Chapter Sixty Six

Sitting in a mediation pose with her eyes closed and her hands pressed together it in front of her face, Master Fay concentrated, sending her mind out into the Force, hunting for the minds among the defenders of this putrid place who stood out from their fellows. Despair, hate, fear, fear, fear. The fear of the slaves being kept here beat at her senses like a tsunami, heightening the power of the veil of the Dark Side as it tried to close in all around her, drowning her in the Dark.

Yet despite that, the minds she was searching for burned even brighter to her senses because of it. They were the sources of much of the fear, the source of a lot of the hate directed towards the attackers, yet tempered by calculation and avarice.

Once she had found them Fay lashed out, her mind flicking forward like a master swordsman's rapier, attacking her targets with both force and pinpoint accuracy despite the Veil, despite the sweat now beading her face. On the bridge of the space fortress several people suddenly collapsed, their minds cut off from their bodies as if they had been puppets and someone had just cut the strings.

On the planet below, several more fell similarly. There she paused, feeling something odd from several minds around the individual she felt had been the leader of this organization. They were colder, more controlled then she expected, with no hint of panic. Deciding that they might be a band of reptilian sentients, she put that observation to one side for now. After all, Trandoshans in particular believed slavery was a natural part of the universe, and often worked for criminals of all stripes.

She could feel panic rise up from the mass of the slavers' and pirates' minds all around her, but that no longer mattered. Opening her eyes she smiled wanly at the concerned face of Loowsherino, the leader of the largest group of warriors whose ship she had been assigned to. "I am all right. I have disabled the leaders among the opposition. That should keep them from becoming organized against us. There are a few scattered slaves throughout the rest of the station and the fortress, I am afraid. But if we can take the junction between the slaves' housing and the rest of the base we can hopefully stop anyone from trying to use the majority of the slaves as shields or hostages."

The large, russet-furred Wookie chuffed good-naturedly, pulling Fay up to her feet as if she were a child. "/Bah as if that would have been enough to stop us from slaughtering them all and freeing their captives! Still, it will make it easier./"

"On that note, I also found the slaves. They are being kept in that separate bio-dome to the left of the main installation. The environment is not pleasant, but it is a multi-tiered thing. If we take control of the entrance to it, I do not sense that they have any electronic means of striking out at them."

Loowsherino nodded his big, shaggy head and raced up to the cockpit from the main holding area, relaying the commands to the other ships of their landing force as the starfighters and cruisers moved in on the star fortress. Master Fay followed only slightly more slowly. Dooku promptly reorganized the transports, sending the one containing Harry off slightly from the others.

Luckily the installation was sprawling enough that the only size of shielding which would have covered it all was a planetary sized one. Planetary shield generators were massive installations and expensive and time-consuming to build, such that few planetary governments beyond the Mid Rim could afford them. No pirate band or organized crime syndicate could ever have built one. The Black Sun at its height might have been able to, and certainly the Hutt clans could do so with their combined wealth and resources, but no smaller group could.

The transports came in from the opposite side of the planet as the cruisers went to work on the space fortress. By the time they entered the orbital installation's weapons' arcs, the defenders were fully occupied with attempting to save their own skins, paying no mind to the transports below them. The base did have some anti-air weapons, but the Nabooan squadron Dooku had assigned to guard the transports blazed forward, engaging each in turn as they showed up.

Harry's ship hovered right above the junction between the slaves' group jail cell and the rest of the base. He took a moment to think that it might have made sense to keep the slaves separate for any number of reasons, in particularly defensive ones, but it was going to bite them on the ass now. Once the ship was in position, hovering directly above the junction, he nodded up at his mother. "You're up, Mum."

"See you in a bit, Harry," Lily said with a chuckle, fading through the floor of the ship and making her way down. As a ghost, she, of course, was not affected by the lack of air outside, and they had done this kind of thing before.

With his mother gone Harry quickly turned to the Wookies, who were looking at one another quizzically, wondering what the young Jedi had said and why he had seemingly addressed thin air for a moment there. "Gather around, everyone. I know you all are wondering what we're going to do here, since we can't take the chance of just blowing our way into the base. What you are all about to experience is a secret, and as such I will ask you to never tell anyone else about this." Harry grimaced. "And you also might find it distinctly unpleasant, but it will get us down there without us needing to blow our way in."

One of the Wookies growled at Harry. He was a younger one judging from his size and lack of adornment on his bandoleer, but he seemed to be respected for all that. "/Asking us to keep it a secret is fine. We will do so, of course. But I still have no idea what we're doing here./"

"We're trying to prevent a hostage situation from occurring," Harry said somewhat blandly. "We can't fight our way through from the landing pads to the slave areas, not and stop anyone from trying to take them hostage. So instead were going to take command right here."

"/We can't survive out there!/" shouted one of the Wookies Harry had been introduced to whose name was Sarboucca. He shook his head wildly, his dark brown fur sticking up in all directions. "/We didn't bring any of our Zero-G suits with us./" Wearing those things was the next best thing to torture for the Wookies given the amount of hair they had, and so they rarely if ever wore them outside of real life or death situations. The idea of bringing them along normally, let alone for a battle, had never occured to them, and it wasn't like they would have fit into any the Nabooans could have supplied.

Moreover, though the Wookies themselves would not admit this, wearing helmets over their faces for extended periods of time was enough to drive most of them crazy. It's why they rarely ever wore armor in combat, let alone helmets.

"You won't have to," Harry soothed. "I have a Force technique that allows me to…teleport, I suppose you could say…from one spot to another. I will pop in first, memorize the layout of the place, and then pop back out before bringing you with me in groups."

Harry had to raise his voice to be heard over the shouts of surprise, consternation, and shock from the Wookies all around him. "After you are down one group will take position there while the rest of us spread out from there into the base, opening a second front against the defenders. This will force them to both split their attention, and allow us to safeguard the slaves who we are here to free! I realize this sounds unusual and dangerous, but it is necessary!"

That did not quiet the growls and mutters from the Wookies, and he was forced to use a silencing technique on the entire crowd to regain order. The glares he received after that made Harry cringe, no one likes seeing that many angry Wookies, after all. But they quickly understood that he was no longer hearing their voices, and indeed, none of them could hear each other either very well either.

"Thank you!" he said, removing the technique over the area and going on before any of them could realize it. "Now, if you could all be quiet for a moment, I have to concentrate on this so that I don't leave bits of myself behind! Unless any of you has a better suggestion?"

The growls and hand gestures told Harry that the Wookies were not exactly happy with this, but would go along with it for now. Though the glares he got from the younger Wookie warriors told Harry he might have issues there.

"/We don't believe you can succeed in this. We have had many Force sensitives join the Jedi Order in the past, and what you are saying goes well beyond what Jedi can do,/" said one of the Wookies bluntly in their own language, shaking his head. "/But then again we've never heard of Jedi being able to silence all sound in an area like that before either./"

"Yes, you'd be surprised at what we've been discovering Jedi can do lately," Harry said dryly, as his mother floated up through the floor.

As soon as Lily's head was above the level of the floor she began to talk quickly. "There's a quad laser in the ceiling in terms of automated defenses, but there are six guards, and they're arguing right now about what to do. Two of them think they should start dragging the slaves out to use them as meat shields while the other four are holding out for new orders. One of those is trying to get in touch with their boss. The speed of our assault's taken them completely by surprise, but we need to get in there!"

Lily immediately began to describe the area, going into detail on the shape and organization of the room as well as where everyone was in it. Thank God for Jedi mind techniques! The mix of the Jedi's mental techniques and Occlumency enabled Lily to quickly memorize what she saw and then regurgitate it verbatim later, which in turn gave Harry the ability to teleport into places he had not actually seen personally. They'd only used this technique a few times, after all it was supposed to be a secret, and the more often you used a secret technique the less it was an actual secret, but it had worked every time so far.

After a few moments Harry repeated what Lily had said word for word, then began to construct an image of the area in his head. At the same moment he felt Aayla reach out to his mind. "We're starting our assault, Harry! Master Quinlan's out and moving to the door!"

The other troop transports had landed on the base's actual landing port, but the defenders, despite no longer being led by anyone, had the presence of mind to shut down the atmosphere shield, the very low powered shield that was intended to keep in atmosphere, as it would on a ship's loading area. But Quinlan had a spacesuit and a computer, and was hacking software that would get them into the base soon enough.

The plan from that point was to leave Master Fay by the entrance with a group of Wookies, the youngest of them, to defend their path of retreat while the rest of them would press forward. Each clan or family would operate independently to break the defenders' positions and search out the pleasure slaves scattered throughout the rest of the base, while one team would head forward with Aayla and Quinlan, and another with Harry as Master Fay directed them towards the control center of the base.

"Good luck, love. I'll see you in a bit!" With that Harry set his concern for Aayla aside, concentrating on his own task. Letting loose a breath of air, he breathed in and began to form the image of himself in the structure he'd already created within his mind of the area below them. And then as the image solidified, he poured his Force power into it, imagining himself there instead of here.

Just as it had worked the times before, like it had the first time on Ryloth, Harry disappeared from where he was and appeared where he wanted to be with a loud pop of displaced air. Having come out in a corner of the room, the shouts of surprise from all around him signaled his arrival.

Swiftly Harry activated his lightsaber, cutting to one side, wincing as his lightsaber literally cut through a pirate, a Duros like his friend Alecto armed with a wicked looking skinning dagger and a whip. The shocked look on his face would have been comical under other circumstances.

Yet Harry could not let his grief at taking a life so quickly control him, and he lashed out with a Force Push that slammed two other men, both humans, into the airlock they had just been about to open, leaving them senseless on the ground. He brought his lightsaber back around to block two astonishingly well aimed blaster bolts, but was unable to direct them back at his opponents. A swift stunning bolt flew from his other hand, however, knocking the last of the defenders unconscious.

The quad laser set into the floor had twisted around by this time, and Harry hastily brought up his lightsaber to block the blasts, the lightsaber flashing this way and that, its distinctive hum filling the area, audible even over the sounds of the alarms in the background, interspersed by the spang, spang of blaster bolts impacting the blade. They came a little too fast and a little too furiously for harry to deflect back using Shien, pushing Harry off balance before he could recover, and one of the bolts flew by his head with a bare inch to spare.

The blaster bolts came in so fast and furiously Harry couldn't divide his attention between his Force Precognition and trying to use the Force to destroy it. But he quickly got used to the speed and impact of the bolts, which began to bounce directly back at the gun slagging it within a few seconds.

Breathing in deeply, Harry let his lightsaber fall to the side for a second, staring around him before deactivating the lightsaber and concentrating once again on where he had previously been. That was much easier, although when he popped into the transport two of the Wookies had moved forwards towards where he had been standing.

They must've been waving their hands in the air where he had previously been and they let out sharp barks of exclamation, retreating quickly. "I said I could do it," he said mildly, letting none of his relief that they had stopped waving their hands through that position show on his face. His mother had been very clear on what would have happened if he had teleported into a position occupied by another person or thing, and it wasn't pretty. "Now gather round. I can only do this with people touching me, so I'll be bringing you in about five or six at a time."

By the time the Wookie force with him had been completely transported, Harry was gasping, sweat streaking his face. Transporting other people like that took it out of him to a degree Harry hadn't realized before this, not having ever done so with so many people before. Still, they were in position and pushing forward within about five minutes of the time it had taken him to take out the defenders.

After he popped in the last group, Harry leaned against a control console for a moment, getting his breath back before activating his lightsaber again and looking at the Wookies. "Have you decided who's going to stay?"

Several of the older Wookies nodded firmly, taking up stations along the walls and behind the control panel set into the center of the room. One of them, one of the oldest leaders named Tarnoshiiicaba, also knelt behind the quad turret, chuffing. "/Jedi, always so hard on electrical devices./"

"It was trying to be equally hard on me, so my sympathy for it is limited," Harry replied dryly, garnering a chuffing laugh from the Wookies as he looked around, realizing that at least ten Wookies were missing. "We should think of rotating troops back to rest if we have to, though hopefully this battle won't…" He stopped, shaking his head. "Yeah, I'm not going to jinx us like that."

That caused some more chuffs of laughter, and Harry doubled over from a slap to the back from one of the Wookies, who had gotten over their shock at his teleportation far quicker than he had feared they would. They seemed now to take it in stride, and gestured him on. "/Come, young padawan! It is time we Wookies showed you what we can do!/"

Harry nodded and raced forward, determined to catch up with the first group that had already left.