Disclaimer: 'Stargate' and 'Harry Potter' both belong to their respective creators, so I don't own them; I'm just borrowing them for the immediate moment in time and space
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Truth and Revelations
"So," Landry said, looking sceptically at Daniel after the small group that had been rendered intangible had finished their report on recent events, "you're telling me that Merlin was not only an actual wizard, but was also a former Ascended who retook human form to create a weapon that could destroy Ascended beings?"
"That's pretty much what we've been able to gather from the information provided by the device, anyway," Daniel confirmed with a nod. "Hermione said that she's going to see what she can find out about Merlin's history in the wizarding world to see if there's any further clues about where he might have left some of his secrets that I might not have access to here, but we're not holding out much hope; right now our best chance would seem to be to check out that gate address included in the available information as soon as possible and see what it has to offer-"
Further conversation was cut off as alarms began to blare around them, a quick glance at the window behind them confirming that the Stargate was being dialled from the other end.
The group sitting around the table didn't hesitate; getting to their feet, Daniel, Sam, Landry, Mitchell, and Tonks all ran down the stairs to the control room, where Harriman was already studying the computers and radios as the Stargate finished dialling and the Iris was closed.
"What's up?" Landry asked.
"Incoming wormhole from Tagalus," Harriman replied, looking over at Daniel. "A Jarrod Kane is requesting to be let through to talk to you about an urgent matter; he's on the radio."
Nodding in confirmation- while shooting a brief look at Tonks to assure her that he'd explain this latest turn of events later-, Daniel turned to face in the approximate direction of the control room's radio transmitter. "Jarrod, this is Daniel; what's wrong?"
"Doctor Jackson," a man's voice replied from the other end of the connection, "I have very little time. I've gained access to the Stargate without my government's authorization. Please allow me to come through; I am alone and unarmed."
A nod from Daniel was all the confirmation General Landry needed that the voice on the other end was telling the truth.
"Open the Iris," he said, Harriman automatically reaching over to activate the necessary controls to open the metallic shielding over the Stargate.
"OK, Jarrod," Daniel continued, "it's safe to come through."
With that, confirmation, he, Mitchell, Sam and Tonks turned around and walked out of the control room, quickly heading down to the gateroom to be greeted by the sight of a dark-haired man with a prominent forehead, dressed in a leather jacket and trousers carrying a bag and a long rod of some kind.
"Stand down," Mitchell said, waving the soldiers aiming their weapons at the Stargate to the side as the new arrival walked down the ramp.
"Doctor Jackson," the man said, looking in relief at the archaeologist.
"Jarrod," Daniel replied with a slight nod as he indicated his friends. "This is Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell, and Special Auror Tonks Lupin; you already know Sam."
"Tagalas..." Mitchell said, pausing reflectively for a moment as he looked at Daniel for confirmation. "Post-apocalyptic war and superpowers of deep seeded political differences; that Jarrod Kane."
At Daniel's lack of contradiction of his assessment of the situation, Mitchell turned to nod at the other man. "Nice to meet you."
"Post-apocalyptic wars?" Tonks asked in confusion.
"Long story short, Kane here's from a planet that went from a state of cold war to actual war after we accidentally inspired a local terrorist to trick them into firing missiles at each other," Mitchell explained briefly to Tonks.
"Your government stopped responding to our communications months ago," Daniel continued, looking slightly apologetic for Mitchell's slightly flippant description of Tagalas's situation as he spoke; even if Kane didn't seem that bothered about it, it couldn't be easy to hear his planet's recent history summed up in such a manner. "We assumed that you..."
"Completely destroyed each other?" Kane finished, looking grimly back at the archaeologist. "Not quite yet."
"I was going to say no longer wanted our help, but that'll do," Daniel admitted with an apologetic shrug.
"In any case, we're still there," Kane continued, his tone grim. "The Rand protectorate is still struggling to rebuild and defend itself from the Caledonian Federation."
"OK... what's so urgent?" Daniel asked uncertainly.
"Five months ago a man came through the Stargate," Kane explained. "He called himself a Prior of the Ori."
"Here we go..." Mitchell said, exchanging a grim glance with Sam as Tonks looked briefly uncomfortable; she might only know about the Ori from second-hand information, but that was still enough to make her uncomfortable at the implication that she might be about to have to deal with them.
"Yes, we're aware of the Priors and what they're preaching," Daniel said, once again pushing thoughts of Voldemort to the back of his mind; the way things were going right now, it looked like his old enemy was once again going to have to take a back seat to the latest Ori assault...
"The Prior wasn't just offering us religion; he offered us power," Kane continued. "In exchange for us embracing the Ori, he gave our government designs for a weapon that could be launched into orbit. A satellite capable of giving us total domination over the Caledonians."
"Oh," Sam said, out of a lack of anything else to say to a statement like that. "So, assuming that your people intend on building this weapon, how long before it's completed?"
"Twenty-four hours ago, a Caledonian military outpost was completely vaporized in a demonstration," Kane said, maintaining his neutral expression despite the grim nature of hte news he was now delivering. "The weapon is already operational."
"Ah," Daniel said, his eyes widening in understanding. "Well... that isn't good..."
"Quite," Landry said, walking up behind the group, looking pointedly at Kane as he spoke, clearly fully aware of the implications of this latest revelation. "You can join us in the briefing room to fill us in on the situation in greater detail."
"How long until your government makes its next move?" Landry asked, SG-1 and the available 'SG-M' members- the magic-users were currently all-but-officially permanently assigned to work with SG-1 until the need for their services had ceased, so they were now regularly sharing briefings with the other team- sitting around the conference table as Kane filled them in on the current crisis.
"Our president has given their leader, Minister Casket, a deadline of five days," Kane explained, currently standing alongside a digital map of Rand and Caledonia to give the new arrivals a better idea of the stakes they were currently facing. "After that, if the Caledonians don't surrender to Rand occupation... they'll be destroyed."
"And the Prior instructed you to do this?" Daniel asked, the expression on his face making it clear even to those who only knew the basics of the current situation that he was sceptical about Rand's role in current events.
"Rand has been in disarray since the missile attacks last year," Kane explained. "Intelligence reports were filtering in that said the Caledonians were preparing a full-scale ground assault. They were going to invade and attempt to topple what was left of Rand once and for all."
"Caledonia wasn't interested in hearing anything from the Prior?" Lupin asked.
"The Prior asked our leaders if he could spread his word to the Caledonians as well..." Kane began uncomfortably.
"And they didn't want anything that you lot had already, eh?" Fred finished for Kane, exchanging a brief smile with his brother at Daniel's surprised stare. "Eh, business, religion, and politics; you get a decent feel for all three of them after spending time doing one for long enough."
"Well... you are correct, anyway," Kane said, nodding in confirmation at Fred and George even as his sceptical expression made it clear that he was puzzled at their reference. "President Nadal explained that to the Prior, and he said... anyone that did not accept Origin must be destroyed."
"Bit of a one-track mind these 'Priors' have, don' they?" Hagrid reflected.
"Trust me, you don't know the half of it..." Daniel muttered, nodding briefly at his friend before looking back at Kane and continuing in a louder but more neutral tone of voice. "I'm guessing it was also the Prior that convinced your people that having a relationship with us was no longer necessary...?"
"It was already clear your government wasn't going to offer us the type of weapons and technology this prior was offering us," Kane said, his gaze shifting away from Daniel as he spoke, clearly uncomfortable about the current admission. "You see, we weren't just suffering defeat at the hands of the Caledonians; we were on the verge of collapsing as a nation..."
He shook his head in frustration at himself as he sat down in the chair next to Daniel. "But now, after what you told me about these Oris and their Priors... I fear that may have been a better way to go."
"We appreciate your situation, Mr Kane," Landry said, nodding briefly at the new arrival in acknowledgement of the risks he'd taken, "but I'm still unclear on what you want us to do about it."
In response, Kane reached over and picked up the long rod he'd been carrying when he walked through the Stargate.
"These are earlier schematics of the weapon," he explained, pushing the rod into the centre of the table. "Unfortunately, they're not complete; the Prior gave us step by step instructions in stages..."
"Making sure he kept you under his thumb," Mitchell concluded, Sam taking the plans out of their container as she began to study them.
"He said it was so he could make sure each stage was completed properly before we moved on to the next," Kane clarified. "It was the best I could under the circumstances; access became restricted soon after some of us in government voiced our disapproval about building the weapon, particularly when it began to incite further dissent from Caledonia..."
"Uh... righ'," Hagrid said, nodding slightly uncertainly at Kane. "So... yer want us ter destroy this?"
"It's the only chance we have to stop things before they go too far," Kane confirmed.
"Just to be clear," Mitchell said, looking slightly uncertainly at Kane, "you're doing this to save Caledonians? You don't hate them for bombing your country and killing some of your people?"
"I do," Kane admitted with a grim nod. "But I refuse to see any more lives, be they Rand or Caledonian, senselessly lost due to archaic prejudices of religious extremists. This has to stop."
Nodding thoughtfully as he listened to Kane's response, Landry seemed to come to a decision.
"Thank you for speaking with us, Mr Kane," he said, as he indicated the door to his office. "If you would wait in there for a moment, SG-1 and I need to consider what you've told us."
"Of course," Kane said, nodding in an understanding that Daniel and the rest of 'SG-M' in particular wished wasn't so obviously natural to him; even with the courage he must have possessed to carry out his original defiance of coming to them in the first place, it was clear that Kane was too used to the idea of people keeping secrets from him, even if their motives for doing so differed from those who'd kept the secrets from him on his home planet.
"So," Landry said, as Kane shut the door to the office- all files were regularly kept locked up when not in use, and there was nothing in there that Kane could use for any kind of nefarious purpose anyway-, "what should we do?"
"Well, I'd like to point out that a lot of this is actually our fault," Daniel pointed out. "There wouldn't have been a war on Tagalus if we'd just not gone there in the first place."
"Huh?" Hagrid asked, looking at his old friend in surprise.
"Basically," Daniel explained, looking around to address the wizards as he spoke, "at the time we first arrived there- our first visit was only last year, actually-, Tagalus was stuck in the middle of a 1950s-esque cold war between the Rand Protectorate and the Caledonian Federation, but there was also a third group of religious fundamentalists active on the planet at the time who believed that the ancient gods who created their world would return and reward their faith. They'd been a fairly small group at first, but when our arrival proved that the fundamentalists were actually correct- even if they weren't right about the nature of the gods-, it prompted their leader to arrange to trigger a nuclear missile launch on both sides."
"Ah," George said simply, clearly disinclined to even think about making one of his and Fred's usual jokes in the face of such news.
"An entire war happened just because you went to the planet..." Lupin muttered, shaking his head grimly. "No wonder you're concerned about them..."
"General O'Neill probably said it best," Mitchell said with a shrug. "The minute we step through the gates we're sticking our collective noses where they don't belong."
"It's not like anyone could have known that would happen when you went there..." Tonks said uncertainly.
"It doesn't stop us feeling responsible," Sam said in response to that comment, before she turned back to look at the rest of her team. "At least now we know why they stopped accepting our offer to help them rebuild; they made contact with the Prior."
"And this satellite thing takes it to a whole new level," Mitchell added grimly. "The Ori have gone and started arming their followers..."
"Who says they won't eventually help them build ships capable of attacking other planets?" Sam pointed out.
"In other words, stop them now and you don't have to worry about stopping them later when they try something bigger?" Tonks asked, looking between the SG-1 members with a slight smile. "Sounds like a plan..."
"Hold on a minute," Landry said, turning to look pointedly at Tonks. "Ms Lupin, as much as we have appreciated your assistance in attempting to track Voldemort and the Death Eaters, this current situation has nothing to do with you all; you're under no obligation to-"
"Harry has an obligation, General Landry," Lupin interjected, his stare looking resolutely at the older man. "That's enough for me."
"I'm sorry, but you do realise that, short of just flying in there to blow it up, we don't actually have any kind of plan for this situation?" Daniel interjected, looking pointedly between the others.
"Unless you've got a better idea, Doctor Jackson-" Landry began.
"I have another idea, anyway," Daniel replied. "All Tagalans, both Rand and Caledonian alike, deserve to know the truth. If we tell them what we know, who the Ori really are, they might be convinced to dismantle this weapon themselves."
For a moment, the rest of the group looked between each other, until Lupin turned to look at Daniel.
"You're actually suggesting a plan that doesn't feature us just diving in there?" he asked, smiling slightly at his old student. "The time was that you favoured a direct approach over talking..."
The grim expression on Daniel's face at that comment prompted Lupin to stay quiet; evidently the boy who was the closest thing he'd ever had to a nephew wasn't interested in discussing that topic.
"Let's just say that the way things turned out back then left me questioning the way I did things before," Daniel said simply; even those who hadn't experienced the events he was indirectly referring to knew enough to stop that avenue of discussion before it went any further
"Anyway," Sam said, trying to get the conversation to a less personally difficult topic even as she made a note to try and talk with Daniel later- he might have a right to feel guilty if she was accurately remembering the stories he'd told them about his life as Harry, but that didn't mean he should still be holding on to it-, "do you think they'll even listen?"
"Let's just propose it to Kane... and see if Rand will hear us out," Daniel responded, shrugging slightly as he drew stares from the rest of the group. "It's our best chance to end things without getting into a fight that could make things worse."
After a moment's hesitation, Landry nodded.
"All right," he said, looking over at the archaeologist with a grim nod before he turned to Sam. "In the meantime, Colonel Carter, see what you can figure out about that satellite weapon based on the plans Mr Kane provided for us; if there's a weakness that we can exploit, I want to know about it as soon as possible."