The Omake Files – The Fifth Man
A Look Ahead
"Next Story, and way beyond"
2nd Lieutenant Harry Potter frowned as the hologram of the latest Asgard project, scheduled for construction to begin in three months, rotated, displaying in a see-through manner.
There were perhaps some things he was not used to, and that was Asgard ship design philosophies.
As he spoke to an Asgard engineer, he moved his hands onto the hologram, which while not physical to the touch, responded as if it were. Pulling apart made the visual grow in size, and then 'picking' at bits, and pulling them out of the 'ship' served to allow him to see something in the design better.
He pressed on a spot, as if there was a button, and related information appeared in midair, next to the hologram of the ship.
His Asgard language skills had improved greatly, and barely a second after reading, he understood.
For about an hour, he discussed, argued and otherwise helped the engineer in refining the design, until the product had become closer to both what he had imagined initially when they asked him to join the project team, and closer to what they had wanted.
A communiqué distracted him before they got to the Hyperdrive engines.
"Lieutenant Potter. This is Thor."
"Hey buddy, what's the problem?"
"There is no problem, the weapon designs you had come up with worked as you believed they would."
"Great. What about the 'swarm logic' idea I had about them?"
"The programming is not yet ready for controlled situation testing."
Harry nodded at the holographic representation of the Asgard' Supreme Commander. "Maybe I can take a look...?"
Ten minutes later, though, and he had a headache from trying to make sense of the program code.
"Is something wrong, Harry?"
Turning towards the source of the voice, an Asgard Harry had gotten to work with often on the project, he shrugged, "I'm not a software programmer."
"Your specialisation is Hardware. I understand."
Harry smiled and nodded.
--
Years later
1st Lieutenant Harry Potter of SG-1, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell, frowned as he looked at the code that one of his friends from Area 51 had sent over.
Sam entered the small private lab of Harry's secret underground facility.
Facility was perhaps pushing it in regards to the place. The entire original area of the hanger had been put into the use originally intended for it, and his work stations now were in a purpose-built lab room that connected to both the house and the hanger.
"Hey Sam, could ya take a look at this?"
With a little laugh, as she did so she asked, "Still not got programming languages?"
"No. As an old friend said, my specialisation is hardware. I'm lucky that I was allowed to use the same OS as the computers at the SGC for this work, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get even halfway with my project. Mind telling me if this is okay, or a bust like the last version was?"
Sam scrolled through the various lines of code, then nodded. "Still not going to source out to some of the companies that helped with the F-302?"
"Nope. That'll cost."
"You can afford it."
"Not those prices. I got a quote, Sam. And I couldn't go to Colson Industries for the MEC's after that thing that happened when I was away with the Asgard."
Sam had to frown, "Why'd you need MEC's?"
"Sam, Anti-grav units, remember?"
"Those..."
"Need to interface with other things, and for VTOL stuff? Let the craft go higher/lower or maneuver around without using the main engines? Main engine minimum thrust would push the craft really fast, remember?"
"Oh. Right. Sorry, I forgot about those."
"Yeah. Say, did anyone do that thing to the guy who forgot to add AG Units to the 302, like I suggested when they realised that said units were part of the original design proposal?"
She blushed, and Harry grinned. Looking away, she asked, "So how far are you getting with building my ahm, 'Aethersprite'. You said you could start work on it this week."
"Just waiting on the delivery for the Trinium-Titanium alloys before I can start work on the frame."
"Trinium-Titanium? Okay, that's got to cost you... it does, right?"
Harry hummed for a moment, before he spoke, "The parts that I can source here, sometimes. Not much. Can you believe it would have cost me more to purchase the Trinium-Titanium alloys, uncut, than it would to do any other part of the job? Even the custom windshield, the only part that I have outsourced to earth companies, doesn't cost that much. I'm just glad that some ties I have with the Asgard, ahm... paid off, if you will."
"How'd you get the materials for yours?"
A wince, and he said, "I'm replacing the frame when I get the delivery. The current frame limits maneuverability and top speed to something like..." Harry trailed off into a mumble.
"Harry?"
"100-150mph." He answered, embarrassed. "It's a really weak frame, I always intended to replace it when I could get the TT-alloy. I didn't expect it to take this long."
--
2012, Ida Galaxy
Colonel Harry Carter looked out from the observation post in the Command Centre of the Asgard Supership Hermione Granger.
Like its name suggested, it was a very large ship. While not nearly as massive in dimensions as Atlantis, it surely had similar levels of internal volume.
And ever since the Asgard' had gone into severe seclusion while they underwent the process to finally cure their genetic degradation diseases, The Tauri had been entrusted with the care of the Asgard' galaxy.
As he reminisced about his part in the design of this particular class of Asgard vessel, outside of the ship, visible through the large expansive dome-style window, was a Black Hole.
--
USS George Hammond
Colonel Samantha Carter grinned at the latest readings. She was sat in a large room, similar to a conference room in layout but was more of a lab of sorts.
"Alright people, we're good to go. We'll be the first people, ever, to recover matter from inside a black hole. This is a momentous occasion."
Grins were had by all at the thought of the accomplishment.
"Final checks." She called out, and people groaned. "Remember, if this doesn't work, we have no idea what will happen."
A scientist spoke up, "Sector 0-0-0 stations report Green."
Another, and another and more scientists in turn reported the same, of sectors '0-0-0' through to '4-4-4'.
And then more calls of other things, for five minutes.
Until, "The Hermione Granger reports MEC green."
Sam nodded, and spoke up again. "Gravity stations, point five percent on my mark."
She looked around, and counted down... "Five... Four... Three... Two... One... Mark."
A second passed, then, "Black Holes' gravity has reduced by point zero-zero-eight percent." Sam looked at the voice, and saw a hologram of her husband, grinning at her.
She grinned back, and spoke up to the group at large. "Program an increase of Point zero-two-five every 5 minutes, first increase on my mark. Report status ready?"
About a minute passed to get the affirmatives and checks. Then she spoke, "Mark."
Now, the process would run uninterrupted, as the black holes' gravity field was slowly, artificially reduced until the true part of the project would begin.
She turned back to the hologram of her husband, and walking over, she began to say, "At current projected rate, we should be able to start extraction in about 27 hours." She shuddered a bit.
"Can't believe how far we've come?"
"Yeah. I mean... you're here because I essentially, did what we're planning to do here."
"That was with a sun, Sam. You blew up a sun. This time, we're creating one."
"And getting fuel for..." Sam stopped, unable to say.
"We'll succeed, Sam. I'm just hoping the Geologists let me put in that-"
"Ah!" Sam cut in. "We agreed last year. We are rebuilding the house closer to Colorado Springs."
Harry sighed, and asked, "That house wasn't exactly family friendly... are you sure you want it exactly how it used to be?"
Sam thought for a moment, her hand moving for a moment across her belly, then nodded. "Fine, but nothing ostentatious."
"Fine. I've got some ideas."
For a moment she thought he was just telling the truth, then she realised something from the way he was shifting about, and she just had to state, "You've already got the blueprints worked out, haven't you?"
"You know me so well. I've even included a hanger for our planes."
"Which ones? Not the-"
"No, just the smaller ones. Our Aethersprites, our 'Bus'."
She chuckled, and a few minutes later he disappeared, their private conversation over before he had given some information on their mission to her.
Under her breath, she muttered, "'Of all the hobbies for my hubby to have...'"
It sounded like a quote, one Harry would have recognised with amusement.
--
Hermione Granger
Harry stepped through the doorway, and saw in the massive chamber the various beams of light extending from the Asgard Transporter-derived 'Mass Extraction' device.
At the end points, were various large lumps of rocks, suspended in a Zero-G field, which would vary once such 'rocks' were each fully materialised, making them move along the intended pathways like a conveyer belt and into the active Stargate.
There were 8 such 'pathways', all collecting together without a hitch to send such a rock one after the other.
He clicked his communicator, a small device acting the same way as a radio that was clipped to his ear. "Galaxy of Ida'go to the Galaxy of Milk." Harry spoke, a stupid pun that someone had made about how their own galaxy was supposedly named after a chocolate bar, which everyone had started to take up on.
"Station Tao here."
"Status report."
The person on the other end was silent for a short moment, before the woman began, "The first mass group is ready for transport to the Supply Refinery. Just awaiting the Cargo Tugs and Hyperdrive platforms, eta 5 hours."
Harry nodded.
It had been a week since the process had begun, at well-balanced rates. The Hermione Granger was the sole ship near the Blackhole, although there were the few thousand gravity manipulation stations around it, which served to reduce the gravity well of the black hole to the point that Time wasn't so warped the closer they got.
The sheer mass of the collapsed star meant that the entire thing would take possibly decades, probably more, at the current rate of matter extraction.
The entire project had been a, puppy, of Sam's ever since the asteroid that at the thinnest point was still several hundred kilometres wide, almost a thousand at the widest, had been mined dry, although the actual stockpile of material created from the mining of it had, in the three years since the mine dried up, only been reduced by one quarter.
The main problem, was that the kind of materials that had run out where the ones they were able to convert using the Asgard Matter converter technology. The rest, well, the energy expenditure required for the process to convert the other materials into the ones they needed, was so much more than the reverse.
And then someone gave part of an idea, another person said something, and so forth in several places, until Sam, a week before she was to take command of the George Hammond, had the brilliant but very complicated idea of using the transporters combined with a matter converter, piercing through the temporal distortions created by the immense gravity well of a black hole, to 'nibble' at the mass of said collapsed star.
It was complicated, extremely difficult bordering on impossible, and dangerous if they didn't get the sciences behind the entire thing correct.
The first step was to create a gravity buffer zone, prevent more material from getting closer to the black hole. The second was, to go in closer, but still waay outside the noticeable temporally distorted area, with the next set of gravity-altering stations. Those would begin to reduce the size of the gravity well, but not the actual surface gravity of the black hole. That would be handled by the 3rd set of satellites, which would slowly reduce the effective 'weight' of the black hole. It's mass wouldn't change, but the gravity exerted by all that mass would be reduced. Slowly.
It had been a beautiful site, the moment when the black hole was no longer earning it's name, and became visible.
With the gravity no longer at literally crushing levels, the electromagnetic properties of atoms that repels atoms apart from one another, was enough to expand the black hole.
No longer a collapsed star, but just a dead one.
The fourth, final step, the goal of the project, was to use specially-designed transporters to literally, beam away some of the mass. With an in-built matter conversion process, the resulting lumps of mass, were literally, rocks of a very dense element. Those would be sent on to refinery plants – equipped with matter converters to produce specific amounts of various other elements, compounds, and so on.
It would then go to manufacturing plants to be formed into the parts for spaceships, or other materials for any space or terrestrial construction... Such as the first Bering Sea bridge, to be built out of materials that would be suitable for the cold arctic weather, fully encapsulated, the internal highway of 6 lanes on two levels plus a third lower level of 2 rail tracks...
The hope was that this 'Black Hole Mining' project would allow them to cease, completely cease, the strip-mining of earth...
--
2016, Stargate Command
Brigadier General Harry Carter gazed out from his office at the gate room below.
Leaning on the balcony, he murmered, "Where are you, Sam."
A knock on the door to his left interrupted his musings. He turned away from the window, and sat back at his desk. "Enter."
The door opened, and his teenage son and daughter entered.
"Hey dad," Janet started. "Mom back from Orilla yet?"
He shook his head. "No."
The two kids looked at each other, then at their dad, and saw that he was barely restraining his emotions. Jacob spoke up. "She'll be fine, dad. She's super smart..."
Harry nodded slightly, with a faint smile. "You bet she is."
There was a knock on the door to his left – the other door that Janet and Jacob entered through was now on his right – and it opened a bit, a head peeking in.
"Ah, sir..." Cam started.
"Come in, Cameron."
With permission, the 46 year old Colonel who still wore the SG-1 patch on his arm smiled slightly and entered fully, closing the door behind him. He saw the presence of the two kids, and after giving a hug to them both, he looked up at his boss.
"Just got word from the Ida Carrier group. The Hammond had been disabled after some subspace anomaly destabilised the hyperspace window. No casualties, only minor injuries. Engines and communications were out, along with a few minor systems. Luckily, the Ida Carrier group were taking offensive action so the enemy forces didn't get to take advantage. She's being towed to the Hermione Granger. Sam'll get in touch from there when they arrive."
Harry sat back with a sigh, and smiled. He nodded at his friend, and said to the kids, "I'll call you down when she calls, kids. Why don't you go get something to eat and some sleep? It's quite late."
Janet and Jacob shared a look, then moved around the desk and gave him a tight hug, then left.
"Good kids." Cam commented with a smile.
Nodding, Harry said, "Janet's quite the budding pilot."
"Still grounded for joyriding?"
Harry snickered and nodded.
"You still haven't told me what's so funny about that. You didn't find Jacob doing that the first time very funny."
Harry calmed down a bit, and said, "Janet took out my old Aethersprite."
"Oh, That's not so bad."
Harry continued, "Daniel picked her up in the Kernar system."
Cam was silent for a minute, before he asked, "Isn't Kernar a colony of the Jaffa?"
"With peace ties with us."
Came was silent as that filtered in, then he had to ask, "So she knows how to fly in space and through hyperspace. That could be useful."
"Even so, that's why she's still grounded until she's 20."
"I thought that was just you doing that 'parent mad' thing?"
He shook his head. "Bigger than a lot of stuff any other kid would do, so bigger punishment. She can't just take my plane for a joyride around the galaxy. I wouldn't mind so much if she limited herself to our little home system... I mean, I let Jacob fly the type 11 Shuttlecraft to the fleet yards, to surprise Sam when the Hammond last pulled in for overhaul maintenance."
Eyebrows raised, Cam had to say, "Wasn't he 12 at the time?"
Chuckling, Harry nodded. "They both learned to pilot before they turned 11. It's not like there's a space-pilots' license thing that they have to be at least a certain age to get... and even so, the Star Trek craft I built so that you don't have to be a pilot to still fly. The autopilot systems were quite good when I built the Type-11."
"Reminder... the Type-11 one is from...?"
"Picards' movie Enterprise. Seen first in Insurrection."
"Ah. I liked that one. Built-in Hyperdrive?"
"Based on the small F-302's, although not Naquadria."
Cam shook his head. "One of these days I'll have to join that club of yours. Get me one of those Type 9's... Small enough to fit through the 'gate... Be good for missions."
"Didn't you hear, SG-3 tried to get some Speeder bikes? They looked heartbroken when I told them that the inertial dampeners weren't small enough to fit in a mock up design taken from the films."
They both started snickering. Standing, then left through the door Cam had entered in, into the large conference room, that looked a lot different from how it used to be not ten years ago. The window overlooking the gate room was larger, for one.
They pair went to the stairwell, and walked down into the control room. As they did, they continued talking about the club that Harry had started a decade ago, that had gone beyond what he had thought it would. Upon catching site of the gate technician at the fancy lookin' control room computers, Harry ordered. "Dial up Atlantis."
The technician nodded, and a moment later, Harry looked out as the Stargate was dialled.
A very different Stargate.
It was the same size, proportions... but it was, newer. Unlike the Pegasus gate too, although the comparison between their galaxies' and the Pegasus galaxies' Stargates of 'Analogue' and 'digital' would have fit. Instead of set symbols, each of the 45 symbol plates on the inner ring sort of shimmered, from showing on 39 of the tiles, slightly-faded symbols of the Milkyway Galaxy, to showing on only 36 of them, slightly-faded symbols of the Pegasus Galaxy. Like the Pegasus Stargates, the symbols in the address being dialled then 'spun' from their originating tile, showing in a brighter glow literally moving from one tile to another.
Unlike Earths' original Stargate, it wasn't a slow process, and unlike the Pegasus Stargates, the process wasn't restricted to the Stargate actively waiting for the first symbol to lock before the next made its' way around the gate.
Although some locked out of order, they did lock at the correct chevrons.
A minute later, and the top-most tile glowed with the symbol of Earth – Pyramid with a sun above, and the Stargate activated.
Harry turned to Cam, "Give my best to everyone."
Cam nodded, and left the room. Harry watched as the Team Leader of SG-1 for going on 11 years strode into the gate room, and stepped through the Stargate, to rejoin SG-1 on Atlantis.
When the Stargate disconnected, Harry sighed, and decided he'd best get some sleep, not wanting to fall asleep when Sam called.
--
Authors Note: This was Way Bigger than i thought it would be. And no, that 'new stargate' there in 2016 isn't human-built. Well, not design-wise. Lets just say they came across the designs and builders instructions in some Ancient lab in pegasus, designs from just before the wraith started a war or something.
I never intended to write the series itself beyond Season 5 of Atlantis, and considering the slowness of my writing the main stories... I felt a tease of the 'future' yet outside of the main story was needed.