Ch. 35 — Serpent's Grasp
Harry and Hermione were once more in the mervillage.
"Now that you've had a chance to talk with the ones who went to the water-planet, look over all the pictures they took, and the information we managed to get — what have you decided?"
The chieftain wagged his head side-to-side. "Here, we are mostly content." He looked around. "A few of our young warriors and their mates are interested." He looked back at Harry. "We've talked with others, outside. They are very interested."
"How many?" Harry was surprised they had shared their information, already. He knew there had to be a way to the sea somewhere in the depths of the lakebed, otherwise Durmstrang would never have been able to get to Hogwarts. Not to mention there weren't enough fish in the lake to support the Giant Squid and the other creatures who inhabited it.
"About a hundred." He eyed them both suspiciously. "What do you want in exchange? Treasures from the ocean?"
Harry recoiled slightly. "No! I just want to lessen the possibility of the magical world being discovered!"
"What can we take?"
Hermione spoke up. "Nothing living, so no plants or pets. The muggles have had terrible problems with accidentally bringing a new species when they discover a new place, and then upsetting the natural order of that place. Several new species became a severe pest that competed with them for the food stocks, or even wiped out entire native species that the muggles preferred." She paused. "Later, in a decade or two, when you know more about how the different animals and plants interact, you might want to introduce something from Earth."
Her comm suddenly chirped. At her response, Harry heard, "Angelina here, Ma'am. I've been thinking about that. Why can't we have the ship tag the DNA of all the new plants and creatures they bring in? Then, if one of them turns out to be a problem, we can have a ship selectively beam the plants or creatures out of the ecosystem?"
"We can do that?" Harry asked.
"Certainly," came the instant response. "When they board the ship, we scan them and have the medical system make the required changes in a few seconds."
He looked over at Hermione and tried to raise his eyebrows, only to realize he didn't have any. "Well, what do you think?"
She frowned and looked down for a minute. "If you have no objection, it's fine with me."
Harry nodded and turned back to the Chieftain, who was scowling at them.
"It appears, if you don't mind us tagging things, that you can take anything you want with you. If it turns out to be a problem," he shrugged, "you can ask us to remove it from the planet."
He looked back at Hermione. "Scanning everything is probably a good idea anyway, that way we can eliminate any parasites or overlooked stowaways."
She nodded back.
He reached into the rucksack he had brought and took out a box painted a vibrant orange. The DFS logo was written on all four sides. He held it out to the merman.
"This," he said, "is a communicator. If you press the black button, it signals us that you wish to talk. As soon as someone can, the front will turn into a display of whomever answered the call. You can tell them when you will be ready for pickup, or have them pass on to me any questions you might have." He paused as the Chieftain gingerly took the device. "This one I leave with you here, in the village. We will leave the colonists on the new world a much larger version so they can contact us if there is an issue. You can also communicate directly with them, this way, too, if you want."
He paused and looked at Hermione, frowning. "It occurs to me to ask if we could set up a whole communication grid for the merpeople? Like the one we use?" He gestured at his comm stone. "Then they could talk with friends and family anywhere on Earth or the new world. Is it possible?"
She mulled it over for a few moments. "I don't see why not. With multiplexing we could easily set up a parallel system."
He turned back to the Chieftain. He pointed at his command stone. "As you just saw, we have a simple way to communicate between ourselves no matter how far apart we are. Would you be interested in something like this? It would make it possible for you to talk to any of your fishing teams at any time, and for them to warn you of any problems they encounter."
They spent a few minutes talking over why the merpeople might want the comm-stones.
Before they had finished, a small box appeared on the ground below them. Hermione swam down to fetch it. "Here," she said. "There are a hundred of our comm-stones in here. I suggest you give a few out to some of your village elders and hunters, and the other villages, and discuss if something like this would be useful."
"I think," Harry said, "That when we first move your colonists to the new world, that we'll give each of them a comm-stone so they can warn each other of dangers and discoveries as they come across them instead of waiting until they get back to their new village to report. It'll probably save a few lives."
They also decided that the Galileo would build the first village in a bay in one of the islands, with a high-barrier across the mouth to prevent large predators from finding them. It would form a safe-hold for if something large decided that merpeople would make nice snacks.
The Galileo would take the first group of merpeople colonists on the weekend.
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It was Wednesday, the week after the hard-fought Gryffindor-Slytherin match, which Gryffindor won. At the conclusion of their Potions class, Professor Slughorn said, "Mr. Potter, a moment, please?"
Hermione hung back with him, and they both approached the wizard's desk.
Slughorn smiled at her. To Harry he handed a box that he had taken from a drawer in his desk. "As promised, Mr. Potter," he said pompously, "one hundred one-ounce vials of Felix Felicis." He winked at Harry. "Actually, a hundred and ten. I got," he smirked, "lucky, when I was first mixing ingredients."
Hermione grinned happily, opened her rucksack, took out her purse, and then took a small box out of that. She handed the small box to the Potions professor. "The agreed upon gems and galleons, Professor."
She smirked and pulled a second small box out of her beaded purse. "And," she said, "to show our appreciation for your fine work, a selection of a dozen wizarding wines from Champagne, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Loire, and the Alsace regions, all said to be approaching their peak time of enjoyment over the next two years."
Slughorn took the box gently from her hands and looked at it reverently.
"As a connoisseur of fine wines," she continued, "I can't think of anyone better qualified to enjoy these wines than yourself." She didn't mention that they had several hundred magically preserved cases of such wines. The Malfoy, Lestrange, and a few other rich Death Eaters, had had extensive wine-cellars that the Twins had plundered.
"Thank you," he said quietly.
"You are more than welcome, Professor, more than welcome."
Harry and Hermione turned and left. They had a class to get to, and Slughorn's next class was starting to trickle in.
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On Friday, the day after meeting with Slughorn, at breakfast, Hermione said, "Lee says he wants to take the Requirement to Uranus Base tomorrow to finish the modifications we discussed. With the Base, two General Construction Units, and the Requirement's Replicators, it won't take more than a day, maybe a day and a half. He should have the Requirement back in place by Sunday evening."
Harry shrugged. "Sounds good to me. Just make a crew-wide announcement so everyone who wants to go, can go."
She gave his thigh a squeeze with her left hand, then kissed him on the cheek.
He was almost getting used to her doing that.
He smiled back at her.
He still didn't know what they planned for the ship. But, then again, he hadn't really paid any attention to what the Requirement originally looked like, anyway. So, any changes they made really didn't make a difference to him.
"What did you decide to do about arming the ship?"
She finished her current bite and said, "Well, considering that Lee is a firm believer in overkill, I managed to talk him down to a thousand dual-laser mounts and four-hundred-and-fifty plasma-cannons."
Harry widened his eyes and blinked at her.
She shrugged. "He does have a point that we really don't know how space battles are managed with this tech. We're just guessing. It's better to have more than we need, than get into a situation where what we have isn't enough. From what we've tested, the tech-shields the ships have are basically useless against lasers. Lasers are light moving in phase with itself, and they are simply too powerful for the shields to pass-through, like they do with normal light to hide us from the muggles. Plus, any shield that would stop a laser, would, by necessity, block all light from reaching the ship. Which would leave the ship effectively blind." She shrugged. "All an attacker has to do is wait for you to drop the shield, then, bang, he has you dead to rights."
She sighed. "That's why Lee put in so many plasma cannons. If the enemy ships are using shields like ours, then the plasma-bolts will flow harmlessly over them." She smiled. "But that means they will be blinded by the light and unable to see what we are doing. Their protection for the ship is indirect, but could be quite effective at allowing us to manoeuvre without being detected by our weapons' fire."
She smirked. "Of course, we have tried using the impervious charm on the X-wings, and it seems to resist the lasers for one or two hits, depending on how powerful the charm is. The twins are investigating how to adapt their 'shield hats' into something that will automatically recover after a hit. It works for smaller hits, but the lasers mounted on the X-wings are pretty powerful devices, so the X-wings are still vulnerable. If they get hit by two or three lasers at the same time . . . well, the best shield seems to be to not be the target of a laser-cannon."
She took a deep breath and let it out. "The problem we're having is that the X-wings' hulls, and the big ships, too, are extremely magic-resistant — like dragon-skin. And, like dragon-skin, that resistance works against us. We can get a spell to hold only for a short time, if at all. But at least we can get a spell on them if we try hard enough. Unfortunately, that means while the spells will protect a ship of a short time, if they are on a patrol for an hour, the spells are mostly gone by then if they ran into trouble." She sighed.
"The real problem is the Requirement. It's huge, so trying to cover the whole ship with one spell is pretty much impossible." She looked down at her plate and teased her lower lip with her teeth. "Trying to do it one section at a time would take years. We think we can use anchor stones, like they do with big manors and farms, but we'll need eight one-ton slabs of marble. Complicating that is that we don't really have anyone who knows how to enchant anchor stones for a ship instead of on the grounds for a house, manor, or farm."
Harry sat thinking for a few minutes as he returned to his breakfast. Finally, he said, "Find out who the best company is for making anchor stones, and hire them." He looked over at his girlfriend — thinking of her as his girlfriend always made him smile. "Offer them enough gold that they will either agree to be obliviated, or agree to make a wizard's oath to never disclose what they did to someone who isn't crew." He paused a moment in thought. "Tell them that if this works, we'll want to do this at least three more times, maybe four."
She frowned for a moment, considering what he had said, then slowly nodded. "That might work," she said.
"Then do it." He stopped and frowned, thinking as he stared at his plate.
"If they can do it for something big like the Requirement, maybe they could make smaller ones for the X-wings and Runabouts," he mused. "The stones wouldn't be nearly as big, too." He shook his head. "Not being magic, but light, maybe the anchors could absorb the lasers to power the spell. The more the ship gets hit, the stronger the impervious becomes." He looked at Hermione. "I don't know enough about that, really, so it's just a stray thought."
He gave her a grin. "Anyway, who knows, the ones who do the work might want to join the crew once they see what we have."
She rolled her eyes. "Probably not. But that is a good idea. I'll have Cho Chang look into who's the best at anchor stones."
"How many X-wings will the Requirement carry?"
"The design is for four squadrons of X-wings, where a squadron is seventeen X-wings with two additional general purpose units for support away from the ship. Plus, one that's a Command-and-Control ship, with a crew of five, for all four squadrons in case they have to operate for some time at a great distance from the Requirement."
"General Purpose?" he looked at her quizzically.
"Larger version of the X-wings with six passenger seats and a small, expanded medical bay that can hold four patients."
He nodded. If the X-wings were too far from the Requirement, the pilots wouldn't be able to disapparate or use a portkey to get to safety. Being able to send a smaller craft to rescue them only made sense.
"We'll also have seventeen Runabouts onboard for excursions and transport of materials that can't be beamed."
"Do we have that many pilots?" he asked somewhat incredulously. "Do we even have that many X-wings and Runabouts?"
She shook her head wryly. "No. We only have the original set of thirty-six that Lee made. On the other hand, we've got about twenty people who are absolutely nuts about them. They've each logged about a thousand hours each of actual flight time at Mars and Uranus Bases in mock battles — and that's after about the same amount of time in the simulators. Being able to dial the laser output down to the equivalent of a torch really helped." She shrugged. We'll easily have a full complement of X-wings and Runabouts for both ships by January, at the latest. Those GCUs are fast!"
"Huh," he said, shaking his head, impressed, "sounds like you and Lee have everything well in hand."
She smiled to herself and nodded. "Yes, I think we do."
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The following Thursday, they realized things were not as rosy as they had been hoping. The first inkling that they were in trouble was just as after Friday dinner.
They were headed for Gryffindor when his comm-link began to vibrate. When he looked over at Ron and Hermione he saw from their expressions that they, too, had just received a message.
"You two go on ahead, I need to see a man about a dog," he said casually.
Ron looked at him, then said, "Not a bad idea, mate."
Hermione gave him a small nod, "I think I should, too. See you in a few."
He and Ron headed for the wizards' toilets while Hermione went for the witches'.
After a quick muffliato, once he and Ron made sure the room was empty, he activated his comm.
"Potter here," he said simply.
Lee came on, sounding more than a bit flustered.
"Yeah, right, uh, we got a really bad situation here," he said. "I need you all up here, A.S.A.P. It's the Goa'uld, I think they're headed towards Earth."
Harr and Ron exchanged alarmed looks.
"We'll be right up," he said. "Dobby! Winky!"
"Dobby's here Great Master Admiral Harry Potter Sir!"
"Winky's comes."
Not wasting time — it took a lot to rattle Lee — Harry said, "Winky, go to Hermione and follow her orders. Dobby, Ron and I need to be on the Requirement's Bridge. Take Ron first."
Seconds later, the three were on the Bridge with Lee.
"What's up?" Harry said.
Lee motioned them towards the meeting room behind the bridge.
As soon as they were inside, even before they had a chance to sit at the table, he started explaining. "SG-1 went to a new address, and discovered it was a dead world. Made that way by the Goa'uld. They apparently wiped the civilization out."
The others nodded. They were appalled, but it seemed to be the sort of thing the Goa'uld would do.
"However, before they left, Doctor Jackson found a mirror, and it apparently took him to an alternate reality, like ours, but not quite."
Hermione gave a squeal. "Alternate reality? A parallel world?" she interrupted as she jumped excitedly in her seat.
Lee nodded, "But that's not important," he started.
"Not important?" she interrupted again. "It's proof of something that both wizards and muggles have speculated about for decades, if not centuries!"
"It's what he found there that's important!" Lee forcefully said.
She subsided, grumbling.
"There, the Goa'uld were in the middle of invading Earth with the goal of wiping out all life."
"Here," he waved at the table, "I've got the recordings from his drone for you to see yourselves. I've edited out the unimportant sections where nothing of note is happening."
Even with editing, it took them over an hour to view them.
"How do we know that will happen here?" asked Harry.
"It's like Teal'c said," Ron said quietly. "The only common event both versions of Stargate had with the Goa'uld was the sending of a bomb through the gate to Abydos. Most of their other interactions were different. In fact, the other Reality was far more low-key than ours!"
Hermione picked it up. "If the setting off of a nuclear device on Abydos was enough to get the Goa'uld to invade Earth in that reality, there's no reason to believe it won't be the same here. The differences between realities could all be on Earth, in which case the Goa'uld will reaction, being outside of that, will be exactly the same in both."
Harry sighed deeply, slumping slightly. "And we won't know for sure that they are on their way here until they show up."
He closed his eyes. "Nobody believed us when we tried to tell them that Tom was back. If they had, the death toll and damage would have been far less." He straightened in his chair. "I refuse to act like the Ministry." He looked at the others.
"We need to warn the others that the Goa'uld might be sending a ship to Earth. Tell the X-wing pilot's their training just got a lot more serious, and ask them who is willing to take the fight to the Goa'uld if they show up and they aren't here to talk. Lee, see what you can do to strengthen the cloak fields on all our ships, Stations, Depots, and Bases. Set them up so that if someone tries to attack them, the shields go to full power. Block everything, even light." He paused. "That way, even if they do have lasers, we'll be safe. We can use sub-space communicators to tell them when it's safe to drop the shields."
He turned to Hermione. "We'll need to recall the Galileo and use it as a refugee haven. If we line the walls of the barracks with thin sheets of steel, could we use expansion spells to make them bigger?"
She sat back in her chair, her eyes unfocused as she considered the question. "Possibly," she said slowly.
"Woah," Lee said, "refugees?"
Harry shook his head. "If it comes to ship-to-ship combat, we can't just assume we will win. Plan for the worst, hope for the best." He gave them all a long look. Each was lost in his own thoughts.
"Should we begin evacuation when the Goa'uld appear? Or wait for them to actually do something?" he asked.
Ron stirred first. "The Goa'uld were taking their time, from what the drone recorded," he nodded at the pensieve, "They had been bombing the muggle cities for about a day before Daniel made his appearance, and continued for the two days he was there." He took a deep breath. "Wait for them to start to attack. The moment they do, we can have the Hogwarts elves evacuate the students first, then start on their families." He stopped and frowned. "The same for the crewmembers. I figure we could probably get most of the wizards and witches in England to the Galileo in about two or three hours. We might have to stun and shrink most of them, but we could do it. Especially if we brought the ship down a mile or so and cruised up the island. We could use the drone-portkeys, too."
He gave a wry smile. "We could even start in on the muggles, stun, shrink, and transport them by the tens of thousands. In a day, with a lot of invigoration draughts, we could probably pack several million in one of the holds."
Harry slowly nodded.
"We should start immediately on saving the magical plants and some of the animals." Hermione said. "Neville has quite extensive greenhouses at Uranus, he can tell us what we can't do without for potions and such."
"Ginny and Luna have to see this, they need to prepare the marines for helping in the evacuation, if necessary," Harry said, finally. He sighed. "Time for me to go make a nuisance of myself." He grinned at the others.
Ron shook his head. "I'll talk with the house-elves, I might need to borrow a pensieve." He looked over at Lee.
Lee nodded, walked over to a cabinet, and removed the extra kept there. He handed it to Ron.
"I'll send out the recall for the Galileo, and bring them up to speed on what's happening," Lee said.
They left for their various tasks. Harry just hoped it was all just jumping at shadows, but he couldn't help but feel they weren't.
As soon as Dobby dropped him off in the dorm room, he sent a quick message over the comm-link to all the crewmembers that there would be an after-curfew meeting in the Room of Requirement.
Tomorrow would be excruciating with him stuck in classes while most everyone else skipped class in preparation. He doubted he would get much sleep, tonight.
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The Marines, he learned from Ginny the next morning at breakfast, were quite unhappy at most of the action taking place in space, with their talents relegated to "merely" rescuing millions of muggles. Now that they had taken care of most of the "bad" wizards, removed the Acromantulas to a station at Uranus — called, naturally, Spider Base — they were starting to get bored.
These Jaffa promised to be interesting opponents.
The Galileo was parked over England, beside the Requirement. The Replicators on both ships were working at refurbishing the Galileo into a transport ship capable of handling the large number of people they hoped to pack into her, if they had to.
Using the expansion charms on wood seemed to work best, and allowed them to expand the ships capacity by several dozen times. They could actually have half-a-million people in the ship. They would be crowded, but alive.
If they used stasis and shrinking charms, in addition?
Then the number rose to fifty or a hundred million with no crowding. They could conceivably store a billion people on the ship if they did that to everyone but the skeleton crew required to operate the ship.
It was mind boggling.
They would start the same modifications on the Requirement as soon as they finished with the Galileo.
Still, he made it a point to speak up and ask questions in the classes, and tried to distract the Professors from asking too many questions about where some of their students had disappeared to. Fortunately, the Professors were used to the older students skiving off their classes, usually when they had an assignment due in another class and needed extra time to complete it. What helped was that the missing students always turned in excellent work, so the professors were more likely to overlook their not attending class every once in a while.
It was just after dinner, again, that his comm-link vibrated. A quick duck inside an empty classroom, a muffliato, and Angelina was telling him, "Admiral? Two spaceships have just passed Saturn — and parked themselves about a hundred thousand miles over the Americas. Almost directly over Stargate Command."
Showtime!
One Dobby-express POP later, and Harry was asking, "Any hostile reactions on anybody's part?" He headed for his chair.
Hermione and Lee were already at their consoles.
"Nothing. The ships are just holding station." Lieutenant-Commander Johnson caused an image of two circular ships with what looked like pyramids embedded into them to appear on one of the windows on the Bridge. "They're massive, too. A giant circle a mile and a third round — half again as much as the Requirement is long —and triple the Requirement's height, although most of that is the pyramid in the middle. It sticks out of the top and bottom," he quickly explained.
"According to sensors, focused through a remote runabout," Lieutenant-Commander Zach said, "the ships have an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere similar to Earth's, with about ten thousand personnel, each." He paused and frowned at his display. "Jaffa, although I'm getting bog-standard human for three." A moment later he snickered. "Through the comms, I have positive identifications on Colonel Jack O'Neill, Dr. Daniel Jackson, Captain Samantha Carter, and Teal'c on one of the ships."
Lee shook his head wryly. "I told you that the S.G. One team went through the Stargate to the Stargate coordinates Daniel had retrieved. Either one of those starships has a Stargate or they snuck aboard just before it started its journey here."
Zach suddenly spoke up. "I'm picking up two large sources of naquadah on one of the ships. One is clearly the fuel, the other has the mass of a Stargate."
Harry perked up at that. The two Stargates gave them a huge supply of naquadah for their future needs without having to worry about their Fuelling Depots being a bottleneck.
"Has anyone else noticed the ships?"
"Not that I can tell, there's nothing the communications' systems have picked up from Earth that mentions spaceships," said Angelina. "Stargate Command doesn't seem to know of them, yet."
Harry sighed and tapped his comm-link. "All-crew," he said. "This is Admiral Potter speaking. All non-essential personnel on-board the Requirement are requested to return to Earth or transfer to the Galileo, immediately. We have positively identified two Goa'uld ships in orbit above the Earth. Shut down all discretionary processes and activities. Prepare for Earth emergency evacuation procedures. Over." He paused a moment and sighed again.
"Well," he said as he rubbed the area his former scar used to occupy. "Lee? What is the SG-One team apparently doing?"
Lee didn't respond for a few moments. "They appear to be in the brig."
"How soon can we get a Runabout close enough for a portkey?"
"I would say, five minutes, max."
"Lee? You'll need to be the one to do this. Take some drones to a Runabout and program that as their return-to destination, with the brig S.G. One as the go-to destination. Then have someone pilot it, full cloak, of course, until they are close enough to portkey the drones and retrieve the team."
"Aye, Aye, Sir," Lee said, giving a snappy salute. He grinned and hurried off the Bridge.
Harry shook his head. "Angel, after we get an all-clear that only essential personnel are on-board, and we get the signal from Lee that he's rescued S.G. One, let's give the ships a call."
"Shouldn't we wait until they start to do something?" Hermione suggested.
"I don't think so," Harry said slowly, "If we wait until they actually start bombardment, we might not be able to stop them before they actually hit the planet."
Hermione nodded. "Plus, they won't be expecting us to be here, which might slow them down."
Angelina had waited until they finished. "What frequency, Sir? I have no idea what they use."
Hermione shrugged, "Use all of them, Miss Johnson. It'll tell everyone we're here, but I don't think they'll be able to keep two starships orbiting over the Americas much of a secret, anyway. Especially if they start an attack."
"Yes, Ma'am." Angelina nodded, and sat thinking a moment. After getting the all-clear signal fifteen minutes later, and the signal from Lee fifteen minutes after that, she touched a control and said, "This is Lieutenant-Commander Johnson of the Defensive Space Force Ship Battlestar Requirement calling unidentified spaceships who just entered Earth orbital space. Please identify yourselves and why you are here. Over."
Harry turned and stared at Hermione.
She smirked and shrugged. "It continued the theme of Star Trek and Space: 1999. Besides, it's the only starship that was designed to be a carrier! All the others are small ships, transports, or the equivalent of cruisers or battleships."
He shook his head.
Angelina had waited several seconds, as the round-trip for a radio signal was just over one second. Silence. She gave her head shake.
"This is Lieutenant-Commander Johnson of the Defensive Space Force Ship Battlestar Requirement," she repeated, "calling unidentified spaceships who just entered Earth orbital space. Please identify yourselves and why you are here. Over."
This time there was a response.
"I am the god Apophis," an imperious voice said over the communications system. "You have interfered in my affairs long enough. I have come to wipe out the scourge that plagues me."
Harry sighed and face-palmed. Everyone exchanged disbelieving looks.
"This is Lieutenant-Commander Johnson of the Defensive Space Force Ship Battlestar Requirement, please say again, unidentified ships," Angelina said, disbelief evident in her tone. "Your transmission was garbled. It sounded as if you were claiming to be a god. Over."
The voice came again, this time with angry tones. "I am the God Apophis; I am here to wipe you out like the vermin you are!"
"Oh, Merlin," moaned Harry, exasperated. "This bloke is an idiot."
He looked over at Hermione and Lee. "Are the Requirement's lasers and plasma cannons ready?"
Hermione and Lee nodded. "Unfortunately, all we have are automatic controls on them," Hermione said. "They are primarily for defence."
"We've been trying to run drills," Lee said, "but there aren't really any examples for us to crib from in the Library."
Alicia nodded.
"So, they might do in a pinch, but I can't predict how effective they will be in an actual engagement."
"Like I told you when we first discovered the Goa'uld were coming, the closest we have to anything with hitting power are the X-wings, sir," Lee said slowly.
"Does anyone know how to really use them as anything but a three-d video game?"
Lee grinned. "Actually, sir, there are seven of them in a mock-battle right now. It'd take about two minutes to get them here. Half-an-hour for the rest to get their pilots, power-up, and get here." He looked up. "If anyone could do it, they could."
Harry looked at Hermione and Lee. "Would they actually be able to do anything?"
The two exchanged looks.
"Maybe?" said Lee said cautiously.
"If they have the same armament we do? Yes," said Hermione. "The lasers still just ignore our shields unless we opaque them. Which makes it difficult to see what's happening around us."
Harry ran his hand through his hair. Well, they had declared themselves a Defensive Space Force, and Earth clearly needed defending. He had been hoping that actually needing to fight someone had ended with the Death Eaters. At least for a few years. It looked as if he had been optimistic.
They really didn't have a choice, though, did they? Whomever it was on those two ships, based on what Daniel had discovered, intended to attack Earth. They had to defend themselves.
"Okay, call in the seven that are ready. Full cloak. As soon as they are close enough, portkey to each two gels of Felix Felicis. Then have them surround the alien ships, but not in each other's line of fire. Tell them to be really careful. This isn't a game! I don't want anyone taking risks, if they can be avoided at all." He sighed, "we don't really know anything of what the Goa'uld are capable of doing with their ships."
Normally, wizards kept the good luck potion in one-ounce vials that lasted twelve hours. Dennis, of all people, had suggested that, instead, they should portion them out as one-hour doses.
They had discovered last year that most emergencies lasted for less than a quarter-of-an-hour. Almost never did they last an hour, never-mind a whole day! So, they had divided the two hundred and ten vials from Professor Slughorn into twenty-five hundred twenty doses, in small gel-tablets. They burst open quite nicely when you bit down on one, and the gel material, itself, was nutrient-based and inert to the potion.
They were now divided into five batches of five hundred: Diagon Alley's Enterprise store, the Requirement, the Galileo, Uranus Base, and Mars Base. Each off-Earth batch was kept in the respective Hospital Suite.
Harry, Hermione, and Lee each kept six doses with them.
Fred had used one one-hour dose to come up with the proper gel materials for it all to work, then used one gel-capsule as a test. He claimed he had researched and competed more candies in that hour than he had in the previous two months of work.
Ron was standing by the window, looking at the two ships. He turned and joined Hermione, whispering something to her.
"Miss Johnson, tell the intruders to go to Jupiter and wait for further instructions . . . not that I expect them to do that," she relayed.
Angelina nodded. "Yes, ma'am," she said and adjusted something on her console. "This is Lieutenant-Commander Johnson of the Defensive Space Force Ship Battlestar Requirement calling unidentified spaceships. Please remove yourselves to stable orbit around the largest gas-giant planet in this system, and wait for further instructions. Over."
The response, after a few seconds, was an outraged, "You dare to tell me, the God Apophis, what to do? Where are you hiding! Show yourselves! I shall destroy everyone on your planet! Your kind will disturb the Goa'uld no more . . .," he continued ranting as Angelina reduced the volume on the transmission.
Zach sighed. "If he's a god, why does he need a spaceship?" he asked rhetorically as he leaned back and rolled his eyes.
When the rant from the speaker stopped, Angelina sighed, and said, "Well, we've heard that one before." She shuddered, no doubt remembering some of the memories Harry had put into the ship's pensieve for the Crew to see the previous year.
Then she cleared her throat, leaned forward again, and said, "I say again, this is Lieutenant-Commander Johnson of the Defensive Space Force Ship Battlestar Requirement calling unidentified spaceships currently in Earth orbital space. Please remove yourselves to a stable orbit around the largest gas-giant planet in this system and wait for further instructions." She paused, then derisively added, "Real Gods don't need spaceships or soldiers. Over."
Hermione looked up from her console. "The seven X-wings are in position, sir, arranged in a globular pattern, distance two hundred miles. Full cloak and they have each taken one of the gel-tabs."
"Have one of them fire a warning shot of lasers below the ships, between them and Earth. Miss Johnson? Repeat the order as a final warning after that."
Lee spoke up, "Uh, Admiral? Lasers don't work that way. You can't see 'em in space."
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