CHAPTER 121: Construction
The ISS orbited the earth at the fantastic rate of once every ninety minutes. Alternating periods of fifty minutes of daylight and forty minutes of darkness did not do well for one's time-of-day estimation. By this point they had thoroughly lost any semblance of normal sleep schedules.
With the detailed work over, the great work could now begin. With only Alastor Moody able to reliably cast partial transfiguration, the whole load would by necessity fall upon him. On paper it looked simple enough. The steel sheets were to be cut by partial transfiguration of a thin strip of steel into motor oil, separated, and the strip finited to prevent anything stupid from happening. Once separated, the pieces were to be assembled according to the plan into the hull of the spaceship. This was done by partially transfiguring the edges of the strips to be joined into motor oil, pressing them together, and finiting the oil between them. The result was as good of a weld as could be done on earth, and required less equipment and less hazard.
On the other hand, this meant long spacewalks for Alastor Moody. Actually cutting and gluing, even by magic, in zero gee outside the space station was tricky business. Noting they dared not use a broom for propulsion meant Moody had to do it the old fashioned way like astronauts before the MMU was invented. Nobody had found a way to replenish an MMU by magic nor by mundane methods that wouldn't attract a lot of attention. Minerva McGonagall hadn't even bothering checking the charms table for hydrazine and there was no way anybody was going to try to free transfigure that.
Hermoine watched out the copula as Alastor assembled their starship. Petuna hung by her, transfixed by the mere sight of the earth circling below. All this time and she still hadn't gotten used to it. At least someone had the virtue of wonder. Minerva was there, but more to keep an eye on Hermoine than any particular interest on Alastor's progress. Time passed slowly, but progress was being made. What first looked like a piece of metal at the end of the space station's arm now looked like half a cylinder that had been beat on with a hammer until it was all angular. While Alastor Moody was constructing it in a particular order, that order was neither inside-out nor outside-in. A few bits of the rather Spartan interior, or rather the mounting points thereof, were visible as he put it together.
Time passed slowly. The work wasn't really exhausting but there's only so long someone can spacewalk, bubble-head charm or not. It was eventually determined that Minerva would have to accompany the rest of them on departing earth as there simply was no other way that navigation was going to work out besides pairing her with the astronaut. As powerful a wizard Alastor Moody was, his Arithmancy wasn't up to snuff and one mistake here could prove fatal. Warp drive or not, it is well-advised to treat black holes extremely seriously.
When Alastor Moody came to the windows he discovered that Michael Evans-Verres had forgotten something. While they could get high quality glass into any shape they wanted by partial-transfiguring sand into steel of the appropriate shape, and crystferrum on the resulting steel, they could not place the anti-reflection coating without having some to start with. So after placing the windows it became necessary to make one more trip to the surface after all. While he and Mad-Eye were on the surface, Minerva agreed to install the amenities and the warp core onto their now almost functional spaceship.
As soon as they portkeyed down Alastor Moody knew something was wrong. His habit of apparating two seconds after portkeying permitted him to instead discover he'd portkeyed into the middle of an anti-apparition ward. Between the non-descript warehouses was a good place for not being noticed at night, but a really bad place for an ambush if somebody ever figured it out.
It didn't take that long to spot the first death eater in the window high above them. "Stupefy." It was difficult to tell if that was a hit or if the death eater just jumped down but there wasn't time to consider it, nor time to look through the layers to see what was behind the wall. Three of them had been lying in wait around the corner. It just so happened it was behind Mad-Eye but to the Eye of Vance that is no problem. He pirouetted out of the way of a hail of stunbolts sent down the narrow alleyway. While he was momentarily busy they closed a considerable fraction of the distance until he sent his first stunbolt at them. They all jumped aside and quickly put up Protegos. Two of them were obviously working on adding more layers of shielding while another sent a stunbolt at Moody. "Lagann. Stupefy." A single-layer shield is of no use against Moody. The death eater jumped out of the way just in time.
Then the other two approached. "Stupefy." "Jellyfy." The second move was rather clever against Alastor. While easy to block if you had a shield, Moody never used shields, and he was starting to get old. The athleticism required to sustain a fight for long was not quite there anymore. On the other hand, getting on his nerves is not particularly good for one's longevity. "Avada Kedavra." One of them jumped out of the way, another sent three gold bolts and a third sent a green bolt. A prismatic sphere sent one of the gold bolts back where it came from and the other two into the walls.
Another Death Eater was now approaching from the opposite side under not less than three distinct layers of shielding. The outer blue haze wrapped a purplish layer, than an inner red layer. Of his visage nothing could be seen. To Michael (who had wisely pressed himself against a wall until that point) it appeared that Alastor had his hands full with the fireworks show and couldn't deal with yet another. Having no suitable weapon he pulled the Elder Wand from his pocket. "Begone, or I'll blow you apart!"
"Drop it. I don't see what Mad-Eye sees in you, muggle, but you can't contend with me. You're not even holding it right."
Michael took a step closer. "I took off the dark lord's hand. How much more shall I do to you if you do not withdraw."
"Stupefy."
The Elder Wand moved of its own and caught the stunbolt. Quick as lightning Michael Evans-Verres returned it to its sender. The Death Eater hadn't quite been paying attention, hadn't changed his shield harmonics, and the stunbolt went right through all of them. He was just quick enough on his feet to dodge it, his skin buzzing where it blew past him. "Stupefy." Again it came back at him. This time he had swapped his harmonics and it bounced off into the wall. They were getting rather close now. "Avada Kedavra." But Michael jumped right into the wall, high-kicked off the wall at the Death Eater, bringing the Elder Wand down on his shields right as he made contact. The shields gave way. Michael dropped the wand and brought his fists up even as he came down. On the rebound he delivered an uppercut to the death eater which knocked him off balance and sent his last stunbolt wild. The Death Eater was too stubborn to drop his wand and brawl and Michael was too mad to be stopped. A few blows to the stomach and the Death Eater was down.
AN: I know full well most MMUs use nitrogen. 10 m/s of delta V per spacewalk isn't going to cut it.