Chapter 47:

It was time to deal with 99942 Apophis in 2010. In 2029 it would have gotten close enough to Earth to destroy geostationary satellites, and then every so often be close to Earth again. Eight impulse engines were being constructed on the asteroid. They would gradually change its orbit so that it would always be closer to the Sun than Earth, instead of its current range of between of about 0.75 AU and 1.1 AU, an AU being the mean orbital distance from the Sun to the Earth. The plan is to not break the asteroid, but it will be carefully monitored, and if necessary any broken parts will be pushed into a safe orbit. Having 19 years to reset its orbit meant that much lower accelerations would be sufficient. Only after it finally is put in a stable orbit will it be a place for human habitation.

A mining base was opened on the far side of the Moon. There were some H3 deposits there, which are much easier to find than to create. A mining base on the near side of the moon was started as well. Both bases were also being used to experiment on active shielding against ionizing radiation.

On March 4th 2010 at 08:21:42 Earth Time, the Jupiter Sphere Sentinels alerted. Earth Time is more or less what was called GPS time in my original dimension. It can vary from UTC or GMT or the local solar time in Greenwich England by an increasing number of seconds. It will later tie into Starfleet's interstellar time, or stardates. It will never have leap second corrections. The Jupiter Sphere Sentinels were a net of observation satellites just outside the orbit of Jupiter in a full sphere around the Solar System. They had been upgraded considerably since 2002.

At 08:21:42 there was an anomaly in space matter density. Telescopes on the satellite were targeted to the anomaly and could see an actual black outline where there should be stars. The sentinels were programmed after 2002 to send short bursts of encrypted data every 6 minutes. So at 08:24:00 it sent its observations. At 09:02:52 Starfleet Headquarters and the automated Earth Defense Net received it. For fast moving developments near Earth, Earth Defense Net will act according to its programming unless there is an override by authorized controllers.

The Earth Defense Net was programmed for a number of scenarios. The main lesson from Star Trek canon was that the Klingons fired on and destroyed a Vulcan ship at their first contact, causing them to be in a state of war. The Earth Defence Net had certain criteria to indicate an invasion or hostile approach, in which case the system would attack the unknown ships. Otherwise, it would track the visitors, prepare weapons, but not fire.

The Vulcan warp capable ship stayed well outside of the orbit of the Jupiter Sphere Sentinels. At 10:13:07 a shuttle craft was launched from it. It had some sort of covering that was completely non-reflective to light or radar. That covering including a cowling that hid the engine exhaust from most viewing angles, but could not hide the heat of the exhaust. The shuttle had a similar shape to the Vulcan craft that landed on Earth in the movie Star Trek First Contact. This stealth method was something I was not familiar with from Star Trek canon, but I don't think I ever saw, in canon, a Vulcan mission to a planet that was not yet ready to be contacted. This method would not have blocked scanners of warp capable civilizations so was not otherwise used.

At 11:41:58 Earth received the signal saying that a fast sub-light speed ship was headed past the Sentinels. The Vulcan shuttle craft did its acceleration to a quarter of the speed of light, before reaching the orbit of Jupiter, and then did an extremely complicated series of slingshot maneuvers that brought it first near Vesta, then around the sun, and near the moon, with engine burns while the engines were faced away from Earth, and also a close flyby of 99942 Apophis. Finally, on March 6th at 01:05:02 Earth Time, it did a flyby of Earth, then an engine burn while turned partly away from Earth, and back to the starship. By 21:39:04 the same day there no more sign of any unknown ships in the Solar System.

Kazakhstan and its affiliated countries called a shelter alert, and had their entire populations in underground bunkers within minutes as soon as the report of an unknown spacecraft heading inward from the orbit of Jupiter was received.

The Earth Defense Net, watched carefully, but did nothing overt. There were photon torpedoes hidden with magical wards, throughout the inner Solar System, but not too close to Earth. There was a research project to combine a photon torpedo with a shield, so it could be safely exploded fairly close to Earth, but nothing deployable yet.

The world headlines, both magical and non-magical were about this flyby for days. There was more information to relay than in 2002, including where the ships went, what acceleration levels they used, the size of both the starship and the shuttle.

Only the limited number of people in Starfleet cleared to know about Star Trek canon were told that the shapes of both ships were similar to Vulcan ships from canon.

Starfleet had an emergency meeting, and the consensus was that, while there was no overt contact made, after the home base of the ships analyze the data they acquired during their flybys they very well might initiate contact, so it is time to try to develop warp technology. If we were going to be visited anyway, we might as well be warp capable.

The various research projects around Vesta started increasing their power for particle collisions, high energy plasma, and every other possibility that could be thought of and actually done, that might have led to warping of space in Star Trek canon.

Warp cores started to be constructed using a combination of magic and technology, and no longer waiting until they can be done completely with technology or completely with magic. What was not yet know is exactly how much energy needs to be fed to warp coils, but there were some clues, that in Star Trek canon, in 2063, it could be built and built compactly. It was presumed that a compact fusion reactor was used. It was noted that the canon year 2063 was after a long period of wars, and without the help of magic.

Experiments were done with a large number of coils with plasma from matter-anti-matter combinations of deuterium and anti-deuterium, arranged similar to the Star Trek canon Earth ships. Another experiment, was similar, but instead of coils, used two loops moving in opposite directions that resemble the Vulcan starships in Star Trek Enterprise.

Non magical news stories included,

Alien ship looks at Earth and space stations!

A large ship arrived past orbit of Jupiter. A smaller ship detached from it and headed past our space stations on asteroids, then flew by the Earth.

What are their intentions? What will be next?

Starfleet says they are ready.

Starfleet discussed strengthening the Basic Living Centers to be shelters against attack. It turned out that a shielding system would not work due to proximity of other buildings and people near them. For underground habitations to effectively be shelters they should be much deeper underground, which itself would provide considerable protection, but would also give enough room for there to be shields. It was decided not to use Starfleet resources on this project for the moment, instead maximizing Starfleet's strength in the Solar System would be where its resources were going to be directed in the next years.

Another Starfleet meeting was about what information the ships that were probably Vulcans obtained. The Director of Solar System Defense had a presentation made on an open source equivalent to PowerPoint.

"Detection of warded defense satellites? Unknown.

Detection of various space stations and bases in orbit, near and on asteroids, and the Moon.

Detection of impulse engines in use to move 99942 Apophis.

Detection of experiments on and near Vesta that might lead to discovery of warp fields? They would probably know better than we do as to whether our experiments are on the right track.

Various communications over radio and broadcast television, including about Starfleet.

Internet communication about same? There is no indication that they tried to connect to web sites during their fly-by. It would have been possible, but there would have been evidence if they had done so.

They would have noted the lack of any warfare on Earth.

They would have noted the growth of wireless communications since whenever their last visit was."

The ICW had an emergency meeting. Its agenda was that the time of contact with extra-terrestrials will be soon, that many non-magicals know about magic, and that the rest have some idea about impossible seeming capabilities in use.

"When we agreed to assist the non-magicals, we knew we would eventually have to go for full disclosure."

"It is either now or later. If later, do we want to be doing this when the extra-terrestrials want to do a meet and greet?"

"Some of us are going to opt out of this and just go into hiding."

The decision was made to give gradually more information, leading to full disclosure starting August 1st 2010, and concluding with full disclosure by December 15th. Magical communities throughout the world were told to all be in locations protected from non-magicals by the end of July, just in case there was a backlash. Any magicals that want to stay in warded locations inaccessible to non-magicals, even long after disclosure, were free to do so.

As an example what that would mean for Wizarding Britain would be that arrival at the Ministry would by magical transport to a secure waiting room, instead of needing to go through non-magical London to get there. Similar methods for Diagon Alley and the Hogwarts Express would be by completely magical routes. All magical people would have a secure method of magical transport from their home to magical locations, and their homes would be warded. Those magicals who did go in non-magical areas were expected to have a port-key with them at all times.