Chapter 102
Harry squinted at the display. "What is it?"
"It is a minor galaxy between the Wrarth, Pheezel and Platrion galaxies, currently declared neutral in the Time War, Sorcerer," answered the Dalek Time Strategist.
"Why should we care?" queried Oswin.
-/
They'd been on their way to working out where Alvega was when they'd ducked out into normal space to 'check their messages' as he'd taken to calling it, which was mostly the Eternity Circle or Seriphia broadcasting a message to anyone who might care about their warnings of vampires. Harry continued to hope it was just hyperbole about the Time Lords' ancient enemies, they had enough enemies at the moment to worry about, they didn't need to recall old ones.
That was when the Time Strategist contacted them; that it knew who they were and gave them coordinates to materialise in was worrying but was far too interesting to ignore. Alvega could continue to wait.
If a Time Strategist was involved and knew them, this was 4-Dimensional chess levels of Dalek planning, which was something that could be interesting.
-/
"Within this galaxy is the former location of the planet Aldriss," the Time Strategist explained.
Harry looked over at Oswin and shook his head. "So? I'll be honest I don't know all the planets in the universe, I don't even know all the cities on Earth."
"Your education lacking on random knowledge like that Harry," Oswin tutted dramatically.
"Too busy trying to kill a bloke who wanted me dead," Harry countered in a musing tone.
The Time Strategist didn't try to interject while they were bantering, it was probably playing 3-dimensional Go by text message with Rassilon while they did so.
"It was a planet host to Technomancers," the Time Strategist explained. "The Doctor removed their planet from the Time War to prevent Time Lord resurrection being utilised by beings known as the Horned Ones."
Harry blinked as he tried to process that information. "Oh…kay?" Harry looked over at Oswin again, she shrugged and shook her head.
"Technomancers sounds magic-y, I guess my biodata source is involved?" Harry offered.
"Ginny Weasley is involved, yes Sorcerer," the Time Strategist confirmed.
Harry smiled carefully at the Time Strategist. It was the first Dalek to use her name, or recognise her significance without prompting. "I'm going to have to be careful around you, you're very smart, even above the vampire-obsessed Eternity Circle."
"The Eternity Circle are a focussed group of Daleks Sorcerer," it said and didn't confirm or deny anything else he said.
"Yes, indeed they are, too focused, too obsessed, are you obsessed Time Strategist?" Harry countered.
"The War is my focus Sorcerer," it answered obliquely.
"As Ginny Weasley is mine, her interference can't be allowed to continue," Harry sighed in thought and wondered if he'd spent too long on Metebelis III and getting his revenge on Voran, both of which weren't really holidays from anything, but had felt like they'd taken him away from the mission, even if he'd eliminated a three Ginnys.
"Yes, Sorcerer," the Time Strategist seemed to say only to break up the conversation.
"So what are these Technomancers?" Oswin queried.
"They are no more," the Time Strategist answered in a weird tone.
"Is Ginny Weasley on a planet that no longer exists in a dwarf galaxy…does that exist?" Harry looked at the galaxy again. It was still there. Unless it was a static image. Or a painting. It certainly looked like a few splotches on a black background. "We must be some distance from it."
"Yes, Sorcerer we are," Harry thanked the Horned Ones that the Time Strategist didn't go on to explain how far away they were. He kept getting told distances in the Time War and never understood them. How long will it take to travel? That's all he cared, the distance was immaterial for the most part. Unless you needed to ram something.
"So we fly in, blow her up, job done?" Oswin asked.
"No, Dalek Mage," the Time Strategist said.
"Bugger. Knew it wasn't going to be a cake walk in an O'Neill cylinder," Oswin commented.
"The effects of the weapon utilised by the Doctor had effected large swathes of reality in several systems of this galaxy, a small Dalek taskforce was sent to investigate," the Time Strategist explained.
"How many saucers?" Harry asked.
"6 saucers," the Time Strategist answered.
Harry nodded, recognising the number as a notable loss.
"None survived?" Oswin asked.
"None have returned," the Time Strategist answered again in a simple tone.
"Ominous," Harry mused. "Why do I get the feeling that I'm going to be sent with a minimal amount of Daleks to go and investigate and stop whatever it is that's going on there?"
The Time Strategist swivelled around to look at him. "You are correct."
"Of course I am, and let me guess, it's not safe for Oswin and most Daleks so she'll be staying behind."
"Dalek Mage's abilities are an unknown factor," the Time Strategist answered.
Oswin sighed dramatically.
"The Time Lords and Ginny Weasley cannot be allowed to succeed, if the Time Lords gain resurrection," the Time Strategist began in a tone that suggested it was going to spool up for a rant.
"On top of regeneration," Oswin interjected, now in Dalek form.
"This would present an unacceptable shift in the balance of the Time War," the Time Strategist finished calmly.
"Weird that the Doctor would bowl one for the Daleks' side then isn't it?" Harry wondered.
"The Doctor is a complicated element within the Time War Sorcerer, his ultimate machinations are complex," the Time Strategist answered obliquely.
"We're going to get on fine Time Strategist," Harry commented resisting to urge to pat the Dalek on the back.
-/
"A vessel has been obtained for your passage into the galaxy Sorcerer," the Time Strategist began.
"This is a big saucer isn't it?" Harry whispered to Oswin who had remained in Dalek form, after the Time Strategist had suggested she might be staying behind – that she'd switched to her Dalek form, Harry wasn't sure if this was a sign of rebellion or confirmation.
"I think this might be the biggest one we've been in," Oswin commented looking up and around them.
"I'm glad you're coming, wherever we're going Oswin," Harry confided as he looked at the back of the Time Strategist.
"He's too clever, and too smart to come with us," Oswin gestured with her manipulator arm.
"As long as he sends some Daleks with us," Harry paused as Oswin's gun twitched. "You're powerful, but I'd rather use something else as cannon fodder first," Harry added. If Ginny was messing around with something other magical, or something that might be magical and may or may not exist along with something god-like. All of this felt very dangerous, in a new worrying way.
A set of large double-sized doors opened with a whirr of noise and action for the Time Strategist, with Harry and Oswin following.
"Oh, wow, it survived!" Harry looked up at the white retro-futuristic spacecraft. "It survived the battle!" Harry exclaimed again.
"Its nature as an extra-temporal craft will offer a greater possibility of survival against the meta-temporal tele-psychic influences being wrought by the Time Lords and Ginny Weasley on Aldriss," the Time Strategist explained.
"I hope you'll be providing some support, for us Time Strategist," Oswin warned gesturing with her manipulator arm. "We will not go solo," her lights lit up for a long time and she inched forward as she spoke.
Harry had to smile as the Time Strategist backed away from her slowly.
"Affirmative Dalek Mage," it swivelled quickly around and a door on the other side of the room opened. "Other Skaro Degradations created by Time Lord manipulations of the timeline, not confined to the planet you escaped from have been chosen for this assignment."
Harry gaped as group of Daleks came into the room, six crawled on spidery legs, they held a normal-ish gunmetal grey Dalek atop these legs, another three came with them, they were larger than normal Time War Daleks and were silver with blue hemispheres around their lower half, and they had claws instead of manipulators along with what appeared to be satellite dishes on their backs.
"So this is our motley crew of Daleks, in a retro spaceship to go and fight a witch in the centre of her magical lair where she's having some sort of relations with a Horned One," Harry finished.
"What could possibly go wrong?" Oswin wondered brightly.
-/
The saucer had been fixed up better than it had been, the lava lamps hadn't been replaced and none of the Daleks; neither claw nor spider would tell him what they thought they were.
"How long will it take to get to the general area of Aldriss?" Harry wondered out loud.
"The planet does not exist on our space maps Sorcerer," one of the silver Daleks with the claw had taken up the space where he'd previously controlled the saucer. "However the Time Strategist has provided coordinates of the last confirmed location of the previous fleet."
"And how long to get there?" Harry asked with a sigh.
"Approximately 15 relative hours Sorcerer," said a spider Dalek behind him.
Harry nodded. "Well, let's get to it," Harry gestured with his hand, "let's go, engage, hit it, activate, whatever," he continued, waving at the screen ahead of them.
-/
Harry sat in the area off to the side of the control room within the Timeship, he wasn't going to leave his time craft with the Time Strategist, no matter their rank. It would cope with whatever was out there, it had kept them safe so far, if it could survive a temporal prison by the Time Lords, and he'd managed to survive, so he was confident that it would too.
"Got sick of spider and claw out there?" Oswin walked in, now in human form.
"Wanted to have a nap before wherever we end up, how dangerous do you think this is?" Harry wondered.
"Had a root around while we were walking to the saucer storage deck, the Time Strategist was telling the truth. She's out there. The galaxy has been existence for however long galaxies exist for, and there was a weapon detonation some time near the beginning of proper hostilities of the Time War, I don't know when or if it's related to when we popped into the war," she gave him a look "time you know."
Harry nodded. It gave him a headache sometimes. "Even the first time I time travelled using wizarding means, it gave me a headache, and Hermione was doing it every other day, it does my head in that something like that was allowed," Harry paused thinking back. "All of this, feels…" he trailed off. "Dangerous is the wrong word," he paused in thought. "I don't trust being sent with one sauce even if they've lost 6, it's ominous and worrying, and-"
"Just what is Ginny up to?" Oswin finished. "After all of this, I still don't have a handle on her Harry, you've got to stop killing her so I can understand her," she teased.
"I'm a bit disappointed that the only ones I've liked have been kind of mad," Harry pondered and looked to her. "That says more about me doesn't it?"
"Probably," Oswin paused. "but you're at ease surrounded by Daleks, that says something about you Harry."
"My stay with the Time Lords wasn't exactly a spa treatment, time around the Daleks is much more pleasant by comparison," he sighed. "I wish we'd spent more time on Metebelis III, I enjoyed that."
"We could have. At least you dealt with Voran…" she said leaving that statement hanging for a few moments. "Unless you wanted to be there to pull the trigger yourself."
Harry shook his head. "There's always the video of him, if he some how survived. Traitors aren't regarded highly," Harry smiled in a darkly wicked manner. "That would let me deal with him. I'm sure we can drop it on him when we deal with the original Ginny."
"You still think she's on Gallifrey don't you?" Oswin asked in a tone suggesting she just wanted to confirm his suspicions again to her.
Harry nodded, he'd suspected it for a while, it made sense that that would be where the Time Lords would stash her, and of course that would be more dangerous than anywhere else they could go. It would be most dangerous for both of them even to set foot on the Time Lord's home planet. He'd already set foot on their space station and that hadn't turned out well for him.
"One thing at a time Oswin, but at least we're on the home stretch, more dead than alive Ginnys, but…"
"Can't get distracted," Oswin finished for him. "Off you go, have a nap," she took him by the shoulder pulling him up to standing. "Go get some shut eye, I'll keep an eye out."
-/
Harry came out of the Timeship feeling much better rested, which helped as he had a feeling of utter dread at seeing cobwebs hanging in space.
"That's new," he commented.
"Cobwebs are imparting significant psychic interference across all wavelengths," reported the claw Dalek at the front of the command deck.
"Force barriers are in place and holding," a spider Dalek said from the back of the command deck.
"Try shooting it, that's what I said," Oswin said from where she was stood at the very front, in front of the windows.
Harry crossed the command deck to stand with her and felt a chill pass over his hands and did up his coat. "Well, we've seen this before, and we didn't like it then."
"Means we're in the right place," Oswin commented brightly.
"The creeping dread and general desire to want to run away and hide in the Timeship not already signalling that?" Harry asked morosely as he tried to bite his non-existent nails.
"Where should we direct our craft towards Sorcerer?" the Dalek at the front of the command deck asked.
That, Harry thought was a good question, for which he did not have a good answer. "Towards somewhere where there's a high concentration of psychic energy I guess," Harry pondered. "Wait until we start getting attacked and follow whatever it is that attacks us."
"And if that doesn't work?" Oswin wondered.
"Wait for inspiration to strike," Harry answered, turning to walk away from the command deck.
"Where are you off to?" Oswin called.
"The view's putting me on edge, going for a turn around the saucer," he called as he headed for the lift.
-/
"What's up Daleks?" Harry asked as he walked onto the command deck, he'd been having a wonder around, taken a look out the windows of this saucer to see what might be out there with the naked eye. There hadn't been much beyond the webs increasing his feeling of impending doom and despair.
"Energy source detected," said the Dalek at the front of the command deck.
"Can we see it?" Oswin asked as Harry walked to the front of the command deck.
An overlay appeared on the large window, overlaying a screen.
Harry turned around to Oswin "Could it do that last time?"
"We were on a quarter power when we had this thing Harry," she reminded him.
Harry smiled wistfully. "Back before the Time Lords," he sighed. "Makes me wish for ghosts and porridge."
Oswin coughed and Harry looked around and felt like he had the eyestalks of the Daleks on him. "What is it?" Harry said refocusing his attention on the spinning thing in space, it seemed about the size and shape of a small sky scraper with various transmitting aerial-type things on it.
Actually…Harry thought as he looked at it, it sort of looked like a turret of a castle, with techy bits added.
"Can we zoom in?" Harry grinned at having a fully functioning spacecraft to do things in and looked at it.
"It is of Time Lord design," Harry turned to see one of the spider Daleks had come up behind him.
Harry nodded in agreement, it certainly wasn't of Dalek design. This had too odd angles, and parts to it. "And blue crystals," Harry pondered as the image continued to zoom in as presumedly the saucer flew closer to it. "Any more information about what it's doing?" Harry asked out loud.
"Unknown," said a Dalek off to one side of the command deck. "Supposition, may be associated with the web structures we continue to make passage through."
Harry turned around to look at another of the spider Daleks, it was a level of pondering he'd not been used to. "Very possibly," and shook his head. "We've encountered the web before, it's more of a psychological measure."
"Or maybe it's more psychic, and those crystals, they must be enhancing something on the same wave length," Oswin said raising her eyebrows.
Harry returned the gesture, if the Daleks didn't know about the Metebelis III crystals, they didn't need to tell them.
"Should it be destroyed?" asked the spider Dalek beside them.
Harry shook his head. "No, not until we know what's going on, then we can…" he trailed off.
"Explosives?" Oswin asked brightly.
Harry beamed. "Excellent idea."
"None included in arsenal," the spider Dalek responded.
Harry wrinkled his nose and didn't ask why not. There probably wasn't a budget for it, he wondered if that was part of why it had been easier to send the misfits instead of engineering soldier Daleks to go with them.
"Any torpedoes?" He wondered.
"Thought you didn't want to blow it up?" Oswin asked.
"Transmat the torpedos nearby and we'll remote detonate it if we need to," Harry explained.
Oswin nodded. "That should work," she turned around to the back fo the command deck. "Get on it," Harry said and didn't bother to mention he got the idea from watching a TV show.
"Understood, Sorcerer," the Spider Dalek answered.
"Can we discern from this where the energy is pointing, give us a better idea of which way to head?" Oswin wondered.
-/
Harry stood at the back of the command deck looking at the lava lamps.
The Time Strategist hadn't explained anything more about Horned Ones in its way of just delivering information and sending him off on a task. Too focused that was its problem…actually Harry suspected it was his problem that the Time Strategist had exploited. The Time Strategist had shown that it was thinking about far more than just this.
Cobwebs and the Metebelis Crystals and a Horned Ones good at resurrecting the dead.
If the Time Lords managed to achieve this, or achieve it again on a grand scale that could drastically shift the war.
Harry wasn't sure how the Doctor had stopped it last time, and they weren't exactly on the most chummy terms at the moment, and calling him in to give the Daleks a hand probably wouldn't go down amazingly well.
"You doing alright?" Oswin asked as she came up to him and looked at the lava lamps curiously.
Harry shrugged. "Just worrying about facing horned ones."
"Not done that before?" Oswin wondered.
Harry shook his head sinking down to to the floor into a seated position and leant against the wall where the lava lamps were held.
Oswin followed suit. "Worried?"
Harry sighed. "This doesn't feel dangerous, but there's a big unknown something that we're following, whatever it is she's messing around with, it's got the potential to shift the war in a massive way, that means it'll be protected."
"Unless she's doing it on the sly, if the Doctor destroyed this place, then maybe the Time Lords don't know, some of them, at least anyway," she mused,
Harry nodded, it was a possibly. "I guess…" he trailed off with a sigh, the mood here was pulling him down, that psychic field or whatever. Even after Voldemort, Ginny was doing the whole resurrection thing, again in a different way.
"I spent time in the temple of the goddess," Oswin interjected into the silence and his musing. "She, the goddess, helped as I came to terms with…" she waved her hand around. "Everything."
"Did it help? Believing in something?" Harry wondered.
"Do you think these Horned Ones are gods?" Oswin asked curiously.
"The Doctor always talked about megalomaniacs and other things proclaiming that they're gods or whatever. I've not really thought about it much, I remember finding a book in the Doctor's TARDIS about 'the war in heaven', where it detailed of the wars the Time Lords engaged in, and where."
"You think the Time Lords are gods?" Oswin asked again in the same curious tone. "After seeing the Doctor?"
"What do you think? You've met him as well, not just the beardy one we've met here," Harry asked.
"Dunno, Rory and Amy were more notable, more powerful in the face of danger," she said softly. "Rory especially," she finished very quietly.
Harry smiled and nodded. "I don't think they're gods, I'm not sure if I'd know a god or goddess if I came across them. I didn't trust the Time Lords before I came into this Oswin, and I still don't."
"Any ideas about what they might be then?" She pondered.
"Dæmons from Dæmos maybe? UNIT and the Doctor encountered one in the 1970s," Harry frowned in thought. "Not sure what Ginny could be doing-"
"With the Time Lords," Oswin interjected.
"With them," Harry finished as an alert tone went off.
"Looks like we're about to find out," Oswin said jumping up and offering him her hand, pulling him up off the ground.
"What's the alert for?" He asked.
"Dramatic tension aside you mean?" Oswin challenged playfully.
Harry rolled his eyes. "Just what we don't need in our lives Oswin, more tension and drama, hopefully this one we can deal with using scones and tea."
"Convergence of energy sources detected," announced the spider Dalek.
Harry gestured towards the window. "We pointed in the right direction or close enough to see? Or pop it up on screen if we can't…" Harry trailed off as an image appeared on the window.
It was very big, and hard to focus on.
"Sensors indicate TARDIS energies," a Dalek said behind him as he tried to process it. It was like a ball of misshapen stuff, yet had an almost structured-like form to it, weird it reminded him of a castle, sort of. "We've seen this sort of thing before," Harry said looking to Oswin.
"When we were attacked by those TARDISes? You think it's similar?" Oswin wondered.
Harry shrugged. "Looks like it," Harry turned around to the spider Dalek. "Any sign they've noticed us," Harry paused. "Can you also show a scale of us to this structure?"
"I obey," it said behind him as a secondary wire frame model was projected beside it.
"Oh," Oswin said in a dull tone.
"Yep," Harry sighed. "that's what I suspected, because we're never lucky."
The saucer was about the size of a speck and this structure was moon-sized.
"And that's no moon," Harry said to himself.
-/
Outside the structure towered over the saucer. It was a tiny speck of a space vehicle and if the TARDIS had any remaining external sensors, it would have been unlikely to have been able to detect the craft currently sat outside it at an odd angle.
If the operator, or anyone who might have been able to look outside of the structure had done so, equally it would have been unlikely that they could have seen anything, because, now that the saucer had stopped moving the web-like structures that had been trailing behind it had begun to catch up with the saucer's velocity.
Unbeknownst to the occupants of the saucer. And anyone else within the local vicinity.
-/
Harry turned around from the front of the command deck where they were still trying to work out how to get in, as this was Time Lord design and there was nothing else around that might signal something that they should be going after.
"The lava lamps are making more bubbles, should we be worr-" Harry didn't even get to finish asking his question, and nor did he get to have an explanation of what the lava lamps indicated because something exploded, the lights turned purple and it felt like everything was on fire.
Fortunately he didn't black out and Oswin managed to rush over and grab him as the saucer tipped backwards.
"Full power towards the Time Lord TARDIS structure!" Harry shouted and edged towards a part of the back of the command deck, casting spells to compensate for motion as he did so, "Ramming speed!" Harry shouted.
He wasn't sure if he heard the Daleks acknowledge the order or not, but did hear Oswin ask "Do you know what ramming speed is?"
"It's what spaceship captains on TV shows say when they run out of options," he explained.
"Are you out of options?" Oswin looked at him with a worried expression.
"Whatever this is, it's an attack and if it's enough to effect the lava lamps then that's dangerous," Harry felt the engines start to whine. "And I'm not going to sit around not doing anything Oswin. There's Ginnys to deal with, and I'm not going to sit around and get captured by the Time Lords again!"
-/
The saucer shrugged off any loss of velocity that the web had removed, secondary energy delivery systems engaged and propelled it towards the TARDIS structure, where unexpectedly, the architectural configuration system; detecting an incoming craft altered configuration; arresting its momentum and brought it to a rough landing within a large docking bay.
Minutes later a motley crew of beings, most of whom were Daleks disembarked and looked around.
"This is disappointing," said the being that hadn't originated on Skaro.
"We did not perish upon making contact with the exterior," one of the spider-shaped Daleks commented in a surprised tone.
"And the three claws will work out if we'll fly again and deal with the webs, I know," said a being in a red dress.
-/
Harry Potter looked around, and gestured around with his wand, this place had a really strange vibe. It felt like reality was, or their interface with it was adjusting as it realised they were within it. It was really weird.
Where they had come into land, it had a sound that was almost out of hearing range as an interior TARDIS noise.
But there was something else, an edge, of a feeling. Not the paranoia inducing one that had begun since he'd seen the web. Said web he was going to blame on his rash actions before.
In here the feeling was different; something else.
Maybe it was just being inside another Time Lord structure. Another not-TARDIS sort of thing.
"Come on," Harry gestured with his wand. He had other weapons strapped to his body, but he felt like his wand would be enough with the Daleks' firepower being the backup he'd need if Ginny turned out to be a handful as she always seemed to be.
"This is weird," Harry looked around curiously. The doors out of the landing bay, which helpfully had the words 'landing bay' written in large unfriendly letters on them led out into a large corridor.
Which looked like a castle.
"It can't be actual stone can it?" Harry looked to Oswin who looked over to the spider Daleks who were looking around.
"Scans inconclusive sorcerer," the lead one said.
"Time to explore," Harry announced.
"Maybe we should split up," Oswin said far too brightly.
Harry looked at her with daggers.
-/
Much to his own annoyance, he'd agreed they should split up, because TARDISes were huge, even if this one wore its hugeness on the outside.
It was weird, it felt like being at Hogwarts, but not really, like there was something…something weird on his senses, like it was a memory, but not quite there.
He let his senses, his memories guide him as he walked, it was…odd. He really wished he had a Dalek with him. A hovering variety, the spider Daleks were many things, much more intelligent than the regular variety. But they were not as quiet as a regular Dalek, too many legs on the stone, or whatever it was floors.
It looked like stone, felt like stone and probably tasted like stone it he was mad enough to reach out and lick the walls.
But then the zeppelin hangar in the Doctor's TARDIS looked like a huge hangar, save for the roundel reliefs in the walls and the faint background hum of the TARDIS. He and Draco had lamented the lack of brooms, the space was big enough to have held an indoor Quidditch match in.
Harry smiled to himself, he remembered saying to Draco that one day they should go and investigate the old airship hangars that were in Britain, that maybe they could do a deal with whoever owned them and to hold some semi-professional Quidditch matches inside. It would certainly save a bit of spell crafting, time and money if they could just do it all inside and keep it all contained.
"Which is what this is…whatever it is, a container for resurrection," Harry said to himself as he turned a corner and, whether through imagination or hopeful projection found a set of stairs, which if this were Hogwarts would have led to the the headmaster's office.
It didn't, he was pretty sure, but he followed the staircase regardless, because it felt like what the architecture wanted him to do, and there was something quasi-magical about this place, which might just have been his imagination.
"Albus Dumbledore eat your heart out," Harry said as he pushed open the double doors. Inside what was intended, or maybe suggested to be the headmaster's office in this simulacrum of Hogwarts was a secondary control room of a TARDIS. Wood paneling and all. He'd only seen this style of secondary control room briefly when he and Draco had travelled with the Doctor, before they'd gone out to deal with the Armageddon Convention stuff, the Doctor had asked them to hunt around for a few things. 'It's in one of the control rooms, I used it after that business with the Teal-Vandor Convention'.
What was notable about this control room however was that all of the panels of the console had been pulled off and control linkages removed.
From what he could see and smell there was considerable power or overload going on around here, maybe everything was functioning on the cusp of overloading.
Harry gestured around with his wand moving loose panels and other things just in case anything might shock or surprise him.
Turning Harry looked at the console for a moment and dug around in his pockets. He'd left his larger bag in the Timeship, as it was a little bit cumbersome when he was getting shot at. But he still stuffed some things into his pockets. Like some portable explosives he'd picked up from a Dalek saucer at some point previous, just because the saucer hadn't been armed with big explosives didn't stop him from carrying around some smaller ones.
Carefully he floated them onto the console and slipped the detonator into a spare pocket.
It was possible the state of grace might stop it, something had allowed them to not crash land into this structure, maybe that was it, but there was something else here…
Something didn't feel right about here, and not just because it felt like Hogwarts.
At the bottom of the stairs he nearly walked into Oswin, both of them making a noise as they sucked in a surprised breath.
"Find anything?" She asked.
Harry shook his head, "This place feels like Hogwarts, it's unsettling."
"I get that, and this is stone, like real stone," she patted the wall.
"Or…a mathematical model of stone," he said as he explained what he'd found upstairs.
"Did you look out the windows?" Oswin asked.
Harry shook his head. "No windows to look out of, why?"
Oswin took him up one of the towers, it would have been, had this been Hogwarts the astrology tower.
It made him want to cast a bubble head being up here…in space and pointed. "Down there?"
There was a large structure, seemingly in the centre of the castle, which was weird because the castle didn't have a centre, or Hogwarts never felt like it had a middle, just lots of corridors and spaces. Also he was sure he'd walked through the middle of the castle, and yet he'd not found this large space in the middle.
There was a big glass roof with what looked like oak beams supporting it, sort of like the great hall at Hogwarts.
"That's where we need to be going," Harry continued to gesture.
"There's other energy sources that come up, if you look hard enough," Oswin pointed to areas that seemed peel away from holding the roof up "points of psychic energy that might be something, the Daleks could look for those."
Harry shook his head. "Get them and let's make an entrance."
-/
"We will need more energy if we're to keep up the schedule," Ginny said into the scanner in the corner of the room. Most of the TARDIS's controls had been moved to the corner of the space. This TARDIS was unlikely to be able to dematerialise ever again.
"You will have everything you require Lady Ginny. CIA TARDISes are preparing to depart Gallifrey space-time shortly, how are our allies going?"
"The Horned Ones continue to appreciate their existence, and I've made it clear the Doctor won't be involved, they appreciate what I've done…and sacrificed to make this happen," she paused, the spell craft was still sinking into the building to ensure that everything would work as it would. She…they had sacrificed greatly, even if she hadn't gone willingly. The energy, the intensity had to come from somewhere, with the Technomancers no longer present…there was nothing she or the CIA could do to help that. But the Horned Ones were still ancient beings, far more powerful than anything currently at play in the war.
"Excellent, the Celestial Intervention Agency praises your commitment Lady Ginny, you are a testament, unlike many of Gallifrey, we will win this war with your assistance."
"Understood," she paused. "I'll need more subjects soon, some of the experiments have been less than successful."
"We have several Dalek prisoners of war and Gallifreyan traitors with CIA TARDISes before you move onto proper subjects…" they paused. "The Horned Ones…"
"Are thankful of our sacrifices, within the terms we acknowledge some to the Horned Ones for the time after the war," she answered.
"Good." And with that the transmission ended.
Ginny still had some misgivings concerning the Horned Ones, but the power they wrought was almost beyond that of the Time Lords…when channelled properly.
Unfortunately after the Doctor used a temporal weapon against the Technomancers they were practically wiped from reality. It was only after much magic and time expended, almost 100 years of real-time careful spell crafting between her and her other self, they had managed to recreate a connection with the Horned Ones, and a space for them to manifest. It still felt dangerous but at least she had established a bridge between them and her. And her sacrifice had been of worth, she had risen again…more or less. Even a magical being had shown the limits which needed…tweaking.
-/
Harry didn't get how Oswin could spy through the door and then project it to him without making much noise around them, but she had, something to do with force fields or something. She withdrew her manipulator arm, and then when he turned around to look at the assembled spider Daleks was back to her red dress human form.
"Well?" She asked.
Harry bit his lip in thought. "I don't like this, something feels off, but if we go in there guns blazing I'm not sure we'll succeed, especially if she's got backup."
"You're going to go in there and talk to her aren't you, you're going to get beaten up and knocked out," Oswin challenged. "Again."
"Daleks should move in first Sorcerer," one of the spider Daleks said behind him.
"You should," it started to move, Harry held up a hand stopping it. "But I want you to go and find an alternate entry, even if that means crashing through the roof. I want to talk to her first, just in case I can get close."
"You just like talking to psychopaths," Oswin commented in an amused tone.
"I'd ring up River Song if that's all I wanted to do," Harry said as he unlocked the door and walked in.
-/
Ginny looked away from the console as she heard the main doors unlock.
"Hello Ginny!" shouted Harry Potter.
She reached for her staser and shot him.
-/
The force of the blast hit him in the chest and, it hurt, he collapsed swearing.
"Really," he pulled himself up leaning on a supporting pillar, which might have been holding up the roof, or was just part of the architectural configuration. "There were never any stasers in the Great Hall Ginny!" He exclaimed with annoyed humour.
"How are you not dead Harry? That was on kill," she said in an irritated tone.
"You think I'd hang out with the Daleks if I didn't know how to survive a kill shot?" Harry asked as he walked through a simulation of the Great Hall, if the tables had been replaced with body-sized slabs that looked like sacrificial alters.
"Shall I try again?" She asked. Now that he got closer he could see she was older, she had greying hair and a cold wrinkled expression, and she was holding a staser.
Harry fired a spell at it, a targeted spell to super-heat the polymer and metal of it. After being stuck on the saucer and with a staser to play around with he'd slowly worked out exactly what spells would be good to deal with it.
He was pleasantly surprised as she screamed and dropped the staser. She didn't fire a spell at him, she seemed more concerned with the burns on her hands.
He took the opportunity to make his way around the sides of the room. "So what's up with the Horned Ones?" He asked casually. "Would you like a hand with some healing spells Ginny? I know a few of them."
"Oh really?" Ginny asked growling. "You're more likely to cut off my head to save me suffering Harry, I've heard what you and your Dalek allies have been up to, traitors to everything."
"And the Time Lords, they're not traitors to everything either, or when they do it, it's acceptable losses for the greater good?" Harry asked cynically.
"You've never suffered for your part in this, I-" she started with a snarl.
"I've been held by the Time Lords and tortured, so don't use that tone with me Lady Ginny," Harry spat.
Ginny seemed to pause in thought. "How did you come to this Harry, you were the best, you fought Voldemort."
"I might say the same, raising the dead?" Harry wondered.
"For the right reasons," she countered.
Harry ran a finger along one of the slabs. "You're swaying the Time War, its web of time is something I can't allow you to influence, you're my responsibility, and you end, here and now."
Now would have been the perfect time for something to crash through the ceiling. Preferably something like a spider-shaped armour-plated killing machine. Unfortunately instead something tried to stab him in the neck.
Harry ducked and rolled firing a blasting curse at what appeared to be another Ginny, her arm splattering against the walls of the hall as Harry ran to the far side of the room, casting healing charm at his neck.
"You, there's another one of you here?" He shouted, though it was more of a croak.
"You've interrupted my work, you think I'm going to explain Harry Potter, you're an insignificant piece of the Daleks' war machine," she commented, turning away to the TARDIS console..
"Oswin," Harry hissed as he activated his communication system, "she's spinning up for a rant, any time would be good."
"I've spent decades perfecting this, you think you could stop me now? This isn't your pathetic little organisation fighting imaginary fictional things on Earth," she challenged cooly.
Harry wiped a finger over the stab marks and realised it was probably some sort of magic, mostly because he was still bleeding, although the healing charm had helped stem the bleeding.
Fumbling with his pocket he squeezed the detonator and felt a satisfying thump and a bell tolling as something in the TARDIS obviously suffered a catastrophic failure.
"You're a really annoying insect sometimes Harry Potter," Ginny said as she moved around the console pulling leavers.
It was then that two somethings crashed through the ceiling and the rest came through the doors.
Unfortunately, through a set of doors behind where the head table would have been, doors which had been invisible until now, opened and somethings came out.
They looked like Time Lords…and Daleks. But it felt like there was a void…plus something else at the front of the room, something old and dangerous.
Harry winced as he found an emergency med-kit in a pocket and slapped something onto his neck feeling it latch on and begin to knit the stab wound on his neck.
"How did you manage to go from friendly conversation to a full battle in less than 6 minutes?" Oswin asked as she was shooting across the room.
"Don't ask," Harry said as he began to make his way back towards Ginny, the weird one seemed to be unconscious, he'd deal with her later.
"We can talk about this Ginny!" Harry shouted as he tried to ignore the firefight going on. Thankfully Ginny's soldiers were focusing on the Daleks, and none seemed to be focused on him.
Which was fortunate because Ginny fired off a series of complex spells, all wordless and they came at him as a spiralised mix of light and sound, it threw him backwards back towards the spider Daleks, two of which rotated and together with their manipulator arms and caught him mid-air.
Harry fired a series of explosive spells towards the floor where the console was and where Ginny stood smugly watching the battle.
The console gave a satisfying crunch as some of the power lines exploded and what appeared to be boiling mercury shot out of the console hitting her in the legs making her crumple.
Harry continued to approach firing multiple blasting spells, nothing fancy, nothing complicated, he was just determined to kill her as simply as possible.
By the time he finally reached her she was burnt by super-heated mercury and blasting charms; her mouth hanging off her face.
Harry winced, and then was shot in the back, as he realised these weren't zombie hordes or something; they weren't going to suddenly drop dead after he'd killed their master.
And then someone jumped on top of him and tried to stab him. Again.
"Miss me?" She hissed into his eye as he tried to to throw himself backwards and only ended up throwing himself and the woman on him against the TARDIS console.
"Why aren't you dead yet?" Harry demanded.
"I am harder to kill, now, Harry Potter, stronger for Ginny's resurrection," she whispered even though she was trying to pull herself up off the console.
Harry rolled off it, careful to miss the bloody mercury-covered remains of the other Ginny.
"What's with the physical attacks? I blasted your non-dominant arm off, you could still attack me," Harry asked as he looked around the console, several of the panels he was familiar with had been removed or were blank. There was no dematerialisation system that he could see, the architectural confirmation was open and the power levels looked dangerously high. Then he remembered he'd just blown up the secondary control room.
Weird how being attacked made him loose track of things.
His question seemed to make the other Ginny pause.
"I remember I had a wand, then she killed me, in the back, I remember we were talking about the Horned Ones experiments, of Resurrection," she said quietly, looking down at her bloodied robes. Harry chanced a look to the battle that was going on, the spider Daleks were definitely making progress against the Daleks and Time Lords that had come through and they were staying dead. Which was good, they weren't in a zombie incursion situation.
"The Technomancers used to be involved," Harry prompted as he made sure he had his wand ready to blast Ginny's head off; decapitation was messy but at least it was final.
"Yes!" She exclaimed softly. "You shouldn't know about them, no one in the universe knows they exist; wiped by away from the timelines."
My source knows far too much about that Harry thought to himself, far too clever. "And why pursue this path again, the CIA nervous?"
"The CIA are preparing for less optimal outcomes, the Guardians would not assist in our cause. Only Yog-Sothoth, their Great Intelligence would assist because we asked nicely, none of the others would involve themselves in this war," she looked up an him a snarl on her face. "The Daleks have one of our own on their side, we have many and we need more."
Lots of royal 'we' Harry thought and wanted to kill her but curiosity was getting the better of him again, he wanted to move into the battle proper, but the sounds of it were dying down.
"I'm on no one's side, I'm just trying to survive it," he looked carefully at her. "You know this," he looked her up and down "Isn't survival, I fought Voldemort, resurrection isn't all it's cracked up to be. The Time Lords want resurrection on top of regeneration? How mad is that?" He asked with some humour.
Ginny looked at him. "The Daleks sweep away life, they reproduce endlessly."
"No, that's the Sontarans, the Daleks have some complexity," Harry tried and wondered if now was the time for poetry. Ginny seemed almost reasonable. Except for the missing arm, which was his fault, probably.
Ginny gave him a look. "They still reproduce in vats."
"Unlike the Time Lords' looms?" Harry countered.
"What?" Ginny looked at him confused.
Harry shook his head. "And these Horned Ones, why do they inhabit the dead?"
"When the Time is right," she said and looked at him, tilting her head a feral smile spreading across her face.
Harry blasted her head off her shoulders, it splattered across the wall.
"That's enough of that I think," he said to himself.
"Learn anything interesting?" Oswin asked as Harry hovered the remains of the first Ginny away from the mercury vapour and started to hunt through her clothing.
Pocketing her wand he didn't find anything else, but he vaporised her body and followed it up with the remains of the other.
"New spell?" Oswin praised.
Harry nodded, it was rather ironic he'd found the spell in Ginny's own notebook of potions and other things, more efficient than what he'd previously been using.
"Now, we need to work out how to blow this place up," Harry said brightly.
Harry mused looking at the scanner, there was a spider Dalek at the TARDIS console who'd been having a good poke around at the console.
Now the scanner was displaying the 'psychic amplifiers' which he assumed had something to do with this TARDIS or the Horned Ones or something. Those would need dealing with first, then they could deal with this TARDIS.
Destroying a TARDIS was not something he knew a lot about.
That wasn't to say he hadn't picked up a few things, but he didn't think this was a situation where he could use the Timeship to pop this one open. This TARDIS didn't seem like it had a hard exterior. Where they were seemed to be the outside and the inside wasn't anywhere, or the outside was stuck onto the inside.
Removing a TARDIS' space time element he knew would stop it from travelling in time and render it functionally inoperative. The Doctor had explained it to him in passing when he was doing some repairs after that vortisaur business with the Terrible Zodin, where he'd learnt a lot about the console.
"The vibe here sets my teeth on edge," Harry muttered.
"Deceased bodies of Daleks and Time Lords retain energy readings of on sub-reality level, possible hyperspace or icaron involvement," one of the spider Daleks reported.
"Wherever these Horned Ones lurk, somewhere dangerous," Harry commented. "We can't Time Ram this TARDIS. Our Timeship doesn't have enough relative mass and this one has too much of its exterior mapped to make it work," Oswin gave him a puzzled look, mostly because he was making that up as he went. He didn't want to try and Time Ram this place, it already felt a bit…off.
"Conventional explosives and the removal of the space time element as you suggested Sorcerer," the spider Dalek at the console suggested.
"I'll have a look in our Timeship for some more, we can pop them all on timers with remote detonators just in case, then we can leave and destroy the psychic enhancers," Harry explained, hopefully they didn't have any shielding or anything.
-/
Harry looked at the Dalek in control of the saucer, and the other that was in charge of weapons with an annoyed expression. He was hoping that he'd get to do this, but no. They were being efficient. One temporal torpedo was enough to destroy each of the psychic enhancers, thoroughly destroying them. Efficient, but hardly fun.
After the sixth of the enhancers was destroyed they moved the saucer to a safe distance, with plenty of time to spare.
Harry stood at the window, watching the numbers count down, eating bag of porridge.
"I didn't think it was breakfast time," Oswin commented. "Thought you were sick of those things."
"Being here made me nostalgic," Harry looked to her, "How are you feeling?"
She tilted her head to look at his neck, he had a balm on it to deal with whatever it was on his neck that the other Ginny did. "You alright?"
"I didn't suffer catastrophic blood loss, nor was I tortured or had to deal with whatever the Horned Ones were," Harry paused as the countdown got to single digits. "I hope we used enough explosives."
"They found what might have been the Eye of Harmony interconnect, it was one of the very stressed areas, there's a few cannibalised torpedoes like the one we left when we entered the area. That should do some damage."
Harry nodded as he spooned some more of the meal into his mouth. It felt like so long ago that he'd been eating nothing but this stuff.
"15 rels," Oswin prompted.
Harry silently counted in his head as they watched the TARDIS as small explosions went off around it like mini-mushroom clouds, then the whole thing seemed to go into a runaway collapse and then there was…
"Not much left," Oswin turned around. "Zoom."
Harry stepped back as the screen superimposed on the window so he could see the zoomed in image of a cylinder approaching them.
"Let's go before the Time Lords turn up," Harry said. "Jump to FTL, let's get a shift on."
-/
A/N:
I wrote a few versions of this chapter. Originally in my plans for this story I had it listed as Land of Fiction/High Fantasy meets the Time War chapter.
I even wrote 5500 words worth of a chapter based on that idea (for perspective this chapter is 8,850 words). Unfortunately it just didn't work and didn't go anywhere.
It would've featured a breach in reality the Time Lords were using on a high magic/psychic planet through which the Time Lords were going to use to wormhole their way between galaxies/the gaps between. With the Land of Fiction / something like it as a convenient bridge / filter.
But it didn't quite fit for the Time Lords or for Ginny, I ended up fighting it to make it work and gave up. The ideas from it I might try and work into a future (non-Time War) chapter.
I don't use chapter titles, but if next chapter had one it would be: Mission to Alvega, and it would be a graphic novel illustrated in 1960s colours. It's got something special in it. And not just beer and psychic daffodils.
Also apologies for the delay, life and other things got in the way. I'm going to endeavour to get the next chapter edited and posted before the end of the year.
Thanks for reading.
