Disclaimer: The Star Wars and Harry Potter copyrights lie with their respective owners, should any of them have any problem with my story being shared, I will comply with their wishes and remove it from circulation.
Please do not copy this work or any part of it.
Chapter 16: Important to Us
Galactic City, the ecumenopolis covering Coruscant, or as it was 'properly' known these days, Imperial Centre, was ever bustling. Even from orbit, its myriad lights were visibly sparkling, and every time that Leia landed here, it reminded her of why the name had been chosen millennia ago: a sparkling corusca gem hurtling through the void of space, never asleep, always in motion.
The very centre of the galaxy, figuratively at least. And where the coordinate system for navigation was concerned, too.
Obviously, that also meant there were many, many people who wanted to go there, and the droid brain that was monitoring traffic on the ingress routes for the sector she and the others wanted to enter had had them waiting in a geostationary orbit for two hours already, one message being constantly relayed to them: "Your visit is important to us, please hold until a spacelane is available for your approach."
Leia wouldn't have minded hearing it once every five minutes, but the damn thing was repeated every ten seconds, and had thereby passed the point of 'grating' around one hour and fifty-nine minutes ago. It was a moment which really made her appreciate the boon her senatorial papers had been. To think of having to wait like this every time she had had to come here for herk, albeit mostly bogus, duties in the senate.
"Is it this annoying to land on all developed worlds?" Jane questioned, once again sitting behind the pilot's flight stick and waiting to take them down. "It makes flying much less interesting."
Before the princess could answer, and her input would obviously have been skewed by her governmental past, Iabaes chose to respond. "More or less."
Narrowing her eyes at yet another repeat of, 'Your visit is important to us, please hold until a spacelane is available for your approach,' she clarified, "Less, definitely less. Corellia is bad, too, pretty much all the planet-wide cities are, but Coruscant is the worst. The Empire insisting on sharper controls isn't really helping things along. I've already seen three ways to smuggle an entire ship past them, anyway."
"Your visit is important to us, please hold until a spacelane is available for your approach."
"Oh?" Leia questioned, looking at the Mandalorian with a raised eyebrow. "Now this I would like to hear."
"Well, firstly, there's obviously cloaking devices. Stygium, if you can get one, but even some of the less-refined ones would work," the older woman began, once again to be interrupted by the droid voice.
"Your visit is important to us, please hold until a spacelane is available for your approach."
"Even with a double-blind cloaking device, just by keeping away from the established spacelanes, you could follow a pre-programmed course down to an altitude where tracking is much less extensive, deactivate the cloak and just blend into the background."
"Your visit is important to us, please hold until a spacelane is available for your approach."
"I don't think a cloaking device counts," Leia countered, to shrugging from the warrior.
"Two ways, then," she replied nonchalantly. "Sensor jammers and just look like you belong."
"Your visit is important to us, please hold until a spacelane is available for your approach."
Raising an eyebrow, a gesture she must have picked up from Harry, now that she thought about it, the co-pilot bade her to continue.
"Sensor shadow," the Mandalorian finished, stretching her arm over Leia's backrest and shoulder to point toward a large garbage barge following one of the priority corridors down to the planet's surface. "They're never going to be able to visually monitor all the incoming routine traffic, and ships like those usually have sensors just about good enough to not fly into a stationary skyscraper. Hide in the engine exhaust and no one will be any the wiser."
"Your visit is important to us, please hold until a spacelane is… Light freighter Dromedary you have been cleared for approach on corridor 943-35."
The sudden change in the metallic voice of the traffic control droid monitoring their sector of the sky shook all of them awake.
"Finally," Jane declared, and was just about to shoot off, quite obviously supremely tired of waiting, when Leia held her back by a hand on the shoulder.
"Remember, top speed; and keep to our lane."
It was a lesson the Twi'lek had to learn, obviously, if indeed she wanted to be a pilot. Yes, most of space was empty and no one particularly cared, how exactly you flew around, but there were some obvious and extremely important exceptions; landing in highly frequented spaceports was one of these exceptions. So, letting her course be guided by the guidance displayed before her, the former slave took them down toward the 'surface' of the galaxy's' capital, past the never-ending throngs of speeders and repulsor trains, the shining skyscrapers and smoking stacks. Their target was one of the many massive underworld portals, gigantic holes in the seemingly solid 'ground' leading to the city's lower levels, some of them even to the very lowest of them, right down to the original surface; at least, that's how some of the rumours went Leia had heard over the years. There were even some holodramas featuring the adventures to be had down there. After thousands of years of industrial detritus and decay, though, she doubted it was quite so glamorous as the often incredibly sappy plotlines liked to portray it. More likely, the lowest levels were like some of the horror holos that featured them, their sorry inhabitants gruesomely mutated and crazed by thousands of years of accumulated exhausts and enduring the complete absence of light for generation after generation.
The levels above around 1000, on the other hand, those could indeed be very helpful, if one was so inclined. Not even the Empire, despite its zealousness in policing especially the capital, had ever really gotten a proper foothold down there; dissidents, fugitives, maybe even a few remaining Republic loyalists lived down there between those who were merely poor. None of these groups were overly willing to accept the help of, or give any comfort or aid to, the Emperor or the Coruscant Security Forces. It had been like this during her father's tenure, and it had gotten only worse since the declaration of the New Order, if Bail Organa's assessments were correct in this regard.
"Where now?" their Twi'lek pilot's question went almost unheard over the din of a large factory at the edge of the dilapidated and abandoned industrial district, probably one of the few actually still working around this part of the planet.
"Around 3500 levels down," Leia announced, right index finger pointing in a downward trajectory to emphasise her point. "Let me just put in this datacard… There is a nav point on there that should lead us to where we want to go."
Without further comment, she inserted the data storage device into the appropriate slot on the console in front of her. All of a sudden, on the same small screen that had provided navigational aid during their descent toward the planet, there were now once again a waypoint and a dotted line leading there from the entry point toward the large hole that had just swallowed them.
"Level 1547?" Iabaes observed, looking at a more detailed readout on Leia's own screen while Jane was following the route, cautiously manoeuvring along the jagged edges of the portal, where from time to time, a precariously placed structure would pierce far past the inner circumference, almost begging for some inattentive pilot to fly it off and go up in a blaze of glory.
"Level 1547," she confirmed, looking out of the cockpit canopy into the dark pit. "A safehouse my father had installed years ago, just for the family, without the Alliance knowing. It's close enough to the Senate District to flee here, if it ever became necessary, and the Rebellion was betrayed. Obviously, with a traitor inside he wouldn't have been able to trust their safehouses."
Bitterly, she added, "Not that it did him much good…"
It came as something of a surprise when, in a weird mirroring of the gesture she would sometimes do when Harry seemed down, Iabaes chuffed her in the shoulder. "He would probably like that it's now helping you, helping his family. Your people might not take it quite as seriously as mine does, but I've yet to see a human culture that doesn't value families."
A worried glance toward their pilot, whose lack of a family made her feel a bit reluctant to talk about her own right now, Leia nodded; only after seeing that Jane was seemingly completely engrossed in the task of safely getting them to the hidden landing platform in the bowels of Galactic City did the orphan reply, "Duty to the family is… was extremely important on Alderaan, especially with the noble families. My parents were married due to a peace agreement, of sorts; they volunteered because they were already in love, but had they simply been named by their families as the ones chosen, they would have been expected to comply."
With a wistful sigh, she added, "Not that I think mom would have complied without making her objections widely known. You know I was adopted?"
"I didn't," Iabaes responded evenly, not the slightest hint of surprise to her tone. Somewhat, well, surprised by that lack of surprise, Leia looked back over her own shoulder and at the Mandalorian. "Adoption is extremely common with my people. Has to be, considering the dangerous lives many of us lead. So no, you being adopted is literally nothing special to me. My own brother was adopted, as well, but it doesn't change the fact that he is and always will be my idiot little brother."
"Huh." The Princess fell silent on that, once again simply watching the levels of Coruscant pass by outside the cockpit canopy as she mulled over what Iabaes had said. In most of her lessons as young girl, those covering history at least, the Mandalorian people had popped up time and time again, most often as aggressors and conquerors and, more recently, the trainers of the Republic Army, as mercenaries and bounty hunters. And while she had been taught quite a bit about the customs and norms of many other people all around the galaxy, the distaste for central government and representation their nomadic society held was one of the few things she knew about them. In a way that made sense, given that she was being prepared for diplomacy and forging alliances above all else, and how would you forge an alliance with a people spread all across the galaxy who would only in the most dire of circumstances band together.
"Aliit ori'shya tal'din."
Every time Leia heard the warriors' language, she was somewhat aghast at how melodic it sounded, despite the often-harsh consonants and short vowels. Now, with what Iabaes had just told her, maybe it fit her people to a t.
"What does it mean?" she questioned, still craning her neck to look back at the older woman.
"Family is about more than blood," the warrior translated with a smile, absorbed in thoughts of her own family, Leia now realised, doing her best to ignore the wistful quality that had stolen onto the older woman's face; she almost looked like she was mourning, though the princess lacked the courage to ask. They simply weren't that close, she told herself.
Casting around for a topic to change the conversation to, she was reminded of the tension she had noticed upon their departure from Sanctuary. Careful probing during the time spent in transit had not led to a successful outcome, so she resolved to simply ask.
"When we first started our trip to Coruscant, you seemed rather… unconvinced of the idea," she ventured, keeping a close eye on the Mandalorian's face. "Please, don't take this personally, but we need to know we can count on each other."
From one moment to another, Iabaes expression turned sober, and she was once again the consummate professional Leia knew her to be, the experienced soldier, mercenary, or whatever else she had done before she had joined the Rebellion. Now that she thought about it, the warrior had actually never told any of them, what it was she had been doing. Once again, a topic for another time.
"Yes, and the problem is that I don't know, whether I can rely on you," Iabaes explained coolly, neutrally. "Harry has proven himself to me and others, your place at his side guarantees everyone will assume you to be in a leadership position on whatever mission he, maybe Mercer and Arden too, aren't on. That's not how becoming a leader is supposed to work."
Ah, so that was the problem. No matter, this she could deal with, had in fact been dealing with for quite some time now. And from the older warrior's perspective, was it not somewhat understandable to chafe at seemingly being put under the command of a woman who had to be around fifteen years her junior, whose entire appearance suggested to most people 'delicate flower'? She did not know Leia had once punched a guy for giving her the 'you're just a woman, let the menfolk do this'-nonsense. Luckily, it was just the three of them this time and rigid structures were perhaps not exactly what they needed for it, anyway.
"Well then, how about you wait and see if I don't surprise you? Just us three, we don't really need a commander, do we?"
"We'll see," Iabaes finally agreed after some careful, time-intensive consideration. Or did it just feel like it had taken a long time? This woman had a certain way to make her feel off-kilter, doubt herself in way she normally would not.
"We're there!" Jane announced into the tense silence, probably not even noticing what kind of situation she was interrupting. Still, in that moment, Leia could have hugged the stuffing out of the Twi'lek just for her skills at choosing the perfect moment to intercede, even if it was just a happy accident. "Where do I land?"
"Let me."
With deft hands, Leia transmitted a short signal toward a receiver hidden in the side of the foundation of one of the gigantic factories above, prompting a single, large gate to recede into the wall above and show the small hangar behind. There really wasn't much to see, there, merely a flat plane just spacious enough to barely fit the Dromedary (where Harry had come up with the name, she had no idea), as well as a few security features that had hopefully managed to keep out the more disreputable denizens of the surrounding area. Once she had set down the ship on the rough duracrete the foundation was formed out of, Leia was quickly out of the seat and dashing toward the ramp.
Suddenly, she could not wait to see whatever could be found in here, however meagre what was left might have been. Before this mission, she had hardly even thought about this place, not since the destruction of Alderaan, not for months prior to that, but now, it seemed incredibly important that she take a look at what her father had left here. Everything else, be it the palace on her home planet or the senatorial quarters that he had inhabited here, on Coruscant, was gone now, either pulverised or in the hands of the Empire. This place, though, as tenuous a link as it was, still remained, an abiding sign of her father's care for her. Barely managing to remember taking a rebreather out of the compartment next to the exit ramp, she dashed out into the tiny hangar space… and was shocked to her very core.
Now that she was standing inside the safehouse, she could see signs of inhabitation: Clearly, the energy had been activated, the small back-up generator audibly running in a side chamber; the air scrubbers were running, their state indicated by the soft breeze caressing over her bare forearms. Leia had just about enough presence of mind to activate the glamour bracelet Harry had made for her before she pulled the blaster pistol she was wearing in a hip holster.
"Why'd you take a rebreather? The air's just…"
Jane had started talking the moment she was down the ramp, only to immediately be shut up by Leia's raised fist, raised in the same way she had seen some of the special forces soldiers use to communicate. Obviously, Iabaes had understood her immediately and quickly followed suit in pulling out her preferred weapons for close quarters combat, a pair of dual-wield hand blasters, relics of the Clone Wars. Quickly, she motioned for the Mandalorian, the only one of them currently wearing armour, to precede her down the only corridor leading away from the hangar. A sharp nod to indicate the directive had been understood, and Iabaes was off. Just watching her now, the intense professionalism with which the warrior did what she did, was readily apparent, something the princess took to indicate this was not her first time clearing a building. When first the small fresher unit, then the well-stocked pantry was unremarkable, besides the missing food supplies, it was the living area that remained as the last place to be searched. Lined up at the door, the three women sought eye contact and then, on a nod, they stormed in, blasters in hand.
"Winter?!"
Indeed, in the middle of the room, on one of the few pieces of furniture the safehouse was adorned with, sat Leia's adoptive sister and childhood best friend, Winter Retrac. Even from behind, the poised, elegant pose, that set of shoulders; she knew these things just as well, maybe even better than she knew her own body. It was why it came as such a shock to suddenly have a heavy blaster pistol pointed at her.
"Winter? Put that away, it's me Leia!"
The immaculately styled eyebrows in her sister's face lowered, their contrast with her ashen hair and sharp features creating a truly intimidating sight.
"If you think I'd forget how my own sister, of all people, looks you clearly don't know me. Now who are you? No lies!" the second adoptive daughter of Bail and Breha Organa hissed, alternating her weapon between Leia and the, to her, unknown Mandalorian.
"What are you talking about? Look at me, it's me, Le…"
A short cough from Iabaes interrupted the Princess' impassioned plea, even as she began working herself into a tizzy. She could not lose another member of her family, and she would put nothing past the Empire in psychological torture.
"Leia," the warrior said emphatically, almost as if wanting to underline her identity, "your disguise."
For a short moment, she had no idea what the older woman was talking about, so she turned to look at her, the movement making the bracelet on her wrist twinkle in the bright light of a light in the far corner. The bracelet, of course; hadn't Harry once told her that, when she was wearing the glamour he had ended up putting into this thing, she looked nothing like herself but for the fact that she remained short? Internally chastising herself for forgetting something so basic, though in her defence, she did not even feel it when the trinket was active anymore, she sent a small pulse of magic into the enchantments, one of the two triggers they accepted.
"Nice try; I've seen you can change your appearance, now," Winter responded icily as Leia felt the disguise disappear. "Tell me something, something only my sister would know. What was your childhood nickname, and who was your first kiss?"
Fond memories tugged at the Princess' heartstrings at these questions, and naturally, she could answer them. "Lelila, you used to call me Lelila. And my first kiss was Raal Panteer; I'd snuck out to go swimming with him, and when I came back, I was so giddy…"
"That you were, Lelila, that you were," her sister responded, the icy tone almost completely gone, and the blaster now lowered. To Leia's surprise, she then stepped closer and enveloped her in a warm hug; these were few, and far in between from the stoic woman this calm child had grown into, so it was always something to cherish. "I'm happy to see you well, sister. After Alderaan, it's…"
"I know," Leia replied, shortly intensifying the hug until she could feel Winter getting uncomfortable with it. "Maybe you should be around people a bit more? Not just the intelligence and control officer in the shadows, but actually talking with people who aren't in commlinks?"
Putting a bit of distance between the two of them to properly scrutinise her sister, Leia did not like what she see; there were deep bags under Winter's eyes, her cheeks looked sunken and sallow, the skin even paler than usual. Most of the time, the two of them looked rather similar… now though, people would be hard-pressed to mix them up with how gaunt she appeared to be. The fact that it had been too easy to feel most ribs during that hug was somewhat worrying, too.
"I…"
For once, the stoic Winter Retrac seemed lost for words, and what might normally have felt like a huge victory now felt like a grave defeat.
"You were okay when I saw you last, on Yavin 4. What happened?" the worried young woman questioned urgently, letting herself sink down onto the cot next to her sister. Then, with a look to her two companions, she added, "Could you…?"
Despite the lack of an actual order or request, at least Iabaes seemed to understand what she meant and quickly pulled Jane out of the room, likely to return to the ship; either that or a closer inspection of the safehouse.
"What are you even doing here? If you're not busy I'm sure you'd be welcome on Sanctuary," she continued, gently rubbing her sister's back. "I would make sure you were welcome on Sanctuary."
It was baffling to see the usually coiffed woman sniffle and even lose a single tear that was now rolling down her left cheek. "I don't know, where that is."
"Oh…" There wasn't really more to say, Leia realised, because her childhood companion was completely right. She had been talking about the planet quite a bit, obviously, though mainly with people who were already in on the secret, but that had made it feel like everyone else was, too. The only reason, Harry had explained, she even could talk about Sanctuary at all, was that it was not the planet itself that was being protected, or its name, but the location. Somehow, that protection then extended onto the planet itself, without making it impossible to mention. Then, he had admitted it was far past his own intellectual horizon, as well, and that sometimes, with magic, it was better to just accept things the way they were, unless you had a lot of time available to sink into research.
"Well, it's the planet Harry has placed the stolen garrison base on, and now that planet is protected by some of his special abilities. No one can find it unless he tells them about it, or they're brought there by someone who already knows the place. It's really interesting, and I'm learning a lot from him and the others…" Mid-breath, Leia stopped herself. This was not about how great she thought the Sanctuary project was (which she did) or how much she enjoyed the strides she was finally making on her own magic skills (which she was). It was about her sister, who was clearly hurting. "So yes, there's people there, people who are not in commlinks. People like your sister and her boyfriend whom she'd like you to properly meet…"
For a while, they descended into complete silence, only two somewhat haggard sets of breaths indicating anything was living in the small quarters of the safehouse Bail Organa had left his daughters so they had a place to lay low for a while, should the need arise.
"I…" With a deep breath, Winter seemed to prepare herself for whatever it was she wanted to say. "I was finishing up a mission with that Solo guy, the smuggler, you remember? Well, we were on Wukkar, just two small hyperspace jumps away and I… you know I can remember every little detail I have ever seen but, I guess I just wanted to be here. Made me feel closer to them."
"Oh." Once again, there really wasn't much more to say, though this time, it was for a much different reason. That is, until a number of things she had observed suddenly fit together for Leia. "Wait, how long have you been here?"
"I… I'm not sure," Winter admitted, looking away in shame, though for what, her sister was unsure. "The chronometer is broken and there's no natural light down here. Two weeks, maybe three. There was nowhere to go until I got a new mission, so…"
What was left unsaid, though very much clear, was the fact that Alderaan was gone, and the Alliance had yet to find a new base, leaving all of the places Leia knew her sister connected to gone, while she herself had found something of a home in Sanctuary; not even just because of Harry, though he was a big part, but also because of all the other people there. Arden and Jane, Iabaes, Mercer and Javoc and Corsek. Even Famet, the somewhat eccentric weapons trader that was now responsible for Harry's armoury and always wanted to tell and hear stories of both personal exploits and simply things they had heard, had wormed his way into her heart. Truly, she was not quite certain she would have been doing quite so well without all of them around. Even the planet itself was, in a way, soothing, the large flat grassland the base had been erected on reminding her distinctly of Alderaan. The smell was a bit off and the air thinner than on her home planet, but she wasn't looking for a replacement, just for something to trigger the fonder memories, not the harrowing image of the green superlaser pulverising her home.
"Well, there's a mission for you to help on, now," Leia told her sister, steely voice brooking no argument. "When we're done, you're coming with us to Sanctuary. I'm not leaving you behind in this hole, even if it's a hole dad made for us."