The easiest way to bait Harry Potter into doing something silly was to distract her. Put her into a position where her moral fiber raged so utterly against what was being done that she had no choice but to follow. Tug on her heart strings, and she'd play a seven-piece orchestra for you. No matter how many times she castigated herself for her foolishness in running off into battle without rhyme or regard for the here and now, she succumbed to her baser instincts time and time again.

This time was no exception. The sound of a woman screaming in fear and agony had drawn Harry's attention– had taken her back to Malfoy Manor, hearing Hermione's pained screams as she was tortured by that foul cunt Bellatrix.

Her magic flared, and she immediately moved to find the source of that noise. When Rey and Ben had moved to follow her towards the noise, she had cut them off.

"Get back to the ship," she said firmly, her voice dripping with anger. "I'll handle this."

Her intrepid investigation led her to a small, rather dilapidated building a few dozen yards away. Narrowing her eyes, Harry stepped through the darkened doorway, and barely had a few seconds to duck out of the way before a crimson lightsaber stabbed itself through where she had been standing.

She turned and scowled. Another fucking trap.

'You'd think I'd have wisened up to this sort of thing by now,' she thought grimly.

The supposed leader of the group of three Sith (she assumed, given their black cloaks, masks, and lightsabers) let out a dark chuckle. "So, this is the one who has subverted our initiate for her own aims? The pretender who dares oppose our great master?"

Harry snorted in a sort of twisted amusement. "Are you seriously monologuing right now?" she asked, twirling her wand in her hand, grinning. "You evil blokes are all so much alike."

The part of her brain that sounded like Hermione chimed in again– despite the totally inappropriate time this was to do scientific research, it was also the perfect time to do scientific research. Namely: how effective was the Elder Wand against a bunch of evil blokes with laser swords? It was one thing to pull her lightsaber out and start hacking and slashing like Godric Gryffindor after he'd drank a bit too much grog, but the Elder Wand, despite the bloodied history that accompanied it, was more of a fine scalpel in comparison to a ruddy chainsaw.

That being said, she did find herself needing a way to counter swords that could cut through just about anything. They were made of magic, after all.

Clay and stone golems? Dispatched without hesitation by her assailants.

Conjured solid aluminum cans? Nothing more than some soft, mushy discs of melted nonsense on the floor once Tall, Dark and Evil was done with them.

She actually had to work a bit to find a material that could withstand prolonged exposure to a lightsaber. The only thing she found that actually could withstand a lightsaber's blade was gold. One of her galleons, as a matter of fact.

"Interesting," she said, throwing a knockback jinx at one of the three that charged her during her experiments. "Lightsabers can't penetrate gold, of all things? Perhaps it's the enchantments on it…"

"My Lord, she's toying with us!" one of them said, their voice reedy. It reminded Harry awfully of a younger version of Umbridge.

"No matter, Master Snoke merely wanted her distracted if nothing else," the leader said with dark amusement. That set of words stopped Harry in her tracks. Tensing up, the young woman glanced at the leader of the three assailants.

"Distracted?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.

"Did you really think Master Snoke has the time or inclination to entertain the deluded fantasies of a pretender such as yourself? Initiate Kylo is the destined leader of the Knights of Ren. He is of the Vader bloodline and will bring the First Order to glory."

There was a sudden sound, and the leader reached over and pressed a button on his wrist. A hologram, wearing a uniform similar to him, appeared. "Lord Taikh, we have captured Initiate Kylo and one other prisoner."

"Another prisoner?" Taikh said, glee entering his voice.

"Yes, sir. We believe her to be the Pretender's whore."

Harry felt a surge of rage swell within her. Suddenly, she was not merely in a small abandoned building on an alien planet in a galaxy far, far away from her home. No, she was now standing in the Ministry atrium on the worst day of her life. Bellatrix Lestrange mocking her.

'No. Never again,' she raged. She wouldn't let the Death Eaters take another fucking life. She wouldn't let another set of her friends down. She wouldn't, she wouldn'tshewouldn'tshewouldnt-

"Extract all information you can from her. Leave no stone unturned. You have full authorization to-"

"Crucio!" Harry shouted, jabbing the Deathstick at their leader. A grim satisfaction filled her soul as she heard the man's pained screams. Clearly neither of his friends had ever seen such a spell before. After the daze had worn from their eyes, the other two Dark morons had charged at her with their swords.

"Avada Kedavra! Avada Kedavra!"

Not even a lightsaber could stop Death. The two dark apprentices collapsed to the ground, unmoving. Harry stalked towards their leader, who was trying to pick himself up off the floor. Stopping for a moment, Harry pointed her wand at him again.

"Crucio," she hissed, a sharp grin crossing her face as the idiot, Lord Taikh, writhed around on the floor. After keeping him under for a few more seconds, she stopped again. She crossed the rest of the way over to him and pressed her boot down on his shoulder, forcing him onto his back.

He opened his eyes, and glared at her murderously.

"M-Master Snoke w-will destroy you," he spat, his voice shaky. Such a declaration would be more fear-inspiring if it wasn't said at a low whisper with a tumultuous stutter.

"No, he won't," Harry said with a tut. She raised her wand and pointed it dead center at Taikh's head. "Legilimens."

"Mandu za rahat i umri," Ben spat in Aldera, spitting blood at his captor.

"Now, now, Initiate Kylo, is that how we speak to a superior?" his captor purred, sending another wave of electric-pain through every inch of Ben's body. "You are most disappointing, Initiate. Are you so hopelessly stupid that you think a foolish pretender is capable of dethroning our Lord?"

"O-Ona fortári Snouka," Ben muttered as his muscles shook. "Ona'će va tu suntsitui."

The sound of an alarm setting off caused both Ben and his captor to jump in shock. Ben watched in near helplessness as his captor punched some keys on his comm. A hologram snapped to life.

"What is the meaning of this alarm? Has the whore escaped?"

"No, sir," the initiate replied. "Lord Taikh's transmission cut without warning. Lord Kornek ordered us to go to immediate lockdown and prepare to leave the system."

Siranus swore before cutting his comm off. "Your little friend is strong, but she is too late. Master Snoke will reward us for bringing him her whore and a traitor."

He turned and left Ben behind, plunging the room into darkness. Ben took in a deep breath and exhaled. These idiots didn't understand. It had taken him this long to realize it, but the Knights of Ren and the First Order were nothing more than a cult. A cult to whom and to what, Ben didn't know– but he knew that Master Snoke now felt threatened enough by Harry's presence to try to have her taken out.

Ben opened himself up to the Force, and allowed the Dark Side to flow freely around him. He had been on the cusp of falling for so long… Master Snoke had always told him that his transformation into Kylo Ren would not be complete until he had eradicated the Jedi. It was his destiny, so Master Snoke had told him.

But here, he sat, in commune with the Dark Side– and it told him the truth. That was not destiny. Harry was destiny, and she would be the fine instrument in which the Force's will would sing and rewrite the galaxy at large.

He let out a low laugh as he thought about everyone who would try to stop her. The Republic industrialists, the politicians, Master Snoke and his apprentices, the Imperial remnants. They would all try their best… and yet…

Fools. They were all fools. Don't they know that you can't run from Death?

He shook his head. Harry would take care of these fools. He was more concerned right now with Rey. He was, to some degree, already trained in Jedi arts. She… wasn't. He and Harry had been waiting to start teaching her the Force and whatever Harry's own powers were, and now they were paying the price.

Reaching out in the Force, he tried his best to link himself to Rey. To offer her strength and resistance– or tell her to stay strong in the face of mental torture.

For a brief moment, he could feel the anguish she was under. Kornek was subjecting her to various types of physical torture to get her to talk. He was never very talented at mental manipulations. Why do something with tactfulness and the Dark Side when you could just do full-on physical torture with various instruments?

However, he felt her surge and shove him out of her head. Suddenly, he felt Harry– his Lady and all her darkness press down upon him. A startle of shock and glee spread across the tenative connection they had.

Ben grinned in spite of himself. She was coming to get them.

Every pulse of her heart practically leapt into her throat as she hurried towards where Taikh Ren's memories had indicated their ship would be. That bastard had thought himself so strong… yet what did these morons know of real power?

She had tasted power. It had the taste of ash, scores of corpses among rubble– and she had hated every bit of it. A power she had not sought, but was saddled with just the same. Death her companion, lingering over her shoulder like a sickly shadow, and ultimately all pointless as she could not fix what was broken in her– nor restore all that had been lost.

So many promising lives and young families exterminated, never to return again.

She would not fail now.

What had surprised her was when she suddenly felt magic that wasn't hers press up against her own. It had taken her a moment to recognize just who the intruders were, but she recognized exactly who it was– Ben and his awkward, unsettled, meandering magic had made the connection– and was joined by Rey, though her usual brightness was dimmed, soured by the flashes of pain that Harry could feel coming down the connection. Her friends were in terrible trouble and it was up to her to find them.

She moved to follow that connection to its source, knowing that there, she would find her lost friends.

It took some doing to find the spaceport that Taikh Ren's memories had indicated– it wasn't exactly in a very public area, no doubt in an attempt to keep her from finding it at all. As she approached the unseeming spaceport, two dark-robed figures standing watch snapped to attention and brandished crimson sabers at her.

"It's the pretender! Kill her!" one snarled at the other.

Before they could even move towards her, Harry's wand was up and casting. She could feel whatever magic these idiots used pushing up against her occlumency shields, but paid that as little mind as she could. Harry wasted no time playing with them, hurling a litany of curses that she had lifted from the Black family library.

She was very thankful that Kreacher, the annoying little blighter that he was, had been proactive enough to have saved all those books from Molly Weasley's wrath. They came in bloody great use now that she actually had targets for them! An organ-liquifying curse here, a bone-breaker over there, a marrow-freezer added in for good measure.

That being said, she was starting to realize the issue with her magic. If given ample time to dodge, the spells were harmless nonsense. The magic that these acolytes had gave them a great degree of flexibility in their movements now that they knew what to expect from fighting someone like her.

The strategist within her recognized immediately some ways she could interdict their aggressive and elusive behaviours. Spell chaining, combining bludgers with hexes with other things to slow them down, and area-of-effect spells. Their over-elusiveness never allowed them to get firmly set, and so their attacks on her almost entirely relied on rush tactics rather than actually trying to best her in direct combat.

Knowing this, she allowed her magic to guide her towards where they were going rather than to where they were.

She grinned, quite pleased when one of the darksider acolytes went down with an organ-liquifying curse, and she followed it up with a simple fire charm that caught on the robes of the other one. While he was distracted with trying to put himself out, she dropped him with a single severing charm to the neck.

As Harry burst through the door of the spaceport, she grimaced as the ship was already beginning to lift towards the opening to escape into space. She knew if she didn't stop the ship now, she'd have no bloody chance of ever finding her friends again. Her anger suddenly felt like a pot of water that'd been left to boil over, and without uttering an incantation, she let out a guttural roar and a lance of lightning leapt from her wandpoint, slamming into the glowing exhausts of the ship in question.

She blinked in shock– she'd never actually seen spells that could perform such fantastic feats of lightning, complete with all the hairs on her arm standing straight up and the distant smell of ozone lingering on her senses.

Her attention refocused on the ship and she realized that the lightning bolt didn't stop it completely. Grimacing, she quickly untransfigured her broom followed the ship out of the portico. She was pleased to see it struggling to maintain altitude, let alone gain more, but she couldn't let it escape. She wasn't sure she could recreate that lightning show again, but…

She willed her broom to go faster faster faster like she had on the night…

Her magic swelled at the memory of that night. Blinking back unbidden tears, she scowled and pushed harder.

Death would come for those who dared harm her friends.

"You have great potential, whore," the darksider said in his low, sibillant voice as he traced his gloved hand over Rey's thigh. "I can feel the darkness within you, yearning to be free."

Rey made a snorting noise of amusement. She knew that already. Just as Harry had her particular secrets, so did Rey. Harry was unaware of the dreams Rey sometimes had, of long, stretching corridors with doors that lead nowhere– of harsh, unforgiving glares and bright lights and loud voices. Rey had never shared much about her life on Jakku beyond the superficial, of the light fading from that one karking sleemo's eyes as she slit his throat in his sleep.

No, she knew she had darkness within her. But she was better than that.

"You'll have to try harder than that," Rey intoned, her voice dry and pained. She screeched in pain as another arc of lightning lanced and danced across her skin. Her muscles seized and flopped around as best as they could within her restraints.

"Watch your tongue, whore, before I cut it out for your disrespect," the darksider hissed.

Rey went to retort, only for the ship to suddenly jolt. Her captor was nearly thrown from his feet, and hissed in anger. "Those fools! Can they not pilot a karking ship?!"

Suddenly, the lights blinked out, and the emergency lights came on, bathing the room in a dark red glow– and then Rey felt it. A surge of something across all her senses, and she couldn't help but laugh weakly.

"She's here," Rey said proudly.

Frankly, Harry expected more. These were supposedly well-trained darksider acolytes capable of a great deal of things… and yet the most they could throw at her was some weak lightning bolts that she batted aside without hesitation. Part of her deep inside tried to appreciate the irony that was going on right now. Here she was, dark magic flowing around her like a cloak, batting down spells, mowing down people desperate to destroy her to save their own hides.

She'd have more time to angst about being so much like the Dark Wanker later. Now it was "save people" time.

With no remorse or regret, a simply placed Sectumsempra relieved someone no older than she was of their head, the darksider apprentice's neck and head rolling off to the side somewhere, a fountain of blood spouting from the stump where it once sat.

The feeling she got from Ben and Rey grew stronger with each step she took, and she could tell they were in anguish. Ben was in the lower levels of the ship– a holding cell of some kind… and Rey… near the top of the ship. Chambers. Being tortured. The bile in her throat grew at the thought of her girlfriend being harmed by these fucking savages.

She wasn't even sure how many more she dispatched by the time she got up to where she could feel Rey's suffering eminating from, nor could she list the number of violent ways she ended their miserable little existences. The Elder Wand sang with glee at the sheer variety of it– cutting curses, Unforgivables, transfiguration spells with no regard for safety and mercy…

Bloodletting was the Elder Wand's greatest talent, and she allowed it and her magic to sing together in a demented chorus. For once, she didn't feel bad about letting it lead her. These were not people, but mere vermin living on borrowed time.

By the time she got to the upper levels of the ship where Rey's pain radiated through the Force like a malevolent cyst, she was certain that whomever these people were– they were effectively exterminated. The corridor to the room containing Rey was poorly lit, the only source of light being the flashing emergency lights.

Harry knew that her approach was already exposed, and stealth would do literally nothing. As she marched down the hall, she reached half-way to the door and stopped as the door opened, and out stepped the target of her current fit of rage.

"You are powerful," the man said silkily from behind his mask. "The greatest disciples of Master Snoke, and you decimate them like you aren't even trying. Very impressive."

"More monologuing. Why don't you arsebrains just die already?" Harry grunted before slinging a cutting curse straight at her opponent. A lazy spell begat a simple dodge as the Dark acolyte merely batted the curse away.

"Did you expect it to be that easy?" he said evenly.

"Of course not, all you evil blokes tend to sponge a few hits before you do something stupid or I do something stupid and get hurt. It's sort of how this goes," Harry retorted.

The dark acolyte said nothing, but drew his lightsaber which sprang to life, bathing the corridor in the familiar crimson haze.

Harry wanted to take zero chances– Rey was suffering and she needed to end this foolish charade quick. As the Dark acolyte moved in to strike, she jabbed her wand at his exposed torso.

"Crucio!" she hissed.

Even the most powerful of the Dark-side acolytes couldn't withstand an unforgivable. The man buckled beneath his own weight, collapsing to the ground like his legs were made of jelly. He seized around on the floor under Harry's curse for a few seconds before the witch lifted the Cruciatus.

"You seem to misunderstand who you are dealing with," she said coldly, stepping on his back and pressing him down onto the steel floor under her boot. "No amount of fancy sword-waving is going to change the fact that I can dismantle you and your master if I put the effort into it. You lost this fight the minute you decided you wanted to show off your prick more than your own survival."

Before the man could even get a word in edgewise, Harry pointed her wand directly at him.

"Avada Kedavra," she hissed, and with a flash of green, the subject of her latest quarrel met an untimely end.

She sighed and rubbed her jaw before smoothly walking past the now-cooling corpse of a shittier, space-age version of a Death Eater lieutenant. The foremost thing on her mind was her girlfriend, damn everything else.

Stepping into the torture chamber, she made her way over to where Rey was still bound up, and could see the terrible pain in her eyes. "Hey," Rey said, her voice hoarse. "I knew you'd show up."

"I would turn this galaxy inside out to save you," Harry said seriously, vanishing the bonds that held Rey in place. "I'm going to put you to sleep, love."

Rey looked at her with her heavily lidded eyes, and blinked a couple times before giving Harry a smile, though the effect was ruined when all Harry saw was blood dribbling from her lips.

Harry made a hushing noise and gently waved her wand over Rey. The sleeping spell took effect almost instantly, and Rey settled down to a quiet, if not strained rest.

"I'll apologize later, but I can't carry you around and save Ben at the same time," Harry murmured as she transfigured her girlfriend into a small stone and tucked her in the pocket of her robes. She marched out of the torture chamber and began to descend deeper into the ship. Though she encountered one or two more acolytes of this Snoke bloke, most of the people on the ship were already very, very dead.

Near the bottom of the ship, she spared a glance out one of the portholes and gauged how much time she had left before the ship crashed– plenty of time, as a matter of fact. They were still thousands of feet in the air, and her spell allowed for a very controlled fall at that.

Satisfied, she continued her march into the detention level where she could feel Ben. The room was empty already– no doubt whoever was down here guarding Ben had run upstairs to join the fray and gotten summarily killed for his trouble– and thus nobody could stop Harry from simply banishing the door to Ben's cell.

"Milady," Ben greeted, though his voice was strained and he was clearly bleeding from his nose.

"Are you able to walk or do I need to put you to sleep as well?" Harry asked.

"I can walk," Ben said. "They only tortured me a little bit. Where's Rey?"

"Safe for now," Harry responded. "Want some help?"

"Please," Ben grunted, and Harry moved to brace him as he climbed to his feet. With her help, he limped out of the detention cell and stood braced against her.

"Once we're back on our ship, you and I need to have a long conversation about what happened," Harry said with a grunt before she apparated them all back to the Marauder.

Harry didn't quite get the conversation out of Ben. As soon as they'd arrived, he'd collapsed and had become unresponsive. He was alive, but the extent of the torture session had left him too weakened to function after being side-along apparated. It was fortunate that the ship had come with a medical droid– though it's usefulness was limited in scope.

Madame Pomfrey it was not, unfortunately.

The medical droid had got Rey and Ben in things called "bacta tanks" which seemed to have a similar function to most of the salves and potions that wizards and witches used. It wasn't as deeply restorative, but it was something.

Harry sighed and watched her friends float in peace for a few moments before she cracked her jaw and went to the front of the ship. She was… not a pilot. She could probably learn but she would need help– and the only help she knew she could easily get were both floating in a medical tank in the next room.

However…

Harry reached into her pockets and drew out the boxes that Rey had purchased from that bloke in Mos Espa. Tapping her wand to it, she re-enlarged it to full size and opened it up. One box contained an assortment of orange-and-white parts, ostensibly still in decent condition from first glance. Harry wondered if her magic would even let her piece it back together or what. She'd need to consult her theory books before trying.

The second box contained parts that looked much older– more like a bunch of scrap metal someone had swept into a box rather than a coherent droid. Her first priority was getting off this scrap-heap, so the first box– an astromech droid, if she remembered what Rey was telling her, was what she was going to repair first.

Dumping the parts out on the floor, she hummed and twirled the Elder Wand in her hand. If there was ever a wand that could do amazing things with a simple repair charm, it was this one. Her thoughts went to her holly-and-phoenix-feather wand that she still had a great deal of love for. It had broken, and The Elder Wand had done what no other force of magic could, and had repaired it. What was this droid thing in comparison to a finely-crafted wand?

She took a deep breath before waving her wand over the pile of parts. "Reparo," she said softly. She felt her magic reach down and curl around the various parts. They began to drag towards each other, and before Harry's very eyes, the pile of parts was replaced with a squat, short little robot with two legs and a caster underneath the front side of it.

It remained dormant for a second, before a small light on the front of it popped on. The robot wheeled back and forth some before it let out a series of excited tonal beeps.

"Um, hello," Harry said softly. "I'm Harry Potter."

Another flurry of excited beeps as the robot took in its surroundings. Harry got the vague feeling that the robot was happy to be alive again. The little robot stopped and turned to face Harry.

"Um… I don't know how to speak robot," Harry admitted. "I don't know very much about you or what you do, little buddy."

Another flurry of excited beeps had Harry raising her eyebrow. Was the robot rocking side to side in excitement? The robot sped over to one of the consoles and stuck a small extension from its chassis into it. Harry suddenly had a message on the datapad she'd been carrying with her.

c1b0: Hello, Harry Potter!

"C1-B0?" Harry asked, looking at the little orange-and-white robot.

c1b0: that is my designation! though it isn't a very good one. there are too many c1 robots out there. no matter! Harry Potter has saved me from the scrap-heap! What can I do to help you, Mistress Harry?

"Oh, you're an excited little bugger, ain't ya?" Harry said playfully. "You remind me of an old friend of mine. He wasn't a droid, but he was very helpful, like you."

c1b0: helping others is what I do!

"Indeed," Harry said happily. "Do you have a preferred name? or gender, for that matter?"

c1b0: Gender: indeterminate, though my previous owner frequently used feminine ones for me. Name: I'm sure you'll think of something, Mistress. My designation by manufacture was C1-B0, and my previous owner did not think it necessary to personalize that.

"Right," Harry murmured. "We'll figure that out, then. Are you able to pilot a ship like this?"

c1b0: Not directly, however, I am a fully-equipped astromech, capable of assisting in hyperspeed navigation and course correction. I will copy my owner's manual to your datapad so you may understand the full breadth of my abilities.

"Good, good," Harry said, rubbing her face. "I've got some friends that are in the medbay and I want to let them heal before I move on to my next destination. Is there a place somewhere between here and Takodana that's… out of the way, where nobody will bother us?"

C1-B0 remained silent for a moment before suddenly, out of her front panel, came a massive holographic projection of the galaxy.

c1b0: Current drive data indicates we are on Tatooine– Outer Rim Territories, The Slice, Arkanis Sector, Tatoo System. Hostile desert planet, under control by Hutt Clans, sympathetic to Confederacy of Independent Systems.

C1-B0 made a trilling noise.

c1b0: Mistress? Am I reading the chronometer right? Current date: 15 Frostwane 546?

"Something like that. I'm still getting used to the whole calendar system you lot use in this galaxy."

c1b0: Mistress, I apologize. My databanks are forty-four years out of date.

"Forty-four years?" Harry asked, surprised.

c1b0: As an astromech in the service of the Grand Army of the Republic, I received regular data updates from various sources in order to provide the most optimal tactical service I could. While not as glamorous as an R-series unit, I was instrumental to assist my previous master in all manner of action.

"We'll try to get you some more recent information," Harry said reassuringly. "Though having something that can pierce the looking glass and show us information from that long ago might be dead useful."

c1b0: As you say, Mistress.

"Harry, please. I'm nobody's mistress," Harry said softly.

c1b0: Acknowledged. Back to the point at hand: finding a place to hide. There are numerous pockets on the most direct route between Tatooine and Takodana that are suitable for your chosen action. Do you have a particular preference?

"Anything that's safe and won't be intruded upon by… Darksiders or something like that," Harry said, waving her hand.

c1b0: Calculating…

A red line appeared from Tatooine to a spot roughly half-way between it and Takodana.

c1b0: By current estimates and projected efficiency of this ship's hyperspeed drive, the trip to this location will take 35 hours. Projected enemy interdiction metrics offline due to aged data. Please exercise caution.

"The problem is that I don't know how to pilot a starship," Harry said.

c1b0: As easy as riding a swoopbike. Not to worry, Harry. I will assist you.

"Alright, then. Come on, girl," Harry said, climbing to her feet and entering the cockpit. For the first time in her life, she was going to pilot a ship capable of travelling at speeds even wizards couldn't fathom.

C1 rolled into the cockpit with her and plugged into the center console. On the screen in front of her, a number of things flashed by before a messaged appeared.

c1b0: Bypassing flight clearance protocols…
c1b0: OK. There are a number of switches above your head. Please power on the first three– they power the sublight engine, antigrav engine, and disengage the landing locks.

Harry looked up to see a row of red switches above her head. She flicked the first one and felt the ship roar to life, she flipped the second one and felt the ship began to slowly lift off the ground, and then when she flipped the third, the landing lock that kept it tethered to the ground let go, and the ship began to float up out of the docking bay.

c1b0: Your dashboard contains all the information you need to safely pilot the ship. Beyond your controls being able to manipulate the pitch and yaw of the ship, you will find the speed control, altimeter, ranged sensor panel, weapon status indicators, gravitational and atmospheric force measurement panel, sublight speed indicators for both horizontal and vertical range, and your current heading relative to the galactic core. c1b0: Now that you are up off the ground, you can begin to increase your speed. It is common courtesy to restrain your sublight engines to approximately twenty percent power while under 10 kilometers altitude. You can slowly pull back on your controls to tilt the ship towards atmosphere, and increase speed to twenty percent.

"Right," Harry said, slowly pulling back on the controls, causing the ship to list backwards. She then reached over and pushed the small lever on her left up a couple of notches. The ship began to move forward.

c1b0: Good work! We'll make a pilot of you yet!

Harry snorted as the ship began to gain altitude at a slightly quicker pace.

c1b0: Keep your eye on your atmo pressure measurements. All ships have a tolerance threshold that they have to keep under so your ship doesn't turn into a massive scrap pile as it exits or enters an atmosphere. If what I'm seeing in the central databanks is right, this ship has quite a large tolerance, so you should be fine. Just be aware of how many forces of gravity are acting on your ship at once.

Harry grinned at what she was doing. This was rather fun! It wasn't as adrenaline-pumping as flying her broom through the sky, or riding Sirius' bike, but she was flying a bloody space ship! Harry thought about how much trouble that the Americans and Russians went through to get into space at all, and here she was, piloting something that was faster than anything they'd ever put into space like it was an automobile.

NASA, eat your heart out!

Once the altimeter ticked over the 10km marker, C1 let out a beep and a new message appeared.

c1b0: Now that we're above ten kilometers, you can gradually increase your speed. You should be approaching full sublight by the time you hit lower planetary orbit.

The trip into the lower atmosphere was rather easy, all things considered. There was only a couple spots of turbulence where the ship resisted breaking gravitational pull. As the ship grew higher and higher, Harry noticed the screen darkening.

c1b0: Filters designed to block out UV radiation. Safety precaution so you don't blind yourself staring at a sun.

"Makes sense," Harry murmured.

c1b0: Disable the antigrav engine. You are now far enough up that it would take significant downforce to bring you back to Tatooine's surface.

Harry reached up and switched the antigravity off.

c1b0: Enable the fourth switch. This will begin to prime the hyperdrive.

Harry flipped the fourth switch, and something to her left began to light up, various red lights blinking.

c1b0: That is the lightspeed navcomputer, lightspeed engine and other components powering on and priming for launch. Once you enable the lightspeed engine, it allows me, your astromech unit, to perform all the calculations needed to safely transit space. This will be slightly more difficult since we are not planning on taking a hyperlane.

"Is that a problem?" Harry asked carefully.

c1b0: No, more fun, actually.

"Oh-ho, I think we're going to get along just fine," Harry said with a grin.

c1b0: The calculations will be done in a few minutes. In the mean time, you can proceed on sublight engines in the direction we'll be heading. If you read your heading display, I can instruct you on how to understand heading and position. Heading vectors are calculated spatially, relative to your current position. That being said, your heading will also tell you if you are heading coreward or rimward.

"Is it possible to be neither?"

c1b0: Yes, but very infrequent– in those instances, you'd see a value of zero, indicating you are heading directly parallel to the core-rim axis. Similarly, there is a vector heading for relative orbit path and height. This is perhaps the most complex part of piloting a spaceship due to the six degrees of freedom the ship has to navigate.

"But that's where you come in," Harry said. "You calculate all the math so I can just press buttons to make stuff go."

c1b0: Essentially, yes! Now, to stage our jump to lightspeed, yaw the ship until your vector reading matches the below vector.

A vector appeared on screen– a litany of numbers that Harry took a few moments to get the ship to adjust to roughly.

c1b0: Once the ship gets up to speed on this heading and the lightspeed engine is primed, you will be able to jump to lightspeed. I will inform you once we are ready. In the mean time, you may proceed in this direction at sublight.

"Got it," Harry murmured, allowing the ship to proceed in the direction they had picked. After a few minutes of flying through the vast expanse, a little light above Harry's head flicked on.

c1b0: Lightspeed armed and ready. I have already performed all necessary diagnostics. The Marauder is ready for jump at your command.

"Before we go," Harry interjected. "I just need to send a quick message to Maz Kanata to let her know of the delay. I'd hate to piss someone like her off."

After sending Maz a brief message on the encrypted channel that the older woman had provided, Harry took in a deep breath and steeled herself. She reached up and placed her finger on the button that was blinking above her head. "Just press it?"

C1 gave a single beep and her chassis rocked back and forth. Harry pressed the button and the stars in front of her began to blur as they rocketed into lightspeed.

c1b0: You did a fantastic job
c1b0: I can maintain hyperspeed course-corrections for most of the trip. You are relieved, Harry.

"Excellent," Harry said, getting up from the controls and moving to step out of the cockpit. She stopped and turned to the little droid. "Thank you for your help, by the way. Um… I'll try to learn your language so we can communicate better."

C1 warbled happily in response.

"Oh, also, ah, don't be alarmed, but I'm going to go into a private part of the ship for awhile. Um… I'll have the datapad with me, and it should work? But if anything comes up and you can't get ahold of me, there's a wooden trunk in my cabin. Just bang on that a couple times and I'll come running. Okay?"

C1 gave an affirmative whistle of understanding and Harry reached down and patted C1 affectionately on the dome before leaving the cockpit.