"Greetings, Captain Potter," the Leia in the two-way-mirror said, a soft smile gracing her face.
With a bow of his head, Harry replied, "Your Highness."
Neither of them could keep this banter going for long though, as they soon fell into silently laughing at each other's over the top formality.
"I thought you should know that the Death Star has been destroyed," she finally informed him, looking oddly torn at the news. "Tarkin was about to have Chandrila destroyed, so we didn't have much choice. I just wish we wouldn't have had to do it, that Luke wouldn't have had to do it."
Harry felt his eyebrows rise at that news, not having been aware that Luke was even staying on Chandrila.
"How did he take it?" the wizard inquired, worried for the mostly likable Jedi apprentice; sure, at the beginning his interest in her had made Leia uncomfortable, but Harry considered things forgiven after the farm boy had backed off when bounty hunter and princess had started becoming closer.
"I don't really know, there was only a short call to inform us of the developments," Leia responded. "And you? How did your hunt for those pirates go?"
"Rather well," Harry responded, silently jubilating about how flawless the operation had gone. Aside from the destruction of his staff, obviously. "Lost my staff though, so I will have to make something new and Arden insists it be something I can use in close quarters."
Getting no reaction from her for the moment, he continued. "We captured 28 pirates, two got killed by some new less lethal grenades I've been tinkering with. Also found two ships they must have stolen recently, both YT-series. One YT-1300, looks a bit like that rust bucket Solo was flying, one YT-2000. Mercer says that one was probably built by some other manufacturer using leaked plans."
"What are you going to do with them?" Leia inquired interestedly, and Harry could see a gleam of acquisitiveness in her eyes.
"We have no one to fly them and giving them to CorSec will just end in some corrupt officer making a quick, wholly undeserved buck," he observed disgustedly. "If you have anyone in the area who can pick them up, consider them a donation to the Alliance's effort."
When, again, there was little reaction, the young wizard began getting worried. "Hey, are you alright?"
The princess shook her head like she did when she was brought out of some thought she had. "Sorry, was a bit distracted there…" she apologised. "I just thought of something, I'll be right back."
Having nothing to do after she had suddenly disappeared from inside the mirror but to look at the ceiling of her room, Harry took up the datapad on his bedside table (he had gotten the captain's cabin, naturally) and went through the list of things they had captured from the pirates' base.
Blasters, obviously; some explosives; body armour. None of it was better than what they already had available. Provisions were always a good thing though, even if Harry would insist on every piece of food, they had taken from the pirates being thoroughly assessed by the servant droid's sensitive receptors before anything of it was served to the crew. The pirates' starfighters, charmingly described as 'crap' by Mercer in the note attached to the item in his list, would probably either be scuttled or simply used as sources for replacement parts.
"Thanks for waiting," the voice of Leia Organa broke through his thoughts and then continued, in her official 'Alliance voice', "We would like to ask a favour."
Intrigued, Harry inclined his head for her to continue. "An Alliance-friendly merchant on Wroona is in danger of being found out by the Empire. Normally, Alliance Intelligence would help him out, but our presence in that system has been compromised just before the Death Star was destroyed."
"And now you would like me to go in there and save that poor sod's arse?" the wizard inquired teasingly. "Anything else I need to know?"
"If you 'save the poor sod's arse'," Leia quoted his own words back at him snarkily, "He'll most like be able to help you with your weapons problem. Palestro is an able gunsmith and knows his way around melee-weapons, too. Also, if you have to know, Wroona does lie at an intersection of trade routes, so I'm sure you'll find some pirates there for you to hunt. Not that people out there could pay as handsomely as the Corellian government."
Surprised by her outburst, although he probably should not have been, Harry smiled at her; winningly, he hoped. "Sorry, Leia," he said, and he actually really meant. "Of course, helping someone who got into trouble just doing the right thing is reward enough. And not every job will be as easy and well-paid as this one."
With the business side of their relationship now somewhat satisfied, Harry inquired, "So, how are you? And I mean you, Leia, not the Princess of the House of Organa."
Suddenly very different from the self-assured vision of strength he had seen only moments before, the young woman in the mirror took a deep shuddering breath; she was still strong, and Harry would never hear anything else being said about her, but it was a different kind of strength that he saw now.
"It's really settled in," she finally replied after a few more deep breaths. "Knowing that the thing that took away my planet is gone now helped… I think. Oh, and my sister is back at the base, so that helped. Oh, you should meet her…"
Abruptly, Leia's face was once again replaced by concrete ceiling, prompting Harry to return to perusing the inventory of their loot: the two freighters, 28 pirates, many of them with outstanding bounties, each and every one of them worth at least 1000 credits just for their membership in the pirate group. A rotary blaster with its generator; credit chips, the worth of which was currently a matter of investigation; something called nova crystals, described as some kind of alternative currency where the Imperial credit was not accepted; a small quantity of a material called phrik…
It was obvious that the pirates had been rather busy, and the bounty hunter could only imagine that, not encompassed in the scope of the data he and Arden had received from their CorSec contact, there had been many more attacks, earlier than the three months the data had covered.
"So, you are the one that has my sister so unusually… bouncy," a graceful, ice-cold voice broke through Harry's musings, directly followed by a sharply whispered, "Winter!"
Returning his attention to the mirror, Harry saw a woman, around his and Leia's age if he had to guess, but there was something about her that seemed… different. She sat on the Princess' bed with an astounding poise and grace, some of which the young wizard could sometimes see in her adoptive sister, yet with her, it seemed less trained and much more a part of her actual being.
"Harry Potter," he introduced himself. "Please, excuse my state of distraction. I was just going through an inventory of everything we seized when we nabbed a group of pirates here in the Corellian system."
Winter, for that was her name, he knew, having heard enough about her from her sister, minutely inclined her head. Her whole demeanour gave Harry an impression of incredible stoicism, at least with people around who she did not yet know all that well.
"Winter Retrac," she returned the greeting. "I wish we could talk more, but my duties call me away. Hopefully, I will get the chance to work with you in the future; as a member of the Alliance."
Not missing her underhanded compliment, Harry inclined his head in a gesture he hoped would be considered contemplative before replying, "I hope to be able to do my best for the cause, whether that may be through joining, or something else entirely. Provided my crew agrees, of course. Good luck on your mission, Winter Retrac."
The retreating image of Winter was soon replaced by Leia's worried face, looking at him as if searching for any kind of discomfort.
"There's no problem," Harry assured her. "She's kind of… intense, but she believes in her cause and does for it what she can; I appreciate that. Hey, can you tell me what phrik is?"
For a few seconds, there was no answer as Leia was obviously working through her shock at his simple acceptance of Winter's uniqueness.
"Phrik is a rare metal alloy, one of the few materials known to be able to resist lightsabres," she explained eventually. Then, the shoe dropped, "You found some?"
Harry nodded enthusiastically; a material resistant to lightsabres was exactly what he needed. Funny how things tended to work out sometimes.
"That's great. I know Arden will be happy to hear it," Leia commented. "By the way, the Alliance has hired that smuggler, Solo, for some secret mission."
While the general revulsion in her voice was unmistakable, Harry thought he could hear a grudging respect there too, possibly acceptance. Not that it was unwarranted, really, from what Ben and Luke had told them about their flight from Tatooine. Then again, it was not Han's skills that Leia had an issue with. Before the young wizard had much opportunity to comment, Mercer burst into his cabin.
"Boss," the Lightbringer's first officer huffed, having obviously run to get to him quickly. "You've got to see this."
Throwing the older man a glare and inclining his head toward the mirror in his hand, Harry replied, "Give me a minute, will you." As Mercer made no move to leave, he added, "I'll meet you outside."
"Oh, such a casually commanding voice," Leia teased after he had left the room. "Hot."
Feeling the beginnings of a flush, Harry looked her into the eye. "Seems like I need to go," he finally sighed. "Miss you."
"Miss you too."
OOOOOOOO
"You know I still haven't shown Arden that stinging hex, so I still can make your life worse," Harry reminded his first officer as they strode through the corridors of the pirate base to whatever incredibly important thing he needed to be shown right away.
"Aah, how dreamy," the not all that much older Mercer commented. "To be young and in love again… ow!"
"Lest you forget," the captain reminded him. "Keep your nose out of my business with Leia, unless you have the impression that your input is required to keep either of us from getting hurt."
"Yes, Boss," the former Imperial accepted, if reluctantly. "Does that mean you won't show Arden the stinging hex?"
Harry pretended to ponder the question for a while before her replied, "Better I don't. We both know she would start using it in her training, which is something literally no one would benefit from. Now, what was so important that you had to show me right away?"
"Right around the corner, Boss," Mercer said evasively. "See, I found it odd that such a ragtag group of pirates would have a base like this, so I had everyone look around a bit while you were asleep. This is what we found."
They were now standing inside the room the pirates had made their defence with the rotary blaster, but unlike before, the room was not simply a widening in the corridor; suddenly, through a door that must have been cleverly hidden before, it was now a T-intersection.
"I've had the team sweep it, no one inside," Harry's first officer said. "In fact, it looks as if no one has been in there in decades."
He led them deeper into the structure, the badly maintained, and even worse cleaned corridors of the pirate base now replaced by a kind of drab grey that starkly reminded the wizard of the inside of Imperial installations. And yet, there was something off that told him it was definitely not a place having all that much to do with the Empire, at least not directly.
The two of them followed the even corridor until the first door that went away from it, which led them into a small armoury, blasters, as pistols, rifles and sharpshooter variants still hanging on the wall. Emblazoned on the back wall was a symbol, comprised of an eight-rayed star in black on white ground, surrounded by a dashed line. Similar enough to betray the connection it held to the Imperial crest, yet distinctly different.
"Clone Wars-era gear," Mercer commented, oddly silent, as if observing some kind of mourning ritual. "We shot a few; just have to replace the power cells and gas cartridges and they still work."
Leaving behind the armoury, they continued following the corridor for a while until they reached what looked like a central hub area. Through a door in the back wall, they reached some kind of command centre, the round room dominated by a holographic planning table, the likes of which Harry had seen the Rebels use and was also installed on the Lightbringer.
Yet, despite the undisturbed condition of everything, the hub area and the command centre were as empty as everything else they had seen, and it remained so as the two men returned to the central room.
"What's through there?" Harry asked, pointing at a door in the left-hand wall as seen from the exit of the command centre.
"Just some quarters, a mess hall, some offices. Not all that interesting," Mercer replied, instead turning his steps toward the other wall and the door there.
What he saw when they finally stepped through almost took the young wizard's breath away; row upon row of prison cells rose in the round room, six stories high. In the middle of the huge space sat a single tower, the guard post on top shrouded in shadows. It was easy to see that whoever had been held prisoner here, would never quite have been able to know, whether they were being watched or not.
Harry could only imagine how easily that might have turned the prisoners into a nervous wreck.
"Some kind of secret prison?" he ventured, looking at his companion questioningly. "But why give it up?"
Mercer shook his head sadly, in deep resignation showing on his face. "Seems more like a black site to me. Not acknowledged in any kind of documentation, so it was probably just forgotten after it was abandoned. Otherwise this would be something the Empire would be interested in using."
Despite how disturbing he found this conclusion, the younger man could not help but agree with his second-in-command's analysis.
"I hope the Rebels know the kind of Republic they're trying to restore and are willing to make some adjustments," he commented, taking another long look around the rotunda. "This is of too much value to leave it unguarded. I need to contact Leia again."
OOOOOOOO
Princess Leia Organa of the Royal House of Alderaan was inside an important Alliance High Command meeting when her communication mirror, the mirror she had gotten from Harry so they could stay in contact, started vibrating inside the pocket she had taken to carry it in. Usually, when either of them did not pick up for thirty seconds, the other would just assume that the time was not right, yet even at a minute, the polished glass and metal was still merrily buzzing away.
So, she pulled the enchanted piece out and answered it, shortly forgetting the rest of the Alliance higher-ups gathered all around her.
"Harry I'm in a command meeting," Leia said, even as she noticed that all eyes were on her.
"Good," came the surprising reply. "You're going to want to know about this."
After that, the young man who had found his way so firmly into her good graces told the Alliance officers about his findings inside the pirates' asteroid base. To say that the former Republic senators their meeting included were shocked would have been a blatant understatement of the facts.
"…seems to have been left rather abruptly," Harry finished his narration. "Good stock of weapons, even a few sets of armour that look like the precursors to what the stormtroopers wear. Even found some completely rotten food."
From the beginning of the story, only the generals intimately involved in Alliance Intelligence had seemed to be more interested, fascinated even, with what was being said. The same kind of mood shone through as General Vernan started talking.
"Did you find anything else? Data plaques, unwiped computers…"
"Sorry to interrupt you, General," Harry interjected. "The only thing that was done thoroughly when they left was erase every little piece of data, so that's not the reason I contacted you. I called because I have a way of making this station almost completely untraceable, hide it so that the Imps could be flying all around it in their TIEs, even blaze the entire area of space in laser fire and it would not hurt that base."
Had Harry not had everyone's attention before he said that he certainly had it afterward.
"I have never heard of such a power," Ben marvelled, looking at the younger man wide-eyed. "How does it work."
"Ah, General Kenobi," he greeted. "Didn't see you there. I don't completely understand how it does what it does, either. Some form of dimensional shift combined with powerful, mind-altering effects. Hopefully I'll be able to learn what I need to know later, delving into the memories of my people."
Of course, Leia was aware the explanation for his vast knowledge was far from true, but they had agreed to simply let people believe that it was another one of Harry's skills.
"Why didn't you do that to our starfighters?" General Dodonna asked, furiously. "All the while you were telling us about the dangers of the Empire looking through that optical camouflage thing, yet you could do something like that the entire time?"
"You are forgetting yourself, General," the Princess, for in that moment, that was what she was, interceded. "Instead of being thankful you accuse our ally, not one of your subordinates of, deliberately holding out on us? Despite him not needing a reason for not sharing all the secrets of his people with us, I am sure Captain Potter still has one."
Harry nodded, even as he was glaring at Dodonna; Leia knew him well enough by now that being accused of not helping where he could have would be considered a grave insult to him.
"Yes, as I've said before, the technology of my home did not really work well with high concentrations of Force energy around," he explained, pointedly looking at the bearded general. "Since the defences against detection were strong enough the way they were, I wanted to get them done quickly, rather than sinking time into research. Now that we know that the things affected worst seem to be droid brains, and even those not to a debilitating effect, I can use a Fidelius here. And no, General Dodonna, I still can't put it onto a starfighter, because it is not something you can just switch off, leaving your ships stranded without hyperspace navigation capabilities."
Although he still looked somewhat pouty at being put down by two twenty-year-olds, Dodonna bowed his head to the small image of Harry.
"Please, forgive me Captain Potter. I am simply concerned for the men and women under my command," the general said, actually sounding quite remorseful.
"And it is an attitude that gives you credit," the wizard replied.
Out of the group, the ones salivating most intensely were the Intelligence officers, Vernan and Cracken, and Leia had a good idea what had them so interested; having a completely hidden base the enemy was unable to find, right in their backyard, too, would be pure gold for a spy. But beyond that, the ability for Alliance High Command to hide like that would be marvellous.
"Anyway, we will either have to wait here until the people who are supposed to pick up those two freighters come in, and then I can place the charm, or they need to be told the secret directly by the secret keeper, who would be me, or at least someone on the Lightbringer," Harry explained. "How easy would it be to listen in on a call made by hyperspace transceivers or on the HoloNet?"
"We always assume anything that is routed through the HoloNet might be listened in on and bouncing a message from hyperspace transceiver to hyperspace transceiver can take days, often leaving the message garbled," Vernan answered. "It can make reliable communication… difficult to achieve."
"I thought as much," the bounty hunter agreed. "So, I can't include them that way… We'll have to wait for those crews to arrive. Can you do anything to keep that arms trader safe for a bit longer?"
"We can tell him to move along the coast and into a cave, but that is only temporary," Vernan responded, stroking his chin in thought. "Wroona is a hyperspace lane intersection, so the Empire has a sizable garrison on planet, and a repair yard in orbit. You would do well, not to be recognised if you want your cover to stay intact."
"Will do," Harry confirmed. "If you can, tell your pilots they have until evening in two days, then we'll be gone, and no one I don't tell will know, how to find this asteroid."
"Understood, Captain Potter."
OOOOOOOO
"Alright, people," Harry addressed the gathered crew, standing as he was on the ramp leading down onto the hangar floor. "We're going to be here for two days, waiting for the Alliance to send some people to pick up those freighters."
A murmur went to the crowd at that pronunciation. "Those of you that aren't wanted by the Empire are on shore leave, those that are… well, consider yourselves on abandoned creepy space station leave. Sorry, we'll make it up to you when we're a bit further away from the core. Arden will still be doing her drills, attendance will not be mandatory, though."
Excited chatter went through the crew at the idea of shore-leave, although there were sympathetic looks all around to those, who would not be able to come.
"We've captured Clone Wars-era weaponry, as you've seen, and a lot of stuff from the pirates," Harry continued his address. "We're going to hand over most of it to the Alliance, but each and every member of the crew may take one piece, either for its value in combat or as an antiquity, under two conditions: one, these weapons can't be sold, we don't want them getting into undeserving hands. Two, if you find any personal effects, you will hand them in so they can be given to the prisoners. These people might be criminals, but that doesn't mean they don't have any rights. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir," the combined voices of the crew echoed through the hangar.
"Good," the captain declared. "The Lightbringer leaves at 0700 in the morning, we'll hand in our prisoners and you'll get your share before shore leave really starts."
OOOOOOOO
"That Potter guy certainly is something else," General Vernan opined, sitting across from Cracken in the mess hall at Massassi Station. "Did you hear that the soldiers have taken to calling his ship 'The Academy'?"
"I'd heard, but don't really know, why," Cracken replied.
A smile on his face filled to the brim with schadenfreude, Vernan explained, "Comes from their schedule. Before they got out of range for direct communication, a few members of the crew called friends and family on the base. They have hand-to-hand training every day, shooting three days a week, and whatever else in special skills they have been able to scrounge up among the crew. I can tell you that at least one among them is an expert slicer, very willing to share her talents."
Cracken's eyes grew wide at that description. "Give them a few months, they'll have turned rookies into special forces soldiers," he commented. "Alright, maybe not to those extremes, but when they return, any unit would be lucky to get anyone who learned on that ship."
The other general nodded in complete agreement. "When they come back, we should have one of our Infiltrators ready to join them," he proposed. "Have someone there to teach demolitions and stealth. Think we can get him to take on some more soldiers…"