Natleen Smitts, former Imperial Navy boarding specialist and now a proud member of the Lightbringer's crew was waiting in front of one of the slavers' hideouts, durasteel doors barring entry. Not that they would hold the team back for long, as the young woman placed a shaped thermal charge against the sheets of metal.
"Breach," the order from their team leader Corsek Betsby, another former Imperial sounded through their communication channel and she immediately blew the door. Within moments, the group of soldiers was through the now empty frame and engaging the disoriented criminals on the other side.
Another few moments later, the guards had been dispatched with stun blasts to their chests, crumbling to the ground.
"This was a trap!" their hitherto smooth operation was suddenly interrupted by the voice of Mercer Fenwick, first officer on their corvette and second-in-command to their captain. "You're sitting on a live bomb, get out of there!"
The tone of order in the man's voice was undeniable, yet there was something that gave Natleen pause; in cages all around the room she had stumbled into were dozens of sentient beings, all of them collared, looking at the interlopers defeatedly.
"You heard the man, everyone out," Betsby ordered his team over the comms channel, and most everyone gave their affirmatives. "That includes you, Smitts! Everyone else is already out!"
Heedless of the order she had been given, Natleen sprinted toward the closest cage and got busy on the lock. This might be her opportunity to right some of the wrongs she had done during her Imperial service.
"Damn it, Smitts, what are you doing?" her team leader's angry voice broke through these thoughts, just as she had managed to open the first cage door. "Alright, I'm coming…"
Natleen Smitts never heard him say anymore, as she and everyone else inside the cave were engulfed in a searing fireball.
OOOOOOOO
The mood among the crew of the Lightbringer and, to a lesser extent the Morningstar, was rather sombre. Most of them had at some point lost comrades before, obviously, that was impossible to avoid in military service, yet they had now suffered the first casualty among this particular crew.
And it seemed so utterly useless, somehow.
One of those hit the worst was obviously the captain and leader of their operation. Harry Potter was sitting in his room wallowing, in all honesty, in self-pity, when his first officer once again decided to barge into his room and disturb his boss' ruminations.
"Hey, Boss," the unusually subdued man said. "We found out what happened. That remote trigger had a dead man's switch; when Arden knocked out Tresk his grip went slack, and the detonator was triggered."
Harry just grumbled inarticulately, still staring into the distance.
"Boss, this was bound to happen at some point," Mercer observed matter-of-factly as he sat down in one of the chairs the captain's quarters were adorned with. "Every one of these people knew what they were signing up for, we even gave Corsek's team enough of a warning to get out there safely while you were stalling Tresk. There's nothing more that you could have done."
"We could have taken out the headquarters first, not split our forces up," the wizard observed catatonically, still staring into the distance.
"And it might have ended up the other way around," the former Imperial, of whom Harry suddenly remembered that he had lost an entire ground team to an ambush once. "We didn't know what their main base was. Imagine we had stormed only that trapped place; we would have all been blown up."
"You don't know that."
"Yes, I do," Mercer replied firmly. "Tresk must have had some kind of surveillance up in that place, and he would have pulled the trigger the moment we all were inside."
That shut the younger man up for a while as he worked to pull himself together to really think about what might have been done different, what specific decision had been somehow wrong. The only one he could think of was that of Smitts declining the order of leaving the trap.
"I see you came to the same conclusion I did," the former Imperial commented. "Don't get me wrong, I still place the blame at the feet of the one who planted the bomb and held the trigger, but she knew what the situation was and decided not to follow the evacuation order."
Though he was aware of how grim he must still be looking, Harry sharply nodded his head to indicate he understood where his friend was coming from, yet it seemed the older man was not yet done.
"That being said, at some point, you will make an error in judgement, and it will cost someone. You have to be prepared for that, as well," he warned sagely, before grabbing Harry's shoulder in a strong grip and dragging him toward the door. "Now we need to talk to Arden; she's in a bit of a funk, too."
OOOOOOOO
As it turned out, describing Arden as being 'in a bit of a funk' was like describing Hagrid with the words 'a bit larger than usual'; technically true, but also definitely understating it, and massively at that. The two of them found the witch in the training room where she was taking out her frustration on an Alliance soldier who had been unwise enough to volunteer for some 'training'.
"Arden, let the man live," Harry interceded, as she was finishing up a blistering barrage of staff hits on who now turned out to be Tevo. "He's done nothing wrong, and he's lost a comrade, too."
Severely disgruntled, the Dathomirian looked around the room, inclined her head to her opponent in a gesture of respect, and put away the training staff.
"Yes, well he didn't cause the explosion," she replied stubbornly, letting herself fall onto the matts, back to the wall of the training room. "Should have just waited a bit longer for everyone to clear out…"
Determined to do for his friend what Mercer had done for him, Harry sat down next to Arden and slung an arm around her surprisingly unresisting shoulder; that alone let him know how badly things had affected her.
"What would you like to have done differently?" he asked, giving her heaving shoulder a squeeze. "Considering what you knew then, what would have been a better decision?"
For a while, the witch remained silent, looking at the far wall, though still visibly seething in anger.
"Grabbed the detonator so it wouldn't have blown," she grumbled belligerently, then, after looking at Harry's expression, she added, "Fine, with what I knew then, there was nothing for me to do differently. That's not the point; I should have known better."
"Maybe, maybe not," the wizard observed. "Important is that you learn from this; in the future, crazy people with detonators in their hands aren't simply knocked out, their detonator is to be secured and then you can smack them about."
That seemed to lift Arden's spirits, and she turned to look around the entire room again, before her gaze focused on the dropped combat staff.
"Speaking of smacking things about…" the Dathomirian suggested, only to receive a rueful shake of the head in response.
"Sorry, another time," Harry replied apologetically, though he was secretly rather happy that he had a reason not to fight a frustrated Arden with, he knew as much from experience, possibly very painful sticks. "I have to take a look into that slave we bought from Tresk, then we'll hand him in for the bounty."
The gleam entering her eyes as he told her his reason for declining let the young wizard know that his friend was more than interested in participating in at least the latter of the two activities; he himself was rather looking forward to that part, too, though he was still quite apprehensive about the former. Despite his mixed feelings on the matter, Harry quickly got up and offered Arden a hand, then turned toward the exit.
Mercer had put the now former slave up in one of the crew quarters, and that is where they found her; despite the stack of clothing that had been laid out for her, she was still wearing the scraps of cloth provided by the slavers. They were barely enough to hide the most important parts. The young wizard could not really guess her age, though she seemed to be around seventeen or eighteen. That was assuming Twi'lek aged the same way humans did in adolescence.
Her state of dress, or lack thereof, however, allowed him to really take in the young woman he had just bought; the lekku so typical of her species were present in her as well, long, almost to the small of her back, yet partly hidden behind some sort of headdress, the coverage it offered deeply contrasting the lack of coverage the rest of her 'clothes' decidedly did not provide. The woman's barely covered breasts were of a medium size, as far as Harry could tell (not that he had much to compare them to). Overall, her demeanour screamed out how lost she was feeling.
That changed the moment the captain entered the room; immediately, she was on the ground, kneeling deferentially, eyes lowered.
"Are you my master?" she questioned pleadingly. "Please, let your obedient slave serve you."
To say Harry was taken aback would have been a rather sizable understatement. In fact, he was gobsmacked. Sure, he had expected there to be some indoctrination after what information R'anteri had been able to relay to them, but this was definitely beyond his expectations. Without missing another beat, the wizard bent down, gently took her arm in hand and began guiding her to sit next to him on the bed.
"I'm Harry," he introduced himself to the clearly distraught Twi'lek, trying to be as non-threatening as possible. "What's your name?"
For a few moments, she looked at him as if he had grown a second head. "I do not have a name. I am Slave 1407. My Master chooses my name to be whatever he desires."
Whatever Harry had been expecting, this was not it; without any idea how to proceed further, he simply looked at the red-skinned woman for a while, 1407 it seemed, not saying a word.
"Have I displeased you, Master? Please, tell your slave how to please you."
It was the utter despair in her voice more than anything else that finally brough the young wizard back to the present as he absentmindedly replied, "No, no, I am not… displeased."
Shaking his head in the hopes of somehow clearing his mind, Harry addressed her once again, "You must have had a name once that we can call you by? What name did your parents give you?"
She looked at him, again in that way that told him she was both flummoxed and scared of disappointing her 'Master'.
"I don't know my parents," the Twi'lek explained evenly, not a hint of emotion as far as Harry could detect. "The instructors always said they didn't want me, so they sold me, and I would be lucky if anyone ever bought me, so I should work hard to be worthy of the one buying me."
Much as he did not like admitting it, the story being told to him tugged at a few scabs Harry had thought long since healed; obviously, his treatment at the hands of the Dursleys had often been harsh, brutal and cruel at times, but nothing approaching the depth of what this woman must have gone through. And yet, what to him seemed to be the most egregious of all crimes was telling a child their parents did not want them. He himself had been in the position of thinking his parents maybe did not really want him, otherwise they would not have left him. It was a childish way of thinking, obviously; still, if you were a child when you were being told that the two people you should have been able to rely on the most of all had foolishly gotten killed, driving while drunk, or even sold you? That could wreak havoc on an impressionable young mind.
Worst of all, Harry did not have it in himself to spin her some tale of her parents probably still flying around the galaxy, desperately searching for their daughter. While, from all accounts he had familiarised himself with, it was not all that common for Twi'lek parents to sell their children into slavery, it certainly was not unheard of. And if what he had heard of the general rarity and value of the red-skinned Lethan subspecies was anything to go by, there certainly were clear financial advantages to it; not to mention the strange views some of her society seemed to hold on the supposed benefits the whole arrangement had for the sentient beings being sold like property.
"Boss… Harry," Arden bumped his shoulder to refocus his attention on the present. "Glad to see you're back with us."
Next to him, sitting on the edge of the bed she had been assigned, the young female Twi'lek was still looking at him in a surprising mixture of deference and expectation; not demanding, really, more like she was waiting for him to demand something of her.
"Alright, for the moment, we'll have to be able to call you something other than 1407, or 'slave'," the wizard finally decided. "You can just pick something you like. Oh, and please just call me Harry, alright."
Once again rather perturbed by what she was being asked to do, especially by the last part (Harry had added it to specifically circumvent any 'the great Harry Potter, sirs' in his future), the former slave looked up at him.
"I do not understand Ma… Harry," the young woman finally admitted, seemingly quite scared of some kind of repercussion. "My Master chooses my name, so it pleases him."
Sensing that he would not get anywhere with this, the young wizard wracked his brain for something that allowed him to both give her a name, while also not giving her a permanent name and taking even more of her choices away. Eventually, he remembered something from his original planet, about using a placeholder name; he even remembered one of the more common ones, as far as he knew.
"Then you'll be Jane, for the moment," Harry announced gently. "You can pick one for yourself whenever you like."
OOOOOOOO
The crew of the Lightbringer was assembled in the corvette's hangar bay, the few people manning the Morningstar having joined them for the ceremony.
It was the burial of what they had been able to recover of Natleen Smitts, namely, her weapon and her helmet. Everything else had blended with the destroyed remains of the slaves Tresk, in his quest to evade capture, had blown up. So, these two things, so inadequate to really describe or encompass the entire human life they stood for were now ensconced in a small sarcophagus, hoisted onto a plinth in the front of the gathering. Naturally, the captain had to say a few words, as much as he did not want to do so.
"Natleen was someone I did not know as well as I would have liked," Harry began his prepared remarks, jotted together with the assistance of Leia the evening before, right after they had handed in the slaver. "But I would like to make a few observations I made."
Taking a small pause, the young wizard looked onto the faces before him, everyone adorned in their uniforms, solemnly keeping the silence. "Even when training directly with Arden, she never let herself get beaten down, at least in a figurative way of speaking. In our crew of recent Imperial defectors, long-time and life-long members of the Alliance she made an effort to connect with people and connect them with each other."
General assent seemed to be the feeling permeating through the crowd at that; indeed, the lively former Navy woman had often played the part of a mediator in any conflicts between crewmembers, especially if their diverse service records came up.
"In the end, even with the order of clearing out still ringing in her ears, she tried, against all odds, to save people she felt she could and should help," the captain continued, just before throwing a certain, rather severe look into the gathered members of his crew that set the stage for his next announcement. "However, this does not mean I condone her actions. It is said not to speak ill of the dead, so what I am about to say is nothing the likes of that; instead, let us learn from Natleen, learn when to follow our shared instincts of courage and when to use our heads instead. As someone always devoted to the betterment of this crew, I am certain she would have approved of us learning this lesson from her demise. It is a lesson I myself have had to learn, and have, most probably, still not completely internalised."
"So, let us learn Natleen's last lesson well, and then continue to remember her as the brave woman she was."
As Harry stepped away from the podium he had temporarily transfigured from a cargo crate they had… 'requisitioned' from the slavers' hideout, he was silently satisfied with how well his speech had gone; people seemed both suitably mournful as well as appropriately reminded of the fragility of life in the face of a futile decision. After him, a few others spoke, comrades and friends both old and new, and it was once again obvious how well-liked Smitts had been. When eventually the last person had stepped down, the ground team began gathering around the coffin on its plinth, joined by Corsek, her last direct commander; under his leadership, they hoisted the quadanium-hulled remnants of Natleen Smitts onto their shoulders and marched slowly to the air-sealing shield in place at the edge of space. Without much pomp and circumstance, their first casualty was then given over to the void.
Not one to dwell overly long on a loss, at least he had told himself that, Harry quickly gathered the key people in the briefing room.
"So, where to now?" the captain asked Iabaes, the older Mandalorian woman who, due to the continued indisposition of their original leader, had taken command of the Special Operations team. "We're returning to the Base, so we're core-bound for a while. Anywhere you'd like to be dropped off?"
Looking around the room a bit, almost as if looking for people trying to listen in, Iabaes leaned in a bit before she replied. "Would you be able to have us onboard until the Mandalore system? It's not that much of a detour, and I think there might be something in it for you, as well."
Now seriously intrigued, Harry motioned for her to proceed with what she had to offer.
"I am in contact with a resistance group on Concordia, Mandalore's first moon," she explained, all the while inserting a data chip into the corresponding port on the holo table, which flickered to light, showing an image of a dry barren world circled by a dry, barren satellite; Harry was beginning to sense a pattern there. "With the help of traitors amongst my own people, the Empire has managed to subvert and enslave much of my home planet's society. With the destruction of the Death Star, and more and more systems in open rebellion, now might be a good time to join them…"
After that, she began weaving an elaborate plan to attack the main Imperial stronghold on the planet, located in an abandoned amusement park of all things; yet, despite the solid planning behind it, the whole thing gave Harry one important impression.
"Sorry, but it seems you're overreaching in a situation that is dire, but not that dire," he analysed what he had heard, surprising himself with how logically he was approaching the whole thing; obviously he had indeed learned a bit and somewhat moved past his more Gryffindor-ish instincts. "We might be able to do it, but I don't like the odds… any softer targets that would allow the Protectors to gather more forces?"
"I was afraid you would see it that way," Iabaes admitted. "I had hoped you might have an idea on how to do this… there is one other target that might be worth our effort. With the Imperial takeover, a group of 'advisors' has been placed on the board of MandalMotors, which is now working for the Empire, helping to bleed out planet dry."
The stormy expression of the stern woman's face told enough of a story to convey how much she despised the situation of her people. "They are still operating some of the mines on Concordia, strip-mining vast swathes of land, and then boring shafts into the ground to get even to the deep deposits; our source works at one of those mines, and they were able to relay to us data that suggests that the parts of the mine that have run dry have been turned into a secret prototype lab."
The holo table now held a three-dimensional representation of what looked like a vast underground network of tunnels at the centre of which sat a large chamber.
"They are working on a new prototype starfighter, and I happened to notice you have a nice, empty hangar bay available…" she insinuated with a gleam in her eyes.
"What's in it for you? The Protectors?" Harry questioned, unwilling to take a gift horse at face-value when it could easily be stuffed with thermal detonators; the smile on the Mandalorian's face was enough to tell him his inquiry was not completely without cause.
"Two things," Iabaes replied with dark amusement. "Make that three; a ship, our revenge, and enough beskar to outfit a whole lot of soldiers in Mandalorian armour."
OOOOOOOO
"I am sure you will be able to write glorious stories with this weapon, Captain Potter," Famet Palestro announced as he handed over the plans and components he had been working on for Harry's new staff. "As soon as you miraculously form the phrik, that is. I must admit I am looking forward to seeing how you do it."
"Let us not keep you waiting any longer then," the wizard announced as he took the small data chip with the plans and inserted it into the reader on his pad. Quickly, the schematics were displayed, to scale, nonetheless, above the holographic projector/camera mounted on the accompanying wristband. This technological boost, as well as the practice he had gotten with his other two foci, ensured that embedding the last crystal shard in the flowing alloy to be used for his staff was no real challenge for Harry.
Palestro, on the other hand, simply stood there, wide-eyed as he stared at the shifting material.
"I have never, not even in the wildest stories of my people, heard of such a skill," the Wroonian breathed. "The things I could do with that at my disposal…"
"Well, don't let me stop you," Harry snorted as he finally let the blank of his newest weapon sink to the table. "You're welcome to stay on the Lightbringer, given that your cover seems to be blown. We could use someone who's good with weapons I think."
The immediate reaction to that was stunned silence, quickly followed by immense joy. "Oh, I must get to designing immediately," Palestro announced eagerly and was already at the door, when he turned back around and grabbed the unfinished blank and the various other parts, he had had Harry shape. "After I finish this."
And indeed, barely an hour later the blue-skinned man had returned, proudly carrying in his arms (almost like a new-born) his and the wizard's creations. Just like the blank before it, the staff was black, yet it held a shine of silver around the edges that was hard for Harry to characterise. Lengthwise, it was around twenty centimetres taller than he, when considering the tips.
"Everything went as you expected?" he asked the Wroonian, who nodded eagerly.
"Everything," Famet assured proudly. "The tips can be set under current, like an electrostaff, or retracted so you would be able to use the vibroblades."
As he was talking, the blue-skinned man triggered the relevant control on the middle part, and with barely a noise, the upper- and lowermost fifteen centimetres, both hollowed out, retracted. In their place were now two wicked-looking blades, made of the same metal as the rest of the weapon, yet polished to a very different sheen. The effect was certainly intimidating.
Fascinated, Harry reached out and received the staff from Palestro's hands. As his hands touched the cool material, the feeling reminded him once again of getting his first wand, and he knew with certainty that casting with this weapon would be a joy indeed; perhaps not as precise as with his actual wand, or as subtle as with the ring, but a joy nonetheless. Upon his triggering of the relevant controls, the tips returned to their 'active' position and were soon crackling with energy, enough of it to knock out a humanoid being on the lower settings. What the higher settings might do, Harry did not want to know for the moment. Whirling it around, the young wizard found that it indeed did not weigh that much more than the wooden staffs Arden had been training him on.
"It's so light…" he marvelled, to the amusement of the former weapons trader.
"Yes, phrik alloy is a very special material, indeed," he commented. "We were lucky, I have to say. The components I needed to make this were almost exactly the ones I chose to take with me on our hasty retreat from my home world."
"You used the last of your stock to make this for me?" Harry looked at the man, aghast. "Why would you do that? There was no hurry!"
Palestro looked at the captain disapprovingly. "I could not have thought of a better use for the last of my stock, than to use it for the one whose intervention allowed me to live and collect more stock," he responded staunchly. "And if we're actually going to fight on Mandalore, possibly with or against Mandalorians, I have a feeling I might be able to acquire some new stock fairly soon, and of prime quality and rarity, too."