The Omake Files - The Fifth Man
Uss Apollo, Maiden Voyage Launch Date.
Colonels Sam Carter and Harry Potter stared at the General. Harry made a show of clearing out his ears, then spoke. "Sir, For a moment there I thought you said that, I have command of the Apollo on it's maiden voyage. I thought Abe-"
"Is going to take command. And you would be right, after the maiden voyage. The Apollo however is to be the testbed for the latest in our M-Generation technologies, given your recent..." General O'Neill paused as though wondering what to say on the subject. He shrugged after a minute, and didn't add anything else. it was obvious what he meant and all the baggage with it.
Sam looked at Harry. "The new model built using what we've learned about it from the Asgard Core... and given what happened with Morg-"
Harry interrupted, "Yes, yes, Asgard who knew more than even we did finding ways to give a kind of form to it to reduce but not entirely eliminate the load placed on the controlling mind. I'm very grateful for that, but... I don't understand, why?"
Jack spoke up. "In all those years you had to look at it, you didn't look at their research did you?"
"Why would I?"
Sam spoke up this time. "We took a look, to see what the asgard knew, because of recent events. They succeeded in creating an asgard clone body with the capabilities of manipulating the energy wavelength in similar ways. One of their tests was similar to the incident with the X-302. They shielded the hyperspace window in as similar way as you had said happened... only it made the ship travel all the way across their home galaxy and a couple hundred thousand lightyears out side of it, in seconds, compared to the 3 hour, 15,000 light year trip they had intended. and as far as the Hyperspace matrix diagnostics were concerned, they had only put in as much energy to do that speed for a few seconds."
Harry nodded. his decades of wading through the Asgard Core both literally and literaturally had taught him much of asgard engineering, aswell as science. While there were people like Doctor McKay and Radek Zalenka as the foremost experts on Ancient Technology, and Sam the foremost expert on the Stargate itself, as well as on Goa'uld tech, Harry was, 90 percent because of the decades spent within the time-dialation field on the Odyssey, the other 10 percent from his three months or so he spent living with him prior to that, likely the only human in three galaxies that knew the most about Asgard Technology. If what Anubis had demonstrated with adding beam technology but still requiring locator beacons was any indication, Harry indeed knew more than even Anubis had gotten from Thor...
Harry knew the exact capabilities of their hyperdrives even before the time-dialation field. The asgard core simply refined his knowledge behind his understanding of why they were at those capabilities.
They ran at peak efficiency, above 95 percent. To travel the distance told with the energy given for the intended speed...
Impossible.
"It was speeded up." Harry said simply. Then smiled. "And you want me to see about getting the Apollo up to... speed?"
O'Neill groaned at the pun, but nodded.
At a final intersection, O'Neill waved Harry into the bridge module of the Apollo. Unlike the Odyssey, whose' first commander preferred the tower as the location of the primary bridge, Ellis preferred the foreward command module, instead of the tower communications module. neither gave any advantage over the other, except viewpoint. The Odyssey had felt like an aircraft carrier with the offset-bridge, while the Daedalus felt like the battlecruiser it was with the bridge in the middle.
And the Apollo would be the same.
-
Hyperspace, Uss Apollo Bridge
Harry smiled, his mind quiet, considering what he was doing. He was mentally regulating fluctuations in the M-Enhanced Hyperspace window.
He had been doing so for hours, and thanks to the Asgards' advances in the M-Generation Technology, it was not the burden of focus it had been before.
He was sat in the command chair, towhich the M-Generator was hooked up onto, within the chair. Certain engineers felt like mimicing the Ancients with their control chairs. Unlike the first 3 generations of M-Generators, this design was modular, designed to work together or seperataly. Together, they were capable of generating the various shield forms and weapons with ease. This was the capability (minus the lack of mental burden) of the 2nd Generation M-Generators. Seperately, he could carry one in the bottom of his backpack and use it much like the 3rd generation M-Generators. The 1st generation had been the prototypes built into the X-302, and all F-302M's. the M designating it's 'Magic' Capability. Considering Earth only had one Magic User: Harry, that was quite odd but helpful given the various F-302 engagements Harry had participated in over the years.
Before, it had been tiring for a few minutes to do something moderate with the Magic Energy Fields created by the technology. The hardest had been shielding an X-302 from a Stargate explosion. Compared to that, the F-302M versus Anubis' Mothership above Vis Uban had been a milk run.
Now, He reevaluated the metaphors. Vis Uban was now akin trying to put up with McKay. Harry had been unfortunate enough to have spent a little while with the scientist in recent months, mostly from between Their being kicked out of atlantis by ancients of all races, then his having his own lab at Area 51. The only good part from that time was when Harry got to run a few missions with SG-1 alongside Sheppards' team. Although being younger than the Colonel and only a Lieutenant at the time ensured their interaction was not as he thought it would be now, next time Harry would meet the colonel.
So Vis Uban was like trying to put up with McKay's constant yammering, the exploding stargate was like having a hundred McKay's, while this... this was like McKay wasn't around, but Sam, saying most of the same stuff but as she would. I.e. Not as irritating, if any of it was, which most of it wouldn't be, but in fact quite pleasant, although not as pleasant as some of the things Harry remembered from during the time-dialation field...
Harry coughed as his thoughts went back onto the, problem, he had now. He opened his eyes from his concentration, and saw that some people were holding in laughter. He reviewed his sensory input... or should that be, his memory of the last few minutes, and realised that, to the outside world, he suddenly mentioned the comparison between the stargate explosion incident and the Vis Uban incident. First he was glad he didn't say anything about Sam, then realised, some of the personnel here had met McKay, and shared his view.
Harry looked out of the Viewport of the bridge, a smile on his face.
He took a moment to check their progress. "Status report, Major." He spoke quietly to Marks. Marks' lips twitched, before he replied, "Judging from our first Hyperspace jump distance to duration, we should be about half-way."
Harry nodded. Not the jump in speed as what happened with the Asgard, but then they were experimenting with output then, and had overloaded their M-Generators. With the Apollo's set to a manageble level, they weren't getting even double the speed increase. But it did make the 3-4 week trip now just last 2 weeks. Not much of an increase considering the 4 days of installing modules all over the ship, with links to the one in the command chair and adding it into the ships' control systems interface... but still would get the ship to Atlantis a couple days before it would have had it left, without them, on the original launch date.
Doctor Weir was in for a surprise.
-
Atlantis Briefing Room
"Now, I was as surprised at the whole thing, me and the Apollo, and this pre-emptive strike..." Harry was saying. The briefing had broken up and Sheppard and Weir were sticking around. Neither knew that he was SG-1's Harry.
"Excuse me, Colonel Carter?" Weir asked.
Harry paused, then realised that his jacket said the name he preferred...
"Oh, ah... It's me. Harry. Harry Potter."
Weir nodded as she remembered the report. Then she pointed at his jacket.
"Yeah, see... that's a difficult one that. Ahm..." he scratched his head, and then Weir noticed a ring on his finger. She raised her eyebrows. "It's not... quite what it looks like."
"It looks like a wedding ring."
"Then it is what it looks like..."
"Then Congrat-"
Harry interrupted, "It's linked with the whole, 'Time bubble' thing." He would have used a lot of techno babble, but he wanted to keep this bit short. "To be honest, In the bubble, I did become Harry Carter, but since Me and teal'c were the only ones who..." He paused. "And Sam couldn't join me..." He sighed.
"I Get it." Sheppard said. Then added, "So when you suddenly aged, what, 40 years?"
"You look younger than 65 though." Weir shared.
Harry nodded. "I was in a few accidents through the years, and lets just say the Asgard retrofits included some stasis/healing chamber that got a fair amount of use. I've only aged about 2 decades. But yes, when I got to this age, I was given my new rank pending excercises confirming my ability to serve in the Armed Forces with the rank..."
"How's Sam taking it?" Weir asked.
Harry smiled thinly. "Before the bubble, we weren't even together in any romantic way. Lets just say to her, it's like she's lost a close friend, only he's still there, older, and wants her in a way she isn't actually used to. It took her a few years to get comfy with the thought before we did get together."
"So you do..."
Harry leaned back in his chair, and remarked... "This doesn't go beyond this room." He gave the pair a pointed look. They nodded, and he shared, "I watched her die."
"That's why Sam couldn't join you?"
He nodded, and said, "Teal'c, Rya'c and Kar'yn are at Rya'cs home on the Hak'tyl, looking after the kids. They weren't comfortable with the others, since they remember old people." He gave a slight smile, then a sigh and a sad one, "especially Sam. They don't remember her but..."
With that, he shook himself, and stood up. "I need to get up to the Apollo. Make sure McKay doesn't tear apart my ship."
-
Uss Apollo
Harry nodded to Marks, who initiated transport.
Then he grinned. "I'll expect a copy of that, Bill."
Bill Lee, who had obviously been about to take a picture of the planet he had just been beamed up from had just half a second too late pressed the button on his digital camera - half a second too late because the camera took a picture after the transport, not before.
Then Harry looked to Sam, who had during his command of Apollo's first mission, been on Midway. He wondered if Cam was visiting Teal'c, Rya'c, Kar'yn and the kids on Hak'tyl. Daniel was working with Vala and Tomin with the directionless Ori armies on getting them home.
Sam shifted uneasily. No one but Harry noticed something though. Harry, only because he was so familiar with her. He wouldn't ask her if she was sleeping well, however. He knew the truth in the slight dark rings around her eyes, and it was private.
"Any word from Atlantis?" Sam asked.
"Subspace echoes from the tracking device." Harry shared simply.
"Damaged?"
"That Asuran beam weapon grazed the tower before the shields came back on..."
"How long between each echo?"
"8 seconds."
Sam nodded, and left. The tactical officer looked at Harry, having not a clue what that all meant except the beam weapon part.
Bill wondered what had changed between Sam and Harry. Although admittedly, he had been working on Midway station when the Odyssey got back from Orilla with the aged Lieutenant-come-Colonel. Sam had been tight-lipped about what happened, except that Teal'c came back aged several decades, and Harry, strangely, not so much.
Harry sighed, and looked to Marks. "You have the conn, Major."
He got up and went looking for his wi-no, she's not my wife here. He corrected himself.
--
A/N: These are scenes that will be referred to in the post-Unending story, but not included, as in the story once Ark of Truth is over, it will be showing before the first scene of here, then showing afterwards, when Sam is given command of Atlantis.
And some things here are spoiling certain aspects of 'Unending Odyssey', but then we all know as, being a Harry-centric saga, and assuming that the readers have seen the episodes, we all know that in the episode, the bubble is reversed and Teal'c comes back aged some, and being Harry-centric, that story would end similarly - Harry comin back. but I wanted to keep the 'aged-teal'c part too. And while Teal'c does not share certain things, Harry's ring is noticed, and the name of his uniform that he wore when the rest of the ship around he and teal'c reversed itself.
I'm going to my aunts, so I will be transferring all files on the stories to a flashdrive backup, and from that, writing on my mums' laptop. So this weekend, depending on what happens, I might get a chapter or two done.