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Chapter 9: Just because you're paranoid…

"Damn fools," Harry muttered under his breath, looking at the sensor contacts for the trio of TIE fighters displayed on the screen. "Get me a communications channel with the lead ship."

"Yes, Captain," the sensor/communications operator replied, swiftly establishing a tightbeam connection (at least, that was what he gathered). "We have them on Visual One."

Above the operator's workstation, a screen activated first with static, then with the flight suit of one of the few TIE pilots who had expressed an interest in defecting after the Bastion had been taken over by… well, they really did need a name, one of these days. His face probably mirroring the relief he felt inside, Harry was nonetheless snarling at the pilot in an instant, though he did do his best to hold back, if just a tiny bit.

"I thought you were not supposed to leave the atmosphere?" the wizard inquired icily, and though the life-support suit was enough to nearly completely obscure the movement, it was clear the pilot had flinched a little.

"Sorry, Captain," the man ventured, diction and voice implacable as ever; again, the training that went into the skills of these pilots was apparent, if nothing else. "See, my buddies and I, we were a bit… doubtful about that supposed shield of yours. Seems to work though and now…"

"Now you're stuck, you were only ever taken across the perimeter of the shield, without being told the secret," Harry surmised to the visible (despite his helmet) disgrace of the pilot. "That's a week's worth of latrine duty for you and your 'buddies'. Understood?"

More nodding. "Fine. Come aboard then, we'll take you with us through the boundary," the captain ordered, reminded of what Mercer had said only minutes earlier about 'idle hands'. "When your week's over, you're going to be taking your TIEs out for some scouting missions all over the planet."

"Yes, Captain."

"If anyone asks about your little adventure, by the way, you tell them what happened and why it was a stupid idea," he amended wryly; a barb the pilot wisely chose to accept silently and without complaint as the connection cut out and the sensor contacts for the three fighters began to move toward the centre of the screen where the Lightbringer had now halted to await its newest passengers.

"I approve," Mercer commented next to him, looking at the screen just as Harry had been before the former Imperial had said something. "Proper chastisement, an unenviable yet ultimately harmless task as punishment and a promise of alleviating their boredom later on."

"Why thanks, Mercer," the wizard replied gleefully. "I might just be tempted in believing you like having me as your boss."

A glare on his face, the older man turned to look at the younger one. "You have no proof of that ridiculous claim."

Harry decided to let things stand at that without any further comment, instead choosing to think strategy as he finally saw the three TIEs approach and enter the hangar; with the enormous bounty/'you tried to screw us over'-bonus from their last assignment, they now had a good deal of financial resources to fall back on, as much was clear. Unfortunately, it had also netted them the attention of the Zann Consortium, a group whose actions in the past had clearly been motivated by only one goal: further its leader's quest for riches beyond measure, or at least that was what it seemed like. Of course, stealing the data capsules the Death Star had launched did not really fit the bill, unless they were hoping to sell the data… or maybe there was some secret bank account where the Navy held credits to pay all their personnel…

It was, simply speaking, rather frustrating Harry admitted to himself, as the Lightbringer was enveloped in the red shroud of heat that usually accompanied atmospheric re-entry; they had possibly made a powerful enemy about whom they did not know enough. Still, if they were forced to contend with this enemy, rooting out this organisation might be enough of a jumpstart to really get going with their little 'Project Sanctuary'. Eventually it all boiled down to the fact that they did not know enough about the Zann Consortium to really plan any further steps.

By now, the garrison base they had stolen from the Bastion was visible in the distance, the light grey a monumental contrast to the pale green of the plants and the earthy tones of the mountains in the distance. Even from this far away, the wizard could make out signs of the complex now being 'lived in', so to speak. There were formerly Imperial speeders zipping around the fence, small groups of other buildings had been erected with the same kind of material Mercer had allocated to the asteroid station; even a few guards were visible, manning the perimeter against any outside encroachment.

"Were we gone longer than a week?" he questioned no one in particular; really, it was more of a way to let out his considerable surprise.

"If people really need or want to, they can be amazingly productive," Leia's voice reached his ears from the door through which she had just stepped. "I think both of these things are true for the people here, so they were very motivated."

"Done with your shooting?" Harry asked, smiling widely at her. That morning, she had announced herself noticing her aim being a bit off as of late and wanting to join the soldiers on the shooting range.

"Oh, yes," she replied happily, sauntering over to him in her black uniform. "Are we going to be staying here for a while then, if we have to lay low anyway? We could help with setting everything up."

"I had the same thought," the wizard agreed. "Plus, I still have some enchanting that I wanted to do to our ships; unlimited ammunition would be a really big help and I already know how to do that. That way, we can stop paying exorbitant sums on the black market."

Then, with a cheeky grin on his lips, he added, "The idea actually came to me on my way to Yavin when I came to rescue the damsel in distress."

Leia did not honour his quip with a response, instead choosing to look out of the transparisteel window to the rapidly approaching piece of flattened earth that was calling itself a landing pad. Harry quickly joined in her ruminations and let himself sink into his own thoughts of what to do, now that they had both a reason and the resources to keep their feet still for a while. Obviously, waiting as they were for the delivery of their new ships, a few more landing pads were on the agenda, and preferably not of the compacted dirt variety, either. An isolated side location, the exact opposite direction of the small basement with the crystal holding the Fidelius charm, to hoard the treasury would also probably make for a good idea.

"How far does the protection extend, anyway?" Mercer interrupted his thoughts. "I don't think we ever really found out; it could be important for the larger ships we have that aren't exactly built for entering an atmosphere; for now, that's just the carrier, but who knows what other crazy schemes you're going to cook up."

"Sir," the same sensor operator who had been manning the station during their entire descent interjected. "We have the data on when we lost hyperspace navigation capabilities; it includes our altitude at the exact moment."

While that seemed to satisfy the first officer, Harry suddenly noticed something very important about that altitude. "Nevertheless, I want someone to chart the exact altitude during an entire orbital rotation. I'm not aware that this has ever been done on such a scale, so I'm not sure, whether the protections will be centred around the core of the planet or the place where they were erected. Do you know, how to do that?"

"Yes, Sir," the technician responded quickly.

"Congratulations, then," the captain continued. "You just got your first own mission; take the Lambda when it returns, along with one of the pilots, then do a few rotations around the planet. Find out, whether the shield is at the same altitude, everywhere. Can you do that?"

"Yes, Sir," she beamed; most likely, she would never have been able to command even such a small mission, even after years of service in the Imperial Navy, what with her non-core accent. Being a woman did not help you get promoted in the Navy, either. "Won't let you down, Sir."

"I did not think you would," Harry replied lightly. "Now, did I just feel us setting down? You're excused, then."

With a dash, the young woman was off, likely to her quarters inside the garrison base; every single one of the people that had joined had been told that, within reason, they would be allowed to decorate their own quarters, all of it on their own dime. Obviously, that meant there was a certain inequality in the amount each person had to spend, those that actually were aboard the Lightbringer, Morningstar, and Phosphoros being the most affluent. Still, everyone was getting a nominal amount of spending money, and so far, no one had complained, as lodging and food were provided. The latter was, at least for the moment, in the form of Imperial rations, but most were still used to that kind of fare.

"Hey, do you know anything about agriculture?" Harry asked Leia, who was now walking next to him toward the turbolifts so they could leave the ship via the large ramp at the ventral side. "Because I certainly don't."

"Oh, yes," the princess responded lightly, greatly to the wizard's surprise. "It was one of the main topics in my classes, along with self-defence and statecraft. Those two and agriculture."

Now it was on him to not honour what she had said with an answer, instead choosing to pull her back to his front and nuzzle her hair whorls, while they had the time during the short ride inside the lift.

"I'm sure you could find a few people in the Outer Rim willing to relocate to a more hospitable place with less crime and almost unlimited, untended land," she went on, even as she snuggled back into his body. "But for the moment, there should be enough to last us all quite a while, right? The Empire likes putting enough provisions on their ships to let them operate alone for extended periods of time."

Harry nodded. "Estimates say we're actually good for years," he answered, unable to really prevent a grimace forming on his face. "Those are Imperial rations only, though. I'd like to keep morale up, and as long as I can't pay people more, good food would be a great start."

"How about a food synthesizer, then?" Leia proposed, leaving his embrace as the lift doors swished open and allowed them into the corridor in the lowest deck. "They're rather pricey, if you want anything palatable to come out, but they can use nearly any raw material and make a huge variety of different dishes."

While they were walking past the storage rooms, the wizard pondered her idea, and found himself immediately liking it; no matter how much money they had to spend on such a device, they would most certainly recur any investment later on by the simple fact that the variety of foodstuffs needed to be produced or bought was greatly limited. If you only needed the basic building blocks, large amounts could be bought at a discount or produced locally.

Stepping out of the Lightbringer, it was once again clear that things tended to look larger when viewed from the ground, very much including the complex that had been erected as their new base. Around as high as the corvette was long, the imposing building dwarfed everything in its shadow, people, speeders, even other buildings and… the AT-AT that was walking around?

"A few of the people from the Bastion were walker pilots," Mercer said, obviously having seen his befuddled look. "I'm being told they're using the larger vehicles to move building material across the surface. By the way, would you be able to help with repairing a forward drive shaft? Everyone was rather bummed when they saw the Juggernaut we have managed to get was broken down. Javoc was downright heartbroken."

"Sure…" Harry mumbled. What had he gotten himself into with this? "Anything else?"

The Imperial deserter shook his head and went off to… wherever he was needed, it seemed. Obviously, a lot of organisation was going on behind the scenes the supposed leader of this whole operation was not fully aware of.

"Overwhelmed?" Leia questioned silently, audible only to the two of them.

"Just a tad," Harry chuckled, gently squeezing her into his side by her shoulder. "Things are moving rather fast, aren't they?"

She chose not to comment, instead taking his hand from her shoulder and into her own, leading him to a few abandoned crates, where they both sat down, and she pulled out her own datapad.

"See, the first time I had command of something even a tiny bit larger than a single ship, it helped concentrating on specific things I could do," the Princess explained, tapping on her pad a few times to bring up the current aerial photograph of the area surrounding the base and converting it into a topographic map. "Now, let's see what we need to add around here, before even more people start putting up huts for themselves and effectively claim space we would have allocated to important functions, otherwise."

OOOOOOOO

Aboard the as of yet unnamed VT-49 Decimator, Arden was once again in a sparring match against Jane. Truly, the mission she had been given, spying on the Mandal Hypernautics security director, would have been easy enough to accomplish alone, though it would have made flying the ship a bit of a bother. No, the true reason she had asked to take the Twi'lek with her was that she wanted to observe the other woman and her behaviour when her 'Master' was not around for an extended period of time. What she had seen up until now was both encouraging and somewhat depressing.

As for the good news, the Lethan seemed to be forming more of an identity for herself outside of her imposed, ingrained service to her owner; that that identity was being formed upon the examples of people around her was both not surprising and not exactly bad, either. There was a reason Arden was still flying around the galaxy with Mercer, Harry and all the others, including the more recent addition of one Leia Organa. Really, it seemed far-fetched that any intelligent being would ever develop inside a vacuum as far as outside influences were concerned. Still, it was obvious the other woman had a hard time pushing through her own will over those of people she considered 'above her station'.

Some lessons probably simply sat too deep to be changed in what was barely half a year, if ever. At least she had taken to wearing clothes and not prostrating herself rather well, which was both encouraging and had reduced the unease of the crew around her by a considerable amount.

"Arden," the voice of the subject of her thoughts wafted to her ears, prompting the witch to turn around and look at the entrance to the bridge, where the red-skinned woman was standing. "Can I ask you something?"

"You already asked me something," Arden quipped, without really thinking about it; looking apologetic, the Twi'lek quickly turned around again, obviously intent on leaving the bridge behind. "Sorry, I was just joking; what did you want to talk about?"

Slowly, as if expecting to be reprimanded at any moment, Jane sat down on the co-pilot's chair, where she began to visibly gather her thoughts for whatever it was that she wanted to ask. So, it was one of those talks.

"How did you decide, what you wanted to do with your life? How did you know?" she questioned, rushing out the words as if they were hurting her lips as they passed; a bit like pulling off one of the healing patches her tribe's healers sometimes put on wounds that would get then stuck on hair and skin and scab.

Honestly, it was a question without a real answer to it; for all of her life, Arden's path had somehow been predetermined. Sure, there had been many instances of choice for her, not the least of which was giving into the pain and anger and fear that had motivated her to use the night spells, or the dark side, as the entire rest of the galaxy seemed to be calling it, but there had never been that one instance where she had to actively choose what she wanted from life. Even as she left behind Dathomir and the only home she had ever known, she had simply continued doing what she had done all her prior years. However, that simple continuation was, in hindsight, a rather momentous decision in and of itself. There was no question about the fact that, had she asked for it, Harry would have paid her out a very fair amount of one of their first bounties and she could have gone her merry way. Yet, the idea had never even crossed her mind.

It was more than a feeling of obligation, as well. Of course, she had felt an obligation to repay the stranded wizard's kindness, but looking back now, she found that staying had never bothered her in the slightest, for exactly the same kind of reason Jane was now having this very situation to deal with: from everything she had heard about Harry, he was an advocate of choice, free choice.

"I never really actively chose, I think," the witch tried distilling all of her thoughts into a concept the former slave would understand. "I was happy with what I had come upon by accident, so the circumstances kind of decided for me."

Visibly thinking, pondering about what she had been told, the Twi'lek, her red skin such a striking contrast to the black uniform everyone on Harry's ships was issued, got up and began pacing up and down the small bridge.

"This doesn't really help me," she eventually exclaimed, voice torn between desperation and frustration. "I…"

"Leia once taught me a neat little trick to help you find out your own opinions, when you're not really aware of them," Arden interjected, still not at all comfortable with the 'touchy-feely' stuff, as Mercer called it. "I ask you a question, you answer as quickly as possible."

With some apprehension, the Lethan nodded and the witch began with something light. "What's the colour of your skin?"

"Red." The answer came promptly, though it was accompanied by a questioningly raised eyebrow.

"Okay; what's your name?"

"Jane Pott… ohhh."

"Let's go back to that later," Arden hurried, feeling not at all prepared to dig into that particular revelation. "What weapon are you best with?"

"Knife and blaster pistol."

"What's your favourite game?"

"Sabacc; I'm good at reading facial cues from the other players."

"What do you want from life?"

"Help build up Sanctuary and help others like… help others like me find their place."

One set of surprised, wide-open eyes met a set of smug ones as the Dathomirian replied, "See, that's an answer; seems like you have found yourself in the right place, after all."

OOOOOOOO

Under the careful ministrations of Harry's wand yet another square hole in the dirt was covered in the grey liquid that was concrete. Once again, he carefully siphoned off any extra humidity, not too quickly though, otherwise it would burst, until barely ten minutes later, there was a flat, hard surface that would soon be turned into a landing pad by the addition of the relevant markings; though lights would have made for a nice addition, they did have to import components like that, at least for the time being. It was actually what the captured freighter, along with some escorting fighters, had been dispatched to do; that and picking up the requisitions of the over 800 people currently living on Sanctuary.

Those were the reasons that only the most trustworthy people had been assigned to the mission. They were, after all, handling the funds of not only Harry (and boy was he still not used to having that kind of money) but most of the residents of the small planetary colony. Any theft would lead to massive problems, as much was certain, not the least of which being the loss of all the funds intended to pay for the first wave of ships they were out to acquire.

A sigh of exertion on his lips, the wizard sat down at the site of the next landing pad he was to help construct, thankful for the liberal number of empty crates still lying around all over the parts of the base that were still in construction. Not that far away, he could see Leia working on the same kind of project he was focused on, though she was tiring out a lot faster, despite being lent his staff, as she simply lacked the years of experience, he and Arden had on her. Shaking his head to clear the aberrant thoughts, he once again concentrated on his objective and nodded to the team he had been working with.

Diligently, he guided the viscous mixture being poured out of a large mixer (apparently, when the Empire sent a ship to set up a base, they filled it with literally everything one might need to do exactly that) into all the nooks and crannies of the depression in the ground. It was the largest one and one of the last ones left, thank Merlin, and would in future be home to the Lightbringer. Close enough to the base proper to handle loading and unloading, yet far enough not to impede important traffic coming out of the huge gates or take space even closer that would be needed for craft that actually needed refuelling from the base's reserves. Because, while Harry could easily inscribe a fuel tank to refill itself, he was dreading having that kind of liability on every one of his ships; it was bad enough that the M14s had had enchantments added to them that allowed infinite, onboard production of torpedoes, both proton and ion, by a limited conjuration. It was not about the work, either, as it turned out an astromech was perfectly capable of inscribing everything and it only needed to be activated by either him, Leia or Arden when she returned.

It was more the worry that adding this kind of enchantment to too many vessels might lead to proliferation that stayed his hand as, while he was perfectly able to make the enchantments impossible to duplicate, even the ability to produce unlimited amounts of fuel was in itself very disconcerting, should it fall into the wrong hands. Technologically advanced as this galaxy might be, fuel bombs were still a thing and were still exceedingly dangerous. Therefore, only the Lightbringer, Morningstar and the Phosphoros, as well as the base itself were permitted such enchantments. Even they had to rely on portable tanks feeding into the actual ones that could easily be removed by Harry himself or an approved person with magic, should the need arise.

Maybe he was being paranoid, the wizard had to admit, but he had learned his lesson about paranoia back in school; it is not always unwarranted (a fellow by the name of Malfoy came to mind), and 'just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you'. He had no idea, where he had heard that particular adage, but it did ring true, just a bit.

When he started to dry out the concrete, all further thought was banished by the tight control he held over his own powers that took all his concentration, up until the moment he could stop and signal the waiting crew of the corvette (the skeleton crew required for simply relocating the ship anyway) they could free up the dirt patch that had previously served as a landing pad and would now… he did not actually know, what was supposed to happen with that area, but it would most likely be given some civilian purpose, as it was far away from the base proper. Maybe some sort of outdoor market or the like, not that the planet was expecting any substantial trade in the near future, what with the relative size of the community and, probably even more importantly, the fact that nobody should be able to find it.

The same could not be said, however, for the small asteroid station that had been set up only two systems out from the Perlemian trade route; apparently, their location was somewhat in-between things, and a grand total of three light and one medium freighter had, in the month since their return to the planet, already come there and sought repairs. Effectively, the first one had stumbled upon them on accident after a 'small malfunction' in his hyperdrive (the whole thing had been completely fried), and from there, word seemed to have spread among the independent captains. Apparently, having a large number of well-trained Imperial engineers as well as two magically capable humans around made repairs go rather smoothly and quickly in comparison to most other repair yards. Additionally, any day now, they were awaiting the arrival of the two squadrons of M14-Xs they had commissioned from the Mandalorian resistance, which would lend the station the credible appearance of being able to defend itself against possibly aggressive pirates.

"I see you're done, as well?" the voice of Leia reached him from behind the crate he had once again taken a seat on. "You were right; I can feel myself being more able to channel magic every day. Using it all the time really helps."

Harry smiled back at his girlfriend, looking at him in obvious elation, then scooted over to provide her enough space to sit down next to him.

"We really have done quite a lot with this place… Harry, what are you doing?" she chuckled as he began softly nuzzling behind her ear.

"I just like how you said that," the wizard replied. "We, as in us, as in you and me and all the other people here. I'm just happy you feel at home."

OOOOOOOO