads, and black eyes (bearing a striking resemblance to the "Roswell Grays" described in countless UFO stories).

"According to our scans, those are clones. What is more, according to the repository, they have regressed in their evolutional path. Thirty thousand years ago they were as tall as a healthy human adult and at least they had reproductive organs… and clothes.

As we watched the hologram, more and more Asgardian ships arrived in the system several light years from the planet. In total there were seventy-three ships.

Fifty-six hours since the first replicator ship arrived, they stopped coming. I reactivated the recall transmitter one more time just in case there were more ships on the way. For two more days, we stayed near the planet and haven't detected any more replicator ships approaching. There are now four-hundred Asgardian ships surrounding the planet.

All the replicators have disassembled themselves and everything has been transported inside the storage device.

"Should we make ourselves known to the Asgard? From the replicator upload, I have found out what has been happening in Ida galaxy." I stated as we continued to watch Asgard ships surrounding the planet. "The first replicator block has been found on the same planet as android Reese. They didn't know what it was, just that it was emitting some kind of low-level radiation. As they beamed it on-board one of the ships, the replicator block reactivated itself and with the last command given to it by Reese, it continued to replicate itself."

Sirius looked pensive as we continued to sive through the information provided. Ignia, the elf, was the first one to speak. "From all I can decern, it is possible that Asgardians had more influence in this galaxy before this event. What is more, because of the replicators, their genetic abnormalities were pushed to the side in order to combat the new threat."

So I decided to present myself. But first I need to return the Stargate and clavis (Dial-home-device).

"Commander Thor, the Astria Porta, and corresponding clavis have been re-moleculised in place of a subspace transmitter."

"The ship of unknown design is decloaking in front of the stargate."

"We are being hailed on Asgard frequency."

A hologram of a human with green eyes, black hair, and a youthful appearance were transmitted to all ships in the area.

"Greetings Asgard, my name is Harry James Potter, I am calling from the 'Explorer one' ship in front of Astra Porta on the planet." His voice was calm and commanding, with nothing to indicate malice or hidden agenda.

Thor was the one to respond to the call in the same manner in form of the hologram projected onto the unknown ship.

"Greetings, I am Supreme Commander Thor of Asgard fleet. We have detected a mass exodus of replicators from our galaxy converging on this planet. As we were at war with them we immediately followed them. Only to find the replicators being deconditioned en-mass." Thor's voice was calm and slightly distorted.

Harry decided to tell the full truth regarding replicator blocks and how they came to know of them. "Supreme Commander Thor, to tell you the truth, we have found an android on one of the planets we were surveying. When we made a full inquiry into androids coding, we found out that a forgotten Alteran 'builder bot' has been studied by the civilization. But the 'builder bot' has been damaged and a large part of the code governing its design has been corrupted. The people cut corners while designing the android and all of the fail-safes have been removed. The android hasn't been programmed correctly, it couldn't differentiate right from wrong, it constructed the replicators as her toys. When the scientist discovered what she did they tried to destroy her but she instructed her toys to protect her and to replicate indefinitely." Harry took a deep breath and continued.

"This android was responsible for the destruction of the entire civilization responsible for creating her. I fixed the flaw and now this same android is happily studying alongside my people. Inside her coding, we discovered a recall function alongside source code governing replicator blocks. With this, I was able to reprogram all the replicators to follow my command to the fullest. As you can see, all the replicators derived from the original have been recalled and subsequently destroyed. The materials they accumulated have been separated and are currently on board my ship inside a buffer."

As Harry narrated the story, Thor's eyes became even bigger. When he mentioned an Alteran he became even more intrigued. By the end of the story, all the Asgardians heaved a sigh of relief.

"If what you say is true, I, on the behalf of Asgard would like to extend a hand in gratitude and friendship. Would it be possible to meet in person to go through all of your findings?"

Harry was pensive for a second but decided to trust them with the location of their planet address. "I am sending you an Astria Porta address where we could meet in person and further our talk for future friendship."

"We will be delighted to meet your people at the provided address. If it is not presumptuous of me, could we send a research ship to provided location?"

"One moment please." Harry paused the hologram. "What do you guys think, should we allow them to visit us with a ship? I know that we are only starting our new colony, but sooner than later we will have to make some allies amongst the stars?"

Sirius was first to speak. "If they were in war with those replicators for gods knows how long, they should be wary of us, seeing as we single-handedly destroyed their enemy. But I don't see why they would attack us."

Ignia and Igneel were in agreement with Sirius. So I decided to resume our communication.

"Supreme Commander Thor, on behalf of our people we extend our invitation to a single exploratory ship. You may send a delegation through the Astria Porta before the ship arrived, but I must warn you that you may not scan our settlement with any of your scanners. We are currently rebuilding our civilization from the ground up, so if you make any hostile moves toward us you will be permanently banned from the planet and any future settlements in our control. I must warn you that any hostile action upon arrival through the Astria Porta will land you in our holding cells without questions asked."

I know it is a bit harsh of me to threaten the Asgard, seeing as they have more than four hundred ships surrounding one of mine, but one could only be cautious of Greeks bearing gifts.

"We have understood the warning given to us. You can be assured that we will not attack or make any hostile moves while in your region of space." Thor was a little comprehensive about the warnings given, but if they can destroy the replicators in several days, maybe they could help with the cloning issue.

"We will await your arrival in one month's time, that is thirty-one standard days," I replied and terminated the connection.

With that, we turned around towards the Stargate and dialed our new address for our planet. I have managed to program different addresses for our home gate easily enough. The old address required six plus one chevrons for successful dialing, the new one requires all nine chevrons to be dialed.

After our talks, I will probably create a new and improved gate model found in the repository. The one we are currently using could be called analog gates, but the one I will make is fully digital in design. But I will ruminate later about the gate system.

I remotely dialed our home gate and with the woosh, we were off.

Once we were safely on our planet, I called all the Elves in order to inform them of our mission.

With all the materials collected from replicators and combining a transporter beam with a molecular reassemblerer, I constructed a machine capable of constructing anything from base components.

The first thing I constructed was a control chair capable of controlling all the Alteran technology inside the solar system.

According to a repository, a control chair functions by creating a neural interface between the subject's mind and the relevant device, allowing the user to control whatever technology it is interfaced with through thought alone. The interface interprets mental commands given by the user and carries them out, then relays information back to the user for confirmation.

This method of control prevents access to the system through other means, a security measure preventing anyone lacking the ability to use the chair from easily controlling the system without it. Control chairs are usually genetically keyed to a specific species to prevent unauthorized access.

This chair will be the main one on the entire planet. The only authorized person that will have access to it will be me and only me. It is not that I don't trust Sirius or the Elves, but this chair will be the only one capable of controlling all aspects of technology on the planet, from robotic helpers to the planetary shield I have in mind.

The chair is built into a large base which lights up when the chair is active and enables it to rotate on command. The headrest also glows blue. Gel-filled sacs are built into the ends of the armrests, which can be manipulated to give various instructions (though this is secondary to the neural interface). When in use, the chair reclines, giving the user a better view of the holographic display that can be projected above the chair.

In order to misdirect anyone from finding out that we are using Alteran design, I started to modify the exterior, alongside some improvements to the technology itself using similar concepts of Nox, Furling, and Asgard design.

The chair is positioned in a large dome-like structure deep beneath the building housing the stargate. The chamber is fifty meters in diameter and equipped with hard-light emitters capable of interacting with the outside world. All around the walls of the chamber, more computer terminals are situated capable of small tasks.

The chamber is even more warded from any and all detection from space or the surface. You would have to be inside in order to even know that the chamber exists because of Fiedlioius charm. Only Sirius, two Elves and I know that the chamber even exists.

Alongside the control chair, I build thirty-six modular shield emitters all around the planet next to ward-stones. This shield can withstand a planetary bombardment indefinitely, provided it has enough power.

Same as the control chair, the exterior is nothing like the four races' design.

Inside the repository, there is a design for a Potentia, a power module capable of supplying energy for an entire city the size of London for a thousand years.

Visually, a Potentia resembles a large, translucent group of primarily orange-colored crystals approximately one foot in height with a roughly cylindrical shape. When activated, a Potentia emits a yellow glow from its center, with a small red circle at the top illuminating once the device has been fully engaged. This illumination ceases once the Potentia has been disconnected from whatever it was powering or has become fully depleted.

The device itself serves as an enclosure for an artificially created pocket of subspace-time. Zero-point energy is extracted from this pocket until it reaches maximum entropy, at which point the pocket collapses, leaving behind a useless shell. In lament terms, it is a pocket dimension similar to what wizards create when making multi-compartment trunks, just on larger scales.

One Potentia can be reused by simply tapping into a different pocket dimension. For this to be possible a special machine is required. But for now, I instructed the molecular assembler to construct the same amount of the Potentia as the shield emitters plus three for use of the control chair.

In order to mask the power emitting from the Potentia, I inscribed several runic arrays capable of masking emissions to practically zero.

In order to prevent someone from teleporting to the surface of the planet or teleporting something from the surface, more runic arrays were added to wardstones, similar to anti-apparition and anti-portkey jinks. In order for Elves, Sirius, and I to be able to apparate or use portkeys, a special runic tattoo had to be applied to the skin. This tattoo would serve as a key while on the surface of the planet.

Modular frequency emitters are used to confuse the teleporters from locking in the position of the target. Only our modified teleporters are able to function on the planet.

Alongside those upgrades to our colony, extra infrastructure reminiscing of those of modern Earth design found in the server farms was assembled all over the colony. Houses, labs, greenhouses, and storage facilities were simply beamed into place. The new look of the colony is nothing similar to earth culture, or any other culture found in the Milky Way galaxy. I know, I checked the scan we performed several times on the entire gate system. With simple code implanted into the scanner, we found all the habitable structures, even several gates that were on the Ha'tak design ships in space.

The elves are happy to catalog all the infrastructure that can be found on other planets, they even adopted my design of the space suit, and travel to several destroyed civilizations in order to ascertain the threat level the Goa'uld present to ourselves. They downloaded all the data they could find in computers of other civilizations and are currently brainstorming how to proceed in first contact scenarios.

A day before the scheduled arrival of the Asgard delegation, the preparations were in full swing. The food has been prepared, the floors polished, and the conference room has been decorated with some undescriptive inert artifacts from the wizarding world. Nothing that would connect us with this reality on Earth. The only language is similar but as we found out, almost all the people speak some derivative of English language.

On the planet Othala, located in Ida galaxy, in a large room reminiscing amphitheater the Asgard High Council is debating how to proceed with the talks with an unknown race responsible for destroying the replicators.

The Asgard High Council is the governing body for the Asgard race. It is composed of at least seven Asgard including the Chief Archon, Freyr, Thor, Penegal, Assir, Hermod, and Sigyn. They each wear a distinguishing necklace which consists of an Asgard stone set in a gold holder, at least during meetings. The Asgard High Council makes decisions that will affect the whole race.

The Asgard is a highly developed, humanoid race that once had colonies in both the Ida and Othala galaxies which visited and protected humans on Earth and elsewhere across the Milky Way. When interacting with early humans, they posed as benevolent protective gods, eventually giving rise to the Norse mythology on Earth.

Once part of the Alliance of Four Great Races, they were among the most advanced races in the known galaxy, matched only by the Ancients, the Nox, and the Furlings. They assumed the role of protectors of the Milky Way galaxy.

Over 30,000 years ago, the Asgard were a tall (approximately 2m), generally humanoid species that reproduced sexually. Their physical forms changed gradually when they began to use scientific means to artificially extend their lifespans. The "modern" Asgard averaged about one meter in height, with grayish skin tones, small, skinny limbs, large heads, and black eyes.

The degradation of the genome came upon a need to extend their natural lives. Over time the cloning process was refined but it was already too late. The original genome has been lost and only altered genes remained. And as you would get diminishing quality upon copying a copy of the copy, so the same happened to them.

The mental patterns of Asgard that became ill or fatally injured were preserved by "downloading" them into computer memory crystals. The patterns were later placed in a new cloned body. This made the Asgard effectively immortal at the cost of the ability to reproduce sexually. This prevented the natural process of evolution.

The research into fixing the genome was pushed aside, upon the discovery of replicator blocks that started to wage a war against Asgardian colonies. The more they pushed the warring machine against them the more numerous replicators became.

And all of the sudden, an unknown race managed to defeat the Replicators in mere five days.

Collectively, they decided to travel through Astria Porta to meet with Harry's people and hopefully make an alliance with them. A science vessel will arrive a day after, filled with the most advanced technology they possess. All of their medical knowledge, alongside many Asgard scientists, will be on board. They were warned not to perform any scans upon entering the system their host is located at.