A/N: Read the damn chapter already.
Harry 'sat' in his lab, meditating. He was vaguely aware that he was floating a few feet off the ground, but he didn't care too much at the moment. Currently, all of his attention was focused on the problems presented by Kinsey and Anubis. One could easily destroy the planet, but the other might just make the planet worthy of that destruction.
Stopping Anubis, fortunately, was easy. Even if Sam and the SGC didn't discover the weapons platform in Antarctica, Harry could find out its exact location and apparate there. Hell, he'd probably even be able to power it with his own magic and a few tricks, given what he'd found in its specifications. But that's not what Harry was worries about.
No, what worried him was this Kinsey fellow. Vice President of the US, no less. From a few of the things Sam had said, it seemed like the President himself wasn't such a slimeball, but Kinsey was just about the worst a politician could get, and probably had ways to keep himself afloat even without the Vice Presidency. The real trick was finding out how to neutralize those options so that if Kinsey went down, he'd stay down. Well, either that or figure out how to keep most of the power in the President's hands so that Kinsey couldn't do much damage.
His thoughts were interrupted as the door burst open. Unsurprised, as he'd felt his visitor coming through his wards, Harry drifted gently into a standing position.
"You have a copy of the Ancient Repostory!" Sam accused him loudly.
Harry groaned. "You know, even if I do, that doesn't mean you shouldn't knock first, woman. Honestly, I could have been doing anything in here."
"Don't change the subject, Harry. You said that you were waiting for our permission to study the Repository!"
Harry smiled. "No, Sam. I implied as much by saying that I would very much like your permission to study the Database. But you must realize that I've been searching for the means to blend technology and magic for centuries now. Among other things, I'm much more qualified to search through the Database than you are. Besides, I really did give you the full version of the Database. Why are you so upset?"
That stopped Sam short. "You lied to us. You told us that we would have control of the Repository, and then you went behind our back and took it for yourself!"
Harry chuckled at that. "Sam…I won't deny that I led you to believe that. And to clarify, I do believe that you're ready to start exploring the Ancients' Database, so don't misunderstand me. But consider this; if I hadn't hinted so heavily that you should search through the Database for possible defenses, you wouldn't have found what you did. I really am here to help, Sam. You're just going to have to accept that I have my own agenda beyond that, an agenda I will pursue in every way I know of that doesn't hamper your own goals."
"But…why didn't you just tell us that you kept a copy of the database?" Sam asked.
Harry considered that. Why hadn't he told the SGC that he'd kept a copy of the Database? They didn't seem the sort to get upset about that, especially when he was giving them their own copy. "I guess…I'm just not used to dealing with people like you and the SGC, Sam. I've grown used to races that are either incredibly used to space travel and advanced technology and the problems that come with all of that, or races that really aren't ready for nearly any kind of advanced technology. But you, Sam…well, you and the SGC blur that line. On one hand you still primarily use primitive firearms and unshielded electronics, but on the other you've figured out how to use one of the most complex machines in the universe all on your own. At times, it's hard for me to look past the former to see the latter."
Sam stared at Harry speculatively for several long moments. "You know," she said finally, "I'm not sure whether or not I should be upset."
"Then don't be," Harry said. "A good rule of thumb is to never get upset if you can't figure out what's upsetting you."
"If you say so," Sam replied doubtfully.
"So," Harry said, "tell me about the real reason you're here. What have you found in the Ancient Database this time?"
Sam narrowed her eyes at Harry, and he could tell she wasn't going to forget his deceit so easily, but she allowed the change of subject. "It seems like the Ancients left a weapons platform on the archipelago that became Antarctica. I've looked at the designs, and I think it could potentially take out Anubis's whole fleet, provided it still has a working power source. It looks like it was powered by another potentia, so there's a chance that it'll work."
Harry raised an eyebrow. "I'd still take a dozen or so of whatever your most powerful generator is, just in case. And if it's under the ice, you're also going to need a way to get down to it, as well." Harry checked the time with Inter. "You've got a little more than two days for all of that. What do you say we do some brainstorming?"
"That sounds good," Sam said, then she paused. "Wait…we?"
Harry smiled. "While I have nothing but faith in your abilities, Sam, it's my hide too if this plan doesn't pan out. I'd be happy to help out where I can."
Sam broke out into a huge smile. "I'll go clear it with the general!"
...
Once Sam calmed down enough to remember the recent change of leadership, she dragged Harry off to Weir, who had a few reservations. Nonetheless, Sam persuaded her to let Harry look over all of the relevant information on drilling through the Antarctic ice. She also mentioned in passing that they'd already done a bit of drilling to extract a second Stargate they'd found several years ago.
Once he was set free (under the close watch of several lab technicians and even base security through the CCTV cameras) Harry immediately overrode the technicians' objections and looked up the location of the previous excavations the SGC had overseen. It seemed the most difficult part had been ensuring that the network of ice caves didn't collapse on the buried gate. After the hole had been safely dug, they'd simply rigged a crane and pulled the Stargate out of the ice. A side note indicated that there'd been some icequakes in the area since, but Harry was willing to bet that the existing shaft would be the easiest place to start.
Then, Harry looked up the equipment they'd used to drill their shaft. It wasn't anything special, but it had gotten the job done. It just needed a few modifications for what he had in mind…
The skinny guy, who had introduced himself as Dr. Daniel Jackson, looked at Harry doubtfully. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"
Harry smiled. "Of course I am. If this fails, we're all dead. I wouldn't put anything but my best foot forward."
Jackson eyed Harry's modified drill speculatively. "It just looks a little…"
"Shaky," O'Neill finished for him.
Harry sighed. "That's unavoidable. The drill has to be flexible in order to rotate towards the Ancient facility once it gets down to the proper level."
"You know," Jackson commented, "I asked Sam to look it up for me, and it seems like they're actually called 'Alterans,' not Ancients."
"Wait, really?" Harry asked. Inter quickly sent him a mental confirmation. "Huh. Well, regardless, that has nothing to do with whether or not the drill will work. And it'll work. Trust me."
The gathered members of SG-1 all gave him remarkably similar looks of doubt, but before they could say anything one of the technicians fine-tuning the drill interrupted the shouted, "All ready!"
Harry turned to watch as the drill slowly started to rotate, pointedly ignoring the doubt that was still pouring off of SG-1. Soon, the drill had been lowered all the way into the hole, down to the first blockage. With an incredible whirring roar that was muffled only slightly by the ice, the drill spun to life. Then, a few seconds later, an even louder churning crrrrrrruuuuuunnnnnch sound began as the drill started chewing through the ice. Harry, still grinning, looked at the people standing nearby, gauging their reactions. O'Neill's face was carefully blank. Sam just stared at the hole the noise emanated from in mild awe, as though she could hardly believe what was happening. Dr. Jackson's skeptical expression was slowly fading.
Teal'c had the same unreadable expression as he always did. Harry wasn't sure that anything could make the large muscleman show emotion.
"A few more hours of this and we'll be laughing," Harry said. "In the meantime, I don't suppose any of you brought something to read?"
…
Several hours later, after the drilling had finished, Harry admired the resulting hole. It was a straight shot down at nearly 45 degrees, and while he couldn't see it in the unlit opening, a few thousand feet down there was a sharp turn where the shaft hit its bottom and began tunneling directly toward the outpost.
"Well," he said aloud, "Looks like it's time to see what our ancient ancestors left behind!"
"Um…I see a small problem with that plan," Dr. Jackson said hesitantly.
"Oh? And what's that?" Harry asked.
"It's just that all we have right now is a really long ice slide down into the bowels of a glacier and no safe way down," Jackson said drily.
"Oh, that." Harry slipped his wand from his sleeve with a flourish. "That's not a problem at all." With a swish of his wand, a staircase was formed into the icy tunnel, and a few idle flicks provided a rough surface on the stairs to prevent slipping, as well as a constant sourceless light throughout the tunnel's length.
The assorted SGC personnel all stopped what they were doing to stare at him.
"Harry," O'Neill said slowly, "what was that?"
"I didn't feel like waiting for you lot to set up ropes and pitons. Besides, any lighting you came up with would probably have melted the ice, and that's no good."
O'Neill gave Harry a rather bemused look, but didn't say anything.
"Well then," the wizard said, twirling his wand and slipping it back into his sleeve, "shall we?" Without waiting for an answer, he started down his newly crafted staircase. Before long, O'Neill, Teal'c, Dr. Jackson, and Sam rushed to join him, bringing along their inevitable questions.
"Wait!" Sam cried, "If you could do that the whole time, why'd you need to bother with a drill?"
Harry smiled. "I couldn't have bored a tunnel through the ice with the necessary precision, Sam. Magic is harder to cast at a distance, and creating a tunnel like this one would have required that I was within 100 feet or so. It wouldn't have been impossible, but it would definitely have taken longer than just using your drill if I had to keep carving out a place to stand."
"But…if magic is so hard to cast at a distance, how did you make the staircase?"
"Oh, that's simple," Harry said, "For one thing, stairs are easier, and for another, I only created about 500 feet or so of stairs. When we get to the end of the staircase, I'll make another, and then another, and so on until we reach the bottom." As he said this, he spotted the end of his staircase coming up. "See, here we are right now." With another few choice spells, the staircase extended once more into the depths, and Harry continued down without breaking his stride.
After several minutes of this, they reached the bottom of the shaft. Shortly afterward, they were met by a rather peculiar sight. The tunnel ended in an inverted cone of ice that tapered into a single dark point that looked vaguely metallic.
"Huh," Harry said aloud, "it looks like the drill stopped just short of actually touching the wall. That's actually pretty impressive, considering that we were going off of data that's 10 million years old." With a flick of his wand, he vanished the remaining ice to reveal a rather elegantly-crafted wall with a singular angular panel half-protruding from the ice.
"So…how do we get in?" O'Neill asked.
Harry considered that. This was, for all intents and purposes, a blank exterior wall. "I think we'll need to go around the outpost and see if we can find a door of some sort. Sam, do you still have the Database?"
The blonde shook her head. "No, I left it back at the SGC for the other scientists to study. Why?"
"We might have been able to use it to figure out which way would be more likely to lead us to a door."
Dr. Jackson spoke up. "Umm…I see a bigger problem. How exactly are we going to 'go around?' There's kind of a lot of ice in the way."
"Hmm? Oh, that's easy," Harry said, "Now that I don't have to worry about falling down an icy shaft, I should be able to clear the ice around the outpost without trouble. This place isn't too big, so even if we go the wrong way this probably won't take very long." And with that, he cast a focused vanishing charm along the wall in one direction and started walking. Several charms and several yards later, the wall was broken by what looked to be a door.
"Well hello. What do we have here?" Harry said, running a hand over the angular architecture. It looked nothing like the ruins he'd been studying before he'd been interrupted by the Jaffa, but perhaps that had been a simpler outpost than this one. Either way, he needed to find a way to get the door open. With a swish of his wand, all the ice cleared around the doorway, revealing what looked like a control panel to the right side. He looked at it speculatively, but before he could do anything, Sam stepped up to it and got out a tablet computer.
"This looks like it might be the door controls. Give me a few minutes, I can probably get it to open." She then knelt by the panel and started probing the panel with various tools and instruments she carried in the various pockets on her tactical vest.
Harry stared at Sam in mild surprise. He'd been just about to do the exact same thing, but she'd beaten him to the punch. That hadn't happened to him in quite a while.
After a bit of prodding, Sam pulled off an access panel to reveal several control crystals. Harry frowned. They weren't lit, which meant there was no power. Sam, apparently having come to the same conclusion, said, "This might take a while. This facility is so old that either the power is shut down or exhausted. I'm going to have to look for a manual override."
O'Neill turned to Harry. "Hey, why don't you just do that vanish-y trick you did on the ice?"
Harry smiled. "That really shouldn't be necessary, but it's also a lot more difficult when I'm not sure what the material I'm vanishing is made of. I was actually about to offer to fiddle with the door controls myself, but Sam seems like she knows what she's doing."
Sam glanced up at him. "You know a lot more about alien technology than I do, Harry. If you want to take over, I won't get in your way."
"Oh," Harry said, "well in that case, budge over a bit." He knelt down and examined the control crystals more closely. From his basic understanding of Alteran circuitry, he could tell that the power for the console was external to this console, and he also knew that without a power source of their own, they stood little chance of making the control crystals do much of anything. "Say, you didn't happen to bring those generators with you by chance?" he asked.
There was an awkward pause. "No…" Sam said, "we left them up on the surface because you started down the shaft before we were ready."
Oops. "Sorry about that," the wizard said apologetically. "Fortunately, I don't think this will need a whole lot of power to operate." Sliding his wand out of his sleeve, Harry decided to try something…adventurous. He'd never been able to use magical energy to power traditional technology before, but from everything he'd seen about Alteran circuitry so far, it should be able to run on pure magic. Hell, that's basically what a potentia provided, and that seemed to be a fairly ordinary power source for them. So, carefully, he channeled a bit of raw magical energy into the control crystals. Nothing happened, but he could have sworn he felt a light tickling on the back of his consciousness.
"Huh," he said aloud. Then, figuring that maybe he hadn't given the circuitry enough juice, he channeled a little bit more magic into the system. This time, instead of a light mental tickle, he got a distinct sense of emptiness, almost like he felt when he'd exhausted himself magically. Pouring a little more power into the system made this feeling of emptiness, recede, so Harry grit his teeth and started pouring as more and more power into the crystals.
"Harry…what are you doing?" Sam asked, but before Harry could answer the crystals flickered and then lit up with a brilliant blue color. Harry stopped pouring power into the circuitry, leveling off his input. Remarkably, the system seemed aware of exactly how much power it needed, and somehow…guided his input to the appropriate level.
Harry stared at the control crystals in wonder. "It's…running. I turned it on…with magic. I didn't even know that was possible."
Sam looked at him sharply. "Then why did you try it?"
Harry grinned. "Well it worked, didn't it? I've been looking for a technology that could interface with magic like this for a very long time, and I wasn't completely sure that I'd found it until just now. These Alterans were impressive little buggers." As he spoke, Harry examined the control crystals, trying to identify the one that controlled the door mechanism. And then, remarkably, he felt a questioning mental nudge from the system flow back through the stream of magic he was using to power the circuits. Acting on a hunch, he pushed back a mental image of an open door.
With a slight hiss, the door unsealed itself and then slid open. "Remarkable," Harry said, "I didn't even have to mess with the physical circuitry. I'm a part of the circuitry, since I'm providing it with power."
Sam stared at him in clear shock, unsure of what to say. Behind them, O'Neill simply said, "Well, that's handy."
"Handy indeed," Harry muttered to himself, sending a query of his own through the system. "It looks like the potentia powering this facility ran out of juice a long time ago. If I'm understanding theses systems right, they're designed to run on about…50 gigajoules of power. Can your generators pull that off?"
Sam took a few seconds, probably running some serious mental calculations. "I…think so. We only brought eight of them, but I think they can generate that much if we run them side-by-side."
"Alright," Harry said, "I'm going to start studying these systems while someone goes and gets the generators. I'd fetch them myself, but…well, I've just confirmed that this outpost's technology is something I've been searching for for…longer than you'd probably believe. If it's all the same to you, I'd like to take a look around."
Sam looked at O'Neill hopefully. The colonel stared back at her expressionlessly, and Harry could almost feel the argument that the two must have had so many times it didn't even need to be said anymore.
"Oh, all right!" O'Neill finally snapped, "Carter, you stay with Harry and do your little technical…studying. Daniel…" Jack turned to the archeologist, "go have fun. Teal'c, you and I can go fetch the generators our resident wizard so kindly forgot about."
"Sorry," Harry offered sheepishly. He'd been so eager to get to the outpost that he'd almost forgotten why they were there.
O'Neill gave him an unamused look. "Teal'c, let's go before these three start boring us simple men."
Teal'c raised a single eyebrow, but turned and followed O'Neill back to the surface. Harry wasn't sure whether the heavily muscled man was putting up with O'Neill's unusual sense of humor or just ignoring it. Teal'c was a hard man to read.
Turning back to the now-open door, Harry felt his excitement stirring. This whole outpost ran on circuits that could withstand and even use magical energy. He couldn't wait to get started. "Well," he said, "where should we look first?"
…
A half hour later, Harry was deeply engrossed in the central fixture of the outpost's main room: the control chair. He hadn't figured out how it worked yet, because he was trying not to use the crutch of the Alteran database. If he got used to using that every time he needed to figure out a new piece of technology, he'd start to lose his touch. Unfortunately, this stubborn desire to figure it out the old fashioned way wasn't getting him very far.
"Do you see any circuits that look like they're crossing between control systems?" he asked Sam, who had opened a service panel on the back of the chair.
"No, I don't," she said. "Why?"
"Well, if we can figure out which systems are connected, we might be able to figure out which ones are the most important, at the very least." Harry poked his wand into the arm of the chair. At first glance it looked to be covered in some sort of plastic-like comfort gel, but every time Harry touched it he felt a little jolt, almost like the sensation he'd gotten when interfacing with the door panel. Unlike the door panel, however, it didn't seem that he had the necessary power to actually activate the chair's systems, so he was stuck with the good old fashioned method of pulling off the proverbial hood and trying to figure out what all the pieces did. "Have you tried running a mild electrical current through the crystals?" Harry asked.
"No." Sam peaked around the chair. "Wouldn't that damage them?"
"It shouldn't. I ran several kilojoules of magical energy through the door panel and the crystals outside were just fine. If I'm understanding the technology right, they're something like incredibly advanced microchips. They might not be designed for traditional electricity, but I'd bet they can work with it."
Sam frowned. "But I still don't understand how that would help us. We won't have enough power to activate the chair, or any of the systems."
"No, we wouldn't," Harry said, "but we don't need to activate the functionality of the chair to find out how it distributes power. I hate to say it, but I don't think we can do much else until we get those generators in here."
"All right then, I'll give it a shot." Sam pulled her tablet out of the back pocket on her vest and started poking at its screen. After a few seconds, she pulled out a cord from somewhere and connected it to the tablet, then one of the crystals by a sophisticated-looking clamp. After tapping the tablet a few more times, she looked up at Harry. "There's definitely a pattern to the power flow, but I can't make anything out of it."
"Really?" Harry looked over her shoulder. The tablet displayed a flowchart readout of the feedback it was getting from the chair's crystals. There was certainly a pattern to the feedback, but he couldn't make heads or tails of it, and half of the text was Alteran that Sam's tablet couldn't translate.
"Hmm…maybe if we-" Harry began, but he was cut off as O'Neill walked into the room.
"Look what I brought, kiddos!" the colonel proclaimed dryly, a silver generator under each arm. Behind him, Teal'c walked in carrying two generators under each arm, and a woman in a lab coat followed behind him with the last two cradled in her arms.
"Or," Harry said, "we could just hook up the generators and go from there."
…
10 minutes and a fair bit of fancy wiring later, Harry and Sam were pretty sure they'd connected the generators up right. But in the end, there was really only one way to be sure, and before they turned it on there was an important decision to make.
"Who's going to sit in the chair?"
Sam, O'Neill, Dr. Jackson, Teal'c, and the female technician all stared at Harry blankly.
"What?" the wizard asked defensively, "It's a valid question. I'm pretty sure that chair is the primary interface with the technology in this outpost. If no one sits in it, we'd probably have to muddle around with circuits and control crystals for ages before we figured out how anything worked, and we don't have that kind of time on our hands."
Beside him, Sam reluctantly nodded. "Harry's right. We were looking at the chair's control crystals earlier, and we couldn't make heads or tails of them. None of the rest of the outpost looks even remotely like it's meant to be interactive, so the chair is our best bet."
The room fell silent. Harry noticed a suspicious majority of the people looking toward O'Neill. Apparently, the colonel noticed them as well.
"What?" the man snapped, "Why is everyone looking at me?"
Harry shrugged. "Don't ask me. I'm just following the crowd."
"Sir," Sam said, "you are the only one we know of with the gene to activate Ancient technology. The chair might not work for anyone else."
Wait, Harry thought to himself, there's a gene for that? Inter faithfully looked up the relevant entry in the Alteran Database, and sure enough, there was a gene that most Alteran technology was programmed to look for in its users. Harry didn't have the means to check at the moment, but he was pretty familiar with his genome, and he was pretty sure he'd never seen this particular gene before. His musing was interrupted, however, as O'Neill threw his hands up in the air.
"All right, what do you want me to do?"
Harry smiled. "It should be pretty intuitive, actually. Once we turn on the power, all you need to do is sit down in the chair. You might need to touch the conductive pads on the armrests, but other than that I think it's entirely a mental interface."
O'Neill frowned. "That sounds pretty complicated."
"It sounds complicated, but it shouldn't be too difficult to operate," Harry said, "I mean, when I was interacting with the door panel I just needed to think about what I wanted and the system interpreted it with no problem."
The colonel considered that for several long seconds, then shook his head in resignation. "Let's do it then."
Harry grinned and got right to work, carefully preparing to activate four of the generators at the same time as Sam activated the other four. At long last, he was actually going to see working Alteran technology. It was all he could do to keep from laughing giddily. With a nod to Sam, Harry pulled the activation rigging out of his generators just as she did the same to hers. The cores sunk into their respective generators and, with a low hum, the outpost slowly began to come to life around them. Lights turned on, bathing the whole room in a white glow. The chair back briefly glowed a light blue and hummed, before falling silent.
Harry looked at O'Neill. "Moment of truth."
O'Neill sighed. "Why am I the one that always ends up doing this sort of thing?" Without waiting for an answer, the colonel sat in the chair.
Immediately, the back of the chair began to glow blue. As if startled, O'Neill clapped his hands to the armrests, and suddenly the chair began to recline as the blue glow grew even stronger.
"Sir?" Sam asked loudly, "what's going on?"
O'Neill didn't respond. Harry frowned. That wasn't like him. With a flick of his wand, Harry cast a quick diagnostic charm on the man. Aside from an excess of brain activity, he seemed fine.
"As far as I can tell he's all right," Harry said, "he might just be so deeply connected to the chair that he can't hear us right now."
As if in response, O'Neill muttered something. Sam rushed to his side. "What was that, sir?"
"I can…hear you," the man said, louder this time.
Harry blinked. "Oh. Well, it was just a theory. All I can really tell from my assessment is that your brain activity is off the charts for a normal human. Fortunately, this time, it's not at dangerous levels. What's the chair telling you?"
"Telling…me?" O'Neill asked, sounding a bit strained. "It…wants to know…the date?"
Harry cast a quick charm. "Tell it that the current astro-date is… 3,737,421,946R, system-side."
"What…?" O'Neill asked, but then he fell silent. "It…heard you. It's…thanking you?"
Harry looked around him, suddenly realizing that he was inside of a rather large machine that might even qualify as sentient. "Erm…you're welcome, I guess."
"Uh…" Dr. Jackson cleared his throat, "I have to ask. What's an…astro-date?"
"Hmm? Oh, that's just the current age of the local star in revolutions of the local habitable planet. It's a fairly standard dating system once civilizations go interstellar, especially for little outposts that don't have to interact with some larger empire."
"But…I thought the sun was 4 billion years old?"
Harry smiled. "It is, if you round up. But, more importantly…O'Neill, can you ask the outpost what kind of weapons it has?"
"It has…drones?" O'Neill sounded very confused. "They look like…squids."
Harry tilted his head in confusion. That didn't sound like the entry he'd seen in the Database. "What kind of drones?"
"I don't know it...wait, they're...energy shielded…remote detonation…multi…phasic…flight controls?" Suddenly, O'Neill lifted his hands from the armrests, and the chair raised up from its reclined position. "Yeesh!" he exclaimed, "that thing is incredibly…odd. I felt like my mind could barely keep up with it, and I got the sense that it was going slowly just so that I would understand."
"It probably was," Harry said. "Keep in mind that the race that built these was highly advanced. Even if they didn't naturally evolve better brains by the time they built this place, they'd have been able to massively augment themselves through genetics and nanotechnology. I think we're probably lucky that the system can run slow enough for a normal human. I mean, that door panel out there felt like it was almost as smart as I am, and all it does is open the door."
There was a moment of silence as everyone considered that. Then O'Neill asked, "Are you saying that their doors are as smart as we are?"
Harry smiled grimly. "Yeah, I am. They're a civilization that was advanced enough to create stable, reliable interstellar wormholes. I, for one, don't feel shame in the fact that I'd never be able to measure up to them. I mean, it's not like-"
Bzzrt- "Colonel O'Neill, come in!" All eyes were suddenly drawn to said Colonel's radio.
Adopting a no-nonsense expression, O'Neill put a hand on the radio to respond. "This is O'Neill. What's going on?"
"Three Goa'uld ships just entered Earth orbit. We think they're just a scouting force for the main attack, but we need that Ancient weapon, now! How are things looking down there?"
O'Neill glanced at the chair, which had gone dark but still hummed with power. "We've got it operational. Do you want us to take them out?"
There was a long pause. Then, "Negative. Do not engage. Power down the weapon until further notice. We're going to try to draw Anubis's main fleet here so that we can end this once and for all."
"Understood." O'Neill nodded at Sam, who quickly started powering down the generators. Soon, the lights around the facility went dark, and they were left with what little light came from their handheld electric torches.
Harry turned to O'Neill. "Do you think you can handle firing the drones once Anubis gets here?"
The colonel gave him an odd look. "Well…probably. It's a bit…odd sitting in that damn chair, but I think I could handle it."
Harry nodded. "Good. I'm going back to the SGC, I think I'll be more use there. This place is just a glorified weapons platform right now, and we don't need everyone down here."
O'Neill gave him a long look, but it was Sam who asked, "Are you sure you can get back in time? If Anubis's fleet is successfully lured out, we won't have much time to fly you back to America."
Harry smiled. "Oh, I wasn't asking for a ride. If you've got everything handled down here, I can get back to the SGC just fine on my own. So…you do have everything handled, right?"
Sam nodded slowly, looking confused. "But…how are you going to get back to the SGC on your own?"
Harry winked. "I have my ways." And with a crack of displaced air, the mischievous wizard disapparated.
A/N: So this was certainly a chapter. Sorry it was a bit late, but the writer's block fairy has been visiting me lately. Hopefully I've scared her off now.
Best of wishes,
~feauxen