First steps

It had been 6 weeks since they arrived to this new reality. An enormous amount of work had been completed in that time. Unfortunately, they were far from ready to rest on their laurels. Their journey, it seemed, was only in its infancy.

"Bill, if you will explain to the rest, what your team had discovered about the wards" he prompted the curse breaker.

"I am afraid, that it is mostly bad news for us" he began. Making eye contact with everyone present, to ensure they were all paying attention. "The standard set of wards, used to hide the wizarding world from muggles back on Earth, only provides long range cover from the ship sensors. If they get closer than 20 kilometres to the wards, they will be able to detect us, if they know what they are looking for" he explained, pausing to give them all a moment to process the information.

"This is bad" noted Arthur. "You said it was for the standard set, what about the more advanced wards?" he asked his son. He had the most experience dealing with ignorant muggles of them all, as his job back on Earth was to uphold the Statute of Secrecy. By ensuring, that charmed muggle items didn't end up in ignorant muggle's hands.

"This is where the situation gets worse. As far as we can tell, the stronger the wards are, the easier it is to detect them. The wards we had set here originally, would have been visible by the ships in the closest local settlement. Thankfully, the horizon seems to have hidden us so far. We had dealt down the wards since, to reduce the chance of discovery by any ship that was landing or leaving the town" he explained, getting many grimaces from the others.

"Hmm... How much can they actually see, through the wards?" followed up his father.

"Not much. It looks like an interference on the sensors, where the wards are. If they come too close, the sensors will get fried by magic. Therefore, the wards still keep our secrets, but the people will definitely know there is something strange in the area" explained Bill. He didn't know exactly how the sensors worked, but it looked like they absorbed some magic by sensing the wards. It didn't even really matter what type of wards it was, they all looked about the same to the sensors. Just with different levels of interference, depending on ward's strength.

"What about Fidelius?" asked Ginny. She was now in 12 years body, finally starting to lose some of her baby fat. Becoming the young woman she was mentally, with all of its good and bad stuff.

"It is about the only ward of those we have tried, that provide perfect coverage from the sensors. However, as you may know, the Fidelius loses its power the more people you share the secret with. In our testing, if more than 100 people know about the secret, then the wards start to become visible on the sensors" he answered. "I would also like to point out, that we only tested the wards against the sensors of the ship we took from the pirates. Who knows what else is out there?" he added, to make their situation clear.

"Therefore, if we want to stay hidden, we have to move away from the colonised space in a hurry" summarized their situation, Harry. "It is also possible that we were already detected, but not yet confronted. Just because our pirate friends don't know about magic, doesn't mean that the others in the settlement don't. For all we know, there may be already an army on its way here" he stressed, to make sure that everyone understood their situation.

"Hermione, can we relocate using the ship we took from the pirates?" he asked the bushy haired friend. He already knew the answer to that from a private conversation they had earlier. It was mostly to ensure that everyone was on the same page.

"None of us know how to fly their ship yet. We can just compel the pirates again, but the ship will be unable to move more than 20 people at a time. It is also in bad shape, due to disrepair. We don't know how many more flights it has left in it. Additionally, we didn't test any of our magic travel methods between the planets and stars. Most of us, in the research, think it will not work at cosmic distances" she explained.

"We are also unsure, how the space expansion charms will affect the ship or vice versa. The little we have learned about warp technology, indicates, that there is big chance that it may destabilize the space expansion charm. We will need to do a whole lot of tests, before we can answer those questions definitely" she continued.

Unfortunately, it also meant that they were unable to shrink any items they brought with them, as the shrinking charm worked on the same principle as the expanding charms, just on the outside of an object, rather than on the inner surface.

"So far, my team was mostly focusing on smaller handheld technology. Taking the ship up into the air for testing would increase our chance of being detected significantly" she finished her report, sitting down.

"I think, we all can see how the cards are falling" said Harry heavily. He had been fighting in one way or another, since he was 1 year old. Unfortunately, there was no peace in sight. Even if they were able to hide or run, he didn't think he would be able to live with himself, knowing there were whole planets worth of slaves that he could help free.

"War" voiced Luna, what everyone was thinking. Among their group, she was the most peace-loving person, which made this situation especially hard on her.

"Yes. We cannot hide and we cannot run. There is no negotiating with, or compelling the locals either. We don't even know, if compelling will work on all of the species. With such variety? I would bet, that at least some of them will be immune or resistant to magic" summarized their situation, Harry. "Ron, how do you propose we act in our current position?" he asked his strategy inclined best friend, who was also their best tactician.

"Well, the biggest issue we have is lack of information. We have been learning a lot from the pirates and their technology, but it is taking a lot of time. Time, that we may not have" he began, getting nods in agreement. "We also have severe lack of manpower. There are literally millions of criminal organisations all around us, who have enough man power and resources to squash us like a bug" he added, to the general wince at his blunt, but accurate description of their situation.

"I would not be to our benefit to keep kidnaping the pirates in small batches. I say we play to the pirate infested space notion. Hit them fast and hard. Make it look like the settlement was hit by a big group of pirates. Then, if we can entice the locals to our side, we will get both the manpower and expertise in technology in one swoop" he laid down his plan.

"After that, we should either run or focus on our space defences, to protect us from the local powers. Here, our strength in space battles is more important than our ground forces. We can take over a planet at our leisure, if we have dominance in space, but not the other way around. I looked up some of the local historical wars. In extreme cases, the whole planets had been destroyed from orbit, if they had ground forces too strong to overcome" he noted grimly.

"If we hit town this big, the whole area will turn into a hornet nest. Our camp will be detected and we will have to run. There is no way we can build space defences fast enough, to challenge those who will come to investigate the disappearances" pointed out Nevile.

"I agree, no hiding nearby if we kidnap 5,000 people. We will need enough ships to fit everyone, plus the supplies. All of expanded trunks and bags will have to be left behind, for the time being, maybe under Fidelius or three?" added Luna.

The discussion continued for many hours afterwards, filtering ideas and making plans.

Since they were going to leave most of their valuables behind, they didn't plan on moving far from their current system. One of the nearby systems without inhabited planets, was chosen as their temporary hiding place. It was far enough that the search parties wouldn't look for them there, but close enough to easily navigate back. The pirate ship was going to scout the system, preparing the initial landing area on one of the distant moons.

Then, a good amount of food and other resources had to be transferred into non-expanded trunks, to take with them. However, they were limited by what they could take with them. While they were fully planning to come back, maybe even regularly, they couldn't do it too often or in great numbers, without causing suspicion.

Next, was the plan to set up the Fidelius locations and transfer of their remaining goods to them. There was also a question of leaving some people and most of the elfs behind, to attend to the farms as well as to protect their goods, should they be discovered.

The build-up of their new base, was also going to be different to what they went through 6 weeks prior. They were bringing limited resources, as well as leaving all of their expanded tents and trunks behind. They were going to expand new trunks for space once they arrived, but it still left question of getting all of the furniture and everyday items.

Even bigger issue was to house, process and handle the new people. Many of them were criminals, even more, - slaves. Only few people were expected to fall into some other category. Each of those groups had to be dealt with differently.

After that, it was all about planning nuances of their attack and escape.

(*Raid*)

It took two weeks of colossal efforts, but they were ready to implement their daring plan. The 4 new Fidelius locations were already set, with the 50 goblins, 80 house elfs and 20 humans left behind. It included both Nevile and Luna. They were among very few, who knew the secret to all of the Fidelius locations. Most of those who were left behind were assigned to only 1 of them, to ensure maximum strength of the wards.

Two of the locations were also in caves, next to the best mineral deposits they found. The goblin contingent was going to continue mining here, until the alternatives were found in the new system. The house elfs were mostly handling the farms, while the remaining wizards and witches were there to monitor the wards, defend the locations and keep things running.

The main camp was mostly dismantled with only basic wards left in place, to hide the people and supplies until they were picked up. Few of those who were staying, were tasked with collapsing the remaining wards after evacuation as well as covering up any sights of the camp existence in the first place.

The attacking force consisted of 100 goblin warriors and 100 humans, mix of wizards and muggles. Their main limiting factor was lack of armour. Therefore, only the best got to participate in the raid. Which included their General Weasley who had to take an aging potion, as her currently 15 years old body was a bit too short for her new armour. Unfortunately, the potion couldn't be used too often, so she only used it in emergencies or for really important stuff.

Professor Babbling made necessary runic design adjustments for all of the various armour pieces. However, only 50 goblins and 25 magicians were good enough in runes to etch those designs onto the armour. The process could only be accomplished by a magical person, as the design had to be imbued with both magic and intent at the time of etching.

Even with 75 people working on the armour production around the clock, only 90 complete sets were finished in time. The remaining 10 humans wore the dragon skin armours, they had in their possession. Meanwhile, Goblins were using their goblin silver armour, forged back on Earth. The armour from Earth was not as good as enchanted durasteel against local weapons, but provided significantly better protection against magic, while still being better against blaster fire than enchanted plasteel armour.

In addition to assault on the nearest town, another 3 teams were sent to bigger towns nearby. Their task was to steal 3 light freighter crafts, necessary to evacuate all of their people and goods. They had scouted their targets over the last few days, so had a good idea of how to do it quietly, without raising suspicion. It was main reason why the attack was happening today. All three ships were slated to depart around the same time today, from 3 different towns. It was as perfect opportunity to pull their move as they could dream off.

"Harry, we got the word. All ships are on their way with no signs of alarms or pursuit" told him Hermione, exiting from their pirate ship parked nearby.

"Great! It is our turn now. Bill, your group is up" he informed the redhead, watching him and seven others apparate away. They were going to put up quick and dirty wards over the whole town, to prevent any signals from getting out.

It took only a minute, when a bracelet on his wrist warmed up. It was his signal that the wards were in place. "Alright people, we are up. Everyone has their area, so work quickly and quietly. We don't want to fight the whole town, so remember to place the silencing wards in designated areas as soon as you arrive" he ordered his troops. Only a few seconds later, he tapped the piece of rope he was holding, triggering all of their portkeys.

They couldn't Apparate to their locations, as very few had been to the town to avoid causing suspicion from the traffic. The infiltration specialists who went in, studied the town well enough to split it into 48 areas. Then, a team of 4 was assigned to each of the areas and given a portkey to it.

Half of the team were tasked with stunning anyone who was outside. The other half, focused on raising silencing wards to prevent the alarm spreading through the town. In worst case, they will have to deal with only a few isolated pockets of resistance.

Landing in a crouched position in the middle of the street, Harry took less than half a second to orient himself. Then, sent a silencing wall down one of the streets as far as he could, splitting it in half. Turning 90 degrees, Harry sent another silencing wall between buildings. A goblin in his group did the same in an opposite direction, effectively splitting the location into 4 isolated quadrants of silence.

Another goblin in their group, shot a stun bolt at a local walking the sidewalks, away from their group. The man didn't even know they were there, before he fallen to the ground stunned. Meanwhile, a muggle soldier in their group closed on a droid standing outside one of the doors. With a quick push of a switch the droid was deactivated, before it could alarm anyone of their presence.

Using a Point-Me spell Harry determined the true North, inferring the direction of their area of responsibility. Nodding to his team he led them to the closest building. They had done many drills over the last two weeks, to prepare for this operation. There was no need to verbally communicate beyond a few practiced hand signals, like their muggle drill instructor taught them.

Casting Humenum Revelio, Harry held 3 fingers to his teammates, then shown the directions in which those presences were. Getting nods in return he positioned himself in front of the door, casting a quick Alohomora on the lock he stormed the building, stunning spell already on his lips.

As it turned out, the house belonged to a family of 3 who were in the middle of a game of some sort. They had no time to react, before they were all stunned on the floor laid next to each other. Then, Harry cast full body binding curse on them, in case any of them were resistant to magic and could throw off the stunning spell. While he handled the family, his team made a quick work checking out the rest of the house, looking for any other presences that his spell may have failed to reveal, like droids.

Leaving the family on the floor, their team moved to the next house in much the same fashion. It took them only an hour, to work through all 30 houses in their designated area. None of the residents were able to put any sort of resistance. Being slaves, they had no access to any serious weapons. One man tried to make a run for it and one little girl hid in a closet, but otherwise, the operation went smoothly for his team.

Next step, was to go back into each individual house and use packing spell to gather all of their possessions into unshrunk trunks. They wanted to earn trust and loyalty of the locals, therefore, couldn't leave all of their hard-earned possessions behind. Then, each resident and each trunk were marked with the street and house number they were found in.

When done with his area, Harry unshrunk a broom and took to the air, looking for any teams in need of assistance. Meanwhile, his team stayed in their designated area to guard their captives and catch any runners from other areas. Once the whole town was pacified, the captives and their possessions would be moved to pick up locations, where the transport ships were going to land.

While the assault teams were working on town's folks, curse breakers patrolling the outer perimeter. Intercepting anyone who tried to flee on foot or speeder, using the fastest brooms they had. The wards around the perimeter were also projecting muggle repelling wards inwards. It made runners turn back to the town, suddenly remembering something important they forgot to do or take with them. An hour later, Harry was no longer able to find any signs of resistance. Landing near the local space port, he made his way to Ginny. The space port was their priority target. Therefore, Ginny's and some of their other best teams were tasked with securing it, as well as all of the ships on the ground. Harry was good with a wand, but he was not a part of the military. Therefore, he didn't have a permanent team he worked with on regular basis. When he did join the action, he usually acted as overall commander or regular infantry man, depending on situation. This time, he was assigned to the opposite side of the town from the spaceport, in case they needed a strong magic user in the area, while majority of others were securing the ships.

"Ginny, what is our status?" he asked his girlfriend. They had setup the temporary headquarters in the spaceport, so all of the information was filtering into this place.

"Hey Harry. So far all goes according to plan. We have 3 soldiers with medium injuries and 11 with light injuries, the new armour is really something" she prized. "One of the teams ran into a turret defence, in one of the local crime lord buildings. Another team found a battle droid that gave them some trouble. We also have 40 deaths among the locals, with maybe 200 injured" she explained, wincing a bit at the end.

"One of the criminals triggered the slave collars, before our team could get to him. It killed 29 slaves" she paused, calming herself. "The remaining casualties are among the criminals, killed in a few different firefights. The first freighter is already back at our original camp, being loaded. The second one will be here within 20 minutes, with the last one being only 15 minutes behind" she summarized their current state of affairs.

"Good, good. Where do you need me?" he asked. It looked like their plan, hasty that it was, worked out brilliantly.

"One of the freighters already had a good amount of cargo in its bay. We will not have time to offload it, which limits the amount of stuff we can bring. Additionally, there is a good amount of stuff found in a warehouse in an area 36. They need more hands to pack it all and get it to Nevile, to keep it planet side" she explained.

In addition to the transport ships, they were able to secure 7 other ships that were already in the spaceport. One of the ships was a fighter craft, only suitable to host 1 or 2 people. Another 4 were small corvettes, only able to carry 10 people each. The remaining 2 were shuttles, much like the original pirate ship they stole, able to carry upward to 20 people.

All of those ships were already jampacked with everything they were able to carry. With featherweight charm, they were really only limited by the internal volume of the ships. They had already identified the pilots, who were kept under Imperius Curse to fly the ships to their new base. A single wizard was flying with each one, in case the curse broke due to distance. The Alliance was well past unforgivables at this point, those spells were just too darn useful in some cases.

It took another 2 hours to finish packing the freighters. The last thing they did before departing was to do the final flybys of the town. Casting detection charms as well as taking down the silencing wards. Then, they collapsed the initial wards over the town, just before their ships departed. The only thing left behind were empty buildings and bodies of the dead, who were looted to sell the story of attack by the pirates.

Each of the freighters departed individually, escorted by 2-3 other ships. All of them going on a different initial vector with 5 minutes delay. It was all done to avoid catching attention of the locals, as well as to shroud their intended destination. For the size of the Xerebus, 11 ships traveling in a group would have been very suspicious.

It took 3 jumps and roughly 6 hours of travel time to get to their destination, moon dubbed Avalon by their people. The journey was rough, with many of their people choosing to be stunned rather than be confined to 2 square meters of space for 6 hours. The amenities on the ships were not designed to handle this many people either, so there were constant queues.

On arrival, their pain was not over. The first steps were to expand 3 of the trunks. One for slaves, one for pirates and one for their own people. Then, there were many hours of turning the empty spaces into areas capable of housing over 6,000 people. Unloading the ships also took a long time, especially since most of them already had a very long day.

The last thing for the day was to move the ships some distance away, while new wards were put in place. After that, they all went happily to bed. The moon was lifeless and didn't have atmosphere. They hoped it would prevent others from taking interest in it, therefore, never coming close enough to spot their wards. Meanwhile, the ships were hidden by a temporary, obscuring ward. Until the goblins dug out an underground hangar for them.

Next day, they began processing their new citizens, starting with the slaves. Firing a quick Enervate, Ginny watched as a young girl stirred on a folding bed. She was maybe 15 years old, with jet black hair, blue eyes, pale skin and skinny complexion. All slaves had been skinny from what she saw. "Hello" she greeted the girl in Basic, once her eyes found Ginny's.

"Um..., hi. Where am I?" the girl responded back, uncertainty.

"I will explain everything to you in a moment, why don't you take a seat first. Do you have a name?" indicated Ginny, to a seat in front of her desk. They were in a small, featureless room, with a simple cot, table, pair of chairs and couple of doors.

"It's Hanna" she responded quietly.

"Nice to meet you, Hanna. My name is Ginny" she introduced herself back. "What is the last thing you remember?" she asked the girl.

"Umm... I went to sleep... and then I woke up here?" she tried to recall, but couldn't remember anything else.

"That's alright" Ginny calmed down the young lady. "Your town was raided by a Thule Alliance. You probably never even woke up, while you were taken" she explained as gently as she could.

"Oh..." replied Hanna with little reaction, making Ginny raise her eyebrow.

"You are taking it surprisingly well. Are you alright?" she asked the girl.

"Umm..., yeah. I was taken before, twice I think" she finally supplied, after a moment of consideration.

"Twice?" inquired Ginny in surprise. As far as they knew, kids were generally kidnapped at very young age, to be sold as slaves. Independent adults made for bad slaves, as they already had a taste of life of freedom. Therefore, were often more trouble than they were worth. Children who grew up as slaves, on the other hand, were much more valuable and accepting of their place in the world.

A very sad and calculating way to look at things. The process refined over thousands of years by slave owners and traders. In most cases, the kidnapers murdered the child's parents too. To prevent them from seeking retributions against the kidnappers and slave owners.

"Well..., it is three times now? I barely remember the first time. I was very little. Then, Bran was killed and I was sold to Phynjak, a few years ago. Is Phynjak dead too?" she asked, in surprisingly calm manner.

"Probably not" she said to the girl. "Only a few people were killed in the raid. There is a good chance he is still alive. We are still processing everyone who was taken, so I cannot tell you for sure right now" apologised Ginny.

"Okay. When am I going to be sold?" she asked calmly, with acceptance.

This made Ginny's blood boil, but she took a few deep breaths to calm down for Hanna's sake. "You are not" she responded. At the girl's questioning look, she elaborated. "We have removed your slave collar. You are free now."

This got a reaction from the girl. Firstly, her eyes widened in surprise. Then, she tentatively reached for her slave collar only to find it missing. "W-What?" she asked, with lost look.

"Here, in the Thule Alliance, we don't approve of slavery. It was one of the main reasons we attacked your town, because there were so many slaves. Now, you are all being set free. Do you have any family that you would like to be reunited with?" she asked the girl.

"Um..., no" the girl finally responded, after a few moments of silence.

"Not to worry, you can stay here with us. We can always use another pair of hands" Ginny gave her a smile, getting a small one in return.

"I..., don't know how to be free" Hanna finally admitted, with hesitation.

"That's not a problem. You are still young, there is plenty of time to learn. Speaking of learning, how old are you?" Ginny led the conversation in the direction she wanted it to go.

"Um..., 14 years old, I think. I don't know when is my birthday" she admitted.

"That's okay, we have ways to determine your exact age" reassured her Ginny, writing down the girl's age in her data pad. "Since you are underage, which is younger than 17 for humans in our group, you will have to go to school. There, you will learn many different things to help you in your life" she explained. "What languages do you know? Do you know how to read and write?" she asked the girl.

"I can speak, read and write in Basic and Huttese" Hanna answered, watching Ginny add the information to her profile.

"Good, good. Just a few more questions and I will let you go" Ginny reassured her. "Can you show me where you lived in the town?" she asked, turning on a holographic projector of the town. As the girl showed her, Ginny zoomed on the image until she was sure which house it was. Then, she added the information to girl's profile. "Who did you live with?" she followed up.

"I lived with Marti previously, but she was sold and moved to another town. I had been living on my own, for the last 3 months" she explained, making Ginny nod in understanding.

"Last thing. Can you take this and give it a big wave, like this. Just make sure you don't point it at me or hit anything" demonstrated Ginny, handling the girl her own wand, handle first. The Hogwarts registry book was the only reliable way to detect wizards and witches, which couldn't be applied in their situation. No one knew how it worked either, so replicating it was out of question. Wands on the other hand, always had reactions when wielded by a untrained magical person, it was just a violent reaction in most cases.

"Okay" said Hanna in confusion, to the weird request. Taking the piece of wood, she stood up and gave it a big wave, like she was shown. The confusion turned into a fright, as a small wave of flames shoot out of the stick, darkening a wall she was waiving at. "I am sorry!" she apologized frantically, putting the stick on the desk and taking a step back.

"Oh, there is nothing to be afraid off Hanna. It is actually a very good thing" reassured her Ginny, masking her own surprise.

"It is?" the girl asked in confusion.

"Yep. Don't worry about it, everything will be explained to you later. For now, we are all done here" she said, typing a few last things into the girl's profile. They had 12 tech savvy muggles, who worked with computers back on Earth. They had written a basic profile system, as well as cobbled together a couple of devices to get their governance going. They primary worked under Arthur in administration, but also worked heavily with Hermione's team, to figure out the local tech.

Picking up a smart watch, Ginny showed it to Hanna. "This here is your access watch. You must always have it with you, when you are outside of your apartment. It works as your identification, wallet and access key" she explained, making sure that the girl understood. "Here, let me put it on for you" she walked around the desk, fastening the watch on girl's wrist. Admittedly, the watch was not going to win any aesthetics prizes, as it was made in a hurry with very limited resources and little understanding of the local technology.

"Beyond those doors behind me, is a cafeteria. You can get anything you want to eat, it is all free, so take as much as you want" Ginny continued explanation. "On the other side of the cafeteria, are the access doors to the apartments. Yours is in the block C, 4th floor, apartment 187. Did you get it all? Repeat it back to me" she requested.

"Um, behind those doors is food, that is free. My apartment is 187, in block C, on the 4th floor" Hanna repeated dutifully back.

"Good, if you get lost or forget, there should be some people in the uniforms who will help you out" nodded Ginny. "Now, nearly all doors in this place are access locked. Just bring your watch under reader like this, if you have access, the door will open. This is also how you open your apartment doors. All of the things we managed to save from your place should already be waiting for you in the apartment" finished the explanation Ginny, leading the girl to the door.

"Um, thank you Ginny" said the girl, using her new watch to open the door, proceeding into cafeteria.

"You are welcome, Hanna. I will be seeing you around" she reassured the young woman. As the doors closed, Ginny picked up her wand and with a wave fixed the damage to the room. It was surprising, that the third person she processed was a witch. They didn't honestly expect to find anyone with magic, in this small batch of people.

Sighing heavily with the implications, Ginny opened another door to a closet. It was stacked full of people for her to process. Using her wand, she levitated another person from the pile and onto the cot. Once she was ready, she fired an Enervate at the purple skinned alien man.

Side to side of her room, there were 34 others who were doing much the same interviews with the former slaves. Only those who could use basic Legilimency were doing the interviews, to judge the truthfulness of the information they were given. Not all slaves were innocent, some were ex-criminals who failed their bosses one too many times, enslaved, to pay off their debt.

(*Taking stock*)

It had been two weeks since the raid and the things were starting to calm down. The new base was not yet up to the old base standards, but it was improving fast.

"I guess, today I will start first" said Harry, to the assembled leadership of the Thule Alliance. Considering that most of their population was from British Islands and Norway, it was very fitting name. Thule was an old Greek word, used to refer to the Northern part of European continent and beyond. Its literal translation was 'beyond the borders of the known world', which survivors found appropriate, considering they were quite literally beyond the known borders.

"We have finished processing all 5,287 of the towns people now. Of them, 4 have shown to possess magic, 3 humans and 1 alien, - Twi'lek. They are between 7- and 43-years old and none were trained in magic. We also freed 3,921 slaves, the vast majority of which have nowhere else to go. Only 98 have families they wish to be reunited with. As many as 1,141 have other family members, who are also slaves under different owners elsewhere."

"There are another 546 locals, who were simple citizens, slave owners, or criminals with not much crime to their name. With a bit of work, they may one day join our people. The remaining 820 have so much blood on their hands, that I am unsure they will ever reform."

"We have also recovered nearly 800 droids of various designs. All of which are currently kept deactivated, until we learn a bit more about them. Some of the droids are clearly meant for combat and did a good amount of damage to our teams, before they were turned off. We are also unsure if any of the droids are able to transmit signals to other systems. As a precaution, we will keep them all disabled for now."

"We have also recovered additional 10 spaceships, of which half are military and another half are civilian. None of them are big by the galaxy standards. The light freighters we evacuated on are by far the biggest, being only 60 meters long. For comparison, according to the information on the interweb, multi-kilometre long ships are quite common here, in big space battles and busy civilian sectors. We have also recovered 300 ground vehicles, mostly speeders of various make, with only a few capable of carrying multiple people and cargo."

"Additionally, a good amount of small tech was recovered, most of which the researchers are still trying to identify" finished Harry. "Madam Pomfrey, if you would give us your report on the captives" he indicated to the healer.

"Right. Around 70% of the slaves had slave collars, that had been easily removed with a simple Alohomora. The rest had internal devices put in their bodies, about the size of an almond. Mostly in the neck area or elsewhere near the spine. A small cut followed by summoning and healing charms, took care of those devices too. I believe, the procedures to be safe enough to be performed in a field. It will prevent the criminals from activating the devices while the fights are still ongoing" she pointed to Ginny and Ron.

"Sounds good. We will add it to our training programs" agreed Ginny. It will take only a few seconds per person, to ensure they were safe. It wouldn't slow down their advancing teams too much. Having subdued slaves lay there stunned with primed explosives on their bodies, for hours to an end, wasn't very comforting. It could also be used to distract their teams in a critical moment. From whichever angle you looked at it, removing explosives early on was good for everyone involved.

"Otherwise, the slaves are mostly in good health. Some were little malnourished, some had bruises and cuts, but nothing serious. The pirates were a bit worse off, with many blaster and knife injuries, some old, some new. Quite a few of them are using mechanical prosthetics. The stunning spells didn't seem to have affected them too much, but we are cautious of using too much magic on them."

"There were also 27 distinct species of aliens among the captured, with another 140 being hybrids. The diagnosis and healing spells worked well enough for them, but we will need to do a lot more work to find out which potions are safe for them to use. We are currently mostly worried about any allergic reactions they may get. Therefore, I would request to prioritise processing of medical droids first. They will know a lot of information, about the distinct species and what is the difference in how they should be healed."

"For our own people, we have finished the common course of immunisation for this area of space. If any of them have to go further than the nearest few systems, they will need additional shots. We are still going through the medical supplies that were taken from the town. But we can already say, that those were quite limited and we will need many more in the future, especially if our population is to grow" she finished her long report.

"Great work Madam Pomfrey. I agree, that the medical droids should be the first to be brought online. They would be the safest to be activated, while also providing a wide range of knowledge we are lacking" responded Harry. "Mr Weasley, how is the settlement of the new people going?" he asked their head of administration.

"It is work in progress Harry, work in progress" he responded tiredly. "I don't think you quite realise what you are asking of me. You want us to build a whole new social structure from scratch, while in state of perpetual crisis, with great influx of people from completely different culture. We have to design laws, courts, police, taxes, currency, economy and so much more" he rubbed his tired eyes.

"Is there anything we can do to help, dad?" asked Charlie, who was sitting in for Nevile and Luna. Bringing the total number of Weasleys in leadership position of the Alliance to 5. Harry was certain, the Malfoys were foaming in a mouth in the afterlife.

"It is alright son. I understand that all of you have your own responsibilities to handle. I am just trying to point out, that administration cannot be the place to put all of the leftovers, from all other areas. We need smart and competent people too, unless you want another inefficient, barely functioning Ministry of Magic under Fudge" he pointed out seriously.

"I am sorry Mr Weasley, I haven't realised it was that bad" apologized Harry, rubbing back of his head sheepishly. "None of us really had much experience in real life, outside of fighting in a war. And less is said about my experience with the old Ministry, the better. You are right, now that we have established a safer base of operation, we should focus on building a proper foundation for the Alliance. We will be unable to free too many slaves if the Alliance collapses on itself, or operates not better than the Fudge's Ministry" he acknowledged, stopping for a minute to think.

"I think, we can start by allowing you to pick, say up to 5 people from each of the other teams, unless their Heads veto the transfer. We should also establish some system that prevents one team from monopolising all of the most promising candidates" he added, looking at his bushy haired friend, who was biting her lips trying not to object.

"Thank you, Harry, it will be of great help. Your willingness to hear the others out, as well as act to assist in any way you can, makes you a better Minister than Fudge ever was" he smiled at his adopted son.

"As for the new people, most of the slaves are happy with their new living arrangements, which are better than what they enjoyed back home. We had been gradually introducing new things for people to do, parks to walk in, cinemas, sports, games. It prevents them from getting restless, while we figure out where they can be best used. We are still updating our profile system, but each person in the Alliance already has a rudimental ID."

"The situation is similar for the non-slaves, but also non-criminals. The only difference is that those people are less happy about their new arrangements. They causing periodical disturbances requiring involvement of patrols, but nothing overly bad yet. We are still working out the police force, based on the experiences of the Aurors and muggle Police Officers, we have."

"The criminals, on the other hand, had been a problem. We have lost 3 of them, murdered by their fellow detainees. On the muggle side, none of the survivors had been to prison or have known how's of their operations. At the same time, Azkaban is not a prison we want to emulate. Therefore, we are currently figuring things as we go. I am not even mentioning the special needs of some aliens" he rubbed his eyes tiredly. It was clear, that Arthur was putting more hours into his work, that was heathy.

"Dad, you look like you can use a break. Why don't you take a day off, mom would like that too" suggested Ginny.

"This is something else I wanted to bring up. I know that most of you are young and full of energy, but you should remember there are also some older people too. We aren't quite as young as we once were" he smiled tiredly. "Seriously, the whole Alliance had been operating under crisis conditions for over a year now. The people are burning out, physically and mentally. When it was question of survival, they all understood the need for the extreme efforts."

"Now, that the Alliance is no longer threatened, they will start rebelling soon. Even back on Xerebus people were already starting to question 12 hours working days, 7 days a week" he pointed out. "We are about to start using the currency again, so the overtime payments will alleviate some of the dissent. However, it will not last long, when people realise that they have no time or place to spent the money at" he described another important problem the Alliance had.

He would be the first to admit, that this group handled the crisis admirably. It was yet to be seen, if they could handle the peacetime ruling nearly as well. He had a full confidence in his children, but they were introducing many revolutionary ideas, that were never tested before.

Harry, Ginny, Ron, Hermione, Luna and Nevile were DeFacto the ruling 6, as he called them. Even if on paper Harry was the Minister, he nearly always included the others in any important decision making. Not that he didn't listen to council from others, but with others it was just that, the council. With those 5, Harry would bend to the decision of majority, even if it contradicted his personal feeling on the matter.

One of those revolutionary ideas that were already causing a lot of friction, was equalisation of all of the sentient beings. Goblins, House Elfs, Magicals, Muggles, Vampires and now Aliens, were the same from the point of view of the Alliance law. This idea was somewhat familiar to muggles, but practically unheard off in the Wizarding World. Not even Albus Dumbledore would have gone that far.

That decision had many far-reaching consequences. Starting with all of the beings requiring to attend the same classes, ending with all of them having the same rights to own land and previously unattainable items, such as wands. That law had enough stick and carrot to rub everyone in the Alliance wrong. Yet, the ruling 6 decided with strong push from Hermione and Luna, therefore, they were all grudgingly living under the law for nearly a year now.

Another decision was going to be tested soon. The new currency, - Dragons, in the opposition to the gold Galleons, was going to be purely electronical. It was decided, that the physical gold currency was impossible to scale to the galactic scale. As anything without the precious metal was too easy to counterfeit for the wizards. Therefore, they were only left with the electronic alternatives.

They were still going to have some physical way to exchange currency, but only for rare cases. Even then, it would mostly take form of those gift cards muggles were so fond off, rather than actual golden coins. This was, perhaps, the hardest part of his new duties. Neither he himself, nor any other employee under him, had any idea how to make that system reliable and secure on large scale. They did what they could with the available resources, but it was going to need a lot more work. Preferably, with assistance from someone with the expertise in the local technology, banking in particular.

If the currency itself was not revolutionary enough, they were also going to implement Universal Basic Income. It was an idea that circulated in some muggle circles, but was never actually implemented on a big scale. Ron, Harry and Ginny were the ones that liked it the most. Arthur could understand where they were coming from, it would have definitely made life of his family much easier. However, he was sceptical that the idea would work as intended.

The idea was that everyone in the Alliance would get a flat payment monthly, no matter what. Species, race, age, employment, religion, marital status, none of that mattered. Even the prisoners were going to get the payment, but in their cases the money will go to pay for the damages caused. Even children received the payment, but their part was split evenly between parents, unless they were living separately. In that case the payment went proportionally, depending on the child's living arrangements.

The payment amount, was supposed to be just enough to pay for the basic needs of shelter, food and clothes. General education and healthcare were going to remain free within the Alliance. The idea behind it all, was to remove homelessness, hunger and poverty from their society.

The payments provided a cushion for people who lost their income for any reason. It also allowed people to get their education and swap to better jobs much easier. In essence, it replaced nearly all social programs and pension, while having none of the drawbacks of those.

Since there were no real economy going at the moment, it was very hard to determine the correct level of UBI. They were going to start with 100 dragons per month, adjusting it as the economy developed. They were pricing the new currency to be worth around 1 pound or 5 knuts, back on Earth before the war.

It was also important to ensure that the payment didn't reduce peoples will to work. They didn't want to go from full employment with 80 hours work week, to full unemployment with no work being done. The smallest payment the working people were getting, would be in order of 200 dragons per month, making them 3 times richer than the unemployed people.

Foods and entertainments were the first industries they were expecting to take off. With furniture, appliances and decorations for homes to follow.

He would be lying, if he said he wasn't nervous about the transition period. There were so many things that could go wrong, especially with all of the unknown variables thrown in. But he was also excited, he never ever dreamed of architecting a new government. Not being bound by centuries of red tape was very liberating.

"Hmm..., I can see where you are coming from Mr Weasley. We still have much to do, but can probably slow down now. With the additional manpower we should be able to maintain, even increase our progress in some areas. Each of you should come up with a plan to transition your people current work arrangements, to the standard 40 hours work week. Let's aim to finish the transition in one month time?" suggested Harry, getting nods of agreement back.

"It will be a very welcome change, by all of my colleagues" supported the decision their head of education, McGonagall.

"Great! Charlie, are there any problems with the captured animals?" he asked the redhead. While the planet itself had surprisingly little of the wildlife, mostly small critters, bugs and fishes, the town itself employed quite a few of big animals. They were used as pack animals, pets and source of food.

"There are quite a few very interesting ones actually. It looks like all of the bigger ones are to some extend magical, with a few smaller ones also showing signs of magic. We had to stun some of them hourly on the flight over, as they kept waking up. I don't think any of them are magical enough to be used for wand cores, but potion masters will have a lot of new stuff to play with" he began.

"We have also checked them all for sentience. While some of them are quite smart, none have crossed the threshold on any of our tests. For now, we are mostly studying them, but if we don't get more grass pastures going soon, we will need to slaughter a good amount of them. The town didn't have much in the way of ready silage for us to take. We will run out in less than a month, at the current rate of consumption."

"To avoid losing these unique species, we will need to either transport them back to Xerebus, or bring more soil and silage back. Either way, we will need to organise a trip back in the next week or two" he finished his report.

"I see. The trip back is something we wanted to do in the near future. There is only so much information we can send and receive on these bracelets" he showed the ones he was wearing. They had a Protean Charm placed on them, much like the galleons they used for DA back in their fifth year. They proved to work over stellar distance, as he was able to send and receive messages from Nevile and Luna.

However, the messages were limited to a single word. Which made the communication very slow and frustrating. At least, they knew that those left on Xerebus were safe. The Fidelius held under scrutiny of the locals, but they knew next to nothing else about the situation on the ground.

"How much cargo are we talking about? I do not believe we will be taking the freighters back, at least on the first scout mission" he asked, looking at Hermione.

"We have been preparing one of the better corvettes for the first trip back. It has better weapons and the fastest hyperdrive of the branch. I believe it has around 60 cubic meters of cargo space. Is that going to be enough?" asked Hermione.

"Hmm..., we are using around 5 cubic meters per day, so if we loaded it full it will give us another 12 days. Maybe even a bit longer, as our local farms should start producing a bit by then" responded Charlie.

"We cannot allocate the full cargo to the agriculture, we already got requests for other critical items and materials" argued Harry. "I think we can give you 50 cubic meters, at most. That should give you 10 more days of run rate. After that, we may organise another trip to Xerebus, depending on how the first one goes. Does that work for everyone?" he asked. Getting nods of agreement, he went on to the next agenda.

"Professor McGonagall, what can you tell us about the new arrivals from point of view of education?" he asked his old Transfiguration Professor.

"Well, firstly, I want to start with those with magic. As was my responsibility at Hogwarts, I went to introduce the locals to the world of magic" she started, making many lean forward with interest. Magic was about the only advantage they had over the pirates. Getting more magic users into their midst was crucial, to maintain the fast growth of the Alliance.

"From the start, it became apparent that something was different with the local muggle born. As far as they could recall, none of them experienced any significant accidental magic" she explained, making many raise their eyebrows in surprise.

"Are they magically weak, like squibs?" asked Ron.

"Not at all, I have taken them to Poppy and we ran full barrage of diagnostic spells on them. As far as we can tell, they are all within standard deviation. An average magical strength" she elaborated, at some confused looks. "It is still too early to say, but we suspect that their connection to magic is different, in particular on emotional level" she speculated.

"Emotional?" asked Harry in confusion.

"Emotions are strong multiplier to magical strength. Meaning, your spells will be stronger if you experience strong emotions at the time of casting, but you will have less control over it. It is why children have so much accidental magic. It is in essence wandless magic, which is very hard for adults to replicate despite being more magically powerful. Children experience emotions much more strongly than adults. They don't filter and control their emotions; they don't know how" she explained.

As a teacher, it was one of the things she learned. In many regards, first year students were more dangerous than seventh year. "We suspect, that this tie between magic and emotions is not present in the locals. At the very least, it is not very strong" she added.

"What does this mean Professor? Can they use magic? Will they be able to learn our spells? What about potions and runes?" asked Hermione, in machine gun fashion.

"As I said Ms Granger, we know very little at this point. All of this is mostly speculations on our part. However, I suspect, there will be some effect on learning. The charms in particular will be strongly affected, if our suspicions are indeed true" explained Minerva. Charms relied on emotional component in casting more than other branches of magic.

"The different connections to magic are not that unusual. Goblins, for example, find use of charms easier than us humans, but have troubles with transfiguration" she pointed out, nodding at Irongrip. "It is just surprising to find such difference in local humans" she explained.

"When it comes to the rest, nearly all of the people are able to speak Basic and Huttese. Most are also able to read both of the languages, but only half is able to write. We have given them all tests, to determine their level of education. The results are mostly as expected, nearly all of them failed to pass the basic level in at least 1 subject. Some of them are remarkably advanced in some areas, but are completely lost in others" she explained.

The basic level, was expected from all citizen of the Alliance. It was the level that all species had to attain, before they went into specialisation. Back on Earth, it would be equivalent to 8th grader. Goblins went to learn from their artisans and masters, muggles into high school, house elfs to learn under elders, while the wizards focused fully on magic. It is not to say, that before attaining basic levels there were no specialisations, but those were only 1-2 days a week at that time.

"The children, will join classes with those from Earth next week. For the adults, we are still drawing up schedules. We are thinking of having them attend courses 2-3 days a week, similar to the structure of muggle universities. This will also allow them to hold part time jobs, contributing to the Alliance while earning some income."

"Lastly, as discussed during our last meeting, we have started to put more emphasis on Ancient Runes, making it a mandatory subject. We will also allow some of the better students in the subject to do armour plate enchantments in their free time, to earn some pocket money" she finished her report. She was not thrilled with the idea, but understood the necessity of the action.

"Great! We will need a whole lot more of the armour, as it worked even better than we expected. Without it, we would have definitely lost some people in the raid" noted Harry. "Irongrip, how is the armour production coming along, any problems?" he asked.

"Grr. As I mentioned earlier, we will need to bring more minerals from Xerebus that we haven't located on Avalon yet. Otherwise, we have made 300 armour sets now, with around half of those enchanted. We are now enchanting only 4 per day, since Ms Granger took away the human specialists" grunted the goblin.

"Hermione?" asked Harry.

"Well, Ron said that space battles are more important. The research department had been switching to focus on the spaceships. With the help of captured engineers, we were able to disassemble the fighter craft into small enough pieces to make a copy of all components. We are currently waiting on some rare materials from Xerebus, to finish copying the hyperdrive engine. It is the smallest and simplest ship we have, so we are going to use it as platform to test the effects of hyperspace travel on expanded spaces."

"Additionally, we have been enchanting the armour of the corvette we are preparing to send back to Xerebus. If everything goes according to plan, it should be finished in 10 days. The windows, engines, antennas and other sticking out parts will still be old, but it is better than nothing. We don't have the resources to enchant it all before the mission. Our knowledge of local technology is still pretty bad too" she explained, where the specialists went.

"Hmm..., it sounds like a good idea with the fighter. The space expansion charms had served the Alliance well since its creation. The corvette is not that critical, I am only planning to take Ginny with me back to the planet. We will be fine without additional protections. However, in the near future the ship will get a lot more use, so we can start on upgrading it."

"Those 98 slaves that have families waiting for them, will need a ride. There is no point of holding them here against their will. This way, we can earn some good reputation among their families and friends. We just need to ensure they will be unable to give up the location of Avalon and secrets of the Alliance" explained Harry.