I don't own Harry Potter or Stargate.

Chapter 16

The next two days were a little more hectic. The Chinese enclave, read village, had been found by the Peoples Army. The army was poking around at the wards to try and find a way in. They couldn't get out from under their own wards.

The problem was that Chinese satellites spotted a village where the maps said that there wasn't one. The wards extended a kilometer in every direction and that led to discovery. The village appeared to mundane eyes as a mountain as it sat in the foothills. The wards were ancient and hadn't been erected with hiding from satellites in mind. Then one had to factor in that the mundanes found it stranger still that they couldn't approach this strange mountain. Anyone and anything approaching was sent the long way around the place, even from the air, if you were low enough.

Harry ended up authorizing the use of the transport tags they'd used in Europe. They'd beamed in a crate of 4,000 even, even though the village only had 3,682 people in it. Transporting out of wards was tricky for the sensors as the over abundance of zero-point energy made the people show up 'fuzzy' and they didn't want to trust it too much without the tags.

People began to appear in groups of 100. The transport was still happening quickly, with flash after flash. An older woman with graying black hair stepped forward and began to speak with very good English.

"What happened to us? I know you said we would be transported but there was no hook around the navel as we thought the tags were just advanced portkeys. I am Li Yung." she said.

"That was our transporters doing their jobs and pulling you out of there. When the Chancellor of Personnel, in charge of people and employment, said that the Chinese army was poking around your wards we sent you the tags so that we could 'lock on' better to your people. I find it more comfortable than a portkey." said Harry. Parvati stepped forward.

"Madam Yung, it's nice to finally meet you in person. I hope you still have the pad I sent to you? It is locked to you and locked to Lantean DNA as well. It also recorded your magical signature so it would only work for you." she said.

"Yes. I have it here. But what is a transporter? I thought you were talking about some sort of transportation spell but that was nothing I recognized." Li Yung asked.

"A transporter is a technological device that turns people and objects into energy and then relocates that energy before reversing the tranformation. You'll learn more about it when you're done with the repositories I talked to you about." responded Parvati.

"Yes. I remember you said that we'd have to use them or we wouldn't understand much of what's going on." the flashes in their vicinity stopped and she turned to her group and said something in Chinese before turning back to them.

"I'm sorry if I'm being a little rude, but I just told everyone to check that everyone is here and that they have all their belongings. Ms. Patill told me that the leader of this operation or magical country is Harry Potter-Black and that he would be here to greet us. I'm guessing that that is you?"

"Yes ma'am. Just make sure that everyone is here. As long as they were wearing a tag they were transported in this group." said Harry.

Li nodded went over to the large crowd and began speaking with everyone. They all seemed to agree with her about something, likely that everyone made it out. She seemed to be trying to explain something to them and was doing a decent job of allaying fears. Sure, she'd talked them into taking their chances but that was because there was little other choice. She took quite a few minutes, making sure that everyone was alright before she came back over to Harry and Parvati.

"Thank you for being patient. The whole village turned out in the square when the army started shooting flares out at our mountain illusion to see if they got hung up on the mountain and they fell into the village. We were sure they were going to start shooting something more deadly next. Not to worry though, everyone is here and perfectly healthy. I'm sorry for not trusting your word, Parvati, but you just said we were turned into energy for a moment and I was worried." Parvati smiled broadly.

"It's no trouble at all. We can check the sensors if you want to later to see what happened. Now, if everyone would follow us we can get you to the repositories and get everyone more up to speed on what's going on here." she said. Li Yung bowed slightly before turning to relay the instructions.

What followed was a day of getting people downloaded with information and handing out their pads when they were finished. The children didn't get to use them as it wasn't safe for them but everyone over 17 did and medical was there with hangover cures. Ever since Antonia took over as Chancellor of Medical, the medi witches and wizards on staff were more on top of things. They followed what was happening and had found that hangover cures worked for the disorientation over pain potions.

The process was mostly efficient as doing this every day for the few that joined them had made for good practice. That and they had processed large numbers before. It only took til after lunch so a picnic was planned to feed everyone at one time. Several resident elves volunteered to help and things went smoothly. Several people, now that they had at least one common language, came over to thank them for getting them out of a bad situation. Once everyone was done and fed Li came back over to Harry and Parvati, though Padma had joined them around lunch time. Everyone was listening as she began speaking in Lantean, probably to prompt them to do so so that everyone, but the children, could understand.

"We understand a bit now. This technology works on magic and is powered by magic, or zero-point energy. Parvati told us that you are trying to bring wizard kind to the stars and that we'd been there before but it has been lost to our history. Tell us more about that, please." she asked. Harry looked around for a moment to make sure that everyone that could now understand was paying attention.

"Our race isn't originally from Earth. We're not even from this galaxy. We came here and seeded life on the planet and settled in. Humans weren't here yet and wouldn't appear for several million years. We built an outpost in Antarctica to defend the planet. Then a plague, that we are now fairly certain was engineered, swept through the populations of the galaxy and we took Atlantis and fled to another galaxy, the Pegasis galaxy, to get as far away from the plague as we could.

"When we arrived in the new galaxy we did what we always did, and won't do again, and seeded the galaxy with life. This was fine, at first, but a new race evolved based on that seeding that actually ate life force directly from your body, lethally. War broke out and, even though we were the more advanced race, we lost due to sheer numbers. We eventually sunk Atlantis to the bottom of the ocean, on the planet Lantea, and used the Astria Porta to escape back to Earth. We hoped the plague had burned itself out.

"I say we, but I really mean our ancestors. Some settled here on Earth and others ascended to a higher plane. Some of the ones that stayed began to experiment with the zero-point energy that our bodies naturally produce and learned that we could use it to affect our surrondings. They soon grew lazy. Why should they spend years learning to build a civilization for Lanteans again when they could conjure what they needed? They began to teach their children less and less until they finally couldn't build what they had before if they wanted to.

"In the end they created my gauntlet, which is a repository of the accumulated knowledge and history of the Lantean people. When I put it on I got everything. You got what was safe for you. I'm the only person, so far, that had the ability to take the whole accumulated knowledge at once. It would have killed just about anyone else. Then they began to think about keeping the Lantean bloodlines as pure as they could, even though most of them had human DNA in their bloodlines.

"This part is a guess based on observation, but eventually blood purity became a mantra that no one could trace an origin to and had forgotten why they were trying to practice it to begin with. It took a while, but eventually the bloodlines became too pure and squibs began to be born. They didn't have enough magic to control so they were mostly cast out and married into the regular population. That didn't matter until these squibs, that no one had tracked, began to start having magical children.

"We called them muggleborn and decided, on some level, that they were inferior to the pure bloodlines. It took 10,000 years to get there but there is Lantean blood on every continent. Eventually, someone came along with the right combination of genes to take on the repository. Me. I intend to bring us back to the stars and out from under the whole blood purity craze that seems to have taken over in Europe. When the Statute of Secrecy was passed, wizard kind went into hiding for the most part. I'm not suggesting that we change that. We need to become partners with the mundanes again. We lost our history, but I want to bring it back. But there's a problem.

"Probably as a result of the seeding of life again, a race of snake like beings that enter through the mouth and take over your body evolved. They call themselves the Goauld, or gods in their language. They have taken over most of the galaxy and enslaved its people. If they think you may be or become a threat to their control of the galaxy they come in and wipe you out if you don't declare them your gods. I know what you're thinking. 'Why would we go out there then?' The answer is simple. They are coming here first. If we don't put up some sort of defense, we stand a good chance of being wiped out or enslaved.

"Our ancestors share the blame with the American mundane government. We left a lot of our technology laying around the galaxy for others to find. The Astria Porta are being used by the Goauld to spread across the galaxy and the Americans found one on Earth and got it working. They ended up in a fight with the Over God Ra, the leader of the Goauld and killed him. Many of them are happy with this as it created an opening for them to grab more power for themselves. But it also revealed Earth to be a threat to be 'taken care of'. You don't have to join the defense effort. We can and will gate you to Atlantis or Olympus, the two city ships, and you can live life as civilians and just ignore it all. Or you can join up and defend our home planet." he said and waited for their reactions.

There were mixed reactions, though they'd heard some of it before. Most seemed to believe it and some seemed resigned to go along with it anyway because they had pulled them out of a bad situation. They also weren't demanding anything in return.

"And if we don't join you we will have problems making a way for ourselves?" said one old man standing with a cane.

"No. There is still commercial space available in both cities. There are civilian jobs to be had, though you'll need to apply for those yourselves. Or you can just live in Atlantis. Every suite of rooms has a replicator that creates something close to regular food. It tastes near the same as long as it's been programmed in." he said with a smile.

"And your defense effort...meaning we're likely to be at war with some alien monsters soon, right?" said another person, though Harry didn't see who it was.

"One of them, Apophis, is building a small fleet for that purpose now. The other System Lords are pushing him to do it, as he lost his top slave soldier to Earth a little while ago. They feel that he's the one that was insulted so it should be his responsibility."

"Can we think more about this?" said one man up front.

"We'll be sending you on to Atlantis either way. The facility you see here is a training facility for the military and Aurors. It is currently filled to capacity and training multiple ship crews. Atlantis has the space and you can apply for whatever you want from there." he answered.

"You saved us and truly expect nothing in return? What if we don't work?" said one young man who looked barely old enough to use a repository.

"I really don't expect anything from you. If you don't work? Oh well. Atlantis will provide, but you won't be able to buy anything without having some sort of income. See something you like? It costs galleons...galleons you won't have. Want to go on vacation and see some more of the world? Travel costs money."

"You mention vacations...You mean we will be allowed to leave?" asked the same old man from before.

"Yes. You'll have to put in the request but you can leave. We currently buy all our portkeys from the British Ministry of Magic. All travel is routed through the personnel office, and possibly legal office depending on where you go."

"And if we want to open a shop?" Parvati fielded this one.

"If you want to be a shop keeper all you have to do is file for a commercial space. There is a small monthly fee, 50 galleons. If you need materials and such you apply for supplies through your local personnel office and supply the gold for what you need. It's added to the imports list and it's even delivered to you."

"And if you were a farmer?" asked one middle aged man.

"Sorry. We currently don't have the land for that. We would need to find a suitable planet or terraform one. We are currently guarding three planets but only one is habitable. That would be Earth and with the way the magical world is shrinking...lets just say you could leave here and try your luck but good luck to you in finding someone willing to part with a parcel." she said, sadly. He nodded.

"If you want to get settled and think about your options remember to use your pads to look things up and send messages. You can even send messages to the personnel office of Atlantis. They may take a little while, but seeing as how there are only about 20,000 maximum living on Atlantis right now, it will only take them a day or two to get back to you. The schools start in a couple of weeks so take the time to get your children signed up. Since they can't use the repositories they have to learn everything the hard way." Parvati said.

They led the village to the gate and the operator punched in the address to Atlantis. The people were shocked as the gate opened.

"Go on through and follow the directions of the people on the other side. They'll make sure you don't get in the way and get you to your suites. We put your whole village close together so you have familiar faces to live near." the people smiled at that.

The village moved on through the gate but Li Yung hung back to make sure everyone went through. She was smiling and seemed hopeful that they could pick themselves up after that frightening ordeal with the Chinese military and now they were in a strange place and moving on to a stranger one. She turned to Parvati and Harry.

"Thank you again for helping us. You didn't have to but you did it anyway. They didn't say it here, but some of the young men have been talking about joining up with you." she said. Harry smiled.

"Don't mention it. We were happy to help. You did nothing wrong to have the army trying to come in a kill you. It was very little to go through to help you." he said. She bowed in a more pronounced manner and turned to join the end of the line.

It didn't take the entire 30 minutes to get them all through as the personnel office on the other side was quick in directing them to where they wanted to go. The gate shut down and Parvati immediately pulled her pad.

"Padma, could you find out what happened in the village after we pulled them out? Also, could you find out if the Chinese are searching for the remaining villages the same way, satellite then probing? I'm in talks with them now but they may be more inclined to leave the country if they knew that the Chinese had a way to find them." she said as she got busy with her pad and headed for the office and Padma went with her.

It turned out that Parvati had recorded the talk he'd had with the new Chinese emigrants so he wouldn't have to repeat it for the next group of people to come in looking for a new life. And come they did. The next week was full of new groups coming in and the Chinese made the bulk of the new arrivals. They took on another 30,000 in Chinese emigrants, give or take a few hundred. With the new search methods that the Chinese army was using, the wizarding villages decided, as a group, on a mass exodus. Groups of nearly 1,000 arrived from the Middle East and India as well, looking for a better life away from caste systems and racially fueled politics. New Lantea didn't have social classes or genocidal religious teachings.

Harry walked into the council chamber and looked around. Everyone chancellor that currently remained on Earth was already in the room in their new chancellor robes. The robes were white and trimmed in gold and some Lantean text to tell what their responsibilities were. They were government job heavy at the moment, as only so many businesses were up and running already. He took his place in between the twins and, a moment later, the off world chancellors shimmered into place.

"Looks like we're all here. Do we have any new business?" Harry started as he always did. Parvati spoke up first.

"Personnel has a minor problem. There are no caps on recruitment so we currently have some 11,000 signed up for various government employee billets. We don't have the training facilities to train them all right now. We've opened some training centers on board the cities but they can only train 2 crews at a time due to the space we've set aside to expand the government offices into. The plus side is that we have an abundance of interest and such but we've instituted a delay between signing up and training.

"Also, population is now over 70,000. That is higher than post war Magical Britain. Most of the signers are coming from the Eastern European mundane born for the Navy and Marines. Most, not all. We've had to balance the classes with some of the newer applicants to make sure that one faction over the others isn't in charge of the military forces." she said. Harry frowned.

"Faction? Are we beginning to splinter?" he asked, worried.

"No. But we all have old national identities that are slowly fading. We just thought it would be best if not only Eastern Europe had a say in the Navy and Marines, as it currently is." she responded. He nodded.

"I don't think we need a limit at the moment. We need the crews and Marines for or military with Apophis building that small fleet. What is happening with that, by the way?" he asked, turning to Padma.

"That fleet is ready and waiting on orders. The allies have heard that Apophis is getting ready to go on the offensive, at least to probe and are scrambling to do something about it. I think they may be sending SG teams to infiltrate and sabotage Apophis's effort but I'm not sure how successful it will be. They made quite a few allies among some of the subjugated worlds. It seems that a goodly portion of the galaxy has figured out that their gods can be killed by lesser beings, as seen by the death of Ra, and are questioning their loyalties. The ASP (Allied Stargate Program) can use that to their advantage for information and are doing a fair job of it. If they can handle it, we wouldn't even have to reveal our ships.

"Apophis reassigned two of the four ships he was setting aside to his borders for reinforcement leaving some of his core worlds lightly protected as he fends off probing attacks. It seems that the other System Lords do not want another Ra situation unless they are the ones in the lead and Apophis has the biggest fleet. They seem to be working to whittle him down a bit.

"The spread of the social satellites is nearly complete and we now have real time data about Goauld ship movements. The information has been made available to the Navy and an intelligence representative has been dispached to each of the manned ships in the fleet, especially to Joel's to keep the captains up to date on the situation. We expect Apophis to give the order any day now.

"We are also pretty sure we've found a few planets we could make use of as we have sent satellites to almost every star we could. As I've said, we have Goauld space pretty much mapped and are getting prepared for more information to come in as they fight among themselves. There are six more possible mining planets and one of them has a breathable atmosphere but it has no gate. It's a little larger than Earth by 10% and not super rich in building materials. There's only so much we can see about it from the satellite in the system. We'd have to send a ship for a better sensor reading. There is a large moon there as well that is very naquada rich and another, smaller moon that is trinium rich. Basically a blue moon and a silvery one. Both are larger than Earth's.

"To claim the system, we would basically have to skirt around Goauld space. We're guessing that the Goauld haven't found it yet or they didn't care about it for some reason. Again, we wouldn't know why without sending something to get a detailed scan. It's on the sun side of the habitable zone so it's hot and a little rocky but we could sneak a terraformer onto it and see what happens in a year. It would give us time to assemble some magical plants and animals to move there and a gate. We should use the new gates that we can program from the Pegasis era." said Padma.

"The information on the planet is interesting. I think it would be nice to have our own dust ball to call our own. I'll get the shipyards to start on a terraformer and prepare a Destiny escort for it after I send an Orion class ship to get the scans. I'm guessing that the mining planets you've seen so far are in relatively bad places for us?" he said. She nodded.

"They all are in Goauld space for the moment. They don't use the systems at all but they are hard to get to without being discovered. We aren't ready for all out war with the Goauld yet so it would be best to leave those planets alone for the time being. Navy and Marine are working closely with intelligence to help plan things out and give a better analysis." Joel spoke up.

"The crews we rushed out are finally operating well. The ones passed over for those crews have been in training since and showing just as good scores in the simulators. Education says that that is the best we can hope for as most of our systems are pretty automated. We have manual backups to the computer backups but that's where the extra training comes in. If both computers fail we have to be able to adapt and it's a good thing that you designed the ships with a manual backup because we had a mishap that disabled the computers and, until it could be put to rights, we had to use the manual backups. The tech that caused it has been reprimanded and spent the next 12 hrs going over the computer specs to make sure it didn't happen again.

"As it is, we have 6 crews ready to go and the first class of Marines is ready to go. They will be the first division to graduate, and they are enough for a division and a few besides. The ones passed over for the division will spend their days training and looking after the training facility until the next division's worth graduates and so on. The next class is exactly a division and we have 30 graduates without an organized division but they do have squad leaders and an officer and have been assigned to the defense of the facility and the Gate.

"You went ahead and built the next 6 Aurora's and we have the crews ready now for them along with captains. It would be best if a new captain took over one of the defensive positions and Zeus takes their place in the new fleet that we're going to form out of the 6 Aurora's. I plan to work on crew familiarization and fleet tactics and movement with them until we get our Destiny backup built. Each construction system is currently building 14 of them every couple of days and it is rounding out the fleets quite well. I suggest that we send the next 28 directly to the Auxillary fleet to get the coordinators used to controlling them during fleet engagements. I just need you to sign off on the orders." finished Joel.

"Research thinks that we soon will be able to replicate a good many things that we need for potions with a new style of replicator. We'd still need to brew the potions ourselves but that is negligable for now. We've taken the time to figure out how to build automated brewing stations for the potions we use the most, and the new replicator will be ready next week. The quality of the replicated material will be only average but it shouldn't make that much of a difference to the potions.

"The idea, when intelligence, research, and military put our heads together, was to send the new fleet to the planet until we have the ships to guard it ready. It will only take a week or so to get it all ready and set up mining on the moons. That and the terraformer has to go as well. And, we have to take the long way around. The 28 Destinys will be right on time in a couple of days and by the end of the week we can have the third city. Intelligence has already named the next city. We are going with Avalon. The other idea is to send constructors along and go with an outpost and build the next city when we need it." said Padma. He nodded and poked at his pad a bit.

"Sounds good. We'll probably go with the outpost for now. Education?" he said after a bit.

"The schools are just about ready. Some of the kids will be old enough for the repositories in a few months but most have a ways to go until then. We hope to have them taught to repository standard and then some by the time they are old enough. I know I'm just an old squib, but we should be able as long as the children don't fight us on it.

"Military and Auror training if still continuing with the changes I implemented as well. We have a class of Aurors ready to hand off to legal to be sent to where we need them." said Edward.

"Legal has already assigned the Aurors to the city ships that are active with a small reserve set aside for transfer to Avalon when she's built. If we're looking at a week we can ask for volunteers but we have a list for transfers ready in case there are none. We have few legal cases. Some people want to apply for dock space to attempt to build their own ships but that is currently used by the constructors to build the fleet. They say that the government currently has the monopoly on most of the production and their right. But there is also no law on monopoly right now." said Alice. He nodded.

"Prices for most of what they want will be relatively low with the government in charge of supply. I intend to charge cost plus a galleon for materials that we produce. As for building their own ships...that may come available after the Goauld are not a factor in how we operate. It would take a while without nanite swarms and the construction facilities that they have the knowledge to build would take some time to operate. Our defense fleets hold the priority right now." said Harry and Alice nodded and made some entries into her pad.

"Medical has no problems currently. Because there may be problems exposing everyone in the cities to the vaccines via the air again, we are actually injecting all the new people instead. Our staff is currently working on the new arrivals. We expect to be done with that by tomorrow after lunch while handling any new arrivals that arrive tomorrow as well. We are working with personnel to anticipate where we might be needed. We currently have 100 medi witches in training and 323 active." said Antonia. Harry nodded.

Padma's pad beeped and she quickly opened the message and read it silently. Her eyes widened. Harry and the rest of the counsel watched her intently until she finally looked up and spoke.

"Harry, I just got a message from one of the section chiefs. It basically says that the small fleet on the edge of Apophis's space has gone into hyperspace on a vector that will bring them to Earth in 2 days. It's just 2 ships at the moment as they analyzed the makeup of the Allied Stargate Program's weapons and have underestimated the resistance they will find in us. But we aren't ready for a counter offensive as the crews are just getting ready to transfer over to the patrol/expeditionary fleet. I guess it's time to turn this back over to Joel." she said. Joel nodded.

"The captains and I have been chewing on this for a while and decided that we can't just block communications in the system to stop them from declaring themselves so we are going to uncloak the picket's manned ships just before their arrival in a direct intercept. We'll try to stick to beams and the Asclepius class that we have in the picket will remain cloaked. The Pallus class will prepare to launch fighters, which means opening the bays and powering them on. The Aurora on station will challenge them. We'll keep the Destinys out of it this time. We may have to cut down on the number of Destinys in the picket fleets to flesh out the expeditionary fleet so we have some striking power.

"This would be a skirmish basically. We don't have to capacity currently to bite off a piece of Apophis's territory and hold it yet. I suggest that we continue to prepare after making sure that none of the ships survive to report in. We should be able to keep them from escaping but, by the size of the ship and the tactics that they tend to use that Intelligence has managed to hack for us, we know that they have Astria Porta aboard. We can't block them if they dial out and escape and that would reveal us immediately. The Navy suggests that we gut both ships immediately after we get an aggressive response." said Joel. Harry nodded and picked up his pad. Hermione interrupted.

"What about the Jaffa? We can't just kill them!" she objected. The whole counsel turned to her and shook their heads.

"Hermione, we learned from the blood war to actually fight out enemies instead of trying to capture them all. Sure we rounded up the survivors later but we had to put some of them down in the meantime. These Jaffa wouldn't listen to us even if we found a way to contact them. We could try to send in the Marines to take the ships but that would give the Goauld time to escape and we would be immediately in the middle of a shooting war with the majority of the galaxy before we're ready. We just can't risk it at this time. If this happened a month from now...as of now your objection is noted but we will go ahead with the destroy option so as to continue to prepare." said Harry sadly. She frowned but nodded.

Harry turned his attention back to his pad and authorized the orders for the Navy to commence with the defense of the Earth. There were no other topics, so the meeting adjourned and the off world chancellors shimmered out. The earthbound filed out of the room except for Harry and his fiancees.

Harry sighed and pushed his chair back from the table. Padma moved immediately to his lap and sat side saddle before throwing her arms around his neck. He wrapped his arms around her kissed her neck.

"Do you think I'm doing the right thing?" he asked suddenly after a moment.

"You mean destroying both ships as quickly as needed? Yes. We are not ready for a full on shooting war with the Goauld. If they massed their fleets to deal with the interlopers, which they have a history of doing, we would be hard pressed not to have a long bloody war on our hands. The only advantage we would have is that we can replace our ships faster. The only reason I see not to destry those ships is if the ASP manages to get people on board." he nodded.

"In which case, we should knock out the shields and beam them off the ship first and then destroy it." Harry said, looking to his pad which was still on the table.

Padma released his neck with one arm and retrieved it for him. He sent off the additional information and handed it back to her. She sighed and put it back on the table before changing her position, straddling him, and proceeded to snog him as if he were going away for a while. His hands found her arse and hers found their way into his hair. The kiss lasted a few minutes before she broke it, glassy eyed, and dismounted to be replaced by her sister soon after.