Ch. 52 — Taking out the Trash
Fortunately, both their rooms were not far, and Yu made a quick appearance. Nirrti, however, did not respond to their attempts to get her attention, and the order went out to find her.
"I thought only Hathor could turn invisible?" Jack said as they waited.
Both Goa'uld looked up startled.
"Is she still around?" he continued.
SGC did not know of all the Goa'uld the DSF had captured and executed.
"Is there any way we can force this person into visibility?" Harry asked.
Both Goa'uld shook their heads.
An Airman came in and saluted General Hammond. "Sir! No trace of Nirrti can be found in the base. Only her quarters haven't been searched, sir!"
"Should we get a Transphase Eradication Rod?" suggested Major Carter. "It might be a Reetou rebel."
The two Goa'uld scowled.
"It is not an insectoid form, but a mammal," Teal'c said.
Jack shrugged. "It still might help."
An Airman took off at a run.
"What about a Goa'uld healing device? It might tell us something?"
By then two airmen with a stretcher had shown up. Teal'c gingerly moved off the person while keeping a good grip on their hands. The Airmen took only a few moments to move the body to the stretcher, and then handcuffed both arms and legs to it to prevent their prisoner's escape.
"To prevent any misunderstandings, I would like all three of you to witness this," General Hammond said, gesturing at the apparently empty stretcher. One of the Airmen placed the torn drape across the stretcher, outlining her body. "Which means we must open Nirrti's quarters. I would like you both to watch so there will be no mistakes on our part and that Nirrti won't misunderstand our intentions."
Knocking increasingly hard didn't work. Nor did using the phone-intercom system to call inside. Eventually, they had to use the emergency over-ride to unlock the door and get inside . . . where they discovered that Nirrti was not there.
While the group headed for the medical section, another, more thorough, search of the complex was initiated.
Once in Medical, the Transphase Eradication Rod did not help determine who was on the stretcher.
The Goa'uld healing device did not make the person visible, but it did reveal that the person on the table was a female and host to a Goa'uld!
It also woke her up.
"You might as well reveal yourself, Nirrti," Harry said. "We searched your quarters and the entire base without being able to find you. With the only other two Goa'uld on the base being Cronus and Yu, who are both here, you are the only suspect left."
She slowly reappeared, glowering at everyone.
Cronus was giving her a look that promised much pain in her future.
Yu was too.
Primarily because she hadn't shared her new ability or the technology that accomplished it, Harry suspected.
"It seems," General Hammond said, "That either Nirrti tried to sabotage the negotiations for reasons of her own, or this is all an elaborate ploy to trick the Asgard into thinking we had attacked you so you could justify attacking us."
Cronus switched his glare from Nirrti to Hammond and snorted. "We would do no such thing. If we cannot come to an agreement, then we will attack and wipe you out." He glanced at Yu and they stared at each other a moment, then Yu nodded. Cronus looked back at the handcuffed Nirrti. "We need to take care of this . . . problem, so the negotiations are suspended for five days. We will return then, and you will tell us if you accept our demand that you give up both of your stargates." He paused and stared at Hammond.
"The . . . delay . . . is acceptable."
"Release her," ordered Cronus.
The Airmen rapidly complied after Hammond gave them a nod to proceed. Once she was standing, both Yu and Cronus seized her arms and started for the door.
Five minutes later the trio was passing through the Stargate.
Harry and Hammond retired to his office.
Hammond studied him, but Harry could see his eyes slipping from Harry's face to his uniform. Finally, he said, "Was that the emergency?"
"We could pick up that a Goa'uld was moving around in the halls, but the security cameras showed nothing there. We suspected it was one of the Goa'uld. Naturally, it required . . . delicate . . . handling."
At the General's steady gaze, Harry added, "We did not arrange for those three persons to be together in Cronus' quarters, that was all Nirrti's doing.
"I imagine that Nirrti planned to sabotage the negotiations while at the same time expanding her own influence by eliminating Cronus. Two birds with one stone, you might say. Getting caught? I'm sure she thought it was impossible."
Hammond slowly nodded.
Harry sighed. "Well. At the least, this gives us the extra time the DSF needs to complete their project!"
"Just how many of those Weapons Platforms are you scheduled to make?"
Harry stared at him a moment, then shrugged. "Twenty-four thousand is the goal."
Hammond stared at him blankly.
"The plan is to store three thousand at each of the five Lagrange points, a thousand on each of the Battlestars, another thousand each at Mars, Venus, and Uranus Bases, and then one thousand each at two planets we're colonizing, Rigel Kentaurus and 61 Virginus. There's a third at 107 Piscium that is currently unoccupied, but will soon have colonists. We will build and add Platforms there when appropriate.
"Please notify your government that those three systems are off-limits without special permission. The inhabitants are going to be quite hostile to humans. None of them have a Stargate, and are in different Stargate sectors with regards to Earth. So, if there are any habitable planets in those two sectors, we can put a Stargate on them for your easy access."
Hammond frowned. "And that is in addition to the two from Rillaan and Hadante?"
Harry nodded. "We currently have eight not committed to any use."
Hammond gave him another stare.
Harry would hate to play poker against him.
"When you first contacted SG-1, you said that you only had one stargate, and now you have eight?"
Harry grinned. "The Su Song took stargates from the Tollan home planet, P3R-233, Rillaan, Hadante, Cimmeria, 5C-353, Chulak, Svoriin, one from the planet the Tokra were on, PXY-887, one from the Reetou Rebel Base, and two from Goa'uld ships we destroyed that happened to have a Stargate on them. One of those was from one of the ships that Apophis used to attack Earth, which you are currently using.
"We're reserving four for the Battlestars to give remote access to Stargate Command, so that leaves us eight. All we need are places to use them. Two are now ear-marked for SGC."
Hammond shook his head wryly. "Eight."
"Hey, it's not your fault the Goa'uld can't count."
The General cleared his throat. "On the Weapons Platforms, how good are they?"
Harry sighed. "We don't know," he said, simply. "Each one has twenty-four quad-laser units; one quad-laser unit has the same power as the four lasers on each X-wing. It took seven of them to disable each Goa'uld ship when they attacked Earth, but that was a surprise attack for them. In a slugfest?" Harry shrugged. "In theory, each platform could fire twelve quad-lasers at a target on one side, completely disabling it, just as the seven X-wing fighters did that day."
He shook his head. "Whether that holds true, we don't know. We're hoping that throwing massive numbers of these Platforms against the Goa'uld will do the job, even if an individual unit can't take out a Ha'tak."
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The DSF didn't waste time, and Harry spent most of his helping make portkeys. The General Construction units took two days to modify each of the three planetary orbit bases, Mars, Venus, and Uranus to carry a thousand Platforms while also altering the Bases to have their own thousand quad-lasers and four-hundred-and-fifty plasma-cannons. The Weapons Platforms being self-shrinking made it a rather simple operation, too. Setting the self-shrinking charm on each Platform would be easy on the Platforms that had not yet had their marble-blocks powered up. A simple command sent to all the Platforms had their de- de-molecularizer carving the needed runes in only seconds. Naturally, each of the marble-blocks already had invisibility and shield rune-sets cut into them.
The contractor that had been hired earlier, Bob, had already powered up two-thousand of the blocks. Bob had ten teams of five wizards — it took five wizards to power up each marble block, and they could only do one block a day. Bob's teams were working as fast as they could, but it was simple logistics that had them moving so slowly.
At that rate, it should take over eight years to do them all.
Which meant that only about two thousand platforms had had magical protections added since December. Unfortunately, carving the runes for shrinking into those would also take a day each.
Part of the new programming for the Weapons Platforms was to add the self-shrinking to any Fuel Depot's marble spell-stone that wasn't powered up yet. They didn't need all the Platforms to be self-shrinking, but adding the rune-sets before powering up the marble-blocks meant the capability was there if it became important — better to have it and not need it then need it and not have it!
It was decided that powering up the Platforms with the shrinking rune-set already in place would be a better for now on.
Two hundred crewmembers doing nothing else after the portkeys were finished, including Bob's teams, should be able to do the seven-thousand Weapon Platforms they needed for the Battlestars. It should only take a bit more than four-and-a-half months — assuming they were able to avoid the invasion.
If not, then they would go with what they had and hope for the best.
In the meantime, the Platforms would be parked beside the bases and emplaced as each was fuelled and shrunken.
In any case, getting the three-thousand Platforms to each Lagrange point didn't even take a day for a ship capable of hauling an entire city through space.
They now had eighteen thousand Weapon Platforms prepositioned to protect Earth from any size armada the Goa'uld might send after them. Only a few thousand were properly supplied with sufficient naquadah for an extended slug-fest, but that still meant they outnumbered the planned invasion fleet . . . if the number given by Thor was accurate.
Assuming the Platforms worked as intended, of course.
Then the GCU's worked at modifying the Battlestars to carry a thousand Platforms, each. Each Battlestar's Platforms were anchored to the hulls as they awaited their fuelling and marble spell-stone powerups.
Getting the naquadah to the Platforms would be a priority, of course.
It was exhausting work.
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As scheduled, five days after they left, the Goa'uld — Cronus, Yu, and a new Goa'uld, Tilgath — and Thor returned to Earth and SGC. They were pleased at Earth's handing over the Gates. The SGC managed to stall another day before finally, and reluctantly, relinquishing their two gates.
Both Stargates had been moved to Earth before the Goa'uld and Thor had made their first appearance to avoid any suspicions the Stargates hadn't been there the entire time.
Thor was the one who took the Gates, not the Goa'uld, although the Goa'uld closely supervised every step. They then left Thor's ship via those same stargates.
The DSF managed to sneak through drones with each one, verifying their stargate addresses, as well as their physical positions in the galaxy.
The day after Thor and the Goa'uld SGC left, the replacement Stargates were installed on the Moon. SGC decided to hold back on using the Stargates for a time, just to be careful. In the meantime, the Stargate Teams and X-wing fighters would undergo additional training.
The DSF inspected both Moon and Earth SGC Bases carefully, searching with Tech and Magic for any hidden surprises the Goa-uld might have left behind.
And they had left behind a few gotchas! On Earth that would have caused quite a few problems if left in place. Two were deadly aerosol viruses left in timed containers set for one and two months. Three were bombs, naquadah enhanced, each capable of reducing Cheyenne Mountain to a crater.
Those were set for one year. All three would have pumped enough material into the air to force a winter that lasted at least two years, if not more. * Not to mention the vast number of earthquakes and tsunamis they would have set off as the blast rattled the insides of the planet and initiated earthquakes years, decades, and centuries before they would normally have "slipped."
Following on the impact of the viruses, which could have killed as many as much as fifty-percent of the population, the resulting famines would have completed the devastation of every society. The Humans would be lucky if the surviving world population reached up to twenty-percent. It would be even lower if the winter lasted longer than three years.
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With the Goa'uld invasion now not a concern, the DSF again found themselves with a shortage of naquadah. They wanted to bring all the Weapon Platforms up a full "tank", which they estimated at twenty pounds — nine kilograms — each, a bit more than the original estimate just for safety's sake.
Unfortunately, they had underestimated how many tonnes of Naquadah they had already used in equipping the Battlestars, Bases, XE-wing fighters, Runabouts, and Medical Units. They needed two hundred and sixteen tonnes — fifty-seven tonnes short of what they had on hand even if they liquidated all six Stargates they had left. If they kept the Gates intact that jumped to eighty-seven tonnes. The twenty-five thousand Fuelling Depots they had in other star-systems would give them only three-quarters of a tonne a month and take bit over nine-and-a-half years to make up the shortfall.
The solution was fairly simple — rebuild their fleet of forty-nine thousand Fuelling Depots. That would give them one and a half tonnes a month.
Fortunately, they still had twenty-five thousand Fuelling Depots, all they needed to do was switch them to replication mode. It would take only a month to have the complete number back.
Unfortunately, making one and a half tonnes a month would still take four years and ten months to make the eighty-seven additional tonnes they needed.
However, doubling the Depots for another month would reduce that to two years and five months. That was a reasonable time-to-completion — and would give the DSF the time to distribute the naquadah at a more leisurely rate than currently. It would no longer be an "all hands on deck!" crisis and most of the DSF crewmembers could go back regular duties.
The Galileo headed for the first star system with a giant planet, Lalande 21185, which they estimated at thirteen times the mass of Earth. With Uranus at nearly fifteen times that of Earth, Lalande 21185 was a good match in terms of expected atmospheric content . . . that is, helium-three was very abundant. Plus, it was only seven-and-a-half lightyears away.
The first few days they spent finding asteroids of the right makeup, mostly metallic, then another few days of hauling them into orbits above the Depots. As a result, every Depot was always within range of a massive asteroid for raw material for its replicator — and if one asteroid ran out of a particular element, one of the others would orbit by that did have that element. Then they started the Fuelling Depot replication process.
The Su Song went to Gliese 674, which was very similar to Lalande. They followed the same routine.
The Dogong went to Gliese 687. The bonus was that this star system had two giant planets. The first was a planet seventeen times the mass of Earth, barely twelve percent bigger than Uranus. The second was further out and had a mass only seven percent more than Uranus.
It was a great training exercise for the new recruits.
If any of the Depots had difficulty of any kind, it would send a signal to the Requirement with the particulars. They expected the problem would be in a raw material being used up. Someone would go out to fix the problem.
All told, it took the Galileo and Su Song a week to finish their assignments — which meant they could return to their previous activities and research. The Dogong was still at Gliese 687.
Now they would just have to wait for the three months it would take to finish the process, and start receiving naquadah.
Which gave them plenty of time to finish with the other fourteen thousand and six hundred Weapons Platforms — and double-check that everything was setup properly on them, with a minimal amount of naquadah to get them operational, if not ready for combat.
Not to mention finishing the Weapon Platforms' housing bays on the Battlestars and Bases.
The Requirement stayed in orbit over the Earth and served as the coordination centre for everything, primarily distributing portkey blanks and collecting the finished portkeys. They had the naquadah stored on the Requirement, and made a daily trip to the LaGrange points to distribute what they had as the portkeys were finished.
After that was distributed, they would just stockpile the portkeys until the Fuelling Depots started to come back online in three months.
Once that happened, then the Dogong would fetch the accumulated naquadah each month from the three star-systems as a training exercise. The Dogong would also fetch Fuelling stations from each system until Earth's system had forty-nine thousand stations in service, shared between Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn.
Then it was just a matter of waiting until the Goa'uld system lords caught on to how they had been hoodwinked. Hopefully, it should be well-after the Battlestars had been completely refurbished with their fully-fuelled shrunken Weapon Platforms sometime in February of next year.
By Hermione's reckoning, the Goa'uld shouldn't suspect anything until a year from now, when the three bombs were scheduled to go off. In the meantime, they would be expecting their planted viruses to be decimating the world-population. Any reports of SGC teams in the field would be ignored as "old" rumours because they "knew" the Tauri did not have any Stargates.
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In mid-September, the SGC teams once more started going through the Stargates.
A short time later, Hermione came to him on the Requirement's Bridge.
She sighed heavily. "We have a problem with the Portals."
He looked at her.
She rubbed her forehead over her right eye. "While we can get them to anywhere we want in the Solar System, it seems getting them to reach any of the other star systems isn't working. It simply takes too much magical power." She shook her head. "It seems to try to form, but nothing happens."
Harry leaned back.
This was a problem. Having a Portal for the Goblins was essential. It also made it monumentally more difficult for them to round up the more difficult magical creatures and get them to other star system, especially the dragons.
Portkeys could make the trip, but the exposure to space with no atmosphere would deliver an icicle to the destination, not a magical creature. Apparition was right out with its limit of about six hundred miles. Vanishing Cabinets were similarly limited in range, even if it was a much greater distance.
The Room of Requirement had connected them to the ship, despite it being over a billion miles away, and Hermione had used similar magic to create the Portals. At least, that's what Harry assumed.
Harry frowned. It felt like the answer was right there, just out of reach.
"Hermione, Vanishing Cabinets" he said, "are kind of like the Portals, aren't they? Only they don't do anything until you close the door and they have to have a matched cabinet as a destination, right?"
"In a way," she said, "much of the arithmancy is the same."
"So, what if you," he said slowly, "did the same thing . . . paired them up, I mean?" He paused. "Maybe the Portals need a dedicated target to make the distance?"
Hermione frowned at him. Her expression slowly changed to surprised, then back to frowning in concentration. She grabbed her tricorder and started working, drifting over to a nearby control-chair and sat, concentrating on what she was reading and writing. "It would mean this whole section could be deleted and a simple search for this pattern used," she mumbled. She continued working for a while
Harry watched, smiling. She was already lost to another world. He went back to reviewing some of the reports Lee had sent him on his tricorder.
A couple of hours later, she suddenly stood. "I need to talk to Angela and Lee," and rushed off the Bridge.
Harry shook his head wryly.
Just before October, the Mars Portal was closed, the atmosphere was up to Earth Standard, nearly fifteen pounds of pressure per square inch. Unfortunately, it wasn't a nice nitrogen and oxygen mix of seventy-eight and twenty percent respectively. The carbon dioxide was at nearly zero-point-zero-three percent, much higher than Earth's. Fortunately, that wasn't a bad thing as long as they could get the oxygen content up to twenty-point-nine percent. It was also still beastly cold. The Mars team estimated they should be able correct the ratios to what were needed in only a few months, then they would work on bringing the temperature up.
The Venus team had a much tougher time of it. While they had vented a great deal of super-hot carbon-dioxide to Mars, the Venusian atmospheric pressure had barely changed. The teams were now pumping water into the atmosphere by the cubic kilometre, mined from comets in the ice asteroid belt between Uranus and Neptune. The intent was that the water would absorb some of the carbon-dioxide, as it did on Earth, bringing down both the temperature and the atmospheric pressure. If they could drop the carbon-dioxide content down from ninety-six-and-a-half percent to the same as Earth, zero-point-zero-four percent, that would make the Nitrogen content account for seventy percent of the atmosphere, the same as Earth. The remainder would, hopefully, be oxygen. At the same time, it would reduce the atmospheric pressure to something close to Earth's. They also were dispersing millions of tons of iron dust, gathered from the Martian-Jupiter asteroid ring, into the upper atmosphere to bring the sulphur-dioxide under control.
The newly tremendously expanded Contents Under Pressure was a huge assist. They now carry entire comets. A once-over with the improved de-materializer removed those elements they didn't want to take to Venus. It took a bit longer for that scan, but was well-worth the effort. They were able to acquire and deliver exactly what they wanted.
At the same time, in the upper atmosphere where the pressure and temperature approached Earth-normal, they were seeding it with atmospheric plankton that broke up the carbon-dioxide, keeping the carbon for growth and releasing the oxygen. Featherlight spells on the plankton platforms prevented them from simply falling into the lower atmosphere.
At least, those were the rough outlines of what they intended. There were far more details in what they doing that Harry simply didn't understand.
But, then again, he didn't have to. All he had to do was make sure they had the resources they needed. Which, with a good-sized replicator and the naquadah they already had in it, was simplicity, itself.
Merworld had a steady flow of Merfolk colonists, now. The Were's not at Uranus Base acting as overseers for SGC teams, were very happy with Lycaon. They were now getting immigrants from all over Earth as word slowly spread that there was a sanctuary for them that wasn't the stark wilderness.
The Goblins were still mistrustful of the DSF, and, based on how Wizards had acted in the past, Harry could hardly blame them for that attitude.
While the Goblins were debating if they should trust the DSF, the DSF had managed to stun and stasis a tribe of Trolls and a tribe of Giants from the continent and move them to the as-yet unnamed planet orbiting 107 Piscium. They were simply calling it 107d — there were two super-earths orbiting inside the third planet's orbit. Both were too close to the 107, the star, to be of any use. One was blasted like Mercury, and in a close ten-day orbit, and the other made Venus look positively pleasant with its average temperature of over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit and fifty-day orbit!
Meanwhile, SG-1 had their own problems. First with a Goa'uld killing weapon designed by Ma'chello that got out of hand, and then with Orbanian children who seem to learn at fantastic rates, but who turned out to be being used to manufacture nanites that were then "harvested" for adults to save the adults the chore of actually learning new material.
For that last, they managed to peacefully convince the Orbanians that their approach to education left a lot to be desired. And while it worked, the children of the next generation would have to be conscripted to do the same thing because their adults never kept the information they learned as children!
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In October, the fecal matter hit the rotating fan, as Hermione later put it — and it wasn't even their fault.
It started when two people were captured in a secure storage facility in Area 51. Turned out that while they appeared to be Major Samantha Carter and Major Charles Kawalsky — fingerprints came back positive for both — they were actually from a different reality and had come through the Quantum Mirror from the planet P3R-233. The same Mirror that Daniel had fallen through and returned from to warn SGC that the Go'uld were on their way.
In their reality, the Goa'uld had just suddenly appeared just five days ago! The astonishing part was that in their Reality, it was December tenth!
Their SG-1 team had tripped across the Quantum Mirror months before, not the week it had been in this Reality. They hadn't had a Daniel Jackson on their SG-1 team, and none of their Team had fallen through the Mirror. Thus, while having discovered the Mirror, they hadn't received a warning of the impending attack.
Their Doctor Samantha had built a remote control for the Mirror months ago, which they had brought through with them. Plus, unlike this reality, their Stargate Agency — not Stargate Command — had kept the mirror at the Stargate facility instead of in Area 51 because they were still experimenting with it.
A direct Goa'uld assault on their Stargate Agency that had started days before had finally sent the two of them fleeing through the Mirror as the Agency resistance fell.
Lieutenant Loup had participated in debriefing the two, after watching the same interrogation videos as the SG-1 team. The two interlopers were quite surprised to see him wearing the DSF robes. Naturally, Loup was wearing a notice-this-not spell on his face and his spacesuit under the uniform.
Clearly, there was no equivalent to the DSF in their reality.
Everything appeared to be fine, the President gave permission to give sanctuary to the two alternate people, and they planned to integrate the two into the SGC. Then Dr. Carter began to suffer Entropic cascade failure — the result of two Carters in one universe — forty-eight hours after arriving in this reality. A condition she had predicted but had not expected to start so soon.
Daniel managed to convince both SG-1 and the General that the only solution was a risky trip back through the quantum mirror to contact the Asgard. The alternate Asgardians might be willing to set up Earth as a protectorate, just as they had done to this Earth.
Which was when Harry and Hermione were requested for consultation. They decided they needed Luna along, as well.
They did not walk into the meeting uninformed, however. Lieutenant Loup, the day before, had sent them his memories of the meetings he had attended.
"General Hammond," Harry after they apparated into the Teleportation Room.
"Admiral Potter, Number One," the General replied. He looked at Luna curiously.
Harry smiled. "This is one of our Combat Operations Commanders."
The General nodded to her. Turning back to Harry, he said, "Sorry to bother you, but I believe you might have ideas we missed."
He led them out of the room. Harry was happy to see the walls had been reinforced and there was a machine-gun turret covering the door. Squinting, he could see the unbreakable and imperious charms cast on the weapon. The gun tracked them as they exited the room. The two also felt the anti-apparition spells cover them as they passed through the doorway.
Any unauthorized person arriving in that room was in for a world of hurt if they didn't cooperate.
"Lieutenant Loup filled us in on the situation," Harry explained as they followed the General.
"Good. That will save time."
When they arrived, it was only O'Neill and Teal'c waiting for them.
Seeing their questioning looks, the General explained. "Doctor and Major Carter are working on the Asgard power generator; Major Kawalsky and Doctor Jackson are using the Quantum Mirror dialling device to locate the correct other alternate reality."
Then the General explained what they had come up with to secure the Stargate and contact the Asgard.
Luna was almost bouncing in her seat. "Oh! Oh! Send us! Send us! My marines have been chomping at the bit to go against the Jaffa! Let us clear the base!"
The three from DGC were staring at her, unable to hear her comments over the comm to Harry and Hermione.
Harry held up his hand to indicate the three DSF were in a discussion.
"How many do you think it will take?" Hermione asked her.
"Send all four Requirement Platoons, a hundred and eleven! They could secure the whole mountain in under half-an-hour!"
"And then what?" Harry asked. "What's to prevent them from just bombing the mountain and burying the gate?"
"We could shrink a squadron of XE-wing fighters," Lee suggested over the comm. Most of the department heads were listening in. "They would provide all the air-cover we need! Especially if the first thing they do is take out the two Ha'taks Apophis brought."
Ron was laughing. "Why not send through a shrunken General Construction Unit after we get the Base," Ron said, still chuckling. "Then we can do like we did at Chulak . . . beam all the Jaffa into a desert, the Sahara perhaps, and the Goa'uld into a jail cell in the Base."
"Can we do that, Hermione, Lee?"
"A GCU isn't that large, actually," Lee said.
"Not much bigger than Hogwarts," Hermione added softly. "It is mostly the powerplant, de-molecularizer/replicator, and station-keeping engines with a small Control Room, kitchen, and bunks for emergencies."
"It would take several wizards working together, but we could get it down to toy size, I should think, without too much effort," continued Lee.
"If we could make a similar-sized cavern beside the Base, we wouldn't even have to take it to orbit," Ron said.
"But we would still need to handle the Ha'taks and they are way out of range for the GCUs," Hermione reminded them.
"Instead of shrinking them, why not use an expanded bag? We could make one for each XE-wing, and have each pilot carry his own ship!" Lee said excitedly. "Once on the other side and outside, pull them out, get in, and head for orbit. One of them could carry a bag with the GCU, and pull it out once they were close enough to the Ha'taks to clear out the Jaffa and Goa'uld."
"With both tech-cloaking and magic don't-notice-this spells, the Goa'uld would never see them," Ron added.
"Then the GCU could start making Weapon Platforms and the XE-wings placing them in stationary orbits to defend the planet against other Goa'uld ships."
"It would be better to take through a couple of hundred we've already made, and have them start replicating themselves using the Ha'taks for the resources. They should have enough naquadah on one of them to make ten thousand weapon platforms," Hermione said, referring to her tri-corder tablet.
"We'll still have to haul a few asteroids into Earth Orbit."
A shrug. "That's doable."
"They could reach ten thousand in seven months," Hermione said. "In the meantime, the GCU could start preparing for a full Medical Unit in the Atlantic, like we did here, and emplacing it."
"They're going to have a severe problem with famine, though, so I think we'll probably be using the GCU for that for at least a year."
"We can use one of the spare Medical Units from one of the Battlestars — each does have a spare for when we run across a planet that is sophisticated enough to use one. Preparing a spot for it shouldn't take more than a few hours. One portkey later and it's running in place."
"What'll we do about all the Jaffa on the ships?" Lee paused. "Space them?" he said distastefully.
"It'll only takes seconds for the GCU to identify their mess-hall, seal its doors, and remove the furniture."
"Yeah, but then we have to feed them."
"Once they're all in the room, put the room in stasis and let the alternate Earthers worry about that problem later?" Ron suggested.
Angelina broke in, "We could easily modify the programming on the GCU to do that, use a setup like we were planning for the evacuation. The GCU could add each sleeping-cell as it beamed in a Jaffa . . . and give each one a sedative. Once it's done, a pilot could go over and cast a stasis spell on the whole room."
Hermione hummed a moment. "It'd probably take several pilots working together." She shrugged. "Later, find a primitive agricultural world and shove them through to that. They could adapt and grow their own food."
"What about the prim'tas?"
She shrugged. "Is there a way to render a prim'ta brain dead? They never wake up to become a problem, and their autoimmune system still works."
"I'll have a team start researching that immediately," Angelina said.
"Dean, here. What about the magicals? Do they not exist there? Or did the DA never find the Requirement spaceship? How are they faring?"
Harry sighed. "We'll have to send a team to London to see if the Leaky Cauldron is still there."
Harry blinked and looked around the table. The Stargate people were waiting patiently. "Okay," Harry said to them, "Sending in just S.G. One and hoping they make it is a bit suicidal. So, instead, let's do this by the numbers."
They gave him curious looks.
"We'll send four platoons, one-hundred-eleven, Marines through. First to clear this SGA of any Jaffa and Goa'uld, then the entire mountain Base." She glanced at Hammond. "You did say that SGC was only one of many Commands hidden under Cheyenne Mountain, right?"
"Yes," he said nodding, "There are five other Command centers."
Harry nodded back. "Once we have SGA under our control, SG-One, Major Kawalsky, and Doctor Carter can get to work on contacting the Asgard."
"In the meantime, we'll push through four squadrons of X-wing fighters to give us air-coverage and take out the Death Gliders. We'll also push through a General Construction Unit. Once it's on-station, we'll take out the two Ha'taks, which will remove their ability to resupply either personnel or equipment . . . or escape and warn others of what we're doing."
The other three were staring at him as if he had lost his mind.
"After that, we can bring through a Medical Unit and a few thousand PiMPS. It'll take a while, but the Medical Unit will be under-used at first, so it can devote some of its time to duplicating more PiMPS."
"How the hell will you get X-wing fighters through the mirror?" Jack said incredulously. "Not to mention the Construction and Medical units!"
Harry shook his head. "Tech we will not share with you. It is far too easy to end up being abused by governments unwilling to look beyond their petty grievances with their neighbours.
"With the Ha'taks eliminated and the Stargates under our control, we can then bring through a few hundred of the Weapon Platforms and place them around the planet. With some careful planning and a few asteroids in orbit, they can replicate themselves to ten thousand in the next eight months. That should be enough to forestall any attempt by the Goa'uld to repeat their invasion, regardless of what the Asgard decide."
"If we're lucky," Harry went back to explaining, "we can capture Apophis, which will stall all Goa'uld activity regarding the Alternate Earth as the others wait for him to either reappear or be confirmed dead. That should give us the time the Alternate Earth will need."
He shook his head and sighed. "That only leaves the problem of what to do with the thousands of Jaffa prisoners we'll have. It's going to be anarchy on most of the planet, and asking the surviving governments to take custody is problematic — they will barely be able to control and feed their own citizens, much less the captured Jaffa.
"We can't bring them through to here, I'm sure that at least half of them would succumb to Entropic cascade failure.
"We do have an accounting of the Jaffa we captured back in December. If we interview the ones we take this time, we can weed out the dopplegangers and only bring in the ones who died here, then shove them through to Chulak. I'm sure their families, in this reality, will be overjoyed to see them returned, alive."
He sighed. "The Marines are assembling and preparing right now. As soon as we get the confirmation that you've found the right Alternate Earth, we can start passing them through." He chuckled dryly. "They are actually quite enthused over the opportunity to go up against the Jaffa in full combat."
"So," Harry leaned back, "Will you let us?"
Luna was bouncing in her chair excitedly. Thank Merlin they couldn't see her making puppy-eyes through her suit's visor.
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Author's Note: * See Mount Tambora for the impact of tossing cubic kilometres of material into the atmosphere.
"Legacy" and "Learning Curve" in September don't involve the DSF as everything seems to be internal politics to SGC.