Chapter 20: Bricks, Blood, and Bureaucracy

Harry exhaled as he finally left the long chamber behind, the massive doors sliding shut with a quiet hum. He was exhausted.

The meeting with Sena had lasted over nine hours. And not because it was slow, no, quite the opposite. It was a whirlwind of logistics, city planning, economic reform, public service structure, and military-industrial strategy all in one day.

And that was just the baseline.

The biggest issue they tackled first was infrastructure. Roads.

Yes, roads.

The Goa'uld could traverse galaxies in seconds, but when it came to moving goods across land, they were still in the Bronze Age. That was why almost every mine, settlement, or factory was clustered around the Stargate. It wasn't strategy—it was desperation. Harry had no intention of repeating that mistake.

So he had given Sena the updated urban design template, stored on the magical tablet. All future cities would share a standard framework: sector-based divisions with modular zones—residential, educational, commercial, recreational, and administrative. Each sector would function as a miniature city, self-sufficient in essentials.

At the heart of every city would stand a central building: Prima Potestate—the "seat of command." There, city systems could be monitored, emergency services deployed, and critical decisions coordinated. For this to work, though, he needed to lay cables, fibre, and power conduits beneath every street.

Hard to build an empire if you can't send a damn message, Harry thought dryly.

And then came one of his most radical decisions: a human-run police force.

This served two critical purposes. First, it freed Harry's elite Jaffa warriors from mundane civil duties. Second—and more importantly—it separated law enforcement from military rule, thereby decreasing the ever-present tension between Jaffa and humans.

If the humans saw the Jaffa less as overlords, and more as honoured warriors… maybe they'd stop fearing them.

There were complications, of course. Humans were still recovering from centuries of subjugation. Most were illiterate. They weren't ready for high command. For now, Jaffa would staff the upper ranks. But with time, education, and exposure, Harry hoped to reverse that entirely.

He eventually wanted a human police force. Just not today.

The meeting then turned to training programs for these new services. That was a whole new can of worms.

For the police, Harry had essentially copied and pasted Earth's public safety manuals, combining them with magical and Ancient concepts of civic duty and protection. The firefighting corps followed a similar route, enhanced with rune-based insulation, oxygen-filtering enchantments, and heat-nullifying suits—each designed to withstand the wrath of magical or alien fires.

The medical service was trickier. Ancient medicine was… advanced, yes, but obscure. Sam would need to assist him in designing a usable curriculum and equipment. For now, he sketched out basic service kits and pushed it to the "critical but delayed" column.

Then came the equipment.

Police would carry stun pistols, retractable batons, binding cuffs, and runic armour—strong enough to absorb six or seven Ma'tok shots. They'd also be issued patrol vehicles to ensure rapid response in urban settings. Firefighters would wear sealed suits with transparent visors, rune-etched to filter air and regulate internal temperature. It was a start.

He tasked Sena with designing uniforms for all three branches.

"She's got a good sense for structure," he told himself. "And besides, they'll probably take her more seriously than me when it comes to fashion."

Then came the factories.

His industrial base was spread across twenty planets—a surprisingly efficient inheritance from Hecate. On each, he ordered the construction of four shipyards and ten large factories, prioritizing modular efficiency over size. If his math was correct, and it better be, each shipyard would be able to construct four capital ships at a time, once operational.

It would take roughly two months to get them running. With five hundred major ships in production at any given moment, Harry could replace, modernize, or expand his fleet rapidly. Not fast enough to match the old empire, but enough to survive when the storm came.

And come it would.

Ra was dead.

When the other System Lords found out, everything would collapse into war. Power vacuums. Betrayals. Backroom deals. The old order, crumbling.

Harry estimated that it would take at most two years before it began.

He needed that time. Every second of it.

His first new ship design was a transport vessel. No weapons. No ornamentation. Just speed, range, and capacity.

Oval hull, with a T-shaped rear section. Five to five-and-a-half kilometres long. Nearly two kilometres high. Powered by usual sources but later ZPM, protected by Ancient shields, and moved by a hyperdrive tuned with rune-based propulsion.

Capacity: Half a million people.

He'd assigned one factory per world to mass-produce it. They should be able to finish four per month once running. It was simple, efficient, and vital for evacuations, supply lines, and future colonization.

The rest of the factories would build warships. Harry had the designs in his head—mixes of Asgard sleekness, Ancient scale, and Earth functionality. He just needed time to sketch, model, and test.

The backbone of his new fleet.

When they finally adjourned, most of his advisors looked ready to collapse.

So Harry had called it a night.

He was drained—both mentally and magically—but something still gnawed at the back of his mind. A small whisper, a missing detail.

He wandered the empty stone halls of his temple-palace, the air cool and quiet. Stars flickered through skylights above. His boots echoed softly against polished black marble.

What am I forgetting…

The thought was like an itch. Insistent. Cold.

He stopped mid-step.

And then it hit him.

His eyes widened. His soul screamed.

"…Oh no."

He had forgotten her.

She's going to kill me, he thought, a flicker of panic flashing across his face.

He didn't need to see her to imagine it. The glare. The silence. The slow, measured fury.

My only option is to beg.

Food. Yes. Food might help.

I should bring her favourites. Maybe flowers. Or something cute. Do I still have those beacons from his Earth?

Fumbling, he reached into the enchanted pendant around his neck and summoned his shrunken luggage.

The fate of his empire might hang in the balance.

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