The mood in the Imperial camp outside the Hogwarts gates was surly, at best; discouraged, at worst. They had spent the entire night bombing the gates without so much as a crack in the defensive shields of the ancient entryway into the grounds of Hogwarts. Clearly, Riddle had improved them substantially since the last time the Imperial forces had been here. However, this couldn't account for the apparent ineffectiveness of their artillery against the shields. Even if their conventional siege cannons had no effect, the Basilisk cannons on the Basilisk warships had also failed to make a dent in the shields. All they knew was that the only way through them was to march the troops through the permeable shields and take the gates the old fashioned way, which they had tried. Tried, and failed.
"I just don't understand!" growled Sulu as he slammed his fist onto the table where the map of Hogwarts lay. "McDonald laid siege to this castle twice, didn't he? Weren't there notes of the wards being this difficult to take down?"
One of the minor officers in the tent quickly went through the available documentation that the Imperial forces had brought regarding Hogwarts. In the folder were nearly all the details that both previous military commanders and Imperial Intelligence had managed to scrounge regarding the famed ancient citadel. The aide, a Captain, shook his head regretfully.
"According to the battle reports we managed to acquire from McDonald's faction after his assassination, his forces were able to make it past the gates with relative ease, but found himself mostly hampered by the defenses at the second gate and on the grounds between. There is no mention of strong magical shields at the main gates," reported the Captain, much to Sulu's frustration.
Sulu glared at the gaggle of generals and commanders in his tent reproachfully. "How is it, gentlemen, that we are able to defeat the Death Eaters, successfully lay siege to a dozen, more heavily defended locations around the globe, and bring the Dark-influenced Americans to their knees, but we are not able to conquer a single, blasted gate?" he was practically hissing by the end of his reproach, his dark eyes bulging in frustrated anger.
His officer corps had their collective heads bowed in shame as they realized how disappointed Sulu was with them. Not that he was in the wrong, either. The Imperial Army had never been so thoroughly humiliated as with this first day of combat. Not a single gain had been achieved. Even Longbottom's conquest of the Hogwarts docks was nullified by the fact that there was no way for his column to reach the top anymore. In the end, they had been forced to reveal their hidden hand—the Basilisk warships hidden underwater—and had achieved nothing in the process.
Sulu slumped into his chair heavily, one hand rubbing the bridge of his nose while he tried to sort out his thoughts and recollect his calm. "Where are we on the enemy bodies?" he asked tiredly. "Any progress?"
A young woman in a blood-stained apron and green overalls took a step forward at the question, this being her field of responsibility. "We've established with finality that the enemy is using golems, sir," reported the young woman.
Sulu didn't even bother to look up—he had already guessed as much from Harry's preliminary information. Instead, he waved his hand for her to continue.
The commander's silence disturbed the young woman slightly, but she continued nonetheless. "We ran a comparative diagnostic vis-a-vis the results of a magical autopsy of a Terracotta soldier and, though there were basic similarities, we are now certain that the golems are not, in fact, remnants of the Death Eater army."
Sulu let out a sigh of relief he didn't know he was holding in. The Terracotta soldiers had been a veritable nightmare for the Imperial Army. Since they could take the shape of any human being, and could be implanted with human social functions, they had been the perfect infiltrators as well as soldiers. Relentless, emotionless, and deadly, they had accounted for nearly 70% of the Death Eater army. Conventional tactics designed to crush enemy morale simply didn't work on them.
So when news had come that the enemy here was using golems, Sulu had, for a moment, feared that his hunt for the remaining Chinese golems had left some alive. He was glad now to know that his glassing of several areas throughout the globe had not been in vain. Those were areas that would never again see life bloom in their precincts. It deprived humanity of several large tracts of land to live in, but it had been something Sulu—along with the rest of the Imperial High Command—saw necessary.
"Anything interesting in these new dolls, Doctor Riley?" asked Sulu, while the rest of the officer corps took out their electronic notepads and began taking notes. Next to Sulu, an aide was doing the same for the dark-skinned Commander in Chief.
Riley fidgeted for a second, uncomfortable at being the focus of so many stares. "Well, they're rather crude, or so I'm told by one of our Warders."
"Explain," came the crisp order from Sulu.
"Well, while their outside is the same as an activated Terracotta soldier—that is to say, organic—the insides are very much earthen. These golems would never stand up to a thorough examination process, such as the one Harrisburg employs at its immigration desks. They can't even bleed, or simulate that process, and their skin has none of the softness of human skin tissue; it's hard as iron."
"That would explain the difficulty in taking them down," observed one of the attending generals, thereby garnering the attention of everyone present in the command tent. "Initial reports noted that it took twice as much damage to take one of these new golems out than it took to take down a Terracotta."
Screeches outside and the pointed noise of continuous gunfire told them that they were being subjected to another attempt from Riddle to raid the main camp using dragons. As with the last few times, the dragons were beat back, and the meeting continued.
"Our bayonets are also finding difficulty piercing their iron-hard exterior," continued the general. "It's got some of the boys wondering whether they can win this battle as it is."
Sulu frowned. Such grumbling, no matter how scattered and few, was a danger to morale. All it took was for one disgruntled voice to come forth, and human nature would do the rest in spreading it.
"I do not relish this, but have such voices punished for dissent," ordered Sulu reluctantly. He had to put a lid on the pessimism in the camp, but he did not like having to condemn his men to punishment for due dissent.
"Yes, sir," given the similarly reluctant tone from the general who'd been speaking, he didn't enjoy giving the order for punishment any more than Sulu did.
"Doctor Riley, please continue," requested Sulu with a wave.
The young woman nodded before going over her notes and starting to speak again from where she left off. "The golems do have a weakness, though, in their iron exterior," she noted. "Their heads."
Sulu said nothing, bringing a fist to his mouth as he pondered the doctor's words. Making a silent decision, he used his free hand to wave for his aide to go retrieve something. The aide, long accustomed to Sulu's idiosyncrasies, left the general's side and quickly returned with a oval shaped metal disk that resembled an animal feed bowl, but with the filled in and bulging circularly. Placing it on top of the Hogwarts map, the aide retreated back to Sulu's side and Riley needed no prompting to activate the disk and input the data she was referring to by sliding a small device in her hand into an open socket on the disk's side.
Instantly, a holographic image of one of the enemy's golems appeared, and Riley had the image zoom in on the head before continuing.
"The head," she began, as the image changed according to her words, "seems to be foci of the magical energies that animate the golems. While we are not exactly certain why this seems to have weakened the defensive skin in that region, it is undeniable that it has."
"Is there a theory, at least, to explain this?" asked a Major as he scribbled down what Riley had been explaining.
Riley nodded, before pointing at the region of the golem's head where the human brain would otherwise be. "We believe that the constant fluctuation of concentrated magical energies in this region has caused the skin to lose some of its magically enhanced properties, such as toughness. Not enough to collapse the integrity of this superficial defense, but enough to make them more susceptible to damage."
One of the generals was understandably disturbed by this. "So the only way to effectively take down these...things is to head shot each and every one of them?" he asked, dumbfounded. "That's insane!"
Riley nodded sadly. "That, and grenades, I'm afraid. The shockwave of a grenade's impact blast is enough to collapse the integrity of the skin's hardness. Artillery shells would probably have the same impact, but we have no way of proving this, given our current situation."
She knew it was a tad cruel to remind them of their failure, but it was also the truth. As it was, the scene before her was one that could have been painted by one of those Colonial era painters and would have sold for millions. Sulu was in his field chair, his mood pensive as he glared at both the hologram and the map beneath it. His generals, their notepads out, were all either silently conversing or taking notes. There were a pair of Imperial Guards at the tent flap, looking as impassive as ever.
Truly, it was a scene straight out of a Colonial war painting.
The problem was that despite the artistic scene, the people involved had truly not a clue how to fix their current predicament. They had no way to approach the walls for a scaling maneuver without losing a good chunk of the attack force in the process. If they did launch such an attack at the moment, the casualty expectations were at about 40%, which was just unacceptable.
As Riley's own briefing had ended, the gaggle of generals began to speculate out loud how best to rectify the vexing situation with a variety of plans, many of which found opposition from some other general. Sulu, for his part, remained silent as he kept glaring at the map and the hologram.
"...ing a series of tunnels up to the walls..."
"Sapping them? Are you mad?" asked an outraged general. "We've established that those wards alert the enemy whenever they're crossed! All they'd have to do is send enough blasting spells straight down to collapse the damn thing!"
"Using our Warders is right out," was arguing another general to a colleague. "We've already lost...what? A hundred and twenty? At this rate, they'll all be dead before they can be of any use past the gates, when we're out in the open!"
"Their shields are invaluable, though!" riposted the man's colleague. "Without them, we would have lost a great deal more soldiers in our last two attempts!"
"And yet we still have two thousand of our brothers now lying in body bags!" shot back the general. "We should keep the Warders back as long range magical artillery. We don't have enough snipers to take down all of the enemy golems via head shots, but maybe having the Warders pummel them with blasting hexes will give our men at least enough time to scale the walls!"
Sulu, still in his chair with a brooding look on his face, considered that plan silently. It was by no means perfect, and the withdrawal of the Warders from the active siege complements would probably increase their casualty count a bit, but if the assault worked the way the general was describing, there was a chance that his men could seize the gates. There was only one issue.
"How would our men fight the enemy in close quarters?" asked Sulu calmly, withdrawing his fist from his face at last. "Our bayonets are all but ineffective against such hardened skin."
The tent descended into silence once again, much to Doctor Riley's amazement. It was only when she was addressed that the silence broke.
"Would normal shotgun blasts do it?" asked Sulu's aide, much to everyone's surprise. The man, mistaking the crowd's surprise for annoyance at such a junior officer voicing their opinion, attempted to quickly elaborate his idea. "Well, they pack a much meaner punch than one of our rifles, don't they? And all you really need is to aim in a general direction and the pellets do the rest."
Using normal, non-magically enhanced weaponry. The idea stumped the generals and Sulu alike. So used had they become to magical enhancements in nearly everything that they had completely forgotten about conventional, non-magical weaponry. Sulu seized on the idea immediately.
"Doctor Riley!" he barked, making the young woman jump.
"G-General Sulu?" she answered, unsure of why she was being addressed so abruptly.
"Is a magical bullet necessary to induce death in these abominations?" he asked. "Is magic necessary to bring down their head defenses?"
Riley thought about the question for a moment, occasionally glancing at the holographic image of the golem's head she'd put up, before slowly shaking her head in the negative. "Maybe not," she said. "Possibly. I wouldn't be able to confirm this without another golem body to experiment with, but if I had to venture an educated guess? It would probably work."
"But where are we to find enough to equip a siege column?" asked a general. "Have shotguns even been issued since the coup?"
That was a good question. His own faction hadn't done so, Sulu knew, and Harry wasn't one to dwell on past, obsolete weaponry. Staples—maybe, if only due to lack of resources. McDonald and O'Connor were the likeliest of candidates for possessing the outdated weapons.
Glancing at his aide, Sulu made quick decision. "Captain, please go and hail the closest Airship and have them find out and retrieve the largest cache of shotguns available," he ordered. "If necessary, even from foreign nations. They owe us that much, at least."
The aide nodded and gave a salute, leaving the generals, Doctor Riley, and Sulu to their planning.
For they at last had a plan.
EWEWEWEWEW
Hogwarts Docks
Neville listened intently as a roar was heard outside the protective cavern where the staircase up to Hogwarts lay. 'Dragons,' thought Neville. 'Probably probing the Basilisk warships' anti-air capabilities.'
A good idea, Neville admitted. Unlike the Death Eaters, who just launched everything in tides, Riddle seemed more intent in probing out weaknesses and then exploiting them for all they were worth. A particularly aggravating example of this was the fact that the bridge that had led Neville's column to the docks was now lying on the lake bed in pieces—the work of several dragon strafing runs that had ended with several sections melted right through.
As such, Neville and his men were now stuck inside the staircase cavern with no way out. The worse part was that this was all to the enemy's advantage, for their inability to reach the battlefield now essentially put him and his men out of the fight. Neville was fairly certain that this meant that Riddle would mobilize what men he had protecting the broken stairway towards reinforcing the front gates, making Sulu's job that much harder.
'If only I could repair the bloody thing!' raged Neville mentally as he gazed at the vaporized section of the staircase. Unfortunately, he had not counted on the extent of the Bombarda grenade's destruction.
Having had a full night's rest, Neville had attempted to make good on his word to repair the staircase, but had quickly found out that this was just not possible. Maybe it was the lingering magic in the cavern that had accumulated over the years of magical students using this staircase or maybe it was something else entirely, but whatever the reason for it, the Bombarda grenade's blast had been multiplied several times over what Neville had expected, essentially vaporizing the section of stairs that he needed to get his men into position. There was nothing to repair!
Which meant that about two thousand Imperial crack troops were now stuck out of combat. Two thousand out of fifty thousand. The remaining forty eight had not even managed to get across the bridge, or even on it, when the dragons finally took it down. Hell, it was a miracle they had this much to begin with. Only the fact that the bridge had been wide had allowed so many troops to get across. Even then, he had never expected the two thousand to actually fit inside the cavern. Still, he was pleasantly surprised when the cavern gradually seemed to enlarge to fit the two thousand warriors. Apparently the cavern had been designed to automatically change itself to fit however many students arrived. For once, the blasted castle's spells would work in favour of the Imperial cause.
Of course, that help also amounted to very little, seeing how they couldn't go anywhere.
Near Neville, all of them crouching on the floor or sitting, the officers that had made it across—forty out of a couple hundred—were quietly devising a plan, bearing in mind to keep Neville within earshot for approval.
The latest plan was to swim around the cliff and make a beachhead on the other side, with the Navy transporting the remaining 48,000 troops across the Lake in dinghies. The biggest problem with that was that the constant firing of the Basilisk warships had caused the water of the Lake to become somewhat violent near the cliff, resulting in constant, heavy waves crashing against the bedrock. Most likely, a decent chunk of the men would end up crushed to death, and the dinghies, if they came to pick them up, would end up crashed against the cliff.
Sighing, Neville voiced the issue, and the officers, realising the truth behind their commander's words, abandoned the plan and went on to the next one.
"What about a Wolfe?" suggested a Captain.
Neville sighed. "That's what we were trying to do, Captain," he reminded the junior officer. To Neville's surprise, the man shook his head.
"Not, not this, I mean a real Wolfe!" insisted the man.
Neville frowned. What exactly was the man implying? "Explain."
The man fidgeted, suddenly nervous, but nonetheless grabbed the stick they were using to draw on the ground and made a crude drawing of where they were vis-a-vis the cliff outside. "See, what we're doing is a typical flanking manoeuvre, really. Taking advantage of an impossible-to-reach location and using it to hit the enemy's soft spot."
All of the officers, including Neville, leaned over or moved closer to watch with interest.
"But since the way to their soft spot has been cut off," continued the man, striking a line through the area of the staircase that they had blasted away accidentally, "We need to find a new way to get back into the fight, yeah?"
"Right..." agreed Neville, cupping his chin with his hand thoughtfully.
The Captain, however, made no sign that he heard his superior, and kept drawing. "Now, Major Williams here wanted us to dig our way up the cliff, but with only one magic user here, that would take weeks, especially once we hit the bedrock," he added, making Williams grumble. "However, the idea of getting to the top of the cliff is still a good one."
"So how do we get there, Captain?" asked another Major, who was looking somewhat excited. The Captain's arguments seemed logical thus far, and from the look in the man's eyes, he had thought of a way to get around their situation.
The Captain grinned. "We pull a Wolfe," he said, marking an X on the sight of the cliff. "The docks outside go right against the cliff side, so all we need to do is climb it."
Silence descended on the group. None of them had honestly considered what the Captain was proposing. For one, they had never thought the initial plan would fail, and two, they had never considered the cliff climbable. Even now that scepticism was still very much alive.
"Is that even feasible?" asked another Captain, this one from one of the Seventh Legion's multiple companies. "I mean, did you even look at it while we were crossing? It's smooth from top to bottom!"
Most of the muttering that followed was made in agreement with the Captain's assessment of the cliff, but the Captain that had made the initial suggestion shook his head.
"That's true, for the most part," he said with a smirk. "It seems that although the cliff is impossible to climb from the front due to erosion, the sides have been suitably shielded from the elements. The cliff side next to the docks is perfectly climbable."
Neville felt a surge of excitement as he heard the words leave the Captain's mouth. He could scarcely believe that there had always been such a way out of their predicament. Now that he thought about it, he could even conjure the necessary equipment to get his column moving up the cliff!
Upon seeing their commander's face, the other officers knew that he was sold, and all protests against the plan died instantly. Instead, they began discussing logistics.
"We'll need long, long ropes," warned one of the Majors. "Has to be tough enough to handle several hundred men at the same time, too."
"I can take care of that," said Neville commandingly. "What's got me worried is if the men know how to properly scale cliffs," he admitted.
Major Williams waved his hand dismissively. "If they've gone through Basic, they know how to scale cliffs. And let's face it, not a single soldier has been brought here that hasn't been a war veteran, so the likelihood of one of them not knowing proper procedure is nil."
That reassured Neville somewhat, and before he knew it, he was conjuring the necessary rope and placing Unbreakable charms on them. One of the soldiers—a man who'd loved mountain climbing before the war—inspected the rope and, after tugging on it hard, declared it fit for use. Now that they had a plan, and the materials to carry it out, however, they had to decide what to do once on top of the cliff.
"We can't be expected to launch an assault on the castle with merely two thousand men and no specialists!" argued a Captain.
"Well, we can't just sit here and wait out the battle, now can we?" demanded Tomlinson before suggesting, "What if we have the Navy ferry the remaining lads over to join in on the climb?"
Neville shook his head, his hand once again cupping his chin thoughtfully. "The dragons will notice immediately. We'd be putting whoever's still climbing at risk."
Major Williams sighed tiredly. A glance out the cavern entrance told him that the sun was going to set soon. "What if we just send a scout up first to check things out and then we decide?" he asked, expecting no one to agree.
Which was the reason he was so surprised when nearly everyone agreed. Albeit, with the condition that only the stealthiest of the troops go, since getting their cover blown at this point would mean they would not be able to carry out the plan.
In the end, it was decided that a young woman—heck if she could be called one, considering she appeared 19—was to go. She had been a veteran of Harrisburg, and before that she had been, albeit briefly, part of the Third Legion before transferring to the Second. That was enough of a resumé to satisfy everyone, given the Third Legion's focus on camouflage and silent tactics.
The young woman, an Irish-born named Emily Murphy, was briefed thoroughly on the goals of her mission and warned time after time about being seen by the enemy. Neville, for whom the teen had enormous respect as her former Third Legion commander, even told her that she would be placed under a Disillusionment spell in order to maximise her stealth capabilities.
Emily was not to climb for another few hours, though, as the officers had unanimously decided that she would be safest under the cover of dark, and the sun had not yet set. So for two hours, the stranded soldiers waited patiently while the sun edged further down, waiting patiently for the moment when their scout would be off.
Finally, the time had arrived, and the dimly lit cavern was flooded with light as the magical torches inside flared to life. Still all could hear the sound of the Basilisk warships bombing the defensive shields protecting the front gates, but beside that, there were no sounds of battle. A good sign.
Quietly, Neville, Emily, and a few other of the officers went out of the cavern's safety and made their way towards the cliff side, where they saw that the Captain's assessment of the cliff's condition was spot on. Another good sign.
Instantly, the Emily was helped into her climbing harness, while Neville and the rest of the officers briefed her one last time about her mission goals. She was to get to the top, observe the situation, and then get back down without being noticed. If there was a chance she would be found out, she was to abort and wait until such a danger passed. If by half an hour the situation had not changed, she was to get back down. She had an hour, tops, to do her scouting before they assumed she was captured.
"You understand, yes?" asked Neville, just to make sure. He had a pleased smile when Emily nodded. "Excellent. Remember to attach the ropes when you get to the top; we'll be needing them tomorrow."
Emily nodded once and gave a stiff salute. Getting this much attention from Neville Longbottom himself was like a dream come true to the girl, and she silently vowed not to let him down.
Carefully, the dark-haired teen placed a firm grip on a rock slightly above her head-level and, securing her footing on a rock slightly above knee level, pulled herself up, all the while feeling the effects of the Disillusionment spell take effect.
"Good luck," she heard one of the officers tell her as she continued her way up in a similar fashion.
Fifteen minutes of climbing, and Emily could already tell that she was high enough to kill herself if she fell off. The climbing rope was firmly tied to her waist, and her harness was attached to nothing; it was only being used to carry the picks she could use if she ever found trouble finding a good, solid place to grip.
About a third of the way up, she paused in her climb, breathing heavily as she felt her muscles protest at the continuous climb. This was exertion in a way she had never been conditioned to withstand. That mountain climber in her Legion would have had no trouble at all, she knew, but the fact that he was so tall and bulky made him a much easier target to spot. Emily, on the other hand, was lithe and of average height, and she had been a member of the Third Legion, which underwent training for combat in all sorts of environments.
Still, Emily had only been in the Legion for a year. True, she had been selected for it right out of recruitment at the age of 17, but by the time she was 18, she had been transferred to the Second Legion, which was usually deployed for field battles.
"Honour and Victory," she hissed under her breath, repeating her Legion's motto over and over as she ended her break and resumed her climb. It gave her mental strength to chant the Second's motto, pushing back the tired thoughts and letting her focus entirely on her mission.
Grunting with each pull, Emily stubbornly made her way up the cliff. She let nothing affect her concentration—not even when she accidentally cause a piece of gravel to come loose and cut her cheek superficially. Ignoring the warm feeling of blood on her cheek, she suppressed the stinging pain and kept up her steady climb.
The closet call Emily got was when she accidentally lost her footing during a particularly hard pull, and only her hands being firmly latched onto a good ledge had saved her. Fighting down her panic, she had swung her body forward with all the grace of a dancer and had recuperated her footing before continuing her ascent.
"Honour and Victory!" she kept up the chant as she saw her goal come closer and closer within reach. Of course, she took great care in making sure that no one heard her—it would not do to have herself captured after she had tried to hard to prove herself to Brigadier Longbottom!
Finally, the last meter lay before her. Finding a strong ledge to grip, Emily pulled herself only high enough for her eyes to cross the top of the cliff, thereby minimising her presence, Disillusioned though she was. To her relief, no one seemed to be around, and the teen pulled herself fully on top of the cliff, a surge of pride rising within her at her feat.
Bringing out her pistol, she quietly made sure it wasn't primed before sticking it back in its holster, satisfied. She then crept forward towards the castle entryway, all the while keeping her eyes open for any enemy soldiers.
Finding none in her immediate vicinity, she got into a crouch and set off towards the road that led down towards the grounds between the castle and the front gate. To her surprise, no enemy troops seemed to be on the cliff—or even in the immediate vicinity of the castle itself. Instead, only illuminated by the fires of the Imperial artillery's blasts against the gates' defensive shields, she could see row upon row of enemy soldiers filling the grounds. Clearly, the enemy had assumed that there was simply no way for the flanking manoeuvre to occur, and had pulled everything to stop an incursion via the front gates. Even the second gate had a paltry dozen patrolling the walls!
Emily was hard pressed to keep herself from voicing her pleasure at the situation out loud. Thank whatever deity there be that the enemy hadn't realised how stubborn soldier of the Empire were in getting around difficulties! Otherwise, they would have kept a guard on the cliff.
After half an hour of observation, Emily knew she had what she needed. Slowly, she crept back to the place she had climbed up from and carefully descended onto the rope—securing the rope to her harness all the while—which she had nailed toughly into the cliff side. Taking out another few nails, she proceeded to repeat the procedure with four other pieces of rope. Tugging on them to make sure the nails wouldn't easily come out, she then rappelled her way down the cliff side.
The way down was obviously a lot quicker than going up, and she soon found herself back at the docks, where she whispered out her identification phrase.
"Imperium" she whispered out.
"Aevitas," replied someone, and almost instantly, several ripples in the air appeared, dissolving to reveal several Imperial soldiers, armed and ready to fire. Obviously sentries waiting for her return. "Emily?" asked one of them.
Emily sighed in relief. "John!"
The sentries made their way to the cliff side, but then remembered that she was Disillusioned. "Err...Emily?" said John, somewhat nervously. "We can't see you."
Emily wanted to smack herself. "The General put that invisibility spell on me. Is he around?"
John nodded and motioned for one of his colleagues to get Neville. In the meantime, one of the other sentries kneeled down and recovered what appeared to be a small metallic disk. Emily quickly recognised it as an Invisibility Camouflage Device. Obviously, they weren't taking any chances.
Soon enough, Neville returned with the sentry and Emily was made visible once more. Brushing aside normal social conventions, Neville quickly delved into the matter he was most concerned about.
"Well?" he asked. "What's the situation?"
Emily grinned at Neville. "All clear, sir. Not a soul in sight."
Neville's look of utter triumph made Emily's day.
EWEWEWEWEW
HMAS Invincible
"All personnel are asked to clear the landing platform in Dock One. Repeat, All personnel are--"
So went on the mechanical voice through the speakers in the hangar. Of course, the docking crews present were all so thoroughly trained in procedure that they had begun to do as the voice requested well before it ever blared to life. At the same time, soldiers took positions all around the hangar bay, ready to open fire if the people within the landing shuttle happened to be hostile. Not that they expected them to be, but Harry Potter's own assault on an Airship that had lacked such security was a grim reminder that it was possible.
The shuttle in question, however, had been expected for a while now. Two days, in fact—ever since it was requested by the Duke himself. All that the hangar crew knew was that the cargo onboard the shuttle was of enormous importance and incredibly top secret. So much so that a stern warning had been issued hours before that peeking or damaging of the cargo could be met by firing squad. It was an incredibly harsh punishment they were being threatened with, but the crew had no doubts that if the Duke had set the standard so high, it was because the cargo would be critical to the siege.
As expected, the shuttle released a hissing noise as the landing gear was lowered and the docking ramp slid out from the side of the hull, lowering itself diagonally onto the floor. Only once the ramp had hit the floor did the hangar crew move forward towards the shuttle, aiming for the underbelly of the ship, where the cargo lift would lower any moment now.
At the same time, the section of the hull right above the docking ramp seemed to pop in and to the side, revealing the insides of the ship. The first people out were, predictably, the security detail onboard—Imperial Guardsmen from the Fifth Legion. The ten soldiers made their way down the ramp and exchanged documentation with the hangar security detail officer on call. Once the security detail officer was satisfied with the documentation, the Guardsmen activated a small device that sent back an "all clear" signal to the ship, indicating it was safe for the occupants to disembark.
The first person to come out, after the Guardsmen, was a familiar redhead who wore his hair in a ponytail and had a lab coat on. With a grin of excitement, he descended the ramp, followed by a stunning blonde that had many a soldier and crewman in the hangar whistling appreciatively.
As the redheaded man got to the bottom of the ramp, he noticed a highly decorated man approaching them. The man had the rank of Admiral stitched onto his uniform, but the redhead did not salute, instead offering his hand in greeting.
The redheaded man grinned. "It's good to see you again, Admiral Wolf. I'm glad to say I brought you lads some damned good presents."
Admiral Wolf smiled in return. "I dare say the Duke will be pleased to hear that, Mister Weasley."
Bill's grin never faltered.
"Yes, I dare say he will."