Star Granger Season 5 - Chapter 18
Thoughts
"speech"
"Goa'uld speech"
SG SG SG SG SG SG SG
May 8th 2004 - Brick Ln
It's a nice day for a change. Warm enough for outside sitting without a coat. We're at the Rochelle Canteen's outdoor terrace, right next to my beloved Boundary gardens, having a morning coffee before meeting with Sirius and parents and driving south. Harry sits across from me soaking in the morning sun and smirking. It's probably related to the well satisfied smile I wear myself. Even the owner of the news-stand was smirking when he called me in the morning to get this rug.
On the front page of the paper is yours truly again. "A dark witch!" screams the headline. It's The Mail, since even The Sun won't lower itself to print such rubbish, it being mostly true notwithstanding.
Underneath the headline is an old picture of me. It was taken about two years back, when I aired my old Hogwarts uniform - robe, pointy hat, tie, wand, and all, for this Halloween fundraiser. This Gryffindor shirt was certainly getting a tad tight around the chest, which was the point back then.
Inside is a rather lengthy interview with my dear, dear friend, the ex-bartender. Turned out I've bewitched his fiancé to ditch him, the day of their planned marriage celebration. Then, I cursed his, well - you know. The prudish Daily Mail has certainly not gone into much detail there. Turns out 'Permanent Shrinkage' is an actual thing, and Fleur was only delighted to teach me the Jinx.
Such a dear!
The sod wanted to sue me, but all I really did was show the girl the video from 'The End'. Then, when properly disgusted, committed to reimburse all her outstanding expenses on said wedding.
London weddings cost an arm and a bleeding leg.
My barrister met with the little bugger, smiled, and encouraged him to approach the MET and file a proper complaint about me ruining his life by lying to his ex and Cursing his dangly bits.
I'm waiting with bated breath.
May 8th 2004 - the Sheldonian Theatre
Dress codes make us look a bit like WIB caricatures and make me smile slightly.
We weren't permitted to attend wearing sunglasses, though.
The Gown reminds me of Hogwarts, the Hoods are quite ridiculous, and the Capes? Well, one needs something to throw up at the end of the ceremony, doesn't she?
The ceremony itself is quite uninspiring. The Vice Chancellor gives us a short speech about our achievement and our role in the future of the Kingdom. She then moves to speak late-Alteran for the remainder of the ceremony. Up in the guest's balcony Sappho smirks. Beside her my parents beam with pride. I reach out and take Harry's hand in mine. His eyes are bright with unshed tears. He's long over it, but it's in times like this when a person truly misses his parents.
We are lined up in groups of four, bow three times, given our hoods and ushered out. We are now formally Bachelors of some Art. Took us six blooming years to complete a three-year program. Not even a distinction. Still, managed to save the galaxy two or three times during this while, mind you. Harry was even lost in space for almost half a year.
Outside is a spontaneous party. R hugs both of us tightly. "We might still make a properly educated person of you," she tells me softly.
Keira and Calvin, together with Neta who is currently travelling, are true celebrities in these parts, albeit deans and chancellors look at them funny when they reckon no one will notice. Our fellow undergraduates are pulled towards them like moths to the fire, hoping for an opportunity for a job and further education. The BCE Inc research arm is loudly whispered as being the best prospect for science undergraduates' future. It is well known that those three are the heart of our screening process, yet no one could ever make sense of the criteria used.
The Owen family made an outing of this weekend. I understand that they have hotel reservations in Abingdon for the night. Emily said something about lunch in the sun and a weekend market, weather permitting.
Sounds quaint.
Emily looks much better these days. Feels much better too. Still, she arrived too late for Chanda and Sappho to completely heal her. As such, she is destined to visit either Vis-Uban or Atlantis hospitals once a year, for the remainder of her life.
We are quite done here. I join Harry in saying our goodbyes to the few of our fellow students we actually know.
Eat now?
May 10th 2004 - Atlantis
"Not fun," is Neta's answer to my question regarding 'how the Pegasus galaxy was'.
Watching humans being treated as livestock and not being able to do anything about it for the foreseeable future must be a horrible experience.
"Everything is in ruins," she tells me. "Human population has shrunk to a fraction of what it used to be, according to the Tria's crew. Pegasus replicators have re-established themselves, although they seem to be confining themselves to their manufacturing planet. Even the wraith, as a race, are starving.
At a separate table Helia sits alone, sipping her beer and pointedly not looking out the windows. Out there is a shell of a ship, which once was the Lantean Battleship Aurora - The Tria's sister ship. Helia has resigned herself to being displaced in time. All family and friends have long passed. Lantean society and culture are nothing but old memories. Now the cruel fate has brought back a shipful of friends, and Helia herself had to go and tell the poor souls that they have been locked inside a virtual world for the last ten millennia. Also, that their bodies, in their stasis pods, are too old to be saved.
We are all scared, as Harry said.
I'm looking at the wreck of a ship, hanging out there in space, blankly for a while.
"They couldn't bring themselves to leave it there." Neta softly answers my unasked question. "Nor could they end their friends' consciousness, without going in and talking with them one last time."
"No more than we could leave the Seahorse behind." I agree.
"Come!" I'm startled by Helia's voice from behind my back. "We have things to discuss," she tells me and leads me deeper into the city. "I also have a favour to ask," she then adds quietly.
May 11th 2004 - Furling homeworld
Tunnels here run for miles and miles. All dark, but for the meagre lights we manage to create ourselves.
"Thank you for helping us with this," Goldpick tells me, in his gruff voice, but there is something to his tone of speech.
Emotional goblin? That's a first?
I shrug it off. As if building three capital ships, in the middle of a galactic wide war, mind you, for a race we mages were in a state of a thankfully very cold war with, what, some five years back only? - is the most natural of things.
For years, I was certain that Goblins living underground was a demonstration of Wizarding oppression against them. I honestly believe most mages these days, Goblins as well, reckon the same. Turns out this is where they feel most comfortable at. Add a herd of Dragons, and they apparently feel right at home and cushy.
The Furling city we are visiting is a good example of that. Have you seen the Lord of the Rings films, a couple of years back? This city here is much like Moria. A dark and grand catacomb system. Much more modern in design, yet just as ruined.
Maybe the City under the Lone Mountain is a better example, for the Dragons roaming around.
The hundreds of goblins spreading in front of us are quite effective though. The stench of death and body excretions is almost gone. Light is spreading.
Like Magic!
Security, exploration, and construction workers, each are doing their part, while being very cautious, both with the actual use of magic and touching anything until machinery and technology are better understood. Still, it doesn't look like much has survived the ravages of time and the occasional roaming Dragon.
A Nox accompanying us grimaces at the sound of the Dragon repelling tools the Goblins are using. Researching history taught us that Nox and Furling were the least friendly towards each other of the four allied races. It was partially understandable, being the sheer opposite within the alliance on the pacifism front. Truly? It was the Dragons. While Nox were of the opinion that the Furling ways of handling Dragons are hurtful and deplorable. The Furling's stand was that on their own personal homeworld - it was called 'survival of the species'. End result was that, surprisingly enough, the Nox's old databases had more information regarding both the Furlings and their home planet, than those of the Asgard and Alterans combined.
Our first visit here, some two years back, was a setback alright, but it sent us back to do our research and make better plans. The fact that the Dragons are able to notice that reality is folded close by also came as a nasty surprise. Apparently, Dragon-fire, right next to a folded pocket of space, can put a strain on Brick-class shields. Something about ZPE bleed, but you'll have to ask Kazuko about it, if interested.
That was the first time we took notice of the peculiar shape, common to the bows of Furling ships of old. Turns out this wasn't the result of some Furling peculiar sense of aesthetics, but a design made to pair with the underground docking tunnel locks.
That's when the request to redesign the ships we were building for the Goblins came in.
"Docking tunnel shield active!" announces a voice from behind and one can actually feel the relief pass through us all. From now on, surprises of the Dragon kind will only lurk in front of us.
"Catapults are ruined," reports one of Goldpick's Goblins.
Apparently, those were used to launch small crafts high enough, out of the atmosphere, and most importantly - out of the reach of the Dragons. Capital ships either had robust enough shields to survive the local atmosphere's, well - atmospheric conditions. Or, they were built and operated in orbit.
All this is for the quite distant future, though. The Goblins are looking at years of excavation, reconstruction, and research, before they might be ready to even consider rebuilding their old homeworld. It will also be decades before current Goblins will have the tech know-how to seriously try.
"About two hours for the initial perimeter," we are updated by the same Goblin as before.
The Nox accompanying us looks hopeful. He then grimaces again, as the sound of the Goblins chasing away another Dragon reaches us from the distance.
"Former acting director Potter?" we hear Helia's voice over the comm.
Giggle.
"We're in orbit. Ready for transport?" she then announces, asks?
"Mint," Harry agrees.
May 12th 2004 - Somewhere in the Milky-Way galaxy
It's actually right in the neighbourhood of Camelot, and when I say 'right in the neighbourhood' I really mean 'no more than five thousands light years away'.
The whole planet's identity and location was a riddle, and the planet's surface is peppered with even more riddles all round. Those are Ganos' hoops, made to ensure only the worthy will get through. To actually reach Moros, one would have to first reach and then navigate this whole labyrinth of tunnels, under a lone mountain, while the whole place is protected by traps and a vicious Dragon.
How novel is that?!
By a happy chance we were given the exact coordinates and Atlantis was able to hyper to orbit, then transport us down, directly into the hidden cavern. A team led by Fleur and Bill will stay on planet to dismantle it all, and especially, to research whatever was left behind here.
Right, we brought Atlantis here for a change. Firstly, the thing is bloody fast. Not even the Asgard have anything which can keep up with the city in hyperspace. Now that we upgraded it, the city also has transporters. It's quite absurd that a space-city, so dependent on point-to-point transporters, just for one to get around, didn't have coordinate-based transporting capabilities. Enter the Martian.
Generally speaking, the Tria used to be just as fast, till her hyperspace engines went the wraith way and had to be replaced with Nox derived ones. The Tria even has transporters, originally installed. What she doesn't have is a hospital, and after almost a thousand years in a makeshift stasis pod, Moros is expected to be in a dire need for one. Atlantis also hosts a certain holographic library index, which just might become useful in this particular place in the galaxy.
Merlin's cave here is even more disappointing than his mythological one in Tintagel was. It is torch lit and peppered with some Lantean tech and an equal number of mediaeval artefacts. An engineer is quick to access the memory banks of the repository installed here.
Might be the most current in existence.
There's also a small sub-molecular constructor to pack.
"Is this Merlin?" Minister Scrimgeour's voice pulls our attention to the main attraction in the hall. Inside a rigged stasis alcove is an old man with a thick white beard. He is dressed in something that only Hollywood dressmakers would consider to be proper mediaeval attire.
"Might be," Bill shrugs.
"Hospital. Right away!" Sappho orders, after a short look at the instrumentation. A minute later we are all transported back up, but for a small team which is left behind to research the cave.
"Alright," Helia orders the chair officer. "Take us some ten thousand light-years above the galactic disk, and as close to this place as possible."
Harry nods in agreement.
We might need to return here in a hurry.
"Three days at the least, before he's strong enough to come out of stasis," comes Sappho's voice, from the hospital, over the comm.
"Brilliant," I can only say.
"What were we thinking?" old Weir bemoaned over her pint.
"About going where no woman has gone before?" I ask her flippantly.
Old Weir came back from Pegasus quite shaken.
"We had no place being there.'' she exclaims. "Atlantis is out of our league. We wouldn't even have been able to start and understand it. And the enemies we might have awakened!"
"Humans have always been too curious for our own good, if it's any consolation," I answer.
Having the likes of the Wraith aware of the Milky-Way feeding grounds is indubitably a worthy nightmare material.
"And all those poor souls, living out their lives looking up and waiting for them to come, with nothing to do and nowhere to hide…"
How many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
"No one turns his head and pretends that he just doesn't see," I remark softly.
For a while, we sit in silence, staring blankly at the stars outside and nursing our pints.
Did you know Atlantis used to be a dry city? Honestly!
"I was once invited to a friend's home in St. Croix," Weir tells me softly, after a while. "I came back, thinking that there is nothing in the whole universe like the night sky there." She then laughs a tad bitterly at the undisturbed sight of the galaxy swirl above our heads. "Never imagined something so dangerous"
Frightening!
"Can possibly be this pretty."
"Is this the reason you stay here?"
She's looking at me, quite bitterly. "I don't know that I have a place to go to," she whispers. "In a way, I was always aware that this voyage might be one way. Turns out that I've managed to return, but the world I've come from is no more."
Once again, she stares at the stars for a while. "Also," Weir then adds, "I get the notion that those weekly treatments I'm receiving are the only thing keeping me going."
"Did you ask?" I ask, but I get no response.
"In many ways, what happened before is happening again," Weir then tells me.
"Just received an invitation for Elisabeth's nomination as the head of SGC." I agree with her. "It's a whole reorganisation, though. Not just a political move to push General Hammond out, as you told me."
"True," Weir agrees. "And Kinsey expects her to be 'his woman'"
"He's about to be bitterly disappointed," I smirk.
Again!
"She's gonna have a whale of a time locked in her office," I then add, thinking of R's inner cave. "Reckon she'll need someone like you to do actual inter-planetary diplomacy work for her."
Weir looks at me intently for a long moment. "Wouldn't it be strange for the both of us," she then asks, clearly considering the possibility.
"Might be?" I shrug. "Should take it up with her, though."
May 15th 2004 - Just above the Milky-Way galaxy
It's a Saturday - Let's wrap it up?
We're quite an eclectic group, standing around Moros hospital chair, waiting quite impatiently for him to finally wake up.
"Any minute now," Sappho updates us.
It's at that moment that the old man moves slightly and opens his eyes.
"You look familiar," he says in a soft, unsteady voice, looking at Sappho. "Guinevere - It's been too long!" He then enthuses, trying to hug her.
"Stay back," Sappho just remarks and holds him in his chair.
"Percival!" he then calls towards Bill. "And Galahad!" he adds, looking at Harry. "Oh brave knights, fortune indeed does smile upon me to see your faces again."
Bill looks dejected. "Wrong brother," Fleur remarks lightly.
I hear Fleur murmuring something behind my back and soon Moros torso is lit. I glance at the bedside monitor - about point ninety-three of a Merlin.
Not even a Dumbledore.
"Rather disappointing, is he not?" I hear Minister Scrimgeour whispering to Harry beside him, a tad too loudly.
"It's what sometimes happens when people turn old men into the second coming of Merlin," Harry replies just as quietly.
"What's that? Mordred?" Moros responds, and the minister rolls his eyes, though I'm not certain whether it's about Moros, or Harry's words.
"Where am…" Moros starts to ask, then stops as he finally looks about.
Probably quite familiar with this place.
It's at this point that Helia loses her patience and steps right in front of him. "Nevermind the bollocks," she tells him and stuffs a tablet into his hands. "Enter the codes."
Moros sobers up at this and looks at her. He's clearly surprised at the identity of the person in front of him. "Captain?"
"The codes, Moros," she answers coldly. "We don't know how long you have to live."
"Curiosity is not a sin... But we should exercise caution with our curiosity," he answers.
These words earn a loud snort from Harry.
Are you having a laugh?
Helia silently points at the tablets in his hands.
"The truth," he goes on saying, "It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution."
Helia is clearly unimpressed with the old man's tosh, though. "I was voted, almost unanimously, as the High Chancellor by the almost two hundred Lanteans still around," she replies plainly. "The codes!"
"Perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it?" Moros still doesn't give up.
"If everybody minded their own business, the world would go round a deal faster than it does," I can't stop myself from saying. It earns me a thin smile from Helia.
It's at this point that Sappho loses her patience too. "The great and mighty Alterans," she tells Moros derisively. "We looked down on the Ori, but then played gods in this galaxy, seeded life, then ran away and left the humanity we had created to be slaves to worms. Then we played…"
We? Sappho?!
"Gods again in the Pegasus, then left them to be livestock to the wraith we have also created. You," she points angrily at him, "were so eager to flee again, that you left our own people behind to rot!" she snaps angrily.
"Literally," the Lantean cultural officer remarks dispassionately. "Helia here had to go into the Aurora's virtual environment network to personally tell our friends that they are, well - virtual. Also, that their bodies, out there, had meanwhile atrophied beyond hope."
"We also met the Orion in the Pegasus, in use by another race, who had no idea regarding her original crew." says the Tria's medical officer from behind us all. "Why exactly didn't you check on our people before leaving?" he asks, not truly expecting an answer.
Good, since one doesn't seem to be forthcoming.
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." Harry takes upon himself to answer in a sage tone, and earns a shade of a smile from the Minister.
"It is I, who's left with the ugly task of trying to clean our rubbish," Helia finally speaks again. "Hopefully, before us Lanteans are no more. We need to know how to manufacture drones and ships. We need the Asuran base code and design. We need to know what other rubbish was left around for others to stumble upon. And especially, what other secrets you old men have brushed under the rug."
We also need the location of Celestis, but the distinguished twit most certainly doesn't need to know that.
For a long moment they look at each other in silence. Then Morose sighs and finally types the code in.
I was half expecting it to be '1-2-3-4-5-6' or some such.
Helia plucks the tablet out of his hands, verifies something, then walks briskly out. Probably to login and change the pass-code, before the old berk changes his mind.
"We can't choose our fate, but we can choose that of others. Be careful in knowing that." he calls after her parting back.
Helia doesn't bother with a response. Nor does she even slow down. Surprisingly enough, it's Minister Scrimgeour who answers.
"Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!" he says, and I can't help but giggle.
I stop to hug Sappho on the way out of the hospital.
This day is hard for her, almost as much as it is for Helia.
"We?" I ask her, with a tender smile.
She huffs in exasperation. "Twits are really trying."
Out in the corridor I find the Minister speaking softly with Harry and Bill. "Thank you for inviting me here today," he says, as soon as I join them. He then turns back to Harry.
"I owe you an apology, Mr Potter," he adds in his gruff, serious voice. "Dumbledore was indeed the second coming of Merlin," he adds, and we all laugh. "Now, I need to go back and find a way to save our young's education prospects from his former deputy," he sighs.
It reminds me of something, though, and I stop this conversation with a raised finger and walk back in. In there, Moros sits in his treatment chair alone, holding a steaming cup of green tea.
"Say," I ask him, with no fanfare. "Why did you remove all maths and science books from the Hogwarts library?"
By the pained look on his face, I can already know not to expect an enlightened answer for this one.
Mark me disgusted.
May 16th 2004 - Moon base
We're back from our five-day mission to find both R and Admiral Penrose in the office.
On a Sunday?!
"Merlin has turned out to be all we had expected," Harry updates her, even before she has the opportunity to ask.
"Or perhaps the clear opposite," I add. "Not certain, myself."
We both look at her with a question clear on our faces.
"Greetings, Hermione Granger, Harry potter," Thor welcomes us. I'm surprised to see him perched in one of R's well-padded guest's armchairs, and not in his ever-present metal chair. He certainly looks cushy and content. Also, with him are a couple of 'young' Asgard. I'm surprised that for once their hands stay above the table. Still not a stitch of clothing on them.
"There was a small group of replicator ships, which managed to slip through our blockade," Thor gets to the point of this unscheduled visit."
"They left on the opposite side of our galaxy from Avalon," one of the other Asgards elaborated. "But, we believe them to be on their way here."
"Effing brilliant…
Huge shout, once more, to flyboy38, my beta, who takes the time to make sure the story is a much better read.
Also to Dalwolf For doing Brit-Picking for, well - you all, and help my British characters stay British.
I am eternally grateful!