Led by the sound of explosions, Arden stormed into the hangar bay of the corvette, only to find nothing out of sorts, besides Harry with his staff and Mercer with a blaster repeatedly firing upon an innocent cargo crate.
"By Allya, what are you two doing?" she asked the two men, even as another streak of light left Harry's staff, impacting with and finally rupturing the crate.
"Hey Arden," Mercer screamed. Then, remembering the earmuffs he was wearing and removing them, he continued, "We're trying out what happens when something Harry has made bigger on the inside is destroyed."
Harry nodded eagerly, although he seemed way too excited for the whole thing to be just about a simple experiment; Mercer's love for explosions seemed to be rubbing off.
"Yeah, well you destroyed that crate so badly, I am sure now would be the time to check," she prompted, being rather curious about the whole thing herself. If these tricks were safe to do on a combat ship, the possibilities seemed endless; if the results were less promising… well, that was an import bit of information, too.
By that point, the two men had reached the defeated and broken crate, both of them looking very dissatisfied with what they found.
"Uhh, that's not pretty," Mercer observed, standing over the box, his head inclined to look through the hole blasted into the side. "What are you looking at me for? It's your rune stuff that did this."
"And it was your idea to 'try it with something organic'," Harry retorted, and Arden finally saw what they were arguing about. Where once there had most likely been the reasonably clean insides of a shipping crate, a mangled mass of flesh and blood had been evenly distributed around the entire interior.
"You took meat out of our provisions for this little experiment?" she inquired, raising an eyebrow at her older comrade. "You know I could have eaten that, right?"
"And we needed to know what would happen to any being inside one of Harry's space-extension fields when they break," Mercer countered. "What is one little steak compared to the knowledge that a magically expanded hangar bay would be an incredibly bad idea?"
Watching them go at each other, Harry finally let loose a loud groan. "Could you guys stop it with the bickering, please?" he complained. "I've had enough of that for two lifetimes where I came from."
The two of them stared at each other for a while, before first Arden, then Mercer broke out into raucous laughter.
"But it's so much fun," she objected, winking at the older of the two men. "Fine, but just for you."
Grumbling, Harry accepted that deal and led her over to an assortment of canisters, the kind of which Mercer had said tended to contain fuel. With the former Imperial's help, they managed to find one that was completely empty, and the wizard began describing their plan to utilise his skills for the production of fuel.
"If you already know, what you want to do, what am I here for?" she finally asked after the lengthy process of Harry describing an entire rune-set.
"I don't know, you suddenly just showed up. Also, don't forget, I promised to teach you," he replied with a winning smile, an expression Arden was sure she was mirroring; sure, he had promised to teach her his magic, but things had been so hectic all around, he had also seemed to have forgotten.
"Until we can get some kind of wand or other focus for you and I find more alternative potion ingredients, runes are something you can learn without any of that," Harry explained. "How did you and your sisters cast your spells, anyway?"
Arden thought back to her early days of instructions with the elders of her tribe. "We just said the words and used our hands, mostly. Sometimes we danced."
"But no tools of any kind?" her teacher asked, as if to reaffirm some observation. "Interesting…"
"Boss," Mercer interjected at that. "Might not be my area of expertise, all that magic stuff, but didn't you say the 'ambient magic' of this place was extremely strong compared to where you come from?"
That comment seemed to flip a switch in Harry's mind, and his formerly brooding face returned to a wide smile. Without comment, the young man began moving around and looking closely at his hands, until eventually, he pointed a finger at the still-smouldering cargo crate and intoned, "Expulso!"
With a loud crash, the box flew through the air and impacted the hangar blast doors, leaving behind a small pile of charred, bloodied shards.
"Merlin's threadbare tighty-whities," he cussed loudly. "I mean I'd noticed wandless magic was easier when I made my staff, but I haven't been doing all that much offensive casting, lately."
He stared at his fingers in fascination for a while before returning his attention to his pupil.
"Alright, we can start on the way back to the Rebel base, but we'll be looking for a wand for you as well."
OOOOOOOO
The flight back to Yavin 4 took them more than ten days, lengthened as it was by the hyperdrive on the cargo ship and escort frigate they were with being only half as quick as the ones installed on both the Raider-II (whose drive systems had been upgraded from the Raider-I) and the Guardian cruiser. Still that time was neither boring nor did it go unused.
Most importantly, there was always someone present on the bridge who was not a droid, seeing as they were travelling first through Hutt space and later through the Outer Rim territories, basically the galaxy's Wild West. Luckily, they were not required to post many guards for prisoners, as well, because the rank and file of the Imperial crews had been either handed over to Vuli's flotilla or expressed an interest in defection (those were mostly the younger crewmembers); they were still disarmed and put under guard, but it was much lighter than it would have needed to be otherwise. The higher-ups had all been transferred onto the captured frigate and were under lock and key there, where the largest contingent of Rebel soldiers could keep an eye on them.
Meanwhile, Harry and Arden were working on their magic; him training in wandless casting, while she picked up everything, she could from watching and listening to him.
"Basic safety rules for Transfiguration," he quizzed his student, even as he was holding up a shield charm she was peppering with stunners.
"Don't eat or drink anything you conjure, unless you made it to be permanent," she panted between two spells. "Permanence takes energy and skill, increase in complexity takes energy and skill, increase in mass takes energy and skill."
"When is a potion the better alternative?"
"When… Stupefy!" Arden replied, hitting his shield with the strongest spell she had ever managed to hit him with. "…the one receiving it is injured, you're not sufficiently qualified to prevent a spell backfire, you want effects for which no spells exist."
After finishing her answer, Harry let his student pepper his shield charm with a few more stunners until he called, "Halt!"
Panting and sweating profusely, the two mages were standing opposite each other in the hangar, sucking in big gulps of air as they could get them.
"If all the energy comes from the magic, or the Force around us, why is this so damn tiring?" Arden half asked, half complained. The answer to that question, though did not come from Harry.
"Maybe because you've been at this for almost two hours?" Mercer ventured from where he was repainting the LAAT/i with black paint the resident wizard had permanently conjured one evening directly before bed when the intense tiredness that action had induced was not all that detrimental.
"Two hours?" Arden gasped. "It felt more like 20 minutes, at most."
Harry shook his head and pointed his finger at the clock on the wall that showed the shipboard time they had set to the one they were used to from the Morningstar.
"We started at 1400 hours after lunch, now its 1600 hours. And what is so tiring is the fact that while hte magic around you might be a limitless source of energy, the applications of which are mostly limited by the density of that energy, your body still has to mould it to your wishes. That's what is hard on you physically," he said, although admittedly, he too had somewhat forgotten the passage of time. Still, holding a shield charm, wandlessly for two hours; well, he would be lying if he said he was not somewhat proud of himself. "Time for a break, I think."
Arden seemed to heartily agree with him on that as she picked up her water bottle, enchanting it had been her first rune project, and greedily gulped down almost the entire content, knowing that, within an hour or two, it would have refilled.
"You guys were really going at it," Javoc commented as he stuck his head out of the dropship. "Didn't even notice us coming in."
At the mention of us, Corsek too appeared from within the transport. "This thing is really awesome; when I was still in the Army, my unit so wanted one of these. The new IDTs are okay and all, but these larties pack so much firepower. Their mass-driver rockets can punch through capital ship armour, no problem."
"And I always wanted to work on one," Javoc added, the professional appreciation for an excellent design showing on his face. "Who knew deserting would let us fulfil that wish."
Obviously finished with whatever they had been doing inside the craft, the two brothers returned to the outside to join Mercer in his mission to transform the drab grey into an unsettling, if beautiful black.
"Boss, I was thinking," the oldest of the three painters ventured, valiantly ignoring Javoc's comments concerning the danger of him doing something as cerebral. "If you can make our fuel tanks self-refilling, could you also do the same to our tibanna gas-cartridges?"
Harry thought about that for a moment; from a theoretical standpoint it was certainly possible, and practically speaking, it did not sound all that bad either. The cartridges, despite containing enough gas for 500 shots, were not all that large, each shot only taking a miniscule amount, so keeping up with the depletion certainly would not be an issue. Still there was something troubling him.
"I'd rather not," he finally admitted. "They're so small that, even with a standard backpack, we could take dozens into the field. On the other hand, such a small piece of equipment is easily lost. I'd rather not have any of our enemies, or just some random bandit even, stumble upon my enchanted technology."
Mercer nodded in understanding. "Oh, that reminds me," Harry suddenly piped up. "I need all of the enchanted bags back with me; found a way to make the inscriptions completely unreadable, so at the very least they can't be reverse-engineered if they fall into the hands of the Empire. Because that Vader guy would definitely be able to activate enchantments after some trial and error."
"Will do, Boss," Corsek affirmed, to nods from the others. "Have you thought of a name for our new toy, yet?"
He gestured all around them with a whirl of his hand, showing he meant the corvette.
"Actually, I have," Harry replied as he too grabbed a paint-gun and began applying the black coating to their new dropship. Then, his pompous delivery severely undermined by the painting tool in his hand, he declared, "In keeping with the naming convention established by the Morningstar, this corvette shall henceforth be known as Lightbringer."
When there was absolutely no reaction, a small detail he had forgotten to think of earlier made itself loudly heard inside his mind. "Right, you guys have different religions here, too."
OOOOOOOO
12 days after the skirmish in the Keldooine system, the small flotilla of stolen ships that had escaped the destruction of the Imperial repair yard left hyperspace at the edge of Yavin Prime's gravity well. Immediately, the vessels adjusted their trajectories toward the planet's fourth moon and fired their engines until they reached a stationary orbit around 35000 kilometres above Massassi Station.
All of them but one.
Out of the middle of the formation, a sleek, grey, dagger-shaped craft broke away and continued to approach the moon as the manoeuvring thrusters all over the hull worked hard to slow down the descent through the atmosphere, even as the temperature indicators on the bridge noted the rising heat all over the hull. On that very bridge, elated at seeing a certain someone on that Rebel base again, Harry Potter was looking through the transparisteel windows, automatically tinted against the glare of atmospheric re-entry. Next to him stood Mercer, equally eager to reach the base of their allies, if only to start the modifications on their newly acquired corvette.
"How come you like working on our vehicles so much?" Harry asked the older man, noticing the elation almost radiating off of him. Mercer's face was graced by the kind of smile commonly associated with one reliving fond memories at that question.
"Back at home, I used to tune speeders with my father and my older brothers," he said fondly. "Up until my twelfth birthday I wasn't allowed to get even close to the engines, so I painted instead."
"How very wholesome," Arden commented from further behind on the bridge. "With your defection, is your family in danger?"
"No, they'll be alright," Mercer assured the two of them, yet there was a despondent note to his voice. "We're not exactly talking; they were angry when I joined the Navy. They're somewhere in the Rim now, still fixing speeders as far as I know. Not even the Empire goes to that much trouble to hurt one single deserter."
Deciding not to comment on the man's obvious dislike of the idea of seeing his parents and brother again, Harry instead opted to look out of the windows again, as the ground inched ever closer and it became possible to make out actual trees in the mass of green that were Yavin 4's jungles.
"Approaching ship, this is Massassi Station; you are entering restricted space, please state your name and intent," the familiar stick-in-the-mud voice of the flight controller echoed from the comms station. The captain of the 'approaching ship' stepped up behind the officer manning that station and indicated for him to open the connection.
"Massassi Station, this is Captain Potter on the corvette Lightbringer. Generals Vernan and Cracken are awaiting us," Harry replied, although the debriefing could not be further from his mind in that particular moment.
They were quickly given landing clearance and the helmswoman set down the ship on the strip of jungle-free ground around the hangar. Given the corvette's size, any attempt at flying it inside the structure was bound to destroy at least something, so they did not even try. With barely a shudder, the landing gear extended, and the vessel made contact with the ground.
"You'll get onto the refits as soon as possible?" Harry asked Mercer as they were already on their way to the hangar/vehicle-bay where the large ramp descended from the belly of the corvette. Hitting the button for the lowest level as soon as the two were inside the lift, Mercer nodded.
"Yeah," he replied. "I'd like to get everything done as soon as possible, while these people still have our agreements and our contributions firmly in mind. Don't suspect them of playing a rigged game, but these are politicians we're talking about. What did Arden say she wanted to do?"
Harry snorted. "Looking for our next target," the captain answered. "I told her it might be a bit early, should we be needed for the attack on the Death Star, but she insisted. I think she just wants to try out all her new skills."
The barely-there feeling of deceleration told them they had reached the lowest level, and the two men stepped out of the turbolift and into the hangar bay, its only occupant currently the repainted LAAT/i. Past the dropship, the high ramp led them down toward the ground and the waiting reception committee.
"Captain Potter," Dodonna greeted, dignified as ever.
However, willing as he was, Harry had no opportunity to react in kindness, as he was soon enveloped in a surprisingly crushing hug by Leia, who had stormed out from within the crowd of officers.
"Nice to see you, too," the wizard greeted the unabashedly elated princess beaming back at him. "General Dodonna, General Vernan, General Cracken, a pleasure to see you. I am happy to report that our mission was a success, light casualties and no fatalities among the troops, one X-wing and two Y-wings lost in space."
"Very impressive," Vernan commented, looking at the dagger-shaped vessel they were standing under. "The Adjudicator is now the Lightbringer, or so I've been told?"
"Correct, General Vernan," Harry agreed, he too looking at the sleek craft. "Mercer has the general outlines for the refit, so if you would be able to assign the necessary technicians, we would like to start the refit as soon as possible."
"That won't be a problem," Dodonna assured them genially. "You have all the personnel willing to defect on your ship, I presume."
"Yes, they are making ready for disembarkation and debriefing. The soldiers tell me they were compliant and peaceful the entire trip. They're mostly junior officers or gunners and specialists, some technicians. Most of the higher officers we left with Captain Vuli's flotilla," the young wizard informed them. "Now, if I could get access to an appropriate ship, I would be happy to try making it a bit stealthier."
OOOOOOOO
Considering the rather impractical implications a constantly obscured ship would bring with it (not the least of which was people, or worse other vehicles crashing into it), Harry had opted to think about a rune-based application of the disillusionment charm. It was not hard, per se, he knew how to do it and combine the whole thing with the same enchantments making reverse-engineering impossible that he had placed on the fuel containers, but what worried him was the delicate technology built into the Alliance starfighters.
Therefore, he opted to go step by step, adding layer upon layer onto the enchantments, starting with the disillusionment. Currently, he was working under the fascinated gaze of Luke, Leia and Ben, carving runes in the Y-wing's outer hull at select points.
"I… I feel something from these symbols," Luke commented as his hand was inexorably drawn to the string of runes. The ageing Jedi master next to him nodded.
"They are imbued with the Force, yet lack any sort of malice," Ben observed. Obviously taking note of Harry's offended look, he explained his comment, "Much of what you are able to do reminds me of the Sith's sorcery, which is dark to its very core. Once, even the mere presence of artifacts appointed with it made me collapse. I'm just wondering how the Jedi never managed to use it like you do."
Harry snorted in annoyance. "You just answered your own question," he replied calmly, all the while continuing to etch the runes into the metal. "I've recently had a lot of time for some more profound thoughts and what I'm about to tell you is one of the things I learned from thinking about my own life up until now: Doctrinal orders are completely useless at adapting to new things, as long as their very survival is not threatened. I bet there were Jedi that found out you could use this without becoming evil but, as a doctrinal order, straying from the treaded path probably wasn't encouraged."
As he had been talking with Ben, Harry had not noticed Leia coming closer, seeming almost as, possibly even more fascinated with the runes as Luke had been. Before he could stop her, she had already put her hand on one particularly unfortunate sequence of runes, which started glowing dangerously. At this point, the wizard was beyond caring for any sensibilities, and he simply shoved the young woman away and put his own palm onto the rapidly heating metal surface, pushing into it the strongest cooling charm he could muster, while the other hand started furiously scratching away the activated rune sequence.
After waving a basic healing charm over his reddened hand, he returned attention to the slowly rallying woman he now saw he had thrown to the ground.
"Sorry," he winced, looking at her apologetically. "You activated the sequence responsible for collecting the energy, only there is nothing in place to stabilise or use it yet. Had to make sure the whole thing wouldn't blow up on us like a giant battery with a short-circuit."
Leia shook off the cobwebs and proceeded to stare at her own hands in shock. "How did I do that?"
"Seems you have almost as much of an instinctive connection to magic… as Luke does to the Force. Mybe the'yre the same, and you're just better at different things," Harry observed, taking note of a slight hint of discomfort in Ben's face; filing away that observation for later, he returned to carving runes.
"Sorry I almost blew up your project," Leia apologised, now standing next to Harry, interestedly watching his progress, yet with her hands firmly clutched behind her back.
"It's alright," he assured the uncomfortable young woman. "Just, please don't activate stuff of which you don't know what it does, or that I'm not done with. I have no idea how big of an explosion something like this might trigger with how dense magical energy is here compared to where I come from."
For a while, Harry worked in silence with Leia watching over his shoulder, even as Luke and Ben returned to hitting each other with their lightsabres. When finally he was able to place the crystal that would work as a sort of capacitator for the magical power the enchantments needed, multiple hours had passed, and even the two other men had grown tired of their sparring, yet the young woman was still silently watching as he slowly made his way along the ship.
"There, all done," the wizard finally declared, even as he cracked his joints just by standing back up straight. "Do you want to activate it?"
Leia nodded eagerly and, following Harry's instructions, put her hand on the small crystal placed inside the Y-wing's cockpit. From one moment to the other, the formerly well-defined form of the fighter-bomber became but an outline, only visible due to the close proximity that sitting on its frame afforded them. The only part that was unchanged was the cockpit, and only because the canopy was open.
"It worked," the princess enthused, jubilantly squeezing the stuffing out of Harry, who, loathe as he was to do so, had to reign her happiness in somewhat.
"Well, we knew the enchantment would work, once activated," he commented wryly. "The question has always been, whether the ship still would."
So, to clear up once and for all any questions as to that regard, Harry slipped into the tight corners of the cockpit and began the start-up sequence. He listened carefully, yet with increasing confidence, as first the reactor, then the engines began to hum contentedly.
"Alright, basic functions are working," he observed, grinning widely as he saw Leia jump down from the vessel and grab his commlink.
"Basic functions seem to be working," he repeated, now over the comm system as the cockpit canopy began to close. "Checking sensors next."
As it turned out, the sensors were working just fine, as were the weapons (he murdered an innocent tree to test the lasers) and shields. Unfamiliar as he was with the craft, he had no intention of taking the Y-wing for a spin. Still, there was yet more to be done, Harry reminded himself as he set back down and activated the cooling sequence.
OOOOOOOO
"So, it works, and it doesn't interfere with any of the electronics?" Dodonna confirmed with the self-satisfied wizard in front of him.
"Depends how you define 'interfere', I suppose," Harry admitted. "The ship itself was just fine, but the astromech Luke tried to take flying really didn't like it. No damage, it's completely fine, but it seems like having the camouflage up interferes with their computing. So, no jumping to hyperspace with the visual and thermal camouflage being up."
"I think that is something we can live with," the bearded general snorted. "How quickly can you make them, or show one of our people how to?"
Having expected the question from the moment he had brought up the possibility of doing something, Harry shook his head apologetically. "Sorry, can't do that," he said matter-of-factly. "I would be willing to show a droid whose memories are wiped after it's done helping me, but can you imagine the chaos something like this could cause if it fell into the wrong hands? I can protect this from being reverse-engineered, but not from being ripped out of somebody's mind."
Indignant as Dodonna looked at the mere mention of someone in the Alliance blabbing to the Empire, both Vernan and Cracken actually looked quite relieved to hear it being said.
"He is right," Vernan chimed in. "A cloaking device with this few drawbacks must remain under the tightest security we can achieve. We should also be careful not to overuse it, unless we want the enemy to find a way around it, either. Now, thermal imaging is out, due to the… thermal camouflage, but those ships still have mass it would be possible to detect."
Harry vehemently agreed with the man's assessment. "And I don't have any idea, how I would be able to hide that. Additionally, I believe that any further effort at such large-scale modification would severely hamper the ships' functions," he added. "I've given Luke Skywalker's droid, R2-D2 the needed information to apply the same modifications and allowed the little guy to do it to twelve of your X-wings. The Princess, Skywalker and Kenobi should all be able to handle the activation."
The gathered Alliance officers looked at him in consternation.
"And where will you be, Captain Potter?" Cracken asked with a furrowed brow.
"Why I will be hunting a bounty, of course."