"How much longer until you get here?" Leia asked during their now routine mirror-call the evening before the Lightbringer was set to arrive in the Mandalore system. "I miss you; and this Jedi training is not really for me…"
"A few days, a week, two weeks," Harry offered with a shrug. "What is it with the training? Still the same as before?"
"Yes," she replied, sounding rather unsure of that answer. "No… maybe. I just find it hard to concentrate on training when I am constantly wondering what Obi-Wan is keeping from us. And a lot of the code and tenets of the old Jedi Order seem rather unhealthy to me. He accepts that there must be change, I think, but he also grew up in it. That kind of indoctrination is hard to shed."
"Mercer and I talked about that a while ago," the young wizard offered his thoughts. "It sounded rather constrictive and emotionally stunting to both of us, and I know all about being emotionally stunted."
The princess looked at him with sympathy. "For what it's worth, I think you have turned out much better than anyone had any right to expect. Being in control suits you."
"Thank you," he replied earnestly, before moving in equal earnestness to quickly change the topic back again. "Anyway, a religious order with power over other people's lives… that's just a recipe for disaster. Even if they manage to help prop up another republic, at some point the populace will take issue with beings like the Jedi holding sway over the government. People in my home reality sure did at some point."
Leia nodded in understanding. "That would be a problem, yes," she agreed, deeply in thought. "But the Jedi are important resources, don't underestimate the impact a single one can have on a battle, an entire war even. Let alone their ability to stop them beforehand; father always talked about the incredible feats their negotiators could achieve."
"Not saying they should be barred from public office or being part of the military or law enforcement," Harry offered. "Just not under their own jurisdiction as basically a state-sanctioned religious order."
As out of character as their conversation might have seemed for the Harry Potter of a few years prior, he had found that this kind of topic seemed far more interesting when seen in the light of Leia's fascination with it. Additionally, he liked to think he had done some maturing during these years.
"That might actually work," Mirror-Leia eventually commented, but only after visibly mulling the idea over in her head. "One citizen's personal religious beliefs are none of the government's concerns, as long as they don't infringe on anyone else's rights…"
"No reason to sound so surprised," the wizard complained half-heartedly. "It is a common concept where I come from. I was bored and for once decided to pick up a book."
"Sorry," she apologised honestly. "Political theory does not seem like something you would be interested in. Still, I definitely agree."
They continued talking for a while, meandering from topic to topic as they enjoyed simply spending time together, even if it was only a visual connection. Soon, that would be able to change.
"Anything interesting happen while I was gone?" Harry eventually asked, their former topic of Jane, the former Twi'lek slave having run its course.
"Don't know if it's interesting," Leia pondered for a bit, before smiling and telling him anyway. "The scavengers and guards we had stationed all around the Death Star debris had a run-in with the forces of some new crime lord. Didn't end well for us, unfortunately. We managed to recover some of the data pods they were trying to steal, and even that was only because we had the backing of the forces Chandrila had gathered for defending against the Empire."
"What could be so interesting about data pods?" the wizard inquired, puzzled as to why anyone would risk bloodshed over something so trivial. "Was the data that important?"
"Well, we don't really know," came the somewhat dejected reply. "We lost a whole bunch of ships trying to hold the Consortium back and only gathered two pods with data on some Imperial fleet positions, schematics we already know, a few strategic assets we might now be able to strike at…"
The bounty hunter pondered what she had told him for a while; interestingly, even as intensely as he had learned about the criminal syndicates of this galaxy, something like the 'Consortium' did not sound familiar at all.
"Who's this 'Consortium?" he asked, both out of curiosity and a healthy, professional interest.
"Don't worry, I had to ask someone as well," Leia chuckled, obviously having guessed his thoughts by his reaction; it was nice to be so easily readable for her, Harry decided. Showed she knew him rather well. "The Zann Consortium. They're a small but rapidly growing group, currently engaged in a turf war with Jabba the Hutt, led by an Imperial washout named Tyber Zann. The kind of people who would do anything for a few credits."
Hearing her talk like that, the young bounty hunter was quite happy that he had a set of morals complementing his work in that particular profession. It was a good thing he seemed to like a fierce woman.
OOOOOOOO
"So, what can you tell me about this fighter, then?" Harry asked Iabaes as they sat in the mess hall, Mandalore just a few hours of flight away. "Anything special about it?"
"You mean apart from the excellent Mandalorian ship designing that went into it?" the older woman joked, before becoming serious once more. "Yes, there are quite a few rather special things about it, actually. A hyperdrive, for one, which is always a good place to start; shields and a sturdy hull, three heavy laser and two ion cannons, and two ordinance launchers. All that in a ship quick and nimble as a TIE."
Regaining her joking manner from earlier, which had started shining through more and more, the longer she and her team had stayed on the Lightbringer, she added, "It's a really good snubfighter, so the Empire is unlikely to actually use them. I have no idea, how much money they must have sunk into the development. Won't ever appear in large numbers, though. It's too pricey. As far as our source can tell, the squadron we're about to steal is the entire complement that has been built so far. We can even steal the plans."
Harry raised an eyebrow at the emphasis she had placed on the last part.
"The only copy of the plans," Iabaes clarified, looking rather smug. Not that he would begrudge her any smugness in this instance, as these fighters sounded exactly like something they would want for their operations. Especially the ion cannons and the ordinance launchers, which could usually be loaded with ion torpedoes, were a dream come true for someone, whose profession it was to capture people.
"Won't that make our affiliation with the Alliance incredibly obvious, if my team started using them?" Harry voiced a concern her last comment had brought up. "A fighter model, the only copies of which were stolen in an illegal raid, suddenly flying for my bounty hunting outfit? Even if it doesn't connect to the Rebels, it would still brand us as criminals."
"Ah, not to worry," the Mandalorian assured, waving him off. "You can release the plans to a shipyard of your choice, for a price and under the condition of anonymity obviously, and soon, you'll be able to claim you simply 'bought them fair and square'."
Somewhat mollified, although he was not quite sure releasing such a capable craft into the hands of possibly hostile forces was a good idea, Harry returned to his droid-prepared scrambled eggs. Not having seen anything even approaching a chicken in this galaxy, he had no real incentive to think about where the eggs had come from.
"What are the dimensions?" he inquired, finally remembering the restrictions the Lightbringer's limited hangar placed on them.
"Don't remember the exact measurements," Iabaes replied between bites, looking at the food warily, still not completely trusting the droid cook. "Your hangar should comfortably fit three, though, even with all that stuff you seem to insist on storing there. You do realise this ship has a small cargo-bay, right? And an armoury, for that matter."
Harry chuckled darkly. "I am aware," he replied wryly. "Just didn't have it in me to have people move that stuff; might have to now, with the new fighters coming in."
"You have to anyway," the experienced warrior reprimanded harshly, and from her tone it was clear she meant business. "Generally speaking, you run a rather tight ship, which is a good thing, so don't get sloppy on the details. Imagine you're ever being boarded: do you really want weapons to be lying around where the enemy would most easily be able to reach them?"
"Oh shit," Harry gulped loudly, before he began to shovel the rest of his food and rushed to the training room, where he interrupted Arden's regularly scheduled muscle training. "Everyone, we're going for some real-world application of this training. It's been pointed out that having stuff lying around in the most easily boarded part of our ship is a really bad idea. We're going to be carrying all that stuff to places more suitable for it."
Soon after, a group of grumbling crewmembers were carrying crates, both heavy and light, along the corvette's corridors, their captain in the lead, a group of boxes floating obediently behind him.
In the back of the group, an amused Dathomirian was watching them trudge along.
OOOOOOOO
"You're ready, have everything you need?" Harry confirmed with Iabaes, who was standing before him in a threadbare outfit that would fit in nicely with the slaves being forced to work on the planet below. "Remember, anything bad happens, you use that portkey to get out of there."
"I remember," the Mandalorian replied, both annoyed and touched by the younger man's concern. "I have the emergency exit, and I have your 'beacon' as you called it, just like I have my gear in that little bag you somehow managed to make to not be there, except for the two of us. I am as prepared as I'll ever be, and this is not my first mission."
He seemed unhappy with how things had panned out but was obviously resigned to it. "I should be the one doing this…"
"No, you shouldn't," the experienced agent reprimanded. "Learn to leave someone else in charge, when they have more experience. You would stick out like a sore thumb amongst my people, even with how well you can blend in. It's not like I'll be long; our contact will get me into the work crew employed in the factory and I'll have you teleport in."
Without too much more grumbling, Iabaes was finally on her way, being flown to the surface inside the LAAT/i gunship the group had found somewhere and transported the rest of the way on one of the speeder bikes to meet with their man on the inside. This 'super spy' turned out to be an Imperial non-commissioned officer by the name of Laycli; not someone she would usually trust easily, given that his reasons were not ideological but monetary, but in this case, the possible gains far outweighed the risks.
"You the one I am supposed to smuggle inside?" the man asked gruffly, looking her up and down with a lecherous gaze. "Your credits better be good, otherwise I'll… take my payment from you directly."
Suppressing the instinctive, and admittedly powerful, urge to head-slam this asshole's nose bad enough that even bacta would have a hard time dealing with it, the warrior smiled sweetly and adopted, as much as that was possible for her, an innocent, naïve persona. Not that it would fool anyone who looked at her.
"But I don't have any credits on me…" she replied waspishly, looking at the corrupt officer wide-eyed. "I'm sure the transfer of the credits went just fine."
Obviously not buying her whole spiel, Laycli shuffled her into the back of the speeder he had come with, grunting at her as they went, "Do yourself a favour, pretend you have just been fucked from here to yesterday. That'll be my cover story for when I take you inside the compound. We have a system in place for that kind of thing."
Not sure whether to be thankful or disgusted, Iabaes simply remained silent and nodded to indicate she had understood. Assured that she would play along, the man activated the speeder and they shot off, along the ravaged landscape of Concordia, marred with the efforts of mining the rare and priced beskar ore, the damage inflicted by Mandalorian operations easily rivalling that done by the Empire's efforts.
Little time had passed, when they reached a guard post at the edge of a giant crater, the sound of equipment and explosions heavy on the air. The leer of the men standing guard was impossible to dismiss, and one of them seemed to even wink at the one they must have thought had just had his way with the powerless slave in his speeder. Laycli parked the speeder in the corresponding spot of the vehicle pool and dragged her out.
"Try not to look this haughty," he sneered at her. "It's going to get us both killed."
No more words were spoken until she was eventually pushed into the barracks assigned to the slaves; triple-layered cots, ten of them, in a room that was most definitely too small for this many people. On these cots, wearing clothes like the ones she was to fit in, lay 29 people. The air stank of fear and sweat and ammonia; worst though, was the defeated look many of them had in their eyes. It was almost physically hurtful to see that look in the eyes of a member of her proud people.
"You're new," a man stepped to the front of the group. He looked like he might once have been burly, but the treatment he had received at the hands of the Empire had robbed him of any of that. "That bunk's free, the poor sod fell unconscious while on a work assignment. Name's Opan, not that it matters anymore."
Seeing the state these people were in, the proud Mandalorian made a resolution: she would do her utmost to… expand the scope of her assignment.
OOOOOOOO
"Up!" the slave driver called Iabae's group the next morning after way too short a night, as far as she was concerned. "Lots to do, maggots."
It was not particularly easy to decide, whether to pity or hate the overseer as he began wandering between the cots, sticking what looked like an electric prod into the bodies of the slaves, both awake and still asleep. Then, she got hit with a jolt too, and suddenly it was easy to decide; hate might have been too strong a word, it was more that she despised him, now. Still, there was a mission to fulfil and that took precedence, not that she would object to later giving the overseer the same treatment as Laycli.
Despite the circumstances, it was a relief, being led out of the stuffy, stinking barracks and into the barely fresher air of the mining and factory complex. Unceremoniously, they were abandoned at a mess hall, where they sat under the watchful eyes of a group of stormtroopers, their identity-purging armour only adding to the gloom of the place. To think that, regardless of how many turns it had taken, these things were based on Mandalorian armour was insulting. Yes, beskar'gam would conceal one's identity, as much was true, but the armour also had its own identity, with its myriad colours and design choices making it truly unique. Uniqueness was definitely not what she would accuse the Empire of promoting.
Their breakfast, if it could even be called that, consisted of a grey, taste- and odourless goop, slimy and unappetizing, yet Iabaes managed to eat her fill. She had reason to believe she would need the energy, later on, given the state of so many of the actual slaves in this particular hellhole. Nary enough time was given to them to complete their 'meal' until the next overseer, this one wearing the kind of protective equipment one would expect of a factory worker, began ushering them along the corridors once again, his prod making a few of the stragglers jump. The factory hall was a loud, if rather clean mass of organised chaos, like Iabaes would have expected from a company such as MandalMotors, especially with the Empire sticking their hands into the business. Much could be said about the Imperials, and a lot of what they did certainly included a great deal of corruption but proclaiming they could not enforce order when they really wanted to, was most definitely a lie. However, what was certainly a pleasant surprise was the general lack of guards in the working areas; sure, a few members of the Imperial Army, and even a pair of stormtroopers, could be seen patrolling around the room, yet their presence was dwarfed by the amount of workers and the efficiency of their surveillance was impeded by the din of machinery. It would make sneaking away to a far-off corner to drop the beacon all that much easier, and that was without even mentioning the possibility of inciting the slaves into a revolt against their oppressors. They would just have to find some way to disable the slave implants and the Imps would be nothing more than stains on the wall.
A few hours of working on the assembly line told the Mandalorian her earlier assessment had been hopelessly romanticised and incredibly, overly optimistic. With how defeated the captive men and women had looked the evening before, she should probably have been prepared for how jaded most of them seemed to her talk of a rebellion without outside help. Nevertheless, she persisted in her attempts to convince at least some that what she had to say had some merit. Admittedly, it riled her up a fair bit how reluctant they were.
"What kind of Mandalorians are you?" the seasoned warrior hissed at the two men and one woman she had finally managed to corner during one of the small breaks, necessitated not by the condition of the workers (something the Empire aggressively did not care about) but by a problem with the machinery.
"The kind that sees when a battle is lost," the older of the two men rebuffed her. Still, his more practical and less cowed answer was a small victory, as far as Iabaes was concerned.
"Ah, but what if it wasn't lost?" she speculated. "What if, hypothetically, someone was on their way with weapons, someone with the ability to suppress the signal to the slave implants?"
"If someone like that were on their way, it would change a lot," he admitted, looking her over speculatively. "Not that I think someone like that exists…"
"And what do we have here?" they heard a deep voice from behind their backs, prompting the four of them to turn around rapidly. "A spy and three traitors…"
The interloper was of rather unimpressive stature, the Mandalorian gathered, but there was something about him that tingled her sense of danger. Maybe it was the blood-red robes, or the supreme confidence with which he approached who he obviously believed to be a spy and a member of a culture known to produce excellent hand-to-hand combatants.
Or maybe it was the number of small cylinders at the man's belt, signature weapons of both Jedi and Sith.
"I would advise against attacking me," the man said glibly, hands still folded behind his back, supremely smug expression still etched into his face. "Were you inside your armour, you might have a chance of survival. As it stands, you would only doom yourself and everyone else here to a protracted and painful death. Not that that is not in your own personal future…"
Upon the man's gesture, Iabaes looked around the room, for the first time noticing that each and every door had opened, throngs of stormtroopers now holding the workers at gunpoint. Admitting a temporary setback was certainly not something she liked doing, but in this case, anything else was folly. Therefore, she did the only thing she could: she dropped the heavily enchanted (at least that was the word Harry had used) beacon that would lead her team's portkey journey and raised her arms. Within moments, the white-armoured henchmen of the Emperor were upon her and she was led away.
"I must admit, I did not think it would be this easy to get caught," she freely admitted to the man walking next to her.
He requited her admission with a cruel smirk.
"No one expects the Imperial Inquisition."
Nobody noticed that, behind them, inside the room, a young woman with ashen hair had bowed down to the ground to pick up the small bracelet Iabaes had dropped.