As Harry and Arden entered the Lightbringer that evening, they were greeted by a small swarm of saucer-shaped, floating droids, each with multiple 'eyes', small pincers and an antenna. The five had already been painted in the black colour Mercer tended to anoint every one of their acquisitions with.
"Got them cheap off a shop selling used droids," Harry's second-in-command announced from where he was working on one of the speeder bikes. "Package deal, couldn't say no, really. Way too good an offer."
"You stayed inside the budget?" the captain inquired, the question quickly being answered with a nod. "Seems you got a good deal, then. Let's take a look at the data we got from that CorSec contact."
Throwing a longing glance at his various projects in the hold, Mercer followed Harry and Arden toward a briefing room close to the bridge, quickly followed by the tactical officer on loan from the Alliance.
"Can you patch in the Morningstar, please," Harry asked the officer who complied with a quick 'Yes, sir'.
"Hound, good to see you," the bounty-hunter captain greeted the Bothan commander of his first ship. "We have some new intel on our dear friends, the ruthless pirates."
Pushing the data plaque into the associated slot on the holographic console quickly produced a readout, showing the Corellian System with its 'Five Brothers', as well as Corellia's moons and the various stations in orbit around the multiple planets. Most importantly though, it showed the positions of all the distress signals concerning pirates over the preceding three months.
"My goodness, they really do have a problem with pirates it seems," Mercer observed in shock. "That must be dozens of attacks. I'm surprised the Empire didn't step in…"
"Not exactly true, sir," Hound interjected. "See, some of those attacks were bold and important enough to warrant the sector Moff's intervention; those are marked by the Imperial crest."
"Can we filter these by certain traits?" Harry inquired, looking at the tactical officer.
"Yes, sir," came the prompt answer.
"Please do that," he ordered. "Start with the kind of ship that was attacked. Nothing larger than, say, a medium-sized freighter. Nothing with escorts, either."
Immediately, around two dozen blips on the system map vanished, still leaving at least thirty, with two distinct groupings clustered in different parts of space.
"No survivors," Mercer added solemnly. "They take the ships and any cargo, then dump the bodies of the crew."
Even as the tactical officer entered the new parameters and the dots were starting to vanish, it became clear that they had found their quarries' hunting grounds. There, densely clustered around an imaginary line in space they could see a large number of data-points fitting the parameters of the search. What they could also see, was an asteroid field.
"Reckon they have a base on one of those asteroids?" Harry asked his crew, finding that most everyone seemed to agree. "There's no way we can find a hidden asteroid base in that chaos, we'll have to find a way to follow them…"
OOOOOOOO
"Captain, we have received a distress signal from the region you wanted us to monitor," one of the Lightbringer's bridge officers informed Harry over his commlink.
As positive as that news was for their ongoing hunt, it also meant that the captain was distracted, if just for a moment. Yet a moment was all Arden needed; the first whirl with her staff had him disarmed, the second lying on the ground, a foot on his chest.
"Good try," the witch commented. "Next time, try not to get distracted."
Harry shot the 'drill sergeant' a mock glare, before waving his hand over himself, quickly removing all the accumulated sweat of a training session with Arden. A second spell later, the captain was clothed in his captain's regalia again; black, tailored pants, a long-sleeved jacket that went just a tad lower than the hips, belted with black leather. While the jacket itself was jet-black, the epaulets and the seams were adorned in gold, as was the peaked cap Mercer had insisted on.
Frankly, from time to time Harry felt quite silly wearing it, yet someone kept insisting he wear it anyway. Supposedly, it made him look dashing, while also underscoring his authority. While that was just Leia's opinion, he had to admit that the allusion the design supposedly made to old (meaning really, really old) Republic Navy uniforms was not bad either for an ally of the Alliance to Restore the Republic.
The two of them took a lift to the highest deck and were on the bridge without much delay, yet the ship was already on the move, as per the standing orders issued as soon as they had assumed position, lying in wait for the pirates to strike again.
"How far?" Harry asked the former Imperial manning the helm.
"We're five minutes out in realspace," the officer replied. "The Morningstar can be there in three."
The captain nodded curtly before looking at the sensor operator. "Did the distress call say anything specific about the attacking ships?"
"A group of fighters, sir, nothing more specific. No ordinance weapons in the background of the call, though, only ion canon fire."
"Whoever was on that ship will probably be dead by now, Boss," Mercer offered up, probably noting Harry's conflict of conscious. "Multiple fighters attacking a single light freighter with ion weaponry? They'll be dead in space in minutes, boarders onboard little later. Best chance at catching these people will be to follow whatever they use to tug that freighter back to their base."
Loath as he was to admit it, Harry knew his second-in-command was right and they should act accordingly; at least taking out these pirates would be saving lives in the future.
"Alright, bring us in slowly, avoid drawing attention, stay undetected if possible," he ordered the helmsman before turning to the comms operator. "Tell Hound to tail them in the Morningstar."
Little happened in the following minutes, yet they were still some of the most sense ones Harry had spent in his entire life. Slowly they were encroaching upon the site of the attack on the freighter and when they finally reached the place, their expectations were fulfilled in the grimmest way possible as they saw three dead bodies floating in space, all of them showing signs of blaster burns.
"Is the Morningstar on their tail?" Harry asked the comms operator, who replied in the affirmative. "Alright, then get Smitts into a space-suit to recover those bodies. We can hand them over to CorSec when we're done."
Smitts was one of the soldiers that had joined them on the Lightbringer. Although, other than her comrades in arms, she was not an Alliance-member, instead being one of the Imperials from the warships they had captured over Keldooine, she got on well with the other members of the combat team. Of particular use to the crew was her training in boarding actions and her proficiency with vacuum, zero-g operations. Quickly, the soldier was dispatched from the corvette's hangar, the rope of a winch in hand which was then used to tow into the ship the three dead spacers, murdered and unceremoniously dumped by callous criminals. What an ignominious fate, Harry mused.
"Sir, the Morningstar is on the comms," the corresponding staffer alerted the gathered bridge crew.
"Captain," Hound greeted over the audio connection. "We've found them, sending you the coordinates now."
OOOOOOOO
The asteroid the group of pirates had made their base of was rather huge, in Harry's humble estimate. Of course he knew that these chunks of rock, ice and whatever else might have conglomerated to form them could range in the hundreds of kilometres, but he was also flying through space inside a 150 metre ship; compared to that, a floating rock of 2 kilometres was simply massive.
"…five uglies, one large tug, one boarding shuttle," Hound finished her report. "Seemed rather professional, too, just lacking the equipment and manpower for anything bigger than taking out small freighters. Went in hard and fast, quickly pulled back again."
"Understood," the bounty-hunter captain replied. "Anything on their base?"
"One large hangar-door, no external defences, no shielding," the Bothan former scout continued. "I'd suggest simply blowing through that door with one or two salvos from our turbolasers. They have atmospheric shielding in place, so we can still capture them alive."
"Shock and awe?" Mercer ventured, receiving nods all around. "Okay, so we take the larty, wait for the Lightbringer to shoot a hole into the hangar doors… then what?"
"Here, I come in," Harry interjected, holding up a small sphere of metal the soldiers among them recognised as a thermal detonator. "I did some tinkering when I wasn't being tortured by 2nd lieutenant Tla and managed to put together a stun grenade. Mostly still a standard thermal detonator, but the energy is not dissipated as heat or pressure. Instead, it knocks out any targets in the vicinity of the blast."
The special forces soldiers as well as the one marine on their crew looked very intrigued at the prospect of such a weapon and could be seen actually craning their head as Harry handed the innocuous device around.
"Problem is, I couldn't really test exactly this model on the ship," the captain admitted ruefully. "Tested the modifications, obviously, but with somewhat less power. So, for the first few you throw, throw them further away rather than closer, alright."
Generally speaking, the boarding team seemed to be agreeable. Harry was just about to tell everyone to get dressed up, when he noticed his second-in-command was trying to get his attention.
"Boarding team, dress up; everyone else, battle stations," he ordered. Waiting for the throng of people to leave the briefing room, the wizard closely watched the older, very much uncomfortable looking man. "Everything alright?"
"No problem, Boss," Mercer replied stoically. "I just don't think it would be a good idea for me to join the boarding team. The crew has done really well, which will easily let you forget how new they are to this, either to the ship or to the other people on it. Either one of us should be here, and since you're more valuable on the ground, I should stay on the ship."
Harry showed his agreement in an appreciative nod. "Good thought," he commented. "You can keep an eye on the station, see if anyone tries to run away through some backdoor."
"Exactly my thoughts, Boss."
OOOOOOOO
"Are we committing any infractions against the rules for bounty hunting here?" Harry inquired over his helmet commlink with Mercer on the other side. "We're shooting at them before we have made ourselves known to be bounty hunters."
There was a certain degree of chuckling audible through the connection. "Well, we're not shooting at them, rather we're shooting at a non-registered space station without a discernible owner. The shooting at them comes later, and you're welcome to try and make them lay down their weapons."
Now, it was on Harry to snort disbelievingly. Right up until he thought about it.
"Mercer, can you activate the searchlights on the Lightbringer as soon as we bring the gunship through the hangar doors?" the wizard ventured. "Maybe we can get some of them to lay down their weapons without any further shooting…"
"Ahh," Harry's second-in-command hummed approvingly. "Render the enemy unable to react, even for a little while. Will do, Boss."
"Everyone ready?" Harry asked into the group of boarders arrayed all around him, receiving nothing but 'Yes, sir' in return. "Then let's do this. Pilot, activate our searchlights when we fly inside."
OOOOOOOO
Morvis was a simple man, with an appreciation for the simple things in life. Things as booze, the occasional whore, upgrades for his blaster, stuff like that. Other than that, and of course his own survival, the man was interested in little, and certainly not what effect his actions had on the galaxy at large.
The galaxy, after all, had never cared about the effects it had on him, either.
For the moment, he had to admit to feeling rather disgruntled and not at all in the good mood that their crew of pirates nabbing a shipment this valuable should usually elicit. This bad mood was, as far as Morvis was concerned, wholly due to the captain's ridiculous demands that their hidden base be patrolled at all times. Obviously, the stick in the arse serving in the Imperial Navy gave you had never been removed from that one.
And who was going to attack them now? Sure, after the first few prises, maybe, but the Empire had clearly shown they did not care if some pirates took out a few light freighters, murder a few spacers. In a twisted way, the general state of disinterest on the part of the Imperial authorities was not all that surprising; many of the ships they had taken had been crewed by aliens, and at least half of them were smugglers, anyway.
He was just about to try and snatch some of the Corellian brandy they had scored during an attack the previous week, when the asteroid in which the pirate base set was suddenly hit by shockwaves the likes of which he had only ever felt before when onboard a starship that was under heavy fire.
However, very much different from that earlier event, this time he could not simply punch in some hyperspace coordinates and be gone. Instead, he had to watch impotently as the hangar-doors that had once seemed so strong were ripped open by acid-green turbolaser fire. For a brief moment, Morvis was scared that he would get sucked into space until he remembered the atmospheric shielding.
That was when nothing less than a wraith glided into the hangar bay: completely black, save for a few specks of gold and those eyes… those eyes.
Around two bubbles he assumed were turrets in the nose of the gunship someone had painted two eyes, slanted and clearly angry despite how stylised the whole design was. Both from that vessel itself and from behind it shone large, strong cones of light blinding him and the second pirate who had pulled guard duty. And then, all of a sudden, a booming voice filled the hangar bay.
"This is Captain Vincent Dash," the man, for it was a male voice, thundered. "There is a bounty set on every member of this pirate group. You will either surrender peacefully, or my crew and I will be quite content to go with the dead part of 'dead or alive'."
Now, Morvis might have been a simple man, but he was certainly not a simpleton, and he knew a good offer when he heard one. It was obvious that these people had a ship outside, and that ship was armed with turbolasers. Should this Captain Dash choose to go with dead rather than alive, all he had to do was shoot out a part of the base without atmospheric shielding and atmospheric decompression would be doing most of the work for him.
Without losing another moment, the pirate drew his blaster pistol from its holster on his hip and threw it away before laying on the ground, face down, hands on the back of his head. Unfortunately, the other guard was much less practically inclined, something Morvis had been chafing to address for a long time; instead of doing the sensible thing and surrendering, the idiot drew his weapon and started firing.
However, it did not do him much good, as within seconds, a black-armoured figure was upon the guy, hitting weak points all around his body with a painfully fast, long and smooth wooden staff.
Mere moments later, a group of around ten other armoured soldiers had left the dropship Morvis now, with a bit of time, realised was one of those old Republic gunships from back in the clone wars. While only three of the ten were wearing the same kind of fully enclosed armour the first one had, each and every one of them was clad in black from head to toe.
Again, the only exception was a glimmer of gold, this one in the form of a symbol Morvis could not quite make out.
Quickly, one of the less elaborately dressed boarders came over to him, cuffing his hands with a pair of binders. Just as the soldier was done cuffing him, the one the others seemed to consider their leader (no way to tell someone's gender from underneath these armours) made their way over to kneel down in front of the newly captive pirate. With a hiss of unlocking atmospheric seals, the person took off that absolutely fear-inducing mask.
Behind the black of the armour, as surprising as that seemed to Morvis at that moment, was a normal man. Sure, the green eyes were somewhat unusual, but other than that, he looked like a standard human.
"How many others are on this base?" the man, by his voice now identified as this Captain Dash, demanded, and though refusing to answer was on his mind, if just for a second, the pirate knew that any attempt to do so would ultimately hurt him and possibly the others.
"Around thirty," he mumbled, head still lying on the ground.
"Defences?"
"If you go along the corridor at the back of the hangar, behind the second door, we have some barriers and a repeating blaster."
"Much obliged," Dash replied. "You might just have saved some lives; doesn't that feel good?"
OOOOOOOO
"Morquen, Sestac, Gur, secure the hangar. Smitts, Tevo, Grindal, with us. We're going to try out those new grenades," Harry ordered the boarding team, the various members of which echoed 'Yes, sir' around the huge room, although those scheduled to participate in the field test of the new invention seemed somewhat more enthusiastic. "Oh, and clear those freighters while you're at it."
The strike team followed after their captain deeper into the base. Counter to every instinct there was, no defensive emplacements had been placed along the long corridor they followed deeper into the asteroid, nothing intended to slow them down to allow the defenders more time to prepare or even taken out one of their numbers, not that it would have worked; they were meticulous in their advance. With that thought came the realisation that, yes, the mere presence of a tunnel like this was a delaying-tactic, because any commander valuing the lives of their men would be advancing carefully. Crafty, he had to admit.
Finally, at the infamous second door, the group spread out to make ready for their entry, Arden and Harry next to it with the others stacked behind them. Both drew the modified thermal detonators from their belts and the wizard was just about to open the door when he remembered that, indeed, he was a wizard.
"Homenum revelio," the young bounty hunter whispered, setting loose a wave of magic that enveloped and showed sentient species; in this case, their boarding party as well as around twenty people waiting behind the door. "Twenty people, all grouped in a long line around ten metres into the room. Corsek, you push the door opener, Arden, toss to the right, I will toss to the left. Then I go in, put up a shield. First person inside takes out whoever's using that repeating blaster. All clear?"
"Yes, sir," the mostly disciplined soldiers replied, while Arden only gave him a pouty, "Of course!"
Hand still half on his staff, Harry held out three fingers, then two, then one.
With a hiss, the poorly maintained door slid open, quickly followed by two modified thermal detonators flying through. Even as the two explosives loudly announced their arrival, a hailstorm of blaster fire tore through the door, peppering the first door they had come through completely unaccosted.
"Protego," Harry incanted and, against any better instinct, briskly walked into the repeating blaster's direct line of fire. Immediately, he could feel the immense draw on his strength that kind of bombardment caused. Luckily, before he could fall over in sheer exhaustion, Grindal came through the door behind him and immediately hit the heavy gunner with a stun shot.
Everything that came after was somewhat blurry for the bounty hunter, as he continued defending the boarding team while it stormed into the narrow chamber. When eventually it seemed like the last of the defenders lay unconscious, the shield charm simply winked out of existence.
That was the moment the actual last defender chose to announce himself, having hidden in an alcove on the side during the entire fight, shooting a nasty-looking blaster pistol in Harry's direction. Despite his tiredness, he had just about enough presence of mind left to jerk his staff into the way of the shot (although how he had done that particular feat, he was later unable to tell).
Then, he succumbed to exhaustion and sunk into unconsciousness.
OOOOOOOO
What eventually woke Harry up again was a wave of pain from his face.
He opened his eyes, only to see Arden standing over him, right hand still poised for another slap, looking way too happy for the opportunity.
"Thanks for waking me up," the wizard grumbled conciliatorily. "I'll show you the enervate charm on occasion, less painful to wake someone up with that."
Head still very foggy with his exertion, Harry accepted the hand the Dathomirian was holding out for him to grab. As she helped him up, he looked around to take in the chaos that had fallen over the room where the pirates had mounted their defence.
"Where are the others?" the captain asked Arden, peeking into the corners of the room, but only finding unconscious and cuffed pirates.
"Catching stragglers," she replied, waving her hand into the general direction of the rest of the base. "I offered to stay with you, make sure you didn't do any more profoundly stupid things."
Harry looked at her offendedly, waiting for an explanation what the profoundly stupid thing he had done was supposed to be. "Putting up one of your shields against a repeating blaster while you yourself said your power level with that old staff of yours was far from your abilities? Sounds like a bad idea to me."
Despite his inner grumbling about it, the wizard had to admit that what she had said was at least somewhat true. With a groan, Harry began looking for the very staff the witch had been talking about, only for her to actually hold it up. Well, half of it, at least.
"You caught a blaster bolt with it," she informed him. "Wood tends to not like that. Seems like you'll need a replacement, and one more up to par with what you need."
For a few moments, Harry simply stared at the sundered weapon, and it felt a bit like the destruction of his old phoenix feather wand had felt, in a time that seemed so long ago now. The feeling was not as intense, after having the staff for barely a year, yet having made it with his own magic, there had been a certain connection that was hard to deny.
"Yeah, maybe I'll get an opportunity to use that crystal I found on Dathomir now," he replied wryly. "Who knows how powerful my spells could be here with a proper wand."
Arden watched him closely a while until she objected, "I think you should continue using a staff. It gives you a way to defend yourself when someone gets too close to easily use magic."
While the thought of using a staff continued to be a bit weird to him, Harry had to admit that the witch had a point; with some of their enemies using things like these lightsabres, or the vibroblades he had seen some of the soldiers possessed, having a way to defend himself in close quarters certainly seemed advantageous.
"Still have to find something to use for it, though," he mused, only to be quickly poked into his side by Arden.
"I think you should see something," the witch said, before starting to stride out of the room.
"Arden," Harry called her back. "Less enthusiasm, more practicality. You can show me later, for now there are prisoners to guard."
With a small pout, the Dathomirian returned to the room, where she leaned against the doorframe, eyeing her captain for a while. Steadily growing uncomfortable under her unflinching gaze, Harry began squirming in place after about a minute.
"You seem more in control than when I met you," she finally observed. "The training has done you good, making decisions for yourself and others has done you good."
Not quite sure how to respond to that, Harry simply stayed silent and thought about what Arden had said. Arguably, out of the people in this new reality, she was the one who had known him the longest, and there was no denying her observational abilities, if she was ever inclined to actually employ them. And now that he was thinking about it, the young wizard had to admit that he was happier than he had ever been before; for a time, during the hunt for Riddle's horcruxes, he remembered his idea of becoming an auror getting less and less appealing.
These days, though, although he was not exactly the same as a hunter of dark wizards, he was contributing to the safety of the citizens of the galaxy, and mostly on his own conditions, too. There was no red tape to cut through, like he would have faced in the Ministry of Magic, no annoying superiors for him to appease, insisting upon the general upstandingness of someone who was quite clearly evil. No, now he, or rather Arden, could simply scroll through the bounty database, find someone whose crimes were so blatant they had no problem handing them over to whoever had posted the bounty and go after them.
Yet, something was missing, and Harry vowed in that moment that their next mission would be something to help the Rebel Alliance. For, despite his wish for autonomy, Captain Potter longed to be part of the larger struggle.
OOOOOOOO
Chandrila, whose chief exports had long been considered agricultural goods produced by the vast swathes of farmland all around the planet, as well as supremely argumentative politicians forged in the mostly civilised, but rather heated discussions of the House. Every citizen having an equal, direct voice had a natural tendency to sometimes produce violently different opinions.
These very politicians, or rather one particular example of them going by the name of Mon Mothma, was also the reason that, inside a hastily erected sensor outpost on the planet's first moon, staffed only by a few members of the Alliance to restore the Republic, a shrill alarm went off. The hyperwave signal interceptor, the main reason the small outpost had been built, was showing a massive object approaching out of hyperspace.
Within moments, Alliance fighters that had been lying in wait for more than a week, constantly alert for any sign of the approaching planetkiller, were rising from the surface of the planet. In one of those fighters, a Rebel X-wing given to him after his phenomenal simulator scores, Luke Skywalker was ascending with his wingmen, their Potter-provided cloaking devices already engaged as they followed after the small fleet of starfighters meant to run interference for his group as they approached the Death Star.
Only having seen the massive station once before, Luke was once again both awed and disgusted as he saw the monstrosity, sitting in space and approaching Chandrila, which the Empire had obviously selected as the next target for their campaign of fear.
Well, not if he had anything to say about it.
Both to port and starboard, wings of fighters peeled off, turning to engage the oncoming masses of TIEs, yet the Jedi apprentice and his two comrades remained unaccosted as they closed in on the battle station. When finally, the exhaust port that was their target came into view, Luke's conscious mind screamed at him to use the targeting computer, yet something told him that was the wrong choice.
Instead, just like Ben had taught him, he let himself sink deeply into the Force, letting it guide his minute corrections to the X-wing's course…
…and then he fired, and the attacking fighters drew back.
And the Death Star, Tarkin's monument of fear and cruelty exploded, its reactor struck by the proton torpedo from Luke's fighter. For a moment, something he had heard Mercer say, about families and children living on that station came to mind, yet his oncoming feeling of guilt was assuaged as Luke turned the nose of his fighter around to see the green sphere of Chandrila.
Chandrila and its 1.2 billion citizens, still alive and breathing.
Nonetheless, he dearly hoped never having to kill on such a vast scale, ever again.