Chapter Five: Beneath the Surface
Friday, 4th June 1999.
Luna blinked rapidly against the brightness of the light when she opened her eyes, though her body felt surprisingly well-rested. She had no idea how long she had been triggering systems and monitoring the rebirth of the facility, but she felt very hungry, and more than a little thirsty. She glanced over as a sound on the closest wall drew her attention and noticed a panel had retracted and a vessel was slowly filling with clear liquid.
She stood and stretched, letting her muscles work for the first time in she knew not how long. When she approached the panel, the liquid ceased flowing and she lifted the vessel to her nose, giving it a slight sniff. It smelt like the purest water she'd ever seen and she took a sip, finding it nicely tepid and that it tasted cleaner than any water she'd ever had as well. Even that of the glaciers in northern Sweden.
As she drank the water, she cast her gaze about the large central chamber. The floor was clear of all ice but several pieces of debris now littered its surface. A quick glance up or to the side revealed the debris to be pieces of wall and ceiling that had been torn free by millions of years of unchecked snow and ice.
The walls had resumed their normal grey appearance without the snow and the room was a lot easier on the eyes under the illumination without the glare produced by shining off of slickened ice. Luna returned the cup to the panel and rolled her neck to clear out the last few kinks from it.
"Harry?" She called, not seeing the boy anywhere in the space.
No reply came back to her and she wondered where he had wandered to in her downtime. She once more walked the corridor to the conscensa, swiping at the panel to open the doorway. It moved much easier now, almost silent as it slid into the wall. However, the room beyond was unchanged once the cleared walls reached the ice wall. Something had indeed sheared the entire room away. The damaged circuits in the tips of the wall that remained had prevented the edges that met the ice wall from fully melting, leaving an odd transition of metal to frost to solid ice.
Luna decided against heading further into the facility at the moment and returned to the main chamber. There were several spaces that had not defrosted, including a large space that she couldn't recall exactly why it was important to the operation of the building. As she circled the space, she soon found Harry in a side room operating a slanted terminal, a hologram of Merlin off to the side occasionally providing instruction.
"Hello." She said, stepping inside.
"Luna. It's nice to see you up." Harry smiled as he stepped away from the terminal. The holographic screen at its upper edge vanished when he stepped towards her and gave her a light hug.
"Hungry?" She asked, looking up into Harry's face.
His stomach responded for him by growling loudly in response. "Looks like it," he chuckled. "I found a general schematic of how this place is meant to look. Come on, there should be a mess hall over here."
He led her from the room and the hologram behind them disappeared, allowing them time to themselves. A few twists and turns led them to a large space, not quite as big as the central chair chamber, but still large enough for a good-sized group to eat.
"Actually, if you want to set it up. I've another pressing need I now know the location of." He gave her a look that she identified immediately, replying with but a light chuckle as he passed over the beaded bag.
"Of course. I might need one myself after dinner."
"Alright. It's to the right, three doors down on the left-hand side. Back in a minute."
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Harry gave a relieved sigh as he stepped out of the small room. It was very spartan but had what was required. He utilized the wash station before stepping back out into the now clear hallway. The station took on a very different appearance once they had cleared away all the ice and the air inside was perfectly heated.
He soon rejoined Luna in the mess hall and was surprised to find she had arrayed the food on the floor, and conjured a blanket for them to sit upon.
"I felt like having a picnic." She explained simply as Harry sat nearby. "Makes me miss Hermione a little less doing something like this."
"Yeah, I know what you mean. We haven't seen her in days." Harry paused as a crazy idea struck him. "Merlin?"
The hologram appeared before them a moment later. "You called?"
"Can we communicate with the lab from here? As in talk to Hermione?"
"Of course." The image smiled and shifted and before they knew it, Hermione was seated on the blanket in front of them. The slight distortion around the edges of her image was the only sign she wasn't physically in their presence. Harry's breath caught as the hologram settled and he saw the figure seated before him.
Hermione seemed oblivious to their transmission as she turned another page of the massive book resting on her raised knee, her right arm draped over the side of the tome as she read, her face warm with the glow of learning that she enjoyed so much. The sleeves of the light cardigan she was wearing in the cool air of the underground cavern had risen up and Harry found his eyes drifting over the exposed skin of her extended arm, also noticing that she was wearing no shoes, the residue of the 'petty cure' Luna had given the elder girl still visible on her exposed toes. The image showed Hermione in her truest state; relaxed, researching and yet still resplendent.
Luna cleared her throat beside him and Harry blushed, caught out staring at his best friend. Hermione glanced up over the large book and caught his eye. A beautiful smile spread wide over her face as she did. "Harry. Luna. It's so good to see you both. It's been over two weeks since you sent a message."
Harry nodded, still uncertain of his voice as the image of his friend rested foremost in his mind. His eyes flicked to the side where Dobby and Winky were resting on the couch, a single book across both their legs and broad smiles on both their faces.
"Er, hi. How are things up there?" He finally asked, swallowing hard to normalize his voice, hoping the others would put it entirely down to the new transmission method.
"Things are good. We miss having you both here, but my studies progress nicely. And Dobby and Winky are wonderful company."
The elves blushed slightly at the comment. "Well, Luna and I were just about to have something to eat, and given we can communicate now those systems are powered up again, I thought you might want to join us," Harry suggested.
A happy gasp came from the elves and Winky popped away, surprising all the others at her rapid disappearance. "Ok, maybe not." Harry drooped.
A few moments later, a basket appeared in front of them, seated over the food Luna had laid out and Winky reappeared, opening the container and pulling some food out of it for herself. "Winky thinks a picnic is a wonderful idea. I have prepared something for Miss Grangy."
Hermione tucked a bookmark into her place in the book and laid it aside as she shuffled forward glancing into the basket. "That looks lovely Winky. Almost like you prepared it earlier."
The brunette glanced up at the once more blushing elf. "Winky had been wanting to ask Miss if we could go outside and have a picnic for a few days. I gets a bit antsy not seeing the sky for so long."
"Winky, you are welcome to come and go as you please," Harry explained. "And Hermione often needs someone to shake her out of a study funk from time to time. If Luna and I aren't there to do it, I'll happily deputize you for the job."
Hermione rolled her eyes at Harry and laid a hand on Winky's shoulder. "We can go out after lunch for a walk in the sunshine. Stretch our legs. How's that sound?"
"It sounds wonderful Miss."
"Well, now that is settled," Luna chimed in, "snack time!"
Harry smiled as the five of them sat down to the oddest meal he'd had in a very long time. Luna and himself seated on a conjured blanket in Antarctica eating from the food on its top, while Dobby, Winky and Hermione pulled food from a basket that wasn't really there and they chatted and laughed the time away, thousands of miles apart, yet still together. Their odd little family.
ϟ
Harry yawned as he stood, feeling the post-meal lethargy heavily in the now comfortably warm air. "Wow, I've felt full after a meal before, but I didn't think I ate so much as to feel this sleepy." He stretched his back and arms, light pops coming from some of the joints as he moved.
Luna glanced at her watch and her eyebrows raised in surprise. "Well, that explains why they were only calling it lunch."
"What does?" Harry asked drowsily.
"It's only three in the afternoon in England right now. But we started sleeping with the nights as we travelled, while we were far enough north that such a distinction even existed, at least. We're in a very different time zone now. It's currently two in the morning here."
Harry was taken aback at the thought he had simply worked through the entire evening. They had landed at McMurdo Station at eleven in the morning local time, though it had been hard to tell with the eternal twilight the area experienced at this time of year. Had it really taken them so long to exit the base and find their way across the ice? "I guess that explains why I'm so tired then."
"But not why I feel perfectly fine. I should be as tired as you are." Luna asked, thinking deeply. "The only thing we've done differently since arriving is which interface we used. Maybe the chair relaxes the body enough to count somewhat as sleep. How about you try it for a while and I'll learn the terminal system from Merlin."
Harry nodded sluggishly. "Sounds good. Worst case I fall asleep in the chair."
Luna smiled at him and nodded. "It was quite comfortable. But that could be all the cold weather clothing acting as padding. Off you go. I'll tidy up."
Harry waved as he turned and walked from the room. He let his mind drift over the past few hours and how they had passed nearly unchecked by them. He thought it may have had to do with the cold. Extreme low temperatures left the body feeling as tired and sluggish as a lack of sleep did, so perhaps they'd already been feeling the hours but brushed them off as the result of being in the freezing air of Antarctica.
He quickly arrived back at the chair platform and slumped into it, having to reshuffle to get into a more comfortable position. He yawned again as he felt the system come to life beneath him and he felt a refreshing tug on his mind. While there were physical controls at the tips of the arms, he now understood that this interface was mostly mental.
Harry reseated himself slightly once more and let his mind drift into the interface, checking the status of the changes Luna had made. As he did, he noticed an anomaly that Luna likely had missed. The schematic of the facility he had found had informed him that the structure was quite tall, the size of a small multi-story building in fact. But they were not on the uppermost floor as he had suspected.
That floor was gone. Not sheared away like the gate room, that he set the system to locate with the local sensors, but crushed flat. The computer had no log of the event but the information coming to him now made the explanation quite plain. The Alterans had left the Fundamenta's shield up when they left for the final time, and the ice had formed over the top of it during the many many years since. It had gradually taxed the powerful field more and more as the forever shifting ice had pushed outward from the south pole, draining the potentia to the point of failure.
By the time the potentia had lost power and the shield collapsed, there was over a mile of ice and snow packed on top of it. All of which came down at once onto the structure, instantly flattening the two upper floors to nothing. It was a testament to their engineering prowess that the lower floors had not buckled under the strain. The structural sensors in the parts Luna had awakened were showing stress, but nothing the design could not handle for the time being. Though he had a feeling the iced-up state of the lower levels could be contributing to that strength.
He began processing the math on their options as the numbers whizzed by. The previous potentia had managed to hold back the ice for millions of years before it drained, but the rest of the facility had been in idle, sleep or low power modes, or inactive entirely. The one they had brought had not drained a single percentage point powering the systems up, but they were a long way from fully up and running.
As he was running the calculations, he found himself considering how to disperse what was going to be a very large quantity of melted water. The system was shifting as much as it could into the reclamation systems, but they would fill fast. A notification to the side drew his attention and Harry brought it to the focus. In front of his mind's eye was a small device that looked almost like a cross between a jellyfish and a squid. It had a tapered point at one end and several small tentacle-like protrusions from the rear.
The system labelled the item as a ferra. It also noted that the ferrum supplies were fully stocked. Harry considered the name, trying to find its modern equivalent and the closest he could come to was weapon or sword. He focused on the image in front of him and a buzzing soon filled his ears. When he opened his eyes he saw a glowing golden item about three feet long hovering in the air in front of the chair, above a thin hole in the floor.
"That's… interesting." He wondered aloud as Luna came rushing from the other room.
"Merlin says a ferrum was launched. Oh. What are you doing?" She asked as she slowly walked around the hovering item.
"I was wondering how we can deal with the water we'll liquify as we defrost the station. The system sent a notification about these. I guess I called one forth from wherever they're stored."
"Ferrum storage is two floors down." Merlin clarified as he appeared in the room as well. "Normally they would launch through the designated launch tubes on that level. I believe you called this one directly through the interconnecting floors, given the hole."
"It seems to respond to precise control. Maybe we can let it drill down. Punch a hole right through to the sea below?"
"No. Right down will only yield earth. Fundamenta was built in a valley on the landward side of the mountain range that led to the ocean, the foundation on which they would build Atlantis. You will need to drill at an angle, through this pass, to reach the water."
A new hologram appeared in the air above the chair and Harry considered it. It seemed to be a side view of the area. Fundamenta standing tall on the rocky surface buried under miles of snow and ice. To the far right of the image, he could see the ocean under its own ice sheet about a hundred or so miles from the edge of the structure.
"Ok, I can see now. Maybe if we drill several holes from each level outwards, that come together into one larger pipeline," the ideas appearing on the hologram as the words left his mouth, "we can funnel the water outwards as we defrost each level."
"That seems like a sound strategy."
"That is an extremely long way. Will the water make it that far without freezing again?" Luna asked.
"I believe so. If not, we can always redo it periodically as required." Merlin replied and Luna nodded.
"I am worried about the ice above us though," Harry said, drawing their attention to the hologram. "As you can see, we've already lost the two top floors to it when the shield originally failed. If we defrost the rest of the facility can it hold up under all that weight?"
"Calculating. No. The facility will be crushed. If you utilize the shield it will keep any further material from resting on the structure."
"What about the power requirement? The shield held the ice at bay for a long time, but this facility was asleep. If we turn everything on the shield won't last as long."
"I'd rather not have to wait another hundred years for a new battery for this place," Luna added.
"The computer has finished the calculations you began," Merlin informed them. "If we raised the shield and pushed a little extra power into it, it would provide enough heat to melt away the ice above in about a year. The potentia has more than enough power to achieve this while the systems are operational. Hopefully, within that time we have either achieved our goal or found an off-site manufacturing plant. One could be fully constructed in just two days at such a facility."
"You're certain?" Harry asked.
"They are your calculations, but the computer," The hologram paused and grinned, "me, has analysed the data. It will work, and prevent Fundamenta from being destroyed in the process. However, before we go digging any holes, I have located a log from the final days before the departure."
Harry leant forward and the chair raised up, the ferra going dark and dropping harmlessly to the floor of the chamber. "Oops."
"Not to worry, they only trigger their explosive response if they have reached minimum field strength or the weapons officer wills it. The bigger problem is the log entry. The Altera didn't leave this galaxy out of curiosity. They left to avoid a plague they could not cure. Their whole civilization was being ravaged across the entire galaxy."
"A plague. Are we safe?" Luna asked.
"For the time being. However, they were studying samples of it here in this facility. And a handful of lab staff were infected as a result. They should be in stasis in the Biolabs. If we defrost that sector, we could expose ourselves to the contagion."
"Lovely. Where exactly is this sector?" Harry asked, laying back in the chair and bringing up the schematic.
Merlin stepped forward and pointed at the hologram. "Here, in the lower floors. But…"
"Yeah, I see it. It's gone. Sheared away by the moving ice, just like the conscensa. Crap. I'll set the sensors to search for it and trigger an alert the moment we find it. Until we do, I'm not comfortable triggering any further systems."
"Agreed. Maybe we should let the computer do its searches and take a moment to rest ourselves. There's a barracks down the hall here that we can rest in." Luna explained.
"Yeah. That sounds good. This helped, but I'm still tired." Harry replied, his mind wandering slightly as he set up the searches for the lost lab and Astria Porta, along with setting the system to identify any further lost structures and highlight them. A significant enough chunk missing could be disastrous if they defrosted that section without proper forewarning. "Done. We'll get an alert once it's finished."
Merlin nodded as Harry stood and stretched slightly. "I will pass the message on to Miss Granger in the lab. Enjoy your rest." The hologram shimmered and vanished as Luna took Harry's hand and guided the exhausted man to the barracks.
ϟ
Luna patted her stomach lightly as she and Harry walked the halls of Fundamenta, the afternoon's meal settling quite nicely after their long nap. Harry had checked the progress of their searches straight after they had eaten and the computer had located the two areas they were most interested in for now.
The bio lab had been identified, having shifted almost a hundred kilometres to the south. The entire area and the path the ice had travelled through had been cordoned off and the system would overlay a holographic warning should anyone come too close to the area that had been quarantined as a result.
Without a connecting link to the lab, they could not identify whether any of the stasis pods were functional, but they hoped that someday the area could be safely recovered. However, their current path led them towards the shattered passageway furthest to the west of the structure. The computer had confirmed there were no other major structural failings besides the conscensa and bio lab, though several walls and corridors would need repairs before working past those levels.
The issue now was they would need to return to the surface to reach their next destination, and neither were too keen to leave the now comfortable warmth of the station, even with their spells and heavy clothing.
Harry sighed as they stepped up to the icy wall blocking what once led to a small external landing platform, the current location of which they were completely uncertain, believing it shattered off during the shield failure incident. "Ready?"
"No," She shook her head as she took his arm tightly anyway.
"We can put it off for now if you don't want to go."
"No. We have to find it if we're going to complete the mission."
"I know. I'm just trying to find a valid excuse not to go back out into that freezing darkness." Harry grumbled.
"All the more reason to get it over and done with as quickly as we can. The computer has tagged the location, but we need to see what state it is in and why there is a human structure on the surface nearby. The records show that it's been severed for a long time, which means the Lanteans returned through the gate at that location. It can't be that bad."
"I'm not worried about the room, I'm not excited about having to spend any time in the freezing night."
She hugged his arm tighter. "We'll be alright. Do you want to power or aim?"
"I'm feeling pretty charged up right now. I'll power again unless you want to." Harry offered, looking down at her smiling face, hidden as it was behind her thick hood and woollen mask.
"Sounds good. It should only take three hops. Let me know when you're ready."
Harry nodded and Luna felt the familiar warmth of his magic coil around them. Hermione had been the one to recognize their familiarity allowed them to direct each other's magic when they worked together, but this was going to be the farthest they'd tested it in a while. The room that was their target had been shifted almost as far to the other side of McMurdo as they were now. And it had taken them several hours of hiking across the Ross Ice Shelf and through the mountains to reach Fundamenta.
"Three, two, one." Luna prepared herself as she envisioned the space she wanted them to occupy and turned into the magic. The uncomfortable squeezing quickly gave way to the unbearable pain of freezing air buffeting her body. She tried to push past it and focus on the next leg of their journey, but the weather was colder than she had anticipated.
She pushed against the pain and found the image in her mind, pushing the combined magic once more into the squeezing feeling of apparition. The pair instantly reappeared even further out over the icy landscape. The weather buffeting them did not let up in the slightest and Luna found it much harder to focus her mind on the destination after the last hop.
A pair of arms pulled around her and she leaned into the body heavily. Her magic was circling her in an attempt to forcibly warm her freezing body and Harry pulled it into himself as they vanished once more and reappeared with a resounding echo into a dark cave in the ice.
Harry immediately lost his footing on the slippery surface and the two went tumbling to the ground. Luna was already tucked up tightly from the last jump and simply pulled her legs up as she rolled across the slick surface. When she came to rest at the bottom, she began to giggle hysterically at the absurdity of her life at times.
"That last bit was kind of fun." She said to the chilled air.
"Yeah, you got the slidy bit. The other side wasn't quite so nice." Harry added, rounding the outcropping they had appeared on and that Harry had tumbled down the far side of. "I think I landed badly."
He limped over to her and held out a hand, pulling her to her feet. "This does not look promising." She said, glancing about the narrow fissure.
The area bore no resemblance to the design they had become used to in the facility they left behind. It was merely rock covered in ice. And worst of all, there was no sign of an Astria Porta.
"Hey, check this out," Harry called, having walked back over to the area where they had landed. "This looks like something was dug out of here, recently."
He pointed to the upper side of the ice where a bowl had formed, but the ice was clearly newer than that around and underneath it. "Explains why we lost our footing so badly. But what was taken?"
Luna cast her eyes over the cavern from their new perspective and noted a groove with a similar sign of new ice in the cracked wall opposite. She stepped closer, minding her footing as she approached and noted there was a matching groove in the floor of the space.
"Look at this. The dimensions of these marks are pretty close to the size of the Astria Porta."
Harry sighed again as she moved up beside her. "Great. So we just went for a jaunt through freezing Antarctic weather for nothing? Someone already beat us to it."
"It's worse than that," Luna added, turning to face him. Harry raised his eyebrows in confusion. "Well, unless you want to spend the night here, we have to go back."
His eyes widened and flicked upward before resettling on her covered face. "I hate you so much right now. You had to burst my delusional little bubble."
"Sorry." She replied, turning away and looking over the rest of the space. "We should probably look around just to be safe. Obviously, it hasn't just rolled away, but there could be something else nearby. The clavis was stored in the same room. Even though the room appears to have been ripped apart over the years as well."
Harry agreed and the pair got to searching the cavern for anything of use, neither overly keen to go back up onto the surface for the return journey to Fundamenta.
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The violent sound of air displacement faded quickly, replaced by heavy breathing and rustling clothing as the pair snuggled tighter together in the large central chamber.
Harry shook his head. "No more of that. We find another way out of here, or we're staying here a long time."
"Agreed," Luna chattered tightly against his chest.
Harry pulled the tiny girl closer, struggling to share what little warmth they both retained between their forms as the temperate air of the facility slowly washed the remnants of the wild storm above away from their clothes, dripping lightly onto the now clean floor.
Luna shuffled against him slightly and Harry felt her hand dig into his inner pocket. A moment later he began to feel relief from the cold fill his body and the younger girl pulled away and waved his wand a second time, her own face taking on a more human tone once more.
She handed his wand back to him and shook her body, to displace the remaining snow and ice from the folds of the floofy material. "I'm going to get changed. I think these clothes are going to be cold for the next year at least."
Harry nodded as she headed for the barracks and he cast every warming charm he knew over himself. The air in front of him shimmered as the hologram of Merlin appeared once more.
"Welcome back." It paused as he removed his head covering and tilted its head slightly as it took in his face. "Bad news I assume?"
"You could say that. The structure has been completely destroyed. The walls have been ripped to shreds by ice and rock. Recovery of the materials is all we could hope for, and it'll have to wait for a time when we can stand outside and not die of hypothermia. Worse than that, it seems someone has removed both the Porta and clavis. Both within the past few years at most."
"That will be a problem. While this world was once the jewel of the Alteran empire, it lacks many of the naturally occurring materials required for the technology they created. Including the Sangraal and the Astria Porta. By the time they colonized this part of the galaxy, they had established the Conmeatas, and had ready access to materials from all corners of Avalon. Without access to off-world supplies, we cannot complete the mission."
"Yeah, we figured that part out," Harry grumbled, shuffling out of the freezing jacket, letting it slump to the floor loudly as he relished in the warm air around him. "By the size of the unit, and what we know of current human space-faring capabilities, there is no way it was taken off-world by us. If that's the case, it should still be somewhere on earth."
"That is a logical conclusion," Hermione stated, startling Harry as she stepped up beside him, shimmering like Merlin. "Sorry, I wanted to see you both again. Where is Luna?"
"Getting changed. We just came back from outside where a blizzard is raging. I'm surprised my blood can even flow, it's so cold right now."
"Why would you go outside in weather like that?" Hermione growled.
"We didn't have a choice. The snow was filtering into the cave, had we hunkered down, we probably would have been buried. Look, I know you worry for us, but can we not get into it right now. I am far too cold for an argument." Harry pleaded.
Hermione looked very much like she wished to continue, but she nodded. "So, we need to find out if this porta is still on earth somehow. Thoughts?" She asked the other image.
"Well, while they were gone, I monitored the progress of the searches. There are no more complete facilities missing from the structure, however, the long-range scanning gear was mounted to the exterior wall of the Conscensa. If what they say about its state is true, they are just gone. We would have to rebuild them from scratch."
Harry nodded at that and rubbed his chest.
"That means interstellar monitoring is out of the question. The planetary sensors, however, were built into the centre of the lower floors. They are still in functional condition, but that section is still completely frozen solid. It will take several days at least to thaw them out and get them working."
"As fascinating as this place is," Luna stated, walking up to the group. "I don't like the idea of being trapped here. We can't leave via the surface. That was horrible, and it's only likely to get worse as winter drags on."
"Agreed," Harry added snuggling up to the tiny girl again, pleased to feel she was much warmer than when they had arrived.
"My link to the station allows me access to most systems. I can continue bringing systems online and defrosting the station, if one of you pre-drills the drainage we discussed earlier. Now we know where the risk points are, we can avoid them. Then I can let you know once the sensors are running and we can proceed."
"That solves the problem of getting the station working, but what about us going home. This place is great and all, but... it's pretty out of the way."
"The computer has assessed that the Porta Mundas is still functional, it is just buried in a thick column of ice. It was a few stories high to allow the rings to move freely and I believe for aesthetic appeal, as well as functioning as a vertical launch tube for the ferrum. When the upper floors collapsed, the roof above it broke open and the ice poured in. It will take a day or so to clear the ice off it, but once that is done you can use it to travel back to the Lab."
"Directly?" Harry asked, his eyes flicking to Hermione.
"That's correct, though I would suggest moving the campsite out of the unit in the lab, unless you want it brought here at the same time."
The three humans looked at the hologram confused. "A Porta Mundas, unlike an Astria Porta which use artificially created wormholes to operate, allows two-way transport in a single operation. A safety feature to prevent items from merging if something was in the destination receiver."
"Why doesn't the Astria Porta allow two-way travel?" Hermione asked.
The hologram showed telltale signs of the computer checking its memory bank and translating the concept to English. "Wormhole physics. Matter cannot pass both ways through a wormhole. Energy can."
"And the Porta Mundas converts its cargo to energy?"
"That is correct."
"So could a Mundas transport its matter stream both ways through an active Astria?"
The image became pensive. "I do not believe such a test was ever performed, but I believe the technology is not incompatible. Perhaps we can test the theory once we locate the Astria Porta."
"Great, we have a plan." Harry interrupted. "Can we get drilling, I really want to go curl up in bed for a few hours."
"Come with me," Luna said, pulling him towards the central chair while the holograms followed along.
She pushed him into the chair and as it activated and shifted backwards, she climbed into his lap and resumed snuggling against him. "Er, Luna?"
"I tried directing a ferra last time I used the chair before we left for the surface, you have better control. And you are warm and I don't want to stop hugging you at the moment. So get to work."
Hermione stood beside the chair and grinned at him widely, Harry's eyes flicking between the two girls for a few moments before he sighed and closed his eyes. The little woman did provide a nice warmth as he worked. Soon he had the golden ferrum digging the tunnels they required through ice and metal, hollowing out paths for the heated water to exit the facility while making sure the tunnels weren't so large as to allow the ice to collapse them again.
His eyes opened once more as he finished and he found himself trapped in place. Luna had fallen asleep in her position and Harry was stuck. Hermione still stood beside them watching and she grinned broadly as Harry tried to lift the girl up and climb out of the chair at the same time, the soreness from the earlier rough landing much stronger after a period in the chair under another person's body weight, and without the extreme cold lessening it.
"Good night, Harry." She offered as he turned towards the barracks, a sleeping girl tucked in his arms.
"Good night, Hermione. Hopefully, Merlin gets the transporter uncovered soon and we'll be able to speak in person again."
"I look forward to it. I miss our little hug-bug." She smiled at Luna and Harry nodded.
"Night." He whispered as he moved away, the hologram shimmering out of existence behind him once more.