Ch. 50 — Talk Softly
During the weeks that Harry, Hermione, and the other Seventh-years had prepared for and taken their NEWTs at Hogwarts, the Weres and Lee had been kept busy watching what Star Gate Command had been up to.
One notable incident involved an alien named Ma'chello who tricked Daniel Jackson into exchanging bodies and left the base under Chyenne Mountain for Colorado Springs. Star Gate caught up with him fairly quickly, fortunately. They forced Ma'chello to return to his original body, but used one of the PiMPS to restore him to good health. He was astonished at their generosity despite his attempt to take over Daniel's body. He gleefully began sharing his discoveries and creations with the Star Gate scientists.
Several DSF Crewmembers joined them.
Then SG-1 accidentally crashed a survey unit on a planet they were preparing to visit and hit a field of plants. When SG-1 went to collect the unit, they discovered it had somehow caused a plague to break out that swept across the natives. At first, they thought they had it, too, as Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson seemed to be infected. But when they returned to Star Base, the symptoms went away.
It turned out that the natives were in a symbiotic relationship with the plant in the crash-site field, and that the survey unit had contaminated the plant with something from Earth. The plant was signalling its distress sonically, causing the natives to fall ill, and the SGC team. Complicating matters, the one plant seemed to have transmitted the contamination to other plants of the same type, causing the "plague" to spread to villages far away.
Daniel finally came up with a cure.
Next, a genetically-engineered young boy mysteriously appeared at Stargate Command and pled for help. He claimed that the Goa'uld were chasing him to find his race of invisible beings, known as Reetou. He warned Colonel Jack O'Neill that a rebel group of Reetou, planned to wipe out all humans in order to defeat the Goa'uld. The boy, Charlie, gave SG-1 the co-ordinates for the rebel base. SG-1 checked it out and found a large group at work. Fortunately, the tech that the DFS had watching the gate only needed a bit of tweaking to reveal the presence of a Reetou trying to access the Gate. However, they discovered five Reetou rebels were already on the Base.
Fortunately, magic easily revealed the six invisible aliens to the on-site DSF liaison there. He used his invisibility tech-cloak and hoverboard to track down and capture the aliens, one of whom turned out to be the boy's mother, who had secretly followed him to SGC. The others they tossed back through the gate to the rebel base. Before shutting down the connection though, they brought back the Dialling Device for that Gate to Star Gate Command.
The rebels would be unable to leave their planet without a spaceship.
Lee had sent the Su Song out to the rebels' base's planet to retrieve the Gate itself and prevent them from importing a new dialling device to restore use of the Gate.
While SGC was investigating the information, the genetically-engineered boy's organs were rapidly deteriorating. Using the SGC's PiMPS they were able to repair the organs and prevent further deterioration, and he and his mother were given sanctuary on the free-Jaffa planet.
██:::::██:::::██
After breakfast, they went down to Merworld and spent the day enjoying the gorgeous, untouched beaches. Harry and Hermione touched base with the merfolk in each of their villages, made sure they were happy with the way things were going, and listened to their few complaints. Then they visited the centaurs to see how well their village was doing, and for their complaints.
The introduction of the magical plants was going well, they reported, and the acre of the Forbidden Forest they had transplanted was thriving. It would be a few centuries before they had a true magical forest, but the centaurs were confident of the eventual result. There might even be new magical plants and small animals as the native plants adapted to the presence of such strong magic in their world.
The next day they visited 107 Piscium, just to get an idea of what the world was like. So far, all that they had done was transplant an acre of the Forbidden forest with the centaurs help.
That afternoon was Lycaon, to check up on how well the werewolves who didn't want to live on a space-station were adapting to their new home — and the absence of losing control once a month. It wasn't large, with only a small school and a few entrepreneurs starting businesses. Their village could have been on the continent on Earth, as far as they could tell, if there hadn't been two moons in the sky. The moons appeared bigger than Earth's moon, but each was actually smaller and closer.
They were working energetically at expanding the acre of Forbidden Forest that had been transplanted a few miles away from the village, as well as caring for the farms they had established. The unicorns and a small tribe of centaurs seemed to be doing well, too.
The Medical Units had been installed on all three planets, of course, and expanded to cover incidental replicator needs. The new natives wouldn't be building any starships, but any farming or construction equipment they needed, not to mention clothes, meals, and so forth were readily available.
It was quite an experience.
Then it was back to Earth and their boring jobs — for the adults. Not surprisingly, several of the adults asked if there were jobs they could do in the DSF. Harry quickly redirected them to Lee as being the best person who would know what skills the DSF could use or how they could be integrated into the workforce.
Hermione's parents, for example, were quickly discovering that with the PiMPS now in the hands of the NHS, the need for their job skills was quickly drying up.
Harry suggested that they take that world cruise they had always dreamed of making. Money, after all, was no longer a concern for them. Hermione could give them all they needed.
In fact, now that he thought about it, he had seen more of foreign worlds than he had of Earth! As a result, the four of them embarked on month-long world cruise that started on July Second, when the QEII docked at Southampton, and ended on August Fourth, again in Southampton.
It was one of the most relaxing times he had ever had . . . not a high bar to achieve considering his only other trip had been with the Grangers to visit France the previous summer . . . and that was before he and Hermione were a couple. The only studying either of them did was each other. Harry thought it disappointing that the ship wasn't French, with their casual topless habit around the pool.
Sirius had been upsetting wizarding England since December by being Sirius and pointing out all the deficiencies of the Ministry in general, and the Wizengamot in particular. With the conservative grip on the Wizengamot reduced to only a few bitter members, he used his clout as the richest family in England to pass laws that brought the wizards and witches into compliance with English laws. Muggle-baiting was a prison sentence; killing a muggle, except in self-defence, was Azkaban or the Veil, depending on the circumstances; all positions in the Ministry were to be based on skills and time in service, not who they knew or who their family was; veritaserum was required for all crimes in which there was a reasonable doubt that the one on trial might not be truthful. If the suspect was thought to be powerful enough to beat veritaserum, they were to be given a cleansing routine, and hit with a confundus just before testifying. Or, they could provide their memory of what happened to prove their innocence.
As a last resort, they would be forced to give a Wizard's Oath, on their magic, that they had not done the accused crime.
Tests would also be made to determine if the suspect had been obliviated, and an estimate of the amount of time lost. If it covered the time-frame of the crime, then they would be forced to give a Wizard's Oath on their magic that they had not committed the crime with which they were charged.
It wasn't perfect, but it was better than criminals using bribery and family connections to escape judgement as had been the rule in the past.
Mr. Finch-Fletchley had arranged for Sirius, Director Bones, and a few of her top aurors, to visit Scotland Yard and see just how much of England was under video surveillance, and that there were many, many private companies doing so, too.
Seeing how the "inferior" muggles took the tiniest bits of evidence to find criminals was truly eye-opening.
The Statue of Secrecy was in serious danger of collapsing if wizards didn't change their attitudes and attire when in muggle areas.
As a result, he and Amelia Bones worked hard to get laws passed mandating better behaviour by wizards when in areas frequented by muggles. Wizards and witches who didn't properly obey the Statute of Secrecy would be fined on scale that ramped up as the incident escalated in seriousness, up to Azkaban time.
The Daily Prophet began running articles highlighting and ridiculing wizards and witches wearing inappropriate clothes when among muggles, with pictures. They paired those articles with ones that the illustrated robes that wizards and witches could wear that wouldn't attract attention from the muggles.
The public ridicule probably did more to make wizards and witches behave in muggle areas than anything else.
The graduates' NEWTs scores were waiting for them when they arrived home. Hermione was over the moon . . . not only had she scored Outstanding Plus in Runes and Charms, but her collaboration with Angelina and Lee in creating the Portals had landed her a Mastery in Charms!
The first two weeks they were back, Harry and Hermione spent going through the paperwork that Lee accumulated on what the DSF had been doing. Plus getting Harry's signature on papers that required it, as Admiral of the Fleet and Head Executive of the DSF businesses.
During that time, SGC discovered a Goa'uld lord, Seth, living on Earth, apparently for thousands of years. He kept recurring in history as a powerful religious leader. This time, he had a heavily-armed cult following. The SG-1 team faced off with both government agents and the cult, which only ended when Samantha Carter managed to kill the Goa'uld.
Unfortunately, their next incident that required intervention by the DFS wasn't even on a mission! While starting to give a congratulatory speech at a promotion ceremony for Captain Samantha Carter, who was moving up to the rank of Major, Colonel Jack was suddenly beamed away.
"It seems," Lee told Harry over the Comm, "he was beamed to an Asgard ship where Thor told him that the Goa'uld System Lords plan an attack on Earth due to the killing of Apophis. The System Lords will send a fleet far more powerful than the one SG-1 faced at his hands, Thor said." He paused. "Because that was only two ships, this means we could be facing as many as two hundred Ha'taks." He sighed. "Unfortunately, the majority of the Asgard fleet is busy," Thos said. "They apparently are having difficulties of their own in their galaxy. . .. However, Thor did offer Earth a membership in the Asgard's Protected Planets Treaty as a way to hold off the Goa'uld."
Harry sighed. He tapped his comm. "Message to all Department Heads." He waited a second. "This is Harry, this is an emergency. Something has come up and I need your advice. Come to the Command Deck meeting room as soon as possible."
After a moment's further thought, he had Dobby contact Amelia, Hermione's, Colin's, and Justin's parents. He needed a wide range of opinions, and with the Grangers being dentists, the Creevey's being a milkman and house-wife, and the Finch-Fletchley's very upper-crust, all muggles, that would give the greatest spread. Getting Sirius and Remus was probably a good idea, too.
It took half-an-hour before all twenty-seven — Mr. Granger was booked with an appointment he couldn't cancel — were in the conference room. Joining Harry, Hermione, Lee, Sirius, and Remus were Hannah, Neville, Marietta, Luna, Ron, Ginny, Fred, George, Susan, Justin, Terry, Padma and Parvati, Anthony, Cho, Angelina, and Zacharias. Between them all, they covered the gamut from pure-bloods to muggle-born, and represented every department in the DFS.
After explaining the situation as they knew it, Harry went on, "The Battlestars being invisible is of limited use. Once we start shooting, the debris fields will disclose our positions, and they aren't as nimble as the XE-wings. Each of the Battlestars could easily handle four or five Ha'taks each, maybe more, without straining the shields too much, but if they were to gang up with a dozen or more Ha'taks on each? We would lose. Optimistically, we might be able to down fifteen Ha'taks each before the Battlestars were destroyed.
"We have barely enough XE-wing fighters to assign one to each of the remaining a hundred and forty Ha'tak's. Assuming, of course, that they only bring two hundred ships." He glanced around the room. "The last time we went against Ha'taks with the XE-wings, it took seven to down each one.
"And they only need one to destroy our planet.
"In other words, we are woefully outgunned.
"Ideas?" He looked around. "Oh, and we don't know exactly when they will come. It could be a week, it could be less."
Everyone sat in silence, absorbing what they had heard. Mr. Edgecombe was the first to speak. "You can't get more XE-wings because there's a pilot issue, right?"
Hermione nodded. "We have another seventy XE-wing fighters, but no pilots and no time to train more."
"We could pull the Mars and Venus Bases to Earth High Orbits," Lee suggested, "and have the two General Construction Units modify them with extensive weapon loadouts and manoeuvring engines, that should make for a good last-ditch defensive line to surprise any ships that try to get close. The modifications should only take a day, maybe a day and a half because most of the infrastructure is already in place."
Mr. Creevey leaned forward. "How many guns can you equip those bases with in that time?"
Lee looked over at him. "Lasers, actually, but around a thousand, enough to equal a Battlestar." He sighed. "But I think we would need fourteen Battlestars to be assured of winning."
The adults' eyebrows went up in surprise at that.
Mr. Creevey frowned, thinking.
"We can't put mines in place because we don't know from which direction they will be coming," Mr. Edgecombe mused out-loud. "Putting weapons on the Moon won't work, for the same reason."
"I detest saying it," Mr. Finch-Fletchley said, "but what about evacuation? Is it even possible?"
"It's possible," Harry said slowly, "but we would only be able to handle perhaps three or four billion, and it would leave the planet virtually defenceless as the Battlestars would be doing that instead of fighting." He sighed.
The adults exchanged amazed glances — only three or four billion?
"We would have to put all of them in stasis," Angelina said. "The problem would come afterwards. It would take years to develop the infrastructure to support those people once we arrived at a planet. Plus, it would be a logistical nightmare trying to keep families together, not to mention deciding who was released from stasis and in what order. Never mind the disaster of all those languages and cultures mixed together. And that doesn't even begin to cover the logistics of dealing with magicals!"
Hermione sighed. "And then there's the problem of convincing people that there is a disaster coming and to cooperate in evacuating."
"I would prefer we concentrate on defending the planet," Harry said, "and save that plan as a last resort if we can't come up with something else." He paused a moment. "Still, we'll prepare the Contents Under Pressure to hold as many stasised passengers as possible, with maximum use of enlarging charms. If we could manage anything like Scamander's trunk, we might even be able to take the entire population of Earth."
"I'll start my team on searching for suitable planets," Zachariah said.
"I'll have my team double-check our plant and animal inventories," Neville added. "There's no reason we can't start stockpiling the plants right now. We can even move Uranus Base and the Greenhouses to Merworld or Piscium."
"We'll have to set up the Were-Overseers on the Moon, temporarily," Remus said. "Setting up the facility won't take one of the GC Units more than a couple of hours."
"Could you use an invisibility spell to hide the planet?" Mrs. Granger said.
Lee shook his head. "That would only be a temporary solution. There are too many gravitational anomalies that would crop up, meteor groups that mysteriously changed their orbits or suddenly disappeared, and so forth."
"Could we make the sun unplottable to the Goa'uld?" Zacharias said.
"Maybe we could make the Earth and moon a fidelius secret to the Goa'uld," suggested Ron, a moment later.
Hermione shook her head. "It's too late for the fidelius. Their navigators probably already know where Earth is. The fidelius doesn't remove the information from them, it just makes it so they can't tell anyone else." She turned contemplative. "But the system being unplottable? That might work, the navigators wouldn't be able to type in the coordinates without making a mistake." She paused. "If we can get it to work on something as big as the solar system. If we can somehow gather the magical strength necessary."
"I know we can't place mines," Mrs. Edgecombe said hesitantly, "but can't we, I don't know, throw mines in front of them when we do discover where they are coming from? Mines with those laser guns so they can shoot at several ships at once?"
Mr. Creevey looked up. "That could work," he said thoughtfully. "I don't know if you can do it," he said as he looked Lee. "Make a couple of hundred of those, shove the mines into their formation as they arrive, send the mines the targeting information from one of the Battlestars, and have them fire in mass bursts on twenty ships at a time. If each one is as powerful as one of the XE-wings, then ten or twenty firing on one ship should disable it, right?"
"There was a space movie I saw with something like that," Mr. Finch-Fletchley said. "The Last Star Fighter?" He frowned a moment. "There was a scene where this ship was surrounded by the enemy and he ran out of missiles. He did something . . . what was it called . . .," He shook his head. "Anyway, it turned the ship over to an automatic targeting system and it started spinning on all three axis and shooting at the enemy ships. Naturally he destroyed them all." He grinned. "They didn't show it, but I sure he sicked up when the ship stopped spinning."
Lee perked up. "Ships that were basically just laser-mounts, a computer, and minor engines . . . yeah," he said, nodding. "That's doable! We could even have the XE-wings tow them into position."
Angelina looked over at Harry and Hermione. "Actually, for something that simple, couldn't we have a few thousand of the Fuel Depots convert themselves to automated laser platforms? They could cannibalize their own structure for most of the components, right? A couple of asteroids strategically positioned could provide whatever other materials they needed."
Most of the Crew nodded at the thought.
"Fuel Depots?" Mrs. Finch-Fletchley said sharply.
"A few thousand?" Madam Bones said almost at the same time.
Lee shrugged and quickly explained, "When we first found the Requirement, it was almost out of fuel, it was something we had never heard of — which we later discovered the Goa'uld called naquadah — and it wasn't in our solar system, nor any that were close to us. We managed to cobble-together a nuclear reactor of using helium-three as a fuel, which is freely available on Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, and Neptune and could be harvested by the Requirement. It wasn't as efficient and required massive fuel tanks, but it worked. That's what we used for nine months or so, at first.
"Then we realized we could make naquadah. Unfortunately, it's not very efficient and the Requirement would spend all it's time just making the fuel and doing nothing else. So, we started building Fuel Depots that would gather the helium-three we needed to make the naquadah. Unfortunately, each one takes a month to make about an ounce of naquadah. It would require tens of thousands of them to get the tonnes of naquadah we needed for the Battlestars, not to mention the hundreds of pounds each XE-wing needed.
"So, the first Fuel Depot we built we had replicate itself, and then both replicated themselves again, and so forth. It took over a year and three months before we had enough, but eventually we had enough to make nearly a tonne and a half of naquadah per month. When we had enough Fuel Depots to supply the Battlestars, Runabouts, XE-wings in the quantity we expected to use, we stopped replicating them and started making the naquadah instead. It was . . . what," he looked at Hermione from the older adults, "forty-five thousand?"
Hermione had her "note-pad" out. "Forty-nine thousand one hundred forty-eight."
"Where are they?" burst out Mr. Creevey.
Everyone looked incredulous. Most of the Crew had known about the Fuel Depots, just not how many.
"Most are in close-in orbits around Uranus," Hermione explained, "hidden under both a tech-cloak and disillusionment, aversion, and don't-notice-this charms. Twenty-four thousand are now in other star systems orbiting giant planets to avoid the all-in-one-basket issue."
Lee heaved a big sigh. "Then we realized we didn't need full fuel tanks for each ship, we only needed enough naquadah for a few seconds and could use a doubling enchantment to create the naquadah that we actually used in the ships as we needed it, just like the never-out inkpots or the never-ending scrolls. We've been warehousing the extra naquadah against future ships we may build."
"How long would it take a Fuel Depot to convert itself to a weapons platform?" Madam Bones said, frowning.
"A couple of hours to reprogram the computer on the Depot, a few more hours to debug it, then a day, maybe two for the physical conversion. But that would only get us a small number," Lee said, shrugging. "Manpower."
Angel gave him a look that clearly questioned his intelligence. "So, reprogram the first one and have it transmit the required changes to all the others!"
Lee stared at her, then held his head in his hands, elbows on the table, shaking his head at his missing that obvious point.
"I dare say," said Mr. Finch-Fletchley, "that we could surround the Earth in a cloud of ten thousand of these things and dare the Goa'uld to try anything! Reserve the rest as reinforcements if they try to concentrate on any one area of attack."
"With a ratio of a hundred-to-one," Mrs Finch-Fletchley said, "I don't think the Goa'uld ships would stand a chance!"
"We could temporarily park them at the Lagrange points, and move them into position when the Goa'uld fleet arrives," Hermione said quietly, thinking. "The Lagrange points would also give us early warnings should they not come into the system from the side the Earth's on at that moment. All of them could keep watch north and south of the orbital plane, too."
They discussed the idea some more
Finally, Harry said, "Alright. Lee, Angel, get your teams together and come up with a program for the Fuel Depots to rebuild themselves as Weapon Platforms and start the first one.
"While its working, adapt the point-defence program from the Battlestars into a targeting system for the new Platforms. Right now, concentrate on a program that can take the targeting information sent via a Battlestar. If we have time, modify it to determine its own targets, based on distance, most dangerous, and highest value. The engines will need to be robust enough to allow it to manoeuvre freely, so it can move itself to the best firing position. Later we can add more so they can move around in the solar system as needed.
"The power unit needs to be big enough to keep the lasers continuously firing indefinitely, and keeping up the tech shield."
He glanced at Lee and Hermione. "Do we have enough naquadah?"
Hermione referred to her notebook again, and laughed. "The Fuel Depots have made five point four tonnes of naquadah since they came online in April. However, we've taken over two hundred metric tonnes of naquadah from Goa'uld ships and worlds that declared they didn't want a Gate or the worlds were uninhabitable. That gives us a bit over eight kilograms or about eighteen pounds per Depot. About triple what each XE-wing carries. More than enough for each Platform to survive an attack from a dozen Ha'taks, indefinitely."
Harry nodded happily. "Have the Su Song, Dogon, and Galileo start moving the Fuel Depots to the Lagrange points, as well as a few asteroids for raw materials while you're working on the program for the first Fuel Depot."
"Ginny, Luna, you can organize the Marines for another rescue effort, and have them help Neville's team in acquiring the plants and animals."
"Also, Lee, make sure the Battlestar Captains know what's happening, and that the XE-wing pilots are on a proper combat-ready rotation."
"Oh, and make sure the stocks of Felix Felicis are distributed, and see if Slughorn has anymore for us." Slughorn had been making a continuous supply of the rare and expensive potion. He was quite rich, now, as were his assistants who were doing the brewing under his supervision.
He turned Bones, "Director Bones, would it be possible to get several Time-Turners? Twenty-four-hour units? The programming team could isolate themselves on the Requirement while working on the problem. That way we don't waste any time that we don't have to. Neville and his team could work on getting plants and animals we don't already have in stasis. Hermione, Cho, and Marietta can start on the enchantments for space-enlarging the Contents Under Pressure and the green houses to the maximum."
She frowned. "I think I might be able to, but I can't guarantee success. The Unspeakables are very protective of them."
Harry and Hermione exchanged glances.
"Perhaps you can persuade them if you tell them that if they refuse it is highly likely there won't be a planet for them to hide the time-turners on."
She nodded.
"Dobby?" he called.
"Dobby be here, Master Admiral Harry Potter Sir," was the immediate enthusiastic response.
"Would you get a box of Felix Felicius gel tabs from stores?
"Aye, aye, Master Admiral Harry Potter Sir!" the house-elf cried out, disappearing and reappearing almost immediately. He held out the small box of tabs to Harry.
Taking it, he opened it and handed two gel-tabs to Bones. Each gel-tab was in a tiny parchment wrapping with "Felix Felicius," written on one side in large letters, and "one hour dose, take orally, wait five minutes," written on the other. "Take one of these when you think it might help the most. It gives you an hour of good luck." He turned back to Dobby, ignoring the Director's stunned look.
"Please take Director Bones back to her . . .," he looked at the Director and frowned, "office? Home?"
"Home," she said, still staring at the tabs, but then quickly put them in her pocket.
He nodded, "Her home. And can you listen for her to call you?"
"I'll be calling from the Ministry," she said
"Aye, Aye, Master Admiral Harry Potter Sir!"
As soon as the two disappeared, Harry began handing out the other doses, three each to Hermione, Lee, Sirius, Hannah, Neville, Marietta, Ron, Susan, Justin, Terry, Padma and Parvati, Anthony, Cho, Angelina, and Zacharias. The remaining nine he pocketed himself. "Use these at your discretion for when they will provide the most help."
Ginny and Luna already had three tabs as part of their normal Combat kit.
Then he clapped his hands. "Well, that's all I have right now. I'll let the rest of you get started on what you need to do."
Angelina shrugged. "I doubt I'll need more than Padma, Anthony, and Terry, who are already here. We can start laying out the parameters for the program while Lee and Hermione get their assistants."
They were starting leave the room for the Apparition Room when Dobby announced, "Dobby be here, Master Admiral Harry Potter Sir!" He was holding three Time-turners, each with a ridiculously long chain.
He stared at the House-elf a moment, then nodded. "Right," he said. "Director Bones took one of the gel-tabs before going to the Ministry?"
"Yes, sir, Master Admiral Harry Potter Sir!" Dobby said enthusiastically.
Bones must have used the good luck to acquire the time-turners, then time-turned herself back to when she left Dobby for the Ministry, before he had even had time to leave, Harry realized.
"Give one to Hermione," Harry said. "One to Lee, and the third to Neville. Hermione, who do you think you'll need? Dobby, would you please listen to Hermione and Lee for this, and fetch whomever they need? It's very important."
"Yes, sir, Master Admiral Harry Potter Sir!" He hurried over to the two.
"Before you all leave, I'd like to thank Mr. and Mrs. Edgecombe, Mrs. Granger, Mr. and Mrs. Creevey, and Mr. and Mrs. Finch-Fletchley for their help. They are all more familiar with non-magical solutions than most of us. Using the Fuel Depots as Weapons Platforms is something I'm not sure any of the others of us would have thought of doing. So, thank you for agreeing to help us."
They all murmured their own thanks for being invited.
"Okay, I'll be heading down to Star Gate Command to tell them some of what we've decided, and to see if they have any more information."
██:::::██:::::██
General Hammond was surprised when his Comm suddenly came to life. He kept it under his left-side epaulette where no one could see it but it was still readily available. Now that they had a liaison of the DFS in residence, though, it had never been used. He kept it simply as an emergency measure.
He had just hung up the phone after briefing the President and fielding his questions as well as he could. His next action would be to head to a conference room where he intended to discuss what they might expect from both the Goa'uld and the Asgard with SG-1.
"General Hammond," came an easily recognizable voice, "this is Potter. I have been briefed on the situation with the potential invasion by the Goa'uld. May I come down there and discuss our options with you?"
Hammond didn't know how they did it, but no one else could hear the Comm he wore. Fortunately, he was alone in his office. "Of course," he said. He stood up from his desk, "I'll meet you in the teleportation room."
The Admiral surprised him by not appearing in his normal clothes and spacesuit, but looking as a normal Caucasian in a uniform! The only feature consistent with his past was the blank mask and helmet over his face and head.
The other surprise was that it was a United Kingdom Royal Air Force uniform with a rank insignia of an Air Commodore that he was wearing.
"No spacesuit, this time?" George said.
The admiral shook his head. "I'm still wearing the spacesuit, it's just set to transparency. With its skin-tight fit, it can only be detected if I'm attacked, and that by the fact that I can't be injured."
George nodded. That made sense, and did fit in with the camouflage capabilities of the suits worn by the Stargate teams.
"And the uniform?"
"The D.S.F. met Thor and the Asgard when we were at Cimmeria. I do not want him to think that we have anything to do with Earth, directly, until we have no choice. I would like you to tell everyone that I have been sent to observe the negotiations on behalf of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.
"Which is why I contacted you directly. It gives our liaison plausible deniability that the DSF is involved, and none of the personnel will make that connection."
"The face mask and helmet will make that difficult," George said dryly.
"I wanted you to know that it was really me, Admiral Potter, arriving." He reached up and pulled on the fastenings for the helmet, it dropped to his shoulders, and disappeared, just as did the spacesuit helmets the Stargate teams used.
Hammond carefully studied the suit of the man/alien in front of him. He was average in build and looks, with the sort of face that was also average. He was neither outstanding in looks nor ugly. He would have blended in on any street in America without anyone commenting.
"We have incorporated special tech into the suit that hides my actual appearance." He smiled. "Blend a thousand different pictures of an average man, and that's what you see. Five minutes after we part, you will not remember any of my features, just that I was . . . average. And ten people will describe ten different versions of average."
The General nodded. The perfect disguise, in other words. A picture of him would match up with literally thousands of people, the differences so minute it would difficult to point them out.
"While cameras will be able to 'remember' the illusion, it won't be of much assistance."
Hammond nodded again. "How should I introduce you?"
"Air Commodore Black will do. It is close, but will not be traceable to me."
"I was just about to meet with S.G. One. Shall we . . . Commodore?"
"Lead the way, General, lead the way."
While they were walking, Hammond had to ask, "Isn't having the Gates and most of our base here on the Moon already telling the Asgard that the D.S.F. is involved?"
"Not really. They can easily detect the presence of the Ring technology, but they have no yardstick on actual human technology development. Between what you've managed to steal and your own ingenuity, you could have set up this base on your own. If they've seen the X-wing fighters in the base, then they can't rule out that you built this yourself. After all, until you ran into them on Cimmeria, they had no idea you were in conflict with the Goa'uld.
"As for our ships and bases? I guarantee they can't detect them."
██:::::██:::::██
They had barely sat down in the conference room and Colonel O'Neil was reassuring the General that the Asgard, while not necessarily on their side, were definitely not on the side of the Goa'uld, when Thor suddenly beamed into the room.
They had four days to prepare, he told them, and the Asgard wanted O'Neil to be the lead negotiator. O'Neil was not pleased.
After he left, the "Commodore" sighed, held his hand straight up and twirled it. "Well," he said, "it looks like the blocking devices given to you by the D.S.F. don't stop the Asgard. You should complain to them about that oversight. I'll have to warn the British government, too."
General Hammond gave him a steady look and wondered if Potter was being facetious. "Yes, of course."
Potter looked at Jack. "It's nice to see that the Asgard have such confidence in you, considering what I've heard about some of your missions."
The colonel gave him a startled look. "I don't know why they would think I'm best to head this . . . negotiation. I'm not very good at that sort of thing."
Black grinned at him. "I'm sure you will do fine. You'll piss them off and keep them off-balance. You can't do better than that in a negotiation."
He looked around, and George nodded at him to continue.
"Alright. Now to why I'm here. The D.S.F. wants me to . . . share . . . some information. They are working in the background to come up with a counter to the fleet of two hundred Ha'taks that Thor warned you were being gathered for an invasion. Now that we have a time-frame with a minimum of four days, they should be able to be more specific in what they can accomplish.
"At the moment, if worse comes to worst and the fleet is sent, they believe they can evacuate about four billion people with their four Battlestars and another ship, a freighter, the Contents Under Pressure."
Hammond joined the rest in staring at him, mouth gaping.
"Four billion?" Major Carter said in disbelief.
Black nodded. "I was told they would be in stasis and stacked in honeycomb-like cells, but they would be safe."
"Stasis?" Jack said.
"Think frozen like popsicles," Black said by way of explanation, "but they aren't really frozen. No food, air, or watering needed. Once they get to another planet, they can easily be restored." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Building something to live in and making a working society? That will be a logistical nightmare I wouldn't wish on even the Goa'uld."
Everyone shuddered at that thought.
"However, they also said that if we can stall them long enough, a week more at the most, they will have . . . prepared . . . a trap that should be big enough to stop the Goa'uls cold."
██:::::██:::::██≈ ≈ ≈ ≈
Author's Note:
June: Serpent's Song does not happen because Apophis is dead.
July: Out of Mind & Into the Fire do not happen because Hathor is dead. 1969 happens, but as it concerns only George Hammond, he never mentions it to anyone.