I don't own Harry Potter or Stargate.
Chapter 11
The next morning, during a breakfast of pancakes and fruit, an alarm rang from Harry's workstation. He was up like a shot and out of the room to check, and then out back to double check that the gate was unpowered. He came back in worried and relieved at the same time. The girls thought that it was an impressive feat of facial expression.
"What's got you all worked up?" asked Parvati before Padma could.
"That was an alarm I set up to let me know if the Americans managed a stable wormhole. They just managed it today and I bet they sent something through. Or someone." Harry responded.
"That's...that could be bad. It really depends on where the other end of the wormhole is."
"The Goauld own ninety percent of the Astria Porta in the milky way. The chances are that they are going to run into Jaffa and start an interstellar conflict. I've only got two ships, one for each system. The next ones won't be ready for days and we still go to crew the Aurora." he complained.
"Well suck it up! Things tend to build faster than your estimates you get from the construction site anyway. Are the drone ships more powerful than the Goauld ships that we could see if they do end up pissing someone off?" said Padma after studying him for a moment.
"Technically, yes." he said, realizing that he sounded petulant. "They should turn back up to three Ha'tak seperately. Anything more than that and we have trouble. We also have three more building and that will be the build order for a while. When Atlantis is ready we can build four more ships at a time and faster as well with Atlantis's computer running things."
"Then calm down. Unless there is a fleet sent out just because they meet the Americans there should be no trouble we cant handle. Soon there will be six ships available and I'm betting the Aurora is stronger than the drone ships, right?" he nodded at her so Padma continued. "Well then we really don't have anything to worry about then. We can operate the Aurora if we need to and it and the other Destiny's will be ready in just a couple of days. Please don't loose your head on us now."
"You're right. And there is no absolute guarantee that the Americans will piss anyone off out there. I'm sure I was panicking over nothing." he said. "Thanks love. I don't panic often at all, but knowing we could possibly be out gunned very soon has me back in the war."
"I know. One step at a time. We'll keep you on task." Parvati said with a smirk.
After breakfast he spent some time reviewing the programming of the drone ships. He found himself adding a few contingencies to the list and checked the status of the construction operations. He found that the build time had indeed shortened with the modification to the number of nanites he allowed to be built and that the ships would be ready in about two days. The problem in regards to the Aurora was that there was no ready crew yet to fly her.
The training facility would be ready soon and if he put people in the rooms up to four per room he would fill the facility with close to four hundred people comfortably. As is he would begin to double them up and see how the training went. He needed to make sure they learned how to repair and jury-rig the ships to make things happen and limp them home if there happened to be a problem. Repairs shouldn't be to horrible as he'd added a constructor table to the engineering sections of all of the ships and the information and scematics required to order parts and crystals from them was provided in the training and by the ship. They just had to know how to look it up, and the best of them would be able to do it from memory.
He would also be using part of the oversized facility to make some of the products he was marketing and free up the girls for training as well. They were his preferred bridge crew and he wouldn't have it any other way. As is they would be training much of the day on the new programs because they had to be tested anyway. He would see if the girls would find space combat tedious or not.
Going back to the training programs he tweaked the Goauld ships so that they were a little faster and that their ship to ship cannons were computer guided. He also gave them better shields. More in line with the ancient fleet than the Goauld of today. It would force more competence out of his recruits to fight something more like themselves. It also made for better tactics as thinking tactically makes more sense if your beam cannons don't tear through the enemy shields like hot knives through butter. Looking at the hacked information he'd pulled on Goauld technology, he found that it was based off of ancient Lantean technology and badly reverse engineered.
The Goauld simply went for 'shock and awe' with their technology in an effort to appear as gods to their slaves. Their guns made it look like fire raining from the sky and their staves shot the same fire. They made a lot of noise and caused explosions where they hit. The guns he would use in their place would not explode on contact, there would be a little reaction but not an explosion. Thier ships didn't use computer aided targeting but had a Jaffa on each cannon as it was considered a great honor for a Jaffa to be given control of the armament of a god. They had troop carriers for planets that didn't have the ancient ring transporters and some rudimentary gate ships. There were no ways known to get their people off of a failing ship other than a stolen Asria Porta or Tel'tak that was reserved for the Goauld in charge. Everyone other than themselves were expendable.
The program was ready to be tested and he was kind of running out of time to test it in anyway. He quickly churned out two transmitter/receivers for the other two stations so that he could network them all together. There were enough wires visible in their workstations. The idea was to simulate what they would be up to when piloting an Aurora II and he was ready to run the test run of the program. The girls knew he was up to something when he moved over to connect the new hardware.
"It's time to test my training programs." he said as he worked out any networking issues. With no other transmitters nearby the setup was easy. He hoped he could keep it that way.
"What will we be doing through it all?" asked Parvati.
"Just be prepared to do what I direct and there shouldn't be any issues. We start with the first level. We want our people prepared to deal with being outnumbered, mostly because for the most part we will be, and so the simulators start out with a five to one situation." he responded.
"Five to one? Sure, make it hard to start with." snarked Parvati.
"That won't be that difficult. We are technologically far more advanced than the enemy in these. The Wraith only won because they just wouldn't run out of ships and people. They grew more fleet faster than our ancestors could kill them." he countered.
"So we training for the Wraith first or the Goauld?" said Padma.
"The Goauld first. We are looking at a possible invasion from them first. They will probably engage the gate and start orbital invasion at the same time. That's what I would do if I designed a fleet like theirs. So thats what we'll fight against. Now, who wants the tactical setup and who wants the sensors and coordination?"
"I'll take tactical this time." said Parvati. "It would probably be good to learn how to use the 'big space guns' I've been selling to our recruits."
"That puts me on sensors. I'm guessing that coordination has to do with the drone ships and other Aurora's?" said Padma.
"You've got the right of it. Okay, everyone to your stations. You will see a new icon on your workstations...you'll need to open that program and we'll get connected."
It didn't take long before that was all that they could see on their screens. Padma looked over the sensor suite that would be available on board an Aurora and could see that the tutorial would be more of a 'sink or swim' scenario. She could scan enemy and allied ships and she basically knew everything about the battle space. She nodded as she realized what her job would be.
"I've got five hyperspace signatures headed into the system. Judging from the size, the system is telling me they would mostl likely be Ha'tak. I won't get a clear reading until they come out of hyperspace." she flatly intoned. Harry smirked before positioning the still cloaked simulated Aurora into orbit around the simulated planet.
"Positioning to intercept all incomming. Preparing challenge message." he said back to her.
"Powering up all weapons systems and preparing to drop cloak." stated Parvati, picking up quickly what she should be doing as well.
"Parvati, don't lock all drone missiles on one target at a time. Split fire in all weapons systems to put fire on all enemy ships at once. I'll keep us between the planet and them."
"Aye." came her cheeky response.
"And can the cheek, we're recording this." he said.
"Oh. Okay. Preparing to split fire." she said much more professional.
"Five ships coming out of hyperspace!" announced Padma.
"Locking targets."
"Lock two with drone missiles and lock beams with everything else." came Harry's command.
"Drone targets locked...beam targets locked. Your show." said Parvati.
"Sending challenge." said Harry.
"Fighter bays opening. Deathgliders an something with a large number of life signs, must be the troop carriers. Picking up an active wormhole in the colonies. Life signs emerging. Response registering...'You dare challenge your god?'. They didn't take well to the challenge."
"It's to be expected. Moving to cut off the fighters. Parvati fire at will."
The simulated ship decloaked and began to move to intercept the smaller threats while beams tore into the shields of the motherships. Drones trailed out to beat down the shields of the other two while the leading three took dual beam fire. The anti fighter batteries were picking off troop transports and death gliders as they tried to move past.
"Calling in the drone ships to move between the planet and the enemy fleet. Directing them to continue to shoot down anything that gets past us. I've got launching Al'kesh!" stated Padma.
"I see them." stated Parvati as she added them to the drone targeting.
"We have to hold them off." stated Harry.
"All enemy shields failing and direct damage to outer hulls. They really can't take much more of this. Drone targets destroyed. Drone ships from Centari just arrived. Sorry I didn't specify which drone ships so the system called them all."
"It's okay. We are here to learn. Redirect main drone fire to the other three Ha'tak." he commanded.
"Redirecting." stated Parvati fingers flying over her console as she chose the amount of missiles to fire per salvo.
"Tel'tak departing! Marking it for you Parvati." said Padma.
"Drones launched. Got him!"
"All primary targets destroyed. Remaining death gliders engaging drone ships. A few slipped through. Drone ships chasing them down. Should I call them back?"
"It's a full scale invasion. Let the drone ships handle the mop up and we can work on trying to keep the an attack of this magnitude secret from the majority of the population on subsequent excercizes. Like how I forgot about the outpost and the fact that I can use the drones stored there to shoot down even more. Sending the commands now." and with that there was drone missle fire from the south pole that helped with the cleanup. "At this point the world would know about aliens as a sure thing instead of speculation and that someone out there is looking out for Earth. We should not give them that kind of feeling of invincibility."
"I've got to be better on the guns next time." said Parvati.
"I've got to get better at coordination. We could have had the Drone ships intercept the five ships just as easily and done the death glider hunting ourselves." said Padma.
"That's actually a good idea to try next time Padma." said Harry, nodding.
"It may be a good idea but I selected all drone ships instead of just the ones in system. That was just beginner's error. I'll do better next time. I don't see how we could keep the fact that we are here helping keep the planet safe from full scale invasions secret if we actually have to do so."
"I can see what you mean. There is no way to hide the ships once they engage. We would have to fire when cloaked and the Goauld would likely hack the communications around the world and announce themselves as gods to the whole world before invading anyway." he added.
"The best we will be able to do will be to cut down on the orbital impact of an invasion. The Centari portion has arrived. Too bad we can't haul the hull pieces away and use the materials." sighed Padma.
"Actually, with the tractor beams all the ships have, we can." he countered.
"You never mentioned them before." she said.
"They are in there with the 'and then some' portion of the explanations of the systems. All this heavy material would be bad to fall in on the planet."
"Okay then. Coordinating with the drone ships to bring in the materials. I noticed that there are more drone ships in the simulation than are actually active. Why is that?" said Parvati.
"That is because there is only a couple of days until there are three in system, and two at Centari. Likely they will be ready by tomorrow as the nanites tend to finish all things earlier than the calculated completion times that the system gives me. I haven't really taken the time to figure out why yet. I just know that they found a way to be more efficient."
"As long as they don't think for themselves like Skynet." they'd watched some movies from the hacked communication networking he'd done weeks ago.
He laughed. They reset the scenario and tried again. This time Padma only called what was in system to aid the fight and set the three drone ships on the emerging Ha'tak and the Aurora used its drones to keep the landing forces and death gliders away from the atmosphere. The whole operation would have kept the secret of support from alien benefactors away from the general public but it did allow the escaping tel'tak to escape. The drone ships had no drone missile launchers and the lack of extra firepower showed in keeping the little scout from escaping. Their first simulation would have killed the Goauld in charge of the invasion but the second left him or her able to fight another day with knowledge of what was available to fight back.
They stopped recording and went back to work on their seperate projects. Harry went to work on a shield for the Astria Porta in the back yard like the one in Atlantis and spent much of the afternoon making sure it worked and that the girls could turn it off as well. The transmitters would work for incoming signals to verify identity so the shield could be dropped on short notice but there wouldn't be much exploring done. They already knew that much of the galaxy was under the control of someone else and unless the Goauld were pushing at Earth they would leave well enough alone. With the training program a striking success all he really needed was the training facility ready to go which would still take most of tomorrow to be ready.
Padma was working on churning out more personal shields and Parvati had the order of stun pistols. Ever since the Ministry had found that they couldn't just make their own and cut out the supplier they had jumped at the chance to buy these. It really would revolutionize law enforcement and was better than dragonhide armor. The shields had been tested in real world as well with the attack on Harry so the girls were more than happy to be wearing them.
"Harry, are we going to issue stunner pistols to our recruits?" said Parvati.
"Well, we do have brigs on board ships. But no. We shouldn't need to. We are using the bots for security. And orbs too." he responded.
"Most of the recruits will have wands anyway." said Padma.
"Oh. Right." she said as if she'd forgotten.
Lunch was a mexican food affair with one very adventurous elf trying to not do the same thing two days in a row. The house was also finally spotless, with the little elf having repaired or replaced the wallpaper where required. The snake motifs were still in place but he resolved to fix that with some simple transfigurations later.
"When are you going to make the repositories?" said Parvati.
"Right. We need those in a couple of days. We also need tags or badges for our recruits." he countered.
"Tags or badges?" she wondered out loud.
"Yeah. I'm going to transport them to the training site with the transporter. That should take care of travel to the place and I added a floo to the plans so I will need to go to the ministry to connect it to the floo network. That way they are not all trapped there all the time. Got to transport there later and take control of the wards so that we can let people in and out all the time. That would also help so that they can enjoy the property for flying or what not. We don't actually know what all is there after all. Only that the estate was burned down. Once the building is complete we should be able to fit a few hundred in the facility at a time if we put people together instead of one to a suite. That way we could get the most out of the space." he said.
"We get that. So that's whats on the agenda for after lunch?"
"Yea. The security bots will get everyone checked in over there and we can have them all transported directly to the facility. I need to get started on the badges after we finish. That means that the repositories will be built on site and we don't have to have a million people tromping through here. But we would have to have a medical scanner available on site as well. It would also be a good idea to advertise that we need healers as well."
"On it. I can't believe I didn't think of it before." said Parvati.
"Don't worry. I just though of it myself. How's things going on the people side of the fence since yesterday?" he asked.
"They are starting to get antsy. They know, after the Daily Prophet article and the Wizengamot that we are almost ready for them to get into training and from there directly into space. Then there's the fact that we are going to have to bring them through here anyway on their way to the gate, unless they will be picked up for the ship they are to be flying from the training facility. We could keep as many out of the house as you want or we can have high foot traffic. It's up to you." she responded.
"I think we should set things up so that there are as few people tromping though this house as possible." he said. "Even if that means that it is strait from the training facility to the ships."
"Okay. That will take some coordinating but we already have a way to do it. There should be no problems." said Parvati.
"The money side of things is pretty constant. You should see the size of the diamonds that we have in the vault now. The mining operation is definitely bringing in more than our business. The international markets are picking up on our products now and its a good thing that the stun pistols can only stun because there are some ministries that are calling for everyone to be able to buy one for themselves. Its not illegal here yet to have the shields and pistols but the pistols are being frowned upon for private use here. The aurors don't all have them yet but as the budget is still set for war time we will see that rectified." she paused. "Ron fire called earlier while you were working on the gate. He wanted you to come with him to a Cannon's tryout. He's convinced that, with you as seeker, they have the Quiddich cup in the bag. He's also convinced that the magic technology will never pan out and you should quit while you're ahead. Hermione also called and wanted to know if there are any openings to work with you. She has decided to take the ministries offer for a free pass and work with magic technology with you. She's also demanding more answers. Her house has just been added to the floo network so she can get here every day or to the training facility." said Padma.
"She would be added for the training facility. Please let her know. The part of the program that we skipped was the aptitude test. We would go through all of the positions to see which one we work best at and then train specifically for that specialization." added Harry. He paused. "I'll get to work on the preloaded crystals for the repositories and make sure that they are added to the facility plans. Is there anything else before we get back to work?" they both shook their heads so everyone rose to head back to their stations.
Harry went to work on the reloadable crystals and started churning them out one at a time. He set the construction project to build three of the repositories and quickly finished making the fist thirteen crystals. Then he got to work on the badges. He added a security exception for lowest priority to them and set about to create a few hundred of them. This work took a while and each set would have to be owled out to the proper people but he knew he had to get them where they were ment to be.
The badges took until near dinner time to finish and there was a flurry of activity as Parvati was writing instructions and sending out badges to the first thirteen families and recruits. They were certain that they could get a few of the unidentified squib parents to accept some of the badges and a position with their children to join the space militia.