Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Scourge
Wednesday, 8th March 2000.
Adrenaline coursed through Harry's veins as he ducked the next attack at the last moment before striking back quickly with his own. His opponent dropped from the low hit and Harry capitalized on the fall, attacking again and again before their health bar finally dropped to zero and he leapt from the couch, celebrating his win with a shout of triumph.
"Well done, Harry," Luna said softly, the other controller in her hand. "You're really getting quite good at this one."
"Thanks, Luna. I'm not the biggest fan of fighting games, but the level of concentration required helps to distract me." He replied, lounging back onto the extremely comfortable couch that Luna had selected for the entertainment space.
He closed his eyes and relished in the feel of the padding beneath him, recalling a few nights prior when the entire group had all gathered together on or around these couches for the first full movie night in Aether. They'd all been so busy since Luna had completed it that it had been the first time all of them had been together with free time to spare.
He opened his eyes again when he heard a beeping sound, thinking that Luna was cheating him by starting the next round while he was distracted, as she had done once or twice with that innocent smile of hers, but the image of the screen still showed his victory pose.
"What is that?" He asked her, trying to find the source before Merlin's voice sounded around them.
"Incoming transmission."
"Incoming…" Harry trailed off as the screen before them changed and instead of the colourful fighting game he saw, "Thor! It's been ages. Where have you been?" He finished, noticing that the alien looked even paler than usual, sitting not in the sleek command chair he remembered but in a strange red capsule that looked a lot like the one Idun had used to collect Famrir.
"I am afraid I have been busy in our campaign against the Replicators, and it has gone poorly," Thor replied.
"Well, how can we help? Whatever you need, it's yours." Harry offered and Luna nodded beside him.
"I need you to remain away. The Earth itself is in imminent danger, but that is nothing compared to the danger the entire galaxy will be in if I am unsuccessful."
"I'm sorry, Thor," Luna said confused, leaning forwards, "but that sounds like you need our help all the more."
Thor sighed and his head dropped for a moment. "I should explain. During a recent skirmish in Ida, a number of Replicators managed to board the Biliskner. I was able to beam the crew to safety and destroy the outbound transport functionality, trapping the menace on board, however… This vessel is the flagship of the Asgard fleet. It is the same one upon which we first met." Thor finished as though that explained everything.
"Ok, well we have a small space-worthy craft we could come aboard and help you. And our beam here could get us all…"
"NO!" Thor said, more forcefully than anything he had ever said before, leaving him panting heavily for a moment. Harry was taken aback. "Your technology is the very reason that the Replicators are on their way to Earth. There are records of our encounter in the ship's logs, as well as Asgard historical accounts of the power and scope of Lantean technology. The Replicators are seeking to absorb that technology into their collective. This would be catastrophic. Under no circumstances should you approach the Biliskner. It is imperative that your technology does not fall into their grasp."
Harry looked at Luna who seemed very concerned. "What is it you want us to do?"
"I contacted you as a warning. I shall continue attempting to destroy this ship before it reaches Earth to the best of my diminished capacity, but everything I have so far attempted has been thwarted by the Replicators. If I am unsuccessful, I have prepared to contact the SGC. O'Neill and his team have proven immensely resourceful in the past, and I hope that they will then succeed where I have failed. Should we both be unsuccessful, I urge you to use any weapons you have available to annihilate the Biliskner and all aboard as thoroughly as possible before it can land on Earth.
"Any Replicator blocks left intact that fall to Earth pose a risk of them establishing a foothold on your world. They are already a scourge throughout Ida thanks to their many encounters with the Asgard. Every weapon and tactic we have used against them they have countered and added to their collective. Should they do the same with the technology you control, the war would be over. And the Asgard will become extinct. Along with all life in this galaxy."
"So what you are saying is that you are only calling us to tell us to blow you up so hard that there aren't even pieces left?" Luna asked bluntly.
Thor stared at them both for a moment before he replied. "Precisely."
"Great," Harry scoffed sarcastically. "Like the Asgard don't already have enough reason to hate us."
"I wish that there were another way, but the Replicators cannot be allowed to gain access to Lantean technology. In what little free time I have had, I've been searching your database for something we can use to defeat them for good, but I have as yet been unsuccessful. Yet, the scope of the technology I've been able to research shows that it is far beyond the level they currently have access to."
"Wait. If they're aboard your ship and your ship has access to that link, can't they access the database?" Luna queried.
"No. I do not have direct access to the link for that very reason. When I peruse the database, I first contact Othalla and remotely access the link through them. Any information I observe is only on this vessel while I consume it before being wiped when I disconnect. However, without my forces holding them at bay, it may not be much longer before the Replicators I was engaged with make their way to our homeworld."
Harry frowned. Every sentence seemed to add even more danger to the situation and Thor was adamant that all they could do was watch and attack should he, and possibly the SGC, fail to destroy the ship. Whatever the outcome, Thor, their single strongest supporter within the Asgard, would be lost forever. And should all three forces fail, a scourge even the Asgard had failed to curb would wash over the Earth even more deadly than the plague they were working on downstairs.
Harry groaned as that thought settled. Even their only other true recourse of fleeing was not an option. If they tried to disintegrate Aether to move elsewhere and keep it from the Replicators, they would unleash the plague upon the planet instead.
He felt Luna's hand fall on his shoulder and she squeezed it firmly in a show of support. Clearly, she was just as aware of the stakes as he was, but once again the fate of the world seemed to be resting on, or very near, Harry's shoulders.
"We will do what you ask, Thor," Luna said, getting a grateful nod from the Asgard.
"I am sorry that our friendship has come to such a sudden end. I had truly hoped to get to know you all better. I am grateful I got the chance to meet you, Harry. Luna. Give my regards to your friends. And good luck to us all."
The transmission ended and the previous image once more filled the screen. The victory pose now seemed to taunt Harry instead. Every time he thought things were over, and that life would continue on peacefully, fate lined up another punch to the groin.
"Harry?" Luna said, hand still resting on his shoulder.
"Did I upset the Fates in some former life?" He asked flippantly.
"I don't know." She said earnestly, shrugging her shoulders as she pulled him into a firm hug. "What do we do? The only weapons we have in Aether are the ferrum. While they will absolutely destroy the ship, I don't think they will be effective enough at completely obliterating a starship and everything aboard to the degree we seem to need."
"I don't know. We need to call everyone in. Can you please ask them to come? I'll head to the control room and see if I can't get us a timeline." Harry said, thanking her with a tight squeeze of his own in the hug.
"Of course. We'll be there in a minute."
She stood and danced away, already entering commands into her remote. Harry stood and flicked his hand at the screen, the display shutting off as he walked quickly over to the nearby transport cabinet and headed for the main control room. Inside he found Merlin already running through Alteran and Lantean weapons schematics, having clearly recorded the entire conversation with Thor.
"Any luck?" Harry asked as he stepped up to a console and began his own efforts to use their sensors to track Thor's incoming vessel.
"There are several options, but most do not provide the required level of destructive power. The Altera were not a particularly warlike race. Most of their weaponry was defensive in nature. I will continue looking." Merlin replied. "And as a precaution, I have begun integrating as many ferrum units as possible in the empty hangar."
Harry nodded and was just about to run his search command when an alert popped up on his sensor panel. A vessel had just exited hyperspace out past the moon and was rapidly approaching the planet.
"Crap. They're already here."
"Already?" Hermione asked, stepping inside with Luna, the others soon following along behind.
Harry just waved his hand at the screen, indicating a vessel rapidly approaching the Earth and settling into orbit above the northern hemisphere. A surge of energy was detected in both the SGC and the ship.
"I guess that means Thor was unsuccessful. Is everyone up to speed?" Harry asked.
The others looked as rattled as he felt. The last time they had been involved in something of this manner, they had needed to fight the aliens in person and several innocent people had died as a result. This time they were forbidden from doing so. Any action they took had to be remote and it had to be decisive. Failure here meant the loss of the entire planet.
"I hope no one minds, but I buzzed Jack and Mother," Richard explained. "They will ping Merlin when they're ready to beam in. I figured we could use the extra tactical thinking."
"A good idea." Harry agreed as the others nodded in agreement. "We need to figure out how to destroy that ship if it tries to land. And, if at all possible, we need to do so in a way that doesn't signpost that we're right here."
The group looked solemnly about the room, each making eye contact before they all settled at a terminal and began exploring their options. The entire time, the big central console screen showed the Biliskner sitting quietly in orbit above Russia. Just knowing it was there gave Harry chills. That very ship had once saved his life and now it was threatening all life on this planet.
"Why is it just sitting there?" Richard asked quietly after several silent minutes, watching the dot with Harry. "Do you think Thor was successful?"
"I'm not sure. But the longer it sits there, the better. We need more time to prepare."
A short set of beeps sounded from Richard's console and he looked up at Merlin. However, before he could speak, two white fields appeared in the room, leaving behind Mother and Jack West Jr.
"Hear we're all in a spot of bother." Mother said, uncharacteristically quietly.
"Come over here, I'll get you up to speed," Richard said, indicating the panel in front of him which changed from Alteran to English on the display.
Things in the room once again became quiet, besides Richard's soft voice, as the team focussed on how to bring down the ship."
It was almost an hour later, well after they had detected another burst of energy in the ship and the SGC that Natalie gasped and drew everyone's attention. "Bugger me."
"Mum!" Hermione said, looking over the woman's shoulder before she dropped an even harsher curse word herself.
Everyone began to look at the large screen over Natalie's station, and at the four small red figures split into pairs versus the hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions of tiny blue specs that filled the ship from aft to stern.
"Fuck me. That's them?" Mother asked.
"I was trying to calibrate our sensors to figure out how large the problem might be. Detecting the humans was easy, but these things were tiny. And they were everywhere. The computer didn't want to acknowledge them as anything other than a part of the ship. They're made of the same material. And they are bloody everywhere." Natalie reiterated.
"With numbers like that, what are they waiting for?" Jack said softly.
"More importantly, why is one of the humans outside?" Neville noted, indicating the figure that was hovering in place on the exterior of the ship with another figure inside only metres away.
"Worse," Luna said, watching closely and zooming in on the space. "Why are they drifting slowly out into space?"
"Merlin," Harry said, turning to the hologram. "Do they have sufficient oxygen?"
"Oxygen levels are plummeting. There appears to be something wrong with the suit they are wearing. Estimate death in less than two minutes. There is a repeated energy signal coming from the ship, but it appears to be targeting a space several metres behind the figure."
"Help them!" Natalie yelled before the figure vanished from their screens, reappearing a moment later next to the other figure inside the ship.
The group gave a collective sigh of relief as the two figures moved rapidly away from the rapidly encroaching blue dots. Their number seemed to be near infinite.
"There are so many of them. How the hell are we going to achieve this?" Padma said, looking scared.
Harry turned to Merlin again. "Did you find anything we can use?"
"There are several technologies that could possibly be sufficient," Merlin said, moving to one of the larger screens on the wall and waving his hand to display examples of what he had found. "However we most assuredly do not have the time needed to integrate and deploy them. The Lantean Defence Satellites would be most effective, but it would take almost two weeks to assemble one. The best I could manage to find that we might be able to build in time was an experimental beam weapon, similar to the satellites. But it would need to be integrated into Aether for power and would be very obvious when firing."
"I don't think we have a choice," Jack said, indicating the central console and the small red dot above the Earth that had begun moving.
"Calculating projected course," Merlin said, a dotted line preceding the moving dot that missed their position by several miles.
"Wait, they aren't coming here?" Harry asked, confused.
"They could course correct once through the atmosphere," Merlin noted.
"No, they're not," Luna said with a smile. "They're going for Fundamenta. Thor's ship records must not indicate that we've relocated."
"Great, so they intend to land in a human research base and then work their way over to us. I guess it will have to be the ferrum." Harry replied, turning to Merlin once more. "Try and see if you can build that experimental beam emitter in time as well, just in case."
"You're the best here at firing more than one at a time, Neville. Go take a seat." Hermione said with an encouraging smile.
Neville gave a heavy sigh before he tapped a command on his wrist remote, the others following suit. They didn't have time to waste on using the transport cabinets right now.
As Neville appeared beside the alien chair, Harry had another thought. "Hey, Neville. Beam the ferrum into the ocean first. Then you can fire them up out of the water at the ship. It will help keep our location secret, in case those buggers do actually manage to land. We don't want them following the flight path back here."
Neville nodded as he reclined and everyone watched as a hologram of the previous display showed in front of him. They were tracking the ship entering the upper atmosphere and it was already beginning to slow.
"Looks like it needs to decelerate considerably for entry. At least it will make an easier target." Jack said, giving Neville a thumbs up. "You've got this, mate."
Neville looked terrified to Harry, not that most would be able to tell on his face these days. He had gotten very good at hiding such things during the year that the Death Eaters had run Hogwarts. The teen closed his eyes and they heard the sound of something large being beamed out from somewhere deep below them. On the tracking image, a large circle appeared in the path of the ship as separate indicators showed the temperature around the vessel's shields was increasing dramatically as it encountered the resistance of Earth's atmosphere.
"Here goes nothing," Neville said softly, focusing on the task before him.
"Crap, it's altering course." Mother said, pointing at the image.
Harry followed the progress as the dot diverged dramatically from the dotted line, careening wildly as though out of control. Suddenly the image changed and they were looking at a real-time image instead of a map. Harry realized that Neville had sent out several vulta along the path and they could now see the ship for themselves.
For about a moment before the entire ship was engulfed in flames as it lilted wildly in the air. It had lost all control and was plummeting faster and faster now, burning up as it met considerable air resistance.
"Can you still scan inside?" Harry asked Merlin, hoping that they could track the individual blue dots still.
"Yes, for the moment. All four red figures are gone, they appear to have utilised the astria porta from the SGC as an escape vector. It just shut down and the blue dots are scrambling to retake control. The hull has become compromised in multiple places. The ship is breaking apart."
The group watched in tense silence as the blue dots began flickering and vanishing. Whatever the SGC team had done to ruin the entry into the atmosphere was working well. Soon they would all be destroyed. But the ocean was rapidly approaching the falling ship. If they weren't all destroyed before it impacted, it was possible some might survive, scattered even further by the impact.
"Come on," Harry whispered to himself, his fist clenched tightly as he watched the insane numbers plummeting. Merlin had even put up a counter that was rapidly diminishing so fast Harry couldn't tell what it actually said.
A huge explosion went off in the centre of the vessel as the natural resistance of the atmosphere broke through into something presumably important and large chunks of the ship were thrown in all directions, the numbers on the counter plummeting even faster. But Harry noticed that several of the tiny blue dots were thrown outwards by the explosion, and they were not disappearing.
"Neville?" Harry asked and the other teen closed his eyes again.
"I got them." He said, as several small yellow objects burst out of the ocean and destroyed the tiny purplish blue objects tumbling through the air.
The image in front of them was incredible. Several large burning chunks of alien spaceship tumbled through the air, small little bug-like creatures falling away from its innards and shattering apart against either the air itself or the ferrum that Neville was wielding with pinpoint precision.
"Nice work, Neville. Keep it up." Hermione said from his right.
"They're down to four-digit figures. We're so close." Padma said, watching the counter closely.
As the numbers moved rapidly into the double-digit range, the ship impacted the ocean hard, sending debris in every direction. Whatever was left of the Biliskner, weakened as it was by the violent entry, shattered and the final handful of numbers dropped down until only three remained on the tracker Merlin had put up.
Harry watched Neville's face as he focused hard, tracking the three tiny blue dots. Three ferrum followed their descent towards the ocean floor, somewhere in the Tasman Sea, between Australia and New Zealand. It had been close, but Thor and his SGC friends had kept the vessel from reaching them down in Antarctica.
"Come on. How can they move like that underwater?" Neville groaned as he focused harder, tracking the objects with his weaponry, managing to glance one. The shimmering energy field around the ferrum had the desired effect and sheered the spider-like shape in half.
"Two more, Nev. You got this." Luna cheered.
Neville grit his teeth hard and seven ferrum shot up from the sea floor and tracked the second to last object. Two of them came together and pinched the tiny robot from either side, crushing it into nothing.
"Alright. One left." Natalie said, softly, her hands grasped tightly in front of her face.
Every single ferrum now came to life, the underwater depths a glow with their yellow light. and Neville looked like he was sweating bullets as he had them converge on the final object. It was somehow managing to maneuver under the water, but Neville was determined. He tracked it precisely and four ferrum impacted the object from all sides, destroying it entirely in a powerful explosion as they connected with one another.
Everyone took a collective breath of relief before the girls pulled Neville up from the chair and hugged him hard, dancing about in relief. Harry just laughed at the sight, glad that the potential disaster had been averted. But just to be certain, he sat in the vacated seat and began running detailed scans of the area. There were hundreds of the tiny blocks that seemed to form the Replicators scattered all over the sea floor.
He closed his eyes tightly and using the remaining ferrum, he began to target the blocks, ensuring that none survived to be found by search and rescue teams that might be sent by the SGC or any other country that had witnessed the fireball. The Asgard were in a galactic war with these buggers and had been for some time. Harry wasn't about to allow them a chance to establish a foothold here because they celebrated too soon.
As he worked, he noticed that some of the blocks seemed to be pulling on one another, and clumping together. He prioritized targeting these, instructing the vulta to descend to give him a better view.
He was surprised as one of them descended into the water, to find something odd resting at the bottom of the ocean. The astria porta that the SGC team had used to escape was sitting in the settling silt looking none the worse for wear.
"Wow, that is certainly impressive." He said to himself as he scanned the object thoroughly while continuing his clean-up effort.
It was completely intact, but something was moving underneath. Harry carefully positioned several ferrum and used one of them without its energy field to lift the porta up off the seafloor. The moment the ring lifted away, a small mechanical form shot out from the silt, trying to get away.
Harry chased it down with the ferrum and soon had it in pieces like the rest. With the completely undamaged porta balancing on the tip of the inert ferra, he continued his effort to clear up all the blocks, using the energy fields around the ferrum to vaporize the tiny blocks.
It took him a long time to scan the entire area, carefully double and triple-checking to ensure all of them had been found and destroyed. When he finally opened his eyes, the others had mostly dispersed with only Hermione still standing there watching him work.
"Sorry. Just wanted to be sure." He said, quietly.
"Are you?" She asked with a soft smile.
"I'm pretty certain I destroyed every block that survived to the bottom of the ocean. We'll just need to keep a careful watch for the time being. Make sure nothing snuck through. But the porta from the SGC did come through all of that intact. Not even a scratch."
"Really?" She said, stepping forward and reading the hologram he spawned for her, showing its diagnostic. "That is impressive."
"They do seem to have designed the fourth-generation units to last. From my reading, the first-gen were barely even professionally built. No more than a proof of concept barely able to provide intrasystem travel, built long before they even found this galaxy. And that travel was rough. We all know the disaster that the second generation turned out to be once they'd finally arrived here in Avalon. It's the reason most of the built-in safeguards exist at all. And the third, even factory-built, were incredibly weak. Even stray weapons fire or small environmental hazards could cause serious and often irreparable damage. I guess they got sick of having to replace them. According to the SGC report on Edora, the fourth generation porta there survived a direct hit by a meteor and was still active throughout."
"Really impressive," Hermione said, settling on Harry's lap now he wasn't focusing on keeping an arsenal of ferrum under control. "So, do we give it back to them?"
"What are they doing? Are they looking for it?" He replied.
"Merlin is watching them right now. The others needed to go and cool off after. Most of them aren't used to the stress of global catastrophes landing on their shoulders. Neville looked like he might pass out from it all once he stood up. I think we were the only thing allowing him to keep his feet at first."
"He did an incredible job. But we'd have been boned if SG1 hadn't destabilised the entry vector. I was really panicking there at one point." Harry said, unafraid to be open with Hermione about such things anymore. She would ferret it out of him eventually regardless, so it was better to be open from the start.
"Then you did better than me. I was panicking from the moment Luna called us in."
"You're much better at hiding it these days." He replied as Hermione leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. Harry felt the last residue of the event washing away as he leant into her in response.
"Mmmm. I'm never going to get tired of doing that." She said as she pulled away.
"Me either." He said softly, looking up into her molten brown eyes. "But, I do currently have a million-year-old porta dangling in the ocean currents by an inert ferra. I should probably put it somewhere safe if we plan is to continue."
"Use the vulta, and do a detailed scan. We need to make sure there are no blocks on it before we bring it anywhere near us."
"Good idea," Harry said as he leaned back in the chair, Hermione remaining in place on his lap as he drifted into the interface, her presence a peripheral comfort as he swam in the data he was receiving.
He felt the images from the vulta surrounding him and suddenly he was underwater again, moving around the porta slowly. He could see the other tiny orbs moving through the water, some running visible scan lines over the ring, others checking around it for any residual blocks. All the while, the other glowing ferrum danced circles in the background, running on automated sensors, searching for any new targets. When all the scans came back negative, Harry breathed a sigh of relief.
"It's clean. But I don't want to bring it here either. Just in case." He said, not opening his eyes.
"What about the crevasse?" Hermione suggested and Harry cocked his head. "The one you and Luna found. Where the original Fundamenta Porta drifted off to. The SGC has no reason to go looking in there now. And it's nearby if we want to grab it."
"I suppose that's as good as anywhere. They packed up that base when they shifted to Fundamenta's former location."
Harry focused again and the ferra and porta were surrounded by beam energy, vanishing and allowing water to rush into the vacated space. He could feel the system tagging the location as it deposited the ancient item in the tiny cave he and Luna had once ventured to over the frozen ice of Antarctica.
"That was a lot easier than our first trip there," Harry said, opening his eyes again as he used his fingers to transport the rest of the ferrum into the same cave, to be carefully checked by Merlin for any Replicator contamination.
"I wanted to smack you for being out in that weather. It was so careless. We were in no rush." Hermione said.
"I wanted to smack myself, though I doubt I'd have even felt it at the time I was so cold. We absolutely should have waited. I'm trying to be less brash about things now."
"I know." Hermione paused for a moment, before she shifted, straddling him and looking into his eyes. "Harry, I love you. You know that, right?"
He smiled at her softly. "And I love you too, Hermione." His hand came up and caressed the side of her face gently, Hermione leaning into his touch, eyes still locked on his own. "The one person who has been with me through everything. No matter what. I've loved you longer than I've truly understood what I was even feeling."
"It's just… something like this… I've never properly said it to you before. I need you to know that I do love you."
"I know." He said, gently caressing her face. "And I will be forever grateful that you do. Even if I sometimes feel like I don't deserve it, I know. And I try to live up to that."
"You don't need to change for my love, Harry. That's not how love should work. I fell in love with who you are, not what I could make you into. That never works."
"I'm glad to hear it, but let's be honest, there are a few things I should change. My recklessness for starters."
She smiled at him again and gave him another soft kiss. "Just don't change too much on me then."
"I promise I'll keep it to a minimum." His hand softly cupped her cheek before his own expression became somewhat serious as a thought came to him. "Sorry to put this on hold, but I need to know something."
"Anything," Hermione replied, hands balling his shirt as she held him tightly.
Harry flushed slightly as he opened his mouth. "Er, Merlin?"
The hologram appeared beside them, looking unfazed at their position. Hermione gave Harry an odd look before she too focused on the hologram.
"What are the SGC doing? If SG1 used the porta to escape, I assume they're currently trapped off-world."
"That appears to be correct. They are retrieving the second porta from Nevada. Two teams are currently preparing it for loading aboard an aircraft on the base. It will be headed for Colorado Springs within the next hour."
"Excellent. I had been wondering how we could do this, and then they went and gave us the perfect opportunity. Can you fit a copy of the metal cover they have on it to the porta in lab thirty-two? As soon as the aircraft is in flight, and you can do so without detection, swap the two porta over."
Hermione and Merlin gave him a strange look. "I'll explain in detail tomorrow. We need to discuss all of this then anyway. Can you do it?"
"It should be simple enough. I'll see to it." Merlin said, shimmering away as he did.
Harry let his head fall back against the chair, Hermione shifting with him as her arms were still around his neck. "Or," he said, seeing the curious look on her face. "I suppose I can fill you in now."
Hermione gave him one more kiss, pulling back mere millimetres to whisper to him. "I suppose you can."
ϟ
The chime on Harry's door rang out and Hermione let her arms fall from around his body as he climbed off the couch and moved to answer it. They'd spent the past two hours letting off the stress and tension that had built during the Biliskner situation by snogging one another silly. Hands had drifted further than ever before and she felt a buzz running throughout her body.
Hermione was so grateful that she and Harry had finally embraced the oh-so-obvious love between them both, and now that she had properly said it too, she couldn't stop doing so. It felt like every time they had broken apart from kissing, she was telling him once more how she felt for him. And sometimes he even beat her to it.
There had been long periods interspersed between the snogging where they had simply lain in place and stared into each other's eyes. Hermione bit her lip happily just at the memory of the feelings that it stirred within her.
The swish of the door finally drew her attention and she noted that Harry had unsuccessfully tried to fix his appearance. Hermione's hands had done a real number on his hair, and he had several red marks peeking out from where his shirt was still riding high in the back. She felt a little bad for those ones and made a mental note to trim her nails down before doing that again.
"Merlin." Harry greeted, and she could see the hologram waiting in the corridor.
"The exchange has been completed. It finished during their descent into Colorado Springs. Are you certain this was wise? There were many differences between the units. Surely the SGC will notice."
"I'm sure they will. But, according to the reports I read on the 'Beta Gate' as they call it, they also believe that they completely drained the last of the power from the clavis they found with that porta during its use by Maybourne's extra excursions. Accordingly, they believe the porta it was paired with to be the oldest ever constructed."
"It is. The unit we just recovered was the first fourth-generation porta ever built. By my reckoning, it is approximately 52 million years old."
Hermione's mind boggled as she considered that statement, and she could see that Harry was taken aback as well. That was a timescale for which the human mind was not equipped.
"Um. Ok. That's crazy. We are not breaking that down. It can remain a museum piece somewhere, so long as we can ensure it cannot be connected to."
"I will modify the circuitry shortly to ensure it is safely decommissioned," Merlin said, giving a nod. "There have already been two connections to the other one and I have detected a digital radio signal coming through, but so far no one has tried to pass."
"Right," Harry said, glancing over his shoulder at Hermione who gave him a disbelieving look. She was still trying to wrap her head around the age of these items. "Might be that GDO thing they talk about in their reports. They aren't getting an all-clear to enter back because the SGC isn't the one getting the signal, so they can't be sure they wouldn't step through into the bottom of the ocean. Can you suppress any transmissions coming through? Wouldn't want someone on the ice accidentally picking up that stray signal just now. Not until we've cleared that area for blocks."
Merlin nodded once more, seeming to agree with Harry's assessment. "Luna, Padma, Jack and Mother have beamed over to the crevasse. They are currently inspecting the remnants from the crash. I have collected all of the shattered pieces of the Biliskner as well, should we wish to return them to the Asgard."
"That's probably a good idea. Once we're sure there aren't any leftover blocks on any of it. We can send them a message in a day or two to confirm everything went well. All things considered. Was there anything else?"
"I am doing continuous scans of the entire entry path of the vessel, making sure we have cleaned up the entire mess. So far I found several hundred blocks scattering the route, though thankfully they were all separated by significant amounts. Given its success rate with both the ship and blocks before, I have been beaming them into low-Earth orbit and allowing the atmosphere to do the rest. So far there is no sign of any intact models."
"That is good to hear. Can you schedule a council meeting for tomorrow? And make sure that everyone is there. We have something we need to discuss and everyone should be involved. And by everyone, I mean Jack, Mother, Xenophilius and everyone downstairs as well. They can attend in person or by hologram, whichever they prefer, but this might well be the toughest decision we've ever had to make as a group. I want input from everyone that it might affect."
Merlin nodded. "I'll see to it. Enjoy your evening." The hologram said, smiling at Hermione over Harry's shoulder. She blushed but waved at the figure, fixing her partially opened shirt.
"Good night." She said, as Harry closed the door and turned back to her.
The pair locked eyes for a moment before the oddity of the situation fell upon them and they broke out laughing. Harry soon rejoined her on the couch and she gave him a knowing look. Harry sighed but nodded, and she snuggled up close to him as he began to explain his thinking for tomorrow's meeting.