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Chapter 7: Not Right

As it turned out, stealthily following a convoy through the Mandalore system while it picked up shipments from various ports and facilities belonging to Mandal Hypernautics was, even in the most charming light available, rather dull. Despite the high-stakes situation, no one could find it in themselves to be excited about waiting yet another hour, while smaller shuttle craft were flying to-and-fro between a large bulk transport and yet another asteroid mining operation. Though he could somewhat understand the discomfort of his crew, was even feeling it himself to a degree, Harry was worried about the implications; if this went on for much longer, there was a real worry to be had about dropping levels of effectiveness among the more crucial posts on the ship and for the first time he found himself wishing he had enough people to run two full shifts, instead of one full and one skeleton crew.

"They're undocking now," the sensor operator announced to the room at large, sounding as supremely bored as the entire rest of the bridge crew looked. "Next stop on their itinerary… oh, this could be interesting."

"What is it?" Harry inquired, more urgently than he would have liked; looking forward to combat was not exactly something he wanted for himself, especially not for such mundane a reason as alleviating his boredom.

"The next stop on their itinerary is on the outer asteroid belt, not the inner one; it's the only time they go out that far," the operator responded, eyes now once again glued onto her screen; obviously, the captain was not the only one who was suddenly a lot more interested in what was going on with the convoy they were shadowing.

Despite that brief moment of respite, though, it was another hour before anything really had a chance to happen. With the transport's next stop stuck deep inside a dense asteroid belt that promised to rip apart anyone who tried to jump in, there was no sense in attempting to use the hyperdrive, leaving the slow ship only its inadequate sublight engines, while the Lightbringer and the Morningstar followed in its wake, twelve fighters arrayed around them protectively, almost invisible against the void of space in their black glory (Mercer had gotten his hands on the M14s, obviously).

The transport itself was just past the edge of the outer asteroid belt when, from behind the massive rocks shot forth a small group of ships. To Harry's eyes, they looked to be of two distinct models, one of which he was familiar with, that being a Skipray blastboat, while the other was a total unknown; the ones he could not identify looked a bit like snowflakes with four tips, quite quick and agile in their manoeuvres as they zipped around the spinning space rock. In all, there seemed to be around two dozen ships, six of the blastboats and maybe fifteen of the other class.

"I recognise the blastboats, but what are those smaller fighters," he asked the assembled crew, not at all surprised when it was Mercer who answered his question.

"I don't recognise them, never dealt with those before," the Imperial deserter replied. "We should let the M14s handle the slow blastboats, take those fighters out with the Lightbringer."

Harry did not comment beyond a nod, knowing that his first officer did not expect him to, either; instead, he watched on the sensor screen as the group of ships closed in on their quarry and, as they were just about to reach weapons range, he said into his helmet microphone, "Engage."

From what the vantage point aboard his ship allowed him to see, it was not even close to a fair fight; the group of pirates that had been posturing, flexing their metaphorical muscles, so to speak, likely in an attempt to get the crew on the freighter to give up, was completely taken by surprise when, without warning, an enemy force fell into their unprotected backs. It took only moments, before the Skiprays were floating idly in space, each of them the target of no less than two M14s and their ion cannons; the same fate befell around half of the smaller fighters, hit by the Lightbringer's ion cannons. Those were the lucky ones, for the rest had simply been blown apart by the laser cannons on the top deck. As the bridge crew was taking in the short work that had been made of their adversaries, it was Iabaes who first found her voice again.

"Something's wrong with all of this…" she observed, worriedly fiddling around with the helmet she was holding under her arm. "Either this is not their entire operation, or there's something different going on here."

Now getting worried as well, given that when it concerned fighting and battle, the Mandalorian's insights were usually worthy advice, Harry inquired, "What is it?"

A slight grimace on her face, she was visibly pondering how to express what exactly she was thinking. "Anyone attempting to engage in piracy over Mandalore will, at some point, have to deal with the clan leaders, and I know for a fact that at least one of them has a battleship under his flag, not to mention entire squadrons of fighters. This paltry little band of ships could never have defeated him. So, either this is not their entire fleet, or there's more going on than we were told; both options very worrying."

By this point, the captain was actively troubled, a state only proper information would be able to get him out of. "Leia, let's go and take aboard one of those blastboats, shall we? And Mercer," he added in the direction of his second-in-command, "call in the carrier, they can pick up the rest and have the new recruits get the crews out, they could use the practice. I'm sure Javoc would enjoy a… whatever those things are to tinker with."

OOOOOOOO

As it turned out, the crew of the blastboat Harry and Leia collectively magicked aboard the Lightbringer did indeed contain a crew. Unfortunately, that crew was also four men strong, armed and very unhappy. Therefore, it was mostly a lucky coincidence that, from having brough the ship into the hangar, they were both already prepared to immediately cast their strongest shield spells, and while the one the princess managed was just about enough to roll out of the line of fire, his managed to hold fast as she began peppering the entry hatch with suppression fire dense enough to drive the would-be reverse boarding party back into cover.

It was all the opportunity the captain really needed for him to pull out one of his stun grenades, pull the pin and lob it through the open hatch, where it quickly exploded, enveloping the surprised pirates in a blue halo. As one, the four fell to the hull they had been taking cover behind, no longer conscious.

The crewmembers that had been drawn by the sounds of fighting were immediately put to use by Harry, who had them separate the four captives and bring one of them to the interrogation room that had been set up on the same level where detention cells had been installed that a bounty hunter was likely to use in his professional conduct.

Eventually, sitting opposite Harry and Leia, the latter of which had been outfitted with a small glamour to hide her identity whenever there was the risk of exposure, was a man in his middle years, or at least that was what he looked; over the time spent in this world, the wizard had learned that gauging the age of people tended to be a hard task without knowing, where they had grown up. In fact, one of the prime examples, though hidden behind a glamour, was occupying the chair next to him; when one compared the Princess of Alderaan's flawless youth with the weather-beaten skin of Luke Skywalker, a man within a year of her in age, the ravages life could exact were quite apparent.

Deciding that this particular train of thought was of no relevance to their current situation, Harry refocused on the criminal in the opposite chair, beyond the metal table he had had installed to reminisce what he had once seen in the telly, after his uncle had fallen asleep while watching. He hit the pirate with a waking charm to counteract the magic of the enchanted grenade, and the man came back to consciousness with a mighty jolt.

"So nice of you to join us," he greeted the captive evenly, holding his gaze just long enough to register surface thoughts of surprise and fear. "I have an opportunity for you that you would be wise to accept…"

"I don't want nuffin fram you," the criminal interrupted, though his bravado was quite obvious in its falseness.

"You don't even know, what I wanted to say," Harry countered, aware that next to him, the stern-looking, black-haired woman he had given Leia for a disguise was staring holes into the criminal. "See, I would like for you to cooperate with me, making it easier for the both of us. Otherwise," here, he pulled out a pristine flask of clear liquid, "I will use this. Three drops and you'll spill your dirtiest little secret. Hell, three drops and even the Emperor himself spills his dirty little secrets."

There was a small crack in the other man's façade, though it was obvious he was not convinced his interrogator was speaking the truth. However, making this man believe in what Harry was saying was not the aim, anyway; if he was simply worried enough that the claims might be true and his crimes were bad enough, the bet would end up growing too high.

"It is a good deal, you must be in a good mood. Slept well, last night?" Leia injected herself into the interrogation, knowing full well how well he had slept; she had been there, of course, and also helped in tiring him out in the first place. "I wonder what this one might tell us, if we put him under the influence…"

"Alrigh', alrigh', whadda ya want," the pirate eventually exclaimed, throwing up his arms as far as he could with his wrists shackled to the table.

"Where do you operate from and how many of you are left?" Harry questioned immediately and aggressively, hoping to shock the criminal into revealing more than he otherwise would have.

"Jus' check the nav logs," the prisoner replied petulantly. "A few more fighters, nuffin much; were hired to harass Mandal less than a week or so ago… hey, where you goin'?"

Harry paid the man no mind though, as he gestured Leia out of the room and began a quick stride back toward the hangar, his girlfriend on his tail.

"They were only hired a week ago, just after we took the contract," she observed when she finally caught up, hampered a bit by her shorter legs, though she did make up for it in energy. "That means…"

"It means Mandal Hypernautics knew, somehow, that they would be harassed by pirates in the near future," Harry completed the thought and, had the situation been any less worrying, he would have enjoyed the sign of close companionship in mind that completing each other's sentences often implied. "Which means Iabaes was right, something is most definitely completely wrong with this situation."

OOOOOOOO

As it turned out, the navigation computer aboard the Skipray sitting in the hangar did indeed hold the jump coordinates to a nearby system, though that may have been too grand a term, in all honesty; it was really more of a conglomeration of asteroid belts that had found themselves in relatively low orbits around a brown dwarf star, its mass too little to ever really develop the fusion reaction that made other stars the bringers of light and life that they were. Only deuterium, limited in its amount as it was, reacted inside them. Astronomically speaking it was a wasteland.

All of which were things that made it an appealing hideout for a pirate gang who had somehow gotten their hands on hyperspace-capable fighters. It was quite intelligent, Harry had to admit, an ingenious system really; what had worked so well in sniffing out the pirate base in the Corellian system was completely eliminated as a possibility here, as simply tailing a ship through hyperspace was widely thought to be impossible without attaching some kind of transmitter to the vessel one was after. These things, in their entirety, made him all the gladder when, as their captured blastboat jumped into the system, the modified freighter the pirates had been using as a base was still there, cluelessly floating between the asteroids.

The original idea had been to sneak aboard by pretending to be a member of the pirate group, but the interrogations had proven two things beyond reasonable doubt: these people had no sense of group loyalty and completely lacked any scruples. Once again, they had gathered, any even the least bit suspicious activity on behalf of a boarding party would carry the risk of simply being shot to pieces. Therefore, what had once been theorised as an infiltration mission was now a simple scouting foray, the thought being that were they discovered, being aboard a ship their adversaries would at least only hesitatingly consider a foe might prove beneficial. These concerns, however, turned out to be pointless. There was simply no movement, no reaction around the large freighter; the area was not even patrolled by enemy ships, as far as the very respectable sensors aboard the blastboat could detect.

"Alright, let's call in the others," Leia said eventually from the second compartment behind the cockpit where she was manning (womanning?) the co-pilot/sensor operator's station. After what had happened the last time, she left Harry alone, she had simply refused to do so again for the time being. With the original plan needing him aboard the ship for his skills in infiltrating enemy vessels, he had somehow been set for that position, one thing led to another, and now the two of them were the only ones aboard; in hindsight, it was probably a supremely bad idea.

"Yeah," the wizard agreed. "Try and send them coordinates as close to the asteroids as possible; maybe we can make this enough of a surprise to prevent them from launching any fighters in response."

Leia 'hmmed' in response, made the communication over what Harry guessed was a tight beam transmission to avoid detection by their opposition and then made her way into the cockpit, where she then swivelled around his chair to plop down in his lap, leaning back with her back against his stomach. He turned them back around, so they were looking through the cockpit window at the distant dwarf star and the dense asteroids around it; too far away to make out individually, the swirling rocks made large rings of earthen tones against the backdrop of space.

"I think we should take some time off after this mission," Harry ventured, letting his thumb gently caress up and down over his girlfriend's stomach, right next to her belly button. "We still need to find you a wand that works, something that's your own, not borrowed from me."

Sounds of agreement came from the sometimes surprisingly cuddly human on his lap; obviously, she liked the idea of having Harry to herself for a while without pressing matters from the Rebellion or his own activities. Or she was just looking forward to the idea of finally having her own focus to really start training to cast magic. There was, after all, a lot to learn, gifted as she most obviously was. He himself would have liked to think it was the former reason, and if not that, then at least a combination of the two.

"The Empire has every common source for lightsabre crystals under a lockdown," she finally said, quietly and with her head still tucked under Harry's chin, their hands now intertwined on her stomach. "Obi-Wan once said that, if there ever was a problem with Luke's lightsabre, he should visit the old man's hut on Tatooine."

"Did he say, why?" the wizard inquired, though he already had a good idea on what the answer was going to be; still, hoping for at least one straight statement from the old Jedi was not too much to ask, right?

"Of course, he didn't," Leia replied, exactly as expected. "You knew him at least well enough to expect nothing less, right?"

A slight chuckle escaped Harry's throat at that. "I guess I did," he responded. "Was just hoping he would have made an exception."

They remained silent for a while, enjoying the physical and mental closeness their position afforded them, floating as they were alone in space, no one around for dozens of kilometres and nothing to do but wait, hold still until the rest of Harry's small force jumped in. Not even leaving the system was really an option, as the energy surge of an activating hyperdrive might have alerted the pirates to the fact that they had unwelcome visitors in their midst.

"Damn, that means we'll have to take Luke with us on our trip, don't we?" the wizard finally realised. "Correct me, if I'm wrong, but Obi-Wan would definitely pull something like a locked chest only Luke could open, right?"

"That does sound like something he might do, yes," Leia agreed, though her mind was obviously somewhere else. "No matter, we can take the VT-49 or maybe the Morningstar, if we manage to get it away from Hound for a while."

"I wouldn't want to do that to him," Harry chuckled easily. "I think the Decimator would work out just fine, though I think we should think of a name soon; Decimator is not exactly the image we want to project to the galaxy, right?"

"Has someone worked on the modifications then? Changed the transponder codes?" the princess questioned, turning her head to look over her shoulder. "Wouldn't want any run-ins with the authorities during our holiday, right?"

"Yeah," Harry replied, a bit smugly he had to admit; as it turned out, one of the new recruits they had gathered up from the Bastion had a somewhat chequered past, before they were pressed into service with the Navy. Not by the Navy itself, though, rather by a local gangster they had run afoul of and only managed to get away from by enlisting. "Real stroke of luck we found that one."

Once again, Leia 'hmmmed' in response as she settled back into her boyfriend's chest and they continued to gaze out of the cockpit window for a few minutes until finally, the communication terminal to the side of the primary flight controls began blinking. She extended her arm toward the corresponding switch and soon, Mercer's voice could be heard throughout the small ship.

"Boss, were in the system, engaging the freighter now," the first officer informed them. "Those coordinates were excellent, Leia; they didn't know what hit them, couldn't even launch fighters… shab, someone is escaping in a shuttle and the fighters are still occupied with the freighter."

"Tell us where," Harry ordered immediately, even as he was already swivelling the chair around and setting Leia down behind him. "Will you get on the sensor station please? I'll take them out with the ion cannons, but I need to know where they are."

She nodded sharply and hurried back to the seat she had been occupying earlier and began working on locating their quarry among the multiple sensor contacts the sensors aboard the blastboat were picking up.

"Looks like they're running for the edge of the gravity well," she called out to him through the open door. "We should be able to intercept them at… 50 degrees starboard, 20 degrees upward."

Quickly, so as to not let whomever it might be get away, Harry throttled up and adjusted their heading so that it matched what Leia had told him; with nary a shudder, the Skipray was set in motion as the powerful sublight engine pushed the unusually heavy craft forward.

"Can you see what kind of shuttle they're in?" he asked without letting his eyes stray away from the blackness in front; missing the first appearance of their quarry simply would not do, after all.

"I don't know the model," Leia replied quickly. "Got an image though, looks Mandalorian. And if the Mandalorians built it…"

"… we can expect it to be armed," Harry once again finished the thought, while also hoping the shielding on this blastboat stayed true to its reputation of being unusually tough for something of its size. As they came progressively closer to the ship they were hoping to intercept, Harry could finally make out their quarry: more than twice the length of the Skipray, the craft looked a bit like a giant, flying fork, its pointy wings going just past the bisected front section. Even from this distance, it was easy to make out the vessel was far from well-maintained, large patches of rust visible on the triangular wings. It was almost physically painful to see such an obviously well-made piece of technology in such disrepair.

Noticing the direction his thoughts were headed, the young wizard shuddered a bit; he had obviously been spending too much time with Javoc, if that was the thing he found objectionable in a person who regularly attacked civilian targets with anything up to and including lethal force, at least according to the data from Mandal Hypernautics. Now that he considered it, maybe the data from Mandal was a bit suspect, with everything they had learned by now.

"Do you see any weapon systems?" he called back into the aft compartment, hoping the visual scanners would have been able to get an even clearer picture.

"Yes," Leia replied, no less loudly, though with much more refined elegance and poise. "Two in the front, two in the back; no turrets, unless they're behind panels."

He allowed himself a brief moment of joy, as he was approaching from the side, rather than the front or the back, before concentrating on the targeting computer again; inexorably, the distance indicator went down, only moments left before the shuttle came in range…

And he fired, letting loose a blistering barrage of ion cannon fire. At first, the enemy's shields buckled under the stress, yet held firm, but as the other ship sped past, Harry swung around the blastboat's nose and continued pelting the already weakened vessel with more and more of the immobilising bolts. It took a surprising number of shots, but eventually, first the defences and soon the rest of the ship were without power, floating idly in space.

OOOOOOOO

At the edge of the unnamed system's gravity well, Harry and Leia set the Skipray down inside the large hangar of the Imperial escort carrier he had aptly decided to call Phosphoros. The original plan for the ship had been to not let it be seen alongside the Lightbringer and the Morningstar but having a small carrier with you that needed a ridiculously small crew was just too valuable. Therefore, it had been decided the ship should simply stay out of the thick of it and only jump in from wherever it was lying in wait when it was actually needed, then be gone just as quick.

This was one of those situations, where the large hangar bay of a carrier was needed; after already picking up the small fleet of attackers that had been disabled in the Mandalore system, it was now time to pull in the fascinating shuttle/fighter, neither of the two could really decide, what it looked to be more. What had been quickly decided, though, was that simply letting it float around, dead in space would be a tremendous forfeiture of good luck, as even should they dislike the vessel, they would still be able to sell it, or maybe barter it for a few favours to the Alliance. Always in keeping with their 'friends & family' discount, of course.

It took a fair bit of manoeuvring inside the confines of the wide, usually empty space aboard the Phosphoros that was the hangar to free up enough space for the large craft, what with a good deal of the available area reserved for the M14s and much of the rest already occupied by captured Skiprays and the weird, snowflake-shaped fighters the pirates were using, but eventually, they managed. Having learned from their last attempt at flushing out people from inside a ship they had pulled aboard, this time they only let the ramp lower just enough to throw in a stun grenade before doing just that.

Then another one, for good measure.

When eventually, the exit ramp was fully down, there seemed to be only a single occupant, clad in body armour of just slightly better quality than the crew of the blastboat Harry and Leia had taken out earlier, leading him to think he might just be the one to hold some answers regarding the situation they now found themselves in.

"I have no time to play nice and we know, who to ask," Harry announced as he was floating the stunned pirate captain along beside him and into the interrogation room, where he was then relieved of his armour and filched for hidden weapons. "Get the veritaserum, please."

"Yes, Boss," Arden replied eagerly and was soon off like the devil himself was on her tail.

He himself, and Leia with him (the latter now once again hidden behind a glamour to protect her identity) simply sat down opposite the pirate leader and waited, silently, for the Dathomirian to return, so that the interrogation might begin. In truth, it was less than five minutes until the veritaserum arrived, though it had felt a good deal longer to the young captain, who was now eager to find out exactly in what way he had been played. So, he had Arden administer three drops of the incredibly expensive potion and then wake up their captive.

"Hello, are you going to answer our questions?" Harry asked of the unkempt man on the opposite side of the table, glassy eyes unfocused and slack jawed face completely relaxed.

"Yes."

"How did you manage to overcome the clan chief and his fleet?" the captain began the line of questioning he had been thinking up over the waiting period until the potion had arrived.

"We didn't."

Oh, how utterly wonderful he always found these answers to be, given under veritaserum; so incredibly literal. "Then who did defeat him?"

OOOOOOOO

Far away on the planet Ryloth, the hologram of a large bipedal, yet bird-like creature appeared next to man; he was tall as well, though human in appearance, save for his unusual hair, long white and straight, and the aura of… not malice that enveloped him, more a sense of utter disregard for the entire world as long as there was not anything in it for himself.

"What is this I hear about Mandal Hypernautics refusing delivery of new ships?" he demanded of his subordinate's hologram.

In a calm voice that would have surprised anyone listening in, had anyone actually dared to do such, the beaked man answered, "Mandal Hypernautics has hired a young bounty hunter, he took out the pirates. Now, they refuse to honour their side of the bargain."

A creased brow became visible under the man's straight white hair, if just barely. "Took out the entire operation, you say? Tell me more…"

"It appears he has somehow gotten his hands on an Imperial corvette and an entire squadron of a new line of starfighters, now he and his crew are hunting pirates and other such outfits."

"I want you to find him, Urai," the man ordered, the gleaming in his eyes somehow audible in his voice.

"Do you wish to have him eliminated, Tyber? We would need a small fleet, I do not think Bossk would be up to the task."

"Eliminated?" Tyber Zann scoffed derisively. "I want to hire him. Everyone has a price, and I'm willing to pay for good help."

OOOOOOOO