"Gentlemen, the situation has rather radically changed and our tempo of operations will chsnge with it."
"As we all know current fuel reserves can maintain the past pace and focus of operations for, at most, six months, and I am very pleased to announce that this is no longer an issue."
"However analysis of damage caused by enemy action comparable to our own, shows the current air offensive to be largely ineffectual, a supposition backed up by analysts of aerial reconnaissance provided by eyes in orbit, and ground observations provided by Special Operations Command and as such all current operations are truly achieving is to gradually bleed our finest, and bravest, aircrews -dry-."
"As such our new objective is to oblige the enemy to continue to spread his air defences wider, and to tie up enemy manpower spread as widely as possible; to inflict maximum possible damage upon the enemy's reserves of experienced aircrews; and to support efforts to sabotage Old Nosey's ongoing war efforts in his home front..."
-/-/-/-
The largest - and most blunt-force alien - man any member of 4 Company 4th Special Operations Group had ever seen in their collected lives*, six feet ten inches tall it he was an inch with a ridiculously burly barrel-chested frame, a huge mane of steel-grey hair, and a beard to match, was along with a rather more believable-sized and also grey-bearded alien man who appeared to be wearing a towel** on his head and a small dark-haired alien woman wearing a private soldier's desert isdue uniform,walked into the company's homebase in Telvrith*** but six hours after they had taken posession of the new Model 98 six-wheel-drive lorries that the 4 Special Operations Group motor pool had modified to better suit their needs, accompanied by a red-dressed 'Jahne' construct serving as translator and Colonel Seteran Rys-Hein, overall C.O of 4SOG as a whole, in turn accompanied by a subaltern armed with a map case.
"-like what you've got up and running here," the goh'leim was dutifully translating.
"I can't say I'm the slightest bit surprised, the details are a little different - my experience in the area pre-war was largely due to quite how common sites of significant archaeological interest are in these parts, we're roughly six hundred miles from the oldest signs of Dunmeri inhabitation yet known to science, on the other hand the ability to reach deep behind enemy kines and cause excitement there seemed quite pertinent in wartime much as they did in your north A'hfariike theatre," the Colonel said, glancing around. "Aha! Major, there you are - gentleman,this fellow is Major Pyrr-Hethan Sy, officer in command of 4 Company 4th Special Operations Group; Major, our recently arrived military advisers from the Office of Ungentlemanly Warfare," the you what? "Master-Sergeant, and I apologise if my attempt to correctly prounounce is awful, Murdo-Alec Corbeccson formerly of the Burahitaish Empire's Eight Army, known as the," and he cleared his throst snd carefully enunciated, "Dehsairut Rahts, long story old chap, Mr Farouk Al-Saladin, an expert in warfare in desert environs, and Madam Kaydee, spy extraordinaire, who I'm afraid you're going to have to get used to as she's to be riding along with your next operation."
The huge alien stuck out a clenched fist the size of an entire mess tin with a thumb pointing upwards, and the somewhat less daunting alien rocked a hand from side to side, eyes glinting with amusem*nt, while the young lady said in oddly accepted Synadaric, "Close enough, Colonel. Dipthongs can be a bit interesting like that."
"Quite - now then," and the Colonel turned to where the subaltern had just hurriedly spread out the maps, "Major, this is going to be rather unusual and involve rather a change in course for your next few patrols. Field Marshall Carsetara has decided to take -full- advantage of a sudden lack of reliance on fuel and it's on us to sort out a course to get brigade-level forces into position to breach back line defenceshere," and he tapped a map at -a bit of a sh*t- of a location infested with terminal surprise, "Command wants us to pin down a workable route for transport and supplyfor the units that we're going to be cramming in through Old Nosey's back door right about here."
"Am I to take it an answer has been come up with to the mines?" He was pointing at the place that had the desert clans het up. A fifteen mile square of every description of land mine smack dab in the only readily passageable route into the enemy's rear area from the north, only angles of attack avoiding it the treacherous desert terrain Pyrr-Hethan Sy had spent all the war so far jumping from one cave to the next through, even worse terrain in the way of getting to it without a nearly two thousand mile traverse across the Dune Sea.
"Mine removal is a solved problem, Major," the goh'leim translated for the massive Master-Sergeant. "The crabs will deal with it."
"For reference that's all command and these hooligans will tell me either," the Colonel added, "It's on us to figure out how to get whatever the devil species of crustaceans they're on about into position with the proposed location of logistics stockpiles and so forth at the Andesyan oasis, thoughts, ideas, questions?" And the Colonel gestured at the maps and photographs. "You know the region better than I do, I hadn't been anything like so far west pre-war."
"Sir, assuming our mysterious crustaceans are up to the job, the thing that immediately comes to mind is, how much distance don't I worry about? Because that minefield that I'm not asking further questions concerning is across the southern end of the Spice Route, up until the war there were near daily caravans headed down that way, across here," and Pyrr-Hethan traced a finger across the map. "Moving a tad slow for military purposes of course, but it's been in use for at least two and a half thousand years going from what I found in my pre-war dig at the Nakesh Oasis, located here, sir," and he pointed. "It's a little short of two thousand miles starting from Syathd Naain,that's why the idea of using it for our purposes has never been seriously contemplated, but if fuel is seriously not a concern? Getting a road fit for logistics traffic through the high escarpments would be a devil of a job, take years most likely, and pushing such a road through the Dune Sea seems fundamentally impossible, I think it's our best bet if we're going to present High Command something that'll work in as short a timeframe as I expect they're intent on."
"I thought I recalled you having successfully driven into that area from the north pre-war," the Colonel mused.
"Yes,I successfully traversed the Spice Route with a convoy of twenty-eight vehicles heavier and rather less capable than M-98's at the time of the Nakesh dig. Odds are it'll demand a good deal of attention from the Corps of Engineers to keep open if we're to use it as a backbone for longer than a few months, will it be necessary for my team tocommence surveying it for condition?"
"Probably not, though we'll see - I'll so my damndest to convince the Corps of Engineers to get stuck into the job at the northeastern end, your next patrol objective is a little on the extraordinary side and concerns Miss Kaydee, who will brief you," and he nodded to the alien lady.
"Thankyou, Colonel. I'll put it bluntly: I am what we call a ninja - a subspecies created specifically to serve our liege as extremely hard to detect agents operating in enemy territory - and I am here to scrounge a lift. Major, given that the 'fuel' range of your new vehicles is higher than the expected service lifetime of their tyres, how far into the Southwesters rear area do you suppose you're able to drop me off?"
"You're rather visually distinctive," Pyrr-Hethan couldn't help but note; she smirked at him, passed a hand across her face, normal -blue- flooded across her skin, and he was left looking at an entirely normal 5th Army soldier who appeared much more convincingly male than Private Cy Cyrenne did.
"Better?" She asked, clearly amused and even -sounding- convincingly masculine.
"I swear I'll never get used to that," the Colonel muttered.
"I wouldn't worry too much about it, you won't need to get used to it sir," Kaydee said, successfully acting the part of a grunt addressing a rather senior officer, then repeated her passing hand over face and reverted to a clearly female alien as she continued, "There's a very low likelihood you'll ever see me again, your bosses aren't even halfway close to dim enough to start the sort of arse kicking competition with the Orcs that'd have iterations of me ninjing," whatever that meant, "Around causing ammunition depot fires and mysterious bridge explodings and other sorts of viciously successful accident in -your- back garden."
"Iterations of you?" Private Costgriff asked, then remembered himself and added, "Ma'am."
"Yes, five of me jumped out of bombers last night and another three of me swam ashore from submarines. I'm not -everywhere-, there's only so much self-proliferation any one ninja can do, but oh well, it's good enough."
-/-/-/-
* - At least, that Lance-Corporal Cy remembered.
** - Of all the things invented by Dunmer, the shemagh was not one.
*** - Location of, amongst other more interesting things such as compelling evidence of nearly three thousand years of continuous inhabitation with layer after layer of archaeological interest awaiting an opportunity to excavate beneath every square foot of city, the former colonial capital and the current headquarters of the 4th Army.
-/-/-/-
Hanzo waited until they were well out of town and bivvied down for the first night into the desert before getting Kassim, their djiin teammate, to give him a lift out of the ring Sakura was wearing on a chain necklace, much to the perplexity of a bunch of Special Dunmer Service (one of whom didn't know she used to be Asari) at finding themselves giving -two- Kaydees a ride, this being the final step in Aoi's plan to have all Ishikawas deployed to Cmawhin with the knowledge of Alliance Special Operations arrive as one person who then proceeded to repeatedly self-duplicate, which would ultimately go on to win Clan Ishikawa the ROIS sweepstake for silliest successful game of the nuclear disarmament aliens of '98 when it became clear that they'd successfully convinced the Dunmer.
Their youngest daughter remained camped out in the ring until they were into the target area and dropped off by 4COY4SOG, because they hadn't quite come up with a suitably stupid excuse for a mini-Kaydee existing; she'd later be very annoyed that her big sister Kaedae had come up with one, namely not having enough self-proliferation available to get another fullsized Kaydee right now, aboard a submarine she and their cousin Makoto had then swum ashore from.
-/-/-/-
July of 1998 trundled tidily past, for all Harry approached the end of it with some trepidation concerning his mother's unique style of birthday presents, something promptly laid to rest by the actually well thought out gift of a carefully chosen selection of books written by Dunmer archaeologists on the slowly emerging increasingly compelling evidence that they had suddenly appeared somewhere in the region of a desert now being fought over for having most of their planet's known oil supply under it.
(There was a lot of related conjecture about there being a 'colonial rocketship' laying around somewhere, though Harry immediately recognised a tiny handful of artefacts described and imaged therein as matching things owned by various very important Khajiit most likely meaning there wasn't a ship rocket or otherwise.)
On the Councilspace side of things, there was an increasing amount of disarray in the rough area of the corridor between them and 'Midgardr space' as every last company with any real involvement in the Bullsh*t trade howled blue probably-glowing murder at the vast, -vast- quantities of the stuff now being shipped out of the area of Fiona's World and another nearby system that had been sternly claimed by the dwarfs, to construction sites in orbits usually more conveniently located than extant mass relays: commissions for OSA tugs to gingerly gravity tractor the old explodey ones out had started popping up as the new non-explosive ones started coming online, and a lot of very rich business concerns were seeing their profit margins going down the tubes.
(Probably going to be trouble that'd give an excuse to activate a pair between Ehel'swaar and the Coincilspace OSA yards sooner or later, only a matter of time before someone did a stupid and blockaded or sabotaged or bombed something.)
Closer to home Kitty (and one of the things Nev had received for his birthday was his wife's permission, or rather -blunt demand-, that the Luna-grade-tiny kittycat be offered a necklace, which just wasn't a surprise to anyone not named Neville Orlando Longbottom) had apparently been the start of a trend Harry was starting to seriously wonder whether was the result of some description of accidental ritual potentially caused by enough of an entire planet being resoundingly 'Orc' as: it had started happening on Duncan's World too. A full dozen assorted Nekomimi and Alfar, as they'd been dubbed for readily apparent reasons, eight so far on Fiona's World and three on Duncan's World and one Nekomimi -onboard Skithblanthir II-, had simply turned up in the exact same way by the end of July giving every impression of having flat out popped into existence fully formed and started looking for someone to belong to.
Back in Sol, things were slowly retreating from edge of war despite assorted furious naval buildups and something involving heavy vehicles being very focusedly built by the Jovians who had, it quickly became apparent, decided to 'do an Orcs' with exactly no attention paid to what the proles thought about this with four different flotillas competing to be the first to sod all the way off, one particularly overambitious bunch were on about 'nipping over to Andromeda' and the other three arguing about what direction to head generally away in and the various 'landholders' not involved in this equally clearly considering joining in. It hadn't taken long to decide to shadow each with a nice big flotilla of Freyas with a Goon in tow and wait for them to either start crying for help (and get shuttled back to civilisation) or need a sudden runin with Mysterious Alien Pirates and vanish without a trace (again shuttled back to civilisation in a much quieter fashion) if, say, they decided that this that or the other bunch of hunter-gatherers looked colonisable or something.
And one Jovian Federation landholder had sincerely surprised Harry by politely requesting permission to up with his demesene and emigrate to Orcadia, he'd concluded that sticking around Sol was decidedly unhealthy. It had taken some back and forth but by the time Gabrielle went into labour at just after one in the morning on Astoria's birthdaya mostly-Spanish-speaking formerly-Baja Californian formerly-Jovian town of twelve thousand and sixty-four people had set down at the very northernmost, somewhat arid, tip of Eddie Campbell's Land with the obligatory railway now being driven in that direction and quite a lot of ensuing moving to or from it by people who preferred the climate or adamantly wanted to not be there any more.
-/-/-/-
"There," Hermione said, and started packing a measuring kit away in her wardrobe again; Ellie didn't start getting her clothes back on yet, instead rereading what they'd come up with on the sent text communication on Hermione's mirror.
"It seems a little wasteful to buy one without being certain this is more than a passing fancy," she said.
"Not really?" Hermione said. "I mean when it comes down to it the knickers you're wearing right now actually cost four times as much because being acromantula silk does that, and either way if you turn out -not- to like it, which I don't believe for a second, it can always turn into decorative parts for some golem or another. That's what happened to the two cut-open scrap ones we used to have laying around mostly because those were self-resizing and we decided we'd better use them for something before one ended up welded back together around one of the harpies, or a houseguest, or Luna, or Astoria would've woken up in one if I didn't know she could and would chop it off and go on a rampage instead of learning her bloody lesson."
-/-/-/-
"Happy, Mistress?" Gabrielle asked, not quite able to keep the exasperated note out of her voice at her owner, tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth due to overfocus, ran through a series of diagnostic charms aimed at the area of Gabrielle's body contained by something she had, over the last several months, really -very seriously- missed.
"I still think you should've gone down a bit slower Filly," Astoria said, tucking her wand back into her tool belt, which was laying on the bedside table.
This had been something of a ritual for the one day short of a week since the entire brutal process of giving birth, of which Gabrielle had been reliably informed she'd had -rather a lot harder- a time than any of the others (so far) as Amy, on top of coming out feet first, had to all appearances done everything she could to avoid emerging into daylight, a process Gabrielle didn't remember much of with any real clarity as she'd spent most of it off her face on a variety of pain relief potions.
Astoria on the other hand -did- with exceptional clarity, had only just started to settle down from Harry-grade laser-tight focus on Gabrielle's health, and had been a tab upset about Gabrielle, on the morning of the day after Amy's birth, insisting on immediately getting onto getting herself to fit into her corset again now there wasn't a baby occupying the related area.
"I know it's got to be a bit bloody uncomfortable but it's not doing anything damage-like," Astoria grumbled, "And I guess congratulations it's all the way done up again? In six days. Nutter."
"Mm-hmm, and I don't think I'd exactly say -uncomfortable- though it -is- feeling bloody tight at the moment-," Gabrielle said, turning this way and that in front of the mirror and enjoying looking, and -feeling-, ike herself again. "Mistress I know me having a breach birth scared the living sh*t out of you but -I am okay now-, okay, we have -Harry-."
"Despite Luna, when Amy's fifteen or more and I actually agree to have a kid if she tries to chase Harry out -f*cking stun her for me- then chain her to something out the bloody way okay?"
"That's if this didn't learn her," Gabrielle said. She had -not- been off her face when Luna panicked. "Anyway, Nikkit, please fetch the round box this wide and this high," she measured with her hands, "From the bottom of the wardrobe."
"Da wun ya sed not ta touch roight Mum?" The golem she'd constructed to keep their room tidy, who was three feet tall, green-skinned, pointy-faced, knobbly-jointed, and carefully constructed to resemble a 'gretchin', asked, emerging from where he'd been carefully dusting Astoria's collection of weird and unusual or otherwise snazzy car badges.
"That's the one, ta," Gabrielle said. "I also need my lace-up extra-extra-shorts, a pair of stockings, and my new deerskin bodice, the one we'd just finished after Harry's birhday "
"... souldna zoggin' stakked dis on dat, stikk dis ova ere, ere we go," Nikkit gretchinned from inside the wardrobe. "Gorrem Mum!" And the scrawny-looking golem came bustling back out with an armload of deerskin, old motorcycle helmet fasteners, laces, black acromantula silk, and what would look like a hat box to the uninitiated.
"Seem my spiky chrome Gen Nines?" Astoria asked.
"In da bedside drawer Boss," Nikkit said, presanting his armload to Gabrielle; she laid the bundle of tanned hide and silk to one side and took the box containing the other thing she'd been thoroughly irritated about not being able to wear since the morning after her birthday.
"Thanks," she virtually chorused with Astoria.; Nikkit bustled back into the wardrobe to await further requested aricles and 'sort fings out'. "Finally-" and Gabrielle stopped, snorted, and rephrased, "Mistress, this is entirely your fault."
"No it's bloody well not! You decided you want that thing yourself!"
"Yes Mistress but you're why without needing to think about it I know starting today I won't even know where the keys are until Governess gives them to you at lunch in three hundred and fifty-nine days."
"Actually my next birthday's a Wednesday so it's three hundred and -sixty- days before I gatecrash the Thursday sermon in Contraption yelling 'oi Potter where's my bloody necklace, cough up' or something like that over the loudhaler. What? Oh come off it Filly, you got 'princess of the road warriors' -pinned down- so -my- 'ceremonial procession' is going to be one Ratbag, one ratrod, and my usual bullsh*t."
"Well at that rate - damnit this is fiddlier than I remembered - at that rate you're getting your birthday present from me a day late next year," Gabrielle said, fumbling the waistband's ends together and wondering whether or not to work on persuading her Mistress to actually get the escort she really deserved.
"Bleh, I'll deal, lob us knickers and stockings ta Nikkit," a neatley folded package of black silk stayed folded as it sailed across the room, "Ta."
On one hand Astoria -deserved- a huge procession and wouldn't need golems to do it the way Gabrielle had - she wasn't sure if Astoria even realised how many people thought well of the generous loudmouthed pint-sized grease-monkey who had spent years, the rough months after the Big Drums included, getting much-needed cars running again for essentially nothing, routinely simply -gave away- second hand spare parts from her massive stash of bits of car, or just how many people had heard phrases such as 'forget it, it's not like I paid a tin Sickle for it, it's yours' or 'nah mate, knowing the bloody back end's -staying on- your banger's payment enough' or 'well I ain't got one of those but I think I can persuade -this- to fit'
The question was whether or not Astoria would-like it- if the hundreds of hotrodders, ratrodders, classic car enthusiasts, and just people who owed her a good turn from the hard times just sort of turned up to escort the queen of the anarchistic spanner-benders and motorheads and other kinds of car people.
She pulled the waistand down and the front shield up, and started fiddling the lock into place.
... maybe she should -just make it happen-. She knew she could do it.
The lock finally clicked and she pulled the key out with a triumphant, "Got the bloody thing,"
Astoria snorted as Gabrielle fished her own stockings out of the bundle and started rolling them up her legs, but didn't comment further, instead saying "Pass me my bar towel onepiece."
"Ere ya go Boss," Nikkit emerged from the wardrobe, and at that point they more or less ran out of conversation due to focusing on getting dressed - this being the first time Gabrielle had actually been able to get into the most abbreviated set of 'shorts' in her wardrobe, resembling a set of particularly minimalist knickers made out of deerskin (fur side inside of course) with a lace-up front deliberately designed to be unable to do all the way up even without having a chastity belt under them, or the bodice she'd designed to go with them - this fastened up each sides with three straps with small chromed buckles each side,leaving a hsndpan ov completely uncovered waistband and corset, and instead of having a boob area had a large oval cutout with two triangular flaps, one to go over each of her boobs, with small seatbelt syle clips salvaged from motorbike helmets to hold each up for ease of getting a boob out for a very hungry very small daughter - there was several other deliberate gaps here and there, such as the one strategically positioned to make her belt's lock immediately obvious, nicely framed by a mokeskin-lined cancas ammunition pouch sewn on each side, into which she tucked her tool rolls and notebook.
A set of deerskin gwuntlet wristbands (one with wand holster inbuilt) her rust-effect-finish Gen 9s pushed all the way back acting as a hairband, and deerskin version Orc Princess boots finished the ensemble, for a -much more like it- overall effect than very pregnant her.
"What's with the skidlid clips?" Astoria asked, slinging her tool belt on.
"Oh, these? Apart from the fact I bet you're going to like pulling these," and she gave the loops of narrow very red webbing a tug, causing both to fall open and Astoria's expression to become very satisfying as the attached triangles of deerskin followed suit, "Amy's going to appropriate not having to f*ck around to get some mum juice to drink I'll bet."
"... right," Astoria said, gone a touch glassy eyed, and definitely struggled to hide the disappointment when Gabrielle refastened one then the other. "Goddamnit Filly you're the tease from Hell you know that?"
"I would never," Gabrielle gasped, portraying innocence as transparently fake as a deliberately overacting Fleur; Astoria snigg*red and Gabrielle turned her attention to...
Her six day old daughter.
Who was as -blatantly obviously- a Veela as Gabrielle herself had been also from birth, while also blatantly obviously being the Redcap's granddaughter, she was the -spitting image- of her paternal grandmother, and Gabrielle reaffirmed her mental note to check the religious literature section of Hermione's book collection for any more benevolentish gods who might or might not exist she was going to have to thank that Amy Marie Potter had -not- been born in Statute-era France on the offchance that they'd had some role in making sure Amy would grow up lighyears away from people who considered Veela subhuman and hated The Redcap.
"Thanyou, Monsiur Un, you're off babywatching duty for the day," she told the solemn lawn-gnome who'd been standing sentry duty over Amy while Gabrielle slept, armed with an air horn in case Amy was in distress and Gabrielle didn't wake up, this hadn't been a problem so far as the slightest sound from -her daughter- had proven enough to bring her crashing awake even when exhausted. "Oh stop it with the impudent look," and she lifted her senior gnome down and set him on the floor where he started foremanning at four of his six brothers to get set to carry a sleeping baby, cradle and all, to the breakfast table.
"Face it Filly," Astoria said, standing up, "They've switched that protection thing they had going on when I met you back on for the munchkin,"
"France," Gabrielle said, "Taught my little men some very particular lessons Mistress, I may have had a slightly awkard conversation with Fleur when Claire was this size as Monsiur Un and his brothers may have kept very studious tabs on my niece until she had learnt to walk rather than toddle."
"Well she -is- effectively their first cousin and Amy -is- effectively their little sister," Astoria mused.
"It's either that or they remember 'defenceless Veela' as clearly as I do and are defending her on the offchance, I don't know as it's not written into their scripting. Stop facepalming at me Monsiur Un, it's not funny."
-/-/-/-
The second alien business concern to approach the Republic's military was an outfit calling themselves Corbecsson Motors, represented by a couple of grinning gray-haired old alien scoundrels, and this lot had shown up with something rather more substantial: a -complete aircraft-, some description of light, -very- unusually constructed, twin-engined what they called 'multirole military aircraft' already kitted out with locally-made engines and aircraft cannons and air-to-air radar filched from right under the eyes of Old Nosey's horrid little pals with assistance from certain partisans, which would've been rather more exasperating if the downed aircrews had not -also- been spirited back to friendly shores.
The airframe itself looked fairly conventional (save for fitting -four- propellers, contra-rotating, into the two nacelles) if you stood back a bit, but as one approached for a walk around details -or rather their absence- started to spring out: a total dearth of rivets or fasteners on the sleek, smooth, really quiet -pretty- fuselage that some lunatic had decided to construct out of plywood.
Post a rather startling takeoff by dint of an exceptionally light monocoque plywood contraption containing two utterly monstrous 2,200-horsepower engines, kinda like sticking a V-12 in a pedal car really, followed by an unexpectedly faint radar trace blazing across the sky at -five hundred miles per hour- seemingly utterly unconcerned by transporting four thousand pounds of concrete in the bomb bay while so doing, after an equally slightly alarming landing, the conclusion that the term was, in fact, 'maniacal genius' was immediately drawnwith the main question now how the devil are you supposed to spell 'de Havilland Mosquito'?
It was one of the few instances of the aliens pointing out something that they could be doing with hardware and knowhow already to hand and weren't, and it had a rather unexpected knockon because unbeknownst to a pair of muggleborn Orcadians who used to fly a very similar aircraft with somewhat less immodest engines, right about when they were introducing some fellow flyboys to the amazing things than happen if you stuff rather more engine into the good old Mozzie, in a nondescript tin shed nine thousand miles away a whine grew, a series of close-spaced clicks sounded, then a shattering roar half-deafened everyone in the area as the first -successful- Dunmer-built axial flow gas turbine engine lit.
The Imperial Aviation Board weren't particularly interested by it, or by the testbed the second example would end up in... quite yet, but when the Northers started blowing through in aircraft with a cruising speed far beyond anything they had?
That would change, and shortly thereafter be held up as one of the endless 'too little, too late, coulda been a gamechanger if it'd been sooner' of military history.
-/-/-/-
"Aye, sounds good on paper but there's a problem with that: I don't know if it's a hard limit or a design limitation, we don't legit understand how the damn things work - our current new-build relays are damn near cargo cult copies honestly, it's not just us either, Councilspace are in about the same boat -and they have a -maximum- transferrable mass at about one fiftieth of the peak load for single nexus displacement," Harry told his stepfather. "The Kirkwall Gun Room rigorously tested them starting back in June as soon as the first pair we built were operable and that's the current conclusion: they're powerful but limited, with the question now whether that's fundamental or by design. And we're not going to be punting battlewagons through them any time soon."
"Shame, what about the cycle time?" Sirius asked.
"Limited again, fifteen seconds per transfer operation, and again no idea whether that's fundamental or by design - the workaround is obviously -build more-, they don't mind being parked next to each other or even flat out having a whole rack of them strapped together. That wasn't one of our tests, the new interhomeworld transit corridor in Councilspace is the project that found that out."
"I don't pay as much attention to what's what over there," Sirius admitted, then the clatter of feet on the stairs announced the emergence of what they, along with Eddie Campbell, Reggie Black-Potter, Hermione, Luna, Astoria, Gabrielle, little Amy, and Rayana (the rest of the sh*tshow not being in the kitchen and to which Trixie, preparing breakfast - which courtesy of 28-hour Fiona's World days was going to be lunch for Harry - and Cissy, just starting to show another pregnancy where Lily was the mother and Sirius the father, werealso present to bear witness)had been waiting for:
Cassie and Sarah had asked Harry to see them off to their first day as ultra early starters at Ardgowan Secondary and while she hadn't gone -completely- overboard you could tell at first glance that Lily had designed the girls uniform.
It didn't, needless to say, suit Cass -or- Sarah regardless of Luna's immediate "Oh that's adorable."
"Venemous tummysquisher," Astoria said, giving Lily, who had just escorted her daughters downstairs, an arch look.
"I'm not squished, Aunt Ratbag," Cassie said, clearly not objecting to something halfway between a Hogwarts uniform and Lily's style of Important Businesswoman Robe nearly halfway as much as she'd objected to school uniforms invented by Cissy.
"And -no crinolin-," Sarah noted with some approval.
"You mean you're not squished -yet-."
"Astoria," Lily said, "I am not -entirely- incapable of learning and the twins haven't started leaving explosive curry sh*ts in any underwear drawers the way a certain somone reacted to -not- having been 'squished' round the middle."
"Bollocks, that first one was already too bloody tight," Astoria sniffed.
"As I said, I'm not incapable of learning."
Harry took an image on his mirror for posterity, and decided to change the subject, not mentioning that he knew for a fact that the initial magnitude of corset to which Astoria had initially been subjected by his mother was partly -Luna's- fault as she hadn't admitted hers had been painful to begin with for years.
"So, any signs of looking forwards to school?" He asked.
"Nah, it's gonna be a drag, we're not allowed to actually finish before normal dummies would be starting," Cassie said. "I mean primary ran outta stuff to even try to teach before Easter, I dunno how -that's- gonna work."
"Well," Harry said. "I started my collection of master's certs in first year at Hogwarts, why not see how many you can collect by the time you're twelve?" perfectly aware he was dobbing Noriko Ishikawa in for getting dragged along with them.
"... How many guilds -are- there anyway?" Sarah asked.
"That issue recognised master's certification? Fifty-three," Hermione said.
"So gettin' a full set is eighteen each an' seventeen for Karen before any doubles," Cassie mused. "Think that's do-able?"
"Well I dunno yet, bet we can knock the Arithmancer's Guild flat on their arses like -that- an' find out though."
"Actually I've got a better idea sis, we leave math until we're sick of knocking other stuff off then figure out something to present at the Expo coz that Guild are sh*t at it."
"Motility?"
"Motility."
"Looking forwards to what you cook up in the process of nicking my 'youngest ever master-motilist' record you bloody hooligans, don't do anything I wouldn't," said Harry, who'd spent most of the summer inspiring his little sisters with tales of -his- schoolboy bullsh*t ranging from centaur golems through Mediterranean Wars via killer mutant ducks that weren't his fault to the Wizarding Space Race, and enjoyed the maniacal grins that indicated they immediately recognised exactly what he was saying.
"Okay Harry," Lily said, smiling down at her two adorable little-girl geniuses in big-girls school uniforms. "For that crack I think you owe the faculty and staff of Ardgowan Secondary danger money."
"Why? It ain't like we're gonna use boring old fuddy-duddy teachers for test subjects Mum, that's what classmates are for."
"Huh, didn't 'spect I was gonna be glad I've got barmy big sisters ever bruv," Reggie said. "What? It means when I halfarse stupid stuff that don't matter for -starships- they're gonna be too busy goin' 'oh good he's not the twins' to whine about me ignorin' stuff like, -ugh- potions."
"Starships, huh?"
"Yup Dad, I'm gonna be a deep space architect, all the aliens are sh*t at it an' golem designed stuff don't -look right- so it -ain't right-."
"Oh yeah Reg, what'd you say about mass relays then?" Sirius asked, whichwas when a herd of most of Reggie's nieces and nephews, and Gremlin and two very small ninjas, dragged Harry's cousin Dorea and a stray blink-dog and Ginny and two harpies, in the door with the remainder of the sh*tshow trailing at a more sedate pace, the schedueled pandemonium arrived, and Harry started composing a textcomm heads-up to a ninja about twin sisters plotting to bombard her with master's certs.
-/-/-/-
Zero hour had arrived at midnight, commencing with the real guns that had subsequently replaced dummy guns the enemy had purposely been presented the opportunity to realise weren't the real thing commencing bombardment, thousands of tanks shedding the canvas disguises that had allowed them to pose as lorries and supply dumps and static defences, and the first operational use of one of the very few things the Orcs had come up with that could be done with locally available technology and wasn't already: apparatus fitted to a tank converting it to what was now known on two worlds in two utterly unrelated languages as a 'Crab', helped along by the fact that nature appears to hold crabs in high regard and has verifiably invented some description of crab on virtually every lifebearing world on the record: this sort of crab, however, rather than being any description of crustacean was a hydraulic power takeoff attached to the engine of a tank, spinning a large metal drum with heavy chains attached to it on a pair of sturdy arms fitted to the vehicle, that would then, so to speak, beat ten levels of unholy sh*t out of the ground ahead of the vehicle and effortlessly deal with land mines.
(Apparently this had been come up with by a gentleman by the name of Hobart along with a number of other combat engineering vehicles, some familiar and some not, collectively known as 'funnies'; either way it was a shame the fellow wasn't still on the go as he appeared to have been the go-to maniacal genius of armoured warfare.)
Either way this contraption was much appreciated by sappers no longer required to attempt to remove mines by hand as a formation of the adapted, and happily also still a fully operational battle tank, mine removal vehicles effortlessly tore a quarter mile wide lane straight through the minefield between Alliance and Southwestern Powers lines at a suitably ferocious pace with unmodified armour and motorised infantry hard behind.
The second operation of the offensive struck home nearly fifteen hundred miles to the west, deep in what the enemy had previously believed beyond reach before the 'crabs' had swung aside allowing the followup to pour into the most weakly defended strip of the other lot's front line,as a stream of six hundred and twelve fully loaded heavy bombers with two escorting fighters apiece did a very good impression of having appeared fully formed out of nowhere in the deepest deserts, and proceeded to announce that minimal air defences in rear areas was no longer sufficient as they carefully distributed fifteen thousand pounds apiece of high explosives and incendiaries across the oilfield furthest from Alliance lines, leaving a hellscape of burning oil wells in their wake as they, to all appearances as far as the foe were concerned, went back to nowhere the way they'd come, actually turning east and commencing to return to recently constructed airfields some eighteen hundred miles away across the vast expanse of sand; this strike was so utterly unforeseen minimal damage was taken by the bomber regiments involved, one aircraft downed on the way out after having been lit up by the inferno sufficiently for the enemy anti-aircraft gunners to draw a bead, a second becoming separated from the formation post having copped a shell in the port wing and lost an engine, and eight others taking damage varying from light to 'it's a wonder that kite is still flying' - a roaring success in anyone's books.
Natirally, as the bombers were clearing the minimal rear-area air defences and the escorts breaking away having savaged what few enemy fighters were that far for the front, the third strike commenced with another formation of Crabs grinding into another even deeper minefield: breakthrough was achieved by two in the morning allowing the follow-up motor infantry and armour to crash into and through supply lines in the largest outflanking and encirclement operation of the war, at least so far
The stray aircraft would rather startle 4COY4SOG shortly after dawn as the crew spotted the patrol surveying a site for the establishment of another airfield deep into the desert - coincidentally at the exact same oasis where they'd found their buddy Cy Cyrenne a couple of months prior - and landed to request increasingly urgent medical assistance as the only uninjured man aboard was the tailgunner, the shell had destroyed instruments communications included, fatally wounded the navigator, concussed the pilot, and injured everyone in the forward section of the aircraft, in all likelihood it was a miracle that they hadn't flown into a hillside somewhere in the desert as the pilot was barely able to set his battered kite down in one piece.
Either way notice had now been served: the game had changed, the reversal that the Northern Alliance had searched for for two long hard bloody years had arrived, and the aim now was to maintain momentum.
-/-/-/-
"Fourteen airmen confirmed KIA, seven aboard the plane confirmed to have gone down, and one aircrew MIA last in contact over the target," Daphne said, sounding pretty contemplative. Normally Hermione took it on herself to report on operations of particular interest in the war they were aiding and abetting half a galaxy (and two hours by bullsh*t-propulsion and mass relay) away, but for unspecified reasons involving a brown paper parcel she was currently otherwise occupied. "That oilfield looks like Surtr took a dump on it, the fires are visible from -geosynchronous- and apparently Air Force high command are tripping the light fantastic despite twenty young blokes. Gods, Master, they were all about our age, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old."
"That's the really sad part Daph, just two planes lost in theone operation -is- a massive success. They've routinely been losing one in ten bombers -on a good day-," Harry said; she nodded and set the report down.
"It's a smart play for more reasons than just damage done to logistics," Tracy said. "I've been counting up the number of badly defended sites 'far beyond range' and the rough estimates of the amount of manpower that'd be needed for defending them from bombers coming from seemingly random directions and it's going to put quite a dent in."
"From what Mairi's been hearing that's one aspect of the plan, force them to spread as thin as possible," Harry told her. "And I don't know whether or not to hope they call my bluff on guaranteeing independence of noncombatant states down there."
"I thought you weren't bluffing," Daphne said. "Correction, I know you're not bluffing so you what Master?"
"I'm starting to hope they think I'm bluffing? Because not airdropping Crab IIs by the armada is getting really bloody annoying depite the level of I don't even know how many generations of sh*t it'd definitely start," and at that point the door clunked upen to admit Hermione, Fleur, Gabrielle carrying a baby attached to her tit, and Ellie.
The latter of whom was just saying, "-entirely certain of that quite yet though,"
"Oh I think we know where that's going to conclude, any woman who ever tried one of these on and said she didn't want to stay in it as much as possible was lying, delusional, too young to appreciate it, or hadn't found anyone worth belonging to," Gabrielle said, "I should know, I was one."
"Luna exists," Ellie noted. Harry looked, and confirmed what had to be the contents of a certain brown paper parcel, as his youngest offspring stopped drinking and started making complaining noises.
"Luna is mental," Hermione said.
"Do you chastened harlots mind? We're trying to have a late lunchtime situation report," Daphne complained.
"No we don't mind at all and that's my bloody job Daph, gimme and -shoo-," Hermione said, hastening over and successfully grabbing the reports despite various sexy impediments to her mobility, such as short chains currently connecting her wrists to her waist. "Okay right so hmm oilfield raid went off oh -wow- they put on a Hell of a show figurative and literal and for pity's sake Daphne Greengrass, you only got as far as the bits you've ticked? Gods! There's a -reason- this is my job, -scram-. Okay so, one aircraft down with nobody got out, the missing aircraft is a 'no signs' waiting for the next detection overpass - 5 Company report not having heard a second crash, difficult to tell in the mess down there though, the last report from the aircraft - here we go with the translated initial thing, Q for Thresherfish - reported bombs away. I bet Daph made out MIA is KIA,"
"Claws in kittycat and you'd win that bet," Tracy said. Hermione firmly inserted herself into the settee between Harry and Daphne while Ellie and Fleur and Gabrielle, cradling a freshly burped daughter and readjusting a boob cover, sat down on the settee opposite. He didn't note that when an aircraft was last heard from over target right before having been seen copping a flak hit MIA is all but certain to be KIA, they all knew it.
"Right, so that's it on the oilfield raid... right, onto the next topic, the channel front is still very stalematey but between the shift away from daylight raids, night-fighters going in low and mixing it up with enemy interceptors as they get off the ground, and that freeing up fighters to constantly hit inbound raids from every direction there's a downward trend in losses and the numbers of KIA and POW is starting to swing in the right direction - they're still working up towards actually building aircraft really -capable- of 'fast, low, and sneaky' but the oilfields raid means going round the long way is definitely on the cards now, that's about it for air operations since lunchtime yesterday Master, we've got desert rattery and ungentlemanly warfare left for the Dunmeri today."
"Desert first please Hermione," one thing a bunch of old Orc ex-squaddies had been reaily able to pass along was the British Army's extensive talent for military deception with ex-Desert Rats popping in to do a bit of military advisoring to people who already had their stuff pretty solidly sorted out.
"It's looking good, it's looking really good Master, the mine flails had broken through on both assault corridors about when we were waking up this morning and there's every impression our boys have achieved complete tactical surprise."
"Since when are a bunch of blue elves 'our boys', Granger?" Tracy asked.
"I'm not sure, it just slipped out," Hermione admitted, blushing lightly. "Anyway there's solid evidence starting to come up of near total panic in the other lot's high command, no signs of working out how to respond yet and Hanzo's reported a lot of running in circles and frantic scrambling -and- some sort of command squabble, I don't know how long they're going to keep doing it but they're currently giving every impression of being more interested in fingerpointing and blame gaming than in getting their sh*t sorted out and admitting they were all proper caught napping."
"Which will be nice while it lasts," Harry agreed, nodding and not bothering to predict that it wouldn't, or at least not without a lot of help to keep the other lot reacting rather than acting: he had a very clear picture of just how significant gaining, and maintaining, the initiative is to the conducting of a successful war with anything even remotely close to an even field.
"Oh, and I think it's important to note that they are as of now no longer using draft not-centaurs in the desert, at all. The last batches were removed from theatre yesterday afternoon, though I don't think the ruse with fakes attached to lorries is going to hold any longer, but it definitely seems like it did the job," namely convincing the other lot that -their- plan to force Alliance capitulation by running them out of fuel was working when it very thoroughly wasn't.
This had been about the only aspect Harry had directly thought up himself that people with a much better idea of how to war hadn't already though of, he'd successfully avoided making a fool of himself by running his ideas list past Olaf first, either way sudden complete motorisation of Alliance logistics was probably going to come as a very unpleasant surprise to the other lot if it hadn't already.
"Aye, threw me when the second thing they wanted most was a sh*tload of common or garden bog standard lorries," He said. His mother had proceeded to very copiously deliver with a constant stream of simple, rugged, specification originally designed for the Sindari market, 6x6 military logistics vehicles being delivered by the company's growing fleet of 'relaymax' container ships, with some slight alterations - Dunmeri bolt and electric standards and a local motor manufacturer's badges - along with a steadily growing supply of lighter two-axle vehicles and three-axle articulated tractors, all with as much part interchangeability as possible.Harry wasn't convinced of his mother's insistence that Black and Black weren't going to be taking grotesque advantage of footing the bill via a land-lease agreement, and was entirely convinced that his parents company was postwar going to be a major business concern over there too, but the flipside of that was, fair treatment of employees was written straight into the constitution of the Corporate State and a major business concern not believing in glass ceilings or 'wage slavery' might very well do the buggers some good. Sirius had already finagled his way into buying out the functionally bankrupt Dunmer motor manufacturer there was now a fast-growing fleet of soft-skin military vehicles wearing the badge of down there.
"So how about 'ungentlemanly warfare'?" Ellie, who had only very recently managed to stop taking giggle fits at the term and still found it utterly delightful, asked.
"Bad elf, bear in mind which keys are in what pouch and be quiet," Hermione said. "Anyway that about wraps it up for the current state of desert rattery, Master."
(The Alliance troops currently involved in the Dunmer brand had on having the term adequately translated very promptly gone from a bit puzzled to clear comprehension and amusem*nt when an Orc who'd assisted Bernard Montgomery in making the bugger who'd caused it seriously regret sneering about them being 'rats in a trap' had explained -why- he and every other Desert Rat had taken it as a badge of honour, turning an insult back was very much a part of the Dunmer playbook.)
"Well that means Ellie's right about moving on,"
"Okay Master, well as far as Operation Ungentlemanly Warfare goes, for a start IshikawaDemolitions Incorporated has restored the Forth Bridge's status as the galaxy's longest known all-metal cantilever railway bridge, scratch the Dunmeri one that was fifteen feet longer and an entire track wider and scratch Old Nostrilhole's primary north-south logistics trunk right along with it. Along with a northbound ammunition train, there's a few thousand tons of unexploded ordinance gone for a swim in an enormous pile of mangled girders for -maximum- difficuly getting a replacement structure up without more booms."
"I think it better translates 'Old Nosey'," Harry said, nodding. "Let me guess, Aoi?"
"No Master, -Kaedae- blew the bridge, -big-eyed 'innocent' wee girl with a mokeskin full of plastic explosives- in the land of the most patronisingly sexist pratts in known space," Hermione said with considerable satisfaction. "Check this out," and she passed him a photo.
Of a small, adorably cute, Dunmeri girl with an expression of wide-eyed fluff-brainedness and the local equivalent of a cutesey school uniform, holding up a Turian-built remote detonator and giving it an expression of inability to comprehend anything about it.
"That's Kaedae?"
"That's Kaedae, Master, off to blow up significant infrastructure and put bullets into mass-murdery officers anywhere they think they're safe. Talking of which Makoto finally managed to get into the relevant Sethmaarian archives, we now have a full list of every Sethmaari involved in," she skipped exactly what, authorising setting up and running operations involving quote 'comfort women' unquote, every last one of whom Harry fully intended to see introduced to an axe, "The documents are in ROIS hands right now, Mairi's getting them sorted between dealt with, needing dealt with, and currently in Alliance POW camps."
Harry nodded again, said, "Hang on a sec," fished out his list of good reasons not to invade, read over it, scored a couple off as they just weren't good enough, groaned, reread, and put it away.
"Why's the paper making you cross Dada?" Asked an unexpected little voice and he realised his eldest daughter was ztanding at his feet.
"It's a list of good reasons not to invade some places that've done a lot of utterly, -utterly- awful things, Nina, there's still fifty-six mostly running to it'd cause a lot of really bad stuff to happen but -f*ck- I want to."
"Awkward kinging stuff," Nina said, climbing into his lap and stubbornly proceeding to hug.
"Aye, bloody awkward," Harry told her. "Anything else on the ungentlemanly warfare side of things Hermione?"
"Yes Master, it's all still very early days but the efforts to provoke civilian unrest are starting to show dividends, nothing particularly spectacular yet but there isn't anyone in power -not- muttering about 'fifth column' at this point and there's this growing muttering about interring dissidents. Or 'dissidents'. Who're starting to -actually perceivably exist-, I think the attempts to get Southwestern Powers governments to go all witch-hunty looking for 'traitors' is going to actually work and actually start generating -actual dissent-, again especially the -f*cking- Sethmaari. Other than the same causing new and exciting logistics fail, messing with the post, encouraging ammunition depots to mysteriously catch fire, so on, that's about it for news there, apart from one thing that's mostly conjecture at the moment. Tracy? Tell Master that conspiracy thing. The one that's starting to look like it's not tinfoil hattery."
"Which, the it starting to look like someone's collecting the parts for a flesh golem in the occupied territories or that Dunmer Illuminati thing?"
"Let's hear them both," Harry said. "After hearing about any updates from the Batarian corner."
"Yes Master," and Hermione flipped over to the second report. "Okay so, the first evidence of a Batarian Wizarding World turned up in the form of, of all things, a Batarian freedman picked up a head injury crashing a motorbike on Duncan's World yesterday and while he was being patched up the healers found signs that he'd been irreversibly obliviated several times, most recently probably about five or six years ago. They immediately asked around for volunteers and so for they've found obliviation damage in roughly one in every five Batarians they've checked with the common factor that they'd all been on their homeworld in the same rough timeframe. ROIS just started going back and checking with ex-slaves they've previously debreifed and it's holding up so far, out of fifty-eight people known to have been on Khar'shan's surface so far checked all fifty-eight have been obliviated one or more times most probably -while there-."
"... I think it may be time to take prisoners," Harry said.
"Murdo's way ahead of you there Master. He's tracking a freighter outbound from Khar'shan that just exited the Batarian Iron Curtain," the high-security fortified relays into Batarian core systems that the Turians didn't think they'd be able to break through any time soon; ROIS had successfully infiltrated it using vessels crewed by golem imposters but nobody had quite got up the nerve to try sneaking into the Khar'shan system itself yet.
"My bet is basically Batarian Black and Black run by Batarian Voldemortcompletely won first at Dark Lording then at Statute collapses," Daphne said.
"I'm not going to bet against that, I can't think of anything that doesn't fit," Harry told her.
"Does basically that happening with inheriting the company going on at least once in the process count as a bet against that?" Tracy asked.
"Bet you it's a Dark Lord still immortally Dark Lording," Daphne told her.
"Bet you it's a Dark Lord's dark-lordy grandkids doing the Dark Lording now," Tracy said.
"Bet you it's a Batarian arsehole version of me who bumped off their Dark Lordish parent," Harry said.
"Any other bets?" Gabrielle asked, pulling her notebook out.
"I bet it's a Board of Dark Lords that used to be what the Batarians used for a Wizengamot and the whole -muggle- corporate state is basically their Statute," Fleur said.
"Anyone else?" There was a round of headshaking; Gabrielle nodded, finished noting down her elder sister's bet, and tucked the big book of bets away.
"Wanna get on to Dunmer conspiritations Dada?" Nina asked. She officially considered the entirety of Councilspace boring, potentially partially due to not knowing about the Drell's gigantic muggle-repelling ward, which was currently still in place while the OSA and ROIS worked on getting the planet to look like it actually -had- been environment catastrophed then rebuilt from it. There wasn't a consensus -yet- over what to do amongst the ragtag Drell magical survivors, one band so far was now getting established on Fiona's World in the sufficiently arid to not mess up Drell lungs northwest of Eddie Campbell's Land, another band were reconditioning an old muggle nuke shelter in which to claim to have been trapped by outside environment, and the majority - realistically just, -only just-, enough to represent a viable genepool - were starting to lean towards finding or terraforming a nice Drell-hospitable planet well out of the way and rebuilding Wizarding Drell civilisation thousands of lights away from the catastrophic mistakes of the past. The common factor was a majority urge to not have to see the devestation cause by a dead Dark Lord's bad plan any more.
"Go for it," Harry said.
"Okay so starting with the flesh golem thing, there's a pattern emerged from a string of murders with the bodies turning up with different bits cut out," Tracy said. "As of the latest body to turn up whoever it is has every part neededto assemble a flesh golem in the guise of a very averagish bloke. The part that's making people wonder is flesh golems just aren't a -thing- in any extant Dunmeri records and the only reason the bloody Sethmaari are actually -doing any investigating- is they're wondering if they've got a serial killer wearing one of their uniforms who'll keep at it at home. Aoi's working on getting hold of what they know and we don't at the moment and the Cesethmara Home Army are running their own investigation too, it's all local civvies who've turned up dead with bits missing."
"... Right," Harry said.
"And as for the whole Dunmer Illuminati thing, there's another very odd pattern starting to turn up - in centuries of extensive history of things just lining up -weirdly conveniently- for what you might call forwards thinkers and industrialists and people trying to unify countries or 'civilise' places and the likes, and weirdly -inconveniently- for the likes of luddite types, independence movements, what we'd call Mottery, and anyone overtly using forced labour and the likes. I don't know I can even start to guess whether or not there -is- some sort of 'they' involved but it's starting to look a bit like the local tinfoil hat brigade might be onto something, and if they -are- it's starting to look like 'they' are a kinda wrongheadrd sort of well-intentioned."
"Tinfoil hat brigades being onto something, now there's a phrase I never expected to hear," Harry said.
"I know right Master? It's a f*cking -weird- idea and I keep tripping over it every time I try to make head or tail of just the -weirdness- of Dunmeri history. The man part making it unbelievable is it'd require 'they' to have an objective that's remained completely consistent for -at least- fifteen hundred years and that just -yyyeah- whatever."
Harry nodded, frowning.
"Okay," he said. "Aye. That -is- outlandish."
"Yes Master," Tracy agreed. "I mean I just flat out laughed at the idea when it originally came up but it's starting to look too like there -is- something weird going on in the background down there - I mean the only thing that's ever actually broken up one of their historic empires over the last fifteen hundred years is a fight over who's in charge escalating to hell in a handbasket and I don't even know how to phrase how weird -that- is."
Harry nodded again. Hermione said "I think that about wraps it up for the news for today Master and I think we might as well start betting on whether or not World War Dunmer is going to end up with some description of unified world government actually happening."
"I wouldn't like to call that one," Harry said. "I mean us just being there is going to put some sort of impetus in that direction but no matter what happens there's going to be a lot of leftover bad blood from the war, I expect it's going to be a couple of generations before say for example anyone being Sethmaar in public in whatever Cesethmara state comes out the other end is asking for the sh*t kicked through them. I wouldn't be surprised if they try it and it doesn't stick."
"I'm not going to be able to reasonably bet on it until we know whether or not there actually is a Dunmer Illuminati running around down there, times whether or not we decide to set ninjas on any such Illuminati," Tracy said. "I just don't see it happening without a lot of serious Mottery and linecrossage any time soon, what I'm expecting to see is a Sovietless mashup of the aftermath of both muggle World Wars and us probably having to talk them out of going all Treaty of Versailles and setting themselves up for another one the way the muggles did eighty years ago."
"I think they're going to start working to make something actually possible based on the fact that the Northern Alliance reminds me of a cross between NATO and the European Union," Hermione said. "And I'm very certain we're going to start seeing a lot of long games being played down there especially if the tinfoil hatters are -right-, though exactly what aims and so on are going to develop? Us existing is going to have a -huge- impact on their everything."
"Betcha Granny ends up their government with them thinking it's their idea and Granny not realising it's her idea until it suddenlies and she's like 'oh f*cksticks well that happened'," Nina said.
"It's a bit early for bets, squirt," Harry told her. "That said it's a pretty good one, aye. Anyway Tracy's definitely right that we're going to have a massive impact on their everything because I'm not going to stop guaranteeing independences down there, which someone is going to find out just how bloody serious I am about sooner or later. Gonna be interesting to see if they ever manage to make global unifying happen by -popular demand- and I think you're onto about the only way it could even possibly hwppen before someone calls -you- Granny."
"So not for ages and ages and ages which means I'm gonna win my bet because Granny's gonna accidentally take over the Dunmer world first," Nina said, then utterly changed track to, "Dad, when am I gonna be wearing corsets?"
This question caught Harry utterly flat-footed, he hadn't even considered it.
He said, "Uh,"
"Stop looking at me in that tone of voice Dad, everyone knows it's when."
"Hang on, I hadn't even thought that far ahead," Harry told her.
"I had, Master, I've been reading up on the subject for Claire's benefit and the consensus appears to be that five is the most appropriate age for an easy process the child won't find overly burdensome with the later after that the more obnoxious it becomes." And she looked at Ellie, who'd been abruptly introduced to tightlacing older than anyone else in the room.
"No comment," Ellie said.
"I don't know? I didn't start until I was twelve and I wouldn't call any part of it unpleasant?" Hermione more asked than said.
"I wouldn't know either, I've been wearing one since I was six though I didn't get into tightlacing until I came here," Gabrielle said.
"Don't look at me, all I can say is one halfarsed together out of old bedsheets and twine because the matron's embezzling most of the budget is f*cking awful whatever you do with it that isn't chucking it in a bonfire," Tracy said.
"I didn't have much trouble from starting at Hogwarts, though adjusting how to move with it would probably have been easier done earlier - actually you know what? I know who to talk to, Flora and Hestia, and Dorea Potter. They've actually had a -normal- experience with it unlike anyone here, and unlike Luna aren't prone to constantly fibbing."
Harry nodded, and said "Okay, any idea where the twins are?"
"I'll go and excavate them Master," Hermione said, getting up.
Harry nodded, "Thanks Hermione," and fished his mirror out. He hit record, said, "Dorea, hey, this is a bit awkward but Nina just unexpectedly asked about corsets and you're one of only a handful of people who actually had anything like a normal experience with that, when'd you say was about the right age? Give me a ding when you're free, ta," and sent it on its way.
"I think this is the first time I can remember normal even being a question here," Ellie said.
"That's because it's barely ever worth worrying about but what's good for the kids -is-," Harry told her.
-/-/-/-
The Friday after a briefing had concluded with a very unexpected question from an eldest daughter, Harry was wandering out of his office with a head full of leftover traces of the morning's kinging - two more pairs of Goon-class mass relay platforms had come online linking 4 Saggitarius and the system (fifty lights to hell and gone) containing a planet suitable to terraform into a new Wizarding Drell homeworld both back to Ehel'swaar, the Dunmer were managing to maintain momentum on Desert Rattery, all good- when he found a very unexpected sight he probably should have expected:
Hanging off the bars outside Luna's junk room door with both hands to prevent herself being pulled around, one Gremlin, with Johhny, Dave, Nina, and Claire all busy working on collaboratively lacing up what appeared to be one of Luna's old training corsets, about which she was slightly dubiously frowning over her shoulder at the quartet of rather smaller Potters.
"I think it's all the way?" Johhny said. "It's not pinchy is it Taylor?"
"No, it's okay, it's pretty tight but not -that- tight," Gremlin said, peering down at herself.
Nina, apparently the ringleader in this some description of ambush, finished tying it off, collected a length of chain and lock - definitely grabbed out of a golem paets bin - and proceeded to wrap and lock this round the a bit older girl's middle before critically examining with a, "Well if it -gets- pinchy lemme know cause that's part of proper test subjecting."
"Ello ello ello, what's all this ere then?" Harry pointed out he was present.
""Gremlin's big enough for test experimenting whether it's bad or not Dad," Johnny announced, in a tone of enhanced reasonableness. "Cause Nina says nobody seems to agree on that so we're doing studies."
Harry, who would have been a fine one to start on about conscripting the neighbour's kids as test subjects, nodded and said "In that case I think it's time you all learn the basics of diagnostic charms once you've given Gremlin her jersey back."
"My jersey is on that old settee and I'm going to put it back on now I'm not being pulled off my feet," Gremlin told him, and immediately put motion to words.
Harry nodded and started herding his entire mob of so far large enough to pull shenanigans flock of kids into the Royal Mess while composing a message to the effect that there would be a golem over with a relevant key immediately, in case his offspring's 'experiment' needed adjusted or concluded while they were in bed, because he -really- couldn't say whether they'd gone overboard with it.
(He didn't think so, the diagnostic he'd cast before informing the kids they had an audience said no, but better to peomptly arrange contingencies when it comes to your children's first medical experiments.)
He'd just hit send when his mirror started dinging, and he found himself attempting to decipher a laughing his head off Sirius who finally gave up and showed him photos of an epidemic of cat ears amongst eleven-year-old-and-younger students at Ardgowan Secondary, for which the twins were -unabashedly- responsible with a stated aim to determine how many people would still have them come the end of seventh year and an adamant lack of desire to change their own back.
-/-/-/-
"It's an experiment,Mum. Nina and Claire needed a test subject."
"Really. And you're sure you don't mind it?"
"No? Should I?"
"... I think that's rather more up to you dear, be sure and tell Dad or me immediately if you -start- minding it, it looks a bit mindable from here."
"I'd also need to tell Nina and Claire too Mum cause working out how mindable it is is the whole experiment."
-/-/-/-
Eight days of fire, increasingly desperate attempts to break out of the trap, eight days of maintaining constant pressure and keeping the hundreds of thousands of men cut off burning through their ammunition, one big eight day long vicious air-to-air furball to prevent supplies being dropped in, and resistance finally, suddenly, -collapsed-.
The price the Alliance forces on the ground had paid was bloody - thousands of casualties between WIA and KIA, hundreds of tanks knocked out, two hundred and sixty-three aircraft lost - but it paled in comparison with what their enemies had lost: half the Southwesters best front-line regiments were effectively -gone-.
Nearly half a million men were on their way to Alliance POW camps and the medical tents of and thousands more dead or 'MIA, presumed dead' as the Fifth Army flooded westwards towards the second line of defence, a hard-fought victory won and the course of a war - and a world's destiny - changed forever.
-/-/-/-
"Well well well," said a nondescript Dunmer clad in a Sethmaar private's uniform, contemplating an inert body surrounded by arcane apparatus and preservation charms and hidden away in a derelict pillbox. "So he's at it again, but this time we know where to find the bastard's new corpus."
"I'd think that means we're closer to his tail than ever before ," the middle-aged Cesethmarai peasent lady to whom he was speaking said, really quite excited. "Question now is what to do with this."
"... Boobytrap I'd say, let him think he's cheated death yet again and the moment he sits up, -boom-," the soldier said. Both were armed with suppressed sub-machine guns of a design not belonging to any military worldwide, though chambered for a very common pistol calibre used by multiple armies, Sethmaari included.
"Better report back and definitely better get a team in to track the damn ritual links, this is closer than -anyone's- ever got."
"Point. You start getting this boobytrapped, I'll check in."
Neither of them were the slightest bit aware of an unperceivable form listening in from the pillbox entry corridor, and the man remained completely unaware of it when Aoi Ishikawa rode, clinging to his car's roof, along with him.
She maintained pursuit as the man drove through three checkpoints, parked in a culdesac, went into a building in which an entire squad of Sethmaari were billeted, changed into civvies after swapping papers with a couple of soldiers, exited via a tunnel to a different house as a Cesethmar civilian, passed through two more checkpoints riding a not-centaur and presenting papers at each, arrived at an outlying farm, and gave away the presence of a concealed bunker underneath one of the barns, into which Aoi, of course, followed him.
There was an assortment of a dozen individuals down there including someone Aoi recognised from that first partisan camp she'd approached - allegedly a Cesethmar soldier who had avoided capture during the invasion, not very effective as a partisan but a competent gunsmith - and someone else who she recognised as a file clerk from the occupiers local HQ, but more important right now was the several unknowns currently involved in going over various documents and maps with an air of intense focus.
Aoi started taking photographs while keeping tabs on what the man she'd followed had to say; his news was met with a lot of interest and rapid arrangements for a selection of persons identified by number to get down to the pillbox and track ritual linkswhile a report was put together to be in some means express mailed somewhere once joined by a post-op report - she contributed a low detectability scrying anchor to it and invisibly accompanied the 'strike team' back to the pillbox, used their results to beat them to it, blackbagged their target and said target's notes, went back to the pillbox, and set their boobytrap off before starting to exfiltrate her way to somewhere suitable to deliveran alien necromancer wearing a body with clear signs of having been built like a flesh golem to ROIS interrogators in orbit, fully aware that there was a new very significant objective:
The organisation infiltrating every major faction in at least this area was very, -very- interesting indeed, worth detailed attention, and she'd be really very interested to see if they did in fact explain the numerous inconsistencies and curiosities that had, thus far, cropped up.
-/-/-/-/-
An envelope walked off a train in a military officer's pocket and was passed to a clerk from an embassey; it was loaded into a diplomatic bag and flown to the neutral country whose embassy that was, then passed through three sets of hands on the way to a different embassey rather further north; from here it was passed off to an Alliance military logistics clerk type who coveyed to a specific very old town that had just stopped being the Fifth Army's field HQ and was now the eastern end of a major truck convoy operation, where it was passed into the hands of one of the various 'nomads' who carried it nearly six hundred miles to Hell and gone into a near-desert, and finally:
To the blind alley canyon at the back of an anchient oasis town (the one wherein the C.O of 4SOG had undertaken a prewar dig) and into a building that appeared to be overgrown by the area's unique gigantic mushrooms that promptly turned out to -be the building-, where it was hand delivered to one of two -massively out of place- persons at the end of a surprising quick journey taking less than forty-eight hours to convey the envelope across half a dozen borders, beating the delivery of a not-a-lich to orbit by nearly ten hours:
The recipient was afour foot nothing short -unmistakably Khajiit- woman with a very impressive cleavage displayed by an elaborate green-and-gold 'booby dress' who was for some reason also wearing an elaborate brass and some description blue crystal gauntlet on her left hand, who immediately opened it.
And hada slightly taller, preadolescent, reddish-yellow-glowing-eyed, attentive-expressioned, dark-haired and very pale skinned -human- girl clad in a dress Hermione Granger would've been delighted to wear at age twelve, calf boots Hermione wouldn't have been seen dead in since she was twelve due to sensibly flat heels, and a silver definitely collar, who immediately started reading over the equally thoroughly out of place Khajiiti midget's shoulder.
Naturally, the immediate reaction to this utterly unexpected duo on the part of the ROIS intelligence analyst who'd been monitoring the tagged report via scrying was, "What in the f*ck?"
The report immediately had the bizarre pair check various arcane intsteuments with an air of not quite daring to hope, which quickly turned into a flood of resigned swearing, after which theyinstructed the messanger to convey the message that 'the great traitor' was no longer in any way tracked and all cells were to immediately begin seeking signs of where he'd emerge next, and there the scying link's usefulness ran out as it was taken to a rock-cut archive and filed by one of several Dunmer dogsbodies.
The question now became whether Aoi had nabbed a playing piece or a bargaining chip, as the due very clearly -loathed- a certain not-quite-lich, desperately wanted him entirely dead, and had all but given up on seeing it happen.
-/-AN-/-
Explanation of what in the exactly hell Babette and a slight edit (by dint of being shorter) of one of my Morrowind player characters are doing here coming up shortly, along with the even more delayed excavation of an 'oh no not again'ed Serana Volikharr.
You don't know that not-a-lich but it's his fault the plan didn't go off exactly as intended by Babette, Serana, and the Nerevarine's mutual friend (another of my old PC's who may or may not be in some measure Tiber Septim as I'd named him Wulf before finding out there's an avatar of Talos wearing the same name in TES3) who'd hired Babette to forcibly evacuate two of his dearest surviving companions from a rapidly going to Hell in a handbasket Mundus and didn't warn her she was getting evacuated too, details as known by this mob to follow in the next story post meaning I'm going to actually have to pin down just how bad it was getting in there right before Akatosh's last ditch Plan E worked.
Note that neither said not-a-lich (he's basically a Horcrux-supported shade posessing previously unoccupied bodies) nor the three still-extant refugees who're going to survive the next part, actually know that their mutual friend pulled a two seconds to midnight save.
These four are the only characters who've actually been in Nirn who're going to show up until Nirn actually gets found.
For some background on Kiassa, the Nerevarine: she was born in an egg mine owned by Master Neloth in mainland Morrowind, the child of a not clearly known one of three slaves 'employed' there; he later 'employed' her as a houseservant (by which time her growth had rather been stunted by harsh conditions and iffy food) became simultaneously fond of and exasperated by her, and about eight years before the events of TES3 sold her to an 'obnoxiously large, unusually effective Nord doorkicker by the name of Wulf' of his acquaintance (always useful maintaining convivial relations with -competent- adventurers) with his spoken justification that her witterings were starting to -make sense- and his unspoken justification the fact he was as noted getting rather fond of her and was perfectly aware Wulf was in fact buying her free as the big Nord was known to be involved in the Twin Lamps abolitionist society.
(Master Neloth still kinda regrets selling her, he's never found a housekeeper half so good at brewing canis root tea. Oh well, the mad little bugger always was destined for greater things than polishing boots.)
At that time Wulf was acting as an undercover operative for Uriel Septim, who he'd known at least since having protagonnisted his way through Arena, with this Khajiiti ex-slave found to have the potential to make the Nerevarine prophecy come true in a way beneficial to the Empire: Wulf more or less took her on as an apprentice adventurer, leading her to return to Morrowind and infiltrate Vvardenfel by prison ship as a solidly experienced pyromancer (probably better described 'explodeomancer', she's not far off being Khajiit Lina Inverse)and sneak thief. And unsurprisingly, a complete nutjob.
The next time Master Neloth saw her she was, to his considerable surprise and unexpected pride, a powerful up and comer with a proclivity for massive explosions quickly establishing herself in House Telvanni on her way to become a political, and magical, powerhouse while very clearly being entirely mad enough and brilliant enough to fit in to the House despite being -a Khajiiti midget-, during all of which (and that entire doing in Dagoth Ur thing) she and Master Neloth established a bizarre very Telvanni mutually antagonistic friendship.
Post having exploded Dagoth Ur, Almalexia having lost her freaking mind, Sotha Sil dying due to Almalexia losing her freaking mind directly after which Almalexia got thoroughly exploded,and an unholy mess involving werewolves (and explosions) on Solstheim she was involved in persuading Helseth to outlaw slavery (personal reasons) was unfortunately offplane cleaning up the mess left over from Sotha Sil's death (Clockwork City needed a -lot- of fixing from Almalexia going mental, well, actually from Almalexia -getting exploded- but still) during the Oblivion Crisis, and is still absolutely furious at Vivec for not having put that damn rock down -gently- before he lost his grip on it, the utter pratt.
(She's still keeping an eye out for hints where the stupid bastard is right up until the cataclysms of the Dragon Crisis, and assumes he was hiding from her for fear of getting exploded for getting her giant mushroom house blown up by a sodding humongous volcano.)
She managed to missthe Argonian invasion, having seen off and followed back to source another very abortive due to Nerevarinus Interruptus attempted Akiviri 'snow demon' invasion; she ended up chasing them back to 'discuss' their having blown up her second giant mushroom house, several unecessarrily large explosions later gotimprisoned there for decades before escaping, causing a lot of huge explosions in the course of expressing her precise opinion of being shoved in a hole and forgotten about,and making her way back to Morrowind right in time to get mixed up in the Clockwork City section of Elder Scrolls Legends via her third giant mushroom house getting exploded when some prick nicked her second favourite ring - the one for teleporting there - resulting in her being mostly busy solving problems there -again- (yup. Exploded him hwrd as ahe exploded Almalexia, oops) until all that muck with dragons started. Which she became aware of via: a dragon blew her fourth giant mushroom house up and didn't stick around for its exploding the way the one that -crawled out what used to be the basem*nt- did.
She spent the majority of the slide into utter chaos of the Dragon Crisis crashing on Master Neloth's couch and keeping the necessary ingredients to grow herself several more giant mushroom houses on her person while looking for possible locations of a certain urgently in need of an exploding dragon, meeting back up with Wulf for the first time in centuries when Harmeus Mora lost contol of some sort of 'first dragonborn' whatever that's supposed to mean beyond 'Wulf started deliberately reading Black Books, the nutter, and claims to have caved the bugger's skull in with his latest big hammer', this being when she resumed accompanying Wulf after discovering that -Alduin- blew her giant mushroom house up, and she's really not going to be happy when she finds out Wulf successfully hammered Alduin's head into the ground like a tent peg in freaking Sovngarde without her getting a chance to explode that -bastard dragon-.
(Her relationship with Master Neloth is mutual mixed vitriol, respect, exasperation, mockery, constant magical theory argument, and very abrasive lowkey affection. This is what two ideal Telvanni being close friends looks like even when one of them really doesn't look like you expect, they think each other are completely barking mad and brilliant and they're both not wrong.)
She's calmed down somewhat over the course of more or less having to relearn magic from scratch largely as her artificing knowledge (learned largely from repeatedly jury-rigged Clockwork City back into running with stolen Dwemer gubbins) was a lot more easily transferred than 'how to cause huge explosions' was - though she's still definitely keen on explosions and is probably the galaxy's foremost expert on blasting hexes.She and Babette rarely actually leave Giant Mushroom House #5 these days as the uninitiated tend to get really weird about them on a planet where they're the only known ones not being Dunmer.
She has Sunder, Keening, Wraithguard, and Moon-And-Star on her person at all times (having retreived Keening, which she'd mislaid when a bunch of Akiviri -arseholes- blew her second giant mushroom house up, after an -idiot- used it to disappear himself right as all sorts of chaos involving dragons kicked off) and has quite forgotten that one of the various objects she had in her pockets when she got involuntarily evacuated, now located in a baggie in the attic of her latest giant mushroom house (which hasn't been exploded even once here, only upside,-why'd people keep having to blow it up back in Nirn?- Is being Kiassa's giant mushroom house some sort of 'insert explosion here' sign in Daedric or something? Not okay!) with the rest of the random pocket crud she had on her, is Barilzar's Mazed Band which she'd nicked back off a certain Elder Scrolls Legends antagonist after expressing her extreme displeasure at exploded house.
It doesn't want to work which is why it's in a bag of junk, first thing she checked and she successfully diagnosed it as not being able to find its set destinations,this being her grounds for belief home ceased to exist as she does not yet know it has a maximum range exactly matching a Portkey (about two thirds of the distance from Earth to the Moon)or that she's currently tens of thousands of lightyears away from Nirn.
Oh, and by the way, I've just found out where Nirn is. There's a 'Collector base' unaware of what it's actually orbiting or its destiny involving words to the effect of 'Is it just me or diddebris just start somehow -ricochetting off that event horizon-? What in the -f*ck-, that's not how to black hole!'
Cheers,
Cal.
