The office of the base commander, Harry's office, was almost completely empty as the group of three reached it; only Mercer and the holographic representation of Urai Fen, Zann's lieutenant, were inside, with even the command centre mostly empty in the early hours of the morning. Only a skeleton crew of three was keeping watch right now, carefully watching sensor and communication stations for any incoming dangers. Looking just like Leia remembered him, tall and proud in his somewhat archaic clothes, most of his face formed by a large beak, the Talorta was obviously awaiting them. It was a lucky thing she had remembered to activate her enchanted bracelet shortly before leaving the turbolift, instead of waiting to do so once they reached the holo projector.
"Captain Potter, Princess Leia," the being greeted them, to general consternation and worry. "Do not be alarmed; I have no intention of unveiling your secret to the Empire, though I would be fascinated to learn of the technology you use to shield your true identity."
"I'll trade you, a secret for a secret; something to hold over Zann's head that will get you people to leave us alone," Harry snarked next to her, already annoyed from being interrupted while clearing the air with Hermione she assumed.
"I'm afraid that would be impossible, Captain Potter," the criminal warrior informed them, before turning his distressing black eyes on Leia. "And I would suggest you work on your acting skills; had I not been certain of your identity before, your reactions would have confirmed my hunch. Discussing blackmail and bluffing was not the purpose of my call, though."
Laying a calming hand on her boyfriend's shoulder, it was the queen who took over talk, at least for the moment. Letting him run his mouth when he was angry had proven to lead to dangerous situations in the past, if the stories she had heard were to be believed.
"And what exactly is your call about then, Urai Fen of the Talortai?" she questioned, trying to strike that delicate balance between interest and a complete lack thereof. It was important to appear as if she wanted to know what he had to tell them, while also not seeming like she did not particularly need it, making the information much more expensive to get her hands on. "If not to blackmail us, then why are you contacting us?"
Seemingly amused, the tall, bird-like being nodded his beak in what she could only assume was a gesture of acquiescence. "I remembered you mentioning wishing to acquire more ships, and simply thought we might be able to come to a mutually beneficial agreement. Without the need to resort to… underhanded methods."
Next to her, Harry still seemed rather agitated, possibly wanting to give his own comment on what he thought of the Consortium's methods, but luckily, he held back; he was, they all knew, not the most diplomatic fellow, especially when he was angry, and as long as he knew that and let others do the talking when necessary, they would be able to stay out of at least some trouble. Not all of it, obviously, never all of it, but some. Then again, completely without trouble, life sounded rather boring.
"And what might such an agreement entail?" Leia questioned evenly, looking the tall birdman straight into his black eyes. Suddenly, the words had barely left her mouth, the holographic display changed substantially: next to a now much smaller Talorta they could see data and images, comprising of graphs, star charts, even fleet compositions, though most seemed to be somewhat incomplete.
"The Maelstrom Plunderers," Fen informed them blandly, pointing toward the riot of intel with one of his four-fingered hands. "They've been attacking a… client of ours for quite some time now, while successfully evading the Consortium fleet. Their actions, as you might guess, are hurting our reputation. The Consortium is willing to provide every piece of intelligence we have gathered on them, but no more. No bounty has been set by us and we do not have any expectations of you. Just as I said, mutually beneficial."
Taking a look at the ship listings, beneficial was only one of the words Leia could think of; apparently, this band of pirates had somehow managed to get their grubby paws on some impressive, decommissioned military hardware that they were now using to prey on local merchants and a few larger corporations, any one of which might have been a 'client' of Zann, in one of the many ways one could be a client of that greedy nerfherder. Most likely, someone had bought protection from the Consortium's considerable military assets and were now upset their shipments were still being raided, even though it was no longer Tyber's forces doing the raiding. No, to the outside world it would look like a deal was not being honoured, and that was going to cut into the criminal's bottom line.
"Fine," Harry agreed next to her, now considerably calmer than to begin with, which was a good thing, considering that she needed him to agree; this was about his people, after all, no matter how much they had looked to her for leadership during his recent incapacitation. Still not managing to keep the disdainful sneer out of his voice, he continued, "But we'll contact the injured parties ourselves; I have no wish to publicly be associated with your organization any more than I have to be."
Not rising to the challenge, Fen simply nodded his head calmly in a non-committal gesture, before starting to transmit the data the Consortium had gathered on the brigands attacking shipments along the Old Corellian Run, a defunct part of one of the two most important hyperroutes of the galaxy.
"Good luck on your hunt, Captain Potter," the Talorta addressed Harry, his calm, ratchety voice winking out along with his image as the last syllable passed his beak, and for a few moments, everyone fell silent while digesting, what they had heard.
While it rubbed her the wrong way, doing something for Zann free of charge, or really under any circumstances at all, the opportunity really seemed too good to simply discount. While the firepower these pirates had managed to cobble together certainly was a bit much for the ships under Harry's command to engage in an all-out slugfest, especially if they wanted some to remain operable at the end, if they managed to steal even a few, that should be enough to get the Alderaanian refugees off of Coruscant, especially in conjunction with the assets that were already available. Most interesting seemed the old Pelta-class, a modular frigate of the Republic Navy, either the pirates themselves or some former owner had remodelled into a small carrier. After the Clone Wars, these ships had been sold off in droves, their design no longer in fitting with Imperial fleet doctrine. Now, they were a common sight amongst small and medium freight hauling and passenger service outfits. To take that away from the pirates would denude them of their most valuable asset, while also providing exactly the kind of ship suited to extracting her people from the capital of the Empire. With that ship taken, what remained of the brigand fleet could easily be engaged in a space battle to the extinction.
"As much as I hate doing favours for vicious criminals," Harry began, sounding very much like he really, really did not want to have the same opinion as her on this, even unknowingly. "This does sound good. Just look at these fleet assets… a small carrier that will stand out much less than the Phosphoros, two CR90s… wait, I know that ship!"
"I was wondering when you'd notice," Mercer chuckled, before a frown marred the picture of amusement his face had been only a moment earlier. "This sounds like too much of a coincidence to me. Kisc frees a group of slaves, steals one of the ships of the pirates responsible for keeping these slaves, not much later the Consortium wants us to take out these very same pirates we already happen to know quite a bit about; this stinks to high heaven."
"Do we suspect a spy on Sanctuary?" the wizard questioned. He had a shifty look about him now, like he was suddenly worried to be surrounded by enemies on all sides.
Mulling it over a while, all of them, it was Leia who spoke again first, "Not necessarily; like Fen said, the Consortium is interested in taking out these pirates, they're bad for business. They could easily have had someone watching a single base, hoping to take out the entire operation when Kisc threw a spanner in the repulsorlift by simply destroying that particular outpost."
"So, we don't have to worry about a traitor?" Harry asked, looking at her with hope-filled eyes. He also knew better, she was well aware, but he wanted to think the best of the people he had risked life and limb for. Lost a limb for by now, actually.
"It's possible, not certain," she replied softly. There was little she disliked more than traitors, especially traitors for money; now a traitor within the Alliance actually convinced of the Empire's agenda, she could rationally understand beyond the mere concept greed. Not to the degree of agreeing, obviously, since she could not even understand wishing for the Empire to remain standing, but there was a somewhat noble thought process in there somewhere, if you really wanted to find one. However, an ideological reason behind selling out Sanctuary to Zann? That the queen truly struggled to come up with, even while she was stridently trying to play Devaronian's advocate.
"I hate traitors," Hermione, who up until now had remained silent, standing in a corner of the room, interjected; her voice had a tone to it that seemed alien to the woman's general demeanour.
"Let's keep things grounded, for the moment," Mercer quickly interjected. "We don't know for sure about any kind of traitor; what we do know is that we have a good opportunity to get our hands on some ships, hopefully with manageable risk while sparing our funds and without pissing off anyone too big for us to handle. Interviews with captives Kisc brough back on that CR90 he stole from these pirates indicate they're working alone. Boss, you want to confirm that later?"
Harry merely nodded; then, for Hermione's benefit, he added, "I'll question a few of them with veritaserum, later. It's one of the potions I've managed to get working with ingredients native to this… well, this galaxy. My stocks are running a bit low on some, though, so I'll either have to start searching for surrogates or schedule a harvesting excursion to Dathomir."
"And to think that you always wanted me to 'proofread' your essays," the witch snipped, looking at him with both amusement and a certain amount of pride, at least until she seemed to catch herself at it, at which point she tried to look stern. He simply shrugged and motioned for Mercer to continue.
"Well, especially for a pirate fleet, they've amassed significant assets," the deserter went on with his cold analysis of the facts. "According to the Consortium's data, they have at least another CR90, two of the old Consular-class ships, their carrier and a Marauder-class. That makes for a few dozen fighters between them, numeric parity or even superiority with our available fighter forces, those that aren't currently assigned to any protection details. There might be more that simply haven't been observed by the observers who survived to tell the tale."
"Is Iabaes at the base? I'd like her input on this, she is better with all that Clone Wars gear. Those are Republic V-wings, right?" Harry asked the room at large, looking at the small, nimble-looking craft the pirates were using for a fighter screen. "They seem to have an awful lot of outdated military tech in that fleet…"
Nodding solemnly, Mercer silently agreed with his captain's assessment. Leia made the same of the situation: some Imperial functionary was taking bribes to divert decommissioned military hardware to the brigands. Not that it was surprising, way out on the Outer Rim.
"What's our plan of attack then? Stay under the radar, get them on the back foot? We could take the Alderaanian Twilight, park our combat ships somewhere nearby in deep space?" the former Imperial ventured, looking around at them. Harry nodded, so did Leia. "I assume you're going to want to go to Tatooine, too, then? It's right around there… I remembered you were planning to go there before the whole Consortium thing."
Sharing a quick glance with her boyfriend, the queen questioned, "Do you want to call him, or should I?"
OOOOOOOO
"I'm sorry to be going off like this, Hermione," Harry said apologetically, looking at the young woman sitting across from him with a wan smile; he had rather been looking forward to getting to know her once again, sharing stories of what had happened over the last few years to each of them, now that they were once again talking to each other. That was without even mentioning how much he wanted to be there for her in dealing with the death of her parents. She, though, was simply looking at him like he had grown a second head.
"What are you talking about, going off? I'm coming with you."
These words, coming out of her mouth, were a statement of fact, as much was obvious. Hermione had decided not to let him go off to deal with a dangerous group of pirates by himself, never mind the various people he would have watching his back, so she would simply tag along. Not this time, though; this time, Harry was determined to outstubborn her.
"I don't think that's a good idea," he began, already preparing for a tongue-lashing for daring to countermand something Hermione had set her mind on. Indeed, there came the sternly raised eyebrow she must have learned from Professor McGonagall. Quickly, he resorted to the only thing with a marginal chance of convincing her on the issue: cold hard facts. "You don't know your way around this place, you don't speak the language, any of the languages. It's too dangerous, and I already have lots of people to look after me, keep me from doing stupid, impulsive things…"
At that, Leia, who had come into the small conference room after them, snorted audibly. It was deliberately exaggerated, he knew, as if to comment on his less than stellar performance in staying out of trouble. Looking at his own, recently replaced arm, it was hard to argue the matter. Hermione for her part, simply continued looking at him, an eyebrow raised expressively.
"He's not wrong though," his girlfriend eventually admitted, taking the seat at the head of the table next to both of them. "The language barrier is a huge problem, as is your lack of knowledge on all the technology and everything here we take for granted. Harry still hasn't caught up to everything."
The wizard was about to look at Hermione again, waiting for a rebuttal (because there was definitely going to be a rebuttal, as much was certain), when Leia continued, "Fortunately, I have an idea, for both of you, actually."
With that, she pulled out her datapad and showed it to them both. Across the screen, a number of obviously complicated, technical devices were shown, all of them in a light blue on a cobalt background. In blazing, white letters the page read Galladinium's Fantastic Technology.
With narrowed eyes looking suspiciously at the other woman, Hermione questioned, "Why are you showing us what looks an inflight shopping magazine from a long-haul flight travelled 200 years into the future?"
Though she was clearly baffled by some of the words, Leia seemed to get the gist of what the witch had asked about. Without comment, she paged through the large catalogue until she came upon what she must have been looking for. Proceeding to show him a page, she pointed out one particular piece of merchandise to him. The 'Synoptic Teacher', the paragraph's headline proclaimed in bold script. Reading through the description of the device, Harry could easily see how useful it could be. Meanwhile, Hermione was bursting at the seams with curiosity.
"What is it? You know I can't read or speak Basic!"
"Not much longer, if this works," the wizard replied, wryly smiling at his friend. "Supposedly, this thing can be used to put knowledge from pre-planned modules into your head while you sleep. Sort of like… a reverse pensieve."
The reaction she had for that, he was not expecting; there was no elation, no happiness, at being able to quickly learn what she needed to know to be able to tag along on his mission. Instead, there were narrowed eyes, indignantly staring at him.
"But… but that's cheating!" Hermione rebutted, seemingly shocked he would ever even consider such a despicable act. Her tone, the entire demeanour, brought him back once again to a simpler time, the two of them sitting in the library, silently arguing about the right way to finish school essays. "That's not how learning is supposed to work! The hard work is what makes it an achievement!"
"I'm glad that's your problem, not the thing about having something put information directly into your brain," Leia chuckled, amused eyes twinkling at the witch. "I can put your mind at ease about your worries, that other one would have been… different. We used to use these at the Royal Palace a lot, especially Weltic, the head cook; he always had the new apprentices trained up with the basics using this, but everything beyond that still takes lots of time and effort. It makes sure you don't burn anything; it does not turn you into a celebrated cook."
"Yeah, come on Hermione: Think of it as getting right to the good stuff, the really hard stuff," Harry jumped in, knowing how much his friend liked to really gnaw on a problem, then finally solve it. "You learn the foundations this way, then you can get right into trying to learn ancient High Alderaanian, or start writing theatre reviews…"
When she smiled at him, he knew they had convinced her, which was a good thing, really, as he had been struggling to find more examples. It was hard to determine what exactly Hermione was likely to sink her proverbial teeth in after she could understand and read everything. And despite how much he wanted this for his friend, the larger implications had not eluded him: depending on the availability of different information modules to be plugged into this contraption, a few of these were starting to sound like they could really be helpful in getting some of the newly recruited personnel up to speed with the different roles that still needed filling around Sanctuary, let alone the small fleet. The very same fleet that was now sounding like it might soon be growing in a rather substantial way.
"With the right learning modules, as well as some on the job training, anyone we recruit could be trained up in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take," Leia confirmed she had been thinking the same thing. "It's not possible to transfer actual experience this way, so we do still need to train people up, but the basics and all the theoretical knowledge should have learning modules for sale; astrogation, mechanics, languages… just no combat skills. Those are as much about your body as they are about the mind, and a stranger can't teach you to know your own capabilities."
Already fearing the price tag, Harry questioned, "What does one of these go for?"
"I was thinking we should try and go for a volume discount…"
OOOOOOOO
When the state-of-the-art X-wing, Incom's last, dying blow to an Empire that was about to gobble the company up whole, jumped into the Tatoo system, its pilot was treated to a sight he had been hoping to never see again: far in the distance, yet still blindingly bright against the dark background of space, shone the twin suns. And almost as dazzling, filling out most of the small snubfighter's canopy window, was their first eternal companion: Tatooine.
Following his two suns on the first orbital path, the sandy planet was said to have been thought to be a third sun by the earliest Republic explorers, with wide, white deserts throwing most of the light the surface was bombarded with defiantly back into space. Besides this visually impressive phenomenon, there was little worth mentioning about this insignificant ball of dust Luke Skywalker had been dreaming of escaping from for most of his life. Returning now, he did not know how to feel about that. What surprised him, though, was the rather heavy, new Imperial presence: upon his arrival close to Tatooine's orbit, he was immediately hailed by a patrolling customs corvette. Hoping his forged identification would hold up, he accepted the communication.
"Unidentified ship, this is the customs cruiser Assessor. You are travelling on a monitored vector and have raised suspicion. You will be escorted to our base, prepare to be searched."
Without waiting for a reply, the terse, male voice vanished again, the communications link lost as quickly as it had been established; instead, his audio pickups were now relaying the ear-splitting whine of a quartet of TIEs sent to guide him to wherever the Imperial Office of Customs had set up their incredibly remote outpost. It was a surprising thing to find a presence like this out here, really; Tatooine, as he had always been painfully aware, was a backwater of a world, the latest estimations putting the entire planet at around 200000 inhabitants, most of which were bound to not be paying taxes, plus any members of the indigenous species. The latter, obviously, were not paying taxes, either. To find not only customs vessels, but also a base established here, was a worrying development; had the repercussions of his hasty… exit just barely a year earlier really been this far-reaching? Or had putting this dustpan on the radar merely accelerated what was always bound to happen, eventually?
To his great surprise, the escorting fighters soon veered away from his chosen approach vector toward roughly the area of Mos Eisley (from which he would only have deviated when he was already deep inside the atmosphere) and toward the first moon: Ghomrassen; compared to that moon, as far as Luke was aware, even the Jundland Wastes were hospitable, giving the lucky traveller stranded there at least some air to breathe that was not a toxic mix of caustic gases. And yet, despite the inhospitable conditions, it was obvious the Empire had set up a small outpost there, as he found out when his X-wing pierced the cover of the clouds, the ship's environmental sensors wailing in alarm as they took in the lethal atmosphere. By now taking exactly this vessel was starting to, in hindsight, sound like a rather bad idea.
The mystery of how a base on this unwelcoming little moon was keeping itself going was soon cleared up, when in the distance, a small outcropping appeared from the side of a cliff: hewn into the very surface was a hangar opening, the space behind just large enough to hold maybe two light freighters on the magnitude of Solo's Millennium Falcon, as well as the TIEs that would be used to escort them here. Nothing much, then, not a particularly massive operation, yet still more than he would ever have thought likely for what the Empire had to consider a rather insignificant world. Up ahead, the first two fighters were now passing the atmospheric shielding, quickly settling into the ceiling racks so typical for the storage of the entire model line. For a moment, Luke was tempted to just blast his way free: maybe two proton torpedoes, fired directly into the hangar, to cut off any would-be pursuers, reverse thrust and a few well-placed shots with the laser cannons to take care of his remaining two escorts. But if his own sense of reason had not stopped him, suddenly noticing the looming anti-fighter turrets set up close-by that were shadowing his every move with unsettling attention, certainly would have.
Inside, standing on a rough duracrete floor so unlike the utilitarian opulence favoured by the Imperial Navy in all its installations, a member of the ground crew was waving around his cones, trying to get his attention; given the significant amount of firepower focussed on him, the young pilot thought it wise to comply, and he quickly followed the man's instructions on where to set down the X-wing. A series of beeps soon echoed through the cockpit.
"No, R2, I think it's going to be alright," he replied to the little droid's computer-translated question. "You just keep the ship on standby, in case we need to get out of here quickly."
A few worried beeps that, even without a machine translator, would have sounded doubtful, even cynic, followed. Luke, for his part, disregarded the idiosyncratic droid for the moment, for he had noticed a group of people approaching his fighter: two men, one woman, all of them wearing the uniforms of Imperial Customs. With a hiss, the canopy opened and the young man jumped over the vehicle's sides, landing lithely on his feet, actively working to not let the Force aid his body. Immediately, he had two rifles and a pistol pointed at him, three fingers twitching close to three triggers.
"Sorry, officers," he greeted the three, holding up his empty hands to show his peaceful intentions. Anything else was pure lunacy at this point, really. "Just trying to save you the effort of telling me to get out of my vehicle. Here, my registra…"
Once more, as soon as he moved for the forged documentation, three weapons were pointed directly at him.
"I was just going for my pilot's and weapons license, no reason to shoot me." When the man in the lead moved for the Luke to continue, he did it extra slowly; no reason to give anyone with an incredibly twitchy trigger finger any excuses. Throwing over the counterfeit licenses, the young man watched his interrogators closely. If there was even the merest hint of doubt on their faces, he might be forced to put to use his limited lightsabre training.
"And why are you flying in a type of ship favoured by the terrorists and rabble-rousers calling themselves the Rebels?" the lead officer questioned, apparently disappointed his documentation looked to be in order. "It's not really comfortable for long-haul flights, is it?"
Luckily, Luke was prepared for the question; or rather, Leia had prepared him for the question, together with Harry, when they called to invite him along to Tatooine. He had been deemed too bad a liar to come up with his own fake story, and he did have to admit, the one they had cooked up together was ridiculous enough to be believed.
"Repaired it, actually; saw one shot down, claimed it as dictated by salvage law, fixed it up." It was taking the application of all the mind-focussing techniques he had learnt to keep completely calm, to talk his way out of the situation. Obviously, he could have done it the way his mentor had when they were still trying to leave the dust bowl he was now returning to, but there was always the risk of attracting the wrong kind of attention by using Force powers. "The documentation is right there, officer. I'll show it off to some old friends, then sell it to a collector on Corellia for three times what it's worth, buy my own ship to get around in. You're right, this one's not all that comfortable."
Seemingly, he had struck a nerve with the leader of the small group in front of him, whose formerly grim countenance now being filled with a wide, somewhat malicious grin, worried him for but a moment; that was, until the man began laughing loudly. "A collector on Corellia buying a rebel fighter? Sounds like a sympathizer to me. Do me a favour, take him for every credit, and when you buy that ship, think of customs officer Verrinam, if you ever need a co-pilot. And make it a yacht. My contract's up in a year, I want to retire in style. Let him go, he checks out."
The last part had been directed at his lackeys, who had finally lowered their rifles as the situation began palpably defusing. Nodding their acknowledgements, the two walked off, gesturing to the unseen observers whose likely presence had made Force persuasion a dangerous business, while their superior handed Luke's forged documents back.
"Follow the fighter escort out of the moon's atmosphere, then you're free to go," Verrinam ordered the young pilot seriously. "And have a good flight, sir."
After that, within short order, Luke was back on track, his thoughts once again returning to the question, of whether he really wanted to return, at all.