"We're just going to take out a local group of bandits or something like that, then we'll set course for Yavin," Harry told the widely smiling Mirror-Leia. "Might have to make a small detour first, though, to drop off the Alliance Special Operations team we picked up. Most of them at least…"
"Most of them?" the young woman inquired, crunching her expressive eyebrows together. "Define 'most of them'."
"All the ones who did not threaten to steal my ship," he expounded on his earlier statement. "Meaning all but one will be fine; the other one we'll be insisting to deliver right back to High Command."
Now looking truly worried, the exact reason of which she did not give away immediately, Leia asked, "Do you mind if I go looking for General Vernan? He knows more about the SpecOps teams than most."
"Only if, after we're done talking to him, we can talk a bit more among ourselves," the wizard stipulated with a cheeky grin. "Simply talking to you over the mirror is not the same as talking face to face, so we need more of it to make up for the lack in quality."
"Sure, it's the lack of talking you're worried about," the Princess teased back, just before blushing prettily at her own audacity. "Of course, I'm most looking forward to learning even more hand-to-hand combat from Arden."
"You know, I can actually almost believe you on that," Harry admitted faux-solemnly. "You did tell me you ran away from an appointment to get all dressed up once to play in the garden; not to mention all the combat training you like talking about so much more than your etiquette training."
The blush now creeping onto her neck as well, even as she was stepping into the turbolifts, Leia whispered, "Alright, there might just be something else I'm looking forward to… doing even more than train with Arden."
Wisely, at least in his own mind, Harry chose not to comment on what her insinuation did to his own personal fantasies, for he could hear the opening of the lift doors and was quite sure Leia would appreciate the opportunity for her blush to go down a bit. Within short order (and already much less red in the face), the Princess had located Vernan and directed him to a private spot where discussing disciplinary matters was a bit more appropriate than it would have been in the mess hall.
"Captain Potter," the general greeted neutrally. "What is the matter? The Princess said something about a problem of disciplinary nature. Is there a problem with your crew?"
"Oh no," Harry rushed to assure the older man. "My crew is conducting themselves impeccably. Even shore leave was without incident. No, we ran into one of the SpecOps groups, and their leader made some threats, to which I had to react accordingly."
Drawing a deep, calming breath the experienced officer asked, "Could I get any more details than that?"
"Sure. Name of the agent is Beeth Va'lim, he and his team held off the scout party that had found our target," the young wizard explained. "When we got him onto our ship, he got rather… demanding. When I refused to immediately take him out of the system, both to keep our cover intact and because we still had someone on the ground, he said, and I quote 'You have a nice ship. What tells you we won't just take…' He didn't get to say more."
Wide-eyed, Vernan questioned, "What did you do?"
"Stunned him, had him searched, put into some new clothes and thrown into the brig under constant surveillance," Harry explained evenly. "I won't abide by threats against my ship or my crew and will be expecting consequences. I'll have the witness statements of all the members of my ground team corroborating that this is exactly what happened, not to mention the surveillance footage. Will that be enough? Because that would mean I could drop off Mr. Va'lim's team at a port of their choice."
"That should be enough, Captain Potter. We would be grateful if you could help the rest of the team however you can," the general replied, and Harry could swear he heard the other man add a muttered, "Damn Bothans and their attitudes."
Back in Leia's room, he asked what Vernan had meant with Bothans and their attitudes.
"Oh, the Bothans can be a bit paranoid, and tend to be rather black and white in how they think of other people," she explained, her general tone of voice and expression telling Harry that she had had the pleasure before. "Not from a moral standpoint, necessarily; their society just encourages individual success to a high degree, backstabbing and political manoeuvring are extremely common. You're either with them or you're against them."
Listening to that description had only one direct impact on Harry: he felt pity. It sounded like such a deeply saddening way to live, always looking over your shoulder, fearing a figurative knife in your back. Never truly trusting the peace…
"Sounds like a rather unfulfilling life," he finally observed solemnly; Leia simply nodded.
"Back to what we were talking about earlier," Harry introduced a conversational U-turn. "If that's something you want to do, I'd of course be ecstatic, but there's no pressure, alright?"
A grin on her flushed face, the Princess responded, "Cute that you worry about me. I think I know what I want, though."
OOOOOOOO
"Hello, you must be Palestro," Harry greeted the blue-skinned man who had been the whole reason for their presence in the first place. "I am Captain Potter. Sorry I kept you waiting; I had to deal with an… issue of decorum."
"No offence taken, Captain Potter," the now former merchant said. "I am sure it is a fascinating story, and I look forward to hearing about your travels. If it does not cause you discomfort, please call me Famet."
"Of course, Famet," the captain allowed. "Then it is Harry for me. Have you been able to save what you wanted to save?"
With a dejected expression, the Wroonian turned around to point at the meagre ten pieces of merchandise Harry had allowed him to save of his stock, and it was visible how sad the destruction of his property made him.
"Sorry, Famet," the young wizard said compassionately. "It was either your wares or our lives."
"Oh, I understand," the man assured one of his rescuers. "I just wish I had something to do…"
The grin now spreading on Harry's face must have given away something, for within moments the other man looked less downtrodden and much more enthusiastic. That seemed to be a good sign, as far as the young wizard was concerned, so he presented his idea, "Well, I need a new weapon. A staff to be precise, made of phrik alloy. We already have the metal, just need someone to design the thing; if you're interested, you could go wild, we can shape the material into any form you can think of."
Almost too choked up to answer, Famet wheezed out a short, "Yes!" and got to work on a pad that someone on the crew must have given him. Satisfied that his guest was squared away, and quite happily at that, Harry turned his steps toward the conference room, where he did indeed find Arden.
"Anything interesting?" he asked as he strode into the room, looking at the witch flicking through bounties.
A slight grumbled told Harry that Arden was unhappy with what she had found, and she proceeded to flick to the next bounty on the list.
"Someone else must have been through here recently," she complained, sounding supremely miffed. "High bounties are all gone, none for all the members of large groups, either. Best-paying one there is would be our blue friend, but I don't think we'll be handing him over anytime soon."
Looking over the Dathomirian's shoulder, Harry too took a look at the listings. "Sedition, Crimes against the New Order, Petty Thievery… who puts out a bounty because of petty thievery?"
Arden shrugged. "Don't get me wrong, there are some really sick people in here," she commented, a hint of disgust in her voice. "Just not the kind the Empire would take issue with other than perhaps due to the competition."
Some flicks into the other direction brought up the picture of a reptilian humanoid with green skin, glowing orange eyes and a sword handle visible over its shoulder. Among the crimes listed were unlicensed slavery, murder, piracy, hundreds of items each. Yet, the bounty sat at only 22000 credits.
"Mostly private bounties, though the biggest single one is still offered by the Wroonian planetary government," she summed up what she must have read earlier. "Not really worth our time with the money it pays…"
"No, but it sounds like it might be worth our time just for the fact that it might help keep a lot of people safe," Harry declared with certainty. "That's a reward in and of itself, if you ask me."
OOOOOOOO
The seedy cantina in one of the smaller cities surrounding Wroona's capital was awash with noise. Beings from many different walks of life, though most of them illegal, had gathered in the establishment as they had a tendency to do in the waning hours of the day. While most of them were human, a good portion was made up of a host of different near- and non-humans, ranging from the more common ones like the Twi'lek to the rarely-seen, for which the bar's newest guest did not even have a name.
Shrouded in a wide cloak and hidden behind the darkness of her cowl, Arden took in the gathered people, looking for someone who might be able to help in her mission. For a price, most likely; it was how these beings worked. Having been sent out to find the trail of their quarry, she had, with the help of the members of the Rebel team, located a place where they might be able to contact the black market that practically any planet with enough wealth and an Imperial presence had.
It had led her to this place.
To be fair, it had not led her to this place, rather one of the members of the SpecOps team she was now shadowing, but the end result was pretty much the same in the witch's mind. Having gotten over their shock at the sudden detainment of their team leader, the other members had nevertheless offered their help in finishing the mission that had been chosen as cover, partly out of ideological reasons, partly out of purely practical concerns. The sooner they had their target in custody, the sooner they would be able to drop off their guests.
That target was a Trandoshan by the name of Tresk. Slaver, bounty hunter, smuggler and whatever else fell his way and could make him money; it was quite obvious there was little that he would not do if it made him a few credits extra. For the last few years, it had been slave trade, mostly female Twi'leks as far as the had been able to find out. They had been sold to every corner of Imperial space, many going to high officers or bureaucrats who, despite outwardly following the general policy of human supremacy, had a more exotic taste than their own trophy wives could provide for.
Hearing it all had made Arden uncomfortably shift when thinking about how her own people treated their males.
Over at the bar, the Alliance agent she had been shadowing handed over what looked like a sizable amount of credits and left behind the cloaked figure she had been talking to. A wan smile on her face, the Miralukan Rebel returned to her watcher, took a sip of the highly mediocre drink the witch had standing in front of her and sat down on the opposite side of the table.
"I got us our in," the woman, whom they all only knew as R'anteri, reported. "Cost quite a few credits, but you should be able to get that back when you claim the bounty."
Arden watched her partner closely for a few moments, before asking the question she had been dreading, "You didn't just buy information, did you?"
Her entire face screaming out the distaste she had for the entire situation, the Miralukan replied, "No, I made a down-payment on a 'new' Twi'lek slave girl. I'm assured she is of prime quality and quite rare a skin tone."
Snorting audibly, the witch commented, "Captain's going to be pissed."
"That does not much concern me," R'anteri admitted nonchalantly. "Don't get me wrong, I'd rather he be happy with us, because we would have been in big trouble had those IDTs reached us, but I know that he'd eventually come to appreciate the wisdom of my actions. It is the fastest way to achieve our goal and keep more people from getting harmed."
Watching the other woman talk always made Arden uncomfortable, even if she was not wearing her cloak. Not being able to look your opposite in the eye made her nervous beyond belief, and the Miralukans did not have eyes, and covered up their empty sockets.
"Let us get going," the Rebel agent proposed eventually. "This place… it does not feel good. And that drink you were having is still burning in my throat."
OOOOOOOO
"You did what?!" Harry roared as he was told about the women's trip to the seedy cantina and what exactly R'anteri had been doing. "You bought a slave?"
"We made a down-payment on one," the Miralukan clarified, although somehow that did not help Harry's mood. "It is the fastest way to get on the track of whoever is behind the illegal slavery on the planet."
The captain continued grumbling for a while after that, but eventually agreed that, if it got them to the slavers faster, it was probably a worthwhile thing to try. It also had the added bonus that it might just help keep this particular slave out of any cruel hands, if she were to be bought by them.
"How exactly is buying a slave supposed to get us to the slavers, anyway?" Harry asked after spending a good deal of time thinking about the plan. "What tells you that there won't just be some underlings sent to handle the transaction while their boss stays in the shadows?"
"Believe me," R'anteri assured him. "This is one transaction the leader of the whole operation will want to be a part of."
"And if not, you'll have placed a tracker on the credits," the witch added.
Giving the two women an accepting shrug, Harry looked at Arden. "I'm calling Leia now. You can come and help me explain why we're buying a female Twi'lek slave."
OOOOOOOO
Once again, it was on Arden and R'anteri to play the parts of the buyer in their operation. The contact they had made the down-payment to had given them a time and a place where they would meet with the seller to hand over 'the goods' and the credits.
As was most definitely called for, the two women had backup in the form of a disillusioned Harry, a group of Alliance soldiers in a van and a larty floating in the cover of a low-hanging cloud; that was without even mentioning the group of disillusioned probe droids that would be following the participants of the meeting to wherever they went afterward.
Of course, there was also the small detail of Corsek, hunkered down on a nearby building with good visibility, very much looking forward to the first deployment of his newly acquired DC-15A blaster rifle, found on the abandoned Republic station. It was Corsek's voice that Harry was now hearing in his ear.
"They've got backup too," he warned on the frequency. "I see two sharpshooters, a few goons, an armoured van, just like ours… There's no way they haven't seen me here on the roof."
"Understood," the wizard replied, safe in the knowledge that his charms would keep him unheard as well as unseen. "So, no ambushing them during the meeting. We can only assume that they would have some way to kill the slave if it came down to it. I could protect her against blasters, but I can't stop them from blowing up a slave implant."
"Roger, Boss," the confirmations began coming in from all team members.
Their deliberations made, the group simply waited the remaining few minutes until finally, their target arrived; admittedly, he had looked less scary on the holo pictures, where the hulking two metres of lizard had been shrunken down to manageable proportions.
"My guys don't appreciate the sharpshooter on the roof," the Trandoshan said gruffly in lieu of any kind of greeting. "Or the armoured speeder…"
Arden snorted. "And we don't appreciate the goons, the sharpshooters and the armoured speedervan either, so I think we can call it quits. Where's the merchandise?"
An expression of pure disinterest on his face, the slaver waved to his goons who then proceeded to drag a surprisingly docile, red-skinned Twi'lek out of the speedervan and into the waning light of dusk. She was slim, almost petite of stature, her long lekku reaching down almost to the small of her back, and clothed in a way that left very little to the imagination.
"Now the credits," Tresk ordered dispassionately, coldly whispering his demands. "45000, not one less."
With a deliberateness and calm that was both surprising and deeply admirable, as far as Harry was concerned, the Miralukan Alliance agent went back to the van, got the agreed-upon amount of credits (in hard currency, as befitting the kind of business they were in) and walked back to the exchange slowly.
"45000, plus the 5000 we made as down-payment," R'anteri declared, confidently looking into the slaver's burning orange eyes. "We'll exchange at the same time."
As one, the two of them began moving toward each other, the Twi'lek slave walking along her slaver docilely, face downward, shuffling across the dirty street on her bare feet.
"The control for her implant?" the Miralukan demanded, immediately snatching the small device out of the Trandoshan's large hand as soon as it came into reach. Then, she leaned in a little, and whispered, "Whatever you're planning, I would advise against it; credits are worth nothing to a corpse. Or maybe it's being a prisoner you're more scared of, losing all favour with the Scorekeeper? We can arrange that."
Noting the glint of anger and stubbornness in the slaver's eyes, she continued. "You didn't really think we came with only one van and one sharpshooter to trade something this valuable with someone like you, right?"
An expression of pure loathing on his face, though for what exactly, Harry could not tell, the Trandoshan took the credits and marched back to his thugs, got into the van and left.
"What was that all about?" he asked, still disillusioned, although that really did not make much of a difference to the Miralukan.
"There's a saying about these Trandoshans," the Rebel agent explained. "When they're loud, be wary; when they're silent, be terrified. This one was silent, so I assumed he was planning something."
"And what was that part with the Scorekeeper about?" Arden inquired, having heard the entire conversation a bit more clearly. "Sounded like something religious…"
"Oh, it is," R'anteri confirmed. "The Trandoshans believe in a deity called 'the Scorekeeper' who awards points for aggressiveness, successful hunts or exotic kills. However, they lose all of that favour should they ever be captured or shamed during a hunt. He will not be easy to catch because he will much rather die, than be dishonoured."
Listening to the two women talk with one ear, it was rather interesting after all, Harry dispelled the disillusionment charm on himself, before engaging with the comm unit in his helmet.
"Mercer," he spoke into the connection that had been open from the beginning of the meeting. "You heard all that?"
"Sure, Boss," came the expected reply, professional as always in such a situation. "I have two of the droids following the van, two are waiting to see where those sharpshooters are going to vanish to."
"Excellent," Harry replied, adding, just before the connection was cut, "Keep us posted."
OOOOOOOO
"Wow, that guy is even more paranoid than I ever was," Harry muttered as he watched the signal from the probe droids steadily move cross the planetary map. "How often have they changed vehicles by now?"
"Three times, Boss," Mercer replied, his eyes glued to the holo-table just as much as Harry's. "Where's the money?"
"Still moving," the captain explained. "Not really sure, where, though. It's a bit too far away to tell to exactly; the tracking charms just gives me a direction and a rough estimate of the distance."
The Lightbringer's second-in-command grunted in understanding, just as the two men were joined by Arden. "Still moving?"
Both of them nodded.
"Paranoid, much?"
Again, nodding.
"Seems like they've stopped," Harry finally observed, pointing toward the no-longer moving dots on the by now very large map. "Helmsman, bring us deeper into the atmosphere. I have a weird feeling about this."
As ordered, the former Imperial manning the ship's controls that day began steering the corvette toward Wroona's surface, all the while the young wizard was feeling the pull of his tracking charm intensify and the direction become ever more clear.
"They've split up," he eventually declared, when it started becoming overly clear that the charm's results differed wildly from the direction the signal from the probe droids indicated. "Must have had a second ride waiting at one of those stops to throw off any pursuers."
"Clever little womp-rats," Mercer grumbled at that particular announcement, but was mostly ignored.
"Helmsman," Harry ordered the young officer, "Keep us at this height and set course for… 11 o' clock."
With barely an audible sound, the Lightbringer turned her nose toward the direction her captain had assigned. Meanwhile, that very captain was feeling into himself to follow the cord linking him to the credits they had used to pay the slaver. Just as expected, the longer they followed the pull of Harry's magic, the less directional the pull of the tracking charm became; instead, it was now just a general feeling of 'down'.
"Hold here," the captain instructed and his ship ground to a halt. "What can you find?"
The last bit had been directed at the sensor operator, who was now furiously tapping away at the controls in front of her, somehow managing to keep up with the stream of data flowing past before her eyes.
"Not much," the woman offered. "Just some burned-out refugee village. Probably an Imperial retaliation for whatever imagined slight a few scared and desperate people supposedly committed."
"Perfect hiding place," Mercer concluded sombrely. "No one will want to look twice, maybe it's even under some form of unofficial Imperial protection; you know, it remains a military exclusion zone, but no one interferes with business, as long as the wheels keep getting greased and the pockets keep getting lined."
Harry snorted at that, no longer surprised with the staggering amount of corruption spread throughout the Empire's military and administration, especially away from the core.
"Can we get in there without getting into trouble with the Imps?" he asked his first officer, eyebrow raised at the idea of breaking Imperial movement restrictions.
"Should work just fine," Mercer assured the group. "There can only be some low-level, informal cooperation. Otherwise there wouldn't be a bounty out for unlicensed slave trade. Probably just some disgruntled officer looking to supplement his paycheck."
"Alright then," the young wizard announced. "One team with me and Arden, we take out whatever we find in this camp, one team with Javoc and Corsek to look into the last stop the droids tracked those speeders to."
OOOOOOOO
"Everybody ready?" Harry asked into the comms unit built into his helmet. Receiving affirmatives not only from his own team, but also the second one that had been assigned to smoke out whatever part of the slaving ring they could find in their vehicles' last stop, he ordered for the raid to proceed.
"Go in, no unnecessary risks," the command ran through their communication channel, just as the captain nodded into the direction of his cloaked companion; Arden had been disillusioned, just as a precaution to any… unlucky surprises.
His presence revealing spell showed only a marginal presence of guards at this station, just about enough to keep control of the slaves, not that it would be all that hard if they all had slave implants or explosive collars. Things being like they were, they were set to quickly waltz through the defenders, leaving only Tresk as a real danger to deal with. As had become his custom, Harry held up three outstretched fingers and counted down. When all of his fingers were pulled into a fist, the charges one of the Rebel special forces soldiers had planted went off, and immediately the group of heavily armed soldiers stormed inside. The picture that formed in front of them was not a pretty one.
All over the room they had stormed there were cages, though most of them were empty; excrement was lying around inside the metal constructs, their purpose clear to anyone that laid even a single eye on them. Then there were the guards, though they had obviously been caught on the wrong foot, and the grouping of stun shots that hit each of the three criminals into the chest would do little to improve that. However, right in the middle of it all stood Tresk, calm as can be, in his hand a trigger, the kind of which Harry was all too familiar with; after all it was not unlike what he himself had used to disable the Death Star's tractor beam projectors.
"No step further, human," the Trandoshan slaver said in his eery, low and grumbling voice. His basic was understandable, but heavily accented. "Otherwise, I will turn your companions and all the slaves in our outpost into mush."
The being's orange eyes glimmered sadistically at that. "Oh yes, I knew something was wrong about that offer for the Twi'lek. You were too well organised and equipped for what you claimed you were."
Harry simply watched the whole scene play out in consternation, even as he listened to the heavy chatter going on in their communications channel. He could hear Mercer ordering the other troops out of the slavers' outpost, yet he could also hear someone disregarding those orders.
"I assume this is some kind of… aggressive negotiation strategy?" the bounty hunter ventured, even though he was quite aware that negotiation was hardly an applicable word.
"This is a hostage situation," the slaver corrected. "Unless you want your people to be turned into a fine mist, you will do exactly as I say. You're Vincent Dash of the Lightbringer, yes, I know who you are, so I know you've made quite a bit of money recently…"
Tresk did not get to say more, for in that moment a heavy thump could be heard as the faint shimmer of Arden appeared behind him. The slaver went slack, and in that moment, first an explosion and then static filled the communications channel.