Ch. 19 — Errand of Mercy
"Doesn't the Ministry know where Malfoy Manor is? I remember . . . someone mentioning the Ministry sending aurors there at least once." Harry asked.
"Not anymore," Susan's voice joined them. "Mr. Malfoy told Aunt Amelia that with the latest unrest and disappearances, he has made their home unplottable. My aunt says that the ministry can only access through the floo, and they would need a specific search warrant to do so."
She sighed. "So, until that changes, the Ministry can't find them, either."
"On the other hand, we did cut off one source of information for the Death Eaters," Susan said.
"She listened?" Lee said, sounding surprised.
"She didn't want to, at first," Susan said sourly. "But then she had three aurors she trusted go through the logs of the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad, backtracking all the incidents involving under-age muggle-borns without older magical siblings. Turned out that all the more recently involved families were . . . gone. Several homes were destroyed by 'gas explosions,' the other families just, disappeared." Susan continued grimly, "Then she had the Squad questioned under veritaserum. She found two Death Eater sympathizers in the department. Now, the squads have to make a magical vow not to reveal the addresses they discover of any 'accidental magic' incidents to anyone not in their department unless directly ordered by their superior. With said order, and by whom, recorded in the log book, as well as the reason why."
"It seems to have worked," Lee acknowledged. "The trackers managed to tip us off to a raid while Susan was talking with her aunt. We caught three Death Eaters that way, and left panic-watches with the parents. Since then? Nothing."
"One of the reasons," Susan continued sourly, "for low numbers of muggle-borns in incoming classes for the last few years is that they've apparently been doing this on and off since before the last war ended."
"Shite!" came more than one voice over the link.
"That means," Hermione's dull voice said after a moment, "That if there were no muggle-born in Slytherin, the other three houses should have had at least three muggle-born, each, in our first year instead of the one that we have."
There was a moment of stunned silence as they thought about the dozens of helpless families that must have died over the last fourteen years.
"To bad we can't just apparate a nuke into the middle of their next meeting," someone anonymously suggested after the silence that statement provoked.
"Apparition would short out the electronics," Hermione reflexively said.
Harry, Ron, Ginny, and the twins stared at each other.
"Hermione?" Harry carefully asked, "What would happen if you shorted-out one of those batteries you made for the tech-cloaks?"
"Well, there are so many fail-safes in one that you'd really have to work at it. It's more likely to just fizzle and get really, really hot. And do that for a long time. If there was anything flammable around, you'd start a fire, for sure."
A disappointed silence descended on the group.
"But," she mused softly, murmuring more to herself than the others, "If you were to disable that fail-safe, and remove that one entirely . . .," her voice dropped into mumbling. She stopped. "Well, in theory, if you got rid of all the fail-safes, you'd get an awfully big boom. Not nuclear, nothing like that, but it'd make a pretty big crater and knock down anything standing in a large area."
"Lee," Harry said hesitantly. "Could you get one of those on one of the tracked Death Eaters? And then, maybe, at their next meeting, set it off?"
There was another long silence.
"Maybe," came the slow response. "Let me think on it a bit. I'll need to get together with Angel and her group. We wouldn't want this to go off in a restaurant or something."
"Well, if it's in an unplottable location and it isn't any well-known public place like Hogwarts or the Alley, I think it's safe to assume only Death Eaters go there," put in Colin Creevey.
"I don't know if we want to do this, guys," Harry said slowly. "It's a big step from defending someone under attack to going after the attackers in their base with the intent to kill them, not capture." He paused. "But we might need this. It'd be better to have this ready and not need it, than need it and not have it."
There were murmurs of agreement from those listening in.
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Harry's link vibrated. "Gotta see a man about a . . . cat," he said and looked slyly at Sirius. They were going through the books in the Black Library. Sirius looked for dangerous books, and then spent some time curse-breaking a book when he found one, which was depressingly more frequent than it should have been. Harry was looking through them for anything that looked interesting enough to mention to Hermione.
Harry's link vibrated, again.
"Prat," Sirius said absentmindedly, concentrating on the current book.
Once Harry was in the bathroom, he put up a privacy spell. His link had been vibrating almost constantly.
"Harry here," he said calmly, worried that something must be drastically wrong for this urgent of a contact.
"Captain," came Hannah's voice, "I think I might have something to help Mr. Weasley!" Her excitement was plain.
He sat down on the toilet lid. "What!?"
"We've been all through the ship's library and it has tons of information, but we don't understand it, so, today, I just queried it about what to do with a crewman who had been bitten by a poisonous snake and regular anti-venom treatments didn't work." She stopped and took a quavering breath. "Then it started asking me about symptoms. I put in everything I knew, multiple bites, wounds refused to heal, constant bleeding, nerve and tissue degradation, secondary infections, everything. Then, it replicated something it called a portable medical problem-solver and told me to place it on the injured party's chest. It's about the size of a thick book."
"Oh my god," Harry whispered.
"I called you immediately," she said. "This is a private link."
There was a pause.
"How can we get it to him?"
"I don't know." He sat for several moments. "I assume you're on the ship, so I'll send Dobby to meet you at the door. Give it to him with any other instructions you might have, okay?"
"Done. Lieutenant Abbott, over and out."
"Captain, over and out," Harry said numbly.
After a while, he didn't know exactly how long, he said, "Dobby?"
"What does the Exalted and Magnificent Starship Captain Harry Potter wish of Dobby, sir?"
After getting over the shock of seeing Dobby dressed in a Star Trek engineering uniform — he usually appeared in Grimmauld Place in a standard tea-towel garment — Harry explained he wanted him to retrieve something from Hannah. The house-elf was dancing with happiness as he disappeared.
Harry stood shakily, went to the kitchen, and collapsed into a chair. A hot cup of tea appeared on the table. He took a sip.
Sirius wandered in and stared at him with concern. "What's up pup?" He leaned forward, arms on the table.
Harry looked up at him, but really wasn't seeing what he was looking at. "We might have discovered a way to help Mr. Weasley," he said, shakily, bemused. After all this time, he had sort of given up hope. Suddenly to find out there might be a way to do something . . . was stunning. He was afraid to think it would work for fear it might not.
The next problem was getting everyone else to let them do it.
"That's fantastic!" Sirius said, elated. "Tell me!" he said eagerly. Then he frowned. "Who's we?"
Harry just stared at Sirius. Did he really have a choice? He knew none of the adults, especially none those in the Order, would believe him and let him try an "experimental" device to cure Mr. Weasley. Anything he showed them, they would just confiscate it. Then, instead of using it, they would fruitlessly try to figure out how it "magically" worked.
But should he show his godfather? Staying in Azkaban had suspended Sirius's mental development, and even regressed it somewhat. Sirius was an adult only in appearance. He acted and sounded like someone in Hogwarts, someone between third year and NEWTs, depending on the current topic. Someone not even as old as Harry, at times. Although, at times, he could put up a façade of him being a responsible adult.
But he did wield a lot of power with his position in the Wizengamot. He did know far more about the wizarding world than anyone currently in the crew. He might be able to guide them through the dangerous waters as they built up the Defensive Space Force.
Plus, given his slightly retarded emotional growth, he would be more likely to actually listen to Harry and the others instead of dismissing them out-of-hand. The other adults would probably be more inclined to listen to his opinions because he could, and did, at times, come across as a competent adult. He could probably convince the other adults that Harry's "cure" wasn't a wild flight of fantasy.
Finally, he said, "Sirius, I need your help." He paused and stared at the wizard as intently as possible, trying to convey how sincere he was. "We can't do this without your help. No one else will believe us — and Mr. Weasley will die."
Sirius raised an eyebrow.
"Promise you'll listen to the complete story, and then I'll show you proof."
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An hour later, the two of them were on the bridge of the D.S.F.S. Requirement.
"And this is real?" Sirius said for what had to be the tenth time, gobsmacked. He stared at Uranus outside the window, the nearly complete space station, and the three mountain-sized asteroids drifting not far away.
"As real as London, Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade, or the moon," Harry assured him earnestly.
"And this is where you got the vests and cloaks you've given the Order?" Sirius gave a quick questioning glance before returning to staring out the window.
"Yes."
"And you haven't shown it to anyone in the Order?"
Harry snorted. "Can you imagine Dumbledore not trying to take this over and run it as he does the Order? He'd insist we simply didn't have the knowledge and experience that he has, and that him being in charge would be better for everyone." Harry shook his head. "He doesn't understand a tenth of what muggles are up to, can you imagine him doing anything intelligent with this?"
Sirius snorted in turn. "Yeah, you got that right." He shook his head wryly.
He stared, transfixed by the giant gas-planet outside the window for a long time. "What do you want me to do?"
"Simple. We need to get this," Harry held out the textbook-sized box, "to Mr. Weasley, and place it on his chest. It's a portable medical problem-solver. It'll tell us what to do next. Or if anything can be done."
Sirius turned to stare at him.
Harry shrugged. "The healers are completely stumped. They've tried everything they can think of, and it's merely delayed the inevitable. Even the Unspeakables are stumped. Right now, they're waiting for a miracle. This might be that miracle. What have we got to lose?"
"You'll need to tell the Weasleys," his godfather said, almost absentmindedly.
"I know. There's no way I could get Mrs. Weasley, Charlie, and Bill to agree — they all see me as just a kid. They take nothing I say seriously." He was more than a bit angry about that. He had fought Voldemort to a standstill three times now — without any adult assistance.
"You on the other hand, are Sirius Black, Head of the infamous Black Family. They can't outright dismiss you, not take you seriously. Plus, no one knows what secret things the Black Vaults have hidden away. Not even the Blacks, I would guess."
Sirius smirked at the wordplay. "And the twins, Ginny, and Ron already know about this," he stated more than asked as he waved his arm at the window.
Harry gave a wry smile. "From the very beginning."
Sirius stared at the box, then back up at Harry. "What if it says it needs something from the ship?"
Harry shrugged. "Then we'll get it."
Sirius shook his head. "No, I mean what if it needs direct contact to the ship." He waved an arm uncertainly. "I mean, what if it needs to materialize something in place, like the ship's equivalent of blood-replenishing, or something. You having to leave the hospital, run to Hogwarts into the ship and back again would be rather suspicious, wouldn't it?"
Harry frowned. "Oh." He sighed. "You mean move the ship?"
Sirius nodded. "You did say the . . . replicator had a range of about ten thousand miles, didn't you?"
Harry nodded, then tapped his comm-link. "Lee, Hermione, Marietta, Cho, Angel, Hannah."
After they acknowledged the call, he said, "Hannah thinks she may have found something to help Mr. Weasley, but Sirius has brought up the point that we should move the ship to Earth, to within replicator range, just in case. Lee, can we pause the space station? Or will it finish soon? Cho, Marietta, how long to plot a course, if we need it? Hannah, you can explain more to Angel later, but you'll need to find out everything you can about this medical problem-solver the ship provided, and what it might need from the ship."
"Well," Lee said slowly, gathering his thoughts, "the station is almost finished. All the important parts are complete and it can probably finish building itself without a problem. The next time we enter a rest cycle, I'll power-up the space station, double-check that it's complete enough, and if it is, switch the operation over to it. It'll take over the work as soon as it finishes fault-searching, physical integrity checking, and data integrity verification. So, maybe about an hour after the ship enters cool-down?" He paused a second. "So, we can safely leave orbit in three hours? Maybe four at the most?"
"The course for Earth is already laid in place. All the major planets, moons, and asteroids in the solar system are, too," Cho said, smug amusement lacing her voice. "We did that weeks ago for practice. So, anytime you want, we're there. From anywhere to anywhere!"
"We're not in a hurry, Lee, we still haven't told the Weasleys, yet. And it'll take some time, I'm sure, to convince Mrs. Weasley and the staff at St. Mungo's to let us try. That's why I brought in Sirius. They'll listen to him."
Sirius shrugged. "Making a large donation wouldn't hurt."
Harry continued, "Are there any issues with us going that close to Earth? Will the muggles spot us?"
"I don't think so," Lee said. "The tech-cloak for the ship is really good. Basically, anything that might detect us somehow goes around us. So, x-rays, light, infra-red, ultra-violet, all that just passes us by as if we weren't here."
"What about light we generate? Or heat?" Hermione piped up. "Those aren't reflections of energy off the ship. Just like our tech-cloaks on the armour don't stop sounds we make."
There was silence.
"I . . . don't know," Lee said. "Let me check my notes."
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Five days later, the Weasleys, Harry, Hermione, Sirius, and a dozen healers were gathered outside Mr. Weasley's treatment room.
"I must protest," said the Head Healer for that floor said for the umpteenth time — Harry had stopped counting at ten. "We don't know anything about this box, or what magic it uses. It might change the way our potions react, and slow or negate their ability to counter the venom."
"I know," whispered Mrs. Weasley, and held Bill's and Charlie's hands in a white-knuckle grip.
"And I've told you," Sirius said serenely, "That it comes from the Black family vault, that's all you need to know. Plus," he looked over at the Weasleys, "I'm really sorry," he said to them regretfully, before turning back to the healer, "You've had Mr. Weasley in here for eight months and the only thing you can say is, 'he hasn't died, yet.' Forgive me if that isn't a ringing endorsement of your attempts at a cure."
He shook his slightly. "I'm sure you have done everything possible," he said apologetically, "and it clearly hasn't improved Mr. Weasley's condition, only slowed his decline. Which is a miracle in and of itself." He looked at the healer in the sealed room with Mr. Weasley. "I don't know that this won't make his condition worse. I don't know that it will make him better. But neither could you say that about any of the treatments you have attempted in the last seven months. You haven't even made any attempts in the last five weeks." He sighed sadly and shook his head. "I'm afraid we're at the cure or kill stage." He turned to the weeping family. "I'm terribly sorry, but I sincerely believe this is our last chance to save Arthur."
The Weasleys reluctantly nodded.
Harry, Sirius, and the rest of the crew had high-hopes that this would be the miracle they needed. They had tested the device on several unsuspecting muggles, telling them it was a prototype device still in development. The "volunteers" had been relatives of the crew who suffered from a myriad of problems, from arthritis to old-soldiers still carrying shrapnel from battles they had been in. They device had even regrown a missing finger!
Sirius nodded to the healer in the room, and said "Start."
The wizard inside looked at the Floor's Head Healer, who also reluctantly nodded. He slowly waved his wand over Arthur, and then placed the device on Arthur's bare chest.
"We have to partially cancel the stasis whenever we try something new. He's now in a very deep coma, and his heart is almost not moving," the Floor's Head Healer said.
"It says, Searching," the wizard in the room reported, the sonorous making it easy for everyone to hear him, looking at the top of the portable medical problem-solver.
"Patient alive, unconscious, condition deteriorating. Cascade organ failure imminent. Complete system failure in approximately twenty minutes," he reported, relaying what the runes on the top of the device were displaying.
Molly sobbed and clutched at Charlie and Bill.
"Detecting hostile atmosphere, not damaging to patient."
"Detecting foreign substances — attempting to identify."
"Identification failed."
"Allow access to main systems?" He looked up, puzzled. "There are two circles below that, one red that say's 'NO', the other is green and says 'YES'."
"Press the green circle," Sirius said evenly, glancing at Harry and Hermione.
"Accessing main systems."
"Main systems online."
"Detecting destructive nerve toxins. Attempting identification."
"Identification failed."
"Detecting destructive muscular toxins. Attempting identification."
"Identification failed."
"Detecting destructive skin toxins. Attempting identification."
"Identification failed."
"Detecting unknown toxins."
"Detecting unknown substances."
"Comparing to normative baselines."
"Patient genetically related to Ginny Weasley, Ron Weasley, Fred Weasley, or George Weasley? It has three circles this time, YES (All), YES (Some), and NO." the Healer reported.
The healers stared at the Weasleys before turning to Sirius.
"Yes, all, please."
"Captain," came Lee's whisper in his ear where he had concealed his link under his hair, "The replicator just powered up."
"Begin treatment? And, again, the red and green circles are available."
"Press green," ordered Sirius.
"Beginning treatment. Removing destructive toxins." He paused, then said, "It added 'Completed.'"
He frowned. "It is now asking, 'Remove unknown toxins?' with a red circle and a green circle underneath." He looked up at Sirius.
The Weasleys were staring at the man on the bed through tears, but hope was shining there, too. Hermione was squeezing Harry's hand. He realized he was squeezing hers, too. He forced himself to relax and took an unsteady breath.
Sirius raised both eyebrows. "Has it? Check."
The wizard pulled out his wand and waved it over the wizard, mumbling. He looked up at the Head Healer. "The toxins we've been fighting are gone!" He looked at Sirius excitedly. "Without the toxins to work on, some of the potions are actually deadly, in and of themselves," he warned. "I also need to remove some of the spells needed to guide the potions."
Sirius nodded, took a breath, and said, "Do it. Green circle."
The wizard started finiting specific spells. "'Removing unknown toxins,'" he reported. "'Completed.' Now it says, 'Remove unknown substances?' with green and red circles below."
"Green."
"Removing unknown substances," the man reported. "Completed. Removing damaged tissue."
The bandages across the man's body slumped. "Removing extraneous protective materials." The bandages abruptly vanished. Seeing the formerly hidden damage that had ravaged Arthurs body was heart-breaking, and Harry heard Mrs. Weasley wail in anguish.
"Repairing damaged tissue."
"Repairing damaged organs."
They watched as muscles, bones, nerves, and blood vessels seemed to grow from the edges of the undamaged sections at breath-taking speed. Harry had had Skele-Gro to replace bones, and here he could actually see the missing bone appear.
"Patient now reacting negatively to hostile atmosphere, isolating."
They watched, stunned as a black coating seemed to come out of Arthur's skin until he was completely covered. It took only a second, if that.
"Oxygen supply insufficient, supplying oxygen."
"Hostile atmosphere limited to room, remove and replace with Standard? YES/NO."
The healers and Sirius exchanged looks, then the Head Healer nodded.
Almost immediately, the black covering on Arthur seemed to melt away. The healer in the room gasped as the faintly foggy atmosphere disappeared.
"Treatment completed. Patient unconscious. Wake patient? YES/NO."
"Let him sleep," Sirius said. "Give his body time to adjust."
In the next few moments, the healers swarmed the room, apparating in, and immediately began waving their wands and consulting on what the spells they cast revealed.
If her sons hadn't held on to her, Molly would have fallen to the floor the moment she realized her Arthur was apparently cured. The others were crying tears of joy. Ron murmured, "Got something in my eyes," as if he was trying to convince everyone he wasn't crying. He was wiping at them almost non-stop.
The Floor Head Healer handed the black box to Sirius, "Any chance you'll let us examine that?"
Sirius smiled at him. "I'd like to, but there is literally nothing in this that anyone at the hospital could understand or duplicate." The healer looked offended at that claim. "Scanning it for spells is a waste of time," the Head of Black Family continued blithely, "they never show any spells in use. And yet," Sirius looked into the crowded treatment room, ". . . and yet it works. Even I don't know how. It just does."
The healer grimaced and nodded. "From the ancient runes it used, I'd say it dates back thousands of years." He sighed. "If we have another case that is responding poorly, do you think we could borrow this?"
"Unless something unforeseen comes up, I don't see why not. You have my floo address."
That was what the wizard had hoped to hear, and they left him smiling as the three slipped out of the ward and headed for the elevator. The Weasleys would catch up to them later.
They had no sooner stepped into the elevator when Neville's voice came on in Harry's link. "Captain," he said hesitantly.
"We're on our way, Neville," Harry interrupted as the elevator doors closed. "I don't know if this will help, but we haven't anything to lose."
Sirius handed the black box to Harry. "I'll chat up the Healer while you're busy."
Neville greeted them at the doors to the ward. Sirius peeled off from Harry and Hermione as he introduced himself to the Healer and started asking questions. He stood so that the Healer's back was to the ward.
The three crew members walked quickly to the two beds that held Neville's parents. Harry didn't waste time; he just placed the device on Neville's dad's chest and waited.
The first display was the same as before, "Searching. Patient semi-conscious, poor health, stable condition. Allow access to main systems?" Harry pressed the green circle. "Accessing main systems. Main systems online. Detecting systemic damage to nervous system. Detecting deteriorated musculature. Comparing to normative baselines. Patient related to Neville Longbottom?" Harry took a breath, looked at Neville, and motioned him to push the 'YES' circle.
"Begin Treatment?"
Neville again pressed the green circle.
"Beginning treatment. Repairing nerve damage. Repairing muscle deterioration. Treatment completed. Patient semi-conscious. Wake patient? YES/NO."
Neville stared at his father. His eyes were open, but his entire appearance looked different. His skin colour was the same pasty white, but he somehow looked healthier. Neville looked up at Harry and wet his lips, and looked at the black box as if he expected it to bite him.
"Stimulating brain cortex."
The man startled, blinked, and then frowned. The frown slowly faded and his eyes closed.
"Treatment completed. Patient asleep. Wake patient? YES/NO."
Neville looked on the verge of crying. Harry rested his hand on the boy's shoulder.
"Maybe he needs a little time to realize something is different?" Hermione suggested.
"We should try your mother next, maybe she'll have a better reaction?" Harry suggested softly.
Unfortunately, her reaction wasn't much of an improvement. She did look around the hospital room, and almost seemed to understand that something had happened, but soon, she, too, was asleep.
"I'm so sorry," Harry said. "Hannah did say that the instructions that were available said the machine could only fix physical damage, not psychological."
"Neville," Hermione said hesitantly. "Have any psychologists or psychotherapists evaluated your parents?"
Neville gave her a blank look, and shook his head. "Who?"
She sighed. "Muggles have special doctors who look at patients who have suffered severe mental shocks their systems." She looked around the room. "It looks as if the healers here aren't actually trying to treat your parents. What harm would it do to try muggle methods for a little while, because it appears that the healers seem to have given up? Think about it."
He nodded slowly.
"We tried, Neville. You tried. It's not your fault it doesn't seem to have done anything except make them healthy, once more," Harry said. "Would you like some company for a while?"
"No," he whispered. "I'd like a little time alone."
The two of them left Neville sitting between his parents with a forlorn expression and tears trickling down his face.
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"General, you need to see this," said Colonel Hacksaw. "There's an anomaly over London, England, at nine hundred and sixty klicks. It's not moving." His slightly shaky voice belied his calm tone.
"Hostile?" Major General George Hammond asked, masking his alarm.
"Nothing overt, yet, but it definitely did not originate from Earth. We're in briefing room three."
"I'll be right there." He hung up the phone.
An anomaly.
He stood and started for the door. Usually, anomalies were new spacecraft put up by the Russians or Chinese that had abruptly manoeuvred to a new orbit. For one to "hover" over a location wasn't unusual, but they were usually in a molniya orbit — an orbit with a sixty-three-point-four-degree high inclination and a high zero-point-seven-two-two eccentricity — which would give them eight hours over any location that was above thirty-five degrees latitude and difficult to see from the geosynchronous satellites at the equator. But the molniya satellites orbited from the height of a geosynchronous orbit down to six hundred klicks, with a velocity of thousands of klicks an hour at perigee.
To maintain a position over a location at nine hundred and sixty klicks, though, was very difficult. First, you had to bring the satellite to almost a full stop relative to the ground, then constantly fire thrusters so it didn't start falling, then resume your orbit when you were finished. Such satellites were very rare. They were basically one-shots; they ran out of fuel quickly and had to be carefully guided if one wanted to retrieve anything from the satellite. There hadn't been the need for such satellites since the early 1950's, before the molniya orbits had been discovered and refined.
It was his command, the Air Force Space Command, to keep track of dangers from space. Usually put there by foes of the United States of America and its allies.
"Senior Airman Jones first noticed it last night, and verified it today," the Colonel said after they sat down. "He noticed yesterday that several ten-centimetre pieces of debris in mid-level orbit were missing. He started a search program last night, and this morning brought the results to his superiors and my attention." He turned to the projection wall. "Here're the results."
The wall lit up from the projector mounted on the ceiling. They were looking at thousands of white dots that slowly moved, leaving a line behind each. Several dots were outlined with a red circle and left a red line behind them. "I'll speed this up," he said and the dots became streaks.
"This is composed of several radar recordings from NORAD and NATO stations. We've screened out the debris that was outside our area of interest. For many of these we have multiple recordings,"
They watched as the lines grew. Hammond felt his eyebrows go up when the red lines stopped, but the others didn't.
"The red dots are debris that has simply vanished. They were all located over London, England."
He paused.
"There are not that many instances, only six, but space debris simply does not cease to exist without hitting something. And, as you can see, none of the marked debris intersected with any other debris, which would have created a smaller cloud of debris, anyway." He paused. "Any energy weapons with which we're familiar would not have vaporized the debris without creating a halo of gasses that would briefly appear on radar, and none were observed."
He took a breath. "The last two pieces of debris to disappear were in the same area, nine hundred and sixty kilometres up, and the second piece was an hour after the first at the same altitude, indicating that whatever it is, it is still there. Intensive sweeps by radar reveal nothing, nor have telescopes, both ground and satellite."
He looked over at the General, bleakly. "Something is there. The evidence is that it came from outside. Or several different pieces of equipment not connected to each other, and thousands of klicks apart, somehow managed to malfunction the exact same way at the exact same time, and do so repeatedly within a short period of time."
Hammond sat thinking. His mind drifted back to a certain incident in 1969 when he was merely Lieutenant Hammond. The accidental visitors had been armed with advanced versions of current weapons, except for the one they had used on him. That had been something completely different — a zat. And he hadn't even heard of any such weapon in development — and he had been looking for it for the last twenty-six years. He had seen prototypes, and then working models, and finally production models of the other weapons. There had been nothing, though, of anything with the name zat or any project with initials that could have been the source of the name he had heard. Which, disturbingly, implied that that lone weapon wasn't anything developed here. However, he had recently heard rumours of something called a 'Gate.'
Was this the beginning of that?
"Maintain observations. Notify European Command to raise status to DEFCON Four. Notify the British high command of what you suspect, and your evidence. See if they've picked up anything we've missed." He gave a long look at Colonel Hacksaw. "Inform everyone else involved to consider this Top Secret until told otherwise by me."
And he would begin writing up a report for the Chief of Staff to give to the President.
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The Daily Prophet still reported the occasional disappearance or sudden illness striking a half-blood, but attacks on muggle-borns had almost disappeared, Harry was happy to see. The pure-bloods weren't so lucky, both Fortescue and Ollivander had gone missing, as had several of Riddle's supporters. No one knew what to make of what was happening.
Except the Requirement's crew.
Thanks to the D.S.F. teams, who now insisted they be called Marines, they had managed to intercept a few more raids. As a result, they had added a number of Death Eaters to the brig. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your point of view, some of the Death Eaters still insisted on trying to escape.
With Mrs. Edgecombe's help they had twenty-nine new employees. Gred, Forge, and Lee no longer had to man the Enterprise store when Josephine was off.
They had also opened a pub, Quark's, on the second floor of the Second-Hand Robes shop beside Gambol and Japes. It served breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with their speciality being the "home-cooked" stasis meals available for take-home, both individual and family. The unmarried wizards and witches were especially appreciative of the grocery-store-like pricing for the take-home meals. The in-pub versions were priced a bit higher than The Leaky Cauldron — they didn't want to hurt a thriving business and draw the attention of the pure-bloods — which paid for the employees quite nicely.
Astonishingly enough, the in-pub and home meals were both popular, and Quark's was turning a handy profit. Which decreased their dependence on Gringotts for cash by a surprising amount.
Harry had to smirk at that. Turning a profit really wasn't that surprising considering their costs for the meals were as close to zero as you could get. Their only expenses were in getting the original meals. They had a professional prepare a meal, then they cast a stasis charm on it and took it to the ship to get its pattern. With the pattern in place, they could replicate it. The stasis didn't replicate, but the meal appeared just as if had been taken off the grill seconds ago, piping-hot with a mouth-watering smell. Then they put it under stasis, again, and took it to the store where it waited for the customer to buy and un-stasis it when they wanted to eat it.
They were thinking of opening a second pub, also space-themed, Gus's Galaxy Grill, in London, proper. It would provide another nice front for the constant traffic they expected. Plus, maybe, get them a few muggles for their crew.
If it worked, they had plans for a Ten Forward, Crashdown Café, Mos Eisley Cantina, Chalmun's Cantina, and Callahan's Place for other locations. The muggles wouldn't get the stasised take-home meals, of course, but would have "perfect" gourmet meals to eat at bargain basement prices because pubs weren't competing with pure-bloods.
They had distributed hundreds of the panic-watches to past muggle-born Hogwarts graduates, going back decades. Many of them had dropped out of the wizarding world to find new jobs, but still occasionally kept in touch with friends. Most of those muggle-born were sceptical, with their only contacts being irregular meetings with friends. Almost all didn't subscribe to the Daily Prophet and had no idea of the changes pure-bloods were trying to push through.
Surprisingly, the take-home wizarding stasis meals were enticing a few of the muggle-borns back into the wizarding world just for the convenience of it all! Quark's took both pounds and galleons. As a result, the crew had grown significantly.
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